GOLD, FRANKINCENSE, MYRRH

Epiphany, Year B. Mt.2:1-12

AIM: To show how Jesus’ roles as king, priest, and sacrifice, prefigured in the Magi’s gifts, are the model for our lives.

         

          Who were these Magi? Where did they come from? We do not know. On the level of history, the story we have just heard is shrouded in mystery. When we move to the spiritual level, however, the mystery falls away. The gifts which the Magi offered tell us a great deal about Mary’s child. The Magi offered him:

          gold for a king —  incense for a priest — and myrrh for his burial.

Jesus was a king. 

          Yet Jesus was different from all other kings known to history. Asked by Pilate whether he was “King of the Jews,” Jesus was reluctant to claim the title (Jn. 18:33-8). Unlike all other kings, Jesus was never interested in amassing possessions and wealth. He had no palace, not even a fixed abode (cf. Lk 9:58).  He never lorded it over people. Jesus was a shepherd-king who came, he said, “not to be served, but to serve” (Mk 10:45), even to the extent of laying down his life for his sheep (cf. Jn. 10:11).  Yet —

Jesus was also a priest. 

          A priest is a man for others; someone set apart to offer God prayer, praise, and sacrifice on behalf of others. From antiquity the smoke of incense, curling heavenward, has symbolized this priestly activity. From a purely utilitarian point of view, judged by results, burning incense is a sheer waste. So is prayer, if we judge it by measurable, visible results. A skeptic, seeing a priest praying the Breviary, the Church’s daily offering of prayer and praise to God, asked: “How do you know anyone is listening?” Without faith, that question is unanswerable. You cannot prove that anyone is listening. With faith, however, no proof is necessary. 

          Jesus exercised his priesthood in those nights of solitary prayer which we read about in the gospels. He was no less a priest, however, when he healed the sick, consoled the sorrowing, and comforted people weighed down by suffering and sin. The supreme example of Jesus’ priesthood came, however —

On the cross —  

          where Jesus offered his heavenly Father not merely the prayer of his lips and his heart, but his very life. To anyone without faith the cross is a scandalous waste and utter defeat. For those with faith, however, the cross is the place of ultimate victory. The most eloquent symbol of this victory is the empty tomb of Easter morning, which shows that the power of death and evil has been broken.  Because of the sacrifice offered on Calvary by Jesus, our shepherd-king and priest, evil cannot control or master us, unless we consent.  

          The Magi’s gifts foretold all this: gold for a king, incense for a priest, myrrh for his burial. Jesus shares these three functions with us. Paul says that Jesus is “the first-born of many brothers” (Rom 8:29). In baptism we became members of his family, his sisters, his brothers. We share with Jesus, our elder brother, the functions of king, priest, and sacrifice.  

          Like Christ, our shepherd-king, we too are called to serve others. That was Jesus’ explicit command to his disciples when, at the Last Supper, they argued about “who should be regarded as the greatest” (Lk 22:24-26). The noblest of the Pope’s many titles is “Servant of the servants of God.” Whenever popes have lived that title, and inspired others to similar lives of service, the Church has enjoyed spiritual health. Whenever popes and the Church have neglected the servant role, the Church has become weak, flabby, and sick — no matter how much wealth, privilege and power it may have amassed.

          We younger sisters and brothers of Jesus share also in his priestly role.  Like him, we are called to be people of prayer. Prayer is the soul’s breath and food. I was only a schoolboy when I discovered that when I neglected prayer, my grades suffered and my life began to fall apart. I’ve never forgotten that. As sharers of Christ’s priesthood, we are called to bring the love, healing, and power of God to others. We do so not by so much by words — for words are cheap, and our world is inundated by words — as by the force of our example. “Your light must shine before others,” Jesus says, “so that they may see goodness in your acts and give praise to your heavenly Father” (Mt. 5:16).

          Finally, we are called to share in Jesus’ death. God asks us to die daily to the selfishness and self-centeredness that lurk within each of us. And one day God will ask us to give back to him the precious gift of life itself, so that he can raise us to enjoy with Jesus, our elder brother, new, eternal life with God: a life without suffering, without sorrow, without frustration and disappointment, without loneliness, and without sin.  

          The Magi offered Jesus gold, frankincense and myrrh: the best and most costly gifts they had. Somewhere in this church right now there is someone who is longing to do the same. And yet, when you look at your life, you seem to have so little to offer. When you look within, you see so many broken resolutions; good that you might have done and yet failed to do; evil that you could have avoided and did not. You wanted to give Jesus so much. What you have given him up to now is so little. You ask yourself: What can I give him?

          Over a century ago an English poet with an Italian name, Christina Georgina Rosetti, asked that question.  Her answer is beautiful.  Listen.

          What can I give him, poor as I am?

          If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

          If I were a wise man, I would do my part;

          Yet what I can I give him — give my heart.

"THE WORD BECAME FLESH."

Homily for December 31^st, 2014: John 1:1-18.

          If you came to Mass on Christmas morning, you probably heard this gospel. You may have thought it strange. Where are the shepherds, the manger, Mary and Joseph? Where is their child? Instead of these familiar Christmas figures we have heard about abstractions: light and darkness, the Word becoming flesh.

Let's start with another word: "incarnation."  It means "taking on flesh, embodiment." This building is the incarnation of an idea in the mind of the architect who designed it, and of the sacrifices that made its construction possible. Children are the incarnation of their parents' love. And Jesus is the incarnation of God. 

We cannot see God. Jesus shows us what God is like. That is why this Christmas gospel calls Jesus God's Word. A word is used to communicate. Jesus is God's word because he is God's communication to us: not a lifeless, abstract statement, but God's living and breathing utterance and self-disclosure.    

When we listen to Jesus, we hear God speaking to us. When we look at Jesus, we see what God is like. What do we see when we look at Jesus? We see that he preferred simple, ordinary people. He came to the world in a provincial village where nothing interesting or important ever happened. Jesus moved not among wealthy or sophisticated people, or among scholars and intellectuals, but among ordinary people. They were the ones who welcomed him most warmly.  The rich and powerful and learned had difficulties with Jesus. Many were hostile to him – then, and still today.

In his youth Jesus 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 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. Those were images that everyone could understand. Jesus also told stories: so simple that they capture the interest of children; yet so profound that learned scholars are still studying them today.

         In all these ways Jesus was showing us what God is like. He who is God=s utterance and word, God=s personal communication to us, is saying through all the circumstances of his life that God loves humble people. God is especially close to those who feel that they are not in control of their lives; that they are the victims of circumstances; that their lives are a tangle of loose ends and broken resolutions.
        It is because God gave us his Son at Christmas that we give gifts to one another. The greatest gift we can give cannot be bought in any store. It is the gift God gave us at Christmas: the gift of himself. Look at Mary's child: helpless, vulnerable, and weak, as all babies are. He is God's way of saying: 'This is how much the Lord God, creator of heaven and earth, loves you; enough to be become tiny, insignificant, vulnerable.' Jesus, the personal utterance and word of God, is God's gift to you. He wants you to share this gift with others.

MARY, WOMAN OF FAITH.

Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.  Num. 6: 22-27; Gal. 4:4-7, Luke 2:16-21

AIM: To present Mary as the model of trusting faith in the new year.

 

          A new year! What will it bring? Some great success? Humiliating failure?  Unexpected happiness, or sudden loss? Dramatic change, or just more of the same? Illness, suffering, or death? We cannot know what the new year will bring. The one certain thing about the future is its uncertainty. 

          As we venture into the unknown, the Church gives us, on this New Year’s Day, a feast in honor of Mary, the Mother of God. Does this mean that Mary is as important as her Son, equal even with God? Of course not. A glance at today’s readings dispels any such idea at once.

          The first reading contains the beautiful formula of blessing that Jesus would have learned as a boy in the synagogue school at Nazareth. It remains today the common property of both Jews and Christians. The second reading mentions Mary, but does not name her. “When the fullness of time had come,” Paul writes, “God sent his Son, born of a woman ...” That was Paul’s way of saying that Jesus was truly and completely human, as he was also truly and completely God. The gospel mentions Mary twice, but tells us simply that she “kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” 

          Why does the Church dedicate this first day of the new year in a special way to Mary? Because Mary is, in a unique way, the woman of faith. While only on the threshold of her teens, Mary was asked by God to venture into an unknown future, filled with suffering, the purpose and end of which she could not possibly understand in advance. We think of the angel’s message to Mary, that she was to be the mother of God’s Son, as something wonderful. To Mary, however, it meant being an unmarried mother in a little village, where everyone knew everyone else’s business, and where gossip was rife.

          Did Mary understand the reason for the angel’s message, and where her assent would lead? How could she? Luke tells us that even years later, when Mary and Joseph found their twelve-year-old son in the Temple at Jerusalem after a frantic three-day search, they still “did not understand” Jesus’ words to them about having to be in his Father’s house (Lk 2:50).

          The faith which enabled Mary to accept her role in this mystery was no once-for-all thing. Her faith, like ours, needed to be constantly renewed amid suffering and misunderstanding. Joseph wanted to break their engagement. In the Jerusalem temple Mary heard the aged Simeon prophesy her Son’s rejection and his mother’s suffering. When her twelve-year-old Son told Mary and Joseph, who for three days had thought him lost in Jerusalem and sought him frantically, that he had to be in his Father’s house, Luke tells us that “they did not understand” what he was telling them. (Lk 2:50)

          There would be much more that Mary did not understand and could not understand. In time her Son left home. Often thereafter he seemed to be fulfilling his own command about “hating” parents and other close relatives, and one’s “own life too” (Lk 14:26). At Cana, the site of his first miracle, Jesus appeared to treat his mother with perplexing disrespect. Even at the Last Supper Jesus made no place, it seems, for his mother. Only at Calvary was she permitted to stand beside her now dying Son, along with “the disciple whom Jesus loved” — deliberately left anonymous, so that he can represent the ideal follower of Jesus Christ in every age and place. 

          There on Calvary Mary experienced the full truth of Simeon’s prophecy three decades before: that a sword would pierce her own soul. There she shared the anguish of her dying Son, as he cried: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Calvary was the final and greatest test of Mary’s faith, the place where she had to renew once again, as she had done so often before, the declaration of trusting faith with which she had begun: “Let it be done to me according to your word.”  

          The next three decades would bring Mary much more that she did not understand, and could not understand. She continued to trust God nonetheless. In trusting faith she endured her greatest suffering, and for her the most incomprehensible, as she watched her Son die a criminal’s death on Calvary. The final glimpse we have of Mary in the New Testament shows her to be still the woman of faith: joining with the friends of Jesus in prayer in the upper room at Jerusalem, before the outpouring of God’s Spirit at Pentecost, as Jesus had promised.  (Cf. Acts 1:24)

          The Church sets Mary before us today because she, like us, needed faith to journey into the unknown; because her faith can inspire in us the we faith we need for our journey into the unknown; and because Mary’s prayers support us on our pilgrim way. 

          Let me conclude with some words which evoke this trusting faith.  They were written in England about a century ago. As you listen, you may wish to imagine them being spoken to you by Mary, the woman of faith, as you cross the threshold of a new year.

          “And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown. And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than a light, and safer than a known way.’”

[M. Louise Haskins; quoted by King George VI in his Christmas broadcast, 1939]

JESUS' "HIDDEN YEARS."

Homily for December 30^th, 2014: Luke 2:36-40.
          The prophetess Anna, whom we have just heard about in the gospel, was very old. “She never left the Temple, “Luke tells us, “but worshipped day and night with fasting and prayer.” There are such people in the Church today: contemplative nuns, who do not leave the convent for charitable or other good works, like most Catholic Sisters. They lead mostly hidden lives, praying for others.

          Anna has evidently been praying, as devout Jews had done for centuries, for the coming of God’s promised anointed servant, the Messiah. When Mary and Joseph brought their baby into the Temple to present him to the Lord, as the Jewish law required, both the priest Simeon and Anna recognized at once that this infant was the long awaited Messiah. How they most have rejoiced! Anna’s joy is evident in the fact that she cannot keep the news to herself. “She gave thanks to God,” Luke tells us, “and spoke about the child to all those who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.”

          Then comes what at first seems like an anti-climax. Mary and Joseph return to Nazareth with their child. Save for a glimpse of Jesus back in the Jerusalem Temple at age twelve, we know nothing about his boyhood, adolescence, or young manhood until, at age 30, he begins his public ministry with 40 days of fasting in the desert. These are his so-called “hidden years.”

          Are they really so hidden, however? “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” people in Nazareth will ask later (Mt. 13:55). So we can assume that as a boy, Jesus must have worked in the carpenter’s shop. Is it conceivable that any shoddy work came out of that shop? that customers were kept waiting beyond the promised date? Luke tells us that in that shop, Jesus “grew in size and strength, filled with wisdom.” He did that by accepting the burdens, duties, and frustrations of a very ordinary and outwardly uninteresting life.

He calls us to do the same.

"WHOEVER HATES HIS BROTHER IS IN DARKNESS."

Homily for December 29^th, 2014: 1 John 2:3-11.

          “I am the light of the world,” Jesus says in John’s gospel (8:12). How dark the world would be without him. In baptism we were commissioned to be lenses and prisms of that light, which shines from the face of Jesus Christ. In today’s first reading the apostle John tells us how we fulfill that commission. “Whoever loves his bother remains in the light . . . Whoever hates his brother is in darkness; he walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”

          To understand these words we need to know that the words “love” and “hate” here do not refer to feelings. They refer to our conduct. This becomes clear if we look at the words of Jesus himself in the parable of the sheep and the goats in chapter 25 of Matthew’s gospel. There Jesus says that when we come to stand before God in judgment, he won’t ask us how many prayers we’ve said, or how many Masses we have attended. He will ask instead how we have treated other people.

          To those on his right hand, designated as sheep in the story, the king (a stand-in for the Lord God) will say: “Come, you have my Father’s blessing! … For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, in prison and you come to me.” Astonished at these words, those on the king’s right hand ask when they had done all those things. To which the king responds: “As often as you did it for one of my least brothers, you did it for me.” 

Then, to those on his left hand, designated as goats in the story, the king says: “Out of my sight, you condemned, into that everlasting fire prepared for the devil and has angels!” To explain this harsh judgment the king tells those on his left that they have done none of those things. Conduct and not feelings is the standard by which both are judged.

          We pray then in this Mass that when the Lord sends his angel to call us home to Him, he will find us walking in the light by doing good to those we encounter along life’s way.

"THE CHILD GREW."

ATHE CHILD GREW ...@

Feast of the Holy Family. Luke 2:22-40.

AIM: To show that Jesus, like us, learned to love in childhood by being loved; and

to encourage the hearers to share their love with others.

 

What do we know of Jesus= childhood and youth? Virtually nothing.  Matthew records the flight of the holy family into Egypt. Luke gives us the story of the infant Jesus= presentation in the Jerusalem Temple, which we have just heard in the gospel. And he tells us that at age twelve Jesus stayed behind in the Temple after Mary and Joseph had started home, thinking their son was in the group with them. Otherwise the record is blank. No wonder that the first three decades of Jesus= life are called Athe hidden years.@

The obscurity surrounding Jesus= infancy and youth makes the concluding words of today=s gospel especially precious: AThe child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.@  Jesus= slow growth from infancy to manhood shows how completely he who was God=s Son entered into our human condition.

God could have sent his Son into the world fully mature, in a way so dramatic as to compel everyone=s attention. Instead Jesus made his entrance, like every one of us: quietly, inconspicuously. Like us, Jesus passed through the weakness and vulnerability of infancy; through childhood, adolescence, and early manhood. At each stage Jesus possessed the perfection proper to that age. He was the perfect baby, the perfect boy, the perfect adolescent, the perfect young man.  There was, however, real growth: physical, mental, and also spiritual.

That growth took place in the context of a family: a family like any other, yet also unlike any other. Luke introduces them at the beginning of today=s gospel, yet they speak no word throughout. Their silence is another aspect of those Ahidden years.@  

Were those years really so hidden, however?  Even if we have no record of them, it is not difficult to reconstruct from our knowledge of Jesus= public ministry something of what they must have been like. The early nineteenth century German novelist Jean Paul Richter writes: AWhat a father says to his children is not heard by the world, but it will be heard by posterity.@ Many of Jesus= familiar sayings surely reflect the atmosphere of simple trust in God, and undivided loyalty to him, which surrounded Jesus from his birth. It is fanciful to imagine Jesus first hearing in the carpenter=s shop at Nazareth such sayings as these?

ADo not be anxious about tomorrow; tomorrow will look after itself. Each day has troubles enough of its own.@ (Mt 6:34)

AThe one who endures to the end will be saved.@ (Mt 24:13;10:22, Mk 13:13)

AThe first shall be last, and the last shall be first.@ (Mt 19:30, 20:16, Mk 10:31, Lk 13:30)

Is it conceivable that any shoddy work came out of that carpenter=s shop? That its customers were kept waiting for things beyond the time they were promised?

Father Theodore Hesburgh, emeritus President of Notre Dame University and one of our country=s great priests, has said: AThe most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.@ Where did Jesus got his unsurpassed capacity to love even outcasts, lepers, beggars, and hardened criminals, if not from Joseph and Mary.

A film I saw years ago on natural childbirth showed more clearly than many words the effect of a mother=s love even in the first moments after birth. As the baby is placed for the first time in the mother=s arms, she cries out spontaneously: AO you beautiful baby!  I love you already.@ That is how each one of us learned to love: not from formal instruction or from books, but simply by being loved. 

Parents don=t wait to love their children until the little ones have done something to deserve parental love. Indeed, before birth, and for months thereafter children are so burdensome, to their mothers especially, that there is every reason why they should not be loved. Parents love their children nonetheless. And if they are good parents, they don=t stop loving when their children disappoint them, changing from the little angels they admired in the crib into grown up sinners like Mom and Dad. It is this experience of unmerited and unconditional love that makes it possible for us, as we grow up, to love others in return. Jesus too learned to love in that way. He learned about God=s love from experiencing the human love of Mary and Joseph.     

Do you see now why the Church gives us, on this first Sunday after Christmas, a feast in honor of the Holy Family? By recalling the atmosphere of love that surrounded Jesus from birth, and molded him in that long process of human growth referred to in the closing words of today=s gospel, we are reminded that this is the way each of us grew to maturity. This is how we learned to love, if we have learned at all. This is how we learned how much, and how unconditionally, God loves us.

Here is what one of the modern world=s great lovers, Mother Teresa, said about loving and being loved: AThe greatest suffering today is being lonely, being unwanted, being unloved; just having no one, having forgotten what it is like to have the human touch, human love; what it is to be wanted, what it is to be loved; what it is to have your own people. The greatest diseases are not leprosy, tuberculosis, or cancer. A much greater disease is to be unwanted, to be unloved.@

On this Feast of the Holy Family, God is asking each one of us, whom he has already made members of his family in baptism, and whom he loves totally and unconditionally, to be his agents in loving the unloved, the unwanted, the unlovable. Here at his holy table Jesus Christ, God=s Son, fills us brim full with his love C so that we can go forth from here to share that love with other people: His brothers and sisters, and ours too.

"THE OTHER DISICPLE SAW, AND BELIEVED."

Homily for Dec. 27^th, 2014: 1 John 1:1-4; John 20:1a, 2-8.

          “The other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first.” Why? There are two possible answers to that question. Both are probably true. First, "the other disciple," as he is called, was probably younger than Peter. That is what most Bible scholars believe. This is the man we celebrate today: St. John, author of our fourth gospel, written, Scripture scholars believe, between 90 and 100 A.D., well after Peter had been crucified in Rome.

In the gospel which bears his name he is identified throughout as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Known therefore as “the Beloved Disciple,” he alone of all the twelve apostles returned to stand beside the Lord’s cross, along with Jesus’ mother Mary and the other faithful women disciples, after the men “all deserted him and fled” at Jesus’ arrest the night before in the garden of Gethsemane (Mk. 14:50).

And it is this special love which gives us the second reason for John’s earlier arrival at the tomb. His love for the Lord was more intense than Peter’s. Once he heard that the tomb was empty, the Beloved Disciple had to get there, to see with his own eyes what had been reported. And it was precisely this special bond of love between him and the Lord which explains the closing verse of our gospel today: “”Then the other disciple also went in … And he saw and believed.” John is the only one of the Lord’s apostles who came to belief in the resurrection on the basis of the empty tomb alone. The others assumed that the Lord’s body had been stolen. They came to belief only when they saw risen Lord – and then only after overcoming their initial skepticism.

The American biblical scholar Fr. Raymond Brown, who died in 1998 at age 70, writes that John “was the disciple who was bound closest to Jesus in love [and hence] the quickest to look for him and the first to believe in him.” The Beloved Disciple was also the first to recognize the risen Lord standing on the shore after a night of fruitless fishing on the lake, and to tell Peter, “It is the Lord” (Jn. 21:7).

“Faith is possible for the Beloved Disciple,” Fr. Brown writes, “because he has become very sensitive to Jesus through love. … Love for Jesus gives one insight into his presence.” On this feast of the Beloved Disciple what better gift could we ask of the Lord than an abundant measure of the love that he has for us?

CHRISTMAS BLESSINGS, CHRISTMAS JOY!

                                                            at Christmas 2014

                                                             He became what we are

That we might become what He is.

-- St John Chrysostom

My very dear friends:

 

As I have done annually at Christmas since the start of this century, I send you once again my best wishes and prayers for a happy Christmas and the Lord’s richest blessing in the coming year. I do so with overflowing gratitude for the blessings I have received in the year now ending. Herewith a brief account --

 

In February I flew to London (for 52 hours!) to speak at the Memorial for my dearly loved friend, Emi-Lu (Kinloch) Astor, who died on December 27^th, 2013. From our first meeting at Easter 1948, when she was an 18-year-old London debutante, and I just graduated from Harvard, not yet 20 and about to enter an Anglican theological college (seminary) in England, we were like brother and sister. Our mothers had been classmates at New York’s Brearley School in the early 1920s. The service was held at St. Michael’s Church in Chelsea, where Hugh and Emi-Lu had married in November 1950. Hugh, who died in the late 1990s, kindly invited me to be one of his ushers. In the decades following I enjoyed countless happy visits to their beautiful country house near Reading, and witnessed the birth of their five children.

 

On April 3^rd year I celebrated the 60^th anniversary of my priestly ordination. I did so at the simple weekday Mass which I celebrate five times weekly at 6.30 AM for parishioners at Christ the King Parish, where I have been “in residence” for over 24 years. To my grateful astonishment there were over 80 people present, despite heavy rain and a tornado which touched down only a mile away, rather than the normal congregation of 10-20. In place of a homily I read them an updated version of the Litany of praise, thanksgiving, and repentance which I compiled for my 60^th birthday in 1988. You can find it on pages 322-325 of my autobiography, No Ordinary Fool.

 

On May 14^th I celebrated my 86^th birthday. In June I flew with a priest-friend to northern Germany for visits in Cologne, Osnabrück, and Münster, where I lived from 1965 to 1969, received conditional ordination as a Catholic deacon and priest, served as curate/associate in a German parish, and studied for the German Dr. theol. with (among other teachers) Prof. Joseph Ratzinger, now Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI. We returned to this country from Hamburg aboard the QUEEN MARY II. A highlight of the 9-day passage was the daylong stopover in Southampton. With my companion I went to nearby Winchester (20 minutes by train), where we met, in the splendid medieval Cathedral, the two Astor brothers and an English priest-friend now teaching at Oxord, and enjoyed a wonderful meal, with conversation like intellectual champagne. God willing, I shall repeat this trip and experience with another priest-friend in June of 2015.

From age 12 I have wanted to be a priest: I have never wanted anything else. Every time I served Mass, as a teenager, I thought; ‘One day I’ll stand there. I’ll wear those vestments. I’ll say those words.’ It was wonderful the first time I did that, on April 4^th, 1954. It is, if possible, even more wonderful today.

 

Not all of those 60 years have been happy. That does not happen in any life. Some have been bitterly unhappy. But if you were to ask me, “If you had your life to live over again, knowing in advance the worst that priesthood would throw at you, would you still choose priesthood?” – I would answer without hesitation: “In a heartbeat! I would change just one thing. I would try to be more faithful, and above all more generous.”

 

My joy in priesthood, which causes me to say every day, more times than I could ever tell you, “Lord, you’re so good to me, and I’m so grateful,” is best expressed in what I have written about my celebration of Mass in No Ordinary Fool (p. 305f):

 

The eucharistic prayer is for me, the heart of the Mass. Seldom am I unmoved by the narrative of institution with the words of the Lord himself, “This is my body,” and “This is my blood” I recite the words slowly, with reverence and awe. Those precious moments with him, repeating his words, are quite literally the high point of my day. No man ever longed more ardently for the arms of his beloved that I for that daily encounter with the Lord.

 

I became a priest not to be with people, but to be, in a specially intimate way, with the Lord.  I honor priests who experience this intimacy through pastoral ministry.  I consider them my superiors: better priests, and better human beings. I experience intimacy with the Lord most of all at the altar. Ministering to people can be fulfilling – but also frustrating. Not everyone wants what the priest has to offer.  God always wants us. The worship I offer him at the altar is imperfect. Yet he never spurns it. And, for me, the offering of that worship never palls.  

 

In His love your deeply grateful friend,

 

Jay Hughes

  

 

 

"YOU WILL BE HATED BY ALL BECAUSE OF MY NAME."

Homily for Dec. 26^th, 2014: Acts of the Apostles 6:8-10; 7:54-59; Mt. 10:17-22.

          A priest fifteen or perhaps more years ordained, told me recently that he was concerned about the overly rosy image of priesthood being offered to today’s seminarians. The recruitment material sent out by Vocation Directors is full of success stories. All the photos on the websites of today’s seminaries show young men laughing, smiling, and joking.

         None of this is false. Thousands of priests testify to the joy of serving God and his holy people as a priest. I’m happy to be one of them. The late Chicago priest-sociologist and novelist Fr. Andrew Greely said: “Priests who like being priests are among the happiest men in the world.” In support he cited sociological surveys that show over 90% of today's priests say they are either "happy or "very happy" in the priesthood.

          The result of all this happy talk, my priest-friend told me, was that young priests who have a bad day, a bad week, or who encounter rejection or failure, start thinking that perhaps they have chosen the wrong vocation and should abandon priesthood. Jesus never promised his disciples that they would have only joy, success, and happiness. Both of today’s readings are about the price of discipleship. “You will be hated by all because of my name,” Jesus says at the end of today’s gospel. Only after these words warning about the cost of discipleship does he proclaim the good news: “But whoever endures to the end will be saved.”

          Christmas is a feast of joy, of course. But today's commemoration of the first martyr Stephen reminds us each year that this joy has a price. In a dispute with his enemies,  Stephen cries out: “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” Infuriated by the supposed blasphemy of those words, his enemies take Stephen outside the city and stone him to death. Omitted from our first reading are Stephen’s dying words: “Lord, do not lay this sin to their charge.” Jesus too suffered outside the city. Among his Last Words was the prayer: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Speaking a few years ago to a group of priests about the increasing secularization of our society, Cardinal George of Chicago said, in what he recently admitted was an “overly dramatic fashion”: “I expect to die in bed; my successor will die in prison; and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.” Mostly omitted by those who quote these words, is the good news which the cardinal spoke in conclusion: “His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has done so often in human history.”

"BLESSED BE THE LORD."

Homily for December 24^th, 2013: Luke 1:67-79.

          The Old Testament has a number of stories about women unable to conceive who become pregnant through God’s intervention. The one which most resembles the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah, the parents of John the Baptist, is the story of Sarah and Abraham. In both instances the parents are long past the age of childbearing. Three visitors come to Abraham and tell him that when they return next year, Sarah will have a son. From the tent nearby, where she is preparing a meal for the visitors (as required by the oriental law of hospitality for strangers) Sarah overhears the conversation and laughs at the absurdity of an old woman of her age giving birth. Whereupon God asks, “Why did Sarah laugh?” To which Sarah replies, “I didn’t laugh.” And the Lord responds, “Yes, you did.” (Genesis 18:1-15)

          In the case of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, an angel brings the message that his wife will have a son while Zechariah is alone, performing his priestly duty of offering incense in the Temple. The angel also says that the boy will be called John. Zechariah says he cannot believe the news. Because of this unbelief, he loses the power of speech  – and, as we learn later, his hearing as well. Thus he is unable to tell his wife about the angel’s announcement or the child’s name.

          This explains why, when they come to name Elizabeth’s baby, people are astonished to hear his mother say he will be called John; and her husband  -- still unable to speak, or to hear what his wife has just said – writes on a tablet the words Elizabeth has just spoken.

          Immediately Zechariah’s speech and hearing are restored. We might expect a conversation between him and Elizabeth about how they had agreed on the same name. Instead Zechariah immediately breaks out in the hymn of praise that we have just heard, called ever since the Benedictus, because that is the first word of the hymn in Latin.

          What does all this tell us? It says that in our relationship with God praise and thanksgiving come first. We come to Mass first of all to worship. We come, that is, not to get but to give. And all experience shows that those who give most generously also receive most abundantly.

"HE WILL BE CALLED JOHN."

Homily for December 23^rd: Luke 1:57-66.

          At the circumcision of John the Baptist, eight days after his birth, “they were going to call him Zechariah after his father,” Luke tells us. Scholars tell us that in New Testament times a child’s naming was the right of the father. The naming of Mary’s Son was an exception: he had no human father. That was why the angel Gabriel told Mary in advance, “You will give him the name Jesus.”

          John’s father Zechariah had lost his voice when he failed to believe the angel’s message to him that his wife, though long past childbearing age, would have a son, “whom you shall name John” (Lk 1:13). He had thus been unable to tell Elizabeth that the angel had already disclosed the name of the son she would bear. We now learn that Zechariah is not only mute but deaf. So he cannot hear his wife saying: “He will be called John.”

          To get confirmation of the name, the bystanders have to question the deaf father by writing him a note. Imagine the astonishment when he confirms the name already chosen by his wife by writing: “John is his name.”

          “Immediately his mouth was opened,” Luke tells us, “his tongue freed, and he spoke, blessing God.” Those final words are significant. With his speech restored, Zechariah speaks first of all to the Lord God, blessing and thanking him for the humanly impossible gift he and his wife have received. “Blessed be the Lord the God of Israel because he has visited and ransomed his people.” The Latin word for “blessed” is benedictus. So the canticle or hymn which Zechariah speaks is known by Catholics as the Benedictus. The Church incorporates Zechariah’s words into her daily public prayer, in the Office of Lauds or Morning Prayer.

Happy are we, if we do the same: by praising and thanking God for the blessings he has already bestowed on us, even before we start asking for things.