Deacon Bob Huber

Why the Immaculate Conception?

We celebrate tonight (this morning) the feast of the Immaculate Conception. This feast is a holy day of obligation which under the precepts of the Church requires the faithful to attend Mass.

So since you are here anyway, I am going to give you a pop quiz. It is a one question multiple choice quiz. So here goes:

The Immaculate Conception is: 1) the incredible catch by fullback Franco Harris of the Pittsburgh Steelers in a 1972 playoff game against the Oakland Raiders; 2) the commemoration of Mary being conceived without sin; 3) an idea perfectly and successfully presented; or 4) the commemoration of Jesus being conceived without original sin.  Who wants to answer the question?

If you guessed number two, you are right. There is sometimes some confusion about the dogmatic foundation of this feast. Jesus was conceived without sin, but since He was God, it could not be otherwise. Mary, on the other hand, was not God, but fully human. But the Church teaches that Mary was immaculately conceived, even though her parents were not.

Many volumes of theological works over the centuries have been devoted to this issue. The origins of this feast go back to the seventh century. It was universally celebrated in the Church by the end of the 15th century. And on this date in 1854, the belief in the Immaculate Conception of Mary was made an infallible teaching by Pope Pius IX.

Now this is all theologically important, but by now you might be asking, who cares? Why should any of us, here on Whidbey Island in the beginning of the 21st century care if Mary was immaculately conceived or not?

At one level, there is a fairly simple reason we should care. Since Jesus as God was without sin, it would not have made a lot of sense for Him to enter the world as a sinner. He was sent by God the Father to overcome sin and death, and enable us to do the same if we followed the Gospel life He laid before us as a model before He returned to heaven.

Beyond this simple explanation, our Scriptures provide a much richer foundation.  Our first reading from the Book of Genesis reminds us that God intended all of us to live peaceful, sinless lives of love with an all-loving God. By conscious choice, Adam and Eve rejected that life, thereby ushering sin and death into the world. St. Paul in our second reading from the letter to the Ephesians reminds us that the Trinitarian God’s all-embracing love led God the Father to send His only Son into the world to restore the covenant of love with all human beings.

God could have chosen any means to restore that covenant. But because God loved humans so much, He wanted to literally live among them as a human. So the God of love chose to enter the world the human way. But since he was sinless, he needed a sinless vessel. He would need an immaculately conceived and sinless vessel by which to enter into the world. So Mary would receive the incredible grace from God to be immaculately conceived.

But Mary of course, was much more than a physical vessel. Again remembering our first reading tonight, the first Adam and Eve rejected God’s love. The second Adam and Eve were Jesus and Mary. They accepted the call from God to love God and others. The spotless nature of their souls was not immediately clear to the human Jesus and Mary, as demonstrated by our Gospel from Luke this evening (morning). Mary is reported as troubled about her designation by the angel Gabriel as “full of grace,” that is, immaculately conceived and about to give birth to a human Jesus also without sin.  But like Jesus, she agrees to love God and others above all else.  She agrees to play a key role in making possible the opportunity for all of us to overcome sin and death.

Since St. Paul in our second reading stresses that we were intended by God from the beginning of time to be “holy and without blemish in God’s sight,” but that that intention was rejected by the first human beings, how could we now overcome that rejection? Following Jesus’ model of life was of course one answer. But to whom could we look for proof that any fully human being could in fact become “holy and without blemish in God’s sight?”  The answer:  the immaculately conceived Mary.

Put quite simply, if God through the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, could perfect one human being, God’s graces can also perfect us, offering Mary’s life as a model. Mary as a model of life for all of us is not just a turnkey. Her humanity makes such her model of life interactive with us. Her intercessions on our behalf to the Lord because of her special relationship with God bring us into the reality of the co-redemptive role for Mary as a human leading other humans back to God.

The Immaculate Conception of Mary provides the foundation for the spotless witness of her life to which we are also all called. As a mother, she shows fidelity to her child. As a follower of Jesus, she is the most faithful of witnesses, sharing in the agony of His earthly death, and the joy of His rising from the death.  As she accepts the role as Mother of the Church given to her by her Son on Calvary, she becomes a leader and friend to Jesus’ followers, the mother of the Church, and therefore the Mother of all of us.

The roles of parent, friend, witness to Christ, and model of Christ are all roles to which we are called as well. They are signposts on a successful journey to salvation that Mary achieved. With her help and God’s grace, we can achieve that successful journey as well. And this is why the Immaculate Conception matters to us.

Recovering the Meaning of Advent

On behalf of the staff and pastor of St. Hubert’s Parish, let me wish you a Happy New Year.

Yes, Happy New Year. As many of you know, the first Sunday of Advent begins the Church liturgical year. Sadly, beyond this fact, we live in a time when Advent has lost much of its meaning, or at least the practice of that meaning in our society.

In our secular society, Advent is the merely the run up to Christmas, a time for busy rushing around for ever bigger and more expensive Christmas presents, usually done through crowded shopping centers and malls. The origins of Christmas shopping stemmed from a tradition of exchanging ornaments for decorating homes in anticipation of Christmas. That then led to open markets in medieval towns where people could buy such ornaments. That exchange of ornaments for decorating homes has now been replaced with pedestrians and drivers swearing at each other in crowded parking lots and Christmas presents costing hundreds or thousands of dollars.  

Many of you remember a time when Christmas trees were not set up until Christmas Eve, the actual beginning of the Christmas season. Our secular culture, for reasons having nothing to do with spirituality, has succeeded in no small part in collapsing the Advent season into the Christmas season, and confining the Christmas season to only Christmas Day itself, rather than its liturgical end, which is the Baptism of the Lord, this year celebrated on January 13.  At a time when we might still want to give gifts in the real Christmas season, our secular culture tells us it is time to take them back.

Now I am not saying that putting others first cannot be advanced in some ways by Christmas shopping. At some level we all like receiving gifts. But let me suggest it is far more valuable to for all of us to take a step back and try and recapture the meaning of the Advent season, a season that begins today. Is it still possible that in our hearts and lives we can still actually enjoy and cherish the meaning of Advent?

Let me suggest that the answer is yes. And let me start off by saying that Advent is its own season; it is not part of the Christmas season. I cannot stress this basic liturgical fact enough and so I say it again: Advent is its own season; it is not part of the Christmas season. You may notice that hymns assigned in Advent are not Christmas hymns. Christmas hymns are only assigned at Christmas and through the real Christmas season.

Our Church teaches that the purpose of Advent is threefold. Let us take each purpose in turn. The first purpose of Advent is to prepare oneself worthily to celebrate the anniversary of the Lord’s coming into the world as the incarnate God of love. The word advent comes from the Latin adventur, meaning coming, in this case the coming of the Lord at Christmas. Advent, stresses the spirit of waiting, conversion and hope for the birth of the Redeemer, and the centrality of the Redeemer for the salvation of human beings.

We seek in Advent to be blessed with a spirit of expectation, of anticipation, of preparation, of longing for the coming of the Lord. The spiritual meaning of this is a yearning for a real deliverance from the evils of the world, first expressed by the slavery of the Israelites in Egypt more than three thousand years ago.

Advent represents a symbolic and even real out crying against bitter oppression in the world, which has far from ended. The first reading in Advent Sunday Masses, including today, is nearly always from the Book of Isaiah. The Book of Isaiah stresses deliverance from oppression by turning toward the loving covenant of the Lord.

In Advent, the Lord brings, and calls us to bring, glad tidings to the lowly, to heal the broken-hearted, and to proclaim liberty to captives. As far as I know, these glad tidings have never been about a new Wii, an MP3 player, or some new mechanical or electrical gadget. At the essence of the spiritual meaning of Advent is the real hope for deliverance by a God who heard the cries of the poor and oppressed and brought deliverance through the incredible act of sending Himself through the birth of Jesus. In Advent, we long for God to come and set the world right.

But the world cannot be set right if we have not set ourselves right. So the second purpose of Advent is to make our souls fitting for the Redeemer through a period of reflection upon our sins and seeking reconciliation through the sacrament of the same name, and through forgiving others.

Overcoming sin thus becomes a critical aspect of Advent. Because of this important truth, especially in the Eastern Rite churches in union with the Catholic faith, the season of Advent has always been a time of fasting and penitence similar to the Season of Lent. Penitence is a part of both seasons, symbolized by the color purple in both Advent and Lent, and the stress on the sacrament of Reconciliation in both seasons.

Finally, the third purpose of Advent is to make ourselves ready for God’s final coming as judge, at the passing away of this life, and at the end of the world. This is why Advent is such an important season to respect and commemorate. For it is only as we experience Advent in combination with other liturgical seasons does it take on its full significance and meaning. By experiencing Advent together with Christmas, Lent, and Easter, we come to understand the darkness of sin in our souls, the joy of Christ’s birth, the awful reality of Good Friday, and the Good News of the Resurrection. All disciples of Christ are called to take this journey, a journey that begins with Advent.

Just as Advent has a threefold purpose, it also has a threefold chronological focus. Advent looks backward, looks at today, and looks to the future. The profound essence of Advent is Jesus Christ Yesterday, Jesus Christ Today, and Jesus Christ Forever. It looks back to the first coming of Christ at Bethlehem. We look back in Advent and celebrate Christ made human. We wait to hear again the story of his life and experience his presence as a human being in history. Advent reminds us that Christ came to show us how magnificent life can and should be. He gave us true and valid principles by which we can live true and valid lives.

The Advent season also looks to today, the days we spend on this earth; our lives as Christians.  We are called to be faithful stewards of what is entrusted to us as God’s people; the Gospel life, the service-based love of God and others. Christ has come. He is present in the world today. When Christ left this earth, he did not abandon us.  He remains with us in the Holy Spirit, the Church, the sacraments, the Scriptures and each other. He lives in community with us and keeps his vision of life before us. Advent is a time to become more involved, more anchored in the meaning and the possibilities of life as a Christian community.

And Advent also looks to the future. When Christ comes again, his presence will be among us in all its fullness, a presence that will never end, a presence that will perfect and complete our community with God and each other.  But the Advent season asks: Will we be ready? Advent reminds us to be awake and watchful for that second coming. Our Gospel this morning from Matthew makes clear this preparatory spiritual mandate of Advent.

The diminution of the Advent season by secular society is therefore not only annoying or unfortunate; it is a danger to souls. For it has the effect of viewing Jesus as a historical figure of the past, a figure through which we can satisfy our material dreams. By contrast, when celebrated with solemnity and in a devout manner, Advent instead shows us that Jesus is the Word of God who, in the past, now, and the future continues to shed light on man’s path back to God. Advent reminds us that Jesus’ actions are the expression of the Father’s love for every human being at every time and place.

These brief thoughts on the meaning of Advent represent, I hope, a useful corrective to the secular gutting of the season by the growing materialism of our society. Let us pray that this Advent truly be a season of anticipation, of forgiveness of sins, and most of all, a welcoming in our hearts of the Lord who at Christmas ushered in a time of true joy and freedom that, if we choose, can last forever.
 

Stewardship, Like Conversion, is a Lifelong Process

In the interest of full disclosure, it is my responsibility to inform you that this weekend (this Sunday) is commitment week for Parish Stewardship. It is the Sunday in which we ask you to prayerfully consider how you will give of your time, talent, and treasure to serve God and our fellow brothers and sisters through a host of ministries and activities.

I wanted to get this out of the way early in this homily so we could also get the groans out of the way. For peoples’ reaction to stewardship appeals often is a kind of collective “here we go again.”  And indeed, no matter how much our pastor and other pastors seek to strike a balance between liturgical worship and worship through stewardship, a certain insidious sense of the Church as an institution of never-ending needs can develop. We can be tempted to think that God is a demanding god and we cannot do enough to please him.

We do not want you to feel that way. We do not want you to consider stewardship through a sense of guilt, of bargaining with God, of fending off bad things by putting up more money, much as pagans did with sacrifices to this or that god.

All Christians are on the road to salvation. Jesus died and rose so that we could work our way back to God by the way we live. And so at the heart of stewardship lies the question of just what kind of relationship do we want with God? Indeed what kind of life do we want to have?  Stewardship is a part of conversion, of making loving God and others the central priority in our lives. While to be sure we have dedicated campaigns of stewardship, at the end of the day such activities will not work well unless we think of stewardship not as a campaign, not as an isolated task, but as a daily call of the Christian life.

This is not an easy lesson to learn.  It certainly has not been for me. I was born a cradle Catholic. I had wonderful parents, who sent me to excellent Catholic schools, took me to church, and lived their faith. Despite all their best efforts, like many young people, when I was old enough to be on my own, I drifted away from God. It is often said that youth is wasted on the young. That was certainly true in my case. When you are in your twenties, you think you can do anything. Physiologically, you usually have a lot going for you. And you can develop passionate professional interests with the energy to help carry them out, you think, without God’s help.

I was very lucky. God gave me many, many gifts in which to ply my professional trade and earn a comfortable living. As I took on a wonderful wife, and we were blessed with two wonderful sons, I began to realize it was time to come back to the church, and try and provide a Catholic education for our own kids. But in retrospect, it was at best an incomplete conversion, driven by guilt and a desire to somehow buy God’s continued good graces. Putting God first was lacking as I rather radically separated my spiritual life from my professional life.

At the relatively young age of 37, I rose to nearly the very top of my profession. In a key organization in my field, I was the Senior Vice-President and had been a key figure in increasing the size of the budget of that organization five-fold.

But I was not putting God first. No matter how many grants and contracts I won, there was pressure to do more, to keep winning, to keep growing. My devotion to God and to my family suffered and so did I. My success produced mostly jealously from others and self-absorption and resentment in myself when I did not succeed. I began to hate myself, and others began to hate me.

So for all my success in business, I was hauled into the office of the President of our organization and summarily fired. I had an enormous sense of injustice about it all. And I was frightened to my very bones. I was 42, with a wife and two teenage boys, wondering how in the world I was going to be able to give them a good life. I sunk into a deep depression and contemplated suicide.

After this near death experience, I finally, after all these years of going to church, began to develop a real relationship with God. Not as some kind of celestial Santa Claus. Not as a supreme being needing to be appeased, but a loving, merciful God who wants what is best for us and wants us to be close to him if only we will let Him.  It finally dawned on me at the deepest emotional level that I was not alone. I could not do things without God. I realized that without God, I would fall flat on my face, and indeed I had. I decided to get closer to God, to allow Him to work in me, to cooperate with the Holy Spirit for the benefit of others. To pray and receive the sacraments. To serve God’s people. To receive by giving.

There is a happy ending to this story. I got professional help and I began to become more active in my church in Maryland where we lived. I found a new job, one which enabled me to stay in my field, but in a smaller organization so I could bring some balance to my life. I took on new ministries.  And I thirsted for full ministry. I felt called to the permanent diaconate. I was ordained in 2002.

In working with and for others, I receive joys beyond imagining, joy far greater than the power, money, and influence I once had. And then one day in August, 2004, sitting in my office in Washington, DC, I was to receive an offer from the University of Washington to move my organization to Seattle. Lois and I had planned on retiring on Whidbey Island anyway, but here came this manna from heaven, right into my lap. We would build our retirement home eight years early. I then began to search in earnest for the nearest Catholic church. Deacon Huber found St. Hubert’s. An accident? I don’t think so.

I have included this personal witness this morning not because I am special. But rather because I am not. Many of you could share similar experiences. The point, however, is that we have lots of reasons brothers and sisters, to pursue stewardship and put God first. And it is true in good times and in bad.

If we put God first in good times, we realize that everything we have comes from God. This attitude toward stewardship is one shaped by gratitude rather than guilt, envy, resentment, and vengefulness. It is an attitude about stewardship that helps us put God first, to give first fruits rather than last. In such good times, St. Paul reminds us in our second reading from the second reading to the Thessalonians, we can easily discern God’s love that encourages our hearts and strengthens them to give back for what we have been given.

It is undoubtedly harder to pursue stewardship when life seems not full of blessings. For if gratitude for gifts received is the only reason we pursue stewardship, then hard times can easily destroy our relationship with God and others.  In bad times, we pursue stewardship because bad times can actually bring us closer to God. Our own troubles remind us clearly how much the greatest person of all time, Our Savior Jesus Christ suffered grievously. And, in human terms, for no good reason.  Jesus was nailed to a tree for serving God and others, so gratitude in human terms can be fleeting indeed.

Yet his suffering did not overcome Him. He conquered sin and death. He brought salvation to humans in His death even though He sought to do so in life. And when we share Jesus’ mission to serve God and others, we join our suffering to his. We come closer to God who always stands with us. We are reminded of the many people, like the saints and our veterans who we honor officially tomorrow, who had the courage to face death and emerge victorious in faith, making our world and our country a better place.

We also learn to step back and discern what God is asking of us, where He wants us to go. Even when we are hurting and wanting, discerning the presence and workings of God means we have developed a deeper sensitivity to God’s presence and how God acts in our lives. Our second reading also tells us that in bad times the Lord directs our hearts to love of God and the endurance of Jesus Christ. What an insight! To give thanks in bad times through stewardship is to be truly shaped by a deep faith. And what a gift that is!

There is much to consider in the process of stewardship. But let our stewardship be a part of an authentic Christian life in which we give not because we have to, but because we want to. Don’t give out of guilt. Give because it makes you joyful in giving in order to receive. Give, because we want to be like Jesus, the God and person who showed us how to live. Stewardship, like conversion, is a lifelong process. But the blessings, whether we face good times or bad, are enormous. Our pastor, himself a great steward, will now lead us through the process of commitment to a greater stewardship in our own parish.
 

Challenges to the Common and Ministerial Priesthood

“Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.”  These very powerful words, spoken by Jesus in our Gospel from Luke this (evening) morning remind us of something very, very important. If God calls us to be humble in the conduct of our faith, then at the heart of all faith is service, putting God and others first.

Service to God and others of course takes many forms. But to be successful in loving and serving our communities, the call to humility rather than exaltation means that we are called to give more than we get. We are called, as the Book of Sirach points out this morning, to answer God’s call to our brothers and sisters who need our help, regardless of their station in life.

In the almost 2000 years since Jesus gave Peter the authority to build his Church, many types of service and many types of service ministries have arisen. But there is only one ministry shared by everyone. You might be surprised to learn that that one shared ministry is priest.

Now you don’t have to take my word for it. In the Catholic faith we profess and try to practice, we are anointed as priests from the very moment of our baptism. Shortly after blessed water is poured on us, the priest or deacon anoints the baptized with sacred chrism and says the following words: “As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet and King, so may you live always as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life.”

The Dogmatic Constitution of the Catholic Church (Lumen Gentium,) comments as follows on our common ordination:

“Christ the Lord, high priest taken from among men, made the new people “a kingdom of priests to God his Father. The baptized, by regeneration and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are consecrated to be a spiritual house and a holy priesthood, that through all the works of Christian men (and women) they may offer spiritual sacrifices and proclaim the perfection of him who has called them out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

So the next time you are in touch with your non-Catholic friends, you might tell them that there are about a billion priests in the Catholic Church. Better yet, next time your favorite priest gets uppity, remind him that you are a priest too.

Why am I bothering with this line of thought? Because today is World Priests Day.  Here we speak not of the billion or so common priests, but the much smaller number of ministerial priests in our Church. But we can never fully appreciate the meaning of World Priests Day, and serve our ordained fellow priests well unless we understand that as common priests we must be in loving solidarity with them.  Lumen Gentium again notes: “Though they differ essentially and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are none the less ordered one to another: each in its own proper way shares in the one priesthood of Christ.”

American secular values in the last 40 years have sadly made their presence felt in our Church. As common priests, we have been generally unprepared for the effects of such values on the ministerial priesthood. For example from 1970 to the present, the total number of ministerial priests fell by 20,000, or about one-third of the total number of priests in that year.  Yet while almost all Catholics say they are aware of fewer ministerial priests, only one in four reports that this has affected them.

The workload of the ministerial priesthood has also grown enormously. The one-third drop in ordained priests since 1970 has been accompanied by a more than 25 percent increase in the size of the Catholic population in the United States. Only one in twenty active diocesan priests is under the age of 35. According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, of the more than 19,000 Catholic parishes, a little over 4,000 have more than one priest. There are now in the United States 2,386 pastors serving multiple parishes, and 2,334 parishes without a pastor.  This is a development touching 56% of American dioceses, and is expected to reach 60% by the year 2010. In addition, there are another 437 parishes entrusted to someone other than a priest, a condition well known to long-time parishioners here at St. Hubert’s.

Aside from demographics are quality of life issues for ministerial priests. The realities of fewer priests, the pressures and headaches of administration, and the just plain ordinary struggles that have always characterized the human side of the Church are not easy and are especially challenging today. More than 90% of diocesan priests are on call 24/7. Today most diocesan priests live alone, and life can indeed be lonely. The scandal in the ministerial priesthood concerning sexual abuse has reduced respect for priests in our society. This is true even though  the vast majority of ordained priests love God and love others in faithful and inspirational ways.

So it is clear there are fewer priests today, particularly if we subtract out retired priests. And yet Mass is celebrated, the Eucharist is shared, and parish life goes on. Many don’t notice much change. Why?  Because ministerial priests are remarkable people. They continue to respond generously to serve the common priesthood, often at a great personal cost and a sense that the job can be thankless. Priests can often feel like St. Paul in our second reading today from the second letter to Timothy; that they being poured out like a libation.

But like St. Paul in that reading, nearly all have kept the faith.  Remarkably, in a survey conducted for the Los Angeles Times, only seven percent of priests in the United States would change their decision to become a ministerial priest if they had the chance. Many, many members of any Catholic parish, including this one, have stories to tell about how their lives have been changed for the better by a priest.

Ministerial priests baptize us and our children. They listen to and absolve our sins. They provide loving examples for us and our children. They provide counsel in times of trouble, and their wisdom at key moments of our lives often keeps us out of trouble. They marry us and marry our children. They inspire new vocations. They supervise social justice ministries that serve tens of millions in our parishes and communities.

And when our time on this earth is over, priests commend us to Our Lord and comfort those we have left behind. Ministerial priests, with the wonderful graces given to them by God through ordination to service to all of us, provide through the sacraments comprehensive, cradle-to grave life insurance for the soul. And they do not reject us for preexisting conditions or charge big premiums for their service.

In our own parish, our pastor Fr. Rick is an inspiration to all of us. For he not only touches us with his priestly and sacramental abilities. He has overcome great obstacles to be a loving priest to us all. He was the first hearing-impaired person to be ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of Seattle. He collaborates with many, many common priests in this parish, those in specialized ministries like usher, lector, acolyte, sacristan, and Eucharistic minister. He works with the Knights of Columbus, the Women of St. Hubert’s and Parish Outreach. He assists in religious education organization and classes, and adult education through the support of many prayer groups. He has welcomed a deacon from thousands of miles away in active collaboration in liturgy and parish service.

The challenge to us as common priests is to prayerfully and concretely consider what more we can do for our brother ministerial priests.  We might consider digging deeper to contribute to the life of the parish through time, talent, and treasure. Perhaps there is a ministry we have been thinking about participating in that we could now join in an effort to help our pastor.

We also need to reach out to our pastor at a human level. Tomorrow (this) afternoon you are welcome to join Lois and I at our home for a reception in honor of Fr. Rick. Flyers with all the details were in the parish bulletin last week and are also on the table in the back of the church. If you cannot make it (tomorrow) this afternoon, you might send Fr. Rick a card telling him what he means to you. Tell the archbishop too. If you have not done so, introduce yourself to him and tell him how much you appreciate his ministry. Invite him to dinner. Have your kids color him a picture. Go out together on an outing.

Brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit will attend to the big things of our Church.  For us common priests, the challenge is to take care of the little things, particularly serving our ministerial priests with the same excellence and quality with which they serve us.
 

Spiritual Inspiration, Temporal Perspiration

Today’s Gospel reading according to Luke makes one glad to be a Catholic. For in understanding the Word of God, Catholicism insists on using both the nearly 2000 year old sacred teaching tradition of the Church AND the words of Scripture. The sacred teaching tradition of the Church allows us to support advanced historical research, knowledge of languages and the effects of enculturation in Sacred Scripture to help us understand what it being said. Without that tradition, our Gospel reading would seem to present Jesus as supporting greed and dishonesty in the way people should treat each other.

It is important to remember that in Palestine at the time of Jesus, there were many absentee landlords. There was a Roman occupation, and many non-Jews who were Roman citizens owned land not just in Palestine but also in other places throughout the Roman Empire. So they delegated the day-to-day operations of landholding and land production to others, including slaves who had distinguished themselves in one way or another.

In the Roman Empire, there was no real tradition of what we would call rule of law.  While there were hierarchies of authority, the enforcement of laws was a function of who could extract the most out of others, who could threaten and extort others, who could cheat others. This was the best way of avoiding or lessening one’s own obligation to people higher up the authority structure.

It is this corruption, this greed that Jesus addresses today. And far from endorsing it, he uses his human nature, employing wit and sarcasm to demonstrate the fundamental immorality of the Roman system, and for that matter the Jewish power structure that supported it. He wants to make sure his audience understands that in a system run by greed and corruption, blaming only a corrupt slave for the consequences of a system of greed and corruption from top to bottom is to attack a symptom rather than suggest a cure.

Nor is Jesus singling out the Roman system. His audience would have known a long tradition in Mosaic teaching and religious practice, exemplified by our first reading from the prophet Amos that prohibits greed, cheating and corruption in the way Jews were to teach each other. Such actions violated the covenant between God and man. Old Testament Jewish prophets and teachers repeatedly warned such actions would not be without implications for the decline and decay of the Jewish nation.

But before we are too critical of Roman and Jewish greed and corruption, our own society would do well collectively to take a good look in the mirror. Scandals like those at Enron, Arthur Andersen, and Merrill Lynch demonstrate the culture of corporate excess, greed, conflict of interest, and fraud that has taken hold in the United States. Thousands of workers have lost their jobs and pensions from such scandals and a climate of greed permeates our economic and political system. Federal budgets pay for tax cuts for millionaires with budget cuts in education, medical care, and child and health care.

In terms of real income, the middle class in the last thirty years is standing still, and it would be worse were it not for the fact that a second family earner has entered the workplace, placing considerable stress on families. Meanwhile, additional income is gobbled up by remarkable price increases in health care, education, child care, housing, and transportation. Family savings rates have dropped from 10 percent to near zero. Americans are working overtime to hang on to a middle class lifestyle, a lifestyle made more precarious because two incomes are needed to keep it going.

There is an old saying that “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”  Part of this statement is undeniably true. Many nations do not respect worker rights and environmental safeguards in economic production and therefore globalization drives down wages, sometimes beyond the ability of even the most progressive political system to stop. But disparities of income have also occurred in this country because some politicians have actually promoted it a social good, shifting tax burdens to the lower ends of the income scale, and from corporations to individuals.

In the last thirty years, America has gone from being the Western industrialized society with the smallest gap between the super wealthy and the poor to the society with the largest.  This was done in considerable measure by conscious political choice.  From the end of World War II to 1979, eighty percent of productivity gains by workers had trickled down to America’s workers. Now only 25 percent does. Meanwhile the wealthiest 500,000 Americans have tripled their income, and corporate executives make more in a day than their employees do in a year.

I could go on and on. But what is the solution? Jesus reminds us in our Gospel that his children will never be able to compete with the world in terms of being greedy and corrupt. We live in this world but live for the next. While we live in this world, Jesus provides the answer of how and why we work for social justice. Jesus’ advice to his followers in short and sweet:  we cannot live by man’s sinful rules, and God’s just ones. We have to choose.

The same sacred teaching tradition of the Catholic Church that helps us understand God’s word in Scripture more fully, also uses Jesus’ Gospel message of love of God and others to define a steady and reliable body of what is called social justice teaching. The Church asks that all Catholics utilize this teaching as a moral foundation when we seek to live our faith and relate to our political and economic system through work, advocacy and voting. Social justice teaching, if you will, provides the spiritual inspiration, for our temporal perspiration.

Our Church teaches that our identity as God’s creatures, indeed our human dignity includes our work.  The work that produces physical goods are, no less than spiritual goods of grace, are held in common. However societies are organized, the common good, including the common distribution of physical goods, must be the guiding organizing principle.

Because of the effects of sin and human weakness, uneven distribution of physical goods is never going to be completely eradicated. But, as Jesus reminds us, to whom much is given, much is expected in return. Possessions in and of themselves are not a sin, but how we choose to use them at an individual, community, national or international level can be.  Generosity of spirit, using possessions to cement social justice rather than tear it asunder is required of all of us. Our first job, even before our temporal one, is to serve God and love others.

Strictly speaking, private ownership is only apparent and temporal, because everything is a part of God’s creation. We are all born in God’s image and likeness. We are stewards of what is given to us, and at the end of our lives, there is no U-haul behind the hearse. The only mediator between God and us, as St. Paul tells us in our second reading, is Jesus Christ, whose life of service and all-embracing love is the model for the way we treat each other. Neither profit nor state is superior to the fundamental dignity of the human persons at every stage of human life; not just at conception, not just at birth and childhood, not just at the end of our lives, but for all the years in between when we grow up, work, build our families, and serve our God and others.

As such, capital and government should serve the Body of Christ and not the other way around. Catholic teaching supports the right to work, the right to a just wage, the right to property, the right to rest, the right to medical care and a modicum of income security in old age. Economic and political institutions must honor all these rights. Disputes should be settled non-violently, but the right of workers to organize to enforce these rights is also respected by the Church.

At the same time, our support of social justice is not about trying to work God out of a job.  We pray that our leaders employ such teaching. What we have achieved in alleviating poverty and creating a middle class in this country was because many of our past political leaders believed it and acted on it.

Human beings, possessing free will, can and often do choose to ignore the Church’s teaching on social justice. Ultimately, there will be a judgment, and end time, a transformation of the earthly life into a heavenly one or a hellish one.  All of the Church’s teachings can be ignored; it employs no military coercion anymore. But social justice teaching is every bit as authoritative as its teachings on abortion, euthanasia, war and peace, and other issues. We cannot be buffet Catholics on social justice teaching any more than we can on any other aspect of Church teaching.

Jesus challenges each member of the Body of Christ to honor the value of labor and the rights of workers. Catholics are called to accept this challenge, and work for social justice through our service and our responsibilities as citizens. It is an essential, necessary part of a Christian life, a road sign pointing to a successful journey to salvation, and another reason why it is so wonderful to be a Catholic.