Friday, October 23, 2015

WARNING -- AND ENCOURAGEMENT.


Homily for Oct. 24th, 2013: Luke 13:1-9.

Jesus= hearers tell him about two recent disasters: an atrocity perpetrated by the hated Roman governor, Pontius Pilate; and a construction accident which had killed eighteen unsuspecting people. In Jesus= day people assumed that the victims of such tragedies were being punished for their sins. Twice over Jesus contradicts this view. The victims were no worse sinners than anyone else, Jesus says. But their deaths were a warning , Jesus says: AI tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!@ The story which follows, about a farmer and his barren fig tree, drives home this warning.

Fig trees grew wild in Palestine in Jesus= day. A newly planted fig tree takes three years to bear fruit. So when the owner of this fig tree tells his gardener that he has been looking for fruit from it for three years, this means it had been there for six years in all. The order to cut it down was entirely reasonable. The gardener is an example of the incurable optimist. He wants to dig round it, to allow the rain to reach the roots, and to fertilize the tree. Nowhere in Scripture do we find any reference to fig trees being cultivated or fertilized. The gardener is suggesting extraordinary, heroic measures. He agrees with his employer, however, that if the tree is still without fruit after another year, it will have to come down.

The story contains a warning, but also encouragement. God is like the owner of the fig tree, Jesus is saying. God looks for results. There will be a day of reckoning. That is the warning. But God is also patient. He is willing to wait. He will even wait longer than necessary. Behind the figure of the gardener in the story C pleading for one more growing season, for extraordinary, heroic measures C we glimpse Jesus himself. Jesus, our elder brother and our best friend, knows our weakness. If we haven=t done too well up to now, Jesus pleads on our behalf for more time. That is the story=s message of encouragement.

In the gardener=s suggestion to wait one more year, to use extraordinary measures, we see God=s patience and generosity. In the agreement of owner and gardener alike, that if the tree remains without fruit another year, it must be cut down, Jesus warns us of the certainty judgment.

God’s judgment is not the adding up of the pluses and minuses in some heavenly book. It is simply God’s ratification of choices we make every day: for God, his love, his goodness, and his light; or our choice to reject those things. If we are trying to choose Him, the Lord God who loves us beyond our imagining things, need not fear judgment. We can be confident.

 

Thursday, October 22, 2015

"I DO NOT DO THE GOOD I WANT."


Homily for Oct. 23rd, 2013: Romans 7:18-25a

          “I do not do the good I want,” Paul writes in our first reading, “but I do the evil I do not want.” Which of us could not say the same? Paul is stating something about human nature, and our common human experience, which, several centuries later, came to be called “original sin.” Original sin is not a sin which has never been committed before. Such a sin does not exist. All the sins there are have all been committed years, even centuries, ago.

          “Original sin” is something that comes to us in our origin, as sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. They were created by God to live in happy harmony with their Creator, the Lord God. God placed them in a garden, a symbol of order, beauty, and tranquility. Misunderstanding their Creator as jealous of his prerogatives, and wanting to be like God, they disobeyed God’s command and, in consequence, lost the original goodness and holiness they had received from God. Moreover, this loss was not only for themselves, but for all their descendants, ourselves included. This loss, the Catechism says, is called “original sin.”

As a result of original sin, the Catechism goes on to say, “human nature is weakened in its powers; subject to ignorance, suffering and the domination of death; and inclined to sin.” (Nos. 417f).  It is this flaw or weakness in our nature which Paul is talking about when he says in our first reading, that though he wants to do good, and recognizes that he should do good – yet nevertheless he does evil time and again. Which of us has not experienced the same in our own lives?

          Grieving over this defect or flaw in our nature, Paul cries out: “Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body?” Only to add at once that there is someone who does bring us deliverance: God himself, through his Son Christ Jesus. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” Paul cries out.

          The Catechism says that “the victory that Christ won over sin has given us greater blessings than those which sin had taken from us (No. 420). With Paul, then, we too cry out: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

 

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

"I HAVE COME TO SET THE EARTH ON FIRE."


Homily for Oct. 22nd, 2015: Luke 12:49-53.

AI have come to set he earth onfire,@ Jesus says, Aand how I wish it were already kindled.@ That fire was kindled on the first Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came down on Jesus’ friends in “tongues as of fire” (Acts 2:3). And that fire is still burning. That we are Catholic Christians in a continent undreamed of by anyone in Jerusalem then is proof that the fire kindled then was not lit in vain.

It is our task to pass on the flame to others, so that they may catch a spark from the fire of God=s love burning within us. Christianity, it has been said, cannot be taught. It must be caught. As fire burns it gives light. We are called to be prisms or lenses of God=s light, so that it may shine in a dark world. The inner quality of our lives is determining, right now, the brightness, or the darkness, of that part of the world in which God=s providence has placed us. St. Paul tells us what this means in characteristically memorable words. AShow yourselves guileless and above reproach, faultless children of God in a warped and crooked generation, in which you shine like stars in a dark world, and proffer the word of life.@ (Phil. 2:12-16)  

What is this word of life we have to proclaim? It is very simple, really. We are to proclaim, at all times by the quality of our lives, and when necessary by words, that God is C that he is real. That he is a God of love, who loves each one of us as if, in the whole universe, there were only one person to love; and that he looks for our loving response to his love. And we are called to be witnesses to the existence of a world beyond this one: the unseen, spiritual but utterly real world of God, of the angels, of the saints; the dwelling place of our beloved dead C our true homeland, as Paul reminds when he writes, Awe have our citizenship in heaven@ (Phil 3:20).    

Does any of that come through in your life? Is the Spirit=s fire burning in your heart? If you were arrested tonight for being a Catholic Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? And if mere physical presence at Mass were not enough for conviction, would there be enough evidence then?

We come here that the Spirit’s fire may be rekindled if it has burned low within us. Listen then to an ancient prayer of the Church for the rekindling of this fire.

Come down, O love divine, seek thou this soul of mine,

and visit it with thine own ardor glowing;

O Comforter, draw near, within my heart appear,

and kindle it thy holy flame bestowing.

 

O let it freely burn, till earthly passions turn

to dust and ashes in its heat consuming;

and let thy glorious light shine ever on my sight,

and clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

 

Let holy charity my outward vesture be,

and lowliness become my inner clothing;

true lowliness of heart, which takes the humbler part,

and o=er its own shortcoming weeps with loathing.

 

And so the yearning strong, with which the soul will long.

Will far outpass the power of human telling;

for none can guess its grace, till he become the place

wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.

 

(Bianco da Siena, d.1434; translated by R.F.Littledale, d. 1890)

 

 

"GET UP, JESUS IS CALLING YOU."


30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B. Mark 10:46-52
AIM: To challenge the hearers to deeper conversion.
Tourists in poor Third World countries, such as India, are constantly beset by beggars. Our country is rich. But there are beggars here too. A priest walking in certain inner city areas is sure to be asked for money for a cup of coffee from at least one pathetic figure clearly suffering from the effect of a stronger brew. Near the Greyhound bus terminal the request is more likely to be for money to buy a ticket to a distant city, where a job is waiting to relieve the petitioner from his temporary financial embarrassment.  In European cites, such as Paris or Rome, the beggars are often gypsies who use all kinds of tricks and harassment to separate unwary tourists from their money.
Harassment was the stock-in-trade of the blind beggar Bartimaeus in our gospel reading today. He would sit by the roadside in a pathetic heap crying out his mournful litany to passersby whom he could hear but not see. Bartimaeus is at his accustomed station early today. He has heard that the famous rabbi Jesus from Nazareth is coming to town. There is sure to be a big turnout. With any luck, Bartimaeus thinks, I=ll have a good day.
From a distance Bartimaeus hears the sound of an approaching crowd. They are chanting one of the Psalms sung by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. Surely this must be the rabbi himself, on the way to the holy city for Passover. 
At once Bartimaeus starts to cry out repeatedly the flattering salutation which he has rehearsed in advance: AJesus, son of David, have pity on me!@ Indignant that this squalid town beggar should disturb the famous rabbi=s pilgrimage, the bystanders tell Bartimaeus to be quiet. He pays no attention. This is his big chance. He continues to cry out at the top of his voice.
Though blind Bartimaeus cannot see it, Jesus has stopped. He is telling his friends to summon the man whose voice Jesus can still hear through the hubbub of the crowd. ATake courage,@ those near Bartimaeus tell him. AGet up, Jesus is calling you.@ Overjoyed at this unexpected good fortune, Bartimaeus leaps to his feet, throwing aside the tattered cloak which he uses to enhance the impression of pathetic misery.
AWhat do you want me to do for you?@ Jesus asks. Bartimaeus never expected anything like this. AMaster,@ he hears himself saying, AI want to see.@
AImmediately he received his sight,@ Mark tells us. The words which follow are the most important in the whole story: Bartimaeus Afollowed [Jesus] on the way.@
To follow Jesus on the way has a special, spiritual significance in Mark=s gospel. It was no ordinary way. The way Jesus was walking would take him to Jerusalem, the site of his passion, death, and resurrection. When Mark tells us that Bartimaeus started to follow Jesus on that way, therefore, he means that Bartimaeus has become Jesus= disciple. The fact that this man, alone of all those Jesus healed in this gospel, is named, indicates that he was known to the Christian community for which Mark wrote. He was one of them.
That encounter outside Jericho changed Bartimaeus=s life. He was looking for money. He found something far more valuable than anything even the most generous benefactor could give: not only the restoration of his physical sight, but spiritual vision as well: the ability to recognize Jesus C and to see that following him was the best thing he could do with his life.
Into this simple story of the healing of a blind beggar Mark has compressed the whole process of Christian conversion. In began, seemingly, with Bartimaeus= search for money. In reality, God was already searching for him. He had already sent his Son, Jesus of Nazareth, to call Bartimaeus. Jesus= call reaches him not directly, but through others. These messengers challenge Bartimaeus to act. AGet up! Jesus is calling you!@ Even after Bartimaeus responds to this call, however, he still needs others to lead him to Jesus. Through the encounter with Jesus Bartimaeus discovers something infinitely better than the money he has been looking for. He finds the one whose companionship means everything to him. He decides to follow Jesus on the way C to become his disciple. 
The story continues to exercise its spiritual power today. Let me tell you about a man whose life was changed through reading it. Some of you know him.  He is Abbot Thomas Frerking of our local Benedictine Abbey on Mason Road. He told me his story, with permission for publication, when the monks chose him as their abbot seventeen years ago. First a little background.
Thomas Frerking was born in St. Louis 65 years ago to Presbyterian parents.  Stricken with polio at age two and not expected to live, he spent six months in an iron lung. Upper body strength returned, but with his legs totally paralyzed he can get around today only on crutches or in a wheelchair. Like many young people today, Thomas abandoned religious faith while in high school, confident that science had disproved spiritual things, such as the existence of the soul. He graduated from Harvard in 1966 and won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford. There, as previously at Harvard, he had many Catholic friends. AI loved to discuss religion with them,@ he told me. ABut it never occurred to me to investigate their church.@   
In a talk on prayer at Oxford, the speaker recommended reading one of the gospels straight through. AYou will find one passage that speaks to you directly. When you do, be faithful to the message, regardless of the cost.@ Thomas chose Mark=s gospel. Let me tell you the rest, in Abbot Thomas=s own words.
AWhen I came to the blind beggar, Bartimaeus, I thought: >That=s me!= I felt   convicted of intellectual pride and kept repeating: >Lord Jesus, Son of David, be merciful to me, a sinner.= Jesus came to me. I heard him saying: >Call him over.= So I went to Jesus C and he gave me a hard time. He asked me: >What do you want me to do for you?= I had to tell him: >Lord, I want to see.’ This happened= several times over the next few days. I realized that the people around Jesus were Catholic Christians. I knew I must ask for instruction in the Catholic faith. But then I thought: >Oh no, I could never do that!=@

That was in July 1969. In August Thomas came home for a visit to the Rocky Mountains with his parents. ALooking up at a cloud one day, [he told me] the decision was just given to me. I knew that when I got back to Oxford I would phone the Catholic student chaplaincy and ask for instruction. When I did so the chaplain asked: >Where are you?= I replied: >In my room at Trinity College.= He didn=t know me from Adam. But he said at once: >I=ll be there in 15 minutes.= That was in September 1969. I was received into the Church at Easter 1970.@

AGet up, Jesus is calling you!@ Was that just long ago and far away? Don=t you believe it! That is the Lord=s message to each one of us. It is his message to you, right now. Have you responded to the message? Are you passing on the message to others? If not, what are you passing on? Whether you know it or not, your life is making a statement. Is it a statement for Jesus Christ? or against him?

Perhaps you are uncertain what statement your life is making. Then you need to listen again to the call. Jesus is calling you. The farther you are from him, the more urgently he is calling. You need to do what Bartimaeus did: get up, cast aside the things that hinder you, and come to Jesus. He wants to heal you of your inner, spiritual blindness.

He wants you to follow him, on the way.     

"I HAVE COME TO SET THE EARTH ON FIRE."


Homily for Oct. 22nd, 2015: Luke 12:49-53.

AI have come to set fire to the earth,@ Jesus says, Aand how I wish it were already kindled.@ That fire was kindled on the first Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came down on Jesus’ friends in “tongues as of fire” (Acts 2:3). And that fire is still burning. That we are Catholic Christians in a continent undreamed of by anyone in Jerusalem then is proof that the fire kindled then was not lit in vain.

It is our task to pass on the flame to others, so that they may catch a spark from the fire of God=s love burning within us. Christianity, it has been said, cannot be taught. It must be caught. As fire burns it gives light. We are called to be prisms or lenses of God=s light, so that it may shine in a dark world. The inner quality of our lives is determining, right now, the brightness, or the darkness, of that part of the world in which God=s providence has placed us. St. Paul tells us what this means in characteristically memorable words. AShow yourselves guileless and above reproach, faultless children of God in a warped and crooked generation, in which you shine like stars in a dark world, and proffer the word of life.@ (Phil. 2:12-16)  

What is this word of life we have to proclaim? It is very simple, really. We are to proclaim, at all times by the quality of our lives, and when necessary by words, that God is C that he is real. That he is a God of love, who loves each one of us as if, in the whole universe, there were only one person to love; and that he looks for our loving response to his love. And we are called to be witnesses to the existence of a world beyond this one: the unseen, spiritual but utterly real world of God, of the angels, of the saints; the dwelling place of our beloved dead C our true homeland, as Paul reminds when he writes, Awe have our citizenship in heaven@ (Phil 3:20).    

Does any of that come through in your life? Is the Spirit=s fire burning in your heart? If you were arrested tonight for being a Catholic Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? And if mere physical presence at Mass were not enough for conviction, would there be enough evidence then?

We come here that the Spirit’s fire may be rekindled if it has burned low within us. Listen then to an ancient prayer of the Church for the rekindling of this fire.

Come down, O love divine, seek thou this soul of mine,

and visit it with thine own ardor glowing;

O Comforter, draw near, within my heart appear,

and kindle it thy holy flame bestowing.

 

O let it freely burn, till earthly passions turn

to dust and ashes in its heat consuming;

and let thy glorious light shine ever on my sight,

and clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

 

Let holy charity my outward vesture be,

and lowliness become my inner clothing;

true lowliness of heart, which takes the humbler part,

and o=er its own shortcoming weeps with loathing.

 

And so the yearning strong, with which the soul will long.

Will far outpass the power of human telling;

for none can guess its grace, till he become the place

wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.

 

(Bianco da Siena, d.1434; translated by R.F.Littledale, d. 1890)

 

 

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

"MY MASTER IS DELAYED IN COMING."


Homily for Oct. 21st, 2015: Luke 12: 39-48.

AMy master is delayed in coming,@ the unfaithful servant in Jesus= story says. Behind those words lies the thought: >Maybe he=s not coming at all.=  Then this unfaithful servant begins to act as if he were the master himself, abusing his fellow servants and breaking into his absent employer=s wine cellar to stage wild parties for his free-loading friends.

The unfaithful servant=s words, AMy master is delayed in coming,@ had special meaning for the community for which Luke wrote his gospel. They believed that Jesus was going to return soon, within the lifetime of some of them at least. As time went on and the Lord did not return, many in Luke=s community were tempted to say: >Maybe he=s not coming at all.=

Jesus= story warns them not to yield to such thoughts; not to forget that they are servants who, one day, will have to give an account of their service. People who live as if there will never be an accounting have broken faith, Jesus warns. For such faithless servants the day of reckoning will be unexpected, and painful. AThat servant=s master will come,@ Jesus says, Aon an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish the servant severely.@

That failure of faith is always a temptation for the Church, and for each of us who are the Church. We yield to this temptation when we use the blessings that God gives us through his Church solely for ourselves. That is why the Church is, and always must be, a missionary Church. We can=t keep God=s gifts unless we give them away. And when we do give them away, handing on to others the faith God has given us, we don=t become poorer. We grow richer. In passing on our faith to others, our own faith is deepened and strengthened.

Whenever in its 2000-year history the Church has forgotten its servant role; whenever the Church has settled in too comfortably and accumulated too much worldly power, prestige, and wealth, it has become inwardly flabby and spiritually sick. What is true of the Church is true also of each of us, the Church=s members. We are servants: servants of the Lord, and servants too of our sisters and brothers. And we are people on a journey: pilgrims underway to our true homeland with the Lord B pitching our tents each evening, as we lie down to rest for the next day=s journey, a day=s march nearer home.       

 

Monday, October 19, 2015

"BE LIKE SERVANTS WHO ARE READY."


Homily for October 20th, 2015: Luke 12:35-38.

          Yesterday’s parable of the rich fool was about a man who thought that money and possessions could guarantee security and happiness. Too late he discovers that life is God’s to give, and God’s to take away. In today’s gospel, Jesus reminds us that we are servants, not masters. We remain servants, even when the master is away. When he returns and finds us still his faithful servants, ready to welcome him, we shall experience a reversal of roles: he, the Master, will serve us.

          But when will he return? We cannot know – save that his return, when it comes, will be unexpected. Here is a modern parable about the unexpected: a young woman’s letter to the man she deeply loves. This is what she wrote:

          “Remember the day I borrowed your brand new car and dented it? I thought you'd kill me, but you didn't. And remember the time I flirted with all the guys to make you jealous, and you were? I thought you'd leave me, but you didn't. Remember the time I forgot to tell you the dance was formal and you showed up in jeans? I thought you'd drop me, but you didn't.

          “Yes, there were a lot of things you didn't do. But you put up with me, and you loved me, and you protected me. There were a lot of things I wanted to make up to you when you came back from Afghanistan.

          “But you didn't come back."

          We think there is always tomorrow; but one day our tomorrow will be on the other side. Will that tomorrow be happy? We need to decide now, for tomorrow could be too late.

          One thing alone can guarantee a happy tomorrow: remaining conscious of our servant role by centering our lives on Jesus Christ as ministers of service to our fellow servants: brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ – yes, and ours too.