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.