Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time - August 30, 2015

Homily for 22^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

August 30, 2015

Traditions & Superstitions

 

            We are blessed, as Catholics, to have rich traditions in our Catholic culture. Things like fish fries on Fridays in Lent, devotions to this saint or that saint, statues and holy water and Rosaries and all sorts of things. We have special blessings for everything from cars to Easter food. This is a wonderful gift! Being Catholic is kind of like being at an all-you-can-eat restaurant – so many choices, so little time!

            The objects and blessings that make up part of our tradition are called sacramentals. A sacramental is something like a crucifix, a holy card, a Rosary, Holy water, a blessing, or any other object that helps to remind us of Jesus. Sacramentals have no power on their own, but are meant to remind us of God and bring us closer to the Lord. They are important parts of our Catholic tradition!

            But Jesus has some sharp words for people in the Gospel who focus on traditions and neglect the heart of the Law. In His day, the Pharisees were more interested in making sure their hands were washed properly than in making sure that the poor are fed. In our day, we sometimes see similar things. We sometimes see people focusing too much on the traditions, and not enough on the core of Jesus’ message.

            For example, I had a woman come up to me one time in Church with a five-gallon bucket. I had never seen her before, so I asked her what she was doing with that bucket. She asked – through a translator – for some holy water. I told her I could give her a little bit, but not five gallons worth! But she insisted. So I asked what she wanted to use it for. She said she wanted to give her sons a bath in holy water to ward off evil. But when I asked her if she came to Mass weekly, she said that she didn’t. So I didn’t give the lady any holy water, but instead encouraged her to come to Confession and Mass that weekend!

            We must always be careful to avoid superstition in our religion. Superstition is the enemy of true faith! Superstition basically means giving something else the power that belongs to God alone. Jesus alone saves us – not a specific prayer, not a statue, not wearing a specific medal, not a specific blessing. Only Jesus!

            Again, Jesus is not condemning all traditions as evil. Jesus Himself was a good Jew, and He followed the traditions of His religion. But He also recognized that traditions can be used to draw us closer to God – or can be a distraction from what God truly wants of us.

            What does God truly want from us? He wants us to love Him; to have a life of prayer, to follow the commandments, to love our neighbor, to surrender our lives over to Him. That is the core of the Gospel message – that although we are sinners, Jesus died for us so that we could be forgiven and healed, if we accept Jesus into our lives and strive to live for Him and keep His commands. That is the core of what we believe.

            And sacramentals are supposed to remind us of this! When we look at a crucifix, we are reminded that Jesus loves us and He died for us. When we receive a blessing, we remember that God is the giver of all good gifts. When we pray to St. Jude, we remember that God’s grace was powerfully at work within him, and we too are called to imitate Jude’s example of holiness. When we look at a Rosary, we are invited to pray it.

            Just a survey - how many of us own a Rosary? How many of us have prayed the Rosary in the past year? The past month? The past week? Having a Rosary and not praying it is like owning a car and never driving it – we need to pray the Rosary in order for it to make us saints! Sacramentals do no good unless they lead us closer to Jesus!

            So, we rejoice at all of the sacramentals and rich traditions of our Faith. We cultivate devotion to saints, we hang crosses on our walls, we get blessings for our cars. Those traditions are beautiful and rich. But we do not have a superstitious reliance on these traditions. God alone saves us, and He invites us to use these traditions and sacramentals as avenues of His grace so that we can be transformed into saints!

Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time - August 23, 2015

Homily for 21^st Sunday in Ordinary Time

August 23, 2015

Complementarity of Gender

 

            For the first time in history this October, the pope will canonize (make saints of) a married couple. Both Louis and Zelie Martin lived lives of such heroic holiness that the Church will recognize them both as saints. Louis and Zelie lived in France in the late 1800s, and they lived a simple life of upper-middle-class workers. Louis was a watchmaker, and Zelie made lace. They had five daughters who survived infancy, and all five became nuns…in fact, their youngest is rather famous: St. Therese of Lisieux! But their life, although simple, was devout – they prayed daily as a family and attended Mass throughout the week; they read spiritual books and sincerely strove for sanctity. They did nothing heroic – but through their marital love, they helped each other get to Heaven!

            This is what St. Paul is helping us with today in the second reading. He desires to see husbands and wives help each other become saints. Yet many people, when they hear the second reading, think it to be misogynistic – he says, “Wives, be submissive to your husbands.” Wow! This seems harsh to modern ears.

            But let’s look deeper. What is the husband called to do? “Love his bride as Christ loved the Church.” And how did Christ love the Church? By dying for her! Jesus shed every drop of His Blood so that the Church could come to life; likewise, a husband is called to lay down his life, his wants and desires, his pride and his strength, in service to his wife. St. Paul is calling on husbands and wives to practice mutual self-giving love as the key to a happy and holy marriage!

            You see, in marriage, the role of husband and wife are different – but complementary. We believe that men and women are created in the image and likeness of God AS men and women! Men and women are different but equal – they have different roles, different strengths, they reflect God in different ways – but are equal in the life of grace.

            One of the major themes of Pope St. John Paul the Great’s Theology of the Body is that the body expresses the person. We see this in everyday life. Just this past week as we were having (our youth group summer gathering) Mass Mayhem, we were discussing a difficult line in the Gospels where Jesus says, “The Spirit gives life, the flesh is of no avail.” One of our boys offered an interpretation of that line: “Jesus means that it doesn’t matter what we do with our bodies, so long as our souls are with Him.” The boy sitting next to him just turned to him with an incredulous look, and said, “So, it doesn’t matter if I punch you in the face?” Obviously, what we do with our bodies is an expression of the soul.

            This past week I was at our Catholic summer camp, Camp Veritas. And this principle was displayed so much, because Camp Veritas is absolutely filled with nuns! There are nuns everywhere! And all of these nuns have such a joy and a beauty that radiates from their face. They are smiling and laughing all the time. Why? Because their souls are at peace; they have a deep, intimate relationship with Christ – and that radiates forth from their countenance!

            So, because the body expresses the soul, men and women are not merely men and women on the level of the body, but they are different on the level of the soul, as well. Men and women reflect God’s image in different ways. Men are in the image of God’s strength, His power, His ability to come through and defend and protect His people. Women are in the image of God’s tenderness, His mercy and love, His beauty.

            We see this borne out in daily life. If I were to skin my knee as a little boy, who would I run to? My mom, of course. She is the image of God’s tenderness and mercy. (My dad would probably just say, “Cool scar, son! Tough it out!”) But if there was a burglar in the house, who would I want around me? My dad, of course. He is the image of God’s strength and power.

            Of course, this isn’t to say that men shouldn’t be merciful or than women shouldn’t be strong. I’m not saying that – there is certainly overlap. But if a man is not powerful or strong, we know that something’s wrong with him. If a woman isn’t tender and kind, we know that something’s wrong with her. These are the ways in which we were created to image different but complementary aspects of God to the world.

            But a lot of people may say, “That sounds nice, but that hasn’t been my experience!” Of course not – because we live in a fallen world! Because of original sin, many men are now tempted to use that God-given strength and power to dominate and abuse others, instead of to serve them (which was God’s original plan). Because of original sin, some women are tempted to seduce and manipulate men with their beauty, instead of putting their beauty and tenderness at the service of others. We need to repent of this if we have used our God-given gifts for selfishness and not self-giving!

            We live in a world in which gender is very confused. Just recently, Target stores decided that they would no longer have a “boys” section and a “girls” section – they said that they don’t want to be divisive or intolerant by believing that boys and girls are created differently. On the other hand, on the social media website Facebook, when you create a profile you can select one of 49 different genders. Not sure what the other 47 are…

            But this just expresses the great confusion that our society has about gender. Yet God created men and women in His image and likeness in different but complementary ways, equal in dignity and grace but with distinct roles to bring about His Kingdom on the earth!

            In today’s Gospel we hear the Jews walking away from Jesus because of the difficulty of His teaching (about the Eucharist). Many people in today’s world want to walk away from the Church because of this beautiful teaching about the complementarity of men and women. I pray that we may have the courage to say, with Simon Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life.”

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time - August 16, 2015

20^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

August 16, 2015

Eucharist, Part III

 

            It helps to know a little Greek to better understand this Gospel. There are two words in Greek that mean “eat”. One is “ephago” – that simply means to eat. But there is another word, “trogon”, which is a much more graphic verb. It means to gnaw, to chew, to rip with one’s teeth. As we have been working our way through John 6 – Jesus’ important “Bread of Life Discourse” – up to this point, Jesus has used the word “ephago”. This could be taken figuratively, like when we say that we need to “digest that idea” – not literally with our stomach, but it means to absorb it in our minds.

            But at this point, in today’s Gospel, Jesus switches words. He no longer uses ephago – now he uses trogon, which can only be used literally. He is being incredibly graphic here – we must chew, gnaw His flesh…He clearly did not mean this figuratively!

            He strengthens His statement with the phrase, “Amen, amen, I say to you…”. Whenever Jesus says this in the Gospels, He is basically saying, “Listen up, disciples, because I am about to tell you a most solemn truth, one that is literally and absolutely true.” So when Jesus says, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life within you,” He is putting it in the most forceful, literal way possible.

            And of course, it was difficult for the Jewish people to understand this. A good Jew would be horrified by the thought of drinking blood, as it was expressly forbidden by the Old Testament. For a Jewish person, blood equaled life – to drink the blood of some animal was equivalent to drinking its very life, which belonged to God alone. So the Jews were hearing Jesus ask them to consume His very divine life, which was not something they were prepared to do!

            Even the early Christians were persecuted, partly, because of this belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The ancient Romans heard rumors about this new sect of Christianity, and how they ate bodies and drank blood in their secret rituals. Well, of course that was true about their Masses, but the Romans thought that they were cannibals!

            Of course, we are not cannibals…because we believe in transubstantiation. Transubstantiation means that the substance of the Eucharist changes, from bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus, while the accidents – the external things like taste, touch, smell – stay the same. Jesus wants to draw near to us in the Eucharist, so He hides Himself in something small so that we are not afraid to approach Him. Yes, it takes faith – but if the Eucharist is truly Christ, then it is a gift beyond all price.

            I love what JRR Tolkien, the author of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, wrote about the Eucharist:  Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament… There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth. Every Sunday, we get to receive Him…even every day if we choose. Let us always approach Him with reverence, with clean hands and souls free of mortal sin, recognizing that it is the King of Kings that we receive here.

            In 1263 in Bolsena, Italy, many people struggled to believe that what we receive in the Eucharist is truly the Lord. One day, a priest who was struggling with that belief was celebrating Mass. As he began to break the Eucharistic Host, he found that it started to drip blood, which flowed upon the altar cloth (known as a “corporal”). He was so amazed by the miracle that he told the bishop, who in turn told Pope Urban IV. The Pope visited the town, which has preserved the bloodied corporal to this day, and he was convinced of the miracle’s authenticity. So he declared that the universal church should celebrate a feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus, and in 1264, the Feast of Corpus Christi was first celebrated (which we now celebrate every June).

            What a feast it truly is when God Himself offers His body and blood as food for our poor souls!