Friday, November 4, 2016

"YOU CANNOT SERVE TWO MASTERS.'

Homily for November 5th, 2016: Luke 16: 9-15.
         The sayings of Jesus which Luke has collected into today’s gospel reading are comments on what we heard in yesterday’s reading. That was about the unjust steward who realized that he was about to lose his job because of mismanaging his employer’s property. To assure himself of friends who would be indebted to him, and might offer him future employment after he was let go, he calls in the people who owe money to his master’s estate and settles their debts for fifty cents on the dollar. To our surprise Jesus commends the steward “for acting prudently.” Jesus does not praise the man’s dishonesty. He praises his prudence. Realizing that the knife is at his throat, the man acts, desperately, to ensure his future.    
         Today’s gospel continues Jesus’ teaching about money, for which he uses the ancient Hebrew word mammon. This culminates in the sayings, “No servant can serve to masters. … You cannot serve God and mammon.” Jesus is not saying that money and possessions are bad. Nothing that God has made is bad; indeed everything that comes from God is good. It participates in some measure in the absolute goodness of God the Creator. What is at stake is how we use money. Used to support people and causes we love, money is good. Given the central place in our lives by trying to amass more and more and more, money makes us unhappy and frustrated (as people who give money the central place in their lives soon discover) – because we find we can never get enough.
         Jesus’ personal religion taught the law of tithing: giving the Lord out of gratitude, the first claim on our money and possessions. For most Catholics that seems so out of reach to be almost preposterous. There is one place in our country, however, where tithing is a reality: the diocese of Wichita, Kansas. There, after decades of teaching, tithing is all but universal. One consequence is that whereas all other dioceses are struggling to maintain Catholic schools in the face of today’s rising costs, all the Catholic schools in the Wichita diocese are tuition free! Another consequence: the Wichita diocese has almost as many seminarians as does our own archdiocese of St. Louis – which has five times the Catholic population of Wichita.   
Think about that, friends. Above all, pray about it.  

Thursday, November 3, 2016

THE DISHONEST STEWARD


Homily for November 4th, 2016: Luke 16:1-8.         

“The master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.” From antiquity Bible commentators have disputed about who is meant by “the master.” Is he the man’s employer – or Jesus himself? It is difficult to believe that the praise can have come from an employer who has just told his steward – we would call him a manager -- that he is about to be fired. So the praise must come from Jesus himself. How is that possible? Clever the manager may have been. But honest? Hardly. How can Jesus praise what all can see is a swindle?

          Jesus does not praise the manger’s dishonesty. He praises the man’s ability to recognize his desperate situation. For him, it is now or never. Jesus addresses the parable to those who remain indifferent to his message. The story is Jesus’ attempt to shake them out of their complacency. His message confronted them with the need to decide: for him, or against him. To postpone this decision, to continue living as if nothing had changed, with the attitude of “business-as-usual”, was in fact to decide against Jesus. That meant disaster. Trapped in what looks like a hopeless situation, the manager cleverly found a way out and acted while there was still time. It is this cleverness and enterprise which Jesus commends, not the man’s dishonesty.

Jesus Christ asks us for the same decision today: for him, or against him. It is not a once-for-all decision – something like learning to ride a bicycle: once you’ve learned, you know it for life. Our decision for Jesus Christ needs to be renewed every day.

For those who are trying to renew their decision for Jesus Christ every day, joy awaits, beyond our imagining: eternal life with Him who alone can fulfill the deepest longings of our hearts.

 

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

WHAT AWATS US AT DEATH?


Nov.6th, 2016: 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C. 
2 Thessalonians 2:16B3:5; Luke 20:27-38.
AIM:  To explain Jesus teaching about life beyond death.
 
What will happen to us when we die? Is death simply the end, like the snuffing out of a candle? And if there is life beyond death, what will it be like? Which of us has never asked questions like those? What better time to consider them than on this Sunday, when the gospel reading contains Jesus= teaching about life beyond death?
Jesus= critics present him with a hypothetical and deliberately absurd case about a woman who has been married to seven husbands. Jesus might have told his questioners that the case was too frivolous to merit comment. Instead Jesus shows himself, here as elsewhere, to be a model teacher by using his opponents= attempt to show him up as the occasion for serious teaching about the future life.
Which of the woman=s seven husbands will have her as his wife after death, Jesus= critics want to know. Jesus= answer falls into two parts. First, he says that life beyond death is not a prolongation of life on earth. It is something completely new: not merely life after death, but rather life beyond death. That is the meaning of Jesus= statement that Athose who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.@ A fundamental purpose of marriage is the continuation of the human race through the procreation of children. Beyond death there is no need for more children to be born. 
The second part of Jesus= answer addresses his critics= contention that the idea of a future life is absurd. On the contrary, Jesus tells them, our own Scriptures clearly imply the resurrection when they represent Moses addressing the Lord as Athe God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.@ Those final words are crucial: all are alive to God, even those who have died. Before him, Jesus is saying, those long dead patriarchs remain alive. 
Jesus= way of interpreting Scripture may not be ours. But his teaching is not hard to grasp. His fundamental point is that our hope of life beyond death is not based on wishful thinking, but on the nature of God himself. He is not just a philosophical Afirst cause,@ an Aunmoved mover,@ or the Agreat architect of the universe.@ God is all those things, yet he is infinitely more.     
The God whom Jesus reveals is our loving heavenly Father, who enters into a personal relationship with us B a relationship of love. This love relationship cannot be terminated by death, any more than God=s relationship of love with his Son was ended by Jesus= death. I learned this very early, through my mother=s death when I was only six years old. A few days after my mother=s funeral, my father told me: AOur love for Mummy continues, and her love for us. We must continue to pray for her. She is with God. He is looking after her. Our prayers can help her.@ That made sense to me when I was only six. It still makes sense to me more than seven decades later. I pray for my dear mother by name in every Mass I celebrate. 
Paul is referring to this love relationship when he prays in our second reading: AMay our Lord Jesus Christ and God our Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement and good hope through his grace, encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word.@ And in his letter to the Romans Paul says that this love extends beyond this world: AI am certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor powers, neither height nor depth nor any other creature, will be able to separate us from the love of God that comes to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord@ (8:38).
This much is certain, then, about life beyond death. It is not a prolongation of present existence, but something totally new. And it is based not on wishful thinking, but on the nature of God himself as a God of love. Everything beyond that remains uncertain. The resurrection life lies so far outside our experience that it can be described only in symbols and images. Jesus mentions one in today=s gospel: Aangels.@ The Book of Revelation, which is an extended vision of the life of heaven, used other images: white robes (6:11, 7:9), stars (12:1), and harps (14:2). Those images are poetry, not prose. Like all poetic images, they are not meant to be taken literally.
Jesus Christ does not offer us a faith that answers every question curiosity can propose. He gives us a faith by which to live and die. Central to that faith is Jesus= assurance in today=s gospel: ATo [God] all are alive.@ When Jesus says Aall@, he really means it. He is speaking not only about us who await death. He is speaking also about those who have already gone home to God, to live with him forever. In John=s gospel Jesus says he is going to his AFather=s house ... to prepare a place@ for us (14:2). When we come to die, we shall find that Jesus has gone ahead, and is waiting to welcome us to the place he has already prepared for us.  
Meanwhile our task is to prepare for that great encounter and homecoming not by worrying about the details, but by living to the full here and now. To help us do this Jesus offers here at the Eucharist the treasure of his truth at the table of the word, and the treasure of his love at the table of his body and blood.
When we encounter Jesus at the end of life=s journey, will we be meeting a familiar and well loved friend? Or will he be a stranger at whose approach we shrink in fear?  The answer to that question lies in our hands, right now. Out of his great love for us God permits us to choose what that great final encounter will be like.
 It is the most important choice we shall ever have.

"MORE JOY OVER ONE SINNER . . . "


Homily for November 3rd, 2016: Luke 15:1-10.

          Had Jesus said, “There is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents,” we’d say: “Well sure.” But that is not that Jesus said. He added a word to that sentence. “There is more joy in heaven,” he actually said, “than over ninety-nine people who have no need of repentance.” How do we respond to that? I think the first response that comes to most of is: “Now, wait a minute. Shouldn’t there be some joy at least over the ninety-nine who have need of repentance?” 

          To answer to that question we need to ask another question: Who are these ninety-nine who have no need of repentance? Do you know anyone like that? I don’t. Oh, I know many people who think they have no need of repentance. But they are wrong. How can there be any joy over people who are so mistaken about their true spiritual state? We all fall short at some time, and in some way. We all need to repent, the saints included. Catholics have always believed that the only person who has never sinned, and has therefore no need to repent, is the Lord’s mother, Mary.

          The two parables in today’s gospel tell us that God’s love for us is not measured, limited, or prudent. It is, judged by human standards, over the top, reckless. For a shepherd to leave the whole flock of sheep untended, in order to find just one who had strayed, risked turning a minor misfortune, the loss of one, into a major disaster: the dispersal of the whole flock. For the woman who has lost a single coin from the family’s meager savings to throw a party which surely cost far more than the one coin lost and then found, was crazy. Could Jesus have remembered his mother doing something like that during his boyhood? It is quite possible.

          The two parables are Jesus’ answer to his critics’ complaint at the beginning of today’s gospel: “This man receives sinners, and eats with them.” What for those critics was a scandal is, for us, good news. It tells us that however far we stray, the Lord is close to us. His love for us has no limit, and no end. That is the good news. That is the gospel.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

ALL SOULS DAY


Homily for All Souls’ Day 2016.

          Yesterday, on All Saints’ Day, we reflected that we are never alone. I told you what Pope Benedict XVI said at his installation of Bishop of Rome in April 2005: “Those who believe are never alone B neither in life nor in death.@ God never intended us to be Lone Rangers, I said. In baptism he made us members of his great family, the Catholic Church. He wants us to support one another. One way we do so is by praying for one another.

          Our present Pope Francis is quite different from his predecessor. Yet he proclaims the same gospel. Here is something he said on All Souls’ Day two years ago. “The communion of Saints goes beyond earthly life, it goes beyond death and lasts forever. This union among us, goes beyond and continues in the afterlife; it is a spiritual union that stems from Baptism, is not severed by death but, thanks to the Resurrection of Christ, is destined to find its fullness in eternal life. There is a profound and indissoluble bond among all those who are still pilgrims in this world - among us - and those who have crossed the threshold of death to enter into eternity. All the baptized down here on earth, the souls in Purgatory and all the Blessed who are already in Paradise make up one great family. This communion between earth and Heaven is brought about especially through intercessory prayer.”

          Intercessory prayer (also called suffrages) refers to our prayer for the departed, and to their prayer for us. He is what the Catechism says. “The Church in its pilgrim members [that is in us who are still alive], from the very earliest days of the Christian religion, has honored with great respect the memory of the dead and ‘because it is a holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins’ she offers her suffrages for them. Our prayer for them is capable not only of helping them but also of making their intercession for us effective.” (No. 958)

          This is what we do in a special way on All Souls’ Day.

Monday, October 31, 2016

"THOSE WHO BELIEVE ARE NEVER ALONE."


Homily for All Saints= Day
AIM:  To help the hearers rejoice in our fellowship with the saints.
                                                                                
Eleven half years ago, on April 24th, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI, now retired, began his ministry as Bishop of Rome with the Mass which he celebrated before a vast crowd in St. Peter=s Square in Rome. Three times that month, he told them in his homily, they had chanted the litany of the saints: at the funeral of Pope John Paul II; as the cardinals processed into the conclave to choose his successor; and at the beginning of the Mass which Pope Benedict was celebrating, when the response to the invocation of each saint was a prayer for the new Pope: ALord help him.@ 
At Pope John Paul=s death, Pope Benedict said, his predecessor had crossed the threshold of the next life, entering into the mystery of God. ABut he did not take this step alone. Those who believe are never alone B neither in life nor in death.@   We knew, the new Pope said, that the saints, Ahis brothers and sisters in the faith ... would form a living procession to accompany him into the next world.@
Two weeks later, Pope Benedict continued, as the cardinals gathered to choose the Church=s new chief shepherd, Awe knew that we were not alone. We knew that we were surrounded, led, and guided by the friends of God. And now, at this moment, weak servant of God that I am, I must assume this enormous task, which truly exceeds all human capacity. How can I do this?
AAll of you, my dear friends, have just invoked the entire host of saints, represented by some of the great names in the history of God=s dealing with mankind. In this way, I can say with renewed conviction: I am not alone. I do not have to carry alone what in truth I could never carry alone. All the saints of God are there to protect me, to sustain me, and to carry me.@
Is it only popes whom the saints protect, sustain, and carry? Don=t you believe it! The saints are truly sisters and brothers to every one of us. That is why we pray to them: not as we pray to God, of course, but asking them to pray for us.  What could be more natural, what more fitting? God never intended us to be Lone Rangers. In baptism he made us members of his great family, the Catholic Church.  He wants us to support one another. One way we do so is by praying for one another. Priests receive requests for such prayer all the time. If it is right, and natural, to ask our friends here on earth to pray for us, how much more fitting to ask the prayers of our friends in heaven, the saints? Being close to God, their prayers are especially powerful.
The saints are not remote figures in stained glass windows. They are close to us. We enjoy fellowship with them. The letter to the Hebrews portrays them as spectators in an arena, supporting and encouraging us who are running now the race they ran here on earth. ASeeing, then that we are surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily drags us down; and let us look to Jesus, the beginning and end of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and is now set down on the right hand of the throne of God.@ (Heb. 11:1f.)
People often ask: How many saints are there? There are reference books which list them. And the list is constantly growing. In reality, however, most of the saints are known only to God. That is why we celebrate All Saints= Day, honoring not only those we know, but the vastly larger number of those known only to God.  All Saints= Day reminds us that we are never alone: neither in life nor in death. 

When we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and clouds seem to shut out the sunshine of God=s love, the saints walk with us. When we rejoice at some answered prayer, some great achievement, some unexpected blessing, the saints rejoice with us. For the saints, our sisters and brothers, are not only more numerous than we often suppose. They are also, in a sense, more ordinary. They faced the same difficulties we face. They never gave up. That was their secret. The saints are just the sinners who kept on trying. 

Each time we make a decision for Jesus Christ, we place ourselves on their side. They centered their lives on the Lord. He was their strength in life, their companion in death. He is the same for us. As long as we are trying to be true to him, he will give us what he gave them: strength to live, and courage to die.  

Sunday, October 30, 2016

"THE SON OF MAN HAS COME TO SEEK AND SAVE WHAT WAS LOST."


Oct. 30th, 2016: 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C.  Wis. 11:22-12:2; Lk. 19:1-10.
AIM: To proclaim Jesus= offer of hope to the hopeless and salvation to the lost.
 
In 1985 the German tennis player Boris Becker set the tennis world on its ear by coming out of nowhere, at age seventeen, to win the Wimbledon tennis tournament. He won it again in 1986 and 1989. By age twenty-one Becker was a rich man, with a tax residence in Monaco and access to just about any luxury he desired. Yet he was unhappy, his life so empty that he contemplated suicide. AI had no inner peace,@ Becker said later. Many successful people who have ignored their inner life feel that way. J. Oswald Sanders, author of the book, Facing Loneliness, writes: AThe millionaire is usually a lonely man, and the comedian is often more unhappy than his audience.@ Jack Higgins, author of the novel The Eagle has Landed and other best-sellers, was asked what he would like to have known as a boy. His answer: AThat it=s lonely at the top.@
The central figure in the gospel reading we have just heard has reached the top. But he is lonely and unhappy. As chief tax collector in Jericho, Zacchaeus was filthy rich by the standards of those days. He was not the kind of tax collector we think of: a salaried public official. He was the sole proprietor of a business enterprise. He had a contract with the hated Roman government of occupation to pay them each year a fixed amount in taxes. How he got the money was of little concern to the authorities. He squeezed his fellow citizens for all they were worth, pocketing whatever he could in the process. No wonder he was hated: first for his greed and strong-arm tactics; second for collaborating with the pagan Romans. For all his wealth, Zacchaeus was a lonely man: alienated from his own people and alienated too from God.
Zacchaeus had heard about Jesus, the wandering rabbi who enjoyed such tremendous popularity. What was his secret, Zacchaeus wondered? If only he could see Jesus, perhaps speak with him. But how could Zacchaeus mingle with the crowd gathered to welcome Jesus? These were the people he had milked year after year to amass his wealth. He hit on an ingenious idea. He would climb a tree. With everyone straining to see Jesus, no one would notice him. And he would have a good view. 
Someone does notice Zacchaeus, however. Then as now, climbing trees was for boys C certainly not something anyone could imagine a millionaire doing. How they must have jeered to see this hated rip-off artist up in a tree. It is not difficult to imagine Zacchaeus=s shame and embarrassment at being seen. The jeering stops, however, as Jesus looks up at the tree and calls out: AZacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.@ Zacchaeus was accustomed to being ostracized, especially by religious people. Yet here was a religious teacher actually saying he wanted to dine at Zacchaeus=s house. With a big smile on his face he hurries down. The crowd makes way for him as he goes to greet Jesus and lead the way to his house. 
Once there Jesus does not preach to Zacchaeus that he must repent or else go to hell. Jesus= non-judgmental and unconditional acceptance of Zacchaeus speaks more powerfully than even the most eloquent sermon. In full view of everyone at the table Zacchaeus stands up and says: AHalf of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.@ By giving half of his wealth to the poor and using the other half to repay the victims of his greed Zacchaeus= wealth was just about gone. Who needs money, however, when you have found a meaningful life? 
Where had this greedy, grasping man suddenly got such generosity? He got it from the One who had called out to him in love rather than in condemnation, and who even then was sitting at his table as an honored guest; the One who loved Zacchaeus when he had done nothing to deserve love; and who in this way had made it possible for Zacchaeus to love others in return, out of gratitude. 
What better example could we have of the creative, healing power of love? What better demonstration that love is never lost when it is shared, but that it is increased? Love is contagious. It grows when we give it away. What clearer illustration could we have of the central truth of the gospel: that God=s love for us is always a free gift, never a reward?
The good, respectable religious people of Jericho are scandalized by the whole affair. AHe has gone to stay at the house of a sinner,@ they protest in tones of shocked indignation. What for them was a scandal is for us good news. Jesus is the one who Ahas come to seek out and to save what was lost.@ 
Those words are a statement of who Jesus is. Then, now, for all time, Jesus Christ is the one who does not look at what we have been, or even at what we are.  Instead Jesus looks at what, deep in our hearts, we would still like to be. He is the one who has come to search out and to save people without hope, the most abandoned, those most deeply entangled, like Zacchaeus, in webs of selfishness, self-indulgence, and greed.
AToday salvation has come to this house,@ Jesus told Zacchaeus. He is saying the same to us, right now. This is our great today. This is our hour of salvation. Jesus is here, calling us, inviting us to his holy table. He is reaching out to us in active, accepting love, though we have done little or nothing to deserve such love. He is here for no other purpose than to seek out and save people who, without him, are floundering, without hope, and lost.
Zacchaeus Awelcomed Jesus with joy,@ Luke tells us. We can share that joy. Because of Jesus Christ, and his love for us, life is not aimless, not without meaning. Our sins, our failures, our compromises are not the last word about us. The last word belongs to the One who tells us that he has come Ato seek and to save what is lost.@ No matter what others think of us. No matter what we may sometimes think of ourselves. There is One to whom we are infinitely precious. He is Jesus Christ: Son of man and Son too of God C our brother, our lover, our best friend; but also our Savior, and our God!

'INVITE THE POOR, CRIPPLED, LAME, BLIND."

Homily for October 31st, 2016: Luke 14:12-14.


          “When you hold a banquet,” Jesus says, “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.” He directs these words to his host, whom Luke describes as “one of the leading Pharisees,” clearly a person of social prominence. We get an idea of the other guests at this Sabbath dinner from Jesus’ words about those his host should not invite: “your friends, your brothers or sisters or your relatives, or your wealthy neighbors.” Those were the people Jesus saw when he looked around him at this dinner. “They may invite you back,” Jesus says, “and you have repayment.”


          Invite people, Jesus is telling his host, who cannot repay you. When you do that, Jesus says at the end of this brief gospel reading, “you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” What Jesus clearly means is that then God will repay you. And his repayment is the only one worth receiving.


            Instead of inviting people from whom you can expect gratitude and some kind of repayment, Jesus says, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind. If you do that, Jesus continues, you will be “blessed indeed.” That means, you will be truly happy; for you will receive a reward which is infinitely beyond the greatest of earthly rewards, since it will come from God himself.


          Jesus reinforces this teaching with his own example. When does he do this, you ask? He does it at every Mass! We who are Jesus’ invited guests at the table of Jesus’ word, and the sacramental table of his Body and Blood are spiritually poor. Our sins cripple us and make us lame. And too often we are blind to the greatness and depth of his love for us. St. Augustine says that God loves each and every one of us as if, in the whole world, there were only one person to love.


          So this little story, about Jesus attending a dinner with a group of elite guests, turns out to be Good News for us. It tells us, once again, that Jesus loves us with a love that will never let us go.  

INVITE THE POOR, CRIPPLED, LAME, BLIND.


Homily for October 31st, 2016: Luke 14:12-14.

          “When you hold a banquet,” Jesus says, “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.” He directs these words to his host, whom Luke describes as “one of the leading Pharisees,” clearly a person of social prominence. We get an idea of the other guests at this Sabbath dinner from Jesus’ words about those his host should not invite: “your friends, your brothers or sisters or your relatives, or your wealthy neighbors.” Those were the people Jesus saw when he looked around him at this dinner. “They may invite you back,” Jesus says, “and you have repayment.”

          Invite people, Jesus is telling his host, who cannot repay you. When you do that, Jesus says at the end of this brief gospel reading, “you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” What Jesus clearly means is that then God will repay you. And his repayment is the only one worth receiving.

            Instead of inviting people from whom you can expect gratitude and some kind of repayment, Jesus says, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind. If you do that, Jesus continues, you will be “blessed indeed.” That means, you will be truly happy; for you will receive a reward which is infinitely beyond the greatest of earthly rewards, since it will come from God himself.

          Jesus reinforces this teaching with his own example. When does he do this, you ask? He does it at every Mass! We who are Jesus’ invited guests at the table of Jesus’ word, and the sacramental table of his Body and Blood are spiritually poor. Our sins cripple us and make us lame. And too often we are blind to the greatness and depth of his love for us. St. Augustine says that God loves each and every one of us as if, in the whole world, there were only one person to love.

          So this little story, about Jesus attending a dinner with a group of elite guests, turns out to be Good News for us. It tells us, once again, that Jesus loves us with a love that will never let us go.