Fr. Rick Spicer

Total sacrifice is the theme I find woven through today’s readings. Total sacrifice is what America witnessed many firefighters doing on 9/11 as they tried to save people trapped in the World Trade Center. Most heroes wouldn’t have seen themselves as being one until the need arises. Faith enables them to do something out of the ordinary.

One hero that day was a fellow Johnnie, an undergraduate at St. John’s when I was studying theology. His name was Tom Burnett. After graduation, he moved to San Francisco. He was returning home on United Airlines flight 93 from Newark when the plane was hijacked. When Burnett and others learned that two hijacked planes had flown into the World Trade Center, they realized what was afoot and formulated a plan to retake control of the plane. Their efforts succeeded in preventing the hijackers from crashing into their intended target in Washington DC. Instead, their plane crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board. That Johnnie gave totally to save the lives of others.

The Good News of Jesus Christ demands sacrifice, even the sacrifice of our lives, as many martyrs well know. Sacrificial love must be the way of life for followers of Jesus, which is the point I hear James making in his letter when he asked, “What good is it if someone says he had faith but does not have works?” Citing the common need of caring for the poor, he adds, “I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.”

That isn’t what some people want to hear when they come to church. They want their religion to be less demanding. They come expecting a homily that leaves them feeling good but when you read the gospels, you notice that Jesus never promised us a rose garden or that our lives would be easy.

Instead, Jesus frequently challenges us to think not as human beings do but as God does.

That was his blunt criticism to Peter who didn’t want to see Jesus suffer. Peter recognized him as the Messiah, which in Greek is known as the Christ, but his understanding of the Messiah was limited. Peter envisioned the Messiah to be a political not a spiritual savior, a leader who would restore Israel to its former glory by overthrowing the Romans.

The notion of total sacrifice is unthinkable to us as it was to Peter. A little sacrifice might be acceptable but total sacrifice seems perverse, which is why Peter protested. A mindset that is basically self-centered cannot understand sacrifice nor fully understand love. Those who see love as a means to satisfying their needs cannot appreciate that real love demands sacrifice. The deeper the love, the greater the sacrifice. The shallower the love, the more insignificant the sacrifice will be.

Couples whose marriages have grown so that they can say they are more in love now then when they first married recognize that they each sacrifice more now than when they were first married. They become more accepting of each other as time goes on. Those who find themselves caring for a sick spouse are likely to agree that their love today is stronger than on the day they said, “I do” to each other.

On the other hand, those who view marriage only as a means to an end will never enter into a real marriage.

What can be said for a lasting satisfying marriage can be said for one’s faith relationship with Jesus Christ. Merely believing in Christ isn’t the same as loving Christ. Faith, as James points out, needs to be demonstrated with deeds. Some of us hesitate to mirror our faith with deeds. Instead, we put our wants ahead of someone else’s needs. How do you heed James’ advice to give those in need the necessities of the body? Our 3 P’s bin and St. Anthony’s Kitchen are two ways in which you can show your faith with deeds. Bring something each weekend to place in one of the bins. This small sacrifice for you will be much appreciated by a needy family on the island.

Suffering prompts many people to lose faith in God. We see so much suffering around us and ask, “Why doesn’t God put a stop to all this?” “Why did God allow the tragedy of 9/11 to happen?” “Why hasn’t God stop this pandemic?” “Why does God allow such horrific hurricanes and fires to happen?”

Like Peter, we want to say, “This cannot be.”  So long as God gives us free will, the requisite for love to exist, suffering will also exist due to choices we make. Suffering is the blood, sweat and tears of life. God cannot put a stop to suffering but by dying on the cross, his son can fully relate to our suffering. That is why he then tells us to deny ourselves, take up his cross and follow him. In other words, put our self-centered agenda aside and be willing to make a sacrifice just as he did by following his example.

The devil continually tries to convince us to give up our faith when all is going wrong in our physical lives. To resist him, we have to grow stronger in faith every day we have left until we take our last breath.

Meanwhile, none of us want to suffer but if we really love, then we are willing to make sacrifices and deny ourselves so that our love may grow deeper. This is completely contrary to the mindset of a self-centered society yet heroes who have loved deeply and made sacrifices have repeatedly blessed our world. That is what taking up the cross is all about. As Christians, we reveal who we are by what we willingly give up, even our lives, to make this a better world.

When I was a toddler, my mother noticed my hearing loss when I didn’t react to the sudden loud music of a military band that had startled her. At age four a speech therapist taught me how to talk. Since adolescence, I have relied on hearing aids to survive in the hearing world. Before they existed, those with a hearing loss used ear trumpets, large horn like devices that they held up to an ear to funnel in the sound.

The miracle we witness was unlike any other recorded in the gospels. Jesus takes the deaf man away from the crowd. Putting his fingers in the man’s ears, he then touches the man’s tongue. Looking up to heaven, Jesus groaned, “Ephphatha!” That is, “Be opened!” Immediately the man could hear and his speech impediment was gone.

The people were awed by what happened. They could see that God comes to save all peoples. Perhaps they knew of the vision of peace and restoration proclaimed by Isaiah, which we just heard. “Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared.” What Isaiah communicates with poetry, Jesus does with miracles, using them as a sign of salvation.

Alas, we tend to think of salvation in terms of heaven and the hereafter but the readings challenge us to see salvation as encountering and hearing God now. Even in the events of our daily lives, God is present to save us. 

Jesus ushers in the new kingdom of God envisioned by Isaiah; the deaf man embodies the human need for healing. Isaiah depicts salvation in terms of an ideal world of plenty. Jesus does so with miracles. Salvation may seem like something out of the ordinary but not so. Salvation begins when we open ourselves up to a relationship with God.

Salvation isn’t a future event or a figment of our imagination. Imagine Jesus saying to you, “Be opened!” Jesus is curing not your physical hearing but your inability to hear his message that leads you to salvation.

As a kid, my mother used to accuse me of selective hearing. How selective are we when it comes to listening to Jesus? If we hear the anguished question, “Why can’t you hear me?” our hearing is more impaired than we realize. What might God be saying to us that we are not hearing?

One example is prejudice. In his letter, James urges us to show no partiality and yet he points out that we often do. None of us care to think of ourselves as being prejudiced but consider the possibility. Prejudice comes from the Latin word that means “pre-judge.” When we have made up our minds about someone or something, we have already passed judgment. Doing so, we put up barriers. James compared how we might treat someone who is wealthy or poor. How do we treat anyone of a different sexual orientation or race or ethnicity or faith or disability?

Prejudice prevents us from experiencing salvation. So long as we cling to any manner of bias, we are not hearing Jesus telling us how to act here and now. He wants to put his fingers in our ears and say, “Be opened!” Be open to hearing the Good News, to loving one another, to seeing the fullest beauty of his blueprint to living life here and now.

At times we are blind to the goodness that exists in others because we only notice some aspect of their behavior that disturbs us. Other times we are deaf to the voice of reason, closing our ears to a point of view different from our own. Without realizing it, we can be deaf and blind to the needs of others. Everyone is looking for a safe life, the chance to live with dignity and security yet many are denied the opportunity. The Lord hears the cry of the poor. Do we?

Think of the countless victims of natural disasters and refugees seeking a safe haven. The kingdom of God will be a time and place when the cares and concerns of the needy are addressed.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu urged, “Do your little bit of good where you are. It’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”

In the midst of the noise and distractions that surround us, Jesus wants us to sense God’s presence when we are overwhelmed by anger, jealousy, or disappointment, to see the possibilities we have to bring God’s peace and forgiveness into our lives and the lives of others, especially those whom we love. “Be opened!” he is saying to us who are not hearing him. Your response could make all the difference in bringing Christ to someone else’s heart. (May we have a heart for those in need and share the love of Jesus with others through our words and actions.)

A Christian and a Jew were talking about the ways of their respective religions. “You people,” said the Jew, “have been taking things from us for thousands of years. For instance, the Ten Commandments.” “Well, yes,” the Christian said, “We took them from you all right, but we haven’t kept them!”

At least that Christian was being honest. We don’t always keep them, which is why we begin the Mass asking for God’s forgiveness. In today’s readings, we are told to carefully observe God’s decrees. We shouldn’t add to them, as the Pharisees did, nor subtract from them as some of us tend to, so that we don’t lose sight of what really matters to God.

And what really matters? James gives us a concise answer when he wrote, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” In biblical times, orphans and widows depended on others for their survival. Our response to the less fortunate says more about our heartfelt relationship with God than rituals.

What does James mean by keeping ourselves unstained from the world? For starters, we must acknowledge the reality of sin in our lives, a subject few of us care to dwell on. Sin and reconciliation are the very reasons why our religion even exists. Jesus came into the world to save us from our sins, dying on the cross so that we could be forgiven and be blessed with eternal life. In his book, Mere Christianity, CS Lewis wrote, “Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness.”

In today’s gospel, Jesus confronts one such group: the Pharisees. They criticized others for things like not washing hands before eating and improper care of utensils, yet they tended to ignore their own faults. Jesus provides them with an examination of conscience as he points out that what defiles a person comes from within: evil thoughts, the lack of chastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, and folly.

In short, Jesus calls a spade a spade. We don’t care to hear what he has to say about sin, so we often fudge a bit. For example, cohabitating has become an acceptable lifestyle. Our laws say that abortions are legal, but neither choice is morally right and like any sin, anything morally wrong has the potential to really harm others and us.

In giving the Ten Commandments to the Israelites, Moses urged them to “observe them carefully, for thus will you give evidence of your wisdom and intelligence to the nations.”

To paraphrase James, we should humbly welcome what God has given us and act accordingly.  He is warning us that if all we do is listen, we are deceiving ourselves.  God’s commandments are really meant to serve as blueprints for living life wisely and well, not burden us.  When done, that brings us freedom. Not freedom in the sense of doing what we please at the expense of others, but freedom from what can and will harm us emotionally, spiritually, or physically.

God is urging us to set the example for the world around us instead of allowing the world to stain us with its profane examples. Like the Pharisees, some of us can easily lose sight of what matters and be more concerned, for example, with how our rituals are performed than the tragedy of abortion, domestic violence, world hunger, racism and homelessness. Did you hear today’s psalm? “The one who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.” That is why Jesus is challenging us to be honest with ourselves. 

Years ago, I ran across a poem entitled, The Devil’s Beatitudes, which warns that all that is needed for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing.

“Blessed are those who are too tired, busy, or disorganized to meet with fellow Christians on Sundays each week. Their hearts are not in it.

“Blessed are those who enjoy noticing the mannerisms of clergy and choir, their hearts are not in it.

“Blessed are those Christians who wait to be asked and expect to be thanked, I can use them.

“Blessed are the touchy who stop going to church. They are my missionaries.

“Blessed are those who claim to love God at the same time as hating other people, they are mine forever.

“Blessed are the trouble makers. They shall be called my children.

“Blessed are those who have no time to pray. They are easy prey for me.

“Blessed are you when you read this and think it is about other people and not yourself. I’ve got you too!”

Hopefully Moses, James and Jesus got you instead. 

“What saying is hard?” You might be wondering. We missed hearing the preceding passage from John’s gospel due to the feast of the Assumption last Sunday. Jesus told his listeners in his most challenging sermon, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him on the last day.” Imagine yourself in that audience. Eat his flesh? Drink his blood? Both notions were so abhorrent, that many of his disciples, no longer convinced that he was the holy one of God, returned to their former ways of life. They didn’t hang around to better understand his message.

After they left, Jesus turned to the apostles and asked, “Do you also want to leave?” That question is one that every generation of believers has faced sooner or later. Imagine Jesus asking you that question. Some in fact have done just that. They left the parish, offended by a certain homily or certain parishioner or boring liturgies. Some even left the Church. I suspect most of us know someone, even family members, who have left the faith. Some did so loudly and publicly while others have departed quietly, slipping away like a thief in the night.

Some left because they found Jesus’ message too hard to accept so they parted company with him. Some liked Jesus but couldn’t stand his Church or her leaders or the manner in which their personal views were being challenged or at odds with certain Church teachings, such as abortion, marriage, or contraception.  Whatever their reason may be, they left the Church, choosing to walk away from the Eucharist.

Their conduct was nothing new. From the day Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, many people have opted not to serve the Lord but to fashion their own god that suited their taste. Those listening to Joshua, however, as they were about to enter the Promised Land, told him, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord for the service of other gods. For it was the Lord, our God, who brought us out of the Land of Egypt, out of the state of slavery.” They had tasted and seen the goodness of the Lord and opted to serve the Lord.

Centuries later, the disciples who heard Jesus were at a crossroad. He challenged them to examine what they believed to be right and what he was now conveying. His language about the Eucharist was alien and repulsive. Eat his flesh? Drink his blood? His message was foreign to their way of thinking. While you might like your steak bloody rare, a Jew would never touch blood, thus they could not accept what Jesus was saying. They could not grasp that he was offering them eternal life. When they walked away, Jesus didn’t try to stop them by toning down or altering his teaching; he just let them go.

But there are others, such as ourselves, who have responded to Jesus’ question with Peter’s words, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” For all its limitations and shortcomings, this is the Church where we have touched God and God has touched us.

When he was a professor, Pope Benedict wrote an essay entitled, “Why I am still in the Church.” We do not belong to the church because it is perfect, or because it has all the answers, or because it is always comforting to belong to it, but because, despite its many flaws, we find in it something which is crucial and indispensible. Remaining in the church, then, is a challenge: to be faithful to that truth which is its essence, while transcending its limitations and faults.

A good example presents itself in today’s second reading. In his often-misunderstood passage to the Ephesians, Paul is challenging husbands and wives to examine their fidelity and commitment to one another. Both spouses need to serve one another and strive to put the other person first. That was a revolutionary idea then and still is for some people today.

Commitment and fidelity is the theme running throughout these readings. A fitting question for us to ponder would be how committed are we to the Lord and his gospel message? To eat his body and drink his blood means taking on the life of Jesus. Are we willing to then show loving care and respect to one another? if so, there can be no room in our hearts for bigotry or racism. Those reluctant to hear Jesus’ command have replaced him with a god of their own design.

Remaining in the church is a decision that cannot be taken for granted. Each of us must ask ourselves, just as Pope Benedict did, “Why am I still in the church?”  We are motivated to belong to this Church despite its shortcomings because of all that it has to offer.

Alas, some people see that the values of the gospel are not in accord with their preferred lifestyle so they leave the Church. If we do not find his life and message challenging, perhaps we have not really heard what he is asking of us. How willing are to better understand our faith if we are tempted to walk away?

If we choose to belong to a faith community that strives imperfectly to fulfill Jesus’ demanding selfless mission of universal love, it can only be because we see that we really have nowhere else to go; after all, who else offers us the gift of eternal life? Despite the challenges of the cross and the scandal of the human church, we are convinced as was Peter that here and only here do we find the words of eternal life. Blessed are they who are led by Jesus’ words to abundant and eternal life!

While there is no mention of the event in scripture, Catholics view the Assumption as a milestone in the life of Mary, celebrating our belief that as the mother of God, she was taken up, body and soul, into heaven when she completed her earthly life. Unlike the rest of humanity, we believe her body was never allowed to decay.

We have no history that tells us what really happened. There is no liturgical record of this feast until several centuries later. Yet from scripture, we can tell that no person is more closely linked with Jesus than his mother. Not only does Mary have the intimate bonding that only a mother can have with her child, she appears as the model Christian.

Because of her intimacy with Jesus, Mary reflects the person of Jesus Christ more perfectly than any one else. For this reason, Pope Pius XII wrote on November 1, 1050, “The immaculate Mother of God, the ever virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.”

So how does this feast touch us? Our Catechism notes, “The assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son’s resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians.” In other words, what happened to Mary will someday happen to us.

As followers of Christ, we believe and hope that just as Christ rose from the dead and lives forever, the virtuous will live forever with the risen Christ who will raise them on the last day. Jesus promises that all faithful Christians will have the same destiny of experiencing the resurrection.  In John’s gospel (11:25), he tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Jesus initially fulfilled that promise when Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven.

For many, this outcome is incomprehensible. Certainly our souls will last forever, but our bodies? Yes, our bodies, so clearly mortal, will also rise to everlasting life.  This feast invites us to celebrate death as our crossroads to eternal glory.  In his letter to the Corinthians Paul notes that death has no sting for those who believe in the resurrection. Just as our gifts of bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ, upon death, we will be transformed when we present the gifts of our body and soul to God.

Granted, death is a subject few of us have an easy time dealing with when it touches us personally. When my mother was terminally ill, neither of us would openly talk about what we knew was about to happen for fear that we would leave the other person more despondent yet why be afraid?  How different might we have felt had I known of this story then.

A long time ago, there lived a young boy whose parents had died. An aunt took him in and raised him as her own child. Years later, after he had grown up and left home, she sent a letter in which she disclosed that she was now terminally ill. From the tone of her letter, he could tell that she was afraid to die. He replied with a letter in which he wrote, “It is now thirty five years since I, a little boy of six, was left quite alone in the world. You sent me word that you would give me a home and be a mother to me. I’ve never forgotten that day when I made the long journey of ten miles to your house. I can still recall my disappointment when, instead of coming to me yourself, you sent your servant, Cesar, to fetch me. I well remember my tears and anxiety as, perched high on your horse and clinging tight to Cesar, I rode off to my new home.

“Night fell before we finished our journey and as it grew dark, I became even more afraid. ‘Do you think she’ll go to bed before I get there?’ I asked Cesar anxiously. ‘Oh, no,’ said Cesar. ‘she’s sure to stay up for you. When we get out of the woods, you’ll see her light shining in the window.’

“Presently, we did ride out into the clearing and there was your light. I remember that you were waiting at the door; that you put your arms tight around me; that you lifted me—a tired, frightened little boy—down from the horse. You had a fire burning on the hearth, a hot supper waiting on the stove. After supper you took me to my new room. You heard me say my prayers. Then you sat with me until I fell asleep.

“You probably realize why I am trying to recall this to your memory now. Very soon, God is going to send for you, and take you to your new home. I’m trying to tell you that you need not be afraid of the summons or the strange journey or of the dark messenger of death. God can be trusted. God can be trusted to do as much for you as you did for me so many years ago.

“At the end of the road, you’ll find love and a welcome waiting. And you’ll be safe in God’s care. I’m going to watch and pray for you until you are out of sight. And I shall wait for the day when I make the same journey myself and find you waiting at the end of the road to greet me.”

This feast sends us word that heaven can be our new home and the directions for getting there are rather simple. In the gospel, Jesus tells us, “blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” As Mary demonstrated by her example often, that is done every time we willingly say “Yes,” to whatever God asks of us.