Friday, August 3, 2018

PRAYING FOR THE VICTIMS OF INJUSTICE


Homily for August 4th,, 2018.Matt. 14:1-12.

          Herod had thrown John the Baptist into prison, today’s gospel tells us, “on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip.” Herod divorced his first wife, in order to marry the wife of his still living brother Philip, a woman named Herodias. No wonder that John denounced Herod. He had divorced his wife in order to marry his still married sister-in-law. This earned John the Baptist the hatred of two people, both equally unscrupulous: Herod and Herodias.

          Herodias sees her chance for revenge at a drunken party hosted by her second husband, Herod. Aroused by the dance of Herodias’ daughter – unnamed here, but celebrated in literature and in a well known opera as Salome – Herod promises the girl, under oath, that he will give her anything she asks for, up to half of his kingdom. Not knowing how to respond, the girl consults her mother, who tells her to ask for the head of John the Baptist, who was even then languishing in Herod’s prison.

          Aghast at the girl’s request, but unwilling to violate his oath, made before so many witnesses, Herod orders John’s immediate execution, without judge, jury, or trial. It is hard to conceive of something more cruel and unjust than the squalid story our gospel reports.

          Is that all just long ago and far away? Don’t you believe it! The media report similar outrages all the time: Muslims threatened with death, or actually killed, for converting to Christianity; a Christian missionary sentenced to death for preaching Christ in an Islamic country, and saved only by a worldwide outcry; the teenage girl in Afghanistan four years ago who survived an assassination attempt by terrorists opposed to education for women. Fortunately she was nursed back to health in England, and lived to tell her story before a meeting of the United Nations in New York.

          How could we better respond to the atrocity reported in today’s gospel than to pray in this Mass for the countless victims of injustice and terror in the world today?

 

Thursday, August 2, 2018

"ISN'T THIS THE CARPENTER'S SON?"


Homily for August 3rd, 2018: Matthew 13:54-58.

There’s a 19th century hymn, little known to Catholics, which goes like this:

          I think when I read that sweet story of old,

          When Jesus was here among men,

          How he called little children as lambs to the fold:

          I should like to have been with them then.

It’s a nice sentiment. But it hardly corresponds to the historical reality. Most of the people who encountered Jesus found him quite ordinary. “Is he not the carpenter’s son?” they ask in today’s gospel reading. “Where did this man get all this?” And Matthew, the gospel writer adds: “They took offense at him.”  

That remains true today. People encounter Jesus today not in his human body but through his mystical body, the Church – through us, who in baptism were made eyes, ears, hands, feet, and voice for Jesus Christ. He has no other.     

The Catholic Church is human, as Jesus was human. It is mostly ordinary, as Jesus was ordinary. It can be remote, as Jesus was sometimes remote. It can be weak, as Jesus seemed weak to his contemporaries when he refused to use the divine power he manifested in his miracles to avoid crucifixion.

Hidden behind this ordinariness and remoteness and weakness, however, is all the power of God; all the compassion of his Son Jesus; and all the strength of his Holy Spirit, who came in fiery tongues on the first Pentecost to kindle a fire that is still burning; and to sweep people off their feet with a rushing mighty wind that is still blowing.

Most of Jesus’ contemporaries took offense at him. Or as another translation of our gospel reading has it, “They found him too much for them.”

What about you?   

Wednesday, August 1, 2018

THE DRAGNET


Homily for August 2nd, 2018: Matthew 13:47-53.

          “The kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea.” It is what we call a dragnet. Dragged along the bottom, it collects everything in its path. In Matthew’s gospel it immediately follows the parable of the weeds among the wheat. Both parables have a similar message, one which Jesus’ first hearers would easily have understood. They were familiar with dietary laws, which separated unclean foods from those they were permitted to eat. Sea creatures without fins or scales were unclean, and hence could not be eaten. So once the net is brought ashore, there must be a selection. The clean fish are put into buckets and taken to market. Everything else is thrown away. “Thus it will be at the end of the age,” Jesus tells us. “The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace.” In the parable of the wheat and the weeds

they do the same with the weeds.

          God is not mocked, Jesus is telling us. The power of evil, of which we see signs daily in the morning headlines, and on the evening news on TV, is temporary. In the end, goodness will triumph, Jesus is telling us, and evil will be burned up in the flames of God’s justice.

That too is the gospel. That is the good news.      

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

SURPRIZED BY JOY


 

Homily for August 1st, 2018: Matthew 13: 44-46.

          The day labor who unexpectedly finds in his employer’s field a buried treasure that can change his life is living at the subsistence level. The merchant searching for fine pearls is rich. Despite this great difference between them, the two are in other respects alike. Both are surprised by their unexpected discovery and filled with joy.

          The two are alike in another respect as well. Obtaining the treasure each has found will cost each one all that he has. The closing sentence of the parable says this explicitly when it tells us that the merchant “goes and sells all that he has,” in order to possess the treasure he has discovered.

          “God’s kingdom is like that,” Jesus is saying. Neither of these two men thinks for a minute of the sacrifice he is making. Both think only of the joy of their new possession. Both know that the great treasure they have discovered is worth many times over what they are paying to possess it. 

          Must we pay a price to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ? Of course.  And yes, sometimes that price is high. But when we think only of the cost of discipleship, we make our religion grim and forbidding. In these two linked parables Jesus is emphasizing not the cost, but joy at the infinitely greater reward that the Lord gives to all who are willing to sacrifice all for him. 

          Jesus came to bring us that joy. “All this I tell you,” he says in John’s gospel, “that my joy may be yours, and that your joy may be complete.” (Jn. 15:11).

Monday, July 30, 2018

ST. IGNATIUS LOYOLA


Homily for July 31st, 2018.

          Ignatius Loyola whom we celebrate today, was born about 1491 in northeastern Spain. Wounded in 1521 by a canon ball while fighting invading French troops at Pamplona, he was carried to the family castle at Loyola. There the doctors reset the broken bone in his broken leg. He would walk with a limp for the rest of his life.

          During his recuperation Ignatius asked for tales of love and adventure – the equivalent of today’s pulp novels and Playboy magazine. When nothing of this kind could be found, he was given the Legends of the Saints and a Life of Christ. He found them boring. In time, however, he asked himself: “What if I were to do what blessed Francis did? or blessed Dominic?” 

          As the months crept by, he realized that his romantic dreams left him empty afterwards. The stories of the saints, on the other hand, filled him with a joy which persisted even after he laid the book down. He resolved to do penance for his many sins, and to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem – another romantic dream, transformed now into a desire to serve a higher love, the love of God himself.

          In March 1522 Ignatius set off on a mule for his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. His went first to the Benedictine monastery of Montserrat. There he made a general confession, laid down his sword at the shrine of the Black Virgin, gave his mule to the abbot, his fine clothes to a beggar, and donned the sackcloth garment of pilgrims. Ignatius then made for the nearby town of Manresa, where stayed for the next ten months. He attended Mass daily, spent much of the day in prayer, and fasted to excess. He became seriously depressed, was tempted with thoughts of suicide, and tormented by scruples about whether his general confession at Montserrat had been complete.

          At Manresa Ignatius also began writing notes for what eventually became his Spiritual Exercises, a kind of handbook designed, as the opening paragraph says, “to prepare and dispose the soul to rid itself of all disordered affections and then, after their removal, to seek and find God’s will in the ordering of our life for the salvation of our soul.”  It would become the first organized manual for a spiritual retreat in Christianity’s history. 

          Upon his return from the Holy Land, Ignatius began university study of philosophy and theology, first in Spain, finally at age 37 in Paris, where he guided fellow students in the Spiritual Exercises. On the 15th of August 1534, Ignatius and six companions attended a Mass celebrated by Peter Favre, the only priest in the group, in a chapel atop Montmartre, then outside Paris. Together they vowed to go to Jerusalem (the old romantic dream was not dead); and if that proved impossible to place themselves at the disposal of the Pope for any work he assigned them.

          Only in January 1537 could the group could reassemble at Venice, the jumping off place for the Holy Land. On the 24th of June Ignatius and his companions were ordained priests in Venice. With the Mediterranean closed to shipping by the Turks, the hoped for trip to Jerusalem was impossible. At the end of 1538, therefore, Ignatius and his companions proceeded to Rome, where they offered themselves to Pope Paul III, who assigned them missions in Italy, Portugal, and overseas. In 1540 the Pope confirmed the group as the Society of Jesus, with Ignatius chosen unanimously as their first superior.  

          Ignatius remained in Rome for the fifteen more years which remained to him. The society grew rapidly, founding two colleges in Rome for the training of the clergy, Rome’s first orphanage, the first “half-way house” for prostitutes wanting to change their lives, and in 1547 the first schools for laypeople, the beginning of the worldwide Jesuit teaching apostolate which continues today.   

          Inspiring and supporting all this activity was Ignatius’ deep and prolonged prayer. His devotion to the Holy Trinity was so intense that he sometimes had difficulty starting to celebrate Mass or to continue. After Mass he would remain two hours in silent prayer -- something sadly lacking today, when millions banish silence with TV, radio, and the many other electronic means now so widely available.

          Death came unexpectedly to Ignatius’ on July 31st, 1556. He went home to the Lord whom he had served so generously as he had taught his followers to live: without drama or fuss. At his death they numbered over a thousand, working as far afield as Japan and Brazil, and including the great apostle to the Orient, St. Francis Xavier. Among Ignatius’ many frequently quoted words are these: “Act, as if all depended on you; pray, as if all depended on God.”  

Sunday, July 29, 2018

A LOIN CLOTH, MUSTARD SEED, YEAST.


Homily for July 30th, 2018: Jeremiah 13:1-11; Matthew 13:31-15.

          We sometimes hear that the Old Testament is about God’s law, the New Testament about his love. Both statements are misleading. The Old Testament speaks often of God’s love. And in the New Testament Jesus says he has come not to abolish God’s law, but to fulfill it (cf. Mt. 5:17).

          Our first reading is what Bible scholars call an “acted parable.” The loin cloth which God tells Jeremiah to wear is an intimate garment. It symbolizes the intimate relationship God wanted to have with the people he chose to be especially his own. After burying it, at God’s command, Jeremiah finds it, years later, rotted. That symbolizes what his people have done through their unfaithfulness to the Lord who chose and loved them.  

          Today’s gospel contains two more parables. 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.

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.

Jesus spoke “only in parables,” the gospel says. 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 three parables we have heard today proclaim God’s love – but also our need to respond with love: for him and for others.