"THE DISCIPLES WERE FILLED WITH JOY."

Homily for May 17^th, 2014: Acts of he Apostles 13:44-52.

          Following the example of Jesus, Paul and Barnabas, who are now in Antioch, address their preaching first to their fellow Jews. They had considerable success. The passage immediately before our first reading says that: “Many Jews and devout Jewish converts followed Paul and Barnabas, who spoke to them and urged them to hold fast to the grace of God” (13:43). As a result, the opening sentence of our first reading tells us, “On the following sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord.” This causes the Devil to deploy one of his strongest weapons: jealousy. “When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and with violent abuse contradicted what Paul said.”

          “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first,” Paul and Barnabas respond, “but since you reject it and condemn yourselves as unworthy of eternal life, we turn to the Gentiles.”  Note the words, “condemn yourselves.” Condemnation does not come from God. It comes from our own free choice to reject God and the love he offers us as a free gift, not as a reward for services rendered.  

          Enraged, those at Antioch who have rejected the preaching of the gospel stir up a persecution against Paul and Barnabas and run them out of town. Undismayed by the abuse and maltreatment they have received, Paul and Barnabas shake the dust from their feet and move on to Iconium. In so doing they were following the explicit command of the Lord, who told his disciples whom he sent out to preach the gospel: “If any place will not receive you or hear you, shake its dust from your feet in testimony against them as you leave” (Mark 6:11).

          The final sentence of today’s first reading surprises us: “The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.” Do you want that joy? Which of us does not? To have it you must do one thing. Put thanksgiving at the center of your prayer, and of your life. If a long life has taught me anything, it is this. Grateful people are happy people – no exceptions! I couldn’t tell you how often I say every day, as I go through the day: “Lord, you’re so good to me – and I’m so happy.” Find your own way of saying that, and you too will be happy! 

"I AM GOING TO PREPARE A PLACE FOR YOU."

Homily for May 16^th, 2014: John 14:1-6.

          “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places,” Jesus tells us, “I am going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.” What a tremendous promise! Jesus’ words address our greatest enemy, and for most of us our greatest fear: death. Down through the centuries Christians have pondered and prayed over this promise. Here is what three of them have said.

St. Cyprian, 3^rd century Bishop of Carthage in North Africa:

“We reckon paradise to be our home. A great throng awaits us there of those dear to us, parents, brothers, sons. A packed and numerous throng longs for us, of those already free from anxiety for their own salvation, who are still concerned for our salvation. What joy they share with us when we come into their sight and embrace them! What pleasure there is there in the heavenly kingdom, with no fear of death, and what supreme happiness with the enjoyment of eternal life.” [Office of Readings for Friday of the 34^th week of the year)]

St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa from 395 to 430.

“How happy will be our shout of Alleluia there, how carefree, how secure from any adversary, where there is no enemy, where no friend perishes. There praise is offered to God, and here too; but here it is by people who are anxious, there by people who are free from care; here by people who must die, there by those who will live forever. Here praise is offered in hope, there by people who enjoy the reality; here by those who are pilgrims on the way, there by those who have reached their own country.” [Office of Readings for Saturday of the 34^th week of the year)]

Pope Benedict XVI, now retired:

"Christianity does not proclaim merely a certain salvation of the soul in some imprecise place beyond, in which everything in this world that was precious and loved by us is erased, but it promises eternal life, 'the life of the world to come': nothing of what is precious and loved will be ruined, but will find its fulfillment in God. All the hairs of our head are numbered, Jesus said one day (cf. Matthew 10:30). The final world will also be the fulfillment of this earth, as St. Paul states: 'Creation itself will be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God'" (Romans 8:21). [Aug. 15, 2010]

          How do we reach the joys of which these three great Christians speak? Jesus tells us in the final sentence of today’s gospel: “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

"WHOEVER RECEIVES THE ONE I SEND RECEIVES ME."

Homily for May 15^th, 2014: John 13:16-20.

          Jesus’ words in today’s gospel reading immediately follow his washing of the apostles’ feet. Feet shod only in sandals got dirty on the dusty roads of Palestine. It was customary, therefore, for a host to provide water for arriving guests to wash their own feet. Jesus went beyond this gesture of hospitality. By washing his friends’ feet himself, he gives them an example of humble service which they must be prepared to imitate.

          How little the Twelve heeded and followed this example, we learn from Luke’s gospel, which says that at the Last Supper “a dispute arose among them about who should be regarded as greatest” (22:24). After the foot-washing, therefore, Jesus goes on to speak about what he has just done.

          “No slave is greater than his master,” Jesus says, “nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him.” Down through the centuries many of Jesus’ followers have recognized this, and acted accordingly. Jesus directs his words to them when he says: “If you understand this, blessed [which means “happy”] are you if you do it. Sadly, there also many who have acted as masters themselves, rather than as servants, conceiving of priesthood as a career, not as service. Knowing that there was one at table with him there at the Last Supper, who in his heart had already rejected his servant role, Jesus quotes a verse from Psalm 41: “The one who ate my food has raised his heel against me.”

          Then, to encourage those truly resolved in their hearts to be and to remain his servants, Jesus says: “Amen, amen,” [which means “solemnly”] I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me.” Which one of us would not be thrilled to receive Jesus in person? A recent e-mail from a Philippine deacon now in Rome, soon to be ordained priest, had the words “A great grace” in the subject line. It told about his being able to greet Pope Francis personally at the end of an audience for seminarians.  

Jesus was telling his apostles that those to whom he was sending them would be no less thrilled than my Philippine friend. Jesus concludes by saying: “Whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” Every encounter with Jesus is an encounter with God himself.

"GREATER WORKS THAN THESE . . . "

Fifth Sunday of Easter Year A. John 14:1-12.

AIM: To deepen the hearers’ faith.

      A four-year-old boy was in the kitchen with his mother. “I need a can of mushroom soup, Johnny,” she said to him. “Could you go down into the cellar and get it for me?”

      “It’s dark down there, Mom,” he replied. “I’m scared to go down.”

      His mother tried several times, without success, to persuade him that he had nothing to be scared of. When all else failed, she played her trump card. “It’s all right, Johnny. Jesus will be down there with you.”

      At that Johnny opened the cellar door and called out: “Jesus, if you’re down there, would you bring me up a can of mushroom soup?”

      Four-year-old Johnny’s fear was not unlike the fear of Jesus’ friends in our gospel reading. Jesus has just washed his disciples’ feet. Then he said he would be leaving them. The news plunged them into grief and fear. At the beginning of our gospel reading Jesus responds to this fear by saying: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” 

      The “trouble” they were experiencing went deep. The gospel writer uses the same word to describe Jesus’ emotions at the tomb of his dear friend Lazarus as he joins in the grief of Lazarus’ sisters and other friends. The word is used once again to describe Jesus’ emotions when he realizes that one of his inner circle, Judas Iscariot, is going to betray him. The “trouble” Jesus felt on those occasions, and which his disciples feel now, was gut-wrenching, and stomach-turning. It is the feeling we experience at the news that someone we dearly love has unexpectedly died. Nothing, we realize, will ever be the same again.

      Notice how Jesus counters this fear. “You have faith in God,” he tells his

disciples. “Have faith also in me.” Faith in God Jesus could take for granted. These friends of his were believing Jews. He challenges them to extend this same faith to him. You must trust, he was telling them, that the same God whom we worship in synagogue and temple is truly present and active in me. 

      That is a tremendous claim, when you think about it. The disciples whom Jesus was addressing didn’t yet know him as we know him — as the divine Son of God. To them he was a man like themselves. Realization that he was more came only after the resurrection.

      Jesus’ challenge to his friends to trust him as they trusted God involves the central teaching of our Christian faith: the incarnation. Incarnation means “embodiment.” Children are the embodiment, or incarnation, of their parents’ love, which brings them into being. This building is the incarnation of an idea in the mind of the architect who designed it, and of the sacrifices of those whose gifts made its construction possible. And Jesus is the incarnation of God. That explains how Jesus can say in today’s gospel reading: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” The introduction to the Eucharistic Prayer for Christmas says the same: “In him [Jesus] we see our God made visible, and so are caught up in the love of the God we cannot see.”       

      The incarnation begins with Jesus. But it has important implications for us as well. By taking on our human nature Jesus has broken through the boundary between our world and the world of God. The same God who took human form in Jesus is also embodied, though of course in a different degree, in each person who, in baptism, becomes a member of Christ’s body, the Church. Hence we can even say that each one of us is, in a certain measure, the embodiment of God. He dwells in us through the presence and power of his Holy Spirit.

      This truth, that each of us is the temple or dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, helps us understand Jesus’ words at the conclusion of our gospel reading: “Truly I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I go to the Father.”

      What are the works that Jesus did?  First on just about any list would be his miracles: the healings he performed, the stilling of the storm on the lake, the raising of the widow’s son at Naim and of Jesus’ friend Lazarus. Jesus also fed the hungry: the vast crowd in the wilderness, his twelve apostles at the Last Supper. After his resurrection Jesus prepared a lakeside breakfast for Peter, James, and John, tired and hungry from a night of fruitless fishing with the net coming back empty time after time until a man on shore, still unrecognized, calls out, “Cast the net on the right side” — and they feel the net heavy with fish, and “the disciple whom Jesus loved” calls out excitedly: “It is the Lord.” Jesus’ works also include his beautiful stories — the  parables — and all his teaching about the love of God, his heavenly Father: the love that will never let us go.   

      How can Jesus say that we, his followers, will do even greater works than those? 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’ death, resurrection, and return to his Father in heaven. He wanted them to continue, and they have continued, through his Church. Starting as a sect of Judaism, the Church which Jesus founded 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 warning 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 — amazing in fact — because they have never ceased despite all the failures betrayals began when, at Jesus’ arrest, “they 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?

I began with a story.  Let me close with another. 

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.@

"IT WAS NOT YOU WHO CHOSE ME . . . "

Homily for May 14, 2014: Act 1:15-17, 20-26; John 15:9-17.

          Our first reading shows us the Church performing what might be called her first juridical act: finding among Jesus’ disciples one to take the place of Judas Iscariot, who had betrayed the Lord and, unlike Peter who repented, had despaired and taken his own life. Peter, by the Lord’s appointment the Church’s chief shepherd, takes the lead. The man chosen, he says, must be one who has been with us from the day of Jesus’ baptism, until his death, resurrection, and ascension, so that he could be, with us remaining eleven apostles, a witness to [Jesus’] resurrection. 

          Note how carefully they proceed. Not trusting to human judgment, they choose two of their number who fulfill Peter’s requirement. Then they pray that the Lord will show them which of the two he has chosen. This is the first corporate prayer recorded in the New Testament.  Following this, they cast lots. A common Jewish practice, this was done by taking two stones, writing the name of one candidate on each, and then placing both in an open jar. The jar was then shaken until one of the stones fell out.        

Who was this Matthias, we want to know? The honest answer is: we don’t know. There are stories about him, but they are legends only. Careful as Peter had been to leave the choice to God, it seems that the Lord had another in mind, a man about whom we know a great deal: a devout Jew named Saul, zealous defender of his Jewish faith, who in baptism became Paul, the great apostle to the wider Gentile world. He is a man to whom Jesus’ words in today’s gospel reading apply, if they ever applied to anyone: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain.”

In all this we see, once again, what the Bible shows us repeatedly: that God is  the God of the unexpected , the master of surprises. Hence the old saying: If  you want to make God laugh tell him your plans.

"THE FATHER AND I ARE ONE."

     Homily for May 13^th, 2014: John 10:22-30.

A careful reading of the gospels shows us that Jesus was very guarded about revealing his true identity. Pressed in today’s gospel to say whether he is God’s long awaited Messiah (“the Christ” in English) he replies: “I told you and you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me.” What works is Jesus referring to?  

          First on any list would be his miracles: the healings he performed, the stilling of the storm on the lake, the raising of the widow’s son at Naim and of Jesus’ friend Lazarus. Jesus also fed the hungry: the vast crowd in the wilderness, his twelve apostles at the Last Supper. After his resurrection Jesus prepared a lakeside breakfast for Peter, James, and John, tired and hungry from a night of fruitless fishing with the net coming back empty time after time until a man on shore, still unrecognized, calls out, “Cast the net on the right side” — and they feel the net heavy with fish, and “the disciple whom Jesus loved” calls out excitedly: “It is the Lord.” Jesus’ works also include his beautiful stories — the  parables — and all his teaching about the love of God, his heavenly Father: the love that will never let us go.  

        These works say nothing to you, Jesus tells his questioners, because "you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice; I know them and they follow me.” What does it take to be among Jesus’ sheep? The first requirement is openness: willingness to learn, not just once, but all our lives long. People who think they know it all already, that they have nothing more to learn after their formal education is finished, cannot be among Jesus’ sheep. “My sheep hear my voice,” Jesus says. That requires listening, all our lives long. Our education is never finished as long as life lasts.

         To those who come to him not as skeptics, saying ‘show me,’ but in a spirit of openness Jesus gives the greatest of all gifts: eternal life. “No one can take them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”

         That too is the gospel. That is the Good News.

"I HAVE OTHER SHEEP THAT DO NOT BELONG TO THIS FOLD."

Homily for May 12, 2014: Acts 11:1-8; John 10:11-18.

          “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold,” Jesus says. “These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd.”

Today’s first reading is about some of those “other sheep.” It tells about a confrontation (Luke, the author uses that word) between Jewish Christians in Jerusalem and Peter over his visit to a Gentile house, and his eating with the people who lived there. It is difficult for us to understand just how shocked the Jerusalem Christians were when they heard about this. Read the Old Testament and you will find God’s people, the Jews, being told over and over again that the must be different from all other people. Since Gentiles did not observe the Jewish dietary laws, Jews could not share a meal with such people.

To defend what he has done, Peter tells about a vision he had, while he was praying in Joppa, in which God told him to eat food forbidden to him as an observant Jew. No sooner had Peter awakened from this vision than three men appeared asking him to come with them to a Gentile house in Caesarea. The owner of the house had been told by the Holy Spirit to summon Peter, who would “speak words to you by which you and all your household will be saved.”

As soon as Peter entered the Gentile house and began to speak about Jesus, “the Holy Spirit fell upon them as it had upon us at the beginning” (at Pentecost) Peter says. His conclusion: if God gave those Gentiles “the same gift he gave us when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to be able to hinder God?”  

Do visions and visitations of he Holy Spirit belong only to Bible times? Don’t you believe it! Pope Francis appears to have had such a visitation. A cardinal who has known him for years recently had an hour with Francis in his room in the Vatican guest house where he lives. In the course of the conversation, the cardinal said to him, “You are not the same man that I knew in Buenos Aires. What’s happened?” Francis answered: “The night that I was elected, I had an experience of the nearness of God that left me with an interior freedom and peace that has never left me.” We pray in this Mass that this freedom and peace will never leave him; and that we may have a share in the same freedom and peace.