Holy Family

Readings: 1 Samuel 1:20-22, 24-28; 1 John 3:1-2, 21-24; Luke 2:41-52

Video

We prayed in our opening prayer

for this feast of the Holy Family,

“that we may imitate them
in practicing the virtues of family life.”
The family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph 
are offered to us as an ideal 
that we are to strive to live up to
and a pattern for us to reproduce 
in our own families.

So, how are you doing?
How well do you think 
you measure up to this ideal?
If you don’t think you’re doing all that well,
it may be that we tend picture the Holy Family 
as toddler Jesus playing happily at the feet of Mary
with his cousin John the Baptist,
always generously sharing his toys;
or as teenage Jesus and Joseph 
working side-by-side in the carpenter’s shop,
Jesus always diligent
and Joseph quietly admiring Jesus’
preternatural skills with saw and lathe.
So when we look at our own toddler 
bopping her brother in the head with a Tonka truck
or get angry with our teenager 
when he seems so slow—not to mention sullen—
in finishing what really is a pretty simple task,
we may think that there is no way
that our own families will ever measure up 
to the shining ideal of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
 
As children we will never match 
Jesus’ amazing obedience and thoughtfulness;
as parents we will never have 
Mary and Joseph’s endless patience and wisdom.
We will never achieve the holiness
of the Holy Family.
But what if we have misunderstood 
what makes the Holy Family holy?
Part of the problem is that we confuse the ideal
that the Holy Family presents to us
with some nostalgic, and largely false, picture
of families from the past—
television images of children and parents 
happily gathered around the family dinner table,
saying please and thank you
and talking about the exploits 
and adventures of the day.
Or perhaps we think 
of the carefully curated pictures 
of familial joy and togetherness 
that people used to include 
in their Christmas cards
and now post year-round on social media.
Do we think of the holiness of the family
of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as something like that:
a holiness that knows no struggle,
knows no sorrow or pain,
no confusion or misunderstanding?
If that is our picture, 
then perhaps we need 
to look more closely at the Scriptures.
 
We need to see Mary, 
the frightened but faithful young girl,
quite unexpectedly pregnant,
who gives birth in a stable
and whose heart will be pierced
by the sword of sorrow.
We need to see Joseph,
the new father who struggles to provide
safety and stability for his family,
who must take them to a distant country
to avoid the threat of violence.
We need to see Jesus,
the baby born in a barn
who becomes the young man 
who senses a call from God 
that his parents struggle to grasp
and who follows a path
that frightens and worries them.

What makes the holy family holy?
It’s not their being some first-century version 
of the twentieth-century television family 
or the twenty-first-century Instagram family.
In our opening prayer, 
we prayed that we might imitate them
not only in the virtues of family life,
but in “the bonds of charity.”
What makes the holy family holy is their love:
the love that makes Mary say “yes” to God,
the love that makes Joseph care for a child not his own,
the love that makes the eternal Son of God 
empty himself and be born among us,
the love that makes him accept death,
even death on a cross,
the love that raises him from the grave.

This is the love that we hear behind Mary’s words:
“Son, why have you done this to us?
Your father and I have been looking for you 
with great anxiety.”
This is the love that is present in Jesus’ reply:
“Why were you looking for me?
Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
This is the love that is present even amid
confusion and misunderstanding,
fear and frustration.
This is the love that makes Jesus who he is.
For while Jesus is who he is from all eternity
because he is the Word 
who is born of the Father before all ages,
in a very real sense he also becomes who he is
by being born in time into a human family,
by advancing “in wisdom and age and favor
before God and man”
within the matrix of love
that is the holiness of the Holy Family.

But what of our families?
What of our families that struggle, not simply
to live up to a television or Instagram ideal,
but sometimes even to love at all?
What of our families, 
where love at times cannot make itself felt
or cannot forgive the harms 
that we have inflicted on one another?
Even then, we can look to the Holy Family.
The Holy family can teach us that love
is not the exclusive property 
of mythical perfect families.
 
The Holy Family can teach us 
that love can be present
even amid anxiety and confusion;
that we can keep loving people
even when we don’t understand them,
or can’t protect and provide for them 
in the way that we would wish.
But above all, 
the Holy Family can teach us
that there is a reservoir of love 
upon which we can draw
when human love runs dry,
a perfect divine love that can heal
the imperfections of our human love:
“See what love the Father has bestowed on us
that we may be called the children of God.
And so we are.”
This is the love that forgives love’s failures,
that sustains us when the harms we cause
obscure the love we feel.
This is the love that makes us by grace
what Christ is by nature,
children of God,
treasured by God from all eternity. 

May we know such love 
in these days of Christmas,
may we know it in our hearts,
in our families,
and in our world.
And may God have mercy on us all. 

Advent 4

Readings: Micah 5:1-4a; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-45

Video

Writing shortly before the time of Jesus 
the Roman poet Ovid said,
“Women’s words are as light 
as the doomed leaves whirling in autumn; 
easily swept by the wind, 
easily drowned by the wave” (The Loves bk II).
Alas, Ovid’s opinion of women’s words
was not unusual in the ancient world.
Women’s words were thought trivial, 
unserious and flighty,
unsuited to weighty matters.

But in a world that largely discounted 
the words of women 
as weightless and windswept, 
we hear in today’s Gospel reading 
words spoken between women 
on weighty matters—
the prophetic words of Elizabeth 
speaking of the divine Word
who waits in Mary’s womb:
“Blessed are you among women, 
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”
Her words are indeed windswept,
but it is the breath of the Spirit 
that sends them whirling.

Of course, the weight of Elizabeth’s words
count as nothing compared to Mary’s words
spoken earlier to the angel: “Be it done to me
according to your word.”
On these words hangs the hope of the world.
Perhaps no greater words have ever
been spoken by a human person,
for they are the doorway through which
God’s Word made flesh,
the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb, 
enters into our sorrowing, sin-sick world.
Truly blessed is she who believed.

We should not be surprised, however, 
that the Gospel would give 

such weight to women’s words.
After all, what do we celebrate at Christmas
if not God’s preference for those things
that the world counts as of little weight?
Think of the words of the prophet Micah,
which we have just heard:
“You, Bethlehem-Ephrathah
too small to be among the clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
one who is to be ruler in Israel.”
It’s just so typical of the God of Israel,
always preferring the underdog.
God chose David, 
the puniest among his brothers,
from the little town of Bethlehem
(which is simply a polite way 
of saying “nowheresville”),
to be Israel’s anointed ruler.
And now, the prophet Micah foretells,
God is going to do it again;
God will send a new anointed one,
and this ruler whose reign  
“shall reach to the ends of the earth”
is going to come from,
you guessed it,
the little town of Bethlehem,
“too small to be among the clans of Judah.”

What we will celebrate at Christmas 
is the great mystery of redemption:
the almighty Lord of the universe,
creator of all things visible and invisible,
chooses to be with us
not as a king,
not as a general,
not as a scholar
from whom we expect weighty words,
but as a speechless child from nowheresville,
as a wandering rabbi who followers
are a bunch of scruffy ignoramuses,
as a convicted blasphemer and revolutionary
tortured to death on a Roman cross.
If this is who God is,
if this is how the Word takes flesh 
and dwells among us,
then of course his arrival is announced
by those whose words were counted
as of little weight,
of course it is an insignificant old woman
through whom the Spirit speaks,
of course it is the word of one young girl
upon which our hopes hang.

And if this is who God is,
then who should we be?
If this is how the eternal Word is spoken,
then how should we listen?
Whose words do I think of
as words of little weight?
Who do I think could not possibly 
say something I needed to hear?
Someone of a different political party?
Someone of a different social class?
Someone of a different race?
Someone of a different religion?
How do we learn to listen
and weigh the words
of those we may have written off?

This fall the Church has embarked
on a worldwide synod, which will offer us, 
as Pope Francis said in his opening address,
“the opportunity to become a listening Church….
To listen to the Spirit in adoration and prayer….
To listen to our brothers and sisters speak 
of their hopes and of the crises of faith 
present in different parts of the world.”
Sometimes we might feel that in the Church
our voices have little weight
and our concerns go unheard;
the synod is an attempt to remedy that.
For our part, here at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen,
we will be holding listening sessions in late January
so that our parishioners can have an opportunity
to speak of their joys and hopes,
their sorrows and anxieties,
which will eventually be reported
to the bishops meeting in Rome.
But these sessions will be more 
than an opportunity to speak;
they will also be a chance to learn to listen,
to hear the diversity of voices 
that make up our community,
to hear what others love about our faith
and to hear what causes them pain.
You can sign up on our website,
but even if you don’t sign up
you can simply show up.

During this time of listening
we need the help of God’s Spirit
to open our ears to hear those 
whose words we may have thought weightless.
And so the Church encourages us
to pray the prayer that began
each session of the Second Vatican Council:

We stand before You, Holy Spirit, 
as we gather together in Your name. 
With You alone to guide us, 
make Yourself at home in our hearts; 
Teach us the way we must go 
and how we are to pursue it. 
We are weak and sinful; 
do not let us promote disorder. 
Do not let ignorance 
lead us down the wrong path 
nor partiality influence our actions. 
Let us find in You our unity 
so that we may journey together to eternal life 
and not stray from the way of truth 
and what is right. 
All this we ask of You, 
who are at work in every place and time, 
in the communion of the Father and the Son, 
forever and ever. Amen.

 

Anniversary of the Dedication of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen

Readings: 1 Kings 8:2-23, 27-30; Ephesians 2:19-22; John 2:13-22

Video

In his book Confessions, 
as a prelude to his account of his own conversion,
St. Augustine tells the story of Victorinus,
a prominent Roman philosopher of his day—
a pagan who, through reading the Scriptures 
and other Christian writings,
became convinced of the truth of Christianity.
When he said in private to a Christian friend,
“Did you know that I am already a Christian,”
this friend replied, “I shall not believe that
or count you among the Christians
unless I see you in the Church of Christ.”
To this Victorinus responded, jokingly,
“Then do walls make Christians?”
Augustine notes that, despite his joking tone, 
Victorinus’s question was motivated by fear 
that if he openly professed his faith
and stood publicly within the walls of the Church
he would be scorned by his pagan friends
who had hitherto held him in such esteem.

As time passed, however,
Victorinus felt a growing longing to be within the Church,
to abandon his pride and receive the sacraments,
which Augustine calls 
“the mysteries of the humility of your Word,”
signs of God coming to dwell with us.
The priests offered to let him be baptized privately,
to preserve his dignity and reputation,
but Victorinus said “no,”
that he wanted to be baptized 
with all the rest at the Easter Vigil.
When the day came, 
and Victorinus stood up within the walls of the cathedral
and the assembled congregation saw this famous philosopher
publicly proclaiming his Christian faith,
a murmur of excited whispers 
went through the crowd: “Victorinus! Victorinus!”
Augustine writes, “all of them wanted
to clasp him to their hearts,
and the hands with which they embraced him
were their love and their joy” (Conf. 8.2.4-5).

Do walls make Christians?
Victorinus’s question remains a question worth asking 
as we celebrate the anniversary of 
the dedication of this cathedral in 1959.
And the answer is…well…yes and no.

No, walls do not make Christians
because the God whom Christians worship 
cannot be contained within walls of stone.
King Solomon, 
who built the first Temple in Jerusalem,
says in our first reading that the God of Israel 
is unlike other gods
because neither the earth 
nor the heavens that he created 
can contain him,
much less a temple built by a human being.
Jesus makes an even more startling claim:
the true Temple, the true dwelling place of God on earth,
is not a building, but a person: Jesus himself.
God is to be found in him,
not within the walls of any building.
And Paul, writing to the Ephesians, tells us
it is the Christian community,
Christ’s body joined to its head,
that is a temple sacred to the Lord,
a temple built of living stones
in which God’s Spirit dwells,
a holy place constructed from holy lives.

So, no, walls do not make Christians;
Christians can worship God in spirit and in truth
without the benefit of walls,
much less stained glass and stone carvings,
marble altars and votive lights.
Christians can worship God wherever Christ is,
and Christ is wherever his body the Church 
gathers in communion with him, its risen head.

But also, yes, walls do make Christians.
Or at least, a Christian who seeks to be 
a living stone in the temple of Christ’s body
must be a part of an actual community 
that gathers at a particular time and in a particular place.
Walls, strictly speaking, are optional.
But what Victorinus discovered is that
what is not optional is gathering together to listen to God’s word
and to celebrate the sacramental mysteries of God’s humility
in coming to dwell among us in Jesus crucified and risen.
What is not optional is being part of a community of worship,
a community that can both challenge and embrace us
as the Christians of Rome embraced Victorinus,
clasping him to their hearts with hands of joy and love,
no longer a stranger and sojourner,
but a fellow member of the household of God.
What is not optional is letting the stories of our lives,
as diverse and varied as they are,
be fitted together into a dwelling place for the Spirit
with Christ as our head and cornerstone.

And experience tells us that the physical spaces
in which the living temple of Christ’s body gathers
do take on a kind of reflected holiness.
Walls may not make Christians,
but the walls within which Christians worship
serve as an outward and visible sign 
of the presence of the Church
and therefore of the presence of the Spirit 
who dwells within God’s holy people.
This is why we try to make out church buildings beautiful,
to point to the deep mystery of God’s presence
that is enacted within them in word and sacrament.
This is why we seek to make them oases of calm and beauty
in a world that can at times get very noisy and ugly.
This is why we fill them with images 
of the living stones of the past,
the saints who now worship God eternally in heaven.

But the real beauty of our churches comes
from the thousand of prayers 
that have been prayed in them:
the cries and pleas for divine mercy 
that have be uttered,
the words of praise and adoration
that have been offered,
the sacramental mysteries of our salvation 
that have been celebrated.
These prayers have saturated these walls for decades
and made them holy.

Do walls make Christians?
No, God’s Spirit makes Christians.
But those Christians make places in which to gather
and the Spirit who prays within them 
hallows those places
and makes them a home 
in which God’s household can dwell.
So it is right and just that we 
should celebrate today 
this house of prayer that is our home,
and call to mind all those faithful people,
past and still to come,
who have found in it
a place of prayer and adoration,
a place where God’s grace 
has been given and received,
a place of living stones 
where God’s holy people can be found.
May God have mercy on us all.

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Kings 17:10-16; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44

In today’s Gospel Jesus says 
to beware of religious leaders 
who go around in long robes
and recite long prayers
and sit in places of honor
in houses of worship.

I hope you will listen to me anyway.

The contrast Jesus draws between the poor widow,
who gives everything she has, little as it is, 
and those rich people who give much more
but still remain wealthy,
is a familiar one.
But sometimes we miss the fact that this story
is something of a two-edged sword.

On the one hand, 
Christians have traditionally heard in Jesus’ words
implicit praise for the widow’s sacrifice,
which in its unrestricted generosity
mirrors Jesus’ own gift of himself 
for the life of the world:
what counts is not how much you give
but the fact that you give your all.
And this is certainly true:
Christ calls his followers to give their all
for the sake of his kingdom,
to follow him on the way of the cross.

On the other hand,
we might notice that Jesus 
does not draw the widow to our attention
to praise her generosity 
but to drive home his denunciation 
of the Temple scribes who,
as he puts it, “devour the houses of widows.”
In giving all she has in paying the Temple tax,
the widow’s life and livelihood are 
consumed by the Temple leaders.
Jesus seems to be pointing her out as an example
of how the greedy scribes use religious duty
as a pretext to take from the poor
everything that they possess
in order to enrich themselves
and enhance their status.
This incident is therefore at least as much 
a denunciation of religious corruption
as it is a call to imitate the widow’s generosity.

I don’t think we have to choose 
between these options.
We can both praise the widow 
and denounce the scribes;
we can both value someone’s religious devotion
while criticizing their corrupt religious leaders.

This is important because our world is, alas,
not all that different from Jesus’ world.
In our own day, corruption often lurks 
within our religious institutions 
and evil hides behind the mask 
of piety and clerical privilege:
the long robes and long prayers
and the seats of honor in holy places.
We see it in our own house,
in the sexual abuse catastrophe
that over the past twenty years has laid bare
the ways in which some of our religious leaders
have committed heinous acts
behind the façade of holiness
or have hidden and enabled such act
in the name of protecting 
the Church’s reputation.
The corruption Jesus denounces,
which consumes the lives 
of the weak and defenseless,
is something that is all too with us.

What comfort can the Gospel offer
in the face of such a realities?
There are at least two things 
that we should keep in mind.

First, Jesus is on the side 
of people like the widow—
the poor and defenseless
who are constantly at risk 
of abuse and exploitation—
and not on the side of guys like me
with our long robes and long prayers
and our seats of honor in holy places.
Or, rather, he is only on the side 
of guys like me
to the extent that I am on the side 
of people like the widow.
When the final day of judgment comes
I will not be asked 
“did you defend the reputation of the Church?”
but “did you comfort the afflicted?”
“did you speak up for the voiceless?”
“did you bear witness to my healing love?”
It is true that the Church has taken significant steps
to correct past evils and avoid future ones,
and we should not be afraid to point this out.
But we should not let our desire to tell this truth
ever obscure the deeper truth
that Jesus is on the side of the victims
and of those who stand with them;
that they matter to him far more
than the reputation of the Church.

Second, because Jesus is on the side of victims
he will not allow the corruption
of religious leaders and institutions
to deprive the people of God of his grace.
It is long-standing Catholic teaching,
stretching back at least to St. Augustine,
that the sins of the Church’s ministers
cannot keep God from working 
through the Church and her sacraments.
As Augustine puts it: 
“The spiritual power of the sacrament 
is indeed comparable to light:  
those to be enlightened receive it in its purity, 
and if it should pass through defiled beings, 
it is not itself defiled” (In Joannis 5.15).
The Temple remained God’s house
despite the defiling corruption of its scribes,
and the generosity of the widow
remained worthy of reward
even if it was exploited.
So too for us the grace of the sacraments 
retains its purity and remains effective 
even if it is a sinner who administers them,
provided it falls on good ground in our hearts.
In the mystery of God’s mercy
Christ our great high priest makes use 

of fallible, frail, and even wicked ministers
as instruments of salvation
whose flaws cannot finally thwart God’s power.

God has willed that on the last day
the Church will be his spotless bride:
a Church whose leaders are humble
and do not exploit the weak and defenseless,
a Church whose ministers’ lives reflect the purity
of the sacraments they administer.
But it should be clear to anyone 
with eyes to see and ears to hear
that we are not there yet.
But it is our faith that,
as we journey toward God’s kingdom,
Christ journeys with us still,
present in his word and sacraments,
humbling the proud,
consoling the sorrowful,
healing the wounded,
ever-faithful even when we are faithless.
This should make us hopeful
even as it makes us humble,
and it should inspire us to pray more fervently
that God would have mercy on us all.

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Jeremiah 31:7-9; Hebrews 5:1-6; Mark 10:46-52

VIDEO

“Master, I want to see.”

The beggar Bartimaeus wants so badly to see
that even when people are shushing him
he continues to cry out:
“Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.”
He wants so badly to see
that the minute he hears 
that Jesus is calling him 
he leaps up and, 
leaving behind the cloak 
that is likely his only possession,
he runs, heedless 
of the unseen obstacles in his way.
Bartimaeus wants so badly 
to be cured of his blindness,
which has consigned him to a life of poverty,
begging by the roadside,
that when Jesus asks him,
“What do you want me to do for you?”
he does not hesitate: “Master, I want to see.”

He asks for physical healing,
but his words speak of even deeper desires.
I want to see not simply the world as it is,
but the world as it could be.
I want to see the salvation 
of which the prophet Jeremiah spoke:
the great throng returning 
to the land of promise—
the blind and the lame,
the mother and the child,
those who left weeping
but now return consoled.
I want to see 
all that is scattered made one,
all that is broken made whole,
all that is sorrowing made joyful.
I want to see hatred vanquished,
selfishness shamed,
fear put to flight.

Bartimaeus longs to see fulfilled
the promises of God to his people Israel.
But most of all, he wants to see Jesus,
for he already senses
that Jesus is “the Son of David,”
God’s anointed savior,
in whom the hopes of humanity 
have taken concrete form,
the one who comes to heal 
the ancient curse of sin and death.
He feels this in his bones,
but he wants to see it with his eyes—
not just with his physical eyes,
but with the eyes of faith,
the faith heals both body and soul.

Master, I want to see you,
for you are the light 
that lights up the world
and keeps the dark at bay.
I want to see you,
for you are my true homeland,
you are the eternity for which 
my time-weary soul is thirsting.

I want to see you,
but I am a blind beggar,
sitting alone beside the way 
on which you pass.
I cry out again and again,
“Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.”
Have pity, for my sins 
have dimmed the light of my eyes
and darkness is all around me.
Have pity, for the dark terrifies me.
Master, give me the light of your glory
in which I might see you.
Give me the gift of your Holy Spirit,
who promises wisdom and understanding, 
counsel and fortitude, 
knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.
Let your Spirit’s light guide me
so that I may no longer 
stumble unseeing through life.
Let the Spirit’s fire dazzle my eyes
and make my heart pure so I may see you.

His eyes healed and his soul given light,
Bartimaeus now follows Jesus on the way.
He joins Jesus on the journey to Jerusalem,
the city whose name in Hebrew 
means “vision of peace.”
He joins Jesus on the way that leads 
through suffering and death to resurrection,
to that heavenly city whose light is the Lamb,
where God “will wipe every tear from their eyes, 
and there shall be no more 
death or mourning, 
wailing or pain.”

In our Catholic tradition we speak of
the ultimate fulfillment promised us by God
as the visio beatifica—
the “beatific vision”—
which we might also translate as
“the seeing that makes us blessed”
or “the beholding that itself is bliss.”
Saint Paul writes to the Corinthians,
“At present we see indistinctly, 
as in a mirror, 
but then face to face.
At present I know partially; 
then I shall know fully, 
as I am fully known.”
The fulfillment for which we long
is to know the depths of God,
to know the divine dance of love
that is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
and in knowing the depths of God
to truly know ourselves for the first time
by seeing ourselves as God sees us,
artifacts of eternal love.

Master, I want to see.
I want to see with the eyes of faith,
the faith that weds my soul to you.
I want the bridal veil to be lifted
so that my soul can behold 
its beloved face to face
and see itself 

through your eyes of love.

Jesus, Son of David, have pity on us all.
In your mercy, let us see your face.

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Wisdom 7:7-11; Psalm 90:12-17; Hebrews 4:12-13; Mark 10:17-30

We hear in today’s responsorial psalm,
“Teach us to number our days aright,

that we may gain wisdom of heart.”
Presumably this means wisdom has to do
with counting the days of our life correctly,
with neither overestimating nor underestimating them.
So I checked.
The average life-expectancy of a male in the U.S.
is 78.79 years.
By my calculation I am currently about 60.06 years old,
which means that I can number my remaining days
at 18.73 years, or 6836.45 days—
though that’s not counting leaps years,
which I think will get me an extra four days,
for a grand total of 6840.45 days.
More or less.

It’s the “more or less” that is the problem.
Because averages presume
that some people live much longer lives
and others live much shorter.
I could live into my nineties, like my father has,
giving me an extra 4500 or so days,
or I could get run over in the parking lot after Mass today,
making my allotted days considerably fewer.
So as I strive to number my remaining days, 
I’m stuck with a figure somewhere between 
11,340.45 and zero.

“Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain wisdom of heart.”
But how can I number my days 
amid so much uncertainty?
Should I spend my days 
taking every possible precaution 
to mitigate that uncertainty?
Should I plan and stockpile to make sure 
that my future is as secure as possible?
But experience tells us that the only certain thing 
is that no amount of planning and stockpiling
can eliminate uncertainty.

Perhaps the only way to number our days aright 
is not to number them at all,
but to accept and embrace the truth
that however much we might try 
to calculate and mitigate risk,
however many resources we store up 
against future calamity,
the future is unknown and uncertain.
Our calculations are always off,
our stores of wealth are subject 
to decay and corruption.
As the hymn writer Isaac Watts put it,
in a paraphrase of today’s psalm, 
“Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.”
We know not the number of our days.
But the truly wise heart knows
that all that we have amassed and accumulated
to hold back time’s ever-rolling stream
will one day be reduced to dust.
That fine house, 
that beautiful car,
that stock portfolio,
that power and influence and reputation—
they will all one day be gone.
It may be 11,340.45 days from now,
or it may be this very day,
but the truly wise heart knows
that the day will come.
And if we wish not to vanish with them
then we must place our hope not in passing things
but in the life offered to us by the one who is eternal.

In today’s Gospel 
Jesus is questioned by a rich man
about what he must do to inherit eternal life.
After the man assures him 
that he has kept all the commandments,
Jesus tells him, “Go, sell what you have, 
and give to the poor
and you will have treasure in heaven; 
then come, follow me.”
Jesus knows that what this man lacks
is in fact the only thing necessary:
to learn to number his days aright
so that he may gain wisdom of heart,
to place his hope not in his wealth, 
but in Jesus, in whom is found
the depth of the riches
of the wisdom and knowledge of God.

For the rich man to number his days aright
is for him to recognize that it does not matter
whether the days that lie ahead of him 
number 11,340.45 or zero,
for the only day that matters is this day,
the day on which he meets Jesus, 
who speaks to him the words,
“come, follow me”:
follow me on the journey 
from this world of anxious uncertainty,
this world of decay and death,
into the world of life eternal.

We are told that the man,
“went away sad, 
for he had many possessions.”
He went away sad 
because all that he had amassed
in his futile quest to hold at bay
time’s ever-rolling stream
now stood in his way 
like an insurmountable obstacle
blocking his path on the journey to eternity.
“How hard it is for those who have wealth
to enter the kingdom of God!”

“Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain wisdom of heart.”
Teach us, Lord, that our days may be few or many,
but that the only day that matters is this day,
for this is the day that Jesus stands before us
and says, “come, follow me.”
Teach us, Lord, to know what is
the one thing necessary,
to not let fear of loss 
of wealth or power or reputation
keep us from answering your call.
Teach us, Lord, to trust 
that with you all things are possible,
that through your grace even we,
weak and frightened and clinging to this life,
can become sons and daughters of God,
and heirs with you to eternal life.
May God’s grace grant to us 
true wisdom of heart,
and may God have mercy on us all.

 

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Number 11:25-29; James 5:1-6; Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48

The letter of James is pretty scathing
when it comes to the rich.
“You have lived on earth in luxury and pleasure;
you have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter.”
A day of judgment is coming, and the rich are invited
to weep and wail over their impending miseries,
when their fine clothes will be in tatters
and their silver and gold corroded.
All that they trusted in,
all their wealth and power,
which had been gained through exploitation 
of the poor and the weak,
will be a testimony against them
and will devour their flesh like fire.

Boy, those rich sound like terrible people,
and their fate equally terrible.
I’m glad I’m not one of them.
Or am I?
I tell myself that I’m not rich,
that I am only “comfortable,”
while ignoring the fact that my standard of comfort
includes two cars, regular meals out, 
and numerous video streaming services to entertain me—
all luxuries by the standards of 99% of the world.
Could these words actually be addressed to me?
Is my heart the one being fattened for the day of slaughter?
The temptation to hear these words as addressed to others, 
and our difficulty in hearing them as addressed to ourselves,
is actually pretty typical.
We human beings can often direct our critical eye 
outward rather than inward.
 
But today’s Gospel reading suggests the opposite:
that I should be generous in my judgment of others,
whose hearts I cannot know, 
and strict in my judgment of myself,
whose heart I do know.

The disciples object when a stranger,
someone from outside their circle,
begins performing exorcisms in the name of Jesus.
We are not told who this person is
or where he got the idea of doing such a thing.
But the disciples are appalled at the temerity of someone
who would do a good deed in the name of Jesus
without being part of their group.
Perhaps the disciples are suspicious of this person’s motives
or his sincerity in using the holy name of Jesus.
But Jesus seems quite generous 
in assessing his motives:
“whoever is not against us is for us.”
Jesus knows, of course,
that it is possible for people to be deceptive—
to appear to be doing good 
when they are in fact doing evil.
But he wants us to see 
that we put ourselves in considerable peril
when we take up the role of judging others,
for the hearts of others are hidden from us,
and we should presume that God’s Spirit is at work
in the most unlikely people and places.

But after Jesus calls us to forbearance in judging others,
he then commends stringent self-judgment.
We cannot see into the hearts of others,
but we can see into our own hearts,
we can see how they have fed on sin,
fattening themselves for the day of judgment.
We are to examine our own lives,
and whatever causes us to sin,
whatever causes us to separate ourselves from God,
we should cut off or pluck out,
even if it is a hand or a foot or an eye.
Of course, it is usually not your hand or foot or eye
that causes you to sin—
that would be a comparatively simple problem,
easily, if painfully, solve with a sharp knife.
It is our twisted wills and ungoverned passions
that cause us to sin,
and these are not so easily dealt with
as a hand or foot or eye.
These are remedied only by long 
and often painful spiritual therapies
of honest self-examination and confession
by which they are excised from our souls.
And the cost to us if we fail to do so
is exclusion from God’s kingdom,
and an eternity in that place,
“where ‘their worm does not die, 
and the fire is not quenched.’”

This is terrifying stuff.
This may be why most of us think of hell, 
if we think of it at all,
as a place for other people to go:
the Hitlers and the Stalins and the Pol Pots.
But Jesus speaks here of Hell as a possibility 
that we should contemplate for ourselves,
as a possible fate for our sin-fattened hearts,
the hearts whose gluttony for vice
we know only too well.
 
Perhaps it is because the truth of our own sin
is so fearful to contemplate
that we project our judgment outward onto others,
terrified at what we might find
if we look into ourselves.
But fear cannot have the final say,
for the Gospel is ultimately a word of hope,
not a word of fear.
Jesus’ call to self-scrutiny and conversion
is not a call to beat yourself up.
It is a call for hopeful honesty.
For an honest acknowledgement of our sins,
joined to the practice 
of generosity and charity toward others,
can serve as the therapy needed to heal our souls.
If we can learn to see in others
the new creation that grace brings about,
if we can learn to see the Spirit’s work
in the most unlikely of people and places,
then we can find hope for ourselves as well.
If we can come to see in God 
a boundless love and generosity toward others,
then we can see that same love and generosity
as something given us as well,
sinners though we are. 

May God who is merciful
have mercy on us all,
even on me, 
a sinner most in need of his mercy.

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

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

On this Catechetical Sunday, 
when we are also celebrating a baptism,
it is probably good to ask,
what point Jesus is making in today’s Gospel
when he places a child in the midst of his disciples.
Is he simply using the child as an example
of someone without power or status, 
in order to shame his disciples,
whom he has caught red-handed 
discussing who is greatest?
Mark’s Gospel is well known 
for portraying the disciples of Jesus 
as stunningly dense,
and this seems no exception:
their conversation is somewhat ridiculous.
It is not like they are jockeying for position
within the Roman colonial government
or within the religious establishment
that ruled the city of Jerusalem.
Did anyone really care about who was number one
in the scruffy dozen who followed Jesus around Galilee?
Perhaps, having heard reports of Jesus’ transfiguration, 
the disciples are hoping to get in 
on the ground floor of the next big thing;
or maybe it is simply an example of how 
it is in the smallest and most insignificant groups 
that the power struggles are most vicious.
 
So is Jesus simply saying, “Woah! 
Slow your roll there, fellas.
Don’t get ahead of yourselves,
thinking you are more important than this child.”
He does, after all, say,
“If anyone wishes to be first,
he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”
And this certainly resonates with the view
expressed in the letter of James:
“Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist,
there is disorder and every foul practice.”

But I think there is something more going on
than Jesus simply using a child to point out
the selfish ambitions of his disciples.
As he is always doing,
Jesus is pointing us to the kingdom of God
that his words and deeds make powerfully present. 
He is, as always, trying to show us
that the reign of God arrives in a way
that turns the ordinary course of events upside down,
and turns our lives upside down along with them.
If you want to know what it is like to welcome God’s reign
think about what it means to welcome a child.

Think of what welcoming a child means for parents.
It is giddy excitement at each new milestone
combined with bone-crushing weariness at each new demand;
it is the joy of a love deeper than any you ever thought possible
combined with a new-found fragility 
in a heart always on the verge of breaking;
it is a constant stream of insight gained by seeing the world
through the eyes of someone for whom everything is new
combined with an exhausting stream of questions 
that you are expected to answer.

We might also think of what it means
to welcome a child into a community, like a parish.
It means having your most solemn moments
punctuated by noisy, rambunctious behavior
that deflates all pomposity;
it means having to revise your agenda 
to accommodate those with a different agenda;
it means having to reflect on and grasp anew
your beliefs and traditions
in order to satisfy the questions of those
who won’t accept “just because” for an answer.

In welcoming a child,
we are welcoming a disruptive presence
that makes us realize how little we actually know
and how much we have yet to learn.
We are welcoming someone who might make us
change the way we have always done things.
We are welcoming a future 
that we cannot anticipate or control.
Welcoming a child is a lot like welcoming Jesus,
who comes to disrupt and change our lives
and point us to a future beyond our imagining.

But Jesus is not simply saying that welcoming a child
is like welcoming him,
is like welcoming the one who sent him;
he say that to welcome a child is to welcome him,
it is to welcome the one who sent him.
And here we enter into something deeply mysterious:
Jesus tells us that he has joined himself to the human race 
in such a way that whatever we do for the least
we do for him.
Jesus lodges himself in places most unlikely
for one who is the king of kings.
He joins himself to the weak and defenseless
so that he can receive our love and compassion.
And who is weaker and more defenseless than a child?

This is one reason why we baptize children.
This is why we are baptizing Felix this morning.
Sacraments are signs that bring about what they signify,
and in the baptism of a child we see enacted
the desire of the eternal God who creates the universe
to lodge within the most unlikely of places.
We believe that in baptism the God who took flesh in Jesus
will, through the grace of this sacrament, dwell in Felix,
not because he has earned it 
by attaining some standard of human greatness,
but because that’s just who God is
and that is how God wants to be present among us.
And this should give each of us hope
that God can also dwell in us.

So let us pray that we as a Church 
will always welcome and honor and protect
those children entrusted to us,
because in receiving them
we receive the real presence of Christ in our midst.
And let us pray that God who is merciful
would have mercy on us all. 

Memorial Mass for Angela Christman (1958-2020)

Readings: Wisdom 3:1-9; 2 Corinthians 4:14-5:1; John 12:23-26

Angela was my friend and my colleague,
and I am not quite sure 
how to separate those things.
From the day we met in the Summer of 1994,
new faculty members at Loyola College,
our friendship grew within a matrix
of studying, teaching, and arguing about
the Catholic intellectual tradition: 
a tradition of inquiry we believed
to be liberating and lifegiving.
No one who ever worked with Angela,
whether in the Theology Department, 
the Honors Program,
the Catholic Studies Program,
or on the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee
could possibly doubt her fierce commitment 
to that tradition of inquiry.
But she was no less fierce 
in her commitment to her friends,
her care for her students,
and her love for her family.
To be her friend or student or family member
was to be invited into her passions.

Because Angela knew that “catholic”
means “according to the whole,”
she understood that one 
could not place arbitrary limits on what 
the Catholic intellectual tradition encompassed.
Her passions were truly catholic: 
art and music and literature ancient and modern,
thoughts of the intellect and crafts of the hand,
bees and butterflies and native plants.
All of these were for her part of her vocation
as one called to love God with both heart and mind.

Her love and concern for the natural world
stands out in particular,
and I can’t help but think that she approves
of Tom and Sidney and Cecilia’s choice
for today’s Gospel reading,
in which Jesus uses nature’s pattern of life and death
to speak of the call of the Christian: 
“unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies,
it remains just a grain of wheat;
but if it dies, it produces much fruit.”
Angela, of course, would want to insure
that this was a non-GMO, native species of grain,
and that the ground to which it fell
would be free of chemical fertilizer.
She would also note how the natural world,
carefully and studiously observed,
can point us toward the mystery of God,
the mystery of faith, hope, and love
that death cannot defeat.
Angela believed that there is wisdom 
in the dying grain of wheat,
in all the rhythms and cycles of nature,
wisdom about life and death, 
about sorrow and sacrifice.

But Angela also believed 
that nature itself was not enough—
that the book of nature remained a volume
of obscure hieroglyphs dimly perceived
apart from the light shed by Jesus Christ 
and the grace and glory of his cross.
In Christ, the natural world 
that Angela loved so much
has a destiny beyond itself,
lifted beyond the rhythms and cycles 
of birth and death.
The natural world, 
no matter how studiously observed,
cannot free itself from death and decay.
But Angela had a better hope,
a hope “that the one who raised the Lord Jesus
will raise us also with Jesus.”

One of Angela’s great intellectual passions,
an expression of her catholic mind,
was to search for echoes of classical literature
in early Christian writings,
particularly in her beloved Ambrose of Milan.
So I think she will not disapprove
if I quote from Aeschylus’s play Agamemnon:
“Zeus, who sets mortals on the path to understanding, 
Zeus, who has established as a fixed law 
that ‘wisdom comes by suffering.’ 
But even as trouble, bringing memory of pain, 
drips over the mind in sleep, 
so wisdom comes to men, 
whether they want it or not. 
Harsh, it seems to me, is the grace of gods 
enthroned upon their august seats.”
Aeschylus, observing nature’s laws of birth and death,
recognized that wisdom is born of suffering,
a suffering and a wisdom given 
by the harsh grace of the gods,
who impart it to us indifferently, 
whether we want it or not.
 
The biblical book of Wisdom also speaks of suffering:
of the souls of the just being tried by God
like gold being refined in a furnace.
But these just ones are not being tried
by the harsh grace of the gods of Aeschylus,
but by the one who desires 
that we abide with him in love,
who has mercy on his holy ones
and cares for his elect.
Indeed, the wisdom of suffering is dispensed
not by deities enthroned upon their august seats,
but by a God who has made the cross his throne,
a God who has joined himself to our nature,
so that he might become the grain of wheat
that falls to the earth,
so that he might be ground 
into the bread that gives us life.
Aeschylus saw a truth—
that wisdom comes by suffering—
but only through faith can we see
that divine Wisdom itself 
has come to dwell among us
as one who suffers,
to suffer beside us and within us,
to save us and redeem us.

We know that Angela suffered.
We know she suffered physically,

as cancer consumed her body.
We know she suffered spiritually,
as she worried 
about how Tom and Sidney and Cecilia
would carry on without her,
as she felt herself torn
from the people and things she loved so much.
 
But we also know that in the midst of her suffering
she believed that the affliction of our present moment
is, as St. Paul writes, “producing for us 
an eternal weight of glory 
beyond all comparison.”
She believed that even as her earthy dwelling
was being destroyed,
she had in Jesus Christ,
“a dwelling not made with hands, 
eternal in heaven,”
a dwelling in which all that she loved in this life
would find a place, transfigured by divine glory.

The greatest wisdom 
is often expressed very simply.
In the early weeks of the pandemic shutdown,
a few days before Angela died, 
a group of Loyola colleagues 
gathered with her virtually via Zoom
to pray with her and to say our goodbyes.
Her very last words to us were simple words,
words of wisdom born of suffering, 
words of faith nourished by the bread of life,
words of hope that bears the eternal weight of glory,
words of love for her friends and her family:
“I will see you on the other side.”
A simple promise to which we can cling.
I am holding Angela to that promise.

But until that day when all the saints
are joined together in the eternal sabbath rest of God,
we say to Angela, farewell on your journey.
Farewell as you enter God’s eternity.
Farewell until we are reunited in that heavenly city
toward which we make our pilgrimage,
that city where at last 
we shall rest and see,
we shall see and love, 
we shall love and praise.

May God grant the gift of rest to our friend Angela,
and may God have mercy on us all.
 

24th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 50:5-9a; James 2:14-18; Mark 8:27-35

You may have been struck, 
as I have been struck,
by the oddness of the claim
that our eternal destiny depends 
on believing something—
namely that there is a God
and that this God so loved the world
that he sent his only Son to redeem us.
Jesus says in John’s Gospel,
“that everyone who believes in Him 
shall not perish but have eternal life.”
But how can assenting to an idea,
thinking something true,
embracing an opinion, 
determine our eternal destiny?
What sense does this make?

Well, it doesn’t really make sense,
not if we think of belief or faith
as merely assenting to an idea
or embracing an opinion.
After all, as Scripture notes,
even the demons that Jesus casts out
assent to the idea that Jesus 
is the “holy one of God,”
even the devil knows that there is a God 
and that God has sent Jesus for our salvation.

Clearly what Scripture means by the belief we call “faith”
is something more than—something different from—
assenting to an idea or embracing an opinion.
What Scripture means by faith 
is not embracing an opinion,
but rather letting ourselves be embraced by God
in such a way that a new horizon opens before us,
a new way of living and moving and having our being.

This is why the letter of James tells us today, 
“faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
James is not saying that faith 
needs to be supplemented with good works,
so that we can earn eternal life,
but rather that a faith that does not entail
the works of love that grace empowers,
that does not open up new possibilities 
for how we live and act,
is not true faith, but merely the holding of an opinion.
St. Paul says much the same thing when he writes,
“if I have all faith so as to move mountains 
but do not have love, I am nothing.”

True faith is not private,
since it involves visible, public actions
and we believe together as members of Christ’s body.
But faith is deeply personal,
in the sense that we find ourselves grasped by God
in the very depths of our existence as persons.
It is, as Thomas Aquinas says, 
something that weds the soul to God
and allows eternal life to begin in us,
even in this life.
Through faith we become new people
because we begin to live out of our conviction 
that God has come to our rescue through Jesus Christ,
that death has been defeated,
and that we do not have to live our lives in fear.

We see this difference 
between embracing an opinion
and making a true act of faith
in our Gospel reading for today.
When Jesus asks his followers, 
“Who do you say that I am?”
Peter responds: “You are the Christ.”
This response is, of course, correct:
Jesus is God’s anointed savior.
But eternal life does not depend
on our ability to give correct responses;
it depends on our faith that in Jesus 
the victory of divine love makes it possible
for us to live now in God’s saving presence.

Peter’s response to Jesus’ prediction
of his impending rejection, death, and resurrection
shows that he does not yet have living faith,
that his assent to the idea that Jesus is the Christ
is merely his embrace of an opinion
and not yet his having accepted the embrace of God.
Perhaps Jesus says to him “Get behind me, Satan”
because even the devil can say “You are the Christ.”
What both the devil and Peter cannot accept
is that the suffering love of Jesus on the cross
is stronger than the powers of evil 
that would seek to destroy him.
Peter embraced the opinion 
that Jesus was the Christ
with great passion and assurance,
but for all that passion he still lacked faith
because he was not yet willing
to embrace the path of cross and resurrection
to which Jesus called him.
Indeed, it is only once he encounters the risen Jesus—
the embodied sign of love’s victory—
that Peter finally surrenders to the embrace of faith.

In the Gospel today Jesus calls all of us
who would be his followers,
to walk with him the path of cross and resurrection,
to let ourselves fall into faith’s embrace.
Jesus does not simply want our mind’s assent
to the truths of the faith.
Jesus wants it all:
“whoever loses his life for my sake
and that of the gospel will save it.”
Jesus wants our mind and our will,
our flesh and our bones,
all that we do and all that we suffer.
True faith, living faith,
calls us to lay our entire life
at the feet of the crucified.
True faith, living faith, 
calls us to enter with Jesus 
into the world’s suffering,
trusting in the power of his resurrection.
True faith, living faith,
calls us to fearlessly let ourselves
be embrace by God
and to follow Jesus 
on the path to eternity.
May God grant us such true and living faith
and may God have mercy on us all.

22nd Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8; James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

We know we live in a fallen world—
a world haunted by evil, sin, and pain—
but some weeks you feel it more than others.
There is, of course, the ongoing pandemic,
which persists with wearying tenacity,
and the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti,
where misery is piled upon misery
and deaths number in the thousands.

But we feel the sorrow of our fallen state most acutely
in those events where deliberately chosen human actions
are the source of the pain and suffering of other humans.
And this is what we have watched 
unfolding in Afghanistan.
Some of the harmful actions 
seem to be matters of miscalculations,
errors in judgment about how events might unfold.
Some seem to be acts of garden-variety callousness,
in which those who are not of our own tribe
receive less of our care and concern.
But some of these choices—
such as the bombing of the airport in Kabul
in which over 170 Afghan civilians were killed,
along with 13 U.S. service members—
seem to deliberately embrace cruelty,
deliberately desire to inflict pain.
It is in these acts, these choices,

that we see the evil that afflicts our world
as not merely a patina on the surface of things,
but something that has planted its roots deeply in us,
something that reaches into the human heart 
and turns us not simply into victims 
of evil forces afoot in the world,
but into co-conspirators with evil.

In these events, these choices, 
we are confronted with what Saint Paul called 
“the mystery of iniquity” (2 Thess. 2:7),
the mystery of how human creatures
that God made in the divine image 
and declared “very good,”
could harbor within them a capacity for cruelty
that is chosen, deliberate, and planned—
the mystery of how beings who have at their core
a desire for God and the good,
could also be the source of such evil. 
As Jesus warns us in today’s Gospel,
evil is not an external stain that we can wash away;
rather, “the things that come out from within 
are what defile.”

What motivates such cruelty,
such willful taking of life 
and deliberate inflicting of suffering?
Is it a quest for some imagined higher good,
some noble cause used to justify evil means?
Is it a desire to usurp God 
as the one who holds in his hands
the power over life and death?
The mystery of iniquity remains a mystery;
it remains a void that we 
cannot wrap our minds around,
cannot fully grasp.

Evil remains a mystery to us
even though it is a reality 
in which we are all implicated.
Events of obvious horrific evil,
like the bombing of the airport in Kabul,
can tempt us to refuse to acknowledge
our own share in the mystery of iniquity:
it is those people—over there—in whom evil dwells.
We turn evil once again into something outside of us,
something alien to us.
But Jesus offers an extensive and varied list
of the fruits of evil,
lest we think that somehow
evil has not sunk its roots deeply into us: 
“from within people, from their hearts,
come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder,
adultery, greed, malice, deceit.”
licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.”
We may not steal or murder or blaspheme,
but who of us has never been arrogant or foolish—
I’m pretty sure I’ve been both 
several times already this morning.
Who of us has not been deceitful or envious,
lustful or mean? 
An act of lust or envy is, of course, 
not the same as an act of murder,
but they all come from the same source:
“All these evils,” Jesus says, 
“come from within and they defile.”

So where is the good news in all of this?
What hope do we have 
in the face of the mystery of iniquity? 
Our hope is clearly not in ourselves.
Captive as we are to sin, 
there are no efforts we can make on our own
that can uproot the sin in our hearts,
that can stem the tide of evil
that come forth from within us.
No, our hope is, as the letter of James says,
in the Father of lights,
“with whom there is no alteration 
or shadow caused by change,”
from whom comes down every perfect gift.
Our hope is in the God who has planted in us
the word of truth,
“that we may be a kind 
of firstfruits of his creatures,”
signs of God’s grace dawning already 
in the dark night of sin.
Only the Word of God joined to our human nature
can restore that nature to what God would have it be:
that which God declared to be “very good”
at the dawning of creation.
Only the mystery of divine love
can save us from the mystery of iniquity.

This does not mean
that we have no role to play
in the inward purification 
to which Christ calls us.
After all, the letter of James says quite clearly, 
“Be doers of the word and not hearers only.”
The word of truth that the Father of lights plants in us
is something that we nurture 
through prayer and penance,
through the grace of the sacraments,
through following the way of Jesus on a daily basis,
through seeking to repair the damage sin has wrought.
What can I do to comfort those
whom sin has made suffer?
What can I do to heal the wounds inflicted 
by my own arrogance and folly,
by my own deceit and envy?
How do I live a life of on-going conversion
to the way of Jesus?
These are the questions that must define our lives
if we are to be doers of the word and not just hearers.

Let us pray that the Father of lights
would show us the mystery of love
that can defeat the mystery of iniquity,
and let us pray that God 
would have mercy on us all.

 

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reading: Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15; Ephesians 4:17, 20-24; John 6:24-35

I learned a new term this week: “the twisties.”
A friend of mine who is a former gymnast explained to me 
that this is when you lose what they call your “air sense”—
your awareness, after you have launched yourself into the air,
of exactly where you are located,
which way to are oriented,
how you are going to land—
the sense that allows the gymnast 
to turn what for most of us 
would be a chaotic tumble through space
into a graceful, gravity-defying dance.

A gymnast with the twisties is in considerable peril:
suddenly, in mid-arc, you are lost,
you literally don’t know which way is up
or how you are going to come down.
And once you lose your air sense
it is not certain when, or if, it will return.
Apparently, it was a bad case of the twisties
that led Simone Biles to withdraw 
from the team gymnastics competition
this past week at the Olympic Games.

I, obviously, am not a gymnast,
but I can relate to the twisties.
We all have dreams and aspirations 
that guide our choices
and, in a sense, give us our identity.
We launch ourselves, as it were, on various life-projects:
I am going to be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher;
I am going to be the best parent possible;
I am going to be famous, rich, powerful;
I am going to be an Olympic athlete,
a professional musician,
a successful student.

Some of these aspirations,
these life-projects, 
are worthwhile,
and others not so much,
but whether worthy or not,
they come to define not just what we do
but who we are, our sense of self.
This sense of self is like the gymnast’s air sense:
having launched ourselves into pursuit of our dreams,
it is how we locate ourselves,
how we keep ourselves oriented,
how we know how we are going to land. 
But we can lose this sense of self.

We all know of people—
and maybe have experienced this ourselves—
whose aspirations are thwarted,
whose dreams do not work out,
whose dedication does not pay off.
I may be a hard-working pre-med student 
who does not do well enough on the MCAT
to get into medical school.
I may be an athlete who has spent years in training
but who is sidelined by a career-ending injury.
I may be a parent who has poured myself
into providing my children 
with a happy and secure life
but now watch then struggle 
with problems that I simply cannot fix.
If I am not a doctor, an athlete,
a parent who can protect my children,
then what am I?
Who am I?
We get the twisties.
We are dislocated, disoriented,
and we don’t know how we will land.

The poet Dante begins his work The Divine Comedy
with the words, “Midway on our life’s journey
I found myself in a dark woods, the right road lost.”
In a moment of profound dislocation and disorientation,
Dante is not exactly sure how it is that he come to this point.
He too had aspirations: to be a great poet,
to achieve a kind of immortality through art,
to be a man of influence in his native city of Florence.
But these dreams seem to have come to nothing,
and he awakens in the middle of the arc of his life
as if from a dream to find 
that he has no idea how he will land.
He has the twisties.

But what Dante comes to see in his great poem
is that the one thing to which we should aspire,
the one great dream that should give us our sense of self,
the one lodestar by which we should orient ourselves,
is nothing so paltry as being a great artist or a person of influence,
nothing so fragile as having a career or honor or wealth,
but only being a follower of Jesus Christ.
Of course it is a fine thing to have aspirations—
our world would be impoverished 
without the passion of artists,
without the drive of athletes,
without the dreams of parents for their children.
But none of these aspirations is enough
to give us a sense of self that can survive
the twists and turns of fortune,
none of these can locate and orient us
in a way that will allow us to land in God’s kingdom,
none of these can make for us a self
that will be eternal.
 
In the Gospel today Jesus says,
“Do not work for food that perishes
but for the food that endures for eternal life.”
We should not base our sense of self 
on aspirations for passing things.
St. Paul speaks in our second reading 
of a self “corrupted by deceitful desires.”
We are deceived by any desire for worldly achievement
that promises to give us a self that is secure,
because the world is constantly passing away
and the self that is based on worldly achievement
passes away with it.

This is why Paul tells us this morning 
“you should put away the old self 
of your former way of life…
and put on the new self.”
When we find ourselves with the twisties—
when in the middle of our life’s journey
we find ourselves dislocated, disoriented, 
with no idea of how we will land—
God’s grace can relocate and reorient us,
give us a new aspiration that will not fail,
an aspiration for eternity.

When the people ask Jesus
“What can we do to accomplish the works of God?’ 
He responds,
‘This is the work of God, 
that you believe in the one he sent.” 
When we launch ourselves into the life of faith
we are not launching ourselves into a void
where our sense of self can slip from our grasp,
but into the hands of God.
We are launching ourselves into a new self
that is, as Paul says, “created in God’s way 
in righteousness and holiness of truth.”
We are launching ourselves 
into companionship with Jesus
on the journey to the kingdom.

It is not the case that on this journey
you will never feel dislocated or disoriented
or doubtful as to how you will land,
but in faith we trust Jesus,
the one whom God has sent,
the one who comes to meet us 
in the middle of our life’s journey
to grasp ahold of us,
to located and orient us, 
to bring us safely home.

So let us aspire to share in God’s eternity,
let us trust that God will be there to catch us when we fail,
let us pray that God will have mercy on us all.

17th Week of Ordinary Time--Saturday (St. Ignatius Loyola)

Readings: Leviticus 25:1, 8-17; Matthew 14:1-12

What has always struck me 
about the story of the death of John the Baptist
is just how tawdry the whole thing is.
This man of God is killed 
because Herod’s step-daughter,
who is also apparently his niece, 
performs a dance that so delights 
the guests as his birthday party
(I’ll leave it to your imagination 
as to why it might have been delightful)
that Herod engages in what medieval romances
called a “rash boon”:
you promise to grant whatever someone asks,
having no idea of what that might be.
So this girl, manipulated by her mother,
whose feelings have been hurt by John,
brings about John’s death.
It’s got everything that is wrong with our world in it:
deception and violence, power and pettiness.
It shows us how the world all too often works
when it is in the hands of the powerful,
as it always seems to be.

But our first reading gives us a different vision
of how the world might work.
The year of jubilee pushes the rest button
on a world that has been divided up 
according to the principle that the rich get richer
and the poor get poorer.
It is a reminder that the world is God’s gift 
to the whole human race,
not just to the rich and powerful.
It is a reminder to not deal unfairly
but to stand in reverent fear of your God.
This vision of the jubilee year,
the year of forgiveness and freedom, 
is something that the Church enacts in her Eucharist,
which is not a feast, like that held at the house of Herod,
to which only the rich and powerful are invited.
It is the wedding feast of the lamb
to which no amount of money,
no degree of power can gain admittance,
but only the words, “Lord I am not worthy.”
It is the feast in which we celebrate
the liberty found in humbling ourselves before God,
in acknowledging that we are all beggars.

St. Ignatius Loyola,
whom we commemorate today,
devoted his life to helping souls
by guiding them to true liberty.
His entire spirituality was directed toward the jubilee
in which true freedom is given to us through Christ
so that we might choose to fight under his banner
in the cause of God’s kingdom.
St. Ignatius celebrated the Eucharist daily 
with tears of gratitude,
because he knew it was the feast of true freedom
in which we give to God from God’s own gifts to us,
and receive back from God 
the flesh and blood of God himself.
So let us today make St. Ignatius’s prayer our own:
“Take, Lord, receive all my liberty, 
my memory, my understanding, my whole will, 
all that I have and all that I possess. 
You gave it all to me, Lord; 
I give it all back to you. 
Do with it as you will, according to your good pleasure. 
Give me your love and your grace; 
for with this I have all that I need.”

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Kings 4:42-44; Ephesians 4:1-6; John 6:1-15

A few weeks ago, 
my wife and I were driving 
through the hills around Harper’s Ferry,
listening to National Public Radio,
as college professors tend to do.
They were reporting on the on-going conflict
between Ethiopia and Eritrea,
which has been raging for eight months
and has led to severe and widespread famine.

As our car made its way 
along the winding road,
the radio station kept fading out,
lost in a wave of static,
and another radio station kept fading in.
This was one of those evangelical religious stations
that college professors tend not to listen to.
The signal was buried in static,
and hard to make out,
but after a minute or so
I realized that this station was discussing 
the story of Jesus’ feeding of the multitude,
the story that we have just heard in today’s Gospel reading.
As we wove our ways through the hills,
the two stories wove their way around each other:
at one moment reports of war and famine 
in a distant part of the world,
in the next moment the ancient tale
of Jesus feeding the hungry multitude,
stories bouncing back and forth 
in a dialogue between conflict and communion,
between hunger and plenty.

What gets said in such a dialogue?
What does the story of Jesus’ feeding of the multitudes
have to say to a world of war and famine?
Certainly it speaks a word of rebuke 
to the story of the world’s sin,
the story of the way that the world all too often operates.
It presents a striking contrast to the violence and hunger
that is found not only in distant foreign lands
but right here in our own city,
where most years we average close to a murder a day,
and one in four residents lives in a “food desert,”
without ready access to places to purchase healthy food.
And to such physical violence and hunger we must add
the spiritual violence of various forms 
of factionalism and discrimination and racism—
the refusal to see the image of God 
present in those who are different—
and the spiritual hunger of those who are fed a steady diet
of empty aspirations for fame or wealth or physical sensation
all the while starving for the bread of life
that only God can give
and only faith can receive.

Everything about the feeding of the multitudes
stands as a rebuke to these realities that afflict our world.
The story of the feeding of the multitudes
is the story of human beings caught up
in the goodness of God
and receiving abundantly from that goodness.
It is a story that interrupts 
the world’s story of hunger and violence,
a story that pierces through 
the static of sin,
the static of the world’s business as usual,
and says to us that something else is possible,
that something else is even now making itself present
through the power of God taken flesh in Jesus Christ.

And yet, so often 
we can only dimly perceive this new reality;
it hovers at the edge of our awareness 
like ghostly voices on the airwaves,
obscured by the world’s static
and only discernible if we play close attention.
And even when we see it,
we often misperceive it.
The gospel-writer John concludes this story 
of divine abundance made present in Jesus 
with the statement:
“Since Jesus knew that they were going to come 
and carry him off to make him king,
he withdrew again to the mountain alone.”
The multitude saw 
the power of Jesus to satisfy hungers,
but could not see that this was a power
different from that of earthly kings.
As Jesus will later say to Pontius Pilate,
“My kingdom does not belong to this world,”
and when the multitude in Jerusalem hears this
they will say, “Crucify him…
We have no king but Caesar.”

The power of God to defeat the world’s violence,
to feed the world’s hunger,
takes flesh in the one who is rejected and crucified.
And God wills this to be so 
because God knows how we are drawn to worldly power.
We believe that violence will end
once we have a ruler who can crush our enemies.
We believe that our hungers will cease
once we have a leader 
who can get the economy humming along.
But Jesus has no armies, no police force, 
no Federal Reserve, no Internal Revenue Service;
he has only five barley loaves and two fish
and the power of crucified love.
But for those with ears to hear,
ears that can discern it through the static of the world,
this is the true story of peace and abundance.

This is what it means to live the life of faith.
It is to see in the sharing of gifts 
in our Eucharistic celebration
the abundant banquet that God offers us 
in Jesus’ body and blood.
It is to see in our small efforts to feed the hungry 
in our Loaves and Fishes ministry
a sign of God’s abundance breaking through
the static of the world’s violence and hunger.
These actions might seem like small things—
as small as five barley loaves and two fish—
but if Christ takes them into his hands
to offer them to the Father,
they can become the seeds of God’s kingdom sown in us.

The story of that kingdom is being told in countless way,
interrupting the story of the world’s sin.
Listen for it.
Don’t let the world’s static obscure it.
And may God have mercy on us all.