Year C Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Wis 11:22-12:2; Ps 145:1-2.8-11.13-14; 1 Thess 1:11-2:2; Luke 19:1-10

Jesus’ arrival in Jericho, which sits down the mountain from Jerusalem, marks the next to last, or penultimate (I can’t pass up the chance to use that word!) episode in Saint Luke’s travel narrative. It is, however, the Sunday Lectionary’s final installment of this this part of the Gospel.

As Jesus and his band of followers enter Jericho, a short, wealthy tax collector, in fact, the city’s chief tax collector, “was seeking to see who Jesus was.”¹ No doubt Jesus’ fame preceded him. While Zacchaeus collected and oversaw the collection of taxes for the occupying Romans, he was a Jew, like Jesus.

Being Jewish and working for the Romans collecting taxes is precisely what made tax collectors so loathsome to their fellow Jews. The contempt in which tax collectors were held by their co-religionists was highlighted well in Jesus’ teaching in last Sunday’s Gospel.²

If you remember, it was the tax collector, who recognized his need for God’s mercy, who went home justified. This is in contrast to the scrupulous man who was so convinced of his own righteousness that he felt very comfortable judging and even condemning others.

My friends, it is important to always receive Jesus’ teaching in the first person. It’s easy to make someone else’s sins and shortcomings seem worse than my own. But holiness is not a competition. Neither can you establish your righteousness by pointing out someone else’s sins and failures. Such an attempt, at least for Christians, is self-defeating and more than a little ironic

Our first reading from the Book of Wisdom tells us of God’s love and mercy. God is, indeed, the “lover” of our souls.³ Because of this, God respects our consciences. In its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, the Second Vatican Council teaches: “Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a [person]. There [s/he] is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in his[/her] depths.”⁴

The sanctuary of your soul is where you encounter God’s law of love. By its very nature, the law of love cannot be imposed. But once discerned, it “holds” you to obedience to the Great Commandments: loving God with your whole being and loving your neighbor as yourself. It is love that summons you to do “good and avoid evil… do this, shun that.”⁵ Without truth there can be no love. Without love there is no truth because, as Jesus reveals by his life, passion, death, and resurrection, “God is love.”⁶

What makes it impossible to judge another is the only soul you can access is your own. But you still need a key to enter the sanctuary of your own soul. What is the key, you might ask? God’s grace.

There are various means of receiving God’s grace. The sacraments, in this context, especially the sacrament of penance, or confession. Always, of course, the Eucharist. Another indispensable means of grace is daily prayer. Prayer should include meditation and contemplation. It is important in prayer, which is a conversation with God, to spend at least as much time listening as you do talking. Maybe think about prayer as your own sycamore tree, the place where you seek Jesus.

In addition to being kind and merciful, God is patient and gently persistent. This is shown in today’s Gospel when, upon seeing Zacchaeus in the sycamore tree, Jesus tells him to come down because that very day he “must” stay at Zacchaeus’ house. This prompted the predictable response, one Jesus was no doubt used to: “He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.”⁷

Here’s a little secret: there are only houses of sinners for Jesus to enter. In the Book of Revelation, in a section addressed to the ancient Church in Sardis, the risen Lord says: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, [then] I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me.”⁸

This reference to dining evokes the Eucharist, the source and summit of Christian faith because it provides us with the interpretative key to the law and the prophets: the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Paschal Mystery.

What Jesus said to Zacchaeus, he says to you and to me: “today I must stay at your house.”⁹ He says this to you with the same urgency because he “has come to seek and to save what was lost."¹⁰ Like Zacchaeus, receive Jesus with joy, which means living according to the divine law of love.

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1 Luke 19:3.^↩
2 See Luke 18:9-14.^↩
3 Wisdom 11:26.^↩
4 Second Vatican Council. Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World [Gaudium et spes], sec. 16.^↩
5 Ibid.^↩
6 1 John 4:8.16.^↩
7 Luke 19:7.^↩
8 Revelation 3:20.^↩
9 Luke 19:5.^↩
10 Luke 19:10.^↩

Year II Twenty-ninth Friday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Ephesians 4:1-6; Ps 24:1-4ab.5-6; Luke 12:54-59

It’s easier to read the weather than to read our hearts. When we know what the weather is going to be, based on how things are outside, we plan and prepare. Maybe you wear a jacket, a coat, or a raincoat. Perhaps you carry an umbrella or maybe decide to wear shorts.

Very often, we don’t realize how things are on the inside, in our hearts. If you haven’t yet noticed, we live in a contentious world. People want to contend, to compete, to get the upper hand, to win at all costs, even if the cost is devastation.

In today's Gospel, Jesus is telling us not to be that kind of person. He uses the example of someone who has a dispute with another person. These two people are bringing their dispute before a judge. One part of Jesus’ warning here, I think, is not to always be so sure you're in the right.

In light of this, he urges settling disputes before they go to court. After all, you might lose. But sometimes our unwillingness to compromise isn’t the result of being right or seeking justice. It is often nothing other than our deeply ingrained desire to win, or at least not to lose.

It is often only in retrospect that we realize most things don’t matter as much as we think they do, especially when we're in a dispute. At the end of the day, a lot of disputes between people don’t amount to much, if anything, in the big scheme of things. Jesus always urges his followers to look at life's big picture. Traditionally, this is called viewing things sub specie aeternitatis, or "under the aspect of eternity. It’s important, therefore, to determine whether something is worth disputing over, even if you’re convinced you’re right.

As the old-time comedian W.C. Fields once said: “You don’t have to attend every argument you're invited to." We are all products of a very argumentative culture. As Christians, more often than not, we should choose the way Jesus lays out for us and gently decline to participate.

In light of the risk of not being right, coupled with the risk of having your wrongness exposed, most arguments simply aren’t worth having. More important than anything, you need to pay attention to the weather inside. When you feel like arguing, stop and ask yourself "How is my heart?"

Most of the time, the impulse to be contentious and argumentative is the result of bad weather inside. Through prayer and choosing not to participate, just like you plan for bad weather outside, you can plan for those days when there’s a storm brewing inside and respond accordingly.

Jesus teaches "Blessed are the peacemakers." Given how prone we all are to contend, to argue, to dispute with each other, peace has to be made. As John Lennon noted: "Peace is not something you wish for; It's something you make, something you do, something you are, something you give away."

Our first reading from the Letter to the Ephesians, which was ostensibly written in prison, urges us (i.e., Christians) “to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received.” You received this call when you were baptized. What is the call you received? According to this scripture, deeply rooted as it is in the teaching of Jesus, you are called to be humble, patient, and gentle. You and I are called to be peacemakers in a world desperately in need of peace.

Why pray?

Readings

Here's a test for preaching this week: Did whoever you heard preach take as a starting point what the Gospel tells us the readings are about? "Jesus told his disciples a parable "about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary"?

If not, I would question that person's approach to preaching and whether they are really committed to expounding the scriptures or if they're intent on riding hobby horses. Frankly, a lot of preaching amounts to such an equestrian event.

I've been re-reading Louis-Marie Chauvet's outstanding book The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body. Along with Jean Corbon's The Wellspring of Worship, it is the best book of sacramental theology I've ever read. Early in the book, which is an abbreviated version of his magnum opus Symbol & Sacrament, he writes brilliantly, drawing from the Church Fathers, on word and sacrament and the role preaching plays in this dynamic.

Commenting on Origen's view of preaching, Chauvet writes: "he does not hesitate to compare the homily to the multiplication of loaves." Then quoting Origen, he writes: "Consider...now how we break a few loaves: we take up a few words from the divine Scriptures and... many thousand men are filled." Origen, who remains an unparalleled master of Scripture, goes on write that "unless the loaves have been broken, unless they have been crumbled into pieces by the disciples... unless the letter has been discussed and broken in little pieces, its meaning cannot reach everyone" all from page 44).

In my view, a serious lack in the current Eucharistic Revival is the sacramentality of the word as it relates to the Eucharist. According to the Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Christ is really present in the proclamation of the scriptures (sec. 7). Even the bread and wine become for us the body and blood of Christ through the words of Eucharistic Prayer- word becoming flesh. Without the word, there is no sacrament.

I love the analogy of the scriptures proclaimed as the loaf and the homily as the sharing of the one bread. It is by analogy that we come to understand the mystery of faith, is it not? We cannot access this mystery in an immediate way. It is always mediated. Sacraments are mediations, which means they are both sign and symbol. If sacrament is sign and symbol- though signs of particular type- they're empty gestures, mere rituals that signify nothing.

Given that the kind of prayer Jesus is clearly talking about is petitionary prayer (i.e., the kind of prayer that asks things from God), it's fair to ask- How do I pray and not grow weary? Another question that seems almost inevitable in light of this teaching- Will God answer my prayer(s) only because he grows weary of hearing me ask? In other words, Do I need to wear down God like the widow wore down the horrible judge? Look at what Luke writes- the judge granted the widow's request because he was worried about her "striking" him. As I practicing proclaiming this before Mass yesterday, this struck me as funny. I think sometimes Jesus injected a wry humor in his teaching. At least I hope he did.

While I am not sure there are definitive answers to such questions, which makes these questions all the more important, two observations strike me as relevant. The first is to note that throughout this parable what the widow is seeking to be vindcated against an unnamed adversary in an unspecified dispute. She is is only asking the judge to do what he ought to do, to do his job. In verse 5 of Luke 18, where, in our translation (the NABRE) the judge decides to "deliver a just decision for her," the Greek word translated as "just" ἐκδικέω (transliterated = ekdikeō), in this context means to vindicate her. This same word is used in verse 3, where the widow demands the judge "Render a just decision for me against my adversary."

We are vindicated through Jesus Christ, whose death and resurrection are the key to interpretiting the whole of Scripture. The Paschal Mystery is the very core of reality that we seek not just know, or even merely to understand, but to live, be immersed into. Observing this not only indicates that, in and through Christ, we are always already vindicated against our adversary, it also indicates God's method of vindication, or how God answers our prayers. Doesn't the widow herself undergo a kind of passion in seeking vindication?

While Luke gives us a parable and is even explicit about what it teaches, we tend allegorize every parable and every element of every parable. To say something is "like" something else is precisely not to posit an exact identity. Say what? Cutting to the chase, while we should bring our petitions to God without ceasing, crying out to him for ourselves and for others, we are not petitioning an asshat of a judge. Just as Jesus did not allegorize the master of the unjust steward as the Father, in our Gospel today he does not teach that God [, the Father] is "like" the despicable judge. Verse 7, which could begin with the words "How much more, then, will God vindicate...," indicates that no allegory is intended in that regard.

Again, our vindication is the one on whose lips Luke places this parable. How much more, then, should we heed his exhortation to pray to God without growing weary? We don't grow weary because because what we truly seek, want, and need is already ours.

So, should we pray because the answer to our all prayers tells us to pray? Rather than trot out the tired quote by Kierkegaard about how the point of prayer is to change the one who prays, an observation with which I agree, I am going to dig a bit deeper.

I think Kierkegaard answers this question very well, in light of the vindication that is already ours, giving us good reason to pray to God without growing weary:

[God] lets me weep before him in silent solitude, pour forth again and again pour forth my pain, with the blessed consolation of knowing that he is concerned for me—and in the meanwhile he gives that life of pain a significance which almost overwhelms me (Journals VIII1 A, 650)

Year C Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Kings 5:14-17; Ps 98:1-4; 2 Tim 2:8-13; Luke 17:11-19

Today we find ourselves still journeying with Jesus toward Jerusalem. Today Luke’s Gospel tells us, even if in a somewhat confusing way, that Jesus passes through Samaria on his way. Samaria is located between Jesus’ native region (Galilee) and Jerusalem, which is in Judea.

It is said, that in Jesus’ day certain observant Jews, concerned about purity, would make their way from Galilee to Judea by walking east, toward the Jordan River, crossing the river, walking on the far side of the Jordan to Jericho where, like their ancestors at the end of the exodus, they would cross the river and go up the mountain to Jerusalem. It was on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem that Jesus, earlier in Saint Luke’s Gospel, set his Parable of the Good Samaritan. It has been asserted that Jewish pilgrims took this longer route to avoid passing through Samaria. However, examples can be found of Jews, other than Jesus and his entourage, passing through Samaria.

Our first reading, from 2 Kings, also takes place in Samaria. It occurs as Elisha, the successor of the great prophet Elijah, warns Israel about the possibility of exile due to their failure to heed his prophetic call to repentance.

An exile happened in about 740 BC. According to the narrative of Samuel/Kings, it occurred not long after the episode concerning Naaman. The Assyrian exile is what alienated Samaria from the rest of Israel (i.e., Galilee and Judea). What happened, as still often occurs in conquered territories, was a population exchange. Some Israelites were exiled and some Assyrians were moved into Samaria.

This population exchange resulted in Israelites intermarrying with foreigners. Not only did they intermarry, but they also adopted some foreign religious practices and blended these with their ancient form of Judaism. Instead of Jerusalem, the holy site for Samaritans became Mount Gerizim, in Samaria. This is why, some 700 years later, in Jesus’ day, the Jews and the Samaritans hated and avoided each other.

Something relevant to the point of our readings today is that Naaman was the commander of the army that threatened Israel. He was Israel’s enemy. The reason he sought out Elisha after discovering a troubling “spot” on his skin, was because a young Israelite woman, who had been taken captive and made a servant to Naaman’s wife, suggested he do so.

Before leaving for Israel with a large amount of money to pay for his cure, Naaman sent a letter to Israel’s king announcing his trip and its purpose. The king, convinced that it was a trick by Israel's powerful northern neighbor, one that would lead to war, tore his clothes because he did not know how Naaman could be cured.¹

When he heard of his king’s torment, Elisha sent a message to the king of Israel, telling him to send Naaman his way so the Syrian leader would “find out that there is a prophet in Israel.”² When Naaman arrived at Elisha’s abode, the prophet himself did not go out to meet him, but sent a messenger. This servant told the general, “Go and wash seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will heal, and you will be clean.”³

Naaman, who was a man used to getting his way, started to leave, very angrily saying, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand there to call on the name of the LORD his God, and would move his hand over the place, and thus cure the leprous spot. Are not the rivers of Damascus, the Abana and the Pharpar, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be cleansed?”⁴

Stated simply, Naaman was angry because God didn’t do what he wanted God to do in the way he wanted God to do it. If we’re being honest, are we not sometimes like that?

Ultimately, the Syrian general heeded the pleas of his servants and did as Elisha instructed him. The result was his immediate and complete cure. Refusing his generous gift, Elisha sent him away with two mules loaded with earth from Israel. Naaman assured the prophet that henceforth he would only worship the one, true God, the God of Israel, the One who had healed him and to whom he owed a debt he could never repay.

This episode is typical of Elisha’s miracle-working, which can be summarized in three points. First, he did not exclude anyone: he performed miracles for the rich and the poor and, as with Naaman, even for Israel’s enemies. Second, when compared to the complicated incantations and rituals performed to get pagan gods to act miraculously, the miracles God accomplished through him, geared towards demonstrating God's power, were done quite simply. In Naaman’s case- “Go wash in the Jordan and you’ll be clean.” Finally, Elisha’s miracles were done for free. No fee required, even from someone as rich as Naaman, who was clearly prepared to pay a lot for a cure.⁵

Naaman is like the healed lepers who did not return to thank Jesus and then like the Samaritan who, unlike his presumably Jewish companions, gave Jesus thanks for what he’d done. While Israel’s king ignored God’s prophet, the enemy general heeded him. In this episode, Elisha is very much a precursor to Jesus.

The word used by Luke for the Samaritan leper’s gratitude to Jesus is the appropriate form of the Greek word anglicized as “eucharist.” Considering this, we should recognize that what we are doing right here now is “Eucharist.” Eucharist is simply the Greek word for thanksgiving.

We give God thanks because, as our reading from 2 Timothy tells us, once we truly belong to Christ, he remains faithful even when we are unfaithful, which happens.⁶ Our infidelities require us to acknowledge that we are incapable of saving ourselves. Therefore, we need to make frequent recourse to the healing power of Christ, which is made available to us most effectively in and through the sacraments.

My brothers and sisters, worshiping God in gratitude is what makes us members of his chosen people. While perhaps a bit anachronistic, by his act of thanksgiving, the Samaritan cured of leprosy becomes a Christian, just as Naaman worshiped the God of Israel after his healing.

What ought to bring us to our knees in gratitude is our personal experience of God’s mercy given us in Christ by the Holy Spirit’s power. This is why we kneel as we say, after being told to “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world…,” using the words of the grateful Roman centurion, whose servant Jesus healed at his request, “Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof…”⁷

As our Collect, or opening prayer, asks, may God’s grace always go before and after us, making us “determined to carry out good works.”⁸

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1 2 Kings 5:1-8.^↩
2 2 Kings 5:8.^↩
3 2 Kings 5:10.^↩
4 2 Kings 5:11-12.^↩
5 José Enrique Aguilar, Richard J. Clifford, SJ, Carol Dempsey, OP, Eileen M. Schuller, OSU, et al. Eds. The Paulist Biblical Commentary, “First and Second Kings,” Peter Dubovsky, SJ, 306. ^↩
6 2 Timothy 2:13.^↩
7 Roman Missal, The Order of Mass, sec. 132; Matthew 8:8.^↩
8 Roman Missal, Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Collect.^↩

"When my conscience called me to heed the cry..."

It's been a while since I posted anything on Friday. For both of my readers, I haven't given up doing so. Life takes priority. Frankly, my pace of life for the first and third quarters of 2022 has been just a little short of frantic. I am trying to make the fourth quarter like the second quarter, much slower.

Have you ever had the experience of thinking something and simultaneously being disgusted by your thoughts? I experienced this today during my walk. I have no need to divulge the thoughts that disgusted me. All I need to say is that these thoughts are the product of my own conditioning. Since their genesis is not a mystery- they didn't come out of nowhere- I am responsible for them. These thoughts find their origin in a weakness, a vulnerability of longstanding. Over time, I have plumbed the depth of this vulnerability. Anyway, it's like standing outside yourself, being outside and inside at the same time.

In English we have the adjective diabolical. In a more specifically Christian vein, the Greek word διάβολος, which transliterates diabolos, is the origin of the word devil. In essence, a diabolos isn't merely an accuser. After all, I am often justly accused by my conscience, as in my experience this morning. A diabolos is a slanderer, a backbiter, a calumniator (there's a word for you!).

More to the point I am trying to make, looking at diabolical etymologically, it is a compound Greek word: dia + ballein. Literally, it means “to tear apart.” I think the experience I had today was just that, a tearing apart from myself. I think sin has just this effect: it alienates you from yourself. This why the turn indicated by metanoia (i.e., repentance) is a turn back to yourself. Or, taking my cue from Augustine and Ignatius of Loyola, repentance is not merely a "return to God." True repentance is returning to yourself.

Since it is Friday, which I still observe as a penitential day, as I walked, I meditated on the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Blessed Virgin's Holy Rosary. Praying the Rosary while walking- sometimes while sitting and in a more contemplative way- is a daily practice. It's a practice I recommend, especially today on the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary.

Christ on the Cross, Flemish Painter, ca. 1675-1725

The part of me that was disgusted, distraught, grieved (if I may beg pardon and employ that overused word) was conscience. It was what my conscience called out that was pulling me apart from myself. The call of conscience is the call of wholeness. Being whole is what it really means to be holy. At least for me, holiness requires healing.

The healing holiness requires for me is a struggle, what Saint Paul described as agon. Agony, of course, is derived from agon. An agon is the kind of struggle that accentuates feeling pressure in a deeply personal way.

I don't have a neat way of wrapping up my experience. My agon continues. With the help of people who love me, simply by loving me, and the grace of God, which is living in the reality that God, who is love, loves me no matter what, I am confident I will be successful in the contest. After all, in and through Christ, my victory is won.

Our need to be gentle with each other is aided by the recognition that we're all engaged in an agon of one sort or another. And so, kindness, compassion, and understanding should be our default, not judgment, condemnation, and derision.

After that experience, which occurred while I was walking, I listened to Phil Keaggy's 1990 album Find Me In These Fields. Because of what just happened, I was particularly moved by the title track from that album. As a result, "Find Me In These Fields" is our Friday traditio.

Increasing faith

Readings

Faith. What is it? Is it mere belief? If it is belief if and I just believe, do I have faith? What is meant by belief in this context? Is it what is often called "intellectual assent"? Intellectual assent can run the gamut from being deeply convinced to "Sure, why not?"

It's easy enough to say "I have faith," even when the person saying it isn't really sure what s/he means by it. I would say the hallmark of faith is repentance. By repentance, I don't mean, or don't exclusively or even primarily mean, being sorry for your sins. Jesus' call to repentance is not a threat. It is an invitation to live a new and different kind of life, the life of faith.

Jesus' point in our Gospel reading this week is that faith produces repentance and repentance is not just the door we wlak through to new life but also the path that leads to it. Even the fruit that genuine faith produces through your life is nothing other than grace at work in you. This is what leads to Jesus' conclusion in this pericope, which can sound harsh.

But Jesus isn't being harsh. He's seeking to move you away from your self-centeredness. He wants you to live in God's grace, not your own vainglory. Is God grateful to you for the good things you do? No. He did create and redeem you for these very things that constitute the life of faith. Sanctification is your cooperation with God's grace in living this way, this life of faith.

I think we have to be careful not to allegorize Jesus' teaching in this passage from Luke. In other words, God is not the master in Jesus' lesson. He's just using an example with which they're familiar. To tell his disciples that even when they've done all that they're supposed to do, they're still unprofitable servants is just a way of answering their plea to increase their faith. What is faith but our response to God's initiative toward us? God's initiative elcits (it doesn't solicit and it certainly doesn't force) a response from you.

We need to constantly trust God. As C.S. Lewis put it: "Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done" (from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer). I really think this is the point Jesus seeks to make to his disciples in our Gospel reading. When it comes to faith, you can't rest on your laurels. If for no other reason, you can't rest on your laurels because you don't have any laurels on which to rest.

This is faith: to respond again and again and again to God's initiative toward you and then recognize the results. True faith can never be merely believing, even believing fervently. When belief waivers, praxis should not. Do you want God to help your unbelief?

In a very brief explanation of this pericope, the late New Testament scholar, Fr. Raymond Brown, noted that Jesus seems to address the "idea" some of his disciples "might get... that they had done something great" (An Introduction to the New Testament, 250). But whatever truly great thing they might've accomplished is the work of God in/through them. It is grace that flows from faith.

This leads us back to Jesus' invitation to live a new life; to repent. As our reading from Habukkuk tells us: "the just one, because of his faith, shall live" (Hab 2:4). After all, it is true faith that makes him just.

So, if today or on any day, you hear God's voice, harden not your heart.