Homily for Sunday, 27 October 2013

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
World Youth Sunday 

Readings of the day: Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18; Psalm 34:2-3, 17-18, 19, 23; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14

How many of us gathered here are in middle school, high school, or college? How many of you are involved in some form of service activity in your school; in your community; in the Church?

Maybe you are part of a peer support group at school, or you tutor other students, or you are on a student council, or you are involved in social justice initiatives through your school. Maybe you help to feed, clothe, and shelter the poor, or advocate for pro-life causes. Maybe you write for a school yearbook or newspaper, or play a sport or are a member of a band or choir. Maybe you do volunteer work. Maybe you are an altar server. Maybe you support a friend who struggles with their faith, or you are accompanying someone who has recently become Catholic or is thinking about it. Maybe you minister with seniors. You probably serve your school; your community; your Church in many ways I have not mentioned…

Often young people do not think of how many ways they serve their community; their country; their Church unless someone asks, and how much this service means to people you serve and, yes, to the Church.

The Church blesses all its people of all ages who serve God through the Church but also through broader society. Particularly on this World Youth Sunday, our youth will receive a special blessing during this Mass. The Church blesses you; God blesses you, our young people; all people of St. Kateri Parish, and your service to others and to the Church.

In light of this, I do not wish to dampen your joy and enthusiasm in serving others, and yet if we are attentive to today’s readings just proclaimed, God’s and the Church’s blessing for all the wonderful ways you are serving and acting as God has created us to serve and act comes with a caution.

Many of us could probably re-tell Jesus’ parable in today’s Gospel about the Pharisee and the tax collector almost by heart. The Pharisee stands before God in the temple and lists his accomplishments. His holiness is exemplary and to be encouraged: He fasts twice a week and gives more than fairly of his income to worthy causes, he obeys all the religious laws to the letter, and he lives moderately, is honest, and faithful and chaste.

Meanwhile, the tax collector, who would have been regarded as a traitor to his own Jewish people for charging them taxes above the amount to be paid to the occupying Romans in order to make himself rich, cannot even lift his eyes to God in prayer. In his shame, the tax collector pleads, “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

We know that the tax collector, not the Pharisee, ends up right with God. But who among us has ever stopped to ask why the tax collector “went home justified” before God at the end of this parable?

The answer to this question seems easy. The Pharisee is boastful, whereas the tax collector humbly recognizes what all of us are called to acknowledge: That all of us are sinners and that there is no salvation without God.

The Pharisee’s prayer is not, in fact, a prayer. In our Gospel reading we hear that the Pharisee “speaks [his] prayer to himself,” not in gratitude to God. The tax collector actually prays to God for mercy. The Pharisee even says, “Thank God I am not like the rest of humanity… or even like this tax collector.” How arrogant can one be?!

Now let us bring this parable into the context of the present. I speak primarily, but not exclusively, to the young people among us. Youthful exuberance and a willingness to serve one another, to serve the Church, and to serve God are wonderful and blessed. However, have any of us ever listed off, even in prayer, what we have done that should earn favour from other people and even from God?

Imagine this as a prayer: “Lord, I help others in need at school; at work; in my community; in the Church. I give of my time and talents; I give of my income to worthy causes. I defend life from conception to natural death, and I support those in public office who also do so. I live moderately and chastely. I am not aggressive or rude or a bully.”

“Thank God that I am not like the kid who has trouble learning at school or the kid who does not ‘fit in’; that I am gainfully employed or studying, not like that street person; that I am not like the person whose family is in crisis; that I am not like the person who has contemplated, carried out, or participated in an abortion; that I am not like that dishonest politician whose party’s policies I oppose.”

“Thank God I am not like that Pharisee in Jesus’ parable… Or am I?”

The truth is that we are all “like the rest of humanity”; like that Pharisee in today’s Gospel at one time or another, and to be like the Pharisee is usually a good way to be. In Jesus’ time, most Pharisees were well-respected teachers of the Jewish faith. They were not exceptionally rich, nor did they live extravagantly. Most Pharisees did their best to practice the Jewish Law that they preached. Some Pharisees were among the most valued early Christian disciples.

A young, energetic person of Jesus’ time would have wanted to serve as a Pharisee! This is why Jesus’ parable in today’s Gospel works so well. The maligned, traitorous tax collector adds shock value to the story. Who would want to be like him when I could be like the righteous Pharisee? Jesus’ assertion that the repentant tax collector “went home justified” would have been scandalous to many of his hearers. Unfortunately, the shock value of the tax collector is lost on many of us today, even if we know this parable almost by rote. 

But all is not lost for the Pharisee. All is not lost (in fact there is much to be gained) for us who are in many ways like the Pharisee. The parable ends short of saying whether the Pharisee ever repented of his self-righteous “prayer-to-self” and, maybe later, prayed to God in thanksgiving for the gifts God gave him to teach and put into practice before the people he served. 

Especially to our young people gathered here (although I address this to all of us): The parable in our Gospel reading today invites us to be like the repentant tax collector. It also invites us to be like the Pharisee; to finish the Pharisee’s prayer in a way that puts us right with one another and with God.

Now try this prayer: Thank you, God, for the blessing of youth. Thank you for the energy and exuberance that you have given to me, so that I might serve your people at school, in my community, in the Church.

I thank you that I am just like the rest of humanity: blessed; gifted; learning from your wisdom and the wisdom of others; loved by you and by other people; in need of your loving and saving presence, O God.

For the times when I have thought your gifts to be my own; when I have prayed to myself in arrogance instead of to you in thanksgiving; when I have set myself apart from those less visibly gifted; from “the rest of humanity,” “Lord have mercy on me, a sinner!”

The parable of our Gospel reading, placed in today’s context, might then end like this: Having made this prayer to God in thanksgiving and for mercy, the young person (or at least the person young at heart), already blessed beyond measure, went home justified before God.