HOMILIES, FOURTH SERIES, 2021-2023

[This concludes years 2021-2023; go to SERIES 5 for 2024-2026] 

Christ the King

     Most people hate exams.  The worry so much that they cannot even study for them.  A few people love taking exams; it’s a chance for them to show off how much they know.  I live in a community of students; when it’s exam time, I say to them with a smile: “Another chance to get an A.”

     So it’s surprising to us that taking an exam, of undergoing a test, was something that the early followers of Jesus looked forward to.  “Thy Kingdom come,” they prayed. “Come, Lord Jesus.” We think this is crazy because we have another TV series to watch or maybe a new car, or house, to buy.   Why would we want all this to end?

     The early Christians saw God’s putting the world to the test as thew way that God’s goodness and truth would be revealed; it was also they way in which their own status as children of God would be revealed.  We have to remember that most thinking about the end of the world in Jewish history took place when they were victims of the aggression of other nations.  The final test was when they knew God was on their side.

     In the Gospel today we do not see many of the images of the end of time that we read about perhaps in the Book of Revelation or even in the second reading we have today from Paul.  Rather, we see God gathering the nations without fire and earthquakes, only with his Son judging them.  Although the image is that of a shepherd separating sheep and goats, I doubt God has anything against goats.  The image is just a way of saying what the fundamental division between redemption and destruction will be.  The division, the point of testing, will be compassion.

     In each of the statements the King makes, we see people who are in need, whether it’s physical need like hunger, or whether it’s social need like the isolation of prison or illness.  This is the kind of Kingdom God wants—a Kingdom manifested by the care we have for those who are hurting.  The parable makes it clear why: to not have compassion for others is to not have compassion on God.  Our judgment will not be about how many Rosaries we have said or how many times we went to communion; it will be about how many times we saw the hurting and reached out to them.

     We need to remember that God already underwent the final test on our behalf in the death of his Son, Jesus.  Jesus took on every human need and hurt when he witnessed to the presence of God’s Kingdom: hungry, thirsty, abandoned, tortured: God showed himself not in the powerful or the pretty but in the suffering of the world.  If we will not do something for those around us who are hurting, neither would we have done anything for Christ in his passion.

     We learn from the first reading what kind of King God is: the shepherd who cares for his flock, who will do anything to preserve his sheep and keep them safe.  God has shown that compassion most of all in the death and resurrection of his Son, the ultimate victory of goodness and love.  In the parable we have today, Jesus is saying we can be part of that victory by learning to be shepherds for each other.  That’s who God is; that how those who belong to God should be.

I      think Jesus did not tell this parable to discourage his disciples; its basic purpose is to foster a fundamental attitude in his followers.  We attend Mass and pray our Rosaries and other prayers precisely to have this attitude of compassion grow within us as disciples of Jesus so that, when the test comes, we will have already passed it by the way we have lived. 

33 A

     We hear a noise in our house in the middle of the night, like someone strange is moving around.  Or we hear gunshots that don’t seem so far away.  Or we are in a competition, in the final rounds, and we choke, unable to perform.  Or a friend suddenly seems to turn on us for no reason.

     There are many reasons why we might be emotionally paralyzed, unable to move, unable to make a decision, or even think straight.  Of all the images in Jesus’ long parable today, the image of the man who got only one talent and couldn’t do anything with it strikes us the most.  Why did he bury his talent?  Why was he paralyzed?

     What he says seems to give us some insight into his motives.  He knew the boss was tough, eager to make a profit, pushing ahead for progress.  He tells this to the boss and the boss just sneers at him: “If you knew I was that tough, all the more reason you should have doubled the gift I gave you.  Your own words condemn you.”

     But I wonder if there wasn’t a deeper reason why this man was paralyzed.  We could easily observe that the others who received talents were motivate; they had an energy that this man lacked.  But that only gives us part of an answer.  Because you and I do things, you and I even get beyond our mental paralysis, because there is a good that we want to attain and we are so driven by that, that we are willing to push ourselves even beyond our fears. 

     The first reading brings up the ancient Jewish idea of a perfect wife.  I’m sure most women today, and most people, would roll their eyes at this kind of description of women.  But we should not let our modern ideas get in the way of what the reading assumes: the wife is so wonderful and beautiful, who could not love her?  Who could not do whatever to please this woman.  Her beauty is enticing.

     This brings up the question for all of us: what is our basic motivation in faith?  God is inviting us to think of beauty, life, and abundance as the motivations for our faith.  Because when we operate from these motivations, we will accomplish so much more during our lives than if we live in fear.  We can see this at play in the second reading when Paul is talking about the end of the world.  Do we think the end of the world will be fear and dread?  Or do we think the end of the world is when the abundance of God shows itself through the joy of the redeemed? 

     God wants our lives to be fruitful, spiritually fruitful.  This means that, as we go through life, we radiate more and more the Goodness that God is.  We see this in people who are joyful in their faith and generous in the love they show through their lives.  God is inviting us to get beyond the fear, the paralysis that can destroy our spiritual lives.  God is inviting us to see that great goal of his Kingdom which should be the primary motivation of our lives.

32 A

     Are there some things that you have to have for yourself, that you cannot borrow from another?

     I’m thinking about integrity, or a desire for peace, or honesty.  While others may help us form these attitudes in our life, ultimately they have to be inside us.  They have to be ours in our own hearts and not because we belong to a group or nation.

     In the parable we have today, Jesus is reflecting on fidelity—how we hold onto something without betraying it or giving up.  He contrasts the bridesmaids who were prepared to wait throughout the night with the ones who didn’t even care to think ahead. The crucial line comes when the thoughtless bridesmaids ask the others to share their oil.  In effect, they are told: No, we have to have enough to be faithful to the groom. 

     One way to think about this is from the point of view of relationship.  Think of the oil as one’s relationship with God or Jesus.  Think of the bridesmaids who ran out as the ones who did not maintain their relationship with Jesus.  When they knock on the door, they hear the terrible words, “I do not know you.” 

     Each one of us needs to cultivate our own relationship with Christ.  This is a living, ongoing, vital exchange of love, prayer, reflection, and trust.  We have this relationship with Christ because we have come to see that Christ has this relationship with us.  Christ holds us in eternal love and sends his Spirit of love upon us always.  When we open our hearts to Christ, that love fills us with joy, or strength, or hope.  When we close our hearts down, then we let that love pass us by.

     When we stand before the world as Christians, or before God in judgment, that Christian faith must be alive and strong in our hearts.  We cannot point to someone else’s belief; it has to be our own.  We cannot say that we are “Catholic” as if that was enough.  No, we have to be Catholic disciples, that is, Catholics with an abiding and growing relationship with Christ. 

     Paul is talking to the Thessalonian community, some of whose members are losing heart.  He is telling them that God’s faithfulness to us in Christ is stronger than even the experience of death.  It is a relationship that will grow into the unending Kingdom of heaven, a Kingdom that begins for us even now, even as we await the Bridegroom, even as we experience his Spirit.

     Our Mass today is one more example of the relationship Christ wants with us: speaking his Word, we respond in faith. Giving himself, we proclaim we want to give ourselves.  Coming to us, he invites us to come to him.  Becoming our food, he invites us to make him the center of our lives.

     How blessed we are!  The Lord is always pouring the oil of his life into us.  Our job is to receive it and let it burn.

31 A 

     “The Boss.”  Sometimes this is said with affection, but often it is said with sarcasm.  Because the boss can often be a mentor, helping those being supervised; but the boss can often be very abusive, using force and manipulation to keep people under control.  Think of the bosses you have had in your life, the ones you admire and the ones you wish you never met.

     Jesus is talking about leadership today, using some language that we Catholics can find shocking, like calling no one “father” or “teacher.”  But he stands in a long line of prophets who warned about how easily leadership, particularly religious leadership, can be corrupted.  The first reading has Malachi the prophet speaking in the voice of God denouncing the corrupt religious leaders of Israel.

     But what makes a boss corrupt?  Fundamentally, it is thinking that the point is getting ahead and satisfying our pride rather than being servants and serving others.  This can happen in two ways.  One is through hypocrisy, when leaders say one thing and then do something else themselves. They write rules for others but disregard them themselves.  Did we not see a lot of this when Covid was raging?  It cost one Prime Minister his job.  Jesus talks about the religious leaders of his day; whatever their words, they did what they wanted.

     The other is when the leader thinks it is all about himself or herself, using others to aggrandize themselves.  “The greatest among you must be the servant of all.”  This shows that already among the earliest followers of Jesus, there were leaders who were using the Gospel and the Church to amplify themselves.  Obviously the problem continues today when priests put themselves above their people, or the Pope rails against clericalism, and when he calls us to be a Synod church which lives by listening to, and serving each other.

     We even have, in the second reading, Paul talking about his own methods.  We think of Paul as a fiery, and even fierce, leader.  But that’s not what he says.  He came among the Thessalonians like a mother cares for her infants.  He wanted to give his congregation not only the Good News but all the affection and concern he had to give.

    How does this apply to us? We don’t think of ourselves as bossy, but let’s think about this.  How many parents, for example, basically boss their children around?  Or see their children’s lives as fulfilling their own?  How many times do I pray as If I was the boss, telling God what to do?  How often would we like to dictate what the Church teaches?  How often do I get angry because the world doesn’t fit into my expectations?

    Jesus comes among us as a servant.  It took his brutal crucifixion for his disciples to realize what kind of Messiah Jesus was—the one who gives himself in love.  All of us, then, who follow Jesus have to see our basic vocation as Christians in this way: how am I called to serve others in order to further the Kingdom of Jesus?

30 A

     They said it was like an earthquake.  They could even measure the movement of the earth.  It lasted more than three hours.  But it wasn’t an earthquake.  It was a Taylor Swift concert,, and the trembling was from the stomping of her fans as she gave her concert.  Swifties, they call them: the devoted fans of Taylor Swift.

    Of course, she also gets attention because of her interest in the Kansas City football player, Travis Kelce.  They are romantically connected and millions of people are fascinated by this.  Wouldn’t it be great to be Taylor Swift’s friend?  How much better to be her boyfriend?  This is the kind of love that modern people understand—romantic and celebrity!

     But this is not the kind of love that Jesus is talking about in the Gospel today.  Remember how Jesus was being questioned by his opponents?  Now the Pharisees are trying to trap Jesus by asking him about the greatest commandment.  Now Jesus has a powerful answer for the Pharisees: To love God with all our heart and soul, and to love our neighbors as ourselves—this is the greatest commandment.

     What do you think is the greatest commandment in your life?  For many of us it would be something like this: to keep away from sin so we can get to heaven.  For others it might be: to be successful in life.  Others might say: to care for my family and loved ones.  A few might say: to make as much money as we can.

     But Jesus says love is the greatest commandment—not as some set of emotional feelings about a person, nor even as the loyalty I feel toward my family.  Jesus means love as the ability to give ourselves in service to God and to the needs of others, whoever those others might be.  We so often sit in judgment on people: how the Jews and Palestinians cannot get along, or how the Russians are treating the Ukrainians.  But we need to look at the ways we ourselves treat others in our daily lives.  We mostly ignore others, and we stay away from people who make demands on us. 

     We need to be honest: Love is often not the greatest commandment in our daily lives.  Yet this is what God asks of us, starting with the first reading which asks about our attitudes toward immigrants.  “You were immigrants yourselves,” the Scripture says.  Indeed, all of us are immigrants in some way because make demands on the world around us. 

     God calls us to love because that is the only way we can understand who God is, how God loves, and how God loves us.  God has given us our lives; and God also gives us the space we need to live as well as we do.  If this is who God is, how, then, should we be?

     In some sense we are always turning to God from the idols of our lives.  Jesus points out one of our greatest idols, the shallow, feeling-based idea we have of love.  Until we understand the generous, self-giving love that God shows us, we are not living at the full capacity of our hearts.  There is only one great commandment, and that commandment is the very love God has for us.

29 A

     Occupation.  We have some powerful reasons to be thinking about this word today, given the terrible destruction of life in the Middle East and the ways Hamas and Israel are fighting each other.  Of course, our country has never experienced occupation.  But, seeing overseas conflict, we can imagine what it would be like to feel that some other group owned us, ruled over us, and expected our compliance.  We can imagine how the sense of being occupied would fill every inch around us.

     We have heard Gospel stories so long it would be easy for us to forget that all these Gospel events took place in occupied territory.  For almost 600-years before Jesus and extending beyond his own lifetime, someone else ruled Israel.  We see hints of this at times in the Gospel—the references to Roman centurion, for example, and the test Jesus’ enemies are putting before him today.  “Whose side are you on?”—that’s what they are asking him.  And, however he answered, it was likely to get him into trouble.

     Jesus’ response to the Pharisees and Herodians was short and stunning.  We all might pray to come up with a simple, pithy response like Jesus.  He does not play one side against the other, nor does he get caught in disputes.  He goes way beyond this. “Give to God what belongs to God; give to Caesar what belongs to him.”

     That was enough to get his opponents off his back, but does it seem like it’s enough to answer the questions we have today?  In effect, Jesus is saying that whether we are occupied or not, only God is central to our lives.  Keeping God at the foundation of our lives will give us both peace and guidance in any circumstance.  Here we need to recognize the point of the first reading: it was Cyrus, king of the Persians, who defeated the Babylonians.  God used a secular ruler to bring freedom to the Jews and allow them to return to Jerusalem after 80 years of exile.  Nothing is so secular it is beyond God.

     In our present day, although we are not occupied, believers certainly feel surrounded by a world that sees itself as fairly indifferent to the things of God.  These attitudes can permeate the attitudes of believers themselves.  Everyone comments on the decline of attendance at church all across the board, and not just with us Catholics.  Our lives can come to look like everyone else’s life.  We can be conquered by the patterns of the modern world.  Just how are we Catholics different from everyone else?

     This is why it is important to keep in mind what sets us Catholics apart, what makes us different and also what we have to bring to others.  Obviously, our faith sets us apart because we believe in a triune God of absolute love and grace.  But our worship also sets us apart because we believe we have a special relationship with God through our celebration of the Mass.  We are not like everyone else because we come to the Altar of Christ to receive his Body and Blood, to unite ourselves with him. 

     The Eucharist, after all, is not something we do for an hour on Sunday.  We celebrate the Eucharist on Sunday, but we live out the meaning of the Eucharist at every other moment of our lives.  At the Lord’s table, we show that we are his disciples; at the end of Mass God sends us forth, not with the coins of Caesar but with the Word and the life of Jesus.  Whatever we render to the world, we must also render it Christ.  For keeping Christ at the center of our lives is the only way we can preserve our own faith and bring that faith to others.

     Jesus is telling us that as long as we are occupied with the Kingdom of God and our loving Father, to that extent we can never be conquered or overcome by anything, or anyone, else.

28 A 

     “I wish you would have told me.  I would have loved to come!”

     I remember saying this to a friend who did not send me an invitation to his anniversary celebration.  He thought I was too far away and I was too busy.  Even though both of these were true, I still hated the idea that I missed out on the celebration.

     From the Gospel today we learn that there are several ways to miss out on the celebration.  The first one is not knowing that we are invited; the second is that we do not realize what we are invited to.  Jesus is speaking to his contemporaries about the risks they are taking of missing out on the invitation of their lifetimes.

     Jesus uses the image of a banquet, one of his favorite images of the Kingdom of God.  The King wants his banquet full: it’s not just for some small select group of people; it is for everyone.  We may be uneasy about how the King sends his servants out to invite everyone they see, “the bad as well as the good,” but this is a way to refer to God’s invitation that also comes to us.  Everyone is invited to the banquet.

     This speaks of the urgency God feels for every person to discover his love and the joy that it brings to their lives.  Historically speaking, aren’t we the ones whom the servants went out to get?  God did not want God’s word to be limited; God wanted his word to touch the ears of everyone, even people like us!

     We are surprised at those who declined to come to the banquet.  Didn’t they know what Jesus was offering?  Jesus here is referring to people who think what they have is just fine.  So going to the banquet is not important to them.  How many of us today live with what Pope Francis calls “complacent hearts”?  The rewards that we have found in life seem sufficient for us.

     Here we need to pay attention to the first reading, this powerful selection from the eleventh chapter of Isaiah.  This is God’s vision for humankind: a mountain where everyone will be fed with abundance, where death itself will have no power, and where God’s joy is experienced in endless happiness.  To the ears of the ancient Jews who heard Isaiah, living as they were under constant threat of conquest, this image might have seemed to be a fantasy.  They would have been happy just not to be invaded.  But God had far more in mind for them . . .  and for us.

     The Gospel is telling us not to let the invitation slip by us.  The invitation asks us not to shrink our expectations of ourselves or our lives.  This is the greatest risk we can take in our lives, to sell ourselves, and God’s vision, short.  Because it is not the same thing to struggle through life as it is to rejoice through life. It’s not the same thing to live for a big pension as it is to live for the Kingdom.

     Every Sunday we hear this invitation once again; every Sunday we anticipate an eternal banquet by eating the Sacred Food that is Jesus’ life given to us.  We believers are already on the mountain of God.  God is telling us that, because of Jesus and the Spirit, we can climb even higher and experience even more joy in our lives.  We can’t let this invitation slip past our lives.

27 A

     Are there some things so important you can’t entrust them to others?

     When I saw the movie Oppenheimer this summer, apart from its three hour length, what impressed me most was this question: Should we even be toying with the idea of making a bomb this powerful?  Can we trust ourselves to even use it?  Well, our history of the cold war, and nuclear threats going on even today, go a long way to answering that question.

     We might ask this about the earth itself—is it too important a resource to trust us humans not to mess up?  What about the way we think about the economy?  Or about unique historical sites? 

     That’s the question God has for us:  Can God entrust us with God’s vineyard?  Not just to work in the vineyard but, even more drastically, to think that we can own and control the vineyard?  We learn in the first reading that the idea of vineyard stands for God’s own people.  As precious as it is, the leaders of Israel don’t seem to appreciate it.  In fact, they abuse it.

     And this insight echoes down into the Gospel we have today.  Jesus tells the parable of the owner of the vineyard who entrusts it to people to work.  They can’t own the vineyard.  Of course not, because the vineyard is the Kingdom of God.  But they want to own it, to control it, to dominate it.  They are even ready to do violence to take over the Kingdom.  Jesus’ parable makes clear that history is full of people who will do what they want to be on top.

     I think we can recognize a lot of behavior like this in the world around us.  It’s in the modern brain to dominate everything and be number one. We seek that no matter what the cost.

     So Jesus’ lesson is for all of us: unless we see our lives in terms of humble service and profound reverence, we risk losing everything.  This is the point Jesus is making to religious leaders of his day: the Kingdom will be turned over to others who will see it, respect it. and serve it. 

     Jesus is saying the only way to participate in the Kingdom is by understanding how vast and sacred it is.  We can be part of it, but the Kingdom is something that no one can own.  It belongs to God.  Our hearts are way to small and our impulses are way too selfish to think that we can manage God’s Kingdom.

     Jesus is also telling us what it means to be his Church.  Because not even the Church owns the Kingdom.  The Church, rather, serves the Kingdom by showing its healing, joy, acceptance, mercy, and grace.  That is what it means to be Church.  And that is what it means to have the privilege of being members of Christ’s People. 

26 A 

     We cannot make up our minds.  We want to be connected electronically all the time, but we also want to be free of emails and texts.  We want government to leave us alone, but we want government services to be available for us.  We want prosperity for everyone, but we also want to make as much money as we can.  We want to save the earth, but we want every convenience we can have.

     Ambivalence is a way of life for us.  We cannot make up our minds.

     Of course, the first reading is not about being ambivalent.  It’s about the way God gives everyone a chance to say “yes” completely.  God is always giving us a chance for a change of heart, for conversion.  Likewise in the Gospel, Jesus contrasts two sons.  His point is that, whatever people say, we know their decision by the way they come to live.  We may condemn someone for his or her way of life; but that does not mean they will never follow God’s will.

     But in our own spiritual lives, there’s always a “yes” and a “no” going on inside of us.  We call ourselves Christian, but we tolerate all kinds of things that Jesus spoke against, from our obsession with money to our toleration of violence in modern life.  We want to show love to everyone, but there are always a few people whom we resent, to whom we close our hearts.

     Paul was seeing this in his community at Philippi: although they had accepted Christ and had begun to live Christian lives, their hearts were filled with pride and ambition.  So he holds up before them the mind and attitude of Jesus.  Paul uses some of the most powerful words of the Scriptures, talking about the total humility of Jesus who empties himself out of love for others and in response to his Father.  This is exactly the reason Jesus is raised up and given the title LORD.  Not because he was proud and muscular but because he was humble and trusting.  His life as a total “yes” to his Father.

     Perhaps this is also our road to conversion, our way of overcoming the ambivalence of our lives.  Instead of trying to travel down two or three roads, the Scriptures invite us to travel down that one road that Jesus took.  “Which of the sons did the Father’s will?” Jesus asks. We do the Father’s will when we overcome our ambivalence and finally say “YES” to God by living the values God shows us, in humble generosity.

     There is, indeed, hope in all of this.  God gives us time to respond.  God does not write us off or dismiss us but rather encourages and leads us toward following Jesus’ path.  The goal is always the same: that we come to a point in our lives when we say YES to God.  Every moment we live is an opportunity to grow in doing just that.

25 A

     Of course, this Gospel about the vineyard workers upsets  us because we are all bothered by  inequality, whether it’s income inequality with CEOs making millions and ordinary workers barely paying the mortgage, or power inequality with some folks getting to call the shots and the rest of us being ordered around.  “All people are created equal,” we declare. But we are still waiting to see it happen.

     But let’s test these feelings about inequality with a thought experiment.  Suppose we had a system where everyone had exactly the same—the same apartment, the same car, the same health care, the same IQ, the same physical skills.  And so forth.  Do you think we would function any better?  Or would some of us immediately start pushing others around, showing ourselves off, or proving we were smarter?  Of course we would!

     That’s why I think that this Gospel about the workers in the vineyard is so infuriating for us.  We see ourselves in the image of the people who worked all day, and we think we are special and deserve more than others.  Doesn’t everyone have a version of this in her or his head?  So therein lies the mystery: no matter who we are or what we have, we end up so easily resenting others.  I suspect this is the dominant feeling in our American culture today given social media and the politics we witness.

     But what if this parable is not about who got more than others? What if it is about the true mystery of our faith?  Namely, that God gives the overwhelming gift of divine love to every person.  Therefore, there is no “more or less” with God.  Remember the punchline in the Gospel: “Are you envious because I am generous?”  This parable is an invitation for all of us to realize how unbelievably generous God is to everyone.  Like Paul in the second reading, we have been given the gift of Jesus’ life.

     The generous equality of God seems no more obvious in our Catholic lives than in the gift of the Eucharist.  “This is my body which I give to you.”  “This is the cup of my blood which I pour out for you and give to you.”  Everyone of us, rich or poor, professors or factory workers, has been invited to the same table of Jesus’ immense generosity.  To use the image of the parable, the owner cannot pay anyone more because the owner has bestowed his riches on everyone, just as God has bestowed divine life on us in Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

     So, the Gospel pushes us to the opposite of resentment.  We are not called to hold on to what we have and try to take from others.  Rather, we are called to give to others what God has given to us.  The table of the Mass that God sets for us is not one of selfish hoarding.  It is one of empowerment—that we are filled with a desire for everyone to know and receive the fullness that God gives us. 

     As a result, to receive the Eucharist is to be made an evangelizer, someone with a mandate to bring others to the rich banquet God serves us every Sunday.  Think about it: if you found a new restaurant in town, wouldn’t you want others to know about it?  We’d want to get the news out to show others what cool our lives we have.  So, at this banquet of the Eucharist, isn’t it totally logical for us to want to help other know what God has done for us . . . and wants to do for them?

24 A

     “Do not criticize another until you walk in her or his shoes.”

     We often hear that, and it contains an essential insight: we understand things best through experience.  As someone who never married, I am often jealous of what married people get to learn about God the creator from their relationship with their children.  How easily Jesus’ words, “Your heavenly Father loves you” can be heard by those who have been loved by their parents, and parents who have loved their children.  Or how an act of extravagant generosity might help us grasp the heart of God through experience.

     Jesus’ argument in the Gospel flows from this kind of logic.  Don’t you think you can better understand what it means to be forgiven by God if you have experienced and practiced forgiveness yourself?  Until we have given mercy, the mercy of God can feel very vague.

     Forgiveness is among the most difficult things humans are urged to do.  Why so?  It’s only a gesture, a word, a stance.  It so often costs us nothing in terms of money.  But it seems to cost us our pride, our self-esteem, even our sense of ourselves.  “I can’t forgive you for what you did.”  Forgiving is hard.

     I have, in recent years, been forced to think about the word “give” in “forgiveness” because of experiences in my life.  When someone does something that offends us deeply, don’t we feel we have something to hold over them?  They have to acknowledge our anger; we can make them feel ashamed any time we want.  We have something to hold over their heads.

     But this is exactly the gift that we give when we forgive people.  Whatever residual feelings might be present, we let others off the hook and help them understand that they do not need to carry around the burden that they owe us.  Let it go.  Let everyone be free.  Of course, we all realize just how much of a cost our anger is to ourselves . . . but still we resist forgiving.

     Look at what God gives to us in showing us forgiveness, not only by releasing our sins, but doing so by the gift of his own Son who embodies divine mercy and love.  God gives us the gift of having a weight lifted that otherwise we could barely budge.  For when we sin, we spoil the vision of God for creation and for the ultimate fulfillment of humankind.  What a weight that is!

     That’s what the one servant in the Gospel cannot see: he has been forgiven so much but has not learned how forgiveness mirrors God’s own love and provides the kind of freedom that reflects the infinite love of God.  God’s forgiveness is the gift of liberation for us; to understand that gift, we have to give it ourselves to others.

     “You worthless servant,” the master say.  Indeed, nothing makes us worth less in the Kingdom of God than holding onto our anger and refusing to experience the liberating love of God.

23 A

     Someone picked me up at an airport recently. As we got to know each other, he wanted to know what I thought of fossil fuel and the electric revolution in cars.  Before I could begin to respond, however, he pretty much made clear that he was all in favor of fossil fuels and that some of our worries about the planet and planet change were a bit exaggerated. 

     This typifies one of many areas where people might differ today, and sometimes differ quite vigorously.  Politics is another area.  Certainly, many issues about gender divide us, and even certain approaches toward animal rights.  What do these issues reveal about us?  Surprisingly, that we are all in it together, otherwise we would not be arguing with each other.

     We began on September 1st a “Month of Creation,” an emphasis of Pope Francis on our global home and the reverence which we need to show it.  This emphasis, and many church teachings about social justice and war, all indicate that our moral lives are not just personal.  They are communal as well.  For certain values, we have to act together for the good or the good will not be possible.

     The readings this week can seem annoying.  In the first reading, Ezekiel is appointed as a watchman, one who will tell Israel what they are doing wrong and warn people.  Many of us are old enough to remember when the teacher, often a nun, would appoint a student to be the class “monitor” and who would tell her who misbehaved while she wasn’t looking.  We deeply resented the monitor.  “A rattlesnake,” we thought.

     In the Gospel, Jesus likewise praises those who point out the faults of their brothers and sisters.  This makes us very uncomfortable.  Because if I can point out the faults of others, then my own faults can be pointed out as well.  Which one of us is righteous enough to be the moral policeman of others?  And on what basis?

     Paul’s message from Romans helps to give us the basis and the perspective.  The whole point, he says, is about deepening our love for God and our love for each other.  So we can understand Paul and Jesus telling us that we need to create environments which make it likely for us to live as people of love, and dismantle environments that make it more likely that we will live as people without love.  We have to construct, together, an environment that reflects the vision of God.

     We do this on the personal level, of course; but we also do this collectively, by the values that we share and prize.  How do I, and how do we, contribute to a world that moves toward peace, the seeks justice, that upholds the beauty of creation, that affirms the inherent dignity of everyone created by God?  How do we let the values of love permeate our personal and our common vision?

--

     It may seem like a huge burden to be responsible for creation, or society’s development, for the welfare of everyone.  And it is a huge burden for any one of us.  That’s why the scriptures invite us to see that we are not alone.  God has given us each other, and God has given us the Holy Spirit, so that, together, we can make our prayers for the Kingdom come closer to fulfillment.

22 A

     Can we believe it was sixty years ago?  That’s when the historic March on Washington took place and when Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.  He was murdered just five years after this historic event.  But were Martin Luther King alive today, he would probably give a speech entitled “I Still Have a Dream.”  Because his dream, in so many ways, is yet to be fulfilled.

     Perhaps it’s that way with many big goals.  Has, for example, American really attained true democracy?  Or do we still basically have a nation where some people are more important than others?  Or has the promise of progress actually made for progress?  Or is this notion the source of so much dysfunction in modern society, from drastic changes in climate to even larger differences in economic equality? Have we attained our biggest dreams?

     One of the essential elements in proposing a large, life-changing idea is faithfulness.  We cannot espouse it one year and then put it aside for a few years after that.  This is how we know what we stand for: something that has been constant in our lives from as long as we can remember.  It’s something we stick with.

     This is what rattles Jeremiah in the first reading.  He has stood for something but now he realizes what it is going to cost him.  “You duped me, Lord.”  Really?  I doubt that the Lord tricked Jeremiah; I think it more the case that Jeremiah is still learning what it means to be faithful to the message of God.  Is he still willing to proclaim God’s vision in the face of so much opposition?

     Paul, in the second reading, is encouraging the community of Christians in Rome to be faithful.  It is too easy to want to look like, and think like, everyone else.  “Do not be conformed to this age but be transformed in your minds and hearts.”  This is because Christians have an essential message to share with the world and they cannot take the risk of losing that message.

     We are all tempted to be like Peter in the Gospel.  Peter just proclaimed that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God; Jesus complimented Peter on this insight.  But when Jesus tells Peter that it means to be the Messiah, Peter cannot face this.  “Get away from me, Satan,” Jesus says, meaning, “Get away from me, you tempter!  Can you not accept what it means to bring about the Kingdom?”

     This is a question that should disquiet us believers as well.  Our faith is easy as long as it doesn’t ask much of us.  We all want a faith that accommodates itself to our desires, our habits, our weaknesses.  But a faith like this cannot help us grow.  How can we have faith if we do not let it change our lives?

     We Christians have an essential message to bring to our world—a message about the infinite love of God which challenges the greedy, hateful, selfish ways in which so much of the world tends to operate.  Our message is not so much about this or that evil.  It’s about the whole vision of life’s meaning.  This is the mission that demands everything we have, the vision that makes us able to enter the Kingdom. 

     Dreams come true only if we are faithful to them.

21 A

     Describe your best friend to me?  Or, even more, describe your spouse?

     We would say a few things about their humor, their size, maybe some of their qualities—but we would not be able to describe them in any satisfactory way.  That’s because when we know a person, it’s not information we know.  It’s a relationship.  Many languages distinguish the word know.  For example, “saber” is Spanish for knowing things; “conocer” is Spanish for knowing a person.

     We have to wonder what Jesus was asking for when he questioned his apostles in this famous passage from Matthew. “Who do people say that I am?”  And lots of people had various opinions about him—he was some prophet risen from the dead or perhaps a social reformer.  But that shows exactly the thing-like way we know people, putting them into categories.  You may have categories but you need to encounter Jesus himself.

     When he says to the Apostles, “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus is asking an encounter question.  The Apostles have come to know Jesus; but just how much?  Peter says something that is beyond the visible eye: “You are the Messiah, the Son of God.”  We want to take this as information, some dogma that we should memorize.  But we need to take this as something else: this is encounter language.

     Encounter language leads us to mystery.  “Mystery” doesn’t mean something I do not know.  “Mystery” means a reality that exceeds our ability to express it.  Like the people we love the most.  Or even the sense I have of myself.  And the most essential mystery of our lives is God, infinite love beyond-words that generously bestows reality and life.

     Isn’t this what Peter is getting at?  Peter is beginning to see that Jesus is revealing a fuller and deeper experience of God.  Whoever Jesus is, he cannot be known by his nationality, or his language, or the facts of his life.  He can only be known with reference to God, to the Father that he comes to reveal through the Holy Spirit.  Peter is, in effect, saying that Jesus is the one who reveals to us the loving and saving life of the Father.

     This is what characterizes us believers: that we have come to share in the mystery that Jesus reveals to us.  In Jesus, we have a personal relationship with God, not as an idea or a theory, but as the very infinite love that defines our existence.  Everything we do as believers—prayer, serving others, reading Scripture, celebrating the Sacraments—expresses that mystery and deepens our grasp of it.   In this way, every moment of our lives is an encounter with God.

     Who do you say that I am?  Jesus asks.  He is not looking for a scripture lesson or an idea from theology.  He’s asking us to look into our hearts so we can acknowledge the mystery of infinite love that he has given us in Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  This is the foundation on which the community of believers is built.

20 A

     There are things you want . . . and there are things you really want.  I might think about going into medicine; but when I apply to med school and start interning, then I know it’s real.  I might think about buying a house; but when I start saving money and looking for a realtor, then I know I’m serious.  A team might think about winning; but when they go out and play for their lives, then they know it’s real.

     So the question that the Gospel raises this week is pretty direct: do I really trust Jesus enough to follow him?  Is my faith real?

     The Gospel we have seems disconcerting to us believers.  After all, Jesus doesn’t come off as the sweet, smiling person we often make him to be.  A non-Jewish woman really needs Jesus’ help.  He seems a bit unconcerned.  But when she lets him know that this is something she absolutely needs, Jesus points to her faith as a model for all believers.

     This story takes place against a larger debate that we indirectly hear about when we read the New Testament: can non-Jews, can pagans, be part of the community of Jesus.  The harshness of the story tells us just how difficult this was for some believers in the early Church to accept.  But Catholic Christianity came to the same vision that we see in the first reading: people who truly believe always have access to the Kingdom of God.  This is exactly what Paul boasts about in the second reading because he was called to be the apostle to the Gentiles.  True faith gives everyone access to the kingom.

     This is Good News for us, of course, but it contains a challenge.  Are we willing to live our faith so that we show that we truly believe it, that we truly need it?  And, more particularly, do we show the importance of our faith by the way we worship?  It’s no secret that many Catholics no longer worship regularly even though they call themselves believers.  But it also is no secret that our presence at Mass can become something casual and mostly habitual.  We can come to Mass and not really be into it.

     Every Mass is intended to show that we have committed ourselves completely to God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  Every Mass is to be another experience of, and renewal of, conversion.  In every Mass we are saying that we give ourselves in faith To Jesus.  This is why our American church is having a Eucharistic Revival: to help us all underscore the powerful reality of what happens when we come to Mass.  Because if the Mass is not a powerful statement of faith for us, how can it be that for others?

     The Canaanite woman says to Jesus that she’d be happy with scraps that fall from the table.  But Christ Jesus gives us so much more than that.  In our Mass, Christ gives himself to us as the sacred food and drink that we consume.  Christ gives us a share in his Risen life, not scraps from the table but a heavenly banquet laid out for us.  But this banquet of faith can only be consumed if, deep in our hearts, we really, really want it. 

19 A

     Much as we like winning, it’s difficult to have the lead.  If a pitcher takes the mound when his team is ahead, he worries about making a mistake and being responsible for losing.  If a golfer is leading the final day of a tournament, reporters keep asking him how he kept calm, was he able to sleep the night before, how did he maintain the momentum.  It’s hard to be in the lead, and it’s hard to be a leader.

     That’s the question that Peter is facing in the Gospel today.  Does he really want to be a leader?  Just before the story we have in the Gospel reading, Jesus fed five thousand hungry people.  The disciples asked Jesus to let the people go and feed themselves; Jesus said he and his apostles could feed them.  And they did.  Jesus showed leadership by the depth of his trust.

     Now these same men are on the lake that most of them grew up on.  And, probably like many times before, a storm came and threatened their boat.  Instead of relying on the trust that Jesus had just taught them, they are frozen in fear, thinking they are all going to die.  Jesus’ coming to them on the water represents the way that Jesus comes to everyone who is afraid. 

     Initially they dismiss Jesus; it’s a ghost, they say.  This is exactly what they will say when Jesus rises from the dead.  Instead of affirming the power of God, it’s much easier to live in fear.  Peter tries to be a leader.  But it’s not a good start.  “If it is you,” Peter says.  Peter is still acting out of doubt and fear.  “If” doesn’t mean faith and trust; it means mistrust and doubt.

     Jesus invites Peter to leadership.  “Come,” he says to Peter.  Trust me enough to walk on the water yourself.  I will send you to do the deeds that I do so begin by walking on the water like me.  Begin by trusting like me.”  But Peter can only begin and then his doubts take over.  He looks around; he feels the wind, and then he begins sinking.

     Eventually Peter would become the leader of the Apostles but it would not happen until he experienced the death and resurrection of Jesus.  It is when Peter experiences the risen Christ, when he affirms his love of Jesus, that Peter learns to be a leader, learns to show the hope and trust that takes away the doubts that people have. 

     “Why did you doubt?” Jesus asks Peter.  But why do we live in the doubt we do, we who experience the death and resurrection of Jesus in every liturgy we celebrate?  We worry about everything.  We fear to show or share our faith.  We sink into waters that let us take our faith for granted.  Many barely trust enough to pass our faith on to our children.

     We were baptized not to live in fear and doubt.  We were baptized to be empowered by the Holy Spirit.  Our Gospel today is the start of Peter’s baptism, something he had to grow into.  Likewise, we are always growing into the power of our baptisms.  Jesus shows us that he is always there, ready to pull us up if necessary, but mostly ready to teach us how trust in him can  make us winners.

Transfiguration 

     When I was growing up, I noticed a big difference between our apartment on the West Side of Manhattan, and my aunt’s on the East side.  We always had lights on; she rarely did.  I asked my mother why?  It turns out that we lived in the projects where electricity was included in our rent.  My aunt, on the other hand, lived in a private tenement building and received a monthly bill for electricity.  Therefore, she never turned on a light until it was absolutely necessary.

     Some of us are creatures of the night; we like it dark and feel comfortable when it’s cooler.  Others of us are daytime folks; we adore the sun and cannot get enough of it.  Daytime people go to the beach; nighttime people go to the mountains.  It’s a mystery of our psychology.

     Because of the way we approach the Gospel today, we think of it as a daytime event.  Jesus’ face becomes like the sun; everything turns so bright that the apostles are confused.  But it is attractive, this brilliance and glory, so attractive that Peter wants to build a shrine so he can keep it like that.  But then we get a chance to see the darkness side of the Gospel because at that moment a cloud forms that creates a shadow over them and the light seems hidden.

     One of the deceptions of our spiritual lives is that we can think it’s all about brightness.  Lots of candles, lots of spotlights, lots of stained-glass windows to show the glory of our faith.  Indeed, we thank God for this and do not begrudge one moment when God’s glory comes upon us, both in church and in our lives.  But these moments of glory take place within the clouds under which we mostly live.  One of our prayers to Mary talks about how we live in the valley of sorry as exiled children of Eve. 

     In fact, we also need times of quiet, silence, reflection, darkness: these are powerful moments of our faith lives.  They may not always be times of sorrow or stress.  They may be what we imagine monks might feel when they rise in the night to pray, or what a child might feel when, awakened in the night, mom is there to bring consolation.  Nighttime makes our ears sharp.  We listen better.

     And that’s the main line of the Gospel: the call to hear Jesus in a new way.  “This is my beloved Son, listen to him,” the voice from heaven tells the apostles.  In the darkness of our lives, God might be speaking even more powerfully in our lives than in times of brightness.  Because we can see less, our ears can perk up and we can listen all the better.

     Maybe this is a message we have to bring to others who think that God’s light has disappeared from their lives. God is always with us.  He sent his Son Jesus to demonstrate for us that his love is always surrounding us, whether that love feels like a warm ray of sun or whether it feels like a quiet moment in the night.  Even more, sometimes we are the voice that God is speaking to people—letting them know that God’s presence is always there for us, that we can sense that presence and heart his voice if we quiet ourselves down enough.

     The vision of Jesus points to his Resurrection.  You and I live in that Resurrection because we are believers.  That resurrection touches every moment of four lives, especially those that seem the darkest or even the saddest. Because Resurrection is speaking of hope and hope shines God’s light in every corner of our lives.

17 A

     Once again football teams are starting their practice.  And, once again, the Washington football team, now called the Commanders, has a new quarterback. Every season seems to begin with a new quarterback, with so much hype and expectation.  Every season it doesn’t seem to work out.

     But this happens a lot in life, does it not?  People don’t live up to their expectations.  So many potential sports superstars, so many young stars in Hollywood, and now so many Tic Tock stars: we expected more from them, and we were disappointed.  At times of self-reflection, we even ask this of ourselves: am I living up to my promise?

     This was the sense I got reading this powerful introduction of Solomon in the first reading.  He is the son of King David and Bathsheba; his father piled up tons of resources so he could build the first Temple in Israel.  God applauds Solomon because he asks for wisdom as he begins his kingship.  And yet, by the end of his life, Solomon is pictured as a King with a thousand wives and a thousand different pagan gods.  He is the opposite of an ideal king, faithful to God.  After him, the Kingdom splits in two, never to be united again.

     I think this is why we see Jesus doing what he does in the Gospels these Sundays: he can be seen as the coach who is giving incentives to his followers so that they can come up to the expectations of their lives as disciples.  We know, from what comes next, just how long it would take these men to be the faithful followers that Jesus wants.  But they eventually lived and many of them died for Christ.

     How do these parables work in our lives?  Two of them refer to energy and desire.  In each of them, someone comes upon the prize of a lifetime, something of enormous value.  Do you want it?  Will you do something . . .  or just sit and wait?  This is about the place of faith and Jesus in our lives.  What prize can be greater than God’s own Wisdom given to us as a brother, savior, and lover?  How can we let this go by in our lives?  But we do!  Chasing every glittering idea or person but never really claiming the prize of being Jesus’ disciple.

     The next parable should be a huge motivator, the fishermen pulling in fish.  It’s asking us: what kind of fish do we want to be?  Anyone who has gone fishing knows there’s a huge difference between some ugly bottom-feeder and a nice two-foot fish that’s delicious to eat.  Jesus is incentivizing us by saying judgment is the state in which we live; we cannot escape it.  How we respond to Jesus will mark every moment of eternity.  Do we need more incentive than this?

     But we should not, then, give up.  Paul gives us another angle when he is encouraging the Romans.  God is working in and through our lives to bring them to completion.  In fact, the goal of eternal life begins the very moment we respond in faith to God.  With God, little things become the building blocks of salvation and life’s fullness.  As Solomon asked for wisdom, we ask for the fullness of life—not just for ourselves but for the whole of creation.

     Everyone one of us has begun a life of discipleship from our baptisms; faith has begun growing in us even when we were children and our parents whispered prayers in our ears.  This is the prize Jesus won for us and the Holy Spirit has implanted in us: faith and our lives as disciples.  Nothing is more valuable or more important. The prize is given to us—what a disappointment if we let it slip away!

16 A

     Blow them up.  Shoot them.  Eradicate them.  Destroy them.

     These are attitudes we see every day.  Sometimes they play out internationally, as with Russia’s attempt to eliminate Ukraine.  Often they play out on our TV sets as we the good people take down the bad, particularly on shows that emphasize law enforcement like Chicago PD, one of the CSI series, or NCIS.  We even see it personally; that’s what the word “cancel” means—we cancel someone out of our lives.  It doesn’t happen only on soap operas.

     We are surprised, then, at the famous parable we hear in the Gospel today, the weeds and the wheat.  The owner tells the servants not to pull the weeds because they will hurt the wheat in the process.  This parable was first heard by people who could well feel persecuted or even threatened.  Being a follower of Jesus did not always just bring peace and joy.  It sometimes brought opposition from others, even from the forces of the emperor in Rome.

     Yet Jesus tells his followers not to reach for the gun, not to drop bombs, not to exterminate those who seem weed-like, those we deem evil.  We ask ourselves, why?

     The most obvious response is that we are so often off balance when we think people are our enemies.  We demonize them in such a way that they become inhuman.  From my childhood, I know how we looked at “Indians” on TV as they were shot to death.  Likewise, the term “communist” became a tag to demonize others, whether individuals or whole societies.  We had elected leaders smear others with that label leading to destroyed careers or worse.  And we, in turn, were demonized as heartless capitalists.  Calling people enemies cuts off our ability to come to know them. Destroying the other is a sign that we do not think that the good, or God, will ultimately win out.

     It is also true that, whatever happens in a field of wheat, people do change.  People experience conversion or start hanging out with less destructive people.  They used to be “bad” but now they seem to be growing as human beings and believers.  Jesus is telling his followers that they must always allow for the possibility that God may touch the hearts of people.  Everyone of us can think of someone that we once wrote off, for one reason or another, who has become a friend or more attentive in their faith or more generous in their actions.

     There is also the truth that we have weeds growing inside of us.  We all have parts of us that we know we would like to change, or that we struggle to transform.  In fact, we often grow by having greater insight into our lives and recognizing that we are not the perfect people we often think we are.  Just as we live with some of our darker sides, so also we can live with the darkness of others. 

     Absolute perfection.  How often has this seemed an ideal to us?  But more often this ideal leads us to a smugness and blindness that reveals just how imperfect we are.  To be perfect is not to be flawless; to be perfect is to live with the compassionate heart and mind of Jesus.

15 A

     The NRP interview got me thinking.  They were interviewing former speechwriters for presidents of the United States.  They talked about the research they had to do, the fear that the speech would not work, and the inherent difficulty to take on the voice of someone else.  We particularly remember soaring speeches and we remember speeches made during times of danger.  Ted Sorensen was famous as Kennedy’s speechwriter, but who wrote George W. Bush’s speech when we were attacked?

     As I’ve thought about it, speeches do two things.  One is that they create a vision, a common sense of identity and purpose; the other is that they communicate vital information that people depend on.  Speeches strive to bring us together for common encouragement and common action.

     The Scriptures this day imply that God is a speechwriter.  He is writing on behalf of all of us.  God sends his Word to bring us together and give us common purpose.  The Word of God is so powerful that we read God’s prophets today and still feel their energy.  Our first reading says that God’s Word is like the rain: it makes things happen.

     What is God’s word bringing about in our lives?  The parable that Jesus gives us says that God’s Word is like seed sown into the earth of our lives.  What is that Word bringing forth? This Word gives us information; that’s what the Sermon on the Mount was about, that’s when we read the Beatitudes which showed us how we relate to God and how we are called to relate to each other.  But what about the vision?

     We have a powerful image in the second reading today.  Paul is comparing the experience of the world to that of a woman giving birth.  The groans and trials of our lives are part of something larger—the new life that God invites humankind to accept.  Don’t think, Paul is saying, that this is all about the 24 hours you live each day, or the seventy years you may live in a lifetime.  This is about what God is doing in the world, to bring transformation and eternal life to all who can receive it.

     The other image we have, of the Sower and the Seed, talks about the chances God takes with all of us.  God’s Word comes: what are we going to do with it?  Many of the chances that God takes seem wasted.  Why?  Simply because we would not pay attention. The distractions and fears of the thorns or the crows in our lives take over our ears so we cannot hear what God is saying.

     But some of the chances God takes on us bear fruit, the fruit of the Kingdom of God in which we share a vision of God’s common and total love for everyone—and then live according to that vision. At a minimum, that vision is saying that our role in life is not to live for ourselves.  Our lives are too narrow a base for what God would do in our lives and our world.  Without the Word, our lives stay pretty selfish and limited. 

     Each of us is a fertile field in which God wants to plant the seed of his Kingdom.  Each of us is a speech waiting to be fulfilled and accomplished.  Each of us is a disciple who has received the seed of God’s Word and then goes forth to plant God’s seed in the world throughout the moments of our lives.

14 A

     “Where are you going for vacation?”  I think this must be the most frequently asked question during the summer.  Some people say they are going to the mountains where the air is cool; others say that they hate the mountains.  They want the beach with the ocean and the sand.  Some people say they are traveling far away while others have what they call a “staycation” where they remain at home.

     So what does a vacation accomplish?  If it means anything, whatever its form, it’s a time when we get away from our daily responsibilities and reflect on life from a different perspective.  We are out of the office, or out of our daily routine.  We get to think of what we do every day without the pressure of work and without the time-clock.  We get to taste life in a purer form.

     Although it may seem strange, the Gospel we have today is something like a break for Jesus.  Here’s the context.  Jesus has chosen the twelve apostles and instructed them. He has sent them out to do his very work—to proclaim the kingdom, to bring healing and reconciliation.  Now they have returned to Jesus excited about their experiences; they saw the Kingdom of God open up before them.

     Now Jesus is thanking his Father for what has been accomplished.  “Father, Lord of heaven and earth, to you I give thanks, for what you have hidden from the learned and clever you have shown to these followers of mine.”  No one knows what God is really all about except Jesus, who has come forth from the Father.  Now this has been revealed not to experts or philosophers. It’s been revealed to those who are able to see it and act in faith.

     Jesus here is not putting down intelligence or thinking.  Rather he is saying that the richness and generosity of the Father may be hidden to many because we do not live in openness to the wonders of God.  We can theorize all we want about God, but when we see healing and mercy poured out upon people, we are way beyond theory.  We are into experience.

     Jesus wants to make this experience open to us.  He asks us to take a vacation from all the clutter that is in our brains and to see the wonders that surround us.  That we live with hope, that we desire to love and care for each other, that we are willing to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of those in need, that we can see angry people come to embrace each other, that we can celebrate and rejoice in God’s love—these are the wonders and the foundations of our life in Christ.

     This is the yoke that Christ offers us.  Come to me all you who are tired of trying to do it all yourself.  Come to me all of you who have built worlds that are closed to others.  Come to me all of you who have run out of other options.  Take my yoke upon you—a yoke that allows you to see your life saturated with divine love and hope.  A yoke that one wears not to demonstrate strength but to demonstrate that openness which allows us to see the hand of God in our everyday lives.

     We go on vacation to get perspective.  Jesus takes his precious moment to praise his Father and help us get perspective on the way of life he is offering us.

13 A

     Not many years ago a knock on the front door was greeted with a smile.  Who could be there?  Must be a neighbor or friend.  Maybe someone is selling something that I need.  But, these days, a knock at the door is treated with fear.  In fact, we have recently had people shot for knocking on a door, that’s how afraid we have become of others.

     We don’t know for sure what front doors were like in Jesus’ time, but he seems quite willing to send his disciples out to share Good News with others.  Back then the towns were mostly small, and everyone probably knew every else’s business, so they didn’t use privacy to protect themselves. 

     The interesting thing in the Gospel, however, isn’t that Jesus is sending out his disciples; rather, he is telling his listeners how his disciples should be accepted and received.  Jesus is saying that the Good News of his message and life is not just in the hands of the professionals, be they clergy or church ministers.  If we receive and support people bringing Good News, we will be rewarded like them because we become part of their ministry.

     We see the widow helping Elisha in the first reading.  She goes out of her way because she knows Elisha is a holy prophet.  Elisha returns her kindness with a gift she could never have expected, a gift that changed her life: She would become a mother.  This happened in a society where being childless was considered a shame.  This is how she was able to receive Good News in her life.

     All of us hear the Good News every time we come to church and every time we read the Bible.  This makes all of us responsible for supporting God’s message and God’s messengers.  This not only means participating in worship; it means doing our part to help others know God’s message as well.  Many of us have this opportunity by the way we raise our children as believers and the way we strive to live with integrity.  But all of us, by our Baptisms, are messengers of God.  As one famous preacher often says, “You may be the only Bible someone else ever reads.”

     St. Paul underscores this in his words to the Romans.  He says: don’t you know what happened to you when you were baptized?  Don’t you know you took on the life of Jesus Christ, dying with him so you could live a life grounded in his Resurrection?  All of us baptized live in a “newness of life” which proclaims the joy of Christ’s victory over sin and death.

     We are tempted to be shy about faith today because that often is the style of modern people.  “Don’t talk about politics or religion,” is the common rule.  But all of us interact with others on different levels; many of those interactions involve key points of faith and the values we should live by.  These need to be reinforced in our everyday lives.

     Rewards are waiting to be given out, it seems.  They spring from the joy we have as believers who have come to know Christ and live in his Spirit.  The reward and richness that comes from our believing and living our faith is only the preliminary of the reward of the fullness of life God is ready to give us.

12 A

     He probably wasn’t old but he seemed old to us.  We were in first your college and one of the Paulist Fathers was giving us a pep talk.  He said, “I hope they don’t have a persecution today.  I love being a Catholic and I’d hate to have to give it up.”  Of course, we chuckled.  He was joking about how casually we take faith today, him included, but he was also praising those saints who had suffered for what they believe.

     Of course there are many people today who suffer for their faith, especially in countries where another religion is dominant or where the government is communistic.  But most of us today do not have to worry about being killed for practicing our faith.  Instead, we live in a world which attacks faith by ignoring its value.

     “Do not be afraid of those who can kill the body; be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.”  This phrase of Jesus sounds shocking to us.  In the first place, it’s natural to fear when our lives are at risk.  But we also don’t think of judgment as destroying body and soul. 

     Jesus is trying to get the attention of his audience with language like this.  He knows that persecutions will come; indeed, he will be the first one to be persecuted.  But persecution will follow for the apostles as well; we think all the original disciples, except St. John, were murdered for their faith.  We look at them with admiration and feel pretty small when compared to them.

     If Jesus is encouraging his disciples who one day will face death, he also is encouraging us who face a world in which nothing is taken too seriously, particularly religion.  This means that modern people tend not to value their faith too much; and that’s the biggest temptation that we face.  We can think of our faith as just convenience or cultural heritage, something we claim but something that doesn’t cost us much.

     But, in a sense, this is another way to kill a soul, isn’t it?  When our faith grows weak, when we take our attitude toward God as something casual, it begins to affect everything else about us.  Some famous writers have said, “If there is no God, then there is no sin.”  They meant people would feel free to do whatever they wanted because there were no consequences.  But it is also true, “If there is no God, there is no great purpose to life.  We live for ourselves and our comfort.  We live to ease things for those we love.  But not much more than that.”

Jesus is telling us that the love of God is crucial in our lives, so crucial that we have to respond to that love with everything inside of us.  When life is good, God’s love still must be crucial to us.  When life is difficult, especially when we feel tested and tempted, then God’s love must be even more crucial to us.  Without that love, we empty our lives of their very foundation.

     This is the foundation without which we cannot be faithful as disciples.  This is the foundation that holds us up when things are falling apart; it is also the foundation that lifts us high as we grow in our faith and our life as disciples.  The danger isn’t that others will murder us for our faith.  The danger is that we will let it die because we never saw its full value.

11 A

     It’s hard to believe that it was over fifty years ago that we would flock to our televisions to watch Archie Bunker and his antics in the TV show “All in the Family.”  As we laughed at the irreverence of Archie Bunker—wasn’t this the beginning of casual irreverence for many things in our culture?—we also had seen an important, but often unrecognized, dimension of family: everyone belongs.

     So not only did Archie Bunker have to put up with his son-in-law Meathead, Meathead had to put up with Archie too.  No matter the strains between them, the idea of family kept them together.  Don’t we recognize this in our own families—how people could be away for years but somehow return after all that time?  Robert Frost, the famous poet, said that “Home is when you there, they have to take you in.”

     “They have to take you in” . . . because there’s a way that we come to belong to each other.  For all the times we are in danger of forgetting that, both in our personal families and in the human family, we belong to each other because we belong to God whom we call “Father.”  All of us are equally loved by this Father, however we are physically or emotionally; all of us have our destiny in this same God.

     Just as God made the Israelites a family, which we see in the first reading, so Jesus formed a family of those who followed him.  We hear their names in the Gospel—most of them from different family and backgrounds, but now given the same mission.  Jesus is sending them out to proclaim that the “Kingdom of God has come”—a Kingdom that wants to unite all humankind into a family of grace and love.

     We even hear the name of Judas at the end of this list.  This makes us wonder.  Didn’t Jesus know what Judas would do? Couldn’t Jesus read the people he was choosing?  What makes him different from the other disciples?  But the truth is that Judas is part of all of us.  We all have in our heads and hearts the capacity to act totally for ourselves and totally without awareness of God’s love.  We all can look Jesus in the face and still be thinking of our own ambition.

     God loves this part of us as well—not so we can stay with our selfishness that leads to betrayal, but so that we can know that even this side of us cannot keep us from God or from the family that God wants to form.  We may write ourselves off, but God writes no one off.  St. Paul tells the Romans that God loved us when we were still distant and sinners.  We don’t have to be perfect to be part of God’s family.  We do have to accept God’s love and let that love transform us.  This was the very thing Judas would not do.

     So here we are, in the sacred space of the Mass, each of us with our limitations and imperfections.  Here we are, each of us in need of God’s mercy and grace.  Here we are, gathered around the table to Jesus sets for those who want to accept his love more deeply, for those who commit themselves to following him.  We are all in the family, not so we can use and abuse each other, but so that Jesus can show us what it means to belong to God.

Corpus Christi A

     We sometimes have strange hungers.  Hungers that go way back in our lives and memories.  I remember so well when we would visit Coney Island as children, how my mother would love to eat one of the candied apples and my father would look forward to a hotdog at Nathans.  Even today, when I see the ridiculous hotdog-eating contest at Nathan’s on TV, I see my father smiling.

     Hunger is not just about our stomach and our mouths.  It’s also about the memories we have of our past lives, of the environments where we felt safe and free, of the people who surrounded us with love.  Every time I east pasta, I’m expecting the sauce to taste like grandma’s.  It’s a taste I cannot forget.

     These are the deeper tastes that Jesus wants us to think about today, on the feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus.  Our attention these years has been on the Eucharistic Revival when the US Bishops have invited us to renew our faith in the Eucharist, particularly in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.  But this renewal directs us to that environment of love that Jesus established for us, the community that gathers around his altar and experiences union with him. 

     It is in the Eucharist that Jesus makes us feel totally at home, totally free, and totally connected because it is in the Eucharist that Jesus gives himself to us as our truest and deepest food.  In the first reading, we are reminded of the hunger of the Jewish people in the desert.  They were mostly hungering for what they did not yet experience—for a promised land that was yet to come into their lives.  God uses their human hunger to prepare them for something deeper.

     The hungers we have in life are, in a sense, never fulfilled.  That’s why gaining weight is so much of an issue for many of us.  We eat and we want to eat more.  Our hungers are eased but not relieved.  Christ wants us to feel our deepest hunger—to be in unity with Life itself, to be one with endless, infinite Love.  Jesus tells us that is who he is—God’s endless love come in our flesh, and God’s endless love made food and drink for us. 

     Only when we eat the food of Jesus will our deepest hungers become satisfied.  Because when we eat his food, we take on his life.  Only when we take on his life of generous and giving love, to complete trust in the Father and full action in the Spirit, only then do we realize the food that Jesus would give us.  We can come to Communion a thousand times; but until Communion puts us in touch with the heart of Jesus, we are not truly receiving.  We receive Communion much more with our hearts than our mouths.

     We receive the Eucharist so we can become a Eucharistic people, grounded in Jesus’ life and love, and strengthened to bring his life and love to all who still hunger for true food.  So many are starving today, not because of a lack of calories but because we are not feeding on true meaning in our lives. 

     When we eat the food of Jesus, we finally know what it means to live. 

Trinity A

      “I never knew this a bout you.”  Or we might say, “I was surprised to see you act this way.”  Or we might even say, “I couldn’t believe what you did.”

     We might say things like this in a variety of situations: a child who goes on a rant, a spouse who surprises with an extravagant display of love,  Or a coach who sees an amazing game played by an athlete.

     The truth is that we barely know everything that is inside of ourselves, let alone what can come from another person.  And today’s feast of the Trinity, celebrates the amazing things that we have come to see in God.  Father, Son, and Spirit we call them: but these are human words to describe the ultimate mystery out of which everything comes and toward which everything moves.

     If we pull back for a larger view, the revelation of God to the Jewish people should shock us.  They saw a personal God to whom they could talk and pray, a personal God whom they could praise.  We could open any of the pages of the Hebrew scriptures and be astonished at the way their words attempted to grasp and relate to God.  God was not an idea nor an elusive being; God was part of their everyday experience.

     These images of God, initial and powerful as they were, were the images that Jesus built upon when, as God made flesh, God enters our experience in an even more profound way.  “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.”  In Jesus, God is being given to us.  In Jesus, God speaks our language, takes part in our history, tastes our death and reveals the Resurrection as the destiny of humankind.  Who knew that God was like that?

    And the life of Jesus leads to yet a fuller experience of God, the coming of the Holy Spirit, through whom God dwells in us, empowers us, enlightens us, and leads us into the fullness of life—our life and God’s life shared in love.  Some people have trouble seeing the work of the Spirit in their lives; they expect fireworks or magical displays.  But how about the prayer we do, the love we have, the care we show, the joy we have celebrating the Eucharist?  How about the selfless love between husband and wife?  Or the desire we have for heaven?

     The revelation of God in Jesus and the Spirit shows us that we have barely touched knowing the God who created and saves us.  The revelation of the fullness of God in the Trinity shows that our life’s fullness comes from exploring the fullness of God, of seeing again and again the extent of the love and sharing God has given us.  When we make the Sign of the Cross we are gesturing the astonishing life that is God, that is now open for us to enjoy.

    God keeps surprising us by showing us levels of life and love that we have barely imagined. 

Pentecost A

     It was one of most confusing and disconcerting moments of my life.  I had moved to one of our Paulist houses and proceeded to re-arrange the furniture, put up my books, and put clothes into the closet.  I had to leave after a day or two for a week-long trip.  I returned late on a Friday night and entered my room: I could not recognize it!  I made sure the key opened the right door—it was my room alright, but everything has been rearranged differently than I had left it. 

     I opened the desk draw, yes it was my stuff in the drawer.  I opened the closet: yes, they were my clothes.  But nothing was where I had left it.  I spent the weekend wondering how much of my mind I was losing, until I talked to the housekeeper on Monday.  She was so happy for me to move in, she decided to do me a favor and fix my room up for me!  My room would be better her way!

     We don’t like things turned upside down.  We like them predictable and under our control.  But what happens when Jesus enters our world?  What happens when he sends the Holy Spirit upon us?  We can feel that in the first reading.  I say “feel” because so much is happening in the scene between the wind, the tongues of fire, this new way of communicating, and this recognition that all were brothers and sisters in the same grace, that God had broken the boundaries between us.

     So what do with this scene from Pentecost?  Our world is still much more comfortable when we can be with our own, have the rules of our group to follow and speak our own language.  But the Holy Spirit, that is to say, the Spirit of Jesus, comes precisely to break us out of the molds we have formed for ourselves and bring us, kicking and screaming, into the world that God has destined for humankind.

     Pentecost wants to be a new creation, at least a new starting point.  So much of past human experience had been each one trying to get his own, each group struggling against other groups, and each believer building walls with other believers.  If Genesis is the breaking apart of fundamental relationships, Pentecost is their restoration.  If Babel shows how humans cannot communicate with each other, Pentecost gives us the common language of love. 

     “Peace be with you, “ Jesus says.  Then, as God breathed into Adam, Jesus breaths into his disciples: “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  As I am reconciled with you, so you are to bring reconciliation to the world.  As God’s Spirit lives in me, so I pass that same Spirit on to you.  As creation had its first dawn, so I bring upon you a dawn of new life, full life, unending life, life with God.

     It may disorient us, but God’s love is exactly the kind of love that we cannot keep to ourselves.  That love may challenge us, but that’s part of the renewal it promises.

Ascension A 

     We usually think of the sky in spatial terms.  People love tall buildings; they love to climb high mountains; people will pay tens of thousands of dollars for a brief ride into space.  Up high we can see so much, and we imagine ourselves on top of it all.

     But with Jesus’ ascension into heaven, the issue is more about time than space.  After all, we believe God is everywhere, not just in the sky.  We experience God more powerfully in our own hearts than we do looking at a cloud.  But Jesus ascends into heaven not as a sign that he is leaving us; rather, he is showing that he is now present to every moment in history, even in our own lives.

    The Ascension of Jesus into heaven is not a geographical statement.  Rather, it’s a statement of the role of Jesus in human history and, indeed, all of time. Jesus ascends, as we say in the Creed, to sit at the “right hand of the Father.”  Well, God doesn’t have hands, so this is a figure of speech. To sit at the right hand of God is to the one through whom God’s love and action is revealed.

     Doesn’t Jesus tell us this?  “If I go to the Father, even greater things will happen.”  That’s because what God has done in Jesus will now be carried throughout history, bringing transformation and hope to the world.  The Angel in the first reading has to tell the disciples that staring into heaving is not what faith is about.  Rather they are to be witnesses of what God has done in Jesus—and the message they bring will transform human life.

     It does seem quaint and strange, these twelve men who rushed from Judea to Galilee who are now approaching Jesus on the top of the mountain.  They have not even put aside their doubts.  No only did they doubt about Jesus; they doubted mostly about themselves.  But Jesus didn’t doubt.  They are to go to “all the nations”—far beyond the safety of their Jewish lives—and invite all people to be disciples of Jesus.  What does that mean?  To invite all people to continue the mission of Jesus throughout history.

     Indeed, history has come up to this very moment, when you and I are gathered around the Scripture and the Altar.  The same Jesus speaks to us with the intimate power of his Ascension.  The power of heaven, of joy, of peace and wholeness, which Jesus won for us in his Resurrection, is now available to us.  “Men of Galilee . . .“   People of Maryland, of New York, of Chicago, of Los Angeles: why do you think your answers are in the sky?

     Heaven itself has come to you, filled you will grace, and empowered you to be a witness, an ambassador, and example, of the salvation that Jesus invites all people to experience.  Witness is not something we do at special moments; no, disciples live witness, show witness, give witness at every point of our lives.  The same power that God used to raise Jesus is now at work in our lives; that’s what we heard in the second reading.

     Maybe it’s time we lived with the power of love and grace we have been given . . .

Easter 6 A

     I once gave a couple a Bible. I also put a check in the Bible which I assumed they would find.  When my check didn’t clear, I called them up.  “Oh, we didn’t see the check.  Thank God because we have needs right now that we take care of with the check.”  In other words, they had a gift that they didn’t know about.

     This happens in a variety of ways in our own lives.  We take out a jacket we haven’t worn in a while and find twenty dollars inside.  Or we get into a difficulty and find that one of our friends is a powerful support for us.  We never realized how good that friend was!  Or we are challenged to do something new but aren’t sure we can do it.  Yet we find ourselves succeeding.  We had gifts inside us that we didn’t know!  Do we not discover every day how our mothers have been an ongoing gift to us?

     That is the sense of the readings we have at this time of the church year.  Jesus is raised from the dead; Jesus is ascending into heaven.  But this is not an experience of absence.  Rather, this is the time to concentrate on the ways Jesus continues to be with us through the presence of the Holy Spirit.  “I will send you another Advocate,” Jesus says. The Advocate of the Holy Spirit is the way that Jesus continues his works of redemption and continues to reveal the life of his Father.

     In some ways the Holy Spirit is so pervasive, we can easily not recognize his work among us.  We fill in our lack of awareness with sense of the Holy Spirit that are fairly exceptional—whether we can speak in tongues, or see miracles, or have unusual feelings.  While the Spirit can bring about many different kinds of actions in our lives, the primary action of the Holy Spirit is to fill us with the virtues of faith, hope, and love.  When we think about our lives as Catholic believers, they are filled with these gifts.

     Our celebration of the Mass, for example, seems almost totally concentrated on Jesus and his presence through the Consecration.  But the whole ceremony we have takes place through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  Just as we ask the Spirit to come upon our gifts of bread and wine, so we are asking the Spirit to come upon us as well.  If we have faith, if we care for others, if we strive to make life richer for others—all of these are signs of the presence of the Holy Spirit.

     The Spirit comes upon everyone.  In the first reading we see the Gospel coming to the Samaritans.  We should pause for a moment and realize that the Samaritans were rejected and despised by observant Jews at the time of Jesus.  Yet the Spirit comes upon them with the same power and love as it came upon Jewish believers.  This is telling us that if the Holy Spirit can come upon the Samaritans, then the Holy Spirit can fill our lives as well, however we think of ourselves.

     As an exercise this week, try to reflect on every event you do from the point of view of the Holy Spirit.  Are you working?  Then is not the Spirit using you to build a better world?  Do you care for your family?  Then is not the love of the Holy Spirit being communicated among your family members?  Do you stop and pray?  Is this not the work of the Holy Spirit?  Have you spoken a word of encouragement to others?  This is the consolation of the Holy Spirit being given to others.  Are you looking forward to blessed life in heaven?  This is the Holy Spirit giving us a vision of the Kingdom.

     Among all the gifts we have, none is greater than the Holy Spirit, the Advocate of Divine Love who ties us to God the Father, to the risen Jesus, and to the whole community of believers.  Jesus freely gives us his Spirit.  We need to make sure that we realize the gift we have.

Easter 5 A

     I know I’m going to date myself, but how many of you remember a singing duo named Milli Vanilli?  Yes, most of the younger folk have no idea who this 1988 singing group is.  The reason they are famous, though, is because their top selling album, Girl You Know It’s True, was actually sung by others.  Milli Vanilli went on a tour and they basically lip-synched the lyrics—and they got away with it!  People were understandably upset when they learned of this . . . no one likes to be fooled.  We want the real thing.

     On NPR radio they had a segment talking about how Artificial Intelligence can actually produce music.  Tell it to write a song in the style of Elvis Presley or Dinah Washington and it will do just that.  This is a further complication of our lives; how can we be sure we are not being cheated or fooled?

     In our Gospel today, Jesus is saying that he’s the real deal.  “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” he tells his disciples.  He can tell us this because Jesus knows what his mission is.  He comes to reveal the Father to us; he speaks only what the Father gives him to speak.  His whole identity is to help us understand God and God’s love for us.

     “Have I been with you so long,” Jesus asks Philip, “and you do not know who I am?”  This is the same thing we heard last Sunday when Jesus said he is the true sheepgate, the true prophet.  He gives his life to verify the authenticity of his words.  The signs that he performs throughout his ministry are all to help us understand who God is: our healer, the one who reconciles and forgives, the one who accepts us when we feel unacceptable, the one who even calls us from our tombs.

     “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” Jesus says.  But doesn’t Jesus give this same mission to his followers.  “Greater works than mine you will do because I go to the Father.”  Jesus’ mission is to reveal the Father’s life by the way he lives and dies.  But he asks us to accept this same mission so that our lives also reveal to the world who God is.  Jesus goes to the Father to pour his Holy Spirit upon us and make us witnesses to God’s life and love.

     We see this happening in the first reading when seven non-Jewish men are chosen to assist the apostles.  They go from serving the food to proclaiming Jesus as apostles to others.  They learn their ultimate mission is not only inside the Christian community; they become apostles to others.  Likewise, we are called to go from being believers to being disciples who bring Christ into the world.

     Jesus continues to do great works in our midst; he even involves us in them.  Because every time we come together for the Eucharist, the Spirit of Jesus makes us one community bearing witness to Jesus’ transforming presence.  For the Eucharist continues to reveal to us the nature of God.  Even more it brings us into the presence of God in an astonishing way.  Just as Jesus is the “real thing,” so our Eucharist is the ‘real thing” because it connects us directly with the Father, his life and his love.  And so it makes us the “real thing” in continuing Christ’s work today.

    Pretty soon it’s going to be impossible for us to know what’s real.  We will have not only artificial songs but also artificial videos that pretend to be politicians or entertainers, what they call deepfakes.  All the more reason, then, for us to be real believers.  The more we encounter Jesus and understand his mission, the more others will see us as authentic followers of Jesus who truly live his life.

Easter 4 A

     “May I speak to a representative?”  “Is there an agent available?”

     How many times have we been working our way through the voice menu on the phone trying to get a real answer?  We just want to talk to someone who can do something about our situation.  If there’s a problem with something we bought, or if we have to call the Motor Vehicles Agency, we dread the runaround we are going to get.

     Religion can be that way too.  Go to this person for one set of ideas, go to this book for another perspective.  One expert says one thing, and the next expert contradicts the first one.  This has made it more likely that people will be indifferent about their faith today.  “They are all the same.  They all come down to the same thing.”

     But can you say that after Easter?  That’s the question the Gospel poses today.  With all the religious experience that people have had through history, there has only been one person who has been raised to glory from the dead.  Jesus, presenting himself as the gate for the sheep, says that this gives him an authority that no one else can claim.  “I am the sheepgate,” he says.  “Everyone else pretended to care for the sheep.  I have given my life for my sheep.”

     Because of this experience of Jesus, having come from God and going back to God, Jesus says he is the true entryway to understanding what God is all about.  Jesus came to show us what the Father was like, knowing full well the revelation to the Jewish people over two thousand years.  However we may be tempted to think of God—as a law-giver, as a judge, as a liberator—Jesus is saying if we look at the love that permeated his life and death, then we can begin to understand the love that God has for us.

     Because Jesus is the gate, Jesus gives us access to God.  Others can give you ideas or guesses, but Jesus gives us a way into God’s own life.  We know that because of how he died and rose; we know that from the complete love that Jesus showed.  We know that from the Spirit Jesus pours into our hearts.  “Whoever sees me has seen the Father,” Jesus tells us.

     Jesus comes primarily for our sakes.  He comes to reveal for us the meaning of our lives. He comes to show us the power of resurrection which should energize the lives of every one of his believers.  His believers hear his voice because his believers have seen who he is and have begun to let the power of his risen life transform them.  We hear his voice because we have received his life.

     With Christ we can stop playing with a never-ending set of options that goes nowhere; with Christ we can truly share God’s life which he gives us in love.

Easter 3 A

     Would you like to talk a walk with Jesus?

     That’s the invitation that all of us have after reading about the two disciples who were running away to Emmaus.  This was a walk that changed their lives.  Why?  Because it was an Easter walk.

     Think of all the other walks Jesus had with his disciples, particularly his initial journey from town to town in Galilee, and then the longer trip he had when he went to Jerusalem with his followers.  How often these walks were awkward.  How often the disciples didn’t know what to make of Jesus.  Jesus would be talking about his upcoming sufferings and the disciples would be talking about who was the favorite.  Jesus would be talking about the bread that he multiplied, and the disciples would be thinking of lunch.

     The disciples needed Easter to begin to understand Jesus.  Because it is at Easter that we see how the self-sacrifice of Jesus becomes a victory for him and for all of humankind.  It is at Easter that the disciples see this is not some new government Jesus is setting up but a whole new set of relationships between us and God.

     It is only on this walk that the disciples could begin to see how Jesus was fulfilling the patterns long buried in Jewish Scriptures.  It was only on this walk that the disciples could begin to see that the broken bread was the unending sign of Jesus’ continued presence with them.  Here the disciples began to see that Easter is the slow absorption of the power of the Scriptures and the power of the Eucharist into our lives as disciples.

     The amazing thing about this walk is that it never ends for the disciples.  Indeed, they would spend the rest of their lives reading the Scriptures and sharing his broken Body.  Our lives as followers of Jesus are a continuation of the journey Jesus undertook with these two disciples who went from giving everything up to understanding everything that God was doing in their lives.

     It is to this same life, this same journey, that you and I have committed ourselves.  By our baptisms and our receiving of the Sacraments, by our continuing to hear and to apply the words of Scripture, we continue to grow in our awareness of Easter.  Easter is not a pretty day in Spring; Easter, rather, is the new Day that God begins for all of humankind with the Resurrection of his Son from the dead.

Easter 2 A

     It’s a rare enough experience, thanks be to God: the feeling of being absolutely defeated.  The feeling of having lost everything meaningful.  Like the people in the Gospel today, we want to lock ourselves in a room and just be by ourselves.  What’s it like to have a friend fight valiantly through a cancer but, just when things seemed to be changing, our friend suddenly dies?  Or to be called unexpectedly into a boss’s office and be summarily fired?  Or to have been caught doing something terrible, with your face all over the news?  And now often do we see people having experienced a total loss through fire?

     “I give up, give me the key.  Leave me alone. I’m locking myself in. I’ll figure something out.” 

     Although the Gospel says it was fear that kept the disciples in the room, we know it had to be more than this.  Here they were, having given themselves to a brand-new cause that seemed to be filled with hope.  But instead of being part of the new Kingdom they dreamed about, they ran away, leaving the one they loved alone, to be captured, tortured without mercy, and buried as a criminal.  They were in that room because their shame and failure put them there.  They would be happy if the earth swallowed them up!

     With God, however, no doors are permanently locked.  As long as we can breathe, something can happen.  As long as we can remember the words of a Psalm of Hymn, then we have the ability to let God touch us.  “Peace be with you,” are Jesus’ first words.  These are words of mercy and peace, to be sure; but they are also words that change everything.  Peace be with you—has not Jesus whispered this into broken hearts for more than 2,000 years.

     But the mercy of Jesus has a price.  We have to give up the pity party.  We have to give up the idea that we are allowed to quit in shame.  We have to give Jesus the keys to the doors of our hearts, so he can unlock them with the Power of Easter.

     That is what we are watching this Sunday in the Gospel—we are watching the power of Easter at work in the lives of Jesus’ followers.  We have a choice: keep our doors locked or else let Easter move us.  Keep beating our breasts in shame or start reaching out to others.  “As the Father has sent me.” Jesus says, “So I send you.”  The Power of Easter is to receive the gift of divine life in such a way that we become part of the ministry of sharing that life, that we ourselves become servants of Easter life.

     Jesus comes today into our community of worship as much as he came to the disciples.  He knows the ways we have robbed Easter of its power; that’s why he appears again and again in our lives.  “Peace be with you” he always says.  He breathes upon us with the breath of his Risen Spirit.  “Come on,” he says.  “The door is no longer locked.  Can’t you see before you a world waiting for Easter life and peace?  You bring it to them as I have brought it to you.”

Easter Sunday

     It arrived in its typical fashion, the official-looking envelope, once more summoning me to serve as a Juror.  Residents of DC receive these invitation because it is so hard, in that city of intertwined relationships, to look objective and disinterested.  Most people in the City know policemen and most of them know people who have had difficulty with the law.  So many of us live in “conflicts of interest.”

     What if we were jurors on this Easter Day?  Matthew’s Gospel sets it up.  One could be a juror like the soldiers whose sleep was wildly disrupted by an event they would rather forget; or one could be a  juror like the Women of Galilee who can barely believe what they are seeing and hearing.  The soldiers decide to clam up; the women, however, are spreading Good News as soon as they can.  “Go, tell his disciples what has happened,” and angels urge.  It seems like they cannot wait.

     The question this raises for us, then, is how can God get a decent hearing when people have already closed their minds to the message?  How can the Gospel message be heard by people who have decided, in principle, not to share it?

     The soldiers lives are closed in fear.  Not only has a terrifying event happened to them, but they have been warned precisely about something like a scam that the believers of Jesus might be willing to pull off.  As far as they are concerned, it’s easier to live in a world without Easter as it is to live in a world where Easter will make us question each other again and again.  “Just say it didn’t happen and you won’t be bothered.”  Just enter the conversation with a closed mind and you can block out the questions and implications.

     The women, on the other hand, went to the tomb with open minds.  Their question is simple: “Who will roll back the stone for us?”  They didn’t know what to expect at the tomb; for them it was going to be a Sabbath morning of tears and broken hearts.  No one expected the tomb to be opened.  None of these women expected to see a Messenger from God sitting on top of the rock which protected the tomb as if in triumph!

     Here the dynamic of the story changes dramatically.  In place of the soldiers’ fears and the woman’s tears, there now emerges a brilliant joy, a joy which cannot be kept stifled.  “Go tell your brothers,” the angels say; “Go tell your brothers,” Jesus says.  You cannot keep Easter a secret.  You cannot pretend as if it didn’t happen.  All they can do is fall at the feet of Jesus and beg to be with him. 

    These women have heard the greatest news, news that still shocks and shakes us today:  “He is not here.  He has been raised.  You will experience him Risen  in the ministry that he gives you.  You will make known his resurrection and life now present to every human.” 

     Easter is not seen with our eyeballs; Easter is seen in the love that we show the world in Jesus and our desire to help others know the hope Jesus .

Passion (Palm) Sunday

     I find myself focused on a part of the Passion that, in past years, I would pass over fairly quickly.  Because one naturally moves to the characters involved, to the drama before the Sanhedrin and Pilate, to the particularly cruel torture they put Jesus through.  One moves on to the weeping women, Simon of Cyrene, and the scene on Mt. Calvary.

     But for the past few years I’ve been called to reflect on and to grasp more deeply the long night Jesus spent before his crucifixion.  I think of the emotional brokenness he bore along with all the physical pain.  Here he was, having given himself totally to what he was called to do, having proclaimed a time of mercy and healing, having done one marvelous deed after another; here he was, alone and abandoned.

     I wonder what a sense of failure he had, a sense that he let everyone down, a sense that every good deed that he did was coming back at him now as slaps in the face, as spit, as insults.  What did he think during the night he awaited sentencing?  Those long hours when he undoubtedly could not sleep?  Those hours that shift way-too-slowly from darkness to morning’s glimmer of light? 

     This, too, he bore for us, every moment we have been crushed, when our intentions were misunderstood and twisted, when what we have striven and lived for seems to crumble.  This, too, he bore: when friends are no longer present and one feels there is no place to stand.  This, too, he bore: the times our hearts have been broken and we have been rejected.

     This is Jesus’ secret pain, less visible than the lashes and punches.  But it is no less his pain, and no less his offering to his Father.  To live and die as a witness to the Kingdom he proclaimed, to give everything he had to give, even enduring the bitterest feelings: this, too, he would give in trust to his Father.  For it was part of that emptying that would lead to a fullness no one dared yet to dream of.  His depression and rejection would be part of the road he was taking to attaining Risen life for himself and the world he loved.

Lent 5 A

     It’s the obvious question from today’s Gospel:  Why did Jesus do it?  Why did he let his friend die?  Why did he delay in going to Lazarus?  I doubt I would do that, and I think most of here would not do that.  What was Jesus’ purpose?

     I think Jesus wanted to make a statement that went well beyond his friendships and even the events of his life.  Jesus wanted to make a global statement about God and the limitations of our lives.  He wanted to say something about the human experience of death.

     Because we can all be stoical about death.  We can talk about how limited our time is, about how we never have enough life, about how noble it is to accept our fate.  Most people today do exactly that.  We don’t talk about people dying; we talk about them transitioning or passing over.  We try to take as many thorns out of death as we can.

     Jesus is inviting us to something more than Stoicism, more than toughing it out.  He is saying that God’s vision for humankind is that every life would be in unending relationship with him and with the unending capacity to grow in life and love.  So, in effect, in the words of the Godfather movie, Jesus is saying: “This isn’t personal, this is business.”  His raising Lazarus is not a favor he does for a friend, but a statement he wants to make for the world.

     There’s a part of us that wants a limited life; the thought of eternal life can be frightening.  If our life is limited, we can say we did what we could do and what else is expected of us?  But if our lives are destined for unending fullness, then we have to live differently.  We have to live with hope, with integrity, with justice, with a profound respect for all human dignity.  If we will live forever, then we know that our human lives matter.

     Lazarus, come out, Jesus shouts.  But he shouts that to us as well. When we were baptized and given a name, we began a true relationship with Jesus.  And God began a grace-filled relationship with us. Mary, John, Eduardo—all of you, come out!  Do not be locked in the tombs that limit you, in the cages that keep you back.  Do not be stuck in the dark of the tomb that tells you that you are less than you actually are. 

     The raising of Lazarus was, of course, down payment on what would happen when Jesus himself is raised from the dead.  Why?  Because his resurrection reveals the fullness of God’s vision for us, and it is the means by which he bestows the Holy Spirit upon us, a Spirit that begins divine life in us.  We celebrate this destiny every time we worship—not only the death but the resurrection of Jesus, now made ours through the sacraments we receive, through our receiving his risen Body and glorified Blood.

     Pay attention to Lazarus.  He has a lot to teach us.  His death was the way Jesus chose to show us who we are all called to be.  His rising was the way Jesus chose to show us the future God wants for all of us.

Lent 4 A

     So what do you think about your genes?  “My grandmother lived to be 95, so I have very good genes.”  Or, “My grandfather and father each had heart disease, so I have to be careful.”  We think of genes as part of the destiny handed down to us, a destiny that can shape our lives in a drastic way.  A destiny to which we have to submit.

     We can also use our genes to make excuses.  “Well, being hyperactive is a trait in our family.”  Or we can use them to underline our humility. “I got the family genes for math and that’s why I get A’s.”  Our genes determine our looks, our physical shape, our endurance.

     Jesus is dealing this Sunday with a man born blind.  I emphasize “born.”  We don’t know what caused the blindness, but the fact that this comes from his birth almost makes it something genetic.  Like so many of us, he was dealt a hand and had to work around it.  Jesus, in healing the blind man, shows that there are no limitations when it comes to faith.  Faith can change what we think is our destiny.

     Imagine how this man had to live, all the people who had to be part of his support structure, from feeding him to keeping him clean.  With Jesus’ healing, all of that was different in his life.  And he wasn’t going to let anyone take that away from him.  “The only thing I know is this: I was blind and now I can see.”  The religious leaders do not want to hear it; they throw the blind man out of the synagogue, a fate that undoubtedly happened to many of the earliest believers in Jesus. 

     Something new had come into the live of the blind man; before he met Jesus, he had a confined destiny.  But now he is free. Others, however, could not accept this element of newness.  They had to play down Jesus’ healing just as they had to play down Jesus himself.  “Your healing was sinful because it happened on the Sabbath.  We can pretend it didn’t happen.”

     This reading is suggesting to us that we can use that same strategy of denial.  We can pretend that Jesus hasn’t done very much in our lives.  That our faith has not brought us much newness.  This allows us to make a lot of excuses to stay the same way we are, to play the destiny card.  It also allows us to escape many of the implications of redemption.  Just like the opponents of Jesus, it will be easier to deny anything is different than to face up to the fact that the power of the Spirit of the Risen Jesus is at work in us to transform our lives and help us grow in discipleship. 

     Not all change in life is dramatic or immediate.  In fact, some of the greatest change we experience happens over time, slowly.  But it still is change.  Through this change, we are still able to see Christ at work in our lives, if only gradually.  Maybe we are a little less greedy and a little more generous.  Or a little less angry and a little more peaceful.  Or a little less anxious and a little more trusting.  Or a bit less full of doubt and a lot more full of faith.

     Perhaps we can look back at our lives during Lent, seeing where we were ten years ago and where we are now.  Perhaps we can notice growth and thank God for that.  Christ has touched us all and invited us to bathe in the pool of his baptism.  He has empowered us to live less in darkness and more fully in the light.  He has changed the destiny of our lives by the power of his grace.

Lent 3 A

     The jury took only three hours.  This concerns the widely-followed case of Alex Murdaugh, the famous lawyer of a prominent family, who was convicted of murdering his son and his wife.  It was the kind of case that we American seem to love—a mystery with a variety of possible motives that keep our minds churning.  Was he guilty?  Why did he do it?  “I knew it all along.” Sure enough, another case will be making us before too long.

     Which brings us to the Gospel today.  Aren’t we suspicious of the Samaritan woman?  The story starts with this outsider making her way to the well at noon, long after all the other women have gotten their water.  She’s obviously isolated and being spurned by her neighbors.  When it comes out later that she had five husbands and her situation is still awkward, our judgments start to conclude things about her.  The woman wonders why Jesus talks to her.  There’s a part of us that wonders that too.

     The scriptures are using this woman to ask us a direct question: what is it that we thirst for?  And where will our thirst be quenched?  We were amazed after the earthquake in Turkey and Syria that several people were found alive many days later.  How could they last?  Isn’t it impossible to last that long without water?

     Indeed, it is impossible to live without water.  The acres of plastic water bottles in our dump sites show how much we thirst.  And it is precisely here that Jesus wants to insert himself in the readings this week.  Jesus wants to quench our thirst with the water that we truly need.  “The water I shall give will become a spring welling up to eternal life.”  Only the water that Jesus gives can completely take away our deepest thirst.

     Thirst is a need; but thirst is also an emptiness.  Take a very cold glass of water on a very hot day: we feel it in our whole body, as if some total craving were being touched.  Jesus wants to fill our emptiness with his very life, a life that always points to the Father, a life that always surges with the Holy Spirit.  “The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit,” St. Paul tells us.  A love the swells, fills, and overflows.  This is the love we are invited to receive, the love that Jesus’ offers, a love that fills our needs and emptiness.

     Throughout the Church many are preparing for baptism, the same sacrament most of us have already received.  The Church invites us to look upon the longing for faith and community in the hearts of these people preparing for baptism so that we can revive our own experience of baptism.  For when the baptismal waters came over us, at whatever age that was, God’s love began to flow in a way that fills our lives with grace, holiness, and ongoing conversion.  In a sense, we have to renew our baptisms every single day by committing ourselves to the love of Jesus.

     Of course, for us believers, the waters that quench our thirst lead to the Wine that is Christ’s Blood taken into ourselves every time we come to worship.  “Take this, all of you, and drink.”  In case we ever wondered what our baptisms meant we have the Mass to remind us again and again. 

     Will we drink Christ’s water?  Will we drink Christ’s Blood?  Will we make Christ’s life our own?  Only when we do that will the deepest thirsts of our hearts be satisfied.

Lent 2A

     I bet we all have a favorite picture of ourselves.  And I know it’s not the one for our drivers’ license.  And I’d bet it not the formal one we took when we graduated from school, though it’s fun to look at how we posed back then, how we tried to look serious and successful.  My money would be on some photo someone snapped, perhaps at a wedding or picnic, and we just love it.  Why?  Because “that picture captures me.”

     We often like painted portraits because of the way they seem to capture a personality, far better than a camera.  We feel there’s a true inside to us that most of the time isn’t recognized until, boom, the right picture is snapped.

     Which was the right image of Jesus?  The one where he’s walking around Galilee, where’s he healing a crippled person, or the one we find in the Gospel today, with his face dazzling and his clothes bright as the sun.  Which is the right image of Jesus?  The one that seems heavenly, filled with light, or the one when stands before Pilate?

     The Gospel we have today is very important because it shows Jesus’ glory—a glory that was always part of his life, a glory that is revealed for a moment but a glory that came from within him.  Jesus is always glorious, whether he’s hungry in the desert, being mobbed by a crowd, or dying on the cross.  This Gospel shows us a part of Jesus that his disciples could not often see, and perhaps we cannot often see it as well.

     No wonder Peter is tempted to stay on the mountain.  Now that he’s seen this side of Jesus, he wants to freeze it in time.  “Lord, let me build three booths and we can keep things just as they are.”  He wants the perfect picture.  But notice that it’s exactly at this moment that darkness arrives, that the cloud envelopes them, and the voice from heaven tells them: ”This is my beloved Son.  Listen to him.”  It’s as if they wanted only one part of Jesus, the glory part; that’s why they fall down in fear. 

     Listen to him!  We have so much prejudice in favor of our eyes.  We value vision more than anything.  Look at all the TV and video we keep watching.  Look at how we want cameras to tell us what really happened, as if they knew for sure.  But Christ is known not by what he looks like but by what he says.  We don’t have movies of Jesus, even though we keep trying to make them.  We have his teaching, what came from his mind and heart.

     Look at how much of Jesus we see every Sunday.  When we come to Mass, we feel Jesus’ presence so much that we have to stand when we hear the Gospel.  We cannot be sleeping like Peter.  We have to be alert because that spoken Word wants to haunt our minds and hearts.  It wants to transfigure our lives.  Then we begin thanking God in a way so powerful that Jesus become presence in our midst—not in dazzling robes but in the simple bread and wine we offer and, once transformed by the Spirit, we eat. We don’t want Jesus sitting in a booth on a moluntain.  We want Christ in our daily lives and actions.

     We often think, “wouldn’t it be great to go back 2,000 years and see what Jesus actually looked like.” But that’s not the point.  Lots of people did see him and never accepted him.  Lent is a time for us to learn that Christ is as present in our lives as we let him be, and all the more so in the Eucharist we are privileged to celebrate every Sunday.

    Which is our favorite picture of ourselves?  Which is our favorite picture of Jesus?  I have a picture of a laughing Jesus that drives one of my co-workers insane.  “Jesus didn’t have teeth like that,” she says.  Well, whatever teeth Jesus had, his presence remains with us, in us, and throughout our lives.  The more we let Christ in us, the more clearly we see him, hear him, and come to know him, not in pictures but in our lives.

Lent 1 A

     Sometimes I wonder if there’s only one real temptation in a person’s life.

     I know that often these days we unfortunately hear about an actor or athlete who died unexpectedly young; sometimes they’ll say, “They had a long struggle with alcohol or drugs.”  And we surely know people who seem plagued in an usual way by a propensity to addiction or sexual excess or fits of uncontrolled anger.

     But my question goes beyond this: is there one basic test that we all face that constitutes the major temptation of our lives?  Because that’s what Jesus is showing us in the Gospel.  Although there are three temptations, his basic temptation was one: not to trust in his Father and not to live for the Kingdom.  Although the tempter puts before him comfort, fame, or power, the real temptation is deeper.  That’s what Jesus makes clear through his time in the desert.  He knows the purpose of his life.

     Jesus clearly is reversing what we see in the first reading, the story of our first parents.  This passage is a way for the scriptures to say that every one of us is tempted like Adam and Eve.  Every one of us is tempted to become our own center of power, to control everything, and to do this from an insecurity that lies deep within us.  All of us would do what our first parents did, and most of us do this, one way or another, every day.  We want to be our own gods.

     Which brings us to this season of Lent.  If the central temptation of human life is not to trust in God but to substitute our own power and choices for God, then the only way to defeat this temptation is to come to choose God as the center of our lives more deeply.  Lent gives us this opportunity.  Beyond all the things we consider giving up, beyond all the extra charity we might do, how do we come to affirm God as the God of our lives?  Even more, how do we rediscover this God as the God of infinite love and life once again?

     The Scriptures invite us to go into our own desert in a figurative way.  Can we pull away from the numerous distractions and spend just ten minutes every day this Lent in silence, asking God to speak to us?  Can we shut our minds up long enough, once a day, to try to listen to God more completely with the deepest part of our soul?  Isn’t that Jesus lesson for us?  He resists the tempter by saying that God the Father is the center of his life, and nothing will substitute for that.  He suggests that we discover the same thing in our own lives.

     Recently there was a story about a pastor who, trying to imitate Jesus, starved himself to death by not eating and drinking for forty days.  That is one way we should not interpret the Scripture!  Our task is not to replicate Christ’s hunger but to replicate his mentality—that’s the process God asks of us. 

     Every Mass we celebrate is done with the light that Jesus shines upon us this first Sunday of Lent.  Every Mass says that we live for the Father and the Father is the center of our lives.  Every Mass invites us to experience God’s love and presence as renewed disciples.  Every Mass is a chance to rediscover the conversion to which Lent invites us every year.

     There is, in the end, only one remedy for the fundamental testing that we all undergo as disciples: to do what Jesus did, to push aside the delusions that tempt us, and to say to the Father: You alone are God, I live for you.

7 A

     I was asked to pray for an unusual intention a few months ago: a woman, imprisoned in a Central American country, for political reasons.  I typically try to imagine the situations people are in—what it would be like to be held by people who detested you for political reasons and were willing to lock up a middle-aged mother for over a year.  What it would be like not to have control over your own life.

     I direct a prison ministry for Catholics imprisoned in the United States; I have visited prisons, both local jails and more distant state correctional facilities.  I see the barred doors opening and closing, each one revealing that the prisoner has virtually no chance of getting out.  I love prison ministry precisely because it gives people hope.

     We think of jail and prison as primarily external constraints: thick walls, barbed wire, steel cells.  We think of how people are deprived of relationships, the ability to pursue their own desires, and the fear of others.  But perhaps these external constraints are nothing compared to the internal constraints we have that trap us and keep us locked up.

     Jesus points to just these constraints in his words today—words that have inspired people like Francis of Assisi and Dorothy day, Martin Luther King and Pope Francis.  Our inability to love another, and our inability to forgive another, are instincts that imprison and trap us in insidious ways.  I recently read how liberated Francis of Assisi felt when he finally was able to hug a leper, to feel part of the love that God has for that unfortunate person.  Finally, St. Francis felt free.

     Jesus’ words speak about what we can remove from our lives: those feelings and limitations that keep us locked in anger, resentment, and hate.  Every one of us knows what these feelings take from us.  The surprise in Jesus’ words, however, is not what we can lose but rather what we have to gain.  So profoundly does our lack of love and forgiveness distort us, we do not even realize how much our lives are diminished by these feelings.  That’s because we have not yet realized what Jesus invites us to gain, to hold onto forever, to make central in our hearts.

     For when we give up these internal chains of hate and unforgiveness, then we begin to see how God is, and how our lives can be enriched with the qualities of God’s life.  God is totally free.  From God’s freedom arise infinite love and infinite mercy.  God wants us to share in this divine freedom, to be free as God is.

     In some ways, every one of us is imprisoned until we taste of the freedom that God is and God offers, for his rain falls upon everyone, just and unjust; his love extends to everyone, no matter how we feel.

     Most of the time our ideas of freedom are trivial—getting out of work, getting on a plane, spending money on ourselves.  Jesus invites us to a totally new dimension of freedom, a dimension which, once we can enter it, will transform everything in our lives. 

6 A

     Oops!  I said something I knew I shouldn’t say . . .  Or, a string of nasty words come out of my mouth . . . Or, I pushed someone who was in my way . . .  Or, I smiled when I heard of someone’s misfortune.

     We think we understand our actions and even that we act deliberately.  But most of the actions that we do come out of complex layers in side of us, some quite conscious, some quite unconscious, but all from a seed of impulse that we rarely think about. That’s why we do things that seem uncharacteristic.

     A shooting in Southeast.  “We don’t know the motives yet.” Four students murdered in Idaho.  “This seems to have been planned.”  A free-spirited man beaten to death by men sworn to protect the public.  What was going on?  Are they now looking at the video and wondering what they did, and why?  Are they mystified by their actions?

     Jesus is giving us a psychology of human action in the Gospel today.  He points out that the greatest sins we do all come from impulsive seeds inside of us which we let grow.  Look at the violence and the murders.  Was there not a seed of anger that went unchecked?  Look at the way a marriage was violated and vows were transgressed.  Didn’t that start with sneaky looks and wandering eyes?  Looks and eyes that should have been checked from the beginning?  The deceit all around us comes  from the unbridled way we use language against each other.

     “Your holiness must be better than the scribes and Pharisees.”  But weren’t these groups the holy people?  Indeed they strove for total purity in following the law and the teachings of Moses.  But the followers of Jesus have to concern themselves with more than laws and teachings.  We have to strive to control our attitudes and inner thoughts.  Our holiness must go right to our core.

     This mostly involves humility.  Jesus is well aware of the arrogance of those who think they are perfect; he also knows well the dangers of people who totally repress themselves, pretending that they have conquered things they can now forget about.  Remember his parable about the man who thought he threw out the last demon and was totally clean inside?  The demon returned to the empty house with seven more!

     Humility knows weakness, knows how to depend on God, knows not to puff ourselves up so much that we cannot even see the obvious in front of our eyes.  If we know we are week, we learn not to presume.  We learn to question.  We learn to be cautious.  We learn to turn at every moment to God, to the Holy Spirit, to fill our emptiness and quell the feelings that arise from that emptiness.  The wisdom Jesus offers us teaches us not to deny what is inside of us but to bring it, continuously, to God.

     That is the wisdom Jesus urges on us in his teaching.  A wisdom that does not rely on itself and get scuttled on its own vanity, but a wisdom that arises from learning to present to God all our minds, hearts, and energy.  That’s a wisdom that can seep into the deepest crevices inside us and begin to direct our inner impulses and attitudes toward the Kingdom of God.

5 A

     You are the light of the world . . . and we certainly need more light!

     We Catholics are about 25% of the population in the United States.  That’s a lot of people, whether we are very active in our faith or whether we come now and then.  What are we contributing to the enlightening of America?

     I speak in terms of the racism and gun violence that haunts us at every moment.  I speak of gross images on our televisions every night as lives are taken, families are broken, and people prepare for funerals.  I speak of the tears that never get a chance to dry up.  Memphis, Monterey Park, Sandy Hook, Baltimore . . . the list goes on.

     Jesus tells his disciples that they are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  These two elements only work when their power is spread.  If you keep salt in the saltshaker, it does nothing for the food.  If you put a lamp in the closet, it doesn’t light the house.  Jesus probably got a smile when he gave his audience the image of a lamp under the bushel-basket.  What kind of fool would do that?

     Well what kinds of fools are we if we do not live out, share, and spread the basic values we have about the dignity of every human person, about the infinite love God has for every human begin, whether rich or poor, whether this color or that color, whether powerful or dependent?  Jesus died and rose for every one of us. Yet doesn’t his crucifixion continue in the hate, violence, abuse of power and justice that pervades our everyday lives here in our country?

     Well, we say, what are we supposed to do?  Overturn the second amendment?  Reverse centuries of racial exploitation?  Change a society that was born in violence and grew by exploitation?  What can we do?

    Quite apart from legal changes and social commentary, every one of us can be some of the salt God wants to spread through American life, some of the light beams God wants to shine on the world today.  We know how easy it is to stereotype and judge.  We can refuse to do it.  We know how we can readily slip into kind of sick humor about others.  We can stop finding it funny.  We know how we get excited about movies and TV shows that thrive on guns, bullets, and dead people.  We can turn off the TVs and not buy movie tickets.  You know how people are put down in subtle ways because of something different about them?  We can start praising those people and thanking God for them.

     Maybe all of America is too big and idea.  But what about the worlds that you and I inhabit every day, especially our families, work-places, and neighborhoods?  Can we make our light shine?  Can we sprinkle the seasoning of love throughout lives and relationships?

     Can we help modern society stop being its worse self?  We are the salt of the earth.  We are the light of the world.  Let’s do it.

4 A

     What if Jesus were to appear today?  Maybe a the local football or baseball stadium?  Imagine the excitement.  As the time approached, thousands would crowd into the park; it would be filled with TV cameras and news reporters.  Finally, Jesus would approach a microphone and begin to speak.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . “ he would say.  And people would look at each other and start to leave.  “We’ve heard all this before,” they would say to one another as they departed.

     “We’ve heard all this before.”  How many people have we dismissed because we thought they had nothing new to say?  And how easy for us to dismiss these statements from Jesus today, statements we call the Beatitudes, because we already learned them or because they seem so out of touch.  Todays’ Gospel gives us an opportunity to hear them afresh because these are the words Jesus asks us to live by.

     We heard Jesus announce the Kingdom last week; this week he is telling us what it means to live in the Kingdom.  These are the opening words of Jesus’ first talk to his disciples in the Gospel of Matthew, the very first lesson Jesus wants us to have.  They touch on the question of happiness and the purpose of life.  Jesus is inviting us not to be happy, or find happiness, but to live happiness every day.

     Blessed are the poor, the meek, the sorrowing, Jesus says.  But don’t we spend most of our time trying to be rich, influential, and cheerful?  What is Jesus talking about? 

     Jesus is saying that those who think happiness comes from money, power, or pleasure have not faced life’s basic truths.  Our value, our importance, and our joy all reside in coming to know God as the center of our lives because the God of Jesus will always be with us even though we are poor, even though our hearts are breaking, and even though people think we are insignificant.  When God is the center of our lives, then we are set free to live in the joy that only comes from God.

     The rest of Jesus’ statements show us what freedom looks like: to be merciful, to strive to make things right, to work to bring peace to others, to live with integrity: when I am in the proper relationship with God our Father then I can be in proper relationship with myself and those around me.  The more we inflate ourselves the further we are from God, the further from the simplicity that makes us alive. God chooses the foolish of the world to confound those who think they are smart; God chooses the lowly to deflate the self-important.  God doesn’t buy into our illusions.

     The Gospel invites us to this initial lesson of Jesus because obviously we live in a world that tries to do the opposite—and it doesn’t work.  How many people have tried to cheat their way to wealth?  Yet it all falls apart.  How many nations think it’s all about power?  Yet they end up in nonstop war.  How many think their might will save them?  Yet they end up broken and alone.

     Jesus wishes us true happiness, a happiness that cannot be taken away, a joy that abides in every situation of life.  He wishes us this blessedness so that we can become blessings ourselves to others and, in this way, spread his Kingdom of true life to everyone.

     True freedom and true life.  Who can turn down an offer like that?

3 A

     “A people who walked in darkness . . . “

     This phrase from Isaiah in the first reading is referring to two tribes of Northern Israel who were conquered by Asyria almost 700 years before the coming of Jesus; as a result, their populations were mixed with pagans and foreigners.  They represented people considered unclean.  From that area come Samaritans; and from that area, Galilee, comes Jesus.

     Of course, today darkness seems to be growing everywhere.  We think of countries where people live with oppression and military rule, like Myanmar; but we also think of countries of seeming non-stop strife like El Salvador and Venezuela.  We consider people who have no freedom and no opportunity to be as people living in darkness.

     If we are honest, we also notice the darkness in our own culture.  Is there a  night on TV when we do not hear of teens and younger children shot?  We sigh in relief if a whole week goes by and there is not some massacre in a shopping mall or church.  Economists regularly talk of recession and inflation.  We smirk at would-be public leaders who tell outright lies and expect to get away with it.

     Jesus comes from a land enmeshed in darkness.  There is not only the occupation of Israel by the Romans; there is also a staleness to faith, as if people have run out of energy and hope.  “The kingdom of God is at hand,” Jesus shouts, as if trying to get our attention.  The light that is God’s divine presence in our midst has begun to shine.

     “Repent,” is the poor translation of the word the scriptures have Jesus using.  Jesus is not telling us to give up chocolate or beer.  He’s telling us to wake up, to let our mind be flooded with a new vision, to let our staleness be startled by the Kingdom that is appearing in front of us.

     So shocking is this message that we have to reflect on what it did to people.  Andrew and Peter hear the invitation of Jesus and immediately give up their fishing profession.  James and John hear the invitation and immediately leave their dad and co-workers in the boat. 

     We show that we have heard Jesus’ invitation by the changes we are willing to make in our lives.  Some of us are called to give up homes and occupations.  Our Church has been blessed by people who felt the call to live fully and explicitly as clergy and religious.  But Jesus’ call extends to everyone, to make every calling we have, every way of life, into a sign of the Kingdom of God.  For all of us can let the light of Jesus shine into the darkness of our lives through compassion mercy, justice and generous love.  All of us can carry a part of the Kingdom into the world in which we live.

     Paul reminds us that our salvation doesn’t come from fancy philosophers or any range of religious figures.  Only one was crucified for us; only one gave the witness of his own life in martyrdom so that the Kingdom could be revealed in his Resurrection.  The light of that resurrection has, indeed, shone on the world and changed the meaning of our lives. 

     And that light gives us a choice: to be people who have gotten used to the darkness around us, or to be people who disrupt our world with the vision of hope.

2 A 

     What makes someone charismatic?

     You sense these people as soon as you engage with them.  Often they are politicians who seem able to persuade anyone.  Certainly, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, for all their political differences, were charismatic.  Sometimes it’s a star.  Meryll Streep seems able to dominate any movie screen with all her gifts.  But even in daily life, we meet people who just seem to have it all together, and we wonder what their secret is.

     John recognizes something about Jesus in the Gospel.  Obviously, John knew of Jesus because of family connections.  But John had left his small town and was now preaching many miles away outside Jerusalem.  John had gathered followers and had even attracted Jesus to hear him.  But John knew there was something different about Jesus.  In the language of today’s Gospel, John saw the Holy Spirit come upon Jesus and stay with him.

     We know the Spirit is at work throughout the world; we know the Spirit is at work in the hearts of every person even if they do not recognize that.  But the Spirit seemed to be especially at work in the life of Jesus, something that John recognized in a distinct way because John longed for a new future more than anyone else in his generation.  “One greater than I is coming after me,” John says.

     We recognize charism when we see how a person’s life and destiny seem to coalesce, when they become their full selves, when they seem to live fully for the purpose they have discovered.  Of course, some people have these qualities, but they use them for greed or power.  We have had plenty of charismatic leaders that have darkened many years of human history.  But when people use their gifts to accomplish a noble purpose, we can see that clearly and we rejoice.

     What more noble purpose could there be than to open up history to the future God plans for it?  What more noble purpose than to live in a way that God’s grace and mercy begins to change the hearts of many?  What cause could be more noble than to reveal the salvation God wills for everyone?  This is Jesus’ destiny, and Jesus wants it to be ours as well.

     In today’s first reading, we see this destiny as far back as the words of Isaiah some 500 years earlier.  Isaiah talks about a servant who will brings salvation to the ends of the earth—whose destiny and purpose will be even greater than that of Israel.  In our Gospel, John cannot hold his testimony back: the Lamb of God has now come into our lives, the one whose selfless innocence and service will reverse even the power of sin.  Jesus is perfectly charismatic, perfectly filled with the Spirit, because his life and his destiny coincide to become the instrument through which human history is transformed.

     We begin reading Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians today; it is one of Paul’s longest and most complicated letters to read and understand.  But his opening lines are clear enough: the Corinthians have been called and made holy by God.  They, therefore, share in the destiny of Jesus, to live out Jesus’ charism of loving service.  We will see as we read this letter that living up to this destiny is not easy for the Corinthians, or for us.

     But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.  Jesus, after all, has sent upon us the same Spirit that was present in his own life, a Spirit that makes our lives capable of serving the purposes of God as well.

Epiphany A

    Obstacles.  Obstacles in travel.  Obstacles in life.

    First we had the blizzard in Buffalo, one that was exceptional even by Buffalo snow standards.  A woman dies in her car, stranded six blocks from her house.  Another woman dies a few hundred feet from her home.  The snow paralyzed a whole city.  Then we had Southwest Airlines with days of cancelled flights, stranded passengers, and lost luggage.  Imagine what it would have felt like to be stranded on day three!

    Our feast today is about potential obstacles.  Epiphany is basically a story of travel.  These mysterious men journey because they saw a new star arise.  The emphasis of the Gospel is that these men are foreigners, strangers to Judaism and its teachings.  They are puzzled but ask questions.  They are put on the spot by Herod, but they escape.  They finally are able to fulfill their purpose, to bring gifts to one they acknowledge as the world’s new king.

    The magi might help us think about the obstacles that we think we face because, after all, we are all on a journey, looking for the center of life and searching for wisdom.  How can this feast help us find that for which we seek?

    The Magi, first of all, saw their need.  Perhaps they were revered as wise men, perhaps they even had status in their countries.  But they knew something was missing, and they paid attention to their need. Of course, we know something is missing but we so often think the answer lies in our wallets and credit cards when we know that our consumerism only makes our needs, and our greed, grow more.

    The Magi, secondly, trusted their instincts.  They read the signs around them.  They noticed a star and felt compelled to follow it.  How easy it is for us to bury our instincts, especially the more noble instincts we have: to live for something decisive and essential.  We settle for very small images of ourselves: can we make it through college, can we make it through retirement.  Epiphany says that every life is filled with eternal promise; the Magi find God in the form of a homeless child.

    The Magi also knew they had something to give.  What do you bring a new-born King?  What is he going to do with gold or incense or spice?  But their gifts represented themselves; that’s what they had to give.  Because we are all lost until we have come to give ourselves in selfless love to another and to God.  We pride ourselves on our power or our charm; the Magi were prized because of their generosity and kindness.

    The Magi teach us that without hope we are stuck in life, in danger of missing life’s meaning.

    We, like the Magi, travel through life.  Unlike them, however, our paths are clearer.  Why?  Because we know that God has traveled to us, made a path from eternity into our humble history, and come to us in the seeming weakness of a child.  God made the path to us promising divine life.  The Magi teach us to follow it back to God.

Mary, Mother of God A

     It’s a week since we celebrated Christmas.  I wonder what we remember of that day, or, better, what we remember most vividly.  Certainly, how cold it was.  For those of us who traveled, we might remember how long we drove or whether the plane was late.  We probably will remember the gifts we exchanged.  But, more than anything, we will remember who we were with on Christmas day.

     We have a lot of sentimental songs about Christmas and many of them revolve around being back home.  “I’ll be home for Christmas,” we sing—"if only in my dreams.”  When we sing that we mean that we will remember deeply the people whom we love the most, the people with whom we want to spend our time.

     Christmas is a perfect time to remember how important we are to each other because Christmas is when we begin to learn how important we are to God. Jesus becomes our brother in our human flesh so that we can call upon God the same way he does—“Abba!” “Father!”  Christmas is when God tells us that we all are related to him because God not only created us in love but became a brother to us in his Son Jesus. 

     This is an intense relationship as any of us know when we have turned to God in very desperate prayer.  We feel God’s presence more deeply than we would feel the presence of a human being in the room with us.  How did St. Augustine say it?  “God is more interior to me than I am to myself.”  When we explore our existence with any depth, we see deeper layers of God’s presence.  How much more so now that Jesus has come to us in our own flesh?

     But we have this intense relationship not so we can keep it but more that it can come to include many others.  Here are the shepherds sitting in the field, fighting off sleep, when the sky lights up with Angels.  What do they do?  They don’t jump in the field saying, “We have seen Angels.”  No.  They run to the manger, they see Mary and Joseph, and they see the child born just as the Angels told them.  Jesus extends his presence beyond Mary and Joseph to include some of the lowliest people in ancient Israel.

     This is how blessings work.  We see that in the first reading: Israel will be blessed when their blessings have spread through all the people.  And, in Jesus, we see that the blessings of God begin to have their true power when they extend to the hearts of every human being.  God’s wants to pour into each heart the Holy Spirit that tells us we are all his children.  That is what the birth of Jesus does for all of us—it lets us know that God is present to us and wants us to be present to God, not as an outside quality but as an internal realilty that we can share.

     Mary reflects on all of this, especially how shepherds heard Good News, as she brings her Son to be named.  “His name is Jesus.”  His name is Jesus because he will save us by giving us a share in God’s eternally blessed life.

Christmas A

     Do you think it would have been wasted on us—if our sky filled with Angels singing Glory to God because God had done something unimaginable in history? Do you think we would have stared in the sky and then run to tell everyone about it?

     Of course, we are fascinated by what might be in the sky.  Lots of people think we are regularly visited by creatures from outer space, but authorities keep hiding it from us.  When we have fireworks over the Mall, many thousands crowd near the Capitol.  If there’s an air show, Blue Angels doing acrobatic turns, we cannot keep away.  And we routinely stare at the clouds or sun to determine what weather might come.

     We are fascinated by what might be in the sky, but we are so often blind and deaf to the Angels whom God sends us. 

     After all, Angels are messengers that make us aware of another way of seeing things, of God’s way of seeing and doing things.  God’s messengers are everywhere.  But perhaps we ignore them because we do not want anything complicate our interpretation of things with something new, something holy, something amazingly happy.

     “A child has been born, Christ the Lord.”  So the Angels announced, so the Church has announced, so we announce once again this Christmas day.  Creation itself wants to announce this good news!

     Maybe the shepherds were particularly well disposed to hear a message.  There was no life more boring than being a shepherd, especially when one had the night shift. Think of the endless hours of sheer boredom, wondering whether that noise was a dangerous animal, hearing the sheep do their “baaa” throughout the night, struggling to keep awake.  Think of the cold, of the rain, of the small-time conversation between sleepy shepherds. 

     Yet it was to these nobodies that Angels sang.  And it was these nobodies who heard the message.  Who heard the Angels’ song . . . What have they to teach us?

     Perhaps they were blessed to know they were bored, to know there had to be something more, something that changed life completely.  Perhaps those long nights disposed them to hear and see God in a way our nonstop TVs do not.  Perhaps we are so distracted by one digital burst after another that Angels and divine messages seem too quaint, too old-fashioned, or too good to be true.

     The shepherds ask us this Christmas day: what are you expecting of yourself and of God?  Why have you reduced your vision and hopes so much?  Why do you think God isn’t doing something unimaginable every moment of existence?  Why do you think God’s message isn’t something you need to hear?  Our skies are always filled with messages of joy.  We should pray for the grace to hear them!

     Glory to God in the highest.  We sang this with the Angels as Mass began.  Perhaps seeking a little more glory and a lot less distraction can train our ears to hear the Angels and open our lips to tell the world.

Advent 4 A

     Lots of things can get us stuck in life.  But what are the things that can get us moving again?  Sometimes it’s a threat.  Sometimes it’s a prize or an incentive.  Sometimes we just face the fact that we have to do our job.  But is it ever a dream?

     Until the start of the 20th century, dreams were put into two categories: nightmares or innocent pleasantries.  Then psychologists like Sigmund Freud started thinking about dreams.  All of a sudden, they were not so innocent.  I know as a child I had a regularly recurring dream about jumping under a water sprinkler on a terribly hot day.  I now know many therapists would trace most of my neuroses to a dream like this!

     Actually, we hear in the Gospel Joseph doing something that happens quite often.  He’s trying to work out a problem.  The woman he loves and is committed to has become pregnant and no one knows exactly how.  How does he handle all of this without bringing even more shame and harm into the situation.  Joseph is stuck.

     That’s when an angel appears to him in a dream.  The angel helps Joseph clarify the situation.  He can look at his own life; he can look at Mary’s devotion and faithfulness.  He begins to realize that something else is going here: the hand of God, the work of God.  “Joseph, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife . . . .“  Joseph, do not let your fear paralyze you.

     In the first reading, Ahaz, the King of Israel is paralyzed with fear. Ahaz, by and large, does not appear to have been a very nice man.  We know of one incident when he cheated a man out of the inheritance of land from his family so he could have it for himself.  “Ask for a sign,” says Isaiah.  “Ask for some way to see the hand of God.”  Ahaz refuses.  He doesn’t even want to deal with God—the very One he should be dealing with at this point of danger in the life of his nation.

     “A young woman will conceive and bear a child,” says Isaiah.  Can you not see that if new life can continue to be born, then we always have hope, we always have a future, we always have the chance for something new. 

     If any birth is a reason to hope—and we know this from the excitement we normally feel upon learning about a birth—what happens when it is the birth of the Son of God, of a Savior, of one who comes to reveal the scope of God’s mercy and love to us?  It’s too easy for us to be like Ahaz, to refuse to dream, to refuse even to ask.  We can sit around and pout at our misfortune.  And nothing says we are stuck more than sitting around and pouting.  We get the joy of resenting and feeling sorry for ourselves; but we need so much more than this to come close to the life God dreams for us.  Or we can accept that something new is being done in our lives.

     Like Paul, we have all been called and chosen.  We have all been given a mission to be signs of hope and agents of the future.  We have all received the revelation of God’s love and power in our lives.  A child will be born . . . one that changes history’s meaning.  We should let people know!

Advent 3 A

     I think it’s part of human nature to second guess ourselves.  After all, our intelligence allows us to think of alternatives to many situations; as a result we can always compare the various versions in our heads to what we tually have chosen.  Did I pick the right school?  Would another career suit me better?  I love my spouse . . . but still I wonder. We second guess.

     Is there a little of the “second guess” to the Gospel we just read, when John the Baptist sends disciples to question Jesus?  We see John as the one who virtually launches the ministry of Jesus.  But now, in jail, it seems like he’s beginning to wonder.  Maybe he thinks his own life would have turned out differently if Jesus were the Messiah.

     But a second guess can also be a way we seek confirmation of what we have done.  “Yes, I could have done this or this.  Yes, I could have chosen something else or someone else.  But I’m happy I did what I did because of the way it made my life, and the lives of others, better.”

     John sends his disciples to ask Jesus the question, “Are you the one who was to come, or do we still expect someone else?”  Jesus gives John the most direct reply: just look at the deeds I have done and ask yourself if they don’t look like the deeds of the Messiah?  The blind see, the lame walk, sinner receive reconciliation, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news proclaimed to them.”  Jesus is accomplishing exactly what Isaiah the prophet said would be the signs that the Kingdom had arrived.”

   If we second guess ourselves, we can second guess God as well.  Like John, we can put our questions to God, asking if God has disappointed us.  When we do this, it’s usually because we have been seeing God in terms of bargaining: I’ll do this for God, and then God has to do what I need for me. And when we do this, we often fail to see what God has done, and is doing, in our lives. We second guess without opening our eyes.

     Where does the hope in our hearts come from?  Or the desire to reach out to people who are hurting?  Or the unending conversation we have with Jesus?  Or the signs of divine presence that surround our faith lives?  Where do the joys of family and friends come from?  Or the courage to face things that once seemed unfaceable?  Where does the expectation of eternal life come from?  Are not all of these the works of the Messiah, of Jesus, in our lives?

     The emphasis of today’s Mass is on joy—as Advent reaches its maturity and slowly changes into the celebration of Christmas.  One of the great joys we have is that, after we have raised our questions and doubts, God continues relating to us with a love and presence that is stronger than the questions we constantly pose.  Because God continues to heal the blindness of our lives, and walks with us as we limp along, and brings us out of the traps we use to imprison ourselves, and raises us from the death of our sorrows.  God continues to look upon the poverty of our souls and pour into them the riches of Good News.

     One of the gifts of Advent is this: looking at the darkness of these days and our hearts, the presence and joy of God stand out even more clearly.

Advent 2-A

     Once more I am undergoing a ritual that happens often to a missionary priest: I am preparing to move.  I have already done this eleven times in my life, and I suspect this will not be the last time either.  Perhaps we Americans move more than most people in the world because of the requirements of our jobs or even changes in our state of life. 

     The process is complicated, often involving questions of whether we need this thing or that, of what to throw out or keep.  But it is also filled with imaginative dreaming: a new house, a new room, a new way to consider how I am living. When we move, we can imagine doing what is otherwise impossible: we can imagine that our lives are starting over, that we have a new beginning.

     That’s the overwhelming sense I get from the Gospel today.  All these people are flocking into the desert in order to be baptized by John.  Matthew, whose Gospel we will mostly be reading this liturgical year, emphasizes just how many were inspired by John.  “The Kingdom of God is at hand,” John shouts in the desert.  All these people came to him with dreams of a new life, of something different, of profound change.  This is what they felt when they entered the waters of baptism.

     In the middle of all this excitement, though, the Gospel strikes a very dark note.  John sees the Pharisees and other religious leaders observing, looking at him and the crowd.  “You brood of vipers,” John yells at them.  “You bunch of snakes.”  Now these people were among the most pious and religiously observant people in Jewish society at that time.  Why is John yelling at them?

     John is saying that God is giving people an opportunity to begin a new life, an opportunity that is not to be missed.  By refusing his message, these religious leaders are saying that they are quite happy the way they are.  Perhaps it was their status; perhaps it was their economic comfort; it certainly was the idea of God they had come to, God the giver of laws and temple ritual.  So John’s stirring words about the Kingdom of God appearing made little impression on them.  They were comfortable enough.

     What about us?  Is Advent an invitation for us to begin anew in our lives?  We only have to hear the first reading, from the early chapters of Isaiah, to realize the possibilities when we let the Spirit of God into our lives.  Isaiah is talking about an ideal king who would transform his country through a realm of peace.  But John the Baptist is talking about a Savior who would transform what it means to be a human being, what it means to live with hope.

     We have the word “repent” in the Gospel, but I don’t like that translation.  The Greek word means so much more than we mean by “repent.”  It refers to a complete change in the vision with which we live our lives, of minds opened and transformed.  God would give us new minds so we can begin to live in a new way.  Only those with transformed minds can really see the Kingdom that God begins in Jesus.

     Whether we realize it or not, that’s why we worship each week.  The Eucharist is an opportunity for God to open our minds and transform our hearts so that we can experience the Kingdom more deeply—a Kingdom where we begin to experience the fullness of life and love through our encounter with Jesus.  You and I do this every week not merely as a pious act but especially as a dramatic act of hope in what God is offering our world. 

     Our Catholic lives are a constant invitation to start anew with an ever-fresh vision of the Kingdom.  We cannot let the opportunity go by.

Advent 1-A

     Where’s it all going?  What is the point of all the efforts we put in?  Is it all just a party that will eventually come to an end?

     Another way to ask this question is this: what kind of city do we want to live in?  What’s our vision of life?  I’m a New Yorker so, of course, heaven would look like New York, except I’d have a lot more money in my pocket.  I love the crowds, the noise, the way people seem to race down the street.  It’s as if they cannot get enough of life.

     Others hate New York, of course, and never want to go there.  The very things that excite me are the very things that drive them crazy.  Crowds, noise, rushing around?  They’d rather be on a farm in Iowa than walking in Central Park.

     In the first reading we have a section near the opening of the book of the prophet Isaiah.  He is speaking to people surrounded and threatened by their national enemies, people who wanted the very destruction of Jerusalem.  But Isaiah turns it around: one day, he says, people will be rushing toward Jerusalem.  They will all want to live there.  They will realize that living in Jerusalem means living in the city of God.

     That was the message the people in Isaiah’s time needed to hear.  But God has a bigger message for us.  God’s plans for us are not a single city like Jerusalem.  Nor even a great and populous city like New York.  God invites us into his city, the city that shows us why we are living and what our goals in life should be like.

     The opening Sunday of Advent gives us a choice: what are we living for?  Do we think life is all ultimately about nothing?  Or do we think our lives come to greater meaning and fulfillment?  The vision God has for us is the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom where you and I live in the fullness of life and love.  This is a vision, a Kingdom, which no amount of negativity can destroy.

     We can live as if things didn’t make sense, stuffing our bellies and getting drunk.  Lots of people choose this option today.  Look at the amount of addiction and self-destruction that happens on a regular basis in our world.  One statistic said that one in five young adults die from the abuse of addiction.  Or we can live as if every moment of our lives makes sense because we have made the greatest discovery we can make: we have discovered the immensity of God’s love for us.

     We often think of Advent as a time of searching, of seeking, of waiting through the dark and cold of winter.  Indeed, we do seek and search every moment of our lives.  But more than our searching for God, there is God’s seeking us, encountering us, beholding us in infinite love, and telling us that we have a place in his life, in his city, where all of humankind can rejoice together, a Kingdom where divine love will be unconstrained in our hearts.

     Where is it all going?  What city are we seeking?  Can we join in God’s project of building a Kingdom in which everyone can dwell?

Christ the King C

     For years I resisted getting an Alexa Echo.  There’s something about these modern gadgets that drives me nuts.  When does everything come down to pushing a button, or clicking a mouse, or giving a verbal command?  Coming from a generation that changed channels by fiddling with an antenna for ten minutes and walking up to the television to change a knob, all these modern gadgets seem to mark us as lazy and spoiled people.

     Alexa play this.  Alexa tell me the weather. Alexa stop.  I’ve come to love this.  No fiddling with radio buttons or distorted signals, Alexa gives me the radio channel I want with just my speaking.  I wish that things happened that way when I speak to my car while I’m driving.  There I am, with Alexa, for at least a moment or two in my life, in total control 

     Total control has been a human yearning throughout our history.  Wasn’t that Adam’s problem, he couldn’t have total control?  Every nation that has invaded another sought control.  From Alexander, to Ceasar, to Frederick II, to Napolean, to Adolf Hitler, to Vladimir Putin, the idea of totally controlling something has seduced us humans.  And if emperors and conquerors can do it, why cannot I?

     The feast of Christ the King seems to be line with this desire.  We have long seen images of Jesus as the conqueror and controller of everything. We’ve long thought of the Last Judgment as the moment when Christ stops playing around and takes total control.  When we look at what it took as we endured our last election, we rather like the idea of a King who settles everything by sheer power.

     Yet this Feast teaches us that we should not impose our ideas of kingship and rule on Jesus; rather, we are to place his ideas of Kingdom and power over our own deluded images.  The tender scene we have in the Gospel, when Jesus shares the hopes of his death with a common criminal, shows how Jesus thinks of power.  He does not need people to bow down to him; he rather needs his followers to learn how to bow down to others, especially the broken and hopeless, in imitation of him.

     The second reading ends a rathe powerful poem about the preeminence of Jesus with a shocking image.  It talks about the ministry of Jesus as one of reconciliation, a reconciliation that happened by the blood of the cross.  That blood does not represent domination over others; rather it represents the power of self-giving love to conquer both death and human hostility.  It implies that the victory of Jesus’ blood brought about reconciliation between Jews and Greeks, between those with authority and those without authority, between all humans whose blood Jesus shared in the Incarnation. 

     Jesus’ power is all about peace, reconciling opposites, bringing together people who defined themselves against each other, people who believed they lived in two different worlds.  So powerful is the generosity of Jesus’ self-giving that there are no barriers that it cannot overcome.  So powerful is this generous love of Christ that it is supposed to mark the lives of every one of his followers.  Indeed, we know now that creating divisions is a mark of weakness and limitation; the true victor is the one who can unite all in a vision of love.

     “Are you not the Christ?”  This is what they yell at Christ as he dies on the cross?  We can hear Jesus responding:  “Indeed, I am the Christ, but not the one your power-hungry mind longs for.  I am the Christ who, freeing you from your delusions of power, can conquer your hearts with love if you only give them to me.”

33C

    We modern people have our own ways of imagining the end of the world.  We see asteroids coming from a distant part of space.  Our earth choking on the fumes we find necessary for our modern way of life.  Some people even imagine aliens coming in space saucers and occupying our planet.  For over 50 years the idea of total nuclear destruction seemed to recede; but it has returned with the invasion of Ukraine.  Such are some of our modern images.  Of course, Covid gave us yet another threat.

     Our Scriptures, as they near the end of the church calendar, typically turn to a kind of literature we call “apocalyptic.”  The word actually means “reveal what is hidden” but we take it to mean the definitive end of everything.  Jesus and his contemporaries were quite familiar with this kind of literature and speaking which our Gospel plainly shows us.

     The idea of the end of the world is strange.  One the one hand, wow, it’s terrifying to think about.  On the other hand, what are we supposed to do about it?  Some early Christians sat around most of the time, talking about the end of the world, but used that worry as an excuse to do very little.  Should we run around and panic?  Should we live paralyzed in fear?

     Jesus takes an entirely different approach in the Gospels.  “When you see these things happen, do not be terrified.  Such things are bound to happen.”  Rather, Jesus invites his disciples to look upon their lives as people filled with hope, people who cannot be shaken by fear.  Our first reading sees the end of things as the coming of justice, the coming of the time when everything will be lit up by the sun of God’s justice.

     When you think about our Catholic faith, it is one unending participation in the victory that Jesus has already won.  Isn’t baptism our sharing in the death and the resurrection of Jesus?  Aren’t the sacraments of marriage and holy orders ways to arrange life in order to serve and give ourselves, and, in this way participate in the fullness of life?  Isn’t Anointing the sacrament when we anticipate God’s healing of all creation through the healing you and I receive in our lives?  And Reconciliation states that we have already discovered God’s peace and reconciliation.  We Catholics don’t panic; we rejoice in the victory which is constantly being given to us.

     The second reading is a very sober one.  Paul is talking about people who refuse to live the life they are called to live.  Maybe they think that, because they are saved, they are no longer responsible for anything.  Paul tells us, rather, to imitate him, a man completely filled with the belief of Christ’s Resurrection and victory and, for that very reason, a man able to dedicate his life to helping others experience Christ’s victory too.

     These apocalyptic images that we have are not to frighten us into immobility nor paralyze us in terror.  They are to point out the terms in which you and I live, that the moment we have here are important because of the way they anticipate the promised fullness of creation.  We go about our daily lives and work not because they are pointless exercises.  Rather, the moments we have are shaping that ultimate event when God is all in all.

     We may not know how or when the world will end.  But we certainly have been taught how to live in the meantime.

32 C

     What a blessing a week is.  Thank God for the Jewish innovation of the week—six days plus a sabbath!  If we didn’t have a way to count to 7, and take brakes as a result of the counting, we could be stuck in an unbearable monotony: one day after another, indefinitely.  Imagine what commuting without end would do to most of our minds!

     So the number seven has come to represent a kind of completeness to us.  Witness, for example, the World Series playoffs—the best of 7 wins!  And the same goes for Basketball—the best of 7 wins!  If you win once, it could be just a fluke.  Do it over 7 games, and then we will know how good you are. Seven means “complete”—as in the phrase “twenty-four/seven.”  Someone will always be there.

     We have the number seven playing a big role in the readings this week.  The first reading, which is rather harrowing when read in its full length in the bible, represents the torture, before a mother’s eyes, of the seven of her sons.  This was at the time of Jewish resistance to pagan influences that would have corrupted the purity of Jewish faith about a century before Christ’s birth.  The point of the story is to urge faithfulness upon a persecuted people. We hold on completely.  We never give up.

     Perhaps this might remind us of the Ukrainians today: the more they are besieged, the more resistance they seem to have, a resistance that came as a surprise to many people.  Who knew their stamina?  What would we do if missiles were crumbling our buildings and electricity was down to two hours a day with winter around the corner?  Quitting would look a very attractive.

     We have a different seven in the Gospel, which echoes a story in the book Tobit; the bride who brings terrible luck to the seven brothers that she marries.  We hear the story in the Gospel not because it’s about a deadly bride but because it’s about completeness, about faithfulness.  Jesus teaches us the kind of faithfulness we are to have in our lives: once we have committed ourselves to another, how can we take the commitment back?  It’s impossible to claim to love another and hold anything back!

     Given the unfaithfulness that is rampant in our culture and in so many aspects of what people call love, the Gospel has yet a deeper meaning.  Our faithfulness, Jesus says, reflects the unending relationship between us and God, a relationship that will flower into eternal life.  The point Jesus makes is that how we are at the end of time revolves around the way we live faithfully at the present.  Eternal life is not something disconnected from our present life. 

     No one knows exactly what eternal life will be like.  Will I have the body of a professional boxer or hair like Justin Bieber’s?  Will I finally be the weight I always strove to be?  What we do know is that eternal life is springing forth from the life you and I live every day, from the generous, self-giving love that reflects God’s love. 

     I suspect many married couples might not be aware of how they are shaping each other’s spiritual lives and eternal lives. And I suspect most of us, married or not, are not aware that the quality of our faithfulness and love is forming the core of our lives when they come to fullness.

  So we don’t declare a winner with one or two victories.  Likewise, God will declare us winners when he sees the breadth and depth of the faithfulness we have lived. 

31 C

     A friend of mine lost his wife a few weeks ago.  She had battled breast cancer for over five years.  They were a team throughout the long stretches of therapy, sharing the hopes and the fears.  My friend expressed surprise to me: after his wife died, he cried for a few days, but then the crying stopped.  How come?  I suggested that he and his wife had already grieved for years and that many of the tears were shed beforehand.

     There may be many instances when we anticipate things.  Certainly the birth of a child, but also the coming of retirement, and couples who anticipate their youngest child moving out of the house.  We cry when they pack up but then imagine a life freer of stress in the future.

     I have been thinking about this as I reflected on the amazing Gospel we have today, the story of Zaccheus, the short guy who had to climb in a tree to see Jesus, the tax collector whom everyone hated.  How did things happen so quickly?  How did his life seem to turn around in a moment? 

      I suspect that Zaccheus had been working up to this moment for a long time.  Sometimes we seem to do things impulsively but, when we look back, there was a path, a pattern that brought the moment about.  Zaccheus had gotten caught in a life that left him on the periphery of his society.  He was forced to give up most relationships except those connected to other tax collectors.  He could look only a few people in the eye.  How often he must have thought: something has got to change!

     So he begins with curiosity, just wanting to get a peek of Jesus.  But he ends pledging to give away half his money and to pay back everyone he has cheated four-fold.  His curiosity led him to take a risk: what might happen if I got to see Jesus?  But Jesus takes a risk too: he looks up in the tree, knowing the agony of Zaccheus’ heart, and says that he wants to stay in Zaccheus’ house, that is, to make community with Zaccheus, his family, and his friends.

     Who took the bigger risk?  Jesus, obviously.  Because Zaccheus could have stayed hidden in the tree and remained unmoved.  But Jesus took the risk that perhaps Zaccheus would be unable to change, would keep his distance, and refuse Jesus’ hospitality.  Jesus’ openness to Zaccheus made it possible for Zaccheus to be open to him.

     Spiritually we all have a bit of Zaccheus inside us, a faith that leads us to look at Jesus but try to keep a safe distance.  We go to church.  We say some prayers during the week.  We volunteer for something.  But it only goes so far.  And we can stay comfortable with being curious about Jesus, or keeping our piety where it is, or wearing a religious label.  Yet Jesus says to us in an even clearer way: I want to stay in your house.  I want to be part of your company.  I want to be part of your life.  Will you accept me fully?

     Jesus asks that of us whether we’ve been lifelong believers or whether we are just checking out a parish.  He asks that whether we consider ourselves very religious or just religious enough.  He asks us to spend intimate time with him, time for which he has made us ready by the relationship we already have with him.  He knows there’s a part of us that has been getting ready for this: to truly put him at the center of our lives.

     So we can either stay in the various trees we have constructed, or we can come down and accept the embrace of the Savior. 

30 C

     “You asked Dad.”  “No, no, you ask him. He always listens to you. You've always been his favorite.”  “Okay I'll ask him if we can get the car keys and go out tonight. . . . You are right, he never says ‘no’ to me.”

     So we have two focus points here: one is the person asking and the other is the person listening.  Of course, there's no point asking if the other one is not going to listen. But perhaps we can help others listen to us by the way we ask, by the way we soften them up for our request.

     In the reading today we have today, we have this sense of God who is listening to everybody who comes in need.  There are no favorites because of prestige or money.  The first reading says that God wants to hear the cry especially of those who feel they have no voice, those who have no entitlements, those who have no status: the poor, the broken and the widows.

     In the Gospel we have the image of somebody approaching God, but he's doing it in a way that makes it impossible for God to accept.  He's there, in the front of the Temple, pretending to pray; but he's only talking about himself, and what he has, and what has earned. The other man in the back of the Temple—he's empty, he's got nothing.  He can only open his heart and beg for the mercy of God.  The first man comes and his bag is already filled so God has nothing to put into it.  The second man comes, and his bag is empty; and God is ready to fill that with the mercy and the grace that the man needs.

     We hear in the second reading Saint Paul saying that he has put up a good fight, that he has run the race and, now, near the end of his life, he awaits a crown that will come. But Paul is not speaking out of self-sufficiency or arrogance. Paul is speaking out of a lifetime of giving himself completely and generously to serve God and to serve others.  Paul is very different from the Pharisee.  Paul always stands before God knowing what he needs; he always stands before God willing to give more.  He never thinks about himself.  He only thinks about God and God's gracious love.  The arrogant, on the other hand, are so filled with themselves that they can accept nothing from God.

     In our own attitudes, very often we are arrogant in the sense that we think we have everything we need. We have everything figured out.  We are in control. We are self-satisfied and, so, we have nothing to ask of God. This is a blindness because there is always some profound need in our hearts.  It is only when we open our hearts with this deep need, when always we bring God our empty bag, that God is able to put things into that bag and make our lives richer and fuller. 

     As we gather for this Mass, we gather not as a community of self-satisfied people who have everything, but as a community radically in need of even the smallest gifts of our generous God.  We Gather here in confidence with Jesus as God's gift to us, In Christ, as we express the depth of our needs, we are united with Christ who prays for us and all of humankind in his eternal prayer.

     Jesus says to us: “Hey, whatever you need, I’ll ask my loving Father on your behalf.  The Father always listens to me because I empty myself in love.”

29 C

     Tell a child he cannot have something from the refrigerator . . . . that’s all that child will think about.  He cannot stop.  Forbid a teen the chance to go out with friends . . . the resistance begins immediately until you change your mind.  She won’t give up.  Mention a great restaurant to a foodie . . . “When are we going?” will be the immediate response.  This will continue until you try the restaurant.  Fall in love, and the beloved in always in your mind; you cannot forget the image.

     If we can get so obsessive about so many things, why can we not get obsessive about God? 

     The first reading and the Gospel seem to have strange images.  In the first reading, the Jewish people win the battle only so long as Moses has his hands raised, even if he needs help in raising them.  In the Gospel, the widow is going to pester the judge until she gets the right judgment.  The judge eventually gives up because the woman will not leave him alone and the judge even thinks she might harm him.

     Well, we say.  Does God need Moses’ hands raised in order to answer Moses’ prayer?  We think of God as all-knowing so why does he make Moses go through some external gesture to make his point?  The Gospel is even stranger: do we think that God is actually like this judge, corrupt and unjust?  Who would want to follow a God that is like that?

     This is why we have to carefully see the point of the readings very clearly: they are about sticking with what is important to us, about being faithful to both our needs and our trust in God.  They are about not giving up when it comes to our relationship with God.  This attitude is important not for God’s sake but for our sake, to continue to be reminded of our need for God, and God’s continued faithfulness to us.

     This is Paul’s advice to Timothy who is being appointed a delegate of Paul for one of Paul’s Christian communities.  Timothy is young and inexperienced.  He will find out what most pastors find out, that he will be pulled in many different directions by many different needs and requests.  “Be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient,” Paul tells Timothy.  Do not let anything stop you from proclaiming God’s good news to others.

     It is way too easy to contrast this message of persistent faithfulness to the ways of us modern Americans who, especially when it comes to religion, are very likely to not be persistent.  More and more, people tend to quit on their religious practice—for two reasons. First, God, and the things of God, are not that important to them.  And, secondly, if it’s not something we need right away, then we don’t care about it. 

     God wants us to be persistent so that we will know that we have a long-term, never-ending relationship with God.  God wants to be in our lives both when we feel some immediate necessity and also for our life-long formation as a disciple.  God wants us to be so familiar with divine life and love that we long for this in this life and in the fullness of life to come.  Jesus invites us to share in his own fidelity as God’s faithful sign of love and redemption to all humankind.

     For the things that interest us, we simply cannot stop paying attention.  Why not put God first on that list of things that interest us the most?

28 C

     “Make sure you write a thank-you note,” I still hear my mother say.  Faithfully, year by year, my aunts would give me a check for my birthday and, faithfully, year by year, I wrote cards to thank them.  Friends send me gifts; I write them back as soon as I can.  That’s the minimal we can do when we have received a gift.

     But those are the obvious gifts, the ones that stand out immediately in front of our noses.  Aren’t there many other gifts that we receive that rather stay in the background?  The tenderness a child learns from mama, or the work ethic a child picks up from a teacher, or a sense of optimism one picks up from having mostly positive friends. Some of these gifts are harder to frame. 

     It’s a small sentence in the Gospel about the lepers, but it’s worth thinking about: “And one of them, realizing he was healed, returned to Jesus.”  Was this the crucial difference between the healed Samaritan and the other 9 lepers, that he realized what had happened to him?  When would the other ones realize what had happened?  If and when they did, would they too return to give thanks?

     In many ways, being a person of gratitude means being a person who searches his or her life for the gifts that have come to us.  Very often, however, we do not recognize these gifts or else we take them for granted.  We see our different gifts—yes I’m personable, or I’m dependable, or I’m friendly, or I’m not a quitter—but we just see these as dimensions of ourselves, not gifts from God.

     How, after all, do I really thank God, especially for these fundamental gifts?  In the first reading, when Naaman is healed of leprosy, he is looking for a way to thank Elijah, the prophet.  “I have a ton of money to give you,” he says.  When Elijah refuses this, we realize that the primary way we thank God is not through money. “As the Lord lives,” says Elijah, “I will not take it.”  Elijah realizes that he is only the instrument for the healing, not the one who caused it.  Naaman shows thanks through the life of worship and prayer that he undertakes, by keeping the God who healed him always before his face.

     For us, donations surely can be a sign of thanks, especially when we give of our wealth to offset the poverty of someone else.  But no donation will ever be enough without the prayer and involvement of our life.  This is the thanks that pleases God.  After all, God needs nothing.  God wants from us the thanks that amplify the realization of God’s goodness in the world.

     Giving donations, saying prayers, even coming to Mass—these external actions cannot be a substitute for the internal turning of ourselves to God and our living as people who realize that everything we have comes from God.  This is not so easy because it means living without taking credit, without the pride, without the presumptions that usually accompany our lives.  “Oh, aren’t I a good organizer? Don’t I have great people-skills?  How about my ability to cook or play tennis?”  We hardly need to renounce our gifts, but we desperately need to put them into perspective, the perspective of God.

     Oftentimes we hear the word “stewardship” and think it’s just a big word for making people give money.  But before stewardship is about any donation or any gift, it is about realizing how graced our lives are because of a generous God who gives to us even before we have asked, who fills our lives with abundant gifts, indeed the very gift of the Eucharist that we celebrate today.  Stewardship is really about living like this Samaritan, so full of thanks that it transforms our minds and hearts.

     The greatest “thank you” we can say to God is the gift of our lives turned toward God and revealing God in the actions that we do.

27 C

     We all love a show.  Whether it’s a new series on Amazon Prime, or yet another cute story of someone proposing marriage in a strange setting.  We can’t wait for the block buster movie to come out, anticipating the millions they are going to make.  We admire friends who get into acting and singing.  “Wow, you’re not afraid of an audience?” we ask.

     Even in religion, we love a show.  How many millions watched the pageantry and high liturgy of Queen Elizabeth’s burial?  We couldn’t get enough of it.  And when the Pope goes anywhere, we love the scene of the outdoor Mass will tens of thousands of people singing away.  Our culture is always pointing out a new preaching star whose sermons dazzle the congregations.  Why have a church when you can have a megachurch?

     “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed,” says Jesus, “then you can move mountains.”  Of course, our brains go to the idea of moving mountains more than the idea of the mustard seed.  Yes, with our faith we should be able to accomplish anything, from building big cathedrals to making thousands of converts, from worrying our Catholic schools to opening them up and building Universities!

     That’s why Jesus’ parable is so important, even as it is achingly difficult.  He goes out of his way to paint the scene: the servants who sweated all day in the field and can’t wait to get home and rest, the master who comes in an says “It’s time for me to eat, cook me something,” and the moral of the story which is so sobering.  “After we have done all we’ve been asked to do, we should say that we are only useless servants who did only what we were supposed to do.”

     Now we might very well be discouraged by this idea.  Who wants to be a useless servant, let alone being happy that he or she is considered useless?  We all want a bit of our famous 15-minutes of fame.  Why be an altar server if we can be a bishop?  Yet Jesus is telling us, when we think about it, that the focus and love it takes to be a faithful servant is exactly the kind of force that eventually can move mountains and change the world.

     Our first reading shows us a very frustrated prophet, Habakkuk, who is only asking for one thing: the grace to hold on to a vision and to wait patiently until things come about.  He sees violence all around himself, and fears that his ministry may be a waste.  No, says God: Hold on to the vision, stay faithful, keep at it, let the vision lead you forward.  People who are rash and do not have the ability to patiently serve and wait do not have faith.  Those who are right and just live by the simple vision of our lives.

     This should console us at a time when faith seems diminished.  We no longer have people flocking the Church as we did 50 years ago, whatever their motives were back then (and a lot of it was fear!).  But we do have God’s Word, God’s working in our lives, and the vision that God gives us of his Son now risen from the dead.  These can give us the strength not only to hold on but, in the process, to do God’s work of building his Kingdom stone by stone.  That’s what God’s servants do.

26 C

     We just didn’t see him, the man we thought was weird but who was probably mentally sick, the man on 62nd Street that we passed each day, laughing to each other as we pointed out to him.  And we certainly paid little attention to the lady on the second floor who would yell at us kids as we played outside in front of our building.  What was her issue?  So many figures that we see but really do not see.

     It’s become a disease, this not seeing others.  It used to be primarily in terms of economic status—the very wealthy having nothing to do with the poor, even the poor who cleaned their houses and held open their doors.  But now it’s in terms of nearly everything as we divide ourselves into red states and blue states, “woke” people and people who want nothing to do with being “woke.”

     It was a disease at the time of Jesus as we see in this powerful Gospel about the rich man and Lazarus. Although Lazarus has a clear name, it’s the rich man who claims the spotlight so much so that he cannot even see Lazarus in front of his own door.  In the rich man’s world, Lazarus doesn’t exist.  While we want to hold up the rich man as extraordinarily evil and cold, but, as we look at ourselves through this parable, aren’t there many kinds of people to whom we are blind?

     We have governors of states flying immigrants, who have come here with the same needs and dreams that our grandparents had, to different cities so they can use these poor people to make a point.  We do not see them as individuals, in their suffering and need.  We see them as a group, immigrants, and make them into a political football.  And yet none of us would want our spouses or children to undergo a tiny portion of the sufferings of these people.  To top it off, it’s the representatives of these same states who have refused to consider anything like our long-needed immigration reform.  They are just Lazarus at the door; let’s make them beg even harder for our American scraps.

     Likewise, we do not often see the “essential workers” who were made famous during the pandemic.  They don’t have corner offices or jobs that use zoom.  They just cook, clean, drive, bandage, and overall keep society together.  But we don’t see them.  It’s just Lazarus whom we want to work for us around like the rich man, in death, wants Lazarus to do.

     Nor do we often see people of other races.  We congratulate ourselves on our multiculturalism, maybe eat an enchilada, but we have mostly slipped into our enclaves where we hang out with people like ourselves, never having to stretch ourselves to understand another person’s language, situation, or pain.

      We even often do not see each other, getting into our routines, paying less attention to our spouses or children, avoiding people with whom we have quarreled, not speaking to those we have dismissed.  Lazarus is everywhere.

     “If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not even listen to me after I’m raised from the dead.”  Jesus is saying that until we see each other, and the poorest, we cannot begin to know what the resurrection is all about.  

     How sadly true is this, we who so often slip into “rich man” mode even though we celebrate a Risen Christ every Sunday.  Before we celebrate resurrection, we have to acknowledge death.  And, to acknowledge death, we have to acknowledge the poor, the marginalized, the suffering, and the neglected.

25 C

     At some point each one of us is disappointed with government.  For decades one theme has been, “The government is the problem.”  Some folks want the government to do more to alleviate social difficulties; others want the government as small as possible, and taxes as low as possible.  St. Paul tells his listeners, in the second reading, to pray for kings and government leaders; he did this at a time when it would be very easy for Christians to dismiss government as an enemy.

     As this Sunday comes around, the world has spent over a week paying tribute to Queen Elizabeth II, awaiting her burial tomorrow.  She was the opposite of those excoriated in the first reading from Amos. His critique of leadership in ancient Jewish times follows in a long line of critics—virtually from Saul’s time, the first king, and including David, the king most admired in Jewish history, through the following centuries.

     Some of the Gospel reflects possible issues of mismanagement, even in the Church.  We see signs in several places in the New Testament of people using religion for their own purposes, especially to enrich themselves.  Jesus is warning his followers that they have to live with integrity, especially when it comes to money.  “No one can serve two masters.”  No one can serve the purposes of God and put making money as the purpose of her or his life. 

     Very few of us get into elected governing positions, and very few of us make ourselves rich off the Church.  Yet every one of us who follow Jesus is called to live with integrity as well.  We are all tempted to make our faith into one thing or another, usually into a bargaining system so we can get from God what we want.  When can our faith be simple trust and steady faithfulness?

     The second reading tells us what God wants: to lead all people to salvation, to have their lives filled with truth—the truth of God’s infinite love for all humankind.  This statement shatters so many attitudes of religion, especially the attitudes that see only a few people being saved, and the more they are like me, the more likely they are to be served.  God wants to permeate the world with ways in which people can come to know God’s love and relate to God in their whole lives.  God is not stingy; God does not expect disciples to be stingy or greedy or self-centered.

     Whatever our vocation, whatever our role in the Church, our Gospels today are calling us to live our faith more purely and more fully.  The Gospel says that even if we are faithful in little things, it ends up meaning a lot.  Our attitude in worshipping, our daily routine of prayer, our reading the Scripture, our caring for our families, and our simple acts of kindness to others—these are ways in which Christ’s salvation is spread.  How do I know this?  We only have to look what happens when we give up worship, prayer, relating to God, and following Christ’s path!  We are hurt and cannot give the world gifts it needs.

     I think the fascination with Queen Elizabeth is how much she was a contrast to so many other civil leaders who just cared about themselves and making their families rich.  “Duty and devotion” was the way she put it.  Here’s praying that we Catholics can earn a place of respect for the way we live our faith, with way we look to transform the world,  and the way we share faith with others.

24 C

     Paul is the last one to think he should have been forgiven.  He sounds stunned, shocked that God would reach out in mercy to someone who worked against God’s purposes as much as he did.  But isn’t Paul showing us what we already know—that forgiveness is among the most difficult acts humans can do or understand?

     Look at the reaction to forgiving some of the college loans of some of the most financially stretched in our society?  Or the state that plans to execute a prisoner a month for two years.  Or how we feel when we consider the sentences of the deranged youth who shot up the high school in Parkland or the grade school in Uvalde.  Or the way past and possibly future presidents use their power of pardon. 

     Forgiveness is difficult because it is the greatest gift we can confer on someone.  We think of forgiveness in terms of how it makes us feel.  But, ultimately, forgiveness is the gift of letting someone else off the hook precisely because there’s no other way they can get off the hook.  We’ve all done things we wish we could erase out of our lives, turn history back, be freed from the shame we feel.  We’ve all been on the hook.  We’ve all needed forgiveness.

     That’s why forgiveness invites us to go beyond our own feelings and get into the lives of others.  The father in today’s parable demonstrates that vividly to us.  He knows there’s no way the younger son can erase his past.  He knows his younger son is stuck.  But what is the father going to do?  Leave his son in that impossible situation?  And, if he did, what good would be accomplished?  Spite?  Feeling superior?  Teaching him a lesson?  Actually, the only thing that would be accomplished is prolonging an impossible situation.

     The father forgives the son so the son can have a life, so that son can be restored, so that an even greater good than justice might happen.  The first reading shows Moses arguing with God.  Ultimately he says that God should forgive his people for the sake of God’s own promise, God’s own vision, God’s own desire to enhance our lives.  This desire to bring things to fullness is far more important than our small ideas of justice.

     “We had to rejoice. My son is was dead and has come back to life,” says the father.  We have to rejoice, in this Mass and at every sacrament, because God continues to bring us to life again and again, because God will not leave us stuck and broken.  We have to rejoice because we have learned that Mercy is God’s greatest name.

23 C

     I thought I could imagine the lives of slaves but when I read Colson White’s book, “The Underground Railroad,” I was in no way prepared for its contents.  Of course, there might be various slave-like arrangements depending on the people and situation, but this book showed in all too vivid detail what one class of people thought they could do to another class of people.  As I read I thought, this book is so unsettling, I don’t think it can ever be made into a movie.  If they do, it will be a movie few people will have to stomach to see.

     The book’s power is to enter the minds and hearts of enslaved people, to see their deprivations and the sheer fear in which they lived, and to show what this can do to the human spirit.  Cora, the heroine of the book, finds the power to escape and then pays the price of living in dread she might be recaptured.  What wouldn’t she do to be able to walk to the store and buy something like millions of others could do?  What wouldn’t she do for freedom.

     We have the story of Onesimus in the second reading.  It’s a little complicated but worth putting some work into.  Onesimus is a slave; but he was given by his owner, Philemon, to Paul as an assistant and companion.  Onesimus, however, has now converted to becoming a Christian.  Paul is sending the slave back to Philemon, hoping that his master will give him liberty now that he is a fellow Christian.

     Onesimus helps us to ask the central question of the readings this week: what is that essential value for which you give everything?  What is the reality you love more than anything else?  We can try to enter Onesimus’ mind: was he seeking freedom or was he seeking faith?  But maybe freedom and true faith are ultimately parts of the same reality.

     The first reading shows an ancient tradition that ran through Jewish thinking and writing, a tradition that goes back to the days when the Jews lived in Egypt, first as free people and then as an enslaved population.  This tradition, centered on Wisdom, asks people to discover what is the key to their lives and their thinking.  It says that once we discover the vision of God in our lives, the purpose and path of all things, then we will have Wisdom.  Through Widom we know God’s mind; and once we know God’s mind, then we know what paths we should walk.

     Jesus is pushing his followers in the same direction.  He knows they will have to make choices and decisions.  He is saying that our putting God the Father at the center of our lives and thought will be what liberates us.  It isn’t that there has to be a battle between God and our families or friends.  It’s rather this: only when we begin to discover the love of God will we begin to live the love we want to give to our families, our friends, and to all humankind.  God’s love is the key to Wisdom; God’s liberating love is the key to life.

     Fortunately, most instances of outright slavery have stopped, although plenty of oppressed people live today, victims of economic, human, and even sexual exploitation.  But even for us who think we are liberated, have we found the full freedom God invites us to have?  Have we found the full freedom that arises from God’s Wisdom and Love?

22 C

     One many says to his friend,  I want you to see how stupid this kid is.  So he calls the kid over and puts two hands before him, one with fifty cents and another with a dollar.  Sure enough, the kid takes the fifty cents.  The man looks knowingly at his friend and smiles.  A week later the same scene happens, with the kid once again choosing fifty cents.  Later that day the friend sees the kid and calls him over.  “I wonder why you always choose the fifty cents over the dollar.  It doesn’t make sense.”  The kid smiles at the friend and says, “I know, but the moment I pick the dollar I know the game will be over and there won’t be any money.”  So who is stupid now?

     Th e first shall be last, the last shall be first.  Jesus wants his disciples about this over and over again, and it applies in so many ways.  People who think they are more chosen, or more hard-working, or wealthier, or more intelligent—so many people think of themselves this way and, if we are honest, we all want to think of ourselves this way.  We all want to be better, or at least more deserving, than the next person.

     We have to see the smile on Jesus’ face as he tells his parables today, the one about the man who goes to a dinner and just assumes his place is at the head table.  We can see the audience smirking as they imagine the guy being led back to the lowest table; what an arrogant fool. And then the surprise of the audience as he tells them not to invite relatives or friends to their table; invite those who cannot pay you back.  That way you will know your motives are entirely generous.

     We have spent years trying to boost the esteem of people, doing everything we can to take away the sense that a person might not be as good as someone else.  Is this what Jesus means?  We should not have any esteem?  We should have no self-pride?  No, I think Jesus is pointing to a profound spiritual disease that comes along with pride: we lose the ability to really see ourselves and we lose the ability to really see other people.  All we see, in the end, are the categories we use to judge others.

     It isn’t that humble people are seeing themselves incorrectly.  Rather, because they have no pretentions, they have half a chance of seeing themselves as they actually are.  But the proud are seeing things in such a distorted way that that it doesn’t help them. They don’t see their true needs and desperation, nor do they see the people they dismiss in their arrogance.  In a culture like today’s , we can see the price that arrogance is taking in our interactions with each other. Our arrogance makes us blind to each other.

     The second reading has an important lesson for us.  The Letter to the Hebrews is comparing how the Jewish people saw God and how God came to us in Jesus.  When God came to them with all his seeming power and glory, they could not get close to him.  They ran away in fear.  But when God came in the human flesh of Jesus, we were able to draw close to the mystery of love that God shows us, a mystery we celebrate at every Mass, when our humble elements of bread and wine become the ongoing presence of Jesus in our midst.  God speaks to us in humility. We need humility to hear.

     We are always looking to call others stupid or short-sighted.  We always want to set ourselves up high.  But God has brought us to the greatest heights in the humble servant, Jesus, that he sent to us.  As Jesus’ humility allows us to see God, may our humility allow us to see each other more clearly in God.

21C

     There are so many of them . . . and they all are so cute.  4,000 dogs, all beagles, produced in a lab that provides animals for testing, each one looking like the other.  But here they were, so many of them jumping around, and all of them up for adoption.  Of course, we don’t know what dogs exactly feel, but leaving an environment that was totally made up of creatures like you, for another environment when you are alone, would be quite a shift for these puppies.  It’s comfortable to stay among our own.

     Staying among our own is one of the larger temptations in life.  The whole strain of children leaving the home is our version of this: the teens that won’t stay home after they have a driver’s license, to the graduate who wants to move as far as possible from home.  College in Florida or California, a job in New York or Boston.  Leaving home is a sign of grown-up independence.

     At various times in history, religion has seemed to prefer harmonious groups, even to the extent of fearing and even condemning other groups.  I’m not the only one who was taught as a child that it was a serious sin to even enter a Protestant church building.  We only have to think of the stress in the early Church between Jewish converts to Christianity and Gentile converts.  Didn’t they have to be Jewish before becoming Christians?  Didn’t they have to become like us?

     Jesus tells his audience that it’s hard to enter through the narrow gate; many will want to enter but will not be able to.  We should ask ourselves what is the “narrow gate” that Jesus is talking about.  The biggest clue is at the end of the Gospel when he says that  many will come from east and west, from north and south.  They will have a place at the heaven banquet.  The narrow gate means that we see the vastness of God’s love and invitation. 

     Indeed, in the first reading, we learn that the very scattering of the Jewish people among so many pagan nations will end up being a blessing.  Why?  Because faith in the God of the Jews will grow.  Foreigners will even become priests and Levites who serve God.  We believe that this has happened because of the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the sending of the Holy Spirit upon humankind.  God does not have one favorite, closed, chosen group.  God is choosing everyone to hear God’s call.

     The scriptures challenge the narrowness of our own view of God and God’s action in the world.  It’s too easy to think that only Catholics, or only Lutherans, or only Jews, or only Muslims, are chosen by God and receive salvation.  God doesn’t want a little party for the precious; God wants a huge banquet for as many as can attend.  God chooses people and groups so that others can see that they are chosen as well.

     God is not about generating pure breeds that stand apart.  God is about transforming the breadth of human reality, all the diversity God has created.  Enter through the narrow gate, that is, that special insight into divine love that shows us how broad and full God’s vision is, that shows us what a privilege we have to invite many others to the banquet.

20 C

     Perhaps it is primarily a dark side of human nature, the way people bully other people.  Often the reason is that someone looks different because of a physical trait or their race—the girl with the red hair, the boy who is shorter than others or who stutters.  In some ways it makes the group feel superior.  But in every way, it distorts society.

     Perhaps everyone of us will be bullied or persecuted in our lives.  Perhaps everyone will be a victim of someone stronger or of group-think.  Jesus says that his followers will be persecuted; we have to wonder how that made his followers feel.

     But Jesus is very exact about this persecution.  It won’t be because we look different or because we look weak.  It will be because we strive to do good.  We have the example of Jeremiah, in the first reading, perhaps the most troubled of the prophets; he is thrown into a cistern because people do not want to hear his message.  They don’t want to hear the messengers of God.

     Many Christians claim we are being persecuted today, pointing to the way society ignores one or another value that Christians believe is essential.  But we are still free to practice our faith and believe what we believe, aren’t we?  Many Christians think we need to fight back, that the culture is evil and must be changed, and that it’s our task to do that.  The fight is often around laws that Christians want enacted.

     But we see with Jesus that battle and war is not the way to interact with our world.  Remember how Jesus said he could call down legions from heaven to protect himself?  Jesus was showing us that it is the witness of our lives, the integrity of our striving to serve others and God, which is the strongest defense we believers can have.

     Is not Jesus the One most persecuted?  Executed as a criminal by an occupying power after he is handed over by the leaders who should have protected him.  In his martyrdom, in his acceptance of death, Jesus shows us the ultimate power of goodness and the ultimate futility of people who act out of sheer power.  His Resurrection from the dead shows that life dominates death, love dominates hatred, and witness dominates deceit.

     What is the baptism that will set fire on the earth?  What is the baptism that Jesus longs to receive?  It is the baptism of his faithfulness to the Kingdom, the vision of God’s love that ultimately transforms everything.  His death, because of the circumstances of his times, was the way this Kingdom was revealed.  In dying and rising, Jesus shows how death itself was made powerless, as was all brutal force. 

     We have been baptized into Jesus, into his death and resurrection.  That means we have begun to already participate in the Kingdom that he shows us.  We do not have to go to war to protect this Kingdom.  Rather, we believers have to accept and believe that Jesus has already won, not by battling his persecutors but by God’s overwhelming love.

19 C

     We often wonder how people do it.  You know, the child lost in the woods for four days and they find him alive.  Or an earthquake victim, buried under dust and stones, whom they find after several days.  Or how people start something in a garage and, in five years, it’s a huge corporation.  Or how the people of London endured the Nazi bombs, or the people of Ukraine endure the destruction of their cities.  They don’t give up.

     Some of this is the survival instinct.  But often it’s much more than that.  Often, it is love, whether of living or of family and friends.  And often it’s a vision they have that holds them through difficult times.  Like the single mother who has a full-time and part-time job and is trying to go to school.  She has a vision of the future.  Or public servants in the police or fire department who have a vision of keeping people safe and alive.

     What’s our vision?  What’s going to keep us going?  That’s what Jesus is talking about in the Gospel today, giving us this parable of the owner who leaves his servants in charge.  Will they continue to serve? Will they abuse the absence of the owner?  Will they greet the owner when he returns?  Or will they just fizzle out?

     Let’s face it: many people fizzle out today.  They cannot stay strong, and they cannot maintain loyalty to very much.  Many people use any opportunity, without true loyalty, as a way to further themselves; we see this in politics, in business, and in entertainment many times.  Many people begin loyal but then get distracted.  How many Hollywood marriages are images exactly of this?

     The first reading gives us a simple image, one we have heard of often.  The people of Israel are following Moses toward a new land and a new freedom.  How did they do that throughout the years they wandered in the desert?  What was it that held them together?  They had a vision—coming from God’s promise and coming from the leaders God sent the people.  And, as the first reading tells us, they had their worship which was the foundation of their community.  God’s oaths and their oaths, together, making one covenant.

     Many people today look at believers as if we are walking through a desert.  Wider society no longer applauds faith and no longer assumes the basic tenets of faith.  What is going to hold us together as a believing community?  How will we continue to offer faith to people who seem indifferent?  This Sunday reminds us that we too have the oaths of God, and we too have communities that support our faith, and we too have a worship that far exceeds what was possible in the desert for the ancient Jews.  We have the Eucharistic presence of Jesus himself and the Spirit he pours in our hearts.

     So Jesus tells us today: hang on. Don’t give up.  Keep looking ahead.  Keep up the vision that I have given you, the vision of a Kingdom in which humankind is transformed by divine love.  And if we can maintain faithfulness, we can then see how faithful Christ is to us: he lets us, servants, sit down with him as brother and sisters, and feeds us his banquet with his own hands.

     More than Abraham’s faith, we have the faith of Jesus himself, his fidelity to the vision of his Father, and his fidelity to a vision of redemption for us.

18 C

     When we watch TV, we are unlikely to be in a situation similar to most of what’s on the screen.  But one situation will probably arise for most of us, the situation when a doctor tells us how much longer he or she thinks we have to live.

     When we realize how short our lives can be, or actually might be, two thoughts come into our heads.  First, what things am I going to do before I die—the so-called bucket list.  The other is this: how will I spend the everyday time I have.  The readings at Mass this weekend raise both those questions.

     Bucket lists.  The things on our agenda.  The things we put there, and the things life puts there.  Jesus talks about the furious energy that we put into things, mostly concerned with money, and how, in the end, much of that seems pointless.  “Who will get your piled-up wealth?”  How often, in real life, it’s exactly the accumulated wealth of a loved one that gets family members at each other’s throats. 

    Indeed, Jesus raises questions about a whole range of economic assumptions that keep you and me running like rats most of the time.  Our economic mindset cannot accept the word “enough.”  We always want more, need more, demand more.  Such a non-stop economic machine is its own enemy, as we see in the regular recessions that happen, in the ridiculously huge inequality of pay, in the low birthrate of just about every modern country, and in the inability to the economy to allow for the necessary human process of pregnancy and new birth. 

     What are you living for? Jesus asks.  Where is your energy going?  What are your priorities in life? What, in other words, is our life agenda?  It should begin with God and God’s Kingdom.

     We hear reference to the first reading from Ecclesiastes many times.  “Vanity of vanity.”  It’s not easy to translate the word “vanity” but here it means this: emptiness of emptiness, meaninglessness of meaninglessness, wastes of time in one big waste of time.  The preacher who says this is pointing us to another insight: unless I can accept the simple pleasures that surround me every day, I cannot find peace in my heart.  We let our greed hinder our ability to see our gifts.

     Unless I can come to enjoy the relationships that I have with family and friends, the quiet or fun moments that come to me, those silent minutes when I realize the wonder of life, then I’m pretty much wasting the time I have.  We got a glimpse of this during the pandemic when we were forced to pause.  Life can be different.  But our biggest temptation is to demand more without cherishing what we have already been given.  In the process, we lose most of what we have, including a vision of God’s peace.

     St. Paul tells us in the second reading that Christ has already done the work for us.  In him we have died . . . precisely so we can live differently, without the wasteful anxiety that we keep at our side, but with his risen life that makes us free.

  “You fool,” God says to the man who would be rich.  I wonder what God thinks about us and our crazy way of life.

17 C

     It’s a scene I always see when I’m at supermarket or one of these super drug stores.  A mother, usually, wheeling a two-year old around in a carriage.  “Oh, Mommy, I want that,” the baby says.  “Can I have it?”  Usually it’s a toy-like thing or a bright red package.  Everyone stares at the mother, or father; what will happen.  So often the parent relents and says yes, but many times the parent says “No, we don’t need this.  I don’t have the money on me.”  And then proceeds the drama of a tantrum. Children naturally ask for things.

     So something must happen between toddler years and teen years because often teens, and older folks, feel very reluctant to ask for something.  It can be as trivial as “Can I join your pickup game?” or as tension-filled as asking someone to go out or to be partner at a prom.  This reluctance to ask only grows more in our lives, as we see ourselves cringing to ask someone for money that we need, or to borrow their car, or to sleep on their sofa.

     I think the reason is that asking for something makes us feel vulnerable.  It has two angles to it.  One is that we are taking the risk of receiving “no” for an answer.  The other is that our sense of self-sufficiency has been violated.  Why do I have this need that I cannot take care of?  Why am I imposing myself on another?

     We ought to be quite surprised by the point of the readings today: God wants us to ask for what we need!  “Ask and you will receive,” says Jesus.  “Seek and you will find.”  In the first reading the point is elaborated step-by-step.  Abraham’s reluctance to ask, again and again, is met by God’s generous response.  Abraham feels he has to haggle, but God keeps showing him that he really doesn’t.  “For the sake of the fewest, I will spare the town.”

     Obviously this is speaking to our sense of vulnerability.  Jesus is asking us to make ourselves vulnerable before God.  Jesus is asking us to open our hearts with our needs again and again.  In doing this, Jesus shows us that our sense of self-sufficiency is an illusion.  All of us radically need, whether it’s things, whether it’s each other, or whether it’s God. Only when we see that about ourselves can we establish proper relationships, particularly with God.  All of us radically need.

     Look how simple and direct is this prayer that has been said by all Christians from the beginning: affirming God as the generous giver of everything and affirming ourselves as people in need. Our Father, who are in heaven.  “But God doesn’t answer my prayers,” we so often say.  But God always answers our prayers because every prayer puts us in radical relationship with God; just doing this is a transformative act.  Just doing this touches the utmost reality of our being and God’s being.  Prayer helps us realize that every instant of our lives is sheer gift.  Every moment of our lives is a prayer answered in unbounded generosity.

     We come to this Mass primarily to give thanks—that’s what “eucharist” means in its Greek root.  But we also come here to ask.  We should probe that a bit in our meditation at some point.  The deepest petition we make, and it’s at the end of the Eucharistic prayer, is to merit to praise God along with all creation, with all our being, forever. When we do this, when our needs correspond to God’s blessings, we will have reached life’s fullness.

     Yes, when we come and worship, and when we turn to God in need, we open up the depths of our relationship with God.  We have another opportunity to study the marvels of his grace.  And we have another opportunity to take on the mind of Jesus.  Because when we pray “Thy Kingdom come,” aren’t we asking God for exactly the same thing Jesus’ lived and died for?  When we ask for the Kingdom, God never denies that!

16 C

     We don’t want to recall it, but we really can’t put it out of our minds for long.  We don’t want to remember those endless months when we were basically stuck in our houses, unable to gather with anyone.  No school. No church. No mass transportation. Shopping was as quick as we could do it.  Empty offices, hotel rooms, restaurants.  Covid ruled! . . . Yet we fear, don’t we, that it might all happen again?

     You can’t be human without gathering, that’s what we learned.  And you can’t gather without basic hospitality, the ability to greet and accept another.  We often think of this as simple courtesy, which is fundametnal, for sure.  After all, we all know when we were not treated with courtesy—the time we were ignored at a party or even the time when received poor or no service because of who we were.

     Our Scriptures, however, bring hospitality to an even greater level, beyond ordinary courtesy.  In the first reading, we find Abraham responding to the three guests who come to him as an image of God, something very hard for Jewish people to express.  Because of his generous hospitality, a new nation will come about.  God will give Abraham and the Jewish people a destiny. Abraham entertained the angels of God, in these strangers, without knowing it.

     In the Gospel, even though Jesus seems to push back against Martha’s pushiness, the importance of hospitality is not lessened.  Without hospitality, no one would be gathering to visit with and hear Jesus in the first place.  In fact, the Gospel  aims to us what hospitality is all about: the ability to sit with Jesus and be his disciple in a welcoming and accepting way.  Because encountering another is encountering God who becomes present to us in and through the other.

     What does the second reading say: God’s glory has been manifested to us, chosen as we have been by God, because Jesus has revealed himself to us.  How does Jesus reveal himself? Well, we think of the Scriptures, and we think of sacraments, and we think of people who have taught us.  But the Scriptures are saying that Jesus is manifested to us through others, through the people we encounter, and especially through the poor and needy.  Perhaps this surprises us, but it is the unbroken lesson of our faith: we reveal Christ to each other because Christ lives in us.

     This is why gathering as a Church is so important.  Just coming to church is saying that God is not some private event in my head. Rather, God is revealed in our community and in our common faith.  The sacred meal we celebrate shows what our gatherings mean: the bread becomes Christ’s Body even as we become Christ’s body.  Christ continues his incarnation in us.

     I  know others can be a problem.  I see that every time I drive my car.  But others are the way God begins to stretch us out of our self-absorption.  And that stretch is big enough to include even the encounter of God. 

15 C

     “If it had teeth it would bite you.”

     This was the phrase my elders used when something was right in front of my face but I couldn’t see it.  Of course, as we get older this becomes a more frequent occurrence: where did I leave the keys?  I know I had my eyeglasses a few minutes ago.  What drawer did I put my checkbook in?

     These days our worries are a bit more cynical because all of us are tempted to deliberately not see things that we don’t like, or else to obsess on only those things.  Our Paulist community had a big meeting last month; the biggest topic was “polarization”—how we have become a culture that cannot see what the other person is saying.  We call it being “woke” or “alternative facts,” but Americans are going to see what they are determined to see, and not much else.

     Jesus puts this powerful parable in front of our faces today to make sure that we see what he’s talking about.  He tells the parable of the Good Samaritan.  We could also call it the Parable of the Overlooked Victim.  There he is, in the road, crying out for help.  And you tell me you can’t see him? 

     I suppose we all have reasons for our selective blindness, including the priest and the Levite in the parable.  But selective blindness will not be an excuse when it comes to what God wants us to see.  God wants us to look upon each other with the same compassion that God has for every person.  God wants us to love with the same care he shows everyone. 

     Sometimes our faith can be a lot like the second reading, all the exalted language about Jesus being the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of the dead, the fullness of everything.  This keeps our eyes titled upward, toward a heaven we can barely penetrate.  That is why it is important to always remember that our faith in Jesus arises from the way the Son of God came so close to us,  became one of us,  entering  our lives,  becoming our brother, becoming our neighbor.

     “And who is my neighbor?” the wise-guy scribe asked Jesus.  Because he wanted to be selectively blind, to have compassion on the ones he felt sorry for but have no compassion for the rest.  Jesus makes clear that it isn’t only the victim that is his neighbor.  It is also the people who disagree with him.  It is also the people that irritate him.  It is also the Son of God, made flesh, standing in our common flesh, show us how to love, who has become neighbor to all.

     We all want to set up sacred cows and fight about them, dismissing each other as red or blue, as left or right.  But our faith in Jesus demolishes every sacred cow except this one: God has come in our flesh, teaching us how to see each other as bothers and sisters, as neighbors and friends.  He has become our neighbor so we may see him in all the neighbors that surround us.

14 C

     “I just don’t feel good enough.”

     This is one of the most constant stories that many of us tell ourselves.  While most people have something they pride themselves on, underneath is this sense that we are worthy, we aren’t adequate, we aren’t ready, we aren’t good enough.

     The disciples of Jesus felt this too.  Here Jesus is, sending out 72 disciples, and he has to give them a pep talk.  He is sending them out to do what he does—to heal and proclaim the Kingdom—and to do what the 12 disciples had already done; this might seem intimidating to them.  But Jesus has to tell them what to do, how to dress, and even what to leave at home.

     Of course, most of us would shrink at the idea of going out the way Jesus sends these 72 disciples.  “What, you want me to visit people, heal them, and tell them about the Kingdom of God?  I can’t do that!  I’m just trying to live as best I can and that’s hard enough.”  But Jesus does not give them a free pass.  He sends them out, and they go.  And, as we discover later in the Gospel, when they return, they are very happy indeed.

     What does it mean to be sent by Christ?  Many of us have strange ideas because people have accosted us in the name of Jesus and only made us feel uncomfortable.  “Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?” we get asked as we’re trying to buy groceries or pump gas.  We don’t want to go around showing off our faith and making others feel like they are put on the spot.

     But when we think about it, Jesus isn’t asking things like that.  He is asking his disciples to encounter others the way he encountered them, to enter their lives with the single message that God’s Kingdom of mercy has come to us.  He wants us to approach others with the joyful message of Isaiah we heard in the first reading: with comfort, joy, and Good News.  Isaiah is speaking to people who are living in Exile in Babylon.  God asks us to speak to people who feel exiled because they have little hope.

     Pope Francis pushes us the way Jesus did.  He says that everyone who has encountered Jesus has the ability to share Good News and hope with others.  Not by preaching at people, nor by putting them down or threatening them.  Rather by loving and accompanying them in their fears, questions, and doubts.  Every parent does this in some way almost every day.  And every one of us can bring this encouragement to someone we know who is stuck. 

     Like the disciples, we have our doubts—I have to learn more, bring more, hang out with my friends more—but Jesus tells us that we already have enough if we know him.  And we do know Jesus, otherwise we wouldn’t be here listening to his Gospel and expecting to receive his Body and Blood.

     “You are good enough,” says Jesus.  “I have touched you and loved you.  That’s why you can touch, and love, and heal the world to which I send you every day.”

13 C

     It’s not uncommon for people in business to call a special meeting to address an important issue: what is our mission?  What are we about?  How do we accomplish it?  It was not uncommon for Catholic parishes to do this as well, developing “mission statements” which they posted on their websites.

     How well do these work?  Do we not see businesses collapse in spite of all the meetings they have?  I often have to drive by an abandoned Sears or Kmart store.  Revlon closed last week though folks are not using less makeup.  CNN spent years preparing for CNN+ which collapsed two weeks after it began.

     Sometimes the problem is outside the company or organization; but sometimes it’s within the people who make up the organization.  The scriptures point to some of these today.  In the Gospel we see how easy it is to not understand what the mission is all about.  Jesus’ own apostles are ready to use violence to teach people a lesson.  As if the use of violence doesn’t contradict Jesus’ basic teaching.

     Others express a desire to follow Jesus, but not completely.  “I will follow you,” they say to Jesus.  But Jesus points out that there is a cost to this, a cost that people are not really willing to pay.  Their commitment is incomplete and provisional.  Others take a step forward, but their minds are elsewhere, thinking back to the way things were, absorbed with nostalgia.  Is it not the case that many people are absorbed so much in their fantasies about the “good old days” they do not attend to the tasks before them?  

     The second reading gives us yet another internal issue: people think that faith is all about themselves and what they get out of it rather than about the mission and how we care for others.  Paul worried that the very freedom people experienced from forgiveness would set them up to abuse that freedom.  How many people in the name of religion have exploited others, even the vulnerable?  Our freedom is not about ourselves but about how we serve others.  It might be money, or power, or sex that drives this exploitation.  But all of it is distorted.

     The first reading gives us a fuller account of following the mission.  Elijah, the great prophet, knows that his days are numbered.  God sends him to find a successor.  He finds Elisha who is plowing the field on an obviously large farm since they have twelve plows going.  He throws he cloak over Elisha who gets the message right away.  He seems to be wavering; he wants to hang with his family before following the prophet.  But then we see him burning the plows and ready to follow Elijah with all his energy.

     All of us have something that wants to keep us from the mission—of following Jesus and helping others follow him.  We all get self-absorbed, righteous, or afflicted with nostalgia.  But that does not negate the call we have received or the choice we need to make to continue on that call.  Our call may not come as dramatically as Elisha’s but it nevertheless has come: in our baptisms, in our commitments like marriage, in our journey in service of the Kingdom.

     The opening of the Gospel points to how Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem, the city where he would die.  It ends with the observation that many begin something but never complete it.  Jesus completed his mission to show us the hope that comes from his Resurrection from the dead.  He sends us his Holy Spirit so we can complete our mission with him.

Corpus Christi

     “If you are not going to say something nice about someone, then don’t say anything at all.” 

     That was the standard advice we received as children from every quarter, whether it was parents, the nuns at school, or folks on television.  The idea was that words create environments; and destructive words create destructive environments in which people have a much harder time living in peace or accomplishing anything.

     But what happens when we say nice things about people?  Very often a creative environment comes about.  Bosses whose positive language in the workplace often have happy employees.  Teachers who compliment their students often produce better students.  Parents who raise children with positive message have children filled with confidence and inner peace.

     Well, what happens when we say nice things about God?  Many things happen, some of them astonishing.  That’s one of the themes in all of the readings we have this Sunday which commemorates the Body and Blood of Jesus.  Each reading speaks about blessing but on an ever- deeper level.  The first reading recalls the blessing of the priest Melchisedek who praises God and offers bread and wine as a sign of being part of the blessing.  The image of Melchisedek will become a symbol of the saving work of Jesus many centuries later.

     In the Gospel we see Jesus with a large crowd of people who are growing hungry.  He urges his disciples to feed them and they tell him that it is not possible.  Jesus then has the disciples arrange people in an orderly way.  Taking the food that seems so inadequate for such a crowd, he blesses his Father, thanking him even for this small amount of food.  So powerful is this blessing that an abundance of food becomes available for the crowd.  The twelve wicker baskets of leftover scraps represent God’s capacity to feed the hungers of all humankind. 

     In the second reading we hear the earliest account of the Last Supper when Jesus blesses his Father using bread and wine and then distributes the bread which is now his Body and the wine which now is his blood.  This blessing continues to our own day, our own Mass, our own receiving of the Eucharist.  When we bless God, God pours abundance into our lives, even the abundance of his son, Jesus.  In other words, when we acknowledge God and the gift of his Son, God fills us with the very life of his Son.  “Take, eat, this is my body.”  “Take, drink, this is my blood.”

     The abundance is the very life of Jesus which we Catholics profess is not given to us as an image or only symbol.  No, the bread becomes the reality of the Risen Christ; the chalice is filled with the life of Christ himself.  The abundance of Jesus’ presence multiplies itself in each one of us who receives it, making us become part of the body of Christ, and continue his life of blessing, as we bring blessings to the world.  Look at how, today, we celebrate the blessings that our fathers have brought to us!  Christ lives in us so that his saving work can continue in our own lives.  Sometimes I wonder if we know just how blessed we are as Catholics, how lifegiving and life-shaking is the worship we do every Sunday.

     This feast asks us not only to deepen our appreciation of the presence of Christ.  It asks us to be a community that invites us to share in the Body and Blood of Christ, so that the joy we experience at Communion might pass beyond us into the lives of those searching for faith or disconnected from faith.  When we bless God and eat the Sacred Food of Jesus, he makes us blessings ourselves, sent out into the world.

Trinity Sunday C

     There is a new word in the city of Washington, “Interrupters.”  It’s a new word developed in the context of very strange times, times of out-of-control violence on our city streets, resulting in murders.  While we rightly stand aghast at the horrible and inexcusable mass shootings that seem to take place regularly in our country, we are not shocked enough by the more mundane and ordinary killing that happens all the time, especially in some of our cities.  The nighttime news seems to blend with the cop stories we watch—just more shootings we see on the TV screen.

     Interrupters are people trained to have a special role, to become aware when tempers are rising, and violence is likely to happen—and then to interrupt it.  They are to step into situations of anger or violence and disrupt its progress toward murder.  These interrupters assume there is a way life should be; when that life is in danger, someone needs to try to step in.

     This feast of the Trinity, which summarizes the image of God that we have from the revelation of Jesus and the experience of the Spirit, seems like God interrupting the craziness of our human lives.  There is a way life should be—our assumed environment should be one of love, acceptance, support, and caring.  Our assumed human environment should be one of gracious acceptance.  Our assumed human environment should mirror the reality that God is, the Trinity of life and love.

     In the Trinity we see a God of endless generosity, endless reaching out in love.  For is not the Father’s love poured into the Son; and does not the Son’s love flow back toward the Father.  And is not all their love the Holy Spirit who hovered over creation, who inflamed the ministry of Jesus, and who fills the hearts of those who turn to God.  The Trinity is a shorthand way of saying that God has come to this crazy human environment we have so messed up; God has come to this environment to redirect it toward the love which is its foundation.

     In the second reading, Paul is talking about the hardships that he has had to experience.  But he says he can endure them “because the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”  These are some of the most important words in the Scriptures because they describe what God wants to do in the hearts of all people, and what God continues to do in our own hearts.  God’s love is poured into them so that it may flow from us out into a world crippled with violence, division, tribalism, hate, and despair.  God’s love is sent to us to make us interrupters in our world.

     “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” Jesus says to us.  As I am filled with Divine Love, so I fill you with Divine Love, so you may fill all of creation with Divine Love as well.

     The Trinity is not so much a dogma or teaching as it is a description of the environment of love from which everything came and the environment of love toward which everything should move.  When we do all things “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” we are orienting existence to its meaning and fullness.  We do this not only in our prayer but also in the way we live, interrupting the world’s disorder for the sake of love.

Pentecost C

     I’m sure my feelings were not unique.  This would be in January of 2021 when vaccines were just starting to roll out.  It was hard to get an appointment but, after waiting by my computer for a while, an appointment came through.  I lined up with about 20 other people in the same time slot and got my first vaccine.  I remember leaving the facility with a sense of being liberated.  Although we were still plenty confused about the Covid virus, at least I didn’t have to worry about contracting it and dying.  I remember walking down the street feeling that the world had changed.

     Some folks might feel this kind of liberation after they graduate college, or when they move to a new job in a new city, or after they have completed chemotherapy.  All of a sudden, a burden is lifted, and now a new future looms ahead.  Things will be different.

     As Luke begin his important book, the Acts of the Apostles, a book from which we have been reading since Easter six weeks ago, he gives us this scene in our first reading, the story that we call Pentecost.  The story is meant to be a prologue so it’s strange to be reading it six weeks later.  But the story tries to capture the energy and freedom of people who have experienced the Holy Spirit whom the Risen Christ has sent into their lives.

     When we get beyond the images of wind and tongues of fire, the passage basically is about communication.  It compresses the experience of the whole generation of early Christians who found that the message of the Risen Christ was so powerful that it could pass through barriers of religion, nationality, generation, and race.  All people were able to plainly hear and understanding that Jesus had been raised, a new world had dawned, and that we shared in that world by the experience of the Holy Spirit.  God was speaking to us in Jesus; and Jesus was speaking to us in the Spirit.  Therefore we could speak to each other about God’s Good News.

     One of the temptations of hearing the story of Pentecost is that we get locked into the imagery and strangeness of the scene.  But that imagery is only meant to underline what Christian disciples experience on a regular basis: that the Risen Christ is present to us in such a way that we can share his life and invite others to share that life as well. 

     For most of us, this happens as part of our Catholic lives.  When we celebrate First Holy Communion, or Confirmation, parents cannot hide the joy they have because their children are encountering Jesus in new ways.  Husbands and wives must often confront difficult issues in the lives of their family members; they console each other as they find God’s strength present to them.  Young people sort through all kinds of issues when adopting a career or committing themselves to another for life; the strength of the Spirit allows this to happen.

     “Receive the Holy Spirit,” Jesus says into the fears and insecurities of his disciples.  “As the Father has sent me to share the Holy Spirit, so I send you to live in and share the Holy Spirit in your everyday lives.”  The strangeness of the Pentecost story underlines the hidden strength that is part of our lives of faith and faithful love. 

     So often we hear that we Catholics are a Eucharistic People; indeed, that is very true because the Eucharist is central to our lived faith.  But we are also a Spirit-filled people because, without the Holy Spirit, there is no Christian life.  Like the participants at that first Pentecost, we come from everywhere, with many different backgrounds, but form one family.  When we pray together and respond throughout the Mass, that is the Spirit giving us our voice and setting our tongues aflame today.

Ascension C

     Occasionally someone raises the topic: what is the greatest American movie ever made?  Some people do “Gone with the Wind” or “To Kill a Mockingbird.”  Some go for religious classics like “Ben Hur” or “The Ten Commandments.”  I think the greatest American movie ever made about America is “The Godfather”; you could put down parts one and two without a quibble, but I’d throw in part three as well.

     All the three parts tell a story of power, what it means to have it, to use it, and what it does to people when it is used as a blunt weapon.  You need the final scenes in part Three, when Michael Corleone, who started off trying to take the high road, ends up isolated and dying, ruined by the way power and anger overtook his life.

     The Scriptures bring up the theme of power in all the readings today because this is one way to reflect on the feast of the Ascension.  What does it mean for Jesus to ascend to the right hand of the Father?  What does it mean for Jesus to send power upon his disciples?  How are people of faith supposed to use power?  “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

     Now the scriptures can employ various words which kind of mean power: authority, for example, is a common one.  But the word we hear in the readings from Luke is akin to our word “dynamite.”  While we should not use explosive words to describe faith, we need to see that Jesus is giving his disciples the capacity to make something happen, to be roused from their fear and passivity, to go forth in the name of Jesus.  When we look at how weak and flabby we modern Catholics often feel in our faith, we can understand why we could use a boost.

     The Church has used power in a variety of ways, from the days of Constantine when she came out of the underground and started taking on a public role, to the days of popes going to war in alliance with one or another European King, to the ways people have been excommunicated or even executed during its history.  I am sure that Jesus had none of these ideas in mind when he spoke of power.

     Rather, I think Jesus means the power to bring about change, within people and between people, the kind of changes he brought to the lives of people when he healed then, forgave them, brought peace to their lives, accepted them when no one else would.  Because the power with which Jesus worked is God’s power of love.  When you think of all the influences that have changed your life, I bet none ranks with the force of love.

     Love invites, it does not force.  Love gives, it does not take.  Love moves from within our hearts.  Love ultimately forgets itself for sake of the other.  Love spreads itself from person to person, from community to community, with the ability to transform everything.  When we speak of love this way, we are actually speaking of the Holy Spirit, God’s own love, given to us as a gift. 

     Jesus ascends to heaven not to claim and horde power but to bestow it upon anyone with a heart open to God in faith and love.  When he comes to judge us from the throne of heaven, there will be only one test: how much did the power of God’s life come to overtake our hearts.

Easter 6 C

     “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?”

     We ask this question at every baptism, at every confirmation, and at every Easter when we renew our baptismal vows.  It’s part of the second set of questions about belief in God: we expect people to respond with the words, “I do.”  I’m sure, in fact, if I asked everyone of you if you believe in the Holy Spirit, you would say “Yes.”  But then I think we’d wonder about our answer. 

     In fact, the Holy Spirit is so much a part of our lives that sometimes we take the Spirit for granted, or do not even think about the Spirit.  Most of us think that Jesus came to give us commandments and an incentive to obey them; then it’s up to us to comply.  But that is not the image of the Christian life that our Easter readings give us.

     In the Gospels, Jesus has been going out of his way to emphasize to his disciples that when he ascends to the Father, he will not be leaving a vacuum.  Rather, the power of his resurrection will continue with us even more forcefully through the coming of the Holy Spirit.  “I will send you another Advocate who will teach you ever thing and allow you to do wonderful things in my name.” 

     The Holy Spirit is the way the Risen Christ fills all creation, all of time and space, with the power of God’s love.  The Holy Spirit is the way Christ’s resurrection touches and changes everything.  The Spirit is the way Jesus’ life continues in us, filling us with faith, hope and love; surrounding us with sacraments; filling our minds with the Word of God; and empowering our hearts to act in and through God’s grace.  “I will not leave you orphans,” Jesus says.  When he fills us with his Easter peace, he fills us with the Holy Spirit to work in our lives so we can live in and for the Kingdom Jesus won.

     We have seen the effects of the Spirit all these Sundays when we read the Acts of the Apostle.  What motivated the first follower of Jesus to want to bring the Gospel to every culture, every nationality, in every language?  It was precisely to expand the experience of the Holy Spirit throughout the world, to build a civilization based on God’s love.  The book of Revelation which we’ve been reading gives us a powerful image of the Kingdom: a city gathered together by God’s presence and love. 

     This city is a new nation composed of peoples from all over, every race and social condition.  What is a city but a community of shared life?  God’s city shares God’s life. God is so intimately present that no temple, no moon, no sun is needed: God is its temple, its light, and the life of the city.  In this city the Gospel will be fulfilled: we will realize that the love we have for each other has been God’s love running in and through our lives.  God is what binds us together and makes us one—through his Holy Spirit.

     We so frequently fall into the temptation Jesus warned his disciples about, thinking Christian life is one of grief for a missing Jesus.  We think that maybe we catch a glimpse of him in the tabernacle or at Mass.  But the Mass and the tabernacle themselves point to the divine presence that Jesus wants to saturate and penetrate every moment of our lives.  A presence that comes through the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Easter 5 C

     I thought it was pretty cynical when Robert Frost wrote that “home is when you go there, and they have to take you in.”  This expresses the idea that we are, in a sense, stuck with our families, but it misses the key point about home: home a base that remains with us throughout our lives.  A mental space where we most feel ourselves.

     Of course we feel this when we are living at home, even though there might be the occasional battles with teens or someone grumpy.  But the feeling stays with us even after “home” is not there for us literally anymore—when the family left the apartment, when the house is sold, when parents have gone to the fullness of life. 

     The first reading from Acts should have us dizzy with the way Paul and Barnabas are moving from one city to another.  I imagine the passion they felt, and the encouragement that came from the acceptance of their message.  So many people being touched by the Risen Christ and the Holy Spirit.  How could you stop?

     But the last sentence in the reading contains a lot: “From there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work they had now accomplished.”  They returned home, to Antioch, to the community of believers that sent them out, to the place where both had first experienced faith.  Remember that Paul may have been shaken on the way to Damascus, but after this he went to Antioch.  There he found a home with believers who shared prayer, sacraments, and life with him.

     Many of us might have a feeling like this when we visit our home-towns, especially when we can walk around the school we attended or see the church where we received Holy Communion.  Our minds go back, our hearts warm, and we feel transported back to foundational moments in our lives.  We need these home bases, and we need to return to these home bases; but the scriptures tell us we should not get stuck at these home bases because, for a believer, home is where we are nourished—and then, from home, we are sent out, to engage the world.

     Jesus, in a sense, talks about home in the Gospel, but it’s not so much a place as a state of life.  He talks about the glory that he had before creation, and the glory that he will always have with the Father, a glory that nothing can take away, not even crucifixion and death.  In fact, the glory is even more manifest as Jesus gives himself in love and, in this way, reveals the extent of God’s love for us.

     But Jesus gives us a clue about how we can be part of his home base, his glory, the glory of the Father.  “I give you a commandment, love one another.”  Isn’t it true that we feel at home whenever we experience and show love?  Isn’t it true that our “home” taught us the basics of love, basics that Christ wants us to use to grow his church, to reveal the home to which he invites everyone?  By our loving others as God does, we make God’s glory shine throughout our world.

     As we do this, we are slowly building that heavenly city the second reading talks about, the new Jerusalem, where God is so present to all that we need no sun, moon, or temple.  As we love each other in God, the eternal home, which we call the new Jerusalem, slowly comes into focus as the true home where we all will belong.

     Home sends us on mission; but mission means that we can make ourselves at home wherever we are sent because God’s glory shines through us.

Easter 4 C

     “Blessed are those who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb.”

     I, like many of us, have been struck by this phrase from the second reading.  When we think of washing, the last thing we think of is blood.  In fact, blood is notoriously difficulty to get out of our clothing, a stain that resists cleaning.  In English class we read about Lady Macbeth’s cry, “Out, out, damn spot” referring to the blood of the murdered king.  Her guilt meant the stain would not go away.

     So this phrase about the blood of the Lamb needs a little work to make sense.  For the Jewish people, blood was the most vital part of human life.  If you had blood, then you lived; if you didn’t, then you died.  So blood came to mean the inner life of someone.  The blood of the Lamb refers to the inner life of Jesus.

     But Jesus’ blood is different, not because it was a different color than ours, or because it had a different chemical.  Jesus’ blood means his selfless willingness to give his life as a sign of God’s total love for the world.  Jesus’ blood means his total giving of himself, even at great sacrifice, so that others can find life as well.  We often think of this in sacrifice terms, the blood that had to be shed.  But it is far more than sacrifice: Jesus is reflecting the gift that God is to us, the gift from whom everything comes.

     To be washed in Jesus’ blood means that we have the same attitude of commitment, the same direction of life, that Jesus did, that we live out of generous love.  The robes that are washed refer, of course, to the baptismal robes we wore at our baptism.  Baptism means we become Jesus’ disciples and learn the love that he had toward everyone.  Each Sunday when I drive to Mass, I pass a church of Ethiopian Orthodox parishioners.  What strikes me is that everyone of them comes wearing a white robe over their street clothes.  They show their baptism status to each other and to the world.

     We can do things with blood that the ancients could never conceive of or might even resist.  I’m thinking of dialysis, of course, but also of blood transfusions.  To be washed in the blood of the Lamb is to receive a blood transfusion—to receive a deeper share in the life-giving love of Christ.  What else does Holy Communion mean but Jesus is transmitting his life to us.

     He transmits his life to us as an incentive but also as a protection.  We hear that in the Gospel reading: the image of the Good Shepherd isn’t only to guide the sheep but to protect them.  Jesus talks about a protection that comes from God himself, a space where we can be absolutely secure because it is the space of God’s powerful love.  God wants us all to experience the divine protection of the Good Shepherd.

     The Scriptures often think of blood, not as something that divides us, but as something that unites us, something that we all have in common.  The blood we share in Jesus allows us to share with each other across languages and cultures.  It makes us one people, makes us one Church, the universal Catholic Church.  As this Church, we have the privilege of showing God’s love in the way we love and, in this way, bringing humankind to greater unity.

Easter 3 C

    In my many years of serving as Paulist priest, I’ve noticed a somewhat awkward but pleasant pattern.  Part of our life is moving from place to place a lot which not only involves the difficult process of leaving a community where one has served; just as crucially, I’ve had to enter into new communities where I’ve had to make new connections.  I call this “the lag.”  Because when you enter a new community, it takes a bit of time to get “up and running” as they say.  It takes a month or two for the new schedule to emerge, to learn how traffic works in the area, and especially to learn the new people with whom I’ll be serving.  During that lag, one feels in-between. 

    I think this is where Peter is in the Gospel we have today, this beautiful passage of the Apostles’ encountering Jesus for morning breakfast on the beach.  Peter begins by saying, “I’m going fishing.”  This surprises us because we typically think Peter gave up fishing as soon as he met Jesus.  But now that Jesus has been raised and begun to appear in his Risen Life, Peter feels in-between, like he’s waiting for something to happen.

    In John’s Gospel this is the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples.  But Jesus and Peter have not dealt with what had to be a huge issue, the fact that Peter denied knowing Jesus just before Jesus was crucified.  Judas gave up; Peter just kept hanging in, maybe pretending nothing had happened or holding his feelings inside.  So he goes fishing, and other disciples go along with him, maybe to make a few bucks or maybe just to kill the time.

    At first nothing happens because they disciples can’t seem to wake up any fish; they try all night and catch nothing, something that only reinforces the in-between feeling of their lives.  But then they see someone on the shore.  In the twilight that Easter often is, they see someone but aren’t sure who it is.  “Have you caught anything?” he asks.  Jesus tells them to cast the net again, to the right side of the boat—and then everything begins to happen.  The net is filled with large fish, the Beloved disciple tells Peter that it has to be Jesus, and Peter tucks in his clothes and jumps into the water. 

    Just as Jesus was recognized before by the breaking of the bread, so Jesus is now recognized by the huge catch of fish.  Jesus already has some fish cooking but now he asks his disciples to contribute from their catch.  In other words, Jesus wants their efforts and labors to be part of his.  This is only confirmed when Peter responds to Jesus’ question: You know that I love you.  And Jesus doesn’t respond by saying: oh, that makes me feel good.  He responds by saying: feed my lambs, feed my sheep.  The love Jesus wants is the love we are called to do in our vocations and our ministries.  Peter’s lag was over; now he knew his mission, what he would do in life.

    Easter teaches that it is in our service, our mission, that we respond to the Risen Christ.  Jesus will not let us respond to him unless this involves responding to each other—whether we do this as married disciples, or as people who stay single, or as members of the clergy.  The net is bursting; we each have our role in the abundant catch of Christ’s grace.  The vocations and callings in life that we have, in Christ, are how we show that we recognize the Risen Jesus and how the Spirit equips us to continue the saving mission of Jesus in our daily lives.

    We know Easter to the extent that we serve others. The more we give ourselves, the more we say “yes” to Jesus’ invitation—“Follow me”—the more we can experience Easter life.

Easter 2 C

     “What are you looking at?”  When I was a kid, that’s how people proved how tough they were, like they wanted to start a fight.  How dare you look at them, stare at them, enter their space!  If I though the kid was not likely to beat me up, sometimes I’d answer like a smart aleck: “I’m not looking at much,” I’d say and smirk.

     But what we look at tells us a lot about ourselves.  When I meet someone new, what am I noticing?  Their clothing, their face, their attitude?  When I visit someone house, where do my eyes go?  To the furniture, the refrigerator, the dishes piled up in a sink, their entertainment system?  How could I spend an hour with someone and not see something obvious?  And yet that often happens.

     Thomas knows what he wants to see.  “Unless I put my finger in the nail marks, unless I put my hand in his side, I will not believe!”  Now, Thomas, why is your mind going there, to the wounds of Jesus?  Wouldn’t you rather like to see him smile, hear him speak again, even go up and get a hug from Jesus?  Why do Thomas’s eyes go toward Jesus’ wounds?

     Of course, we are fascinated by wounds and pain.  If there’s an accident on the highway, everyone slows down to watch.  If there’s a fight at a bar, everyone is looking and waiting to see who gets hurt more.  If someone tells me about a friend with a difficult illness, I am fascinated by the details.  Where was the operation?  How long did it take?  Will there be a scar?

     In some ways looking at Jesus’ wounds is a simple way to identify him.  But maybe it’s a way to ease Thomas’ pain because he, like all the others, ran away and could not stay with Jesus.  “If I see his wounds, maybe I’ll feel less responsible for his death.  He survived, right?”  Maybe Thomas is a lot more interested in Thomas than in Jesus.

     But Jesus gives the apostles, and ultimately Thomas, much, much more to think about.  “Peace be with you,” he says.  “Receive the Holy Spirit, the power of my resurrection in your life.”  “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  “If you forgive, sins will be forgiven.”  Jesus is giving his disciples a whole orientation to the kind of mission he wants them to live.  When he shows them his hands and his side, they are not filled with disgust or morbid curiosity.  They are filled with joy.  The work Jesus did in his body is now accomplished.  It’s time for a new phase of work in his Spirit.

     When we look at Jesus what do we see?  Where do our eyes go?  Do we try to see him in his wholeness, or do we just look at the same dimension of Jesus, the one we’ve become familiar with, and stay with that?  Many of us have felt forgiven by Jesus, but how many of us have felt sent?  How many of us feel like we are Jesus’ ambassadors of peace and mercy?  How many of us feel the burden of living for, and spreading, God’s love?  Today Jesus invites us to go beyond his wounds and our wounds; he invites us to address the wounds of the world.

     As we will learn every Sunday, Easter is not only about Jesus or primarily about us.  Easter is about the world, what God wants to bring about in the world, and what our role in doing that might be.

Easter C

     I arrived a few days earlier and had time to walk around an old neighborhood.  As I looked at houses and intersections, memories of the past surged through my mind.  Then I noticed the house of an old friend, someone whom I hadn’t contacted in a while.  Spontaneously, I knocked on the door, figuring my friend was home because of the car in the driveway.  When the door flew open, my friend stared at me as if I’d come from nowhere.  “What are you doing here?” she exclaimed, both excited to see me and puzzled at my presence.

     We develop our familiar patterns and, these shape the expectations we have of life.  This is who lives on the block, this is how long it takes to get to work, and this is what my health allows me to do.  So when the unexpected happens, we are shocked and puzzled.  “What are you doing here?” we ask. 

     This is what happened to the women the early dawn of Easter over 2,000 years ago.  They came to the tomb with the expectations that any of us would have when visiting the resting place of the dead.  “What are you doing here?’ the angels ask.  “Why are you looking for Jesus among the dead?  He is not here.”

     Well, we can imagine the woman asking, where else would we look.  We witnessed some of his life, we saw them condemn and murder him, we witnessed his hurried burial.  We look for the dead among the dead.  That’s what makes sense to us.

     But if Jesus is not among the dead, if Jesus has broken the assumed limitations of human nature, if Jesus has turned our expectations on their heads, then we are looking in the wrong place.  We need to look for Jesus among those who have broken death and entered a new dimension of life.  We need to look for Jesus in a whole new dimension of life. 

     For all the joy we have this Easter Day, exclaiming “Alleluia” and proclaiming resurrection, aren’t we still so much like those women on Easter morning?  Aren’t we still people that assume death as the ultimate limit of life?  Not only does all the evidence of our news reports show us a history that revolves around death—from Yemen’s starvation, to Ukraine’s battles, to our national violence; even more, so many assumptions of our personal lives seem framed by the limits of death.

     Our daily lives seem born more of frustration than hope.  Our daily vision revolves around grabbing what we can instead of living in trust.  Our personal occupations spin around worrying and lack of control rather than a conviction that death has been conquered in Jesus and, because of that, a new future has opened for all of humankind.  “What are you doing here?” the angels ask.  “We are way too used to despair to be anywhere else,” we respond.  We are not yet Easter people.

     But which yields us more, our despair or our hope?  What brings more energy, our cynicism or eyes filled with expectation?  Which is more compelling, a funeral with tears or an empty tomb that forces us to wonder and smile?  Easter offers us what nothing else in life can offer us.  Will we choose it, believe it, or live it?

     The men in dazzling robes stare at us, waiting for an answer.  “Why look for Jesus among the dead?  Don’t you know a new world has begun?  And, if it has, why keep this news to yourself?  Why not let every mortal person know that mortality has met its match in Jesus?”

PASSION (PSALM) SUNDAY C

     “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

     Amidst so many words in the Passion reading, these last words of Jesus stand out.  Amidst so many words in Jesus’ life, these words so perfectly capture him.

     They are words from Psalm 31, showing how he lived and breathed prayer until the end.  That psalm is the prayer of someone desperate, attacked on all sides, but someone who trust in the mercy and goodness of God.

     This is the God Jesus lived for, his life totally centered on his Father.  A Father of mercy, of generous love, of faithful kindness, of unlimited life.  This is the God Jesus taught us to call “Father.”  Not just infinite being, not just creator, not just source of being: Father, that personal reality that enfolds every moment of our lives, the loving Father that forms a personal relationship with all who open their hearts to him.

     “I commend my Spirit, I commend my life, I commend my breath.”  I give what I am back to you, Father, for you will know what to do with my innermost self.  With every step I took and word I said, I strove to make you known.  With every healing and act of mercy, I showed how you really were.  I have always lived for you.  Now I die for you, Father, still showing your love to the world, knowing that my unjust execution is part of the Kingdom you are opening up for all. 

     I give my inner life and Spirit back to you, Father, just as you gave it to me knowing, even in my final moment, it will never fade.  For the Spirit you gave me, which I give back to you, is the Spirit I will bestow upon humankind when my death is vindicated in Resurrection.  I weep for my brothers and sisters who so often choose death more than life, despair more than hope.  But I trust and hope in them, that, having seen our life, the life of Father and Son, the vibrant love of existence itself, they too will commend their lives, hopes, and energies to you, Father, and to your vision.

LENT 5C

     I notice these days that everyone wants my opinion.  Every magazine I’ve ever subscribed to wants me to be on their opinion panel because “Your opinion is so valuable.”  Everything that I order online gets two requests: my opinion on the article I purchased, and my opinion of how the delivery went.  Was the delivery great or not so great?  Almost every article I read online has a comment section, so people can throw their opinions around and seem so clever.

     All of this, we know, is only a sales gimmick.  They want my opinion so they can sell me something else or use what I say to sell something else.  Perhaps people don’t realize that it’s dangerous to ask for an opinion: they might get more than they bargained for.

     “What do you think, Lord. about this woman we caught in adultery?  Should we stone her to death or not?  Now Jesus was just minding his own business, teaching people about the nature of God, and these religious leaders come up to bait him.  They don’t want his opinion; they want to catch him in a trap.

     Jesus, however, shows them what a trap really looks like—the one they sprung on themselves.  “Let the one among you who is sinless throw the first stone, he says.”  That’s my opinion. “If you are so self-righteous as to demand me to be part of taking another’s life, then you should learn that I do not deal with opinions and games: I deal with the truth of your hearts.  You want me to judge her heart?  Let me judge yours first!  Or, even better, judge your own hearts.”

     “Behold I’m doing something new,” the first reading says.  What God is doing new is helping realize that religion is not a game we play with God, with others, or with ourselves.  Religion is the risk we take to place our hearts openly before God—not the God of petty vengeance but the God of infinite love.  Do we dare to measure our hearts according to that standard?  Do not use religion to hide from God because ultimately you cannot hide from divine love.

     “Neither will I condemn you,” Jesus says to this woman who was shamed and used as a pawn in a religious power-game.  “I will not participate in the sham of making my Father anything other than a God who desires not condemnation but ongoing transformation.”

     As we come to the final weeks of Lent, maybe our final fast should be not giving up things or punishing ourselves but rather trying to strip off the masks we often use when approaching God, especially the “Now I’m good enough” mask.  Lent should have taught us that none of us are good enough.  We really need to be good enough only to see how much we need God’s goodness, to make God’s grace the platform from which we live.

     God doesn’t want our opinions; God, ultimately, wants our love as it responds to the vision of divine love that Jesus continues to reveal to us.

     St. Paul realized anything he knew apart from this revelation of love in Christ Jesus was, well, garbage.  Even our theological and religious games.  God wants more than garbage for us.

Lent 4 C

  Is the longest distance between our hearts and our brains?  Or is it the distance between one ear and the other?  Or is it the distance that friends and spouses feel when they’ve had a huge fight?  Often distance is more emotional than geographical.

     In our first reading and the Gospel distance is being overcome.  The reading from Joshua shows how long the journey through the desert felt for the Jewish people.  Now they have finally come to their new land, a new home, and eat bread.  They have no more need for manna.

     In the Gospel, Jesus’ spellbinding story of the wasteful son shows he distance he is willing to walk to return home.  “Even servants have something to eat,” he thinks.  We can imagine what it felt like to crawl home again, only to be greeted by a Father who could not repress his joy.

     Lent has been inviting us to journey, to spend time in deeper reflection and greater prayer, to dedicate 40 days to more intense penance and charity.  But its purpose is for us to arrive home, as the Jews did, as the younger son did: to find ourselves at home with God in greater peace and unity.  This is even truer if we feel a burden from our sins . . . reconciliation, after all, means we are at home with God once again.

     There is a difference, though.  The Jews and the sinful son walked in a kind of uncertainty: when will we arrive at the promised land?  What will my father do to me?  But we walk with a knowledge of God’s presence and mercy that accompanies us at every step.  Today, in the midst of Lent, we rejoice because mercy always gives us a reason to rejoice.  Christ, the faithful Son, is always at our side.

     Lent is not a time of physical distance.  It’s a time to think of distance differently.  Not how far we have yet to go but how close God has come.

Lent 3 C

    What is the most important conversation we have ever had? 

    This question brings up many possibilities, from the first time we met a future spouse to a career-changing talk with a mentor.  We might even think of times when we have been able to get “a lot off our chest” when we were deeply troubled by something.  These conversations stay in our minds because in some sense they made us who we are, they shaped our lives so deeply that a whole course of actions proceeded from them.

    Everyone who has run for president, for example, has had a long talk with their spouses and their families.  Who gets married without talking things over with a parent or a closest friend?  What motivates someone to give up a scholarship in college so that she can play professional sports?

    Moses is having a conversation with God.  It appears unexpected because Moses was simply curious about the bush that was on fire but did not burn up.  He expected something strange, a puzzle.  But he ended up in dialogue with God.  That dialogue was so profound that it not only shaped Moses’ life; it shaped the destiny of a people and the course of God’s revelation.  It was a conversation that, once begun, could not stop.

    This conversation grew out of a relationship that God initiated.  “Moses, Moses,” God calls out.  God will only deal with us on a first-name basis.  He wants us directly speaking to him and not hiding behind a title or a pose.  Moses, in turn, asks God’s name.  In fact, God identifies by two names: the God of Moses’ ancestors and, more pressingly, the God ever abides, the God who always is.  God will not be defined as a people approach God; God will be a God for all.

    Jesus, when we think about it, insists that everyone must be about this conversation with God because this is how conversion happens.  People bring up an issue with him, trying to get him to debate who is bad and who is good, who gets punished and who doesn’t.  Jesus says that beyond all those questions, and they can be endless, we simply must face God and turn to God in conversion, that is, place God at the center of our lives, make God the key narration in how I think and who I am.

    Lent clearly has this as its purpose.  It invites us to pull away from all the conventions we have developed to tame God and keep God from bothering us.  It invites us to get to the point of our lives where we see that we either absolutely trust God and put our lives in God’s hands . . . or else play games with God, with ourselves, and ultimately with everyone.  Paul talks about the way people can use religious conventions to cover things up instead of reveal them. “God was not pleased with most of them,” Paul says, though they had clear signs of God’s presence.

    What clearer signs can we have than the gift of Jesus, his words, and his saving actions?  What clearer presence can we have than the Holy Spirit who works to bring about our spiritual lives.  What greater support can we have than a community of faith and love that expands around the world and has over a billion people?  But how easy not to see these signs.  How easy to push God’s revelation aside.  How easy not to engage with God and experience conversion.

    Intimidating as this can sound, Jesus goes on to point out the mercy and peace of God.  “Put a little manure around it,” the owner says, “and maybe it will begin to grow.” God always has time, but we do not.  God has begun the conversation with us; Lent asks us to respond and not leave God hanging.

Lent 2 C

     One email I hate to receive is when folks are asking me to send a picture.  Perhaps it’s a talk or a parish renewal; whatever, they want a photo. Which one will I send?  Shall I send one from ten years ago?  Or shall I get a new, post-cataracts photo?  Maybe there’s one that makes my hair look darker or my nose look smaller?  Or, when I die, which picture will they stick on my memorial card?

     Images are important because no one image comes close to capturing us.  In some ways, old-time painting worked better than modern cameras, because a paint could imply subtle traits which photos often cannot do. 

     We have a little bit of that problem with the very powerful Gospel story of the Transfiguration of Jesus.  In this Gospel, after all, Jesus seems to show a different face to his disciples.  However they saw Jesus when they went up the mountain with Jesus, now it’s more complicated.  Now they have an image of Jesus when they first met him, as well as an image of Jesus in radiant glory; and then the post-Transfiguration of Jesus as they came out of their trance.  “After the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone,” the Gospel tells us.  And they said nothing to anyone.  How could they ever look at Jesus the same way again?

     I’m sure one of the reasons they said nothing was because they had seen way more than they could process.  How could they make sense of Jesus at this point?  And, a few weeks later, they will see yet another face of Jesus, bruised and immobile with death.  And, three days after that, another face, that of the Risen savior.

     In some sense we need all these images of Jesus to keep us from pigeonholing him.  There is one Jesus, but that Jesus comes at so many different moments of our lives it takes a lifetime to begin to see them all.  Maybe that’s one of Lent’s goals: to force us to try to see Jesus more deeply, in the various ways he is present to us, in the various ways in which we need him.  Like the apostles, we need to be overwhelmed again with our overwhelming Savior.

     We Catholics have yet another way to see Jesus.  We have the Mass, the Eucharist, this central act of worship that defines Catholic life.  Perhaps it is this image of Jesus, built up Sunday after Sunday, which is the most important one for our understanding.  After all, would our faith change much if someone could go back in history and take a photo of Jesus? I gave a Confirmation class I am teaching three different renderings of Jesus.  They were puzzled because they always though Jesus was blond and blue-eyed.  Seeing Jesus is seeing Jesus through faith.

     Lent is a time for us to explore the Eucharist once again in our lives: how Jesus speaks to us in the Liturgy of the Word; how Jesus encounters us, and invites us to encounter him, in the second part of the Mass; and how Jesus sends us forth as witnesses and missionaries to bring the fruits of the Eucharist to our daily lives. 

     This Lenten time of renewal not only calls us to reflect on how we see Jesus.  It also calls us think about how Jesus sees us—the way we live his life and the way we do not; the faith that we have or that we might struggle with; sense of closeness we have of Jesus, or the sense of distance.  Christ shows us his many faces so that we can know that we do not have to hide any of our faces from him.  He loves us in all the ways we are because that’s how he invites us to always look toward him.

     Abraham put his faith in a God he could not see.  Jesus invites us to put our faith in him precisely because we can always, one way or another, see him.

Lent 1 C

   There’s Flo on the Progressive Insurance commercials.  And the emu from LIMU, Liberty Mutual Insurance.  And, more dangerously, there’s Mayhem in the Allstate commercials.  The others are there to make you laugh but Mayhem is there to cause . . . mayhem.  He does this by distracting drivers so that they ram into the backs of trucks or drive onto highway dividers.  He smirks from the side, knowing that he distracted the driver enough to cause an accident, to cause mayhem. 

   This is how we often think of a temptation: like mayhem, from the outside, causing us to turn away and mess something up.  And this is how we can think of the Satan, the Tempter, in the Gospel today, but we need to expand our vision of true temptation.  The Satan is there to distract Jesus from the very mission he is undertaking, the very mission he committed himself to accomplishing in his baptism.  Instead of being God’s servant and giving his life in generous love, the Satan wants Jesus to take care of himself, to seek political power, or to make religion into a stunt.  Jesus resists Satan at every point.  Unfortunately, Jesus’ followers throughout history have not always been as successful.

   As Lent begins, this might be one way we think of this season of purification and renewal: to look at the ways in which we are invited not to be disciples of Jesus who seek God’s will.  The Satan, the Tempter, wants us to change the central story of our lives: not to be Christ’s disciples who carry on his mission, but to use our faith to keep God’s mission distant and hidden.

   One of the chief ways we do this is through reducing our faith mostly to external practices: we do the rites, we receive the Sacraments, but we do not take into ourselves the depth, the meaning, of what we are doing.  One easy example is the way we often mutter our prayers mechanically, as a routine or some kind of habit.  Our prayers before meals, if we even say them, are formulas we go through rather than heart-felt thanks.  One Lenten practice we can do is to pray and act religiously with as much sincerity and attention as we can muster.

   An even more dangerous way we can be tempted is to ignore our own story of faith, of God’s involvement in our lives.  In the first reading, we see the Jews had to constantly remind themselves of their history and what God did for them.  We need to do the same, recalling every day that Christ has saved us by giving himself to us; Christ has made us holy by pouring his Spirit into us; and Christ promises us the fullness of life and love which is his Kingdom.  We rarely think of our Catholic lives with the drama they deserve.  We take our faith for granted and, as a result, do not see ourselves as part of the great story of salvation that Jesus is accomplishing. This Lent, remember the big story in our lives.

   Yet another dangerous temptation is to think of our faith only in self-centered ways, as if our job was to keep ourselves from sin so we can go to heaven.  No, it’s Christ who keeps us from sin by the power of his Spirit; and Christ does this to make us instruments for the caring and serving of others.  The idea of a private faith is one of the greatest distortions of Christian life.  What we have received, Pope Francis says, we have in order to give to others.

   Lent then is a time for us to focus on the big picture, the big story, the deeper purpose of our Catholic and Christian lives.  We reflect on our redemption and what that means for us personally and for the whole world.  We reflect on Jesus’ mercy as the very key to our relationship with God—the healing God poured into us as soon as we are aware of our woundedness.  We reflect on the vision of God’s glory, which Jesus promised all his followers, a glory which is slowly transforming the world. 

   Mayhem surrounds us, waiting to cause trouble as soon as we stop paying attention.  But Christ is stronger than any mayhem in our lives.  Christ, once tempted, now sets his face toward his destiny and brings us along with him. 

8 C

     A nation like ours, founded on revolution against British royalty, is deeply suspicious of rulers, leaders, and executives.  Given our divisions, it’s hard to know how anyone could be a widely-accepted president.  Nevertheless, we do need leaders.  So the basic question then is: what kinds of leaders do we need?

     Of course we all like bosses and leaders who are nice.  Our biggest fear is that we will have a leader who is nasty and vindictive, especially to us.  We don’t mind leaders that pick on other people, but we resent leaders who are going to make our lives more difficult.  In the United States we want leaders who give us everything without taxing us one penny. 

     But we know the influence that leaders can have.  They set the tone for everyone around them.  How many stories do we have of leaders who brings dishonest people to work with them?  Look at the influence of drug cartels in many nations in the world.  Look at how some countries are almost dysfunctional because there is so much corruption.  And corruptions spreads to become a society of deceit and lies. 

     Jesus has a particular way for us to judge leader.  He is, in fact, teaching his disciples about leadership.  He expects his followers to live with such a goodness that it radiates on to others.  His disciples are to be people who bear good fruit, not only in themselves but in the world around them.  He warns them about picking on other people and finding fault with them: take care of the log in your own eye before you worry about the slivers in the eyes of others.

     If we, as followers of Jesus, walk around like blind people, how can we lead others?  If we, the followers of Jesus, are not producing good fruit, how can we part of helping the world produce the goodness it needs?  If we, Jesus’ followers, do not strive to become like him, then how can we create a world in his image?

     Often we think of our spiritual lives as something personal, something inside ourselves.  We often hear people referred to as “souls,” as if we were floating ghosts.  But everyone one of us lives in a human environment, connected with other people and connecting with our finite planet.  Our actions spill way beyond ourselves.  As the first reading tells us, how we speak affects the world around us.  And how we think affects how we speak.  Nothing is totally personal.  Everything has an effect. 

     As disciples, then, we need to let Jesus continue to have an effect on us, transforming our lives in a steady way, because it’s not only our lives that are changed—the world is changed with every conversion, with every breakthrough, with every selfless act, with every kind word.  We are not only followers of Jesus; we are leaders in the transformation of our human existence.

     Paul gives us an ambitious goal as disciples of Jesus: we are working to defeat death itself.  Death, not only as the extinction of life but as everything that lessens life, that robs life of dignity, that makes life seem vain and useless.  The Risen Jesus makes all life precious and worthy of renewal.  In Jesus, nothing that we do is wasted. 

     How’s that for great motivation from Jesus, our Lord, King, and leader!

7 C

     These have been huge weeks for sports.  Not only do we have the Olympics taking up most of the month, but we had Super Bowl LVI last Sunday.  It’s amazing to me how some sporting events can seem to sweep everything else aside and claim all our attention.  “It’s only a game,” I think, but everyone still can’t stop talking about it.

     Of course, sports is one of the few places we can root and boo, and maybe that’s the attraction.  While the Patriots were not playing in the Super Bowl this year, we know how people love to applaud or deride them.  Same with the Yankees.  They are heroes or they are bums.  Look, for example, at how Chinese social media is said to have exalted Gu Ailing, an American woman of Chinese descent who played in the Olympics for China, and spurned Nathan Chen, a American man of Chinese descent who skated so excellently for the United States. 

     What does this sense of deriding and demeaning people do for us, especially apart from sports?  It obviously gives us a sense of superiority.  But particularly when it comes to demeaning another person, it gives us false sense of righteousness.  “See, they are wrong; they are evil.  I’m against them, so I must be right.”  This is the way we have been approaching politics in our nation for over three decades, by making ourselves superior to the people we oppose.  And we approach a lot of relationships like this as well.

     The problem with this, however, is that our sense of being superior almost always is self-delusion.  The most significant moral weakness anyone can experience is not being able to see his or her own moral weakness.  And it is just this weakness that Jesus is calling out in the Gospel this week: the false picture of ourselves that comes from thinking we are alright, and all the others are dead wrong.

     These are some of the most challenging words that Jesus speaks to his disciples, telling us that we must love everyone, even those who persecute and detest us.  This goes against ever human instinct we have—the instinct to beat and punish people who we judge have offended us.  Jesus says to us: look at God, look at how God loves and gives.  Look at God’s vastness of heart, at God’s care for every person.  If we want to be children of God, then we must have God’s attitude in our own hearts.

     The second reading makes a distinction between the first Adam, of creation, and the second Adam, Jesus, who creates us anew.  This is the result of the new life that God pours into us through the Holy Spirit.  It’s a new life that aims to reshape and transform all those parts of our hearts that do not conform to God’s love.  To be in the new creation of Jesus means to cultivate a heart of compassionate mercy and expansive love. 

     The first reading gives us the picture of David and Saul at one of their most intense moments of rivalry, when David could have killed Saul and become King himself.  David shows us a large heart by refusing to kill his rival, Saul, but a lot of that is ultimately his own self-interest.  If someone kills Saul, then who might one day kill David when he becomes king?

     But the greatest self-interest we can have is not what gives us an advantage but one that lines us up with the heart of God.  All of our self-interest is furthered when every person can come to experience God’s generous love and mercy.  This is what brings about a new creation, a new world.  This is what brings the Kingdom of God into view.

     Booing and cheering seem to simplify life. But what simplifies our lives most is knowing God’s love and trying to live in our lives.

6 C

     Poor Jeff Bezos.  He, of course, is the fabulously wealthy owner of Amazon and other things, including the Washington Post.  But he wanted to build a yacht, a big yacht.  And he decided to build it in the Netherlands for $465 million.  However, the yacht that he built was so big they couldn’t get it out of the city and onto the sea; so they had to dismantle the city’s most famous bridge to make room for Jeff’s little boat.  On top of that, after giving lots of money to the DC Public library, the Board of the Library wanted to name an auditorium for him.  But so many people protested, they decided not to name it after Toni Morrison.  Poor Jeff.

     When we hear stories like this, mishaps that come to the very rich, we smile, either secretly or openly.  We little people like to see the grand people taken down a notch or two.  Whether it’s the fabulously rich or the fabulously famous, there’s a part of us that smiles when they seem less exalted.  We hear Jesus in the Gospel today: “Cursed are you rich because you already have it all.”

     But we need to be careful here because Jesus goes on to pronounces woes on those who have food, who laugh, and who enjoy good reputations—and that includes most of us.  We all want to look good, feel good, and eat well.  So are we all being cursed like the big shots?  What is Jesus doing here?

     Jesus is giving us an attitude adjustment because he knows that most of us do not know why we are living.  The things we have, the things we want, the ambitions we hold, have such a grasp on us that they absorb all our attention.  But look at what absorbs the poor and sorrowing: they receive the Kingdom of God.  And that Kingdom cannot be received by those who think they can fully take care of themselves.  It can be received only by those who know that the Kingdom is the most important reality we can pursue. All too often, it’s the desperate and struggling who know that!

     One of the dimensions of the Kingdom we see in the second reading, when Paul proclaims Jesus raised from the dead.  We remember last week how this message of Good News turned his life around; it was the most important thing that Paul realized—and the most important thing in human experience.  That we share in Jesus’ Resurrection changes the whole purpose of why we are living—not to have the biggest yacht in the world but to further a universe of love, grace, and life.

     People deny the Resurrection when they think they don’t need it.  They deny the importance of God when they think they can control their own destinies.  They deny the Kingdom of God when many lesser things seem to fill their bellies and their wallets.

     Jesus wants us hungry and lean, pushing always ahead. more than anything. for what will advance the lives of others.  He doesn’t want us to settle for steak when his life is our true food.  He doesn’t need us dancing to Adele if we do not see the feast for which we all long.  He doesn’t want us accepting the applause we crave if it keeps us from applauding the infinitely loving God who would uphold us forever.

     I’m sure we’ll all have some cash, our favorite foods, and our little fan clubs.  Jesus is saying, fine.  Just don’t be fooled into thinking that these simple needs are the most important in our lives.

5 C

     “I am a sinner.”

     There, that’s not so difficult to say.  Even Pope Francis, when describing himself in a news interview, listed this as the first thing about himself: “I am a sinner.”  In fact, our Catholic teaching says that the only person apart from Jesus who was not a sinner was Mary, his Mother, and this by a special grace of God from the moment of her conception.

     We hear this line about being a sinner twice in our readings today: Isaiah, who is having a vision of God connected with worship in the temple, proclaims himself to be a sinner.  He sees the coals from the incense fire coming to purify his lips.  “I am a man of unclean lips living in a community of unclean lips,” he says.  And in the Gospel, right as the fish swarm throughout the boat, Peter falls on his knees before Jesus and says, “Depart from me because I am a sinful man.”  As if Jesus didn’t know that already.

     The point, though, isn’t that Isaiah, Peter, and all the rest of us are sinners.  The point is what we do with this fact.  I always thought Peter’s line was some excuse he made up because he wasn’t sure he was ready to be a disciple and put Jesus ahead of everything in his life.  Isaiah, too, is saying a lot of traditional things because standard belief back then was that if someone saw God they would die.

    God, however, looks right at our sins, no matter how high they are piled up, and refuses to take any excuses.  Because our sins can never be an obstacle for us to serve God.  In fact, our sins can help us serve God better precisely because we know our need for God because of our sins.  God looks at us and says, in spite of your sins, in spite of your limitations, I want you to carry my word to others.

     In the second reading, in one of the most important selections from St. Paul, we see how the dynamic works.  Paul is proclaiming to his Corinthian community the basic message of our faith: that Jesus Christ died in utter wretchedness to overcome our sins; and that he was raised and began to share his Risen life.  Paul lists the people Jesus appeared to.  And at the end of the list Paul puts himself.  Jesus appears to him as to someone born in a strange way, abnormally, because Paul saw himself as such a strange case.  “I am the least of the Apostles,” he says, because he persecuted the first followers of Jesus.

     “By the grace of God, I am what I am,” Paul says.  God’s grace, that is, God’s gracious love and choosing of us, is stronger than our sins, our resistance, and our doubts.  That grace allows Paul to be in some ways a greater apostle than the rest because he is willing to toil with all his energy all the time.  “By God’s grace, I am what I am”—isn’t that true of all of us.

     We are so conscious of our limitations, the thoughts of jealousy or anger, the feelings of resentment, the doubts the jump into our heads, the impulsive actions we do—we are so conscious of them.  God says to us: good, know who you are.  But, more importantly, know whom I want you to be—a disciple, one who lives to serve the Kingdom of Jesus, one whose unique gifts can open the hearts and minds of others.

     Indeed, we are sinners.  But that’s not an excuse to recognize God’s call in our lives and the grace God gives us to respond to that call with all our heart.

4 C

     Good cop.  Bad cop.  Sometimes it’s a joke and sometimes is a theme for a TV show.  One cop seems sweet and kind, smiling, offering coffee to the suspect.  The other cop does the opposite, scowling and threatening, giving the suspect nothing.  The theory is that the Good Cop gets more done than the Bad Cop because people respond better to kindness. 

     Perhaps this is true, but we seem to prefer the angry cops a lot whether it’s Chicago PD or one of the NCIS programs they have.  Is the nice teacher more effective than the hard teacher?  Don’t people go to the new priest because they think he’ll be kinder?  Do we want our governmental leaders to be sweet or do we want them to be angry tough people, ready to protect us? 

     This is the test in the scriptures we have today.  Do we want to hear Good News, kind news?  And will we accept Good News when it actually comes to us?  Certainly, there is no sweeter section in the writings of St. Paul than the selection we have today, the so-called Hymn of Love, which Paul writes to his unruly Corinthians.  We hear it so often at weddings.  Everyone is drying their eyes when they hear the words: Love is patient, love is kind. 

     But we see in both the first reading and in the Gospel that people resist hearing words of grace and kindness.  God calls Jeremiah telling him that he has to bring a message to people who will spend all their energy resisting his good news.  And Jesus, after having been applauded by the people of his home-town synagogue, now hears their questions and their doubts.  “Who does he think he is?” they say.  He’s only the local carpenter and nothing more.

     Indeed, it isn’t easy to live for love.  It isn’t easy to keep ideals.  It isn’t easy to keep encouraging people to be the best they can be.  It’s often easier to be impatient, unkind, jealous, proud; it’s always easier to go looking for what is wrong and to think the worst.  That way we can criticize and not have to change.  Everyone is a bum; I can be a bum too.

     But that’s not God’s Word to us, and it’s not the word God asks us to bring to others.  Indeed, our word to the world is God’s generous goodness and undiminished love.  People want an Angry God so they can dismiss God; but God’s love will not be dismissed.  Ultimately, God’s love is what wins.

     But if we are to proclaim a word of goodness and love, that means we have to live that ourselves.  We cannot use the excuse of cynicism or pessimism.  And our message of love will only be heard if it is accompanied by deeds of love, mercy, forgiveness, and joy.  As Pope Francis says, you cannot spread the Gospel if you are a sourpuss. 

     Jesus, the ultimate Good Cop, suffers fierce rejection; but that rejection itself leads to resurrection and redemption.  In the end, our anger leaves us seething in the corner, but God’s love leads us into the Kingdom.

3 C

     May I have your attention please!

     No, you may not.  My phone is ringing or I just got a text.  I have a deadline for school.  My job just called me about an emergency.  My children are fighting in the kitchen.  I’m waiting for the results of my Covid test.  I’ve been feeling unwell and am trying to call my doctor. My series on TV starts in two minutes; you’re not going to make me miss that, are you?

     Of course you can’t have my attention.  No one can have anyone’s attention these days, so distracted have we made our lives.  Even some of the very solemn political speeches we’ve heard lately cannot really gain attention because, once they are done, a dozen important people start giving their opinion about it.  Too forceful.  Not forceful enough.  It’s about time.  It’s six months too late.

     We ought to note, then, how the Scriptures are giving us a very different approach to the power of speech today.  In the First reading, Ezra the priest is reading the book of the Law, probably what we call the book of Deuteronomy, to the people.  This went on for five or six hours, from daybreak until midday, for all Israelites, including the children old enough to understand.  They stand when Ezra reads, they bow down and prostrate themselves.  “Amen, Amen,” they say.

    What would make people do this, we who can barely sit still for ten minutes of Scripture reading during Mass?  This is why: the Word of God was coming to fill a huge gap in their lives.  Ezra and Nehemiah served the Jewish people when they were allowed to return to Israel after 70 years of exile in Babylon.  The people stood there and listened because it was the way they were learning who they once were and who they should be in the future.  They had no identity without the Word.

     Jesus is in a very different situation.  No podium, no large crowd, no reading for many hours.  Jesus is visiting his home synagogue, where everyone knew him.  He is doing something that probably was routine for him.  The synagogue folks  know him enough to invite him to read; they know him enough to give him a scroll that he knows very well.  He reads Isaiah 61, probably a set of verses that everyone in that congregation knew by heart.  Yet they cannot keep their eyes off him.  He commands their total attention.  At least for these few minutes.

     Why was that?  Luke infers that Jesus had begun to make a name for himself, that he was the local boy now doing very well.  Perhaps it was curiosity; perhaps it was pride at what their town produced.  Or perhaps it was the sheer power of what he read, how God’s liberating Spirit had anointed him to be an agent of a new time, a time of healing, liberation, and grace.  Who would not want a time like that?  But ultimately the reading was about Jesus, about his identify.  “This passage is coming about even as you are listening to me,” Jesus says.  Jesus is declaring his mission, his identity, to people who wanted to define him as their local celebrity.

     Each Sunday we come to Mass with the Scriptures carefully chosen; we read a Gospel in sequence Sunday by Sunday so that Jesus’ identity can become clear to us.  This year we read from Luke’s account. We also read from Jewish writings which seem to give a context for what Jesus is saying and doing.  We read from the first followers of Jesus so that we know that the Word is to have an effect in our lives.  In fact, the Liturgy of the Word takes up at least half our time on Sunday.

     Does God have our attention?  Does Jesus have our ears?  Do we let the Word we proclaim challenge us, invite us, convert us?  Is this part of the Mass a formality we go through or is it an essential part of our spiritual and Catholic lives?  After all, if the Mass is not continuing to convert us, then in some way we are not giving it our attention.

     We understand ourselves as a Eucharistic people because the Mass is central to our Catholic lives.  But the Liturgy of the Word is an inherent part of the Mass.  The Word is the way we know what the Eucharist is all about.  It, too, is being fulfilled for everyone who, with opened ears, is eager to listen.

2 C

     We’ve all been on roller coasters during the pandemic, experiencing different ups and downs, and one of the institutions that felt these swings most publicly was the theater, especially Broadway theater.  Theater involves so many people in the New York area, from actors, to musicians, to stagehands, to the thousands who commute into the city to see a play—it involves so many people that its ups and downs shake the lives of thousands of people.  But is there anything like a show, a play?  Especially on opening night, when everyone is staring intently, wondering how this new play will do?  Debuts are so critical.

     Our Gospel today, about the wedding feast in Cana, has plenty of drama in it.  Those who follow the series The Chosen will remember how this scene was elaborated, from the building of various tents for the guests to eat to the final revelation of the superb wine which was kept till last.  There are so many characters on which to focus, beginning with the couple, then their families, then the various guests, then Jesus and his new-found band of friends, and, of course, Mary.

     All this drama might keep us from putting this event into its proper place.  This is a debut!  This is the opening scene of a drama that would transform the world.  This is the first public appearance of Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, now present and acting in our midst.  Just as the opening notes of a Broadway musical give us a hint of the melodies to come, this event is meant to color every other thing that Jesus would do in John’s Gospel.

     And how does Jesus begin?  What does his debut performance look like?  He throws a party!  He throws one of the most memorable parties in human imagination.  Not only does water become wine, a symbol of what God does to all of our ordinary lives when we turn to God, but the sheer quantity of wine is enough to make every member of that town float away with the sweetest dreams.  One of the funnier moments of my priesthood was when a guest pastor of the bride read the wrong first reading, a stern condemnation of drinking from the book of Proverbs; and then I got up, the pastor of the groom, and read this romp of a drinking story.

     But think about it.  Jesus has come to show us the inner heart of the Father and to pour out the Holy Spirit of divine love upon us.  And his opening move to do that is to fill people with the joy of a wedding party, with the dreams we have for the couple, the laughter of the different tables, the dancing between the couple and the guests, the great array of food and 180 gallons of wine.

     The point of Jesus’ ministry is to bring joy and salvation to the world.  From the way many Christians have lived, you wouldn’t know that, because we can be a very dour lot.  It’s not our seriousness or our penances that show God; it’s the joy we experience in coming to know God’s infinite love and sharing that love with each other and the world.  This is how the dream of Isaiah comes about!  A Spirit that comes upon us with gifts and graces to multiply for the world.

     Jesus’ hour has begun, the reason he came into the world.  It wasn’t to teach us sadness and doom, but to give us a joy to permeate our lives when we let him abide in our midst, a joy to bring to others as our witness to God.

Baptism of the Lord C

     When Charlie Woods got to play golf with his father, Tiger Woods, more than the golf world was watching.  One part of the drama was whether Tiger, who has undergone nearly nine months of rehabilitation after driving down a cliff, would even be able to swing his club.  Many were relieved when he swung his club very well.  The other part of the drama was seeing Tiger’s son play alongside him: about half his size, being only twelve, Charlie swung his club and hit his ball better than most people playing golf.  Maybe the Woods dynasty would live on?

     Some of this captures the dynamic of fathers and sons, which can be fairly tortured as sons grow up to become possible disappointments to daddy, or dads realize that they were not as available for their sons as they could have been.  We remember not too long ago how dramatic it was to see on the screen a dad hug his son and say “I love you.”

     That’s not the problem in the Gospel today, the feast of the baptism of the Lord, which extends the Christmas season one more Sunday.  At his baptism, the heavens open and a voice speaks: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”  In case we missed the love shown here, the Holy Spirit descends—the very divine love of God coming down upon Jesus and, through him, upon the world.

     There are two reasons to rejoice in the Father’s love of Jesus, his beloved son.  One is the way it shows God’s eternal disposition: God is a God of love, love bestowed upon the Son and love bestowed upon all creation.  Everything we experience from sun rises to mighty oceans, reflects the generous and abundant love of God given to us.

     The second is the mission that Jesus is now undertaking.  For Jesus’ baptism was not because he needed to experience conversion or show he was awaiting a kingdom.  Jesus already had union with the Father and came precisely to bring creation to its fulfillment in the Kingdom.  Rather, this is a moment in which Jesus’ baptism, which stood out so strongly against that of the others who were baptized with him, shows he is now fully engaged in the mission of making the Kingdom of God real by the service he would give to the poor, the imprisoned, the physically and mentally broken, and to people dismissed by everyone else. 

     This Sunday, then, asks us about our own baptisms and the mission that we have taken up as disciples of Jesus.  For surely God spoke to us the same thing he said to Jesus, because we are baptized in Jesus.  And surely the Spirit came upon us as it came upon Jesus.  Surely our lives are directed to expanding the world’s recognition of the Kingdom by the actions we do and the love we show.

     The issue with mission, however, is not whether we start.  It’s more whether we will be faithful when the mission drags, or seems to endanger our lives, or seems especially frustrating.  We only have to look at the lives of our heroes, whether Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, or Mother Theresa.  And we only have to look at our own, how easy it is for us to lose energy and hope.  And, of course, they looked to Jesus who never wavered in giving himself to his mission.

     When Jesus comes out of the water, he sends ripples that wash over all of history.  Those ripples continue in us who celebrate our baptisms even as we celebrate the baptism of Jesus.

EPIPHANY C

     Maybe it’s true, that our brains are being destroyed by Google and things like that.  Since the advent of search engines, searching has gotten easier.  I have a question, I want some information, I want to check something out, I just type it into Google, and it appears, seemingly out of nowhere. 

     Contrast that with the image we have in the story of the Magi, those mysterious men of the East who represent all of humankind seeking answers.  We give them names, we have images of them, whole cultures have folks dressed up as one of these Magi in their shopping centers.  But they are mysterious, and they are meant to be mysterious.

     The star in the sky contrasts directly with the darkness around the star.  Without the star, the Magi have nowhere to go.  They cannot advance one inch because we only know where we are going when we have light.  We may live through times of darkness, but we are people of the light.  That’s why Isaiah’s line is so striking: “The people who have lived in darkness have seen a great light.”

    They search with risk and optimism.  They expect a positive result from their journey.  But that may not happen.  When I Google something, there’s little risk.  Something will come up on the computer or the phone.  Of course, the web search may give me nonsense. half-truths, and even outright lies.  But there’s no doubt that I will find something, lights that I can match against the light that I have already acquired.  Nothing is more cynical and destructive than those who find great profit spreading lies and fear in response to the searching of others.

     So these Magi search in trust.  They face the risk, look for the star, advance a bit and wait.  There is a hope inside of them that allows them to undertake the risk, a hope that comes from the very design of the human heart: our searching springs from the depths of our spirits, spirits already knowing of God because of the longings inside of us.  Something makes us search; something makes us risk; that something is the Love of God that touches us at every moment of our existence.  We believers do not think that life is a bad joke played on pitiable creatures.  We think that life is a joy bestowed on us who are privileged to relate to each other and relate to God.

     These Magi look at us: resist the cynicism, the shortsightedness, the cliches with which we fill our minds.  Resist the insinuation that we are only being played with.  Refuse to listen to those who says the starts in our lives are only illusions to be distrusted.  Refute those who say faith, hope, and love have no real place in our lives. 

     Renounce these temptations by being Magi ourselves, both bringing gifts to the newborn baby and receiving even greater gifts.  Renounce them by daring to look into the sky and point out the Star of divine wisdom which alone can give us orientation and hope.

Holy Family C

     “I wish they would always stay the way they are.”  I hear this so often from parents of children when the kids are in the “cute” stage of life, say from five to eleven.  “They grow up so quickly,” I hear as children enter high school.  “I wish I could have stayed the way they were,” we hear once children become teenagers.  Once they get older, they seem to want to be independent and to walk in their own circles.

     We have developed a very nostalgic image of what they call the nuclear family, mom and dad, and two or three precious children, all hanging together and living in peaceful cooperation.  For most of history, generations of families lived together, so the idea of family was broad and family responsibilities were spread among many.  Now, with a smaller family, we want to cling to everyone.

     But aren’t families meant to send their members out?  Isn’t that what the Scriptures say. “So a man leaves his parents and clings to his wife.”  And women leave their households and cling to their husbands, and make careers, and take up positions of responsibility in the world.

     We have this very potent story of Jesus visiting the temple at the age of twelve.  Luke alone has this story; for him, it is a way to indicate that Jesus’ wisdom was always present and that the mission of Jesus always extended to others.  We certainly sympathize with the words of Mary as she expresses the anxiety of herself and Joseph.  But Luke wants us to appreciate the words of Jesus: he has to be about the mission of his Father and that mission is more than a family affair.

     We are invited to think of our families as training grounds for mission.  Look at all the formation that happens in the family, how we learn love, acceptance, patience, give-and-take, faithfulness, loyalty, and forgiveness.  All these things we learn without going to school; they are built into the dynamics of a family, especially a family grounded in its faith.

     So rather than thinking that our families need to cling together, why not think of our families as schools that send people forth with essential gifts to bring to others.  Doesn’t the Church need the very virtues that family members teach each other, and live out?  Doesn’t the world need people who have learned to treat others with the same grace they have when dealing with their brothers and sisters? 

     Indeed, we are not called to stay in the Temple any more than Jesus stayed in the Temple.  Rather, we are called to be temples ourselves, structures through whom people can sense the presence of God’s love and come to feel invited to the world-wide family of God.  We are all about our Father’s business because Jesus has made the world itself, even more clearly, into the house of God.

Christmas C

     We often hear the words “Keep Christ in Christmas,” usually as part of a broader feeling that American, Christian, and even Catholics, are just too commercialized when it comes to Christmas.  We run to our shopping centers rather than run to the manger scene.

     Yet, as I think of Christmas, it seems to me the problem is different.  I think Christmas has lessened in our spiritual awareness because we have lost a deep sense of our need.  Think of those to whom Christmas is announced: shepherds, the people at the bottom of the economic totem pole in ancient Israel, and Wise Men who were willing to acknowledge their need to search, to grow, to find.

     For many centuries we have emphasized our competence and strength, almost as if we can save ourselves.  If our attitude is like this, it’s no wonder we cannot run to the manger!  Yet often things like pandemics and economic crises pull back the illusion of our competence.  They reveal how much we are still profoundly in need.

     This Christmas, we can spend extra time at the manger, stare at the birth of this Child to a simple woman and her husband, look for the Angels and Stars that God continues to send us, and acknowledge that there is nothing we need more than to accept the love God shows us at Christmas.

Advent 4 C

     “I just finished a Zoom meeting and have another one starting in a few minutes.”  How often have we heard sentences like this over the past two years?  They talk about Zoom fatigue.  This is likely to happen when we have a meeting with 25 or so more people and we are trying to keep our eyes on lots of people who are participating.  Maybe that’s what exhausts us about Zoom and other meeting platforms.  Our brains do not seem wired to do that, to engage intensely with dozens of people. 

     Our minds seem most wired to engage intensely with one or two people.  If we look back on our lives, we probably can identify distinct moments when we met someone and it changed us.  These were more than meeting; they were encounters—when all our attention and energy seemed to focus on the other person.  Best friends, mentors at school and work, people who introduced us to something that changed us, and, of course, people we ended up committing our lives to.

     Mary hardly seems exhausted from her encounter with the Angel Gabriel.  However he may have appeared to her, and however life-changing his message, we find in the Gospel today that Mary is running over hills so she can greet her kinswoman and older relative, Elizabeth, who is now, against all probabilities, pregnant.  Her encounter with the angel leads her to encounter her kinswoman.

     When they do encounter each other, it’s like electricity is flowing.  “Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Elizabeth says. And the unborn infant, the future John the Baptist, leaps inside of her, John’s first encounter with the newly-conceived Jesus.  Encounter is so powerful that it transforms the undeveloped and hidden parts of us.  It can transform all of life itself.

     Of course, Jesus encounters us today in a way even more powerful than Mary’s meeting with Elizabeth.  We come to worship precisely for this reason: to experience together the encounter Jesus continues to have with us in our life of ongoing transformation.  This happens in four powerful ways.  The first is our very gathering as believers.  We witness to each other how Jesus has touched us and brought us together.  We acknowledge that we are, together, a visible sign of Christ’s body, the Church.  In and through each other, Christ touches us.

     The second way is through the Word of God that we hear and celebrate each week.  I know we are not much used to having words read to us as we do in Church; but we do this so that we can together hear God’s call and together know we are responsible for living that call.  God’s Wod in the Scripture calls us, every Sunday, to conversion.

     The third way is through the Eucharistic Prayer leading up to our reception of Holy Communion.  While Christ is present in so many ways in our lives, Holy Communion demonstrates his presence with an intimacy and union that is unique.  He embraces us so deeply that he shows he wants to be part of us and make us part of him.  How privileged are those who receive Holy Communion; how hungry and starving are those who seldom receive his sacred food!

     The final way is through our encountering others.  Just as Christ has encountered us, so we are the means by which Christ can encounter others.  We encounter others by our attention to them, loving concern for them, and by being people through whom Christ can reach out to others.  Christ is so present in us that others should sense this encounter and, in some way, feel Christ’s energy, his electric-like presence.  Yes, we are sacraments that bring Christ to others because we are disciples.

     Mary’s running through the hills was the first of many pilgrimages that we Christians take, paths we travel through life touched by Christ the Lord.  May our paths this week bless all those we come across that they, in some way, can be part of God’s eternal encounter in Jesus.

Advent 3 C

     I don’t blame John the Baptist one bit, saying that he was not the Messiah.  Even though he didn’t know the whole story, he had a sense of what being a Messiah might mean.  When he tells us he is not the Messiah, I hear a sound of relief.

     After all, look what trying to be the messiah does to us.  As a nation, we have slipped into a kind of messiah-complex, thinking we were not only invincible but that everything we did was right.  But after trying to police the world, and after the end of our latest twenty-year attempt, I think we’ve started to realize that we have limits.

     Even in our personal lives, we can try to take on projects that are more than heroic.  Sometimes this happens at work when we are the one who is going to save the company or the division or the school.  But mostly it happens in our personal lives, when we get into such a deep rescue mode that we are doing no one any good.  We begin to realize our limits, that we cannot live the lives of others for them.

     John’s denial of being the Messiah certainly involves modesty because people were starting to talk about him, and we know from the rest of the New Testament just how wild peoples’ imaginations can be.  He didn’t want to be the poster boy for everyone’s political illusions or ambitions.  But John’s denial is primarily a statement of truth.  After all, we either are the Messiah, or we serve the Messiah. It’s important to know the difference.

     The general theme of this Sunday, the third one in Advent is joy.  Rejoice, rejoice, the liturgy says in various ways.  The prophet Zephaniah joins with Paul the Apostle: rejoice, be happy, because the Lord is in our midst.  Maybe we thought we had to do it all ourselves, but we don’t.  Let’s hear it again: the Lord is in our midst.  Emmanuel means God is with us.

     Therefore we don’t have to be God, thinking we know all the answers and that we can then tell everyone else what to do.  We don’t have to be God, pretending to have the issues figured out and putting out an agenda for everyone else to follow.  We don’t have to be Saviors because only One is the true Savior, because only One has understood the depths of our brokenness with the power to bring what is needed.

     Advent comes during our darkest days; but Advent knows that sometimes the experience of darkness, of night, can bring the greatest clarity to our lives.  What must be clear, above all, is our radical need for God and the graces that only God can bring.  Advent is teaching us that our greatest joy can come from embracing God and accepting God’s coming into our lives.

     When folks came to John, he didn’t ask them to do extraordinary feats.  Just don’t cheat.  Just don’t bully.  Just treat others the way they should be treated.  When we do what is right there before our eyes, we do enough for Jesus us to use us in the larger purposes that he, as Messiah, can accomplish.

     We tend to snicker at folks with Messiah complexes, especially when their illusions fall apart.  But if we are honest, we are all tempted to put on the robe of Jesus.  Yet Jesus showed that his power was greatest when even his robe was stripped from him during his passion.  Yes, he has died, and he is Risen.  Our privilege is to follow him.

Advent 2 C 

     Do we always long for an alternative world?  Certainly the success of the Harry Potter series, both in print and on film, made the world of the Hogwarts School of Wizardry into a great imaginary landscape.  The land of Wakanda was enshrined as a magical land where the Black Prince might finally reign. Yet how many times will TV play Jimmy Stewart’s It’s a Wonderful Life with the opposite message because the hero must realize that the world in which he actually lives is the best world for him. 

     Look at how our nation has played that role for numerous other cultures, how people have been willing to leave Ireland, Italy, Germany, Latin America, and so many other countries to come to America “for a better life”—an alternative life in America.  Yet even as others dream about coming to America as an ideal, so many of us Americans grouse about our nation in more extreme ways.

     Maybe looking for an alternative world drove people out to the Jordan river to hear someone like John the Baptist who can seem to us as a religious freak.  In the desert, listening for the voice of God, he draws people of all classes to his message: God has an alternative world for you if you want to enter into it.  I have a baptism to perform on you to show that you are ready and willing for this alternative world.

     Perhaps the world John offers can seem even more imaginary than Harry Potter’s or the Black Prince’s. After all, what kind of change is John offering?  People are not going to him to get rich, or become younger, or to look more alluring.  When they come to him, he offers them the alternative world of conversion and the forgiveness of sin.

     We might be tempted to push this idea aside pretty quickly, we who ask for the forgiveness of our sins with every Our Father we say, or at the start of every Mass we attend.  But the forgiveness John is talking about, and the forgiveness Jesus will actually bring, isn’t like erasing a pencil mark or bleaching out a stain.  Rather, it’s a new world, a way of life, in which everything changes.

     We hear the word “repentance” as if it means to “do penance” like eat less chocolate or drink fewer beers.  But the meaning behind this word is far stronger: to transform our minds, to turn our brains upside-down, until we see our world in entirely different ways.  Because you and I are prone to be insecure calculators, trying forever to get more for ourselves, not trusting a world of grace.  And this is the world for which we need an alternative.

     John is proclaiming exactly a world of grace in which “all flesh will see the salvation of God,” every single person who dares to see things anew.  It’s a world based on recognizing God’s gracious generosity, God’s ever-ready mercy, God’s bringing us into a Kingdom where generous love is the only rule that works.  We hear this in the second reading: that we now live with a new perception of how things are, so that we can see what is of true value and live with hearts fixed on God.  John is offering people of his day a new way of life that rebuts their resentments and narrow visions, that expands their horizon to heaven.

     Luke shapes his Gospel in a distinct way.  Only after talking about all the rulers and leaders, living in their palaces and holding political sway over others, only then does he present John in the desert, the place Isaiah said would lead us to God.  In this way, Luke puts the choice of worlds before us.  We can hang with the calculating folks who try to run our world and so often do a bad job, or we can go into the desert Advent invites us to and begin to learn a way of life based on grace.

     The God who has brought us to this new way of life is the God who wants to bring it to completion in Christ Jesus.

Advent 1 C

     Although retail stores have taken a beating during the pandemic, one of them seems always to endure.  Macy’s was in trouble, but the news this past week is that its stock has recently doubled.  Of course, it’s the time for the Thanksgiving parade in New York which is sponsored by Macy’s, culminating in the appearance of Santa Claus at the end of the parade, and prominently featuring the Macy’s slogan: believe.

     But belief is not the dominant virtue of the season.  Rather, Advent, which starts off our new Church year—and year when we will read mostly from the Gospel of St. Luke—is primarily a season of hope.  It is a time when we train our eyes on those things that we long for so deeply we are willing to search for them and give our lives to them.

     In a Pew research poll sampling seventeen advanced economies, they found that the most meaningful thing in the lives of people was their families.  They worried also about health and having enough money but, far and away, it was family that got the top rank.  Yet what is there about family that most occupies us?  This: we love our family members so much that we dream of a brighter future for them—not only our children and grandchildren, but even our aging parents and grandparents.  We keep wishing them a greater life.

     This seems harder to do in our times.  We’ve barely made it through one of the world’s greatest health crises in human history, with the disruption of our personal and social lives, and now we are hobbling through the economic consequences of shutting down our economies and trying to start them up. We also live with daily fears for the health of our parents and our children, turning school board meetings into shouting matches.  How do we have hope in a world beset with fear?

     In today’s Gospel, Jesus is using the standard “end of the world” imagery that he received as part of his Jewish inheritance—how the collapse of Jerusalem and years in exile led them to think about the collapse of everything—but he tells his follower that when they see the worst happening around them, then they should stand up and hold their heads high because the fullness of redeemed life is near at hand.  Jesus teaches his disciples to learn to hope even through the worst of human experiences.

     It's easy to see a contrast, isn’t it, between living with hope and living without hope.  If we try to live without hope then we collapse only to what the present moment brings to us, especially with its limitations.  How much of today’s addiction, and consequences of addiction, are a product of people trying to live without hope.  “It makes no difference anyway.”  Jesus says in today’s Gospel for us not to let our hearts become drowsy with our various intoxications which only dull our sense of the future.

     But to live with hope leads us to see that everything makes a difference because it is not only created and love by God; even more, God is bringing everything forward to a completion greater than we can imagine.  The loves we have now, as much as they motivate us, are only shadows of the fullness of love for which we live.  The embraces that make life such a treasure for us now are only a prelude to that ultimate embrace of everything in God.

     Of course, we eagerly look ahead to days of family gatherings and Christmas parties, to a Christmas morning when we might be able to gather with those we love once again.  But our excited looking ahead is a way to train ourselves to look even further ahead, and even deeper inside, as look forward with the hope that Jesus gives us with his promise of the fullness of life.

Christ the King B

     Every time I get on the Beltway driving around Washington, DC, I feel like it’s a game.  Who is going too slow, and who is right behind me pushing me to go even faster?  I bet that Honda is going to cut in front of me.  Look at this idiot weaving in and out of traffic at 80-miles per hour.  I wonder by how much I can beat my estimated time for arrival. 

     When we think about it, almost every field in life can be like a game.  Certainly we have games at the office revolving around money and power.  Even the halls of academics can be a game of prestige and fame.  While children play their games in the playground, often parents are playing other games in the household, some cute and some destructive.

     Jesus was a keen observer of the games people play, especially those played around religion in his time.  In fact, he dies as a victim of the games that power-players used on him.  So when Pontius Pilate wants to play a game with Jesus, Jesus plays him right back.  “Are you a king? Pilate asks.  “Who told you that?” Jesus retorts.  “I’m not one of your people,” Pilate proceeds.  “My kingdom of not of this world,” Jesus asserts.

     When Jesus says this, he clarifies for Pilate that he is not playing Pilate’s game of political power.  Jesus always refused political power from the first moment of his temptation until his dying breath on the cross.  Jesus’ Kingdom is not of the world because his Kingdom does not play according to the various rules that our world, our social and political machinery, wants to play.

     But you and I know that, indeed, Jesus Kingdom is very much part of this world.  Jesus comes to transform our lives, to fill them with the Spirit which will give us the mind and heart of Jesus.  This, indeed, very much happens as we live today.  The mission of Jesus was not to pull us out of this world into some kind of monastic isolation; rather, Jesus’ mission is to empower us with the special energy of divine love which transforms our lives.

     On this feast of Christ the King, we need to be aware of the many roles the word “King” has played in human experience, all the way from ancient emperors who ruled with arbitrary ruthlessness to our images of King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable.  Our own nation was a renunciation of King George III and the very idea of kingship.  Yet, throughout history, churches and religious groups have variously embraced their kings or denounced them as it suited them.

     But our King, Jesus, came to do one thing: to inaugurate us into a Kingdom whereby divine love moves us closer to the fullness of life and love which is the longing of every human heart.  He came to show us the merciful heart of a Father and the gentle surge of the Holy Spirit.  His power is to break the bonds of sin and death; his enthronement is to sway history toward a divine destiny.

     Jesus wants to be King of our lives by making us members of his Kingdom, by making us disciples with a mission to transform human life by the divine grace God pours into our lives.  As he lived to heal, reconcile, include the outsider, and teach a spirituality founded on total trust in God, so he bequeaths this mission to us.  His Kingdom in one sense is not part of this world; in another sense, it’s all about the salvation of a world which resists God’s love only at its own risk.

     Many years ago, when I was in college, we talked about a popular psychology book called “Games People Play.”  The title has lived on in other forms of media, recently a TV series.  Our feast of Christ the King proclaims that God does not play games with us.  In all seriousness, Jesus gives his life to bring us into another reality, a Kingdom based on God’s infinite love. 

33 B

     When the pandemic came, workers were divided into the essential workers and the non-essential workers.  Although being essential might sound more important, these workers were usually the folks who do the everyday jobs that keep things moving—bus drivers, supermarkets, electricians, food workers.  The non-essential workers were in another category.

     There were two wonderful things about being a non-essential worker who could work from home.  First, one could stay in one’s pajamas or leisure clothes most of the day unless there was some electronic meeting happening.  The other was that the boss seemed pretty distant.  We didn’t have to worry about her eyes on our backs or how he might stir things up by calling folks into his office.

     The readings today make me wonder what kind of boss we think Jesus is.  Because in every one of the scripture selections God seems to be far away.  And just as an absent boss might allow for mayhem in the office, an absent God might allow for lots of complications in the lives of Christians.  On this view, the shape of Christian life is this: when Jesus comes back, all bets are off, and he’s going to clean house. 

     In the first reading, it’s Michael the Archangel who is going to take care of the boss’s business.  In the second reading, Jesus the priest waits until his enemies are made his footstool.  And in the Gospel, the Son of Man comes with his angels who gather the chosen of God from the four corners of the earth. 

     The problem with this picture is that it makes it seem like, during all the time we live, Christ is not with us and we are not with Christ.  The cat’s away and we, the mice, will play our games.  Jesus is on the side, watching, waiting, until the alarm bell rings, or the horn is sounded.  Jesus certainly left us with a lot of responsibility, but that doesn’t mean he has left us.

     There is an optical illusion when we think about the future, especially what we imagine will be the end of the world. It makes all the intervening time look tentative, relative, unimportant.  We know what happens when people buy up lots of property to develop a project but then let the occupants stay there: everything runs down.  They are only thinking of the day when those houses will come down.

     But Christ’s future coming is an extension of Christ’s ongoing presence with us now.  The one who sends the angels is the one who tells us he is with us until the end of time.  The one who comes in judgment is the one who is here for us as our food and drink in the Sacrament.  The one who reads our hearts is the one who sends his Spirit into us to guide our every step.

     Our judgement is not what we did when we thought Christ wasn’t here.  Our judgment is whether we let Christ walk alongside of us, as the guide of our lives, and the inner strength of our hearts, as the one whose Spirit transforms us.  Judgement is not about how we played around when we thought Jesus wasn’t coming.  No, it’s when we push Jesus away when he wants to embrace us.  Our judgement is simply this: what kind of disciples have we let Jesus make us as we walked alongside him.  The greater our discipleship, the greater is the joy of eternal life; the smaller our following of Jesus, the smaller our eternal joy.

     Some of us are shirt and tie kinds of people; some of us prefer leisure clothes.  Some of us like dressing up; some of us hate that.  But whatever style we have, Jesus is by our side, asking to be part of our lives so we can serve his Kingdom.  The most important thing is saying yes as the Spirit works in us.  Then we don’t have to worry about the end of the world because Jesus will complete the job in and through the grace he gives us now.

32 B

     What are the risks we are willing to take?  The news has reported strikes in various industries recently, a sign that workers have a little more umph.  But to strike is to take a risk—that what strikers sacrifice will bring better benefits in the long run.  Every day we hear more commercials for sports betting on our telephones.  Every commercial carries the warning about gambling addiction, let alone the risk of losing.  What is the risk of taking a vaccine against the risk of getting and spreading Covid?

     Most people, like me, are risk averse.  Why take a chance if you don’t have to?  I see all the people buying cards and then start scratching off to see if they won.  Many of them look poor but obviously they are still willing to spend $20, $40 or even more on a regular basis, taking the risk that they might win.  Not me.  I’ll buy a Lotto ticket for $2 but I’m not going any deeper than that.

     We have in our scriptures the image of the widow, first in reading about Elijah and then in the Gospel about the widow’s two coins.  What makes these images powerful is not merely that they are about widows, very vulnerable people in ancient time.  More than that, these women are willing to risk everything they have.

     One widow is keeping her son and herself alive in a drought.  She doesn’t have flour to make cakes for herself and her son.  Should she take the risk of using up her last bit of flour for the local prophet who is passing through town?  “The jar of flour will not go empty,” the Prophet Elijah says to her.  That’s easy for him to say.  But how will she know?

     Right after Jesus excoriates religious leaders who manipulate old widows to acquire their wealth and savings, he points out to his disciples an old widow.  She has only two coins to give to the Temple treasure, far less than all the others making donations.  Yet Jesus points out the ultimate risk she is taking: she contributed from her poverty, everything she had to live on.  Others can give out of discretion; when this woman gives, she’s risking everything.

     So it’s not only that the two figures for reflection this week are widows; it’s, even more, that the two women have learned to have total trust in God.  They risk everything, but they would tell us that do not see it as risking because their generosity opens them up to deeper dimensions of God.  They can give because they have learned to trust.

     Oh, we say, I could never trust like that.  Sure you can. Sure we do.  Most of the time we do not show it, but if any one of us gets into a desperate situation, one in which we have literally nowhere to turn, we find ourselves crying out to God from the deepest parts of our inner being.  We find ourselves throwing ourselves onto God.  Because, ultimate, you and I have only God to trust in, only God to rely upon, only God as the foundation of our lives. 

     These widows see it.  They are with us in today’s Scriptures to help us see it in our own lives and begin to live it more fully, and to let our trust in God shape the way we look at and treat others.  This is the trust that Jesus shows when he gives himself as an offering to the Father as we hear in the Letter to the Hebrews.  He does this on behalf of us so that we can come to live in his trust, to live with his faith and openness.  Jesus has taken on all the risk; as a result, he has removed the risk that makes us afraid.

     Give it all, he says; give it all, he shows us.  See, give it all, and you get everything in return.

31 B

     The Golden Rule.  It’s everywhere, in a variety of forms.  “Treat others as you want them to treat you.”  “Wish upon others what you wish upon yourself.”  “Never do to another what you would not want done unto you.”  It seems like not only common sense but also common empathy.  Emotional intelligence 101.

     We hear Jesus give a version of the Golden Rule in the second part of the one great law today, echoing basic Jewish teaching: “Love others as you love yourself.”  Again, that seems pretty basic.  But why is it so hard to do?  And why does it seem even harder to do in today’s world.  We are far more comfortable yelling at each other, and cancelling each other out, than loving each other.

     I think many times we mishear what Jesus is saying.  Instead of “Love others as you love yourself,” we hear something far more common: “Love others for the sake of yourself.”  In other words, the main focus is what we are going to get out of it.  The nonstop ads we in the Washington, DC, area have to listen to, proposing and attacking one idea after another, mostly boil down to this: push what is for your best interest.  If you have wealth, oppose taxes.  If you don’t have wealth, attack people with wealth.  Do you really want the government sticking its nose in your medicine?  Until, that is, we are uninsured and sick.

     Jesus imposes a higher standard on us.  The standard is not only the love that we expect for ourselves, which is hard enough in itself.  The standard is God’s love as a measure of our love.  Because, let’s face it, a lot of us seem not to love ourselves.  “If I could only lose 15 more pounds then I’ll look the way I want.”  “I never felt worthy of that.”  “I try the best I can in spite of all my inadequacies.”

     A lot of us don’t love ourselves.  And the reason we do not love ourselves is that we have not accepted God’s love for us.  Jesus embodies the ideal of the first commandment because he uniquely seems to love with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength.  For all our human attempts to live the great commandment, we could not do this until Jesus came. 

     But Jesus not only loves his Father with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength.  He also shows us that God loves us with all of divine heart, spirit, mind, and strength. And that love is the basis of the dignity that every human being has.  When we love another, we are loving what God loves and what God makes loveable.  When we are distant from another, we are not loving as God loves nor what God loves. There is one commandment and it goes like this: selfless, generous love is the essence of all life, human and divine.

     When Jesus expounds this, even one of his enemies seems to see his point.  He recites what Jesus says back to him, appreciating the words.  “You are not far from the Kingdom of God,” Jesus says.  In other words, the more we can bring the world to love with the love Jesus shows, the closer we will come to the Kingdom Jesus brings to us. And that can happen only if we, the followers of Jesus, ourselves understand the kind of love we are called to experience and live and, in this way, give the world a better inkling of its calling.

30 B

     It sounds ridiculous, that Jesus asks this blind many what he wants from Jesus.  What did Jesus think the man would ask for?  If we imagine losing any of our senses, I think we would fear losing our sight more than anything else.  I know whenever I meet someone blind, I can’t help from trying to imagine what their lives must be like.  I think of them very often. I cannot imagine life without seeing. 

     But perhaps Jesus can imagine a life like that because why else would he ask this man what he wanted from Jesus.  Jesus certainly felt the man’s desperation because Bartimaeus just would not stop shouting for Jesus.  It’s as if they bring him to Jesus because they cannot figure out what else to do with him.  Bartimaeus is going to let them know: he wants to see Jesus.

     Did Bartimaeus have needs even greater than being blind?  Was the source of his desperation something deeper yet?  In the first reading we have Jeremiah’s majestic vision; but it doesn’t talk about any healing from blindness.  Jeremiah says that the blind and the lame will be able to accompany everyone else, as if being part of the people being restored as a community was the most important gift anyone could have, a gift that would offset any impediment.  The tears of any handicaps are part of the tears of all humankind.

     These are the tears of Jesus, the High Priest, who was not afraid to take on our frailty and brokenness; no, his very priesthood is taking our greatest brokenness, our death, on himself and offering it as an act of obedient love to his Father.  If we are all joined to Jesus by our tears and pain, then we are joined to the community of Jesus as well. 

     Look what happens to Bartimaeus after he regains sight.  He immediately follows Jesus.  That’s probably why the Scriptures can record his name—he became a disciple of Jesus.  He was able to walk alongside Jesus and be part of the community of disciples that Jesus was forming.  He was able to be part of the great restoration that Jesus was bringing about, a restoration that Jerremiah could only hint about in his prophecy.

     Every one of us has impediments.  Many times they are not physical impediments but handicaps that go even deeper.  Do we ever ask ourselves if we lack things even greater than the loss of sight, or hearing, or a limb?  Do we ever wonder if our spiritual deprivations, most of them self-caused, exceed those grotesque physical deprivations that so easily frighten us?  Maybe all our deprivations are only overcome by becoming part of the community that God is forming, a community based on shared love and compassion.

     I  had an opportunity once to ask a blind man what his dreams were like.  I was helping him cross the street in New York.  “I dream just like you,” he said.  “You see things?” I asked.  “I hear and feel and smell . . . these are my senses, and this is what I dream.  Just like you.”  Blind though he was, he did not see himself as apart or different.  He saw what was most essential to see, that we are ultimately one.

     That’s what Jesus comes to help us see; and, with his Priestly love, he invites us to find our unity in the Kingdom he forms among us.

29 B

     Because we are a democracy, we also think we are a meritocracy, that is, everyone has an equal opportunity to advance in life based on the work that she or he is willing to do.  So when things don’t seem to work that way, we get unsettled and angry.  Why did that particular person get a promotion at work?  How come they didn’t pick me for their team?  I got an A+ so I should be first.  And, of course, one of the main battlegrounds on which carry out this fight is in college admissions, affirmative action, allowing someone with somewhat lower grades to be admitted in place of someone else.

     When we think about it, however, there are many factors that make meritocracy hard to pull off.  One is simply the fact that people know other people and take that into consideration.  “My next door neighbor has been out of work and is looking for a job.  Can you help her out?”  Or just look at the way many relatives of politicians end up with government jobs—even for politicians that scream the most about equal opportunity?  Daughters and in-laws, sons and friends.  Tell me this isn’t the same nepotism that plagued much of history!

     So when Zebedee’s sons, James and John, ask Jesus for a favor so they can get ahead, the other apostles are furious.  I suspect some of their anger is that they didn’t ask for the favor first.  They keep asking among themselves who is the greatest, who is number one, who is the most favored.  Are they going to get ahead on their merits or is Jesus going to do them special favors?

      The answer to this is not easy for the disciples to learn, and it’s not easy for most Christians to learn.  Most of us think we are going to be saved because we work at it, because we earn it.  Jesus is telling his disciples, like he is telling us, that everything we have comes as a gift—and the greatest gift we can receive is to share in the death and resurrection of Jesus, that is, to receive the same grace that he received.

     You will drink of the same cup that I drink from, says Jesus.  You will undergo the same baptism that I undergo.  Because the sacraments that Jesus lets us share make us one with his death and resurrection, make us one with the grace that he earned by his perfect listening to his Father.  If we have merits, that is because Jesus gives us the merits of his grace.

     But these are not merits Jesus received because he put himself ahead of other people.  The fundamental stance of Jesus is to be a servant, not to hold power over people but to give himself in generous self-sacrifice for the sake of others.  That is the greatest grace we can receive, to be servants who give ourselves for the needs of others.  At the heart of Jesus’ Kingdom we don’t find meritocracy; rather, we find the abundance of divine love and life that flows from giving ourselves to others in service.

     The competition Jesus wants among his disciples isn’t who is going to be number one, or who is going to get ahead.  The competition Jesus wants is this: who will follow him as he takes on our weakness in order to show that it is not our strength that counts; rather, it’s the strength of God’s love which is the only power on which Jesus relies.

     The only way to get ahead in Jesus’ Kingdom is to walk behind him in humble service.

28 B

     One often hears a very neat description of the cost of addition: “Addiction is when I give up everything in my life for the sake of one thing; recovery is when I give up one thing in my life and then find I have everything else.” 

     This is a way to talk about how one aspect can change our approach to everything.  We don’t have to think of addiction.  Think, for example, of a serious medical diagnosis.  “You have pancreatic cancer.”  Think how much that would make you look at everything else differently.  Or imagine you were elected to a very public and very important position—would you not begin to view everything from that perspective. 

     Our scriptures are presenting precisely this question before us: what is the one thing that you allow to dominate your view of everything?  This rich young man comes to Jesus.  The account in Mark is particularly powerful: “Jesus looked at him and loved him.”  This probably means that Jesus embraced the man, but the language is still powerful.  But as the encounter progresses, it turns out to be pretty disappointing. 

     “There is one ore thing you need,” says Jesus.  What is this one thing?  Well, we say, the obvious answer is money.  The man has to sell what he has in order to gain eternal life.  But the invitation might be more nuanced than this.  Jesus is asking this man to give up the one thing that colors his approach to everything else.  As long as money is the most important thing for him, he cannot begin to see how he can serve the Kingdom.

     Look at our contemporary world.  We all think money is most important.  We all know what lack of money does to people who are extremely poor—how steep a mountain the children of the poor have to climb to get anywhere in life.  Yet we know how conflicted we are about the poor by the language we use, how often they are seen as lazy, or unambitious, or morally limited.

     But we can also look at how we let worry about money take over our brains.  Every twitch of the stock market, the direction of interest rates, housing prices, minimum wage, national debt, unemployment rates, the GDP . . . our absorption about money makes it look like our nation was founded only to help Americans make as much money as possible.  We cannot even begin a conversation about how else to promote prosperity for most people, especially the poor.

     So this rich young man, with money figures dancing in his brain, provides an opportunity for us to think about our own priorities.  The first place to look is in our own personal lives.  The Scriptures are saying that if God is the priority of our lives, then everyone and everything else falls into place.  The second place to look is at our society.  Does it make sense to think about ourselves primarily in economic terms?  Or should it be our common humanity, or the greatest needs, or our greater unity?

     What helps us cut through the confusion in our lives and our society is God’s Word which not only forces us to look at ourselves but also gives us a way to clarify the paths we believe are best for the future.  God has a vision for us—the fullness of life and love—and wants us to have that vision for ourselves.  With that vision, we can see more clearly. Without it, we are stumbling in the dark.

     Jesus has loved and embraced us.  What will we make the most important reality in our lives?

27 B

     We often think of divorce as a moral failure and surely there’s something of that in every divorce because there is moral failure running throughout all of life.  We hear words in the Gospel like “adultery” and we cringe. But divorce is far more than something personal. It is a social reality in which people’s lives undergo massive a massive and traumatic shift.

     On the radio this week there was a story of a Rabbi who is being sentenced in New Jersey.  What did he do?  His specialty was dealing with Orthodox Jewish people who had marriage problems.  When he could work nothing out, he would try to secure a divorce which, in the view of the Orthodox, cannot happen unless the man grants permission, something they call a “get,” the husband’s giving of the divorce.

     The Rabbi got in trouble when one man continued to refuse giving approval, so he sent gangsters around to threaten and beat him up, because that was the only way his wife could be free to pursue another life.  He and his gangsters will be away in jail for a long time.

     The first reading from Genesis shows us that marriage is about much more than human attraction or even personal commitment.  It is saying that man and woman were created for each other, and that this relationship springs from creation itself.  The cute story about Adam’s rib helps set up the main idea: each is bone of the other’s bone, flesh of the other’s flesh, blood with the same life.  From this dimension of creation, all human beings will be shaped by their birth and their upbringing. Our commitments to each other uphold, in fact, our existence.

     I’ve tried to think of what it was like to be divorced back in ancient times, particularly for the woman.  Jesus’ prohibition of divorce speaks against the abandonment of women by their husbands, an abandonment that left them doomed to be poor and homeless.  In that patriarchal society, women lived with the ever-present risk of a failed marriage, stuck in a society that made no place for them.

     For if marriage is founded in creation, it is also founded in God’s unconditional love.  For Christians in an explicit way, and for all humans in an implicit way, the ultimate norm of love isn’t what movies or films say, isn’t what society tolerates, and certainly isn’t the smallness of our human hearts.  The love that God shows by bringing us into existence, by sending his Son who binds himself to us so closely he calls us “brother and sisters” as the second reading says, and by filling our hearts with the Holy Spirit—this is the standard of all love.

     When we think about marriage, we certainly have to mourn the tragedy of its failure.  But more than that, we have to uphold the ideal of love stamped upon us by our very existence and faith.  These are the ideals that not only hold us together in our commitments.  Even more, they show us the kind of love which we have received in God and in which we should live.  If we all lived steeped in this unconditional and generous love of God, maybe our marriages, and creation itself, would be better sustained. 

     The big heresy today is that each one lives for herself and himself, that we thrive when others leave us alone.  But everything about our lives, and everything about God’s Word and actions, keeps saying that the opposite is true.  Until we see how we are connected to each other, we are missing the fundamental starting point of life, the purpose of creation itself.

26 B

It was a bitter feeling, our leaving Afghanistan, a bitter feeling on top of years of bitter feelings after our pandemic and the disagreements it continues to bring about in us, and after an election that seemed to culminate in an invasion of our Capitol.  Poll after poll said Americans wanted to end the endless war; various candidates said they would make that happen if elected.  But when it did, it was a bitter feeling because, in some way, America lost.  At least that’s how it seemed.

     We’ve made winning and losing part of the basic language of American life—best sellers, top movies, championship teams; we all love to be on the side of winners or even to be winners ourselves.  The only problem is that winners necessarily imply that there will be losers.  Sometimes rooting for our side comes out as rooting against the other side. 

     The Scriptures challenge this winning-losing pattern that we’ve developed.  They challenge our assumption that one side is always right and the other side always wrong.  Moses desire to bestow leadership and spirit is not something he wants to be miserly about.  When two others, not in the original group, begin express the Spirit and people complain about them, Moses says, “I wish all had my spirit.”  Likewise, when people are healing others in the name of Jesus and they complain to Jesus, Jesus points out that they cannot be enemies if the Spirit is working through them.

     Like many older Catholics, I grew up in a Church that saw the Spirit working in a very small circle.  Certainly the Spirit wasn’t outside the Catholic Church!  In fact, only those Catholics who practiced regularly their faith could even qualify for the Holy Spirit.  Jesus founded a Church and we were the winners.  There was something reassuring about this, something that bolstered Catholic identity.

     The Scriptures are calling for us to live in a far more generous world.  We can surely think of generosity as James put it in the second reading, in terms of money and possessions.  James rails against the economic winners who can look down upon, and separate themselves from, the economic losers whom they are exploiting.  James tells us which voices reach to heaven—not the voice of the would-be winners.

     But we are also called to be generous in our attitude toward other believers.  To affirm the good that others seek to do, to acknowledge the Gospel values in other Christian Churches, to want all faiths to contribute to the common good of humankind—none of this puts our faith down or makes it relative.  Rather, it is our very faith that allows us to see the breadth and depth of God’s action in the world and in other faiths.  We Catholics see ourselves as a Sacrament of the world, a means by which God uses our faith and our Church to reveal God’s purposes for all humankind.  It’s not a small church but a big Kingdom that Jesus makes us a part of.

     Our Gospel has a long list of things that Jesus—as a metaphor—invites us to cut off if they lead us to sin.  Maybe the invitation for our world today is to cut off that part of us that divides people into conflicting categories, that insists the only our side can win, that dismisses good just because some other group did it.  “If your attitude leads you to dismiss another, cut it out.  Until you do, you cannot enter the Kingdom whole because you don’t even know what the Kingdom is about.” 

     Jesus’ desire is that we live generously and with trust; he wants all to be winners in him.

25 B

     Since I was a kid, I’ve heard the phrase: It’s too bad that youth is wasted on young people.  This only makes sense, however, if someone is looking back at youth and seeing things that she or he did not see before.  Children and teens go through youth with the consciousness they have.  For them youth is an experience, not a memory that is analyzed.

     What do we make of Jesus’ injunction to the apostles that they look at their lives in terms of a child?  The contrast has an exact point: it isn’t that children are totally innocent and always wonderful.  Rather, children experience life with an openness that adults should mirror in their lives.  Children experience life without calculation.

     Ever since Jesus began to announce his destiny, that he would be rejected, tortured, and executed in Jerusalem, his disciples have been doing their calculations.  They still do not have the basic point, that the essence of Jesus’ life is selfless service, his willingness to give himself for the sake of others.  Rather, immediately after reiterating his destiny, we find the disciples arguing about who among them would be the greatest.

     They don’t have in their heads the picture Jesus has.  For them, following Jesus has been a way to get ahead, possibly even to have political power in a kingdom.  Jesus knows that it is exactly the political powers that be who will be the instruments of his death, the leaders in Jerusalem and the occupation leaders of that time, the Romans.  They are making their own calculations.

     Jesus wants us like children because children accept life as it comes, often with joy and laughter.  The second reading echoes this when it talks about the good gifts that are showered upon us by a loving God.  They come from a heaven of goodness, and they can be received only in an attitude of grace, an attitude, that is, of receiving gifts as surprises, as unexpected favors, which come to us from God’s generosity.

     This is the fundamental Christian attitude, often summed up by the word “stewardship,” a profound awareness of the grace-filled gifts we receive, a profound gratitude, and a subsequent living of our lives in a generous freedom.  A child’s face before a birthday cake, kids at an amusement park, children playing in the water for the first time.  This is the freedom and openness that we are called to have.

     What limits our lives are not the possessions and power that we feel we don’t have; what truly limits us is the loss of freedom and spontaneity, that automatic joy that should be part of every life.

     The test of Jesus’ vision will come soon enough, whether he can accept even death and apparent defeat, with the openness and trust he is trying to teach his apostles, and us.  Jesus knows well the calculations of the wicked; our first reading shows exactly the logic of trying to dominate life by power and trying to maintain power by destroying others, especially the weak and innocent.  When Jesus’ accepts his destiny, he teaches us one of the greatest lessons: in the end, it’s not the calculating and power-hungry who win. 

     Rather, only those whose hearts are open and trusting, like the hearts of children, really know the meaning of life.

24 B

     Because I was ordained in 1972, the song used most frequently at the wedding receptions I attended was Billy Joel’s, which came out in 1977.  I love you just the way you are!  “Don’t go changing,” the song sings, with the idea that the one I love is plenty good enough, even more than I deserve.  But isn’t the nature of us human’s precisely to change?  The person I am today will not be the person I am five years from now.  Love is tested not a fixed picture but by dynamic growth.

     I offer this image as a way to interpret this pivotal moment in Mark’s Gospel when Peter professes to Jesus that “You are the Christ.”  It’s hard to know what was in Peter’s head because “Christ” could have a variety of meanings, many of them political.  But he had his image of Jesus, and he wanted that image fixed, defined, accessible to him.

     Jesus realizes that the title “Christ” is not a way for him to be carved forever in marble or made into a golden mosaic icon.  He’s quite clear in his explanation to Peter.  “You say I’m the Christ.  Let me tell you what that means.  It means I will be rejected, arrested, tortured, and killed.  Don’t be imposing your fixed categories on me.”

     This passage is pivotal in Mark’s Gospel because in all the times up to this moment Jesus tried to keep people—and even demons—from identifying him.  “Do not tell anyone,” he repeats again and again.  Now that Jesus approaches Jerusalem, that city of destiny, he begins to probe his disciples, the people who have been with him from the start in Galilee: “Who do people say I am?  Who do you say I am?”  Then he moves on further, “Let me tell you who I am.”

     Jesus’ spirituality was permeated by images from the Jewish Scriptures.  He begins his ministry evoking the book of Isaiah, and now the words of Isaiah which we read in the first reading are coming alive in his life.  When it is time for me to face my destiny, when it is time for me to give myself totally in love and trust, I will not flinch, I will not turn back, I will not hesitate to show my love.  Because only when Jesus gives himself will the fullness of his mission—Resurrection and bestowal of the Spirit—become clear to all.

     “Don’t go changing,” is a tune we often sing to ourselves as we settle into our Catholic and Christian lives, having found a rhythm that suits us, asking only so much of us but not more than we want.  Yet our lives cannot be static when Jesus’ own life was a dynamic opening of his mission in response to his Father.  Although in different ways, God invites us to give ourselves fully to the callings and missions of our lives.  God invites us to give all that we have in love.

     Of course, God loves us just the way we are.  But the way we are, in God’s eyes, is not a fixed and closed entity.  In God’s eyes, we are endowed with gifts and filled with the Spirit to grow every day as disciples of Jesus, to respond ever more deeply to the choices that lie before us.  We come to Mass, then, not just as we are but as Jesus’ followers, ready to walk alongside him as he gives himself in love as our Messiah, as “the Christ.”

23 B

     Thank God we are much more sensitive today about people with physical impediments than some eras in the past.  With an institution like Gallaudet College in Washington, we know not to underestimate people who are, for example, hearing impaired. 

     But the Gospel gives us other angles to consider about what physical limitation can do in our lives.  First of all, it points to the inevitable isolation that had to accompany people who were limited.  We can imagine the existence of people who were blind, deaf, unable to speak, crippled, or beset with some skin disease.  You depended on the mercy of others.

     But another angle is what these limitations mean as symbols of our spiritual lives.  What happens when I’m unable to hear what others are saying, or even what God is saying?  What about people who never feel they can say what they are thinking?  In how many ways are all of us blind, seeing what we want to see and ignoring everything else? 

     The second reading gives us a perfect example of spiritual blindness.  James undoubtedly reflects the actual situation of his day when people would gather in prayer.  If someone is rich, everyone wants to crowd around and smell their perfume or cologne.  But if someone is shabby, people pull away and pretend not to see.  Pope Francis’s continued insistence that our seeing, serving, and loving the poor is essential for society’s redemption shows just how our blindness still continues today.

     But isn’t it curious how Jesus approaches this man who is deaf and mute?  Jesus pulls him off to the side, so as not to make a circus of the situation, and then he first opens the man’s ears, curing his deafness.  “Ephphatha,” Jesus says, “be opened,” as if to say we can only speak after we have heard, that something has to be put inside of us before we can be whole, before we can act.  Some of you will remember that this word, Ephphatha, is frequently used at baptism, so it’s legitimate to see the healing of this deaf and mute person as a symbol of what it means to be saved: God’s grace comes to us, opens our ears, fills our minds, and then flows out of us in our speech and our actions.

     The first reading from Isaiah, the prophet who played such a large part in the way Jesus saw his mission, contains Isaiah’s message to people who had lost everything and were now living in exile in Babylon.  These are words of pure grace, God’s gift of mercy and healing to people who could claim nothing for themselves.

     We Catholics are notorious for not speaking about faith very much, being shy when it comes to the work of God in our lives.  That may be a good thing given how some in contemporary America abuse religious language.  But it may also be a sign that we need to let God speak more profoundly inside us, get in touch more fully with the grace that fills our lives even when we don’t recognize it very clearly, and then be ready to support others when they are stuck with the blessings we have received. 

     Ephphatha   What needs to be opened inside us?  What do we need to hear from God?  How can we let the Spirit strengthen all that seems weak and limited inside us, not so we can run around talking about ourselves but so we can be a strength and blessings to others?  We believe at this Mass that Christ himself comes into us.  More than touching our tongue or putting fingers into our ears, Jesus penetrates our whole being. 

     At this Mass, let the Spirit help us to hear more clearly, and let the words of our worship come more freely from our hearts. 

22 B

     We’ve always had a problem with hypocrisy, but social media has made it an even bigger issue.  Before we would be able to say one thing and do another but, because of the absence of cameras and the Internet, it might be hard to spot.  Not today.  Just look at the anguish of finding a replacement for Alex Trubek on Jeopardy, how Mike Richards had to step down when they started publishing his past emails, and you realize that there’s more scrutiny today than ever.

     But there are different kinds of hypocrisy, as we see in our readings.  After we hear the first reading which is telling us to act in accord with the relationship we have with God and each other, we find the second reading using the phrase “be doers of the word and not only hearers.”  This has to make a lot of us uncomfortable because we hear God’s word every time we go to Mass and every time we read the Scripture—and there’s a lot of it we do not do!

     But the situation in the Gospel is different.  Jesus is facing the criticism of the Pharisees, people who saw themselves as set apart to follow the law of God as completely as possible.  Pharisees were mostly the most pious of the people in ancient Israel; they wanted to make everyday life as holy as the life of the Temple.  In effect they said, “You don’t have to go to Israel to be sacred; you can be sacred in your everyday life.”

     Yet what’s the problem?  Jesus says that they have no problem doing pious things, but they don’t understand the meaning of what they are doing.  They use their external actions to cover up a lot of the inadequacies in their lives.  When Jesus quotes the prophet’s words about honoring God with our lips but having hearts far from God—we feel stung again.  How easy it is for us to use patterns of piety but leave have our hearts far from the heart of God!

      This may be especially true of us Catholics who have many devotional actions and sometimes use these to cover the rest of our actions.  How I love those cars with Rosaries hanging off the rear-mirror as they cut me off and almost cause an accident!  Or how many of us routinely have a devotion we do but we do it mostly out of habit or even a superstitious fear?  Or how many of our children and grandchildren see us coming to church on Sunday, week after week, but we often complain about it and . . . our lives never seem to change? 

     It isn’t food that defiles us, Jesus says, and it’s not external religious practices that make us holy.  Rather, when we set our hearts on the heart of God, then we start to live differently.  Folks fast and do pious things, but from their hearts come all kinds of things that do not represent God.  When our hearts are set on God, it isn’t envy and violence that come from us, but peace, patience, kindness, mercy, and love.  These are the qualities that take the charge of hypocrisy away from us.

     Our issue isn’t with social media.  For us Christian believers, our issue is the God we believe in, before whom we always stand, from whom we cannot escape.  We may or may not look good before others, but how about being good before God?  We may or may not be able to escape the scrutiny of others, but we’ll never escape the loving eye of God questioning our hearts.  We may or may not escape the judgment of others, but we’ll never escape how God’s love judges us and calls us to love, insisting that we make divine love the norm of our lives.

21 B

     “You gotta be kidding me!”

     Isn’t that the almost universal reaction when we hear, say, that Tom Brady is no longer a Patriot, or Max Scherzer will not be pitching for the Nationals, or Trae Turner is going to Los Angeles, or Washington’s early love, Bryce Harper, was traded?  It feels so much like betrayal.  Of course, think of what happens when whole teams disappear, as the Dodgers did for Brooklyn, or the Giants for New York, or when the Baltimore Colts went to Indianapolis.  Leo Messi leaving Barcelona?  “You gotta be kidding me!”

     We have an instinctual feeling that loyalty should be returned, that the adulation we pour upon a person or a team makes a claim on them.  We have shown you love.  How dare you not love us back? 

     But isn’t this one of the basic dramas of all human experience?  Perhaps it’s played out most personally and painfully in divorce when people risked their lives, affections, and futures on another person and things fell apart.  Certainly this is the pall that covers our military leaving of Afghanistan, just as it felt when Saigon fell decades ago.

     This is also the underlying drama of the Scriptures and our relationship with God.  God has shown such generous love and such gracious redemption to us, but how so we treat God in return?  The first reading gives an “all or nothing” choice to the Jewish people; when things are put in those terms, the decisions we make seem clear.  But often the basic choices we make do not stand out so boldly.  We rather drift in and out of feelings, sometimes hot and sometimes cold, until it’s clear, in the end, where we stand.

     Today we finish our reflection on the very long and powerful chapter 6 of the Gospel of John in which Jesus, having multiplied bread for hungry people, tells them that this is a sign of the way God’s generosity is being poured upon them, a symbol of the way God is giving his Son, Jesus, to be eternal life for every person.  When people hear this, they find it too much and begin walking away.  How can Jesus be our bread, our food, our life?

     When Jesus asks Peter where he stands, Peter bluntly says that the Apostles have no where else to go because no one, other than Jesus, has the words of life.  No one can better show us how we stand with God, now and forever, than Jesus.  As the second reading shows, Jesus’ faithful love is the norm of all faithful love.  Yet what seemed clear to Peter seems so fuzzy for so many people today.  “Where else can we go?”  And people seem to be answering, “lots of places, lots of alternatives,” because following Christ seems not to be high on the agendas of many people.

    Yet God’s love endures, like the love of true lovers as we hear in the second reading, with a loyalty and fidelity that cannot be broken, only ignored.  And it stands before our world today as a perpetual invitation.  Wherever we may be considering, or whatever we think is important, God’s love and covenant stand forever, reaching out to the heart of every person, inviting us into that love.  That love endures, for sure, because after we have looked at every half-baked alternative for our lives, God insists that we know that divine love is always there to draw us back and fill us.

     Jesus comes to us as Bread of Life.  We pledge ourselves to him every time we come to Mass and unite ourselves with his faithful love.  We are saying, with Peter, that we will stay with Christ.  Perhaps our greater faithfulness can be a witness to others and a way for them to also experience the solid food of God’s unbreakable love.

Assumption of Mary--Special Feast

     In my lifetime, the way we do wakes when someone dies, has completely changed.  For most of my childhood years, having a wake meant spending three days visiting a funeral home, spending hours each of those days visiting with family and friends, sharing memories both sad and funny about the deceased.  Of course, with all that time, lots of other things went on too, as men snuck out to the bar and kids played stoop ball in the streets.

     Now days one rarely sees a wake last for more than one evening—and even that is generous considering that most wakes, if people have them at all, consist in spending an hour together just before a funeral or a burial.  Sometimes technology enters into the picture, when families project dozens of photos of the departed, from infancy to ripe old age.  Yet most modern wakes a quick and tidy.

     However we do wakes, or vigils as they are often called, they seem to have one purpose: to give the community a chance to try and capture the life of someone they loved who now is no longer with us.  The references might be about work, or about big family parties, or about how someone interacted with a town or neighborhood.  From all the moments of someone’s life, we pull a few incidents and frame them in an attempt to get an image of someone.  We frame that person in terms of the past.

     The feast we have today, the Feast of the Assumption, can bring an important perspective to the reflecting we do about ourselves and those we love at a time of death.  Because this feast is not an attempt to define Mary in terms of her family and hometown of Nazareth.  Rather, it pictures Mary in terms of God’s purpose for her and her place in God’s vision.  Because Mary’s importance is how she opened herself to God, even when she didn’t entirely understand it; and therefore how God used her to provide the environment in which Jesus would grow, and also to give us an image for how the meaning of each of our lives finds its peak in our fulfilment of God’s purpose for us.

     In the Gospel people are so excited by Jesus’ words that they praise his mother, how blessed she was to have given birth and nursed a prophet like this.  But Jesus, without taking anything away from Mary, says that all of us who seek to do God’s will, who open ourselves to God’s Word, are also blessed like she was.  For God’s Word contains a vision of what our lives mean that we cannot find anywhere else.  When we listen to God, we are part of the shaping of history into the Kingdom of God, of bringing time into its ultimate future. 

     Think, then, of how unblessed are those who have little vision or only small visions of the purpose of their lives . . . to make a little money, to have fun, to avoid pain and sickness . . . how little of life they are seeing!  And even when we are blessed enough to see our lives in terms of loving others and the families to which we belong, those image of love and family take on greater meaning when we see how they fit into God’s vision.  Jesus came to open the future for us; today’s feast says that Mary was part of that future.  And it invites us to be part of that too.

     Mary’s Assumption is an opportunity for us to think about the ark and shape of our own lives—not just the moments you and I are privileged to live but, even more, how those moments lead to a fullness for ourselves, others, and the world, which only God’s grace can bestow.

19 B

     “Failure to thrive.”

     I forget what hospital bed I was next to when I first heard this phrase.  It was being applied to an old patient who was, for all purposes, skin and bones.  It seems that her body was not able to take in any nutrients; even if you tried to feed her, it would be useless.  Food had lost its ability to sustain this human being.

     Perhaps that’s an extreme example of many situations when we cannot eat.  The times, for example, when we are feeling sick.  Or times when we have something big coming up and are just too nervous to eat.  Even times when we have to sit down with people with whom we’ve had an argument—there just isn’t any appetite.

     Elijah is in a bad space in the first reading.  Elijah is one of the early super-prophets in Israel, people who seemed larger than life and were willing to take on the powers-that-be.  He’s being sent on a mission and he just doesn’t have the heart to do it.  “I just want to die,” we hear him saying in the first reading.  “I’m going to lay down under the tree and it will all be over.”  But God’s mission will not be frustrated.  God sends creatures that give Elijah not one meal but two—enough for him to accomplish his mission.

     Do we not pick up some of this irritation in the Gospel as well?  Jesus has fed people, has healed their sick, has taught them of the constant care of God, but they are too dismissive of Jesus.  Just as we heard when Jesus began his ministry in his home town, so here the folks dismiss Jesus by saying that “Isn’t he just an ordinary guy.  “We know his father and mother,” they say.  “Who is he to claim that he came down from heaven?”

     Yet it is precisely their refusal to know heaven, to know the Father, that makes it hard for them to accept Jesus.  Jesus comes to show us what the Father is like, the Father who feeds his children in the desert and the Father who sends his Son to bring life into the world.  Just as they don’t know the Father, they also don’t know true life.  The biological life that we live now pushes forward into a desire for eternal life, the fullness of life and love.  Until we know that God is the only one who can bring us the fullness of life and love we do not know the Father, nor can we know the one the Father has sent.

     In the second reading we see another idea about Jesus as the Bread of Life.  When we eat the food that Jesus is, that Jesus gives us, we become like him.  Just as his mission was to give his life so that people might find true life, so we know we are receiving this life when our lives take on the generous, self-giving character as Jesus’ life.  “So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us. . . “

     In a lot of ways our world today looks like it’s failing to thrive.  Oh sure, we can consume, even to the point of excess, whether it’s fast food or fossil fuels.  But we will have a huge discontent in our hearts.  We still wonder whether it’s worth continuing.  Jesus teaches us that it’s not about consuming but about eating his food of generous love—perhaps this is a clue to what the world needs, and how to feed the world today through the way we Christians, we who share the Eucharist, live.

     The ultimate failure to thrive is the failure to love generously and selflessly.

18B

     When we go out to eat, people can be very curious about what they are eating.  Some are finicky because they don’t like raw tomatoes or spicey things.  Others, however, are analyzing the food: what were the ingredients, how did they make the sauce, and how did they get the string beans to be as tasty as they did?  “What is this?” they ask, as they roll the food in their mouths  They are very curious.

     We see the ancient Jews asking same thing in the first reading. They have been liberated from slavery in Egypt and allowed to escape, but this still has not led them to know and accept the truth about God.  They still mistrust God.  What happens now, they ask?  Is God going to continue to be here for us?  Then they raise a complaint that seems perfectly justifiable to us: here we are in the desert, and we are starving to death.  Will God continue to take care of us?

     God sends them flocks of quail for meat.  And then God sends a strange substance for their bread.  There are various scientific answers for what this strange substance might be, but that’s not the point.  God provided the Jewish people what they needed for their time in the desert.  The strange substance, which made them so curious, was to help the Jewish people discover more fully who God is.  Their question, “what is this?” led them reflect on who God is.

     In the Gospel today people are also curious.  They have followed Jesus from where he fed them, and now they are looking for him.  “Master, how did you get here?” they want to know.  So Jesus pushes back at them; he wants them to realize what they are really looking for.  He wants them to know who he is and what he is for them.  “Are you following me just because you got free food?”  You can get food in lots of places, but the food that “I am” can come only God’s gift in your life. 

     In some ways we are invited to keep asking basic questions: What is this sacrament?  Who does it reveal?  Who is Jesus?  How does Jesus feed us?  “Do not work for food that perishes,” Jesus says.  Rather, work for the food that sustains you at the deepest part of our soul.  For most of the food we eat is to help us do something, to go about our business and take care of our everyday tasks.  But the food that Jesus offers speaks much more about who we are to be  than what we are to do. 

     The food of Jesus is the food of his own life, a life that God gives for the salvation of the world, and a life that we are called to make our own when we eat the bread which is Jesus.  The food of Jesus means that Jesus himself is permeating our minds and hearts such that he shapes us and works through us.  “Put on the new self,” we hear in the second reading.  Put on the presence of Jesus by letting him work through our thoughts and our deeds. 

     We Catholics have a unique view of this Bread of Jesus.  We believe that Jesus is truly present in the consecrated bread, that we are made one with him.  But this is only the start of the mystery that you and I are called to live in Jesus Christ.  We have to go further: What is this—the grace we experience?  The strength that comes to us?  The peace that touches the depths of our hearts?  The assurance that we stand in God because Christ lives in us?  “What is this?” And Jesus responds: “I am the bread of life.”

     Jesus and his Eucharist are the mysteries that cannot be completely comprehended or exhausted.  They are the mysteries that underly our curiosity about life, and faith, and God.  “Did you come only because you were being fed?” Jesus asks.  After you eat the bread I give you, you will never be the same, because I have brought you into my loving and eternal life.  “I am the bread the gives you true life.”

17 B

     Jesus wants to feed us, but he is not going to do that without us being involved. 

     There is no food without a lot of involvement.  Say I’m in my apartment by myself and I feel a little hungry.  I go to the refrigerator and look at the variety of items in there.  Does a single of one them arrive in my refrigerator without a long history of people being involved?  I pick a bagel and a slice of cheese.  As I pop the bagel into the toaster I have time to think of the planting, the harvesting, the delivery trucks, the baking, and the store clerk—all of whom are essential before I can toast my bagel.

     Look at what happens in the Gospel today.  Jesus first notices the crowd and their hunger.  Then he says, almost provocatively, to the disciples: ”You give them something to eat!” In their confusion, Andrew blurts out that a boy has five loaves and two fish.  So without the boy, and the boy’s caring parents, there would be no food to multiply and distribute.

     Then he has the disciples seat the people, almost the way Moses had his assistants organized the Jewish people in the desert centuries before.  After he says the blessing, what does he do next?  He gives the food to the disciples to spread among the people.  And what do the people do? They pass the bread from person to person in imitation of Jesus and the disciples.  When it is all over, what does Jesus say?  “Pick up the leftovers.  Put them into baskets so others can eat too.” And they do it.

     In every step, Jesus involved his disciples and the people who were present, from the boy who volunteered his lunch to the folks who put the leftovers into the basket.  The bead is never given in isolation, not the bread in the desert nor the bread that we eat today.  It always involves all of us having something to do with the banquet.  At times we may be the little kid who feels there’s not much to offer; at times we may be the bewildered apostles wondering what to do.  But at all times we are the people passing bread from one to another, either literally or figuratively.

     This is no less true of the Mass we are celebrating.  It is a meal to which Jesus invites us.  We may feel tired or anxious, as if we have nothing to give.  But we are all that little kid, coming with what we have and offering it to God.  We may feel like we have run out of options in our lives, that we cannot find solutions.  This makes us like the disciples seeing Jesus bring hope.  We may feel that our job is just coming to Mass to be a good Catholics, but we are like the people called to give what we have received to the next person. 

     Jesus will not feed us without our involvement.  He will not give us bread apart of the callings we have and community with which we celebrate.  We bring our lowly bread and Jesus transforms it.  We come up to communion, and Jesus transforms us.  Jesus says: “Take the bread of my life and share it!  Don’t worry, it will never run out.”

     The Mass we celebrate is one of the millions, maybe the billions, of Masses that go back twenty centuries.  We stand grateful for the gift of the witness of all who have received the Eucharist before us and invited us to do the same. We are part of the people helping Jesus distribute the bread.  Although the Body of Christ is absorbed into our bodies, the Body continues in our lives as we go forth today, disciples fed just like at the time of Jesus.

16 B

     We knew July was here when Joey Chestnut ate 76 hotdogs in ten minutes in the annual Nathan’s hot dog eating contest on Coney Island.  Of course, the whole thing is ridiculous, but we keep returning to the image of this competition. Imagine how Joey feels when it’s over, even if he does win $10,000.  Yet seeing a six foot one inch man gobble those many hotdogs is speaking to something inside all of us.

    I suppose we’ve all been in situations when we were extremely hungry.  Without even thinking, we seemed to eat everything on our plate in a minute or two.  Doesn’t this show just how basic the hunger instinct is inside of us: it can come to control our behavior. We can’t get food down fast enough.

     Jesus knows hunger when he sees it, and he’s seeing it in the crowd that seems to be unable to leave him.  Their hunger represents many kinds of hunger as the Gospel readings over these next weeks will explore: a hunger for wisdom and teaching, as we see in Jesus’ teaching in the Gospel today, but also a hunger for life itself and, ultimately, a hunger for God who comes in Jesus as food for eternal life.

     But perhaps the question today is this: what is it that we hunger for the most?  Sure we have our ambitions, our desires to get ahead in life.  We have our creature comforts that define our lives.  We have people we love whose good we will do anything to help accomplish.  But the scriptures place two things before us today: our hunger for reconciliation and our hunger for true leadership.

     In the second reading, we have one of the most graphic descriptions of reconciliation.  Jesus has reconciled us!  How?  But taking on our human body, all our human bodies, and breaking down the divisions that arise between us.  The passage is speaking in the context of Jews and Gentiles in ancient life, but the image easily extends to the social, racial, gender, and class differences that so often define our lives and make reconciliation seem impossible.  The one Jesus took on the bodies that every human has.  There is no “us” and “them” but only us and Christ.  Let’s apply that to the conversations we seem to have in our nation today.

     The second hunger is for leadership.  In the first reading, Jeremiah laments the leadership that has arisen in Israel.  The Jewish leaders don’t care about the people; we have shepherds who could not care less about their own flocks.  Jeremiah says that God will be our shepherd: the true leader, who loves selflessly and generously.  God shows that leadership must be about the good of the other and never about the aggrandizement of the leader himself or herself.

     The Gospel shows us that Jesus is quite willing to accept this role of shepherd because, in his compassion, he sees the people flocking to him as sheep without a shepherd.  Jesus surely knows what the cost will be for himself, but he lays that aside in order to feed the crowd and show them that God’s abundant love is always available to us.  He feeds the crowd with bread but that will be a sign of the ultimate gift, how he will continue to feed the crowd with himself and the infinite love he offers.

     Reconciliation and leadership.  Two basic hungers and two needs that, if we spend two minutes scrolling on our computers, seem impossible to satisfy.  We seem to live today by fighting and distrusting, not only our leaders but each other. 

     Yet we come to Mass today to be fed; more precisely, to be fed by the Jesus who reconciles us and shows us what kind of leadership we should follow, that of a servant, the humble one who gives himself.  Maybe we all need to examine how we contribute to the unmet hungers that are tearing our society apart.  Maybe our reception of communion today should be also our commitment to living lives of reconciliation as people anointed to serve others.

     We have more important things than hot dogs to occupy our minds these days!

15 B

     We have all become very sensitive about our surroundings, especially fearing to go someplace strange or different.  Two years ago we might enter a hotel room with a smile, wondering how big the TV screen might be; now we enter wondering if they have sanitized the room enough or if we will end up bringing a deadly virus to someone else because someone didn’t clean enough.

     All of this reminds me of an ironic movie called “The Accidental Tourist,” in which the protagonist, a travel editor, tries to make every hotel room he stays in look exactly the same.  It’s as if he never left home.  He always wants those things that make him feel self-assured surrounding him in the room.

     Jesus is not into accidental tourism in the Gospel today; Jesus is into mission.  Rather than having his apostles hang out and feel comfortable, Jesus is sending them out to do the very things that he himself has done.  It’s as if a child went to swimming lessons and now it’s time to swim without the teacher’s support.  “You have seen my ministry; now do it yourself.”  Amos wanted to stay home, as the first reading shows, but God gave him a mission bigger than his flock and his sycamore trees.

     Jesus knows this will not be easy because we are most comfortable staying in our own zone.  He advises them to travel very lightly—not to bring extra things or extra money.  He wants them to go out in great simplicity so that they will be forced to deal with others—to meet them, to engage with them, to depend on them for food and beddings, and to proclaim the Kingdom of God to them.

     In other words, Jesus sends them out in great simplicity and he gives them a very simple message: they were to preach repentance, that is, a new way of seeing things because God was active in their lives.  Their deeds were to bring healing and victory over the very forces that we think hold us back: cast out demons and anoint the sick to cure them.  The demons are the illnesses of our spirits which distort and limit them; our spirits need healing even more than our bodies.

     He also teaches them not to worry about failure.  Some people will hear their voices and be unmoved; but our mission is to speak God’s message, to do the deeds that show God’s presence, and trust that those who are ready will be able to see this.  The ones who hear you will become part of a community of people who have been called and chosen to experience God in such a way that he want to spread that experience to others. 

     As believers we may look stranger and stranger to people around us.  This may make us want to crawl in a shell and play safe.  But Jesus does not call us to crawl into shells.  He calls us to be apostles and ambassadors of his healing and grace.  He knows we are cautious.  “Trust me,” he says.  “I am always with you.”

     Perhaps each one of us can think of someone who needs a word of healing or consolation.  After what we’ve been through, that might include just about everyone!  But, for now, just think of one person and realize that God is sending you to that troubled heart.  Start with that hurt, focus on God’s healing presence, and let the Kingdom shine through you.

     Now if we all did that, what might the impact be?

14 B

     They say the most widespread fear of people isn’t heights, or spiders, or being mugged.  No, the greatest fear, they say, is speaking in public.  Most people get stage fright and, when it comes their turn, they feel they can’t say anything.

     So where does the fear come from.  Part of it, I’m sure, is just being looked at by lots of people waiting for us to speak.  We are all self-conscious about our looks because we are surrounded by TV screens of people made-up to always look pretty or handsome.  But I think the bigger fear might be something else: we aren’t sure what to say.  We feel the words won’t come to us when we want them.

     Of course, we are not alone.  The Scriptures give us endless examples of people called by God to speak and they begin with a whole range of excuses, starting with Moses who told God he could not speak: please use my brother Aaron!  But how many even of the major prophets tried to get out of their vocation to be God’s spokespersons?  Did they all have stage fright?

    Perhaps they knew that there’s a cost to being God’s spokesperson.  Prophets get made fun of, they get attacked, they even might get murdered.  Ezekiel in the first reading speaks about his difficulty preaching to people who just wouldn’t listen to him.  “At least they know there is a prophet!” God tells him.  And we see Jesus, at first received warmly by his townspeople, but then quickly rejected.  “Who does he think he is?”

     But the truth is that every one of us has a message.  We all have so much to say about faith.  It’s just that we aren’t used to saying it.  We speak to God, we come to Mass, we receive Communion—is there anything else?  Yes, the personal experience we have of Jesus through our regular encountering of him in the Scriptures and the Eucharist has created a solid basis for us to talk about our faith with others.  We have all been baptized and made prophets in the image of Jesus. 

     It doesn’t have to be much.  We don’t have to recite the whole catechism or creed.  The fancy word we have is called “kerygma”—a short message of the Good News we have heard and lived.  Pope Francis puts it this way: “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.”  Every one of us knows this about ourselves.  Every one of us has experienced the love of Jesus.  Every one of us is strengthened by the presence of Christ.

     Being a prophet doesn’t mean boring people with our stories or nagging them and making them feel guilty.  It means speaking of our experience of Jesus when it’s appropriate, especially in our own homes with our families, but also with friends and associates who are going through tough times.  By your experience of love, you help them experience Christ’s love as well.  Remember, you only have faith because someone helped you know God.  They were prophets in your life.

    So the lines are easy, and we know them already.  There’s no reason to be silent and afraid.  God has called us all to be prophets, to speak of God as a witness and sign of God’s grace working in our lives today.

13 B

     We have seen large numbers reported to us for almost a year and a half—the total pandemic numbers, the numbers who have had the disease in the United States and, like a drum roll, the number of people who have died in America.  We remember when the numbers went above 100,000 and everyone was so shocked.  But now the numbers are over 600,000 just in the United States, and over 4,000,000 world-wide.  As shocking as our numbers have been, we hear even larger proportions from places like Brazil.

     All of this can numb us to the very experience of death, so that people become statistics, and statistics are just facts that we recite.  Of course, entertainment may be the biggest force numbing us to the reality of death because every night on television, and just about every other movie released, has people shooting other people, or some murder crime that CSI or a British detective is trying to solve.  “Death is part of life,” the more philosophically-minded remind us.  “We shouldn’t make more of it than it is.”

     Our readings from the Scripture directly attack these ideas of making little of death or becoming numb to the reality of death.  Because every death betrays the promise of life, and every life reveals the fundamental promise God has put into our hearts.  As the book of Ecclesiastes says, “God has put the timeless in our hearts,” and we haven’t faced who we are in God’s eyes until we realize how every life points beyond itself to a promised fullness.

     Our first reading today from the Book of Wisdom simply tells us that God did not make us for death.  God formed us to be imperishable.  We do not realize this when we read statistics in a report or when we watch yet another murder on TV. We realize this when people dearest to us die—making us feel so badly that we wish we could have died in their place.  Often when a young person dies the grief is overwhelming because the survivors can imagine how much more of life that young person could have had.  But even when someone old dies tears will flow, and often they will flow even more because of the long relationship we have built with the deceased.

     When Jesus raises the daughter of Jairus, which we hear as the climax of a very busy Gospel, people cannot believe it.  The crowd makes fun of Jesus and his promise of life.  The crowd represents the cynical part of every one of us who think that the way to face death is to toughen up and move on with life.  But death cannot be dealt with by denial.  We see the results of this every day with the increasing violence in our cities and on our streets. 

     Death can only be dealt with by staring it down with God’s promise of life.  When Jesus raises this little girl in the Gospel, just as he did in the other raisings of the dead in the Gospels, he looks directly as our despair and cynicism, and then he presents to us the God who is his Father, the God of the living, the God in whom all can find life.  We are invited to understand our death not as a cynical defeat but as an opportunity to grasp more deeply the ultimate power of Jesus’ God who loves us through and beyond death.

     Before he raises Jairus’ little daughter, Jesus heals the affliction of a woman who has been bleeding for years.  Her bleeding made her impure.  Her bleeding drove her to the feet of Jesus.  He could have ignored her, of course, but his making her life better is part of the same divine power that led to the little girl’s resurrection.  In other words, if we believe in the fullness of life in God, we need to work for that fullness even now by the way we care for each other, lift each other up, treasure each other in the moments we have.

     No matter what statistics tell us, they are all ultimately about the very real lives that you and I lead every day.  In God’s eyes we are not numbers or percentages; nor are we disposable.  To show us this, his Son died the death that we fear so much, and, in the face of this death, God raised his Son just as he is raising us.

12 B

     It is hard for us modern people to know just how conflicted the ancient Jews were over water.  In their view of the world, water was everywhere, on top of the sky, in the oceans, and under their land.  They would drown if there were not things that held water back or kept it in control.  Also, a farmers and people who raised cattle, landlubbers, the sea to them was a place of chaos, where huge fish roamed untamed.  The stories of the Flood and of Jonah show us why unchecked water could be a problem.

     On the other side, because the lived in a desert, they knew a need for water that most of us take for granted.  Scientists are predicting large droughts in the Western United States this year—they are already causing fires—and desert-dwelling Israelis knew how precious a stream, river or lake could be. 

     Lastly, they knew the waters of baptism, the ritual though which they gave themselves to following Jesus and received the assurance of divine life.

     All these images are at play in the Gospel we have, one that should strike us as intensely strange, giving us plenty to think about.  To begin with, these disciples grew up on this Lake, but here they are terrified as the wind blow their boat around.  This shows us that almost any moment in our lives can tear apart the seeming calm and leave us terrified.  You arrive home and notice that the back door has been broken into . . . you feel an unusual pain in your hip, a pain you cannot explain.  Behind the seeming normalcy of everyday life lurks the fear of the uncontrollable.

     The disciples are terrified even though Jesus is sitting in the boat with them.  They wake him up: “Jesus, don’t you care that we are perishing?”  We see here that the disciples had as yet no sense of who Jesus is—that he was God’s presence and salvation in their lives.  But how often do we cry out, even though we know Jesus is with us, “wake up, Jesus!  I’m in trouble?”  Paul talks about no longer knowing Jesus “according to the flesh”—according to external appearances.  But the Gospel asks us whether we ourselves know Jesus only by appearances, not by the personal faith and trust we are called to have.

     The whole passage, finally, involves future apostles and water.  Can we not imagine this passage being read at baptisms across the centuries in the early Church?  We go into the waters of baptism not in fear but in total trust.  Just as Jesus has tamed the wind, so Jesus tames the forces of evil which threaten us at every side—the evil of egoism, of anger, of greed, of despair, of death.  Baptism is Jesus’ commitment to be with us even more than it is our commitment to follow Jesus.  He is always in the boat beside us, calming the winds that terrify us and rebuking the evil that would hurt us.

     Like Job in the first reading, we eventually realize that we cannot know all the mysteries of creation and especially the mystery of our existence.  Science may push back walls of ignorance but, ultimately, our existence is a gift we can never comprehend.  But that mystery, which has terrified so many people throughout history,  driving them to fear or magic, has become flesh in Jesus.  As he was in the disciples’ boat, so is he at our liturgy this day, saying to us the same thing he said back then, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?”

11 B

     “He spoke to them in parables; but to his disciples he spoke plainly.”  These words end the Gospel, but they are still confusing.  They seem to imply a time when we won’t need parables, when we won’t need images and analogies to understand God.  But even Jesus’ disciples, to whom he spoke plainly, did not grasp what Jesus was doing.  Up to his death, they didn’t understand him.

     Yet, are not our lives filled with parables, with images that cause us surprise and make us think about God?  One parable that many Americans have seen recently is the emergence of billions of cicadas after spending seventeen years under the earth.  They create such an incessant cry that it seems like the earth itself is shrieking.  We see them emerge, make their noise, and soon disappear again.  How strange is this?

  But Jesus says lots of things are strange.  A farmer goes out and puts seed into the ground.  After that, a lot of it is out of his hands.  Seemingly out of nowhere, the farmer sees the blade, then the ear, then grain.  Who understands how this happens?  We certainly know more biology than farmers did in ancient Israel, but the wonder of growth never stops amazing us.  We live in a world where all around us are parables teaching us that life is all about growth, and that growth is full of mystery.

  In the first reading we hear Ezekiel talk about trees, again as a parable.  There may be a great tree that seems to dominate everything, but cannot God take just branch of that tree and plant it somewhere else? And might not that sprout grow bigger than the tree it came from?  Growth is the way we know God is working in our lives: the growth of plants, the growth the Kingdom, the growth of faith, the growth of the Church.

  Has not God, after all, planted us?  Are we not the result of the seed God planted in our hearts, of the love God pours into us, of the community God calls us to be, of the Spirit working within us and between us?  Are we not the tree God has planted, tending to grow like the mustard seed, until everyone in need finds nourishment and a place inside God’s family, until everyone is helping everyone else grow?

  Paul realized this in the very striking passage we have today.  He only speaks like this in a couple of places—when he speaks about his ambivalence about continuing to live.  He wants to be home, with the Lord, with life fulfilled and salvation complete.  But God gives him a different mission: instead of resting in glory, God wants him to continue working in his Kingdom to help it grow to its fullness.

  Are we not, as a church, a parable to the world around us?  Do we not cause the world to ask who we are, what we are, and why we are?  The world sees us Christians at times looking a little ragged, but it mostly sees us flourishing with a confidence, a faith, which we carry through life.  The world sees us reaching upward, but also reaching outward toward them.  Are we not called to be the way in which the world finds itself and its meaning?  Are we not called to be the tree that gives to others what God has planted in us—life, hope, and security?

  The cicadas have come, and they will go.  Our spring flower have blossomed and dropped their petals.  Our trees have now grown leaves only to lose them in five or six months.  But we have come not only from the mystery of the earth but also from the mystery of the heart of God.  We bloom, we blossom, not for a season but in the unending time God gives us.

Body and Blood of Jesus

     The psychology of winning has taken surprising turns.  I once ate at a restaurant chain called “Chopt,” but now I see that it’s a television show on the Discovery channel called “Chopped” where four chefs vie for the prize.  They have a ridiculous list of ingredients that they have to use in a ridiculously short  amount of time.  As they make their dishes, they bring them to three or four experts who mostly make snide remarks—don’t you think you overdid the cinnamon?—until one of the four gets “chopped”—which is the equivalent of “You’re fired” from another famous reality show. And so on with the rest.

     Kids have food fights; adults have chef fights.  But the dinner table seems to be the last place for competition.  After all, we come to the table with shared bonding and shared hunger.  Food is not presented to us as a game to win but as a source of life.  Instead of criticizing the chef, guests at the table applaud and show appreciation.

     What kind of banquet does Jesus make for us in the Eucharist?  Competition is the last thing it is because no one is chopped.  Rather the Eucharist extends the covenant God made with Israel to all of humankind.  Here we remember the “new and eternal covenant” where the cup of wine is poured out “for you and for many.”  This is an ancient Jewish way of saying that God’s love does not stay with only one group; God’s love extends to all.

     After our celebration of Easter and Pentecost, the Church asks us to consider how we experience Jesus’ resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  Where do we get a sense of God’s life being poured into us, of union with Jesus Christ, of being empowered by the Holy Spirit?  It is here, in the Eucharist, which the Church has celebrated since the first days of resurrection.  “Behold I am with you always,” Jesus says.  Indeed, is he not?

     esus comes into our lives in an explicit way in the Eucharist.  It isn’t like Jesus isn’t part of our lives already; rather, we cannot appreciate his being part of our lives without our coming to celebrate how he is here for us.  “I will not drink this cup again until I drink it new in the Kingdom of God,” Jesus tells his disciples.  Does he not drink it new with us every time we gather around his table and the cup of his blessing is held up for us?  He eats with us, he drinks with us, he lives with us.

     But Jesus also asks us, in the Eucharist, to enter his life, the life of the covenant where we give God true worship by the way we live.  As he enters the fullness of life, which the second reading calls the true heaven, he invites us to enter with him.  As he accomplishes the new covenant, he asks us to live it.  As he sheds his blood for all, so Jesus invites us to live for all, to be his body present in the world today.  As he invites us to his table, so he asks us to invite others, to fill up his banquet, so everyone can know the divine love he brings.

     Jesus came to win, not by being the strongest physically or by being the cleverest in the kitchen.  He wins by giving himself in love to the Father on behalf of all of us.  He invites us to be part of his victory by living out his covenant in our daily lives.

Trinity Sunday

     We’ve all been struck by the presence of another person, perhaps someone we meet for the first time.  Even though we do not know them, we recognize how they light up a room when they enter. Their eyes seem to connect with everyone they meet.  They approach others with their hands extended, seem ready to give a hug, have a ready smile, and are able to get others laughing on the spot.  “What’s their secret?” we wonder.  How do they connect like this?

     Well, then, what does the presence of God do?  Of course, God is not someone who enters a room and smiles, but God’s creative and loving hand lies behind everything that exists and touches every moment that we live.  The first reading, from the book of Deuteronomy, remembers the things that God did for the Jewish people—primarily their escape from slavery, but then their beginning a long relationship with God in which the Jewish people were privileged to understand God in a way no other nation could.

     If that’s how it was with the Jewish people, what is it like for us who have experienced escape from death and meaninglessness through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus?  Indeed, Paul goes even further.  If the Jewish people could understand a God who liberated them in the darkest moment of their history, Paul is saying that we can understand God as the intimate Father who is part of our very lives.  How do we call God?  Paul tells us to call God, “Daddy,” “Abba,” the one who is always present with his loving protection.

     I’m sure this word, “Abba,” which is such an audacious way to approach God, did not originate from Paul.  It originated from Jesus, who taught us to called God “Our Father” and taught us to trust in God’s presence.  “Look at the birds,” Jesus taught.  “If not one of them falls from the sky without my Father’s know, just imagine how precious your lives are to God.” 

     This, indeed, is hard to see, especially after the pandemic we have been through.  Where was the loving Father when millions of people got infected, when over 600,000 in our own country died, when Covid tore through India without pity?  Jesus will say to us: I asked the same question when I hung on the cross.  I thought God had abandoned me.  But God was with me through my death into my resurrection.

     This feast of the Trinity challenges us about how we think of God.  Too often God seems like some big head in the sky, making planets and stars move, but far away from us.  Too often God seems like an unreliable machine, one that works sometimes and doesn’t other times.  But this feast says that unless we understand God as pure life and love, extending Godself through all time and history, an endless circle of love that expresses itself as Father, Son and Spirit who invites every one of us to find our place in relationship to God, then we do not know who Jesus revealed, nor do we know whom we are worshipping.

     “Go out,” Jesus says.  “Go out to all the world.  Teach them what I have taught you.  Teach them the God that I have revealed to you, the God who takes on your flesh, who carries you through every moment of joy or fear, who removes your death, who sends his Spirit to be intimately part of your life, who promises eternal fidelity and a place in the Kingdom. 

     This is the God we come to worship and experience every time we celebrate the Eucharist. “Lift up your hearts”—that’s the invitation.  “We have lifted them up,” we cry out.  “Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God,” we say.  Because we have been privileged to know the God of Jesus Christ and we can even dare to approach this God in the unity that Jesus gives us in Holy Communion.  For he gives his body that we may know the generosity of the Father.  He gives his blood that we might share God’s life.  He gives us the most important Good News we could ever hear.  And he tells us not to keep it to ourselves.

Pentecost

     Do we really want things to get back to normal?

     We hear that said so often—when the kids are back in class, and everyone is back in the office, when I can go to a ballgame and just enjoy a hotdog, or when I can visit with friends at the restaurant.  We’ve been deprived of so much everyday activity, we cannot wait till the deprivation stops.   Really?  You want the traffic jams, the crowded busses and subways, the distractions of having people at their computers all around you?  You want to go back to where families had a hard time catching up with each other, and parents had to drive their children from one event to another all Saturday and Sunday?

     The shutdown we have endured has given us the luxury of being able to think of our ordinary lives and question them.  Do we want things to go back to normal or do we want to change them now that we see the problems? What about our faith lives?  Do we want them to return to normal?  You know what that means for most Catholics—most of us not worshipping on Sunday; most of those who do worship coming at the last minute and leaving as soon as they can; not many parents teaching their children about faith or praying with them at home. Or too many of using our faith as an identity more than a way of life.  What do we think is normal about our faith lives?

     The Scriptures on this Pentecost Sunday tell us what’s normal—that we all live empowered by the Spirit of the risen Jesus, that we experience a sense of unity with God that transforms us, and that this sense of unity would extend to every person without limit.  We see so many kinds of people experiencing the Holy Spirit in the first reading, all of them rejoicing at the voice of God.  We see Jesus tell his disciples that they are sent forth just as he was sent forth by the Father.  We hear Paul, in the second reading, speaking of the gifts that each one of us has received—all to contribute to the Christian life we share in faith.

     Today’s feast of Pentecost gives us an opportunity to look at our Catholic lives not as we usually live them but as God calls us to live them.  This starts with us realizing the gifts that God has given us as a family of believers—not only the Mass we celebrate, but all the Sacraments of the Church, the Scriptures that invite us to know God more fully, the moral vision that guides us to live and love in God, the world-wide community of believers that we belong to, and the vision of the Kingdom that draws us forward.

     But the Spirit’s gifts come to our personal lives as well because every one of us, with the unique personalities and talents that we have, has been transformed by God.  Some of us are endlessly thoughtful, some of us feel the pain of others right away, some of us know how to encourage people when they are down, and others of us know how to console and heal those who are hurting.  Every one of us has many gifts that we can bring to the lives of others.  Because, for believers, normal doesn’t mean hiding in a shell but rather sharing what God has given us.

     Pentecost is called the Birthday of the Church—but not as if that was an event that happened two thousand years ago.  No, Pentecost is a Birthday more in the sense that the Holy Spirit is constantly giving birth to new life within us and around us every day.  The dynamics of faith do not happen once or twice in a life.  Rather, they are constant because Jesus is constantly sending us forth and the Spirit is constantly gifting us, all with a purpose of transforming humankind into the image of Christ. 

     For months we have seen people getting vaccinated, holding up their vaccination cards, so relieved to be able to get out of the prison of their fears, and so ready to be able to move about more freely.  Today’s feast tells us that we have all been more than vaccinated as followers of Jesus.  We have not been injected but transformed by the presence of the Holy Spirit.  We are not just protected, but rather we are being empowered by the Spirit of the Risen Jesus.  “Receive the Holy Spirit,” Jesus says to his disciples . . . and to us.

     Our Catholic lives are an unbroken experience of receiving the Holy Spirit.  That is the normal of our Christian lives that we have to rediscover. Todays’ feast is an opportunity for us to more fully recognize this and to more powerfully celebrate it. 

Feast of the Ascension B

     “He ascended into heaven, where he sits at the right hand of God.”

     Each week every Catholic congregation recites this at Mass.  I often wonder what is in our heads when we say this.  Do we imagine God sitting on a throne and Jesus sitting on a slightly smaller throne at the right hand of God?  Remember when the apostles James and John came and asked Jesus to sit at his right and his left?  What does any of this mean?

    We know what the phrase “right hand man” or “right hand lady” might mean in terms of a corporation; they are the ones who are the chief assistants and help the boss execute his or her decisions.  Do you have a problem?  Go to the boss’s right-hand-person and it will get solved.  To be at the boss’s right hand is to speak and act for the boss.

     But this idea doesn’t get at Jesus’ full reality in the Kingdom of God.  Rather, God sent his Son to become incarnate in our human flesh, to unite with us.  Now God says, in the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus, that Jesus is the way in which God is to be known and seen—that Jesus, in his glorified humanity, brings about the purpose of the Kingdom.  As Jesus has been saying in our Gospel passages all these weeks, if you want to know what God is about, then look at Jesus in whom God was perfectly revealed.

     “In a little while you will not see me and your hearts will be sad,” Jesus says.  But he urges his followers not to be sad. Rather, they should rejoice that he, in his humanity, goes to the Father.  Why? Because this doesn’t mean that Jesus is absent in the world.  It means, rather, that Jesus has assumed an even greater presence in the world, a presence through the Holy Spirit living and acting in all those who come to faith, in all those who dare to understand God through the life and love of Jesus.

     As so often happens in the Gospels, just before people get the big insight, when they are almost ready to put things together, messengers appear to help them see it.  The messengers say, “People of Galilee, why do you stare so intently at the sky?”  Jesus is not gone from our midst.  Rather, Jesus is even more active in our midst through his Spirit and what the Spirit brings about in us. Why stand around and stare?  It’s time to be . . . and to do!

     Jesus is active in our sacraments, in our Scriptures, in our moral vision about the dignity of every human life, in our community, and in the virtues through which you and I show purpose.  This is why we sense Jesus’ presence in our families, in our parish gathering, in our deepest and most authentic friendships, in the works of selfless charity we carry out, in the hope that we find in our darkest hours. 

     In the Church before the Second Vatican Council, on Ascension Thursday, right after this Gospel was read, a server would go to the Easter candle and snuff it out.  You could almost hear the congregation gasp, as if Jesus had become this whisp of smoke.  I’m afraid this gave people exactly the wrong idea because the Easter Candle represents the light of the Risen Christ which can never be snuffed out.  Rather, it is a light that shines on all of humankind through the lives of those who become followers of Christ and become, themselves, flames of light and love through the Holy Spirit.

Easter 6 B

     “You’re not telling me what to do!”  How often, during the pandemic we’ve suffered through, have these kinds of thoughts and words been expressed? First it was about masks and restrictions; then it was about getting the vaccine.  “I’m American, I have my rights and liberties, you can’t force me.”

     I hear these words against Jesus’ statement to his disciples: “I no longer call you slaves, but I call you friends.  Slaves do not know what the master is about; but you are friends because I told you everything I heard from my Father.”  From ancient Rome to contemporary America, we are all sensitive to being enslaved, to being made to do something.  No one is going to tell us what to do!

     So many of our readings today speak of love; what a wonderful coincidence for Mothers’ Day.  If anyone knows about love, we think, mothers must.  But how often mothers feel trapped, enslaved, because of the demands put upon women in general and mothers in particular.  They feel caught by the demands of their work and professional lives; they feel caught by the expectations of the household.

     Jesus seems to say that the crucial difference is whether we know what our lives are about.  He goes out of his way to show his disciples what he is about.  He wants, through the boundless love that he shows, reveal the boundless love of the Father.  “I have told you what I heard from my Father,” he says.  “I have shown you what true love is about.”  This true love can set us free.  It is no obligation but rather gift.

     We see a dimension of this true love in the first reading when Peter acknowledges that, in view of Christ’s death and resurrection, God shows no “partiality.”  How much of religious identity has been based on partiality—you have to be of this race, or this class, or this level of skill.  How much of Jewish life as like that, especially after the Exile in Babylon; and how often Christians have behaved with partiality, with pickiness, with limiting the abounding acceptance the God shows us.  “You have to be this or else you can’t belong.”  Partiality is the secret history of religion and also our nation.

     But true love sees no partiality because it gets outside itself, outside its own preoccupations and concerns, to see the lovability in everyone, the lovability that God has placed in everyone because of creation, of redemption, and of God’s Kingdom.  Ask a mother, “Which is your favorite child?” and she will go crazy.  “I love them all,” she will say, even though some have been more supportive, and others have been more problematic.  A mother’s love is like God’s: you can’t put boundaries on it.

     “Love is of God, and everyone who loves is begotten of God.”  This profound truth from the second reading takes a whole lifetime to absorb.  We are slaves so long as we do not know what it’s all about, as long as we need to be told.  We are friends, that is, we relate in love, when we understand that everything is about love.  Not the changeable romantic view of love as something that turns us on.  Rather, Jesus is speaking of the self-giving love that reveals the true purpose of life. 

     It’s not about being forced, of losing our freedom.  It’s about finding our freedom because we freely give ourselves on the model of God’s revelation in Jesus.  We don’t have to be forced because we freely give, knowing that only when we give ourselves to God and to others can we find the wholeness for which we seek.

Easter 5 B: I am the Vine

   “ Mother, please, I’d rather do it myself.”

   This was the opening line of a commercial that always got us laughing back in the 1950s.  The daughter was trying to cook, the mother comes over to do it the right way, the daughter huffs and puffs, and then says her line: Please, mother, I’d rather do it myself.  They were selling Anacin, a brand of aspirin; I was surprised, with my ten-year-old brain, that people got headaches over little things like that.

   But doing things yourself has become a whole way of life, D-I-Y as they say, with tons of books and YouTube videos to show you how to do one thing or another all by yourself.  Cook lasagna, put up a deck, change the keyboard on your laptop, figure out why you are still living at mama’s home—there’s a resourced so you can fix something or even fix yourself.

   We bring this attitude, unfortunately, into our faith and our relationship with God.  We think our spiritual life is all about our efforts and the decisions that we make.  “Your purpose in life,” I was told as a child, “is to save your soul.”  Follow the commandments, do what your parents tell you, follow laws of the Church—that’s how you saved your soul and how you went to heaven.

   As a result, the Gospel we hear this weekend is one of the most important ones for our spiritual lives, for our lives as disciples.  “I am the Vine,” says Jesus, “you are the branches.”  Whatever is in the branches, whatever is in us, comes from the life that the Vine gives us.  Without the Vine we can do absolutely nothing, Jesus says.  Without the Vine, and receiving the life the Vine gives us, we are useless and need to be thrown out.  Jesus saves us by giving us his life.

   What we are seeing here is the absolutely essential teaching of the Church about grace, which is God’s generous favor given to us out of love.  Our whole Christian life is basically a response to the grace that God gives us, a gift we could never merit.  The grace that is life, mercy, and reconciliation from God.  This teaching of the Church is sometimes very hard for us because we think the project in life is to fix ourselves by our own wits and energy.  The project, rather, in our Christian lives is to accept the fixing, the forgiving, the loving, that God continuously pours into our hearts.

   Isn’t this the experience of Saul, whose Greek name was Paul, who had everything figured out in his spiritual life until, one day, he received the gift of encountering the Risen Christ?  Isn’t this the experience of the early Christians who formed communities filled with abundant spiritual gifts, seemingly out of nowhere?  Isn’t this the gift that we all receive with the assurance of the forgiveness of our sins? 

   The idea is not that Christian life means sitting around doing nothing.  Rather, the idea is that our Christian life is accepting as deeply as we can the generous grace that God pours into us.  God wants us to produce fruit, yes indeed.  But the fruit we produce is what God has planted in us, now given the sun and water of divine care, and the Spirit that makes us grow in our following Jesus.

Easter 4 B: The Good Shepherd

     Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, now almost twenty years ago, our nation has come to use the idea of “hero” on a regular basis.  Heroes are not just the Spiderman and Superwoman images of our comics and movies; heroes are everyday neighbors who are willing to sacrifice a lot.  During the pandemic, we have even acknowledged, and rightly so, healthcare workers at every level, from orderlies to the nurses and doctors in our ICUs.

     Among our heroes, there is a special class.  These are the few who, more than being willing to sacrifice, know that they will definitely have to sacrifice.  The newspaper had a story of a survivor from the invasion of Normandy who lived to be 100 years old. It told of the numerous wounds that he suffered as he went onto the beach at Normandy but how he fought through his pain, and seemingly certain death, to support his fellow invaders. 

     We see this in our admiration for Martyrs.  Some of them die, like St. Oscar Romero, as a result of their ministry.  They don’t expect to die.  Others, like the martyrs in Ancient Rome, knew they would be killed but still professed their faith in Jesus.

      This is what characterizes the Good Shepherd as Jesus describes himself.  He contrasts the Good Shepherd from others who are hired and just doing their j job.  When trouble comes, the hired people run away.  But the Good Shepherd does whatever needs to be done, gives whatever needs to be given, suffers whatever he needs to suffer, for the sake of his flock.

     What makes sacrifices like this possible?  For most heroes, the value of human life and society’s good makes the possibility of sacrifice possible.  For Jesus, what makes his sacrifice possible is knowing that, because of the love of his Father, his death will lead to greater life, to the fullness of life, not only for himself but for all who come to live his life.  “No one takes my life from me.  I lay it down, and I take it up again.”  Jesus does what he does because it is how he shows the gift of divine love and life.

     We see this gift at work in the first reading when Peter explains how a crippled man has been healed.  This happens because of the name of Jesus, the name of the Good Shepherd.  But we should not think of Jesus’ name like a tag or a label, or like the title of a team.  Ancient Jews thought that the idea of “name” is the total reality of a person.  The crippled man is healed because of the total reality that Jesus is: giving his life as a servant, now raised from the dead, and bestowing his Spirit upon us.  This is the pattern Jesus shows as the path to fullness. This is the reality in which this crippled man is healed.  This is the pattern in which we can find salvation because it touches what Jesus touched, the depths of God and the depths of human life.

     When we gather at Mass, we invoke the name of Jesus.  We stand with the Good Shepherd.  We see how his giving his life has opened up a future of full life for all of humankind.  His sacrificial love invites us to commit ourselves to lives of self-giving love.  This is the name, the reality, in which we all live as believers because Jesus has made us people of resurrection and hope.

Easter 3 B

     He showed them his hands and his feet.

     This line has stayed foremost in my brain for the past two weeks.  It raises the problem of recognition.  How do we recognize someone?  We can imagine if a close family member who died suddenly entered a room where we were sitting in.  After picking ourselves up off the floor—because in some way the recognition would be instantaneous—how would we know it was our family member?

     Do I imagine they would have on pants with a back pocket containing a wallet?  “Here, look at my driver’s license.?  Or would they have a well-used and familiar pocketbook out of which came pictures of me as a child, or on a memorable trip?  It would be far more likely to ask them to recall very private things about me, something hardly anyone knows.  “You broke your leg when you were three.”  “You really liked this teacher.”

     He showed them his hands and his feet.

      think Jesus has a clear purpose in what he’s doing.  It is, most obviously, an identity marker for all those disciples.  Although one of the twelve betrayed Jesus, and one of them pretended not to know him, and only one stayed by Jesus at the Cross, even though they ran and hid, they all knew very well what crucifixion was, and they knew crucifixion only worked as a monstrous system of torture by nailing the hands and feet of the victims to beams of wood.

     Further, what he showed them would be the thing they would wish to forget.  How great if Jesus came back with a gleaming new body, unmarked and in perfect form!  This might even give them some psychological relief: “Well, at least what we did, wasn’t permanent.  See, it all went away.  It wasn’t so bad.”  But I doubt Jesus is into playing psychologist with his disciples.

     I think Jesus wanted not only to prove who he was but also to show what resurrection meant.  Because we have no trouble imagining body-less souls floating on clouds, but we have lots of trouble making sense of our wounds.  Jesus is showing his disciples his wounds.  He is saying something about the triumph of God.  Resurrection doesn’t mean our wounds go away, that our past is erased, that our bodily life is ultimately not part of our eternal identity.  Rather Jesus is saying that the very wounds that have caused the greatest pain become part of the triumph of new life: new life is our very life transformed by the power of sacrificial love.

     Jesus shows them his hands and his feet.  What wounds, after all, would we not be willing to suffer if it meant helping those we love the most?   What wounds have we undergone that have made us the very people that we are?  What wounds do we think God cannot heal and bring into eternal meaning through his absolute love for us?  What wounds do we think God has not loved in us and used to transform our lives?  Jesus is showing his disciples how redemption works.  It’s not magic. It’s history coming to its full meaning.

     To live, for almost every person, involves suffering.  Of course it involves far more than suffering, but suffering is the aspect that raises the most pressing questions in our lives.  Even now, in our difficulties, Easter is at work.  Even now, in our pains and failures, Easter is at work.  For when we are raised, we will not only be able to encounter each other with a depth and love that we only glimpse at this moment.  We will also be able to disclose the wounds that have made us who we are, not to complain but to show the power of divine love and the path Jesus opened for us.

Easter 2 B

Doubting Thomas

     As someone who regularly buys four Lotto tickets a week, I can’t figure out why I’m bothered by all these adds inviting us to put sports-betting aps on our phones.  After all, a bet is a bet, right?  But maybe it’s about what level of risk we are willing to take.  Some of us take lots of big risks throughout life; sometimes they pay off, sometimes they don’t.  Most of us take modest risks now and then; it’s just a matter of ordinary living.  A few of us, however, want everything nailed down.  We aren’t willing to take any chances; we want to be certain.

     Perhaps that was the psychology of Thomas in the Gospel, doubting Thomas as we frequently call him.  “I’m not going to believe unless I put my finger in the nail marks,” he says to the other disciples.  “I’m not taking any chances of looking like a fool.” 

     Was that, then, the biggest risk he had to take, the risk of looking like a fool?  Was that too big a bet to lose?  Or maybe he was burned out—that he had risked so much following Jesus for the past three years and, having seen him murdered in humiliating shame and knowing he would not try to protect Jesus, he didn’t have any more inside of him.  From now on, he’s thinking, I want it all in black and white.

     The problem with this, however, is that life can not be lived in black and white, with no risks, with no going beyond ourselves.  To take no risks is to reduce life to the bare minimum— to seek security but not much else, to accept the care of others but not risk giving care oneself.  Birds must leave the nest; kids must leave the house.  Life is an adventure waiting to be accepted and lived.

     Well, we might think, Thomas’ problem was that he wasn’t there the first time Jesus came.  The others had an advantage over Thomas.  He was right to be cautious.  All true . . . except that he’s staring Jesus in the face right now.  Except that Jesus says those most blessed are the ones who haven’t seen but still believe.  Thomas shows us the human truth that two people can see the same thing; one accepts and the other rejects.  It’s all about how our hearts dispose us.

     The other apostles were willing to take a bet on Jesus because they had an Easter hope that Thomas did not yet have.  They were willing to accept Christ because they were willing to continue their journey with him, a post-Easter journey of sharing faith with others.  They were willing to take a risk because, having trusted Jesus all along, why should they not trust him now? 

     “Receive the Holy Spirit,” the risen Jesus says to his disciples.  Receive a Spirit who will guide you into the future.  Receive divine Wisdom so you can be guided into a future filled with the light of Easter.  Receive the risen power of Jesus in your hearts so you can continue his work of bringing the Kingdom into focus.  Receive the Holy Spirit who sends you forth to be a disciple, shining Easter hope on the world around you.  Receive the Spirit who is God’s love empowering you to new life.

     Thomas would receive the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of Easter, in abundance.  He shows us that Easter can overcome even our own skepticism and reluctance.  He shows us that playing it safe costs us an enormous amount in the end because we wind up with little besides our own worries.  He shows us that you don’t have to stick your finger in; you just have to open your heart.

     Betting on the Risen Christ ends up being the most certain thing we can do in our lives.

Easter Sunday B

The Beloved Disciple

     Having gone through the seminary, and living in one now, I’ve seen lots of what I call “seminary fads.” All of a sudden everyone is watching the same show together, or playing darts, or into a certain health strategy, or joining in a brown rice diet.  But the latest fad we had seemed quite traditional and homey to me: doing very complicated jigsaw puzzles.  1000 pieces. All of a sudden, the guys are bending over a table for hours, trying to put the pieces of together.  You get clues from the large picture, but you also get clues from the particular shapes and combinations.  When the puzzle is done, everyone celebrates.

     I think getting at Easter involves a bit of puzzle work.  We have the larger patterns of the Scripture and human life, but we also have the little signs and shapes that help us.  In the Gospel today the puzzle begins with Mary Magdalene going, when it is still dark, to the tomb.  “Oh my, the stone has been rolled back!”  She then runs and tells the apostles.  Next we see Peter and the beloved disciple running to the tomb. They immediately see some of the pieces of the Easter puzzle, the cloths lying inside the tomb.

     Who would move a body without the burial cloths? Who would, even stranger, take the cloth that covered Jesus’ head and put it in a different place, separate from the other cloths?  Peter looks in and scratches his head.  Then the beloved disciple looks into the tomb.  “He saw and he believed,” the Scriptures say.  What was it that made the beloved disciples come to faith?  Maybe he immediately saw the connection between the Jesus who loved him, who brought hope and the promise of life, and the tomb now empty, strewn with burial cloths in front of his eyes.

     We always want the big picture, the total picture, one that does all the work for us.  But Easter requires work because without our trying to see all the dimensions that are opened up to us, Easter can seem just like a pretty story.  Yet the pieces of Easter extend beyond one morning over two thousand years ago, beyond one tomb unexplainably empty, beyond disciples who witness the Risen Lord.  The pieces of Easter especially involve the shapes and contours of our own experience.

     We know, after the crisis we have lived through, how easy it is to be cynical, to hear numbers of how many got sick and how many died.  “Well, it wasn’t me!” We know how to take things in stride, even pandemics. We know how comfortable it would be just return to something that feels normal like kids going to school, or returning to the office, or coming back to church again.  We take it all in stride.

     But we cannot take our lives in stride.  We see countless signs of our infinite value, especially in the faces of those we love.  The hopes we have and the sheer desire for something deeper haunt our lives.  The return of Spring speaks of renewal and vitality, one that we surprisingly feel even at stress-filled times in our lives.  We spontaneously call upon a God in times of trouble and are amazed to find reassurance and consolation.  We cannot take our lives in stride because there is no greater sign of Easter than the hope that is embedded in every one of us.

     This is why the beloved disciple can see and believe, why he can put the pieces together.  This is why we come out this morning to hear Alleluia once again.  Like the beloved disciple, we know Jesus is risen because so many other things in our lives speak of resurrection, because so many of our experience are pieces of a puzzle that only Easter puts together.

     n every Mass Easter comes to us, the Risen Jesus as food and life.  After so much deprivation of the Eucharist, what a blessing to be here this Easter and let the glory of the Risen Christ shine on us again.  Because of this experience of Easter faith, we can becomes signs to others of hope and life, pieces of a puzzle that come together to make an image of Risen Christ, the fullness of life.

Passion Sunday B

     I  think the many characters and details contained in the story of Jesus’ Passion are deliberate: the Holy Spirit wanted to give us many entry points to this history-changing story.  We can see ourselves, and our culture, through the many mirrors the Passion presents to our consciences.

     One detail seems particularly telling; I have thought about it more and more over the years.  The soldiers, while mocking Jesus, make a crown of thorns and put it on his head.  Then, the next sentence tells us, they kept hitting him on the dead.  Nothing seems to have caught the deliberate cruelty and meanness of the human heart more than this detail.  This was done to inflict a particular kind of pain, one unique to Jesus.

     Every day the news brings to us stories that have cruelty and meanness at their heart, whether an attack on human bodies as we keep hearing in so many domestic massacres; or an attack on human dignity as our public discourse sinks lower and lower.  All of this, just as the incident of Jesus mockery, shows one point: that some people feel their own esteem can only be earned with the pain of someone else.  I feel powerful by hurting you.

     Jesus accepts this mockery, along with the whole outrage of his assassination, to show the emptiness of this esteem and the weakness of this quest for power.  In his meekness, Jesus shows us the true power of emptying human cruelty by giving oneself as a sign of divine love.  What the prophets hinted at when reflecting on the suffering of the Jews Jesus now reveals in the gift of himself.  True power comes with sacrificial love.

     What about each of us?  Where am I in this Passion story?  Where do I find my power?  How do I resort to cruelty just for cruelty’s sake?  Or am I ready to be at the side of Jesus and renounce human smallness for the sake of a better, a saving, vision?

Lent 5 B

     Although we aren’t sure how it’s going to work out, it does look like there will be Olympic games this summer.  One of the debates I followed was whether they would acknowledge golf as a real sport, an Olympic sport.  About six years ago golf received that recognition.  It was a sport!  In some ways, we can see golf as a nearly perfect sport.  Because we think sports is not only about winning but also seeing what we have inside ourselves.  In most every sport, I am reacting to someone else.  In golf, it’s only me and the ball.  When I play the game, I know what’s inside of me.

     We can think of Lent as a testing of what’s inside of us.  The prayers of the Mass throughout this season emphasize again our Lenten practices, our undertaking a Lenten discipline, our being faithful to our Lenten commitments.  Have we increased and deepened our prayer? Have we repressed our impulses?  Have we been particularly generous to the needs of others?

     Well, we have; and, indeed, we haven’t.  Lent shows us just how far we have to go to respond to God’s invitation of love, to truly be followers of Jesus.  But today’s readings show us that the real drama of Lent, indeed of our faith, is not so much what we have inside ourselves.  Rather, the question is: to what extent have I let Christ inside myself?  To what extent do I let him work in me?

     The reading we have from Jeremiah is yet one more reflection on covenant, a theme we have been exploring all through this Lenten cycle.  Jeremiah is expressing the same frustration we saw in last week’s first reading, how history shows just how much we have not been faithful to the covenant God has made with us.  But this week we hit a line that should astound us.  Jeremiah says that from now on God will place his law inside our hearts.  God will do the work that we’ve not been able to do.  God will give us God’s faithfulness.

     This is what Jesus does for us.  He comes into human history, he comes into our community of faith, he comes into our hearts, to take on the very burdens that have broken us.  He cries out on our behalf to God, his Father and our Father, the one who could save him from death.  By taking on our burden of death he overcomes it on our behalf.  Christ becomes the source of eternal salvation for everyone who lets him be the force of her or his life.

     “ When I am lifted up,” Jesus says in the Gospel, “I will draw all people to myself.”  He says this when Greeks, gentiles, non-believers asked to speak with him.  “All people” are the ones that God wants to be part of the new and eternal covenant that Jesus fulfills on our behalf.  Because all people, every one of us, is in need the divine life.  All of us need the love and power of God to radiate from inside us. We all need the new covenant of Jesus to be written deeply and permanently in our hearts. 

     What is inside us?  We often look inside and see inadequacies, hesitation, doubts, and sin.  We often see only ourselves, in our weakness, at work.  Lent is teaching us that our salvation is precisely learning how Jesus is at work in our hearts, more powerfully than any of our own efforts and actions.  When we become obedient to his grace, when we open ourselves up to his love, then we can see more clearly the grace of God as that which is deepest within us.

     What’s inside of us?  What are we made of?  Sports may tell us one thing, but Jesus tells us the most important thing, that his place is inside of us, working mercy and grace.

Lent 4 B

     We might try to recall the greatest gift we’ve ever received.  Maybe it was a set of car keys when we turned sixteen.  Or maybe an engagement ring.  Or perhaps someone paid our tuition through high school or college. Or surely the friendships and loves we’ve come to have.  For some, it might even be the second dose of vaccine that might finally get us out of isolation after a year.

     The scriptures talk about gifts, but the precise question they ask us is this: what did we do with that gift?  What did we let that gift do in our lives?  Because not all gifts are accepted; indeed, not all gifts are even recognized.

     In certainly one of the more famous lines in any of the Gospels, we have that verse people quote even at sporting events: God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.  Before we go on to add phrases like: to save us, to teach us, to heal us, or to die for us—before we add any of these, we first need to recognize the simple boldness of the statement.  Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, is plain and simple God’s gift to us, God’s gift to the world.

     The passage goes on to talk about condemnation using the simple formula: those who accept the Son will not be condemned; those who refuse to accept the Son are already condemned.  It’s as if the Scriptures are saying that the gift that Jesus is must of its very nature involve a judgment.  Just as every child born includes the judgment of whether she or he will be accepted and loved, just as every sunrise includes the judgment of what we will do with the twenty-four new hours we have, so the gift of Jesus asks us what we will do with the gift of God that has been given to us.

     Language like this can seem pretty black and white. Indeed, almost all religions have developed ways to separate people into the saved and the damned, the holy and the sinner, the “in” and the “out,” the enlightened and the blind.  That’s why we need to reflect on the first reading, a summary statement from the Second Book of Chronicles, a book we do not hear from very often.  The reflection looks back on Jewish history from a later time.  It acknowledges the covenants, promises, and prophets that God gave the Jewish people which, time and again, the Jewish people did not accept.  They rejected their greatest gifts.  But God never abandons them.  God even sends a pagan ruler, Cyrus, to restore them to their homeland.  God continues to send his gifts, his love, and his Son because we continue to need them again and again.

     The letter to the Ephesians, our second reading, calls us the “handiwork of God.”  It tell us that we are the product of God’s gracious love working in us.  God has sent his Son; in his love, God has chosen us in his Son, raising us up and assuring us of the promises of mercy and grace.  But this process is never fully accomplished.  We always have more to accept, more to receive, more to live, and more love to learn.  Instead of condemnation, God would give us the fullness of life. 

     This is what God shows us in every Eucharist. There is no doubt about God’s gift.  The only question is our willingness to continue receiving this gift with all our hearts.

Lent 3 B

     “Law and Order” has been a big cry in American life since the time of Ronald Reagan.  Anyone who lived through the late 60s and 70s knows why this was such a huge success given the mood of our country.  The craziness of the sixties merged with the anti-Vietnam sentiments and demonstrations; and all of that started to blend with the crack epidemic and the emergence of Aids.  Everything seemed out of control; what better antidote than “law and order.”

     Some thirty years later we can see the downside of some of this direction, particularly in the way we imprison people in a proportion that exceeds every other nation, including Russia and China.  The laws that were passed during that phase caused people to be imprisoned for doing much less than people can legally do in many of our states.  Nevertheless, once you get mugged you want to get the one who mugged you.

     We hear the story of what we call the Ten Commandments out of this “law and order” framework.  Here’s the law; break the law and you will get punished.  Although the Jews, through most of their history, did not believe in an afterlife, or hell, in any clear way, we have taken the words God gave Moses and made them into a law-and-punishment system: break the commandment and you’ll burn forever in hell.

     So we have to get behind the “Law and Order” image to find a different approach to the first reading.  This is where this season of Lent can be of help to us.  Each of these Lenten Sundays we have looked at a different covenant God made with humankind, first with Noah, then with Abraham, and this week with Moses.  “Covenant” means a relationship; in each covenant, God is committing to be in relationship with us.  More than anything, these relationships are expressions of mercy. 

     The Commandments, then, are primarily ways to show we are living in relationship with God.  They are ways we are responding to the mercy of God, to the grace God shows by opening to us in love.  One of the downside of legal thinking is that we are always trying to get away with breaking the law.  “Is this a sin if . . .”  “But what if . . .”  “Let me find a lawyer . . . “We always make excuses and try to evade the law.  But you cannot play this game so easily with a relationship.  We don’t live with the ones we love through laws; if we try, the relationship will soon end.

     Speaking of “Law and Order,” what is Jesus doing in the Gospel?  My gosh, he seems like the biggest protester we ever met.  Here he is storming the temple, overturning tables needed to provide animals for the sacrifices offered to God.  What was Jesus issue?  Exactly this: instead of dealing with God, we are dealing with the systems we set up, the rules we impose, even the markets we start.  Jesus wants us to see God, his Father of infinite love.

     And certainly we can try to live our lives with systems of religion, formalities, rigidities that do more to hide God rather than reveal God.  Part of what Lent wants to accomplish is to push us further into the mystery of God, make us see more clearly the reality of God that Jesus reveals.  What are the tables we need to overturn in our lives?  What do we need driven from our lives?

     Did we hear the message in the second reading?  “The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”  This is the energy Lent invites us to find.  The love overflowing in each of us, and the love overflowing in our families and parish communities.  Once we find that love, responding to God becomes, not just the keeping of laws, but something as natural as breathing through the Spirit living with us and empowering us to show God’s love every day. 

Lent 2 B

     Although medical experts tell us that hearing is the last sense that we lose in the process of dying, nothing seems to be more difficult in our lives than hearing and listening.  We live in households in which members feel that no one ever listens to them.  “Are you listening to me?”  This is a line a teen might say to a parent and, just as easily, a parent might say to a teenager.

     Modern media has made the issue of listening even more difficult through mass media.  Even in the early days of radio, demagogues held listeners captive, one of them being the famous priest, Father Charles Coughlin, who broadcast anger and anti-Semitism from his station in Detroit.  Well before cable and well before the Internet, media raised the question for us: Who are you listening to?  And what is this doing to your life?

     If it’s so difficult to listen to each other, what about listening to God?  Abraham presents, in the first reading, a classic example.  He shows us that sometimes we have to listen very hard, and for a long time, to get God’s true message.  Abraham, who longed for the birth of a son through is wife Sarah, now appears to be asked to sacrifice Isaac, his beloved Son, to God.  The choice seems cruel and impossible. Who do you love, God or the son God gave you?

     Only later can Abraham hear more deeply as the Angel of God tells Abraham not to kill his Isaac but to find an animal offering instead.  This is a deeper hearing of the voice of God on the part of Abraham, one that reveals more fully who God is.  For the God of love does not spurn our loves; rather, this God would have us bring all our loves into the fullness of his love.  Finally, Abraham was able to hear God clearly.

     The climax of the Gospel also involves listening.  When the cloud encircles the three apostles closest to Jesus, we hear the voice of God: “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”  This voice appears directed to Peter who has not begun to figure out what the trip to the mountain top means, what the figures of Moses and Elijah stand for, or what Jesus mission is all about.  Peter called Jesus “The Messiah” in the previous chapter of the Gospel; but he has not learned to listen to Jesus.

     We listen to Jesus when we stop imposing our distorted ideas on him.  We listen to Jesus when we see that his path was not one of power or pleasure, but one of humbly serving others, even at the cost of himself.  We listen to Jesus when we realize that faith does not revolve around our own selves; rather, faith brings our selves into relationship with the One whom God has sent into our lives.  We listen to Jesus when we see that the more we run from the authentic voice of God the more darkness we find in our lives.  “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

     Paul reminds us how hard it is to hear God.  Do we not spend so much of our lives wondering if God loves us and if God is on our side?  But Paul shows that, when we have the ears and eyes of faith, we know that God is always for us.  We know that nothing can separate us from the love he has given us in Christ.

     “Are you listening to me?”  Often we want to say this to God in our fear.  But far more often, God is saying this to us in his love.

Lent 1 B

     I’m bored.

     Back before cellphones and endless streaming, when young people would say “I’m bored” we sometimes often about it.  What did it mean?  Was it really depression or anger coming out as boredom?  Should we do something about it or let it be?

     Now I see postings saying that boredom is good; in fact, some people insist that it is necessary for creativity because boredom allows the mind to re-set.  It is then that we can discover new ideas, develop new approaches to things, and come up with some creative ways of doing something which never would have dawned on us otherwise.

     Both the first reading and the Gospel made me wonder what it would be like to spend a lot of time just waiting, just looking around, just being open to whatever might come.  The story of Noah, however we take it, at least asks us: what would we do if we had to stay on a boat for 40 days?  The point of the story is a way to talk about the ability to be reborn, but it also raises the question of where the rebirth comes in our own spiritual and personal lives.

     Mark gives us the simplest telling of the time in the desert.  We don’t have the image of Satan presenting temptations before him.  Rather, the emphasis is the length of time Jesus stayed there, being willing to be tested.  And what was that test about?  Was it not about a new vision, a new creation, which would be Jesus’ mission to bring about?  The desert animals might threaten him, but Jesus saw how the ongoing aid of heaven was given to him.

     From the boredom of Jesus’ time in the desert there arises the kernel of his teaching and his ministry.  “The Kingdom of God is upon us,” Jesus says.  This brings the general message of John the Baptist to a new level.  “All of time is coming to fulfillment,” Jesus says.  You may think that it’s all one boring day after another, but time is rich, pregnant with the future.  “Repent and believe in the good news.”  Open your eyes, Jesus says, and see that your live is fundamentally about Good News.

     As Lent begins, we go through our formulas of what we are going to give up for Lent, be it beer or chocolate or shopping for non-essentials.  This may help us feel identified with Jesus and his deprivation in the desert.  But the Gospels suggest that we need a bigger vision.  We need to empty our brains of all the trivia that haunts us and see what our faith is really about.  Our lives are not years wasted on work or play; they are about the fullness God wants to bring into the world by our love and service of others.  Our days are not just filling time with busy things but seeing time as God’s vehicle into the Kingdom.

     In this Lenten period, we spiritually identify with adults across the world who are preparing for baptism.  It gives us a chance to re-appreciate our own baptisms whenever they might have happened.  For baptism is not an ordinary bath but a radical new life in which Jesus, who shows us our future, sits at God’s right hand, transforming our lives, and the world, through the gift of new life.

6 B

     Don’t do it!  That’s the clear message to people who are so relieved to get their Covid vaccine shot that they immediately post on line their information card.  Don’t do it, the experts say, because thieving people can get some of your information and set up fake bank accounts or open credit cards in your name.  Sometimes it’s better to keep things secret.

     Don’t do it!  That’s what Jesus said to this leper whom he healed.  “Go and show yourself to the priest so, if anyone every asks, the priest can testify that you were healed.  But, otherwise, please do not go around blabbing to everyone you meet.”

     But can we blame them for showing off?  We’ve all been so cooped up and socially crippled, not to mention the enormous sense of loss at hundreds of thousands of deaths.  Of course we want to show off our vaccination.  It’s a sign that the disease cannot keep us down.  Imagine, then, what it was for this man who had leprosy . . . how many years he had to stand apart, keep away from his family and town . . . because he had a disease that made him unclean, that drove him away from everything.

     So why does Jesus tell this man to keep his healing to himself.  The overall reason is that Jesus wants to announce his mission on his own terms so people do not get false and distorted impressions of who he is and why he came.  Jesus will begin to reveal his role and destiny after Peter declares him to be the Messiah.  But perhaps there’s a more subtle reason.

     Could it be that Jesus wanted this leper to reflect more deeply on what God had done?  Could it be that Jesus wanted this man, so overjoyed to be healed, to recognize what that meant?  Perhaps, like many of us, this former leper thought the healing was all about himself.  “Look, ma, no more leprosy!”  Maybe Jesus wanted to make sure this man knew his healing was primarily about God and the way God brings healing into every life, one way or another. And this was the message he was to live out among his own people.

     It’s way to easy for us to be self-absorbed, even when it comes to God.  Instead of concentrating on what God is doing in our lives, and in the world, we run around putting ourselves at the center of everything.  “Oh, wow, look at my miracle.”  Of course Jesus wants us to share our faith.  But he wants us to share our faith in a way that shows what God is doing in the lives of everyone.  He wants our faith to be about him more than ourselves.

     St. Paul gives us a powerful example today.  He lives his missionary  life for the sake of others.  He is willing to adapt himself, to cross boundaries and languages, so that God’s love may be better known.  Paul says he is not seeking his own benefit; rather, he will do what benefits as many people as possible.  Sometimes focusing on ourselves can obscure the mercy and grace of God.

     Don’t do it!  We who resort so regularly to social media have to be cautious of what we put out there.  It’s fun to imagine what St. Paul would have done with social media!  But today Paul teaches us that it’s all about God, making God the center, than it is about us getting hundreds of “likes” on or post.

5 B

     “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”  Older folks in the congregation will remember this as the motto of “The Christophers,” an organization founded by Fr. James Keller in 1945.  The Christophers tried to bring a sense of purpose and positivity to the lives of everyday Catholics and believers. But, let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to curse the darkness.  In fact, we can often wallow in our list of complaints.

     The first reading, from the book of Job, paints just this dark side of life.  As the story goes, Job has every reason to complain, having lost just about everything that is valuable to him.  Now he sits on a pile of trash having to listen to empty pieties from his so-called friends.  “Remember that my life is like the wind; I shall not see happiness again,” Job moans with all the self-pity he can muster.

     Well we have a lot to moan about ourselves these days, from the difficult times that this pandemic has brought to us, to the social and economic losses that we all suffer, to the personal difficulties we all have to face.  Young people have had their graduations and sports programs ripped from them; old people have been deprived of even seeing their grandchildren for almost a year.  There’s plenty of darkness.  What does the candle look like?

     The simple flicker of a candle, with its frail and vulnerable flame, seems like something so little.  We see an example of this in the Gospel when Jesus visits the house of Peter and Andrew.  Peter’s mother-in-law has a fever.  She’s like millions of us, having a bad day, feeling a bit under the weather.  Jesus has just announced the coming of the Kingdom of God—the greatest project in human history.  But he has time for this unnamed woman.  He makes time for one simple act of kindness, of healing, a gesture the Gospel had to include.

     Can one act of kindness change so much?  We’ve all heard of the “butterfly effect”—the idea that things are so interconnected that if a butterfly flutters its wings it will eventually have a huge effect on the whole cosmos.  Yet we underestimate the capacity we have to make a huge difference simply by acts of generous kindness that are given to us every day.  One of the indirect benefits of our coronavirus crisis is that it has provided daily opportunities to show small acts of kindness.  We hold a door open, so someone doesn’t have to touch it.  We wave at people to compensate for our smiles now hidden behind masks.  We call and write our seniors in nursing homes.  We wear a mask. We extend extra courtesies because we know we are all in the same boat.

     One simple act of kindness seems like so little, but does it not change the environment around us?  Does it not say that we care, that others are important to us, that we can each alleviate the pain of another?  And if we multiply these small acts by the millions that we are and by the dozens of opportunities we have every day, then we see the power of good to vanquish the darkness of our human condition, then we see the power Jesus gives us by sending the Holy Spirit to encourage us so we can encourage others.

     Some of the greatest saints had one simple insight: the smallest thing we do, if done with love, is done in God.  Jesus would go on to perform wondrous acts of healing and restoration, but the love behind those acts was no more than the love he showed a woman with a fever and poor people keeping him up all night because of their illness. “Let us go to other villages,” he tells his disciples.  The need to show kindness is everywhere.  That’s why he sends us to do the same in our daily lives.

     The biggest battle today will not be between quarterbacks, one young and the other very experienced.  The biggest battle is always between the darkness and the power of one candle refusing to be extinguished.

4B

    In many rougher neighborhoods it can be fairly common for smaller children to be bullied by bigger ones.  What does the weaker or unpopular child do?  Often they suffer by themselves.  Sometimes they talk to their parents. But many of them find help in another bigger child who befriends the picked-on child.  “Hang out with me and I’ll take care of you.”  The picked-on children feel much safer.

    When we look at the first reading from the book of Deuteronomy, the one talking about a new prophet who will rise up among the people, it reads a little like a bully story.  The only surprise is that one we are being saved from is God.  The appearance of God was so terrifying to the ancient Jews, at least according to this narration, that they asked for a prophet who would protect them from God. “‘Let us not again hear the voice of the LORD, our God, nor see this great fire any more, lest we die.’”  In place of listening to the frightening God, they can more easily obey the words of their prophet.

    This shows us how utterly crucial the ministry of Jesus was.  If in ancient times ideas of God were colored by images of lightning, thunder, and earthquakes, Jesus comes to show us a God of infinite tenderness and mercy.  Instead of having a prophet protect us from our imaginary ideas about God, we have a prophet who is able to reveal God perfectly because he is God’s Son.

    In the Gospel scene we have from Mark we see the impression that Jesus is making on the people.  Jesus speaks and acts “with authority.”  He confronts the forces of evil who try to stop Jesus’ ministry.  As we would say today, he doesn’t just talk the talk; he walks the walk.  He calls people to believe in a God who can make a difference in their lives.

    The people contrasted Jesus with their regular religious leaders and teachers who do not speak “with authority.”  Like many religious leaders down through the ages, it’s easy to place God behind a lot of theory and many different laws.  It’s easy to make God as distant as a theory or as remote as a natural force.  Jesus’ teaching is contrasted with that approach to faith.

    When Jesus speaks “with authority,” it doesn’t mean that he has a higher set of laws that he is imposing.  No, Jesus’ preaching is done with effectiveness, with the ability to change lives, with the capacity to fill people with hope and wonder.  Jesus comes with the power to amaze people because faith can bring so much power in our lives if we let it.

    Because the truth is that it’s not only religious teachers who make God remote.  All of us can make God seem remote because we are distant from the power of our own faith, because we keep faith tightly wound up in our lives, or because our faith is mostly a custom that we received.  If Jesus is going to speak with power and effectiveness in our lives, then we are called to see the power of the faith we have received as something that can renew us.

    The people in that synagogue were amazed at Jesus.  But let’s be real: in Jesus ministry, many people refused to be amazed at Jesus because he threatened the way they understood the world.  Jesus can be effective only with those people who let him be effective, only with those who let Jesus have the principal place in their lives.

    We don’t need protection from the God of Jesus.  Instead, we need protection from our own tendency to make religion only a formula or only a set of customs.  Instead of the fear of ancient people, we need the loving openness that allows Christ to transform our lives, a prophet who reveals the true heart of God.

3 B

     We know the power of words in a way unknown for most of history. 

     We have always known the power of speeches.  Students in Latin have long read speeches given by Cicero and other famous Romans; we can read great sermons whether in Greek or Latin by the early leaders of the Church.  Our grandparents heard Franklin Roosevelt give fireside speeches and saw clips of Winston Churchill during World War II.  And certainly our recent days in Washington showed the power of words in many different ways as one administration tried to end and another tried to begin.

     But the world has never seen the power of billions of words by billions of people with cell phones and tablets.  People on these social platforms can virtually say whatever they want for free; what they say can end up in the inboxes of untold numbers of people.  Whatever big media might be putting out, social media has created an undercurrent that can wash away the base of anyone anytime.

     Scriptures give us an image of Jonah as a very effective preacher, as we hear in the first reading.  He only does one-third of his work and the whole city is repenting.  But the biggest contrast to the conversion of Nineveh is Jonah himself who did whatever he could not to hear God’s word and not to fulfill God’s mission.  Unlike Jonah, the disciples in the Gospel seem to pick up Jesus’ invitation in an instant, dropping their fishing nets; but how long would it take them to realize what Jesus was really about?  According to Mark, they never quite get it right up to and beyond Jesus’ crucifixion.

     On this Sunday, which is devoted to the power of the Word of God in our lives, the scriptures invite us to look at the various levels of resistance we have to hearing God’s Word, to find the Jonah in us.  Those who try to attend Mass, even those who have to resort to television, get a steady output of the Gospel.  But what do we do with it?  We hear Jesus calling the four fishermen; but doesn’t this story ask us how Jesus is calling us?  We hear Paul showing how dramatic God’s Word was in his life and the lives of his congregations.  But does God’s Word have dramatic impact on our own lives?

     The consoling thing about the Scriptures today is the way they show us we can all continue to grow in hearing God’s Word.  Even people who have sudden conversions need decades more of meditating on the Word before its implications begin to dawn on them.  And most of us, whose conversions involve a series of insights throughout our lives, have to learn to let the Word penetrate us more deeply.  Even with the dramatic political events all around us, we do not feel, as St. Paul says, that the world is passing away.  We sashay through life without much focus and without a sense of urgency.

     “The Kingdom of God is at hand,” says Jesus, in words that should both violently shake us and powerfully excite us.  God does new things for people who can open their eyes to see the Kingdom and open their lips to proclaim it.  The movement Jesus is starting with these Apostles has come into our own ordinary lives.  Jesus gives us all a part to play in the coming of this Kingdom because ordinary life is where Jesus wants the Kingdom to be born. 

     We can each make a commitment to spend a few minutes each day reflecting on the Scriptures; the Internet has abundant resources for us.  If we tried to hear that Gospel more, I wonder how different our lives would be?  Jesus shows us, every day, there are still many fish waiting to be caught up in the net of his love.

2 B

     It was a phone conversation similar to conversations that happen on a regular basis in today’s culture.  A father was talking about his twenty-year-old son.  The son was home because COVID closed his college dorms.  Could the son now live in the house as an adult, making up his own schedule, not worrying about rules, being his own man?  This is often the way our culture has young people putting things: how can they be themselves instead of someone else’s person?

     “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?”  These words today from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians cut us modern people very sharply.  What can Paul mean when he says that “you are not your own”?  Being our own is what makes us who we are, right?

     All the readings we have today say that is not correct.  They all show us that there are far more voices in our heads than just our own.  They show that we are connected to each other and that, ultimately, all our connections are made real in God.  The Gospel from John is a fascinating study of human connections, how people open up to each other, and how we are shaped by the relationships we have with others and God.

     We have John the Baptist with a group of followers; he sees Jesus and calls him “the Lamb of God.”  Two of John’s disciples get curious about Jesus.  Jesus says, “Come hang out with me.”  Then they go to people they know, inviting them to get to know Jesus.  And, in the end, Simon Peter ends up with a relationship with Jesus that would unfold in different ways for the rest of his life.  There are many voices in our heads, and these voices show who we belong to.  Ask anyone who has come to love another . . . the beloved’s voice cannot be quieted.

     Samuel is a powerful example of the power of voice.  In his dreaming he hears his name called.  What is that voice calling out to me?  He doesn’t know what to make of it.  Three times he awakens the old priest, Eli.  At first Eli doesn’t know what to make of it either; but eventually he ends up teaching Samuel how to listen for the voice of God.

     Our culture tells us to be our own persons, that we have to be self-sufficient and in control.  But the last thing we have felt for the past year, and especially these past weeks, is “in control.”  Our illusion of control can not only cut us off from the people and resources we actually need to live; it can cut us off from being able to hear the voice of God calling our name, affirming our relationship with God, and opening up the best paths for our journey.

     What, then, is the Lord revealing to us?  How is the Lord inviting us to see all of our life as something sacred because the Holy Spirit dwells in us and guides?  How is Jesus saying to us, this day, “Come and see.  Come and spend some time with me”?  How is the Lord helping us see that we are most ourselves not when we are our own people but when we find ourselves connected to, loving, and serving each other?

Baptism of the Lord

     Some facilitators and presenters talk about how useful “the elevator speech” can be.  Imagine, they say, you are riding down an elevator and someone asks you about something.  How would you come up with a short description?  If they asked you what your job was?  Or what your company does?  Or where you live and why?  What if they asked you the most important thing you’ve learned in life?  Or why you believe?  Or what your Catholic faith stands for?

     Advertisers have this down pat.  Almost all the ads we see are 90-second short pitches, like elevator speeches, to let us know about a product or how much we need their product.  In fact, advertisers can sometimes get the speech down to a few words: Just do it, Be like Mike, America’s most convenient bank, or, as we endlessly heard, December to Remember.

     I see something like an elevator speech in our second reading today, from the first letter of John.  He is talking about what it means to know Christ; he mentions the things that help us know him, that testify to Christ.  He talks about the water, the blood, and the Spirit.  On this feast of the Baptism of the Lord, we can use these simple words to think about what it means to follow Jesus.

     The baptism of Jesus was not an isolated event.  No, when he came up from the waters, he experienced the authorization of God his Father and also the Holy Spirit who would guide him.  Besides being connected to the fullness of God, his baptism was also connected to his mission—the words he used and deeds he performed—to show that a new age of mercy had begun. 

His baptism was also connected to his death.  Jesus would be faithful to that mission even up to the point of death.  His blood means that he gave himself selflessly as a sign of reconciliation and new life.  The water leads to the blood; accepting his mission led to giving himself in total love.

     But John says there are water, blood, and Spirit.  Jesus is baptized to accomplish his mission; he dies to bring that mission to completion; but he rises from the dead so that he could give his life to anyone who accepts him and believes in him.  If only he died and rose, that would not be redemption. No, salvation is when we receive his Spirit as the pattern that directs our lives, so that we live as Jesus did.

     Water represents the baptism we have all received; it’s as if the waters in which Jesus stepped have flooded onto us as well.  Our baptisms mean our acceptance of mission as a disciple of Jesus.  Blood represents the Eucharist in which we are made one with the body and blood of Jesus.  As baptism begins our mission, so Eucharist sustains our mission and allows us to grow in it.  But baptism and Eucharist are not just for themselves.  They are to allow us to receive the Spirit more fully in our lives, so that the effects of Jesus’ salvation grow ever more fully within us.

     John is telling us that we have been inserted into the great work of Jesus.  As we finish our celebration of the Christmas season this Sunday, John reminds us what that season was all about.  We plunge into the waters of Jesus in baptism to affirm God’s new life in us.  We drink from the cup of Jesus’ blood at Mass so we will be permeated by his sacrificial love.  We grow in the Spirit as disciples, constantly opening ourselves up to the deeper experiences in faith and service that God continues to open for us.

     Water. Blood. Spirit.  There, in a nutshell, is what our life of discipleship is all about.  That’s our elevator speech for today!

Epiphany B

     We can identify with the Magi in a special way this year.  Many of us have peeled our eyes looking for the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the sky, an event that happened 800 years ago.  Several experts call this the “Christmas Star”—analogous to what the Magi might have seen 2100 years ago.  And, perhaps even more than the Magi, we have been searching for a vaccine to begin to end this pandemic that has upended our lives for most of this past year.

     Yet this feast is very paradoxical.  On the one hand, it’s a story about Wise Men searching for someone important to them.  On the other hand, this is a story about God searching for humankind.  It’s perhaps easier to see ourselves as the Magi; but the challenge is to see ourselves as part of God’s searching too.

     Look at the ways we are always searching for something.  Indeed, the most important searching we do is for people whom we have come to love.  Certainly one of the largest projects of many human lives is finding a life partner.  But we also find friends in life, people with whom we associate on a regular basis.  Even when we search, relationships come as a gift, a surprise. Were the Magi surprised when they found the Holy Family?  Did they think they’d find the baby in a very different situation?  Did they think the star would ever stop?  Did they ever doubt what they were searching for?

     But God already knows what God is searching for.  God has been pursuing this goal, this aim, from the start of creation.  Now, with the birth of Jesus, God’s goal begins to come into focus.  God would draw all people into a community of love.  The Magi represent every culture and community, every race and language.  Just as the shepherds represented the faithful poor of Israel, our three Kings represent the quest for truth and love in the heart of every human, a quest that corresponds to God’s quest for all of humankind.

     What is astonishing about the Christian faith is how quickly it came to see itself as an inclusive faith.  Almost immediately, foreigners and people of all social classes were drawn to the image of Christ.  Unlike most faiths that spread along national or ethnic lines, Christianity dared to include all of humanity, even to include some groups that others would not touch.  Like the Three Kings, all are invited to Adore and, in their worship, understand themselves more fully.

     We come to search like God when we see ourselves gathering people together in love.  We search like God when we reach out to people that others exclude, when we build community with all the people we meet, when we free people up to talk about their longings and needs.  We search like God when we make God’s encompassing love the vision out of which we act.  The Star rising in the East is the promise of love finally extended throughout the whole human community.

     Admittedly, with our masks and cautions, approaching others has gotten more complicated since March. But, in some ways, the common handicap we have had to live with has shown that we are all in the same boat: our masks and bottles of sanitizer show how vulnerable we all are.  Our covered faces force us to look each other in the eyes and makes us see each other as the mysteries we are.

     We have many reasons to say Good Riddance to 2020.  But it has taught us some important things about what it means to search and what it means to    belong.  And it can remind us that God continues to search for us—until we realize that we belong to each other because ultimately we all belong to God.

Holy Family B

     Given all the political wrangling, we still do not have the final results of the 2020 Census in the United States.  This number is important because it shapes how funding will happen through government programs for the next ten years.  But it will also tell us other interesting things, particularly the breakdown of age brackets.  The last time I looked, for example, the numbers of people under 18 ranged near 22%, just a bit more than the numbers of people who are 65 and older, some 20%.  Each of these is still a huge market share for commerce today.

     The older group has gotten a lot of attention because of the disproportionately higher death rate from the coronavirus; these are the folks who are slated to receive the vaccine earlier than others.  The image of Simeon and Anna in the Gospel today, both of them part of the older age bracket for their times, makes us ask what we look forward to when we age, particularly when we will have far fewer days ahead then those which have already passed.

     Beyond concern for their own well-being, a we have a growing concern given the numbers of aged people who live alone and can no longer drive; most older people transfer their dreams to younger generations, first their own children and then, perhaps even more, to their grandchildren.  It used to be that each generation wanted the next one to have things a bit better; now, we will be content if our grandchildren can live in a country free from political divisions and with relative economic stability.  No one foresaw what we have had to live through this past year, and no one would wish that on anyone.

     But Simeon and Anna show us a larger vision yet.  Their concerns go beyond the needs of family and friends.  They have a vision which can deepen particularly in old age: they are looking for redemption, for salvation, for a whole new way of living between humans and God.  Simeon truly catches our attention because, in the child Jesus, he sees redemption for Israel and light for all humankind. His hopes have been fulfilled and he feels he can die in peace. 

     But his is not a candy-coated vision.  He sees that salvation itself will be a problem for many because the prospect of living a whole new way, united to God and with each other, will evoke opposition and contradiction.  It will expose the hearts and thoughts of many; Jesus will force us to see the real values that motivate us, and the ones that do not.

     What does the coming of Jesus evoke in us?  If the child Jesus were placed in our arms, what would we see?  What would be our dreams and hopes?  Is our vision in any way expansive?  Do we see God acting on behalf of all humankind, or is our faith still pretty much centered around the things that preoccupy our immediate concerns?  Are we part of the light that God is sending for all the nations?

     Christmas challenges us to get beyond our own private circle of concerns, whether it’s our age group, or our immediate fears, or our personal and family interests.  Christmas challenges us to love the world, and all its peoples, despite contradictions and opposition.  Christmas invites us to see in the baby Jesus the flesh he assumed on behalf of all people, the flesh of humankind itself.  Once we have come to that vision, then we can rest more easily because we know better what God is working for, and what we must be working for as well.

Advent B 4

    So where are we? 

     We might ask this in terms of our pandemic, with all our concerns about safety, masks, and the vaccine we believe will save us.  We can ask this in terms of Christmas, our shopping and wrapping, our cards, and any travel plans we might have.  And lots of people are asking this as they run out of the little money they had trying to keep their heads above water.  And some even continue to ask it about our presidential election.     

     But our Gospel asks us where we are in relationship to God.  This Gospel, read so frequently during our Church year whenever we celebrate Mary, but read even more during this Advent period, presents ways for us to answer the question: where are we?  Although we think of this Gospel as a slam-dunk—the Angel visits and we then have the Messiah—it shows different stages in Mary’s reaction, stages that can be of help to us.

    Mary’s first reaction is fear.  She doesn’t know what is going on. She cannot fathom Gabriel’s greeting, generous as it was to her.  His words  leave her disturbed and puzzled.  This first reaction of Mary shows where a lot of people are in terms of God: we fear God, and we are puzzled by God.  And we can stay stuck in this stage because, in a way, it can make us feel justified.  God is the one who causes fear; we are just trying to escape God’s fierceness.

    Mary’s next reaction is question-asking.  “Who are you and how is this to happen?"  And many people are content with this stage in their relationship with God because as long as we can ask questions, the ball is in God’s court.  We can imagine that we have the upper hand.  Many people who are not connected with church ask questions all the time, but so do many people who consider themselves believers.  Asking questions has created a whole industry  which we call theology.  But this can keep us distant from God and not bring us closer.

    But the final reaction of Mary is the one that challenges us.  She hears and accepts God’s direction in her life.  She shows what St. Paul calls “the obedience of faith.”  But we need to unpack this idea because “obedience” for us usually means being subservient to someone more powerful.  The word actually means hearing at a deeper level.  Obedience is when we are formed by God’s word because that word is speaking to our deepest needs.  Obedience is not being forced; it’s accepting God and God’s love in a fuller, deeper way.

    The first reading shows us that the project of faith isn’t what we do for God--but what we let God do for us and in us.  As we await the coming of a child, the tenderest and most vulnerable form human life can take, we stand with Mary, putting aside the false approaches we have constructed to God, and looking for the signs of divine love that we can make more fully our own.

Advent B 3

     “How do you want me to introduce you?”  I get asked this very often, especially when I was able to travel more, because my hosts want to let people know why they brought me in to speak.  I think of the audience, what their interests might be, and try to say a few sentences about who I am.  It’s a little like joining a group and all the folks in the circle get to introduce themselves—what will I say to the others in the group?

     It’s a very different thing, however, to try and think of what not to say, to try and say who you are not.  “I’m not from Kansas and I don’t know much math, etc”.  Yet that seems to be exactly what John is aiming to do in the Gospel today.  People come out in the desert to ask who he is.  They are almost saying: “Who do you think you are?”  He wants to make sure that they know who he is not: “I am not the messiah.”

     This seems to be a very important clue that John the Baptist is giving us: in this time of confusion and limitation, that we know more clearly who we are not.  Just as John has to understand himself in humility—I am not worthy to untie his sandal—so we are now forced to understand ourselves in terms of humility—how we have been brought to our knees by this global virus and by the confusion it has brought about in us.

     One of the gifts of Advent is the way it asks us to make an estimation of ourselves.  This estimation is not principally in terms of all the gifts that we have.  More pointedly, Advent asks us to look at ourselves in terms of our needs, how we need to long for something, for Someone, beyond ourselves.  Advent comes to us at the darkest point in the year to teach us that salvation ultimately must come from beyond ourselves—it has to come from God.

     John the Baptist is clear that he comes as a witness.  He does not come as the light, but as one who gives testimony to the light.  He does not come as the Word but as the voice that calls attention to the Word.  He comes to fulfill his role—to announce that salvation does not come from him, but from the one who comes after him, the one Anointed by God.

     We might be tempted in our own arrogance to attribute our arrogance to God. But the first reading makes clear how Jesus is to come to us: Anointed by the Spirit, he brings good news to the poor, and messages of freedom to the imprisoned, and healing to the lame and the blind.  He comes fully aware of our brokenness and fully willing to share in that brokenness himself.  In many ways it’s our mistaken self-importance that gets in the way of seeing God and others.

     Can we be content, then, with the identity we have been given from God?  Can we be content as disciples of Jesus, sent by him to serve others, to especially attend to those who are in need, who are hurting, who feel too ashamed to come to near to God?  Can we be content to be the missionary disciples that Christ has called us to be?

     Ultimately, what is important is not who we are, and not who we are not.  Ultimately, what’s important is who we are in Christ. \

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     Reflection: What part of my prideful self gets in the way of seeing and serving God and others?

Advent B 2

     When you hear the phrase, “It’s no longer business as usual,” how does it make you feel?

      Let’s face it, there’s a huge part of us that likes business as usual.  We can figure out what’s likely to happen during our day, including the amount of work we have to do and what our income might be.  Because of this predictability, special things like feasts or pieces of art stand out even more in our lives.  Just look at what a disruption this pandemic has been to our “business as usual” lives?

      So when John begin his ministry on the Jordan, it’s a bit surprising that so many people were drawn to him.  These earliest verses in Mark’s Gospel make it sound like John was the equivalent of the American appearance of the Beatles.  People could not get enough of him.  Mark’s language is meant to evoke in us jus how powerful John’s message was.  “It’s not business as usual!”

      The folk who came clearly wanted to put something behind themselves.  John proclaimed a baptism for the forgiveness of sins.  There were certain sects at that time which practiced a ritual of water purification almost as part of their daily lives.  But John’s baptism was something different.  This was not joining a kind of monastic group; this was part of becoming part of a movement.  People wanted disruption—in their own lives and in the life of their society.

      We know from our own current experience that movements are not always welcomed.  “If you don’t like the country, leave it,” people say.  Movements can make it look like we are all going to lose something important to our daily life.  What would it meant to be part of the movement that John was stirring up?  “A baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  What people wanted to lose was that part of their lives that set God aside, that did not take God seriously as the center of their existence.

      But if John came in the desert to begin this movement, Isaiah presents the voice of God coming at another time in Jewish life proclaiming that business as usual was ending.  Only this was not a disruption of daily life; it was a disruption of the decades-long exile that the Jewish people suffered at the hands of Babylon.  In other words, if God would disrupt the daily life that we feel comfortable with, God can also disrupt the broken lives that need to be healed.  “Comfort, give comfort to my people; speak tenderly to Jerusalem.”

      Advent is a time when God wants to disrupt our lives, when God invites us to look at the things we have come to accept as our ordinary lives.  Because we develop patterns that blur our vision of God, that put God in boxes that we feel we can control.  But God’s invites us with purpose: to help us put behind ourselves that things that exile us from the true and deepest values in our lives.  God comforts us by giving us a way to find reconciliation with each other as well as with God.

      You might have seen the recent story of the monolith sculpture, a large bar of iron, that people discovered in the desert in Utah.  Who put it there and what does it mean?  But, suddenly, just as mysteriously it disappeared last week.  It’s curious that we would be all abuzz about a slab of metal but not abuzz about the voices of the prophets God continues to send our way.

Advent B 1

     When it comes to waiting, New Yorkers are probably the worst in the world.  Why wait for the light to change; why be held up by someone driving too slow; why do I have to be stuck behind some old person trying to get up the stairs.  Please, let’s get a move on.  I’ve got things to do!

      For New Yorkers, waiting seems like a total waste.  There are deadlines, appointments, meetings, phone calls, and a million other things that could be happening in the meantime.  Waiting is dead space, an emptiness that has to be filled with something else. Look how often we have complained about quarantining, even when we have TV, books, phones and many other distractions.  It still feels empty and boring.

      But aren’t there different kinds of waiting?  With so many people sick, what kind of waiting happens until they feel better?  Behind the loss of energy, people are sharply alert to even the smallest signs of getting better—did the fever go down, am I breathing easier, did the cough stop? 

      A different kind of waiting, yet, is that done by people in hospice.  What could be a very empty and frightening space gets filled by the care that different people show, the nurses and care givers, the friends and family members.  Space that could be empty is filled by freely given care.

      Think of the kind of waiting I imagine a pregnant woman is doing, especially as she detects signs of the new life that is growing within her.  This kind of waiting is not emptiness, is not dead time, but rather something like expectation, anticipation.  She can feel the goal of her waiting right inside of her.  She’s not waiting alone; she is waiting with . . . with her family, her friends, and especially with the baby whom she sustains by her body.

      What kind of waiting will Advent be for us?  Certainly for many in our culture, the time before Christmas is frantic with many of us going down our lists of things we have to do until we arrive at Christmas, nearly exhausted.  We feel the impatience of Isaiah who cries out: O that you would tear heaven apart and come down to save us right now!  It feels like a child who can sense that new and much-desired toy, who can’t wait to tear apart the ribbon and the wrapping.

      Jesus uses a special word for the waiting he asks us to do: Watch he says.  Watching is waiting with intention.  Watching is knowing that something is coming and keeping alert for the slightest signs of its arrival.  Watching is waiting in such a way that the waiting shapes us, helps prepare us, and makes us ready for the very thing we expect.  Instead of emptiness, the waiting of Jesus is filled with purpose, with suspense, with readiness.

      This Advent, we can wait this way because, in a sense, all of creation also waits with longing and expectation.  God built a dynamic force into creation, built it into us, so that the reality of God might grow within us, until it comes to expression in Christ Jesus.  We are not waiting alone.  Not only does all creation wait with us, but Jesus himself waits alongside of us, working toward the fullness of his coming at the end of time. 

      Advent’s question to us: can we learn to watch for, watch with, and watch in Christ Jesus?