ST. TERESA OF AVILA

Homily for Oct. 15th, 2019: St. Teresa of Avila

            We celebrate today one of the great women of the 16th century, Teresa of Avila in central Spain. Born in 1515 as her mother’s third child and first daughter, she was, in the words of a modern biographer, “a vain and vivacious girl, with a divine agenda.” When she was thirteen, her mother died while giving birth to her tenth child. Devastated, Teresa prayed that henceforth Mary might be her mother. Despite this early piety, Teresa says herself that she was a frivolous teenager, “wearing fancy things, and silly baubles.” This was likely why her father sent Teresa to a convent school at age 16.

            She got on well in the convent. But after 19 months she fell ill and was sent to a deeply pious uncle in the country to recuperate. Conversations with him convinced Teresa that the world would soon end and that if she did not change, she would go to hell. To avoid this, she decided to “bully herself” into becoming a nun. Lacking her father’s permission for this, she stole away at age 20, with the help of an older brother, to the Carmelite convent in Avila. She would remain there for the next quarter-century. It was a relaxed life, with nuns from wealthy families enjoying comfortable suites, pets, and even servants. “Everything about God gave me tremendous pleasure,” Teresa writes, “but the things of the world captivated me. I spent almost twenty years on this stormy sea, falling and rising, then falling again.”

            When she was not quite 40, she had a conversion experience. Her prayer deepened and she began to think of what more she could do for the Lord. Reform of orders for men and women was in the air, and in 1562 Teresa, with only 4 companions, but with the support of her 17 years younger friend and Confessor, St. John of the Cross, founded a new convent with a far more austere life than the one she had left. Teresa would found almost 20 other such convents in the 20 years which remained to her. Exhausted by the travels all over Spain which these foundations required, Teresa died in 1581. She left classic writings on prayer which fill 3 volumes in English translation. They formed the basis for Pope Paul VI’s declaration in 1970 of Teresa of Avila as a Doctor or official teacher of the Church, the first woman to be so honored.

            The modern English Carmelite, Ruth Burrows, writes: “Teresa’s will was identified with our Lord’s. So everything she was, her many gifts and her weaknesses too, were brought into the orbit of her love and dedication. Union with Christ does not mean becoming someone different, renouncing our gifts, changing our temperament; but putting everything we have into our love for God and opening everything we have to his transforming influence. Teresa reached the full potential of personhood: what she was meant to be she became. This is holiness.”

            How wonderful, if something like that could be said of us, when the Lord sends his angel to call us home. To that end, then, we pray:

St. Teresa of Avila, pray for us

29th SUN - PERSISTANCE IN PRAYER

PERSISTENCE IN PRAYER

Oct. 20^th, 2019: Sunday in Year C. Luke 18:1-11.

AIM: To encourage persistence in prayer.         

 

In 1961 the author, Joseph Heller, enriched the language with the title of a best-selling novel, later made into a film: Catch 22. The phrase designates a hopeless situation. An example would be a worker applying for a job who is told he cannot be hired until he joins the union. When he seeks membership in the union, however, they tell him he cannot join until he has a job. Like the widow in today’s gospel, he is stymied. Both are in a catch-22 situation. The woman’s hopeless situation is compounded by the judge’s cynicism. “He respected neither God nor man,” Jesus tells us. The judge, in other words, could not be moved either by considerations of duty or by threats to his reputation.

We need not think of the widow in the story as old. Women married in their early teens in Jesus’ day. This widow may well have been young. Her repeated appearance in court indicates that she was also vigorous. Young or old, however, widows in Jesus’ day were among society’s weakest members. It was a man’s world. Women were the property of men: of their fathers until marriage, thereafter the property of their husbands. In a subsistence economy without any social safety net, a woman whose husband had died was destitute.

The widow in Jesus’ story is the victim of a corrupt system. An “opponent” is withholding her sole means of support. If she is unable to vindicate her rights, she will starve.

Faithful to the age-old maxim that the squeaky wheel gets the most grease, she comes to court every day and makes a scene. At her first appearance the court officials doubtless explained to her that she could not be heard until she paid the usual fees. Since these went straight into the pockets of those demanding them, we would call them bribes. When the widow told them, she was too poor to pay, they ignored her. Yet still she came. Those hearing Jesus tell the story recognize an impasse. Given the character of the judge, and the woman’s poverty, they expect no resolution. Some problems, they realize, are insoluble. 

Now comes a surprise. After days, perhaps many weeks, the widow suddenly achieves the breakthrough she has almost ceased hoping for. Without realizing it, she has found a chink in the seemingly impregnable armor of indifference with which the corrupt judge has covered himself. Consistent to the end, not out of any sense of justice but simply for his own convenience and to silence this public scold in his courtroom, he gives in, hears the woman’s case, and quickly grants her what she has so long sought in vain. 

Jesus’ description of the judge’s thought processes would have caused mirth in the hearers. “This widow is wearing me out,” he reflects, and resolves to settle in her favor “or she will end by doing me violence.” This is the language of the boxing ring. The picture of one of society’s weakest members pummeling with her fists a man of virtually unlimited power, with others at his beck and call, is laughable.

The story’s impact comes from its reversal of expectations at the end. A judge who neither fears God nor cares for what others think of him comes to fear a poor widow. A petitioner without power, both as a woman and because she has neither husband nor money, turns out to be anything but powerless. Her power lies in her persistence. 

For the story’s original hearers the use of a corrupt judge to illustrate God’s goodness was so shocking as to require an explanation. Jesus supplies this with his two rhetorical questions: “Will not God then do justice to his chosen who cry out to him day and night? Will he delay long over them, do you suppose?

At once Jesus answers these questions himself — and then puts a further question to the story’s hearers, ourselves included: “I tell you he will give them swift justice. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on the earth?”

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? Are prayers of petition or intercession attempts to change God’s mind? If they were, God would be like the corrupt judge. And the point of the story, as we have seen, is that God is not like the corrupt judge. How does prayer work, then?

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 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. Even when we have all these things going for us (and which of us has?), we still need God. God is the missing ingredient in life: the one without whom life is meaningless, without whose help all our striving, conniving, planning, struggling, and praying still fall pitifully short of the goal. 

“Will not God do justice to his chosen who call out to him day and night?” Jesus asks at the story’s conclusion. The answer would be obvious, even if Jesus did not supply it. Of course, he will! First, however, God wants us to “cry out to him day and night.” He wants us to pray and to keep on praying, even when it appears useless — because God seems to answer only with silence. Perseverance in prayer strengthens our desire and deepens our faith, very much as sustained physical exercise strengthens the muscles, heart, and lungs. St. Augustine expresses this well: “God wants our desire to be exercised in prayer, thus enabling us to grasp what he is preparing to give. ... We are small and limited vessels for the receiving of it. ... We shall have the greater capacity to receive [God’s gifts], the more trustfully we believe, the more firmly we hope, the more ardently we desire.”^[1]

St. Gregory the Great, Bishop of Rome from 590 to 604, says the same in a slightly different form: “Holy desires grow with delay: if they fade through delay they are no desires at all.”^[2]

God always answers prayer, though not always at the time, and in the manner, that we want. In my 92^nd year I am grateful to have lived long enough to be able to thank God for answering some of my prayers: “Not now”, and others “Not ever.” Nor will God keep us waiting until we bid high enough for the things we need. All that is certain. One thing alone is uncertain. Do we truly believe in a God who hears and answers our prayers? Do really trust him? Or is our real trust elsewhere? In our own cleverness, in our good luck, in the strings we can pull, in our hard work, in the bribes we try to offer God in the form of prayers and sacrifices and good works? 

None of those things is certain, Jesus tells us. There is certainty only in God.  He alone can satisfy our deepest needs. Hence Jesus’ final, insistent question: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on the earth?

---

^[1] Letter to Proba, 130; Office of Readings for the 29^th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

^[2]  Homily 25 on the Gospels; Office of Readings for St. Mary Magdalene.

"THIS GENERATION SEEKS A SIGN."

Homily for Oct. 14^th, 2019: Luke 11:29-32.       

          “This generation seeks a sign,” Jesus says. He is referring to the repeated demand of his contemporaries for a miracle so dramatic that it will force them to believe. But belief cannot be forced any more than love can be forced. Jesus’ miracles confirm the faith of those who already believe. They do not compel belief on those who hearts and minds are closed to him and his message.

          Jesus then mentions two such confirming signs: Jonah, and the so-called queen of the south, Sheba. Jonah’s sign was not his survival in the belly of the great fish. The book Jonah is fiction, not history. Like much great fiction, notably Jesus’ parables and Shakespeare’s plays, Jonah is the vehicle for important truth about God, humanity, and life. The sign of Jonah which Jesus refers to is the immediate repentance of the people of Nineveh – Gentiles without the gift of God’s law – in response to Jonah’s preaching. Jesus contrasts the response of the Ninevites with the failure of so many of his own people to respond to his message.

          The sign of Queen Sheba is different, though in one respect the same. Like Jonah, she came from afar, motivated however not by a divine command, but by the report that King Solomon possessed wisdom greater than that of all other rulers or sages. “There is something greater than Solomon here,” Jesus says. He is referring to himself. He not merely possesses wisdom: Jesus is wisdom personified. Similarly the statement that “there is something greater than Jonah here” means that Jesus’ message is more compelling than Jonah’s -- yet the people still do not respond. Jesus sums up by saying that the Ninevites and Queen Sheba showed a readiness to respond which his own people do not.

Are we responding? “I have come,” Jesus says in John’s gospel, “that they may have life, and have it to the full” (10:10). Are we embracing Jesus’ offer of life to the full? Or do we think of our faith as observing enough of the Church’s complicated rules and regulations to be able, on Judgment Day, to squeeze our way into heaven?

          Think about it!             

BLESSED WHO HEAR GOD'S WORD

Homily for Oct. 12^th, 2019: Luke 11:27-28.

          “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed,” a woman in the crowd cries out as Jesus is speaking. Jesus’ response to this tribute to his mother surprises us. He might have said, “Truly,” “Indeed,” or perhaps just “Thank you.” He owed his mother so much: his humanity, loving care from infancy through childhood, youth, and adolescence. Yet he says none of those things. The response Jesus actually makes seems almost to contradict what the woman in the crowd has cried out. “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”

In reality this is not a contradiction. For Mary is the first hearer of God’s word. It came to her first when the angel Gabriel told her that she was to be the mother of God’s Son. How much of that word did Mary understand? Well, she understood at least this: that in a small village where gossip was rife and everybody knew everybody else’s business, she would be looked on as an unmarried mother. Despite this bleak prospect, Mary immediately said yes: “Be it done to me according to your word.”

Mary’s attention to God’s word did not stop there. After Mary and Joseph’s frantic search for their 12-year-old son who, unbeknownst to them, had stayed behind in Jerusalem, they heard the boy’s puzzling questions: “Why did you search for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father’s house?” On the threshold of his teens, Jesus already knew that God, and not Joseph, was his Father.

Luke (alone of the four gospel writers) tells us that Mary and Joseph “did not understand” what their son had said to them (2:50). After returning to Nazareth, however, Mary continued to “ponder these things in her heart” (vs. 51).

The Lord asks us to do the same. More, he promises that when we do listen to his word, ponder in our hearts what he says to us, and put his teaching into action, we are “blessed.” And that word, in Luke’s original Greek text, makarios, means “happy.”        

"ASK AND YOU WILL RECEIVE."

Homily for Oct. 10^th, 2019: Luke 11:5-13.

This story about the friend coming at midnight emphasizes two things: the need for persistence in prayer, and God=s readiness to hear us: AAsk and you will receive,” Jesus says. “Seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.@ Continuing to pray when God seems to answer only with silence increases our desire and strengthens our faith, as physical exercise strengthens the heart, lungs, and muscles. St. Gregory the Great, who was bishop of Rome from 590 to 604, wrote: AAll holy desires grow by delays; and if they fade because of these delays, they were never holy desires.@

To illustrate his teaching about prayer, Jesus reminds us that God is our loving heavenly Father, and we are his children. God is more loving, however, than the even best human father or mother B and wiser. Hence he will not always answer our prayers in the way, or at the time, that we think he should. When God refuses something we pray for, it is always in order to give us something better.  

 The late Archbishop Fulton Sheen told a story about a little girl who prayed, before Christmas, for a hundred dolls. She didn=t get even one. Her unbelieving father, who had taunted both her and her mother for praying at all, couldn=t resist saying on Christmas day: AWell God didn=t answer your prayers, did he?@ To which the child gave the beautiful answer: AOh yes, He did. He said No!@ In my own ninety-first year, I am grateful to have lived long enough to be able to thank God for answering some of my prayers, Not yet; and others, No.

Even when we have done our best to explain and understand prayer, however, it remains a mystery: not in the sense that we can understand nothing about prayer, but that what we can understand is partial only. We can no more explain Ahow prayer works@ than we can explain how the human mind works, or the human heart.

Above all, therefore, we need to ask for the gift of God=s Holy Spirit: the fire of God’s love, to burn away everything in us that is contrary to God, and to light up our way; his wisdom to see what is right and true, and to embrace it when seen. That prayer will always be answered, Jesus promises us. AIf you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?@

JOB RECIEVES AN ANSWER

Homily for Oct. 9^th, 2019: Jonah 4:1-11.

          For the last three days we have been hearing readings from one of the most remarkable books in the Bible: Jonah. Like Jesus’ parables and Shakespeare’s plays, Jonah is a work of fiction. But also like them, it contains profound truths about life. Indeed Jonah is an extended parable about God’s mercy and his willingness to forgive.

The book begins with God’s call to Jonah to preach repentance to the people of Nineveh. Unlike the other prophets, who obey God’s call, though in some cases reluctantly, Jonah’s response is, “No way.” He takes a ship going in the other direction from Nineveh. When a violent storm arises, the ship’s crew pray for deliverance. The only one not praying is Jonah, who remains asleep below. The captain questions him and discovers that he is fleeing God’s call. To appease God, they throw Jonah overboard. Swallowed by “a great fish,” who vomits him onto dry land after three days (the clearest indication of the book’s fictional character), Jonah now travels to Nineveh to preach repentance, though reluctantly. Nineveh symbolizes all the foreign nations who have oppressed God’s people. Jonah can’t stand the possibility that God will show mercy to one of Israel’s enemies.

When Jonah tells the Ninevites they must repent, they do so at once. Whereupon God is merciful to them – and Jonah is burned up about it! In today’s first reading, we hear him telling God of his anger. He is a sorehead! “Take my life,” he asks God. God remains merciful, however, even to his reluctant prophet, Jonah. God provides a large-leafed plant to shelter Jonah from the sun’s heat. When the plant dies the next day, Jonah is angrier than ever. God has the final word: ‘You’re concerned about this plant, Jonah? And shouldn’t I be at least as concerned about all the people in this great city Nineveh?’

What is the takeaway for us? Simply this. God’s mercy and willingness to forgive are unlimited. When we resent God being good to people of whom we deeply disapprove, we’re like Jonah. And we’re also like another character in Holy Scripture: the elder brother in Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son. His anger at his father’s welcome for his shiftless younger brother is like Jonah’s anger at God’s goodness to the Ninevites. It shows that though the elder brother has never left home, he too is in a far country, far removed from his father’s boundless love and willingness to forgive. God’s mercy is not only for us. It is for all.

 

"MARY HAS CHOSEN THE BETTER PART."

Homily for Oct. 8^th, 2019: Luke 10:38-42.

          It seems unfair, doesn’t it? Even a child can see that it’s not right to leave your sister all alone in the kitchen while you make pleasant conversation with a guest. How can we make sense of the story?

          Before dealing with this question, it is worth noting that this is one of a number of instances in the gospels where Jesus rejects the second class status of women in his society. In Jesus’ day, only men were supposed to sit at the feet of a religious teacher and listen to his teaching. Women were supposed to stay out of sight and appear only to wait on the men. Jesus clearly rejects this double standard.

The story is not about the duty of hospitality. In Luke’s gospel it immediately follows the parable of the Good Samaritan, which we heard yesterday. That told us we must always be ready to help others in need. Today’s story is shows the futility of active service which, because it is not based on attentive listening to God=s word, becomes mere busyness. When Jesus says to Martha, AYou are anxious and worried about many things,@ he is not criticizing her for performing the duties of hospitality, but for doing so without first attending to his word. Martha, we might say, is the kind of person who likes to go about doing good, especially the kind of good that requires a lot of going about. 

Jesus doesn’t ask us to choose between being a Mary or a Martha. The true disciple of Jesus must be both. Mark=s gospel tells us that when Jesus called his twelve apostles, he called them for two reasons: Ato be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message@ (Mk 3:14). Which is more important: to be with Jesus, or to proclaim his message others? Both are important. If we ask, however, which must have priority C the relationship or the work C then the answer is clear. Our relationship with the Lord must come first. If we are not willing to spend time with him, sitting at his feet like Mary of Bethany and listening to his words, then all our efforts help others are just spinning our wheels. Luke gives us this story to challenge our priorities; to help us see that being with the Lord and listening to his word must be the basis of all we do for him – and for others.

That’s why we are here: to listen to the Lord speaking to us in his holy word; and to be strengthened for service to others by receiving his Body and Blood.

"WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?"

Homily for Oct. 7^th, 2019: Luke 10:25-37.

          This well known story of the Good Samaritan was Jesus’ response to a question: “Who is my neighbor?” In other words: what are the limits to my obligation? Jesus never answers that question. Instead he tells a story about what it means to be a neighbor. And he concludes the story with a question of his own: “Which of these three was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?” The answer is obvious: the Samaritan. But Jesus’ questioner can’t bring himself to say that hated word. Samaritans were despised by Jews. So he resorts to a circumlocution: “The one who treated him with mercy.” To which Jesus responds: AGo and do likewise.@ The man had asked about the limits of his obligation. The parable says in effect: >there are no limits.=

          How, we ask, can Jesus make such a radical demand? For one reason alone: because this is the way he, Jesus Christ, treats us. Jesus is the despised outsider. Jesus is the one who finds us lying mortally wounded along life=s way. For no merits of our own, but simply because of his infinite compassion, Jesus comes to our aid. He binds up our wounds, pouring upon us the healing oil of his forgiveness in the sacraments of baptism and penance, the exhilarating wine of his love in his holy word and in the Eucharist.

He entrusts us to the care of his Church, promising to come again and again as often as may be necessary, to tend to our every need. Because of this total generosity toward us in our need, a readiness to help which caused Jesus to lay down his life for us, he is able to say to us: ‘See how much I have done for you C look what I am doing for you even now! Then go and do the same for others.’         

The man who asks Jesus, AWhat must I do to inherit eternal life?@ is like many sincerely religious people today. Wanting to do what is right, he develops a spirit directly contrary to God=s law, even when he thinks he is obeying the law. His question, AAnd who is my neighbor?@ shows that he was unable to get beyond the law=s details. To be cured, he needed to encounter the Lawgiver. 

His name is Jesus Christ.