"THE ONE WHO HUMBLES HIMSELF WILL BE EXALTED."

Homily for Sept. 1st, 2013, 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C.

Are we really comfortable with humility? Don’t we suspect that there is something phony about it? That humility means striking a pose, pretending to be less than we really are? Let’s look again at today's gospel.

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"OUT OF FEAR I BURIED YOUR TALENT."

Homily for August 31st, 2013: 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.   

"BEHOLD, THE BRIDEGROOM IS HERE!"

Homily for August 30^th, 2013: Matt. 25:1-13.

          To understand the story in today’s gospel we must know that in Jesus’ day marriages were arranged between the two families. The ten virgins or bridesmaids in the story are waiting at the bride's house for the negotiations to conclude at the house of the bridegroom. Close to midnight, when the bride’s party has begun to fear that the groom may not come at all, he suddenly appears to fetch his bride, accompanied by a crowd of his friends and relatives, carrying torches -- necessary because there was of course no street lighting. Whereupon the combined parties, all carrying lighted torches, would proceed back to the groom’s house for the actual wedding ceremony, followed by further feasting and dancing into the wee hours.

          Despite the final sentence about staying awake, the story is really not about ceaseless vigilance, for all ten bridesmaids sleep. The emphasis is on being prepared.  Most commentators think that the words, “stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour,” were added by Matthew from another context.

          The bridesmaids’ torches consisted of rags tightly wound around the end of a pole and drenched with oil. After perhaps a quarter hour, the flame would go out, unless fresh oil was poured on the torch. The foolish bridesmaids don’t bother to bring any reserve of oil, assuming that they will always be able to scrounge more. When the midnight cry, “The bridegroom is here!” wakes all ten bridesmaids from sleep, five are caught unaware and unprepared. Before they can get more oil and re-light their torches, the wedding is history and they are shut out.   

          The story is Jesus’ attempt to penetrate the complacency of the crowds who heard him. The story warns that them they are passing up an opportunity which will not be come again. The story continues to challenge us today with two urgent questions. We ignore them at our peril. When will the midnight cry come for me? And, when it does, will I be prepared?

"HE MUST INCREASE, I MUST DECREASE."

Homily for August 29^th, 2013: St. John the Baptist

Not quite 55 years ago, on the afternoon of October 28^th, 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.@

"YOU HAVE MADE US FOR YOURSELF, O GOD . . . "

Homily for August 28^th, 2013: 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 the devout Christian mother, Monica, whom we celebrated yesterday, 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.

          He 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 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.”

ST. MONICA'S TEARS

Homily for August 27th, 2013. Memorial of St. Monica.

          The opening prayer for today’s celebration of St. Monica speaks about her “motherly tears for the conversion of her son Augustine.” He was a brilliant boy. But into his 30s he was unable to accept the Christian faith, despite his mother’s fervent prayers and tears. Monica is said to have asked an old bishop whether her son would ever accept baptism. “It is impossible,” the old man reassured her, “that the son of so many prayers and tears should perish.” Augustine’s dramatic conversion at age 33 caused his mother to “leap for joy,” Augustine tells us in his Confessions. 

In another passage in that book, Augustine recounts a memorable conversation with his mother toward her life’s end. “We talked together in deep joy,” Augustine writes, “and forgetting the things that were behind and looking forward to those that were before, we were discussing in the presence of Truth, who you are [O Lord], what the eternal life of the saints could be like, which eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of man. But with the mouth of our heart we panted for the high waters of your fountain, the fountain of the life which is with you. ... And my mother said, ‘Son, for my own part I no longer find joy in anything in this world. ... One thing there was, for which I desired to remain still a little longer in this life, that I should see you a Catholic Christian before I died. This God has granted me in superabundance. What then am I doing here?’” 

          A few days later Monica fell ill. “Here you will bury your mother,” she said. “Lay this body wherever it may be. This only I ask of you, that you should remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be.” Augustine was able to restrain his grief at his mother’s funeral and burial shortly thereafter; but his tears flowed copiously later on. 

          What a mother! And what a beautiful and holy death! May the Lord grant each of us such a death, when the Lord sends his angel to call us home!

'WOE TO YOU HYPOCRITES!"

Homily for August 26^th, 2013: Matt. 23:13.22.

          Today’s gospel gives us the first three of the seven woes pronounced by Jesus against those who refuse to accept him and his message. They correspond to the blessings or Beatitudes spoken by Jesus in the fifth chapter of Matthew’s gospel at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. 

          The scribes and Pharisees against whom Jesus pronounces these woes are the interpreters and teachers of God’s law, the Ten Commandments. Nowhere does Jesus criticize, let alone reject, God’s law. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets,” Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount. “I have come not to abolish them, but to fulfill them” (Mt. 5:17).

          What Jesus attacks is the gaping contrast between what those against whom he pronounces his woes teach, and how they themselves behave. The first woe is directed against those who do not enter the kingdom of heaven because they have closed their minds and hearts against him. Even worse, Jesus says, are their attacks against those who do open themselves to Jesus’ person and message. 
          The woe against those who “traverse sea and land to make one convert” is a back-handed compliment to the missionary zeal of those who take their treasured Jewish faith to non-Jews. Paul would do just this with his new Christian faith. What Jesus condemns is the narrow, legalistic version of Jewish faith which they propagate. This is also the basis of the woe against people who take oaths with formulas that allow them to wriggle out of what they have sworn to.

          Does all that belong to a bygone age? Don’t you believe it! The yawning gap between what we claim to believe and how we actually behave remains a danger for us Catholics today. As the old saying has it: “What you are speaks so loud, that I cannot hear what you say.”