Friday, July 31, 2020

PRAYING FOR VICTIMS OF INJUSTICE


Homily for August 1st,, 2020. Matt. 14:1-12.

          Herod had thrown John the Baptist into prison, today’s gospel tells us, “on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip.” Herod divorced his first wife, in order to marry the wife of his still living brother Philip, a woman named Herodias. No wonder that John denounced Herod. He had divorced his wife in order to marry his still married sister-in-law. This earned John the Baptist the hatred of two people, both equally unscrupulous: Herod and his new wife, Herodias.
          Herodias sees her chance for revenge at a drunken party hosted by her second husband, Herod. Aroused by the dance of Herodias’ daughter – unnamed here but celebrated in literature and in a well-known opera as Salome – Herod promises the girl, under oath, that he will give her anything she asks for, up to half of his kingdom. Not knowing how to respond, the girl consults her mother, who tells her to ask for the head of John the Baptist, who was even then languishing in Herod’s prison.
          Aghast at the girl’s request, but unwilling to violate his oath, made before so many witnesses, Herod orders John’s immediate execution, without judge, jury, or trial. It is hard to conceive of anything crueler and more unjust than the squalid story our gospel reports.
          Is that all just long ago and far away? Don’t you believe it! The media report similar outrages all the time: Muslims threatened with death, or actually killed, for converting to Christianity; a Christian missionary sentenced to death for preaching Christ in an Islamic country, and saved only by a worldwide outcry; the teenage girl in Afghanistan five years ago who survived an assassination attempt by terrorists opposed to education for women. Fortunately, she was nursed back to health in England, and lived to tell her story before a meeting of the United Nations in New York.
          How better could we respond to the atrocity reported in today’s gospel than to pray in this Mass for the countless victims of injustice and terror in the world today?

 

Thursday, July 30, 2020

ST. IGNATIUS LOYOLA


Homily for July 31st, 2020.

          Ignatius Loyola whom we celebrate today, was born about 1491 in northeastern Spain. Wounded in 1521 by a canon ball while fighting invading French troops at Pamplona, he was carried to the family castle at Loyola. There the doctors reset the broken bone in his leg. He would walk with a limp for the rest of his life.
          During his recuperation Ignatius asked for tales of love and adventure – the equivalent of today’s pulp novels and Playboy magazine. When nothing of this kind could be found, he was given the Legends of the Saints and a Life of Christ. He found them boring. In time, however, he asked himself: “What if I were to do what blessed Francis did? or blessed Dominic?” 
          As the months crept by, he realized that his romantic dreams left him empty afterwards. The stories of the saints, on the other hand, filled him with a joy which persisted even after he laid the book down. He resolved to do penance for his many sins, and to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem – another romantic dream, transformed now into a desire to serve a higher love, the love of God himself.
          In March 1522 Ignatius set off on a mule for his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. His went first to the Benedictine monastery of Montserrat. There he made a general confession, laid down his sword at the shrine of the Black Virgin, gave his mule to the abbot, his fine clothes to a beggar, and donned the sackcloth garment of pilgrims. Ignatius then made for the nearby town of Manresa, where he stayed for the next ten months. He attended Mass daily, spent much of the day in prayer, and fasted to excess. He became seriously depressed, was tempted with thoughts of suicide, and tormented by scruples about whether his general confession at Montserrat had been complete.
          At Manresa Ignatius also began writing notes for what eventually became his Spiritual Exercises, a kind of handbook designed, as the opening paragraph says, “to prepare and dispose the soul to rid itself of all disordered affections and then, after their removal, to seek and find God’s will in the ordering of our life for the salvation of our soul.”  It would become the first organized manual for a spiritual retreat in Christianity’s history. 
          Upon his return from the Holy Land, Ignatius began university study of philosophy and theology, first in Spain, finally at age 37 in Paris, where he guided fellow students in his Spiritual Exercises. On the 15th of August 1534, Ignatius and six companions attended a Mass celebrated by Peter Favre, the only priest in the group, in a chapel atop the hill, Montmartre, then outside Paris. Together they vowed to go to Jerusalem (the old romantic dream was not dead); and if that proved impossible to place themselves at the disposal of the Pope for any task he assigned them.
          Only in January 1537 could the group could reassemble at Venice, then the jumping off place for the Holy Land. On the 24th of June Ignatius and his companions were ordained priests in Venice. With the Mediterranean closed to shipping by the Turks, the hoped-for trip to Jerusalem was impossible. At the end of 1538, therefore, Ignatius and his companions proceeded to Rome, where they offered themselves to Pope Paul III, who assigned them missions in Italy, Portugal, and overseas. Only in 1540 did the Pope confirm the group as the Society of Jesus, with Ignatius chosen unanimously as their first superior.  
          Ignatius remained in Rome for the fifteen more years which remained to him. The society grew rapidly, founding two colleges in Rome for the training of the clergy, Rome’s first orphanage, the first “half-way house” for prostitutes wanting to change their lives, and in 1547 the first schools for laypeople, the beginning of the worldwide Jesuit teaching apostolate which continues today.  
          Inspiring and supporting all this activity was Ignatius’ deep and prolonged prayer. His devotion to the Holy Trinity was so intense that he sometimes had difficulty starting to celebrate Mass or to continue. After Mass he would remain two hours in silent prayer -- something sadly lacking today, when millions banish silence with TV, radio, and the many other electronic means now so widely available.
          Death came unexpectedly to Ignatius’ on July 31st, 1556. He went home to the Lord whom he had served so generously as he had taught his followers to live: without drama or fuss. At his death they numbered over a thousand, working as far afield as Japan and Brazil, and including the great apostle to the Orient, St. Francis Xavier. Among Ignatius’ many frequently quoted words are these: “Act, as if all depended on you; pray, as if all depended on God.”  

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

THE DRAGNET


Homily for July 30th, 2020: Matthew 13:47-53.

          “The kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea.” It is what we call a dragnet. Dragged along the bottom, it collects everything in its path. In Matthew’s gospel it immediately follows the parable of the weeds among the wheat. Both parables have a similar message, one which Jesus’ first hearers would easily have understood. They were familiar with dietary laws, which separated unclean foods from those they were permitted to eat. Sea creatures without fins or scales were unclean, and hence could not be eaten. So, once the net is brought ashore, there must be a selection. The clean fish are put into buckets and taken to market. Everything else is thrown away. “Thus it will be at the end of the age,” Jesus tells us. “The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace.” In the parable of the wheat and the weeds they do the same with the weeds.
          God is not mocked, Jesus is telling us. The power of evil, of which we see signs daily in the morning headlines, and on the evening news on TV, is temporary. In the end, goodness will triumph, Jesus is telling us, and evil will be burned up in the flames of God’s justice.
That too is the gospel. That is the good news.      

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

"I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE."


July 29th, 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.

 

 

Monday, July 27, 2020

"THE RIGHTEOUS SHALL SHINE LIKE STARS."


Homily for July 28th, 2020: Matt. 13:36-43. 

“The righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father,” Jesus tells us at the end of his explanation of his parable of the weeds among the wheat. That story directs our attention to the greatest difficulty for religious belief: the so-called “Problem of Evil.” How is it possible that, in a world created and ruled by a good and loving God, there is so much evil, injustice, and suffering? The weeds sown among the wheat are, Jesus explains, “the children of the Evil One, and the enemy who sows them is the Devil.”
          Why does God tolerate evil in the good world he has created? Some words of God  to Moses in the thirty-third chapter of Exodus give us a clue to the answer. There we read: “The Lord is a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity, continuing his kindness for a thousand generations, and forgiving wickedness and crime and sin.” But not forever! Today’s gospel reading proclaims the good news that the power of evil is temporary. There will come a time when justice and goodness will triumph. “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his Kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers [and] throw them into the fiery furnace …”
          When that happens, Jesus says, “the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.” We became citizens of that kingdom at baptism. This life, with all its trials and suffering, and ending with death, is a preparation for a life without end, and without suffering; where the deepest desires of our hearts, never fully satisfied in this life, will find fulfillment beyond our imagining; where we shall experience not just joy but ecstasy, for we shall see God face to face.

Sunday, July 26, 2020

A LOIN CLOTH, MUSTARD SEED, YEAST


Homily for July 27th, 2020: Jeremiah 13:1-11; Matthew 13:31-35.

          We sometimes hear that the Old Testament is about God’s law, the New Testament about his love. Both statements are misleading. The Old Testament speaks often of God’s love. And in the New Testament Jesus says he has come not to abolish God’s law, but to fulfill it (cf. Mt. 5:17).
          Our first reading is what Bible scholars call an “acted parable.” The loin cloth which God tells Jeremiah to wear is an intimate garment. It symbolizes the intimate relationship God wanted to have with the people he chose to be especially his own. After burying it, at God’s command, Jeremiah finds it, years later, rotted. That symbolizes what his people have done through their unfaithfulness to the Lord who chose and loved them.  
          Today’s gospel contains two more parables. The kingdom of God, Jesus says, is “like a mustard seed … the smallest of all seeds.” From tiny beginnings comes a great bush, large enough to shelter birds, who build their nests in its branches.
The kingdom is also, Jesus says, “like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened.” Do those words reflect a childhood memory: Jesus recalling how he had watched his mother mixing leaven with dough, kneading it, and then setting it in the sun, which made the dough rise, so that it could be baked in the oven? We cannot say; but it is entirely possible. The meaning of this parable is similar to that of the mustard seed. From small, seemingly insignificant beginnings, comes growth that no one could have predicted.
Jesus spoke “only in parables,” the gospel says. Why do you suppose Jesus chose parables as his favorite form of teaching? Well, who doesn’t like a good story?  Stories have a universal appeal: to children, but also to adults. But there is another reason why Jesus chose to teach through stories. Because stories are much easier to understand than abstract explanations. In his book, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI writes: “Every teacher who wants to communicate new knowledge to his listeners naturally makes constant use of example or parable. ... By means of parable he brings something distant within their reach so that, using the parable as a bridge, they can arrive at what was previously unknown.”  
The three parables we have heard today proclaim God’s love – but also our need to respond with love: for him and for others.