THE PHARISEE AND THE TAX COLLECTOR

Homily for March 21^st, 2020: Luke 18:9-14.

The Pharisees have had such a bad press that we think the first man in this story must be a hypocrite. He was not. He really has done all the things he lists in his prayer. The tax collector, on the other hand, is a public sinner. He collects taxes for the hated Roman government of occupation. Much of it goes into his own pocket. Unable, like the Pharisee, to point in his prayer to any semblance of a good conduct record, he appeals simply to God’s mercy: “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” 

Here is what our Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI says about these two men in his book, Jesus of Nazareth [pp. 61f]:

“The Pharisee can boast considerable virtues; he tells God only about himself, and he thinks that he is praising God in praising himself. The tax collector knows that he has sinned, he knows he cannot boast before God, and he prays in full awareness of his debt to grace. “Grace is the technical term for God’s freely given love, something we can never earn. ... The real point is ... that there are two ways of relating to God and to oneself. The Pharisee does not really look at God at all, but only at himself; he does not need God, because he does everything right by himself. He has no real relation to God, who is ultimately superfluous --what he does himself is enough. 

“The tax collector, by contrast, sees himself in the light of God. He has looked toward God, and in the process his eyes have been opened to see himself.  So, he knows that he needs God and that he lives by God’s goodness, which he can not force God to give him and which he cannot procure for himself. He knows that he needs mercy and so he will learn from God’s mercy to become merciful himself, and thereby to become like God. ... He will always need the gift of goodness, or forgiveness, but in receiving it he will always learn to give the gift to others.”

Happy are we if those words describe us: people who know we shall always need the gift of God’s goodness and forgiveness; and if, in receiving these gifts we learn to pass them on to others

 

"I AM THE VOICE"

Homily for March 20th, 2020: Mark 12:28-34.

          The man who asks Jesus, “Which is the first of all the commandments,” is called a scribe. He is himself a teacher of the law. He is giving Jesus an orthodoxy test. By answering with a verse from the Old Testament book Deuteronomy about total love of God, Jesus passes the test.

          People today are still asking the scribe’s question. What is most important in our faith? Is being baptized most important? Or going to Mass, especially on Sunday? Or is being kind to our neighbor most important? Or trying to serve the poor and struggling for a more just society? There are strong arguments for all of these things. Jesus’ answer remains true, however. The practice of our faith begins with total love of God. That is the indispensable foundation of everything else.

          Devout Catholics today recite three times daily the Angelus prayer: morning, noon, and evening. In Jesus’ day devout Jews recited three times daily the verse from Deuteronomy about loving God totally which Jesus cites in his answer to the scribe.

          Jesus then goes on to cite a second Old Testament verse, this one from Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18). The scribe praises Jesus’ double answer, saying that loving God and neighbor is “worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” We find the same thing said in many of the Old Testament prophets. The equivalent statement today would be this: loving God and neighbor is more important than all novenas, litanies, pilgrimages, and prayers to the saints. 

          As the conversation concludes, Jesus tells his questioner: “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” “Not far” he says, because of the new commandment which Jesus will give his disciples before his crucifixion. “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12-23). Perhaps someone is asking: How can I do that? Jesus was divine. I’m only human. The answer to that question is simple. On our own we cannot love as Jesus loved. Aided, however, with the Holy Spirit, we can love as Jesus loves us. So we pray in this Mass: Come Holy Spirit, kindle in us the fire of your love!

JOSEPH DECIDES TO DIVORCE HER QUIETLY

Homily for March 19th, 2020: Matthew 1:18-25.

Luke’s gospel tells us that when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary to tell her that God wanted her to be the mother of God’s son, Gabriel also told her that Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, though far beyond child-bearing age, was also, as they say in England, “in a family way” – six months pregnant, in fact. With typical generosity, Mary decides to go and visit Elizabeth. She couldn’t start right away. It was a man’s world. A woman, especially a young teenager like Mary, could not travel alone. She must have at least one chaperone.

Organizing that took time. Since the whole purpose of the visit was to help with the birth of Elizabeth’s son, Mary was away from home for some months. By the time she got back to Nazareth, she was visibly pregnant. A film I saw a few years ago – I think it was called The Birth of the Messiah – shows Mary’s encounter with Joseph after her months’ long absence. The look on his face is unforgettable.

          According to the law of that day, an unmarried woman who got pregnant could be stoned for bringing shame on her family. Though Joseph assumed that Mary had been unfaithful to him, he still loved her and did not want to be responsible for her death. Rather than bringing public charges, Joseph decided simply to break off the engagement quietly.

Then something unexpected happens. An angel visits Joseph in a dream and tells him: the baby growing in Mary’s womb has no human father. He is God’s Son, the anointed Servant of the Lord, the Messiah, whose coming Israel’s prophets have predicted for centuries. Then Joseph wakes up and realizes it was only a dream.

Or was it only a dream, Joseph wonders? Suppose it’s true? With great courage, and almost super-human faith, Joseph decides to go ahead with his longed planned marriage. For the rest of his life, whenever Joseph had doubts or second thoughts about the life he had chosen, all he had to go on was the memory of a dream when he was only a teenager.

          Friends, we too have staked our lives on a dream: that God exists; that he is a God of love and of justice; that he has called us, as he called Joseph, to be friends and servants for Mary, and sisters and brothers of her Son, Jesus.

MOSES GIVES THE LAW

Homily for March 18^th, 2020: Deut. 4:1, 5-9.

          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 follow the law of the jungle, inflicting on one another the cruelty and oppression inflicted on them by their oppressors. 

So, the ragtag group of people who crossed the Red Sea with Moses had grown accustomed for centuries to a life of lawlessness. The Ten Commandments, given by God to Moses, were designed to bring order out of chaos, to establish justice and peace among a people who had long since forgotten the very meaning of those words. The Commandments were not then, nor are they now, fences to hem people in. They were and are ten signposts pointing the way to human flourishing, freedom, and peace.   

          That is why Moses tells the people in our first reading to observe God’s Commandments “that you may live.” Doing that, Moses says, “you will give evidence of your wisdom and intelligence” to other nations. But Moses tells them that they must do more. “Take care … not to forget the things which your own eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your memory as long as you live, but teach them to your children and to your children’s children.” What things is Moses referring to? He is speaking about the whole marvelous, indeed miraculous, story of his people’s deliverance from their more than four centuries of slavery.

          Why is this remembering so important? Why does Holy Scripture so often record the story of God’s mighty deeds in the past? Because God never changes. As we read in the letter to the Hebrews: “Jesus Christ is the same: yesterday, today, yes and forever” (13:8). The record of God’s miraculous care for his people in the past assures us of his care today, and its continuance into the future.

          The Church’s central act of worship, the Mass, is a recalling of what God’s Son, Jesus, has done for us at the Last Supper, on Calvary, and at his Resurrection. But this is not merely a mental recalling. Because the Mass is a sacrament, it makes present, spiritually but truly, that which it commemorates. We are there with the apostles in the Upper Room. We are there with the Beloved Disciple, Mary, and other women on Calvary; and we are with them also, astonished, at the empty tomb, with but one exception. We cannot see him with our physical eyes; but we do see him with the eyes of faith. And seeing, we adore.

4th SUNDAY IN LENT: THE MAN BORN BLIND

COMING INTO THE LIGHT        

Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year A. John 9:1-41.

AIM: To strengthen the hearers’ faith. 

          Is there someone here today who comes here discouraged – by frustration, failure, or defeat? by the seeming meaninglessness of life? If so, consider the man in the gospel we have just heard. 

          What could be more discouraging than to be blind from birth, reduced to begging as your only means of subsistence? To this poor man Jesus gives the greatest gift possible short of heaven: sight. He does so out of sheer goodness: not because the blind man was good enough, but because Jesus is so good that he wants to share his goodness with someone who has next to nothing, to bring the man from darkness into the light.

          The gospel writer intends this blind man as a symbol of human life without God. He is so understood by the Church, which in the introduction to the  Eucharistic prayer on this Sunday, which we shall hear in a few moments, tells us that what Jesus Christ did for this man is what he wants to do for every one of us — if we will let him. He never forces himself on us.

            By the mystery of the Incarnation, he has led the human race that walked

            in darkness into the radiance of the faith and has brought those born in

slavery to ancient sin through the waters of regeneration to make them

your adopted children.       

          The story, in other words, is about more than the gift of physical sight. It tells us also that Jesus gives us spiritual sight: the inner light of faith.

          Notice the progressive stages of the blind man’s journey. Jesus might have healed him with a word or touch. Instead Jesus invites the man to cooperate in his own healing by going to a certain pool and washing from his eyes the mud Jesus has smeared on them. Following those peculiar directions required faith. How easy it would have been for the man to say: “Oh, that won’t do any good.” By his willingness to do this simple thing which Jesus asks of him, the man, without knowing it, begins his own journey of faith. 

          The blind man’s journey to faith brings him into conflict with those who are certain they already possess all the light there is, people who know all the answers.  The blind man starts with very few answers. Asked who healed him, he first says: “The man called Jesus.” Later he adds: “He is a prophet.” Finally, questioned by Jesus himself, the man accepts Jesus as “Son of Man”: God’s anointed servant, the Messiah, before whom he bows down in worship. Starting with the recovery of physical sight, he has completed his journey from the blindness of disbelief into the spiritual light of faith. 

          Those who are confident that they have all the answers already are journeying, meanwhile, in the opposite direction: from self-assured enlightenment to the inner darkness of disbelief. Initially they seem ready to accept the man’s healing as genuine. Then they begin to question it by raising questions about the man’s identity. When this has been firmly established, they resort to bullying: “You were born totally in sin, and you are trying to teach us?”

          Finally, these self-righteous spiritual leaders who presume to sit in judgment on Jesus are in turn judged by him. “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.” Refusing to acknowledge their need for God and the enlightenment that only his divine Son can give, they are condemned to their own self-imposed darkness.

          The story asks each of us for a decision. Where do I stand? With the blind man, or with his critics? The blind man’s journey from darkness to light is possible because he admits his need for light, and trusts the One who offers it. What condemns his critics to journey in the opposite direction is their complacent certainty that they know all the answers already. Confident that they do not need what Jesus has to offer, they turn their backs on him, only to have him turn on them with the terrible words: “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.”

          If you can make little sense of life; if you cannot see the way ahead; if you do not know sometimes whether you believe in anything – then come to Jesus Christ as the blind man came. Show him your needs, your fears, your doubts, your blindness. Tell him you want what he alone can give.

          And as you tell him, trust him as the blind man trusted when he obeyed Jesus’ simple command: “Go and wash.” Show Jesus Christ your need. Trust him, and go on trusting. He will do the rest.

          I would like to close with a brief personal statement. It is sixty-six years now since I knelt before the bishop to be ordained a priest in the Church of God. It was the fulfillment of the dream I had had, without a single interruption, from age twelve. Have every one of those sixty-six years been happy? Of course not. That does not happen in any life. All of us must travel at some time another through the dark valley. For seven years, 1974 to 1981, I was without assignment and unemployed. Resident in St. Louis but belonging to a bishop in Germany, I was like an Army officer who has got detached from his regiment. The clerical system did not know what to do with me. Those years were hard, and terribly lonely. I survived only by prayer. And there have been other hard years as well.

          If you were to ask me, however, whether I have ever regretted my decision for priesthood, I would reply at once: never, not one single day. I’ll say it another way. If I had my life to live over again, knowing about all the hard and difficult years which lay ahead, would I still choose priesthood? In a heartbeat! I would change just one thing: I would try to be more faithful. Priesthood has brought me pain and sorrow, yes. But it has also brought me joys beyond telling. Those joys are the reason why I say every day, more times than I can tell you: “Lord, you’re so good to me, and I’m so grateful.”               

          The greatest joy is the privilege, beyond any man’s deserving, of standing at the altar day by day to obey Jesus’ command at the Last Supper, to “Do this in my memory.” Celebrating Mass was wonderful the first time I did it sixty-six years ago. It is, if possible, even more wonderful today. My prayer today and every day, starting fourteen years ago and continuing on into the future, is twofold:

That the years which remain to me may be dedicated every more completely to the Lord God; and –

          For a happy and a holy death.         

          I would like to close with a prayer composed by the great 19^th century English convert, Saint John Henry Newman, at the end of his long life a cardinal, which has been dear to me since childhood.

Support us, O Lord, all the day long; until the shadows lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in your mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.   

THE END TIME

Homily for November 12^th, 2020: Luke 17:20-25

          We are nearing the end of the year in the Church’s calendar. Two weeks from Sunday, the 29th of November, is the start of a new Church year. As we approach the threshold of this new year the Church gives us readings about what has traditionally been called “the end time,” when Jesus will come again: not as he first came in Bethlehem, in the weakness and obscurity of a baby, born in a little village on the edge of the then known world; but in an event so dramatic that all will know that history’s final hour has struck.  

          From Jesus’ day to this, people have wanted to know when this will be. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus says that even he does not know this. “As for the exact day or hour, no one knows it, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but the Father only” (Mt. 24:36).

Hence, Jesus tells us in today’s gospel, when people claim to have a timetable, we should pay no attention to them: “There will be those who will say to you, ‘Look, there he is,’ or ‘Look here he is.’ Do not go off, do not run in pursuit.” Jesus’ return will be dramatic, but also unexpected. “For just as lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will he Son of Man be in his day.”

Then comes a shocker: “First he [the Son of Man] must suffer greatly and be rejected by this generation.”  Friends, this suffering and rejection continue today. Just a few years ago, Cardinal Dolan of New York, in his final address as outgoing President of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference, spoke about the worldwide persecution of Christians today. The 20^th century, he said, saw the death of half the total number of Christian martyrs since Jesus’ death and resurrection. And in the not yet 21 years of this century, a million Christians have already died because of their faith in Jesus Christ. Those martyrs are our brothers and sisters in the family of God, Dolan said. We must pray for them, as well as for those still living, in Iraq and Syria but also elsewhere, who are facing cruel persecution. Pope Francis has said the same many times. I invite you to do this in a special way in this Mass. 

UNLIMITED FORGIVENESS?

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.   

CURE OF A V.I.P.

Homily for March 16^th, 2020: 2 Kings 5:1-15.

          Read the Bible through, and you will find every type of person you will ever encounter or even read about. The Syrian General Naaman, whose story we heard in our first reading, and whom Jesus recalls in the gospel, is the original V.I.P. – a Very Important Person. We see this in the retinue he takes with him on his visit to what he considers the unimportant little country of Israel. He brings with him a treasure in silver and gold, ten sets of elaborate court dress, the horses and chariots necessary to transport all this booty, and the personnel necessary to keep everything in order and to ensure that Naaman himself has a safe journey, with all the comforts he requires.

          The reason for his trip is the report which has reached him from one of his wife’s servant girls that there is a prophet in Israel who can cure people of Naaman’s disease: leprosy. Naaman deals initially with Israel’s king. You wouldn’t expect a man of his importance to go traipsing through a piddling little country like Israel looking for a mere prophet, would you? When the king sends him on to Elisha, and Naaman finds out, upon arrival at the prophet’s modest abode, that Elisha won’t even come out to greet him, but sends him a note instead, he is indignant. When he reads the note, his indignation turns to outrage. It tells him that if is looking for a cure he should wash seven times in the nearby river Jordan. ‘You call that a river?’ Naaman protests angrily. ‘Back where I come from, that’s nothing but a muddy creek. I’m going home.’

          At this point the real hero of the story appears: someone in Naaman’s entourage who finds courage to say to the Great Man: ‘What have you got to lose? Why not try what the prophet says?’ Naaman does so – and he is healed! He returns to Elisha, who comes out now, and hears Naaman confess: “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel.” Naaman’s cure is not only physical. It is mental and spiritual as well. His mind, and with it his soul, have been changed. He realizes that it’s not all about himself, his ideas, his expectations.

          What about us? Are we open to the other – open to God? Are we willing to acknowledge that our own ideas, our goals, our dreams, may fall short of what the Lord God, who loves us more than we can ever imagine, wants for us – and yes, has in store for us -- if only we can stop thinking it’s all about me, me, me, and tell God: “Not what I want Lord, but what you want?”