"BLESSED WHO HEAR GOD'S WORD . .."

Homily for Our Lady of the Rosary, Oct. 7^th, 2017: Luke 11:27-28.

          “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed,” a woman in the crowd cries out as Jesus is speaking. Jesus’ response to this tribute to his mother surprises us. He might have said, “Truly,” “Indeed,” or perhaps just “Thank you.” He owed his mother so much: his humanity, loving care from infancy through childhood, youth, and adolescence. Yet he says none of those things. The response Jesus actually makes seems almost to contradict what the woman in the crowd has cried out. “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”

In reality this is not a contradiction. For Mary is the first hearer of God’s word. It came to her first when the angel Gabriel told her that she was to be the mother of God’s Son. How much of that word did Mary understand? Well, she understood at least this: that in a small village where gossip was rife and everybody knew everybody else’s business, she was to be an unmarried mother. Despite this bleak prospect, Mary immediately said yes: “Be it done to me according to your word.”

Mary’s attention to God’s word did not stop there. After Mary and Joseph’s frantic search for their 12-year-old son who, unbeknownst to them, had stayed behind in Jerusalem, they heard the boy’s puzzling questions: “Why did you search for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?” On the threshold of his teens, Jesus already knew that God, and not Joseph, was his Father.

Luke (alone of the four gospel writers) tells us that Mary and Joseph “did not understand” what their son had said to them (2:50). After returning to Nazareth, however, Mary continued to “ponder these things in her heart” (vs. 51).

The Lord asks us to do the same. More, he promises that when we do listen to his word, ponder in our hearts what he says to us, and put his teaching into action, we are “blessed.” And that word, in Luke’s original Greek text, makarios, means “happy.” 

"FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES . . . "

Homily for October 6^th, 2017: Baruch 1:15-22; Luke 10:13-16.

"Justice is with the Lord, our God,” we heard in our first reading, “and we today are flushed with shame. … We have sinned in the Lord’s sight and disobeyed him.” And in the gospel we heard Jesus speaking about communities which had suffered for failing to be flushed with shame for their disobedience to the Lord God: Chorazin, Bethsaida, Tyre, and Sidon.

We have a name for people like that. We call them “complacent.” That is a quality which affects just about all of us: some occasionally, others most of the time, or even habitually. It is no accident that Jesus included repentance in the one prayer he gave us, as a model for all prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Repentance, not just occasionally, but daily, is the key, God’s word is telling us through these two readings, to a right relationship with God. Even the greatest saints were conscious that when they came before God in prayer, the first thing they needed to do was to repent. None of the saints ever pointed to their good conduct record when they stood before God in prayer. They knew that any good they had done was possible only because of the inspiration and help they received from the Lord God.

Part of the daily repentance that all of us need is willingness to forgive those who have wronged or hurt us. “Forgive us our trespasses,” Jesus teaches us to pray, “as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The late Archbishop Fulton Sheen encouraged his hearers to forgive others by telling them:

    “If, during life, we forgive others from our hearts, on Judgment Day the all-wise God will permit something very unusual to Himself: He will forget how to add and will know only how to subtract. He who has a memory from all eternity will no longer remember our sins” (Victory over Vice, 14).

     And so we pray, once again: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Amen.

 

"THE KINGDOM WILL BE TAKEN 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 threats from North Korea, 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’ 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-three 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!

"GO, PROCLAIM THE GOSPEL."

Homily for Oct. 5^th, 2017: Luke 10:1-12.

“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 fired with enthusiasm by 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, teachers 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.

 

ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI

Homily for Oct. 4^th, 2017: St. Francis of Assisi.

          Why does a gifted young man, son of a wealthy merchant, 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 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: Francis 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 had cheated his father and must make restitution. Whereupon Francis withdrew and returned to court carrying the expensive clothes he had been wearing, 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."

ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI

Homily for Oct. 4^th, 2017: St. Francis of Assisi.

          Why does a gifted young man, son of a wealthy merchant, 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 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: Francis 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 had cheated his father and must make restitution. Whereupon Francis withdrew and returned to court carrying the expensive clothes he had been wearing, 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."

"SONS OF THUNDER."

Homily or October 3^rd, 2017: 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 not of destruction but 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.”

THE GUARDIAN ANGELS

Homily for Oct. 2^nd, 2017: 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.”