THE UNJUST JUDGE

Homily for November 14^th, 2020: Luke 18:1-8.

Most of Jesus’ parables involve a similarity between the central figure and God. In this case the story turns on the dissimilarity between the corrupt judge and God. It is a “how much more” story. If even so depraved a judge as this one grants the petitioner her request in the end, how much more will God grant the prayers of those who ask him for their needs. God, Jesus is saying, is not like the corrupt judge. It is not difficult to get his attention. God is always more ready to hear than we to pray. God is approachable.

What is the point of praying, however, if God knows our needs before we do, and better than we do? To that question there is no fully satisfying answer. Prayer, like everything to do with God, is a mystery: not in the sense that we can understand nothing about it, but that what we can understand is always less than the whole. One thing is certain. Prayer does not change God. Prayer changes us. It opens us up to the action of God in our lives, as the sun’s rays open the flowers to their life-giving warmth and the nourishing moisture of dew and rain.

Prayer also reminds us of our need for God. How easily we forget that need, especially when the sun shines on us and things go well. Then we start to think we can make it on our own: by our cleverness, by luck, by pulling strings, by hard work, even by being so good that God (we assume) will have to reward us.

We need to be reminded again and again that we can never make it on our own. No matter how clever we are; no matter how much luck we have; no matter how many strings we pull; no matter how hard we work or how hard we try to be good. None of those things is certain, Jesus tells us. There is certainty only in God. He alone can satisfy our deepest desires. Hence Jesus’ final, insistent question. He is putting it to us, right now:

   “When the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on the earth?”

 

THE GOD OF THE UNEXPECTED

Homily for November 13^th, 2020: Luke 17:26-37.

             Jesus continues his teaching about the end time, which began with yesterday’s gospel reading. The end time refers to Jesus’ return in power and glory, a total contrast to his first coming as a helpless infant, in weakness and obscurity. In today’s gospel the emphasis is on the unexpectedness of the Lord’s return. On page after page of Holy Scripture we see God acting in ways that no one could have expected.

Jesus gives two examples familiar to his Jewish hearers. No one expected the flood which swallowed up all but those who embarked in the ark which Noah built at God’s command. No one save Lot foresaw the catastrophe which befell the wicked inhabitants of Sodom.

Here are two more examples of the unexpected. The younger son Joseph was hated by his older brothers, who sold Joseph into slavery in Egypt. There Joseph is thrown into prison on a trumped up capital charge – only to become the second most powerful man in the kingdom and the savior from death through famine not only of the Egyptians but of his whole family, including his resentful brothers.

          At age forty Moses has to flee Egypt after failing to save his people from slavery. Forty years later, with Moses’ life for all intents and purposes over, God summons him from a life of obscurity to do what he had miserably failed to do forty years before: liberate his entire people from bondage. These biblical stories, and many more like them, have given birth to our modern saying: “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”

          How do we prepare for the unexpected? Jesus’ answer is clear: by living with our eyes directed not upon ourselves and our own interests, but on the Lord God. That is what Jesus means when he says: “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it.”

If we try to do that, then, when the Lord comes – whether to us individually through the angel of death, or for all of us through the Lord’s return in glory – his coming, though unexpected, will be a day not of terror, but of joy – the joy of seeing face-to-face the One who alone can satisfy the deepest longings and desires of our hearts; and who told us during his short time on earth: “All this I tell you that my joy may be yours and your joy may be complete.” (John 15:11)

 

THE END TIME

Homily for November 12^th, 2020: Luke 17:20-25

          We are nearing the end of the year in the Church’s calendar. Two weeks from Sunday, the second of December, is the start of a new Church year. As we approach the threshold of this new year, the Church gives us readings about what has traditionally been called “the end time,” when Jesus will come again: not as he first came in Bethlehem, in the weakness and obscurity of a baby, born in a little village on the edge of the then known world; but in an event so dramatic that all will know that history’s final hour has struck.  

          From Jesus’ day to this, people have wanted to know when this will be. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus says that even he does not know this. “As for the exact day or hour, no one knows it, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but the Father only” (Mt. 24:36).

Hence, Jesus tells us in today’s gospel, when people claim to have a timetable, we should pay no attention to them: “There will be those who will say to you, ‘Look, there he is,’ or ‘Look here he is.’ Do not go off, do not run in pursuit.” Jesus’ return will be dramatic, but also unexpected. “For just as lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will he Son of Man be in his day.”

Then comes a shocker: “First he [the Son of Man] must suffer greatly and be rejected by this generation.”  Friends, this suffering and rejection continue today. Just a few years ago, Cardinal Dolan of New York, in his final address as outgoing President of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference, spoke about the worldwide persecution of Christians today. The 20^th century, he said, saw the death of half the total number of Christian martyrs since Jesus’ death and resurrection. And in the not yet 21 years of this century, a million Christians have already died because of their faith in Jesus Christ. Those martyrs are our brothers and sisters in the family of God, Dolan said. We must pray for them, as well as for those still living, in Iraq and Syria but also elsewhere, who are facing cruel persecution. Pope Francis has said the same many times. I invite you to do this in a special way in this Mass. 

ONLY ONE RETURNS TO GIVE THANKS

Homily for November 11^th, 2020: Luke 17: 11-19.

Jesus heals ten lepers. In Jesus’ day leprosy was something like AIDS today. Because the disease was incurable, and thought to be contagious, the leper had to live apart, calling out “Unclean, Unclean!” lest others approach and become infected. So, in healing the ten, Jesus was restoring them from a living death to new life. Yet only one comes back to give thanks for his healing. He was a foreigner, despised by Jesus’ people. If he goes to the Temple, the priest will probably tell him to get lost. He doesn’t belong to the right religion, or the right people. Related ethnically to the Jews, he doesn’t observe the full Jewish Law. Priests in Jesus’ day were also quarantine officials: they could distinguish between the clean and unclean – those admitted to public worship, and those excluded because they were unclean. Only the Samaritan, who lives outside the law, follows the impulse of his heart, returns to Jesus, and gives thanks.  

What about ourselves? Are we grateful people? Do we take time each day to count our blessings, and give thanks to God for them? The Church helps us to be thankful people by placing thanksgiving at the heart of its public prayer. Eucharist, you know, means “thanksgiving.” This Mass -- every Mass -- is a public act of thanksgiving to our heavenly Father for all the blessings he showers upon us. In a few minutes we shall hear once again the familiar story of what Jesus did for us at the Last Supper. “He took bread and gave you thanks .... When supper was ended, he took the cup. Again, he gave you thanks and praise.”

Giving thanks to God over something is the Jewish form of blessing. In giving thanks to his heavenly Father for the bread and wine, Jesus was blessing them. And in so doing he was also transforming them: changing their inner reality into his own body and blood. It is because of this miraculous though unseen change that we genuflect to Jesus present in the tabernacle when we come into church. We ring a bell at the consecration, reminding everyone in the church: Jesus is here, right now, in a special way, with a special intensity! The light burning near the tabernacle, day and night, says the same thing. 

Show me someone who is embittered, angry, filled with resentment and hate -- and I’ll show you a person who has no time for thanksgiving. But show me a person who radiates peace and joy-- and I’ll show you someone who daily and even hourly gives thanks to God for all his blessings. Which of these two persons would you like to be?

"WE ARE UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS."

Homily for November 10^th, 2020: Luke 17:7-10.

          “When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’” The closing words of our gospel reading today tell us that we never have a claim on God. Even when we have done all that God commands – and which of us has? – we can never sit back and tell God: “I’m waiting for your reward, Lord.”

          That was what the Pharisee did in Jesus’ story of the two men who went up to the Temple in Jerusalem to pray. In his prayer the Pharisee tells God all the good things he has done. And he really had done them. He was a genuinely good and devout man. His good works went far beyond anything that was required.

          The tax collector, on the other hand, knew that he had few if any good deeds to appeal to. He could pray only for God’s mercy: “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Yet, Jesus says, it was the tax collector who went home justified – which means “put right with God” – rather than the devout Pharisee. His mistake lay in assuming that his good deeds gave him a claim on God. We never have a claim on God. God has a claim on us, and it is an absolute claim 

          Does that mean that there is no reward for faithful service? Of course not. Jesus speaks often of God’s reward. To experience his reward, Jesus is saying, you must appeal, not to what you think you deserve; appeal instead to the Lord’s mercy. Learn to stand before Him saying the words of the hymn, “Rock of ages” (hardly known to Catholics, but a favorite of our Protestant brothers): “Nothing in my hand I bring / Simply to your cross I cling.”

 

DEDICATION OF ST JOHN LATERAN

“YOU ARE THE TEMPLE OF GOD.”  (Dedication of St. John Lateran) 

Ezek. 47:1-2, 8-9, 12; 1 Cor. 9c-11,16-17; John 2:13-22.

AIM: To help the hearers understand our calling as God’s temples.

 

          Is the Bible a Christian book? Just about any of us would answer this question in the affirmative. Of course, it’s a Christian book, we would say. While that is not wrong, most of the Bible is not about Christians at all, but about Jews.  Even the New Testament is almost entirely about Jews. Jesus was a Jew, like his mother Mary and St. Joseph. Jesus’ twelve apostles and almost all his first followers were also Jews. 

The Jewish people possessed, in Bible times, a special place of worship: the Jerusalem Temple. It was built by King Solomon, son of the great King David.  The Temple was the earthly dwelling place of the God who had chosen them from all the peoples on earth to be his own. As a mark of his special favor God had given them the Ten Commandments: not a fence to hem them in, but ten words of wisdom which, if followed, would lead to happiness and fulfilment for the people and each individual. 

As a devout Jew, Jesus worshiped regularly in the Jerusalem Temple. The building he knew was not the one built by Solomon, however. That had been destroyed several centuries earlier by enemies who conquered Jerusalem and carried its inhabitants off to exile in Babylon. After their return to Jerusalem the people built a new Temple on the site of the old one.

It was this rebuilt, second Temple, which Jesus knew. There he was brought as an infant to be dedicated to God. There, at age twelve, he was found by his anxious parents after a frantic three-day search. There, as we heard in the gospel reading, he overturned the tables of the money-changers, rebuking people for turning God’s house into a marketplace.

That Temple did not long survive Jesus. Not forty years after his death and resurrection Jerusalem was again plundered; this time by the Romans, who pulled down the Temple that Jesus had known, and in which Peter and the other first Christians continued to worship even after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension.  Now, Paul writes in our second reading, we are God’s temple: “Do you not know that you are the Temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”

Today Catholics all over the world celebrate the dedication of a Christian temple: the Church of St. John Lateran in Rome. Though less well known than St. Peter’s basilica, St. John Lateran is the Pope’s cathedral as Bishop of Rome. It is customary in every diocese or local church throughout the world to celebrate the dedication of the cathedral, the bishop’s church. We celebrate this feast in St. Louis on October twelfth. Because the Pope is the chief shepherd of the whole church, we celebrate the dedication of his cathedral each year on the ninth of November. Only when that date falls on a Sunday, however, do most Catholics become aware of the observance.                                             

The preface to the eucharistic prayer, which we shall hear in a few moments, helps us to appreciate the significance of today’s celebration: “You give us grace upon grace to build the temple of your Spirit, creating its beauty from the holiness of our lives.” Even as we celebrate the dedication of a building, therefore, the Church’s public prayer reminds us that the most important Temple is the one built not of stones, but of people. 

The parish which I formerly served as pastor used to attract many visitors.  They would often remark: “Father, you have a beautiful church.” To which I always replied:

“Thank you. And we think the building is nice too.”

The church is people before it is a building. “The temple of God, which you are,” Paul writes in our second reading, is “holy.” “Holy” means “set apart”, removed from ordinary use, set apart for God. It is in this sense that a chalice is holy. It is not an ordinary cup. It is used only for the Precious Blood of the Lord.  This building in which we worship is holy: it is not a dance hall, an auditorium, or a theater. It is set apart for worship.

We too are people set apart. When did that happen, you ask? In baptism!  The Catechism says: “Baptism not only purifies from all sins, but also makes the neophyte [the newly baptized person] ‘a new creature,’ an adopted son of God, who has become a ‘partaker of the divine nature,’ member of Christ and co-heir with him, and a temple of the Holy Spirit.” [No. 1265] The whole of the Christian life, therefore, is not a striving after high ideals which constantly elude us. It is living up to what, through baptism, we already are: temples, dwelling places of God’s Holy Spirit.

Today, therefore, we celebrate not merely the dedication of a building: the Pope’s cathedral in Rome. We celebrate no less our own dedication as people set apart for God. What that means in daily life St. Paul tells us in stirring words in his letter to the Philippians: “Show yourselves guileless and above reproach, faultless children of God in a warped and crooked generation, in which you shine like stars in a dark world and proffer the world of life” (2:15)

Dear sisters and brothers in the Lord: there is no call higher than that, no life more worth living.