How Do We Feed the Hungry?

 Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

It’s almost as if Isaiah had read Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel, for he tells us how to be a light for the world. Six simple and concrete things he tells us to do, and the first is “Share your bread with the hungry.”

And how do we do that? Do we empty out our wallets for every beggar we meet? That might make you seem heroic to the beggar, but, as you quickly discover, it has implications for your other financial obligations down the road. Not to mention the next three beggars you meet.

So what are we to do? Do we just send every poor man to an agency or give them the number for Saint Vincent DePaul? And what of the poor folks who are addicted or homeless or just running a scam? Do we become cynical or despair of every being able to help anyone? How do we “share our bread with the hungry?”

That question first hit me between the eyes almost 36 years ago when I was in graduate school at Catholic university, where I spent most days doing research and writing my dissertation. The one time I took off for myself was Saturday mornings, when I would take the Red Line to Union Station for breakfast, buy a Washington Post and think neither about Liturgy nor Theology nor Neophyte Vesture while I ate an obscenely large breakfast. It was great fun.

Except for the escalator.  For, when you emerged from the Metro all the pan-handlers of Washington D.C. would gather at the top of the escalator and you had no choice but to pass through their midst.  They were aggressive, too.  Grabbing and poking so much I was afraid for the contents of my pockets.

But I was also afraid for my soul, ‘cause I’d heard what Isaiah said, and I didn’t want to be that priest rushing off to his big breakfast while the half-dead beggar was screaming his name.

So, at first, I would take out five one-dollar bills and fold them tightly (so they looked like tens) and I would distribute them like a prince passing among his serfs.  But then I worried that five bucks wasn’t much, (it was a drop in the bucket) plus they might well well spend it on drugs or drink, as on food.

So I went to MacDonalds and got five five-dollar gift certificates, and I started to hand those out as I ran the gauntlet of the forgotten.  But then I heard from Mitch Snyder (who ran the local shelter) that some of the guys were selling the five-dollar certificates for  two dollars cash, which they’d use on drugs.

So I went to a wise old priest I knew, and told him I was so frustrated I was thinking of staying home on Saturdays and working on my dissertation.  At which he asked simply, “You’re going to breakfast?”  “Yes,” I said.  “Well why don’t you invite one of them to breakfast?”

Amazing.  I did.  And I met some of the most interesting people I have ever known.  Tom was a physicist who now lived underneath the bridge by the train tracks.  In his late twenties he had started seeing things and now he would get physically ill when he slept inside a building too long.  Then there was Gerry, who had been in Seminary and later fell into a bottle, which led him all kinds of bad places.  And there were so many more whose names I have now forgotten…but not their faces and not the beauty of their souls.  Their suffering souls.  Stripped and beaten and left for half-dead by the exigencies of life.  

And somehow we are called to feed them. Not just their stomachs, but their aching hearts and their confused minds and their emaciated bodies. And most of all we are called to love them an see Christ in them. It’s not easy, and anyone who tells you there are easy answers is lying to you. 

But somehow, in some way, we must find a way to share our bread with the hungry.

On Uppity Corinthians

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

In the days of Saint Paul, Corinth was the truck-stop of the Eastern world. Just look at a map. The Isthmus of Corinth is a four mile strip of land that joins northern Greece to the Peloponnese, with the Ionian and Adriatic seas on either side of it. In fact, in Paul’s day, he would have walked a long stone-paved road along which they would drag small ships on rollers, from one sea to another.

That’s why Corinth was the center of banking and shipping and became a melting pot of Greeks, Romans, Jews, Syrians, Egyptians, sailors, merchants, slaves, and freedmen, 

It was a booming port city, wealthy, cosmopolitan, and fiercely competitive. All of which meant that the city was what my grandmother would call “stuck-up,” and quite impressed with itself. Social rank, rhetorical polish, education, and patronage networks mattered enormously. To “be somebody” in Corinth meant being impressive: skilled in speech, connected, admired, and upwardly mobile.

And so, when Paul started a Church there, he noticed rather quickly that this one-upmanship started to creep into peoples behavior in church. Christians began aligning themselves behind different leaders—“I belong to Paul,” “I belong to Apollos,” “I belong to Cephas,” as if they were choosing to belong not so much to a Church as to a political party!

Which is why Paul begins this morning by reminding these stuck-up Corinthians that “not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” No, he tells them, God did not choose you because you were so big and powerful and impressive, but because you were little and weak and foolish. God chooses “the foolish to shame the wise, the weak to shame the strong, and those who count for little in the eyes of the world.”

Perhaps that’s why we love, Saint Thérèse or the Little Flower so much. She never preached to crowds. She never founded a movement. In fact, she never left her convent and by the standards of history, her life was so small that hardly anyone would have noticed at all.

She was born in an out of the way French town and entered a Carmelite convent as a fifteen year old kid. And the community she entered wasn’t all that impressive. It was a place of cold corridors, scratchy habits, sore knees, and women who often drove each other crazy. Thérèse was often sick. She was often misunderstood. She was often ignored. For years she scrubbed floors, folded laundry, and sat in the choir behind sisters who sang better and prayed longer than she did.

But discovered something that no one else noticed: that God is not impressed by how big and important you are. The only thing that matters to him is whether you are loving. “Do little things with great love,” became her motto. “Do little things with great love.”

Thérèse once wrote of a sister in her convent who used to drive her crazy. She was noisy, fussy, and always bumping into the young nun. So Thérèse decided to pray for the nun who drove her crazy, to smile at her and to hold her in her heart. 

Later on, the noisy nun would write, “I always wondered why Thérèse liked me so much.” She had no idea it was an act of heroic charity.

Thérèse dies of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four. No crowds. No headlines. But after her death, something astonishing happened. Her simple autobiography spread across the world like wildfire. 

People began to pray to her. Conversions followed. Vocations were born. Hope returned to the despairing. Within twenty-eight years, the Church declared her a saint, and soon thereafter, a Doctor of the Church.

All because God choses “the foolish to shame the wise, the weak to shame the strong, and those who count for little in the eyes of the world” to teach us all.

Why David spared Saul...

The troubled relationship of Saul and David continues today. As each pursue the other.

But then a remarkable thing happens, as David has Saul in his grasp (literally) and has the opportunity to kill him. But he doesn’t. Instead he cuts off a piece of his mantle, but lets his enemy go.

In English, the word “love” means a whole bunch of different things. We love God, but we also love our spouse, our brother and our mother. There’s love of country and loving the snow (if that’s you, you’re about to be very happy), love of scrambled eggs and even love of God.

But the Hebrew word for God’s love, HESED, is different. It means faithful love, the kind that doesn’t give up on the other. It means the love that is kind, that thinks only of the other. But most of all, it means a love that shows mercy.

The kind of merciful love that forgives the chosen people every time they turn away. I’ve always loved the Book of Hosea, which is all about an unfaithful spouse who is forgiven again and again. It’s about the kind of love, which responds to infidelity and sin by sending your only Son to be crucified as a sacrifice which teaches us how to love.

So, why does David not kill Saul when he had the chance?  Because he’s starting to understand the meaning of love.

My Christmas Homily...

As any little child will tell you, God is big. Bigger than big and bigger than all bigness. God is all powerful and all knowing. He made us and everything and everyone we have ever known. He even made you.

And he made you out of love. A love so boundless that, in the fullness of time, he came to live among us, to feel our pains and know our joys, to become a man like us, in all things but sin.

He let go of all the glory and the power and the bigness of being God, and became little out of love for us.

Little—like a baby in the arms of its mother, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. Is there any more helpless than a baby? Too little to speak, to walk or even to feed himself. But is there anything more powerful?

I remember watching seeing a clip from this new dystopian movie a while back in which the world has become infertile and babies are no longer born. Everything falls apart, because there is no future, just an authoritarian jungle in which everyone fights to preserve their advantage in endless war.

But then, for the first time in years, a single child emerges from her mother’s womb and begins to cry, at the sound of which soldiers lay down their guns and a broken world grows silent in the presence of innocent life. The child does nothing but cry, but she changes everything in the process.

That’s what babies do. It’s why you watch endless cute baby videos on Youtube and why a baby entering in a room immediately becomes the center of attention.

Which is why the Son of the Living God through whom all things were made, chooses to empty himself of all power and glory and take the form of a puking little baby in a manger of straw: that he might hach us to love one another as he has loved us.

And where does that baby sleep? “Away in a manger, no crib for his bed, the little Lord Jesus lies down his sweet head.”

The English word manger, by the way, is found only in Saint Luke’s Gospel. In Greek it is phatnē, and it means a feeding trough for animals.

A feed box which baby Jesus uses as his throne, from , from which the Son of God receives the worship of shepherds and wise men. 

But it’s still a feed box, a feed box from which we are fed…for the little body which rests in the hay is the same Body which will be offered for our salvation on the Cross and which we will 

receive in Holy Communion, that he might live in us and we might live in him.

And all this happened because there was no room for them in the inn. Did you ever wonder why there was a big no occupancy sign out in front of the Bethlehem inn?  Maybe there was a big party going on or a convention coming into town or a big dinner at which they would celebrate until late in the night.

No room in the Bethlehem Inn. But what about tonight? Is there room in your heart to receive that little baby? Is there room for him, amidst all your cares and your needs and preoccupations or does the fear, the anger and the aching needs for success crowd him out?

Well, you’re here, and that’s a start…You gaze on him, you sing the old songs and you hear the old stories, but do you make room for him in your heart? 

But I want to warn you, this is very dangerous business, this opening of our hearts. For if you make room for this this God of ours, who is very very big, he will make you little like himself, and utterly transform you to be loving and holy, and innocent and pure, serving him in this life, and happily living with him in heaven in the next.

It’s as simple as that. And how Blessed are we who are called to this night!

Deacon Workshop on Order of Christian Funerals

Here are the slides from this morning's workshop!

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0a23hcvky4rEE6N36YKK2ObBw#Deacon_OCF_25

Giving Thanks...

One of the most overwhelming privileges of being a priest is the number of times you are there at the moment of a person‘s death. The whole family is gathered around, listening for their loved one’s breathing to slow. It can takes minutes or hours or sometimes even days. It is a sacred and extraordinary time, standing there beside the bed, a privileged moment.

For me, one of the most remarkable experiences of the moment of death was with Martha and Peter more than 30 years ago. I had walked with Peter through an extraordinarily agonizing few years as Martha slowly succumbed to the ravages of Alzheimer’s. I remember visiting the house the first day she no longer recognized who he was, threatening to call the police, because this strange man was now making lunch for her in the kitchen. I remember when she was finally no longer able to speak, and would just sit and stare out the window and mumble at the Lake for hours on end. And I remember when poor Peter was no longer able to take care of Martha, and had to put her into a facility where they could provide 24 hour care. It broke his heart.

Most of all, I remember that night when Martha died. Peter had insistently called me and said he was sure she was about to die and could I come by and pray the prayers of commendation of the dying. I arrived late that night, pulled into the driveway, and the whole family was standing around the bed. Martha was slowly dying, her breaths more shallow and irregular by the minute. And in between each halting breath, she would mutter something unintelligible, much as she had been doing for the past six months. We didn’t pay much attention.

Until all of a sudden, with Peter standing over her, putting ice to her lips, and then slowly running his fingers through her hair, she grabbed his wrist Looked him right in the eye and said with unimaginable clarity, Peter, thank you. Then she closed her eyes and died.

It was the first time she had spoken something intelligible in years, and yet somehow, in that last moment, her love, and her gratitude pierced the fog of her disease, and touched the heart of the man who had stood by her for all those years.

Gratitude is, perhaps the deepest expression of love. The gratitude of the leper who came back to give thanks that he was cured, the gratitude of creatures, who, get on their knees and thank God that they were born.

But sadly, gratitude can seem so rare these days, even among good people like me and you. 

On the day I received my last postgraduate degree I practically sprained my wrist patting myself on the back. But did I think of Miss Lucasak who first taught me cursive in third grade, or Miss Morin who encouraged me to write those one page essays with the pictures two years later. Did I think of the Priest who first inspired me with a love for the Liturgy, or my parents who put me through College, or the inspiring professors I had come to know along the way. Did I think of the scholars who had constructed that world of knowledge in which I had gained some small degree of proficiency, or those who built the institutions which had led me through those mysteries. 

No, I thought of none of them, I never gave them a thought or a prayer. I never said thank-you. But like an ungrateful leper, I just got on with my life and I never looked back.

I was always struck by something which Fred Rogers (you remember Mr. Rogers?) would frequently do when giving a talk. H would stop and ask people to be quiet for a moment and think of someone who had made a big difference in their lives. Maybe the person was dead, maybe they had never even known what a big impact they had on your life. And maybe you never had a chance to say that to them.

Do that now. Stop just for a minute and, in the silence, think of someone who meant a lot to your life and thank God for them.

PAUSE.

Didn’t that feel good?

That’s why, in just a few minutes, I will say to you: Lift up your hearts. And you will respond: We lift them up to the Lord. 

And I will say: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

And you will reply: It is right and just.

Violence and the Presence of God

It’s been quite a year.

Sixty thousand dead in Gaza, and 20,000 of them were children. That’s 2% of the children who lives in Gaza City killed by guns and bombs in a single year.

And then there’s Ukraine. The number killed there is the last four years runs into the millions. Not to mention the accusations of war crimes and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people by mass genocide in Nigeria and the Sudan.

But those numbers don’t mean a lot after awhile, for the horror of violence gets strangely diluted by statistics. A million her, a 100,000 there. What does it mean?

Somehow it really comes home, though, when you hear of a person pulling the trigger of a hand gun at Whitney field two weeks ago, shooting a teenage kid. Then it really comes home.

“Violence,” Habbakuk cries out. “Violence!" and you, O Lord, why don’t you stop it!?

 Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?  Destruction and violence are before me;  there is strife, and clamorous discord.

There is evil in this world. We see it in headlines. We see it in other people. And sometimes, we see it in ourselves.

But why does God allow it?

A Simplanswer. He allow us because he loves us. :oves us enough to give us a choice. A choice to lie or to hate.

For real love requires freedom. No one can force me to love. Love is the choice to let go the way of my own self interests or to lay down my life, to sacrifice my life for the other.

Loving is always a choice. And so is violence. 

The devil and his minions whisper incessantly into ears, just like they did for Eve and her husband. “God can’t save you. You’ll a sap if you think about other people. They’ll just take advantage of you. They’re a threat to you and to your happiness and even to your life. You need to take action!  Protect yourself!  Kill them before they can kill you!

It happens in the school yard in fifth grade, and in High School when the rival gets the girl, or at the office when she gets the job I should have gotten or at Thanksgiving, when that embodiment of selfishness needs to be cut off and made to suffer!

“Violence,” Habbakuk says, Violence on every side! Sounds like a great idea, the devil whispers into my heart…and yours…

And that’s the way it is. People can choose to love, or they can choose to hate. And God will not stop them. They can choose to go to heaven, or choose to go to hell.

And old and very wise friend of mine used to say that, when he was younger, he found it very hard to believe that anyone could be in hell. But since he grew older, he said, he now has a list!

There is evil in this world. And people will sin against you. Jesus told us as much. They will revile us and talk about us and say every vile thing against you. 

That’s what Jesus meant when from the wood of the Cross when he prayed the first lines of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why ave you forsaken me!” For at that moment Jesus was taking upon himself all the violence and all the sufferings of every man or woman who ever lived. He takes them upon himself, like an innocent sheep led to the slaughter, and he invites us to join our sufferings to his.

So, when they treat you so badly, join your sufferings to his.

When they spread life about you behind your back, join your sufferings to his.

When they seek to kill your reputation or make everyone hate you, join your sufferings to his.

When that same relative does that same thing again at Thanksgiving, join your sufferings to his.

When even your spouse or your kids or your best friend turn against you, join your sufferings to his.

For he hangs there, nailed to a tree for love of you. Which is why that Cross is our only salvation.

So what we are we to do, in the face of Violence. The same thing he did. We are to join our sufferings to his, and just like Jesus, open our arms and pray, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”