"HE MUST INCREASE, I MUST DECREASE."

Homily for August 29^th, 2020: St. John the Baptist

Not quite 62 years ago, on the afternoon of October 28^th, 1958, an elderly Italian 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.

           He loved the name John, the new Pope said, because it had been borne by the two men in the gospels who were closest to Jesus: John the Baptist, who prepared the way for 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.”          

          The name John means, “God is gracious,” or “God has given grace.” The name was singularly appropriate for the man we know as John the Baptist. He was commissioned even before his birth to proclaim the One who would give God a human face, and a human voice: Jesus Christ.

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 serve 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 ever 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 fulfillment, and to peace. “He must increase, I must decrease.”

ST. AUGUSTINE

Homily for August 28^th, 2020: Memorial of St. Augustine

          We celebrate today with joy one of the great men of the ancient Church: St. Augustine. Born in North Africa in 354 to a pagan father and the devout Christian mother, Monica, whom we celebrated yesterday, Augustine was 33 before he was baptized by the great bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose. Augustine tells the story of his dramatic conversion in his Confessions.

          Augustine was 33 and on the point of accepting Christian faith, and asking for baptism. Only his inability to master his strong sexual desires held him back. Sitting on a summer day in the garden of his house, Augustine uttered an agonized prayer for purity. “How long, O Lord, how long will I hear tomorrow, and again tomorrow? Why not now? Why can there not be an end to my impurity right now?”

          All at once Augustine heard a child’s voice from a neighboring house saying over and over the Latin words, Tolle, lege. They may have been merely a child’s game, like “Eeny, Meeney, Miney, Moe.” But Augustine took them literally: “Take up and read.”  Seizing the scroll he had been reading, which contained Paul’s letter to the Romans, Augustine’s eyes fell on the words: “Let us cast off deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us live honorably as in daylight; not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual excess and lust ... Rather put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.”

          “The very instant I finished that sentence,” Augustine writes, “light flooded my heart, and every shadow of doubt disappeared.” He was baptized by Ambrose the following Easter.

          He died at on this day in the year 430, at age 75 and having been bishop of Hippo in North Africa for 35 years. He had dictated to scribes millions of words about the faith which have been a rich source for Catholic theologians ever since. The best known of these words is a single sentence, written out of Augustine’s own life experience. It still speaks to us over 1500 years later: “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

 

ST. MONICA

Homily for August 27^th, 2020: St. Monica

          The opening prayer for today’s celebration of St. Monica speaks about her “motherly tears for the conversion of her son Augustine.” He was a brilliant youngster. But into his 30s he was unable to accept the Christian faith, despite his mother’s fervent prayers and tears. Monica is said to have asked an old bishop whether her son would ever accept baptism. “It is impossible,” the old man reassured her, “that the son of so many prayers and tears should perish.” Augustine’s dramatic conversion at age 33 caused his mother to “leap for joy,” Augustine tells us in his Confessions. 

In another passage in that book, Augustine recounts a memorable conversation with his mother toward her life’s end. “We talked together in deep joy,” Augustine writes, “and forgetting the things that were behind and looking forward to those that were before, we were discussing in the presence of Truth, who you are [O Lord], what the eternal life of the saints could be like, which eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of man. But with the mouth of our heart we panted for the high waters of your fountain, the fountain of the life which is with you. ... And my mother said, ‘Son, for my own part I no longer find joy in anything in this world. ... One thing there was, for which I desired to remain still a little longer in this life, that I should see you a Catholic Christian before I died. This God has granted me in superabundance. What then am I doing here?’” 

          A few days later Monica fell ill. “Here you will bury your mother,” she said. “Lay this body wherever it may be. This only I ask of you, that you should remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be.” Augustine was able to restrain his grief at his mother’s funeral and burial shortly thereafter; but his tears flowed copiously later on. 

          What a mother! And what a beautiful and holy death! On my 75^th birthday, over 27 years ago now, I started to pray daily “for a happy and holy death.” You can do the same. Just ask the Lord to grant you a death like that of St. Monica, when the Lord sends his angel to call us home!

HYPOCRISY

Homily for August 26^th, 2020: Matthew 23:27-32.

          The gospel reading we have just heard is part of a longer indictment by Jesus of perhaps the greatest temptation of religious people, and our greatest failing: hypocrisy. I say “our failing” quite deliberately, because the “woe” that Jesus speaks is directed not to other people, but to us.

          Webster’s Dictionary defines hypocrisy as follows: “the act or practice of feigning to be what one is not, or to feel what one does not feel; esp. the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion.” And it says that the opposite of hypocrisy is sincerity.

The late William F. Buckley, Jr., a great wit on many subjects, was clearly referring to hypocrisy when he said to someone he was interviewing on TV: “I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.”

          The Letter of James is speaking about hypocrisy when it says: “If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his own face in a mirror. He sees himself, then goes off and promptly forgets what he looked like.” [1:23f] The nineteenth century American author Nathaniel Hawthorne says something remarkably similar when he writes: “No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”

There are people who have hidden behind a mask for so long that they have forgotten what their true face looks like. Our masks may fool others. They cannot fool God. God looks behind our masks. God looks at the heart. God reads even our secret thoughts and desires. Yet no matter how great the darkness within us, God never rejects us. God loves us deeply, tenderly, passionately. That is the gospel. That is the good news.

It was his deep conviction of this truth which enabled Pope Francis, shortly after his election as Bishop of Rome, to respond to a Jesuit interviewer who asked, “Who is Jorge Bergoglio?” with the simple and direct words: “I am a sinner.”  

Happy are we, if we can say the same – and appeal, when we come to stand before the Lord God, not to our good conduct record, but simply to the mercy of the One about whom Francis said in the same interview: “God never gets tired of forgiving us. It is we who get tired of asking for forgiveness.”

 

"YOU HAVE NEGLECTED THE WEIGHTIER THINGS."

Homily for August 25^th, 2020: Matthew 23:23-26.

          An elderly monk, Father Benedict, was returning to his monastery from a journey. With him was a young novice, Brother Ardens. It had been raining and the road was muddy. When they came to a dip in the road still covered with water, they found a beautiful young girl standing there afraid to proceed, lest her long dress be soiled. “Come, dear,” Father Benedict said, when he saw her predicament.  “I’ll carry you.” Then he picked the girl up in his arms and carried her across. She thanked him, and the two monks walked on in silence.

          When they reached the monastery, Brother Ardens felt he had to say something about the incident he had witnessed. “Monks are supposed to keep away from women, especially from beautiful young girls. How could you pick up in your arms that girl we met on the road?”

          “Dear Brother Ardens,” the older monk replied, “I put that girl down as soon as we reached dry ground. You have carried her in your thoughts right into the monastery.”

          The young novice was like the scribes and Pharisees in the gospel reading we have just heard: zealous, as many young people are, and determined to see all the rules and regulations carefully observed. The ardent young monk never realized that this could mean failing in something even more important: helping someone in need.

          Behind each of the Ten Commandments is the highest law of all, charity: active, generous and sacrificial service – to God, and to others.

ANGLES ASCENDING AND DESCENDING

Homily for August 24^th, 2020: John 1:45-51.

 It is a little disappointing to find, on this feast of St. Bartholomew, that the gospel reading is about a man named Nathanael. Scripture scholars believe that Bartholomew and Nathanael are actually the same person. The gospel writers wrote inspired by faith, and in order to instill faith in others, not in order to give us “just the facts.”

“We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law, and also the prophets,” Philip tells his friend Nathanael, “Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth.” Nathanael responds with skepticism: “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Nazareth was then an insignificant village, unmentioned in the Old Testament.

          Despite this skepticism Nathanael accepts his friend Philip’s invitation to “Come and see.” This attitude of openness is what causes Jesus to call Nathanael “a true child of Israel,” with no duplicity in him. Too many of Jesus’ own people lacked this openness. We see this in their many demands that Jesus produce some dramatic “sign” which would compel belief; and in their refusal to heed the signs Jesus did offer: his miracles.

          Philip was telling Nathanael, in effect, that he had found the one so long foretold by the Jewish scriptures: the Lord’s anointed servant, the Messiah. Nathanael responds to Jesus’ identification of him as “a true child of Israel” without duplicity by an explicit acknowledgment of what Philip has just told him: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.”

          Acknowledging the faith expressed in Nathanael’s words, Jesus tells him that further blessings await him: “You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” The words are the climax of this brief reading, and the most important. They tell us that Jesus is the contact person between earth and heaven, between humanity and God.  

We contact God by offering prayers to our heavenly Father through his Son Jesus, in and through the Holy Spirit, who inspires us to pray and supports us as we do so. The ascending angels are carrying our prayers heavenward. And the descending angels are bringing us the Father’s blessings in answer to our prayers. If we were on that ladder, we’d grow tired of going up and down. God’s angels are never grow weary. They are active always – on our behalf.