Friday, August 11, 2017

JESUS USES HYPERBOLE.


Homily for August 12th, 2017: Matthew 17:14-20.

          Today’s gospel reading gives us an example of Jesus using hyperbole. How so, you ask? Webster’s dictionary says that hyperbole is “a statement exaggerated fancifully, as for effect.” The American humorist Mark Twain was using hyperbole when he said: “The first time I ever saw St. Louis, I could have bought it for 3 million dollars; and it is the mistake of my life that I did not do so.” In Mark Twain’s youth 3 million dollars was like 300 million today. The statement is absurd – but also very funny, which is of course the effect Mark Twain was aiming at.

          Helping people understand the power of faith is the effect Jesus was aiming at when he spoke the words in today’s gospel: “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘move from here to there,’ and it will move.” That is as absurd as Mark twin claiming he could have bought Louis for 3 million dollars. No one would expect a mountain to move on command.

          What Jesus is actually saying is that with faith we can accomplish the impossible. What is faith, anyway? Many Catholics would probably say: faith is the list of truths that we profess every Sunday in the creed. That is not wrong. But faith in that sense is properly called the faith.

          The primary meaning of faith is trust. Even in the Creed, we say “I believe in God.” To believe in someone is to trust that person. When we say we believe in God, we’re saying that we trust him enough to entrust our lives to him. Faith in that sense is not something that comes to us naturally. It is a gift. And the one who gives it to us is God.

          Each time we come here we are praying that through his two tables of word and sacrament God will deepen and strengthen our trust in him. We are like the man in Mark’s gospel who comes to Jesus asking healing for his boy, who suffers terrible convulsions. Jesus asks the man if he truly believes that Jesus has power to heal. “I do believe,” the father replies. “Help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). With this gospel reading Jesus is inviting us to make that man’s prayer our own.  

Thursday, August 10, 2017

"WHOEVER LOSES HIS LIFE WILL SAVE IT."


Homily for August 11th, 2017: Matthew 16:24-28.

“Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,” Jesus says. “But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” What is Jesus trying to tell us? He is speaking about two kinds of people: the takers and the givers. Takers are the people engaged in what is called “the pursuit of happiness.” Some takers seek happiness through pleasure; others through amassing financial or material possessions. Others seek happiness by trying to gain positions of power; others still by seeking honor and fame.

All of those things – pleasure, possessions, power, and honor -- are good in themselves. They become harmful for us only when we make them central in our lives. That is what the takers do. They think that if only they can get enough of one or more of these four things, they will be happy. Always and inevitably they end up frustrated. Why? Because they can never get enough. As a man of great wealth said: “Anyone who thinks he will be happy if he has a lot of money, has never had a lot of money.” The takers, then, are those who lose their lives – through frustration at never having enough. The happiness they seek always and inevitably eludes them.

Who are those who, in losing their lives for Jesus Christ, find happiness and thus save their lives? These are the givers. They put the Lord God at the center of their lives. Remembering Jesus’ words in the parable of the sheep and the goats in the 25th chapter of Matthew’s gospel, “Anything you do for one of these little ones, you do for me,” their goal in life is to serve. In doing so they discover that Jesus words are true: “There is more happiness in giving than in receiving” (Acts 20:35). That is the only saying of Jesus preserved for us outside the four gospels. Paul quotes it as something already well known in the Christian community.  

So which are you? Are you a taker, or a giver? If you’re a taker, I can promise you one thing: you will always be unhappy and frustrated, because you’ll never get enough. You will always be wanting more and more and more. It is the givers who find true happiness: the happiness Jesus is talking about when he says: “Give, and it shall be given to you. Good measure pressed down, shaken together, running over will they pour into the fold of your garment. For the measure you measure with will be measured back to you” (Luke 6:38).

 

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

"TAKE COURAGE -- IT IS I!"


August 13th, 2017: 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A.  Mt. 14:22-33.
AIM:  To show that Jesus is always close in times of peril.
 
          It was not a long voyage across the lake — five miles at most. The water was calm when Jesus sent his disciples off. In such conditions, they could row across in two hours at most. Should a favorable wind come up, they would hoist the sail and reach the other shore in half that time.
          Jesus’ friends were disappointed when he refused to join them. He insisted, however, that they set off alone. He would get passage in another boat the next day. Otherwise he would hike round the lake and join them. Meanwhile Jesus needed to be alone. Following the miracle of the feeding of the multitude, which we heard about in last Sunday’s gospel, Jesus needed to spend time in prayer, restoring his spiritual energy as he waited upon God in stillness through the night.
          What began as a routine evening crossing of the lake soon turns into a nightmare for Jesus’ friends in their small boat. Still today Galilean fishermen fear the treacherous storms caused by cold winds blowing off the surrounding hills, creating a sudden tempest in the warm air covering the low-lying water. The storm which breaks on the disciples so unexpectedly this evening comes from just the direction in which they are heading. Against wind so strong, and waves so high, they can make no headway. But the disciples know they must not allow the boat to be driven back to the shore they have left. The waves could dash them against the rocks, smashing their frail craft and everyone in it. Their only hope is to ply the oars as long as the storm continues, trying to remain a good distance from the land, in deep water.
          This explains why they are still far from their destination in “the fourth watch of the night.” The night, in those days, was divided into four equal periods or watches. If there were eight hours of darkness, each watch would be two hours long. Assuming that they had embarked before nightfall, they would have been in the boat seven hours at least. They are exhausted, soaked to the skin, cold, and frightened. Small wonder, then, that they cry out in fear as they see a human figure approaching across the wind-whipped waves. It is Jesus. “Take courage,” he calls out. “It is I; do not be afraid.”
          One man in the boat is more impulsive than his companions. He no sooner recognizes Jesus than he wants to be with him. He will react in the same way upon recognizing the risen Lord on the shore after a fruitless night of fishing in the lake.  (Cf. Jn. 21:7)  It is Peter. “Lord,” Peter calls out, “if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” 
          “Come,” Jesus replies.
          Peter’s willingness to do the unthinkable enables him to experience the impossible. He climbs out of the boat and starts to walk to Jesus across the storm tossed waves. “But when he saw how strong the wind was,” Matthew tells us, “he became frightened. And, beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’”
          Jesus had a special role for Peter. He was to be the leader of Jesus’ friends and thus of the Lord’s Church. This terrifying experience was part of Peter’s preparation. Years later he would remember: as long as he had kept his eyes on the Lord, he was safe. When he looked down, and saw the danger, he began to sink.
          Every detail in this story has rich symbolic significance for Matthew, the gospel writer. Like most people in antiquity, Jesus’ people, the Jews, regarded the sea as the domain of supernatural, demonic forces. To the Hebrew mind wind and waves were perilous: only God could master them. When Jesus’ people were fleeing from bondage in Egypt, they were terrified to find themselves trapped between the advancing army of their former masters, and the impassable waters of the Sea of Reeds ahead of them. In this desperate crisis, God had led them through the waters to safety. Their pursuers had perished. They never forgot it. Repeatedly the psalms speak of God’s power to “rule the surging sea and calm the turmoil of its waves” (Ps. 89:10; cf. 93:3f; 107:23-30). By walking on the raging waves, and calming the stormy sea, Jesus shows himself to be acting as only God can act.
          The boat too is significant. From biblical times Christians have viewed the Church as a boat, carrying those who are in it safely through the storms of an often hostile world, like the ark which kept Noah and his family safe amid the great flood. Fifteen years ago, in the midst of the media firestorm about the abuse of minors by some priests, Bishop Wilton Gregory, then bishop of Belleville and President of the Bishops’ Conference of our country, and now archbishop of Atlanta, spoke to St. Louis priests about this painful crisis. In his talk he referred to the story in today’s gospel. We’re in that boat, he told us. And like the disciples, we’re frightened. But Jesus is with us. He still has power to still wind and wave.  “Ought we not realize,” he said, “that we have within this Bark of Peter, which is being so terribly tossed about in the public arena, the source of calm and peace.  We priests and bishops must be more devoted to our life of prayer as the only reliable source of courage and hope that will bring peace to our troubled hearts and souls.” Bishop Gregory’s words were the message we needed to hear. 
          The beautiful story in today’s gospel speaks also to each one of us individually. Somewhere in this church right now there is someone facing a personal crisis: an illness, perhaps, your own or that of a loved one; a family problem; a humiliating failure; the sudden collapse of long held hopes, plans, and efforts. You are filled with fear. When you look down, you see only peril and ruin. But look up! Keep your eyes on Jesus. He still has power to save. 
          The story assures us that when the storm rages and the night is blackest; when we cannot see the way ahead; when we are bone weary with life’s struggle and our hearts fail us for fear, Jesus is close. He only seems to be absent. In reality he is never far from us. He knows at every moment the difficulties against which we contend. Across the storm waters of this world he comes to us and chides us, as he chided Peter: “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”
          Happy if we today, in this hour, can respond to the Lord’s saving presence and power as his friends did in that boat. Happy if we too can bow before him in awe-struck worship and say, with those first friends of Jesus:
          “Truly, you are the Son of God!”

"GOD LOVES A CHEERFUL GIVER."


Homily for August 10th, 2017. 2 Corinthians (9:6-10)

          “God loves a cheerful giver,” Paul writes in today’s first reading. Paul wrote his letters in Greek. And the Greek word which Paul uses for cheerful is hilarios. That’s where we get our English word “hilarious.” If we wanted to translate Paul’s words literally, therefore, we would say: “God loves a hilarious giver.” Why? Because that is how God gives: not sparingly, not grudgingly, “without sadness or compulsion” (as Paul writes), but with overflowing joy.

“There is more happiness in giving than in giving than in receiving,” Jesus says (Acts 20:35). Those words, incidentally, are the only saying of Jesus that is preserved outside the gospels. Paul speaks them to representatives of the Christian community at Ephesus, telling them to remember a saying that they were already familiar with from the oral teaching of Paul and other apostles. The New Testament did not yet exist: it hadn’t been written. But already the Church was teaching the faith, and telling people what Jesus had said and done. That is the answer to people who say they have a religion of “the Bible only.” The Church’s faith is older than the Bible – older, at least, than the New Testament.

People who have never experienced the joy of giving that Jesus speaks about are poor, no matter how large their bank accounts, investments, or other possessions. As a help to finding this joy, consider this. God does not need anything. He is, the theologians say, “sufficient unto himself.” Hence anything we give to God – or to people in need, or to good causes – comes back to us. But it comes back to us changed, and enlarged. The bread and wine we offer in the Mass come back to us transformed into the Body and Blood of God’s divine Son. The same is true with all our gifts. That is why Paul writes: “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully”

There are people here who have experienced that already. They experience the joy of living with open hearts, and open hands. If you’re not yet one of them, the Lord is inviting you to join our happy company – today!                

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

A MODERN MARTYR


Homily for August 9th, 2017: A Modern Martyr.

On an August evening in 1921 a brilliant 30-year-old Jewish woman in Germany who had long since abandoned religious belief was staying overnight with some Catholic friends. They apologized for leaving her alone: they had a previous evening engagement. Among their books their guest found the autobiography of the Spanish Carmelite, St. Teresa of Avilla. She read it through overnight and declared the next morning: “That is the truth.” She was baptized on New Year’s Day 1922. The woman’s name was Edith Stein, the saint whom we commemorate today.

          In October 1933, Edith Stein, by then well known in German university circles as a brilliant philosopher, but now excluded from academic employment by the Nazi racial laws, entered the Carmelite convent in Cologne. She took the name Teresa Benedicta a Cruce: “Teresa blessed by the cross.”  On the night of November 9/10, 1938, the Nazis instigated the notorious “Kristallnacht”, smashing Jewish shop-windows all over Germany, and torching synagogues. At the news Edith Stein, who, like St. Paul, never abandoned her identification with her own people, felt herself “paralyzed with pain.” Shortly thereafter, to avoid imperiling her fellow Sisters, she moved to a Carmelite convent in Holland. 

          At the end of July 1942 the Nazis, having invaded Holland, retaliated for the public protest of the Dutch bishops against the persecution of Jews by rounding up all Dutch Jews who had received Catholic baptism, Sister Teresa Benedicta among them, and shipped them like cattle to Auschwitz. Upon arrival they went straight to the gas chamber. The date: August 9, 1942.

          After the war Edith Stein’s Sisters put up a memorial tablet in the Cologne Carmel with the inscription: “She died as a martyr for her people and her faith.” Pope John Paul II confirmed these words on October 11, 1998, when he enrolled Edith Stein in the church’s official list of saints, with the title “martyr.” With thanksgiving therefore, we pray in this Mass:

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross – Pray for us.

Monday, August 7, 2017

"DO NOT BE AFRAID!"


Homily for August 8th, 2017: Matthew 14:22-36.

          What began as a routine evening crossing of the lake soon turns into a nightmare for Jesus’ friends in their small boat. The storm which breaks on the disciples so unexpectedly this evening comes from just the direction in which they are heading. This explains why they are still far from their destination in “the fourth watch of the night.” Small wonder that they cry out in fear as they see a human figure approaching across the wind-whipped waves. It is Jesus. “Take courage,” he calls out. “It is I; do not be afraid.”

          One man in the boat is more impulsive than his companions. He no sooner recognizes Jesus than he wants to be with him. He will react in the same way upon recognizing the risen Lord on the shore after a fruitless night of fishing in the lake. (Cf. Jn. 21:7) It is Peter. “Lord,” Peter calls out, “if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” “Come,” Jesus replies.

          Peter’s willingness to do the unthinkable enables him to experience the impossible. He climbs out of the boat and starts to walk to Jesus across the storm tossed waves. “But when he saw how strong the wind was,” Matthew tells us, “he became frightened. And, beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’”

          Jesus had a special role for Peter. He was to be the leader of Jesus’ friends and thus of the Lord’s Church. This terrifying experience was part of Peter’s preparation. Years later he would remember: as long as he had kept his eyes on the Lord, he was safe. When he looked down, and saw the danger, he began to sink.

          The story assures us that when the storm rages and the night is blackest; when we cannot see the way ahead; when we are bone weary with life’s struggle and our hearts fail us for fear, Jesus is close. He only seems to be absent. In reality he is never far from us. He knows at every moment the difficulties against which we contend. Across the storm waters of this world he comes to us and chides us, as he chided Peter: “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

          Happy if we today, in this hour, can respond to the Lord’s saving presence and power as his friends did in that boat. Happy if we too can bow before him in awe-struck worship and say, with those first friends of Jesus:

          “Truly, you are the Son of God!”

Sunday, August 6, 2017

"THEY ALL ATE AND WERE SATISFIED."


Homily for August 7th, 2017:Matthew. 14:13-21.

          As sun starts to sink and the shadows lengthen, Jesus’ disciples approach him with an urgent request. “This is a deserted place and it is already late; dismiss the crowds so that they can go to the villages and buy some food for themselves.”

          Jesus’ response surprises us: “There is no need for them to go away; give them some food yourselves.” He was having fun with them – teasing them. Jesus knew perfectly well what he was going to do.

          Not realizing this, the disciples point out that what Jesus has asked them to do is impossible: “Five loaves and two fish are all we have here.” To which Jesus responds simply: “Bring them to me.”

          When the disciples have done this, Jesus looks up to heaven, blesses these hopelessly inadequate supplies, and gives them to the disciples to distribute to the crowd. “They all ate and were satisfied,” Matthew tells us, adding: “and they picked up the fragments left over – twelve wicker baskets full.” But of course: there were twelve men doing the distribution.

          What does this tell us? Two things. First, when we entrust our pitifully inadequate resources to the Lord, they are inadequate no longer. Second, when the Lord gives, he gives not only abundantly, but super-abundantly. We come repeatedly not because the Lord limits his gifts, but because our ability to receive them is limited.

          The early Christian community loved this story so much that we find it told six times over, with variations, in the four gospels. The reason is clear. It reminded Jesus’ friends of what he does in the Eucharist. We offer him a little bread and wine – and these modest gifts come back to us transformed into his Body and Blood: all his goodness, all his love, all his compassion, patience, and purity. And when have him, we have everything!