"IT IS EXPEDIENT THAT ONE MAN DIE."

Homily for April 13^th, 2019: 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 the  punishment commanded in the book Leviticus 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.

 

"THE FATHER IS IN ME . . . "

Homily for April 12^th, 2019: 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 the  punishment commanded in the book Leviticus 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.

"THEY WATCHED JESUS CLOSELY"

Homily for April 11^th, 2019: 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 entrusted 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. They were doing what is 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.

"THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE."

Homily for April 10^th, 2019. 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 also called “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.  

         A video made in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome a few years ago shows Pope Francis kneeling to confess his own sins, before going to another confessional to hear the sins of others. 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.    

 

  

HE EMPTIED HIMSELF

 

April 14th, 2019: Palm Sunday. Philippians 2:6-11.

AIM:  To show that Christ’s self-emptying is the model for us in our search for self-fulfillment.

          The celebrated English convert, G.K. Chesterton, called the cross “that terrible tree, which is the death of God and the life of man.” Chesterton’s phrase evokes a similar one in the Church’s public prayer for the Feast of the Holy Cross on September 14^th: “You placed the salvation of the human race on the wood of the cross, so that, where death arose, life might spring forth, and the evil one, who conquered on a tree, might likewise be conquered through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Preface).

          We read about the tree of death in the third chapter of Genesis. The writer tells us there that the man and woman whom God placed in his the garden “to till it and to care for it” (Gen. 2:15) were not satisfied with being God’s friends. They wanted to be gods themselves. Believing the devil’s lie, that eating the fruit of the one tree in the garden forbidden to them will make them “like gods” (3:5), they grasp at the opportunity to become divine, and experience instead shame, guilt, and banishment from the garden which symbolizes God’s peace, beauty, and order.

          That simple childlike tale describes the origin of sin in every form: rebellion against our human condition, the desire to be “like gods.” The Genesis story is not just about two individuals. It is the story of Everyman and Everywoman. It is, in short, our story.

          We find it difficult to accept our human limitations. We are not what we would like to be. We long to be in full control of our lives, masters of our destinies. Many people today express this by saying that they want to be beautiful, strong, successful. The Bible says it more simply and more directly: we want to be “like gods.” The result of every attempt to fulfill this desire is the same as in the Genesis story: loss of innocence, shame, guilt, and banishment from the garden of beauty, order, and harmony that God, our Creator, intended for us.

          Jesus, today’s second reading tells us, was made like the man in the Genesis story, “in the form of God.” Unlike that man, however, Jesus “did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.” Instead Jesus accepted the human condition with all its limitations. “He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave ... He humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

          “Because of this,” Paul writes, “God highly exalted him.” The desire to be god-like is not in itself evil. It comes from the spark of the divine in each of us, put there by a bountiful Creator when he fashioned us in his own image. The desire to be “like gods” leads us astray only when we seek its fulfillment in the wrong way: through getting rather than through giving; through power rather than through service; through self-sufficient strength rather than through the weakness of dependence on God and others. The German Protestant theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who gave his life for Jesus Christ in the closing weeks of Adolf Hitler’s tyranny, writes: “The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.”

          The gospel is good news for those – and only for those – who are willing to follow Christ in accepting weakness, suffering, and defeat. To those who accept the inner poverty of the human condition without rebelling against it, God reveals his secrets. One of them is this: God can fill with his love only those who are empty. Jesus, our second reading tells us, “emptied himself.” He invites each of us to do the same. Only when we are empty can God fill us with those things we all long for yet never find on our own: his peace, his happiness, his joy.

"I AM."

Homily for April 9^th, 2019: 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 given us reasons to believe in Jesus as God’s divine son. In the story of Jesus’ temptations on the first Sunday of Lent we saw that Jesus, though human, is also divine. In the story of his Transfiguration on the second Lenten Sunday we saw the light of his divinity breaking through the flesh of his humanity. The Sunday following brought us the story of the workers who had died unexpectedly in a recent construction accident. Their fate warned of the certainty of death and judgment. And Jesus confirmed this lesson with his story of the unfruitful fig tree, cut down because it proved unfruitful – another warning of the need to prepare for judgment.

On the Sunday following we heard Jesus’ story of the Prodigal Sun being welcomed home by his still loving and merciful father. And just two days ago, in Jesus’ story of the woman taken in adultery (for which the punishment, in Jesus’ day was death), Jesus tells us again that God forgives every sinner who repents.

          “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 only days later would cry, “Crucify him.” That cry came, Pope Benedict writes, from “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.

"I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD."

Homily for 8th, 2019: John 8:12-20.

          “I am the light of the world,” Jesus says at the start of today’s gospel (8:12). How dark the world would be without him. In baptism we were commissioned to be lenses and prisms of that light, shining from the face of Jesus Christ. In the first letter of John we learn how we fulfill that commission. “Whoever loves his bother remains in the light . . . Whoever hates his brother is in darkness; he walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes” (1 John 2:10f).

          To understand these words we need to know that the words “love” and “hate” in that passage do not refer to feelings. They refer to our conduct. This becomes clear if we look at Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats in chapter 25 of Matthew’s gospel. There Jesus says that when we come to stand before God in judgment, he won’t ask us how many prayers we’ve said, or how many Masses we have attended. He will ask instead how we have treated other people.

          To those on his right hand, designated as sheep in the story, the king (a stand-in for the Lord God) will say: “Come, you have my Father’s blessing! … For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, in prison and you come to me.” Astonished at these words, those on the king’s right hand ask when they had done all those things. To which the king responds: “As often as you did it for one of my least brothers, you did it for me.” 

Then, to those on his left hand, designated as goats in the story, the king says: “Out of my sight, you condemned, into that everlasting fire prepared for the devil and has angels!” To explain this harsh judgment the king tells those on his left that they have done none of those things. Conduct and not feelings is the standard by which both are judged.

          We pray then in this Mass that when the Lord sends his angel to call us home to Him, he will find us walking in the light --  by doing good to those we encounter along life’s way.