5th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Job 7:1-4, 6-7; 1 Corinthians 9: 16-19, 22-23; Mark 1:29-39

In our first reading, Job sounds pretty unhappy –

and with good reason.

He is a righteous man 

who has lost his wealth and his family

because, unknown to him, 

God has allowed Satan to test him.

He has no explanation for his misery

but he will not accept the conventional wisdom 

offered by his friends

that prosperity in this life is a reward for goodness

and that suffering is a punishment for evil,

since he is suffering and yet knows he has done no evil.

The only conclusion he can draw 

is that human life on this earth

is simply a life of drudgery,

that he is like a slave who can expect 

no justice from his master,

that his life is like the wind

and that his days will end 

without hope or happiness.

In other words, having rejected the idea 

that the misfortunes that we suffer

are a just punishment for our wrongdoings,

he seems to have come to the conclusion

that there is no reason why some prosper and others suffer.

And yet Job refuses to break off his dialogue with God,

hoping against hope that God will provide an explanation.

The book of Job manages in the end 

to give Job something like a happy ending,

with his property restored,

without falling back into the idea 

that prosperity in this life is a reward for goodness

and that suffering is a punishment for evil.

When God finally speaks with Job 

this is only to strengthen Job’s conviction

that the reason why there is so much suffering in this life

is ultimately a mystery to us.

And  we have not gotten very far in the centuries since

in dispelling that mystery.

Even those people of great faith 

who can sincerely say

in the face of their own tragedy and suffering

that everything happens for a reason,

that everything is a part of God’s plan,

cannot claim to know how specific tragic events fit into that plan.

The passage of the centuries has not really increased our ability

to find reasons for our suffering or the suffering of others.

Knowing that worldly attainment is temporary 

and wealth tenuous

does not take away the difficulty 

of losing a job or a home.

Knowing that relationships are fragile 

and hearts are fickle

does not lessen the pain 

of a broken marriage.

Knowing that death is the common lot 

of all human beings

does not eliminate the fear and grief that grips us

when faced with the death of someone we love.

I suspect all of us here have, at some time,

found ourselves in a darkness like Job’s.

I suspect that all of us have, at some time,

found all of the proffered explanation of the world’s pain

as unsatisfactory as the arguments made by Job’s friends.

And while we might someday be able to say

that everything happens for a reason,

that everything is a part of God’s plan,

this is really more a statement of faith and hope

than it is an explanation of tragedy, pain and suffering.

And in our Gospel today,

we find Jesus smack dab in the middle 

of our tragedy, pain and suffering.

He enters into Simon’s house 

and heals his mother in law:

“He approached, grasped her hand, and helped her up.”

As word of this healing spreads, Mark tells us,

“they brought to him all 

who were ill or possessed by demons”

and “the whole town was gathered at the door.”

The whole town. . .

the pain and suffering of an entire community 

brought to Jesus,

so that he could heal them of their illnesses,

so that he could free them of their demons.

He doesn’t offer them any explanation for their pain,

but plunges into the midst of that pain

to heal what is wounded and to drive out what is evil.

He is there with them not to explain 

but to grasp their hands and help them up.

God’s answer to the question of human suffering

is the healing presence of Jesus.

But it remains a mysterious answer.

Tragedy, pain and suffering remain with us

as long as we are on our pilgrimage toward God’s kingdom.

The presence of Jesus with us on that journey

is no guarantee of immunity from pain and suffering.

Indeed, Jesus himself drinks deeply 

from the cup of suffering on the cross;

God incarnate shares the lot of Job and of all who suffer,

definitively refuting the idea 

that prosperity in this life is a reward for goodness

and that suffering is a punishment for evil.

Jesus speaks to God on behalf of generations of humanity

when he cries out, 

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

But he also speaks to those same generations on behalf of God;

in his resurrection he speaks a word of comfort and a call to faith.

The mystery of human suffering remains,

but in Jesus that mystery has been taken up into God

so that it may be healed,

so that he might draw near to us, 

grasp our hands, 

and help us up,

so that we might continue with him 

on the journey to God’s kingdom.

Epiphany

Readings: Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12

When God made the covenant with Abraham

and established the Israelites as God’s people,

God made clear that this was not simply 

for the benefit of Abraham

or of the nation that his descendants would become,

but it was for the blessing 

of “all the families of nations” (Genesis 12:3).

Over the centuries the Jewish people 

came to think of this

in terms of the “pilgrimage of the nations”

that we hear spoken of in our first reading:

“Nations shall walk by your light,

and kings by your shining radiance.

Raise your eyes and look about;

they all gather and come to you. . . .

the riches of the sea 

shall be emptied out before you,

the wealth of nations 

shall be brought to you. . . .

all from Sheba shall come

bearing gold and frankincense,

and proclaiming the praises of the Lord.”

In other words, if the descendants of Abraham

are faithful to their covenant with God

then they shall be a light to the “nations” – 

the Gentiles –

who shall see that light and come in pilgrimage,

bringing with them all the riches of their cultures,

to worship and serve the God of Israel,

the one true God,

under whose rule all the nations of the earth

shall become one people of God and live in peace.

This was the hope.

This was the dream.

This was what the Jewish people 

looked for God’s anointed one,

God’s messiah,

to do.

When the messiah came, 

he would make Israel

a light to the nations,

to draw all the families of nations 

into God’s family.

The nineteenth century Jesuit poet, 

Gerard Manley Hopkins,

in a journal that he kept while on retreat,

remarked, after spending a day 

meditating on the events of the Epiphany –

the story we have just heard in today’s Gospel –

that the Jewish people had looked 

for the pilgrimage of the nations,

but, “when it came it brought 

an unexpected circumstance with it,

as God’s works always do” 

(Sermons and Devotional Writings, 269).

This is something worth pausing over, for just a moment:

when what they had been hoping for from God

came to pass: 

“it brought an unexpected circumstance with it,

as God’s works always do.”

As God’s works always do:

isn’t this always the way?

What we hope for,

what we wait for,

what we pray for,

never arrives 

in quite the way that we expect it to.

In the case of the story of the Epiphany,

the pilgrimage of the nations

is represented by the three Magi

who come from the east 

seeking “the newborn king of the Jews.”

But they do not find him in King Herod’s palace,

but in the humble dwelling place of Mary and Joseph;

the savior does not arrive with the splendor of a king,

but with the humility of a child;

his parents are not powerful and secure,

but weak and threatened, 

and soon enough in flight for their lives.

“It brought an unexpected circumstance with it,

as God’s works always do.”

The one who summons the world’s nations

to bring their gifts to the God of Israel

and to become part of God’s people

appears among us as what St. Augustine called

the verbum infans – which we might translate as

“the infant Word, unable to speak a word.”

He is offered gold and incense, 

because he is king and God,

but he is also offered myrrh, 

a spice used in burial,

because he is a king who will rule 

and a God who will save

by living among us as one of us

and by giving his very life for us.

Unexpected circumstances indeed –

circumstances that should drive home for us

that truly it is God who is at work here,

in that typically unexpected way that God has.

It should remind us also that, 

while the work of God in our lives

is also a part of these unexpected circumstances,

God’s work in us is not a puzzle to be solved

but a mystery to be pondered and celebrated:

the mystery of God’s Word found in a speechless infant,

the mystery of life found in death,

the mystery of power found in weakness,

the mystery of the love that unites us as one people of God.

Advent 2

Readings: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; 2 Peter3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8

Advent is, of course, a time of expectation –

expectation of the birth of Christ

but also of his second coming –

and in today’s first and second readings

we have voices that present us with images 

of the coming salvation of God

that involve a cosmic transformation 

of the very fabric of the universe.

Isaiah tells us that, “Every valley shall be filled in,

every mountain and hill shall be made low,”

and, even more strikingly, 

the Second Letter of Peter says that,

“the day of the Lord will come like a thief,

and then the heavens will pass away with a mighty roar

and the elements will be dissolved by fire,

and the earth and everything done on it will be found out.”

These voices remind us that world as we know it

is merely temporary, not eternal,

and that the very fabric of reality will be transformed

in the marriage of heaven and earth –

transformed by God in a way that we cannot even imagine

and so we must speak of it in metaphors

of valleys being filled in and mountains being laid low,

of heavens roaring and the elements being dissolved in fire.

After presenting such dramatic images Second Peter asks,

“Since everything is to be dissolved in this way,

what sort of persons ought you to be?”

In other words. . . so what?

If this is all true, how does it affect my life now?

Peter answers his own question,

saying that if this is true we should be,

“conducting [our]selves in holiness and devotion,

waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God.”

Waiting and hastening.

These two things might seem incompatible.

How is it that we can patiently wait for something

and yet still impatiently seek to hasten its arrival?

Even more, how can we, 

by acting with holiness and devotion,

do both things at the same time:

both waiting and hastening?

In answer to his own question 

of what people we ought to be

in the face of God’s coming transformation of the world,

Peter says our lives should be a hastening that waits

and a waiting that hastens.

We need somehow to work for the world’s transformation

while at the same time waiting for that transformation,

which only God can bring about in God’s own time.

That day we work to hasten

is what Second Peter calls “the day of God” –

the day whose coming belongs entirely to God and not to us.

A hastening that waits and a waiting that hastens:

what Peter says about the kind of people we ought to be

might at first sound quite strange and paradoxical

but perhaps it is not so unfamiliar as it first appears.

Think of the process of growing from a child into an adult.

Of course for me this was a long time ago,

so I think of this in terms of my more recent experience

as the parent of teenagers.

I know that, as a parent, I want my children

to work at developing into adults 
and to act like the adults they are becoming,

How many times have I said, 

“you’re too old to act this way”?

At the same time, 

I want them to be patient with themselves,

not to rush too quickly into adulthood,

but to let it arrive in its own good time.

How often have I said, 

“Sorry, you’re too young for this”?

I want them both to wait for adulthood

and to hasten toward it.

And this is not, I hope, 

simply one more unreasonable parental demand

because, oddly enough, 

these two things often occur simultaneously

in a hastening that waits and a waiting that hastens.

Sometimes it is a step toward maturity to recognize 

that you are not yet mature enough for something

and that the most adult thing you can do

is to let yourself be a child for a little while longer.

At other times maturity involves stepping forward in faith

into a risky new experience,

despite all hesitation,

trusting that, whether your succeed or you fail,

it is all part of your becoming an adult
though it may require patient waiting before you can see that.

Maybe if those of us who are adults

can recall how it was that we became adults

we can have some idea 

of the sort of persons we ought to be

as “we await new heavens and a new earth
in which righteousness dwells.”

If we listen to the voice of the apostle Peter

calling us to cultivate lives 

of holy waiting and devoted hastening,

then the Advent season can be for us

a time both of anxious yearning for the world’s redemption

and of patient waiting to receive it as God’s gift.

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Wisdom 6:12-16; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13

I recently heard the current Eurozone crisis
compared to Aesop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper,
with the Germans compared to the ant,
who worked hard all summer to provide for the winter,
and the Greeks compared to the grasshopper,
who frittered away the warm days playing music
and when winter arrived came begging to the ant,
only to be turned away,
with the concluding moral:
“Beware of winter before it comes.”

Maybe because the Greek debt crisis has been so much in the news
this fable immediately came to mind
when I read the parable in today’s Gospel
of the wise and foolish virgins.
The foolish virgins, who forget to bring extra oil,
are the grasshoppers who take no thought for the future,
while the wise virgins are the ants who plan ahead
and make sure they have enough oil
to keep their lamps burning
until the bridegroom arrives.

But in fact the message of Jesus’ parable
of the wise and foolish virgins
is not the same as that of Aesop’s fable
of the ant and the grasshopper.
For in Aesop’s fable the wisdom of the ant
is about calculating the times and seasons –
of knowing how to put the right amount of effort in
at the right time –
and the foolishness of the grasshopper
is a matter of not grasping the obvious fact that winter arrives
more or less reliably at more or less the same time every year.
For Aesop, wisdom and foolishness
is a matter of understanding or failing to understand
a calculable reality
so as to be ready at some fixed point in the future
for the arrival of winter.

In Jesus’ parable, however,
neither the wise virgins nor the foolish virgins
are able to calculate in advance the time of the bridegroom’s arrival.
The wise virgins, though they have brought extra oil with them,
had no way of knowing if it would be enough to last
until the bridegroom showed up.
If he were delayed another few hours,
perhaps they too would run out of oil.
In other words, the wise virgins simply were lucky
that the oil they had brought was enough.
So they are not really like the ant,
who knows more or less when winter is arriving
and who knows more or less how much food she needs
to make it through the winter until the return of summer.

I think a key to understanding the parable
is that the difference between the wise and foolish virgins
does not manifest itself
until the immanent arrival of the bridegroom is announced.
It is only at that point,
when the bridegroom’s arrival has been announced,
that the foolish virgins run off looking for more oil,
rather than staying to greet the bridegroom.
It is as if they can think only of how unwise they will look
if their lamps are not burning brightly,
if they are dark and empty of oil,
and so they leave to buy more oil
and miss the arrival of the bridegroom.
In other words, their foolishness lies in thinking
that it is more important to appear as if they had properly calculated
the arrival of the bridegroom
and had secured beforehand a sufficient amount of oil
than it is actually to be present at the joyful arrival of the bridegroom.
They preferred the appearance of wisdom to wisdom herself,
and in doing so show themselves to be most unwise,
missing the moment for which they should have been longing,
all for the sake of securing a little bit of oil.

How often do we ourselves prefer
the appearance of wisdom to wisdom herself?
How often do we get so wrapped up
in wanting to seem prepared, competent, or clever
that we focus on trivialities and miss the main event?
How often do we forget to ask ourselves
about what it is that really matters
and give ourselves whole-heartedly to that,
the way that the wise virgins gave themselves whole-heartedly
to welcoming the bridegroom?

Next week we will be asking you to consider
your level of financial support to our parish.
I’d like to say that this isn’t really about money,
but actually it is about money.
At least, it is about money to the degree that we need money
to keep the lights on and the heat going,
to pay the salaries of staff members
and to provide programs for the parish.
But your support of the parish is not just about money.
It is about time and talent and, more than anything else,
it is about discerning what it is that really matters to you
and about how to give yourself whole-heartedly to that.

When we gather on Sunday, we are doing nothing less
than joining together to receive Christ joyfully
and to celebrate his arrival in our lives.
This is either the main event, as it was for the wise virgins,
or we are just fooling ourselves that it has any importance at all.
Financial times are hard,
and maybe you don’t have any more money to give.
Life is busy,
and maybe you don’t have an extra hour to give.
Maybe you feel as if you are like the foolish virgins
who lamps were empty and dark
or maybe like the grasshopper
who had not planned ahead.

But that doesn’t matter.
What matters is that the bridegroom is arriving.
What matters is the wisdom of knowing that,
however much or little we have to give,
we give it joyfully in thanksgiving
for the great gift of God in Christ.

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 25:6-10a; Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20; Matthew 22:1-14

At this point in my ministry as a deacon –
four and a half years after my ordination –
I have performed a fair number of wedding ceremonies
and I realize that wedding can be times of high tension
 for everybody involved.
But even so, the characters in the parable
that Jesus tells in today’s Gospel
seem unusually stressed-out.
We’ve all received invitations
to weddings we did not particularly want to attend,
but it seems a bit extreme
to kill the person delivering the invitation.
And while it might hurt our feelings
to have our invitation rejected,
it hardly seems a fitting response
to burn down the city where the invitee lives.
And though an underdressed guest
might raise a few eyebrows,
we would probably not tie up his hands and feet
and cast him “into the darkness outside,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth”
(presumably the wailing and grinding of teeth
of those who cannot get into this joyous celebration).

Matthew’s version of Jesus’ parable
is hardly a realistic depiction
of even the most emotionally fraught wedding.
But of course it’s not really a parable about wedding etiquette
and the deadly consequences of breaching that etiquitte.
Jesus’ parable trades upon the imagery
of the great feast at the end of time
that God, our first reading tells us,
“will provide for all peoples,”
a feast of “rich food and choice wines,
juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines.”
At this feast, “The Lord God will wipe away
the tears from every face.”
It is this feast that fulfills the promise in our second reading
that “God will fully supply whatever you need,
in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”

The book of Revelation presents a particularly striking image
of this great feast at the end of time
in which Christ the lamb is united to his spouse, the Church.
At this feast the joyous guests sing, “Alleluia!
The Lord has established his reign,
God, the almighty.
Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory.
For the wedding day of the Lamb has come,
his bride has made herself ready. . .
Blessed are those who have been called
to the wedding feast of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:6-7, 9a).

In all these texts the joy of a wedding feast
at which two lives are joined together
becomes an image of the joyous event
of the union of our life with God’s life,
when God will consummate human history,
wipe away all its tears,
and fill every cup to overflowing. 

In the Eucharist that we celebrate every Sunday
we share already in the wedding feast of the Lamb.
I have heard the Eucharist described
as the rehearsal dinner for the Lamb’s wedding feast
but I believe it is something more than that
because in the Eucharist the Lamb is truly present with us
and the wedding feast is already begun.
We come, week after week,
to have our lives joined to the life of God,
to have our tears wiped away,
to have our cups filled to overflowing.

In the new translation of the Mass
that, as I mentioned last week, we will soon be using
the invitation to communion will now be,
“Behold the Lamb of God,
behold him who takes away the sins of the world.
Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.”
This is not only a more literal translation of the Latin,
but it makes just a bit clearer the connection of our Eucharist
with the wedding supper of the Lamb –
the great feast that God provides for all people
at the consummation of history.

We have been called, like the guests in the parable,
to the wedding supper of the Lamb
who has taken away our sins,
and we are indeed truly blessed
to have received this call.
But the parable is also a warning
not to take lightly so great a call.
Though the actions of the characters in the parable
seem extreme,
the very exaggeration of those actions
drives home the point
that this is a call to the feast of life itself
and to decline that invitation
is to reject the gift of life that is offered.
At the same time,
 the invitation is not to be accepted lightly;
we are to adorn our souls
with the wedding garment of love,
a garment that, as St. Gregory the Great put it,
is woven of two strands of wool:
love of God and love of neighbor (Homily 37).

In the Church we sometimes speak of the “Sunday obligation” –
that is, the obligation of all Catholics
to be present at Mass each Sunday.
But if we understand what the Eucharist is –
that it is our sharing in the wedding feast of the Lamb –
then the language of obligation,
which we might associate
with something we do grudgingly and under duress,
might seems to miss the mark a bit.
At the same time, as our parable reminds us,
how we respond to this invitation
is a matter of life and death,
and our weekly presence
at the wedding feast of the Lamb
is an obligation,
but not an obligation that we owe to God
or to the Church
but to ourselves:
the obligation
to let our lives be joined to God’s,
to let our tears be wiped away,
to let our cup be filled to overflowing.

Blessed indeed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 55:6-9; Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a; Matthew 20:1-16a

The prophet Isaiah commands us,
“Seek the LORD while he may be found.”
But how do we fulfill this command?
On this weekend when our religious education programs resume
it is worth asking ourselves what it means to seek the Lord,
and who this God is whom we are seeking.

In his homily a couple of weeks ago,
Fr. Jerry Lardner mentioned the Baltimore Catechism.
Who remembers the Baltimore Catechism?
I don’t mean, “who remembers that there was a Baltimore Catechism?”
but rather, who remembers what they learned from the Baltimore Catechism?
As those who were taught from the Baltimore Catechism will know,
it consisted of set questions and answers concerning the faith
that children memorized and repeated back.

Let’s try a test:
Who made you?
God made me. 
Why did God make you?
God made me to know Him, to love Him, 
and to serve Him in this world, 
and to be happy with Him forever in the next.

Though the fact might have been lost, at least at first,
on the children who were made to memorize them,
these are profound words.

“Who made you?”
I have been made by God,
the supreme, infinitely perfect maker of the universe.
You might think that, as important as God is,
this task might have been delegated to someone else,
such as an angel or a demi-god.
But the Baltimore Catechism tells us
that each and every one of us
has been brought into existence directly by God,
who shapes our lives
with the intimacy of the potter shaping the clay vessel.

But there is more. . .

“Why did God make you?”
God has not simply brought me into being,
but God has given my life a purpose,
a meaning,
a “why.”
God says to us through the prophet Isaiah,
“As high as the heavens are above the earth,
so high are my ways above your ways
and my thoughts above your thoughts.”
And yet the Baltimore Catechism tells us that that even so
God has made each and every one of us
to know, love and serve God in this life.
We are made by God so that we might seek God out.
Though God’s ways are unfathomable to us,
God has made us so that
we can know God, however imperfectly,
we can love God, however falteringly,
we can serve God, however unworthily.

And even more than this,
our imperfect knowledge,
our faltering love,
our unworthy service
can, through the grace of God
that comes to us in Jesus Christ,
be transformed into a path
to eternal happiness with God
when this life is done.

Though it may have been lost on them at the time,
those who were made to memorize
these words of the Baltimore Catechism
were given a profound truth,
a life-changing truth,
a saving truth.
They were given the truth
that each and every human life
is of infinite significance
because it is a gift from God
that can blossom forth into eternal joy.

Our methods of catechesis have changed over the decades,
but our goal is the same.
We may emphasize memorization less
and understanding more,
but our desire is still
to help the children of our community
to seek the Lord while he may be found.
Our desire is to communicate to them the saving truth
that they have been made by God
and that their purpose in this world
is knowing God with their minds,
loving God with their hearts,
and serving God in their daily lives,
so that their lives can be of eternal significance.

As any parent knows,
we live in a world that increasingly pressures children
to polish their résumés
with a dizzying array of activities and accomplishments.
We Christians, however, have a counter-cultural message
to hand on to our children:
that their lives are significant and important
not because of what they have accomplished,
not because of what they have done,
not because of awards they have won,
but, as in the parable in today’s Gospel,
because of what God has done for them
in calling them into life and redeeming them through Christ,
and that therefore their lives should be lives of gratitude and service.
This saving truth is what our catechists seek to give our children
and what we who are parents must reinforce for them every day
in our deeds and in our words.

And this is true not simply for our children,
but for all of us.

St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote:
"Do you want to know the opportune time to seek the Lord?
The simple answer is: all your life."
Our lives are lives of continual seeking and continual finding.
So we should all seek the Lord while he may be found.
We should seek the Lord who made us
to know, to love and to serve him in this life
and to be happy with him forever in the next.

A Wedding Homily

Readings: Ruth 1:1-11, 14-18; Romans 12:3-18; John 15:9-17

A wise friend of mine once said

that marriage is not about standing face-to-face

gazing into each other’s eyes,

but rather is about standing side-by-side,

facing the world together.

This idea runs somewhat counter

to popular, romantic notions of marriage

that focus exclusively on the love of the spouses for each other.

Don’t get me wrong; this love is important;

C___ and G___ would not be here today

if they did not love each other.

But marriage does not simply link two people together.

Rather it places the couple

within a much wider network of relationships

that can be extremely complicated.

When you marry, you are marrying not just your spouse,

but also his or her family, friends, colleagues,

sports teams, favorite musicians, and even ethnicity.

Indeed, one of the challenges of marriage

is learning to negotiate that complexity.

But it is also part of the richness:

when I got married, I acquired not only a wife,

and eventually children,

but what was to my mind

an extraordinarily large Irish Catholic family,

a set of expectations about how and where

holidays should be celebrated,

and a professional football team I was expected to root for.

This has always been the nature of marriage,

as we can see in our first reading,

which tells the first part of the story of Ruth

from the Old Testament.

She is a foreigner, a Gentile,

who marries into a Jewish family

and as a part of all this

becomes a worshiper of the God of Israel.

When her husband, her original link to that family, dies,

she is offered by her mother in law, Naomi,

the chance to cut her ties to them

and go her own way,

back to her own people

and her own gods.

In what to our ears

sounds like something one might speak to a spouse,

Ruth tells Naomi, “Wherever you go I will go;

wherever you lodge I will lodge.

Your people shall be my people

and your God, my God.

Where you die I will die,

and there be buried.”

For Ruth, her marriage had placed her

within a web of relationships, traditions and beliefs

that permanently altered who she was as a person.

Marriage calls us not simply to be faithful to our spouse,

but into a wider faithfulness,

a faithfulness to family, friends, sports teams,

and even to God.

This is why in the Catholic tradition

we call marriage a sacrament:

it is a sign that points beyond itself

to an ultimate reality –

the reality of God’s love.

It points to the reality that,

as St. Paul said in our second reading,

“we, though many, are one body in Christ

and individually parts of one another.”

But in order to be a true sign,

it is not enough for C___ and G___

to love one another,

or even to love

each other’s family and friends and sports teams,

but they must love in a particular way.

What St. Paul writes to the Romans

is a pretty good description

of the love that married couples

ought to have for each other:

“Let love be sincere. . . .

love one another with mutual affection;

anticipate one another in showing honor. . . .

Rejoice in hope,

endure in affliction,

persevere in prayer. . . .

Rejoice with those who rejoice,

weep with those who weep. . . .

If possible, on your part, live at peace with all.”

In John’s Gospel, Jesus puts it even more succinctly:

“love one another as I have loved you.

No one has greater love than this,

to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

C___ and G___,

that is what you are doing here today:

laying down your lives for each other,

entrusting your lives to each other,

saying, “wherever you go, I will go.”

Your lives now belong to each other,

and in belonging to each other

you belong to the whole world.

In loving each other sincerely and faithfully,

you will be a sign to the world

that true happiness is found

not in power

or in prestige

or in possessions,

but in the kind of love

that will lay itself down for another,

in the love that seeks

to live in peace with all.

What you do here today is, I know,

important to you.

It is important to your families.

it is important to your friend.

But even more than that,

it is important to the world:

a world that desperately needs a sign

that love can overcome hate,

that generosity is more powerful than greed,

that peace can prevail over violence.

You can be that sign.

In what you do together here today,

in what you do tomorrow,

in what you do for the rest of your lives,

you become,

in what will often be small

and undramatic ways,

a sign from God,

a sign of hope.

As Jesus said to his disciples, I say now to you:

“Go and bear fruit that will remain.”

May God bless you.

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14: 22-33

Somehow, somewhere people came up with the idea

that the chief motivation behind the belief of Christians

was a sense of comfort in this life

and the promise of even more comfort in the next.

In this view, Christianity is for those who cannot face

the harsh realities of this world

and so hope for a better life in another world.

Christians are smug and complacent in their faith,

sure that they know all the answers

and have a firm footing in life.

I can speak only for myself,

but this is not my experience of being a Christian.

For me, the Christian faith seems at times

to make my life

much more complicated,

much more of an effort,

and, in a way, much more uncertain.

Faith places an infinite demand upon me

because it is assent to the truth of the infinite God,

a God whom we can never comprehend or control.

As the twentieth-century theologian Karl Rahner once said,

Christians are those

before whom the abyss of existence opens up –

those who know that they have not thought enough,

have not loved enough,

have not suffered enough.

So do not let anyone tell you otherwise:

to step out in faith

is to step into that abyss of existence.

Think of Peter in today’s Gospel:

Jesus had made the whole walking-on-the-water thing

look pretty easy

and this seemed like a good opportunity

to demonstrate that he,

alone among the apostles,

really had faith;

so Peter succumbed to his impetuous nature

and stepped out of the boat.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

And for a while, it continued to seem like a good idea;

as Peter began to walk across the water toward Jesus.

But then he began to focus more on the wind and the waves

and the watery abyss beneath his feet

and he began to doubt

and he began to sink.

And suddenly the idea of stepping out of the boat

and into the abyss

began to seem like not so much of a good idea.

When I read this passage earlier this week

I thought, “yes, that’s exactly what it’s like.”

When I think about my life as a Christian,

I sometimes feel as if I have foolishly, impulsively,

climbed out of the boat,

inspired by God-knows-what impulse,

and I realize

that the waves are much higher than I thought

and the wind is much stronger than I thought

and the water is much deeper than I thought.

And I realize that I cannot think deeply enough

to grasp the mystery of God.

I realize that I cannot love passionately enough

to be worthy of the love that has been shown to me.

I realize that I cannot suffer willingly enough

to take upon myself the pain of others,

the pain of our world.

I stand suspended

over the infinite depth of divine mystery

and, as my fear takes control,

I begin to sink

and the only prayer I can utter

is to cry out, like Peter, “Lord, save me.”

And then there is Jesus

who grasps our hand and says,

“Take courage, it is I;

do not be afraid.”

As with Elijah in our first reading,

God comes to us not in a strong and heavy wind

or an earthquake

or a fire

but in a tiny whispering sound

that says “do not be afraid.”

God comes to us in the person of Jesus.

In Jesus Christ,

God has reached out to us with a human hand,

amidst the wind and the waves,

to catch us and hold us up over the abyss.

It is not our thinking

or our loving

or our suffering that can save us,

but only Jesus,

“who is over all, God blessed forever.”

If we trust in him,

if we cry out to him, “Lord, save me,”

we can trust that the storm will not overcome us,

the abyss will not swallow us up.

The Christian faith is hard,

not because it is complicated

but precisely because it is so simple.

All that it asks of us is that we see the world as it truly is,

to embrace the abyss that is the mystery of God,

and to trust the tiny whispering sound that says,

“Take courage, it is I;

do not be afraid.”

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 55:10-11; Romans 8: 18-23; Matthew 13:1-23

As Christians we believe

that God has spoken a word of grace to us,

and we are invited to respond to that word

by bearing the fruit of the Spirit.

In our Gospel reading,

God’s word is depicted as seed

that is scattered widely across on the earth

so that some falls on the path

and some falls on rocky ground,

and some falls among thorny weeds,

with only about a quarter of it falling on good ground.

These different sorts of soil

reflect different sorts of responses to God’s word,

some of which produce fruit and some of which do not.

The seed that falls on good ground produces an abundant harvest,

“a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold,”

by a process that seems to be natural and even effortless.

We might think that Jesus is saying

that while all people might not be good soil

in which his word can take root,

if you are good soil, then the fruits of that word

will be readily apparent;

if you are good soil then you will produce spiritual fruit

with the same ease with which seeds sprout from good soil.

And if you are finding life difficult and full of struggle

then maybe it is because you are not good soil.

This is not, however,

the implication that we should draw from this.

In our second reading, Paul also speaks

of how we live in response to God’s word.

Here the metaphor is not

that of the seed germinating in the soil

but of a woman laboring in childbirth:

“We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains

even until now;

and not only that, but we ourselves,

who have the firstfruits of the Spirit,

we also groan within ourselves.”

Paul speaks of “the sufferings of this present time,”

to which all of creation is subject,

and makes clear that

even those who have received God’s word with joy –

those who are “good soil” –

still share in that suffering.

Put in terms of our Gospel parable,

Paul is saying that we may indeed be the good soil

on which the seed of God’s word has fallen,

but we still groan along with all of creation

in our bringing forth fruit,

just as a woman must labor

in bringing forth her child.

The process of bearing fruit is not always,

and maybe not ever,

an effortless process.

As Jesus reminds us in John’s Gospel,

even the seed that falls to earth

only sprouts by means of a kind of death:

“Amen, amen, I say to you,

unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies,

it remains just a grain of wheat;

but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (John 12:24).

I dare say we all have those moments

when we find ourselves groaning,

awaiting redemption,

asking ourselves and asking God,

does it really have to be so difficult?

We might even have those moments

when we ask ourselves

whether the sheer difficulty that we experience

in trying to be faithful to God’s word

might be a sign that we are not, in fact, good soil,

but are rather the rocky path,

or the shallow earth,

or the weed choked thicket.

We find ourselves unemployed,

and our faith wavers.

We groan under the burden of

a debilitating physical or mental illness,

and we wonder whether God has abandoned us.

We suffer the loss of someone we love

and we ask ourselves whether we really trust

that God is a God of life.

If we groan in our suffering,

does this mean that our faith is shallow

and our souls choked with weeds?

Paul seems to say, “no.”

Suffering in this life

is something we share with all of creation,

and why some suffer and others seemingly do not

should never be taken as a sign of who is and is not

the “good soil” that receives the word.

In fact, we have no idea why life’s sufferings

seem to be so unevenly distributed

and I suspect that the answer to this question

will remain a mystery to us in this life.

Paul, it seems to me, is trying to get us to shift our question.

He is trying to get us to ask not,

“where does this suffering come from,”

but rather “where is this suffering leading.”

We can see our sufferings

either as the last agony of one who is dying

or as the laboring of one who is bringing new life to birth;

our groaning can simply be a cry of despair,

or it can be a calling out to God.

The difference between the good soil and the bad soil

is not that one suffers and the other does not,

that one groans and the other does not,

but rather that the good soil suffers and groans

in faith, and in hope, and in love,

trusting that the trials and sorrows of this life

are, in a mysterious way that we cannot now clearly see,

the birthpangs of the good soil,

laboring to bring forth the fruit of eternal life.