Intimacy is not Built or Maintained on a Whim

Homily for the 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time, 2013

Most of us have fixed points in our days – specific times and routines that are a part of daily life.  For most of us, we have some kind of work routine – a time when we must arrive, a time that we have lunch, a time when we are done.  Some of you are in school and have to navigate class schedules and due dates and fixed exam times.  Many of you are parents who have various fixed points surrounding your children: times that they need to be at school, the times of sports practices or games or various other activities.  And many of you are who are a little older are on medications that must be taken at regular intervals – before or after meals, in the morning or the evening or at other prescribed times.  And then there are a whole host of other fixed points that many of us are aware of: the times when stores open and close, the times of t.v. shows or sports games, the schedules for buses and other forms of transportation.  And of course there is Mass and the time for confession and religious education each week here in the parish.

Life is a maze of fixed points, of routines – and by and large we manage to navigate them.  Every once in a while we get mixed up and miss something, but in general most of us live an adult life that moves from one fixed point to another, and in fact we would consider someone who is incapable of meeting the fixed points around them as lacking in maturity or virtue.

And this would be all well and good in a monastery.  Because in a monastery there are fixed points of prayer and community throughout the day.  At morning, noon, evening, and night the bells in the tower ring and everything gets dropped and abandoned as the community comes together in the chapel for prayer.  Meals are likewise fixed points in the day, usually they follow the times of prayer.  And there are also times of recreation that usually follow meals.  And so there is a prayerful pace of life that the walls of a monastery foster and sustain for those who live inside.

But we don’t live in a monastery… we live in a secular culture that has almost no fixed points that direct us to God during the day.  We might say “well, this is what it is to live in the world, we’re not monks.  We have to make our lives a prayer, we have to pray as we can, we have to fit it in along the way.” That is right, in a sense. That is true.  We do have to fit prayer in to a busy and distracted and secular world.

But when we fit prayer into our day, it can’t all be willy nilly, haphazard and always distracted.  And this is because a “Howdy God” here and a “Hey can you help me on this” there just can’t sustain a healthy Christian life.  It is too superficial, it doesn’t have roots that are deep enough to sustain our Catholic faith and way of life.
If we allow our prayer to become shallow and fragmented, pretty soon we will find that Christ’s teaching has become confusing and hard to understand, that more often than not we are just suffering through Mass, that we have begun to doubt God’s faithfulness or in the reality of the sacraments, and have started to resent the sacrifices that are required in order to follow him.

And this makes sense, doesn’t it?  Those of you who are married know this.  A real relationship, true love cannot exist without moments of undistracted attention, without real listening, without real speaking from the heart.  Intimacy is not built or maintained on a whim.  It is not something that you just fit in when you can, when you can get to it.  If you don’t regularly put everything else aside and give your attention in an undistracted way, even if not for a long time, then the relationship starts to become superficial.  It starts to feel fake.  Soon, especially if that relationship makes any demands upon us, we wonder why we are bothering.

Prayer is the same way.  If we are not setting aside deliberate and undistracted time for prayer, we will begin to lose our connection to God and start to wonder why we are bothering to practice our faith at all.

I am convinced that the real reason that so many Catholics have left the practice of the faith in recent decades is almost entirely due to a lack of prayer in daily life.  In our second reading today we hear St. Paul pleading: “Remain faithful to what you have learned and believed.  I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient.”

Can we do that if we don’t know Christ well?  If we just exchange a few haphazard words as we pass through the day?  No.  It’s not possible.  Our faith will be stunted or lost altogether – either it will be dead as we sit here in the pews or soon we won’t even make it through the doors after a while.

I started by talking about fixed points.  And about monasteries.  We don’t live in them.  But all the same, I hope you can see how critical it is that we be serious about praying.  This week I read an article by Peter Kreeft on prayer.  He is a college professor who lives a busy life.  Here are a few of his thoughts about prayer:

“The major obstacle in most of our lives to just saying yes to prayer, the most popular and powerful excuse we give for not praying, or not praying more, or not praying regularly, is that we have no time.”  He writes. “The only effective answer to that excuse, I find, is a kind of murder. You have to kill something, you have to say no to something else, in order to make time to pray. Of course, you will never find time to pray, you have to make time to pray. And that means unmaking something else.”

“Deciding to do that is the first thing. And you probably won’t decide to do it, only wish to do it, unless you see prayer for what it is: a matter of life or death, your lifeline to God, to life itself.”

Christ tells us in the Gospel that it is a necessity that we pray always without becoming weary.”  A Christian must live a daily existence that is prayerful.  And I think we could say that there is no greater challenge, and no greater joy than achieving a solid prayer life in the midst of the daily routines of a world that no longer has any fixed points that help us turn to God.

You and I must make fixed points of prayer in our day.  Not haphazard, not leftover scraps.  But usually I find it must be in the morning and somewhere we can be undisturbed.  It doesn’t have to be long, it doesn’t have to be a particular thing.  Even if you just sit by yourself and listen, or read, or whatever.  Just chock out some God time, schedule it, insist on it.  Perhaps your children or your wives and husbands or friends will be frustrated at times, it will be inconvenient at times, you will be frustrated at times.  But by our persistence we will be witnessing to our families and to our world that our relationship with Christ is serious, that we are not playing around here.  That God is the one who sustains us.  We acknowledge and proclaim this fact when we pray.

Think of the people around you, your family and friends.  Think about how it would impact you if you saw them set aside time each day to pray – if you saw that they were serious about prayer.  If you witnessed your husband, your wife, your father or mother, your daughter or son, consciously and deliberately turn to God each day in prayer.  Is that not an incredibly reassuring and grounding thought?  Prayer isn’t just good for us.  It also assures and bolsters those around us because it roots us in God who is steadfast and faithful, and makes us a source of strength and assurance for others.  Without disciplined prayer we are like sponges that have no integrity, that soak up everything around us and can be shaped and molded by anything that comes our way. Fixed times of prayer provide structure to life and make us into living stones that God can use to anchor our families, church, and community.  So encourage one another, help one another to pray, like Aaron and Hur who helped Moses to keep his arms raised up.  To quote Peter Kreeft: “The single most important piece of advice I know about prayer is also the simplest: Just do it!”

Clubhouse of the Ineffable?

Homily for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time, 2013

This past week I started yet another debate on facebook.  I like to post links to various articles and things that I am reading, and inevitably someone makes a comment, and then someone comments on that, and next thing you know, you have a conversation thread with over 100 entries of people arguing back and forth on a given issue.  And sometimes the comments can be quite enlightening…

In this particular debate, for example, one of the contributors defined a church as a “clubhouse of the ineffable.”  And I thought of this definition when I read the readings for Mass this weekend.

Because our readings this weekend demonstrate that this idea of a church as a clubhouse is entirely opposed to a Judeo-Christian understanding of who we are and what defines us as men and women of faith, and more specifically as followers of Christ.

Naaman is a Syrian, he is not a member of the club.  And the leper who returns to glorify God after he is healed is a Samaritan, a foreigner, not a member of the club.  Yet Christ says “Stand up and go, your faith has saved you.”

And it is not as if these are the only two examples in the scriptures.
The Old Testament is full of prophetic visions that speak of all people from every nation, from the north, south, east and west, streaming into Jerusalem.  The Jewish people understood that the covenant entrusted to them was meant to extend one day to all people – that their covenant with the Lord did not form a clubhouse for a few chosen, but a sanctuary for all people.

Jesus not only underlines this idea, but he just hammers it again and again.  Need we think of the parable of the Good Samaritan?  His scandalous conversations with the Samaritan woman at the well, his declaring that the pagan centurion had more faith than all of Israel?

Clubhouse?  No, no, no… Christ despised the idea of the church being a clubhouse.  He went after those who acted as if they were the leaders of a club, calling them hypocrites and turning over their tables.

And the Church, from its earliest years, took note.  St. Paul immediately saw that Christians need not be members of the Jewish community.  And the first bishops viciously fought Gnostic attempts to make the Church into some kind of esoteric secret society for the chosen few.
The Church is Catholic, they declared – it is universal.  Christ’s life, his salvation, true Christian religion must be Catholic, must extend to all people.  To be Christian is to be Catholic – the Church cannot be a club, because Christ clearly taught that the person refused membership, who is left outside the gate - is him.

Yet the perception that churches are clubhouses of the ineffable – this is a common perception today, isn’t it?  I think of all the people who say “Well, I’m not a religious person.”  Isn’t what they often mean “I’m not the type to belong to a religious club.”?  I worship God without the rules and dues and politics.  Clubs are so often characterized by politics, by egos, by who can do what and who can’t do what, who has power and who doesn’t.  Especially younger people today - they can’t stand clubs – they don’t join them.  And they shun organized religion as if it were another club.

So let’s look at the New Evangelization.  How many times it seems that the question those promoting the New Evangelization are asking is “How can we get more people to come and be a member of our club?  “The Evangelicals are getting everyone to be a part of their club – look at how cool it is: they are doing all these great things for their members.  What are we doing for our members?”
So many of our protestant friends understand church in this way.  They call those who go to their churches ‘members’ and if they switch churches, they change ‘membership.’  And we sometimes see these huge mega-churches and all of the neat activities that they provide to their members.  So is that what the New Evangelization is about, figuring out what we can do to provide a competitive religious experience in our churches and get people to switch membership to our Catholic club?

No, no, no!  I don’t know how to be more emphatic about this!  That is a dead end!  It is not Catholic, it is not even Christian.  Christianity is universal, it is Catholic, it is for everyone – there are no members, there are no insiders and outsiders, it is the furthest thing from a club!

And this is because what makes us the Church is not us!  We are made into the Church by Christ, who gathers us into one and makes us members of his body.  It is not we who choose him, but he who chooses us.  He gives us faith – and as we see in the readings today, his gift of faith transcends the boundaries of any earthly clubhouse.  Our identity is in Christ, we are HIS people, members of HIS flock, the flock that HE shepherds and gathers from among all the nations.  Our Psalm response today proclaims loudly “The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power.”

So if a church, if St. Joseph’s is not a clubhouse, what is it?  Ahhh!  Now we are getting somewhere!  What would we call this place?  A place of encounter?  A visible sign and tangible expression of Christ’s saving work in our community?  A precious refuge and sanctuary freely offered to all people?  We could go on.  The second Vatican council calls the church a building of living stones, a sheepfold, a boat on the seas of life.   Pope Francis recently called local churches field hospitals.

But how many of our neighbors see this church that way?    I’m afraid not too many.  How do we show them the truth?  How do you and I witness to the Catholicity of our faith?

Two thoughts:
The first is that we must live a communion of life with Christ outside of these walls.  If we walk with Christ throughout the week, then it will be more clear to our community that this place is not a club, but instead a place where we come to celebrate and deepen and offer back to God the life that we live with him all week long.  When we live with Christ in daily life, the walls of our church become transparent to our community and it becomes clear that this cannot be a clubhouse, since there are no walls keeping Christ in or keeping them out – Christ walks freely with us wherever we are – he is not trapped in a clubhouse.

Secondly: the places that we build and the way we act in our churches is important in communicating our Catholicity.  There is a problematic trend in recent decades - we have been building our churches out in the suburbs, and have set them up in a way that increasingly resembles a country club.  The enthusiastic greeters at the door smile and say “Welcome to OUR church!”  which sounds an awful lot like “Welcome to OUR club!”  to those who visit.

Maybe what we should really be saying is “Welcome to your Church!  You didn’t even know it, but you have one!  We’ve been keeping it open for you and waiting for you to arrive!”
That’s one of the things that I loved about churches in Europe.  There, the churches are in the center of town and the door is always open.  There is no sense of membership – anyone wandering down the street, sometimes even a stray cat or dog, can wander in and find a place of prayer and refreshment.

Does this community see our church as their church?  That this is a building that we keep open for them?  Our churches must communicate catholicity: they must be understood to exist for all people in the community, regardless of their spiritual or religious background or leanings.  Everyone who lives in this town is a parishioner, either actually or potentially, because everyone who lives in this town is called to be a saint in Christ.  The membership requirement for Christ is that we be human.  Every single person who lives in this town meets that criteria, not just those who receive envelopes.

In our readings this weekend we hear the stories about how two foreigners, two outsiders, a Syrian and a Samaritan, are led by the Holy Spirit and are amazed and profoundly grateful to find healing and redemption in an encounter with the true God.  What about the outsiders of our day: our pagan and protestant friends and neighbors?  Are we trying to entice them to join our religious club?  Or are we trying to live in the Holy Spirit so that they will find Christ in us and be amazed and profoundly grateful for an encounter with the true God alive in the members of Christ’s body, the Catholic Church?

So Where is Your Cross?

We had missionary sisters visiting and speaking in place of the homily this week, so I am instead posting a homily that I gave for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time back in 2010.  

Here is a link to the readings:  http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/090813.cfm

Jesus’ words in today’s gospel could not have been easy for his disciples to hear.  

He made it clear that discipleship, if it was to be genuine, would place an incredible demand on their lives, would bestow upon them certain duties and obligations – a heavy responsibility that they were called to shoulder.

No one that I know of likes to talk about the duties and obligations that come from being a person of faith – the demands that our faith places on our shoulders.  

I wonder if part of the reason for that is that there already seem to be so many duties and responsibilities that we all shoulder each day.

If we have children, they lay a claim on our lives – this is clear from the very first moments of the first child’s birth.  

You can never stop being a father or mother.

And while our parents are still living there are certainly duties and responsibilities that we have to them in turn – they brought us into this world, and we will always be indebted to them at a basic, natural level.  

Our brothers and sisters and other family lay a claim on our lives – though we have not chosen them, they are a part of our lives and we have an obligation to look out for their welfare.

If we are married, we have certain duties and responsibilities to our spouse – the promises made at the wedding make it clear that husband and wife have a mutual obligation to work for each others’ good.

And let’s not forget work – the demands that are made of us in order to keep food on the table.  Or the many different social obligations and responsibilities that we have – to friends, neighbors, to our community, our country, etc.  All of these areas lay claim on our lives, they limit what we do and the choices that we make, they often oblige us to do things that we do not want to do.

Do you feel the weight?  

With all of these demands placed upon us, with all of these pressures being brought to bear, life can sometimes feel so heavy, like such toil.  And we can be brought to the point where we wonder if we can keep our heads above water, if we can fulfill so many obligations without losing ourselves in the process.    

I think it was when she reached that point that my mom would sometimes threaten to run away from home.  

I imagine we’ve all been there, we’ve all arrived at the end of a long day only to be asked to give and give and give… more than we feel that we have.  Pushed to the point where we even had a hard time making sense of what was going on around us, 

to where we wondered if our own sanity would start to fail and our lives would start to fall apart.  Maybe it was the job, maybe a huge conflict with our spouse.  Maybe it was in struggling with illness, or in taking care of a loved one.  Maybe it was when the newborn was screaming all night or at 3 in the morning when the paper due the next morning was still in shambles.

In those moments – when there seems to be nothing left except the brutal weight of life’s demands on our shoulders and we feel the weight of them bearing down on us – that’s when we are carrying those crosses that Jesus is talking about.  

And in response to these demands, our Lord gives us only one path forward: pick it up and carry it.  If you want to be a follower of Christ, take up your cross and follow him.  Following his example of obedience and faithfulness, we are called to shoulder the burdens of life with courage, perseverance, and trust.  

I say trust because Christ promises us that it will be in those moments of abandonment to the will of the Lord, that we will be closest to him.  After all, he is very acquainted with crosses, he is the Lord of the cross.  And not only will be close to him, we will also become more self-aware – more aware of who God made us to be.  You want to see what it means to be a man, to be a woman?  Look to the cross.  We hold it up for a reason.  That is the crucified God in whose image and likeness in which we were made.  There is no other image and likeness – there is only one, the one that was crucified, Jesus Christ – true God and true man.

That is hard to accept, sometimes, though, isn’t it.  To accept the image and likeness of God on the cross.  We want to be made in the image and likeness of a God who does not suffer.  Of a God who is a happy angel who just floats away from pain and suffering and sin.  We like to think that God wouldn’t ask us to bear such things.  That he would keep us from having to endure such brutality.

But that’s not the way God is.  That’s not what Jesus showed us.  Instead of running or refusing to submit, Jesus humbled himself, even unto death, Saint Paul tells us in one place, and death on a cross.  Your heart, your mind, your body, your soul – they are made in that image and likeness: and so we can say that every human being is made to carry the cross.  Jesus Christ the cross-bearer is the pattern from which we are all made, who we are called to be.  

It follows, then, that when we do not submit, when we don’t take up our crosses, we become less human.  We betray our hearts, and minds, and bodies – because they are all made in the image and likeness of a cross-bearer.  And an interior conflict begins to eat away at us as we become more alienated from our very selves.  By refusing the cross, we refuse to be truly human.  

Meaning, fulfillment, life, joy – they can only flow from an embrace of the cross in this life.  The more we accept that abandonment, the more we let ourselves be nailed down, poured out for the sake of God and others - the more we will understand who we truly are, who we were made to be.  And the more we will be open to the grace and mission of Jesus Christ, who works through and in our submission to bring about his kingdom of new life in this world.  

Take up your cross and follow Christ.  There is no other way, no other image, no other likeness.  We cannot rise with the Lord if we have not died with him – if we have not carried the cross by his side.  Something deep within each of us that knows this truth – we’ve experienced it over and over.  The peace and fulfillment that comes in those times of greatest sacrifice.  But how often we need to be reminded!

I urge you to honestly ask yourselves, your families today: where are the crosses that you have refused to lift?  The crosses that you are pretending aren’t there or aren’t yours?  Where are the crosses that you are running from?  Where are the crosses that you carry halfheartedly and with resentment?  

Are your crosses too heavy?  You can’t carry them alone?  

Why do you think we’re here?  Why do you think Christ gave us his Church?  Why the Eucharist if not to feed us and give us strength, why Confession if not to help us when we falter?  Why the scriptures if not to give us encouragement?  Why one another if not to sustain each other in prayer and good works?

All these things, all of these gifts, all of this grace that we have received: it is all ordered to one purpose – to help us carry our crosses and follow Christ to new life.  

So where is your cross?  Get down on your knees and hoist those hard, heavy wooden crossbeams back on your shoulders.  Then rise to the full stature and dignity of your humanity: take up your cross and follow Christ.

The Aisles Must Have Room for Stretchers and Crutches

Homily for the 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time, 2013

Something kind of jumped out at me as I read this parable of the rich man and Lazarus in preparation for this weekend: the rich man knew Lazarus’ name and he recognized him, even across the great abyss between heaven and hell.

This fact brings up all kinds of questions.  How many times did he pass Lazarus at that gate?  How often did he see him?  He had learned his name...  Maybe he felt pity for him, maybe he felt bad walking past him.  Maybe he didn’t like to look at him – perhaps he resented the fact that it was his gate that Lazarus had chosen for his spot to beg.

This parable brings to the foreground so many questions about social responsibility, about what it means to love our neighbor.

Christ has told us that whatever we do for the least, we do for him.  And the inverse is true as well, whatever we have not done for the least, we have not done for him.

How can we not take this parable very seriously?  There are beggars on the side of the street that we drive by each day.  There are struggling families here in our community that are dealing with all kinds of issues, from substance abuse problems to mental health issues to deeper spiritual issues.  Maybe some of us live in these situations ourselves, but by and large I have noticed that most of you who come to Mass on Sunday seem to be pretty put together: well fed, well dressed, and by and large socially main stream.  Or you dress up nice, anyway.  But it doesn’t take but a quick drive through the downtown of Augusta to realize that that’s not everyone in our community, is it?

Now the Catholic Church in this country has traditionally been the church of the poor, the church of the immigrant.  All of the old churches – people talk about how today they are in the bad parts of town – well they were always in the bad parts of town because that is where the Catholics lived.  They wouldn’t let us build the Catholic Churches in the good parts of town – I remember reading in Bangor they refused to let them build downtown because they didn’t want drunk Irishmen laying in the gutters and carousing in the streets.  Catholics were not considered to be polite society in the mid-1800s.  We were the ruffians, the riff raff.

But that’s not the case today, is it?  In the 70s and 80s we started building our churches in these suburban neighborhoods, where Catholics were now living.  After the GI bill, Kennedy and Fulton Sheen, Catholics had integrated into mainstream America and were now living the American dream.  And by and large this is still the Church that we have in Maine – it’s different in other parts of the country where there are large Hispanic or other Ethnic populations, but here I would say that our experience of Catholic life is decidedly middle class.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being middle class.  But we need to take a look at this parable, don’t we?  Do people who are poor or living in dysfunctional situations feel like they can come here?  When they look at our churches, when they see us drive into our parking lots and enter these doors, what do they think of all of this?  Do they feel like they could walk in with us?

The parish office is on the top of sand hill.  That’s a rough neighborhood.  There are a lot of Lazaruses there – I can hear them out my window – they have mouths like sailors.  Christ has told us that we cannot be indifferent to our brothers and sisters who are suffering or who are in difficulty.  We cannot just pass them by on our way to church, feeling sorry for them.

In recent years we have professionalized our outreach to the poor, sending those who are suffering to institutions where people are paid to care.  And many of us support these ministries with a check, and that is important because many of them do work that we could not do, but can a referral to a social service agency, whether it be Catholic or state run, really satisfy our duty to the poor among us?  I don’t think so.  You cannot delegate compassion.  Our duty to Lazarus is personal, it is about dignity, it is about whether we acknowledge the humanity of the poor and afflicted or whether we pass them by.   Christ is clear: our parish, our Church must be a place of refuge for those who suffer and are afflicted: we ourselves must be a source of help and encouragement to the Lazaruses of our day.

Pope Francis in the recent interview that caused a big stir put it this way: our Church, the parish, must be like a field hospital: a place where those who are suffering, who are injured, who are addicted or who are tormented, can find the healing and redemption and the encounter with Christ that they seek.  The church cannot be our private club, he said, the place where only those who have their lives in order feel welcome. The Aisles of our churches must always have room for stretchers and crutches.

What does that mean for you and I?  I’m not sure.  Many of us are older.  It’s not as if we can just walk into a poor neighborhood and start ministering to those in need.  And I am not convinced that those who are poor in our community need our money or our handouts to begin with.  Our government is pretty good about providing basic care.  The issues that really are harming people, the issues that are really afflicting them in our time are spiritual in nature.  So many Lazaruses today are afflicted with broken families, mental health issues, addictions, sinful habits, and an immense spiritual poverty.  They need Christ.  They need compassion, love, and a home where they can encounter God – a community that cares about them, cares about helping them to find God and find happiness – that sees in them the face of Christ and treats them with dignity.

A first step for all of us I think must be interior: that we work to see the face of Christ in Lazarus, to leave behind any sense of superiority, distain, prejudice, animosity, judgementalism, or indifference.  And we should pray for the courage and the strength to reach out to Lazarus with compassion and without fear.  Just this prayer alone will accomplish incredible wonders in our community if we take it seriously.

And as we go about this interior work, there are some exterior steps we can take too.  Maybe we work to leave the comfort of our homes more often, to simply go to the gates of our society and spend time there - prioritize being a part of our community.  Many of us do not even know Lazarus’ name.  We are in worse shape than the rich man in the Gospel.  At least he took the time to know the man’s name.  Who are your neighbors?  Who are your co-workers?  Who are the people struggling at the gates of our town?
I am convinced that if we pray and place ourselves at the gate, Christ to show us how to approach the Lazaruses of our community, how to show them that our spiritual home, our church, is also their home, their church.  To tell them about how Christ has come to heal the broken, to save what is lost.  To explain to them that Christ’s merciful love is the only reason we are all here – because in one way or another we are all Lazarus.

Make Friends with Dishonest Wealth

Homily for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2013

What a fascinating parable Christ tells in the Gospel today, one that certainly causes us to think.  Certainly Christ is not recommending that we steal from our employers or that we be dishonest, right?  So what are we to learn from this parable?

There are two lessons that I would like to focus on today.

The first has to do with our identity.  In the parable, the Master represents God and our relationship to him is compared to that of being stewards.  And this understanding of the human person, of our identity and situation in this world is already a teaching in and of itself.  Because we live in a world that is constantly trying to tell us that we are the masters, don’t we?  Because our world is fallen, our wealth and blessings, which of course are really not of our own creation, often masquerade as if they were.  And I think this is why Christ calls worldly wealth ‘dishonest.’  It is as if someone came in and took all the little ‘made in heaven’ stickers off the things of this world and instead replaced them with new, fraudulent ‘made by you’ stickers.  How easy it is, as individuals, as families, as communities, even as a country, to begin to think that we are responsible for creating our own earthly wealth, to think that we are self-made men and women.  Particularly in our time, when we have so much wealth, when we are so prosperous – it is so easy to forget our dependence upon God for all that we have.  Reminds me of the rich man from another parable that Christ told, who was very successful and built those new big barns to house all his wealth before settling back and saying to himself “Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!”

I’m not sure if you recall what God said to him.  “You fool.”  That’s a direct quote.  “You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?”  You fool: you were taken in by dishonest wealth, it got the best of you, it fooled you into thinking you were the master, that it was your permanent possession.

No, Christ teaches us: we are stewards, stewards of wealth that is not our own, that is temporary, that is on loan to us.  All the blessings that we receive and live in this world are given to us by God.  He gives us the natural world to take care of and cultivate and through our work to create things that are good and beautiful.  But these things, this world, is entrusted to us as a stewardship, not as a possession.  Everything is son loan.  Temporary.  Even our own lives.

So this is the first lesson: that of our identity: we are stewards indebted to a master.  But the parable doesn’t end there.  The second lesson has to do with how God expects us to carry out the stewardship that has been entrusted to us.

And I find this to be the really interesting part of this parable.  Because in many places, when speaking of riches or earthly wealth, Christ told his disciples “Go, sell your possessions, give the money to the poor, then come follow me.”  His guidance in many cases was to be as detached as possible from dishonest wealth so that it would not distract from proclaiming the kingdom. 

This is clearly the guidance that many Christians are called to follow, the radical embrace of poverty that points to the kingdom of God and frees us from any snares or traps involving earthly wealth.  From the first days up until now the Church has raised up men and women who have taken a vow to live this kind of poverty as a witness to the treasures of heaven.  You probably know men and women religious who don’t own a thing.  The clothing that they wear, the car they drive, everything down to their toothbrushes is owned by their community, is owned in common. 

But this kind of radical poverty is not possible for most of us, and most of us have not been called to live this evangelical counsel of poverty in such an intense and beautiful way.  And that is why this parable seems to apply in a particular way to us.  Listen to what our Lord says about what a good steward does with the dishonest wealth entrusted to him: “Make for yourselves friends with dishonest wealth.”

And this is a beautiful thought and description of the purpose of earthly treasure, isn’t it?  How many times we hear such a different message: that earthly wealth is given to us to make us successful, to make us more comfortable, to help us be more financially secure, to give us opportunities.  That being a good steward of earthly wealth basically means that we are careful not to compromise our financial security, or the financial security of our families. 

But Christ shows us the absurdity of this idea.  Security, he shows us, is not something that we can aquire with wealth.  At the end of our lives it does not matter how much we make, how much we set aside: we will not be able to afford the ticket for heaven.  Heaven cannot be purchased with dishonest money.  The currency of heaven is love. 

And so the wise steward uses dishonest wealth in service of the currency of heaven.  He uses his time and treasure in the service of friendship: friendship with his or her spouse, with children, with parents, with neighbors and friends, coworkers and members of the parish, with the poor and the needy.  Prudent stewardship in this world places all dishonest, all earthly wealth, in the service of God and neighbor. 

At the conclusion of a Catholic wedding there is a beautiful blessing for the newly married couple beginning their stewardship together, and it is my prayer for all of you today:  “May you always bear witness to the love of God in this world so that the afflicted and the needy will find in you generous friends, and welcome you into the joys of heaven.  Amen.”

Was the Prodigal Son Sorry?

Homily for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

I think that we often assume that he prodigal son was truly remorseful and was looking forward to being home.  That he had repented fully of his errors and was looking forward to walking the straight and narrow.
But it is interesting to note what the prodigal son did not say as he came to his senses in that pig sty: he didn’t say “I really miss my family.”  He didn’t say “I am so sorry for what I’ve done.”  In fact, his rehearsed statement is pretty self-interested and stiff and formal: no affection is expressed.  “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you, I no longer deserve to be called your son, treat me as one of your hired hands.”  Now, perhaps these words express some contrition or sorrow for his sins – but it is not clear that there was really a change of heart in the young man.  In fact, we have good reason to think that he wasn’t too excited about going home – after all, it wasn’t until he was absolutely desperate – until he was starving to death – that he finally decided to return to his father’s house.  It is clear that he recognized that he was in dire need and had a better shot at finding mercy with his father, but it is not clear that he had a deep love or concern for him.

Contrition is the term that we use to speak of remorse or sorrow for one’s sins.  And in our tradition you may have heard of the distinction between perfect and imperfect contrition: and this is really what we are asking about this prodigal son: was his contrition perfect or imperfect?

Because Christians realized from the very beginning that many different things can make us sorry for our sins. Normally, when we have done something wrong we experience what is called imperfect contrition, or the natural effects of sin.  It may be that we become remorseful for our sins because they have brought suffering upon us, as was the case of the prodigal son in today’s Gospel passage.  It may be that we regret what we’ve done because we are worried that we will suffer punishment in the future, like when the whole city of Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah because they were afraid of the destruction of their city.  Or it may be that we repent because the revolting and ugly reality of our sins suddenly becomes apparent to us, as in the case of King David, when he repented after recognizing the evil he had inflicted on Uriah the Hittite.
These are all examples of what we call imperfect contrition: a sorrow for sin that is natural and is most common in this world.

But because of Christ and his grace at work in us, we are also given the ability to experience what we call perfect contrition when we recognize our sins.  Perfect contrition is also a sorrow for sin, but it is a sorrow that is rooted in our love of God.

When we love God, when we want to do his will and follow his commands, our sins cause us sorrow because they separate us from the one who we love.  And more than anything else, more than the fact that our sins cause us to suffer or that they are ugly and destructive - more than what our sins do to us, we are most concerned about what they do to our intimacy with Christ, an intimacy that we prize above all things.

I think that many parents experience this kind of contrition when they do something to injure their children: they are not worried about the consequences of their failure for themselves – they worry about the fact that they have injured the child who they love more than the world.

But I think if we are honest, the reality is that many of us, like the prodigal son, do not always or even often have perfect contrition for our sins.  Many times we are contrite because we are ashamed or we are suffering or we are afraid of the repercussions for what we have done.  Our love for God and desire to do his will is sometimes weak.  Sometimes our desires are mixed.

And I think that is why Jesus teaches us with the parables that we hear in the Gospel today.  He teaches us two important things:

The first is that our sorrow for sin does not have to be perfect for God to forgive us.
The father of the prodigal son was not a fool – he knew that his son had not returned because he missed him but because he was starving on his own.  And yet the Father didn’t say “Oh, I can tell you are just saying all of these things so that you can get something to eat – you want me now that you need me.  Well, I’m not going to be used by you, you’re on your own.”  No, the father represents our Heavenly Father who is faithful and loving even when we are not capable of loving him in return.  He knows that sometimes we turn to him for selfish reasons.  Sometimes we repent because we are afraid.  Sometimes we are sorry for our sins because our egos have been injured.  Sometimes we turn to him because we are hurting and we have nowhere else to go.

But while imperfect contrition is not ideal, it is still good because it brings us back to him, which is what we really need and what God wants.  That’s why in the sacrament of confession, perfect contrition is not required, even if it is what we pray for.  We pray that we would always turn to God in repentance because of our love for him, but God doesn’t require our love in order to shower us with his love.  He loves us first, he reaches out to us first, he seeks out the lost lamb who has wandered away from the 99, he searches for the coin amid the floorboards.  More than anything he just wants us back.

And yet this is the secondthing that Christ’s parables teach us: that God’s mercy is always inviting us into a deeper communion of love.  Into an intimacy with him that will make our sorrow for sin pure, that will make our contrition perfect.  That is why Christ tells us these stories, these parables – to show us the goodness of God, to show us our Heavenly Father’s merciful love so that we will come to love him and praise him for his goodness and not be so worried about saving our own hides, so worried about our suffering or feeling ashamed.  That in hearing of God’s mercy, in experiencing his love, love and gratitude will grow in us.  And we will more and more each day be overtaken with love for our God who has reached out to us even when we were struggling on the horizon, lost in the dark, or stuck in the floorboards.

We don’t know the state of the prodigal son’s contrition as he journeyed home.  But I have a sense that when he saw his father running out to meet him, something changed inside of him.  The words that he had been rehearsing – well he got them out, more or less.  But their meaning changed, because his heart changed when he saw his father’s love.  He no regretted his sins merely because of the suffering and pain they had inflicted upon him, but now he experienced a new sorrow for how his actions had injured his father’s love.  Experiencing his father’s loving mercy changed the prodigal son’s sorrow and perfected it.

Christ teaches us of our Heavenly Father’s merciful love in these parables and he allows us to experience this mercy and love in the sacrament of Penance.  As we experience of our Heavenly Father’s mercy, may our contrition be perfected: may we regret our sins not merely because of how they harm us, but more importantly because of how they contradict our love for God.

Vying for Seats of Honor

Homily from the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2013

We might imagine the scene at the banquet that Christ encountered in today's Gospel and that prompted his remarks.  Why would the guests be vying for places of honor?  What might have been their motivation?  Let’s look at a few possible guests who are fighting over seats:

Maybe the first is from a family that has been in town for generations.  He is from a big family that has always looked out for their neighbors and has run a good and honest business.  Looking around the room, he could point to an instance in which either he or one of his family members has reached out to help each of the guests around that table.  Some of them work for him or rely on his business.  He has been active in building up the community and is clearly one of the leaders in the town.  Of course he would never fight someone for the seat of honor, but it is clear to him that everyone in the room expects him to take the place of honor because of his standing in the community.  In a sense it is his responsibility, his duty to take one of the places of honor.

But he finds another guest in his way: a guest who is new in the community and doesn’t know as many people.  He would love to sit up where the important people are so that they can really get a sense of his abilities and how blessed his family is.  He makes sure to tell Ezra from the Camel store about how his son was just accepted into the most prestigious pharisaic school in all of Judea. 
And his wife has made the most wonderful desert for everyone.  He has lots of stories to tell.  He is sure that they will love to hear about them – and in fact, he is happy to allow his family and his success to be an inspiration to the others.

But there is a third guest who stands in his way, also vying for a seat of honor.  The last time he was at one of these wedding banquets, Eli the butcher started talking down his carpentry shop, saying his chairs broke after a few months and his tables always wobbled.  The last time that he was at one of these weddings, he got stuck with Josh the stable boy on one side, and Jake, the shepherd on the other.  He had learned all he ever wanted to know about the dietary restrictions for sheep while missing out on all the important conversation at the other end of the table.  Securing a place of honor will keep him connected to the important people instead of ending up in the riff raff section again.

Perhaps these are a few portraits of what drives these men playing musical chairs at a wedding feast:
A sense of entitlement and pride
A desire for acceptance and honor
A fear of being ostracized and left behind.
But notice: they are all blind: they have lost sight of the whole purpose of a banquet: which is to come together and enjoy a meal with your friends.  Instead they are filled with rivalries and jealousies.  They see one another as competitors, and any appearance of friendship between them is just that: appearance.  Their anxiety as they vie for the few miserable scraps of honor and recognition and comfort keeps them from entering into a true communion of life, a communion that can only be fed and nurtured by a mutual desire for heavenly food.

Jesus proposes a different seating arrangement for all of us who are gathered together at this table.  At the banquet of the heavenly feast that he sets before us, Christ encourages us to seek the food that truly nourishes, to seek first the kingdom of God.

In place of the seat of entitlement and pride in earthly success, Christ leads his guests to the seat of humility.  Those who take the seat of humility stand before God with gratitude for his many gifts and look to generously share those gifts with others.  He encourages us to work to raise up others, to give others a chance to have the places of honor.  To remember that in truth we are not entitled to anything because everything that we have and are is an undeserved gift from God.

In place of the desire for acceptance and honor, Christ brings us to the seat of piety: he reminds us that earthly praise is fleeting: that we should seek to please God above all: that we belong to him, that the praise of the angels and the saints is far more valuable than the mere recognition of earthly rulers.

And in place of a fear of being ostracized of left behind, Christ leads us to his own seat, the seat of the outcast, of the stranger, of the mocked, of the scorned, of the ridiculed – and he invites us to join him for the true banquet.  To take our place with the angels and all of the often scorned and overlooked saints who are seated at the table of the Lord, sharing in the joy of his love, singing hymns of praise, and drawn together in an eternal harmony of friendship and peace.

The Narrow Gate: Not a Threat but a Gift

Homily for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2013

“Lord, will only a few be saved?”
I was just speaking with someone last week about the idea of hell – and about how hard a concept it is for many of us who are younger to get our heads around.  That Jesus would say to people knocking at his door something so harsh: “I do not know where you are from.”  You can understand why they protested: “But you ate and drank in our company, you taught in our streets!” and we might add some more familiar protestations as well. “But I’m a good person, a spiritual person.  I’m not perfect, but look, I’m a lot better than some and I haven’t killed anyone.  Aren’t you a God who is good and merciful and full of love?  How could you reject me?” 

So many of us who are younger have grown up in what we might gently call an ‘entitlement’ culture, and for some the sense of entitlement reaches all the way to the gates of heaven.  So often we hear people speak as though we are entitled to go to heaven by virtue of being born: as though everyone is on the highway to heaven: maybe not everyone is in the fast lane, some might take some detours, some may break down on the way, some may need to pay extra tolls, but that we will all get there eventually. 

I like that idea.  But unfortunately, it is not true.  The Church formally declared that the teaching of universal salvation is heretical at the council of Constantinople in 453.  And why?  Because it simply does not match what Christ told us.  Not just once, but many times.  He told us that not all will be received into the home of our Heavenly Father.  In the Gospel today he calls it a ‘narrow’ gate. 
Now it seems that the older generation has an easier time with the whole notion of the narrow gate: maybe too easy a time with it.  I have encountered a fair amount of fear in the confessional: fear that sometimes becomes the dominant force in the spiritual life: fear of being shut outside, being left at the door.  Instead of worrying about my brother and sister, about thanking God for his many blessings, there can be the tendency to get hung up on one’s own salvation: whether Christ will open the door, whether I’ve done anything to offend him.  The irony is that this illness of the spiritual life can actually cause the very thing it is trying to avoid: isolation from God: fear for our salvation can cause us to become entirely focused on ourselves and oblivious to the needs of those around us, or to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, making it difficult for God’s saving grace to be at work in us.

So what does a healthy Catholic understanding of the afterlife look like?  Clearly it is not a perspective of entitlement. 
We cannot join our protestant brothers and sisters in confidently proclaiming that we are saved.  We don’t know.  We know we are not entitled.  We know that heaven is not guaranteed.  We know that it is a narrow gate and that as our Lord seems to imply today, some who think that they are all set to go through will be surprised to find out that they are not prepared.
And yet it is not healthy for our relationship with God to be overshadowed by a preoccupation with our final destiny, with anxieties about the life to come. 
Isn’t that the classic stereotype of Christianity today: that faith really doesn’t add anything to our lives but a fear about heaven and hell?  That we can be good people and live just fine without religion, without this whole idea of the narrow gate, so why bother believing such a fearful thing.
Some portray Christ as a shepherd who comes in to a beautiful pasture where the sheep were just peacefully grazing and enjoying life and being good sheep, and then he fences off the good field, the heavenly grasses and says “From now on you can only get in here if you are part of my flock – envelopes will be arriving in the mail next week.”  Well, I would resent that kind of a shepherd too!

So let’s look at the scene again.  How important it is that we have the right scenery for this gate of ours.  And the scenery is this: our world is a pasture that is in ruin.  The sheep rebelled, breaking down its fences and trampling its fields.  The meager tufts of grass have left the sheep tired and hungry, and now it is the night: we are at the mercy of countless wolves, and one thing is certain: we will not last the night.  No one is getting out of here alive.

So that is the scene.  It is into this pasture, the pasture of a fallen world, that Christ, our good shepherd enters.  A deadly pasture. 

Christ loves his sheep, and he wants to protect us.  So he fixes the fence, and he makes a gate, not to keep out sheep, but to keep out the wolves, to keep out sin and death.  And then he goes out searching for us, calling out to us, bringing together his flock to lead them to safety.

Christ tells us in another place in the Gospels that he knows his sheep because they hear his voice and they follow him, they listen to him.  Our Gospel makes it clear that being a part of the flock, knowing Christ, is not a matter of externals: of geography, of culture, or race, or of history.  It is not enough for us to smell like incense, to be seen in Church, to have the appearance of disciples.  We all know that you can wear sheep’s clothing and remain a wolf within. 

So we should be careful about trying to determine who we think will enter the gate and who will not.  Christ reaches out to all of his sheep, to all people.  Maybe they wandered for a time, maybe they were running with wolves for a while, maybe they were injured.  Christ leaves the 99 to find the one lost sheep, sometimes he carries us to the gate.  But he doesn’t force himself on us.  He calls and he waits to see what our response will be.  Whether we will listen and obey.  Whether we will leave behind the wolves and enter through the narrow gate.

The gate is not a threat: it is a gift.  Hell is not a threat, heaven is a gift.  We do not lose anything in Christ, we gain everything: we gain what we would never have had: we are given the promise of leaving this pasture unscathed, freed from the slavery to sin, the darkness of ignorance, and freed from death itself.  We can live a new day because of the gate, because of Christ – who did not come into this pasture to condemn, but to save us from sin and death. 

The specter of Christ at the gate, of the last judgment, of the possibility of hell, should not make us afraid: it should make us grateful to Christ for inviting us to be members of his flock, giving us a way out of this pasture, for the promise of salvation.  And it should remind us of what we should fear: the author of sin, and the prince of darkness.  The one who seeks to infect us with his rebelliousness, who prowls in the darkness when we wander away from the flock, waiting to devour us. 
I, for one, am glad that he is not getting in the gate.

Ablaze with God's Love

Homily for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2013

In recent days many of you have probably read about the horrible bloodshed and unrest in Egypt, and maybe you have also heard about how the Coptic Christians community is suffering.  Dozens of churches have been burned, Christians are being targeted, and so many are living in fear. 

As you probably know, the Christian community in Syria has been facing similar threats, with priests being kidnapped and killed.  And these are not the only two countries: in so many parts of the world today, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, Christians are persecuted for their faith.

In the Gospel Christ tells us that this violence and turmoil is unfortunately not the exception, but many times the rule for Christian life in this fallen world.  At another time he reminded his disciples that no servant is greater than his master, so if they persecuted Christ, if he had to undergo the suffering of the cross, then so would his disciples also suffer and undergo the cross.

Pope Francis recently put it another way at world youth day: perhaps in a way that applies more to our culture: he called it a mess.  He said he wished that the youth would go home and make a mess – that they would not be afraid to disturb the quiet reign of earthly kingdoms in this world, but announce the good news of the kingdom of God.

It’s often messy, he said, this proclamation – not always polite.  Our world, society – we ourselves – we do not easily submit to the rule of our heavenly king.  We tend to resent his will in our lives, even though it is only by his will that we exist in the first place.  But we have a tendency because of our fallen nature to bite the hand that feeds us.

It’s not just outside of the Church that we find the mess – but within the Church too, in our families, and within each of our hearts.

Some suggest that we attempt to strike an uneasy truce: that we let each govern themselves, or we let the strongest rule, or the majority rule, whatever will make for quiet.  But quiet is not the same as peace.  You can force slaves to be quiet, but you cannot force them to be at peace.  All you need for quiet is duct tape.  Or at least that’s what I hear…  But you need more than duct tape for peace.
Christ did not come to make this world quiet, he did not just pull out the roll of heavenly duct tape (though I would like some of that) and go to town.  He is much more dangerous than that. 
He tells us in the Gospel today that he came to set the world on fire, came to set us on fire.  And not some superficial fire that is just flash and smoke, singeing hair and leaving us with a nasty smell in the nose. 

The fire that Christ wishes were blazing is the fire of purification, of conversion, a fire that enters into the depths of our hearts through the sacraments and scriptures, in our prayer and acts of charity.  And deep within, through this fire, this grace, Christ works to purify our hearts, to remove the duplicity from our wills, to heal the rebelliousness of our spirits, and to forge within us new hearts.  New hearts that - forged in God’s love, tempered with sacrifice, and honed through discipline - are prepared to serve the will of our Father in heaven, and his will alone.  His fire makes us fully human by re-casting us in Christ form the inside out, in whose image and likeness we have been made. 
This deep and mysterious fire of God’s love messes with the superficial rulers of this world, it scares them because it cannot be controlled by them: it forges men and women who are ruled by God alone, who are citizens of heaven.  Men and women who St. Paul speaks of in our second reading today: who persevere in running the race that lies before them, while keeping their eyes fixed on Jesus, not growing weary or losing heart, but resisting even to the point of shedding blood.  Men and women ablaze with the fire of God’s love.

On the Field

Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, August 15, 2013

I imagine that most of us have a memory of watching a sports game that was particularly intense.  I remember, for example, the super bowl of 2002, when I was in college and the Patriots won for the first time in forever.  We were sitting on the edge of our seats toward the end, especially… riveted.  I don’t think there was a person on campus who was not watching the game.

I’m sure college campuses in other parts of the country weren’t as preoccupied.  For them it was not personal – it was not their team, their region that had suffered such a horrible losing streak for so long and was finally looking like it might win. 

I wonder what that night must have been like for the families of the players on the field during the game: their mothers and fathers, wives and children.  If all of us were so riveted by the drama of those final moments of the game, how much more intense that experience must have been for the family. 

Today much of this community goes about its daily work just like any other day.  August 15th means little to them.  Maybe some are aware or hear that it is the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a Catholic feast.  But most people are not even aware, and if they are, they are not particularly interested.  Many of those around us might as well be in Texas during a Patriots Game.

Now I suppose some might say that we are like avid Patriots fans sitting in the bleachers.  That we who celebrate the victory of Mary’s Assumption today, we all root for team Mary.  Or maybe, some might be a little more precise and say: look, we are not just Mary’s fans, we don’t just root for the team: we are her family: Jesus has given Mary to the Church, to all of us, as our mother.  So we are not just celebrating today as fans, but we are celebrating our Mother’s assumption into Heaven.
But I don’t think either of those analogies go far enough. 

Because while it is true that we are probably all big fans of Mary, and while it is also true that in Christ we are her sons and daughters and she is the mother of all believers, the reality is that you and I are not sitting in the bleachers.  You and I are on the field.  By virtue of our Baptism, what we celebrate today as we recall Mary’s Assumption into heaven is not just her victory, but our own, not just what God has done for her, but what God promises he will also give to us. 

Each time we celebrate one of these great Marian feasts, we are not only celebrating what God did for Mary and how he works through her, but we also reflect on how Mary shows us about who we are.  Mary is our mother, she is the mother of the Church: what has happened to her, what God has done in her he also offers to each of us. 

St. Bonaventure put it this way: “As the sun excels and makes glorious all the bodies of the world, so the Blessed Virgin excels and makes glorious the members of the whole Church.”
Mary is the first Christian, the first to be given the gift of eternal life by Christ, her son – the first to experience the future that Christ has promised to all of his disciples, to all of us.  She is our family, but she is also our model in faith: the sign and the pattern for what we hope will be for us as well.  She is our coach and team captain.

That is why this is a Holy Day of Obligation.  Not because the Church wants to force us into the stadium to watch some game that doesn’t concern us.  But because we are on the field and Mary shows us how to run the race, how to fight the good fight, how to compete well in the battle against sin and death, and today she shows us the prize that awaits us across the finish line. 

Our first reading today from Revelation makes Mary’s courage and strength so apparent: she gives birth into the gaping mouth of a dragon.  I cannot think of a more powerful depiction of courage.  Most women would still tremble at giving birth in a room full of saints.

And she is on the field with us.  That is the beautiful thing – she walks with us and coaches us and encourages us as we seek to follow her example of courage and of trust in her Son. 

She sings to us the battle hymn, or the fight song, in the Gospel today: the Magnificat.  It is a hymn that makes the halls of hell tremble.  A hymn of humble yet confident trust in God, a hymn of praise and thanksgiving.  “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.”

But today, let us remember what one of the fathers of the Church has taught us: “The Magnificat was not said once and for all in the garden at Hebron; it was put into the mouth of the Church for all the centuries.”  Christ has come to earth, is given to us in the scriptures and sacraments, has given Mary to us as our mother and guide, so that it is not only her soul that proclaims the greatness of the Lord, but so that there are thousands of souls, millions of souls who join with her on the field, singing her hymn of praise, confident that one day we too will share with her the bright victory of eternal life with her Son.

Making a Mess

The recent words of Pope Francis to the youth gathered in Rio de Janeiro last month spread like wild-fire: “I want to tell you something. What is it that I expect as a consequence of World Youth Day? I want a mess. We knew that in Rio there would be great disorder, but I want trouble in the dioceses!  I want to see the church get closer to the people. I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselves, in our parishes, schools or structures. Because these need to get out!”

It has been interesting to watch the reactions of Catholics to the Pope's words.  Some have swooned at these words, waxing nostalgic about how he reminds them of Blessed John XXIII.  "Dust off the picket signs and the blow horns everyone!  Let’s go march on the hierarchy and make a mess.  You heard the Pope, he wants us to!  Time to challenge this male-dominated and homophobic church and enter the modern world."

And then you have those who have interpreted the Pope’s words in the same way, but with horror: “He’s as bad as Obama.  Next thing you know he is going to be telling us that there was no virgin birth."

But what about actually seeking to understand the Pope’s comment, rather than use it as a launching point to promote an agenda or instigate panic?

What did the Pope mean when he said “Make a mess?”  I would submit that what he was saying is not immediately apparent.  He was speaking in another language and off the cuff, and he used words that were open to an incredible range of interpretation when not understood in context.    There are few words in the English language that say so little as the word 'mess.'

So what was the context of his remark?  “We knew that in Rio there would be great disorder,” Pope Francis said, “but I want trouble in the dioceses!”  The Pope was first referencing the mess in Rio de Janeiro: the mess  in the streets.  Anyone who watched the coverage during World Youth Day saw how the celebrations shut down the city, they snarled traffic, they brought normal life to a standstill.    In this context it becomes clear that the Pope is expressing a desire that the Church be for society the same kind of visible and tangible and yes, “messy” presence of Christ that the youth were for the people of Rio this July.  “I want to see the church get closer to the people,” he said.

The pope’s next line is an important interpretive key for us to further understand what he meant by this mess: “I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselves, in our parishes, schools or structures. Because these need to get out!” 

Those who have been reading Pope Francis since he was elected will recognize in this statement a reference to a dominant theme of his teaching as archbishop, of his address to the cardinals prior to being elected pope, and of many of his addresses and other public statements since beginning his pontificate: the rejection of what he terms ‘clericalism,’ and particularly of a clericalization of the laity, and the insistence that the Church is not and cannot ever be viewed in merely mundane or secular organizational terms, but that the Church is first and foremost a spiritual reality: the living Body of Christ in the world.

Many have read excerpts from an interview then Cardinal Bergoglio gave in 2011, when he spoke of sickness in the Church.  Asked about the role of the laity, the cardinal did not mince words: “There is a problem, and I’ve said it many times before: the temptation of clericalization. We priests tend to clericalize the laity. We don’t realize it, but it is like our [clerical state] being contagious. And the laity –not all, but many,- ask us on their knees to clericalize them because it’s more comfortable to be an altar server than the protagonist of the way [of life] of the laity. We don’t have to fall into that trap. It is a complicity that is sinful. Neither to clericalize nor to ask to be clericalized. The lay person is a lay person and has to live like a lay person with the strength of baptism, which renders him capable of being leaven of God’s love in society itself, to create and sow hope, to proclaim the faith, not from the pulpit but from his or her daily life. And carrying the cross like we all do. The lay person’s cross, not the priest’s cross. Let the priest carry the priest’s cross. God gave him shoulder enough to bear it.”

And so when the Pope speaks of a ‘mess,’ I would submit that it is pretty clear that he is not talking about the mess of a protest in front of a chancery.  Instead, I think he is speaking of a mess that shares more in common with the commotion that first clogged the streets of Jerusalem 2000 years ago and has continued to disrupt the day to day life of men and women since.  The mess that ensues when the divine breaks into the human, when the kingdom that is not of this world encounters the kingdoms of this world.  In short, the mess of the cross.

Where is the cross encountered, where is the mess to be made today?  Certainly there are crosses and messes inside the Church, but this is not where Pope Francis wants the laity to focus.  He wants them to focus on the streets.  That has been the Pope’s continual message: that the laity stop messing around in the sacristy and in the sanctuary and get out into the world.  That they start messing around in the world, bringing their faith to bear in daily life and witnessing to the transformative power of the Gospel in the street.  Let the Pope worry about corruption in the curia.  Let the Bishops worry about what is in the Catechism.  Let the priests worry about how to offer Mass.  The pope, the bishop, the priest: the hierarchy is in service to the Church, but it is not the Church.  The Church must extend to the dining rooms, living rooms, bedrooms, voting booths, and classrooms where the laity live: and the hierarchy cannot and should not interfere in spreading the Gospel in these parts of society.  These places are the specific domain and responsibility of the laity; it is in their homes and communities that Christ desires to work through all baptized men and women to build his kingdom, his body, the Church.

As Cardinal and now as Pope, Francis is identifying one the most serious ailments facing the Church in our time, particularly in the West.  The doors of the Church were flung open during the Second Vatican Council, but rather than the laity rushing out to meet the modern age, it seems that many were confused and rushed inside the sanctuary and sacristy and pulpit.  The doors were opened, but they went the wrong way. 

Instead of bringing others to encounter our Lord in the Eucharist and confession, parishes were embroiled in battles over where to place the tabernacle and rivalries about who would get to be an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion.  Instead of planning ways to increase understanding of the Gospel so that families would live according to Christ's teachings in their communities, religious educators debated translations and gender inclusivity and ecclesiastical authority.  Instead of enriching programs that would foster direct service to the poor and the needy, the imprisoned and the sick, pastoral councils were preoccupied with making the parish a ‘welcoming community,’ organizing small sharing groups, and planning the next bean supper.

It is this welcoming and comfortable self-referential country club of pseudo-spiritual communitarianism that the pope wants replaced with authentic parish life: with the messiness of a community that is trying to live the Gospel in the day to day world.  He desires for us to build Catholic communities that do not seek to be the end in and of themselves, but to be a source of strength and encouragement for those who are working to live the mess that is necessarily entailed in following Christ in our families, the streets, the schools, the courthouses, the hospitals, the nursing homes, the tenements, the prisons, the workplaces, the malls, the parks and neighborhoods.  He reminds us that the purpose of the Church is not to be a locus of neat and tidy worship services that serve as a refuge from the hard realities of life in a fallen world.  The Church is the body of Christ incarnate, a body that shone with divine light on the Mount of Olives and anointed with precious oil, but that also was spit on and scourged and crucified on the cross.

The refuge of the sanctuary is meant to recharge us and equip us for carrying the cross, for confronting the mess, of life in a world groaning in labor pains as it awaits resurrection.  We are not in heaven yet.  The Church is not triumphant yet.  This is the Church militant, and a sign of her authentic presence in a culture is often not peace and tranquility but a great big mess. 

In a way, the Pope’s words to the youth were a further precision of the words of Blessed John Paul II: “Do not be afraid to set out into the deep and lower your nets for a catch.”  How our recent popes have desired the laity in particular to become the protagonists of conversion within society!  To deliberately approach the activities of daily life so as to ensure that they are authentically witnessing to their union with Christ in the world, and thereby becoming vessels of his grace that reaches out in love to all people.

Beginning in Augusta

Just a note for everyone:

Since there is a three week rotation here at St. Michael's in Augusta, I am spending the next three weeks introducing myself and basically am giving the same homily three weeks in a row.  So rather than post the same homily three times, I am hoping to write about some different things in the coming weeks and then to post my first homily here after the third weekend.

Homily on the Occasion of my Departure from St. Paul the Apostle Parish

Homily for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
On the Occasion of my departure from St. Paul the Apostle Parish, Bangor ME
July 14th, 2013

In the Gospel today we hear the beautiful parable of the Good Samaritan.  And I find myself preaching on my final weekend together with all of you here at St. Paul the Apostle Parish. 
There are so many things that come to mind, so many things that it seems would be good and important to say before I go.  But there is not time to speak of everything, and so I want to just focus on a few things:

First of all, I want to tell you all how grateful I am to Fr. Nadeau.   He has been incredibly good to me and has been a wonderful example of a good and faithful pastor.  You have seen us work together, I am sure.  But there are many things that you have not seen.  How many times I would come home after a long meeting to find Fr. Nadeau, also back from a long meeting, working to prepare a late dinner so that I did not just end up snacking on doritos and gummy worms.  Or the time that I decided to pull out the poison ivy at St. Matthew’s by hand – and the gloves did not quite work and he bought a million guaze pads and ended up waiting in the emergency room with me at St. Joseph’s for quite a while one evening. 

And I cannot begin to count up the number of hours we have spent talking about all of you over the last 5 years.  Whose child we just baptized, who just found out they had cancer, which altar server fainted at Mass, what new work of art one of the kids made at the school, or who we hadn’t seen for a while at Mass.  Over the years, other parochial vicars were a part of those conversations: Fr. Ouellette and Fr. Tony, and also our chaplains Fr. Rolly and Fr. Apollinaire, and retired Fr. Rudy. 

But because I arrived just a month after Fr. Nadeau and we have lived under the same roof for 5 years, I think we have shared in a particularly intense way the experience of being your priests these last years.  Fr. Nadeau brought me into the critical discussions about the direction of our parish: involving me in the work on a new daily Mass schedule, the shape of a new bulletin, the location and construction of a new parish office, and later on in the creation of new positions for a combined parish staff, the crafting a lifelong faith formation program, the establishment of an 8 Mass weekend schedule down from the previous 12, and countless other smaller projects and initiatives and issues that needed to be addressed. 

It seems that one thing has happened after another in this parish since we arrived, not to mention the larger events of our diocese: the capital campaign, same sex marriage battles, and a whole host of other bigger challenges that we have gone through together.  I have watched Fr. Nadeau face more challenges than I would ever wish on a priest in these 5 years, and go face them with remarkable grace and stamina.  So I ask you, as I move to a new assignment, please support him in the years to come, as I hope I have shown you by my example in the last 5 years. 

What do I mean by support? 
I hope that many of you, especially those who are younger, will become more involved in helping to build up the parish.  Perhaps serving as catechists to teach and hand on our faith or as members of a commission to help foster community life or look after the needs of the less fortunate.  Not asking what the parish can do for you, but following the example of the Good Samaritan in today’s Gospel: asking what you can do to help this parish be a loving neighbor to all who live here in Bangor, Brewer, Hampden and Winterport.

When we first arrived, Fr. Nadeau would say to me “This is not normal parish life.  Everything is up in the air now, but don’t worry, we will settle into a normal priestly existence in a couple years.”  After a while he stopped saying that.  And I think one day he said “Well, maybe this is the new normal.” 

And we both had to accept that.  I think it’s easier for me, because this is all I’ve ever known: rotating among 6 churches, reconfiguring things right and left, trying to balance 89 million things and often carrying a nagging feeling that you are neglecting someone or letting them down.

We are going through a time of unprecedented change in our diocese and certainly in this parish.  I have had the tendency sometimes to focus on how long and treacherous the road seems to be, but Fr. Nadeau is very good at reminding me of the works of charity, the good Samaritan moments, that must be at the heart of the daily life of a priest, and of every parish: the celebration of Mass, the anointings, baptisms, weddings, and funerals.  The time spent in the school or at faith formation and youth ministry gatherings, visiting families, counseling couples, trying to help someone get the oil or prescription that they need, training altar servers.

It is easy, when we are anxious about the road, to overlook those who are lying in the ditches.  But we cannot allow ourselves to become so preoccupied with navigating the constant twists and turns of restructurings and changes that we no longer see and serve Christ who comes to us as our neighbor in need on the side of the road.

As I prepare to leave, I want to make sure that you know that if I have in any way passed you by, neglected any of you, if I have done anything to offend you, if I have misled you in any way through my teaching, I am sorry and I ask for your forgiveness and prayer.  I am far from perfect, and this has been my first parish assignment, so I pray that God will make up for my failings.

I am not even sure how to begin to express my gratitude for your love and support over these 5 years.  I came to you as a baby priest, not exactly half dead along the side of the road (although I had just survived grueling comprehensive exams) but certainly in need of support along the road. 
And this parish, all of you, have taken such good care of me.  You have helped me to learn how to walk the road of the priesthood: how to pray with you, how to listen to you, how to teach you, how to offer Mass with you.  I am so grateful for the trust that you have put in me and for the countless prayers, notes and cards, kind words, and culinary delights over the years.  I have found in you so many good Samaritans.  Thank-you. 

Fr. Dan Belargeon is fortunate to be assigned here as your new parochial vicar.  I am sure he will plug in right away and will find in you the same warm welcome and generous support and encouragement that you have given me.

I arrived a baby priest, as I said.  I suppose you could say that I am now entering into my adolescence.  Look out Augusta.  People keep telling me that I should work on cleaning up the politics down there, but I have told them that I don’t know how to do exorcisms yet.

A final word.  We should all give thanks to Christ today for the gift of our faith.  He is the first and perfect Samaritan – he is continually at work to lift us up, to bind up our wounds, to carry us to the house of our heavenly father.  He is the only reason that we are together in this church, in this parish.  We share a communion, a friendship, that rests upon his shoulders, shoulders stretched out upon the cross because of his love for us.

Our second reading from St. Paul, the patron of this parish, reminds us:
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
He is the head of the body, the church.
For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things, making peace by the blood of his cross

Jesus Christ transforms us into his body, the Church.  Through the sacraments, the scripture, and tradition of our faith, he teaches us and gives us the strength to love our neighbor: to walk the chaotic and winding road of life together with compassion, generosity, and love.

So we thank God for bringing us together, for teaching us and ministering to us along the road we have walked here at St. Paul the Apostle Parish during these last 5 years, and I pray that he will continue to guide all of you and to draw you closer to himself and to one another in the years to come.  Please pray for more vocations to the priesthood, please keep me in your prayers, and know that I will certainly be praying for all of you.

Accommodating

Homily from the 13th Week in Ordinary Time

I think that for most of us, one of the challenging aspects of living a Christian life is trying to figure out when and when not to be accommodating.  How do we decide when to accommodate the ideas and actions others and when to insist that we cannot?  How accommodating should we be of the ideas or actions of our children, siblings, spouses and friends?  When should we insist that we cannot accept certain ideas or actions?

How many times we get to the end of the day and wonder: “Should I have put up more of a fight, insisted more on what I knew was right, not been so quick to agree?”; or we wonder the opposite: “Should I have backed off, given the other person more room, not insisted so vehemently?”

It seems that some propose an easy solution to the whole question of accommodation: when you can accommodate, you should.  And some even have a misguided notion that this kind of accommodation is a sign of humility and goodness in a person.  In fact, some insist that kindness and compassion require that we accommodate ideas and actions that we do not agree with.  I find this argument rather amusing, since those insisting on accommodation are demonstrating a profound unwillingness to show it!  Perhaps you have also noticed that often those who insist on accommodation the most, accommodate the beliefs and actions of others the least.

This is clearly not the path or accommodation that Christ taught.  As we see in the Gospel today, Jesus could be extremely un-accommodating.  Even to the point of insisting that a disciple could not bury his or her own parents before following him.  He would not accommodate what seems to be a perfectly legitimate request.  And yet in how many other passages we see our Lord bend over backwards to accommodate the needs of those he encountered!

Today’s Gospel reading gives us the opportunity to pause a bit and look at the whole question of accommodation.  Clearly, just because we can accommodate something does not mean that we should.  And so we have to ask: “Well what should the Christian accommodate?  Why are there instances when Christ clearly insists that we must not make accommodation?

“For freedom Christ set us free;” St. Paul teaches us in our second reading today, “so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.”  In other words, do not settle for sin.

Now it is obvious to most people that when someone directly commits a sin they are enslaved by it.  But what is less obvious is this: sin also enslaves those who accommodate it.  In fact, sometimes it enslaves them more than the person committing the sin.

If a family accommodates a drinking problem, the whole family becomes slaves to the bottle, perhaps sometimes more than the person drinking from it.  If poor sportsmanship is accommodated on the field, or lying and deceit in the workplace, or obsession with material wealth and status among friends, or immoral laws and regulations in the government, these areas of sin affect everyone involved.  In other words, a family, a workplace, a community, a culture can be enslaved by darkness not only by committing sin, but also and sometimes most profoundly by accommodating it.

How many times this has become clear only after the fact: there are millions of people who regret how they were enslaved by the sins of others who they accommodated in their violence against children, minorities, the poor, the marginalized, and the vulnerable. 

As the often quoted passage from Burke goes, “All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” You cannot accommodate without giving accommodation, without giving a home, a piece of yourself to what you have allowed.  And that is why we all know that it is impossible to have a clear conscience when sin and evil are being accommodated.  So that is a pretty clear line with regard to accommodation.  Sin and evil can never be accommodated without entering into slavery.

But what about our Gospel reading today?  Jesus is even unwilling to accommodate what seem to be good and noble requests:  to say goodbye or to bury parents? 

And so Christ shows us that there are there even times when we should not accommodate good things.  Yes.  Yes there are.  And this is where it gets very tricky.  For example: when a child is so involved in extracurriculars that they are not getting enough sleep and are showing signs of stress and anxiety and are not able to spend time with family or friends.  Extracurriculars are good, but they need to be balanced with the greater goods. 

Or when our adult children want us to go to camp over the weekend where there will be no possibility of attending Mass.  Camp is good, but thanking God for camp and everything else he gives us is the greater good.  Or when our family is life is dominated by endless xbox hours or hours in front of the tv or computer or constant interruptions from cell phones.  None of these machines are evil, but they are not the greatest good. 

Now many times there can be creative solutions worked out when we are not dealing with areas of outright evil, we can make reasonable accommodations that allow us to still place first things first.  But sometimes, even with good things in this world, we have to simply say no.  If we know that a good thing cannot help but lead us to a not so good end – if we will not be able to control it, if we know that we are risking greater goods, sometimes we must let the dead bury their dead and give no accommodation even to something that is good.  This happens all the time in prayer – how many times the devil tries to distract us from prayer with the goods of this world.  What is the governing concern?  It is what St. Paul teaches today: we must make sure that our accommodations leave us free to follow Christ, encourage us to follow Christ where he leads us. 

And this brings us to a third kind of accommodation: the path of healthy and good accommodation shown to us by Christ.  Accommodation of an older parent who is having a hard time remembering, accommodation of a young child who is sick and needs our attention, accommodation of a friend who is misinformed about the teaching of the church but willing to listen to what we really believe, accommodation of the single mother trying to pay for her groceries and wrangle the children in the grocery check out.  These are the accommodations of Christ, of the Christian.

When we find ourselves accommodating, we should always ask: is this accommodation one that is of Christ?  Is it helping me and those around me to be more like him?  If we find ourselves accommodating sin, we need to remember that it is enslaving us through our accommodation and leading us to death.  When we are making accommodation for various goods, have we ensured that our lives remained focused on seeking the greatest goods.  And we must all make sure that we are being accommodating enough to Christ who comes to us in prayer and the scriptures and sacraments, in the faces of the poor, the stranger, the ignorant, and the suffering.

Christ calls us to seek first the kingdom of God, his kingdom that gives us life and freedom.  To make no accommodation for anything that would separate us or others from his love.  To resolutely determine with Christ to journey toward the heavenly Jerusalem, following the will of our heavenly Father to the end.  May he give us the grace not be tempted to make accommodation for anything that would keep us from following our his example.