Lent 3

Readings: Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15; 1 Corinthians 10: 1-6, 10-12; Luke 13:1-9

It has been an interesting week to be a Catholic.

Of course everybody who has access to any form of media

knows that Pope Benedict’s resignation from the papacy 

took effect on Thursday

and that the Church has entered a period of sedes vacans,

or the empty chair of Peter,

as we await the election of a new Pope by the college of Cardinals.

In my mind, this event is framed 

by two other events from this week:

on Monday the Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien resigned

amidst accusations of sexual misconduct with several priests,

and on Friday the Archdiocese of Baltimore issued a statement

that one of my brother deacons had been suspended from ministry

after his arrest for possession of child pornography.

Sad to say, for all too many people 

such news has ceased to be shocking,

because it has come to seem like business as usual 

from the Catholic Church.

And I find myself praying that God will seize this opportunity

to send us a leader who can make the Church into the kind of place

where at least such things regain their capacity to shock.

So what does the Word of God offer us today?

We hear in the Gospel the parable of the fig tree,

which for three years produces no fruit,

after which the owner of the orchard, 

justly and understandably frustrated,

tells the gardener to cut it down 

so that it will no longer deplete the soil.

But the gardener pleads with the owner 

to give the tree one more year,

during which he will tend it and fertilize it.

Early Christian interpreters such as St. Augustine

saw the parable as a warning to Christians that,

while we have been granted another season of grace

in which to bear the fruit of good works,

a day of judgment and reckoning is coming

for those whose lives remain barren.

But perhaps this parable 

is not just about us as individuals,

but also about us as a Church.

Events not just this week but over the past ten years

have led me often to wonder whether our Church

has become like the fig tree,

exhausting the soil around it

while producing no fruit but scandal upon scandal,

sucking life from the world

and offering nothing in return but one more excuse

for the cynicism that so pervades modern life.

Is time running out for our Church to bear good fruit?

Could the day arrive when God decides 

that the time has come to cut it down?

Christ said that the gates of hell 

would not prevail against his Church,

but we must also remember the words of St. Paul:

“whoever thinks he is standing secure 

should take care not to fall.”

These are dark thoughts to have on the eve of a papal election.

And they bring with them the temptation to think

that what is needed to fix the Church

is a Pope who fits with my particular agenda:

whether that is a Pope who will ordain women to the priesthood

or impose the Latin Mass on all parishes,

or change the Church’s teaching on contraception

or excommunicate all the bad Catholics.

These might be good ideas or bad ideas,

but a solution more radical than any of these is called for,
a solution that fits neither a “conservative” agenda nor a “liberal” one, 

a solution that is hinted at in the parable of the fig tree.

The gardener in the parable says

that he will cultivate the ground around the tree and fertilize it.

What our translation rather primly translates as “fertilizer”

is the Greek word kopria, which really means “excrement.”

A Pope from many centuries ago, Gregory the Great,

said, in reference to this parable, that the fertilizer that can make

the unfruitful tree of our souls fruitful once again

is the remembrance of the dung of our past sins;

the frank acknowledgement of the stench of our own misdeeds 

can pierce our hearts

and move us to begin bearing 

the fruit of good and godly deeds (Homily 31).

And what is true of us as individuals 

is just as true of us as a Church.

The Church must clear away all of the weeds that are choking it:

the desire to protect careers and images at all costs,

the denial that the world’s evils are found in the Church as well,

the denigration of any who would dare to call us to account.

The Church must be fertilized by facing up to the foulness of her failings,

and let her heart be pierced by the stench of her own sins,

so that we can in due season bear fruit

that will feed a world that is spiritually starving.

Perhaps our next Pope can help us to do this.

But the Church stands 

on the promise of Christ to remain with us,

not on the dream of a Pope 

who will fix everything that is wrong with us.

Still, we should pray in this time of sede vacans 

for God to send us a leader

who, like the gardener in the parable,

will cultivate and fertilize the Church with honest repentance.

And we should not only pray, but pray with confidence,

because we know that while our past is ours, and we must own it,

our future belongs to the God 

whose grace can make a barren fig tree fruitful

and make a desert bush burn with the fire of God’s presence,

the God whose Spirit, 

despite our best efforts to quench it,

still burns as a refiner’s fire within the Church, 

the living body of Christ. 

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19; 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13; Luke 4:21-30

In today’s Gospel, the people who,

at the beginning of the story, “all spoke highly” of Jesus

and “were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth,”

have become by the end of the passage a mob “filled with fury,”

who try to throw Jesus over a cliff.

This change in attitude seems to occur

when Jesus recalls for them two stories in which

the prophets Elijah and Elisha came to the aid of Gentiles –

the starving widow of Zarephath and the leper Naaman the Syrian –

rather than helping their fellow Israelites.

Presumably what fills them with fury is the implication

that Jesus has come not only for them,

to fulfill God’s promises to Israel,

but also for others,

to extend God’s saving covenant to the Gentiles.

Their fury is, I think, rooted in fear:

the fear that God’s favor

is a limited commodity,

so that the more God loves others

the less he loves them;

the fear that there is only so much room

within God’s covenantal love,

so that the inclusion of others in that love

might mean their exclusion.

As is so often the case with the Gospels,

the figures we read about invite us to reflect on our own lives.

Do we treat God’s love as if it were a limited commodity?

Do we react with envy when others benefit?

Do we find ourselves filled with fury

because we fear that another’s gain is our loss?

And if we find such fear and fury in ourselves,

do we ask ourselves, is this who I really want to be?

In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov

a character recounts a Russian folktale that paints for us

a picture of such fury and fear:

Once upon a time there was a peasant woman
and a very wicked woman she was.
And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind.
The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire.
So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers
he could remember to tell to God;
‘She once pulled up an onion in her garden,’ said he,
‘and gave it to a beggar woman.’
And God answered: ‘You take that onion then,
hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out.
And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise,
but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.’
The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her.
‘Come,’ said he, ‘catch hold and I’ll pull you out.’
He began cautiously pulling her out.
He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake,
seeing how she was being drawn out,
began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her.
But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them.
‘I’m to be pulled out, not you. It’s my onion, not yours.’
As soon as she said that, the onion broke.
And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day.
So the angel wept and went away.

Because she was convinced

that her single good deed belonged to her alone,

that God’s salvation was a limited commodity

that she had to grab for herself,

that those with her in the lake of fire were her rivals

rather than her fellow sufferers,

she found herself left in that lake for eternity

drowned in the fire of her own fear and fury.

But this is not who we are condemned to be.

In our second reading,

Paul speaks of a different kind of living,

what he calls “a still more excellent way,”

the way that prizes love above all else.

This love, Paul says, is not jealous, not pompous, not puffed-up, not rude,

“it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered,

it does not brood over injury.”

It is not filled with fear of being deprived of a blessing,

or fury at the good fortune of others,

but “bears all things, believes all things,

hopes all things, endures all things.”

If we want to be Christians,

if we want to live this still more excellent way,

we should pray that God fill us with this greatest of gifts,

the love that seeks not its own good

but rejoices in the good of others,

the love that led Jesus to endure the cross for all,

the love that conquers fear and fury.

The Baptism of the Lord

Readings: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

What did Jesus find when he went down

into the waters of the Jordan river,

to baptized at the hands of John?

What awaited him as he plunged into the bath of repentance

to which John had called his fellow Israelites

in preparation for the coming day of judgment?

Certainly not the washing away of his own sins;

Luke has already informed us in the beginning of his Gospel

that the child born of Mary is holy, the Son of God.

There was no need for Jesus to repent,

to turn his life around.

What, then, took place that day in the river Jordan?

What happened to him in those waters?

Today’s celebration of the Baptism of the Lord

concludes the Christmas season,

and reminds us that for the past few weeks

we have been doing something more

than simply celebrating Jesus’ birthday.

The Baptism of Jesus continues

the “epiphany” or “manifestation” of Jesus to the world

that we celebrated last Sunday:

the Father’s voice from heaven

and the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove

show to those present that Jesus is God’s beloved Son –

he truly is “Emmanuel,” God-with-us.

But there is an even deeper connection

between the Baptism of Jesus and the mystery of Christmas.

For the incarnation is not simply about God the eternal Son

taking on a human nature –

as stupendous as that event is –

but it is also about we humans

becoming, through Christ, partakers in God’s own nature.

The early Christian theologian Athanasius of Alexandria

wrote that Christ “was made human

that we might be made God" (De incarnatione no. 54).

This theme has echoed throughout the Christian tradition.

When the priest or deacon mixes water into the wine

at the preparation of the gifts at Mass

he prays, “may we come to share in the divinity of Christ

who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”

The poet Gerard Manly Hopkins put it this way:

      In a flash, at a trumpet crash, 

      I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am.

This theme is sometimes called

the admirabile commercium or “wondrous exchange”:

God takes on human nature in all its frailty

so that we may take on the immortality of God’s own nature.

This is the event of our salvation that we celebrate at Christmas,

and it is also what we celebrate in the Baptism of Christ.

What did Jesus find when he went down into the water?

He found the waters of death that we had created.

And in those waters he found us:

drowned in the waters of chaos,

submerged in our alienation from God,

suffocated by our own unlovely sinful acts,

the dead bloated with the corpsegas
of pride and greed and envy.

And stripping himself of his immortality,

Jesus transformed those waters of death into waters of life,

exchanging his divine immortality for our human death,

so that we who were drowned in sin

might be raised with him to immortal life.

Through our baptism,

which St. Paul calls “the bath of rebirth,”

we become partners in that wondrous exchange.

In baptism the Holy Spirit poured out on Christ

is “richly poured out on us”;

in baptism God declares that we, like Christ,

are God’s beloved, on whom God’s favor rest;

in baptism, like Christ, heaven opened to us.

What did we find when we went down 

into the waters of baptism?

What awaited us in the bath of repentance?

We did not find death

but the robe of immortality

that Christ left for us there,

the glorious garment of which he stripped himself

so that we might be clothed in everlasting life.

Wrapped by Christ in that robe of light

we pray that we may be worthy of such a garment,

that we might live lives that reflect

the divine glory that has been given to us.

It was for this that God became a human being:

that God’s life and light might be reflected in us

who have become through grace 

what Christ is by nature:

beloved sons and daughters of God.

Epiphany

Readings: Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12

We call this feast,

on which we recall the visit of the Magi to the Christ child,

“Epiphany,” from the Greek word epipháneia,

which means an appearance or manifestation.

We also use the word “epiphany” 

in a more secular sense,

one popularized by the novelist James Joyce,

to refer to flashes of profound realization

that seem to strike us from out of the blue.

Today it seems to be used for any insight,

some of them less-than-profound:

in a recent news story from Los Angeles,

a teacher at an elementary school

that had provided iPads for all its students

described the effect on learning as “an ephiphany.”

“Epiphany” is even the name for an integrated suite

of Customer Relations Management software.

Presumably using this software 

will give one striking new insights

into how to manage one’s customer relations.

But the epiphany that we celebrate today

is something more than an idea 

that suddenly occurs to the Wise Men.

What the Magi find in Bethlehem is not an idea, 

but a person: Jesus Christ.

Pope Benedict has written: “Being a Christian

is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea,

but the encounter with an event, a person,

which gives life a new horizon

and a decisive direction” (Deus Caritas Est no. 1).

What the Pope is warning against here

is the temptation, on the one hand, 

to reduce being a Christian

to a set of ideas that we hold 

about God and the world –

making it something like 

a philosophical system –

or, on the other hand,

to transform it 

into a set of ethical positions –

whether this be a commitment to peace and justice

or to so-called “traditional values.”

Pope Benedict does not deny 

that Christianity commits us

both to certain truth claims 

about God and the world

and to certain ethical positions,

but the heart of Christianity is found 

neither in our ideas nor our ethics

but in our encounter with the person of Jesus Christ.

The Epiphany of the Wise Men

was not their being struck by a startling new notion,

nor their adoption of a new set of moral values,

but the transforming experience 

of meeting God in Jesus Christ.

Their epiphany is their encounter

with the God who has entered our world 

as a human child,

as love that makes itself weak and vulnerable

so as to become one with us in all things but sin.

As a result of this encounter 

they no doubt found themselves

thinking about God and the world in new ways.

After all, if you go searching for a king

and find yourself kneeling before a baby

in a humble dwelling in a small town,

it is bound to overturn 

much of what you thought you knew

about God and the world.

And based on this new understanding 

you very well might find yourself 

with a very different set of values

and a very different approach to living them out.

As Pope Benedict says, this encounter

“gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”

In the wake of this encounter,

Jesus Christ becomes for the Magi 

the new star whom they will follow

on their journey of return 

to their true homeland in God’s kingdom.

And this is true for us too.

Our protestant brothers and sisters often speak

of having “a personal relationship with Christ.”

I used to react negatively to this phrase

because I thought it referred to having

a private relationship with God 

that took no account of other people.

This would run completely counter 

to our Catholic tradition

of the importance of the Church community 

in our life as Christians.

But now I see that 

speaking of a “personal relationship” with Jesus

is less about having your own personal Jesus

and more about having a relationship with Jesus

as a person who is even now living and active.

Perhaps this is something we Catholics need to learn

from our protestant brothers and sisters.

Pope Benedict himself reminds us

that Jesus is not someone 

who lived an long, long time ago

and left behind some interesting ideas 

and ethical injunctions.

Jesus is the risen Lord whom we can encounter

in a way that is just as direct and just as personal

as the encounter of the Magi with the Christ child.

We encounter him in the words of Scripture,

in prayer, 

in the sacraments,

in the poor and the suffering, 

and in each other.

The epiphany of God as love 

is not something that happened long ago;

it is something that is happening here and now.

Just as with the Magi, 

Jesus shows himself to us

so that he might become 

both the star that we follow

and the companion who walks beside us,

on our journey to God’s kingdom.

Advent 4

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

Today, as we teeter on the brink of Christmas,
the Church offers for our consideration
the story of the Visitation:
the pregnant Mary’s visit
to her pregnant kinswoman Elizabeth.
This event might be familiar to some as the second joyful mystery
upon which one meditates when praying the rosary.
To others is might be more familiar as the subject matter
of great paintings by Giotto, Fra Angelico, Albertinelli, and Raphael.
Whether as a joyful mystery to be meditated upon
or as a subject depicted with great beauty by artists,
the story of the Visitation –
Elizabeth’s greeting of Mary as blessed
and the unborn John the Baptist leaping in her womb
in recognition of the Messiah whom Mary bears within her –
seems to be a fitting prelude to the joy and beauty of Christmas.

The poet Jessica Powers captures some of this joy and beauty
in the opening lines of her poem “The Visitation Journey,”
in which she meditates on Mary’s journey to Elizabeth:

The second bead: scene of the lovely journey
of Lady Mary, on whom artists confer
a blue silk gown, a day pouring out Springtime,
and birds singing and flowers bowing to her. 

But then Powers introduces a note of skepticism
about this picture she has painted.
If we consider the incredible news
that Mary had received from the Angel,
the news that she, a virgin, in some ways still a child,
would give birth to the Son of the Most High God,
then perhaps her journey to visit Elizabeth
was neither entirely joyful nor completely saturated in beauty.

Powers continues:

Rather, I see a girl upon a donkey
and her too held by what was said to mind
how the sky was or if the grass was growing.
I doubt the flowers; I doubt the road was kind. 

Rather than the calm and self-possessed Queen of Heaven
whom we might envision in our prayers
or see in great works of art,
Jessica Powers presents us with the image of a young girl,
her mind filled with all that had recently transpired,
preoccupied on her journey with trying to make sense
of how God had grabbed her life and shaken it,
overturning all that she had expected
and promising her something she could barely imagine.

It is still a joyful mystery, a beautiful mystery,
but its joy and beauty are of a sort
that can only be taken in slowly and with great effort.

Powers concludes her poem:

“Love hurried forth to serve,” I read, approving.
But also see, with thoughts blown past her youth,
a girl riding upon a jolting donkey and
riding further and further into the truth. 

Jessica Powers suggest to us that Mary’s visit to Elizabeth
was not unmarked by fear and perplexity.
But it was not only a journey of fear and perplexity.
Because of her faith, Mary knew
that despite her fear and perplexity
her journey was a journey further and further into the truth.
It was faith that allowed her to see this,
which is why Elizabeth says to her,
“Blessed are you who believed
that what was spoken to you by the Lord
would be fulfilled.”

Teetering on the edge of the great mystery of Christ’s birth,
Mary was no doubt filled with fear and perplexity
but she was also filled with faith:
truly blessed was she who believed.

And we too, teetering on the edge of the Christmas feast,
have not been immune to fear and perplexity
as the past week has brought more and disturbing news
of the school killings in Connecticut.
And we can only try to imagine the fear and perplexity
of the families and friends of those who died.
What can Christmas mean for those whose lives
have been touched by such horror?
What does it means to celebrate Christmas
in the shadow of the cross?

Blessed are you who believe
that fear and perplexity
do not have the last word,
but that we are even now journeying
further and further into the truth.
Blessed are you who believe
that the horror and suffering
of a world awaiting redemption
cannot completely hide
the joy and beauty of Christmas.
Blessed are you who believe
that the Christ whom we expect,
whom we await
and in whom we rejoice
will visit us in his mercy
and heal our broken world.

Advent 1

Readings: Jeremiah 33: 14-16; 1 Thessalonians 3:12-4:2; Luke 21:25-28, 34-36

Advent is a season of expectation:
a time of expectant preparation

for our celebration of Christ’s birth 2000 years ago,

for the coming of Christ into our lives today,

and for the glorious return of Christ on the last day.

This Sunday our attention is drawn particularly

to Christ’s future coming in glory:

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars,
and on earth nations will be in dismay,
perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves.”

Of course, this year things are a little bit different,

since this year we know that

when the ancient Mayan calendar runs out 

on December 21, 2012,

the end of the world is upon us,

whether it is caused by a black hole eating up the earth

or a collision of the earth with the mysterious planet Nibiru.

And I’ve got to say that knowing this 

certainly simplifies things in my life:

I’ve told my daughter Sophie

to forget about getting those college applications done

and I’m thinking about canceling

the repairs on our leaking roof.

Speculation and prediction about when the world will end

is not really something unique to this year

and to enthusiasts for the Mayan calendar.

Last year the radio preacher Howard Camping

predicted that the world would end on May 21, 2011,

and, when May 21st came and went,

revised that to October 21st.

Prior to that, various groups and individuals

had predicted the end of the world in

1889, 1874, 1844, 1763, 1585, 1533, 1370,

1284, 1260, 1033, 1000, 992, 793, 500.

In fact, I think we can safely presume that pretty much every year

has been a candidate for the world’s end in somebody’s calculation.

I must admit that 

I don’t take end of the world speculations very seriously,

and I suspect this is true of many of you as well.

But a lot of people do, so it is worth asking,

what is it that attracts people to such speculations?

I suppose that we might take a negative attitude toward them

and say that they are an expression of our human desire

for control over our own destinies,

a desire to put God on a timetable 

that we can plan around.

This is certainly part of what is going on,

and it is why the preacher Howard Camping

has recently denounced his own attempts

to predict the date of the world’s end as “sinful.”

But I don’t think such predictions are only

manifestations of a sinful desire for control.

I think that they are also a sign

that one is living one’s life 

in expectant hope of deliverance.

Those who look for this world’s ending

seem to be those who have a profound sense

that something is wrong with this world,

marked as it is by sin and death,

and that we await a deliverer who will set things right,

who will “do what is right and just in the land.”

Perhaps people come up with dates for this world’s end

because they yearn so fervently for a world where,

as our first reading says, we can “dwell secure.”

In other words, 

perhaps those most interested in the world’s end

are those whose lives in this world are most insecure,
whether materially, socially, emotionally or spiritually.

And perhaps people like me,

who tend to dismiss end of the world speculations,

might have something to learn 

from those who take them seriously –

not that the world will end on this or that date,

but the fundamental and undeniable truth

that my life is in fact insecure,

that the life that I have so carefully constructed

could collapse in an instant:

through sickness, unemployment, betrayal or death.

The one thing that does seem secure 

is that my world, my life, will end.

Perhaps what I need to learn is that, 

as Jesus says in today’s Gospel,

my heart has grown drowsy 

with the concerns of everyday life,

so that I overlook 

the fundamental insecurity and fragility

of my very existence,

not to mention the suffering of those

whose lives are far more insecure than mine:

the poor and the dispossessed.

To wake up to this insecurity is also, by God’s grace,  

to awaken to an expectant hope for a savior

in whose love I can dwell secure.

The message of the Gospel

is ultimately not about the insecurity of this life,

but about the security of the love of God

that comes to us in Jesus Christ,

the love that allows us to face life’s insecurities with hope,

knowing our redemption is at every moment at hand.

Because of the love that God has shown us in Jesus

we can look in hope beyond our insecurity,

not to a fixed date on which the world will end,

but to the certain advent in our lives of the God who is love

and whose love will one day be fully manifest in our world.