Friday, May 24, 2019

"IF THE WORLD HATES YOU. . . "


Homily for May 25th, 2019: John 15:18-21.

          “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first,” Jesus says in today’s gospel.. Does the world really hate us? I’m sorry to tell you: It does. When we say, publicly and openly, that abortion at any stage of pregnancy, is the deliberate killing of a baby, a crime as grave as the killing of a human being at any age between birth and natural death, the world calls us misogynists, haters of women, enemies of their “reproductive freedom,” who are waging a war on women.

          When we say, publicly and openly, that marriage is exclusively the lifelong union of one man and on woman, rooted in our God given human nature, for the sake not only of uniting hearts and minds, but also for parenthood, we are called homophobes, bigots, enemies of equality as reprehensible as those who defended segregated schools, waiting rooms, and lunch counter in yesteryear’s Jim Crow South.

          The world hates us for saying these things and tells us: “You should be ashamed.” These teachings are not merely personal opinions, as a parishioner told me not long ago when I stated from the pulpit the Church’s teaching about marriage. They are the teaching of the Catholic Church.

          There is a way to avoid this hatred, and it is this: simply be silent about such matters. Then we can continue to go to Mass, and identify ourselves publicly as Catholics without arousing hatred; because the world knows, with a wink and a nod, that there are also “good Catholics”: sensible, modern people who don’t upset anyone by mentioning such matters; because such Catholics agree with those who hate us that the Church’s teachings are outdated, obsolete, and hence, for Catholics, optional and dispensable. Friends, nothing in our Catholic faith is optional or dispensable, any more than any one of the teachings of Jesus Christ is optional. It was Jesus’ refusal to compromise, or be silent, about anything he said that brought him to the cross.

One day each one of us will stand before God in judgment. One of the questions we shall be asked is this: Were you ever ashamed of the gospel? Did you keep silent about any part of it, or did you deny it, out of fear that you would make people uncomfortable or even angry? The answers to those questions will determine, one day, where, how, and with whom, we shall spend eternity. Think about that. More important, pray about it.

 

Thursday, May 23, 2019

"LOVE ONE ANOTHER."



May 24th, 2019: John 15:12-17.
          “Love one another,” Jesus says, “as I have loved you.” Is that realistic? Can we love on command? Certainly not, if the kind of love Jesus is talking about is a matter of our feelings only. Jesus is talking about an attitude. Let me give you an example: a story sent to me by a man who is today a successful architect.
          “Thirty years ago, I was driving a cab for a living. When I arrived at 2:30 a.m., the building was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window. “So I walked to the door and knocked. ‘Just a minute’, answered a frail, elderly voice. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 80's stood before me. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. 
          "‘Would you carry my bag out to the car?’ she said. I took the suitcase to
the cab, then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness. “‘It's nothing’, I told her. ‘I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated’.
          "‘Oh, you're such a good boy’, she said.
          “When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, then asked, ‘Could you drive through downtown?’ 
          "‘It's not the shortest way,’ I answered quickly.
          "‘Oh, I don't mind,’ she said. ‘I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to a hospice’.
"‘I don't have any family left,’ she continued. ‘The doctor says I don't have very
long.’ I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. ‘What route would you like me to take?’ I asked. 
          “For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived as newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes she'd ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.
         We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent. I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.
          "‘How much do I owe you?’ she asked, reaching into her purse.
          "‘Nothing,’ I said.
          "‘You have to make a living,’ she answered.
          "‘There are other passengers,’ I responded. Almost without thinking, I bent
and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly. 
          "‘You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
          “I squeezed her hand, then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a
door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.
          “On a quick review, I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life. We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware — beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.”
          The man who sent me that story offers this final comment. “People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said.  But they will always remember how you made them feel.”
          The One who pours his love into our hearts gives us this greatest of all gifts under one strict condition: that what we have freely received, we freely share with others. Or, to put it another way: You can’t keep Jesus’ love unless you give it away.
 
 

Wednesday, May 22, 2019

"THAT MY JOY MAY BE IN YOU."


May 23rd, 2019: John 15: 9-17.
Was Jesus a joyful person? Or was he sad and serious? The gospels show us that he was both: serious, even sad, when that was appropriate; yet so filled with joy that he could say, in today=s gospel: AI have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete.@
What gave Jesus joy? The beauties of nature, surely. And children. How Jesus rejoiced when little children climbed onto his lap. And what joy he felt when he healed people. 
The deepest source of Jesus= joy, however, was his relationship with his heavenly Father. Every day Jesus realized anew that wherever he might go that day, whatever he might do, he remained in his Father=s loving embrace. Not even Jesus= anguished cry on the cross, AMy God, my God, why have you forsaken me?@ broke Jesus= awareness of his Father=s love and care. Jesus was speaking the first words of Psalm 22, an anguished prayer for help in suffering. The psalm concludes with an affirmation of faith in God: AYou who fear the Lord, praise him ... For he has not spurned ... the wretched man in his misery ... but when he cried out to him, he heard him...@ Even amid the pains of a horrible death, Jesus knew that his Father continued to care for him. 
Jesus= greatest joy of all came after his resurrection. Imagine the joy Jesus experienced at seeing the expressions of shocked disbelief on the faces of his frightened friends C soon turning to exultant jubilation as they realized it was truly the Master they had known and loved, gloriously alive again, victorious over our last enemy: death. 
Jesus wants us to have this joy too. He tells us this in today=s gospel: AI have told you this that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete.@ And he adds: ARemain in my love.@
More than half a century ago a wise and holy Englishwoman named Evelyn Underhill wrote about joy as follows:
This is the secret of joy. We shall no longer strive for our own way; but commit ourselves, easily and simply, to God=s way, acquiesce in his will and in so doing find our peace. 
There are people here today who have experienced the truth of those words.  If you are not yet one of them, Jesus Christ is inviting you to begin C right now!

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

"I AM THE TRUE VINE.


Homily for May 22nd, 2019: John 15:1-8.

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.” Some Bible scholars think that Jesus spoke these words as he crossed the Temple courtyard with his eleven still faithful friends after the Last Supper. It was Passover time, so there would have been a full moon. The golden vine around the Temple wall, which symbolized God’s people, glowed in the moonlight. Pointing first to himself, then to the vine, Jesus says: AI am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower ...@

In calling himself the true vine, Jesus implies a contrast. God=s people, the vine he had brought out of Egypt and planted in a new land, had not been true. Jesus had been true. His death the next day would be Jesus= final act of faithful obedience to his Father=s will. He was calling the little band of friends accompanying him to imitate his faithfulness ABy this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

  To do this, they must remain united with him. ARemain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.@ The person who remains united with him, Jesus says, Awill bear much fruit.@

AMy Father is the vine grower,@ Jesus says. He cares for the branches of his vine in two ways: by pruning those that bear fruit, and by cutting off and burning the unfruitful branches. Jesus= words about these unfruitful branches being thrown into a fire and burned are an implied reference to Judas, who was even then betraying the Lord.

The vine grower=s treatment of the fruitful branches seems at first sight severe: AEvery one that [bears fruit] he prunes so that it bears more fruit.@ The image, easily understood by Jesus= hearers, who were familiar with vineyards and grapes, is that of a gardener pinching off the new green shoots on a vine, so that all the growth can be concentrated in the few early blooming branches which the gardener has selected to bear fruit. 

Faced in life with setbacks, injustice, or suffering B as all of us are, at some time or other B which one of us has not asked: AWhy me? What have I done to deserve this?@ Jesus= words in today=s gospel do not answer these questions. Instead his words challenge us to view setbacks, injustice, and suffering as opportunities to grow. He is inviting us to submit to the vine grower=s pruning, and so to glorify him by producing abundant fruit.

 

Monday, May 20, 2019

THE SCANDAL OF THE CHURCH'S PARTICULARITY


May 19th, 2019: Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year C. Revelation 21:10-14, 22-23.
AIM:  To show the Church=s spiritual beauty and power, hidden beneath surface shabbiness and weakness.

Shortly after he became Pope in November 1958 John XXIII was asked: AHow many people are working in the Vatican now?@ With the humor that made him beloved all over the world, the Holy Father replied: AAbout half.@  
AAbout half@ is a more than generous estimate of the number of baptized Catholics who will attend Mass today. All of us know one of more of these inactive Catholics. If there is someone in your family who seems to feel no need to practice the faith, don=t argue, and certainly don=t nag. Show that loved one a little of the patience the Lord has shown you in your own life. The decision to forego churchgoing is never final as long as life continues. The example of our lives will always have greater converting power than any words we can speak.
Many inactive Catholics say they continue to worship God B just not in the Catholic Church. Some are Anature worshipers.@ They say they feel closer to God on the golf course, or on a drive or walk through the country, than at Mass. Others have joined the Electronic Church. They watch one of the television preachers B almost all of them fundamentalist Protestants. Estimates of the Catholics in their large audience range up to 30% of the total. Finally, there are the Catholics who still go to church, but not to a Catholic church, and thus not to Mass. All of these Catholics who are no longer with us share one thing in common: dissatisfaction with Mass in their own Church. They find our ordinary Sunday worship cold, impersonal, boring, and irrelevant to their needs.   
How different the picture in our second reading today. Like the second reading last Sunday, it is part of the author=s vision of the worship of God in heaven.  Describing the heavenly church, he says: AIt gleamed with the splendor of God. Its radiance was like that of a precious stone, like jasper, clear as crystal.@ If we were to try to persuade the huge number of inactive Catholics that our Sunday worship was anything like that, they=d think we=d lost our marbles. They find the Church and its worship not radiant like a precious stone, but shabby. At bottom it is this shabbiness, in one form or another, which has caused them to drop out. What has turned them off is something called the scandal of the Church=s particularity.
That is a long name for something very simple. The Church=s particularity means our belief that God is present in particular ways, in particular places, at particular times. Catholics believe, for instance, that when, with a priest, we obey Jesus= parting command to Ado this in my memory,@ the bread and wine on the altar are no longer ordinary bread and wine but truly the body and blood of our risen and glorified Lord. At that particular time, and in that particular place, God is present in a special way. 
That is a tremendous claim. It upsets a lot of people. Especially upset are the nature worshipers. God is everywhere, they say. That=s true. God is everywhere. Since we are not angels, however, but bodily creatures of time and space, we are unlikely to experience God=s presence everywhere unless we experience him somewhere in particular. Hence God gives us certain times and places where he is present with a special intensity: in the Eucharist, for instance, or in a building set apart for worship. God=s presence in such particular places does not diminish his presence elsewhere, however, any more than the sun=s light is diminished when we use a magnifying glass to focus sunlight onto a leaf or piece of paper until it burns. 
It is not only the Church=s particularity which turns many people off, but also its shabbiness. And let=s face it: often the Church is shabby. The Mass may be badly celebrated and the homily unprepared, rambling, and boring. The people round us are often strangers, some of them perhaps not Aour kind.@  
No wonder that many people find the Electronic Church, or Protestant worship, more attractive. On TV the preacher is always well prepared; the singing is lively and on key; the congregation is squeaky clean. Moreover, much Protestant worship has a genuine warmth and fervor too often lacking in our Catholic parishes. Some years ago an ecumenical service with Lutherans drew a large congregation which filled our enormous Cathedral in St. Louis. You could tell it was Protestant because of the volume of singing. You could tell it was Catholic because there was a baby crying. That says it all. Face it: often what goes on in Catholic churches is unattractive, cold, irrelevant B in a word, shabby.
 Yet it is precisely amid this shabbiness that we encounter God. He seems to like shabby surroundings. When God came to us in human form, he chose to be born not in the glamour and sophistication of Athens or Rome, but in a backward village on the fringe of the civilized world. The stable and manger at Bethlehem were not romantic like our Christmas cribs. They were smelly and dirty. Today Mary would shelter her son not in a stable but in a garage.  
The Catholic Church calls itself Athe one true Church@ B another example of that particularity which offends people. In claiming to be the one true Church we are not saying that other churches are false. The Catechism says: AThe sole Church of Christ ... subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him. Nevertheless, many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside its visible confines@ (No. 870). The phrase Aone true Church@ means simply that the Catholic Church is, in the fullest sense, the representative today of the body founded by Jesus Christ. In the poetic imagery of our second reading, it means that beneath the Church=s outward shabbiness there is Aradiance like that of a precious stone, like jasper, clear as crystal.@
The Catechism says that this radiance is visible, however, Aonly [through] faith@ (No. 812). It is not the worldly radiance of wealth, impressive church buildings, or power. Today those outward trappings are being taken from us. The Church=s true radiance is inward and spiritual. We have the precious jewels of Holy Scripture, of the sacraments, of the heroisms large and small of innumerable Christians of all ages and both sexes B some of them here in our own parish. Most of these people are known only to God.
Between the Church on earth and the heavenly church described in our second reading there is, however, an important difference. The author of that reading says: AI saw no temple in the city.@ Of course not! There will be no church buildings in heaven, no sacraments, no priests. None of these will be necessary, for in heaven we shall see God face to face. 
Here and now, however, we do need these particular times and places where God has promised to be with us in special ways. People who claim to worship God everywhere in general but nowhere in particular are starry-eyed romantics, acting as if they were already in heaven while they are still on earth. The same is true of people who look for a Apure@ church with no shabbiness. A pure church would be wonderful, wouldn=t it? Can we be confident, however, that a really pure church would have room for sinners as shabby as ourselves?
For those with eyes to see and ears to hear; for those humble enough to accept God=s ways instead of insisting on their own; for people willing to respond to the Lord=s invitation instead of pursuing their own romantic dreams B for all such people here is all the power of God and all his love. Here is all the radiance of his glory. Here, as we Ado this@ with the bread and wine, as Jesus commanded and in his memory, we find medicine for sick sinners: nourishing, strengthening food for us, God=s weary and often shabby pilgrims, as we trudge onward to that heavenly city which is our true and eternal home: the heavenly Jerusalem described in our second reading with no darkness and Ano need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.@    

HARDSHIPS -- AND PEACE.



          Five years ago a book was published with the interesting title: The Boy who Met Jesus. It told the story of a 15-year-old penniless boy in the African country of Rwanda named Segatashya who had never been to school or a church, and had never seen a Bible. Resting under a shade tree one day in 1982, he was visited by Jesus, who asked Segatashya if he’d be willing to go on a mission to remind people how to live a life that leads to heaven.

         Segatashya accepted the assignment on one condition: that Jesus answer all his questions  --  about faith, religion, the purpose of life, and the nature of heaven and hell. Jesus agreed to the boy’s terms, and Segatashya set off on what would become a most miraculous journey. Some of what the young man learned confirms things we have heard in our two readings.

“What you need to know is this,” Segatashya told the book’s author. “Jesus knows us all to the very depths of our souls, all our dreams and worries, all hopes and fears, all our goodness

and all our weakness. He can see our sins and faults and wants nothing more than for us to heal our hearts and cleanse our souls so that we can love him as immea­surably as he loves us. When he sends us suffering, he does it only to strengthen our spirits so we'll be strong enough to fight off Satan, who wants to destroy us, so that one day we can bask in the glory of his presence forever.”

            Paul says something similar in our first reading: “It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God.”  I discovered those words 75 years ago. They have helped me through I couldn’t tell you how many trials ever since.

          “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you,” we heard Jesus saying in the gospel.” Segatashya must have heard those words, for he told the book’s author: “When I was with him, I never wanted to leave. If he asked me to come and be with him now, I would leave this world for­ever without the slightest hesitation. To be near him is to live in love; no words need be spoken. In his presence, your soul is at peace and completely joyous. Know that his love is real, and that it is eternal and ours to have if we love him and do his will on earth. Ask him into your heart, and all his graces are yours. He will refuse you nothing. If you were able to know only one truth in your life, you should know this truth: Jesus loves you.”

          Sadly, the young man who spoke those words was killed in the Rwandan slaughter of 1984. Our Christian faith gives us reason to hope that we’ll meet him one day in heaven.

 

Sunday, May 19, 2019

"WHOEVER LOVES ME WILL BE LOVED BY MY FATHER."


Homily for May 20th, 2019: John 14: 21-26.

          “Whoever loves me will keep my word,” Jesus tells his friends. He is speaking to the apostles at the Last Supper, after washing their feet. He did this to show them that he was sending them to serve others, and not to be served. That is what Jesus means by keeping his word: being servants of others. Jesus was speaking not just to those twelve men in the Upper Room at Jerusalem. He is speaking also to us. If we keep his word, he is telling us, his heavenly Father will love us, and both Jesus himself and his Father will love us and come to us, and make their dwelling with us. What a wonderful promise that is! And of course whenever Jesus promises something, he always keeps his promise.

          None of us ever keeps God’s word completely, however. All of us fail at times. That was why Mother Teresa – now St. Teresa of Calcutta – used to say: “God does not ask us to be successful. He asks us to be faithful.” When we fail, we need to remember what our wonderful Pope Francis never tires of telling us: “God never grows tired of forgiving us. It is we who grow tired of asking for forgiveness.”         

Speaking to a vast crowd of young people in Germany in September 2011, his predecessor, now Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI said: “Dear friends, Christ is not so much interested in how often in our lives we stumble and fall, as in how often with his help we pick ourselves up again. He does not demand glittering achievements, but he wants his light to shine in you. He does not call you because you are good and perfect, but because he is good and wants to make you his friends. Yes, you are the light of the world because Jesus is your light. You are Christians – not because you do special and extraordinary things, but because he, Christ, is your life. You are holy, we are holy, if we allow his grace to work in us.”

          Pope Benedict’s words were an example of something else that Jesus promises in today’s gospel reading, at the close. “The Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.” On that evening with those young people in Germany almost five years ago, the Pope of that day was doing just that.