Lent 4

Readings: 1 Samuel 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41

VIDEO

In our Gospel today there seem to be 
a lot of people who just do not get 
what is really going on.
The disciples ask a question about sin
that appears to be completely off-track;
the blindman’s neighbors get into a debate
about whether it is really the same person 
who was blind but now can see;
and the Pharisees ignore the healing 
so they can accuse Jesus of breaking the Sabbath.
All of those who think that they can see
seem to be unable to figure out 
what is happening before their eyes.
They see a blindman, 
and ask the wrong question;
they see a healed man, 
and launch into a pointless debate;
they see the Word of God at work, 
and accuse him of sin.
They think they can see, 
but the light of the world
is darkness to them.

All of this is only to be expected
in the world of John’s Gospel.
John tells story after story 
about people being clueless,
not getting the point,
misunderstanding Jesus.
Nicodemus doesn’t understand 
what Jesus means by being “born from above”;
the woman at the well doesn’t understand
what Jesus means by “living water”;
the crowd doesn’t understand
what Jesus means by “bread from heaven.”
At every turn, Jesus is misunderstood.

But John warns us about this from the outset.
He writes in his very first chapter,
in the opening verses of his Gospel:
“the light shines in the darkness, 
and the darkness… auto ou katelaben.”
Now, this Greek phrase might be translated,
as our lectionary does,
“has not overcome it,”
and this is quite correct,
both linguistically and theologically:
the darkness does not overcome the light
that shines forth in Christ.
But the phrase can also be translated
as “has not comprehended it”
or maybe “has not grasped it,”
and this too is quite correct,
both linguistically and theologically:
the darkness does not grasp the light,
the darkness does not get it.
In his typically ironic fashion,
John is saying two things at once:
the light cannot be overcome by darkness
because darkness cannot comprehend the light.

Those who fail to understand Jesus
show themselves to be in darkness.
And to grasp fully who Jesus is, 
and the truth of what he says and does,
is to pass, like the man born blind,
from darkness to light.
It is to seek to see, 
not as human beings do,
judging by appearance,
but as God sees,
looking into the heart.
It is to live as a child of light,
producing “every kind of goodness
and righteousness and truth.”

But there can be a temptation for us here.
We can be tempted to think 
that the world divides up neatly
into light and darkness.
We can be tempted to think that we 
who have been marked with the waters of baptism,
who profess Jesus as the world’s Lord and light,
and who come faithfully to church on Sunday,
must surely be standing fully on the side of light, 
must surely be seeing as God sees,
must surely be living as children of light.
Surely we must be the ones who comprehend the light,
the ones who get what is really going on.

The season of Lent, however, 
tells us something different,
for Lent reminds us of our own blindness.
The annual return 
of this season of repentance and conversion
tells us that, in this life, we never grasp fully
the light that has come into the world.
Our lives are punctuated each year
by the call to turn away from sin 
and believe in the Gospel.
Our lives are punctuated each week
by our confession that we have sinned
through our own deliberate fault.
Our lives are punctuated each day
by our prayer that God 
would forgive us our trespasses.
Lent reminds us 
that the line between darkness and light
lies not outside us but within us,
that even we who have truly 
become light in the Lord
must hear again the call:
“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will give you light.”

“I came into this world for judgment,
so that those who do not see might see,
and those who do see might become blind.”
Jesus comes as the light of the world
to illuminate the dark corners of our hearts,
so that the truth might be manifest,
and all our masks and pretenses be stripped away.
To see this light is both 
to be dazzled by its brilliance
and to comprehend our own blindness.
It is to see that we ourselves are often
those who just don’t get what is really going on:
who ask the wrong questions,
who engage in pointless debates,
who accuse others of sin.
But it is also to see the possibility of joy,
for it is to see that our darkness 
cannot overcome that light—
that even if we cannot grasp it,
it has grasped us,
and it will not let us go
until the last dark corner of our soul
is flooded with the light of glory.
May these remaining days of Lent
be for us ones of light and joy in the Lord
and may God have mercy on us all.

 

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Sirach 15: 15-20; 1 Corinthians 2:6-10; Matthew 5:17-37

VIDEO

“What matters in the end
is not what you do
but what is in your heart.”
That sounds nice, doesn’t it?
It suggests that God 
is not concerned
with our obeying God’s Law,
as the scribes and Pharisees 
seem to have thought,
but with our intentions.
God will not judge me
on the basis of what I have done
and what I have failed to do—
through my fault,
through my fault,
through my most grievous fault—
but on what I intended to do,
what I hoped to do,
what I wanted to do.
And the message of our Gospel today
suggests that this is, in fact, the case.
What matters is not what you do
but what is in your heart.

But here’s the bad news:
Have you looked into your heart lately?
Have you seen what’s in there?
Have you tried to do something about it?
It turns out, it is a lot easier 
to control your actions
than to control your heart.
Despite our moral struggles,
most of us manage to avoid 
committing murder or adultery.
But how many of us 
avoid anger or lust?
How many of us have souls
that are free of jealousy and irritation
and prejudice and greed
and pride and pettiness?
Even if we want to be free of these things,
they seem firmly lodged within us.
What matters is what is in our hearts,
but what is in our hearts can be pretty ugly
and seems pretty much beyond our control.

What matters is what is in our hearts
because it is our souls, not our bodies,
that lie at the root of our failure
to live as God would have us live.
St. Augustine criticized those Greek philosophers
who held that it was the body that corrupted the soul.
In fact, he said, the opposite is true:
“it was not the corruptible flesh
that made the soul sinful,
but the sinful soul
that made the flesh corruptible (Civ. Dei 14.3).
It is the soul that turns us from God,
the source of all life,
and toward ourselves;
it is the soul and its passions
that lead the body into acts of anger and lust,
that lead our hands to steal,
our ears to listen gladly to gossip,
our mouths to speak lies
or words of cruelty.
Jesus says, to have righteousness 
that surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees,
and so enter the kingdom of heaven,
it is not enough to present 
an outward appearance of goodness;
we must possess a goodness that goes
all the way down.
Paul tells us that “the Spirit 
scrutinizes everything, 
even the depths of God.”
And if the Holy Spirit can scrutinize the depths of God,
surely the Spirit can scrutinize the depths of my soul.
I may fool some people with my pious actions,
but I cannot fool the Spirit of God,
who sees into my heart.

This all seems like pretty bad news.
But here is the good news:
the Spirit scrutinizes 
not in order to condemn,
but in order to convert.
The Spirit’s comes into our hearts
to teach us the hidden wisdom of God,
the wisdom that we must have 
in order to choose life over death,
good over evil,
to enter the kingdom of heaven.
The Spirit dwelling within us 
is the New Law that teaches us
how to walk in the ways of God
not only in our outward actions
but in the depths of our soul.

But if this is so,
if we have received God’s Spirit,
why is it that our hearts are still beset
by anger and lust,
by jealousy and irritation,
by prejudice and greed?
What is the Spirit waiting for?
Why is the Spirit so slow?

Perhaps the Spirit works slowly
because the human heart is a delicate thing.
In theory the Spirit could convert us
in the blink of an eye,
cracking open our stony hearts,
rooting out our anger, 
lopping off our lust.
And people do sometimes undergo
dramatic interior conversions.
But in many hearts 
the weeds grow amid the wheat,
the evil is entwined with the good,
and so the Spirit works within our hearts
like water dripping on a stone:
slowly wearing it away bit by bit,
smoothing out its roughness over time.
Our anger slowly abates,
our lust gradually lessens,
we grow in compassion and mercy toward others
as we experience God’s compassion and mercy
shown to us. 
If we cooperate patiently with the Spirit,
the wisdom of God works on us
in ways hidden and mysterious,
in a life-long process by which
we learn to lean on God
and not rely on our own strength.

“What matters in the end
is not what you do
but what is in your heart.”
And thanks be to God
that what is in our hearts
is the mercy of God, 
for the love of God
has been poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us: 
slowly, patiently teaching us God’s hidden wisdom
so that our hearts might become like Christ’s heart
and we might live our lives as he lives his,
for the praise and the glory of God.

Funeral for Alan Bauerschmidt (1927-2023)

Readings: Isaiah 61:1-3; Romans 8:14-19, 34-35, 36-37; John 6:37-40

Death is a catastrophe.
It ends a world:
an irreplaceable and unique set 
of experiences and events.
In my father’s case, it has ended an experience 
of deprivation in the Great Depression;
of sacrifice and struggle in the Second World War;
of years of hard work at everything he put his hand to;
of thousands of books read;
of scores of jigsaw puzzles finished
and genealogical puzzles untangled;
of days tending blueberry bushes and Gerber daisies,
swimming laps in a pool and playing bocce,
watching the stock market 
and predicting an imminent crash;
of a lifetime of loving my mother, 
and then my brother and me,
and then six grandchildren.
All of those experiences 
are suddenly vanished from our world,
leaving behind a gaping void.
And so we mourn.

Oh, we can say lots of things—
true things—
that seem to suggest we should not mourn:
death is natural, a part of life;
everything happens for a reason;
the dead live on in our memories
and in our hearts;
death is the entrance into eternal life.
But all of this 
is just whistling past the graveyard.
None of these things we say,
true as they may be,
change the fact
that death is a catastrophe
that opens a void in our world.
And so we mourn.

Some people ask, “Was it sudden?”
To which I can only answer,
well, it took ninety-five years;
but, yes, it was sudden.
It was sudden because every human life
ought to last forever, 
yet for some reason does not,
and this is a catastrophic truth about our world.
Over 166,000 people die each day,
nearly two every second,
but that doesn’t make death less catastrophic.
It simply gives us some idea 
of the scale and scope of the catastrophe.
And so we mourn.

Pascal pointed out that our sense 
of the catastrophic character of our existence
is a sign that something has gone wrong.
We are, he says, fragile reeds that snap and break,
but we are also, when we are not distracting ourselves,
thinking reeds, aware of and outraged at our fragility.
Our sense that even ninety-five years are too few,
that even one death is too many,
points us to a truth:
we are made for something more,
we are meant for something greater.
Pascal writes, “For who thinks 
he is unhappy not to be king
other than a dispossessed king?” (Pensées S149)
Like royalty sent into exile,
we sense the wrongness of our state,
the height from which we have fallen,
the treasure that has been taken from us;
though, also like many a ruler sent into exile,
we know deep down
that we bear responsibility for our state.
For we human beings 
have turned from the source of our existence,
rejected the love that called us out of nothingness,
squandered our inheritance
and fallen into the catastrophic abyss of death.
And so we mourn.

But here is the funny thing about Christianity:
without denying our fallen state,
without ignoring the abyss into which we fall,
we believe that the love 

that called us out of nothingness,
has pursued us into that abyss;
we believe that the Word 

through whom all things were made
has taken flesh and dwelt among us
and entered even death’s exile,
to fill the void of nothingness
with the light of eternity.
We all fall into the catastrophic abyss of death,
but there, in the very heart of the catastrophe,
we find Jesus:
binding up the broken-hearted,
proclaiming liberty to those 

captive in death’s exile,
giving us garlands instead of ashes,
and the oil of gladness instead of mourning.
We find Jesus, 
from whom nothing can separate us:
neither death nor life, 
nor things present, 
nor things to come, 
nor height, 
nor depth.
We find Jesus, 
who loses nothing 
that his Father has given him,
but raises it up to eternal life.
And what the Father has given him is us:
he holds in his heart each of our lives,
in their irreplaceable uniqueness,
so that none of it is lost.
We mourn, because our loss is real.
But Jesus loses nothing;
Jesus loses no one.
The thinking reeds that snap and break
will be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.

Faith commits us to the truth of this reality,
though it is for now hidden from our sight;
faith turns us back 
to the love that has loved us into being
and plants us in the heart of Christ.
John and I are, by vocation if not disposition,
quite public about our faith;
it is sort of in our job descriptions.
Our father was not.
But he was nothing if not faithful—
the world’s most reliable man:
faithful to his family,
faithful to his labors,
faithful to his God.
He spoke to me once a few years ago
about how he imagined heaven:
it would be a place where he would find 
all those people he had lost
to death’s catastrophe:
family and friends,
all those people from whom 
the fabric of his life had been woven,
all those people whose lives 
were so meticulously documented
on his genealogical charts,
even those who had faded from his memory,
but whom God remembers.
I pray he will also find jigsaw puzzles
and Gerber daisies.
And I pray that he will find all of us,
loved and treasured 
in the heart of Christ.

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Zephaniah 2:3; 3:12-13; 1 Corinthians 1:26-31; Matthew 5:1-12a

VIDEO

It’s been a bad week for those of us
who want to believe 
in the essential goodness of human beings.
We had three mass shootings in California,
leaving a total of nineteen people dead
in Monterey Park, Half Moon Bay, and Oakland.
Then, on Friday, the Memphis police
released video of the deadly beating of Tyre Nichols 
by five police officer earlier this month—
a brutal and deliberate attack
by those who are supposed to “protect and serve.” 
We can add these deaths to the pile created
by the unjust war being waged in Ukraine
(over 42,000 dead and counting)
and the ongoing callous disregard for human life
at its vulnerable beginnings and endings
that seems to characterize our society,
and we have to ask, 
what is wrong with us?
What is this rage to destroy,
to snuff out the precious of life
that God has bestowed upon us?
The world seems to be wicked without relief,
and we human beings endlessly inventive
in the evil we do.

But through the welter of the world’s wickedness
we hear the voice of Jesus:
Blessed are the poor in spirit…
Blessed are they who mourn…the meek… 
those hungry for righteousness…
the merciful…the clean of heart…
the peacemakers…the persecuted.
Like a whisper at the edge of our consciousness—
a consciousness consumed by a constant stream
of undeniable examples of human evil—
we hear the voice of Jesus saying:
this is not the way the world has to be;
this is not the way that you have to be.

As Jesus begins to preach to the disciples,
whom he has just called to leave their old lives
and follow him on the path to God’s kingdom,
he speaks of the blessedness of those 
who live entirely on the love of God,
who see the evil that people do
and hunger for a world that is different,
who never let bitterness win out over mercy,
who see peacemakers persecuted 
and yet persist walking in the way of peace.
He says to them: this is who I am,
and this is who I am calling you to be;
blessed are those who can see 
the reality of the world’s wickedness
and yet love in the way that God loves.

But Jesus doesn’t just say this 
to the disciples he has called.
His voice also reaches 
the crowd that has gathered
and is, as it were, eavesdropping 
on the words he speaks to his disciples.
For the crowd too must wonder 
at the world’s wickedness
for which there seems to be no relief.
And they wonder as well at the small band
of scruffy fishermen
who have left everything
to followed this rather strange rabbi,
who is without educational pedigree
or priestly status.
It all seems rather foolish
and yet… something echoes in their hearts: 
this is not the way the world has to be;
this is not the way that you have to be.

Blessedness…
the blessedness those whom the world deems foolish.
Could it be that God has chosen the foolish to shame the wise?
Could it be that God has chosen the weak to shame the strong?
Could it be that God has chosen the lowly and despised 
to humble our pride and end our boasting?
Could it be that this strange teacher
and his ragtag band of fishermen followers
hold the solution to the world’s wickedness?
Could it be that his word 
will take root and bear fruit
in the hearts of his disciples?
Could it be that human beings
can turn away from hatred and violence
and live the blessedness he proclaims?
The crowd listens in, 
waiting for a sign,
hoping for relief.

The crowd is still listening.
Though the world seems ever sadder,
its wickedness ever more intense
and ever more inventive of new ways
of crushing the spark of human life,
people are still listening in
as Jesus speaks to his disciples.
His words overheard still echo in their hearts,
words that speak of a human goodness
that evil cannot eradicate,
a blessedness
that the world cannot crush.
The crowd still looks to us,
the followers of Jesus,
to see if the word 
will take root and bear fruit in us,
waiting for a sign,
hoping for relief.

We live our lives as Christians
before the crowd’s watching eyes
and listening ears.
What do they see?
What do they hear?
Do they see those who, in poverty of spirit,
acknowledge their dependence on God
and live lives of purity and justice?
Do they hear voices 
that mourn the world’s wickedness
and yet still proclaim mercy and peace?
Do they experience in us the possibility
that the world does not have to be
this sad place of hatred and violence,
that we do not have to be these people
trapped in anger and despair?
Do they find in us a reason to hope,
a reason to believe that at the heart of the world
there lies not wickedness but blessedness?

We, of course, are not the world’s savior.
We are not the hope of the world.
We will not relieve the world of its wickedness.
But Jesus, the wisdom of God,
who is the world’s righteousness, 
sanctification, 
and redemption, 
has called us by his grace 
to a blessedness
that bears witness to his power 
to transform lives
and transform the world.
Let us listen to him and learn from him
and pray earnestly to him 
that his word 
may take root and bear fruit is us,
so that God in his mercy
might have mercy on us all.

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 49:3, 5-6; 1 Corinthians 1:1-3; John 1:29-34

VIDEO

John the Baptist, 
who featured so prominently 
in our Advent liturgies,
returns to us today as we embark 
on what the Church calls “Ordinary Time.”
Only now the word he speaks to us
is not “prepare the way of the Lord,”
but “behold the Lamb of God 
who takes away the sin of the world.”
The time of preparation has passed
and we are told to cast our eyes
upon the savior 
for whom we have 
been preparing.

But the life of a Christian
doesn’t really divide up neatly
into preparing and beholding,
as if, after a period of preparation
we are now ready to behold.
For what we are bidden to behold
is a mystery so profound
and a love so immense
that our minds fail in comprehension.
We are called to behold the Lamb 
who bears not simply our sins,
but the sin of the entire world,
the servant to whom God says,
“I will make you a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach 
to the ends of the earth.”
In beholding, we find ourselves
pitifully unprepared, 
totally incapable of receiving 
the one whom we behold,
not simply because of our sins
but because of the surpassing greatness of his love.

Think of how the words of John the Baptist
feature in our liturgy each week.
Before communion we are invited 
to behold the Lamb of God,
to behold the one who takes away
the sin of the world.
And how do we respond?
“Lord, I am not worthy…”
I am not worthy even though
I have confessed my sins 
and acclaimed your glory.
I am not worthy even though
I have listened to your word
and professed my faith in response.
I am not worthy even though 
I have offered my prayers 
and gifts at your altar
and cried out to the Lamb 
for mercy and peace.
I am not worthy even though
I have spent the entire liturgy
preparing for this moment,
because when now confronted 
with the reality
of the mystery of God’s love
present body and blood, 
soul and divinity,
in the power of the Spirit,
all my preparation seems as nothing.
I am not worthy to have you 
enter under my roof
not because I am sinful,
but because your love is so great
that the house of my soul cannot contain it.

We might be tempted to think 
that what is called for
is more preparation, 
more work to be done
before we can receive him,
more earnest effort on our part 
to enlarge the house of our soul.
But this is not the word
Christ speaks to us at that moment.
Rather, he says “blessed are those
who are called to the supper of the Lamb.”
Blessed are those called to feast on the one
who takes away the sin of the world.
Blessed are those to whom he says “come,”
to whom he speaks the word that is healing 
for our cramped, little souls.

For when Christ enters us sacramentally
the walls of our souls are pressed outward
by a love exceeding every human love,
the love that encompasses all,
the love that takes away the sin of the world.
The book of Sirach (24:21) says,
“He who eats of me will hunger still,
he who drinks of me will thirst for more.” 
The supper of the Lamb,
expanding our souls, 
only makes us hungrier—
hungrier to love him
and hungrier to love as he loves:
loving the enemy and the sinful,
loving the outcast and the stranger,
loving scandalously and without measure.

The life of a Christian
doesn’t divide up neatly
into preparing and beholding,
but there is a kind of rhythm to it.
We prepare,
we behold,
we receive,
and in receiving we are drawn into
a more rigorous kind of preparing,
a more perceptive sort of beholding,
a more profound way of receiving.
We confess our sins, knowing that,
despite our firm resolution of amendment,
we must still strive not to sin again.
We hear God’s word, knowing that, 
because we see still dimly, as in a mirror,
we must always listen to it anew.
We receive God’s grace, knowing that,
if God’s Spirit is to lodge in us,
then the house of our soul 
will once again have to be enlarged.

Becoming a Christian is not 
a one-and-done affair
in which, having prepared,
we now behold and receive.
The life of a Christian is not a straight line
but a kind of forward-moving spiral,
in which preparing, beholding, and receiving
are recurring moments along the way
of our pilgrimage into the mystery of divine love.
Thanks be to God that Jesus,
the pioneer and perfecter of our faith
joins us on that spiraling journey 
to the supper of the Lamb.
Lamb of God, 
who takes away the sins of the world,
have mercy on us and grant us your peace.

Christmas: Mass at Dawn (Shepherds' Mass)

Readings: Isaiah 62:11-12; Titus 3:4-7; Luke 2:15-20

VIDEO

The Christmas story that we know and love

involves Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus,
and a journey to Bethlehem and no room at the inn, 
and a stable and a manger and a donkey and an ox,
along with angels and shepherds, 
and three good kings and one very bad one.
Assembled from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke
with a bit of the prophet Isaiah thrown in,
this is the story depicted in our nativity pageants 
and in the manger scenes in our homes.

But for the first Mass of Christmas day,
much of that story seems missing.
Our Gospel reading from Luke 
does give us shepherds,
but not the exciting part with the angels 
who exhilarate and terrify them,
announcing the birth of the world’s savior
and peace and good will to all people,
but rather the part where they arrive 
once the excitement is over
and see what to all appearances 
is an ordinary newborn child.
We have Mary and Joseph and the child, 
but we hear not of the search for shelter
or of the birth itself,
but of a moment of repose
when “Mary kept all these things,
reflecting on them in her heart.”

We may feel that we, like the shepherds, 
are arriving in the early light of day
once all the excitement of the night is over.
But in fact we, like Mary, 
have arrived at a moment
of contemplative stillness 
amid momentous events.
And in that stillness we hear 
the true mystery of Christmas.
St. Paul, without mentioning
any of the elements of the Christmas story,
speaks to us of what we celebrate this day:
“the kindness and generous love 
of God our savior appeared, 
not because of any righteous deeds 
we had done
but because of his mercy.”

This is the great mystery we celebrate
each year at this time.
Not the stable, not the manger,
not the donkey, ox, or angels,
not Mary nor Joseph, 
not even little baby Jesus—
but the kindness and generous love
of the one who comes to save us,
not because we are good,
but because God is good.
This is the mystery made flesh
in the infant born in a manger,
watched over by donkey and ox.
This is the true marvel for which 
the shepherds glorify and praise God.
This is what Mary cherishes in her heart.

St. Bede, in a commentary on Luke’s Gospel,
imagines Mary’s reflection on this mystery:
“As I contemplate his greatness, 
which knows no limits, 
I joyfully surrender my whole life, 
my senses, 
my judgment, 
for my spirit rejoices 
in the eternal Godhead 
of that Jesus, 
that Savior, 
whom I have conceived 
in this world of time.”
Cherishing all these things in her heart,
Mary holds within herself still
the mystery to which she has just given birth:
the God whose greatness knows no limits
born within the limitations of time and place
out of love for us 
and for our salvation.
Mary surrenders to that mystery,
so that the joy of Christ conceived in her
might be hers for eternity.

We too are called 
to cherish in our hearts
this mystery that teeters 
on the edge of the incomprehensible:
this divine love that 
no goodness found in us calls forth,
but which explodes into our world 
in a shocking, disorienting, thrilling act 
of sheer mercy given to us 
who deserve no mercy.
The 17th-century mystical author 
known as Angelus Silesius wrote,
“If Christ is born 
a thousand times in Bethlehem 
but not in you,
you remain still forever lost.”
This is the work Christmas calls us to
in this morning of contemplative repose; 
it calls us to the work of Mary:
the work of surrendering ourselves to God 
whose mercy we can never merit,
of cherishing the memory of that mercy, 
so that its mystery might seep into our souls,
of letting that mystery be born in us anew
so that we might become vessels
bearing mercy to our world,
so that God in his mercy
might have mercy on us all.

Advent 4

Reading: Isaiah 7:10-14; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-24

VIDEO

I often end the introductory theology course
that I teach at Loyola University
by asking the students 
how they would spend their time
if they knew that the world was ending 
in twenty-four hours.
A few, in an obvious attempt to curry favor,
say they would pray or go to confession.
But most give more honest answers,
and many of their answers are unsurprising:
spending time with family and friends,
traveling to a place they’ve always wanted to see
or revisiting a place they love,
maxing-out their credit card on a shopping spree
or going skydiving.

This year, one student said she would forgive
those who had hurt her in her life.
She said that she has been told by others
that while she forgives, in the sense of moving on,
she never forgets who it is who has hurt her
and she cuts them ruthlessly out of her life
so they can never hurt her again.
But, she said, if the world were ending
she thought she could really let all that go.
When I asked her why that was,
she said that she would no longer be afraid
that those who had hurt her in the past 
could hurt her again in the future.

Her words sounded a theme 
common in my student’s answers:
they don’t do what they really want to do
because they are afraid.
They are afraid 
that if they do not follow the safe path
of degrees and careers and societal expectations
then they won’t be able to make their lives secure,
to control what happens to them,
to keep pain and sorrow at bay.
But the prospect of the world’s end,
while in one sense terrifying,
in another sense frees them from fear
because it frees them from the illusion of control;
it frees them to live their remaining hours differently.
In this one student’s case, the difference
is between a simulated, half-hearted forgiveness
that is focused on managing hurt
and a forgiveness that is genuinely freeing
both for the one who forgives
and for the one who is forgiven.

I thought of her words as I reflected 
on today’s story of Joseph.
The angel in Joseph’s dream does not simply
offer Joseph an explanation of Mary’s pregnancy
that exonerates her of wrongdoing.
Rather, the angel tells Joseph, “Do not be afraid 
to take Mary your wife into your home.”
Do not be afraid of what the future holds.
Do not be afraid to plumb the depths of mercy.
Do not be afraid,
because the world’s time has grown short,
and the world you know is about to end.
Not, of course, in a chronological sense.
After all, here we are over 2000 years later.
But the world we seek to manage and control
even as it runs ruthlessly toward death,
is about to be brought to an end 
by the birth of Emmanuel—
God who is with us.
The angel announces 
not simply the birth of a child
but the birth of a new world 
and the death of an old one.

In the face of that world’s end,
rather than putting Mary aside,
Joseph puts aside his fear 
and his desire for control
and in mercy welcomes Mary.
St. John Chrysostom says
that when Joseph does this,
“It is like the sun not yet arisen, 
but from afar more than half the world 
is already illuminated by its light.”
The light of mercy that will flood the world
with the birth of Emmanuel
is already appearing in Joseph’s act
of grace and mercy.

And for us who live 
on the near side of that birth,
how much more ought we to live 
lives of fearless mercy?
St. Paul tells us that 
“whoever is in Christ is a new creation: 
the old things have passed away; 
behold, new things have come.”
To believe that Jesus Christ is Emmanuel,
is to believe that the light of God is even now 
pouring into the darkness of our fears,
and bringing the world ruled by fear to an end.
To believe that God was in Christ 
reconciling the world to himself
is to be freed from the task
of making our lives secure,
for it is to believe that even now,
within the dying shell of the old world
a new world is ceaselessly being born,
a world of grace and mercy.

So I ask you, what would you do
if you knew the world was ending 
in twenty-four hours? 
Would you not do that thing 
that is most important?
Would you not spend that time
on acts that can endure beyond this world,
on acts of grace and mercy?
And what is keeping you
from doing those things now,
on this day?
For the world of our fears is ending,
and God is calling us to step into
the world of Emmanuel,
the world of the God who is with us.
Let us pray that God, 
who calls us to mercy,
will have mercy on us all.

 

Advent 1

Readings: Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:37-44

VIDEO

As we embark upon this season of Advent,
St. Paul exhorts us: “You know the time;
it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep.”
Paul's words suggest that our lives 
are a kind of fantasy, a waking dream,
anesthetized by sensual pleasures
and worldly ambitions:
orgies and drunkenness,
promiscuity and lust,
rivalry and jealousy.
Even if we refrain 
from orgies and drunkenness,
can we really pretend we are free
from rivalry and jealousy?
But now it is time to wake up
and to clothe ourselves in Christ.

This passage from Paul
played a key role in the conversion
of the great theologian Augustine of Hippo.
Augustine had been a smart 
and ambitious young man
from North Africa, 
the hinterlands of the Roman empire,
who had made his way to Italy
and found his footing in the center of power.
But his restless heart kept telling him
that there must be more to life,
even as his lusts and ambitions
pushed him up the ladder of success.
 
He had become convinced 
of the truth of Christianity,
but found himself unable to break free
from those lusts and ambitions;
he knew what he should do,
but was unable to will himself to do it.
He describes his situation as being
“like the efforts of those 
who would like to get up 
but are overcome by deep sleep 
and sink back again.” 
We say, “Just a little longer please,”
but, Augustine notes, 
“‘Just a little longer, please’ went on and on 
for a long while” (Conf. 8.5.12).

One day, praying in anguish in a garden, 
he hears the distant voice of a child,
saying in a sing-song chant,
tolle lege, “take up and read.”
He goes and gets a copy of Paul’s letters
and, opening them at random,
reads the passage that we have just heard:
“put on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and make no provision 
for the desires of the flesh.”
Augustine tells us,
“I neither wished nor needed to read further. 
At once, with the last words of this sentence, 
it was as if a light of relief from all anxiety 
flooded into my heart. 
All the shadows of doubt 
were dispelled” (Conf. 8.12.29).
 
I tell the story of St. Augustine in some detail
not to suggest that reading a magic Bible passage
can make all our doubts and hesitations vanish,
can rouse us from our spiritual dream state,
but because the message that woke Augustine up
is a message that we need to hear today:
“put on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.”
We, no less than Augustine 
and the Roman Christians to whom Paul wrote,
seek to indulge our desires—
to satisfy not only our bodily appetites,
but also our appetites 
for power and control and security.
We, no less than they,
drowsily respond to the call of God’s Spirit,
“Just a little longer please.”
Please let me linger just a little longer 
in this waking dream that I call my life,
in which I believe myself 
to stand stable and secure.
Leave me to my lust and my rivalries,
my self-indulgence and my petty ambitions.
Leave me in my old way of life.
We, no less than they,
have let “Just a little longer please”
go on and on for a long time.
 
But today Christ calls to us 
to wake up and to stay awake,
for the day of the Son of Man
will come like a thief in the night—
the day of judgment,
when the desires of this world 
on which we have spent our lives
will fade away like a dream, 
a dream that seemed 
so real as we slumbered
but which we 
cannot quite remember
in the bright light of day.
Those things that loom 
so large as we dream—
plans and programs, 
ambitions and awards,
grudges and gambits—
all will fade away
with the dawning of that day.

And what will remain?
What of this life can endure
the bright light of day?
Jesus Christ, 
in whom we have been clothed
through the saving waters of Baptism,
on whom we have fed
in the sacrificial banquet of the Eucharist,
through whom we have become 
friends of the living God.
He alone will remain,
who came among us in great humility
so many centuries ago,
who comes to us still 
in the guise of the needy stranger,
who will come in power and glory
to judge the living and the dead,
who reigns for all eternity
as the victorious lamb
giving light to the city of God.

The Church gives to us
these precious weeks of Advent
to let God’s Spirit wake us up,
so that we might not live a waking dream
but see the light of Jesus Christ,
the light that endures in God’s eternal kingdom.
Let us not spend these days drowsily murmuring
“Just a little longer please.”
For the time is now.
“Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5; Luke 20:27-38

VIDEO

In this month of November—
adorned with falling leaves,
and begun with the commemorations 
of All Saints and All Souls—
the Church turns our attention 
to the passing away of this world
and our hope for the world to come.
But what is it that we hope for?
Certainly, we hope that 
whatever has given life in this world 
meaning and joy
will be somehow continued 
beyond this world,
that the things and people 
in whom we have delighted in this life
will continue to delight us in the next.

But in today’s Gospel 
Jesus seems to throw cold water on those hopes.
Asked whether those 
who will be raised from the dead
will still be married,
Jesus responds, “those who are deemed worthy 
to attain to the coming age
and to the resurrection of the dead
neither marry nor are given in marriage.
They can no longer die,
for they are like angels.”
Jesus seems to suggest that marriage
is a temporary provision 
necessitated by the fact that we all die, 
and if we did not procreate 
the human race would die with us.
His words also suggest that all those relationships
that are so important to our life in this world
are perhaps simply temporary provisions 
and will no longer be relevant in the life to come.

Maybe to think that God’s kingdom 

involves having husbands or wives
or parents or children or friends
is simply a failure of imagination
and an inability to grasp 
how different eternal life will be,
where we will no longer die, 
and will be like the angels,
who know and love God 
in a direct and unmediated way.
Perhaps to mourn the passing of those loves
is to be, as the philosopher Eleonore Stump suggests,
“like a child who reacts with dismay when he is told 
that he won’t be sucking his thumb when he grows up.”

Is it simply the case 
that the loves forged in this life
vanish into the love of God—
are something that we, as it were, outgrow?
Do we forget the personal histories
by which we became who we are,
in which spouses and parents 
and children and friends
played vital, irreplaceable roles? 
Is all of this simply swallowed up 
when God becomes all in all?

Maybe this is not the whole picture.
If our Gospel suggests that the life of the world to come
is radically different from our life in this world,
our first reading suggests that even in this radical difference
there remain threads of continuity 
between this life and the next.
We hear in this reading a part of the story 
of the torture and execution
of seven brothers and their mother 
during the Greek persecution of the Jews 
who remained faithful to the Law of Moses. 
Our lectionary spares us 
the gruesome details of their dismemberment,
but we do hear the words of the third brother,
who, as he extends his tongue and hands to be cut off,
says to his tormentors,
“It was from Heaven that I received these;
for the sake of his laws I disdain them;
from him I hope to receive them again.”

This story gives us an example 
not simply of faith and courage,
but of hope as well. 
Read alongside Jesus’s words in the Gospel,
it suggests that the life from God for which we hope
is somehow in continuity with the life
that we have already received from God,
and yet it is unimaginably more;
it is a blessedness toward which 
the blessings of this life gesture,
but which they ultimately cannot express.

In the case of the blessing of marriage,
St. Paul tells us in the letter to the Ephesians
that the love of husband and wife
is not only for the sake of procreation,
but is also a sign of the love 
between Christ and the Church.
Even amid struggle and misunderstanding,
the sorrow and the loss,
that seem to mark all our loves in this life,
our faithfulness to the bond of marriage 
gestures to the ultimate union with Christ in love
that we hope for in God’s kingdom come.
But in the blessedness of God’s kingdom
we will no longer need signs,
we will no longer need to gesture,
because we will possess that love in its fullness. 

And yet, while the sign of the marriage bond will pass away,
surely the love that forged that bond will not.
In this life, the bond of love between spouses,
always faltering and imperfect,
is a sign by which we orient ourselves in hope
toward the unimaginable love of God;
when we possess that divine love in its fullness,
surely we will find encompassed within it
the love had by spouses in this life,
no longer marked by struggle and misunderstanding,
no longer afflicted by sorrow and loss,
no longer faltering and imperfect,
but gloriously transfigured by the light of Christ.

And so too with all our loves forged in this life:
the love of parent and of child and of friend.
Our hope is that they too 
will be present in the life to come,
no longer as signs and gestures 
that dimly hint at the love of God
but healed, perfected, and transformed by the light 
that streams forth upon them from the very heart of God.

Jesus tells us in the Gospel that our God
“is not God of the dead, but of the living,
for to him all are alive.”
So as our minds turn,

amid November’s falling leaves
and remembrances of the dead, 
to the passing away of this world,
let our hope be renewed 
that the loves with which God has blessed us in this life
will not finally pass away but be restored to us,
for these loves are eternally alive 
in the God of love who is their source,
from whom we have received them,
and in whom we shall possess them in eternity.

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18; 2 Timothy4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14

VIDEO

This parable should come with a warning label.
On the face of it, it seems pretty clear.
There’s a bad guy and a good guy—
a Pharisee and a tax collector.
The one is bad 
because he exalts himself
and the other is good 
because he humbles himself.
You should aspire to be
like the tax collector, 
not the Pharisee.

Things get a little less clear, however,
once you recall that Pharisees 
were not notorious hypocrites
but were largely thought by their fellow Jews
to be sincerely pious people,
and that tax collectors 
collaborated with the Roman oppressors
and often cheated people to enrich themselves.
So perhaps the Pharisee is right to thank God
for all the good God has enabled him to do.
After all, he doesn’t sound any more boastful
than Paul in our second reading:
“I have competed well; 
I have finished the race;
I have kept the faith….
the crown of righteousness awaits me.”
And even if he seems a bit snooty
in thanking God 
that he is not like the tax collector…
well, even the tax collector 
doesn’t want to be like himself.
Can we really blame the Pharisee?
So things are a little complicated.

But things get even more complicated
once we place ourselves within the parable
and ask, whose side do we want to take?
With whom do we want to identify?
It seems clear that we are meant to identify 
not with the arrogant Pharisee, 
but with the humble tax collector;
we want to be those 
who humble themselves
so as to be exalted,
not those who exalt themselves
and end up humbled.
The parable almost invites us to say, 
“O God, I thank you that I 
am not like that Pharisee—
arrogant, proud, and self-satisfied.”

Of course, once we say this
we have fallen into the trap: 
we have become the Pharisee.
Even if we adopt 
the outward trapping of humility—
lowering our eyes and beating our breasts
and standing as far from God as we can get—
inwardly we see ourselves as the righteous ones.
We exalt ourselves in our humility,
and are proudly contemptuous 
of those who are proud.
Seeing that we have been caught,
we attempt to extricate ourselves,
and we find ourselves saying something like,
“O God I thank you that I am not like a tax collector,
who thanks you that he is not like that Pharisee,
who thanks you that he is not like that tax collector.”
But no, we are still stuck.
We are ensnared in a trap 
from which we cannot free ourselves.
Like I said: this parable 
should come with a warning label.

Is there any way out of this trap?
Perhaps the way out 
is to return to Paul’s words, 
words that he writes from prison
having suffered beating and abuse and rejection
for the sake of preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Before Paul speaks 
of the crown of righteousness that awaits him,
he writes, “I am already being poured out like a libation,
and the time of my departure is at hand.”
A libation was an ancient form of sacrifice,
in which some valued liquid—
often an alcoholic beverage—
was poured out on the ground.
It is a practice found 
in cultures around the world,
including in ancient Israel.
Among the Romans it was common at burials,
because it was a sacrifice that could be afforded 
by even the poorest person.
Paul, imprisoned and facing death, 
compares his life spent in service to Christ
to the poor man’s funeral offering.
It is, in the words of Sirach,
the prayer of the lowly one,
that pierces the clouds
and does not rest till it reaches its goal.
Whatever good Paul has done 
has been because God’s Spirit
has stood by him and given him strength, 
has filled the empty vessel of his efforts;
the crown of righteousness he hopes to receive
is God’s crowning of his own work in Paul.

In other words, 
Paul does not make it all about him.
He makes it all about Christ.
The gifts with which God has filled Paul
are put to work in Christ’s service,
not turned into precious objects 
admired for their scarcity—
into things that God has given Paul
by denying them to others.

And if we too—
if we turn our eyes away from ourselves
and toward Jesus Christ and his Spirit—
can find a way out of the trap
in which this parable has ensnared us.
If we turn our eyes toward Christ,
if we let our lives be poured out in his service,
then we will no longer need to thank God
that we are not like other people,
we will no longer need to puff ourselves up
by putting others down,
and we will be freed from the vicious circle
of treating God’s love like a limited commodity,
a trophy that we gain and keep 
only by denying it to others.
If we let our lives be poured out in his service,
we will know Christ’s love in its abundance,
an abundance that can fill Pharisee and tax collector
and even we poor sinners who hope in his mercy.
May God have mercy on us all.