22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Jeremiah 20:7-9; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16:21-27

As our nation’s two major political parties
wrap up their nominating conventions
the word of God this week remind us
that the call of Jesus to be his follower
is something far more radical and far-reaching
than the values enshrined in American politics,
and offers us a way of living together
beyond the endless and increasingly rancorous squabbles
that mark our public discourse.

St. Paul goes right to the heart of the matter:
“Do not conform yourselves to this age
but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”
When Paul speaks here of “this age,”
he is not thinking simply
of his own first-century Roman culture.
Rather, he is thinking of the entire sweep
of human history lived in its fallen state.
He is thinking not just of his place and time
but of every place and time
in which human beings
seek worldly goods and glory
rather than “what is the will of God,
what is good and pleasing and perfect.”

St Thomas Aquinas, commenting on Paul’s statement,
notes, “the present age is a kind of measure
of those things that slip away in time” (Comm. Rom. n. 965).
To be conformed to the present age
is not simply to follow current fads and fashions
but to love too much
the fragmentary and temporary
goods of this life,
to be so enraptured by the glittering image
of power or wealth or control
that we fail to love
what is good, pleasing, and perfect,
that we miss the moment
of Christ’s invitation to be his follower.
And when, as it always does,
fortune’s wheel turns
and our power and wealth and control
turn to dust in our hands
and ashes in our mouths,
we find ourselves equally bereft
of those eternal goods,
those things that do not slip away in time.
“What profit would there be
for one to gain the whole world
and forfeit his life?”

This is not to say
that the politics of this present age do not matter.
For example, many sincerely believe
that one or the other presidential candidate
is clearly the superior choice as leader for this country.
Many sincerely believe
that one or the other party’s policy positions
clearly reflect the superior choice
for the future of America.
And people should undoubtedly vote
according to their sincere beliefs.
But let me say, in complete frankness,
that neither political party embodies fully
the vision of the good life for human beings
as understood by the Catholic tradition.
The vision of human flourishing
that has for centuries animated
saints and scholars,
prophets and Popes,
is simply not reflected
in the pre-packaged political platforms
that we are asked to affirm.
Whether it is a question of holding human life sacred
from conception to natural death,
or of the immorality of employing the death penalty
in modern societies,
of protecting the earth, our common home,
or of protecting the rights of religious conscience,
of making space for certain traditional values,
or of making space for the migrant and refugee,
it seems there ought to be something
that Catholics should find troubling
in all of the political packages presently on offer.

But the problem is not simply the failure
of our two major political parties
to cohere with the Catholic vision of human flourishing.
The problem ultimately is something deeper.
The problem is that politics,
rather than being a means
of negotiating our way through this present age,
seems to have become for many
the sole source of ultimate meaning.
Research indicates that while Americans
have become more willing to marry
someone of a different religion
they have become significantly less willing
to marry someone of a different political party.
To me this suggests that politics
has become for many what religion once was:
a bottom-line value that shapes our lives
in the most fundamental way.
The question is,
can our contemporary politics,
which is based upon winners and losers,
my side against your side,
us versus them,
bear that sort of weight?
Or, under the pressure of that weight,
does it inevitably turn into something quite ugly?

I was speaking the other day with a friend,
with whom I have some political differences,
and she said to me that what bothered her most
on the current political scene
is the amount of hatred.
One might respond, of course,
that heated emotions are normal
because the stakes in politics are high,
and policies and priorities
have a real impact in people’s lives.
And this is true.
But for a Christian,
those stakes are not ultimate.
As important as politics is,
if it engenders hatred in us
then we must ask ourselves,
what has gone wrong?
If we cannot see that those who support
a candidate we find reprehensible
are also people
who love their spouses and children,
who are capable of kindness,
and who are, like us, seeking some sense
of meaning and peace in their lives,
then we must ask ourselves
what has gone wrong?
If we cannot find a way to pray
for our political enemies,
then we must ask ourselves
what has gone wrong?
What profit would there be
for one to win an election
and forfeit the life of one’s soul?

Confronted with his own political enemies—
the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes—
Jesus chooses the path of cross and resurrection,
And he calls us to take up the cross and follow him,
and in doing so he points us to a different path:
the path, not of hatred and rancor,
but of non-conformity to this age,
the path of transformation
by the renewal of our minds,
the path of mercy and love.
In this season of political conflict
let us pray that God would open to us
the path that Jesus calls us to walk,
and may God have mercy on us all.

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 56:1, 6-7; Romans 11:13-15, 29-32; Matthew 15:21-28

She called out to him from afar,
using a term that was alien to her
but seemed to mean a lot to the Jews:
“Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David!
My daughter is tormented by a demon.”
He ignored her;
nevertheless, she persisted.
He made clear that the salvation he brought
was not for her kind, but only for the Jews;
nevertheless, she persisted.
He compared her to a dog,
begging for food that was not hers;
nevertheless, she persisted.
She persisted because persistence
was the only tool she had,
the only weapon in her arsenal.
A Canaanite and a woman,
she was doubly disadvantaged,
by her race and by her sex,
in approaching a Jewish holy man
to beg a cure for her daughter.
She had no leverage,
no angle to work,
just sheer stubborn persistence,
and a capacity to absorb pain and insult,
and a deep, deep love for her child,
who was suffering so much.
And, seeing her persistence, Jesus said,
“O woman, great is your faith!
Let it be done for you as you wish.”

The unnamed Canaanite woman
joins the ranks of persistent women
who stories are told in the Gospels:
the woman with the hemorrhage
who, after years of medical abuse,
pressed through the crowd
to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment;
the sinful woman who,
despite shame and rebuke from bystanders,
bathed the feet of Jesus with her tears
until she heard the words,
“Your sins are forgiven”;
the widow in Jesus’ parable
who, through resolute nagging,
won justice from an unjust judge;
perhaps above all, Mary of Nazareth,
who persisted in faith:
from a most unexpected pregnancy,
through the suffering of her son’s cross,
to the joy of the resurrection.
Of course, in the Gospels and throughout scripture,
it is not only women who are persistent—
certainly a prophet like Jeremiah is a model of tenacity—
but in the ancient world in which Jesus lived
the near complete powerlessness of most women
made persistence a particularly important
skill for them to have,
a capacity to carry on
in the face of rejection and setback.

But the kind of persistence shown by the Canaanite woman,
shown by the woman with the hemorrhage
and the sinful woman at Jesus’ feet,
shown by the nagging widow and Mary at the cross—
such persistence is something that all Christians need to have.
For the road to God’s kingdom is long and difficult;
and if we are to follow the way of Jesus,
we cannot walk it
burdened by the baggage of worldly power
that might win for us quick and painless solutions.
God plays a long game,
and we must too,
for our goal is nothing less
than God’s reign of love,
which calls for us to live lives
of persistent faithfulness.

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.,
in a sermon entitled “Loving Your Enemies,”
spoke of how, in struggling against racial segregation,
it was important not to relinquish what he called
“our privilege and our obligation to love.”
He continued, “While abhorring segregation,
we shall love the segregationist.
This is the only way to create the beloved community.”
This sort of love calls for persistence.
Addressing his segregationist opponents,
he said, “Throw us in jail,
and we shall still love you….
But be ye assured
that we will wear you down
by our capacity to suffer.
One day we shall win freedom,
but not only for ourselves.
We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience
that we shall win you in the process,
and our victory will be a double victory.”
To defeat your enemies, not by destroying them,
but by making them your friends
is a long, slow process of persistence—
a struggle to act out of love
and not out of hatred.
For us too, these are days that call us to persistence.
From the ongoing struggle for racial justice,
to advocating for the sanctity of human life
from conception to natural death,
to building a community that welcomes the stranger
and cares for its weakest members,
to enduring the trials of a global pandemic,
our times confront us with challenges
that cannot be remedied by hatred and violence,
though many are tempted by such remedies.
We Christians have a lesson
to teach the world about persistence.
We should be the ones who can show the world
that persistence is more than simply
white knuckling it through a crisis.
We should be the ones who can show the world
that persistence is the fruit of the Holy Spirit,
something brought about in us
by the grace of a loving God.
We should be the ones who can show the world
the beauty of persistence that springs,
not from confidence in our own power,
but from our confidence is the power of God.

Remember the Canaanite woman:
confronted with seeming rejection by Jesus,
she did not grow angry or lash out,
but resolutely acted out of love for her daughter
and her faith that Jesus could heal her.
In commending her faith,
Jesus commends her persistence
and calls us to emulate her.
So in facing the many challenges
that beset us in these days
let us act with persistent, grace-filled love,
let us walk with Christ
the long, hard road to the Kingdom,
trusting that God will bring to completion
the good work that he has begun in us.
And may God have mercy on us all.

19th Week in Ordinary Time II -- Friday (Maximillian Kolbe)

Readings: Ezekiel 16:59-63; Matthew 19:3-12

In Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons,
which tells the story of St. Thomas More,
the character More, facing execution at the hands of the king,

says to his daughter,
“When a man takes an oath, Meg,
he is holding his own self in his own hands.

Like water.
And, if he opens his fingers then—
he needn’t hope to find himself again.”
Promise-making and promise-keeping
are one of the chief ways
in which we give shape to our lives—

just as our hands give shape to water—

in which we form an identity,
in which we become the self who we are.

For Christians,
the self that is formed by promise-keeping
is a self that bears witness to the promise-keeping God.
In the prophet Ezekiel, God says that he will remain true
to his sinful and wayward people Israel:
“I will re-establish my covenant with you,
that you may know that I am the LORD.”
God does not take the Israelites’ disobedience
as an excuse to go back on his promise,
to break his covenant with them;
God remains resolutely, fiercely true to his word,
and calls his people to be faithful in turn.
This is who God is: the God of steadfast love.
And this is who we are to be:
a people of steadfast love,
a promise-keeping people.

This is why Jesus is so stringent in his expectations
for the permanence of marriage.
This is not simply a bit of marital morality.
This is something that should speak to all of us,
married or not.
This is about the power of God’s grace;
the power we sense when we realize
that the hands in which we hold ourselves
enclosed like water
are themselves enclosed
in the steadfast, loving hands of God.
This is about letting God’s grace work in us
so that in keeping our vows in good times and in bad
our lives give witness
to the God of fiercely steadfast love.

Today we celebrate the feast of Maximillian Kolbe,
the Polish Franciscan priest who died
in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
After a prisoner escaped,
the commander of the camp
sentenced ten men to die by starvation
to deter future escape attempts.
Kolbe volunteered to take the place of one of the ten
whom he knew had a wife and child.
Having promised himself
in baptism and religious consecration
to be a follower of Jesus,
to walk with Christ
the path of cross and resurrection,
Kolbe stood at that moment
holding himself in his own hands like water.
And he chose, by God’s grace,
to be a person of fiercely steadfast love.
This is who we, by God’s grace, can be as well.
Let us ask today for the prayers
of Saints Thomas More and Maximillian Kolbe
that we too might be true to our vows
so that God might make us
witnesses in the world to the love of God.

18th Week in Ordinary Time II -- Friday

Readings: Nahum 2:1-3, 3:1-3, 6-7; Matthew 16:24-28

Today’s Gospel reading pretty much sums up

what it means to be a Christian:

“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,

but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

This is a mystery and a paradox:

that we lose everything by trying to hold on to it

and we gain everything by letting it go,

if we surrender everything for the sake of Jesus.

It also presents us with two paths:

the path of holding on

and the path of letting go.

 

If we follow the path of holding on,

we discover that there can be no end to our grasping

and our efforts to retain control of what we see as ours

end in desperation and destruction.

We can see this in our first reading,

which tells of the fate of Israel’s foe,

the city of Nineveh,

which sought through warfare

to secure its wealth and power

and dominate its neighbors.

But the conqueror is eventually conquered,

and in our first reading

the prophet Nahum offers us

vivid and horrifying images of ancient warfare:

the sound of approaching chariots,

the sun glinting off of swords and spears,

piles of dead bodies.

It is a terrifying scene,

but presented as just recompense

for Nineveh's warlike ways:

in seeking to save their lives,

they lost them.

If we turn ourselves into little Ninevehs—

if we become people who seek

to secure our lives by control and domination—

we too will lose all,

we too will find our lives ruined

by the very power we sought to wield.

 

But Jesus says that there is another path to follow,

another way to live:

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,

take up his cross, and follow me.”

Jesus’s call to his followers to take up their cross

is a call to live our lives

with open hands and open hearts,

to surrender ourselves to his way.

This is crucial for us as we seek

to find our way through these difficult times

of pandemic, civil unrest, and political division:

we might be tempted by the path of grasping

as we seek to gain some sense of control over our lives;

we might be tempted by the path of anger and blame

directed toward those who seem to threaten our security;

we might be tempted to abandon the path of Jesus—

the path of love and gentleness,

the path of mercy and forgiveness—

as unrealistic or impractical.

But our faith tells us that

in the great paradox that is the Christian way,

in the great mystery that is the path of cross and resurrection,

it is by surrendering to God’s love that we are saved;

it is by turning ourselves over in faith to the path of Jesus

that we truly find ourselves in him,

beloved children of God sharing in life eternal.

What does it profit us to gain the whole world

if we cannot find ourselves in Christ?