Homily: Third Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B

Readings: Jon 3:1-5,10; Ps 25; 1Cor 7:29-31; Mk 1:14-20

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One theme present in today’s readings is time, or perhaps more specifically, the passage of time. Of course, at my age – and I suspect this is true for a few of you – the passage of time is very evident.

When we were children, time crept by, carrying us slowly and deliberately through our young lives. What a blessing this was! The movement of time let us anticipate and savor so much of life – to observe, learn, absorb all that we encountered…and if we were fortunate, to distance us from the not so good.

For several years, Diane and I took foster children into our home. We had four children of our own, but we took on emergency cases, children who often came from difficult family situations.

Amazingly, regardless of the tumult and confusion these little ones had endured, they were often able to set it aside. Moved by love for their parents, their fervent hope was to return, to return to a renewed family where all would be set right. One need only look at a child to see the true manifestation of hope as a virtue.

But as we age, time moves along more quickly, doesn’t it? It hurries us through our days, pushing us relentlessly to the very culmination of our lives. It’s as if time, like today’s readings, pleads with us, reminding us we cannot bargain with it; that for each life, time has a limit, one that can come on quickly.

In our second reading St. Paul doesn’t pull any punches, but comes right out and tells the Corinthians and us that, “time is running out…the world in its present form is passing away.”

Paul wants us to be ready, to prepare for all that is to come, to prepare for God’s transformation of the world, and to prepare for judgment. He calls us to prepare – not by our own power, but through God’s gift of grace.

For God comes to us. He comes to us here in His Word, proclaimed in our hearing, entering into our minds and hearts.

He comes to us in the Eucharist, joining our very being with His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, joining us to one another in this shared Communion. Do we ever think of that? As we depart here today, we are surrounded by the Real Presence of Jesus in each other. Yes, through the Eucharist each of us becomes a God-bearer, called to take Jesus Christ to others.

He comes to us, too, when we encounter Him daily, especially in His least brothers and sisters. Do we see Christ in them? At the Wildwood Soup Kitchen, we told our volunteers, “We don’t serve meals; we serve Jesus Christ.” But do those we serve, experience Jesus in us? Do they turn to us in expectation, in hope? That marvelous writer, the late Flannery O’Connor, once wrote to a friend: “You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people’s suffering and not your own.”

How foolish we are when we ignore these daily encounters. And yet so many of us do just that when we make the mistake of thinking the little slice of time we’ve been given belongs to us.

"Follow me and I will make you fishers of men."

The apostles didn’t make that mistake. They had encountered Jesus in the flesh – hearing, seeing, touching Him – and realized that they had been called, called in God’s time, not theirs. They had no time to do anything but drop their nets, turn away from their former lives, and follow Jesus. They didn’t fully understand it, not then, but moved by the Spirit, they knew it was a special time.

Indeed, in that same brief Gospel passage from Mark, Jesus begins His public ministry with the words, “This is the time of fulfillment.” Here is Jesus, the Lord of History, standing at the very center of all time, bringing everything that went before to fulfillment – truly, a most special time. The very thought of the Incarnation, God’s thought, was made in eternity, outside of time itself. And with His coming, everything changed.

The time of the Old Covenant pointed forward, away from itself, to Jesus Christ, its fulfillment. Yes, Jesus tells us, all of time that came before, every moment from the creation of time itself out of eternity, is brought to completion. His coming thrust us into God’s time; and Jesus, our God become man, is now ever-present.

Yes, indeed, it’s His time; it’s God’s time, for Jesus goes on to tell us: “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” To be sure, then, this fulfillment of time also means the time of the Kingdom of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

But other than this, Jesus really tells us very little about this time, or what we can expect as it unfolds. He tells us only that God has acted and fulfilled all. Then, continuing His teaching at that first moment of His ministry, Jesus commands us to act as well – for we must do our part.

“Repent,” Jesus commands, “and believe in the Gospel.”

Instead of telling us what we can expect, Jesus tells us what God expects of us. First, we are to repent. Translated from the Greek, metanoia, it means a change of mind and heart.

Time and change — repentance calls us to look back, if only to acknowledge the sinfulness of our lives; but then, filled with hope, to look forward to conversion, to forgiveness, and to the joy of the Good News. Jesus calls us to faith, to accept the Gospel, and to love our God and to love each other. Then, with minds and hearts turned toward God, we can experience the surprising joy of the Good News.

Sisters and brothers, Jesus spoke those words to the people of Galilee gathered around Him that day. He spoke to each one of them, personally, individually, calling them to accept His gift of faith, calling them to repentance, conversion, and joy. And He speaks this message to each us as well; for we, too, are called…and as Paul reminds us, “time is running out.”

Are we like the people of Nineveh? Like all of us they needed to repent. They had turned from God…until He placed that ultimatum before them. God set a 40-day time limit to their lives, and when they heard Jonah’s message, the message of the most reluctant of all the prophets, they realized their time was running out.

But they didn’t wait, not for a moment. No, they acknowledged their sins, turned to God in repentance, and He lifted the dire sentence He had placed on them.

Nineveh Repents

Repentance, conversion, salvation, and joy.

What about our time? People move here to our little corner of the world to have the time of their lives, don’t they? But all too often they forget that the time of their lives is coming all too quickly to an end.

Christ’s message, then, is one of urgency. It’s a message that demands an answer. To put it off is to run the risk of missing the coming of the Kingdom into our lives.

This Gospel message is for every single one of us, for all of humanity stretched out over the entire span of time. It’s a message aimed directly at the heart, in which God marks each of us for repentance, and for the salvation He desires for us.

Brothers and sisters, that we're here today means you and I believe in the Good News of Jesus Christ, in the salvation He offers us. Our Lord calls us to live that belief in lives that glorify God by loving and serving Him and each other.

Have you and I done much God-glorifying lately? Maybe it’s time to give it a try. Then, through the grace of God, we really can have the time of our lives.

Homily: Wednesday, 2nd week in Ordinary Time (Year 2)

The following are a brief reflection on the day's readings offered during Eucharistic Adoration after Mass. 

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Readings: 1 Sam 17:32-33, 37, 40-51; Ps 144; Mk 3:1-6

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A couple of years ago, during a Bible-study session, someone asked me why the Pharisees lacked faith, but the Apostles didn’t. At the time we were reading today’s Gospel passage from Mark, so I asked the group if they noticed anything different about Jesus before he healed the man with the withered hand.

Almost immediately someone said, “Jesus is angry.”

Mark is the only Gospel writer who mentions the anger of Jesus. Oh, John tells the story of Jesus driving the buyers and sellers from the Temple, but he never explicitly says that Jesus was angry. Only Mark does that.”

Jesus had just asked the Pharisees a question: “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?” It’s a pretty simple question. And so how do the Pharisees answer it?

They don’t. “But they remained silent,” Mark tells us. And it’s easy to see why. A “Yes,” would be a lie and would highlight their hypocrisy. But a “No,” would be a public admission of their lack of charity. They had set out to trap Jesus and, once again, he had trapped them. Usually, it was their words that exposed them. This time it was their silence. What happens next? Well, Mark tells us that Jesus looked “around at them with anger and grieved at their hardness of heart,” and then went on to heal the man’s hand. 

Pharisees Silent

It's interesting, virtually every scene in the Gospels has at one time or another been the subject of a painting. Except this scene. I know of no painting that shows Jesus looking around at the Pharisees with anger. I suspect such a painting wouldn’t be very popular among those who have this distorted image of a warm and fuzzy Jesus who roams through Galilee and Judea dispensing hugs.

It reminds me of a woman who told me she had left the Church to “join a denomination that wasn’t so judgmental.” I just told her to read the gospels and then tell me Jesus doesn’t judge.

“Why was Jesus angry?”

One translation says, “Because they had closed their minds.” And another, “Because of their hard-heartedness.” Closed minds or hard hearts -- these only seem different. The mind is open by its very nature. Notice how young children are very open-minded, always ready and able to learn. It’s only when they grow up and get stupid like the rest of us that they do otherwise; for it is the heart that closes the mind.

But these particular Pharisees had lost any sense of compassion for others. They had ceased being childlike. They had stopped loving. And because love couldn’t penetrate their hearts, their minds were closed as well, so tightly that they couldn’t even recognize the hand of God in the miracles that occurred right before their eyes. They had created an almost impenetrable barrier to the gift of faith.

The Apostles, on the other hand, were in a sense more childlike, more open to the Spirit’s urgings, more open to receiving the gift, more willing to love.

You see, brothers and sisters, hatred closes, and love opens. Indeed, love is itself an opening, a kind of wound.

The 14^th century mystic, Julian of Norwich, when she prayed, prayed for “the wound of true compassion.”

Let’s all pray today that we may never be healed of it!

The Spirit of Truth

Often enough, people don’t want to hear the truth, especially when it’s stark and perhaps a bit frightening, the kind of truth that denies their Weltanschauung and their hopes for the future, as well as the hopes and lives of those they love. I suppose that’s a normal human response when things seem to be going reasonably well, and then someone comes along and insists on a very different view of the world. 

But as faithful Christians we cannot view our lives through a worldly lens. For us the truth is always “Good News” even when, to the worldly, it seems very bad indeed. After all, Jesus is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” [Jn 14:6]. When the world and its confusion and hatreds pour into our lives, we Christians should be joyful because it’s an opportunity to suffer for the proclamation of the Gospel.

Oops! Wait a minute! Most Christians in the West don’t expect to suffer simply because they go to church on Sunday and drop a few bucks in the collection basket. And yet, here we are, facing what could be another era of persecution. Don’t believe it? Just look around the world and realize it’s on its way to you and to me…and a lot sooner than we probably think. But the Church has been there before, many times; and yet the Church is still here and will be here until the end. Although in the US and in Europe, the Church appears to be in decline, this isn’t true globally. In Africa and in much of Asia the Church is growing, just as it grew in its earliest years.

We need only look to that early Church and its response to persecution. Tertullian (died c. 220 A.D.) was a lawyer (we’ll forgive him for that) who converted to Christianity largely due to the courage of condemned Christians he witnessed as they went to their deaths singing hymns. His ultimate response, one directed to the Roman Empire:

“We are not a new philosophy but a divine revelation. That’s why you can’t just exterminate us; the more you kill the more we are. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. You praise those who endured pain and death – so long as they aren’t Christians! Your cruelties merely prove our innocence of the crimes you charge against us…

Yes, indeed, "the seed of the Church." God calls us Christians to sacrifice and actually expects His disciples to give everything for Him: evangelization without compromise. But that's a truth few of the lukewarm want to hear, much less think about. The signs, though, are there for all to see. The persecution of Christians today is greater than at any other time in history. And where is the Church growing? Wherever it suffers persecution.

In many parts of the world, the United States included, persecution of Christians is subtle but still very real. But for Nigerian Christians there’s nothing subtle about the deadly persecution they must face daily. For example, Christians in northern Nigeria are the most religiously persecuted people on earth. According to Open Doors, in 2022 roughly 90% of the world’s Christian martyrs — which equates to over 5,000 Christians — were slaughtered for their faith in this part of Nigeria. Who's been murdering them? Islamists. This has been going on for a long time. In the past 15 years 52,250 Nigerian Christians have been brutally murdered at the hands of Islamist militants. They not only kill Christians — men, women, and children — but also destroy churches, over 18,000 Christian churches and 2,200 Christian schools were set ablaze during this same period. And if you’re a moderate Muslim who objects to such genocide, the Islamists will kill you too. Approximately 34,000 moderate Nigerian Muslims died in Islamist attacks.

Megan Meador, communications director of Aid to the Church in Need (ACD) describes the situation faced by Christians and others in today’s Nigeria:

“The persecution comes from terrorists, from machete-wielding militias, from mob violence and laws that implicitly encourage them, and from authorities who are indifferent to the mayhem and shrug off these atrocities, allowing perpetrators to go free while punishing victims…We’ve had cases where Christians have been hauled in front of Sharia courts, without jurisdiction, and accused of crimes like apostasy, which is not supposed to be a crime in Nigeria…We are right now supporting a Sufi Muslim young singer, Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, who was sentenced to death on blasphemy accusations for posting lyrics to social media, and is now challenging that law at the Supreme Court. Nigeria needs to fully practice what is protected under its Constitution.”

ACD is a strong and constant supporter of religious freedom throughout the world. In Nigeria ACD's work includes defending Christians from legal attacks, false accusations, and discrimination. It also supports those who are threatened by blasphemy laws if they express religious beliefs openly. Both Open Doors and ACD deserve our support for the wonderful work they do.

To get a sense of what Nigerian Christians must cope with, their remarkable response, and its effect on evangelization and conversion, follow this link to a recent article in the Catholic Herald: Numbers of African Catholics Boom as Church in Europe Continues to Shrink.

It seems the future of Christianity, and specifically the Catholic Church, is no longer in the United States or Europe. As one Congolese priest told me not long ago, "What we're experiencing in Africa today is a reenactment of the Acts of the Apostles." Why should we expect otherwise? After all, didn't Jesus tell Nicodemus:

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born anew.' The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or wither it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit" [Jn 3:6-8].

Yes, indeed, the Spirit blows where it wills, not where you and I will.

Pray for those persecuted for their Faith.

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Oh, yes, a postscript: the State Department has inexplicably left Nigeria off its Religious Freedom Watch List (for the third year) despite the widespread slaughter of Christians in that nation. Once again, the Biden administration demonstrates its indifference to the lives and religious freedom of Christians. Here's a link to a 2021 story when Secretary of State Blinken first removed Nigeria from the watch list: Catholic News Agency -- nothing has apparently changed in three years.