"MANY OF THE DISCIPLES NO LONGER WALKED WITH HIM."

Homily for May 10^th, 2014: John 6:60-69.

          There is something poignant about Peter’s response to Jesus’ challenging question: “Do you also want to leave?” Many had already done so: “Many of [Jesus’] disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer walked with him,” John tells us before reporting Jesus’ challenge to the Twelve. What caused their departure was Jesus’ refusal to soften his teaching about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. “Let me solemnly assure you,” Jesus said, “if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” (6:53). That was strong meat indeed, especially for people whose dietary laws forbade the consumption of blood in any form. Still today the kosher laws of observant Jews require that the blood be drained from any meat offered for human consumption. Jesus’ words are also the answer to Protestants who insist that Jesus’ presence in the bread and wine of their Communion services is “purely spiritual” and not real. 

          The apostle Peter was, frankly, not the sharpest crayon in the box. His response to Jesus’ question, “Lord to whom shall we go?” suggests that he may not have understood the meaning of Jesus’ strong words. He was captivated nonetheless by the One who spoke them: “You have the words of everlasting life.”

          Any preacher who is faithful to his commission to preach the full gospel, and not just what people want to hear, will encounter criticism and rejection. I say that from personal experience. It is the preacher’s task to comfort the afflicted – but also afflict the comfortable. When I have said from the pulpit that marriage is possible only for one man and one woman, I have been told: ‘That’s just one opinion.’ The answer is simple: it is the teaching of the Bible, and of the Catholic Church. Told that this teaching is “very hurtful to many of our parishioners,” I remain unfazed. The Lord whose commission I hold to preach “the truth the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” will ask me one day whether I did that; or whether I abbreviated his truth because someone might be uncomfortable and offended. Similarly with the person who was offended by a homily which dealt in part with pornography – which any priest who sits in the confessional soon learns is a serious problem today – and in consequence could no longer attend our church. Jesus encountered rejection. If we who serve him receive only applause and affirmation, we must ask whether we are being faithful to the One who commissioned us.

"SAUL, SAUL, WHY ARE YOU PERSECUTING ME?"

Homily for May 9^th, 2014. Acts of the Apostles 9:1-20.

          The story we heard in our first reading is one of the most dramatic conversion stories of all time – in the same class with the story of St. Augustine’s conversion three centuries later. The chief persecutor of Jesus’ disciples, until then a small sect within the Jewish community, becomes overnight the man who carried the gospel message to the whole world.

In Augustine’s case, conversion started with a child’s voice from the other side of a garden wall, saying, “Take up and read.” When Augustine opened the biblical scroll he was holding, his eyes fell on Paul’s words in his letter to the Romans: “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof” (13:13f). Those words kindled in Augustine a fire that never went out.

          In the case of Saul (he received the name Paul only when he was baptized), the voice said: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” We might have expected a different question: “Why are you persecuting my Church?” The question came in personal form because the Church is Christ’s body: he has today no voice to speak to people but ours, no hands to reach out in compassion but ours, and so forth.

          Note the reaction of the man God has chosen to baptize Saul, Ananias. He’s scared out of his wits. ‘I’ve heard about this man, Lord,’ he says. ‘He’s dangerous.’ ‘Go,’ God tells him. ‘He is my chosen instrument to carry my name to Jew and Gentile alike.’ Go to St. Paul’s Church just south of Columbus Circle in New York’s Manhattan. Over the altar you will see carved in stone three Latin words: Vas electionis est – “He is my elect or chosen vessel.”

          To those words the Lord adds these: “I will show him what he will have to suffer for my name.” What does this tell us? A personal encounter with the Lord God – like those experienced by Saul, Augustine, and countless others down through the ages – is never just for the individual. God comes personally to chosen souls to commission them to go to others, proclaiming: “I have seen the Lord!” And in every case, the fulfillment of this call means suffering.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD

Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A.  John 10:1-10.

AIM: To show Jesus as the good shepherd who gives us abundant life.

          Certain things are indispensable for human life: air, water, food — and love.  Without love children grow up stunted or warped. “Problem children,” we call them. They may have received too little love, the wrong kind of love, or so much of what their parents mistook for love that the children are spoiled. Every one of us needs love: not just in childhood, but our whole lives long. Deep in every heart is the desire to give and to receive; to know some beloved person intimately, but also to be known. As we grow in age, we make a discovery which causes most of us deep pain. It is this: no human relationship completely fulfills this deep human longing: not the most perfect marriage, not the most ideal friendship.

          There is one person, however, who does love us totally, and who knows us better than we know ourselves. His name is Jesus Christ. “I know my sheep,” he says in today’s Alleluia verse (Jn. 10:14). Before this friend we have no secrets.  He sees behind the masks we all wear. From his penetrating gaze there is no hiding. Does that seem threatening? In reality it is reassuring: to know that there is one person who knows the worst that is in us, and yet still loves us — yes, and will continue to love us, no matter how little we return his love.

          “I know my sheep,” Jesus says. The words are so familiar that we don’t realize how unflattering they are. Sheep are foolish animals. They easily wander off and get into trouble. They are easily frightened. They require constant supervision. In one respect, however, sheep are smart. They recognize their own shepherd and can distinguish him from strangers who may harm them. Listen again to Jesus’ words in the gospel: “The sheep hear [their shepherd’s] voice, as [he] calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ... The sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice.” The words are an expansion of today’s Alleluia verse: “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and mine know me.”

          The knowledge that we, the flock of Jesus Christ, have of our shepherd is astonishing, when you stop to think about it. Jesus lived two thousand years ago.  About most of his years on earth we know nothing at all. He was often a mystery, even to his closest friends. Yet was there ever a human being so well known by so many as Jesus Christ? Not everyone knows him, of course. Jesus indicated that when he said, “mine know me.” Who is he talking about? He is speaking of all those who listen to Jesus’ voice, and try, at least, to follow him. That is what counts: the effort, not the success. 

          Those who do try to follow Jesus find that he is always close to them, yet that he remains the totally Other. They know his goodness, his kindness, his patience, his strength, his courage. They recognize Jesus Christ as the embodiment of everything good and noble and worthwhile in human life: completely sinless, selfless, pure, holy. Those who try to follow Jesus, the Good Shepherd, experience him as a man set apart; yet drawing people to himself with a mysterious magnetism which centuries cannot diminish. (Why is it always quiet in the church when I speak about Jesus Christ?  Why is it quiet right now?)

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

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

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

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

"I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE."

Homily for May 8^th, 2014: John 6:44-51.

          “I am the bread of life,” Jesus says. “Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat and not die.” Jesus is speaking to his fellow Jews. So to understand what he is saying, we must start with the Jewish Scriptures, which we call the Old Testament.

          The rabbis often spoke of the manna which nourished God’s people during their desert wanderings under Moses as God’s word or instruction. Amos, the first of Israel’s prophets to write down his message (earlier prophets spoke orally only) writes about a famine coming on the land, because of the people’s unfaithfulness: “not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but for hearing the word of the Lord” (8:11f). The theme of bread as God’s word is frequent in the so-called Wisdom books of the Old Testament. In the book Sirach, for instance, we read: “He who fears the Lord … will come to wisdom … She will nourish him with the bread of understanding . . .” (15:1 & 3).

          This is the background for Jesus’ astonishing claim: “I am the bread of life … the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever.” Jesus’ words are real nourishment. That is why the two disciples who encountered the risen Lord on the road to Emmaus could say, after Jesus had made himself known in “the breaking of the bread” (the oldest term for the Eucharist): “Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32).

          All Catholics know that Jesus comes to us in Holy Communion. Many still do not know that he comes to us equally in what the second Vatican Council called “the table of the word.” The rediscovery of that term, which had lain, largely forgotten, in the Church’s attic for centuries, was one of the Council’s great gifts to us. “The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures as she venerates the body of the Lord,” the Council said, “insofar as she never ceases, particularly in the sacred liturgy, to partake of the bread of life and to offer it to the faithful from the table of the Word of God and the Body of Christ” (Verbum Dei, 21). For a balanced spiritual diet, we must be nourished by both.

         

"WHOEVER COMES TO ME WILL NEVER HUNGER."

Homily for May 6^th, 2014: John 6:30-35.

          “Whoever comes to me will never hunger,” Jesus says, “whoever believes in me will never thirst.” Those are tremendous claims indeed. Only our familiarity with the words keeps us from recognizing how daring they are.

          What do we hunger for? Many things. One hunger, however, is universal. Every one of us hungers for acceptance and love. At life’s beginning, our parents, mothers especially, satisfy this hunger, if they are at least reasonably good parents. Even the best mother’s love pales, however, beside the intensity and fervor of God’s love for us.

          A three-year old Chinese girl in our parish pre-school showed me this not many years ago. Her name was Doris. At the time an only child, her parents told her that she would soon start school. She talked of it with excitement for weeks. When school started, however, there were floods of tears. It was her first time away from her parents. She had never had a baby sitter.

Because I was a close friend of her family -- I had seen Doris for the first time an hour after her birth -- I felt a special responsibility for her. When her three-hour school day ended at noon, I would meet Doris outside her classroom, and stand with her at, or in cold weather inside, the glass door of the school, waiting for her mother to appear to take her home. The instant Doris glimpsed her mother, she would break away from me and run as fast as her little legs would take her to her mother’s arms. What an example of hunger for love! It was heart-stopping.

That hunger for love does not diminish as the years go by. When parental love no longer satisfies us, most of us start looking for satisfaction of our hunger from things which, though good in themselves, leave us still hungry and frustrated, because we can never get enough of them: things like pleasure, possessions, power, and honor.

For many people it takes years, for some decades, before we discover that there is only One who can satisfy the deepest hunger and desires of our hearts. His name is Jesus Christ.

TWO MODELS OF TRUSTING FAITH

Homily for May 5^th, 2014: John 6:22-29.

          “This is the work of God,” Jesus says, “that you believe in the one he sent.” To believe in someone is to trust that person. To believe in the one God sent, Jesus, means to trust him. But it means more. It means entrusting our lives to him. Is that scary? Of course it is. Because it means losing control, turning our lives over to another. That is what the saints do – every one of them, no exceptions.

Consider our two most recent saints. St John XXII came from a desperately poor family. In our country they would have been called sharecroppers. As a child he went barefoot. His parents couldn’t afford shoes. Later they couldn’t afford train fare to Rome when he was ordained priest. Made a bishop at an early age, he chose a motto that showed that he had already turned over control of his life to others: Obedientia et pax. Sent for twenty long years to the fringes of the Catholic world – Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece – ignored and considered a simpleton at headquarters, he lived out his motto in ways that his Journal of a Soul shows were often lonely and painful. Those years, living among people who were not even on the Vatican radar screen, made him into a man who accepted without hesitation all that was asked of him and was totally at peace. This gave him the courage to call an ecumenical council which, according to his intent – the fulfillment of which we can see only now – would be for the Church a new Pentecost.

St. John Paul II was born into a world which offered little opportunity for control of any kind. He lost his mother at age 9, his older brother at 12, and his father at 19. The Nazis had already occupied Poland. Karol Wojtyla worked for a time in a stone quarry. A German truck hit and almost killed him. When he decided to seek priesthood, he had to attend a secret seminary in the Archbishop’s residence. No sooner were the Nazis defeated in 1945 than they were replaced by Russian communists, no less hostile to the Church and careless of human rights and lives. His whole life, until he was chosen as Bishop of Rome in 1978 was lived in an atmosphere of oppression and terror. His episcopal motto, reflecting his intense Marian devotion was similar to John XXIII’s: Totus tuus – Always yours, holy Mother of God. Happy if we can say the same!