Homily for Thursday, 2 July 2015– Ferial

Thursday of the 13th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Genesis 22:1b-19;  Psalm 115:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9; Matthew 9:1-8

Have you ever encountered somebody (or have you been somebody) who trusts another person; trusts you; trusts God to the point that this person would do anything for the person she or he trusts? Can this kind of unfailing trust not sometimes appear to us to be naïve?

We hear in our readings today of people with great depth of trust in another. First we hear of Abraham, who has such faith in God that he is willing to sacrifice his only son, Isaac on a makeshift altar in the wilderness of Moriah. And then we hear in Matthew’s Gospel reading of the trust some in the crowds had in Jesus’ ability to heal a paralytic whom they bring to Jesus “on a stretcher.” Matthew contrasts the trust in Jesus of those who bring the paralytic to him and the lack of trust; the lack of faith of “some of the scribes,” those we would expect to have the deepest trust and faith in God but do not.

On the surface, does our Gospel reading of Jesus’ healing of the paralytic not seem much more believable to us than Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis? To me it seems far-fetched that God would ask of Abraham, and Abraham would be willing to carry out, the sacrifice of his only son, only to have a “messenger” of the LORD stop him just as he is about to kill Isaac. Would God ask this of Abraham after promising Abraham and Sarah for many years that they would have a child together; that this child would be the first of many descendants, numbered as the stars? I think this would be highly unlikely.

Jesus’ healing of the paralytic is much more believable than Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac. At least the people of Israel in Jesus’ time knew of Jesus’ reputation as a healer. It is not a surprise that they bring the paralytic and many others to him who are in need of healing. If anything the unbelief of “some of the scribes” is somewhat exaggerated here in Matthew’s Gospel. Their charge of blasphemy seems to be illogical; a charge out of nowhere against Jesus, whom many religious leaders of the day felt was a threat to their authority.

But despite the far-fetched elements of our readings, is there not a parallel between them: Limitless trust? Our God’s ability and willingness to ensure our good is limitless, and so are we not invited to have trust in God that is equally limitless?

If we trust in God without limits, God will often go beyond what we have trusted in God to do for us. Abraham trusted that God would keep his promise to Abraham of descendants in faith in unlimited number, even as God was seemingly asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Abraham trusted that, as Sr. Sandra Schneiders, IHM, says, God is not a God of destruction. Even if Abraham had sacrificed Isaac, something greater; somehow life-giving would arise from this. And the paralytic and many in the crowds in Mark’s Gospel are rewarded for their trust more than they could have imagined. Not only is the paralytic healed, but his sins are forgiven!

The reward is great, and maybe even a bit far-fetched, when we trust limitlessly in our God.

Homily for Thursday, 12 March 2015‒ Thursday of the Third Week of Lent

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 7:23-28; Psalm 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9; Luke 11:14-23

Have any of us ever been so frustrated with somebody else’s poor choices or bad habits that we have been close to giving up on this person?

We hear through Jeremiah in our first reading of a God who is perhaps on the cusp of giving up on God’s people; the people of Israel. Instead of following God’s commandments, “From the day that [their] fathers left the land of Egypt… they… stiffened their necks and [did] worse than their fathers.” God also says to Jeremiah that the people of Israel are so mired in evil that “they will not listen to you either.” God has all but given up on Israel. They will be left to the consequences of their evil; left under the power of other nations.

The same could be said of Jesus toward the crowds in our Gospel reading today who had seen him cast out a demon. Jesus appears to have all but given up on those who say, “By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he drives out demons.” Jesus leaves them to the consequences of their divisive, evil attitude: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”

I think the key words are “all but”: God all but gives up on the people of Israel in Jeremiah; Jesus all but gives up on the stubborn crowds who accuse him of channeling Satan’s power. God may all but give up on some especially wicked people in our own time, but we are promised that, as frustrated as God may become with human evil, God will never give up on us. And we are urged to act as God acts; not to give up on one another, as frustrating as another’s poor choices or habits, or even the state of our world, so full of violence and a lack of mercy, may become to us.

How can we be so confident that God never gives up on us? We can be confident in this if we listen attentively to our readings today. God has the prophet Jeremiah rebuke the people of Israel as “the nation that does not listen to the voice of the LORD, its God.” Even so, God has sent these people Jeremiah. And God will send still more prophets to them after Jeremiah. God never gives up on the people of Israel, no matter how wicked and hard-hearted they have become.

Finally, God has sent us Jesus. No matter how wicked we become (this is certainly no excuse to test God; we understand this); no matter how many times we have sinned, God sent us his only Son to live as one of us in all but sin, to die for us; to rise and to ascend to heaven for us; to save us. God will never give up on us.

God invites us, then, not to give up on one another. God invites us not to give up on ourselves and on God; not to think any of our sins are so great as to be beyond God’s mercy. Instead, God calls us to respond with hearts open to mercy; to forgiveness toward one another, toward ourselves, and toward our world.

Homily for Sunday, 8 March 2015

3rd Sunday in Lent

Readings of the day: Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19:8, 9, 10, 11; 1 Corinthians 1:22-25; John 2:13-25

Here is maybe a difficult question: In whom do we trust? To any of us who have a U.S. bill or coin on hand, I ask us to take it out and look at it. What do our bills and coins say on them about who we trust? They all say, “In God we trust.” This makes our task of knowing in whom we trust easier, right? If our money says, “In God we trust,” it must be true.

If only our answer the question, “In whom do we trust?” were that easy! And even if we are able to answer this question with “God,” are we not then invited to answer some even more difficult questions: In what kind of God do we trust? How do we understand and experience God, so that we are able to trust in God? The trouble, for me at least, is that our readings only help us with these questions if we are attentive to one common way, in our readings today and in all of Scripture, in which God makes God’s self known to us. And what is this common way in Scripture; in our readings today in which God makes God’s self known to us? What is the one consistent trait of God in which we are invited to trust? Stay tuned…

But if we are not so attentive to the one consistent way in which God reveals God’s self to us does God not seem woefully inconsistent to us, especially in the readings we have just heard?

Perhaps when we first hear the Ten Commandments that God gives to Moses on Mount Sinai in our first reading, from Exodus, might our first impression of God be that he is somewhat mean? God promises “mercy down to the thousandth generation” to those who obey his Commandments, but this is only after promising “punishment… down to the third and fourth generations” on those who disobey God’s Commandments. If God were really a God of mercy and kindness, why would God threaten to curse those who disobeyed him at all? It would seem that we cannot trust God to be merciful and kind all the time, depending on how we hear these Ten Commandments.

Our first reading also raises the problem of the anonymous God. The “Big Guy in the Sky” shouts down commands at us from a pillar of fire, just like the one in the Cecil B. DeMille movie, “The Ten Commandments.” God does not seem very friendly. He does not even introduce himself to us by name. God just begins by telling us to do a few things and not to do many other things: “I Am… I Am… I Am the LORD, thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” God is so anonymous; so distant that whoever played God’s voice in “The Ten Commandments” was not included in the credits at the end of the film.

I must admit that God sounded awesome back in 1956. To some of us, Charlton Heston as Moses looked almost as awesome as God back then! And those divine sound effects and fire were well ahead of their time. But, in the Biblical version of the Ten Commandments if not in the movie version, God still may seem distant; anonymous. God shouts forth the Ten Commandments, engraving them with his fingers on stone tablets (I wish my fingers were that strong). God blesses all who obey his Commandments, but curses all who disobey them, all from a distance, as the “I Am” hidden behind a pillar of fire.

I would have difficulty trusting in this kind of God. Would you? I would have difficulty with a God who shouts at us, let alone when people shout at one another. When I was a child, one of my favorite comic strips in the newspaper was called “One Big Happy.” This comic strip centers on six-year-old Ruthie and her eight-year-old brother, Joe. One day, as Ruthie and Joe are arguing, Ruthie says, “Stop shouting at me, Joey! Shouting is against the Ten Commandments”! Joe asks, “Which one”? Ruthie responds, “All of them! They all begin with ‘Thou shout not…”!

And yet if God shouts out the Ten Commandments, God’s shouting, in the person of Jesus, is even worse in our Gospel reading today. God is no longer anonymous and distant as in giving Moses the Ten Commandments. In Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple in John’s Gospel, God is just plain angry: “Take these out of here,” Jesus shouts at the people selling doves near the Temple as he overturns the money changers’ tables, “and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” I cannot say this for sure, because John’s Gospel does not say so, but I wonder how important a role Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple played in his death. At the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in John, during his first visit to Jerusalem, Jesus becomes violently angry in the Jewish faith’s holiest place, the Temple. Would the cleansing of the Temple, followed by Jesus’ claims in John’s Gospel especially to be God, “I Am,” so offended the people that they would demand that Pontius Pilate have him crucified? Did the people of Israel; the religious leaders in particular, become so unable to trust a God who could be so angry with them that they decided to kill him?

The Cross of Jesus Christ presents us with yet another challenge in knowing and trusting in God. This challenge is at the heart of our second reading, from St. Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians. St. Paul says that “Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified.” We also hear, “For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” Is this not a strange argument to trust in God? Who would trust in a God who is foolish; who is weak; who would submit himself to die a shameful death on a cross? Would St. Paul have been very successful at first in convincing the Corinthians, seekers of “signs” and of “wisdom”; Jews and Greeks alike in his audience, to trust in this kind of God? Somehow I doubt it. But eventually our Christian faith gained enough believers; enough people to trust in God even in stubborn Corinth, and around the world.

Why is this? Again, what is the one consistent trait of God in which we are invited to trust? What is the trait of God in which two thousand years of Christians and our sisters and brothers in the faith of Abraham, the Jews and Muslims, have come to trust? This trait is not that God will only bother us when God wants to shout laws at us, is angry at us, or when we want something from God. This trait is not that God is, in a strange way, so foolish and weak that he is actually wise and strong. These arguments to trust in God are not very persuasive, I do not think.

So why would we trust in God? I think we trust in God the more we understand and experience God as the God who wants a relationship with us; who invites us to strengthen our relationships with one another. God does not give us the Ten Commandments just to be mean to us while retreating into the distance behind a pillar of fire. No, God gives us the Ten Commandments to govern and strengthen right relationships with God and with one another.

Jesus did not clear the money changers and their goods out of the Temple just because he felt especially angry that day. No, Jesus invites us to put aside barriers to right relationship with God and with one another: Wealth when it does not serve people in need but selfishly feeds a “marketplace” mentality, even among people of faith.

And St. Paul speaks to us of a God who so desires relationship with us that, in Christ, he willed to die for us; to save us. And so we, too, “proclaim Christ crucified.” Not only on our coins, but in our hearts and on our lips, we as Christians can and do proclaim, “In God we trust.”  

Homily for Saturday, 7 March 2015– Commemoration of Sts. Felicity and Perpetua

Saturday of the 2nd week of Lent

Readings of the day: Micah 7:14-15, 18-20; Psalm 103:1-2, 3-4, 9-10, 11-12; Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

Has anybody here ever experienced making a bad choice, possibly even sinning, when somebody else, especially somebody in authority (a parent or grandparent; a teacher; your employer perhaps) knew you were about to make a bad choice but did not warn you not to make this choice?

What about the “Prodigal” Son and his father in today’s Gospel reading? What was the father’s first reaction to his younger son’s demand for his share of his estate? If I were the father in our Gospel reading, I may have thought: “This will not end well. My son will spend his share of my inheritance unwisely, will find himself in need, and then come home asking for a handout.”

As the eldest child of my family, I may have thought: “The eldest is usually the obedient, responsible type. The youngest is stereotypically playful and causes all the trouble. To give the youngest son a large share of the estate is probably not a good idea. I should warn him not to spend all his money irresponsibly.” In reality, I have made (and grown from) my share of irresponsible choices. My brother Eric, meanwhile, gives me many reasons to rejoice in him. He is, like the stereotypical youngest sibling, easygoing, funny, and even playful. But he is also very responsible and hard-working.

In our Gospel reading today, the father does not warn his younger son away from his irresponsible actions, as I probably would have were I in the father’s place. This father gives his younger son his share of the inheritance and watches him “set off to a distant country.” The father respects his son’s free will.

What sadness the father must have felt for his younger son! The years pass. The father worries about his son’s well-being: “It is not like my son to give no sign of life: No letters home; not even for birthdays and important holidays. Telephones, text messaging, and Facebook have not been invented yet for faster communication. Should I file a missing person report? I suppose I will need to wait… And wait…”

One day, the father sees a small shadow on the horizon. It gets bigger; closer. “It is my son! I thought he was dead; he was gone so long! Throw a party for him!”

“Wait a minute,” the responsible eldest son says to his father, “‘All these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders,’ and you want to put on this great feast for that wild little brother of mine”?

“My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’” This is our God to us. God does not warn us when we are about to behave irresponsibly. No, God respects our free will, which is itself God’s gift to us; our share of God’s own free will.

And when we become lost by our irresponsible actions; distant from God because of sin, our Prodigal Father waits for us, ready to put on a great feast when we return home.

Homily for Thursday, 26 February 2015‒ Thursday of the First Week of Lent

Readings of the day: Esther C:12, 14-16, 23-25; Psalm 138:1-2ab, 2cde-3, 7c-8; Matthew 7:7-12

For what do we often ask of God or of other people? Perhaps ultimately we ask to be loved; respected; accepted for who we are. God naturally loves us; accepts us for who we are, while challenging us, especially through this Lenten season, to turn from sin and grow and be renewed in our love for God and for one another. God’s love for us is self-evident, even if readings like those we hear today necessarily remind us of the love of God for us. Our readings also call us to deepen our love for one another: “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets,” Jesus says. This is our faith’s “Golden Rule.”

We ask God and one another to love; to respect; to accept us. In faith we are invited and challenged to love; respect; to accept others and to love God in return: “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.”

And yet our readings also encourage us to ask God and one another for what we need, and to expect confidently that our needs will be met. But what are these needs we are encouraged to ask God and one another to meet? Do not many of us have some, often healthy, aversion to asking for too much, especially of God? Should our prayer not be less of petition; of asking for things, but of gratitude and sometimes penance? Perhaps, but today’s readings show that petition to God and to one another can be effective and appropriate in many circumstances.

We hear of Queen Esther in our first reading. Esther grows up in the court of the Persian Emperor, who has turned against the people of Israel, who are under Persian rule. Esther and her people of Israel find themselves in mortal danger, and so Esther prays to God to spare her life and the lives of her people.

The cause for petition to God in Matthew is not as dire as in Esther. Jesus invites us to ask anything of God as we need it: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

But then what happens when we ask something of God, or another person, and we do not receive what we have asked or prayed for? Is God answering our prayer then? Does God care? Is it possible to pray for something wrong or untimely?

I answer yes to all three questions… But I think our readings challenge us not to view God’s answer to our prayers of petition as some kind of magic: I ask and, “Poof,” I receive! More importantly, our petition and God’s answer to it changes us; renews us. “Ask and you shall receive.” And if we allow ourselves to be changed by our petition and God’s response, we may just become more able to live by Jesus’ Golden Rule: “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.”

Homily for Monday, 23 February 2015‒ Monday of the First Week of Lent

Readings of the day: Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18; Psalm 19:8, 9, 10, 15; Matthew 25:31-46

How many sets of commandments do we know of in the Bible? Most if not all of us know of the Ten Commandments. In fact there are two sets; two very similar versions of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament, one in the Book of Exodus and the other in the Book of Deuteronomy.

Are not most if not all of us familiar with Jesus’ distillation of all the Old Testament commandments, the Law and the prophets, down to two commandments: Love God and love neighbor?

Our first reading today from Leviticus presents us with a series of commandments. These commandments in Leviticus are similar in style to the Ten Commandments. We hear them as a series of laws against particular actions: “You shall not…” After every few laws is the divine emphasis: “I am the LORD.” If we love God and believe that God is the beginning and end of these commandments, we will keep these commandments.

Without changing the substance of the many Old Testament commandments or the sense that God is their beginning and end, Jesus simplifies them while framing them in a positive way: “You shall” in place of “you shall not.” We hear this simplification and positive re-framing of commandments in our Gospel reading today.

But let us not be taken off guard by the simplicity; the positive, even inviting, tone of Jesus’ words. Are there not still stark consequences to acting in favor or against what Jesus teaches? Jesus words are still commandments that we are urged to follow. They are every bit as significant as the Old Testament commands of “you shall not.”

Jesus, as in Leviticus (although perhaps more clearly than in our Old Testament reading), bases his teachings on pressing social concerns. Who are the most vulnerable in Jesus’ time; those most in need of protection? They are “the hungry… the thirsty… the stranger… the naked… the ill” and those “in prison.” The manner in which we act toward these most in need is the manner in which we act toward Christ himself.

Who are the most vulnerable; the most in need in our time? Perhaps they are the unborn; small children; the elderly; the poor person; the person working for a minimum wage that does not suffice to feed, clothe, and shelter her or his family members; the sick; the person with disabilities; the homebound.

“Whatever you did for one of these least… of mine, you did for me.” Jesus’ commandment still stands today: Protect those most in need as though they were Christ. Most if not all of us do well at heeding these teachings of Jesus. Some if not all of us have had experiences in which our actions toward those most in need, or at least our intention behind them, are in need of some purification: Am I acting for my own gain, or because I see Christ in the other person, or a bit of both?

Lent is the great time for this kind of purification of both action and intention; of praying for the strength to follow God’s commandments, especially for the benefit of “the least of [our] brothers” and sisters.