Friday, March 23, 2018

"IT IS EXPEDIENT THAT ONE MAN DIE .. ."


Homily for March 24th, 2018: Ezekiel 37: 21-28; John 11:45-56.

          “It is better to have one man die [for the people], than to have the whole nation destroyed.” These words of the Jewish high priest Caiaphas in today’s gospel reading are cynical. They were spoken at a meeting of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, called together to discuss what should be done about the crowds who were becoming followers of Jesus following his raising of Lazarus from the dead. “What are we going to do?” members of the Sanhedrin ask. “This man is performing many signs. If we leave him alone, all will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away our sanctuary and our nation.”  

          Palestine was already controlled by the Roman government of occupation. But the authorities had an agreement with the Sanhedrin, allowing them to control internal affairs, as long as they kept order and saw to it that things remained quiet. Jesus’ miracles, culminating in the raising of Lazarus from his tomb, threatened to destroy this stability. If things got out of hand, the Romans would crack down hard; and the Sanhedrin’s limited authority would be swept away. Caiaphas was proposing a simple solution. Let’s show the Romans we can still control things. We’ll just get rid of Jesus, he says, and things will quiet down.

          Jesus was removed, as we know: by crucifixion. But although it was the hated Romans who executed him, working with the small ruling clique around the Sanhedrin, God remained in charge. As the great nineteenth century convert, Blessed John Henry Newman wrote in a memorable phrase, “God knows what he is about.” Jesus’ death and resurrection brought salvation not only to his own people, but to all peoples. As the gospel writer says: “Jesus died … not only for [his own] nation, but also to gather into one the dispersed children of God.”

          Through baptism we are members of that people; dispersed throughout the world, but united in worship of the One who, by rising from death, has opened for us the gate to life everlasting, with Him.

Thursday, March 22, 2018

HOMILY FOR MARCH 25th, 2018


THE CENTRALITY OF THE CROSS
Passion/Palm Sunday B.  Mark 14:1-15:47.
AIM:  To help the hearers meditate on the cross.
 
Bible scholars tell us that the passion narratives were the first part of the gospels to be written down. From the start the Christian community wanted to preserve faithfully every detail of the Lord=s suffering and death. Mark, whose account we have just heard, says nothing about Jesus= birth and infancy. But he devotes approximately a fifth of his gospel to Jesus= passion. For him, as for all the gospel writers, the cross was central.
Take the cross out of our religion, and you have ripped the heart out of it.  The late Archbishop Fulton Sheen illustrated this truth with a personal experience from the somewhat chaotic time immediate after the second Vatican Council. Some of you may be offended by Sheen=s story. But the cross has offended people from the start. Paul called it Aa stumbling block to Jews, and an absurdity to Gentiles@ (1 Cor. 1:23). 
In his posthumously published memoir, Treasure in Clay, Sheen tells about receiving a phone call one day from a Jewish jeweler in New York whose shop he  had often visited. AWould you like to see a large number of silver crucifixes?@ the jeweler asked. When Sheen visited the shop, the jeweler showed him a little brown bag with dozens of silver crucifixes about four inches high. 
AWhere did you get them?@ Bishop Sheen asked.
AFrom Catholic Sisters,@ the jeweler answered. AThey brought them in to me and said they were not going to use them any more C wearing the crucifix separated them from the world. They wanted to know how much I would give them for the silver.@ The jeweler added: AI weighed them out thirty pieces of silver. What is wrong with your church?@ 
AJust that!@ Bishop Sheen replied. AThe contempt of Christ and his cross which makes it worldly.@

Fulton Sheen would not have been the man he was if he had not concluded the story by writing: AThose words became the channel of the Holy Spirit working in his soul. I explained to him the cost of redemption, the blood of Christ. He embraced the faith, and died in it.@     

The Vietnamese bishop, Nguyen Van Thuan, who spent thirteen years in a Communist prison in Vietnam, before Pope John Paul II brought him to Rome, were he died as a cardinal in 2002, wrote during his time in prison: ALook at the cross and you will find the solution to all the problems that assail you.@ He was expressing what countless others have discovered: to learn the deepest meaning of our holy faith, we must take our stand beneath the cross and contemplate the One who hangs there. All the great lessons of life are learned at the foot of the cross.

 

"THE FATHER IS IN ME, AND I IN THE FATHER."


Homily for March 23rd, 2018: John 10:31-42.

          “The Jews picked up rocks to stone Jesus,’ The gospel today starts where yesterday’s gospel ended: with Jesus’ critics throwing stones at him. As we saw yesterday, that was commanded in the book Leviticus as the punishment for blasphemy (24:16). 

          Whenever critics accuse him of blasphemy for making himself equal to God, Jesus responds by saying, I have not made myself anything. It is God our Father who has made me who I am. Jesus says in today’s gospel “that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

          John’s gospel starts with that claim: “In the beginning was the Word; the Word was in God’s presence, and the Word was God. He was present to God in the beginning” (John 1:1). Words are used to communicate. Since we cannot see God, he sends us his Son, God clothed in human flesh, to show us what God is like. 

          When we listen to Jesus, we hear God speaking to us. When we look at Jesus, we see what God is like. What do we see when we look at Jesus? We see that he preferred simple, ordinary people. He came to the world in a provincial village where nothing interesting or important ever happened. Jesus moved not among wealthy or sophisticated people, or among scholars and intellectuals, but among ordinary people.

Jesus was of the earth, earthy. In his youth he worked with his hands in the carpenter’s shop. His teaching was full of references to simple things: the birds of the air, the wind and the raging waves, the lilies of the field, the vine, the lost sheep, the woman searching for her one lost coin, leavening dough with yeast, the thief breaking in at night. 

          In preferring simple people and simple things, Jesus was showing us what God is like. He who is God’s word, God’s personal communication to us, is saying that God loves humble people. In his earthiness Jesus shows us God’s love for this world and everything in it.

Often we think of God and religion as concerned only with some higher, spiritual realm. That is wrong! God loves the earth and the things of earth. He must love them, because he made them. And God does not make anything that is not lovable. God made each of us, using our parents as his agents. And he loves us with a love that will never let us go.

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

"BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS, I AM."


Homily for March 22nd, 2018: John 8:51-59.

          “Whoever keeps my word will never see death,” Jesus says. The response to this astonishing statement is fully understandable. ‘We always suspected you were crazy – now we know it.’ In the dialogue which follows Jesus’ critics press home the absurdity of what Jesus has just said. Abraham died. All the prophets died. Who are you claiming to be?

          Jesus is about to tell them that he is without beginning or end. There was never a time when he was not. There will never come a time he will cease to be. Because he is not only human but also divine, he stands outside time. Since he knows, however, that this will seem to his hearers like boasting, he says: “If I glorify myself my glory is worth nothing; but it is my Father who glorifies me.”

          The exchange between Jesus and his critics culminates in the most astonishing statement of all, Jesus words: “Before Abraham was I AM.” What clearer statement could we have of Jesus’ claim to stand outside of time? As we saw two days ago, God had given the divine name I AM to Moses as the answer to his question about how to identify the One who was sending him back to Egypt to liberate his people. Tell them, God said, that I AM sent you.

          For Jesus’ hearers his appropriation of the sacred name of God was not merely astonishing. It was blasphemous. That is why the hearers take up rocks to throw at Jesus. The were doing what was commanded in Leviticus: “He who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him” (24:16). 

          The gospel’s final line seems like an anti-climax: “Jesus hid and went out of the temple area.” In reality, it is no anti-climax. It shows that Jesus is still in charge. His hour had not yet come. When it did, he would lay down his life: not under compulsion, but willingly – for us.

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

"THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE."


 
Homily for March 21st, 2018. John 8:31-42.

            “Everyone one who commits sin is a slave of sin,” Jesus says. What does that mean, “a slave of sin?” To answer that question we must start with temptation. Where does it come from? From Satan. His name means “the Tempter.” Jesus calls him “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

          Satan lied to Jesus in the second of the three temptations during Jesus’ 40-day fast in the wilderness. “Then the devil … showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant. He said to him, ‘I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms: the power has been given to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Prostrate yourself in homage before me, and it shall all be yours” (Luke 4:5ff). That was a lie. Jesus recognized the lie at once, and rejected the temptation with a scriptural quote: “You shall do homage to the Lord your God; him alone shall you adore” (Deut. 6:13).

          We all experience temptation, all the time. ‘Go ahead. Do it. Why not? It will make you feel  good. You’ll be happy. Everybody does it.’ Every one of those statements is a lie. So we say, ‘Well, just this once.’ And then we find that it’s not just this once. Having yielded to Satan’s lies, we yield again – and again, until we find that we’ve acquired a habit, which soon has us in its grip. Over time we discover that we are slaves of sin, as Jesus says in today’s gospel. Breaking the habit is very difficult.

          But not impossible. “If you remain in my word,” Jesus says, “you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” What is this truth that will set us free? It is knowing that when the Lord God set his mark on us at baptism, he made us his sons and daughters,  sisters and brothers of his Son, Jesus. As long as we stay close to him, we are happy; yes, and we are also free. And when we wander off, as all of us do at times, he is ready to forgive us and to restore us to his friendship. He does that in the sacrament of penance, or confession.  

More than once Pope Francis has heard confessions at St. Peter’s basilica in Rome. A video made on one such occasion, and which soon went viral on the Internet, shows the Pope kneeling in another confessional to confess his own sins, before he goes to the confessional assigned to him. I have an appointment with my own confessor next week. If you have not celebrated this sacrament recently, I hope you will do so before Easter. It’s not something unpleasant like going to the dentist, It is a personal encounter with One whose love will never let you go. He wants to set you free. His name is Jesus Christ.    

Monday, March 19, 2018

"I AM."


Homily for March 20th, 2018: John 8:21-30.

          “Many came to believe in him,” we just heard. Others, however, did not. As he nears his arrest, trial, and crucifixion, Jesus speaks with increasing urgency. “If you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” That sentence makes sense only if we know the story of God calling Moses, already an old man, to return to Egypt and deliver his people from slavery to the Egyptians. Moses asks what he is to say to his people when they ask who has sent him. And God responds: ‘Tell them that I AM has sent you.’ So what Jesus is saying in the gospel we just heard is that only those who believe he is the divine Son of God will have their sins forgiven.

          The gospel readings for the previous Lenten Sundays have been giving reasons to believe in Jesus as God’s divine son. In the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration four weeks ago we saw the divine light of his divinity momentarily breaking through the veil of his humanity. Three weeks ago we heard about Jesus cleansing of the Temple and saying: “Destroy this Temple and I will raise it up” – words which the hearers assumed referred to the Temple building. In reality, Jesus was speaking about the Temple of his body, and hence about the resurrection. Two Sundays ago we heard Jesus saying: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not die, but may have eternal life.”

          “Because he spoke this way,” today’s gospel tells us, “many came to believe in him.” In his book Jesus of Nazareth Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI writes that those who welcomed Jesus as he entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey on the first Palm Sunday “were not the same crowd that later demanded his crucifixion” (p.8). That crowd consisted, Pope Benedict writes, of “the Temple aristocracy,” a small ruling clique who felt their power threatened by Jesus’ teaching and claims – and not even all of them, as we see in the case of Nicodemus, a member of the ruling caste, but secretly Jesus’ disciple (cf. op.cit. 185f).

“Just as the Lord entered the Holy City that day on a donkey,” Pope Benedict writes, “so the Church [sees] him coming again and again in the humble form of bread and wine.” Greeting him, we are encountering the One who made us; the One who upholds us at every moment of our lives; who is always close to us, even when we stray far from him; who loves us more than we can ever imagine; who is waiting for us at the end of life’s road, to welcome us into the place he has gone ahead to prepare for us; where we shall experience not just joy but ecstasy – for we shall see God face to face.

Sunday, March 18, 2018

JOSEPH DECIDED TO DIVORCE HER QUIETLY


Homily for March 19th, 2018: 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 they say in England, “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. 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 in a dream 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 only 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 friends and  servants for Mary and her Son Jesus.