29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 53:10-11; Hebrews 4:14-16; Mark 10:35-45

St. Thomas Aquinas once said 
that the death of Christ, 
for us and for our salvation, 
“is so tremendous a fact 
that our intellect can scarcely grasp it.”
In the midst of the horror of death
the mercy of God manifests itself;
divine love and compassion 
burst forth from within an act
of human hatred and condemnation.
As the hymn “How great Thou Art” puts it,
“And when I think
That God, 
His Son not sparing,
Sent Him to die,
I scarce can take it in.”

But we want to take it in.
Our souls want to grasp such love
so that it might dwell within us.
And so, like someone 
circling a magnificent sculpture
in order to see it from all angles,
or someone listening to a symphony
over and over to find 
new nuances and hidden harmonies,
the cross of Christ, 
God’s magnum opus,
must be seen from as many sides as possible,
must be called to mind again and again,
in order to catch even a fraction
of the beauty of divine love that it reveals.
We must mediate on the cross of Jesus
so as to drink in its riches
and be transformed by the grace 
that pours forth from it.

The Letter to the Hebrews tells us
that in Jesus “we do not have 
a high priest who is unable 
to sympathize with our weaknesses.”
In taking on our human nature,
God has taken on human weakness as well.
Jesus, like us, skinned his knees as a child;
he got colds and grew hungry;
he was misunderstood and disappointed.
But most of all, 
on the cross God has taken on 
the weakness of the persecuted,
of those condemned to death by systems
that care more about the exercise of power
than about justice or mercy.
God has entered into solidarity with those
who lives are crushed by forces
that do not even recognize their humanity.
God has made himself present to the countless millions 
ground beneath the wheels of human hatred—
of war and injustice and oppression—
those whose names are lost to history
but whom God remembers.

But God’s solidarity with us 
in our suffering and weakness
is only one facet of Jesus’ cross.
As our mind moves around this great work of God,
as we listen again to the symphony of salvation,
we see that, in Christ, God not only suffers with us,
but he also suffers for us.
Jesus does for us what we cannot do for ourselves,
by offering his life in perfect love to the Father
so that we might be freed from sin’s prison
and be reconciled to God.
Fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy of the Servant of God
who “gives his life as an offering for sin,”
Jesus tells his followers that “the Son of Man 
did not come to be served but to serve 
and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
More than simply suffering alongside us,
Jesus offers his sinless life as our “ransom”—
the price that is paid to redeem us 
from sin and death, which hold us captive.
How this exchange is accomplished 
he does not explain;
what matters is the simple fact
that he will drink for us the cup of suffering
and be baptized for us in the waters of death,
so that we might be saved from eternal suffering
and raised up from eternal death.

Yet there is still another side of all this
that we must see,
another harmony we must hear.
If on the cross the Son of God 
joins us in our suffering,
and by his love 
pays the cost of our freedom,
we now are left with the question 
posed by Jesus to James and John:
“Can you drink the cup that I drink
or be baptized with the baptism 
with which I am baptized?”
For while Jesus does for us
what we cannot do for ourselves—
gives his sinless life 
to free us from sin and death
and reconcile us to God—
we are in turn called to give our own lives
in service to God and neighbor.
We are called to imitate the love
by which we have been saved.

Thomas Aquinas wrote that
“Whoever wishes to live perfectly 
need do nothing other than despise 
what Christ despised on the cross, 
and desire what Christ desired.”
What did Christ despise on the cross?
He despised all earthly honors and riches,
preferring to be found among the ranks
of those who are oppressed and killed.
What did Christ desire?
He desired to give himself for our salvation,
a salvation bought with charity and patience, 
humility and obedience;
he desired the will of his Father,
which seeks us out in our lostness
to bring us back to our true homeland.
So we too, in turn, 
must despise earthly honors;
we must refuse to feed 
what the philosopher Iris Murdoch called
“the fat relentless ego.”
We too must desire selfless love
and endurance of suffering,
a recognition of our own poverty of spirit
and a willingness to answer God’s call.
We too must find greatness in service
and freedom in binding ourselves 
to God’s holy will.

The love of God shown forth 
in the cross of Jesus:
I scarce can take it in.
But just as we can find ourselves
captivated by a magnificent work of art
or absorbed by a great piece of music,
so too we are drawn into this great work of God.
What I cannot take in,
can take me in.
By the mercy of God,
I, unworthy as I am, 
become myself a part 
of God’s great work.
Christ welcomes me to drink 
his cup of suffering and joy;
he washes me in his baptism of death
and raises me to life in his Spirit
and calls me into God’s service.
And all this because of his mercy. 
So let us pray that we might know this mercy,
and that God, who is merciful,
might have mercy on us all.

Commemoration of St. John Henry Newman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

A Wedding Homily

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

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

VIDEO

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indeed, he shows us that you cannot choose,

for the God whom we worship 

is the maker of both body and soul

and has destined for salvation both body and soul,

and we anticipate this salvation

not only when we receive the Eucharist,

but also when we offer food to the hungry

and justice to the oppressed.

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

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

17th Week in Ordinary Time (Saturday)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

15th Week in Ordinary Time--Wednesday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

that we would know our need,

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

11th Sunday in Ordinary Time

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

VIDEO

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

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

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

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

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

to guide us through the darkness. 

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

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

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

Pentecost

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

VIDEO 

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

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

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

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

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

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

But he also tells us that 

“the peace of God… surpasses 

all understanding” (Phil 4:7),

and after the risen Christ 

wishes his disciples peace

he shows them his wounds,

the price of all his troublemaking.

So, what is for God power

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

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

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

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

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

Vigil of Pentecost

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

VIDEO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Loyola University Baccalaureate Mass

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

VIDEO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Easter 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Easter 4

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

VIDEO

This has been a tough week 

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

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

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

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

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