Holy Thursday Homily

 Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper

Homily

Jesus is here. In our midst. He told us as much when he said that “where two or three are gathered in my name, there are I am in their midst.” That is why, in just a few minutes, Father Shaughnessy and I will remove our chasubles and wash your feet, because the same Jesus told us that whatever you do to your brothers, you do to me.

Jesus is here. He is present in the priests who wash your feet, who strive to serve you in the image of Christ every day of the year. And Jesus is here in the Word which taught us these sacred realities and strengthens us in our faith.

But most of all Jesus is here, in the Holy Communion which we will receive, as we obey his command to eat his Body and drink his Blood. He is here in the true bread which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world, and he comes to live in us that we might live in him.

For this Holy Communion, this Holy and Living Sacrifice, transcends all time and space, and in the moment we come to this Altar to receive him we stand at the foot of the Cross with Blessed Mary and Saint John and partake of Christ’s glory, made one with all who are “called to the Supper of the Lamb.”

For in this Holy Eucharist we glimpse heaven, as the light of God’s glory pierces the clouds of our history and enlightens our way. 

Just look around you. Look closely, for you are surrounded by an unseen world of Angels and Saints, rejoicing and sharing in our Communion with Jesus. 

Look around you, for they are all here: Grandmothers who have gone before us in faith, the priests who built this holy house, and the our ancestors who intercede for us night and day before the throne of God. They are here, and this Church is crowded to overflowing tonight with all our invisible friends.

For they know how blessed we are to be called to the Supper of the Lamb!

On Prayer: The Confiteor

On Prayer: The Sign of the Cross

 

David and the Man Born Blind

God chooses in the strangest ways.

Jesse had seven sons, and one of them was to become the King of Israel. So, when he hears that the Prophet Samuel is coming to Bethlehem, he lines them all up.

He’s sure that Samuel will choose Elian, for his is the oldest, the tallest and the best looking. He’d make a fine kind. 

Not so fast, God whispers in Samuel’s ear. You might be impressed with him, but I have looked in his heart and he’s not the one.

So Samuel brings the second oldest, Abinadad. His name means nobility. And Shimeah, whose name means the famous one. And Nethaneel, who they called “a gift from God.” And Radii, the conqueror and Ozem, whose name means “strength.”

But God chose none of them, and Samuel turns to Jesse and asks “Are these all the sons you have?"

Well, Jesse says, there’s the youngest and he is our tending sheep. And you guessed it. God chose him to be King of Israel. The runt of the litter.

——

In the same way, today’s very long Gospel begins with everyone believing that the man born blind is the biggest sinner in Jerusalem. For why else would God make someone blind, except because he was a sinner? He is an unworthy, unclean beggar in their sight. But of all the people in Jerusalem: the Pharisees, the scholars of the law, his parents, the Jews… Jesus chose him.

And he’s a not particularly bright or articulate blind man either. I love his testimony, the second time they call him to the stand and demand to know if Jesus is a sinner. “Did you hear him?” they ask. He says simply: 

“I don’t know if he is a sinner. The only thing I do know is that I was blind and now I see.” ‘And if God does not listen to sinners, and he made me see, how can he be a sinner?’

At which they become enraged:

"You were born totally in sin, and are you trying to teach us?"

And then they throw him out.

And then, our not too bright, but honest once-blind-man sees Jesus again, who comes to the point of the story:

”Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He asks him.

"Who is he, sir,” he answers, “that I may believe in him?”

And Jesus says the most beautiful words of the Gospel. He says four words to the once blind man: "You have seen him.”

And he says: “I do believe.”

For, in the end, we don’t need all kinds of fancy words. We don’t have to be the ones with the best reputations or the coolest names. We don’t have to be the best looking or the tallest or the strongest.

We just have to be chosen. As you have been. In all your littleness and imperfection, to know the Son of Man and to worship him.

Caring for the Sparrow: A Mission Homily

Be not afraid. That’s what Jesus tells us in tonight’s Gospel. Be not afraid.

Indeed, he says it three times, as if he thinks we might not believe him. And he may be right, as we live in a world that sometimes seems thick with fear.

We are afraid of growing old or getting sick or losing what makes us happy. We fear for the safety of our children, the direction of our country, and the well-being of the earth itself. We fear strangers and those who think differently from us; we fear being misunderstood, judged, or canceled. And beneath all these fears lies a deeper one: the fear that we are alone, that no one truly sees us, that our lives might pass without meaning.

And because he became a man like us in all things but sin, the Lord Jesus knows our fears; he has felt out fears and still he says, “Be not afraid.”

Which is why we observe Lent each year, a time to learn not to be afraid of the Cross. A time to learn to open our arms upon whatever crosses the Lord might send us and to know that they are but a sign of his love for us.

Which is what Jesus is talking about when he asks us to think about the sparrows, the cheapest little birds in the bird store…and yet “not one of them falls to the ground without God noticing it.” 

Wasn’t it nice to hear the old story about Saint Francis preaching to the birds again? I love how he calls them his brothers and sisters and thanks God for their wings, their feathers and their freedom. And the birds, the story goes, just patiently perched there and never flew off until Francis had finished. (Please remember their patience if you’re tempted to leave before the end of this homily!)

For this story of the little birds is not just a cute Hallmark moment, it is a profound insight into the heart of God, a heart which loves every creature, even the little ones with feathers.

And he calls us to do the same.  Just as God cherishes the birds and the turtles and the trees and even every man and woman on the earth, so should we. If God attends to the fall of a sparrow, we should not be indifferent to the ways in which life—human or non-human—is wounded, neglected, or destroyed.

That’s a pretty good lesson for Lent, the season in which we examine not only our private sins, but our habits of relationship—with God, with one another, and with the created world entrusted to our care.

Is that what we do?

Or do we sometimes forget the small, the poor and the overlooked—as if their falling realer doesn’t matter? Do we live upon the earth as stewards, or as consumers? Do our choices reflect reverence, or convenience?

Pope Francis once wrote that “Our relationship with the environment can never be isolated from our relationship with others and with God.” In other words, care for this world and everything in it is a concrete expression of discipleship. It is how paschal love takes flesh.

Jesus concludes the Gospel with words of astonishing intimacy: “Even all the hairs of your head are counted.” If God attends to such detail, then nothing, and no one, is beneath our care.

Not the sparrow.
Not the stranger.
Not the earth itself.

Lent prepares us to see thus way. It teaches us to fast from indifference, to give alms in the form of mercy and restraint, and to pray ourselves into the mind and heart of Christ.

So today, Jesus says again: “Be not afraid.” Be not be afraid to live gently. Be not be afraid to care deeply. Be not be afraid to love in ways that mirror the Father’s own attention to the smallest of things.

Not a single sparrow falls to the ground outside God’s care, and yours.

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.