Church thrives through true disciples

Homily: 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle B

          Friends, today our scriptures all point to what it means to be a disciple.  Being here in a “college town” I would guess that most of us have a good sense of what it means to be a student of a particular subject... or even of a particular teacher.  It means that you study, you learn what you can, and you then decide what you are going to do with it.  A disciple is something more, however.  A disciple is one who listens to a teacher and then seeks to apply that teaching to his/her life.  Perhaps an example from my own life.  At one point I was a student of engineering.  I studied engineering and learned the particular aspects of mechanical engineering.  I didn’t become an engineer, however, until I started to apply all that I had learned to my life and work.  In other words, I didn’t become a “disciple” of engineering (as strange as that sounds) until I began to observe what I had heard.  It is in this sense that I see our scriptures speaking of being a disciple.

          In our first reading today, Moses is speaking to the Israelite people who had been wandering through deserted lands for 40 years during their exodus from Egypt.  He is going to remind them of the Law that God had given to him on Mount Sinai many years ago.  Moses knows that he will not cross into the Promised Land with the Israelites and so he urges them to hear and observe the laws that he will give to them so that they might have a prosperous life in the land into which God is leading them.  Moses instructs them that it will not be enough to be a student of these laws—that is, to study and memorize them only—but rather that they must observe them: allowing them to shape and form the way that they live, both as individuals and as a nation.  By this—by being disciples of the Law—Moses said, they will be esteemed as a people: noted as truly wise and intelligent among other nations.

          Our second reading, from the Letter of Saint James, one of the Twelve Apostles, is even more clear.  After reminding his readers that everything good comes from God, he exhorts them to receive humbly the teaching that comes from God; but then he goes further, stating that it isn’t enough to be a student of this teaching, but rather one must also be a “doer”: making it clear that it is not enough to simply acknowledge the importance to serve the poor and remain unstained by the world, but that one must also do it if one is to be considered a true disciple.  This, he said, is the demand of “religion that is pure and undefiled”, meaning “of right praise and worship of God”.  In other words, Saint James is saying that we worship God falsely if we hear God’s word only and do not observe it in our daily lives by conforming our actions to it.

          This teaching, of course, comes to a concrete example in our Gospel reading in which Jesus—always critical of the Scribes and Pharisees—again criticizes them for their misunderstanding of “religion that is pure and undefiled”.  They criticize Jesus’ disciples for not observing the ritual washings which the Law (by their study) demanded of them.  Jesus corrects them by reminding them that the ritual washings are of no value in themselves, but rather only when they act as an outward sign of and inward purification do they have value.  Here, therefore, is an example of people who were trying to observe the law without truly having heard it (that is, without having taken it to heart).  “Religion that is pure and undefiled,” Jesus seems to say, “comes from a heart that is first pure and undefiled.”

          Friends, as all of the events in the news have reminded us, simple observance of the outward rituals is not enough to ensure a religion that is “pure and undefiled”: that is, that one is in right relationship with God.  Rather, one must have allowed the law—that is the word that comes from God—to sink into the deepest part of one’s self and to purify it, before the outward observance will truly become worship.  Every priest and bishop, including myself, has failed in some way to hear and observe fully God’s command.  Some priests and bishops have been grossly negligent to do so, which led them to commit horrible crimes against the very people for whom they were called to care.  These men continued to preach and teach and to fulfill the outward rituals demanded of them—and demanded the same observance from their people—while the deadly sins of greed, lust, and pride defiled their hearts and led them to mar the word of God and the holiness of God’s Church.  Jesus, if he would appear to us again today, would certainly speak much more harshly against them than he did against the Scribes and the Pharisees.

          Therefore, it is understandable if we, for our part, are caught up focusing on the sins of these men as we seek clarity about what has transpired and accountability for those responsible—and if we find ourselves questioning the institution of the Church itself.  I would caution us to remember, however, that the holiness of the Church doesn’t rise and fall based on the holiness (or lack thereof) of any one particular member (even if that member is the Vicar of Christ himself, the Pope!), but rather that it is holy, in and of itself, because Jesus Christ, present within it, is holy and thus makes it so.  Our task is to show that holiness to the world by how well we embody a “religion that is pure and undefiled”, that is, by how well we are disciples.  Blessed Pope Paul VI once said “The world more readily listens to witnesses than to teachers; and if it listens to teachers, it’s because they are first witnesses.”  The great social activist Mahatma Gandhi, when asked why he refused to become Christian said “I don’t reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

          Friends, the Church will survive this crisis: the Holy Spirit guarantees that.  The way that it will begin to thrive again, however, is to purge this evil that has embedded itself into its institution, of course, but will also be when its members “humbly welcome the word that has been planted within them” so as to be authentic disciples: doers of the word, not just hearers of it.  In this way—through the apostolic witness of its members—trust in the Church will be built up once again, and more and more of our brothers and sisters will return to this altar of grace to receive the Bread of Life, the Body and Blood of Christ our Lord.

          And so, let us pray today for the grace not to allow these scandals to pull us away from our efforts to be more authentic disciples of Christ, so that the work of restoration—the healing of those who have been so grievously hurt and the building up of the Body of Christ—might begin with us.  May the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Conception and Mother of the Church, guide and protect us by her intercession, so that we might weather this storm and emerge, purified by grace, to enter God’s kingdom of light.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – September 1st & 2nd, 2018

Communion with Christ brings us true comfort

Homily: 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle B

In my six-plus years as a priest, I’ve celebrated a good number of funerals.  It is a graced experience to walk with families who have lost loved ones and to help them say “goodbye” in a sacred way.  There is one thing, in particular, about celebrating funerals that has stood out to me as interesting: that as we mourn the death of a loved one and after we celebrate his or her life in the funeral liturgy, we gather to share a meal; and that this is somehow comforting to us.

Of course, there’s a perfectly good scientific explanation for this.  The death of a loved one is often stressful and full of negative feelings of loss and separation.  When we eat—especially when we eat warm food that we enjoy to eat—our body releases chemicals, called endorphins, that help relieve the stress our bodies have been under and help us to relax and so give us a feeling of comfort.  Yet, we are more than just bodily creatures.  Rather, we are also spiritual.  And so there has to be something more than just the biological to explain why eating provides comfort.  Indeed, there is.

Sharing a meal with others creates or renews spiritual bonds that last long after the food and the endorphins disappear.  Those feelings of comfort caused by eating become associated in our hearts with the presence of those with who shared the meal, and a bond, a relationship, perhaps we could even say a communion is formed.  And it is this sense of communion, I would argue, that causes our true comfort. ///

As we continue to reflect on the “Bread of Life” discourse in John’s Gospel, we come to face the notion that the Eucharist is a Sacred Meal.  Beyond—or, better yet, in tension with—the notion that the Eucharist is Sacrifice, Anamnesis, and Epiclesis, we must also hold that the Eucharist is a meal: a sacred meal in which the bonds of relationship are either forged or strengthened.

Every week, we gather around this object that is both the altar of sacrifice and the table of communion.  And every week, as we gather as a people set apart by God, we renew our relationship to one another as the People of God when we share in the meal we receive from this altar.  But this is not only a renewal of our relationships with each other.  For when we receive the meal offered on this table, we receive also Christ, who makes of himself the meal that we share, and so renew our relationship—our communion—with him, too.

The Church teaches us that this renewal of communion is actually the sole purpose of our gathering.  In the Catechism of the Catholic Church it says that “the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice is wholly directed toward the intimate union of the faithful with Christ through communion” (CCC 1382).  What this reveals is that the communion we receive in the Eucharist is first and foremost communion with Christ, and that it is through our communion with him that we experience communion with all those who likewise receive him. ///

As I mentioned last week, most of us struggle, to some degree or another, with believing that the bread and wine that we offer on this altar truly becomes the Body and Blood of Christ that we then receive in communion.  I also said that, if we have doubts, our responsibility is to bring those doubts to God in prayer and to ask him to reveal the truth about the Eucharist to us.  For those of you who heard my homily last week, hopefully you’ve been practicing that prayer.  If you didn’t (or if you haven’t been practicing it) our readings today invite you again to see the truth about what we receive from this altar

In the first reading, the author of the book of Proverbs describes a scene in which “Wisdom”-- who is the personification of the creative force of God by which he designed and ordered the world rightly (and who could be referred to equally as “Logos” or “The Word”, as in “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us...” in other words, an image of Jesus)--sets her table in order to invite those who are simple to come and receive from her the riches of wisdom.  “Come,” she says, “and partake at my table that we might be in communion with one another.”  For the ancient Jews who lived before Christ, “wisdom” was sought and valued as the way to live in communion with God.  To feast at Wisdom’s table, and, thus, to be in communion with her, was, therefore, to enter into that desired for communion with God.

In the Gospel reading we should immediately hear the connection: Jesus has set the table of his Flesh and Blood so that those who partake of it can be in communion with him: and, through him, with the Father in heaven with who he is eternally in communion.  “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.  Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.”  In the Last Supper narratives Jesus will show us how he will give us his flesh to eat and blood to drink when he takes the bread and says “This is my Body, take and eat...” and the wine and says “This is my Blood, take and drink...”

My brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ presents us with this same offer today.  He desires greatly to be in communion with us and so he invites us to this table to partake of this “living bread that came down from heaven”: his Body and Blood.  And so, we should not be afraid to step forward even if we have some doubts.  Rather, we should let our “Amen” be shorthand for “Lord, I believe, please help my unbelief.”  If we can say even that much, then we can feel confident that we have the faith that we need to receive the communion that Christ so deeply desires to have with us. ///

Friends, in our grief over the scandals that continue to plague the Church we gather here in this sacred meal called the Eucharist to seek comfort in our pain.  May our communion with Christ and, through Christ, with one another provide us with the humility, courage, and fortitude to remain hopeful in the midst of darkness; and so continue to proclaim the Good News: that life beyond this life of suffering and pain is possible through Christ, the true Bread of Life.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral Parish: Lafayette, IN

August 18^th & 19th, 2018