"YOU CANNOT SERVE GOD AND MAMMON."

Homily for November 7th, 2020: Luke 16:9-15.

         The sayings of Jesus which Luke has collected into today’s gospel reading are comments on what we heard in yesterday’s reading. That was about the unjust steward who realized that he was about to lose his job because of mismanaging his employer’s property. To assure himself of friends who would be indebted to him, and might offer him future employment after he was let go, he calls in the people who owe money to his master’s estate and settles their debts for fifty cents on the dollar. To our surprise Jesus commends the steward “for acting prudently.” Jesus does not praise the man’s dishonesty. He praises his prudence. Realizing that the knife is at his throat, the man acts, desperately, to ensure his future.    

         Today’s gospel continues Jesus’ teaching about money, for which he uses the ancient Hebrew word mammon. This culminates in the sayings, “No servant can serve two masters. … You cannot serve God and mammon.”

         Jesus is not saying that money and possessions are bad. Nothing that God has made is bad; indeed, everything that comes from God is good. It participates in some measure in the absolute goodness of God the Creator. What is at stake is how we use money. Used to support people and causes we love, money is good. Given the central place in our lives by trying to amass more and more and more, money makes us unhappy and frustrated (as people who give money the central place in their lives soon discover) – because we find we can never get enough.

         Jesus’ personal religion taught the law of tithing: giving the Lord out of gratitude, the first claim on our money and possessions. For most Catholics that seems so out of reach to be almost preposterous. There is one place in our country, however, where tithing is a reality: the diocese of Wichita, Kansas. There, after decades of teaching, tithing is all but universal. One consequence is that whereas all other dioceses are struggling to maintain Catholic schools in the face of today’s rising costs, all the Catholic schools in the Wichita diocese are tuition free! Another consequence: the Wichita diocese has almost as many seminarians as does our own archdiocese of St. Louis – which has five times the Catholic population of Wichita.

Think about that, friends. Above all, pray about it.  

THE DISHONEST STEWARD

Homily for November 6th, 2020: Luke 16:1-8.           

“The master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.” From antiquity Bible commentators have disputed about who is meant by “the master.” Is he the man’s employer – or Jesus himself? It is difficult to believe that the praise can have come from an employer who has just told his steward – we would call him a manager -- that he is about to be fired. So, the praise must come from Jesus himself. How is that possible? Clever the manager may have been. But honest? Hardly. How can Jesus praise what all can see is a swindle?

          Jesus does not praise the manger’s dishonesty. He praises the man’s ability to recognize his desperate situation. For him, it is now or never. Jesus addresses the parable to those who remain indifferent to his message. The story is Jesus’ attempt to shake them out of their complacency. His message confronted them with the need to decide: for him, or against him. To postpone this decision, to continue living as if nothing had changed, with the attitude of “business-as-usual”, was in fact to decide against Jesus. That meant disaster. Trapped in what looks like a hopeless situation, the manager cleverly finds a way out and acts while there was still time. It is this cleverness and enterprise which Jesus commends, not the man’s dishonesty.

Jesus Christ asks us for the same decision today: for him, or against him. It is not a once-for-all decision – something like learning to ride a bicycle: once you’ve learned, you know it for life. Our decision for Jesus Christ needs to be renewed every day.

For those who are trying to renew their decision for Jesus Christ every day, joy awaits, beyond our imagining: eternal life with Him who alone can fulfill the deepest longings of our hearts.

MORE JOY OVER ONE SINNER.

Homily for November 5^th, 2020: Luke 15:1-10.

          Had Jesus said, “There is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents,” we’d say: “Well sure.” But that is not all that Jesus said. He added a word to that sentence. “There is more joy in heaven,” he actually said, “than over ninety-nine people who have no need of repentance.” How do we respond to that? I think the first response that comes to most of is: “Now, wait a minute. Shouldn’t there be some joy at least over the ninety-nine who have need of repentance?” 

          To answer to that question, we need to ask another question: Who are these ninety-nine who have no need of repentance? Do you know anyone like that? I don’t. Oh, I know many people who think they have no need of repentance. But they are wrong. How can there be any joy over people who are so mistaken about their true spiritual state? We all fall short at some time, and in some way. We all need to repent, the saints included. Catholics have always believed that the only person who has never sinned, and has therefore no need to repent, is the Lord’s mother, Mary.

          The two parables in today’s gospel tell us that God’s love for us is not measured, limited, or prudent. It is, judged by human standards, over the top, reckless. For a shepherd to leave the whole flock of sheep untended, in order to find just one who had strayed, risked turning a minor misfortune, the loss of one, into a major disaster: the dispersal of the whole flock. For the woman who has lost a single coin from the family’s meager savings to throw a party which surely cost far more than the one coin lost and then found, was crazy. Could Jesus have remembered his mother doing something like that during his boyhood? It is quite possible.

          The two parables are Jesus’ answer to his critics’ complaint at the beginning of today’s gospel: “This man receives sinners, and eats with them.” What for those critics was a scandal is, for us, good news. It tells us that however far we stray, the Lord is close to us. His love for us has no limit, and no end. That is the good news. That is the gospel.

ST. CHARLES BORROMEO

Homily for Nov. 4^th, 2020: St. Charles Borromeo.

          Today’s saint, Charles Borromeo, was born in 1538 in a castle on the shore of Lake Maggiore in northern Italy. His father was a count, his mother the sister of a future pope. From birth, therefore, Charles was surrounded by privilege and wealth. Remembering Jesus’ words about how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God (cf. Lk 18:24), we would hardly expect that a child so privileged would become a saint.

          Though handicapped by a speech impediment, he became a doctor of both civil and canon or church law at age 21. Shortly thereafter, his maternal uncle was elected Bishop of Rome, taking the title of Pius IV. The new pope soon made his nephew, then only 22 and not yet ordained priest, a cardinal and bishop of Milan in northwest Italy – a classic case of nepotism. Ordained a priest at age 24, Charles was detained by his papal uncle in Rome, to assist in the government of the Church. Only two years later was he able to enter his diocese, which had been without a resident bishop for eighty years  something inconceivable for us today, but not unusual in the 16th century. Is it any wonder that there was a Reformation?

          During the only 18 years which remained to him, Charles worked tirelessly for Church renewal and reform, despite embittered opposition from the civil authorities in Milan, and many of the clergy. At one point one of his priests actually discharged a gun at his bishop. The assassination attempt failed due only to the primitive nature weaponry in that day. When the plague broke out in Milan, causing most of the clergy and civil officials of the city to flee, Charles remained behind to nurse the sick personally.

Exhausted by his labors, Charles Borromeo died at age 46 in the night of November 3 to 4, 1584, having spoken the Latin words, Ecce venio – “Behold I come.” Just seventeen years later, the then reigning pope, Paul V, declared him a saint.

Charles Borromeo is a singular example of what the angel Gabriel told a Jewish teenager named Mary, when she asked how she could possibly be the mother of God’s son: “Nothing is impossible for God” (Lk. 1:37).

I WANT MY HOUSE TO BE FULL

Homily for November 3^rd, 2020: Luke 14:15-24.

          Some Scripture commentators suggest that the host in the parable we have just heard was a tax collector. His party is an attempt to break into society by inviting the leading citizens of the town and providing lavish entertainment. His guests have all told him, in the offhand way that people do, that they’d be happy to come to his house.  “Any time,” they’ve all said. When the invitations arrive, however, it turns out that these acceptances were insincere. The excuses offered are so flimsy as to be almost pathetic.

          Jesus’ hearers would have smiled as they heard of the frustration of the host’s plans. He thought he was going to make a big splash. Now all his guests have stood him up. The man’s growing anger enhances the humor of the situation. He resolves to repay the insults of his intended guests with an insult of his own. He will give a party for people whom those originally invited hold in contempt. That will show them!          

         The parable, like many others, contains a warning — but also good news. The warning is the exclusion of those first invited. They represent Jesus’ critics: people confident that the best seats at the banquet were reserved for them. They assume that there will be other opportunities, other invitations. Too late, they discover that this was their final chance.

         The parable’s good news is contained in the description of the substitute Sguests. They are a portrait of Luke’s own Christian community: “the poor, the blind, the crippled, the lame.” The parable’s good news is its assurance that God welcomes not just the fit and strong, people whose good moral character makes them role models and leaders. The Lord who was reproached in his earthly life for welcoming sinners and eating with them continues to do the same today. To claim a place at his table we need to show him not our successes but our failures; not our strength but our weakness; not health but sickness.

          Preaching on this parable back in 2006, Pope Benedict XVI told about bishops from Western countries, Europe especially, telling him on their visits to Rome about how people refuse the Lord’s invitation to his banquet. Yet at the same time, the Pope said, “I also hear this, precisely from the Third World: that people listen, that they come, that even today the message spreads along the roads to the very ends of the earth, and that people crowd into God’s hall for the banquet.”

          Are you among them?