FREEDOM IS NOT FREE

Homily for July 4^th, 2020.   

             The 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia 244 years ago today pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Have you ever wondered what happened to them? I researched this question a few years ago. Here is what I found.

Five of the signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War.

What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners: men of means, well educated, but they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that if they were captured, the penalty would be death.

Carter Braxton, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts and died in rags. Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Continental Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward. Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of 8 others [Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton].

At the battle of Yorktown, which closed the War of Independence, Thomas Nelson, Jr. noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt. Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months. John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished.

As we give thanks to God for the courage and generosity of these founders of our beloved country, we need to remember: Freedom is never free!

"THOMAS WAS NOT WITH THEM."

Homily for July 3^rd, 2020: John 20:24-29.

          On the evening of Jesus’ resurrection, Thomas was not with the other apostles. He did not see Jesus until he rejoined them a week later. Then he uttered what many scripture scholars believe may have been the last words spoken by any of Jesus’ disciples in the original version of John’s gospel: “My Lord and my God!”

Thomas’s experience has an important lesson for us. Faith is not a private me-and-God affair. Jesus taught us this in the one prayer he gave us. It begins not “My Father,” but “Our Father.” We pray as members of a community. We need each other. Why? Here’s one answer.

Dwight L. Moody, a Protestant and founder of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, tells about visiting an old friend. As they chatted in the evening by the friend’s fireplace, the host said to Moody. “I don’t see why I can’t be just as good a Christian outside the Church as within it.” Without replying, Moody used tongs to pick up a blazing coal with tongs, allowing it to burn by itself.  In silence the two men watched it smolder and go out.    

          Dwight Moody believed that the support which believers give one another was an affair of this world only. We Catholics believe more. When we say in the Creed, “I believe in the communion of saints,” we are acknowledging that the community which we entered through baptism extends beyond this world. It includes the saints and our beloved dead. A passage in the letter to the Hebrews expresses this belief. It comes at the beginning of chapter 12. The preceding chapter recounts the great heroes of faith in the Old Testament. The writer portrays them as spectators in an arena, cheering on and encouraging us, who are still competing in the race which they ran before us. Then come these words. I discovered them as a young teenager. They thrilled me then. They thrill me still:

          “Seeing then that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which clings so close, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the beginning and end of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

"THEY TRAMPLE THE HEADS OF THE WEAK."

Homily for July 2^nd, 2020: Amos 7:10-17.

Should the Church get involved in politics? Many people say, “No way. Religion and politics don’t mix.” Others disagree. Whenever fundamental moral issues are at stake, these people maintain, the Church must get involved. Our first reading today introduces a religious figure who was severely condemned for involvement in politics. Like his countryman, Jesus, centuries later, Amos was a layman. God called Amos while he was still a shepherd and farmer, and commanded him: “Go, prophesy to my people Israel.”

           Amos had no crystal ball to predict the future. Instead Amos, like all true prophets, was summoned to speak “a word of the Lord” to the people of his day: to warn, to admonish, to rebuke, and to encourage. As a simple countryman, Amos was scandalized by his glimpses of city life during his visits to market. “They sell the just man for silver, and the poor man for a pair of sandals. They trample the heads of the weak … and force the lowly out of the way.” Without mincing his words, Amos pronounced his corrupt society ripe for God’s judgment.

If Amos were to come back today, what are some of the things he would denounce in our society and tell us we needed to repent of? One which was often mentioned by Pope St. John Paul II, and by his two successors, is consumerism: the false idea that we can buy happiness by amassing more and more possessions.

Something else which cries out for repentance is hedonism: the mindless philosophy that says, “If it feels good, do it.” Hedonism wrecks lives, relationships, and marriages, every day. We need to repent also of the hard-hearted selfishness which ignores the needs of the poor and oppressed in our midst; or which thinks that our obligation to them can be discharged by gifts to charity from our surplus goods, with no examination of unjust conditions in society that cause poverty and oppression. 

That is a short though incomplete list of the things in today’s society that require repentance. Jesus speaks of this often in the gospels.  And the repentance to which he summons us is not somewhere else, tomorrow. It is here, and it is now. And repentance begins not with someone else. If it is to begin at all, repentance must begin with ourselves.

 

 

"THEY BEGGED JESUS TO LEAVE."

Homily for July 1^st, 2020: Matthew 8:28-34.

          Jesus is in Gentile territory. We know that from the herd of pigs mentioned at the end of today’s gospel reading. Jews considered pigs unclean animals and did not raise them for food.

          The “demoniacs” who encounter Jesus are possessed by demons. This has made them violent and dangerous. “They were so savage that no one could travel by that road,” the gospel says, adding that when they met Jesus “they were coming from the tombs.” The idea of cemeteries being dangerous and scary places lives on today in stories about people whistling in the dark, to keep up their courage, as they walk by a cemetery.  Here, as elsewhere in the gospels, the demons perceive something that ordinary people do not. They recognize who Jesus is: “Son of God.” Most of Jesus’ friends would discover his true identity only after the resurrection.

“Have you come here to torment us before the appointed time?” they ask. This question reflects the belief in those days that demons were permitted to torment humans until “the end time,” when God would come to earth in blazing glory and banish all demons. Unlike humans, the demons recognize that with the coming of Jesus, God’s kingdom was already breaking in – which was bad news, of course, for the demons and all forces of evil.

Aware of Jesus’ power, the demons plead with him: “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of swine.” Jesus does what they ask, and the pigs, now controlled by demonic forces, rush headlong into the nearby sea and drown.

When the men who had been looking after the pigs carry the news of what has happened to the nearby town, the inhabitants come out en masse and beg Jesus to leave. But of course! The loss of the pigs was a disastrous blow to the local economy. What fresh disasters might occur if Jesus were to stay?   

          The story takes us into a world very different from ours. Or is it? Still today there are dangerous people who do horrible things: mass shootings at schools, kidnappings, slaughter by crazed suicide bombers. Despite all precautions by the military, police, and electronic surveillance, there is only One who has power over today’s demonic powers. His name is Jesus Christ.

JESUS CALMS A STORM

June 30^th, 2020: Matthew 8:23-27      

Jesus has spent all day, teaching and healing. Only now is Jesus able to break away from the crowd and embark in a boat with his friends. Jesus is totally exhausted.  he is fast asleep when, without warning, a violent storm comes up, throwing up steep waves which threaten to swamp the boat. “Lord, save us!” the disciples cry out as they wake Jesus. “We are perishing!” Awake now, he says calmly, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” Then he rebukes the winds and the sea. “And there was great calm,” Matthew tells us.

          Immediately the disciples’ panic is replaced with amazement, as one of them asks the question that is in everyone’s mind: “What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and the sea obey?” The Jewish Scriptures, especially the Psalms, speak often of God ruling the sea and the waves. Now Jesus’ disciples have seen him act as only God acts.

          The story is Matthew’s gift to the Church, and to each of us who have become members of the Church in baptism. Time and again the Church, and we its members, are storm tossed. That we are frightened at such times is only natural. The story is the Lord’s assurance that he is always with us. No matter how often we have strayed from him, he remains close. He saves us for one reason alone: because he loves us – with a love that will never let us go. 

PETER AND PAUL

Homily for June 29^th, 2020.

‘You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.” In Jesus’ language, Aramaic, the words for Peter and Rock were the same. In calling his friend, Simon, “Peter,” Jesus was giving him a new name: “Rock.”

In reality, Peter was anything but rocklike. 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: Jesus was right, Peter wrong.

Jesus gave the position of leadership of his Church to the friend whose love was imperfect; whose impetuosity and weakness made the name Jesus gave him -- Rock -- ironic: as ironic as calling a 350-pound heavyweight “Slim.”  Before he was fit to become the Church’s leader, however, Peter had to experience his weakness. He had to become aware that without a power greater than his own, he could do nothing.

With Peter the Church honors the Apostle Paul. His call was as surprising as the choice of Peter to be the Church’s leader. Who could have imagined that the Church’s arch-persecutor, Saul, would become its first and greatest missionary, Paul? If Peter was impulsive, impetuous, and often weak, Paul was hypersensitive, touchy, subject to wide swings of mood: at times elated, at others tempted to self-pity. No one who knew Paul would ever have accused him of “having it all together” --  to use modern jargon.

Is there anything like that in your life? When you look within, do you see any of Paul’s touchiness, or Peter’s impetuosity and weakness? Take heart! You have a friend in heaven -- two friends, in fact: Peter and Paul. The same Lord who gave the vacillating Simon the name of “Rock”; who summoned the Church’s arch-enemy, Saul, to be her great missionary, Paul, is calling you. In baptism he made you, for all time, his dearly loved daughter, his beloved son. He called you to be not only his disciple, but an apostle: his messenger to others. You say you’re not fit for that? You’re right. Neither am I! God often calls those who, by ordinary human standards, are unfit. But he always fits those whom he calls.  

God has a plan for your life, as surprising and wonderful as his plans for Peter and Paul. Knowing this, and aware of how God was accomplishing his plan in Paul’s own life, Paul could write: “I am sure of this much: that he who has begun the good work in you will carry it through to completion, right up to the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6).

Those words are part of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. And the best news of all is simply this. The only thing that can frustrate the accomplishment of God plan -- for you, for me, for any one of us -- is our own deliberate and final No.