Homily – Third Sunday in Ordinary Time - Love and Mercy

NEH 8:2-4a,5-6,8-10

1 COR 12:12-14,27

LUKE 1:1-4, 4:14-21

            Boy do we have a lot of ground to cover with this weekend’s deep and provocative readings.

Today we are getting a snapshot of mercy in our salvation history, and God’s hand in it. These are shocking and beautiful images of God’s love and mercy for us all.

First, from the book of Nehemiah, we follow the Israelites out of their Babylonian exile with the help of their Persian liberators who are called by God to help with the restoration of Israel.  This all happened around 5 BC; 25-hundred years ago.

As the Jews return from exile to their homeland, the people ask their priest and scribe Ezra to read for them the scroll of the Law of Moses.

As they hear the law, they are reminded of what each is called by God to do: put aside our human instincts for selfishness, self-destruction, anger and hatred and replace them with God’s command to love.

In their tears, the Israelite people realize that God’s law was never designed to condemn people, but to teach and lead them to a better way to live. Their tears come from the Word of God convicting their hardened hearts as they are made new again.

The covenant renewing Jubilees in Judaism and in our own Catholic faith come from this special moment in Salvation History.

After Ezra’s reading the people brought out their best food and drink to celebrate renewing their covenant with God and shared them with the needy.

Aren’t we all asked to have this same conversion each time we come to Mass? Aren’t we all supposed to be renewed -- made new again -- by the Eucharist each time we receive it? As people of God, shouldn’t our behavior toward others (especially the marginalized) reflect God’s love and mercy for us all?
            I love the first Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians. We hear portions of it at many weddings: "Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interest, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails."

     Today’s reading is the preamble to this important passage in First Corinthians 13. It’s all a letter of love and mercy to a community that was failing to do what St. Paul had originally instructed them to do. They were acting out of selfishness and arrogance toward each other, especially the have-nots, in the up-and-coming port city of Corinth.

Paul finds out how this community is marching down the wrong path with its division and rancor. He writes them a letter soaked in love to scold this bad behavior (I always chuckle about that fact when it’s being read at a wedding).

St. Paul is using the analogy of the body to promote the importance of unity and diversity in the Corinthian community.

Today Paul is reminding us that every Disciple of Christ has a place at the table. Every Disciple of Christ has a gift to be shared by his or her community. We are all a part of the Body of Christ. There are no lesser Christians.

How apropos for today’s Catholic, Christian or larger world faith community, especially for people who try to stake out ground as living as perfect followers of God, condemning others for not living or worshipping the way they do.

God and St. Paul are reminding us today to never fall into this trap, because this trap is not of God.

Disharmony, discord, rancor are not of the Lord. Only love, harmony and peace are.

Do we sometimes fall into this trap in how we act as Catholics? Do we sometimes think we are living perfect Christian lives by condemning others we think are not? Do we promote unity or disunity?  Do we honor the unique diversity found in the body of Christ here in Everett? (PAUSE)

Then we come to my favorite Gospel writer Luke. Yes, we are in the Year of Luke in our Catholic Church lectionary, the Gospel of Mercy, in THIS the Jubilee Year of Mercy as declared by Pope Francis.

Pope Francis’ actions since being elevated to Pope in 2013 are cause of alarm for some Catholics. They worry he’s going to ruin the Church.

Take as a case in point this week’s action to change the Roman Missal to officially allow the washing of women’s feet on Holy Thursday (We’ve done that in our parish community for years!).

If you want to see rancor, disharmony and discord by Catholics opposed to this change just log on to the comment sections of articles about the move.

You would think we are a faith at war.

This war has many sides, including ardent supporters of Pope Francis who would use his words and actions as tool to beat those who disagree with the Holy Father. 

At times, we all forget the words from St. Paul, “[love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude…”

This is exactly Jesus’ point in today’s Gospel. Jesus is reminding  us pious sanctimony at the exclusion of those marginalized in the world is not what God commands. In coming out of exile, Ezra did the same thing by sharing the Law of Moses.

Jesus returns home to Nazareth, a place he’s known simply as a carpenter’s son to the townspeople, and shocks them with his words.

Jesus is announcing good news to the poor, blind, in captivity, oppressed and marginalized – the outcasts of the people.

In quoting the prophetic words of Isaiah, he officially launches his ministry by proclaiming the Scripture passage fulfilled in their hearing.

Boy, to be a fly on the wall of that synagogue?

I’m sure all heck broke out after he said that and sat down.

What’s left out of today’s Gospel reading is the reaction of the people of God, the rejection Jesus faced from family, friends and fellow residents of his home town.

His words provoke ire and turn the townspeople’s initial welcome of their hometown boy into hostile rejection. They decide to drive the messiah out of town and were even prepared to throw him off a cliff, but Jesus escapes through the angry crowds.

As one bible scholar puts it: “Some speak highly of Jesus, while others are filled with resentment.

Isn’t that what Pope Francis’ actions are doing to some in our Catholic faith – causing rejection to the Pontiff’s call to all Catholics to lead with love and mercy?

As a people of faith, we are called to adhere to the command of love, no matter how we feel about Pope Francis and his actions or each other. We need to lead with love and mercy with everyone we encounter. Even those whose opinions we disagree with.

Afterall, “Jesus forgave even those who crucified and scorned him.”

As we reflect and pray on these readings this weekend, I ask that we all shine the light of Christ on our hardened hearts. Ask God for healing to the bitterness and discord we feel toward our fellow members of faith, or our Holy Father, or toward people in our society who we may look down upon: the captive, the immigrant, the refugee, the homeless; all those God calls us to be present to in showing our love and our mercy to a broken, dysfunctional world as we build up God’s Kingdom here on earth.

On a side note, I announced last week I’m leaving my fulltime position at Archbishop Murphy High School at the end of the school year to run a non-profit based in Everett that will provide street ministry to the most marginalized people in our society today: men, women and children living in homelessness on the streets.

I will continue to pastorally serve the AMHS community as their deacon, but will put most my time and energy into this important initiative God’s been calling my heart to since ordination.

If you’re heart calls you to join us, we’ll be taking names in the vestibule after Mass to launch this ecumenical effort called MercyWatch.

I pray you’ll join us.  If you’re unable to join us, please pray for our efforts.

May God continue to bless each and every one of us as we step out of the captivity of the sin of division, magnify our gifts as members of the Body of Christ and live as a people of love and mercy as WE “proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” Amen.

 

Homily – Third Sunday of Advent – Finding that Christmas Feeling

ZEP 3:14-18A

PHIL 4:4-7

LUKE 3:10-18

It’s Gaudete Sunday.

Gaudete is a wonderful Latin word that means rejoice. 

So it’s Rejoice Sunday!

This weekend is a time to rejoice as the birth of Christ is almost upon us.

We wear the rose vestments as a sign of Jesus Christ who is about to dawn on the world in radiant beauty. The color rose hints of the hues of a sunrise.

That line, “dawn in radiant beauty” is often heard for those who do the Liturgy of the Hours or the Divine Office during Advent.

It’s the responsory we hear each and every morning during Lauds or Morning Prayer. It reads:

“Your light will come, Jerusalem; the Lord will dawn on you in radiant beauty.”

It’s the expectation of the dawn of Christ’s beauty in our lives that we celebrate this third weekend of Advent.

But for some, the power of Christ in our lives is blunted by a tragic event or painful memory or a major health challenge.

I’m sure there are some of us here this weekend who are finding it hard to rejoice; finding it hard to have the Christmas feeling. I understand.

The Christmas feeling enlivens hearts each and every year around the holidays when Christ’s love pours through us, and we do what John the Baptist says we must do: help our sister and brothers in need.

John is calling us back to a sense of justice. John is asking us to show mercy the way God shows mercy. John is preparing us for Jesus’ the law of love, planted in our hearts and felt most strongly during the holiday season.  

But for some, that Christmas feeling is non-existent.

I don’t remember how I lost the Christmas feeling, lost the ability to rejoice, but I did early in my life. Sometime during my teenage years the annual Christmas feeling disappeared from my heart.

Perhaps it happened after my father’s tragic death when I was 14.  Or maybe it was an angry teenager shedding all things heartfelt from a painful childhood.

I don’t remember Christmases ever having the same joyful and peaceful atmosphere as I trudged into adulthood.

My heart had shrunk to the size of the Grinch’s at his worst.  And faith, faith to me was dead.

Christmas was nothing more than an obligation to get over and done with. My cold heart had little or no compassion for people in need.

I know I’m not the only person who’s had a personal tragedy silence the Christmas feeling from their heart. 

Christ was born to turn our despair into hope. Christ was born to fill our hearts with love and joy. Christ was born to bring “Peace on Earth, Good Will to all.”

It’s just sometimes in our lives when we experience too much pain we become numb to the Christmas feeling. 

But God can grace us with a moment when we realize the many blessings we do have and count them all. 

In other words, there are times when we are graced with a moment where Christ dawns on our lives in radiant beauty and we can rejoice! 

For me, the Christmas feeling returned Christmas Eve 1986.  It was a foggy, still night.  My new wife (the one true Catholic in the family at the time) wanted to go to Midnight Mass.

I begrudgingly went along not sensing what was about to happen.

As we drove to the nearby parish, Mary popped in the new cassette of Mannheim Steamroller Christmas music (she has a near obsession with Christmas music).

As we rode along the song Silent Night came out of the speakers.  I remembered this song being a favorite for my baby sister back when we were little kids.

Every Christmas, my sister Erin, my brothers Dan and Jim, cousin Annie and I would reenact the manger scene at family gatherings.  

My sister Erin loved Christmas.  She was born with a congenital heart defect and found joy in only a few things thanks to hundreds of doctor’s visits and numerous heart surgeries.

            But love Christmas she did -- especially “Mee-Mohs” (which were chocolate, marshmallow Santa candies).  And she loved her beloved toy piano she got in the final months of life.

That Christmas in 1967, a few months before she died, Erin unwrapped the toy piano after we had regaled the family in the true story of Christmas.  I can still hear her playing it in my head.

As I daydreamed while driving, the closing strains of Silent Night snuck up and knocked my cold, stony heart for a loop.

At the end of the song, after the rushing of what sounds like some celestial wind, the song concludes with a child’s toy piano playing the opening stanza of Silent Night.

As I drove, tears streamed down my face.  And I felt it!  The Christmas feeling came flooding back to me once again. My Grinch heart grew bigger. God’s loving mercy penetrated my heart. And I have never lost that Christmas feeling since.

Pope Francis declared a Jubilee, a Holy Year of Mercy, this past Tuesday on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. He opened the Holy Door of Mercy to St. Peter’s Basilica.

The Holy Father said upon its opening, “To pass through the Holy Door means to rediscover the infinite mercy of the Father who welcomes everyone and goes out personally to encounter each of them… We have to put mercy before judgment …  In passing through the Holy Door, then, may we feel that we ourselves are part of this mystery of love.”

When we feel God’s loving mercy and not God’s judgment in our lives, we rejoice. When we show God’s loving mercy and not God’s judgment to others, they rejoice. That’s the Christmas feeling in a nutshell.

I pray you experience the Christmas feeling this year.  I pray your heart grows even bigger and rings out with the joy and hope and love of Christ and you show mercy. I pray Jesus dawns on your life in radiant beauty.  And you rejoice! 

The Lord is coming soon.  Let our hearts be ready.

 

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Widow's Mite

1 Kgs 17:10-16

Heb 9:24-28

MK 12:38-44

Today’s Gospel reading should make us all squirm a little.

Is our charitable giving only from our surplus wealth?  Or is our giving breathtaking? 

This is what Jesus is asking us today.

His question should make us uncomfortable. There are no easy answers to this challenge by Christ. And it should make us think --   to reflect deeply -- especially in this time of Stewardship renewal.

If we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul and all our might, and love our sisters and brothers as ourselves as Jesus commands, we have to ask ourselves do we give enough?

Today our Church offers us two models of faith-filled giving. Both are women, both are poor and both are widows – perhaps the most marginalized of peoples of Elijah’s Day, Jesus’ Day, and today. These are people who have no visible means of support, no future, no hope.  To their despair, God appears and asks them to give.  Trusting in God’s presence in their lives, these women represent for us how to live and how to give in God’s Kingdom. They gave their all.

I don’t know about you. But this sort of talk makes me uneasy. But I know that this uneasy feeling comes from being blessed to live at the top of the world’s financial pecking order, blessed to be born in the United States, in wealth, and not in poverty.

Bishop Robert Barron had a great insight on today’s readings. He says, “Here’s the great spiritual truth. When you are linked to God who is nothing but (gift and) giving … you (too) can give and give and never run out.”

But here he says is the flipside to this truth, “When we cling to pathetic substitutes for God (money and sex and power and honor) then we can hoard and hoard and hoard all we want, but we will never have enough. He says, “To get this is to get the bible.” Wow!

Pope Francis had some challenging words for Americans to ponder on his recent visit to U.S.

The Holy Father spoke to Congress and United Nations. His words while in the U.S. were an antidote to the consumerism, materialism and the ME-ism present in society today.

How some modern scribes had a field day criticizing the Pontiff.  Scribes are the very people Christ is holding up for scorn in today’s Gospel reading.

The words of pundit and scribe George Will:

     "Pope Francis embodies sanctity but comes trailing clouds of sanctimony. With a convert's indiscriminate zeal, he embraces ideas impeccably fashionable, demonstrably false, and deeply reactionary." 

 

Will says: “Americans cannot simultaneously honor (Pope Francis) and celebrate their nation’s premises.”

 

Are we Catholics more passionate about the Kingdom of God or our own Kingdom here in the United States?

Therein lies the problem for many Americans and why it’s so tough for some of us here in the U.S. to accept Pope Francis’ message to Americans or Jesus’ message today.

The Lord brings justice to the oppressed, gives food to the hungry, sets captives free, cares for widows and orphans and thwarts the path of the wicked.

We, too, are responsible for the poor and oppressed in our society. Each of us needs to do our part to help – with our time, our talents and our treasure.   

Many of the faithful poor in the Third World are as generous as the widows in today’s readings.

Take for example the experiences of Jesuit Father Gary Smith documented in his book “They Come Back Singing.” The journal tells of his six years living among the Sudanese refugees in Northern Uganda.

Father Gary experienced giving in the Catholic communities of the refugee camps that took his breath away. Such love for God, such love for their sisters and brothers barely surviving in a region torn by years of Civil War, and generously giving to others with what little they had.

So when we are asked to give, is our giving breathtaking?  Do we give from our very livelihood, trusting in God to the point where it hurts?  Or do we only give from our surplus wealth?