THE PHARISEE AND TAX COLLECTOR

Homily for March 10^th, 2018: Luke 18:9-14.

The Pharisees have had such a bad press that we think the first man in this story must be a hypocrite. He was not. He really has done all the things he lists in his prayer. The tax collector, on the other hand, is a public sinner. He collects taxes for the hated Roman government of occupation. Much of it goes into his own pocket. Unable, like the Pharisee, to point in his prayer to any semblance of a good conduct record, he appeals simply to God=s mercy: AO God, be merciful to me, a sinner.@ 

Here is what our Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI says about these two men in his book, Jesus of Nazareth [pp. 61f]:

AThe Pharisee can boast considerable virtues; he tells God only about himself, and he thinks that he is praising God in praising himself. The tax collector knows that he has sinned, he knows he cannot boast before God, and he prays in full awareness of his debt to grace. [AGrace@ is the technical term for God=s freely given love, something we can never earn.] ... The real point is ... that there are two ways of relating to God and to oneself. The Pharisee does not really look at God at all, but only at himself; he does not need God, because he does everything right by himself. He has no real relation to God, who is ultimately superfluous B what he does himself is enough. 

AThe tax collector, by contrast, sees himself in the light of God. He has looked toward God, and in the process his eyes have been opened to see himself.  So he knows that he needs God and that he lives by God=s goodness, which he can not force God to give him and which he cannot procure for himself. He knows that he needs mercy and so he will learn from God=s mercy to become merciful himself, and thereby to become like God. ... He will always need the gift of goodness, or forgiveness, but in receiving it he will always learn to give the gift to others.@

Happy are we if those words describe us: people who know we shall always need the gift of God=s goodness and forgiveness; and if, in receiving these gifts we learn to pass them on to others

 

THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT

Homily for March 9^th, 2018: Mark 12:28-34.

          The man who asks Jesus, “Which is the first of all the commandments,” is called a scribe. He is himself a teacher of the law. He is giving Jesus an orthodoxy test. By answering with a verse from the Old Testament book Deuteronomy about total love of God, Jesus passes the test.

          People today are still asking the scribe’s question. What is most important in our faith? Is being baptized most important? Or going to Mass, especially on Sunday? Or is being kind to our neighbor most important? Or trying to serve the poor and struggling for a more just society? There are strong arguments for all of these things. Jesus’ answer remains true, however. The practice of our faith begins with total love of God. That is the indispensable foundation of everything else.

          Devout Catholics today recite three times daily the Angelus prayer: morning, noon, and at night. In Jesus’ day devout Jews recited three times daily the verse from Deuteronomy about loving God totally which Jesus cites in his answer to the scribe.

          Jesus goes on then to cite a second Old Testament verse, this one from Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18). The scribe praises Jesus’ double answer, saying that loving God and neighbor is “worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” We find the same thing said in many of the Old Testament prophets. The equivalent statement today would be this: loving God and neighbor is more important than all novenas, litanies, pilgrimages, and prayers to the saints.   

          As the conversation concludes, Jesus tells his questioner: “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” “Not far” he says, because of the new commandment which Jesus will give his disciples before his crucifixion. “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12-23). Perhaps someone is asking: How can I do that? Jesus was divine. I’m only human. The answer to that question is simple. On our own we cannot love as Jesus loved. Aided, however, with the Holy Spirit, we can love as Jesus loves us. So we pray in this Mass: Come Holy Spirit, kindle in us the fire of your love!

DIA-BOLOS

Homily for March 8^th, 2018: Luke 11:14-23.

        We are just half-way through Lent. Today is the 20^th of the 40 days. As our pilgrimage to Easter continues, the gospel readings at Mass show the opposition to Jesus mounting. Today, when Jesus heals a man previously unable to speak, some are amazed; others are critical. And some of the critics charge that Jesus is able to do such things only because he has entered into a pact with Satan. Still others find the miracle of healing unpersuasive. They demand “a sign from heaven.” All agree on one thing, however: Satan is a real person, of great power.

        That is anything but modern. Most people today, even many Christians, think of Satan as just one of the many legends from the past which we enlightened moderns have discarded. We still pray, however, in the words of the one prayer which Jesus gave us, “deliver us from evil.” Here is what the Catechism says about that prayer.

   “In this petition, evil is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the Evil One, the angel who opposes God.” In Greek, the language of the New Testament, the name for the Devil is diabolos. That gives us the English word which describes the Devil’s work: “diabolic.” The first part of the Greek word, dia, means “through” or “across.” Bolos is from the Greek word for “throw.” The Catechism says, therefore, “The devil (diabolos) is the one who ‘throws himself across’ God’s plan and his work of salvation accomplished in Christ.” (No. 2851) Satan is no long discarded legend. He is person of real power. Both Scripture and the Catechism call him “a murderer from the beginning … a liar and the father of lies, the deceiver of the whole world.” (No. 2852)

        When we ask, in the final petition of the Lord’s Prayer, to be delivered from the Evil One, “we pray as well [the Catechism says] to be freed from all evils, present, past, and future, of which he is the author or instigator. In this final petition, the Church brings before the Father all the distress of the world. Along with the evils that overwhelm humanity, the Church implores the precious gift of peace and the grace of perseverance in expectation of Christ’s return. By praying in this way, she anticipates in humility of faith the gathering together of everyone and everything in him who has ‘the keys of Death and Hades,’ who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.’” (No. 2854)

 

"GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD . ."

Homily for March 11th, 2018: Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B.

Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:14-21.

AIM:  To proclaim God’s unconditioned love, and appeal for a response.

 

          At the center of every Catholic Church the world over is a cross. The cross hangs around the necks of hundreds of thousands of people in our world who give no other outward sign of being religious. Teachers of young children report that when they offer the youngsters a selection of holy cards and ask them to choose one, time and again children choose the picture of Jesus on the cross.

          Why is the cross so important, and so central? Why is it hanging, right now, around the necks of thousands of our fighting men and women in the Middle East? Why, after two thousand years, has the cross lost none of its fascination and power? The best answer is also the simplest: because the cross is a picture of how much God loves us. “There is no greater love than this,” Jesus tells us, “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).

          “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,” we heard in the gospel.  It was the most God had to give. That is why the cross is at the center of every Catholic Church the world over. That is why the cross is also at the center of the Church’s preaching – or should be. Many people associate the words “preaching” and “sermon” with a list of Do’s and Don’ts: all the things we must first do or avoid before God will love us and bless us. Yet the gospel is supposed to be good news. Is it good news to be told that God won’t love us until we have kept enough of his many rules to show that we are worthy of his love? That doesn’t sound like very good news to me. It sounds like horribly bad news.

          The gospel is the good news that God loves us just as we are, right now.  How much does God love us? Let me tell you, through an Internet posting I received some time ago:

          "If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. 

          If God had a wallet, your photo would be in it. 

He sends you flowers every spring. He sends you a sunrise every morning.  He never lets you out of his sight. 

Do you know why? Maybe you’re thinking it’s because he wants to catch you breaking one of his rules. Many people think that. They’re wrong – dead wrong. 

God never lets you out of his sight because he loves you so much that he can’t take his eyes off you. 

          Face it, friend — he’s crazy about you! 

God doesn't promise days without pain, laughter without sorrow, sun without rain; but he does promise strength for the day, comfort for the tears, and light for the way."

          That is Paul’s message in our second reading: “God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us [Note: not because of our love for him], even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ. ... For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God ...”      

          Does this mean that obedience to God’s law — all those Do’s and Don’ts — is unimportant? Of course not. God’s law tells us how to respond to the free gift of God’s love. But the preaching of God’s law has little power to convert. It is the proclamation of God’s love which break’s through hardened hearts. Let me give you an example.

          Marie is eighty-nine years old and a widow. She has lived for the last year in a nursing home. It is hard to grow old, to have to give up your own place and to be dependent on others. Marie hasn’t adjusted yet. She is crabby and disagreeable much of the time. She complains over trifles. She criticizes those who look after her, often for little or no reason. Her loved ones have reproached her for her bitterness, and tried to talk her out of it. They’ve failed.      

          One day Marie received a letter from her grandson at college. He told her how much the whole family loved her, how in her old age she was an inspiration to them. He said how much he admired her. Shortly after she received the letter a priest visited her. He found her clutching the letter, in tears.

          “I want you to read that, Father,” Marie said. When he had done so, she told him she wanted to go to confession. She did so and received the Lord’s forgiveness: that love that will never let us go, which heals us and makes us well again.

          Afterwards Marie was transformed. For the first time anyone could remember she was kind to the nurses. Instead of criticizing them, she thanked them for all they did for her. What had changed her? Simply a letter which said: “Grandma, we love you.” It is love that breaks through. And the cross is a picture of God’s love for us. 

          “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,” we heard in the gospel, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” 

          The One who hangs on the cross, to show us God’s love, says elsewhere in this gospel according to John: “I am the light of the world” (8:12). And in today’s gospel he tells us that our eternal destiny is being determined, even now, by how we react to his light: “Everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.” 

          Are you walking in the light of Jesus’ love? Or do you fear his light because of what it might reveal in the dark corners of your life which, like all of us, you try to keep hidden? We all have those dark corners. Now, in this hour, Jesus Christ is inviting you to put away fear. Come into the bright sunshine of his love. Once you do that, the fire of Christ’s love will burn out in you everything that is opposed to his light. Then the reason for your fear will be gone. Then you will have no need to hide. You will be home. You will be safe: safe for this life, but also for eternity.

          “Whoever believes in [Jesus Christ] will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil.”

          The eternal destiny of each one of us is being determined by our response to the light, and love, of Jesus Christ. He is waiting for your response, right now.

 

"I CANCELLED YOUR ENTIRE DEBT."

Homily for March 6^th, 2018: Mathew 18:21-35

          “Lord, when my brother wrongs me,” Peter asks Jesus, “how often must I forgive him? Seven times?” “No,” Jesus replies, “not seven times; I say, seventy times seven times.” The number seven was the number of fullness, for Jews in Jesus’ day. Jesus was saying that the duty of forgiveness was unlimited. Then, as so often, Jesus tells a story to illustrate his teaching.

          The story’s opening is ominous. A king, for Jesus’ hearers, was a man with power of life and death over his subjects. The people with whom he intends to settle accounts are officials responsible for collecting the king’s taxes. “One was brought in, who owed a huge amount.” A lifetime was insufficient to pay it. The king’s cruel punishment, ordering not only the man himself but his whole family to be sold into slavery, would have shocked Jesus’ hearers. Then comes a surprise. When the man pleads for time to pay the debt, the king suddenly shows mercy: “Moved with compassion, the master … forgave him the debt.”

          No sooner delivered from his desperate plight, the official finds a colleague who owes him “a much smaller amount,” and demands immediate payment in full. The second official’s reaction to the demand that he pay his debt mirrors that of the first. “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.” The sole difference is that the second official’s debt could easily be paid, given reasonable time. How shocking for those hearing the story for the first time to learn of the first official’s harsh response. Seizing his colleague by the throat and throttling him, he insists that the man be imprisoned until the debt is paid.

          In the story’s conclusion the colleagues of the two debtors go and report the injustice to the king. Summoning the first official again, the king reminds him of the unmerited mercy he has received and, in an act of grim irony, grants the man what, in his original desperation, he had requested: time. Now, however, the time will be spent not in repayment but in prison, under torture. This detail would have deeply shocked Jesus’ hearers. In Jewish law torture was unknown.        

The story’s lesson is simple: if we are not forgiving toward others, as God is already forgiving toward us, we risk discovering one day that the forgiveness God has extended to us has been canceled. Jesus is telling us, in short, that our treatment of others, here and now — and especially of those who have wronged us — is already determining where, how, and with whom we shall spend eternity.   

THE CURE OF A V.I.P.

Homily for March 5^th, 2018: 2 Kings 5:1-15.

          Read the Bible through, and you will find every type of person you will ever encounter or even read about. The Syrian General Naaman, whose story we heard in our first reading, and whom Jesus recalls in the gospel, is the original V.I.P. – a Very Important Person. We see this in the retinue he takes with him on his visit to what he considers the unimportant little country of Israel. He brings with him a treasure in silver and gold, ten sets of elaborate court dress, the horses and chariots necessary to transport all this booty, and the personnel necessary to keep everything in order and to ensure that Naaman himself has a safe journey, with all the comforts he requires.

          The reason for his trip is the report which has reached him from one of his wife’s servant girls that there is a prophet in Israel who can cure people of Naaman’s disease: leprosy. Naaman deals initially with Israel’s king. You wouldn’t expect a man of his importance to go traipsing through a piddling little foreign country looking for a mere prophet, would you? When the king sends him on to Elisha, and Naaman finds out, upon arrival at the prophet’s modest abode, that Elisha won’t even come out to greet him, but sends him a note instead, he is indignant. When he reads the note, his indignation turns to outrage. It tells him that if is looking for a cure he should wash seven times in the nearby river Jordan. ‘You call that a river?’ Naaman protests angrily. ‘Back where I come from, that’s nothing but a muddy creek. I’m going home.’

          At this point the real hero of the story appears: someone in Naaman’s entourage who finds courage to say the Great Man: ‘What have you got to lose? Why not try what the prophet says?’ Naaman does so – and he is healed! He returns to Elisha, who comes out now, and hears Naaman confess: “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel.” Naaman’s cure is not only physical. It is mental and spiritual as well. His mind, and with it his soul, have been changed. He realizes that it’s not all about himself, his ideas, his expectations.

          What about us? Are we open to the other – open to God? Are we willing to acknowledge that our own ideas, our goals, our dreams, may fall short of what the Lord God, who loves us more than we can ever imagine, wants for us – and yes, has in store for us -- if only we can stop thinking it’s all about me, me, me, and tell God: “Not what I want Lord, but what you want?”