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.