Homily for 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily for the

15th Sunday
in Ordinary Time

July 15, 2012

Mark 6: 7-13

St. Timothy, Banksville (Greenwich), Conn.

“Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two” (Mark 6: 7).

Jesus has just been rejected in his hometown of Nazareth—our gospel reading last week.  His reaction is to expand his preaching and healing ministry by sending out his closest disciples, the 12, with his own “authority over unclean spirits,” both physical and spiritual.  They are to go out into the villages of Galilee and preach his message of repentance—Jesus’ 1st words in Mark’s Gospel are a call to repent and believe in the Gospel, for the kingdom of God is at hand and God’s promises are being fulfilled (1:14-15).  Those promises, that kingdom, reveal themselves in Jesus’ word and actions, and now they will be revealed also in what the 12 do and say in his name.  “The Twelve drove out many demons, and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them” (6:13).  Repentance restores the good order of creation, in our hearts and souls in the 1st place, but ultimately also in a broader manner, in the balance of created things.  If we don’t see miraculous healings of the body or of the mind every day, we do believe that on the Last Day we shall see all things, all persons, made new, made whole, and God’s rule completely secured on earth as it is in heaven.  Jesus’ ministry foreshadows that.

Bl. Catherine Tekakwitha
(Natl. Shrine of Immaculate Conception)



Jesus is sending out the 1st Christian missionaries, men (in this instance) who go forth in his name to preach his message and act as he would act.  Ever since Jesus sent those 1st missionaries out, the Church has been missionary, has gone out from the places and the communities where it is firmly established in order to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Good News of the kingdom of God, where it has not yet been heard or not yet accepted.  Yesterday we celebrated the memorial of Blessed Catherine Tekakwitha, who in October will be canonized a saint.  Called the Lily of the Mohawks on account of her exceptional virtue, she’s the finest flower of French missionary activity in Canada and upstate New York in the 17th century.  (For a good visual presentation of what that missionary activity was like, rent the movie Blackrobe, which is fiction solidly based on fact.)  Missionaries came with the earliest explorers and settlers in the Americas, they went west with the fur trappers and homesteaders in the 19th century, and they accompanied the hundreds of thousands of Irish, German, Italian, and Slavic immigrants who arrived on our shores in the 19th and 20th centuries.  In the 20th century, the Irish and American Churches were famous for sending out thousands of priests, sisters, and brothers as missionaries to China, the Philippines, Africa, and Latin America—all of them continuing what Jesus started with the 12.

I bring that out because Msgr. Cullen asked me to preach this week on the missions, and specifically on the Salesian missions.  (Actually, I got the message 3d-hand—on Thursday.  And I found out only when I got here this a.m. that you’re having a special collection for the Mission Cooperative Appeal.)

You may know that the Salesians, the 2d-largest religious order of men in the Church and the largest one of women, are primarily associated with youth ministry.  But St. John Bosco was keen also that we be missionaries, and since 1875 we’ve been a dynamic, far-reaching missionary force—which is why we’re ministering in 130 countries today, bringing to missions of people spiritual, physical, and social healing.

A few examples from the various continents:

A Salesian school in Haiti

In Haiti, after the government the Salesians are the largest provider of educational services in the country.  After the 2010 earthquake, in which 3 SDBs and several dozen of our pupils died, we also provided a great deal of emergency relief.  Now we’re rebuilding our schools and youth centers and one of only 3 nursing schools in the country.  The president of the Haitian Bishops Conference, Abp. Louis Kebreau of Cap-Haitien, is a Salesian; last Dec. 8 he was awarded the Notre Dame Prize for Distinguished Public Service in Latin America.

American SDB Fr. Larry Gilmore in Monrovia, Liberia, 2003

The Salesian missionary work in Liberia and Sierra Leone was started by American SDBs.  You may remember the bloody civil wars that wracked both those countries in the 1990s—recalled by the movie Blood Diamond a few years back, and by Charles Taylor’s conviction at the Hague in April on charges of war crimes.  The SDBs stayed in-country thruout those wars, stayed with the people, and witnessed some terrible events.  They remain there today, working with former child soldiers and street children, among other pastoral activities.

Ethiopia has been a largely Christian country since the earliest centuries of the faith; the Acts of the Apostles tells the story of the conversion of an Ethiopian court official.  It’s an extremely poor country with low literacy rates.  SDBs from Italy, India, and other countries offer education at 11 sites in all parts of the country; the FMAs have another 4 schools.  For the last several years we’ve also had young lay missionary volunteers from the U.S., Italy, and Austria teaching in some of the schools, especially skills like English and computers that will help the young find good jobs.  And of course after-school activities also keep kids busy, happy, and out of trouble.

The SDBs went to China in 1906.  Two SDBs are among the 120 Chinese martyrs whom JPII canonized in 2000, whose feastday was last week (Aug. 9).  In Shanghai in the 1940s, young Joseph Zen met the SDBs and decided to become one.  He was ordained a priest in 1961 in Turin and became a seminary professor in Hong Kong, Macao, and even on the mainland.  He served as provincial, and in 1996 was made bishop of Hong Kong;* he was made a cardinal in 2006.  Wikipedia says he “is famous for his outspokenness on issues regarding human rights, political freedom, and religious liberty, often attracting criticism from the Communist Party of China.”  Altho now retired as bishop of Hong Kong on account of age, he remains a very active champion of human rights and of freedom.  He delights in describing himself, relative to the Communist authorities, as “a troublemaker.”  Besides Cardinal Zen, the SDBs boast of some of the finest schools in Hong Kong and Macao, 11 of them in all, besides several on Taiwan; the FMAs have 9 schools in those places.

Cardinal Zen speaking with young Salesians (men and women) and candidates.
Ramsey, N.J., 2009.

Those of you of a certain age remember the crucial WWII battles fought on New Guinea and Guadalcanal, and younger folk may have seen them portrayed last year on HBO (The Pacific).  Now some of the scenes of the bloodiest fighting imaginable are the sites of SDB and FMA schools and youth hostels, where young Papuans and Solomon Islanders learn trades and professional skills, besides the 4 Rs: reading, ’riting, ’rithmetic, and religion.  The Salesian missionaries are mainly from the Philippines but also from other countries.

Students at the SDB school in Lahore

Philippine SDBs also run very highly respected technical schools in Lahore and Quetta, Pakistan.  Yes, Pakistan!  If the names of those 2 cities sound familiar, it’s probably because they’re often in the news in connection with terrorist activity.  So far, our schools and personnel have been not only respected but even revered—all the more because of the extensive relief programs they organized after 2 natural disasters, an earthquake in 2006 and widespread flooding last year.  Both education and disaster relief, of course, are offered to Christians and Muslims alike.

Auto mechanics students at the
Don Bosco trade school in Ulan Bator

Mongolia is a little larger than Alaska in area sandwiched between China’s northern border and Siberia.  Its population is a little over 3 million, less than that of Connecticut.  When the Communist regime there fell, there were no Catholics in the whole country.  The SDBs were invited to come in to set up parishes and youth ministry programs in the capital, Ulan Bator, in 2001, and in Darhan, the 2d largest city, in 2004.  Thus Vietnamese and Polish SDB missionaries staff half the parishes in the country:  2 out of 4.  They’ve provided some wonderful educational activity for youngsters and programs for street children and abused women.  Their parish activity has brought about hundreds of baptisms; today there are about 1,000 Catholics in Mongolia.  (You may have seen a little piece about all this in the March issue of the Fairfield County Catholic.)

I mentioned young missionary volunteers in connection with Ethiopia.  There are such programs sending post-college youths—and sometimes much older folk, even whole families—to the foreign missions from Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, Poland, and the U.S.  Both the SDBs and the FMAs sponsor such programs.  Several SDB provinces in Latin America have programs that send young people to mission areas, including urban slums, in their own countries.  Here in the U.S. between 2009 and 2011 we’ve missioned 58 men and women (about 2/3 women), almost all of them in their 20s but some in their 50s, to Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, Ethiopia, India, Mexico, Rwanda, and South Africa to serve in orphanages, trade schools, academic schools, youth centers, and other services.  The American FMAs do something similar.  The volunteers commit for a year, and a good number of them re-up for a 2d year; there’s one in Cochabamba, Bolivia, now finishing her 3d year.  The 2012 batch, expected to number about 20, will start their orientation in a couple of weeks and be commissioned at the end of a retreat on Aug. 18.  If you’re interested in such service or know someone who is, someone who’d like to continue the mission of the 12, the mission of the Lord Jesus, especially among young people, let me know.

I hope all of you will support our Salesian missionaries—priests, sisters, brothers, and lay people—with your prayers.  In the 2d collection you’ll have a chance to give tangible support to the missions—in this case to the diocese of Jaffna in Sri Lanka.  God bless you.

---

               * Technically, he became coadjutor bishop of Hong Kong in 1996, and bishop (ordinary) in 2002 on the retirement of his predecessor, Bp. John Wu.

Homily for 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily for the

14th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Mark 6: 1-6

Christian Brothers, Iona College, N.R.

July 8, 2012

(Note: As many lay people as brothers participate in the Saturday evening vigil Mass.)

“Jesus came to his native place” (Mark 6: 1).

The last place where many Salesians want to preach is in their own communities.  How much easier to talk to the kids, go out to a parish, even go to another religious community.  At home they’ve heard it all before.  Worse, they know us well.  Worst, we have to live with these guys, so we have to be wary of what we say and how we say it.

So we can identify a little bit with Jesus.  He’s been preaching and healing around the Sea of Galilee from a base in Capernaum, where he’s made his home (Mark 2:1).  Maybe he was practicing his carpenter’s trade.  It seems that it was in Capernaum that he raised the daughter of Jairus and healed the woman with hemorrhagic bleeding, our double gospel story last week (in the long form, Mark 5:21-43).  Now Mark takes us with Jesus on a trip back to Nazareth, about 20 miles inland from Capernaum and up into the hills.

Jesus grew up there, and according to Luke his mother lived there before his birth.  She and cousins (his “brothers and sisters”) still lived there.  Maybe he made trips like this periodically.  But now he’s become famous.

Jesus reading in the synagog.
Artist unknown; perhaps Tissot?

So someone invites the famous hometown boy to give the Sabbath sermon.  Mark offers no clues about the Scripture passage he used or about what he said.  Matthew’s account (13:54-48) is similar with a few details altered.  Luke’s version (4:16-30) is dramatically different; it may even be a conflation of 2 different episodes.  It ends not merely with the people’s rejection of Jesus, as in Mark, but with their intent to do him violence.

Why the negative reaction?  If he preached repentance, his theme from the beginning of his public ministry (Mark 1:14-15), they may have been offended.  That could be why they’d exclaim, “Where did this man get all this?  What kind of wisdom’s been given to him?” (6:2).  Some could have been resentful or jealous that he’d gotten away from their little town and become successful elsewhere.  A lot of small-town folk, in literature at least, take it hard when someone tries to open them up to a broader world; recall what many of the people in River City think of and gossip about Marian the librarian in The Music Man.  What?  We’re not good enuf for you?  The way we live and talk and make a living and entertain ourselves doesn’t suit you?

They note that Jesus is a carpenter, and perhaps this serves as a contrast with the “mighty deeds wrought by his hands” (6:3).  Carpenters—the term could mean anything from a craftsman who made tables and chairs and handles for axes and mattocks, who shaped door lintels and yokes for farm animals, who repaired carts, to a large-scale builder—framers and contractors in modern lingo; these all work with their hands, of course.  But Jesus’ hands are doing something else now; however “mighty” that is, it isn’t what Nazarenes are used to, and it’s not like he was trained in medicine.  Maybe they see here not something to marvel at, to praise God for, but something unbecoming, like Jesus has risen above his station in life.  The question sounds a little like, “Who does he think he is?”  “And they took offense at him” (6:3), apparently from his identity as well as his preaching.

It’s highly unusual that they refer to him as “the son of Mary” (6:3).  In Jewish custom a man was ordinarily referred to by his father, as we see in so many personal names in the OT and in the NT genealogies.  This is the only time that Jesus is called Mary’s son.  Otherwise, he’s “the carpenter’s son” (Matt 13:55) or “Joseph’s son” (John 1:45).  Possibly Joseph had died so long ago that people had become accustomed to associating him with Mary.  Perhaps Mark wants to stress that God is Jesus’ true Father—a point he makes in the very 1st verse of his Gospel:  “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” and which he makes again at the Gospel’s climax, when the centurion on Calvary exclaims, “Truly, this man was the Son of God!” (15:39).

Jesus doesn’t seem to be surprised by the reception he meets:  “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house” (6:4).  This isn’t Mark’s only hint that Jesus’ kin are skeptical about his mission and his person.  When he’s preaching to such large crowds on so many occasions that “it was impossible for them even to eat,” “his relatives…set out to seize him, for they said, ‘He’s out of his mind’” (3:20-21)—he’s crazy!  Not exactly adulation!

There’s a deeper meaning here, however.  Jesus’ kin and his house aren’t just “James and Joses and Judas and Simon” and “his sisters.”  They’re not just the several thousand inhabitants of Nazareth.  And Jesus’ patria (it’s the same word in both Mark’s Greek and Jerome’s Latin), “native place” in our translation or his “country” in other translations, isn’t only Nazareth.  It’s Israel as a whole.  Recall the verse in the prolog of John’s Gospel:  “He came to his own”—his own home, his own country—“and his own people received him not” (1:11).  Most of Israel, God’s own people, doesn’t honor the prophet sent among them, this Son of God.  They’re not impressed by his verbal “wisdom” nor by his “mighty deeds,” and they take such offense at him that they hand him over to the Romans for crucifixion.  After the resurrection, they persecute his apostles and the other disciples.

The upshot is that “he was not able to perform any mighty deed there” (6:5) because they weren’t receptive.  “Their lack of faith” (6:6) stands in contrast to what Jesus has met almost everywhere else, e.g. in last week’s gospel.  However imperfect that faith may be—it’s based, according to Mark, mostly on people’s being amazed at what Jesus says and does (in today’s gospel, “many who heard him were astonished” (6:2), on what Jesus may be able to do for them here and now, and not on a religious faith, a conversion experience, a submission of oneself totally to God—it’s still a faith of some kind. And the Nazarenes don’t have even that.  Whereas bystanders are usually amazed at Jesus’ words and deeds, here he’s the one struck with amazement (6:6)—at their lack of faith.

How do we see Jesus?  Is he a kindly teacher, the wise man of the Deists, the Unitarians, and modern secularists?  Is he our master, teacher, companion on life’s journey?  Is he the Son of God, our savior, the way, truth, and life? 

What kind of faith do we have in him?  Is he someone we pray to when we need something?  Someone who forgives us when we’ve done something wrong?  Someone on whom to model our lives?  Someone who leads us to and unites us with, his Father?

How do we react to him?  Does his teaching disturb us?  Do we find it “nice” or “attractive” but not very practical?  Does Jesus induce us to “turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel” (Ash Wednesday; cf. Mark 1:15)?  Do we honor his prophetic words on weekdays as well as on Saturday evening, make him as welcome in our own homes as in church?

In short:  We are Jesus’ own people, his brothers and sisters by Baptism, his own flesh and blood thru the Eucharist.  What reception do we give him and his teaching?

Homily for 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily for the

13th Sunday

in Ordinary Time

I was away on vacation from last Thursday afternoon (June 28) till early this afternoon (July 4). On Sunday I concelebrated at the Oakland Mills site of St. John the Evangelist Parish in Columbia, Md., my sister's parish. We heard a very good homily there. Following my custom, I offer here an "oldie" of my own.

July 2, 2000

Wis 1: 13-15; 2: 23-24

Mark 5: 21-24, 35-43

Our Lady of Pompei, Paterson, N.J.

St. Joseph, Passaic, N.J.

On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, representing 13 of the British colonies along the eastern seaboard of North America, voted their independence from Great Britain. The protest being fought to assert their equal rights as Englishmen became a war to assert their complete freedom among the nations of the earth.  Happy Independence Day!

The next evening, July 3, delegate John Adams of Massachusetts wrote home to his wife Abigail:

The second day of July, 1776, will be a memorable epocha [sic] in the history of America.  I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations, as the great Anniversary Festival.  It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.  It ought to be solemnized with pomp, shews [sic], games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of the continent to the other, from this time forward forever.

We have certainly done justice to Adams’s confidence in the outcome of the struggle and to his hopes for the celebration of our freedom—except perhaps for the “solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.”  As you know, religion doesn’t get much play in our Independence Day festivities.  And except, certainly, for the day of our celebration.  Thomas Jefferson’s magnificent Declaration setting forth the reasons for independence so captured our hearts and minds that the day of its adoption by Congress, July 4, also captured the celebrations so fondly expected by his colleague Adams.

Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull--Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol (Office of the Architect of the Capitol)

We here do solemnly thank God for the blessings of liberty and pray him to continue them, as well as to pardon and correct our individual and our national, collective abuse of our liberty.

The War of American Independence was about political liberty.  Our 1st and 3d readings this morning address a different kind of liberty, one more fundamental, one more durable.  “For God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him” (Wis 2:23-24).  God made us to live; he “did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living” (Wis 1:13).

Yet death is a fact:  indisputable, unavoidable.  Even the little daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:21-24, 35-43) eventually died a permanent bodily death, as also did those others whom Jesus revived, the widow’s son and Lazarus.  With St. Paul, writing to the Romans, we can all cry out in exasperation, “Who will deliver me from this mortal body?” (7:24).  Who will liberate us from the tyranny of death?

“By the envy of the devil, death entered the world” (Wis 2:24).  This is the Book of Wisdom’s take on the fall of the human race in the garden of Eden.  Out of jealousy for the happiness of the human friends of God, the devil tempted them to spurn God’s friendship, as he himself had done.  And tempted, the 1st man and woman fell.  They chose a lie; they chose disobedience; they chose death.  “They who belong to [the devil’s] company experience [death],” Wisdom tells us (2:24).  Or, as St. Paul put it, to the Romans once again, “The wages of sin is death” (6:23).  Death is not God’s plan but the consequence of our own love for evil.

Paul’s earlier question, “Who will deliver me from this mortal body?”, he answered himself in the next line:  “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (7:25).  Jesus Christ came to set us free:  to forgive our sins and erase their mortal consequences.

Jesus’ power over death during his earthly ministry, demonstrated in this morning’s gospel, foreshadows his own permanent victory over the grave.  Tho utterly sinless in his own person, he was led like a lamb to the slaughter (cf. Is 53:7).  He died, as every human being must.  But his death was an injustice, because he was sinless.  Therefore, the devil and the netherworld had no claim on him, and undying justice (Wis 1:15) compelled them to give him up.  God the Father justified his own Son by raising him to a new kind of bodily life, no longer mortal.  This we celebrated during the 7 weeks of Easter.  This we celebrate every Sunday, the day of the resurrection.  This we look forward to ourselves—not because we’re innocent and without sin (cf. Job 33:9), but thanks to the grace of God bestowed on us in Christ Jesus.  We have been baptized into his death and resurrection.  We eat his body and drink his blood in order that we might be incorporated into his righteousness before God and into his immortality.

So, before all our suffering and death, and even before the memory of our worst sins—provided we have repented and confessed them—we listen to the words of Jesus:  “Do not be afraid; just have faith” (Mark 5:36).  Have faith that he has truly conquered both sin and death.  He has liberated us all from the worst the devil can do to us.

At the Catholic Media Conference

At the Catholic Media Conference

The Catholic Media Conference took place in Indianapolis from June 20 to 22, with about 400 attendees (my very rough guess--but Tim Walter, executive director of the Catholic Press Assn., told me that CPA was just shy of 300 registered participants; unless I misunderstood and that figure was for both associations involved).

The convention is sponsored annually by the CPA and the Catholic Academy of Communications Arts Professionals, and most of the attendees came from those 2 organizations, naturally.  We were also blessed by very active presence of Abp. Claudio Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, and his chief assistant, Msgr. Paul Tighe, and of several bishops either as speakers or as celebrants or as attendees: Abp. Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, Bp. Christopher Coyne of Indianapolis, Bp. Timothy Doherty of Lafayette (Ind.), Bp. Kevin Rhoades of Ft. Wayne-South Bend, and Bp. Ronald Herzog of Alexandria (La.).

I took a lot of photos of the meeting, the city, and our hotel (the Crowne Plaza at Historic Union Station). Here's a link to convention shots (I hope!):
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AYsWrdi2ct2KlGQ
and one to city and hotel shots:
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AYsWrdi2ct2KlGy

While I'd like to go into details about the convention, I'm not ready to do that.  So here's the next best thing:  links to Deacon Greg Kandra's reporting:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2012/06/chaput-we-need-to-look-at-the-arc-of-catholic-history-in-our-country/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2012/06/bishop-coyne-to-catholic-communicators-always-take-the-high-road/    (You can get Bp. Coyne's homily direct and entire at http://thoughtsofacatholicbishop.blogspot.com/2012/06/homily-from-opening-mass-of-catholic.html)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2012/06/vaticans-social-media-head-we-need-to-cultivate-our-ability-to-listen-to-others/    Full text at http://www.pccs.va/index.php/en/documenti/dicorsi/item/670-2012-address-of-archbishop-celli-at-the-st-francis-de-sales-award-presidential-medallion-awards-indianapolis

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2012/06/on-blogging-our-panel-from-the-catholic-media-conference/    For some audio from that panel, supplied by Matt Palmer of Baltimore's Catholic Review: http://audioboo.fm/ReviewPalmer

Elizabeth Scalia, aka The Anchoress, reports a bit too:  http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2012/06/22/a-couple-catholics-sittin-around-talking/

More from Deacon Greg: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2012/06/its-true-it-dont-rain-there-in-the-summertime/

Other keynotes were given by Carolyn Woo, the new COO of Catholic Relief Services, and Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the K of C, and Abp. Chaput, and homilies by Bps. Doherty (shortest on CMC record, someone said) and Rhoades.

Abp. Chaput's address on religious freedom as summarized by Catholic News Service:
On the eve of the start of the "fortnight for freedom," the U.S. bishops' effort to galvanize Catholics across the country to pray for and learn about religious liberty, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput gave a major address on the topic during the 2012 Catholic Media Conference June 20. Arguing that "religious freedom is a cornerstone of the American experience," Archbishop Chaput said the American founders "saw religious faith as vital to the life of a free people. Liberty and happiness grow organically out of virtue," he said. "And virtue needs a grounding in religious faith." Religious liberty, however, is "more than freedom of worship," Archbishop Chaput continued. "It begins in worship, but it also demands preaching, teaching and service," he said. "It's always personal but never private." This liberty seen as so vital to the nation's founders, Archbishop Chaput said, is now facing threats that are "immediate, serious and real" and are often linked to a hostile reaction to Catholic teachings on sexuality and life issues. Citing an article written by University of Notre Dame law professor Gerry Bradley, Archbishop Chaput said critics of these teachings see them merely as "subjective religious ... that can't be rationally defended ... and should be treated as a form of prejudice."

Full text of the archbishop's speech at http://www.catholicpress.org/resource/resmgr/2012_cmc/repair_my_house_cjcfinal.pdf

And here's Catholic News Service's short version on Mr. Anderson's speech:
The debate over the federal contraceptive mandate and the fight for religious freedom is not about "a particular policy choice" but is "a debate over the role of religion in American society and the freedom and integrity of the Catholic Church's mission," the head of the Knights of Columbus said June 22. "It's not an ordinary national debate. There's a great deal at stake here," Supreme Knight Carl Anderson told Catholic News Service in an interview in Indianapolis. It is an attempt "to redefine the role of religion in America," he added. Anderson was at the Catholic Media Conference, the annual joint convention of the Catholic Press Association and the Catholic Academy for Communications Arts Professionals. He was scheduled to address the closing banquet of the June 20-22 media gathering. The mandate issued by the Department of Health and Human Services would require most religious employers to provide contraceptives and sterilization free of charge to their employees. To be exempt, a religious organization must have "the inculcation of religious values as its purpose"; primarily employ "persons who share its religious tenets"; primarily serve "persons who share its religious tenets"; and be a nonprofit organization under specific sections of the Internal Revenue Code. Catholics are at the center of the HHS debate right now, he said, but it began with the Lutherans in the Supreme Court case in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, a challenge to a Lutheran school's firing of a teacher. The attempt to more narrowly define who is a religious employee was unanimously rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. Anderson said "virtually every religious denomination" in the U.S. -- "from the Hare Krishnas to the Catholic Church" -- got involved in the case because the position taken by the Obama administration on Hosanna-Tabor, he said, could be characterized as the government's most restrictive definition of religious ministry.'

The Catholic News Agency, carried by the Knights themselves, has a longer report on the speech:
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/supreme-knight-urges-catholics-to-put-faith-first-while-voting/ 

I took in a master camp on developing a communications strategy for your diocese/order and workshops on reaching young adults, copyediting, copyright law, the above-mentioned one on blogging, and the Eastern Regional meeting of the CPA, besides concelebrating at our 3 Masses (St. John the Evangelist Church, 2 blocks from our hotel, is Indianapolis's oldest Catholic church and a really beautiful one) and doing a lot of visiting with old and new friends in the press (or networking, if you want to call it that).

Someone named Lisa Ranae Shanteau, whom I don't know, took this photo in the copyright law workshop and captured me from behind (you can discuss whether that's the better angle--but at least you can see that I'm awake).

Homily for Solemnity of Birth of John the Baptist

Homily for the Solemnity 

of the Birth of

St. John the Baptist

June 24, 2012

Collect

Ursulines, Willow Dr., New Rochelle

“You raised up St. John the Baptist to make ready a nation fit for Christ the Lord…” (Collect).

Naming of John. Artist unknown. "Borrowed" from The Deacon's Bench.

1st, let’s thank the Lord that our translators have ditched “John the Baptizer” and returned to the traditional nomenclature.  (Actually, the Sacramentary never went with “Baptizer”; that was only the hapless 1st run of the NAB, amended when they revised the New Testament.)

Then, let’s thank the Lord for having called us to be his people, partly thru the ministry of John the Baptist.  God’s people is in fact the object or purpose of John’s life, according to our Collect.

Every collect begins with a statement of the mystery or saving event being commemorated on a given day, or a tribute to some divine attribute.  Today we note—and by implication praise God for—his having “raised up St. John the Baptist to make ready a nation fit for Christ the Lord,” and immediately move on to the petition part of the prayer:  “give your people, we pray….”  Thus the Collect identifies us—“God’s people”—with that “nation fit for Christ” which “John the Baptist made ready.”

Here we acknowledge John as the forerunner, as the lamp shining (John 5:35) in a dark place, as the one who points out the Lamb of God (John 1:29-36), as the one who steers his own disciples toward the One who is to come (John 1:19-40).  In his lifestyle, in his preaching, in his spiritual direction (if we may call it that), and finally in his martyrdom John is at the service to Someone greater than he—a service consisting largely in helping people get ready for that Someone, preparing the way.

John the Baptist. Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Turin.

Isn’t that what we’re all supposed to do?  None of us is the Expected One—not even those sometimes called alter Christus (“other Christ”).  Rather, we’re the servants of Christ, or his friends (as he said at the Last Supper [John 15:15], and as John the Baptist referred to himself in a little parable about a bridegroom and best man [John 3:28-30]).  Like John, in our lives, in all the varied forms of our ministry, in our prayer, in our openness to God’s direction in our lives—in all this, we imitate John the Baptist and point to the Lord Jesus as the true Lamb of God, the one who redeems the world from its sins.  We have the mission of making ready a nation fit for Christ the Lord as much as John the Baptist did.  Most of you spent a lifetime doing that in classrooms, and many of you still have the opportunity, the divine opportunity, to continue in other settings.

You all remember Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Man” speech—is that in As You Like It?[1]—which credits each person with playing many parts in a lifespan.

The Seven Ages of Man by William Mulready, 1838

We play many parts too—imitating now this saint, now that one.  We might imitate the Virgin Mother in how we treasure God’s Word and meditate upon it; imitate Angela in how we relate to young women; imitate the fearless heart of great St. Teresa.[2]  And in John the Baptist we have a model of pointing always to Jesus in whatever we say and do—if not in words, which we can’t always do or shouldn’t always do, then in our character, our manner, our actions.

The Collect asks God to “direct the hearts of the all the faithful into the way of salvation and peace.”  That’s what John strove to do.  That’s what each of us can still do:  direct our own hearts, direct the hearts of our sisters, friends, alumnae, into God’s saving ways, the pathways of Christ—with God’s help, of course, which is why we make it our prayer.

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[1] Good recall!  Specifically, it’s from Act II, scene vii.

[2] St. Teresa of Avila is patroness of the convent.

Homily for 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily for the

11th Sunday
in Ordinary Time

June 17, 2012

2 Cor 5: 6-10

Christian Brothers, Iona College, N.R.

“While we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord” (2 Cor 5:6).

At Eucharistic adoration we often sing “O Salutaris Hostia,” which concludes with the lines vitam sine termino nobis donet in patria, “May he give us life without end in our fatherland,” or as the English translation we usually sing puts it, “Grant us endless length of days in our true native land with thee.”

Those sentiments resemble Paul’s as he writes to his friends and disciples in Corinth; and also what he wrote to the Christians at Philippi:  “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.  He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself” (3:20-21).

The Last Sacraments. Fresco in St. Catharine's Church, Spring Lake, N.J.

So we live in this present world, in this earthly body, and we’re rather comfortable here, “at home.”  Paul is no Greek philosopher, regarding the soul as imprisoned in, in a very uneasy with, the body; nor is he a Manichean or Cathar who despises the body and regards it as evil.  In fact, it’s with the body and thru the body that our salvation is worked out.  In recent years Pope John Paul II developed a whole theology called the “theology of the body.”  Nevertheless, our present bodily existence is temporary and conditioned:  “We would rather leave the body and go home to the Lord” (5:8), to our patria, to our Pater.

We live here with a kind of tension, then—unfulfilled because what’s here can’t possibly satisfy us.  What’s here includes loss, suffering, frustration—and the danger of permanent separation from God, from our homeland, from that perfect happiness of which we get fleeting experiences in this life.

Paul twice uses the word “courageous”—tharrountes and tharroumen, which other translations render as “of good courage” or “confident”—for the attitude he brings to this tension, he and those like him who have invested themselves 100% in Jesus Christ:  “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20).  Altho he (and we) are in a kind of bodily exile, away from our true home, not as closely united with the Lord as we’d like, yet “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7).  We’re confident, or we’re of good heart, because we know in faith that Christ is with us and is leading us toward his Father’s house, our Father’s place—even if we don’t have the destination in our bodily sight, even if we’re not sure of the road that we have to travel except that we know that Christ is the Way.

“We’d rather leave the body and go home to the Lord.”  Blessed is the disciple who looks forward to his transition, his passage, to the Father’s home, to the place that Jesus has prepared for us (John 14:2-3).  We’ve probably known people who were afraid of dying—whether that fear arose from not knowing what lay ahead, or from the pain that may accompany death, or from the thought of judgment.  That’s certainly understandable, which is why it’s a blessing to walk in such deep faith that we’re not afraid but are longing to complete our pilgrimage.  Not for nothing did JPII say so often, “Be not afraid.”  How wise that song of the ’70s, “Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the waters.”

In any case, we don’t really “leave the body,” only the body in its present form.  A couple of sportscasters have been credited with the line, “The opera ain’t over until the fat lady sings.”  According to Paul, the opera or the game or the production of our destiny isn’t over until “the last trumpet.  For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.  (Can you hear the Handel chorus in the background?)  For that which is corruptible must clothe itself with incorruptibility, and that which is mortal must clothe itself with immortality” and “death [shall be] swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor 15:52-54).  The body will be changed into something immortal, something glorious, something Christ-like, completing all that we’ve been working at our whole lives, to become more and more like Jesus.  About all this we have the confidence of faith, the courage that faith gives us to live in the body, to live in this world, where we have to deal with loss, suffering, temptation, and risk.

The Pilgrim's Progress

Yes, risk, “for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense according to what he did in the body, whether good or evil” (5:10).  No matter our faith, no matter our courage or confidence or good heart, “it ain’t over until the fat lady sings”; we haven’t persevered until we come to the Lord Jesus; our salvation isn’t accomplished until he exclaims, “Well done, my good and faithful servant!” (Matt 25:21).  “We aspire to please him” (2 Cor 5:9), but our deeds don’t always match our aspirations, and doing evil remains not merely a possibility, unfortunately, but too often an actuality—which Paul knew very well:  “I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh.  The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not.  For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want” (Rom 7:18-19).

Still, Paul had complete confidence:  “Who will deliver me from this mortal body?  Thanks be to God thru Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 7:24-25).  Confessing his weakness, his susceptibility to sin, he threw himself into the arms of Jesus:  “when I am weak, then I am strong”; God’s grace is sufficient to deal even with our sins (2 Cor 12:9-10).  Or, as the Collect says this evening, God is the “strength of those who hope in [him],” for “without [him] mortal frailty can do nothing.”  So we continue our journey in this temporary home of ours, our mortal bodies, living under judgment, but living in hope that God’s grace is with us—to preserve us from sin and to forgive our sins—so that when we approach our true homeland we may receive the recompense of faithful servants who have pleased him by how we have “followed [his] commands by our resolve and our deeds” (Collect).

Homily for Solemnity of Corpus Christi

Homily for the Solemnity of

Corpus Christi

June 10, 2012

Ex 24: 3-8

Ursulines, Willow Dr., New Rochelle

Fr. Jonathan Parks. Photographer unknown.

“Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, saying, ‘This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words of his’” (Ex 24:8).

Our 1st reading this morning shows us Israel and the Lord God sealing a covenant between themselves at the foot of Mt. Sinai.  God has just delivered Israel from slavery and from the might of Pharaoh’s chariots; he’s guiding them thru the desert toward the Promised Land where their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob once dwelt and are buried; he undertakes to continue to defend and guide them.

For their part, Israel undertakes obedience:  “We will do everything that the Lord has told us” (Ex 24:3) thru his words to Moses:  the commandments, the rituals, worship of YHWH alone, etc.

If you’ve ever read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, you probably remember that Tom and Huck became blood brothers, cutting their fingers with a knife and mixing their blood, and committed themselves to stand by each other.

That sharing of blood is an ancient idea.  A solemn blood ritual concludes the covenant agreement between YHWH and Israel.  Animals are slaughtered and their blood collected.  Blood represents the life of the creature, and the Hebrews treat blood with extreme reverence because God alone is the author and master of life.  Now, half of the blood of the sacrifice is “splashed on the altar” (24:6), which represents God:  God is solemnly bound by this covenant, bound by his own life’s-blood, as it were.  The other half of the blood is “sprinkled on the people” (24:8), affirming God’s life upon them, binding them to the Lord with a blood connection—and cleansing them too, for in the rituals of the Law blood is a purifier.

The ritual of sharing blood joins the 2 parties, YHWH and Israel.  They become partners, or we could say, blood brothers.  The reading doesn’t mention it today, but the oxen sacrificed on the altar would have been eaten by the people—or at least some of them—so that both parties to the covenant partook of it, parts of the oxen being given over to YHWH by being burnt, and the rest consumed by the people.  In fact, 24:11 (3 verses after our reading) affirms that “after gazing on God, they [Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and 70 elders] could still eat and drink,” which, presumably, refers to the sacrifice.

This same sharing happens thru the blood of Jesus, the blood of the new covenant that the Lord has made with us in accordance with is words, that he would lay down his life for his sheep.  Shed on the cross, his blood makes of the cross an altar.  Offered to us in the cup, it “sprinkles” us, linking us to the altar-cross, binding us to the Father, making us a new Israel, mingling Christ’s blood with our own, cleansing us of our sins.  And we eat the flesh of the sacrifice that’s been offered to God on the cross and is offered to us from our own altar.

In this new covenant, the Father undertakes to save us from the slavery of sin, from the oppression of eternal death—“cleansing our consciences from dead works” and “promising an eternal inheritance” (Heb 9:14,15).  We promise, in our turn, to keep the words of the Lord—starting with a living memory of Jesus—“Do this in memory of me” (Luke 22:19)—but living out the words of Jesus, adhering to his teaching by loving the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves—a teaching we were reminded of at Mass just last Thursday (Mark 12:28-34).

To love the Lord our God and him alone with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength is, like Jesus, to center our lives on the Father:  in our worship, in all our decisions, all our activity.  It’s to acknowledge him as the sovereign master of the world, and of ourselves in particular—not a symbolic and essentially powerless sovereign like Elizabeth II* but a sovereign with power and authority over us:  the Lord who created us, loves us, pardons us, demands loyalty of us, and dispenses justice to us.  We’ve come from his hand, and he created us to return to him—in Christ, in love.

To love our neighbor as ourselves is to keep Christ’s new commandment, linked to the Last Supper and thus to the Eucharist, even if St. John doesn’t place the Eucharist there.  All who partake of the Eucharist are our sisters and brothers, for we all share in the sacrifice of the Lord’s body and blood.  Even those who don’t share in the Eucharist have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, and so have a destiny to become God’s children.  Many of them act more like God’s children than some who partake of the Eucharist, as we know, because they honor God implicitly or explicitly and practice love of their neighbor—keeping a covenant they may not even be aware of, as St. Paul writes to the Romans:  “When the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law.  They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts” (2:14-15).

Well, we know and acknowledge Christ, and thru him we strive to honor the Father; by his grace and power we strive to love one another—grace and power we draw upon in the Eucharist, which is his eternal covenant with us, his lasting commitment to be with us, to strengthen us, to assist us in the long process of living out our Baptism, the process of becoming truly God’s children, washed in water, cleansed in blood, made one with Christ our blood brother by sharing in the sacrifice of his body and blood.

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            * Who this past week celebrated her diamond jubilee with much national fanfare and adulation.

Fr. Chavez Announces Strenna for 2013

Fr. Chavez Announces

Strenna (Theme) for 2013:

Don Bosco the Educator

(ANS – Rome) – Following the program announced last year for the 3 years of preparation for the bicentennial of Don Bosco’s birth, the strenna of the Rector Major for 2013 is an invitation to get to know DB by seeing him as the educator. “Like Don Bosco the educator, we offer young people the Gospel of joy through a pedagogy of kindness.” The 2013 Strenna, announced publicly on June 6, is an opportunity to deepen our understanding of and update the Preventive System.

The first official act of Fr. Pascual Chavez as the general council opened their summer plenary session on Tuesday, June 5, was to present the topic for 2013 Strenna to the council. The RM explained its content and the angle he was taking by recalling a twofold need: “A deeper study of Salesian pedagogy is certainly necessary, on the one hand, so that it can be updated according to the sensitivity and demands of our time,” and on the other hand, “to make the content and approach of what Don Bosco offered in educational and pastoral terms our own.”

It is a rediscovery, then, of the Preventive System that takes into account a historical understanding of Don Bosco’s approach and the insights already present in his experience of the Oratory of St. Francis de Sales at the Pinardi house, “that would afterward acquire a deeper value as part of a complex human and Christian synthesis.”

“Once we have a correct understanding of the past, we need to translate the Preventive System’s major insights and virtues for today … to the advantage of the formation of the ‘new’ youth of the 21st century, who is called to experience and deal with a vast, totally new range of circumstances and problems in times that have changed decisively, and which the human sciences themselves are now reflecting upon critically.”

The RM offers three particular slants, developed briefly, that will help set a process of modernization in place: (1) relaunching DB’s concept of the “upright citizen” and “good Christian”; (2) return to the young better prepared; (3) education of the heart.

The RM’s presentation is already a good tool for reflection and work on the part of the educational and pastoral community and the various Salesian Family commissions or coordinating bodies. The text, in fact, suggests some evaluation processes which cover both attitudes and planning possibilities. And this year, too, as for other years, the text adds an early indication of what will probably be the major reference points for concrete tasks stemming from 2013 Strenna.

As he did last year, Fr. Chavez offers the Salesian Family a bibliography as a set of references: “The Preventive System in the Education of Youth,” the 1884 “Letter from Rome,” and the biographies of Dominic Savio, Michael Magone, and Francis Besucco, “all written by Don Bosco, which well illustrate both his educational experience and his pedagogical choices.”

The treatise on the Preventive System (under the title “An Ounce of Prevention”) and the biographies of the 3 young pupils of the Oratory may be ordered from Salesiana Publishers by calling 201-986-0503.

Homily for Trinity Sunday

Homily for

Trinity Sunday

June 3, 2012

Collect

Deut 4: 32-34, 39-40

Rom 8: 14-17

Matt 28: 16-20

Ursulines, Willow Dr., N.R.

“God our Father, who made known to the human race your wondrous mystery, grant that in professing the true faith we may acknowledge the Trinity of eternal glory and adore your Unity” (Collect).

According to many theologians, the Trinity is the most fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith.  Others might say that the Incarnation is the most fundamental, or our Redemption thru the death and resurrection of Christ.  Certainly it’s the Trinity that distinguishes Christians from other believers in the one eternal God—from Jews and Moslems, and nowadays it might be apropos to add, from Mormons.

The Holy Trinity by Hendrik van Balen. St. James Church, Antwerp

Our Collect this morning acknowledges that God has revealed this “wondrous mystery” to us.  It’s not a mystery open to discovery by human reason; indeed, it’s beyond human understanding or explanation, however much great theologians like Augustine, Aquinas, and Rahner have tried to understand or explain it.

The Collect calls it “your mystery,” i.e. God’s mystery, the mystery of God’s own existence, his own being.  But the Father has graciously chosen to reveal to us this mystery—to some degree.

God’s self-revelation began, according to our Scriptures, with Abraham and continued with Moses.  The prophets reveal aspects of God’s mystery:  his knowledge, his power, his compassion, his justice, etc.  Our 1st reading today shows Moses speaking of God’s closeness to Israel, God who has spoken to them “from the midst of fire” (Deut 4:33), God who has redeemed Israel by “taking” them “for himself from the midst of another nation” (4:34), God who has tested them during the exodus and their years in the desert (4:34).  All this God did for Israel to help them to know him, to “know and fix in [their] hearts, that the Lord is God in the heavens above and on earth below, and that there is no other” (4:39).  This revelation of God to men and women is unprecedented, says Moses:  “Did anything so great ever happen before?  Was it ever heard of?” (4:32).

So God has revealed himself in Israel’s story, in his interactions with this people he chose to be his own.  It’s a story of grace and redemption, of fall and forgiveness.

But it’s only a partial revelation of God’s own self.  The oneness of God, the uniqueness of God, shines forth in Israel’s history.  There’s no hint of God’s threeness-in-one until we start reading back into the Hebrew Scriptures after the revelation that has come to us in Jesus Christ, e.g. by seeing Trinitarian references in God’s saying, “Let us make man in our image” (Gen 1:26), and in the 3 strangers who visit Abraham.

A more complete revelation of God comes thru the Incarnation of the Son, who speaks of his Father, who shows us something of the Father in himself, who sends the Holy Spirit upon us, and who sends us out into the whole world to baptize people “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt 28:19), which means to baptize them into the Father, Son, and Spirit, into this 3-fold relationship; which incorporates Christians in the divine family:  “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God”—and daughters too! (Rom 8:14); adopted by the Father in the Spirit, in union with the unique Son, we’re all entitled to invoke our Abba (8:15), and with the Son we’re listed in the divine will as heirs of the kingdom (8:17).

Our Lord Jesus has intensified the relationship between us, the new Israel, and God.  In faith we see God as 3 Persons; we “acknowledge the Trinity of eternal glory.”  In the sacred mysteries of our liturgy, we adore the Three-in-One, and we even become one with them to a certain degree—another “wondrous mystery.”

God’s revelation of himself to us still isn’t complete.  When we, his children, come into our inheritance, when we’re raised up with Christ Jesus and enter the kingdom, then “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).  When we’re raised up with Christ Jesus and enter the kingdom, then our partial knowledge shall become full; we shall know fully, as we are fully known (1 Cor 13:12).

Interestingly, that full knowledge that Paul speaks of comes at the end of his hymn on love.  Our full knowledge of God, and his full knowledge of us, is built on love, not on intellect.  The adoration that we bring to the One God now, is already a gateway of love leading us to a fuller experience of the Holy Three—still, even with our New Testament revelation, “indistinctly, as in a mirror,” but with the hope of “fleshing out” what we see in the mirror, so to say, when we shall see him “face to face” (1 Cor 13:12).  If we can imagine how filled with joy, how ecstatic, a husband and wife are when they behold each other after a long separation—we’ve all seen pictures of troops returning from deployment, for example—what must it be like to behold God’s face—forever!