Friday, May 15, 2020

"IF THE WORLD HATES YOU."


Homily for May 16th, 2020: John 15:18-21.

          “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first,” Jesus says in today’s gospel. Does the world really hate us? I’m sorry to tell you: It does. When we say, publicly and openly, that abortion at any stage of pregnancy, is the deliberate killing of a baby, a crime as grave as the killing of a human being at any age between birth and natural death, the world calls us misogynists, haters of women, enemies of their “reproductive freedom,” who are waging a war on women.
          When we say, publicly and openly, that marriage is exclusively the lifelong union of one man and on woman, rooted in our God given human nature, for the sake not only of uniting hearts and minds, but also for parenthood, we are called homophobes, bigots, enemies of equality as reprehensible as those who defended segregated schools, waiting rooms, and lunch counter in yesteryear’s Jim Crow South.
          The world hates us for saying these things and tells us: “You should be ashamed.” These teachings are not merely personal opinions, as a parishioner told me not long ago when I stated from the pulpit the Church’s teaching about marriage. They are the teaching of the Catholic Church.
          There is a way to avoid this hatred, and it is this: simply be silent about such matters. Then we can continue to go to Mass, and identify ourselves publicly as Catholics without arousing hatred; because the world knows, with a wink and a nod, that there are also “good Catholics”: sensible, modern people who don’t upset anyone by mentioning such matters; because such Catholics agree with those who hate us that the Church’s teachings are outdated, obsolete, and hence, for Catholics, optional and dispensable. Friends, nothing in our Catholic faith is optional or dispensable, any more than any one of the teachings of Jesus Christ is optional. It was Jesus’ refusal to compromise, or be silent, about anything he said that brought him to the cross.
One day each one of us will stand before God in judgment. One of the questions we shall be asked is this: Were you ever ashamed of the gospel? Did you keep silent about any part of it, or did you deny it, out of fear that you would make people uncomfortable or even angry? The answers to those questions will determine, one day, where, how, and with whom, we shall spend eternity. Think about that. More important, pray about it.

Thursday, May 14, 2020

LOVE ONE ANOTHER


May 15th, 2019: John 15:12-17.
          “Love one another,” Jesus says, “as I have loved you.” Is that realistic? Can we love on command? Certainly not, if the kind of love Jesus is talking about is a matter of our feelings only. Jesus is talking about an attitude. Let me give you an example: a story sent to me by a man who is today a successful architect.
          “Thirty years ago, I was driving a cab for a living. When I arrived at 2:30 a.m., the building was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window. “So, I walked to the door and knocked. ‘Just a minute’, answered a frail, elderly voice. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 80's stood before me. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. 
          "‘Would you carry my bag out to the car?’ she said. I took the suitcase to
the cab, then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness. “‘It's nothing’, I told her. ‘I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated’.
          "‘Oh, you're such a good boy’, she said.
          “When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, then asked, ‘Could you drive through downtown?’ 
          "‘It's not the shortest way,’ I answered quickly.
          "‘Oh, I don't mind,’ she said. ‘I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to a hospice’.
"‘I don't have any family left,’ she continued. ‘The doctor says I don't have very
long.’ I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. ‘What route would you like me to take?’ I asked. 
          “For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived as newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes she'd ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.
         We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent. I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.
          "‘How much do I owe you?’ she asked, reaching into her purse.
          "‘Nothing,’ I said.
          "‘You have to make a living,’ she answered.
          "‘There are other passengers,’ I responded. Almost without thinking, I bent
and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly. 
          "‘You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
          “I squeezed her hand, then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.
          “On a quick review, I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life. We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware — beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.”
          The man who sent me that story offers this final comment. “People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said.  But they will always remember how you made them feel.”
          The One who pours his love into our hearts gives us this greatest of all gifts under one strict condition: that what we have freely received, we freely share with others. Or, to put it another way: You can’t keep Jesus’ love unless you give it away.

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

"IT WAS NOT YOU WHO CHOSE ME."


Homily for May 14th, 2020: Acts 1:15-17, 20-26; John 15:9-17.

          Our first reading shows us the Church performing what might be called her first juridical act: finding among Jesus’ disciples one to take the place of Judas Iscariot, who had betrayed the Lord. Unlike Peter, who repented, Judas had despaired and taken his own life. Peter, by the Lord’s appointment the Church’s chief shepherd, takes the lead in choosing a new apostle. The man chosen, he says, must be one who has been with us from the day of Jesus’ baptism, until his death, resurrection, and ascension, so that he could be, with us remaining eleven apostles, a witness to [Jesus’] resurrection. 

          Note how carefully they proceed. Not trusting to human judgment, they choose two of their number who fulfill Peter’s requirement. Then they pray that the Lord will show them which of the two he has chosen. This is the first corporate prayer recorded in the New Testament.  Following this, they cast lots. A common Jewish practice, this was done by taking two stones, writing the name of one candidate on each, and then placing both in an open jar. The jar was then shaken until one of the stones fell out.  

Who was this Matthias, we want to know? The honest answer is: we don’t know. There are stories about him, but they are legends only. Careful as Peter had been to leave the choice to God, it seems that the Lord had another in mind, a man about whom we know a great deal: a devout Jew named Saul, zealous defender of his Jewish faith, who in baptism became Paul, the great apostle to the wider Gentile world. He is the man to whom Jesus’ words in today’s gospel reading apply, if they ever applied to anyone: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain.”

In all this we see, once again, what the Bible shows us repeatedly: that God is the master of surprises, the God of the unexpected. Hence the old saying: If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

I AM THE TRUE VINE


Homily for May 13th, 2020: John 15:1-8.

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.” Some Bible scholars think that Jesus spoke these words as he crossed the Temple courtyard with his eleven still faithful friends after the Last Supper. It was Passover time, so there would have been a full moon. The golden vine around the Temple wall, which symbolized God’s people, glowed in the moonlight. Pointing first to himself, then to the vine, Jesus says: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower ...”
In calling himself the true vine, Jesus implies a contrast. God’s people, the vine he had brought out of Egypt and planted in a new land, had not been true. Jesus had been true. His death the next day would be Jesus’ final act of faithful obedience to his Father’s will. He was calling the little band of friends accompanying him to imitate his faithfulness “By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”
  To do this, they must remain united with him. “Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.” The person who remains united with him, Jesus says, “will bear much fruit.”
“My Father is the vine grower,” Jesus says. He cares for the branches of his vine in two ways: by pruning those that bear fruit, and by cutting off and burning the unfruitful branches. Jesus’ words about these unfruitful branches being thrown into a fire and burned are an implied reference to Judas, who was even then betraying the Lord.
The vine grower’s treatment of the fruitful branches seems at first sight severe: “Every one that [bears fruit] he prunes so that it bears more fruit.” The image, easily understood by Jesus’ hearers, who were familiar with vineyards and grapes, is that of a gardener pinching off the new green shoots on a vine, so that all the growth can be concentrated in the few early blooming branches which the gardener has selected to bear fruit. 
Faced in life with setbacks, injustice, or suffering -- as all of us are, at some time or other -- which one of us has not asked: “Why me? What have I done to deserve this?” Jesus’ words in today’s gospel do not answer these questions. Instead his words challenge us to view setbacks, injustice, and suffering as opportunities to grow. He is inviting us to submit to the vine grower's pruning, and so to glorify him by producing abundant fruit.

 

Monday, May 11, 2020

HARDSHIPS, AND PEACE

Homily for May 12th, 2020: Acts of the Apostles 14:19-28; John 14:27-31a.

         Seven years ago a book was published with the interesting title: "The Boy who Met Jesus." It told the story of a 15-year-old penniless boy in the African country of Rwanda named Segatashya who had never been to school or a church, and had never seen a Bible. Resting under a shade tree one day in 1982, he was visited by Jesus, who asked Segatashya if he’d be willing to go on a mission to remind people how to live a life that leads to heaven.

        Segatashya accepted the assignment on one condition: that Jesus answer all his questions -- about faith, religion, the purpose of life, and the nature of heaven and hell. Jesus agreed to the boy’s terms, and Segatashya set off on what would become a most miraculous journey. Some of what the young man learned confirms things we have heard in our two readings.

     “What you need to know is this,” Segatashya told the book’s author. “Jesus knows us all to the very depths of our souls, all our dreams and worries, all hopes and fears, all our goodness and all our weakness. He can see our sins and faults and wants nothing more than for us to heal our hearts and cleanse our souls so that we can love him as immeasurably as he loves us. When he sends s suffering, he does it only to strengthen our spirits so we’ll be strong enough to fight off Satan, who wants to destroy us, so that one day we can bask on the glory of his presence forever.

      Paul says something similar in our first reading: “It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God.”  I discovered those words 75 years ago. They have helped me through I couldn’t tell you how many trials ever since.

      “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you,” we heard Jesus saying in the gospel.” Segatashya must have heard those words, for he told the book’s author: “When I was with him, I never wanted to leave. If he asked me to come and be with him now, I would leave this world without the slightest hesitation. To be near him is to live I love; no words need be spoken. In his presence, your soul is at peace and completely joyous. Know that his love is real, and that it is eternal and ours to have if we love him and do his work on earth. Ask him into your heart, and all graces are yours. He will refuse you nothing. If you were able to know only one truth in your life, you should know this truth: Jesus loves you.

      Sadly, the young man who spoke those words was killed in the Rwandan slaughter of 1984. Our Christian and Catholic faith gives us reason to hope that we may meet him one day in heaven.

Sunday, May 10, 2020

"WHOEVER LOVES ME WILL KEEP MY WORD."


Homily for May 11th, 2020: John 14: 21-26.

          “Whoever loves me will keep my word,” Jesus tells his friends. He is speaking to the apostles at the Last Supper, after washing their feet. He did this to show them that he was sending them to serve others, and not to be served. That is what Jesus means by keeping his word: being servants of others. Jesus was speaking not just to those twelve men in the Upper Room at Jerusalem. He is speaking also to us. If we keep his word, he is telling us, his heavenly Father will love us, and both Jesus himself and his Father will love us and come to us, and make their dwelling with us. What a wonderful promise that is! And of course whenever Jesus promises something, he always keeps his promise.
          None of us ever keeps God’s word completely, however. All of us fail at times. That was why Mother Teresa – now St. Teresa of Calcutta – used to say: “God does not ask us to be successful. He asks us to be faithful.” When we fail, we need to remember what our wonderful Pope Francis never tires of telling us: “God never grows tired of forgiving us. It is we who grow tired of asking for forgiveness.”  
         Speaking to a vast crowd of young people in Germany in September 2011, his predecessor, now Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI said: “Dear friends, Christ is not so much interested in how often in our lives we stumble and fall, as in how often with his help we pick ourselves up again. He does not demand glittering achievements, but he wants his light to shine in you. He does not call you because you are good and perfect, but because he is good and wants to make you his friends. Yes, you are the light of the world because Jesus is your light. You are Christians – not because you do special and extraordinary things, but because he, Christ, is your life. You are holy, we are holy, if we allow his grace to work in us.”
          Pope Benedict’s words were an example of something else that Jesus promises in today’s gospel reading, at the close. “The Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.” On that evening with those young people in Germany nine years ago, the Pope of that day was doing just that.