Set Free

(5th Sunday of Lent, C)

Brothers and sisters, on this last Sunday before Holy Week we hear on the most beloved of Jesus’ acts of forgiveness and salvation, the story of the woman caught in adultery. This passage is full of beautiful and challenging spiritual teaching, and I thought that one way we could approach it is through the various characters.

The scribes and Pharisees. These are the bad guys in the passage, but we shouldn’t let their dastardliness distract us from the ordinariness of their spiritual error. It’s one that people commit all the time. They are so into the woman’s sin that they forget to notice their own sins. We do the same thing whenever we engage in gossip and detraction, pointing out to each other all of the bad things other people do. If we do this habitually we can learn to absolve ourselves and blame everyone else for whatever is wrong in our lives and the world. The sorry state of my religious community, my friendship, my workplace or my marriage is everyone else’s fault and I don’t notice the contribution of my own sin and selfishness. I once saw a “motivational” poster I liked very much. It had a picture of chain breaking at the weakest link. The message said, “The only consistent feature in all of your dissatisfying relationships is you.” The devil is perfectly happy to have us as zealous as could be in our condemnation of sin, just as long as it’s somebody else’s sin and not our own.

The missing man. Personally, I don’t know much about adultery, but I know this: you can’t commit it by yourself. ‘It takes two to Tango,’ as is said. So where’s the adulterous man? He’s missing from the scene. This reminds us that we always have to be careful in handing out blame. Rarely is someone individually responsible for evil. In fact, when we ask the question of what’s wrong with the world there is only one rational answer me: “Me.” To take responsibility for our own sins rather than blaming each other is the beginning of conforming our lives to the Cross of Christ. One of my favorite of the Desert Fathers, Abba John the Dwarf, put it this way: “We have cast off the light burden, that is to say self-accusation, and taken up a heavy burden, that is to say self-justification.” Let’s throw off the heavy burden of blame and take up the light burden of humility.

The woman. We should notice how she teaches us that it doesn’t matter how we get to the presence of Jesus. It wasn’t her idea to end up at his feet! But once there, she recognizes him for Who He is. She calls him “sir,” but the word is kyrie, there being no distinction between ‘sir’ and ‘Lord’ in the Greek of the New Testament. This poor woman is dragged before Jesus, presumably against her will, but once there she receives his kindness and salvation. Therefore, if our own contrition for our sins is weak or imperfect, we shouldn’t worry. All that matters is that we get to the presence of Jesus and recognize him when we get there.

Jesus. What is Jesus’ concern as he receives the adulterous woman? He does not deny that she has sinned, but he is not interested in condemning her for what has happened in the past. Jesus only concern is to protect her from danger, condemnation, guilt, and shame and to set her free to fulfill his command, “do not sin anymore.” That’s the gift we each have in Christ, to let go of whatever has gone before, and be set free for a future of holiness. I once told a priest in confession that I really just needed a fresh start. He said, “Fresh starts are the Lord’s specialty.” As Oscar Wilde put it, “The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”

Brothers and sisters, let us let go of blame, notice or own sins, and become that sinner with a future. It is Jesus who sets us free for a future of freedom and holiness.

The Christian Trials

(1st Sunday of Lent, C)

Each year on this first Sunday of Lent, we hear one of the accounts of Jesus’ fast and temptation in the desert. Today we take courage from Jesus’ defeat of the devil; in our own journey through Lent we imitate his retreat and meditate on the meaning of the trials for us.

The temptations of Jesus in the desert are an argument over what it means to be the Son of God. In the first temptation the devil says, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” We know that Jesus is hungry, because he is fasting. We also know that Jesus is quite willing and able to care for the hungry by bringing forth bread in a miraculous way; think of the very familiar scene of Jesus multiplying the loaves to feed the multitude. He won’t, however, do something similar here. He uses his divine power to take care of the hunger of others, but not his own. “One does not live on bread alone,” Jesus says. His obedience to God is more important than his bodily needs, and he will not sacrifice his trust in his Father in order to satisfy them. This is a strong word for us who desire to become better Christians over the course of this Lent; how can we better put the needs of others before our own? How about the needs of the hungry of this world? If we’re not thinking about their needs, we’re not the Body of Christ we hope to become in Holy Communion.

In the second temptation, the devil offers Jesus all the “power and glory” of the “kingdoms of the world.” All Jesus has to do is worship the devil, to trade his heavenly Father for the ‘prince of this world.’ For Jesus to have power and authority the way this world imagines it, he would have to reject his Father. For the glory and power of the Son of God do not conform to the way this world imagines these things. Think of Jesus on the Cross with the capital charge hanging above him: ‘The King of the Jews.’ He’s not much of a king the way royal power is usually defined; he can’t even move his hands and feet, much less command or control anything. No; the power of the Son of God lies not in his lording it over, controlling, or pushing anybody around, but in the almighty humility by which he places himself below us as our Suffering Servant. So it must be with us, brothers and sisters, if we are to be Christians. From the larger systems of political oppression to the little tyrannies and coercions of ‘control freaks’ in our relationships, workplaces, and churches, the Christian rejects it all. True power lies instead in the courage to place ourselves below others, to become their servant and so make them free.

In the third temptation, the devil invites Jesus to put the Father’s faithfulness to him to the test. “Throw yourself down,” he says, for doesn’t the Bible say that God will protect you? Trust doesn’t work like that, and we all know it from our human relationships. If someone tests our trust or our faithfulness, we’re hurt, because we know that this means we were not really trusted in the first place. So it is with God, brothers and sisters. If we really trust in God’s presence to us, in his desire for our peace and happiness, we should never have to put Him to the test. We should never have to say in our hearts, ‘just do this for me’ or ‘just give me this sign and then I will really believe in You.’ To trust God is to abandon ourselves into his Care. If we can do this, we will also fulfill the calls that come to us in the first two temptations: to look to the needs of others before our own, and to let go of control. During this Lent, may we be about this work of becoming more Christ-like.

In the Kingdom of God, the Poor Help YOU

(6th Sunday, C)

For the past few Sundays we have been hearing about the beginnings of Jesus’ ministry according to St. Luke. First we had two weeks of his inaugural sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth, Last Sunday was the calling of the first apostles. Today we begin to hear the preaching of Jesus in earnest with the beginning of his “Sermon on the Plain.” Jesus begins this great sermon with a set of four beatitudes—‘blessed are you’—matched with four corresponding woes—‘woe to you.’

These are good for us to hear because we are much more accustomed to St. Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes, which we hear every year on All Saints Day and is among the most popular choices for the gospel of funeral and wedding Masses. St. Luke’s version, however, is starker. There is no “Blessed are the poor in spirit” here, no chance to hedge or mystify the teaching. “Blessed are you who are poor…who are hungry…who are weeping,” proclaims St. Luke’s Jesus, and “Woe to you are rich…who are filled…who laugh now, for you will weep.” Worldly fortune has been reversed.

This is hard stuff, but we have to try to take it seriously. For God, in the birth of Jesus Christ, has accomplished this great reversal. At the beginning of Luke’s gospel, Elizabeth, our Blessed Mother’s cousin, becomes the first person to proclaim the prayer that will become for us the Hail Mary: “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Mary responds with her great Magnificat, which the Church sings as the gospel for Evening Prayer each day: God has “cast down the mighty from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly/the hungry he has filled with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.”

The very birth of Jesus Christ is itself this great reversal. In Jesus, God has given everything and even Himself away and become poor. We saw this all through the Christmas season when the Almighty God was revealed in poor and vulnerable child. As we go forward into Lent later this week, we will begin to contemplate the poverty and humility of God from the aspect of the Cross, wherein God is revealed as a condemned and tortured criminal. Both of these mysteries of the sublime humility of God are recapitulated and made present for us here at the Eucharist, as Jesus makes himself present to us, as St. Francis says, “under the little form of bread.”

What this means is that God, by revealing himself as a self-abandoning poverty and vulnerability, has identified himself with the poor and vulnerable of this world. So we have to ask ourselves what this might mean for us, especially any of us, who, like me, worry that they might be among the recipients of Jesus’ curse, being well provided for in this world, being “filled now.”

It seems to me that we can challenge ourselves in at least a couple of ways. First, we must adopt an attitude and spirituality that find their hope in God rather than in the things of this world. This is what we hear from Jeremiah the prophet in the first reading: “Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings,” but “Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord.” As many of us have learned the hard way in these times, the securities of this world are not reliable. Only in God do we have a true and lasting security. One of the documents of the Second Vatican Council that you never hear about, the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, describes the attitude of God’s people: “Following Jesus in His poverty, they are neither depressed by the lack of temporal goods nor inflated by their abundance; imitating Christ in His humility, they have no obsession for empty honors.” (§4)

Second, because God, in Jesus Christ, has identified himself with the poor and the vulnerable, we too should put ourselves on the side of the poor. Those who are poor, hungry, and weeping right now in this world should be at the heart of our prayer, at the front of our concern, and at the center of our debates on public policy. When we can do this, we have truly become the Body of Christ we proclaim ourselves to be here at Mass.

A Danger of Religion

(4th Sunday in Ordinary Time, C)


In the Scriptures today we encounter some hard teachings, and they ought to be very challenging for us. To prepare him for his prophetic vocation, the word of the LORD comes to Jeremiah: God will make him a “fortified city,” a “pillar of iron,” and a “wall of brass” against kings and princes, against the priests and the people. But why should God have to do this for Jeremiah? If to be a prophet means to speak God’s Truth to the world, why should the prophet be in an adversarial relationship with the people and priests of God? In this we begin to see the hard truth at hand: sometimes it is devout folk—and the official and professional stewards of religion especially—who are exactly the people who don’t want to hear a prophet’s word.

We see this in the gospel today. After one sermon in his hometown synagogue, Jesus’ fellow Nazoreans drive him out of town and then try to throw him off a cliff. In interpreting this rejection of Jesus, we have to be careful. We’re accustomed to praying through the condemnation of Jesus; his Passion and Cross are at the center of our faith. Jesus is executed for his messianic claims—so the charge against him reads on his cross: “The King of the Jews.” We heard the beginning of Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah in the first part of the Nazareth sermon last Sunday, and today’s gospel repeats it: after reading from the prophet Isaiah, Jesus proclaims “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled your hearing.” The people don’t seem to have a problem with that. In fact, St. Luke reports, “all spoke highly of him.”

The people’s problem isn’t that Jesus claims to be the Messiah, but for whom he suggests he is savior. By recalling two scriptural incidents of God working for the salvation of people who were not part of Israel, Jesus suggests that he is to be savior also for those who are outside the in-group of God’s people. Neither the poor and humble widow helped by Elijah or the powerful Naaman cured by Elisha were Jews. Neither were members of God’s people, but it was to these outsiders that God also sent his good news.

It’s not that being a member of God’s people doesn’t matter; as we say in the third Eucharistic Prayer, “From age to age you gather a people to yourself.” Just as God chose his people Israel to be his special possession, he has built us into “a people set apart” as we pray in the first Preface for Sundays in Ordinary Time. But this never means that God doesn’t reserve the right to work, act, and save outside of the people of God as we are visibly constituted. Too many times religious people get this idea, and become jealous for God. They are the chosen ones, and outsiders do not have the same—if any—access to God. This is what is going on in the gospel today. The people in the synagogue were happy to hear that Jesus was the Messiah; they just couldn’t bear the idea that he might be savior for anyone but themselves. Otherwise devout religious people have made this error down through the ages, and have sometimes caused a lot of suffering.

Nevertheless, it’s a delicate distinction. We have been called into the people of God and should be glad to have the Truth. But we can’t limit God to what he has revealed to us. We can see this distinction, for example, in our own doctrine of the sacrament of baptism. God has revealed the necessity of baptism for salvation (e.g. Mark 16:16), but this doesn’t mean that God can’t save someone in another way. As the Catechism puts it, “God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments.” (§ 1257) Baptism is the way to salvation as far as God has revealed it, but this doesn’t mean that God can’t save in other ways as well. So we always proclaim the necessity of baptism for salvation—as Jesus has revealed—but we are careful to remain humble in this assertion, knowing that God’s work is not limited to what he has publicly revealed.

So let us rejoice today in the knowledge that God has revealed to us the way to salvation, but let’s not make the mistake of thinking that we know everything about what God is up to in the world.

Renovated and Missioned

(3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, C)

In the first reading today we hear from the book of Nehemiah, in which we meet Ezra the priest. Ezra and Nehemiah were two important figures in the return of the people of God from the Babylonian Exile. Towards the end of the sixth century BC, after two generations in exile, King Cyrus the Persian ended their Captivity and allowed the people to return to Jerusalem. The city, of course, had to be rebuilt, and Nehemiah is famous for some of this work. The faith had to be reestablished as well, and this is what is going on in the reading. Ezra is reading out the Law to the people and restoring familiarity with God’s word and commandments. Though the people are weeping—perhaps from having to stand there all morning or because the newly rediscovered demands of the Law seemed overwhelming—Ezra invites them to celebrate. Jerusalem is being rebuilt, the covenants are being renewed, and it’s time, as Ezra says, for “rich foods and sweet drinks.”

The good news for us today is that Jesus, in the announcement and inauguration of his mission which we hear in the gospel, is about the same work for us. Nehemiah rebuilding the walls and gates of Jerusalem can be an image for us of what we are about here at the Sunday Eucharist. As the Catechism teaches, “The Eucharist makes the Church.” (§1396) In Holy Communion we are addressed by the minister with our deepest name, our enduring and eternal identity—the Body of Christ. We gather here to be made together into the New Jerusalem, which, as we hear in the book of Revelation, is the new City which comes out of heaven and joins herself to earth as the ultimate destiny of creation. We, in our human lives united to the humanity of Christ in our baptism, are the living stones that provide for that joining of heaven and earth. Here at Mass we are built into that New Jerusalem. “The Eucharist makes the Church.”

As the Church we are the heirs and custodians of the mission of Jesus Christ. His mission is put into our hands and entrusted to us. This is part of what it means when Jesus says that the prophecy of Isaiah is “fulfilled in your hearing.” When we gather each Sunday to hear God’s Word, the mission of Jesus is handed over anew and fulfilled in our acceptance.

What is the mission of Jesus Christ? It is to be anointed to “bring glad tidings to the poor,” “liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” To offer our time, praise, personal sacrifices and indeed our whole selves on this altar each Sunday is to be willing to be transformed into the Body of Christ and become the bearers of this mission. As the Catechism also teaches, the “Eucharist commits us to the poor.” “To receive in truth the Body and Blood of Christ given up for us, we must recognize Christ in the poorest, his brethren.” (§1397)

In our Holy Communion today, may we know that we are fulfilling the command of Ezra to make our rejoicing in the Lord our strength as we eat the rich food of the Body of Christ and share in the sweet drink of his Precious Blood. Let us rejoice to be built into the New Jerusalem, and let us accept anew the mission of Jesus to bring good news to the poor.

Being Invited and Saving the Party

(2nd Sunday, C)

We arrive, brothers and sisters, at the start of another cycle of Sundays in Ordinary Time, and for this beginning we hear from St. John the beginning of Jesus’ “signs.” The account of the wedding at Cana is so full of spiritual truth and good news for us that a preacher might hardly know where to begin. The story speaks not only of the gospel of Jesus’ compassion and humility, but also of the exciting news of the possibility of transformation and new destiny that all creatures have in Christ. So for fear of preaching forever, I’ll limit myself to two points of good news for us today.

First, we shouldn’t miss the simple truth that Jesus accepts invitations. Jesus was invited to the wedding, and he showed up. That’s good news for all of us, because we can be confident that if we invite the presence of God in Christ into our lives, our prayer, and our troubles, we can be assured that Jesus will be there. Jesus accepts invitations. His disciples accept invitations too; they too were at the wedding. So if we wish to be disciples of the Lord we have to be ready to accept the invitations we receive to enter into the joys, griefs, and chaos of others. To be unmoved by the suffering of others or unable to rejoice in the joy of another is an almost certain sign of sin.

Second, Jesus saves the party. Why didn’t his hapless couple have enough wine? Poverty? Poor planning? Too many wedding crashers? We don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Jesus (at the invitation of his mother we might add) saves the party by providing new wine. Jesus saves the party so that the newlyweds and their guests may rejoice on this most special occasion. Jesus makes up for their lack, whatever it was, so that their joy could be full.

So it is with us, brothers and sisters. We must never fear our own lacking in what we need to be faithful to God or to flourish in the vocations God has given us. The sign Jesus works today shows us that if we seek the presence of Jesus Christ and the intercession of his mother, whatever way we lack can be an opportunity for the revelation of the glory of God through Christ. So if we ever feel that we don’t have what we need, let us turn to Jesus through Mary and we will soon find that our lack is changed into the glorious and superabundant grace of God. The water not only became wine, but the best wine. If we invite Jesus into our lives we can be assured that our souls too will blush into the new wine that gives joy to the heart. May the same transforming grace come upon every place in our hearts and lives where we feel dull, tired, and plain, so that the joy and delight of God himself might shine through us, making each of us into revealers of the Father’s glory.

The Grace of God

(Baptism of the Lord, C)

In the second reading from the letter of Paul to Titus we hear a simple proclamation of Christmas: “The grace of God has appeared.” This is also the second reading from the Mass of Christmas night, and so this announcement of grace brackets the whole Christmas season. Today’s feast of the Baptism of the Lord is a great revelation of this grace and the good news of how we can come to live in it.

First, let us remind ourselves what we mean by ‘grace.’ In our Christian life we talk about the grace of God all the time, so it’s good to review what we mean by the term. The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives this definition: “Grace is a participation in the life of God.” (§1997) Grace is our sharing in the divine life of God; grace is the name we give to the work and presence of God when it comes to dwell in us. Most simply, grace is God when God is with us and in us.

Jesus Christ is ‘God with us.’ As we sang all through Advent: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel—‘Emmanuel,’ ‘God with us.’ In the coming of Jesus this plaintive prayer has been answered. God is with us and the “grace of God has appeared.” Jesus is grace; he is God’s sharing of the divine life with us through the humanity of Christ; he is the participation of our human nature with the delight, joy, and creativity of the divine life of God himself. During the Christmas season we celebrate Christ as the wondrous means by which God has accomplished for us this participation in himself.

From the overshadowing of Mary by the Holy Spirit to the human birth of the Son of God to the revelation of the Father’s voice we hear at the Lord’s baptism today, the Christmas season is a feast of the Blessed Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity teaches us that God is not some static and unmoving reality sitting quietly on some throne in heaven, but a set of dynamic and creative relationships. Christmas celebrates our wonder at the great gift that the Holy Spirit has bent the mutual and creative love of God the Father and God the Son into our world through the motherhood of Mary. The perfect Love at the heart of the Blessed Trinity has been stretched into this world and into our human condition by the conception of Jesus. This opens up the life of the Blessed Trinity just enough so that you and I can step into Him. Jesus is God giving us the opportunity to be ourselves spiritually included in the eternal goodness, delight, and creativity which is the life of God.

In a particular way we celebrate today how it is that this grace, this “participation in the life of God” is accomplished and begun in each of us. It is through the sacrament of Baptism. By going down into the water we are joined to the death of Christ, the death which destroys the power of sin within us. By our rising from the water we are joined to the new life of Christ’s Resurrection. It is, in the words of the second reading, “the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”

Jesus’ baptism gives this cleansing bath of rebirth to the humanity he shares with us. It’s not that the water cleanses him, but that he sanctifies the waters of baptism for all of us. Let us pray today that all of our catechumens might desire their coming baptism all the more, and for renewal of the grace of baptism for each of us who are baptized, that our lives may become ever more graced participations in the Life of the Blessed Trinity.