ALL SOULS

ALL SOULS

Wisdom 3:1-9; Philippians 3:20-21; John 14:1-6.

AIM:  To help the hearers understand death and prayer for the dead.

 

When a baby is born, we like to speculate about its future. Perhaps the little one will be famous one day: a great scientist, a musician, an artist, an entrepreneur, an adventurer, a writer. Catholic mothers may pray that the boy they hold in their arms will grow up to be a holy priest, like Pope John XXIII or Pope John Paul II, both of them saints. If the little one is a girl she could be a holy nun like Mother Teresa. At life=s beginning all possibilities are open.

There is a limit, however, to all our maybes and perhapses. Of no one, at any age, do we ever say: APerhaps he or she will die.@ For death is the common lot of every one of us. The eighteenth century Englishman, Dr. Samuel Johnson, famed for his witty sayings but also a devout Christian, said once: ADepend upon it, Sir: when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind  wonderfully.@

In a sense we are all like the man who knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight. We all know that we must die, though none of us knows the time or manner of our death. There is no reason why this knowledge should not concentrate our minds wonderfully. And what better time to think of death than on All Souls Day, which we celebrate today? It comes each year on the second of November, the day after yesterday=s feast of All Saints.

The first experience of death comes, for each of us, differently. For me, the encounter with death came at age six-and-a-half when, a few days after Christmas, I stood by an open grave and, to the accompaniment of the solemn words, AEarth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes,@ I heard the heavy clods of earth raining down on my mother=s coffin C the most terrible sound I have ever heard in my life.   

That tragedy marked me with a scar which I shall carry to my own grave.  From this tragedy there came later, however, a great blessing. Only a year or two later it came home to me one day with blinding certainty that I would see my dear mother again, when God called me home. If my mother=s death was the greatest sorrow in my life, the realization that the parting was for a time only was C and remains C my greatest joy.

From that joyful realization has come a deep conviction of the reality of the unseen, spiritual world: the world of God, of the angels, of the saints, of our beloved dead. That world is real to me, because I know people who are there: my mother first of all, and since her death so many other loved ones who have gone ahead of me to that eternal dwelling place which, as Jesus promises us in today=s gospel, he has prepared for each of us in our Father=s house. 

The memories we have of our beloved dead, and the mementoes C the photos, the things they saw and used and wore C are precious.  But those things belong to the past. And the past is receding, ever farther away. We come closest to our beloved dead not through memories and mementoes, but by coming close to God; for the dead are now with God. That is why, at life=s end, we come into the Lord=s house to celebrate the church=s central mystery and sacrament: the sacrifice of the Mass. The Mass is the pledge of the abiding presence with us until the end of time of the One who has conquered death, and who is waiting for each of us at the end of life=s road. His name is Jesus Christ. 

 If death were really the end, simply the snuffing out of a candle, then it would be fearful indeed. Our Christian and Catholic faith tells us, however, that death is not the end. It is the gateway to new life. Death is the entry into our true homeland. AWe have our citizenship in heaven,@ Paul tells us in our second reading. Through death we come home to the family of the Trinity. We shall be able to share in the joy with which the Father loves the Son. We shall experience the love which binds Father and Son together C the Holy Spirit. 

Though our faith assures us that death is not the end, few of us can completely banish the fear of death. Yet we experience death every day, without ever realizing it. Every night we die to our normal mode of consciousness and fall asleep, so that we can awake again the next morning refreshed.     

This pattern of death and rising again goes on all through life. If the child in the womb could know what lay ahead, the prospect of birth would be terrifying: leaving the security and warmth of the mother to enter an alien world, another mode of existence. No wonder that the first thing babies do is cry! Later on children must die to their infantile state of being and consciousness in order to become adolescents. And adolescents must die if they are to become  adults. This dying and rising goes on through middle age and old age until, finally, every one of us must make the final passage through death to new life with God in our true, heavenly homeland. 

All these deaths, save the last one, are in some sense voluntary. The child can refuse to grow up, clinging to childhood and remaining attached to mother. A   century ago the English writer James Barrie wrote a famous play about a boy who refused to grow up: Peter Pan. Adolescents too can refuse responsibility, declining to face the burden of maturity. The middle-aged man can refuse to grow old, to surrender his position as head of a family or a business, clinging to power. When children mature and leave home, mothers can refuse to let go, to accept them as independent adults. The result is frustration and unhappiness on all sides.

 If we are willing to let go at each stage of life, however C to die to childhood, to adolescence, to middle age, not clinging desperately to the old ways of thinking and feeling but embracing the fresh challenges which life brings at each age C then we shall find that the final death loses its terrors. Most of us are prepared gradually for death by the shocks life brings us: our setbacks, the death of loved ones, the gradual loss of our own energy and faculties. If we accept these things when they come and don=t resist the changes they bring, we begin to find new meaning in each event, even in the most tragic. To the extent that we do this, we catch a glimpse of the resurrection.

Let me conclude with another personal recollection. A few days after my mother=s funeral my father told me: AWe must still pray for Mummy. She is with God. God is looking after her and our prayers can help her.@ That made sense to me when I was only six-and-a-half. It makes sense to me today, when I have read many books of theology and my hair has grown grey. One of the greatest joys of priesthood, for me, is being able to stand, at the altar, on the threshold of that unseen eternal world of which we were made citizens in baptism. In that world, the dwelling place of our beloved dead, there is no more suffering, no more loneliness, no more grief, no injustice, failure, or misunderstanding. There, as we read twice over the book of Revelation, God will wipe away all tears from our eyes. There we shall experience ecstacy, for we shall see God face to face. 

WE ARE NEVER ALONE

ATHOSE WHO BELIEVE ARE NEVER ALONE.@

Homily for All Saints= Day

AIM:  To help the hearers rejoice in our fellowship with the saints.

                                                                                    

Fourteen and a half years ago, on April 24^th, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI, now retired, began his ministry as Bishop of Rome with the Mass which he celebrated before a vast crowd in St. Peter=s Square in Rome. Three times that month, he told them in his homily, they had chanted the litany of the saints: at the funeral of Pope John Paul II; as the cardinals processed into the conclave to choose his successor; and at the beginning of the Mass which Pope Benedict was celebrating, when the response to the invocation of each saint was a prayer for the new Pope: ALord help him.@    

At Pope John Paul=s death, Pope Benedict said, his predecessor had crossed the threshold of the next life, entering into the mystery of God. ABut he did not take this step alone. Those who believe are never alone B neither in life nor in death.@   We knew, the new Pope said, that the saints, Ahis brothers and sisters in the faith ... would form a living procession to accompany him into the next world.@

Two weeks later, Pope Benedict continued, as the cardinals gathered to choose the Church=s new chief shepherd, Awe knew that we were not alone. We knew that we were surrounded, led, and guided by the friends of God. And now, at this moment, weak servant of God that I am, I must assume this enormous task, which truly exceeds all human capacity. How can I do this?

AAll of you, my dear friends, have just invoked the entire host of saints, represented by some of the great names in the history of God=s dealing with mankind. In this way, I can say with renewed conviction: I am not alone. I do not have to carry alone what in truth I could never carry alone. All the saints of God are there to protect me, to sustain me, and to carry me.@

Is it only popes whom the saints protect, sustain, and carry? Don=t you believe it! The saints are truly sisters and brothers to every one of us. That is why we pray to them: not as we pray to God, of course, but asking them to pray for us.  What could be more natural, what more fitting? God never intended us to be Lone Rangers. In baptism he made us members of his great family, the Catholic Church.  He wants us to support one another. One way we do so is by praying for one another. Priests receive requests for such prayer all the time. If it is right, and natural, to ask our friends here on earth to pray for us, how much more fitting to ask the prayers of our friends in heaven, the saints? Being close to God, their prayers are especially powerful.

The saints are not remote figures in stained glass windows. They are close to us. We enjoy fellowship with them. The letter to the Hebrews portrays them as spectators in an arena, supporting and encouraging us who are running now the race they ran here on earth. ASeeing, then that we are surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily drags us down; and let us look to Jesus, the beginning and end of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and is now set down on the right hand of the throne of God.@ (Heb. 11:1f.)

People often ask: How many saints are there? There are reference books which list them. And the list is constantly growing. In reality, however, most of the saints are known only to God. That is why we celebrate All Saints= Day, honoring not only those we know, but the vastly larger number of those known only to God.  All Saints= Day reminds us that we are never alone: neither in life nor in death. 

When we rejoice at some answered prayer, some great achievement, some unexpected blessing, the saints rejoice with us. When we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and clouds seem to shut out the sunshine of God=s love, the saints walk with us. For the saints, our sisters and brothers, are not only more numerous than we often suppose. They are also, in a sense, more ordinary. They   faced the same difficulties we face. They never gave up. That was their secret. The saints are just the sinners who kept on trying. 

Each time we make a decision for Jesus Christ, we place ourselves on their side. They centered their lives on the Lord. He was their strength in life, their companion in death. He is the same for us. As long as we are trying to be true to him, he will give us what he gave them: strength to live, and courage to die.

"WHO WILL SEPERATE US?"

Homily for Oct. 31^st, 2019: Rom. 8: 31b-39.

          “If God is for us,” Paul writes in our first reading, “who can be against us?” This rhetorical question introduces one of the greatest testimonies of personal faith in the whole of Scripture.

Personal witness or testimony has a prominent place in the worship of Evangelical Protestants – too prominent, some would say. Catholics shy away from it. We’re not comfortable speaking publicly about our personal faith. Handled properly, however, personal testimony to our faith has unique power.  

          “Christ intercedes for us,” Paul writes. How encouraged we should be to know that his work and prayer for us did not end with his resurrection and ascension. From his place at the Father’s right hand, Jesus continues to bring us and our needs to his Father’s attention. Who could be a more powerful advocate for us than the One who laid down his life for us?

          Continuing his rhetorical questions, Paul asks, “What will separate us from the love of Christ?” The unspoken answer to this question is clear: Nothing can separate us from Christ’s love; nothing in either heaven or earth.

          “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

          What an eloquent testimony to personal faith those words are; what a powerful aid to confident hope when we are down and discouraged. And how fitting were the words we spoke in response: “Thanks be to God.”

          We pray in this Mass that, when appropriate and needed, the Holy Spirit of the living God will give us words to testify to our own personal faith.

"I HAVE SOME TO SEEK AND SAVE THOSE WHO ARE LOST/"

“THE SON OF MAN HAS COME TO SEEK AND SAVE THOSE WHO ARE LOST."

Nov. 4^th, 2019: 31^st Sunday in Year C: Wis. 11:22-12:2; Lk. 19:1-10.

AIM: To proclaim Jesus’ offer of hope to the hopeless and salvation to the lost.

 

In 1985 the German tennis player Boris Becker set the tennis world on its ear by coming out of nowhere, at age seventeen, to win the Wimbledon tennis tournament. He won it again in 1986 and 1989. By age twenty-one Becker was a rich man, with a tax residence in Monaco and access to just about any luxury he desired. Yet he was unhappy, his life so empty that he contemplated suicide. “I had no inner peace,” Becker said later. Many successful people who have ignored their inner life feel that way. J. Oswald Sanders, author of the book, Facing Loneliness, writes: “The millionaire is usually a lonely man, and the comedian is often more unhappy than his audience.” Jack Higgins, author of the novel The Eagle has Landed and other best-sellers, was asked what he would like to have known as a boy. His answer: “That it’s lonely at the top.”

The central figure in the gospel reading we have just heard has reached the top. But he is lonely and unhappy.

 As chief tax collector in Jericho, Zacchaeus was filthy rich by the standards of those days. He was not the kind of tax collector we think of: a salaried public official.  He was the sole proprietor of a business enterprise. He had a contract with the hated Roman government of occupation to pay them each year a fixed amount in taxes. How he got the money was of little concern to the authorities. He squeezed his fellow citizens for all they were worth, pocketing whatever he could in the process.  No wonder he was hated: first for his greed and strong-arm tactics; second for collaborating with the pagan Romans. For all his wealth, Zacchaeus was a lonely man: alienated from his own people and alienated too from God.

Zacchaeus had heard about Jesus, the wandering rabbi who enjoyed such tremendous popularity. What was his secret, Zacchaeus wondered? If only he could see Jesus, perhaps speak with him. But how could Zacchaeus mingle with the crowd gathered to welcome Jesus? These were the people he had milked year after year to amass his wealth. He hit on an ingenious idea. He would climb a tree. With everyone straining to see Jesus, no one would notice him. And he would have a good view. 

Someone did notice Zacchaeus, however. Then as now, climbing trees was for boys -- certainly not something anyone could imagine a millionaire doing. How they must have jeered to see this hated rip-off artist up in a tree. It is not difficult to imagine Zacchaeus’s shame and embarrassment at being seen. The jeering stops, however, as Jesus looks up at the tree and calls out: “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.” Zacchaeus was accustomed to being ostracized, especially by religious people. Yet here was a religious teacher actually saying he wanted to dine at Zacchaeus’s house. With a big smile on his face he hurries down. The crowd makes way for him as he goes to greet Jesus and lead the way to his house. 

Once there Jesus does not preach to Zacchaeus that he must repent or else go to hell.  Jesus’ non-judgmental and unconditional acceptance of Zacchaeus speaks more powerfully than even the most eloquent sermon. In full view of everyone at the table Zacchaeus stands up and says: “Half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone, I shall repay it four times over.” By giving half of his wealth to the poor and using the other half to repay the victims of his greed Zacchaeus’ wealth was just about gone. Who needs money, however, when you have found a meaningful life? 

Where had this greedy, grasping man suddenly got such generosity? He got it from the One who had called out to him in love rather than in condemnation, and who even then was sitting at his table as an honored guest; the One who loved Zacchaeus when he had done nothing to deserve love; and who in this way had made it possible for Zacchaeus to love others in return, out of gratitude. 

What better example could we have of the creative, healing power of love? What better demonstration that love is never lost when it is shared, but that it is increased? Love is contagious. It grows when we give it away. What clearer illustration could we have of the central truth of the gospel: that God’s love for us is always a free gift, never a reward?

The good, respectable religious people of Jericho are scandalized by the whole affair. “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner,” they protest in tones of shocked indignation. What for them was a scandal is for us good news. Jesus is the one who “has come to seek out and to save what was lost.” 

Those words are a statement of who Jesus is. Then, now, for all time, Jesus Christ is the one who does not look at what we have been, or even at what we are.  Instead Jesus looks at what, deep in our hearts, we would still like to be. He is the one who has come to search out and to save people without hope, the most abandoned, those most deeply entangled, like Zacchaeus, in webs of selfishness, self-indulgence, and greed.

“Today salvation has come to this house,” Jesus told Zacchaeus. He is saying the same to us, right now. This is our great today. This is our hour of salvation.  Jesus is here, calling us, inviting us to his holy table. He is reaching out to us in active, accepting love, though we have done little or nothing to deserve such love.  He is here for no other purpose than to seek out and save people who, without him are floundering, without hope, and lost. 

Zacchaeus “welcomed Jesus with joy,” Luke tells us. We can share that joy.  Because of Jesus Christ, and his love for us, life is not aimless, not without meaning.  Our sins, our failures, our compromises are not the last word about us. The last word belongs to the One who tells us that he has come “to seek and to save what is lost.”  No matter what others think of us. No matter what we may sometimes think of ourselves. There is One to whom we are infinitely precious. He is Jesus Christ: Son of man and Son too of God — our brother, our lover, our best friend; but also, our savior, and our God!

THE NARROW GATE

Homily for Oct. 29^th, 2019. Luke 13:22-30.

ALord, will only a few people be saved?@ Jesus is asked in our gospel reading. The question was asked out of mere curiosity. Jesus never answered such questions. Here he turns to a different question B and a far more important one: AHow can I be saved?@ Many, he warns, will not be saved. People who are complacent, who think they can postpone their decision for God, will find themselves shut out from God=s presence. Many others, however, who do not belong to God=s chosen people, will be saved, Jesus says. APeople will come from the east and the west and from the north and the south and will recline at table in the kingdom of God.@ God offers salvation not just to one people, but to all peoples. The lesson for us Catholics is clear. A Catholic baptismal certificate and attendance at Sunday Mass do not guarantee salvation. Our Catholic faith must produce fruits in daily life. If it does not, we too risk hearing one day the terrible words in today=s gospel: AI do not know where you are from.  Depart from me, all you evildoers!@

AStrive to enter through the narrow gate,@ Jesus says. That Anarrow gate@ stands for every situation in which God=s demands weigh heavily on us and seem too hard to bear. Our trials and sufferings are the homework we are assigned in the school of life. Our teacher in this school is Jesus Christ. Whatever trials and sufferings we encounter, his were heavier. Jesus never promised that God would protect us from trials and sufferings. He promises that God will be with us in every trial and in all suffering. 

Today=s gospel begins by saying that Jesus was Amaking his way to Jerusalem.@ For Jesus, our teacher in life=s school, Jerusalem meant Calvary. There he passed through his Anarrow gate.@ There he had his final examination in life=s school. John=s gospel tells us that Ain the place where [Jesus] was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb ...@ (19:41). In that garden tomb, hard by Calvary, the Lord=s heartbroken friends laid his dead body on Good Friday afternoon. From that tomb Jesus was raised on the third day to a new and glorious life beyond death. He had passed his final examination. He had graduated. For him there would be no more school, no more examinations, no more suffering.

Jesus invites us to walk the same road he walked. Here in the Eucharist, he gives us the food we need for our journey. He invites us to make our way to Jerusalem, there to pass through our narrow gate to Calvary B but beyond Calvary to resurrection and the fullness of eternal life with him.     

MUSTARD SEED, YEAST

Homily for October 29^th, 2019: Matthew 13:31-15.

          The kingdom of God, Jesus says, is “like a mustard seed … the smallest of all seeds.” From tiny beginnings comes a great bush, large enough to shelter birds, who build their nests in its branches. God’s kingdom is not identical with his Church. Yet what Jesus says about the kingdom in this little parable is also true of the Church. Who could have predicted that the little band of humble friends of Jesus whom we read about in the gospels would grow into the worldwide Church we see today? Nobody! Yet so it is. Jesus knows what he is about. With this comparison of God’s kingdom to mustard seed, he spoke the truth.

The kingdom is also, Jesus says, “like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened.” Do those words reflect a childhood memory: Jesus recalling how he had watched his mother mixing leaven with dough, kneading it, and then setting it in the sun, which caused the dough to rise, so that it could be baked in the oven? We cannot say; but it is entirely possible. The meaning of this parable is similar to that of the mustard seed. From small, seemingly insignificant beginnings, comes growth that no one could have predicted.

Why do you suppose Jesus chose parables as his favorite form of teaching? Well, who doesn’t like a good story? Stories have a universal appeal, to young children, but also to adults. But there is another reason why Jesus chose to teach through stories. Because stories are much easier to understand than abstract explanations. In his book, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI writes: “Every teacher who wants to communicate new knowledge to his listeners naturally makes constant use of example or parable. ... By means of parable he brings something distant within their reach so that, using the parable as a bridge, they can arrive at what was previously unknown.”  

The two little parables we have heard today proclaim God’s love – but also our need to respond with love: for him and for others.    

 

"HE CHOSE TWELVE."

Homily for Oct. 28^th, 2019: Luke 6:12-16.

 From his disciples, we heard in the gospel, Jesus chose twelve. Why twelve? Because God’s people was composed of twelve tribes. Jesus was establishing a new people of God. The twelve men Jesus chose to lead his new people were undistinguished. If they had one common quality it was mediocrity. About most of them we have only legends. And the lists of names in the different gospels don’t even agree in all cases.

He calls these mostly quite ordinary men “apostles.” What is an apostle? The word means ‘one who is sent’ – like an ambassador, sent to another country to represent his country, and especially the head of state who sends him.

Who are today’s apostles? One answer is “the bishops.” We call them the successors of the apostles. Each one of them must have been ordained bishop by at least one previous bishop who is, as the books say, “in the apostolic succession.” That means that he too must have been ordained by a bishop who received his sending from a bishop who can trace his call back to one of the twelve originally sent out by Jesus and named today’s gospel.

In baptism and confirmation, however, Jesus has also sent each one of us to be his apostles, his messengers. How do we do that? You probably know St. Francis of Assisi’s answer to this question. “Preach always,” Francis said. “When necessary, use words.” How wise that is. Personal example is always more powerful than words. “What you are,” someone said, “speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.” And Pope Paul VI said essentially the same when he wrote: “People today listen more willingly to witnesses than to teachers. And if they do listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.

So what are we? In baptism we were made God’s sons and daughters, brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, and heirs of his kingdom. The whole of our Christian life, therefore – all our prayers, sacrifices and good works -- are not a striving after high and distant ideals that constantly elude us. They are efforts to live up to what in baptism, we have already become. We come here, therefore, to receive, at these twin tables of word and sacrament, the inspiration and strength to be messengers of God’s love, and bringers of his light, to a dark and mostly unbelieving world.