THE GOOD PHYSICIAN

Homily for April 1^st, 2014: Ezek. 47:1-9, 12; John 5:1-16.

          “Do you want to be well?” Jesus asks the paralyzed man unable to get to the healing waters because of the crush of others ahead of him. Not all sick people do really want to get well. Their illness gains them sympathy which they lose, once they are healed and become ‘like everyone else.’ Moreover, Jesus (who as we see often in the gospels) can read minds and hearts, surely saw that this man was a simple soul indeed. After his healing he doesn’t even ask Jesus’ name, but lets the man who has changed his life slip away into the crowd unidentified. He discovers Jesus’ identity only later, when Jesus himself takes the initiative to look for the man he has healed. And then the man repays Jesus by identifying him to the authorities. A dull soul indeed.

The Church gives us, in the first reading, an account of the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of the stream of healing waters flowing from the Temple to be rebuilt following the return of God’s people from their exile in Babylon. The Temple was the earthly dwelling place of God. With the birth of Jesus, who is God’s divine Son, God transferred his earthly dwelling place to a new temple: the body Jesus himself. (See John 2:21). That is why, at Jesus’ death, the Temple veil, concealing the Holy of Holies, the place of God’s dwelling, was “torn in two” (Mark 15:38 and parallels). God had withdrawn his presence: a veil was no longer needed.

In this story we see that the healing previously flowing (in Ezekiel’s prophecy) from the Temple now comes from Jesus himself. Rather than helping the man reach the healing waters, Jesus heals him with a mere word. He continues to exercise his healing power. One of Jesus’ titles is “the Good Physician.” He heals us from the inherited guilt of original sin in the water of baptism. Through the word of a priest authorized to speak in Jesus’ name, he heals us in the sacrament of penance from the guilt of actual sin.

"THIS SECOND SIGN . . . "

Homily for March 31^st, 2014: John 4:43-54

          The royal official who asks Jesus to come with him to heal the official’s son, who is near death, is a pagan. Jesus’ initial response to the man’s request seems harsh. “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.” Why does Jesus respond in this way?  The most likely answer is that Jesus wants to teach the man to have faith, to trust. The official, it seems, would believe only if Jesus went with him to his house. He wanted to see Jesus curing. Most of us have this attitude. We are not aware that is shows the deficiency of our faith.

The official loves his dying son so much that he won’t give up. “Sir, come down before my son dies,” he pleads. Jesus still won’t budge. “You may go,” he tells the man, “your son will live.” And now comes a crucial sentence in this story. “The man believed what Jesus had said to him and left.” That shows faith. He no longer insists on Jesus coming with him. Without any guarantee save Jesus’ word, the official believes. Before he reaches home, his servants come to him with the joyful news that the crisis is past. His son will live. When he asks when the boy began to recover, he learns that it was at the very hour when Jesus had assured him: “Your son will live.” How he must have rejoiced! And how Jesus must have rejoiced at the official’s faith. Later, a week after his resurrection, he would say to his apostle, Thomas, who refused to believe until he actually saw the risen Lord: “You [Thomas] became a believer because you saw me. Blessed are they who have not seen and believed” (John 20:29). This pagan official was one of that blessed company.

The story concludes with another significant sentence: “This was the second sign Jesus did when he came to Galilee from Judea.” Only in John’s gospel are Jesus’ miracles always called “signs.” The first of these signs was the changing of water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana. A sign points beyond itself to something else. The sign at Cana shows that when Jesus gives, he does not only abundantly, but super-abundantly. The quantity of water made wine would have kept the party going for a week! The sign in today’s gospel shows that Jesus’ love embraces all. He turns no one away. He asks for faith. And when we show even the smallest beginning of faith, he grants us healing, that our faith may grow and become complete.

"TWO MEN WENT UP TO THE TEMPLE TO PRAY."

Homily for March 29^th, 2014: 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 Is 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: AO 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]:

AThe 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 knows that he has sinned, he knows he cannot boast before God, and he prays in full awareness of his debt to grace. [AGrace@ 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 B what he does himself is enough. 

AThe 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 FIRST OF ALL THE COMMANDMENTS

Homily for March 28^th, 2014: 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, especially 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: at morning, noon, and 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 love as Jesus loved? 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!

SIXTY YEARS A PRIEST!

           Sixty years ago next Thursday I knelt before the bishop to be ordained a priest in the Church of God. It was the fulfillment of the dream I had had, without a single interruption, from age twelve. Have every one of those sixty years been happy? Of course not. That does not happen in any life. All of us must travel at some time another through the dark valley. For seven years, 1974 to 1981, I was without assignment and unemployed. Resident in St. Louis but belonging to a bishop in Germany, I was like an Army officer who has got detached from his regiment. The clerical system did not know what to do with me. Those years were hard, and terribly lonely. I survived only by prayer. And there were other hard years as well.

          If you were to ask me, however, whether I have ever regretted my decision for priesthood, I would reply at once: never, not one single day. I’ll say it another way. If I had my life to live over again, knowing about all the hard and difficult years which lay ahead, would I still choose priesthood? In a heartbeat! I would change just one thing: I would try to be more faithful. Priesthood has brought me pain and sorrow, yes. But it has also brought me joys beyond telling. Those joys are the reason why I say every day, more times than I can tell you: “Lord, you’re so good to me, and I’m so grateful.”                          

          The greatest joy is the privilege, beyond any man’s deserving, of standing at the altar day by day to obey Jesus’ command at the Last Supper, to “Do this in my memory.” Celebrating Mass was wonderful the first time I did it sixty years ago. It is, if possible, even more wonderful today. My prayer today and every day, starting over a decade ago and continuing on into the future, is twofold:

That the years which remain to me may be dedicated every more completely to the Lord God; and –

          For a happy and a holy death.

          I would like to close with a prayer composed by the great 19^th century English convert, now Blessed John Henry Newman, at the end of his long life a cardinal, which has been dear to me since childhood.

Support us, O Lord, all the day long; until the shadows lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in your mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.   

"DELIVER US FROM EVIL."

Homily for March 27^th, 2014: Luke 11:14-23.

        We are just half-way through Lent. Today is the 20^th of the 40 days. As our pilgrimage to Easter continues, the gospel readings at Mass show the opposition to Jesus mounting. Today, when Jesus heals a man previously unable to speak, some are amazed; others are critical. Some of the critics charge that Jesus is able to do such things only because he as entered into a pact with Satan. Still others find the miracle of healing unpersuasive. They demand “a sign from heaven.” All agree on one thing, however: Satan is a real person, of great power.

        That is anything but modern. Most people today, even many Christians, think of Satan as just one of the many legends from the past which we enlightened moderns have discarded. We still pray, however, in the words of the one prayer which Jesus gave us, “deliver us from evil.” Here is what the Catechism says about that prayer.

   “In this petition, evil is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the Evil One, the angel who opposes God.” In Greek, the language of the New Testament, the name for the Devil is diabolos. That gives us the English word which describes the Devil’s work: “diabolic.” The first part of the Greek word, dia, means “through” or “across.” Bolos is from the Greek word for “throw.” The Catechism says, therefore, “The devil (diabolos) is the one who ‘throws himself across’ God’s plan and his work of salvation accomplished in Christ.” (No. 2851) Satan is no long discarded legend. He is person of real power. Both Scripture and the Catechism call him “a murderer from the beginning … a liar and the father of lies, the deceiver of the whole world.” (No. 2852)

        When we ask, in the final petition of the Lord’s Prayer, to be delivered from the Evil One, “we pray as well [the Catechism says] to be freed from all evils, present, past, and future, of which he is the author or instigator. In this final petition, the Church brings before the Father all the distress of the world. Along with the evils that overwhelm humanity, the Church implores the precious gift of peace and the grace of perseverance in expectation of Christ’s return. By praying in this way, she anticipates in humility of faith the gathering together of everyone and everything in him who has ‘the keys of Death and Hades,’ who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.’” (No. 2854)

THE MAN BORN BLIND

COMING INTO THE LIGHT      

Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year A. John 9:1-41.

AIM: To strengthen the hearers’ faith.

          Is there someone here today who comes here discouraged – by frustration, failure, or defeat? by the seeming meaninglessness of life? If so, consider the man in the gospel we have just heard. 

          What could be more discouraging than to be blind from birth, reduced to begging as your only means of subsistence? To this poor man Jesus gives the greatest gift possible short of heaven: sight. He does so out of sheer goodness: not because the blind man was good enough, but because Jesus is so good that he wants to share his goodness with someone who has next to nothing, to bring the man from darkness into the light.

          The gospel writer intends this blind man as a symbol of human life without God. He is so understood by the Church, which in the introduction to the  Eucharistic prayer on this Sunday, which we shall hear in a few moments, tells us that what Jesus Christ did for this man is what he wants to do for every one of us — if we will let him. He never forces himself on us.

            By the mystery of the Incarnation, he has led the human race that walked

            in darkness into the radiance of the faith and has brought those born in

 slavery to ancient sin through the waters of regeneration to make them

 your adopted children.       

The story, in other words, is about more than the gift of physical sight. It tells us also that Jesus gives us spiritual sight: the inner light of faith.

          Notice the progressive stages of the blind man’s journey. Jesus might have healed him with a word or touch. Instead Jesus invites the man to cooperate in his own healing by going to a certain pool and washing from his eyes the mud Jesus has smeared on them. Following those peculiar directions required faith. How easy it would be have been for the man to say: “Oh, that won’t do any good.” By his willingness to do this simple thing which Jesus asks of him, the man, without knowing it, begins his own journey of faith. 

          The blind man’s journey to faith brings him into conflict with those who are certain they already possess all the light there is, people who know all the answers.  The blind man starts with very few answers. Asked who healed him, he first says: “The man called Jesus.” Later he adds: “He is a prophet.” Finally, questioned by Jesus himself, the man accepts Jesus as “Son of Man”: God’s anointed servant, the Messiah, before whom he bows down in worship. Starting with the recovery of physical sight, he has completed his journey from the blindness of disbelief into the spiritual light of faith. 

          Those who are confident that they have all the answers already are journeying, meanwhile, in the opposite direction: from self-assured enlightenment to the inner darkness of disbelief. Initially they seem ready to accept the man’s healing as genuine. Then they begin to question it by raising questions about the man’s identity. When this has been firmly established, they resort to bullying: “You were born totally in sin, and you are trying to teach us?”

          Finally, these self-righteous spiritual leaders who presume to sit in judgment on Jesus are in turn judged by him. “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains.” Refusing to acknowledge their need for God and the enlightenment that only his divine Son can give, they are condemned to their own self-imposed darkness.

          The story asks each of us for a decision. Where do I stand? With the blind man, or with his critics? The blind man’s journey from darkness to light is possible because he admits his need for light, and trusts the One who offers it. What condemns his critics to journey in the opposite direction is their complacent certainty that they know all the answers already. Confident that they do not need what Jesus has to offer, they turn their backs on him, only to have him turn on them with the terrible words: “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.”

          If you can make little sense of life; if you cannot see the way ahead; if you do not know sometimes whether you believe in anything – then come to Jesus Christ as the blind man came. Show him your needs, your fears, your doubts, your blindness. Tell him you want what he alone can give.

          And as you tell him, trust him as the blind man trusted when he obeyed Jesus’ simple command: “Go and wash.” Show Jesus Christ your need. Trust him, and go on trusting. He will do the rest. 

                                               *               *               *

          I would like to close with a brief personal statement. Sixty years ago next Thursday I knelt before the bishop to be ordained a priest in the Church of God. It was the fulfillment of the dream I had had, without a single interruption, from age twelve. Have every one of those sixty years been happy? Of course not. That does not happen in any life. All of us must travel at some time another through the dark valley. For seven years, 1974 to 1981, I was without assignment and unemployed. Resident in St. Louis but belonging to a bishop in Germany, I was like an Army officer who has got detached from his regiment. The clerical system did not know what to do with me. Those years were hard, and terribly lonely. I survived only by prayer. And there were other hard years as well.

          If you were to ask me, however, whether I have ever regretted my decision for priesthood, I would reply at once: never, not one single day. I’ll say it another way. If I had my life to live over again, knowing about all the hard and difficult years which lay ahead, would I still choose priesthood? In a heartbeat. I would change just one thing: I would try to be more faithful. Priesthood has brought me pain and sorrow, yes. But it has also brought me joys beyond telling. Those joys are the reason why I say every day, more times than I can tell you: “Lord, you’re so good to me, and I’m so grateful.”                          

          The greatest joy is the privilege, beyond any man’s deserving, of standing at the altar day by day to obey Jesus’ command at the Last Supper, to “Do this in my memory.” Celebrating Mass was wonderful the first time I did it sixty years ago. It is, if possible, even more wonderful today. My prayer today and every day, starting over a decade ago and continuing on into the future, is twofold:

That the years which remain to me may be dedicated every more completely to the Lord God; and –

          For a happy and a holy death.

          I would like to close with a prayer composed by the great 19^th century English convert, now Blessed John Henry Newman, at the end of his long life a cardinal, which has been dear to me since childhood.

Support us, O Lord, all the day long; until the shadows lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in your mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.   

OBSERVING -- AND REMEMBERING

Homily for March 26^th, 2014: Deut. 4:1, 5-9.

          Just three weeks ago I told you that God’s chosen people, the Jews, were slaves in Egypt for more than four centuries, over double the life of slavery in our country. Oppressed people follow the law of the jungle, inflicting on one another the cruelty and oppression inflicted on them by their oppressors. 

So the ragtag group of people who crossed the Red Sea with Moses had grown accustomed for centuries to a life of lawlessness. The Ten Commandments, given by God to Moses, were designed to bring order out of chaos, to establish justice and peace among a people who had long since forgotten the very meaning of those words. The Commandments were not then, nor are they now, fences to hem people in. They were and are ten signposts pointing the way to human flourishing , freedom, and peace.   

          That is why Moses tells the people in our first reading to observe God’s Commandments “that you may live.” Doing that, Moses says, “will give evidence of your wisdom and intelligence” to other nations. But Moses tells them that they must do more. “Take care … not to forget the things which your own eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your memory as long as you live, but teach them to your children and to your children’s children.” What things is Moses referring to? He is speaking about the whole marvelous, indeed miraculous, story of his people’s deliverance from their more than four centuries slavery.

          Why is this remembering so important? Why does Holy Scripture so often record the story of God’s mighty deeds in the past? Because God never changes. The record of God’s miraculous care for his people in the past assures us of his care today, and its continuance into the future. As we read in the letter to the Hebrews: “Jesus Christ is the same: yesterday, today, yes and forever” (13:8).

          The Church’s central act of worship, the Mass, is a recalling of what God’s Son, Jesus, has done for us at the Last Supper, on Calvary, and at his Resurrection. But this recalling is not merely mental. Because the Mass is a sacrament, it makes present, spiritually but truly, that which it commemorates. We are there with the apostles in the Upper Room. We are there with the Beloved Disciple, Mary, and other women on Calvary; and we are with them also, astonished, at the empty tomb, with but one exception. We cannot see him with our physical eyes; but we do see him with the eyes of faith. And seeing, we adore.