"YOU WILL DO GREATER WORKS THAN THESE."

Homily for May 3^rd, 2014: 14:6-14.

“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 spread 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.@

THEY WANTED TO CARRY HIM OFF AND MAKE HIM KING.

Homily for May 2^nd, 2014: John 6:1-15.

Following the miraculous feeding of the great crowd in the wilderness, AJesus realized that they would come and carry him off to make him king, so he fled back to the mountain alone.@ The people were so impressed with the great Asign@ Jesus had performed, that they want to capture the power they had seen in him, so that it would be theirs always.

You cannot capture Jesus Christ. You cannot apprehend him or hold him fast. He will always elude your grasp. ADo not cling to me,@ the risen Lord said to Mary Magdalene in the garden of the resurrection.  She wanted to resume the relationship of emotional intimacy with Jesus which she had enjoyed during his public ministry. The time for that was past. ADo not cling to me,@ Jesus told her. ARather, go to my brothers and tell them, >I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God!=@ (John 20:17) Jesus says the same to us today: ADo not cling to me.” At the end of every Mass the Lord sends us to others: his brothers and sisters C and ours too.  

As we journey life=s way, with all its twistings and turnings, Jesus is always with us. He remains close to us, even when we stay far from him. But he does not belong to us. We belong to him. He will be with us always C but he will also be ahead of us.

When you come to walk the last stretch of life=s journey, which each of us must walk alone, you will find that you are not alone. Jesus will be walking with you. And he will be waiting for you at the end of life=s road. AI am going to prepare a place for you,@ Jesus says later in John=s gospel, Athat where I am you also may be@ (14:3).  That is Jesus= personal promise to you C and to me. And when Jesus Christ promises something, he always keeps his promise.

Here, then, is a question to ponder. When you meet the Lord at the end of life=s road, will you be encountering a stern judge, before whom you shrink in fear? Or will you be meeting a familiar, dearly loved friend? The Lord in his goodness allows us to choose what the encounter will be like. It is the most important choice we shall ever have. 

"HE DOES NOT RATION HIS GIFT OF THE SPIRIT."

Homily for May 1^st: John 3:31-36.

          “He does not ration his gift of the Spirit,” we heard in the gospel. What does that mean? It means that God's gifts are without limit. Whenever God gives, he gives totally and completely.

          Jesus showed that in his own life. When he turned water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana, the quantity of water changed into wine would have kept the party going for a week. In every one of the six accounts of Jesus’ feeding a vast crowd in the wilderness, he gave them not just a snack. Always there was food left over, even after all had eaten to the full. When God gives, he gives not only abundantly, but super-abundantly.

          Whether I offer Mass for one person, or for a hundred, does not affect the blessings that each receives. God’s blessings are infinite. We come again and again to Communion not because what we receive is limited, but because our capacity to receive is limited.

          Jesus goes on to say: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.” We heard yesterday that believing in someone means trusting that person, and more: entrusting our lives to him or her. Friends and disciples of Jesus Christ are people who entrust their lives to him who is our best friend, our lover – but also our Savior, our Redeemer, our God in human flesh.   

          And note: Jesus does not say that we shall have eternal life. No. He speaks in the present tense. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life” – here and now. The fellowship we have with the Lord Jesus continues on beyond death into eternity. That is God’s plan and design for your life, and for mine. And the only thing that can frustrate the fulfillment of that plan is our own final and deliberate No.

          That, friends, is the gospel. That is the good news.

THE TWO TABLES

Third Sunday of Easter, Year A.  Luke 24:13-35.

AIM: To help the hearers appreciate God’s presence in his word.  

          This best known of all the resurrection stories, which we have just heard in the gospel, is also one of the most loved. Three elements of the story explain its appeal. First, it has an element of suspense: we know in advance the identity of the story’s central figure and are eager to see when the other people in the story will discover what we already know. Second, we can identify with the two friends of Jesus. They are not leaders, like Peter or Paul, but ordinary disciples like ourselves. Finally, the story appeals because it shows Jesus coming to his friends in the two ways he has always come: through word and sacrament. This aspect is worth pursuing further.

          After Jesus’ disappearance, his two friends recall that their hearts had been “burning within us while he spoke to us ... and opened the Scriptures to us.” Jesus could make people feel that God’s word was addressed personally to them. More than once the gospels record that “he spoke with authority,” and not like other religious teachers.  (Mt. 7:29 and parallels.)

          When you read God’s word, or hear it read in church, do you ever feel that the words are addressed personally to you? To do so, you must learn to listen. You must become still, opening your heart and mind to what the Lord wants to say to you. That takes time. How good to see people coming early to Mass, so that they have time to become quiet, prepared to listen to God’s word with open hearts and open minds. That is something people with children are seldom able to do. Once we begin to appreciate that Jesus comes to us through his word, we will be less apt simply to rattle off prayers mechanically. We shall be more aware that the words we speak to God in prayer mean something. Then, starting with the most familiar prayers like the Our Father and Hail Mary, we’ll pray them more slowly, more reverently.  

          Though the two friends of Jesus in today’s gospel feel their hearts burning within them as they listen to the Lord’s words, they recognize him only “in the breaking of the bread.” That is the earliest name for the Eucharist. But Jesus does not linger. At once he is gone. Jesus had not been brought back to his old life. That ended on Calvary. Jesus was raised to a new life, beyond death: a higher mode of existence no longer limited by the physical laws which govern life before death. In his book Jesus of Nazareth Pope Benedict, now retired, explains this by writing: “[Jesus’] presence is entirely physical, yet he is not bound by physical laws, the laws of space and time. ... He is the same embodied man, and he is the new man, having entered upon a different manner of existence” (p. 266, emphasis supplied).

          Jesus’ swift disappearance shows also that he did not come to these friends of his so that they could luxuriate in a great spiritual experience. He came to empower them to carry the good news of his resurrection to others. Under the influence of this unexpected and wonderful encounter they forget their weariness and the late hour, and return at once to Jerusalem with their unbelievably good news. Before recognizing Jesus, they had pressed him to stay with them, because evening was coming on. They had with them Him who is the light of the world. Had he left, it would have been dark indeed.

          Is your life dark? If so, perhaps it is because you are not journeying with Jesus Christ. One day you will come to the evening of life’s journey. Happy then if Jesus is with you, so that you can press him to stay: “when the shadows lengthen, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done” (Newman). Then he will stay with you, to take you to the place he has gone ahead to prepare for you (cf. John 14:2). 

          But that great encounter is still in the future. Here and now, if you wish to journey with Jesus Christ (and your presence here shows that, deep in your heart, you do), you must encounter him in the same two ways as those friends of Jesus did at Emmaus: through his word, and in the breaking of the bread – which is the Mass.   

          Let me conclude with some verses written as a meditation on this beautiful story of the appearance of the risen Lord to the two disciples at Emmaus. They are by Fr. Ralph Wright, a monk of our own St. Louis Abbey on Mason Road.

Sing of one who walks beside us / And this day is living still,

          One who now is closer to us / Than the thought our hearts distill,

One who once upon a hilltop / Raised against the power of sin,

Died in love as his own creatures / Crucified their God and King.

Strangers we have walked beside him / The long journey of the day,

And have told him of the darkness / That has swept our hope away.

He has offered words of comfort, / Words of energy and light,

And our hearts have blazed within us / As he saved us from the night.

Stay with us, dear Lord, and raise us / Once again the night is near.

Dine with us and share your wisdom. / Free our hearts from every fear.

In the calm of each new evening, / In the freshness of each dawn,

If you hold us fast in friendship / We will never be alone.

"GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD . . ."

Homily for April 30^th: John 3: 16-21.

          “God so loved the world …” we just heard. Probably we say: “But of course. Isn’t that obvious?” To many people it is not obvious. Christians who in past centuries used to be called Puritans consider the world an evil place, from which Jesus’ disciples must flee. This view is still alive and well today in certain quarters. It has a kernel of truth. The world organized apart from God, and against God is evil. Jesus refers to that world when he says, later in John’s gospel: “In the world you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (16:33) . In today’s gospel, however, Jesus is speaking of the world in a good sense: not the world of human marring, but the good world of God’s making. That world must be lovable, for God does not making anything that is not good.

          “God so loved the world,” Jesus goes on, “that he gave his only begotten Son.” He was the most that God had to give or could give. And God’s Son came into our world, and continues with us through the power of his Holy Spirit, not as some kind of great policeman or scold to frighten us into measuring up to his unrealistically high standards. No. Jesus came, and remains with us, “so that the world might be saved through him.” How?

          As we read on in today's gospel we discover the answer. We are saved “by believing in him,” Jesus Christ. To believe in someone is to trust that person -- more, to entrust ourselves to him or her. Whoever does that, our gospel tells us, lives not in darkness, but in light – the light that shines from the face of Jesus Christ. How dark our world would be had he never come to us!

          We pray in this Mass, therefore, that we may entrust ourselves ever more completely to Jesus, himself the light of the world; and that we ourselves may be lenses or prisms of his light in a dark and often fearful world.

         

         

"THE WIND BLOWS WHERE IT WILL."

Homily for April 29^th, 2014: John 3:7-15.

          In yesterday’s gospel reading we heard Jesus telling Nicodemus that he must be “born again.” How was that possible, Nicodemus asked? How could someone enter again into this mother’s womb and be born anew? Jesus explained that he was talking, not about biological birth, but about birth “from above” – heavenly birth, through water and the spirit. We understand (though Nicodemus did not) that Jesus was talking about baptism. 

          In today’s gospel Jesus expands on theme of spirit. In Greek, the language of the New Testament, the word for spirit is pneuma. In English medical terms are almost all from Greek roots; so we find pneuma in the name for a sickness of the lungs: pneumonia. In antiquity pneuma designated both a wind and a person’s breath. That is why the gospels speak about Jesus giving up his spirit when he died. His breath went out of him.

          Using the same word, Jesus speaks also about the winds of the air. In antiquity people believed that the winds came from God. Winds were, they thought, God’s breath. The winds we hear and feel blow from different directions. We hear the sound the wind makes, Jesus tells Nicodemus, but we do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

Then comes a crucial sentence: “So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” We are born of the spirit in baptism and in confirmation. At Pentecost we hear about the Spirit of God coming dramatically, like a strong driving wind. That we are Christians in a land undreamed of by anyone in Jerusalem on that first Pentecost day is proof that the Spirit=s Astrong driving wind@ did not blow in vain. Those first touched by that wind were blown into places, and situations, they never dreamed of.  Even those who never left Jerusalem found their lives utterly changed.

This same wind of the Spirit is blowing in the Church today. Is it blowing in your life? Or are you afraid of that wind B of what it might do to you, and where it might blow you? Cast aide fear. The wind of God=s Spirit, like the winds of the sky, blows from different directions. But in the end this wind blows all who are driven by it to the same place. The wind of God Spirit blows us home B home to God.   

'YOU MUST BE BEGOTTEN OF WATER AND SPIRIT."

Homily for April 28th, 2014: John 3: 1-8.

          Most of those who responded to Jesus’ teaching by coming to believe in him were “little people,” as the world reckons such things. In today’s gospel we meet an exception. Nicodemus was member of the Sanhedrin, the elite 70-man Jewish ruling body that went back to Moses. He comes to Jesus at night. He doesn’t want his fellow Sanhedrin members, almost all of whom are either hostile to Jesus, or indifferent, to know about his visit. The night visit my also have a symbolic meaning. John’s gospel is rich in symbolism. Nicodemus is coming from the darkness of disbelief, or at least of weak belief, to the One who is the light of the world.

There was similar symbolism in the gospel for Tuesday in Holy Week, also by John. After Judas leaves the Upper Room where Jesus was celebrating his Last Supper with the twelve apostles, John tells us: “And it was night.” For Jesus, however, it was not night. “Now is the Son of Man glorified,” he cries out, “and God is glorified in him.”

Nicodemus has been impressed by Jesus’ miracles – which ones we are not told. Calling Jesus “Rabbi,” Nicodemus says: “We know you are a teacher come from God, for no man can perform signs and wonders such as you perform unless God is with him.” This stops far short of acknowledgement that Jesus is the Messiah. There were other holy rabbis who performed signs and wonders. 

This explains Jesus’ less than enthusiastic response. You cannot see God’s kingdom, he tells Nicodemus, unless you are “begotten from above,” in other words, “born of God as your Father.” A father “begets” the child whom a mother “bears.” Jesus’ meaning becomes clear only when he says: “No one can enter God’s kingdom without being begotten of water and the Spirit.”

That is what happened to each of us when we were baptized. Through the Holy Spirit, and the pouring of water, God our Father made us his children, brothers and sisters of his divine Son, Jesus, and heirs of the kingdom of heaven. That is our eternal destiny. And nothing can prevent its fulfillment except our own deliberate and final No.