Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time, 2021

 Lectionary: 71

All were amazed and asked one another, “What is this? A new teaching with authority."

Raised in the Protestant tradition of 19th century Anglican England, Saint John Henry Newman believed that everyone should read the Bible and find guidance for their life. Ever since the printing press with movable type had made the Bible available, millions read the scriptures and interpreted God’s word for themselves. But the result was not harmony. Protestantism had splintered into a thousand sects. Despite the singularity of the text, everyone read a different book.

Seeing that catastrophe, Newman taught that we must have human authorities if we would know God’s will for us. His argument began first with the obvious authority of God's word as we hear in today’s gospel:

“The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.”

Jesus, the Word made Flesh, knew the Mind of God. His every utterance sounded with the resonance of incomprehensible mystery and creating energy.

Secondly: after his death and resurrection and ascension into heaven, Jesus had to bestow that authority upon the Church, for if he took his authority with him no one could know what the Word of God says. It’s like the mystery of time: If there is only one clock in a room, everyone knows what time it is. If there are two clocks in the room, no one knows the time! Likewise, the Word of God must be interpreted with a single authority or it says nothing.

Every generation, adapting to its own time and the changes that occur on this dynamic planet, must interpret the Word of God, but what assurance do they have that their reading is true? Is our understanding of Jesus faithful to him, and to those who have gone ahead of us, especially the martyrs? Or are we imposing an alien meaning on a corrupted text? Without divine guidance, people and their traditions must veer off course like rudderless boats. 

When people disagree, blue is green, and green is red. And truth is relative. Sadly, we've seen this confusion invade American politics as people disavow any allegiance to Truth and simply angle for power. The Holy Spirit, given by the Father and the Son, must remain with the Church and assure her teaching. Without the authority of the Holy Spirit who speaks the Truth to us, we're lost. 

(I have heard some creationists argue that God placed millions of fossils in the earth to fool the clever people who believe they have found evidence which contradicts the account in Genesis. In other words, God intentionally deceives people. But our Catholic tradition has assured us since time immemorial, our God does not and will never lie to us.)

The Church, being human, is fractious. Newman insisted in his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, we must have a single person with authority to teach, guide, and govern. He recalled how that authority was revealed through a fascinating and complex historical process. If the seeds of papal authority are found in scriptural references to Saint Peter, its flourishing appeared after several centuries, especially at the Council of Chalcedon in 449. (One would have to enjoy making sausage to study the whole story deeply.)

Let me conclude this brief reflection with a wonderful citation from the writings of 2nd century Saint Ignatius of Antioch. Without clear and effective authority neither a choir nor a symphony nor a church can exist:

But since love will not allow me to be silent about you, I am taking the opportunity to urge you to be united in conformity with the mind of God. For Jesus Christ, our life, without whom we cannot live, is the mind of the Father, just as the bishops, appointed over the whole earth, are in conformity with the mind of Jesus Christ.

It is fitting, therefore, that you should be in agreement with the mind of the bishop as in fact you are. Your excellent presbyters, who are a credit to God, are as suited to the bishop as strings to a harp. So in your harmony of mind and heart the song you sing is Jesus Christ. Every one of you should form a choir, so that, in harmony of sound through harmony of hearts, and in unity taking the note from God, you may sing with one voice through Jesus Christ to the Father. If you do this, he will listen to you and see from your good works that you are members of his Son. It is then an advantage to you to live in perfect unity, so that at all times you may share in God. (From St Ignatius of Antioch's letter to the Ephesians. He died in the early 2nd century, long before the papacy appeared as the first among equals. )

  

Saturday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 322

Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen. Because of it the ancients were well attested. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; he went out, not knowing where he was to go.

I often refer back to Hebrews 11 and its recollection of God's presence and Jewish fidelity since ancient times. We might even call Abraham prehistoric since we know so little of his time, and have so few documents of that age. 

As I think of those two mysteries -- God's presence and our fidelity -- I recall a citation I've often used from Rabbi Abraham Joseph Heschel:

Not the individual man nor a single generation by its own power can erect the bridge that leads to God. Faith is the achievement of ages, an effort accumulated over centuries. Many of its ideas are as the light of a star that left its source centuries ago. Many songs, unfathomable today, are the resonance of voices of bygone times. There is a collective memory of God in the human spirit, and it is this memory of which we partake in our faith.

Each day I recite the Lorica of Saint Patrick, including its prayer for protection against "witches, smiths, and wizards." I can't say the fear of sorcery keeps me awake at night but I like to hear and feel "the resonance of voices of bygone times" in the words. In God's presence there is neither past nor future, there is only the one worshiping Church. I feel the proximity of my Irish ancestors in this fifth century invocation. 

I also remember fondly an older priest -- God rest his soul -- who chewed me out roundly and thoroughly for rearranging parts of the Mass in a private setting with a small congregation to fit my beliefs. I had neither right nor authority to alter the Mass to my specifications, he told me. And I have never done it again. 

As sojourners live in this world but are not part of this world, we travel to our distant home and treasure our ancestors known and unknown. We must keep the faith they kept with its precious memories, both familiar and peculiar. Their images, songs, and stories reassure us as we keep the same faith and practice the same religion.

But there are also ancient artifacts that jar our twenty-first century sensibilities. They may be reliquaries with bones and mummified flesh. Or ghastly paintings and sculptures. 

Their histories also may be disturbing. Some of the martyrs intentionally antagonized their killers in ways we could not support. Some saints demonstrate an embarrassing contempt for women and a shameful attitude toward Jews. We can be impatient especially with attitudes like Antisemitism, male chauvinism, and white superiority, and aggressively challenge them today without disavowing our past or dispossessing our ancestors. The uncle at the Thanksgiving table may have embarrassed the whole family for his attitudes toward Germans or Japanese, but he still has an honored place at the table. He fought bravely during World War II.

We might think they should have known better as we know better; aren't certain attitudes always sinful regardless of time and place? But we are not appalled by customs and mores of the twenty-first century that they could not abide. 

Keeping the faith of our ancestors -- or, as we used to sing, the "faith of our fathers" -- requires an openhearted welcome to the sisters and brothers whom God has gathered at the table. Like us, they obeyed when they were called to go out to a place that they were to receive as an inheritance. They went out, not knowing where they were to go. We walk with them in faith. 

Friday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 321

“This is how it is with the Kingdom of God;

it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land

and would sleep and rise night and day

and the seed would sprout and grow,

he knows not how.

As I visit with patients in the VA hospital, I hear many complaints of no particular nature. Few are unhappy with the VA but some name this or that problem, or tell me a story about a difficult discussion with a doctor or therapist.  So far as I can tell they come down to two spiritual challenges: waiting and not knowing. 

The doctors have ordered their tests. The tests are scheduled; some are completed; others are pending. Now we wait for results. The technologists who conduct the C-T scans, MRIs, echo-cardiograms, and take blood samples are pleasant and courteous but say nothing. They only send their data to the doctors who determine what they mean. 

And the patient waits. And the patient doesn't know what it all means. When will they be discharged? Where will they go from the hospital? Can they return to the life they've known, or will they have to make radical changes. 

Waiting and not knowing. 

Jesus's farmers might sleep with more assurance but they too must wait for the crop to ripen. And they don't know whether the crop will be abundant or scarce. Much depends on the weather. And as much, or more, depends upon the mercurial market. Even a rich harvest can disappoint if prices are low. 

Human life is like that. I'm sure there have been golden ages when political structures were stable, foreign enemies were held at bay, the weather was reliable, and the economy was predictable. Some people say that ancient Egypt, before the Roman incursions, enjoyed several millennia of peaceful tranquility. Even enemy invaders were neutralized and accepted the more civilized, Egyptian way of life. Some people remember the post-war Pax Americana as if all Americans enjoyed security at home and peace abroad. 

But humans are rarely content for very long. We like to shake things up when they get too stable. And our frail bodies, persistently walking on two legs rather than four, must finally succumb to gravity. 

Today's selection from Hebrews reminds us that we have suffered religious persecution in the past, and it might happen again. That should come as no surprise to Christians. 

So we wait and do not know what must come. 

And, all the while, Jesus assures us, "The Kingdom of God is at hand." This will be beautiful. Just wait and watch. You'll see!

Memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor of the Church

Lectionary: 320

Since through the Blood of Jesus we have confidence of entrance into the sanctuary by the new and living way he opened for us through the veil, that is, his flesh, and since we have “a great priest over the house of God,” let us approach with a sincere heart and in absolute trust, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.

The Letter to the Hebrews is all about confidence in Jesus, especially in him as the priest who enters and stands within the Heavenly Sanctuary. There he continually offers himself for our salvation.

We experience that confidence under the aegis of the Church, that protecting shelter from the raging storms. Our confidence is renewed by our habitual sacrifices, daily prayer, and weekly worship; and by the companionship of our sisters and brothers in the faith.

With the recent turbulence in our nation’s capital and the continuing fury of a pandemic, I appreciate that shelter more and more each day. I need my bubble of protection.

Hebrews encourages us to approach “with a sincere heart and in absolute trust, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience.”

Given our history and culture, every Christian must search their own heart expecting to find sinful inclinations, desires, and guilt for sin of commission and omission. It’s like the Covid epidemic: everyone is suspect of carrying the disease whether they are symptomatic or not. Only a fool would suppose, “I am not a carrier because I don’t feel I am.” We must use screening tests to determine if we’re Covid positive, and they're valid for only a few days. 

The United States has a history of slavery and racism. Only a fool would suppose, “I have no racist tendencies because I don’t feel like I have them.” Wisdom teaches us to suspect they are there, and to learn what they look like so that we recognize them when they appear. We check for suspicious lumps in sacred places of the body; we do the same with our souls.

Discovering attitudes of fear, suspicion, or hostility toward strangers, especially those of a different race, ethnicity, language, or religion, we do whatever it takes to be rid of them. Confessing them to a priest is a start; followed by more deliberate actions like reading, studying, and searching for opportunities to meet the feared parties.

In the early 1960’s, in Louisville KY, an organization sponsored and encouraged “home visiting” between black and white couples. They wanted to ease racial tensions and promote harmony by matching different-raced families and encouraging them to socialize. My parents joined the movement and I have fond memories of our outings and visits with a family remarkably like ours. (I think this link may be the same people, nearly sixty years later.) It's just not that hard to do.

Not to challenge our innate, systemic sins -- including those we have not yet detected -- is to condone them. No one should hope to stand before God's judgement seat and plead "innocent by reason of doing nothing wrong." Grace invites us to challenge the Original Sin which we have inherited from our ancestors, even our blessed ancestors. 

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, let us not miss the opportunity that he has offered us.

Optional Memorial of Saint Angela Merici, virgin

Lectionary: 319

The Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying:

    This is the covenant I will establish with them

        after those days, says the Lord:

    “I will put my laws in their hearts,

        and I will write them upon their minds,”

he also says:

    Their sins and their evildoing

        I will remember no more.

Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer offering for sin.

 

The Divine Author of Hebrews cites a passage from Jeremiah (3:33):

I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

The Author emphasizes the overwhelming power of the Holy Spirit who places “my law in your hearts” to guide our thoughts and decisions. Often, when the saints speak of their rapturous knowledge of God, it sounds as if they have lost their freedom, as if they are possessed. They don’t hesitate to use frightening metaphors like surrender, servants, slavery, and possession to describe their obedience to God’s spirit.

Today's Catholic should be reminded that the one we call “GOD” is not just any god. Our God claims us as his own, and we are God’s people. If we are not God’s people, we are nothing but lost souls. Too often we speak of God as a god who creates us but neither knows nor cares about us. He is just “God.”

Our knowledge of God begins with, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” much as a man will say, “This is my wife!” and “I am her husband.” or “This is my father. I am his son.”

Among humans, these important relations go further as a faithful husband might say, “That’s a good idea. I’ll discuss it with my wife and get back to you.” or “I’d love to, but my wife would not be interested, so I’ll decline your offer.”

This man’s freedom is guided by his devotion to the woman who has proven her trustworthiness. They work at being of one mind and heart and will. Devoted parents are likewise guided by responsibility for their children in the same way. Whatever they do for themselves, they decide only after considering its meaning and impact to their children.

There are many who consider Christian freedom utter nonsense. Their "freedom" is to do whatever they want within the limits of their power, without responsibility, transparency, or accountability. No one else matters; no one else exists in that vision of freedom. Goodness is what I want; evil is what I don’t want. And I decide what both words mean. Christians know that so-called “freedom” is the worst kind of all; it is bondage to self.

In today’s reading we learn that our freedom is continually reassured by the Lord who tells us, “Their sins and their evildoing I will remember no more.” This is not a license to sin but a reassurance that the Son of Man knows our failings, recognizes our courage, and admires our willingness to turn back to the Lord. 

Responsible, transparent, and accountable, we live and move and have our being in God for we are his people and he is our God.

Memorial of Saints Timothy and Titus, bishops

Lectionary: 520/318

I am grateful to God, whom I worship with a clear conscience as my ancestors did, as I remember you constantly in my prayers, night and day.

 

Saint Paul routinely sent greetings to his friends, naming many of them, as he finished his letters. Two millennia later these names sound in our churches and we wonder who they were, and how they deserved to be memorialized for all time. They were friends of Saint Paul.

His devotion to his companions and fellow missionaries began with his gratitude to God “whom I worship with a clear conscience as my ancestors did…” His love of God was not a personal discovery; he received it as an heir of Abraham and Sarah; Isaac and Rebecca; Jacob, Leah and Rachel; and their twelve sons with their wives.

Steeped in that religious tradition, his love of God guided his thoughts, feelings, and reactions. There were always alternatives, of course, offered by the cynical and hypocritical, but Paul was ordinarily guided by the Spirit of his ancestors. For a brief while he had fallen under the Pharisaic spirit which grossly imitated God’s spirit, offering a counterfeit spirituality. But when the Lord pulled him up short on the road to Damascus, he immediately abandoned that foolishness and returned to the worship of the One True God.

It was in that spirit that he would write to his protege Timothy, “I remember you constantly in my prayers, night and day.” If we think of the Spirit only as a dove or a wind, we might miss the roots of Saint Paul’s faith, its foundation and grounding in his religious tradition. We should not ignore those images of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is more than an airy, impulsive creativity; it is also a rock-solid anchor in an ancient heritage.

Today we celebrate the memory of Paul’s disciples, the bishops Timothy and Titus. They received from him what they passed on to others, that “apostolic foundation” which you and I enjoy today. In the heady days following the Second Vatican Council, as Catholics of all stripes seemed to rediscover the love of the Scriptures, wiser heads reminded us that a lot had transpired since the last New Testament documents appeared. We should not neglect the Patristic age when the Church formed its liturgies, selected its scriptures, hammered out its doctrines, and created structures of leadership. We must recognize the complex history of the Church through its various ages, and the contributions of its martyrs, doctors, confessors, and virgins. 

We should also understand the continual challenges to our faith. There has never been a time when the Church was not challenged by forces within the church or outside it. There were no "Good Old Days." 

Every generation receives the spirit of Saint Paul’s ancestors; contributes its own insights and adventures; and passes it along to the next generation. We’re living in a most amazing, confusing age. Thank God, our ancestors still lead the way.

 

 

Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul

Lectionary: 519

“Go into the whole world
and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.
Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved;
whoever does not believe will be condemned.

 

There is a conviction among some scholars that the Christian religion was actually founded by Saint Paul. This brilliant, enthusiastic former-Pharisee joined the Jewish sect which Jesus of Nazareth had started, and then radically adapted its message and meaning to include gentiles. Under his dynamic influence the movement became majority gentile, and eventually hostile to Jews.

I first encountered this peculiar reading of the New Testament fifty years ago in the seminary, in conversation with a Jewish student. Most recently I found it in Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation, The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions. (2008). I have enjoyed and respected much of her writing but was sorely disappointed by this misreading of the documents. There is ample evidence in the New Testament of Jesus’s intention to refound the Jewish religion and address it to every nation. There is every indication in the Bible that the Roman Catholic Church has been faithful to his mission. Despite Paul’s astonishing energy and genius, he did not attempt to realign the faith to his beliefs; rather, he deferred to the leadership of Saint Peter and respected the other major leaders.

Saint Luke credits the outreach to the gentiles first to the Holy Spirit, who appears in the Acts of the Apostles with the same authority as Jesus in the Gospels. That Spirit directed the teams that the apostles sent out: first Peter and John, and then Barnabas and Paul.

Peter, the spokesman and appointed head of the Apostles, had a powerful vision at Joppa which convinced him that he could not restrict the Gospel to Jews. He must accept the gentile Cornelius and his companions in Caesarea into the Communion. His training as a Jew revolted against eating with gentiles but the vision insisted, “What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.”

When the Christian leaders met in Jerusalem, as Saint Luke tells us, the Spirit reassured them of this new direction and overwhelmed their reluctance to break bread with gentiles. There could be no distinction among them.

Guided by the same Holy Spirit we continue the work of the Apostles as we invite everyone to know our Lord and breathe his Spirit. If some of us have to be blinded, stunned, decked, or unhorsed to persuade us to see as God sees and know as God knows, we're demonstrating our kinship with the Apostles. Persuaded by infallible experiences we rejoice in the confidence God places in us. 

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 68​

...when the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth. When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, he repented of the Blessings on Joe and Saint Ellen! that he had threatened to do to them; he did not carry it out.

I greet as God's blessing the inauguration of a Catholic president of the United States. This man attends Sunday Mass and has not divorced any wives; his speeches are inspired by the Catholic faith and imagination. If he doesn't expect to reverse the world's predilection for abortion, neither do I expect that of him. "Politics," as Bismarck said, "is the art of the possible." If some Catholics would prefer that politics be different than that, they can quarrel with God about it.

Today's scripture readings invite us to ponder new beginnings. The fictional Jonah challenges the people of Nineveh to repent and, to his surprise, they do. Every one of them from king to cattle put on sackcloth and ashes, fast, and beg forgiveness.  Saint Paul warns the first century Corinthians and the twenty-first century Americans that time is running out. If he saw it coming theologically, we can see it in the daily news. And finally, Jesus selects fishermen to join him in the Kingdom of God, which is destined to appear in the last days.

The month of January, the debacle of the former president’s term in office, and President Joe Biden’s inauguration invite us to consider this moment in history and where we choose to go from here. In January, in the United States, we also remember the 1973 Roe v Wade decision of the US Supreme Court. Abortion, racism, and climate change seem the three most important moral/political issues of our time. There are many others, I am sure, but it may not matter which of these anyone thinks is most important.

The larger question is how do we address our divisiveness. The invasion of the nation’s Capitol Building on January 6 – the traditional date of Epiphany – revealed an intense darkness in the soul of the nation. King Herod would have reveled in the familiar spectacle.

I have watched as these difficult discussions became more and more rancorous. I saw it happening, and was guilty of the same, in the 1970s, when I demonized people who supported the option of abortion. I have often encountered the issues of racism and climate change, and the face of denial on both issues. Despite my studied opinions, strong feelings, and sinful tendencies, I believe that nothing is accomplished by violence, vilification, or hostility. As much as I despise the practice of abortion, I am not willing to scrap the American Experiment in the effort to stop the killing.

As Christians we celebrate the hospitality of the Crucified Lord whose open arms are spread to everyone. We should contemplate his welcome and then greet others with the same open hearted generosity. Every opponent should be greeted with courtesy and respect. And every person should be welcomed with a warm, hospitable silence. “I will let you speak the truth as you know it to me. I will let you enter the personal space within my being and in my world. Although you might despise me, I will not despise you.” 

If this courteous welcome is not the foundation of democracy, democracy is a sham. It is nothing more than a game played by people who bray about “freedom, equality, and fraternity” for their personal advantage.

Democracy is an experiment that can always fail; and can never succeed. It must be maintained with intense, deliberate attention. To take it for granted, or to suppose it can absorb a certain level of cynicism, is to plot its failure. I think some people promoted Mr. Trump for that reason; they believed the nation could endure his insane narcissism as they attempted to use him for their own ends. They believed the ends would justify the means – until January 6, 2021.

The invasion of the Capitol, we hope and pray, signaled the lowest point of a fifty-year decline in the American experiment. If we believe that democracy must succeed, we’ll close the gaps between us as we listen for God’s direction.

Saturday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 316

Again the crowd gathered, making it impossible for them even to eat. When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.” 

Just about everyone agrees that Jesus was a very unusual fellow. His worst enemies might compare him to the Buddha or Muhammad, but the rest of us find him simply incomparable. There was no one like him before, nor anyone since. 

The Gospel of Saint Mark begins with this singularity and then discovers the fear and hostility that uniqueness bred around him. The world comprised of Jews and Gentiles agrees he does not belong to us and cannot remain with us. 

In today's very brief gospel we hear about the opposition of Jesus's family. Aware of the commotion he is generating and that it might recoil on themselves, they decide -- to be on the safe side -- to arrest him and bring back to Capernaum to be confined. They justify this project on his state of mind. He is, to be exact, "out of his mind." 

Beyond their interest in preserving their standing in the community, they believe they have both the right and the duty to take charge of Jesus. They'll argue he must be protected from hostile others; and he should be protected from himself. 

When they arrive -- as we'll hear on Tuesday -- they are dismissed. Jesus will not submit to them; he will not even respond to them. Instead he disowns them in favor of his disciples: 

“Here are my mother and my brothers.

For whoever does the will of God

is my brother and sister and mother.”

The new family of Jesus are those who, like him, are willing to abandon father and mother, land and property, in their following of him.

“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

The principle is simple. How it applies to each of us is not. We first saw God's radical demand when Abram was called to leave his father's house and "go to the place I will show you." Not long afterward, the same man would be told to sacrifice, "your son, your only son, whom you love."  

We saw the inevitable and necessary apotheosis of this demand when 

"God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life."

God could not and would not make a demand upon us that he would not make upon himself. And besides, there is no other way we can be saved.

Everyone experiences that demand in different ways. It is there. We know it is there. It might not appear daily but we are apt to feel its weight at many different points in our life. Young people might face it as they choose a job, career, or profession; and as they enter marriage with its demands for fidelity, perseverance, and willingness to beget children. Older people will feel it as they practice their vows, eschewing every thought of distractedness, infidelity, or divorce. We must even guard thoughts that might lead in those directions. These conceptions of the mind, even those beloved like Isaac, have no place among us. 

Every Christian must experience that terrifying solitude in God's presence even as they enter and remain in the companionship of the Church. Each one will pray with the Lord occasionally, "Why have you abandoned me?" And each will know the Resurrection of Faith, Hope, and Love in the Spirit of Jesus. 

Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children

Lectionary: 315​

Now our high priest has obtained so much more excellent a ministry
as he is mediator of a better covenant, 
enacted on better promises.

 

Forty-eight years ago today, the United States Supreme Court surprised the nation and the world by overturning virtually all legal protections for unborn children. They based their decision on a “right to privacy” that was unknown to writers of the American Constitution, a right undesired and unimagined until recently. The decision permitted not only the destruction of millions of infant humans, it also encouraged the willy-nilly spawning of “rights” which, if unwritten in the heavens were somehow implied in the Constitution.

Rights in the real world, of course, are privileges we grant to one another. A wife gives her husband, and perhaps her brother, her son, and her father, the privilege of kissing her on the lips. She does not grant that privilege to strangers or acquaintances; and she may withdraw the privilege even from her loved ones at any time.

However, rights in the idealized world of the Supreme Court have a different kind of existence. They simply exist up there and cannot be revoked. Rights are supposed to permit one to do whatever they choose within their limited field. 

That privileged space is like the backyard of a family home. Protected by a high wall or fence, equipped with proven-safe toys, it permits confined children to go berserk if they so choose, without fear of hurting themselves. Parents can send their children into this secure area and go about their business, assured that no harm will come to their young ones. Both parties are free to do as they please, free of responsibility, free of oversight, free from anyone who might care about them. Everybody wins in this ideal world!

That model of freedom fits the deism of America’s Founding Fathers who supposed that the Creator had finished his work and had little interest in what humans did with his creation. Guiding principles of good and evil were theoretically woven into the moral structures of this world; they were evident to any reasonable person. We needed neither revelation nor divine intervention to know right from wrong. The deists' ideal God was not supposed to interfere in human affairs and, so far as they could tell, never had. He simply didn’t care. Or, if he did, he didn’t act like it, which was the same thing. Given God’s absence, men could enjoy their rights without constraint or fear of judgment. 

Oddly, these men never thought of abortion rights in the backyard that was America. The Supreme Court, in 1973, filling in the apparent gap, created those rights ex nihilo.

 

Opposition to “abortion rights” has accepted and assumed the same deistic language of rights by promoting the “right to life.” Proponents of abortion, realizing that abortion is an ugly word – no little girl looks forward to her first abortion – then invented the “right to choose.” Suddenly rights were spreading like dandelions in a manicured lawn. Where two or more Americans were gathered together, new rights appeared. 

 

The freedom of the Gospel, that freedom for which Christ died, (See Galatians 5:1) supposes that God cares about everything we do, think, and feel. There is no backyard he does not watch with loving eye; there is no dark place in the heart where God should not govern. Any student of the Ten Commandments must notice God’s prohibitions against their most private thoughts, like coveting the neighbor’s property or spouse.

Christian freedom revels in God’s omnipresence and under God’s benevolent gaze. We seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit continually. We understand that the smallest decisions can become habitual and dictate largest decisions. Carelessly indulging in lustful thoughts, for instance, can lead to obscene entertainment, fornication, unintended pregnancy, great personal distress, and abortion. The Holy Spirit urges us, “Don’t go there.” God neither gives us that right nor leads us into that temptation.

Catholic opposition to abortion begins with our welcome to God’s benevolent omnipresence. We are a holy people, and we are sent to represent God’s presence to a society that prefers a godless, fantasy world of fabricated rights. We do not condone abortion; we are frankly horrified by the thought. It cannot exist in our world. We revel in that real freedom which is life in the Spirit, and we invite everyone to join us.

Memorial of Saint Agnes, Virgin and Martyr

Lectionary: 314​

Jesus is always able to save those who approach God through him, since he lives forever to make intercession for them. It was fitting that we should have such a high priest: holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, higher than the heavens.

 

I find the Letter to the Hebrews endlessly fascinating as it explores the role and mission of Jesus in our salvation. In today’s text we encounter Jesus as our priest/mediator in God’s presence. As we read the New Testament, Christians should understand that the word God almost always refers to God the Father. While our faith tells us that Jesus is the Son of God and coequal with the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the Breath – the spiration – of God and is coequal with the Father, the word usually refers to God the Father.

The Son and the Spirit obey the Father even as they are coequal to the Father; their obedience does not imply inferiority. There is joy, generosity, courage, and willingness in the Trinity, and no domination. Christians delight in that doctrine and strive to achieve similar relations with one another. The bishop, for instance, should regard his priests, deacons, and the faithful as fellow servants of God even as he leads them. And they should willingly defer to his leadership without slavish subservience. As Saint Augustine put it, “For you I am a bishop, with you, after all, I am a Christian.”  

And so, we receive this teaching from Hebrews, Jesus “is always able to save those who approach God through him.”

Denizens of the Roman Empire, most of them slaves, welcomed the Gospel of Salvation. Although Roman slavery was not as barbaric as American slavery, words like freedom (Latin: gratia), deliverance, salvation, and redemption coupled with the story of Jesus's conquest of death through obedience unto death attracted those whose daily hardships offered little hope for the future. 

But what does salvation mean today. For what do we long? What does a nation that cultivates individuality to the point of isolation as it flirts with chemical addictions, violence, and suicide, want? What do we want? 

The Christian mystery of the Holy Trinity describes an intense community even as it insists upon the individuality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We believe in one God, and yet each person is God; but the Father is not the Son, who is not the Holy Spirit. When the Father speaks the Word and breathes the Spirit they are sent infinitely far from the Father even as they remain infinitely close. They are united in one mind, heart, and will -- in complete self-sacrifice to one another -- and yet never become, or melt into, each other. 

Disciples of Jesus find community as our priest/mediator Jesus brings us to the Father, the very Father who gave us to him. This marvelous communion happens in our Holy Communion, the Mass. Their giving sacrifice to one another is our oblation, as we receive the Lord and offer him to the Father, impelled as we are by the Holy Spirit. The self is never lost in God even as we long to give more of ourselves to God. 

In this communion we know an intense satisfaction even as we retain eternally our separate identities. In the Spirit each becomes perfect without ever losing the haecceity which identifies each person in our common life and God's presence. 

Of course we can no more imagine what that perfection might feel like than a caterpillar can imagine the flight of a butterfly. 

Rather, we live in faith in the Gospel we have heard, hope for its fulfillment in ourselves, and the sacrificial communities of church, family, human society, and the Earth. And we are confident that Jesus, our priest, mediator, and savior, "is always able to save those who approach God through him, since he lives forever to make intercession for them."

Wednesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 313

His name first means righteous king,
and he was also “king of Salem,” that is, king of peace.
Without father, mother, or ancestry,
without beginning of days or end of life,
thus made to resemble the Son of God, he remains a priest forever.

 

Melchizedek appears as a historical person in the Book of Genesis. The priest/king congratulates and blesses Abraham after the latter’s victory over four kings and their armies. By way of a thank offering, he offers bread and wine to Abraham’s God, although he worships another god in the city of Salem (which King David will rename Jerusalem.)

After that Melchizedek appears as a mysterious, sacred presence in the Book of Psalms and the Letter to the Hebrews. That anonymous Divine Author extemporizes on his name and title, and then teaches us that he prefigures Jesus.  The ancient priest/king and the Savior resemble each other in opposite directions: where Melchizedek has become a “Son of God” by his similarity to Christ, Jesus has become a priest forever in the line of Melchizedek. The ancient one is like God in having neither ancestors nor descendants; and, because he is “without beginning of days or end of life.” The Eternal Son of God, insofar as he is eternal, also has no beginning or end, and no ancestry.

Philosophers and pundits of our time might find the Author’s logic hard to follow. But they don’t expect God to act in history. When they trace historical developments, they describe certain forces that trigger and arouse other forces in causal connections. These forces move like fluids in a mechanical system that, under controlled circumstances, are somewhat predictable.

The Sacred Authors of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures were not as naïve as our scientists. They knew that God acts in history; and in the Bible they found prophetic patterns of God’s behavior. To believers these patterns appear clearly in ancient utterances and recent events. Retelling these stories, songs, laws and sayings recounted the past and prepared for a future fulfillment. If we think Saint Matthew was stretching when he linked two Hebrew words -- Nazareth and nazirite, for instance -- it made perfect sense to those who saw God’s guiding hand in the subtleties of the Hebrew language.

The Divine Author of the Letter to the Hebrews successfully anchored the Church’s worship of Jesus in the priestly traditions of Jerusalem, which included both the pre-Abraham worship of Jerusalem and the Levitical priesthood of Moses and Aaron. As he saw it, the Lord’s sacrificial death on Calvary was a Jewish holocaust like that of the Levites, in the manner of Melchizedek. The mystery of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter would be inexplicable to the most devout Christians without this understanding of Jesus as the priest, the lamb, and the altar of sacrifice. 

As we gather with the priest at the altar, we take our place in the line of Melchizedek, offering again his bread and wine as they are the Body and Blood of Jesus. We unite the Jewish traditions of our faith with the religious impulses of all nations -- from Melchizedek to the Magi to the searching thousands of every religion. In the Lord we offer our worship for the salvation of the world and all its peoples. We take this duty upon ourselves with the same enthusiastic praise and approval that Melchizedek gave to Abraham. 

Tuesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 312

God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love you have demonstrated for his name by having served and continuing to serve the holy ones. We earnestly desire each of you to demonstrate the same eagerness for the fulfillment of hope until the end...

I think of the Church -- whether it be your local parish, my friary, or the universal congregation -- as a drum rotary rock tumbler. You find some pretty stones in a nearby creek and put them in this tumbler, adding sand and water; and then turn it on and let it tumble. Come back in a month or two, open it up and discover how much smoother and prettier your stones are, if they haven't disintegrated entirely.
Belonging to, and participating in the life of a community, can be like that. It can be endlessly dark, confusing, and uncomfortable. All your rough edges will be discovered, remarked upon, and smoothed away. If you stay in the Church despite everyone's advice that you should take care of "Number One, Yourself," you will emerge as the same person, but so much nicer. You might even remember the ordeal with fondness.
Given that rather dour homage to community life, I appreciate the reassuring word of Hebrews: "God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love you have demonstrated...." Your reward will come; it's on the way!

The same master who says to his slaves, "Serve my meal now; you can eat later!" also wraps an apron around his waist and waits on them.

It is good to remember that God owes me nothing even as I ponder God's gracious mercy. If the Lord comes down to discipline and punish as he did the city of Babel with its pretentious tower, he also descends to live among us; and, descending ever lower, to die with us and for us.
In prayer we humble ourselves, remembering the sins which render us unworthy to be -- much less pray -- in God's sight. Finishing our prayer we rise up and go forth confident of the Lord's backing as we tend to our personal needs and go the extra mile for others.

Mass in Commemoration of Martin Luther King Day

Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak. If he does, its fullness pulls away, the new from the old, and the tear gets worse.

In my early memory of the Civil Rights movement -- that is a "white man's" memory which is necessarily shorter and more recent than that of African Americans -- we reminded one another that "colored" or "negro" people were just like "white" people, but with dark skin. That seemed, at the time, a generous reassessment. We wanted to forget the ugly stereotypes we had heard and accepted. We knew those words and images were demeaning, grotesque, and untrue. Accepting African-Americans as white people in black skin seemed like a step in the right direction.

In other words, we were attempting to sew a piece of new, unshrunken cloth onto an old cloak. We were willing to make a minor adjustment in our understanding of a different group of people whom we had seen in other (distant) parts of town, but rarely or never spoke to. They were largely invisible to the new medium of television; and if they appeared in movies they were portrayed as friendly servants or smiling entertainers. 

My parents did not hide from their children the darker side of American history; we knew of the savage displacement of aboriginal Americans and the history of slavery. But I wonder if they knew the crueler version of "eenie, meenie, miney, mo." I was fifty years old before it occurred to me that nickel didn't fit the context. To children and their clueless parents it was just a way to make an arbitrary choice from many options. 

In the fifties and sixties, most white Americans could not suspect how deeply racist attitudes, policies, and habits ran in our language, customs, and practices. We would mightily resist the metanoia the Civil Rights movement demanded. It didn't seem necessary; it suggested that there was an intractable wrong in a way of life we assumed was basically right. 

When I was appointed as the pastor of an African-American Catholic church in Jennings, Louisiana I knew enough to know that I had a lot to learn. I hoped I was willing to learn. It took a while to discover I was "stepping on landmines" and unaware of it. I might not discover that I had said something that others found offensive. A "landmine" was a word or gesture perceived as insulting and rude by people who could not imagine why I would say or do such a thing unless I was intentionally being rude. I might not discover the hurt I'd caused for a very long time, if ever. More often, I hope and pray, I was forgiven for being an ignorant Yankee. Sometimes, helpful colleagues would tell me what I'd done. 

As when, I remarked to a group of black pastors, how well the children of our churches had behaved, "much better than white children!" A good friend later pulled me aside and said, "Ken, we can say that to one another. You can't." 

I got it. He was right. I learned from it. 

I learned that history cannot be erased even when people on all sides reach a new understanding. I will always be a white man, and I must always atone for that. I must ask my black brothers and sisters to tell me their stories of the American experience, when and if they find me trustworthy and willing to learn. 

Atonement is not grovelling in shame; it is listening to others and recognizing that their personal experience, sensibilities, sensitivities, reactions, and responses are not my own. It is honoring the unique haecceity of each person. It is learning how to share the truth with different people, whether that truth be the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a confession of my sin, or an admission that I too have suffered. Atonement is becoming as one, it is forgetting self and playing team. 

Atonement is enormously satisfying and remarkably pleasant as we journey to the Promised Land. 

Second Sunday of Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 65

Jesus turned and saw them following him and said to them, “What are you looking for?”

 

Potential disciples of the 21^st century might turn and ask the Lord the same question, “What are you looking for?”

A formerly Judeo-Christian society, alienated not only from faith but from our religious nature, would gape in astonishment at the appearance of Christ among us. What is he doing here? What does he want?

But he would also find many who are seeking God, or Truth, or Love; and often in all the wrong places. Many look to drugs, alcohol, entertainment, social media, or virtual reality and discover only disappointment. Others wallow in love with love, looking continually for a relationship which will connect them to reality on their own terms. Some even pursue long discredited ideologies like racism and socialism. 

Unless the Christ comes to them, they cannot find him. 

In today’s gospel we hear the Baptist cry, “Behold the Lamb of God.” Catholics know the expression well since we hear it in every Mass. After we have taken the bread, blessed and broken it, and as we are about to form our procession to the altar, the presiding priest declares, “Behold…!”

There may be some in the congregation who also hear in their hearts, “What are you looking for?” Frankly surprised by the question, they might ask, “Where do you stay?”

Clearly, he stays among us.

From long before the birth of Jesus, the LORD assured his people of his immediate presence. The Word of God, whom we adore, speaks insistently to us from Deuteronomy 30: 11: 

For this command which I am giving you today is not too wondrous or remote for you. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who will go up to the heavens to get it for us and tell us of it, that we may do it?” Nor is it across the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross the sea to get it for us and tell us of it, that we may do it?” No, it is something very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it.

 Any notion of God as uncaring and removed is not just wrong; it's unjust. The Lord comes for us; it is we who flee him. 

As we start into 2021, we discover the Lord coming for us as we are also going to him. If we are impelled by need, hope, and the fear of death, we are also curious. We want to know the Lord; we want to know where he lives, and where he comes from. We want to know what is expected of those who follow him. 

But he cannot tell us, he can only show us. Divine Revelation was never about ideas, information, or facts; it is always an invitation to "come and see" where God lives, and how we may become worthy to stay with him.