Fr. Rick Spicer

Today’s gospel is a jewel, a real gem, containing a parable that is pithy, giving us much food for thought without a wasted word, and pungent, leaving us with a message that stings, pricks, and bites. A parable that could well bear the notice: ‘Warning: the preacher-general has determined that this parable can be dangerous to your religious self-esteem.”

Luke tells us the obvious lesson: exalt yourself and you will be humbled; humble yourself and you will be exalted.  This parable urges us to examine our relationship with God and one another. One writer best summarized the story by saying, “Two men went up to the temple to pray. One did and the other didn’t.”

The tax collector prayed while the Pharisee stood there offering an assessment of his sanctity. On the surface, the Pharisee appears to be praying, but all he really did was exalt himself.  How odd, given that Pharisees were known for their piety.  While this one could be easily commended for being very religious in what he did, he saw little need to actually pray to God. The Pharisee was oblivious to his sin of pride. In contrast, the tax collector faces the painful truth about himself and quietly ask God to have mercy on him.

Obviously, the prayers of the tax collector and the Pharisee were very different.  The Pharisee was fulfilling an obligation in the Law to worship.  He stressed the point that he was doing more than the law required of him. To emphasize this, he pointed to the tax collector, “I certainly am a lot better than that guy over there.”  His ‘holier than thou attitude’ can’t be missed.

The tax collector didn’t make any comparisons, nor did he try to remind God of any of the good things he had done in his life.  He didn’t say, “I know I’ve done wrong, collecting taxes from my own people for the Romans and making a profit on it for myself, but I also fed my neighbor’s family when he died suddenly, and I routinely give alms to beggars.”  Nor did he say, “Lord, I am not an arrogant man, like that Pharisee.” His prayer was simply, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.”  

Catholicism is often accused of putting people on guilt trips.  I do not agree.  Catholicism puts people on reality trips.  Catholicism dares to speak about unpopular topics like sin.  Ours is not a “feel good” religion. Instead, Catholicism dares to invite people to consider their own participation in sin and seek forgiveness. Catholicism recognizes that our salvation is a process we are engaged in.  We are not saved yet, we are in the process of being saved.  Our Church recognizes that we are human beings and that we can give in to the temptation to sin.  Our Church also tells us that the Lord was one of us.  He experienced what temptation was like and he fully understands our need for mercy.  He gives the sacrament of mercy, penance, because he wants his mercy, not our guilt, directing our lives.

God is determined to form a relationship with each of us.  So often, however, we have run from Him.  When we realize that God has chosen us as individuals, that He loves each of us, and when we consider how we have resisted Him, we realize that our prayer must begin with, “Have mercy on me a sinner.”

Contrary to what many Catholics think, our Church is not concerned with guilt but in my ministry I find that to be a hard lesson to sell. Perhaps that is due to negative experiences you may have had years ago in the confessional. Or it may be that you subconsciously think like the Pharisee and don’t really see yourself as a sinner. More than once, penitents have come to me seeking absolution but they are at a loss to confess to any wrongdoing. Their mindset reminds me of a classmate in the seminary who would sometimes sing, “O Lord, its hard to be humble when you are as perfect as me.”  While we may not see ourselves as being perfect, we often fail to see how much we have in common with one another. Namely, being human, we all make mistakes, we all fall prey to temptation, we all sin at one time or another, and we all need God’s mercy.

Last Christmas, someone gave me a book by an American priest who had been incarcerated in Siberia for decades. Fr. Walter Ciszek compared himself to the Pharisee at one point. He wrote, “I was ashamed because I knew in my heart that I had tried to do too much on my own, and I had asked for God’s help but had really believed in my own ability to avoid evil and to meet every challenge…The sense of guilt and shame I felt was rooted in my failure to put grace ahead of nature, my failure to trust primarily in God rather than in my own powers.”

Jose Gomez, the recently appointed coadjutor Archbishop of Los Angeles, made this observation that ties in well with the gospel. “Ultimately, what we all must learn is that no matter what our gifts, abilities, and training, no matter how hard we work, and no matter what we are able to achieve, everything is a gift from God in Christ Jesus, and God alone is the true source of our strength and power in this life. Learning this lesson is the beginning of growing in Christian character.”

Archbishop Gomez raises the point that few of us have been taught the virtue of living humbly. Instead we value our uniqueness and emphasize what sets us apart like the Pharisee, but that is not what enriches our relationship with God or, for that matter, with others. Jesus challenges us to embrace the humble, God-centered faith of the tax collector, not the self-centered and self-important claims of the Pharisee. We give thanks for God’s love for us by returning that love to one another, and by accepting one another as God has accepted us. We honor God as Father of us all by honoring one another as brothers and sisters. Real prayer seeks first and only the grace to do that.

Now here is a parable that I can easily restate in a contemporary setting. In a certain city there was a corrupt bureaucrat who neither feared God nor respected people. A single mother on welfare kept coming to him and saying, “Make my landlord fix the furnace and insulate my house. I can’t afford to pay the heat bill and my children are freezing.” For awhile the bureaucrat refused to listen but the mother came to his office every day with her three children and each day she would voice the same plea. After several weeks of this, the bureaucrat decided that if he didn’t give her what is right, she would continue to pester him so he finally issued the order to her landlord to repair the house. The furnace was replaced and her home was insulated.

The next day the mother was back in the bureaucrat’s office with her children. She thanked him for what he had done and then said, “Now let me tell you about my plumbing problems.”

One point Jesus is making with this parable is that we are to pray always without growing weary. If persistence can change the mindset of a self-centered judge, how much more will our persistence prevail with a gracious God who loves us?

The ultimate question, however, is not “How will God react?” but “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” That is, when Jesus returns in his glory, will he find us in prayer? In whatever trying situation you find yourself in, how do you react? Unlike the widow, some people give up. Worn out by their struggle, they retreat in defeat. Would you do the same thing if you were in their shoes?

Some people don’t give up though. They persist, like the widow in the parable, seeking to be vindicated, to succeed and ultimately rebuild their lives. You have to wonder what gives them such inner strength. The message in these readings provides a clue: persistence and prayer go hand in hand.

The noted Jewish rabbi, Abraham Heschel describes persistence as a form of prayer, flowing from the power of faith that initiates and acts. Persistence is prayer that is rooted in our ability to approach God and reveal our hurts, hopes, dreams, and desperations.

Persistence enabled the widow to get the justice she deserved.

Persistence enables my cousin, Betty, to celebrate 46 years of marriage. She was only 14 when she married Lou and back then no one expected their marriage to last, especially since Lou had a drinking problem, but with persistence, they have licked the problems they have encountered, including his alcoholism, her struggle with lupus and bankruptcy.

As the parable points out, persistence is not merely waiting for something to happen, but actively doing something that brings us closer to our aspirations. By itself, prayer may or may not accomplish what we have in mind, but when prayer takes on the quality of being persistent, then we are allowing not so much our will but God’s will to be done.  In other words, persistent prayers are answered but not always in the manner we would expect.

Prayers go unanswered only when we cease to pray, for then we deny God the chance to even respond.

Some people become disillusioned with prayer because they don’t get what they want. People who pray for miracles usually don’t get miracles, but people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have instead of what they have lost, very often find that prayer helped them to tap hidden reserves of faith and courage which were not available to them before.

Another point that I hear Jesus is making comes to light if we think of the widow, rather than the judge, as God. This allows us to see God as the one who is persistently seeking justice and calling on us to do the same. Anyone who resists injustice, faces it, names it, and denounces it, as the widow did, is God-like and is doing what needs to be done to build up the kingdom of God in our midst. The persistence of the widow reminds me of others who have sought justice in our times: Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, jr., Rosa Parks, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Oscar Romero, Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta to name but a few. Need I mention that prayer is the one tool that enabled them to persist in their mission?

Oftentimes we find ourselves struggling with issues that demand a choice.  Do we listen to God through the different ways God uses to communicate with us as we discern how to respond? One way to discern is the sacred scriptures which, as Paul notes, “are capable of giving you wisdom for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.” Another is the Magisterium, that is, the teachings of our Church conveyed to us by her bishops. For example, in the bulletin this week, you will find a flyer, entitled Seeking the Common Good, which discusses the initiatives on the ballot for this fall in light of Catholic social teaching and tradition.  The bishops, I must add, did not endorse any of the initiatives nor are they indicating how we should vote. Their aim is to help us to act justly when we cast our votes.

The widow in the parable was certainly formidable. Was she the only one to take on the judge, the only one to hunger and thirst for justice? She shouldn’t be. She should have us for company and that, my friends, is what this gospel is really all about.

How many glasses of water did you drink yesterday? For the sake of good health, we are advised to drink eight glasses a day but few of us really keep track. When water is ample, we give little thought to its value, but when it is scare, we treasure every drop for without water, we cannot live. Habakkuk is suggesting that without faith we cannot live either.

Fr. Daniel Barrigan, a Jesuit, once said, “The attitude of faith is no more easily described than a glass of water: colorless, tasteless, and odorless, but still mysteriously refreshing, and held up to the light of day, a prism that captures all the delight and mystery of the world.” What a beautiful reflection on water and faith! So ordinary yet at the right temperature, water can be so refreshing. Faith can be described in much the same way.

Contrary to popular perception, faith is not necessarily religious, nor even an element to be equated with belief. The first definition of faith is confidence. If we don’t have much faith in something, we are saying that we lack confidence in it. Faith is a person’s way of leaning into and making sense of life. Everyone who chooses to go on living operates by some basic faith, whether he is an atheist, an agnostic or one who believes in God.

The apostles said to Jesus, “Increase our faith,” and he answered, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” Instead of answering their plea, Jesus is suggesting that what matters in life is not the quantity but the quality of their faith.

Faith should not be seen as a commodity that someone else has but you don’t. To the contrary, we all have faith or we would not even be alive for faith is as essential to the being as water is to the body. What matters is how readily we value and nurture the faith we have.

Years ago, while in the seminary, I ran across a book entitled, The Precious Present, by Spencer Johnson, co-author of The One Minute Manager. “What might that be?” I wondered as I opened the book. Instead of being a physical object, Dr. Johnson made the point about how precious this moment in time truly is.

He wrote, “The present is what is. It is valuable. Even if I do not know why. It is already just the way it is supposed to be. When I see the present, accept the present, and experience the present, I am well, and I am happy.

“Pain is simply the difference between what is and what I want it to be. When I feel guilty over my imperfect past, or I am anxious over my unknown future, I do not live in the present. I experience pain. I make myself ill. And I am very unhappy.

“My past was my present. And my future will be my present. The present moment is the only reality I ever experience. As long as I continue to stay in the present, I am happy forever; because forever is always the present.”

St. Paul urges us, “Beloved: I remind you, to stir into flame the gift of God you have through the imposition of my hands.” This reminds me of embers in a fireplace. If you stir them, flames burst forth, but if the embers are left untouched, they slowly go out.  Likewise, we are urged to stir the embers of our faith, God’s gift to us today. What we did yesterday or plan to do tomorrow will not keep our faith alive today when it matters most for this is the moment when God is most present to us.

Last week, I heard on the news that in a survey on religious knowledge, when asked what best describes the Catholic teaching on Eucharist, barely a majority of Catholics responded that the gifts of bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ. Forty percent see the bread and wine as symbols, as did the majority of other Americans surveyed.

Perhaps they wonder how we can believe that bread and wine become something else when they remain for all outward purposes still bread and wine. That is where faith steps in. I remain confident in what Jesus proclaimed at the Last Supper when he said the words, “This is my body…this is my blood of the new covenant.” If God can create the universe out of nothing, who am I to limit what God can do and if God says that our gifts become the body and blood of his Son, my faith and hopefully yours responds, “Amen!” to what takes place during the consecration. With faith, we believe in a deeper transformation than our senses can perceive.

We also hold that we too are transformed when we receive Eucharist in a state of grace. By uniting us even closer to Jesus, Holy Communion separates us from sin for just as our gifts are transformed into Christ, he in turn transforms us into him. By virtue of our faith, we become the body of Christ, his presence in the world today.

For those who demand proof, I can offer none but the awareness that not everything can be proven, certainly not faith, yet as I said earlier, faith is very much a part of our human existence. In Hebrews, we read, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Blasé Pascal had this to say about faith, “It is your own assent to yourself, and the constant voice of your own reason, and not of others, that should make you believe.”  Like water and the present moment, faith is a gift from God that is to be appreciated and put to use in our lives. With the help of the Holy Spirit, faith can make us strong, loving and wise, giving us what we need to move the “mulberry trees” in our lives.

A man known throughout the town for his great wealth and tight fistedness never contributed to any charity or did anything to alleviate the plight of the poor. The chairperson of one of the community’s worthy charitable organizations decided to approach the rich man at his office.

“Sir,” the fundraiser said, “Our records show that despite your great wealth, you have never given to our annual drive.”

“Oh, really?” the rich man fumed. “Well, do your records show that I have an elderly mother who was left penniless when my father died? Do your records show that I have a sick brother who is unable to work? Do your records show that I have a widowed sister with three small children who can barely make ends meet? Do your records show any of that?”

“No sir,” replied the embarrassed volunteer. “We did not know any of that information.” “Well, if I don’t give anything to them, why should I give anything to you?”

Hopefully, not one of us here is as miserly as that wealthy man was yet we may still feel a bit uneasy having just heard both Amos and Jesus berate people for being rich.

In contrast to many others, especially in third world countries, the vast majority of us are “wealthy.” We have a roof over our head, none of us are starving, we have heat to keep us warm, and most of us have our own means of transportation. However, there is no need to feel any twinge of guilt for simply being “rich.” To be wealthy is not, in itself, morally wrong. The moral question raised in today’s readings is simply how are we using our wealth?

In the parable Jesus shares today, the rich man is condemned not because he is wealthy, but because he remains unmoved and unaffected by the suffering at his door. His lack of concern for Lazarus condemns him to an eternity of misery.

Those who listened to Jesus give this parable were likely surprised by the outcome of his story. That God would punish the rich man and reward the beggar with eternal life made little sense to his Jewish listeners who believed that wealth was a sign of God’s favor and suffering was punishment for being sinful.

With this parable, Jesus makes the point that our earthly treasures provide no guaranteed passage to heaven. If anything, whatever wealth we have could threaten our salvation if we are too obsessed with our assets to pay much attention to God in our daily lives. Last week’s gospel passage ended with the warning from Jesus, “You cannot serve both God and mammon (that is, money).” If, like the rich man, we use our wealth selfishly, ignoring the needs of others, we will find ourselves separated by a chasm of our own making from God’s divine love and compassion.

In trying to spare his brothers the same fate, the rich man implores Abraham to send Lazarus to warn them to change their ways before it is too late, but Abraham knows such a warning would be futile. “If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.”  One was raised from the dead, namely Jesus, and yet many in the world continue to ignore the message that the rich man wanted his brothers to hear.

The rich man had been forewarned by the teachings of the Hebrew Scripture to be compassionate to the less fortunate. Undoubtedly, he heard the warnings of the prophet, Amos bluntly chastising those who are rich. Isaiah addresses this responsibility when he wrote, “This is the fasting that I wish, sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless, clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.”

Some of you may feel that Jesus’ story of Lazarus and the rich man belongs to the distant past but his story is just as timely today. There are many Lazaruses at our own gates. What is our attitude toward them? Are they someone else’s problem? Has our self-centeredness blinded us to their presence?

We might make any number of excuses as to why we mimic the rich man, but none will win us a place at the eternal banquet if we choose to remain totally blind as the rich man did to the plight of the less fortunate. To give something to those in need is better than doing nothing at all. Had the rich man shared even one meal with Lazarus, he would have bridged the chasm that separated him from the love of God.

One indicator of how mindful we are of the less fortunate is how readily we contribute to Good Cheer. Lately the red barrel has been empty more often than not. The next time you come to Mass, can you bring one of the three P’s? Outreach attempts to provide paper products like toilet paper, personal hygiene items such as toothpaste and protein items such as canned tuna so that these products are more affordable to those who patronize Good Cheer’s food bank.

By his moral standards, the rich man didn’t show himself to be a true son of Abraham.  Do we show ourselves to be disciples of Jesus, heeding his advice to be aware of those in need? Our legacy lies not in what we own but in what we share to make our world a happier, healthier place for the less fortunate in our midst.

As the bright light of summer yields to the soft hues of fall, while students settle into school and parish activities kick into high gear, many Christians ponder over vacation expenses, tuition bills, the cost of new clothes and school supplies and other upcoming expenses. Life in Christ seems to be taken over by calculator and computer, yet the timely message of today’s readings is that our salvation is deeply intertwined with how we use the goods of this world.

This passage from Luke’s gospel is one of the most complex to be found in scripture. Its collection of somewhat disparate sayings is bound together by a common theme, the use and abuse of money. Jesus knew that living in the world requires each of us to use money wisely but he is quick to warn his listeners never to become so attached to money that it becomes their master.  The late Archbishop Thomas Murphy often asked the question, “What do I own and what owns me?”

Money is a god that rules many lives. The pursuit of money for some people is the driving force behind all they do.  A father once told his son, “Everybody has two personalities: the one we usually see and then the one when money is on the table.” That son later became a priest. He often quotes his father because he sees the harm that money can cause. Relationships and lives have been destroyed over money and money related issues. Many failed marriages can trace the start of their undoing to either the lack of or the pursuit of money.

If that priest’s father is correct, then one could say that our real character is revealed by our spending habits. Someone could learn quite a bit about your values by looking through your checkbook. Which master are you serving? God or money? As they so often do, the words of scripture have much to say about real life, offering us much wisdom on how best to live.

How do you use money? Do you consume just for the sake of consuming? Do you possess just to possess? Do you spend a bit more to get that item of clothing because of its logo? Do you go out on a Saturday night and spend $60 on dinner, $20 for a movie and $12 for an after movie desert and then place a few wadded one dollar bills in the Sunday collection?

What bothered Amos most in the first reading was the lack of connection his fellow Jews made between their religious beliefs and the way they were living their lives. He didn’t like what he saw. He made no claim to being a prophet, yet Amos forecast that Israel’s wealth would soon be its destruction. Although he did not live to see it, he was right.

The Israelites viewed their prosperity as a gift from God, ignoring Amos’ challenge that God would not forget how their wealth was being abused. Amos timeless words are meant to challenge us as well.

So, how are we using our wealth, our possessions, our money? In other words, how are we using what God has given us? The country singer, Garth Brooks, once said in an interview that he has more money than could be spent by his children’s children’s children. He wasn’t bragging. He was nervous. Garth felt that the prosperity and wealth he had achieved brought with it great responsibility and it does.

Few of us are wealthy monetarily. Nonetheless, we are called to be caretakers of the wealth God has given us.  Israel ignored that responsibility and ultimately paid the price. Many Christians have done the same, arrogantly proclaiming, “I have worked hard for what I have and it is mine!” They are allowing money and material goods to become a rival god in their lives.  Amos warns us that such an attitude can destroy us.

Jesus airs much the same caution in this confusing parable, which can leave us wondering if he is complimenting the steward for being dishonest. Actually, Jesus is commending him for his prudence and practicality, not his dishonesty.

This parable may be better understood if we keep in mind that neither the steward nor the debtors could claim ownership of the goods. They all belonged to the master. Using the language of the gospel, we could say that the earth and all its riches belong to God, the master of our universe. We are his stewards. How are we managing the goods that have been entrusted to us? Are we managing these goods in a way that benefits others or are we squandering them, thinking only of ourselves? Do we cling to the rights of private property or do we recognize our responsibility to share what we have to provide justly for the needs of the less fortunate?

We have a great deal of ambivalence about money yet our survival in this world demands a certain skill in acquiring money and using it well, that is, being a good steward of our resources.

Some people argue that money is evil but that isn’t so. Money is only a tool. In itself, money is neither good nor bad. A more accurate understanding of the saying that money is the root of all evil can be found elsewhere in the first letter to Timothy where St. Paul cautions, “the love of money is the root of all evils, and some people in their desire for it have strayed from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains.”

No wonder then that Jesus is making the point here that no matter what problems we face, one thing is clear: if we are in love with money, we will not be in love with God. Or as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux wisely observes, “Theirs is an endless road, a hopeless maze, who seek for goods before they seek for God.”