Sunday, August 5, 2018

Homily for 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
18th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Aug. 5, 2018
Eph 4: 17, 20-24
Visitation Convent, Georgetown, D.C.

“I declare and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do” (Eph 4: 17).
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Recent news offers us evidence of “living as the Gentiles do,” i.e., like pagans, which is what St. Paul means.  Consider the brutal civil wars being waged in Syria, Yemen, South Sudan, and Congo, among other places; genocidal practices in Burma; the persecution of religious minorities in the Middle East and South Asia; drug wars in Mexico, gang wars in Central America, political strife in Nicaragua and Venezuela.  Etc.

Closer to home, what shall we say about the gun violence that explodes because someone has a grievance, real or imagined, or that takes place daily on the streets of Chicago (much worse than here in D.C.)?

Closer yet, the sad saga of Abp. McCarrick is the story of a priest who lived part of his life “as the pagans do”—assuming the credibility of what we’ve been hearing, and evidently Pope Francis so assumes.

Polls, such as those of the Pew Research Center, show over and over that as many as 89% of Catholics see nothing morally wrong with contraception; only half of self-described Catholics consider abortion to be morally wrong; only 35% say that homosexual behavior is wrong.

The latest Pew polling, out last week, concerns Americans’ church attendance.[1]  It reports that 28% of those who don’t go to services regularly (church, synagog, mosque, temple, etc.) don’t go because they’re non-believers.  Whatever their personal lives may be like, and they could be virtuous—they’re pagans.  37% don’t go to church because, they say, they have other ways of practicing their faith; further poll questions reveal, however, that their “other ways” aren’t very evident; they’re less involved in community, charitable, or social groups than churchgoers, tho more than non-believers are.  For practical purposes, these are semi-pagans.

In our reading from St. Paul, the lectionary skips 2 verses in which he briefly describes the Gentiles:  darkened in understanding, alienated from God’s life because of their ignorance, hard of heart, callous, licentious, practicing every kind of impurity to excess (4:18-19).  Some of his descriptions in other letters are even more explicit.
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Paul’s description sounds like a great deal of Western society today, from Point Barrow to Tierra del Fuego, from Gibraltar to Moscow, and throw in Australia and Japan too, just as much as it does the Greece and Rome that Paul knew.  To a vast extent our culture justifies, even glorifies, “every kind of impurity to excess,” which I hardly need detail here.

Beyond that, we’ve degraded our human dignity in multiple ways, most nefariously by murdering our unborn, and in many places our sick and elderly as well; by creating human life in labs in order to destroy it as a means—they hope!—of curing diseases; by creating human life in labs like a manufactured product.  Let me read you a paragraph from medical ethicist Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyks current online column in the Boston Archdiocese’s Pilot:

We encounter Promethean temptations today in the expanding fields of reproductive medicine and infertility. We may be drawn to the idea of “manufacturing” children through in vitro fertilization and related forms of assisted reproductive technologies. By producing and manipulating our children in laboratory glassware, however, we cross a critical line and sever our obedience to the Giver of Life. We assume the role of masters over, rather than recipients of, our own offspring. We allow our children to be mistreated as so many embryonic tokens -- with some being frozen in liquid nitrogen and others being discarded as biomedical waste. We take on the seemingly divine role of creating another human being and reigning supreme over his or her destiny.[2]

We’ve also degraded our human dignity by treating refugees like criminals; by scattering the ashes of the dead like fertilizer on our fields or fish food on the ocean; by discriminating against those who are different in skin color, religion, national origin, gender, or age.

All of this degradation of humanity is pagan behavior.

As already noted, many American Catholics think most of these behaviors are OK, if you believe polls about our acceptance of contraception, premarital sex, homosexuality, divorce and remarriage, even abortion—besides small numbers who indulge in racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, or other discriminatory attitudes and behaviors.

St. Paul tells the Ephesians, “That’s not how you learned Christ” (4:20).  Then he adds quickly, “assuming that you have heard of him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus” (4:21), with the consequence “that you should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted thru deceitful desires” (4:22), viz., their pagan way of life.  Paul himself had preached the Gospel at Ephesus.

And there’s the rub regarding American Catholics as indicated by the polling numbers:  a great number have never “learned Christ”; never been catechized in what we believe or how Jesus’ followers are supposed to live.  Too many parents, too many CCD programs, too many religion classes fell grossly short in their responsibilities.  It’s also been said that a great many baptized Catholics were never really evangelized, i.e., converted to belief in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, as our evangelical brethren like to phrase it.  How else can you explain a 75% absentee rate on Sundays, week after week?

Even churchgoers may be showing up out of a sense of obligation or for social reasons; in other words, not out of conviction—not out of having heard and believed in the Good News of Jesus.  They’re not so different from the crowds who chased after Jesus, seeking a miracle, a healing, some free food, without recognizing in him the Son of God who feeds us with the bread of God’s love and eternal life (cf. John 6:24-35).

Saying you’re Catholic doesn’t mean you are in fact a disciple of the Lord, that you’ve been “renewed in the spirit of your minds and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth” (4:23-24).  That’s why we have errant priests, politicians who vote for abortion, laity who spout hatred for Muslims, immigrants, gays, and so on.

I’m not calling for a great conversion in the sisters, except insofar as the Lord calls all of us to daily conversion, as we do at the beginning of every Mass.  I know our lay friends are here out of conviction and not just for coffee and donuts later.

St. Paul  (Bartolomeo Montagna)
Yet St. Paul speaks also to us.  Maybe we have 1 or 2 pagan attitudes or opinions in our hearts that need to be shucked as “corrupt and deceitful desires” out of harmony with the teachings of Jesus—teachings voiced in the Gospels, voiced thru other biblical messages, voiced thru what the Church teaches today under the influence of the Holy Spirit given her by Jesus.
Beyond that, we have a part to play, maybe just a small part, in addressing the pagan culture around us.  We have the power of our example, so important, as we realize when we witness powerful bad examples.  We may also have the power of conversations and discussions with our friends, colleagues, or offspring—for which we need to be well informed of what the Scriptures and the Church teach.  We may have the power of interacting and teaching a young generation—grandchildren or students.  In our democracy, we have the power of speaking out, of writing to our representatives, of voting.  And, maybe most important, we have the power of prayer:  “Draw near your servants, O Lord, and answer our prayers with unceasing kindness.  Restore what you have created and keep safe what you have restored” (Collect)—the dignity of human beings and the goodness of creation.  Convert all of us, the powerful and influential and the least of us, from whatever evil lies in our hearts and minds and behaviors, so that we may live in peace and mutual respect and virtue and give honor to you, our Maker, here on earth and forever after.[3]


     [1] http://www.pewforum.org/2018/08/01/why-americans-go-to-religious-services/?utm_source=adaptivemailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=18-08-01religiousservices&org=982&lvl=100&ite=2944&lea=654195&ctr=0&par=1&trk=
     [2] https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/1650988e27fd5818
     [3] I wish I’d seen this review of George’s Weigel’s The Fragility of Order before delivering the homily: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/george-weigel-on-the-state-of-the-world

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