IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY

June 9^th, 2018: Immaculate Heart of Mary. Luke 2:41-51.

          ADid you not know that I must be in my Father=s house?@ Jesus asks his worried parents, worn out from a frantic three-day search for their twelve-year-old son. The question is Jesus= first recorded utterance in Luke=s gospel. He speaks the words in the building which, for all believing Jews of that day, including Jesus himself, was the earthly dwelling place of God. The Temple at Jerusalem was the most sacred shrine of the people God had chosen to be especially his own.

With Jesus= coming, however, God was creating a new dwelling place on earth: not a building of wood and stone, but the living flesh of the twelve-year-old boy who stood in that building and spoke of his need to be Ain my Father=s house.@ 

Here is what Pope Benedict says in his book on the infancy narratives about this exchange between mother and son:

Jesus’ reply to his mother’s question is astounding: How so? You were looking for me? Did you not know where a child must be? That he must be in his father’s house, literally ‘in the things of the Father,’ Jesus tells his parents: ‘I am in the very place where I belong – with the Father, in his house.’ There are two principal elements to note in this reply. Mary had said: ‘Your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.’ Jesus corrects her: I am with my father. My father is not Joseph, but another – God himself. It is to him that I belong, and here I am with him. Could Jesus’ divine sonship be presented any more clearly? (p. 123f)

Today’s gospel reading tells us that Jesus’ parents “did not grasp what he said to them.” As time went on, there would be much more that Mary and Joseph did not grasp and could not understand, at the time it was happening. They continued to trust in their Son, nonetheless, and to believe in him.

What better prayer could we offer, as the Church today celebrates Mary’s immaculate heart, than to ask that her trust and faith may be ours.

SACRED HEART: BLOOD AND WATER.

Homily for June 8^h, 2016. Feast of the Sacred Heart: John 19:31-37.

          “When they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs, but one soldier thrust a lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out. The soldier who thrust the sword into the Lord’s side is called, in legend, St. Longinus. The legend says that he was almost blind; but that his sight was restored when some drops of Jesus’ blood fell upon his eyes; whereupon he cried out, “Truly, this was the Son of God” (Mark 15:39).

          Moving from legend to history, it is noteworthy that from antiquity Christians, starting with the ancient Church Fathers, have interpreted the blood and water that flowed from Jesus’ side as symbols of baptism and the Eucharist. In baptism we are made God’s sons and daughters, hence brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. The body and blood of Jesus which we receive in Holy Communion nourish us. Unlike ordinary food, which through the process of digestion becomes part of us, so to speak, the heavenly food of the Eucharist makes us into what we receive, members of Christ’s body, the Church. An  ancient prayer, known by its first two words in Latin as the Anima Christi, says: “Soul of Christ, sanctify me; body of Christ, save me; blood of Christ inebriate me.”

          We experience something like intoxication when we receive the Lord’s blood devoutly: with sorrow for our sins and thanksgiving for God’s blessings; for Christ’s blood comes from his heart. And that explains why the Church gives us this passage from John’s gospel on today’s feast of the Sacred Heart. The feast celebrates the Lord’s love for us. Unlike human love, the love of Jesus Christ which we celebrate today is unconditional. Like God himself, this love is always there. God never stops loving us, even when we fail to respond to him. It is because of this unconditional, no-strings-attached love that God never grows tired of forgiving us, though we too often grow tired of asking for his forgiveness. Our wonderful Pope Francis said that within days of his election as Bishop of Rome. He has repeated the statement many times since.

          We pray, then, in this Mass: “Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us. Sacred Heart of Jesus, make our hearts like yours.”     

"WHICH COMMANDMENT IS GREATEST?"

Homily for June 7^th, 2018: Mark 12: 28-34.

          Which commandment comes first? Jesus is asked in today’s gospel. It was a standard question amongst rabbis in Jesus’ day. Jesus answers by citing two well known Old Testament texts, from Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19, about loving God and others. The question is still being asked today, when people want to know is it more important to worship God, or to serve the poor? The shortest answer is: both are important.

          If people want to know which is primary, then the answer is, worship. But if our worship has no consequences in daily life, it is hypocrisy which cries to heaven for vengeance. On the other hand, service of others which is not performed for love of God, but for the uplifting feeling of serving a noble cause, or some other human ideology, is not genuine service. Those “served” in this way experience not the warmth of compassion, but the cold impersonalism of bureaucracy, which undermines so many of the best intentioned efforts of the welfare state to help the poor and disadvantaged. 

          We followers of Jesus Christ are called to live at the intersection of the vertical and the horizontal. That is where Jesus lived. It is also where he died. The cross, which is itself the literal intersection of the vertical and the horizontal, tore Jesus apart and killed him. For us too the attempt to live where the vertical and horizontal intersect will mean pain, rending asunder, and ultimately death. But this is precisely that dying-in-order-to-live of which Jesus himself speaks often in the gospels. For behind the cross Christians have always seen, and we must always see, the open portals of the empty tomb – the sign and proof that death is not the end. Death was not the end for Jesus. It will not be the end for us; it will be rather the gateway to new life, unbelievably more wonderful than this one. It is Jesus’ resurrection which enables us to live as people of hope – and above all as people of joy. 

 

LIFE AFTER DEATH

Homily for June 6^th, 2018: Mark 12:18-27.

Jesus= critics present him with a hypothetical case about a woman who has been married to seven husbands. Jesus might have told his questioners that the case was too frivolous to merit comment. Instead Jesus shows himself, here as elsewhere, to be a model teacher by using his opponents= attempt to show him up as the occasion for serious teaching about the future life.

Which of the woman=s seven husbands will have her as his wife after death, Jesus= critics ask. Jesus= answer falls into two parts. First, he says that life beyond death is not a prolongation of life on earth. It is something completely new. That is the meaning of Jesus= statement that Athose who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.@ A fundamental purpose of marriage is the continuation of the human race through the procreation of children. Beyond death there is no need for more children to be born. 

The second part of Jesus= answer addresses his critics= contention that the idea of a future life is absurd. On the contrary, Jesus tells them, our own Scriptures clearly imply the resurrection when they represent Moses addressing the Lord as Athe God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.@ Those final words are crucial: all are alive to God, even those who have died. Before him, Jesus is saying, those long dead patriarchs remain alive. 

Jesus= way of interpreting Scripture may not be ours. But his teaching is not hard to grasp. His fundamental point is that our hope of life beyond death is not based on wishful thinking, but on the nature of God himself. He is not just a philosophical Afirst cause,@ an Aunmoved mover,@ or the Agreat architect of the universe.@ God is all those things, yet he is infinitely more.     

The God whom Jesus reveals is our loving heavenly Father, who enters into a personal relationship with us B a relationship of love. This love relationship cannot be terminated by death, any more than God=s relationship of love with his Son was ended by Jesus= death.

I learned this very early, through my mother=s death when I was only six years old. A few days after my mother=s funeral, my father told me: AOur love for Mummy continues, and her love for us. We must continue to pray for her. She is with God. He is looking after her. Our prayers can help her.@ That made sense to me when I was only six. It still makes sense to me eight decades later. I pray for my dear mother by name in every Mass I celebrate. I encourage you to pray for your own departed loved ones at the prayer for the dead in the prayer of consecration.

 

"REPAY TO GOD WHAT IS GOD'S."

Homily for June 5^th, 2018: Mark 12:13-17.

          Many of those who put questions to Jesus did so not to get information, but to “catch him in speech.” They hoped to get a reply that they could use against him. This is the case in today’s gospel. The taxes imposed by the hated Roman government of occupation were deeply resented by Jesus’ people. If Jesus told people not to pay, he could be denounced to the authorities. If he said we should pay, he would be discredited with the people. 

          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 those 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. Note that Jesus speaks not or paying but of repaying: “repay to God what is God’s.” What is God’s anyway? The answer is inescapable: everything! From God we receive all that we are and have, sin excepted. God even gives us our possessions and our money. 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 have worked for are gifts from 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. People who do that 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, after giving God the first portion of their time, talent, and treasure, is always enough, and more than enough. They discover that Jesus’ words are really true: “There is more happiness in giving than in receiving” (Acts 20:35).

 

"HE WILL TURN OVER HIS VINEYARD TO OTHERS."

Homily for June 4^th, 2018: Mark 12:1-12.

          The story in today’s gospel would have reminded Jesus’ hearers of a similar story in the prophet Isaiah, about God planting a vineyard, namely his people whom he had delivered from slavery in Egypt, in a new land. God had lavished care on his vineyard, his people, only to find that they failed to produce the fruit he looked for. Isaiah warned that there would be a day of reckoning. The parable in the gospel reading we have just heard gives a similar warning to the leaders of Jesus’ people, who are about to reject him. The vineyard God had given them would be taken away from them, Jesus warns them, and turned over to others.

          That warning is not obsolete. We can read it as addressed 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 Swiss priest, Fr. Walbert Bühlmann, wrote a book entitled 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. Folks, it has already happened. The majority of the world’s Catholics now live in the southern hemisphere. For the first time ever our Pope comes from south of the equator.

          As a 18^th century English hymn has it: “God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.”