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.

Vigil of Pentecost

Readings: Genesis 11:1-9; Exodus 19:3-8a, 16-20b; Ezekiel 37:1-14; Joel 3:1-5; Romans 8:22-27; John 7:37-39

VIDEO

Collapsed towers and confused tongues;
fire and thunder and trembling mountains;
the sun turned to darkness,
and the moon to blood;
a valley filled with rattling bones 
reassembling themselves
into spiritless bodies;
all creation groaning in labor pains 
even until now.
Welcome to the feast of Pentecost.

The ancient Vigil of Pentecost
offers us what appears to be 
catastrophic image 
after catastrophic image
as it prepares us 
for the descent of the Spirit.
It might feel more like 
a dystopian disaster movie
than the arrival of the Paraclete.
It might feel more 
like catastrophe than comfort.

This word “catastrophe,” 
which we associate with 
the sudden arrival of bad fortune,
comes from Greek
and means literally an overturning.
It is a catastrophe when peoples’ lives 
are turned upside down
by wars or natural disasters,
by serious illness or personal tragedy,
by fickle fortune
or deliberate deception.

But the greatest of all catastrophes is sin,
which overturns the order 
of our very existence,
as we try to place ourselves above God,
above the one who is 
the source of our existence.
The 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich
wrote, “Adam’s sin was the greatest harm 
ever done or ever to be done 
until the end of the world.”
In rejecting the true source of life,
we overturn the order of creation,
so that what we call life is nothing but 
one long catastrophic decline into death.

The arrival of sin in the world 
is a catastrophe, an overturning.
The arrival of the Spirit is likewise 
a catastrophe, an overturning,
but of a radically different sort.
It is the comforting catastrophe,
because the Spirit takes the world
that we have turned upside down
and turns it over once again;
the Spirit comes
to overturn our overturning,
to blow into our lives like a whirlwind
that dispels our disobedience,
and sounds like thunder and rattling bones,
breathing itself into the living death
that we call life.
The Spirit arrives 
with catastrophic comfort
that can seem to us quite uncomfortable
because what we take to be 
the proper order and peace of the world
is actually the disorder and strife of sin.
We think it is only right
that the strong should oppress the weak.
We think it is only right 
that we should amass all the wealth we can.
We think it is only right
that we should live for ourselves first,
and judge others on the basis
of how useful they are 
to our life projects.
We grow comfortable with the world’s fallenness;
we make our peace with sin and call it order.
And when the Spirit blows into this fallenness
and blows apart this illusion of order,
it seems to us to be chaos and peril.

But the fire and the thunder 
and the trembling of the mountain
are but the echo
of God’s call to his chosen people:
“if you hearken to my voice…
you shall be my special possession…. 
You shall be to me 
a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”
The sun turned to darkness,
and the moon to blood
are but signs of the day on which
the Spirit shall be poured out on all flesh,
so that everyone who calls 
on the name of the Lord
will be saved.
The valley of rattling bones
is but the prelude to impending resurrection,
when the Spirit will come from the four winds
to breathe new life into our bodies.
The groaning of all creation
is but the sound of the Spirit
who prays within us 
with sighs too deep for words
as we await the redemption of our bodies.
The catastrophic comfort of the Spirit 
shakes apart the world of sin
and wakes us from the slumber 
of its false promises of peace.

And once we are awakened by the Spirit
we can hear the voice of Christ:
“Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink.”
Come to me and drink of my grace.
Come to me and receive the Spirit
of wisdom and understanding,  
of right judgment and courage, 
of knowledge and reverence,
of wonder and awe.
True life is found not in dreams
of power and wealth and self-seeking,
but in a gift freely given.
The Spirit awakens us 
to hear the voice of Christ 
calling us into his body,
so that the deep thirst of our souls 
might be quenched,
and his love in us 
might be kindled, 
and our weary hearts 
might know true peace—
his peace, 
which surpasses all understanding.
May God, who is merciful,
have mercy on us all 
and grant us peace.

 

Loyola University Baccalaureate Mass

Readings: Jeremiah 29:11-14; Philippians 1:3-6, 8-11; John 15:9-17 

VIDEO

We began in boxes.
We didn’t think we would,
but then on August 6, 2020
we got the word: 
classes for the Fall semester—
for most of you, your first semester—
would all be online.
So there we sat on Zoom,
staring at each other in our little boxes,
swallowing our disappointment 
and wondering if we 
would ever get out of them.
And we did get out of them,
slowly at first:
during the Spring semester
in our boxes only half the time,
meeting every other class in person
in spaces too large for real connection
and with masks hiding our faces.

But eventually 
we left our boxes behind
and we got into regular classrooms
and around seminar tables,
and the masks came off
and friendships formed,
and we began to learn together.

This is the story of the Class of 2024,
but in some ways, it is the story 
of every undergraduate class
that I have ever taught 
in my thirty years at Loyola.
They have all begun enclosed in boxes:
boxes of their limited experiences
and certain ideas they have 
about themselves and their world,
boxes that may seem 
comfortable or comforting
but are also constraining and isolating.
And what we who work at a university 
try to do over the course of four years
is get our students out of those boxes.

This is, I think, true of every university,
but it is true in a particular way
at a liberal arts university like Loyola.
You arrive in the box of thinking 
“I’m not a STEM person”
and we will make you take math.
You arrive in the box of thinking 
“I’m really focused on becoming an accountant”
and we will make you take philosophy.
You arrive in the box of thinking
that you know something
and, well, we won’t tell you that you know nothing,
but we will show you that what you know
is but a tiny speck compared to what you could know.

We call them “the liberal arts”
because they involve cultivating the skills 
necessary to live as a free person, 
which includes the skill 
of overcoming our isolation
by becoming curious about human experience 
in all its variety.
The ancient Roman writer Terrence,
who began life as a slave from northern Africa
and ended it as a celebrated playwright,
famously said, Homo sum, 
humani nihil a me alienum puto. 
For those whose Latin is a little rusty,
this means, “I am a human being, 
I consider nothing that is human alien to me.”
We want you to be free,
and so we have pressed you to get out of your box
and live your life against a broader horizon,
the horizon of all of human thought and experience.

But Loyola is not just a liberal arts university;
we are a Catholic and Jesuit liberal arts university,
which means that the education we offer
is set against a horizon far vaster 
than even the totality 
of human thought and experience.
Your education has been set against
the horizon of the infinite love that lies
at the very heart of existence, 
the love that, as Thomas Aquinas would put it,
people call God.
When St. Paul writes 
to the Christians at Philippi
that his prayer for them is
“that your love may increase ever more and more 
in knowledge and every kind of perception, 
to discern what is of value,”
he is not praying that they will study math,
as good as that is,
or that they will read philosophy,
as good as that is,
or that they will come to appreciate
the vastness of the world of human experience,
as good as that is.
He is praying that the love that is God
would come to possess them,
so that their lives might expand
beyond the limits of the human
into the divine.
He is calling them out of the box
of the humanly possible
to live in the dizzying freedom 
of the children of God.

This is the most important thing
that Loyola had to teach you.
This is the magis, the “more,” 
of which St. Ignatius spoke—
not simply the endless striving 
for human achievement,
but the ever-greater glory of God.
The great Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner
said that the Christian is one before whom 
the abyss of existence opens up,
one who knows that he or she
“has not thought enough, 
has not loved enough, 
has not suffered enough.”
The magis at Loyola 
is not about a smooth path 
of continuous quality improvement,
or rising U.S. News rankings,
or the implementation of strategic plans;
and for our graduates 
it is not about higher salaries,
or bigger houses,
or more fame and recognition.
The magis means 
thinking and loving and suffering
until we find ourselves 
lost in the wilderness of God,
out of all the boxes in which 
we have packaged ourselves,
confronted by Jesus, 
the one who in living and dying
shows us that being possessed
by the love that is God
asks from us 
nothing less than everything:
“No one has greater love than this, 
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
If we have not taught you this
then we have taught you nothing,
and you are still in the box you arrived in.

This might sound kind of harsh, 
and pretty terrifying,
as if all we have prepared you for
is a life of hardship and sacrifice,
which is what most people 
go to college to avoid.
But here is the mystery,
the mystery revealed 
in Jesus’s cross and resurrection: 
it is precisely in laying down your life
that you can take it up again in freedom.
The ultimate box in which we encase ourselves
is the illusion that freedom means 
being in charge of our own lives,
rather than giving those lives away
in love of God and neighbor.
And to emerge from that box
is finally to find a life worth living:
not a life of higher salaries
or bigger houses,
of more fame and recognition,
but a life that brushes up against
eternal love.

God says through the prophet Jeremiah,
“I know well the plans I have in mind for you…
plans for your welfare and not for woe, 
so as to give you a future of hope.”
God’s deepest desire for all of you,
and most especially for our graduates,
is that you emerge from your box
to know that love for which
you will lay down your life,
so that you might truly have
a future of hope eternal.
I pray that God’s desire for you 
might be fulfilled, 
and that God, who is merciful,
might have mercy on us all.

Easter 5

Readings: Acts 8:26-40; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8

There is an ancient legend about St. John, 
evangelist and beloved disciple,
that is recounted by Thomas Aquinas 
at the end of his commentary on John’s Gospel.
John, who was the one apostle 
not to die a martyr’s death,
lived to a ripe old age.
When he was no longer able to walk,
he was carried to the church by the faithful
so he could teach them.
And he taught only one thing:
“Little children, love one another.”
Thomas Aquinas adds,
“This is the perfection 
of the Christian life” (§2653). 

The conclusion Thomas draws 
from this apocryphal story
rings true not only with the Gospel 
and the Letters of John,
but with Scripture as a whole.
We hear this morning from
the First Letter of John:
“If we love one another, God lives in us, 
and his love is perfected in us.”
As Aquinas uses the term, 
“perfection” is not 
some unobtainable ideal,
something true only of God;
it is in fact true of anything 
that fully realizes the kind of thing it is.
A knife is perfected by being sharp,
a racehorse is perfected by being fast,
food is perfected by being 
both tasty and nutritious.
For something to lack these perfections 
is to fall short of being 
the thing that it is meant to be.
And, seemingly, the life of a Christian
is perfected by loving others;
and not to love is, for us Christians, 
to fall short of being 
the thing we are meant to be.

Perhaps this leads us 
to breathe a sigh of relief.
Love? 
Who knew that perfection was so easy?
But of course, it’s not so easy.
And St. John, even if he did,
at the end of his life,
teach nothing except 
“little children, love one another,”
knew that love, as Christians understand it,
is something quite arduous and demanding.
It might seem quite easy to love God,
especially if the God we love 
is simply an abstract notion,
an omnibenevolent higher power
whom we encounter as a distant, hidden force.
But Christianity requires also love of neighbor,
the insistent close-at-hand human presence 
that demands of me 
some sort of concrete response.
 
Maybe this difficulty is why 
love is not simply suggested,
since suggestions are something
we feel free to ignore,
but commanded.
“The commandment we have from him is this: 
those who love God must love 
their brothers and sisters also.”
And the brothers and sisters 
whom we are called to love
might not seem to us very lovable.
They will probably seem weird 
or annoying or grubby 
or threatening or alien.
To love my neighbors 
in their insistent proximity 
will involve my heart traveling 
some distance from where it is
to where God wants it to be.

In our first reading,
the story of Philip baptizing 
the Ethiopian eunuch,
we get some sense of the distance 
the heart must travel
in order to reach the perfection 
of the Christian life.
Philip is a “Hellenist”—
that is, a Greek-speaking Jew
from the diaspora, outside Judea.
The Ethiopian is, well, an Ethiopian, 
which in the ancient world 
was a generic term
for anyone with black skin. 
Ethiopia, moreover, 
stood in the ancient imagination
as a place that was far distant 
and almost unimaginably exotic.
The Roman writer 
Pliny the Elder claimed 
that there were Ethiopians 
who were twelve feet tall,
and that they “never spit, 
do not suffer from 
headache or toothache 
or pain in the eyes, 
and very rarely have a pain 
in any other part of the body.”
They might as well be 
from another planet.
And in the Old Testament, 
when the writers want to speak 
of something as being at a great distance,
they say it is as far as Ethiopia,
in the same way we might refer 
to something being in Timbuktu
(which, in case you don’t know,
is an actual city in Mali).

But the Ethiopian’s distance from Philip
is not simply geographical or cultural.
For this Ethiopian is a eunuch,
and even though he is reading 
from Israel’s scriptures
his status as a eunuch would prevent him 
from joining in Israel’s worship,
for eunuchs were excluded from the Temple.
Philip’s heart must travel some distance
in order to be perfected by loving this Ethiopian,
in order to see him as a brother for whom Christ died
and welcome him into fellowship through baptism.
And so the story emphasizes 
at every moment
that it is the Spirit 
who is propelling Philip,
for only the Spirit can guide us 
across such distance.

Given events in the world today,
it is hard not to be struck by the fact
that the setting of this story
is the road that runs 
from Jerusalem to Gaza.
What better symbolizes for us
the seemingly impossible journey
that the heart must make
to the perfection of love
than traversing the road 
from Jerusalem to Gaza?
What better captures for us
the seemingly intractable complexity
of creating not simply a cessation of violence
(which would in itself be something)
but the creation of true shalom,
the true peace of God 
that is the fruit of love?
What situation better sums up
how cultural and religious difference
can erect barriers that block 
the path to love of one another?
 
The road from Jerusalem to Gaza
marks a journey whose distance is too great,
a journey that we cannot make on our own.
And while we see that unmade journey 
vividly displayed 
in the current conflict in the Middle East,
we also have roads from Jerusalem to Gaza
in our own nation,
in our own homes,
in our own hearts:
Intractable racial divisions,
long-festering family conflicts,
the gap between the good 
that I know I should do
that the evil that I actually do.
All of this and more
tells us that the love for one another
that is the perfection of the Christian life
often involves a journey 
too far for us to make.

But though we cannot ourselves
make that journey,
the Spirit can.
Though we cannot 
cross that distance,
the Spirit can.
For the Spirit,
who can traverse
even the infinite distance 
between God and us,
binds us to Jesus
and make us abide 
in his love for the Father
and the Father’s love for him,
so that the flow of love 
that is the life of God
begins to flow through us
and begins to flow from us
out across the distance 
that separates us from one another,
even the distance from Jerusalem to Gaza. 

Jesus tells us in the Gospel: 
“apart from me you can do nothing.”
But if we abide in him
through the Spirit…
well, who knows what is possible?
“Beloved, let us love one another.”
Let us love the weird, annoying, grubby, 
threatening, alien other,
“because love is from God; 
everyone who loves 
is born of God 
and knows God.”
And this is the perfection
of the Christian life.

 

Easter 4

Readings: Acts 4:8-12; 1 John 3:1-2; John 10:11-18

VIDEO

This has been a tough week 

for Catholics in Baltimore,
as the prospect begins to sink in 
that the Church in the city could go from 
sixty-one parishes 
to twenty-one.
It has been especially tough
for those parishes that, 
in the current Seek the City proposal,
are slated to be closed and merged
into other parishes.
But even in parishes that are likely 
to remain as worship sites
there is a pervasive sense 
of shock and grief and, yes, anger
at the idea of nearly two thirds 
of the parishes in the city closing.
Fallen human nature being what it is,
some may be gloating that their parish
has, as they see it, “survived” 
where others have not,
but that is generally not 
what I have heard from people.
The Catholic community in Baltimore 
is tightly knit:
we know each other’s parishes;
we have worshipped at them over the years
at Baptisms and Communions and Confirmations; 
we have admired the beauty
of their buildings and their people;
we are, as today’s Gospel puts it, 
one flock with one shepherd,
Jesus Christ himself, 
and so we bear each other’s sorrows
and share each other’s loss.

Many may feel that the Church
is abandoning the city,
like the bad shepherds of whom Jesus speaks: 
those who work merely for pay 
and have no concern for the sheep,
who see a wolf coming and run away,
leaving the sheep to be scattered.
Let me say that while this feeling
is understandable,
I don’t think that is what is going on.
Perhaps I have simply, as they say,
drunk the Koolaid,
but I do believe that, 
while I may agree or disagree 
with this or that 
specific recommendation,
the Seek the City process 
has been a good faith effort 
to address the needs of a shrinking flock
and laying the groundwork for the flock to grow.

But let’s not let the shepherds 
off the hook entirely.
I will not deny that we clergy
must bear our measure of blame
for the state of the Church in the city today,
and for people’s skepticism 
regarding anything we say about it.
Obviously, the abuse scandals 
have driven away members of the flock
and engendered cynicism 
among those who remain.
But also, and even more,
we clergy have all too often 
simply not risen to the task 
of forging new forms of ministry 
amid depopulation and disinvestment,
high crime rates and pervasive poverty;
we have ourselves succumbed 
to despair and inaction and cynicism
at the sight of emptying pews.
And, at the heart of it all,
we have sometimes 
simply not loved God enough
to lay down our lives for God’s flock.
And for all this I can do no more than, 
like Job, to repent in dust and ashes.

But while, as always, 
there is plenty of blame to go round,
and while we should be honest 
about our failures,
laying blame and wallowing in failure 
are not what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is about.
It is about the stone rejected by the builders
that becomes the cornerstone of a new Temple
in which we worship God in Spirit and in truth.
It is about the love of God bestowed on us
even while we lay dead in our sins,
making us God’s children.
It is about the assurance 
that we have a good shepherd
who will never abandon us to the wolves,
a shepherd who lays down his life for us,
a shepherd who takes up that life again
so that we can be taken up with him
into the glory of eternal light.

People need to be allowed to feel 
the darkness of this moment;
they need to be allowed to grieve
and even to feel anger.
But if we are to be Christians,
darkness, grief, and anger
cannot be the final word.
In the midst of darkness,
we cannot forget the promise of light,
the light that streams 
from the risen body of Christ.
St. John writes in our second reading,
“Beloved, we are God’s children now;
what we shall be has not yet been revealed.”
We can and should look at demographic trends
and population patterns in the city,
measure pew space and count numbers,
think through what is possible 
and what is plausible,
but the fact is that we don’t know
what God’s plans are 
for the Church in Baltimore:
what we shall be has not yet been revealed.
And it is hard to live without knowing.
But we do know we are God’s children now;
we know that we have a good shepherd;
we know that a stone rejected
has become the cornerstone;
we know that God brings life out of death
for we have met the risen one on the road
and felt our hearts—
weighed down with darkness, grief, and anger—
burn within us with the fire of his love.
We know that he is risen,
and we are risen with him,
and nothing can separate us from his love.
This is the faith that will carry us through
the difficult months ahead,
for this is the faith that will carry us
through death into eternal life.

Holy Thursday

Readings: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; 1 Corinthians11:23-26; John 13:1-15

Preached at Corpus Christi Church, Baltimore.

So here we are,
embarking on these three
most holy of days.
As disciples of Jesus Christ
we gather with him once again,
just as his first disciples did 
on the night before 
he was handed over
to suffering and to death.
We gather with him once again
in an anxious hour of uncertainty.
We gather with him once again
to eat a meal like those in flight
into an unknown future.
We gather with him once again
in a moment when memory 
reaches back into the past
to retrieve hope 
in God’s power to save.

But what if memory is not enough?
Our human memory 
is prone to fading and forgetting,
and to nostalgia and confabulation,
and even when we remember well
we can never remember well enough
to stop the flow of time,
to make our lives secure from the future 
that bears down upon us.
For those first disciples,
the memory of God’s salvation
of their ancestors
could not forestall what was to come,
could not forestall betrayal and denial
and scattering and cross and tomb.
Our memory is not enough.

But thanks be to God 
that tonight is not about our memory
but about God’s memory,
not about how we remember Jesus
but about how Jesus remembers us.
It is true that in our Eucharist 
we remember God’s saving work
and the night of Jesus’ handing over.
But more than that,
we ask God to remember us:
to remember the Church throughout the world,
to remember us who gather in this place,
to remember those who have died,
those who once gathered with us 
but who have now passed beyond our sight:
Sr. Marge, Frank Callahan, Larry and Mary Alma Lears, 
Vince Gomes, Tom Ward, John and Mary Jane O’Brien,
Henry Tom, Frank Hodges, Kathy Hoskins, 
Shirley Allen, Irene Van Sant and Jim Curran,
and so many more.
Tonight, as in every Eucharist, 
Christ re-member us,
makes us his members once again:
he gathers us from our scatteredness 
and knits us once more into his body—
Corpus Christi.

“He loved his own in the world.” 
Because Jesus remembers each one of us, 
he holds us together in his heart,
and in that heart we find a refuge
from an anxious, unknown future.
He treasures us in his heart,
which like our hearts suffers human pain
but which also burns with the love of God,
burns with the primal love 
that called the cosmos out of nothingness,
burns with the eternal love
that knows no shadow of change.
We are his most beloved possession
and he will not let us go.

“He loved his own in the world 
and he loved them to the end.”
Though in that anxious, uncertain hour
his disciples did not know what was coming,
they must have sensed that the end was near.
But this is the Good News
of these three days:
the end is not the end 
if he loves us.
And he does love us.
The whole meaning 
of these most holy of days
that we are celebrating
is that the end is not the end.
Beyond the tomb there lies
the risen glory of the lamb once slain,
a glory that we cannot imagine,
and in our moments of deepest distress
can scarcely believe.
But believe we do.
We believe that beyond the end
we will find the fire of that love, 
human and divine,
that burns without end
within the heart of Jesus.
We believe that beyond the end 
there lies new life,
a new life we live already 
through the sacramental signs
that Jesus gives to us this night.
We believe that beyond the end
there lies the day of the Lord,
the day of resurrection,
the day whose sun knows no setting.

Jesus loved them to the end
and Jesus loved them through the end.
Held within the heart of Jesus,
he carried them with him 
through the end that would seem 
to have shattered their communion 
with him and with each other
to call them once again
into the adventure of discipleship,
the adventure of life with him, 
of life in him and with each other.

St. John wrote, “Beloved, 
we are God’s children now; 
what we shall be 
has not yet been revealed.”
We cannot see beyond the end.
But though we cannot see we can still believe,
and we do believe that because he loves us—
to the end and through the end—
the end is not the end,
but simply one more step
in the adventure of life 
with God and with each other.
And so we pray,
all good thieves together,
“Jesus, remember us
when you come into your kingdom.”