Sunday Homilies

2025 Jan 12 SUN: BAPTISM OF THE LORD F
Is 40: 1-5. 9-11/ Ps 104: 1b-2. 3-4. 24-25. 27-28. 29-30 (1)/ Ti 2: 11-14; 3: 4-7/ Lk 3: 15-16. 21-22

We have had an interesting few days. We received more snow than we're used to. And from my point of view, it's a hardship. It's tough to get around.

Of course, we can think of the inconvenience of the snow and realize that there is no comparison with what people are undergoing with these fires in the Los Angeles area. We know that real hardship is common to the human family generally.

Today we are completing the season of Christmas. And this is a time for merriment. But I believe that as year after year gets added to our ages, we are all the more aware that even merriment does not do away with hardship. And we want to make sure that our hearts are united with those who are suffering for any reason, whatever. And of course, that leads us to prayer. And we can all increase both the time we spend in prayer and its intensity. We see very, very clearly how much we need those words from the first reading today.

"Comfort. Give comfort to my people." This is an acknowledgment that comfort is needed and it is a universal need. Really, these scriptures taken together are kind of a summary of the Christmas season. Isaiah is, as we know, associated with Christmas and with Advent. The letter of St. Paul to Titus is used at two different Christmas Masses. And it is always remarkable to hear those words. To hear "God and Savior Jesus Christ," to know how early in Christianity the divinity of Jesus was affirmed.

And then we come to the Gospel, one of the portrayals of Jesus' baptism. As we said at the beginning of Mass, Jesus had no need of a baptism of repentance. But he submitted to baptism just as he submitted to the human nature that he assumed. He wanted to be completely united with us. And this baptism is a sign to us of the fact that he intends and he remains completely united with us in our human nature.

So we reflect upon both the merriment and the pain which are associated with the season of Christmas. And especially how it must have been incredibly strange for the Son of God himself to take our griefs upon himself. And we can look at this as a preparation for what the rest of the year brings.

Easter is relatively late this year. It will fall on April 20th. That means that Ash Wednesday is not until March the 5th. We see the baptism of Jesus as a boundary between his hidden life, of which we know practically nothing, but what we heard two weeks ago on the Feast of the Holy Family about Mary and Joseph searching for Jesus who said, "You know I had to be in my Father's house, in the Temple." We have just that little window on his youth. But then when he was about 30 years old, he received this baptism and he began his public ministry, which we think was about three years. We are led into sober thinking. That is, in our lives of prayer we are developing an awareness of the needs of the whole human family. And we find ourselves moving more deeply into the mystery of Jesus embracing our state of life and lifting us up by dying for us. So we have several weeks of Ordinary Time and then in early March we enter into Lent, which will prepare us to celebrate more fully the Easter mystery of death leading to resurrection. We give thanks for these gifts and as we remember Jesus' baptism, we seek to be immersed more deeply into his mystery.

2025 Jan 5 SUN: EPIPHANY OF THE LORD S
Is 60: 1-6/ Ps 72: 1-2. 7-8. 10-11. 12-13/ Eph 3: 2-3a. 5-6/ Mt 2: 1-12

I want to start by looking at two words. It seems to me that more recently there has been some confusion between these two words, and I think it is helpful for all of us to maintain a distinction between them.

The words are epiphany and insight . Very often, and I believe this is the source of confusion, you will hear people say from time to time, "Oh, I've just had an epiphany." Well, I think they're really talking about an insight, and I want to explain the distinction that I see.

As we said at the beginning of Mass, epiphany means manifestation. It means something external that people can see.

An insight, however, is something that goes on within us when we are looking at what appears to be the same reality we've always known, but somehow we see something quite different about it.

And that is a change within ourselves. I think that insight is really the proper word for that concept.

And in the Word of God today, we see that St. Paul is saying that an epiphany is an external event happening, the manifestation of the Savior to the nations.

This external event prompts insight. And what is the insight St. Paul says? Gentiles, the nations, the foreigners, they are coheirs with the Jewish people. They also receive the gift of salvation in Jesus.

Really, the Epiphany is a time for us to be aware of an insight we probably receive many times during our earthly lifespan. And that insight has to do with breaking down something that we tend to suppose. That is that we look at our own people, the people we are familiar with, who look and talk and believe like us. And then we think of foreigners and happily, because of the great increase in our day of communications and travel, we are much more in contact with peoples of other nations. And we have this insight that amazingly, they are just as human as we are. And it's a kind of an insight that has us saying, "Oh, why didn't I know that before?" Or, "Why didn't I think of that before?" But it's an extremely important insight.

And we see what happens in the words of Isaiah today. "You shall be radiant at what you see, your hearts shall throb and overflow, because you begin to understand that people of all nations are a gift to us." We build one another up. And that's certainly a good alternative to what I would call caricaturing people of other nations. And indeed, I believe that is a major source of the troubles we have in our world community: that we don't see other peoples as being quite human. And then we have a pretext for doing inhuman things to them.

So this is the thing that can carry us through another year, as we reflect on the mysteries of the Epiphany. There has been an external manifestation which causes us to rethink what's going on in our hearts and to develop the insight that far more than the symbolic gifts which the Magi gave to Jesus, we have gifts in one another as fellow members of the People of God.

2024 Dec 29 SUN: HOLY FAMILY F
1 Sm 1: 20-22. 24-28 or Sir 3: 2-6. 12-14/ Ps 84: 2-3. 5-6. 9-10/ 1 Jn 3: 1-2. 21-24 or Col 3: 12-21/ Lk 2: 41-52

I find that these readings today can be summed up by quoting another reading, not found among these. I'm thinking of a verse in St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 6, in which he says, "You are not your own. You have been purchased and at a price." Paul is referring to the mystery of Jesus' death and resurrection, by which all of us have become new people who absolutely belong to God.

We turn to these readings and it seems as if they are saying, "Your children are not your own." There is a universal tension behind these words. They are felt in every family, these tensions.

Because we know what the normal response of parents is to their children. They want to exercise some sort of control over them. At the very least, even though they won't say this outright, parents will be hoping that their children will not repeat their own mistakes. They may be hoping that children will achieve a success which is beyond their parents'. They may subtly or less subtly be placing expectations upon their children as to whom they marry or what sort of career they have. And we know, again, this is founded in a desire to see the best things come about for children. But as much as we want to direct our children, the more we find that each child is a mystery. And it is necessary for parents to stand back, stand back and see what happens, because the ways in which children grow and mature will always be surprising.

We have read from the Old Testament about a woman who understood very well that her child belonged to God. Hannah had prayed for a son, and Samuel was born to her. She remembered the fact that she prayed earnestly for this child when she went to the sanctuary in Shiloh. It is perhaps better described as a tabernacle or a tent. And Hannah could not forget the fact that she would see to it that this child would be dedicated to the Lord's service.

We go then to the Gospel, and we can see that by the time Jesus was 12 years old, that is, one year before he would be considered an adult, we can see that Mary and Joseph settled into comfortable parental roles, and they were not willing or eager -- eager is probably the better word -- they were not eager to see that this child would grow and become something beyond their imaginations. Luke tells us that when Jesus says to them, "You knew I had to be in my father's house." Mary and Joseph did not understand. I believe, however, that at least in Mary's case, at some level of her awareness, she knew what Jesus was talking about. That indeed, if you were in Jerusalem, you would know that he would be in the house of God, whom he would begin to call "Father." And it must have been painful for Mary and Joseph alike. But we have this window, a very brief window, into the childhood and youth of Jesus. And we see that he was on the path of his mission to love human beings as the Son of God and to do so by giving himself completely for our salvation.

And we can take all this and come to understand better the words of the first letter of Saint John. We are God's children now. What we shall be has not yet come to light. But somehow we will be like God, for we shall see him as he is. We are reminded again, we all belong to God, absolutely. Our children are gifts given back to God and given, in fact, to the whole human family that we might all mature together. So this is the tension and the difficulty of considering family. And we find it even in the Holy Family. And we trust it will be a creative tension.

2024 Dec 22 SUN: FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT (O Rex Gentium)
Mi 5: 1-4a/ Ps 80: 2-3. 15-16. 18-19 (4)/ Heb 10: 5-10/ Lk 1: 39-45

You know that for several weeks we have been looking at Scriptures which have to do with what are called the last things. Again, that technical word is eschatology. We've been thinking about the fact that people find something quite emotional in a concept called the end of the world.

And we learn to understand that what people call the end of the world is simply the beginning of eternity. And therefore we take comfort in all the things that we are hearing, especially about the definitive, glorious coming of the Son of God when God brings all things to completion and perfection.

And we read from the prophet Micah a mention of a place called Bethlehem. In the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Bethlehem is noted as the place of the birth of Jesus.

And remember that Bethlehem is associated with King David -- that he came from that area. And remember that the genealogy at the beginning of Matthew's gospel traces the lineage -- that is to say the legal fatherhood -- of Jesus, and it goes through David who is looked upon as the ideal king.

The letter to the Hebrews speaks to us about the definitive thing that Jesus did in laying down his life. He did the will of his Father. He offered himself for the salvation of all human beings.

And as we heard very clearly this morning, he did that once for all of us. And therefore it is not necessary for any of us to do something extraordinary or extravagant in order to get the attention of God the Father so that he might smile on us. That is, all of that is accomplished already.

In the Gospel we have two women sharing the favor of God upon them. Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, is the one who brings this child to birth even though she is past the age. Mary is the mother of the Word Made Flesh, the Savior, and in her case she does not know man.

So these two women know of God's special favor upon them. God favors us as well.

In the case of Elizabeth and Mary, these are things that could not be easily shared really with anybody. And in our case as well, God brings us peace in ways that are hard for us to explain to another person.

But as it's been said, each of us has the same secret -- that idea refers initially to the same secret of wondering how inadequate we are. We can also take that phrase, each having the same secret, and apply it to the fact that in various ways, in unique ways, our God signals to us in our daily living that our humanity is blessed.

It has been consecrated because we have received the gift of the one who laid down his life so as to conquer death and give us all resurrection and eternal life.

2024 Dec 15 SUN: THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Zep 3: 14-18a/ Is 12: 2-3. 4. 5-6 (6)/ Phil 4: 4-7/ Lk 3: 10-18

Very quickly, I want to let you know that we have a number of people who are coming forward and seeking to enter the Catholic Christian way of life, and therefore we are planning to reform our team for what we properly call the Order of Christian initiation of adults, the OCIA.

You'll remember it used to be called the RCIA for the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, but now we're told that Order is the proper word rather than Rite.

So we'll be making plans to come together after the first of the year, so you have time to consider whether you might want to participate in the process of bringing people into the Catholic Christian faith.

Obviously, today the theme is joy, and we hear this very clearly from St. Paul. We also hear it from the prophet Zephaniah.

He wrote a very brief book of about three chapters. It is surprising that he ends up talking about joy, because Zephaniah is also the source of a hymn which we don't sing very much anymore.

In Latin it's called the Dies Irae, English is Day of Wrath, and it emphasizes God's anger. So it's surprising that this same prophet should talk to us about our cause for joy for the coming of a Savior.

And in the Gospel we find cause for joy as well. We may think of John the Baptist as a severe sort of person, but it says at the end of today's Gospel passage that he preached good news to the people.

Well obviously we need to consider joy. Some of you may know that I have made a study on my own of what has been called emotional intelligence.

The idea behind that is that we seek to understand our own feeling states. To recognize that, for instance, anger can be channeled into steady work to undo injustice, for instance.

When we understand and are at peace with our own feelings, we can look at other people and develop what we might call fellow feeling or empathy with the people in our life, understanding ourselves as feeling people who are necessarily pushed around by the circumstances of life.

And we remember at all times if we can be pushed around we are limited creatures of God and we always remember our relationship with God, our Creator. In recent times we've been given a sort of vocabulary for understanding feelings.

There have been a couple of animated films that have come out in recent years. The first one, Inside Out, came out in 2015.

And then there was a sequel just this last summer: Inside Out 2. And the feelings in one person are characters in the film.

And in both, there is the character called Joy, and Joy is understood to be kind of a coordinator among all the feelings. We can think about this and realize that, for any one of us, to have joy is to have a sense of the whole of life, the entirety of life.

And we might ask ourselves where is joy when we are feeling sad? -- For instance, when we lose someone close to us.

One thing that sadness can do for us is demonstrate to us how important that person was, what a gift he or she was to us. And ultimately it informs a sense of joy, which joy is about the whole picture of life, the whole variety of life.

So as we come together on this day of Advent called Rejoice Sunday, Gaudete Sunday, we seek to understand that we can be joyful as we look ahead to our God, specifically Jesus, the Son of God, bringing all things to completion and perfection. We've said in recent weeks that we know of people who just think of that occurrence as "the end of the world."

We all have limited imaginations and the notion of the end of the world particularly limits our imaginations because, when all is brought to perfection, that is really the beginning. We step onto the threshold of eternal life itself and an unending joy.

So we give thanks that this season of Advent is preparing us to step onto the threshold of eternity, to find our complete vocation in praise of God who created us to praise him without end.

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I left out a lot from Saturday evening. I left out John the Baptist almost entirely, and he is described as bringing "good news" to people. The fact that he tells people, essentially, to do what is expected of you, is a response against elaborate sacrifices for supposedly getting God's attention.

2024 Dec 8 SUN: SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Bar 5: 1-9/ Ps 126: 1-2. 2-3. 4-5. 6 (3)/ Phil 1: 4-6. 8-11/ Lk 3: 1-6

I imagine that many of us, when we're trying to read the Bible, find a particular frustration in that we would like for the Bible to be sort of like journalism or a history book that mentions dates. We want to know when certain events happened. And the Bible is not good about that. These [issues] are not a priority.

We do, however, have today the Gospel of Luke. It is using a lot of different data points to fix a particular event in history. And essentially to say that this event is for the sake of rewriting all of human history. Luke does this in the beginning of chapter two. We always hear at the Christmas Mass during the night about the first census of the Roman Empire and the fact that Jesus was born during that time. Luke then turns to a much more recent event, and he has a lot more data points. So we hear about who the emperor was and who the empire's governor was and various kings and high priests. So he fixes a particular time when John the Baptist began his proclamation of good news. And people have studied this, and it would seem then that John the Baptist began his work in the year that we call AD 27 or Common Era CE 27. And scholars have further determined that Jesus must have been crucified in AD 30, thus allowing for what we have traditionally understood to be a three-year public ministry by Jesus.

And Luke is saying, pay attention. God is entering human history definitively through the Son of God, the Word made flesh. And thereby human salvation is assured, union with our God is assured. And that is the way in which history gets rewritten. This passage quotes Isaiah, who uses an image similar to the prophet Baruch in the first reading. And it must have seemed utterly fantastic what he was describing. I mean, we in our day have earth-moving equipment. But the idea of leveling mountains and filling up valleys, that's still a stretch for us to imagine.

And these images are being used to say God wants to give us a straight path to Himself. And this is cause for joy. You know that in recent weeks I've been talking about the idea of the end of the world, which idea really does not appear in the sacred scriptures. The Bible does not focus on an end so much as the beginning of eternity. And we know that our hearts must be convicted of this joy that is open to every human being. And we know we are preparing ourselves well to welcome the fullness of the kingdom of God when in accord with St. Paul we seek to discern what is of value. There's another translation I like that says to discover what really matters. And that is the good news that you and I are hearing today. I need to make a transition now because Keith Detmer is going to speak to us about the Centennial Campaign, which is the responsibility of every one of us to participate in. So I will stop there and let Keith continue.

2024 Dec 1 SUN: FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Jer 33: 14-16/ Ps 25: 4-5. 8-9. 10. 14 (1b)/ 1 Thes 3: 12 -- 4: 2/ Lk 21: 25-28. 34-36

I have been thinking about how the events of our life present a variety of contrasts. Things we may desire, things we may not desire so much.

Yesterday I have to say I was not happy to see the snow come, Although I know that many people like to see the snow. For me it's one more thing to get through and try to live with.

On the other hand, my nephew scored three touchdowns yesterday.

So this is how we all experience life. It's a series of things.

And I think especially the good things just take us by surprise. And we understand that we do not have to be the ones who die of fright, as Jesus says in the Gospel today. In fact all the Scriptures today are very encouraging.

We have the promise from Jeremiah. This is really a promise and a prophecy related to Jesus. The last shoot shall come to establish justice.

And likewise St. Paul tells the Thessalonian Christians that they can look forward to what God is bringing.

Again we think of what is coming as something to dread. We can look back two weeks.

You never actually find in the Scriptures the term "the end of the world." But we have that popular notion. And of course most of the time when we hear the word "end" we think that something is over. It is not proceeding further.

And in fact all these blessings that we find in the midst of our sufferings are hints. They are pointing to something far greater than ourselves.

And really the season of Advent is about the good things that are coming to be. As we witness and recognize the fullness of God's Kingdom.

We know that here and now we struggle. So that God's grace might be at work within us. So that we might not be working against ourselves. Allowing the very life of God to show its love and its general goodness in what we do.

So as we enter upon this season we remember that even as we prepare to celebrate the humble coming of our Savior, we look ahead to His glorious coming and realize, "No, we don't have to die of fright." We can be the ones who welcome everything that our God intends to work for us and give to us.

2024 Nov 24 SUN: CHRIST THE KING S (Thirty-fourth and Last Sunday in Ordinary Time)
Dn 7: 13-14/ Ps 93: 1. 1-2. 5 (1a)/ Rv 1: 5-8/ Jn 18: 33b-37

This Gospel is a part of the passion according to John, which we read every year on Good Friday. And we need to take note of the overriding quality of that we find here. And that quality is the fact that Jesus is presented to us as someone who, though about to be condemned to death, is in fact in charge of the situation. Pilate is troubled, even though he goes ahead and condemns this man to death. He really doesn't know what is going on. And he is in fact just caught up in events which seem to be of his making because he makes that decision to have Jesus crucified. We heard at the end of this passage Jesus' words, "Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." And we may remember that immediately after Jesus makes this statement, Pilate asks, "What is truth?" He is not asking as a sincere seeker. He is asking as a cynic. Because Pilate gave up his search for truth long before this moment. We must understand the kingship of Jesus. Really, Jesus is saying that titles such as king do not do him justice. Very likely Pilate in his conversations with the religious leaders heard them translating Messiah, the anointed one, to mean a king because they thought that was the only way that Pilate would understand what they considered to be the crime of Jesus. So we come to this celebration of Jesus as universal king. And we understand that he reigns over us because he is completely our servant. He has laid down his life for all human beings. And we understand that if we are to serve as Jesus served, we will be looking for ways to aid our brothers and sisters. This is a surprising kingship, and it causes us to feel great surprise within our own hearts every time we think about our crucified king who won for us resurrection.

2024 Nov 17 SUN: THIRTY-THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Dn 12: 1-3/ Ps 16: 5. 8. 9-10. 11 (1)/ Heb 10: 11-14. 18/ Mk 13: 24-32

So this is the time of year when in our liturgical calendar we find ourselves thinking a lot about what theologically we would call the last things. More popularly people will refer to the end of the world, although that specific phrase is not found in the Scriptures. But obviously the idea of the end of the world works upon our imaginations. I was thinking about the fact that there are a number of popular songs that in fact have the end of the world in the title.

For instance you may be familiar with a 1987 song, "It's the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine." I found the lyrics; they go on for a couple of pages and I really couldn't do anything with that song. [Laughter] I would stress that it seems that a lot of the imagination surrounding the end of the world has to do with things happening outside. And it seems these days as if there are some people who want to see it happen, they want to see upheaval and a change of what we expect and they'd like to go and break things to help it along. I don't think that's a good idea.

But in fact I believe that we can take some of these words of Jesus and other parts of the Scriptures and realize that internally each of us undergoes various upheavals that feel to us like it's the end or we have to start over or we don't really know the way.

And when it comes to saying oh, it's upon us, well, yes, God is all-powerful, he is the master of his creation and he could
intervene at any time and say, well, this is over. But we have to appreciate the fact that God who is the author of time has been operating on a scale of time which is vast. I once put together what you could call kind of a "convincer" so we could get a feel for how vast the expanse of time has been since the Big Bang, which by the way this man did not give it that name, but this astronomer about a hundred years ago found evidence, and he aided this theory, and it happens he was a Catholic priest. Well, what I have here is a little notebook and instead of having a lot of pages it has just one long page of stiff paper and I used both sides of the paper in order to visualize how vast the expanse of time has been. [Shows whole expanse of timeline; laughter] And I like to ask people what one millimeter stands for on this timeline in all the time since the Big Bang, and I do it multiple choice: is it 300 years or 3,000 years or 3 million years and the answer is 3 million years and you only go a millimeter on this. So that's a good thing to think about, and you know the cosmos will take care of itself, but we have to in fact consider what is going on within us; what are the upheavals that we experience within; what are our insecurities; how do we find that there are things that just don't sustain us. And with regard to those concerns I did find another song about the end of the world which I think really gets to the heart of things. This song is from 1962.

Why does the sun go on shining?
Why does the sea rush to shore?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
'Cause you don't love me anymore

Why do the birds go on singing?
Why do the stars glow above?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
It ended when I lost your love

I wake up in the morning, and I wonder
Why everything's the same as it was
I can't understand, no, I can't understand
How life goes on the way it does

Why does my heart go on beating?
Why do these eyes of mine cry?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
It ended when you said, "Goodbye"

Well, happily, we have been reading from the great promise that the Letter to the Hebrews gives to us, and we have come today to the last portion [in the Sunday Lectionary] of that amazing book. We've been talking about Jesus as the great high priest and we hear a summary today. Jesus is the great high priest: the one who is at one and the same time the priest offering sacrifice and the sacrifice being offered. He has offered the sacrifice for all of us, once for all, and this is something that we need to search out in our own hearts. Have we accepted that this gift has been given to us? Do we accept that it is personal? Do we accept that it is the opposite of the lyrics of the song that I just recited? We can think about endings all we want but we do in fact have the good news today that accepting this gift is for us the beginning.

2024 Nov 10 SUN: THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
1 Kgs 17: 10-16/ Ps 146: 7. 8-9. 9-10 (1b)/ Heb 9: 24-28/ Mk 12: 38-44 or Mk 12: 41-44

Abundance and scarcity are on our minds as we consider the Scriptures today. We may have a variety of attitudes toward the gifts with which we have been entrusted.

We may think of our situation here and now and say, "There isn't enough for me and for everybody else. I have to hug everything I have to myself." On the other hand, there is the attitude of abundance which recognizes that God gives us gifts and does so unfailingly.

We also have the theme of widowhood in the first reading and the Gospel. We understand widowhood in our own day to be precarious, certainly from an emotional standpoint.

From an economic standpoint, we see that there are many things which make up what we call an economic safety net. But in the times of Elijah and Jesus, such a safety net did not exist.

So the widows we read about here are in an especially precarious position. We may think, "How can it be that a jar of flour will remain filled likewise for a jug of oil? How can that be?"

Well, you and I are very much accustomed to looking at life in economic terms. We think almost constantly about buying and selling and storing up lest there be a shortage. But we are invited to think in different terms.

And we can gain something from a consideration of today's second reading. We have been reading for several weeks from the letter to the Hebrews, which makes a powerful argument that the sacrifice of Jesus is the one great sacrifice, which frees all of us and allows us to recognize abundance rather than scarcity.

We hear about the sacrifices of old: people slaughtering and burning up livestock. It may seem to us that this is kind of a crude way of thinking we have to get God's attention or we have to demonstrate how sorry we are for our sins.

We may think that this is antiquated behavior, but in fact, you and I engage in similar behavior. Somehow we want to prove that we have a right to be here. We want to prove, for instance, our competence or our closeness to God.

And this leaves us in a place which I would call nervous and unsettled. And in this case, there is an alternative. Jesus has offered the sacrifice of Himself.

He is a great high priest, and He does something that no one else can do. He acts as priest offering the sacrifice, and He is the sacrifice itself. And as Hebrews says, He enters the unique heavenly sanctuary with His own blood.

And therefore, He has given us salvation and everything that flows from that gift, including a mentality of abundance. So we can use our imaginations and think of ourselves perhaps finding every sort of goods, every sort of services in our lives, but then we still don't have a direction.

Now that is scarcity, but abundance is knowing that we are God's beloved children, that we can count on abundance in anything that we find making its way into our hands.

We are people, not of scarcity, but abundance.

You may know that I and the various liturgical ministers get ready for Sunday Mass in a little room back in this corner. It's called the prep room. And it is a relatively small space for the number of people who gather there. So I find myself getting vested for Mass and I try to catch a glimpse of myself in a full-length mirror, to make sure that the chasuble is on straight. And yesterday before four o'clock Mass I was having a bit of trouble because there were so many people and someone remarked to me, "Ah, you can do it blind."

Well, perhaps I can, but I just find this to be an instance in which I am very well aware of how much I depend on my sense of sight for this and for so many things. And we can all reflect on how we rejoice in our gift of vision. We can think at this time of year -- even if we've seen it year after year -- we still marvel as we watch the colors of the leaves changing at this time of year.

Now Bartimaeus had a clear understanding of what he wanted to do with the gift of sight, which came to him as Jesus said, "Because of his faith." He wanted to follow Jesus and the gift of sight permitted him to do this easily. And he did it.

We know that our eyes can be fixed on a variety of things, some of which are a good deal more important than other things. We know we want our very soul to be filled up with what our God presents to us to be seen. And of course that includes all of God's people, the dignity of every human being and our call to help one another to know that God is in our midst. At the same time, we understand that there is something that goes beyond mere seeing. We can find a hint of it in the Hebrews reading today, where we come to understand that our Savior, who is truly God and truly human, has tremendous mercy and compassion for all of us. And that really is something which goes beyond seeing. Actually, seeing can sometimes get in the way of understanding. We tend to equate knowing with seeing an image of something. But in fact, we're just seeing an image. Understanding goes deeper. And at times, we just have to look away from things in order to understand.

Now you remember on Easter Sunday, we have that gospel of Peter and John inspecting Jesus' empty tomb. They did not see him there. They looked around the tomb and saw various burial wrappings. They were strewn about, and there was the one that had covered Jesus' head, rolled up in a place by itself.

They didn't see the risen Jesus right away, but they looked around the tomb. And finally, they understood so many things that they were afraid to ask him about -- things that they tried to ignore, in fact, because they didn't want to think about his death. And they didn't know what to do with rising on the third day. Finally, they understood. And this really went beyond seeing.

Likewise, in the psalm today, the people are exclaiming that the Lord has done great things for us. We are filled with joy because they were set free from their captivity in Babylon. You don't have to see something in order to understand. We are going home. So we recognize how much we depend upon the gift of sight. And likewise, we see that we are led to something that goes even deeper, to understanding who our God is. And really, we can equate understanding with faith. Jesus says to Bartimaeus, "Your faith allows you to see." We must understand our own understanding and see that understanding is a function of faith. And it feeds faith as well. We give thanks, as Peter and John did, for all the things that have been told to us that maybe we can't quite put into place.

The witness of the People of God, the Church throughout the centuries and today: we take it all in. We understand. We grow in faith.

The homilist was away last week.

Well the young people sitting up front here spent a night -- I don't know how comfortable it was because they were sleeping outside during the night. It's what we call cardboard city. It is an opportunity for them to have an experience of homelessness. And I wonder whether at school you know people who are similar to what I am going to describe to you.

In high school I had two classmates who had this ongoing feud about which one of them was taller. It happened that they were the two shortest guys in the class. And right there we find something about the futility, the nonsense of seeking distinction. Or trying to prove that someone is somehow superior.

Well this is what we find in the Gospel. James and John want distinction. I suspect that if Jesus gave them their wish, and I don't know which of them was the older, they might have decided that these places were dissatisfying because the right side is considered preferable to the left. So there may well have been some kind of dispute over that.

We see the folly of this. We understand that we must begin our understanding of ourselves by knowing that our God loves each one of us to a degree we cannot conceive. And it is from that awareness of God's complete love for us that we can carry out our life unconcerned about distinctions: that we will make our lives acts of thanksgiving.

Jesus asks them, "Can you drink the cup that I drink?" The Old Testament passage and the selection from Hebrews today remind us of that cup that Jesus drank. He laid down his life.

He did something which only he could do. As God, he was able to take the initiative. As human, he was able to offer up human nature itself.

This is a summary of what I preached on Sunday, October 6, 2024, the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

So we had a Gospel about marriage accompanied by Genesis 2 and the creation of a woman.

This is always an occasion to talk about marriage, and I have to say the main point I was driving at that day was that before people can be spouses they have to be friends; they have to enjoy a deep friendship.

I used once again the exchange in Act 2 of the play "Our Town" in which George and Emily are coming close to saying to one another that they are to be married.

I did not record the homily as I got distracted that day. That was the day that we held the Mass in the Grass in the Troy Park at the Gazebo.

And it was a beautiful, perfect day to be out, and that was what distracted me from the duty to record the homily.

2024 Sep 29 SUN: TWENTY-SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Nm 11: 25-29/ Ps 19: 8. 10. 12-13. 14 (9a)/ Jas 5: 1-6/ Mk 9: 38-43. 45. 47-48

Very briefly I want to talk about some things in the second half of this Gospel and in the second reading. We know that Jesus is not calling us literally to maim ourselves. He is making a point that it is better to enter the kingdom of heaven one way or another rather than fail to do so. In the second reading -- this is our last selection from the letter of James -- James is already bemoaning the fate of those who cling to their riches. If they cling to them they cannot with open arms receive the gift of the kingdom of heaven. You and I may not consider ourselves especially wealthy but actually our economic standard of living is the envy of billions. We have to keep in mind that we are called to live lives of sharing with those in need.

The main thing I want to get to here is the theme that is obviously set up by the passage from Numbers and by the Gospel today. And it has to do with the question who is in and who is out. And we hear that Jesus is talking about inclusion. And that's especially important to think about because very recently Pope Francis made some statements about non-Christian religions and a lot of people were bothered by it.

But the Pope was saying something that was entirely consistent with the Second Vatican Council: that all who are yearning for and seeking what is good and true and holy will find themselves united with the Son of God who offered himself for all people, past, present, and future. I call this the anthropological principle of the Christian faith. It's something we find in no other religion.

And it's entirely based upon the fact that the Son of God saw fit to unite himself with our human nature and with every one of us individually. I can remember at the end of my first semester of working on a degree in theology that I had an oral exam. And the professor asked me, "How do we know that people are united with Jesus?" And I found myself struggling to come up with an answer. But the professor provided the answer for me. And I look upon this still as a great moment of wisdom, by receiving great wisdom, when he said, "By the very fact that the Son of God has taken on human flesh, all people are united with Jesus."

And whenever I think about his telling me that, I find myself looking at my hands. I'm looking at my human flesh, and I think of the human flesh of all people. And I realize the gift has been given.

You and I, especially as we witness a baptism today, have the joy of explicitly proclaiming faith in the Word-made flesh. And we can be confident that people who are earnestly seeking what is true and what is good, people who have never heard of Jesus, and even people who think they know Jesus and reject Him, all these people can be welcomed in. I am sure that it has occurred to many of us that God becoming human is the way that humans need to be loved. We all have our bad days, and sometimes those bad days can extend to weeks and months. We're just not sure of what this is all about, being human, but we have the good news that the Son of God has been absolutely the opposite of indifferent to our human state and to our struggles. And of course, He laid down His life and rose victorious. In all this we trust.

You may have been aware that the priests of the diocese were taking part in our annual convocation this past week. In addition, I attended a meeting of the Diocesan Pastoral Council in Springfield yesterday. And some months ago, there was a group of priests set up to study what you might call the use of priest energy in the 28 counties of our diocese. They gave us some interesting figures. First of all, that our weekend Mass schedule is such that we are ready for 112,000 people every weekend. The fact is, however, that we have only about 36,000 people at weekend Mass in our 129 parishes. So one recommendation which they are making is that across the board, across all parishes of the diocese, we consider dropping a Mass on our weekend schedule. So I have some ideas about this, and I'm not going to talk about them until I have conferred with neighboring pastors. I want to give you some reasons for this. They also gave us a statistic that a church feels full to the people assembled when we are at about 65% of seating capacity. And we think that this is a desirable goal.

The reason for that is if you are in an assembly, if you are in a church that feels full, there is a sense of energy, we feel more alive, and those who are here will be more motivated to enter more deeply into the life of the local parish. So we are, as we say, studying this, and we are not going to be making any changes for a number of months. But when we hear this, we say, "Oh yeah, okay, well, we need to reduce the number of Masses, but don't mess up my schedule."

In the Gospel today, the Twelve cannot fathom this thing that Jesus is telling them that He has to be killed, and He will be raised up after three days. They don't want to go anywhere near this thing that Jesus is telling them. Now, dropping a Mass is not the same, but we find ourselves very likely doing exactly what the Twelve are doing. They change the subject. They get into an argument about which one of them is the greatest. Do we recognize ourselves? I think we can recognize our reluctance to look at things which may be difficult, which may require extra sacrifice on our part. This goes along with the Old Testament passage. This is from a very late Old Testament book, the Book of Wisdom, and we hear the resentment that is residing in the hearts of the people who feel threatened by one who acts justly.

The passage from James is also of great interest. It talks about being enslaved by our passions, and that's an important thing to look at. These days it seems that we use the term "passionate" quite a bit, and we're sort of congratulating ourselves as we say we're passionate about one thing or another. Well, we keep in mind that very word "passion" comes from a root meaning "to suffer." A passion is something that we undergo, either more or less willingly. When I hear someone say I'm passionate about something, I find myself, at least, saying to myself, "Oh, that's good." To say that we're passionate is pretty much the same as saying we have a pulse or we have a blood pressure, or we have feelings. Yes, these are all things that remind us of our humanity, including our limits. But we need to remember that we can praise ourselves for being passionate, let's say about the religious formation of our children, or we're passionate about hunting, or passionate about a particular recipe we like. Well, these have various degrees of importance, and we need to keep that clear in our minds.

Now, Jesus, when he confronts the Twelve with their changing the subject, when he does this, he calls a child to him, and he says to the Twelve, "If you want to be great, you remember that your mission is to receive even this child." It is a call to us that says, "We all have been children." How have we turned out? What is our wish? What is our prayer for this child? What gifts do you want this child to accept? Maybe there are gifts that we were slow to accept, which took us a long time to come around to recognize as valuable. We pray for every one of us that we might accept what is truly valuable.

As I think of a word by which to sum up all of the scriptures today, I believe that word is denial. Denial is a very common aspect of our consciousness. We decide that there are many, many things in life we would prefer to avoid.

And so we exercise denial over them. One example is in the letter of James. We have here the image of a brother or sister, and we need to remember those words, "brother" and "sister" who does not have enough to eat or to wear.

Denial puts distance between ourselves and this person whom we could help. Somehow we manage to say to ourselves, "It does not concern me. I cannot do anything." And I suppose that this denial is rooted in an unexamined fear, really an irrational fear, that says, "Well, if I start giving, I won't have anything." That's how our minds can work. We also find denial as Peter has this exchange with Jesus.

Mark does not tell us exactly what Peter said, but we can look at other Gospels and see that Peter says, "God forbid that any such thing should happen to you." And we know that Jesus then turns to Peter to say, "Get behind me, Satan." He's using the term "satan" to mean "adversary." The adversary is trying to get in the way of Jesus' mission to lay down his life for the sake of all of us.

We have from the prophet Isaiah the third of the four suffering servant songs. We hear this every year on Palm Sunday that the servant of God has set his face like flint, knowing that he will not be put to shame.

And that is another irrational fear that many of us have, that suffering is shameful. But when we know the purpose of our suffering, it is anything but shameful.

Anyone of us can embrace suffering out of love, as Jesus did. So how do we emerge from a state of denial?

We can start by realizing how common denial is. We tend to associate denial with addictions of various kinds. If alcohol is one's thing, for instance, there is a lot of rationalization going on, "Oh, I'm not drinking that much," or, "Oh, I'm only drinking beer," things like that.

But once you get started, it does become completely absurd, the things that we tell ourselves. So we have to be aware of the denial we are submitting to.

And then take a look at what human life is about. It is not about self-absorption, which is common to all kinds of addiction.

We know that we are here to be present to one another, to love and serve one another, to affirm our dignity as human beings. It is a dignity which we may not have recognized ourselves, but we give thanks that the Son of God has affirmed our dignity.

Well, here we are, gathered together in one place. Someone once said that the church could be described as "Here comes everybody." Because we understand this assembly is for everyone.

We think in territorial terms, and we say that the people in a particular territory who are Catholic Christians come to this particular assembly or church, because they are members of this particular parish.

And we know that we are to find out who we really are when we come together for this assembly, for the Sunday Eucharist, on which we give thanks for the resurrection of Jesus on a Sunday.

But there are many questions that could be raised about our coming together here. And we hear some questions in the letter of James.

And it's good for us to remember that in the very early years of Christianity, people came together for the Eucharist, for the breaking of the bread, for the most part, in private homes. So we need to imagine this. And James suggests that you might pay a lot of attention to someone with gold rings and fine clothes, and give this person some kind of privilege.

Whereas there might be someone that you judge to be less important. And you say, "Well, there's room to stand over here, or you can sit at my feet." And James is pointing out that this is how we carry out discrimination among people, when we are to understand that we enjoy a radical equality, because we are the children of God, we are the ones redeemed by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We are equals. And we realize that as we come to this Eucharist, there is no one among us who has life figured out.

And the one great riddle for all of us is our mortality, the fact that we are subject to death. And we come here because the Son of God has addressed this riddle of death, and he has done so definitively by laying down his life and then rising from the dead and bringing all of us with him into resurrection.

Now we have to help one another. We think of the various liturgical ministers who volunteer to take on various roles in our celebration.

We think of lecturers and servers and Eucharistic ministers. It is important for us to know that the people you see carrying out these functions are on a very short rotation.

And we can easily have many, many more people assume these roles. And if we are not inclined to volunteer in this way, it is important for us to ask ourselves, "What are we afraid of?" Being seen?

Well, you find out when you let yourself be seen, you can relax. Again, we are not here to impress one another or engage in some sort of one upmanship.

We are all pilgrims on this great journey, and we learn to be at ease and at peace with one another.

In the Gospel, we have related social concerns.

We take note of the fact that Jesus, in carrying out this healing of this man, takes him away from the crowd, gives him some privacy.

And when you think about the various things that Jesus does, which seem very, very crude to us, putting his fingers into the man's ears, spitting, touching his tongue, and groaning.

I think if we were receiving this service, we'd just as soon not have anyone see us. And we take special note of the groaning, because sometimes when it comes to prayer, yes, we have words for prayer.

But there are times when all we can do is groan. And St. Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit himself groans along with us.

It's strange, of course, that although Jesus told the people to keep this quiet, they announce it to the world. Jesus' point is that he only does healings when there is an expression of faith.

And people have faith in Jesus to do this. And when we have received some benefit, some great healing, it's not the first thing we do to tell everybody, we have to reflect on the meaning of this healing.

And among other things, we realize that if we're given the power to speak, we don't have to speak all the time. We also must take time for listening and listening to our Lord and what he wants us to do with our various powers.

So keep all this in mind as we give thanks for our various gifts. And remember that those gifts are for the sake of service.

Have you ever had the experience of someone telling you a joke and you had to think about it for a little while before you got it? I'm thinking about something which I would say is not strictly a joke; it was an exchange between me and a student at a school I ran.

This was about 30 years ago. And I asked a student, "What is a defibrillator?" And the student replied, "Is it a lie detector?" I thought that student was pretty sharp. There are things, and we hear this from Jesus today, that you try to say something and make something sink in.

It might take a while. And that's what Jesus is saying here. And he uses some language here in Mark's Gospel. We've returned to Mark after hearing from John. Jesus is saying, "Hear me, all of you, and understand." I think I've seen some translations that say, "And try to understand." In other words, give it your attention so that a new idea might kick in.

Now, we could think that these scribes and Pharisees had something important to point out. You and I have been through a global pandemic, and we all know the importance of cleanliness when it comes to our food.

So, in these laws that they observed, they might have been developing this according to an insight by which they equated lack of hygiene with disease. But Jesus is not going in this direction. We have to follow his argument here.

And what he says you have to try to understand is, that food goes in, waste passes out. It really does not have anything to do with you. What does have to do with you is whatever comes from within your heart. And that's the point he is trying to get across.

And he gives us this list of the things that may be residing in our hearts, which are sinful and are really ruinous to relationships with one another and with our God. So, Jesus is also saying that there are laws that are much more important than other laws.

We know when we think about the great, real multiplicity of laws that we find in every aspect of our lives, we know that some laws are more important than others. And all laws can be summed up by the two great commandments. Love God with your whole being, and love your neighbor as yourself.

And Moses in speaking about law, is saying in this passage from the book of Deuteronomy, that laws are based upon wisdom. And if we understand and carry out the laws, we are conforming ourselves to wisdom, provided again that we know what the really important things are and how various laws connect to the great commandments.

We begin to read today, and we will do so for a total of five Sundays, from the letter of James, which has been a source of controversy among Christians for at least 500 years. You've heard of the controversy over faith and works.

James seems to be very much focused on the works we do, the good things we do. And some have said you have to focus on the fact that God loves us and frees us from our sins.

Well, it's not an either-or situation. It's not faith or works. If you do things that you see are good in order to make God love you, that's the wrong direction. It's the wrong emphasis.

On the other hand, if you say God loves me and forgives me and that doesn't lead to a change in how you conduct your life, well, that's useless as well. It's not faith or works. It is faith. Yes, that incredible awareness we have of God's love for us.

It is that faith which gives us the energy to make our lives a work of thanksgiving. So it is faith leading to works.

And we need to keep that in mind as we hear from a portion of the New Testament which is distinct, which has its own set of issues to address. We are here allowing ourselves to be enveloped in the love that God has for us, a love that's been shown to us through various people in our lives.

We welcome this opportunity to celebrate that love and then to allow our gratitude to form our works.

I hope that everyone has read the cover story of the latest issue of our diocesan magazine Catholic Times . It has to do with a person who was addicted to pornography, and this person is very, very forthright in describing the things which go on in the minds and in the feelings of all of us. And we realize that this is one example of the way in which people chase after various objects which we think will provide us with contentment and turn out to be anything but.

We have read from the Book of Joshua near the end of that book. Joshua was the immediate successor of Moses. Now the people are in the long promised land of their own. And Joshua questions the people about their intentions. He asks whether they will continue to serve the one true God, the Lord. They say, "We will." We know, however, that many, many people did forget about the Lord, and we can understand why. The Israelites were surrounded by neighboring peoples who had various gods and these gods had images, and there were people who were convinced that their various gods took care of things like the weather and fertility and the growth of crops. And they said, "You should pray to this god." And many people did so.

It is hard for the Israelites and for us to remain fixed on the one true God who cannot be captured in any image. And so we struggle, and at times we find ourselves caught up in worship, you could say, of objects which are far from God. We think about our primary commitments, our marriages, and we have heard a teaching of St. Paul in Ephesians about how marriage is intended to be a reflection of the love that Jesus has for his bride, the Church. There is a lot of context to be aware of as we come to understand the meaning of these words. And I would say statistically, when it comes to matters of abuse in marriages, statistically it's more often the men abusing the women rather than the other way around. But it is possible to apply it both ways. There are multitudes of men who do not know anything from the Bible except "Wives, be subordinate to your husband." And that's where they stop, and that's what they think the wife should respond to in the sense of, yes, you have to be totally my servant. Well, it is not correct. The context is very clear. Husbands are to love their wives as Jesus has loved the church, sacrificing himself completely. So we need to be clear about that because if a spouse is merely an object, you are not treating the spouse or yourself with dignity.

And finally, we come to the end of our five Sundays of reading from John chapter six about the bread of life. And it is disappointing to hear of all the people who abandon Jesus. It is encouraging, however, to hear the faith-filled words of Peter: "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life." He is expressing a faith which remains fixed on the God who cannot be seen. Now, God the Son did become human. That's who Jesus is. The full mystery of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit remains hidden from us. So we struggle as the Israelites did in the time of Joshua.

We have God's Word. We have the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist by which we remain united with the mystery. So we continue as people being fed by Word and sacrament, encouraging one another not to fall for the various objects we find in life, even if they happen to be good. We can reach a point where we say, yes, there are many good things in our life and I can enjoy them. I don't have to possess them. In fact, if I just keep my heart on the gift of God himself, other things will become much less important. And that makes for a life of great simplicity.

I believe many of you know, because I've spoken about this at times, that I have been helped greatly by the sciences of psychology and psychiatry. And we recognize that these disciplines are addressing the human person in our complexity.

And we are the most complex creatures of God. And I bring this up because our readings today mention wisdom. And I am thinking about one school of thought in psychology and it's okay to have many, many different schools of thought. Again, it's because of our complexity. There are so many ways that we can approach the human person. And I'm thinking about stages of normal human development. And I'm going to the end. I'm going to the last couple of stages. There are maybe eight or nine, or it looks like some people have added more. But anyway, according to my references, the second to the last stage of personality development is called generativity. And we hear that and we think, "Oh, yes, having children." That is obviously one way to be generative. But for those of us who do not have children, we can also exercise generativity by being creative, for instance, in the arts in one way or another. And generativity leads to what is considered the final stage.

And that's called wisdom. And it is interesting that our Scriptures today in the first and second readings mention wisdom. You may also have noted in the fourth verse of our opening hymn ["Here at This Table"] that there is a reference to wisdom. It's not as if through the course of our life we were totally without wisdom. But the final stage of our earthly life is for the sake of summing up, recognizing the wisdom we have acquired. It might have been at many different turning points during the course of our life. And it may have been through mistakes we'd made. In any event, wisdom is saying to us, "Yes, you can look upon your life as worthy." You can recognize that you have lived on behalf of very, very important values.

And so we have in Proverbs the invitation to the banquet offered by wisdom. There's also a banquet offered by folly, by foolishness. And we didn't read that, but you can read it on your own. Just go to the ninth chapter of the book of Proverbs. And then St. Paul in Ephesians goes on to address wisdom as well. And he specifically indicates the problem of getting drunk on wine, as he says. Apparently such behavior did upset many of the earliest Christian communities. So we take all this into account and then we return to Jesus' instruction on himself as the bread of life. And he is very, very earthy in this particular passage. He is saying, "You must eat my flesh and drink my blood." And people just don't know what to do with this. They say that's impossible. At the same time, they're probably thinking it's disgusting as well to say that. And all the more they're saying, "Drink my blood, that's impossible." The dietary regulations totally forbid the ingestion of blood. It may seem as if there is no wisdom to be gained here. You and I are thankful that we have been introduced and exposed to this incredible gift of the Son of God who became one of us. He has loved us completely, all the way to death, followed by resurrection. And we are united with his love in a most intimate way, the most intimate way that we can imagine through our partaking of the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. So we give thanks for the gift of wisdom. And we know that next weekend, the last of our five weekends in which we have detoured from Mark into the Gospel of John, we look forward to hearing the profession of faith of Saint Peter, when people go away, but Peter says, "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of everlasting life."

The Third and Fifth Sundays of Easter, and the Ascension, are missing. In the case of the first two, I had left the recorder at home and did not feel like running back for it. The Ascension marked the return of Deacon Bob Crosby, who preached.

As I recall, on the Third Sunday of Easter, I preached about our need as Christian community to grow comfortable with one another -- which Peter obviously was not when he discovered himself to be in the presence of the risen Jesus. On the Fifth Sunday of Easter, I focused on the word "elder" in the Acts of the Apostles and the fact that I am technically a presbyter or "elder," and became an elder before I had turned 26.