FULFILLING GOD'S LAW

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A. Sirach 15:15-20; Matthew 5:17-37.

AIM: To show that obedience to God=s law is a response to His love for us, not its

prerequisite.

ADo your own thing@ is the slogan today of people who consider themselves Aliberated.@ Behind this slogan is the idea that the only thing that stands between me and happiness is lack of freedom. If laws limit my freedom B whether they are God=s laws or human laws B they must be bad. AHow much happier life would be if there weren=t so many Do=s and Don=ts.@ We may not actually say that. But probably most of us have thought it at one time or another.

Jesus would have been shocked at that idea. His religion taught him that God=s laws preserve and enhance human happiness. The Ten Commandments were God=s highest gift to the people he chose to be his own. They showed God=s special love for his people. They were directions for life, from the One who created all life. Obedience to God=s commandments was his people=s way of showing their love for the Lord God, while sharing his love with one another. The words of our responsorial psalm today express this view: AHappy are they who follow the law of the Lord!@ (Ps 119:1)

There was never anything so good, however, that it could not be abused. Law is abused when people pay more attention to its letter than to its spirit; when they think up hairsplitting interpretations to show how little the law means, instead of how much. People who approach God=s law in that manner think of their relationship with God as based not on love (which the law, rightly understood, expresses) but on legalism.

From there it is only a short step to thinking that fulfilling our Aminimum obligation@ gives us a claim on God which he is bound to honor. That was the religion of some people in Jesus= day. Sadly it is the religion of some Catholics today.

Jesus is addressing such people in today=s Gospel. He shows that legalistic human interpretations miss the true meaning of God=s commandments. God, Jesus says, looks not just at our exterior acts. He looks at our inner attitudes, desires, and thoughts. AYou have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery,@ Jesus says. ABut I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust in his heart has already committed adultery with her in his heart.@ If that is what the commandment means, then who can claim perfect obedience? Do you see what Jesus is doing? He is plugging the loopholes in the law crafted by legalistic interpreters. In so doing, Jesus shows us that we can never establish a claim on God which he is bound to honor. God has a claim on us, and it is an absolute claim.

AUnless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees,@ Jesus says, Ayou will not enter the kingdom of heaven.@ The scribes and Pharisees were Jesus= critics, the people who scorned him for Areceiving sinners and eating them.@ Like some Catholics today, they knew (or thought they knew) the exact limits of their obligation, whether with regard to public worship, fasting, avoidance of work on the Sabbath, or almsgiving.

With his demand for a holiness surpassing that of the outwardly most Areligious@ people in his day, Jesus was undermining the whole basis of their religious practice. Was that good news@ Hardly. For such people it was horribly bad news. If God=s law really meant what Jesus said it did, then who could hope for a reward from God? No wonder they crucified him!

The Agreater righteousness@ that Jesus asks of us is based not on what we do for God, but on what God has done for us. God accepts us not because we are good enough to deserve a reward for keeping his law. God accepts us because he is so good that he wants to share his love with us, as a free gift. That is the good news: that God loves sinners B people who often fail to keep God=s law, people who know that they have no claim on God. People, in short, like us.

Does this mean that we can forget about God=s law? Of course not. AI have not come to abolish the law,@ Jesus says, Abut to fulfill it.@ God=s law remains as important for us Catholics today as it was for Jesus. What Jesus changed was not the law, but our motive for keeping it. We keep God=s law not to earn a reward: blessing in this life, heaven in the next. We keep God=s law to show our gratitude for the love he lavishes upon us before we have earned it, and though we can never merit it, on any strict accounting.

Here in the Eucharist, a word that means Athanksgiving@, we the people of God receive the greatest gifts he can give us this side of heaven. At the table of the word God gives us the gift of his truth. At the table of the sacrament, he gives us the body and blood of his Son.

Enriched with these gifts, which are always more than we deserve, God sends us out into the workaday world, there to show our gratitude for his gifts by a life of generous obedience to his holy law. Our effort to thank God for the gifts he gives us here at Mass requires the best that is in us. We shall find it easier to give our best if we keep in mind the words of our responsorial psalm: AHappy are they who follow the law of the Lord.@

"THEY ALL ATE, AND WERE SATISFIED."

Homily for February 15^th, 2014: Mark 8:1-10

          This story of Jesus feeding the vast crowd in the wilderness is told six times over, with variations, in the four gospels. What accounts for its popularity? I can think of four reasons. First, it shows Jesus’ ability to solve what, to us, is insoluble. Second, it is an example of what is sometimes called “The Law of the Gift.” Third, it helps us understand the central Christian mystery: the Eucharist. And finally, it reminds us of what happens in every Mass.

Feeding four thousand people with seven loaves of bread and a few fish was clearly impossible. Not, however, for Jesus. The story tells us that when we place our resources, however inadequate they may be, into the hands of Jesus Christ, we discover that they are inadequate no longer. Jesus is the Son and representative of the God of the impossible.

Second, the story helps us understand what is sometimes called “The Law of the Gift.” This tells us that when we give something to the Lord, it is not lost. It comes back to us. But it comes back transformed, and enlarged. That is because God does not need our gifts. He is, as the theologians say, sufficient unto himself.

Third, what we offer to God in the Eucharist -- a little bread and a small quantity of wine, gifts every bit as insignificant as the seven loaves of bread and a few fish offered to Jesus in this story -- comes back to us transformed into the Body and Blood of God’s Son: all his love, all his goodness, all his strength, all his purity and compassion, all his willingness to forgive.

Finally the story reminds us of what Jesus does in every Mass. “Taking the seven loaves,” the story says, “he gave thanks, broke them, and gave them to his disciples to distribute.” That is exactly what happens in every Mass, with but one exception. Though the host and celebrant are the same, Jesus, we cannot see him with our eyes, only with the eyes of faith. We see instead his human representative, the priest.

“They ate and were satisfied,” Mark tells us. When Jesus gives, he gives not only abundantly, but super-abundantly. We come repeatedly not because the gift is limited, for it is not; but rather because our capacity to receive is limited.

"BE OPENED!"

Homily for February 14^th, 2014: Mark 7:31-37.

 ABe opened!@ Jesus says to the deaf man who is brought to him for healing. Deafness has closed him off from others. Jesus wants to set him free. Jesus is the man of total openness: openness to God; and openness to those whom society in Jesus= day accepted only in subordinate roles or not at all B women, children, and social outcasts like prostitutes and the hated tax collectors. Our fourth Eucharistic prayer tells us that Jesus proclaimed “the good news of salvation to the poor, to prisoners freedom, and to the sorrowful of heart, joy.”

Jesus is saying to us right now, in this church, what he said to the deaf man: ABe opened!@ How closed in we are much of the time: closed to God, closed to others. We shut ourselves up in prisons of our own making, whose walls are self-fulfillment, and whose guiding principle is the hackneyed and deceitful slogan: ADo your own thing.@ Most of the conflicts, divisions, and wars in our world B between individuals, families, classes, groups, and nations B are the result of people not being open. In the cacophony of conflicting arguments and claims we hear only what we want to hear, and no more; just enough to confirm our prejudices; and then we stop listening altogether.

Even between Christians there are barriers erected by our failure to be open to each other. To remedy this tragic situation, which contradicts Jesus= prayer the night before he died, that all might be one (Jn. 17, passim), the Second Vatican Council recommended the method of dialogue. Dialogue requires that we be open to what those who are separated from us are saying; that we listen before we speak.

Can dialogue overcome all barriers? Sadly it cannot. Some conflicts are so grave that no human power seems great enough to break down the walls that separate us from one another. Nor can we penetrate by our own efforts alone the wall which our sins erect between us and the all-holy God. The gospel proclaims the good news that there is One who can break down those walls. His name is Jesus Christ.

Jesus, the man of total openness, has the right, if ever a man had it, to command: ABe opened!@ He won that right for all time on Calvary when, as we shall hear in a moment in the preface to our Eucharistic prayer, Ahe stretched out his hands as he endured his Passion, so as to break the bonds of death and manifest the resurrection.” (Weekday Preface VI) 

'THE DEMON HAS GONE OUT ..."

Homily for February 13^th, 2014: Mark 7:24-30.

          I told you yesterday that there are many things in the Bible that we do not understand. Yesterday we heard Jesus overthrowing the distinction in Jewish law between clean and unclean foods. Why then was there the great controversy, perhaps less than a decade later and reported in the Acts of the Apostles and three of Paul’s letters, over whether Gentile converts to Christianity must keep the Jewish food laws? We simply don’t know.          

          Today’s gospel poses another question which we cannot answer. Why did Jesus initially refuse the request of a Gentile woman that he heal her daughter? It cannot be because Jesus lacked compassion. The gospels show that he was a man of total compassion. Did Jesus want to test the depth of this mother’s love for her sick child? If so, she passed the test with flying colors. Throwing herself at Jesus’ feet, showed that she was out to win. Her daughter means everything to her. She refuses to take no for an answer.

Jesus’ words about the children being fed first seem to be a reference to his mission of feeding his own people first. When Jesus says it is not right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs, he is using traditional Jewish terminology. Jews in his day often referred to Gentiles as dogs. Jesus softens the word, however. The word he uses means not dogs but puppies. 

Even this does not discourage the woman. Without missing a beat she comes right back with the remark: “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.” To understand what she is saying, we must know the eating habits of the day. Food was eaten with the fingers, which were wiped afterwards with pieces of flat bread that were then cast aside to be eaten by the household dogs.

          Or was Jesus testing the woman’s faith? If so, she passed that test too. For Jesus responds: “For saying this, you may go. The demon has gone out of your daughter.” Illness of all kinds was thought in Jesus’ day to be caused by demons.

          The beautiful conclusion of this moving story follows at once. “When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.” How her anguished mother must have rejoiced!

          This desperate and nameless woman is a model of love and faith. We pray in this Mass for the Lord to make us like her.

                             

EVIL COMES FROM WITHIN

Homily for February 12^th, 2014: Mark 7:14-23.

          “Everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile,” Jesus says, since it enters not into the heart but the stomach.” The heart in Jewish thought was considered the seat of feelings and learning. The gospel writer Mark adds his own summary of what Jesus has just said: “Thus he declared all foods clean.”

Jesus’ disciples were all Jews. For them there was a whole list of foods which not be eaten because they were unclean, starting with pork. By declaring all foods clean Jesus was making a radical break with Jewish tradition. But this raises a problem. If Jesus so clearly abolished the distinction between clean and unclean foods, why was there the great debate, reported in the Acts of the Apostles and three of Paul’s letters, about whether Gentile Christians were bound by the Jewish food laws? The answer to that question is simply: we do not know. There are many things in the Bible that we cannot understand. 

What we can understand is the list of vices that Jesus gives us: "evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly." Evil thoughts may be of many kinds: hatred, anger, lust, resentment. The list goes on and on. All of us have such thoughts from time to time. As long as we are trying to turn away from such dark thoughts to better ones, evil thoughts remain only temptations. And a thousand temptations do not make a single sin. Indeed Jesus himself was tempted after his 40 days of fasting in the wilderness. Yet we know that Jesus never sinned.

Theft is forbidden by the Commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a world where there was no theft? We wouldn’t need to lock our homes or cars. If we left something behind, we’d know it would be there when we came back. Could there be a better example of the Commandments being signposts to human happiness, not fences to hem us in? Envy is the one vice that brings its own punishment with it. When we give way to envy, we’re unhappy. Blasphemy is not respecting the holy name of God. Arrogance puts people off: no one likes an arrogant person. And folly means misusing or wasting the gifts God showers upon us.

Jesus,who gives us this list of vices, has also given us the best defense against them: the closing words of the one prayer gave us: “Deliver us from evil.”

"LISTEN TO THE PETITIONS OF YOUR SERVANT ... AND GRANT PARDON."

Homily for February 11^th, 2014: 1 Kings 8:22-23, 27-30.

          “Listen to the petitions of your servant and of your people Israel which they offer in this place,” Solomon prays at the dedication of the Temple. To pray that God will hear the petitions offered in the Temple is what we would expect. But then comes something we do not expect: “Listen from your heavenly dwelling -- and grant pardon.”

          Solomon’s prayer reminds us that whenever we approach God, the first thing we need to ask for is pardon for our sins. None of us is worthy to enter into the presence of the all-holy God. That is why the first thing we do in every Mass is to ask forgiveness for our sins, and implore God’s mercy.

          Our wonderful new Pope Francis has made prayer for God’s mercy central in his preaching. Repeatedly, and in different ways, the Pope tells us: God never grows tired of forgiving us; it is we who grow tired of asking for forgiveness.

          It appears that this theme is rooted in the Pope’s personal history. At age thirty-six Jorge Bergoglio was put in charge of all the Jesuits in Argentina. The country was under a cruel military government. They arrested hundreds of people they did not like, perhaps thousands, and without trial flew them in planes over the South Atlantic and dropped them into the sea. Many Jesuits embraced something called liberation theology, putting political action and protest before traditional priestly duties: administering the sacraments and preaching the gospel.   
        Guiding his Jesuit brothers along the right path in this chaotic and perilous situation would have been difficult even for a much older man with greater experience than Fr. Bergoglio. Some Jesuits were clearly over the line. To protect them he forbade his brothers to provoke the authorities by living in the slums and engaging in political action. Inevitably this provoked charges that he was “soft on injustice.” Over time Bergoglio came to feel that he may have been too rigid, and that his treatment of his Jesuit brothers who confronted the military regime in Argentina, and embraced the cause of the poor, had perhaps been too harsh. This continues to weigh on him today, as Pope Francis. It helps us to understand his constant emphasis on our need for forgiveness.

Regardless of our personal history, we all need to pray for God’s mercy and forgiveness. And Pope Francis is right to remind us that this prayer is one that God will always answer.

THE OUR FATHER

Homily for March 11^th, Tues. of Week 1 in Lent: Matt. 6:7-15.

          I’ve told you that Lent is a kind of spiritual spring training. It focuses on three essential practices: prayer, fasting, and thanksgiving. Today’s gospel gives us Jesus’ teaching about prayer. “Do not babble like the pagans,” Jesus says. The pagan gods of Jesus’ day were manipulative. They were in competition with one another. To get on their good side, the worshipper had to say the right words, and repeat them as often as possible. Forget all that, Jesus says. The God to whom you must pray is your loving heavenly Father. He “knows what you need before you ask him.”  

          Jesus then lays out the pattern for our prayer. By praying our Father, and not my Father, we acknowledge that we approach God as a member of his people. We don’t have a private me-and-God religion. Three petitions follow, having to with God himself. “Hallowed be thy name” is the first. It means “may your name be kept holy.” God’s name is kept holy when we speak it with faith, not as a magical word to get his attention, or to con him into giving us what we want.

          “Thy kingdom come” is a petition for the coming of God’s rule over us and the whole world. We are unhappy, and frustrated, because the world, and too often our own personal lives as well, do not reflect God’s rule. “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” extends this petition. In heaven God’s will is done immediately, and gladly.

          Four petitions follow which have to do with our brothers and sisters in the family of God: for bread, forgiveness, deliverance from temptation, and victory over evil.

          Here is a Lenten suggestion. Take at least five or ten minutes to pray the Our Father slowly, phrase by phrase, even word by word. Start with the opening word: “Our.” Reflect on the implications of that word. Pray that you may be mindful not only of your own needs, but also of the needs of your brothers and sisters. That could be your whole prayer for five or ten minutes. Move on in your next prayer time to the word “Father,” and on the day following pray over the words “Hallowed be thy name.” Practiced faithfully, and with patience, this way of praying the one prayer Jesus has given us will bring you close to Him who tells us in John’s gospel: “All this I tell you that my joy may be yours, and your joy may be complete” (15:11).

"THE LORD INTENDS TO DWELL IN THE DARK CLOUD."

Homily for February 10, 2014: 1 Kings 8:1-7, 9-11.

          “The Lord intends to dwell in the dark cloud,” King Solomon says at the dedication of the Jerusalem Temple. He was speaking about the cloud which filled the Temple, the earthly dwelling place of God, at its dedication. God manifested his glory not in light, but in darkness – so thick, our first reading says, “that the priests could no longer minister there because of the cloud.”

          The author of psalm 23, the best loved of all 150 psalms, speaks of God dwelling in darkness when he writes: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff comfort me.”

          We must all walk through that dark valley at one time or another. I entered it when I was just six and a half. On the day after Christmas that year, 1934, my father came home from the hospital to which my mother had been taken with pneumonia just a week previously, gathered his three little children – myself six, a sister four, and our brother, two -- and spoke the three most terrible words I have ever heard: “Mummy is dead.” My whole world collapsed, and I was in darkness.

Never in the 79 years since this tragedy have I ever said, or ever permitted anyone else to say: “It was God’s will.” My mother’s death was not God’s will. My mother’s death was a mystery – a dark mystery. Yet God, who as Solomon said in his prayer for the dedication of the Jerusalem Temple, “has chosen to dwell in thick darkness” was in this mystery. 

          I can no longer recall the exact day when I discovered God in the darkness. I can fix it, however, before the age of nine. With blinding certainty it came home to me one day that I would see my mother again, when God called me home. From that day to this the unseen spiritual world – the world of God, of the angels, of the saints, and of our beloved dead – has been real to me. I know people who are there: my mother first, and now so many others whom God has called home to himself. Decades later I realized that this insight was the beginning of my priestly vocation. It kindled in me the desire to be close to that spiritual world. 

          The anonymous medieval work on prayer, called The Cloud of Unknowing, speaks of finding God in the darkness when it says: “By loving he may be caught and held: by thinking never.”