ASSUMPTION OF MARY

Homily for August 15^th, 2020: Luke 1:39-56.

Mary, the Second Vatican Council says, “shines forth on earth, until the day of the Lord shall come, a sign of certain hope and comfort to the pilgrim People of God” (LG 68). Our pilgrim way is beset with difficulties. We are reminded of them each time we read the morning headlines, or watch the news on television.

On this feast of Mary’s Assumption, we are reminded that Mary also confronted difficulties on her own pilgrim way. What did Mary understand about the angel’s message that even before her marriage to Joseph she was to become the mother of God’s Son? She understood at least this: that in a tiny village where everyone knew everyone else and gossip was rife, many would consider her marriage to Joseph to be irregular. Yet Mary responded without hesitation in trusting faith: “I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me as you say’ (Lk 1:38) 

That act of trusting faith was not blind. Young as Mary was -- and the Scripture scholars think she may have been only fifteen -- she asked what any girl in her position would have asked: “How can this be, since I do not know man?” (Lk 1:34) Even this question, however, reflects faith. Mary was questioning not so much God and his ways as her own ability to understand God’s ways.

Nor was Mary’s faith a once-for-all thing. It needed to be constantly renewed.  Before her Son’s birth, Joseph wanted to break their engagement. When the couple presented their newborn child to the Lord in the Jerusalem temple, Mary heard the aged Simeon prophesy the child’s rejection and his mother’s suffering (Lk 2:34f). Three decades later, after Jesus left home, he seemed on more than one occasion to be fulfilling his command to his disciples about turning one’s back on parents and other relatives (cf. Lk 14:26). At the marriage at Cana Jesus seemed to speak coldly to his mother. She seems not to have been present at the Last Supper. Only at Calvary was Mary permitted to stand beside her now dying Son, along with “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 19:26); deliberately unnamed, many Scripture scholars believe, to represent the ideal follower of Jesus Christ in every time and place.

The last glimpse we have of Mary in Scripture is immediately before Pentecost. With the apostles and Jesus’ other relatives, she is praying for the descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:14). Thereafter Mary disappears. Her work of bringing Christ to the world was taken over by the Church. 

How did Mary’s life end? We do not know. In defining Mary’s Assumption on All Saints Day 1950, Pope Pius XII said simply: “When the course of [Mary’s] earthly life had ended, she was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven.” The body the Pope referred to is Mary’s new resurrection body: the body with which Jesus rose from the dead -- the heavenly and spiritual body which, as St. Paul says, each one of us will receive in heaven (cf.1 Cor. 15:35-53). There Mary continues to pray for us on our pilgrim way. As the Catechism says: “The Church loves to pray in communion with the Virgin Mary ... and to entrust supplications and praises to her.” (No. 2682).

If it makes sense to ask our friends on earth to pray for us, doesn’t it also make sense to ask the prayers of our friends in heaven, the saints? The Catechism says it does: “Being more closely united to Christ, those who dwell in heaven ... do not cease to intercede with the Father for us. ... We can and should ask them to intercede for us and for the whole world.” (No. 956 & 2683) Without Mary’s prayers, I would not be a Catholic priest today. Let me tell you how I know this.

Before I was a Catholic priest, I was an Anglican priest, like my father and grandfather before me. Leaving the church which had taken me from the baptismal font to the altar, and taught me almost all the Catholic truth I know, even today, was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. Starting in 1959, and for almost a year, the question of the Church, and of my conscientious duty before God, was not out of my waking thoughts for two hours together. 

One of the many obstacles to my decision was the need to abandon, possibly forever, the priesthood to which I had aspired from age twelve, and which had brought me great happiness, with no guarantee that it would ever be given back to me. In Holy Week 1960 a Trappist monk at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, himself a convert from Judaism, who was helping me along the last stretch of my spiritual journey, said to me: “Why don’t you give your priesthood to Our Lady, asking her to keep it for you, and to give it back to you when the time is right?” With his help I did this. 

Had I known then that it would be eight years before I could once again stand at the altar as a priest, I would never have had the courage to go through with it. During those years I had many difficulties -- so many that well-meaning priest-advisers told me I should forget any idea of priesthood and embrace a lay vocation.  That I was never willing to do. I knew that Our Lady was keeping my priesthood for me, and I was confident that she would give it back to me one day. 

After eight years, on January 27^th 1968, I knelt before the bishop of Münster in northern Germany, where I was then living, to receive the Church’s commission to stand at the altar once again, as a Catholic priest. I had never told the bishop about entrusting my priesthood to Our Lady. You can imagine my joy, therefore, when, at the end of the private ninety-five-minute ceremony in the chapel of his house, the bishop turned to the altar and intoned the Church’s ancient Marian hymn: Salve regina, “Hail, Holy Queen.”     

 

ST. MAXIMILIAN KOLBE

Homily for August 14^th, 2020: St. Maximilian Kolbe.

          The Church commemorates today a modern martyr, St. Maximilian Kolbe. Born in Poland in 1894 to devout Catholic parents, he was a mischievous boy. After his mother scolded him one day for some misdeed, he changed. He explained later that in that night the Virgin Mary had appeared to him holding two crowns: one white, the other red. “She asked me if I was willing to accept either of these crowns. The white one meant that I should persevere in purity, and the red that I should become a martyr. I said that I would accept them both."

          At age 16 he entered the Franciscan order, received the religious name Maximilian, and was ordained priest at age 24. During years of ministry in Poland he founded a Marian sodality, as well as a radio station and printing press to spread the gospel. From 1930 to 1936 he served as a missionary in Japan, where he mastered the local language.

          When the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939 Fr. Maximilian arranged shelter for 3000 refugees, 2000 of them Jews. Soon arrested by the Nazis, he was imprisoned in Auschwitz. There he shared his meager rations with others, prayed with them, and heard many confessions. In the summer of 1941 three prisoners managed to escape. In retaliation the camp commander ordered 10 prisoners, selected at random, to be starved to death in an underground bunker. When one of the men selected cried out, “My wife, my children!” Fr. Maximilian immediately asked to take the man’s place.

          In the hunger bunker Fr. Maximilian prayed with his fellow prisoners, celebrating Mass with tiny amounts of bread and wine given to him by friendly guards, until only he was still alive. After 2 weeks the Nazis then killed him with a deadly injection.

The man whose life he had saved was present at his canonization as a “martyr of charity” by Pope St. John Paul II in October 1982. As we commemorate him today, we praise God that the age of martyrs is not dead.   

 

"I CANCELLED YOUR ENTIRE DEBT."

Homily for August 13^th, 2020: Mathew 18:21-19:1

          “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 pity, the master … wrote off the debt.”

          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 mirrors that of the first. “Just give me time and I will pay you back in full.” 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.   

RULES FOR RECONCILIATION

Homily for August 12^th, 2020: Matthew 18:15-20.

          In the gospel we heard Jesus giving instructions about how to handle disputes in the Christian community. They have existed from the beginning. Luke’s gospel tells us, for instance, and that even at the Last Supper they argued over “who should be regarded as the greatest” (22:24). The instructions Jesus gives owe much to existing rabbinical rules for the settlement of disputes, yet bear the imprint of Jesus’ compassion for human weakness. He outlines a three-fold procedure.

          Jesus’ first step is personal confrontation of the offender: “Tell him his fault between you and him alone.” “But, of course,” we say. In fact, too often this is exactly what the offended party does not do. It is much easier to avoid direct confrontation in favor of telling everyone who will listen how badly the offender has behaved.

          I witnessed this years go when I worked in the office of the archdiocese as Vice Chancellor. We received many telephone calls complaining about things done by priests in parishes. Many of them were put through to me. “Have you talked to Father about this?” I would always ask. In almost all cases the answer was No. “Go and see him,” I would always advise the caller. “A letter or e-mail is too impersonal. Have a personal conversation.” That is Jesus’ advice: “If he listens to you, you have won over your bother.”  

          Only if that fails should you proceed to the second step, Jesus says. “Take one or two others along with you.” They will be able to testify to what was said and done. Only if this second step fails to achieve reconciliation, should you go public: “Tell the Church,” Jesus says, meaning the local Christian community. “If he refuses to listen even to the Church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or tax collector.” This final step – and it should always be saved for last – is what we today call excommunication.

At each stage there is opportunity for repentance and reconciliation. This is how God treats us. Pope Francis tells us that often when he says: “God never gets tired of forgiving. It is we who get tired of asking for forgiveness.”

          The gospel reading concludes with the wonderfully reassuring words: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

THE LOST SHEEP

Homily for Aug. 11^th, 2020: Matt. 18:1-5, 10, 12-14. 

          “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray?” Jesus’ rhetorical question invites the answer, “Of course, any shepherd would do that.” In reality, no shepherd in his right mind would think for a moment of doing what Jesus’ question suggests. That would risk turning a minor misfortune, the loss of a single sheep, into a major disaster: the dispersal and possible loss of the entire flock.

          ‘That’s how good God is,’ Jesus is saying with this simple parable. God’s care for us is not reasonable, measured, prudent. God’s love for us is reckless, according to ordinary worldly standards. When we stray from him, God will go to any lengths, and wait without limit, to get us back.

          But what about Jesus’ following words about the shepherd rejoicing more over the one lost sheep than over the ninety-nine who never strayed? Shouldn’t there be some rejoicing, at least, over those who never left the flock?

          To answer that question, we must ask another. Who are these ninety-nine who never went astray? Do you know anyone like that? I don’t. Oh, I know many people who think they have never strayed from their heavenly Father’s love. But they are wrong. How can there be any rejoicing over people who are so mistaken about their spiritual condition?

          In reality all of us stray from our heavenly Father in some way and at some time. All of us need the Father’s loving forgiveness. With this short and simple parable, Jesus is telling us that God’s care, his love, and his forgiveness, are available to us always. Or as our wonderful Pope Francis never tires of telling us: God never gets tired of forgiving us. It is we who grow tired of asking for forgiveness.

"GOD LOVES CHEERFUL GIVER."

Homily for August 10^th, 2020. 2 Corinthians (9:6-10)

          “God loves a cheerful giver,” Paul writes in today’s first reading. Paul wrote his letters in Greek. And the Greek word which Paul uses for cheerful is hilarios. That’s where we get our English word “hilarious.” If we wanted to translate Paul’s words literally, therefore, we would say: “God loves a hilarious giver.” Why? Because that is how God gives: not sparingly, not grudgingly, “without sadness or compulsion” (as Paul writes), but with overflowing joy.

“There is more happiness in giving than in giving than in receiving,” Jesus says (Acts 20:35). Those words, incidentally, are the only saying of Jesus that is preserved outside the gospels. Paul speaks them to representatives of the Christian community at Ephesus, telling them to remember a saying that they were already familiar with from the oral teaching of Paul and other apostles. The New Testament did not yet exist: it hadn’t been written. But already the Church was teaching the faith, and telling people what Jesus had said and done. That is the answer to people who say they have a religion of “the Bible only.” The Church’s faith is older than the Bible – older, at least, than the New Testament.

People who have never experienced the joy of giving that Jesus speaks about are poor, no matter how large their bank accounts, investments, or other possessions. As a help to finding this joy, consider this. God does not need anything. He is, the theologians say, “sufficient unto himself.” Hence anything we give to God – or to people in need, or to good causes – comes back to us. But it comes back to us changed, and enlarged. The bread and wine we offer in the Mass come back to us transformed into the Body and Blood of God’s divine Son. The same is true with all our gifts. That is why Paul writes: “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.”

There are people here who have already experienced that. They experience the joy of living with open hearts, and open hands. If you’re not yet one of them, the Lord is inviting you to join our happy company – today!