Saturday, January 2, 2016

WHO WERE THE WISE MEN?


EPIPHANY
Matthew 2:1-12.

AIM: To present the wise men’s search as a model for us.

 

          Who were these “magi from the east,” who set out to follow a star and found instead “the child [Jesus] with Mary his mother”? We know the magi from other translations as “the Wise Men.” To their contemporaries they were not wise. They were crackpots who were not playing with a full deck. Who were they in reality?

1.       The Wise Men were searchers.

In his book about the infancy narratives in the gospels of Luke and

Matthew, Pope Benedict XVI says that the Wise Men “represent the inner dynamic of religion toward self-transcendence, which involves a search for truth, a search for the true God and hence ‘philosophy’ in the original sense of the word.” (p. 95) They were not content with routine, with life as they found it. They wanted more. Yet the Wise Men were not idle daydreamers. They were willing to abandon routine, to set out on what seemed to everyone but themselves a madcap journey, following a star.

          People are searching today – searching for answers to life’s mysteries. If this is God’s world, people ask, why does he permit so much pain, injustice, and suffering? Must we always live under the threat of international terrorism? How can we master the dark forces within ourselves that threaten to drag us down from the highest and best that deep in our hearts we want, and to destroy our inner peace: dark forces like envy, hatred, lust, resentments, sloth, and the self-centeredness of conceit and pride? Is death simply the end, like the snuffing out of a candle? Or is there life beyond death?   

          Those are just some of the questions that perplex us today. There are many more. Sometimes it seems there is no end to life’s questions, problems, and mysteries. When we are tempted to fear that there are no real answers to our questions, because life at bottom is meaningless, the Wise Men can help us. Like us, they were searchers. But they were more.

2.       The Wise Men were discoverers.

          They continued their search despite its seeming futility, despite all discouragements and setbacks. In the end they were rewarded. They found the One they were looking for. Matthew tells us that when the Wise Men finally arrived at the end of their long journey, “they were overjoyed.”

          The One whom they encountered as a baby would speak often about this joy three decades later. He would tell of the shepherd’s joy at finding his lost sheep; of the woman’s joy at finding her lost coin; the joy of the dealer in precious stones finding one day in the bazaar a pearl so large and flawless that it made all he had seen and owned up to then seem cheap baubles by comparison; the joy of the day laborer at discovering in his employer’s field an unsuspected treasure that would change his life. 

          For all these people the joy of discovery was purchased at the price of lengthy searching. Even the laborer accidentally finding the treasure buried in the field he was plowing had behind him years of grinding toil, when the very idea that he could ever rise above the subsistence level seemed ludicrous. The Wise Men’s joy was purchased at the price of perseverance in the face of many defeats and the scorn of those who thought them mad.

          Our own search for answers to life’s mysteries is – whether we know it or not – a search for the One whom the Wise men found. It is a search for God. The search is not in vain. God can be found. God wants to be found.

          We think the search is all ours. In reality, God is already searching for us.  The One who led the Wise Men by the shining of a star leads us onward by the powerful attraction of his love, shining in the face of his Son, Jesus Christ. For us, as for the Wise Men at the end of their search, great joy awaits: the overwhelming joy of knowing that we have been found by the One who, all along, was searching for us, though we never realized it at the time. 

          The Wise Men’s search, and their joy in discovering the One they sought, encourage us. But the Wise Men were not only searchers and discoverers –

3.       The Wise Men were worshippers.

          Matthew tells us that in the joy of discovery, “they prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh” – the most precious, and the most costly thing that each possessed.

          The end of the search, then, is neither the discovery nor the joy. When at last you have found the One who, all along, has been searching for you, everything is transformed. The only fitting response is worship.

          To worship means to forget ourselves. It means entrusting ourselves to the One who is greater than our greatest thought and higher than our most lofty imagining; and yet who is present in the humblest and smallest and weakest of his creatures, as he was present in the infant at Bethlehem. Worship is the highest form of prayer there is. The late Bishop Fulton Sheen wrote:

          “The person who thinks only of himself says prayers of petition. The person who thinks of his neighbor says prayers of intercession. The person who thinks only of loving and serving God says prayers of abandonment to God’s will. And that is the prayer of the saints.”  

So who were the Wise Men? They are our fellow travelers on life’s pilgrimage. Matthew leaves them nameless. Hence they can bear our names. Wise is every Anne and John and Mary and David who is not content with life as it is; who is willing to break with routine in order to search for answers to life’s mysteries; who refuses to admit that life is meaningless, but continues to search for answers and meaning despite all difficulties and discouragements. Yes, wise are all those who persevere in this search until it ends in joy – and joy gives way to worship.

          Who, then, are the Wise Men? The Wise Men are ourselves, in God’s plan and according to God’s will. One thing alone can prevent the accomplishment of God’s plan and God’s will for your life: your own deliberate and final No. 

          “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod,” we heard at the end of the gospel, “they departed for their country by another way.” The Fathers of the Church say, ‘But of course’: no one comes to Jesus and goes back the same way he came. The encounter with the Lord changes us. We go home from Mass changed, because here we have been brought into the bright circle of God’s love – not just to give us a warm feeling inside, but so that we may share that love with others: Jesus’ sisters and brothers – and ours too. 

Friday, January 1, 2016

"I AM THE VOICE . . . "


Homily for January 2nd, 2016: John 1:19-28.

          The preaching of John the Baptist, accompanied by mass baptisms, created a sensation. Great numbers went out into the desert, where John lived, to hear him and to be baptized by him. (Cf. Matt. 3:5) The Jewish Scriptures, which we call the Old Testament, speak in several places of the Lord taking away sins by the pouring of water. It is understandable, therefore, that the religious authorities in Jerusalem send messengers to John to ask what is going on, and what is his authority.       

          John’s response to their questions is simple: “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’” These words hark back to a passage in the prophet Isaiah: “A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be laid low.” (Is. 40:3f)  Isaiah’s words were directed to his people in exile in Babylon. The angels, Isaiah told his people, were preparing a way for them to return from captivity to their homeland in Palestine.

“Like a modern bulldozer, the angels were to level hills and fill in valleys, and thus prepare a superhighway. John the Baptist is to prepare a road, not for God’s people to return to the promised land [as in Isaiah’s day], but for God to come to his people. John’s baptizing and preaching in the desert was opening up people’s hearts, leveling their pride, filling their emptiness, and thus preparing them for God’s intervention.” (Cited from Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John, p.50)

John, as we saw before Christmas, was a voice for the one who is the Word: God’s personal communication to us, to show us, who cannot see God, what God is like. John’s message is still preparing people’s hearts and minds to encounter God’s Son and Word. He does so in what were perhaps the greatest of the Baptist’s words: “He must increase. I must decrease.” (John 3:30) Take those words with you into the year that is just one day old today. Let them be your guide during the remaining 364 days of this year. They will keep you close to the One who alone can make this a happy year for you. “He must increase. I must decrease.”    

Thursday, December 31, 2015

MARY, THE WOMAN OF FAITH.

Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. Luke 2:16-21
AIM: To present Mary as the model of trusting faith in the new year.
          A new year! What will it bring? Some great success? Humiliating failure?  Unexpected happiness, or sudden loss? Dramatic change, or just more of the same? Illness, suffering, or death? We cannot know what the new year will bring. The one certain thing about the future is its uncertainty. As we venture into the unknown, the Church gives us, on this New Year’s Day, a feast in honor of Mary, the Mother of God. Does this mean that Mary is as important as her Son, equal even with God? Of course not.
          Why does the Church dedicate this first day of the new year in a special way to Mary? Because Mary is, in a unique way, the woman of faith. While only on the threshold of her teens, Mary was asked by God to venture into an unknown future, filled with suffering, the purpose and end of which she could not possibly understand in advance. We think of the angel’s message to Mary, that she was to be the mother of God’s Son, as something wonderful. To Mary, however, it meant being an unmarried mother in a little village, where everyone knew everyone else’s business, and where gossip was rife.
          The faith which enabled Mary to accept her role in this mystery was no once-for-all thing. Her faith, like ours, needed to be constantly renewed amid suffering and misunderstanding. Joseph wanted to break their engagement. In the Jerusalem temple Mary heard the aged Simeon prophesy her Son’s rejection and his mother’s suffering. When her twelve-year-old Son told Mary and Joseph, who for three days had thought him lost in Jerusalem and sought him frantically, that he had to be in his Father’s house, Luke tells us that “they did not understand” what he was telling them. (Lk 2:50)
          There would be much more that Mary did not understand and could not understand. In time her Son left home. Often thereafter he seemed to be fulfilling his own command about “hating” parents and other close relatives, and one’s “own life too” (Lk 14:26). At Cana, the site of his first miracle, Jesus appeared to treat his mother with perplexing disrespect. Even at the Last Supper Jesus made no place, it seems, for his mother. Only at Calvary was she permitted to stand beside her now dying Son, along with “the disciple whom Jesus loved” — deliberately left anonymous, so that he can represent the ideal follower of Jesus Christ in every age and place. 
          There on Calvary Mary experienced the full truth of Simeon’s prophecy three decades before: that a sword would pierce her own soul. There she shared the anguish of her dying Son, as he cried: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Calvary was the final and greatest test of Mary’s faith, the place where she had to renew once again, as she had done so often before, the declaration of trusting faith with which she had begun: “Let it be done to me according to your word.” The final glimpse we have of Mary in the New Testament shows her to be still the woman of faith: joining with the friends of Jesus in prayer in the upper room at Jerusalem, before the outpouring of God’s Spirit at Pentecost, as Jesus had promised.  (Cf. Acts 1:24)
          The Church sets Mary before us today because she, like us, needed faith to journey into the unknown; because her faith can inspire in us the we faith we need for our journey into the unknown; and because Mary’s prayers support us on our pilgrim way.
          Let me conclude with some words which evoke this trusting faith.  They were written in England about a century ago. As you listen, you may wish to imagine them being spoken to you by Mary, the woman of faith, as you cross the threshold of a new year.
          “And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown. And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than a light, and safer than a known way.’” [M. Louise Haskins; quoted by King George VI of England in his Christmas broadcast, 1939]

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

WHO WERE THE WISE MEN?


Epiphany.  Matthew 2:1-12.

AIM: To present the wise men’s search as a model for us. 

          Who were these “magi from the east,” who set out to follow a star and found instead “the child [Jesus] with Mary his mother”? We know the magi from other translations as “the Wise Men.” To their contemporaries they were not wise. They were crackpots who were not playing with a full deck. Who were they in reality?

1.       The Wise Men were searchers.

In his book about the infancy narratives in the gospels of Luke and

Matthew, Pope Benedict XVI says that the Wise Men “represent the inner dynamic of religion toward self-transcendence, which involves a search for truth, a search for the true God and hence ‘philosophy’ in the original sense of the word.” (p. 95) They were not content with routine, with life as they found it. They wanted more. Yet the Wise Men were not idle daydreamers. They were willing to abandon routine, to set out on what seemed to everyone but themselves a madcap journey, following a star.

          People are searching today – searching for answers to life’s mysteries. If this is God’s world, people ask, why does he permit so much pain, injustice, and suffering? Must we always live under the threat of international terrorism? How can we master the dark forces within ourselves that threaten to drag us down from the highest and best that deep in our hearts we want, and to destroy our inner peace: dark forces like envy, hatred, lust, resentments, sloth, and the self-centeredness of conceit and pride? Is death simply the end, like the snuffing out of a candle? Or is there life beyond death?   

          Those are just some of the questions that perplex us today. There are many more. Sometimes it seems there is no end to life’s questions, problems, and mysteries. When we are tempted to fear that there are no real answers to our questions, because life at bottom is meaningless, the Wise Men can help us. Like us, they were searchers. But they were more.

2.       The Wise Men were discoverers.

          They continued their search despite its seeming futility, despite all discouragements and setbacks. In the end they were rewarded. They found the One they were looking for. Matthew tells us that when the Wise Men finally arrived at the end of their long journey, “they were overjoyed.”

          The One whom they encountered as a baby would speak often about this joy three decades later. He would tell of the shepherd’s joy at finding his lost sheep; of the woman’s joy at finding her lost coin; the joy of the dealer in precious stones finding one day in the bazaar a pearl so large and flawless that it made all he had seen and owned up to then seem cheap baubles by comparison; the joy of the day laborer at discovering in his employer’s field an unsuspected treasure that would change his life. 

          For all these people the joy of discovery was purchased at the price of lengthy searching. Even the laborer accidentally finding the treasure buried in the field he was plowing had behind him years of grinding toil, when the very idea that he could ever rise above the subsistence level seemed ludicrous. The Wise Men’s joy was purchased at the price of perseverance in the face of many defeats and the scorn of those who thought them mad.

          Our own search for answers to life’s mysteries is – whether we know it or not – a search for the One whom the Wise men found. It is a search for God. The search is not in vain. God can be found. God wants to be found.

          We think the search is all ours. In reality, God is already searching for us.  The One who led the Wise Men by the shining of a star leads us onward by the powerful attraction of his love, shining in the face of his Son, Jesus Christ. For us, as for the Wise Men at the end of their search, great joy awaits: the overwhelming joy of knowing that we have been found by the One who, all along, was searching for us, though we never realized it at the time. 

          The Wise Men’s search, and their joy in discovering the One they sought, encourage us. But the Wise Men were not only searchers and discoverers –

3.       The Wise Men were worshippers.

          Matthew tells us that in the joy of discovery, “they prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh” – the most precious, and the most costly thing that each possessed.

          The end of the search, then, is neither the discovery nor the joy. When at last you have found the One who, all along, has been searching for you, everything is transformed. The only fitting response is worship.

          To worship means to forget ourselves. It means entrusting ourselves to the One who is greater than our greatest thought and higher than our most lofty imagining; and yet who is present in the humblest and smallest and weakest of his creatures, as he was present in the infant at Bethlehem. Worship is the highest form of prayer there is. The late Bishop Fulton Sheen wrote:

          “The person who thinks only of himself says prayers of petition. The person who thinks of his neighbor says prayers of intercession. The person who thinks only of loving and serving God says prayers of abandonment to God’s will. And that is the prayer of the saints.”  

So who were the Wise Men? They are our fellow travelers on life’s pilgrimage. Matthew leaves them nameless. Hence they can bear our names. Wise is every Anne and John and Mary and David who is not content with life as it is; who is willing to break with routine in order to search for answers to life’s mysteries; who refuses to admit that life is meaningless, but continues to search for answers and meaning despite all difficulties and discouragements. Yes, wise are all those who persevere in this search until it ends in joy – and joy gives way to worship.

          Who, then, are the Wise Men? The Wise Men are ourselves, in God’s plan and according to God’s will. One thing alone can prevent the accomplishment of God’s plan and God’s will for your life: your own deliberate and final No. 

          “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod,” we heard at the end of the gospel, “they departed for their country by another way.” The Fathers of the Church say, ‘But of course’: no one comes to Jesus and goes back the same way he came. The encounter with the Lord changes us. We go home from Mass changed, because here we have been brought into the bright circle of God’s love – not just to give us a warm feeling inside, but so that we may share that love with others: Jesus’ sisters and brothers – and ours too. 

"THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH."


Homily for December 31st, 2015: John 1:1-18.
          If you came to Mass on Christmas morning, you probably heard this gospel. You may have thought it strange. Where are the shepherds, the manger, Mary and Joseph? Where is their child? Instead of these familiar Christmas figures we have heard about abstractions: light and darkness, the Word becoming flesh.
Let=s start with another word: Aincarnation.@  It means Ataking on flesh, embodiment.@ This building is the incarnation of an idea in the mind of the architect who designed it, and of the sacrifices that made its construction possible. Children are the incarnation of their parents= love. And Jesus is the incarnation of God. 
We cannot see God. Jesus shows us what God is like. That is why this Christmas gospel calls Jesus God=s Word. A word is used to communicate. Jesus is God=s word because he is God=s communication to us: not a lifeless, abstract statement, but God=s living and breathing utterance and self-disclosure.    
When we listen to Jesus, we hear God speaking to us. When we look at Jesus, we see what God is like. What do we see when we look at Jesus? We see that he preferred simple, ordinary people. He came to the world in a provincial village where nothing interesting or important ever happened. Jesus moved not among wealthy or sophisticated people, or among scholars and intellectuals, but among ordinary people. They were the ones who welcomed him most warmly. The rich and powerful and learned had difficulties with Jesus. Many were hostile to him – then, and still today.
In his youth Jesus worked with his hands in the carpenter=s shop. His teaching was full of references to simple things: the birds of the air, the wind and the waves, the lilies of the field, the vine, the lost sheep, the woman searching for her one lost coin, leavening dough with yeast, the thief breaking in at night. Those were images that everyone could understand. Jesus also told stories: so simple that they capture the interest of children; yet so profound that learned scholars are still studying them today.
In preferring simple people and simple things, Jesus was showing us what God is like. He who is God=s utterance and word, God=s personal communication to us, is saying through all the circumstances of his life that God loves humble people. God is especially close to those who feel that they are not in control of their lives; that they are the victims of circumstances; that their lives are a tangle of loose ends and broken resolutions.

It is because God gave us his Son at Christmas that we give gifts to one another. The greatest gift we can give cannot be bought in any store. It is the gift God gave us at Christmas: the gift of himself. Look at Mary=s child: helpless, vulnerable, and weak, as all babies are. He is God=s way of saying: >This is how much the Lord God, creator of heaven and earth, loves you; enough to be become tiny, insignificant, vulnerable.= Jesus, the personal utterance and word of God, is God=s gift to you. He wants you to share this gift with others.

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

JESUS' HIDDEN YEARS


Homily for December 30th, 201: Luke 2:36-40.

          The prophetess Anna, whom we have just heard about in the gospel, was very old. “She never left the Temple, “Luke tells us, “but worshipped day and night with fasting and prayer.” There are such people in the Church today: contemplative nuns, who do not leave the convent for charitable or other good works, like most Catholic Sisters. They lead mostly hidden lives, praying for others.

          Anna has evidently been praying, as devout Jews had done for centuries, for the coming of God’s promised anointed servant, the Messiah. When Mary and Joseph brought their baby into the Temple to present him to the Lord, as the Jewish law required, both the priest Simeon and Anna recognized at once that this infant was the long awaited Messiah. How they most have rejoiced! Anna’s joy is evident in the fact that she cannot keep the news to herself. “She gave thanks to God,” Luke tells us, “and spoke about the child to all those who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.”

          Then comes what at first seems like an anti-climax. Mary and Joseph return to Nazareth with their child. Save for a glimpse of Jesus back in the Jerusalem Temple at age twelve, we know nothing about his boyhood, adolescence, or young manhood until, at age 30, he begins his public ministry with 40 days of fasting in the desert. These are called his so-called “hidden years.”

          Are they really so hidden, however? “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” people in Nazareth will ask later (Mt. 13:55). So we can assume that as a boy, Jesus must have worked in the carpenter’s shop. Is it conceivable that any shoddy work came out of that shop? that customers were kept waiting beyond the promised date? Luke tells us that in that shop, Jesus “grew in size and strength, filled with wisdom.” He did that by accepting the burdens, duties, and frustrations of a very ordinary and outwardly uninteresting life.

He calls us to do the same.

Monday, December 28, 2015

"WHOEVER HATES HIS BROTHER IS IN DARKNESS."


Homily for December 29th, 2015: 1 John 2:3-11.

          “I am the light of the world,” Jesus says in John’s gospel (8:12). How dark the world would be without him. In baptism we were commissioned to be lenses and prisms of that light, shining from the face of Jesus Christ. In today’s first reading the apostle John tells us how we fulfill that commission. “Whoever loves his bother remains in the light . . . Whoever hates his brother is in darkness; he walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”

          To understand these words we need to know that the words “love” and “hate” here do not refer to feelings. They refer to our conduct. This becomes clear if we look at the words of Jesus himself in the parable of the sheep and the goats in chapter 25 of Matthew’s gospel. There Jesus says that when we come to stand before God in judgment, he won’t ask us how many prayers we’ve said, or how many Masses we have attended. He will ask instead how we have treated other people.

          To those on his right hand, designated as sheep in the story, the king (a stand-in for the Lord God) will say: “Come, you have my Father’s blessing! … For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, in prison and you come to me.” Astonished at these words, those on the king’s right hand ask when they had done all those things. To which the king responds: “As often as you did it for one of my least brothers, you did it for me.” 

Then, to those on his left hand, designated as goats in the story, the king says: “Out of my sight, you condemned, into that everlasting fire prepared for the devil and has angels!” To explain this harsh judgment the king tells those on his left that they have done none of those things. Conduct and not feelings is the standard by which both are judged.

          We pray then in this Mass that when the Lord sends his angel to call us home to Him, he will find us walking in the light --  by doing good to those we encounter along life’s way.

Sunday, December 27, 2015

THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS


Homily for December 28th, 2015: Matthew 2:13-18.

          Which of us does not remember the brutal killing of 20 young schoolchildren, first and second graders, in Newtown/CT six years ago? It happened the Friday before the third Sunday in Advent, which is called “Rejoice Sunday” because the readings are about joy and rejoicing. I was away from St. Louis, visiting friends in northern Virginia, just outside of Washington/DC, and staying in the rectory of a large parish. I had prepared a homily for Rejoice Sunday, on the theme of joy.  

          As soon as the terrible news came from Connecticut, I knew I could not preach about joy, when our hearts were breaking at the slaughter these innocent children. Away from home, and without access to the books I use for homily preparation, and the mass of material already on my computer, I was unable to produce the full text which I would have done had I been at home. I reflected long and hard about what I could say which would help people grieving over this tragedy. And I prayed that the Holy Spirit would give me the words I needed.   

At 11 o’clock on that Sunday morning I stood before a congregation of at least 300 people to speak about grief and how God can bring good out of evil. My own voice was breaking as I did so. When I finished, I knew that God had answered my prayers for inspiration and guidance. The whole congregation erupted in applause. And I remember saying to myself: “It’s not about you, Jay, it is about the Lord.”

          Today’s gospel tells us about a tragedy every bit as great as that one three years ago. In a frantic attempt to kill the baby king whom the Wise Men from the East had told him about when they passed through Jerusalem two years before, the cruel Gentile tyrant Herod ordered the slaughter of all the boys in and near Bethlehem two years old and younger.

          We cannot observe the feast of the Holy Innocents in America today without thinking of the mass killing of unborn children, a quarter of all babies conceived, which goes on day after day and year after year, leaving their mothers, most of them acting under pressure from others, burdened for life with regrets, shame, and guilt – a burden no woman should have to bear. This modern slaughter of the innocents will end only when hearts and minds are changed and people become as ashamed of abortion as we now are about slavery. For that we pray at Mass today.