You should literally read this immediately. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
This literally drove me nuts when I was working in the corporate world. I wish every mid-level manager would literally read this and then literally send me a quarter everytime they literally misuse the word. I’d literally be a millionairre literally next week…
Sorry. That was a little overkill, wasn’t it?
Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.
There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but there is free grace. And today Jesus reminds us that free grace is exactly what we have been given. It's good on occasion to stop and take an account of all the grace in our lives. We all have problems at any given time in our lives, but we have to stop and take a look at the many graces that outnumber and overtake them all.
There is an ancient Jewish prayer called the Dayenu prayer. In it, the pray-er is enumerating how blessed he or she is, and noting that God did not have to go to all the lengths he does to bless us. The prayer is based on Jewish history and it goes like this:
How many levels of favors has the Omnipresent One bestowed upon us:
If He had brought us out from Egypt, and had not carried out judgments against them-Dayenu, it would have been enough!
If He had carried out judgments against them, and not against their idols-Dayenu, it would have been enough!
If He had destroyed their idols, and had not smitten their firstborn-Dayenu, it would have been enough!
If He had smitten their firstborn, and had not given us their wealth-Dayenu, it would have been enough!
If He had given us their wealth, and had not split the sea for us-Dayenu, it would have been enough!
The prayer goes on like this for a while, but you get the idea. The Israelites were delivered from the slavery of Egypt to the grace of the present time, and they never forget that. We could all write our own Dayenu prayer, I think. In fact, if you would like to do a little homework today, that would be it! The reason to stop and recite our dayenus and number our graces is not simply to feel superior, or even to be thankful (although being thankful is good, too!). The real reason, and the reason Jesus gives us in today's Gospel, is that, knowing hour graced we are, we can go out and be grace to others.
As you go, make this proclamation:
'The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.'
Cure the sick, raise the dead,
cleanse the lepers, drive out demons.
Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.
Grace is a great gift to us, but it's never meant only for us. As much as we have been given grace, we're expected to be sharers of that grace with others. The grace in our lives never decreases as we share it; in fact, it grows all the more.
Without cost your have received; without cost you are to give.
I would be remiss if I did not observe with great fondness this feast of St. Benedict, abbot, and father of western monasticism. My Benedictine roots stem from my college days at Benedictine University in Lisle, IL (then called Illinois Benedictine College), and I have a deep fondness for the monks of St. Procopius Abbey, who staffed the college, and in whose monastery I made my Priesthood retreat earlier this year. Benedict’s motto, Ora et Labora — Prayer and Work — are a constant reminder of the balance we are called to have in life. This motto is the name of my forthcoming personal website. A wonderful source of inspiration to me while I was working in the corporate world was a daily reading from The Rule of St. Benedict, which is a great reflection on the balance we are called to in life.
Admirable Saint and Doctor of Humility, you practiced what you taught, assiduously praying for God’s glory and lovingly fulfilling all work for God and the benefit of all human beings. You know the many physical dangers that surround us today, often caused or occasioned by human inventions. Guard us against poisoning of the body as well as of mind and soul, and thus be truly a “Blessed” one for us. Amen.
St. Benedict, pray for us.
The Lord is gracious and merciful.
Recently, I was reading a commentary on preaching that encouraged preachers to preach once in a while on other readings beside the Gospel. The Gospel's almost always the most obvious choice, and certainly contains the crux of the message in the Liturgy of the Word. But wonderful gems can be discovered if we dig a little deeper into the other readings. So today, I would like to reflect on the responsorial psalm, often sung, often recited, but largely forgotten. I'm a singer, so the psalm tends to appeal to me, and you will often hear me preach at least a short portion of my homily about the psalm, quite often at the very end. Today, I'd like to take a look at the psalm because I think it provides a beautiful link between the first reading and the Gospel.
The Lord is gracious and merciful.
These are words that are easy for us to pray when things are going well, but maybe not so much when we're going through rough times. At first glance today, it seems like the psalmist is going through some very good times indeed. But we have no way of knowing that. The only key to the great hymn of praise the psalmist is singing is that he is reflecting on the wonder of creation and the mighty deeds God does in the world. Indeed, the psalmist sees wonders not just in his own place but everywhere. He says, "The LORD is good to all and compassionate toward all his works. Every part of creation has been blessed by God's goodness. Because of this, God is to be praised not just now, but "forever and ever" and by "generation after generation."
This fits in very nicely with Hosea's prophecy. Preaching to the Israelites in exile, he proclaims that God will change the relationship between Israel and the Lord, much as one would change the relationship with a fiancé when the two are married. God will give Israel the ability to be faithful to God, and for His part, God will remember His faithfulness forever. God's great mercy and compassion are seen in the Gospel reading, which is Matthew's version of the story we had from Mark a week ago Sunday. Jesus rewards the faithfulness of Jairus and the woman with the hemorrhage with miraculous healings. Key to all of these wonderful events, in all three readings, is that God who has created us is committed to re-creating us in His love and faithfulness.
So as we approach the Eucharist today and reflect on all the mighty and wonderful things God does in our midst, may we too sing the psalmist's song. May we all praise God's name forever and ever, and proclaim his might to generation after generation.
The story goes that one day, St. Theresa of Avila was wheeling a cart across a bridge over the river. At one point along the bridge's passage, a wheel of the cart got stuck in the planks, and St. Theresa had to wrestle the cart to get going again. In the struggle, the cart tipped over, and its entire contents spilled out and into the river. As she looked at all her stuff floating down the river, she said, "Well, God, if this is how you treat your friends, it's no wonder you have so few of them!"
Many of us, I would venture to guess, have had experiences in our own lives where it seemed like the contents of our carts were floating down the river. Certainly that must have been how Ezekiel felt in today's first reading. To be told, in no uncertain terms, at the outset of your life's work, that your work will be frustrating and ultimately unsuccessful might be a little too much reality all at once. You'll never see that reading quoted on vocation posters or seminary websites!
Jesus' experience in the Gospel reading was much the same. The people who knew him first and knew him best, people from his own home town, totally misunderstood who he was and what his ministry was sent to accomplish. These people saw the miracles he worked elsewhere and heard the words he preached, but were so offended by it that their lack of faith stifled his ability to do anything great in their midst, other than to cure a few sick people.
Today's readings are filled with contrasts as we read them. Let's first back up a bit – all the way to last week. Do you remember last week's Gospel reading? The faith of Jairus and the woman with the 12-year hemorrhage made possible two wonderful, miraculous healings. Jairus's daughter was literally resuscitated from death because Jairus had faith enough to come to Jesus in humility. The woman with the hemorrhage was cured because she had just enough faith and courage to reach out and touch Jesus' garment. Last week we were impressed with faith that overcame long illness and even death.
Today's Gospel, coming right on the heels of that celebration of faith and healing, is the complete opposite. Where last week there was faith, this week there is rejection. Where last week there was courage, this week there is fear and offense. Where last week healing abounded, this week there is hardly any mighty deed to be found. What's going on here?
In Jesus' time, there was a clear delineation of one's class based on where one's family fit into the social structure. To honor one's family, a person worked hard, within the parameters of his or her family's place, and didn't rock the boat. Where striving to better ourselves is a hallmark of the American ethic, in that time it was scandalous to try to rise above one's place in the social structure. It just wasn't done. So this is the basis at which the people of Jesus' home town took offense at him. They knew he was a carpenter, they knew his mother and relatives. His actions and words seemed to put him above all that, and for them, that was just intolerable. That explains their reaction, but of course, it doesn't make it a good reaction, does it?
Another huge contrast in today's readings is the faith of St. Paul over against the lack of faith of Jesus' neighbors in the Gospel. In today's second reading, St. Paul has plenty of reason for a lack of faith: a thorn in the flesh – whatever that was for him – afflicted him and would not go away. In addition, he put up with weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions and constraints. And yet, in all of this he did not waver in his faith: he put up with it all for the sake of Christ, proclaiming that when he was weak, it was then that he was strong. If Jesus' neighbors had just a little of that kind of faith, think of the many wonders that would have been accomplished in their midst!
The contrasts we have looked at in these readings show the range of response to the presence of a prophet in one's community. Everywhere Jesus went, his prophecy was met with wonder and awe – except in his own community, that is. In every other place, people came to him in faith and were healed of their illnesses and freed from their sins. In his own place, they were scandalized by him and wanted nothing whatever to do with him. That was just the kind of reaction that Ezekiel was promised in today's first reading. The people to whom he was being sent were "hard of face and obstinate of heart" but Ezekiel was sent to preach to them anyway, so that whether they heeded or resisted, they would nonetheless know that "a prophet has been among them."
The question for us, then, is how we will respond to the prophetic voices in our own lives? When we hear our parents, our elders, our Church or whoever it may be calling us to reform our lives, what will be our reaction? Will we become hard of face and obstinate of heart? Will we take offense at those who dare to speak to us, because we know who they are and where they came from? Or will we, like St. Paul, boast of our weaknesses and be content with all our afflictions, knowing that in all of that, the power of Christ will take hold of us and God will be glorified?
Because we all of us have days where our cart tips over and our stuff ends up floating down the river, don't we? St. Theresa could get away with taking God to task for that because her faith was unquestioning and her trust in God was central to her life. But what about us? Will we look at our stuff floating down the river and give it all up and turn away from the voices of those who strive to help us make sense of it all? Or will we hear the Word of the Lord speaking through the hard times and the crisis and the pain and respond in faith, knowing that God longs to collect the contents of our carts and restore them to us, sending us on our way to continue the journey over the bridge?
We have to see that what God is calling us to here today is a faithful response, and not necessarily a wildly successful one. Sure, we are going to have resistance to our best efforts. Yes, life will bring its share of hardships and obstacles. Some days we may be victorious over pain and evil and sin, and some days they may get the best of us. We may pray over and over and over again that God would deliver us from our thorns in the flesh, and we may get discouraged at the lack of results. But our response must always be a response of faith, letting God be God, and trusting in God for our salvation.
We've all heard the famous serenity prayer, written by the protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr:
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
But maybe you haven't heard the rest of that prayer. It goes like this:
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
We are a people drenched with the imperfections of the world, and yet called to a resilient faith. The psalmist today puts it well and sums up our experience of life by saying that we are "more than sated with contempt … with the mockery of the arrogant, with the contempt of the proud." But even suffering all of that, that same psalmist makes a case for faith and models what should be our response to it all: "Our eyes are fixed on the Lord, pleading for his mercy."
Watch the World Cup. Lego Style.
I have no idea who had the kind of time it would take to put this together, but I loved it!
Thinking we have it all together and every issue taken care of can be a very dangerous thing. In my days in music ministry, I had many rather humbling moments as a cantor. Whenever I thought I knew the psalm well enough, God would use that occasion to show me, in front of everyone, that I didn’t. Needless to say, my leading of prayer on those occasions wasn’t very praiseworthy.
But, sometimes I would struggle with a psalm. On those occasions, I would typically work pretty hard on it, practicing it and praying it over and over. Even if it wouldn’t get to the point where it was perfect, I would often say, “Okay, God, I’ve done the best I can, just help me to proclaim your Word as you would have me do it.” And on those occasions, I would almost always be surprised at how wonderful the psalm would sound coming out of my mouth.
The difference between these two experiences, of course, was the one in whom I trusted to give voice to the song. When I thought I had it together and didn’t need to work very hard on it, I trusted in my own talents and knowledge, which was so subject to my own frailty. But when I would work hard on a psalm and eventually just give it up to God, I was trusting in the one in whom there is no frailty at all.
Whether it’s in the raising of families or in our jobs or in the relationships we have with neighbors and friends, we can all be subject to the kind of self-righteous overconfidence that afflicted the Pharisees in today’s Gospel, and even the so-called worshippers that Amos was addressing in today’s first reading. Honesty about who we are is critical to authentic worship.
God does not expect us all to be perfect, because he made us and knows us. He sent his Son among us to call not the righteous, but sinners. We will often stumble and fall into sin in the practice or malpractice of our spiritual lives, but on those occasions, Jesus reaches out to us and longs to dine among us. That’s what brings us here today. Though we are all of us far from perfectly righteous, we are all of us gathered together and can share the meal with our Lord and Master who is Righteousness itself. May we all do more to resemble the tax collectors and sinners who responded to Jesus’ invitation than the Pharisees who preferred to eat with their own kind.
One of the things that used to irritate me about my parents when I was growing up is that they always knew, often better than I did, what was not only best for me, but would really make me happy. Of course, now I love that about them, but when I was young it always made me crazy. They would tell me that I should join a certain group or try a certain activity and I never wanted to, but when I ultimately did it, I of course would enjoy it thoroughly. They were right more often than I would have admitted. My parents have been wonderful prophetic voices in my life.
Amazon had Amos as his prophetic voice. And of course, much like me, he didn’t want to hear that prophetic voice. Amos makes it clear that he is not speaking on his own, or even because he wanted to. If it were up to him, he’d go back to being a simple shepherd and dresser of sycamore trees. But he knows that the Lord was using him to speak to Amazon, and he had no intention of backing down. And, as it turned out, Amos was absolutely right about what he told Amazon. Too bad Amazon didn’t appreciate his prophetic voice as much as I did my parents.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus too comes across as a prophetic voice. He could have cured the paralytic with one touch and without much fanfare. But that wasn’t what he was there to do. He was there to preach forgiveness of sins by the way he healed the paralyzed person (by the way, we don’t know by the language used here whether the person was a man or a woman, and the person’s name is not mentioned). Jesus used that simple situation of healing to be a prophetic voice in the world, saying to everyone present that real healing only comes about through the forgiveness of sins.
That unnamed, gender-unspecified paralyzed person could be you or me today, or someone we’ll meet today. Who among us is not paralyzed by sin in some way? To whatever extent we are the ones in need of healing, may we all hear the prophetic voice of Jesus saying to us: “Your sins are forgiven. Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.”
"Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe."
Thomas sometimes gets a bad rap for having said that, but if we're honest, I think most of us can understand Thomas's hesitation to believe, since we have all probably struggled with belief at some point in our lives. And Thomas had good reason not to believe: the apostles were all frightened for their lives, having seen their Lord taken away to his death. Certainly that brings some healthy wariness to one's thoughts, words and actions.
I wonder sometimes if Thomas's response was an expression of hurt. For whatever reason, he was not present when the apostles first saw Jesus. They had a wonderful experience of the Lord that Thomas didn't get to have. That wonderful experience helped them all to believe in the resurrection. It seems natural to me that Thomas may have felt a little left out, a little unjustly deprived of the Lord's presence. After all, Thomas had been with Jesus just as long as the others, so why should Jesus choose to appear to them when he couldn't be present also? We've all had experiences like that too, I think.
But Thomas need not have felt deprived, because he was given an opportunity the others didn't get: he got to reach out and touch the Lord Jesus, an experience way more intimate than just seeing him. We get to have that kind of experience too. In a few minutes, we will all get to come forward and reach out and touch the Body of our Lord, allowing the Lord to enter our lives and our selves once again to fill us up and send us forth to be his disciples.
We've been a lot like Thomas, I think. We've all struggled with our faith, we've all experienced the hurt that comes from being left out. But we're also all given the opportunity to have a real experience of our Lord by reaching out to receive him. So may we, all of us who have not seen but have believed, may we all cry out with Thomas, "My Lord and my God!"
God did not make death,
nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.
I had finally gotten around to writing out some Christmas cards a few days before that great feast last year. I was still at school at Mundelein, and we didn't get out for Christmas break for a day or two. We had been doing the kinds of things you do before Christmas: the guys on my floor had gone out with the Rector for pizza. There was a little snow falling, which meant that there were some accidents here and there and bad traffic, but we all got back to the seminary safe.
Well, my heart wasn't really in the writing out of the Christmas cards – I'm just terrible at that. But the alternative was studying for a test, and well, my heart wasn't in that either. Besides, the test was after Christmas break, so it could wait. I was about halfway through the address book, I think, when I got a page from the fire department I worked for. Usually the pages didn't apply to us, and I wasn't on call that night, but this one got my attention: Chaplains needed for fatal accident involving a child.
Of course, all the emotions you'd think someone would experience hearing that went through me. I called my friend who was on call that night, and he was getting information from the department and said he'd call me back. He called a couple of minutes later and said if I wanted to come along, he could probably use the help. The family had their own clergy with them, so they didn't need us; we waited at the station for our people to come back so we could talk to them. Eventually, we were joined by another of our chaplains, which turned out to be a good thing.
The call was handled by our department and another one nearby. The other department could not reach their chaplains, so I went with one of my friends to the other station. We waited for their guys to come back, and after they had emptied their ambulance, we were able to sit down and talk with them. In all my time as a fire chaplain, I never had a more significant conversation. These guys had been through a terrible situation, trying to save the life of a child, and the child had died on the way to the hospital. We talked for over two hours as they told us all the details and all of the emotions they were feeling. Fire and medic personnel almost never get to the point of freely sharing their emotions, so this was a pretty awesome talk.
One of the men was Catholic and he was the one who had the task of extracting the child from the car. His enduring question was, why did this innocent child have to suffer and die? There was no answer for that question, but my fellow chaplain was able to give some meaning to it all when he pointed out that the child died in front of Marytown, a Franciscan monastery near our seminary that provides 24 hour exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. He pointed out that he died near the physical manifestation of Christ's own body, and that Jesus was always letting the children come to him.
Today's readings bring this whole question back for me in such a poignant way. Why do people have to suffer? Why do good people and innocent children suffer? Why do people have to die? These are ever-present questions for us, I think, and this is where the rubber meets the road as far as our faith goes. Some people take great comfort in their faith when they have to deal with suffering. Some people even find their faith as they work through the pain of it all. And some people lose their faith, asking how God could let them suffer, or let a loved one suffer, if God loves them so much.
God did not make death,
nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.
For he fashioned all things that they might have being;
and the creatures of the earth are wholesome…
These words from today's first reading may bring up more questions than they answer for us. If God did not make death and if he made everything to have being and wholesome life, why does that plan go so often awry? Why are the living destroyed? Why is our world so often far less than wholesome? The Wisdom writer gives us a hint at an answer:
But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world,
and they who belong to his company experience it.
The author is not saying that the person experiencing suffering and death did something to deserve it, and that's why they're suffering. That was, actually, a long-held belief in Jewish theology. But this reading represents a break from that kind of thought. The author is merely acknowledging that there is evil in the world, and that evil is the root of sin, suffering and death. All you have to do is flip on the evening news to know that's true.
But suffering never seems to make sense for us. We may never get the answers to all our questions this side of the kingdom of God. Ask the woman with the hemorrhage in today's Gospel reading. She put up with her condition for twelve years – twelve years! In that society, such a condition made her ritually unclean, and so she could not take any part in the ritual or social life of the community. How awful that must have been for her. And to make matters worse, she was treated by doctors who not only did not cure her, but also took advantage of her, leaving her penniless.
How many of us can identify with that woman? How many of us are here today, suffering from some illness that never seems to get better, or going through a family crisis that never seems to go away, or living with depression that seems to have no end? How many of us have worked long and hard on problems in our life or with our health with little success? How many of us have been left bankrupt – spiritually or emotionally, at least – in our attempts to put an end to our pain?
Perhaps if we identify with the woman with the hemorrhage, we can also imitate her. In a great act of faith, she reached out to Christ, who not only cured her illness, but freed her of her social stigma and ritual impurity. Her touch of faith – which was a totally taboo thing for her to do, because it would have made Jesus ritually impure if he chose to acknowledge that – that touch of faith was rewarded with a new life.
That can be hard for us to hear, when we don't really have that same opportunity. We can't see Jesus walking by and reach out and touch his robe. And maybe all of our attempts to reach out to him seem to have gone unrewarded. I'm not going to tell you that one act of faith will make all of your problems go away.
But what I will say is this: as I have walked with people who have suffered, those who have reached out to Jesus in faith have not gone unrewarded. Maybe their suffering continued in some way, but in Christ they found the strength to walk through it with dignity and peace. Maybe Jesus won't always stop the bleeding of our hurts and inadequacies and woundedness. But through his own blood, he will always redeem us. We who are disciples need to make those acts of faith if we are to live what we believe.
We come to the Eucharist today with our lives in various stages of grace and various stages of disrepair. At the Table of the Lord, we offer our lives and our suffering and our pain. We bring our faith, wherever we are on the journey, and reach out in that faith to touch the body of our Lord. We approach the Cup of Life, and whatever emptiness is in us is filled up with grace and healing love, poured out in the blood of Christ. As we go forth to love and serve the Lord this day, all of our problems may very well remain unsolved. Our suffering and pain may very well be with us still. But in our faith, perhaps they can be transformed, or at least maybe we can be transformed so that we can move through that suffering and pain with dignity and peace. And as we go forth, may we hear our Lord saying to us the same words he said
to the woman with the hemorrhage: go in peace, your faith has saved you.
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