Homily: Monday, 8th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Pt 1:3-9; Ps 111; Mk 10:17-27

“Are you saved?”

I remember the first time I was asked that question. It was about 40 years ago, and my young family and I were at the San Diego Zoo when a young person came up to us and shouted those words at me: “Are you saved?”

At first I was taken aback and didn’t say anything. But when he was joined by another young person who asked the same question, I simply said, “I working on it, but like St. Paul I’m working out my salvation with fear and trembling.”

I then said quietly, “Philippians 2:12”, gathered my family, and walked off to check out the gorillas.

It was one of those rare lucid moments when I actually said the right thing. Most of the time my perfect response comes to me about an hour later.

Of course, Jesus always said the right thing. And today’s passage from Mark is a wonderful example.

When the rich young man approached and knelt before Jesus, the disciples were surely excited that of one so favored might join their ranks. Jesus, too, treated him affectionately. 

'...he went away sad..."

When asked, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life" [Mk 10:17], Jesus didn't say, "Get rid of your wealth." No, instead he told him to keep the commandments.

It is only when the man persists, saying in effect, "I've done that, but I want to do more," that Jesus looked at him with love, and issued His unexpected and radical challenge:

"…one more thing you must do. Go and sell what you have and give to the poor; you will then have treasure in heaven. After that, come and follow me" [Mk 10:21].

And the effect? At these words, the man's "face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions" [Mk 10:22].

He’d been so sure of himself, hadn't he? He’d done nothing wrong; he’d followed all the rules. He was aware of his innocence before the Law, but unaware of his weakness before God. On this day, for the first time, a great sacrifice was asked of him. But he lacked the heart for it. The peace he sought seemed beyond his reach because he couldn’t let go of his possessions. He saw the way, but feared the renunciation. And this fear, this failure to follow God's personal call, always produces sadness.

Jesus saw the man's weakness, for nothing is concealed from Him, but says nothing else to him. And what of this weakness? Is it the love of money and material possessions? Or are these merely symptoms of something else, something deeper? The man's inability to shed his wealth results from his love of things over his love of others. But at the root of this disordered love is something even more serious: a form of self-love that refuses to place God first.

You see, Jesus doesn't condemn the rich solely because of their wealth. No, His concern is for those of us who place anything ahead of God. Material things, in themselves, are good. The sin lies in attachment, in trusting in them as if they will solve all your problems. Everything we have is a gift from God, a sacred trust which must be shared for the good of others.

"I am the way, the truth, and the life" [Jn 14:6], Jesus tells us. And therefore nothing, absolutely nothing, should take precedence over Christ in my life, over His right to rule over my heart. As St. Peter reminded us in our first reading, your faith is "more precious than gold" [1 Pt 1:7].

Let each of us meditate on that question today: What takes precedence in my life? Does my faith place God's Will first, or am I consumed by something else? Even human friendships, or the love for another person, can manipulate us, strangle us, and lead us away from God. For that which we place first in our lives – when it is not God – becomes a prison. Only when we place God first do we experience true freedom.

God is calling each of us, brothers and sisters, and He never stops calling. In return for our response, for our submission to His Will, He promises a different kind of wealth, a treasure far greater than you and I can ever imagine.

But only when we empty our arms of self can we stretch them out to receive the gift of salvation…just as Jesus, in total humility, and acceptance of the Father’s Will, emptied Himself and stretched out his arms on the Cross.

Then, when you stand before Jesus, with the fear and trembling well behind you, and He asks, “Are you saved?”, you can say “Yes, indeed.”

Homily: Saturday, 28th Week of Ordinary Time

Readings: Rom 4:13, 16-18; Ps 105; Lk 12:8-12
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Were you moved and filled with hope when you heard those wonderful words of Jesus?

“…everyone who acknowledges me before others the Son of Man will acknowledge before the angels of God” [Lk 12:8].

What more could we hope for than to be acknowledged before the angels? What Good News this is – God’s promise of salvation and His call to evangelization.

And yet, sadly, I encounter so many people who, because of their sins, almost despair of achieving salvation. Among their mistakes, of course, is the idea that they, or indeed anyone, can achieve salvation. We can’t…not on our own. Salvation, like every other good thing, is a gift from God.

Yesterday, in his homily during Mass at St. Martha’s House, the Vatican guesthouse where he lives, Pope Francis said:

“One of the hardest things for all of us Christians to understand, is the gratuity of Jesus Christ’s salvation.”

In other words, because God’s love is so far beyond any human love we could ever experience, we find it hard to understand, much less accept. How can God love me in my sinfulness? I always seem to be falling instead of rising, always disappointing myself, always disappointing God.

Pope Francis blesses a prison inmate

Yes, we are called to obedience, to do as God has commanded us as a response to God’s gratuitous love. And yet, we are imperfect creatures, and in our sinfulness often fail to live out our faith. We find ourselves, then, in the midst of this battle, but in reality it’s an internal battle, one we manufacture within ourselves, and not a very productive one.

As Pope Francis suggests, how much better it would be if we would only focus on God’s great commandment:

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” [Lk 10:27].

This is the commandment that saves. This is the love that truly reflects God’s gratuitous love for us. How did St. Peter put it?

“Above all, let your love for one another be intense, because love covers a multitude of sins” [1 Pt 4:8].

Do you and I truly believe that the Lord saves us freely, that we have done nothing to merit salvation? I hope so, because this is the truth, this is the Good News we are called to bring to others. This is the remarkable love, God’s love, that we are called to share with the world.

And it is through this sharing of God’s love that we can acknowledge Jesus Christ before others. Never forget what St. Paul wrote to Timothy:

“God our savior… wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth” [1 Tim 2:3-4].

It is only we who place limits on God’s limitless love. You and I, then, must put aside our judgment of others, and instead do God’s work in the world by helping others “come to knowledge of the truth” which is Jesus Christ...

For He, and only He, is “the Way and the Truth and the Life” [Jn 14:6].

Homily: 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)

Readings: Ex 22:20-26; Ps 103; 1 Thes 1:5c-10; Mt 22:33-40
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Remember last Sunday’s Gospel passage? Sure you do. You remember…the Pharisees tried to entrap Jesus by asking if it were right to pay taxes to the Roman emperor. Their scheme, of course, failed because Jesus' only concern was God and God's Kingdom. He turned the tables on His accusers by saying, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”

Well, in today's passage the Pharisees once again tried to entrap Jesus. When they asked Him, “Which commandment of the Law is the greatest?” they were far from sincere. Jewish scholars of the Law spent their lives pondering this question, and few agreed. Yes, the Pharisees hoped to demonstrate publicly that this upstart from Galilee was an ignorant country bumpkin. How could He hold His own against these experts in the Law? Jesus’ answer would only demonstrate his ignorance. 

Or so they thought. Once again Jesus surprises them by quoting two passages from Scripture, and in effect tells them that all God’s teachings are based on these two commandments. The first, from Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love your God with your whole heart, your whole mind and your whole soul.”

God wants it all. He wants us to turn every dimension of our lives and our being over to him. He wants our whole minds. He doesn't want us to think about Him only when we need Him and then forget about Him. He doesn't want us to fill our minds with powerful distractions that obscure or erase His presence. He doesn't want us to misuse our minds, filling them with evil thoughts of greed, jealousy, anger or lust.

"Give me your whole minds," Jesus says to us. "Are you distressed? Do you despair? Have your children or your parents hurt you? Remove the hatred from your minds and let my love take over. I’ll transform your thoughts and give you a new understanding. I’ll give you wisdom." 

Jesus also tells us to give God our hearts, our whole hearts. He tells us to love him with every part of ourselves, with every way there is to love. We are called to imitate God, to return the love He gives to us. But God’s love is total love, sacrificial love, the love we see on the Cross. Are we ready to love God sacrificially? Are we willing to give our hearts, our very lives for God, as so many others have?

And Jesus tells us to love God with our whole souls, our immortal souls, that which separates us from other creatures. We have the ability to think and to love. We have the ability to choose, to imagine, and to express ourselves. 

We are unique reflections of God – made in His image and likeness. And what is God’s image? What is His likeness? St. John tells us clearly: “God is love.” Our ability to see meaning in life, to recognize purpose to existence, is directly proportional to our willingness to reflect the presence, the love, of God. We each have a capacity to reflect God’s presence, our own unique way to bring His love into the world.

The other passage Jesus chose was from Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  This is the second great commandment, Jesus tells us. 

If we love God as He calls us to love Him, we then must love ourselves; for we were created out of His love. If God loves each of us so much, then, of course, we should love ourselves.

I remember a story about a young mother who was trying to help her little boy understand this commandment. “God put us here to help others,” she told him. He thought for a moment and then asked, “What are the others here for?” The little lad would have made a good Pharisee.

God wants us to love Him by loving each other; and to love each other completely not just now and then.

He tells husbands to love Him by loving their wives, and wives to love Him by loving their husbands. Love, true love, is God's presence. The sacrament of marriage is the union of God's love to the love of husband and wife for each other. 

We cannot love God if we love only with a selfish love, a what’s-in-it-for-me love. We cannot claim that something is love, when we are in fact just using another person. We cannot love God if we nurture a hatred for another in our hearts. 

 “Love me,” the Lord says, “by loving your neighbors, your spouse, your children, your parents, your relatives, your colleagues at work, the kid who mows your lawn …everyone.” 

You see, Jesus’ definition of neighbor differs from that of the Pharisees, who applied this commandment only to other Jews. Jesus changes this. Recall the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which He expands neighbor to include strangers, even our enemies. And this, brothers and sisters, ain’t easy. 

But even more shocking to those who resisted His teaching, Jesus goes on to include sinners and all kinds of other folks. He includes the prisoner, the criminal, the drug addict, the prostitute. He includes the homeless, the panhandlers. He includes the dying, the disabled, the mentally ill. He includes those we haven’t met and those we don’t know. He includes people from the farthest corners of the globe, people from our inner cities, people whose cultures and ways of life are alien to us. 

Among our neighbors are the unborn infant, the lonely and forgotten one in the nursing home, the convict on death row, the terrorist. He includes not only those who are hard to love but those it’s easy to ignore or forget.

Do you remember a dozen years ago when the Washington DC area was plagued by the pair of snipers who were shooting people indiscriminately? Well, one of the later victims was seriously wounded as he and his wife left a Virginia restaurant. His wife refused to be interviewed by the media, and instead asked a hospital representative to read a statement. In it, she thanked those who were praying for her husband, and asked for their continued prayers not only for him but for the person who shot him. She didn’t scream for vengeance…she didn’t cry out for revenge…she didn’t plead for closure. No, she asked only for prayers.

Our Christianity obliges us to reach out to others, to the poor, the sick, the defenseless…and even those the world expects and encourages us to hate. But Christian charity isn’t motivated by humanitarianism. It’s motivated by love, by a desire to do God’s will, a desire to be Christ-like.

Quite simply it’s the work of evangelization. People who are starving first need food before they can hear God’s Word or praise His Name. Those who are ill need to experience God's mercy and compassion in others if they are to make sense of their sickness. Those locked in a prison cell, who’ve never known love, never heard a kind word, need to experience another’s love for them before they can accept the perfect love of God.

And let’s not forget, as we approach Election Day, that we can give to Caesar only what is his. And one thing that is not his is God’s gift of life. Life, brothers and sisters, belongs to God, and to God alone. No government has the right to take innocent life, to support such inherently evil acts as abortion, infanticide, and assisted suicide. As true disciples we must resist these evils…just as we should resist capital punishment which so often hinders a person’s redemption.

Every good law, every law that makes any sense, is implied in the Lord's simple answer to the Pharisees: “Love God with your whole mind, your whole heart and your whole soul; and love your neighbor as yourself.”

As we celebrate the sacrifice of Jesus, as Jesus re-presents on this altar His eternal act of love for us on the cross, let’s each take a moment to ask God for the courage to be the people he has called us to be, people who return all they have and are to God – people of his Kingdom. 

Jesus wants you, all of you! He wants it all!