2024 Nov 17 SUN: THIRTY-THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Dn 12: 1-3/ Ps 16: 5. 8. 9-10. 11 (1)/ Heb 10: 11-14. 18/ Mk 13: 24-32

So this is the time of year when in our liturgical calendar we find ourselves thinking a lot about what theologically we would call the last things. More popularly people will refer to the end of the world, although that specific phrase is not found in the Scriptures. But obviously the idea of the end of the world works upon our imaginations. I was thinking about the fact that there are a number of popular songs that in fact have the end of the world in the title.

For instance you may be familiar with a 1987 song, "It's the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine." I found the lyrics; they go on for a couple of pages and I really couldn't do anything with that song. [Laughter] I would stress that it seems that a lot of the imagination surrounding the end of the world has to do with things happening outside. And it seems these days as if there are some people who want to see it happen, they want to see upheaval and a change of what we expect and they'd like to go and break things to help it along. I don't think that's a good idea. 

But in fact I believe that we can take some of these words of Jesus and other parts of the Scriptures and realize that internally each of us undergoes various upheavals that feel to us like it's the end or we have to start over or we don't really know the way. 

And when it comes to saying oh, it's upon us, well, yes, God is all-powerful, he is the master of his creation and he could intervene at any time and say, well, this is over. But we have to appreciate the fact that God who is the author of time has been operating on a scale of time which is vast. I once put together what you could call kind of a "convincer" so we could get a feel for how vast the expanse of time has been since the Big Bang, which by the way this man did not give it that name, but this astronomer about a hundred years ago found evidence, and he aided this theory, and it happens he was a Catholic priest. Well, what I have here is a little notebook and instead of having a lot of pages it has just one long page of stiff paper and I used both sides of the paper in order to visualize how vast the expanse of time has been. [Shows whole expanse of timeline; laughter] And I like to ask people what one millimeter stands for on this timeline in all the time since the Big Bang, and I do it multiple choice:  is it 300 years or 3,000 years or 3 million years and the answer is 3 million years and you only go a millimeter on this. So that's a good thing to think about, and you know the cosmos will take care of itself, but we have to in fact consider what is going on within us; what are the upheavals that we experience within; what are our insecurities; how do we find that there are things that just don't sustain us. And with regard to those concerns I did find another song about the end of the world which I think really gets to the heart of things. This song is from 1962.

Why does the sun go on shining?  Why does the sea rush to shore?  Don't they know it's the end of the world?  'Cause you don't love me anymore 

Why do the birds go on singing?  Why do the stars glow above?  Don't they know it's the end of the world?  It ended when I lost your love 

I wake up in the morning, and I wonder  Why everything's the same as it was  I can't understand, no, I can't understand  How life goes on the way it does 

Why does my heart go on beating?  Why do these eyes of mine cry?  Don't they know it's the end of the world?  It ended when you said, "Goodbye" 

Well, happily, we have been reading from the great promise that the Letter to the Hebrews gives to us, and we have come today to the last portion [in the Sunday Lectionary] of that amazing book. We've been talking about Jesus as the great high priest and we hear a summary today. Jesus is the great high priest: the one who is at one and the same time the priest offering sacrifice and the sacrifice being offered. He has offered the sacrifice for all of us, once for all, and this is something that we need to search out in our own hearts. Have we accepted that this gift has been given to us? Do we accept that it is personal? Do we accept that it is the opposite of the lyrics of the song that I just recited? We can think about endings all we want but we do in fact have the good news today that accepting this gift is for us the beginning.

2024 Nov 10 SUN: THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME 1 Kgs 17: 10-16/ Ps 146: 7. 8-9. 9-10 (1b)/ Heb 9: 24-28/ Mk 12: 38-44 or Mk 12: 41-44

Abundance and scarcity are on our minds as we consider the Scriptures today. We may have a variety of attitudes toward the gifts with which we have been entrusted.

We may think of our situation here and now and say, "There isn't enough for me and for everybody else. I have to hug everything I have to myself." On the other hand, there is the attitude of abundance which recognizes that God gives us gifts and does so unfailingly.

We also have the theme of widowhood in the first reading and the Gospel. We understand widowhood in our own day to be precarious, certainly from an emotional standpoint.

From an economic standpoint, we see that there are many things which make up what we call an economic safety net. But in the times of Elijah and Jesus, such a safety net did not exist.

So the widows we read about here are in an especially precarious position. We may think, "How can it be that a jar of flour will remain filled likewise for a jug of oil? How can that be?" 

Well, you and I are very much accustomed to looking at life in economic terms. We think almost constantly about buying and selling and storing up lest there be a shortage. But we are invited to think in different terms.

And we can gain something from a consideration of today's second reading. We have been reading for several weeks from the letter to the Hebrews, which makes a powerful argument that the sacrifice of Jesus is the one great sacrifice, which frees all of us and allows us to recognize abundance rather than scarcity.

We hear about the sacrifices of old: people slaughtering and burning up livestock. It may seem to us that this is kind of a crude way of thinking we have to get God's attention or we have to demonstrate how sorry we are for our sins.

We may think that this is antiquated behavior, but in fact, you and I engage in similar behavior. Somehow we want to prove that we have a right to be here. We want to prove, for instance, our competence or our closeness to God.

And this leaves us in a place which I would call nervous and unsettled. And in this case, there is an alternative. Jesus has offered the sacrifice of Himself.

He is a great high priest, and He does something that no one else can do. He acts as priest offering the sacrifice, and He is the sacrifice itself. And as Hebrews says, He enters the unique heavenly sanctuary with His own blood.

And therefore, He has given us salvation and everything that flows from that gift, including a mentality of abundance. So we can use our imaginations and think of ourselves perhaps finding every sort of goods, every sort of services in our lives, but then we still don't have a direction.

Now that is scarcity, but abundance is knowing that we are God's beloved children, that we can count on abundance in anything that we find making its way into our hands.

We are people, not of scarcity, but abundance.

You may know that I and the various liturgical ministers get ready for Sunday Mass in a little room back in this corner.  It's called the prep room.  And it is a relatively small space for the number of people who gather there.  So I find myself getting vested for Mass and I try to catch a glimpse of myself in a full-length mirror, to make sure that the chasuble is on straight.  And yesterday before four o'clock Mass I was having a bit of trouble because there were so many people and someone remarked to me, "Ah, you can do it blind." 

Well, perhaps I can, but I just find this to be an instance in which I am very well aware of how much I depend on my sense of sight for this and for so many things.  And we can all reflect on how we rejoice in our gift of vision.  We can think at this time of year -- even if we've seen it year after year -- we still marvel as we watch the colors of the leaves changing at this time of year. 

Now Bartimaeus had a clear understanding of what he wanted to do with the gift of sight, which came to him as Jesus said, "Because of his faith."  He wanted to follow Jesus and the gift of sight permitted him to do this easily.  And he did it. 

We know that our eyes can be fixed on a variety of things, some of which are a good deal more important than other things.  We know we want our very soul to be filled up with what our God presents to us to be seen.  And of course that includes all of God's people, the dignity of every human being and our call to help one another to know that God is in our midst.  At the same time, we understand that there is something that goes beyond mere seeing.  We can find a hint of it in the Hebrews reading today, where we come to understand that our Savior, who is truly God and truly human, has tremendous mercy and compassion for all of us.  And that really is something which goes beyond seeing.  Actually, seeing can sometimes get in the way of understanding.  We tend to equate knowing with seeing an image of something.  But in fact, we're just seeing an image.  Understanding goes deeper.  And at times, we just have to look away from things in order to understand. 

Now you remember on Easter Sunday, we have that gospel of Peter and John inspecting Jesus' empty tomb.  They did not see him there. They looked around the tomb and saw various burial wrappings.  They were strewn about, and there was the one that had covered Jesus' head, rolled up in a place by itself.

They didn't see the risen Jesus right away, but they looked around the tomb. And finally, they understood so many things that they were afraid to ask him about -- things that they tried to ignore, in fact, because they didn't want to think about his death.  And they didn't know what to do with rising on the third day.  Finally, they understood. And this really went beyond seeing.

Likewise, in the psalm today, the people are exclaiming that the Lord has done great things for us.  We are filled with joy because they were set free from their captivity in Babylon.  You don't have to see something in order to understand.  We are going home.  So we recognize how much we depend upon the gift of sight.  And likewise, we see that we are led to something that goes even deeper, to understanding who our God is.  And really, we can equate understanding with faith.  Jesus says to Bartimaeus, "Your faith allows you to see."  We must understand our own understanding and see that understanding is a function of faith.  And it feeds faith as well.  We give thanks, as Peter and John did, for all the things that have been told to us that maybe we can't quite put into place.

The witness of the People of God, the Church throughout the centuries and today: we take it all in.  We understand.  We grow in faith.

The homilist was away last week.

Well the young people sitting up front here spent a night -- I don't know how comfortable it was because they were sleeping outside during the night.  It's what we call cardboard city.  It is an opportunity for them to have an experience of homelessness.  And I wonder whether at school you know people who are similar to what I am going to describe to you.

In high school I had two classmates who had this ongoing feud about which one of them was taller.  It happened that they were the two shortest guys in the class. And right there we find something about the futility, the nonsense of seeking distinction.  Or trying to prove that someone is somehow superior.

Well this is what we find in the Gospel.  James and John want distinction.  I suspect that if Jesus gave them their wish, and I don't know which of them was the older, they might have decided that these places were dissatisfying because the right side is considered preferable to the left.  So there may well have been some kind of dispute over that.

We see the folly of this.  We understand that we must begin our understanding of ourselves by knowing that our God loves each one of us to a degree we cannot conceive.  And it is from that awareness of God's complete love for us that we can carry out our life unconcerned about distinctions: that we will make our lives acts of thanksgiving.

Jesus asks them, "Can you drink the cup that I drink?" The Old Testament passage and the selection from Hebrews today remind us of that cup that Jesus drank.  He laid down his life.

He did something which only he could do.  As God, he was able to take the initiative.  As human, he was able to offer up human nature itself.

This is a summary of what I preached on Sunday, October 6, 2024, the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

So we had a Gospel about marriage accompanied by Genesis 2 and the creation of a woman.

This is always an occasion to talk about marriage, and I have to say the main point I was driving at that day was that before people can be spouses they have to be friends; they have to enjoy a deep friendship.

I used once again the exchange in Act 2 of the play "Our Town" in which George and Emily are coming close to saying to one another that they are to be married.

I did not record the homily as I got distracted that day. That was the day that we held the Mass in the Grass in the Troy Park at the Gazebo.

And it was a beautiful, perfect day to be out, and that was what distracted me from the duty to record the homily.

2024 Sep 29 SUN: TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Nm 11: 25-29/ Ps 19: 8. 10. 12-13. 14 (9a)/ Jas 5: 1-6/ Mk 9: 38-43. 45. 47-48

Very briefly I want to talk about some things in the second half of this Gospel and in the second reading. We know that Jesus is not calling us literally to maim ourselves. He is making a point that it is better to enter the kingdom of heaven one way or another rather than fail to do so. In the second reading -- this is our last selection from the letter of James -- James is already bemoaning the fate of those who cling to their riches. If they cling to them they cannot with open arms receive the gift of the kingdom of heaven. You and I may not consider ourselves especially wealthy but actually our economic standard of living is the envy of billions. We have to keep in mind that we are called to live lives of sharing with those in need. 

The main thing I want to get to here is the theme that is obviously set up by the passage from Numbers and by the Gospel today. And it has to do with the question who is in and who is out. And we hear that Jesus is talking about inclusion. And that's especially important to think about because very recently Pope Francis made some statements about non-Christian religions and a lot of people were bothered by it.

But the Pope was saying something that was entirely consistent with the Second Vatican Council: that all who are yearning for and seeking what is good and true and holy will find themselves united with the Son of God who offered himself for all people, past, present, and future. I call this the anthropological principle of the Christian faith. It's something we find in no other religion.

And it's entirely based upon the fact that the Son of God saw fit to unite himself with our human nature and with every one of us individually. I can remember at the end of my first semester of working on a degree in theology that I had an oral exam. And the professor asked me, "How do we know that people are united with Jesus?" And I found myself struggling to come up with an answer. But the professor provided the answer for me. And I look upon this still as a great moment of wisdom, by receiving great wisdom,  when he said, "By the very fact that the Son of God has taken on human flesh, all people are united with Jesus." 

And whenever I think about his telling me that, I find myself looking at my hands. I'm looking at my human flesh, and I think of the human flesh of all people. And I realize the gift has been given. 

You and I, especially as we witness a baptism today, have the joy of explicitly proclaiming faith in the Word-made flesh. And we can be confident that people who are earnestly seeking what is true and what is good, people who have never heard of Jesus, and even people who think they know Jesus and reject Him, all these people can be welcomed in. I am sure that it has occurred to many of us that God becoming human is the way that humans need to be loved. We all have our bad days, and sometimes those bad days can extend to weeks and months. We're just not sure of what this is all about, being human, but we have the good news that the Son of God has been absolutely the opposite of indifferent to our human state and to our struggles. And of course, He laid down His life and rose victorious. In all this we trust.

You may have been aware that the priests of the diocese were taking part in our annual convocation this past week. In addition, I attended a meeting of the Diocesan Pastoral Council in Springfield yesterday. And some months ago, there was a group of priests set up to study what you might call the use of priest energy in the 28 counties of our diocese. They gave us some interesting figures. First of all, that our weekend Mass schedule is such that we are ready for 112,000 people every weekend. The fact is, however, that we have only about 36,000 people at weekend Mass in our 129 parishes. So one recommendation which they are making is that across the board, across all parishes of the diocese, we consider dropping a Mass on our weekend schedule. So I have some ideas about this, and I'm not going to talk about them until I have conferred with neighboring pastors. I want to give you some reasons for this. They also gave us a statistic that a church feels full to the people assembled when we are at about 65% of seating capacity. And we think that this is a desirable goal.

The reason for that is if you are in an assembly, if you are in a church that feels full, there is a sense of energy, we feel more alive, and those who are here will be more motivated to enter more deeply into the life of the local parish. So we are, as we say, studying this, and we are not going to be making any changes for a number of months. But when we hear this, we say, "Oh yeah, okay, well, we need to reduce the number of Masses, but don't mess up my schedule." 

In the Gospel today, the Twelve cannot fathom this thing that Jesus is telling them that He has to be killed, and He will be raised up after three days. They don't want to go anywhere near this thing that Jesus is telling them. Now, dropping a Mass is not the same, but we find ourselves very likely doing exactly what the Twelve are doing. They change the subject. They get into an argument about which one of them is the greatest. Do we recognize ourselves? I think we can recognize our reluctance to look at things which may be difficult, which may require extra sacrifice on our part. This goes along with the Old Testament passage. This is from a very late Old Testament book, the Book of Wisdom, and we hear the resentment that is residing in the hearts of the people who feel threatened by one who acts justly. 

The passage from James is also of great interest. It talks about being enslaved by our passions, and that's an important thing to look at. These days it seems that we use the term "passionate" quite a bit, and we're sort of congratulating ourselves as we say we're passionate about one thing or another. Well, we keep in mind that very word "passion" comes from a root meaning "to suffer." A passion is something that we undergo, either more or less willingly. When I hear someone say I'm passionate about something, I find myself, at least, saying to myself, "Oh, that's good." To say that we're passionate is pretty much the same as saying we have a pulse or we have a blood pressure, or we have feelings. Yes, these are all things that remind us of our humanity, including our limits. But we need to remember that we can praise ourselves for being passionate, let's say about the religious formation of our children, or we're passionate about hunting, or passionate about a particular recipe we like. Well, these have various degrees of importance, and we need to keep that clear in our minds. 

Now, Jesus, when he confronts the Twelve with their changing the subject, when he does this, he calls a child to him, and he says to the Twelve, "If you want to be great, you remember that your mission is to receive even this child." It is a call to us that says, "We all have been children." How have we turned out? What is our wish? What is our prayer for this child?  What gifts do you want this child to accept? Maybe there are gifts that we were slow to accept, which took us a long time to come around to recognize as valuable. We pray for every one of us that we might accept what is truly valuable.

As I think of a word by which to sum up all of the scriptures today, I believe that word is denial. Denial is a very common aspect of our consciousness. We decide that there are many, many things in life we would prefer to avoid.

And so we exercise denial over them. One example is in the letter of James. We have here the image of a brother or sister, and we need to remember those words, "brother" and "sister" who does not have enough to eat or to wear.

Denial puts distance between ourselves and this person whom we could help. Somehow we manage to say to ourselves, "It does not concern me. I cannot do anything." And I suppose that this denial is rooted in an unexamined fear, really an irrational fear, that says, "Well, if I start giving, I won't have anything." That's how our minds can work. We also find denial as Peter has this exchange with Jesus.

Mark does not tell us exactly what Peter said, but we can look at other Gospels and see that Peter says, "God forbid that any such thing should happen to you." And we know that Jesus then turns to Peter to say, "Get behind me, Satan." He's using the term "satan" to mean "adversary." The adversary is trying to get in the way of Jesus' mission to lay down his life for the sake of all of us.

We have from the prophet Isaiah the third of the four suffering servant songs. We hear this every year on Palm Sunday that the servant of God has set his face like flint, knowing that he will not be put to shame.

And that is another irrational fear that many of us have, that suffering is shameful. But when we know the purpose of our suffering, it is anything but shameful.

Anyone of us can embrace suffering out of love, as Jesus did. So how do we emerge from a state of denial?

We can start by realizing how common denial is. We tend to associate denial with addictions of various kinds. If alcohol is one's thing, for instance, there is a lot of rationalization going on, "Oh, I'm not drinking that much," or, "Oh, I'm only drinking beer," things like that.

But once you get started, it does become completely absurd, the things that we tell ourselves. So we have to be aware of the denial we are submitting to.

And then take a look at what human life is about. It is not about self-absorption, which is common to all kinds of addiction.

We know that we are here to be present to one another, to love and serve one another, to affirm our dignity as human beings. It is a dignity which we may not have recognized ourselves, but we give thanks that the Son of God has affirmed our dignity.

Well, here we are, gathered together in one place. Someone once said that the church could be described as "Here comes everybody." Because we understand this assembly is for everyone.

We think in territorial terms, and we say that the people in a particular territory who are Catholic Christians come to this particular assembly or church, because they are members of this particular parish.

And we know that we are to find out who we really are when we come together for this assembly, for the Sunday Eucharist, on which we give thanks for the resurrection of Jesus on a Sunday.

But there are many questions that could be raised about our coming together here. And we hear some questions in the letter of James.

And it's good for us to remember that in the very early years of Christianity, people came together for the Eucharist, for the breaking of the bread, for the most part, in private homes. So we need to imagine this. And James suggests that you might pay a lot of attention to someone with gold rings and fine clothes, and give this person some kind of privilege.

Whereas there might be someone that you judge to be less important. And you say, "Well, there's room to stand over here, or you can sit at my feet." And James is pointing out that this is how we carry out discrimination among people, when we are to understand that we enjoy a radical equality, because we are the children of God, we are the ones redeemed by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We are equals. And we realize that as we come to this Eucharist, there is no one among us who has life figured out.

And the one great riddle for all of us is our mortality, the fact that we are subject to death. And we come here because the Son of God has addressed this riddle of death, and he has done so definitively by laying down his life and then rising from the dead and bringing all of us with him into resurrection.

Now we have to help one another. We think of the various liturgical ministers who volunteer to take on various roles in our celebration.

We think of lecturers and servers and Eucharistic ministers. It is important for us to know that the people you see carrying out these functions are on a very short rotation.

And we can easily have many, many more people assume these roles. And if we are not inclined to volunteer in this way, it is important for us to ask ourselves, "What are we afraid of?" Being seen?

Well, you find out when you let yourself be seen, you can relax. Again, we are not here to impress one another or engage in some sort of one upmanship.

We are all pilgrims on this great journey, and we learn to be at ease and at peace with one another. 

In the Gospel, we have related social concerns.

We take note of the fact that Jesus, in carrying out this healing of this man, takes him away from the crowd, gives him some privacy.

And when you think about the various things that Jesus does, which seem very, very crude to us, putting his fingers into the man's ears, spitting, touching his tongue, and groaning.

I think if we were receiving this service, we'd just as soon not have anyone see us. And we take special note of the groaning, because sometimes when it comes to prayer, yes, we have words for prayer.

But there are times when all we can do is groan. And St. Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit himself groans along with us.

It's strange, of course, that although Jesus told the people to keep this quiet, they announce it to the world. Jesus' point is that he only does healings when there is an expression of faith.

And people have faith in Jesus to do this. And when we have received some benefit, some great healing, it's not the first thing we do to tell everybody, we have to reflect on the meaning of this healing.

And among other things, we realize that if we're given the power to speak, we don't have to speak all the time. We also must take time for listening and listening to our Lord and what he wants us to do with our various powers.

So keep all this in mind as we give thanks for our various gifts. And remember that those gifts are for the sake of service.

Have you ever had the experience of someone telling you a joke and you had to think about it for a little while before you got it? I'm thinking about something which I would say is not strictly a joke; it was an exchange between me and a student at a school I ran.

This was about 30 years ago. And I asked a student, "What is a defibrillator?" And the student replied, "Is it a lie detector?" I thought that student was pretty sharp. There are things, and we hear this from Jesus today, that you try to say something and make something sink in.

It might take a while. And that's what Jesus is saying here. And he uses some language here in Mark's Gospel. We've returned to Mark after hearing from John. Jesus is saying, "Hear me, all of you, and understand." I think I've seen some translations that say, "And try to understand." In other words, give it your attention so that a new idea might kick in.

Now, we could think that these scribes and Pharisees had something important to point out. You and I have been through a global pandemic, and we all know the importance of cleanliness when it comes to our food.

So, in these laws that they observed, they might have been developing this according to an insight by which they equated lack of hygiene with disease. But Jesus is not going in this direction. We have to follow his argument here.

And what he says you have to try to understand is, that food goes in, waste passes out. It really does not have anything to do with you. What does have to do with you is whatever comes from within your heart. And that's the point he is trying to get across.

And he gives us this list of the things that may be residing in our hearts, which are sinful and are really ruinous to relationships with one another and with our God. So, Jesus is also saying that there are laws that are much more important than other laws.

We know when we think about the great, real multiplicity of laws that we find in every aspect of our lives, we know that some laws are more important than others. And all laws can be summed up by the two great commandments. Love God with your whole being, and love your neighbor as yourself.

And Moses in speaking about law, is saying in this passage from the book of Deuteronomy, that laws are based upon wisdom. And if we understand and carry out the laws, we are conforming ourselves to wisdom, provided again that we know what the really important things are and how various laws connect to the great commandments.

We begin to read today, and we will do so for a total of five Sundays, from the letter of James, which has been a source of controversy among Christians for at least 500 years. You've heard of the controversy over faith and works.

James seems to be very much focused on the works we do, the good things we do. And some have said you have to focus on the fact that God loves us and frees us from our sins.

Well, it's not an either-or situation. It's not faith or works. If you do things that you see are good in order to make God love you, that's the wrong direction. It's the wrong emphasis.

On the other hand, if you say God loves me and forgives me and that doesn't lead to a change in how you conduct your life, well, that's useless as well. It's not faith or works. It is faith. Yes, that incredible awareness we have of God's love for us.

It is that faith which gives us the energy to make our lives a work of thanksgiving. So it is faith leading to works.

And we need to keep that in mind as we hear from a portion of the New Testament which is distinct, which has its own set of issues to address. We are here allowing ourselves to be enveloped in the love that God has for us, a love that's been shown to us through various people in our lives.

We welcome this opportunity to celebrate that love and then to allow our gratitude to form our works.