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23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 7, 2008
INTRODUCTION - (Ezekiel 33, 7-9) (Romans 13, 8-10)
(Matthew 18, 15-20) Our first reading takes us back six hundred
years before Christ as God explains to his prophet Ezekiel his
responsibility as a prophet. Ezekiel must warn God’s people of
their sinful ways or he will be held accountable. It is a
prelude to the gospel where Jesus instructs his followers how to
help each other stay on the right track. St. Paul’s teaching on
love in our second reading reminds us that if we should try to
correct one another it should be done out of love.
HOMILY – Each year, I always begin my introduction to our
RCIA program with a lesson we can all learn from geese. I am
borrowing these ideas from Chicken Soup for the Soul (Vol 2).
When we see geese flying south at this time of year, there is a
reason why they fly that way. As each bird flaps its wings, it
creates an uplift for the bird immediately following. This
uplift that is provided by the V formation allows the flock to
get to their destination more quickly and easily. They are
traveling on the thrust of one another. It would seem logical
that people who share a common direction can reach their
destination more quickly and easily by traveling together and
supporting one another. Apparently God thinks this is good idea
too, so he gave us the Church. We can more quickly and easily
reach our home with him if we travel together. We have an
excellent guide in this journey and it is Jesus for he tells us
in today’s gospel: “Where two or three are gathered together in
my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
There’s an attitude many have in society today that they don’t
need the Church. They can find God and love God on their own.
Certainly we do have to come to know God in a personal way or
our religion will simply be mechanical. But God in his wisdom
gave us an important help to knowing him and serving him; that
is, by being part of the Church, not just in name such as
calling ourselves Christians, but by active participation in the
Church.
There is another thing science knows about geese. When one of
them falls out of formation, they quickly feel the drag and
resistance of trying to go it alone and they get back into
formation for the lifting power that is provided by the others.
Unfortunately, when we humans try to go it alone spiritually, we
are often slow to realize we are making no progress spiritually
or we are even going in the wrong direction. If we have as much
sense as a goose, we will stay connected with those people who
are headed the same way we are. It’s also interesting to note
that if a bird gets sick or is injured, and falls out of
formation, two others fall out with it and follow it down to
give help and protection until it either gets well or dies. Then
they will either launch out on their own or join a new formation
until they can get back to their group. We have a responsibility
to care for each other. St. Paul tells us today “owe nothing to
anyone except to love one another for the one who loves another
has fulfilled the law.”
So, are you wondering why all this talk about Church? It’s
because our gospel today is about the Church. The word “church”
(εκκλησία) is used over a hundred times in the Acts of the
Apostles and in the Epistles of Paul. But our gospel today is
only one of two places in all four of the gospels where the word
is used. It is used once when Jesus tells Peter (the rock) that
he would build his Church on him. Then it is used here where the
issue of a serious sin that would be harmful to the Church needs
to be dealt with. Jesus is saying an effort is to be made to win
the sinner back to unity with the community. First a pastoral
approach is to be taken. A one-on-one conversation between the
offender and a friend or pastoral leader might do the trick. If
not, an effort is to be made with the support of other members
of the community to restore the sinner to good standing in the
community. As a last resort, because the sinner refuses these
efforts by the community, he or she is to be treated as one
outside the community, with the hope this will shock them into
being part of the community once again. We can read in I
Corinthians how Paul had to do this with a person in the Church
of Corinth who was living a publicly scandalous life and who
rejected any efforts people made to get him to change his ways.
All of this that Jesus talks about is to be done out of love for
the sinner whom Christ wants to bring back to unity with God. It
is done out of love for the Church, so others are not seriously
harmed by someone leading them off in a wrong direction. Christ
supports this action on the part of the Church by his statement,
“whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.”
Let me hasten to add this whole issue is not about a personal
offense. Jesus deals with that a few verses later when Peter
asks Jesus “if my brother sins against me, how often must I
forgive him?” I’m sure we all remember the answer Jesus gave.
We differ from each other in many ways, yet we all have a common
Father in heaven. We all have Christ as our savior who died to
save us. We all wish to enjoy eternal life with God. The
importance of working together, loving one another, supporting
one another, praying for and with one another, cannot be
overemphasized. As long as we follow Christ’s lead and stay one
with him and with each other in our journey, we will have all
the help we need to get to where we want to go. We listen once
again to Jesus’ words in today’s gospel: “where two or three are
gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
We trust in these words now as we continue to pray together the
prayer he gave us at the Last Supper. Amen.
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Feast of the Holy Cross
Sept. 14, 2008
INTRODUCTION: Our first reading takes us back
over a thousand years before Christ, to the time
when Moses was leading God’s people from slavery in
Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land. The trip
through the desert was extremely difficult and at
times the people complained bitterly. One of their
difficulties was an encounter with a nest of
poisonous serpents whose bite brought intense
suffering and burning pain and then death. The
serpents were called saraph serpents, for saraph
means “fiery.” The people saw this as punishment for
their complaining. But God gave them a way to be
healed from the serpent’s bite. The remedy might
remind us of the symbol often used today as an icon
of the medical profession. In today’s gospel, Jesus
compares this event to his crucifixion.
HOMILY : During Holy Week we focus on the
sufferings of Christ crucified. Today our focus is
more on the glory and victory of the cross. In
Jesus’ day the cross was an instrument of torture,
brutality and shame. The Romans reserved it for the
worse criminals and enemies of the Roman Empire. If
a criminal was a Roman citizen, he or she was exempt
from crucifixion because it was such a terrible way
to die. Roman citizens were simply beheaded. But
Jesus has turned the cross into a symbol of victory,
a symbol of hope, a symbol of sacrifice and infinite
love. St. Paul tells us in Galatians (2,20) “I live
by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and
given himself up for me.”
Over and over the Scriptures tell us through the
cross Jesus saved us, but early Christian art seldom
pictured the cross. They didn’t need to. Father
Foley in Saint of the Day said: “It stood outside
too many city walls, decorated only with decaying
corpses, as a threat to anyone who defied Rome’s
authority.” Included in this group of those who
defied Rome’s authority were the Christians who
would not worship pagan gods, but only the Father,
the Lord Jesus and the Spirit. The emperor
Constantine who made Christianity legal in 313 also
eliminated crucifixion as a form of capital
punishment. Once the Roman Empire actually ceased
crucifying people, then images of the cross appeared
in Christian art. These first images of the cross
did not include an image of the suffering Christ,
but they were crosses decorated with jewels and
precious metals. Incidentally it was a vision of the
cross that led to the conversion of Constantine. He
was assured in the vision that in the sign of the
cross he would conquer Maxentius, a rival to the
throne, and he would become emperor of Rome.
Once Constantine gained control of the Roman Empire,
he went to the Holy Land with his mother, St. Helen,
to discover the places where Jesus lived and died.
Constantine and his mother had churches built in
Bethlehem and the Mount of Olives but the most
famous church he built is the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher, built over the hill of Calvary and the
tomb of Jesus. It was in the process of building the
Church of the Holy Sepulcher that Jesus’ cross was
found. How did they know it was Jesus’ cross? Legend
has it that the men working on this project found
three crosses and they didn’t know which one was
Jesus’ cross. They touched each of the crosses to a
woman who was dying and when she was touched with
the third cross, she was instantly healed. Today’s
feast of the Holy Cross goes back to that time,
around the year 320 AD. It celebrates the finding of
the true cross and the dedication of the Basilica of
the Holy Sepulcher. So that’s why this feast is
celebrated in the middle of September and not during
Lent as we might expect.
Today’s gospel is sometimes called the gospel in
miniature. These few verses express the essence of
the entire gospel: God’s offer of eternal life
through the sacrifice of Christ, a sacrifice offered
out of love for us. God so loved the world, God so
loved you and me that he gave us the greatest gift,
the gift of his son, so we would know the greatest
blessing: eternal happiness with him.
Today we approach the cross not with sorrow but with
joy, not as a symbol of death but of life, not as a
sign of defeat but of victory, not as a cause for
fear but of hope, not as an instrument of cruelty
and hatred but of eternal love. On a practical
level, I know somehow it was inevitable if Jesus
were to be true to his mission. If he had run away
from it, he would not have risen and his message
would have soon been forgotten. Today Christians
make up one third of the world’s population. If
Jesus had abandoned his mission to change the world
through love, perhaps some obscure history book
might have had a sentence or two about this person
who did a lot of healing and was a good preacher,
but for the most part his ministry would be
forgotten. This is just a superficial explanation of
the mystery of the cross. There is much more to this
mystery, but each of us has to discover it for
ourselves. To come to a deeper understanding takes
lots of prayer – and that’s what the Mass does for
us each week, it reminds us of God’s love and the
hope and joy and freedom and peace and salvation it
gives us. Amen.
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25th Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 21, 2008
INTRODUCTION: (Isaiah 25, 6-9; Mt. 20, 1-16)
When God’s people were in exile in Babylon, they
were as depressed as anyone could possibly be. They
had lost everything. They were sure they had even
lost God's love because of their sinfulness. Today
we hear God’s prophet assure them it is never too
late to return to the Lord. Even though they knew
they were not worthy of it, they will have God’s
mercy if they will reform their lives. God is
forgiving, not because we are worthy, but because it
is God’s nature to be generous and forgiving. The
theme of God’s generosity prepares us for today’s
gospel.
HOMILY: Jesus’ parables, as always, are
designed to shock us into thinking. It’s normal for
us to feel the employer was unfair and that’s
exactly how Jesus knew we would feel. It is true,
the owner was more generous with some than with
others, but was he unfair with anyone?
In Jesus’ society a laborer was paid at the end of
the day and the normal pay was just enough for a
person to feed his family for one day. Could it be
that the owner of the vineyard was more generous
with some so that none of the people who worked for
him that day would have to beg, borrow or steal in
order to feed their families the next day? Would
that be unfair for the employer to do that? What do
you think Jesus was trying to tell us?
The clue to understanding the parable is the first
line where Jesus tells us this is what the kingdom
of heaven is like. Jesus was telling us why he was
always willing to reach out to sinners, something he
was frequently criticized for doing. He wants us to
know it’s never too late to find God if we wish to.
Remember the good thief whom Jesus forgave on the
cross. If we’ve not been living right, though, does
that mean we can wait until the last minute to
straighten ourselves out? If we do we’ll miss out on
the joy of knowing God’s love and presence in our
lives right now and who knows whether we’ll get the
opportunity to repent at the last minute. I think it
was St. Augustine who prayed: “God, make me good,
but not right now!” Not a good prayer. Fortunately
God paid attention only to the first part of the
prayer (God, make me good), and the Church was
greatly blessed because God led Augustine from his
wayward life to a life of holiness. “The usual daily
wage” in the parable is a symbol for the immense
happiness we will all have in God’s kingdom. Some
individuals may be closer to God because they served
and loved God more faithfully than others, but we
will all be equal in one way, whether we receive
God’s grace early or late in life, we will all be as
happy as we can possibly be.
Jesus explained his forgiveness of sinners by this
parable. St. Matthew found it helpful to use this
same parable for a similar purpose when he wrote his
gospel probably 50 or 60 years after Jesus preached
it. During this period, many Jewish Christians, who
had lived their whole lives faithful to God’s law,
had difficulty accepting new converts into the
Church, converts coming from paganism, who
represented those who came late to the vineyard. The
parable was meant to help Jewish Christians welcome
those who came to know Christ later in life and
accept them as equals in God’s kingdom.
Today we have no problem with these ideas. We are
always happy to see people turn their lives toward
God, whether they had strayed away at some time in
their lives and came back, or whether for the first
time, even late in life, they become believers in
Christ and join his Church. But there may be a
couple of ideas that are relevant for us today.
First of all, the people who worked all day
complained about unfair treatment. Is Jesus telling
us we shouldn’t complain when we feel we’ve been
treated unfairly? Well, sometimes complaining is
good. It sometimes helps get things done, it helps
us get things off our chest, it may help us clarify
our thoughts and come to realize we haven’t been
treated too badly after all. If people didn’t
complain, counselors and psychologists and doctors
would not be able to help people. Politicians
wouldn’t have anything to do. Friends and family
members wouldn’t be able to give support and
sympathy to each other if they didn’t know how their
friend or family member hurt. Complaining can be
positive, but we have to be careful not to make it a
way of life. If we want to complain, it helps to
stop and count our blessings and we might realize
God has treated us far better than any of us
deserve!
The other idea today’s parable connects with is
envy. Envy makes us miserable. Envy is when we look
around at others and think they have much more than
we do, they have had more breaks in life than we
have, etc. We feel life is not fair and we are
depressed over it. I believe God is more than fair
with all of us. If we want to compare ourselves with
others, we need to compare ourselves also with those
who have not been as blessed as we have. Always
wanting more may motivate us to achieve in life, but
it can also be a formula for constant unhappiness.
We need to always focus on the positive, on our
blessings and give thanks. I always preach that the
key to joy in life is gratitude. God’s ways are not
our ways, Isaiah tells us. Part of the joy of
eternity will be praising God for his abundant love
and goodness to us. The “Eucharist” which we pray
now, a word which means “thanksgiving,” is the most
perfect way to do that. Amen.
26th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sept. 28, 2008
INTRODUCTION – (Ezekiel 18, 25-28) (Matthew
21, 28-32) In 587 B.C. when the Babylonians
conquered the Jews, destroyed their cities and their
Temple, and made the Jews who were still alive after
the conquest into their slaves, the Jews concluded
they were being punished for the sins of previous
generations. They complained that God was not fair.
In today’s first reading from Ezekiel, God addresses
the Jews in exile instructing them that their own
refusal to hear God’s prophets and to follow God’s
laws led them to the disaster they were suffering.
But, God says, the situation was not hopeless. They
could always turn back to God if they wanted. This
reading prepares us for the gospel where we hear a
similar message. If we have damaged our relationship
with God, we can always turn back.
HOMILY – Jesus asks for our thoughts about
the story we just heard in St. Matthew’s gospel.
“What do you think of this? A man had two sons.” I
do not want to confuse things, but I wonder if you
remember another parable that begins: “A man had two
sons.” This other parable is in St. Luke and if you
do not know which one it is, it is the story of the
prodigal son. The older son was an obedient and hard
working son. The younger decided he wanted his share
of the inheritance so he could get off the farm and
go have lots of fun in the big city. After he spent
all his inheritance, he realized what a fool he had
made of himself and came home to a most loving and
forgiving father. Today’s gospel from Matthew is
somewhat similar. There are two sons. In Matthew’s
story the father had a problem with both of his
sons. However, the son who said “no” to his father
realized he made a mistake and changed his mind.
That is key to understanding both parables. The
prodigal son and the son who told his father “I will
not” in today’s gospel both had a change of heart.
The son in today’s parable who said “no” to his
father wasn’t as bad as the son who blew away half
his father’s money. It may not sound like a big deal
in today’s culture - a lot of kids have no trouble
saying “no.” But when I was growing up, it was close
to committing suicide to say “I will not” to my
father. After his change of heart, the son was soon
working side by side with his father in the vineyard
and was back in his father’s good graces.
Jesus’ point, in both of these parables as in
everything he taught us, is it’s never too late to
change our mind if we have not been living the way
God wants us to. Ezekiel had the same message in
today’s first reading. He told the Jews in exile to
take responsibility for what they did and stop
making excuses or blaming someone else.
We live in a world where anything we’ve ever done
can come back to haunt us. If we were a goof off in
school, if we got in trouble with the law, smoked
pot, got a traffic ticket, had to declare
bankruptcy, robbed a bank or whatever, it’s all
there in someone’s memory and perhaps in public
records. Especially if we tried to run for public
office. The media would let the world know
everything we did, and everything anyone related to
us did as well. To some extent that makes sense.
What a person did in the past tells a lot about
their character and may be a predictor or what
they’ll do in the future. It’s the only basis on
which we can evaluate someone, to decide whether we
want them as our president, or our friend or our
doctor or financial advisor or someone we can trust
with our children. But God judges us differently and
that’s because he can see what kind of person we are
right now. If we’ve been bad and decide to change,
he sees our change of heart. Conversely, if we’ve
been good and decide otherwise, he sees that too.
Today’s gospel tells us no matter what we’ve done in
the past, it’s where we are now that matters with
God. It’s a message that brings healing and peace if
we’ve made mistakes in the past (and who hasn’t
because we’re all sinners). I have a little story to
tell that I love. I got it from Scott Peck. There
was a lady who claimed that Jesus was appearing to
her. And she went to tell her bishop about it. He
was skeptical and said he wanted some proof it was
happening. So he told her that the next time Jesus
appeared to her she was to ask Jesus what the bishop
confessed the last time he went to confession. The
next time she saw the bishop he asked her to report
on what happened. Did she ask Jesus what the bishop
said the last time he went to confession? She did
ask she said. “And what did he answer?” the bishop
asked. She said he forgot. Scott Peck said that was
a genuine vision or the lady was a pretty smart
cookie because that’s the way it is with God: when
we repent and change our hearts, God forgets the
past. It brings healing and peace to know that we
can change and God gives us a chance to start over.
The message in today’s gospel should also shake a
few people out of their spiritual lethargy if they,
like the son who didn’t show up at work, say to
themselves it doesn’t matter how I live or what I
do, God won’t notice. Yes God will.
As I conclude, let us return to another lesson from
the parable of the prodigal son. There were two
sons. Remember the older son was very responsible.
He worked hard on the farm. He never did anything to
displease his father, but he resented his father for
welcoming his younger brother back and celebrating
when he returned. The older son lacked compassion.
God wants us to be responsible, hard working,
obedient and faithful and we will be blessed. He
wants us to say “yes” and be willing to follow him
when he calls, that is the point of today’s gospel.
He wants us to have a compassionate heart as well:
“have in you the same attitude that is also in
Christ Jesus,” St. Paul tells us in today’s second
reading. When Jesus asks in today’s gospel: “What is
your opinion?” he is asking what kind of son or
daughter are you and am I. Are we like any of these
sons we heard about today. Or are we like Christ,
the faithful Son who always says “yes” to the Father
and goes to work doing what he asks of us. If we’re
lots of talk and offer lots of excuses and blame
others for why we don’t do what God wants, God can
see right through us and it will get us nowhere. If
we’ve said “no” to the Father, we can change our
mind. If we feel we’ve been pretty faithful to God
throughout our lives, trying to always say “yes” and
doing what God wants, then there are a few things we
need to pray for: pray to be humble, thank him for
the graces he’s given us, pray for the grace to
remain close to him, pray for those who have
forgotten about God and ask for a heart that does
not hold grudges. Amen
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