THE PHARISEE AND THE TAX COLLECTOR

Homily for March 13^th, 2021: Luke 18:9-14.

The Pharisees have had such a bad press that we think the first man in this story must be a hypocrite. He was not. He really has done all the things he lists in his prayer. The tax collector, on the other hand, is a public sinner. He collects taxes for the hated Roman government of occupation. Much of it goes into his own pocket. Unable, like the Pharisee, to point in his prayer to any semblance of a good conduct record, he appeals simply to God’s mercy: “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner."

Here is what our Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI says about these two men in his book, Jesus of Nazareth [pp. 61f]:

"The Pharisee can boast considerable virtues; he tells God only about himself, and he thinks that he is praising God in praising himself. The tax collector, on the other hand, knows that he has sinned, he knows he cannot boast before God, and he prays in full awareness of his debt to grace. [“Grace” is the technical term for God’s freely given love, something we can never earn.] ... The real point is ... that there are two ways of relating to God and to oneself. The Pharisee does not really look at God at all, but only at himself; he does not need God, because he does everything right by himself. He has no real relation to God, who is ultimately superfluous: what he does himself is enough. 

“The tax collector, by contrast, sees himself in the light of God. He has looked toward God, and in the process his eyes have been opened to see himself. So, he knows that he needs God and that he lives by God’s goodness, which he can not force God to give him and which he cannot procure for himself. He knows that he needs mercy and so he will learn from God’s mercy to become merciful himself, and thereby to become like God. ... He will always need the gift of goodness, or forgiveness, but in receiving it he will always learn to give the gift to others.”

Happy are we if those words describe us: people who know we shall always need the gift of God’s goodness and forgiveness; and if, in receiving these gifts we learn to pass them on to others.

 

THE GREATEST COMMADMENT

Homily for March 12^th, 2021: Mark 12:28-34.

          The man who asks Jesus, “Which is the first of all the commandments,” is called a scribe. He is himself a teacher of the law. He is giving Jesus an orthodoxy test. By answering with a verse from the Old Testament book Deuteronomy about total love of God, Jesus passes the test.

          People today are still asking the scribe’s question. What is most important in our faith? Is being baptized most important? Or going to Mass on Sunday? Or is being kind to our neighbor most important? Or trying to serve the poor and struggling for a more just society? There are strong arguments for all of these things. Jesus’ answer remains true, however. The practice of our faith begins with total love of God. That is the indispensable foundation of everything else.

          Devout Catholics today recite three times daily the Angelus prayer: morning, noon, and at night. In Jesus’ day devout Jews recited three times daily the verse from Deuteronomy about loving God totally which Jesus cites in his answer to the scribe.

          Jesus goes on then to cite a second Old Testament verse, this one from Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18). The scribe praises Jesus’ double answer, saying that loving God and neighbor is “worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” We find the same thing said in many of the Old Testament prophets. The equivalent statement today would be this: loving God and neighbor is more important than all novenas, litanies, pilgrimages, and prayers to the saints.   

          As the conversation concludes, Jesus tells his questioner: “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” “Not far” he says, because of the new commandment which Jesus will give his disciples before his crucifixion. “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12-23). Perhaps someone is asking: How can I do that? Jesus was divine. I’m only human. The answer to that question is simple. On our own we cannot love as Jesus loved. Aided, however, with the Holy Spirit, we can love as Jesus loves us. So, we pray in this Mass: Come Holy Spirit, kindle in us the fire of your love!

DIA-BOLOS

Homily for March 11^th, 2021: Matthew 5:17-19.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and prophets,” Jesus says. “I have come not to abolish them, but to fulfill them.” We sometimes hear that the Old Testament presents a God of law, the New Testament a God of love. That’s not true. While law is central in the Old Testament, it presents God’s law as an expression of his love -- a gift granted to his chosen people, and not to others.  (Cf. Deut. 4:6-8) And while the New Testament does emphasize God’s love, Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus that he has come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it (Mt. 5:7). At the Last Supper he gives his apostles “a new commandment: Love one another” (John 13:34). Both parts of the Bible proclaim the same God. If God’s self-disclosure is fuller in the New Testament than in the Old, this is because in it God comes to us through his Son. As we read in the opening verse of the letter to the Hebrews: “In times past, God spoke in fragmentary and varied ways to our fathers through the prophets; in this, the final age, he has spoken to us through his Son …”

Love of God and neighbor are the heart of Jesus’ summary of the law in today’s gospel. When his questioner says that love is better than “all burnt offerings and sacrifices” -- better, that is, than formal worship, Jesus tells him: “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” With these words Jesus is saying that God’s kingdom is present wherever love is present. 

But how can we tell when this love, which is the heart of God’s law, is truly present? Jesus’ answer is clear. The test of our love for God is whether we love our neighbor. (Cf. 1 John 4:20) And love for our neighbor is genuine only if it means sharing with others the unmerited love that God lavishes on us. This is the love for neighbor which God commands in his law, a matter not of feeling, but of deeds. 

Human laws command us to respect the rights of others. But I can respect your rights without having any human contact with you. Hence the enormous amount of loneliness in our society. Mother Teresa called loneliness “the worst disease of modern times.” There is only one cure for loneliness: love. We come here to receive love: a free gift, not a reward for services rendered. The One who gives us this gift does so under one strict condition: that we share his love with others.

THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT

Homily for March 10^th, 2021: Matthew 5:17-19.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and prophets,” Jesus says. “I have come not to abolish them, but to fulfill them.” We sometimes hear that the Old Testament presents a God of law, the New Testament a God of love. That’s not true. While law is central in the Old Testament, it presents God’s law as an expression of his love -- a gift granted to his chosen people, and not to others.  (Cf. Deut. 4:6-8) And while the New Testament does emphasize God’s love, Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus that he has come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it (Mt. 5:7). At the Last Supper he gives his apostles “a new commandment: Love one another” (John 13:34). Both parts of the Bible proclaim the same God. If God’s self-disclosure is fuller in the New Testament than in the Old, this is because in it God comes to us through his Son. As we read in the opening verse of the letter to the Hebrews: “In times past, God spoke in fragmentary and varied ways to our fathers through the prophets; in this, the final age, he has spoken to us through his Son …”

Love of God and neighbor are the heart of Jesus’ summary of the law in today’s gospel. When his questioner says that love is better than “all burnt offerings and sacrifices” -- better, that is, than formal worship, Jesus tells him: “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” With these words Jesus is saying that God’s kingdom is present wherever love is present. 

But how can we tell when this love, which is the heart of God’s law, is truly present? Jesus’ answer is clear. The test of our love for God is whether we love our neighbor. (Cf. 1 John 4:20) And love for our neighbor is genuine only if it means sharing with others the unmerited love that God lavishes on us. This is the love for neighbor which God commands in his law, a matter not of feeling, but of deeds. 

Human laws command us to respect the rights of others. But I can respect your rights without having any human contact with you. Hence the enormous amount of loneliness in our society. Mother Teresa called loneliness “the worst disease of modern times.” There is only one cure for loneliness: love. We come here to receive love: a free gift, not a reward for services rendered. The One who gives us this gift does so under one strict condition: that we share his love with others.

"I CANCELLED YOUR ENTIRE DEBT."

Homily for March 9^th, 2021: Mathew 18:21-35

          “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 compassion, the master … forgave him the loan.”

          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 at once mirrors that of the first. “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.” The sole difference is that the second official’s debt could easily be paid, given reasonable time. How shocking for those hearing the story 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.   

CURE OF A V.I.P.

Homily for March 7^th, 2021: 2 Kings 5:1-15.

          Read the Bible through, and you will find every type of person you will ever encounter or even read about. The Syrian General Naaman, whose story we heard in our first reading, and whom Jesus recalls in the gospel, is the original V.I.P. – a Very Important Person. We see this in the retinue he takes with him on his visit to what he considers the unimportant little country of Israel. He brings with him a treasure in silver and gold, ten sets of elaborate court dress, the horses and chariots necessary to transport all this booty, and the personnel necessary to keep everything in order and to ensure that Naaman himself has a safe journey, with all the comforts he requires.

          The reason for his trip is the report which has reached him from one of his wife’s servant girls that there is a prophet in Israel who can cure people of Naaman’s disease: leprosy. Naaman deals initially with Israel’s king. You wouldn’t expect a man of his importance to go traipsing through a piddling little country like Israel looking for a mere prophet, would you? When the king sends him on to Elisha, and Naaman finds out, upon arrival at the prophet’s modest abode, that Elisha won’t even come out to greet him, but sends him a note instead, he is indignant. When he reads the note, his indignation turns to outrage. It tells him that if is looking for a cure he should wash seven times in the nearby river Jordan. ‘You call that a river?’ Naaman protests angrily. ‘Back where I come from, that’s nothing but a muddy creek. I’m going home.’

          At this point the real hero of the story appears: someone in Naaman’s entourage who finds courage to say to the Great Man: ‘What have you got to lose? Why not try what the prophet says?’ Naaman does so – and he is healed! He returns to Elisha, who comes out now, and hears Naaman confess: “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel.” Naaman’s cure is not only physical. It is mental and spiritual as well. His mind, and with it his soul, have been changed. He realizes that it’s not all about himself, his ideas, his expectations.

          What about us? Are we open to the other – open to God? Are we willing to acknowledge that our own ideas, our goals, our dreams, may fall short of what the Lord God, who loves us more than we can ever imagine, wants for us – and yes, has in store for us -- if only we can stop thinking it’s all about me, me, me, and tell God: “Not what I want Lord, but what you want?”