PRAYING FOR THE VICTIMS OF INJUSTICE

Homily for August 3^rd,, 2019. Matt. 14:1-12.

          Herod had thrown John the Baptist into prison, today’s gospel tells us, “on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip.” Herod divorced his first wife, in order to marry the wife of his still living brother Philip, a woman named Herodias. No wonder that John denounced Herod. He had divorced his wife in order to marry his still married sister-in-law. This earned John the Baptist the hatred of two people, both equally unscrupulous: Herod and his new wife, Herodias.

          Herodias sees her chance for revenge at a drunken party hosted by her second husband, Herod. Aroused by the dance of Herodias’ daughter – unnamed here, but celebrated in literature and in a well known opera as Salome – Herod promises the girl, under oath, that he will give her anything she asks for, up to half of his kingdom. Not knowing how to respond, the girl consults her mother, who tells her to ask for the head of John the Baptist, who was even then languishing in Herod’s prison.

          Aghast at the girl’s request, but unwilling to violate his oath, made before so many witnesses, Herod orders John’s immediate execution, without judge, jury, or trial. It is hard to conceive of something more cruel and unjust than the squalid story our gospel reports.

          Is that all just long ago and far away? Don’t you believe it! The media report similar outrages all the time: Muslims threatened with death, or actually killed, for converting to Christianity; a Christian missionary sentenced to death for preaching Christ in an Islamic country, and saved only by a worldwide outcry; the teenage girl in Afghanistan five years ago who survived an assassination attempt by terrorists opposed to education for women. Fortunately she was nursed back to health in England, and lived to tell her story before a meeting of the United Nations in New York.

          How better could we respond to the atrocity reported in today’s gospel than to pray in this Mass for the countless victims of injustice and terror in the world today?

 

"THEY FOUND HIM TOO MUCH FOR THEM."

Homily for August 2^nd, 2019: Matthew 13:54-58.

There’s a 19^th century hymn, little known to Catholics, which goes like this:

          I think when I read that sweet story of old,

          When Jesus was here among men,

          How he called little children as lambs to the fold:

          I should like to have been with them then.

It’s a nice sentiment. But it hardly corresponds to the historical reality. Most of the people who encountered Jesus found him quite ordinary. “Is he not the carpenter’s son?” they ask in today’s gospel reading. “Where did this man get all this?” And Matthew, the gospel writer adds: “They took offense at him.”  

That remains true today. People encounter Jesus today not in his human body but through his mystical body, the Church – through us, who in baptism were made eyes, ears, hands, feet, and voice for Jesus Christ. He has no other.     

The Catholic Church is human, as Jesus was human. It is mostly ordinary, as Jesus was ordinary. It can be remote, as Jesus was sometimes remote. It can be weak, as Jesus seemed weak to his contemporaries when he refused to use the divine power he manifested in his miracles to avoid crucifixion.

Hidden behind this ordinariness and remoteness and weakness, however, is all the power of God; all the compassion of his Son Jesus; and all the strength of his Holy Spirit, who came in fiery tongues on the first Pentecost to kindle a fire that is still burning; and to sweep people off their feet with a rushing mighty wind that is still blowing.

Most of Jesus’ contemporaries took offense at him. Or as another translation of our gospel reading has it, “They found him too much for them.”

What about you?   

THE DRAGNET

Homily for August 1^st, 2019: Matthew 13:47-53.

          “The kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea.” It is what fishermen call a dragnet. Dragged along the bottom, it collects everything in its path. In Matthew’s gospel it immediately follows the parable of the weeds among the wheat. Both parables have a similar message, one which Jesus’ first hearers would easily have understood. They were familiar with dietary laws, which separated unclean foods from those they were permitted to eat. Sea creatures without fins or scales were unclean, and hence could not be eaten. So once the net is brought ashore, there must be a selection. The clean fish are put into buckets and taken to market. Everything else is thrown away. “Thus it will be at the end of the age,” Jesus tells us. “The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace.” In the parable of the wheat and the weeds they do the same with the weeds.

          God is not mocked, Jesus is telling us. The power of evil, of which we see evidence daily in the morning headlines, and on the evening news on TV, is temporary. In the end, goodness will triumph, Jesus is telling us, and evil will be burned up in the flames of God’s justice.

That too is the gospel. That is the good news.      

18TH SUNDAY IN YEAR C: AUG 4TH, 2019

 

 

 

THE RICH FOOL

August 4^th, 2019: 18^th Sunday in Year C. 

Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23; Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11; Luke 12:13-21.

AIM: To move the hearers to deeper conversion.

 

“What profit comes to a man from all the toil and anxiety of heart with which he has labored ...? All his days sorrow and grief ... even at night his mind is not at rest. This also is vanity.” Is that good news? Hardly. The book from which those words in our first reading are taken, Ecclesiastes, has as its constantly repeated refrain the words: “Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!” Ecclesiastes has been called the most cynical book in the Bible. It contains the bad news that we need to hear to prepare us for the good news brought to us by Jesus Christ.

The bad news is that life is indeed empty – “vanity,” as Ecclesiastes calls it – if we organize our lives apart from God. That’s what the rich fool in today’s gospel did. He made the mistake, which is always fatal, of assuming that possessions and money can guarantee security and happiness. Organizing his life without reference to God, he assumes that his destiny is entirely in his own hands. He never realized that life is not a possession. It is a trust. The man is shocked to discover, just when he thinks he has achieved total security, that life is God’s to give, and God’s to take away. Then, when it is too late, he discovers that the bad news of Ecclesiastes is true. Life lived without reference to God is nothing but sorrow and grief, emptiness and vanity. Jesus’ comment is simple and direct: “Thus it will be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.”

Being “rich in what matters to God” means realizing that there is something more important than getting – and that is giving. It means remembering that the things we think we own are not absolute possessions. They are gifts that have been entrusted to us for a limited time. Few of us have a century. One day we shall have to give an account of how we have administered this trust. Being “rich in the sight of God” also means, therefore, organizing our lives not around ourselves, but around the One to whom shall one day have to give our accounting for all he has entrusted to us – and that is God.

The rich fool in Jesus’ story did the opposite. He organized his life around his own desires and pleasures. Is there someone here who has done that? Probably not. Your presence here at Sunday Mass shows that God does have a place in your life. The question Jesus’ story poses for most of us, therefore, is not: “Does God have a place in my life?” The question for us is: “What place does God have in my life?  Is he at the center? Or have I pushed God out toward the fringe of my life?”   

Catholics who push God out to the fringe of their lives prefer a distant relationship with the Lord. Deliberately coming late to Mass and hurrying away early, they treat God in a way they would be ashamed to treat someone they truly loved, or whose good opinion they valued. If they come to confession at all, the only sin they can think of is how many times they missed Mass. They overlook other serious sins: meanness to those with whom they live and work; hard-heartedness to people who need their help or sympathy; gossip and tale-bearing that tear people down and destroy their good names; spending lavishly on themselves and then tossing God a cheap tip from the loose change that is left over – while complaining that church and charities are unrealistic in their financial demands, and that all we ever hear about in church is money. For such Catholics religion is really a kind of heavenly life insurance policy on which they grudgingly pay premiums, on the principle that you never know when you might need it – and it’s too dangerous to be without it. If your religion is anything like that, you have discovered long since that it brings you no joy.

Let me tell you why. A God who is on the fringe of life will always be a threat to you. e will always be trying to move into the center.  If you want your religion to be a source of joy rather than of sadness, something that lifts you up instead of weighing you down, then you must put God at the center of your life. 

Paul writes about such a God-centered life in our second reading.  Addressing adult converts, he says that when they emerged from the waters of Baptism, “You were raised with Christ.” The new life given to us in Baptism is meant to be centered not on ourselves but on God. It gives first place not to getting, but to giving. That means, Paul says, that we must “seek what is above, where Christ is seated on the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not what is on earth.” 

More than one person here in this church today knows from personal experience what Paul is talking about in that second reading. God can never be a threat to you. He will never try to encroach on a part of your life which you have reserved yourself. Because there are no fenced off corners in your life, where God is not allowed. For you God is at the center, not on the fringe. 

People who put God at the center of their lives have a religion not of law, but of love: a faith that is a source of joy in good times, and of strength in times of suffering and trial. Paul writes of such people: “You have died” – died, he means, to self-centeredness – “and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Such people live their lives not merely with reference to God. They live their lives for God. As a consequence, they experience what Paul calls in his letter to the Philippians “the peace of God that passes all understanding,” as (4:7). 

Do you want that peace? Do you want a faith that fills you with joy? Which of us does not? To have that peace and joy you must do just one thing. You must allow God to move from the fringe of your life to the center. When you do that, then some other words of Paul from our second reading come true for you: “When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.”

 

SURPRISED BY JOY

Homily for July 31^st, 2019: Matt. 13:44-46.

          The day labor who unexpectedly finds in his employer’s field a buried treasure that can change his life is living at the subsistence level. The merchant searching for fine pearls is rich. Despite this great difference between them, the two are in other respects alike. Both are surprised by their unexpected discovery and filled with joy.

          The two are alike in another respect as well. Obtaining the treasure each has found will cost each one all that he has. The closing sentence of the parable says this explicitly when it tells us that the merchant “goes and sells all that he has” in order to possess the treasure he has discovered.

          “God’s kingdom is like that,” Jesus is saying. Neither of these two men thinks for a minute of the sacrifice he is making. Both think only of the joy of their new possession. Both know that the great treasure they have discovered is worth many times over what they are paying to possess it. 

          Must we pay a price to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ? Of course.  And yes, sometimes that price is high. But when we think only of the cost of discipleship, we make our religion grim and forbidding. In these two linked parables Jesus is emphasizing not the cost, but joy at the infinitely greater reward that the Lord gives to all who are willing to sacrifice all for him. 

          Jesus came to bring us that joy. “All this I tell you,” he says in John’s gospel, “that my joy may be yours, and that your joy may be complete.” (Jn. 15:11).

"THE RIGHTEOUS SHALL SHINE LIKE THE SUN."

Homily for July 30^th, 2019: Matt. 13:35-43.    

“The righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father,” Jesus tells us at the end of his explanation of his parable of the weeds among the wheat. That story directs our attention to the greatest difficulty for religious belief: the so-called “Problem of Evil.” How is it possible that, in a world created and ruled by a good and loving God, there is so much evil, injustice, and suffering? The weeds sown among the wheat are, Jesus explains, “the children of the Evil One, and the enemy who sows them is the Devil.”

          Why does God tolerate evil in the good world he has created? God’s words to Moses in our first reading give us a clue to the answer: because “the Lord is a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity, continuing his kindness for a thousand generations, and forgiving wickedness and crime and sin.” But not forever! Today’s gospel reading proclaims the good news that the power of evil is temporary. There will come a time when justice and goodness will triumph. “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his Kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers [and] throw them into the fiery furnace …”

          When that happens, Jesus says, “the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.” We became citizens of that kingdom at baptism. This life, with all its trials and suffering, and ending with death, is a preparation for a life without end, without suffering; where the deepest desires of our hearts, never fully satisfied in this life, will find fulfillment beyond our imagining; where we shall experience not just joy but ecstasy, for we shall see God face to face.

"MARY HAS CHOSEN THE BETTER PART."

Homily for July 29^th, 2019: Luke 10:38-42.

It seems terribly unfair, doesn=t it? Even a child can see that it is not right to sit making pleasant conversation with a guest while leaving your sister all alone in the kitchen. Before tackling this difficulty it is worth noting that this is one of many instances in the gospels which show Jesus rejecting the second-class status of women in his society. In his day women were supposed to stay out of sight and appear only to wait on the men.

The story immediately follows Jesus= parable of the Good Samaritan. In that story Jesus contrasts the behavior of two members of the Jewish clergy, a priest and a Levite, with the behavior of a despised outsider, the Samaritan. Though he lacked the knowledge of God=s law available to the priest and the Levite, the Samaritan fulfilled the law=s spirit better than the legal experts. That parable shows the futility of a religion which has no consequences in daily life.

Today=s story of Mary and Martha turns that lesson around. It shows the futility of active service which, because it is not based on attentive listening to God=s word, and nourished by such listening, becomes mere busyness. When Jesus says to Martha, AYou are anxious and worried about many things,@ he is not criticizing her for performing the duties of hospitality, but for doing so without first attending to his word.

This story does not ask us to choose between being a Mary or a Martha. The true disciple of Jesus must be both. Mark=s gospel tells us that when Jesus called his twelve apostles, he called them for a dual purpose: Ato be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message@ (Mk 3:14). Both are important. If we ask, however, which has priority C the relationship or the work C then the answer is clear. Our relationship with the Lord must come first. If we are not willing to spend time with him, sitting at his feet like Mary of Bethany and listening to his words, then all our efforts to do his work are just spinning our wheels. Luke gives us this story to help us see that being with the Lord and listening to his word must be the basis of all we do for him. 

To people without faith, sitting at the Lord=s feet and listening to his words seems a waste of time. We who live by faith, however, know that the Lord loves to have us waste our time on him. Doing so is the best thing we can do with our time. It is the Abetter part@, as Jesus calls it in today=s gospel, which will not be taken from us. Spending time with Jesus Christ, opening our hearts and minds to his words, is the motive and source of all fruitful work for him and for others. Listening to Jesus= words we receive strength to live, as we shall receive also one day courage to die.