Friday, June 30, 2017

"LORD, I AM NOT WORTHY."


Homily for June 30th, 2017: Matthew 8:1-4.

          People afflicted with leprosy in Jesus’ day suffered not only physically but socially and spiritually, as well. Because the disease was considered highly contagious, they were banned from public places. And since they were considered spiritually unclean they could not participate in Temple worship. Anyone who touched a leper became spiritually unclean as well.

          This helps us understand why the man we have just heard about in the gospel reading is prefaces his plea for healing by doing homage to Jesus. “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean, he pleads.”  The man’s faith in Jesus’ power to heal is crucial. It is faith that opens the door for God’s action in our lives.

          Out of compassion with this social outcast Jesus responds at once. Reaching out across the boundary between clean and unclean, Jesus touches the man, saying: “I will do it. Be made clean.” Jesus has restored the man to the community of God’s people. At once he tells the newly healed man to fulfill the provisions of the Jewish law by going to a Temple priest and offering sacrifice. Jewish priests were then also quarantine officials.

          Where did Jesus get this power to heal? He received it in his hours of silent waiting on his heavenly Father in prayer. Just before encountering this leper, Jesus has been on a mountain, Matthew tells us. Mountains in those days were considered especially close to God. Jesus has just been praying. He needed those times of silence, alone with his heavenly Father. It was in those hours of solitude that Jesus nurtured the power to heal, to say to rough working men, “Follow me,” and have them obey him on the spot. And if Jesus, whose inner resources were infinitely greater than ours, needed those times alone with God, we are fools and guilty fools, if we think we can do without them.  

Thursday, June 29, 2017

"YOU CAN MAKE ME CLEAN."


Homily for June 30th, 2017: Matthew 8:1-4.

          People afflicted with leprosy in Jesus’ day suffered not only physically but socially and spiritually, as well. They were banned from public places. And since they were considered spiritually unclean they could not participate in Temple worship. Anyone who touched a leper became spiritually unclean as well.

          This helps us understand why the man we have just heard about in the gospel reading is prefaces his plea for healing by doing homage to Jesus. “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean, he pleads.”  The man’s faith in Jesus’ power to heal is crucial. It is faith that opens the door for God’s action in our lives.

          Out of compassion with this social outcast Jesus responds at once. Reaching out across the boundary between clean and unclean, Jesus touches the man, saying: “I will do it. Be made clean.” Jesus has restored the man to the community of God’s people. At once he tells the newly healed man to fulfill the provisions of the Jewish law by going to a Temple priest and offering sacrifice. Jewish priests were then also quarantine officials.

          Where did Jesus get this power to heal? He received it in his hours of silent waiting on his heavenly Father in prayer. Just before encountering this leper, Jesus has been on a mountain, Matthew tells us. Mountains in those days were considered especially close to God. Jesus has just been praying. He needed those times of silence, alone with his heavenly Father. It was in those hours of solitude that Jesus nurtured the power to heal, to say to rough working men, “Follow me,” and have them obey him on the spot. And if Jesus, whose inner resources were infinitely greater than hours, needed those times alone with God, we are fools and guilty fools, if we think we can do without them.  

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

THE PREACHING TASK


Homily for July 2nd, 2017, 13th Sunday in Year A: 2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16a; Mt 10: 37-42.
AIM:  To explain the purpose of preaching, and ask for prayerful support.
 
Is preaching important? Many Catholics would say it is not. Some might even prefer a shorter Mass with no sermon or homily. That could be an indication, however, of what people think about the homilies that they hear. Surveys report that a major complaint of Catholics in the pews is the quality of preaching.
The Second Vatican Council said that preaching is important. AThe homily is to be highly esteemed as part of the liturgy itself. In fact, at those Masses which are celebrated on Sundays and holidays of obligation, with the people assisting, it should not be omitted except for a serious reason@ (Liturgy, 52). The Catechism says the same: ANo one B no individual and no community B can proclaim the Gospel to himself: >Faith comes from what is heard= [875]. ... The People of God is formed into one in the first place by the Word of the living God ... The preaching of the Word is required for the sacramental ministry itself, since the sacraments are sacraments of faith, drawing their origin and nourishment from the Word@ [1122].
Two of our readings today are about preaching and preachers. The first reading tells how a Awoman of influence,@ as she is called, arranged guest quarters in her home for the prophet Elisha. Recognizing him as a man of God, she felt privileged to provide for him. And in the gospel Jesus tells his apostles, as he sends them out to proclaim God=s kingdom: AWhoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.@
         The word Apreaching@ turns a lot of people off. ADon=t preach at me,@ we say. We don=t like people who are always laying down the law and moralizing. Most of us, most of the time, know what we should do. Our problem is doing it.
Jesus Christ was a preacher. But he was not a moralizer. Jesus= first concern was not with behavior, but with seeing. Jesus knew that the best way to get people to improve their behavior was to show them how much God loved them; and how much he longed for their love in return. Of course Jesus spoke also of God=s law; but he made it clear that the best reason for obeying the law is to express our gratitude for the love God lavishes on us before we=ve done anything to deserve it. 
Jesus has entrusted this same concern, and this same message, to his messengers today.  The primary purpose of preaching is not to tell people what to do. It is to awaken and nourish faith. If the preacher can accomplish that, love will grow out of faith, and faith-filled people will be eager to express their faith by obedience to God=s law.
Which of us does not need greater faith? When we come to Mass on Sunday, do we need to be told what to do? Or do we come here week by week to the table of God=s word to be told who we are? That we are God=s daughters and sons, infinitely precious to him, the objects of a love so deep that he sent his only Son to die on our behalf. We want to hear that this world, with all its suffering and horrors, is still God=s world. We want a faith which will give us strength to live, and courage to die. 
If preachers are to awaken and nourish faith, we must be people of faith ourselves. We preachers have nothing to give but what we have ourselves received. The most important thing I do each day is to come here, early in the morning, and to wait in silence for a full half-hour on the Lord. Take away that time I spend alone with him, and I would just be spinning my wheels.
Most of you will remember Cardinal Bernardin. He was archbishop of Chicago from 1982 till 1996, when he lost a protracted battle with cancer. In the last few weeks of his life, knowing that he would soon die, he wrote a beautiful little book called The Gift of Peace.  Listen to what he says people want from their priests:
APeople look to priests to be authentic witnesses to God=s love in the world, and to his love. They don=t want us to be politicians or business managers; they are not interested in the petty conflicts that may show up in parish or diocesan life. Instead, people simply want us to be with them in the joys and sorrows of their lives. ... Even if people are not committed to any specific religion, men and women everywhere have a deep desire to come into contact with the transcendent@ C in other words, with God. We priests cannot possibly help people to come into contact with the transcendent C in the pulpit, at the altar, in the confessional, or in personal conversation C unless we are cultivating that contact ourselves. If we are not men of prayer, we are nothing, useless servants indeed. Pope Benedict XVI, now retired writes: AAll methods [of priestly work] are empty without the foundation of prayer. The word of proclamation must always be drenched in an intense life of prayer. ... Speaking about God and speaking with God must always go together.@ [Robert Moynihan, Let God=s Light Shine Forth, pp. 85 & 89.]
          Fifteen years go, when we were in the midst of the firestorm of media reports about abuse of children by some priests, I spoke about the distress we all felt, priests especially. I quoted a column in the Post-Dispatch which said: AThis is not an easy time for thoughtful men who wear the Roman collar.@ I told you that was true C but not the whole truth. I went on to speak of my joy in priesthood; that priesthood was all I have ever wanted. If I were to die tonight, I said, I would die a happy man. And I asked: How many people in other walks of life could say the same?
I added some words which, to my surprise, were printed twice over in the Post-Dispatch: AMy own experience of priesthood, and what I observe in my brother priests, has taught me that we priests are weak, fallible sinners like everyone who has ever been born.@ I explained what I meant: AIf we are healers, we are wounded healers. In other words: any healing we have to offer comes not from us, but from the One we serve; whose uniform we are happy and proud to wear, though we wear it unworthily: Jesus, the Good Physician.@
Let me conclude by reading to you some words by John Quinn, the retired archbishop of San Francisco, who died last week.  AI believe that this is the best time in the history of the church to be a priest, because it is a time when there can be only one reason for being a priest or for remaining a priest C that is to >be with= Christ.  It is not for perks or applause or respect or position or money or any other worldly gain or advantage. Those things no longer exist or are swiftly passing. The priest of today is forced to choose whether he wants to give himself to the real Christ, who embraced poverty, including the poverty of the commonplace, rejection, misrepresentation C the real Christ of the gospels C or whether, with the mistaken throngs of Jesus= time, he wants an earthly, worldly messiah for whom success follows upon success.
AThe priest, for whom Christ Jesus is the true and living center of his heart and life, is the one who can bring the church and the world what they need more than anything else today C hope. The church needs teachers. Yes. But more than ever it needs witnesses to hope. The world, cynical as it may be, wants to touch God and to see the face of God.@ 
Being witnesses to hope, helping people touch God and see the face of God, is a heavy responsibility. Without the help which God alone can give, it would be crushing. Mindful of this crushing responsibility, St. Paul expressed a fear which besets every preacher: AThat after preaching to others I should find myself rejected@ (1.Cor. 9:27). I close, therefore, with a simple but heartfelt request: pray for your priests, that we may remain faithful.

PETER AND PAUL


Homily for June 29th, 2017.

AYou are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.@ In Jesus= language, Aramaic, the words for Peter and Rock were the same. In calling his friend, Simon, APeter,@ Jesus was giving him a new name: ARock.@

In reality, Peter was anything but rocklike. When, on the night before he died, Jesus told Peter that within hours Peter would deny him three times, Peter protested: AEven though I have to die with you, I will never disown you.@ (Mt. 26:34f) We all know the sequel: Jesus was right, Peter wrong.

Jesus gave the position of leadership of his Church to the friend whose love was imperfect; whose impetuosity and weakness made the name Jesus gave him C Rock C ironic: as ironic as calling a 350-pound heavyweight ASlim.@  Before he was fit to become the Church=s leader, however, Peter had experience his weakness. He had to become aware that without a power greater than his own, he could do nothing.

With Peter the Church honors the Apostle Paul. His call was as surprising as the choice of Peter to be the Church=s leader. Who could have imagined that the Church=s arch-persecutor, Saul, would become its first and greatest missionary, Paul? If Peter was impulsive, impetuous, and often weak, Paul was hypersensitive, touchy, subject to wide swings of mood: at times elated, at others tempted to self-pity. No one who knew Paul would ever have accused him of Ahaving it all together@ C to use modern jargon.

Is there anything like that in your life? When you look within, do you see any of Paul=s touchiness, or Peter=s impetuosity and weakness? Take heart! You have a friend in heaven C two friends, in fact: Peter and Paul. The same Lord who gave the vacillating Simon the name of ARock@; who summoned the Church=s arch-enemy, Saul, to be her great missionary, Paul, is calling you. In baptism he made you, for all time, his dearly loved daughter, his beloved son. He called you to be not only his disciple, but an apostle: his messenger to others. You say you=re not fit for that? You=re right. Neither am I! God often calls those who, by ordinary human standards, are unfit. But he always fits those whom he calls.  

God has a plan for your life, as surprising and wonderful as his plans for Peter and Paul. Knowing this, and aware of how God was accomplishing his plan in Paul=s own life, Paul could write: AI am sure of this much: that he who has begun the good work in you will carry it through to completion, right up to the day of Christ Jesus@ (Phil. 1:6).

Those words are part of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. And the best news of all is simply this. The only thing that can frustrate the accomplishment of God plan C for you, for me, for any one of us C is our own deliberate and final No.

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

"BY THEIR FRUITS YOU WILL KNOW THEM."


Homily for June 28th, 2017: Matthew 7:15-20.

          Catholics now in their late sixties came of age in a day when the Catholic Church was proud to be “the Church that never changes.” That boast was actually only half true – as such then young Catholics started to discover with the close of the Second Vatican Council in December 1965. The Church’s faith never changes. There has been development, of course. But we believe that this development has been guided by the Holy Spirit, so that what we believe today about the Pope, to take one example, is an entirely legitimate development of what the apostles believed. Just about everything else except our beliefs has changed and will change: styles of worship, of preaching, and methods of handing on the faith to others. No one has stated the need for such change better than the great 19th century English convert, at the end of his life a cardinal, Blessed John Henry Newman. “To live is to change,” Newman said, “and to be perfect is to have changed often.” Catholics less than 65 today have grown up in a Church which is rapidly changing.

          Are all the changes we have seen over the last half-century good? Clearly not. How can we judge such changes? Jesus tells us in today’s gospel: “By their fruits you will know them.” The most obvious change over the last half-century is in worship. Catholics who came to Church in 1960 experienced a Mass which was almost entirely silent; the few parts spoken aloud could seldom be understood: not just because they were in Latin, but because most priests took them at breakneck speed. Fifteen and even twelve minute celebrations of a rite considerably longer than today’s Mass were common. Praying the prayers aloud, as we now do, and in the language of the people, has enhanced popular participation in the Mass, at least where priests have learned to lead the celebration with reverence. 

          The charismatic renewal is another change. It did not exist before Vatican II. Speaking recently to some 50,000 charismatics in Rome, Pope Francis confessed that he was initially mistrustful of their movement. Now he endorses it enthusiastically because of its good fruits. It has made prayer real for millions for whom prayer was once just reciting words out of a book.

          The renewal of religious life for women has produced both good and bad fruits. The Sisters’ orders which have modernized, while retaining such things as community life, an updated uniform or habit, and enthusiastic faithfulness to Church teaching are growing rapidly. Those which are have erased all signs that they are different have no recruits at all and, though visibly dying, still insist that they are the wave of the future. Once again we see: “By their fruits you will know them.”

Monday, June 26, 2017

"ENTER THROUGH THE NARROW GATE."


Homily for June 27th, 2017: Matthew 7, 6, 12-14.

AStrive to enter through the narrow gate,@ Jesus says. That Anarrow gate@ stands for every situation in which God=s demands weigh heavily on us and seem too hard to bear. We all experience such situations. It is important to know that trials and troubles are not signs not of God=s absence, but of his presence. Everything that threatens our peace of mind, or even life itself, is a challenge, and an opportunity to grow. Our trials and sufferings are the homework we are assigned in the school of life.

The idea that God is a supernatural protector who guards his own from all suffering is not a Christian idea, but a pagan one. Why is there suffering in a good world, created and upheld by a good and just God? Which of us has never asked that question? Our faith does not answer it. Faith gives us instead the strength to endure amid suffering.

Our teacher in this school is Jesus Christ. Whatever trials and sufferings we encounter, his were heavier. The letter to the Hebrews says of Jesus: ASon though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when perfected, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him ...@ (5:8f).

This is the Anarrow gate@ of which Jesus speaks in the gospel: the patient endurance of all the hard and difficult things that life sets before us. Jesus never promised that God would protect us from trials and sufferings. He promises that God will be with us in trials and suffering. 

We pray, then, in this Mass in a special way: “Be with us, Lord, in times of darkness, when clouds shut out the sunshine of your love. Be with us in the power of your Holy Spirit. Lead us ever onward. Give us the protection of your holy angels, to lead us to you.”

Sunday, June 25, 2017

"STOP JUDGING."


Homily for June 26th, 2017: Matthew 7:1-5.

          “Stop judging,” Jesus says. Can we really do that? Even simple statements involve judging: “This coffee is too hot;” or, “Children, you’re making too much noise.” And what about the moral judgments of others that we make, and must make, all the time? An employer makes a judgment every time he hires a new employee. The pope judges when he makes a priest a bishop. Parents make judgments about their children in deciding such questions as  when to entrust them with a cell phone, or the family car. Clearly Jesus cannot be forbidding judgments like that.

          What Jesus forbids is making judgments that only God can make – because only God can see the heart. When God sent the prophet Samuel to Bethlehem to find a new king for his people, to replace Saul, Samuel was especially impressed with the young man Eliab. Surely, he must be the one, Samuel says. To which the Lord responds: “Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, because I have rejected him. Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart.” (1 Sam. 16:7) Jesus, who was steeped in the Jewish Scriptures, would have been familiar with that passage. He would also have known the verse from the prophet Jeremiah, who represents God saying: “I, the Lord, alone probe the mind and test the heart, to reward everyone according to his ways.” (Jer. 17:10)   

          “Stop judging, that you may not be judged,” Jesus says. That is what Bible scholars call the “theological passive.” What Jesus meant was, “Stop judging, so that God will not judge you.” A devout Jew could not say that. Pronouncing the name of God was forbidden. To avoid doing so, Jesus uses the passive: “that you may not be judged.”

          We find this confirmed in the words that follow: “The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.”  What this means is: God will judge you with the severity, or generosity, which you show to others.  Do you hope that, when you come to stand before the Lord God in judgment, he will show you mercy? Then start showing mercy to others. It’s as simple as that!