"YOU ARE PETER."

Homily for February 22^nd, 2020: Matthew 16:13-19.

          “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” The sentence contains a play on words. In Jesus’ language, Aramaic, the words for Peter and Rock were the same. Jesus was giving his friend Simon a new name. In reality, Simon, now called Peter, was anything but rock-like. When, on the night before he died, Jesus told Peter that within hours Peter would deny him three times, Peter protested: “Even though I have to die with you, I will never disown you.” (Mt. 26:34f) We all know the sequel.

          Yet Jesus chose Peter, of all people, to be the leader of his Church. As preparation Peter had to become aware of his weakness. He had to be convinced that without a power greater than his own he could do nothing. Then, and only then, could Jesus use him. 

          What was rocklike in Peter was not strength of character or willpower, but faith — Peter’s trust in the One whose strength overcomes our human weakness. That is the rock on which the Lord builds his Church: trust in Jesus as God’s anointed servant: the Messiah, and God’s Son. As long as this trusting faith endures, Jesus says, even death itself will have no power over his Church.

          We Catholics believe that Peter’s office of chief pastor continues in Christ’s Church. Every one of Peter’s successors, Pope Francis included, is an ordinary sinner like each of us, who must constantly seek God’s forgiveness for his sins in the sacrament of penance. Like Peter, he is strong only as long as he trusts not in himself, but only in the power that comes from God alone, through his Son, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.

          When you look within, do you see anything of Peter’s impetuosity and weakness? Take heart! You have a friend in heaven. The same Lord who gave the vacillating Simon the name “Rock” has made you, in baptism, his daughter, his beloved son. He wants you to be his messenger to others. You say you’re not fit for that? Neither was Peter. God does not always call those who are fit, by ordinary human standards. But he always fits those whom he calls.  

          God has a plan for your life, as surprising and wonderful as his plans for Peter. The only thing that can frustrate the accomplishment of God’s plan — for you, for me, for any one of us — is our own deliberate and final No.

GIVERS AND TAKERS

Homily for February 21^st, 2020: Mark 8:34-9:1

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me,” Jesus tells us in today’s gospel. Let me give you two examples of people who are doing that.  

The first is a mother with three children, all under six. Their needs keep her busy all day and well into the night. “Sometimes I’d just like to close the door on them and walk away,” she says. “But of course, I can’t,” she adds. And she doesn’t. That mother is losing her life for Christ’s sake—for the Him who tells us in the 25^th chapter of Matthew’s gospel: “Inasmuch as you do it for the least of my brothers and sisters, you do it for me.” In serving the needs of her three little ones, she finds a life filled with joy – the special joy that young children bring to a mother who, with her husband, has given these little ones the gift of life.

My second example is taken from the life I know best: that of priests. There are two kinds of priests: the sheets-to-alb priest, who lies abed as long as he can and reaches the sacristy just in time to throw on his vestments before he goes to the altar. And there is another kind of priest. He is up early, an hour at least before Mass, so that he can spend time waiting in silence on the Lord before he ascends the altar steps. Which of these two do you suppose finds priesthood a rat race? And which of the two finds priesthood a life filled with joy? Clearly it is the one who rises early. He is like the busy mother with her three little ones. Like her, he is losing his life for Christ’s sake. And like her, he finds life: a life so filled with joy that he would not trade it for anything.

What is comes down to is this. There are two kinds of people: takers, and givers. Which are you? If you choose to be a taker, I can promise you one thing. You will always be frustrated and disappointed; because you’ll never get enough. It is the givers who experience a measure of joy that only the Lord God can give.

 

"GET BEHIND ME, SATAN."

Homily for February 20^th, 2020: Mark 8:27-33.

          Pope Francis spoke about today’s gospel reading at his first Mass with the cardinals who elected him. Here is what he said:          ere is what he said:

He“The same Peter who had confessed Jesus Christ said to him: ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. I will follow you, but let’s not talk about the cross. This is not a part of it. I will follow you in other directions, but not to the cross.’ When we journey without the cross, when we build without the cross and when we confess a Christ without the cross, we are not disciples of the Lord: we are worldly, we are bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, but not disciples of the Lord. I would like for us all, after these days of grace, to have courage, precisely the courage, to walk in the Lord’s presence, with the cross of the Lord; to build the Church upon the blood of the Lord, which was poured out on the cross; and to confess the only glory there is: Christ crucified. And in this way,” the Pope concluded, “the Church will go forward.”

All of us must walk, at one time or another, through what Psalm 23 calls the valley of the shadow of death, when the clouds of doubt and discouragement seem to shut out the sunshine of God’s love. When we wonder why that should be so, why we cannot have a religion of Easter only, without Good Friday, we need to remember: Jesus could not have that. Neither can we. Take the cross out of our faith, and you have ripped the heart out of it. Good Friday and Easter belong together. Behind the cross of Good Friday, we must see the open portal of the empty tomb. And through that open portal of Easter morning, we must always see the cross, where Jesus offered all for us, even life itself. That is where all the great lessons of life are learned: at the foot of the cross.

 

TRUSTING FAITH

Homily for April 27^th, 2020: John 6:22-29.

“This is the work of God,” Jesus says in the gospel reading we have just heard, “that you believe in the one he sent.” Or as another translation has it: “Have faith in the one he sent.” What is faith? For many of us, I think, faith means belief in the truths contained in the creed which we recite every Sunday at Mass. Faith in that sense is more properly called “belief”: mental assent. Important as that is, faith has another meaning: personal trust -- an affair not of the head, but of the heart.  Even the creed begins not “I believe that” but “I believe in.” To believe in someone is to trust that person. Here’s a story about such trusting faith.

Some Alpine guides in a Swiss village organized a climb late in the season, after all the tourists had departed. They reached their chosen summit without difficulty. They were disappointed, however, not to have found an edelweiss, the delicate star-shaped white flower that grows only at high altitudes and is prized by mountaineers as a souvenir of their exploits.

The group had already started their descent when one of them spotted a single edelweiss on a narrow ledge some thirty feet below. To get it someone would have to be let down on a rope. There was no time to linger, for the weather, which changes rapidly in the mountains, was deteriorating. The climbers turned at once to the youngest and smallest member of the party, twelve-year-old Hans, making his first major climb with his father. It would be easy to let him down. In five minutes, they could be on their way again. 

“What about it, Hans,” they asked. “Will you do it?”

Hans peered anxiously at the narrow ledged with the treasured white flower -- and at the sheer drop of hundreds of feet immediately beyond.

“’l’ll do it,” Hans replied, “if my father holds the rope.”

That’s faith -- unconditional trust! That is what Jesus is talking about when he says in today’s gospel: “This is the work of God: that you believe in the One he sent.”

We pray in this Mass that, through the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit, we too may receive the trusting faith of that twelve-year-old boy.   

"BE DOERS, NOT HEARERS ONLY."

Homily for February 19^th, 2020: Letter of James 1:19-27.

          “Be doers of the word and not hearers only,” we heard in today’s first reading. The words summarize the central theme of the whole letter. They are remarkably similar to something Paul says in his letter to the Romans: “It is not those who hear the law who are just in the sight of God; it is those who keep it who will be declared just” (Rom. 2:13). Jesus says the same in the Sermon on the Mount: “None of those who cry out, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of God but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matt. 7:21).

          Who are the people who say, “Lord, Lord”? We are! Every time we pray – and your presence here shows that you do pray – we are saying, “Lord, Lord.” God asks for more. If our prayers do not bear fruit in our lives, they are useless.

          Our first reading says the same, using the image of a mirror. “If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his own face in a mirror. He sees himself, then goes off and promptly forgets what he looked like.” The nineteenth century American author Nathaniel Hawthorne says something remarkably similar when he writes: “No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”

There are people who have hidden behind a mask for so long that they have forgotten what their true face looks like. Our masks may fool others. They cannot fool God. God looks behind our masks. God looks at the heart. God reads even our secret thoughts and desires. Yet no matter how great the darkness within us, God never rejects us. God loves us deeply, tenderly, passionately. That is the gospel. That is the good news.

HOMILY FOR FEB.23rd

“LOVE YOUR ENEMIES.”

7^th Sunday in Ordinary Time; Levit. 19: 1-2, 17-18. Matt. 3:38-48

AIM: To help the hearers share with others the forgiveness God lavishes on us.    

          Do you have an enemy? Someone who stands in your way; someone who refuses to understand you; who has cruelly misjudged you; who is convincing others that you are a bad person, when you know you are only trying to do your best? Is there someone who has inflicted terrible injustice on you – or on someone you dearly love – at work, at school, in your family? If you have enemies – indeed, if you have only one enemy – then today’s first reading, and the gospel we have just heard, are for you. 

          How should we treat enemies? There is a cynical answer to that question: “Don’t get mad, get even!” Which of us has never experienced the desire for revenge? Today’s readings tell us something that is terribly hard for us to respect. “Take no revenge,” our first reading tells us. “Offer no resistance to one who is evil,” Jesus says in the gospel.

          How, we ask, can Jesus demand something so difficult? Because revenge merely escalates the level of level of hatred and the desire for further revenge. We see this in the history of the last century. World War I began in 1914, just over a century ago. It left 20 million dead. Because there no reconciliation when it ended in November 1918, it was followed twenty-one years later by World War II, which cost 80 million lives.

          When we seek vengeance, nobody wins. Instead everybody loses. Certainly your enemy loses when you seek revenge. Ah, you say, but isn’t that just the point of taking revenge: to inflict pain and loss on the one who has wronged me? True. But no matter how much your enemy loses through your vengeance, he will never lose the one thing he most needs to lose: his enmity. The more you try to pay him back, the greater his enmity is likely to become.

          When you seek revenge, you also lose. You allow yourself to be dragged down to your enemy’s level. You become like him: a person of anger, bitterness, and hate. Instead of conquering your enemy’s evil, you allow yourself to be conquered by it.

          Is there an alternative? There is, and Jesus gives it to us when he says: “Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors.”

          Suppose, instead of cursing your enemy, you were to pray for him. Suppose, rather than seeking revenge, you were to extend forgiveness. Prayer and forgiveness are the way to heap coals of fire on your enemy’s head, to melt him down from an opponent to a penitent. When you repay enmity not with evil but with good, you are burning away enmity and evil with the fire of love.

          That is the way God treats enemies. We make ourselves God’s enemies each time each time we choose our own selfish desires rather than his holy will – which alone can bring us true happiness, though we often find it difficult to believe that.

          St. Paul tells us that “Christ died for us while we were yet sinners” (Rom. 5:8, New English Bible). Long before that, Jesus had been rejected by the pious, “religious” people of his day for fraternizing with his enemies. “This man welcomes sinners,” they complained, “and eats with them (Luke 15:2).

          Isn’t this what Jesus is doing right now, around this altar? He is welcoming us, who have failed him so often; who will continue to fail him; who have denied or betrayed him in a hundred ways: secretly, half-secretly, openly, even brazenly. Despite all these things, and to show us that he loves us with a love that will never let us go, he invites us to his holy table, where he feeds us with his own body and blood.

          When Jesus does this, he heaps coals of fire on our heads: not the fire of vengeance but the fire of love, to burn away our betrayals and to warm our hearts so that we can begin to love him with at least a pale reflection of his fiercely burning love for us.

          And to love not just him: to love one another. That is what the Lord is asking us to do in today’s readings: to share with others the forgiveness and love he lavishes of us, despite all our betrayals of his love. Today’s responsorial psalm reminds us of the gifts we are called to share:

          He pardons all your iniquities, heals all your ills,

          He redeems your life from destruction,

             crowns you with kindness and compassion.

          Merciful and gracious is the Lord,

            slow to anger and abounding in kindness. (Psalm 103:3-4, 8)

          In trying to share those wholly unmerited gifts with others, especially with those who have done nothing to deserve our sharing because they are our enemies, we are fulfilling Jesus’ demand in the gospel. We are proving ourselves daughters and sons of our heavenly Father, who bestows his life-giving sunshine and rain on bad and good alike. By trying to imitate him who loves his enemies into submission – who will never stop loving us, no matter how unfaithful we are to him – we are being made perfect, even as our heavenly Father is perfect.

"DO YOU STILL NOT UNDERSTAND?"

Homily for February 18^th, 2020: Mark 8:14-21

          In yesterday’s gospel reading we heard Jesus’ critics demanding a “sign,” something so dramatic that it would compel belief. Jesus had already given many signs: his miracles of healing. He rejected the demand for further signs because he knew that belief cannot be compelled. His words today, “Guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod,” are a commentary on his confrontation with the pious critics who were not content with the signs Jesus had already given, and demanded more. “Leaven” is a figure of speech for something with an inward, vigorous vitality. Here it refers to an evil force that can spread, like an infection. Jesus is telling his disciples not to succumb to the hard-hearted mentality of his critics.

          This goes completely over his disciples’ heads. They are in a boat and have started to cross the lake. They discover that they have brought only one loaf of bread with them. They think that Jesus’ words about leaven must have something to do with the bread. As so often in the gospels, Jesus’ disciples are thinking on the material level (in this case about bread and leaven), while Jesus is on the spiritual level.

Aware of their misunderstanding at once, Jesus asks: “Why do you conclude that is because you have no bread? Do you not yet understand or comprehend?” Don’t you remember how I fed a vast crowd in the wilderness with just a few loaves of bread – not just once but twice? Why, then, are you worrying about not having enough to eat? “Do you still not understand?”

What is it that Jesus’ friends do not understand? That he is able to look after them; and that he has ways of doing so which they cannot possibly imagine or understand. We pray in this Mass for the faith which they lacked. Here is an evangelical hymn which beautifully expresses this prayer.

Cast your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His Glory and Grace. Through death into life everlasting / He passed, and we follow Him there; Over us sin no more has dominion - For more than conquerors we are! His Word shall not fail you - He promised; believe Him, and all will be well; Then go to a world full of darkness, His perfect salvation to tell.

"WHY DOES THIS GENERATION SEEK A SIGN?"

Homily for February 17^th, 2020: Mark 8:11-13.

          “The Pharisees came forward and began to argue with Jesus, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him.” The words show hostility on the part of Jesus’ critics. They argue with him. They put him to the test. They assume that he will fail the test, and thus lose popular support.

          Jesus has already given numerous signs: his healing miracles. For his critics these are insufficient. They demand a sign so dramatic that it will compel belief. Jesus refuses their demand. Why? Because he knows that belief cannot be compelled, any more than love can be compelled. The greatest sign of all – the empty tomb -- was still in the future at the time of this confrontation. When it came, Jesus’ critics had a perfectly plausible explanation: persons unknown, possibly Jesus’ own friends, had moved his body. The only person who came to belief on the basis of the empty tomb alone was the man always referred to in the gospel which bears his name as “the disciple whom Jesus loved”: the apostle John. All the other friends of Jesus came to belief in the resurrection only after seeing the risen Lord – and most of them were initially skeptical.

          Signs are given to people who already believe, never to people who demand proof as a condition of belief. One of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies is about this: Othello. A rough military man, Othello’s life is transformed when he meets the woman who will become his wife, Desdemona. She brings beauty into his life, but also love, tenderness, and light.

          All is well until Othello’s lieutenant Iago, for reasons which literary scholars are still disputing, suggests to Othello that the wife he passionately loves is unfaithful him. Whereupon Othello confronts Desdemona with the demand that she has not betrayed him. But you can’t prove a negative. As long as Othello loved and trusted the wife whose love had lit up his life, he received constant proofs of her love. Once he withdrew that trust and demanded proof, no proof was sufficient. A love, once beautiful, dies; and at the end of the play Desdemona herself dies at the hand of her now estranged husband: a tragedy indeed.

          You want signs that prove the Lord’s love for you? Proofs that Jesus, while completely human like us, is truly the divine Son of God? Then give yourself to him in faith and love, and you will receive signs which prove both these things. But demand proofs before you believe, and like Jesus’ critics, you will go away empty-handed.

"ONE OF YOU WILL BETRAY ME."

April 8^th, 2020: Matthew 26:14-25.

          “One of you will betray me,” Jesus tells his twelve apostles gathered in the upper room for the last supper. The gospel writer tells us that they were “deeply distressed” – and no wonder. And no wonder too that they ask, one after the other, “Surely it is not I, Lord?” Even Judas asks that question. To which Jesus replies: “You have said so.”

          Why did Judas betray the Lord? People have speculated about that question for two millennia. One theory is that Judas expected a Messiah who would come in power and glory, throw off the hated Roman yoke, and lead his people to new triumphs. When Jesus proved to be a very different kind of Messiah, Judas was angry and decided upon revenge.

Writing about John’s account of Judas’ betrayal, which we heard in yesterday’s gospel, Pope Benedict XVI says: “For John what happened to Judas is beyond psychological explanation. [Judas] has come under the dominion of another. Anyone who breaks off friendship with Jesus, casting off his ‘easy yoke’, does not attain liberty, does not become free, but succumbs to other powers. To put it another way, he betrays that friendship because he is in the grip of another power to which he has opened himself.” (Jesus of Nazareth vol. 2 p. 68)

How important it is for us to know that, and to reflect on it. One of the most effective lies that Satan, a liar and the father of lies, has in his armory is the seductive lie: ‘Throw off the yoke of the moral law. Come with me, and you will be free, free at last.’ Exactly the opposite is true.

Judas’ betrayal has yet another lesson for us. Whatever harm the open enemies of Christ and his Church do, the damage done by the Lord’s friends is worse. As we stand on the threshold of the Triduum, the solemn three days before Easter, we pray that we may not be among those unfaithful friends; and that when, like Peter, we do fall, we may repent, as he did, and receive the Lord’s forgiveness and the embrace of this best of friends and passionate lover, whose love will never let us go.

"HOW OFTEN MUST I FORGIVE?"

Homily for March 17, 2020: Mathew 18:21-35

          “Lord, when my brother wrongs me,” Peter asks Jesus, “how often must I forgive him? Seven times?” “No,” Jesus replies, “not seven times; I say, seventy times seven times.” Jesus was saying that the duty of forgiveness was unlimited. Then, as so often, Jesus tells a story to illustrate his teaching.

          The story’s opening is ominous. A king, for Jesus’ hearers, was a man with power of life and death over his subjects. The people with whom he intends to settle accounts are officials responsible for collecting the king’s taxes. “One was brought in, who owed a huge amount.” A lifetime was insufficient to pay it. The king’s cruel punishment, ordering not only the man himself but his whole family to be sold into slavery, would have shocked Jesus’ hearers. Then comes a surprise. When the man pleads for time to pay the debt, the king suddenly shows mercy: “Moved with compassion, the master … forgave him the loan.”

          No sooner delivered from his desperate plight, the official finds a colleague who owes him “a much smaller amount,” and demands immediate payment in full. The second official’s reaction to the demand that he pay his debt at once mirrors that of the first. “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.” The sole difference is that the second official’s debt could easily be paid, given reasonable time. How shocking for those hearing the story for the first time to learn of the first official’s harsh response. Seizing his colleague by the throat and throttling him, he insists that the man be imprisoned until the debt is paid.

          In the story’s conclusion the colleagues of the two debtors go and report the injustice to the king. Summoning the first official again, the king reminds him of the unmerited mercy he has received and, in an act of grim irony, grants the man what, in his original desperation, he had requested: time. Now, however, the time will be spent not in repayment but in prison, under torture. This detail would have deeply shocked Jesus’ hearers. In Jewish law torture was unknown.   

The story’s lesson is simple: if we are not forgiving toward others, as God is already forgiving toward us, we risk discovering one day that the forgiveness God has extended to us has been canceled. Jesus is telling us, in short, that our treatment of others, here and now — and especially of those who have wronged us — is already determining where, how, and with whom we shall spend eternity.