CHOOSE LIFE

Homily for February, 18^th, 2021: Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Luke 9:22-25.

          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 seldom develop high standards of social life. The high statistics of black on black crime in our country illustrate this. They also show that we are still paying the price of slavery. The price of oppression continues to be demanded even after the oppression has ended. The stories coming out of North Korea are even worse. Oppressed people follow the law of the jungle, preying on one another in ways that horrify us.

          So, the ragtag group of people who crossed the Red Sea with Moses had grown accustomed for centuries to inflicting on one another the cruelty they experienced from the people who had enslaved them.

          This is the background for God’s gift to Moses of the Ten Commandments. They were not then, nor are the Commandments now, fences to hem people in. The Commandments were and are ten signposts pointing the way to human flourishing and freedom. 

          That is exactly what Moses tells the people in our first reading. “Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom. … If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God … [He] will bless you … If, however you turn away your hearts … and serve other gods … you will certainly perish. …Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live.”

          Is that just long ago and far away? Don’t you believe it! The worship of false gods is as widespread today as it was in Bible times. Today’s idols are pleasure, power, possessions, and honor. None of those things is bad. They become idols, only when we make pursuit of any one of them central in our lives. Once we do that, we inevitably experience frustration – because we can never get enough.

What is the remedy? Jesus gives it to us in the gospel. “Whoever wishes to be my follower must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Doing that means putting the Lord at the center of our lives: before our own desires and ambitions, even before those whom we love most. A long life has taught me that people who do that, and only such people, experience the peace and joy that only the Lord can give.  

 

ASH WEDNESDAY

Homily for Ash Wednesday, February 17^th, 2021. 

The English author, G. K. Chesterton says: “The soul does not die by sin, but by impenitence.” More deadly than sin itself is the refusal to acknowledge sin, and to repent of it. Repentance is at the beginning of every Mass. It is also how we begin Lent.

“Lord, have mercy,” we pray. When we appeal to God, we are acknowledging that we can never get rid of sin on our own. Sin is like addiction. Part of the reason for the success of Alcoholics Anonymous in dealing with the addiction to alcohol is the spiritual soundness of the first two of its twelve points:

1.       We admitted we were powerless over alcohol -- that our lives had become unmanageable.

2.       We came to believe that a Power greater than our own could restore us to sanity.  

As we begin Lent, therefore, we confess our powerlessness and appeal to the only power that can make us whole. Do we realize how counter-cultural that is? The self-help books all tell us that we’re not powerless. We can do it on our own. We can get our act together. The only thing we lack is self-confidence. In confessing our sins we are not asking for an increase of self-confidence. Instead we appeal to God for mercy. Prayer for God’s mercy is one petition which is always certain of a favorable response.

“A clean heart create for me, O God,” we prayed in the responsorial psalm.  Cleanliness is not something grim. Nor is the repentance which leads to cleanliness. It is liberating -- and joyful. One of the most beautiful things in married life is the ability to say, “I’m sorry,” and to hear the words, “I forgive you.”

Beautiful as human forgiveness is, however, it is only a pale shadow of God’s forgiveness. When we forgive, there is always a memory of the wrong or injury done -- a skeleton in the closet, we call it. God doesn’t have any closets, and he certainly does have any skeletons. God’s forgiveness is total. In the Old Testament book of the prophet Isaiah we hear God saying: “Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow” (1:18). And later in the book God says: “I wipe out your offenses; your sins I remember no more.” (43:25). That, friends, is the gospel, the good news. We don’t need to drag after us an ever lengthening tale of guilt. When we truly repent, Go forgives: totally and completely.  

"DO YOU STILL NOT UNDERSTAND?"

Homily for February 16^th, 2021: Mark 8:14-21

          In yesterday’s gospel reading we heard Jesus’ critics demanding a “sign,” something so dramatic that it would compel belief. Jesus had already given many signs: his miracles of healing. He rejected the demand for further signs because he knew that belief cannot be compelled. His words today, “Guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod,” are a commentary on his confrontation with the pious critics who were not content with the signs Jesus had already given, and demanded more. “Leaven” is a figure of speech for something with an inward, vigorous vitality. Here it refers to an evil force that can spread, like an infection. Jesus is telling his disciples not to succumb to the hard-hearted mentality of his critics.

          This goes completely over his disciples’ heads. They are in a boat and have started to cross the lake. They discover that they have brought only one loaf of bread with them. They think that Jesus’ words about leaven must have something to do with the bread. As so often in the gospels, Jesus’ disciples are thinking on the material level (in this case about bread and leaven), while Jesus is on the spiritual level.

Aware of their misunderstanding at once, Jesus asks: “Why do you conclude that is because you have no bread? Do you not yet understand or comprehend?” Don’t you remember how I fed a vast crowd in the wilderness with just a few loaves of bread – not just once but twice? Why, then, are you worrying about not having enough to eat? “Do you still not understand?”

What is it that Jesus’ friends do not understand? That he is able to look after them; and that he has ways of doing so which they cannot possibly imagine or understand. We pray in this Mass for the faith which they lacked. Here is an evangelical hymn which beautifully expresses this prayer.

Cast your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His Glory and Grace. Through death into life everlasting / He passed, and we follow Him there; Over us sin no more has dominion - For more than conquerors we are! His Word shall not fail you - He promised; believe Him, and all will be well; Then go to a world full of darkness, His perfect salvation to tell.

"WHY DOES THIS GENERATION SEEK A SIGN?"

Homily for February 15^th, 2021: Mark 8:11-13.

          “The Pharisees came forward and began to argue with Jesus, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him.” The words show hostility on the part of Jesus’ critics. They argue with him. They put him to the test. They assume that he will fail the test, and thus lose popular support.

          Jesus has already given numerous signs: his healing miracles. For his critics these are insufficient. They demand a sign so dramatic that it will compel belief. Jesus refuses their demand. Why? Because he knows that belief cannot be compelled, any more than love can be compelled. The greatest sign of all – the empty tomb -- was still in the future at the time of this confrontation. When it came, Jesus’ critics had a perfectly plausible explanation: persons unknown, possibly Jesus’ own friends, had moved his body. The only person who came to belief on the basis of the empty tomb alone was the man always referred to in the gospel which bears his name as “the disciple whom Jesus loved”: the apostle John. All the other friends of Jesus came to belief in the resurrection only after seeing the risen Lord – and most of them were initially skeptical.

          Signs are given to people who already believe, never to people who demand proof as a condition of belief. One of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies is about this: Othello. A rough military man, Othello’s life is transformed when he meets the woman who will become his wife, Desdemona. She brings beauty into his life, but also love, tenderness, and light.

          All is well until Othello’s lieutenant Iago, for reasons which literary scholars are still disputing, suggests to Othello that the wife he passionately loves is unfaithful him. Whereupon Othello confronts Desdemona with the demand that she has not betrayed him. But you can’t prove a negative. As long as Othello loved and trusted the wife whose love had lit up his life, he received constant proofs of her love. Once he withdrew that trust and demanded proof, no proof was sufficient. A love, once beautiful, dies; and at the end of the play Desdemona herself dies at the hand of her now estranged husband: a tragedy indeed.

          You want signs that prove the Lord’s love for you? Proofs that Jesus, while completely human like us, is truly the divine Son of God? Then give yourself to him in faith and love, and you will receive signs which prove both these things. But demand proofs before you believe, and like Jesus’ critics, you will go away empty-handed.

"ALL ATE AND WERE SATISFIED."

Homily for February 13^th, 2021: Mark 8:1-10

          This story of Jesus feeding the vast crowd in the wilderness is told six times over, with variations in detail, in the four gospels. What accounts for its popularity? I can think of four reasons. First, it shows Jesus’ ability to solve what, to us, is insoluble. Second, it is an example of what is sometimes called “The Law of the gift.” Third, it helps us understand the central Christian mystery: the Eucharist. And finally, it reminds us of what happens in every Mass.

Feeding four thousand people with seven loaves of bread and a few fish was clearly impossible. Not, however, for Jesus. The story tells us that when we place our resources, however inadequate they may be, into the hands of Jesus Christ, we discover that they are inadequate no longer. Jesus is the Son and representative of the God of the impossible.

Second, the story helps us understand what is sometimes called “The Law of the Gift.” This tells us that when we give something to the Lord, it is not lost. It comes back to us. But it comes back transformed, and enlarged. That is because God does not need our gifts. He is, as the theologians say, sufficient unto himself.

Third, what we offer to God in the Eucharist -- a little bread and a small quantity of wine, gifts every bit as insignificant as the seven loaves of bread and a few fish offered to Jesus in this story -- comes back to us transformed into the Body and Blood of God’s Son: all his love, all his goodness, all his strength, all his purity and compassion, all his willingness to forgive.

Finally, the story reminds us of what Jesus does in every Mass. “Taking the seven loaves,” the story says, “he gave thanks, broke them, and gave them to his disciples to distribute.” That is exactly what happens in every Mass, with but one exception. Though the host and celebrant are the same, Jesus, we cannot see him with our eyes, only with the eyes of faith. We see instead his human representative, the priest.

“They ate until they had their fill,” Mark tells us. When Jesus gives, he gives not only abundantly, but super-abundantly. We come repeatedly not because the gift is limited, for it is not; but rather because our capacity to receive is limited.

"BE OPENED!"

Homily for February 12^th, 2021: Mark 7:31-37.

 “Be opened!” Jesus says to the deaf man who is brought to him for healing. Deafness has closed him off from others. Jesus wants to set him free. Jesus is the man of total openness: openness to God; and openness to those whom society in Jesus’ day accepted only in subordinate roles or not at all: women, children, and social outcasts like prostitutes and the hated tax collectors. Our fourth Eucharistic prayer tells us that Jesus proclaimed “the good news of salvation to the poor, to prisoners freedom, and to the sorrowful of heart, joy.”

Jesus is saying to us right now, in this church, what he said to the deaf man: “Be opened!” How closed in we are much of the time: closed to God, closed to others. We shut ourselves up in prisons of our own making, whose walls are self-fulfillment, and whose guiding principle is the hackneyed and deceitful slogan: “Do your own thing.” Most of the conflicts, divisions, and wars in our world -- between individuals, families, classes, groups, and nations -- are the result of people not being open. In the cacophony of conflicting arguments and claims we hear only what we want to hear, and no more; just enough to confirm our prejudices; and then we stop listening altogether. 

Even between Christians there are barriers erected by our failure to be open to each other. To remedy this tragic situation, which contradicts Jesus’ prayer the night before he died, that all might be one (Jn. 17, passim), the Second Vatican Council recommended the method of dialogue. Dialogue requires that we be open to what those who are separated from us are saying; that we listen before we speak.

Can dialogue overcome all barriers? Sadly, it cannot. Some conflicts are so grave that no human power seems great enough to break down the walls that separate us from one another. Nor can we penetrate by our own efforts alone the wall which our sins erect between us and the all-holy God. The gospel proclaims the good news that there is One who can break down those walls. His name is Jesus Christ.

Jesus, the man of total openness, has the right, if ever a man had it, to command: “Be opened!” He won that right for all time on Calvary when, as we shall hear in a moment in the preface to our Eucharistic prayer, “he stretched out his hands as he endured his Passion, so as to break the bonds of death and manifest the resurrection.” (Weekday Preface VI) 

"THE DEMON HAS GONE."

Homily for February 11^th, 2021: Mark 7:24-30.

          I told you yesterday that there are many things in the Bible that we do not understand. Yesterday we heard Jesus overthrowing the distinction in Jewish law between clean and unclean foods. Why then was there the great controversy, perhaps less than a decade later and reported in the Acts of the Apostles and three of Paul’s letters, over whether Gentile converts to Christianity must keep the Jewish food laws? We simply don’t know.      

          Today’s gospel poses another question which we cannot answer. Why did Jesus initially refuse the request of a Gentile woman that he heal her daughter? It cannot be because Jesus lacked compassion. The gospels show that he was a man of total compassion. Did Jesus want to test the depth of this mother’s love for her sick child? If so, she passed the test with flying colors. Throwing herself at Jesus’ feet, she shows that she is out to win. Her daughter means everything to her. She refuses to take no for an answer.

Jesus’ words about the sons of the household being fed first seem to be a reference to his mission of feeding his own people first. When Jesus says it is not right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs, he is using traditional Jewish terminology. Jews in his day often referred to Gentiles as dogs. Jesus softens the word, however. The word he uses means not dogs but puppies. Even this does not discourage the woman. Without missing a beat, she comes right back with the remark: “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.” To understand what she is saying, we must know the eating habits of the day. Food was eaten with the fingers, which were wiped afterwards with pieces of flat bread that were then cast aside to be eaten by the household dogs.

          Or was Jesus testing the woman’s faith? If so, she passed that test too. For Jesus responds: “For saying this, you may go. The demon has gone out of your daughter.” Illness of all kinds was thought in Jesus’ day to be caused by demons.

          The beautiful conclusion of this moving story follows at once. “When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.”

          This desperate and nameless woman is a model of love and faith. We pray in this Mass for the Lord to make us like her.

 

 

                             

"EVIL COMES FROM WITHIN."

Homily for February 10^th, 2021: Mark 7:14-23.

          “Everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile,” Jesus says, since it enters not into the heart but the stomach.” The heart in Jewish thought was considered the seat of feelings and learning. The gospel writer Mark adds his own summary of what Jesus has just said: “Thus he declared all foods clean.”

Jesus’ disciples were almost all Jews. For them there was a whole list of foods which not be eaten because they were unclean, starting with pork. By declaring all foods clean Jesus was making a radical break with this Jewish tradition. But this raises a problem. If Jesus so clearly abolished the distinction between clean and unclean foods, why was there the great debate, reported in the Acts of the Apostles and three of Paul’s letters, about whether Gentile Christians were bound by the Jewish food laws? The answer to that question is simply: we do not know. There are many things in the Bible that we cannot understand. 

What we can understand is the list of vices that Jesus gives us: evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. Evil thoughts may be of many kinds: hatred, anger, lust, resentment. The list goes on and on. All of us have such thoughts from time to time. As long as we are trying to turn away from such dark thoughts to better ones, evil thoughts remain only temptations. And a thousand temptations do not make a single sin. Indeed, Jesus himself was tempted after his 40 days of fasting in the wilderness. Yet we know that Jesus never sinned.

Theft is forbidden by the Commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a world where there was no theft? We wouldn’t need to lock our homes or cars. If we left something behind, we’d know it would be there when we came back. Could there be a better example of the Commandments being signposts to human happiness, not fences to hem us in? Envy is the one vice that brings its own punishment with it. Whenever we give way to envy, we’re unhappy. Blasphemy is not respecting the holy name of God. Arrogance puts people off: no one like an arrogant person. And folly means misusing or wasting the gifts God showers upon us.

Jesus, who gives us this list of vices, has also given us the best defense against them: the closing words of the one prayer he has left us, “Deliver us from evil.”