Commemoration of St. John Henry Newman

Readings: Song of Songs 3:1-4; 1 John 4:13-21

Our two readings today seem to present us
with two very different kinds of love.
The Song of Songs presents a love
rooted in passion for the absent beloved—
a love for a particular other
for whom my heart longs
and whom I want to possess.
The First Letter of John, on the other hand,
with its famous claim that God is love,
presents us with a love
that seems not a matter 
of passion or self-fulfillment
but is a response to the generous gift 
of the God who unselfishly loves us first 
and call us to show to others 
the same sort of selfless love.
It is a love that is universal,
directed to all people.

When you go to seminary and get all smartened up,
you are taught to identify these two sorts of love
with two different Greek words: eros and agape.
You are perhaps taught that eros—
praised by pagan Greek thinkers such as Plato—
is egoistic, particular, and ultimately selfish.
And you may be taught that agape 
is the kind of love spoken of in the New Testament—
an altruistic, universal, self-sacrificial love
exemplified in the cross of Jesus
and in God’s grace shown to sinners.

 
But the fact that the erotic Song of Songs
and the agapeic First Letter of John
are both in the canon the Scripture,
and that they appear side by side 
in our worship this morning,
suggests that this contrast between agape and eros
is one of those the teachable bits of simplified truth
that your teachers feed you,
not in malice,
but because your minds are thirsting for understanding
and simple distinctions and broadly drawn contrasts
are the most effective way to slake that thirst.
These sorts of distinctions and contrasts
are handy pegs on which to organize 
your theological hat collection,
but they also tend to collapse under scrutiny,
and we who teach theology 
pass them along to our students
with our fingers crossed
and a nagging voice in the back of our minds
saying, “Well…more or less,”
trusting that our students will supply for themselves
the nuance that we don’t have the time to convey.

And this strategy more or less works,
because simply trying to live as a Christian
teaches us that universal love of God and neighbor
is inextricably tangled up with love of particular others:
our yearning for a spouse, a friends, a child.
My living shows me that the yearning of eros 
to escape the confines of the self,
to live ecstatically within the life of my beloved
and to have my beloved live in me,
is itself a kind of self-sacrificial love. 
It shows me that it is in my yearning
for this one, this particular beloved
whom I see here, now, before me,
that fosters in me love 
for all those others
whom I cannot now see,
and ultimately love for the God
whom no one can see in this life,
the beloved who dwells 
in unapproachable light.

John Henry Newman, 
whom we commemorate today,
and whom God blessed with 
the kind of supernatural common sense 
that is a mark of sanctity,
noted that we mistakenly think 
that the yearning we feel for particular others 
is a distraction from our real task
of loving everybody indiscriminately.
Newman thought this got things quite wrong.
He thought that our natural yearning
to love and be loved by this beloved—
this spouse,
this child,
this friend—
is the ground from which 
a more universal love might grow.
He wrote, “the best preparation
for loving the world at large,
and loving it duly and wisely,
is to cultivate an intimate friendship 
and affection toward those 
who are immediately around us.” 
Newman thought that St. John,
who teaches us that God is agape,
learned this truth from the very particular love 
that Jesus shared with him.
Newman says of John,
“did he begin with some vast effort 
at loving on a large scale?
Nay, he had the unspeakable privilege
of being the friend of Christ.
Thus he was taught to love others;
first his affection was concentrated,
then it was expanded” (Sermons II.5).

On this score, Newman can teach us something
about our quest for the unity of Christians.
As far as I know, he never expressed an intellectual regret
over leaving the Church of England for Roman Catholicism,
but he was grieved throughout his life 
by the broken friendships that resulted from his decision.
Just as love is always rooted in the particular,
so too is sorrow over separation:
“I will seek him whom my soul loves.”
Though high-level theological discussions are important,
what really drives the quest 
to overcome the divisions of Christians 
are not abstractions like 
“organic unity” or “reconciled diversity,”
but a yearning for union with the brother or sister
who was reborn with me 
from the same womb of living water;
a hunger to share with this one whom I love
at the banquet of the bread of life.   
Our desire for unity must be concentrated
before it is expanded.

It was no accident that, 
upon becoming a cardinal,
Newman chose as his motto
cor ad cor loquitur—heart speaks to heart.
For it is within the heart that speaks
to the heart of a particular beloved
that the voice of God resounds.
This notion that time-bound and particular realities
are the doorway into the eternal and universal
is what Newman called “the sacramental principle.”
The brother or sister who stands before us—
who evokes our love and yearning, 
whom we seek in the nighttime of our restlessness,
whom we desire to hold and never let go—
is the sacrament of a love that expands
to encompass those brothers and sisters
whom we have not yet seen,
to compass even the God 
whom we will only see
in the light of heavenly glory.

Let us pray that God will give us the grace
to love with passionate particularity,
and selfless generosity,
to love the distant through the near
and the unseen in the seen.
St. John Henry Newman, pray for us.

Preached at an ecumenical commemoration of Newman at Duke Divinity School Chapel.

 

A Wedding Homily

Readings: Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31; 1 John 4:7-12; John 15:9-12

If you do enough weddings
you can begin to feel as if 
the wedding ceremony itself is just an appendage 
to a much bigger and more important event
that includes many hours of photography 
and one or more very lavish and expensive parties,
into which months and even years 
of planning are invested.
It can begin to feel like the actual exchange of vows
in the presence of God, his minister, and his people
is something of secondary importance,
even when occurring in a beautiful setting
and adorned with flowers and music.
This is not to cast any doubt on the sincerity
of the couples taking their vows,
but it is simply to note how difficult it is
to resist cultural pressure and expectations
and what I like to call 
the Wedding-Industrial Complex,
that is devoted to finding new things 
you can spend money on.

From the first time I met with Stephen and Theresa
I knew that this was not the case with them.
They simply wanted to get married.
They did not want to host a lavish event,
or stage a photo op,
or make themselves the center of attention.
They simply wanted to vow their love to each other
in the presence of God and in the midst of people 
whom they love and who love them.
I knew that they did not just want to get married,
they wanted to be married.
They wanted to be joined to one another
in a sacrament that would give them 
the grace that they need 
to live life together 
in the many years to come.
They wanted what really matters.

This is, of course, a beautiful event:
the Cathedral is beautiful,
the music is beautiful,
the couple, in particular, is beautiful.
But the most beautiful thing here
is God’s grace.
Like the wise writer of the book of Proverbs,
Theresa and Stephen know 
that “charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting.”
They know that what matters on this day
is the one thing that is not deceptive and fleeting:
the love of God
that has become real for them
in their love for one another.

We call this love “grace” 
because it is something God gives us 
without our ever deserving it,
just as Theresa and Stephen 
have given their love to each other
freely and generously and not really caring
if the other one has earned it.
That’s how love works,
and that’s how God works.
The beauty of God’s grace 
that we celebrate in this sacrament
is that we love God because God loves us first,
and God loves us not because we are good
but because God is good.

Stephen and Theresa, in the Gospel
Jesus tells his followers to remain in his love
so that they might have fullness of joy.
It is this love that really matters today,
and in the years of marriage that lie ahead of you
the challenge will be simply 
to remain in Christ’s love—
to abide in this eternal moment
when God gives you his love
through your love for one another.
And when life brings you hardships,
as it undoubtedly will,
when you feel misunderstood,
as you undoubtedly will,
when you wonder what 
you have gotten yourself into,
as you undoubtedly will,
return to this moment and remain in it,
for this is the moment when eternal love
shows itself in time and space
in the words of promise
that you will speak to each other.

If you remain in the love 
that God gives you today,
then your life together
will be a life of joy, 
even in the face of hardship 
and misunderstanding
and doubt,
because it will be a life 
graced by God’s love,
the one thing that really matters.

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Wisdom 2:12, 17-20; James 3:16-4:3; Mark 9:30-37

VIDEO

Like many people, 
I lament the conflicts and divisions of our culture
as we drag ourselves through yet another season
of the contentious sniping and truth-bending
that we call politics.
I likewise brood over ongoing and escalating wars,
the economic hardship and inequality suffered by so many,
our fear and vilification of those who are different from us, 
our unchecked consumption of the earth’s limited resources.
So much seems so wrong with the world,
and I can certainly marshal the tools 
of political science and economics and sociology
in order to try to trace out the causes
of everything that makes me lament and brood. 
But, the Letter of James cuts to the chase
and tells me that, at the end of the day,
the problem is me.

Not, I should be clear, 
me as Deacon Fritz Bauerschmidt—
I’m not quite arrogant enough to think 
that I am the unique source of the world’s woes.
What James tells us 
is that each of us must look within
if we want to really know why we live 
in a world of conflict
that makes us lament and brood,
and if we do we will find 
that we are our own worst enemies.
James speaks of “our passions”—
those chaotic primal emotions 
that rise up within us—
as the source of the world’s strife:
jealousy, selfish ambition, envy and covetousness.
These passions create not simply conflict in the world,
as we strive to assert our wills over others,
but conflict within ourselves:
they frustrate us,
they make us miserable,
they cannot deliver on the things
they make us want so much.
James tells us, 
“You ask but do not receive,
because you ask wrongly, 
to spend it on your passions.”
The world is at war with itself
because I am at war with myself.

We see this in today’s Gospel story,
when Jesus predicts 
his coming death and resurrection
only to have his disciples unable to understand
and unwilling even to ask questions.
Instead, as they walk the path to Jerusalem
where the events foretold by Jesus 
will come to pass,
they decide to bicker among themselves
about which of them is the greatest,
as if to demonstrate their lack of understanding.
The words of Jesus are confusing and upsetting;
it is so much simpler for them
to give free rein to their passions
of jealousy, selfish ambition, 
envy and covetousness,
perhaps not even realizing 
that these are the same chaotic passions
that will result in Jesus’ death in Jerusalem,
at the hand of those who say,
in the words of the book of Wisdom, 
“Let us beset the just one, 
because…he sets himself against our doings.”
The fruitless and frustrating 
jockeying for greatness
that will be displayed 
in the arrest, trial, and killing of Jesus
is enacted among Jesus’s own disciples,
just as it is enacted in me
as I war with myself and the world.

Jesus, unlike me, 
does not lament and brood over this conflict;
nor is he content simply to sit back
and take in the irony of the situation.
Rather he seeks to teach the disciples
how to end the war within themselves
that overflows into the conflict among them;
he teaches them how to desire and act 
so that they can calm the chaos of their passions
and receive what it is that they truly desire.
He seeks to impart to them—
and he seeks to impart to us—
“the wisdom from above,”
which can relieve our lamentation and brooding
because it is “peaceable, gentle, compliant,
full of mercy and good fruits,
without inconstancy or insincerity.”

He tells us first that our desire for greatness
will only be frustrated if it is ruled by the passions
of jealousy, selfish ambition, envy and covetousness.
As long as these passion war within us
we will never find true greatness,
but only engender conflict among ourselves.
According to the strange wisdom that comes from above,
to be first you must desire to be last;
to have true greatness you must embrace the role
that the selfish ambitions of our passions reject:
the role of servant of all.
And if we embrace the role of servant,
if we think above all of serving others
and not of serving our passions—
our jealousy, selfish ambition, 
envy and covetousness—
then we make space for the wisdom from above
to come and make its home within us 
and calm the chaos of our passions
and make us “peaceable, gentle, compliant,
full of mercy and good fruits.”
This wisdom from above is embodied
in the child that Jesus takes in his arms:
one who has no greatness 
as our passions judge greatness,
one who seems to offer us nothing
that our passions might desire.
Yet in receiving that child
we receive Jesus,
and in receiving him
we receive the One who sent him,
the One who is Wisdom itself,
the One who can end the war within us
and the war between us.

We ask but do not receive,
because we ask wrongly,
in service of our passions.
Let us pray that God’s Spirit
would lead us to ask rightly
by making us the servant of all,
so that we might leave our lamenting
and be done with our brooding,
so that we might know 
the true wisdom from above,
and that God, who is merciful,
might have mercy on us all.

 

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Proverbs 9:1-6; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6: 51-58

“You are what you eat.”
This proverb was, if not coined, 
at least made famous
by the 19th-century philosopher 
Ludwig Feuerbach.
So you’ll have to indulge me
as we get a little philosophical.

In saying, “you are what you eat,” 
Feuerbach wanted to emphasize that, 
contrary to the Christian view of things, 
we humans are purely material beings;
as he put it, 
“in the end we are only patched together 
from oxygen, nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen…”
We are simply the material substances 
that we ingest:
we are what we eat.
Feuerbach thought that Christianity 
had turned this reality on its head,
promoting the illusion of spirit
rather than the reality of matter.
Any notion of “God” or “the soul” or “eternity”
was for Feuerbach simply 
a fiction we humans conjured up—
and a dangerous fiction at that,
since all this talk of God and souls and eternity
distracts us from the true material needs of people.
He said, “If you want to improve the people, 
give them better food instead of denunciations of sin.”
If you want people to know the truth,
give them food, not faith;
as Feuerbach put it: “nourishment 
is the beginning of wisdom.” 

Though his name may be new to you,
Feuerbach’s views are pretty common today,
and you can probably recognize them
in those who would accuse Christians
of indulging in an illusion 
that alienates us from reality
and promotes human misery in this life
for the sake of a false eternity in the next.
But the idea that we ought to focus
on life in this world and not the next,
on tangible material reality 
and not intangible spiritual illusions,
on food that lasts for today
and not food that claims to bestow eternity—
this idea has been around a long time.

Indeed, it is precisely this idea 
that Jesus speaks to in the Bread of Life discourse
with which we have been occupying ourselves
these past few weeks.
We heard Jesus say two weeks ago: 
“Do not work for food that perishes
but for the food that endures for eternal life.”
And last week we heard, “Your ancestors 
ate the manna in the desert, but they died;
this is the bread that comes down from heaven
so that one may eat it and not die.”
In a funny way,
Jesus agrees with Feuerbach.
You are what you eat.
Nourishment is the beginning of wisdom.
The difference is in what you eat
and at whose banquet you are nourished.

“My flesh is true food,
and my blood is true drink.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
remains in me and I in him.”
To eat Christ’s flesh and drink his blood
is to be joined to him,
to share in his divine eternity,
to become by grace what he is by nature:
beloved sons and daughter of the Father.
You are what you eat.
Likewise, we hear in our first reading,
that Wisdom “has spread her table….
she calls from the heights out over the city:
Let whoever is simple turn in here….
Come, eat of my food,
and drink of the wine I have mixed!”
We are invited to be nourished at Wisdom’s banquet,
a nourishment that gives us not growth in body,
but growth in understanding,
nourishment that enables us to live, as Paul puts it, 
“not as foolish persons but as wise.” 
Nourishment is the beginning of wisdom.

But I don’t think that Jesus 
simply agrees with Feuerbach
that you are what you eat
and that nourishment is the beginning of wisdom.
I also think he agrees with him
that you ought not live so much for the next life
that you ignore people’s material needs in this life.
Recall how the Bread of Life Discourse 
began, lo those many weeks ago: 
it began with Jesus feeding people,
and not in some spiritual or metaphorical sense,
but with real, material loaves and fish. 
As John tells the story,
even before he begins teaching them,
Jesus asks Philip: “Where can we buy 
enough food for them to eat?”
And those five barley loaves and two fish, 
blessed and broken in the hands of Jesus,
become a real, material feast
that filled the stomachs of the hungry crowd.

Feuerbach was not wrong to think
that people need real, material nourishment;
but he was wrong to think that that is all they need.
Likewise, we Christian are not wrong to think
that people need wisdom’s spiritual nourishment;
but we’re wrong if we think that is all they need.
Jesus shows us that you do not have
to choose between the two.

Indeed, he shows us that you cannot choose,

for the God whom we worship 

is the maker of both body and soul

and has destined for salvation both body and soul,

and we anticipate this salvation

not only when we receive the Eucharist,

but also when we offer food to the hungry

and justice to the oppressed.

The spiritual nourishment we receive at Christ’s altar
should not be a narcotic that dulls our senses
to the call to address humanity’s material needs;
the Eucharist should be a feast
that makes us hunger and thirst 
not just for spiritual righteousness
and the peace of life eternal,
but for justice and peace in this life. 
If we are what we eat,
and if what we eat at this altar 
is Christ himself,
so that he lives in us and we in him,
then we should find Christ also living
in the least of our brothers and sisters:
in the hungry and the thirsty,
the sick and the homeless,
the stranger and the imprisoned.

Let us, who eat the food of immortality,
feed the hungers of this mortal life
so that people might taste 
and see that the Lord is good,
and that God, who is merciful,
might have mercy on us all.

17th Week in Ordinary Time (Saturday)

Readings: Jeremiah 6:11-16, 24; Matthew 14:1-12

Does any child think:
I’d like to be like John the Baptist
when I grow up?
Does anyone think:
I’d like to live in the desert and eat bugs
and then, after achieving a measure of notoriety, 
subordinate my entire existence
to that of my hitherto unknown cousin?
Does anyone think:
I’d like ultimately to end up being killed,
because a pretty girl whose mother I had offended
dances a deadly dance of seduction
and gets a powerful but foolish man 
to grant her one wish, which is my head on a platter?
Not exactly every child’s dream.

And yet, at our baptism,
each of us was anointed 
priest, king, and also prophet.
For those of us baptized as infants,
we, like Jeremiah, did not get much say
in our prophetic vocation:
we were more or less called
from our mothers’ wombs.
Yet prophets we are.

Some of us, but probably not many of us, 
end up being the dramatic sort of prophet
that John the Baptist and Jeremiah were—
those who are provocative and persecuted 
and perhaps even killed.
But most of us who seek to live the prophetic vocation
end up being what I would call “ordinary prophets”:
those whose ears have been opened sacramentally
to hear God’s words
and whose tongues have been 
loosed to speak them.
We ordinary prophets are called 
to bear witness to glad tidings
by living our lives as if the Gospel is true
and by giving to any who ask
an account of the hope that is in us.

And some of us, the lucky ones, 
get paid for doing this;
we get to be professors of theology,
though I would not suggest 
listing “ordinary prophet” on your CV
among your academic positions held,
even if you teach at a Catholic university.

We academic ordinary prophets 
generally don’t face any external persecution 
apart from the tenure process
(again, if we’re lucky).
We’re more likely to face a kind of 
internal persecution of self-doubt,
of endlessly comparing our achievements
to those of others,
of playing games of power,
of thinking of our work not as the pursuit of wisdom
but as a kind of joyless “knowledge production.”
We academic ordinary prophets often discover
that our most severe persecution comes from ourselves.
We dance our own dance of deadly seduction;
we put our own head on the platter.

And the remedy for this internal self-persecution
is the same as that for external persecution:
the fearlessness that flows 
from the truth of the Gospel.
The remedy is to live, as John the Baptist lived, 
in order to bear witness to Jesus,
to let ourselves decrease 
so that he might increase,
to always bear in mind 
that there is a divine teacher
whose sandals we are not worthy to untie
but who has called us nonetheless 
to speak his word.
We pray that this teacher 
would teach us to be prophets
and that God, in his mercy,
would have mercy on us all.

 

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Jeremiah 23:1-6; Ephesians 2:13-18; Mark 6:30-34

This past week a large gathering of people,
united by a set of common beliefs,
in a vast arena, amid pomp and spectacle, 
reaffirmed their most deeply held commitments
and honored and acclaimed their head,
and pledged themselves to his cause.

I refer, of course, to the National Eucharistic Congress,
at which some 50,000 Catholics gathered in Indianapolis
to recommit themselves to their faith in Christ.
If, however, you thought I was speaking
of the Republican National Convention, 
at which 50,000 members of the GOP 
gathered in Milwaukee…
well, maybe that tells us something 
about the nature of politics.
In both major political parties, 
albeit in different ways,
politics has taken on 
a kind of religious fervor.
This fervor shows itself not only 
in the ritualized spectacle of party conventions,
and the rather amazing powers to save
that are ascribed to the anointed leaders,
but above all in a conviction that what is at stake
is of ultimate significance;
if the wrong candidate wins—
by which I mean the candidate of the other party—
then it’s pretty much over for us as a society,
and perhaps for the human race as a whole.

It has probably always been this way,
but politics these days seems less and less
about proposing positive plans for the nation
and more and more about stoking fear 
of what will come if the other side wins.
Even the attempted assassination 
of one of the presidential candidates
has generated little in the way
of shared concern about political violence,
but has engendered instead, 
from partisans on all sides,
competing and conflicting conspiracy theories
that trade on the fact that we no longer trust
the evidence of our own eyes
and are so fearful of those with whom we differ
that we believe them capable of anything.

The blending of politics and religion shows itself
not just in our tendency 
to let our politics take on a religious tinge,
but also in our tendency to let our religion 
be cast in political terms.
The fear and distrust that plagues our nation
has infected the Church as well:
we treat a preference 
for one or another legitimate option 
in liturgy or music or architecture
as a threat to the very being of the Church.
Not just with our fellow citizens,
but even with our fellow Catholics,
we are so fearful of those with whom we differ
that we believe them capable of anything.

Let us listen to the voice of the prophet:
“Woe to the shepherds
who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture.”
Woe to those who use their authority—
whether the duly appointed authority of State or Church,
or that strange authority conferred by media celebrity—
to mislead and scatter God’s flock.
Woe to those who sow suspicion and division;
woe to them because such division 
is contrary to Christ,
who comes to breaks down walls
and preach peace to the far and to the near.
But woe to us as well if we let ourselves 

be drawn in to this way of looking at the world
and become ourselves agents of division
in the Church or in society.
For the mission of the Church 
is to be the sign and cause 
of the peace and unity of the human race
that Christ has come to bring.

Perhaps Jesus is speaking to us now, at this moment,
when he says, “Come away by yourselves 
to a deserted place and rest a while.”
Perhaps we need to find a way of stepping back
from the constant stream 
of information and misinformation
in which we are drowning
so we can catch our breath and clear our heads.
Perhaps we need to find a place in which to stand
with our feet firmly planted 
on the rock of truth that is Christ
so that we can see what is truly of ultimate importance
and what is merely the distracting spectacle
of a passing world.

Notice, however, that he says, “rest a while,”
not “abandon the world.”
Jesus is not telling us to turn our backs on other people
and become the spiritual equivalent of a survivalist,
concerned only for the well-being of ourselves 
and of those who are close to us.
Jesus calls us to a moment of respite
in which we can catch our breath
in the midst of breathless events,
before we return to the world 
to announce the Gospel
by glorifying the Lord with our lives.

This is where the contrast 
between last week’s political convention
and the Eucharistic Congress becomes important.
Partisan politics as ordinarily practiced
immerse us in a world of conflict
and all too often have as their goal 
merely the victory of one side
rather than the common good of all.
Without denying that the Church can be subject
to all sorts of political manipulations and power plays,
when she withdraws from the crowd
and gathers herself together 
to adore Christ in the Eucharist
she is truly resting in Jesus,
she is immersed in the world as he sees it,
inhabiting his heart that burns with love.

And just as Jesus and his friends, 
arriving at that deserted place,
discovered that the crowd had gotten there before them,
so too we, entering into the Eucharistic heart of Jesus,
find there the world that we are called to love.
We find there the sorrowing and the angry,
the meek and the prideful,
the pure of heart and the sinful,
the peacemakers and the warmongers,
and we see them as God sees them,
not as rivals or enemies whom we fear,
but as God’s beloved children,
called by him to eternal life.
And once we see the world and its people
through the Eucharistic heart of Christ
we can return from that deserted place
into our world of conflict and division,
our hearts more like his heart,
moved to pity and not to anger,
to witness to the world the reconciling love 
that we have come to know.

So let us pray that Jesus 
would make us agents of his peace,
and that God, in his mercy,
would have mercy on us all.

15th Week in Ordinary Time--Wednesday

Readings: Isaiah 10:5-7, 13b-16;  Matthew 10:5-7, 13b-16

Today’s two readings pretty much capture
everything Nietzsche hated about Christianity.
Reversing what Nietzsche took

to be the natural and healthy course of the world,
in which eagles prey on lambs,
the Gospel proclaims the glory of a God 
who brings down the mighty 
and exalts those who are lowly.

Isaiah reveals that the mighty Assyrian empire
is but a tool in the hands of the Lord.
Assyria, the earthly city, 
wants, as Augustine put it, to glory in itself,
to say, “By my own power I have done it,
and by my wisdom, for I am shrewd.”
But God will have none of that,
asking, “Will the axe boast 
against him who hews with it?”
Whatever seeming feats of power 
Assyria has carried out
in fact show that empire’s 
subservience to the Lord’s plans,
to God’s providence.

And in the Gospel we hear
not simply that the powerful
are not so powerful as they think themselves,
nor the wise as shrewd as they think themselves, 
but that what has been hidden 
from the wise and the learned
has been revealed to the childlike.
Those whom the wise and the powerful despise
know something that the wise and the powerful do not—
they know that all human wisdom and power
are in the hands of the Lord,
and they say to God, “My glory,
the one who lifts up my head."

I presume not many of us here 
profess to be Nietzscheans,
nor think ourselves leaders of great empires,
but even in the small pond of theology
the temptation remains to say,
“By my own power I have done it,
and by my wisdom, for I am shrewd.”
The temptation to glory in our selves remains, 
to claim for our own the work 
that God has wrought through us,
to say that it is my power that has brought
whatever successes I have achieved,
my wisdom that has made me oh-so-clever
in the ways of theology.
This is our libido dominandi, 
our lust for domination.

Of course, we don’t say that out loud.
We probably don’t even think it to ourselves.
But we often show it in our actions
and our intellectual habits.
We glory in ourselves 
when we treat theological discussion
as a blood sport in which 
intellectual scalps are the prize.
We glory in ourselves 
when we treat every theological question
as a locked door to be opened by brute force
rather than perhaps a mystery 
before which we must bow.

One reason we have the Studium 
is to try to break these habits. 
By prayer and conversation and friendship
we seek to take our place
among the little ones who glory,
not in themselves, but in God,
to whom Christ reveals 
the mysteries of the Father.
We seek to remind ourselves, 
as St. Thomas teaches us (ST 1.43.5 ad 2),
that Christ the Word dwells in us,
“not in accordance with every and any kind 
of intellectual perfection, 
but according to the intellectual illumination 
that breaks forth into the affection of love.”

Let us pray that,
through the intercession of St. Thomas,
God will bring to completion
the good work he has begun in us
and among us.
And may God, who is merciful, 
have mercy on us all.

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Ezekiel 2:2-5; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Mark 6:1-6

“He was not able to perform 
any mighty deed there…
He was amazed at their lack of faith.”
In today’s Gospel reading
it seems that Jesus’s ability to work mighty deeds
is somehow dependent on the faith of others,
either the faith of those whom he cures
or the faith of those who intercede for them.
Last week we heard from Mark’s Gospel
dramatic stories of Jesus’ power and ability: 
the ability to heal the woman with the hemorrhage,
and even to restore Jairus’s daughter to life.
And we might think that his mighty deeds 
didn’t depend on anyone or anything.
But now, it is as if Mark wants 
to make sure that,
in the face of such mighty deeds,
we do not mistake Jesus
for some sort of superhero or magician.
Here we have underscored for us,
just how much he seems like other people:
“Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary?”
As St. Symeon the Theologian put it,
“He ate, he drank, he slept, 
he sweated, and he grew weary.
He did everything other people do, 
except that he did not sin.”

And a big part 
of the “everything other people do”
is being dependent on others.
The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre argues
that being vulnerable and therefore dependent
is so much a part of what it means to be human
that it is a grave mistake to look upon 
those whom we describe as “disabled,”
as somehow possessing a lesser form of humanity
simply because they are vulnerable and dependent.
As MacIntyre puts it, 
they are in their dependence,
“ourselves as we have been,
sometimes are now 
and may well be in the future.”
The vulnerable dependence we all share
is simply more obvious in those we call “disabled.”
Dependence is, as they say, 
a feature and not a bug 
of our human nature.

And in taking that human nature upon himself
Christ willingly takes on our dependence,
our vulnerability,
even our disability.
“He was not able…”
He made himself dependent on their faith,
just as he made himself dependent on his mother
who carried him in her womb 
and fed him at her breast;
and made himself dependent on his disciples 
who spread his word far and wide;
and made himself dependent on followers 
who offered hospitality and financial support;
and made himself dependent on Simon of Cyrene,
who carried his cross when his 
tortured and exhausted body
could do so no longer.

Christ made himself like us
in our dependence and disability,
and we are called to make ourselves like him
in rejecting our illusion of independence
and embracing the disability 
of ourselves and others.
St. Paul says, 
“I will…boast most gladly 
of my weaknesses,
in order that the power of Christ 
may dwell with me….
for when I am weak, 
then I am strong”
The power of Christ in me
is the power to see the dependence of others,
not as an imposition or a threat, 
but as a summons to expand 
the narrow limits of my humanity
by seeing it as woven into a vast tapestry
of beings who depend upon each other
and all of whom together
depend upon God.
Indeed, to depend on God for our existence
is what it means to be a creature,
and to recognize that dependence
is what it means to be human.

Last week I read a news story
of scientists identifying the fossil remains 
of a six-year-old Neanderthal child
with Down Syndrome
who lived at least 146,000 years ago.
As today, this child would have faced
considerable physical and cognitive challenges,
but these would have been made all the worse 
for living among a group
of highly mobile hunters and gatherers
whose day-to-day existence was highly precarious.
She would seem to have had little to offer
such a group in its quest for survival.
And yet someone cared for her,
cared for her in a way that allowed her,
defying all expectation,
to reach the age of six.
Indeed, it seems likely 
that the whole group cared for her,
since what she would have needed
was more than her mother alone could provide.
They cared for her 
not because of what she could do
but because she called forth compassion
from the deepest wellspring of their humanity,
called forth in them a recognition
that they too are vulnerable and dependent
and unable to do any mighty deed
without the faith of others.
Think about that: these early humans
living over a thousand centuries ago
knew that their humanity 
depended on dependence,
on sharing the burden of vulnerability.
“for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

On Thursday we observed the Fourth of July,
a holiday that celebrates American values
of independence and individualism.
These values certainly have their positive side,
but they also have their dark side,
for they tend to exclude those who
in various ways are dependent on others: 
the child in the womb
and the elderly person at the end of life,
those with physical or cognitive disabilities,
the refugee and the alien in a foreign land,
the person who’s made bad life choices
or simply had bad luck.
We must remember that American values

of independence and individualism,
as good as they may be,
are not necessarily Christian values,
and maybe do not get to the core 
of what it means to be human.
For as Christians we know the power of Christ
not in our independent individualism,
but in our common dependence 
on God and each other

Today, we gather at the Lord’s altar
as beggars asking for bread,
to celebrate our dependence and vulnerability,
our common dis-ability to do any mighty deed
apart from God’s grace and the faith of others,
our common call to find strength in weakness
and to bear each other’s burdens.
So let us pray 

that we would know our need,

so that God in his mercy
might have mercy on us all.

11th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Ezekiel 17:22-24; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10; Mark 4:26-34

VIDEO

“With many such parables
he spoke the word to them.”
So, what exactly is a parable?
Well, it is kind of hard to say.
We typically think of a parable as a story
that is supposed to teach us something. 
And certainly some of the most famous 
parables of Jesus are stories,
like the good Samaritan or the prodigal son.
In the Gospels, however, some things 
that get called parables
are not really stories at all,
but more like proverbial sayings:
“if one blind person guides another, 
both will fall into a pit.”
And sometimes, as in today’s Gospel
a parable is a simple comparisons:
the kingdom of God is like 
how a tiny mustard seed
grows into a large plant.

Moreover, what exactly it is 
that the parables are supposed to teach us
is not always clear.
In the Gospels, 
one thing all the parables seem to share
is that they confuse their hearers.
This is true even of the parables that seem
to convey clear moral lessons.
We might think that 
the parable of the good Samaritan
is telling us to come to the aid 
of those who are in need,
but to Jesus’ Jewish audience
the very idea of a good Samaritan
would have been baffling 
and even scandalous,
like a story about a good terrorist.
And a seemingly clear bit of advice—
don’t let blind people 
lead other blind people around—
prompts his followers to say,
“Explain this parable to us,”
perhaps because they were wondering
who it was that were supposed to be blind leaders.
And even today’s parables about growing seeds
seem to cause some sort of confusion,
since Jesus has to explain them later 
to his disciples in private.

One commentator I read stated,
“Each parable… contains one main point 
that is its basic message.”
But this is clearly wrong.
Parables seem to invite 
multiple interpretations,
even conflicting interpretations.
Rather than delivery devices 
for a basic message,
the parables of Jesus serve 
as instruments of perplexity,
mean of making us ponder,
ways of revealing to us 
just how little we understand
about God and the ways of his kingdom.
They are less likely to make us say,
“Oh, now I get it”
than to prompt us to ask,
“Do I really understand 
what is going on at all?”

Today’s Gospel reading
explicitly calls our attention 
to the limits of our understanding:
the farmer doesn’t know 
what hidden process
leads the tiny seed under the earth
to sprout and grow into such a large plant.
It prompts us to ask:
if the power of a seed to grow 
is hidden from us,
how much more hidden 
is the power of God’s kingdom?
If we are startled by the contrast 
between the smallness of the seed 
that we put in the earth
and the greatness the plant that grows from it,
a plant in which 
the birds of the sky can find a home,
how much more startling is the contrast
between the dead body of Jesus, 
planted in the tomb,
and the immensity of the kingdom 
that springs forth from it in his resurrection,
a kingdom of people drawn 
from every land and nation,
every culture and way of life?

The mind cannot comprehend such mysteries.
Those who await the fulness of God’s reign
must learn how to live 
with perplexity and mystery,
must learn, as Paul put it, 
to “walk by faith and not by sight,”
to trust in Jesus to lead them 
through the darkness of unknowing
into the light of the Kingdom.
Parables show us just how much
we do not know,
how constricted our imaginations are,
how much we must walk 
by faith and hope and love
and not by sight,
how much we must rely on Jesus 

to guide us through the darkness. 

Speaking for myself,
I find that the more I ponder 
God’s ways in the world
the more perplexed my mind becomes,
the more I realize how much

I don’t know about by own life,
where it comes from and where it is going.
Our lives are a parable 
that God is telling,
and as with the parables in the Gospels,
we at best half-understand them.
In our lives we are often perplexed
as to what God’s point is,
what God is up to,
where God is leading us.
Why is there so much hatred 
and violence in the world?
How in the midst of violence and hatred
are people still capable of great acts of love?
Why have I lost someone I love to death?
What have I ever done to deserve
such faithful friends and family?
Why have my hopes and dreams
not come to pass?

The Gospel today tells us,
“to his own disciples 
he explained everything in private.”
Perhaps in this life
we will never find answers
to the questions that perplex us.
But in the midst of perplexity and unknowing
Jesus speaks to those who follow him
in the secret recesses of their hearts,
and if we turn to him in prayer
we will receive,
if not always an explanation, 
at least a word of consolation,
a word of encouragement,
a word that can strengthen us
to continue to follow him on the way.
For he is the way,
and our life is a seed we have been given,
a seed we have been asked to plant in faith,
a seed that must die with Christ 
and be buried with him, 
so that something that is
beyond our power to imagine
can grow from it.
We walk by faith and not by sight,
but we walk with Jesus,
and he will lead us.
So let us pray that God,
who is merciful,
would have mercy on us all.

Pentecost

Readings: Acts 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23

VIDEO 

A friend of mine tells 
of an elderly priest he knew years ago
who, expressing caution about
the growth among Catholics 
of the Charismatic Movement, 
described the Holy Spirit as 
“one of the trickiest persons of the Trinity.”
Even those who might be more enthusiastic
about the charismatic renewal in Catholicism
would surely have to agree that the Spirit can be tricky.

Indeed, we might even see some similarity
between the Holy Spirit and those figures in folklore
that scholars refer to as “tricksters.”
In folktales, tricksters are sometimes gods,
like Loki in Norse mythology,
or animals of particular cunning,
like Brer Rabbit in African-American traditions
or the coyote in Native-American stories.
I suppose in contemporary American mythology
the most notable trickster would be Bart Simpson.
Tricksters like to stir the pot and create chaos,
to shake up the normal order of things
and mock the power of established authorities.
They are usually morally ambiguous troublemakers
who are depicted as causing mischief, 
but also as embodying freedom and creativity.
As the writer Lewis Hyde put it,
tricksters are boundary-crossers,
blurring distinctions between
“right and wrong, sacred and profane, 
clean and dirty, male and female, 
young and old, living and dead.”

Though I hesitate to push the comparison too far—
the Holy Spirit, after all, is not exactly Bart Simpson—
I do think that the Spirit plays in the Christian story
a role similar to the trickster in mythology and folklore.
The Spirit is a boundary-crosser and a troublemaker.
At the baptism of Jesus, the heavens are opened
and the Spirit descends like a dove,
crossing the boundary between heaven and earth,
between the divine and the human,
to manifest Jesus as God’s beloved Son
and send him forth 

on his troublemaking mission.
On the evening of that first Easter
Jesus breathes out the Spirit upon the disciples, 
crossing the boundary between 
the resurrected life that he now leads
and their fearful, huddled existence,
giving to them his troublemaking peace
and the power to share that peace with others.
On the day of Pentecost,
the Spirit once again crosses the boundary
between heaven and earth,
descending from the sky 
with “a noise like a strong driving wind”
and resting on the apostles in
“tongues as of fire.”
And in crossing the boundary 
of heaven and earth 
the Spirit also crosses boundaries
of culture and language,
as the apostles begin to speak to the crowd
gathered “from every nation under heaven”
in a Spirit-filled language
that each can hear and understand.
And the trouble that causes
is recounted in depth in the book of Acts.

We are told that the crowd 
on that day of Pentecost is, 
as so often when tricksters are at work, 
“confused.” 
People are supposed to stay
in their cultural and linguistic boxes,
but now the pot has been stirred,
the old categories and division are blurred.
This kind of boundary-crossing
is profoundly disorienting.
But at the same time, we are told,
the people in the crowd 
are not simply confused;
they are astounded and amazed,
because they are able to hear together, 
despite their differences,
of the mighty acts of God.

St. Paul assures us that our God
“is not the God of disorder 
but of peace” (1 Cor 14:33).

But he also tells us that 

“the peace of God… surpasses 

all understanding” (Phil 4:7),

and after the risen Christ 

wishes his disciples peace

he shows them his wounds,

the price of all his troublemaking.

So, what is for God power

might seem to us weakness,
what is for God wisdom
might seem to us foolishness,
and what is for God order
might seem to us 
disorder and chaos and trouble.

And this is perhaps most evident
in what is that tricky Spirit’s trickiest work:
the body of Christ that is the Church.
For the Spirit blows into the Church
the most unlikely assemblage of people,
from the four corners of the world
and from every race and language:
men and women,
rich and poor,
thinkers and doers,
morning people and nightowls,
athletes and couch potatoes,
city-dwellers and suburbanites,
Republicans, Democrats, 
Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers,
Millennials, Zoomers,
and even Steelers fans…
all baptized into one body,
and all given to drink 
of the one tricky Spirit.

Sometimes it looks and sounds
like chaos and disorder.
When parishioners from churches
throughout the city of Baltimore
packed this Cathedral a few weeks ago
for the final listening session
of the Seek the City to Come process
it seemed at times to be pretty disorderly,
and pretty noisy,
as different voices from different places
spoke of their unique experiences
in their irreplaceable parishes.
But the hope we must bring 

to such listening
is that what will emerge 
from that welter of voices
is the voice of the one Spirit.
As with everything at every moment
in the long history of the Church,
we live in hope that it is
the boundary-crossing trickster Spirit 
who is at work;
we live in hope that it is
not simply a clamor 
of anxious human voices
but the sound of the strong 
driving wind of the Spirit 
that we hear;
we live in hope that, 
when all is said and done,
we will be able to see
different spiritual gifts but the same Spirit,
different forms of service but the same Lord,
different workings but the same God
who works them all.

On this feast of Pentecost
let us pray that that trickiest Person
of the most Holy Trinity
would shine within our hearts,
breaking down the boundaries between us,
making us into the one body of Christ,
enlivened by the Spirit.
And may God, who is merciful,
have mercy on us all.