Salt and Light

5th Sunday, A

“You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.”

Thus the Lord Jesus – after the Beatitudes, at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount – describes to us, his disciples, our identity and our task in this world.

Let’s take the light first.

Citizens of the Kingdom

(4th Sunday in Ordinary Time, A, updated and revised from the homily I gave eighteen years ago on this day!)

Last Sunday we heard the beginning and core message of Jesus’ preaching: “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” The Kingdom of God, which is the destiny of all creation, us included, and is mysteriously present among us even now, is the heart of the Gospel.

Today, in Matthew’s Beatitudes, we hear a description of the citizens of this Kingdom.

First of all, the citizens of the Kingdom of God are “blessed.” The word in the original Greek here is makarios, and it’s just as easily translated as “happy.” My dictionary defined makarios as “blessed, happy, or fortunate.” That’s the first thing to know about being a Christian, a citizen of the kingdom of God: we are blessed, happy, and fortunate for the call we have received to Holy Communion with God in Christ. And that’s why the primary attitude of the Christian is always gratitude. As our own Blessed Solanus Casey put it, “gratitude is the first sign of a thinking, rational creature.”

But I Say To You

6th Sunday, A

Well. We have a lot of stuff in the gospel today. It’s a collection of the moral teachings of Jesus that makes up part of the Sermon on the Mount in the gospel of St. Matthew.

I don’t think it would be possible to say something about all of it adequately, but perhaps we can find a thread that unites all these sayings of Jesus.

Let’s begin with the refrain with which Jesus introduces these teachings: “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors … but I say to you.”

Lights and Ladders

(Epiphany)

“Rise up in splendor,” comes the call from the prophet Isaiah, “Your light has come…the glory of the Lord shines upon you.” Though our world may seem at times to be in darkness and gloom, we rejoice today in the revelation of Christ, the true Light.

The theme of light pervades the whole Christmas season. Lights are one of the primary ways we decorate in celebration of the Lord’s Nativity, as we see here in church and in our neighborhoods. This theme begins with the gospel proclamation of the Mass of Christmas Day, “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” (John 1:9) For us who live in the northern hemisphere, the cycle of the seasons reinforces our spiritual recollection; from now on the daylight will increase each day until we arrive at the Nativity of John the Baptist on the other side of the astronomical year when we celebrate the birth of him who “must decrease.”

On this feast of the Epiphany we are given the image of the magi following the star to the infant Jesus. They are models for our imitation. The magi show us that the created world of nature, properly interpreted, leads us to Jesus Christ. As they followed the star to the newborn Jesus, so we too can follow the beauty and light of creation to the presence of God among us. In some ways, this is something that we as modern people have forgotten. Sometimes our theism, in practical terms at least, is of the type that separates God from nature; God is in charge of spiritual stuff, while we have science to explain the natural world. This is the classic “God of the gaps” theology. As Christians, we must resist this kind of thinking. Why? Because we believe that God created the world through His Word: ‘God said…and so it happened’ goes the refrain of the first biblical account of the creation. What we celebrate at Christmas is that this same Word of God becomes flesh in the human person Jesus Christ. Putting these two articles of faith together we realize that the created world should speak of the Christ through Whom it was created, and that Jesus Christ Himself should be the interpretive key to understanding the created world.

The truth is that we are all aware of this in our day to day lives. When we encounter beauty or mystery in the natural world, whether in the creation around us or especially in our experience of ourselves through these wonderful and mysterious minds we have, we know that this speaks to the goodness, beauty, and immensity of our Creator. The great theologian of the Franciscan Order, St. Bonaventure, writes about this in his famous spiritual treatise, The Journey of the Soul into God. St. Bonaventure teaches that we can see the whole created universe as a scala ad ascendendum in Deum, a ladder or stairway by which we might ascend into the contemplation of God. (I:2)

This is the spiritual work, privilege, and joy that the magi put before us today. Let us notice and contemplate the natural light of creation, the beauty and mystery of everything God has made through his only-begotten Word. Let us follow these lights and contemplations to the Light Itself, Jesus Christ.

The Blessed Trinity

(Trinity Sunday, B)

When it comes to our reflection upon and appreciation of the Blessed Trinity, so many times we give up so fast! We say, ‘Who can understand it?’ People like to say, ‘Well, it’s a mystery.’ That much is true. The Blessed Trinity is a mystery. In fact it is the Mystery. But though we can never comprehend this Mystery completely, this doesn’t mean we can never have some appreciation and understanding of what it means.

Even in theological school people give up on having a practical understanding of the Blessed Trinity. Every seminary student is taught the old ‘5,4,3,2,1,’ mnemonic for remembering trinitarian doctrine: In the Trinity there are five notions, four relations, three persons, two processions, one nature, and then, as is always added in comedic desperation, zero understanding.

It’s funny, but to me it’s a little sad. Let’s not give up on having some understanding of the Trinity! We can, brothers and sisters, come to an appreciation of Who the Blessed Trinity is and what He means for us. Not a grasp, a comprehension, mind you, but an appreciation. We can do this for at least for a couple of reasons. First, we are created in the image and likeness of God, so if God is a Trinity, so we can look for the image and likeness of the Blessed Trinity in ourselves. That’s the approach I took last year with the homily for today. But also, we must always remember that Sacred Scripture is the revealed Word of God. So if God is a Trinity, we can expect the Sacred Scriptures to reveal the Blessed Trinity. And so they do, but we have to look carefully.

In the first reading from the book of Deuteronomy, Moses recalls to the people their great privilege of having God reveal Himself to them: “Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of a fire, as you did, and live?” How was God revealed to the people? God was in the voice and the fire. You recall the powerful scene from the book of Exodus that the Scriptures point to here, when God spoke to Moses in the burning bush. This is one of the most complete revelations of the Blessed Trinity in all of the Scriptures. For we believe that God is a superabundant love, and from all eternity God overflows into a perfect expression of Himself that we call the Word or the Son. The Word is ‘begotten, not made” as we pray in the Creed. This is the second person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word that is spoken from the burning bush, the Word through whom God creates the universe—“God said…and so it happened”—and the Word that became flesh in Jesus Christ.

The fire out of which the Word was spoken, the breath of God that carries the Word, this is Who we call the Holy Spirit. So there you have the Blessed Trinity. A dynamic overflowing of Love in which from all eternity there is Lover, Beloved, and the Love that binds them. But even in this, we haven’t reached the fullness of the good news and wonder for us.

Because God is a set of dynamic relationships—indeed, this is what we confess by our belief in the Blessed Trinity—this means that there is a way into God. Just as the love of husband and wife overflows creatively to include the new life of children, so in the human birth of Christ, the dynamic love of the Blessed Trinity expands to include us. This is what St. Paul is talking about in the second reading when he talks about “the Spirit of adoption.” By our baptism into Christ, by our faith, and by our communion with his humanity here at Mass, our lives are folded into the blessed life of the Trinity. We become daughters and sons in the Son.

With that in mind, think back to the burning bush for a moment. Recall what was amazing about the burning bush, that it was not consumed by the fire. And so it is with our adoption by the Holy Spirit into the Love of the Father and the Son. The life of the Blessed Trinity comes to dwell in us in such a way that it does not consume or displace our humanity. The gift and good news we have in Christ is that the dynamic Mystery of Love we call God has come to include us in its own life, in such a way that the Love of God delights to live in us as our love for each other.

Light to the Nations

(Epiphany of the Lord)

The Christmas season is a very dense set of celebrations. In less than three weeks, we observe five big days: The Nativity of the Lord, the feast of the Holy Family, The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, the Epiphany of the Lord today, and the Baptism of the Lord next weekend. These days represent for us the Christmas mystery in increasing revelation. The Incarnation of the Word, the Son of God, the good news of “God with us” becomes more and more public over the course of the season. We are especially aware of this on this day of Epiphany, because in the magoi who visit the infant Jesus, the good news is revealed to us, the people of the nations. The word epiphany is derived from the Greek word that means, ‘coming to light,’ or ‘appearing.’

This step by step revelation of the appearance of the Son of God began at Midnight Mass, when angels announced the good news to the shepherds. These shepherds living in the fields were the first to know the joy of Christmas, because it’s always the poor who understand the mystery of God most freely and easily.

The next step came last Sunday when we celebrated the feast of the Holy Family. As Jesus’ parents went to present him in the Temple, he was recognized by Simeon and Anna. This elderly pair represents the faithfulness of the Israel of history and they rejoice to see the fulfillment of God’s promises in the newborn Lord. Anna becomes the first evangelist, as she goes off and speaks “about the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.” Simeon takes the child Jesus in his arms and proclaims his great canticle, which the Church sings every single night in the Liturgy of the Hours. He sees in the child the “glory” of God’s people Israel, who will become “a light for revelation to the Gentiles.” This is the fulfillment of the promise made through the prophet Isaiah in the first reading today: the Light has come and will be the “shining radiance” by which the nations of the world will walk.

That’s us, brothers and sisters. I suspect that few of us are biological descendants of Abraham, but through the manifestation of Jesus Christ as the Light of the nations we have become heirs of the promise made to Abraham through adoption. As we pray in the Eucharistic Prayer, “Abraham, our father in faith.”

This is the good news of the visit of the Magi. Their knowledge and their worship of the Son of God, these wise men from far away reveal how, in Christ, the blessing and promises made to the little nation of Israel become available to the whole world.

Notice what a miracle this whole process is! The Son of God was born away from home in poverty and obscurity. His birth—and indeed his life—were important by no conventional human standard. And yet today we, along with our Christian brothers and sisters all over the world, know him as the perfect and complete revelation of God. The process of this public revelation of the Incarnate Word is what we celebrate today.

But let us not forget that the gift of this knowledge of God makes demands of us. That the wise men were able to discern the appearance of the eternal and universal King meant that they had to bring him gifts. And they brought the best things there were: riches, worship, and reverence for the death he would eventually suffer for our salvation. We too, to whom the knowledge of salvation has been given, are called to offer to Jesus the best of ourselves.

Destination and Destiny

(Christ the King, A)

The cosmic kingship of Christ is the end of the world. ‘End’ not so much in terms of a terminal point—though it is that too—but ‘end’ in the sense of purpose. That the kingdom of God in which Christ reigns forever should become complete and extend to every human soul and every other part of creation is the point and purpose of everything God has ever done.

We start to get a sense of this in the second reading we hear today from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. “…in Christ all shall be brought to life, but each in proper order.” This is the process of creation moving toward its final goal of all being brought to eternal life. Christ was first at his Resurrection; his rising to new life is like a kind of preview of the world to come. As Paul says, then those who belong to Christ will be raised as well. When this resurrection of the world reaches completion, then even the final enemy, death, will be destroyed and Christ will reign supreme, and, as Paul says, “God will be all in all.” That’s the reign of Christ the King.

This is about destiny! The full and final reign of Christ is the “life of the world to come” we proclaim in the creed, when the eternal life which we now enjoy obscurely comes to rule every heart and mind and all creation is rolled back into the Original Blessing we call God. This is the fulfillment for which all the prophets hoped, just as Ezekiel in the first reading today looks forward to that divine shepherd who would gather those who are scattered, injured, lost, or sick. This is what God is doing for us in Christ; by pouring his own infinite goodness into our humanity through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, God offers us a path to safety and healing from all the injuries and misery we have brought upon ourselves with our sins.

In the meantime, brothers and sisters, God not only invites but commands us to become part of this movement towards the final fulfillment of creation. We are not in the situation of the nations who stand before God in St. Matthew’s vision of the Last Judgment—the nations who didn’t know that they were or were not serving Christ in the least of their brothers and sisters. We who are Christians know that on account of the Incarnation of the Eternal Word and the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the presence of God is to be found in suffering and needy humanity. We are not ignorant like the nations who are judged in the Gospel we hear today. Instead, we are gifted with the eyes of faith that can see the broken body of Christ in the least of our brothers and sisters, and God calls us to serve him in them and so join in the real history of the world, which is the movement toward the fullness of the kingship of Christ.

This is where the world is going, to the fullness of love in which the Resurrection of Christ comes to encompass all the hurt, lost, and broken of our world. Let’s join in.

The Optimistic Investor

(33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)

The parable we hear today from St. Matthew is one of those parables in which we usually jump too quickly to an examination of ourselves. As soon as we hear it we begin to judge ourselves morally to see how well we are doing with the resources that God has entrusted to us. But when we begin our self-examination right away, we miss a lot. We’ll get to all that, but first let’s bracket ourselves off and take the time to notice the image of God presented by the man in the parable, and the attitudes of God that are imagined through his relationships with his servants.

I don’t prefer the traditional title for this passage, the “parable of the talents,” but instead I like to call it the parable of the optimistic investor. The man entrusts his servants in the parable with a huge amount of money; the talent was a unit of both weight and currency in the ancient world. Now nobody is exactly sure how much it was. One commentator I read said that it might be about fifteen years’ worth of wages for an ordinary worker. Another said that a talent would be about a cubic foot of gold or silver. So in any case we’re talking about a lot of money. And this is the first part of the image of God we should notice; God has entrusted to each of us resources of tremendous value. Indeed, God has invested in us, in our humanity, the divine life of his only Son. Through our baptism into Christ’s death and Resurrection and through our Holy Communion with his humanity in this Eucharist, God has invested each of us with his own divine Presence. In fact, God has poured out his own infinitely loving and refreshing Self into our humanity. That’s the good news of the Incarnation, and the ultimate blessing each of us has received as members of Christ’s body.

Just like the man in the parable, God looks forward to a return on his investment. It is God’s delight to see us taking the gift of God within and making it flourish in the particular circumstances of our relationships and our lives. This is what we do as Christians; we strive to become vehicles for the grace of God, bringing the caring, gentle, reconciling love of God to all that we do and giving it a chance to grow and increase in the world around us. Notice what the man in the parable says when he settles accounts with the first servant, the one who had doubled his money: “Come, share your master’s joy.” This is the God who is delighted when we take the presence of Christ within us and allow it to flourish in our families, our jobs, and our communities.

But we also have to keep in mind that though heaven rejoices when we make God’s investment in us grow, this is not just an invitation. God does not invite us to make his goodness and holiness multiply in the world; he commands us to do so. God is demanding! See how the man treated the servant who buried his talent in fear. That servant was condemned pretty harshly. Is this unfair? Well, no, because as we were told in the beginning of the parable, each servant was given a sum to work with “according to his ability.” From this we know that the servant who was given the one talent could have done something with it, but he didn’t.

So it is with God. God invests his own divine life within us according to each one’s ability. The presence and blessing of God that each of us has is tailored and meant for the particular creation that each of us is. It is up to us to take the saving, reconciling, and renewing presence of God that he has placed within us and use it to build up the people and the world around us in love. This is what it means to be the body of Christ we become in this Eucharist, and to participate in God’s great work of lifting up all creation in the Resurrection of Christ.

How To Read The Bible

(30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)

This Sunday we hear another Gospel in which Jesus is tested. You will recall how last week they tried to trap Jesus in what he would say about the Roman census tax. Today a scholar of the law tries to test Jesus with a specifically religious concern, and it has to do with the very old question of how to read the Sacred Scriptures. What’s the right way to read and interpret the Bible?

This problem was very much alive in Jesus’ time, as it is in ours. All you have to do is flip around on your television or radio to find a preacher delivering some homemade doctrine supposedly based in the Scriptures, or you can walk down the street until someone gives you a pamphlet. And when you hear some of these things you think to yourself how it doesn’t sound right. But then you ask yourself, how do I know? How do I know that one way of interpreting the divine revelation contained in the Bible is better than another? Whom should I believe?

I think that an awareness of this problem can help us to enter into the spirit of the Gospel we hear today. This question, “which commandment of the law is the greatest?” was very much alive at the time of Jesus. A little bit later on, the Jewish tradition will decide that there are, in fact, 613 precepts of the law: 248 in the form of “thou shall” do this, and 365 in the form of “thou shall not.”

In his response Jesus answers once and for all the question of how to read and interpret the Bible. He delivers the great double commandment: we are to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. As Jesus says, the whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” That means that the whole of the Sacred Scriptures depend on the love of God and neighbor; it means that these loves are the point and purpose of all divine revelation.

To love God means to always seek to put God first in our lives, to seek and to consider the happiness that God wants to give us. To love our neighbor means to desire and act for what is best for those around us, to seek their joy and happiness. We are called to do this just as much for those we like as for those we don’t. In fact, often the great work of the Christian life is to make the effort to love those we don’t like. Some of this we hear in the first reading today from the book of Exodus, though it’s expressed negatively: we are to make sure that in our dealings with the vulnerable they are not cheated or oppressed.

So, anytime we want to ask ourselves what the Sacred Scriptures mean, or to judge what somebody else tries to tell us they mean, all we have to do is ask ourselves: would this interpretation lead us to a greater love of God and neighbor? If so, it’s probably a good way to understand the Bible passage in question. If the interpretation seems to point away from love of neighbor especially, then we already know that the interpretation is wrong.

Sometimes the point at question doesn’t seem to make a difference for love of God and neighbor. Take for example the burning question of creationism vs. evolution. Scientists tell us that the earth is something like four and half billion years old. In stark contrast, if you take the Biblical account on its face, the world seems to be just six thousand years old or so. Hence, in the Jewish calendar, we have just entered the year 5769. So which is right? Did God create the world in precisely six days about six thousand years ago, or have we and all the rest evolved over a much longer time? It’s a live and open question, even in our national discourse. But does it make a difference for how we love God or our neighbor? Not really, and so it’s not something we should really worry about. That’s why, in her wisdom, the Catholic Church has not found it necessary to declare anything on the question of so-called creationism against the theory of evolution. For what the Scriptures are actually about, the love of God and our neighbor, it doesn’t really matter.

Indeed, we who are Catholic Christians, who, along with our Orthodox brothers and sisters belong to the Churches founded on the apostles, are very fortunate. For we belong to the communities whose reflection on their faith produced the New Testament in the first place. We are the direct heirs of the tradition Jesus begins in the Gospel we hear today: it is the love of God and our neighbor that is at the heart of hearts of all divine revelation. What nurtures these loves is to be followed, and what injures them is to be discarded.

(With thanks to St. Augustine’s De doctrina christiana, chapter 36)

Repaying To God What Belongs To God

(29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)

(Mass of Thanksgiving at parish of Baptism, First Communion, and Confirmation)

In today’s gospel we see the Jesus of the clever comeback. We shouldn’t miss this simple point; we are meant to cheer for our hero who eludes both the trap and turns the challenge back on his enemies.

They try to trap Jesus, because in the question of paying the tax to Rome he can’t win. Let’s notice who is sent to give the challenge: the disciples of the Pharisees, who, as devout Jews would have been set against the Romans who were occupying their country, and the Herodians who were the ruling class. Now as we all know, the ruling classes are always interested in having people pay their taxes. So Jesus can’t win. If he recommends paying the census tax, he’ll be in trouble with the Pharisees. If he says that the tax shouldn’t be paid, he’ll be in trouble with the local authorities.

But Jesus eludes this rhetorical trap by elevating the whole conversation. He offers a comeback that says: Would that we were so concerned with how we pay our debts to God! And this is a fine reflection us who find ourselves in a pretty intense election season in this country, when there is endless talk about taxes, who should pay them, and how much. (As my father used to say, the trouble is that the United States was founded on the principle that you shouldn’t have pay taxes.) But imagine what the world would be like if we were so concerned as all this for how to pay our debts to God.

To get this point across, Jesus uses a very clever analogy. He asks to see the coin used to pay the tax, and when he sees Caesar’s image on it, he recommends returning to Caesar what seems to belong to him. But then Jesus gives invites his adversaries to repay to God what belongs to God. And so we are invited to reflect on the question, what bears the image and inscription of God in the same way that the coin bears the image and inscription of Caesar? The answer is clear: it is us ourselves, created in the “image of likeness of God.”

This thing with the Roman money is a powerful analogy, and it’s worth some sustained reflection. Let’s bring it into our time though, and replace the Roman coin with one of our standard forms of money, say the $20 dollar bill. Here it is, with the image of Andrew Jackson on the front, and the image of the White House on the back. So if we are paying attention, and even if we’re not, each time we use one of these bills we are reminded of who we are as Americans. The history and the ideals of our country pass through our hands whenever we use this money, and by using it, we remember who we are as a country and what we stand for.

Now, our soul is the same way. It bears the image and imprint of the God who created it. So each time in the course of a day when we use our soul by loving, learning, praying, or just by trying to be fully present to another human being, we can be reminded, we can notice the imprint of God on ourselves. Just by paying attention to ourselves as we relate, work, and pray with each other, we can remember God. In the same way that the images of our secular history pass through our hands whenever we use our money, so the image and likeness of God in which each of us is created, passes into our relationships and becomes a holy communion between persons.

Once we have noticed the image and likeness of God in the loving actions of our own soul, we are ready to fulfill Jesus’ invitation to return to God what belongs to him. But what does it mean to return to God the soul that belongs to him? How do we do that? Well, here’s the really good news: it’s already been done for us.

This is the saving meaning of the Lord’s Resurrection. In his Passion and death Jesus takes our humanity, having borrowed it from us through our Blessed Mother, brings it through the suffering and alienation from God we have brought upon ourselves with our sins, and returns it to God in his Resurrection. So if we want to fulfill Jesus’ command to offer our souls back to God who made them in his own image and likeness, all we have to do is allow our humanity, our hearts and lives, to be caught up into the humanity of Jesus Christ. We do this by faith, by prayer, and especially through the Holy Communion we receive here at Mass. It’s here in the Eucharist that we become what we receive, become who we most truly are. It is here that we become the Body of Christ risen from the dead, offering our humanity back to the God who created us.

Invited

(28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)

Well here we are in church on Sunday. We should take a moment to notice that our presence here together is a remarkable thing. Even among us Catholic Christians who are fully initiated into our faith through Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist, we who actually practice our religion and make an effort to remain faithful to God are a minority. In our culture, at this point in history, most of our sisters and brothers in Christ who once professed—or had professed on their behalf—the catholic and apostolic faith are no longer with us here at the Sunday Eucharist.

I think at one time or another, each of us who are religiously observant people have asked the question: Why me? How is that other people, even members of our families and those are otherwise dear to us, can be indifferent or even hostile to the presence of God which, though always obscure, is nonetheless somewhat obvious to us? Why do I have the faith which someone else seems to lack?

Is it because God is kinder to us than he is to the others? Certainly not. As the prophet Isaiah proclaims in the first reading we hear today, the salvation God prepares—which the prophet imagines through the wonderful image of the messianic banquet—is a salvation for “all peoples” and “all nations.” God wills and desires the salvation of everyone, and is inviting every heart and soul to his banquet at every moment. But as Jesus says at the end of the Gospel we hear today, though “many are invited, few are chosen.”

Now the parable of the banquet, much like the parable of the tenants in the vineyard we heard from Matthew last week, is meant by the evangelist to be an allegory for the mixed reception Jesus received among his own people. Just like the tenants of the vineyard mistreated or killed those who were sent to them, so in today’s Gospel those invited to the banquet mistreat and kill the representatives of the king. In this we are meant by Matthew to understand the rejection of Jesus by the chief priests and rulers of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, this applies to us as well in our situation in which some accept the invitation to the wedding feast and others do not.

For the wedding feast is here and now. This Eucharist that we celebrate is the wedding banquet for the marriage of heaven and earth. As we hear each year in the proclamation at the great Vigil of Easter, “this is the night, when heaven is wedded to earth, and man is reconciled with God.” Why is that we have accepted the invitation to be here and so many of our brother and sister Catholics seem to have rejected it, like those in the Gospel who go off to their own business rather than attending the wedding feast? It’s not because God likes us better. It’s not because we are less sinners than they are. It’s only our good fortune. The particulars of our own personal histories and many other variables made it so that we were able to consent to the grace of God with less distraction than the others.

And for this we must be eternally grateful, literally. Though we haven’t done anything to deserve it, it is our privilege to be the ones who are faithful to God. We ought to rejoice in our presence here at the Sunday Eucharist, grateful that faithfulness to God and the virtue of religion have taken root in our lives and hearts. But this isn’t the end. It is our privilege to be here, but it is also our task to become more and more the Body of Christ we receive here.

In the Gospel the guest who was found without a wedding garment was thrown out of the party. We need not fear this happening to us, because we have received the wedding garment; it was symbolized by the white robe which we wore at our baptism. This baptismal garment will cover us again when we arrive at the door of the church for our funeral and the white pall is placed upon our coffin. But in between the beginning and end of our life of faith on this earth, it is up to us to keep that baptismal garment shining. We must consent to the grace of God working in us so that our baptism bears fruit and the garment of our baptism shines more and more brilliantly, reflecting the goodness and mercy of God to those around us.

Performance Review

(27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)

For the last couple of Sundays we’ve heard a lot of parables about vineyards. Indeed, this is a common and potent image that the Sacred Scriptures use for both the people of God and for creation as a whole.

In the first reading from the prophet Isaiah, we hear this image in its most classic form: The prophet sings of the vineyard of his “friend”—his friend being God. God planted and set up this vineyard with all the best and everything it needed. But when God comes to collect the produce of his vineyard he finds only “wild grapes,” not the nice, cultivated grapes he is looking for. At this God enters into what scripture scholars call a “covenant lawsuit.” God calls for judgment between him and, we may presume, the workers in his vineyard for failing to produce what God intended.

In all of this we find in the prophet a strong image of the relationships between God, ourselves, and the creation. When God creates us and the world it is only the beginning; as we heard in the parable of the workers in the vineyard two weeks ago, God’s creation requires cultivation. God expects that each of us will be an active participant in the work of creation, and bring forth a harvest of peace, justice, and love. More often than not in the history of creation thus far, this hasn’t been the case. To the God who seeks peace and justice, we have more often returned war and oppression. In response to the God who commands us to ‘love one another’ we human beings have more often displayed a disregard for human dignity and even human life itself. And this continues here in our own country even today.

The Gospel we hear today is all about this sad situation. In the parable the landowner is trying to collect his harvest from the tenant farmers. Of course the landowner is meant to be God, and the tenants are the people of God. The first servants who are sent to collect the produce of the vineyard represent the prophets whom the people of God have always abused and rejected. When the landowner sends his own son to the tenants they kill him too. In this we see a strong allegory for the coming of Jesus to Jerusalem, where the priests and leaders of the people handed the Son of God over to death.

And what does God do in the face of this horrible treatment of his messengers and even his own Son? He says to them, “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.” In this the allegory of Matthew’s historical situation continues. We know that he is imagining the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the beginning of gentile Christianity. Nevertheless, there is a lesson for us in this too.

The history of salvation proves that God does what he has to do to accomplish his loving purpose in creation. God expects us to cultivate ourselves and our world in order to bring forth a harvest of justice and so create a world of peace and mutual care. If we who call ourselves the people of God fail to do this, the history of salvation shows that God has no problem taking this privilege away from us and giving it to someone else. Let us consider ourselves warned, and redouble our efforts to consent to God’s will and cooperate with his grace to create the world anew.

Workers In The Vineyard

(25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)

The parable we hear in the gospel today recalls a common image from the whole of the Sacred Scriptures: the people of God, or indeed the whole world, as God’s vineyard. The parable imagines God as the landowner, the world as the vineyard in need of care and cultivation, and us as those whom God hires to do the work.

 So what does this tell us about the kingdom of God, since Jesus tells us that this is what the kingdom is like? First, we know that the kingdom of God requires work; it has to be cultivated and cared for in this world just like the vineyard in the parable. Remember a couple of months ago when we heard the parable of the sower, and we had the image of God as the one who scatters the seeds of the kingdom of God over the earth? Well today’s parable is in part the continuation of that image; the seeds of the kingdom now require our care in they are to grow and flourish.

 We also see in the parable that each of us arrives in the kingdom of God when we are invited—“hired” in the image of the parable—by God. Notice in this the image of God as the one who comes to us, inviting us into the vineyard where we will be given the mission, duty, and privilege of giving ourselves for the cultivation of the kingdom. In the parable the landowner goes out to hire workers several times during the day. We might take this in two ways.

 First, it represents the whole history of salvation, how God, some 130 generations ago first called the family of Abraham to be God’s own people. Then God called the family of Jacob whom God names Israel who became God’s special possession, the Israelites, some of whom later came to be called the Jews after their return from exile in Babylon. Finally, in these last days, God has called all people, through the divine humanity of Christ, to share in the promises made to Abraham, to Jacob, and to David.

 On the other hand, we can look at how the landowner goes out to hire workers at the various times of day as an image of our own individual lives. It’s how at certain special moments of our lives we may feel the presence of God more intensely when God is calling us to a deeper prayer or to doing something that God’s kingdom may require in a special way at that moment. In any case the image of God in the parable is of a God who comes to us, who speaks spiritually to the heart and mind of each, and who is an inviting God, always offering to grace us with the chance to work for his kingdom at the different points of our lives.

 The parable also assures us that if we allow ourselves to be “hired” by God, and if we work diligently to cultivate his kingdom on earth, we will paid a just wage. We will receive our reward from God. But here we come to what is perhaps the most challenging part of the parable. When those who had only worked for only an hour received the full daily wage, the ones who had worked all day thought that they would be getting more. It’s only fair, right? Well, God’s justice is not always the same as our idea of justice. As God says through the prophet Isaiah in the first reading today, “my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.” This is the generous God who gives the same reward to each one who accepted his invitation to work for the kingdom, regardless of how much work he actually did.

 Perhaps those who had worked harder in the vineyard had a right to grumble, but note that nobody gets ripped off. Everyone receives the wage they were justly entitled to; it’s just that some received more than they deserved. To me, I think that’s where most of us are before God.

The Forgiving Body of Christ

(23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)

At first glance the gospel passage we hear today might seem like a simple procedure for dealing with trouble in the Christian community. Jesus advises us to take a step-by-step approach in dealing with someone who is trapped in a sin that is hurting the unity or the holiness of the Body of Christ.

Let’s notice, though, Jesus’ astonishing statement at the end of gospel. Do you remember a couple of weeks ago when we heard St. Peter’s great confession of faith, and how Jesus gave him the “keys to the kingdom of heaven,” so that whatever he bound on earth would be bound on earth and whatever he loosed on earth would be loosed in heaven? Well in today’s gospel we hear Jesus giving that same authority to all of his disciples. Consider what this means: the forgiveness of God is in our hands! When we forgive someone, we forgive them not just with our forgiveness but with the forgiveness of God himself. “Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Why should this be, that God has handed over to us the power to dispense his own forgiveness to each other? It is because we are the Body of Christ. As St. Paul writes in the letter to the Philippians, God “emptied himself” into the human life of Jesus Christ, so that in Christ we see the full revelation of God on our human terms. And where is this revelation of God now, for us? It is right here. Jesus Christ, who died on the Cross for us, is risen into the new life of the Living Bread and Precious Blood of the Eucharist we celebrate each Sunday. We who receive this Holy Communion with the humanity of Christ, become what we receive. We become the Body of Christ, risen from the dead.

So if we are the Body of Christ, what does the Body of Christ do? First of all it preaches the Kingdom of God, and so this is our primary vocation as Christians. Second, the Body of Christ allows itself to be broken for the salvation of the world. And so we who are Christians allow the suffering of the world around us to break our hearts, that we might learn compassion for all. Finally, as we hear in the gospel today, as the Body of Christ, the forgiveness of God is on our hands. “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

We are all well acquainted with our sins. As the old saying goes, a clean conscience is a sign of a bad memory. We all know what it’s like to long for the healing forgiveness of God. Indeed the whole world longs for this forgiveness, for the forgiving of one another from the heart is the only thing that will stop this world’s endless cycles of violence. So if we have ever longed for God’s forgiveness, let us fulfill the injunction to love our neighbor as ourselves, and give God’s forgiveness to each other. It is ours to give, as the living Body of Christ, the revelation of God in the world. To forgive is to heal, to stop the cycles of violence and sin that hurt everyone. To forgive is to love perfectly. To stop the reproduction of violence and sin is to take up the Cross and fulfill our vocation as Christ’s risen Body. It is the love that is the fullest expression of the Mystery we call “God.”

You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God

(21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)

The Gospel we hear today has always been very important to us Catholics, for it contains the scriptural origin of the Petrine ministry: the ministry of St. Peter of teaching and unity for all the churches, which we believe has continued through the years in the bishops of Rome down to our Holy Father Benedict XVI. In this famous exchange, Peter makes his great confession of faith, proclaiming his belief that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

In response to his confession of faith, Jesus gives this Simon, son of Jonah, a new name: Petros in Matthew’s Greek, a play on the word for rock, petra. Jesus then proclaims that Peter will be the Rock on which the Church will be built. But in what does this foundation consist? In other words, what is the “rockiness” of this man on which this church will be founded? It sure isn’t Peter’s leadership qualities or understanding; in the very next passage of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus calls Peter a skandalon, a “stumbling block” or hindrance, because he does not understand the prediction of the Passion. And we all we know the shame of Peter’s denial, the night before Jesus’ suffering and death, that he even knew Jesus.

No, Peter does not become the Rock on which the Church is built because he is a great leader or theologian, but because of his confession of faith. It is the confession that this Jesus of Nazareth is “the Christ, the Son of the living God” that is the Rock, the foundation of the Church.

But what does it mean for us, we who have inherited the apostolic faith that has been passed down to us? We confess that this man, this one human life, this Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew of the first century, is the Christ. By Christ we mean the anointed of God, elected by God to be priest like Melchizedek, prophet like Elijah, and king like his father David. In addition to all that, we confess that Jesus is the Son of the living God. Our faith and belief is that the Eternal Word or Wisdom of God, which is such a perfect reflection and self-expression of God that it is also God, became this human life, this Jesus of Nazareth.

Thus, we believe that Jesus is the perfect Revealer of God. In the preaching, teaching, and interactions of Jesus with people, we see, on our terms, the nature and the personality of the otherwise unknowable Source from which all existence comes, that Mystery that we perceive obscurely somehow behind and beneath everything that is. In his patient suffering, humble death, and glorious Resurrection we see the Eternity towards which we are all traveling as we make our way through this life.

This is the basic “good news” of Christianity; that this obscure reality we call “God,” this Mystery of existence that we only kind of perceive through or experiences of wonder or love, has been perfectly revealed. Even better, God has been revealed on our terms, in a way that is perfectly available to our human understanding. This is what it means to say that God became man, and that Jesus is the Son of the living God.

This is our confession of faith. And it is God’s desire to continue building his church on the solid rock of this confession in each Christian life. God will do this! In Christ, God is saving, reconciling, and sanctifying the world. If we allow this faith to be the foundation of our lives, God will make us part of the work. In our families, and workplaces and communities, we will truly be Christians, “other christs” through whom God is reconciling and sanctifying the world.

The Faith

(20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)

The Sacred Scriptures we hear today invite us to reflect on faith. We have in them an opportunity to notice the miracle and blessing of having faith in the living God. To know and believe in the one true God is indeed a miracle for us human beings, because we are so prone to following false gods on the one hand, and the other we so easily allow true religion to devolve into magic and superstition.

There was a time when knowledge and worship of the true God was limited to just one family on earth: God called Abraham and Sarah and promised to make of them of a great nation. That was perhaps four thousand years ago, when only one family on earth knew about the living God. Consider, then, how amazing it is that today the majority of people on earth adhere to the faith of Abraham. That’s the Jews, whom John Paul II called our “older brother,” us Christians, and all the Muslims of the world, together with whom, in the words of Vatican II, we “adore the one, merciful God.” The gift of God of knowing the true God, given to one family, has taken over the world.

It was a slow process. Through his grandson Jacob, the family of Abraham became a nation unto God, the people of Israel. God settled them in the Land and they became God’s special possession. Over time, the prophets of Israel who knew the living God with such passion began to reflect on what faith in the one true God meant. See, in the ancient world, each people had their own god or a set of gods. What made Israel different is that they knew that their God was the only true God. But if this God of theirs was the only true God, then he must be the God not only of Israel but of the whole world, right?

This is what is going on in the first reading from the prophet Isaiah. The prophet imagines a time when the Temple of the Jews will become a “house of prayer for all peoples,” and that “foreigners” will “join themselves to the Lord, ministering to him, loving the name of the Lord, and becoming his servants.”

The foreigners are us, friends. Through the Church, which is the Body of Christ in the world, we have been brought into the faith of God’s chosen people Israel. This is the great miracle of the Holy Spirit. From the one family of Abraham to the little nation of the Israelites, there is now an entire third of the world that is Christian. And half of us are Catholics. To use St. Paul’s language, in Christ we are “grafted” onto the chosen people and adopted into the family of Abraham.

This ought to keep us humble and grateful, for in this four thousand year old story, we have only arrived lately and towards the end of the story. For those of us with roots in northern Europe, some of our peoples have known the God of Abraham for less than a thousand years. If you’re Irish that extends to fifteen or sixteen hundred years, but that’s still squarely in the latter half of the history of salvation. And we who have been introduced to faith in the living God only in these last days, we have received just as much if not more in blessing and grace.

We are newcomers, and we ought not to forget it. Our attitude should always be a little bit like the woman in the Gospel who knows that, though she believes, the faith is not hers. Like her we have brought into the faith and blessing of God’s chosen people by the generosity of God in Christ.

Walking On Water

(19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)

There’s an anti-drug campaign going around on TV and internet these days with the slogan, “above the influence.” I like it; it’s definitely better than the fried egg thing they were doing when I was a teenager. The slogan, “above the influence” is a play on the phrase, “under the influence.” When someone is intoxicated with drugs or alcohol, we say that they are “under the influence,” but this campaign urges us not to be under, but above the influence.

I appreciate this because I think a lot of our spiritual work and religious effort needs to be about keeping ourselves above the influences that are useless or harmful. Many of these are on the outside: the false promises of advertising, the hubris of scientism, the lies and destruction of the cultures of death and violence. Harmful influences are on the inside too; self-hate, patterns of self-punishment, useless anxiety, and the voices of low self-esteem. To work ourselves above these influences and to replace them with the sole influence of God is a blessed but difficult spiritual work. It’s what in Christianity we call ascesis, from which we have the word asceticism. Mutatis mutandis, it’s what our Muslim brothers and sisters call jihad, right effort in bringing ourselves and the world around to God.

The work can be overwhelming. Many times we feel like the boat in the Gospel today, thrown every which way by the storm. Surrounded as we are by the importunity of advertising, the easy problems of people on television, and the false promises of consumerism, our minds become distracted and confused. Bad “tapes” play within our minds, telling us the wrong thing and inciting us to the wrong strategy in trying to feel better.

But here’s the good news. Jesus comes to us, walking on the water in the midst of the storm. The craziness of the influences of this world doesn’t bother him. Jesus can walk peacefully in the midst of the storm because his divine humanity is perfect; this is part of what we mean when we say he is “like us in all things but sin.”

The good news of our faith is that in Jesus, God wants to share with us freedom from sin and anxiety. God wants to grace us with the ability to walk peacefully in the midst of the both the storms of this life and the ones in our heads. But we have to seek it! We have to say with Peter, “command me to come to you on the water.” We have to make this our prayer. We have to ask God, “Make me free from all these useless and harmful influences and voices that bat me around in the course of the day, wearing out my heart and getting me to do what I know I don’t really want.”

If we make this our prayer, like Peter did, we will find that Lord’s power, his perfect humanity joined to ours, will empower us to take our first peaceful and confident steps in the midst of the storm of this life. This is our spiritual work. To rise above the sea the false promises, tiring lusts, and pointless ambitions that our Christian tradition calls the world, and to walk in the midst of the storm in peace, depending only on God. That’s holiness, and that’s what it means to be a saint.

At times we will falter and fall in our journey. Even after beginning on our path of walking confidently on the chaotic water, just like Peter we will occasionally become overwhelmed again and begin to fall. Jesus is there to catch us, to keep us from ruin, and to receive our prayer again: “Lord, command that I come to you walking on the water, putting one foot ahead of the other, above and free from the influences that seek to harm me."

The Big Party

(18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)

The prophet Isaiah is inviting us to a party, and not just any party but the best one that will ever be. It’s the greatest party ever because the host is the richest, most generous host ever, and has more friends than anyone in the world. The host is God himself, and Isaiah promises that we shall “drink wine,” and “eat well,” and best of all, we shall “have life.” This isn’t just life is the sense of being alive; it’s Life, eternal life, the living force behind, underneath, and ahead of everything that is—this Life that we clumsily call “God.”

What the prophet is describing is a common theme in the Sacred Scriptures, and it’s called the ‘Messianic Banquet.’ It’s the idea that, when the Messiah comes to bring judgment at the end of time, he will host for the just a festive banquet. It’s not just in the Old Testament prophets that we hear this theme. Think of Jesus’ parables and how many of them revolve around dinner parties, banquets, and wedding receptions. In all of these our hope for the Messianic Banquet at the end of time is invoked. This is not a small part of Jesus’ own message: if we want to know what the destiny of the world is at the end of time, look at a wedding reception, for the end of time and the destiny of creation is the final fulfillment of the marriage of heaven and earth.

But here’s the kicker: this banquet that celebrates the end of time and the destiny of the world, it has already started. Not to worry though; it’s still going on and we can still join in the celebration. This is one way we can read the account of the feeding of the five thousand that we hear from St. Matthew today. This miraculous meal is evidence that the final purpose and destiny of creation has appeared within our human history with all of its saving and nourishing force. And just like it was when Jesus took, blessed, broke, and gave that bread and fish to his disciples to give to the people, so through the apostolic authority of his church, Jesus takes, blesses, breaks, and gives us the bread of this Eucharist. This language is important and it helps us understand that since the time of the early Church, we have seen the Eucharist as a continuation of the miracle we hear in the Gospel today.

Let us see the miracle present in the Eucharist we celebrate! Here, in this assembly that the Holy Spirit has brought together, we become the Messianic Banquet that Isaiah looked forward to, and we attend the wedding reception for the marriage of heaven and earth. This is the joy of the final end and purpose of all creation, and we have been invited.

This is a very freeing thing! The judgment has come and the party has begun. God will not be stopped in fulfilling the unconditional covenant he made with David, and insists on saving the world. All we have to do is consent to it and we’re free from all worry and anxiety. Since we’re made free in this way, and don’t have to waste our energy on useless worry, we can devote ourselves to each other. When we see the world around us suffering and struggling, starving spiritually because of its ignorance or even hostility to God, we can respond freely to the Lord’s command: “give them some food yourselves.”

Finding the Treasure

(17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)

Today we hear two more parables that come to us in a pair. They follow the classic form of “the kingdom of God is like…,” and are meant to teach us something about knowing the kingdom of God in our own lives.

In each of these short parables something valuable is found, either the treasure buried in the field or the “pearl of great price.” We have to be careful, though, that we don’t just see image of the kingdom of God in the valuable thing! When Jesus says, “the kingdom of heaven is like…” it refers to the whole of the story. In each of the parables there is a discovery and a response, and both of these together are what make for an image of the kingdom of God.

In the discovery of the valuable object, there is a significant difference between the two parables. The merchant, Jesus says, had been “searching for fine pearls,” when he found the “pearl of great price,” while the person in the field just found the treasure. In one case someone was looking for something and in the other it was discovered by surprise. It goes the same way for us; we can find the kingdom of God in our lives in our world in both ways. We can look for the kingdom of God by reflection on how God has been working in our lives, how the Providence of God has led us along to this point, putting the right people in our path and supporting us through hard times. This is an important part of everyone’s spiritual practice, that we reflect and try to notice how God has been with us in the past and continues to operate in our lives now.

On the other hand, I think we’ve all had the experience of suddenly becoming aware of God “out of the blue” as it were. Maybe it’s in a situation of loss or grief and all of a sudden at some moment we know the strong hand of God with us. Or it might be in a moment of beauty like when we are contemplating the order and wonder of creation and we are suddenly aware of the great and adorable Mystery behind it all.

In the end though, it doesn’t matter how we find and become aware of the kingdom of God because the response we are called to make is the same whether we were looking for it or not. The merchant who found the pearl and the person who found the treasure in the field do the same thing once they find the object of value: they buy it. And not only do they buy it, but they “sell all” and buy it, doing whatever they have to do to own that treasure. Having found it, they single-mindedly make it the entire focus of what they want.

This is “the kingdom of God;” not that we just notice or become aware of God working gently and humbly in our lives, but that we buy into that experience, doing whatever we need to do to own it and make it our primary focus. This is the twofold process that brings us into the kingdom of God: first, that we find the Treasure, the awareness of God with us and working in our lives and our world. Second, that we should invest ourselves in that awareness and make it our guiding principle—allowing the rest of our lives to be organized around it. That’s what it means to put God first, to let God be “king” of our hearts and our world, and to step into the kingdom of heaven.

Mixed Motivations

(16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)

The Lord’s parable the weeds and the wheat is first of all a continuation of the parable of the sower which we heard last Sunday. You will recall that in that parable we had an image of God scattering the seeds of goodness and righteousness over the world. Some of these seeds of grace get into people’s hearts and bear the fruits of prayer and devotion, justice and charity, “a hundred, or sixty, or thirty-fold,” as the Lord says. Today’s parable, though, recognizes the fact that within this great harvest of righteousness and goodness that God is planting and tending in creation, there are also weeds: injustice, violence, hate, disregard for life, and every other kind of evil—and these seem to grow in the world as well. Just like weeds in a garden, they rob the good harvest of space and nutrients. So we have a fairly accurate picture of our world in this metaphor of the field or the garden, in which the good harvest of justice, righteousness, and love is in competition with the weeds of sin, violence, and injustice.

What is Jesus’ advice to us who find ourselves in this world of wheat and weeds? As he counsels his disciples, at the end of the age, when the harvest is complete, the good wheat will be harvested and the weeds burned. So in our world of conflict between good and evil we must have a stance of patient endurance, confident that in our final destiny the good will prevail and evil be destroyed.

To me, though, there’s a deeper level to the parable. For the wheat and the weeds aren’t just out there in the world; there’s also in here, in the heart and the mind of each of us. Each of our hearts is a mix of motivations and most things we do come from a complex mixture of good and evil intentions. Even the most beautiful things we human beings are capable of, loving another person for instance, are often partly made up of admixture of evil motives, like possessiveness or control, for example.

This is nowhere more true than in religion. What motivates us to be religious? What drives us to prayer? What makes us get up early on Sunday and drag ourselves here to church, while so many who blissfully ignore God are resting easy? Certainly it’s because we love God. God is infinitely adorable of course, by definition. We are also moved by our gratitude for the regeneration we have received in our rebirth through the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist. Finally, we are here because we look forward in hope and anticipation to the joy and peace of the eternal life which is ours in Christ.

But we all know this isn’t the whole story of our religious motivations. There are imperfect motives for our religion, and even evil ones. For example, there’s a little bit of fear in the heart of every religious person who isn’t yet a saint. For me, it’s what drives me to say the Act of Contrition over and over on take-off and landing. Even though the Lord has assured us that he calls us friends rather than servants, there’s often a little bit of fear mixed in with our devotion and faithfulness to God. Or we might pray sometimes not because we love and are grateful to God, but because of what we think God can do for us; that’s the story behind the so-called ‘gospel of prosperity.’ Or, worst of all, we might be at least partly motivated in our religion because we like the idea of being a faithful and religious servant of God; we are enamored of ourselves and make an idol out of our own goodness.

Finding ourselves in this situation of mixed motives in our faith, we must not despair! True, our motives are so mixed that, as the Lord himself says in the parable, to uproot the weeds too fast might endanger the roots of the wheat as well. So let us be content with our situation of mixed motives, and let it teach us humility.

God promises in the parable today that, despite our mixed motives, he will harvest the good that is in us. This means that in this life God will use the good that is in us to bring his own goodness to others, and even to multiply it. In the end, God will harvest the good motives in us for eternal life. And when we leave this world, the brilliance of the vision of God will burn and clean away all of our impurities and sins and bad motivations. The wheat will be harvested and the weeds burned. To really see God, as we will after this life, is to love him perfectly, and everything in us that isn’t love will fall away. That, by the way, is what we call purgatory, and it’s something to look forward to.