3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-30; Luke 1:1-4, 4:14-21

Video

“Do not be saddened this day,
for rejoicing in the LORD must be your strength!”
Ezra and Nehemiah speak these words to the Israelites
who have returned to Jerusalem 
after seventy years of exile in Babylon.
Their long-desired return to their homeland
has proved to be not all that they had hoped for:
their society has been shattered by war;
their religious institutions are in shambles.
As they hear the Law of Moses read to them by Ezra,
they are overwhelmed with how far they have fallen
and how distant their daily lives have become
from all that was promised and demanded by God’s covenant.
And so they weep.

I kind of know how they feel.
We have not spent the past seventy years in exile,
but we have spent nearly two years in the grips of a pandemic
that has not only killed over 850,000 people in our country,
but has disrupted daily life and frayed our social fabric,
and has made many of us fearful of the very things
that give joy and color to life: 
travel, concerts, movie-going,
meals shared with family and friends,
and, perhaps most of all, gathering to worship.
Even when we do these things, as many of us do,
we are haunted by a nagging fear 
that perhaps we are being irresponsible,
perhaps we might get infected 
or, even worse,
infect some vulnerable person.
This nagging fear, this colorless grind,
this sorrowful shrinking of life’s horizon
slowly saddens and exhausts us.

But the words spoken to the Israelites
are spoken today to us as well:
“Do not be saddened this day,
for rejoicing in the LORD must be your strength!”
These words are not focused on some day in the future
when outward circumstances will have changed enough
to make joy once again possible.
For the Israelites, it is that very day,
in the midst of their sad circumstances,
on which they are told to rejoice.
Because, even amid their sad circumstances,
God is still God.
God’s word of promise to them stands firm
despite what they see in the world around them.
To believe what you cannot see
is what we call faith;
and so the invitation to let 
rejoicing in the Lord be their strength
is an invitation to faith.

This same invitation is issued by Jesus 
in today’s Gospel reading.
In the synagogue he reads the words of Isaiah,
which speak of “a year acceptable to the Lord”:
the time of glad tidings to the poor,
the time of recovery of sight to the blind,
the time of setting the oppressed free,
the time in which the sorrow that drains 
all the color and joy from life will be banished.
And then, rolling up the scroll, Jesus says:
“Today this Scripture passage 
is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Jesus not only announces 
the drawing near of God’s kingdom,
but offers an invitation to faith,
an invitation to his listeners 
to believe in that kingdom
that their eyes cannot yet see,
an invitation to let rejoicing in the Lord
be their strength.

Jesus not only makes this invitation to others,
but he lives it out himself.
For the strength that sustains Jesus throughout his ministry—
in the face of opposition and misunderstanding,
betrayal and the cross—
is not grim determination, but joy,
the joy of one for whom 
the promises of God are already fulfilled,
one whose mind is saturated with the vision of God.
The Letter to the Hebrews, 
calling Jesus “the leader and perfecter of faith,”
says that he endured the cross and despised its shame,
“for the sake of the joy that lay before him” (Heb. 12:12).
Jesus went to the cross 
not simply out of a sense to duty to his mission
but because rejoicing in the Lord was his strength.

And so, what of us?
Our Scriptures today invite us to look beyond
the narrowed horizon that the past two years
have imposed on our vision,
to not resign ourselves to lives drained of color and joy.
Our Scriptures invite us 
to let rejoicing in the Lord be our strength,
to let the promise of a year acceptable to the Lord
be fulfilled this day in our hearing.
This is not, however, an invitation 
to fantasy and shallow optimism;
it is not an invitation to ignore 
the real challenges we continue to face
or naively believe that we are about 
to turn the corner on the pandemic.
If life has taught me anything
it is that even when we do turn the corner,
as we surely will,
around that corner there will be another pandemic,
or a war or an economic crisis 
or some personal tragedy
or some scandal in the Church.
If life has taught me anything
it is that in our fallen world 
there is always something
that can drain life of joy and color.

This is why our Scriptures bid us 
to rejoice in faith this very day,
why they invite us to see in faith
God’s promise fulfilled on this very day.
Even in our days of sorrow we find strength in rejoicing
for our faith tells us that what we see is not all there is.
It is through the eyes of faith 
that we can see beyond the narrow horizon of now
to the reign of God already becoming present among us;
it is through the eyes of faith 
that small acts of kindness,
small acts of resistance,
small acts of hope
can manifest the time acceptable to the Lord;
it is through the eyes of faith 
that God’s light streams into our souls,
making all that seemed colorless 
to shine with divine glory.

Let us pray that God 
would grant us eyes of faith this very day,
so that rejoicing in the Lord might be our strength,
and God may have mercy on us all.

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

Video

Why are you here?
On a cold winter’s day it is hard to imagine
that you could not have found some excuse 
to stay home rather than drag yourself to church. 
Yet here you are.
What brought you here?
Was it long ingrained habit;
going to church is simply what you do?
Was it fear of committing a mortal sin,
or perhaps a sense of obligation?
Was it perhaps an unnamed and unnamable yearning
to take part in some activity that breaks the spiraling cycle 
of labor and leisure that slowly works its way toward death?

Obviously I can’t ask anyone why they are not here
since…well…they’re not here.
But surveys of those who identify as Catholic 
do give us some idea of what people say
when asked why they no longer go to Mass. 
One survey of young adult Catholics, ages 18-35,
reports that 44% mention the sex abuse scandals,
42% mention the Church’s teachings on human sexuality,
and 33% mention the role of women in the Church.
None of this is particularly surprising,
since these are areas either of notable failure
on the part of Church leaders,
or where Church teachings are most at odds
with contemporary American culture.
And, alas, the number of those who are not here
seems to be growing.

But here’s the thing: 
I suspect that some of you might also feel 
difficulties within yourself 
concerning some Church teachings,
and I suspect almost all of you experience 
disappointment and disgust at the misdeeds
of some among the clergy.
And yet here you are.
Whatever difficulties or disappointments
we may feel with regard to the Church,
something has brought us here.
Maybe it was habit or fear or unnamable yearning,
but I believe that ultimately what has brought us here 
must be some good news 
that we have found here and nowhere else,
some glad tidings that can overcome,
or at least balalnce, 
our disillusionment and doubts
and even our lethargy.

What could that good news be?
Saint Paul proclaims in his letter to Titus:
“The grace of God has appeared, saving all…
The kindness and generous love
of God our savior appeared,
not because of any righteous deeds we had done
but because of his mercy.”
Notice what Paul is saying:
While we might like to think that God loves us 
because of some loveable quality that we possess
or because of some good deed we have done,
the truth is that God loves us
because of a quality that God possesses,
that quality that we call “mercy,”
and because of the great deed God has done,
taking flesh and dwelling among us 
in Jesus the Christ,
so that we might become 
“heirs in hope of eternal life.”

This is the good news,
the glad tidings that we have been celebrating 
in this Christmas season:
God is neither some far-off dictator
issuing our marching orders,
nor some vague gaseous presence
filling the leftover empty spaces of our lives,
but God is one who has become what we are
so that we might become what he is:
partakers of God’s own eternal happiness.
This is the good news that is at the heart
of the story of Jesus’ baptism.
Jesus comes, John the Baptist says,
to baptize us, “with the Holy Spirit and fire,”
to let his love burn away 
all that is frail,
all that is false.
He enters the river Jordan
to sanctify the waters of the earth
so that we might find in them, as St. Paul says,
“the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit,”
so that heaven might be opened to us
and we might hear spoken to us
what Jesus heard spoken to him:
“you are my beloved… with you I am well pleased.”
And all this not because of anything we’ve done,
but simply because of who God is.

And if all of this is not true…
well then who could blame you 
for thinking your time is better spent
staying in your nice warm house.
But if this is true,
then everything changes.
If “the grace of God has appeared, saving all,”
if heaven is opened and the Spirit has descended,
if we are in fact God’s beloved,
then we have been remade,
and the world has been remade,
and nothing is the same.
Our disappointments and disillusion,
our doubts and difficulties
do not magically vanish,
but we can live with them,
we can grapple with them, 
with the glad tidings ringing in our ears:
heaven is open,
the Spirit is poured out,
God is with us,
we are beloved.

Why are we here?
We are here, not to be or do something
that will deserve God’s love,
but simply to let God love us,
to let that love have its way with us,
to let that love transform us.
We are here because love bids us welcome,
and who are we to refuse?

 

Holy Family

Readings: 1 Samuel 1:20-22, 24-28; 1 John 3:1-2, 21-24; Luke 2:41-52

Video

We prayed in our opening prayer

for this feast of the Holy Family,

“that we may imitate them
in practicing the virtues of family life.”
The family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph 
are offered to us as an ideal 
that we are to strive to live up to
and a pattern for us to reproduce 
in our own families.

So, how are you doing?
How well do you think 
you measure up to this ideal?
If you don’t think you’re doing all that well,
it may be that we tend picture the Holy Family 
as toddler Jesus playing happily at the feet of Mary
with his cousin John the Baptist,
always generously sharing his toys;
or as teenage Jesus and Joseph 
working side-by-side in the carpenter’s shop,
Jesus always diligent
and Joseph quietly admiring Jesus’
preternatural skills with saw and lathe.
So when we look at our own toddler 
bopping her brother in the head with a Tonka truck
or get angry with our teenager 
when he seems so slow—not to mention sullen—
in finishing what really is a pretty simple task,
we may think that there is no way
that our own families will ever measure up 
to the shining ideal of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
 
As children we will never match 
Jesus’ amazing obedience and thoughtfulness;
as parents we will never have 
Mary and Joseph’s endless patience and wisdom.
We will never achieve the holiness
of the Holy Family.
But what if we have misunderstood 
what makes the Holy Family holy?
Part of the problem is that we confuse the ideal
that the Holy Family presents to us
with some nostalgic, and largely false, picture
of families from the past—
television images of children and parents 
happily gathered around the family dinner table,
saying please and thank you
and talking about the exploits 
and adventures of the day.
Or perhaps we think 
of the carefully curated pictures 
of familial joy and togetherness 
that people used to include 
in their Christmas cards
and now post year-round on social media.
Do we think of the holiness of the family
of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as something like that:
a holiness that knows no struggle,
knows no sorrow or pain,
no confusion or misunderstanding?
If that is our picture, 
then perhaps we need 
to look more closely at the Scriptures.
 
We need to see Mary, 
the frightened but faithful young girl,
quite unexpectedly pregnant,
who gives birth in a stable
and whose heart will be pierced
by the sword of sorrow.
We need to see Joseph,
the new father who struggles to provide
safety and stability for his family,
who must take them to a distant country
to avoid the threat of violence.
We need to see Jesus,
the baby born in a barn
who becomes the young man 
who senses a call from God 
that his parents struggle to grasp
and who follows a path
that frightens and worries them.

What makes the holy family holy?
It’s not their being some first-century version 
of the twentieth-century television family 
or the twenty-first-century Instagram family.
In our opening prayer, 
we prayed that we might imitate them
not only in the virtues of family life,
but in “the bonds of charity.”
What makes the holy family holy is their love:
the love that makes Mary say “yes” to God,
the love that makes Joseph care for a child not his own,
the love that makes the eternal Son of God 
empty himself and be born among us,
the love that makes him accept death,
even death on a cross,
the love that raises him from the grave.

This is the love that we hear behind Mary’s words:
“Son, why have you done this to us?
Your father and I have been looking for you 
with great anxiety.”
This is the love that is present in Jesus’ reply:
“Why were you looking for me?
Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
This is the love that is present even amid
confusion and misunderstanding,
fear and frustration.
This is the love that makes Jesus who he is.
For while Jesus is who he is from all eternity
because he is the Word 
who is born of the Father before all ages,
in a very real sense he also becomes who he is
by being born in time into a human family,
by advancing “in wisdom and age and favor
before God and man”
within the matrix of love
that is the holiness of the Holy Family.

But what of our families?
What of our families that struggle, not simply
to live up to a television or Instagram ideal,
but sometimes even to love at all?
What of our families, 
where love at times cannot make itself felt
or cannot forgive the harms 
that we have inflicted on one another?
Even then, we can look to the Holy Family.
The Holy family can teach us that love
is not the exclusive property 
of mythical perfect families.
 
The Holy Family can teach us 
that love can be present
even amid anxiety and confusion;
that we can keep loving people
even when we don’t understand them,
or can’t protect and provide for them 
in the way that we would wish.
But above all, 
the Holy Family can teach us
that there is a reservoir of love 
upon which we can draw
when human love runs dry,
a perfect divine love that can heal
the imperfections of our human love:
“See what love the Father has bestowed on us
that we may be called the children of God.
And so we are.”
This is the love that forgives love’s failures,
that sustains us when the harms we cause
obscure the love we feel.
This is the love that makes us by grace
what Christ is by nature,
children of God,
treasured by God from all eternity. 

May we know such love 
in these days of Christmas,
may we know it in our hearts,
in our families,
and in our world.
And may God have mercy on us all. 

Advent 4

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

Video

Writing shortly before the time of Jesus 
the Roman poet Ovid said,
“Women’s words are as light 
as the doomed leaves whirling in autumn; 
easily swept by the wind, 
easily drowned by the wave” (The Loves bk II).
Alas, Ovid’s opinion of women’s words
was not unusual in the ancient world.
Women’s words were thought trivial, 
unserious and flighty,
unsuited to weighty matters.

But in a world that largely discounted 
the words of women 
as weightless and windswept, 
we hear in today’s Gospel reading 
words spoken between women 
on weighty matters—
the prophetic words of Elizabeth 
speaking of the divine Word
who waits in Mary’s womb:
“Blessed are you among women, 
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”
Her words are indeed windswept,
but it is the breath of the Spirit 
that sends them whirling.

Of course, the weight of Elizabeth’s words
count as nothing compared to Mary’s words
spoken earlier to the angel: “Be it done to me
according to your word.”
On these words hangs the hope of the world.
Perhaps no greater words have ever
been spoken by a human person,
for they are the doorway through which
God’s Word made flesh,
the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb, 
enters into our sorrowing, sin-sick world.
Truly blessed is she who believed.

We should not be surprised, however, 
that the Gospel would give 

such weight to women’s words.
After all, what do we celebrate at Christmas
if not God’s preference for those things
that the world counts as of little weight?
Think of the words of the prophet Micah,
which we have just heard:
“You, Bethlehem-Ephrathah
too small to be among the clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
one who is to be ruler in Israel.”
It’s just so typical of the God of Israel,
always preferring the underdog.
God chose David, 
the puniest among his brothers,
from the little town of Bethlehem
(which is simply a polite way 
of saying “nowheresville”),
to be Israel’s anointed ruler.
And now, the prophet Micah foretells,
God is going to do it again;
God will send a new anointed one,
and this ruler whose reign  
“shall reach to the ends of the earth”
is going to come from,
you guessed it,
the little town of Bethlehem,
“too small to be among the clans of Judah.”

What we will celebrate at Christmas 
is the great mystery of redemption:
the almighty Lord of the universe,
creator of all things visible and invisible,
chooses to be with us
not as a king,
not as a general,
not as a scholar
from whom we expect weighty words,
but as a speechless child from nowheresville,
as a wandering rabbi whose followers
are a bunch of scruffy ignoramuses,
as a convicted blasphemer and revolutionary
tortured to death on a Roman cross.
If this is who God is,
if this is how the Word takes flesh 
and dwells among us,
then of course his arrival is announced
by those whose words were counted
as of little weight,
of course it is an insignificant old woman
through whom the Spirit speaks,
of course it is the word of one young girl
upon which our hopes hang.

And if this is who God is,
then who should we be?
If this is how the eternal Word is spoken,
then how should we listen?
Whose words do I think of
as words of little weight?
Who do I think could not possibly 
say something I needed to hear?
Someone of a different political party?
Someone of a different social class?
Someone of a different race?
Someone of a different religion?
How do we learn to listen
and weigh the words
of those we may have written off?

This fall the Church has embarked
on a worldwide synod, which will offer us, 
as Pope Francis said in his opening address,
“the opportunity to become a listening Church….
To listen to the Spirit in adoration and prayer….
To listen to our brothers and sisters speak 
of their hopes and of the crises of faith 
present in different parts of the world.”
Sometimes we might feel that in the Church
our voices have little weight
and our concerns go unheard;
the synod is an attempt to remedy that.
For our part, here at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen,
we will be holding listening sessions in late January
so that our parishioners can have an opportunity
to speak of their joys and hopes,
their sorrows and anxieties,
which will eventually be reported
to the bishops meeting in Rome.
But these sessions will be more 
than an opportunity to speak;
they will also be a chance to learn to listen,
to hear the diversity of voices 
that make up our community,
to hear what others love about our faith
and to hear what causes them pain.
You can sign up on our website,
but even if you don’t sign up
you can simply show up.

During this time of listening
we need the help of God’s Spirit
to open our ears to hear those 
whose words we may have thought weightless.
And so the Church encourages us
to pray the prayer that began
each session of the Second Vatican Council:

We stand before You, Holy Spirit, 
as we gather together in Your name. 
With You alone to guide us, 
make Yourself at home in our hearts; 
Teach us the way we must go 
and how we are to pursue it. 
We are weak and sinful; 
do not let us promote disorder. 
Do not let ignorance 
lead us down the wrong path 
nor partiality influence our actions. 
Let us find in You our unity 
so that we may journey together to eternal life 
and not stray from the way of truth 
and what is right. 
All this we ask of You, 
who are at work in every place and time, 
in the communion of the Father and the Son, 
forever and ever. Amen.

 

Anniversary of the Dedication of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen

Readings: 1 Kings 8:2-23, 27-30; Ephesians 2:19-22; John 2:13-22

Video

In his book Confessions, 
as a prelude to his account of his own conversion,
St. Augustine tells the story of Victorinus,
a prominent Roman philosopher of his day—
a pagan who, through reading the Scriptures 
and other Christian writings,
became convinced of the truth of Christianity.
When he said in private to a Christian friend,
“Did you know that I am already a Christian,”
this friend replied, “I shall not believe that
or count you among the Christians
unless I see you in the Church of Christ.”
To this Victorinus responded, jokingly,
“Then do walls make Christians?”
Augustine notes that, despite his joking tone, 
Victorinus’s question was motivated by fear 
that if he openly professed his faith
and stood publicly within the walls of the Church
he would be scorned by his pagan friends
who had hitherto held him in such esteem.

As time passed, however,
Victorinus felt a growing longing to be within the Church,
to abandon his pride and receive the sacraments,
which Augustine calls 
“the mysteries of the humility of your Word,”
signs of God coming to dwell with us.
The priests offered to let him be baptized privately,
to preserve his dignity and reputation,
but Victorinus said “no,”
that he wanted to be baptized 
with all the rest at the Easter Vigil.
When the day came, 
and Victorinus stood up within the walls of the cathedral
and the assembled congregation saw this famous philosopher
publicly proclaiming his Christian faith,
a murmur of excited whispers 
went through the crowd: “Victorinus! Victorinus!”
Augustine writes, “all of them wanted
to clasp him to their hearts,
and the hands with which they embraced him
were their love and their joy” (Conf. 8.2.4-5).

Do walls make Christians?
Victorinus’s question remains a question worth asking 
as we celebrate the anniversary of 
the dedication of this cathedral in 1959.
And the answer is…well…yes and no.

No, walls do not make Christians
because the God whom Christians worship 
cannot be contained within walls of stone.
King Solomon, 
who built the first Temple in Jerusalem,
says in our first reading that the God of Israel 
is unlike other gods
because neither the earth 
nor the heavens that he created 
can contain him,
much less a temple built by a human being.
Jesus makes an even more startling claim:
the true Temple, the true dwelling place of God on earth,
is not a building, but a person: Jesus himself.
God is to be found in him,
not within the walls of any building.
And Paul, writing to the Ephesians, tells us
it is the Christian community,
Christ’s body joined to its head,
that is a temple sacred to the Lord,
a temple built of living stones
in which God’s Spirit dwells,
a holy place constructed from holy lives.

So, no, walls do not make Christians;
Christians can worship God in spirit and in truth
without the benefit of walls,
much less stained glass and stone carvings,
marble altars and votive lights.
Christians can worship God wherever Christ is,
and Christ is wherever his body the Church 
gathers in communion with him, its risen head.

But also, yes, walls do make Christians.
Or at least, a Christian who seeks to be 
a living stone in the temple of Christ’s body
must be a part of an actual community 
that gathers at a particular time and in a particular place.
Walls, strictly speaking, are optional.
But what Victorinus discovered is that
what is not optional is gathering together to listen to God’s word
and to celebrate the sacramental mysteries of God’s humility
in coming to dwell among us in Jesus crucified and risen.
What is not optional is being part of a community of worship,
a community that can both challenge and embrace us
as the Christians of Rome embraced Victorinus,
clasping him to their hearts with hands of joy and love,
no longer a stranger and sojourner,
but a fellow member of the household of God.
What is not optional is letting the stories of our lives,
as diverse and varied as they are,
be fitted together into a dwelling place for the Spirit
with Christ as our head and cornerstone.

And experience tells us that the physical spaces
in which the living temple of Christ’s body gathers
do take on a kind of reflected holiness.
Walls may not make Christians,
but the walls within which Christians worship
serve as an outward and visible sign 
of the presence of the Church
and therefore of the presence of the Spirit 
who dwells within God’s holy people.
This is why we try to make out church buildings beautiful,
to point to the deep mystery of God’s presence
that is enacted within them in word and sacrament.
This is why we seek to make them oases of calm and beauty
in a world that can at times get very noisy and ugly.
This is why we fill them with images 
of the living stones of the past,
the saints who now worship God eternally in heaven.

But the real beauty of our churches comes
from the thousand of prayers 
that have been prayed in them:
the cries and pleas for divine mercy 
that have be uttered,
the words of praise and adoration
that have been offered,
the sacramental mysteries of our salvation 
that have been celebrated.
These prayers have saturated these walls for decades
and made them holy.

Do walls make Christians?
No, God’s Spirit makes Christians.
But those Christians make places in which to gather
and the Spirit who prays within them 
hallows those places
and makes them a home 
in which God’s household can dwell.
So it is right and just that we 
should celebrate today 
this house of prayer that is our home,
and call to mind all those faithful people,
past and still to come,
who have found in it
a place of prayer and adoration,
a place where God’s grace 
has been given and received,
a place of living stones 
where God’s holy people can be found.
May God have mercy on us all.

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Kings 17:10-16; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44

In today’s Gospel Jesus says 
to beware of religious leaders 
who go around in long robes
and recite long prayers
and sit in places of honor
in houses of worship.

I hope you will listen to me anyway.

The contrast Jesus draws between the poor widow,
who gives everything she has, little as it is, 
and those rich people who give much more
but still remain wealthy,
is a familiar one.
But sometimes we miss the fact that this story
is something of a two-edged sword.

On the one hand, 
Christians have traditionally heard in Jesus’ words
implicit praise for the widow’s sacrifice,
which in its unrestricted generosity
mirrors Jesus’ own gift of himself 
for the life of the world:
what counts is not how much you give
but the fact that you give your all.
And this is certainly true:
Christ calls his followers to give their all
for the sake of his kingdom,
to follow him on the way of the cross.

On the other hand,
we might notice that Jesus 
does not draw the widow to our attention
to praise her generosity 
but to drive home his denunciation 
of the Temple scribes who,
as he puts it, “devour the houses of widows.”
In giving all she has in paying the Temple tax,
the widow’s life and livelihood are 
consumed by the Temple leaders.
Jesus seems to be pointing her out as an example
of how the greedy scribes use religious duty
as a pretext to take from the poor
everything that they possess
in order to enrich themselves
and enhance their status.
This incident is therefore at least as much 
a denunciation of religious corruption
as it is a call to imitate the widow’s generosity.

I don’t think we have to choose 
between these options.
We can both praise the widow 
and denounce the scribes;
we can both value someone’s religious devotion
while criticizing their corrupt religious leaders.

This is important because our world is, alas,
not all that different from Jesus’ world.
In our own day, corruption often lurks 
within our religious institutions 
and evil hides behind the mask 
of piety and clerical privilege:
the long robes and long prayers
and the seats of honor in holy places.
We see it in our own house,
in the sexual abuse catastrophe
that over the past twenty years has laid bare
the ways in which some of our religious leaders
have committed heinous acts
behind the façade of holiness
or have hidden and enabled such act
in the name of protecting 
the Church’s reputation.
The corruption Jesus denounces,
which consumes the lives 
of the weak and defenseless,
is something that is all too with us.

What comfort can the Gospel offer
in the face of such a realities?
There are at least two things 
that we should keep in mind.

First, Jesus is on the side 
of people like the widow—
the poor and defenseless
who are constantly at risk 
of abuse and exploitation—
and not on the side of guys like me
with our long robes and long prayers
and our seats of honor in holy places.
Or, rather, he is only on the side 
of guys like me
to the extent that I am on the side 
of people like the widow.
When the final day of judgment comes
I will not be asked 
“did you defend the reputation of the Church?”
but “did you comfort the afflicted?”
“did you speak up for the voiceless?”
“did you bear witness to my healing love?”
It is true that the Church has taken significant steps
to correct past evils and avoid future ones,
and we should not be afraid to point this out.
But we should not let our desire to tell this truth
ever obscure the deeper truth
that Jesus is on the side of the victims
and of those who stand with them;
that they matter to him far more
than the reputation of the Church.

Second, because Jesus is on the side of victims
he will not allow the corruption
of religious leaders and institutions
to deprive the people of God of his grace.
It is long-standing Catholic teaching,
stretching back at least to St. Augustine,
that the sins of the Church’s ministers
cannot keep God from working 
through the Church and her sacraments.
As Augustine puts it: 
“The spiritual power of the sacrament 
is indeed comparable to light:  
those to be enlightened receive it in its purity, 
and if it should pass through defiled beings, 
it is not itself defiled” (In Joannis 5.15).
The Temple remained God’s house
despite the defiling corruption of its scribes,
and the generosity of the widow
remained worthy of reward
even if it was exploited.
So too for us the grace of the sacraments 
retains its purity and remains effective 
even if it is a sinner who administers them,
provided it falls on good ground in our hearts.
In the mystery of God’s mercy
Christ our great high priest makes use 

of fallible, frail, and even wicked ministers
as instruments of salvation
whose flaws cannot finally thwart God’s power.

God has willed that on the last day
the Church will be his spotless bride:
a Church whose leaders are humble
and do not exploit the weak and defenseless,
a Church whose ministers’ lives reflect the purity
of the sacraments they administer.
But it should be clear to anyone 
with eyes to see and ears to hear
that we are not there yet.
But it is our faith that,
as we journey toward God’s kingdom,
Christ journeys with us still,
present in his word and sacraments,
humbling the proud,
consoling the sorrowful,
healing the wounded,
ever-faithful even when we are faithless.
This should make us hopeful
even as it makes us humble,
and it should inspire us to pray more fervently
that God would have mercy on us all.

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Jeremiah 31:7-9; Hebrews 5:1-6; Mark 10:46-52

VIDEO

“Master, I want to see.”

The beggar Bartimaeus wants so badly to see
that even when people are shushing him
he continues to cry out:
“Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.”
He wants so badly to see
that the minute he hears 
that Jesus is calling him 
he leaps up and, 
leaving behind the cloak 
that is likely his only possession,
he runs, heedless 
of the unseen obstacles in his way.
Bartimaeus wants so badly 
to be cured of his blindness,
which has consigned him to a life of poverty,
begging by the roadside,
that when Jesus asks him,
“What do you want me to do for you?”
he does not hesitate: “Master, I want to see.”

He asks for physical healing,
but his words speak of even deeper desires.
I want to see not simply the world as it is,
but the world as it could be.
I want to see the salvation 
of which the prophet Jeremiah spoke:
the great throng returning 
to the land of promise—
the blind and the lame,
the mother and the child,
those who left weeping
but now return consoled.
I want to see 
all that is scattered made one,
all that is broken made whole,
all that is sorrowing made joyful.
I want to see hatred vanquished,
selfishness shamed,
fear put to flight.

Bartimaeus longs to see fulfilled
the promises of God to his people Israel.
But most of all, he wants to see Jesus,
for he already senses
that Jesus is “the Son of David,”
God’s anointed savior,
in whom the hopes of humanity 
have taken concrete form,
the one who comes to heal 
the ancient curse of sin and death.
He feels this in his bones,
but he wants to see it with his eyes—
not just with his physical eyes,
but with the eyes of faith,
the faith heals both body and soul.

Master, I want to see you,
for you are the light 
that lights up the world
and keeps the dark at bay.
I want to see you,
for you are my true homeland,
you are the eternity for which 
my time-weary soul is thirsting.

I want to see you,
but I am a blind beggar,
sitting alone beside the way 
on which you pass.
I cry out again and again,
“Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.”
Have pity, for my sins 
have dimmed the light of my eyes
and darkness is all around me.
Have pity, for the dark terrifies me.
Master, give me the light of your glory
in which I might see you.
Give me the gift of your Holy Spirit,
who promises wisdom and understanding, 
counsel and fortitude, 
knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.
Let your Spirit’s light guide me
so that I may no longer 
stumble unseeing through life.
Let the Spirit’s fire dazzle my eyes
and make my heart pure so I may see you.

His eyes healed and his soul given light,
Bartimaeus now follows Jesus on the way.
He joins Jesus on the journey to Jerusalem,
the city whose name in Hebrew 
means “vision of peace.”
He joins Jesus on the way that leads 
through suffering and death to resurrection,
to that heavenly city whose light is the Lamb,
where God “will wipe every tear from their eyes, 
and there shall be no more 
death or mourning, 
wailing or pain.”

In our Catholic tradition we speak of
the ultimate fulfillment promised us by God
as the visio beatifica—
the “beatific vision”—
which we might also translate as
“the seeing that makes us blessed”
or “the beholding that itself is bliss.”
Saint Paul writes to the Corinthians,
“At present we see indistinctly, 
as in a mirror, 
but then face to face.
At present I know partially; 
then I shall know fully, 
as I am fully known.”
The fulfillment for which we long
is to know the depths of God,
to know the divine dance of love
that is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
and in knowing the depths of God
to truly know ourselves for the first time
by seeing ourselves as God sees us,
artifacts of eternal love.

Master, I want to see.
I want to see with the eyes of faith,
the faith that weds my soul to you.
I want the bridal veil to be lifted
so that my soul can behold 
its beloved face to face
and see itself 

through your eyes of love.

Jesus, Son of David, have pity on us all.
In your mercy, let us see your face.

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Wisdom 7:7-11; Psalm 90:12-17; Hebrews 4:12-13; Mark 10:17-30

We hear in today’s responsorial psalm,
“Teach us to number our days aright,

that we may gain wisdom of heart.”
Presumably this means wisdom has to do
with counting the days of our life correctly,
with neither overestimating nor underestimating them.
So I checked.
The average life-expectancy of a male in the U.S.
is 78.79 years.
By my calculation I am currently about 60.06 years old,
which means that I can number my remaining days
at 18.73 years, or 6836.45 days—
though that’s not counting leaps years,
which I think will get me an extra four days,
for a grand total of 6840.45 days.
More or less.

It’s the “more or less” that is the problem.
Because averages presume
that some people live much longer lives
and others live much shorter.
I could live into my nineties, like my father has,
giving me an extra 4500 or so days,
or I could get run over in the parking lot after Mass today,
making my allotted days considerably fewer.
So as I strive to number my remaining days, 
I’m stuck with a figure somewhere between 
11,340.45 and zero.

“Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain wisdom of heart.”
But how can I number my days 
amid so much uncertainty?
Should I spend my days 
taking every possible precaution 
to mitigate that uncertainty?
Should I plan and stockpile to make sure 
that my future is as secure as possible?
But experience tells us that the only certain thing 
is that no amount of planning and stockpiling
can eliminate uncertainty.

Perhaps the only way to number our days aright 
is not to number them at all,
but to accept and embrace the truth
that however much we might try 
to calculate and mitigate risk,
however many resources we store up 
against future calamity,
the future is unknown and uncertain.
Our calculations are always off,
our stores of wealth are subject 
to decay and corruption.
As the hymn writer Isaac Watts put it,
in a paraphrase of today’s psalm, 
“Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.”
We know not the number of our days.
But the truly wise heart knows
that all that we have amassed and accumulated
to hold back time’s ever-rolling stream
will one day be reduced to dust.
That fine house, 
that beautiful car,
that stock portfolio,
that power and influence and reputation—
they will all one day be gone.
It may be 11,340.45 days from now,
or it may be this very day,
but the truly wise heart knows
that the day will come.
And if we wish not to vanish with them
then we must place our hope not in passing things
but in the life offered to us by the one who is eternal.

In today’s Gospel 
Jesus is questioned by a rich man
about what he must do to inherit eternal life.
After the man assures him 
that he has kept all the commandments,
Jesus tells him, “Go, sell what you have, 
and give to the poor
and you will have treasure in heaven; 
then come, follow me.”
Jesus knows that what this man lacks
is in fact the only thing necessary:
to learn to number his days aright
so that he may gain wisdom of heart,
to place his hope not in his wealth, 
but in Jesus, in whom is found
the depth of the riches
of the wisdom and knowledge of God.

For the rich man to number his days aright
is for him to recognize that it does not matter
whether the days that lie ahead of him 
number 11,340.45 or zero,
for the only day that matters is this day,
the day on which he meets Jesus, 
who speaks to him the words,
“come, follow me”:
follow me on the journey 
from this world of anxious uncertainty,
this world of decay and death,
into the world of life eternal.

We are told that the man,
“went away sad, 
for he had many possessions.”
He went away sad 
because all that he had amassed
in his futile quest to hold at bay
time’s ever-rolling stream
now stood in his way 
like an insurmountable obstacle
blocking his path on the journey to eternity.
“How hard it is for those who have wealth
to enter the kingdom of God!”

“Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain wisdom of heart.”
Teach us, Lord, that our days may be few or many,
but that the only day that matters is this day,
for this is the day that Jesus stands before us
and says, “come, follow me.”
Teach us, Lord, to know what is
the one thing necessary,
to not let fear of loss 
of wealth or power or reputation
keep us from answering your call.
Teach us, Lord, to trust 
that with you all things are possible,
that through your grace even we,
weak and frightened and clinging to this life,
can become sons and daughters of God,
and heirs with you to eternal life.
May God’s grace grant to us 
true wisdom of heart,
and may God have mercy on us all.

 

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Number 11:25-29; James 5:1-6; Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48

The letter of James is pretty scathing
when it comes to the rich.
“You have lived on earth in luxury and pleasure;
you have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter.”
A day of judgment is coming, and the rich are invited
to weep and wail over their impending miseries,
when their fine clothes will be in tatters
and their silver and gold corroded.
All that they trusted in,
all their wealth and power,
which had been gained through exploitation 
of the poor and the weak,
will be a testimony against them
and will devour their flesh like fire.

Boy, those rich sound like terrible people,
and their fate equally terrible.
I’m glad I’m not one of them.
Or am I?
I tell myself that I’m not rich,
that I am only “comfortable,”
while ignoring the fact that my standard of comfort
includes two cars, regular meals out, 
and numerous video streaming services to entertain me—
all luxuries by the standards of 99% of the world.
Could these words actually be addressed to me?
Is my heart the one being fattened for the day of slaughter?
The temptation to hear these words as addressed to others, 
and our difficulty in hearing them as addressed to ourselves,
is actually pretty typical.
We human beings can often direct our critical eye 
outward rather than inward.
 
But today’s Gospel reading suggests the opposite:
that I should be generous in my judgment of others,
whose hearts I cannot know, 
and strict in my judgment of myself,
whose heart I do know.

The disciples object when a stranger,
someone from outside their circle,
begins performing exorcisms in the name of Jesus.
We are not told who this person is
or where he got the idea of doing such a thing.
But the disciples are appalled at the temerity of someone
who would do a good deed in the name of Jesus
without being part of their group.
Perhaps the disciples are suspicious of this person’s motives
or his sincerity in using the holy name of Jesus.
But Jesus seems quite generous 
in assessing his motives:
“whoever is not against us is for us.”
Jesus knows, of course,
that it is possible for people to be deceptive—
to appear to be doing good 
when they are in fact doing evil.
But he wants us to see 
that we put ourselves in considerable peril
when we take up the role of judging others,
for the hearts of others are hidden from us,
and we should presume that God’s Spirit is at work
in the most unlikely people and places.

But after Jesus calls us to forbearance in judging others,
he then commends stringent self-judgment.
We cannot see into the hearts of others,
but we can see into our own hearts,
we can see how they have fed on sin,
fattening themselves for the day of judgment.
We are to examine our own lives,
and whatever causes us to sin,
whatever causes us to separate ourselves from God,
we should cut off or pluck out,
even if it is a hand or a foot or an eye.
Of course, it is usually not your hand or foot or eye
that causes you to sin—
that would be a comparatively simple problem,
easily, if painfully, solve with a sharp knife.
It is our twisted wills and ungoverned passions
that cause us to sin,
and these are not so easily dealt with
as a hand or foot or eye.
These are remedied only by long 
and often painful spiritual therapies
of honest self-examination and confession
by which they are excised from our souls.
And the cost to us if we fail to do so
is exclusion from God’s kingdom,
and an eternity in that place,
“where ‘their worm does not die, 
and the fire is not quenched.’”

This is terrifying stuff.
This may be why most of us think of hell, 
if we think of it at all,
as a place for other people to go:
the Hitlers and the Stalins and the Pol Pots.
But Jesus speaks here of Hell as a possibility 
that we should contemplate for ourselves,
as a possible fate for our sin-fattened hearts,
the hearts whose gluttony for vice
we know only too well.
 
Perhaps it is because the truth of our own sin
is so fearful to contemplate
that we project our judgment outward onto others,
terrified at what we might find
if we look into ourselves.
But fear cannot have the final say,
for the Gospel is ultimately a word of hope,
not a word of fear.
Jesus’ call to self-scrutiny and conversion
is not a call to beat yourself up.
It is a call for hopeful honesty.
For an honest acknowledgement of our sins,
joined to the practice 
of generosity and charity toward others,
can serve as the therapy needed to heal our souls.
If we can learn to see in others
the new creation that grace brings about,
if we can learn to see the Spirit’s work
in the most unlikely of people and places,
then we can find hope for ourselves as well.
If we can come to see in God 
a boundless love and generosity toward others,
then we can see that same love and generosity
as something given us as well,
sinners though we are. 

May God who is merciful
have mercy on us all,
even on me, 
a sinner most in need of his mercy.

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

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

On this Catechetical Sunday, 
when we are also celebrating a baptism,
it is probably good to ask,
what point Jesus is making in today’s Gospel
when he places a child in the midst of his disciples.
Is he simply using the child as an example
of someone without power or status, 
in order to shame his disciples,
whom he has caught red-handed 
discussing who is greatest?
Mark’s Gospel is well known 
for portraying the disciples of Jesus 
as stunningly dense,
and this seems no exception:
their conversation is somewhat ridiculous.
It is not like they are jockeying for position
within the Roman colonial government
or within the religious establishment
that ruled the city of Jerusalem.
Did anyone really care about who was number one
in the scruffy dozen who followed Jesus around Galilee?
Perhaps, having heard reports of Jesus’ transfiguration, 
the disciples are hoping to get in 
on the ground floor of the next big thing;
or maybe it is simply an example of how 
it is in the smallest and most insignificant groups 
that the power struggles are most vicious.
 
So is Jesus simply saying, “Woah! 
Slow your roll there, fellas.
Don’t get ahead of yourselves,
thinking you are more important than this child.”
He does, after all, say,
“If anyone wishes to be first,
he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”
And this certainly resonates with the view
expressed in the letter of James:
“Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist,
there is disorder and every foul practice.”

But I think there is something more going on
than Jesus simply using a child to point out
the selfish ambitions of his disciples.
As he is always doing,
Jesus is pointing us to the kingdom of God
that his words and deeds make powerfully present. 
He is, as always, trying to show us
that the reign of God arrives in a way
that turns the ordinary course of events upside down,
and turns our lives upside down along with them.
If you want to know what it is like to welcome God’s reign
think about what it means to welcome a child.

Think of what welcoming a child means for parents.
It is giddy excitement at each new milestone
combined with bone-crushing weariness at each new demand;
it is the joy of a love deeper than any you ever thought possible
combined with a new-found fragility 
in a heart always on the verge of breaking;
it is a constant stream of insight gained by seeing the world
through the eyes of someone for whom everything is new
combined with an exhausting stream of questions 
that you are expected to answer.

We might also think of what it means
to welcome a child into a community, like a parish.
It means having your most solemn moments
punctuated by noisy, rambunctious behavior
that deflates all pomposity;
it means having to revise your agenda 
to accommodate those with a different agenda;
it means having to reflect on and grasp anew
your beliefs and traditions
in order to satisfy the questions of those
who won’t accept “just because” for an answer.

In welcoming a child,
we are welcoming a disruptive presence
that makes us realize how little we actually know
and how much we have yet to learn.
We are welcoming someone who might make us
change the way we have always done things.
We are welcoming a future 
that we cannot anticipate or control.
Welcoming a child is a lot like welcoming Jesus,
who comes to disrupt and change our lives
and point us to a future beyond our imagining.

But Jesus is not simply saying that welcoming a child
is like welcoming him,
is like welcoming the one who sent him;
he say that to welcome a child is to welcome him,
it is to welcome the one who sent him.
And here we enter into something deeply mysterious:
Jesus tells us that he has joined himself to the human race 
in such a way that whatever we do for the least
we do for him.
Jesus lodges himself in places most unlikely
for one who is the king of kings.
He joins himself to the weak and defenseless
so that he can receive our love and compassion.
And who is weaker and more defenseless than a child?

This is one reason why we baptize children.
This is why we are baptizing Felix this morning.
Sacraments are signs that bring about what they signify,
and in the baptism of a child we see enacted
the desire of the eternal God who creates the universe
to lodge within the most unlikely of places.
We believe that in baptism the God who took flesh in Jesus
will, through the grace of this sacrament, dwell in Felix,
not because he has earned it 
by attaining some standard of human greatness,
but because that’s just who God is
and that is how God wants to be present among us.
And this should give each of us hope
that God can also dwell in us.

So let us pray that we as a Church 
will always welcome and honor and protect
those children entrusted to us,
because in receiving them
we receive the real presence of Christ in our midst.
And let us pray that God who is merciful
would have mercy on us all.