30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14

In our first reading we hear,
“Though not unduly partial toward the weak,
yet [God] hears the cry of the oppressed.
The Lord is not deaf to the wail of the orphan,
nor to the widow when she pours out her complaint.”
In the Hebrew scriptures, those who are weak and oppressed
are referred to as the anawim or “little ones,”
and they, as our scripture says,
are the special object of God’s concern.
It is from scriptural passages such as this
that the Church today draws her teachings concerning
the need for what Pope John Paul II called
a “preferential but not exclusive love for the poor”;
we, both as individuals and as a Church,
are called to give the poor,
the oppressed,
and the marginalized
a privileged place in our hearts and our concerns.
Concern for the poor is not, for Christians,
simply one concern among others;
concern for God’s little ones is integral
to our identity as God’s people.

This is not a matter of romanticizing the poor,
imagining that every poor person is good and noble;
indeed, poverty is very unromantic,
and often makes those who are poor
less good, less noble, than they might otherwise be.
The Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez
writes, “the poor are human beings;
they include very good people,
but there are also some among them who are not good.
We should prefer them not because they are good…
but because first of all God is good
and prefers the forgotten, the oppressed,
the poor, the abandoned.”
Our concern for the poor is not simply a matter of philanthropy
but grows from our convictions concerning who God is
and how God has acted in human history.
Indeed, we believe that when God came to dwell among us in Jesus
he took his stand with the poor and the powerless,
to the point of saying that
what we do for one of God’s little ones, we do for him.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it,
“Jesus identifies himself with the poor of every kind
and makes active love toward them
the condition for entering his kingdom” (CCC 544).

This is all relevant as we reflect this weekend
on our relationship with
our sister parish in Sepalau Guatemala,
an isolated village, high in the mountains.
Guatemala is an extremely poor country,
with a GDP that is roughly one-half
of the average for Latin America.
Among the indigenous people,
who make up most of the villagers in Sepalau,
73% live below Guatemala’s poverty line –
which, as you might imagine,
is considerably lower than ours.
Guatemala has one of the highest rates
of malnutrition in the world,
with almost half of the children
under the age of five
being malnourished.
Truly, the people of Sepalau
are among the “little ones” of God.

If our relationship with our sister parish
is to be an authentic one
we need to recognize the realities of the poverty
in which the people of Sepalau live.
But I’m not here to give a sociology or economics lecture,
but to preach the word of God.
And today the word of God tells us
that God hears the cries of the poor,
and will answer them
and establish for them justice on earth;
the little ones of this world will be lifted up
and the powerful will be cast down.

This is surely good news to the poor,
but what about the rest of us?
Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel that
“whoever exalts himself will be humbled,
and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Our love for the poor must manifest itself
in a kind of humbling of ourselves,
so that the concerns of the poor become our concerns,
so that their cause becomes our cause,
not because they are good, but because God is good,
because God has heard their cries and will answer them;
God has made their cause his cause
by emptying himself and accepting
the death of a slave,
death on a cross.
You cannot be on the side of God
if you are not on the side of the poor –
this is not politics; it’s simply the gospel.

And this is really what our sister parish relationship is about;
it is about coming to know and entering into friendship
with the people of Sepalau
so that their concerns can become our concerns,
so that is some small way
their struggles can become our struggles.
And we do this because by entering more deeply
into relationship with them
we enter more deeply into relationship with Christ,
who for our sake became poor,
so that we might have spiritual riches.

31st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Deuteronomy 6:2-6; Hebrews 7:23-28; Matthew 12:28b-34

When in our Gospel reading a scribe comes to Jesus

and asks him which of the commandments is the greatest

Jesus’s answer is in one sense not surprising:

he replies by quoting from the book of Deuteronomy

a passage that is to the Jewish people

perhaps the most familiar passage in all of Scripture:

Hear, O Israel!
The Lord our God is Lord alone!
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind,
and with all your strength.

But Jesus does not stop there.

This first and greatest commandment

seems to immediately imply a second commandment,

this one taken from the book of Leviticus:

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

What is notable about Jesus’s answer to the scribe’s question

is not so much the two passages of Scripture that he cites

but rather the way in which he joins them together:

love of God and love of neighbor go hand in hand.

Indeed, we might say that love of God and love of neighbor

are but a single love.

The great 17^th-century saint, Francis de Sales,

said that love is like the ladder that Jacob saw in his dream,

stretching between heaven and earth,

upon which the angels ascended and descended:

love is a ladder,

“raising us even to spiritual union with God,

and bringing us back to loving companionship

with our neighbors” (Treatise on Perfection Bk. 10 ch. 11).

On this weekend, when we celebrate our relationship

with our Sister Parish of St. John the Baptist 

in Sepalau, Guatemala,

it is good to remind ourselves of this single love

upon which we are raised up to God

and journey back to our neighbor.

We have had a relationship with the people of Sepalau,

a remote mountain village of about 800 people, 

for twenty years;

we have helped finance a school building, a church,

and most recently a community chicken coop.

We have sent delegations from our parish down 

every couple of years 

and, as many of you remember, 

a delegation from Sepalau

came to visit us here in Baltimore in 2008.

Maintaining this relationship has required much effort,

not only because of the physical distance of some 3000 miles,

but also because of the distance 

of language and culture and experience.

Those of us who have not been there 

cannot really imagine

the daily lives of the people of Sepalau:

the great beauty of the land and culture of Guatemala,

but also the every-day struggles of this particular village.

For example, I am sorry to say that the chicken coop project

has gotten off to a rocky start

due in part to the logistical difficulties 

of setting up a community bank account

but also due to disagreements within the village itself,

community dynamics that are themselves 

difficult for us to understand:

why can't they do things the way that we do them?

The people of Sepalau are good people, 

but they are not perfect people.

And maybe it is in this that they are most like us.

We too seek to be good – 

to love God and love our neighbor –

but we too are imperfect in that love.

While we as a parish want to show our love 

to the people of Sepalau,

the distances of time and culture 

make maintaining this relationship a challenge

and all too easy to put out of our minds

or to leave to someone else.

Perhaps this is the way 

in which love of God and love of neighbor

most resemble each other:

if it is difficult to love the neighbor whom we can see

how much more difficult is it 

to love the God whom we cannot see?

If our love of neighbor is imperfect,

how much more do we fail 

in our attempts to love God 

with all our heart,

all our soul, 

all our strength?

So while love is the ladder 

upon which we rise up to God

and which brings us back to our neighbor,

it all proves to be a pretty complicated and difficult affair.

Our faltering human love 

can seem like a pretty shaky ladder.

But thanks be to God 

that the twofold commandment

to love God and neighbor

is enfolded within the promise of God’s love for us.

In the love we show to our neighbors –

whether distant neighbors in Sepalau,

or near neighbors in Baltimore,

or the nearest neighbors of all: our friends and family –

we are simply handing on 

the love that God has shown to us:

in the end it is God’s love that is the ladder

that brings us close to God’s kingdom;

it is God’s love along which we journey 

to our neighbors near and far,

and it is God’s love that unites us together with them

to the God who is love.