Evil has no power to destroy us

Homily: 7^th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Cycle A

          Perhaps many of you have heard about a new film series that was recently released named The Chosen.  It is yet another dramatized biography of Jesus pulled from the accounts of his life and ministry in the Gospels.  It has gotten some very positive reviews and the first episode is available free on YouTube.  I haven’t watched it yet, but I hope to do so soon when I have some time.

          While multiple films and series about Jesus have been made ever since man started making films, for me the watershed film has to be Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.  For those of us who grew up watching too much TV and are thus “imaginationally challenged”, this film answered a lot of those “I wonder what that was like?” questions.  I know that many people decided not to see it because the filmmakers did not hold back in depicting the violence that Jesus suffered (almost, perhaps, overdramatizing it).  But if you are an adult and you haven’t seen this film, I think that you should.  Because if you’ve never pondered Jesus’ passion as graphically as this film depicts it, then you’ve never deeply meditated on what Jesus suffered to save us from our sins.

          All that aside, however, one of the things that the film does highlight is the fullness of Jesus’ humanity.  The film begins with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane suffering in his agony over what he is about to endure.  Jesus is both fully human and divine, which means that he has both a human will and a divine will.  Although Jesus’ divine will is powerful enough to override his human will at any time, it never does.  This because, in order for Jesus’ self-sacrifice to be truly salutary for us, he had to be completely obedient to the Father’s will by using his natural human will alone.

          Thus, we see him in such great turmoil in the Garden.  His human will is resisting to its fullest extent what the Father has planned for him to endure.  It begs, it pleads to the Father that there would be some other way to accomplish his will, but there isn’t; and from there—that is, from the moment that Jesus accepted in perfect obedience the will of his Father—we see Jesus in complete control.

          When the soldiers arrived to arrest him in the Garden, Jesus offered them no resistance (and even commanded his disciples who were with him to do the same).  When they struck him, he did not strike back.  When they questioned him, he did not evade their questions, but gave them more than they asked for (that is, more than they had hoped he would in order to condemn him).  And when he was so mercilessly scourged he did not beg them stop, but remained silent through it all.  He accepted all of the evil that was done to him and, in the end, still loved those who had subjected him to it: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

          Jesus did all of this using his human will alone, for it had to be so.  In doing so, he modeled the human perfection to which he called his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount: “When someone strikes you on your right cheek,” he said, “turn the other one as well.  If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand over your cloak as well.  Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go for two miles.”  What Jesus was teaching us, and what he modeled for us, is that we are to accept all of the evil that befalls us in this world; and that we overcome it, not by resisting it or by trying to destroy it, but rather by living as if it has no power to destroy us.  In other words, it seems as if Jesus is teaching us that an evil force loses its strength when the object of its attack absorbs it rather than resists it.

          Now Jesus is not advocating passivism that leads us to be perpetually abused.  Rather, he is indicating the kind of passivism that “takes the wind out of the sails”, so to speak, of those who do evil by turning around and loving them with a self-sacrificial love instead.  To turn the other cheek says to the person, “you may strike me again, but I’m not giving up on our relationship.”  To give your cloak to the one who demanded your tunic is to say to that person, “if you so desperately need clothing, here take all that I have and be well.”  And to go two miles with the one who presses you into service for one says “I hold no grudge, I harbor no rancor in my heart for you.”  To do this makes plain their wickedness and, as Saint Paul would say later in one of his letters, it “heaps burning coals onto their heads.”  This, Jesus is teaching us, is the way to “be perfect, just as our heavenly Father is perfect.”

          “Oh, but father, isn’t this kind of perfection impossible for us?”  By our own human will alone—broken as it is by sin—of course it is!  But it isn’t about that alone.  Rather, it’s about our nature and our end: our nature as creatures made in the image of God and our end which is to be one with him forever.  In other words, this is not about some moral code imposed on us from outside of us that is impossible for us to achieve.  Rather, it’s about becoming who it is that we truly are: creatures made in the image and likeness of God, destined to be perfectly united with our creator forever.

          In order for us to achieve this destiny, therefore, me must strive to conform ourselves to this image in which we have been created.  God, our creator, endures countless evils from his creatures.  And does he ever retaliate against us?  No!  Rather, what does he do?  “He makes the sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust”, doesn’t he?  In other words, in spite of the way that he has been treated by his ungrateful creatures, he continues generously to pour down on us all that we need and then some.  Our work of perfection, therefore, is to strive to live this model.

          My brothers and sisters, by enduring his passion in perfect obedience to the Father using only his human will, Jesus has shown us the way to perfection.  In giving us the Eucharist, he has given us the spiritual strength that we need to follow him.  Let us, today, say “yes” to the grace that perfects us and thus be transformed—or rather set free—to achieve the perfection that awaits us: our perfect communion with the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – February 22^nd & 23^rd, 2020

Evangelize through goodness

Homily: 5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A

Friends, as you know by now, I have invited you to journey with me through these weeks of Ordinary Time, seeking each week one way, revealed to us in the Mass, that we can grow in our discipleship of Jesus during this time.  In previous weeks, I encouraged us to seek to behold Jesus, the Lamb of God, in the different moments and encounters of our daily lives, to see in the Word of God both a record of God’s promises to us and the evidence of their fulfillment, and to be lowly and pure so that we might be blessed to recognize his presence among us.  This week, I believe that the Mass moves us to remember that we have been given a mission to evangelize and what that looks like.  And so, let’s dive in to see how it reveals this to us.

Bishop Robert Barron, in explaining his discoveries over many years of seeking to evangelize and to inspire others to do so, often speaks of the difficulties trying to proclaim Jesus in a world that has lost much of its religious sense.  What he means by that is this: that since, in western culture, people have lost a sense of who God is—or that there even is God—to approach them with a proclamation of Jesus (whom most, if they know him, view him as an ethical teacher and a prophet) is ineffective, since they wouldn’t have a context in which to place him and thus accept him.  To counter this, Bishop Barron often proposes introducing people to what are called the “transcendentals”: that is, truth, beauty, and goodness.  These, he argues, are things, not specifically religious, that anyone can experience, and which can lead them to acknowledge realities that are beyond themselves (that is, realities that “transcend” their own).  When someone is able to do this, Bishop Barron argues, then they can be introduced to the idea of God and of our need for a savior, who is Jesus.

Truth, Bishop Barron argues, is a difficult one to begin with.  This is because our culture is so rife with relativism—that is, the idea that truth is relative to the person who perceives it—that even when presented with a universal truth, a person might not be open to experiencing its transcendent quality.  Beauty is a similarly challenging mode of evangelizing, he says.  This for a couple of reasons: first because to truly encounter beauty one has to “raise your eyes” above the world.  In western culture, so rife with images that speak to our passions and our primal urges, it’s hard to pull our eyes away to see something that is truly beautiful in and of itself.  Second, because the idea of beauty has also been subject to relativism.  “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” the saying goes.  But this is not true.  Transcendent beauty is something that has an objective quality.  You might say that this church does not appeal to your taste in regard to style, but you’d be wrong if you said that it wasn’t beautiful.

This leaves us with goodness.  This, Bishop Barron argues, is where we have the most opportunity.  This is because many in western culture still believe that we have a responsibility to care for those who are less fortunate than us.  Therefore, when folks see Christians serving the poor—especially if it is poor Christians serving the poor—they more readily recognize that there is something valuable in goodness and, thus, will be open to knowing what it is that motivates us to service, which is our chance, then, to share the Gospel.  This third transcendental as a means of evangelization is exactly what our scriptures point towards today.

In the first reading from the prophet Isaiah, we hear the Lord telling the Israelites how it is that they will be restored to God’s good graces and begin again to fulfill their purpose as God’s people, which is to be a light drawing people from every nation towards God.  And what does he say?  He says, “share your bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed and the homeless; clothe the naked when you see them, and don’t turn your back on your own.”  Still further he says, “remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech... bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted...”  In other words, “Do good and avoid evil and the light that you have been given will shine brightly in the world, drawing people into my kingdom.”  Friends, if you read through the Old Testament, you’ll see that every time that the Israelites get in trouble with God it is because they have failed to be the light of God’s goodness in the world, thus turning people away from God, instead of towards him.

Then in the Gospel reading we hear Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount sharing with us the metaphors of salt and light.  “You are the salt of the earth”, he says to his disciples, meaning that they are meant to take what is good in the world and enhance it.  “You are the light of the world”, he also tells them, echoing the purpose that God gave to the Israelite people to be a light to all peoples so that they might turn to God.  He continues, saying, “Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.”  There it is, once again: by displaying goodness to others, others will, in turn, discover and glorify God.

Not included with today’s first reading, but implied by our Lord in his sermon, is the consequences for not evangelizing.  The result of evangelizing, of course, is that things get better: for the kingdom of God will grow and the brotherhood of mankind, united to God through Jesus, will bring peace and harmony to the world.  The consequence of not evangelizing, however, is not that things stay the same, but rather that they get worse.  As Jesus says, salt that loses its taste is good for nothing but to be thrown out.  When it is thrown out and trampled underfoot, it makes the ground sterile: that is, unable to support plant growth.  A burning flame (which is what Jesus means when he says, “light”, by the way) that is hidden by a basket will not keep burning, but rather will burn out after it consumes all of the oxygen under the basket.  In both instances, when the thing is not used for its good end, it doesn’t keep things status quo, but rather make things worse.

And so, my friends, it does, indeed, seem that our Mass today is encouraging us to consider our mission as disciples to evangelize and to do so through goodness: that is, by doing good so as to enhance the inherent goodness in the world and to be a light that draws men and women to know God, who is goodness himself, and, thus, to glorify him.  Let us, then, commit ourselves to spend time this week considering the ways that God is calling us to evangelize through good deeds in our daily lives and to seek out the ways that are still available to us to do more good (like, perhaps, removing “malicious speech” from our lives) so that we might become more fervent disciples of Christ and God’s kingdom of harmony and peace might be realized here and now.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – February 8^th & 9^th, 2020

The lowly and pure will see the Lord

Homily: Presentation of the Lord – Cycle A

My friends, it is true that the Mass we celebrate, while remaining a work that we do here on earth and in time, is nonetheless something that transcends time.  When we come together to celebrate the Mass, we are truly experiencing the fullness of the Communion of Saints: that is, the Saints in heaven, the faithful in purgatory, and us here on earth.  Because of this we know that, when we celebrate the Mass, the past, the present, and the future all merge into one.  In a way, this is why the Mass is celebrated the same basic way every day and everywhere, because what we’re doing is something eternal, something unchanging.

Our Liturgical Calendar is meant to accentuate that.  While the Mass is indeed eternal, it doesn’t change the fact that we live in time and so at different parts of the year we take time to emphasize different seasons; which highlight different aspects of salvation history and our journey as disciples of Jesus Christ here on earth.  Thus, when we are following the Liturgical Year, we are really entering into “God’s Time” in the midst of worldly time.

A “happy coincidence” this year is throwing a bit of a wrench into all of that, however.  This weekend, we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord.  It is the feast in which we celebrate the consecration of Jesus in the Temple as the first-born son of Joseph and Mary.  Traditionally, it was the feast that marked the close of the Christmas Season; falling, as it does, 40 days after Christmas.  Since the revision of the Liturgical Calendar after the Second Vatican Council, however, it no longer serves that purpose (the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord now marks its close).  Nonetheless, we still celebrate this feast.  But, unless you come to daily Mass throughout the year, you probably wouldn’t know much about it as we only celebrate it on Sunday when February 2nd actually falls on Sunday (like this year; thus, the “happy coincidence”).

So here we are, three weeks into Ordinary Time and reflection on Jesus’ public ministry as an adult, and the calendar throws us a curve ball hurtling us back into a reflection on Jesus’ infancy, on which we placed so much focus in Christmas time.  I think that even the most “die-hard” fans of Christmas would be hard-pressed not to feel a little off-kilter by this jump.  Nonetheless, I think that this feast does still have some important things to say to us here today.

First is a reminder that Jesus took on the “full-experience” of humanity.  Mary and Joseph were observant Jews.  This meant that they were careful to follow the precepts that the Law of Moses had laid out for them.  Thus, they observed the prescribed time of purification after the birth of Jesus (for coming into contact with blood and other bodily fluids made them ritually impure).  Then they brought the infant Jesus to the Temple to be consecrated to the Lord.

Now, with all of the work that angels were doing up to and immediately after the birth of Jesus, it seems to me that it would have been just as easy for one to send a message to Mary or Joseph (in a dream, perhaps) that it wasn’t necessary for them to fulfill the precepts of the Law for Jesus because he was the Son of God and thus was exempt from them.  That didn’t happen, however; which I think is another example that shows us that Jesus didn’t come to help us escape from all of the trappings of our humanity, but rather to redeem it all: that is, to make all that we do and experience in this world profitable for our salvation.  This is why the author of the Letter to the Hebrews can say: “Therefore, [Jesus] had to become like his brothers and sisters in every way, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest before God to expiate the sins of the people.”

Jesus was showing us that it is exactly through our humanity that we will come to our salvation!  In other words, following the way that God has marked out for us is the path to purification and holiness—and, thus, readiness to receive God’s gift of grace—and so we should not be too quick to cast off the rules and guidelines that the Church gives us.  They are the roadmap to our salvation!

The second thing of which this feast reminds us today is that Jesus reveals himself to those who are lowly.  Notice that in Luke’s account of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple it wasn’t the High Priest who recognized Jesus for who he was, but rather an unknown man and a poor widow.  Simeon, we are told, was a righteous and devout man.  “Pious” is another word we could use for him; and by “pious” we don’t mean someone who puts on a “religious show”, but rather someone who truly understands his place and what he was called to do, and who, thus, fulfills that duty faithfully.  As a reward for this, we are told, the “Holy Spirit was upon him” and thus he was given the grace to recognize Jesus as the Promised One of the Lord.

Anna, we are told, was a prophetess who, having been widowed at a young age, spent the remainder of her years in the Temple, fasting and praying—that is, offering her life in sacrifice to God.  When she saw the child, she, too, was given the grace of recognizing him; and she went off to do the thing that prophetesses do best, she went around telling of the child to “all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.”

Both Anna and Simeon were waiting in anticipation for the Holy One of the Lord: God’s anointed one who would redeem the people of Israel.  In other words, they were living Advent!  And when they saw him, they rejoiced to finally have seen the one that they had long waited for.  And so, in a way, we celebrate today another Epiphany!  (Is anyone not confused about what Liturgical Season it is yet?)  But what a great reminder this is that we ought to be living Advent all year long!  Jesus has come and he will come again, but if we are consumed by our worldly pursuits (even if those pursuits are religious ones), instead of living in anticipation of his coming, then we may miss him when he appears again in our midst.  To do this, we must be lowly: that is, living upright and devout lives, in which Jesus is always an integral part, and ready to greet him when he appears.

And that brings us to our last reminder: that only the pure will enter the presence of God.  You know, Mary and Joseph needed to complete the ritual of purification before they entered the Temple.  We, too, need to purify ourselves so as to be ready to stand in God’s presence when he appears.  This purification is the work of Ordinary Time.  It is the hard work brought forth by Christ.  Because to pursue the righteousness brought forth by Jesus is to stand in the refiner’s fire—the fire of which the prophet Malachi spoke—which purifies precious metals of impurities and makes them fit for their honored uses.  It is a hard work, but it is the work that purifies us and makes us ready to receive Jesus when he returns.

And so, perhaps our celebration of this feast today isn’t such an odd coincidence after all.  Perhaps it is exactly the reminder that we needed now that the energy of the new year has died down a bit.  Perhaps, then, we can take this opportunity to give ourselves a fresh perspective on our work of growing in discipleship during Ordinary Time.  If so, then let us not be sad at the work that lies ahead of us, because, as Simeon expressed as he held the infant Jesus, “God’s Word has been fulfilled.”  In other words, our success is guaranteed, for God has said so, as long as we give ourselves to the work.

Let us, then, give ourselves over to this work so that we, too, can proclaim the fulfillment of God’s promises to us, like Simeon did, and also proclaim the joy of having encountered him, like Anna: the encounter we experience in sacrament here in this Eucharist.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – February 1st & 2nd, 2020