THINGS REVEALED TO MEREST CHILDREN

Homily for July 15^th, 2020: Matthew 11: 25-27.

          Jesus breaks out in a spontaneous hymn of praise: “Father, Lord of heaven and earth, to you I offer praise; for what you have hidden from the learned and the clever, you have revealed them to the merest children.” The learned and the clever are those who fail to respond to Jesus, because they feel no need for God. Jesus’ disciples are “the merest children.” Their hearts and minds are open to the Lord.

          Who are the learned and the clever today? They teach in our elite universities; they run the great foundations, with names like Ford, Rockefeller, and Gates. They dominate Hollywood and the media. With few exceptions they consider the killing of unborn children whose birth might be an inconvenience to be a wonderful advance in humanity’s ascent from ignorance and superstition to enlightenment and freedom. They charge those of us who consider abortion for any reason a crime and a grave sin with waging a “war on women.” If there is a war, it is not on women. It is a war on selfish, irresponsible men, who put the pursuit of personal pleasure at the center of their lives and take no responsibility for the consequences, apart from offering the woman they have used a supposed cheap fix which will leave her with months, years, and in not a few cases decades of regret and guilt.

Today’s learned and clever look down with patronizing scorn, disbelief, and hatred on those who insist that life is precious at every stage: in the womb, but also in old age, when Grandma’s mind has gone ahead of her, and her meaningful life is over. When we contend that marriage is the union of one man and one woman; and that re-defining marriage is an injustice to children, who have a right to a father and a mother, they denounce us as bigots, homophobes, and enemies of equality.

          Who, on the other hand, are today’s merest children? We are! We pray in this Mass that our merciful and loving Lord may keep us always so: aware that God cannot be mocked; that when we violate his laws, we always pay a price; yes, and aware too that we can never make it on our own; that we are dependent every day, every hour, and every minute on the One who came to show us what the invisible God is like; who always walks with us on the journey of life; and who is waiting for each one of us at the end of the road – to welcome us home!

 

"I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE."

July 29^th, 2020: Luke 11:19-27. “Whoever believes in me will never die.”

          “If you had been here,” the grief-stricken Martha says to Jesus, “my brother would never have died.” She is expressing her confident faith, that Jesus has power even over our final and greatest enemy: death.   

“I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus tells Martha.  “Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” 

          To believe in Jesus Christ means to trust him. For those who trust Jesus physical death will not be the end. It will be the gateway to a new and higher life; a form of existence which is not passing away: where there is no more suffering, no more sickness, no more death; where “God will wipe away all tears from [our] eyes.” (Rev. 7:17 & 21:4). Before he went to his own physical death on Calvary, Jesus showed himself to his friends as the one with power even over death.

          Between the raising of Lazarus, however, and Jesus’ resurrection there was a crucial difference. Lazarus returned to his former life. Jesus went ahead to new life. Lazarus came forth from the tomb still wearing his burial clothes. He would need them again. Jesus left his burial garments behind (cf. Jn 20:6f). He needed them no more. He had passed beyond death to a new and higher life.

          Jesus uses the death and resurrection of his dear friend Lazarus to affirm a central truth of our Christian and Catholic faith. This truth was the seedbed in which my call to priesthood grew. Grief-stricken at age six by the death of my beloved 27-year-old mother, on the day after Christmas, after only a week’s illness, I was uplifted less than a year later by the realization that I would see my mother again, when the Lord called me home. This gave me belief in the reality of the unseen, spiritual world: the world of God, the angels, the saints, and of our beloved dead. At age twelve, the age at which Jesus told his parents in the Jerusalem Temple that he must be “about “my Father’s business,” I decided to be a priest. How can one be closer to God than by standing at the altar, obeying the Lord’s command to “do this in my memory”? From age twelve, and still today, the celebration of Mass has been, for me, the heart of priesthood, the greatest service in the world – something of which no man is worthy, not even the Pope – but to which our ever-loving heavenly Father calls weak sinners such as the one who is testifying to you, right now.

 

 

"I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE."

July 29^th, 2020: Luke 11:19-27. “Whoever believes in me will never die.”

          “If you had been here,” the grief-stricken Martha says to Jesus, “my brother would never have died.” She is expressing her confident faith, that Jesus has power even over our final and greatest enemy: death.   

“I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus tells Martha.  “Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” 

          To believe in Jesus Christ means to trust him. For those who trust Jesus physical death will not be the end. It will be the gateway to a new and higher life; a form of existence which is not passing away: where there is no more suffering, no more sickness, no more death; where “God will wipe away all tears from [our] eyes.” (Rev. 7:17 & 21:4). Before he went to his own physical death on Calvary, Jesus showed himself to his friends as the one with power even over death.

          Between the raising of Lazarus, however, and Jesus’ resurrection there was a crucial difference. Lazarus returned to his former life. Jesus went ahead to new life. Lazarus came forth from the tomb still wearing his burial clothes. He would need them again. Jesus left his burial garments behind (cf. John 20:6f). He needed them no more. He had passed beyond death to a new and higher life.

          Jesus uses the death and resurrection of his dear friend Lazarus to affirm a central truth of our Christian and Catholic faith. This truth was the seedbed in which my call to priesthood grew. Grief-stricken at age six by the death of my beloved 27-year-old mother, on the day after Christmas, after only a week’s illness, I was uplifted less than a year later by the realization that I would see my mother again, when the Lord called me home. This gave me belief in the reality of the unseen, spiritual world: the world of God, the angels, the saints, and of our beloved dead. At age twelve, the age at which Jesus told his parents in the Jerusalem Temple that he must be “about “my Father’s business,” I decided to be a priest. How can one be closer to God than by standing at the altar, obeying the Lord’s command to “do this in my memory”? From age twelve, and still today, the celebration of Mass has been, for me, the heart of priesthood, the greatest service in the world – something of which no man is worthy, not even the Pope – but to which our ever-loving heavenly Father calls weak sinners such as the one who is testifying to you, right now.

 

 

"WHY DO YOU EAT WITH SINNERS?"

Homily for February 29^th, 2020: Luke 5:27-32.

          “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus’ critics ask indignantly. They put the question to Jesus’ disciples. Jesus himself answers it himself. ‘People who are healthy do not need a doctor,’ he says in effect. ‘The sick do. I have come not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.’

          To understand why the religious authorities are so indignant, we have to know that sharing a meal with someone was considered, in Jesus’ day, treating him as a brother. How could one give such treatment to tax collectors? They were the hated rip-off artists of the day, working for the Roman government of occupation to squeeze as much money as possible out of their fellow Jews, while retaining part of their receipts for themselves.     

Is all that long ago and far away? Not at all. There is a similar controversy going on in the Church right now. It has to do with marriage. According to age-old Catholic teaching, marriage is the lifelong union of one man and one woman terminable only by the death of one spouse. The Church has the prophetic duty to proclaim this unchanging truth.

                    The Church has, however, a pastoral duty as well: to reach out in love and concern to people whose marriages fail; in particular to those who, after civil divorce, wish to marry again while continuing to practice their Catholic faith. Many are able to do so after receiving from a Church court, called a tribunal, a ruling, called an annulment, that there was some defect in the previous marriage which prevented it from becoming full marriage in the Catholic sense.

                    But what about the large number of divorced Catholics in good faith who are unable to obtain an annulment – either because the evidence they present is insufficient; or because they live in a country where Church tribunals do not even exist? Can we find some way, without compromising our teaching about the indissolubility of marriage, to readmit them to the sacraments? Or must they live the rest of their lives in an extra-sacramental wasteland? Pope Francis himself has put this question on the Church’s agenda. Two synods have discussed the question in Rome. In April 2016 Pope Francis issued an encyclical on the subject, called Laetitis amoris, or The joy of love.

          Already we are hearing cries alarm about an alleged “threat to the faith.”  Pope Francis wants to find a of way, without undermining Church teaching, to extend the love and compassion we see in Jesus to people excluded up to now, by a rigid application of Church law. Today’s gospel shows that Jesus loves such people. How can we do the same?

FASTING

Homily for February 28^th, 2020: Isaiah 58:1-9a; Matt. 9:14-15.

          Lent is an opportunity for what is called in sports ‘spring training.’ It encourages us to take up three practices which are as essential for spiritual health as regular physical exercise and a healthy diet are for an athlete: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Both of today’s readings focus on the second practice: fasting.

Voluntarily giving up things we may legitimately enjoy, as an expression of our love for God, strengthens our wills and spiritual muscles. This helps us to resist the lures and lies of Satan, when he tempts us to make choices that we know to be sinful. Fasting may be of many kinds: refraining from food or drink, reducing the time we spend in front of the TV, computer, or movie screen, or engaging in hobbies and other legitimate leisure activities.  

Our first reading is a searing indictment of a wrong kind of fasting. The prophet Isaiah represents people who fast asking God: “Why do you not see it [and] take no note of it?” Speaking for God, which is what prophets do, Isaiah gives the answer. “You fast, but while you do so, you continue to act unjustly: fighting, quarrelling, abusing those who work for you.” If you want God to heed your prayers, work for justice, and for changing structures of society that cause injustice. Practice acts of charity for the poor, free those oppressed by unjust laws.

There is a tragic division in the American Catholic family today: between the so-called social justice Catholics and those who concentrate, sometimes exclusively, on the so-called life issues: abortion, gay-marriage, and the family. These life issues are crucial. But so is social justice. There should be no opposition between them. Isaiah’s words show that both are essential. The Lord calls us, Isaiah says, to release those bound unjustly; to set free the oppressed; to share our bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed and homeless, to clothe the naked when we see them. There are people in our parish who are doing all those things. When we join them, Isaiah promises, our light will break forth like the dawn, our wounds will be quickly healed. “Then you shall call,” Isaiah says, “and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!” That, friends, is the gospel. That is the Good News!

CHOOSE LIFE!

Homily for February, 27^th, 2020: Deuternomy 30:15-20; Luke 9:22-25.

          God’s chosen people, the Jews, were slaves in Egypt for more than four centuries, over double the life of slavery in our country. Oppressed people seldom develop high standards of social life. The high statistics of black on black crime in our country illustrate this. They also show that we are still paying the price of slavery. The price of oppression continues to be demanded even after the oppression has ended. The stories coming out of North Korea are even worse. Oppressed people follow the law of the jungle, preying on one another in ways that horrify us.

          So, the ragtag group of people who crossed the Red Sea with Moses had grown accustomed for centuries to inflicting on one another the cruelty they experienced from the people who had enslaved them.

          This is the background for God’s gift to Moses of the Ten Commandments. They were not then, nor are the Commandments now, fences to hem people in. The Commandments were and are ten signposts pointing the way to human flourishing and freedom. 

          That is exactly what Moses tells the people in our first reading. “Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom. … If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God … [He] will bless you … If, however you turn away your hearts … and serve other gods … you will certainly perish. …Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live.”

          Is that just long ago and far away? Don’t you believe it! The worship of false gods is as widespread today as it was in Bible times. Today’s idols are pleasure, power, possessions, and honor. None of those things is bad. They become idols, only when we make pursuit of any one of them central in our lives. Once we do that, we inevitably experience frustration – because we can never get enough.

What is the remedy? Jesus gives it to us in the gospel. “Whoever wishes to be my follower must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Doing that means putting the Lord at the center of our lives: before our own desires and ambitions, even before those whom we love most. A long life has taught me that people who do that, and only such people, experience the peace and joy that only the Lord can give.  

 

ASH WEDNESDAY

Homily for Ash Wednesday 2020.

The English Catholic author, G. K. Chesterton says: “The soul does not die by sin, but by impenitence.” More deadly than sin itself is the refusal to acknowledge sin, and to repent of it. Repentance is at the beginning of every Mass. It is also how we begin Lent.

“Lord, have mercy,” we pray. When we appeal to God, we are acknowledging that we can never get rid of sin on our own. Sin is like addiction. Part of the reason for the success of Alcoholics Anonymous in dealing with the addiction to alcohol is the spiritual soundness of the first two of its twelve points:

1.       We admitted we were powerless over alcohol -- that our lives had become unmanageable.

2.       We came to believe that a Power greater than our own could restore us to sanity.  

As we begin Lent, therefore, we confess our powerlessness and appeal to the only power that can make us whole. Do we realize how counter-cultural that is? The self-help books all tell us that we’re not powerless. We can do it on our own. We can get our act together. The only thing we lack is self-confidence. In confessing our sins, we are not asking for an increase of self-confidence. Instead we appeal to God for mercy. Prayer for God’s mercy is one petition which is always certain of a favorable response.

“A clean heart create for me, O God,” we prayed in the responsorial psalm.  Cleanliness is not something grim. Nor is the repentance which leads to cleanliness. It is liberating -- and joyful. One of the most beautiful things in married life is the ability to say, “I’m sorry,” and to hear the words, “I forgive you.” 

Beautiful as human forgiveness is, however, it is only a pale shadow of God’s forgiveness. When we forgive, there is always a memory of the wrong or injury done -- a skeleton in the closet, we call it. God doesn’t have any closets, and if he did there would certainly not be any skeletons in them. God’s forgiveness is total. In the Old Testament book of the prophet Isaiah we hear God saying: “Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow” (1:18). And later in the book God says: “I wipe out your offenses; your sins I remember no more.” (43:25). That, friends, is the gospel, the good news. We don’t need to drag after us an ever-lengthening tale of guilt. When we truly repent, God forgives: totally and completely.  

FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT

MAN’S FALL

First Sunday in Lent, Year A: Gen. 2:7-9. 3:1-7; Rom. 5:12-19; Mt. 4:1-11.

AIM: To explain sin’s roots and consequences, and the meaning of redemption in personal life. 

          “Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals that the Lord God had made.” Not only cunning, we discover in what follows, but able to talk as well! It is not difficult to imagine someone hearing this reading for the first time saying: “What kind of nonsense is this, anyway? Here we are at the beginning of the third millennium, and we’re supposed to take this seriously? Give me a break!”

          What about it? How should we take this reading? Literally? Of course not. But seriously? Yes indeed. It is only the story’s incidentals, such as the talking snake, and “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” which are childlike.  Underneath these fanciful details the story is not only shrewd but also very true: it corresponds, as we shall see, to what we daily experience.

          It is a story about testing. The man and woman in the first reading fail the test. The gospel shows us Jesus being put to his test. He passes the test. The details of his testing, like the details of the story in our first reading, seem fanciful to us, even bizarre. If we had more time, I could show you that they too are very up-to-date, very like what we experience. For that I must ask you to wait until the first Sunday in Lent another year. Enough today to concentrate on Adam and Eve.

          “But they’re not called Adam and Eve,” I can hear someone saying. That’s true. Our translation avoids those names for good reason. In the original language, Hebrew, Adam and Eve are the ordinary words for “man” and “woman.” This is not the story of two individuals. It is the story of Everyman and Everywoman — ourselves included.

          Note, first, how their testing begins: with a lie: “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?” the serpent asks suggestively. In reality, God had said nothing of the kind. The tempter’s lying question is typical of the one whom Jesus calls “a liar and the father of lies” (Jn. 8:44).

          The serpent continues his lying insinuations even after the woman corrects him, by saying there was only one tree of which God had said: “You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.” 

          “You certainly will not die,” the tempter responds. We’ve all heard the condescending, sarcastic tone in which those words were spoken: “Die? Aw, whadaya talkin’ about?  Don’t be ridiculous. You won’t die. He just says that.” 

          The woman listens just long enough to be impressed. That is her first mistake. She doesn’t realize it, but she’s dealing with a confidence artist. When you encounter someone like that, break off the encounter at once. Staying to discuss the matter can only get you into trouble.

          Having made one mistake, the woman now makes a second: she looks at the forbidden tree and its fruit. “The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom.” Our wills are stronger than our imaginations — if (but only if) we use our wills to control our imaginations. Permit your imagination to wander uncontrolled, and your imagination will take charge, rendering your will powerless. That is what happens to the woman in this story: “So she took some of the fruit and ate it.”

          Realizing that she has done wrong, that she has disobeyed the Lord God who has given her and the man the beautiful garden where they live, her first concern is to get someone to share her guilt with her: “And she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” At this point it is worth pausing to wonder whether, if the Bible had been written by women instead of men, the story might not have been a little different. Possibly we would find the roles reversed.

          Be that as it may, what they have done (harmless as it may seem to us) has consequences: “Then the eyes of them both were opened, and they realized that they were naked.” Now we understand the tree’s name: “The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” You can’t find such a tree in any botany book. The tree, and its name, are symbolic. Now that the man and woman have tasted the tree’s forbidden fruit, they know good and evil in a way they had not known them before. They have tasted evil.

          The story’s sad conclusion, which was not included in our reading, is closest of all to our experience. Confronted by God, they are ashamed and helpless. They can construct only the most pitiful of defenses. All they can do is pass the buck. Each of them blames it on the other. They both blame the serpent. 

          How true to life that is! Those of us old enough to recall World War II remember something similar at its close. The day after Adolf Hitler’s squalid suicide in his Berlin bunker, there wasn’t a single Nazi to be found in all of Germany.  Coming closer to home and nearer in time, I could cite the collapse of the Enron corporation in October 2001. Nobody, it seems was responsible. The company’s president sent out his wife to tell a nationwide TV audience that her husband (known until then as one of the country’s great hot-shot executives) had been kept in the dark by his associates. Other officers of the company said they had  warned of danger ahead — but no one would listen.

          But why look at other peoples’ sins? Which one of us has never tried to avoid responsibility by blaming others?

          This is no simple legend of a credulous and primitive people. It shows deep psychological insight into our human condition. We can distinguish right from wrong. All that is best in us draws us to choose good and refuse evil. Yet time and again we do the opposite. The story, in short, is the biblical writer’s attempt to explain what we daily experience. 

          In our second reading, however, Paul tells us that the story has another chapter. “Just as through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners, so, through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous.”  The one obedient man is Jesus Christ. The man and woman in the first reading are put to the test, and fail. Put to his test in the gospel, Jesus rejects evil, and emerges triumphant.

          At birth we inherit the fallen human nature of which we read in Genesis. At baptism, which is our birth into the great family of God which we call the Catholic Church, we receive a share in the unfallen nature of the perfect man, Christ Jesus. Is it any wonder that we so often experience conflict within? Fallen human nature drags us down. The Christ-life within us, received at baptism, pulls us up. Is there anyone here who does not long to see the Christ-life victorious over the dark forces within which threaten to drag us down from what we know to be the highest and best?  

          Jesus Christ knows, from his own experience, how bitter that inner conflict can become. He knows that without a power greater than our own we cannot pass the test. That is why he offers us here his Body and Blood: not a good conduct reward for services rendered, but medicine for sick sinners: strengthening, nourishing food for those who come, dusty, weary, and wounded from life’s pilgrimage; seeking strength to journey on another day, another week; pitching our tent each night a day’s march nearer home.       

WHO SHALL BE GREATEST?

Homily for February 25^th, 2020: Mark 9:30-37.

          “What were you arguing about on the way?” Jesus asks his friends after they had completed their day’s journey and reached the house where they would spend the night. “But they remained silent,” Mark tells us. On the way Jesus had told them he would be crucified and rise again on the third day. Even though Mark tells us that they did understand what Jesus told them, they clearly understood enough to be embarrassed when he asked them the subject of their conversation. For they had been discussing “who was the greatest.”
          Luke’s gospel tells us that they even argued over this at the Last Supper. (Lk 22:24) I’m sorry to tell you, friends, that this argument continues today. And we clergy are especially susceptible. Even canonized saints have engaged in the contest for position and honor. One of them was the 18^th century French saint, Vincent de Paul. He decided to be a priest, even managing to get himself ordained several years before the minimum age, because he thought of priesthood as a career, rather than a service. Only years later did he come to realize his error, acknowledging it by writing: “If I had known what priesthood was all about, as I have come to know since, I would rather have tilled the soil than engage in such an awesome state of life.”  In an attempt to put a damper on this contest about greatness, Pope Francis scaled back on the number of priests to whom he grants the honorific title of “Monsignor.” Well, Holy Father: Good luck!

Jesus responds to the argument about greatness by calling a young child to his side. “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me,” he tells his disciples. “And whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For the one who is least among all of you is the one who is greatest.” We grasp the full meaning of Jesus’ action and words only when we know that he lived in a society which was anything but child-centered. In Jesus’ world children, like women, were supposed to be seen and not heard.   

When I entered seminary 72 years ago, we newcomers were given a book of “Principles,” as they were called, to guide our lives. One of them went like this: “Choose for yourself the lowest place, not because of modesty, but because it is most fit for you. There is always someone whose burden is heavier than yours. Find him out, and if you can, help him.”

I’ve never forgotten that. Nor should you. 

 

"ALL IS POSSIBLE THROUGH FAITH.

Homily for February 24th, 2020: Mark 9:14-29.

The boy who is brought to Jesus by his father is possessed by “a mute spirit,” Mark tells us. He is evidently both deaf and dumb, unable to speak. The symptoms Mark describes are consistent with what today would be called epilepsy. Jesus lived in a pre-scientific age. Illness was normally attributed to demons. That is not entirely false. Illness and death were not part of God’s original plan of creation. They entered the world as a consequence of human sin. And it was human sin that opened the door for the Devil and his dark power.  

Jesus’ cry, “O faithless generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I endure you?” reminds us of Jesus’ sigh before the healing of a deaf man in chapter seven of Mark’s gospel, which we heard just ten days ago. That sigh, and Jesus’ words here, are expressions of the Lord’s grief over the consequences of human sin – in both cases illness.

The father’s detailed description of his son’s condition shows that he is in anguish over the boy. “If you can do anything,” the father concludes, “have compassion on us and help us.” Quoting the father’s own words, “if you can,” Jesus assures him: “Everything is possible to one who has faith.” Whereupon the man bursts out: “I do believe, help my unbelief!” His prayer for greater faith shows that he still has doubts.

As the story goes on, it becomes clear that even this imperfect faith is enough. It enables Jesus to cast out the demon and restore the boy to good health. Jesus’ words, “Mute and deaf spirit, I command you: come out of him and never enter him again!” show that the healing is permanent. 

What is the story’s lesson for us? It tells us that what opens the door to God’s action is faith. And it assures us that this faith need not be perfect. Finally, the story encourages us to pray with the desperate father of this boy: “Lord, I do believe, help my unbelief!”