Embedded Files
26th Sunday of Ordinary Time C
We all fear losing a fundamental ability, whether its loss of hearing or loss of mobility. Yet the greatest fear that we all share is not having vision. It’s almost impossible to imagine the way hundreds of thousands of blind people have to live. Sometimes I might close my eyes and try to imagine what it’s like to be blind. Can I make it down the hallways without bumping into a wall? How would I know what food is on the plate? How do blind people cross the streets when many of us with sight often risk being killed?
If physical blindness is so frightening, what about spiritual blindness, the inability to see what is right before us because something is blocking our hearts. This happens most often when we see people with whom we are angry; our inner rage keeps us from even engaging with them. For some people, their own drive and ambition lead them to ignore people around them. Or, in the Gospel, in Jesus’ powerful parable, how our own greed and comfort can close our eyes to others.
I think we can be precise. It’s not necessarily all the luxury and money the rich man has that makes him liable; it’s the way his money and luxury lead to a blindness whereby he cannot even see the starving Lazarus right outside doorway. He later realizes his blindness and wants to send Lazarus to his brothers who live the same way. “If someone from the dead should visit, they will change,” he says. Jesus informs him that when people are blind this way, they cannot even see someone raised from the dead. Their blindness is a chosen way of life.
We set up categories in life so we will only see those kinds of people we want to see. I know some folks who never take public transportation because of the kinds of people they might see. Others will not go to one or another part of the city. Wasn’t there a 12-year-old ringing a doorbell for fun a few weeks ago; he was shot to death by an enraged owner whose anger made him blind.
Believers look on faith as a transformation of our vision. This transformed vision allows us to begin to see God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Faith allows us to see what might otherwise seem invisible, most especially the infinite love of God. It is in this love that we are invited to broaden our own vision. After all, none of us can point to a single person that God does not love without limit. It’s when the rich man realizes how he has closed his heart to God’s love that he begins to see just how blind he has been.
In our second reading, St. Paul is reminding his protégé Timothy how much faith has allowed him to see: the loving ruler “whom no man has seen or can see.” Jesus came to open eyes, whether the eyes of the extremely wealthy, or of Paul, or of Timothy. Obviously he comes to open our eyes as well.
25th Sunday of Ordinary Time C
Our modern elections have basically become brawls. Maybe it has always been this way, but modern media makes it seem even more the case. Brawls mean that we are thinking of a fight, good guys against bad buys, winners and losers. In New York here a lot of the political argument is trying to identify who is taking the most money from the superrich. Because the superrich have become the bad folks in the eyes of many. Not too long ago, it was the super-poor who were the bad people as politicians made fun of welfare queens. But maybe all this demonizing isn’t useful.
It’s helpful to review what a terrible and scandalous picture Jesus is painting in the long parable he gives us today. He presents the picture of a thief who has stolen from his master for years. The master finds out and fires the man. What does he do? He steals even more! He visits all the people who owe his master money and forges false invoices so they don’t have to pay as much. In the process, Jesus notes, the thief has made himself a lot of friends.
“People in this world know how to hustle for what they want. What kind of hustling are you willing to do?” This is the punchline from Jesus’ parable, spoken to his follower most of all. He is inviting them to learn from people and the world around them; this can teach them how to live as better disciples. To be sure, he is not inviting his followers to be thieves. He is inviting them to be ambitious about the Kingdom of God.
There are two remarkable policies in Jesus’ parable. One is the frank acknowledgement that we are not likely to find a perfect world, that is, a world without greedy and scurrilous people. How much Christian energy has been spent trying to get rid of bad people? The other policy is that Jesus’ followers can learn from almost any situation. What are athletes, mobsters, politicians, hackers, and thieves willing to do to succeed? Yet, Jesus says, his followers are so de-energized.
To be ambitious for the Kingdom, that’s what Jesus wants. To hustle for the vision of God. To get out of our passive lazy-boys and work for the ideals that Jesus’ teaches us. To look at the ways that God would transform our lives, bringing greater peace, unity, care, and love into the world and make that the energizing goal of our lives.
In a world of bad guys and good guys, look for those who strive, who get ahead, who hustle. This should give us insight into the kind of energy we ourselves should have when it comes to the vision of God.
Exaltation of the Cross
We all want to be lucky. We all want that opportunity one day to be surprised when something happens that really helps our lives. A friend of mine was ecstatic when his visit to the casino brought winnings he could not imagine. And haven’t we just gone through another Lotto craze as millions of us bought two-dollar tickets so we could win at Powerball. Imagine having all those millions of dollars! “Hey, you never know,” was the slogan of a lotto many years ago. Something spectacular might happen to any of us!
Today’s feast is telling us we are lucky in a very special way. Luck happens randomly. But grace happens as the result of a decision. Today’s feast is saying that all of humankind has received grace through the death and resurrection of Jesus. Today’s feast is saying to the natural pessimism in our hearts: no, you are not doomed. God has given you the gift of his Son.
We call this feast now “the Exultation” of the cross. Certainly, we Catholics have not been shy when it comes to exalting the cross. You cannot go into any Catholic church without seeing an image of Jesus crucified erected prominently in the church building. Yet, we can still be missing the paradox: we are exulting an ancient Roman process that was gruesome, savage, and disgusting.
And that’s the point. Not even the most gruesome and barbaric practice of humankind, not even the brutal death of the innocent Jesus Christ through crucifixion, could be enough to overcome the love that God has for humankind, a love that is even more powerfully shown through this terrible instrument of death, the cross. In Jesus, God accepts the worst of us as the heaviest burden so we will know the extent of divine love. In the Crucifixion we see, in the words of the Gospel today, that “God gave his only son so that no one who comes to believe in him might perish.” Jesus’ death is God’s gift.
In this way, something astonishing and unexpected has happened to all humans through the grace that God extends to us. With the death of Jesus, and his resurrection, we have the opportunity to transform the human story. We are no longer strange animals on an insignificant planet, we are no longer mindless products of evolution, we are no longer people defined by our deaths and tombs. We are defined now by the eternal life that Christ won and offers every human being as a way of life.
Indeed, the way of life of Jesus is to live in the wonder of God’s love and life that has been poured out upon us. We Catholics can see this gift so clearly; after all, it is what we celebrate every time we pray the Mass. And we Catholics can help others to see it as well, by living our lives filled with the joy that flows from the grace that God gives to us.
Yes, we can live as victors, as winners, as incredibly lucky people. And the joy we experience can be a force for the transformation of human life.
23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time
Not far from where I live there is a substantial building that has been vacant for almost 35 years. It sits on a prominent corner close to lots of transportation. We hear various rumors about who bought the building or different plans for its use, but, in fact, it just sits there. It makes us think of the images that Jesus gives us in the Gospel—the king who went into battle with too few troops, or the builder who did get the supplies that were needed. People had ideas but they didn’t think them through.
One can hear the chuckles as Jesus gives these images in the God. How the king and the builder were mocked and laughed at. People did not know what they absolutely needed. But what do we need to succeed as disciples of Jesus?
Jesus is talking to his disciples about what they need to follow him all the way. As we have seen in other passages, some of what he says seems exaggerated to us. But everything he says has one basic key point: unless we place Jesus at the center of our lives and hold him above everything else, then we will not have the ability to stick through with our commitment. This key point affects everything Jesus says: if we want life, we can only find it in him.
Jesus knows the issues. Some people just do not seem to get started. They are baptized and make first communion but then their faith becomes something cultural, not a personal commitment. They never mature in faith because they never got started in faith. Other people get started but things get in the way: their ambitions, or their pride. They end up thinking that they are the center, not God. They forget the purpose of their lives.
As Jesus speaks, we might initially think of famous people who died for their faith, people like St. Oscar Romero or like the four Maryknoll sisters killed forty-five years ago in El Salvador. But Jesus hardly expects all of us to be killed for our faith. Rather, he wants us to live for our faith. And he wants our faith to be the basic energy of our lives, our marriages, our employment, our friendships, and the way we treat other people. Jesus knows that one we put him above everything in our lives, our lives will be transformed with meaning and with joy.
Starting things is important; if we don’t do that, nothing will ever get done. But finishing things by being faithful and fully committed is just as essential.
22ns Sunday of Ordinary Time
Taking photos might show a lot about us. Many of us are shy and like to stay in the background. Some of us have naturally beaming smiles that show off our ultra-white teeth. Some people like to deliberately pose for photos to appear like a movie character, staring ahead like The Godfather or touching one’s hair like Marilyn Monroe. But sometimes taking photos bring out the real “ham” in us, how we like to show off.
I remember one group of children whose aunt was trying to take pictures. “Stay still and look at the camera,” she tells the children. But that was only a cue for one of the kids to start showing off, jumping up and down, flexing what he thought were his muscles, and posing like a rapper. As I was watching this, the mother of the child says, “Oh, he always does this. He needs to be the center of attention.”
There’s nothing rare about wanting to be “the center of attention” whether we look at sports, or politics, or our entertainment business. In fact, one of the attractions of cell phones is that we all be centers of attention, making our own videos and putting them up on Tic Tock or Instagram. “Look at me, how cool I am.”
This attitude evident was present at the time of Jesus. As we see in today’s Gospel, Jesus often had to push back against the ambition of his disciples. “Who is number one?” “Who is going to sit next to God on the throne?” “Or who will get the best place at the dinner table?” In every instance Jesus tells his disciples that ambition is not a characteristic of being one of his disciples. Rather, he says, the one with the least will get the most, the last will come first.
He gives this somewhat comical scene at a dinner table, when people are humiliated after presuming their importance. They thought they were the big cheese but they are sent to the lower end of the table. I think he is trying to show his disciples that ambition and pride simply does not work.
In the first place, nothing can make us more distant from others than our arrogance. After a while people just ignore us, thinking we are silly props. This keeps us from seeing the needs of others and being available to serve them. In the second place, arrogance and pride make God almost invisible to us. The more we puff ourselves up, the more we are putting ourselves in God’s seat which means we cannot see the loving compassion and generous openness which is at the heart of God. When I puff myself up I am actually showing how insecure and empty I am; I am trying to compensate for my smallness.
Instead of seeking thrones for ourselves, our task is to be with the lowly and lift them up. Instead of having everyone’s eyes on us, our eyes need to be on those whom God loves, especially on others and their needs. Instead of being in the center, our hearts need to be like Christ’s who underwent the greatest humiliation and suffering to reveal God’s infinite love, a love that extends to everyone.
Jesus is saying to his disciples that the only way to get ahead in his Kingdom is to be the greatest servant, just like he was and is.
21st Sunday of Ordinary Time
In a town near Palo Alto, California, some people are quite unhappy. It seems that one of our tech billionaires has decided to build a compound there for himself and his family. Preparing to do that, this billionaire has purchased over eleven other mansions; his plan is to demolish all of these and build his own castle. People are angry: how someone change my town?
This reminds us of how conservative our instincts usually are. We lived in a spot and get used to it. We grow familiar with the location of certain buildings, the kinds of trees, the traffic patterns, even the typical noises. When something challenges that familiarity, we get upset and angry. All of a sudden, my world is changed.
Part of the mentality of the Jewish people at the time of Jesus was to preserve themselves and their culture. They had experienced centuries of being occupied by foreign powers; now they were in the hands of the hated Romans. How dare anyone change the way it was? Isn’t this God’s plan for his people, to keep them the same and apart from others?
The prophets of Israel didn’t necessarily see things this way. Rather, they knew that when the Jewish people mingled with others, their faith grew. Jesus made it even clearer: the very love God showed the Jewish people, God wanted to show everyone. Faith was not for a small group of the chosen; faith was for the transformation of the world.
“Who can be saved?" is the question we hear from Peter. It has been raised in different ways throughout history. But Jesus invites people to enter the Kingdom through the “narrow gate” which is paradoxically the broad gate of God’s grace for all humankind. God’s children will come from north and south, from east and west, as a world-wide community of faith and divine love. This is what the coming of Jesus in our flesh means; this is what the resurrection of his body means: all human flesh can be open to God.
This challenges us Catholics on two levels. On one level, we often think we are the only people that matter because we are the “one true Church.” So it’s easy for us to put others down. Yet a faith that puts others down cannot flow from the infinite love of God. One another level, we Catholics are reluctant to invite others. We stick to ourselves, content with our community, instead of noticing how hungry and thirsty people are for God. God’s Church must be a church of constant invitation.
“Who, then, will be saved?” All those who open their hearts to the working of God’s love and grace, the more the merrier!
20th Sunday of Ordinary Time
The column caught my attention. Someone was getting ready for the anniversary of his 50th High School Graduation; he wanted to talk about the things he was anticipating before going to the reunion. Like most, he talked about differences we expect from the way we were a half-century ago and the way we are today. Changes in our bodies, the color of our hair, our various careers, and also financial changes.
But the author didn’t talk about the most likely differences from fifty years ago: the way our politics has gotten us so divided and so ready to fight each other. When political divisions define our lives every day, would they not potentially divide us from the political opinions of people we haven’t seen in fifty years. “You voted for whom?” “You wore that red political hat?” In fact, it sounds like today’s Gospel.
Given these divisions in our contemporary world, many of them furthered on by people and interests who have lots of money, it’s a little easier to understand the world Jesus is talking about. While he is speaking to his disciples in the Gospel; his words are also being remembered years later by a community that had suffered persecution from all sides. Faith in Jesus can become a key point of opposition between us even between people who love each other.
Yet we should not miss the point of Jesus’ words. Jesus is not giving us permission to fight with our family members or friends. Rather, he is saying that unless we are grounded in our faith in him, unless he is the foundation of our lives, then we will not be faithful when opposition comes. We will give up our faith in Jesus.
In this sense, it is not our arguments and conflicts with others that should dominate our spiritual lives; rather, it is our acceptance of Jesus ever more deeply into our lives and our everyday commitment to follow him as a disciple. Our discipleship rests on our daily tuning to Jesus in faith and commitment. Once this is the framework of our lives, then no amount of opposition will take us away from the Lord, Jesus.
Only rarely does the testing we will go through today involve opposition in our lives. Far more frequently, as in our marriages and life responsibilities, the testing happens in how we live out, every day, the love and faith we profess. Arguments we may have now and then, but our faithfulness to Jesus is something constant and unbreakable.
19th Sunday of Ordinary Time
“Look, up in the sky. It’s a bird, it’s a plane. No, it’s Superman.” As children we clung to our black-and-white TVs when Superman was on. He was such a reassuring figure: whatever was wrong, Clark Kent could jump in the phone booth, switch his clothes, and appear as Superman ready to solve all the problems and injustices of the world. So I though it was right to spend money on outrageously-priced movie tickets In Manhattan and see the new movie with a friend.
It was not the old Superman who confidently tackled every problem. It was the new Superman, more in touch with his feelings, and being challenged by an enemy, Lex Luthor, head of a technology company, who is so envious of superman that he seeks to destroy him. We’ve never seen a Superman so weakened by the Kryptonite they use to torture him. Yet his vision is clear enough that when he sees the opportunity, he breaks out of the prison in which he is confined, frees other prisoners, and faces the assault his nemesis has planned for him. In the end, it is clear: if you have Superman’s vision of his mission, you cannot keep him down.
The importance of vision is underlined in today’s first reading from Wisdom which talks about the hardships that the Jewish people have gone through over their history. What made the endure it and thrive through it al? Their vision. “For in secret the holy children of the good were offering sacrifice and putting into effect with one accord the divine institution” we read. The Jewish people hung together in prayer and in the traditions that were handed on to them. That’s how they survived.
We see the same thing happening in the Gospel. Jesus is encouraging his apostles about the future. He does this as he himself is making his way to Jerusalem where he will die as a martyr for the Kingdom of God. He tells them to stay focused, not to be concerned with money or threats. Rather, his disciples are to stay faithful to the vision he has given them and to trust that God will sustain them if they are faithful.
Jesus gives us the astonishing image of the master waking up in the middle of the night to feed his servants himself in a reversal of the way things usually are. After all, Jesus can ask his disciples to be faithful servants because that is exactly the way he lives with reference to us. Just as Jesus holds on through the trail of his death, so we can hang on through the trials we have as believers.
We believers live with a vision of the future; we live with hope. That vision puts everything you and I will undergo into perspective. Not only will faithfulness sustain us through our trials; they will give us the energy to understand our trials in a much larger perspective, that of God’s faithfulness to us.
Our contemporary way of life gives us many ways in which our faith is challenged. Probably the biggest challenge is not appreciating just how important is faith is in our everyday lives as parents, workers, citizens, and disciples. We can just coast along in our faith, instead of growing in it and sharing it’s power with others. When the Master returns, how faithful and ready will the Master find us?
18th Sunday in Ordinary Time
One of our brother Paulist Fathers died and the undertakers were bringing his body to our church in New York. They opened the hearse and brought the coffin out. As they were carrying it across the sidewalk, a group of high school girls, all dressed the same, was passing by. Perhaps they were in town for a college orientation or a class visit. When the girls saw the casket, they turned away all at once as if they could not bear the sight. This is a example of how hard it is for us to look at death today.
We have many euphemisms that cover up the shock of death: we say someone “passed,” for example, as if they snuck in front of us while walking on the sidewalk. Or we say that someone is “no longer with us” or “they went to the other side.” Many adult children today are reluctant to have funerals for their parents even when their parents were pretty active Catholic believers. Our modern attitude toward dying contains a lot of hesitation.
Yet death will not go away by our not facing it. In additional to all the killing in our fictional TV shows and movies, we have the actual deaths of tens of thousands of people through ongoing wars and invasions. We thankfully send more and more people to hospice so they can be comforted and comfortable in the final days of their lives. And how many people have the cremated remains of their loved one in their homes, on a mantle or a corner table?
Our Scriptures today urge us not to run away from the reality of death. If, on the one hand, death seems to be sad and disagreeable, the Scriptures are saying that the fact that we will die can give us great insight into our lives. For in place of acknowledging the fact that our lives are limited, we can run around seeking ways in which to distract ourselves. Cleary, the Scriptures say, working and living for money is a key way to distract ourselves. The same can be said for seeking pleasure or power.
Trying to escape death can lead us to massive illusions about ourselves and our lives, living, on the one hand, as if our lives had no meaning or, on the other hand, obsessed and depressed. I’m sure I’m not the only one who is still shocked at the frequency with which famous people die relatively young, and very often the cause is an overdose of drugs. Vanity of vanities, as our first reading says. You can’t get more vanity, more emptiness, than this!
Rather than giving into illusions, the Scriptures invite us to a realism about our lives. Death means we have only so much time; having limited time means that we need to direct the years we have toward a greater purpose. Jesus talks about the man who, having a huge harvest, thought he could coast for the rest of his life on his riches. “You fool,” God says to that person. “What if you die tomorrow?”
We Christians bring something new to the experience of death. We proclaim a savior who freely died for us and who rose from the dead to reveal the importance of our lives. Our importance doesn’t come from money, power, or pleasure. It comes from how we accept the relationship of eternal love that has formed with us. As believers, we face death with hope, a hope that transforms our lives.
Jesus’ death changes the meaning of death. For whether we have five or ninety-five years, all those years are framed by the eternal life that God has offered and given us in Jesus. This shapes how we are called to live; it also shapes the message we believers have to bring he word..
17th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Living in a global experience as we do, where we can get information from all over the world, makes reading the Scriptures a bit different. We can imagine how the scriptures might be read in different countries. Our scriptures this weekend, for example, concern prayer: how might people be praying differently if they lived, for example, in Ukraine, or in Gaza, or in the flooded parts of Texas? What do they feel when they hear, “Ask, and you shall receive”?
We use the word “prayer” very often as believers, but how often do we notice how different prayer can be? How do monks pray differently than non-monks? How did we pray when we were going into the hospital for an operation? How might we pray if our spouse or child were threatened by some event? How do we pray, in contrast, when our team is losing?
Prayer is always opening ourselves in trust to God. Jesus keeps insisting on what kind of God we have—a God of infinite love who cares for us as a parent, a God that he can call “daddy,” a God that is there for us at every moment in our lives.
“Teach us how to pray,” Jesus’ disciples ask him. He cautions that we do not need to blab on and on when talking to God; people do that to show off their piety. We already have God’s ear because God already is turned toward us in love. He gives his disciples this simple prayer, which we have in its most simple form for us Luke’s Gospel, because prayer is the simplicity of our lives opening our hearts to God. If we, as greedy and angry as we can be, will do all we can for our children, then Jesus invites us to see his Father in the same way.
“But I pray and my prayers are not answered,” we say. When we think about it, our prayers are being answered even as we pray, because our prayer brings us into a powerful moment of relationship with God. As saints have often said, “We do not pray to change God; we pray to change ourselves before God.” So often our prayer is lackluster and blah because we have not come to rely on God with the core of our souls. We treat God like a supermarket to get things, not as the infinite lover who gives us all we have.
God and we want the same thing, the Kingdom of God. That Kingdom is a world-wide relationship of love and joy. When we pray, we step more deeply into the Kingdom for which we pray and long. That’s when we see how our prayers are asked and answered in the same divine love.
16th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Let’s hear it for St. Martha! Hip, hip, hooray! She has long been the emotional favorite between the two sisters in the Gospel we have today. So practical, so productive, and so busy. Our culture is so impressed with busy people, people whose computers are going all day, and people who make a lot of money. Our importance in life is what we do . . . even when it comes to our faith . . . let’s keep busy with our rosaries, prayer books and devotions.
So we need to hear a little bit from Mary, the sister who doesn’t fuss around, who would rather sit with the other disciples and listen to Jesus. How do we think she felt when Martha went up to Jesus and told him to get Mary moving, there were tons of things that had to happen in the kitchen. Mary could not even say this to Martha’s face; she has to tell Jesus to pass the message along.
Martha, as we see from our first reading, is certainly not offending anyone. Hospitality was one of the essential virtues of the ancient world. Just as Abraham could not resist being kind to the three strangers who appeared at his tent, the Jewish culture was insistent that hospitality be shown to everyone. After all, they lived as pilgrims-on the-move for generations, and then they settled in a land where people depended on each other for survival.
So if Martha was carrying out the values of Jewish society so perfectly, what was Mary doing? Jesus’ praise of her revolves around her desire to listen to him and grow in his word. This is a key event in understanding the new place of women in Jesus’ world. They could sit down next to Peter and James and John; they could be part of the intimate friends of Jesus. Their value wasn’t only in the kitchen; it was in their relationship with Jesus.
For many centuries preachers made it sound like we had to choose between Martha and Mary. Martha represented the pastoral life of the Church; Mary represented the contemplative life of the Church. But life is rarely this simple. Both sisters represent the kind of life we are called to have with Jesus. Sometimes we make faith so much a list of things we have to do that we forget the relationship we have with Jesus. But the relationship we have with Jesus is meant to infuse our whole Christian life. When we do things in the name of Christ, we do them because of the relationship we have with him.
It's pretty easy, in today’s world, to put things into boxes. And we can put our daily tasks, our jobs and our responsibilities, into one box; and then put our faith and prayer into another box. Just as Martha and Mary need each other as sisters, so faith and daily life need to be seen together. Our faith should so empower our daily actions that people are experiencing Christ when they interact with us, whether in the kitchen, in the office, in the neighborhood, or in church.
Christ has given us all the “better part” of being his disciples. We live that out in our prayer and also in our daily actions.
15th Sunday of Ordinary Time
“Who is your neighbor?” This very curious questions can reveal huge differences. What if you asked it in downtown New York or Chicago, where people rarely interact with others in their buildings? What if you asked it in a housing project where people are always interacting? Or on a block of houses in a quiet suburb? All of this shows just how relative the idea of “neighbor” is.
This is exactly what Jesus wants to attack in the Gospel today—the idea of “neighbor” is a relative concept that doesn’t place an obligation on me. The setting arises from the cynical question Jesus is asked when he says that loving our neighbor is of the essence of God’s law. The cynical questioner as in effect saying, “Doesn’t neighbor simply mean ‘those living nearby’ and nothing more?”
After all, if my neighbor does not mean much to me, then how much do I think I can mean to my neighbor? The issue of “neighbor” is talking about the value of any one of us. Jesus points out precisely that value. If the center of religious life is love of God, then, right along with love of God, comes love of neighbor. That is to say, the very love that binds me to God is the same love that should bind me to every person who is loved by God as well.
Does it take a tragedy for us to feel how much we belong to each other? People remark about how the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, fourteen years ago, brought people together. The same can be said of the terrible floods in Asheville, North Carolina, just a year ago. And, I’m sure, the deadly floods in Texas last week. When we all are in danger of losing everything, we begin to realize how important we are to each other.
The idea of how we are bound together should not be a huge revelation. Our first reading, from the book of Deuteronomy, insists that God’s law is not remote from us. Rather God’s law flows from the very experience we all have of human life. Our style of life today might make it look like we are all individual atoms struggling to survive; the reality is that we are all one human community striving together to appreciate the dignity and wonder of our own existence.
Thomas Merton, a Trappist Monk who influenced much of the spirituality of American Catholics after World War II, would speak about a conversion experience he had while walking across the street in Louisville. He says: “I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers….There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.” That’s the conversion Jesus is inviting his listeners to experience.
Part of the redemption that Jesus won for us helps us know the value we have. As Jesus speaks this parable, he is himself on the way to Jerusalem where he will be stripped and killed. He takes on our deepest fears and pains to help us know how eternally valuable we are. The man beaten on the Road, the Son of God hanging on a Cross, the experience of divine love: is it not totally obvious who we are and what we mean to each other and to God?
14th Sunday of Ordinary Time
The first time a nurse draws blood. Or a lawyer has to argue before a judge. Or a doctor meets the first patient. Or a pitcher begins a game for a new team. Or a child has to play for a concert. Or a newly ordained priest celebrates his first Mass. We can imagine the nerves in these and so many situations: can I do it? Am I prepared? Will I make a mistake?
All the more can we imagine the nerves of the disciples of Jesus whom he is sending out in today’s Gospel. In effect, he sends them to do the very things that he has been doing: to heal the sick, drive out demons, and proclaim the Kingdom of God is at hand. Perhaps it’s not that surprising that everything went better than they feared; after all, Jesus sent them out to do these things “in his name.”
“Name” meant more than just a word in ancient times. “Name” meant the entire reality of a person, the very being of someone. After all, don’t we begin most of our Masses and prayers by praying “in the name” of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?” This is our way of acknowledging that the very reality of God is what brings us together.
So the apostles are learning that they can share in the power of Jesus. When Jesus sends them out, he sends them in his own power as the Son of God made human. In doing this, Jesus anticipates the activity of the Apostles and disciples after he is raised from the dead and sends his Holy Spirit upon them. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” he tells his disciples after his resurrection. They must have remembered the first time Jesus first sent them forth in Galilee.
And what is our reaction to hearing this Gospel? For most of us it’s something like the feeling a pupil in school has who is glad the teacher called on someone else and left them alone. Fine for the apostles to go our healing people and driving out demons. Fine for the priests and sisters to talk about their faith. Fine for others to do exceptional things. Just leave me alone! Don’t expect much from me.
But the Gospel will not let us squeeze out of things. We too are sent forth in the name of Christ. We too are apostles and disciples. We too have the mission of making Satan fall from the sky.
How do I do this, we ask? The world we live in is different from the ancient world of Palestine. Today we see many ways in which the forces of evil need to be defeated, in which hurting people can be helped, in which the Kingdom of God can show itself. The Kingdom, after all, is speaking about the fullness of life and love. All of us can have a vital role in filling the lives of others with hope and with love. All of us can live in a way that shows we believe the Holy Spirit is using us to build God’s Kingdom.
Isn’t this what Paul is showing us in the second reading. He understands that he has been crucified with Christ. He no longer lives in fear and insecurity. He has given himself over to doing everything in the name of Christ. He already bears the sufferings of Christ. He’s not nervous or afraid. Paul shows us the kind of freedom that belongs to everyone who comes to trust in Jesus and to make him the center of their lives.
SAINTS PETER AND PAUL
It seems that everyone is going to Rome! At least, from the social media I use, I see photos of groups of people in Rome more than anywhere else. Some of that is the Jubilee year of Hope which the last Pope Francis proclaimed. Some of that also arises from the excitement of our new Pope Leo the first American ever to be elected Bishop of Rome. And some of that undoubtedly arises from the great city that Rome is, from its ancient ruins to its medieval art to its wonderful food.
Today’s feast asks us to think of Rome in a particular way. Not as the city of Julius Caesar, or Nero, or Caligula, but as the city of Saints Peter and Paul. We are invited to think of Rome as “our city” in a particular way because aren’t we all children of Peter and Paul in some way?
Popes have often worn red shoes—I’m not sure if Pope Leo has started doing this—precisely as a reminder of the blood of these men, and so many martyrs, who were killed because of their faith. Ancient Rome expressed its unity by the pagan worship of their gods; when people refused to worship these false gods, the Romans themselves felt under attack. While early Christians feared persecution, many of them felt a particular pride at being able to give their lives for the Jesus in whom they believed.
Some of us face that prospect today, but most of us live in an environment where we are free to practice our faith without being threatened. This means that we show our faith by the lives we live as disciples. In other words, as Peter and Paul lived their faith by sharing it with others, we live our faith by sharing it as well. Do we not say in the Creed that we believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Apostolic Church, that’s us!
This feast asks us then to renew the faith in which we believe, i.e., to see our faith as more than something handed down to us but as something we experience through our relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Nothing is more compelling to others than a person who sincerely lives what they believe.
It also asks us to look at the world around us and see how our faith can impact that world. With today’s society, hiding faith or wanting to blend in is a big pressure on all of us. But all of us face situations when others are asking deep questions about life and its meaning. These are invitations for us to share with others what we have discovered in our faith, without putting others down or being “better than you.” The chains that repress faith come in many forms but, as for Peter, our chains have been broken so we can share faith in appropriate ways today.
We are all children of Rome, made apostles by the faith of those who came before us. If we cannot be there physically, we can still be Roman by the way we renew and share our faith.
FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI
This time of year makes me think about learning to swim. I probably was in the third grade. On the West Side there was a swimming pool that all the neighborhood kids used; it was our biggest escape in the summertime. The lifeguard was offering lessons. “Why not?” my mother insisted. How hard was this going to be?
“Just watch what I do,” he said. He bought us to the shallow side of the pool, told us to take a deep breath, hold it, and then he had us put our face in the water and asked us to start floating. “You can’t go under the water if you have air in your lungs. Try it.” From there we could expand to moving our arms and kicking our legs.
“You give them something to eat.” Jesus says this to his puzzled apostles who have no idea how they can feed the large crowd that has assembled around Jesus. “We only have five loaves and two fishes.” Jesus then has the apostles form the crowd into manageable groups, gives thanks to his Father, breaks the bread and has them distribute it. At every step, he is involving them.
He is teaching them the secret to ministry. After all, we almost always feel inadequate and useless. But Jesus shows them that the two dimensions of his ministry, living in total trust of the Father and reaching out to others, are enough for things to work out. Not only did they have enough bread; they had baskets full of leftovers.
On this Sunday when we celebrate the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, the church invites us to see that the Mass is not simply coming to church and receiving Holy Communion. Rather, the Mass is teaching us the mind and heart of Christ so that, like the apostles, we can feed the hungers of the world, particularly the hungers of those people around us. Whenever we give, love is multiplied; whenever we how care, grace abounds.
We receive the Body and Blood of Christ not merely to admire Jesus and express love; we receive him so that the actions of our lives can be permeated with his vision, his trust, his love. We have received Communion when our hearts become like his, knowing that the Father’s care carries all of us.
“You give them something to eat,” Jesus says to us. Having been made one with him in the Eucharist, Jesus invites us to make the Eucharist our way of life.
FEAST OF THE HOLY TRINITY
It’s very common, while watching the evening news tell a story about a shooting or some other violent crime, to have a reporter speak to several neighbors. “We never saw this coming,” they say. This is totally out of character.” Yet it’s a fair question: when do we know anyone for real? For that matter, when do we even know ourselves?
The feast this Sunday, of the Holy Trinity, is a bit like the end of a course in school, when the professor gives the class a way to review all the material. Now that we have celebrated Lent, Easter, and Pentecost, the scriptures want to give us a way to review the message of salvation. What have we come to know about God?
We Christians proclaim a God that is profoundly related: God is related as Trinity showing the dimensions of fatherhood, sonship, and Spirit. God relates to us not as some abstract “force” in the sky, but as our creator, our redeemer, and the One who fills us with God’s life. In each of these dimensions we are talking about God’s infinite love.
God the creator is shown as the infinite field of personal, generous, and creative love, wrapping every moment of our lives in his encompassing love. God the redeemer is shown as the Word of God who enters the brokenness and frailty of our human existence so that these weaknesses can be overcome. God the the Holy Spirit says that God is active within us, guiding our lives to a fullness of life and love, and allowing us to grow as disciples in love and service.
This Feast of the Holy Trinity challenges us because we all tend to carry grossly inadequate images of God as something like the Old Man in the Sky, the ultimate Supervisor who keeps us on our toes, or the abstract Ghost who appears and disappears in our lives. These kinds of images must give way to the infinitely loving Father who accompanies us and participates in our lives through Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
It is true that, especially in God’s case, we can never come to complete knowledge. This is not from some inadequacy in God but in the inexhaustible and excessive love that God shows us. God has been revealed throughout history. How privileged are we to glimpse the great life and love of God because the Son and Spirit have been sent into our lives.
PENTECOST C
For several weeks our country was gripped by the fires that swept areas around Los Angeles. The houses that were burnt remain ash piles to this day. One of the problems was the origin of the fire in an area that lack for rain for many months. But the biggest problem was the velocity of the wind which prevented the fire being contained. How do we deal with a fire as destructive as this at a time when disasters seem to be multiplying?
The powerful scene from Acts 2 contains the very same elements, wind and fire. But in the story from Acts, this does not lead to destruction; in fact, it leads to one of the most creative periods of Christian history. God frequently was revealed in Jewish literature in the midst of storm and wind. But God’s wind, God’s power, is now associated not with destructive fire but with productive tongues of fire.
We have heard this phrase throughout of lives; artists have tried to paint what tongues of fire might have looked like. Most show the apostles standing with modest flames standing over the heads. In fact, the image of the ever-popular St. Jude shows him precisely this way. But I think this kind of imagery gets at only part of the symbol the Bible wants to give us. It speaks precisely of tongues of flame being given go the Apostles.
The Apostles have been, as Luke tells it, with Jesus for quite some time after his Resurrection. He is teaching and showing them many things. Jesus tells them not to leave the city until the gift from “on high” comes over them. Here it is, the Gift of the Holy Spirit! And the result: the Apostles are speaking with a power and a passion that draws people from many cultures to their message.
To me the “tongues of flame” represent the profoundly passionate speech that came to the followers of Jesus, a speaking that burned with a desire to share what God had done in Jesus. The fire from God is not destructive because it enters the apostles, takes over their hearts, and spreads, not from cinder to cinder, but from heart to heart, from person to person. Everyone listening to the apostles is amazed at what God is now doing in the world because of the Resurrection of Jesus. We believers are invited to attend to the Spirit's fire in our own lives.
Luke, in this chapter, gives us a compressed picture of the effects of this preaching of the early disciples: so passionate and alive was their testimony, that people of all backgrounds were able to hear them. Their passionate preaching transformed the world. The fire within them would accompany them as they preached, as they baptized, as they broke bread, as they were arrested and condemned. It would be with them as they died as martyrs for what they believed and knew about Jesus.
That same fire has come to us as well because the Spirit has passed through every generation of believers for the past twenty centuries. We have all been set afire to bring the message of Jesus to our world. A few of us do this with extraordinary wonders; many of us do this because of the callings we have in life. Families for whom the faith is alive are passing the fire of faith to their relatives and children in a special way. We are all involved in sharing the Spirit.
After all, Pentecost didn’t stop and disappear. Pentecost is the power by which the Church has lived, shared, and grown throughout its history. And it is happening today as much as on the first Pentecost event.
ASCENSION
It’s a excellent question: “People of Galilee, why do you stand there looking at the sky” Certainly there might be a variety answers to it, particularly watching a human disappear into the sky without external help. But I don’t think it was the disappearance of Jesus that stunned the disciples. I think it was the realization of the transition that was happening before their eyes.
If Jesus goes away, what then about us? What are we supposed to do? What happens to all the talk about the Kingdom of God? What do we make of all the time the Risen Lord stayed with us, showing us wonders and signs?
The disciples are stunned because they now realize that ministry that Jesus did was now going to come to them; if Jesus left then that meant it would now come down to them. Among all the question that Easter raises in our lives the one that stuns us the most is this: how are we going to disciples of the Risen Lord? How do we do what he did? It was so much easier when he was around because they could let him carry everything. Not any more.
Of course, Jesus did not expect them to do what he did all by themselves; he expected them to do his ministry and speak his words because they received the power of the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives. After they experienced the Spirit and began living their lives in the Spirit, they began to understand what this transition is about.
Jesus goes to heaven so that what he did in a limited geographical area could now begin to happen all over the world. Jesus came as Jew to the land of the Jews. But what Jesus accomplished affects the meaning of all human life. Who was going to bring this Good News to the world? Exactly, these men staring in wonder and fear as they watch Jesus vanish from their sight.
What Jesus began with his disciples has generated wave after wave of Christian life over these two thousand and more years. Christians have entered into every culture and used the resources of every culture to bring the world the Good News that we are saved in Christ Jesus. That process continues even to this day.
But all of us can be like the disciples, thinking that faith means looking up to heaven with wonder and questions. Christ, however, wants to direct the eyes of his disciples to the world around them, to the people they would engage, to the ongoing process of creating a Holy Kingdom of love and grace.
The Angels could say the same things to us today: Americans, New Yorkers, Chicagoans, Angelinos: New Orleanians, why do you stare into the sky? The Lord is present whenever we believe and continue his ministry. It’s time to stop staring and put Jesus’ life into action in our world today.
SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER.
I get most sentimental at graduation. “Graduation” is a word that is talking about steps, passages, transitions. And of the kinds of graduations I attend, I think the ones from high school are the most dramatic and affect me the most. For college graduation, the child has probably already been out of the house. But for high school, the parents realize that their child will not always be with them; they are getting ready to experience huge changes in their lives and so are getting ready to eventually leave the house.
I don’t intend to translate Jesus’ words in the Gospel into graduation. But Jesus’ statement that the apostles will be sad when they no longer have him around is poignant. Why does Jesus have to go? Where is he going to? Yet, in these words, Jesus is telling his disciples, and us, about the next steps in our salvation.
Jesus does not go to the Father to be absent from us. He goes to the Father to take up a different kind of presence in our lives. We are fascinated with the physical body of Jesus, what he looked like, and who plays the best Jesus in our movies or on television. People love Jonathan Roumie in “The Chosen.” But Jesus was not fascinated by his own body; his body was one way to be with us, but not the only way.
Jesus goes to the Father so we can begin to understand the implication of his resurrection. He rises to show us that every human being is destined to unending life. He rises to bring us beyond our own provincial images of redemption, that only this group or that group can be saved. He rises to become present to us all through the Holy Spirit who begins the transformation of Jesus’ followers which begins eternal life.
In this Easter Season we have been reading from the book of Acts of the Apostles. Each reading has contained the amazing work of the apostles, continuing Jesus own ministry. But it has also contained the essential story that the newfound faith in Jesus had to push beyond any boundary, any prejudice, any stereotype. Yes, the Gentiles, those who were considered unchosen and unclean, they indeed do have a place in God’s Kingdom; they too are part of God’s covenant. All can be part of Jesus’ community.
Just like in the lives of any of our children, there are growing pains. There are new situations with which one has to engage, new stages on which to act. In the first reading we see the apostles, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, articulate just this mystery of God’s universal salvation in Jesus. People do not have to become Jews in order to follow Jesus; they only need faith.
So we have all graduated; our baptisms and confirmations say that we have taken these major steps. We are all engaged in the project of extending salvation to others, of helping everyone discover the infinite love of God and the power of risen life in Jesus. Leaving the house, getting out into the world is not the danger we fear; it’s the great opportunity God gives us as disciples.
FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Travel is rarely fun. Even if it’s for vacation, where we will have an opportunity sleep in and hang out with friends, it’s still filled with tension. So many things to remember to pack; so many things to remember as we make connections. So many fears of whom you might be sitting next to. You know how difficult travel is when, after a week or so, you return home and get to sleep in your own bed.
Our first reading has a lot of travel in it. Paul and Barnabas seem to be running to every possible city. Now that they have committed themselves to proclaiming the Gospel to the Gentiles, it feels like they want to be everywhere in the world at the same time. We might pause to consider what travel was like back then. As messed up as Newark Airport seems to be these days, its inconvenience is nothing like ancient travel when roads were long and dirty, places to stay were few, and the risk of being robbed never went away.
What could have motivated these first apostles? Surely it was the Resurrection of Jesus because his rising from the dead has changed the meaning of all human life. Jesus changes everything in his Resurrection. And, as we can see from the Gospel today, the apostles were motivated by a new way of life, one based on universal love. Christianity was a radical movement, bringing together, around the same table of the Lord, the rich and poor, the powerful and powerless, owners and slaves, Jews and Greeks. Nothing similar to this vision of the unity of humanity had occurred before this.
But our second reading gives yet one more powerful motivation. All these apostles knew that they were part of the coming of the Kingdom of God. The vision of John in the second reading, the vision of a new heaven coming down upon us, certainly must have seemed very far away. Yet the fear, the fatigue, the dirt, the uncertainty, and the risks of their travel seemed a small price to pay to be part of bringing about God’s vision for humankind.
The heavenly Kingdom, after all, cannot come upon us unless we are willing to work for it, to give ourselves to, to let it guide every action that we do. The Kingdom slowly builds, act of love by act of love, person by person, culture by culture, until humankind is saturated with the love of God.
You and I are involved in bringing this Kingdom, just as were Paul and Barnabas. The small moments of our lives, when done with love and grace, are moving humankind closer to God’s vision for us. You and I are ever pilgrims, on the road, traveling, and making our way toward the Kingdom Jesus won for us.
FOURH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Living in New York City, it’s easy to think we are all in the same space. We rush down the streets, try to beat the red light at every corner, push our way into the subway car, and keep our ears open for the new neighborhood restaurant that we might be able to afford. Perhaps it used to be that way, but I notice it’s very different now. Every other person seems to have earbuds, and they have their favorite music pumping in their ears, creating their own space.
Our Gospel today brings up the question: what are we listening to or, more precisely, who are we listening to. After all, beside our own brand of favorite music, we also have people we listen to. Some of us listen carefully to our bosses; some of us pay a lot of attention to our teachers. Sometimes when we have heard something, it sticks with us for life and changes us.
This Sunday challenges us in a very particular way. Rather than passively listening to the sound and music of others, what will happen in our lives when we start listening to the Good Shepherd? What is his voice saying to us? How might it change our lives?
“My sheep hear my voice,” Jesus says. He says this as if he is saying that this characterizes his followers. “I know them and they know me.” Our knowledge of Jesus brings us into union with him in such a way that we cannot be snatched away any more than the Son can be snatched from the Father. Jesus’ intimate union with his Father becomes the conversation that penetrates the lives of his followers.
And it’s a big conversation. That’s what our First Reading is saying. Paul has been a bit frustrated talking to Jewish people; but he is far less frustrated talking to non-Jewish people, to Gentiles, to those people considered apart from, and different from, God’s people. Just as the sheep of Jesus hear his voice, so the Gentiles have heard the voices of the apostles. As a result, the flock of Jesus extends to every nation, language, and culture. God’s invitation has spread through all the world.
If the Good Shepherd speaks to us, certainly one of his sentences goes like this: You hear my voice so you should become a shepherd like me. The way Jesus protects and cares for each of us should lead us to protect and care for those in need, especially the poor, vulnerable, and those excluded. As the world awaits a new Bishop of Rome, a new shepherd, it also reminds us that we are all, in our different callings, shepherds with him.
We rejoice at the ordinations which so often happen at this time of year, young men who heard a call deeply enough to give themselves to the service of the Church with their entire lives. Most priests will testify about what a great joy it is to serve this way. But all of us are called to hear Jesus’ voice, to be a shepherd to others, especially those in distress.
The Shepherd has invited his own into the City of God; this city has its own music of love and service. Once we hear that music, we cannot get it out of our heads.
THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER C
Hooks, the right bait, the proper weighted line, appropriate sinkers, a sensitive fishing pole that transmits the feel of action. These are some of the ingredients for recreational fishing. Of course a good knife, rags, and a bucket to put the fish in, plus something good to drink complete the gear. But beyond all of these things, something else is essential: a strong desire to be surprised.
Perhaps that is the essential ingredient. What else can make someone stand on a bridge for hours waiting for the tug of the line? Or at the edge of a pier, refusing to look at one’s watch, for hours? “Perhaps I’ll catch. Perhaps the boredom will be broken? Perhaps I’ll have a nice couple of fish to bring home for dinner?”
The Gospel scene has some of these elements, although the fishermen are far from being recreational fishers. The scene sounds familiar, and it is: it comes near the beginning of the other three Gospels but, in the Gospel of John, it comes in the last chapter, after Jesus’ tomb has been found empty, even after Jesus appeared to his followers.
We wrinkle our forehead. What? What are they doing fishing? Didn’t Jesus send them out on mission. “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” Yet here they are, in Galilee trying to catch fish with Peter and Andrew. In the other Gospels, this scene is part of the calling of the disciples, particularly when Jesus says to Peter, “I will make you fishers of people, of men and women.” But that might be the secret to understanding this Gospel as well. It’s a story about calling people, about people finding their vocations.
So perhaps the real fisherman in the story is not any of the disciples. Perhaps the real fishermen is Jesus, trying to catch his disciples and send them into the world. Jesus tantalizes these men. He’s on the shore, already cooking fish, when he seems to tease them: “Children, have you caught anything?” It’s one of the most drastic questions you can ask a fisherman because who wants to say they have failed.
Only when the net is so full of fish that it’s about the break does it dawn on them: this is Jesus. It has to be Jesus because when he is around, there’s always abundance. “It is the Lord,” Jesus’ friend shouts. And Peter, even with nets full of thrashing fish, jumps into the water to approach Jesus. Then, in a scene that happened so often in their lives, Jesus eats with them, just as he eats with us at our Eucharist today.
Jesus saves the biggest fish for last. “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” This is not an emotional statement asking for affection; it is an invitation that reaches to the bottom of Simon’s soul. What will Peter do for Jesus? Will he give everything up for the Lord who stands before him on the beach? “Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you.” Peter’s days of following Jesus half way are over. We see the results of this question in our first reading.
People of God, do you love me more than these? Will you give yourself to helping others find love in me? “Come, follow me,” says Jesus to us. We had a nice breakfast, the fish was great, but now it’s time to get to work.”
SECUND SUNDAY OF EASTER C
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate Thomas the Apostle more, that is the one we call “doubting Thomas.” Our usual take on him is that he was stubborn and unreasonable. His brother apostles had given him great news about seeing the Risen Lord. But Thomas was a sourpuss and refused to accept their message.
But let’s set the scene. The apostles, except for Judas, had run away from the judgment scene of Jesus. They went back to the upper room and stayed there. Imagine them: feeling depressed because Jesus’ death and guilty because they could not stand by him. They were absorbed in fear about what might happen to them. Maybe a few of them snuck to bring in some food and then they began brooding even more.
Now these same depressed men, still locked in the room because of their fear, are telling Thomas that Jesus has risen from the dead! It makes perfect sense to imagine Thomas saying to them, “Well, if you have seen the Risen Christ, you certainly aren’t showing it by your behavior. I don’t see joy and excitement. I see fear and despair.”
So when Thomas says to them that he won’t believe until he can put his finger into Jesus’ nail marks, he is saying that, on the basis of their behavior, he cannot believe what they say. They reported Jesus giving them the Holy Spirit. They recalled Jesus saying, “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” But you would not know it by the way they behaved.
This raises for us, of course, the question of whether our behavior as believers shows signs of Easter. Or whether we live, in effect, in our own upper rooms of fear and passivity, our own doubts about the Risen Christ, our own inability to reveal the joy of his resurrection in our own lives.
When Jesus rises from the dead, he breaks down the ultimate barriers of human life: death and sin. Jesus’ resurrection reveals the hope that God has for every human being, particularly those who believe in Jesus. The Resurrection is saying that Jesus’ risen life now belongs to us!
As the Apostles were sent to be credible witnesses of Jesus life and Resurrection, so also have we. This doesn’t mean we eat chocolate bunnies every day, but it does mean we live with joy, hope, and an assurance that the Risen Lord’s life is now our own. Some people characterize us Catholics as sourpusses, more absorbed by fear than by joy.
The world awaits a message of hope. The message Jesus is sending the world is, precisely, us! Many doubting Thomas are still waiting. When do we become credible witnesses to them?
EASTER SUNDAY C
Many people were talking about the newspaper column. It appeared in a national newspaper and it concerned the columnist’s discovery of faith. Raised in a particular religious tradition, the writer still continued to ask questions and seek like so many people today. He talks about a strange experience, how, one day, he understood that he had already come to believe. A change had already occurred in the way he saw the world. He could now sit on a bus and realize that all the other riders in the bus had immortal souls and eternal destinies with God.
Something had already happened. When I think about it, it’s not so uncommon. How many couples realize they were “already made for each other” long before a proposal or setting a date for marriage? How many people entering high-end professions in medicine, law, or accounting realize that the intense preparation for their profession has already brought them into the field?
Something had already happened. Isn’t that true of the story of Easter we have from St. Luke this Sunday. Woman were coming to the tomb. These same women had stayed on the scene as they endured witnessing the terrible death of Jesus. They stayed around watching where and how Jesus was buried. And now, as soon as the Sabbath was over, they make their way with spices and oil to anoint the body of him in whom they had found faith. That Jesus was killed like a criminal was not going to stop their relationship with him.
They come to the tomb. We imagine that the sun is just about rising. Few words are spoken because all these women know what the others are feeling. As they make their way toward the tomb, they are astonished: the stone had already been rolled back. Something had already happened. Easter had already begun to dawn in their lives and in the world.
And why not? Hadn’t the message, power, and hope of Easter been part of the ministry of Jesus from the beginning? Weren’t they thinking of “the Kingdom of God” from the first moment they met Jesus? Hadn’t they seen Jesus feed hungry crowds and cure groups of lepers? Didn’t they even hear of how Jesus raised his friend Lazarus and the daughter of grieving parents? No wonder they were coming to the tomb. It wasn’t just showing reverence for the body of their friend and Teacher; it was showing the continuity of the ministry of Jesus with the Risen Life that he was now offering the world.
During this Lent I learned of a woman preparing to enter the Church. But she became gravely sick. Before entering the hospital, the parish arranged for her to enter the Church through baptism, confirmation and Holy Communion. She could not be part of the great Holy Saturday celebration of Easter because she died two weeks before. But had not the stone already been rolled back for her?
Maybe this is true of our own lives, the rolling back of stones. Maybe we too are on the threshold of revolution in our lives but we just haven’t made that final step. Maybe we’ve been haunted by a vision and a dream but we still are afraid to engage it. Maybe we have been on the edge of renewing our faith and this Sunday is just the opportunity to make a commitment.
Because the power of Easter is already here, already available, already waiting to come more fully into our lives. We don’t have to roll back the stones. God has been busy doing that all along.
GOOD FRIDAY
“What I have written, I have written.”
These short words said by Pontius Pilate seem to sum up his frustration. People have pressured him to have Jesus condemned and killed. He has let himself be pushed against his own instincts, having declared Jesus “innocent” numerous times. But even now, people are after him.
“The King of the Jews” is what he wrote for the placard that would be tacked onto the cross on which Jesus hung. Who knows what was in Pilate’s mind; many suspect it was irony. But, having given in so much, Pilate feels people want even more. “Don’t write that,” they demand. “Enough!” Pilate says. “What I have written, I have written.”
Maybe Pilate doesn’t want to be bothered, but we do not have that luxury. Good Friday continues to ask us what we make of the unjust and cruel death of Jesus. We focus on the brutality, the horror with which Jesus, and others, were treated. But, yet more basic, it’s the mystery of the rejection of Jesus, of Goodness, of Grace which stuns us.
How dark is the human soul to turn against the very love that could save it? And how extensive is that darkness . . . . not only among those who sought Jesus’ death, but among most of humankind that finds its own way preferable to the path of selfless love which God shows us in Jesus.
Pilate has had enough. What about us? Have we had enough of the darkness of the human heart?
Passion Sunday
Father, Forgive Them, They Know Not What They Do (Luke 23:34)
Jesus’ words from the cross stun us. Luke give them to us in the middle of the most gruesome part of Jesus’ suffering, when he is nailed to the Cross and raised up in shameful disgrace. In some ways, Jesus’ words are so powerful and shattering we have barely believed them or acted upon them.
“They know not what they do.” Of course they don’t because they have not accepted and known Jesus. But they know very well what they are inflicting upon another human being, the deliberate and cruel torture done simply for the sake of extending pain and humiliation. Yet Jesus prays, “Forgive them.”
Jesus says this in order to let the world know that his whole betrayal and execution was done as a sign of God’s mercy and peace. By his shameful death, Jesus shows us what God is like. Larger than our violence, more merciful than our supposed justice, able to bring us beyond our ugliest thoughts, Jesus is showing us the victory of God. We may crucify the Son of God, but his Father will raise him up and make him the gift of eternal Life for humankind.
Jesus forgives; but we, throughout history, have not. We have continued to blame people for Jesus’ death and feel entitled to persecute them. This two-thousand-year distortion resulted in its most brutal showing when millions of Jewish people, and others, were forced to carry humankind’s blame in the middle of the twentieth century. Even apart from that, how we hold grudges against others. . . . How much better we feel when we can diminish others through blame!
But the cry of Jesus continues throughout history, a cry even stronger than our human cries of vengeance. Dare we hear Jesus’ words anew? Dare we give up the pointless anger that continues to destroy human life and obscure the face of God? This Holy Week provides another opportunity to do just that, lay aside our rage and behold the merciful face of God.
Lent 5 C
Firing squad? Really? I was totally puzzled when Brad Sigmon chose to die by this method in South Carolina about a month ago. It had been 14 years since the last person was executed by firing squad. He argued that the other methods the state might use seemed worse to him, both the electric chair and injection. But I suspect he had another motive.
As a Christian, Brad Sigmon argued against killing out of revenge, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” in the classic phrasing of the Old Testament. My sense was that he deliberately wanted to die in a repulsive way to point out how repulsive our attitudes are in terms of punishing people. He saw little need to disguise something gruesome behind technological messages.
In the powerful Gospel we have today, from the Gospel of John, it is pretty clear that Jesus wanted to make some direct points about how people were condemned in his day. Just reflecting on how the scene was set up shows how outrageous the situation is. We see this woman, virtually dragged before Jesus by a group of men, asking Jesus to condemn her to death by being stoned.
Isn’t it too easy, Jesus points out, to make someone a scapegoat? We always want to project the sin we have onto some other person or some other group; and we use that projection to hide from the truth of our own lives. “Let the one without sin throw the first stone,” Jesus says. He forces the crowd to look at its multiple sins instead of looking at the woman they wanted to shame.
Guilt is a dangerous game to play. It’s so easy for us to insinuate the guilt of someone else. It’s so easy for us stereotype a group as evil. These groups might seem different from us because of their race, their language, or their social standing. But the more I draw attention toward them the more I can hope that no one is watching me.
But of course we are always being watched, particularly by a God who sees behind every lie we tell ourselves, who sees the dirt we have long tried to hide. Our ultimate judge is not what others think of us, or make up about us; our ultimate judge is God. And Jesus teaches us today that God has one standard of judgment: did we show the love, mercy and compassion that God has shown us? Or did we presume we could take God’s place on the judgment seat?
The first Reading from Isaiah has God telling us that God is doing something new. God is calling us beyond the revenge and scapegoating that we so often fall into, attitudes that trap us into illusions about ourselves. Before we look at others ready to condemn, we need to look at God and how God offers to treat us. After all, at Easter, the great feast for which we are preparing, God has shown us the greatest compassion by raising his Son, so grossly and unjustly accused, from the dead. This is how God offers true life to all of us.
In the Carolina execution, three men volunteered to pull the trigger, prison guards who probably had their own attitudes toward prisoners. But all of us have had people we would like to have shot. This Sunday’s readings hold out the hope that someday mercy might loom so large in our lives that it would drive out the petty vengeance we often long to show.
Lent 4 C
I remember how shocking it was. I was with my mother and my sister at the “Five and Ten Cents Store” not far from Columbus Circle. All of a sudden a message came over the speakers: “If you are missing you child, see the security officer immediately.” I looked at my mother: “How is it possible to lose a child?” Knowing how she kept a fierce eye on her children, my mother said, “Some parents don’t pay attention.”
Today I realize how easily it would be to lose a child. I see parents in the store with their kids. Parents get absorbed in some garment for sale, or some item for the household; meanwhile the children are looking at the aisle with toys or the aisle with candy. It only takes a moment to miss a child.
Most of us can easily understand the panic of a parent who is missing a child. Whatever the situation, parents start imagining the worst. Our world today is frightening when it comes to the dangers for vulnerable people. But those feelings of dread bring us close to the feeling Jesus wants his listeners to realizer: the Father, in Jesus’ story, feels the loss of his son more than anything else.
Often I try to think of Jesus’ story from the point of view of the Father. I’d like to call this parable “The Extravagant Father” or “The All-loving Father.” Because the younger son realizes that whatever let the Father give him half his possessions is the same love that would accept him back after his running away.
This is a very different kind of Father from the one that most believers have in their heads when they think of God. For most of history we thought of the Father as the one who punishes us when we do something bad; this was how the Jewish people thought of God for most of their history. But more than a God of justice and punishment, Jesus affirms for his listeners a God so attached to us that God cannot bear the loss of any one of us. The God of Jesus is one of fierce attachment to the beloved.
This is why the older son is very important for us believers. This son represents the kind of conventional righteo usness that believers have: we’ve followed the rule, so God won’t hurt us. In the face of this smugness, Jesus says that unless we have experienced the totally generous mercy God has for everyone, we have not begun to understand who God is. The older son, tragically, represents in the end resentment of God’s very love.
Lent invites us to put aside our smugness and our rather bland ideas of God. It invites us to look at our own lives through the eyes of the Father, to see the passionate love God has for everyone. Because, once we see that, then everything else in our lives can change and grow. Once we have seen that, then we know that we follow God because of God’s love for us and for all.
Lent 3 C
It was a very different homework assignment. In grade school, the nuns usually gave us questions to answer for homework, but one time Sister gave out little plastic cups. Each cup had soil in it. Then she passed out seeds and asked us to push them into the soil and sent us to the water fountain to get the soil wet. We children, dwellers of tenements and housing projects, had little familiarity with plants. Yet, here we were, all at once, little farmers.
When I remember is just how long it took for something green to push through the soil. Every day we would examine our cups, wondering what was going on in the dirt, waiting impatiently for our own little plant to show itself. The biggest lesson for little city kids was not only how to plant a seed and see it grow. Or how to feel personally connected to a plant. No, it was this: in an impatient world like New York City, some things didn’t happen right away. It took time and patience.
I often think of the famous scene in our first reading, when Moses encounters God in the burning bush. Moses was basically in hiding, having made enemies in Egypt; he spent his day watching sheep. But he sees the burning bush and decides to find out what it’s all about. In other words, he had the patience to stop and search. I am sure I would have shrugged my shoulders and walked right by the burning bush.
Yet it is at the burning bush that Moses learns about God, how God has been connecting with the suffering Jewish people during all their time of slavery. “I have heard the cries of my people,” God says, and now he will bring them freedom. Moses learns God’s plan to set the Jewish people free from their slavery in Egypt.
It was not easy. We learn that not only did the Egyptian leader, Pharoah, resist God’s plan; even the Jewish people resisted the idea. Moses practically had to drag them out of slavery and help them see a different future for themselves.
Some things take time. God gives us time. People, at the opening of the Gospel passage, are asking Jesus about tragedies that happened to others. Jesus gives them a parable that says, in effect, all of us have time to repent and experience conversion. God planted us like a seed in the ground. God expects figs from the trees he planted. But God tells the gardener to be patient. Give the plant more time and maybe there will be figs next year.
This is Good News for us. Lent is telling all of us that the point of our lives is conversion. In spite of our preoccupations with the many things in our lives, all of us are invited to a burning bush experience in our own lives, that is, a time when we encounter God and discover God’s infinite love at the center of our lives. In these weeks of Lent, when we see people preparing to enter our Church and receive the sacraments of salvation, God is giving us the time to realize that we have received those sacraments, that we are disciples of Christ, that we all can bring God’s Good News to those around us.
We are often impatient with God, demanding one thing or another from him. But God is patient with us, giving us the time and opportunities to realize God has been revealed to us in Jesus, and Jesus bestows his Spirit upon all who stop resisting.
Lent 2 C
“What was it like?” We say this to our friends and relatives who go on vacations, or maybe see a musical show, or to our children when they come back from college. We’re curious about what people experienced.
But this doesn’t seem to be the case in the astonishing Gospel we have today. Rather, it seems to have been an exceptional and exceptionally confusing experience, one that Peter and his other Apostles were reluctant to talk about. It was an experience that was easier not to speak about. But it’s an experience that is essential for us in our journey through Lent and through Life.
The Apostles on the mountain top wake up and are overwhelmed by the vision of the glory of Jesus. Jesus had never shown them his glory this way even though he showed them so many miraculous wonders. And Peter’s reaction is like ours: he wants to keep the glory before him. “Let us build three tents,” he says. He wants to stay on the mountain in the radiance of Jesus.
But it is at that exact moment that the cloud appears. Remember how often God spoke to the Jewish people from a cloud? And Peter is filled with fear, the very person who had been overwhelmed by the glory of Jesus. From the cloud comes the voice of the Father, a voice crucial for the apostles to hear: this is my beloved Son; listen to him.
In other words, God is with us in the joyful and bright moments of our lives, and God is also with us in the darker moments of our lives. In all the moments of our lives, God is speaking to us, inviting us to walk, with faith and hope, along the path of Jesus. Indeed, the darkest days lay ahead for Peter and the others, days when Jesus would be murdered as a criminal. Yet, even here, God is working and leading us to glory.
In this year of Jubilee, when we focus on the mercy of God, we are invited to have hope because Jesus speaks to us and guides us through our lives, whether things seem to be going well or not. The glory of God is always around us, even if we cannot see or feel it. We can hope on the beloved Son that God sends to us.
We live in a culture that is often cynical and has a hard time finding hope. There’s always a problem, from the price of eggs to astronauts stranded in space. God sends us forth as agents of hope into this cynical world, to help people see that the voice of Christ can still be heard today.
Lent 1 C
We are all fascinated with the idea of starting over. We think of some magical point in our past; if we could go back in time and do something different, maybe our lives would be different. How many people come to America, just as my grandparents did, in order to start over? If we could go back to school and study harder, if we could worked harder in our first job, if my spouse and I could begin our marriage again, how much better things would be.
When the Jewish people thought of starting over, they often thought of the desert. Those years wandering in the desert with Moses, when the Jewish people sought the Promised Land, were days when they felt especially close to God. God and Moses talked to each other face to face; Moses helped people see the faithful love of God and how to respond to that love in grateful obedience.
This first Sunday of Lent gives us a chance to start over. Jesus goes into the desert to be tested by the Satan, that is, to undergo the same temptations that beset all religious groups—temptations to think that faith is about power, or wealth, or magical thinking. Lent is, for us believers, not a period in which we give up one or another pleasure. Lent is a time when we think of the hundreds of thousands who are joining our Catholic Church in America. It is a time for us to renew our own sense of conversion.
Conversion reinforces conversion. We know what it’s like to be in the presence of someone who truly believes. We feel the power and the attraction. The new conversion being experienced by those entering our Church is speaking to us who try to live lives of conversion. Similarly, the mature conversion which we live reinforces the new-found faith of those seeking baptism.
So how is Jesus inviting us to find renewal in our faith? How are we being called into the desert with him? How does his resolute commitment to serve his Father by announcing and bringing the Kingdom of God call out to us? It is so easy for us to lose our focus, to make our faith into a convenience, to seek God for ourselves, our feelings, and our advancement. Lent invites us to take time to look at our life of faith so that it can be refocused once again.
In our culture, if we like something on TV, then they give us a second or third series. We always ask if these repeats are as good as the original. Jesus goes into the desert today to tell us that our faith is not a bunch of episodes. Rather, it is one way of life, based on the grace of Jesus, which God calls us to deepen so we can experience his love more fully.
8 C
When we are visiting others in their homes, particularly the first time, it’s very natural to be curious. For example, when they open their refrigerator door, what’s inside? Some households have their refrigerators jammed with all kinds of things; others have an almost empty refrigerator with only some fruit or cheese. Or when we go into the restroom, some of us dare to open the medicine cabinet. Is it filled with all kinds of pills for different health issues; others cabinets barely have a bottle of aspirin.
Curious as we are about other people, Jesus insists that his followers get curious about themselves. “Why do you worry about the splinter in someone else’s eye, but ignore the beam that is in your eye?” Often our curiosity about others is a way to disguise our own failure to look at ourselves.
Jesus says this is vitally important because there’s a direct relationship between what is going on inside our hearts with the actions that we undertake. “A good tree produces good fruit. A rotten tree produces rotten fruit.” This observation of Jesus embarrasses us because it is so accurate. Angry people show anger. Impatient people are always pushing. Greedy people are always thinking of money. Bossy people are always telling others what to do.
In a few days Lent will begin. We think of this as a time of penance and talk about giving up one thing or another that we enjoy. Actually, the idea is much deeper than this. Lent is a period of conversion. Not only are people preparing to be baptized as they join the Church as part of their conversion, but they are joining with the whole Church, with all God’s people, as we beg the Holy Spirit to renew and deepen conversion in each one of us.
Conversion points us to the message of Jesus today: what is going on inside of us that affects the way we think, live, and serve God and others? What are the things that interfere with our following Jesus, and what are the things that need to grow so we can follow Jesus more fully? We know we are converted, after all, through the fruit that we are bearing in our actions and relationships with others.
St. Paul tells us that this is all a part of the conquest of death that is part of God’s victory in Jesus Christ. We serve the Lord by sharing in God’s transformation of the world and our lives. Lent, as a time of conversion, is a way for us to realize the power of the Kingdom of God, of the Holy Spirit in our lives, by the way we show God’s love through the way we live. Lent is about what is happening inside us, not so we can become self-absorbed, but so we can give ourselves to the victory of Christ.
If good fruit comes from good trees, what is the fruit that God’s grace can bear in our lives as we seek to be better disciples of Jesus?
7 C
We are often shocked by acts of violence. When mass shootings occur, we ask ourselves how something like this can happen. We are embarrassed to realize that more mass acts of violence happen in our country than any other. Recently, we have even seen automobiles being driven into crowds by drivers looking to kill people. We are surprised at this violence even though violence and anger is everywhere around us, from the way we drive, to our social media, to the shows we watch on TV.
What would you do if someone was out to kill you, was chasing you from one area to another, and encouraging others to kill you as well? What if you found this person and cornered him, and you had a weapon in your hand? We would expect that our enemy would be killed. Yet the first reading gives us just this situation and David, who has a perfect chance to kill Saul who has been chasing him, refuses to kill his enemy. If anyone could justify a killing, it would be David.
This shocking scene from the first reading helps us prepare for the shocking language of Jesus in today’s Gospel. “Love your enemy,” we hear and it has a nice sound about it. Because the word “enemy” has a distant feel about it. But Jesus is insisting that we behave in a way that almost contradicts our basic instincts. “Pray for those who persecute you,” says Jesus. “Pray for those who hate you.”
The reason Jesus says this is very important. We think our anger gives us a certain entitlement, a certain justification for the negative feelings we have. “Look at what this person did to me. And you expect me to sit there and do nothing?” But Jesus points to God, his Father, as the reason why we need to put anger aside. Look how much God tolerates from us! And yet this does not stop God’s love and care. “God lets his rain fall on the good and the bad; on the just and the unjust.” If this is how God is, then in what way does our anger give us permission to behave differently from God’s behavior?
This language of Jesus pushes us also into another area of reflection. We sit around, holding and heating up our anger. Yet how have we been treated by God? Is not every one of us an object of God’s forgiveness and mercy? If I presume God’s forgiveness of me, why should I not presume God’s forgiveness of others, and, therefore, my obligation to forgive as well?
This may sound like God is asking us not to be ourselves. Indeed, God is. Paul makes it clear in the short passage we have today: God is asking us to become new persons, new persons in the New Person that Jesus is. God is asking us not to live according to the self-centeredness of the first Adam, but according to the universal love of the Second Adam, Jesus Christ.
We have today many more ways to express anger. Our mass communication and our use of social media can create empires of anger. And this anger only begets other anger in return, an unending spiral of venom. Mercy and forgiveness are the only way to stop that spiral and end the cycle. To be unable to see and live by mercy and forgiveness is, Jesus says, to be unable to even know who God is.
6C
We often feel that we have not had much choice in our lives. Our bodies, our families, our environment were all mostly given to us. Many times we end up in jobs or careers that we wish we could change. Many of us feel that we have little control over public life or politics.
Ultimately, however, we have a basic choice to make but at times that is not clear to us. Life-changing options stand before us but we continue on with life in the same old way. One of the basic messages of Jewish teaching was the fundamental choice we have with reference to God and others.
The first reading from Jeremiah gives us the same message as Psalm 1 which is our responsorial psalm today. We can live either receiving the life-giving waters or we can live dry and empty lives and die. We can live striving to follow God’s path of goodness or we can wither making up our own ideas of goodness.
Jesus lays this out very clearly in the Gospel. Many of us will remember this passage as “The Beatitudes” in the version that St. Matthew gives in his Gospel. But Luke’s version makes things clearer for us: we can choose ways or blessedness or we can choose ways of woe. We can choose paths in life that fill us with joy, or we can choose paths that lead us to frustration.
God wants to give us the fullness of life, joy, and love. But often we think our joy and happiness comes from getting things and having power over others when the truth is very different: our joy and power comes from the way we recognize God’s love in our lives even in our poverty or sorrow or struggles. People are blessed and happy when they have discovered for themselves the care that God has for them especially in their struggles.
In our culture we often talk about those who are very rich and famous as if these were our idols. We talk about movie stars or famous singers; we talk about people like Marc Zuckerberg, Warren Buffet, or Jeff Bezos as if they found the secret to life with all their billions of dollars. But this is illusion. So many people spend their lives searching for money or fame but they still are frustrated or unhappy.
Haven’t we all known people who do not have much money or power, who are not famous, yet whose lives have been incredibly rich because they have come to know God and to love others in God. All of our saints lived this way. But, more importantly, we’ve had parents or grandparents, friends and associates, whose lives have been tremendously happy in spite of the external circumstances of their lives.
The difference is this: some people have decided to put God and God’s way of life at the center, and others have tried to live without God or a relationship to God. The abundant water of divine life is there, being poured out for us. The choice we all have is whether we drink this life-giving water or whether we will waste way in frustration.
5 C
TGIF is not only a restaurant. It’s a motto for many of us today: “Thank God It’s Friday.” This says a lot about how we view our daily lives. Often it feels like we are just enduring life. We have our routine, the alarm rings, we get our usual breakfast, then commuting, then work, then commuting again, until we finally return home pretty exhausted. Sometimes our work is exciting; but more often it is just tedious boredom.
So what would it be like to be a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee two thousand one hundred years ago? Imagine the routine in this work: waking early, checking the nets, waiting for the crew to arrive, going out in the boat, and guessing where the fish might be today, the hours spent until the school of fish is found, hauling them ashore and seeing how many fish can actually be sold. Because that’s what our families and relatives depend on.
Simon and Andrew find, in the Gospel we have today, that life can be much more exciting than this. They complain that they have worked all night but have caught nothing. But they will humor Jesus a bit. All of a sudden, their nets are close to breaking with the biggest haul of fish of their entire lives. Their daily life, with its monotony, had the seeds of a future they could not have imagined.
Some of this is happening in the first reading. How many times did Isaiah go to the temple, sing the psalms, smell the incense? It was probably routine for him. But this day he sees something fuller and deeper in what he has been doing his whole life. He comes to realize that his worship has been an encounter with the God of heaven, the God of angels.
Our ordinary lives, in relationship to God, are hardly ordinary. Any moment can be a breakthrough moment of encounter. Paul shows us this in our second reading: even he had an experience of the risen Christ when it was the last thing he deserved. God’s grace surrounds every moment that we have, whether we realize it or not.
We come to Mass; often it feels like routine, maybe like it felt so often for Isaiah. But the process of our Mass is one huge opportunity to encounter God once again. The readings today invite us to at least be open to this. Perhaps we have only a few major breakthrough encounters with God in our spiritual lives, but these encounters have the potential to transform our entire lives. We are invited to be open, to be waiting, to let the God of infinite love touch us.
Certainly, there are many callings in the Church, many ways to try to follow Jesus. But none of those callings is insignificant. From within our daily lives, our daily patterns and responsibilities, the hand of God is waiting to touch us, to show us the purpose of our lives.
We don’t live saying Thank God It’s Friday. We live saying: we thank God for every moment because it is an invitation to live and love more fully
Feast of the Presentation, Feb. 2nd
When asked, most people say they have a bucket list. Even if they don’t, they will think of something they’d yet like to do in life. “I’d love to visit Italy again.” Or “Going to China would be great.” Some people want to win the Lotto or write a book or do art. Having something on our bucket list means we have something to live for, at least in our imaginations.
In the Gospel we have today, we have Simeon, the old man who lived near the Temple and prayed every day. The Gospel says that he spent his life awaiting the salvation of Israel. He represents all the pent-up longing of the Jewish people because they had been occupied by foreign nations for centuries. When he sees the baby Jesus, we can feel the relief: “Now you can dismiss your servant, Lord.” Simeon has seen what he longed for; his life is fulfilled.
But this doesn’t mean the drama is over in his life. Instead, he can look ahead, with the old Jewish eyes that he has, and he can see that Jesus’ mission will not be easy. In fact, he says that Jesus will be a sign of contradiction: many will stand against him because they are not ready for the Good News that he will bring. And Simeon even anticipates the sorrow that will come into Mary’s life.
Sometimes when we get what we longed for, it can be disappointing. Maybe we find out that we really didn’t want it so badly, or we find out that we really weren’t prepared for what came into our lives. To get what we truly long for often means that we ourselves have to change.
People find this true in many areas of life. They get the perfect promotion but it asks too much of them. A child is born but mom and dad didn’t realize what it would take to love their child. Even couples who fall in love, who have found the “perfect person,” realize that living out that love will involve ongoing change.
This feast of the Presentation is a way to say that Jesus spent his whole life giving himself to others. Everything the Temple represented in terms of hope has come to pass in Jesus: God is given to us as Father, Savior, and inner Power. But this gift we have in Jesus doesn’t mean we sit back thinking that everything is done. Rather, it means we have been lifted to a new level of life, a new level of expectations, of growth, of sacrifice.
That’s the thing about God. With our relationship with God, things are never finished. In some way, with God, things are always just beginning. God fulfills our bucket list by giving us far more buckets than we ever imagined.
Third Sunday of Ordinary Time C
“The Bully Pulpit.” As we recognize the change of administration happening in the United States at this time, a phrase like this comes to mind. We think that presidents, senators, mayors and others enjoy a special place in public discourse. They can use their positions, and their voice, to call attention to certain things—a bully pulpit. Sometimes we like this; often, however, we resent being told what to feel or think.
We have the striking image of Ezra getting into a pulpit to speak to the Jewish people in our first reading. The scene echoes others in the Jewish Scriptures when a prophet speaks to the people as a whole. Obviously in the days before microphones and video, it is unlikely that someone could address an entire population. But these scenes speak of the importance of God’s Word, and how God’s Word formed the identity of the Jewish people.
This Third Sunday of Ordinary time has been designated as The Sunday of the Word of God by Pope Francis. It asks us how we hear God’s word, and how big a place God’s Word has in our lives. We might think this about knowing bible history better or memorizing important Bible sections. But the real emphasis is on whether the essence of the Good News has entered our hearts.
In today’s Gospel, the situation seems very different than Ezra’s. Here, Jesus is back in his hometown, visiting a synagogue or faith-sharing center. He has no pulpit on which he is standing. Yet his words, taken from the prophet Isaiah, challenge us to this day. Jesus is announcing his mission, what he hears the Father asking of him. He is telling us that his mission is to embody the mercy and healing of God, particularly for those we seem to have no hope.
Jesus’ first mission is to bring Good News to the poor. This, then, is the first thing we must hear and learn as his followers. Jesus comes as a Savior and new hope to people who are desperate, whose lives would be otherwise empty. Have we personally heard this Good News? Behind all the catechism classes we attended, behind all the sermons we have heard, behind all the rules and commandments, have we heard and felt the Good News of God’s infinite love for each one of us? This is the Gospel we need to hear: God’s personal and infinite love for each of us.
We know we have heard God’s Word when that Word begins to make sense of our lives, when we know why we are living, when we experience love and compassion, when our lives are filled with joy because we have experienced God’s love. This is the first and most important thing that God’s Word has to teach us: how his love brings meaning and direction in our lives.
This, Jesus says, is the reality of our lives, what makes us his sisters and brothers, what makes us children of the heavenly Father. And this infinite love of God, revealed in Jesus’ words and life, is what makes sense of everything: why we are, what we are called to do, and what our unending destiny will be. God’s Word is Good News. How deeply have we heard it?
Second Sunday of Ordinary Time C
Sometimes we have an idea in our heads and it sits there for a while. Fix up the kitchen. Get a new sofa. Travel to Europe. Switch to an electric vehicle. Then some occasion happens, some circumstance, and we find ourselves doing something we’ve thought about for a long time. “What took me so long?” we ask ourselves.
The Gospel has a bit of that feeling this morning. It’s an important Gospel, one we don’t think about much, but it’s the first of Jesus’ great signs in the Gospel of John. Yet it has an almost casual character. “They have no wine?” “Is that my problem? My time has not yet come.” “Do whatever he tells you to do.”
We love this miracle because it seems so whimsical. So many jokes about Jesus bringing his 12 disciples into a bar and ordering twelve glasses of water. Then he winks. Or the priest caught speeding in his car with a bottle of wine in the back. “Oh, sorry Officer, Jesus was at it again.” But this whimsical quality, this makes-you-smile, quality is deceptive. This is one of the most important Gospels to understand and live.
Of all the ways Jesus could have begun his ministry of helping others, why does it begin this way? Surely a more dramatic incident could have happened, someone near death or someone desperately hurting. But Jesus, with the help of his mother, chooses to make this action the preface of all his other signs. If Jesus has come to show us his Father, this is the way he chooses to begin.
Jesus is starting to tell us what our relationship with God is about. God has sent his Son into the world to bring us joy, to help us see that all these things we look at as so ordinary in our lives are really filled with the richness of God’s love for us. We Catholics have many ways to think of God, but to think of God as the one who comes to bring joy in our lives doesn’t happen very often. Thinking of God waiting for us to make a mistake, to be bad, that’s the way we mostly think of God. Not Jesus.
The changing of water into wine is a way to talk about the sending of the Holy Spirit into our lives, the Spirit of God’s own love empowering us and filling our hearts with joy. St. Paul emphasizes this with the Romans—we are all joined together in the one loving spirit of Jesus, so we don’t have to compete and think of some as better than others. Everyone gets to sip from the chalice of Jesus.
This is a key part of Pope Francis’ message to us, particularly during this Jubilee. Let’s show the happiness of our lives; let’s show our joy to the world. This is what we have to offer others, a chance to have their life based on the joy of encountering the God of Jesus. Why look so miserable and troubled? Don’t you know how much Jesus has saved you, is filling your heart with his Spirit? Smile . . . and let the world know too.
Baptism of the Lord C
A big splash. That’s how companies like to start something new. In the old days, stores would put flags and banners outside to let people know they were opening. Today they need email, websites, and direct marketing, usually pushing some wonderful deal or product the company has dreamt up to entice us. “Buy one, get another,” or “The first 100 customers will receive a big discount.” The splash is designed to get attention.
So we might be tempted to think of Jesus’ baptism as the big splash that announces he is the Savior of the World. John has said someone is coming after him, and now he is here, by the river, among the people John is baptizing. It is only after he is baptized with the other and praying with them that the heavens up, the dove of the Spirit descends, and the Father declares that Jesus is the Beloved whom God is sending into the world.
There are important things to notice about Luke’s account. First of all, Jesus is with others. It’s as if to say that his baptism is not something Jesus wants to keep to himself. It’s as if he is saying that his baptism is something he wants to share with others. This invites us to see our own baptisms as a direct share in his.
The second thing is the wording of the Father. The phrase “my beloved Son” is not some emotional term of endearment. Rather, the language comes from Isaiah the Prophet who talks about one who comes as servant, bearing the burdens and struggles of the people as his own. This is a verse about the meaning of the death of Jesus. For if he begins his ministry with his baptism, that ministry would be the cause of his rejection and suffering. But that suffering is the means of bringing redemption to all.
The third item worth noting is the descent of the Holy Spirit. It isn’t like Jesus didn’t experience the Spirit before this. Rather, his experience of the Spirit shows his empowerment to bestow the Spirit upon all who open their hearts to him. Jesus desires to share his Spirit of generous life and love upon his disciples. This is the Spirit by which the world is transformed as it progresses toward the Kingdom of God.
So rather than calling attention to himself and his ministry, the baptism of Jesus is not a big splash about him but about what God is bestowing upon humankind when people commit themselves to following him. And it certainly calls attention to our own baptisms for this is what makes us disciples of Jesus. We are all empowered to live with that same love and generous grace that marked his life. We are all empowered to bring the Kingdom to the world around us.
No doubt, there is plenty for us in the ministry and work of Jesus. But Jesus doesn’t need advertising to show us. His own life of healing, forgiveness, acceptance, welcome, and generous love speaks far more than any hype possibly could.
Epiphany C
Mos of us think of relationship in terms of desire. “You are my dream, my baby, my heart. I could not think of living without you.” This certainly is the dominant approach to love in our movies and our songs. “Love me tender, love me true, never let me go. For my darling I love you and I always will.” In this kind of situation, we think of our longings and desires; my lover will fill them up.
We see a little bit of this in the story of the mysterious three kings, the Magi, who come seeking the meaning of a star in the sky. These mysterious figures are supposed to represent the latent searching in all of humankind. The Kings sand for the non-Jews who are now getting ready to encounter the Lord.
Bu the pinnacle of the story is not the satisfying of desire; rather, it’s when the Magi come to present their gifts. The gifts sound strange to modern ears, but their meaning is pretty clear; these are gifts that recognize royalty and kingship. They represent the honor a king is due at every stage of his life, even to the oils used to anoint the body of someone important after death.
In return, the king gives the Magi a gift as well: The King assures them that God would touch every human person and culture. Although God spoke and worked through the history of the Jewish people, from now on, after the birth of Jesus, God is working throughout all human life and experience. God responds to the searching of every person.
The first reading, the famous one from Isaiah, speaks about the return from exile. People who have lived in darkness are seeing a great light. God has come to set them free, to allow them to return from exile. But it is not only the Jewish people who live n exile, to some extent, all humans suffer exile until we find ourselves at home in the God of love. Through the Magi, who fulfill the vision of Isaiah, we learn that God wants to embrace all humankind/
On this feast of Epiphany, we recognize that a light has shown over all humankind. Our response to this light is to give ourselves to its brilliance. We do this not by hoarding God and Jesus as if God only loved some of us. We do this by recognizing the greatest gift we can give our King is the gift of giving his love to everyone.
Holy Family, C
We have many shootings in our country; most of the attention is put on the shooter and the victims. Two shootings, however, invite us to think about families. One shooting, right here in New York, involved the 26-year old who killed a health insurance executive on 54th street. The other involved a 14-year old girl who attended a Christian school in Wisconsin; she murdered one of her teachers and another student.
The 26-year-old was from a comfortable and famous family in Maryland; he had stopped being in contact with his family for some time. I think of his mother wondering about her disappeared son, a son who had been given every advantage in life. We know the Wisconsin girl had been through three divorces of her mother; how disruptive her family life must have been. After all, in many ways, our family life shape the rest of our life.
Think of how basic family life is. It’s the way we learn the language of human relationship. Just like children learn basic sounds of a language from their parents, so also they learn the basic impulses of life—belonging, being accepted, caring for others, being faithful, learning to forgive.
Our feast today tells us that Jesus was raised in a family. All the words he would use in his preaching—about mercy, love, trust, confidence—came from the experiences he had as a child. When Jesus says we are to love God with all our heart, he presumes we have already learned dimensions of love from our relationships in the family. This is why we need strong families and why our Church insists that family life is the foundation of society.
Yet we learn from the Gospel that the idea of family is so important, that reality cannot stay restricted to the family. Rather, the values we see and celebrate in our families need to be extended beyond ourselves to all people. This is a revolutionary aspect of our Christian faith: the scope of family life has to be broadened to include every human person. Our one Father has made all of us; we are all brothers and sisters. Love, and family, has no boundaries.
When Jesus stays behind in Jerusalem by the Temple, his parents are afraid and express disappointment at his behavior. It is then that Jesus says: “Don’t you know I have to be about my Father’s business.” Evan at a young age, Jesus knew his ministry was for everyone in the world. His Father’s business was the salvation of all people; indeed, all people are created to share in divine life.
You and I are disciples of Jesus. We have the privilege of knowing God as our Father and we have the responsibility of showing the Father’s love to everyone. In a world where so many people work to divide us, we followers of Jesus are called to work so that all people may know how they belong to the same family of God which Jesus showed us.
Christmas, Midnight Mass
What do we see in the skies at night? It depends. In countries of war, people see and fear bombs being dropped on them. People with telescopes hope to see a planet. Maybe skies are clear enough for us to see stars. Science fiction has us seeing flying saucers. Recently many people have been seeing drones, especially over New Jersey.
But do we see angels—do we see God’s messengers surrounding us with words of hope and peace? Do we see life transformed by the birth of a child?
Of all the people in the area around Bethlehem, it was the shepherds who saw the angels. Who knows how many others might have seen the angels, but they were too preoccupied or not really looking. Shepherds, the people with the lowest social status in ancient Israel, these people saw and heard the angels.
How often we feel our lives are insignificant. No one pays attention to us; not even God pays us attention. We feel isolated and alone—in some ways we feel the way shepherds often lived, isolated, alone at night, bored and disconnected. Yet it was to the Shepherds that the first Christmas messages. Because unless the poor and lowly hear God’s Good News, then the full power of this Good News cannot be felt. Christmas is God’s love for all, especially the insignificant and the forgotten.
The angels sing messages of grace. God’s goodness is shown to us as a pure gift, without us having to prove anything to God or show that we somehow deserve the gift of his Son. It’s a grace that touches every moment of our lives because God is showing us how important we are. It’s a message of peace because once we see how precious we are to God, maybe we can see how precious we are to each other and lay aside our violence and anger.
“Let’s go and see,” the shepherds say, not out of doubt but out of hope. For if the Messiah has come, our lives and our history are changed. Just as God has come to live for us, we now know we are called to live for God and God’s kingdom of peace.
Advent 4 C
The process of moving is disruptive; but it always includes its surprises. When one has to go through one’s things, deciding what to keep and what to throw out, little surprises happen. You open a file you haven’t touched in years and letters from a friend written a generation ago pop out. You open an album and see photos you haven’t seen in decades, pictures of people from forty years ago.
The thing is: these little items—a photo or an old letter—bring back memories of a time and of people with powerful force. We see people smiling in the photo and we try to imagine the happiness they had, a happiness that perhaps they were not even aware of. We read words from years back and a whole relationship begins to appear.
Does life consist in our big moments or in our little ones? Often our focus on big moments—like graduation, or the wedding ceremony, or the new job—take up a lot of geography in our memories. But big moments only exist to frame little moments, those everyday events that make up the substance of life.
Two pregnant woman greet each other. They were relatives, people in an insignificant village in an occupied country. Two women who might not even be noticed if one took a walk through town. Something exceptional had happened to each of them. Both had become pregnant in an exceptional way, one as an old lady beyond child-bearing age, the other as a young woman not yet married.
But Mary runs in haste, as the Gospel puts it, to join her relative. Mary just learned of Elizabeth’s unexpected pregnancy. She visits Elizabeth to spend three months with her, helping around the house, preparing meals, shopping in the market, chatting in the afternoon sun. Each of them has a primitive sense that God is doing something exceptional in their lives and the world; but the exceptional is encased in the small evens of daily life.
Our first reading from Mikah the prophet is famous because the Gospel adopts it to discuss the birth of Jesus. But Mikah is saying something that has always been true in God’s relationships with us: it is in the ordinary, in the little, in the every-day, that God brings transformation. Yes, Bethlehem is a little, overlooked town in Judah; but from it will come one who will change the world.
Whether we live in a big city or a small town, it’s easy to feel insignificant. Who are we among millions of people who take the subway every day? Who are we among the dozens of people who pick up mail at the post office of our town? But God’s visit to Mary and Elizabeth tells us who we are: each of us is unendingly important to a God who has looked up us, and our little lives, with infinite love. God knows that infinite love comes in the small instances of our daily lives, the gestures of love and generosity that mark our daily lives.
To celebrate the momentous event of our salvation, God gathers us around a table and asks us to bring simple gifts of bread and wine as signs of the way we give ourselves to God in our daily lives. God’s love is so great it transforms all our lives, big moments and small.
Advent 3 C
“Ledo pizza never cuts corners.” I’ve been hearing this slogan since the 1960’s. As I prepare to move to New York, I realize I probably won’t hear these words up there. It’s a great slogan because it plays with words. “Cut corners” refers to their important brand, to serve pizza as a square rather than a circle. But it also refers to “cutting corners” as a way in which we give people less than they are owed.
I see a lot of people cutting corners on the roads today. More and more, cars with very loud engines are cutting into the opposite lane and passing other cars that are waiting for the light to change. We are all supposed to follow the same rules; but some people cut corners because they think the rules don’t apply to them. People who teach today are alert to the fact that students can use AI to write their essays; why do the work when we can get a machine to do it for us?
As I listen to the words of the Gospel today, I hear John basically saying: when it comes to God and to others, do not cut corners. “What are we supposed to do?” the crowds ask John. We should note the lesson that he tells them. He doesn’t say we need to drop everything and run into the desert with him. He doesn’t say that God is demanding superhuman actions on our part. He tells us to the right things that we are supposed to do, and not to cut corners; this prepares us for the coming of Jesus.
Soldiers are told not to bully people. People are told not to ignore the sufferings of others, that if we have something extra and another needs it, we should think about them. He doesn’t tell people to starve themselves or abandon their families; he tells them to act from the instinctual generosity that permeates the lives of most of us. Look at how you are living, John says, and live it with integrity and generosity.
John is careful to keep people from cutting corners with his own preaching. They were expectant and excited. Maybe John was the Messiah? Maybe John was the answer. John is totally clear: “I am not the Christ.” John has the mission of getting people ready for that totally astonishing gift of God to us, the gift of his own Son. True, John would give his life as the price of proclaiming his message. But this too was a preparation of how the Messian would give himself as a sign of God’s total and unconditional love for humankind.
As we enter the final two weeks of Advent, our reflection gets sharper: how am I cutting corners in my relationship with God and my relationship with others? How can I live with greater attention and focus on God’s love as the gift that changes us? How can I live with greater emphasis on the love I am called to have with the people in my daily lives? How can I live without cutting corners in my life of faith?
That’s the joy we celebrate this Sunday as we light the rose candle and put aside our purple garments. The joy we celebrate is that every one of us can grow closer to God simply by accepting the life that God has given us and by living that life with generosity and love. John doesn’t feel worthy to touch the shoes of Jesus; but Jesus has no trouble touching the hearts of people who open them for him.
Advent 2 C
Different as they were, they were still perfect Thanksgiving stories. One story told of the people in Asheville, a month after their town was wiped out by hurricane Helene. The people were still putting their lives back together, but it was a long and slow task, so much did the flooding ruin everything. But they discovered they had each other. Pitching in day after day, they became a large family and can look ahead to a future. The other story had scenes of people in Lebanon returning to their homes after a month of bombing. Just to return home seemed like a miracle; many thought that would never happen.
What Baruch describes in the first reading has been repeated countless times through history. He speaks of the joy when people who were driven away but now are returning, from East and West, from the captivity of their enemies, now, the prophet says, born aloft “in glory as on royal thrones.” The road has been opened. The obstacles have been removed. People can now return to their homes and their lives. But they return changed, because now they have experienced hope and love in a new way.
It does seem that this was what John the Baptist wanted. He has found his vocation, living in the desert by the river Jordan and calling people to something new. God is doing something new, breaking down the obstacles between people, and between his people and himself. God wants nothing to stand between people and himself. He will lower mountains, he will fill in valleys, he will send prophets, indeed, he will even send his Son to that we can know his love.
John tells the people that the first step is repentance. We have a hard time with this word because we think of it as doing penances like giving up chocolate or going to Confession. Those are examples but not the primary sense of the word. Repentance is when we come to know that we can live our life differently, that the obstacles that we put between ourselves and God can be overcome by the experience of God’s life and love. Repentance is a new attitude in our lives which says that nothing can keep us from God or others if we do not want it to.
As a Church, we have been made a people of repentance and redemption. Advent helps us realize the gift that God has given us in his son Jesus; it invites us to renew our acceptance of Christ by letting him remove obstacles we place in his way. It also invites us to remove obstacles in the lives of others so their path to God can be straight and smooth, so that others can discover this liberating God in their own lives. We are all partners in the Gospel, Paul tells us. We are all instruments that can bring reconciliation to the world around us.
Few of us have suffered the loss of everything we had. But all of us have received a gift that we could never earn, the gift of God’s Son given to us so that, through us, the Gospel words might be fulfilled: “all flesh will see the salvation of God.” Advent hope and light is meant to shine from us onto the whole world.
Advent 1 C
Starting over can be very difficult. Imagine you have worked on an assignment, and power went out before you could save your work. Staring over feels like we’ve wasted a lot of time. Or imagine you’ve finished painting a wall and are standing in front admiring it when your five-year-old comes and puts her hands all over the wall. You have to do it again. No thanks!
But sometimes starting over feel like the greatest opportunity. Imagine a painter who finishes one canvas and then has another strong idea. The painter can’t wait to start on a new canvas. Or imagining a high school football team who had a winning year; they can’t wait for the start of another season when they hope to win again. Families often have great vacations together; they can’t wait until next summer when they can do it again.
Advent, the season that starts today—we can see the Advent wreath and purple vestments—is exactly a time to start over. The Church asks us to get in touch with our deepest expectations and understand how they are linked to God. We eagerly wait for Jesus because we know he is not done with us; we still have more to discover about his love.
What makes starting over easier is when we have a motive. If I want something bad enough, or if I care about a group of people strongly enough, then we have a motive. Pope Francis has given us a motive for this Advent. He has declared the year 2025 a Jubilee year with the theme of hope. Hope is the virtue that comes as God’s gift to us that allows us to eagerly face the future because God is at work in our lives. Our first reading from Isaiah assures us that God is faithful to his promises; we can hope because we rely on God’s Word.
If we think about the Gospel today, it shows us hope in action. Jesus is repeating all the things that people said about the end of the world during his time. It is obviously thought to be a time of fear and destruction. But in the middle of all that, Jesus tells his followers to hold their heads high. People who follow Jesus and his way of life can withstand even the greatest threats around us. Why? Because our redemption is always here, at work in our lives. Christ has already conquered all the forces against us.
As Advent begins, we have the opportunity to take inventory of our lives. This year we can look at our lives from the perspective of hope. What are the things that make us lose hope? But what are the signs of God’s presence and love that fill us with hope? How can our trust in God, our hope in him, bring energy and vision to our lives?
People are always getting us to panic about one thing or another; non-stop news only makes that worse. But Jesus invites us to put panic on the back burner. Because of his coming, his victory, and the powerful love of his Spirit, we have every reason to hope.
Christ the King B
Everyone was excited. On Facebook there was a picture of the intersection of Broadway and 72nd Street showing how they were building the subway there in 1904. Then, after all the excitement, someone posted a message to the group: “You know this is fake, don’t you. It’s an AI picture. They didn’t build the subway like that back then.”
In fact, it’s hard to know what is fake these days. I’d be happy if someone could turn my face back to what it was 40 years ago, but that would not be real; it would not be me. We know that foreign countries flood our social media with fake pictures just to cause confusion and conflict. It’s clear how well this works from the way we have turned on each other.
In the Gospel we have today, with Pilate and Jesus talking about his kingship, on this feast of Christ the King, they left out the next verse. After Jesus says that everyone who knows the truth belongs to his Kingdom, Pilate says, “Truth, what is that?” We can imagine many ways that Pilate said this, perhaps trying to look like a philosopher, or perhaps to end the conversation. But I think of this as a cynical remark by a cynical man. “Truth, what is that?” He’s saying: who cares about the truth?
We have plenty of that going on at every level of society, from basic facts about economics to theories of education. But Jesus cared. The truth was absolutely essential for him, the very reason Jesus came into the world. To listen to the voice of Jesus is to be open to the truth. What was the truth that Jesus insisted we hear?
Throughout his ministry, especially in the Gospel of John, Jesus shows that his life and work are to reveal God to us. He comes as the Eternal Word spoken by God into our history and space. And the Word says that God is infinite love who wants to give the fullness of life to every person—a fullness that includes freedom from our sins and an openness to God’s divine life. This is the truth that Jesus lives, teaches, and gives. It’s a truth that is totally beyond the ability of Pilate, and so many others, to see.
Modern life has given each of us the ability to put forward our own truth. Even a sixth-grader can get on a cellphone and create a personality for the world to see. We spend billions on Artificial Intelligence just so we can imagine a world different from ours, one that can make us anything we want to be. But ultimately you and I have to live for something essential and central; otherwise, we run around in circles and get nowhere.
Jesus is asking us to be part of his Kingdom by listening to his voice, the voice of truth, and pledging ourselves with him to reveal the love of God to others. Jesus says he is not a King, not in the sense that most people are kings when they hold power over others: “I’m the King so I get to say how it goes.” No, Jesus knows how it goes because he is the embodiment of God’s love made flesh. Jesus is a King who does not hoard power over others. Rather, he wants to share the truth of God’s infinite love so all of us are living it, giving it, and being saved because of it. Jesus’ Kingdom does not belong to this world; it belongs, instead, to people whose hearts have been set on fire by divine love.
With Christ there is no artificial intelligence. There is only the real and absolute truth of who God is and how God becomes known in our world.
33 B
Of course, the world is always coming to an end. Half the country thought that two weeks ago after the election. Millions around the world think that climate change is bound to doom us. We recall of the dropping of the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, or all the horrors of the world wars of the last century. If we are not being frightened by inflation, we are being threatened by economic depression. The world is always ending.
This kind of thinking only increased in the centuries just before the coming Jesus. And why not? For hundreds of years, foreign powers had control of Israel, and now it was the Romans who had taken over. The scene from the book of Daniel in the first reading, with St. Michael getting to go to war, was just the kind of message that the Jewish people wanted to hear.
Jesus uses the same kind of imagery, but he has a very different purpose. Jesus never preaches to scare people with destruction; rather, he preaches to give assurance to his followers. Jesus faced the forces of evil and destruction when he was crucified; now, in his Resurrection, his followers can experience hope and trust, no matter how crazy the world gets.
We hear Jesus tell his followers that the end will not come before they have seen “all these thing”s happen. But what is Jesus referring to? He is telling his disciples that before their generation ends, they will have seen the glory of God. That is exactly what they saw when Jesus rose from the dead. In the Resurrection of Jesus, the powers of evil have already been defeated.
The last thing Jesus wants is to have his followers running around with signs saying the world is coming to an end, or to be obsessed with fear about the end of the world, or to think that our job is to engage in endless warfare with what surrounds us. What Jesus wants, instead, is that our faith in him become a gift of hope and grace that we can offer the world. With everyone else running around like chickens without heads, we Christians should walk in the world knowing that God has given us his Son as a sign of hope and salvation.
In some ways, thinking about the end of the world makes things easy. After all, the idea is so overwhelming, we ask: what are we supposed to do about it? Our fear is a way to get off the hook. We can blame forces all around us and live our lives with self-pity. But Jesus has given his followers the fruit of his Resurrection in the Holy Spirit so we can live our lives not with self-pity but victory.
Jesus is already at the right hand of God. I can hear him saying, “Come on. Why are your so afraid? I’ve given you victory already. Go out and conquer the world with the hope and love I have filled you with in my resurrection.”
32 B
“What if you had an extra $10,000? What would you do with it?”
When I hear lines like this on the radio, my first question is to wonder who they are talking to. I quickly think of the people I know in my everyday life, do any of them have an extra $10,000? I suspect people who do have an extra $10,000 are the kinds of people who do not wonder what to do with it. They know exactly how money works and do not need any advice.
But questions like this on the radio or TV do raise some bigger questions for all of us. What do we think money is for? What do we do with the possessions we have, how do we use them? How do I use money in my everyday life? Some folks, after all, think spending $10 a day at Starbucks is just part of life; others of us think long and hard at every $10 they spend.
The Scriptures raise these questions for us because so often the Widow with the coin that she puts into the collection is held up as a model for us. Why cannot we be as generous and as full of trust as she is? Because that is the lesson she basically has to teach us: how full and deep is the trust we have in God, and God’s care for us? In the first reading, we have a widow who trusts in the holiness of the prophet; she gives him the last of what she has on the prophet’s word that God will take care of her. Both widows can be trusting and generous because they have come to know a God who is trusting and generous in their lives.
It is often hard for us modern Catholics to realize this, but there are two economies with which we can live. One is the ordinary economy that seems to make sense to us: get as much money as you can and hold onto it so that it will grow even more through our investments. Sure, give some money to the poor and needy, but don’t be a fool. Eventually you will need that money yourself.
The other economy is the one God shows us: that everything we have comes as a gift from God, that God wills us to care for each other because God’s gifts are given for the good of all people, and that we understand God more when we are able to live with the freedom to be generous. This economy invites us to trust totally in God because, ultimately, that is the deepest spirituality that we can have.
This divine economy is an important part of what our worship is about. We give gifts to God during the Mass as a sign of all that God has given to us, and also as a sign that we want to give ourselves to accomplish God’s loving will. We give our simple gifts to God and, in return, receive the richest gift back from God, union with Jesus, his Son and our Savior. Ultimately God gives himself to us in Jesus, as our second reading shows. Jesus freely gives him life to us and for us. We know we have union with Jesus when we freely give of ourselves as well.
We live in a culture that is obsessed with money; we can never have enough of it. Our biggest heroes are folks that have so much money they can barely count it. Rather than just being obsessed with the acquisition of money as culture would have it, our prayer helps focuses us on another reality: being obsessed with the graces that pour into our lives so that we can pour them into the lives of others.
We all want to win the Lotto; but, unfortunately, few of us Catholics realize that, in a basic way, we already have won the one Lotto that matters, the grace of our faith.
31 B
We will be happy when all the debates are over. We will rejoice when we do not see more political ads on TV. Over $10 Billion has been spent in 2024, two billion more than four years ago. The more politicians raise money, the more we have to endure the same ads of attack one after another. After politicians have debates, whether at the national or local level, people argue for weeks about who won, which candidate came out better.
So we might be a little amazed to realize that we ae actually hearing a debate in the Gospel today. Throughout the Gospels, after Jesus begins his ministry, various groups try to embarrass Jesus in order to show resistance to him. A Scribe comes up to Jesus asking him what is the greatest commandment. We might imagine that this is a rather sincere question, but, like many questions asked of Jesus, it was a setup. At the time of Jesus, Jewish people argued all the time about the Law and how to interpret it.
When politicians debate, we always wait for the knock-out response, the line that will both shut up one’s opponent and show the brilliance of a candidate. This makes sense when we look at politics as something like a sport instead of as a way to come to common solutions to problems that we all have. Jesus delivers a knock-out response, but not in a way to insults his opponent. Rather, it brings his opponent closer to Jesus.
How? Because Jesus touches upon both the heart of his Jewish faith and also a truth that all believers accept at least implicitly. Jesus simply repeats what we heard in the first reading, that most famous line about loving God with all our heart and soul. This was the foundation of the relationship that Jewish people saw themselves having with God. And this is the foundation to which Jesus invites the Scribe to affirm. Instead of growing apart in argument, Jesus points to values that actually draw people together. “You are not far from the Kingdom of God,” Jesus says when the Scribe acknowledges the truth of Jesus’ words.
The Scriptures invites us this Sunday to look beyond all the arguments we like to have with people and to find the things that are foundations of our lives and beliefs. The Scriptures invite us to leave behind our labels of “left” or “right” which we use in both our politics and our understanding of ourselves as believers. Beyond and above all of this, do we not stand on the same foundation?
As believers we stand on the foundation of an infinite God of love who has given us this divine love through his Son Jesus. That is what we celebrate when we gather for Mass—divine life shared with us and shared between us. As citizens, we stand for the equality and dignity of every person, and for the resources to make that a reality in our nation. Lots of people want to make money by stressing our differences, but the better road ahead is realizing how many of our values and beliefs are shared.
“You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” How relieved we would all be if we heard Jesus saying these words to us, letting us know how his drawing close to us has brought us all closer to the Kingdom that he opened for us.
30 B
Of course we want to see. We consider blindness one of the worse handicaps. Since ancient times, humans have looked into the skies trying to understand what surrounds us. Also, since the invention of microscopes, we have tried to understand realities too small for the eye to see. Telescopes and microscopes a ways we try to know what is “out there.”
But besides looking at things far away and things very close to us, we also want to look into the future. This is much harder to do because the future does not exist, but the future is emerging even as we live. When couples marry, we try to imagine what their future will be like. When babies are born, we project ahead about their lives even on the basis of their given names.
We are puzzled that Jesus asks this blind man what he wants Jesus to do. We say to ourselves, “Isn’t it obvious what the blind man wants?” But maybe it is not so obvious. After all, the blind man had adjusted to a whole way of life, probably had a whole network of people who helped him do things, and he might have enjoyed the fact that people did not expect much from him.
We get used to our way of seeing; we get used to our blindness. Because the more I see, the more I am invited out of myself into a world that might not be very comfortable. We can think lots of things about prisons and prisoners; but once we visit a prison, things seem different. We can talk about nations and their history, but once we enter battle on behalf of a nation, it seems different. We can think about wanting to heal people, but once we see doctors and nurses in action, we see so much more.
The first reading compares liberation to being healed of blindness. Jeremiah is consoling people who have lived in exile for decades. I’m sure many of them had gotten used to Babylon, had learned a new language and taken up a new way of life. Many Jewish people even married Babylonians and had families with them. What did they want God to do for them? Did they really want to return home—with all the rebuilding that would require?
The second reading also invites us to reflect on how much God wanted to see us. We think of God way up in the sky looking down on us like we were ants. But God entered into our human experience, saw our sin and brokenness, saw our lives from the inside. That is why we see Jesus as our priest: he lived our life, and this is what Jesus takes into divine glory. In Jesus we can see God’s love more clearly than ever. In Jesus we can see the future that God desires for us.
The blind man knows exactly what he wants. God also knows what God wants—our human lives renewed, transformed, fully loved, and glorified.
“What do you want me to do for you,” God asks us today. God wants to know how much we really want to see.
29 B
“Everyone grieves in a different way.” We hear this advice quite often, and it is important because sometimes people impose their expectations about grief onto other people, making them feel guilty or inadequate. But I have noticed one thing in my decades of priestly ministry. People who have spent a long time caring for the deceased person grieve even more deeply when the one they love dies.
Often it’s the spouse of the deceased, usually the wife, who cared for the husband as he grew weaker and in greater need of help for basic human needs. It can also be the oldest of the daughters who lived close to the parents; the responsibility of caring seemed to fall on her. Sometimes it’s a professional caregiver who spent years with the deceased.
The more we give ourselves, the more it increases the care we feel and show. This is the important message about God’s love for us, and God’s revelation of that love in his son, Jesus. The first reading from Isaiah gives us a snippet from almost ten chapters when Isaiah reflects on the suffering of the Jewish people in exile in Babylon for over fifty years. He comes to see all this suffering as a sacrifice that his generation is making for the future of the Jewish people, a future when they will draw closer to their God.
“If he gives his life, he will see the light in the fullness of days.” There are times, that is, when we have to hold on, in patient sacrifice, trusting that a greater fullness will be given to us. Our second reading, from the Letter to the Hebrews, reflects precisely on Jesus identifying with us in our pain and suffering. This is why we celebrate Jesus as our High Priest: he takes the burdens of our lives and makes them a gift of loving trust to his Father.
Loving trust is not what we see in the Gospel. James and John, two of the three Apostles the Lord often took aside for special experiences, come up to Jesus with a request. Their request is filled with ambition and self-importance. They want to sit at the side of Jesus when the Kingdom comes. We can imagine how they conceived of this, a life of power and special favors, a life when people approached them for favors they might or might grant.
“You do not know what you are asking.” Jesus says this to their faces because they do not know what Jesus is all about. To be in the Kingdom of Jesus is to give one’s life in selfless service to others. “The greatest in the Kingdom is the one who is servant of all.” This is because the Kingdom of Jesus is not based on getting everything one wants but rather on giving everything in one’s heart. It is heart and love that make the Kingdom of Jesus work. It is heart and love that Jesus shows us as our priest.
We gather at this mass precisely to unite ourselves with Jesus our Priest. With him, we give unending thanks to the Father. With him, we pledge ourselves to move the Kingdom forward. With him, we are strengthened to give ourselves in love by his Holy Spirit. The more we give ourselves, the more we can experience the love at the heart of Christ and at the heart of all existence. In Mass today we can ask for that because we know exactly what we are asking for.
28 B
What do we really need to survive? We find that out when catastrophes happen. We learned so much during the Covid 19 Pandemic when so much of everyday life was taken away from us. And we see people in the south reeling from Hurricane Helene. One story illustrates this well. People who relied on debit cards and bank cards for everyday life found out that they couldn’t do much when banks were washed away and there was no electricity. “We realized how important cash was,” people said.
Yes, we need cash and money, but is that all we need? The Scriptures raise this question to us who live in a society obsessed with economic news. Every day we want to know what stocks went up, what does our retirement fund look like, is inflation coming back, how much will eggs cost. But the Scriptures insist that there is something more important than cash.
I think the essential issue is our priorities. We live in a culture that strives for economic security. This makes it look like money is the chief priority of our lives. Jesus is asking us what is more important to us than money? The answer is our relationships with each other and our relationship with God. After all, what wouldn’t we give if we were offered the opportunity to have a leisurely dinner with people whom we loved who have gone before us? We value relationships most of all.
This rich man approaches Jesus, and he clearly has questions. He certainly tried to live with integrity, and he clearly put God first in his life. Jesus asks him a question that exposes what he is missing. Given a choice, he would prefer the money he has before a new relationship with God. He is so close to the Kingdom of God, but his supposed need for money keeps him from seeing the KIngdom and joining it.
Our first reading points to the idea of “prudence.” I like to think of prudence as a satisfying vision of life. A vision that lets us go deeper. A vision that abides and comes to our support particularly when everything has fallen apart. A vision that is the ground floor of our minds and holds everything else up. What we heard on the radio after the hurricane were people saying they knew it would be days before electricity would come, and maybe months before anything like roads might be available. But, in the emergency, neighbors sought others out and brought them water and food. I heard a report about some Italian club driving from out of state to make dinners for others.
Talk about money can make us all feel guilty. I see messages excoriating the super-rich and demanding that we tax them more; so we make them the enemy. The Church asks for support for people in need and sometimes we feel like it’s an imposition on us. Immigrants walk hundreds of dangerous miles for a tiny slice of our life, and they are treated like the enemy in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. The Scriptures are not talking about our feelings of guilt; they are asking us to clarify our priorities.
The Second Reading speaks about the Word of God like a two-edge sword that cuts us. God’s Word wants to help us find out what’s in our hearts. Sometimes those questions hurt us. But, in the long run, we are far richer and filled with Wisdom if we try to answer the questions God’s love raises in our hearts.
27 B
Last week I found out that September 26 was “Daughter’s Day.” Of course, I don’t know who decided that, or any of the other days I see celebrated on Facebook. But it was delightful to see picture after picture of young girls and young women, all beaming, with their parents saying how proud they were of “our daughter” and “my daughter.”
I suppose we do think of our children like that, as if they are “ours” in a sense that they belong to us. Just watch a child wait for a parent at the airport; when they see each other, the joy is so amazing that you know they belong to each other. A lot of this belonging comes from our physical relationship; we say “my flesh and bones.” But where else in our lives is there a sense of belonging?
The readings underscore the human reality that men and women belong to each other when they have made a commitment in marriage. This reflects the relationship that the Scriptures show between Adam and Eve: “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.” This ideal from the book of Genesis has been a model for how essential marriage is to our human existence. We realize today that woman was created not as someone inferior to the man, but rather as someone who shares equality with man. Mutual love assumes this.
But notice how the belonging between man and woman come about. At some point, each must make a deliberate commitment to come to belong to each other, so powerfully that St. Paul will say that the wife’s flesh is the husband’s flesh, and vice versa. Many cultures see this belonging as a decision that a family makes to give their daughter to a worthy man. Even today some marriage ceremonies use the phase, “Who gives this woman away.” But we Catholics see marriage as based in loving decision between the couple.
It is our faith and teaching that the man and woman belong to each other in God; that nothing can break the bond of marriage because it shares in the bond that Christ has made with us—as unbreakable as is his love, so unbreakable should our marriage commitments be. We know, today, that many marriage do break; we know that divorce is just about as traumatic to a person as the death of a family member.
It’s way too easy to sit in judgment on broken marriages. That’s not the point of today’s readings. More, our task as believers and Christians is to witness to the kind of love that Jesus shows us, and the faithfulness that was at the heart of his saving work. Jesus, as part of his saving work, bound himself to us with a faithful love that shows that we belong to him, and he belongs to us. He gives us a model of expansive, generous love that we are called to show in different ways in our lives.
While only a few are our blood family, our love extends to those beyond our families by the respect, honesty, and care that we exercise with others. While our nations and races show differences, our love calls us beyond those difference to embrace all people. While forces around us try to divide us, our love calls us to work for unity and peace. Jesus is not afraid to call us brothers and sisters; he calls us to live the same way.
26 B
There’s a cute story about a man searching at night in a large parking lot. The security guard sees him and asks what the problem is. “I am looking for keys that I dropped,” the man says. The guard and the man look for several minutes until the guard asks, “Are you sure you dropped them here.” The man then points to the lamppost and says, “I don’t know where I dropped them, but this is the only place that has light.”
After we chuckle at the story we realize how true it is. We get used to the way we think, what we already know, how we think life is. It’s the only lamppost we have. But this can blind us to how large the world really is, and how many other lampposts there are in the world.
Both the first reading and the Gospel warn us about making our universe too small, especially when it comes to God. Gifts of the spirit come upon Moses followers, but also upon two others who weren’t members of the original group. The group is resentful of the two. Similarly in the Gospel others are invoking the name of Jesus who do not belong to the known circle of Jesus. He corrects John and shows him how God’s love is not limited.
We can get a little provincial in our approach to life. I remember one Canadian saying to me: “New Yorkers are the most provincial people in the world.” I was shocked and insulted. But he was right; we all think we have everything in our neighborhood. But the world is bigger than any neighborhood, any development, anyone’s back yard.
The Scriptures invite us today to understand that God is, and will always be, a mystery—that is, a vastness that no one can capture or totally comprehend. Everything about our Catholic faith is an attempt to honor this reality about God. We acknowledge that we live in a sacramental world of symbols that point to a fullness that we do not yet possess. We acknowledge that the words we have to try to understand God also have their limitations.
Pope Francis recently visited nations in which Catholics are a small percentage. Part of the reason he did this was to show that, even with the Revelation we have an enjoy, God is available by those who are not Catholic and Christian because there are many paths that can open our hearts to this infinite love which we call God.
Of course, we appreciate and give thanks for the revelation that we have; this is a precious grace that allows us to be in a special relationship with God through Jesus. But that appreciation should never close us off to others. Rather, in the way God relates to us, we are invited to see the ways God relates, in a mysterious way, to everyone.
25 B
In spite of our relative prosperity and freedom, it is quite easy to feel resentment today. When we think of how our grandparents often lived—I remember my mother talking about getting through the depression of the 1930s—we have it pretty good, but it doesn’t feel that way. Often our elections are framed through the question of who is against me, or who is holding me back. So much conversation about Haitians and Columbus, Ohio, with the falsehood that they are eating their neighbor’s pets; how much attention do we even give to the enormous difficulties these Haitians had to go through just to survive?
The sense of being persecuted has been a large part of Christian and Catholic life. Martyrs were revered from the earliest days of the Church; the Eucharist was often celebrated at their tombs. That’s why almost all our altars have relics of some saints. The persecuted, the martyred, are our champions. Are we going to be as strong as they were? Can we die for our faith?
Our readings emphasize persecution. The first reading gives a penetrating analysis of how some people turn against others for their very goodness. We have to get rid of good people because they make us feel bad about ourselves. The Gospel gives us one of Jesus’ clearest statements about his death, the persecution that he will undergo as part of accomplishing his mission.
But if we explore the Gospel more fully, it tells us that the greatest danger to our faith may not come from those outside our faith who persecute us. Rather, the Gospel is saying, the greatest danger is from within the Church, from people who see the faith as basically about themselves and their status. “What were you talking about on the road?” Jesus asks his disciples. He knew very well. They were arguing about which one of them was going to be number one in the Kingdom.
Most of us, of course, are not in a position to be ambitious about careers in the Church. We don’t live in Rome where we can get some cardinal to give us a title or a fancier garment to wear. We don’t march in processions so that others can look at us and applaud us. But all of us suffer from the same spiritual danger: making our faith a way to take care of ourselves and our needs instead of making the faith a way to be of service to others.
In the second reading, James is telling his readers that their ambitions and passions are the greatest danger; these attitudes are the very opposite of that Wisdom which leads to peace and mercy, authenticity and assurance. The easiest temptation for us American believers is to bring the attitudes we absorb in daily life into the attitudes that are the foundation of our faith. I am not a believer primarily because of what I get out of faith. Whatever good I get out of faith primarily comes from following Jesus as he gives himself for others.
The root meaning of “martyr” is “witness.” Jesus, in fulfilling his mission, gives himself in service to others as a sign of divine love. Our faith, in turn, is to bring the witness of Jesus alive in our own faith experience.
24 B
With the development of modern communication, beginning with the radio, and then onto TV and now our ever-present cellphones, we have also the rise of celebrity. I suppose in older times, celebrities were mostly kings or queens; perhaps a military leader might have fame. But today making someone a celebrity is virtually an industry.
We applaud celebrities but what do we actually know about them? We see their striking faces, hear their amazing voices, but the actual lives remain hidden from us. When Matthew Perry died of a Fentanyl overdose, everyone was shocked. Did we ever know what Michael Jackson was going through? Robin Williams made us laugh up to the end although he was also fighting depression right up to the end as well.
In the readings we have today, we are invited to take a deeper look at Jesus. Because it would have been easy for him to appear as a celebrity, and also for his disciples to not realize what was really going on. In the Gospel, we have that famous scene of Peter professing that Jesus is “The Christ,” or “The Messiah.” But right away, Jesus begins to correct the impressions of Peter and the other disciples. He tells them what the Son of Man is really all about.
The celebrity of Jesus will not come from his popularity as a healer or teacher. It will not come from people applauding him as a new king or political leader. Jesus faced all those temptations when he was tempted in the desert: to live for fame, money, or power. Jesus understood the true secret of a leader: to carry the burdens of other people in his own life, particularly the burdens of sin and death.
There were hints of this truth about leadership in the Jewish Scriptures. Our first reading from Isaiah comes from his long meditation on the sufferings of the Jewish people in exile. Although they suffered beyond what any of them might have expected, their God was still with them. “The Lord God is with me,” says Isaiah. Who will prove me wrong? Paradoxically, we see God’s presence more clearly in our pain than when our days are happy.
Jesus would undergo rejection from the very leaders who should have accepted him. He would undergo abandonment from the very people who called him Messiah. He would undergo the terrible thoughts that perhaps his life and mission were failures. Without seeing all of this, we cannot begin to understand who Jesus is.
Jesus redeems us by taking on the very things in our lives that hurt us; only then will his Resurrection make sense in terms of our everyday lives as well in terms of eternal life. Redemption is not escaping our pain; it is embracing it and overcoming it by God’s love and power. The Son of Man will be rejected; but the Son of Man will be with us until the end of the ages.
Decades ago, they put on a play, “Jesus Christ Superstar.” It poked fun at the way we want to make Jesus part of Hollywood. We are always tempted to see Jesus in an abstract way like this, a star who is distant. Jesus is telling Peter, and us, that Redemption doesn’t work this way. Redemption is a servant who comes to be with us in the parts of our lives that seem hardest.
23 B
After the Olympic games in Paris, they began the Paralympics. These games began as a way to acknowledge the skills of people who had physical limitations. After watching Simone Biles and Noah Lyles, whose disciplined bodies won them gold medals, we then get to cheer for people whose bodies are not perfect, for people who overcome their handicaps. A good part of watching these Paralympic games is the way we come to see that our physical limitations are relative.
After all, do not all of us have limitations? Some of our limitations involve bodily parts; but many do not. In Sunday’s Gospel, we have people bringing a deaf man to Jesus. We think about deafness, but how many of us who can hear have never developed the capacity to listen to others? Jesus likewise healed the blind, but what kinds of blindness and biases dominate our lives?
The second reading gives us a perfect example. James is asking his readers to compare how they treat someone who comes to church who is dressed elegantly and seems rich with the way we make judgments about people who come to church who appear needy and messy. We see the people who appears to have money; we ignore folks who appear to be needy.
But our readings invite us to an important message. If in some way all of us are handicapped and limited, God wants to take those handicaps away. In the first reading from Isaiah, we have the picture of a God who touches and changes the lives all kinds of handicapped people. But Isaiah is actually speaking to people who have been forced into exile, who have seemingly lost everything. God vision is that all of us have the fullness of life to greatest extent possible.
“Be opened,” is the command of Jesus over the deaf and mute man. He wants to get rid of whatever is holding the man back. Everyone is astonished at what Jesus has done. Why? Because in our everyday lives we get used to our limitations, to the things that hold us back. We live at a level way less than our capacity. Even if our lives are only “so so” that is fine enough for us.
But that’s not fine for God who wants us as whole and complete as we can possibly be. Because the biggest limitation we experience is the incomplete way we know and love God We limit ourselves with the way in which our small hearts make us miss so much of our lives and also make us miss so much of God. “Be opened!” Isn’t Jesus speaking this to each one of us today?
In many ways, the most important part of us that needs to be opened is our hearts. Not only because of our self-centeredness, it’s also the way we put God and other people into convenient boxes that we think we can manage. Yet the less we see of God and other people, the smaller our own lives will be. When we let God take away our limitations, then our lives will begin to grow.
As we worship and receive Holy Communion today, it’s a perfect time for us to ask Jesus to say “be opened” to our hearts. God isn’t giving us a gold medal. God is giving us divine life.
22 B
There are different ways we learn things. Some of us, for example, like to learn all the rules. That’s how they approach learning a language or a new computer program. Teach me the grammar, tell me code. Others learn more intuitively. They prefer to listen and speak and pick up a language that way. Or they use their intuition to see what the computer can do.
One of our temptations as believers is to think that we have to learn and keep the rules, that this is the core of our responsibility. Let’s put the 10 Commandments up in our classrooms; that will change our children's lives. Or tell me what God wants me to do and I’ll do it.
In terms of our readings today, we can miss the point. Often when we hear the word “law” in the Hebrew Scriptures we imagine it’s referring to the 10 Commandments. God is the lawgiver; we are the people who have to obey the law or else we will get in trouble. But “law” meant much more to the Jewish People. “Law” is a way of life lived in relationship with God.
Most of us will remember the scripture that many Jews have outside their doors; it’s from the book of Deuteronomy. There’s no “10 Commandments” with a list of requirements. Rather, the verse says: You will love the Lord with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. You will love your neighbor as yourself. Because we can obey all the commandments we want, but not have our hearts turned to God. We can argue about what this or that law means but never experience love.
Many of us were raised on the 10 Commandments. When we think of our sins, we go down the list of requirements that the commandments give us. But not many of us learned about the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Risen Jesus that he gives to his followers. The Spirit cannot be understood through law. The Spirit can only be understood through relationship: As God’s heart is opened to us, so our hearts, in the Spirit, open up to God.
This is the point Jesus wanted to make to religious leaders of his day. For all they were into following laws, for the ways they found to regulate virtually all of life, Jesus says that their faith is all about words. It needs to be about hearts. For we can keep every commandment perfectly and still never understand the infinite love of God. We can spend our lives obsessing over our own perfection and never give ourselves in service.
Think about our families; sure we have rules in the house. If we didn’t, our milk would spoil every day. But beyond those rules, we have love that basically motivates our family life. Jesus does not want to be our lawgiver. He wants to be our brother, bringing us to the Father, in the love of the Spirit.
21 B
When I was young, people hardly ever moved. They worked for the same company in the same job all their lives. They had their regular practices of visiting relatives or supporting the local sports teams. Few people had cars. Today is so different. People can move many times during their adult years. They work for a variety of companies and will shift their job to gain some advantage. Visiting relatives has nowhere near the frequency of the past.
So loyalty is harder to see today. People may be loyal to certain brands, or to certain TV shows, but knowing who we belong to and being committed to it looks harder and harder. The same is true, of course, for church. People drift from one church to another, or from one church to no church, all the time, especially the younger generations.
Jesus’ question to his twelve apostles hits us hard. “Do you too want to leave?” After having told people that he is giving himself for their salvation, giving his flesh for the life of the world, they aren’t sure they want the stakes to be so high. “This is hard saying,” they say. But the apostles feel differently: “Where else would we go. You have the words of eternal life.”
Our faith asks us to be faithful and loyal. But this request, this demand, is not like the superficial sense of belonging that prevails in modern life. To respond to Jesus, he invites us to go to the core of our existence. Whatever else others may give you for a while, Jesus is giving us eternal life without stop. This life tells us who we are, why we exist, and what can make us deeply happy. To have a relationship with Jesus is to have a power of eternal love within us.
So the Gospel invites us to be different from aspects of the world around us. Our modern world is based on preferences and choices. It gives us the ability to explore different things and be exposed to many experiences. But it doesn’t ask us to find ourselves by giving ourselves. Only true faith and love does that.
Our second reading has Paul reflecting on marriage. He sees the commitment in marriage as on the same level as Christ’s commitment to his Church. Can Christ be separated from his people? Does his love ever stop? Does he change his mind? Our divorce rate in the United States is 40% for first marriages, and this represents a lower trend in recent years. Of course, our marriage rate is at an all-time low as well.
It's easy to look like we are sitting in judgement of others who are in very complex situations; that is not the point. The point is that Christ has given as a standard for love and commitment; even more, he has given us his Holy Spirit so we can live up to that standard. And he looks at us with mercy as we try to be faithful.
“Do you also want to leave?” That is a question and an option that we always have. But along with this question, Jesus also gives us the greatest reason to stay: a share in his infinite love. This is what it means to eat the bread he gives us.
20 B
I guess there’s mean part of me that takes joy in the deaths of certain kinds of people. When diet experts and health experts die at a young age, I just smirk. East protein. Don’t eat protein. Eggs are bad for you; eggs are good. Will coffee kill you or make you live longer? Dr. Atkins who invented the low-carb Atkins diet died at 72; I got him beat by seven years!
So many diet crazes. I remember in the seminary a group of seminarians decided to eat nothing but brown rice for a month. Others give up meat. Others won’t eat bread. And how many of us have endured eating kale on the premise that it’s healthy for you? Yet we do think that what we eat does affect our lives; we are always searching for the perfect diet.
Jesus has been offering us a diet during this string of Sundays when we have been reflecting on the 6th chapter of John. Today he tells people that unless they eat the flesh of the Son of Man, they have no life in them. He has told us that he gives his flesh for the life of the world.
So if we are eating the diet that Jesus gives us, what does his food do to us? Eating is a very graphic sign. At the very least Jesus is showing us how close and intimate he wants to be in our lives. His is a diet of true life. In the Eucharist we have to most vivid sign of the reality of Jesus in our everyday lives as believers.
But the food Jesus gives is not like any other food that we eat. Other food nourishes our bodies; Jesus wants to nourish our entire selves. He does not care how skinny or fat we are, he does not care if we have unending energy or hardly any at all. He cares that we slowly become transformed into the pattern of his life.
I know how some people can be if they don’t get their cup or two of coffee in the morning. But what about our regularly eating of the Body and Blood of Christ? Jesus’ food is meant to change us, transform us into his image and infuse his mentality into us. Look how powerfully Jesus puts it: as he has life because of the Father, so we have life because of him. Jesus wants to be the foundation of our very existence.
Eternal life is the life Jesus gives us now in the Eucharist and as a way of life. It is life that abides in God and sees life fundamentally in terms of God—God’s love, generosity, forgiveness, and peace. We are baptized once to begin Jesus’ life in us; but we eat the Eucharist constantly so that this life, once begun, can grow fuller and deeper at every step in our lives.
Very little food can promise us immortality. But the food of Jesus, his Body that died and now is forever risen, nourishes us on our present journey and on the unending journey of divine love.
19 B
It was an eye-catching headline: “We were wrong about happiness,” the words announced. Well, I thought I’d click and see what they were saying. The gist went this way. We used to think that if we had $75,000 then we would be happy enough. We didn’t need any more than that. But now scientists have discovered that if you have more than $75,000 then you can be even happier. More money does equal more joy.
I wonder what Elijah would have thought about this headline. Here’s a man who has a mission from God and he is broke, exhausted, and hungry. “I just want to die,” he is saying. He lies down to take a nap and messengers bring him bread and something to drink. Something well below $75,000. “Rest a little more,” the messenger says. He next wakes up to another loaf of bread and more to drink. But now’s he’s ready to undertake his mission. He didn’t need $75,000; he just needed enough to keep him going.
When Jesus fed all those people in the desert, what was he doing? Two things: he was showing them the constant love and generosity of God, and he was giving them enough to keep them going. Because however much money we have, and however many resources, what we desperately need is enough to keep us going, enough to know that God’s is never far from us.
But some did not appreciate this. Like the people of old after they escaped from Egypt, the people whom Jesus fed murmured. Let’s face it, murmuring is about the easiest thing we can do because there’s always something to complain about, we always expect more. Jesus is trying to help them see that they do not know what they already have.
To have been fed by Jesus is to know what God is all about. People cannot appreciate what Jesus just showed them because they don’t have the capacity to see how God is present in Jesus. It isn’t just that our murmuring does us no good; our murmuring rather keeps us from entering the life that God has given us, a life based on God’s abundant generosity.
In the second reading Paul tells his listeners what qualities should be part of their lives—peace, joy, trust, kindness, generosity. Where would people get those qualities? From God and from the Bread that God keeps giving us, the love and life of his Son, more than enough food for our journeys in life.
I know we’d love to have $75,000 every time we come to Mass. But, when we look at what Jesus says, we actually receive far more than that. “The bread I give is my life for the world.” The bread Jesus gives is God’s life, life so abundant it can change how we live and change the world. It isn’t that Jesus came down from heaven. Rather, it’s that he came to bring heaven down to us.
18 B
Not all hunger is the same.
There’s the hunger we have when thinking about a restaurant we will visit in the evening. Or the hunger that teenage boys have after they’ve played an afternoon of soccer. Or the hunger we have as we prepare to visit grandparents for Christmas dinner. And the hunger that many seniors or poor people experience across our country. Or the hunger we see in Gaza where children routinely die of hunger.
Hunger is a biological longing. Our stomachs are sequenced to receive regular nourishment. Without sustenance, we are doomed to die. Jesus knows this in the Gospel; his listeners also know this because they keep chasing after him. They want to be fed.
Jesus uses their hunger to point to something deeper, the hunger that is at the very core of our existence. The hunger to understand, to be loved, to feel meaning, to know that our lives are not worthless events. All these deeper hungers point to the need we have for that food that God gives us, the Son he sends to us, Jesus Christ.
Jesus makes two comparisons in the Gospel. First, he compares the food he has given the crowds to the food that God gave the Jewish people in the desert. We hear their fears and complaints in the first reading. “Did God bring us into the desert only to let us die?” They cry.
Then Jesus says something that is key to our lives as disciples. The food God gave the ancient Jewish people in the desert was the proof of his ongoing care for them. But this ancient food is proof of something else: the only food that will give us the fuller life we seek is the infinite love that God gives us in his Son, Jesus. “"I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst."
But this essential food that Jesus is talking about cannot be chomped down like a hotdog at a picnic. The food that Jesus is accompanies us at very different moments of our lives and gives us different strengths. This food is there for us in moments of bitter grief; it is there at times of spiritual emptiness; it is there when we are blown away by the realization of God’s love for us. It is there in the actions of our daily lives. This is food that has to be eaten again and again, not only at Mass, but in our personal prayer, in our private worries, and in the way we care for the needs of others, especially the poor.
The food that Jesus gives is his life, his way of life, and his assurance of life unending.
“Give us this food always,” the people say. Jesus responds: “Can’t you see that’s exactly what I’m doing?”
_________________________________
For reflection: When do I most feel fed by the Lord?
17 B
“What, we’re having leftovers?”
Leftovers have a pretty poor reputation. We like variety when we eat. Many college dining rooms are set up so students can have different kinds of food if they go to different counters. Of course, we have the major exception to this: How often did we hear that Italian food tastes better the second day? But most of us want something new to eat each day.
Yet “leftovers” is the theme of both our first reading and the Gospel. In the first reading, someone brings the prophet Elisha barley loaves and grain fresh from the harvest. “Give the twenty loaves to the people to eat,” he says. “There won’t be enough,” his assistant replies. But not only is it enough; it’s enough to permit leftovers.
Many people think that Elijah and Elisha, prophets in ancient Israel who lived 800 years before Jesus, were models for his ministry. Just as wonders accompanied their deeds, so wonders abounded in the ministry of Jesus. In the Gospel we have today from Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel, a chapter we will be reading for the next four weeks, Jesus has the opportunity to show God’s abundance the same way as Elisha. As with Elisha, there is such an abundance that there were twelve wicker baskets full of leftovers.
The image of leftovers wants to call our attention to an important truth in our lives as humans and believers. It is teaching us that what God gives to us contains a richness that can never be exhausted. This is true is our ordinary human experience: just look at the abundance of love we experience with family and close friends! And this is true in our spiritual lives: the love God gives to us is inexhaustible.
When we Catholics look at the inexhaustibility of this love, the Gospel has two references for us. First, Jesus is teaching the people, and they cannot get enough of what he is teaching them. The truth of what Jesus reveals to us about God cannot be exhausted. It’s not doctrines like we had in the catechism that so many of us memorized. It’s life-changing insights about that infinite love which is the nature of God. Secondly, we think about the Eucharist, the heart of our Catholic worship. For the food that Jesus gives is himself, a gift that can never be exhausted. Tens of thousands of Catholics celebrated the gift of the Eucharist a few weeks ago in Indianapolis at the Eucharistic Congress. But we celebrate this love at every Mass.
So we have leftovers. What are we supposed to do with them? Clearly, we are to continue being fed by them, but we are challenged to share the abundance of God’s gifts to us with others. How dare we Catholics eat what we eat week by week and think that Jesus is only for us, a treasure to be preserved? How dare we eat what we eat week by week and forget those who hunger physically and spiritually in our midst?
God feeds us. And God wants us to feed other by our generous love and by the Gospel that we each strive to live.
16 B
What’s up with pets? While I grew up in a housing project where pets were not allowed, I still did not see people dote on their pets the way they do now. It seems that we Americans spend $136 billion on our pets; dog-owners spend over $1500 a year on their dogs; cats are a bit cheaper. Their owners spend $1100. What’s up with this?
While some might be cynical suggesting that people care more about their pets than our culture cares about children living in poverty, I think the issue is more positive: an expansion of empathy among modern Americans. Whatever we feel toward each other in our divided country, we are able to imagine the feelings of animals much more vividly than we could decades ago. We feel inwardly sick when we hear about an animal being abused; this says a lot about the expansion of our human hearts.
I want to suggest that this expansion of our hearts might be a way to begin to appreciate the heart of God. In our first reading, Jeremiah speaks of God’s disgust with the leaders of his people because they are neglecting and abusing them. Jeremiah was not alone. Ezekiel is even more disgusted with the leadership. They both talk of God the Shepherd. The remedy: God will come and be shepherd. God will give God’s people the care that they should have.
This is an important image of how God is. Many of us sat through catechism classes or even philosophy classes that depicted God as something like a remote, all-powerful, arbitrary Emperor whom we could only approach with fear. “You must be silent in the presence of the King,” was the attitude we were urged to have. Our prayers would beg God to hear us, as if God couldn’t be bothered.
Contrast that with the Gospel. Jesus doesn’t sit in the Temple asking people to come to him. He is wandering the countryside, visiting the very people whose lives counted for the least in that ancient culture. In our passage this week, Jesus and his disciples are exhausted and looking to get away for a break. But the people come to him anyway. The Gospel says that he had compassion on them. They were like wandering sheep and he wasn’t going to let them feel neglected.
The Gospel is inviting us to begin appreciating the infinite empathy of God. If our empathy has expanded even to our pets, or sometimes even to our cars given the way some people talk about their auto, God’s empathy far exceeds any extent we can expand our hearts. We re made in God’s image and likeness, meaning God sees us as God sees himself. The love of shepherds for sheep, the love of parents for their children, the love of husbands and wives—these are shadows of the divine and infinite love that embraces every moment of our existence. Especially when we are in the greatest suffering.
We sometimes talk to our pets like we talk to toddlers: our pitch is raised and we use what we think is children’s language. But when God wanted to talk to us, he sent his Word not as a high-pitched voice but as a Son who gives his life . . . and is raised from the dead so he can keep on giving his life to us.
15 B
“They never called me back!” In New York many years ago when I was dealing with some people in Real Estate, that was a deadly sentence. There is no greater discourtesy in business as not to receive a return call. “I’m not returning his call,” was the way people said they were ending negotiations with others.
Contrast that with “They called me back!” Suppose you put in an application, got an initial call from an employer, and then you received another call. “I think they want me,” you would immediately think. What if a student applied for a scholarship to a favorite school; they see the name of the school on their phone and immediately get excited. “They must be calling to give me good news.”
Calls can flatter us when, for example, people want to use our talents for one thing or another. Or calls can intimidate us when, for example, we are asked to do something at work we have never done, or have to go to a very difficult meeting we would rather skip.
How do you think the apostles were taking the invitation from Jesus? Here they are, after they have seen the miracles and signs that Jesus is doing, after they have heard Jesus’ words. And now he is asking them to go and do the same thing themselves. Jesus probably knows they are intimidated; that’s why he tells them to go two-by-two. And he probably knows they will have some tough days. That’s why he tells them to shake dust from their feet and move on to the next town. But what amount of encouragement can Jesus give that will assure them? At some point, they realize that Jesus is asking them to trust him.
Of course, all of us have been called. That’s what baptism means. Jesus has incorporated us into himself, given us the Holy Spirit, and filled us with the capacity to live his life. We are baptized into Jesus who is priest, prophet, and king. That means Jesus gives us the power to relate to God, to speak out in his name, and to help build his kingdom of grace and mercy. I’m sure we feel pretty intimidated when we think about this. God wants us to do more than say our prayers and go to church!
So, Amos, the prophet we meet in the first reading, can encourage us. Sent to preach to the Northern Kingdom, although he was from the Southern Kingdom, he hears the priests denounce him as someone who is attacking the king. He is denouncing the lack of care for the poor. “I’m not a professional prophet,” he says in effect. “I was a shepherd and worked with trees. It was God who called me to give this message.”
Likewise the apostles might say, “We were only fishermen, or farmers, why are you sending us?’’ And we might say, “I’m only a lay person; I didn’t go to Catholic college.” But to all of us Jesus is saying this: “If you trust me, you will know how to bring my message of joy, hope, peace, and mercy to the world. You will find the words. The situations will come to you. Trust me, be my spokesperson, and you will know what to do.”
Jesus calls us, waiting for us to respond.
14 B
Another Fourth of July. Another week of fireworks, picnics, and visiting beaches. Another opportunity to think about ourselves as a people, a nation, an aspiration. Never before had a nation been formed on the basis of ideals rather than shared culture and language. The fourth of July, Independence Day.
“Independence.” When I think of this word by itself, I’m struck by how basically negative the idea is. Independence means freeing ourselves from a dependency, getting rid of oppressors, getting someone off our backs. Our nation’s founders desired freedom from the English king. We learn about the voices that cried out for independence: Patrick Henry, Paul Revere, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington. “Give me freedom or give me death,” said Patrick Henry.
But once we are independent, what are we about? “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” often feels like we are about ourselves and our pursuit of money. Because the essential question is not who we are freed from; the question is this: what are we free for?
Just as the people of ancient times needed voices to guide them, so we need voices today. The first reading talks about the importance of God’s Word in our lives: Ezekiel is sent as a prophet to a people in distress. Under attack and threatened by the Babylonians, the people need a guide. Ezekiel is one of the prophets God sends to give his people hope and direction. “They shall know they have a prophet in their midst.”
But what if we do not want a prophet? We are shocked by the Gospel today. Jesus is speaking to his own town, his own friends. But they dismiss him for exactly that reason. “Where does he get all this?” They are saying, “Who does he think he is?” Jesus cannot announce the coming of God’s Kingdom to them because they do not want that Kingdom; what they know, what they are, is good enough for them. Jess could work no miracles there because miracles happen only when hearts are open; there were no open hearts that day for Jesus.
In our own day we are always hoping for a prophet. Often we think politicians are the prophets we need; and often we, like the contemporaries of Jesus, are often disappointed with politicians. Occasionally a great religious figure arises. Many older Catholics remember Bishop Fulton Sheen. Many in our nation still hold Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., as an outstanding prophet. So whom is God sending today?
The disturbing, and exciting, answer is that God is sending us. We, as God’s people, are baptized into Jesus the Prophet. This does not mean we predict the future. It means we live and say the truth—about ourselves, God, and the purpose of life. We need to say what freedom is for: not to be as selfish as we can but to selflessly show God’s care for everyone. Not to have as much money as we can but build up God’s Kingdom of mercy and love, a treasure that can never be lost.
God is always inviting us to a different kind of freedom. We are not invited to do whatever we want. No, God invites us to be free enough to always show God’s love, especially to those who have not yet discovered it in their lives.
Happy Independence Day!
13 D
I remember the headline like it was yesterday. When I was a child, the New York Daily News put these words on the front page, “A Pack a Day.” There were two pictures. One was New York in the 1960 filled with fumes and pollution; the other was a pack of cigarettes. Between these photos was an equal sign. I certainly can remember how, in our housing project, we had to dust off the windowsills every day because so much dust and pollution came into our house.
But now the air is clearer, not only in New York but also in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh. We realized that the way we were living was killing us. Not only pollution, but also cigarette smoke, and foods brimming with fat. We knew that life should be different. Instinctually, we had in our heads the vision that the book of Wisdom gives us: God created a world to give and preserve life.
The billions of dollars we spend every year, along with the vast amount of scientific research, are further testimonies to the truth that we believe life is a precious gift, given by God, and not to be distorted by sin, sickness, or social carelessness. In our gut we know that sin and death do not belong. That is why the coming and the work of Jesus are so decisive for us.
Mark gives us two powerful stories today; he wraps one inside the other so that we will see them together. Both the life of a young girl and the life of an older woman each demand to be valued, each deserve the restoration of Christ. We can sympathize with the older woman, made unclean through her constant bleeding, trying everything she could to get better. She has only one hope, to touch the garment of Jesus; she will do anything to get well. Our regular schedule of medical commercials on TV, featuring one disease after another, reflects this attitude in us as well. We want to buy our health!
If the woman felt she had only one choice, the parents of the dead girl feel they have no choice. Though they come to Jesus and he accompanies them to their home, they join in the weeping of the crowd: “Jesus came too late, all is over. Too bad for the girl.” But that’s not how Jesus sees it. He touches the girl, and she lives.
Doesn’t Jesus touch us at this Mass? Doesn’t he come to us with the promise of life? Doesn’t he offer healing now and hereafter? This gift and this hope that Jesus gives us helps us put aside our wasted tears and our desperate actions. Jesus, the healer, has healed us on many levels, and he heals us with his own divine life.
This is both a gift and a challenge. When we encounter Jesus as healer, we encounter the one who asks us not only to receive his healing, but, even more, to bring healing and wholeness to the world around us. We are sent as ambassadors of hope. This means we not only accompany others in their hurt; we also assure them by the way we live that true life will always be available for those who believe.
12 B
June was a strange month in this area. Several times, in the middle of the afternoon, weather forecasters were live on television following severe thunderstorms and the potential development of tornadoes. These forecasters stood in front of maps dotted with yellow and red blotches. On one occasion, through the evening, we no longer saw maps. Instead, howling winds and cycles of rain raged through neighboring towns.
Most of the time we know what to do with storms. We find a comfortable place, make some tea, and sit with our families and pets. But you cannot do that when a tornado is bearing down on you. You simply cannot feel safe.
That these kinds of events happen in all lives the Gospel shows quite clearly, as the twelve apostles are screaming in their boat in the middle of a raging storm. Through it all, Jesus is able to be sound asleep. The apostles and stunned by this. “Why are you sleeping?” they yell. “Aren’t you worried that we are dying?”
There are outer storms that come upon us; but there are also inner storms as well, times when we feel terrified and without meaning. These come at moments of great crises, when we feel our lives are coming apart—the death of a parent, an unjust accusation, an insult from one we trusted. The Gospels are saying that unless we learn to trust the assuring presence of God, we will not withstand any kind of storm, whether from the outside or from within.
We have a tiny selection from the Book of Job which is one of the greatest meditations on tragedy and blame. Throughout many chapters, Job has railed against how life has treated him even though he claims he is innocent. In Job’s time, and for centuries, people believed that bad things only happened to bad people. Job is saying that is nonsense because he is an example of a just person who has to suffer. But in the passage we have, God is speaking to Job about the limits of his wisdom. None of us can comprehend the mystery of God, nor even the astonishing order of nature, let alone its occasional disorder.
Instead of tossing ideas around to defend himself, Job is invited to trust God, to look beyond the mishaps and tragedies of life into the steady presence of divine love and order which is the context in which we live. “Why were you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” The followers of Jesus can only be astonished as his words.
Why are we terrified? Why do we think life is against us? Why do we think we cannot trust? Our second reading shows us how Paul was not even afraid of death because in Christ Jesus we have already faced death—and death lost. That victory of Jesus is bestowed upon all who have the privilege of being next to Jesus and living in trust.
In no way is Jesus making light of the fears of our lives. He is just asking, in light of what he has done, why we keep letting fear get the better of us?
11 B
I remember visiting my mother in March years ago. “It’s still alive?” I asked her. I was referring to a poinsettia plant I had gotten her around Christmas time. “Why shouldn’t it be alive,” she said. “I water it every day. Plants don’t die if you take care of them.”
Indeed, with all the ways we admire technology and human industry, we can miss the vitality that is built into nature. Most of our religious and civic holidays revolve around the way nature—plants and trees—start blooming in the Spring. A few biologists study how this happens; we just enjoy the return of the leaves on the trees and the way our grass turns green.
Jesus uses the dynamics of nature to give us a lesson about the Kingdom of God. He points out to the wonderful ways things grow in the natural world. He even mentions the mustard seed, the littlest of the seeds, that grow into an abundant bush. In doing this, Jesus is giving his listeners an important and consoling vision: We should not run around worrying that everything is falling apart. God has given us the inner dynamics of grace, dynamics that bring growth and healing.
We hear such imagery in the first reading, comparing kingdoms to trees. Kingdoms can sprout from a branch cut off from a tree. This reminds us of how often the Jewish people thought of themselves as a vineyard that God planted. Because of the care that God took in planting and protecting the vineyard, it should be productive. It was the same with God’s people: because of the care God took in establishing a people on the basis of divine love, we should be productive as well.
Are we consoled with these images? So often we make life into some tense and difficult effort, living with fear and anxiety. For all the things that make us anxious, should we not first be encouraged and strengthened by the simple ways in which our daily lives lead us to grow. On this Father’s Day, for example, we think of those men who have loved and cared for us—a love that has brought us to be able to love and care for each other. The simple dynamics of our family lives are ways in which God helps us grow in human love and in our experience of the Kingdom.
Look at the confidence that St. Paul shows us! He feels a unity with Christ that abides so deeply in him that he has passed beyond a fear of death. Whether he is called to live to serve more people in the future, or whether he is called to die—in either case Christ is his, and Paul can continue growing in that relationship with the Lord.
As we celebrate our dads, as we celebrate our families on this special day, so the Scriptures call us to celebrate the simple and powerful grace that God has embedded into our lives, a grace that can grow within us no matter what we feel we have to face. With God’s constant care, why shouldn’t we thrive?
10 B
As I lay in pain with my leg broken in three places, the doctors calmly described how healing happens. Blood fills the cracks between the broken bones. Then the blood hardens. Once this happens, the cells of the blood are gradually replaced by bone cells. This is how the body repairs itself in a marvel of self-healing. This happened way back in 1981. Too bad not all healing is as efficient as this.
I’m talking about the brokenness of the human heart. Someone asked me on Facebook last week if I thought that humans understood how much they need salvation. It made me think. While we know well enough all the problems that exist in our own lives and around the world, probably most humans presume that we can fix ourselves. Science, technology, Artificial Intelligence, biology. But the more we think like this, the more we are proven wrong—whether from these terrible wars we see, or hundreds of thousands who have to flee their homeland, or climate change, or our own personal struggles with sin.
Our first reading gives us the image of Adam. Most of us think of Adam as some ancient figure that swung from tree to tree in the Garden of Paradise. We fail to see Adam’s true sin—not eating a piece of fruit but profoundly failing to trust God and wanting to become God for himself. Adam’s impulses are still strong in us today. We all want to be God and pretend we are omnipotent. Our Catholic teaching is that we do need to be fixed, profoundly fixed, and only God can do it.
That is the Good News we read in the second reading as St. Paul is writing to the Corinthians. God came to us in Jesus, took on our brokenness and death, rose in victory from the dead, and now bestows this Spirit of victory upon us through the grace he pours in our hearts. The remedy for our brokenness is the Spirit of new life that God gives us in Jesus Christ. Whatever we have to go through, the victory has already been won in Christ.
This Good News can be hard to take. It’s easier for us to be cynical about ourselves and think that we cannot help ourselves. In the Gospel we see that even some of the relatives of Jesus didn’t know how to take his message; some thought Jesus was crazy! But Jesus proclaims God’s victory over evil because he has taken down the realm of Satan from the inside. The blasphemy of Jesus’ opponents was their refusal to see God’s salvation at work in Jesus right before their eyes.
We come together on Sunday to celebrate just this victory because we become one with the Risen Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit is renewed in us. Christ’s broken body is risen; his spilled blood brims over with divine life. In Communion we are united with him. Not only are we healed again, but we are sent forth from Mass to be agents of healing in the world.
We have heard Good News. We ask the Spirit to make us Good News for our world today.
Corpus Christi B
You agree, I agree. That’s how most things happen today. Millions of intersections in our nation work because people agree to stop at red light and proceed on green lights. When we go shopping, before we leave the store with the item we want, we agree to pay the demanded price. Couples make vows of love to each other; this is a profound agreement to love another totally and without condition.
Our readings today are all about agreement. The fancy word we have in the Bible for agreement is “covenant,” the solemn decision we make to commit ourselves to another or two a way of life. Our first reading narrates one of the most important covenants in human understanding: the people solemnly agree to live in accord with the law of God which Moses reveals to them. He even sprinkles the blood of sacrificial animals on them as a sign of the seriousness with which they take this agreement.
Jesus is gathered with his Apostles for their last meal. In it, he invites them to enter into a covenant. He takes the cup of wine, thanks God is Father for his goodness, and then offers it to his Apostles as “the new and eternal covenant.” God is making a new agreement with us in Jesus Christ; God is asking if we will become part of this covenant.
What is this new covenant to which we agree? We can see this in the second reading. Here we have a meditation on what Jesus did in his death and resurrection: he offers his Father perfect obedience, perfect love, and shows his eternal relationship with his Father. He begins a new agreement between humankind and God, one based on the total self-offering of himself in love. This new covenant shows us the infinite love of God which will always be offered to us.
The question from our readings comes down to this: do we want to be part of Jesus’ eternal agreement with the Father? Do we want to join ourselves with the self-offering of Jesus? Will we respond today as the Jews of old responded: Lord, we will do and live everything that you reveal to us?
This is what it means to celebrate the Eucharist. In these years of Eucharistic revival, we are invited to join the eternal Covenant that Jesus makes. When we attend Mass we are united ourselves to Jesus; when we receive Holy Communion, we are accepting that covenant as our way of life.
God has been given to us totally in Jesus. Will we respond by giving ourselves in the same way, through lives of total love and the ongoing gift of ourselves to the vision of Jesus?
Trinity Sunday
Often people mention how boys and girls cannot stand each other when they are 7, but they cannot stay apart from each other when they are 14. “I hate girls,” a boy will say. “Yuck, boys, they are so dirty,” a young girl will say. But once they are old enough to be aware of relationships, everything changes. This is true in many ways in life. Think of how a couple are basically friends until they “fall in love” as the culture puts it. When we become aware of relationships, then everything changes.
Today’s feast of the Holy Trinity invites us to think of our relationship with God, where it is and where it can go. The word “God” is a huge and often fuzzy word; we hear the word all our lives and use it frequently; but we hardly think about what that word means. We expect religious experts, theologians, to do that.
But all the readings we have had during this Easter season point in a very different direction. Jesus has told us again and again how his fundamental mission was to reveal his Father to us. He tells us that he did not come to do his own will, but to do the will of his Father, to bring salvation to the world and let the world know of the Father’s infinite love. He further tells us that the Holy Spirit he sends upon us will deepen the relationship we have with the Father because the Spirit will continue to awaken us to the Father’s love.
Perhaps, then, on this feast of the Holy Trinity, we might think of the God we worship, the One in whom we will profess faith in a few minutes in the Creed, from the vantage point of relationship. What does the Trinity help us to understand about God and ourselves? Principally that we are created, that we are saved, and that we are being transformed. That’s how God relates to us.
We are created. This doesn’t mean much to lots of people but to believers it means everything. We do not think that we are the result of some cosmic accident without meaning. Rather, we believe that a God of infinite love brought us into existence and surrounds every moment of our lives with the signs of his love. Nothing has to be; yes, but divine love brought all things about so we could relate to this God and see how this God endlessly relates to us in generous love.
We are saved. Because despite the relationship of love God invites humankind to have, we humans choose to love only ourselves, our power, our greed, our own need. God refuses simply to condemn us to the darkness of our selfishness; God comes to us as the divine Son, taking on our brokenness and restoring our relationship of love with the Father. In Jesus we are made whole again. In Jesus we know, once again, the dignity of our existence.
We are being transformed. The Father and Son send the Holy Spirit upon us to allow us to intimately relate God. This Spirit is the inner power of God given to us to fill us with God’s love and communicate that love to each other in the generous, selfless service we give each other. The Holy Spirit is the very energy of Divine Love empowering every moment we have.
Father, Son, and Spirit; created, saved, and transformed. This day we know a little more who God is and, a little more, who we are, and can be.
Pentecost
We have plenty of reasons to yell at each other. We’ve seen this in one university after another as people line up on different sides of the Israeli-Gaza conflict. We’ve also seen this for three years as Russia invaded Ukraine and Congress has been split about continued funding for Ukraine. We can make all kinds of arguments about immigration. And, of course, we are in a year or presidential elections, so we have lots of time to disagree about the next leader of our country.
But we see and hear something very different in our readings today. We have heard the story of Pentecost so often that it can be easy to miss just what a remarkable scene it is. Not only do we have signs of divine presence coming “from the sky” in the form of wind and flames; we also have people of very different backgrounds being able to communicate with each other. Just as the Bible sees human divisions starting with the Tower of Babbel, so it sees humans coming together in a new way on this feast of Pentecost.
What is happening here? People are beginning to see that there is something greater than their divisions, greater than their national backgrounds and identities. In the coming of Jesus, and in his Resurrection from the dead, God is revealing a vision of humankind united in the life and love of Jesus. Jesus is telling his disciples that just as he was sent to be an effective sign of God’s infinite love, so they also are being sent to do the same. “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”
It would not take long before Christians started disagreeing with each other; indeed, the divisions we have in the Church are the most scandalous dimensions of our Christian life. But Christians have always been invited to live in and be faithful to that radical unity that Jesus forms between us, for he shares his one Risen life with all who believe in him. And he gives the one Spirit to his followers not so they can stand apart; rather, the Spirit is to draw us out of ourselves in service to others.
We see this in the second reading when Paul is talking about the different gifts in the Corinthian community gifts given to build up the community of faith. These gifts all flow from the same Spirit, the Spirit who lives in each of us and in all of us, drawing us into unity with each other even as we are drawn into unity with God.
It’s easy to be drawn into battles today. Social media makes fighting even easier because we can comment on each other without much consequence. People who have a lot invested in dividing people spend millions of dollars to keep the fight going. Even Pope Francis himself has become a point of contention among some Catholics. This is possible only so long as we focus more on ourselves and not on the one Christ who sends his Spirit to unite us. Whatever differences we might have, we have the greatest bond uniting us, the Risen Christ pouring out his Holy Spirit.
There will be continued polls and protests, arguments and counter-arguments. In addition to asking ourselves how we contribute to these divisions by our own attitudes, we also have to ask if we have forgotten the vision that God shows us this day when his Spirit comes from Jesus to unite us in his love.
Easter 6 B
As children we said her name with a whisper. She was our school principal. She managed a large grade school with a group of over thirty sisters. But she was a force. She scared you just be looking at you. The thing we feared most of all was being “sent to the principal’s office.” She never laid a hand on a child, but she didn’t have to. Her whole demeanor instilled obedience and fear.
Some twenty years later I had a chance to meet with her. She had given up her religious name and her habit, but she still was a nun. We chatted about how she was doing, what I was going to do for the year, and then talked about the school days. She said to me, “When children would come to me in trouble I wanted to give them the biggest hug. But I forced myself never to do that. I knew that I had to be stern, or the child would never learn. I loved the kids in that school. I wanted to hug them all.”
Jesus uses a phrase that should cause us to think when he talks to his disciples this week. “A slave does not know what is master is about.” From my reading of the writings of slaves, all they thought about was what the master because their very lives depend on the master’s attitude and moods. Even today, people in a office discuss among themselves their supervisor, interpreting every gesture to mean one thing or another.
But Jesus is totally correct in another sense. As long as we know someone as a master or a boss, we know them only from that perspective. We might be friendly now and then, but we are not equals. I cannot know a master or a boss the way, say, a friend knows that person. I have a lens through which I have to look at those who are put over me; that’s how I know a master.
Jesus is saying that, because of the disciples’ relationship with him, they now him differently. “I do not call you servants; instead, I call your friends.” Jesus, proclaimed as the Word of God at the beginning of John’s Gospel, now elaborates on what that means. Jesus can show us the heart of God from the inside, from our relationship, from our friendship with him.
Jesus says this because the reason he entered the world was to show us the love of the Father. Jesus wants his disciples to know what the Father is about. Everything he has heard from his Father—which means everything he has received from his Father—he know makes known to us through his words and actions. As he lays down his life, Jesus is showing us the heart of God.
Jesus does this because he wants us to live in the Father’s love ourselves. The second reading says that to know God is to know love; not to know love is not to know God because God is Love. Our first reading gives us a prime example of this when the Church opened its doors to Gentiles, that is to say, opened its doors to all humankind. “God has no partiality,” Peter says. Now, God’s love comes completely and totally to every human being because of the revelation of Jesus.
Today’s Gospel challenges everyone of us to examine our images of God. All those images are distortions unless they all say “love.”
Easter 5 B
When I was in Iowa early this spring, all the talk was about the basketball star Caitlin Clark. Nearly every conversation I had involved people who knew her or the high school she went to. As the college basketball season came to its climax, her team was one of the two finalists. Even though the Iowa Hawkeyes did not win the final game, it seemed like the spotlight was entirely on her. But she made it clear. Her gifts would mean nothing without the gifts of her fellow players. The team was a team. It was not all about her.
I thought of this when I reflected on the first reading which tells us about the beginning of the ministry of St. Paul the Apostle. Paul always seems like he heroic loner to us. First, he is directing the persecution of the Christians; then the Christians have a tough time integrating him into their community because when he arrived in Jerusalem and tried to join the Christians, they were afraid of him.
This conception we have of Paul, as something like the Lone Ranger us old people used to watch on TV when we were children, works against the way the early Christians understood each other. Our Gospel gives us the famous words of Jesus: “I am the vine, you are the branches.” The idea is that the very same life that flows in Jesus is the very same life that abides in very follower of Jesus. We can only be followers of Jesus if we stay united with him and, therefore, united with each other.
How does the Gospel put it? “By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples." Thinking that our Christian faith is some lonely journey we are taking misses the basic idea of our faith. When I was a child, priests would visit our classroom and say that our basic task in life was “to save our souls.” They made it seem like we were on a dangerous journey that we could be in charge of, that our faith was all about our personal salvation.
Our faith is not primarily about our salvation; it’s about God’s transformation of the world. Jesus lives and dies as a testimony to the infinite love of God for everyone. Jesus wants everyone to be part of his vine, that is, to be part of the community of life and love that is the essence of the Church. When Jesus rises, he gives the Holy Spirit to his disciples so that all of us can share his life, a life that is at the same time both intimate and shared.
Notice how the early Christians cared for Paul when he eventually joined with them. They saw him persecuted so they figured out a way for him to go to his hometown safely with his mentor, Barnabas. After this point, Paul and Barnabas are working together forming communities of faith who would show the message of Christ by the way they lived. Christ was revealed in the way the disciples loved each other and invited others to be part of his saving way of life.
As we go deeper into these years of Eucharistic Renewal, we can see how the Mass we celebrate has been telling us this our whole Catholic lives: Jesus comes to us as a believing community. Because of the faith we share, Jesus makes himself part of our lives in the Consecrated Bread and Wine that we share. In Christ’s Kingdom, no one eats alone, because Christ has come to feed us all. There is only one glory which belongs to Christ, a glory that Christ wants to share with all.
Easter 4 B
Good cop, bad cop. We see this theme often in shows about the police. “Bad cop” here means the one who plays tough, threatens, and scares the suspect into confessing. But we know that “bad cop” can refer at times to cops who do bad things, things that embarrass other cops and the wider public. Stories like this appear often; two weeks ago, we the six police men sent to jail for torturing two African Americans. But we can also have bad firemen, bad teachers, bad politicians, and even bad doctors. “Bad” means that they did harm when they were supposed to do the good their profession demanded.
The idea of a “bad shepherd” sounds strange to us. How can a shepherd be bad? You hang out with sheep and keep them out of trouble. Yet one of the most constant themes, particularly from the major prophets, is how the leaders of Israel dealt with the Jewish people. They are often called “bad shepherds”—so bad that prophets says that God will lead his flock himself. God will care for them and keep them safe.
What is the difference? Bad shepherds, bad leaders, are in it for themselves. They use their position and their flock to advance themselves. They do not value the sheep. Indeed, running away from the sheep in times of danger or inconvenience is exactly what they do. But God sends Jesus as the Good Shepherd who gives his life for his flock. No running away. No lining his pockets. The Good shepherd places the sheep above himself. He lives to give his life for his flock.
When we hear Jesus use this language, it should help us know how valuable we are to God. All too often we have seen God as something of an enemy to us, watching to see where we make a mistake, waiting to punish us. But the whole point of the coming of Jesus was to show us the infinite love of God, that unconditional love which encircles every moment of our lives.
This love is revealed to us as a standard for our own lives. We know the two formulas Jesus gives us: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.” But also, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” As followers of Jesus, we are to show the selfless love of God to others, to love them with the very love of God himself. Jesus becomes the cornerstone; Jesus becomes the standard according to which we are called to live. By living in this divine love, we are becoming the children of God who share divine life endlessly.
We’ve all met people like this, whose selflessness transforms the world around them. They cannot give enough; they teach us that giving all we have is the singular path to joy. Tragically we see this selfless love when someone in the police or fire department dies on duty, or when soldiers are killed in war. We then know well the price of love. Christ is showing us that this kind of heroic love needs to happen even more often in life than in death.
Easter 3 B
Imagine people moving in next door who seem very different from you. Perhaps they speak a different language or belong to a different race. It’s not hard to think of immigrants buying a house or renting an apartment in our building.
Suppose, however, that your children become friends with their children; that parents in each house are willing to baby-sit for all the children; that children enjoy the same television programs or games. Eventually there will come a point when these different families will try to eat together. When that happens, it will look like a breakthrough. “Wow, I liked their food even though I never had it before.” Or “Let’s eat together again and share our dishes.”
While eating is natural and instinctual; eating together represents something much more. On one level it’s social sharing between people who have become open to each other. On a much deeper level, it’s a sign that lives are being changed and people are willing to share not only as neighbors but also as friends. Just think, for example, of a couple going out to dinner on their way to getting engaged. Food is a way to share life.
“Have you anything to eat?” Jesus asks his disciples. They, of course, are involved in a situation so strange they don’t know what to make of it. Jesus is dead and buried; but here he is, standing next to them. If it seems strange to have dinner with people of other cultures, what is it like to have dinner with someone risen from the dead? “Don’t think of me as a ghost; see, I am as real as you are, and I have come to share my life with you.”
This is an essential part of the story of Easter. Jesus is breaking down barriers which are greater than social or racial barriers. He is breaking down the barrier between life and death itself, with life overcoming the very specter of death itself. He does this by communicating his life to us. Of course, the startled Apostles see this when he eats their food and probably smiles. But they will see this much more as they continue to do what he told them to do, to break bread together, to drink from the chalice that is his life, to demonstrate the reality of Christ’s union with us.
Jesus points out that God was working toward this point in all the revelation of the Jewish people; Peter, in the first reading, is demonstrating that God has offered humankind reconciliation, reconciliation even to those who rejected his beloved Son, the Messiah and sign of divine mercy.
“Have you anything to eat?” Jesus asks us today. He invites us to continue eating with him on such a profound level that his divine life comes to belong to us. Yes, Lord, we have something to eat—your very life, your risen body, your sacred blood, the food that you yourself have given us! As we eat together the meal Jesus provides, we realize that Jesus is not a ghost. He’s as real to us as we are to each other because he has made us one body in his love.
Easter 2 B
“I got it from the horse’s mouth.”
My mother would frequently use this phrase to say that she was certain of something. Research tells me that the phrase comes from British horse racing, when the horse supposedly tells someone how to bet and who would be the winner. It’s a striking phrase to use in today’s social space, given all the hacking and fake news we worry about. We are far more likely to see other parts of a horse before we see its mouth!
This Gospel, which we read every Sunday after Easter, presents the figure of “doubting Thomas.” But it really is a test question for all of us: how do we think we can discover Easter? Was Easter only for the ten disciples to whom Jesus appeared Easter night?
Think about Thomas’ doubt. He basically is doubting the word of his fellow Apostles. We know this is true because he doesn’t have to put his fingers into the side of Jesus. And when he sees Jesus, he affirms exactly what the eyes cannot see: “My Lord and my God!” he says. His Easter experience is not one of physical vision but one of faith.
Thomas eventually came to accept the testimony of the others. “We have seen the Lord,” they say. But when they saw the Lord on Easter Day, it was a life-changing experience in two ways. The first way happened through reconciliation. “Peace be with you,” Jesus says. These were all men who ran away from Jesus at the time of his arrest. These were all men who knew, in their gut, how flimsy was their faith. Easter is God’s way of overcoming our failures.
The second way is through empowerment. Jesus breathes upon them, which means he is sending them the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that helps us behave like Easter people. He tells them to spread the reconciliation they have received themselves. “If you forgive sins, they are forgiven.” As Apostles of Easter, their job is to help others see that God is offering reconciliation, love, and union with everyone. Easter is not meant to be hidden. Easter is meant to be shared.
“As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” Jesus tells them. Easter means that, through the Holy Spirit, we can reveal to the world what Jesus revealed. Because the major work of Jesus was to reveal the infinite love of the Father, a love that not only transforms our lives but brings our lives into a new dimension which we call Easter.
Thomas had trouble believing this; but, if we are honest, so do we. How easy is it for us to say that we are Easter people? To believe that the Holy Spirit is extending Easter through our own lives? To believe that the power of the Risen Christ has been given to us? We do not need to see the wounds of Jesus to believe in Easter. We only need to see the joy and hope that Easter brings to us and the world.
Because our faith comes from the very mouth of Jesus, God’s Word spoken in our hearts, and God’s life spreading from believer to believer. “We have seen the Risen Lord!” Indeed, we have, and we do. That’s why we can live like Easter people, filled with hope and joy. The gift of Easter keeps coming and inviting us to share it.
Easter B
Think of how expectations shape our vision and our life.
When I’m at an airport or bus terminal and I’m waiting for a friend, I keep scanning the people passing by and keep anticipating the one I’m expecting. I begin to see this person everywhere. “That’s him, look at the hair!” “That’s the kind of coat she wears.” My expectation allows me to open myself to the event.
Our Gospel shows us today that Easter is like this. There is an unexplainable event; Mary Magdalene, and later some of the Apostles, find the tomb is empty. What could have happened? The first visitor, Mary Magdalene, looks and runs back to the other Apostles. It never crosses her mind that this is exactly what Jesus had been talking about.
Next, we see Peter and the beloved disciple running to the tomb. Peter looks in and sees the burial cloths strewn around the tomb. This would make absolutely no sense because, even if someone was going to steal Jesus’ body, they’d keep him in his burial cloths. So first Peter looks but very little registers. When the beloved disciple looks, he sees the same thing as Peter, but he recognizes something very different—he sees that Jesus had to have been Risen from the dead.
Maybe Peter was a natural no-nonsense skeptic about things, but the beloved disciple obviously had something else going on in his heart. We imagine his special friendship with Jesus; some recent theories think this disciple was Lazarus, the one Jesus raised. But his special friendship was not because Jesus loved him more; it was because he accepted the love of Jesus more deeply. It was that love which allowed him to know Easter when he saw it.
Most of us tend to be more like the Magdalene or Peter in the Gospel. We know something has happened, but it affects us only so much. How many of us actually live as if Jesus rose from the dead? Or, even more, as if we were going to rise from the dead? Or as if Easter was actually filling the world with life and hope? Unfortunately, most of us are so much the no-nonsense-types that our eyes can only see so much of Easter.
That’s the invitation of this feast of Easter. Can we hear the message: “He has been raised!”? Can we feel the earth shake when the stone is rolled back? Can we celebrate that our lives are destined for so much more than most people can realize? Can we be Easter people?
The extra crowds that come on Easter day are not just inspired by the smell of lilies. The crowds show us the longing that resides in all human hearts. Inside, we know we were made for much more. Easter is showing us how much more this actually is.
Passion Sunday B
Why was Jesus murdered?
Understanding this is to understand an important side of our human nature, that part of us that refuses to dream or hope.
Jesus came to bring the Kingdom of God into human experience. From his first announcement in Capernaum up to his entrance into Jerusalem, Jesus proclaimed a new way to relate to God and a new way to live because of this new way to know God. In sign after sign, saying after saying, he shows God’s desire to make us whole, fill us with joy, broaden our acceptance of others, and live free from the worries that beset us.
Yet the more Jesus did the greater was the resistance to him. A thousand so-called religious problems, and a thousand so-called political problems were thrown at Jesus. Jesus asked them, “Why can you not see what is happening in front of your faces?” They responded by closing their eyes. Far easier to live without a dream, without hope, than to accept what Jesus was doing. Because if he did what he did, and was who he was, then our lives would have to change. And change is hard.
So this day we behold Jesus on the Cross. We hear him cry out in anguish. We see people trying to kill Jesus and the dream he brought into the world. We see so much resistance still inside us because it’s easier to stay where we are.
But what if that dream is so great, so essential, it cannot be killed? What if God’s hope for us is greater than our resistance. What if even nailing him to the Cross could never be enough to finish Jesus off?
Lent 5 B
Lots of people would love to live in Howard Beach. It’s a seaside town in Queens, NY, right on the bay that leads out to the Atlantic Ocean. Many dwellings have boat houses for the residents who are lucky enough to ride out to the ocean on a sunny afternoon, or catch crabs or the many kinds of fish that make their way thru the harbor of New York City. Howard Beach sounds ideal to many folks on the East Coast, but it has earned a regretful reputation.
It was December of 1986 when four teens were driving through Howard Beach and they experienced car problems. Unfortunately, were the wrong race. Other teens set upon them, beat the teens with bats and forced one to run out onto the highway where he was killed by a passing car. Not in my neighborhood, not in my backyard.
This attitude of “my territory” is a big part of our life today; just look at the numbers of people who shoot at folks who accidentally turn into their driveways or ring the wrong doorbell. Not to mention our national argument about border security. Much of this thinking can be seen in patterns from the bible, where tribes had their territory and were wary of foreigners.
But Jesus did not come for only one group. “If I am lifted up,” he says, “I will draw all people to myself.” He is referring to his death on the cross, of course, and how his death would bring life and liberty to anyone who believes that Jesus revealed the Father to us through his self-giving love. Jesus was doing something new in the world, forming a community of faith that should include everyone.
Our first reading is from the final chapters of Jeremiah. The words are addressed to people who were taken into exile in Babylon, Jews who had to live outside of their homeland for four generations—eighty years. Jeremiah is saying that God is going to do something new. He makes a new covenant with his people, not like the other covenants where they could fail and go into exile. No, God will write God’s law on our very hearts so that our relationship with God would be permanent and personal.
All through Lent this year we have been reflecting on God’s Covenant with humankind through the Jewish people, first with Noah, then with Abraham, then with Moses, then with the Jews in Babylonian Exile. Today helps us to see how all that revelations comes to its climax in Jesus who give us the chalice of his blood which is “the new and everlasting covenant” that we celebrate every Sunday. Our Eucharist is a covenantal reaffirmation with God in which God discloses his infinite love for all humankind.
We Catholics particularly underscore the universality of God’s Covenant and love; we are a church for all people, all classes, all cultures. The Mass we celebrate says that because it is the same Mass celebrated through the world. The Eucharist challenges all of our hearts: can we let Christ broaden our hearts and minds so that we see God’s infinite love for all the world? This is why we say our Church is the sacrament for the world—the world can find its hopes and dreams in the vision that Jesus left us.
Lent 4 B
My generation grew up on Rock n’ Roll, the original songs that came out in the 1950s, with heroes like Bobby Darren, Frankie Avalon, Connie Francis and Elvis Presley. We would hear a song on the 24-hour music station and wait for the first kid to buy the 45 RPM; then we’d play it again and again, clapping and sometimes spontaneously dancing. Not all the songs were wild ones like “You’ve Gotta Be a Hound Dog” by Elvis or “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley. Occasionally there were slow songs like Elvis’s “Love Me Tender,” or Connie Francis’ “Frankie,” songs that were easier to dance to.
One of the most memorable of these songs came from Shep and the Limelights, called “Daddy’s Home.” It has a very plaintive sound to it, like it’s trying to relieve a feeling of hurt. It probably refers to someone who went off in the Military but now was returning to his girlfriend: “Daddy’s Home, daddy’s home to stay.”
This song has been ringing in my ears since I read the first reading a few weeks ago. How the Jewish people must have felt that God had gone away from them. The reading talks about the terrible assault on Jerusalem, the destruction of everything that held Jewish life together, and the taking of thousands of Jews into Exile in Babylon for almost 80 years. But, despite the enormous feeling of abandonment by the Jewish people, Cyrus, the King of Persia, defeated the Babylonians and the Jews were able to return home. Because Daddy came home, the family could go home again as well.
Our Lenten reflections have centered on the various covenants that God made throughout Jewish history, from Noah through Abraham through Moses; today’s reading tells us how God is faithful to those covenants in an astonishing way. For the Gospel tells us that God sent his own Son and gave him to the world, “not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved.” If we ever doubted the care that God has for us, we are invited to think about how God entered our history and transformed our lives by the presence and saving work of Jesus.
Indeed, in two weeks we will be invited to reflect on Jesus’ death, how he cries out wondering, just as we all do at times, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me.” Jesus shows us again, as we saw in Babylon, that God never abandons us. Indeed, God’s love has only been intensified through history such that we can gather around this altar today and affirm that Jesus Christ comes into our midst with the same saving power that brought him beyond the Cross, with the same power of Resurrection.
The word for this, as we hear in the second reading, is grace—God’s generous and saving love for us even in our sinfulness and inadequacies. Our Christian faith is based on this grace, just as Jewish life as based on God’s Covenant. Every moment of our lives is wrapped in that divine love and care that allow us to trust, to grow, to follow in the steps of Jesus.
It’s as if we now know that God has begun a dance of love with us, a dance that cannot come to an end.
Lent 3 B
The big news in the world of golf two weeks concerned Tiger Woods. He has had a long-time clothing contract with Nike; I’d see many people with hats and shirts that had “TW” emblazoned on them. I never wore anything with Tiger’s name on it because I didn’t want to embarrass him with the poor level of my golf. But now he has a contract with Taylor Made, a big brand in golf equipment. He has a stylish logo that gives us the shape of a Tiger as if it was stitched on.
I wonder how many people buy the brands of famous people thinking that it will change who they are or how they act? Will an Aaron Judge jersey make me more agile on the field? What about an Alex Ovechkin hockey jersey or stick? How many people are splurging on the reddest lipstick they can so they can cultivate the Taylor Swift look? Does it change their singing?
All of this shows how we identify today—with large public persons or teams through a branding technique. We have this desire to change our lives. We think that our models or idols will modify our lives one way or another. We think that we can build an image of ourselves through the image of someone famous.
Yet today’s Gospel shows us that this is not an easy thing, even when it comes to Jesus. Certainly Jesus shows an image of himself that the apostles had not yet seen; certainly, too, the apostles are attracted to it and want to stay in the glory of that image. Peter babbles in amazement at the image of Jesus with Moses and Elijah: “Let us build three tents here,” he says; Jesus is the star whose light has fallen on him. But at that very moment a cloud covers them with a voice from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.”
Following Jesus is not primarily about seeing him; rather, the Father asks us to listen to him. Because our eyes can be dazzled way too easily, but the dazzle is not the point. Our ears take things directly into our brains; that’s where Christ’s Word wants to form us. Hearing means being obedient; hearing means I have accepted someone’s message to me. Jesus wants to communicate his message through the openness of our hearts more than the openness of our minds.
Lent gives us an opportunity hear God more deeply. As a result of letting ourselves do that, we come to see God more clearly. In the first reading, does Abraham hear God more correctly the first time, or does he hear God more fully the second time, when God says he doesn’t need the sacrifice of Abraham’s son. The nations all around Israel practiced forms of child sacrifice; Abraham says that this is not what God wants, nor is it what God is like.
At the end of Lent we will see most clearly what God is like when Jesus gives his life as a sign of total love. He does this not so much to appease his Father; far more, it is to show the infinite extent of God’s love, of God’s self-gift. These weeks leading up to Holy Week and Easter are times when we can sit with Peter, even in the shadows, and reflect on the wonder of God’s life and God’s saving presence in our hearts. In this way, we be able to see the light of Christ’s face all the more clearly.
Lent 2 B
The big news in the world of golf two weeks concerned Tiger Woods. He has had a long-time clothing contract with Nike; I’d see many people with hats and shirts that had “TW” emblazoned on them. I never wore anything with Tiger’s name on it because I didn’t want to embarrass him with the terrible level of my golf. But now he has begun a contract with Taylor Made, a big brand in golf equipment. He has a stylish logo that gives us the shape of a Tiger as if it was stitched on. I imagine he will sell a lot of shirts.
I wonder how many people buy the brands of famous people thinking that it will change who they are or how they act? Will an Aaron Judge jersey make me a better batter? What about an Alex Ovechkin hockey jersey or stick? How many people are splurging on the reddest lipstick they can so they can cultivate the Taylor Swift look? Does it change their singing? As kids, we thought a Superman costume would allow us to fly!
All of this shows how we identify today—with large public persons or teams through a branding technique. We have this desire to change our lives. We think that our models or idols will modify our lives one way or another. We think that we can build an image of ourselves through the image of someone famous.
Yet today’s Gospel shows us that this is not easy, even when it comes to Jesus. Certainly, Jesus shows an image of himself that the apostles had not yet seen; certainly, too, the apostles are attracted to it and want to stay in the glory of that image. Peter babbles in amazement at the image of Jesus with Moses and Elijah: “Let us build three tents here,” he says; Jesus is the star whose light has fallen on him. But at that very moment a cloud covers them with a voice from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.”
Following Jesus is not primarily about seeing him; rather, the Father asks us to listen to him. Because our eyes can be dazzled way too easily, but dazzling is not the point. Hearing is the point. Our ears take things directly into our brains; that’s where Christ’s Word wants to form us. Hearing means being obedient; hearing means I have accepted someone’s message to me. Jesus wants to communicate his message through the openness of our hearts more than the openness of our eyes.
Lent gives us an opportunity hear God more deeply. As a result of letting ourselves do that, we come to see God more clearly. In the first reading, does Abraham hear God more correctly the first time, or does he hear God more fully the second time, when God says he doesn’t need the sacrifice of Abraham’s son? The nations all around Israel practiced forms of child sacrifice; Abraham says that this is not what God wants, nor is it what God is like.
At the end of Lent we will see most clearly what God is like when Jesus gives his life as a sign of total love. He does this not so much to appease his Father; far more, it is to show the infinite extent of God’s love, of God’s self-gift. These weeks leading up to Holy Week and Easter are times when we can sit with Peter, even in the shadows, and reflect on the wonder of God’s life and God’s saving presence in our hearts. In this way, we be able to see the light of Christ’s face all the more clearly, particularly in the Eucharist.
Lent 1 B
There’s everything you have to go through to get a diploma. And then the real testing begins.
Ask any doctor, lawyer, plumber, accountant or even any priest. One’s true test doesn’t come in the classroom or at the university; it comes when one starts working and dealing with the realities of life. After all doctors go through to get their degree, they have years more of internships, often involving working long days without sleep. And when lawyers start working and find they have to read over eight hours a day, I’m sure they wonder about their choice.
At Jesus baptism, the heavens opened and the Father’s voice was heard. “You are my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” But this astonishing inauguration of Jesus’ ministry leads to the scene we have in our Gospel today: the Spirit leading Jesus into the desert to be tested by Satan. What was that testing about?
I think it’s pretty clear in the next line that Mark gives us: “Time has come to its fulfillment. Open your hearts because the King of God is right here.” In the desert Jesus clarifies what his life is all about. It could have been about being famous, or being a political leader, or a religious superstar. Instead, it is about bringing the Kingdom of God to people of his time and, through his death and resurrection, to people of all time.
It is the testing that we go through that helps us see what we truly want and how we are truly called. Every great political leader faced a time of testing, a test which forced them to ask: “Do I really want to say ‘yes’”? In the desert Jesus knows that his mission will thrust him into situations of enormous conflict. As he faces these questions, heavenly messengers minister to him, and he knows even more clearly his Father’s presence.
We are being tested as a society in our own day. We read the story of Noah and chuckle at the story of the animals going into the boat. We can imagine what the Ark smelled like after two days. But the story is about God’s pledge to creation, a creation that God has handed over to us. The earth is the great test for our generation today.
While it has been easy for us to exploit creation for our needs, nature needs to be venerated and not exploited. We are being tested and the test is not about our comfort, aided by burning fossil fuels, but about our very existence. If we go spiritually into the desert with Jesus, maybe we will get clearer about the humility we need in our human projects. Maybe instead of giving up beer or chocolate for Lent, we do something, instead, for God’s created world.
All tests can make us stronger; the one we face with our attitude toward creation, will also help us to survive and live.
6 B
So what exactly is the Super Bowl celebrating? On first glance, we think it must be celebrating one of our favorite sports, football which, even given controversies about its dangers to health, continues to be hugely popular. It also is celebrating gambling, particularly given the new and addictive gambling apps on many cellphones. It celebrates certain cities, of course, because either San Francisco or Kansas City can feel great about themselves after the game. But isn’t it mostly celebrating sheer human strength?
During football season we watch men get on a field and, despite their helmets and shoulder pads, simply fight it out. Whether it’s the sheer bulk of people on the line for offence or defense, or whether it’s the athletic swiftness of the receivers or the quarterback, football is a way to test and exalt sheer human strength.
So what about those of us who aren’t particularly strong? Many of us are growing old: it takes all our energy to simply put on socks and shoes. Some of us are naturally small-framed. Maybe we can try pickle ball but certainly not football. And some of us are just physically ill with a variety of handicaps. We consider it an achievement to be able to use our walkers.
Our Scriptures this weekend give us one of the starkest images of weakness, people suffering from leprosy. In ancient days, this was a disease that doomed you. However strong you were, you slowly saw your body wasting away. Even more, you were set aside from everyone else so you could not contaminate them. Many of us had to isolate ourselves during the Covid pandemic. Imagine spending your whole life isolated?
This leper comes up to Jesus, violating all the rules we read about in the first reading, rules which demanded that lepers stay apart from everyone else. “If you wish, you can make me clean.” This leper is testing the heart of Jesus. Jesus is coming to proclaim a Kingdom; is that Kingdom only for the strong? Only for the healthy? “I do will it,” says Jesus. For this Kingdom is open to anyone, especially for those who have been excluded from life and society.
Few of us think of ourselves as lepers, but all of us experience some kind of weakness. Many of us feel weak emotionally because life drains us of energy. Many of us feel weak morally because of the temptations we face. Just as Jesus wanted to heal the leper, so Jesus wants to deal with our various forms of weakness. Jesus would make us strong by giving us his own strength, his own unity with his Father, his own power in the Spirit.
Our gathering here at Mass is not, as Pope Francis frequently reminds us, a gathering of the perfect but rather a gathering of people who are always in need of growth. As we come to Jesus in the powerful sacrament that he makes available for us, we should be able to hear him say: “I do will it. Be with me and I will make you whole.”
We don’t call it our Super Bowl; we call it the salvation which flows from our Mass.
5 B
When I was a child, one of the things you always heard on TV were jokes about mothers-in-law. The comedians that my parents loved, people like Bob Hope and Sid Caesar, always told mother-in-law jokes, usually about one line long. I was looking up some of these jokes this week. One went: “I haven’t spoken to my mother-in-law for eighteen months – I don’t like to interrupt her.” The power of these jokes came from the tensions between wives and their mothers; and mothers always knew best.
In our Gospel today, we have Peter’s mother-in-law in a very short but revealing incident. Jesus has begun his healing ministry and visits the house of Peter, his new disciple. His mother has a fever. Remember in ancient days, having a fever had to be frightening because who knew what caused it or what might heal it. Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law. The Gospel says, “She immediately got up and ministered to them.”
I remember when I was declared “sick” as a child, a part of me was happy. Now people would pay attention to me, I’d get an extra scoop of ice-cream, and maybe I had two days to watch TV all by myself. Sometimes being sick or hurt seems to make you special. But Peter’s mother-in-law gets up and starts serving Jesus and his friends immediately. She wasn’t going to wallow in her illness.
Our first reading gives us the story of Job. This is an ancient and beautifully-written exploration of grief and God’s will. God permits Job to be tested, to lose his family, to be very sick; but Job never abandons his trust in God. But neither does Job ever stop complaining. It’s like he has found his place in life as an eternal victim, insisting that he deserves better.
Peter’s mother-in-law shows the purpose of healing. God wants to restore us so that we can be of service to each other. God wants us well so we can give ourselves to each other. Every healing that Jesus did was a sign of something much bigger. After all, how many people had fevers, had troubled minds, had crippled limbs, had problems. Jesus seems so frantic to reach each person, but this is a sign of how’s healing is directed toward everyone. Jesus’ miracles are signs of the coming of God’s Kingdom for all.
Part of the coming of God’s Kingdom involves understanding how God’s love and strength are part of our lives; therefore, in God’s name, we can give our love and strength to others. When we lift each other’s burdens and dry each other’s tears; when we get up off our beds and put aside our complaints so we can serve each other, then we know the power of the Kingdom is present in our lives.
Jesus briefly talked with and touched Peter’s mother-in-law. And she has been an image of what healing can be accomplishing in our lives. Life is not about self-pity but about the mercy of God poured out upon all.
4 B
“You have a big mouth!”
This must be one of the most frequently-used insults. While we mostly apply it to associates who tend to dominate the conversation, it can also apply to politicians and entertainment figures. Having a big mouth doesn’t only mean dominating the conversation; it is also possible that people speak louder when they have little to say or to accomplish.
Jesus speaks to us, but he doesn’t have a big mouth. As we see in the Gospel, what Jesus does says the most about him. People are amazed because Jesus speaks with “authority” or “power.” Instead of getting empty words or hot air, we get an experience of God’s Word present in our midst.
It is interesting that the demons figure out Jesus before anyone else in the Gospel of Mark. That must be because the demons have no place to hide from Christ. God’s goodness faces the forces of evil without ambiguity or compromise. “We know who you are,” the demons cry out. They are asking us: do we know who Jesus is?
Indeed, many Christian feel they know who Jesus is. We have read and heard stories about him; we call him “Lord” and “Savior.” Many even come and worship in the name of Jesus. But the impact of Jesus on our lives can still be pretty limited. Unlike the demons, we have many places to hide and many ideas to keep Jesus’ authority and power limited in our lives.
One of the ways we do this is by listening to part of what Jesus says. It’s tempting to like the words of Jesus that we can use against other people because if we think others are bad, or worse than we are, we can feel innocent. So we want Jesus to denounce the sins of others. They are the liars, thieves, the impure and violent. We have many religious big mouths denouncing everyone else today.
If Jesus is God’s Prophet, then we have to allow Jesus to speak to us as much as we want him to speak to everyone else. We see from the Gospel how easy it is to be amazed by Jesus, to applaud him. But we see from our own lives how hard it is to put his words into practice in our lives. There are always parts of us we are trying to hide from God. These are the parts where Jesus’ Word needs to have the most effect.
Yet Jesus, God’s Prophet, is patient with us. He knows our resistance and how we try to hide. Still, he keeps speaking, revealing God’s mercy and grace, and waiting for the moment when we will open our hearts more fully to him.
3 B
So what would be your gut reaction if someone held up a telephone and said, “President Biden is asking for you? Or if your cellphone rang and the phone said Pope Francis was on the line? Or if you were a teenage girl and someone named Nick Jonas claimed to be on the other end of the line?
We would be immediately skeptical, would we not? How am I worthy of a calling from this or that president or pope? How do they even know that I exist? But what if you got a call that said it was Jesus calling? Of course, we would ask questions . . .but, in reality, are not all Christians called by Jesus?
We have a very compressed story of Jonah in the first reading. We barely have a few paragraphs, but they are very optimistic. God calls Jonah, Jonah goes preaching, and all the Ninevites are converted. Never mind that the Ninevites didn’t know who Jonah was; never mind that the Ninevites were seen as bitter enemies of the Jewish people—God still calls Jonah to preach to these detested people.
What about the opening lines of Jesus’ words today, the very first words of his mission after his baptism. “The times have been fulfilled; now things have come to a climax. The Kingdom of God is right here. Change your lives so you can be part of it?”
Initially we would find that message attractive; look at how the four fishermen in the Gospel immediately respond to Jesus’ call. “I will make you fishers of human beings, capturing people into my Kingdom of love.” We are surprised. Didn’t they want a few months to think it over? Didn’t they need to let their families know? We imagine Zebedee without his two best fishermen, left to clean fishnets for himself.
But isn’t there an initial reluctance when we hear the call of God? In fact, Jonah was enormously reluctant himself, preferring to escape to a foreign land rather than hear God’s word and follow it. And we will see as we read the Gospel of Mark this year just how many times the Apostles did not understand who Jesus was and even resisted his message.
But none of that obscures the power of the Word of God because it is a word of infinite, selfless, divine love. It is a Word that establishes the world itself and alone gives depth to the meaning of our lives. It is a Word that, shocking at first, is the most transforming Word we can possibly hear. And it has been spoken and given to us!
Paul is telling his followers that the ordinary concerns of their lives are now quite relative. There is only one important thing for Christ’s disciples: to live in response to the Word God has spoken to our hears.
2 B
“He was hearing voices.”
Many times we hear this phrase as equivalent to the idea that someone was not in his right mind, that she was loony or schizophrenic. This is part of the stereotyping of people who have various mental issues. Because, when you think about it, who isn’t hearing voices? Most people are hearing voices most of their lives.
In fact, the voice we hear most of all is our own. One way or another we are talking to ourselves, most of the time silently, thank God. When we come to love others, we begin to hear their voices, sometimes more forcefully than we hear our own. Occasionally we fall into times of anger; it’s amazing how strong that voice can be. But hearing voices is part of what consciousness is.
So the issue then is this: what are the voices that we let dominate our lives? Our first reading gives us the important, and powerful, story of Samuel. You will remember that he was conceived late in his parents; lives; after his birth, his mother Hannah brought him to the local shrine to be reared. Now he is grown and hears his name called in the middle of the night. But he doesn’t recognize the voice. He thinks it’s the voice of the old priest Eli whom he has been serving. But Eli knows something else is happening: a new voice is coming into the life of Samuel. He has to teach Samuel to open his ears, and his heart, to grasp it.
We have a very different scene is the Gospel. Some of John the Baptist’s disciples get curious about Jesus. Who is he? “Lord, where do you live?” they innocently ask. “Come and see,” Jesus says, almost in a teasing manner. Like Eli, it takes time for them to recognize the voice they are hearing and what it means. But by the end of the afternoon, they have come to see Jesus as the “Messiah,” the one that John the Baptist had proclaimed.
In each of these cases there is a convergence. Initially, the listener was out of step with the speaker. Initially there were questions or even confusion. But eventually something deep inside the listener allows them to hear God speaking, the Lord calling, a voice stronger than all the other voices. Eventually they come to recognize a voice that speaks to the longing inside them and their culture; eventually they recognize a call from God that makes total sense in their lives.
In our own lives, we see some of these dynamics as well. We hear things but do not associate them with the longings of our heart. Something is trying to speak inside of us, but we cannot hear it distinctly. We all need to appreciate the two things the scriptures suggest: time to absorb the word that is spoken inside of us, and someone who can help us interpret what we are hearing. Our callings are never immediate instances of clarity, but a gradual growing into the mystery of God’s divine call to every human being.
How, then, do we set aside time to hear the voice of God? Who then helps us hear it? God’s calling in our lives is so profound, we cannot reduce it to a soundbite, or to some magical flash. God’s calling makes sense only to the extent that we continue to give ourselves to it until it becomes the dominant voice in our lives.
Epiphany
We hear the word “star” used a lot, sometimes about sports, occasionally about business, but mostly about entertainers. Everyone seems to think that Taylor Swift is the biggest star right now; and, just behind her, Beyonce. So stars dazzle us. But the most important stars in our lives are the ones that both dazzle us and guide us. We want to follow them.
The Three Wise Men of the Gospel have seen a star; but it far more than a curiosity for them. It is something they feel compelled to follow. Inside each of them was a desire that seemed to become embodied in a star. They not only relished the star; even more, they relished the message, and the person, the star would lead them to.
These Wise Men are a fulfilment of the vision of Isaiah the prophet, the prophet we have been reading almost nonstop since the start of Advent. Isaiah lived a time when Jerusalem was endangered; he lived through a time when Jerusalem was destroyed. But he never doubted God’s faithfulness. He said that God would lead the Jewish people back to Jerusalem; even more, he said people of other nations would be drawn to the teachings of Moses and the Jewish way of life.
Jesus is born precisely to be the star that would unite all people, the one in whom everyone could find their dreams answered. For the Jews, Jesus was a more intense, personal, and direct revelation of God. He wants to teach them about the love of the God who is his Father. But for the gentiles, Jesus was to be the answer to all the pagan culture that had grown up in the half-century before Christ: he was to be God’s Truth revealed in our human flesh.
Jesus comes to respond to the needs of everyone, even those people who think there is no God or that God is not important. Because God has built into every human heart the same questions and longing that is in the hearts of these Three Wise Men. They know something is missing; they are will to go on a journey to find out what that is. They are asking us and our culture: do you think that God is missing in your life? Do you think you can find fulfillment without God?
The scene is quiet and small, to be sure; three men with a mother, child, and Joseph. But we should not be fooled. We call this feast “Epiphany” because it is the start of God’s blazing light revealed through Christ to all the world. The Wise Men leave; but they leave to bring the child they have found to their different regions and cultures. Christ is not meant to be kept in silence; he is meant to be proclaimed to the world.
The light of Epiphany has shone on us; we too have seen a star and found what we were searching for in the child born 2,100 years ago. So we, like the Magi, have the same mission: to let the light of Epiphany shine through us onto our modern world.
Holy Family B
This year it has been impossible to experience Christmas without constantly thinking of the wars that are going on in Israel and in Ukraine. In Bethlehem, the traditional Christmas crib has been changed into the image of a baby on a pile or rocks. We certainly have seen plenty of images of piles of rocks, in Ukrainian cities and. In a terrible way, throughout Gaza. At the same time, we have been hearing about hostages and seen images of family members tearfully talking about their fears for their loved ones.
So this feast of the Holy Family underscores the place of family in our lives. On the one hand, we have to take family for granted because it’s the closest framework of our lives; on the other hand, when family members are threatened or torn away from us, it fills us with fear and drives us to grief. We realize how we cannot take family “for granted.”
Family is not some organizational invention, although some people sometimes make it sound that way. Family is the basic way human beings become human. The very frailty of children demands the constant care of their parents. The very love of parents shows itself in the birth of new life. In our flesh and bones, in the deepest outlines of our hearts, family has been chiseled.
Family has love and commitment built into it. This is why any divorce feels like a tragedy. This is why conflict between parents and children seems intolerable. This is why the image of seniors virtually abandoned in nursing homes feels like betrayal. Family is such an instinctual part of our lives that it demands that we commit ourselves to it. We all smirk when we hear mobsters refer to themselves as “family.” But they certainly have understood the commitment part of family reality.
Our Gospel has Mary and Joseph bring Jesus, aged eight days, to the Temple to satisfy the practice of ancient Judaism. But this is far more than a ritual Mary and Joseph are carrying out. No, this is St. Luke’s way of saying that, from his earliest breaths, Jesus was committed—to the vision of his Father, to the vision of the Kingdom of God, to a vision of a new human family bound together in universal love and joy.
As a Church, you and are the visible sacraments of this vision of God. Through our lives as disciples, joined together in Jesus, sharing in his unending banquet at every Mass, we are attempting to reveal God’s vision of a worldwide family of love to the world. It begins with belonging and with our commitment to belong to others, to care for them, to serve them.
Our mission today is to stand as a counterimage of the images of violence and division that so pervade our world today. Our mission is to reflect toward each other the commitment God has made to us in the birth of Jesus and the human family to which he belongs.
Christmas B
We all deal differently with unexpected news. Think of our reactions to great historical moments in our history, the attacks on September 11th or the killing of John F. Kennedy. Of course there was shock. But initially there was disbelief. The news was too big for us to easily hear.
This helps us begin to understand the reaction of the shepherds to the news of Jesus’ birth. Imagine spending hours, night by night, watching sheep in the field. What could be more boring than that? And this was something that only the least important people did. But here it is: sometime in the night, the skies are lit up with angels singing about a Savior. What could this possibly mean to them?
But we need to pay attention to the very first people who accepted Christmas. For the rulers and important people like Herod, the birth of a Savior was the last thing they wanted. They had what they wanted, and they didn’t feel they needed anything more. In fact, the thought of Jesus’ birth makes him start to plot against Jesus.
It is to people with the greatest needs that Jesus comes—to the poor, the dismissed, the despised. Jesus’ message can best be heard by people who have no pretensions, people who are fully aware of their poverty and humility.
That’s what Advent was for: to help us get in touch with just how much we need a Savior, just how much we need God in our lives. Those days of preparation were to help us empty ourselves of our illusions. Only then can we hear the Angels’ voices: A Savior has been born. Only then can we approach the baby, with Mary and Joseph, knowing that God has come to transform our world.
The Shepherds saw the Angels, heard their voices, but it didn’t stop there. They were so filled with wonder and joy, they had to tell everyone! Christmas will only take on more meaning in our lives if we, like the Shepherds, can spread God’s Good News to people in our own lives.
Advent 4 B
I think every family owns a picture they consider “classic”—in the sense that the picture seems to capture so much of family’s history and connections. Big events like graduations or marriages make for these key photos. Or perhaps age and circumstance are the most important. I have a photo, for example, of my Grandmother and Grandfathers on the East Side of New York. From the sunlight and clothing, it’s probably an Easter Sunday. I keep going back to this photo to capture new details that reveal the setting of their lives and even the earliest months of my own life.
The Gospel we have today, St. Luke’s story of the appearance of angel Gabriel to Mary, feels like a classic scene for us Catholics. This is the third time we have read it this December, given the feasts of the Immaculate Conception and Our Lady of Guadalupe; it is also read other times of the year. Yet, the more we read it, the more we see in it—about Mary and her life, and about ourselves.
Luke goes out of his way to provide details: look how often the word “name” is used in the opening sentences. He wants us to know the names of the people and the events of this pivotal moment of history. “And the virgin’s name was Mary,” Luke says because the rest of this first chapter of his Gospel keep Mary in the spotlight.
Yet Mary herself does not seem like a “spotlight” kind of person. Instead, she is rather shocked and upset that an angel would appear to her. When she hears his greeting—“Mary, you have found favor with God”—she does not jump up and down with joy. Instead she is confused and puzzled. “What is happening here? Why is this Angel telling me these things?”
Mary’s shyness is a key to her life and to ours as well. The Gospel is all about how God works with us, even given our limitations. It is God, the mighty one, who does great things through Mary; it is God, the mighty one, who does great things through us, weak and fumbling though we be. It is God who comes into our lives to use us to speak to the world and be part of the world’s transformation.
“I am the Lord’s slave,” Mary says at the end, a more exact translation of the Greek. This is exactly the point: through her humility and lowliness, God is accomplishing something powerful for humankind. Isn’t that what we celebrate tomorrow, Christmas Day: God appears in our midst not with a huge army of fighting angels but in the form of a child totally dependent on the care of his mother and Joseph.
As we bring Advent to a close, its message seems even stronger. Here, in the darkest and coldest days of our year, God shines forth. Here, when we acknowledge our utter need for God in our waiting, God is able to appear. Here, in the simplicity of the warmth of our families and friendships, God reveals the beginnings of a new world, the world of his Kingdom.
God, indeed, is always sending angels into our lives. But we can see them only with humble and expectant eyes.
What is Mary inviting us to see in this story of her openness to God?
Advent 3 B
Deserts are not strangers to us. We regularly see desert scenes when we see people coming through the American Southwest looking for asylum; we know that sometimes people do not make it because they die in the desert. We also have seen plenty of bleak scenes from the war zones in the Middle East and, in a different way, from Ukraine. There are empty lands . . . and there are lands that have been made empty through relentless bombing. We have deserts that nature gives us; and deserts we make with bombs.
So what are the voices that these deserts need? What voices is God sending to us? Because in a real way we are always surrounded by desert, whether outside of us or inside. What will help us make it through?
John the Baptist has no trouble identifying himself with the voice of God in the desert. The image comes from Isaiah the prophet, as we see in the first reading. The desert Isaiah is talking about is the experience of being in exile, captives in a foreign land. God’s voice to them is clear and reassuring: make a clear, straight path because my people are coming home.
God’s voice from Isaiah speaks of liberation and restoration. He has been anointed, appointed by God, to speak to people who otherwise have no hope. God’s purpose is to bring good news to those who do not have any; to bring freedom to the imprisoned and healing to the broken; to give sight to people whose exile has made them unable to see any hope or purpose.
John comes as a voice in the desert. He is the voice that speaks after what seems like centuries of silence. He is the voice that enters the desert of human experience and proclaims an end to our desolation. He recognizes the one that no one else yet recognizes, the one in our midst who will be light, life, and freedom for the world. He is proud to play his role: Behold, I proclaim Jesus Christ in your desert, in your emptiness.
John gives us a way to see ourselves at this time of year. In many ways our modern culture looks like a desert of faith. This desert has many levels. Publicly religion is frequently put down as silliness or magic; personally, many people have the seeds of faith but have trouble expressing faith or celebrating it with others. The consequence of this is huge: without faith, it is almost impossible to have a comprehensive sense of ourselves or our purpose in life.
We, then, can be like John the Baptist. We don’t have to dress in animal skins or eat insects, but we can all point others to Christ, the Son of God who enters human history to transform it. We have all been appointed to bring good news to the poor and proclaim a time of redemption. We all can point to Christ and tell people what he continues to do in our lives.
Advent 2 B
You have had an important interview for a promotion that you really want. The interview seemed to go well. But when the call comes, it’s not about the promotion; they want another interview with you! “I thought it would be all over,” you think. Or imagine you’ve been looking to buy a house. You have talked with several banks and think you have a loan lined up. But then you get a call: they want to review your information all over again. “I thought it was a done deal,” you think.
That’s the idea that I think many of the contemporaries of St. John the Baptist had back then. John is a strange man, dressing like an ancient prophet, living in the desert. Yet he has caught the imagination of many people, and many kinds of people. “Change your lives, the Kingdom of God is right here,” he cries out. How many of his followers thought that John was God’s answer to their problems?
Yet here is John saying: It’s not over yet! I am coming, but only as a messenger, only as someone to get your ready. Another is coming after me; I’m not worthy to touch his sandals. I am baptizing you with water; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.
What might this phrase mean, “baptize you with the Holy Spirit?” We know there are many Christians who do not think their baptisms were enough. Rather, they think they need another baptism, baptism in the Holy Spirit, that really frees up the gifts of God in our lives. But this is not the idea that we Catholics have. When we are baptized, it is in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We receive the Spirit in our baptisms. Yet so many believers do not appreciate this.
Baptism in water is, obviously, a cleansing. Baptism has meanings like “wash” and “clean.” We can imagine what this felt like for the crowds that came to St. John in the Jordan. And isn’t it true that many Christians think that’s the purpose of their faith: to be clean, pure, and sinless? The idea is that if I do not have any sins, then I am a good follower of Jesus.
But Christian baptism clearly means more than this. Being clean and flawless is not the ideal of Christian life. Rather, we are baptized to be empowered by Jesus to be his follower and continue his mission. So Christian baptism obviously means more than washing; it means being empowered to bring the vision of Jesus into reality; being empowered to serve as he served.
Today the Scriptures remind us that we are called to be disciples of Jesus, to be people who continue to learn from him so we can continue his mission. All of us are called to forgive, to bring healing, to console and strengthen, to accept, to love with God’s love. All of us are called to proclaim the Kingdom with our own lives. Advent isn’t just waiting for Jesus to come; Advent means we share in the task Jesus has given us—to extend his Kingdom in the world through our lives.
This undoubtedly is a gradual process; look at how long it took Jesus’ Apostles to understand what he was all about. But God works on us, throughout the span of our lives, with the constant gift of the Holy Spirit. We do not get baptized to feel good about ourselves. We get baptized to help Jesus Christ change the world.
Advent 1 B
I cannot imagine the stress and suspense. Hundreds of people in both Israel and Palestine have been without members of their families for weeks. The delicate process of releasing hostages has begun, a process so frail it can break at any time. We can hear people asking, “Will my child be returned to me? Will I see my father again?” And the stress goes on nonstop, waiting for relief.
What happens when hostages return, or when sick people come back from the hospital, or a family member returns home after college? After the period of waiting, of wishing, life takes on a normal pattern once again. We can live without the stress and worry. Everyday life takes over.
As we start the season of Advent, we are in a period of waiting. The Church designs this season to help us focus on our need for the coming of the Lord Jesus, not just in Bethlehem but in all the world. But God invites us to a different kind of waiting. It’s not a time of stress and worry; rather it’s a waiting filled with expectation.
Because however great our daily lives are, they are incomplete. However comfortable and safe we feel, there is a longing yet deeper inside of us. However normal and ordinary things might be, Jesus invites us to seek what is extraordinary.
“Oh, God, that you would rip the heavens open and come down,” the first reading cries out. Yet our faith is saying that God does just this: heavens have been ripped open and God is coming down to us in Jesus Christ, not just to assure us in the moments of our lives but, far more, to shape the moments of our lives into a path of hope.
Advent is a time when God wants us to dream. We get so used to the way our lives have come to be, the routine that we have, our tasks and expectations. God has expectations of us that far exceed our everyday dreams; God has expectations that our lives may achieve a fullness of life and love which is the deeper yearning of every moment in our lives.
“Watch,” Jesus says in the Gospel. Watch for the signs of God’s grace and presence. Watch for the ways God holds our hearts in our sorrows or stirs our hearts up when we realize what God is doing for us. Watch for the ways heaven continues to open for us every day if we stay alert, if we keep our eyes open, if we pray with true longing.
In some way we can all become hostages to the everyday, to our routines. We can forget that our lives are dynamic centers of power that point forward to a fullness that we all desperately seek. Advent says that our exile can be over if we recognize how the savior has come to reveal the true wonder of our existence.
Report abuse