'HE MUST INCREASE,I MUST DECREASE."

Homily for January 9^th, 2021: John 3:22-30.

          The preaching of John the Baptist, accompanied by mass baptisms, created a sensation. Great numbers went out into the desert, where John lived, to hear him and to be baptized by him. (Cf. Matt. 3:5) The Jewish Scriptures, which we call the Old Testament, speak in several places of the Lord taking away sins by the pouring of water. It is understandable, therefore, that the religious authorities in Jerusalem send messengers to John to ask what was going on, and what was John’s authority.

          John’s response to their questions is simple: “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’” These words hark back to a passage in the prophet Isaiah: “A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be laid low.” (Is. 40:3f) Isaiah’s words were directed to his people in exile in Babylon. The angels, Isaiah told his people, were preparing a way for them to return from captivity to their homeland in Palestine.

The late Fr. Raymond Brown, a great American Scripture scholar, writes: “Like a modern bulldozer, the angels were to level hills and fill in valleys, and thus prepare a superhighway. John the Baptist is to prepare a road, not for God’s people to return to the promised land [as in Isaiah’s day], but for God to come to his people. John’s baptizing and preaching in the desert was opening up people’s hearts, leveling their pride, filling their emptiness, and thus preparing them for God’s intervention.” (Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John, p.50; emphasis supplied.)

John, as we saw before Christmas, was a voice for the one who is the Word: God’s personal communication to us, to show us, who cannot see God, what God is like. The Baptist’s message is still preparing people’s hearts and minds to encounter God’s Son and Word. He does so in the closing words of the gospel reading we have just heard: “He must increase. I must decrease.” Take those words with you into the year that is just 12 days old today. Let them be your guide during the remaining 353 days of this year of 2019. They will keep you close to the One who alone can make this a happy year for you. “He must increase. I must decrease.”    

"YOU CAN MAKE ME CLEAN."

Homily for January 8^th, 2021: Luke 5:12-16.

          The Bible commentators tell us that the disease of leprosy mentioned often in Scripture is not the same as leprosy today, which doctors call Hansen’s disease. In the Bible leprosy is any kind of disfiguring skin disease. People afflicted in this way suffered not only physically but socially and spiritually, as well. To avoid infecting others, they were banned from public places. And since they were considered spiritually unclean, they could not participate in Temple worship. Anyone who touched a leper became spiritually unclean himself.

          This helps us understand why the man we have just heard about in the gospel reading is so desperate. He “fell prostrate,” Luke tells us, and “pleaded” with Jesus, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.”  The man’s faith in Jesus’ power to heal is crucial. Faith opens the door for God’s action in our lives.

          Out of compassion with this social outcast Jesus responds at once. Reaching out across the boundary between clean and unclean, Jesus touches the man, saying: “I do will it. And the leprosy left him at once,” Luke tells us. Jesus has restored him to the community of God’s people. Jesus then orders the man to fulfill the provisions of the Jewish law by going to a Temple priest and offering sacrifice. In Jesus’ day Jewish priests were also quarantine officials.

          The gospel writer, Luke, was what passed in those days for a physician. This is evident from the care he takes to tell us that the man’s cure was instantaneous. Note also what Luke tells us about Jesus at the end of the reading: “He would often retire to deserted places to pray.” Luke’s choice of words makes it clear that Jesus did this repeatedly. Why?

          Jesus was constantly surrounded by people clamoring to get at him, to speak with him, to touch him. He needed those times of silence, alone with his heavenly Father. It was in those hours of solitude that Jesus nurtured the power to heal, to say to rough working men, “Follow me,” and have them obey him on the spot. And if Jesus, whose inner resources were infinitely greater than hours, needed those times alone with God, we are fools and guilty fools, if we think we can do without them.  

GOD FIRST LOVED US

Homily for January 7^th, 2021. Letter of John 4:19-5:4.

          “We love God because he first loved us,” we heard in our first reading. Isn’t that why we love our parents? If they were reasonably good parents, they loved us when we were still in the womb. “We talk to the baby,” a young father said, when his wife was expecting their first child. Asked what they said to the baby, he replied: “We talk to the baby when we’re lying in bed, about everything we did that day.” Already, before they have seen the little one who is the fruit of their love for each other, the bond of love is being woven.

          So, the tiny child comes into the world already loved. And this love is not just a matter of feelings. It takes flesh as it were, in the often-arduous toil of caring for an infant. That is how each one of us learns to love: from our parents, mothers especially. In the tragic cases in which a child is unwanted, the ability to love is stunted, with often bitterly unhappy consequences in later life.

          Because we are imperfect sinners, God’s love for us infinitely exceeds our love for our children. But the priorities remain the same. If we have any capacity to love at all, it is because God has first loved us. Nor does God’s love for us slacken, let alone disappear, when we fail to respond to his love. In Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son the father never stopped loving his son after the young man left home. How do we know that? We know it from the fact that at the son’s return his father saw him “while he was still a long way off” (Luke 15:20). The father was looking for him. You don’t keep looking for someone you have ceased to love.

          “The love of God is this,” our first reading tells us, “that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.” Really? Don’t we often think of God’s commandments as fences to hem us in? In reality they are signposts pointing us to a happy and fulfilled life. It is so that God’s love for us, given to us already in the womb, and continuing no matter how far we may stray from him, may be deepened and strengthened, and bear fruit in lives of generous service to God and others, that we are here.

And so, we pray in this Mass to the One who is love: “Come, Lord Jesus!”     

"IT IS I. DO NOT BE AFRAID."

Homily for January 6^t, 2021. Mark 6:45-52.

          What began as a routine evening crossing of the lake soon turns into a nightmare for Jesus’ friends in their small boat. Small wonder that they cry out in fear as they see a human figure approaching across the wind-whipped waves. It is Jesus. “Take courage,” he calls out. “It is I, do not be afraid!”

Like most people in antiquity, Jesus’ people, the Jews, regarded the sea as the domain of supernatural, demonic forces. To the Hebrew mind wind and waves were perilous: only God could master them. Repeatedly the psalms speak of God’s power to “rule the surging sea and calm the turmoil of its waves” (Ps. 89:10; cf. 93:3f; 107:23-30). By walking on the raging waves, and calming the stormy sea, Jesus shows himself to be acting as only God can do.

          This beautiful story speaks to each one of us individually. Somewhere in this church right now there may be someone facing a personal crisis: an illness, perhaps, your own or that of a loved one; a family problem; a humiliating failure; the sudden collapse of long held hopes, plans, and efforts. You are filled with fear.  When you look down, you see only peril and ruin. But look up! Keep your eyes on Jesus. He still has power to save. 

          The story assures us that when the storm rages and the night is blackest; when we cannot see the way ahead; when we are bone weary with life’s struggle and our hearts fail us for fear, Jesus is close. He only seems to be absent. In reality he is never far from us. He knows at every moment the difficulties against which we contend. Across the storm waters of this world he comes to us and speaks the same words of assurance that he spoke 20 centuries ago to the terrified men in that small boat: “Take courage, it is I, do not be afraid!”

That, friends, is the gospel. That is the good news.

 

"GIVE THEM SOME FOOD YOURSELVES."

Homily for January 5^th, 2021: Mark 6:34-44,

          As the sun starts to sink and the shadows lengthen, Jesus’ disciples approach him with an urgent request. “This is a deserted place and it is already very late; dismiss [the crowds] so that they can go … and buy themselves something to eat.”

          Jesus’ response surprises us: “Give them some food yourselves.” He was having fun with them – teasing them. Jesus knew perfectly well what he was going to do. Not realizing this, the disciples point out that what Jesus has asked them to do is impossible: all they have, the disciples say, is five loaves and two fish.

          Jesus has the disciples tell the people to sit down in orderly rows. Then he takes the loaves and fish, looks up to heaven, blesses these hopelessly inadequate supplies, and gives them to the disciples to distribute to the crowd. “They all ate and were satisfied,” Mark tells us, adding: “and they picked up twelve wicker baskets full of fragments and what was left of the fish.” But of course: there were twelve men doing the distribution.

          What does this tell us? Two things. First, when we entrust our pitifully inadequate resources to the Lord, they are inadequate no longer. Second, when the Lord gives, he gives not only abundantly, but super-abundantly. We come repeatedly not because the Lord limits his gifts, but because our ability to receive them is limited.

          The early Christian community loved this story so much that we find it told six times over, with variations, in the four gospels. We heard Matthew’s version of the story last August. The reason this repetition is clear. The story reminded Jesus’ friends of what he does in the Eucharist. We offer him a little bread and wine – and these modest gifts come back to us transformed into his Body and Blood: all his goodness, all his love, all his compassion, patience, and purity. And when have him, we have everything!  

"I AM A SINNER.."

Homily for January 4^th, 2021: Matthew 4:12-17, 23-25.

          “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” Jesus says at the beginning of his public ministry. Bible scholars tell us that Jesus uses the phrase, “the kingdom of heaven,” in order to avoid speaking the name of God, which was forbidden to Jesus’ people. When reading a text which contained the word “God”, they substituted “the Lord.” Jesus was actually telling the people that God’s reign was at hand. Hence, Jesus said in his teaching, they must repent. Repentance begins with the acknowledgement that we fall short of what God wants for us; and of what, deep in our hearts, we want of ourselves.   

At the beginning of the long interview with Pope Francis that was published all over the world in September 2013, he was asked: “Who is Jorge Bergoglio?” (the Pope’s name before he was chosen as Bishop of Rome). “He stares at me in silence”, the interviewer writes. “I ask him if I may ask him this question. He nods and replies: ‘I do not know what might be the most fitting description … I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.’”

The acknowledgement that we fall short is the necessary start of all repentance. Having made this acknowledgment, we must follow it up by telling the Lord we are truly sorry, that we want to do better; and that we know we can never do so without his help. Pope Francis, who helps us repent by identifying himself as a sinner, says often: “God never gets tired of forgiving us. It is we who get tired of asking for forgiveness.”

          Jesus, who is God’s Word – his personal communication to us – shows us God’s readiness to forgive by calling as a disciple a public sinner like Matthew, the tax collector. Jesus’ story of the Prodigal Son has the same message. The Father in that story (who is a stand-in for God) immediately forgives his shiftless son, who has wasted his money, freely given him by the father, in what the text charitably calls “riotous living.” Not content with that, he orders a banquet to celebrate his son’s return.

He is doing the same right now – for us. Because we are unworthy, we begin every Mass by asking forgiveness. And we pray before we approach the Lord Holy Table: “Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church.”