Friday, September 1, 2017

"I KNEW YOU WERE A HARD MAN."


Homily for September 2nd, 2017: Matt. 25:14-30.

          The sums entrusted to each servant were huge. Our version speaks of “talents.” In Jesus’ world a talent was a sum of money, the largest there was, something like a million dollars today. This tells us something crucial about the man going on a journey. He is not a bean counter. On his return from a long absence, he praises the first two servants for doubling the sums entrusted to them.   

The people hearing the story now expect that the third servant will also receive generous treatment. How shocking, therefore, to find the man not praised but rebuked as a “wicked, lazy servant.” “Out of fear,” the third servant explains, I kept your money safe. Here it is back. It is this fear which the parable condemns.  

          How often Jesus tells his followers, “Do not be afraid.” The master in Jesus’ parable rewards the first two servants not for the money they gained, but for their trust. He rebukes and banishes the third servant for lack of trust. The parable is about the one thing necessary: trust in the Lord who gives us his gifts not according to our deserving but according to his boundless generosity.

          Do you want to be certain that your heart will never be wounded as you journey through life? Then be sure to guard your heart carefully. Never give it away, and certainly never wear your heart on your sleeve. If you do that, however, your heart will shrink. The capacity to love is not diminished through use. It grows.       

“Out of fear ... I buried your talent in the ground,” the third servant says. Jesus came to cast out fear. To escape condemnation we don’t need to establish a good conduct record in some heavenly book – a row of gold stars representing our sacrifices and good works. Thinking we must do that is “not believing in the name of God’s only Son.” His name is synonymous with mercy, generosity, and love. Escaping condemnation, being saved, means one thing only: trusting him. It is as simple as that.

We don’t need to negotiate with God. We don’t need to con him into being lenient. We couldn’t do that even if we tried, for God is lenient already. He invites us to trust him. That is all.   

Thursday, August 31, 2017

WISE AND FOOLISH VIRGINS


Homily for September 1st, 2017: Matthew 25:1-13.
          The midnight cry, “Behold the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!” will come for each of us, when, at life’s end, the Lord sends out his angel to call us home, to him. The story tells us that we are to prepare for this great and final event by living not for ourselves, but for God and for others. That means pursuing justice instead of exploitation; trying to build people up rather than tearing them down; being more interested in giving than in getting. 
          Jesus uses the story to warn us that if we live for ourselves, heedless of God’s claims on us, we are headed for disaster. We are like the foolish bridesmaids who made no preparations. They assumed that they could always get more oil for their torches whenever they needed it, and that the door of the house would be opened for them even if they arrived late. The foolish bridesmaids are shocked to discover that, at the decisive hour, they are unprepared, and excluded. Until then, there seemed to be no difference between the wise and foolish bridesmaids. “They all became drowsy and fell asleep,” Jesus tells us. The midnight call to action finds the wise prepared, however, and the foolish unprepared.
          Here is a modern commentary on this gospel story. It’s a young woman’s letter to the man she loves. Someone I can no longer identify sent it to me by e-mail long ago. Here’s what the young woman wrote:
          “Remember the day I borrowed your brand new car and dented it? I thought you'd kill me, but you didn't. And remember the time I flirted with all the guys to make you jealous, and you were? I thought you'd leave me, but you didn't. Remember the time I forgot to tell you the dance was formal and you showed up in jeans? I thought you'd drop me, but you didn't.
          “Yes, there were a lot of things you didn't do. But you put up with me, and you loved me, and you protected me. There were a lot of things I wanted to make up to you when you came back from Afghanistan.
          “But you didn't come back.”
          We think there is always tomorrow; but one day soon our tomorrow will be
on the other side. Today's parable of the wise and foolish Virgins is asking us: on which side of a locked door do you wish to spend eternity? We need to make our decision now, not later; because soon that will be too late.
 

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

"DO NOT CONFORM YOURSELVES TO THIS AGE.."


Homily for Sept. 3rd, 2017: 22nd Sunday in Ordinary time, Year A. 
         Jer. 20:7-9; Rom.12:1-2; Matt.16:21-27.

AIM:  To help the hearers see and live with the eyes of faith.

 

          “Do not conform yourselves to this age,” Paul tells us in our second reading.  What does he mean? You can see what he means in the morning newspaper, and on the evening television. He is telling us not to live by the standards of the world around us. 

          Today’s world is very different from Paul’s. Yet people have not really changed all that much. Now, as then, the smart person looks after Number One; tries to get ahead by the deft use of thumbs and elbows; and reacts to rebuffs and injuries with the chip-on-the-shoulder slogan: “Don’t get mad, get even.” With his words, “Do not conform yourselves to this age,” Paul is telling us that if we are serious about wanting to be friends and followers of Jesus Christ, we must follow different standards.

          There is not one of us here today who has not felt the downward pull of the world’s egotism and self-centeredness. Jesus felt that downward pull himself. At the beginning of his public ministry he was tempted to purchase popular success by various short-cuts and sensational tricks. “Turn stones into bread,” the Tempter told him. “Throw yourself down from the Temple – God will look after you.” (cf. Mt. 4:1-11; Lk 4:1-13). In today’s gospel Jesus is tempted again. He is starting on the final stage of his journey. It will take him up to Jerusalem, to death. Once again, as at the beginning, he feels the downward pull of this world’s standards, trying to turn him aside from the right way.   

          Jesus is hurt that the temptation comes this time from the friend who has just confessed that Jesus is God’s anointed servant and Son, the long-awaited Messiah. In response to this declaration of faith, the Lord has just given his friend Simon the new name “Peter the Rock,” as we heard in last week’s gospel. With this name Jesus bestowed on Peter the position of leadership in the Church that was yet to be. And now here is Peter, of all people, trying to turn Jesus aside from his Father’s will and call by responding to Jesus’ prediction of his passion and death: “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”

          Peter was speaking (to use Paul’s terminology from our second reading) from a mind still conformed to this age. We see how keenly Jesus felt the downward pull of temptation in Peter’s words by the harshness of Jesus’ response: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” 

          Thinking as God does means, Paul says in the second reading, being “transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.” That transformation begins here in the liturgy, which is the gathering of God’s people for public prayer. Here we do what Paul tells us to do in the second reading. We “offer our bodies” (Paul’s word for our selves: all that we are and have, sin excluded) “as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, [our] spiritual worship.”

          The renewal of our minds starts at the table of the word, as we listen to the call, not of the world’s standards, but of God’s. The world drags us down. God pulls us up. In our first reading we heard the upward pull of Jeremiah’s words. He protests that God has “duped” him into being a spokesman for the Lord. The role of prophet has cost Jeremiah scorn and repudiation by his own people. Yet deep in his heart, Jeremiah knows that he can do no other. He must speak for God.
          We feel the upward pull of Jesus’ words in the gospel: “Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” If ever a man had the right to speak those words, it is Jesus Christ. They tell us what, deep in our hearts, we already know. The only way to preserve all that we hold most dear, even life itself, it to yield everything to Jesus Christ. 

          Uplifted by God’s holy word, we offer at the table of his sacrament the living sacrifice of our spiritual worship. In so doing we receive back far more than we offer: the very body and blood of our divine Master, who died that we might live. He, Jesus, is the one who transforms us by the renewal of our minds. He is the one who sends us forth from these twin tables of his word and sacrament into the rough and tumble of life, enlightened and empowered by his Holy Spirit so that we can do what Paul tells us to do in the second reading: to “discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect”; and what Jesus tells us to do in the gospel: to lose our lives in service of Him who always gives back to us so much more than we can ever give to Him.       

          Do we really believe that? Aren’t we often afraid of losing our lives for Jesus Christ? Our now retired Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, addressed this fear at the end of his homily at the Mass for the inauguration of his pastoral ministry on April 24th, 2005. The Pope addressed his words especially to young people. Here is what he said:

          “Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that he might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom? No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation. And so, today, with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you, dear young people: Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ – and you will find true life.”

"MY MASTER IS LONG DELAYED."


Homily for August 31st, Matthew 24:42-51.

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

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

Jesus= story warns them not to yield to such thoughts; not to forget that they are servants who, one day, will have to give an account of their service. When they do so, Jesus says, “the servant’s master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish him severely.”

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

Whenever in its 2000-year history the Church has forgotten its servant role; whenever the Church has settled in too comfortably and accumulated too much worldly power, prestige, and wealth, it has become inwardly flabby and spiritually sick. To find an example of this we need look no farther than the history of the Catholic Church in our own country from roughly 1950 to the present day.

 What is true of the Church is true also of each of us, the Church=s members. We are servants: servants of the Lord, and servants too of our sisters and brothers. And we are people on a journey: pilgrims underway to our true homeland with the Lord B pitching our tents each evening, as we lie down to rest for the next day=s journey, a day=s march nearer home.       

 

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

HYPOCRICY


Homily for August 30th, 2017: Matthew 23:27-32.

          The gospel reading we have just heard is part of a longer indictment by Jesus of perhaps the greatest temptation of religious people, and our greatest failing: hypocrisy. I say “our failing” quite deliberately, because the “woe” that Jesus speaks is directed not to other people, but to us.

          Webster’s Dictionary defines hypocrisy as follows: “the act or practice of feigning to be what one is not, or to feel what one does not feel; esp. the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion.” And it says that the opposite of hypocrisy is sincerity.

The late William F. Buckley, Jr., a great wit on many subjects, was clearly referring to hypocrisy when he said to someone he was interviewing on TV: “I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.”

          The Letter of James is speaking about hypocrisy when it says: “If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his own face in a mirror. He sees himself, then goes off and promptly forgets what he looked like.” [1:23f] The nineteenth century American author Nathaniel Hawthorne says something remarkably similar when he writes: “No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”

There are people who have hidden behind a mask for so long that they have forgotten what their true face looks like. Our masks may fool others. They cannot fool God. God looks behind our masks. God looks at the heart. God reads even our secret thoughts and desires. Yet no matter how great the darkness within us, God never rejects us. God loves us deeply, tenderly, passionately. That is the gospel. That is the good news.

It was his deep conviction of this truth which enabled Pope Francis, shortly after his election as Bishop of Rome, to respond to a Jesuit interviewer who asked, “Who is Jorge Bergoglio?” with the simple and direct words: “I am a sinner.”  

Happy are we, if we can say the same – and appeal, when we come to stand before the Lord God, not to our good conduct record, but simply to the mercy of the One about whom Francis said in the same interview: “God never gets tired of forgiving us. It is we who get tired of asking for forgiveness.”

 

Monday, August 28, 2017

"HE MUST INCREASE, I MUST DECREASE."


Homily for August 29th, 2017: Beheading of St. John the Baptist

Not quite 59 years ago, on the afternoon of October 28th, 1958, an elderly cardinal named Angelo Roncalli was elected Bishop of Rome. When he was asked what name he would take as Pope, he replied: AI will be called John.@ It was the first of many surprises. There had not been a pope of that name for over six hundred years. Almost all of them had short pontificates, John told his electors. He was then just short of 77. He would die only four and a half years later, on the day after Pentecost 1963.

He loved the name John, the new Pope said, because it had been borne by the two men in the gospels who were closest to Jesus: John the Baptist, who prepared the way for the Lord and shed his blood in witness to the One he proclaimed; and John the Evangelist, called throughout the gospel which bears his name Athe disciple whom Jesus loved.@

The name John means, AGod is gracious,@ or AGod has given grace.@ The name was singularly appropriate for the man we know as John the Baptist. He was commissioned even before his birth to proclaim the One who would give God a human face, and a human voice: Jesus Christ.

God called each of us in our mother=s womb. He fashioned us in his own image, as creatures made for love: to praise, worship, and serve God here on earth, and to be happy with him forever in heaven. Fulfilling that destiny, given to us not just at birth but at our conception, means heeding the words which today=s saint, John the Baptist, spoke about Jesus: AHe must increase, I must decrease@ (John 3:3).

Those are the most important words which St. John the Baptist ever spoke. In just six words they sum up the whole life of Christian discipleship. Imprint those words on your mind, your heart, your soul. Resolve today to try to make them a reality in daily life. Those who do that find that they have discovered the key to happiness, to fulfillment, and to peace. AHe must increase, I must decrease.@

Sunday, August 27, 2017

ST. AUGUSTINE


Homily for August 28th, 2017: Memorial of St. Augustine

          We celebrate today one of the great men of the ancient Church: St. Augustine. Born in North Africa in 354 to a pagan father and a devout Christian mother, Monica, also a saint, Augustine was 33 before he was baptized by the great bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose. Augustine tells the story of his dramatic conversion in his Confessions.

          Augustine was 33 and on the point of accepting Christian faith, and asking for baptism. Only his inability to master his strong sexual desires held him back. Sitting on a summer day in the garden of his house, Augustine uttered an agonized prayer for purity. “How long, O Lord, how long will I hear tomorrow, and again tomorrow? Why not now? Why can there not be an end to my impurity right now?”

          All at once Augustine heard a child’s voice from a neighboring house saying over and over the Latin words, Tolle, lege. They may have been merely a child’s game. But Augustine took them literally: “Take up and read.”  Seizing the scroll he had been reading, which contained Paul’s epistle to the Romans, Augustine’s eyes fell on the words: “Let us cast off deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us live honorably as in daylight; not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual excess and lust ... Rather put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.”

          “The very instant I finished that sentence,” Augustine writes, “light flooded my heart, and every shadow of doubt disappeared.” He was baptized by Ambrose the following Easter.

          He died at on this day 430, at age 75 and having been bishop of Hippo in North Africa for 35 years. He had dictated to scribes millions of words about the faith which have been a rich source of Catholic theologians ever since. The best known of these words is a single sentence, written out of Augustine’s own life experience. It still speaks to us over 1500 years later:  “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”