Rooting out evil.

Homily: 29^th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle C

          One of the things that I find very curious about our culture is the paradoxical fascination that we have with violence.  Daily we are bombarded with images of real violence and the suffering that it causes in the news, on social media, and, for some of us, even in our own neighborhoods.  Yet, we continue to fill our senses with “make believe” violence in movies, television, and video games as if we were somehow fascinated with it.  Thus, the paradox is that real violence ought to cause us anguish and so it wouldn’t make sense that even fake violence would be entertaining.  But just one look at the summer movie blockbusters, the latest hit TV shows, and the most popular video games is all it takes to realize that our culture does, indeed, find fake violence strangely entertaining.

          Of course, this is not limited to our modern culture.  One can look back throughout the history of civilization and see that in every age there was some form of “make believe” violence that was used as entertainment; and that some cultures even came to thrive on real violence instead.  Even our Bible is rife with images of violence, particularly in the Old Testament.  Just look at our first reading today.  It details how Joshua led the Israelite army against the Amalekites and how he “mowed down Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.”  He destroyed not just Amalek’s army, but his entire people, too.  And we read this here in Mass today as if this kind of violence is something that we are supposed to feel good about because the Israelites, God’s people, killed every person from another nation who threatened them.  Doesn’t that seem odd?  I don’t know, maybe since we’ve been so overwhelmed with images of violence, both real and fake, perhaps we’ve “switched off” our sensitivity to it, but for me an image of such violence, seemingly approved by God, doesn’t sit very well.  Perhaps some of you are like me.

          One of the things that I often find myself doing is reading the Bible too literally, as if it is scientific history.  You know, most of the stories that are included in the bible were first handed down orally, that is, solely by word of mouth.  Now you and I both know that the concrete facts of a history will often change and mutate as it is told over and over again and so the likelihood that the historical stories that are preserved for us in the Bible depict for us the exact sequence of historical events is pretty low.  Does that make them any less true?  Of course not.  But it does force us to take a deeper look at how we read and interpret these stories.

          An allegory is a story, poem, or picture which can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.  In other words, it’s a literary tool that is used to express something in a way that helps communicate it in a way that just stating the facts wouldn’t be able to express.  When we read today’s first reading literally, we might conclude that God’s chosen people are superior to others and therefore that whenever others threaten the well-being of God’s chosen people, that every man, woman, and child among them should be killed.  When we read it allegorically, however, we can find a much more profound meaning that is consistent with our understanding of God as loving, merciful, and just.

          You see, allegorically speaking, this is not just a battle between two nations where the nation that is favored by God destroys the other.  No, it is a battle between Good, represented by the Israelites who were set apart for a special relationship with God, and Evil, represented by the Amalekites who were considered a force that could turn the Israelites away from their relationship with God.  Therefore, the battle is not a physical one, but a spiritual one, nonetheless represented in physical terms so that we can understand it.

          With this hermeneutic, that is, with this “lens” for interpreting the story, we see that this is not a story about God’s people conquering other nations so as to reign over them (it can’t be, because we already know that Jesus himself said that his kingdom was not of this world), but rather that it is story about rooting out evil from our midst so as not to be overcome by it.  “In those days, Amalek [that is, an evil influence] came and waged war against Israel [that is, someone part of God’s people].  Moses [who here represents the conscience of the Israelite people], therefore, said to Joshua [who represents the mind and heart of the Israelites] … go out and engage Amalek in battle.  I will be standing on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand [that is, I’ll be in constant prayer while you engage this battle so that the power of God will be with us].”

          Has anyone here ever battled against sin?  Doesn’t that battle (if we engage it) always take this form?  Sin (that is, an evil influence) comes to tempt us.  Our conscience says “whoa, this is bad; you better fight this!”  And our mind and heart says… what?  “Forget you conscience, this looks fun!”  Well, I guess that happens sometimes.  But usually it says “Ok, you’re right, we need to fight this.”  And so you engage in the battle against sin.

          If you win the particular battle do you say, “Ok, that was enough, I beat that temptation”?  Probably more often than not we do.  Then, what happens next?  Well the temptation comes back again, only stronger the second time right?  And so we quickly learn that we can’t just win battles against individual temptations, but we have to root out the source of the evil influence so as to prevent all temptations from coming.  This, my brothers and sisters, is the allegorical meaning of “Joshua mowed down Amalek and his people [the temptation and the root of the temptations] with the edge of the sword.”  Is it starting to become clear yet?

          Now that we’re getting good at this, look at the part that Moses plays in the victory over sin.  There’s a direct connection, right?  “As long as Moses kept his hands raised up, Israel had the better of the fight, but when he let his hands rest, Amalek had the better of the fight.”  Moses was the intercessor to God on behalf of the Israelites, and so what else can this mean except that as long as Moses had his hands raised in prayer, calling down God’s power on Joshua and his men, they had the better of the fight; but when he became tired and his hands drooped, Amalek and his troops started to gain advantage.  Prayer, then, is critical in our fight against evil.  If we are fervent and consistent in our prayer, we will overcome evil in our lives and root out its influence on us.  If we become slack, evil will begin to overtake us and possibly destroy us.

          Ah, but Moses had help, right?  No, it wasn’t Moses alone, but Moses with the help of the community: his brother Aaron and their companion Hur.  With their help he was able to keep his hands raised in prayer long enough for Joshua and his men to win the battle.  So, too, do we need the help of our brothers and sisters to overcome and completely eliminate any evil influence in our lives and so we should ask for it frequently.

          You know, one of the things that is happening in our society is that we are giving up our imaginations in favor of stimulation.  With imagination we strive to interpret stories and events in our lives in order to find what meaning it has for us.  Our culture, however, is training us absorb stimulation, instead.  When all we’re doing is receiving stimulation, there’s nothing more for us to do.  It’s either there or it isn’t; and if it isn’t, we’re trained to seek more.  When we engage our imagination, however, we begin to see events in our lives in allegorical terms.  In other words, we begin to see the events of our lives through an interpretive lens that adds meaning and depth to what we experience.

          And so, what does this mean?  Well it means that we begin to see our struggle with sin in terms of a greater spiritual battle: the dramatic “Good vs. Evil” that is constantly being waged throughout the universe, instead of the “self-help” exercise to which society wants to reduce it.  And I’m not talking just about the big things, I’m talking about the little things: the gossip, the jealousy, the judgmentalism with which we find ourselves battling daily.  It is not enough to win a battle on any given day; rather, we must engage the war to root out its sources in our lives.

          To do so, we must pray and pray constantly.  Just as Joshua could not defeat Amalek without Moses’ prayer, neither can we hope to root sin out of our lives without the help of God’s grace in prayer.  When we feel too weak to pray, we must not give up; but rather we must ask the help of our friends, our community of faith, for together we can win the war.  My brothers and sisters, we must not be afraid to take up this battle, for God will not fail to help us; because the victory… yes the victory is already ours in Jesus Christ.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – October 20^th, 2019

The terror of the cross

Homily: Friday of the Passion of the Lord

Homilía: Viernes de la Pasión del Señor

          Terrorism is something with which, sadly, we are all familiar and terrorists are those who seek to intimidate people into conformance with their group’s ideology.  For example, the playground bully uses taunts and physical violence to force the other kids to recognize him as “king of the playground”.  The other kids don’t like him, but they are so afraid of him that they conform so as to avoid his verbal and physical assaults.  On a larger scale, the videos published by ISIS are true “acts of terror” meant to instill fear into the hearts of whomever views or even hears about them so that no one will resist them for fear of suffering the same fate.

          In the ancient Roman Empire, the cross was meant to terrify people.  As a form of execution, it wasn’t meant solely to punish the criminal.  Rather, it was also a public display of cruelty meant to instill fear into the heart of every other person: a form of intimidation meant to eliminate any resistance to the Roman authorities.  Thus, the charge against the crucified person was posted above their head as a way of saying “Don’t even think about doing this, because this is how you’ll end up.”  So effective was this method of intimidation that people of that time wouldn’t speak about the cross in polite conversation: it was disturbing even to think about it because, for them, the cross was equated with a horrific death: a death that was humiliating, agonizingly painful, and, ultimately, dehumanizing.

          Today, however, it seems like we have sanitized the cross.  We have made it nothing more than an expression of our personal style or a pious thing about which to talk.  In other words, we’ve lost the “fear factor” that originally came with it.  As part of the Easter Triduum, Good Friday invites us once again to recognize that truly it is a fearful thing to hold up the cross as the symbol of our victory; because in doing so we proclaim not only that we are a follower of Jesus, but that we, too, would be gladly crucified with him and for him, because of our faith that one day he will raise us up again.

          My brothers and sisters, events happening around the world, and even those happening here in the United States, demonstrate that this type of witness is not far from being demanded of us.  Therefore, as we come forward to venerate the cross, let us keep this in mind: that Christ suffered for our sins—yours and mine—and so we must constantly plead for his mercy; and that the cross, symbol of our victory in Christ, should be fearfully embraced: for one day what it demanded of Christ may be demanded of us, too.  Nonetheless we have hope: because in Christ the cross no longer means certain and irrevocable death, but it means life: the eternal life that dawns on Easter Sunday.

          El terrorismo es algo con lo que, tristemente, todos somos familiares y los terroristas son aquellos que intentan intimidar a las personas para que se ajusten a la ideología de su grupo. Por ejemplo, el matón del patio de recreo utiliza burlas y violencia física para obligar a los otros niños a reconocerlo como "rey del patio de recreo". A los otros niños no les gusta, pero tienen tanto miedo de él que se conforman para evitar sus agresiones verbales y físicas. En una escala más grande, los videos publicados por ISIS son verdaderos "actos de terror" destinados a infundir miedo en los corazones de quienquiera que vean o incluso escuchar sobre ellos para que nadie se resista a ellos por temor a sufrir el mismo destino.

          En el antiguo Imperio Romano, la cruz estaba destinada a aterrorizar a la gente. Como una forma de ejecución, no fue solo para castigar al criminal. Más bien, era también una muestra pública de crueldad destinada a infundir temor en el corazón de todas las demás personas: una forma de intimidación destinada a eliminar cualquier resistencia a las autoridades romanas. Por lo tanto, la acusación contra la persona crucificada se publicó sobre su cabeza como una forma de decir "Ni siquiera pienses en hacer esto, porque así es como terminarás". Tan efectivo era este método de intimidación que la gente de ese tiempo no hablaría de la cruz en una conversación educada: era inquietante incluso pensar en ello porque, para ellos, la cruz se equiparaba con una muerte horrible: una muerte que era humillante, angustiosamente dolorosa y, en última instancia, deshumanizante.

          Hoy, sin embargo, parece que hemos desinfectado la cruz. La hemos hecho nada más que una expresión de nuestro estilo personal o algo piadoso de lo que hablar. En otras palabras, hemos perdido el "factor de miedo" que originalmente vino con la cruz. Como parte del Triduo Pascual, el Viernes Santo nos invita una vez más a reconocer que verdaderamente es algo espantoso sostener la cruz como el símbolo de nuestra victoria; porque al hacerlo, proclamamos no solo que somos seguidores de Jesús, sino que también nosotros, con gusto, seríamos crucificados con él y por él, debido a nuestra fe en que algún día nos resucitará.

          Mis hermanos y hermanas, los eventos que suceden en todo el mundo, e incluso los que suceden aquí en los Estados Unidos, demuestran que este tipo de testimonio no está lejos de exigirse a nosotros. Por lo tanto, cuando avancemos para venerar la cruz, tengamos esto en mente: que Cristo sufrió por nuestros pecados, el suyo y el mío, y así debemos constantemente rogar por su misericordia; y que la cruz, símbolo de nuestra victoria en Cristo, debe ser abrazada con miedo; porque un día también se nos exigirá lo que exigió a Cristo. Sin embargo, tenemos esperanza: porque en Cristo la cruz ya no significa una muerte cierto e irrevocable, sino la vida: la vida eterna que amanece el domingo de Pascua.

Dado en la parroquia Todos los Santos: Logansport, IN – 30 de marzo, 2018

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – March 30^th, 2018

A Cubs championship and eternal things

Homily: 32^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C

          Well, it’s the beginning of November and so you know what that means, right?  Yep, the Christmas assault has begun.  And it’s the first Sunday of November so that also means that we have two more full days before our national election finally takes place and we can end at least one of these assaults on our consciousness.  For us as Catholics the beginning of November also indicates that we are approaching the end of the Liturgical Year.  As we do so, our readings make a shift from focusing on the nuts and bolts of discipleship and onto considerations about the end of time.

          This week, the focus is on the reality of the resurrection of the dead.  This is an important consideration, of course, but not only because of what we believe about Jesus (Saint Paul has said that “if there is no resurrection from the dead, then Jesus Christ is still dead and our faith is useless”), but also because it means something about how we live our lives before we die.  Our first reading illustrates this for us nicely.

          In our first reading today, we heard the testimony of three of the seven Israelite brothers who with their mother were being tortured by the Seleucid King Antiochus Epiphanes in order to get them to apostatize—that is, denounce their faith—by eating pork, which they believed God forbade them to eat.  Each of these three courageously handed over their lives to their torturers rather than denounce their faith in God by breaking the Law that he had given them; and it was the strength of their faith in the fact that God could and would raise them to life again that gave them that courage.  In other words, they believed in God’s promise of eternal life to those who remained faithful to his Laws and commandments and so they knew that if they kept themselves pure according to God’s law that, even if they should die at the hands of men, God would one day raise them to life again. And so we see that our belief in the resurrection means something about how we live our lives before we die: if there’s no resurrection, eat pork and enjoy your life, while you have it; if there is a resurrection, then we ought to conform to the laws and commandments of the one through whom the resurrection will come (that is, God), so as not to incur his wrath.

          In the Gospel reading, in answering the dilemma that the Sadducees put forth, Jesus doesn’t describe for us how we should live our lives in this world, but rather describes a glimpse of how eternal life will look.  He describes life after the resurrection of the dead as one in which those who have been raised to life “can no longer die”, indicating that it will be an immortal life which will extend through all eternity.  Eternity, I think, can be a very hard thing to imagine, however.  Fr. Larry Richards, who is a parish priest from Erie, Pennsylvania and who travels to speak nationally, has one of the best illustrations about length of time which is eternity and he describes it in this way: Imagine that, in eternity, every step requires 1,000 years to take and that you have been given the job to take every grain of sand from every beach and on every ocean floor, one at a time, to the top of Mt. Everest.  You can imagine the countless billions of years that it would take to accomplish this task. Yet once you have finished this task, eternity is just beginning.  He describes it in this way in order to put into sharp contrast the reality that with our infinitesimally short time on earth (in comparison to eternity) we will determine how we will spend eternity (either in heaven or in hell).  Thus, once again, our belief in the resurrection of the dead means something about how we ought to live our lives before we die.

          Those of you who have gotten to know me a bit know that, even though I grew up in (what is now) the far south-west suburbs of Chicago, I’ve always been a “north-sider” at heart.  Thus, you can imagine (and, perhaps, many of you share) my joy that the Cubs finally won a championship after so many years of heartache.  As I reflected on how they won this championship, I began to see a connection in this celebration (and what it took to get there) and our lives a Christians.

          In order to win the World Series, this year’s Cubs team had to battle hard.  Even though they ended the season with the best record in baseball, they still had to fight, day-in and day-out, in order to stay on top.  Then, in the Series itself, they had to battle from behind and win three straight games in order to spark the celebration that would fill them and their many millions of fans with inconceivable joy.  Very often the Christian life is no different.

          When someone acknowledges that the resurrection of the dead is, indeed, real and thus that how they live in this life determines how they will spend eternal life, then he or she begins to see this life as a battle and thus begins to fight, day-in and day-out, in order to win the prize of eternal life in heaven.  Because of our fallen nature, he or she will occasionally have to battle from behind; but nothing will deter him or her as he or she seeks to accomplish this goal: to experience the joy of entering into heaven for all eternity—a joy of which we got a glimpse when we saw the incredible joy of both the Cubs and their fans when they won the championship.

          My brothers and sisters, if we are not living this life as if it is a battle for how we will live after the resurrection of the dead—in holy fear of the one who will raise us from the dead—then we can have little hope both of accomplishing that goal and of experiencing the joy that comes when we accomplish it.  Therefore, we must engage the battle if we hope also to experience the victory.

          Perhaps many of you have heard my prophesy that when the Cubs finally win the world series it will be a sign that Jesus is coming back and that the world is coming to an end.  The jury’s still out on whether or not my prophesy is true (though, if you ask Fr. Clayton, he’ll tell you that he thinks that it is true, but that we have to wait until after Tuesday to find out exactly how it’s going to happen).  Nevertheless, it should, along with the readings that we will be hearing over these next few weeks, invite us to consider once again whether we are fighting to win the battle against the world or if we are, in fact, colluding with it: so that we might change our actions accordingly and fight so as to be ready to enjoy the victory when the fulfillment of God’s promise of resurrection comes to us.

          My brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, is the first fruit of that victory.  As we offer back to God this victory that Jesus won for us, let us ask for the grace to keep up the good fight and thus prepare ourselves to enjoy the spoils of his victory: eternal life with him in heaven.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – November 6^th, 2016