Friday, May 17, 2019

'YOU WILL DO GREATER WORKS."


Homily for May 18th, 2019 : John 14:7-14.

“Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do,” Jesus says, “and will do even greater works than these …” How is that possible? Well, consider. During his life on earth Jesus= works were confined to just a few years, and to one very small part of the world. But these works did not end with Jesus= return to his Father in heaven. They have continued, through his Church. Starting as a sect of Judaism, the Church throughout the whole world and has continued through twenty centuries of history. We the Church=s members are charged to continue Jesus= works. He has now no hands to bless people than ours; no eyes to look upon people in love than ours; no tongue to speak words of love, encouragement, or reproof but ours; no arms to support people and their burdens than ours.

The Church=s works are greater than those of her Lord because they are more extended in time and space than they could ever be during the few years that Jesus walked the dusty roads of Palestine. And the Church=s works are great C amazing in fact C because they have never ceased despite the failures and betrayals of Church leaders and members. The betrayals began when, at Jesus= arrest, Athey all forsook him and fled@ (Mk 14:50); and when, only hours later, their leader, Peter, three times denied that he even knew the Lord. Should we be surprised when we hear of similar betrayals today?

Let me close with a story. It’s only a story, but it tells us something important.  When the Lord Jesus returned to heaven at the ascension the angels wanted to know everything he had done on earth.  So Jesus told them how he had gone about doing good, healing the sick, and teaching people about the freely given love of God.

AThat=s wonderful, Lord,@ the angels said.  ABut now that you=re no longer in earth, won=t people soon forget about what you have done and said?@

AOh no,@ Jesus explained.  AI founded a Church.  I chose twelve men to be its first bishops.  I spent three years teaching them: how to pray, how to heal people, how to free them from their burdens, how to teach others about God=s freely given love. They are going to carry on my work.@

AThat=s all well and good, Lord,@ the angels replied.  ABut we know how fickle and unreliable these human beings are.  How do you know that they will keep on doing all those things you trained them to do?  How do you know that they will remain faithful?@

At that the Lord fell silent.  He looked down and seemed to be thinking.  Then he looked up and, with that beautiful, radiant smile of his, said very simply: AI trust them.@

Thursday, May 16, 2019

"I AM GOING TO PREPARE A PLACE FOR YOU."


Homily for May 17th, 2019: John 14:1-6.

          “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places,” Jesus tells us, “I am going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.” What a tremendous promise! Jesus’ words address our greatest enemy, and for most of us our greatest fear: death. Down through the centuries Christians have pondered and prayed over this promise. Here is what three of them have said.

St. Cyprian, 3rd century Bishop of Carthage in North Africa:

“We reckon paradise to be our home. A great throng awaits us there of those dear to us, parents, brothers, sons. A packed and numerous throng longs for us, of those already free from anxiety for their own salvation, who are still concerned for our salvation. What joy they share with us when we come into their sight and embrace them! What pleasure there is there in the heavenly kingdom, with no fear of death, and what supreme happiness with the enjoyment of eternal life.” [Office of Readings for Friday of the 34th week of the year)]

St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa from 395 to 430.

“How happy will be our shout of Alleluia there, how carefree, how secure from any adversary, where there is no enemy, where no friend perishes. There praise is offered to God, and here too; but here it is by people who are anxious, there by people who are free from care; here by people who must die, there by those who will live forever. Here praise is offered in hope, there by people who enjoy the reality; here by those who are pilgrims on the way, there by those who have reached their own country.” [Office of Readings for Saturday of the 34th week of the year)]

Pope Benedict XVI, now retired:

Christianity does not proclaim merely a certain salvation of the soul in some imprecise place beyond, in which everything in this world that was precious and loved by us is erased, but it promises eternal life, ‘the life of the world to come’: nothing of what is precious and loved will be ruined, but will find its fulfillment in God. All the hairs of our head are numbered, Jesus said one day (cf. Matthew 10:30). The final world will also be the fulfillment of this earth, as St. Paul states: ‘Creation itself will be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God’" (Romans 8:21). [Aug. 15, 2010]

          How do we reach the joys of which these three great Christians speak? Jesus tells us in the final sentence of today’s gospel: “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

 

Wednesday, May 15, 2019

'WHOEVER RECEIVES ME . . . "


Homily for May 16, 2019: John 13:16-20.

          Jesus’ words in today’s gospel reading immediately follow his washing of the apostles’ feet. Feet shod only in sandals got dirty on the dusty roads of Palestine. It was customary, therefore, for a host to provide water for arriving guests to wash their own feet. Jesus went beyond this gesture of hospitality. By washing his friends’ feet himself, he gives them an example of humble service which they must be prepared to imitate.

          How little the Twelve heeded and followed this example, we learn from Luke’s gospel, which says that at the Last Supper “a dispute arose among them about who should be regarded as greatest” (22:24). After the foot-washing, therefore, Jesus goes on to speak about what he has just done.

          “No slave is greater than his master,” Jesus says, “nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him.” Down through the centuries many of Jesus’ followers have recognized this, and acted accordingly. Jesus directs his words to them when he says: “If you understand this, blessed [which means “happy”] are you if you do it.” Sadly, there are also some who act as masters themselves, rather than as servants, conceiving of priesthood as a career, not as service. Knowing that there was one such follower at table with him there at the Last Supper, who in his heart had already rejected his servant role, Jesus quotes a verse from Psalm 41: “The one who ate my food has raised his heel against me.”

          Then, to encourage those truly resolved in their hearts to be and to remain his servants, Jesus says: “Amen, amen,” [which means “solemnly”] I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me.” Which one of us would not be thrilled to receive Jesus in person? A recent e-mail from a Philippine deacon in Rome, soon to be ordained priest, had the words “A great grace” in the subject line. It told about his being able to greet Pope Francis personally at the end of an audience for seminarians.  

Jesus was telling his apostles that those to whom he was sending them would be no less thrilled than my Philippine friend. Jesus concludes by saying: “Whoever accepts anyone I send accepts me, and in accepting me, accepts him who sent me.”

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

'WHOEVER SEES ME . . ."


Homily for May 15th, 2019: John 12:44-50.

          “Whoever sees me sees the One who sent me,” Jesus tells us in today’s gospel reading. What do we see when we look at Jesus? We see that he preferred simple, ordinary people. He came to the world in an obscure provincial village on the edge of Nowhere, where nothing interesting or important ever happened. Jesus moved not among wealthy or sophisticated people, or among scholars and intellectuals, but among ordinary people.

Jesus was of the earth, earthy. In his youth he worked with his hands in the carpenter’s shop. His teaching was full of references to simple things: the birds of the air, the wind and the raging waves, the lilies of the field, the vine, the lost sheep, the woman searching for her one lost coin, leavening dough with yeast, the thief breaking in at night. 

          In preferring simple people and simple things, Jesus was showing us what God is like. He who is God’s word, God’s personal communication to us, is saying that God loves humble people. In his earthiness Jesus shows us God’s love for this world and everything in it.

Many people think of God and religion as concerned only with some higher, spiritual realm. Not true! God loves the earth and the things of earth. He must love them, because he made them. And God does not make anything that is not lovable. God made each of us, using our parents as his agents. And he loves us with a love that will never let us go.

How do we know that? Jesus told us himself when he said: “Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). And Paul writes in his Letter to the Romans: “It is precisely in this that God proves his love for us: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (5:8).

          That, friends, is the gospel. That is the Good News.

Monday, May 13, 2019

MY 91ST BIRTHDAY


91st Birthday Homily: May 14th, 2019
          “It was not you who chose me,” we heard in our gospel reading, “but I who chose you.” I was born in New York City, 91 years ago today. I give thanks today for the long life which God has given me. Even more, I thank him for choosing to give me a gift of which no man is worthy, not even the pope: a share in the priesthood of his divine son Jesus Christ. Let me tell you how the Lord did this.
           The son and grandson of priests in the Episcopal Church, I grew up in an atmosphere in which public worship and private prayer were as natural as eating and drinking. I had an almost magical childhood — until the day after Christmas 1934, when my father came home from the hospital to which my 27- year-old mother had been taken, a week before, with pneumonia. He gathered his children — myself six, a sister four, and a brother two — and spoke the three most terrible words I have ever heard: “Mummy is dead.” My whole world collapsed.
          In the three days following my mother’s body lay in one of chapels of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in a simple wooden coffin made for her by the cathedral carpenters. There my father celebrated three Masses for the repose of her soul. I attended, grief-stricken. I remember her funeral, the first I ever experienced. And I remember her burial, especially the sound of the heavy clods earth falling on her coffin, at the bottom of a deep grave, the most terrible sound I have ever heard. At family prayers the next day, my father told us children: “We must still pray for Mummy. She is with God. He is looking after her, and our prayers can help her.” I have followed my father’s injunction faithfully, on every day of the 85 years since then.
          A year later, at age seven, I had an experience which I can see, looking back, would change my life forever. It came home to me one day, with blinding certainty, that I would see my beloved mother again, when the Lord called me home to himself. Since that day the unseen, spiritual world – the world of God, the angels, the saints, and our beloved dead -- has been real me. I know people who are there: my beloved mother first, and now so many other dear ones who have gone home to God in the years since her death.
          Fast forward now to my twelfth birthday. My English teacher at school told me to write about what I would be doing in twenty-five years. About that, I had no clue. But since I had to write something, I wrote about being a missionary priest in the west African country of Liberia. That idea came to me from the school chaplain, a priest of the Anglican religious Order of the Holy Cross, which had a mission in Liberia.
          The idea of missionary work soon faded; but priesthood never. From that day to this priesthood has been all I ever wanted. I went straight to that goal, like a steel needle to a magnet, until, on April 4th, 1954, I achieved it. For six happy years I served the Episcopal Church as a priest, doing with joy literally everything a Catholic priest does, without exception.
Six years later, at Easter 1960, I decided to enter the Catholic Church – the most difficult decision I have ever made, but also the best. Eight years later the Catholic Church gave me the rare privilege of conditional ordination as a deacon and priest, which allows for the possibility that my previous Anglican ordination may have been valid.
Priesthood has brought me joy beyond telling. It has also brought me pain, sorrow, and grief. Countless married people would say the same. If you were to ask me, however, whether I have ever regretted obeying the Lord’s call to serve him and his holy people as a priest, I would answer without hesitation: never, not one single day. If I were to die tonight, I would die filled with happiness, joy – and thanksgiving beyond telling!

"IT WAS NOT YOU WHO CHOSE ME."


Homily for May 14th, 2019: Acts 1:15-17, 20-26; John 15:9-17.

          Our first reading shows us the Church performing what might be called her first juridical act: finding among Jesus’ disciples one to take the place of Judas Iscariot, who had betrayed the Lord and, unlike Peter who repented, had despaired and taken his own life. Peter, by the Lord’s appointment the Church’s chief shepherd, takes the lead. The man chosen, he says, must be one who has been with us from the day of Jesus’ baptism, until his death, resurrection, and ascension, so that he could be, with us remaining eleven apostles, a witness to [Jesus’] resurrection. 

          Note how carefully they proceed. Not trusting to human judgment, they choose two of their number who fulfill Peter’s requirement. Then they pray that the Lord will show them which of the two he has chosen. This is the first corporate prayer recorded in the New Testament.  Following this, they cast lots. A common Jewish practice, this was done by taking two stones, writing the name of one candidate on each, and then placing both in an open jar. The jar was then shaken until one of the stones fell out.     

Who was this Matthias, we want to know? The honest answer is: we don’t know. There are stories about him, but they are legends only. Careful as Peter had been to leave the choice to God, it seems that the Lord had another in mind, a man about whom we know a great deal: a devout Jew named Saul, zealous defender of his Jewish faith, who in baptism became Paul, the great apostle to the wider Gentile world. He is a man to whom Jesus’ words in today’s gospel reading apply, if they ever applied to anyone: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain.”

In all this we see, once again, what the Bible shows us repeatedly: that God is the master of surprises, the God of the unexpected. Hence the old saying: If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

Sunday, May 12, 2019

"BEHOLD,I MAKE ALL THINGS NEW."


May 19th, 2019: Sunday of Easter, Year C.  
         Acts 13:21-27; Rev. 21:1-5a; John 13:31-33a, 34-35.
AIM:  To show how Jesus fulfils his promise to make all things new.

          Walk down the aisle of any supermarket. Scan the ads in any popular magazine.  Watch the commercials on TV. One word recurs in ever fresh combination: “new.” It if isn’t a new look, it’s a new taste, a new feeling, a new formula. Everyone with something to sell seems to be promising us something new. Self-help books offer us a whole new life, or at least renewed physical and mental health, if only we will follow their directions. And during political campaigns candidates promise us a new society, a new frontier, new ideas, or at least a new approach.
          How many of these promises are fulfilled? Not many. Today’s shiny new car becomes tomorrow’s shabby trade-in. The self-help books turn out to offer not the new life they promise, but at best improvement in the old life we already have. And we all know what happens to campaign promises after the election.
          Is life a cheat? Is the universal longing for newness to which all these promises appeal doomed to be forever frustrated? To these nagging questions our second reading returns a ringing and confident No. “The One who sat on the throne said to me, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’”
          The Book of Revelation, from which those words are taken, describes in language of poetic imagery the author’s vision of heaven. It might seem, therefore, that this promise of One who makes all things new belongs not to this world but to another: “Pie in the sky when we die,” as the old saying has it. Complete fulfillment of this promise does belong to the life beyond death. But it is part of the gospel or good news of Jesus Christ that God offers us here and now a foretaste of that new and better life which, in its fullness, will be ours hereafter.
          The Lord who makes all things new does this in many ways. Let me speak about just one. It is indicated by the words that the author of Revelation heard in his vision: “Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them as their God.” 
          That assurance that God is always with us evokes a ready response. Deep in every heart there is a longing for a companion, a friend, a lover, who will accept and love us just as we are; who will support us in sorrow, share our joys, help us to rise above failure and injustice; who will be with us always.
          When we were little children our parents did this for us, if they were good parents.  Few things are more devastating for a small child than to be suddenly separated from Mummy or Daddy. Across the span of eighty-six years I can still recall my feeling of panic when, on my first day at school, I found that my mother had slipped away without my noticing. I realize now that she wanted to spare me a wrenching and tearful farewell. At the time, however, I was crushed.
          We have all had experiences like that. We carry those childhood hurts into adult life, still secretly afraid that we shall be hurt again; that our efforts at friendship and love will be rebuffed; that we shall be let down, hurt, abandoned, by someone we love and trust. When we are, the old wound is reopened, and our fear of loneliness is reinforced.
          To those oppressed by loneliness (and which of us is not, at some time or another?) the Lord proclaims: “Behold, I make all things new.” When no one else understands, there is One who does understand. When everyone else seems to ignore us, to reject us, to condemn us, there is One who accepts us. When I cannot find one other person to accept the love I long to give, and to receive, there is One who does accept: who loved me before I loved him, who loves me more than I can ever love him, who will go on loving me no matter what. His name is Jesus Christ. He is the One who makes all things new.
          Jesus knew greater loneliness than we shall ever experience. The gospel reading we have just heard opens with the departure of one of Jesus’ closest friends, to betray him. Yet Jesus’ first words after this devastating blow speak not of defeat, but of victory: “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.”
          What gave Jesus that breath-taking ability to view betrayal not as defeat but as victory? It was his faith in a God who does indeed make all things new. God fulfilled that promise for his Son, however, not by delivering Jesus from death, but by raising him on the third day to a new life beyond death. In his resurrection Jesus experienced the fulfillment of the great promises contained in our second reading. On Easter morning God wiped away all tears from the eyes of his beloved Son. In his resurrection Jesus was raised to a life in which there is (to quote the words of that second reading again) “no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away.”
          For us, as for Jesus on the night when Judas left to betray him, the complete fulfillment of those promises belongs to the future. As St. Paul tells us in our first reading: “It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.”  As long as this life continues, God’s promise to make all things new means not preservation from hardships, but support amid hardships. 
          The Lord’s promise to make all things new is not like all those other promises I mentioned at the start. It is a glorious reality. But it is a reality which is both present and future. We live at the intersection of the “already” and the “not yet.” Already God is with us, supporting us in so many ways: through his holy word; through those personal loving encounters with him called sacraments; through our sisters and brothers. Already God is fulfilling his promise to make all things new.
          Complete fulfillment of that promise belongs, however, to the “not yet.” Only in a future life will God wipe away all tears from our eyes. Only beyond death shall we experience what Jesus experienced in his resurrection: “no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away.” 
          Life is not a cheat. There is One who does make all things new. His name is Jesus Christ. He can make your life new. He longs to do so. He will never do this, however, without your consent. His assurance, “Behold, I make all things new” is certain. One thing alone is uncertain. Do you really want the new life that God is offering you, even now, through his Son Jesus Christ? If so, then pray right now:
          Come into my heart, Lord Jesus
          With the fire of your love;
          With all your purity, your power, your peace. Amen.  

"I CAME SO THAT THEY MIGHT HAVE LIFE."


Homily for May 13th, 2019: John 10:1-10.

          “Whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep,” Jesus tells us in today’s gospel reading. “The sheep follow him because they recognize his voice.” Those who follow Jesus find that he is always close to them, yet that he remains the totally Other. They know his goodness, his kindness, his patience, his strength, his courage. They recognize Jesus Christ as the embodiment of everything good and noble and worthwhile in human life: completely sinless, selfless, pure, holy. Those who try to follow Jesus, the Good Shepherd, experience him as a man set apart; yet drawing people to himself with a mysterious magnetism which centuries cannot diminish. (Why is it always quiet in the church when I speak about Jesus Christ?  Why is it quiet right now?)

          Jesus Christ is the one who understands us when no one else understands. He is the one who raises us up when we fall; whose help is effective and powerful when every other help fails. He is the Good Shepherd. He tells us in today’s gospel: “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” Does that mean somewhere else, tomorrow? pie-in-the-sky-when-we-die? No! Though the abundant life which Jesus came to give us will never be complete in this world, he wants it to begin here and now.

          Perhaps someone is asking: “Can you prove that?” To that I must answer: “No, I cannot prove it. You must prove it.” You do so when you take Jesus at his word; when you listen for the shepherd’s voice, and heed his call. Once you do that, you will be able to say, in the words of the best known and most loved of all the 150 psalms: “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall lack.”

          Jesus’ words in today’s gospel are a reassurance and a promise. But they are more. They are also an invitation, and a challenge, addressed personally to you: “Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. ... I came so that they might have life and have it to the full” [New American Bible]. 

          That, friends, is the gospel. That is the good news. Jesus came so that we might have life, and have it to the full!