ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI.

Homily for Oct. 4^th, 2014: St. Francis of Assisi.

          Why does a gifted young man, son of a wealthy merchant father, decide, on the verge of manhood, to exchange his privileged life for literal obedience to Jesus’ words to the rich young in the gospel: “If you would be perfect, go sell all that you have and give to the poor . . .  After that come and follow me”? (Mk 10:21, Mt. 19:21). That, in brief, is the story of the man we celebrate today: St. Francis of Assisi.

          Born in that central Italian town in about 1181, he was given the name John in baptism. When his merchant father returned from a buying trip to France, he started calling his infant son Francesco; in English “Frenchy” or Francis. The boy’s youth was much like that of rich young men the world over, with one exception: he was always generous to the poor. One day in his early 20s, he encountered a leper. Though Francis had always had a horror of people with this disease, he was moved to stop, get off his horse, and kiss the leper.

          Praying one day in the tumbledown church of San Damiano, Francis heard the painted figure of Christ on the cross say to him: “Francis, do you not see how my house is falling into ruin? Go and rebuild it for me.” Some time thereafter Francis gathered costly fabrics from the family business, loaded them on his horse and sold both the cloth and the horse in the market. Returning to San Damiano on foot, Francis offered the proceeds of the sale to the priest, for the renovation of his church. When Francis’ father sued to regain his property, the case came before the bishop of Assisi, a man named Guido. He told Francis that he must make restitution. Whereupon Francis withdrew and returned to court carrying his expensive clothes and clad only in his underwear. From henceforth, Francis said, only God would be his father. 

          This was the beginning of a life as a wandering hermit and preacher, living in literal obedience to Jesus' words in the gospel. At his death in 1326 Francis had inspired over a thousand men to follow him. Francis never intended to found a religious order, and possessed no ability to organize it when it came. What he did have was the example of a gospel oriented life that continues to inspire people today – most recently the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires who, on his election as bishop of Rome on March 13^th of last year took the name of Francis as a sign of his determination to serve the poor. So we pray in this Mass: "St. Francis, pray for Pope Francis, pray for us. Amen."    

HIDDEN FROM THE WISE, REVEALED TO THE CHILDLIKE

Homily for Oct. 4^th, 2014: Luke 10:17-24.

          The seventy-two disciples whom Jesus has sent out – in pairs so that they could support one another -- return, glowing with excitement over the missionary success they have experienced. Jesus tells them that they have, however, an even deeper reason for joy: that their names are inscribed as citizens of heaven. In heaven there will be no demons to overcome, only loving union with God, who alone can satisfy the deepest desires of our hearts – desires which can never be satisfied in this world – not in the perfect marriage nor in the ideal friendship: and how many people have found either?

          Jesus then breaks out in a hymn of spontaneous praise to his heavenly Father. “I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, you have revealed them to the childlike.” The wise and learned are those who fail to respond to Jesus, because they feel no need for God. Jesus’ disciples are the childlike, whose hearts and minds are open to the Lord.

          This division continues today. Who are today's wise and learned? They teach in our elite universities; they run the great foundations, with names like Ford and Rockefeller; they dominate Hollywood and the media. With few exceptions they consider the killing of unborn children whose birth might be an inconvenience to be a wonderful advance in humanity’s upward march from ignorance and superstition to enlightenment and freedom. They look down with scorn and disbelief on those who insist that life is precious at every stage: in the womb, but also in old age, when Grandma’s mind has gone ahead of her, and her meaningful life is over.

          So who are today’s childlike? We are! We pray in this Mass that our merciful and loving Lord may keep us always so: aware that we can never make it on our own; that we are dependent every day, every hour, and every minute on the One who came to show us what the invisible God is like; who always walks with us on the journey of life; and who is waiting for each one of us at the end of the road – to welcome us home!

"THE KINGDOM OF GOD WILL BE TAKEN AWAY FROM YOU . . . "

27^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A.  Is. 5:1-7; Mt. 21:33-43.

AIM: To help the hearers see how much God has given us, and hence how much he expects from us.

          Jesus had a way of seizing people’s attention at once. He spoke about things that vitally interested people. Today he might speak about the war in Afghanistan and Syria, affirmative action, the death penalty, abortion, feminism, illegal immigration — all subjects about which most people have strong opinions. 

          A matter about which people in Jesus’ day felt strongly was the amount of land in Palestine owned by foreigners. Jesus’ fellow Jews resented the windfall profits reaped by wealthy tycoons in far-off Rome from some of the most fertile property in the country, while those to whom the land rightly belonged often had difficulty eking out a bare existence. The story we have just heard about tenant farmers who mistreated the agents of an absentee landowner may have been based on an actual case familiar to Jesus’ hearers. 

          Three details in the story would immediately have seized the attention of anyone familiar with the Hebrew scriptures: the hedge around the vineyard, the wine press, the watchtower. All three details are mentioned in Isaiah’s tale of his friend’s vineyard which we heard in our first reading. Jesus’s hearers were familiar with that passage from Isaiah. They knew that the vineyard in that passage was a parable of God’s loving care for his people, and of their ungrateful response. Isaiah is quite specific about this. He represents God as saying:

What more was there to do for my vineyard that I had not done? Why, when I looked for the crop of grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes?

          Isaiah used the parable to expose the ingratitude of God’s people for all the care he had lavished on them, and to warn them that a day of reckoning was coming. The warning came from God himself:

Now, I will let you know what I mean to do with my vineyard ...

            I will make it a ruin.

          In retelling the familiar story, Jesus makes it clear that Isaiah’s day of reckoning is now at hand. The religious leaders of his people are about to reject him. Up to now they have held back because of Jesus’ popularity with the crowds.  Now, however, the small ruling clique is becoming bolder. Jesus gives them a final, solemn warning:

The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.

          Is that all long ago and far away? Don’t you believe it! Jesus’ warning is as up-to-date as the morning headlines. It contains lessons for us today: for our country, for us American Catholics, for each of us personally.

          First, the warning for our country. Few nations have been so blessed by God as ours. We are rich in natural resources, and rich in the diversity of races, nations, and tongues which have come to these shores seeking a new and better life. For more than two centuries two protecting oceans enabled us to develop a largely unpeopled continent. St. Louis, the “Gateway to the West,” played a key role in this development. For most of our country’s history we were able to work out our national destiny little troubled by conflicts elsewhere. Even today the United States, despite all our problems, remains the richest and most powerful country on earth — since the fall of communism in 1989 the world’s only superpower. Jesus’ parable warns us that all this wealth and power will be taken from us, and given to others, if we are not willing to share with those less fortunate than ourselves the abundance God has given us. 

          The parable is also a warning to us American Catholics. The position of  influence we enjoy in the Church, because of our numbers and financial resources, will be taken away from us and given to Catholics in Third World countries, if our Catholicism is complacent, conventional, and lukewarm — while theirs is dynamic, daring, enthusiastic. 

          In 1974, forty years ago now, a Capuchin Franciscan priest from Switzerland, Fr. Walbert Bühlmann, wrote a book which the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner called “the Catholic book of the year.” It was called The Coming of the Third Church. Bühlmann’s “Third Church” was the church of the southern hemisphere: Latin America, Africa, parts of Asia. By the end of the twentieth century, Bühlmann said, most of the world’s Catholics would live below the equator. The older churches of Europe and North America would no longer rank first. Bühlmann’s prophecy has proved correct. The majority of the world’s Catholics now live in the southern hemisphere.

          For each of us personally Jesus’ parable is a warning that merely conventional, formal religion is not enough. And our religion is conventional if all it means, at bottom, is fulfilling a list of “minimum obligations”: dropping in at  Sunday Mass to get our card punched, avoidance of serious sin, but not much beyond that: little generosity, little love or consideration for others, because we’re too busy looking after Number One. How much would a marriage be worth in which the spouses were merely concerned to fulfill their “minimum obligations” to one another? Think about it!

          In the great family of God which we call the Catholic Church God lavishes on us treasures beyond counting: all his truth, all his goodness, power, and love (which the theologians call “grace”). He looks for our answering love in return. The treasures God bestows on us are meant to be used, not put away for safe-keeping. They are to be shared, not hoarded. If we fail to pass on to others what God so generously give to us, we shall lose God’s gifts. We can’t keep them, unless we give them away! That is what Jesus’ warning words mean: “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”

          Someone has said: It doesn’t take much of a person to be a Catholic Christian. But it does take all of him — or her — that there is!

JOB RECEIVES AN ANSWER

Homily for October 3^rd, 2014: Job 38,1, 12-21; 40:3-5.

          For some days now our first readings have been taken from the book of Job. It is one of the great books of the Bible, and unlike any other. Like Jesus’ parables, Job is fiction – it’s a made-up story. But like many made-up stories – Shakespeare’s plays, for instance – it contains profound truth.

          The book introduces us to a devout and God-fearing man, Job, whom God has blessed with a large and wonderful family and earthly riches in abundance. Within the space of hours, he loses everything. Why? That is the central question throughout the book: why do bad things happen to good people?   

          Job’s so-called Comforters visit him to tell him, in various ways, that it all makes sense, if only he will think about it. Their pat and comfortable arguments are typical of the answers given throughout history, and still today, by the self-appointed Defenders of Faith who look out upon a black-and-white world, in which there are no mysteries. Job rejects all their arguments, and demands, again and again, a one-on-one confrontation with God, who has permitted, if not caused, all the tragedies which have befallen him.

          In today’s first reading Job finally receives what he has been demanding. God speaks to him directly. He gives Job, however, not what he has been has been asking for – an answer to what is called the Problem of Evil – but a series of challenging questions. ‘Where were you, Job, when I was creating the earth, the sea, and everything that is?’ God’s questions shock Job into realizing that he cannot dispute with God. God lives on an infinitely higher plane. “Behold, I am of little account,” Job acknowledges. “What can I answer you?” Tomorrow we shall hear more of Job’s response: “I have dealt with great things that I do not understand; things too wonderful for me to know. I had heard of you by word of mouth, but now my eye has seen you. Therefore I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes.”

          At the book’s end, God rebukes Job’s Comforters for denying life’s mysteries. And by restoring Job to good fortune he rewards him for acknowledging mystery. God gives us no answer to the Problem of Evil, why bad things happen to good people. He gives us instead something better: the strength to go on despite unmerited suffering and even the most terrible tragedy.

THE HOLY GUARDIAN ANGELS

Homily for Oct. 2^nd, 2014: Holy Guardian Angels.

          Today’s memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels reminds us of an important truth of our Christian and Catholic faith. The world in which we live, which we entered at birth and which we shall leave at death, is surrounded by another world which, though we cannot see it, is every bit as real as the world which we see, touch, hear, and feel. This other world is spiritual. It is the world God, the angels, the saints, and our beloved dead. Though invisible, this spiritual world is not only as real as the visible world all around us. It is in truth more real than that world. For the world we see is passing away. The unseen, spiritual world is not passing away. It is eternal. Moreover, this spiritual world is our true homeland. St. Paul tells us this when he writes in his letter to the Philippians that, because of baptism, “we have our citizenship in heaven” (3:20).

          The Catechism says: “The existence of the spiritual, non-corporeal [that is, not bodily] beings that Sacred Scripture calls ‘angels’ is a truth of faith” (No. 328). And the Catechism goes on to quote St. Augustine, who says that “angel” is the name of their office: it tells us what they do. Their nature is spirit; in other words, they are not bodily but spiritual beings. “With their whole beings,” Augustine writes, “the angels are servants and messengers of God.” (No 329) They appear often in Scripture. The angel Gabriel told Mary, for instance, that she was to be the mother of God’s son. The Catechism quotes the 4^th century Greek Father, St. Basil, who writes: “Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life” (No. 336).

            Whenever, then, we are in danger; whenever we are strongly tempted, it is a joy to know that we can pray with confidence: “Holy guardian angel, protect me and keep me safe! Amen.”

STE. THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX

Homily for Oct. 1^st, 2013: A spiritual prodigy.

          The young woman whom we commemorate today – she died at only 24 – was a spiritual child prodigy. Born Thérèse Martin on the 2^nd of January 1873 to deeply devout Catholic parents in northwestern France, she was the youngest of five sisters and her father’s little “queen.” Her mother’s death when Thérèse was only 4 plunged her into terrible grief which would last into adolesence. At age 9 Thérèse received a second blow, when her older sister Pauline, who had been a second mother to her, entered the Carmelite convent at Lisieux, where the family was living. Thérèse decided that Carmel was the place she too wanted to be – “but not for Pauline, for Jesus.” So certain was Thérèse of her vocation, that she started to ask permission to enter Carmel when she was only 14. It finally came, in a letter from her bishop, on January 1^st, 1888, a day before her fifteenth birthday. Three months later she was received into the community where she had longed to be from age 9. 

Thérèse soon discovered the shadow side of Carmelite life. “Of course one does not have enemies in Carmel,” she wrote, “but still there are natural attractions, one feels drawn towards a certain sister, whereas you go a long way round to avoid meeting another.” Thérèse resolved to counter these difficulties by going out of her way to be kind to the Sisters who most irritated her. Over time this would become what she called her “little way.” Since she could not do great things, she would do little things as an offering to God. One of those little things was her request to remain a novice. To her life’s end she had to ask permission to do things her fellow Sisters could do on their own.

For the last 18 months of her short life, Thérèse was suffering from tuberculosis, for which there was then no real treatment. She also suffered spiritual darkness, like a later sister with her name, Bl. Teresa of Calcutta. Death came on the evening of Sept. 30^th, 1897.

A year later the account of her short life which she had been commanded to write was published in a limited edition of 2000 copies, under the title, The Story of a Soul. Translated over time into 40 languages, it would produce what Pope Pius XI said at Thérèse’s canonization in 1925, before half a million people “a storm of glory.” People read Thérèse’s story, invoked her intercession, and found their prayers answered. Words she had spoken toward the end of her life came true: “I will spend my heaven doing good on earth.” Today we pray, therefore: “Ste. Thérèse, pray for us. Amen.”

"SONS OF THUNDER"

Homily or September 30^th, 2014: Luke 9:51-56.            

          In Jesus’ day the enmity between Jews and Samaritans was proverbial. We might compare it to the enmity between Sunni and Shia Moslems today. Samaritans were especially resentful of Jews passing through their territory on pilgrimage to the holy city of Jerusalem. This explains why the Samaritan villagers mentioned in today’s gospel reading “would not welcome” Jesus and his friends. Because there were twelve of them, thirteen with Jesus, Jesus had sent messengers ahead to let the villagers know he was coming, and wanted accommodation for the night.

          Mark’s gospel tells us that the brothers, James and John, sons of the fisherman Zebedee, were given the name “Boanerges,” or Sons of Thunder (Mk. 3:17). Their hot-tempered anger at the refusal of hospitality by these Samaritan villagers helps explain the reason for their nickname. The two brothers’ desire to “call down fire from heaven,” reminds us of what the Old Testament prophet Elijah had twice done to destroy his enemies (2 Kings 1:10 & 12). It was the biblical equivalent of the modern slogan: “Don’t get mad, get even.”

          Luke has already given us Jesus’ rejection of such revenge. “Love your enemies,” Jesus says in the sixth chapter of Luke’s gospel. “Do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you and pray for those who maltreat you” (6:27f.) Acting in that way is never easy. But those who, with the Lord's help, overcome the longing for revenge which comes naturally not only to us adults, but even to little children, are calling down a different fire upon those who maltreat them. It is the fire of love, which alone can overcome and burn out hatred. And so we pray in this Mass: “Lord, pour out into my heart the all-consuming fire of your love, that I may share that love with others.”

"YOU WILL SEE THE ANGELS OF GOD ASCENDING AND DESCENDING . . . "

Homily for September 29^th, 2014: John 1:47-51.

          “Truly, I say to you, you will see the heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” Jesus speaks these words to his newly recruited disciple, Nathaniel. Elsewhere in the gospels he is identified as the apostle Bartholomew. The words tell us that Jesus is the contact person between earth and heaven, between humanity and God. 

We contact God by offering prayers to our heavenly Father through his Son Jesus, in and through the Holy Spirit, who inspires us to pray and supports us as we do so. The ascending angels are carrying our prayers heavenward. And the descending angels are bringing us the Father’s blessings in answer to our prayers. 

The Bible identifies three special angels, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, whom we commemorate today. Michael, whose name means, “who can compare with God?” is mentioned in the book of Revelation, where we read: “”War broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. Although the dragon and his angels fought back, they were overpowered and lost their place in heaven.” The archangel Michael represents God’s power, defending us against the forces of evil.

Gabriel is God’s messenger. He appeared to the Old Testament prophet Daniel to help him understand a vision Daniel had about the world’s end (cf. Dan. 8:16 & 9:21). Later he appeared to a teenaged Jewish girl called Mary, to tell her she was to be the mother of God’s Son.

The archangel Raphael is traditionally the angel of healing. Chapter 12 of the Old Testament book Tobit speaks of his healing power. And chapter 5 of John’s gospel speaks of sick people waiting to be healed at a pool in Jerusalem called Bethesda. An ancient verse which is missing in modern Bibles speaks of an angel, identified in Catholic tradition as Raphael, coming to stir up the waters, to release their healing powers.

In 1886 Pope Leo XIII composed a prayer to the archangel Michael which was prayed at the end of every Mass until 1968. It goes like this:

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host - by the Divine Power of God - cast into hell, Satan and all the evil spirits, who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.