The Heart of the Matter

Homily for Sunday, November 6, 2011

At the end of this month we will be embarking on the adventure of the new translation of the Roman Missal.  Those of us who remember the Mass in Latin will remember that when the change in the language of the Mass was made, many people felt that a lot of the mystery had gone away from the Mass.  Part of that lessening in a sense of the mystery was caused, in my opinion, by the choice of elementary English vocabulary and syntax, and a preference for an English that would simplify the precise, lofty and elegant Latin words and expressions that are meant to open to us the doorway to the mystery of who God is.

We will be hearing over the coming years a richer language and noticeably longer sentences.  Why?  In order to convey the beautiful and profound theological connections that exist in the Latin original.  We’ll hear a more formal, more reverent and far more humble approach to how we talk with God than the more casual, informal translation we have been used to.  This new translation is meant to help us recover a sense of mystery of what it is that we are doing when we enter into this direct contact with the Living God in the Eucharist. 

The reason we have vestments instead of street clothes, vessels made of precious metals instead of pottery, and all the other uniquely churchy things, like sacred music and art and architecture, is to help us enter into another world when we come to Mass.  And the more we can be open to the mystery of this other world that is called the Kingdom of God, then we start knowing more and more of the One who is beyond all of our imaginings.  This is what it means for us to worship, to gather together in the liturgy of the Mass, to be fed by our Lord, both with His Word and with His Body and Blood.  

Because in the Eucharist we are invited into the inner life of God.  We are invited to realize more and more of how the Father empties Himself perfectly into the Son, and how the Son in turns donates all of Himself back to the Father, and how this perfect giving back and forth between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit; and the more we catch on, the more we participate in the very inner life of the Triune God.  This self-giving of the Persons of the Trinity is at the core of understanding how the Mass is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The wise virgins of the Gospel understand this, even if they become weary and drowsy waiting for the mystery of God to engulf them.  They are fully prepared to wait and to be ready for when the Bridegroom comes, even if He delays.

The unwise virgins are totally unprepared to wait and be ready for when the Bridegroom comes “at an hour we least expect.”  

Our ultimate union with God comes when we die and, hopefully, pass through the judgment successfully and are found to be ready and waiting, and then we shall become like God for we shall see Him as He is.  In the meantime the Eucharist is the training ground, the foretaste, of how to be in the presence of God.

Think of it this way: the weekly Mass is our school of learning what heaven will be like.  Whenever I hear a Catholic say they are “spiritual but not religious,” it usually boils down to their not going to Mass, or religion on their own terms, without the community, without the structure, without worship and without the commitment.  

However, my response to such an attitude is that if one is not at home at Mass, one will not be at home in heaven.  After all, the New Testament presents heaven as an unceasing act of worship of which we join in when we sing with all the heavenly host: "Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts...” Heaven is portrayed as an unceasing hymn of praise, as participation in the wedding feast of the Lamb, of which the Mass is this experience on earth.

Being prepared for that hour of the coming of the Son of Man, however, entails more than worship.  Perhaps it best phrased by Blessed Teresa of Calcutta:

"What are the oil lamps in our lives? 
They are the little everyday things:
faithfulness, punctuality, kind words,
thoughtfulness of another person,
the way we are silent at times,
the way we look at things,
the way we speak, the way we act. 
Those are the little drops of love
which make it possible for our life of faith to shine brightly."   

So, may our new translation be matched by the little things we can do to prepare for meeting our Lord when he comes with all the angels.

 

Homily for Sunday, October 30, 2011

Today our Scriptures have us reflect on what leadership is, and what leadership is not.  Especially, we are invited to see what makes for failed leadership.  If there has ever been a time in history when there has been a crisis of failed leadership all across society, now is that time.  

Wall Street greed has inspired a growing reaction against the leaders of business who have profited so extravagantly while ordinary people’s savings have disappeared.

Leadership in academia has overseen the dumbing down of America while costs have soared and scores have plummeted.

The political leaders have failed to break through the fog of bitter rivalry so as to work together for the common good.  Leaders simply can’t be trusted to solve the enormous problems facing our society.

Leaders in business cannot trust this crisis in governance with the result being that businesses cannot move forward to create new jobs.

The roadblock of political bickering will not allow creative leaders to emerge to solve our immigration fiasco.  Leadership in opinion-making has failed miserably in helping create a society of virtue and self-control and has sold us all out to extreme individualism which cannot hold a society together.

And we have all lived through the lurid scandal in church leadership which has broken our hearts and tested our faith.  How well is it said in the Prophet Malachi: “And now, O priests, this commandment is for you: You have turned aside from the way, and have caused many to falter ... ; you have made void the covenant ... , says the LORD of hosts.  I, therefore, have made you contemptible and base before all the people, since you do not keep my ways.”

What an indictment!  And what a long list of failures in leadership.  And it goes on further in the Gospel, in Jesus’ list of failures of the leaders of his time.  

How about yourself as a leader?  How are you doing?  Are you a leader in business, in academia, in some service industry, among your peers and relatives and friends?  All of us are persons of power, especially the power of influence.  Our opinion on anything really does matter.  Have you ever considered how many stands we take in life, not because we believe in them, but because we don’t want to be rejected by people we value?  

So, let’s all admit that each of us is a leader in one way or another.  And let us heed what Jesus is telling us as leaders.  He’s telling us three things: to practice what we preach; to lighten the burdens of others; and to become free by abandoning the need for recognition and acclaim.

First: practice what we preach.  If we really believe in the love of God and in His gift of mercy, then let’s allow that love and mercy to saturate all of our interactions, opinions, political choices and relationships.  If we leave love and mercy as a private matter, then we are no better than the hypocrites in the Gospel.

Second: Lighten the burdens of others.  If we remain a selfish, self-indulgent, consumerist culture that does not care about the world we will be leaving to future generations, then we are laying heavy burdens upon them and not lifting a finger to lift them.  We need to learn anew the maxim, live simply so that others may simply live.

Lastly, abandon the need for recognition.  This need for the applause of others, the admiration of others, the esteem of others, is the most fatal attack on our inner freedom.  When we are overly concerned about what others may think of us, we are not inwardly free.  Do you remember: two Sundays ago, in the Gospel, a two-faced man came to Jesus trying to trip him up, asking about the tax to Caesar, and began by flattering him: "Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. And you are not concerned with anyone's opinion, for you do not regard a person's status.”  As much as this was a trap of flattery, this man was also describing Jesus as who He truly is.  And he is describing what we should aim for: to be truthful, to embrace the way of God in accordance with the truth, and to no longer be concerned with anyone’s opinion. 

These are the keys to good leadership: practice what we preach; lighten the burdens of others; and be inwardly free from needing recognition.  

So, my brothers and sisters, let ask Jesus to help us restore good leadership in our church and in our homes and in our society.

 

Homily for Sunday, October 23, 2011

[A meditation on Deus Caritas Est, Encyclical of Benedict XVI,12/25/2005]

What a wonderful Gospel to select for a Nuptial Mass!  And what a wonderful Gospel we just happen to have in our lectionary for this weekend.  I think of the song by the Beatles, “All you need is love,” a song written in the 1960s when love became a most frequently used word for all kinds of superficial ways of loving.  As society began moving away from solidly set philosophical moorings, love morphed into meaning a sentiment, a sentiment without the ramifications of true love.  

The feeling of love is a sentiment that comes and goes.  There is, of course, the truly marvelous spark of first love, but it is not the fullness of love.  True love needs to go through a process of purification and maturation.  True love, mature love, needs to learn how to die to self in order that another may thrive.  True love necessarily includes our loving God as well as loving the ones we call “our loved ones.” And when love really becomes godly, becomes mature, it also awakens within us a feeling of joy, born of the experience of knowing oneself as being loved - above all loved by God, but also by the many manifestations of God’s love for us, particularly in the loves of our lives, and most especially in the love of one’s spouse and family.  

This mature love, however, also moves us on a path towards an all embracing love.  Here we find that our “yes” to God’s love transforms us into uniting our will, our intellect and our sentiments with the living God, who has by now become very real to us.  It’s as if the extraordinary experience of human love, when perfected and purified of its selfish nature, opens us up to the unspeakable, beyond-imagining love of God.  When this happens one finds oneself wanting the same things God wants, and rejecting the same things God rejects. 

All of this gets tested, proven and purified in marital love, which must again and again learn the lesson of how to want the same thing the beloved wants, and how to reject the same thing the beloved rejects.

In our relationship with God, our maturing into wanting what God wants, and rejecting what God rejects, is what makes us holy.  A husband and wife, who have learned to unite their wills with each other, find that the result is a deep down satisfaction about life, harmony within the home, and sheer joy in each other.

So also each of us, who learns to unite our will with the will of God, can find in this love affair with God a communion of thought and sentiment with the greatest Lover of our souls, and thus we will find that our will and God’s will increasingly coincide.  And the hallmark of this union in love with God is twofold: a deep abiding sense of peace, and a love that cares for all God’s children, especially the poor.

Someone who has learned the art of true love will discover that God’s will is no longer alien to me, God’s commandments are no longer imposed upon me.  Rather, by now, I have come to the realization that God is in fact more deeply present to me than I am to myself.  This results in an increasing abandonment of self to God; and increasingly God becomes my joy.

The school for learning the art of true love is the family, based upon the growing love between husband and wife.  If their love is sure, if their love is undergoing the ongoing purification of self, ridding the soul of selfishness, then the children grow up as no strangers to true love, as increasingly capable of learning the art of love.

Imagine if all of us here today were to commit ourselves to beg God for this kind of mature love, imagine how this few people could impact the world in which we live.  Imagine if all of us could see with the eyes of Christ.  Imagine if we could give to others the look of love that every human being craves, ever since we first looked into our mother’s eyes as newborn babes, and saw in those motherly eyes the look of pure love!

If on the other hand, I have no contact with God in my life, then I cannot see in the other anything more than “the other,” and I become incapable of seeing in another person the image of God.  I will have closed myself off to God’s love and will become increasingly selfish, or live life in a lifeless way.  The love of God and the love of neighbor are really inseparable, and form, as we heard in the Gospel, a single commandment. In the art of true love, love grows through loving. Love is “divine” because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a “we” which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is “all in all.”

 

Homily for sunday, October 16, 2011

What do you make of the fact that our spot in the world, called the West, has become increasingly de-Christianized?  I think of my grandparents and my own parents who clung to the faith because it had meaning for them, it gave meaning to all the aspects of their lives; and they and their contemporaries held on to the faith at all costs because they valued it so much.  

Now, however, today’s generations in the West have abandoned Western Civilization so dramatically that the classics of Western Civ, and its religious foundations, are largely unknown to their contemporaries.  Today’s descendants of these earlier faith-filled people are leaving the faith in droves.  It has no value for them, nor any relevance.  Who today would have the biblical insight that Harry Truman had in 1948? 

In 1948 the brand new United Nations established that two peoples would live on that little strip of land known as the Holy Land: Israel and Palestine.  When in that year Israel declared itself to be a state, the question was: who would recognize it as a state, as a nation?  It’s one thing to declare yourselves to be a nation, but it takes recognition by other nations for a country to be recognized as one.  It seemed that no nation wanted to make such a move. 

President Truman made the brave, unsupported decision to recognize the state of Israel, against the opinion of all of his advisers.  Some time afterwards, he was introduced at the Jewish Theological Seminary as “the man who helped create the state of Israel.” Truman erupted with: “What do you mean “helped create”?  I am Cyrus!  I am Cyrus!”

Thus we can understand today’s reading from Isaiah in which God makes clear that, though the King of Persia did not know that the One, true God, the God of Israel was the very same God who worked through Cyrus to bring the captives back from Exile and to re-establish them in the state of Israel.

Where is the ability today to interpret the events of our world within a biblical framework?  Where is the faith today, faith which can give meaning to what presses upon us?  What are the reasons for this worldwide loss of faith?  

Why is our time settling for a malady of superficiality, of wanting only the sound-bite, of wanting to forget the divine, and the holy?  It’s like a slow slide into madness.  

In today’s Gospel when Jesus is facing those who try to trick him by making a dichotomy between God and the reality of living within the Roman Empire, Jesus grounds them in both realities.  As members of the Empire, use the coin with the emperor’s image to pay the tax.  But since man is the image of God, pay to God what is His due, by giving your all to God.

What this means for us today is that we have to recapture the truths of our faith and take every opportunity to drill them into our children and our children’s children until the whole culture is brought to its senses: that there are core truths that we will never abandon.   There is the core truth of the cross, that self-indulgence is not the way of Christ, that no newly conceived person need die for me to live the way I want to.  There is the core truth that we are all called to holiness, not to licentiousness and greed and a soft existence that cares little for the plight of the world’s poor.  And there is the core truth that all men and women are under the judgment of God, that we all must give an account to God for what we have done in our bodies and receive our recompense, for good or for ill.  

A future generation will be able to look back and see what the reason was for such a massive loss of faith at this particular time in history.  That future generation will also be able to see what kind of age the world entered because of such a loss of faith.

Someone will by then have the eyes of faith to see the Cyrus-yet-to-come who will bring the exiles of faith back to a homeland where virtues are exalted, where self-sacrifice again holds first place of honor, and where God is worshiped in spirit and in truth.

Homily for Sunday, October 9, 2011

Do you give much thought to your Christian dignity?  By that I mean, does it occur to you on a regular basis that you are baptized and therefore a beloved son or daughter of God?  Do you ever reflect on your status as a prince or a princess in God’s eyes, a member of a royal people, whose dignity can never be removed, except if we disown our membership in the household of God.

As royal people, royal in God’s eyes, we have been invited to the wedding feast of the Son of God.  What is this wedding feast?

In the prophet Isaiah, who wrote about the coming Messiah hundreds of years before Christ, we hear about the messianic feast as “a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines.”  This is the abundant banquet feast of the wedding of the King’s Son.  This messianic, promised wedding feast was also the backdrop for the wedding feast of Cana when Mary prompted her Son to work a miracle, so lavish that the celebrating could go on for days and days.  Another sign of the wedding feast of the Lamb.

So, this wedding feast is the feast of celebrating the union between God and His people.  This union is so wonderfully fulfilled in Jesus Christ who is totally one with God, and is in fact God, and totally one with human beings, and is in fact completely human.  The marriage has taken place in Christ Jesus. And all of us are called to the wedding banquet.  High born and low born are invited.  People who are living in humble circumstances, and people who are living with abundance.

Indeed the Eucharist is the foretaste and promise of that messianic wedding feast that we call heaven, eternal life, life on high with Christ Jesus. So, we can say with St. Paul, "I can do all things in him who strengthens me."

There is a problem, however.  Many people forget their invitation.  Many people get caught up in this-worldly matters and forget their dignity as sons and daughters of the great King who invites us to the wedding feast of His Son.  Notice in this gospel how badly these people treat the messengers who reissue the invitation.  They ignore the King, they get preoccupied with other matters and forget the King and his Son’s wedding.  And for some, it even happens that in some of these people a real opposition grows and so that they hate being a part of the royal people.  They seem to forget who they are as sons and daughters of the Most High God.  They seem to find other things more preferable to the close relationship the Great King wishes to have with them.  They forget that the promise of the Great King is that He, “the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from every face.”  Instead of welcoming the invitation, these ungrateful people “laid hold of his servants, mistreated them, and killed them.” This mistreatment of the King’s servants enrages the King who then “sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city."

Even though the King was justified in His anger, doesn’t His violent reaction seem to be not typical of a loving and forgiving God?

Even more puzzling is what comes next: The King has a seemingly unjust reaction to this fellow who comes to the banquet not wearing his wedding garment.  What sense can we make of Jesus portraying His Father as destroying the city of those who refused His invitation, and throwing out into the darkness someone who was not dressed correctly?  Don’t these two reactions counter our image of God as a loving God, patient and always forgiving.  

How can we understand God as loving and kind when we have these two unsettling images.  Perhaps a story might help:

When I was a young priest, I was a chaplain of Central Catholic High School in Denver.  It was a multi-ethnic Catholic high school.  There was no one particular race in predominance.  There were black, white, Hispanic and Asian students.  It was beautiful and it worked.

My custom was to take a given class of students into the school's very beautiful, small chapel and do a prayer service with them.  On one particular day the students taught each other about the fear of the Lord far better than I ever could.  Right next to me, in the front row, were three back girls.  Behind them were three white girls.  During the course of the service, the 3 white girls started acting up, misbehaving, disturbing the environment of prayer we had all come to.

The three black girls spontaneously turned around to the white girls and one of them in full voice said, “You don’t mess with God!”  You could have heard a pin drop.  And everyone knew real prayer that day.

So, whenever you hear such things as the Great King destroying a city, or the fellow tossed out because of his not wearing the wedding garment, the point is this: You don’t mess with God!  Do not betray your status as a beloved son or daughter of God.  And do not take casually the invitation He sincerely and lovingly gives you.

 

Homily for Sunday, September 25, 2011

Autumn is a good time to think ahead to the autumn of our lives.  When we are young, we don’t think too much about the end of life; we have too much to live for.  But even for the young, it is very worthwhile to know about the autumn of life.  

In autumn the days become shorter, the nights become longer, the leaves become their most beautiful just before they fall to the ground.

So also for a human being.  In the autumn we become more aware of the shortness of life, and if we have aged in wisdom and grace, we become our most beautiful before we die.  

That aging in wisdom and grace is our task all along the way through the years of our lives.  Our final beauty is determined by our life  of faith. Or, another way to say that is: our eternal salvation is determined by our freewill response to the Lord’s grace as He portions it out to each according to His purpose.  Today’s Scriptures give us some powerful medicine to reflect upon the end of our days.

Our Gospel selection about the two sons is very instructive and thought provoking.  We see one son who gives lip service to his father yet never carries out the will of the father.  The other son seems to be rather rebellious, flatly denying any willingness to do the father’s will.  However, as the day wears on, he changes his mind and does the exact thing his father had asked him to do earlier on the day.

This second son can be a symbol of the rebellious child of God who turns his or her back on God the Father and goes off to do his own thing, even to the point of having nothing at all to do the will of God.  Perhaps even, sin is added to sin, so that this one loses his way, so much so, that he gets to a point where he changes his mind, opens up to the grace of God and turns his life around.

The beauty of Jesus’ telling the story of this son is that there is always hope for someone who has been baptized, that God’s grace will turn him around.

On the other hand, there is the other son, the one who gives lip service, thereby avoiding an explicit fight with his father, but he never does the will of his father.

This first son can be a symbol of the baptized person whose actions are totally inconsistent with the teachings of Christ.   The right words may come forth from his lips, but his heart is far from doing the will of God.  This kind of person, and there are many of them, causes the kind of problem that Mahatma Ghandi experienced.  When asked why he never became a Christian, he said:

"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. The materialism of affluent Christian countries appears to contradict the claims of Jesus Christ that says it’s not possible to worship both Mammon and God at the same time."

So, we must be more forthright about the role of evil, the role of blatant or subtle wickedness. Seeing evil clearly may lead us to undergo a conversion of heart and make God, and God's will, our top priority.  Hear this from Pope Benedict in his encounter this week with Lutherans near the spot where the Protestant Reformation was born:

 “Most

people

today,

even

Christians,

set

out

from

the

presupposition that God is not fundamentally interested in our sins and virtues. He knows that we are all mere flesh. And insofar as people believe in an afterlife and a divine judgment at all, nearly everyone presumes for all practical purposes that God is bound to be magnanimous and that ultimately he mercifully overlooks our small failings. The question [of how we stand with God] no longer troubles us. But are they really so small, our failings?

“Is not the world laid waste through the corruption of the great, but also of the small, who think only of their own advantage? Is it not laid waste through the power of drugs, which thrives on the one hand on greed and avarice, and on the other hand on the craving for pleasure of those who become addicted? Is the world not threatened by the growing readiness to use violence, frequently masking itself with claims to religious motivation? Could hunger and poverty so devastate parts of the world if love for God and godly love of neighbor . . . were more alive in us? I could go on. No, evil is no small matter. Were we truly to place God at the centre of our lives, [evil] could not be so powerful.” 

So, whether we are young or old, we really do need to ask the question:  where do I stand before God? 

 

Homily for Sunday, September 11, 2011

“Anger and wrath and hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.”

 Have you ever considered how much energy we spend on anger?  Have you ever thought, what a waste of time and energy is it to abide in anger?  Abiding in anger clouds our view of reality and pushes us to miss the beauty of life and to see even more of the dark side of life.  Anger leaves us irritable and more likely to become angrier still when a mild irritation comes along.  Anger steals our peace; and when our decisions are made in a spirit of anger, the decisions are rarely good ones.

Abiding in anger makes us unpleasant to be around.  It makes us irritable and likely to say mean things. When someone abides in anger, the tranquility of the home is spoiled; and if someone in the family is hugging anger and wrath tightly, then how pleasant is it for the other members of the family to come home?

Now, there are different types of anger.  There is the perfectly normal, and healthy, anger of reacting to some event or comment that is hurtful either to ourselves or to another.  This is what we call righteous wrath.  But righteous wrath does not steal our inner peace.  No, righteous wrath spurs us into action to correct the injustice that has been done, or even to rescue someone who has fallen into the trap of some injustice.  This kind of righteous wrath is not the most common form of anger.  Indeed, it is always accompanied by inner peace and confidence and a drive to fix what can be fixed, or to point out an injustice so that “the elephant in the room” is recognized and somehow dealt with.

This is different from the anger and wrath that are hateful things.  The hateful things about anger and wrath are described by the following hallmarks:

When anger steals our inner peace and leaves us on edge and bleeds into the fabric of our lives, this is a hateful thing.

When anger leaves us in a state of being easily irritated and likely to lash out, this is a hateful thing.

When anger seems to control our inner life and makes us unpleasant to be around, this is a hateful thing.

When anger comes out of perfectionism that wants everything and everyone to conform to our high standard, this is a hateful thing.

When anger leaves no room for forgiveness and reconciliation, this too is a hateful thing.

Jesus today makes it very clear to us today that He, the Lord, is very patient with us and very willing to be merciful and forgiving of us, especially when we call upon him for his mercy.  But the Lord also makes it very clear that we must exercise the very same kind of patience and mercy in our relationships with others.

Why is it that we always seem to hurt the people we love the most?  Whether is is by words or actions, why do we disrupt the tranquility of the home, which should be our place of safety and security?  Why? Because we have not yet come to recognize that we are far more in danger of the Lord’s wrath than we realize.  If we really understood the Lord’s mercy, we would clearly see how much in need of it we are.  If we could see our failings and sins as the Lord sees them, we would fall on our knees and plead for his mercy.  It would surely be given to us!

But in our pride we tend to think that I, the great “I”, am the only one entitled to be a sinner.  Everyone else must be perfect, but I can go on judging others as somehow less than they should be, so I abide in anger.

Abiding in anger is a massive failure in humility.  I, I alone, can stay as I am, but everyone else must change to be as I want them to be.

Do you remember the great line in Scripture where Jesus says, “How can you remove the speck in your brother’s eye, when you have a wooden plank in your own eye?”

So, my brothers and sisters, when we catch ourselves being angry, and especially when the angers persists, then let’s do a soul check to see if our pride is getting in the way.  If the cause of our anger is is such that we have a state of righteous wrath, then let’s do whatever we can to address the injustice that needs attention.  Then, as the serenity prayer says, we change what we can change and accept what we cannot change, and we ask the Lord for the wisdom to know the difference.

Addressing injustices, however, are rare circumstances.  Mostly, we are like the proud debtor in the Gospel who thinks that he alone should be given mercy.  Remember the words of the Our Father: forgive us our trespasses AS we forgive those who trespass against us, and only as much as we forgive those who sin against us.

 

Homily for Sunday, September 4, 2011

Whenever I hear of tremendous conflicts that people are having with someone else I think of this selection from Matthew 18 as appropriate guidance: talk to the person directly but keep it between the two of you, maybe the problem can be solved by just an honest conversation.  If that doesn’t work, take one or two people with you to bring some objectivity into solving the problem.  If that doesn’t work, take it to the church, a larger group of believers, to seek their help.  If that doesn’t work, then treat that person as an outsider.  Stop fretting about it and move on with your life.  Very sound wisdom. 

But!  But as I read this Gospel in the context of the rest of Chapter 18 of Matthew and see what Scripture the Church has given us from the Old Testament to match this Gospel, I see something far more important than a method to solve our squabbles.

What is going on in Matthew 18?  The movement is this: Jesus warns his disciples to be like children, be humble and don’t inflate your self-importance.  

Then, speaking of children, Jesus warns his disciples to steer very clear of causing scandal to a child “for it would be better to have a great millstone fastened around your neck and be thrown into the sea” rather than you would ever cause a little one to sin. 

Then comes the parable of the lost sheep and how the good shepherd would leave the 99 to go in search of one lost sheep.

Then comes today’s gospel account of Jesus’ guidance on how to go about reconciling in the church, along with the power of binding and loosing, a power given to the church that even heaven itself will heed.

So, can you see that this is about something far more important than our squabbles.  It’s about how we go about being church.  It’s about being humble and never giving cause to one of these little ones to sin so as to lose the redemption won at such a great cost as our Savior’s blood.  It’s about how important it is that we seek out and lead back anyone who goes astray.  And, in today’s gospel, it’s about the importance of giving fraternal correction.  

And what exactly is fraternal correction?  One of the greatest teachers of the faith lived in the late 300’s AD.  St. John Chrysostom, the Patriarch of Constantinople, was one of the most effective preachers in the whole history of the church.  He describes this fraternal correction in this way:  “You will be doing everything for the glory of God if, when you leave this place, you make yourselves responsible for saving a brother or sister, not just by accusing and rebuking him or her, but also by advising and encouraging, and by pointing out the harm done by worldly amusements, and the profit and help that come from our instruction.”  

Ah, so the context of fraternal correction has to be in loving our neighbor as ourself, for we don’t want to lose our own salvation, do we?

But alas, we are in danger of watching our society and our loved ones slide into hell without a word of admonition from us.  Perhaps we do not believe anymore that people can lose their salvation!  Or perhaps we do not love enough so as to risk rejection from speaking the truth to someone who has turned his or her back on Christ. 

St. John Chrysostom talks about our willingness to care enough about others to help bring them back to the Lord.  He says,  “You will also be preparing for yourself a double reward, since as well as greatly furthering your own salvation, you will be endeavoring to heal a fellow member of Christ’s body. It is the Church’s pride, it is the Savior’s command, not to be concerned only about our own welfare, but about our neighbor’s also. 

“Think to what high honor you raise yourself when you regard someone else’s salvation as a matter of extreme importance. As far as is humanly possible you imitate God himself, for listen to what he says through the prophet: “Whoever leads another from wrong to right will be as my own mouth.”

So, today’s reading from Ezekiel makes even more sense:  We, the church, all of us, are to be watchmen, sentinels, who have a vantage point on what is happening to our world and how much danger we are all in. Hear what the Lord says to the watchmen:  “If I tell the wicked, ‘O wicked one, you shall surely die,’ and you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked from his way, the wicked shall die for his guilt, but I will hold you responsible for his death. But if you warn the wicked, trying to turn him from his way, and he refuses to turn from his way, he shall die for his guilt, but you shall save yourself.

Is your love for your loved ones strong enough to take this risk?

Homily for Sunday, August 28, 2011

“You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."

Just last week we heard Jesus say in the Gospel that no mere man had revealed to Peter the mystery of who Jesus really is; it was God the Father who revealed this to Peter and, “therefore, I say to you, you are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

Within moments of those exalted words of high recommendation from Jesus to Peter, Jesus is now calling him Satan, putting a stumbling block in front of him.

Why this shift?  What did Peter do that made Jesus react so strongly?  I think we’ll recognize ourselves in Peter’s good intentions.  Peter, out of his great love for Jesus, wanted there to be no trail of suffering for Jesus.  When Jesus was talking about his upcoming Passion in Jerusalem, Peter didn’t want that to happen to his Lord and Master.

Can we not recognize ourselves in Peter’s wanting to protect the one he loves, wanting there to be no suffering for Jesus, wanting good things rather than a trail of suffering?

Do we not react this way when a loved one has entered into a stance in life that is in direct contradiction to the way laid out before us in the Gospel?  Do we not want things to go well for our loved ones?  Do we not collapse into wordlessness when a loved one chooses to do something that alienates him from God?  And especially when a loved one has chosen a life of what we used to call a life of sin, do we want to preserve our loved one from hearing any kind of judgment or warning that might jar them out of choosing to commit serious sin?

Don't we think, "Who am I to judge?  Maybe my old values and principles are outmoded, old fashioned and no longer applicable.  I just don’t know any more."  

If my loved one is living with someone out of wedlock, do I want my loved one to experience any sense of shame for rejecting the way of the Lord?  Of course not, so we fall silent.

If my loved one is slipping away from religious practice saying, “I’m spiritual but not religious,” do I want to to protect them from the harsh reality that they are moving into idolatry, of placing something ahead of God who tells us, “you shall not have false gods before me.”

There is immense suffering in the way of life Jesus calls us to.  There is the suffering of choosing to deny oneself and follow the path of righteousness.  However, there will be greater suffering involved when eventually we recognize that we will owe to God an accounting of what we have done with our lives, and how we have conducted ourselves, and what we have done with His gift to us of a relationship that should excel all other relationships.

Are we like Peter who wants to discourage Jesus from following a path that would entail suffering?  

Think of Jeremiah in our first reading who was called by God to stop warning the Israelites about the consequences of their actions, their idolatry especially, and now to render to the people of his time, no more warning, but now the judgment of God and the upcoming destruction of their city, their homes, their way of life, and to tell them that because of their wayward lives they would now experience the woe that was to about to come upon them - because of their infidelity to God who is a jealous God and demands of us full devotion.

This was not a message Jeremiah wanted to deliver so he says clearly in our first reading, “I say to myself, I will not mention him, I will speak in his name no more.”  Of course he wanted to run away from such a dreadful message, a word of the LORD [that] “has brought me derision and reproach all the day.”

Can we not identify with Jeremiah in his wanting to run away from the conflict of giving God’s word to the people who don’t want to hear it?   “But then,” Jeremiah tells us about that very same message from the Lord, “it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.”

My brothers and sisters, we have to recapture a sense of the life and death importance of not conforming ourselves to this age, and recapture the life and death importance of being transformed by the renewal of our minds so that we may discern the will of God and know what is good and pleasing and perfect.

“What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and lose his soul?"

Homily for Sunday, August 14, 2011

There’s no way to dodge the problem in this Gospel selection.  It looks as if Jesus was being rude and insulting to the Gentile woman from Tyre and Sidon who came begging for His help with her demon-possessed daughter.  At first He ignores her even as she persists in her appeal.  Then He makes clear that to Him she is an outsider, even in an insulting manner calling her a dog.  Yet still she persists and even manages a humorous response to Jesus’.  The persistence and the humor win Jesus over and He grants her wish: her daughter is cured at that very moment.

How can we draw a lesson from this very strange story?  In the 37 years I have been preaching, I have tried to explain away the strangeness of this passage by trying to enter into the culture of 1st century Palestine:, describing the animosity between Jews and their neighbors to the north, which is still a problem today.  But I was never satisfied with an explanation that sees Jesus as a prisoner of his time and culture.  After all, Jesus is fully divine as well as fully human, so why did He insult her?

Well, it’s about not taking offense.  It’s about the woman’s persistence even if it seems that the Lord Almighty is unresponsive, or worse yet: insulting.

Not taking offense is the issue.  Have you ever examined the instances when you have taken offense?  Just this week I ran into a couple from 25 years ago.  Oh they raved about me, but they really had it is for their present pastor.  I’ve seen that before, people who take offense at their priest, sometimes even changing parishes or even abandoning religious practice altogether.

Or, people who take offense at a comment made by a family member, a comment that may indeed be meant to be hurtful.  And so a feud starts and lasts for how long?  Or, people who take offense at their child’s teacher who doesn’t see that child in the same adoring way as the parents.  Oh, great offense is taken, and off they go in a huff.

Taking offense: What is really going on when we take offense?

Part of being human is that we take offense at each other.  EIther we don’t understand what has happened, or we disagree with what has happened, and we get on a high horse and get offended.

Sounds like a failure in humility, doesn’t it?  

Let’s say a person is purposefully intending to do something or say something that is truly off putting.  How many spouses have a knack for 

saying just the right thing to get a strong negative reaction from the other spouse?  Such seems to be the case in today’s Gospel.  What are we to learn from this Gospel?  

Do not take offense, even if the offender meant to be offensive.  If there is truth lying behind the offense, then we can learn from it.  Hearing a truth spoken, even in an offensive way, is something we don’t want to hear, but may be just the right thing they need to hear.  In fact, I suggest that when we find ourselves taking offense, we should control our hostile reaction and look deeply into the offense to see what actually got us so upset.  Aha!  If we find out what aspect was so very offensive, then we can get a handle on where we most need to grow.  

However, if my offense comes from my misunderstanding, then my response in humility will be to let the comment or action roll off my back as water flows off the back of a duck. Humility also dictates that I will always give the offender the benefit of the doubt, as in: I must not have heard right, or he or she was not having their best day, or now I know who I should pray for.

The crisis the Church faced in the first century was whether or not Gentiles could actually be part of the Church.  The answer eventually was yes, because of such Scriptures as we heard in our Old Testament reading: My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples.  There are far many more O.T. Scriptures that insist on the Jews being the Chosen People.  This was a very difficult crisis and people took offense left and right.  In Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Chapter 9, we have been hearing for the past few Sundays how wrenching this issue was for the early Church.  There’s always something that will upset us, if we let it.

So one more lesson from this Gospel: when we find ourselves taking offense, be patient, time will sort things out, and have some humor.  But if something really needs to be done, as in the case of abuse, then be like Paul and dare to intervene, but from a spot of freedom, not from taking offense.

Thank God for the Syro-Phoenician woman; and thank God for Jesus’ strange response to her.  It helps us all learn that we need to be patient with everyone, and even what we might think is God’s slowness to respond to us in our need.