Rejoice! In All Circumstance Give Thanks!

Lonely or Not

Homily from the 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Year A

 

'I get so lonely I could die.'

These lyrics from the well known song Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis Presley may speak to our own life experience. Indeed, there's something logical about putting loneliness and death in the same sentence.

Man is made for relationship. He is who he is because of who he loves and whom he is loved by. The philosophers would say that man in relationship is a human person; man alone (without a sense of loving or being loved) is only a human being, i.e. a human who merely exists.

Man is made for love. The guests in Heartbreak Hotel know this only too well. Without love human life loses its meaning and becomes alienation which gives birth to the words: I get so lonely, I could die.

How important then to listen carefully to Jesus' words today: You must love… .

They are framed as a command but are actually an analysis of what gives human life its fundamental significance.

A careful reading of the first three chapters of the book of Genesis will show that in the beginning, from the moment of our creation, God established us in four relationships. These relationships are part of the very substance of our human lives: our relationship with God, with our self, with others, and with the natural world. These four relationships shape the very path we must walk to reach our destiny and therefore, thanks to our fallen human nature, constitute the decisive stumbling blocks on our journey.

It is in our relationship to God, to our own self, to others and to the natural world, wounded but redeemed, that we now live out our daily lives as disciples of the Lord. How important, then, that we get them right, because it is so easy to get them wrong!

It may come as a surprise, for example, to hear a married couple say, 'We have always loved God more than we love each other.' Or for a father to say, 'My first love is for my wife, and only then for my children.'

Obviously there is much more to say in order to finetune exactly the hierarchy of love I am attempting to assert here. But the truth remains that we can get our relationships wrong all too easily and cause, thereby, significant disorder in our own life, and in the lives of those who form our relationship network.

I love to hear engaged couples telling me they have decided to live chaste lives until marriage because they 'want to be faithful to God!' These couples have got it right. They have put God before themselves; they are in a right relationship with him and therefore, with each other.

You must love the Lord your God … this is the greatest and the first commandment.

And when they marry this couple will be in a right relationship with their children who have a right to be born within a loving, stable, committed and secure marriage.

To get the order of our love relationships right is to bring about the 'order of God's love'. St Ignatius sometimes used this beautiful phrase. It is an order which brings peace and life, health and fruitfulness.

The greatest and first commandment is to love God. How? With all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. The second commandment is to love our neighbour. How? As yourself. This is the divine vision and plan according to which we were 'put together' in our mother's womb.

It is a great tragedy to meet individuals who live as though they understood the first and only commandment to be: I will love my self with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my mind. Let us pray to be preserved from this catastrophic corruption of our true nature.

Next week each of the three readings affirms what we sometimes forget - that we are all brothers and sisters, children of the one Father. The love we have for our self is the definition, the template, of the love we should have for each other, and there must be no exceptions.

As we have just heard in the first reading today we must not molest the stranger because we ourselves were once strangers in the land of Egypt. We must not be harsh with widows or orphans or the Lord will make our wives widows and our children orphans. The consequences of breaking the bond of love between ourselves and our neighbour are severe.

Christian warfare is fought on the battlefield of relationship. Let us examine ourselves in the light of the great commandment of love, and allow the Lord's words to be both encouragement and correction for us.

Respect Life Sunday

 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Year A (Respect Life Sunday)
Her name is Joanne Schiebel.  In 1954, she was a young unmarried college student who discovered that she was pregnant.  In the 1950s, her options were limited.  She could have had an abortion – but the procedure was both dangerous and illegal.  She could have gotten married, but she wasn’t ready and didn’t want to interrupt her education. Joanne opted, instead, to give birth to the baby and put it up for adoption.

And so it was that in 1955, a California couple named Paul and Clara Jobs adopted a baby boy, born out of wedlock, that they named Steven.
We know him today…as Steve Jobs.

It would not be overstating things to say that Steve Jobs is my generation’s Thomas Edison. As one observer put it, he knew what the world wanted before the world knew that it wanted it.

If you have an iPhone or an iPad or an iPod, or anything remotely resembling them, you can thank Steve Jobs.
If your world has been transformed by the ability to hear a symphony, send a letter, pay a bill, deposit a check, read a book and then buy theater tickets on something roughly the size of a credit card…you can thank Steve Jobs.
And: you can thank Joanne Schiebel.
If you want to know how much one life can matter, there is just one example.
But: imagine if that life had never happened.
Imagine if an unmarried pregnant college student 56 years ago had made a different choice.
Now, imagine all the unmarried pregnant college students who make that different choice today.
By one measure, more than half of all abortions in the United States – 53% — occur in young women under the age of 25.   That is hundreds of thousands of lives every year, snuffed out.  Millions over the last quarter century.
The horrifying truth is this: we live now in a culture that not only does not respect life, but discards it like trash — not only at the beginning of life, but also at the end, and every place in between.
What has happened to us?
In Europe, there’s a new industry of “suicide tourism,” for people who are old or infirm and want to kill themselves.
In California, when it was announced during a recent presidential debate that 234 people had been executed in Texas, hundreds of people in the audience applauded.
What has happened to us?
Catholics can disagree about whether the death penalty is necessary.  But we can’t disagree about this: cheering death – any death, especially if it involves someone who may be innocent – is an affront to life.  And yet we do it so easily.  And that is part of the problem.
Life has become disposable.
In the New York Times recently, there was a long article about the practice called “singleton” – where women pregnant with triplets or twins can arrange to have one or more of the babies aborted, to better manage the size of their family.
We don’t talk about it often, but it needs to be said: the reason we don’t see as many children any more with Down Syndrome isn’t because of some great medical breakthrough.  No.  It’s because roughly 90% of them are being aborted.
What has happened to us???
If you listen closely, the gospel this Sunday is, in one sense, about respecting life – and choosing death.   It brings us the familiar saying about “the stone that the builder rejected.”  Well, we have rejected more stones, more lives, than we can count.  When will it end?
It’s increasingly clear that the only lasting change will happen when we work to change not only laws, but also hearts.
And that begins with each of us.
When will it end?  This nightmare will end when we pass on what we all know to be true: for all its complexity and complications, all its sorrows and fears, all its headaches and heartaches…life matters.  Every life.  At every moment.
This nightmare will end when we teach our children that nothing, and no one, is ever discarded.  Remember the multiplication of the loaves and fishes?  When Christ performed that miracle, the story didn’t end when everyone ate.  It ended with the people gathering up every crumb.  Because every crumb was a part of that miracle.  No one, no thing, no life is wasted in the incredible work of God.
This nightmare will end when we acknowledge that life is inconvenient, and difficult, and unplanned. But nothing, and no one, is ever unplanned or unwanted when the one doing the planning and the wanting is God.
This nightmare will end when we realize, at last, that love is greater than fear.
It will end when we make of our lives a continuing prayer – prayer that isn’t afraid to plead, to ask, to question, to hope.  Prayer that embraces the beautiful truth of the most popular prayer in the world: “Thy will be done.”   Prayer that is able to trust.
It will end when we see life not as a problem to be solved, but as a gift to be embraced.

It will end when we simply choose life.   Beautiful, chaotic, unpredictable, explosive, crazy life.  Life isn’t something to be discarded because it is difficult, or inconvenient, or unexpected, or old or sick.  It is so much greater than we realize.

I sometimes mention this in baptism instruction: the baptism rite begins with declaring the name of the child.  It harkens back to Genesis, and the first thing Adam did after God created him – he named everything around him.  With that, man continued God’s creative work in the world.  And we do that today: with every life we welcome, God continues His creation. Choosing life, we choose to be a part of that.

That’s what Joanne Schiebel did.  Think of her the next time you make a phone call or plug in your iPod or download music.
And this morning, consider the work before us.  It begins here, and now.
By changing how we talk about life, how we treat life, how we teach life to our children, we will begin to change hearts, change minds.
“Respect life” is more than just a catchphrase.  It needs to be a way of living.  Respect life. Not just in the womb, but everywhere, at every time, in all circumstances — within our families, our communities, the places we work and do business.  It means treating every life with dignity, and honoring every life as a gift.
Doing that, moment by moment, we will begin to change the culture.
And: heart by heart, we will begin to change the world.

Let Go & Let God

26th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Year A

Four weeks ago, on the 22nd Sunday of the year, we heard Jesus say to Peter: Get behind me, Satan … because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s!

On the 23rd Sunday Jesus shows us how to treat those who do the wrong thing by us in a way that would be according to God’s way of thinking.

On the 24th Sunday we celebrated the feast of the Triumph of the Cross; madness according to the world's way of thinking but for us who believe, the sublime wisdom of God.

Last week, the 25th Sunday, Isaiah cautioned us: Let the wicked man abandon his way, the evil man his thoughts. … for my thoughts are not your thoughts …. .

Then the Gospel showed us a God who is generous in a way that we, according to our human way of thinking, would think unfair. Once again we see that God’s thoughts are high above our thoughts.

Which brings us to the First Reading today, the 26th Sunday, in which God seems to be defending himself from our human way of thinking which calls him unjust.

Is what I do unjust? Is it not what you do that is unjust?

Imagine us accusing God of injustice!

In the Second Reading St Paul is pleading with the Philippians: ... be united in your convictions and united in your love, with a common purpose and a common mind. That is the one thing that would make me completely happy.

A common mind? Which mind?

In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus...

Well, by now I think you are beginning to see what I’m getting at. The mind of God is indeed higher above us than the heavens. Our ways of thinking are not God’s ways of thinking and the whole of the struggle of Christian discipleship could be summed up as the struggle to begin thinking like God, as St Paul puts it: ...to put on the mind of Christ.

Well, our Gospel today shows us a young man caught in the very act of doing just this. He was asked by his father to spend the day working in the vineyard. His father might just as well have asked him to wash the car, clean up his room, take out the garbage or turn off the television.

The young man was very human but notice he was also very honest. He didn’t like to pretend. He said straight out to his father, 'No! I won’t! I am not going to work in the vineyard. It’s not my turn to wash the car. I didn’t mess up the bedroom. I’ll take out the garbage later, if I don’t forget … and, anyway, I just want to watch this television programme first.'

How human this way of thinking is!

Well, the dad in our Gospel just leaves him to work it out and the young man starts thinking. We are not told what his thought processes were, just that he thought better of it.

He did what Isaiah advised: Let the wicked man abandon his way, the evil man his thoughts. And so he went off to work in the vineyard.

The prostitutes and the tax collectors did exactly the same thing. They at first said no to God in their lives and lived far away from him. But then, at the sound of Jesus’ words they thought better of it and repented. They sought forgiveness and became disciples of the Lord.

There’s no need to say too much about the other son, or about the chief priests and elders. We are simply told that they refused to think better of it. How sad!

Let me repeat, isn’t our whole Christian life a process of learning to think better of it? … of learning to put on the mind of Christ?

Are you in that process?

Watchmen for Israel

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Fraternal correction, assertiveness and speaking the truth in charity are some of the phrases that lead us into the message of this Sunday. The readings focus on the painful responsibility of fraternal correction which entails many qualities: assertiveness, courage, compassion, patience, gentleness, humility, sincerity and prudence, to names just a few. The readings also remind us that we will be held accountable for our silence and failure to speak up. There are many situations in our own homes when at times we are hesitant to speak up. In the first reading, the Lord sends his messenger as “watchman for the house of Israel” as a spokesperson of the Lord, to warn God’s people. The messenger of the Lord is sent to persuade the wicked from wrongdoing. If not, the Lord will hold the messenger responsible. The underlying message is that we are all responsible for one another in helping each other to remain faithful to the Lord. Here the Lord addresses all of us, urging us to listen to his voice. “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” This call to faithfulness is also a call to the commandment of love that undergirds all of God’s Commandments. The Commandment of love is also the spirit that leads us to correct others when they stray away. Calling others to account when they do wrong or persist in wrongdoing is not easy. We ourselves must be living faithfully before we can call others to change their lives. We must be a living example. The bottom line in the message is that we cannot privatize religion, because Christian life is not a private affair between God and me. Such practice of Christian life would lead to a culture of silence before the wrong doing of our brothers and sisters. We are reminded of the obligation to speak up prophetically, to be assertive with humility and the compassion of Christ.

In the Gospel of this Sunday, Jesus challenges us to point out the faults of others privately first, but publicly if necessary. Paul in the Second reminds us that we correct others out of love and concern for their spiritual wellbeing. Elsewhere Paul urges us to “Be kind and tender to one another. Forgive each other, just as God forgave you because of what Christ has done" (Ephesians 4:32). It is then that we are better able to "speak the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15). If we are sincere in our relationship with Christ, if we are intimately related to Christ and the Father in the Spirit, the zeal to invite others to such a relationship will drive us to speak up before others, inviting them to God’s loving mercy and forgiveness. In the words of St. Paul, true Christian love will enable us to help each other along the way to perfection without an attitude of superiority. Everyone in the Christian community, including those in leadership must be willing to give and to receive loving admonition from others. The message of this Sunday may be summed up in three points: 1) Every one of us is called to a life of witness before others; 2) Such life involves personal conversion to Christ and a deeper relationship with God; 3) If we are intimately related to Christ, it is far much easier to invite others to change their way of life. We pray that God’s grace may strengthen our Christian witness; to be God’s instruments with the courage to speak the truth in love.

Taken, Blessed, Broken, Given

The story of Jesus feeding the crowds is told more often than any other story in the four Gospels. Each of the Gospels tells at least one story of Jesus feeding a crowd of thousands, and the Gospels of Mark and Matthew tell the story twice [Mark 6:30-44, 8:1-9; Matthew 14:13-21, 15:32-39; Luke 9:10-17; John 6:1-13]. You can see how important this story was to the early community, for the story was clearly linked to the Eucharist. We often think of the Eucharist as originating with the Last Supper, but the early Church also put a great deal of emphasis on Jesus eating with his disciples in Galilee, and, after the resurrection, on his returning to eat meals with his friends. In different ways each of these meals anticipates the sacrament of Holy Communion.

Today's Gospel passage makes the connection very explicit. Jesus asks the disciples to bring him what little food they have -- five loaves and two fish -- and he orders the crowds to sit down on the grass. Take a look at the next sentence: “Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds” [Matthew 14:19]. If you had a pencil, you could underline the four familiar words that we always hear at the Eucharist: “take,” “bless,” “break,” and “give.”
This morning's Gospel gives us a chance to reflect on how we are formed and shaped by the Eucharist. When you and I were baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we discovered the deepest truth about ourselves: that we are the Beloved of God. That is our deepest identity: we are God's Beloved. Yet it takes a lifetime to live into the truth of our Belovedness, to make it incarnate in everything we say and do, so that in the very nitty-gritty details of our lives, from the moment we get up in the morning until the moment we fall asleep at night, we not only remember in some abstract and rather distant way, “I am the Beloved of God,” but more and more fully become the Beloved, become who we really are.

You may have noticed a few months ago that we made a small change in the Eucharist, which is printed in the service leaflet. After the Lord's Prayer, the celebrant breaks the bread and says: “Behold what you are.” And we reply, “May we become what we receive.” Rob brought these lines back after a visit to the monastery of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge, and the words can be traced all the way back to St. Augustine, who, sometime in the 4th and 5th centuries, preached a sermon on the Eucharist [Sermon 57, “On the Holy Eucharist”] in which he reflected on “one of the deep truths of Christian faith: through our participation in the sacraments (particularly baptism and Eucharist), we are transformed into the Body of Christ, given for the world.”

The point is that every time we receive the Eucharist, we are transformed -- or should be transformed -- a little more fully into the Body of Christ, so that the divine love that made us and that flows through us can become more fully expressed in the world. How are we formed by the Eucharist? One place to look is in those four gestures: “taken,” “blessed,” “broken” and “given.” I am indebted in these remarks to the priest and writer Henri Nouwen, a friend and mentor whose book, Life of the Beloved, is on my very short list of top spiritual books. As Henri says, the words “taken,” “blessed,” “broken,” and “given” summarize the life of a priest, because whenever I come together with members of this community and celebrate the Eucharist, I take bread, bless it, break it, and give it. “These words also summarize [our lives] as [Christians] because, as [Christians, we are] called to become bread for the world: bread that is taken, blessed, broken, and given. Most importantly...they summarize [our] lives as... human beings because in every moment of [our lives] somewhere, somehow the taking, the blessing, the breaking, and the giving are happening.”

What does it mean to say that we are “taken”? To be “taken” by God is to be chosen, to be precious to God. As Henri puts it, “Long before any human being saw us, we are seen by God's loving eyes. Long before anyone heard us cry or laugh, we are heard by our God who is all ears for us. Long before any person spoke to us in this world, we are spoken to by the voice of eternal love.”Claiming and reclaiming our chosenness is the great spiritual battle of our lives, for in a competitive, power-hungry, manipulative world, it is all too easy to forget that God has taken us, God has chosen us -- easy to slide into self-doubt and self-rejection.
Knowing that we have been taken by God, that we have been chosen, is the first thing we need to claim as we behold what we are and become what we receive. The second is to recognize that we are “blessed.” The word “blessing” comes from the Latin word, benedicere, which literally means to speak well of someone, to say good things about someone. We all have a deep need for affirmation, to know that we are valued not just because of something we did or because we have a particular talent, but simply because we are.
Henri tells a wonderful story about the power of blessing in his community. For the last ten years of his life, this renowned spiritual teacher and best-selling author who had taught at world-class universities lived as a chaplain at the L'Arche Daybreak community in Toronto, a community for people who are mentally and physically disabled. Henri describes how one day a handicapped member of the community, Janet, asked him for a blessing. Henri was distracted, and rather automatically traced the sign of the cross on her forehead. Janet protested, “No, I want a real blessing!” Henri realized how unthinkingly he had responded to her request and he promised that at the next prayer service, he would give her a real blessing. After the service was over, when about thirty people were sitting in a circle on the floor, Henri announced, “Janet has asked me for a special blessing.” He didn't really know what she wanted, but she made it crystal clear: she stood up and walked over to him. He was wearing a long white robe with large sleeves that covered his hands as well and his arms, and when Janet came forward and put her arms around him and put her head against his chest, Henri covered her with his sleeves so that she almost vanished in the folds of her robe.
As they held each other, Henri said “Janet, I want you to know that you are God's Beloved Daughter. You are precious in God's eyes. Your beautiful smile, your kindness to the people in your house, and all the good things you do show what a beautiful human being you are. I know you feel a little low these days and that there is some sadness in your heart, but I want you to remember who you are: a very special person, deeply loved by God and all the people who are here with you.”
As he said these words, Janet raised her head and looked at him, and from her broad smile, Henri knew that she had really heard and received the blessing.
After Janet returned to her place, another handicapped woman raised her hand -- she, too, wanted a blessing. She stood up and put her face against his chest, and before long many more of the handicapped people took a turn, expressing the same desire to be blessed.
Henri says that, for him, the most touching moment came when one of the assistants, a twenty-four-year-old student raised his hand and said, “And what about me?” When I heard Henri tell this story, he mentioned that this was a big, burly guy with a neck out to here, probably a football player. This fellow came forward and Henri wrapped his arms around him and said, “John, it is so good that you are here. You are God's Beloved Son. Your presence is a joy for all of us. When things are hard and life is burdensome, always remember that you are loved with an ever-lasting love.”
As Henri spoke these words, John looked at him with tears in his eyes and then he said, “Thank you, thank you very much.”
How hungry we are for blessing! And we are blessed, for God is always speaking a word of blessing in our hearts. When we know ourselves as blessed, we can't help but speak good things to other people, and about other people, and call forth their beauty and truth. As Henri says, “No one is brought to life through curses, gossip, accusations, or blaming... As the ‘blessed ones,' we can walk through this world and offer blessings. It doesn't require much effort. It flows naturally from our hearts.”
We are chosen and blessed. And we are broken, too. Everyone in this room is broken. We all have places of loneliness or fear, places of disappointment, shame, or grief. We all know the pain of broken relationships, and we all face death, which Henri calls “the most radical manifestation of brokenness.”Accepting and befriending our brokenness is part of the long journey of entrusting our whole selves to the care of God, so that, as St. Paul puts it, we know that “whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's” [Romans 14:8]. And it is important to place our brokenness in the light of God's blessing, to experience it within the context of God's love. When something ‘bad' happens to us, it can be tempting to let that event fuel the fire of our self-rejection, to say to ourselves, “You see? Of course that happened to me. I always thought I was no good. Now I know for sure -- the facts of my life prove it.” But when we know ourselves as God's Beloved, we experience our suffering differently -- maybe as a kind of purification, or as a way to enter a deeper communion with a loving God who, in Christ, allowed himself to be broken.
We are chosen, blessed, and broken -- to be given. “Our greatest fulfillment lies in giving ourselves to others,” writes Henri. “...Our humanity comes to its fullest bloom in giving. We become beautiful people when we give whatever we can give: a smile, a handshake a kiss, an embrace, a word of love, a present, a part of our life... How different would our life be were we truly able to trust that it multiplied in being given away! How different would our life be if we could but believe that every little act of faithfulness, every gesture of love, every word of forgiveness, every little bit of joy and peace will multiply and multiply as long as there are people to receive it... and that -- even then -- there will be leftovers!”
Do you remember our Gospel story? As Matthew puts it, “All ate and were filled” [Mt 14: 20], and even after those thousands were fed, the leftovers could be piled up in twelve baskets. That is the promise of the Gospel: that as we know ourselves to be taken, blessed, broken, and given, we will become bread for the world. Our lives will feed and bless those around us in more ways than we can ask or imagine.
In our Eucharist this morning, we see “a sign of God's desire and intent to feed not only us but this whole hungry world.”
Once again, we behold what we are.
May we become what we receive.

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A
Readings: Is 55:10-11; Rom 8:18-23; Matt 13:1-23

The sower, the seed, the soil, the harvest are the metaphors that help us to capture the central message of this Sunday readings. The readings invite us to reflect on Christ the Sower of God’s Word. The Prophet Isaiah in the First Reading speaks about the effectiveness of God’s Word. Like the rain and snow, which do not return without watering the earth, so too the Word that comes from the mouth of God does not fail. Isaiah’s message in the first reading is a prelude to the Gospel of today about the parable of the Sower. Just as the rain waters the land, showing us how God’s Word brings about the desired results, similarly the parable of the Sower reveals to us the dynamic power of God’s Word. Isaiah’s message contains an important aspect of conversion, so that the Word of God, like the rain may shower upon our hardened hearts making them “fertile and fruitful, giving seed to the one who sows and bread to the one who eats.” The First Reading therefore helps to interpret the parable of the Sower in the Gospel. One interpretation is that many people who hear the Gospel simply never seem to “get it.” The message is stolen from them by the enemy before it takes root. Let me illustrate that interpretation with some statistics. There are about 50% of our Catholic kids who receive the Sacraments but disappear between age 18 to 35, only to reappear later for marriage. Why is that? Inadequate faith formation fails to equip them to take the heat and pressure of our secular culture. Then there are about 89% of lifelong, regular church goers who, according to George Gallup, have values and lifestyle identical to those of their secular neighbors. Their faith has been so neutralized by inadequate faith formation and a focus on worldly preoccupation. Though they look like Catholics, their faith practice is fruitless. Then there are those who remain faithful, going regularly to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. They manage to do some good for some people, but in all produce only a mediocre harvest in life. Finally there are those who yearn to learn more about their faith. They sink their roots in Scripture, Tradition, prayer and the sacraments. These produce an abundant harvest. Jesus wants all of us, not just some to yearn for more so that we all may produce a bumper crop.