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SUNDAY HOMILY |
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FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - July 6, 2008
There is an image Jesus uses in today’s Gospel that, if we only took the time to understand it, would make a huge difference in how we see our lives. It’s the image of the yoke; not just any yoke, but the yoke of Christ. What does Jesus mean when He says, “Take my yoke upon you”? It was only a few years ago that I think I began to understand it. A yoke is a wooden bar or frame on the neck of an animal so as to help it pull a load. There are two different kinds of yoke. There is a yoke for a single animal; but the more common kind of yoke is one that joins two animals together, side by side. It was only a couple of years ago that I realized it was probably this kind of yoke Jesus was thinking of, and what it would mean for any of us to be yoked together with Jesus. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before; lack of imagination, I guess. But think of it: to have Jesus helping us to pull our load would be a great advantage to us. It’d be much more than twice the manpower, because Jesus is more than man; He’s God Almighty. And it always helps to have God on your side; or, in this case, to have God at your side, helping to pull in the same direction. We often go to God in prayer, asking Him to help us with this or that; asking Him, that is, to help us go in the direction we choose. But what’s to happen -- if we’re yoked to Jesus -- if we want to go in one direction, and He wants us to go in another. At that point, I think, one of two things will happen. Either we’ll take off the yoke and refuse to follow His lead; or we’ll learn, somewhat painfully, to harmonize our desires with His. Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.” Imagine yourself yoked to Jesus, and you want to go to the right or the left, and He wants to go straight ahead; or you want to stop, and He wants to go; or you want to go fast, and He wants to go slow. (Remember, you’re in a rigid yoke.) I think you’ll either take off the yoke, or you’ll learn to do things Jesus’ way. This will sometimes entail a lot of discomfort; and it will also require – with almost every step – a good deal of humility, a subjecting our wills to His. But Jesus never asks us to do anything He didn’t do. “Learn from me,” Jesus said, “for I am meek and humble of heart.” He humbly submitted to the will of the heavenly Father. He said, “Not my will, but thine be done.” And, in that, He showed us the way to holiness; and not only to holiness, but also to peace: “Learn from me,” Jesus said; “and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” A couple of weeks ago, I spoke about a book written by a French priest named Jean-Pierre de Caussade, a little spiritual classic titled Abandonment to Divine Providence. In that book Father de Caussade teaches the very same lesson Jesus taught when Jesus said, “My yoke is easy, and my burden light.” De Caussade says holiness consists in one thing only: complete loyalty to the will of God. This loyalty, he says, can be practiced both actively and passively; and both of them are easy. Active loyalty means to keep the commandments of God and of the Church, to be faithful to the duties of our state in life, and to be docile to the inspiration and movement of the Holy Spirit. And that’s easy, he said; because God never demands a thing without also giving the grace to do it. Passively loyalty means to accept with love and resignation whatever God permits to happen to us; and this is even easier, he said. For it means to accept with love and resignation what very often we can’t avoid happening anyway, and what otherwise would only cause resentment and bitterness. What Father de Caussade did in that important and influential little book was simply to elaborate on the life and teaching of Jesus. But, as he would have been the first to admit, it’s hard to improve on the words of the Master. “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, you have revealed them to little ones.” “To little ones”; that is, to the meek and humble ones, to the ones who have learned from Jesus, who is so amazingly meek and so wonderfully humble. SOLEMNITY OF STS. PETER AND PAUL - June 29, 2008 Today marks the beginning of the “Year of St. Paul.” We know St. Paul as a great evangelist and missionary. He is also the patron Saint of something called Cursillo. St. Paul became a great missionary, but he hadn’t always been a Christian. He became a Christian, and a fervent one, only after he had met Jesus Christ. We speak easily and fervently about the things we love. If we love our children, our work, or the game of golf, we’ll speak easily and fervently about them. St. Paul came to speak in that way about Christ, but only after he had met Him in a personal way. St Paul became a great missionary and a great evangelist. We’re called to be evangelists, too. Pope Paul VI (1963-1978), who took the name of Paul at his coronation, said that “the Church exists to evangelize.” And, because we are members of the Church, we are called to share in her mission. But we can’t do that very well if we’ve not encountered Jesus Christ in a deeply personal way. One of the best ways I know of for adult Catholics to meet Christ in this personal way is Cursillo, which begins with a three-day retreat. There is one coming up this fall. But more about that in a minute. First let me say that, when St. Paul began his missionary journeys, he had a wide-open field. There weren’t many Catholics in 40 A.D. We’re like St. Paul in having a wide-open field here in Oklahoma. We’re only about 4% of the population statewide, and there are plenty of people in the 31 counties of our diocese who have never embraced the Christian Gospel. You and I have a responsibility to them. You and I are called to evangelize them; that is to say, you and I are called to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with them. But how we do that convincingly if we ourselves don’t think it’s awfully Good News? And we’ll never know it for the Good News it is if we’ve never encountered Jesus Christ in a deeply personal way. St. Paul, as he was nearing the end of his life, said that he was grateful to have “kept the faith.” He kept the faith, because he was willing to share the faith. So must we be willing to share the faith, so as to keep faith with Jesus Christ who has asked us to be His ambassadors. One of the most effective ways of sharing the faith is simply loving others. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said: “Whom you would change, you must first love. And they must know that you love them.” What does it mean to love? St. Paul says it means to be patient and kind, not to be prone to anger or holding a grudge; it means to forgive, as we’ve been forgiven. It means to do all this in the Name of Jesus Christ. But you know something? To do this in the Name of Jesus Christ requires a vital, personal relationship with Jesus Christ. A relationship that is vital is a relationship that is alive and growing. If you want to see your relationship with Jesus Christ come alive and start to grow, I can recommend few better things than to make a Cursillo. What is Cursillo? It begins with a three-day retreat, one for men and another for women; and there’s one coming up this fall. If you would like more information about Cursillo, our local Cursillo Web site is www.tulsacursillo.org. I have put a few applications for this fall’s retreat at the back of the church. May God help us to grow in the faith, so that we can share the faith more effectively, because – through a personal encounter with Jesus Christ – we have come to love God and others more truly. TWELFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - June 22, 2008 When I was a little boy, one of the names my generation of little children hated to be called was “fraidy cat.” As young children, we lacked the wisdom to know that there are things you should be afraid of; and as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to know what some of them are. But today’s Gospel teaches a wisdom far beyond that of anyone’s years, far beyond that of anything merely human. For it’s wisdom found on the lips of a man who is more than a man. Jesus teaches that we should not be afraid of human beings; but, rather, that we should fear God; and that our true reward, or our true punishment, will not be in this world, but in the next. Yet you and I often think of God and the next world as being far away and, in that sense, unreal -- although they’re truly the realest things of all. So how do we nurture that realization? How do gain this wisdom of Jesus, so it becomes our wisdom, too? There are at least two ways. The first is Prayer, and the second is Action. If God seems unreal to you, the first thing I’d recommend is to pray. Prayer means to place ourselves in the presence of God. It’s to lift up our minds and hearts to God. It’s to converse with God: to speak to Him and to listen to Him. Prayer, which should always be more than the mere recitation of words, has a way of making us familiar with God; so that we become more aware of Him, even when we aren’t praying. And, in that way, He’ll become more real to us. But God won’t become really real to us until we allow our lives to be changed by Him – until our thoughts become words, and our words become actions. And when that happens, we also begin to affect the lives of other people. Faith-inspired words and faith-filled actions are the way in which our interior and personal graces become inter-personal graces, such as to inspire and change the lives of others; so that God and the Afterlife become much more real to them, too. That’s what the lives of the Saints are all about, isn’t it? The words and deeds of holy people change the lives of others. To take just a couple of examples: Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and the life and death of the martyrs. There is no doubt that Mother Teresa influenced for the better the lives of millions of people. What she said and did made all of us more aware of God -- and more aware of the poor, especially the poorest of the poor. One holy woman, by what she said and did, made a world of difference for others. And, about the martyrs (those who have shed their blood for the faith) an ancient Christian writer said: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians.” When God is so real to someone that he or she has the courage to die for Him, and when reward in the next life is more important than safety in this one, it can’t help but inspire faith in those who see it or hear about it. I suppose most of us remember the story of the young girl at Columbine High School in Colorado. In April of 1999, two boys in that school went on a rampage of shooting and killing. Thirteen persons were killed by them and 23 were wounded before the two boys themselves committed suicide. One of those killed was a 17-year-old girl named Cassie Bernall. After having killed several other students, one of the two boys is said to have pointed his gun at Cassie and asked her if she believed in God. What would you have said? She said “Yes.” And then was shot. When we hear of the Gospel being lived in such a way as that, how can it not have an effect on us? And so we know that if we live the gospel in such a way as that, it’s going to have an effect on others, too. “Fear no one,” Jesus said; “…do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” “Do not be afraid,” Jesus said. “Everyone who acknowledges me before others, I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.” We acknowledge Christ by every good word and deed. And we deny Him by every wicked one. May all that we say and all that we do help both us and others to realize that God and Eternity are, indeed, the realest things of all. ELEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - June 15, 2008 The world is very big, and we are very few. Catholics, as you know, are only a small portion of the population of Oklahoma. We can relate, then, I suppose, to the situation of the Hebrew people in today’s first reading. They, also, were a small portion of the peoples of the then-known world. And as we find them here in the Book of Exodus, they were not at all a distinguished people. They were not wealthy; they held no territories; they had no power. They were just a motley assortment of runaway slaves. They were few, and they were insignificant. But God chose them. Out of all the peoples of the world, God chose them. He chose them for a great purpose. They were to be His people, and they were to do His work. So it was also with the Apostles. Twelve ordinary men; among them, a few fishermen, a former tax collector, and a future traitor. An assortment of ordinary men. But men on a mission, a mission from God. St. Paul, reflecting on all this, said to the Christians of Corinth: “Not many of you are wise, as men account wisdom; not many are influential; and surely not many are well-born. God chose those whom the world considers absurd to shame the wise; he singled out the weak of this world to shame the strong” (I Corinthians 1:26-27). It seems that God most often chooses ordinary things to do His work; the way a great artist might choose an ordinary pencil to sketch a masterpiece. What is a pencil, but a little piece of wood and a little bit of lead? But in the hand of a Michelangelo or a Leonardo de Vinci, it becomes an instrument of genius. But there was more than human genius at work in the history of Israel and the lives of the Apostles; they were part of a divine plan. And they were beloved instruments; God didn’t throw them away when they’d finished His work. No, He loved them; and He loves them still. What’s all this got to do with you and me? What has this got to do with the Catholics of Oklahoma, or the parishioners of St. Bernard of Clairvaux? Quite a lot, I think. What the Lord said to His disciples is still true: The harvest is great, but the workers are few. God wants all men to be saved. What a daunting task, to save the world! And there are very few willing to help in that work. And those who are willing must think it’s impossible. But, with God, all things are possible. Before there were those 12 tribes or those 12 men, there was only One, one Almighty God; and, with God, anything He wants is possible. It reminds me of the story of the Loaves and the Fishes. Confronted with a huge crowd they had to feed, the disciples said to Jesus, “Lord, we have five barley loaves and a couple of dried fish, but what good is that for so many?” In the hands of God, it was more than enough, wasn’t it? So, what is the lesson here for us? There are three things God wants us to know, I think. First, that our hope is not in great numbers (although Our Lord wants those numbers to increase). Second, that our hope is not in chosen human beings, even extraordinary ones. But rather, third, that our hope is in the invincible power of the One who chooses whom He will -- and in our surrender to that power. What power do a handful of teenagers have to change the morals of their classmates in a school system as large as that of Jenks or Union? What power do a few Tulsa Catholics have to change their city or their state or their nation? They haven’t much power in themselves. But if they’ve been chosen by God and are surrendered to His will, they have a power greater than anything in the universe. You and I have been chosen. You and I should say, as St. Paul said, “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.” Because this is Father’s Day, let me apply this to Catholic men, and especially to Catholic fathers, on a couple of subjects we talk about too little. Men, by your vocations as Catholic men and Catholic fathers, you have pledged yourselves to battle the enemies of chaste and faithful love. Two of those great enemies are pornography and promiscuity. What power do a few chaste and faithful men have in combating such great evils as those? It’s like little David fighting Goliath! But little David killed the great giant, didn’t he? Or rather, God did it through him. And all because that insignificant little shepherd boy refused to let fear get the best of him, and steadfastly trusted in a power greater than his own. The Catholic men of our time are being called to this same trust and this same refusal to fear. Not only for the sake of their own souls, but also for their wives and children, they must know where to draw the line about what they allow into their homes, and also where to draw the line about what they allow into their own heads and hearts. If the monstrous evils of promiscuity and pornography are allowed to go unchecked, it will mean the death of the family, beginning with the death of our own families. The great Englishman Edmund Burke once said: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Happy Father’s Day, men. You’ve got your work cut out for you; but it’s a holy work and a necessary work – and you’ve been chosen. And whom God chooses, He supports. NINTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - June 1, 2008 The readings for today seem to invite a few thoughts on the relationship between Faith and Good Works. As many of you know, this was, and continues to be, one of the great Christian controversies. Are good deeds important? The Catholic Church has always said yes. And it would be hard to deny that that teaching is in accord with the Bible. Today’s Gospel passage, in fact, seems to make that pretty clear. And yet, we must also understand that good works without faith are of no more avail than faith without good works. The teaching of the Church is that faith and good works are both necessary for our salvation. But it’s not as though they’re two separate things; good works follow from faith – if that faith is alive. But faith is alive only if it’s animated by charity, love. St. Thomas Aquinas says that charity is the life of all the virtues; it animates them; that is to say, it makes them living and effective. This is true in regard to all the virtues, but in a special way, I think, in regard to faith. Faith without good works is a faith without love; and faith without love is a dead faith; and a dead faith, as St. James says, “has no power to save” us (James 2:14). Thanks be to God, you and I have been given the gift of faith – it was through His grace that we received that gift. But we must do something with that faith; we must act on that faith; we must exercise that faith. If we don’t exercise faith, it will grow weak. Unused muscle grows weak; so does unused faith. But how do you exercise faith? Let me speak about two principle ways. One is obedience, and the other is love. Obedience to the commandments of God is one of the most important ways in which we exercise faith. St. Paul calls this “obedient faith” (Romans 1:5); and our first reading today, from the Book of Deuteronomy, has Moses say: “I set before you here, this day, a blessing and a curse: a blessing for obeying the commandments of the Lord, your God … a curse if you do not ….” And Jesus, in today’s Gospel, is also emphatic: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Without obedience, faith would quickly die – and so would we, spiritually. But for faith to really thrive, it has to be rich in works, not only in works of obedience, but also in works of love. If you want to give witness to your faith, then let your faith show itself in convincing works of love. Faith and love, it seems, grow (or fail to grow) in proportion to one another. That is to say, if our faith is growing, it’s likely we’re also becoming more loving persons: more patient persons, kinder persons, less angry persons, more forgiving and generous persons. If our faith is great (as it was, for example, in the lives of the saints), then the good deeds of love will flow like a mighty river. If, on the other hand, our faith is small, it’s likely our good deeds will be few and far between, like occasional drops of water from a leaky faucet. If we want to grow in saving faith, then we must also begin to grow in works of charity. The occasional drops must grow into a steady stream, and the stream into that mighty river. And so, we must struggle every day against pride and selfishness and every other vice. We have to work at it. We must do it, of course, under God’s grace and by His inspiration; but we must do it. And to do it we’ll have to step out of our comfort zone; and that, of course, requires faith. It’s not always easy to step out in faith; but we’ll find motivation for it if we do it for Christ’s sake, for your neighbor’s sake, and for our own salvation’s sake. God, in His gracious mercy, has, through faith, begun in us the work of salvation. May He see it through to its completion in a faith-filled life poured out in love for others. CORPUS ET SANGUINIS CHRISTI - May 25, 2008 When I was a little boy, I used to sit in front of the television and eat slice after slice of a certain kind of bread. It was called Wonder Bread. One of the reasons I loved it so, was having heard the advertisement say that it built “strong bodies in 12 ways.” I wanted to have a strong body, so I ate a lot of that bread. The Eucharist builds us up in many different ways, too -- but in the opposite way from Wonder Bread. With ordinary bread, it’s changed into us (building up strong bodies). But with the Eucharist, St. Augustine said, it’s the other way around: we’re changed into It. Or rather, to put it more precisely, we’re changed into Him. “Receive what you are,” St. Augustine said, “the Body of Christ. Become what you receive, the Body of Christ.” That the Eucharist has the power to change us into Jesus is based on a doctrine called the Real Presence. We believe that what we receive is really Jesus -- His Body, His Blood, His Soul, His Divinity. We believe that Jesus is really and truly present under the “appearances,” we say, of bread and wine. It’s Jesus who changes us into Himself. Some years ago, when Pope John Paul II was making his second visit to the United States, a story began to circulate about something that happened in one of the churches his was going to visit. The police were making sure that the building was secure and that no one was hiding there. For that purpose, they brought a K-9 unit into the church, dogs that had been trained to go on point at the presence of a hidden human being. They went from pew to pew, beginning at the back of the church and moving slowly toward the front. Suddenly the dogs went on point, and the police drew their weapons. But they found no intruder. Instead, they found that the dogs had gone on point toward the tabernacle. This is only one of several stories about the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Throughout history there have been many well-attested Eucharistic miracles. If you’re interested in reading about them, you’ll find them in two books by a Catholic couple named Bob and Penny Lord; the books are titled This is My Body, This is My Blood: Miracles of the Eucharist. St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest theologians in the history of the Church, and one of her finest poets, once said that in regard to the Eucharist, all of our five senses are deceived, save one. Our sight is deceived; our taste is deceived; our smell is deceived; and our touch is deceived. The only one of our senses that is not deceived is the sense of hearing; for the Apostles heard Christ say, “This is My Body, This is My Blood.” We believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, ultimately, on the strength of Christ’s word and His power. We believe on the strength of His word, because He said so who is Truth itself. And He had the power to do it, because He was God. About Christ’s power as God in regard to the Eucharist, St. Ambrose said: “Could not Christ’s word, which can make from nothing what did not exist, change existing things into what they were not before? It is no less a feat,” he said, “to give things their original nature than to change their nature” (see CCC, 1375). But why? Why did Jesus give us this Sacrament of the Eucharist? There were many reasons. St. Thomas put some of them this way: “It was to impress the vastness of [his] love more firmly on the hearts of the faithful that our Lord instituted this sacrament at the Last Supper.…[H]e left it as a perpetual memorial of his passion. It was the fulfillment of ancient figures and the greatest of all his miracles, while for those who were to experience the sorrow of his departure, it was destined to be a unique and abiding consolation” (see LH, OR, Corpus Christi). It was to be “a unique and abiding consolation,” he said, for those who were to experience the sorrow of his departure.” Not a bad thing to think about on this Memorial Day weekend. We have in the Eucharist the abiding Presence of the One who has conquered death. The Eucharist is the memorial of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice, but also the abiding consolation of His true and real Presence. And, for those who receive Him worthily, it’s also a pledge of heavenly glory. Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, who have given their lives so that others may live. Let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace. PENTECOST - May 11, 2008 (MOTHER’S DAY) We celebrate today a great miracle: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church as she emerges from the upper room, pours out into the streets of Jerusalem, and proclaims, in a way that all could understand, the mighty deeds of God. The Holy Spirit had come, just as Jesus promised! Fifty days before Pentecost, on the night of His resurrection, Jesus had said to His Apostles, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Then He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” He breathed in them. A breath is only a little wind. But a little wind in the mouth of God is a mighty thing, indeed. And with a little word He had created the universe. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” He said. And 50 days later, they received the fullness of that Gift, as a “strong driving wind filled” the place where they were, and “tongues as of fire…came to rest of each one of them.” They left that place then, the place where they had been praying for nine days, and began to pray in the streets, in ecstatic prayer, in languages unknown to them – but in languages well known the crowd who heard them, because “each one heard them speaking in his own language.” And many in the crowd came to believe in Christ that day; because what they heard were not just “words,” but heart was speaking to heart. The Holy Spirit had filled the hearts of the Apostles; and out of the fullness of their hearts, the Apostles spoke to the people. The Holy Spirit spoke to the people. And the Holy Spirit enabled the people to hear what He said, not just with the ears of their bodies, but also with the ears of their hearts – heart was speaking to heart. This same Holy Spirit has been given to you and me. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our hearts were just as filled with Him as the hearts of the Apostles were at Pentecost? And wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were as ready as the crowds to hear what the Holy Spirit had to tell us? The miracle of Pentecost didn’t happen “out of the blue.” The Holy Spirit had been working very quietly and for a long time to prepare for that day. You might say He’d been working at it from the first day of Creation. And Christ, too, had been preparing the Apostles. On the night before He died, He promised not to leave them orphans; He promised to send them the Spirit of truth. And before He ascended into Heaven, He told them they were to be His witnesses everywhere, but first to go back to Jerusalem until they had been “clothed with power from on high.” And they did go back. And what did they do in Jerusalem? They prayed. They prayed together; and they prayed persistently, for nine days. They prayed in the ordinary way, the way in which we do, ordinarily; but they must have prayed, don’t you think, with wonderful expectation – and very much from their hearts? If we prayed in the same way, perhaps God would move more powerfully in our lives, too. To pray, to pray together, to pray persistently together, to pray in the ordinary way (that is to say, in the way God allows us to pray), but to pray with great expectation and from the heart. If this is the way in which God prepared the disciples for Pentecost, couldn’t we expect that, in this same way, He might also prepare a New Pentecost – a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our own time? This year Pentecost is also Mother’s Day. Did you know that there was at least one mother present at Pentecost? Saint Luke tells us in Acts, chapter 1, that “there were some women in their company, and Mary the mother of Jesus.” Mary was no stranger to the Holy Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit who had “overshadowed” her at the beginning of the Incarnation. It was the Holy Spirit who made her a mother; and it was Jesus, her Son, who gave her to us to be our mother too, the Mother of the Church. Mary is the model disciple, the only disciple present from the beginning of the Incarnation to the gift of the promised Spirit at Pentecost. She is a model of faith, humility, courage, and surrender to the will of God. She is also a model of prayer – in her own ecstatic prayer of praise, which we call the Magnificat; and here too in the upper room, gathered with the others, praying in the ordinary way, but with great expectation and from the heart. What do you suppose Mary wanted for those spiritual children of hers? And isn’t what Mary wanted for them, what every Christian mother should want for her children, too? Let me address a few final words to the mothers who are here at Mass today. Mary is a model for all Christians, men and women, boys and girls; but, perhaps especially, she is a model for mothers. Mothers, want for your children what Mary wants for them: Want what is truly best for them. Not necessarily the best education, or the biggest income, or the most prestigious job. Want instead -- and do more than just want it, will it and help bring it about -- that your children come to know, love, and serve the Lord, who has made them for Himself. Help them deeply to appreciate that, in addition to their bodies (which you helped to give them), they also have immortal souls, which are worth more than anything else they will ever possess. Teach them to pray. Help them to grow in holiness. Help them to understand the thing for which they were made. These are the greatest and most loving things you can do for them, and the things for which they will rightly honor you – today and for all eternity. |
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