Today, the Church celebrates World Mission Sunday, and Pope Benedict XVI has described this day as “an opportunity to renew our commitment to proclaim the Gospel and to give pastoral activities greater missionary perspective.”
We might add, that promoting just such a “missionary perspective” is also the goal of our soon to be Cardinal-Archbishop, who has asked all of us to focus our attention and activity here in this archdiocese, on a New Evangelization.
Men and women around the world, and here in our own local community – our neighbors, friends and coworkers – are desperately searching for the life and meaning that is to be found only in Jesus Christ. All of our pastoral efforts, and all of our service, must therefore, as the Holy Father says, have a true “missionary perspective.” What does he mean?
When we think of the missions, I think it’s fair to say that our thoughts most readily turn to people scattered in the remotest parts of the world – and over the past forty years, we tend to think especially of people’s temporal needs: the victims of war and refugees who cry out for peace; or the victims of disease and natural disaster who cry out for emergency relief and medical care; or the chronically poor around the world who struggle to ward off starvation.
But we often fail to recognize the mission fields that are much closer to home: the urban poor, and the underemployed who ask for assistance in providing daily sustenance for their families; the undereducated, those without adequate medical care, or unwed mothers who seek help in protecting their health and future, and that of their children.
And what is more, when we think of the missions we often forget to think of human needs that are more than physical – emotional and spiritual needs: the many young people who search for meaning in their lives; or the coworker or neighbor whose marriage and family life is in threat of collapse.
Throughout its history the Church has strived to fulfill its mission, responding to the cry of the poor and providing manifest relief to such needs all around the world. The Catholic Church, not the UN, or the Red Cross, or the Gates Foundation, is the largest charitable and social relief provider in the world.
And yet we must also be clear that no social service alone is able to answer the deepest needs and longings of humanity. No amount of humanitarian relief, or new schools and hospitals, or homeless shelters and drug prevention programs will ever save any human being. Jesus Christ alone is our salvation.
So all of our pastoral activities, all of our forms of service, need the context of what Pope Benedict calls a “missionary perspective” – they need to be rooted in bringing others not only the physical and material relief that they must have, and indeed are owed by right, but they must be rooted in bringing others Jesus Christ, and the truth of His Gospel.
Pope Benedict wrote this week that those we serve in missionary activity “must perceive that Christians bring Christ's Word because He is the Truth, and because we have found in Him the meaning and the truth of our own lives.”
How can this be accomplished? How can we come to appreciate and fulfill our own call to be a part of the Church’s missionary activity and bring Christ to others? Well, we’re not likely to start by packing our things and moving to some remote corner of the world. So where do we start?
Again, from Pope Benedict. He says: “an adult faith, capable of entrusting itself totally to God . . . fostered by prayer, meditation on the Word of God, and study of the truth of the faith – this is the prerequisite” for developing a “missionary perspective.”
Brothers and sisters, we need to start by becoming ever more convinced of God’s profound love in our own lives, doing this through prayer, meditation, and study of the faith – and rest assured, once we come to have that relationship with the Lord, we will not be able to keep ourselves from inviting others to share in that love. And that is of course the very essence of the “missionary perspective.”
We have numerous guides to follow along this missionary path. The tax collector in today’s Gospel is just starting out on such a path. His prayer is simply, “be merciful to me a sinner.” And yet it is precisely this attitude that allows us to “entrust ourselves totally to God,” as Pope Benedict said.
“The tax collector’s experience of his own limitations and failures led him not to despair but to depend.” That kind of total trust and reliance upon God is the first stage of preparing to pour ourselves out in service, and having the courage to proclaim the Gospel even in difficult situations or to uninterested listeners.
Then in our second reading, we see St. Paul who is coming to the end of his missionary path. He too started out in an awareness of his own sinfulness, and in trusting reliance upon God. Now, sure enough, near the end of his journey he is able to look back at his missionary efforts and say: “beloved I am already being poured out like a libation . . . but the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the proclamation might be completed.”
We also have the example of any number of missionaries and missionary saints in the life of the Church. My own community is essentially a missionary community. Our founder, Blessed Basil Moreau, first founded our community to serve as home missionaries within his native France, rebuilding a Church devastated by the French Revolution.
Then, within the first few years of our founding, he also sent religious from France, to Algeria, to Bangladesh, and here to the United States. And we tell all sorts of amazing stories about the hardships our members faced, and the amazing work they did – and in some cases we tell the story of their ultimate sacrifice: their martyrdom.
But, you know, none of these missionaries is my community’s first saint. Our first saint, just canonized a week ago, never traveled more than a few hundred miles from his home. He spent forty years doing the same simple work as a doorkeeper at our college in Montreal.
And yet when Pope John Paul II declared Andre Bessette to be Blessed, he noted that: “daily a crowd of the sick, the afflicted, the poor of all kinds came to Andre at the college. They found in his presence a welcome ear, comfort, and faith in God. Very often, they also found relief of mind and body.” And then John Paul asked, “Do not the poor of today have as much need of such love, of such hope, of such education in prayer?”
Brothers and sisters, that’s the “missionary perspective” which sees everything, even suffering, and even simple work like answering the door, as an opportunity to preach the good news, and to invite people into the love of Jesus Christ. This proclamation of the Gospel must now be completed in us. We too must pour out our lives to respond to the deepest longings of our brothers and sisters. Let us all think of the ways that we can answer that longing by bringing them Christ, and then let us pour ourselves out to do it.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Friends and Enemies - UPDATED
Earlier today, I took a few hours off, got out of the rainy afternoon, and enjoyed a matinee movie. I haven't done this in months, and it felt good! I had been itching for awhile to see the new movie about the origins of Facebook: The Social Network.
The movie has been getting a good deal of press, not only because it covers the very controversial beginnings of this generation's greatest social revolution and one of its most successful business ventures, but also because it has been very well reviewed. Indeed, the movie is well written, acted and directed and I imagine there will be some attention from the Academy Awards - if for no other reason then that they love to be 'relevant.'
It's been suggested that the movie is somehow a character study of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook - and that it paints him as some kind of ruthless and manipulative egomaniac. However, I didn't see the movie as a hit-piece on Zuckerberg.
Jesse Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg as an immensely gifted and yet terribly insecure college aged kid. Is he self-absorbed? Of course. Does he overestimate himself and undervalue his friends? Absolutely. Might his inability to form deep relationships and to pick up on social cues even be the signs of an Aspergers-like illness? Yes.
The movie has been getting a good deal of press, not only because it covers the very controversial beginnings of this generation's greatest social revolution and one of its most successful business ventures, but also because it has been very well reviewed. Indeed, the movie is well written, acted and directed and I imagine there will be some attention from the Academy Awards - if for no other reason then that they love to be 'relevant.'
It's been suggested that the movie is somehow a character study of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook - and that it paints him as some kind of ruthless and manipulative egomaniac. However, I didn't see the movie as a hit-piece on Zuckerberg.
Jesse Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg as an immensely gifted and yet terribly insecure college aged kid. Is he self-absorbed? Of course. Does he overestimate himself and undervalue his friends? Absolutely. Might his inability to form deep relationships and to pick up on social cues even be the signs of an Aspergers-like illness? Yes.
But the movie does not make Zuckerberg out to be a moral monster. If anyone in the movie fits that bill, it's Napster's founder Sean Parker, played by Justin Timberlake. Zuckerberg, on the other hand, is pitiable. We see him make stupid (even immoral) decisions based on his own wounds and insecurities and yet we also see hints of his loyalty and his remorse for the times he's betrayed his friends.
It's actually a pretty complex personal portrait that's hinted at, and I can't help but think that people will see a lot of themselves and their own sins in the character. At the very least, I find it hard to imagine that people could leave this movie hating Mark Zuckerberg.
But I was most interested in what cultural commentary the movie might have to offer about humanity and human relationships in the age of (the movie's title) the online social network. I would suggest the very subtle social commentary that is offered is a kind of cautionary tale based on the portrait of Zuckerberg.
Whether or not it's faithful to actual events, the movie tells Facebook's "creation myth" (the movie's phrase, not mine) by portraying Zuckerberg as motivated by the desire for revenge (against a girlfriend who dumped him), for esteem (from the exclusive societies at Harvard), and, frankly, for extramarital sex. (Zuckerberg isn't portrayed as being motivated by money - though he's now the world's youngest billionaire!)
These are, of course, the very powerful desires at the root of almost all human sin. Now some might suggest that since these misplaced desires are portrayed as the springs from which the new social networks flow, we should simply boycott them entirely. They are the fruit of a poison seed. I would offer a different interpretation.
In the movie, the clearest indication we have that Zuckerberg actually does 'get' human interaction, is that he creates Facebook in such a way that it responds so perfectly to the desires of users for an online version of the campus community.
So it's not that we should boycott online social networks. That would be like saying we should avoid classes, parties, and other forms of social interaction. It's that we should recognize online social networks for what they are: extensions in the digital realm of our actual social interactions, and therefore fraught with the same wonderful possibilities, and the same temptations.
This might seem like the simplest and most obvious of observations. But I don't think so. I think many people act as if the Internet is somehow outside the realm of moral consequences and beyond the normal rules of human interaction. Sadly, there have recently been too many examples of this way of thinking, whether it be kids bullying fellow students online in ways that would (or should) never be tolerated on the playground, or adults commenting on blog posts in ways they would (or should) never speak out loud in a public forum.
So perhaps the "creation myth" this movie offers actually helps us humanize the Internet. It makes us aware that, for good and for ill, these newest forms of technology and communication are not as 'otherworldly,' as different or as separated from 'real life,' as we might like to imagine. Fully realizing this, we can go forward with the civilizing and evangelizing efforts that every time and place so desperately need.
UPDATE: My fellow clerical bloggers over at Whosoever Desires also have a review of Social Network - and while its longer and better written then mine, it ultimately comes to a very, very similar conclusion.
UPDATE: My fellow clerical bloggers over at Whosoever Desires also have a review of Social Network - and while its longer and better written then mine, it ultimately comes to a very, very similar conclusion.
Monday, October 18, 2010
"You Have Done A Good Thing . . . People Will Always Have Need of God."
On this Feast of St. Luke, the Holy Father has just issued a letter to the seminarians of the world. I think it is a beautiful letter, and there is much to say about it. In fact, I'll almost certainly have more to say about it in future posts. But for now, I would just highlight the very beginning of the letter. The Holy Father writes:
Almost anytime Pope Benedict travels or makes some kind of announcement, the world press invariably mentions that he is a "former member of the Hitler Youth." By the Pope's own admission, this is true. And yet the media's slander is still self-evident, because the clear insinuation is that Joseph Ratzinger was a Nazi. Of course he was not. Like so many German youths, he was involuntarily conscripted into the Nazi youth movement and into the military.
Here again, Pope Benedict makes this clear with a moving and telling story of his own vocation. The Nazi movement had no need of priests because it had no use for God. And it was precisely the Godless philosophies of the last century, Nazism and Communism, that were responsible for the murder of millions and millions of people.
How important it is that all the faithful, and especially young men, who hear so much of our modern world say that "priests are no longer needed" take the Holy Father's message to heart. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI both knew personally the tremendous suffering unleashed in a world "freed" from God and faith. May we never forget those lessons, or our need for the Living God who is Love itself.
When in December 1944 I was drafted for military service, the company commander asked each of us what we planned to do in the future. I answered that I wanted to become a Catholic priest. The lieutenant replied: “Then you ought to look for something else. In the new Germany priests are no longer needed.”
I knew that this “new Germany” was already coming to an end, and that, after the enormous devastation which that madness had brought upon the country, priests would be needed more than ever. Today the situation is completely changed. In different ways, though, many people nowadays also think that the Catholic priesthood is not a “job” for the future, but one that belongs more to the past.
You, dear friends, have decided to enter the seminary and to prepare for priestly ministry in the Catholic Church in spite of such opinions and objections. You have done a good thing. Because people will always have need of God, even in an age marked by technical mastery of the world and globalization: they will always need the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, the God who gathers us together in the universal Church in order to learn with him and through him life’s true meaning and in order to uphold and apply the standards of true humanity. Where people no longer perceive God, life grows empty; nothing is ever enough. People then seek escape in euphoria and violence; these are the very things that increasingly threaten young people. God is alive. He has created every one of us and he knows us all. He is so great that he has time for the little things in our lives: “Every hair of your head is numbered.” God is alive, and he needs people to serve him and bring him to others. It does makes sense to become a priest: the world needs priests, pastors, today, tomorrow and always, until the end of time.
Almost anytime Pope Benedict travels or makes some kind of announcement, the world press invariably mentions that he is a "former member of the Hitler Youth." By the Pope's own admission, this is true. And yet the media's slander is still self-evident, because the clear insinuation is that Joseph Ratzinger was a Nazi. Of course he was not. Like so many German youths, he was involuntarily conscripted into the Nazi youth movement and into the military.
Here again, Pope Benedict makes this clear with a moving and telling story of his own vocation. The Nazi movement had no need of priests because it had no use for God. And it was precisely the Godless philosophies of the last century, Nazism and Communism, that were responsible for the murder of millions and millions of people.
How important it is that all the faithful, and especially young men, who hear so much of our modern world say that "priests are no longer needed" take the Holy Father's message to heart. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI both knew personally the tremendous suffering unleashed in a world "freed" from God and faith. May we never forget those lessons, or our need for the Living God who is Love itself.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
A Wonderful Day for the Congregation of Holy Cross
Saint André was born Alfred Bessette in Quebec, Canada on August 9, 1845. He suffered from chronic stomach ailments that often kept him from school and work. By the time he was twelve both of his parents had died and he began working in various farms, factories and trades.
Because of his poor health, the Congregation was reluctant to accept him. But in 1870 he entered the novitiate with a letter of recommendation from his home pastor, which stated: “I am sending you a saint.”
Brother André served for forty years as the doorkeeper of the Congregation’s college in Montreal and his hospitality often entailed spending much of the day praying with and consoling the poor and sick. Numerous healings began being reported and the number of visitors swelled. But André always told his visitors to “go to Joseph” and denied that he had anything to do with the healings, saying: “I am nothing – only a lowly instrument at the service of St. Joseph.” Andre saw the value of suffering that is united with the suffering of Christ and he taught his visitors to pray with confidence and perseverance, saying that in praying “one speaks to God as one speaks to a friend.”
With the help of his many friends, André began construction of a church in honor of St. Joseph. Completed only after André’s death, the Oratory of St. Joseph on Mount Royal in Montreal is Canada’s largest church and still welcomes over two million visitors a year.
André died on January 6, 1937 and over a million people braved a blizzard to attend his funeral. On May 23, 1982 when Venerable Pope John Paul II declared Brother André to be Blessed, he said: “a daily crowd of the sick, the afflicted, the poor of all kinds came to André. They found in his presence a welcome ear, comfort and faith in God. Do not the poor of today have as much need of such love, of such hope, of such education in prayer?"
There are many wonderful resources I am happy to direct you to, if you're interested in learning more about Saint André of Montreal, or want to see pictures and videos from the canonization.
My brothers in the Vocations Office have created a canonization web-page, and also have stories and reflections posted on their blog, and pictures from Rome in their Flickr page. The Knights of Columbus have quite a spread on Saint Andre, including a novena and a video on his life. Salt and Light Television out of Canada also has a lovely video as well as excellent essays by Fr. Thomas Rosica, CSB as well as our very own Fr. Drew Gawrych, CSC. Fr. Michael Wurtz, CSC was at the canonization Mass with a number of our confreres from around the world, and he'll be posting photos and reflections at his blog. From South Bend, Today's Catholic has an article featuring some of our priests and colleagues in ministry - and from Portland, comes Fr. Ron Raab, CSC's webpage on Saint Andre, as well as an article in the Catholic Sentinel, and a letter from Archbishop John Vlazny.
I'm also happy to share the section of our Holy Father's homily for the canonization Mass that refers to Saint André:
Brother André Bessette, born in Quebec, in Canada, and a religious of the Congregation of Holy Cross, knew suffering and poverty very early in life. This led him to turn to God for prayer and an intense interior life. Doorman at the Notre Dame College in Montreal, he showed boundless charity and did everything possible to soothe the despair of those who confided in him. With little instruction, he nevertheless understood what was essential to his faith. For him, to believe meant to submit freely and lovingly to Divine Will. Everything existed through the mystery of Jesus, he lived the beatitude of the pure of heart, that of personal rectitude. It is thanks to this simplicity, he showed many God. He had the Saint Joseph Oratory of Mont Royal built, where he was the faithful guardian until his death in 1937. There, he was the witness of many healings and conversions. “Do not try to have your trials taken away from you”, he said, “rather, ask for the grace to endure them well”. For him, everything spoke of God and His presence. May we, following his example, search for God with simplicity to discover Him always present in the core of our lives! May the example of Brother André inspire Canadian Christian life!This morning, before departing South Bend (more on my trip later) I ducked into the Saint André Chapel at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on campus at Notre Dame. It was so wonderful to pray there this morning, sharing in the joy of my brothers and sisters in Holy Cross throughout the world. Later in the day, it was particularly special to be able to say for the first time the name of St. André of Montreal in the Eucharistic Prayer of Mass.
Please join me in thanking God for giving us André Bessette as an intercessor in heaven and as a guide here on earth of obedience, prayer, and compassionate service to the poor. St. André Bessette of Montreal, pray for us!
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Homily for the Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Remember with me for a moment, that in last Sunday’s Gospel, when the Apostles ask Jesus, “increase our faith,” Jesus replies by telling them, “when you have done all that you have been commanded, say, ‘we are unprofitable servants; we have done only what we were obliged to do.’”
I suggested then that Jesus is trying to make the Apostles aware of the humility that is the necessary pre-condition for receiving an increase in faith. In order to receive faith, which is a gift, we have to rid ourselves of any sense of entitlement that makes us believe we have earned or are owed something from life.
Living with a sense of entitlement keeps us from recognizing everything as a gift from God, and makes us victim to the Original Sin of Adam and Eve who grasped and took what all along God wanted and intended to give as a gift.
Today’s Gospel from St. Luke follows directly upon last Sunday’s passage and indeed all of our readings today develop the theme we began contemplating last week.
Our first reading is from the remarkable story of Naaman the Syrian. The background of the story, which we don’t hear in today’s reading, is crucial to our full understanding.
Naaman is a great and powerful man, the army commander of Syria one of Israel’s greatest enemies – but he suffers from the awful disease of leprosy. One of Naaman’s slave girls, who is an Israelite captured in battle, suggests that he go to Israel, to the prophet Elisha to be cured of his ailment.
Naaman takes the girl’s advice and goes to see Elisha, but he is off-put when Elisha doesn’t come to see him personally, instead sending a messenger who tells him to wash in the Jordan seven times. Naaman is furious and wonders “are not the rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel?”
But, again, his servants prevail upon him to heed the prophet’s instructions, especially since they are so simple to fulfill – and sure enough, Naaman is healed of his leprosy. In the section of the story we hear in our first reading, Naaman returns to Elisha to give thanks, and asks that he might have soil from Israel, so that even back home in Syria he can pray to the true God of Israel.
This story of Naaman’s healing is a beautiful reflection on the virtue of humility we began reflecting on last week, and it helps bring our reflection forward to the Gospel reading it is paired with this morning.
Notice that even though Naaman is a great and powerful man, he still has this profound weakness, this fatal flaw, this source of terrible shame: his leprosy, which was not only a horrible disease, but a cause for being shunned from society.
And yet, it is precisely this weakness, this cause of illness and shame that leads Naaman to an encounter with God. The same is true for us. However strong, successful, intelligent or wealthy we may be all of us have some “illness,” some imperfection, something that causes us great pain and shame.
If we’re honest about this part of ourselves this realization is capable of bearing positive fruit. First, it should keep us humble – keep us from pridefully imagining we are somehow perfect. Second, hopefully it can also make us compassionate towards the flaws and shame of others. But perhaps most importantly, we should also note that like Naaman it is often our sin, weakness, illness, or shame that can best bring us to God!
We can often imagine that our sin, weakness, or shame keeps us from God – that it makes us unlovable, or unforgivable to God. But that, brothers and sisters, is a form of pride! The virtue of humility allows us to recognize and accept the fact that God’s healing love is more powerful than we are! – more powerful than anything we could say or do. Humility allows even our weakness and shame to be transformed into a path to God.
This is precisely the humility we see in Naaman. Even though he is a powerful general, he listens to the advice of his Israelite slave girl. Even though he is a Syrian, he goes to see the prophet of his enemy, Israel. Even though Elisha wouldn’t see him, he takes his servants’ advice and follows the prophet’s instructions.
At every turn, Naaman exhibits fantastic humility in his quest for healing. And it is precisely his humility that prepares him, makes him capable of receiving the gift for which he was asking. Thus, we see last week’s theme of humility continued in today’s reading.
But then the reading takes us forward another step. At the end of the first reading, Naaman asks to have two mule loads of soil from Israel, so that even back in Syria he can pray to the God of Israel on holy ground.
Naaman’s story thus makes clear that the true goal of spiritual healing, the true aim of being forgiven of our sins and freed from our shame, is that we return to right worship, and right praise of God.
In other words, just as it is humility that undoes the prideful sin of Adam and Eve and allows us to receive God’s gifts of grace, so too it is gratitude and thanksgiving to God that leads us to right relationship with Him, restoring us to the friendship that Adam and Even enjoyed with God before they sinned. Thanksgiving restores paradise!
This insight from Naaman’s story helps us to see the true power in today’s Gospel from Luke. Jesus encounters ten lepers on his journey to Jerusalem, and sending them to the priests, Jesus heals them while they are on their way. One of the lepers, a Samaritan – again a foreigner – recognizes that he has been healed, and he returns to Jesus to gives thanks.
But the Gospel isn’t merely a lesson in proper etiquette, a reminder to say please and thank you. Nor is it merely about the fulfillment of justice – a reminder that it is only just for us to give God thanks in return for what He has given us.
However true both those insights are, the Gospel is really indicating to us that the whole point of God’s forgiveness, God’s healing, God’s many gifts to us is that we return, as the Samaritan did, to a right relationship with God: that like Naamen, we worship the Lord and give Him thanks.
We all know from our human relationships how much another person’s ingratitude for our friendship, our concern and kindness, can destroy our relationship with them. And the Scriptures make it abundantly clear that our ingratitude wounds and pains the loving heart of God.
But friends, when we participate in the Eucharist we offer to the Father the perfect sacrifice of thanksgiving that Christ made on the altar of the Cross. In humility, we recognize our own inability to adequately thank God; and that humility opens us to receive the Lord’s Spirit; and the Spirit empowers us to share in Jesus’ sacrifice of thanksgiving; and thereby the Eucharist restores us to the paradise of right relationship with God.
Brothers and sisters let us approach our worship in this Eucharist with the spirit of humility and gratitude that will allow this great sacrifice of thanksgiving to have its true effect in our lives.
I suggested then that Jesus is trying to make the Apostles aware of the humility that is the necessary pre-condition for receiving an increase in faith. In order to receive faith, which is a gift, we have to rid ourselves of any sense of entitlement that makes us believe we have earned or are owed something from life.
Living with a sense of entitlement keeps us from recognizing everything as a gift from God, and makes us victim to the Original Sin of Adam and Eve who grasped and took what all along God wanted and intended to give as a gift.
Today’s Gospel from St. Luke follows directly upon last Sunday’s passage and indeed all of our readings today develop the theme we began contemplating last week.
Our first reading is from the remarkable story of Naaman the Syrian. The background of the story, which we don’t hear in today’s reading, is crucial to our full understanding.
Naaman is a great and powerful man, the army commander of Syria one of Israel’s greatest enemies – but he suffers from the awful disease of leprosy. One of Naaman’s slave girls, who is an Israelite captured in battle, suggests that he go to Israel, to the prophet Elisha to be cured of his ailment.
Naaman takes the girl’s advice and goes to see Elisha, but he is off-put when Elisha doesn’t come to see him personally, instead sending a messenger who tells him to wash in the Jordan seven times. Naaman is furious and wonders “are not the rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel?”
But, again, his servants prevail upon him to heed the prophet’s instructions, especially since they are so simple to fulfill – and sure enough, Naaman is healed of his leprosy. In the section of the story we hear in our first reading, Naaman returns to Elisha to give thanks, and asks that he might have soil from Israel, so that even back home in Syria he can pray to the true God of Israel.
This story of Naaman’s healing is a beautiful reflection on the virtue of humility we began reflecting on last week, and it helps bring our reflection forward to the Gospel reading it is paired with this morning.
Notice that even though Naaman is a great and powerful man, he still has this profound weakness, this fatal flaw, this source of terrible shame: his leprosy, which was not only a horrible disease, but a cause for being shunned from society.
And yet, it is precisely this weakness, this cause of illness and shame that leads Naaman to an encounter with God. The same is true for us. However strong, successful, intelligent or wealthy we may be all of us have some “illness,” some imperfection, something that causes us great pain and shame.
If we’re honest about this part of ourselves this realization is capable of bearing positive fruit. First, it should keep us humble – keep us from pridefully imagining we are somehow perfect. Second, hopefully it can also make us compassionate towards the flaws and shame of others. But perhaps most importantly, we should also note that like Naaman it is often our sin, weakness, illness, or shame that can best bring us to God!
We can often imagine that our sin, weakness, or shame keeps us from God – that it makes us unlovable, or unforgivable to God. But that, brothers and sisters, is a form of pride! The virtue of humility allows us to recognize and accept the fact that God’s healing love is more powerful than we are! – more powerful than anything we could say or do. Humility allows even our weakness and shame to be transformed into a path to God.
This is precisely the humility we see in Naaman. Even though he is a powerful general, he listens to the advice of his Israelite slave girl. Even though he is a Syrian, he goes to see the prophet of his enemy, Israel. Even though Elisha wouldn’t see him, he takes his servants’ advice and follows the prophet’s instructions.
At every turn, Naaman exhibits fantastic humility in his quest for healing. And it is precisely his humility that prepares him, makes him capable of receiving the gift for which he was asking. Thus, we see last week’s theme of humility continued in today’s reading.
But then the reading takes us forward another step. At the end of the first reading, Naaman asks to have two mule loads of soil from Israel, so that even back in Syria he can pray to the God of Israel on holy ground.
Naaman’s story thus makes clear that the true goal of spiritual healing, the true aim of being forgiven of our sins and freed from our shame, is that we return to right worship, and right praise of God.
In other words, just as it is humility that undoes the prideful sin of Adam and Eve and allows us to receive God’s gifts of grace, so too it is gratitude and thanksgiving to God that leads us to right relationship with Him, restoring us to the friendship that Adam and Even enjoyed with God before they sinned. Thanksgiving restores paradise!
This insight from Naaman’s story helps us to see the true power in today’s Gospel from Luke. Jesus encounters ten lepers on his journey to Jerusalem, and sending them to the priests, Jesus heals them while they are on their way. One of the lepers, a Samaritan – again a foreigner – recognizes that he has been healed, and he returns to Jesus to gives thanks.
But the Gospel isn’t merely a lesson in proper etiquette, a reminder to say please and thank you. Nor is it merely about the fulfillment of justice – a reminder that it is only just for us to give God thanks in return for what He has given us.
However true both those insights are, the Gospel is really indicating to us that the whole point of God’s forgiveness, God’s healing, God’s many gifts to us is that we return, as the Samaritan did, to a right relationship with God: that like Naamen, we worship the Lord and give Him thanks.
We all know from our human relationships how much another person’s ingratitude for our friendship, our concern and kindness, can destroy our relationship with them. And the Scriptures make it abundantly clear that our ingratitude wounds and pains the loving heart of God.
But friends, when we participate in the Eucharist we offer to the Father the perfect sacrifice of thanksgiving that Christ made on the altar of the Cross. In humility, we recognize our own inability to adequately thank God; and that humility opens us to receive the Lord’s Spirit; and the Spirit empowers us to share in Jesus’ sacrifice of thanksgiving; and thereby the Eucharist restores us to the paradise of right relationship with God.
Brothers and sisters let us approach our worship in this Eucharist with the spirit of humility and gratitude that will allow this great sacrifice of thanksgiving to have its true effect in our lives.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Homily for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
There is an increasing body of psychological research and cultural commentary suggesting that our current generation of Americans has developed a problem with a sense of entitlement. Which is to say, we often think and act as if the world owes us something.
Now, this kind of behavior is typical of our fallen human nature. The parents and grandparents among us can, I’m sure, tell us how toddlers want what they want, when they want it – and a child’s temper tantrums are thrown because they’ve been told ‘no’ in some way.
Then, as children get a little older, they move onto bargaining and rationalizing to get what they imagine they are owed: “If you really loved me . . . But everybody else is . . .”
When we’re teenagers, we really have to struggle to grow out of this kind of self-centered sense of entitlement. We have to learn that we’re not just given a spot on the team, or a good grade in school – we have to earn them. We want to have the most fashionable clothes or the coolest technology, but we learn that they cost money, and we have to get an afterschool job to pay for them.
The problem is this sense of entitlement is insidious – it’s hard to grow out of completely. Some people get stuck in a kind of perpetual adolescence; they remain egotistical and therefore entitled. And even those who basically succeed at maturing past that phase of life still find that a sense of entitlement can rear its ugly head in any of us at any time.
Do you find yourself getting frustrated over being delayed by traffic, or being inconvenienced by having to wait in line? Do you easily get angry when something doesn’t go as you had hoped or planned? I know I find myself feeling this way often enough, and I have to admit that it comes, ultimately, from a sense of entitlement: “Why does this always happen to me . . . Don’t they know I’m in a hurry . . . why don’t they just listen to and do what I say?”
As you can surely appreciate, the reason this sense of entitlement is so problematic is that it can keep us from working hard for things, and even more importantly, it keeps us from appreciating all that we have as gifts from God. In terms of the spiritual life, this really is a deadly way of thinking – perhaps the deadliest: it brings us back to the Garden and to the Original Sin of Adam and Eve who grasped and took what all along God wanted and intended to give as a gift.
I think that’s the thought we need to have in mind in order to properly understand Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel. It starts with the Apostles saying to Jesus: “increase our faith.” This seems like a good thing to ask. But in His response, Jesus says: “when you have done all that you have been commanded, say, ‘we are unprofitable servants; we have done only what we were obliged to do.’”
At first hearing this sounds harsh. But if we think of it in terms of our human sense of entitlement it makes a bit more sense. You see, faith is itself a great gift from God – and the Apostles are right to ask for that gift, as we should too.
But in order to properly receive something as a gift, we have to be free from any sense of being owed. If we think we’re entitled to something – if we think we’re owed something, or even that we’ve earned something, then we can’t receive that thing as a gift.
So it is even with the gift of faith. In order to grow in faith, we must have the humility that recognizes God’s greatness and our weakness. We have to see ourselves as servants who have done nothing that could possibly deserve or earn the many good gifts God has given us. That kind of humility is the pre-condition for receiving an increase in faith. That’s why Jesus responds to the Apostles the way He does.
I think all of us, like the Apostles in today’s Gospel, long for an increased measure of faith. None of us think we have enough faith. And that’s especially true whenever we suffer some trial or loss. Just like the prophet Habakkuk, in our first reading, we cry out: “How long, O Lord? Why do you let me see ruin? Why must I look at misery?”
But think for a minute about the people we celebrate as having great faith – the saints. They are so much like us. None of them sought they had enough faith either! They too cried aloud to God in the face of suffering and in the weakness of their own sinfulness. And yet, the greatest difference between us is that they fought off the sense of entitlement that keeps us from receiving God’s gift of greater faith.
The founder of my Holy Cross community, Blessed Basil Moreau was well known for saying: “I am a simple tool in the hand of the Lord.” Doesn’t that sound precisely like what Jesus is teaching in today’s Gospel?
Or think of our patroness St. Thérèse of Liseux, whose feast day we celebrated this week. She was hardly perfect. The other sisters in the cloister certainly knew that and they told her as much! “I am not always faithful,” Thérèse admitted about herself, “but I never get discouraged.”
“I still am weak and imperfect. I always feel, however, the same bold confidence of becoming a great saint because I don’t count on my merits since I have none. Instead, I trust in Him who is Virtue and Holiness. God alone, content with my weak efforts, will raise me to Himself and make me a saint.”
You see? Jesus teaches us, and the saints show us that the necessary precondition to receiving the gift of faith is that we abandon our sense of entitlement, admit our weakness, and practice gratitude for God’s many gifts. As St. Paul makes clear in his Letter to Timothy, this admission of weakness does not “give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather [a spirit] of power, and love and self control.” We see that in Thérèse: she dared to believe that God would make her a saint! And God wants to do the same for us.
But in order to receive that gift, brothers and sisters, we must fight off the sense of entitlement that makes us imagine we are owed anything at all. Every day, we need to take stock of our failings and weakness, count the blessings we’ve been given, look to serve those who have received less than us, and pray in thanksgiving that we’ve been given so much more than we ever deserved.
Then, we can ask for an increase in faith, and be prepared to receive it as a gift. Then, like St. Thérèse, we can trust that God does indeed want to give us faith, and to make us saints! Friends, “the vision still has its time; it presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint. Wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.” Amen.
Now, this kind of behavior is typical of our fallen human nature. The parents and grandparents among us can, I’m sure, tell us how toddlers want what they want, when they want it – and a child’s temper tantrums are thrown because they’ve been told ‘no’ in some way.
Then, as children get a little older, they move onto bargaining and rationalizing to get what they imagine they are owed: “If you really loved me . . . But everybody else is . . .”
When we’re teenagers, we really have to struggle to grow out of this kind of self-centered sense of entitlement. We have to learn that we’re not just given a spot on the team, or a good grade in school – we have to earn them. We want to have the most fashionable clothes or the coolest technology, but we learn that they cost money, and we have to get an afterschool job to pay for them.
The problem is this sense of entitlement is insidious – it’s hard to grow out of completely. Some people get stuck in a kind of perpetual adolescence; they remain egotistical and therefore entitled. And even those who basically succeed at maturing past that phase of life still find that a sense of entitlement can rear its ugly head in any of us at any time.
Do you find yourself getting frustrated over being delayed by traffic, or being inconvenienced by having to wait in line? Do you easily get angry when something doesn’t go as you had hoped or planned? I know I find myself feeling this way often enough, and I have to admit that it comes, ultimately, from a sense of entitlement: “Why does this always happen to me . . . Don’t they know I’m in a hurry . . . why don’t they just listen to and do what I say?”
As you can surely appreciate, the reason this sense of entitlement is so problematic is that it can keep us from working hard for things, and even more importantly, it keeps us from appreciating all that we have as gifts from God. In terms of the spiritual life, this really is a deadly way of thinking – perhaps the deadliest: it brings us back to the Garden and to the Original Sin of Adam and Eve who grasped and took what all along God wanted and intended to give as a gift.
I think that’s the thought we need to have in mind in order to properly understand Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel. It starts with the Apostles saying to Jesus: “increase our faith.” This seems like a good thing to ask. But in His response, Jesus says: “when you have done all that you have been commanded, say, ‘we are unprofitable servants; we have done only what we were obliged to do.’”
At first hearing this sounds harsh. But if we think of it in terms of our human sense of entitlement it makes a bit more sense. You see, faith is itself a great gift from God – and the Apostles are right to ask for that gift, as we should too.
But in order to properly receive something as a gift, we have to be free from any sense of being owed. If we think we’re entitled to something – if we think we’re owed something, or even that we’ve earned something, then we can’t receive that thing as a gift.
So it is even with the gift of faith. In order to grow in faith, we must have the humility that recognizes God’s greatness and our weakness. We have to see ourselves as servants who have done nothing that could possibly deserve or earn the many good gifts God has given us. That kind of humility is the pre-condition for receiving an increase in faith. That’s why Jesus responds to the Apostles the way He does.
I think all of us, like the Apostles in today’s Gospel, long for an increased measure of faith. None of us think we have enough faith. And that’s especially true whenever we suffer some trial or loss. Just like the prophet Habakkuk, in our first reading, we cry out: “How long, O Lord? Why do you let me see ruin? Why must I look at misery?”
But think for a minute about the people we celebrate as having great faith – the saints. They are so much like us. None of them sought they had enough faith either! They too cried aloud to God in the face of suffering and in the weakness of their own sinfulness. And yet, the greatest difference between us is that they fought off the sense of entitlement that keeps us from receiving God’s gift of greater faith.
The founder of my Holy Cross community, Blessed Basil Moreau was well known for saying: “I am a simple tool in the hand of the Lord.” Doesn’t that sound precisely like what Jesus is teaching in today’s Gospel?
Or think of our patroness St. Thérèse of Liseux, whose feast day we celebrated this week. She was hardly perfect. The other sisters in the cloister certainly knew that and they told her as much! “I am not always faithful,” Thérèse admitted about herself, “but I never get discouraged.”
“I still am weak and imperfect. I always feel, however, the same bold confidence of becoming a great saint because I don’t count on my merits since I have none. Instead, I trust in Him who is Virtue and Holiness. God alone, content with my weak efforts, will raise me to Himself and make me a saint.”
You see? Jesus teaches us, and the saints show us that the necessary precondition to receiving the gift of faith is that we abandon our sense of entitlement, admit our weakness, and practice gratitude for God’s many gifts. As St. Paul makes clear in his Letter to Timothy, this admission of weakness does not “give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather [a spirit] of power, and love and self control.” We see that in Thérèse: she dared to believe that God would make her a saint! And God wants to do the same for us.
But in order to receive that gift, brothers and sisters, we must fight off the sense of entitlement that makes us imagine we are owed anything at all. Every day, we need to take stock of our failings and weakness, count the blessings we’ve been given, look to serve those who have received less than us, and pray in thanksgiving that we’ve been given so much more than we ever deserved.
Then, we can ask for an increase in faith, and be prepared to receive it as a gift. Then, like St. Thérèse, we can trust that God does indeed want to give us faith, and to make us saints! Friends, “the vision still has its time; it presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint. Wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.” Amen.
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