The Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Lively Virtues

March 7 & 8, 2015

Opening Homily

Exodus 20, 1-7 + Psalm 19 + 1 Corinthians 1, 22-25 + John 2, 13-25

The problem at the Temple was not the money changers and those who sold oxen, sheep and doves. They had to be there for the required sacrifices of the temple to take place. The law that prescribed the offerings and sacrifices. The Jews could not use the Roman currency which had Caesars’s image, so they had to change money into the Temple currency. The issue Jesus has with all of this, and especially with the Scribes and Pharisees who run the place is that in spite of all those offerings and sacrifices, nothing is happening, no change. They bought forgiveness without repentance. They bought sacrifices without every making any.  In spite of all that religious activity, nothing ever changed: the poor will still poor, outcasts stayed out, sinners kept on sinning without every reforming their lives. All they had to do was buy another dove and keep on going. This is repugnant to Jesus who has come to preach repentance, conversion, and change. There was no faith. It was all just a mechanical repetition of the same old thing without ever producing what he and the Baptist before him called for again and again: repentance. Change, repent, be made new, let the glory that belongs to the children of God shine forth.

Christ Jesus is headed to Easter, to glory not just for himself, but all of us. Two weeks ago we heard the Gospel of the Transfiguration, that moment when Jesus came into the presence of God. His mission on this earth is to take us there, to lead us to Easter and to glory. There is a problem however. There is not enough glory in our lives, and most of the time, we are not much of an Easter people, and the problem is something we don’t much like to talk about: sin.

All of us are engaged to one degree or another in a personal, ongoing battle with sin and vice. We are living through an age of serious moral decay. I think that is why Islam looks at us and is inclined to call us “infidels.” Cheating and Lying are a way of life today. There is not enough faith, the kind of faith that grows from repentance and change. Although anger doesn’t make most of us murderers, our lust doesn’t make most of us rapists, and our greed and envy do not make most of us outright criminals, together with gluttony, arrogance, and sloth, there isn’t much glory, and those who have to live with us are miserable. Our failure to live up to the glory that is ours is as tragic as the unhappiness our evil causes.

Every deadly sin fuels harmful social phenomena: lust-pornography; gluttony-substance abuse; envy-terrorism; anger-violence; sloth-indifference to the pain and suffering of others; greed-abuse of public trust; and pride-discrimination.” As long as there is any trace of these evils in our lives, we are less that human and less than what God has made us to be. We have in our faith a treasure of wisdom and tradition, teaching and revelation that leads us to a life of virtue and balance, holiness and joy; that is glory! It is not that pleasure is inappropriate, but glory comes from character and virtue, and a right relationship of one’s self to others and to God. That is where we find pleasure, and that pleasure leads to glory.

So, I am inviting you to spend three nights this week reflecting upon “The Seven Deadly Sins”. Unlike our bodies influenced by our genes; our souls, our spirit, and the lives they animate are free to be shaped by our choices. We can choose to be whole. We can choose glory. We can repent and change. There is more and better in us than we have chosen to become. One of the startling facts of life in our times is that no one wants to admit to sin and take any responsibility for its consequences. Too many these days have no sins. They just have issues! So, call it what you want, but it is deadly, and there is an alternative if we choose to change.

We have been given our nature, but we choose our character. When we say someone is a good man or a good woman, we do not suggest that they are people in whom there is no inclination to evil, but rather that they are people who have wrestled and still wrestle with it and never give in because their quality and their goodness comes from the struggle. Those people are truly noble. These are people of virtue, character, and nobility. The work of Jesus and his expectation that we change leads us to glory, to Easter, to virtue and nobility.

“Morality is like art, said G.K. Chesterton, “it consists of drawing a line somewhere.” We live in an age in which no lines seem to be drawn at all, or those that have been drawn are being erased. In my 73rd year of life and almost 50 years as priest I have come to recognize that an unhealed wound, a kind of sinful restlessness, afflicts humanity and robs us of glory.

Bruce Springsteen, “The Boss” wrote a song that describes our age when he sings: “Everybody has a hungry heart.” I think we are hungry for glory, hungry for the life we should have had by God’s will and God’s original plan for us. But we have traded our glory for something else, and sin is the consequence. Our hunger is for God and the glory that comes from being in God’s presence. The glory of Jesus Christ came from his willingness to suffer in obedience to the will of his Father. Calvary was no short – cut to glory. There isn’t one. We will have no glory and no Easter from a short-cut either. We cannot fill ourselves with things that do not satisfy, that do not fill us or lift us or hold us up. 

I want to propose to you that while there are seven sins (not issues) that lead us to death there are seven virtues that when taken seriously lead us to life. It means that we learn from today’s Gospel that we have to change and that what we do here cannot be a shallow and mechanical repetition of the same old thing again and again as it had become in the Jerusalem Temple. Nothing there ever changed. That cannot be so with us. We have to change. I invite you to give three evenings this week for the sake of the truth and glory; three evenings in this church for the sake of life itself, your life. Tonight we shall reflect upon Pride and Envy, tomorrow night Anger and Sloth, Tuesday night Greed, Gluttony, and Lust.  I’ve saved the best till last! I hope to see you again for prayer tonight night when we might begin to consider how it is that we satisfy our hungers and our thirst, because “everybody has a hungry heart.” The only thing that will satisfy that hunger is found here; nowhere else.

PRIDE AND ENVY

Sunday evening Saint Francis of Assisi Church Castle Rock, CO

March 8, 2015

Opening Hymn:

Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament

……..a few moments of adoration

Reading 1 (Sirach 10 12-18, 22, 26)

“A reading from the Book of Ecclesiastes also called the Book of Sirach.

The first stage of pride is to desert the Lord and to turn one’s heart away from one’s Maker. Since the first stage of pride is sin, whoever clings to it will pour forth filth. This is why the Lord inflicts unexpected punishments on such people, utterly destroying them. The Lord has turned mighty princes off their thrones and seated the humble there instead. The Lord has lucked up the proud by the roots, and planted the lowly in their place. The Lord has overthrown the lands of the nations and destroyed them to the very foundations of the earth. Sometimes he has taken them away and destroyed them and blotted out their memory from the earth. Pride was not created for human beings……The rich, the noble, the poor, let them pride themselves on fearing the Lord.  Do not try to be smart when you do your work, do not put on airs when you are in difficulties. Better the hardworking who has plenty of everything, than the pretentious at a loss for a meal. My child, be modest in your self-esteem, and value yourself at your proper worth.”

The Word of the Lord.

Homily

When the church fathers made their list of sins, pride was always at the top of the list because it was idolatry – the first sin is the beginning of all sin. There are all kinds of ways to describe the behavior that manifests pride. The proud are arrogant, haughty, conceited, egocentric, narcissistic, insolent, presumptuous and vain, and way more besides! We know when we are angry or greedy, but pride is more clever and subtle.  We are often unaware of pride. It shows itself in secret: in secret contempt and self-righteous judgment; in secret illegal and unethical behavior; in the smug attitude we have toward the weakness and failure of others as well as in a sense of privilege which marks our age so severely. The proud think they earn things which they then possess because of something they have done. You see, it’s all about them.

Pride easily finds a home among us because our culture predisposes us to competition, and that’s a bad thing! “Pride must be competitive, since it cannot concede first place to anyone even when its real wants are satisfied.” The games and the competitive world of commerce in which we find ourselves are natural breeding grounds for pride. “I’m number one.” “I made it.”  “It’s mine.” Now there’s nothing wrong with being one unless you can’t stand being number two. But the real problem here is the pronoun, that notion that it’s me, that I did it.

Now, part of the problem is language. We no longer use the word “pride” to only refer to idolatry. Today we sometimes use it carelessly to mean “self-esteem” which is not necessarily a bad thing. We tell our kids to take pride in themselves, to be proud of their work. We tell them, I hope, that we are proud of them. The result is a kind of semantic switch that gets this all mixed up in a kind of psycholinguistic soup. The result is that feelings of guilt are no longer interpreted as messages from God or signs of broken covenant. We are now allowed to think that it is a matter of low self esteem. So, pump up the old feel – good ego, and I’ll get over the guilt. Then the higher our self-esteem becomes, the more insulated we become from the pain of broken relationships. When you start thinking that way, you’ll end up with a moat around your soul, isolated, lonely, and distant from everything and everyone beautiful which is just where the proud person is always found. Lonely!

Perhaps the real truth is that the excessively proud person is really not in love with themselves at all, at least not in a healthy way, but actually suffers from the opposite malady. My experience with the puffed up people is that they are in fact excessively insecure. They are self-obsessed because they are always trying to prove something. They look down on others because they never look up to themselves. 

I have come to the conclusion that American Culture is not Christian. I think that is why radical Moslems do not want us near them. If we were really living like Christ, we would be easy companions with Islam. When they refer to us as “infidels” instead of getting all bent out of shape we might give some serious thought as to how much we really do seem like those pagan, infidel “Romans”. Like that dead culture, we worship perfection and power. We hate our imperfect lives and feel powerless in the face of impossible standards. These imperfections torment us, and our obsession with self-improvement leaves little time or energy for meaningful relationships. It’s Pride.

Now consider this: there is an answer to this deadly sin that eats at us day in and day out. It is simple, and it stares us right in the face, yet we do not recognize it. A more authentic and natural love of self is how pride is disarmed: in other words, Truth! Now, loving oneself is not the same as being in love with oneself. I am talking here about a new virtue called: WORTHINESS. You see, a worthy person has nothing to prove because worthiness cannot be earned. It can only be recognized. It is a gift. 

Years ago, I went to summer school in New Orleans at Loyola. The first morning in the dining room at the dorm my order came out with this small, milky-colored, grainy-looking pile of mush on one side of the eggs. “What’s that?” I asked the waitress.

“Them’s grits,” she said.

“But I didn’t order grits,” I said

“You don’t have to,” she replied. “They just comes.”

Now, that’s the way it is with Worthiness. You don’t have to order it, and you can’t do anything to earn it. It just comes.

The Protestant work ethic that has so shaped this nation demands that we earn everything, and that’s a set up for pride.

Worthiness at its core is grace. Like true beauty, which is best described as the “effortless manifestation of inner peace,” true worthiness is the effortless manifestation of inner gratitude. We have forgotten that we are born good – at least I think that’s what we heard God say when he looked at all of this! We may make mistakes, but we are not a mistake. Imagine what this world would be like if more people felt not just good about themselves, but worthy. 

One of the most devastating and deadly realties in American life is our obsession with physical beauty. We live under an astonishing barrage of images whose message is, quite simply, “You don’t look so good, don’t you wish you did?” Image is everything. Having a look is not enough. One must have thelook. How else do you explain that plastic surgery is the fastest-growing form of medicine? This is Roman culture, we are obsessed not with beauty and truth, but with perfection.

So, this “worthiness” I’m proposing is really just a new version of an old a trusted virtue: humility. The trouble is, “humility” too has gotten a bad language twist, and too often we think it has something to do with being soft and self-depreciating. That is ridiculous. To be humble is not to put oneself down. In fact thinking too little of oneself is also a manifestation of pride. The foundation of humility is truth. The sadness here is that we fail to take truth seriously: the truth about our worthiness, our goodness, and our inherent value and dignity. The truth is that God loves us always and everywhere. That is grace unearned, undeserved, and the only response is gratitude. 

Kneel for adoration

Reading 2 (James 3:14-18)

 “A reading from the Epistle of James.

Anyone who is wise or understanding among you should from a good life give evidence of deeds done in the gentleness of wisdom. But if at heart you have the bitterness of jealousy, or selfish ambition, do not be boastful or hide the truth with lies; this is not the wisdom that comes from above, but earthly, human and devilish. Wherever there are jealousy and ambition, there are also disharmony and wickedness of every kind; whereas the wisdom that comes down from above is essentially something pure; it is also peaceable kindly and considerate; it is full of mercy and  shows itself by doing good; nor is there an y trace of partiality or hypocrisy in it. The peace sown by peacemakers brings a harvest of justice.”

The Word of the Lord.

Homily

I had a terrible time choosing scripture to lead us into this reflection. There is so much to draw from I finally settled on the letter of James simply because of time. Yet you might think about Cain and Able, about the tale of Joseph and his brothers, or about the account of the relationship between King Saul and David as it deteriorates. And then there is that wonderful story of King Solomon and how he exposes the envious impostor who would allow the baby to be split in two when the real mother would not. Then, there are the two brothers of the prodigal father who stands between them begging them to come into the banquet.

The roots of envy begin early in life. From childhood we are compared to others. Our value as individuals is measured by how much dumber or smarter, uglier or more beautiful, weaker or stronger, poorer or richer we are than our peers. Competition, as I said earlier: it’s killing us. These are deadly sins. We begin to interpret our lack of what another person possess as somehow indicative of our lesser worth in general. “One of the destructive forms that Envy takes today is the widespread assumption that everyone should be able to do and experience and enjoy everything that everyone else can do and experience and enjoy. That thinking is the beginning of Envy. The idea that we are all equal has been perverted into the idea that we are identical; and when we discover that we cannot all do and experience and enjoy the things that others do and experience and enjoy, we take our revenge and deny that they were worth doing and experiencing and enjoying in the first place.”  The result is that we make no place for the unique for what is rare and cannot be imitated since we would then not be able to achieve it. We end up unable to admire, respect, or be grateful for what is more noble, more lovely, or greater than ourselves. We must pull down or put down what is exceptional. So, envy is not just grieving because of another’s good which is an element of pride; but envy grieves because the good in another diminishes one’s own self.  It’s no sin to recognize or even feel badly that you lack something someone else has. It is a sin when envy makes us wish the other did not have it at all. 

Dejection is a striking symptom of envy. Bitter regret over what we cannot have is envy. That bitterness leads to chipping away at the reputation of another. Pointing out their faults becomes an escape from the dejection. It is a spiteful malignancy. It is an ugly effort to level the playing field or bring another down because we are not up. The envious are completely without gratitude. The envious see themselves as “losers.” Again, competition makes winners and losers. There is something about competition that dooms those to failure who judge themselves by looking at others. There are two assumptions: that everyone begins with an equal chance from the starting line, and that the rules of the competition are fair at every stage. These conditions are unrealizable which is the flaw in the idea that there is equality of opportunity.

Someone once said: “Imitation is the best form of flattery.” I think that idea leads to phony and empty pretense. Admiration or Emulation is what is called for, and it is the surest antidote to envy. The attitude: “If I can’t have it, I don’t want anyone else to have it” is the heart of darkness. It is the loser’s emotion. It is an irrational quality when there is a better way, a lively virtue, a more noble human response: Emulation. To be in the presence of excellence, virtue, bravery or enlightenment does not always produce feelings of sinful envy, or even disappointment that we failed to reach such a high mark. Sometimes we just wonder how that excellence was acquired, what part of it might be available to us or how we might be more like the one we admire! 

Imitation is a counterfeit form of emulation. Imitators do not take the time and energy required to learn what constitutes the soul of those they admire. They merely rifle through their bag of tricks, confusing technique with essence. Dressing like your hero, even talking like him, does not make you, in any sense, heroic. In fact, that sincerest form of flattery nonsense is just that. Imitation is hazardous to your soul.

Have you ever noticed in the New Testament that more people get mad over God’s generous treatment of those who do not deserve it than they do over God’s harsh treatment of those who do?  That parable of the folks hired at different times of the day and then all paid the same is the perfect example of envy at work. The parable speaks of our inability to calculate the mercies of God. Human nature leads us to think that other people are always getting more than they deserve, while we assume that our rewards are just compensation. 

What would happen if, instead of sinful envy, the workers actually sought to emulate the owner? That is, you know what Jesus was always doing. He never told people what to believe. He simply showed people what to do, and then asked them to go and do likewise. So, the eleventh-hour workers could be grateful for their good fortune and model their behavior after that of the owners. Having received beyond merit, they could choose to be generous beyond deserving. At the very least, they would buy the first round of drinks.

Envy is always about power. Emulation is about goodness. In the end, the simple test of determining if the envy we feel toward another might be redeemed is to ask: “Would I like to be more like that person? Or do I wish that person would fall from grace? If envy drives us to hate someone or to wish someone harm, then it’s deadly indeed. 

The world is starved for heroes, and we have settled instead for celebrities. Celebrities are the creature of an envious age. We ascribe no virtue to them. We never think of them as wise or generous, they are simply paid more than we are paid. In envy we erect them, for awhile let our envy prey on them, and then in our envy we destroy them. When we are asked to name the people who have made a difference in our lives, we almost always name a teacher, a family member or a close friend. These people did not make us jealous. We wanted to emulate them, even surpass them. When parents talk about wanting things to be better for their children than they were for them, they are not just talking about money. They want their children to be more, to feel more, to live more. Nothing pleases a real parent like having a child who actually excels over them in all these ways. Envy is a secret thing that makes us bitter, lonely, mean and petty. It never allows us nor motivates us to do better nearly as much as it wishes others to do worse. This malice and evil-mindedness easily and quietly takes possession of us and hardens our hearts. Yet, gratitude and admiration, contentedness and joy at another’s goodness will set us free.

A time of adoration follows and Tantum Ergo is sung.

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, you have given us the Eucharist as the memorial of your suffering and death. May our worship of this sacrament of your body and blood help us to experience the salvation you have won for us and the peace of the kingdom where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Benediction is given, and at the conclusion, the following Litany is sung:

We have been seduced by the arrogance of our self-sufficiency without recourse to your grace. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

In our search for self-esteem, we have lost sight of our brokenness which cries out for your healing. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have denied our responsibility for others and shown indifference to their suffering and plight. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have worshipped the image of ourselves in our achievements without gratitude to you.  Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have presumed on the rightness of our opinions and actions and failed to admit our faults. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

In our envious spirit, we have been reduced to competition instead of cooperation with each other. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

For fear of feeling like failures, we have belittled and criticized the successes of others. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

By comparing ourselves with others, we have not embraced and appreciated our own blessing. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

Our Father…….

Go in Peace.

ANGER AND SLOTH

Monday Evening Saint Francis of Assisi Parish Castle Rock, CO

March 9, 2015

Opening Hymn:

Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament

……..a few moments of adoration

Reading 1 (Ephesians 4:26-32)

A Reading from the Letter of Paul to the Church of Ephesus.

“My brothers and sisters never let the sun set on your anger or else you will give the devil a foothold. Anyone who was a thief must stop stealing; instead he should exert himself at some honest job with his own hands so that he may have something to share with those in need. No foul word should ever cross your lips; let your words be for the improvement of others, as occasion offers, and do good to your listeners; do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God who has marked you with his seal, ready for the day when we shall be set free. Any bitterness or bad temper or anger, or shouting or abuse must be far removed from you – as must every kind of malice. Be generous to one another, sympathetic, forgiving each other as readily as God forgave you in Christ.” The Word of the Lord

The Homily

Whoever said that “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you.” must have been living with deaf mutes. That old saying deserves to be deleted from our memory. As a child I never believed it, and as an adult, I have come to wonder what kind of person could have ever thought such a thing. What were they thinking? “Careless words can do untold damage; one word may destroy even a sublime love.” This sin, called Anger is not about sudden flashes at things gone wrong – those outbursts here one minute and gone the next make the best of us giggle at how silly we reacted over something of little consequence. This sin is about a disorder, an outburst of emotion connected with a desire for revenge. This is an emotion that becomes an obsession. Perhaps it is better called: “Wrath.” It is a fixation and we live in an age of wrath. It is observed every day in the behavior of terrorists, kidnappers, hijackers, looters, and sometimes the clenched fists of demonstrators.

This is an angry age. Our world is crowded with angry people. Sometimes we are the angry ones. In my reflection on this third of the Deadly Sins, I am coming to realize that much of this anger is fueled by a serious confusion over rights and wants. We have come to a time in human history when any need, desire, or longing for anything that one lacks but someone else has, is today conceived to be my right that, when demanded, must be provided without challenge, and if it is not at once supplied the one making the demand as entitled to be angry. In that kind of climate, you can hardly blame the one making the demand for taking advantage of this foolishness since they are justified in advance on four grounds:

what they want, it is their right to have;

when it is asked, it should be granted;

if it is not granted, it is understandable that they are angry;

since they are angry, it is clear that their demand in the first place was justified.

I don’t think any civilization in human history has ever gotten itself in this mess before. It is a vicious circle: any and every felt want is translated into a “right” which incites the citizens to Anger then to destructiveness.

I have no intention of “preaching to the choir” so to speak, or of getting side tracked by this example, but the best example in front of us day in and day out is the matter of a woman’s “right” to control her body: “Abortion.” The bottom line here is that there are no boundaries that can logically be set to the concept of individual and human rights. We are so individualized in this culture that every individual need, want, or desire has become a “right.” But any high school student who studies biology knows that we don’t have control over our bodies.  They are subject to infection, disease, decay, and death.  The truth is, one cannot claim as a right what cannot be guaranteed, and there is no way of guaranteeing to any of us, male or female, the right to have “control over our own bodies.” To present as rights what cannot in the end be secured as rights, as we all too often do today, is a sure prescription for Wrath.

Wrath is inevitably directed, even if not intentionally, at an innocent object. In this case, it is the conceived child. The mother may want to abort, but it isn’t a right. To translate a wish into a right is an example of the absurdly distorted concept of individual and human rights by which our society is now confused. It sets us against each other in an endless combat for the rights we claim. Anger is the consequence.

Most of these “rights” someone will claim will, if granted involve the diminishing of another’s rights. The freedom of a woman to choose not to have a child can be a diminishing of the freedom of a man to enjoy the child whom he has played some part in conceiving; to say nothing of the rights of the child to life. If anyone can claim that any felt want or need or longing is a right, there are clearly no such things as rights left at all, since everyone’s supposed rights are pitted legitimately against everyone else’s supposed rights, and we no longer have any way of deciding what is a right and what is not. We have a mess on our hands and it is deadly: not just to an unborn child, but to civil and social life.

The desire for revenge is both an outcome of Wrath and a cause. “Getting even”, Getting back” – it’s all the same. Creeping along Founders Parkway over I-25 yesterday I pulled up behind a car which had a bumper sticker that read: “I get mad, and I get even.” Road rage is an epidemic in our time, and so is gratuitous violence. Both are directly related to a culture of hyper-individualism which has placed a giant chip on everyone’s precious shoulder. “How dare the world slow me down? How dare we be inconvenienced by a traffic jam, by someone in the grocery store line ahead of us who chats kindly for just moment with a tired checker? How dare that old person slow down in front of me before turning right?”

We are living through the angriest time in the history of our nation. The horrible events of September 11, 2001 created more anger in this country than anyone has seen since Pearl Harbor. The anger raged into wrath and the need to retaliate against the real perpetrators. We’ll get Osama and his network He’ll be hunted down, smoked out, and brought home dead or alive. Anger, you know, often causes us to make promises we can’t keep. What’s more, when dealing with September 11, the distinction between real and perceived injury becomes more than academic. Most Americans defended the war to drive the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and shut down the terrorist training camps. The problem came when “perceived” injuries were ascribed to Iraq, and our anger was directed at a country which, although suffering under a cruel dictator, had done no real harm to us.

We let our anger get the best of us, and then later we learned that the weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda did not exist. We were right to be angry about September 11, but by focusing on our own desire for revenge we allowed ourselves to be dragged or manipulated in a war that has not brought us any closer to capturing the real terrorists. We were hurt, and so we lashed out. But the convenient target isn’t necessarily the legitimate target. While our response may have made us feel better, it hurt our reputation around the world. You know what the difference between a reaction and a response is? It’s a pause. I remember my mom standing still with lips tight counting to ten. She taught me to do that. It makes the difference between an angry reaction (knee jerk) and a reasonable response (wisdom).

Mahatma Gandhi warned us that “an eye for an eye just leaves the whole world blind.” 

So, when things don’t go well, or we fail to get something we want, someone else must be to blame. That is the thinking of our culture. We are taught to assume personal responsibility, but as individuals we often act like victims. The lyrics of nearly every country and western song reveal the sorry mess we are in: “Somebody Done Somebody Wrong.” and, we’re, “Mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.” (Another bumper sticker I saw this week.) There always has to be someone to blame with this crazy thinking because Wrath needs an enemy, and even where this is none, it will invent one. Timothy McVeigh grew up angry and then left a loveless home to live in a world of cheap hotel rooms, hate radio, and the fraternity of racism. Failing to find himself worthy of love, he became addicted to hatred, which can be its own kind of narcotic. After the bombing, our anger was first directed against Arabs, and we immediately detained several men of Arab descent without cause, except that they looked to white America like terrorists. When the real perpetrator turned out to look very much like a clean-cut Marine, we found it difficult to believe that he acted alone, and began to spin out conspiracy theories like cotton candy, because anger can blind us and make us believe we know something, even when we know nothing.

So what about a virtue to use against this sin? There is a theory about “good anger and bad anger.” Let’s call it Indignation. Put the word Righteous in front of it if you want, but I think that’s confusing. “Indignation” has to do with dignity, and what I want to suggest is that a little indignation – that is to say, a little good anger about the right things might help us refocus and surface a little good old passion for justice, not revenge. It might be a good idea sometime to get angry because we care, not just because our feelings have been hurt. Lots of people are mad these days, but not about anything that matters. 

The Gospel images of Jesus do not avoid the reality of anger and the human passion of Jesus Christ. That occasion when he cleansed the Temple was an experience of human passion that could not be ignored. The image of Jesus as “meek and mild” is not always reconcilable with the Jesus of the Gospels. Remember the time when he walked past a fig tree looking for something to eat? In fact, when you start looking at the man who cursed a fig tree because it didn’t give him food when he wanted it even out of season, when you remember that he suggested a mill-stone as a necklace for those who hurt children, you might suspect he needed an anger management class. This matter of anger is really about passion directed in the right way. It is about action, doing something, not just thinking something. The reality of Jesus is that he was angry, but not over some injustice done to him. Rather he was boiling over with indignation over the corruption of religion in his time. I think he is still indignant. The scandal of our church today is not about sex abuse nor that people do not believe the right things as some on the far right would like to suggest. It is that people hardly ever do the right things. Jesus has become a cosmic pal, a buddy. God has become wise and adorable, maybe awesome, but never disturbing. The Word of God has become a study guide. It might be time for God to become frightening again. It might be that so many are obsessed with the second coming because the first coming was so disappointing.

Anger is self-serving passion. When we stir our passions for the sake of others, stop worrying about our rights and act more out of justice, it won’t be so dangerous on our streets. We are at war with terrorism and we will be for a long time to come. The manner in which we marshal our anger and wage this war will determine whether we make the world safer or more dangerous. Indignation on the other hand moves deliberately but patiently to bring terrorists to justice rather than bringing ‘justice to terrorists. Instead of a deadly sin, we need a lively virtue. The love of justice perverted into the desire for revenge and the injury of someone else will end our civilization. When ever love is translated into hatred, we know that sin has entered and wrecked its havoc.

Adoration

Reading 2 (Mark 4:26-29)

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Mark

A man scatters seed on the land. Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing; how, de does not know. Of its own accord the land produces first the shoots then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the crop is ready, at once he starts to reap because the harvest has come.”

The Gospel of the Lord 

The Homily

“Life is tough. Then you die.” Another bumper sticker I saw this week. I think I may work up some talks on “Bumper Sticker Wisdom”! But there’s another old saying like the one I just mentioned: “Sticks and Stones”. It’s a simple one; four words that were drilled into me as child: “Mind Your Own Business.” As an adult and priest, I have begun to question that wisdom. I have begun to suspect that it is at the root of a seriously sinful life style. “Live and Let Live.” is part of that false wisdom. “Don’t’ get involved.” my father once said to me. Bad advice!

“Sloth”. I choose to stick with the old English word because it is so curious. It sounds like being lazy, like laying too long in the bathwater or sleeping through breakfast. It hardly sounds deadly, and certainly not like a capital offence, but it is. It is way more than an energy deficiency. It is not about deciding one morning that you’ll roll over and go back to sleep, or taking a nap in the afternoon when you should be doing laundry. It IS about a fundamental loss of faith in one’s ability to do anything about anything. It is about a feeling expressed this way: “So what? I couldn’t care less.”

If we are living in an age of Anger, it is also an era of anxiety. Like the previous sin, it rests upon the false notion that an individual can find fulfillment and salvation in nothing but his or her own self and the denial that we are members one of another, and that “the solidarity of mankind links the crimes of each to the sorrows of all.” It is that business of individualism again. It is summed up best in the advice: “Look out for Number One.” It is the first commandment of Sloth.

This whole idea, the whole concept of individualism reached a new high and new approval/acceptance in this country in the 1980s. It was first observed in an economic policy called: “Supply Side Economics” that turned out to little more than an economics of ego centric individualism. Trickle down didn’t, and now we live with are can no longer deny a chasm between the rich and the poor that is shocking to everyone who pays attention. It nurtured a kind of isolated individualism that has set the stage for a gradual polarization as the rich get richer and the poor take care of them. Our Church calls this into question again and again.

The first symptom of sloth is Complacency. Individualism breeds it. It is the complacency of the comfortable. As they have grown in number, one begins to hear the denials that we are our brothers’ keeper. That’s Sloth in your face. Looking out for Number One has been given even more enforcement by the self-indulgent idea that if “I’m OK, you’re OK” or “I’ll leave you alone, and you leave me alone, and if we do that, everything will be fine!” No it won’t!  It will not be fine. I won’t be fine, and you won’t be fine. In Genesis God said: “It is not good for man to be alone.” There is something wrong. This is a breeding ground for indifference, and “Indifference” is another word or manifestation of Sloth – it is deadly: deadly to individuals and deadly to the human family.

One of the consequences of all this in our society is getting more and more obvious to people like me. It is at the root of many divorces and the cause of a pressing crisis in our church. When I was a pastor I would interview one by one the young people in confirmation class. One of the questions I ask them is what they will be doing after High School. My favorite answer is: “I don’t know.” I squirmed when they told me they are going into law school, medical school, or planning to be an X ray technician. To those I had a second question: “Do you think that’s what God wants you to do?” At least those who have not made up their minds might be open to wondering what God wants them to do with their lives. It’s all about pursuing some purpose in one’s life, and that means it’s about commitment to someone or something other than oneself. I am of the opinion that young people have no interest what so ever in the priesthood because it requires that frightening experience called: “Commitment.” Avoiding that is what gives so much anxiety to young people approaching marriage. Living it is what makes keeping a marriage alive so difficult. Avoiding it because a marriage like priesthood is hard work is called SLOTH.

Sloth grows quietly and steadily in an environment of gratification. If it doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t get done. If the good feeling is delayed, other things will come first. A lot of charity work is like that, and I am suspicious of it. A large group of young people from Norman, Oklahoma went to a town in Mexico under the sponsorship of a local Methodist church and they built a couple of houses. They came home. Some of them felt really good about it and they want to go again, and I wonder: to build houses or feel good, can they build enough houses to really matter, will they do something about the system that creates the problem if it means they will have to suffer with less? Some became profoundly disturbed, and they have the best chance of all to make a difference if they stay disturbed. The good feeling here is like a narcotic. It satisfies, provides contentment, and nothing changes.

Those who have taken ill with sloth have no identity except their personal identity. There is an absence of group identity. That’s what happens with people too lazy to go to church – they think they are Catholic, but the very identity of Church springs from the assembly. If you’re not in it, if you’re not part of it, if you’re not identified by being in the middle of it, you can’t claim the identity. You’re just claiming an idea. The individualism that is on the rise in our culture shows it’s self in that question: “What’s in it for me?” with immediate gratification of one’s need coming before all other loyalties. So, the commitment to marriage or to having children while debts get paid off begins. The individualism of our age is an ideology that encourages people to maximize personal advantage while consideration of the common good is increasingly irrelevant. It’s SLOTH.

I find it fascinating to discover that in collectivist societies which are often religious (Islam being a perfect example) a person’s loyalty to his family or group takes precedence over his personal goals. Such societies have among the lowest rates of crime, dysfunctional families, and alcoholism. The thought/comparison makes me uncomfortable, but have you ever wondered why no one among us ever blows themselves up for a cause or an ideal or a vision of what should be? We don’t care enough. We are too complacent. We don’t care about the right things and are too easily satisfied with puny pleasures that never last. 

Meanwhile, in the real world, millions of people are moving through life like zombies, staying outwardly busy but not finding anything much worth living for. “I’m so busy! I hardly know what to do.” Business! It is deadly. I’ve given up on a couple of relationships I had hoped would foster lasting companionship because the other person was just too busy all the time. All they could ever talk about was how busy they were. I began to feel like an interruption, an intruder. Personally I hate it when people walk up to me or call me on the phone and start by saying: Father, I know you’re busy, and I’m sorry to bother you!” WHAT?  My life is not about meetings and reports which fill in the gaps that anyone else can do. So when I hear that, rather than be insulted, I simply quietly realize I am being corrected. I can’t count the marriages I’ve seen blow up because people are so busy or the number of families that fall apart because of busy parents and equally busy children who run from soccer to Tee ball, to ballet or swimming lessons. Their refrigerator doors are covered with schedules and lists, and inside there is nothing to eat because they don’t have time to sit down and look at one another, so they eat on the way to or from some game or some practice or some meeting. This is deadly. It is sloth.

Herein lays the paradox of sloth: its ability to disguise itself in misdirected activity. The consequence is neglect, neglect of higher things, greater things, spiritual things, in the end, neglect of self. This is life in a vacuum.

There is a spiritual side to this as well. Just as the slothful avoid obligations that demand sacrifice, so do we experience the same thing spiritually. I think it is what gives rise to some popular devotions that are so shallow and silly and ask so little of us while the real stuff of spiritual life gets ignored: Fasting, Prayer, Sacrifice. Instead of visiting the sick, the nursing homes, the homeless and taking up a share of Saint Vincent de Paul Society’s work, we just look quickly and think: that person in the nursing home isn’t my mom or dad. Someone should so something! I am always suspicious of spiritual exercises that bring consolation and comfort to those who are already so by their position in life.

This is an anxious age. Anxiety is essentially a dread of nothing. What to do about it? I would suggest some balance in life that the little story from the Gospel suggests. Sow the seed, and wait. It is the ancient dilemma of when to do and when to wait. The parable defines something called contentedness in terms of the proper order of things: first you do, then you wait. After you have done what only you can do (plant the seed), you wait while the seed does what only it can do. When the time for harvest has come, you gather in the crop that grew itself, but which cannot harvest itself. This is divine wisdom – a revelation! “The order here is very important. First the seed is sown, and then sower knows that he can do nothing more so he waits. Nobody stands over a seed and screams, “Come on now, grow!” A seed carries its own future in its bosom. The sower has done all he can do. Now he waits patiently for God to do what only God can do.

“No one would think to call his waiting slothful. It is wise. He turns his mind to other things. He hopes for rain. He mends fences. He watches and waits because he is not the master of the harvest; he is the steward of the mystery. When that mystery is fully present, his waiting is over, and he puts the sickle to the stalk.

“Mark preserved this parable for an anxious church, one that waited for the return of Christ and wondered why it hadn’t happened. The answer is that we cannot know, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do what we can and then be content. We plant the seed of the word, and then we wait for the mysterious way in which God brings it to fullness. 

This kind of contentment means that we know there are limits to what we can do, but these do not produce feelings of failure. Failure comes from doing nothing. This kind of contentment makes us more attentive to those moments when we can do something and more patient when we know it is time to wait. Being busy does not make us happy. “Idol hands are the devil’s workshop.” is a lie. More than anything, Sloth is a sin of omission, a sin of neglect. Technology and gadgets have freed us from drudgery leaving us the challenge of what to do with the time now available. Minding our own business, not getting involved means we will not hurt nor get hurt. But of course, the hurt is deep both ways because it leaves us separated from humanity and that’s a deep inner tear that ultimately separates us from God, which by ancient definition is sin.

A time of adoration follows and Tantum Ergo is sung.

Let us pray: Lord Jesus Christ, you have given us the Eucharist as the memorial of your suffering and death. May our worship of this sacrament of your body and blood help us to experience the salvation you have won for us and the peace of the kingdom where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Benediction is given, and at the conclusion, the following Litany is sung:

We have denied our responsibility for others and shown indifference to their suffering and plight. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have presumed on the rightness of our opinions and actions and failed to admit our faults. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

In our envious spirit, we have been reduced to competition instead of cooperation with each other. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

For fear of feeling like failures, we have belittled and criticized the successes of others. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have controlled and intimidated others by our outbursts of rage and our threatening words and behavior. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

In our search for perfection, we have sadly grown intolerant of human weakness. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have preferred to inflict pain on others rather than be agents of healing and peace. Look upon us. Lord, and have mercy.

We have been careless in our work, and failed to put our priorities into place with the Gospel. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

Our Father…….

Go in Peace.

GREED, GLUTTENY AND LUST

Tuesday evening Saint St Francis of Assisi Parish Castle Rock, CO

March 10, 2010

Opening Hymn:

Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament

……..a few moments of adoration

Reading 1 (Luke: 12:13-21)

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke

There was a rich man who, having had a good harvest from his land, thought to himself, “What am I to do? I have not enough room to store my crops.” Then he said, “This is what I will do: I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and store all my grain and my goods in them, and I will say to my soul: “My soul, you have plenty of good things laid by for many years to come; take things easy, eat, drink, have a good time.” But God said to him, “Fool! This very night the demand will be made for your soul; and this hoard of yours, whose will it be then? So it is when someone stores up treasure for himself instead of becoming rich in the sight of God.”

The Gospel of the Lord

Homily

Greed or “Avarice” as I learned it in school is not so much the love of possessions, as it is the love of possessing. It is the buying of things we do not need, more even than we need for our pleasure or entertainment. It is possessing for its own sake. At the risk of offending someone in here, I’m going to tell this story on myself. I was hunting for a parking place at my dentist office last week. There were none. Right in the middle of the parking area there was a humvee sitting across three parking spaces. As I was walking across the street from an empty lot some distance away, the owner of the humvee came out and very cheerfully greeted me. Making great effort to hide my annoyance, I asked: “Why do you have a vehicle like that?” Using everything restraint I had to keep from saying: “and take up three parking spaces.! With obvious innocence she said: “Because I can.” Opened the door, climbed up and drove off leaving three full sized parking spots and me standing there……..”Because, I can.” Avarice!  The issue is not the vehicle obviously; it is the reasoning and the decision.

Just down the street from my last parish, a large construction site is very busy these days. It will be the largest climate controlled storage unit facility in the country. Avarice!  I am not here talking about theories this week. I am talking about evidence that we are in the grip of sin. This is not an idea, it is actual behavior. Evidence of these deadly sins is everywhere you care to look, not in others but within us all. This Avarice is not an old fashioned sin even though it is an old fashioned word. It is alive and well. The evidence is crowding the cars out of our garages and sagging our ceilings. We set our security systems when we are away, rarely when we are inside because they are not there to protect human life from danger, but to get a lower rate on our home owners or apartment renter’s insurance premium.

Our language betrays our sin. We say and we hear others say; “I must have that.” Of course, it’s about having it, hardly ever about needing it. We have more clothes than we need and way more accessories. The very word “accessory” tells you what it’s all about. “For the man who has everything…” the saying goes! Then why give him more? Avarice! It might all seem trivial and harmless until we begin to measure what it is doing to us. I think of Mrs. Buckett in this regard. You know that lady on the British comedy series that airs on PBS?  She is possessed by her possession, and they speak for her more than herself, and her attention to her husband is as though he were a possession she has to put on her show. It’s as though those things were her — Avarice.

A wise Greek writer reminds us that wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants.

We live in a culture where Greed is not just considered good. It is considered Gospel. It is the way to do thing, the way to get ahead, the way to achieve success. Never mind that Enron was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to corporate crime sweeping America. Never mind that accountants are in cahoots with the companies they are supposed to audit, insiders trade after hours, and millions of employees have their pensions robbed. If you’re homeless and rob a 7-11 you’ll get ten years to life in jail. But in corporate America, you can steal all you want and fly away untouched in a first-class cabin seat. The very fact that I can say that, that you know it’s true, and that we all just sit here confirms the problem: we have given the “OK” to greed.

As a priest of forty-eight years, I have come to the most amazing observation. You can talk about anything from this pulpit, and most people will glaze over, and on the way out they’ll wave and say: “Great sermon, father.”  But talk about money, and the eyes tighten up, and everyone slips out the door without a glance. We never talk about it. It is the big secret. It is considered rude to ask what someone makes or how much something cost, but yet we will talk casually and simply about the most intimate and personal matters! 

It’s not as though there is anything wrong with desire. Desire is a form of energy. It motivates us about many good things, the desire for peace, the desire for love, the desire for justice; but the sad truth is that we are taught to want without limit. Enough is never enough. If you thought you were going to get out of here without another bumper sticker, you’re wrong. “Whoever dies with the most toys wins.”

The problem, as I said at Mass this weekend is that “line.” I quoted Chesterton who said that morality like art consists of drawing a line. No one is drawing any lines. There is no longer a line that says and means, “That’s enough.”

Every November, a profoundly sad thing happens in this country. I have met few people who are as touched and profoundly saddened by the news reports as I am. People have been killed and many are injured after staying up all night to be the first through the door of stores for Pre-Christmas sales. The media shows people in a shopping rage tearing toys and games out of one another hands with hatred. Avarice has overtaken us. If you were not in the mob but were not the least bit appalled by the scene, Avarice has taken us captive.

What virtue we need then is a clear understanding of when desire is good, elevating life or when it is bad and an obsessive vice. Wanting Wisely is the virtue. Some things are valued because they are instruments for getting more, and other things are valued in and of themselves. We have to know the difference, because if we don’t the confusion transfers to people. Friends ought to have value in and of themselves not because they help us get something. We have all been used by someone, used by other people, and we know how it feels. Greed brings us to sacrifice what’s really important for the sake of what is not.

There is a television show about Greed in this country. Now this sin is becoming entertainment no longer shocking. Avarice is in control. I call it sin. To want something wisely is to want it for reasons other than status. The desire parents have to give their children the best possible education and make sacrifice for it is wanting something wisely. On the other hand, enrolling a child in the most elite and expensive private school to put them on the fast track to fame and fortune is Avarice.

Those who succeed in this world and become wealthy are not all immoral, but they all have a moral responsibility to give something back to a world from which their riches came. The rich are always the most indignant about paying taxes yet the civilization created by those taxes is what made the rich in the first place. So now that they have it made, they want to shut off the system that gave them opportunities. Avarice. No redistribution of wealth is a world without roads, school, and hospitals. There is a sign on a freeway outside Oklahoma City demanding that we pay no taxes. It is placed for maximum effect along a federally funded interstate highway built by the taxes the sign maker wants to stop. 

For Christians, the answer to this matter is simple. It is Stewardship: a way of life, a witness to faith, the response of a grateful heart. The embrace of that life style will be the end of Greed. 

A Brief period of Adoration begins.

Reading two (1 Thessalonians 4: 3-7)

My brothers and sisters, 

God wills you all to be holy. He wants you to keep away from sexual immorality, and each on of you to know how to control his body in a way that is holy and honorable, not giving way to selfish lust like the nations who do not acknowledge God. He wants nobody at all ever to sin by taking advantage of a brother in this matter. God called us to be holy, not to be immoral; in other words anyone who rejects this is rejecting not human authority, but God, who give you his Holy Spirit.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Homily

Lust is not a sin of the flesh. It is a sin against it. It is in our flesh that we are present to the rest of creation, and particularly present to each other, revealing, and exposing, sensitive to others and even vulnerable to them, open to hurt. This then is the problem, the paradox of lust, because Lust is not interested in partners, but only in one’s solitary pleasure. If there is a hint of concern for the other, it is simply an ego concern that one did well, performed well, and of course is then adequate and desirable. Lust then accepts any partner for a moment, and then they’re gone.

To begin with, we ought to be honest. Sex is the most powerful human hunger next to survival itself, yet it has now moved largely out of the realm of sacred mystery and into the realm of commerce. It sells everything, and like greed, there is never enough. Oddly enough, the message of most modern advertising is that sex appeal builds self-esteem, but in our society the opposite may be true. Beautiful women in particular learn to distrust compliments and to be suspicious of even the most ordinary acts of kindness. Our children are the most vulnerable to this image building/image destroying consumer abusing stuff. It may sell a pair of jeans, but the innocent who buy those jeans will never look like the model in that add, and it only eats away at their developing and fragile self respect and self image all the more. We hunt flesh, but what we really crave is intimacy. Our culture’s addiction to sex is like our addiction to fast food: more of it never really satisfies, and it can be more than just unhealthy. The truth is, our sexual addictions are more rooted in ego than in physical desire. Our insecure, self – absorbed culture has begun to using sex to satisfy emptiness, insecurity, loneliness and self-doubt. The pandemic of internet sex is at the heart of this. Why live in the real world? Escape into fantasy! That body on the screen will never reject us. There is a huge issue of ego in this behavior. Self absorbed and insecure, people sit wide-eyes in front of a computer screen pretending: pretending because the truth and reality are too hard. All the while, minutes and hours of one’s life are gone forever. Intimacy is what we crave, and it has never been found in a chat room or in pornography. It’s all anonymous – empty, and it leaves the victim even more empty and alone. The only thing that responds to our longing and need for intimacy is love; and it doesn’t take long to figure out that love is not something you “make.” It is something you are. Like all the sins, lust makes us solitary. It is lonely, empty, and fleeting.  One of the surest signs of it’s presence in our midst is pornography. It’s big business. There is money in loneliness, and the clever have discovered it.

Pornography is always something used in secret, alone. A private matter indulged in at late hours by lonely people. Pornography is a substitute for involvement with another person. It is another way of condemning ourselves to solitariness. There is a deep and widening sadness hanging over contemporary culture that is made all the more unbearable by casual sex. There is the illusion that one can be physically intimate without being emotionally responsible. In the vernacular, we call that being used. Lust will not get involved, and so it is absolutely contrary to love. 

Ultimately it is about desire which is not at all evil unless it is selfish. The desire that sets it all in motion is the desire for intimacy, and this is what I propose as the virtue or the antidote to lust. “Holy Intimacy”. It is something that rests on trust which makes possible a kind of holy vulnerability. Yet the widespread disinclination to become involved, the great fear of commitment I spoke of last night lays the trap for Lust. In no other sin does one feel so much of a void, and this void is not only inside, it is also outside in our society. There is a profound failure of our society to make continuing individual relationship seem part of the much wider social bonds that tie us to them. Marriage and family are still the basic units of our society, but they are weakened, and we tend to regard them today as a matter only of interpersonal relationships, rather than as fundamental elements of the social order. This changed attitude to marriage has resulted inevitably in a changed attitude to other personal relationships. So, if I don’t get anything out of it, I’m not going to do it. Relationships that rest only on one’s own self-justification are not sacred and holy ground upon which one may encounter the divine. There is no covenant.

What comes between a couple when one of them is unfaithful is, not the other woman or man, but what now cannot be shared by them. He or she knows almost at once that something has been withdrawn, that there is something that the other is unable to bring and share. Love requires some effort, but our age encourages us to avoid it by refusing to get involved and when involved to escape from it.

All of us have seen it, and many of us have experienced it. It comes with that early stage of infatuation with a bit of curiosity. It happens when there are no words, or words seem too trivial. Use your imaginations or your memory. Two people are close together, across a table on a couch, in a car. They look at one another and nothing is said. It is a matter of attention. We know it from music, from art, or even a poem. We have to concentrate and give it full attention. So, there they are, gazing. We need to “gaze” not peer or stare, but simply to gaze and let the eyes bring in the other, and let the other eyes draw us out and into a presence that is peaceful, loving, and totally our own. We are doing that in here before this sacrament. It is the gaze of love, the gaze of affection, the gaze of trust, the gaze of faith, and most of all the gaze of holy intimacy.

Love at its best is here before us. Love in the flesh is the gift of marriage. But the adventure of marriage is learning to love the person to whom you are married….love does not create a marriage; marriage teaches us what a costly adventure love truly is. This holy intimacy is for a lifetime. It knows that age can add more in tenderness than it takes away in virility. Sex when we’re young is all about the body, hormones and pleasure. Then suddenly you’re not young anymore, and sex becomes a feast of reciprocity and intimate tenderness because the solitary emptiness is filled with a spiritual presence which is the gift of fidelity and a promise fulfilled.

A brief period of Adoration follows

Reading three (Luke 14: 15-21)

A reading of the Holy Gospel according to Luke

“When evening came, the disciples went to him and said, “This is a lonely lace, and time has slipped by; so send the people away, and they can go to the villages to buy themselves some food. Jesus replied: There is no need for them to go: give them something to eat yourselves. But they answered, “All we have with us is five loaves and two fish. So he said, “Bring them here to m e. He gave order that the people were to sit down on the grass; then he took the five loaves and the two fish, raised his eyes to heaven and said the blessing. And breaking the loaves he handed them to his disciples, who gave them to the crowds. They all ate as much as they wanted, and they collected the scraps left over, twelve baskets full.”

The Gospel of the Lord

Homily

In the last couple of years, I have come to a curious realization about myself and my appearance. About ten years ago, I had serious heart surgery, and in the process of surgery and recovery, I lost about thirty pounds. As time has passed, I have found what was lost; and I did not have to pray to Saint Anthony. Just after coming back to the parish when I was on the light side of the ordeal, people would come up to me and will say: “Father, you don’t look so good.” As time went on they began to say: “Father, you’re looking good today.” What I have come to realize is that this is all a code message. “You don’t look so good” means I’m down to size 34. “Father you’re looking good” means I’m back up to 38! Or, more crudely stated: “Father, you’re getting fat.” At which point I run home and get out the South Beach book and if nothing else, I read it again. 

It may not be politically correct to say it, but while much of the world is starving, Americans are busy eating themselves to death. At last count, 60% of us are overweight, and the numbers just keep rising. Chronic obesity in children is an alarming public health issue. Meanwhile, there is a multibillion-dollar diet industry in place. Yet despite endless new diet schemes, and any conceivable piece of exercise equipment available for three easy payments, we keep getting fatter. But never fear, there will soon be a pill to fix it all.

To call this a sin would be to imply that someone is responsible, but in a culture of blamelessness we have decided that it’s a matter of genes or slow metabolism or a sweet tooth that runs in the family. That all sounds better than the truth which is that most of us eat too much and do too little by way of exercise. What makes matters worse is that chronic obesity may be more psychological and spiritual than physiological, especially in a culture that idolizes food. Other than the Bible, the only other kind of publication that is growing beyond leaps and bounds is cook books — check out Barnes and Noble if you don’t believe me. It’s a bigger section of the store than history.

The super market is the temple of excess with music, lighting and an ingenious array of visual seductions all designed to prompt us to buy more than we need, especially things we shouldn’t eat. How many of us go into the super market with a list and come out with just exactly those things and nothing more? Last Monday I spent $27.00 for a quart of milk! Two bags! Yet we live in a time when pleasures are regarded as an entitlement, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a prude or a closet hedonist. The whole idea of choosing to live a measured life where less is more and austerity is a virtue sounds almost subversive in our consumer culture.

Gluttony strikes us as sad rather than deadly. What’s a little overeating, after all, when compared to lust? It troubles me when my brother priests get together and I notice what shape they are in. Congregations seem to take pride in getting Father another piece of pie or another donut.

When the early church Fathers made the list we’ve been considering and named the sins we are searching for in ourselves, Gluttony is always placed next to Lust. They are connected. Too much of a good thing is never a good thing. A few weeks ago, I ran into someone from the parish who had been bitterly complaining about their tuition in our school. I was a guest in a very expensive restaurant, and I noticed that the complainer sitting behind me was well known by the restaurant staff leaving me to suppose that they frequently dined there. We claim to be over taxed and underpaid, and so school children go without textbooks and paper. Yet our national restaurant tab could fund them for a decade. We are raising the tuition All Saints School this year. The actual cost of that increase passed on to the school patrons means one less trip to McDonalds each month!

Eating is a “zero-sum game.” The food supply at any one moment is finite. The more you eat, the less food is available to some else. What that really means is that our tendency to waste food, quite literally steals bread from the poor. That story of Lazarus the beggar we just heard suggests that the two of them, the rich and the poor existed only a few feet apart, but they might have been living in separate universes. In some cities, not mine because we hide them under the freeway, you can walk down a street to an expensive restaurant and step over the homeless hungry. If they beg for something, we feel offended, embarrassed, and frightened; then we buy a bottle of wine that would feed them for a month. Gluttony is not just irrational. It is immoral. And it is pointless.

Yet, here’s the paradox. The most constant and frequently used metaphor for the kingdom of God is a banquet, and Jesus was turning water into wine so that there would be more than plenty. He is criticized for eating and drinking and “reclining” at table as he eats which signals more than an ordinary meal. It was a sumptuous and drawn out affair. So here comes the virtue I propose for us to use in the face of Gluttony: COMMUNION.

In a world that continues to hammer away at us to take more and more, this gift from God teaches a different lesson: Less is more. Anyone who looks at the banquet on this altar would have reason to think: “There is not enough.” But there always is. Here the issue the glutton cannot ever address between quality and quantity is finally settled. Eating here is more than a refueling operation. Here, we eat to live, not live to eat. So the opposite of a glutton is not someone on a diet who counts out calories and carbohydrates, nor is it someone who fasts. The opposite of a glutton is someone for whom food is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is a person who uses food and loves people, instead of loving food and using people.

We live in a fast food world, eating on the run or eating alone with the microwave beeping. Sacramental living requires something else. It requires a table at the center of the family life. TV tables and card tables will not do. Nobody eats in hurry, and no one eats and runs. There is no running from communion for believers. There is too little of it anyway.

Some of us probably grew up in homes where you cleaned your plate. It was a “waste not or want not” life. These days with “all you can eat” restaurants and a belief that “if a little bit is good, then a lot must be better” bringing immense portions and larger plates to the table, there is a conflict and it is costing us. Cleaning your plate has its roots in gratitude, and the virtue of not wasting is virtually impossible to exercise. Too much of a good thing is exactly that, and it brings no health and no life. I often remember that one of the temptations Jesus experienced in the desert concerned food and using food for power. We face that temptation all he time, and we’re not making a lot of progress. World hunger is not a political/economic issue to be resolved by diplomats. It is a moral issue.

The glutton usually eats alone and in silence. Sin always seems to isolate us. Those who share food in communion on the other hand pass what’s on the table before helping themselves. There is an unspoken rule that the portions must be adequate for the number of guests present, lest the food run out before all are served. So we start with small portions and discuss leftovers later. We take turns chewing and talking, we do not eat with face down inches from the plate gulping and gorging. We talk and we listen. Sometimes a toast is raised and we look one another in the eye and express our hopes and encouragement that converts nourishment of the body into nourishment of the soul. It is then not what we eat, but why we eat and with whom we eat.

Even the person who eats alone can be in a sacramental experience because they begin with a blessing and the spirit of God is the unnamed guest. A prayer before the meal even though unheard by others establishes the meaning of the food and the undeserved grace of having it available. Having all this food reminds us that we are among the privileged in the world. The most powerful antidotes to gluttony are community and gratitude. They turn eating into communion and every table into an altar. As a sin, gluttony makes us solitary. Communion brings us together. Gluttony teaches us to devour. Communion teaches us to savor. 

Since 2001 I sit at a table every day and wonder how it is that we have the funds and the anger and the enthusiasm for a war on terror but no interest at all for a war on poverty and hunger when the truth is, poverty and hunger are breeding the terrorists while our gluttony for oil makes it all possible. Gluttony takes life. Communion gives life. Since I’ve been sick, I have come back with a new sense of food, eating, and even dieting: eat less, more often, with more friends. I remember mom’s advise, chew slowly, pause to speak, and laugh with those at table. It takes half as much food and it’s twice as good. That kind of eating feeds the body and the soul. A hangover is God talking. The message is simple: you are gulping when you should be sipping. Take, Eat. This is my body, broken for you. This is the bread of heaven; this is the cup of salvation. It isn’t much, but it’s more than enough.

A time for Adoration follows

A time of adoration follows and Tantum Ergo is sung.

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, you have given us the eucharist as the memorial of your suffering and death. May our worship of this sacrament of your body and blood  help us to experience the salvation you have won for us and the peace of the kingdom where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Benediction is given, and at the conclusion, the following Litany is sung:

We have denied our responsibility for others and shown indifference to their suffering and plight. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have worshipped the image of ourselves in our achievements without gratitude to you.  Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

In our envious spirit, we have been reduced to competition instead of cooperation with each other. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

By comparing ourselves with others, we have not embraced and appreciated our own blessing. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have harbored resentment against others, long after they have asked forgiveness. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

In our misguided search for perfection, we have sadly grown intolerant of human weakness. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have been careless in our work, and failed to put our priorities into place with the Gospel. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have held the best of our possessions for ourselves and given token contributions to the poor and needy. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have used sexuality to manipulate and control others rather than as an expression of love and care. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy

We have gorged ourselves with food and drink to excess while our brothers and sisters went to bed hungry;. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

Our Father…….

For three nights we have gathered to reflect upon the pervasive power and presence of sin in our lives, and in the society in which we live because of it. I have proposed to you antidotes to those sins which we might as well call virtues. The virtue we possess and must nurture in our lives is bred from the habits of a lifetime. These virtues are more than ideas; they are a way of life. The movement from understanding them to living them is the very stuff of conversion. 

1. You can recognize a virtuous person because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Prideis insecurity. Proud and Arrogant behavior compensates for deep misgivings about one’s true value. When we believe that we are worthy, that all human life is worthy, there is a deep reservoir of living water on which to draw. No need to be the center of attention, because we have been attentive to our own center. No need to be impatient with others because we know we share the same short comings. These people are recognized because they are not out to be recognized. They listen to others because they respect the worthiness of others. They grow old gracefully because looking young is not what makes you feel worthy. This person wakes up every morning knowing exactly what they are: a child of God.

2. You can recognize a virtuous person because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Envyis the failure to admire and emulate the beauty of everything and everyone else. There is no cheap imitation in their lives. They do not want anything except the very best for others. This virtuous person is always wide eyed in wonder and delight, never squint eyed in resentment.

3. You can recognize a virtuous person because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Angeris consumptive and useless. Vengeance or Revenge is far from them, for they recognize the destructive power of that evil. Indignation is their response to what is wrong and the only anger in their hearts is that indignation on behalf of others rather than service to one’s self. This person is recognized as a friend of the poor and defender of people without power or status. They get mad for the right reasons, and they know when to shout and when to whisper.

4. You can recognize a virtuous person because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Slothrejects the wonder and goodness of everything God has made by saying, “Who cares? They expend their energy for others, are filled with compassion and they are content and comfortable with themselves as God made them, holy and good. They plant seeds and wait, knowing that the planting is their job and the harvest if God’s. They have peace which surpasses all understanding.

5. You can recognize a virtuous person because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Gluttony is living to eat instead of eating to live.  They turn every meal into a sacrament and they commune with friends to savor every moment rather than ever meal. They never forget that food is a gift, that less is always more, and that what seems like too little is always more than enough in the presence of God.

6. You can recognize the virtuous person because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Lustis love of self, and so they never take those who love them for granted. Considerate and thoughtful, knowing that physical attraction is rooted in emotional intimacy and tangible tenderness. Holy Intimacy in love is always Intimacy with the Holy.

7. You can recognize a virtuous person because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Greedbecause they remember that desire is both a blessing and a curse. Wanting things for them is no sin if those things are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. They are free of possession. They love life, not things. They do not serve money, money serves them so that they can serve others. They are always stewards of God’s gifts.

For all their glamour, the Seven Deadly Sins are really just seven fallen angels.

Worthiness is the quiet, unspoken antidote to pride;

Emulation, not envy is what makes us all students of beauty and truth;

Indignation is how we turn self-serving anger into a passion for change;

Fidelity and trust is how we keep monogamy from becoming monotonous;

Communion is how food become fellowship with another and with God;

Wanting wisely is how desire gets bent into useful shapes; and

Contentment is how we let things be and trust God Providence to restore all things to goodness.

Praise to God, the source of all our goodness.

Praise to Jesus Christ, the Word Made Flesh,

the path of Virtue for the Saved.

Praise to the Holy Spirit, the giver life who fills us with Joy.

In the name of the Father, the Son and of the Holy Spirit, let us be embraced by the power of grace, conversion, and peace.

Amen.

February 19, 2023 “The Journey To Jerusalem.”

This evening, tomorrow, and Thursday, we are going to make a pilgrimage, a journey to Jerusalem along with Jesus and his disciples. Chapters 9 to 19 of Luke’s Gospel are a single unit in which Luke has Jesus gather about him those who closest and most faithful; those he would now instruct in a very direct and personal way. Jesus has finished his mission to the crowds, and he sets face toward Jerusalem knowing fairly well what would happen there. As yet, the disciples do not know, and perhaps that is better since they listen more openly without any great anxiety about what is going to happen at the end of the journey.

While we are together these three evenings, I am going to read those ten chapters to you, and we will imagine that we are walking along on the way to Jerusalem, which for us these days is Holy Week. The verses of these chapters will come up again during the summer months of this year, and perhaps having listened and prayed our way through these chapters now, they come alive like never before when you hear them in the summer.

What Jesus does is propose some virtues that are necessary for being faithful followers and for remaining his disciples. In some of the episodes, those virtues are very obvious, in a few it will take some reflection to understand what he proposes. As I have lived with these verses and preached from them for 45 years, I have come up with a list of 19 virtues or characteristics by which we can identify disciples of Jesus Christ. At the end of the evening, I am going to pass out a list of them, and you can use that list to guide yourself and to listen to these chapters on your own. I would suggest that you will get more out of this mission if your read those ten chapters with the list at your side tomorrow and the next day while you are at home. Just to get you started, the characteristics I see that Jesus proposes and the virtues he would want in his disciples are: Poverty, Joy, Mercy, Hospitality, Persevering, Rich Fearless, Zealous Saved Humble, Prudent, Watchful, Wise, Aware, Dutiful, Grateful, Persistent, Justified, and Repentant. Let’s get started and watch how this unfolds.

Read 9: 51-62.

Now those who would follow Jesus are a people called to poverty. They are not called to take on a second job, but rather to make following Jesus everything so completely, that it reorders all other duties. “I will be your follower wherever you go.” Says that man who speaks for us, and the response of Jesus proposes Poverty. Now the “poverty” that Jesus commends to his followers is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved. Poverty in the Gospel is not a social problem, some ill to be solved, cured, and wiped out by an economic system that is “just” The poverty that makes us uneasy, stirs our passion, and calls into question our economics, laws and our consumer culture is an issue of Justice. Poverty that Jesus commends to his followers is a way of life, not a problem to be solved. One is the consequence of injustice, the other is a consequence of a life style and a new way of relating to things and to others.

There is a test of poverty. It has nothing to do with annual income. It has to do with what can be shared. If your car is too expensive to let someone use, it’s too expensive. If your computer is too delicate for anyone else to use, it’s too good. If your sweater is too good for your sister to wear, it’s too good. The point is not that you have a certain make and model of car, or computer, or designer named sweater. The point is, if any of it separates you from your neighbor, it is a violation of poverty. This has nothing to do with what you may own or how much, but the moment it become a problem, you’re in gospel trouble. You see, it’s not about justice, it is about poverty.

It might be “just” to say that someone doesn’t have the ear to use your stereo because they do not share your refined taste. It might be “just” to think that someone is too fat to look good in your sweater, and all that may be true. But, you are not poor at that point, you are just truthful. The moment you start finding reasons for not sharing what you have, you are no longer living the virtue of poverty which Jesus proposes is essential for those who would follow him. You may have good taste. You may have good sense. You may be law-abiding, honest, and truthful, but you are not poor, and you are in trouble with the Gospel. We are not called to be caseworkers making decisions about who should have what, who deserves what, and what will help someone and what will not. That is what social agencies do. What is asked of us is compassion which is an expression of poverty. God is poor; God shares the sun and the rain on good and bad alike.

Life today is complicated, but the Gospel is not complicated for those who believe. Jesus still looks for some to follow him, to live the mystery of poverty. Let’s keep moving along with Jesus.

Read 10, 1-12 and 17-20

Notice how Jesus sends them out – with nothing: poor. With nothing to worry about, nothing to lose, nothing to pack, carry, or slow them down, they are free. And that quality of freedom from worry and the possessive concerns that seem to weigh down the rich whose stuff is too good to loan and share is called JOY. Notice that attitude in the disciples when they return. It says, “they returned rejoicing.” Then, lest they think that the joy has something to do with what they have done, Jesus goes on immediately to say: “Do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” You see, it is who they are that matters, no what they do. This was for them, and is still for us a constant challenge. We keep getting the WHAT mixed up with the WHO, and so we shape our identity by what we do rather than by who we are. This starts a bad cycle of thinking. We measure our worth or the worth of another by what we earn, where we work, what we have accomplished, what we drive and how big the house is.

This thinking is at odds with the Gospel. Discipleship is not so much what we do as who we are. Being a disciple is what we must become, and that happens first by what we are not by what we do. If it’s just a matter of doing something, then discipleship is just another job, one more thing on the list of what have to get done. The doing comes from the being. 

Not too long ago I was listening to a eulogy at a funeral home in Norman, and someone was speaking about the deceased. On and on it went about what the man had done, where he worked, for whom, and for how long. I began to think I was going to be the next on dead before he sat down! I was groaning inside because that was not who that man was, all that talk was what he did, and the man we were honoring was far more than where he worked. To me that was all insignificant since I never knew the man until he had retired. He was a holy man, a just man, a kind man. Those things had nothing to do with his work and what his job accomplished.

Disciples of Jesus are full of joy sent on a mission as emissaries of God. What Christ wants is that others will see him in us. But what does the world get? It is a troubling question. A world that longs for a loving, forgiving God of mercy too often gets a God of judgment, revenge, and punishment. A world that longs for a God of patience and understanding often gets intolerance and impatience. As disciples we re called to be poor, and the consequence of that poverty when we embrace it is Joy. We have Joy because we are free of anxious concerns and worries about things that have nothing to do with who we are; that have nothing to do with the wonderful news that our names are written in heaven.  Poverty and Joy are the first two attitudes by which the disciple lives in this world.

Read 10, 25-37

Poverty, Joy, and now Mercy. Disciples of Jesus know this quality deep within their being. It is a quality of generosity and compassion. It is not just exceptional moments or a response to disasters, but a quality that is consistent and present all the time. The disciple of Jesus does not just show up when a tornado blows through. Nor do they just learn the name of a neighbor when their house burns down. They are always aware of human need, and never measure out limits to their compassion, concern, and assistance. “Take care of him. If there is more cost I will repay you upon my return.” It is never a matter of whether or not those in need deserve assistance. The disciple of Jesus is not a social worker concerned with the solutions of social problems. The disciple of Jesus knows Mercy, and can see the face of God in another human being, and they will not pass by. Mercy is that quality of love and compassion when there is every reason for there to be none.

Random acts of kindness can generate a tidal wave of goodness. There is a story told about a woman who drove up to a toll booth and handed the attendant the money for seven cars instead of just her own. “I’m paying for mine and the next six cars.” she said. As each car pulled up to the booth, the attendant announced, “The lady in the red car paid your toll. Have a nice day.”  That is simply samaritan love at work: Mercy. The lady had no idea who was behind her. It did not make any difference. The story of Samaritan Love offers a challenge to all who believe in Jesus Christ and would be his disciples to make the practice of random acts of kindness their routine, not an occasional exception; the rule of their lives, not just at toll booths, but hour by hour on the phone, at the desk, in the car, at the table, in the classroom, or in the kitchen, wherever there is another in whom we may see the face of God. Mercy is indiscriminate, or it isn’t Mercy at all. It does not measure or limit. It is never exclusive nor reserved for someone special. Mercy for a disciple of Jesus, is something very near, already in our mouths, and in our hearts, and it simply waits to be carried out.

Read: 10, 38-42

 Disciples of Jesus are poor, joyful, merciful, and hospitable. They never forget that they are perpetual guests of a loving and divine host. As guests, our possessiveness and proprietary attitude toward this world’s goods and resources are kept in check. As disciples we are clear in our minds and hearts that it is the Word of God that really provides nourishment for us, and a life devoted to hearing that word is the first of all concerns. In some ways, Martha and Mary might be seen as one person – the disciple who received Jesus Christ. There is a balance proposed here between doing and being, the disciple knows the difference.

In an age and culture that glorifies the workaholic, and rewards with high praise (and usually low wages) t hose who revel in 60 and 70 hour work weeks, there is a serious challenge deep in this story. Work becomes an idol because it can produce the much sough-after prized of comfort, pleasure, and success. In the meantime relationships disintegrate, not just the relationship with God, but between parents and children and between spouses and neighbors as well.

A call to integrate work and play, or action and prayer is what disciples of Jesus hear in this Gospel walking with Jesus to Jerusalem. Having just told the story of Mercy in the Good Samaritan parable, Jesus quickly reminds us that this discipleship is not all about doing, it is also about being. In this case, being hospitable, being good guests, and gracious hosts. So often in other places in the Gospels, Jesus arrives as the guest, and ends up acting the host. His disciples living his example can hardly not be the same.

Read: 11, 1-13

Poverty, Joy, Mercy, Hospitality, and one more for tonight. At first glance you might want to think it’s prayerfulness, but that’s too easy, and that is something to be presumed. I do not think the disciples are asking Jesus to give them words. They know how to pray. They all grew up in a synagogue. They want to know the secret of successful prayer. They have seen it at work in Jesus, and they want to know the secret, and that secret is perseverance. The real secret to effective prayer is not using the right words, the right formula, or the right sequence of days and dates. It is perseverance in the relationship no matter how things are going.

Everything in our culture and this age would make this look foolish. Throwing away relationships that fail to make us feel good all the time, a relentless search and demand for perfection in others, and a growing sense of entitlement that makes us impatient and intolerant of anything that is slow or a pleasure that is not instant make the disciple whose life is formed around perseverance loo oddly out of place. But so it shall be for those who have set their face on Jerusalem and chosen to be formed by Jesus Christ along the way.

Those who say, “Lord, teach us to pray,” are not seeking a repetition of words, but a breakthrough to the one thing necessary to keep them on their journey. It is the one unique element of Luke’s lesson on this issue, and constant theme in his whole Gospel: the Holy Spirit. That is what will be given to those who ask, the very Spirit and Life of God. It won’t be a matter of the little things with which we all sometimes clutter up our prayers: with passing wants, needs, and fears. It will be the Spirit who can and will sustain us through all temptations, trials, and fears. This is what Jesus has ultimately come to give us, to teach us, and share with us. Perhaps the best prayer of all, and the most sincere prayer is not, “Our Father who art in heaven….” but, “Come Holy Spirit.”

Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament now takes place

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Read: 12, 32-48

Fearless is the disciple of Jesus, and this stop on the Jerusalem journey with Jesus gives us the next attribute I want to talk about with you. If you did some reading on your own, you may notice that I skipped one from the list, “rich.” Three nights will just not get through every one in great detail, but if you read the Gospel text, you know that just before this passage in chapter twelve, there has been a lesson through a great parable about a man whose life is empty in spite of all his accumulated things. He is a fool because he can think about is how to hang on to it. The disciple of Jesus knows how to set worthy priorities. Disciples know that they are recipient of many gifts, none of which is their own possession; that everything belongs to God and simply on loan for a very short time for the sake of completing the mission of Jesus. What we carry into the next life is what we have done with what we have been given. The disciple uses what they have not to get more, but to be more: more faithful, more generous, more like God, more concerned, and more responsible for the needs of an another.

So now we come the next attribute of a disciple: fearlessness. If we observe the earliest human behavior in the youngest of children, the first fear deep in the human psyche is the fear of abandonment: the fear of being alone. It prompts the first human cry, and it is soothed only by the reassurance of touch. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to remember our own early and lasting fear. That fear of being alone quickly causes other fears. If I’m alone, then no one is going to take care of me. If I’m alone, no one is going to feed me, give me shelter, protect me. Behavior, then begins to address the fear.

If I am alone or might be alone, then I had better take care of myself. The fear that once alone there might not be enough of whatever I am needing triggers the hoarding, the possessiveness, and all kinds of aggressive behavior and attitudes. These are addressed by Jesus in the verses we just heard. Sell and Give are the directives easy only for those without fear. The confidence that,a even if we feel alone, the master will return, calms the anxious disciple with the assurance that there is always plenty. An “inexhaustible treasure” is the way Jesus refers to what awaits those who will live without fear.

That church Luke is writing to at first was surely troubled and anxious about the absence of Jesus. Slow to believe, slow to trust that Spirit which could settle their fears and their sense of Christ’s absence, this story give us Luke’s counsel to those who have coming anxious in the waiting, and are troubled by doubt and fear. The disciple without fear attends, waits, watches for the Master’s return, confident that it shall happen, and that all will be well.

The life Jesus calls us to would certainly be frightening if we were to be in it alone. But he never asks that. The community he builds with his words is not based in this world of fear and hoarding, but in the one true home to which he calls us. In that place we do not need all the things we are told daily we must have out of fear that we will have to take care of ourselves because no one else will, or stockpile more and more stuff because there’s not enough to go around. We are given the gift of freedom — freedom from fear. Embracing that gift, we can look ahead not for something bad to happen, but for the master to return and treat us as friends, not as servants.

Read: 12, 49-53

To get the attribute of a disciple in this text, you have to look closely at Jesus to see what it is about him disciples are to imitate. It all it ZEAL, but not in the sense of a fanatic, but rather in the sense of one whose life has meaning, purpose, and destiny. It is living with a focus and firm sense of one’s identity and purpose in life. Someone who can say: “I have come to set the earth on fire.” knows what they are about, who they are, and what purpose they have life. that is the virtue one must find and cultivate as a disciple. Those who zeal in their lives are people who a purpose, who know who they are, where they are going, and what they have to work with. 

No aimless drifting, no going after this or after that one day after another, no shopping around for religion, nor picking and choosing in an effort to justify oneself or avoid the challenges of doctrine, truth, or conversion in one’s life. Zeal is a virtue rooted in an expectation that something is asked of us, that there is a purpose for our lives -each of us, and a destiny to which we are all called. The zealous are focused on the direction of their lives, their future, their purpose and their goal. For the disciple of Jesus Christ, that destiny is the Reign of God for which they are headed with a sense of urgency and purpose. They know how to get there, and they know what gets in the way. There is something vibrant about them that is eager and expectant, vigilant and ready for the Lord’s coming. This is not the “jesus is coming….look busy syndrome or frantic do-goodism that is often vague and guilt-driven. It is rather a devotion to the tasks of prayer, ministry, and service consistent with one’s relationship to Jesus it is a life driven by the glad and certain anticipation that just as the Lord Jesus has already come bringing changes in every dimension of human existence so he will return to confirm and resume the royal rule of God.

Not many people are convinced that Jesus is coming soon even though you might see a bumper sticker now and then that says so. Few are inclined to reflect upon the second coming of Jesus at all, much less do it with glad eagerness. But those who live with zeal find meaning to their lives, read the signs of the times, and are always in the presence of God. They know who they are and where they are headed.

Read: 14, 1,7-14

Now those of you who are picky and watching the list should give me a break. I am passing over another on the list I gave you. It is virtue I called “Saved.” Before I push on, let’s simply remember that the word “salvation” is linked to the word “salve”, a healing ointment. In other words, disciples are saved, meaning they are those who are healed. Saved disciples are healed from all that holds them back. Salvation sets one free. Think of it this way: the Israelites were “saved” from the Egyptians — they were set free from all that kept them from God. The saved are people coming home to loving gaze of God. They know that only God can save, and they can do nothing to save themselves, and that leads to this virtue we now find in Chapter 14: Humble.

The protocol from the Banquet of Heaven is being set here, and the way Jesus sees it, there is to be a radical departure from the typical system used in the ancient world, and certainly not done with in our world. Guests would be seated according to their status or importance in our society, and it was a highly stratified society where places at table carried great social weight, and it was a serious matter if one judge their place incorrectly. Rank and status were based upon comparisons with others. The Kingdom protocol that Jesus announces on the way to Jerusalem clearly marks a shift from the Mediterranean world’s custom of reciprocity and social standing.

We have all grown up in the art of being politically correct which teaches that we should bend or skirt the truth in order to avoid conflict. We have learned the lesson that we establish our identity and measure our worth and success by comparing ourselves with other: the more you have, the better you are. The more power you wield, the stronger you are. The more control you have, the more successful you become. The radical and revolutionary character of the Kingdom of God sees wealth and possessions as gifts of God, not privilege or right of status or family.

Disciples of Jesus know that humility does not mean being a doormat in relationships, at work or in public. It means knowing one’s rightful place in the reign of God and it means knowing that it is a gift. The humble disciple finds their sense of self and their identity in God, not in comparing themselves with others. This kind of humility leads to service, not power. The humble then are free, free from fear, free from clinging to fame and fortune that stifle depth and development.

Part of this parable is addressed to guests and part to hosts.

In speaking to guests, Luke suggests that humility is not a matter of pretending that one is “not worthy”. but rather facing the truth that all is gift, and the only proper attitude is to be grateful. The proud think they are worth more because of their achievements, status, wealth, or power, all of which they may well have. Yet they miss the point: all these things they have are for the service of others – for no other purpose whatsoever.

In speaking to hosts, the message comes from a different perspective. Inviting the right people to dinner is crucial. For the host humility calls for a guest list that includes the hungry. The people around the table are those who in truth need to be there.The host does not invite them because of what they can give to the host with by way of favor or by way of being looked upon as a “saint.” Rather, the humble host knows the truth that what worldly possessions they may have are in their possession not because they are better than anyone else, but because they have been chosen to be instruments of God’s love….and where there is love, there is God.

Read: 14, 25-33

At first hearing of these verses, we might think it’s about renouncing all things and taking up a cross; but I don’t think that is what Jesus is leading up to. The later verses are the most important when it comes to digging deeper into this text. Remember, first, discipleship is about being something, then, from that comes doing something. The disciple is always asking: “What kind of person should I be?” rather than “What should I do?” The doing will take care of itself once the being is in place.

So these verses take us back to the principal and Jesus suggests that a disciple must be prudent. Now, those of us who learned our catechism the old way may remember the “Cardinal Virtues”: Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude. They come to us from the Book of Wisdom Chapter 8 where it says: “If one loves justice, the fruits of her works are virtues; for she teaches moderation and prudence, justice and fortitude, and nothing in life is more useful than these.” Ancient Greeks, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, and Bernard of Clairveaux all developed though about these virtues as central to good moral living.

When Jesus puts this ancient wisdom into his formation program for disciples, he suggests that his disciples will be people of action, not cautious, timid, frightened, mediocre, and inactive. These are not qualities of Prudence. In fact, they are just the opposite. Prudence seeks the best way to do the right thing. The point is the Doing! This is a virtue of action, not passive caution.

The obstacles to Prudence are what Jesus confronts in his formation of disciples: procrastination, negligence, hesitation, inconsistency, rashness (like the people in the examples of the gospel) and rationalization. All of these are excuses for doing nothing or for doing the wrong thing.

In terms of the Cardinal Virtues, Prudence if first. Prudence enables us to avoid acting against justice because of greed or favorites. Prudence prevents us from acting against temperance by keeping good desires, like food and sex from running wild and taking control of our lives or controlling wrong desire, like revenge. Prudence presents one from acting against fortitude by finding a way between excessive fear and blind recklessness. We are called to be Prudent which always means being a people of action: wise, accountable, reasonable, and responsible.  This is a serious issue for disciples. Prudence guides and motivates the prophet. It always sees the big picture of life rather than just the little stuff. Prudent disciples ask questions, inquire, probe, wonder, and pray

Read: 15, 1-32

Watchful is the disciple of Jesus. The watch, the hope, the wait is important. The man looking for lost sheep doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. Never mind leaving 99 in danger to look for one. Never mind that he has probably done it before. He goes off looking and watching to find. The woman looking for her coin is not concerned about anything except finding that coin. She has one thing in mind – finding the coin. She would have swept anyway, but now she sweeps night and day uninterested in the fact that she has nine others just like it. In the third story, when coupled with the first two, it is the father that matters. He is watchful for that son to return. He has not gone back to business as usual. He has not said to the rest of the household: “He’s always going to be that way, forget it.” He has not closed the door to the future, changed the locks on the house, nor cut off any hope of change or growth or reconciliation in himself, his first son, or the lost son. He is simply watchful, and because of it, he does not miss the chance he gets to have the party. I’ve wondered sometimes about that fatted calf. Was there always one being readied for a party, or was he living in watchful anticipation that it would be used for just such a purpose?

The disciple of Jesus is watchful and alert to any opportunity for finding anyone that is lost. No matter what others may say, no matter that others may come along to replace what has been lost. The disciple knows the loss and watches for the chance to seize and celebrate the return or reconciliation.

Reflecting on this Gospel has done more to develop my attitude about capital punishment than any other of the sayings of Jesus. The realization that killing an offender ends al hope of their repentance, is really something to think about. It takes from them more than life. It takes away any hope or opportunity to repent. Giving up on them with the thought that “they’ll never change” is a sad excuse for our judgments when we know how painful it would be were others to say the same thing about us and take away any chance to grow, change, and repent. It seems to me that if we take away another’s opportunity to repent and change, we take the obligation of doing so upon ourselves.

In the lives of these people in Luke’s gospel, there is no effort to blame or punish the lamb or the son. There is one virtue that marks them all. Watchfulness. They look for and wait for the opportunity to restore the unity that is broken, and they never give up nor do anything to eliminate that opportunity. Always on the look-out, the disciple remains watchful and vigilant for every opportunity to extend the mercy of God and the embrace of God’s reign no only to those deserving, but to those some insist will never change, never be worthy, nor ever find their way home. For the celebration to begin, it takes two movements: one, the return, and two, the welcome. In neither case can there be a heart that is hardened by disappointment, anger, or stubbornness. For this grace we should pray.

Read: 16, 1-13

It is the wisdom of this shrewd servant that Jesus puts before us, not his behavior. This is what he praises, the wisdom. The parable is addressed directly to the disciples. That’s our first clue that we should pay attention. Wisdom as Jesus proposes through this strange story is about vision, a sense of the future and the cleverness to not be caught off guard or surprised. There is nothing naive or passive about a wise man, but rather a kind of far-seeing, focused vision that makes them trustworthy with little things as well as big things. I think this Gospel proposes that for all the dangers in possessions, it is possible to manage goods in ways appropriate to life in the Kingdom of God. To do that takes a kind of Wisdom that is seen in faithful attention to frequent and familiar tasks of each day however small and insignificant they might be. The one faithful today with nickels and dimes is the one to be trusted with big accounts. Yet it is easy to be indifferent toward small obligations while sincerely believing oneself fully trustworthy in major matters, but that is not Gospel Wisdom. The disciple knows what is coming and is wise enough to be prepared.

Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament now takes place.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Read: 16, 19-31

Like you, I have heard this parable countless times. It is so familiar that any of us could finish the story if it were stopped after a lives of introduction. Over the years, I have come to respect this one in torment, at least to suspect that he was a decent man. After all, when his request is turned down by Abraham, he is at least thoughtful enough to care about his brothers and hope that they might not share his torment. It is important to realize that he is not condemned because he is rich. He finds himself in never ending torment because he never saw Lazarus. It isn’t that he refused or that he did something evil. It is simply that he never saw Lazarus.

One of the saddest aspects of this parable and one of the most sobering is the fact that the rich man raised his eyes and saw Lazarus only when it was too late for him to redeem himself. Insulated as we are these days by our busy lives and the demands of our responsibilities the needs of others rarely enter our thoughts. We justify ourselves by insisting that we’ve done nothing wrong, when the truth is we’ve done nothing at all, which is exactly what put the rich man in such torment. We sanitize poverty and its primary cause – Injustice – by hiding in privatized religion. This age in which we live has reduced religion to worship on Sunday and a very small area of morality – mostly sexual. We teach our children: Be kind. Be chaste. Try to stay married. Don’t quarrel in front of your children Pray. Nowhere do we hear: BE JUST or BE PASSIONATE, or DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE INJUSTICE THAT OPPRESSES MOST OF THIS WORLD”S POPULATION.

Being tidy, temperate, and chaste is nice, but it is not enough to make one fully a good person or a disciple of Jesus. Every generation raises up another church-going Christian who makes a fortune off underpaid workers who have no health care, no rights and no hope. Being unaware of of injustice is not compatible with disciples of Jesus. They will be AWARE of every Lazarus in every generation and nation. Religion of disciples of Jesus is love and justice. Religion is love of neighbor as one’s self. Religion is blessing the food at meals and bringing the blessing of food to those without it. Religion is worshiping God; on one’s knees as it were, but on one’s knees washing the feet of the poor. “The poor you will have always with you” is not an excuse for saying: “That’s just the way it is.” It is a reason for never becoming unaware or ceasing to look everywhere for them. They will always be there, so we must always find them, be aware of them, and never cease being aware of the sufferings of others.

The great abyss of regret and unrealized good intentions threatens us all, and it continues to keep us from one another all too often. Disciples of Jesus hear the master’s words. AWARE of his presence and His Gospel, they become aware of injustice as corporate sin, as evil done by government, business, industry, university, and sometimes by church. They recognize its evil and are not unaware of their share in it and responsibility for it. They do not insulate themselves with a puny, private religion. They are always aware of the gifts of God’s love and mercy they are given to dispense.

Read: 17, 5-10

Almost always we hear this parable from the side of the master, and when that happens, we miss the point of this story told as an instruction to servant/disciples on the way to Jerusalem. The story placed as it is reminds us of our role as servants. The story speaks of duty and it proposes that a disciple is not only aware, but dutiful.

From the time of our mythic ancestors called Adam and Eve, creatures and servants have attempted the role reversal so evident in this parable. Faith gives us the insight to see who we are: servants in the manner of Jesus who did not cling to anything godly, but emptied himself and assumed entirely the role of the servant/slave. When the disciple views what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, then the responsible disciple give back what is due – which is what “duty” is all about: giving what is due. It is not something extra, nor is it something for which congratulations should be in order. It is simply a matter of recognizing what is due. Discipling, in this sense, is done the, not because God deserve it, but because a disciple recognizes that God is God and we are servants. That is the way it has been since the beginning.

So being a faithful disciple provides no grounds for triumphalism or feelings of moral superiority, no should it anticipate special honor or appreciation. A servant serves the maser. That is what a servant does. It is the servant’s duty, because the master is due service. This kind of thinking and self awareness is part of the very fabric of the disciples identity. It is rooted in the virtues we have already explored: Humility, Watchfulness, Awareness, Wisdom, and Prudence. They all provide the character that brings one to fulfill one’s duty.

In the disciple of Jesus there is no room for “look what I have done” attitude. In fact, there is no time for such vainglory, because there is always more to do. Created and sustained in every breath by God, we know that we owe everything to God. The cry of the apostles: “Increase our faith” which began this section reflects their awe at the enormity of what Jesus asks of them. Their cry is made all the more intense by verses just before these in which Jesus speaks about forgiveness with his expectation that there will be no limit to forgiveness. Seventy times Seven is what he says there. No limits, no excuse for refusing to forgive such is the duty of a disciple. They know their place, their relationship to God, and they may never assume the divine role.

Read: 17, 11-19

This is certainly a story about boundaries disregarded. It makes no difference that those unclean are to be avoided. It makes no difference that they live across the border, and it makes no difference that they are samaritans. Where there is faith, there is healing. That is the issue here, and faith is not limited to just the “right” people: those who live on the right side of the border or those who are nice and clean. With Jesus Christ, and for His disciples, there are no boundaries when it comes restoring those who have been excluded, but boundaries is not exactly what this is all about, and this story, told on the way to Jerusalem, puts before us a contrast from which we may draw another of the disciple virtues.

Luke proposes a distinction here between the nine and the one: a distinction we might describe as physical healing and spiritual healing. Notice that the healing of physical infirmity did not bring salvation. Although the nine who did not return to Jesus were indeed cured physically, there is no mention at all of their spiritual healing or salvation. On the other hand, the one who returns to Jesus, the one who acknowledges what God had done for him through Jesus Christ is the one who is saved by faith. Because of his gratitude, by which he gave evidence of his faith, this grateful leper was enabled to experience salvation beyond his physical cure. 

It is gratitude that Luke singles out as a virtue to be found in disciples of Jesus Christ. The grateful recognition of God’s’ initiative that brings healing and salvation is the surest sign of faith. Faith for the disciple of Jesus is not a matter of rules kept nor prayers said. It is a matter of Gratitude in response to the initiative God has taken on our behalf. Disciples are Grateful. They recognize what God as done for them. They return again and again to the feet of the master and speak his praises as the Gospel describes it. This is a public recognition. Take note. It is not something the leper does quietly in his heart or at home in his room. I want you to make a connection here to our Sunday Eucharist because this is exactly what it is all about. Without gratitude there is believable faith. Without expressing that gratitude like this man in the story, there is nothing assured about salvation. The disciple of Jesus is found at the master’s feet giving praise and thanks. That is a great description of Sunday Mass, and perfect reason and explanation of why we gather. 

Gratitude, for a disciple of Jesus, is a way of life, not a passing emotion. It is a life-changing conversion as public as a known leper throwing himself at the feet of Jesus Christ in a Samaritan town. We are not talking about personal, private stuff here. Disciples formed in Luke’s tradition are a people who have known what it means to be accepted, included, healed, saved, and graced by a God who ignores all boundaries, and their gratitude is contagious.

Read: 19, 1-10

We are at the end of the journey. The Luke’s school of discipleship is coming to an end. It began with these words in Chapter 9: “Now it happened that as the time drew near for him to be taken up, he resolutely turned his face towards Jerusalem….” But notice how it ends. This visit to the house of Azcchaeus wass not a delay or a detour on the journey to Jerusalem. This was and is the very purpose of the journey. “The Son of man came to seek and to save what was lost.” Luke will get Jesus to Jerusalem in another couple of verses; but that city is not where Jesus was going. He was, and he still is headed for our homes to stay with us, be with us, live with us. The final virtue of a disciple toward which so many of the others have pointed is the virtue that brings Jesus, attracts Jesus, draws and invites him: the virtue of Repentance.

Zacchaeus stands before us in sharp contrast to that crowd who can’t quite see Jesus because they are too busy looking at and criticizing Zacchaeus. They have shut him out, and in their righteous critique of his life, they have also shut out Jesus. Zacchaeus unlike the crowd that can see Jesus, wants to see Jesus, and is willing to go to some inconvenience and take some risk to do so. Never mind his dignity, stature, or what he might look like in the eyes of others, he will see Jesus, and he will do whatever it takes; and Jesus will see him. You can almost see the two of them walking over to the house – walking away from the crowd, their backs turned away from the whispering, accusing, blaming crowd who do not hear themselves called “Children of Abraham,” and will find no salvation in their homes.

It is the crowd that is indicted by this story. They were so put off by their supposition concerning Zacchaeus that they failed to “see” that in terms of the righteousness of God they were as “lost” as anyone, and were dierted from “seeing” Jesus and gladly welcoming him to their salvation. 

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus announces three times that salvation has come.

1. At the synagogue when his turn came and he rolled up the scroll and sat down saying: “Today this message of salvation is being fulfilled” That happened in Nazareth and it caused a riot.
2. Then he says it in this passage in Jericho. He will say it one more time.
3. He is hanging on a cross, and he says it again to a dying thief hanging at his side.

What it takes to experience this “salvation” is seen in these two, Zacchaeus and the thief who are outside the symbolic synagogue: Repentance.

In Zacchaeus we see it best. It is not something he did, but something he became that brought the consequences. He became a “just” man. It is not just feelings of regret. Repentance bears fruit not only for the household of Zacchaeus, but also for the poor who will be beneficiaries of his conversion and, as well, those people whom he may have defrauded. Repentance has more than personal effects. There is a domestic, social, and economic dimension as well. In Luke, salvation is not just a matter of the soul. It touches the whole human family and all human life. In the great story about to unfold of Jesus and the cross, the presence of the Risen Christ makes noble and holy the home and the table of the faithful disciple. It happened in Jericho, it happened in Emmaus, and it can happen here in Union City if we will be his disciples. 

March 19, 20, 21, 22, 2011 Saint Peter Catholic Church Pine Bluff, AK

Genesis 12: 1-4 + Psalm 33 + 2 Timothy 1: 8-10 + Matthew 17: 1-9

“All of us are engaged to one degree or another in a personal, ongoing battle with sin and vice, although we may not think of the conflicts with our nature in those terms. Although our anger doesn’t make most of us murderers, our lust doesn’t make most of us rapists, and our greed and envy do not make most of us outright criminals, they together with gluttony, arrogance, and sloth, often make us and those who have to live with us miserable. Moreover, when we give in to these passions we debase our humanity. Our failure to live up to the best we can morally be is as tragic as the unhappiness our evil causes.” There is a social dimension to all of this as well for which we are responsible. It works its way through our commerce our entertainment, and our whole culture. Pride, greed, and anger profoundly influence domestic and foreign policy. If we truly had generous and compassionate leaders who were imbued with the value of social stewardship rather than greed and ambition, we would not have tolerated the corporate scandals we have endured in the last ten years. “Every deadly sin fuels harmful social phenomena: lust-pornography; gluttony-substance abuse; envy-terrorism; anger-violence; sloth-indifference to the pain and suffering of others; greed-abuse of public trust; and pride-discrimination.”

These sins are about what it means to be human and humane, not about what it means to be perfect or “holy.” This is basic stuff. It concerns the core of what we are, of what we can become, and most importantly, of what we should aspire to be. In the end, the question of what we want to be has an answer most of us would quickly give: happy. We want to be happy. What those of us who share a common faith believe is that happiness is not dependent upon physical or material pleasure. In fact it is often hampered by it. “Our culture teaches that pleasure and possessions are happiness with the result that pleasure is often substituted for happiness and meaning in life.” When a crisis comes along that pleasure cannot resolve a secular person runs to the psycho-therapist. It is not so for us. We have a treasure of wisdom and tradition, teaching and revelation that leads us to a life of virtue and balance, holiness and joy. It is not that pleasure is inappropriate, but that it comes from character and virtue, and a right relationship of one’s self to others. That is where we shall find pleasure.

“If we do not take seriously our capacity for evil, we are unable to take seriously our capacity for good.” There will be no taking credit for the good that we do if we fail to accept the blame for the evil. The tradition I invite you to reflect upon This evening, tomorrow, and Tuesday evening is called “The Seven Deadly Sins” That tradition does not allow us to compartmentalize our lives. It reminds us that our lives are ours to make. Unlike our bodies so influenced by our genes; our souls, our spirit, and the lives they animate are free to be shaped by our choices. We can choose to be whole. There is more and better in us than we have chosen to become. Accepting the fact that we sin is a summons to life. 

We are always inventing gods. It seems to be a characteristic of our age and perhaps every age. The god most popular this day is a god who does not demand much of us, is certainly not a god that punishes, although we don’t mind a reward now and then. The sentimental god of most sappy religious pop music is a god that just pats us on the head like grandpa and sends us on our way. With a god like that, there is certainly no need to trouble one’s self about the devil but there’s the trouble. The devil’s best trick is to convince us that there is no devil.

We recognize evil in others, but if we ever want to see the face of sin, we must look in the mirror. All we see in others is it’s reflection from ourselves. The honest among us know that what we always criticize first in another is the very thing we dislike in ourselves. Sin is our secret from others. Only we know where and how deeply it has taken root in us. Saint John says: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” 

When we recognize and confess that sin and our inclination toward it is a part of our nature, and that we alone will never wholly eradicate it, there is at least something for us to do in our lives that will not in the end seem just futile and absurd. We can make sense of our lives because the existence of evil presents us with moral choices, and in making those choices, we form our character. We have been given our nature, but we choose our character. When we say someone is a good man or a good woman, we do not suggest that they are people in whom there is no inclination to evil, but rather that they are people who have wrestled and still wrestle with it and never give in because their quality and their goodness comes from the struggle. Those people are truly noble. 

“Morality is like art, said G.K. Chesterton, “it consists of drawing a line somewhere.” We live in an age in which no lines seem to be drawn at all, or those that have been drawn are being erased. In my 68th year of life and my 43rd year as priest I have come to recognize that an unhealed wound, a kind of sinful restlessness, afflicts humanity. Our humanity is losing much of its real glory and beauty. It is less and less a mirror of the creator. That’s what is going on in today’s Gospel – on that mountain top. Those apostles see the glory of God, the glory of God in humanity. It is possible, it is desirable. It is God’s will to have God’s glory revealed in human nature; not just his Son’s, but in all of us. I want to propose to you that if we can take our sinning seriously we might at least find that we can be interesting again, and so can life itself.

I invite you to give three evenings this week for the sake of the truth, three evenings in a church in front of the mirror for the sake of life itself; your life. Tonight it will be about Pride and Envy, tomorrow night about Anger and Sloth, Tuesday night about Greed, Gluttony, and Lust.  I’ve saved the best till last! I hope to see again for prayer tonight night when we might begin again to wonder about how it might be that the glory of God might again be revealed in human nature, in our nature, in our lives. It is not only Jesus who must reveal the glory of God, but everyone who bears the name of Christ and who lives the life of Christ.

PRIDE AND ENVY

Sunday evening Saint Peter Church Pine Bluff, AK

March 20, 2011

Opening Hymn:

Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament

……..a few moments of adoration

Reading 1 (Sirach 10 12-18, 22, 26)

“A reading from the Book of Ecclesiastes also called the Book of Sirach.

The first stage of pride is to desert the Lord and to turn one’s heart away from one’s Maker. Since the first stage of pride is sin, whoever clings to it will pour forth filth. This is why the Lord inflicts unexpected punishments on such people, utterly destroying them. The Lord has turned mighty princes off their thrones and seated the humble there instead. The Lord has lucked up the proud by the roots, and planted the lowly in their place. The Lord has overthrown the lands of the nations and destroyed them to the very foundations of the earth. Sometimes he has taken them away and destroyed them and blotted out their memory from the earth. Pride was not created for human beings……The rich, the noble, the poor, let them pride themselves on fearing the Lord.  Do not try to be smart when you do your work, do not put on airs when you are in difficulties. Better the hardworking who has plenty of everything, than the pretentious at a loss for a meal. My child, be modest in your self-esteem, and value yourself at your proper worth.”

The Word of the Lord.

Homily

When the church fathers made their list of sins, pride was always at the top of the list because it was idolatry – the first sin for the Jews is the beginning of all sin. There are all kinds of ways to describe the behavior that manifests pride. The proud are arrogant, haughty, conceited, egocentric, narcissistic, insolent, presumptuous and vain, and way more besides! We know when we are angry or greedy, but pride is more clever and subtle. Unique among the others, we are frequently unaware of pride. It shows itself in secret: in secret contempt and self-righteous judgment; in secret illegal and unethical behavior; in the smug attitude we have toward the weakness and failure of others as well as in a sense of privilege which marks our age so severely. The proud think they earn things which they then possess because of something they have done. You see, it’s all about them.

Pride easily finds a home among us because our culture predisposes us to competition, and that’s a bad thing! “Pride must be competitive, since it cannot concede first place to anyone even when its real wants are satisfied.” The games and the competitive world of commerce in which we find ourselves are natural breeding grounds for pride. “I’m number one.” “I made it.”  “It’s mine.” Now there’s nothing wrong with being one unless you can’t live with being number two. But the real problem here is the pronoun, that notion that it’s me, that I did it.

Now, part of the problem is language. We no longer use the word “pride” only to refer to idolatry. Today we use it carelessly to sometimes mean “self-esteem” which is not necessarily a bad thing. We tell our kids to take pride in themselves, to be proud of their work. We tell them, I hope, that we are proud of them. The result is a kind of semantic switch that gets this all mixed up in a kind of psycholinguistic soup. The result is that feelings of guilt are no longer interpreted as messages from God or signs of broken covenant. We are now allowed to think that it is a matter of low self esteem. So, pump up the old feel – good ego, and I’ll get over the guilt. Then the higher our self-esteem becomes, the more insulated we become from the pain of broken relationships. When you start thinking that way, you’ll end up with a moat around your soul, isolated, lonely, and distant from everything and everyone beautiful which is just where the proud person is always found. Lonely!

Perhaps the real truth is that the excessively proud person is really not in love with themselves at all, at least not in a healthy way, but actually suffers from the opposite malady. My experience with the puffed up people is that they are in fact excessively insecure. They are self-obsessed because they are always trying to prove something. They look down on others because they never look up to themselves. 

I have come to the conclusion that American Culture is not Christian. I think that is why radical Moslems do not want us near them. If we were really living like Christ, we would be easy companions with Islam. When they refer to us as “infidels” instead of getting all bent out of shape we might give some serious thought as to how much we really do seem like those pagan, infidel “Romans”. Like that dead culture, we worship perfection and power. We hate our imperfect lives and feel powerless in the face of impossible standards. These imperfections torment us, and our obsession with self-improvement leaves little time or energy for meaningful relationships. It’s Pride.

Now consider this: there is an answer to this deadly sin that eats at us day in and day out. It is simple, and it stares us right in the face, yet we do not recognize it. A more authentic and natural love of self is how pride is disarmed: in other words, Truth! Now, loving oneself is not the same as being in love with oneself. I am talking here about a new virtue called: WORTHINESS. You see, a worthy person has nothing to prove because worthiness cannot be earned. It can only be recognized. It is a gift. 

Years ago, I went to summer school in New Orleans at Loyola. The first morning in the dining room at the dorm my order came out with this small, milky-colored, grainy-looking pile of mush on one side of the eggs. “What’s that?” I asked the waitress.

“Them’s grits,” she said.

“But I didn’t order grits,” I said

“You don’t have to,” she replied. “They just come.”

Now, that’s the way it is with Worthiness. You don’t have to order it, and you can’t do anything to earn it. It just comes.

The Protestant work ethic that has so shaped this nation demands that we earn everything, and that’s a set up for pride.

Worthiness at its core is grace. Like true beauty, which is best described as the “effortless manifestation of inner peace,” true worthiness is the effortless manifestation of inner gratitude. We have forgotten that we are born good – at least I think that’s what we heard God say when he looked at all of this! We may make mistakes, but we are not a mistake. Imagine what this world would be like if more people felt not just good about themselves, but worthy. One of the most devastating and deadly realties in American life is our obsession with physical beauty. We live under an astonishing barrage of images whose message is, quite simply, “You don’t look so good, don’t you wish you did?” Image is everything. Having a look is not enough. One must have the look. How else do you explain that plastic surgery is the fastest-growing form of medicine? This is Roman culture, we are obsessed not with beauty and truth, but with perfection.

So, this “worthiness” I’m proposing is really just a new version of an old a trusted virtue: humility. The trouble is, “humility” too has gotten a bad language twist, and too often we think it has something to do with being soft and self-depreciating. That is ridiculous. To be humble is not to put oneself down. In fact thinking too little of oneself is also a manifestation of pride. The foundation of humility is truth. The sadness here is that we fail to take truth seriously: the truth about our worthiness, our goodness, and our inherent value and dignity.

Kneel for adoration

Reading 2 (James 3:14-18)

 “A reading from the Epistle of James.

Anyone who is wise or understanding among you should from a good life give evidence of deeds done in the gentleness of wisdom. But if at heart you have the bitterness of jealousy, or selfish ambition, do not be boastful or hide the truth with lies; this is not the wisdom that comes from above, but earthly, human and devilish. Wherever there are jealousy and ambition, there are also disharmony and wickedness of every kind; whereas the wisdom that comes down from above is essentially something pure; it is also peaceable kindly and considerate; it is full of mercy and  shows itself by doing good; nor is there an y trace of partiality or hypocrisy in it. The peace sown by peacemakers brings a harvest of justice.”

The Word of the Lord.

Homily

I had a terrible time choosing scripture to lead us into this reflection. There is so much to draw from I finally settled on the letter of James simply because of time. Yet you might think about Cain and Able, about the tale of Joseph and his brothers, or about the account of the relationship between King Saul and David as it deteriorates. And then there is that wonderful story of King Solomon and how he exposes the envious impostor who would allow the baby to be split in two when the real mother would not. Then, there are the two brothers of the prodigal father who stands between them begging them to come into the banquet.

The roots of envy begin early in life. From childhood we are compared to others. Our value as individuals is measured by how much dumber or smarter, uglier or more beautiful, weaker or stronger, poorer or richer we are than our peers. Competition, as I said earlier: it’s killing us. These are deadly sins. We begin to interpret our lack of what another person possess as somehow indicative of our lesser worth in general. “One of the destructive forms that Envy takes today is the widespread assumption that everyone should be able to do and experience and enjoy everything that everyone else can do and experience and enjoy. That thinking is the beginning of Envy. The idea that we are all equal has been perverted into the idea that we are identical; and when we then find that we cannot all do and experience and enjoy the things that others do and experience and enjoy, we take our revenge and deny that they were worth doing and experiencing and enjoying in the first place.”  The result is that we make no place for the unique for what is rare and cannot be imitated since we would then not be able to achieve it. We end up unable to admire, respect, or be grateful for what is more noble, more lovely, or greater than ourselves. We must pull down or put down what is exceptional. So, envy is not just grieving because of another’s good which is an element of pride; but envy grieves because the good in another diminishes one’s own self.  It’s no sin to recognize or even feel badly that you lack something someone else has. It is a sin when envy makes us wish the other did not have it at all. 

Dejection is a striking symptom of envy. Bitter regret over what we cannot have is envy. That bitterness leads to chipping away at the reputation of another. Pointing out their faults becomes an escape from the dejection. It is a spiteful malignancy. It is an ugly effort to level the playing field or bring another down because we are not up. The envious are completely without gratitude. The envious see themselves as “losers.” Again, competition makes winners and losers. There is something about competition that dooms those to failure who judge themselves by looking at others. There are two assumptions: that everyone begins with an equal chance from the starting line, and that the rules of the competition are fair at every stage. These conditions are unrealizable which is the flaw in the idea that there is equality of opportunity.

Someone once said: “Imitation is the best form of flattery.” I think that idea leads to phony and empty pretense. Admiration or Emulation is what is called for, and it is the surest antidote to envy. The attitude: “If I can’t have it, I don’t want anyone else to have it” is the heart of darkness. It is the loser’s emotion. It is an irrational quality when there is a better way, a lively virtue, a more noble human response: Emulation. To be in the presence of excellence, virtue, bravery or enlightenment does not always produce feelings of sinful envy, or even disappointment that we failed to reach such a high mark. Sometimes we just wonder how that excellence was acquired, what part of it might be available to us or how we might be more like the one we admire! 

Imitation is a counterfeit form of emulation. Imitators do not take the time and energy required to learn what constitutes the soul of those they admire. They merely rifle through their bag of tricks, confusing technique with essence. Dressing like your hero, even talking like him, does not make you, in any sense, heroic. In fact, that sincerest form of flattery nonsense is just that. Imitation is hazardous to your soul.

Have you ever noticed in the New Testament that more people get mad over God’s generous treatment of those who do not deserve it than they do over God’s harsh treatment of those who do?  That parable of the folks hired at different times of the day and then all paid the same is the perfect example of envy at work. The parable speaks of our inability to calculate the mercies of God. Human nature leads us to think that other people are always getting more than they deserve, while we assume that our rewards are just compensation. 

What would happen if, instead of sinful envy, the workers actually sought to emulate the owner? That is, you know what Jesus was always doing. He never told people what to believe. He simply showed people what to do, and then asked them to go and do likewise. So, the eleventh-hour workers could be grateful for their good fortune and model their behavior after that of the owners. Having received beyond merit, they could choose to be generous beyond deserving. At the very least, they would buy the first round of drinks.

Envy is always about power. Emulation is about goodness. In the end, the simple test of determining if the envy we feel toward another might be redeemed is to ask: “Would I like to be more like that person? Or do I wish that person would fall from grace? If envy drives us to hate someone or to wish someone harm, then it’s deadly indeed. The world is starved for heroes, and we have settled instead for celebrities. Celebrities are the creature of an envious age. We ascribe no virtue to them. We never think of them as wise or generous, they are simply paid more than we are paid. In envy we erect them, for awhile let our envy prey on them, and then in our envy we destroy them. When we are asked to name the people who have made a difference in our lives, we almost always name a teacher, a family member or a close friend. These people did not make us jealous. We wanted to emulate them, even surpass them. When parents talk about wanting things to be better for their children than they were for them, they are not just talking about money. They want their children to be more, to feel more, to live more. Nothing pleases a real parent like having a child who actually excels over them in all these ways. Envy is a secret thing that makes us bitter, lonely, mean and petty. It never allows us nor motivates us to do better nearly as much as it wishes others to do worse. This malice and evil-mindedness easily and quietly takes possession of us and hardens our hearts. Yet, gratitude and admiration, contentedness and joy at another’s goodness will set us free.

A time of adoration follows and Tantum Ergo is sung.

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, you have given us the eucharist as the memorial of your suffering and death. May our worship of this sacrament of your body and blood  help us to experience the salvation you have won for us and the peace of the kingdom where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Benediction is given, and at the conclusion, the following Litany is sung:

We have been seduced by the arrogance of our self-sufficiency without recourse to your grace. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

In our search for self-esteem, we have lost sight of our brokenness which cries out for your healing. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have denied our responsibility for others and shown indifference to their suffering and plight. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have worshipped the image of ourselves in our achievements without gratitude to you.  Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have presumed on the rightness of our opinions and actions and failed to admit our faults. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

Because of our narrow mindedness, we have refused to acknowledge the blessing and goodness of others. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

In our envious spirit, we have been reduced to competition instead of cooperation with each other. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

For fear of feeling like failures, we have belittled and criticized the successes of others. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

By comparing ourselves with others, we have not embraced and appreciated our own blessing. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have become self-righteous in our jealousy of the intimacy and friendship enjoyed by other. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

Our Father…….

Go in Peace.

ANGER AND SLOTH

Monday Evening Saint Peter Pine Bluff

March 21, 2009

Reading 1 (Ephesians 4:26-32)

A Reading from the Letter of Paul to the Church of Ephesus.

“My brothers and sisters never let the sun set on your anger or else you will give the devil a foothold. Anyone who was a thief must stop stealing; instead he should exert himself at some honest job with his own hands so that he may have something to share with those in need. No foul word should ever cross your lips; let your words be for the improvement of others, as occasion offers, and do good to your listeners; do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God who has marked you with his seal, ready for the day when we shall be set free. Any bitterness or bad temper or anger, or shouting or abuse must be far removed from you – as must every kind of malice. Be generous to one another, sympathetic, forgiving each other as readily as God forgave you in Christ.” The Word of the Lord

The Homily

Whoever said that “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you.” must have lived among deaf mutes. That old saying deserves to be deleted from our memory. As a child I never believed it, and as an adult, I have come to wonder what kind of person could have ever thought such a thing. What were they thinking? “Careless words can do untold damage; one word may destroy even a sublime love.” This sin, called Anger is not about sudden flashes at things gone wrong – those outbursts here one minute and gone the next make the best of us giggle at how silly we reacted over something of little consequence. This sin is about a disorder, an outburst of emotion connected with a desire for revenge. This is an emotion that becomes an obsession. Perhaps it is better called: “Wrath.” It is a fixation and we live in an age of wrath.

This wrath is observed everyday in the behavior of terrorists, kidnappers, hijackers, looters, and sometimes the clenched fists of demonstrators.

This is an angry age. Our world is crowded with angry people. Sometimes we are the angry ones. In my reflection on this third of the Deadly Sins, I am coming to realize that much of this anger is fueled by a serious confusion over rights and wants. We have come to a time in human history when any need any desire any longing for anything that one lacks but someone else has, is today conceived to be my rightthat, when demanded, must be provided without challenge, and if it is not at once supplied the one making the demand as entitled to be angry. In that kind of climate, you can hardly blame the one making the demand for taking advantage of this foolishness since they are justified in advance on four grounds:

what they want, it is their right to have;

when it is asked, it should be granted;

if it is not granted, it is understandable that they are angry;

since they are angry, it is clear that their demand in the first place was justified.

I don’t think any civilization in human history has ever gotten itself in this mess before. It is a vicious circle: any and every felt want is translated into a “right” which incites the citizens to Anger then to destructiveness.

I have no intention of “preaching to the choir” so to speak, or of getting side tracked by this example, but this is something to think about seriously, and I think it is the best example for thinking about this matter of a woman’s “right” to control her body: “Abortion.” The bottom line here is that there are no boundaries that can logically be set to the concept of individual and human rights. We are so individualized in this culture that every individual need, want, or desire has become a “right.” But any high school student who studies biology knows that we don’t have control over our bodies.  They are subject to infection, disease, decay, and death.  The truth is, one cannot claim as a right what cannot be guaranteed, and there is no way of guaranteeing to any of us, male or female, the right to have “control over our own bodies.” To present as rights what cannot in the end be secured as rights, as we all too often do today, is a sure prescription for Wrath.

Wrath is inevitably directed, even if not intentionally, at an innocent object. In this case, it is the conceived child. The mother may want to abort, but it isn’t a right. To translate a wish into a right is an example of the absurdly distorted concept of individual and human rights by which our society is now confused. It sets us against each other in an endless combat for the rights we claim. Anger is the consequence.

Most of these “rights” someone will claim will, if granted involve the diminishing of another’s rights. The freedom of a woman to choose not to have a child can be a diminishing of the freedom of a man to enjoy the child whom he has played some part in conceiving; to say nothing of the rights of the child to life. If anyone can claim that any felt want or need or longing is a right, there are clearly no such things as rights left at all, since everyone’s supposed rights are pitted legitimately against everyone else’s supposed rights, and we no longer have any way of deciding what is a right and what is not. These cases may seem now to be harmlessly in the courts, but the assumptions behind them can only breed discord, which in turn can only breed a violent society. We have it, and we have it big time!

The desire for revenge is both an outcome of Wrath and a cause. “Getting even”, Getting back” – it’s all the same. Driving up Bardstown Road today, I pulled up behind a car as traffic slowed at Taylorsville which had a bumper sticker that read: “I get mad, and I get even.” Road rage is an epidemic in our time, and so is gratuitous violence. Both are directly related to a culture of hyper-individualism which has placed a giant chip on everyone’s precious shoulder. “How dare the world slow me down? How dare we be inconvenienced by a traffic jam, by someone in the grocery store line ahead of us who chats kindly for just moment with a tired checker? How dare that old person slow down in front of me before turning right?”

We are living through the angriest time in the history of our nation. The horrible events of September 11, 2001 created more anger in this country than anyone has seen since Pearl Harbor. The anger raged into wrath and the need to retaliate against the real perpetrators. We’ll get Osama and his network He’ll be hunted down, smoked out, and brought home dead or alive. Anger, you know, often causes us to make promises we can’t keep. What’s more, when dealing with September 11, the distinction between real and perceived injury becomes more than academic. Most Americans defended the war to drive the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and shut down the terrorist training camps. The problem came when “perceived” injuries were ascribed to Iraq, and our anger was directed at a country which, although suffering under a cruel dictator, had done no real harm to us.

We let our anger get the best of us, and then later we learned that the weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda did not exist. We were right to be angry about September 11, but by focusing on our own desire for revenge we allowed ourselves to be dragged or manipulated in a war that has not brought us any closer to capturing the real terrorists. We were hurt, and so we lashed out. But the convenient target isn’t necessarily the legitimate target. While our response may have made us feel better, it hurt our reputation around the world. You know what the difference between a reaction and a response is? It’s a pause. I remember my mom standing still with lips tight counting to ten. She taught me to do that. It makes the difference between an angry reaction (knee jerk) and a reasonable response (wisdom).

Mahatma Gandhi warned us that “an eye for an eye just leaves the whole world blind.” 

So, when things don’t go well, or we fail to get something we want, someone else must be to blame. That is the thinking of our culture. We are taught to assume personal responsibility, but as individuals we often act like victims. The lyrics of nearly every country and western song reveal the sorry mess we are in: “Somebody Done Somebody Wrong.” and, we’re, “Mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.” (Another bumper sticker I saw this week.) There always has to be someone to blame with this crazy thinking because Wrath needs an enemy, and even where this is none, it will invent one. Timothy McVeigh grew up angry and then left a loveless home to live in a world of cheap hotel rooms, hate radio, and the fraternity of racism. Failing to find himself worthy of love, he became addicted to hatred, which can be its own kind of narcotic. After the bombing, our anger was first directed against Arabs, and we immediately detained several men of Arab descent without cause, except that they looked to white America like terrorists. When the real perpetrator turned out to look very much like a clean-cut Marine, we found it difficult to believe that he acted alone, and began to spin out conspiracy theories like cotton candy, because anger can blind us and make us believe we know something, even when we know nothing.

So what about a virtue to use against this sin? There is a theory about “good anger and bad anger.” Let’s call it Indignation. Put the word Righteous in front of it if you want, but I think that’s confusing. “Indignation” has to do with dignity, and what I want to suggest is that a little indignation – that is to say, a little good anger about the right things might help us refocus and surface a little good old passion for justice, not revenge. It might be a good idea sometime to get angry because we care, not just because our feelings have been hurt. Lots of people are mad these days, but not about anything that matters. 

The Gospel images of Jesus do not avoid the reality of anger and the human passion of Jesus Christ. That occasion when he cleansed the Temple was an experience of human passion that could not be ignored. The image of Jesus as “meek and mild” is not always reconcilable with the Jesus of the Gospels. Remember the time when he walked past a fig tree looking for something to eat? In fact, when you start looking at the man who cursed a fig tree because it didn’t give him food when he wanted it even out of season, when you remember that he suggested a mill-stone as a necklace for those who hurt children, you might suspect he needed an anger management class. This matter of anger is really about passion directed in the right way. It is about action, doing something, not just thinking something. The reality of Jesus is that he was angry, but not over some injustice done to him. Rather he was boiling over with indignation over the corruption of religion in his time. I think he is still indignant. The scandal of our church today is not about sex abuse nor that people do not believe the right things as some on the far right would like to suggest. It is that people hardly ever do the right things. Jesus has become a cosmic pal, a buddy. God has become wise and adorable, maybe awesome, but never disturbing. The Word of God has become a study guide. It might be time for God to become frightening again. It might be that so many are obsessed with the second coming because the first coming was so disappointing.

Anger is self-serving passion. When we stir our passions for the sake of others, stop worrying about our rights and act more out of justice, it won’t be so dangerous on our streets. We are at war with terrorism and we will be for a long time to come. The manner in which we marshal our anger and wage this war will determine whether we make the world safer or more dangerous. National anger, smoldering beneath a fervent and even oppressive patriotism, can ultimately sanction the kind of indiscriminate rage that only breeds more terrorists. Indignation on the other hand moves deliberately but patiently to bring terrorists to justice rather than bringing ‘justice to terrorists. Instead of a deadly sin, we need a lively virtue. The love of justice perverted into the desire for revenge and the injury of someone else will end our civilization. When ever love is translated into hatred, we know that sin has entered and wrecked its havoc.

Reading 2 (Mark 4:26-29)

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Mark

A man scatters seed on the land. Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing; how, de does not know. Of its own accord the land produces first the shoots then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the crop is ready, at once he starts to reap because the harvest has come.”

The Gospel of the Lord 

The Homily

“Life is tough. Then you die.” Another bumper sticker I saw just yesterday. I think I may change the name of these talks from: “Seven Deadly Sins” to “Bumper Sticker Wisdom”! But there’s another old saying like the one I just mentioned: “Sticks and Stones”. It’s a simple one; four words that were drilled into me as child: “Mind Your Own Business.” As an adult and priest, I have begun to question that wisdom. I have begun to suspect that it is at the root of a seriously sinful life style. “Live and Let Live.” is part of that false wisdom. “Don’t’ get involved.” my father once said to me. Bad advice!

“Sloth”. I choose to stick with the old English word because it is so curious. It sounds like being lazy, like laying too long in the bathwater or sleeping through breakfast. It hardly sounds deadly, and certainly not like a capital offence, but it is. It is way more than an energy deficiency. It is not about deciding one morning that you’ll roll over and go back to sleep, or taking a nap in the afternoon when you should be doing laundry. It IS about a fundamental loss of faith in one’s ability to do anything about anything. It is about a feeling expressed this way: “So what? I couldn’t care less.”

If we are living in an age of Anger, it is also an era of anxiety. Like the previous sin, it rests upon the false notion that an individual can find fulfillment and salvation in nothing but his or her own self and the denial that we are members one of another, and that “the solidarity of mankind links the crimes of each to the sorrows of all.” It is that business of individualism again. It is summed up best in the advice: “Look out for Number One.” It is the first commandment of Sloth.

This whole idea, the whole concept of individualism reached a new high and new approval/acceptance in this country during the Reagan years – it was the philosophy of that administration: a new era, a new approval of selfish self-approval and an economics of ego centric individualism. It failed us, and while he may have been “The Great Communicator”, what he ended up communicating was a kind of isolated individualism that set the stage for a gradual polarization as the rich get richer and the poor take care of them.

The first symptom of sloth is Complacency. Individualism breeds it. It is the complacency of the comfortable. As they have grown in number, one begins to hear the denials that we are our brothers’ keeper. That’s Sloth in your face. Looking out for Number One has been given even more enforcement by the self-indulgent ideas that “I’m OK, you’re OK” or “I am I and You are You.” “I’ll leave you alone, and you leave me alone, and if we do that, everything will be fine!”

No it won’t!  It will not be fine. I won’t be fine, and you won’t be fine. I think I remember in Genesis God is quoted as having said: “It is not good for man to be alone.” There is something wrong here. This is a breeding ground for indifference, and “Indifference” is another word or manifestation of Sloth – it is deadly: deadly to individuals and deadly to the human family.

One of the consequences of all this in our society is getting more and more obvious to people like me. It is at the root of many divorces and the cause of a pressing crisis in our church. I have been interviewing, one by one, the young people in this year’s confirmation class. One of the questions I ask them is what they will be doing after High School. My favorite answer is: “I don’t know.” I squirm when they tell me they are going into law school, medical school, or planning to be an X ray technician. To those I have a second question: “Do you think that’s what God wants you to do?” At least those who have not made up their minds might be open to wondering what God wants them to do with their lives. It’s all about pursuing some purpose in one’s life, and that means it’s about commitment to someone or something other than oneself. I am of the opinion that young people have no interest what so ever in the priesthood because it requires that frightening experience called: “Commitment.” Avoiding that is what gives so much anxiety to young people approaching marriage. Living it is what makes keeping a marriage alive so difficult. Avoiding it because a marriage like priesthood is hard work is called SLOTH.

Sloth grows quietly and steadily in an environment of gratification. If it doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t get done. If the good feeling is delayed, other things will come first. A lot of charity work is like that, and I am suspicious of it. A large group of young people from Norman, Oklahoma went to a town in Mexico under the sponsorship of a local Methodist church and they built a couple of houses. They came home. Some of them felt really good about it and they want to go again, and I wonder: to build houses or feel good, can they build enough houses to really matter, will they do something about the system that creates the problem if it means they will have to suffer with less? Some became profoundly disturbed, and they have the best chance of all to make a difference if they stay disturbed. The good feeling here is like a narcotic. It satisfies, provides contentment, and nothing changes.

Those who have taken ill with sloth have no identity except their personal identity. There is an absence of group identity. That’s what happens with people too lazy to go to church – they think they are Catholic, but the very identity of Church springs from the assembly. If you’re not in it, if you’re not part of it, if you’re not identified by being in the middle of it, you can’t claim the identity. You’re just claiming an idea. The individualism that is on the rise in our culture shows it’s self in that question: “What’s in it for me?” with immediate gratification of one’s need coming before all other loyalties. So, the commitment to marriage or to having children while debts get paid off begins. The individualism of our age is an ideology that encourages people to maximize personal advantage while consideration of the common good is increasingly irrelevant. It’s SLOTH.

I find it fascinating to discover that in collectivist societies which are often religious (Islam being a perfect example) a person’s loyalty to his family or group takes precedence over his personal goals. Such societies have among the lowest rates of crime, dysfunctional families, and alcoholism. The thought/comparison makes me uncomfortable, but have you ever wondered why no one among us ever blows themselves up for a cause or an ideal or a vision of what should be? We don’t care enough. We are too complacent. We don’t care about the right things and are too easily satisfied with puny pleasures that never last. 

Meanwhile, in the real world, millions of people are moving through life like zombies, staying outwardly busy but not finding anything much worth living for. “I’m so busy! I hardly know what to do.” Business! It is deadly. I’ve given up on a couple of relationships I had hoped would foster lasting companionship because the other person was just too busy all the time. All they could ever talk about was how busy they were. I began to feel like an interruption, an intruder. Personally I hate it when people walk up to me or call me on the phone and start by saying: Father, I know you’re busy, and I’m sorry to bother you!” WHAT?  My life is not about meetings and reports which fill in the gaps that anyone else can do. So when I hear that, rather than be insulted, I simply quietly realize I am being corrected. I can’t count the marriages I’ve seen blow up because people are so busy or the number of families that fall apart because of busy parents and equally busy children who run from soccer to Tee ball, to ballet or swimming lessons. Their refrigerator doors are covered with schedules and lists, and inside there is nothing to eat because they don’t have time to sit down and look at one another, so they eat on the way to or from some game or some practice or some meeting. This is deadly. It is sloth.

Herein lays the paradox of sloth: its ability to disguise itself in misdirected activity. The consequence is neglect, neglect of higher things, greater things, spiritual things, in the end, neglect of self. This is life in a vacuum.

There is a spiritual side to this as well. Just as the slothful avoid obligations that demand sacrifice, so do we experience the same thing spiritually. I think it is what gives rise to some popular devotions that are so shallow and silly and ask so little of us while the real stuff of spiritual life gets ignored: Fasting, Prayer, Sacrifice. Instead of visiting the sick, the nursing homes, the homeless and taking up a share of Saint Vincent de Paul Society’s work, we just look quickly and think: that person in the nursing home isn’t my mom or dad. Someone should so something! I am always suspicious of spiritual exercises that bring consolation and comfort to those who are already so by their position in life.

This is an anxious age. Anxiety is essentially a dread of nothing. What to do about it? I would suggest some balance in life that the little story from the Gospel suggests. Sow the seed, and wait. It is the ancient dilemma of when to do and when to wait. The parable defines something called contentedness in terms of the proper order of things: first you do, then you wait. After you have done what only you can do (plant the seed), you wait while the seed does what only it can do. When the time for harvest has come, you gather in the crop that grew itself, but which cannot harvest itself. This is divine wisdom – a revelation! “The order here is very important. First the seed is sown, and then sower knows that he can do nothing more so he waits. Nobody stands over a seed and screams, “Come on now, grow!” A seed carries its own future in its bosom. The sower has done all he can do. Now he waits patiently for God to do what only God can do.

“No one would think to call his waiting slothful. It is wise. He turns his mind to other things. He hopes for rain. He mends fences. He watches and waits because he is not the master of the harvest; he is the steward of the mystery. When that mystery is fully present, his waiting is over, and he puts the sickle to the stalk.

“Mark preserved this parable for an anxious church, one that waited for the return of Christ and wondered why it hadn’t happened. The answer is that we cannot know, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do what we can and then be content. We plant the seed of the word, and then we wait for the mysterious way in which God brings it to fullness. 

This kind of contentment means that we know there are limits to what we can do, but these do not produce feelings of failure. Failure comes from doing nothing. This kind of contentment makes us more attentive to those moments when we can do something and more patient when we know it is time to wait. Being busy does not make us happy. “Idol hands are the devil’s workshop.” is a lie. More than anything, Sloth is a sin of omission, a sin of neglect. Technology and gadgets have freed us from drudgery leaving us the challenge of what to do with the time now available. Minding our own business, not getting involved means we will not hurt nor get hurt. But of course, the hurt is deep both ways because it leaves us separated from humanity and that’s a deep inner tear that ultimately separates us from God, which by ancient definition is sin.

A time of adoration follows and Tantum Ergo is sung.

Let us pray: Lord Jesus Christ, you have given us the eucharist as the memorial of your suffering and death. May our worship of this sacrament of your body and blood  help us to experience the salvation you have won for us and the peace of the kingdom where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Benediction is given, and at the conclusion, the following Litany is sung:

We have been seduced by the arrogance of our self-sufficiency without recourse to your grace. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

In our search for self-esteem, we have lost sight of our brokenness which cries out for your healing. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have denied our responsibility for others and shown indifference to their suffering and plight. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have worshipped the image of ourselves in our achievements without gratitude to you.  Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have presumed on the rightness of our opinions and actions and failed to admit our faults. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

Because of our narrow mindedness, we have refused to acknowledge the blessing and goodness of others. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

In our envious spirit, we have been reduced to competition instead of cooperation with each other. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

For fear of feeling like failures, we have belittled and criticized the successes of others. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

By comparing ourselves with others, we have not embraced and appreciated our own blessing. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have become self-righteous in our jealousy of the intimacy and friendship enjoyed by other. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have harbored resentment against others, long after they have asked forgiveness. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have felt justified in retaliating against our adversaries and have refused to seek understanding and reconciliation. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have controlled and intimidated others by our outbursts of rage and our threatening words and behavior. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

In our misguided search for perfection, we have sadly grown intolerant of human weakness. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have preferred to inflict pain on others rather than be agents of healing and peace. Look upon us. Lord, and have mercy.

We have been mindless in the practice of our faith; our worship and prayer lack interest and feeling. Look upon us. Lord, and have mercy.

We have been careless in our work, and failed to put our priorities into place with the Gospel. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have presumed on the goodness and kindness of other and looked away from duty and obligation. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

Our Father…….

Go in Peace.

GREED, GLUTTENY AND LUST

Tuesday evening Saint Peter Pine Bluff

March 21, 2011

Reading 1 ( Luke: 12:13-21)

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke

There was a rich man who, having had a good harvest from his land, thought to himself, “What am I to do? I have not enough room to store my crops.” Then he said, “This is what I will do: I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and store all my grain and my goods in them, and I will say to my soul: “My soul, you have plenty of good things laid by for many years to come; take things easy, eat, drink, have a good time.” But God said to him, “Fool! This very night the demand will be made for your soul; and this hoard of yours, whose will it be then? So it is when someone stores up treasure for himself instead of becoming rich in the sight of God.”

The Gospel of the Lord

Greed or “Avarice” as I learned it in school is not so much the love of possessions, as it is the love of possessing. It is the buying of things we do not need, more even than we need for our pleasure or entertainment. It is possessing for its own sake. At the risk of offending someone in here, I’m going to tell this story on myself. I was hunting for a parking place at my dentist office last week. There were none. Right in the middle of the parking area there was a humvee sitting across three parking spaces. As I was walking across the street from an empty lot some distance away, the owner of the humvee came out and very cheerfully greeted me. Making great effort to hide my annoyance, I asked: “Why do you have a vehicle like that?” Using everything restraint I had to keep from saying: “and take up three parking spaces.! With obvious innocence she said: “Because I can.” Opened the door, climbed up and drove off leaving three full sized parking spots and me standing there……..”Because, I can.”  Avarice!  The issue is not the vehicle obviously; it is the reasoning and the decision.

Just down the street from Saint Mark church, a large construction site is very busy these days. It will be the largest climate controlled storage unit facility in the country. Avarice!  I am not here talking about theories this week. I am talking about evidence that we are in the grip of sin. This is not an idea, it is actual behavior. Evidence of these deadly sins is everywhere you care to look, not in others but within us all. This Avarice is not an old fashioned sin even though it is an old fashioned word. It is alive and well. The evidence is crowding the cars out of our garages and sagging our ceilings. We set our security systems when we are away, rarely when we are inside because they are not there to protect human life from danger, but to get a lower rate on our home owners or apartment renter’s insurance premium.

Our language betrays our sin. We say and we hear others say; “I must have that.” Of course, it’s about having it, hardly ever about needing it. We have more clothes than we need and way more accessories. The very word “accessory” tells you what it’s all about. “For the man who has everything…” the saying goes! Then why give him more? Avarice! It might all seem trivial and harmless until we begin to measure what it is doing to us. I think of Mrs. Buckett in this regard. You know that lady on the British comedy series that airs on PBS?  She is possessed by her possession, and they speak for her more than herself, and her attention to her husband is as though he were a possession she has to put on her show. It’s as though those things were her — Avarice.

A wise Greek writer reminds us that wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants.

We live in a culture where Greed is not just considered good. It is considered Gospel. It is the way to do thing, the way to get ahead, the way to achieve success. Never mind that Enron was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to corporate crime sweeping America. Never mind that accountants are in cahoots with the companies they are supposed to audit, insiders trade after hours, and millions of employees have their pensions robbed. If you’re homeless and rob a 7-11 you’ll get ten years to life in jail. But in corporate America, you can steal all you want and fly away untouched in a first-class cabin seat. The very fact that I can say that, that you know it’s true, and that we all just sit here confirms the problem: we have given the “OK” to greed.

As a priest of thirty-seven years, I have come to the most amazing observation. You can talk about anything from the pulpit, and most people will glaze over, and on the way out they’ll wave and say: “Nice sermon, father.”  But talk about money, and the eyes tighten up, and everyone slips out the door without a glance. We never talk about it. It is the big secret. It is considered rude to ask what someone makes or how much something cost, but yet we will talk casually and simply about the most intimate and personal matters! 

It’s not as though there is anything wrong with desire. Desire is a form of energy. It motivates us about many good things, the desire for peace, the desire for love, the desire for justice; but the sad truth is that we are taught to want without limit. Enough is never enough. If you thought you were going to get out of here without another bumper sticker, you’re wrong. “Whoever dies with the most toys wins.”

The problem, as I said at Mass here Saturday is that “line.” I quoted Chesteron who said that morality like art consists of drawing a line. No one is drawing any lines. There is no longer a line that says and means, “That’s enough.”

This past November, a profoundly sad thing happened in this country. I have met no one who was as touched and profoundly saddened by the news report as I was. Someone was killed after staying up all night to be the first through the doors of a store for the Christmas sales having been trampled by the mob. The media showed people in a shopping rage tearing toys and games out of one another hands with hatred. Avarice has overtaken us. If you were not in the mob but were not the least bit appalled by the scene, Avarice has taken us captive.

What virtue we need then is a clear understanding of when desire is good, elevating life or when it is bad and an obsessive vice. Wanting Wisely is the virtue. Some things are valued because they are instruments for getting more, and other things are valued in and of themselves. We have to know the difference, because if we don’t the confusion transfers to people. Friends ought to have value in and of themselves not because they help us get something. We have all been used by someone, used by other people, and we know how it feels. Greed brings us to sacrifice what’s really important for the sake of what is not.

Before September 11, 2001, congress passed into law a $1.35 trillion tax cut (nearly $4 trillion if left in place over twenty years), almost half of which will benefit the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. Two more tax cuts have further widened the gap between rich and poor, and the result is the largest deficit in U.S. history. Wealth now buys power, which rewards wealth, which buys yet more power. Nothing is trickling — Avarice is in control. Politicians call it “supply side economics”. I call it sin.

To want something wisely is to want it for reasons other than status. The desire parents have to give their children the best possible education and make sacrifice for it is wanting something wisely. On the other hand, enrolling a child in the most elite and expensive private school to put them on the fast track to fame and fortune is Avarice.

Those who succeed in this world and become wealthy are not all immoral, but they all have a moral responsibility to give something back to a world from which their riches came. The rich are always the most indignant about paying taxes yet the civilization created by those taxes is what made the rich in the first place. So now that they have it made, they want to shut off the system that gave them opportunities. Avarice. No redistribution of wealth is a world without roads, school, and hospitals. There is a sign on a freeway outside Oklahoma City demanding that we pay no taxes. It is placed for maximum effect along a federally funded interstate highway built by the taxes the sign maker wants to stop. 

For Christians, the answer to this matter is simple. It is Stewardship: a way of life, a witness to faith, the response of a grateful heart. The embrace of that life style will be the end of Greed. 

A Brief period of Adoration begins.

Reading two (1 Thessalonians 4: 3-7)

My brothers and sisters, 

God wills you all to be holy. He wants you to keep away from sexual immorality, and each on of you to know how to control his body in a way that is holy and honorable, not giving way to selfish lust like the nations who do not acknowledge God. He wants nobody at all ever to sin by taking advantage of a brother in this matter. God called us to be holy, not to be immoral; in other words anyone who rejects this is rejecting not human authority, but God, who give you his Holy Spirit.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Lust is not a sin of the flesh. It is a sin against it. It is in our flesh that we are present to the rest of creation, and particularly present to each other, revealing, and exposing, sensitive to others and even vulnerable to them, open to hurt. This then is the problem, the paradox of lust, because Lust is not interested in partners, but only in one’s solitary pleasure. If there is a hint of concern for the other, it is simply an ego concern that one did well, performed well, and of course is then adequate and desirable. Lust then accepts any partner for a moment, and then they’re gone.

To begin with, we ought to be honest. Sex is the most powerful human hunger next to survival itself, yet it has now moved largely out of the realm of sacred mystery and into the realm of commerce. It sells everything, and like greed, there is never enough. Oddly enough, the message of most modern advertising is that sex appeal builds self-esteem, but in our society the opposite may be true. Beautiful women in particular learn to distrust compliments and to be suspicious of even the most ordinary acts of kindness. Our children are the most vulnerable to this image building/image destroying consumer abusing stuff. It may sell a pair of jeans, but the innocent who buy those jeans will never look like the model in the add, and it only eats away at their developing and fragile self respect and self image all the more. We hunt flesh, but what we really crave is intimacy. Our culture’s addiction to sex is like our addiction to fast food: more of it never really satisfies, and it can be more than just unhealthy. The truth is, our sexual addictions are more rooted in ego than in physical desire. Our insecure, self – absorbed culture has begun to using sex to satisfy emptiness, insecurity, loneliness and self-doubt. The pandemic of internet sex is at the heart of this. Why live in the real world? Escape into fantasy! That body on the screen will never reject us. There is a huge issue of ego in this behavior. Self absorbed and insecure, people sit wide-eyes in front of a computer screen pretending: pretending because the truth and reality are too hard. All the while, minutes and hours of one’s life are gone forever. Intimacy is what we crave, and it has never been found in a chat room or in pornography. It’s all anonymous – empty, and it leaves the victim even more empty and alone. The only thing that responds to our longing and need for intimacy is love; and it doesn’t take long to figure out that love is not something you “make.” It is something you are. Like all the sins, lust makes us solitary. It is lonely, empty, and fleeting.  One of the surest signs of it’s presence in our midst is pornography. It’s big business. There is money in loneliness, and the clever have discovered it.

Pornography is always something used in secret, alone. A private matter indulged in at late hours by lonely people. Pornography is a substitute for involvement with another person. It is another way of condemning ourselves to solitariness.

There is a deep and widening sadness hanging over contemporary culture that is made all the more unbearable by casual sex. There is the illusion that one can be physically intimate without being emotionally responsible. In the vernacular, we call that being used. Lust will not get involved, and so it is absolutely contrary to love. 

Ultimately it is about desire which is not at all evil unless it is selfish. The desire that sets it all in motion is the desire for intimacy, and this is what I propose as the virtue or the antidote to lust. “Holy Intimacy”. It is something that rests on trust which makes possible a kind of holy vulnerability. Yet the widespread disinclination to become involved, the great fear of commitment I spoke of last night lays the trap for Lust. In no other sin does one feel so much of a void, and this void is not only inside, it is also outside in our society. There is a profound failure of our society to make continuing individual relationship seem part of the much wider social bonds that tie us to them. Marriage and family are still the basic units of our society, but they are weakened, and we tend to regard them today as a matter only of interpersonal relationships, rather than as fundamental elements of the social order. This changed attitude to marriage has resulted inevitably in a changed attitude to other personal relationships. So, if I don’t get anything out of it, I’m not going to do it. Relationships that rest only on one’s own self-justification are not sacred and holy ground upon which one may encounter the divine. There is no covenant.

What comes between a couple when one of them is unfaithful is, not the other woman or man, but what now cannot be shared by them. He or she knows almost at once that something has been withdrawn, that there is something that the other is unable to bring and share. Love requires some effort, but our age encourages us to avoid it by refusing to get involved and when involved to escape from it.

All of us have seen it, and many of us have experienced it. It comes with that early stage of infatuation with a bit of curiosity. It happens when there are no words, or words seem too trivial. Use your imaginations or your memory. Two people are close together, across a table on a couch, in a car. They look at one another and nothing is said. It is a matter of attention. We know it from music, from art, or even a poem. We have to concentrate and give it full attention. So, there they are, gazing. We need to “gaze” not peer or stare, but simply to gaze and let the eyes bring in the other, and let the other eyes draw us out and into a presence that is peaceful, loving, and totally our own. We are doing that in here before this sacrament. It is the gaze of love, the gaze of affection, the gaze of trust, the gaze of faith, and most of all the gaze of holy intimacy.

Love at its best is here before us. Love in the flesh is the gift of marriage. But the adventure of marriage is learning to love the person to whom you are married….love does not create a marriage; marriage teaches us what a costly adventure love truly is. This holy intimacy is for a lifetime. It knows that age can add more in tenderness than it takes away in virility. Sex when we’re young is all about the body, hormones and pleasure. Then suddenly you’re not young anymore, and sex becomes a feast of reciprocity and intimate tenderness because the solitary emptiness is filled with a spiritual presence which is the gift of fidelity and a promise fulfilled.

A brief period of Adoration follows

Reading three (Luke 14: 15-21)

A reading of the Holy Gospel according to Luke

“When evening came, the disciples went to him and said, “This is a lonely lace, and time has slipped by; so send the people away, and they can go to the villages to buy themselves some food. Jesus replied: There is no need for them to go: give them something to eat yourselves. But they answered, “All we have with us is five loaves and two fish. So he said, “Bring them here to m e. He gave order that the people were to sit down on the grass; then he took the five loaves and the two fish, raised his eyes to heaven and said the blessing. And breaking the loaves he handed them to his disciples, who gave them to the crowds. They all ate as much as they wanted, and they collected the scraps left over, twelve baskets full.”

The Gospel of the Lord

Homily

In the last couple of years, I have come to a curious realization about myself and my appearance. About five years ago, I had some serious heart surgery, and in the process of surgery and recovery, I lost about thirty pounds. As time has passed, I have found what was lost; and I did not have to pray to Saint Anthony. Just after coming back to the parish when I was on the light side of the ordeal, people would come up to me and will say: “Father, you don’t look so good.” As time went on they began to say: “Father, you’re looking good today.” What I have come to realize is that this is all a code message. “You don’t look so good” means I’m down to size 34. “Father you’re looking good” means I’m back up to 38! Or, more crudely stated: “Father, you’re getting fat.” At which point I run home and get out the South Beach book and if nothing else, I read it again. 

It may not be politically correct to say it, but while much of the world is starving, Americans are busy eating themselves to death. At last count, 60% of us are overweight, and the numbers just keep rising. Chronic obesity in children is an alarming public health issue. Meanwhile, there is a multibillion-dollar diet industry in place. Yet despite endless new diet schemes, and any conceivable piece of exercise equipment available for three easy payments, we keep getting fatter. But never fear, there will soon be a pill to fix it all.

To call this a sin would be to imply that someone is responsible, but in a culture of blamelessness we have decided that it’s a matter of genes or slow metabolism or a sweet tooth that runs in the family. That all sounds better than the truth which is that most of us eat too much and do too little by way of exercise. What makes matters worse is that chronic obesity may be more psychological and spiritual than physiological, especially in a culture that idolizes food. Other than the Bible, the only other kind of publication that is growing beyond leaps and bounds is cook books — check out Barnes and Noble if you don’t believe me. It’s a bigger section of the store than history.

The super market is the temple of excess with music, lighting and an ingenious array of visual seductions all designed to prompt us to buy more than we need, especially things we shouldn’t eat. How many of us go into the super market with a list and come out with just exactly those things and nothing more? Last Monday I spent $27.00 for a quart of milk! Two bags! Yet we live in a time when pleasures are regarded as an entitlement, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a prude or a closet hedonist. The whole idea of choosing to live a measured life where less is more and austerity is a virtue sounds almost subversive in our consumer culture.

Gluttony strikes us as sad rather than deadly. What’s a little overeating, after all, when compared to lust? It troubles me when my brother priests get together and I notice what shape they are in. Congregations seem to take pride in getting Father another piece of pie or another donut.

When the early church Fathers made the list we’ve been considering and named the sins we are searching for in ourselves, Gluttony is always placed next to Lust. They are connected. Too much of a good thing is never a good thing. A few weeks ago, I ran into someone from the parish who had been bitterly complaining about their tuition in our school. I was a guest in a very expensive restaurant, and I noticed that the complainer sitting behind me was well known by the restaurant staff leaving me to suppose that they frequently dined there. We claim to be over taxed and underpaid, and so school children go without textbooks and paper. Yet our national restaurant tab could fund them for a decade. We are raising the tuition All Saints School this year. The actual cost of that increase passed on to the school patrons means one less trip to McDonalds each month!

Eating is a “zero-sum game.” The food supply at any one moment is finite. The more you eat, the less food is available to some else. What that really means is that our tendency to waste food, quite literally steals bread from the poor. That story of Lazarus the beggar we just heard suggests that the two of them, the rich and the poor existed only a few feet apart, but they might have been living in separate universes. In some cities, not mine because we hide them under the freeway, you can walk down a street to an expensive restaurant and step over the homeless hungry. If they beg for something, we feel offended, embarrassed, and frightened; then we buy a bottle of wine that would feed them for a month. Gluttony is not just irrational. It is immoral. And it is pointless.

Yet, here’s the paradox. The most constant and frequently used metaphor for the kingdom of God is a banquet, and Jesus was turning water into wine so that there would be more than plenty. He is criticized for eating and drinking and “reclining” at table as he eats which signals more than an ordinary meal. It was a sumptuous and drawn out affair. So here comes the virtue I propose for us to use in the face of Gluttony: COMMUNION.

In a world that continues to hammer away at us to take more and more, this gift from God teaches a different lesson: Less is more. Anyone who looks at the banquet on this altar would have reason to think: “There is not enough.” But there always is. Here the issue the glutton cannot ever address between quality and quantity is finally settled. Eating here is more than a refueling operation. Here, we eat to live, not live to eat. So the opposite of a glutton is not someone on a diet who counts out calories and carbohydrates, nor is it someone who fasts. The opposite of a glutton is someone for whom food is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is a person who uses food and loves people, instead of loving food and using people.

We live in a fast food world, eating on the run or eating alone with the microwave beeping. Sacramental living requires something else. It requires a table at the center of the family life. TV tables and card tables will not do. Nobody eats in hurry, and no one eats and runs. There is no running from communion for believers. There is too little of it anyway.

Some of us probably grew up in homes where you cleaned your plate. It was a “waste not or want not” life. These days with “all you can eat” restaurants and a belief that “if a little bit is good, then a lot must be better” bringing immense portions and larger plates to the table, there is a conflict and it is costing us. Cleaning your plate has its roots in gratitude, and the virtue of not wasting is virtually impossible to exercise. Too much of a good thing is exactly that, and it brings no health and no life. I often remember that one of the temptations Jesus experienced in the desert concerned food and using food for power. We face that temptation all he time, and we’re not making a lot of progress. World hunger is not a political/economic issue to be resolved by diplomats. It is a moral issue.

The glutton usually eats alone and in silence. Sin always seems to isolate us. Those who share food in communion on the other hand pass what’s on the table before helping themselves. There is an unspoken rule that the portions must be adequate for the number of guests present, lest the food run out before all are served. So we start with small portions and discuss leftovers later. We take turns chewing and talking, we do not eat with face down inches from the plate gulping and gorging. We talk and we listen. Sometimes a toast is raised and we look one another in the eye and express our hopes and encouragement that converts nourishment of the body into nourishment of the soul. It is then not what we eat, but why we eat and with whom we eat. 

Even the person who eats alone can be in a sacramental experience because they begin with a blessing and the spirit of God is the unnamed guest. A prayer before the meal even though unheard by others establishes the meaning of the food and the undeserved grace of having it available. Having all this food reminds us that we are among the privileged in the world. The most powerful antidotes to gluttony are community and gratitude. They turn eating into communion and every table into an altar. As a sin, gluttony makes us solitary. Communion brings us together. Gluttony teaches us to devour. Communion teaches us to savor. 

Since 2001 I sit at a table every day and wonder how it is that we have the funds and the anger and the enthusiasm for a war on terror but no interest at all for a war on poverty and hunger when the truth is, poverty and hunger are breeding the terrorists while our gluttony for oil makes it all possible. Gluttony takes life. Communion gives life. Since I’ve been sick, I have come back with a new sense of food, eating, and even dieting: eat less, more often, with more friends. I remember mom’s advise, chew slowly, pause to speak, and laugh with those at table. It takes half as much food and it’s twice as good. That kind of eating feeds the body and the soul. A hangover is God talking. The message is simple: you are gulping when you should be sipping. Take, Eat. This is my body, broken for you. This is the bread of heaven; this is the cup of salvation. It isn’t much, but it’s more than enough.

A time for Adoration follows

A time of adoration follows and Tantum Ergo is sung.

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, you have given us the eucharist as the memorial of your suffering and death. May our worship of this sacrament of your body and blood  help us to experience the salvation you have won for us and the peace of the kingdom where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen. 

Benediction is given, and at the conclusion, the following Litany is sung:

We have been seduced by the arrogance of our self-sufficiency without recourse to your grace. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have denied our responsibility for others and shown indifference to their suffering and plight. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have worshipped the image of ourselves in our achievements without gratitude to you.  Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

In our envious spirit, we have been reduced to competition instead of cooperation with each other. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

By comparing ourselves with others, we have not embraced and appreciated our own blessing. Look on us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have harbored resentment against others, long after they have asked forgiveness. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have controlled and intimidated others by our outbursts of rage and our threatening words and behavior. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

In our misguided search for perfection, we have sadly grown intolerant of human weakness. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have been careless in our work, and failed to put our priorities into place with the Gospel. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have held the best of our possessions for ourselves and given token contributions to the poor and needy. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have toiled to excess to achieve material prosperity while neglecting the deeper needs of our loved ones. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have used sexuality to manipulate and control others rather than as an expression of love and care. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy

We have been seduced by physical attractiveness and neglected the life of the spirit. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have gorged ourselves with food and drink to excess while our brothers and sisters went to bed hungry;. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

We have buried our hunger for love and affection by overindulging in food and drink. Look upon us, Lord, and have mercy.

Our Father…….

For three nights we have gathered to reflect upon the pervasive power and presence of sin in our lives, and in the society in which we live because of it. I have proposed to you antidotes to those sins which we might as well call virtues. The virtue we possess and must nurture in our lives is bred from the habits of a lifetime. These virtues are more than ideas; they are a way of life. The movement from understanding them to living them is the very stuff of conversion. 

1. You can recognize a virtuous person because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Pride is insecurity. Proud and Arrogant behavior compensates for deep misgivings about one’s true value. When we believe that we are worthy, that all human life is worthy, there is a deep reservoir of living water on which to draw. No need to be the center of attention, because we have been attentive to our own center. No need to be impatient with others because we know we share the same short comings. These people are recognized because they are not out to be recognized. They listen to others because they respect the worthiness of others. They grow old gracefully because looking young is not what makes you feel worthy. This person wakes up every morning knowing exactly what they are: a child of God.

2. You can recognize a virtuous person because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Envy is the failure to admire and emulate the beauty of everything and everyone else. There is no cheap imitation in their lives. They do not want anything except the very best for others. This virtuous person is always wide eyed in wonder and delight, never squint eyed in resentment.

3. You can recognize a virtuous person because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Anger is consumptive and useless. Vengeance or Revenge is far from them, for they recognize the destructive power of that evil. Indignation is their response to what is wrong and the only anger in their hearts is that indignation on behalf of others rather than service to one’s self. This person is recognized as a friend of the poor and defender of people without power or status. They get mad for the right reasons, and they know when to shout and when to whisper.

4. You can recognize a virtuous person because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Sloth rejects the wonder and goodness of everything God has made by saying, “Who cares? They expend their energy for others, are filled with compassion and they are content and comfortable with themselves as God made them, holy and good. They plant seeds and wait, knowing that the planting is their job and the harvest if God’s. They have peace which surpasses all understanding.

5. You can recognize a virtuous person because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Gluttony is living to eat instead of eating to live.  They turn every meal into a sacrament and they commune with friends to savor every moment rather than ever meal. They never forget that food is a gift, that less is always more, and that what seems like too little is always more than enough in the presence of God.

6. You can recognize the virtuous person because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Lust is love of self, and so they never take those who love them for granted. Considerate and thoughtful, knowing that physical attraction is rooted in emotional intimacy and tangible tenderness. Holy Intimacy in love is always Intimacy with the Holy.

7. You can recognize a virtuous person because they know that the real root of the deadly sin of Greed because they remember that desire is both a blessing and a curse. Wanting things for them is no sin if those things are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. They are free of possession. They love life, not things. They do not serve money, money serves them so that they can serve others. They are always stewards of God’s gifts.

For all their glamour, the Seven Deadly Sins are really just seven fallen angels.

Worthiness is the quiet, unspoken antidote to pride;

Emulation, not envy is what makes us all students of beauty and truth;

Indignation is how we turn self-serving anger into a passion for change;

Fidelity and trust is how we keep monogamy from becoming monotonous;

Communion is how food become fellowship with another and with God;

Wanting wisely is how desire gets bent into useful shapes; and

Contentment is how we let things be and trust God Providence to restore all things to goodness.

Praise to God, the source of all our goodness.

Praise to Jesus Christ, the Word Made Flesh,

the path of Virtue for the Saved.

Praise to the Holy Spirit, the giver life who fills us with Joy.

In the name of the Father, the Son and of the Holy Spirit, let us be embraced by the power of grace, conversion, and peace.

Amen.

Sacred Heart Parish Mission

October 10, 2005

Monday

Pilgrimage, Poverty, Joy, Humility

Opening Hymn: 

Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament

Introduction:

         At the fifty-first verse of Chapter 9 in the Gospel of Luke, something really important happens in the sequence of that Gospel providing us with a remarkable opportunity. From that point on until verse twenty-eight of Chapter 19 Luke gathers all the instructions of Jesus to his disciples into one grand sermon or “course on discipleship.” What it takes to be a follower of Jesus unfolds in these ten chapters in a clear and decisive sequence of discussions, events, and parables. This “Journey to Jerusalem” is where we go when we want to know what it takes and how to measure our readiness to be followers of Jesus Christ. In fact, the journey took longer than four days, and what is about to happen here will only be a first glance at the qualities or the virtues of disciples as Jesus would have it. Your own reading of those ten chapters over these next four days will be helpful and fill in much of what cannot be said and done here this week. It all begins with Chapter 9 verse 21: “Now it happened that as the time drew near for him to be taken up, he turned his face towards Jerusalem and sent messengers ahead of him.” Then it concludes as we shall on Thursday night at verse 28 of Chapter 19 with these words: “When he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.” At that point, he must feel as though he has done and said all he can to prepare us for our lives together as his disciples. For those of us who remain, who have been called to fulfill his mission, the instructions given on this journey shape and form us to be worthy of our calling, of our gifts, and of this mission.

It is all set in the context of a pilgrimage, this “Journey to Jerusalem”, and that is what you have been invited to do this week: make a pilgrimage. I don’t know if you’ve ever done that in a formal way, but I have done so several times as both pilgrim and as leader. This week, I’ll be pilgrim with you once again, at the same time I will be leader for you pointing out the sights along the way, sharing with you their meaning, their purpose, and their power to accomplish what every pilgrimage does. Pilgrims and tourists are not the same thing. Tourists travel for rest and recreation. They go to look and wonder at the natural wonders of this earth or to sample another culture. On the other hand, pilgrims travel to fuel a spiritual quest. A sacred pilgrimage is a journey seeking answers to questions of meaning, purpose, and eternity. They do not seek fulfillment in things that will never satisfy. They seek what the heart desires most of all; God’s presence. Tourists seek entertainment and adventure. Pilgrims desire happiness and self awareness in communion with God. The tourist tries to figure out how to see as much as possible in the time permitted. The pilgrim wants to discover the highest good and figure out how to form habits that achieve the goal.

If any of us are going to be followers of Jesus, then we have to know how to follow. It means learning and using the discipline of trusting God’s plan for my life. That means believing that every detail about who I am and about my day was given to me by a God who loves me and whose vision of the world needs me. A pilgrimage then ultimately teaches us that the meaning of life is found not at the end of the journey but in the journey itself. What matters with a pilgrimage is not the destination, but what happens along the way: conversion brought about by a new experience of God. In that sense, life itself then is a pilgrimage toward God which leads the pilgrim to the heart of our faith, Jesus Christ, our Savior and source of all holiness. So, if you’ll come with me, we’re going on a pilgrimage this week; a symbolic journey into discipleship, into faith, into forgiveness and healing. Our map is the Lukan Journey Narrative. We’ll make some stops along the way each night to reflect upon the virtues of a true disciples; the habits of life, the attitudes, and the behavior that will ultimately bring us to the end of life’s journey, to “Jerusalem” as Luke and Jesus call it; to “heaven” as we better know it. So listen now to Luke, our guide along the way.

The Gospel Text is read.

“He called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal. He said to them, “Take nothing for the journey: neither staff, nor haversack, nor bread, nor money; and do not have a spare tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there; and when you leave let your departure be from there. As for those who do not welcome you, when you leave their towns shake the dust from your feet as evidence against them. So they set out and went from village to village proclaiming the good news and healing everywhere. On their return the apostles gave him an account of all they had done. Then he took them with him and withdrew towards a town called Bethsaida where they could be by themselves. 

“Then it happened that the time drew near from him to be taken up, he turned his face towards Jerusalem and sent messengers ahead of him. These set out, and they went into a Samaritan village to make preparations for him, but the people would not receive him because he was making for Jerusalem. Seeing this, the disciples, James and John said, “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to burn them up?” But he turned and rebuked them, and they went on to another village.

“As they traveled along they met a man on the road who said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go. Jesus answered, “Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.’ Another to whom he said, “Follow me, replied, “Let me go and bury my father and spread the news of the Kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, sir, but first let me go and say good-bye to my people at home.” Jesus said to him, “Once the hand is laid on the plough, no one who looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

“After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them out ahead of him in pairs, to all the towns and places he himself would be visiting. And he said to them, “The harvest is rich but the laborers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send laborers to do his harvesting. Start off now, but look I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Take no purse with you, no haversack, no sandals. Salute no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, let your first words be, “Peace to this house!” And if a man of peace lives there, your peace will go and rest on him; if not, it will come back to you. Stay in the same house, taking what food and drink they have to offer, for the laborer deserves his wages; do not move from house to house. Whenever you go into town where they make you welcome, eat what is put before you. Cure those who are sick, and say, “The Kingdom of God is very near to you.” But whenever you enter a town and they do not make you welcome, go out into its streets and say, “We wipe off the very dust of your town that clings to our feet, and leave it with you. Yet be sure of this: the kingdom of God is very near. I tell you, on the great Day it will be more bearable for Sodom than for that town. Anyone who listens to you listens to me; anyone who rejects you rejects me, and those who reject me reject the one who sent me.

“The seventy-two came back rejoicing. “Lord”, they said, “even the devils submit to us when we use your name. He said to them, “I watched Satan fall like lightening from heaven. Look, I have given you power to tread down serpents and scorpions and the whole strength of the enemy; nothing shall ever hurt you. Yet do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you; rejoice instead that your names are written in heaven.

“Now it happened that on a Sabbath day he had gone to share a meal in the house of one of the leading Pharisees; and they watched him closely. He then told the guests a parable. When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take your seat in the place of honor. A more distinguished person than you may have been invited, and the person who invited you both may come and say “Give up your place to this man.” And then to your embarrassment, you will have to go and take the lowest place. No; when you are a guest, make your way to the lowest place and sit there, so that, when your host comes, he may say, “My friend, move up higher.” Then, everyone with you at the table will see you honored. For everyone who raises himself up will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be raised up.

“Then he said to the host, ”When you give a lunch or dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relations or rich neighbor, in case they invite you back and so repay you. ‘No; when you have a party, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, then you will be blessed, for they have no means to repay you and so you will be repaid when the upright rise again. Great crowds accompanied him on his way and he turned and spoke to them. Anyone who comes to me without hating father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes and his own life too, cannot be my disciple. None of you can be my disciple without giving up all that he owns.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

Psalm 34 as on Sunday 30 in Ordinary Time Cycle C

Preaching

         It is important to see and realize the difference between the two groups sent out by Jesus; the difference in their tasks and in their identity. It is also helpful to realize the similarities. The first group is sent out in place of Jesus. They are sent to do what he has done. The second group is sent out to prepare for Jesus. He is going to follow them. Both groups return to him and give an accounting of their mission. It is the first group he takes aside and begins to instruct along the way to Jerusalem. While we have something important to learn from both groups, it is the first group, “The Twelve” with which must identify. For we live in their tradition. We are the “apostolic” church that now continues to live and to be the mission of Jesus Christ. To be faithful to that mission, to be His presence to the world, and to be effective in our calling, there are some qualities that must be found in us, and the first of them is Poverty.

         These people called by Jesus are not asked to take on an extra task like working a second job. They are to make following Jesus everything; so completely that it reorders all other duties. It becomes who we are, “Christians”. It becomes how we must examine and order our lives. So, if we are parents, we are Christian parents. If we are husband or wife, we are Christian mother or wife. If we are child, then we are a child of God like Jesus was a child of God. If we are teacher, a doctor, a professional of any kind, we are a Christian teacher, or a Christian doctor. Belonging to Jesus is not a part time job or a temporary condition. It is an identity.

         In this first look at the virtues of a disciple, at the qualities that provide for this identity, Luke holds up Poverty, Joy, and Humility as the fundamental qualities of life for those who would follow Jesus. Our best and purest model of poverty is St. Francis. In the clarity of his thinking if not in the radical style of his life, Francis understood poverty. For him, and for that matter, all of us who set our sights on being followers and disciples of Jesus, Poverty is not a social problem. To get that right, we must understand that there are two different “poverties.” One is a life style chosen, the other is a life style imposed. One is a consequence of freedom, the other is a consequence of injustice. They are not the same. The first is always a virtue, not some ill to be solved, cured, and wiped away by laws and social programs. The poverty, which makes us uneasy, stirs our passion, and calls into question our economics, laws, and consumer culture is an issue of Justice. The Poverty which Jesus commends to his followers, is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved. One is the consequence of injustice, the other is a consequence of a life style and a new way of relating to things and to others.

         In our quest for Justice, we have gotten a few things mixed up, not the least of them is a confusion of “justice” with “revenge”. We must be vigilant about allowing that confusion to motivate our decisions and behavior. Jesus rejects revenge entirely.

         There is a test of poverty. It has nothing to do with annual income. It has to do with what can be shared. If your car is too expensive to let someone use it; it is too expensive. If your computer is too delicate for anyone else to use, it is too delicate. If your sweater is too good for another to wear, it is too good. The point is not that you have a certain make and model of car, or computer, or designer sweater. That is irrelevant. If any of that separates you from your neighbor, it is a violation of poverty. This has nothing to do with what you may own, but the moment it becomes a problem, you are in gospel trouble. You see? It is not about justice, it is about poverty. It might be very “just” to say that someone does not have the ear to use your stereo because they do not share your same refined taste. It might be “just” to think that someone is too overweight to look good in your sweater. All of that may be true. But at that point, you are not poor you are simply true. The moment you start finding reasons for not sharing what you have, you are no longer living the virtue of poverty, which Jesus proposes is essential for those who would follow him. You may have good taste, You may have good sense. You may be law abiding, honest, and truthful, but you are not poor; and you are in trouble with the gospel.

         We are not called to be caseworkers. We are not called to be making distinctions about who should have what, who deserves what, and what will help someone and what will not. That is what social agencies do. God is poor. God shares the sun and the rain on good and bad alike. What is asked of us is compassion, which is an experience of poverty.

         Life today is very complicated, but the Gospel is not complicated for those who believe. Jesus still looks for some to follow him, to live in the mystery of poverty. It is not a life style that will take diluting, and it cannot be done part time. Faith in Jesus, like in the Gospel is not for Church, Sunday, or times of private prayer. It is for every day and every hour. It is everything. We do not take our lives and fit them into the Gospel. We take the Gospel and let it shape our lives, our priorities, our vision, and our relationships. Those who make the way of Jesus their own must be willing to do so first, fully, freely, and forever.

         Notice how Jesus sends out these people ahead of him: in pairs and with nothing. They are poor, but they are not alone. With nothing to worry about, nothing to lose, nothing to pack, carry, or slow them down, they are free, and that quality of freedom from worry and the possessive concerns that seems to weigh down the rich who’s stuff is too good to loan or share, is called: Joy.

         Notice that attitude in the disciples of these gospel verses. “They returned rejoicing. But lest we think that their joy has something to do with what they have done, Jesus goes on immediately to say: “Do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” It is who they are, not what they do that matters that makes them disciples, and fulfills their mission. Being task oriented as we have become in our culture, we often get the what mixed up with the who. It is then easy to begin to shape our identity by what we do rather than by who we are.

         Recently I was listening to a eulogy during which someone was speaking about the deceased. On and on it went about what the man had done, where he worked, who for, and for how long. Inside I was groaning because that was not who this was, that was what he did, and the man we were honoring was far more than where he worked which to me seemed totally insignificant since I never knew the man before he retired!

         We are forever selling ourselves to the tasks of life, measuring our worth or the worth of another by what we earn, where we work what we have accomplished, what we drive and how big our house is. This way of thinking is at odds with the Christian message, and it finds its way in our reflection and our thinking about who we are as disciples. In other words, we begin to think of discipleship as something we do, as something with very serious duties and responsibilities, and while that is an element, it is not all there is to it. When that become all there is, we are stuck, and discipleship is reduced to just another thing we are supposed to do, sort of like another job or chore added on to the rest of life.

         What we can discover from this tenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel is another way of looking at one another and ourselves in the context of discipleship rather than in the context of consumer or producer. There is more to this calling than something we must do. Being a disciple is what we must become, and that happens first by what we are, not by what we do. It is important to realize that these people sent out by Jesus have no names. So we must not think that he is sending out Peter, James, and John – those “others”. Luke would have us understand that all are sent this way – on a mission of discipleship. All are given the divine command. What Christ wants is that others will see Him in us. “Then God said: “Let us make humankind in our own image. according to our likeness.” Our calling is to act in God’s behalf, to represent God until he comes in glory.

         But what does this world get? What kind of God do we represent – what is the image this world gets of God from us? It is a profound and a troubling question. A world that longs for a loving, forgiving, God of mercy too often gets a God of judgment, revenge, and punishment, a God of rules and laws. Is that the God we believe in, trust, and hope for? The poor world gets intolerance and impatience. Where is the God we pray to and ask for mercy with confident expectations? Why is it that others cannot find in us the image of the God we want for ourselves? I think it is because we don’t get the point – fail to understand discipleship and continue to reduce it to tasks, duties, and responsibilities. 

As disciples, we are called to be poor, and the consequence of that poverty when we have embraced it is Joy, because we are free of anxious concerns and worry about things that have nothing to do with who we are; that have nothing to do with the wonderful news that our names are written in heaven. This Joy that is the quality Luke insists Jesus would have in those who are his presence is not the same as “Happiness.” When any of us rip into a brightly colored and beautifully wrapped gift that comes as a surprise or at Christmas, when we open it and find something we have wanted and put off getting we are happy. But happiness comes and happiness goes. It is its nature. It is a response to pleasure. Not so with Joy. The virtue of Joy does not come and go. It has nothing to do with pleasure or satisfaction. It has to do with freedom and with faith.

Joy is what allows us to stand in the face of disappointment and not be put down. Joy is what allows us to open a gift and find the box empty, smile, and laugh. Joy is what sustains us in hope when there are no more presents to unwrap. Joy is the life of God in the heart of those who love. Joy is possible for those who know and believe that God loves them and that God’s gifts are without end.

         Finally, those schooled by Jesus are rooted in an ancient wisdom and tradition called: Humility which means knowing one’s rightful place in the reign of God. Humility is a companion of Poverty, just like Joy. In the ancient world, and still too much so in this world, guests would be seated according to their status or importance in society, and it was a highly stratified society where places at table carried great social weight. It was a serious matter if one judged their place incorrectly. Rank and Status were based upon comparisons with others. The Kingdom protocol that Jesus announces on the way to Jerusalem clearly marks a shift from the Mediterranean world’s custom of reciprocity and social standing.

         We live with the art of being politically correct which teaches that we should bend or skirt the truth in order to avoid conflict. We’ve learned the lesson that we establish our identity and measure our wroth and success by comparing ourselves with others. “The more you have the better you are.” The more power, you wield, the stronger you are; and the more control you have, the more successful you become. The radical and revolutionary character of the Kingdom of God sees wealth and possessions as gifts of God, not a privilege or right of status or family.

         The Humble find their sense of self and their identity in God, not in comparison with another like themselves. This humility leads one to service, not to power. The humble are free, free from fear and free from clinging to fame and fortune, which stifle depth and development.

         Part of this lesson for disciples is addressed to guests and part to hosts. In speaking to guests, Luke suggests that humility is not a matter of pretending that one is “not worthy? but rather facing the truth that all is gift, and the only proper attitude is to be grateful. The proud think they are worth more because of achievements, status, wealth, or power; all of which they may well have. Yet they miss the point: all these things they have are for the service of others – for no other purpose whatsoever. The tone of this story is drawn from the threat of the end time; and we are reminded that we take nothing from this life but our relationship. 

         In speaking to hosts, the message comes from a different perspective. Inviting the right people to dinner is crucial. For the host, humility calls for a guest list that includes the hungry. The people around the humble table are those who, in truth, need to be there. The host invites them, not because of what they can give to the host either by way of a return favor or by way of being looked upon as a “saint”; but rather the humble host knows the truth that what worldly possessions they may have are in their possessions not because they are better than anyone else, but because they have been chosen to be instruments of God’s love and where there is love, there is God.

         Poverty, Joy, Humility: three virtues of disciples. Without them we have no hope of getting to Jerusalem; without them we have no hope of completing the mission to which we are called.

Tantum Ergo

You have given them bread from heaven.

Having all sweetness within it.

Let us Pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, you gave us the Eucharist as the memorial of your suffering and death. May our worship of this sacrament of your body and blood, help us to experience the salvation you won for us, and the peace of the Kingdom, where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Benediction

Divine Praises

• Blessed be God
• Blessed be His Holy Name
• Blessed be Jesus Christ true God and true man.
• Blessed be the name of Jesus.
• Blessed be his most sacred heart.
• Blessed be his most Precious Blood.
• Blessed be Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar
• Blessed the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
• Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
• Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
• Blessed be her glorious Assumption.
• Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
• Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse.
• Blessed be God in his angels and in his saints.

Repose the Sacrament

Hymn: “All you who are thirsty, come to the water.” #644 Ritual Song

Sacred Heart Parish Mission

Fowler, Indiana

October 11, 2005

Tuesday

Prudence, Watchfulness, Persistence

Opening Hymn: 

Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament

A reading of the Gospel text.

“Great crowds accompanied him on his way and he turned and spoke to them. Anyone who comes to me without hating father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes and his own life too, cannot be my disciple. No one who does not carry his cross and come after me can be my disciple.

Indeed, which of you here, intending to build a tower, would not first sit down and work out the cost to see if he had enough to complete it? Otherwise, if he laid the foundation and then found himself unable to finish the work, anyone who saw it would start making fun of him and saying, “Here is someone who started to build and was unable to finish.” Or again, what king marching to war against another king would not first sit down and consider whether with the thousand men he could stand up to the other who was advancing against him with twenty thousand? If not, then while the other king was still a long way off, he would send envoys to sue for peace. 

Which one of you with a hundred sheep, if he lost one, would fail to leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the missing one till he found it? And when he fount it, would he not joyfully take it on his shoulders and then, when he got home, call together his friends and neighbors saying to them, “Rejoice with me, I have found my sheep that was lost.” In the same way, I tell you, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repenting than over ninety-nine upright people who have no need of repentance.

Or again, what woman with ten drachmas would not, if she lost one, light a lamp and sweep out the house and search thoroughly till she found it? And then, when she had found it, call together her friends and neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, I have found the drachma I lost.” In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing among the angels of God over one repentant sinner.”

Then he said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, “Father, let me have the share of the estate that will come to me.” So the father divided the property between them. A few days later, the younger son got together everything he had and left for a distant country where he squandered his money on a life of debauchery.

When he had spent it all, that country experienced a severe famine, and now he began to feel the pinch; so he hired himself out to one of the local inhabitants who put him on his farm to feed the pigs. And he would willingly have filled himself with the husks the pigs were eating but no one would let him have them. Then he came to his senses and said, “How many of my father’s hired men have all the food they want and more, and here am I dying of hunger! I will leave this place and go to my father and say: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired men. So he left the place and went back to his father.

While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity. He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him. Then his son said: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son.” But the father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the calf we have been fattening, and kill it; we will celebrate by having a feast because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and is found.” And they began to celebrate. 

Then he told them about a judge in a certain town who had neither fear of God nor respect for anyone. In the same town there was also a widow who kept on coming to him and saying, “I want justice from you against my enemy!” For a long time he refused, but at last he said to himself, “Even though I have neither fear of God nor respect for any human person, I must give this widow her just rights since she keeps pestering me, or she will come and do me harm.”

Psalm 

Preaching

         At first we might think that Luke has Jesus talking about commitment and the consequent renouncing of all things, or that he’s inviting the disciple to take up a cross. However that may be, those ideas fail to dig beneath the words and get behind examples.  When you do that, you can begin to understand that we are being led into virtue as a quality of life rather than behavior. Remember, first discipleship is about being something, then, from that comes the doing of something. In fact, the very effort to get that straight in our minds is what it’s all about. The disciple is always asking: “What kind of person shall I be? rather than: “What shall I do?” The doing will take care of itself once the being is in place. So, from what Jesus has to say at this stop on the way to Jerusalem is that those who would be his disciples will be Prudent.

         Those of us schooled in any Christian spirituality will immediately recall those “Cardinal Virtues” we may have once learned: Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude. They come to us from the Book of Wisdom chapter 9, verse 7. “If one loves justice, the fruits of her works are virtues; for she teaches moderation and prudence, justice and fortitude, and nothing in life is more useful than these.” Ancient Greeks, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine and Bernard of Clairveaux all developed thought about these virtues as central to good moral living.

         When Jesus puts this ancient wisdom into his formation program for disciples, he suggests that his disciples will be people of action, not cautious, timid, frightened, mediocre, and inactive. These are not the qualities of Prudence. In fact, they are just the opposite. Prudence seeks the best way to do the right thing. The point is the DOING. It is a virtue of action, not of passive caution. Back in the 20 and 30s, a phenomenon of Christian action spread from Belgium and France to this country taking the form of what we called: “The Christian Family Movement”, or “CFM”. The heart of that program was simply the Virtue of Prudence reduced to three principals: “See, Judge, Act.” the passage of time may have left the CFM movement in the past, but not its wisdom. The obstacles to prudence are what Jesus confronts in his formation of disciples: procrastination, negligence, hesitation, inconsistency, rashness (like the people of the gospel we hear about tonight) and rationalization. These are all excuses for doing nothing or for doing the wrong thing.

         In terms of the Cardinal Virtues, Prudence is the first. Prudence enables one to avoid acting against justice because of greed or favorites. Prudence prevents one from acting against temperance by keeping good desires, like food or sex from running wild and taking control of our lives, or controlling wrong desires, like revenge. Prudence prevents one from acts against fortitude by finding a way between excessive fear and blind recklessness.

         We are called to be Prudent – which always means to be people of action: wise, accountable, reasonable, and responsible. The Prudent have a desire to discern. It is a serious issue for disciples of Jesus, this matter of Prudence. It guides and motivates the prophet. It always sees the big picture of life rather than just the little stuff. It is a way of living in relationship to others and to things that seeks the Will of God in all things. Prudent disciples know themselves, take time to reflect upon their experience, integrate and relate that experience to the experience of  others, to the Word of God, to the good of all, and to all the consequence of action. Prudent disciples ask questions, inquire, probe, wonder, and pray.

         They are also watchful. We hear of this in three wonderful parables. It is important to keep them together if we want to understand what the Jesus of Luke is teaching us about discipleship. We see it in the man who looks for the lost sheep. It is there in the woman who sweeps the house, and all the more obvious in the father who looks, waits, and watches for his son. The poor, joyful, humble, and prudent disciple is also watchful. Even when it makes no sense by the world’s values, the watch, the expectation, the hope, the wait, is never abandoned.

         That man looking for his lost sheep doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. Never mind that to leave ninety-nine in danger and look for one opens him up for criticism and ridicule because the one that wanders is the one that always wanders. Never mind that he may have done it before. He goes off looking and watching to find. The woman looking for her coin is not concerned about anything except finding that coin. She goes about her business with single purpose, finding that coin. She would have swept anyway, but now she sweeps night and day to find that coin, uninterested in the fact that she had nine others just like it.

         The father is the focus of the third story, no matter what riches we may gain from reflection on the other characters. He is the focus of the story. He is the watchful one alert to his son’s return. He has not said to the rest of the household: “He’s always going to be that way, forget it.” He has not closed the door on the future, changed the locks on the house, nor cut off any hope of change, growth or reconciliation in himself, or the lost one. He is simply watchful, and because of it, he does not miss the chance he gets to have the party. I’ve wondered sometimes about that fatted calf. Was there always one being readied for a party, or was he living in watchful anticipation that it would be used for just this purpose?

         Watchful is the disciple of Jesus Christ. Never cutting off, never giving up hope, never living with that final and self-justifying attitude about another that says; “They’ll just always be that way.” “That’s the way they’ve always been, and they’re not going to change.” It’s like pulling down the garage door on hope, the ultimate conclusion and dismissal of hope. The disciple continues to be watchful and alert to any opportunity for finding anyone that is lost. No matter what others may say, not matter that others may come along to replace what has been lost. The disciple knows the loss and watches for the chance to seize and celebrate the return or reconciliation. What happened to us as a nation on 9-11, in spite of the rhetoric to the contrary, it really makes no difference who did it, and it takes no brains to know why. It is simply a matter of hate, which always drives people crazy. It makes no difference why. History will spend little time on that. What history will record and what matters most is what we do about it, and what we become because of it. It should come as no surprise to any living person that human beings are capable of great cruelty and evil, especially when driven by hatred, anger, and helplessness. Yet at the same time, great heroism and self-sacrifice out of love rises up in contrast. We can chose which behavior is more worthy of us as disciples of Jesus Christ. Rather than wondering “why”, perhaps we might wonder about what it is we are to become and therefore what we are to do consistent with our identity.

         In lives of the people of this gospel there is no effort to blame or punish the lamb or the son. There is one virtue that marks them all: Watchfulness. They look for and wait for the opportunity to restore the unity that is broken, and they never give up nor do anything to eliminate that opportunity. Always on the look-out, the disciple remains watchful and vigilant for every opportunity to extend the mercy of God and the embrace of God’s reign not only to those who are deserving, but to those some insist will never change, never be worthy, nor ever find their way home. For the celebration to begin, it takes two movements: one, the return and two the welcome. In neither case can there be a heart hardened by disappointment, anger, or stubbornness. For this grace we must pray, and in that effort, we find the lesson Jesus teaches about prayer as our final virtue this evening.

         Luke pulls a switch with this parable. I suspect that when Jesus used this parable, it was, like all his parables, about God, his “Father”. In which case, the point of the story was the judge, and the listener would been have drawn into a reflection upon the surprising figure who is moved by this persistent widow to provide the justice for which she pleads. Yet, when Luke tells the story it is not so clearly about the judge. In the context of the journey to Jerusalem the widow emerges as the story’s focus. She emerges as the prime figure for us in our reflection on the virtues tonight not because she is a widow, not because she is alone, not because she is woman, nor because she is an uneducated outcast without a name, wealth, land or power. But she emerges because, unlike others of her kind, she is persistent, constant, steady, and unbending in face of any obstacle. The virtue she offers disciples is the virtue of unrelenting hope. Again, it is not something you do, it is a virtue and a way of doing things. It means that prayer in the life of disciples is neither occasional nor convenient. It does not only rise up in time of trouble, but it is constant, steady, and persistently a part of every day and every moment.

         This kind of life, filled with prayer, is the clearest sign of faith. It is not about the “right” prayer, about devotions, or about the prayers of Christians, Jews, or Muslims. It is about a life style that is constantly prayerful, always lived in the presence of God, and seeing and relating all things to divine will and the divine presence. This kind of faith is not something taught in catechism or school, but something caught by attitude and example. It is the consequence of a God-centered life rooted in conviction and trust in a God who will never abandon or ignore those who entrust themselves to the divine power, care and mercy in prayer.

         It is because of the shift from self to God that perseverance in prayer becomes possible, because God who is utterly reliable, has pledged to hear prayers and has promised that those who ask receive, those who seek find and those who knock will find that no door shall be closed to them. In that kind of faith, persistent prayer becomes not only possible but a permanent practice in the life of the believer and disciple.

         The first witness to this truth is Jesus himself whose life is one of prayer that ultimately leads him through darkness, loneliness, death, and the grace to the ultimate victory of Justice. It can be no different then for his disciples. The judges of this world tell us “NO” and “GO AWAY”; but prayer in the style of this woman sustains our hope and renews the courage of all who cry for justice. If a corrupt and self-preserving judge will finally give way to the cry of that widow, how much easier will it be with a God of Mercy and Compassion?

         Poverty, Joy, Humility, Prudence, Watchfulness, and Persistence: the virtues of disciples, the gospel path to Jerusalem.

Tantum Ergo

You have given them bread from heaven.

Having all sweetness within it.

Let us Pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, you gave us the Eucharist as the memorial of your suffering and death. May our worship of this sacrament of your body and blood, help us to experience the salvation you won for us, and the peace of the Kingdom, where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Benediction

Divine Praises

• Blessed be God
• Blessed be His Holy Name
• Blessed be Jesus Christ true God and true man.
• Blessed be the name of Jesus.
• Blessed be his most sacred heart.
• Blessed be his most Precious Blood.
• Blessed be Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar
• Blessed the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
• Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
• Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
• Blessed be her glorious Assumption.
• Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
• Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse.
• Blessed be God in his angels and in his saints.

Repose the Sacrament

Hymn

Sacred Heart Parish Mission

Fowler, Indiana

October 12, 2005

Wednesday

Holiness and Prayer

Opening Hymn: 

Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament

A reading of the Gospel text.

“Two men went to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself, “I thank you, God that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like everyone else, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I get.” The tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his breast and said “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” this man, I tell you, went home again justified; the other did not. For everyone who raises himself up will be humbled, but anyone who humbles himself will be raised up. One of the rulers put this question to him, “Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not give false witness; Honor your father and your mother. He replied, I have kept all these since my earliest days. And when Jesus heard this he said, There is still one thing you lack. Sell everything you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me. But when he head this he was overcome with sadness, for he was very rich.

         Jesus looked at him and said, How hard it is for those who have riches to make their way into the kingdom of God! Yes, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone rich to enter the kingdom of God. Those who were listening said, “In that case, who can be saved?” He replied, “Things that are impossible by human resources, are possible for God.”

Psalm

Preaching

It is not about Payer, Pharisees, nor Tax Collectors. When we start with that thinking, then we reveal that we think it’s about us. It isn’t. This is about God. It is about a God who forgives and justifies sinners. It is ultimately then about holiness. What is happening here on the road to Jerusalem is Luke’s effort to bring disciples to recognize that they are holy, and the point is that they are holy not by what they do, who they know, or where they are but simply because of who they are. Again, Luke is concerned with virtue, not behavior. This is a matter of attitude. 

There is nothing wrong with either prayer in this story. In fact, they are both reciting Psalms: the Pharisee is using Psalm 17 and the Tax Collector is using Psalm 34. The problem is not the prayer. The problem is the focus.  All the Pharisee can do is recite what he has done. His prayer is all about him. What the Tax Collector does is make God the center of his prayer. One has no room for God because he is so filled with his own accomplishments. The other acknowledges God as the source and ground of his life and hope. He is justified and holy, not the other one.

Disciples of Jesus Christ are a people who find holiness, not by what they do, 

but by the God who saves them, has mercy on them, and sees truth in their heart. What we hear in the parable is not just what these two men think of themselves. They also reveal what they think of God. The Pharisee regards God as something he deserves or earns: like stock in a corporation. It’s as though he is waiting for some special honor or privilege. The Tax Collector sees God as wholly other, as holiness, yet so in love with sinners like him that he could be pardoned. Disciples of Jesus Christ are a people justified and holy not because God owes them something, but because they have stood in truth before God and acknowledged their need and the inadequacy of their own deeds to save themselves. 

It is discomforting to recognize how much of the Pharisee there is in us, 

how quickly when sorrow comes we say: “Why has this happened to me? I go to Mass, I pray, I’m just and fair and good?  Why?” It’s a thinking that suggests that we have a right to expect favors, and if they don’t come, everything falls apart. 

This is not the disciple’s virtue. Disciples of Jesus Christ find holiness in the truth of their sinfulness and in God’s free gift to all who will come in that truth. 

It is not a matter of human achievement. In the new order Jesus came to inaugurate, it is the era of salvation and holiness experienced as a gift, not as a right. In such disciples then, righteousness is never about self, but always about the God who saves with mercy, forgiveness and love. As Disciples in formation then, we come humbly into this holy place acknowledging what God has done for us in spite of what we have failed to do, and we rejoice in what is promised to us and to all who seek and share mercy and forgiveness. We cling then to the hope that we shall go home today justified and give glory to God.

       In our search and hunger for holiness we run the constant risk of becoming religious freaks, idolatrous people who are caught up in success, comfort, luxury, prestige, promotions, and all that sort of thing. The culture of this stuff has reached into another generation, and we now have a whole population of privileged children that expect things to be perfect, immediate, bigger and better than ever before; and what’s worse is, they think they deserve it!

         But to them, and to us, the call comes again just as it always did, even to those wild fishermen who were tending the nets. The call of God is the call to the wild. The whole purpose of Christianity the purpose of discipleship is to teach us and dispose us to live wildly by sharing and participating in the wildness of God. That is why pious people are so bizarre. That is why dull, ordinary, moralistic, Christians make no sense. It takes imagination and a little wildness to throw in your lot with Jesus of Nazareth. That’s what was wrong with that rich young man who came up to Jesus and asked how to be perfect, and with the man who came up to be his follower, but had so much going on in his life, he needed time to get free. That rich young man had no imagination. He could not imagine living without all of his stuff. Give it away! Sell it? He couldn’t imagine that. He was comfortable and thought he ought to have more. The others were so busy: you know, the farm, the dead, his family, all that stuff —– he couldn’t imagine not having things all in order!  Well, God can……. it takes imagination and freedom to become a disciple of Jesus Christ.

         In becoming, and that’s the issue — BECOMING — holiness happens. It’s a by-product, not something you do with a plan. We have confused holiness with morality, and we think that what we do makes us holy, when the truth is that it is us, the holy ones who make things holy. Yet, when we think that holiness is somehow a result of morality, we’ve got it all backwards; and we’re in denial of the truth that holiness leads to morality, not the other way around. Peter was a holy man, wild with God. Jumping out of that boat time and time again. (That took imagination!) Shooting off his mouth when he didn’t know what he was saying half the time, curing the lame, yet denying the Lord Jesus. The denial, his failure, his sin, did not take away his holiness, nor did it take him out of his role as leader of the apostolic community. It certainly seems to me that it’s the same for us. We are a holy people. We may sin, we may break the covenant, our promises, and even deny our relationship with one another but our holiness remains.

         More people die of an un-lived life than die from cancer, and it’s a much more dreadful kind of death. The one single characteristic of the disciples of Jesus that I recognize in the gospels is that they were not dull, uninteresting, and ordinary people. They were untutored, unschooled fishermen. They had been hanging around that wild desert man, John the Baptist, the greatest man of the Old Testament. His one great joy was to hear the voice of Christ. Once he heard it, it was all over. He lost his head! Our trouble is that we are pulled apart into a million different directions by puny pleasures, and we miss the infinite pleasure that would fill the whole heart. John refused to do that. John and those disciples were mystics – and those of us who are called to be disciples, Holy People, ought to be the same.

         REALIZED UNION WITH GOD – That’s mysticism. It’s our vocation. Everyone is called to be a mystic. That is someone who no longer knows God by hearsay, no longer by information, but by experience. That person is in touch with God and therefore with God’s world, and they are wild with that God and with that World. I would suggest that if anyone here is not well on the way to becoming a Mystic, they need more than a three day mission. Now I don’t mean a perfect mystic. I mean one who has begun to become a mystic. One who is immersed in the mystery, one who is engaged, who is enticed, who is enthralled, who is captivated by the living God.

         We’ve got to become mystics, and the important part of that is the becoming part. It is the human adventure – an ongoing process of becoming. It’s what makes humans different from everything else in creation. A rhinoceros has already, when recognized as a rhinoceros reached and archived the quintessence of rhinorocisity. That’s the difference. That never happens to human beings. If Francis lived a hundred years longer he would have become a hundred times more Franciscan. It’s true of us all. It goes on an on. There is nothing fixed, nothing static. The human adventure, this process of becoming, of entering into the Kingdom of God, of becoming eloquently, distinctively human goes on and on. That’s the beauty of it. If on earth we ever think we’re finished, we are. That’s how it is with your Baptism. You are a hundred times more Baptized, more Christian today than you were on the day of your baptism. It’s the same for me. I’m not a priest yet. There’s only one priest, Jesus Christ. I am becoming a priest. Every day, every hour, every effort, every mistake moves me a little more along the way to becoming more and more like Christ – “realized union with God” I’m not finished, and my only hope is that by the time I die, I’ll be enough like Christ that His Father will clam me as his own. It’s the same for you, those of you who are married. You are becoming one, one with each other, and by doing that in faith and in prayer, you become one with Christ who is the living, breathing heart of your marriage. You are becoming married. On the tenth anniversary of your lives together, you are more married than on the day of your wedding. On the fiftieth, you’re way more married. By that time, it’s probably hard for strangers to tell you apart as husband and wife. You don’t even need to talk anymore, you already know one another’s thoughts, and it’s not just because you are repeating yourself a lot by that time! It’s the same with Baptism. That’s the trouble with the fundamentalists around here. They think that once you’re dunked, you’re saved. Well, I’ve got news for them. I’m a lot more saved today than I was when I was baptized. The baptism of that baby back in 1942 just got things started – set me off in the direction of my life. Baptism, Marriage, Forgiveness, Holy Orders, all of these sacramental events and moments of our lives confirm what is already going on — our union with God. That’s mysticism! It is the essence of holiness. It is what we do, because it is in the end, what we are.

 

Tantum Ergo

You have given them bread from heaven.

Having all sweetness within it.

Let us Pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, you gave us the Eucharist as the memorial of your suffering and death. May our worship of this sacrament of your body and blood, help us to experience the salvation you won for us, and the peace of the Kingdom, where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Benediction

Divine Praises

• Blessed be God
• Blessed be His Holy Name
• Blessed be Jesus Christ true God and true man.
• Blessed be the name of Jesus.
• Blessed be his most sacred heart.
• Blessed be his most Precious Blood.
• Blessed be Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar
• Blessed the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
• Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
• Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
• Blessed be her glorious Assumption.
• Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
• Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse.
• Blessed be God in his angels and in his saints.

Repose the Sacrament

Hymn 

“

Sacred Heart Parish Mission

Fowler, Indiana

October 13, 2005

Thursday

Grateful and Repentant

Opening Hymn:

Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament

A reading of the Gospel text.

On his journey to Jerusalem Jesus passed along the borders of Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. Keeping their distance, they raised their voices and said. “Jesus, Master, have pity on us.! When he saw them, he responded, “God and show yourselves to the priest.” On their way there they were cured. One of them, realizing that he had been cured, came back praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself on his face at the feet of Jesus and spoke his praises. This man was a Samaritan. Jesus took the occasion to say, “Were not all ten made whole? Where are the other nine? Was there no one to return and give thanks to God except this foreigner?” He said to the man, “Stand up and go your way; your faith has been your salvation.” Then, upon entering Jericho, there was a man named Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector and a wealthy man. He was trying to see what Jesus was like, but being small of stature, was unable to do so because of the crowd. He first ran on in front then climbed a sycamore tree which was along Jesus’ route in order to see him. When Jesus came to the spot he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry down. I mean to stay at your house today.” He quickly descended, and welcomed him with delight. When this was observed, everyone began to murmur, “He has gone to a sinner’s house as a guest.” Zacchaeus stood his ground and said to the Lord: “I give half my belongings, Lord, to the poor. If I have defrauded anyone in the least, I pay him back fourfold.” Jesus said to him; “Today salvation has come to this house, for this is what it means to be a son of Abraham. The Son of Man has come to search out and save what was lost.”

Psalm:

Preaching

Where there is faith, there is healing. That is the issue here. Where there is faith, there is healing. This healing is not limited to the “right” people, and it knows nothing of boarders and boundaries. Faith knows no boundaries. With Jesus Christ, there are no boarders, and with his disciples, there are no boundaries when it comes to service a share in healing grace. There are no boundaries when it comes to restoring those who have been excluded, but boundaries is not exactly what this is all about, and this first story, told on the way to Jerusalem, puts before us a contrast from which we may draw another of a disciple’s virtues.

Luke proposes here a distinction between the nine and the one: a distinction we might describe as physical healing and spiritual healing. Notice that the healing of physical infirmity did not bring salvation. Although the nine who did not return to Jesus were cured physically, there is no mention at all of their spiritual healing or “salvation.” On the other hand, the one who returns to Jesus, the one who acknowledges what God had done for him through Jesus Christ is the one who is saved by faith. Because of his gratitude, by which he gave evidence of his faith, this grateful leper was enabled to experience salvation beyond his physical cure.

It is the gratitude that Luke singles out as a virtue to be found in disciples of Jesus Christ. In Luke’s thought, the grateful recognition of God’s initiative that brings healing and salvation is the surest sign of faith. One’s faith is confirmed by the witness of Gratitude. Without it, there is no assurance of Salvation.

Faith for the disciple of Jesus is not a matter of rules kept nor prayers said. It is a matter of Gratitude in response to the initiative God has taken on our behalf. Disciples are Grateful, that’s all there is to it. They recognize what God has done for them. They return again and again to the feet of the master and “speak his praises.” as the Gospel describes it. This is a public recognition. Please take note. It is not something the leper does quietly in his heart or at home in his room. This “gratitude,” found in a disciple of Jesus, moves one to public recognition and acknowledgment of one’s gratitude. This is why we are here, in this public place rather than at home. The disciple of Jesus is grateful in an open, public say. The disciple of Jesus is found at the master’s feet giving praise and thanks. Gratitude, for a disciple of Jesus is a way of life, not a passing emotion. It is a life-changing conversion as public as a known leper throwing himself at the feet of Jesus Christ in a Samaritan town. We are not talking personal, private stuff here. Disciples formed on this pilgrimage to Jerusalem are a people who have known what it means to be accepted, included, healed, saved, and graced by a God who ignores all boundaries, and their gratitude is contagious.

We are at journey’s end, and we find ourselves right where we started which is the human story. We began in Paradise, and by God’s love, we end up in the paradise of heaven once again united in joy with the one who has been with us all along. As Jesus completes his journey to Jerusalem, the final encounter happens at the edge of Jerusalem, at Jericho, that place where Moses led a victorious people into the land they were promised. This who journey to Jerusalem in Luke’s Gospel has the most wonderful conclusion. This visit to the house of Zacchaeus was not a delay or a detour on his journey. This visit was and is the very purpose of the journey. “The Son of man came to seek and save what was lost.” Luke will get Jesus to Jerusalem in a couple of verses; but that city is not where Jesus is going. He is headed for our homes to stay with us, be with us, live with us, and die with us.

Zacchaeus stands before us in sharp contrast to that crowd who can’t quite see Jesus because they are too busy looking at and criticizing Zacchaeus. They have shut him out, and in their critique of his life, they have also shut out Jesus. Zacchaeus, unlike the crowd that can see Jesus, wants to see Jesus, and is willing to go to some inconvenience and take some risk to do so. Never mind his dignity, stature, or what he might look like in the eyes of others, he will see Jesus, and he will do whatever it takes; and Jesus sees him. You can almost see the two of them walking away from the whispering, accusing, blaming crowd who do not hear themselves called “Children of Abraham”, and will find no salvation in their homes. It is the crowd that is indicted by this story. They were so put off by their suppositions concerning Zacchaeus that they failed to “see” that in terms of the righteousness of God they were as “lost” as anyone, and were diverted from “seeing” Jesus and gladly welcoming him to their salvation.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus announces three times that salvation has come. First at the synagogue when his turn came and he rolled up the scroll, sat down, and said: “Today this message of salvation is being fulfilled (4:30)” It happened in Nazareth and it caused a riot. Then, he says it a second time in today’s passage in Jericho. He will say it one more time to a condemned dying thief hanging at his side (23:42). What it takes to experience this “salvation” is seen in these two who are outside the symbolic synagogue: Repentance. In Zacchaeus we see it best and understand what it means. The virtue as Luke explores it is not something Zacchaeus did, but something he became that brought other consequences. Luke’s Gospel of Grace is joined to Repentance, and this Repentance is not solely a transaction of the heart. It isn’t just feelings. Repentance bears fruit: this was made clear as early as the in the preaching of John the Baptist as soldiers and tax collectors came to him in repentance asking: “What shall we do?”

A life of repentance bears fruit, not only for the household of Zacchaeus, but also for the poor who will be beneficiaries of his conversion and, as well, those people who he may have defrauded. Repentance has more than personal effects. There is a domestic, social, and economic dimension as well. In Luke, salvation is not simply a matter of the soul. It touches the whole human family and the whole fabric of human life. In the great, soon-to-unfold story of Jesus and the cross, the presence of the Risen Christ makes noble and holy the home and the table of the faithful disciple. It happened in Jericho, it happened in Emmaus, and it can happen here if we will be his disciples.

Tantum Ergo

You have given them bread from heaven.

Having all sweetness within it.

Let us Pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, you gave us the Eucharist as the memorial of your suffering and death. May our worship of this sacrament of your body and blood, help us to experience the salvation you won for us, and the peace of the Kingdom, where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Benediction

Divine Praises

• Blessed be God
• Blessed be His Holy Name
• Blessed be Jesus Christ true God and true man.
• Blessed be the name of Jesus.
• Blessed be his most sacred heart.
• Blessed be his most Precious Blood.
• Blessed be Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar
• Blessed the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
• Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
• Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
• Blessed be her glorious Assumption.
• Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
• Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse.
• Blessed be God in his angels and in his saints.

Repose the Sacrament

Confessions Conclude the evening.

Fowler, Indiana

October 10, 2005

Monday

Pilgrimage, Poverty, Joy, Humility

Opening Hymn: 

Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament

Introduction:

         At the fifty-first verse of Chapter 9 in the Gospel of Luke, something really important happens in the sequence of that Gospel providing us with a remarkable opportunity. From that point on until verse twenty-eight of Chapter 19 Luke gathers all the instructions of Jesus to his disciples into one grand sermon or “course on discipleship.” What it takes to be a follower of Jesus unfolds in these ten chapters in a clear and decisive sequence of discussions, events, and parables. This “Journey to Jerusalem” is where we go when we want to know what it takes and how to measure our readiness to be followers of Jesus Christ. In fact, the journey took longer than four days, and what is about to happen here will only be a first glance at the qualities or the virtues of disciples as Jesus would have it. Your own reading of those ten chapters over these next four days will be helpful and fill in much of what cannot be said and done here this week. It all begins with Chapter 9 verse 21: “Now it happened that as the time drew near for him to be taken up, he turned his face towards Jerusalem and sent messengers ahead of him.” Then it concludes as we shall on Thursday night at verse 28 of Chapter 19 with these words: “When he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.” At that point, he must feel as though he has done and said all he can to prepare us for our lives together as his disciples. For those of us who remain, who have been called to fulfill his mission, the instructions given on this journey shape and form us to be worthy of our calling, of our gifts, and of this mission.

It is all set in the context of a pilgrimage, this “Journey to Jerusalem”, and that is what you have been invited to do this week: make a pilgrimage. I don’t know if you’ve ever done that in a formal way, but I have done so several times as both pilgrim and as leader. This week, I’ll be pilgrim with you once again, at the same time I will be leader for you pointing out the sights along the way, sharing with you their meaning, their purpose, and their power to accomplish what every pilgrimage does. Pilgrims and tourists are not the same thing. Tourists travel for rest and recreation. They go to look and wonder at the natural wonders of this earth or to sample another culture. On the other hand, pilgrims travel to fuel a spiritual quest. A sacred pilgrimage is a journey seeking answers to questions of meaning, purpose, and eternity. They do not seek fulfillment in things that will never satisfy. They seek what the heart desires most of all; God’s presence. Tourists seek entertainment and adventure. Pilgrims desire happiness and self awareness in communion with God. The tourist tries to figure out how to see as much as possible in the time permitted. The pilgrim wants to discover the highest good and figure out how to form habits that achieve the goal.

If any of us are going to be followers of Jesus, then we have to know how to follow. It means learning and using the discipline of trusting God’s plan for my life. That means believing that every detail about who I am and about my day was given to me by a God who loves me and whose vision of the world needs me. A pilgrimage then ultimately teaches us that the meaning of life is found not at the end of the journey but in the journey itself. What matters with a pilgrimage is not the destination, but what happens along the way: conversion brought about by a new experience of God. In that sense, life itself then is a pilgrimage toward God which leads the pilgrim to the heart of our faith, Jesus Christ, our Savior and source of all holiness. So, if you’ll come with me, we’re going on a pilgrimage this week; a symbolic journey into discipleship, into faith, into forgiveness and healing. Our map is the Lukan Journey Narrative. We’ll make some stops along the way each night to reflect upon the virtues of a true disciples; the habits of life, the attitudes, and the behavior that will ultimately bring us to the end of life’s journey, to “Jerusalem” as Luke and Jesus call it; to “heaven” as we better know it. So listen now to Luke, our guide along the way.

The Gospel Text is read.

“He called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal. He said to them, “Take nothing for the journey: neither staff, nor haversack, nor bread, nor money; and do not have a spare tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there; and when you leave let your departure be from there. As for those who do not welcome you, when you leave their towns shake the dust from your feet as evidence against them. So they set out and went from village to village proclaiming the good news and healing everywhere. On their return the apostles gave him an account of all they had done. Then he took them with him and withdrew towards a town called Bethsaida where they could be by themselves. 

“Then it happened that the time drew near from him to be taken up, he turned his face towards Jerusalem and sent messengers ahead of him. These set out, and they went into a Samaritan village to make preparations for him, but the people would not receive him because he was making for Jerusalem. Seeing this, the disciples, James and John said, “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to burn them up?” But he turned and rebuked them, and they went on to another village.

“As they traveled along they met a man on the road who said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go. Jesus answered, “Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.’ Another to whom he said, “Follow me, replied, “Let me go and bury my father and spread the news of the Kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, sir, but first let me go and say good-bye to my people at home.” Jesus said to him, “Once the hand is laid on the plough, no one who looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

“After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them out ahead of him in pairs, to all the towns and places he himself would be visiting. And he said to them, “The harvest is rich but the laborers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send laborers to do his harvesting. Start off now, but look I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Take no purse with you, no haversack, no sandals. Salute no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, let your first words be, “Peace to this house!” And if a man of peace lives there, your peace will go and rest on him; if not, it will come back to you. Stay in the same house, taking what food and drink they have to offer, for the laborer deserves his wages; do not move from house to house. Whenever you go into town where they make you welcome, eat what is put before you. Cure those who are sick, and say, “The Kingdom of God is very near to you.” But whenever you enter a town and they do not make you welcome, go out into its streets and say, “We wipe off the very dust of your town that clings to our feet, and leave it with you. Yet be sure of this: the kingdom of God is very near. I tell you, on the great Day it will be more bearable for Sodom than for that town. Anyone who listens to you listens to me; anyone who rejects you rejects me, and those who reject me reject the one who sent me.

“The seventy-two came back rejoicing. “Lord”, they said, “even the devils submit to us when we use your name. He said to them, “I watched Satan fall like lightening from heaven. Look, I have given you power to tread down serpents and scorpions and the whole strength of the enemy; nothing shall ever hurt you. Yet do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you; rejoice instead that your names are written in heaven.

“Now it happened that on a Sabbath day he had gone to share a meal in the house of one of the leading Pharisees; and they watched him closely. He then told the guests a parable. When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take your seat in the place of honor. A more distinguished person than you may have been invited, and the person who invited you both may come and say “Give up your place to this man.” And then to your embarrassment, you will have to go and take the lowest place. No; when you are a guest, make your way to the lowest place and sit there, so that, when your host comes, he may say, “My friend, move up higher.” Then, everyone with you at the table will see you honored. For everyone who raises himself up will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be raised up.

“Then he said to the host, ”When you give a lunch or dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relations or rich neighbor, in case they invite you back and so repay you. ‘No; when you have a party, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, then you will be blessed, for they have no means to repay you and so you will be repaid when the upright rise again. Great crowds accompanied him on his way and he turned and spoke to them. Anyone who comes to me without hating father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes and his own life too, cannot be my disciple. None of you can be my disciple without giving up all that he owns.”

The Gospel of the Lord.

Psalm 34 as on Sunday 30 in Ordinary Time Cycle C

Preaching

         It is important to see and realize the difference between the two groups sent out by Jesus; the difference in their tasks and in their identity. It is also helpful to realize the similarities. The first group is sent out in place of Jesus. They are sent to do what he has done. The second group is sent out to prepare for Jesus. He is going to follow them. Both groups return to him and give an accounting of their mission. It is the first group he takes aside and begins to instruct along the way to Jerusalem. While we have something important to learn from both groups, it is the first group, “The Twelve” with which must identify. For we live in their tradition. We are the “apostolic” church that now continues to live and to be the mission of Jesus Christ. To be faithful to that mission, to be His presence to the world, and to be effective in our calling, there are some qualities that must be found in us, and the first of them is Poverty.

         These people called by Jesus are not asked to take on an extra task like working a second job. They are to make following Jesus everything; so completely that it reorders all other duties. It becomes who we are, “Christians”. It becomes how we must examine and order our lives. So, if we are parents, we are Christian parents. If we are husband or wife, we are Christian mother or wife. If we are child, then we are a child of God like Jesus was a child of God. If we are teacher, a doctor, a professional of any kind, we are a Christian teacher, or a Christian doctor. Belonging to Jesus is not a part time job or a temporary condition. It is an identity.

         In this first look at the virtues of a disciple, at the qualities that provide for this identity, Luke holds up Poverty, Joy, and Humility as the fundamental qualities of life for those who would follow Jesus. Our best and purest model of poverty is St. Francis. In the clarity of his thinking if not in the radical style of his life, Francis understood poverty. For him, and for that matter, all of us who set our sights on being followers and disciples of Jesus, Poverty is not a social problem. To get that right, we must understand that there are two different “poverties.” One is a life style chosen, the other is a life style imposed. One is a consequence of freedom, the other is a consequence of injustice. They are not the same. The first is always a virtue, not some ill to be solved, cured, and wiped away by laws and social programs. The poverty, which makes us uneasy, stirs our passion, and calls into question our economics, laws, and consumer culture is an issue of Justice. The Poverty which Jesus commends to his followers, is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved. One is the consequence of injustice, the other is a consequence of a life style and a new way of relating to things and to others.

         In our quest for Justice, we have gotten a few things mixed up, not the least of them is a confusion of “justice” with “revenge”. We must be vigilant about allowing that confusion to motivate our decisions and behavior. Jesus rejects revenge entirely.

         There is a test of poverty. It has nothing to do with annual income. It has to do with what can be shared. If your car is too expensive to let someone use it; it is too expensive. If your computer is too delicate for anyone else to use, it is too delicate. If your sweater is too good for another to wear, it is too good. The point is not that you have a certain make and model of car, or computer, or designer sweater. That is irrelevant. If any of that separates you from your neighbor, it is a violation of poverty. This has nothing to do with what you may own, but the moment it becomes a problem, you are in gospel trouble. You see? It is not about justice, it is about poverty. It might be very “just” to say that someone does not have the ear to use your stereo because they do not share your same refined taste. It might be “just” to think that someone is too overweight to look good in your sweater. All of that may be true. But at that point, you are not poor you are simply true. The moment you start finding reasons for not sharing what you have, you are no longer living the virtue of poverty, which Jesus proposes is essential for those who would follow him. You may have good taste, You may have good sense. You may be law abiding, honest, and truthful, but you are not poor; and you are in trouble with the gospel.

         We are not called to be caseworkers. We are not called to be making distinctions about who should have what, who deserves what, and what will help someone and what will not. That is what social agencies do. God is poor. God shares the sun and the rain on good and bad alike. What is asked of us is compassion, which is an experience of poverty.

         Life today is very complicated, but the Gospel is not complicated for those who believe. Jesus still looks for some to follow him, to live in the mystery of poverty. It is not a life style that will take diluting, and it cannot be done part time. Faith in Jesus, like in the Gospel is not for Church, Sunday, or times of private prayer. It is for every day and every hour. It is everything. We do not take our lives and fit them into the Gospel. We take the Gospel and let it shape our lives, our priorities, our vision, and our relationships. Those who make the way of Jesus their own must be willing to do so first, fully, freely, and forever.

         Notice how Jesus sends out these people ahead of him: in pairs and with nothing. They are poor, but they are not alone. With nothing to worry about, nothing to lose, nothing to pack, carry, or slow them down, they are free, and that quality of freedom from worry and the possessive concerns that seems to weigh down the rich who’s stuff is too good to loan or share, is called: Joy.

         Notice that attitude in the disciples of these gospel verses. “They returned rejoicing. But lest we think that their joy has something to do with what they have done, Jesus goes on immediately to say: “Do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” It is who they are, not what they do that matters that makes them disciples, and fulfills their mission. Being task oriented as we have become in our culture, we often get the what mixed up with the who. It is then easy to begin to shape our identity by what we do rather than by who we are.

         Recently I was listening to a eulogy during which someone was speaking about the deceased. On and on it went about what the man had done, where he worked, who for, and for how long. Inside I was groaning because that was not who this was, that was what he did, and the man we were honoring was far more than where he worked which to me seemed totally insignificant since I never knew the man before he retired!

         We are forever selling ourselves to the tasks of life, measuring our worth or the worth of another by what we earn, where we work what we have accomplished, what we drive and how big our house is. This way of thinking is at odds with the Christian message, and it finds its way in our reflection and our thinking about who we are as disciples. In other words, we begin to think of discipleship as something we do, as something with very serious duties and responsibilities, and while that is an element, it is not all there is to it. When that become all there is, we are stuck, and discipleship is reduced to just another thing we are supposed to do, sort of like another job or chore added on to the rest of life.

         What we can discover from this tenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel is another way of looking at one another and ourselves in the context of discipleship rather than in the context of consumer or producer. There is more to this calling than something we must do. Being a disciple is what we must become, and that happens first by what we are, not by what we do. It is important to realize that these people sent out by Jesus have no names. So we must not think that he is sending out Peter, James, and John – those “others”. Luke would have us understand that all are sent this way – on a mission of discipleship. All are given the divine command. What Christ wants is that others will see Him in us. “Then God said: “Let us make humankind in our own image. according to our likeness.” Our calling is to act in God’s behalf, to represent God until he comes in glory.

         But what does this world get? What kind of God do we represent – what is the image this world gets of God from us? It is a profound and a troubling question. A world that longs for a loving, forgiving, God of mercy too often gets a God of judgment, revenge, and punishment, a God of rules and laws. Is that the God we believe in, trust, and hope for? The poor world gets intolerance and impatience. Where is the God we pray to and ask for mercy with confident expectations? Why is it that others cannot find in us the image of the God we want for ourselves? I think it is because we don’t get the point – fail to understand discipleship and continue to reduce it to tasks, duties, and responsibilities. 

As disciples, we are called to be poor, and the consequence of that poverty when we have embraced it is Joy, because we are free of anxious concerns and worry about things that have nothing to do with who we are; that have nothing to do with the wonderful news that our names are written in heaven. This Joy that is the quality Luke insists Jesus would have in those who are his presence is not the same as “Happiness.” When any of us rip into a brightly colored and beautifully wrapped gift that comes as a surprise or at Christmas, when we open it and find something we have wanted and put off getting we are happy. But happiness comes and happiness goes. It is its nature. It is a response to pleasure. Not so with Joy. The virtue of Joy does not come and go. It has nothing to do with pleasure or satisfaction. It has to do with freedom and with faith.

Joy is what allows us to stand in the face of disappointment and not be put down. Joy is what allows us to open a gift and find the box empty, smile, and laugh. Joy is what sustains us in hope when there are no more presents to unwrap. Joy is the life of God in the heart of those who love. Joy is possible for those who know and believe that God loves them and that God’s gifts are without end.

         Finally, those schooled by Jesus are rooted in an ancient wisdom and tradition called: Humility which means knowing one’s rightful place in the reign of God. Humility is a companion of Poverty, just like Joy. In the ancient world, and still too much so in this world, guests would be seated according to their status or importance in society, and it was a highly stratified society where places at table carried great social weight. It was a serious matter if one judged their place incorrectly. Rank and Status were based upon comparisons with others. The Kingdom protocol that Jesus announces on the way to Jerusalem clearly marks a shift from the Mediterranean world’s custom of reciprocity and social standing.

         We live with the art of being politically correct which teaches that we should bend or skirt the truth in order to avoid conflict. We’ve learned the lesson that we establish our identity and measure our wroth and success by comparing ourselves with others. “The more you have the better you are.” The more power, you wield, the stronger you are; and the more control you have, the more successful you become. The radical and revolutionary character of the Kingdom of God sees wealth and possessions as gifts of God, not a privilege or right of status or family.

         The Humble find their sense of self and their identity in God, not in comparison with another like themselves. This humility leads one to service, not to power. The humble are free, free from fear and free from clinging to fame and fortune, which stifle depth and development.

         Part of this lesson for disciples is addressed to guests and part to hosts. In speaking to guests, Luke suggests that humility is not a matter of pretending that one is “not worthy? but rather facing the truth that all is gift, and the only proper attitude is to be grateful. The proud think they are worth more because of achievements, status, wealth, or power; all of which they may well have. Yet they miss the point: all these things they have are for the service of others – for no other purpose whatsoever. The tone of this story is drawn from the threat of the end time; and we are reminded that we take nothing from this life but our relationship. 

         In speaking to hosts, the message comes from a different perspective. Inviting the right people to dinner is crucial. For the host, humility calls for a guest list that includes the hungry. The people around the humble table are those who, in truth, need to be there. The host invites them, not because of what they can give to the host either by way of a return favor or by way of being looked upon as a “saint”; but rather the humble host knows the truth that what worldly possessions they may have are in their possessions not because they are better than anyone else, but because they have been chosen to be instruments of God’s love and where there is love, there is God.

         Poverty, Joy, Humility: three virtues of disciples. Without them we have no hope of getting to Jerusalem; without them we have no hope of completing the mission to which we are called.

Tantum Ergo

You have given them bread from heaven.

Having all sweetness within it.

Let us Pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, you gave us the Eucharist as the memorial of your suffering and death. May our worship of this sacrament of your body and blood, help us to experience the salvation you won for us, and the peace of the Kingdom, where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Benediction

Divine Praises

• Blessed be God
• Blessed be His Holy Name
• Blessed be Jesus Christ true God and true man.
• Blessed be the name of Jesus.
• Blessed be his most sacred heart.
• Blessed be his most Precious Blood.
• Blessed be Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar
• Blessed the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
• Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
• Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
• Blessed be her glorious Assumption.
• Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
• Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse.
• Blessed be God in his angels and in his saints.

Repose the Sacrament

Hymn: “All you who are thirsty, come to the water.” #644 Ritual Song

Sacred Heart Parish Mission

Fowler, Indiana

October 11, 2005

Tuesday

Prudence, Watchfulness, Persistence

Opening Hymn: 

Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament

A reading of the Gospel text.

“Great crowds accompanied him on his way and he turned and spoke to them. Anyone who comes to me without hating father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes and his own life too, cannot be my disciple. No one who does not carry his cross and come after me can be my disciple.

Indeed, which of you here, intending to build a tower, would not first sit down and work out the cost to see if he had enough to complete it? Otherwise, if he laid the foundation and then found himself unable to finish the work, anyone who saw it would start making fun of him and saying, “Here is someone who started to build and was unable to finish.” Or again, what king marching to war against another king would not first sit down and consider whether with the thousand men he could stand up to the other who was advancing against him with twenty thousand? If not, then while the other king was still a long way off, he would send envoys to sue for peace. 

Which one of you with a hundred sheep, if he lost one, would fail to leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the missing one till he found it? And when he fount it, would he not joyfully take it on his shoulders and then, when he got home, call together his friends and neighbors saying to them, “Rejoice with me, I have found my sheep that was lost.” In the same way, I tell you, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repenting than over ninety-nine upright people who have no need of repentance.

Or again, what woman with ten drachmas would not, if she lost one, light a lamp and sweep out the house and search thoroughly till she found it? And then, when she had found it, call together her friends and neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, I have found the drachma I lost.” In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing among the angels of God over one repentant sinner.”

Then he said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, “Father, let me have the share of the estate that will come to me.” So the father divided the property between them. A few days later, the younger son got together everything he had and left for a distant country where he squandered his money on a life of debauchery.

When he had spent it all, that country experienced a severe famine, and now he began to feel the pinch; so he hired himself out to one of the local inhabitants who put him on his farm to feed the pigs. And he would willingly have filled himself with the husks the pigs were eating but no one would let him have them. Then he came to his senses and said, “How many of my father’s hired men have all the food they want and more, and here am I dying of hunger! I will leave this place and go to my father and say: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired men. So he left the place and went back to his father.

While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity. He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him. Then his son said: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son.” But the father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the calf we have been fattening, and kill it; we will celebrate by having a feast because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and is found.” And they began to celebrate. 

Then he told them about a judge in a certain town who had neither fear of God nor respect for anyone. In the same town there was also a widow who kept on coming to him and saying, “I want justice from you against my enemy!” For a long time he refused, but at last he said to himself, “Even though I have neither fear of God nor respect for any human person, I must give this widow her just rights since she keeps pestering me, or she will come and do me harm.”

Psalm 

Preaching

         At first we might think that Luke has Jesus talking about commitment and the consequent renouncing of all things, or that he’s inviting the disciple to take up a cross. However that may be, those ideas fail to dig beneath the words and get behind examples.  When you do that, you can begin to understand that we are being led into virtue as a quality of life rather than behavior. Remember, first discipleship is about being something, then, from that comes the doing of something. In fact, the very effort to get that straight in our minds is what it’s all about. The disciple is always asking: “What kind of person shall I be? rather than: “What shall I do?” The doing will take care of itself once the being is in place. So, from what Jesus has to say at this stop on the way to Jerusalem is that those who would be his disciples will be Prudent.

         Those of us schooled in any Christian spirituality will immediately recall those “Cardinal Virtues” we may have once learned: Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude. They come to us from the Book of Wisdom chapter 9, verse 7. “If one loves justice, the fruits of her works are virtues; for she teaches moderation and prudence, justice and fortitude, and nothing in life is more useful than these.” Ancient Greeks, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine and Bernard of Clairveaux all developed thought about these virtues as central to good moral living.

         When Jesus puts this ancient wisdom into his formation program for disciples, he suggests that his disciples will be people of action, not cautious, timid, frightened, mediocre, and inactive. These are not the qualities of Prudence. In fact, they are just the opposite. Prudence seeks the best way to do the right thing. The point is the DOING. It is a virtue of action, not of passive caution. Back in the 20 and 30s, a phenomenon of Christian action spread from Belgium and France to this country taking the form of what we called: “The Christian Family Movement”, or “CFM”. The heart of that program was simply the Virtue of Prudence reduced to three principals: “See, Judge, Act.” the passage of time may have left the CFM movement in the past, but not its wisdom. The obstacles to prudence are what Jesus confronts in his formation of disciples: procrastination, negligence, hesitation, inconsistency, rashness (like the people of the gospel we hear about tonight) and rationalization. These are all excuses for doing nothing or for doing the wrong thing.

         In terms of the Cardinal Virtues, Prudence is the first. Prudence enables one to avoid acting against justice because of greed or favorites. Prudence prevents one from acting against temperance by keeping good desires, like food or sex from running wild and taking control of our lives, or controlling wrong desires, like revenge. Prudence prevents one from acts against fortitude by finding a way between excessive fear and blind recklessness.

         We are called to be Prudent – which always means to be people of action: wise, accountable, reasonable, and responsible. The Prudent have a desire to discern. It is a serious issue for disciples of Jesus, this matter of Prudence. It guides and motivates the prophet. It always sees the big picture of life rather than just the little stuff. It is a way of living in relationship to others and to things that seeks the Will of God in all things. Prudent disciples know themselves, take time to reflect upon their experience, integrate and relate that experience to the experience of  others, to the Word of God, to the good of all, and to all the consequence of action. Prudent disciples ask questions, inquire, probe, wonder, and pray.

         They are also watchful. We hear of this in three wonderful parables. It is important to keep them together if we want to understand what the Jesus of Luke is teaching us about discipleship. We see it in the man who looks for the lost sheep. It is there in the woman who sweeps the house, and all the more obvious in the father who looks, waits, and watches for his son. The poor, joyful, humble, and prudent disciple is also watchful. Even when it makes no sense by the world’s values, the watch, the expectation, the hope, the wait, is never abandoned.

         That man looking for his lost sheep doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. Never mind that to leave ninety-nine in danger and look for one opens him up for criticism and ridicule because the one that wanders is the one that always wanders. Never mind that he may have done it before. He goes off looking and watching to find. The woman looking for her coin is not concerned about anything except finding that coin. She goes about her business with single purpose, finding that coin. She would have swept anyway, but now she sweeps night and day to find that coin, uninterested in the fact that she had nine others just like it.

         The father is the focus of the third story, no matter what riches we may gain from reflection on the other characters. He is the focus of the story. He is the watchful one alert to his son’s return. He has not said to the rest of the household: “He’s always going to be that way, forget it.” He has not closed the door on the future, changed the locks on the house, nor cut off any hope of change, growth or reconciliation in himself, or the lost one. He is simply watchful, and because of it, he does not miss the chance he gets to have the party. I’ve wondered sometimes about that fatted calf. Was there always one being readied for a party, or was he living in watchful anticipation that it would be used for just this purpose?

         Watchful is the disciple of Jesus Christ. Never cutting off, never giving up hope, never living with that final and self-justifying attitude about another that says; “They’ll just always be that way.” “That’s the way they’ve always been, and they’re not going to change.” It’s like pulling down the garage door on hope, the ultimate conclusion and dismissal of hope. The disciple continues to be watchful and alert to any opportunity for finding anyone that is lost. No matter what others may say, not matter that others may come along to replace what has been lost. The disciple knows the loss and watches for the chance to seize and celebrate the return or reconciliation. What happened to us as a nation on 9-11, in spite of the rhetoric to the contrary, it really makes no difference who did it, and it takes no brains to know why. It is simply a matter of hate, which always drives people crazy. It makes no difference why. History will spend little time on that. What history will record and what matters most is what we do about it, and what we become because of it. It should come as no surprise to any living person that human beings are capable of great cruelty and evil, especially when driven by hatred, anger, and helplessness. Yet at the same time, great heroism and self-sacrifice out of love rises up in contrast. We can chose which behavior is more worthy of us as disciples of Jesus Christ. Rather than wondering “why”, perhaps we might wonder about what it is we are to become and therefore what we are to do consistent with our identity.

         In lives of the people of this gospel there is no effort to blame or punish the lamb or the son. There is one virtue that marks them all: Watchfulness. They look for and wait for the opportunity to restore the unity that is broken, and they never give up nor do anything to eliminate that opportunity. Always on the look-out, the disciple remains watchful and vigilant for every opportunity to extend the mercy of God and the embrace of God’s reign not only to those who are deserving, but to those some insist will never change, never be worthy, nor ever find their way home. For the celebration to begin, it takes two movements: one, the return and two the welcome. In neither case can there be a heart hardened by disappointment, anger, or stubbornness. For this grace we must pray, and in that effort, we find the lesson Jesus teaches about prayer as our final virtue this evening.

         Luke pulls a switch with this parable. I suspect that when Jesus used this parable, it was, like all his parables, about God, his “Father”. In which case, the point of the story was the judge, and the listener would been have drawn into a reflection upon the surprising figure who is moved by this persistent widow to provide the justice for which she pleads. Yet, when Luke tells the story it is not so clearly about the judge. In the context of the journey to Jerusalem the widow emerges as the story’s focus. She emerges as the prime figure for us in our reflection on the virtues tonight not because she is a widow, not because she is alone, not because she is woman, nor because she is an uneducated outcast without a name, wealth, land or power. But she emerges because, unlike others of her kind, she is persistent, constant, steady, and unbending in face of any obstacle. The virtue she offers disciples is the virtue of unrelenting hope. Again, it is not something you do, it is a virtue and a way of doing things. It means that prayer in the life of disciples is neither occasional nor convenient. It does not only rise up in time of trouble, but it is constant, steady, and persistently a part of every day and every moment.

         This kind of life, filled with prayer, is the clearest sign of faith. It is not about the “right” prayer, about devotions, or about the prayers of Christians, Jews, or Muslims. It is about a life style that is constantly prayerful, always lived in the presence of God, and seeing and relating all things to divine will and the divine presence. This kind of faith is not something taught in catechism or school, but something caught by attitude and example. It is the consequence of a God-centered life rooted in conviction and trust in a God who will never abandon or ignore those who entrust themselves to the divine power, care and mercy in prayer.

         It is because of the shift from self to God that perseverance in prayer becomes possible, because God who is utterly reliable, has pledged to hear prayers and has promised that those who ask receive, those who seek find and those who knock will find that no door shall be closed to them. In that kind of faith, persistent prayer becomes not only possible but a permanent practice in the life of the believer and disciple.

         The first witness to this truth is Jesus himself whose life is one of prayer that ultimately leads him through darkness, loneliness, death, and the grace to the ultimate victory of Justice. It can be no different then for his disciples. The judges of this world tell us “NO” and “GO AWAY”; but prayer in the style of this woman sustains our hope and renews the courage of all who cry for justice. If a corrupt and self-preserving judge will finally give way to the cry of that widow, how much easier will it be with a God of Mercy and Compassion?

         Poverty, Joy, Humility, Prudence, Watchfulness, and Persistence: the virtues of disciples, the gospel path to Jerusalem.

Tantum Ergo

You have given them bread from heaven.

Having all sweetness within it.

Let us Pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, you gave us the Eucharist as the memorial of your suffering and death. May our worship of this sacrament of your body and blood, help us to experience the salvation you won for us, and the peace of the Kingdom, where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Benediction

Divine Praises

• Blessed be God
• Blessed be His Holy Name
• Blessed be Jesus Christ true God and true man.
• Blessed be the name of Jesus.
• Blessed be his most sacred heart.
• Blessed be his most Precious Blood.
• Blessed be Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar
• Blessed the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
• Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
• Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
• Blessed be her glorious Assumption.
• Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
• Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse.
• Blessed be God in his angels and in his saints.

Repose the Sacrament

Hymn

Sacred Heart Parish Mission

Fowler, Indiana

October 12, 2005

Wednesday

Holiness and Prayer

Opening Hymn: 

Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament

A reading of the Gospel text.

“Two men went to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself, “I thank you, God that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like everyone else, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I get.” The tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his breast and said “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” this man, I tell you, went home again justified; the other did not. For everyone who raises himself up will be humbled, but anyone who humbles himself will be raised up. One of the rulers put this question to him, “Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not give false witness; Honor your father and your mother. He replied, I have kept all these since my earliest days. And when Jesus heard this he said, There is still one thing you lack. Sell everything you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me. But when he head this he was overcome with sadness, for he was very rich.

         Jesus looked at him and said, How hard it is for those who have riches to make their way into the kingdom of God! Yes, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone rich to enter the kingdom of God. Those who were listening said, “In that case, who can be saved?” He replied, “Things that are impossible by human resources, are possible for God.”

Psalm

Preaching

It is not about Payer, Pharisees, nor Tax Collectors. When we start with that thinking, then we reveal that we think it’s about us. It isn’t. This is about God. It is about a God who forgives and justifies sinners. It is ultimately then about holiness. What is happening here on the road to Jerusalem is Luke’s effort to bring disciples to recognize that they are holy, and the point is that they are holy not by what they do, who they know, or where they are but simply because of who they are. Again, Luke is concerned with virtue, not behavior. This is a matter of attitude. 

There is nothing wrong with either prayer in this story. In fact, they are both reciting Psalms: the Pharisee is using Psalm 17 and the Tax Collector is using Psalm 34. The problem is not the prayer. The problem is the focus.  All the Pharisee can do is recite what he has done. His prayer is all about him. What the Tax Collector does is make God the center of his prayer. One has no room for God because he is so filled with his own accomplishments. The other acknowledges God as the source and ground of his life and hope. He is justified and holy, not the other one.

Disciples of Jesus Christ are a people who find holiness, not by what they do, 

but by the God who saves them, has mercy on them, and sees truth in their heart. What we hear in the parable is not just what these two men think of themselves. They also reveal what they think of God. The Pharisee regards God as something he deserves or earns: like stock in a corporation. It’s as though he is waiting for some special honor or privilege. The Tax Collector sees God as wholly other, as holiness, yet so in love with sinners like him that he could be pardoned. Disciples of Jesus Christ are a people justified and holy not because God owes them something, but because they have stood in truth before God and acknowledged their need and the inadequacy of their own deeds to save themselves. 

It is discomforting to recognize how much of the Pharisee there is in us, 

how quickly when sorrow comes we say: “Why has this happened to me? I go to Mass, I pray, I’m just and fair and good?  Why?” It’s a thinking that suggests that we have a right to expect favors, and if they don’t come, everything falls apart. 

This is not the disciple’s virtue. Disciples of Jesus Christ find holiness in the truth of their sinfulness and in God’s free gift to all who will come in that truth. 

It is not a matter of human achievement. In the new order Jesus came to inaugurate, it is the era of salvation and holiness experienced as a gift, not as a right. In such disciples then, righteousness is never about self, but always about the God who saves with mercy, forgiveness and love. As Disciples in formation then, we come humbly into this holy place acknowledging what God has done for us in spite of what we have failed to do, and we rejoice in what is promised to us and to all who seek and share mercy and forgiveness. We cling then to the hope that we shall go home today justified and give glory to God.

       In our search and hunger for holiness we run the constant risk of becoming religious freaks, idolatrous people who are caught up in success, comfort, luxury, prestige, promotions, and all that sort of thing. The culture of this stuff has reached into another generation, and we now have a whole population of privileged children that expect things to be perfect, immediate, bigger and better than ever before; and what’s worse is, they think they deserve it!

         But to them, and to us, the call comes again just as it always did, even to those wild fishermen who were tending the nets. The call of God is the call to the wild. The whole purpose of Christianity the purpose of discipleship is to teach us and dispose us to live wildly by sharing and participating in the wildness of God. That is why pious people are so bizarre. That is why dull, ordinary, moralistic, Christians make no sense. It takes imagination and a little wildness to throw in your lot with Jesus of Nazareth. That’s what was wrong with that rich young man who came up to Jesus and asked how to be perfect, and with the man who came up to be his follower, but had so much going on in his life, he needed time to get free. That rich young man had no imagination. He could not imagine living without all of his stuff. Give it away! Sell it? He couldn’t imagine that. He was comfortable and thought he ought to have more. The others were so busy: you know, the farm, the dead, his family, all that stuff —– he couldn’t imagine not having things all in order!  Well, God can……. it takes imagination and freedom to become a disciple of Jesus Christ.

         In becoming, and that’s the issue — BECOMING — holiness happens. It’s a by-product, not something you do with a plan. We have confused holiness with morality, and we think that what we do makes us holy, when the truth is that it is us, the holy ones who make things holy. Yet, when we think that holiness is somehow a result of morality, we’ve got it all backwards; and we’re in denial of the truth that holiness leads to morality, not the other way around. Peter was a holy man, wild with God. Jumping out of that boat time and time again. (That took imagination!) Shooting off his mouth when he didn’t know what he was saying half the time, curing the lame, yet denying the Lord Jesus. The denial, his failure, his sin, did not take away his holiness, nor did it take him out of his role as leader of the apostolic community. It certainly seems to me that it’s the same for us. We are a holy people. We may sin, we may break the covenant, our promises, and even deny our relationship with one another but our holiness remains.

         More people die of an un-lived life than die from cancer, and it’s a much more dreadful kind of death. The one single characteristic of the disciples of Jesus that I recognize in the gospels is that they were not dull, uninteresting, and ordinary people. They were untutored, unschooled fishermen. They had been hanging around that wild desert man, John the Baptist, the greatest man of the Old Testament. His one great joy was to hear the voice of Christ. Once he heard it, it was all over. He lost his head! Our trouble is that we are pulled apart into a million different directions by puny pleasures, and we miss the infinite pleasure that would fill the whole heart. John refused to do that. John and those disciples were mystics – and those of us who are called to be disciples, Holy People, ought to be the same.

         REALIZED UNION WITH GOD – That’s mysticism. It’s our vocation. Everyone is called to be a mystic. That is someone who no longer knows God by hearsay, no longer by information, but by experience. That person is in touch with God and therefore with God’s world, and they are wild with that God and with that World. I would suggest that if anyone here is not well on the way to becoming a Mystic, they need more than a three day mission. Now I don’t mean a perfect mystic. I mean one who has begun to become a mystic. One who is immersed in the mystery, one who is engaged, who is enticed, who is enthralled, who is captivated by the living God.

         We’ve got to become mystics, and the important part of that is the becoming part. It is the human adventure – an ongoing process of becoming. It’s what makes humans different from everything else in creation. A rhinoceros has already, when recognized as a rhinoceros reached and archived the quintessence of rhinorocisity. That’s the difference. That never happens to human beings. If Francis lived a hundred years longer he would have become a hundred times more Franciscan. It’s true of us all. It goes on an on. There is nothing fixed, nothing static. The human adventure, this process of becoming, of entering into the Kingdom of God, of becoming eloquently, distinctively human goes on and on. That’s the beauty of it. If on earth we ever think we’re finished, we are. That’s how it is with your Baptism. You are a hundred times more Baptized, more Christian today than you were on the day of your baptism. It’s the same for me. I’m not a priest yet. There’s only one priest, Jesus Christ. I am becoming a priest. Every day, every hour, every effort, every mistake moves me a little more along the way to becoming more and more like Christ – “realized union with God” I’m not finished, and my only hope is that by the time I die, I’ll be enough like Christ that His Father will clam me as his own. It’s the same for you, those of you who are married. You are becoming one, one with each other, and by doing that in faith and in prayer, you become one with Christ who is the living, breathing heart of your marriage. You are becoming married. On the tenth anniversary of your lives together, you are more married than on the day of your wedding. On the fiftieth, you’re way more married. By that time, it’s probably hard for strangers to tell you apart as husband and wife. You don’t even need to talk anymore, you already know one another’s thoughts, and it’s not just because you are repeating yourself a lot by that time! It’s the same with Baptism. That’s the trouble with the fundamentalists around here. They think that once you’re dunked, you’re saved. Well, I’ve got news for them. I’m a lot more saved today than I was when I was baptized. The baptism of that baby back in 1942 just got things started – set me off in the direction of my life. Baptism, Marriage, Forgiveness, Holy Orders, all of these sacramental events and moments of our lives confirm what is already going on — our union with God. That’s mysticism! It is the essence of holiness. It is what we do, because it is in the end, what we are.

 

Tantum Ergo

You have given them bread from heaven.

Having all sweetness within it.

Let us Pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, you gave us the Eucharist as the memorial of your suffering and death. May our worship of this sacrament of your body and blood, help us to experience the salvation you won for us, and the peace of the Kingdom, where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Benediction

Divine Praises

• Blessed be God
• Blessed be His Holy Name
• Blessed be Jesus Christ true God and true man.
• Blessed be the name of Jesus.
• Blessed be his most sacred heart.
• Blessed be his most Precious Blood.
• Blessed be Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar
• Blessed the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
• Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
• Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
• Blessed be her glorious Assumption.
• Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
• Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse.
• Blessed be God in his angels and in his saints.

Repose the Sacrament

Hymn 

“

Sacred Heart Parish Mission

Fowler, Indiana

October 13, 2005

Thursday

Grateful and Repentant

Opening Hymn:

Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament

A reading of the Gospel text.

On his journey to Jerusalem Jesus passed along the borders of Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. Keeping their distance, they raised their voices and said. “Jesus, Master, have pity on us.! When he saw them, he responded, “God and show yourselves to the priest.” On their way there they were cured. One of them, realizing that he had been cured, came back praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself on his face at the feet of Jesus and spoke his praises. This man was a Samaritan. Jesus took the occasion to say, “Were not all ten made whole? Where are the other nine? Was there no one to return and give thanks to God except this foreigner?” He said to the man, “Stand up and go your way; your faith has been your salvation.” Then, upon entering Jericho, there was a man named Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector and a wealthy man. He was trying to see what Jesus was like, but being small of stature, was unable to do so because of the crowd. He first ran on in front then climbed a sycamore tree which was along Jesus’ route in order to see him. When Jesus came to the spot he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry down. I mean to stay at your house today.” He quickly descended, and welcomed him with delight. When this was observed, everyone began to murmur, “He has gone to a sinner’s house as a guest.” Zacchaeus stood his ground and said to the Lord: “I give half my belongings, Lord, to the poor. If I have defrauded anyone in the least, I pay him back fourfold.” Jesus said to him; “Today salvation has come to this house, for this is what it means to be a son of Abraham. The Son of Man has come to search out and save what was lost.”

Psalm:

Preaching

Where there is faith, there is healing. That is the issue here. Where there is faith, there is healing. This healing is not limited to the “right” people, and it knows nothing of boarders and boundaries. Faith knows no boundaries. With Jesus Christ, there are no boarders, and with his disciples, there are no boundaries when it comes to service a share in healing grace. There are no boundaries when it comes to restoring those who have been excluded, but boundaries is not exactly what this is all about, and this first story, told on the way to Jerusalem, puts before us a contrast from which we may draw another of a disciple’s virtues.

Luke proposes here a distinction between the nine and the one: a distinction we might describe as physical healing and spiritual healing. Notice that the healing of physical infirmity did not bring salvation. Although the nine who did not return to Jesus were cured physically, there is no mention at all of their spiritual healing or “salvation.” On the other hand, the one who returns to Jesus, the one who acknowledges what God had done for him through Jesus Christ is the one who is saved by faith. Because of his gratitude, by which he gave evidence of his faith, this grateful leper was enabled to experience salvation beyond his physical cure.

It is the gratitude that Luke singles out as a virtue to be found in disciples of Jesus Christ. In Luke’s thought, the grateful recognition of God’s initiative that brings healing and salvation is the surest sign of faith. One’s faith is confirmed by the witness of Gratitude. Without it, there is no assurance of Salvation.

Faith for the disciple of Jesus is not a matter of rules kept nor prayers said. It is a matter of Gratitude in response to the initiative God has taken on our behalf. Disciples are Grateful, that’s all there is to it. They recognize what God has done for them. They return again and again to the feet of the master and “speak his praises.” as the Gospel describes it. This is a public recognition. Please take note. It is not something the leper does quietly in his heart or at home in his room. This “gratitude,” found in a disciple of Jesus, moves one to public recognition and acknowledgment of one’s gratitude. This is why we are here, in this public place rather than at home. The disciple of Jesus is grateful in an open, public say. The disciple of Jesus is found at the master’s feet giving praise and thanks. Gratitude, for a disciple of Jesus is a way of life, not a passing emotion. It is a life-changing conversion as public as a known leper throwing himself at the feet of Jesus Christ in a Samaritan town. We are not talking personal, private stuff here. Disciples formed on this pilgrimage to Jerusalem are a people who have known what it means to be accepted, included, healed, saved, and graced by a God who ignores all boundaries, and their gratitude is contagious.

We are at journey’s end, and we find ourselves right where we started which is the human story. We began in Paradise, and by God’s love, we end up in the paradise of heaven once again united in joy with the one who has been with us all along. As Jesus completes his journey to Jerusalem, the final encounter happens at the edge of Jerusalem, at Jericho, that place where Moses led a victorious people into the land they were promised. This who journey to Jerusalem in Luke’s Gospel has the most wonderful conclusion. This visit to the house of Zacchaeus was not a delay or a detour on his journey. This visit was and is the very purpose of the journey. “The Son of man came to seek and save what was lost.” Luke will get Jesus to Jerusalem in a couple of verses; but that city is not where Jesus is going. He is headed for our homes to stay with us, be with us, live with us, and die with us.

Zacchaeus stands before us in sharp contrast to that crowd who can’t quite see Jesus because they are too busy looking at and criticizing Zacchaeus. They have shut him out, and in their critique of his life, they have also shut out Jesus. Zacchaeus, unlike the crowd that can see Jesus, wants to see Jesus, and is willing to go to some inconvenience and take some risk to do so. Never mind his dignity, stature, or what he might look like in the eyes of others, he will see Jesus, and he will do whatever it takes; and Jesus sees him. You can almost see the two of them walking away from the whispering, accusing, blaming crowd who do not hear themselves called “Children of Abraham”, and will find no salvation in their homes. It is the crowd that is indicted by this story. They were so put off by their suppositions concerning Zacchaeus that they failed to “see” that in terms of the righteousness of God they were as “lost” as anyone, and were diverted from “seeing” Jesus and gladly welcoming him to their salvation.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus announces three times that salvation has come. First at the synagogue when his turn came and he rolled up the scroll, sat down, and said: “Today this message of salvation is being fulfilled (4:30)” It happened in Nazareth and it caused a riot. Then, he says it a second time in today’s passage in Jericho. He will say it one more time to a condemned dying thief hanging at his side (23:42). What it takes to experience this “salvation” is seen in these two who are outside the symbolic synagogue: Repentance. In Zacchaeus we see it best and understand what it means. The virtue as Luke explores it is not something Zacchaeus did, but something he became that brought other consequences. Luke’s Gospel of Grace is joined to Repentance, and this Repentance is not solely a transaction of the heart. It isn’t just feelings. Repentance bears fruit: this was made clear as early as the in the preaching of John the Baptist as soldiers and tax collectors came to him in repentance asking: “What shall we do?”

A life of repentance bears fruit, not only for the household of Zacchaeus, but also for the poor who will be beneficiaries of his conversion and, as well, those people who he may have defrauded. Repentance has more than personal effects. There is a domestic, social, and economic dimension as well. In Luke, salvation is not simply a matter of the soul. It touches the whole human family and the whole fabric of human life. In the great, soon-to-unfold story of Jesus and the cross, the presence of the Risen Christ makes noble and holy the home and the table of the faithful disciple. It happened in Jericho, it happened in Emmaus, and it can happen here if we will be his disciples.

Tantum Ergo

You have given them bread from heaven.

Having all sweetness within it.

Let us Pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, you gave us the Eucharist as the memorial of your suffering and death. May our worship of this sacrament of your body and blood, help us to experience the salvation you won for us, and the peace of the Kingdom, where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Benediction

Divine Praises

• Blessed be God
• Blessed be His Holy Name
• Blessed be Jesus Christ true God and true man.
• Blessed be the name of Jesus.
• Blessed be his most sacred heart.
• Blessed be his most Precious Blood.
• Blessed be Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar
• Blessed the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
• Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
• Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
• Blessed be her glorious Assumption.
• Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
• Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse.
• Blessed be God in his angels and in his saints.

Repose the Sacrament

Confessions Conclude the evening.