Friday, August 28, 2015

"HE MUST INCREASE, I MUST DECREASE."


Homily for August 29th, 2015: St. John the Baptist

Not quite 57 years ago, on the afternoon of October 28th, 1958, an elderly cardinal named Angelo Roncalli was elected Bishop of Rome. When he was asked what name he would take as Pope, he replied: AI will be called John.@ It was the first of many surprises. There had not been a pope of that name for over six hundred years. Almost all of them had short pontificates, John told his electors. He was then just short of 77. He would die only four and a half years later, on the day after Pentecost 1963.

He loved the name John, the new Pope said, because it had been borne by the two men in the gospels who were closest to Jesus: John the Baptist, who prepared the way for the Lord and, as we have just heard in the gospel reading, shed his blood in witness to the One he proclaimed; and John the Evangelist, called throughout the gospel which bears his name Athe disciple whom Jesus loved.@

The name John means, AGod is gracious,@ or AGod has given grace.@ The name was singularly appropriate for the man we know as John the Baptist. He was commissioned even before his birth to proclaim the One who would give God a human face, and a human voice: Jesus Christ.

God called each of us in our mother=s womb. He fashioned us in his own image, as creatures made for love: to praise, worship, and serve God here on earth, and to be happy with him forever in heaven. Fulfilling that destiny, given to us not just at birth but at our conception, means heeding the words which today=s saint, John the Baptist, spoke about Jesus: AHe must increase, I must decrease@ (John 3:3).

Those are the most important words which St. John the Baptist ever spoke. In just six words they sum up the whole life of Christian discipleship. Imprint those words on your mind, your heart, your soul. Resolve today to try to make them a reality in daily life. Those who do that find that they have discovered the key to happiness, to fulfillment, and to peace. AHe must increase, I must decrease.@

Thursday, August 27, 2015

ST. AUGUSTINE


Homily for August 28th, 2015: Memorial of St. Augustine

          We celebrate today with joy one of the great men of the ancient Church: St. Augustine. Born in North Africa in 354 to a pagan father and the devout Christian mother, Monica, whom we celebrated yesterday, Augustine was 33 before he was baptized by the great bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose. Augustine tells the story of his dramatic conversion in his Confessions.

          Augustine was on the point of accepting Christian faith, and asking for baptism. Only his inability to master his strong sexual desires held him back. Sitting on a summer day in the garden of his house, Augustine uttered an agonized prayer for purity. “How long, O Lord, how long will I hear tomorrow, and again tomorrow? Why not now? Why can there not be an end to my impurity right now?”

          All at once Augustine heard a child’s voice from a neighboring house saying over and over the Latin words, Tolle, lege. They may have been merely a child’s game, like “Eeny, Meeney, Miney, Moe.” But Augustine took them literally: “Take up and read.”  Seizing the scroll he had been reading, which contained Paul’s letter to the Romans, Augustine’s eyes fell on the words: “Let us cast off deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us live honorably as in daylight; not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual excess and lust ... Rather put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.”

          “The very instant I finished that sentence,” Augustine writes, “light flooded my heart, and every shadow of doubt disappeared.” He was baptized by Ambrose the following Easter.

          He died at on this day 430, at age 75 and having been bishop of Hippo in North Africa for 35 years. He had dictated to scribes millions of words about the faith which have been a rich source for Catholic theologians ever since. The best known of these words is a single sentence, written out of Augustine’s own life experience. It still speaks to us over 1500 years later:  “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

 

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

"YOU DISREGARD GOD'S COMMANDMENT. . ."

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B. Deut. 4:1-2, 6-8; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23.
AIM: To show the place of God’s law in our lives. 
          An elderly monk, Father Benedict, was returning to his monastery from a journey. With him was a young novice, Brother Ardens. It had been raining and the road was muddy. When they came to a dip in the road still covered with water, they found a beautiful young girl standing there afraid to proceed, lest her beautiful long dress be soiled. “Come, dear,” Father Benedict said when he saw her predicament. “I’ll carry you.” He picked the girl up in his arms and carried her across to higher ground. She thanked him, and the two monks walked on in silence.
          When they reached the monastery, Brother Ardens felt he had to say something about the incident he had witnessed. “Monks are supposed to keep away from women, especially from beautiful young girls. How could you pick up in your arms that girl we met on the road?”
          “Dear Brother Ardens,” the older monk replied, “I put that girl down as soon as we reached dry ground. You have carried her in your thoughts right into the monastery.”  
          The young novice was like the Pharisees in the gospel reading we have just heard: zealous, as many young people are, and determined to see all the rules and regulations carefully observed. The ardent young monk never realized that this could mean failing in something even more important: helping someone in need.
          Two of our readings today are about rules and regulations. In the first reading Moses tells the people “not to add to God’s law or subtract from it.” He also tells them that the Ten Commandments, which embody God’s law, are a privilege and a gift. “What great nation has statutes and decrees that are as just as this whole law which I am setting before you today?” The commandments are not fences to hem people in. They are ten signposts pointing the way to fulfillment and happiness. 
          This view of God’s law as a special privilege is central to Jewish religion. It was the view Jesus learned from Mary and Joseph, and in the synagogue school at Nazareth. In our gospel reading Jesus accuses the Pharisees of perverting God’s law. “You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.” The Pharisees were not bad people. They were good people, and deeply religious. Their failure in regard to God’s law is common to religious people – ourselves included. Jesus’ rebuke to these Pharisees is not just long ago and far away. It remains a warning for to us today.
          Religious people (and that means us) can pervert God’s law in the two ways indicated by Moses in our first reading: by adding to it, or by subtracting from it. Those who subtract from the law are concerned only with fulfilling their “minimum obligation.” They are always asking: “Do I have to?” That is a child’s question, not an adult’s. Even the tone of voice in which it is asked shows its immaturity. 
          Catholics who go through life asking, “Do I have to?” know all their minimum obligations by heart. They even know (or think they know) how late they can come to Sunday Mass, and how early they can leave, and still have it “count.”  There is one thing, however, which these minimum-obligation Catholics do not know: joy. If your primary concern is finding out how little you need to do for God and his Church, then you will experience these minimum obligations not as light, but as heavy burdens. Why is that?
          People who concentrate on minimum obligations are living with God on the fringe of their lives. As long as you keep God on the fringe of your life, he will always be a threat to you. God will always be trying to move into the center. Show me a person whose religion is a source of joy, and I will show you someone whose life is centered on God.  
          That is how Jesus lived. Like all Jews, Jesus treasured God’s law: it was at the heart of his personal religion. Can you imagine Jesus asking, “Do I have to?”  or being concerned about fulfilling his minimum obligation? He did that automatically. Jesus never asked, “How much do I have to do for God?” He asked instead, “How much can I do?” Jesus was like a person in love. No one in love ever asks, when it is a question of doing something for the beloved, “Do I have to?” People in love are continually looking for new ways to express their love through generosity and self-sacrifice.   
          What about Moses’ other warning: not to add to God’s law? Who would ever do that, you ask? More people than you might think. We add to God’s law when we think that by going beyond our minimum obligation we can gain extra credit – a rising credit balance in some heavenly bank which God is bound to honor. Extra-credit Catholics forget that, though God is unbelievably generous, he never owes us anything. It’s the other way round. We owe him everything. “When you have done everything you have been commanded to do,” Jesus says (and which of us has?), “say, ‘We are useless servants. We have done no more than our duty’” (Lk 17:10). If concentrating on minimum obligations is the failing of the lax and lazy, thinking we can earn extra credit with God is a failing of those who are especially devout. It is sobering to realize that the people to whom Jesus most often speaks severely in the gospels are the especially devout.
          “You hypocrites,” Jesus says in the gospel. He spoke those words not to open and notorious sinners, but to people who prided themselves on the exact fulfillment of God’s law; who actually went far beyond what the law required.  Their error lay in supposing that this gave them a claim on God which he was bound to honor. We never have a claim on God. God has a claim on us, and it is an absolute claim. 
          God’s love and our salvation are not things we can earn. They are God’s free gift. God bestows his gifts on us not because we are good enough, but because He is so good that he wants to share his love with us. God’s law is not the list of rules and regulations that we must first obey before God will love us and bless us. God’s law is, rather, the description of our grateful response to the love and blessing which God has already bestowed on us out of sheer generosity.  
          Does this mean that there is no “just reward” for those who do try to obey God’s law? Of course not. God’s reward for faithful service is certain. Jesus tells us this in many gospel passages. He warns us, however, that those who try to calculate their reward in advance will be disappointed. The people who are most richly rewarded – who are literally bowled over by God’s generosity – are those who never stop to reckon up their reward because they are so keenly aware of how far short they still fall of God’s standard. 
          If we want to experience God’s generosity (and is there anyone here who does not?), we must learn to stand before God with empty hands. Then we shall experience the joy of Mary, who in her greatest hour, when she learned – astonished, fearful, and confused – that she was to be the mother of God’s Son, responded with words which the Church repeats in its public prayer every evening:
          “The hungry he has given every good thing,
                   while the rich he has sent empty away” (Lk 1:53).

ST. MONICA


Homily for August 27th, 2015: St. Monica

          The opening prayer for today’s celebration of St. Monica speaks about her “motherly tears for the conversion of her son Augustine.” He was a brilliant young man. But into his 30s he was unable to accept the Christian faith, despite his mother’s fervent prayers and tears. Monica is said to have asked an old bishop whether her son would ever accept baptism. “It is impossible,” the old man reassured her, “that the son of so many prayers and tears should perish.” Augustine’s dramatic conversion at age 33 caused his mother to “leap for joy,” Augustine tells us in his Confessions. 

In another passage in that book, Augustine recounts a memorable conversation with his mother years later, toward her life’s end. “We talked together in deep joy,” Augustine writes, “and forgetting the things that were behind and looking forward to those that were before, we were discussing in the presence of Truth, who you are [O Lord], what the eternal life of the saints could be like, which eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of man. But with the mouth of our heart we panted for the high waters of your fountain, the fountain of the life which is with you. ... And my mother said, ‘Son, for my own part I no longer find joy in anything in this world. ... One thing there was, for which I desired to remain still a little longer in this life, that I should see you a Catholic Christian before I died. This God has granted me in superabundance. What then am I doing here?’” 

          A few days later Monica fell ill. “Here you will bury your mother,” she said. “Lay this body wherever it may be. This only I ask of you, that you should remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be.” Augustine was able to restrain his grief at his mother’s funeral and burial shortly thereafter; but his tears flowed copiously later on. 

          What a mother! And what a beautiful and holy death! May the Lord grant each of us such a death, when the Lord sends his angel to call us home!

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

HYPOCRISY


Homily for August 26th, 2015: Matthew 23:27-32.

          The gospel reading we have just heard is part of a longer indictment by Jesus of perhaps the greatest temptation of religious people, and our greatest failing: hypocrisy. I say “our failing” quite deliberately, because the “woe” that Jesus speaks is directed not to other people, but to us.

          Webster’s Dictionary defines hypocrisy as follows: “the act or practice of feigning to be what one is not, or to feel what one does not feel; esp. the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion.” And it says that the opposite of hypocrisy is sincerity.

The late William F. Buckley, Jr., a great wit on many subjects, was clearly referring to hypocrisy when he said to someone he was interviewing on TV: “I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.”

          The Letter of James is speaking about hypocrisy when it says: “If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his own face in a mirror. He sees himself, then goes off and promptly forgets what he looked like.” [1:23f] The nineteenth century American author Nathaniel Hawthorne says something remarkably similar when he writes: “No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”

There are people who have hidden behind a mask for so long that they have forgotten what their true face looks like. Our masks may fool others. They cannot fool God. God looks behind our masks. God looks at the heart. God reads even our secret thoughts and desires. Yet no matter how great the darkness within us, God never rejects us. God loves us deeply, tenderly, passionately. That is the gospel. That is the good news.

It was his deep conviction of this truth which enabled Pope Francis, shortly after his election as Bishop of Rome, to respond to a Jesuit interviewer who asked, “Who is Jorge Bergoglio?” with the simple and direct words: “I am a sinner.”  

Happy are we, if we can say the same – and appeal, when we come to stand before the Lord God, not to our good conduct record, but simply to the mercy of Him of whom Francis said in the same interview: “God never gets tired of forgiving us. It is we who get tired of asking for forgiveness.”

 

Monday, August 24, 2015

"YOU HAVE NEGLECTED THE WEIGHTIER THINGS.."


Homily for August 25th, 2015: Matthew 23:23-26.

          An elderly monk, Father Benedict, was returning to his monastery from a journey. With him was a young novice, Brother Ardens. It had been raining and the road was muddy. When they came to a dip in the road still covered with water, they found a beautiful young girl standing there afraid to proceed, lest her long dress be soiled. “Come, dear,” Father Benedict said, when he saw her predicament.  “I’ll carry you.” Then he picked the girl up in his arms and carried her across. She thanked him, and the two monks walked on in silence.

          When they reached the monastery, Brother Ardens felt he had to say something about the incident he had witnessed. “Monks are supposed to keep away from women, especially from beautiful young girls. How could you pick up in your arms that girl we met on the road?”

          “Dear Brother Ardens,” the older monk replied, “I put that girl down as soon as we reached dry ground. You have carried her in your thoughts right into the monastery.”  

          The young novice was like the scribes and Pharisees in the gospel reading we have just heard: zealous, as many young people are, and determined to see all the rules and regulations carefully observed. The ardent young monk never realized that this could mean failing in something even more important: helping someone in need.

          Behind each of the Ten Commandments is the highest law of all, charity: active, generous and sacrificial service – to God, and to others.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

ANGELS ASCENDING AND DESCENDING


Homily for August 24th, 2015: John 1:45-51.

 It is a little disappointing to find, on this feast of St. Bartholomew, that the gospel reading is about a man named Nathanael. Scripture scholars believe that Bartholomew and Nathanael are actually the same person. The gospel writers wrote inspired by faith, and in order to instill faith in others, not in order to give us “just the facts.”

“We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law, and also the prophets,” Philip tells his friend Nathanael, “Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth.” Nathanael responds with skepticism: “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Nazareth was then an insignificant village, unmentioned in the Old Testament.

          Despite this skepticism Nathanael is willing to accept his friend Philip’s invitation to “Come and see.” This attitude of openness is what causes Jesus to call Nathanael “a true child of Israel,” with no duplicity in him. Too many of Jesus’ own people lacked this openness. We see this in their many demands that Jesus produce some dramatic “sign” which would compel belief; and in their refusal to heed the signs Jesus did offer: his miracles.

          Philip was telling Nathanael, in effect, that he had found the one so long foretold by the Jewish scriptures: the Lord’s anointed servant, the Messiah. Nathanael responds to Jesus’ identification of him as “a true child of Israel” without duplicity by an explicit acknowledgment of what Philip has just told him: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.”

          Acknowledging the faith expressed in Nathanael’s words, Jesus tells him that further blessings await him: “You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” The words are the climax of this brief reading, and the most important. They tell us that Jesus is the contact person between earth and heaven, between humanity and God.  

We contact God by offering prayers to our heavenly Father through his Son Jesus, in and through the Holy Spirit, who inspires us to pray and supports us as we do so. The ascending angels are carrying our prayers heavenward. And the descending angels are bringing us the Father’s blessings in answer to our prayers. If we were on that ladder, we’d grow tired of going up and down. God’s angels are never weary. They are active always – on our  behalf.