"GO, PROCLAIM THE GOSPEL."

Homily for Oct. 18^th, 2013: Luke 10:1-9

“The Lord Jesus appointed seventy-two disciples whom he sent ahead of him in pairs to every town and place he intended to visit.” Was that just long ago and far away? Don’t you believe it! The Lord is still sending disciples to recruit new disciples by showing people the joy of a life centered on Jesus Christ.

One of them, a man now in his second year in seminary whose call to priesthood I have been nourishing, wrote recently about joining an Evangelization Club at his seminary. It started when some of the seminarians returned from visiting a state university on fire from the incredible response they had received from college students who came to know Jesus Christ from conversations with the visiting seminarians. “We are excited about the work done through the group,” my seminarian friend wrote, “and I've personally felt a certain aliveness in the Holy Spirit for proclaiming Christ.”

 “But of course,” I responded to him in an e-mail. “When we share our faith with others, we deepen our own faith. Teachers experience this all the time. They learn more than their students, because in order to communicate clearly the material they are teaching, they must first get a firm and clear grasp on it themselves.”

          “Go, and proclaim the gospel of the Lord,” we often hear at the end of Mass. But how? St. Francis of Assisi answers this question as follows: “Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.” Personal example is always more effective than words. If we center our lives on Jesus Christ; if we give thanks daily and even hourly for all the blessings the Lord showers upon us – so many more than we deserve – people will notice that we’re people of joy. They’ll want to know where this joy comes from. That gives us our opening: to tell them it comes from the One who loves us more than we can ever imagine; who is always close to us, even when he stray far from him.

His name, we’ll tell our questioners, is Jesus Christ.

"DO NOT BE AFRAID."

Homily for October 17^th, 2014: Luke 12:1-7.

          Twice in this short gospel reading Jesus tells his friends: “Do not be afraid.” These reassuring words do not promise that the Lord’s disciples will be spared suffering. Jesus promises something quite different: that he will be with us in every suffering.

          We celebrate today a man whose life bears witness to fulfillment of this promise: Ignatius of Antioch, in modern day Syria. Thought to have been a convert, he was for forty years the third bishop of that local Church. Arrested in about 105 A.D. by the Roman authorities for the crime of worshiping the God of Jesus Christ, rather than the Emperor of Rome, he was sent there, in chains and under guard, on a ship, sentenced to be thrown to lions in the arena for the amusement of the spectators.

          News of his arrest spread quickly through Christian communities on the ship’s route. Clergy and numerous faithful came to welcome Ignatius at each port of call, seeking the blessing of a man on the way to martyrdom. Others journeyed by land to Rome for the same purpose. During the voyage Ignatius wrote letters, still preserved, to four local Churches encouraging them to remain steadfast in faith. More than once he expressed his concern that well intentioned fellow believers in high places in Rome might intervene to prevent the fate that awaited him. “I fear your charity,” Ignatius wrote. “I shall never have another such opportunity of attaining unto my Lord. … Allow me to be the food of wild beasts through whom I may attain unto God. I am God’s grain and I am to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts that I may be found the pure bread if Christ.” Ignatius died in the arena at Rome in about 107 A.D.

          None of us are likely to be blood martyrs to Jesus Christ. Every one of us, however, is called to be a martyr to him in the original sense of the word – which in Greek, martyros, means simply “witness.” We ask God in this Mass for guidance and strength to bear witness to him in daily life, as we pray:

“St. Ignatius, pray for us.”

"THEY WERE PLOTTING TO CATCH HIM"

Homily for October 16^th, 2014: Luke 11:47-54.

          In today’s gospel reading we witness the mounting hostility to Jesus of the religious leaders of his people: the Pharisees, who prided themselves on their careful observance of God’s law; and the scribes, the experts in interpreting the law – which for Jesus’ people was, of course, the Ten Commandments. 

          “Woe to you,” Jesus says, “who build the memorials of the prophets whom your fathers killed.” We build memorials to people whom we honor. During their lifetimes, however, Israel’s prophets were not honored. Many were resented or ignored, for reminding people of  God’s demands on them. Others, like Jeremiah, were actively persecuted. Only when the prophets were dead and gone was it safe to start honoring them.

We see something similar in a modern prophet: Dr. Martin Luther King. Widely resented during his lifetime, and the target of hatred so strong that it led to his assassination, today he is honored by a stone monument in Washington, and celebrated on a national holiday. Jesus’ words about how his people treated God’s spokesmen, the prophets – rejecting them in their lifetimes, and erecting memorials to them after they were safely dead --  point to the necessity of Jesus’ own death.

At the end of today’s gospel reading the opposition to Jesus becomes open and active. “The scribes and Pharisees began to act with hostility toward him,” Luke writes, “and to interrogate him about many things, for they were plotting to catch him at something he might say.”

This hostility continues today – in the form of gossip. Earlier this month Pope Francis, celebrating Mass for those who guard the Vatican, told them: “You watchmen guard the doors, the windows, so that a bomb does not enter.” However, “there are bombs inside, there are very dangerous bombs inside.” He was speaking, the Pope explained, about gossip, the weeds sown amid the wheat, which destroy and kill. “May the life of us all,” the Pope concluded, “the last page of the life of us all be: he was a good person, he sowed the good seed. And not – it would be very sad – that the last page be: he was wicked, he sowed the bomb of discord.”

“REPAY TO GOD WHAT BELONGS TO GOD.”

29^th  Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A.  Matthew 22:15-21.

AIM: To help the hearers live as stewards of God’s gifts.

          Imagine, for a moment, that our country had been defeated in war. Foreigners would rule us, their troops stationed in every American state, city, and town. Chinese, perhaps? Who knows? Imagine how we would feel.  That was the situation in Palestine in Jesus’ day. His people deeply resented the Romans who ruled their country. Especially hated was the annual head tax imposed by the military government. It wasn’t the amount of money involved, only a small sum, but the principle of having to pay it at all, to foreigners. 

           A small group of collaborators, called “Herodians” in today’s gospel, took the position that you can’t fight City Hall. Best to pay the tax, they said, and keep on the right side of the law, and of the authorities who imposed it. They were opposed by people called Zealots, who enjoyed wide popular support. The Zealots said that the tax was an infringement on God’s authority over his people and hence should not be paid at all. In the middle of this controversy were the Pharisees.  They agreed with the Zealots in principle, but rejected direct political action, whether through a tax revolt or other means.

          Matthew makes it clear that the Pharisees and Herodians who ask Jesus his view about the tax were really interested in one thing only: “how they might entrap Jesus in speech.” Matthew’s Greek text says they were plotting to entrap him “in word.” Either of two possible words would spring the trap: Yes or No. If Jesus said Yes, it was lawful to pay the Roman tax, he would forfeit his popularity with the masses, who resented the payment. If he said No, the tax was unlawful and should not be paid, he could be denounced to the authorities for inciting people to break the law. 

          Jesus does not give either of the answers his questioners were looking for.  He seldom did. Instead he demands that they show him the coin used to pay the tax. It is a Roman coin. By producing it from their own pockets Jesus’ questioners show that, whatever their theoretical position, in fact they recognize the existing situation. The country is ruled by foreigners. It is their money which is legal tender, and no other.

          Jesus’ words, “Repay to Caesar what is Caesar’s” reject the radical position of the Zealots, who claimed that the Roman government was unlawful and should not be obeyed at all. All the emphasis, however, is on the second part of Jesus answer: “Repay to God what is God’s.”  Do that, Jesus is saying, and everything else will fall into place.

          Jesus’ questioners had asked him whether it was lawful to pay the hated head tax. When Jesus answers the question, he speaks not or paying but of repaying: “repay to God what is God’s.” What does that mean? What is God’s anyway? The answer is inescapable: everything! From God we receive all that we are and have, sin excepted. God has given us the gift of life, using our parents as his instruments. It is God who has preserved our lives until now in the midst of heaven knows how many dangers to life. God has given us our talents: everything from the five senses which we share with the animals, through the uniquely human gifts (thought, speech, love, and laughter), to the individual talents that make each person unique: how dull life would be if we were all the same.

          God even gives us our possessions and our money. Perhaps you’re thinking: Wait a minute, I’ve worked for what I have. Undoubtedly you have. But how long would you retain your possessions and earning power if you lost your health or

even one significant human faculty? At bottom even the things we own are gifts for the creator and giver of all: God.                       

          If repaying to God what is God’s means anything, it must mean putting God first in our lives. Here are some questions for self-examination. Am I putting God first in my life? Or does he get the leftovers? My spare time (if any)? The gifts and talents which are left over when I have finished doing the things I want to do? The loose change that remains after I have satisfied all my needs and as many luxuries as I think I can afford?

          Jesus would have been shocked at the idea of giving God leftovers. The  religion he learned from Mary and Joseph, and at the synagogue school in Nazareth, taught Jesus that we must give God the firstfruits. In the pastoral society of that day the farmer and shepherd offered God the first fruits of field and flock.  They did this not just to fulfill a legal obligation. They gave God first claim on all they had out of gratitude. This grateful giving of firstfruits was based on the truth that, at bottom, everything comes from God, and hence everything belongs to God.   

          If we truly want to “repay to God what is God’s,” as Jesus tells us to do in today’s gospel, then we must put God first in our lives – in all areas of our lives.  There must be no fenced off areas where He is second, or third; where God is not allowed to enter at all. Does that sound threatening? In reality, it is the key to happiness. 

          Even nature teaches us this lesson. There are two well known bodies of water in the world which jealously hoard every drop of moisture they receive from rain, snow, and their tributary streams. Their names tell us what they have become: the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and the Dead Sea in Israel. Show me a lake whose waters are sweet and fresh, teeming with fish, pleasant to drink and swim in, and I will show you a body of water that gives up all the moisture it receives. You can’t keep it, unless you give it away! The trees teach us the same lesson: already they’re starting to shed their leaves, so that they may put forth new ones next spring. The evergreens are no exception. Walk through a forest of pine, hemlock, or spruce, and you will find the ground covered with a carpet of old needles.

          In a small mountain village in Switzerland I saw, years ago, a fountain, fed by a bubbling spring which flowed day and night. Carved on it was a little rhyme in German: “Wie schön ist das Leben / Bloß geben, nur geben” – in English: “How great to be living, just giving, only giving.” Winston Churchill, the 20^th century’s greatest English-language orator and not a particularly religious man, said the same: “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”

          People who are always giving, who put God first in their lives, make a beautiful discovery. They find that God will never permit himself to be outdone in generosity. They find that what is left over for themselves is always enough, and more than enough. They discover that Jesus’ words are really true: “There is more happiness in giving than in receiving” (Act 20:35).

          There are people here, right now, who have made that discovery. They are the truly happy, the truly rich. Are you one of them? If you’re not, Jesus is inviting you to join their happy company – today.

ST. TERESA OF AVILA

Homily for Oct. 15^th, 2014: St. Teresa of Avila

          We celebrate today one of the great women of the 16^th century, Teresa of Avila in central Spain. Born in 1515 as her mother’s third child and first daughter, she was, in the words of a modern biographer, “a vain and vivacious girl, with a divine agenda.” When she was thirteen, her mother died while giving birth to her tenth child. Devastated, Teresa prayed that henceforth Mary might be her mother. Despite this early piety, Teresa says herself that she was a frivolous teenager, “wearing fancy things, and silly baubles.” This was likely why her father sent Teresa to a convent school at age 16.

          She got on well in the convent. But after 19 months she fell ill and was sent to a deeply pious uncle in the country to recuperate. Conversations with him convinced Teresa that the world would soon end and that if she did not change, she would go to hell. To avoid this, she decided to “bully herself” into becoming a nun. Lacking her father’s permission for this, she stole away at age 20, with the help of an older brother, to the Carmelite convent in Avila. She would remain there for the next quarter-century. It was a relaxed life, with nuns from wealthy families enjoying comfortable suites, pets, and even servants. “Everything about God gave me tremendous pleasure,” Teresa writes, “but the things of the world captivated me. I spent almost twenty years on this stormy sea, falling and rising, then falling again.”

          When she was not quite 40, she had a conversion experience. Her prayer deepened and she began to think of what more she could do for the Lord. Reform of orders for men and women was in the air, and in 1562 Teresa, with only 4 companions, but with the support of her 17 years younger friend and Confessor, St. John of the Cross, founded a new convent with a far more austere life than the one she had left. Teresa founded almost 20 other such convents in the 20 years which remained to her. Exhausted by the travels all over Spain which these foundations required, Teresa died in 1581. She left classic writings on prayer which fill 3 volumes in English translation. They formed the basis for Pope Paul VI’s declaration in 1970 of Teresa of Avila as a Doctor or official teacher of the Church, the first woman to be so honored.

          The modern English Carmelite, Ruth Burrows, writes: “Teresa’s will was identified with our Lord’s. So everything she was, her many gifts and her weaknesses too, were brought into the orbit of her love and dedication. Union with Christ does not mean becoming someone different, renouncing our gifts, changing our temperament; but putting everything we have into our love for God and opening everything we have to his transforming influence. Teresa reached the full potential of personhood: what she was meant to be she became. This is holiness.”

          How wonderful, if something like that could be said of us, when the Lord sends his angel to call us home. To that end, then, we pray:

St. Teresa of Avila, pray for us

"I AM A SINNER" (Pope Francis)

Homily for Oct. 15^th, 2014: Luke 11: 42-46

“Woe to you Pharisees!” Jesus says in today’s gospel. Who are these people about whom we hear so much in the gospels, most of it negative? Their name means “the separated ones.” They looked down on their fellow Jews who paid little attention to all the details of the Jewish law.  

          There is an example of this superior attitude in John’s gospel. The Pharisees and chief priests ask the Temple guards in Jerusalem why they have not arrested Jesus. “No one ever spoke like that before,” the guards reply. “Do not tell us you have been taken in!” the Pharisees respond. “You don’t see any of the Sanhedrin believing in him, do you? Or the Pharisees?” Then comes the condescending sentence:” Only this lot, that knows nothing about the law – and they are lost anyway!” (John 7:45-49).

Jesus never condemns the Pharisees’ meticulous efforts to keep God’s’ law. What he criticizes is their legalistic spirit. “You [Pharisees] pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb, but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God. These you should have done,” Jesus says, affirming the payment of tithes on even the tiniest things, “without overlooking the others”: judgment and the love of God.

Pope Francis spoke similarly in the lengthy interview which was published all over the world in late September, 2013. “The Church sometimes has locked itself up in small things,” he said. And he gave this example: “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. … The teaching of the church is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.” People immediately assumed that the Pope was changing Church teaching. Yet within days he told a group of gynecologists: “Every unborn child, condemned unjustly to being aborted, has the face of Jesus Christ, the face of the Lord.” You can’t get more specific than that.

What is the bottom line? The laws of God and the Church are important. Observing them is the key to happiness. Even more important, however, are help and mercy for those who fail in this – and that is all of us. Asked at the beginning of the interview, “Who is Jorge Bergolio” (the Pope’s original name), he responded: “I am a sinner. This is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.” In saying those words, the Pope spoke for all of us, without exception.

"GIVE ALMS."

Homily for October 14^th, 2014: Luke 11:37-41.

          Jesus is the guest of a Pharisee, a man who is careful to observe all the provisions of the Jewish law. Offered an opportunity to wash his hands before dinner, Jesus offends his host by brushing aside this Jewish custom. An act of rudeness? So it would seem. As the story unfolds we discover, however, the Jesus had a reason for what looks like an act of discourtesy. He wanted to show his host that mere external cleansing is useless if it is not accompanied by internal cleansing as well.

          “Oh, you Pharisees!” He says. “Although you clean the outside of the cup and the dish, inside you are filled with plunder and evil.” What might this mean for us today? A possible modern parallel would be Catholics who are always careful to dress up for Sunday Mass: no shorts or jeans for men, but always a suit and necktie; for women no shorts or tight slacks, but a nice dress; inside, however, unconfessed and hence unforgiven sins: cruelty, resentment, and hate; dishonesty, impurity, and pride. The Lord in his mercy has given us a remedy for such sins: the sacrament of penance or confession. Correctness in dress and outward behavior is important. We should not come to the Lord’s Table as we do to a picnic or baseball game. But inner and spiritual cleansing is even more important.

          Now Jesus surprises us (as he does often). Rather than pointing to confession of sins, he speaks of something else: almsgiving. “But as to what is within, give alms, and behold everything will be clean for you.” Luke wrote his gospel for a partly Gentile community. Almsgiving hardly figured in the ancient pagan world of Jesus’ day. For Jews, however, it was important. The Jewish farmer and shepherd gave the firstfruits of field and flock to the Lord. He did so to express gratitude to the Lord who gives us all we are and have, sin excepted. Only when we are truly thankful to the Lord for all the blessings he showers upon us, so many more than we deserve on any strict accounting, are we truly in a right relationship with him. And we show our gratitude by sharing the Lord’s blessings with our brothers and sisters. Only then, Jesus tells us, will everything be clean for us.

"THIS GENERATION SEEKS A SIGN."

Homily for Oct. 13^th, 2014: Luke 11:29-32.   

          “This generation seeks a sign,” Jesus says. He is referring to the repeated demand of his contemporaries for a miracle so dramatic that it will force them to believe. But belief cannot be forced any more than love can be forced. Jesus’ miracles confirm the faith of those who already believe. They do not compel belief on those who hearts and minds are closed to him and his message.

          Jesus then mentions two such confirming signs: Jonah, and the so-called queen of the south, Sheba. Jonah’s sign was not his survival in the belly of the great fish. The book Jonah is fiction, not history. Like much great fiction, notably Jesus’ parables and Shakespeare’s plays, Jonah  is the vehicle for important truth about God, humanity, and life. The sign of Jonah which Jesus refers to is the immediate repentance of the people of Nineveh – Gentiles without the gift of God’s law – in response to Jonah’s preaching. Jesus contrasts the response of the Ninevites with the failure of so many of his own people to respond to his message.

          The sign of Queen Sheba is different, though in one respect the same. Like Jonah, she came from afar, motivated however not by a divine command, but by the report that King Solomon possessed wisdom greater than that of all other rulers or sages. “There is something greater than Solomon here,” Jesus says. He is referring to himself. He not merely possesses wisdom: Jesus is wisdom personified. Similarly the statement that “there is something greater than Jonah here” means that Jesus’ message is more compelling than Jonah’s -- yet the people still do not respond. Jesus sums up by saying that the Ninevites and Queen Sheba showed a readiness to respond which his own people do not.

Are we responding? “I have come,” Jesus says in John’s gospel, “that they may have life, and have it to the full” (10:10). Are we embracing Jesus’ offer of life to the full? Or do we think of our faith as observing enough of the Church’s complicated rules and regulations to be able, on Judgment Day, to squeeze our way into heaven?

          Think about it!