"GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD."

Homily for April 22^nd, 2020: John 3:16-21.

          “God so loved he world …” we just heard. Perhaps someone is thinking: “But of course. Isn’t that obvious?” To many people it is not obvious. Christians who in past centuries used to be called Puritans consider the world an evil place, from which Jesus’ disciples must flee. This view is still alive and well today in certain quarters. It has a kernel of truth. The world organized apart from God, and against God is evil. Jesus refers to that world when he says, later in John’s gospel: “In the world you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (16:33). In today’s gospel, however, Jesus is speaking of the world in a good sense: not the world of human marring, but the good world of God’s making. That world must be lovable, for God does not make anything that is not good.

          “God so loved the world,” Jesus goes on, “that he gave his only begotten Son.” He was the most that God had to give or could give. And God’s Son came into our

world, and continues with us through the power of his Holy Spirit, not as some kind of great policeman or scold to frighten us into measuring up to his unrealistically high standards. No. Jesus came, and remains with us, “so that the world might be saved through him.” How?

          As we read on in today’s gospel we discover the answer. We are saved “by believing in him,” Jesus Christ. To believe in someone is to trust that person -- more, to entrust ourselves to him or her. Whoever does that, our gospel tells us, lives not in darkness, but in light – the light that shines from the face of Jesus Christ. How dark our world would be had he never come to us!

          We pray in this Mass, therefore, that we may entrust ourselves ever more completely to Jesus, himself the light of the world; and that we ourselves may be lenses or prisms of his light in a dark and often fearful world.

         

         

3rd SUNDAY OF EASTER: THE TWO TABLES

THE TWO TABLES

Third Sunday of Easter, Year A.  Luke 24:13-35.

AIM: To help the hearers appreciate God’s presence in his word.       

          This best known of all the resurrection stories, which we have just heard in the gospel, is also one of the most loved. Three elements of the story explain its appeal. First, it has an element of suspense: we know in advance the identity of the story’s central figure and are eager to see when the other people in the story will discover what we already know. Second, we can identify with the two friends of Jesus. They are not leaders, like Peter or Paul, but ordinary disciples like ourselves. Finally, the story appeals because it shows Jesus coming to his friends in the two ways he has always come: through word and sacrament. This aspect is worth pursuing further.

          After Jesus’ disappearance, his two friends recall that their hearts had been “burning within us while he spoke to us ... and opened the Scriptures to us.” Jesus could make people feel that God’s word was addressed personally to them. More than once the gospels record that “he spoke with authority,” and not like other religious teachers.  (Mt. 7:29 and parallels.)

          When you read God’s word, or hear it read in church, do you ever feel that the words are addressed personally to you? To do so, you must learn to listen. You must become still, opening your heart and mind to what the Lord wants to say to you. That takes time. How good to see people coming early to Mass, so that they have time to become quiet, prepared to listen to God’s word with open hearts and open minds. That is something people with children are seldom able to do. Once we begin to appreciate that Jesus comes to us through his word, we will be less apt simply to rattle off prayers mechanically. We shall be more aware that the words we speak to God in prayer mean something. Then, starting with the most familiar prayers like the Our Father and Hail Mary, we’ll pray them more slowly, more reverently.  

          Though the two friends of Jesus in today’s gospel feel their hearts burning within them as they listen to the Lord’s words, they recognize him only “in the breaking of the bread.” That is the earliest name for the Eucharist. But Jesus does not linger. At once he is gone. Jesus had not been brought back to his old life. That ended on Calvary. Jesus was raised to a new life, beyond death: a higher mode of existence no longer limited by the physical laws which govern life before death. In his book Jesus of Nazareth Pope Benedict, now retired, explains this by writing: “[Jesus’] presence is entirely physical, yet he is not bound by physical laws, the laws of space and time. ... He is the same embodied man, and he is the new man, having entered upon a different manner of existence” (p. 266, emphasis supplied).

          Jesus’ swift disappearance shows also that he did not come to these friends of his so that they could luxuriate in a great spiritual experience. He came to empower them to carry the good news of his resurrection to others. Under the influence of this unexpected and wonderful encounter they forget their weariness and the late hour, and return at once to Jerusalem with their unbelievably good news. Before recognizing Jesus, they had pressed him to stay with them, because evening was coming on. They had with them Him who is the light of the world. Had he left, it would have been dark indeed.

          Is your life dark? If so, perhaps it is because you are not journeying with Jesus Christ. One day you will come to the evening of life’s journey. Happy then if Jesus is with you, so that you can press him to stay: “when the shadows lengthen, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done” (Newman). Then he will stay with you, to take you to the place he has gone ahead to prepare for you (cf. John 14:2). 

          But that great encounter is still in the future. Here and now, if you wish to journey with Jesus Christ (and your presence here shows that, deep in your heart, you do), you must encounter him in the same two ways as those friends of Jesus did at Emmaus: through his word, and in the breaking of the bread – which is the Mass.   

          Let me conclude with some verses written as a meditation on this beautiful story of the appearance of the risen Lord to the two disciples at Emmaus. They are by Fr. Ralph Wright, a monk of our own St. Louis Abbey on Mason Road

 

Sing of one who walks beside us / And this day is living still,

One who now is closer to us / Than the thought our hearts distill,

One who once upon a hilltop / Raised against the power of sin,

Died in love as his own creatures / Crucified their God and King.

 

Strangers we have walked beside him / The long journey of the day,

And have told him of the darkness / That has swept our hope away.

He has offered words of comfort, / Words of energy and light,

And our hearts have blazed within us / As he saved us from the night.

 

Stay with us, dear Lord, and raise us / Once again the night is near.

Dine with us and share your wisdom. / Free our hearts from every fear.

In the calm of each new evening, / In the freshness of each dawn,

If you hold us fast in friendship / We will never be alone.

HOME TO GOD

Homily for April 21^st, 2018: John 3:7-15.

          In the passage immediately before today’s gospel reading, Jesus has told Nicodemus that he must be “born again.” How was that possible, Nicodemus asked? How could someone enter again into this mother’s womb and be born anew? Jesus explained that he was talking, not about biological birth, but about birth “from above” – heavenly birth, through water and the spirit. We understand (though Nicodemus did not) that Jesus was talking about baptism. 

          In today’s gospel Jesus expands on the theme of spirit. In Greek, the language of the New Testament, the word for spirit is pneuma. Our English medical terms are almost all from Greek roots; so, we find pneuma in the name for a sickness of the lungs: pneumonia. In antiquity pneuma designated both a wind and a person’s breath. That is why the gospels speak about Jesus giving up his spirit when he died. His breath went out of him.

          Using the same word, Jesus speaks also about the winds of the air. In antiquity people believed that the winds came from God. Winds were, they thought, God’s breath. The winds we hear and feel blow from different directions. We hear the sound the wind makes, Jesus tells Nicodemus, but we do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

Then comes a crucial sentence: “So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” We are born of the spirit in baptism and in confirmation. At Pentecost we hear about the Spirit of God coming dramatically, like a strong driving wind. That we are Christians in a land undreamed of by anyone in Jerusalem on that first Pentecost day is proof that the Spirit’s “strong driving wind” did not blow in vain. Those first touched by that wind were blown into places, and situations, they never dreamed of.  Even those who never left Jerusalem found their lives utterly changed.

This same wind of the Spirit is blowing in the Church today. Is it blowing in your life? Or are you afraid of that wind? of what it might do to you, and where it might blow you? Cast aide fear. The wind of God’s Spirit, like the winds of the sky, blows from different directions. But in the end this wind blows all who are driven by it to the same place. The wind of God Spirit blows us home -- home to God.   

 

 

 

"YOU MUST BE BEGOTTEN OF WATER AND THE SPIRIT."

Homily for April 20^th, 2020: John 3:1-8.

          Most of those who responded to Jesus’ teaching by coming to believe in him were “little people,” as the world reckons such things. In today’s gospel we meet an exception. Nicodemus was member of the Sanhedrin, the elite 70-man Jewish ruling body that went back to Moses. He comes to Jesus at night. He doesn’t want his fellow Sanhedrin members, almost all of whom are either hostile to Jesus, or indifferent, to know about his visit. The night visit my also have a symbolic meaning. John’s gospel is rich in symbolism. Nicodemus is coming from the darkness of disbelief, or at least of weak belief, to the One who is the light of the world.

There was similar symbolism in the gospel for Tuesday in Holy Week, also by John. After Judas leaves the Upper Room where Jesus was celebrating his Last Supper with the twelve apostles, John tells us: “And it was night.” For Jesus, however, it was not night. “Now is the Son of Man glorified,” he cries out, “and God is glorified in him.”

Nicodemus has been impressed by Jesus’ miracles – which ones we are not told. Calling Jesus “Rabbi,” Nicodemus says: “We know you are a teacher come from God, for no man can perform signs and wonders such as you perform unless God is with him.” This stops far short of acknowledgement that Jesus is the Messiah. There were other holy rabbis who performed signs and wonders. 

This explains Jesus’ less than enthusiastic response. You cannot see God’s kingdom, he tells Nicodemus, unless you are “begotten from above,” in other words, “born of God as your Father.” A father “begets” the child whom a mother “bears.” Jesus’ meaning becomes clear only when he says: “No one can enter God’s kingdom without being begotten of water and the Spirit.”

That is what happened to each of us when we were baptized. Through the Holy Spirit, and the pouring of water, God our Father made us his children, brothers and sisters of his divine Son, Jesus, and heirs of the kingdom of heaven. That is our eternal destiny. And nothing can prevent its fulfillment except our own deliberate and final No. 

"GO, CARRY THE GOOD NEWS."

April 18^th, 2020: Easter Saturday. Mark 16: 9-15.

          Throughout Easter week we have been hearing gospel readings which tell of the risen Lord Jesus sending out those to whom he appeared to proclaim that he is risen. On Monday he encountered the women visiting his empty tomb and told them: “Do not be afraid! Go and carry the news to my brothers . . .” On Tuesday we heard him giving the same command to Mary Magdalene. On Wednesday he encountered two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus and made himself known to them “in the breaking of the bread” – the first post-Easter celebration of Mass. On Thursday we heard the account of Jesus appearing to the apostles, with the previously missing Thomas, a week after Easter. “You are witnesses of all this,” he tells them: not just a statement, but also a command. Yesterday we heard about Jesus encountering seven of his apostles, tired from a night of fruitless fishing on the lake, and charged Peter to “feed my sheep.”

          Today’s gospel reading is a kind of summary of all this. Twice over we hear that even after hearing the testimony of people who had seen the risen Lord, “they refused to believe.” Sitting at table with the eleven remaining apostles Jesus “takes them to task for their disbelief and stubbornness,” Mark writes, “since they had put no faith in those who had seen him after he had been raised.”

          Note what immediately follows. To these men whose faith was not merely weak, but missing entirely, Jesus says: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the good news to all creation.” That challenged not only those eleven at table with Jesus. It also challenges us. When we think our faith is too weak to enable us bear witness to the risen Lord, and to proclaim his good news to an often hostile though hungry world, we should remember: the first witnesses were also weak in faith, even lacking in any faith. Yet Jesus did not hesitate to send them. He knew that in the very act of proclaiming the good news to others their own faith would be kindled, and deepened. 

Another man who knew that was the namesake of the present Pope: St. Francis of Assisi. “Preach always,” Francis said. “When necessary, use words.”

PETER'S CALL, AND OURS.

April 17^th, 2020: Easter Friday. John 21:1-14.

“Have you caught anything?” Jesus calls out from the shore at dawn to his friends in their boat. What he really said was: “You haven’t caught anything, have you?” Jesus was poking fun at their lack of success in the one thing they were supposed to be good at: catching fish. Not once in the gospels is there any record of Peter and his friends catching a single fish without Jesus’ help. Here that help is the command to try again. They do so – and at once they feel the net heavy with fish. One of those in the boat tells Peter: “It is the Lord.” It is the unnamed “disciple whom Jesus loved.” Peter and the others hurry ashore and find a charcoal fire with fish on it, and bread. Knowing that they would be hungry after their long night’s labor, Jesus has made breakfast for them.

Did Peter recall another charcoal fire, at night, in the courtyard of the High Priest’s house at Jerusalem, where Peter stood warming himself? “Peter was distressed,” we heard in the gospel, because Jesus asked his question a third time. Of course he was distressed! The memory of his three-fold denial at that other fire was painful. Peter’s thrice repeated assurance of love is his rehabilitation. In response to each pledge of love, Jesus assigns Peter responsibility: to feed Jesus= sheep.

Why did Jesus give this responsibility to Peter, of all people? Jesus gave the office of leader to the friend whose love was imperfect; whose impetuosity and weakness made the name Jesus gave him - Peter, the rock - as ironic as calling a 350-pound heavyweight “Slim.”

Is there someone here today who feels weak? You have made so many good resolutions. Some you have kept, others not. You have high ideals. Yet time and again you have compromised. You had so many dreams, hopes, plans. How many have you achieved? You wanted so much. You have settled for so little. If that is your story, you have a friend in heaven. His name is Simon Peter. 

If, like Peter, you have discovered that you are weak, that command is reassuring. Jesus doesn’t ask you to be strong, for he knows your weakness. He doesn’t ask you to be a pioneer or a leader. He knows that is too hard: that you would soon lose your way - or at least your nerve. He asks one thing alone. He asks you to follow him. 

Following Jesus Christ is not always easy. If you know your weakness, however, you have an advantage over those who still think they are strong. Then you will trust, as you try to follow your Master and Lord, not in any strength of your own, but only and always in the strength of Jesus Christ. His strength is always reliable; and it is always available. We have only to ask, and Jesus is there.  

"YOU ARE WITNESSES."

April 16^th, 2020: Easter Thursday: Luke 24:35-48.

“You are witnesses of these things,” Jesus tells his first frightened and then incredulous friends at the end of this gospel reading. Those words were not merely a statement. They were a sending, a command. The risen Lord continues to issue this command today – to us.

How do we bear witness to Jesus Christ? There are as many ways as there are witnesses. A few years back our local newspaper had an article about one such witness: Sister Irene Marie of the Little Sisters of the Poor, who take a special vow of “hospitality to the aged poor.” As “collector” for her community, she hits the street daily to collect supplies for their 100-bed home for the elderly. One of her regular stops is the wholesale food market on 20 Produce Row. A man who sees her there often says: “I guess a polite way to describe Produce Row is ‘tough.’ But Sister Irene just goes right in there and tells those guys what she needs. They’re like little puppies around her.”

What’s her secret? She is careful not to push too hard, the article says. “You can’t expect people to give what they can’t afford,” Sister Irene told the reporter who wrote the article. “If we pushed like that, then God wouldn’t bless our work.”

          She wasn’t always in this line of work. “I was a seamstress in our Cleveland house,” she told the reporter. “One day Mother Superior told me I was going to be the collector.” Wasn’t she worried about taking on something for which she had no experience?  “Not really,” Sister Irene replied. “I’d never sewn before either.” That’s amusing, of course. But the deep and simple faith reflected in that Sister’s words is also uplifting. She is a shining witness to the power, and love, of the risen Lord Jesus.  

         Friends, you don’t have to be a religious Sister to be a witness to Jesus Christ. You don’t have to be a priest either. There are people here in this church right now who, like that Sister, are bearing witness to the risen Lord by the inner quality of their lives: women and men of deep faith, steadfast hope even when all looks dark, and active, generous love for God and others.

          Here in the Eucharist we encounter the One who sends us out to be his witnesses in daily life. Here, in word and sacrament, we receive once again all his power, all his goodness, all his purity, all his love. And when we have Him, we have everything.  

EMMAUS

THE TWO TABLES

Homily for April 15^th, 2020.  Luke 24:13-35.

 

          This best known of all the resurrection stories is also one of the most loved. The story appeals because it shows Jesus coming to his friends in the two ways he has always come: through word and sacrament. After Jesus’ disappearance, his two friends recall that their hearts had been “burning within us while he spoke to us ... and opened the Scriptures to us.” More than once the gospels record that “he spoke with authority,” and not like other religious teachers. (Matt. 7:29 and parallels.)

Jesus is still speaking with authority today; and our hearts too can burn within us, as we ponder his word. For that to happen, however, we must spend time alone with the Lord, in silence. The 16^th century Spanish Carmelite, St. John of the Cross, says: “The Father spoke one Word, which is his Son, and this word he speaks always in eternal silence; and in silence it must be heard by the soul.”

          Though the two friends of Jesus in today’s gospel feel their hearts burning within them as they listen to the Lord’s words, they recognize him only “in the breaking of the bread” – the first post-Easter celebration of Mass.

          Jesus’ swift disappearance at Emmaus shows also that he did not come to these friends of his so that they could luxuriate in a great spiritual experience. He came to empower them to carry the good news of his resurrection to others. Every encounter with God in Scripture is for the sake of others.

          Let me conclude with some verses written as a meditation on the Emmaus story. They are by a monk of the Benedictine abbey in St. Louis, Fr. Ralph Wright.

Sing of one who walks beside us / And this day is living still,

          One who now is closer to us / Than the thought our hearts distill,

          One who once upon a hilltop / Raised against the power of sin,

          Died in love as his own creatures / Crucified their God and King.

 

          Strangers we have walked beside him / The long journey of the day,

          And have told him of the darkness / That has swept our hope away.

          He has offered words of comfort, / Words of energy and light,

          And our hearts have blazed within us / As he saved us from the night.

 

Stay with us, dear Lord, and raise us / Once again the night is near.

Dine with us and share your wisdom. / Free our hearts from every fear.

In the calm of each new evening, / In the freshness of each dawn,

If you hold us fast in friendship / We will never be alone.