"DO NOT BE AFRAID, MARY."

Homily for December 20th: Luke 1:26-38.

          “Do not be afraid, Mary,” the angel says to the young teenage girl in today’s gospel reading. Her angelic visitor came direct from God. The encounter with the divine is never casual or routine. Mary’s response to the angel’s message, that she was to be the mother of God’s Son, shows her to be the model of trusting faith

          Yet Mary’s faith was blind. She doubted and questioned. “How can this be?” Mary asked the angel who told her she would conceive her child without a human father. What Mary questioned, however, was not so much God, as her own ability to understand God and his plan for her life. Even in the midst of perplexity, however, Mary confessed that God knew best, even if she could not understand what he was about: “May it be done to me according to your word,” she told the angel.

          That assent to God’s plan for her was not a one-time thing.  It had to be constantly renewed, through many sufferings. The first was the humiliation of being an unmarried mother in a little village where everybody knew everyone else’s business, and gossip was rife. Later Simeon told Mary that her Son would be “a sign which men reject,” and that Mary herself would be “pierced with a sword” (Lk 2:35). 

          Upon reaching manhood, Jesus left his mother, as he demanded that his followers should leave their parents.  At Jesus’ farewell meal with his closest friends there was, apparently, no place for his mother — though there was a place for her the next day, at Calvary. There, at the cross, Simeon’s prophecy, that a sword would pierce Mary’s heart, was fulfilled. Yet Mary went on trusting even when — as long ago — she “did not understand” (Lk 2:50).    

          Can there be any doubt that it is precisely this trusting faith of Mary’s which we American Catholics need today?  Which of us can fully explain or understand all that we have experienced in recent years? Today, more than ever, we need the kind of faith which Mary had, the faith she models for us: faith which continues to trust in God even amid things we do not understand and cannot explain.

          Faith in this sense is not something we can summon up by willpower. Faith, the Catechism tells us, “is a supernatural gift from God” (No. 179). And who can doubt that this faith will be given to us in the measure in which we invoke the prayer of the woman who herself modeled this faith, whom Jesus gave as mother to his best friend — and so to all his friends — as he died on the cross? (Cf. Jn. 19:27) And so I invite you to supply the conclusion to the homily, by responding to the age-old prayer based on the angel’s words to Mary in today’s gospel:

          Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among

          women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.

          L  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of

          our death.  Amen.

 

A VOICE FOR THE WORD

Homily for December 19th: Judges 13:2-7, 24-25a; Luke 1:5-15.

          When the angel Gabriel visited the young Jewish teenager, Mary, to tell her that God wanted her to be the mother of his Son, Mary asked, quite naturally, how such a thing could be possible. To which the angel responded: “Nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37).

          Both of our readings today show God doing the impossible. In today’s first reading, the recipient of a gift impossible for anyone but God is identified simply as “the wife of Manoah.” The Bible nowhere gives her name. She is unable to conceive a child. Numerous contemporary articles and books by unfruitful wives testify eloquently to the grief experienced by women whose dreams of motherhood remain unfulfilled.  Manoah’s wife is visited by an angel who tells her that she will have a son who will free his people from their enemies.

          The woman in today’s gospel reading is named: Elizabeth, wife of the Jewish priest Zechariah. Both are far beyond childbearing age. This time the angel bringing the news that she will conceive and bear a son appears not to Elizabeth but to her husband. Zechariah is unable to believe that such a thing is possible. In consequence, the angel tells him, he will lose the power of speech until the promised boy is born. 

          In one of his sermons (293:1-3) St. Augustine uses a play on the two Latin words vox (voice) and verbum (word) to explain the reason for this. Zechariah’s son, John the Baptist, was called, Augustine says, to be a voice: vox – for the word, verbum: Jesus. Jesus is God’s personal utterance and communication to us. While still in his mother’s womb, John’s voice was silent. Only when John, the voice for the Word, was born, was his father’s power of speech restored.

In a different but similar way, we too are called to be voices for God’s Son, the Word: at least by the witness of our lives. St. Francis of Assisi has said it best: 

“Preach always. If necessary, use words.”

MARY, THE WOMAN OF FAITH

4^th Sunday in Advent, Year B.  2 Sam. 7:1-5, 8b-12, 1a, 16; Rom. 16:25-27; Lk 1:26-38.

AIM: To show Mary as the model of trusting faith.

 

          “Unhappy the land that has no heroes,” the German playwright Bertolt Brecht writes in one of his plays. Heroes encourage us. They convince us that life is worth living. Our Catholic heroes are the saints. They do more than encourage us. They also pray for us.

          One of the greatest heroes of Jesus’ people was the man we meet in our first reading today: King David. His career was as romantic as that of any film star or athlete today. From a lowly shepherd boy, the youngest in his large family, David rose to be king of God’s chosen people. On the way David had many setbacks, hard struggles against determined enemies, and at least one fall into serious sin. 

          Our first reading told of David’s desire to build a temple worthy of God.  The prophet Nathan approves of David’s proposal — until Nathan learns that God has other plans. David would not build a house for God. God would build a house for him — not a structure of wood and stone, but a family, a dynasty. “Your house ... shall endure forever,” God tells David. After David’s death, however, God’s plan seemed to collapse. The nation over which David had ruled was carried off into exile. The royal “house” which God has established for David seemed to have come to an end. 

          In the second reading, however, Paul says that God has kept his promise to David.  Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise. He is the “missing link” who supplies the explanation of what had been hidden until his coming. Jesus, Paul says, is “the revelation of the mystery kept secret for long ages, but now manifested ... according to the command of the eternal God and made known to all the nations.”

          On this fourth Sunday in Advent, however, it is not Jesus whom the Church places before us in the gospel, but his mother. How much Catholics used to hear about Mary. How little we hear about her today. Yet Mary has a message of special importance for us today: the message of faith. 

          What is faith? For many Catholics, I think, the word means those truths which we profess when we recite the Creed. Those articles of belief are the faith.  Faith has another meaning, however: a personal meaning. Faith is not merely mental acceptance of truths. Faith is also personal trust. The Creed itself indicates this in its opening words. Not, “We believe that ...”  but, “We believe in ...”  The one we believe in, whom we trust, is God.  

          We learn the meaning of the truths of faith from catechisms and similar works. We learn faith in the sense of personal trust not from books but from people. The greatest model of this trusting faith is the woman the Church places before us in today’s gospel: Mary, the trusting and faith-filled mother of the Lord.

          The kind of trusting faith we see in Mary reckons with the possibility that even our best and holiest ideas of God may be inadequate; that they must be broken and rebuilt anew. Mary models a faith that is prepared for darkness and trial, yet is always open to God. Hers is a faith that threw her totally upon God, permitting him to do with her and her life whatever he would.    

          Yet Mary’s faith was quite modern. It was not blind. Mary doubted and questioned. “How can this be?” Mary asked the angel who told her she was to be the mother of God’s Son. What Mary questioned, however, was not so much God, as her own ability to understand God and his plan for her life. Even in the midst of perplexity, however, Mary confessed that God knew best, even if she could not understand what he was about: “May it be done to me according to your word,” she told the angel.

          That assent to God’s plan for her was not a one-time thing. It had to be constantly renewed, through many sufferings. The first was the humiliation of being an unmarried mother in a little village where everybody knew everyone else’s business, and gossip was rife. Later, when Mary and Joseph presented their infant Son in the Jerusalem Temple, the aged Simeon told Mary that her Son would be “a sign which men reject,” and that Mary herself would be “pierced with a sword” (Lk 2:35). The only story we have of Jesus’ childhood tells of his parents’ grief at his supposed loss, when their Son stayed behind in Jerusalem without informing them.

          Upon reaching manhood, Jesus left his mother, as he demanded that his followers should leave their parents. He said that his true mother and other relatives were not those related by blood, but those who did his will (Lk 8:21).  Sometimes, as at the wedding in Cana, Jesus seemed to treat his mother roughly.  Yet even then she persevered in faith, telling the servants to “do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2:5). At Jesus’ farewell meal with his closest friends there was, apparently, no place for his mother — though there was a place for her the next day, at Calvary. There, at the cross, Simeon’s prophecy, that a sword would pierce Mary’s heart, was fulfilled. Yet Mary went on trusting even when — as long ago — she “did not understand” (Lk 2:50).    

          Can there be any doubt that it is precisely this trusting faith of Mary’s which we American Catholics need today? Which of us can fully explain or understand all that we have heard and read in recent years? Today, more than ever, we need the kind of faith which Mary had, the faith she models for us: faith which continues to trust in God even amid things we do not understand and cannot explain.

          Faith in this sense is not something we can summon up by willpower. Faith, the Catechism tells us, “is a supernatural gift from God” (No. 179). And who can doubt that this faith will be given to us in the measure in which we invoke the prayer of the woman who herself modeled this faith, whom Jesus gave as mother to his best friend — and so to all his friends — as he died on the cross? (Cf. Jn. 19:27) And so I invite you to supply the conclusion to the homily, by responding to the age-old prayer based on the angel’s words to Mary in today’s gospel:

          Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.  Blessed are you among

          women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.

          L  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of

          our death.  Amen.

"JOSEPH DECIDED TO DIVORCE HER QUIETLY."

Homily for December 18th. Matthew 1:18-25.

Luke’s gospel tells us that when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary to tell her that God wanted her to be the mother of God’s son, Gabriel also told her that Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, though far beyond child-bearing age, was also, as our British cousins say, “in a family way” – six months pregnant, in fact. With typical generosity, Mary decides to go and visit Elizabeth. She couldn’t start right away. As I’ve told you so often, it was a man’s world. A woman, especially a young teenager like Mary, could not travel alone. She must have at least one chaperone.

Organizing that took time. Since the whole purpose of the visit was to help with the birth of Elizabeth’s son, Mary was away from home for some months. By the time she got back to Nazareth, she was visibly pregnant. A film I saw a few years ago – I think it was called The Birth of the Messiah – shows Mary’s encounter with Joseph after her months’ long absence. The look on his face is unforgettable.

          According to the law of that day, an unmarried woman who got pregnant could be stoned for bringing shame on her family. Though Mary had been unfaithful to him, Joseph still loved her and did not want to be responsible for her death. Rather than bringing public charges, Joseph decided simply to break off the engagement quietly.

Then something unexpected happens. An angel visits Joseph and tells him: the baby growing in Mary’s womb has no human father. He is God’s Son, the anointed Servant of the Lord, the Messiah, whose coming Israel’s prophets have predicted for centuries. Then Joseph wakes up and realizes it was only a dream.

Or was it really a dream, Joseph wonders? Suppose it’s true? With great courage, and almost super-human faith, Joseph decides to go ahead with his longed planned marriage. For the rest of his life, whenever Joseph had doubts or second thoughts about the life he had chosen, all he had to go on was the memory of a dream when he was only a teenager.

          Friends, we too have staked our lives on a dream: that God exists; that he is a God of love and of justice; that he has called us, as he called Joseph, to be special servants for Mary and her Son Jesus.

                                                                                                  

GENEALOGY OF CHRIST

Homily for December 17th: Matthew 1:1-17.

          To come to Mass eight days before Christmas each year and to hear this long list of mostly strange sounding names – a challenge to any priest or deacon reading them – is discouraging, to say the least. And when we get to the end and find that Jesus’ ancestry has been traced not to Mary but to Joseph, his legal but not his biological father, is jarring. What can we say about all this?

          The list contains both saints and grave sinners. They symbolize all of us, with our strengths and weaknesses, who need the saving power of God. Jesus came, humanly speaking, from some great and talented people, but equally from the poor and insignificant. God, this list tells us, writes straight with crooked lines. He has certainly done that in my life. Which of you could not say the same about yours?

          Especially interesting are the women in the list. The first mentioned is Tamar, a Gentile outside God’s Chosen People, who seduced her father-in-law, Judah, so that she could have a child. The next woman is another Gentile outsider, a prostitute named Hagar, honored by the Jews despite her sinful way of life, because she hid and thus saved from execution the Jewish men sent out by Moses’ successor Joshua to spy out the future home of God’s people. Then there is Ruth, a virtuous woman but also an outsider. Bathsheba, also a Gentile, is not even mentioned by name. She is identified simply as the one “who had been the wife of Uriah.” She was the one who committed adultery with David – whose advances she could hardly refused, given the absolute power of a king in those days. And at the end of her life she would scheme to make sure that one of her own offspring would inherit David’s throne.

          The late great American biblical scholar Raymond Brown writes: “The God who wrote the beginnings on crooked lines also writes the sequence with crooked lines, and some of these are own lives and witness.” Christianity is not just for the talented, the good, the humble and honest. No one is so bad, so insignificant, so devoid of talent that he or she is outside the circle of Jesus Christ. And that includes all of us here today.

"AFTERWARDS HE CHANGED HIS MIND."

Homily for the 3^rd Tuesday in Advent: Matt. 21:28-32.

          Told by his father to work in the family vineyard, the first son refuses. That would have shocked Jesus’ hearers. A father, in their patriarchal society, was a figure of unquestioned authority. Obedience to him was a sacred duty enjoined by the fourth commandment: AHonor your father and your mother.@

“But afterwards he changed his mind and went,” Jesus tells us. Aren’t we sometimes like that? Slow to do what we know is our duty – or even refusing altogether? All that is, in the last analysis, of little account, Jesus is telling us. What counts is not what we say, feel, or intend. The only thing that counts is what we do. Negative feelings, resentment of God=s demands or of the demands of others, are not important if, despite such feelings, we are still trying to do what we know is right. Indeed, being generous with God and others when this is difficult, in spite of the sullen resentment within, is of greater value than obeying God=s call in times of spiritual fervor and zeal.

God sees the difficulties with which we must contend. When we stumble and fall, and think we can rise no more because we=ve been down so often before, we need to ask God to do for us what we can no longer do ourselves. When we approach God in that way, we are sure of a hearing; for then we come before him as sinners, seeking God=s mercy.

Let me conclude with the verses of an evangelical hymn. If you have ever watched a Billy Graham revival on television, you have heard it sung softly by the massed choirs as people come forward to give their lives to Jesus Christ. It goes like this:

Just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me

And that thou bid'st me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come.

Just I am, though tossed about, with many a conflict, many a doubt

Fightings and fears within, without, O Lamb of God, I come.

Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind; sight, riches, healing of the mind,

Yes, all I need, in thee to find, O Lamb of God, I come.

Just as I am: thou wilt receive; wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;

Because thy promise I believe; O Lamb of God, I come.

Just as I am, thy love unknown, has broken every barrier down;

Now to be thine, yes, thine alone, O Lamb of God, I come.

Just as I am, of thy great love, the breadth, length, depth, and height to prove.

Here for a season, then above: O Lamb of God, I come.

 

"BY WHAT AUTHORITY . . ."

Homily for the 3^rd Monday in Advent: Matthew 21:23-27.

          In Jesus’ day, and still in rabbinical schools today, it was common to settle disputed matters by asking one another questions. That is what is going on in the gospel reading we have just heard. “By what authority are you doing these things,” the religious authorities at Jerusalem ask Jesus. They want to know who had given Jesus the authority to cleanse the Temple, as Jesus has just done. Jesus responds with a counter-question: “Who gave John the Baptist the authority to baptize?”

          His critics recognize at once that whatever they answer, they will be in trouble. If they say that John preached and baptized by God’s authority, Jesus will ask them why then did they not believe John. If the critics say that John the Baptist’s authority came from himself only, they will incriminate themselves with the people, who regarded John as a prophet sent by God. The critics take the safe way out by saying simply: “We do not know.” To which Jesus responds: “Neither shall I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

          What does this tell us? It tells us that we cannot demand from God explanations which make sense to us of things we do not understand -- injustice and suffering, for instance. The Old Testament book of Job is about a man who demanded this of God. Job is an upright and good man who suffers a series of major calamities. Why, he asks God – but receives no answer: until finally God appears and asks a series of questions which Job is unable to answer. Where were you, Job, when I made, the sea, the land, the stars of heaven; the birds, the beasts, and man himself? The point of these rhetorical questions is to make Job understand that there is no equality between man and God. The book ends with Job accepting that he, a mere man, cannot demand answers of God. “I have dealt with great things that I do not understand,” Job confesses. “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.” (22:2-6).

          Jesus never promised that all would go well with us, or that we would understand when it does not. He promises one thing only: to be with us in good times and bad; and when we encounter suffering and injustice to give us not understanding, but the strength to go on.