34th Week in Ordinary Time II—Tuesday (Vietnamese Martyrs)

Readings: Revelation 14:14-19; Luke 21:5-11

We are all familiar 
with images of the Grim Reaper,
the hooded figure of death 
carrying a scythe in its hands
and coming to collect the harvest of souls.
This figure is rooted in the imagery 
of the Book of Revelation,
which depicts a final harvest 
in which first “one like a son of man”
and then “another angel”
use their scythes to reap the earth,
after which the angel throws his harvest 
“into the great wine press of God’s fury.”

This is pretty terrifying stuff.
And puzzling as well.
Interpreters differ as to exactly what
the writer of Revelation is telling us.
The one like a son of man 
seems to be Jesus himself.
But who is this second, 
grimly reaping, angel?
We don’t really know.
And what do the two harvests symbolize?
Does the first represent the righteous,
whom Christ takes to himself
and stored like wheat in barns,
and the second the unrighteous,
who are crushed in God’s anger?
Again we don’t really know.
Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel
that it is perfectly right 
that we should not know.
 
Apocalyptic visions of the end
are not given to us 
as a timetable or itinerary
but to fire our imaginations
with a vivid sense of God’s power to save
and an urgency about our own lives,
a reminder to be prepared at every moment
to give an accounting before God
of what we have done with our lives.
Living as we do 
amidst war and rumors of war,
amidst plague and famine,
we should take comfort 
in God’s almighty power and loving mercy.
We should remind ourselves 
that the time of reaping comes for all of us
and pray that it may be for us a time of grace.
If we live at every moment seeking Christ’s reign,
then we have no need to fear.

We should look to the example 
of St. Andrew Dūng-Lac,
a Vietnamese priest in the 19th century
who lived in a time of persecution of the Church
and who ministered, often in secret,
to his fellows Vietnamese Catholics.
Arrested several times, 
he persevered in his ministry
until finally he was beheaded in 1839.
St. Andrew lived his life knowing
that the time of harvest would come,
and yet he trusted that Christ, 
the one like a son of man,
would on that day gather him to himself.
May the prayers and example of St. Andrew
help us to live our own lives
ready at every moment
for the harvest of Christ’s kingdom.
And may God have mercy on us all.

Christ the King

Readings: Ezekiel 34:11-12, 15-17; 1 Corinthians 15:20-26, 28; Matthew 25:31-46

The folk singer Woody Guthrie 
once wrote a song
entitled “Christ for President”
that goes, in part, like this:
“Let’s have Christ for president,
Let us have him for our king.
Cast your vote for the carpenter
That they call the Nazarene…
Every year we waste enough
To feed the ones who starve.
We build our civilization up
And we shoot it down with wars.”

Guthrie’s words find an echo in, of all places, 
the words of Pope Pius XI from 1925, 
when he instituted this feast of Christ the King,
partly in response to the growing secularism of society,
but also in response to fascist movements
that substituted worship of the nation and its leader
for the true worship of Christ.
Both the open disbelief of secular atheism
and the manipulation of religion 
by fascists and nationalists
are seen by Pius as rejections of the reign of Christ
in the hearts and lives of people.
He paints a picture of a world consequently in crisis:
“seeds of discord sown far and wide… 
bitter enmities and rivalries between nations,
which still hinder so much the cause of peace… 
insatiable greed which is so often hidden 
under a pretense of public spirit and patriotism…
a blind and immoderate selfishness… 
the unity and stability of the family undermined; 
society, in a word, shaken to its foundations 
and on the way to ruin” (Quas Primum n. 24).
Woody Guthrie and Pope Pius seem to agree
that our private and public lives would be better
if Jesus were in charge.

While we might take some comfort in the fact 
that we seem to have navigated the last century
without the world falling into utter ruin,
we ought also to be sobered 
by how the ills enumerated by Pope Pius
find such familiar echo in our own day.
We still see seeds of discord 
sown far and wide;
we still see bitterness and rivalry 
between and within nations;
we still see the pretense of patriotism 
used as cover for greed and selfishness;
we still see families struggling to stay together
amid political, economic, and cultural forces 
that would tear them apart.
And we might add to this a global pandemic
that has not only killed 1.4 million people worldwide,
but has also revealed, as it runs its course,
some of the darker aspects of human nature,
as well as a presidential election that promises 
to leave people in this country
ever more divided, 
ever more entrenched in their ideologies,
ever more unwilling to presume 
good will in their neighbors.

But this feast of Christ the King 
offers us more than simply an occasion to reflect
on the dreary catalogue of the world’s ills and failings.
It also offers us a vision of a world renewed
by the royal power of the risen Christ,
who presents to his Father, 
as our liturgy today says,
“a kingdom of truth and life,
a kingdom of holiness and grace,
a kingdom of justice, love, and peace.”
This feast proclaims Christ’s kingdom
present even amid the sorrows of our world.
Indeed, this is a kingdom 
that is present most intensely
in the places of greatest sorrow.
It is present in the hungry homeless person
waiting for a meal.
It is present in the convicted criminal
confined in isolation.
It is present in the unwelcomed refugee
waiting at our border.
It is present in the Covid patient 
struggling to draw a breath.
It is present in these places of sorrow 
because Christ is present there.

This is the great scandal of the Gospel,
over which so many of us stumble.
We think that Christ the King 
must be sought among the sleek and strong
and cannot possibly identify himself
with the wayward, the wicked, or the weak.
But that is precisely what he does 
throughout his ministry.
As the prophet Ezekiel foretells:
“The lost I will seek out,
the strayed I will bring back,
the injured I will bind up,
the sick I will heal, 
but the sleek and the strong I will destroy,
shepherding them rightly.”
And we who would be servants 
of Christ our King must seek him out,
not in places of power
but in those places of sorrow:
by feeding the hungry,
visiting the captive,
welcoming the stranger,
caring for the sick,
seeking to share their lot
so that we might have a share in Christ.
For it is in doing these things
that we find ourselves heirs to his kingdom:
“Come, you who are blessed by my Father.
Inherit the kingdom prepared for you 
from the foundation of the world.”
As Pope Pius writes, the Kingdom of Christ,
“demands of its subjects a spirit of detachment 
from riches and earthly things, 
and a spirit of gentleness.” 
Those who serve Christ as King,
“must hunger and thirst after justice, 
and more than this, they must deny themselves 
and carry the cross” (Quas Primum n. 15).

The great scandal of the Gospel
over which we stumble,
both as individuals and as societies,
is that true power and authority
are not found in the sleek and the strong
but in the crucified and risen one,
the one whose glorified body 
still bears the marks of torture
so that he might unite to himself 
all those who suffer 
the torments of hunger and thirst,
of rejection and captivity,
of illness and deprivation.
To embrace the Kingdom of Christ
is to embrace such weakness;
it is to deny ourselves and carry the cross,
serving Christ in those places of greatest sorrow.
This is the way to true life in Christ’s kingdom,
for Christ our king has come 
to vanquish death by his cross,
and has been raised up 
as sign and promise of that victory.

So let’s have Christ for president,
let us have him for our king,
let us ask him for the grace
to seek him out in places of sorrow
so that when he comes to judge the world
we might hear him say to us with joy,
“Come, you who are blessed by my Father.”
And may God have mercy on us all.

33rd Week in Ordinary Time II--Tuesday

Readings: Revelation 3:1-6, 14-22; Luke 19:1-10

In the Book of Revelation,
Christ dictates to John the Seer 
letters to seven churches.
While offering to some words of encouragement,
these letters are not entirely good news.
Today, we hear perhaps the two harshest:
to the Christian community at Sardis—
“you have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead”—
and to the Christian community at Laodicea— 
“because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold,
I will spit you out of my mouth.”
In both these cases we have communities
that are smug and self-satisfied,
thinking themselves on fire with the Spirit
when in fact their spirits have cooled.
These are perhaps the toughest nuts to crack:
those who are convinced that they know 
what God wants of them
and are equally convinced 
that they are doing it in exemplary fashion.

But the letters end on a hopeful note.
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”
Christ is not deterred by our spiritual coldness;
he does not give up on us.
He keeps pounding on the door of our hearts;
he keeps asking us to let him in. 
And he promises, 
“If anyone hears my voice and opens the door,
then I will enter his house and dine with him,
and he with me.”
It is not too late even for those 
whose hearts have grown cold.
But to heed his knock, 
we must first know our neediness.

Unlike the self-satisfied churches of Sardis and Laodicea,
Zacchaeus, in today’s Gospel, 
knows that there is something wrong with his life.
A tax collector who had grown wealthy
off of the pain and misery of others,
he recognizes in Jesus a call to conversion.
Jesus stand at the door of his heart and knocks:
“Zacchaeus, come down quickly,
for today I must stay at your house.” 
At these words 
the self-satisfied, righteous people
in the crowd begins to grumble
that Jesus is, once again,
hanging around with sinners.
They think their lukewarm piety
is somehow superior to Zacchaeus’s 
heartfelt repentance.
But Jesus can see that Zacchaeus
has truly opened wide the door to him:
“Today salvation has come to this house.”
Unlike the grumbling crowd,
unlike the spiritually dead church of Sardis,
unlike the lukewarm Laodiceans,
Zacchaeus knows himself to be lost,
and so can also know what it means to be found.

Jesus still stands knocking at the door.
Can we hear him?
If we open the door,
if we remove from our hearts
the obstacles of sinful self-satisfaction,
then we truly will feast with Christ
in our sacramental sharing in his eucharist;
he will truly enter into our hearts
and into the heart of the Church.
“Whoever has ears ought to hear
what the Spirit says to the churches.”

32nd Week in Ordinary Time II--Wednesday (Martin of Tours)

Readings: Isaiah 61-1-3; Matthew 25: 31-40

Today is both Veteran’s Day
and the memorial of St. Martin of Tours,
a 4th-century monk and bishop 
who was himself a veteran,
though, according to the accounts of his life,
a highly unusual one.
As a young soldier he gave half of his cloak to a beggar,
only later to have a dream in which he saw Christ,
now clothed in the half-a-cloak,
telling him that in clothing that beggar
Martin had clothed Jesus himself.
This prompted Martin to be baptized 
and, eventually, after his baptism, to tell the emperor,
“Up to now I have served you as a soldier: 
allow me now to become a soldier to God…
I am the soldier of Christ: 
it is not lawful for me to fight” (Life of St. Martin ch. 4). 
When he was accused of cowardice for this,
he volunteered to stand unarmed 
on the front line of battle.
In God’s providence, the enemy army surrendered
before Martin had to face such a trial.
An unusual veteran indeed.

Martin then became a monk and later a bishop,
serving his flock with great dedication,
especially the poor and the suffering,
for he knew from experience 
that in serving them he was serving Christ.
His friend and biographer, Sulpitius Severus,
writes that, as the end of his life approached,
Martin placed his life in God’s hands:
“unconquered by toil, and unconquerable even by death…
he neither feared to die nor refused to live” (Ep. 3).
Martin, I dare say, had learned 
the great secret of the Christian life:
to know that in life or in death 
we belong to the Lord.
Such faith frees us from fear, 
so that we can pour ourselves into
the life to which God calls us,
and we can pour ourselves out
even into the mystery of death.

I think of St. Martin and his example of courage
as I ponder the newly released Vatican report 
on the case of former-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick,
a cleric who rose to great heights of power
and who used this power to abuse a series 
of seminarians, young men, and boys,
aided and abetted by others in the Church
who turned a blind eye to his crimes.
I think of the contrast 
between St. Martin and these false shepherds.
I think of the contrast between his courage
and their cowardice,
between his dedication to the people entrusted to him,
and their use of their office to satisfy their own lusts, 
between his ability to see Christ in the least of these
and their blindness to the abuse of the defenseless.

I have no ready explanation for such evils,
nor any easy remedy for what ails our Church,
nor words sufficient to comfort
the victims of clerical abuse.
But we do have the promise 
of Christ’s enduring love 
and power to heal,
and we have the intercession 
of St. Martin, Christ’s brave soldier. 
Let us ask him to pray for justice 
for victims of abuse,
and conversion for our Church’s pastors,
that they might serve Christ’s flock
with courage, dedication, and insight,
and may God have mercy on us all.

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

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

Whatever your desired electoral outcome,
I dare say that for many of us
these past few days
have been days of anxious waiting:
hitting the refresh button on vote counts,
watching to see states on the map
get colored in as blue or red,
waiting to form a picture 
of what the next four years might look like.

And even though an outcome has been projected,

there seem to be many uncertainties in the days ahead,

as we wait to see how we will mend our fractured nation.

But we should be pretty good at waiting by now,
since the past eight months 
ought to have taught us 
something about waiting:
waiting for a vaccine or better treatments,
waiting to see what is closed or opened,
waiting for life to return to normal,
waiting to see what “normal” looks like
in a post-pandemic world.  
Even prior to this remarkable, terrible year
our lives have been marked by waiting:
waiting for a child to be born,
waiting to hear about a college application,
waiting for a diagnosis,
waiting for a loved one to die.
You would think by now 
we would be pretty good at waiting,
but I suspect most of us have not really learned 
the art of waiting wisely.

In Jesus’ parable of the waiting virgins—
who, as far as we can tell, were to serve
as attendants at a wedding—
the groom whom they await
takes an inexplicably long time to arrive.
And when the cry finally comes at midnight
“Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!”
those who had not anticipated such a long wait
awake to find their lamps flickering toward darkness
and, running out to buy more oil, 
they miss the moment of the bridegroom’s arrival,
and return to find the door barred
and themselves shut out.

How were they unwise?
What was their folly?
Were they foolish for failing to bring enough oil?
Perhaps, but the bridegroom did, after all, 
arrive much later than expected.
How were they to know?
It seems to me that their folly is found
principally in the panic that falls upon them
when they hear that the bridegroom has arrived.
They are so consumed by the rather trivial point
that their lamps might not be burning
that they leave just as that for which they have waited
in now coming to pass:
the bridegroom has arrived 
and the joyous celebration can begin.
The wise virgins show their wisdom
not simply by bringing enough oil—
though their awareness that things 
might not go as planned
is certainly a mark of wisdom—
but by staying focused on what really matters,
by keeping constantly in mind
what it is they are waiting for:
the bridegroom’s arrival.

Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians also speaks of waiting.
The first generation of Christians generally thought
that the risen and ascended Christ would soon return 
to usher in the reign of God in its fullness. 
Like the virgins in Jesus’ parable,
they had no idea 
that the one for whom they waited
would delay so long.
Paul writes to the Christians at Thessalonica 
because they have begun to wonder
about the fate of those who have died 
while waiting for Christ’s return:
like the foolish virgins, they have begun to panic:
will those who died somehow miss out 
on the fullness of God’s reign?
Paul addresses their fears by assuring them
that whenever it is that Christ returns
their beloved dead will be raised to reign with him
since Christ himself is life.
So, he tells them, they should not grieve 
like those who have no hope;
not that they should not grieve—
after all, death deprives us for a time
of those whom we love—
but that their time of grief should be marked 
by the wisdom that waits in hope for Christ’s return,
a return that may seem long delayed
but will occur in God’s good time.

Paul’s words to the Thessalonians echo Jesus’ parable:
be prepared for the time to be short,
but also be prepared for the time to be long,
“for you know neither the day nor the hour.”
Wait wisely for what will come:
you may mourn your waiting, 
grieve the bridegroom’s delay,
but you must also mourn with hope.
For the wise know this: 
time, like all things, belongs to God
and it is used by God to unfold God’s will for us.

If we wish to wait wisely in these anxious days
we need always to remember 
that ultimately that for which we wait,
for which our flesh pines and our soul thirsts,
is not simply the result of some election,
not simply the end of some pandemic,
not simply the resolution of our daily anxieties,
but is the Lord himself,
who will come to redeem our time of waiting,
to give life to the dead and end to our mourning,
to balance the scales of justice 
and wipe away every tear.

What does it mean to wait wisely?
It means in some sense knowing how to prepare 
for both the long haul and the sudden ending,
how to stand at the ready without wearing ourselves out.
It means knowing how to suffer time’s passing
as we await what is to come
without growing bitter, 
or panicking, 
or lashing out at others,
or losing sight of what matters most.
It means knowing that all time is God’s time,
the future is God’s future;
it is not something that we possess and control,
but something that we receive from God as a gift.
And the giver of this gift will not fail us.
May the God whom we await have mercy on us all.
 

31st Week of Ordinary Time (II) -- Tuesday (Martin de Porres)

Readings: Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 14:15-24

In the parable of those invited to a feast
Jesus paints for us a picture 
of people who are too wrapped up in their own lives—
their own acquisitions and accomplishments—
to join in the joy of the kingdom of God,
the great feast of heaven.
And he suggests that it is precisely the lowliest among us—
the poor and the crippled, the blind and the lame,
those who in our worldly judgment 
seem to have acquired and accomplished nothing—
who will be the ones whose hearts are open 
to responding to God’s invitation.

The humility that Jesus commends in his parable
is something that he himself lived out.
St. Paul tells us that Jesus, 
though he was the eternal Son of the Father
and heir to all the riches of God’s eternity,
emptied himself into our history,
joined himself to the lot 
of those without acquisitions, 
those without accomplishments,
the poor and the crippled, the blind and the lame,
taking upon himself the death of a slave: death on a cross.
But God his Father raised him up,
calling him forth from the poverty of death
into the riches of the eternal feast,
exalting him beyond all powers of heaven and earth.

The humble welcomed to God’s feast:
this seems simply to be how God works.
It is not the powerful, 
with all their acquisitions or accomplishments,
but the poor and the wounded 
who find themselves welcomed to the feast 
and exalted to eternity.

We see this in the saint we remember today: 
Martin de Porres.
Born in Peru during the colonial period,
because he was of mixed race 
he was not allowed under Peruvian law
to join the Dominican order,
so he lived with them as a servant.
Eventually allowed to join as a lay brother,
Martin faced racist discrimination 
from some of his fellow Dominicans.
But he persisted, 
not out of a desire for acquisitions and accomplishments
but because he had heard God’s invitation to the feast,
and who was he to refuse such an invitation.
He became a great friend to the poor and the outcast,
and God greatly exalted him,
numbering him among the friends of Christ.

Today is election day:
a day dominated by people 
with many acquisitions and accomplishments
who are asking us to help them 
acquire and accomplish even more.
I sometimes wonder what our politics would look like
if we took the parable of the banquet 
as the key to how to acquire God’s favor,
if we took Jesus and his friend Martin
as our models of true accomplishment.
At the very least, it should remind us
that it is not the powerful of the world
who hasten the coming of God’s kingdom.
but rather the humble and the meek,
who spend their lives in loving service
of God and neighbor,
and who are open to hear God’s invitation:
“Come, everything is now ready.”