Homily for the Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

This Sunday our first reading comes from the Book of the Prophet Malachi, who preached to the people of Israel between four and five hundred years before Jesus was born, so some twenty-five hundred years ago. But maybe in an even more powerful way than usual, this reading sounds as if it were written for our own time and place, here in the United States in 2011:

“O priests, this commandment is for you: if you do not listen, if you do not lay it to heart, to give glory to my name, says the Lord, I will send a curse upon you.”

It’s hard not to hear these very harsh and demanding words from the Prophet Malachi, addressed to the priests of his day, without thinking of the very dark time that the Church in the United States has been undergoing, in our own day, because of the evil perpetrated by a small number of our priests.

It does indeed feel as if the Lord has “sent a curse” upon the Church, and especially upon priests, who are suspected and maligned by many people in our society today even if they are among the vast majority of good and faithful priests.

But we have to remember that God is not a capricious or vindictive god. The 'curse' He puts upon us is only that, from time to time, He allows us to experience the ill effects of our wandering away from Him, precisely so that we might return to Him, and never stray again.

Though sin is never good, and scandal is never good – and we can certainly never cease to confess that the abuse of children, and the unwillingness to address such crises are both sin and scandal – it is also true that the God who brings life from death can certainly use the hard times we are enduring to teach us lessons we might have forgotten and to bring all His people and His priests into greater fidelity.

So then, what lessons do our readings today offer to us, God’s priests and God’s people? Let’s take a look at Jesus’ criticisms of the Pharisees in today’s Gospel.

The Pharisees, we know, were some of the most important religious leaders of Jesus’ day. They studied and knew the Torah and the Prophets well, and they strove to follow the Law with precision. So Jesus begins by saying: “the scribes and Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example.”

There is a very human temptation to view the failings of others – and particularly the failings of people in authority; and perhaps especially the failings of religious authorities – to view these people’s failings as excuses to disregard anything and everything else they say and do:

“If someone in authority doesn’t follow the rules, then why do I have to follow the rules? If a religious leader proves to be a sinner, doesn’t that just prove that everything else they believe and preach is a sham? If some priests and bishops have done the terrible things they’re accused of doing, then why should I accept the authority of any of them, or believe what the Church has to teach about anything?”

But Jesus knows that this is precisely how we think, and so he reminds His followers that the Pharisees have taken “their seat on the chair of Moses,” and He instructs them to “observe all things whatsoever they tell you.” In other words, Jesus says, as long as the Pharisees preach the Law, in as much as they tell you to do as Moses instructed the people to do, then do it – because the weakness and failings of the Pharisees doesn’t negate the power and truth of God’s Law.

And Jesus’ listeners would have known well, that their ancestors, and the kings of Israel, and the priests of the Temple had all sinned and failed throughout the history of Israel – but that none of that ever negated God’s Law or God’s covenant of love with His chosen people.

And so St. Paul also says, in our second reading from his Letter to the Thessalonians, that he gives thanks to God that “in receiving the word of God from” his preaching, they “received it not as a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God which is now at work in you who believe.”

When the Church proclaims the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ – when the Church admonishes us to follow the Laws of God, whatever the failings of some of her ministers throughout the past two thousand years, we must strive to “observe all these things” because their truth does not depend on the relative strength or weakness of God’s human instruments - thank God!

Jesus goes on, however, to make clear that His followers are not to “follow the example” of the Pharisees because “they preach but they do not practice.” The teachings they proclaim with their words, are not backed up by the way they live their lives. So the disciples are to do as the Pharisees say, not as they do.

And what precisely is it that the Pharisees do that Jesus wants the disciples to avoid? The Pharisees did, after all, at least claim to follow even the minute details of God’s Law. Well, Jesus names two things in particular. First He says, “they tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them.”

The Pharisees abused and misused the Law of God because they used it not as a means of obtaining their own salvation, and less as a means of helping others to achieve their salvation – rather, they used the Law as a means of securing their own power over others. They wielded the Law like a weapon, looking to trap the people in the Law’s minute details.

Second, Jesus says that, all the Pharisee’s “works are performed to be seen. They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels. They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues, and greetings in marketplaces.” Again, the Pharisees did not see their authority as an opportunity to serve, they saw their authority as a chance to obtain privileges and perks for themselves. They were truly focused, not on God’s Law, but on their own egos – and so they made a show of their religious observance so that other people, not God, would see them and give them earthly praise and esteem.

But Jesus makes clear that for His disciples – for all of us, God’s people and His priests – it is to be different: “The greatest among you must be your servant,” He says. “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

Jesus teaches His disciples, and He teaches us, that in and of itself the Law is a good thing – in and of itself, religious observance is a good thing. But they are corrupted when they are turned from being means of encountering and following God, into means for building up our own egos – when they go from being about God, to being about us.

And so, brothers and sisters, we Christian people and priests – any of us who are given authority of any kind – must seek to use that authority as a means to give of ourselves, and serve others. Therefore, in our second reading, St. Paul writes to the Thessalonians about himself and his coworkers, saying: “We were gentle among you, as a nursing mother cares for her children. With such affection for you, we were determined to share with you not only the Gospel of God, but our very selves.”

We have all known good and holy priests and religious who have lived their lives in just that way. And we love them because in giving us the Gospel, and themselves, they were Christ in our midst – Christ, who gave us not only a teaching, but Himself, dying on the Cross out of love for us. May we pray for and encourage such priests and religious, and help call more young men and women to join their ranks, and let us follow the Gospel they preach with their words, but especially through their lives.

All Hallows' Eve

The following article will be published in this weekend's Little Flower Parish bulletin, as part of our weekly "Clergy Corner:"

Sometime this weekend, I will fire-up the old DVD player, pop some popcorn, and sit down to a private showing of “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” – a perpetuation of my family’s annual tradition from when I was a boy.

Like the holiday itself, the show includes lots of kids dressed as ghosts and witches, pumpkins carved into scary Jack-O-Lanterns, Trick-or-Treating, and of course it adds Linus’ anticipation of the mythical Great Pumpkin and his rise from the “most sincere of all pumpkin patches.”

There are many people, especially Evangelical Christians, who are scandalized by such Halloween imagery. These people rightly fear the practice of the occult and they worry that Halloween encourages children to dabble in it. I’m convinced, however, that despite its occasional excesses we can all help redeem the celebration of Halloween.

The holiday’s very name, after all, is a shortened form of “All Hallows’ Eve” – in other words, the day before All Saints’ Day, which leads, the very next day, into All Souls’ Day. These two beautiful feasts celebrate the great witnesses of our faith – among them a great number of martyrs who suffered and died for their love of the Lord – and then move on to commemorate and pray for all the dead, saints and sinners alike.

So when kids dress up as super heroes or saints, let’s take the opportunity to speak about the virtues these role models encourage us to cultivate in our own lives. When we eat cakes decorated with skeletons and tombstones, and Jello-molds shaped like brains, let’s reflect on our own mortality and come to see death as our friend, as St. Francis taught us. When we decorate our homes with witches and devils let’s take the chance to remember that we do indeed believe in the presence and power of evil – but that we also never exaggerate our fear of it. We can even see our Halloween traditions as a way of taunting and mocking these symbols of evil because we recognize that ultimately Christ has power over them!

Even when we carve our Jack-O-Lanterns we can recall the myth that our Irish Catholic forebears brought with them to their colony here in Maryland. The story of Jack and his lantern is a morality tale that teaches us the evil of selfishness and the value of selfless service (see more about this traditional Catholic folk tale at American Catholic).

If we make some of these lessons a part of our Halloween fun, then we will indeed have prepared ourselves well for All Hallows’ Day, and for November, the month of the dead.

Annapolis

A few weeks ago I took a day away from school work and visited my friend Fr. Mark at his new parish assignment. Together we drove to Maryland's state capital in Annapolis and toured the United States Naval Academy, which is appropriately located on the waters of the Chesapeake.

I can recall years ago that Fr. Robert Gannon, my childhood pastor, celebrated a wedding at the Academy Chapel and came back to Staten Island raving about its beauty. This was my first visit to "the yard" and I found that the Chapel is indeed a lovely building.

Along with the Tiffany stained glass windows, I was most impressed by the model ship that hangs above the choir loft as a kind of votive offering on behalf of all those sailors who are currently at sea. In the crypt of the chapel, we paid our respects to John Paul Johns the naval hero of the American Revolution.

Our tour overlapped the lunch hour and so when we made our way to Tecumseh Court, which is directly in front of Bancroft Hall where all of the midshipmen live and eat, we were able to see the daily review formation ...

Inside Bancroft, the Memorial Hall contains some fabulous murals of important naval battles in American history and a replica of the flag flown by Oliver Hazard Perry aboard the USS Niagara during the War of 1812. The phrase "Don't Give Up the Ship" was famously uttered by James Lawrence as he died aboard the USS Chesapeake during the same conflict.

After our tour Fr. Mark and I had a quick bite to eat in one of the campus eateries. We noted that all of the decor centered around the Naval Academy's sports teams, and so I suspected that somewhere I would find a few pictures celebrating the Navy's long-overdue success when playing the Fighting Irish in football. And sure enough ...

Although this trip was several weeks ago, I thought that posting this was an appropriate way of celebrating the 236th birthday of the United States Navy which we commemorate today. Anchors Away, and God bless the men and women of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.

A Priest's Chalice

The Catholic New York has a lovely little piece on New York's recent commemoration of the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. The article briefly explains the story behind the chalice that Archbishop Dolan used in the memorial Mass he celebrated at St. Peter's Parish just blocks from the site of the World Trade Center. Go check it out.