SIN AGAINST THE HOLY SPIRIT

Homily for October 20^th, 2018: Luke 12:8-12.

          “Anyone who speaks against the Son of Man [a title for Jesus] will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven.” These words of Jesus are difficult. We find them, in different versions, in all three of the so-called synoptic gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. From the beginning the words have caused heart-searching and anguish, especially for people inclined to scrupulosity. What can we say about them?

          Here is what the Catholic Catechism says: “There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and final loss.” [1864] Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit does not properly consist, then, in offending against the Holy Spirit in words; it consists rather in the refusal to accept the salvation which God offers to us through the Holy Spirit, working through the power of the Cross.

          Pope John Paul II explained it thus: “If Jesus says that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven either in this life or in the next, it is because this ‘non-forgiveness’ is linked, as to its cause, to ‘non-repentance’, in other words to the radical refusal to be converted. . . Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, then, is the sin committed by the person who claims to have a ‘right’ to persist in evil -- in any sin at all -- and who thus rejects redemption. One closes oneself up in sin, thus making impossible one's conversion, and consequently the remission of sins, which one considers not essential or not important for one's life. This is a state of spiritual ruin, because blasphemy against the Holy Spirit does not allow one to escape from one's self-imposed imprisonment and open oneself to the divine sources of the purification of consciences and of the remission of sins.” [Dominum et vivificantem, 46.]

          And Pope Francis says again and again: “God never grows tired of forgiving us. It is we who go tired of asking for forgiveness.” Committing the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit means, therefore, refusing to ask for forgiveness, and perseverance in such refusal until the end.

"DO NOT BE AFRAID."

Homily for October 19^th, 2018: Luke 12:1-7.

          Twice in this short gospel reading Jesus tells his friends: “Do not be afraid.” These reassuring words do not promise that the Lord’s disciples will be spared suffering. Jesus promises something quite different: that he will be with us in every suffering.

          We celebrate today a man whose life bears witness to fulfillment of this promise: Ignatius of Antioch, in modern day Syria. Thought to have been a convert, he was for forty years the third bishop of that local Church. Arrested in about 105 B.C. by the Roman authorities for the crime of worshiping the God of Jesus Christ, rather than the Emperor of Rome, he was sent there, in chains and under guard, on a ship, sentenced to be thrown to lions in the arena for the amusement of the spectators.

          News of his arrest spread quickly through Christian communities on the ship’s route. Clergy and numerous faithful came to welcome Ignatius at each port of call, seeking the blessing of a man on the way to martyrdom. Others journeyed by land to Rome for the same purpose. During the voyage Ignatius wrote letters, still preserved, to four local Churches encouraging them to remain steadfast in faith. More than once he expressed his concern that well intentioned fellow believers in high places in Rome might intervene to prevent the fate that awaited him. “I fear your charity,” Ignatius wrote. “I shall never have another such opportunity of attaining unto my Lord. … Allow me to be the food of wild beasts through whom I may attain unto God. I am God’s grain and I am to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts that I may be found the pure bread if Christ.” Ignatius died in the arena at Rome in about 107 A.D.

          None of us are likely to blood martyrs to Jesus Christ. Every one of us, however, is called to be a martyr to him in the original sense of the word – martyros, which in Greek means simply “witness.” We ask God in this Mass for guidance and strength to bear witness to him in daily life, as we pray:

“St. Ignatius, pray for us.”

 

"GO, PROCLAIM THE GOSPEL."

Homily for Oct. 18^th, 2018: Luke 10:1-9

“The Lord Jesus appointed seventy-two disciples whom he sent ahead of him in pairs to every town and place he intended to visit.” Was that just long ago and far away? Don’t you believe it! The Lord is still sending us to recruit new disciples by showing people the joy of a life centered on Jesus Christ.

One of them, a man now in his second year in seminary whose call to priesthood I have been nourishing, wrote recently about joining an Evangelization Club at his seminary. It started when some of the seminarians returned from visiting a state university on fire from the incredible response they had received from college students who came to know Jesus Christ from conversations with the visiting seminarians.

“We are excited about the work done through the group,” my seminarian friend wrote, “and I've personally felt a certain aliveness in the Holy Spirit for proclaiming Christ.”

 “But of course,” I responded to him in an e-mail. “When we share our faith with others, we deepen our own faith. Teachers experience this all the time. They learn more than their students, because in order to communicate clearly the material they are teaching, they must first get a firm and clear grasp on it themselves.”

          “Go, and proclaim the gospel of the Lord,” we often hear at the end of Mass. But how? St. Francis of Assisi answers this question as follows: “Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.” Personal example is always more effective than words. If we center our lives on Jesus Christ; if we give thanks daily and even hourly for all the blessings the Lord showers upon us – so many more than we deserve – people will notice that we’re people of joy. They’ll want to know where this joy comes from. That gives us our opening: to tell them it comes from the One who loves us more than we can ever imagine; who is always close to us, even when he stray far from him.

His name, we’ll tell our questioners, is Jesus Christ.

 

"I AM A SINNER."

Homily for Oct. 17^th, 2018: Luke 11:42-46

“Woe to you Pharisees!” Jesus says in today’s gospel. Who are these people about whom we hear so much in the gospels, most of it negative? Their name means “the separated ones.” They looked down on their fellow Jews who paid little attention to all the details of the Jewish law.  

          There is an example of this superior attitude in John’s gospel. The Pharisees and chief priests ask the Temple guards in Jerusalem why they have not arrested Jesus. “No one ever spoke like that before,” the guards reply. “Do not tell us you have been taken in!” the Pharisees respond. “You don’t see any of the Sanhedrin believing in him, do you? Or the Pharisees?” Then comes the condescending sentence:” Only this lot, that knows nothing about the law – and they are lost anyway!” (John 7:45-49).

Jesus never condemns the Pharisees’ meticulous efforts to keep God’s’ law. What he criticizes is their legalistic spirit. “You [Pharisees] pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb, but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God. These you should have done,” Jesus says, affirming the payment of tithes on even the tiniest things, “without overlooking the others”: judgment and the love of God.

Pope Francis spoke similarly in the lengthy interview which was published all over the world in late September, 2013. “The Church sometimes has locked itself up in small things,” he said. And he gave this example: “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. … The teaching of the church is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.” People immediately assumed that the Pope was changing Church teaching. Yet within days he told a group of gynecologists: “Every unborn child, condemned unjustly to being aborted, has the face of Jesus Christ, the face of the Lord.” You can’t get more specific than that.

What is the bottom line? The laws of God and the Church are important. Observing them is the key to happiness. Even more important, however, are help and mercy for those who fail in this – and that is all of us. Asked at the beginning of the interview, “Who is Jorge Bergolio” (the Pope’s original name), he responded: “I am a sinner. This is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.” In saying those words, the Pope spoke for all of us, without exception.

'THE SON OF MAN CAME TO SERVE."

Oct. 21st, 2018: 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B.  Mark 10:35-45.

AIM: To encourage the hearers to find fulfillment through service.

ABe careful what you pray for C you might get it.@  This familiar saying came back to me this week when a friend sent me a set of ARules for Life.@  One of them was this: ARemember that not getting what you want can be a wonderful stroke of luck.@ We all think we know best what is good for us, what will make us happy.  Often, however, we are wrong. 

In the gospel reading a few moments ago we heard Jesus trying to teach this lesson to two of his friends. ATeacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you,@ the brothers James and John say to Jesus. They are asking Jesus to sign a blank check. They will fill in the amount when they get it. Jesus might have told the two that their request was presumptuous. That would have put them on the defensive. People who feel they must defend themselves are not open to new insights. So Jesus asks simply: AWhat do you wish me to do for you?@

AGrant that in your glory we may sit one at your right hand and the other on your left.@ That was presumptuous. Jesus still does not rebuke them. Instead he tells them that they have no idea what they are asking. To drive home the lesson he challenges them with a question: ACan you drink of the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?@ 

AWe can,@ the brothers reply lightheartedly. 

Clearly they have no idea what lies ahead for the Master they love and revere. The cup Jesus refers to will contain bitter suffering. His baptism will be, this time, not in water but in blood. Had James and John understood that, they would not have been so eager to claim places on his right and left. Those places, Jesus tells them, are Afor those for whom it has been prepared@ C a reference, we recognize today, to the two thieves between whom Jesus would be crucified.

James and John have understood none of this. The indignation of their fellow disciples on learning what the brothers have been up to continues the misunderstanding. They are upset because two of their number have staked out a claim before they could assert theirs. Patiently Jesus explains that this whole contest for power and honor is totally unacceptable among his followers. AWhoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.@ Jesus reinforces this teaching with his own example: AFor the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.@ In Jesus= language that expression, Afor many@ was actually Afor the many@ C which was another way of saying, Afor all.@ Jesus died not just for some C not just for Catholics or for Christians. He died for all. We are reminded of this in every Mass when we hear Jesus= words at the Last Supper: AThis is the cup of my blood ... It will be shed for you and for all.@ 

The first citizens of God=s kingdom are those who, like Jesus himself, seek not to be served, but to serve. On this Mission Sunday we think of the countless women and men all over the world who are happy to live for years far from their homelands, to serve as missionaries, bringing to others the gospel B the good news that God loves sinners. They have discovered the secret of true greatness, and true happiness. Let me give you are three further examples of people who seek not to be served but to serve, first citizens of God=s kingdom. 

The first is a woman who died 21 years ago in India. She was scarcely five feet tall. She had an oversized nose and a deeply lined face. At her death the only things she owned were two white saris edged in blue and a wooden bucket to wash in. Born eighty-seven years before in Albania, she was known to the world as Mother Teresa. Originally a Sister of Loretto, she was principal of a school for girls in Calcutta. In 1946 she was traveling by train to her annual retreat when she received what she termed Aa call within a call: to give up all and follow Jesus into the slums C to serve him in the poorest of the poor.@

She began in a single room, with no companions and five rupees, then about a dollar. She started a school for slum children. Later she began caring for people dying in the streets C the start of several hostels for the dying which continue in Calcutta today. Slowly others joined her. Over the next half-century the growth of Mother Teresa=s Missionaries of Charity became a twentieth century miracle. In a day in which, in our country alone, over 10,000 Sisters have left the convent, Mother Teresa=s Sisters numbered, at her death, 3,700 in 122 countries C all  inspired by a woman who sought not to be served but to serve, to be the slave of all.  She is now St. Teresa of Calcutta.

My next first citizen of the kingdom is a married woman, the mother of three children. When her first child was born twenty-five years ago she was already a successful lawyer, with prospects of a lucrative career. She decided that her children were more important than a career and the income it would bring. In time she bore two more children. Two of them are now young adults; the third is a freshman in college. All three are young people that any parents would kill for: hard-working, courteous, generous and giving. Where did they get those qualities?  They got them from their parents C first from the mother who sacrificed a professional career because she considered her children more important.

AI never thought of it as a sacrifice,@ she told me once. But it was none-theless. It is an example of what Jesus was talking about when he told us to seek not to be served but to serve. This woman, like Mother Teresa, is another first citizen of God=s kingdom. There are others here in our parish. If I don=t speak about them, it is because I don=t want to embarrass anyone. 

My final example is Pope St. John Paul II.  Thirty years ago, on October 16^th, 1978, the cardinals elected him Bishop of Rome. Then a vigorous, athletic man of 58, we remember him today old, bent, and ailing. A few months before his eightieth birthday Pope John Paul issued a letter ATo my elderly brothers and sisters.@ Let me conclude by reading to you the closing passage.

ADespite the limitations brought on by age, I continue to enjoy life. For this I thank the Lord. It is wonderful to be able to give oneself to the very end for the sake of the Kingdom of God! At the same time, I find great peace in thinking of the time when the Lord will call me: from life to life! And so I find myself saying, with no trace of melancholy, a prayer recited by priests after the celebration of the Eucharist: >At the hour of my death, call me and bid me come to you.= This is the prayer of Christian hope, which in no way detracts from the joy of the present, while entrusting the future to God=s gracious and loving care.

A>Bid me come to you!= [the Pope continued]. This is the deepest yearning of the human heart, even in those who are not conscious of it. Grant, O Lord of life, that we may be ever vividly aware of this and that we may savor every season of our lives as a gift filled with promise for the future. Grant that we may lovingly accept your will, and place ourselves each day in your merciful hands. And when the moment of our definitive >passage= comes, grant that we may face it with serenity, without regret for what we shall leave behind. For in meeting you, after having sought you for so long, we shall find once more every authentic good which we have known here on earth, in the company of all who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith and hope.@ 

GIVE ALMS.

Homily for October 16^th, 2018: Luke 11:37-41.

          Jesus is the guest of a Pharisee, a man who is careful to observe all the provisions of the Jewish law. Offered an opportunity to wash his hands before dinner, Jesus offends his host by brushing aside this Jewish custom. An act of rudeness? So it would seem. As the story unfolds we discover, however, the Jesus had a reason for what looks like an act of discourtesy. He wanted to show his host that mere external cleansing is useless if it is not accompanied by internal cleansing as well.

          “Oh, you Pharisees!” He says. “Although you clean the outside of the cup and the dish, inside you are filled with plunder and evil.” What might this mean for us today? A possible modern parallel would be Catholics who are always careful to dress up for Sunday Mass: a suit and necktie for men; for women a nice dress; inside, however, unconfessed and hence unforgiven sins: cruelty, resentment, and hate; dishonesty, impurity, and pride. The Lord in his mercy has given us a remedy for such sins: the sacrament of penance or confession. Correctness in dress and outward behavior is important. Coming to the Lord’s Table as we would to a picnic or baseball game shows scant respect for our host. Yet inner and spiritual cleansing is even more important.

          Now Jesus surprises us (as he does often). Rather than pointing to confession of sins, he speaks of something else: almsgiving. “But as to what is within, give alms, and behold everything will be clean for you.” Luke wrote his gospel for a partly Gentile community. Almsgiving hardly figured in the ancient pagan world of Jesus’ day. For Jews, however, it was important. The Jewish farmer and shepherd gave the firstfruits of field and flock to the Lord. They did so to express gratitude to the Lord who gives us all we are and have, sin excepted. Only when we are truly thankful to the Lord for all the blessings he showers upon us, so many more than we deserve on any strict accounting, are we truly in a right relationship with him. And we show our gratitude by sharing the Lord’s blessings with our brothers and sisters. Only then, Jesus tells us, will everything be clean for us.

ST. TERESA OF AVILA

Homily for Oct. 15^th, 2018: St. Teresa of Avila

          We celebrate today one of the great women of the 16^th century, Teresa of Avila in central Spain. Born in 1515 as her mother’s third child and first daughter, she was, in the words of a modern biographer, “a vain and vivacious girl, with a divine agenda.” When she was thirteen, her mother died while giving birth to her tenth child. Devastated, Teresa prayed that henceforth Mary might be her mother. Despite this early piety, Teresa says herself that she was a frivolous teenager, “wearing fancy things, and silly baubles.” This was likely why her father sent Teresa to a convent school at age 16.

          She got on well in the convent. But after 19 months she fell ill and was sent to a deeply pious uncle in the country to recuperate. Conversations with him convinced Teresa that the world would soon end and that if she did not change, she would go to hell. To avoid this, she decided to “bully herself” into becoming a nun. Lacking her father’s permission for this, she stole away at age 20, with the help of an older brother, to the Carmelite convent in Avila. She would remain there for the next quarter-century. It was a relaxed life, with nuns from wealthy families enjoying comfortable suites, pets, and even servants. “Everything about God gave me tremendous pleasure,” Teresa writes, “but the things of the world captivated me. I spent almost twenty years on this stormy sea, falling and rising, then falling again.”

          When she was not quite 40, she had a conversion experience. Her prayer deepened and she began to think of what more she could do for the Lord. Reform of orders for men and women was in the air, and in 1562 Teresa, with only 4 companions, but with the support of her 17 years younger friend and Confessor, St. John of the Cross, founded a new convent with a far more austere life than the one she had left. Teresa would found almost 20 other such convents in the 20 years which remained to her. Exhausted by the travels all over Spain which these foundations required, Teresa died in 1581. She left classic writings on prayer which fill 3 volumes in English translation. They formed the basis for Pope Paul VI’s declaration in 1970 of Teresa of Avila as a Doctor or official teacher of the Church, the first woman to be so honored.

          The modern English Carmelite, Ruth Burrows, writes: “Teresa’s will was identified with our Lord’s. So everything she was, her many gifts and her weaknesses too, were brought into the orbit of her love and dedication. Union with Christ does not mean becoming someone different, renouncing our gifts, changing our temperament; but putting everything we have into our love for God and opening everything we have to his transforming influence. Teresa reached the full potential of personhood: what she was meant to be she became. This is holiness.”

          How wonderful, if something like that could be said of us, when the Lord sends his angel to call us home. To that end, then, we pray:

St. Teresa of Avila, pray for us