I love a good historical novel about ships and sailing,

especially stories set in the Napoleonic era,

when England and France battled on the high seas.

But, though my mom and dad were both in the Navy,

I’m not much of a sailor myself.

The first and only time I sailed on the ocean

was twenty-five years ago, when Brenda and I took the ferry

from Seattle to Victoria, British Columbia,

on our honeymoon.

For a short period of time—only about 15 or 20 minutes—

land was out of sight,

and we were completely surrounded by water in all directions.

I have to admit, I’m glad it was only for that short time.

As much as I love reading stories about ships at sea,

I was nervous being on this ship

in the middle of the great blue ocean.

When you’re at sea you’re at the whim

of the the waves and and wind.

For Christians in the first century,

the sea was even more frightening.

Those were the days before cruise ships,

before sonar, before electric spotlights, or satellite navigation.

The image of the sea runs through the readings of today’s liturgy.

God asks Job, “Who shut within doors

the sea?”

In the responsorial psalm God raises up a storm on the sea

and then calms it.

And in the gospel we have the dramatic scene

of Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee.

God is using the sea to speak to us today.

In the gospel, Mark refers to the “Sea of Galilee,”

but it’s really just a lake,

only about 13 miles long and 8 miles wide.

It’s not much bigger than Lake Coeur D’Alene.

It’s also known as Lake Gennesaret or Lake Kinneret.

But Mark calls it a sea,

to suggest images of chaotic power,

of sea monsters, of evil.

The sea is a place of mystery,

of powerful forces hidden below the surface.

It is something to be feared,

a mysterious depth that no one but God can control.

It is at the shore of this fearful depth,

as evening descends,

that Jesus says, “Let us cross to the other side.”

He says the same thing to us today.

“Come with me.

Get into my boat and let’s cross this sea together.”

So the disciples get into the boat with Jesus

and begin making their way across the sea,

when suddenly a violent storm comes up.

There’s a powerful painting of this scene by Rembrandt.

In his painting the front of the boat is high in the air,

lifted by dark waves that crash over the side.

Inside the boat, the disciples are each doing different things.

One is trying to climb up onto the mast,

taking things into his own hands.

Another is in the back of the boat with his hand on his forehead

getting sick into the sea.

One is just staring out at the water in panic as if to say,

“What is happening?”

And a couple of the disciples are staring angrily at Jesus

who is very calm in the back of the boat.

Mark tells this event

to a church that was facing storms of its own.

It was facing persecutions,

and doubts about whether Christ would return.

We, too, encounter violent storms

as we sail on the sea of our lives.

Many things in the world disturb us,

shake our faith, weaken our confidence in God.

We have only to pick up a newspaper, turn on the evening news,

or scan the latest headlines

to see that life is turbulent.

And the trials of daily life, both great and small,

crash over the side of our tiny fishing boat.

Our little boats, the boats of our lives,

are tossed and turned as the waves pour in.

If we were to look closely at Rembrandt’s painting,

On this Solemnity of the Ascension,

the Scriptures describe Jesus as being lifted up into the cloud.

We hear a lot about “the cloud” these days.

We can put our documents in the cloud.

Or we can keep our pictures in the cloud.

We can even put our music and books in the cloud.

It’s really convenient having our music or all of our books

at our fingertips.

But for many of us,

switching to the cloud can be a difficult transition.

We’ve probably got file cabinets

full of folders that contain important legal documents.

Maybe we have boxes of CDs, or cassette tapes, or even records.

We’ve also got shelves full of photo albums or cases full of books.

Putting items like these in the cloud is a bit scary

and hard to get used to.

Where do they all go? Are they secure?

Plus, we like the idea of having the concrete items to hold on to.

We like the way they feel and to see them organized on a shelf.

There’s a security in being able

to physically flip through an album of pictures

or hold a book in our hands

rather than looking at them on a tablet or e-reader.

The disciples are facing a similar problem in the first reading today.

As they were looking on,

Jesus “was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight.”

Jesus has moved to “the cloud.”

He is no longer physically with his disciples on earth.

They stand there “looking intently at the sky” as he ascends to the cloud.

They would like him to stay on earth, in the flesh,

rather than vanish within the cloud.

Like those of us who would rather feel the pages of a paper book

or see our photos in a leather-bound album,

the disciples would rather be able to see Jesus,

to place a hand on his shoulder,

to speak directly to him.

And I suspect many of us feel the same way.

It’s hard to place our faith in a person we can’t see or hear or touch.

Maybe we would have liked it better if Jesus had not ascended,

but stayed on earth with us.

What if that would have happened instead?

What if Jesus had simply continued living on earth

for all these centuries?

Maybe he’d have continued living near Jerusalem

for a few decades more,

and then maybe he’d have gone on to Africa, or China.

After that he could have made his way through Russia

to Europe and then the Americas.

He could have traveled all over

and been seen by millions of people in the flesh.

But there would have been many more who could not have seen him.

Billions of people who lacked the money or the time

to travel to where Jesus was.

Even if Jesus was alive today

in this era of planes, trains, and automobiles,

even with Skype or FaceTime,

there would still be people who could not get to Jesus:

the poor, the homebound, those in war zones, or in prison.

And even if Jesus went to visit them, he couldn’t get to everybody.

And that’s where the cloud can help us understand.

When we keep our documents and photos and music and books

in the cloud,

they’re available to us everywhere:

on our desktop computers, our laptops, our tablets, our e-readers,

and even on our smart phones.

We can share them with others with the simple click of a button.

Though it seems like our documents, our pictures, our music, our books,

are nowhere,

they’re really everywhere.

In a similar way,

though it seems like Jesus is nowhere,

he is really everywhere.

All because he was lifted up to the cloud.

The cloud is an ancient image for the presence and glory of God.

For instance, when God called Moses up to Mt. Sinai

to receive the tablets of the law

a cloud covered the mountain for six days,

What if,

at communion,

after receiving the Body and Blood,

after consuming the consecrated bread and wine,

we were handed a consecrated towel?

What if we came forward with arms held out,

and the priest or deacon or eucharistic minister said,

“The Body of Christ,” and handed us the host,

and then, “The Blood of Christ,” and handed us the cup,

and then “The Service of Christ,”

and gently placed a white towel in our hands?

And what if we took that towel

walked out of this building

and went in search of feet to wash?

Strengthened by the Body of Christ,

given new life by the Blood of Christ,

what if we spent the rest of the week on our knees

washing dirt from the feet of our friends, neighbors, and strangers,

or wiping their tears,

or binding their wounds,

only to return the next Sunday to get another towel?

Tonight we are reminded

that the love of Jesus consists of two things:

sacrifice and service.

Love is service made possible by sacrifice.

At the Last Supper

Jesus is about to humble himself to serve God and us

by his sacrifice on the cross.

“He loved his own in the world

and he loved them to the end.”

He is on the eve of giving his Body and Blood for our sake;

and in his final act before accepting the cross,

he does the work of a menial servant

and tells his disciples to do for others as he has done for them.

This was the purpose for which Jesus came:

to serve God and neighbor,

a service we are called to imitate

by loving one another as he loved us.

This is who we are now—

the people who do this in remembrance of Jesus;

the people who do for others as he has done for us;

the people who bring the love of Christ

through service made possible by sacrifice.

Pope Francis has described the Church as a field hospital.

The world is filled with the sick and the wounded

waiting to be touched by the love of Christ.

Waiting for us to wash their feet.

When I imagine a field hospital, I think of the TV show M*A*S*H.

M*A*S*H stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital.

The doctors and nurses of the M*A*S*H units worked in tents,

picking up and moving to wherever the wounded needed them the most.

It was menial, dirty work;

they were often exhausted;

they were often put in harm’s way;

and they often questioned the war;

but they kept at their healing work for the sake of the soldiers.

We are to be the M*A*S*H units for the wounded of this world.

We go out from this place

strengthened by the Body of Christ,

renewed by the Blood of Christ,

and we set up our tents of healing,

wherever they are needed.

Like the doctors and nurses of the M*A*S*H unit,

sometimes our healing work is menial and tedious;

sometimes it exhausts us;

sometimes it puts us in harm’s way;

and sometimes we question a world that causes so much pain;

but our discipleship calls us to keep at our work

for the sake of the wounded.

Tonight the liturgy asks us to consider,

Is my home a tent of healing?

Is my place of work a field hospital for the sorrowful and lonely?

Is the Church in our city a healing presence

for the hungry, the imprisoned, the marginalized?

Is it time to move my tent to another location

where the wounded need help?

This kind of service is a sacrifice,

as all true service is.

It makes great demands on us;

it takes us away from things we would rather do;

it sends us to places we would rather not go.

But it is only a shadow of the great sacrifice of service

Christ has done for us.

In fact tonight is a foreshadowing,

a prelude to the great act of love we commemorate t...

Do you remember the first picture of Jesus you ever saw?

Was it a picture in a children’s Bible?

A coloring book page from Sunday school?

The actor Robert Powell in Jesus of Nazareth?

There are many famous images of Jesus,

and some of them hang on the walls of our homes.

There’s the famous Warner Sallman painting of the Head of Christ,

which has sold over 500 million copies.

There’s the familiar Sacred Heart of Jesus,

and the Divine Mercy image.

Another popular painting of Jesus

is the one where he stands outside the door knocking.

We could run through an entire catalog of famous paintings of Jesus:

in the manger at his birth, sitting on a bench surrounded by children,

carrying a lamb on his shoulders.

If the Greeks in today’s gospel had come to us and said,

“We would like to see Jesus,”

we have many paintings we could show them.

And yet, none of them would be the real Jesus.

All of them would be artistic interpretations of who he is.

They each reveal an important aspect of Jesus,

but none of them is complete.

We all carry around inside of us an incomplete picture of Jesus.

We carry these images in our minds

and they form our view of who Christ is.

It’s like seeing a movie before reading the book.

No matter how hard we try,

Frodo Baggins will always look like Elijah Wood;

Atticus Finch will always look like Gregory Peck;

The Godfather will always be Marlon Brando.

Who does Jesus look like to us?

The Greeks had heard all kinds of things about Jesus of Nazareth.

I wonder how they pictured him.

I wonder who they expected to see when they asked to see him.

Jesus the preacher? Jesus who turns water into wine?

Jesus who walks on water?

And what about us?

Who did we expect to see when we came to Mass today?

Like the Greeks, each of us has come here to see Jesus.

Each of us has an image of Jesus in our mind when we pray,

when we come to communion.

Who is the Jesus we have come to worship?

Whoever it is the Greeks wanted to see,

Jesus surprises them.

And maybe he surprises us.

He says that he is troubled.

He, who is usually so confident and divine in John’s gospel,

is disturbed that his hour has come.

He tells the Greeks and us

that unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies,

it remains just a grain of wheat;

in other words, he has come to die,

he has come to be the grain of wheat

that will become food for the world.

He is the one who has come to serve and be obedient

and who asks us to do the same.

Both the gospel and the letter to the Hebrews show us a Jesus

who learned obedience through suffering,

who offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears.

That’s not an image we see in paintings very often—

a Jesus sobbing in prayer for his people.

But that’s what we hear today: loud cries and tears;

a grain of wheat about to fall to the earth and die.

It’s a difficult Jesus to look at,

because that is who we are called to imitate.

We’re preparing for the holiest times of the year.

Today’s liturgy challenges us to seek the Christ who really is,

to get beyond images of our youth and get to know the real Christ,

not Christ as we want him to be.

In these remaining two weeks of Lent,

we’re asked to take some time to ourselves and ask

is there an aspect of Christ we have been avoiding?

Is there a part of Christ’s life and mission that we would rather not see?

There’s another famous painting of Jesus,

one that you probably won’t find in anyone’s house.

It’s disturbing, ugly,

Every year on the First Sunday of Lent,

the gospel takes us into the desert

where Jesus was tested for forty days.

And we follow Jesus into the desert for these forty days of Lent

so that our hearts can be transformed, so that we can be ready

to enter fully into the Mystery of Easter.

This means being careful of the Star Wars Effect.

When the original Star Wars movie came out in 1977,

every kid my age wanted to see it.

It was the first movie my dad took me and my two brothers to see.

It was a groundbreaking film in many ways.

The film makers made spaceships fly,

brought alien creatures to life, and built alien worlds.

There was one setting in particular

that was extremely difficult to create:

the desert planet Tatooine

where the hero Luke Skywalker lived.

To bring this desert planet to life,

the film makers went to Tunisia, in North Africa.

It took eight weeks for bulldozers and tractors

to reshape the land,

to transform the desert of Tunisia into the iconic sets

where Luke and Obi-Wan would meet for the first time,

where Jawas and the Sand People lived.

The actors and crew spent two and half weeks

in the heat, wind, and sand of the Tunisian desert.

But the harsh conditions paid off,

as Star Wars became one of the most successful films of all time.

During Lent we are driven into the desert.

Not to make a movie, but to make a change in our lives.

Just as Jesus spent forty days in the desert among wild beasts,

tested by Satan,

the forty days of Lent are to be our time in the desert.

We come to the place of heat, wind, and sand.

We have been driven here by the Spirit, marked with ashes.

This is our time of testing, of facing our demons.

The desert experience

has been a part of salvation history

from the very beginning.

Moses fasted for forty days on Mt. Sinai

and he received the tablets of the covenant.

And when the Israelites were unfaithful to the covenant,

Moses broke the tablets,

but then fasted for another forty days in penance,

until God wrote the tablets again.

The prophet Elijah walked through the desert

forty days and nights to find God on Mt. Horeb.

The Israelites wandered forty years in the desert

before reaching the promised land.

And today we see Jesus as the perfection

of the desert experience.

Immediately after his baptism he is driven into the desert

where the wild beasts are, where Satan tests him.

Through our baptism,

we join with Jesus in the desert and confront our demons.

The desert is a necessary part of an authentic spiritual life.

The solitude of the desert of Lent

gives us time to spend with God in prayer.

Our fasting helps us recognize what habits and attitudes

have been holding us prisoner.

In the desert we can draw on the strength of God

to be angels who minister to the poor and needy among us.

Jesus returned victorious from his time in the desert

to announce, “Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

The word “repent” is a translation of the Greek word metanoia,

“a change of heart.”

Jesus says,“Change your heart and believe in the gospel.”

We go to the desert of Lent so our hearts can be changed.

But they cannot change if we give in to the Star Wars Effect.

Star Wars was so successful that it led two sequels.

And each of those movies required exotic, alien locations.

In The Empire Strikes Back, film makers created the ice planet Hoth

by filming on an actual glacier in Norway.

In Return of the Jedi a thrilling speeder chase took place

on the forest moon of Endor

by using footage from the Redwood forests of California.

But with each movie,

In the first reading we hear that “Samuel was sleeping in the temple of the LORD.”

Now that doesn’t mean you get to sleep here in church during the homily!

But we do have something in common with Samuel: at one point, we, too, were not familiar with the Lord.

Samuel is called three times, but he does not recognize who is it is.

It is the priest Eli who helps him understand that it is the Lord who is calling.

In the gospel, too, Andrew and an unnamed disciple don’t know Jesus.

It is the prophet John the Baptist who points to the Lord and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God.”

There was even a time when Peter did not know Jesus, and it was his brother the apostle Andrew who brings him to the Messiah.

As we stand at the beginning of another season of Ordinary Time, today’s scripture shows us these three people at the beginning of their relationship with the Lord.

Today, then, is a good day to remember that there was a time in all of our lives when we did not know God, when we did not know Jesus, and it is a day to be grateful for those brothers and sisters who first brought us to the Messiah.

At some point in the life of every Christian, we learned about Jesus from someone who loved us.

Each of us is gathered around the altar here today because someone introduced us to God.

The priest Eli told Samuel about the Lord.

The prophet John the Baptist told Andrew about the Lamb of God.

The apostle Andrew told his brother Peter about the Messiah.

Someone told you and me about Jesus.

If John was writing the Good News of your life, who would take the place of the prophet John the Baptist in telling you, “Behold the Lamb of God”? Or who is your apostle Andrew, bringing you to Jesus for the first time? Who has been the priest Eli in your life, advising you to say, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening”?

In other words, who introduced you to God? Who first told you about Jesus?

For many of us, it was our parents, bringing us to the church for Baptism when we were infants. But that was so long ago we probably don’t remember it.

What is your earliest memory of knowing that Jesus loved you?

Imagine that moment in your life, hearing about Jesus for the first time.

Maybe you can’t pinpoint one particular moment the way Samuel, Andrew, or Peter can. Maybe your introduction to Jesus was more gradual, over the course of your childhood. That’s probably the experience of most people who come to know God.

After all, the reason Samuel was in the temple in the first place was because his mother Hannah had brought him there.

So whether your first experience with God was a single moment in time, or a gradual process locked away somewhere in your memory, the important thing is that it came from people who loved Jesus and who loved you enough to bring you together.

This is how we meet Jesus: through people we trust, through people who care for us and want what’s best for us.

They evangelize us.

Sometimes we might wish that Jesus would speak to us directly, that we could hear his voice or see his face.

But God has chosen a different way.

And as always, God’s way is better.

There’s a bond that forms when you hear about Jesus from people who love you.

When parents share the gospel with their children, for example, or when friends pray with friends, then the Body of Christ is strengthened, the Church is built up.

We become a closer, more interconnected, more loving community.

There’s also a dignity in knowing that God has entrusted us with spreading the Good News to the world.

We received that dignity at our Baptism when we were anointed priest, prophet, and king.

And with that dignity comes a responsibility, the responsibility that Jesus gave to all of his disciples:

“Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations,

On this first Sunday after Christmas, the Liturgy invites us to celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family.

And today the gospel presents the Holy Family’s encounter with two elderly people of faith, Simeon and Anna.

In the first and second readings, too, we hear about two more elderly people of faith, Abraham and Sarah.

Today there is Good News for both the old and the young.

Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to Jerusalem to be presented to the Lord, and one at a time, Simeon and Anna each come forward, one after another, and speak to them of the child Jesus.

We might imagine this being similar to a young couple here at St. Peter’s bringing their child to be baptized after Mass, and being approached by some of the older parishioners who remember when Mary was pregnant.

But the gospel situation is quite different.

In the first place, Mary and Joseph have traveled with Jesus to Jerusalem; they’re not in their own town of Nazareth. Simeon and Anna aren’t neighbors or family acquaintances who happen to know them or have seen them before. They’re total strangers.

And second, Simeon and Anna are acting on the prompting of the Holy Spirit to proclaim to all that this child is the messiah for whom they have been waiting. Full of wisdom and the Holy Spirit, Simeon and Anna come forward to bear witness to the messiah.

Together, they help us recognize how precious and important it is to have the elderly in our family of believers.

Unfortunately, in our time and in our culture, the elderly are often seen as a burden rather than as deep wells of wisdom and faith. The prevailing message of our culture is that people are to be valued only for what they can do, not for who they are.

In this kind of environment, it’s no surprise that the elderly get ignored, and their words brushed aside.

Yet when Mary and Joseph are approached by Simeon, they are amazed at what he says to them. They accept his blessing. They listen to what he has to say and honor it.

And Anna, who never left the temple, but worshiped day and night with fasting and prayer, she bears witness to the goodness of God and to the child who had come to redeem the world. At eighty-four years old and a widow, she surely had experienced her share of heartache and loss, of struggle and pain. And yet, she remained faithful to the covenant. She still believed in the redeemer promised by God.

Anna and Simeon echo the faith of Abraham and Sarah we hear about in today’s first reading. Abraham and Sarah are our great-great-great-grandparents in the faith. They put their faith in the Lord and then waited patiently. They believed that even in their old age, God would give them the descendants he had promised, just as Anna and Simeon believed they would see the messiah, the fulfillment of God’s covenant.

There are Simeon’s and Anna’s, Abraham’s and Sarah’s in our own families, in our faith community, older men and women who are “righteous and devout” and who trust in the Holy Spirit; that is, people who have an intimate relationship with God even after having lived through extremely difficult circumstances. There are those here among us who have lived through the Great Depression, through a World War, to say nothing of their own personal tragedies.

And yet they remain faithful, praying each day for their children and grandchildren, drawing nearer to God with each breath they take. You can see it in their smiles, in the way they eagerly talk about their faith, in the wisdom of their words.

Here they come week after week—in many cases, day after day—to participate in Mass. They have learned the hard lessons of life and have seen God at work over the years.

Their age gives them perspective and the ability to see through the illusions of wealth, honor, and pride.

They have become wise. They have remained faithful.

How often do the elderly of this world speak words of wisdom and faith only...

Here is the audio of my homily from the Christmas Eve children’s Mass.

There’s a video that’s been online for about five years now,

that I like to show to my students.

It starts in a big parking garage

with two street basketball teams,

one wearing white t-shirts and sweats, the other wearing black.

As they stand there in one line, each team with its own basketball,

the announcer’s voice begins,

“This is an Awareness Test.”

“How many passes does the team in white make?”

A voice yells, “GO!” and suddenly the teams start running around,

weaving in and out, passing the basketballs to each other.

So my students start counting, “One, two, three,”

trying to keep their eyes on the white team’s ball,

trying not to get distracted by the other ball.

“Eleven, twelve, thirteen…”

Suddenly, the video freezes.

The announcer says, “The answer is thirteen.”

“Yes,” my students pump their fists in the air, “got it!”

And then they’re surprised when the announcer suddenly continues:

“But—did you see the moonwalking bear?”

What?

The announcer rewinds the video

and they watch the teams pass the ball again,

but this time they watch the entire scene, looking at the big picture.

Suddenly, from the right side of the screen

a person dressed in this outlandish bear costume

comes strolling through the middle of the action,

doing the wave arm dance

—and yes, moonwalking!

The bear makes its way across the scene,

finally disappearing off to the left.

Now, I’ve shown this to dozens of students

and the first thing they all ask

is to rewind the video to the very beginning and show it again.

They don’t think the bear was really there the first time.

So I rewind it, and there it is moonwalking across the parking garage.

They were so focused on the basketball passes,

that they missed the amazing sight of the moonwalking bear.

The video ends with this simple statement:

“It’s easy to miss something you’re not looking for.”

Now, the video is intended to raise our awareness

of bicyclists on the street, so they don’t get hit by cars,

but it’s also a good illustration for us as we begin Advent.

The Advent season is like an awareness test,

and Jesus is the moonwalking bear.

“Be watchful!” he says.

“Be alert!”

“I say to all: ‘Watch!’”

In other words, “It’s easy to miss something you’re not looking for.”

Once, long ago, a chosen people looked for their God to come to them,

as he had promised.

We hear their longing in today’s liturgy.

“Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,” they groan.

“Return for the sake of your servants.”

They kept alert, they kept watch, looking for the Messiah.

But they formed their own idea of what he would look like:

A mighty king, born of important parents,

a warrior who would raise an army and free them from their oppressors.

And so, when a little baby was born in a food trough for animals

to humble newlyweds,

the world didn’t recognize him as the Messiah.

When he began spending his time with the poor,

the outcasts, the unclean,

the authorities rejected him.

They were looking for someone else.

“It’s easy to miss something you’re not looking for.”

Here today, in the beginning of this Advent season,

the same longing for God that the Israelites felt

dwells in each of us.

There is inside each of us a fundamental restlessness,

an unquenchable thirst,

an unsatisfied desire.

We spend our days chasing after things

that we think will satisfy that desire:

power, success, possessions,

security, pleasure, perfection;

but in the end, nothing satisfies

and the desire remains.

It’s an eternal longing that can only be satisfied by an eternal love.

The first reading and the gospel can be summarized like this:

“Do not be afraid to use what has been entrusted to you.”

In both readings something precious is entrusted to someone,

and in both readings fear plays an important role.

The master entrusts his possessions to his three servants.

And the husband entrusts his heart to his wife.

The third servant is afraid of the master.

And the worthy wife has the Fear of the Lord.

To entrust is to put something precious into another’s care.

The master puts his possessions into the care of his servants.

Five talents, three talents, even one talent—

these are great sums of money.

The master is placing his trust in the ability of his servants

to do something with that capital.

They’re expected to use the money to increase it,

so that when the man returns from his journey

there is more than when he left.

They are to buy low and sell high,

and make smart investments.

It’s risky, trading with someone else’s money.

There’s always the chance you will lose some of it,

or all of it.

A husband takes a chance, too, entrusting his heart to his wife,

just as a wife takes a chance entrusting her heart to her husband.

The two enter into a covenant,

a solemn promise of unending relationship.

The husbands offers his entire being to his wife.

The wife offers her entire being to her husband.

Both intend to grow together, not to remain stagnant through life.

They remain open to the possibility and the reality of children.

They learn together what true love is.

But it’s risky to open your heart so much to another person.

There’s always the chance for pain and betrayal.

And the more of yourself you entrust, the greater the risk.

We have been entrusted with something precious.

Through our baptism, we have been given a trust.

Like the master going on the journey,

God has entrusted his possessions to us:

This planet, our families, our physical bodies, our jobs.

But even more importantly,

like the husband of the worthy wife,

God has entrusted his heart to us.

The worthy wife is held up to us today

as a model of how to receive God’s heart.

With strength drawn from her husband’s heart,

The worthy wife reaches out her hand to the poor and needy.

True love between a wife and husband

always moves beyond just the two of them

and into the greater community.

She is a worthy wife because she does the work of love.

We, the Church, are called to be like this wife in Proverbs.

Scripture is filled with marriage imagery

to describe the relationship between Christ and his Church.

Christ is our Bridegroom and we are his Bride.

How do we as Church measure up to the worthy wife?

God has entrusted his heart to us in an eternal covenant.

Do we bring God good and not evil?

Do we reach out our hands to the poor,

and our arms to the needy?

A few days ago the Vatican announced

that this coming Monday, November 17,

the Church in Rome is going to start building showers for the homeless

in the public bathrooms at St. Peter’s square.

Fr. Conrad, the priest appointed by Pope Francis

to look after the needs of the poor and homeless in Rome,

is personally supervising the project.

He also visits the parishes in Rome

in areas where the homeless dwell

and he examines the parish halls

to see if there are showers that the homeless can use.

If there aren’t any showers, he asks them to be built,

paid for by the Pope’s charity.

Fr. Conrad is also working with a nearby school for hairdressers,

so that in addition to getting a shower,

the homeless can also get a haircut every once in a while.