"LORD, i AM NOT WORTHY."

Homily for June 27^th, 2020. Matthew 8:5-17.

          The centurion who asks Jesus to heal his serving boy is a Roman military officer, something like a colonel today. This is clear from his response when Jesus says he will come at once to heal the boy. The officer shows both courtesy to Jesus and respect for the Jewish law by saying: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you under my roof.” Luke’s version of this story tells us that this Roman officer has taken a genuine interest in Jewish religion, and has even built a synagogue. He knows, therefore, that in entering a Gentile house Jesus could become ritually unclean. Hence the officer suggests an alternative: “Just give an order and my boy will be healed.” I do that all the time, he says. I give orders to those under my authority, and they do what I command.

          Upon hearing these words, Matthew tells us, Jesus “showed amazement.” Normally it is the witnesses of Jesus’ healings who are amazed. Here it is the Lord himself who shows amazement. I have not found faith like this from my own people, Jesus says. This outsider, who has neither our divine law, nor our prophets, he tells the people, shows greater faith than you do.

The words which follow about people coming from east and west to take seats at God’s heavenly banquet alongside Israel’s heroes are a prophecy of the Church. Originally a sect within Judaism, the Church would break out of its Jewish womb to become the worldwide community that we know today.

          The centurion’s words continue to resound two millennia later. “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof,” we say before we approach the Lord’s table to receive his Body and Blood, “but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.” Even after a good confession, we are still unworthy of the Lord’s gift. He gives himself to us for one reason: not because we are good enough; but because he is so good that he longs to share his love with us.  

          How do we respond? By gratitude! By walking before the Lord in holiness and righteousness all our days, trusting that when the Lord calls us home to himself, we shall hear him saying to us, very personally and with tender love: “Well done. … Come and share your master’s joy.” (Matt. 25:21).

 

"YOU CAN MAKE ME CLEAN."

Homily for June 26th, 2020: Matthew 8:1-4.

          People afflicted with leprosy in Jesus’ day suffered not only physically but socially and spiritually, as well. Because the disease was considered highly contagious, they were banned from public places. And since they were considered spiritually unclean, they could not participate in Temple worship. Anyone who touched a leper became spiritually unclean as well.

          This helps us understand why the man we have just heard about in the gospel reading is prefaces his plea for healing by doing homage to Jesus. “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean, he pleads.”  The man’s faith in Jesus’ power to heal is crucial. It is faith that opens the door for God’s action in our lives.

          Out of compassion with this social outcast Jesus responds at once. Reaching out across the boundary between clean and unclean, Jesus touches the man, saying: “I will do it. Be made clean.” Jesus has restored the man to the community of God’s people. At once he tells the newly healed man to fulfill the provisions of the Jewish law by going to a Temple priest and offering sacrifice. Jewish priests were then also quarantine officials.

          Where did Jesus get this power to heal? He received it in his hours of silent waiting on his heavenly Father in prayer. Just before encountering this leper, Jesus has been on a mountain, Matthew tells us. Mountains in those days were considered especially close to God. Jesus has just been praying. He needed those times of silence, alone with his heavenly Father. It was in those hours of solitude that Jesus nurtured the power to heal, to say to rough working men, “Follow me,” and have them obey him on the spot. And if Jesus, whose inner resources were infinitely greater than ours, needed those times alone with God, we are fools and guilty fools, if we think we can do without them.  

THE HOUSE BUILT ON ROCK

Homily for June 25^th, 2020: Matthew 7:21-29.

"Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.” In Jesus’ day, it would make no sense to build one's house on sand. After each heavy rain, a torrent would come and wash away anything in its path. Jesus had probably seen structures carried away by heavy rains and storms in Palestine.

To build one's house on sand means to build our lives on things that are unstable and fleeting, things that cannot not withstand the tests of time and the hazards of chance. What are such things? Money, success, fame, and even health and prosperity. Each of those things is good in itself; but none of them is reliable or solid.

To build one's house on rock means to base our lives on things that are solid, enduring, things that cannot be carried away with life’s storms. “Heaven and earth will pass away,” Jesus says later in this gospel according to Matthew, “but my words will not pass away.” (24:35) To build our house on rock means building our life on God. Rock is one of the preferred biblical symbols for the God. “Trust in the Lord forever,” we read in the prophet Isaiah, “for the Lord is an eternal rock.” (26:4). The book Deuteronomy says the same: "He is the Rock; his deeds are perfect. Everything he does is just and fair. He is a faithful God who does no wrong; how just and upright he is." (32:4)

To build one's house on the rock means, therefore, living in the Church and not remaining on the fringe, at a distance, using the excuse that the Church is filled with hypocrites, dishonesty. and sin. Of course it is! The Church is made up of sinners like ourselves.

Today's gospel starts with what seems a harsh message. For the first time Matthew speaks about people who refer to Jesus as their Lord. But what good is it to cry out, "Lord, Lord," Jesus asks, when your works are not done for me but for your own glory? When we cry out "Lord," it should mean that we belong to him at all times, and not just as temporary acquaintances. When the Lord responds, “I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers,” (a harsh message indeed) Jesus is really expressing his longing for people who are truly close to him in daily life. Those who do things in his name to be seen and honored, yet refuse to live in daily fellowship with him, are fraudulent. Those who are deaf to the Word of God, who do not act upon it, and whose lives are not built upon God will be swept away when the storms of life descend.

"HIS NAME IS JOHN."

“HIS NAME IS JOHN”

June 24^th, 2020. Luke 1:57-66, 80.

AIM: To explain the significance of the Baptist’s name, and the implications for us.

 

Not quite 52 years ago, on the afternoon of October 28^th, 1958, an elderly cardinal named Angelo Roncalli was elected Bishop of Rome. When he was asked what name he would take as Pope, he replied: “I will be called John.” It was the first of many surprises. There had not been a pope of that name for over six hundred years. Almost all of them had short pontificates, John told his electors. He was then just short of 77. He would die only four and a half years later, on the day after Pentecost 1963.

“The name John is dear to me,” the new Pope explained, “because it was the name of my father, because it is the dedication of the humble parish church where I was baptized, and because it is the name of our own cathedral, the blessed and holy Lateran Basilica.” He loved the name John, he added, because it had been borne by the two men in the gospels who were closest to Jesus: John the Baptist, who prepared the way of the Lord and shed his blood in witness to the One he proclaimed; and John the Evangelist, called throughout the gospel which bears his name “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”

Today we celebrate the birth of the first of those two Johns. The saints are normally celebrated on the day of their death, called by the Church their heavenly birthday. The Church celebrates John the Baptist’s death on the 29^th of August. He is the only saint whose birthday is celebrated as a solemn feast, so that, like Christmas, it displaces even the weekly remembrance of the Lord’s resurrection on Sunday. 

The Baptist’s naming, like that of Pope John XXIII, was a surprise. Luke’s gospel tells us how it came about. Nine months before the child’s birth, God had sent the angel Gabriel to tell the baby’s father, the Jewish priest, Zechariah: “Your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth shall bear a son whom you shall name John.  Joy and gladness will be yours, and many will rejoice at his birth” (Lk 1:13f).  Zechariah found the news incredible. He and his wife Elizabeth were both far too old to have a child. “How am I to know this?” Zechariah asked. “I am an old man; my wife too is advanced in age.” 

Zechariah’s inability to believe the angel’s message meant that from that day he was mute, unable to speak. Clearly he was deaf as well. For at his son’s birth, today’s gospel reading says, they have to ask the old man by signs what name he wishes to give his son. His inability to speak meant that he had never been able to tell his wife that the angel had named their son John nine months before. 

Those gathered for the baby’s naming assume that he will have his father’s name. Great is their astonishment when the child’s mother Elizabeth insists on a name not borne hitherto by anyone in their family. “No,” she says, “he will be called John.” The astonishment becomes amazement when Zechariah, asked by signs what he wants to call his son, confirms his wife’s choice. Even though deafness prevented Zechariah from hearing what his wife had said, he writes the words: “John is his name.”

Immediately, Luke tells us, Zechariah’s “mouth was opened, his tongue freed, and he spoke, blessing God.” His words are omitted in today’s gospel reading. They are a hymn of praise, starting with the words: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; he has come to his people and set them free.” The Church has made these words part of her daily public prayer every morning. 

St. Augustine says that Zechariah’s power of speech was restored because at his son’s birth a voice was born. If John had proclaimed himself, Augustine says, he could not have restored his father’s speech. John’s role, determined by God from his first conception in his mother’s womb, was to proclaim another: the One who would not be, like John, simply a voice, but himself God’s Word: his personal utterance and communication to us.

The words of the prophet Isaiah in our first reading apply equally to John: “The Lord called me from birth, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name. ... You are my servant, he said to me, Israel through whom I show my glory.” The name John means, “God is gracious,” or “God has given grace.” The name was singularly appropriate for the man commissioned even before his birth to proclaim the One who would give God a human face, and a human voice.

God called each of us in our mother’s womb. He fashioned us in his own image, as creatures made for love: to praise, worship, and praise God here on earth, and to be happy with him forever in heaven.  Fulfilling that destiny, given to us not just at birth but at our conception, means heeding the words which today’s saint, John the Baptist, spoke about Jesus: “He must increase, I must decrease” (John 3:3).

Those are the most important words which St. John the Baptist spoke.  In just six words they sum up the whole life of Christian discipleship.  Imprint those words on your mind, your heart, your soul.  Resolve today to try to make them a reality in daily life.  Those who do that find that they have discovered the key to happiness, to fulfilment, and to peace. “He must increase, I must decrease.”

"TO LIVE IS TO CHANGE."

Homily for June 23^rd, 2020: Matthew 7:6, 12-14.

          Catholics now in their late sixties came of age in a day when the Catholic Church was proud to be “the Church that never changes.” That boast was actually only half true – as such then young Catholics started to discover with the close of the Second Vatican Council in December 1965. The Church’s faith never changes. There has been development, of course. But we believe that this development has been guided by the Holy Spirit, so that what we believe today about the Pope, to take one example, is an entirely legitimate development of what the apostles believed. Just about everything else except our beliefs has changed and will change: styles of worship, of preaching, and methods of handing on the faith to others. No one has stated the need for such change better than the great 19^th century English convert, at the end of his life a cardinal, Blessed John Henry Newman. “To live is to change,” Newman said, “and to be perfect is to have changed often.” Catholics less than 65 today have grown up in a Church which is rapidly changing.

          Are all the changes we have seen over the last half-century good? Clearly not. How can we judge such changes? Jesus tells us in today’s gospel: “By their fruits you will know them.” The most obvious change over the last half-century is in worship. Catholics who came to Church in 1960 experienced a Mass which was almost entirely silent; the few parts spoken aloud could seldom be understood: not just because they were in Latin, but because most priests took them at breakneck speed. Fifteen and even twelve-minute celebrations of a rite considerably longer than today’s Mass were common. Praying the prayers aloud, as we now do, and in the language of the people, has enhanced popular participation in the Mass, at least where priests have learned to lead the celebration with reverence. Sadly, many still have not.

          The charismatic renewal is another change. It did not exist before Vatican II. Speaking recently to some 50,000 charismatics in Rome, Pope Francis confessed that he was initially mistrustful of their movement. Now he endorses it enthusiastically because of its good fruits. It has made prayer real for millions for whom prayer was once just reciting words out of a book.

          The renewal of religious life for women has produced both good and bad fruits. The Sisters’ orders which have modernized, while retaining such things as community life, an updated uniform or habit, and enthusiastic faithfulness to Church teaching are growing rapidly. Those which are have erased all signs that they are different have no recruits at all and, though visibly dying, still insist that they are the wave of the future. Once again, we see: “By their fruits you will know them.”

"STOP JUDGING."

Homily for June 22^nd, 2020: Matthew 7:1-5.

          “Stop judging,” Jesus says. Can we really do that? Even simple statements involve judging: “This coffee is too hot;” or, “Children, you’re making too much noise.” And what about the moral judgments of others that we make, and must make, all the time? An employer makes a judgment every time he hires a new employee. The pope judges when he makes a priest a bishop. Parents make judgments about their children in deciding such questions as when to entrust them with a cell phone, or the family car. Clearly Jesus cannot be forbidding judgments like that.

          What Jesus forbids is making judgments that only God can make – because only God can see the heart. When God sent the prophet Samuel to Bethlehem to find a new king for his people, to replace Saul, Samuel was especially impressed with the young man Eliab. Surely, he must be the one, Samuel says. To which the Lord responds: “Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, because I have rejected him. Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart.” (1 Sam. 16:7) Jesus, who was steeped in the Jewish Scriptures, would have been familiar with that passage. He would also have known the verse from the prophet Jeremiah, who represents God saying: “I, the Lord, alone probe the mind and test the heart, to reward everyone according to his ways.” (Jer. 17:10) 

          “Stop judging, that you may not be judged,” Jesus says. That is what Bible scholars call the “theological passive.” What Jesus meant was, “Stop judging, so that God will not judge you.” A devout Jew could not say that. Pronouncing the name of God was forbidden. To avoid doing so, Jesus uses the passive: “that you may not be judged.”

          We find this confirmed in the words that follow: “The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.”  What this means is: God will judge you with the severity, or generosity, which you show to others.  Do you hope that, when you come to stand before the Lord God in judgment, he will show you mercy? Then start showing mercy to others. It’s as simple as that!