Emmanuel, God is with us. Christmas Vigil

Friends

    Peace be with you. 

    I am so glad to see all of you here tonight! Whether you are someone I see pretty much every weekend, someone I see occasionally, or someone I see very rarely, I want you to know how great it is that we come together this night/this day to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, son of God and son of Mary.

When I was in middle school, my parents took me on a vacation to visit my godfather who lived in Orlando. It was the first time I travelled on a plane. I can remember that plane ride because they weren’t certain one of the landing gears was down but, thank goodness, it was. It was also the first time I ever saw oranges and grapefruits growing on trees in people’s backyards. Both fruits even seemed to have a darker color coming directly off the tree. On the trip, my parents brought me to Sea World and we got to see many sea animals I’d never seen before. At the Orca or Killer Whale, show I noticed a man sitting with a very fancy video camera dressed all in black with a black mohawk and black sunglasses. I recognized him immediately as a professional wrestler named The One Man Gang. He was a meanie, one of the bad guys of the wrestling world. I pointed him out to my parents and my Mother gave me a piece of paper and a pen to get his autograph. I just shook my head, not because I was intimidated by his in ring persona, but because I thought to myself, “Why would someone famous want to meet me?” 

You see, as I shared in a bulletin column recently, this is one of my foibles. If I seem kind of snobbish or shy it’s because I don’t always think people will want to meet me. I suspect some of you are this way or maybe some of your kids or your relatives are this way. 

I would bet St. Joseph felt this way. In the Gospel of Matthew, which we just heard, he never says a word. In fact, as Deacon Robert correctly pointed out this past weekend, St. Joseph never says a word at any point in scripture. Yet, you get the sense that Matthew must have heard from St. Joseph, or someone who talked to St. Joseph, in order to write the gospel passage we just heard. At the time, there was a two step process for marriage, the betrothment and the indwelling. The betrothment isn’t exactly what we would consider being engaged in our culture. The couples would exchange promises in front of their family and friends and committ to a life together. Then, the husband would go off and build their house get a job or prepare a dowry to give to his future father-in-law. Then, after all of that was completed, which could take as long as a year or year and a half, the husband would come back and take his wife into his home and the two would, hopefully, build a family of their own. Our story is taking place between the betrothment and indwelling. During this time, Joseph finds out Mary is pregnant. Now, according to the Old Testament book of Leviticus, he could have exacted a capital punishment on Mary. It says that Joseph was unwilling to expose her to shame so he decided to divorce her quietly. He may have done this because he loved Mary and wanted what’s best for her by allowing her to go off and have the child in a place where no one would know. St. Thomas Aquinas and others thought that it’s also possible that Mary shared with Joseph the vision she received from the Angel Gabriel about how her son was to be special, a Son of God, and so Joseph thought to himself that he wasn’t important enough to be the father of such an important person so he was divorcing her so she could marry someone more important. 

If that’s true, it makes sense that the Angel had to visit Joseph in our gospel to explain that he has two important roles to play in this child’s life: first he is the one that will connect Jesus to King David. St. Matthew quotes the prophet Isaiah in which it is prophesied “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel.” This passage also connects the Messiah to being a descendant of the Old Testament King David. Second, it is Joseph who is given the job of naming Jesus. The fact that he’s told what to name his son shouldn’t be seen as making St. Joseph any less integral. The name Jesus means “God saves”. Joseph will be the first to declare the salvation that comes through Jesus to the world and will clarify that the salvation will not come through a political dynasty like his ancestor King David tried but a salvation through the forgiveness of sins. 

Perhaps the most important thing that is revealed to St. Joseph is that, despite his feelings of unworthiness, his son would be the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies that the Messiah would be called Emmanual, or God is with us. Joseph would know that God is with us every time he looked on the face of his child. That means that, rather than having to search all over the world for a God playing hide and seek with us, we have a God who is with us. We may feel, like St. Joseph, that our lives are too sinful or too boring or too exciting or too whatever for God to care about us. But God is with us. He is with us in the Eucharist, in the real presence of his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. He is with us in the Bible, in the inspired Word of God given to the church to build up our faith. But he is also with us in the quiet of our prayer. He is with us in the smile of our wife or husband or children. He is with us to save us from our sins. God doesn’t care about prestige or power. He only cares about you. Please take some time today noticing the many ways God is with you. 

First Sunday of Advent Year A: Let us climb the mountain of the Lord

Friends

Peace be with you.

One of the regrets I have about my semester in Israel during seminary is that I never walked on the Temple Mount. Today, it’s a Muslim Holy Site now called, in Arabic, the Harem al Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary in English. The two most important buildings located there are the Dome of the Rock, which houses a rock which may have been the altar of sacrifice during the time of Jesus. Muslims point to what appears to be a footprint on the rock and say that it is the launching point for the Prophet Muhuammid right before he shot into heaven. Christians believe they’re actually pointing to chisel marks that we made during the crusades in order to send part of the altar of sacrifice back to as relics for altars but, who knows? The other building on the Noble Sanctuary is the Al-Aqsa Mosque, a large mosque that still welcomes many different groups of Muslims seven times a day to prayer. It is the most important site of Islam within Israel despite the fact that it’s not really all that impressive. It’s roughly the same size and height of Bellevue State Park, just without the trees and vegetation and wildlife. It does have a lot more security and a sound system that can be heard throughout the city of Jerusalem. Yet, I never quite made it up there to see things first-hand. Violence broke out between Israelis and Palestianians and it was seen as unsafe to walk to the Noble Sanctuary. But, just to give you a sense of its height, we were able to overlook it from several places within Jerusalem including the steeples of the Catholic Church of St. Anne, the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, and a number of other not-so spectacularly tall buildings.

Our first reading today, from the book of the Prophet Isaiah, predicts a time when that structure would be the tallest building in the world. It seems a little...exaggerated...especially in an area of the world which actually has mountains. What would cause the Prophet to see this lofty future for such an unremarkable place?

This passage is a poem. I know it might not sound like it in English, but apparently it’s clearly a poem in Hebrew, possibly even a song. The poem is less about high places as it is about what the people at the time would have associated with the Temple. To offer an analogy, imagine if I were to say that someday Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City or the Uni Dome or Jack Trice Stadium in Ames will be seen as a great stadium and everyone will want to stream towards it and say, “Come, let us watch real football and a real football team.” I would tacitly be saying everywhere else is going to be inferior to that stadium and that team. That’s kind of like what Isaiah is really saying in the first reading. Mountains are the dwelling places of the gods. Zeus was on Mount Olympus. Ai, the god of the Samaritans, was housed on Mount Gerizim. Isaiah is saying that all these other gods on other mountains, even ones that tower higher than the Temple Mount, will be dwarfed by the One True God located on his Mount.

This becomes even more clear if we continue reading and hear the results of the Temple being the highest mount: tools of warfare like swords and spears will be able to be repurposed for tools of agricultural production like plowshares and pruning hooks. And, rather than fighting, all people will solve their problems by bringing them to the Temple, where God himself will be their judge.

I think there’s something particularly significant to us, as Christians, in the heart of this reading. As I said before, the Temple was the dwelling place of God, a kind of Sacrament before there were sacraments if you will, the meeting place of God and humanity. In Advent we, likewise, celebrate the meetings of God and humanity, the dwelling place of God, and the origin of all sacraments in the coming of Jesus. He doesn’t come like a Marvel Superhero or a Supermodel or anything the world would consider “super”. He comes as a typical Jewish person, obedient to his Mom and Dad and observant of his religion in every way. Yet, he was lifted above all mountains on the cross and it causes, not just Jews but all people, to stream toward him.

We are invited, as Isaiah so prophetically put it, “that he may instruct us in his ways and we may walk in his paths.” Are we waking time with God each day to be instructed through Scripture and studying the Catechism or watching a Catholic video on the Formed website? Are we utilizing confession to be rid of what weighs us down so we can walk with the Lord? Our Lord invites us to come! Let us walk in the light of the Lord.

31 OC We belong to God because his imperishable spirit is in us.

Friends
Peace be with you.
Have you ever been in a room filled with people and felt completely alone or ignored, like you’re in one of those movies where you and die and come back as a ghost that only Whoopi Goldberg can see? It’s frustrating, isn’t it? You may start to ask yourself what makes you different than everyone around you and start thinking that difference makes you less important or even worthless.
This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about little Zacchaeus from our gospel today. His name means pure or clean but he’s far from pure or clean. We know this because he is a tax collector at the time of Jesus. You may remember that tax collectors weren’t paid by the government but, instead, increased the amount a person owed and kept the difference for themselves. It was common for tax collectors to charge more to those who were less likely to beat him up, like widows, orphans, and the poor. If you steal from a powerful person, you risk a powerful response. And, since St. Luke emphasized that Zacchaeus is “smaller in stature”, I would guess he’s really pointing to how Zacchaeus especially took advantage of the least powerful. It’s, therefore, especially interesting, that St. Luke includes this story when he tends to emphasize the poor and oppressed, or the “little ones” as Mary calls herself in the first few chapters of this gospel. Why would he tell this story wherein a guy who victimizes the poor comes out looking like the hero?
I’d like to think it’s because St. Luke knew the Old Testament, and thus would have known the passage we heard in the first reading. This passage could be summarized by saying that God is all powerful and all merciful, two things that seem contradictory. If God is all powerful, he not only made everything but determines if something remains existing, including each one of us. But, instead, God doesn’t simply wipe people off the face off the earth whenever we fail to love him or our neighbor. Why? The answer to that question comes at the heart of this reading, “But you spare all things, because they are yours, O Lord and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all things.”
Let’s unpack that sentence for a second. On the one hand, the Most High doesn’t destroy people who sin because they belong to Him, as it says in Psalm 95, we are God’s people, the flock he shepherds. There’s a level of ownership that God has over us and all of creation, which may make us at least a little ill at ease. I don’t like the idea of someone, even someone I love, feeling like they own me. I get nervous by technology companies tracking my every move. I get annoyed when people think they deserve an immediate response to a question or request that could have waited or could have been answered in a different way. The idea of someone owning us harkens back to the days of slavery, when someone could be owned. Is this the implication that the Wisdom writer wants us to draw: That we are God’s slaves? Hardly! Actually, the writer of wisdom completes this by saying ...they are yours, O Lord and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all things.” God’s Spirit is in us. He has put a part of himself in us.
Now let’s go back to the story of Zacchaeus and see if this may help us understand why St. Luke, the gospel writer who tends to focus on Jesus’ help for the poor, tells a story about Jesus being merciful to someone who often took advantage of the poor. St. Luke could see, in the poor, people who were owned by God because he put part of himself inside of them. And, this story of Zacchaeus coming down from the tree, he could see a person learning to see the image of God in others.
This reminds me of how important it is to not allow the busyness of life or work or misguided thoughts of superiority to stop us from paying ttention to people who are often overlooked, the person up a tree like Zaccheaus or the person having a rough day standing behind us at Benders. God is calling us to reach out and include people into his community of forgiveness. How can we be sure to take the time to notice the imperishable spirit present in others so as to be an agent of God’s forgiveness for them.

30 OC The one who serves God willingly is heard

Friends
Peace be with you.
While studying in the Holy Land, it was common for women to be sitting on the ground with a child sleeping close by with a sign stuck in a box or basket saying she and her child were sick and asking for help. We would often throw some money at her feet and she would thank us. One day, two of my classmates were going down to the Church of All Nations, which is located in the Garden of Gethsemane. Along the way, they noticed one of these women stand up, pick up her child, and start walking quickly in that same direction. They walked about a half-block behind her until they got close to the church, at which point she turned and opened the back door of a shiny, black Mercedes-Benz. She put her child in the back seat and removed her robes to unveil that she was quite well-dressed and looked very healthy. Then, she climbed into the front seat and drove off. That was the last time we gave money to any of these women.
As I look back, I can’t help but wonder if we overreacted. I mean, what if she was the exception? What if every other of these women were, in fact, a sick widow struggling to take care of her child? What if she was loaned the car by a friend or what if she was sitting there begging for a friend, a proxy of sorts for a friend too sick to even beg?
A similar thing happened much closer to home recently. There was a picture on Facebook of a guy mowing a lawn next to a picture that appeared to show the same man holding a “homeless vet” sign. The second picture appeared to be taken on the corner of Dodge Street in Dubuque between Chick-Fil-A and Chipotle where homeless people commonly stand. The person on Facebook told people not to help the man because he was mowing his own lawn at his own house and is, in fact, not homeless but ripping people off. I couldn’t help but wonder if the person posting knew that for sure or was making assumptions. What if the homeowner had offered to give him money if he mowed his lawn? Or what if the homeowner allowed him to live there in exchange for these services?
I’m betting most, if not all, of us don’t want to be ripped off. If we help someone, we want it to be someone actually in need and not someone just pretending to be. Our sense of justice says that we should feed hungry people who cannot feed themselves but we can’t be responsible to feed those who are perfectly capable of doing so themselves. We may take in a family member or close friend who loses a job or gets a divorce or has something else happen to them that causes the person to be homeless but we all bristle at the thought of paying for housing for people who can readily afford it.
In the first reading, Sirach is struggling with similar things. This is part of a section dealing with what is true and false worship involving how best to fulfill the rules surrounding almsgiving. On the one hand, God doesn’t play favorites and doesn’t always favor the poor if they are at fault. But, he also doesn’t ignore the widow or the orphan simply because the rest of society tends to do so. Instead, God looks to whether the person willingly serves Him and whether the person is lowly.
It seems to me that Sirach is, in part, saying that we shouldn’t be so concerned that someone is worthy of our gift; that we shouldn’t demand the person give us an accounting of what they used the gift for or prove to us that they really needed it. Sirach doesn’t see what we call charity to be something separate from the notion of holiness but interconnected with it. It’s part of being in a covenant. A commentary I read put it this way, “In covenant theology, we are all responsible for one another, the well-fed are obliged to address the needs of those who suffer misfortune.” That means giving to the poor and oppressed is actually a prayer, an act of honoring the image and likeness of God present in each person, especially the poor.
Can we see the image of God in a woman and her child begging in the streets of Jerusalem? What about in that person standing by the side of the road in Dubuque? What about in a relative or neighbor who struggles with drug or alcohol abuse or brain health that calls and asks for help? In all of this, you may say that you don’t think the right answer is to just throw money at the person and walk away, and I agree. But what is the right answer? How can we honor God in those relationships? How can we make these experiences and others like them, especially the ones where the image and likeness of God is much harder to see because of anger or past hard feelings, an experience of worshipping God?

28 0C God speaks through the humble little one, even to the most powerful

Friends
Peace be with you.
Fr. Adam, my monk spiritual director, once told me a story about something that happened in April of 2005, during the period of time after the death of Pope John Paul II and before the election of Pope Benedict. He was meeting with the pastor of a protestant megachurch to do spiritual direction for his retreat. At the beginning of their session, Fr. Adam admitted that he was kind of obsessed with the process of choosing the next pope. The pastor said something about how it was going to be really hard to find a good replacement, someone as dynamic and energetic, as John Paul had been in his youth. Fr. Adam responded by telling him that actually we tend to avoid people with big personalities in leadership positions. We don’t want a movie star pope because he pulls focus from Jesus instead of drawing people to him.
The longer I’m a priest and the more I read scripture, the more I tend to agree with Fr. Adam. Look, for instance, at the first reading of today’s Mass. Now, before I begin, yes this is gonna be another one of those homilies where I’m gonna refer to more than what we just read for Mass. It’s gonna be a cold day tomorrow, so maybe it’d be good to spend some time reading and praying over the entirety of Second Kings chapter 5. It starts by telling us about this military commander named Naaman who is a trusted adviser of his King, the King of Syria, one of the Israelites' adversaries. Naaman is powerful enough to have servants and a wonderful wife but he also has a skin condition referred to as leprosy, which is ironic considering Naaman’s name means pleasant or beautiful.
One of the servants Naaman acquired in a battle with Israel is an unnamed Israelite girl, who informs Naaman that he should go to Israel and meet Elisha, God’s prophet, in order to be cured. We find out, in the course of the story, just how complicated this is because Syria has its own gods and their own religious services led by their own priests and prophets. Naaman has, apparently, gone to all of these people but they’ve been unable to cure him. So, Naaman is, understandably desperate. He goes to his King who gives him permission to approach the King of Israel and ask for permission to approach Elisha.
Setting aside the details of some political shenanigans, eventually, Naaman gets from permission from the King of Israel to go to Elisha. The prophet stays inside his house in prayer and sends a servant to tell Naaman to go bathe in the Jordan River. Naaman is insulted, at first, because Elisha refused to meet him and pray over him , presumably like his own prophets have done, and he can’t understand why he should bathe in the Jordan, considering the rivers in Syria are better than this dirty river. Still, one of his men says to him, “My father, if the prophet told you to do something extraordinary (or difficult), would you not do it? All the more since he told you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” I love this. I’ve been there. Someone asks me to do something unexpected and I act like it’s much harder than it is simply because I don’t entirely believe they’re right. I called Dubuque Religious Company on Friday to ask about the name of someone to refurbish some of the statues that have faded and have some of the plaster falling off. Tim, the owner, gave me a name and phone number of someone he thought could do it. It took me an hour and a half to convince myself to actually call the person. How would I know if the person is good at his job and is, at least not going to ruin these statues? Am I going to have to drive somewhere and see what he’s done before? Should I bring someone with me? Who would that be? How much is it going to cost? What if we can only afford one or two statues, what should be first? Do I need to convene a statue renovation committee to decide which should go first? Do I need to talk to the Archdiocese renovation committee and get their recommendation? Do I need to find out who donated the money for the statue in the first place and ask permission from their relatives to refurbish them? I had almost convinced myself that it wasn’t even worth the phone call because the project was too complicated when the voice of reason cut through and said it’s just a phone call.
It’s just washing in the Jordan River. Naaman does it, plunging himself seven times, as instructed, and he’s cured. He goes back to Elisha to thank him for the healing. Elisha greets him and Naaman says he’s not only been cured, but he’s been converted. He now only believes in Elisha’s God, the one true God, though, as a Syrian military officer, he’s going to have to pretend to bend down to the god of thunder, the chief god of Syria. Naaman offers all kinds of silver, gold, and clothing to Elisha, who refuses them. Some believe the prophet refused them because he realized he didn’t do anything, that is was god’s work all along. I agree but I think something deeper also happens because of his refusal.
You see, since Naaman wants to worship the one t4rue God, and a god’s dominion is tied to a specific location, Naaman brings two mule loads of dirt back to his home. Now, remember that little Israelite servant girl who recommended Naaman approach Israel’s prophet in the first place? She’s a person of faith and humility who lives in the difficult situation of being far away from the land of her God. Yet, because Elisha refused the gifts and Naaman, instead, brings these two loads of Isralite soil back to his house, she will be able to pray to the God of her fathers on their soil.
I hear in this the importance of listening to the little ones, whether that be people who are younger or people who are poor, or people who have less power than us. The little ones tend to be the ones who are easiest to ignore because they aren’t the squeaky wheels or the most beautiful person in the room. But, God speaks and acts through them more often than we expect. Think of the times we’ve had to stop ourselves from swearing because there were little ears in the room. Aren’t they really helping us be holier than we’d normally be if they weren’t there? Or think about the times when a person with special needs makes a suggestion to solve a problem that we either don’t take seriously or don’t entirely understand that turns out to be the exact right thing to do if we’d just paid attention in the first place. When we listen to the little ones, we humble ourselves and open ourselves up to the possibility that God can do amazing things with and for us. We become humble ourselves by listening to the most humble around us. Let’s all stop seeking to be a dynamic celebrity that everyone listens to and seek to be like God’s little ones.

27 OC God answers our prayers in his time and his way

Friends
Peace be with you.
Oftentimes, in the wake of mass shootings or some other tragedy, some people will make fun of the phrase “thoughts and prayers”. I understand that these tragedies often evoke an outrage at the inaction and misdirection of our politicians. I have sympathy for people who, during and immediately after a tense situation, express frustration that more wasn’t done to protect the innocent. However, one thing that concerns me is that the phrase “thoughts and prayers” has become, for some, synonymous with saying “oh well, there’s nothing that could have been done to stop this.” It’s engendered a real hatred for the phrase with one person recently telling me that people just need to be more creative than saying “thoughts and prayers” and another person saying that God hasn’t done anything so maybe it’s time we people do something.
        In my mind, the second of those two people, who implied that prayers have been ineffectual, has the most concerning attitude. Yet, if we look to the first reading, it’s nothing new. The first reading comes from the three chapters-long Old Testament book named haBAkuk or Habakuk as most people say. Habakuk is the name of the prophet to whom God is speaking in the book. One challenge we face with our reading is that, in summarizing it, they’ve left out the heart of what is being said. You see, what we have is the first question Habakuk asked followed by part of the answer God gave to a follow-up second question. Now don’t get me wrong. I understand that the reason it is redacted in this manner is because it seems to take God until Chapter two to actually answer the question Habakuk was asking. Still, I think it’s important for us to understand how anyone could go from this answer, essentially that God will do it in his own time, to the third and final chapter, which is a song of praise, without sounding like it’s the plot to a bad sitcom. We ask God why it’s taking so long to stop bad things from happening, God responds to hold your horses and that he’ll get around to it when he does, and then the song “Where o Where are you tonight starts playing in the background.” And yes, for those who were wondering, that was a reference to Hee Haw.
       So, what’s happening? Things are getting bad in Israel. The people aren’t following God’s laws and aren’t taking the time to develop a relationship with God. They can see an empire coming from the South and the East that both look like they are going to overwhelm them and Habakuk turns to speak on behalf of the people to ask God “Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord.”
       God’s immediate response is actually that it’s going to get worse. He says that those armies that are coming from the East will overpower you all and take some captive. It’s an incredibly dispiriting response when you think about it. But it’s one that I’ve experienced. You’re having a busy day and you just need a break and someone calls and complains that you haven’t done something for them and you think to yourself “well, it’s not like I’ve been sitting around doing nothing.” Or you or a loved one is diagnosed with cancer or some other illness and, right when you think it can’t get any worse, you find out that your son was in a terrible car accident or had a heart attack. You know what I mean, right. I’m talking about those times when you think it can’t get any worse and then you find out you’re still on the second floor of badness and you’re headed down to at least the sub basement if not the sub sub basement.
       Habakuk’s response, his second question, asks God how he can allow people to believe that he’s sitting back and doing nothing. Habakuk can understand punishing the guilty but he’s worried that the good will also get punished if he doesn’t stop them from being exiled. We’re kind of reminded of the passage from a few weeks ago when Abraham negotiated with God about how many people it would take for God not to destroy Sodom and Gemmorah. I’m also reminded of being in grade school when the teacher would be correcting the students for doing something that I hadn’t done but, instead of feeling justified in not talking when I wasn’t supposed to, I feel like I’m getting punished for other people’s bad behavior.

24 OC Idolatry is putting ourselves at odds with God.

Friends

Peace be with you.

The first reading for today can drive theologians crazy. It’s one of those readings that seems to reinforce the misconception that the God of the Old Testament is not the God of the New, that the God of the Old Testament is an angry, old man shouting “get off my yard” and the God of the New Testament is the smiling, tolerant Jesus pictured with wind blown, sun drenched hair as though he’s just stepped off his surf board. Aside from the anti-semitism in thinking the Old Testament is bad, remember that the only book Jesus knew as a Bible was the Old Testament and when he prayed to “Our Father”, he was praying to this God. So, there has to be a way to understand this passage that doesn’t assume the God of the Old Testament is bad or mean.

Yet, even knowing a bit of context for this passage doesn’t help. Right before this passage, Moses has gone up the mountain to meet with God and receive the 10 Commandments. While that happens, the Israelites meet with Moses second-in-command, Aaron, and convince him to make them a god. Aaron seems like the babysitter who isn’t entirely sure the parents would want their kids to drink Mountain Dew after 8:00 pm so he lets them do it but tells them not to tell their parents. He gathers all the gold they’ve brought with them and makes a golden calf, which the Israelites immediately proclaim to be their God. Apparently, it was quite common at the time of Moses for people to believe that both cattle were gods. I suppose any genus of animal that can provide great-tasting milk, ice cream, steaks, and hamburgers would seem like a god to most people.

Nonetheless, when the one true God looks down and sees the people with whom he is about to enter into a unique covenant worshipping a false God, the passage says that his anger flares up and it implies that Moses is holding him back. The way it’s phrased, it almost seems like Moses is standing in the doorway preventing an angry god from going out and beating the heck out of someone. God turns to Moses and says that he’s just going to wipe them off the face of the earth and get Moses a great nation.

During the second part of the passage, Moses talks to God about how God shouldn’t wipe out the Israelites because, if He does, everyone who saw them leave Egypt will think the one true God tricked them into leaving so that He could murder them in the desert. Moses also reminds God that He made a promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose descendents these people are, that He would protect and build up their ancestors. The last thing that bothers theologians is translated as “the Lord changed his mind” but could also be translated as “the Lord repented” or the Lord turned his back.

So, you may at this point be asking what’s the problem here? There are three. First, this passage implies that God can have emotions. But, God doesn’t have emotions because God made emotions and God is unchanging but emotions are constantly changing. Part of what made Judaism different than the other religions is that God didn’t get angry one day and excited the next and sad the next. God made all these things and so was above them.

This is connected to the second problem, which is that God can’t change his mind. Something exists because it is in the mind of God. If God stops thinking about something, it ceases to exist. God can’t change his mind like I do when I think I'm gonna go away on a day off but stay home instead. God isn’t choosey. God is decisive. If God thinks something, it comes into existence the way God thinks it because that’s the only way something can exist, if it is the mind of the creator.

Lastly, and likewise connected to the other two, is that idea that Moses prevented an angry God from going down the mountain. Moses could not stop God from inflicting punishment. God is all powerful, all knowing, all seeing, eternal. Moses is...not. All God has to do is stop thinking about Moses or the Israelites for a scone or they’d all be gone.

So, how can we make any sense of all this?

Let’s start by acknowledging that, yes, God is all knowing, all powerful, eternal, unchanging AND that this same God created humanity to play a special role in creation. He created us distinctly from the rest of creation in his divine image. So, as God is making this pact with the Israelites through Moses, their first act is to turn away from God to make their own idol, and God allows them to do that. He isn’t going to force the Israelites into a relationship if they don’t want it. They’re going to have to learn the hard way that being in right relationship with God means loving God alone and not setting up a competitor. That’s, after all, what an idol is; a competitor with God.

Now, we may not have false idols like golden calves in our society or sitting around our house, but I know there are plenty of idols. What’s in our lives that dominates them? To ask that same question in a slightly different way, what do we first think about when we have some free time? Alcohol? Drugs? Pornography? Television? Gaming? Facebook? Tiktok (turn to a young person - that’s a thing, right)

What do we spend money on that we don’t really need and could give to charity instead? Or, again, to ask that in a slightly different way, what could we give up that would make our life simpler? Books?(That’s me by the way) Tools? Some things from our kitchen?

One last question, what do we think about when we’re in a boring meeting or listening to a boring homily? Right now, what are you thinking about? Food? The television? All of this could be idolatrous. It could be stuff that prevents us from drawing closer to God.



What if, instead, of God changing or turning back, Moses resolution to get the Israelites back to God meant they would no longer be in opposition but in line with God and God’s will in their lives. What if God’s anger was like trying to swim against the tide and his anger ceases because they aren’t trying to compete but are with him instead? That’s what I think is happening and what I think the challenge is for us: How can we get rid of the distractions in our life, the idols, so that we can put our focus where it belongs: on God.

22 OC Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ
Peace be with you.

       When I was still in the first five years of priesthood, I would meet with the Archbishop once-a-year so he could hear how things were going for his new priests. One time,  we met with him iat the American Martyrs retreat house in Cedar Falls. I entered the room right exactly on time and noticed I was one of the last ones to show up. The circle of chairs in which the brothers had sat were almost completely full except for the two places right next to the Archbishop. I started to move a chair from outside the circle when I noticed the Archbishop motion for me to sit next to him on his right hand side. So, I casually strolled over to that chair and sat down on his right. Immediately a million different Biblical verses went through my head including Psalm 110 “The LORD’s revelation to my lord:  “Sit at my right hand, until I make your foes your footstool.”
       To be someone’s “right hand man” is an expression meaning that you can be allowed on the side of their body with arm that they would normally use to protect themselves both because they trust you and so that you can protect them in battle. I felt important. At the time, I was a new pastor and felt that the Archbishop wanted me to sit next to him on purpose, because he wanted me to take a seat of importance. That feeling of self-importance lasted until I realized that actually it was just that the other priests are kind of like their parishioners. They wanted to be close to the door so they could be the first ones out of the room and into the social.
       There’s more to our gospel than a simple Miss Manner’s lesson on etiquette. Jesus is showing us an image of what it will be like in heaven. What is your image of heaven? I imagine if we were to take a poll, we would all have different answers to that question. The perfect game of golf? The perfect house? A good steak cooked medium rare with corn on the cob and chocolate cake for dessert? What if heaven actually was being totally devoid of all of that? No house. No car. No golf. And the way the meals are served, you have to sit next to a stinky, sick, homeless person that coughs a lot. That doesn’t sound much like heaven, does it. And yet, Jesus isn’t giving us advice on how we should set up our dinner parties. Not even a fundamentalist believes that. Jesus is trying to get us to realize the kind of humility that will be demanded of us in heaven. Heaven isn’t a Subway sandwich shop. You can’t pick and choose what you want and don’t want in heaven. You just get it the way it is and, to paraphrase what our parents used to say, you’ll be happy with it.
       So, what’s the good news about heaven? Why would anyone want to go there if you don’t get to do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it? Do you remember what you hated most about Middle School or Junior High, depending upon what they called it when you were there? Remember how it seemed like the only way people could feel good about themselves was by ripping apart everyone around them. You can’t just feel good about yourself because you’re a person created in the image and likeness of God who is loved by God as you are. You have to feel good about yourself by noticing all the flaws of everyone around you and making fun of them for it. The crazy thing is that, even though it’s most intense in Middle School, don’t we sort of keep doing that throughout our lives. We should just feel happy about who we are and the gifts we have been given but we spend an awful lot of time complaining about the people around us and how many good things they have. I think part of what Jesus is saying is that heaven will be a place where we don’t care about others having more than we do or being treated better than us, a place where status doesn’t matter and where we learn the freedom of being truly humble. A place where “every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

18 OC Avoid the trap of vanity by building up treasure in heaven.

Friends
Peace be with you.
I knew a priest who worked for many years in a parish far away from here. At first, he lived with two other priests in a terrible rectory that doubled as apartments for parish staff and some local college students. The building began its life as a fraternity house before the church bought it and converted it into apartments. It had a terrible old heating system and was plagued with bats and mice and other critters. Eventually, he got to know some of the more affluent alumni and convinced them to purchase some land and build him a condo to his own suiting. The idea was that he would retire at age 70 and remain living in the rectory as the Pastor Emeritus to raise funds for the parish. The new pastor could live in the parish-owned apartment until he raised his own money to live somewhere else. However, very much like in the parable Jesus spoke in the Gospel, my priest friend developed a very fast moving cancer and died less than a year later, shortly before he would have turned 70 and retired.
So, don’t save for retirement. It’s a sin to have a 401k or an IRA. And don’t get me started on life insurance or nursing home insurance. Just give any excess money you have at the end of the month to the church. (pause for the hope of laughter) Okay. Okay. I’m just kidding. Actually, it’s important to have a plan for your retirement, even if we know it could go very differently than we expect. The point of the parable is not the sin of savings but something much more meaningful.
Let’s look at the gospel through the lens of the first reading from the Book of Ecclesiastes. The author calls himself Qoheleth, a Hebew word that means “the reader” or “the one who addresses an assembly”. So, Qoheleth is the one who reads to us the message he received from God. The message repeatedly describes actions as leading to vanity. You may remember from Deacon Robert’s homily last weekend that vanity is one of the 7 deadly sins. When I think of vanity, I tend to think of a supermodel staring into a mirror smiling at how attractive she or he is. But, Qoheleth the reader realizes that it’s larger than that. He begins by trying to learn everything he can, to exhaust all knowledge. But he realizes that this is vanity and a “chase after the wind” another phrase Qoheleth repeatedly uses to mean something that’s impossible. No one can learn everything or know everything
       So, since he can’t get all knowledge, he turns to pleasure and tries to be the happiest person in the world. He sees pleasure in the acquisition of things or, to echo what the man says in Jesus’ parable  he want to be able to sit back some day and think, “Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’ He buys palaces, vinyars, pools for watering his orchards, herds, flocks, ane even people. He had every kind of treasure he could want but the search for more and more wealth made him miserable. Again, it’s vanity and a search after wind. After all, even the richest person in the world will someday die or get sick and the pleasure they feel in their things will be taken away. And, if he bases his pleasure on the fact that his name will be forever remembered because of the farm he owns or the palace he built, he realized that the names and stories of our ancestors only last as long as people remember them and they eventually pass away.
Qoheleth lands on a quandary similar to the one Jesus has at the end of the gospel: how do we build up for ourselves treasure in heaven? According to Qoheleth, we stop  making it all about ourselves and our success and doing it our way and focus entirely on God and God’s will and seeing everything as a gift to be used by God. Which then changed the way we look at how we use our gifts, especially the gifts that are more than we can utilize today. It is our responsibility to first ask what God would want us to do before we ask what we want to do. Does God want us to allow concerns about our inheritance to rip apart our family? I think not. Does God want us to store up more money than would be necessary for a comfortable life in such a way as to impress others with all our stuff? Again, I think not.
        The next pastor after my friend passed initially moved into my friend’s house but quickly decided he didn’t like it. He couldn’t invite his Associate Pastor or any seminarians to live with so he sold that house and bought an older, larger one closer to the church that could accommodate multiple people. I think he wanted to build up treasure in heaven. He could see that spending time with God and people was the most important treasure of all.
       So how can we avoid the traps of vanity to build up treasure in heaven?

16 OC Don’t let worry ruin your labor.

Friends
Peace be with you.
Yes, it’s Martha and Mary Sunday. That Sunday when we, the slackers of the world, turn to the worker and say, “According to Jesus, I have chosen the better part!” Much of the time, the message that is driven home in homilies is about the contemplative life being more important than the active, charitable life. You can just feel the smugness of the Trappist monks and priests and Trappistine nuns sitting their chapel at prayer as you drive past New Melleray Abbey and Our Lady of the Mississippi. I’m only kidding of course. Still, hearing Jesus say, “Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken of her” sure seems to imply the superiority of Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet in quiet contemplation over Poor Martha slaving away in the kitchen all day. I mean, she’s been trying to put together a nice meal for Jesus and his followers and, when she asks for help, she gets rebuked for being “worried about many things”. Maybe if the apostles would have been worried about many things, they wouldn’t have found themselves in the middle of nowhere trying to feed 5000 people with five loaves and two fish.
But, if we pull back and little from this simplistic explanation of the supremacy of the contemplative versus the charitable, this simple message gets muddled. Let’s look, for instance, at the first reading from the Book of Genesis. In it, we hear of Abraham seeing three men standing in the heat of the desert. He takes them for travelers. He could have gone back into his tent to keep Sarah, his wife, safe from these strangers and taken some time, to pray with her. But, instead, he kicks into a high gear of hospitality. He asks them to stay, bathes their feet with his precious water, and finds a shady tree for them to rest. Then, he organizes everyone in his party to prepare a feast for these three men who turn out to be angels. Although, it’s only after they leave him that he realizes he’s entertained angels. Before the leave, they inform him that he will be given the gift he’s been continually promised by God; to have an heir, a truly humourous suggestion given the advanced age of both Abraham and Sarah. It seems pregnancy is the reward for Abraham’s charitable hospitality. He’s not admonished for being “worried about many things”. Is God being sexist by rewarding a man for a hard days work but chastising a woman for the same work? No, I really don’t think that’s what’s going on.
I think part of what is happening has to do with worrying Martha turns her concerns for a nice meal into worry. And it appears she’s worried about many things, not just the quality of the meal she’d like to provide. And Mary allows her worries to become a barrier to hospitality. Jesus is suddenly having to arbitrate a disagreement between siblings. One wonders what would have happened if Martha had gone to her sister and asked her for help instead of tattling to Jessus.
But, I think both stories focus our minds and hearts on the importance of relationships over labor. Work is important, but only if it makes us more connected to others and we should seek to be in loving service to those around us while we work. If we use work as an excuse not to spend time with our spouse or kids and allow the concerns of work to spill over to our home life, we will quickly find that we are missing the better part. If we allow work to take precedence over Mas or our personal prayer, we may find that we are constantly anxious and worried about many things instead of finding consolation in the one great commandment to love God and neighbor. That is the better part that we must not allow to be taken away.

Pentecost - C

Friends

Peace be with you.

I would guess that one of the more rewarding and yet challenging components of being a parent is being equated with the actions of your children. If you have more active children, you may think that people believe you’re letting your children have too much screen time and they’re acting out because they don’t get out enough. Or you may think they’re saying that your kids spend too much time outdoors and have become feral like a child raised by apes. Or, God forbid, if you child breaks the law, you may think people say that you should have punished them more as a child, to teach them respect for the law. Or you may be worried that people think you should stand up for your kid and not just accept that the police are always right. I think it’s even more difficult when your kid domes thing good, especially if it was something you really struggled to do. You may be worried that people will think you really pushed your kid to succeed and were a slavedriver even if you didn’t have to push him or her because they loved what they were doing and pushed themselves. Or you may think they’re going to say you pushed them hard so you can correct your failures through your kid’s successes. Let’s face, the people in our heads are the worst!

This weekend, we celebrate Pentecost, the giving of the Holy Spirit to the Church. Some people ven call this the Birthday of the Church, since all ministry is empowered by the Holy Spirit and we can do nothing good without her. In our readings today, we hear two separate accounts of the Pentecost event. Unlike last week during the Ascension, when we heard the same author, St. Luke, tell the same story twice in two different books, we have the story of Pentecots told from two, very different perspectives. The Gospel writer, St. John, tends to remember more the preaching and teaching and less the miraculous side of Jesus. So, in St. John’s story, Jesus appears through a locked door without any fanfare and shows off his body to show that it was truly a resurrection. Then, he breathes on his disciples to empower them to forgive sin. It appears that all of this took place on the night of the Resurrection, Easter night.

In contrast, St. Luke, who tends to favor the miraculous because of his goal to show the movement of the church from Jew to Gentile, says the Holy Spirit was given fifty days after Passover, on Pentecost. The differences in dates is just one difference between these two accounts. In Luke, Jesus ascended 10 days before Pentecots and was, therefore, not present for Pentecost, Further, the Holy Spirit sounded like a mighty wind and was accompanied by tongues of fire, which empowers the Apostles to be able to spread the message of the mighty acts of God to everyone around by giving the Apostles the ability to speak in such a way that the many people with different languages could understand them. If Pentecost is the undoing of the Old Testament event of the Tower of Babel, it’s not by making us all speak one language. It’s done by making the gospel heard by all people in their native language.

Some scholars say that the Gospel account is about a personal giving of the Holy Spirit while the story from Acts tells about a second, communal giving of the Spirit. And, while that’s entirely possible, I prefer to think of this as the same story told from two different perspectives. For St. John, Sunday itself has been transformed because of the Resurrection of Jesus in such a way that every Sunday is Easter and Jesus is always present there because we eat his flesh and drink his blood in the Eucharist. Further, the fire and sound of driving wind in St. Luke are merely the breath of God empowering the Holy Spriit. And, even though it appears as though the mission of the Gospel to spread God’s mercy to all nations seems different than St. .Luke’s message to spread the mighty works of God, the truth is that God’s forgiveness is the mightiest act of God and, indeed, the basis for all the mighty acts the church will be called to perform.



It seems to me that we tend to focus on Pentecost on the Gifts of the Spirit, which is important. In fact, it’s important to do so every day of our lives, not just Pentecost and certainly not just during confirmation class. But, it’s important for us to remember why we need the gifts in the first place; to give glory to God. The gifts we are given by the Holy Spirit are given to show forth the glory of God. So, yes, we need to pray for the gifts of the spirit but not so that we can have superpowers like Captain Marvel or Superman, but so that others will see the mighty acts of God and long to encounter God’s mercy and forginess as well. May the Holy Spirit always empower us in this endeavor.

4 EC Listening to Jesus and not the naysayers

Friends
Peace be with you.
For some reason, as I read over the first reading, I couldn’t help but think of a high school friend of mine that, for the sake of the story, I’m going to John. As you may be aware, it’s typical for people to gain some weight during the first year of college.  People refer to it as the Freshman fifteen. After college and before his wedding, John decided he was going to work on some of the weight he had gained during college. He started exercising and eating less food and food that was healthier. John had lost fifteen of the forty pounds he was hoping to lose. He was feeling good about his progress and decided to go to a party with some of my high school friends. In the middle of it, John and another friend got into a bit of a verbal altercation which ended with the other friend calling John fat. I remember thinking how unfair it was for the one friend, who had gained more weight in college than John and was doing nothing about it. John knew there was no use in arguing with this person and let the whole thing drop but I could really tell it bothered him.
       In the first reading, St. Paul and St. Barnabas are in Antioch of Pisidia. Now, this shouldn’t be confused with Antioch of Syria, where the term “Christian” was first used to describe the followers of Jesus. This is farther North and East of there. And this is the administrative center of the Roman Empire for the province of Galatia, meaning it would have been a fairly important town. St. Paul and St. Barnabas arrive in town and go immediately to the synagogue. In the first part of this chapter, they describe St. Paul’s preaching the first week that they’re there. He uses the Old Testament to show Jesus as being prefigured in the Exodus and King David. Then he uses a quote from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah to invite the people in the synagogue to faith in Christ. All of that happens in verses fifteen to forty two of this chapter of Acts, the verses that are left out of this reading.
       Instead, we focus on what happens a week later when St. Paul and St. Barnabas again gather and, this time, a larger crowd filled with both Jews and Gentiles has gathered in the synagogue. It’s a clear indication that the Holy Spirit is working, the other being that these two saints get a jeering section. It’s hard to know if the Jewish leaders who went to the “women of prominence who were worshippers and leading men of the city” to these great evangelizers kicked out of their territory were more afraid that St. Paul and St. Barnabas were making salvation seem too easy or if they were just jealous because of the success. What we know is that didn’t allow the persecution to stop them but, instead, shook the dust from their feet and went on to the next place in joy and the Holy Spirit.
       If you’re anything like me, it’s hard not to get frustrated by unfounded criticism. It’s hard not to question if something is worth it when someone is lobbing all kinds of criticism toward you. The question we have to ask ourself is if what we are doing is of God or not. If we are following God’s voice, if we are listening to the voice of the Good Shepherd, we should shake the dust of the naysayers criticism off our feet and continue on our way. If someone can’t handle your growth in holiness, it’s probably because they’re not making the progress they wish they could or they’ve given up on making progress in holiness. As it said in the Responsorial Psalm, “We are his people, the sheep of his flock.”

Palm Sunday C He brings together those who were apart

Friends
Peace be with you.
In the midst of the chaos of the Passion, there is this very fascinating turn-of-events that may, very understandably, be missed. “Herod and Pilate became friends that very day, even though they had been enemies formerly.” Now, you may wonder why, in this midst of this very long, very detailed story about the condemnation, torture, and death of the central person within Christianity, I would choose to focus at all on the two civil leaders mentioned in this passage. Isn’t it interesting, however, what it takes for these two powerful leaders to become friends: the common struggle against a crowd braying for the death of an innocent. Their power hungry attitudes set them against one another but it will be a common enemy that will unite them and make them friends.
In a past assignment involving several parishes in different towns, I was dumbstruck as to how to get the people in the parishes to get past differences in order to work together to build up the body of Christ. They seemed to be only concerned with being Christian if it helped their town and hurt the towns (and parishes) close by. After all, if we close a parish next door, maybe some of those people will come to our parish and they won’t be able to close us. There was even a point where I found myself wondering if I were to do things to make myself hated by the people in the parishes, if they would come together out of hatred for me.
The “why” of unity is just as important as unity itself. If we are working together to bring criminals back to God, to reconcile sinners around a campfire, and helping people deal with the reality of death, we are reconciling as Christ would. But, if we are united in mutual hatred of a common enemy, we may find that we are, in fact, crucifying our Lord more than we are the Lord himself.

8 OC Listen before you speak

Friends
Peace be with you.
When I was growing up, my Mom had a plaque in her bedroom wall which read “speak less than thou knowest”. A little alter, I heard it expressed in slightly more pessimistic language as “It’s better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool than to talk and remove all doubt”. This quote, erroneously attributed to both Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain, illustrates well the biblical principle of today’s first reading from the Book of Sirach. It’s regrettable that we miss out on the first three verses of Chapter 27 of this reading because I find them integral to understanding the wisdom that Joshua Ben Sirach is trying to impart to us. He starts, in Chapter 27, by talking about how sin is a peg between the fitted stones of buying and selling. Presumably, he is talking about bargaining or haggling, the negotiating that happens between a buyer and a seller. The seller wants to make his product appear worth top dollar even when it’s well-worn. And the buyer wants to make herself appear destitute and in need of extreme charity. In that negotiation lies the rub between the fitted stone of one who has the product and one who wants or needs it. And that rub is deception and lies and manipulation. So, according to Sirah, what is the escape hatch to turning a blind eye to the injustice associated with buying and selling? The fear of the Lord.
Now, before I continue, let me take a minute to talk about the fear of the Lord. A couple of years ago, the Archbishop told the priests of this diocese that there was going to be a new translation of the Rite of Confirmation but he wasn’t real excited about it. His principle complains that that they maintained this phrase “Fear of the Lord”. He thought it would be better understood if it was translated “awe” or “respect” of the Lord because “fear is never a good thing. I can see his point. One of the most used phrases in the Bible is “Do not be afraid.” And the concept of the fear of God is used by atheists to mischaracterize religion as a manipulation of people through fear of a non existent old bearded man in the clouds. Yet, fear is also a reaction to something or someone that is not of our control. Yes, it is a a survival instinct when we encounter the unknown but it is also a natural reaction we have around someone or something far more powerful than we are. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe C.S. Lewis put it this way in describing the Lion, Aslan, who is the Christ-figure, “He’ll be coming and going. One day you’ll see him and another you won’t. He doesn’t like being tied down and of course he has other countries to attend to. It’s quite all right. He’ll often drop in. Only you musn’t press him. He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.” In another place, Lewis describes the lion as “not safe, but good”. The fear of the Lord is merely the recognition that God is neither tame nor safe nor manipulable nor power hungry but is, simply, good. The greatest good in fact, and one to keep in our heart even while engaged in buying and selling.
This is all context to the first reading which advised against judging a person by what she or he says. Often, we say that talk is cheap and actions are what count but Sirach is going to remind us that words also count for something. In particular, pay attention to how a person speaks when they are under duress or under pressure. According to Sirach, that’s when the true test of a person cares about. I can think of times when I wish I would have had the fear of the Lord more in my heart than worrying about being in control of a situation or trying to fill the tense-silence of a situation with sarcastic humor. I look back and wish I have through before uttering a harsh word or laughing with someone who was making a joke at another’s expense. In those cases, I don't feel like I was producing the good fruit both Sirach and Jesus call us to produce. As we enter the season of Lent this Wednesday, it may be a good time to evaluate the T.V. shows, videos, radio programs, books, podcasts, and other audio and visual media that are forming the way we speak and think. Are they helping to nourish a healthy sense of the Fear of the Lord? Or have they turned God into a safe, tame, far-off deity instead of a powerfully good God who wants us to become the best version of ourselves possible?And might a little silence help us in that process?

6 OC Only God can fill the hole inside our heart

Friends
Peace be with you.
If Today’s gospel sounds similar to but not the same as the Beatitudes you are used to hear, there’s a reason for that. It’s because these beatitudes come from the Sermon on the Plain from the Gospel of Luke and not the Sermon on the Mount from the Gospel of Matthew. The difference is that St. Matthew’s version contains eight Beatitudes (statements that begin with “Blessed are the…”) while St. Luke has four Beatitudes and four woes. I appreciated the explanation offered by St. Bonaventure as to the difference. He said that possibly the Lord offered the fuller eight beatitudes earlier on the top of the mountain and then, later, offered the four as a kind of summary/reminder to a congregation mixed with those present for the earlier sermon and some new people who needed to be caught up. Yet, I think the summary is even more challenging because it not only focuses on the positive side of who is blessed but makes explicit four contrasting “woes” that a Christian is to avoid.
Still, let’s be honest. How many of us would say that we have, as a goal, to be poor? Don’t raise your hands but think about how absurd of a question that is. How many plan on starving in order to be holy? How many want to weep, not just shed a tear but have a full out, uncontrollably mournful experience of weeping? And how many people want to be persecuted? The answer to these question is, of course, no one. And we can probably all think of people who are poor or hungry, or weeping or persecuted who are far from holy. So, why does Jesus seem to set these up as the ideal of Christian life?
Each of these beatitudes describes what ancient philosophers would have called and “evil”. An evil in the ancient world was a place where there should be something good but, instead, there is nothing. Think of a hole in the ground that needs to be filled. Someone who is poor needs money. Someone who is starving needs food. Someone who is mourning needs to be comforted. Someone who is being persecuted needs to have rights. Yet, Jesus says that people who have filled the holes these are the ones to be pitied. Is he off his rocker? Or, as some scripture scholars suggest whenever we have a passage of scripture that seems to hard to fulfill, is he exaggerating in order to make a point? I don’t think so.
The passage that immediately precedes this one is the calling of the twelve apostles. Jesus looked at his growing number of followers and chose 12 men who had been with him since his baptism to be leaders in this community. They wouldn’t have known at the time that Jesus was really beginning the first diocese with himself as the bishop, the 12 as priests, the 120 disciples as his deacons, and the people as...well...the people. What they did know, however was that there was danger in following Jesus. Not only did you have to neglect your family and your job in your commitment to follow Jesus but you, in effect, became an enemy of the state and synagogue. Romans would view you as being an insurrectionist and the Jewish leadership would see you as following a rogue rabbi. So, these men, now filled with fear and trepidation, are being told what to expect. Don’t expect to be rich, well fed, happy, or esteemed. In fact, if you do expect that treatment, you aren’t following Christ. Instead, expect to be poor, hungry, mournful, and hated because of the fidelity you feel to Christ.
Jesus ultimate message, then, is not that there is an innate value to these characteristics, otherwise anorexia and anarchy would be the pinnacle of holiness. Intead, he is saying that those who are satisfied with what they ave are where they are already have what they need. There is no hole inside them that needs to be filled. But we who do feel the hole inside of us have, basically, two choices. We can fill it with the stuff of this world or we can let God fill it in his time with his grace. After all, our world loves to try and offer things that fill the holes in our life. These four blesseds and woes are pretty good for our time. The world wants us always to have the newest technology, clothing, home furnishings, and other things. They want to fill us up with junk food or drugs and alcohol to make us happy. They have given us social media that addicts us to having our every be liked and esteemed as though we are all St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas.
At our core, as Christians, we know that culture can only fill these holes in our life with trash that ultimately leaves us feeling even more empty. We recognize that emptiness we feel are an opportunity to connect with the biggest hole in history, the cross: This evil torture device on which hung the savior of the world is the ultimately filled by the Word Made Flesh, Jesus Christ, who alone satisfies our hungers and leads us out of mourning to the comfort of eternal life. Then the hole in our heart becomes a grace that drives us to be like Christ, an emptiness that we treasure because it points us to where our true hearts will one day be filled.