Friday, November 3, 2017

HUMILITY


Homily or November 4th, 2017: Luke 14: 1,7-11.

Jesus seems to be offering shrewd advice to the person who wants to get ahead in society. When you are invited to a banquet, he says, don=t head straight for the head table. You might be asked to give up your place for someone more important. That would be embarrassing. Take your place far away from the head table. There you don=t risk being pushed aside. And if you=re lucky, your host will ask you to move up to a better place, where everyone can see what good connections you have.    

In reality, Jesus gave this shrewd advice Atongue in cheek.@ Can we imagine that Jesus cared where he sat at table? If there is one thing Jesus definitely was not, it was a snob. By seeming to take seriously the scramble for social success, Jesus was actually making fun of it. He was showing up snobbery for the empty and tacky affair it always is.

But Jesus= words have a deeper meaning. This is clear from his opening words: AWhen you are invited to a wedding banquet.@ A wedding banquet is a familiar image in the Bible. Israel=s prophets speak often of God inviting his people to a wedding banquet. That was the prophets= way of saying that their people=s sins would not always estrange them from the all-holy God. There would come a time when God would take away sins, so that his people could enjoy fellowship with the one who had created them and still loved them.

  Jesus came to fulfill what the prophets had promised. He told people that the wedding banquet was ready. Now was the time to put on the best clothes, he said, and come to the feast. Some of the most religious people in Jesus= day, the Pharisees, were confident that the best seats at God=s banquet were reserved for them. Hadn=t they earned those places by their zealous observance of every detail of God=s law? Jesus= seemingly shrewd advice about how to be a success in society was a rebuke to those who assumed that the best seats at God=s banquet were reserved for them. Jesus was warning them that they were in for a surprise, and that it would be unpleasant.

Today’s gospel reading is at bottom, about humility. Humility doesn’t mean the clever man pretending he is stupid, or the beautiful woman pretending she’s homely. Humility means being empty before God. And it is only the person who is empty whom God can fill with his joy, his love, and his peace.

 

Thursday, November 2, 2017

"THEY COULD NOT ANSWER."


Homily for November 3rd, 2017: Luke 14:1-6.

          Few things were more important for devout Jews in Jesus’ day, or for Orthodox Jews day, for that matter, than the observance of rest on the Sabbath, laid down in the fourth of the Ten Commandments. We find the Commandments twice over in the Bible: in the 20th chapter of Exodus, and in the 5th chapter of Deuteronomy. The command in both passages is to keep the Sabbath holy by refraining from work. But what types of work are forbidden? Successive generations of rabbis and scholars of God’s law debated this, producing over time a long list of activities forbidden on the Sabbath. Orthodox rabbis continue to develop the list today, to cover activities which did not exist previously, like driving a car or watching television.

          In today’s gospel reading Jesus, dining on a Sabbath at the house of a devout Pharisee, is confronted by a man with a serious illness: “dropsy,” an archaic term for what doctors today call “edema,” swelling of the lower legs due to excess water. Before healing the man, Jesus asks his fellow guests whether it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath. Receiving no reply, Jesus goes ahead and heals the man. Sensing the indignation of the guests at his seeming violation of God’s law, Jesus asks them another question: “Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern, would not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?” Once again, no one dares answer.

          Jesus’ questions are very like issues with which the Church is wrestling today. Can we admit to Communion people who have divorced and entered a second marriage while the first partner is still living? And how do we show love and compassion to people living with a partner of the same sex in what they claim is a marriage? Church teaching is clear in both cases. Marriage is exclusively between people of different genders; and once established it can be terminated only by death.

            The Church throughout the world has been wrestling with these difficult questions for at least three years. The difficulty is that we have two duties: the prophetic duty to proclaim the truth about marriage; but also a pastoral duty to show compassionate love to those whose lives do not reflect this truth. One thing alone will enable us to be faithful to both duties: fervent prayer to God’s Holy Spirit.

 

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

"CALL NO ONE ON EARTH YOUR FATHER."



Homily for Nov. 5th, 2017: 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A. 
          Matthew 23:1-12.
AIM: To show that Christ’s unique authority permits only servants in his Church, not masters.
 
          Catholics who live in the so-called Bible Belt know that there are few scriptural texts so often cited against us by fundamentalist Protestants as the verse we have just heard in the gospel: “Call no one on earth father; you have but one Father in heaven.” Our critics charge that the practice of calling Catholic priests “Father” violates Jesus’ command. 
          There is a simple response to this charge: pointing out that taking Jesus’ words literally leads to absurdities. The command to “call no one on earth your father” would forbid us to use this word for our biological fathers. Nor can we take literally the following verse: “Do not be called ‘Master’; you have but one master, the Christ.” Taken literally this would forbid us to call anyone “Mister,” since this title is merely a variation of the English word “master.” If despite this passage, it is legitimate to call men in our society “Mister,” and to call our biological fathers “Father,” why should it be wrong to call priests “Father”?
          All this is true. But we make things too easy for ourselves if we leave the matter there. We need to see the principle behind Jesus’ rejection of titles like “Father” and “Master.” What is really at issue in this passage is not the titles themselves but an underlying mentality. Jesus is warning against the temptation of those who have spiritual authority in his Church to forget that they are first of all servants; and that they will themselves be judged by the authority they represent to others. The apostle Paul was keenly aware of this. In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul writes about his fear, “that having preached to others I myself should be rejected” (9:27). 
          Because Church leaders are weak, fallible sinners, like everyone who has ever been born, they have always been susceptible to the scramble for titles, for power and influence, for higher places in the ecclesial pecking order. We see this even in the New Testament. The mother of Jesus’ two apostles, James and John, asked him to give her sons places of special honor in his kingdom. (Cf. Mt. 20:20f). Luke’s gospel tells us that even at the Last Supper, the night before Jesus died, his closest friends argued “about who should be regarded as the greatest” (Lk 22:24). It is no secret that the contest for places of honor continues in the Church today. As they say in Rome: “If it rained miters, not one would touch the ground.”
          Conscious of this temptation to abuse spiritual power, St. Gregory the Great, who was Bishop of Rome from 590 to 604, gave himself the title which, ever since, has been a healthy and necessary reminder for Peter’s successors of Jesus’ teaching in today’s gospel: “Servant of the servants of God.” The words are still used in official papal documents. It is reported that after his election as Pope thirty-three years ago John Paul II asked the cardinals to remain together for dinner, and himself helped pour the champagne for the meal of celebration.
          It is impossible to confirm this story. We can certainly hope, however, that it is true. For whenever popes – and with them bishops and all who bear office and spiritual authority in God’s Church – have tried truly to live as servants rather than as masters, the Church has prospered. Whenever Church leaders have forgotten Jesus’ words in today’s gospel, “The greatest among you must be your servant,” the Church has grown spiritually flabby and sick, no matter how much worldly power and prestige and wealth it may have accumulated.
          Jesus’ warnings in today’s gospel have an obvious application to us clergy.  Do they apply, however, only to Church leaders? Who are the people today of whom it could be said: “They preach but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them. All their works are performed to be seen.” 
          It is not hard to find people in public life to whom those words apply. Many public officials are truly public servants. Sadly there are also many exceptions.  More than our decades ago a newly elected American President thrilled the country by saying in his inaugural address: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Historians now question whether the man who spoke those stirring words followed them himself. Most members of Congress work long and hard for what they believe is truly in the country’s best interests. For decades, however, they have enjoyed a pension plan vastly more generous to them than Social Security is to us, their constituents.  
          Hypocrisy, the yawning credibility gap between words and deeds, is a danger for all of us. The American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne writes: “No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally 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 is God’s love, and his love alone, that gives us the courage to throw away our masks, to stop pretending to be other than we are. That, more than anything else, is what God wants for us. Deep in our hearts that is what we too desire: to stop pretending, just to be ourselves; to know that we are loved not in spite of what we are, but for who we are: daughters and sons of our heavenly Father, sisters and brothers of Jesus Christ.
          Once we stop pretending and truly accept the love God offers us as a free gift, we can make our own the words of today’s responsorial psalm:
           “In you, Lord, I have found my peace.”

ALL SOULS


Homily for All Souls’ Day 2017.

          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 three 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, but also 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.

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

WE ARE NEVER ALONE.


ATHOSE WHO BELIEVE ARE NEVER ALONE.@
Homily for All Saints= Day
AIM:  To help the hearers rejoice in our fellowship with the saints.
                                                                                
Twelve and a 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.

Monday, October 30, 2017

MUSTARD SEED, YEAST.


Homily for October 31st, 2017: Luke 13:18-21.

          The kingdom of God, Jesus says, is “like a mustard seed … the smallest of all seeds.” From tiny beginnings comes a great bush, large enough to shelter birds, who build their nests in its branches. God’s kingdom is not identical with his Church. Yet what Jesus says about the kingdom in this little parable is also true of the Church. Who could have predicted that the little band of humble friends of Jesus whom we read about in the gospels would grow into the worldwide Church we see today? Nobody! Yet so it is. Jesus knows what he is about. With this comparison of God’s kingdom to mustard seed, he spoke the truth.

The kingdom is also, Jesus says, “like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened.” Do those words reflect a childhood memory: Jesus recalling how he had watched his mother mixing leaven with dough, kneading it, and then setting it in the sun, which caused the dough to rise, so that it could be baked in the oven? We cannot say; but it is entirely possible. The meaning of this parable is similar to that of the mustard seed. From small, seemingly insignificant beginnings, comes growth that no one could have predicted.

Why do you suppose Jesus chose parables as his favorite form of teaching? Well, who doesn’t like a good story?  Stories have a universal appeal: to young children, but also to adults. But there is another reason why Jesus chose to teach through stories. Because stories are much easier to understand than abstract explanations. In his book, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI writes: “Every teacher who wants to communicate new knowledge to his listeners naturally makes constant use of example or parable. ... By means of parable he brings something distant within their reach so that, using the parable as a bridge, they can arrive at what was previously unknown.”  

The two little parables we have heard today proclaim God’s love – but also our need to respond with love: for him and for others.    

 

Sunday, October 29, 2017

"WOMAN, YOU ARE SET FREE."


Homily for October 30th, 2017: Luke 13:10-17.

          “Woman, you are set free . . . ” Jesus tells a nameless woman, unable to stand erect, whom he encounters in a synagogue on a Sabbath day. “He laid his hands on her, and she at once stood up straight and glorified God,” Luke tells us. There is no indication that the woman asked to be healed. Moreover, men and women sat separately in synagogues – as they still do today in Orthodox synagogues. “When Jesus saw her, he called to her,” Luke writes. The healing was entirely his initiative.

It is one of countless examples in the gospels of Jesus’ compassion. More importantly, it is an example Jesus’ rejection of the second-class status of women in his society. Another is Jesus’ lengthy conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well in chapter 4 of John’s gospel. The social laws of the day forbade all but the most superficial public contact with a woman not related to a man. Moreover, as a Samaritan the woman belonged to people whom Jews in Jesus’ day hated. Jesus also rejected the second-class status of women when he praised Mary of Bethany for sitting at his feet, listening to his teaching, while her sister Martha toiled in the kitchen. Again, the laws of the day said that Mary belonged\ in the kitchen.

The fourth Commandment told God’s people to rest from work on the Sabbath because God had rested on the seventh day, after finishing his work of creation. (cf. Exod. 20:11) The Sabbath rest was thus a weekly reminder that God must have the central place in his people’s lives.

When the synagogue leader complains that the healing Jesus has performed violates the Sabbath rest, Jesus responds by telling the man that he would not hesitate to untie and lead to water a domestic animal on the Sabbath. Was this “daughter of Abraham,” as Jesus calls her, less worthy of compassion than an animal? Ought she not to have been set free on the Sabbath? Jesus asks. By framing what he has done in terms of liberation, Jesus reminds us of his central and most important work: setting us free from our heaviest burden: sin and guilt. Jesus never grows tired of forgiving, our wonderful Pope Francis reminds us. It is we who too often grow tired of asking for forgiveness.