Homilies

We usually give little thought to the value of water, but when it’s scarce, we treasure every drop. After all, without water, we cannot live. Likewise, Habakkuk suggests that without faith we cannot live either. Like water, faith is colorless, tasteless, and odorless, but still quite refreshing.

“Increase our faith,” the apostles pleaded. Jesus responded with a lesson that suggests what matters in life is not the quantity but the quality of one’s faith. Simply put, he told them that faith is animated by our way of living; a point one student endeavored to explain to his skeptical teacher.

Being an atheist, his philosophy professor began class by asking him, “You’re a Christian, aren’t you, son?” “Yes sir,” the student said. “So you believe in God?” “Absolutely,” the student replied.

“Have you ever felt your Jesus, tasted your Jesus or smelt your Jesus? Have you ever had any sensory perception of Jesus Christ, or God for that matter?” “No, sir, I’m afraid I haven’t.” “Yet you still believe in him?” “Yes, sir,” the student replied. “Well, according to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn’t exist. What do you say to that, son?” “Nothing,” he answered. “I only have my faith.” “Ah, faith,” the Professor repeated. “And that is the problem science has with God. There is no evidence, only faith.” 

The student stood quietly for a moment, before asking a question of his own. “Professor, is there such thing as heat?” “Yes,” the Professor replied. “And is there such a thing as cold?” “Yes, son, there’s cold too.”

“No sir, there isn’t. You can have lots of heat, even super-heat, mega-heat, a little heat or no heat, but we don’t have anything called ‘cold’. We can hit up to 458 degrees below zero, which is no heat, but we can’t go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold; otherwise we would be able to go colder than the lowest -458 degrees.

“Absolute zero is the total absence of heat. You see, sir, cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. We can measure heat in thermal units because heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it. 

“What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?” “Yes,” the Professor replied. “What is night if it isn’t darkness?”  “You’re wrong again, sir. Darkness is the absence of light. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light, but if you have no light you have darkness, but in reality, darkness isn’t. Otherwise, you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn’t you?”

“So what point are you making, young man?” “My point is, your philosophical premise is flawed to start with, and so your conclusion must also be flawed.”

The Professor’s face could not hide his surprise this time. “Flawed? Can you explain how?” “Sir, you are working on the premise of duality,” the student explained. “You view the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science can’t even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one.”

“Now tell me, Professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?” “If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, young man, yes, of course I do.” “Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?” The Professor shook his head. “Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you now not a scientist, but a preacher? Let me give you an example of what I mean.” 

The student looked around the room. “Has anyone in the class ever seen the Professor’s brain?” The class broke out into laughter. “Is there anyone here who has ever heard or felt the Professor’s brain? No one appears to have done so. So, with all due respect, sir, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, so if science says you have no brain, how can we trust your lectures?”

Now the room is silent. The Professor just stared at the student. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the old man answered, “I guess you’ll have to take them on faith.”

“Now, you accept that there is faith, and, in fact, faith exists with life,” the student continued. “Now, sir, is there such a thing as evil?” The Professor responded, “Of course, there is. We see it everyday. It is in the daily example of man’s inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil.” 

The student replied, “Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God’s love present in his heart. It’s like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light.”

Sitting down, perhaps the professor finally got the picture that faith, like any glass of refreshing water and life itself, is a priceless gift from God to be valued, appreciated and lived from the womb to the tomb. A little faith can go a long way, just as a tiny seed will spring up into a great tree.

This well-known parable of the rich man and Lazarus brings Several questions to mind. First, why is the rich man in hell, this place of “torment?” Jesus didn’t say that the man acquired his wealth dishonestly. We aren’t told that he is to blame for Lazarus’ predicament or that Lazarus begged from him and was refused. We are not told if the rich man committed any evil deeds. All we know is that he feasted well and dressed in fine clothing, as any rich person likely would, so why then, did he go to hell?

The reason we have trouble pinpointing why this man is in hell may have a lot to do with how we think of sin. We often think that we sin only through thoughts, words, and deeds, but lets not forget that another way we sin is by omission. During the Confiteor, which we said moments ago, we admitted, “I have greatly sinned, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do.” Too often, we overlook the sin of omission in our lives yet this parable reminds us that this sin can send a person to hell. This happened to the rich man.

The poor man, known as Lazarus, was lying at his door, and rich man couldn’t care less. “Whatever happens to him is none of my concern,” he most likely said to himself. In the meantime, dogs came and went, licking the poor man’s sores. When he died, the angels carried him to heaven.

The rich man had done nothing wrong to Lazarus but he did fail to do a good deed. He failed to reach out and share any of his blessings with the poor man. The rich man committed a sin of omission, and for that he went to hell.

This raises the second question: why did Lazarus go to heaven? So far as we know, he never performed a single good deed. What qualified him for heaven? The clue lies in his name. In biblical stories of this nature, names are significant because they often convey the basic character of the person. In fact, this is the only parable of Jesus where a character in the story has a name, so the name must be significant for understanding why Lazarus went to heaven.

The name, Lazarus, is the Greek form of a Hebrew name, Eliezer, which means, “God is my help.” There is the clue. Lazarus is a poor person who believes and trusts in God. So he found himself nestled in Abraham’s bosom in paradise because of his faith and trust in God, not because he was materially poor. Keep in mind that poverty can easily make a person bitter toward God, angry and even criminal.

According to this parable, one that undoubtedly startled Jesus’ audience, the gospel measurement for heaven or hell is determined not by one’s wealth but in seeing. Jesus warns that spiritual blindness and spiritual indifference condemns people. That lesson shouldn’t surprise you. At the end of Matthew’s gospel, we are told, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” In other words, when did we see you and yet not see you?  And Jesus told them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it for one of these, you did not do it for me. And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

The rich man saw Lazarus hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, and sick but he chose not to see him. He was spiritually blind. In not seeing, he did not act and in not acting, he omitted the compassion and sharing he should have given Lazarus. Thus, having no concern for anyone but himself, the rich man is condemned to hell for his sin of omission.

Only when it was too late, did the rich man understand the message God had been trying to send him through Moses and the prophets. What about us? When we listen to Jesus and the prophets, do we really get the message? I doubt anyone here wants to spend eternity in hell but that could be our fate if we ignore the advice Jesus is giving us here.

A Christ-like sensitivity to those in need enables us to see their need and respond accordingly. This parable confronts us not because we are wickedly rich and insensitive…hardly that…but because we so often fail to act in a compassionate manner. This parable challenges us to open our eyes and see, then to act upon what we see.

What would be your response if a total stranger walked up to you and asked if you had any spare change? Lacking sensitivity, we could easily say no without much thought. When you see panhandlers on street corners, what is your inclination? Lacking sensitivity, we could quickly judge that our spare change would be wasted on booze or drugs.

The letter to Timothy urges us to pursue a life of virtue. Now that may sound quaint and old fashioned to you yet what is more important if we desire to be in heaven someday than striving to be virtuous in this lifetime?

This parable wasn’t merely a warning about hell. Here Jesus is challenging our sensibilities. How might we overcome our avarice and become more caring to those less fortunate? In the narthex, we have bins to collect donations to provide Good Cheer, our local food bank, with provisions they can’t afford to buy. You may not see those who are less fortunate than you are, but you are being mindful of their needs when you donate a personal hygiene product, a paper product, or a protein product each weekend when you come to Mass. If heaven is our quest, we can’t afford to stand by idly enjoying our own riches and freedom if Lazarus is at our door.

There are many places in the Gospels where Jesus used tough harsh words to catch the attention of his listeners. In today’s gospel he says that we cannot be his disciples if we come to him without hating father and mother,wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even our own lives.

What kind of talk is this? Jesus isn’t telling us to ignore the Fourth commandment and no longer honor our parents, noris he telling us to literally sell our possessions. Jesus often used hyperboles to illustrate the costly demands of being one of His disciples, which is often overlooked.

To be a disciple of Christ means to make time first for the things of God and live beyond the insignificant things that we throw into our lives. When Jesus speaks about hating father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters and even our own lives, he is using apocalyptic language, which is shocking, telling us to hate anything and anyone that causes us to lose our focus on Him.

Last Thursday marked the 22nd anniversary of the death of St. Teresa of Calcutta. Many of us have been blessed with being witnesses to her life. We all saw how she would not allow anything to get in the way of her serving God. She and her sisters would spend hours in prayer so they could spend hours serving God’s presence in others. In her own way, Mother Teresa taught us today’s gospel: we need to hate anything that could keep us from being a disciple of Christ, including the perceptions we have of ourselves.

Many stories exist about this saint but I suspect that you haven’t heard this one. Fr. John Fullenbach, a theologian, contacted Mother Teresa’s sisters in Calcutta and asked if he could join them for a few weeks. They welcomed him to join their work. He flew to Calcutta, found the Missionaries of Charities’ hospice, and had just finished telling the sister in charge that he was willing to do anything they needed to be done, when another sister came running in saying that there was a man dying on the streets. The sister in charge turned to him and said, “Father, could you please go with her and bring the man back here to the hospice?”

Fr. Fullenbach followed the sister through the back alleys of Calcutta, in and out of narrow streets, and finally came upon what looked from the distance to be a heap of dirty rags. It was the dying man. Fr. Fullenbach bent over him and tried to comfort him and told him that he was going to take him to a nice, clean place where he could be cared for. The man opened his eyes; saw that it was a priest talking to him, and spit in his face. The priest felt a rage rising up within him.

He came all the way from Rome to help these people. And this man responded by spitting on him. The sister explained that most of the people on the streets are not Catholic, but we still need to care for them. So, Fr. Fullenbach picked the man up and carried him back to the hospice where the man was cleaned, given fresh clothes, fed a bowl of soup, and put on a bed to die with dignity.

The sisters then asked Father to help out by rolling up some clean strips of cloth that could be used for bandages. He was doing this for about an hour, rolling the strips, and still feeling upset over the man spitting on him. Suddenly the whole hospice shook with the screams of a little girl. On the other side of the room there was a poor little girl, about nine, and covered in sores. She was standing in a basin of water as one of the young sisters was trying to clean her, bathe her sores. The little girl was enraged, hysterical, throwing a fit. She kept screaming and kicking and splashing the sister. Fr. Fullenbach was watching this horrible scene when he noticed that everyone was looking at one of the doors.

There stood Mother Teresa. She had heard the racket and was coming in. She started walking to the little girl. “Well,” Fr. Fullenbach thought, “Now we’ll see what a saint is made of.” As she approached the little girl, she waved the young sister away. The girl saw her and kept screaming, and then began splashing Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa kept walking towards her, very slowly, with a smile of love on her face. By the time she got to the girl, she was drenched, but she didn’t seem to mind. Instead, she just kept smiling. Then she held out her arms. The child fell into them and just cried and cried and cried. Mother Teresa let her cry for as long as she wanted. Then the little girl let Mother Teresa wash her and put clean clothes on her. Fr. Fullenbach said to himself, “And that is what a saint is made of.”

Our lesson is this: we need to hate all that keeps us from the Lord and love all that brings us closer to him for nothing is more important than serving God. Not our stuff, not our likes, not our perceived position among our peers, not even the people in our lives. We must not allow anything to stand in the way of being a disciple of Jesus Christ. The price of discipleship is total commitment so consider those parts of your life that are actually tearing you away from Christ.

Simply put, if being one of his disciples really matters to you, then faith must be your priority, otherwise, your relationship with Jesus could grow shallow. Through the intercession of St. Teresa of Calcutta, may we have the spiritual strength we need to truly be one of the Lord’s disciples.

If Jesus were to give this parable today, he might have made his point about humility with the difference between first class and economy class on an airplane. If one who exalts himself will be humbled, it would be that passenger who sneaks into an empty seat in the first class cabin. An alert flight attendant will soon escort that now embarrassed soul to the back of the plane while other passengers will be watching and smirking. The readings today stress the importance of humility, especially for those in high places. Modesty often comes to mind when we think of humility. That seems to be what Jesus is suggesting when he tells the guests where to sit at the banquet table. Sirach also advises us to conduct our affairs with humility yet this virtue has fallen on hard times. Self-help books abound instead promoting assertiveness training, “feel good” therapy and affirmation. Humility is not the in thing, which turns people on right now. That makes sense if our perception of humility is the award winner who says, “I really don’t deserve this,” or the habitual drunk who laments, “I’m no good.” Such humility under the guise of modesty or self-deprecation denies who we really are. Putting ourselves down or downplaying our abilities is not what humility is about, at least that is not the meaning portrayed in these readings. Authentic Christian humility is the recognition of our status before God. Humble people can look at the heights and depths of their beings without becoming proud over one attribute or discouraged by another. Humility allows us to accept our mistakes, admit our limitations and even laugh at our failures. Jesus may come across as Miss Manners in the gospel but he isn’t talking here about table manners or social protocol. Rather he is speaking about eschatological etiquette. What really matters if we care to spend the rest of our days in the kingdom of heaven is not our status in the sight of others but our status in the sight of God. Keep in mind the audience that Jesus is addressing. Since they were diligent followers of the law, the Pharisees viewed themselves as the holiest people in Israel. By elevating themselves, they were quick to dismiss many others as totally unworthy of ever being seated at the heavenly feast. Consider the guests whom Jesus speaks of in his parable. The rich and the poor have exactly the same worth in the sight of God. As a person of wealth, the rich guest is superior in that one dimension of human achievement yet at the same time, he or she could be inferior to the poor guests in all other dimensions, e.g., love, compassion, and mercy. Once again, Jesus cautions his listeners, “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” We tend to measure our self worth by comparing ourselves to others as the Pharisees did yet in the end, our special talents, abilities, attractiveness, or success do not add to our worth in the sight of God. When people ridicule and make fun of us, they do not detract one bit from God’s love for us. When they praise and honor us for our success, they do not detract one bit from the fact that we are still sinners. St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta comes to mind as one who approached life with the quality of humility that Jesus has in mind here. In her ministry she reached out to the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. She was able to find God in anyone she met no matter who they were and what they did. Many religious people look in the wrong places for God and get sidetracked by all the wrong issues. After two thousand years the church is still struggling to embrace the vulnerable, the poor, the unclean, the sinner in our midst. They stand in front of us, seeking to be welcomed and accepted as sisters and brothers. In biblical times there was a residual prejudice against those who were physically or mentally impaired. In our time there is a residual prejudice against those who are from south of the border, gay or lesbian, or not Caucasian. Jesus is challenging us to open our eyes and welcome those who through no fault of their own are shunned by our society. Imagine how society might be impacted if the followers of Jesus allowed humility to uproot our arrogance, anger, greed, pride and ambition? We are being challenged to be truly who we are at all times, in all places, with everyone we meet, not just with those who can pay us back. The late Karl Popper, a British philosopher observed that society will only heal when it takes the interest of the weakest of the weak among us first. The gospel today reminds us that Jesus not only had a big heart but big eyes. He observes us in all that we do. Before we can learn to love like him, we must learn to see like him those who are in front of us. Sirach’s opening line provides advice we must really take to heart. “My child, conduct your affairs with humility, and you will be loved more than a giver of gifts. Humble yourself the more, the greater you are, and you will find favor with God.”

These readings are difficult, very difficult. They are difficult because they remind us of the true cost of discipleship. To be a disciple of Jesus is to be inflamed with the love of God. Consider the plight of Jeremiah. He was persecuted because he dared to proclaim the truth of God. Life would have been easier for him had he kept quiet, but no, he dared to speak out. The princes who did not want to hear his message mocked him, then, they threw him into a muddy cistern to die. Jeremiah was rescued but the near death experience did not silence him. He would not reject the burning of God’s truth within his bones. We then heard a passage from the Letter to the Hebrews. The author tells the second and third generation Christians to keep their eyes fixed on Jesus and persevere in running the race set before them. Keep in mind that being a disciple in those times was perilous. Then and now, being a follower of Jesus was never promised to be an easy undertaking. The early Christians were reminded that Jesus himself endured much opposition from sinners who rejected him and his message. He did this so that they and we could endure the wrath of sinners who reject him. If, like them, you think being a Christian is too demanding, just think, you haven’t resisted the evil one to the “point of shedding blood.” Finally we came to a very demanding gospel passage that began vividly. “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” Jesus wasn’t talking about forest fires. He was talking about the fire of God’s love. Alas, he knows that too many people have yet to experience that love because not all his disciples endeavor to truly love others and God. He then delivers this rather startling statement, “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three…” Yes, Jesus cautions us that being one of his disciples is costly. We don’t want to hear that choosing Christ can put our lives at odds with those around us or that we will be persecuted for our beliefs and mocked. Instead we want our religion to be easy and private. We don’t want to have to pay a price for living our faith but sooner or later we may have to since we live in a culture that opposes many tenets of our faith. When we encounter resistance to contemporary moral issues like capital punishment, the treatment of immigrants, racism, caring for the poor, abortion, artificial contraception, sexual activity outside of marriage, porn, to name but a few, we are at times tempted to be quiet on the matter or even join the opposition and reject the moral truths of our faith. But if we are to be true disciples, we can do neither. In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes a distinction between what he calls cheap grace and costly grace. He didn’t use the term grace in the manner that we Catholics do, as something coming from God. Rather for him grace was another word for religion. To paraphrase Bonhoeffer, “cheap religion is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, or communion without confession. Cheap religion is a religion without the cross, a religion without Jesus Christ.” Cheap religion is to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ as this, “Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are.” Costly religion confronts us as a gracious call to truly follow Jesus. It comes as a word of forgiveness to the contrite heart and broken spirit.Bonhoeffer calls this costly because it compels us to be willing to die for Christ, which as you and I both know, many martyrs have literally or figuratively. Because we have chosen Christ, we are sometimes mocked perhaps even within our family for our beliefs. The pseudo-intellectuals of our times belittle the truths of our faith as children’s tales or may even think of us as Jesus freaks. Because we have chosen Christ, we are confronted with difficult decisions at times that we need to make if we are to be true to our convictions as Catholic Christians. We embrace the cost of discipleship when those of us who are married or ordained remain committed to our vows in difficult times as well as easy times. There are no perfect marriages because marriage is the union of two, normal yet imperfect people. The cost of discipleship demands that spouses accept each other’s limitations and love each other even when they don’t like each other. We embrace the cost of discipleship because God’s kingdom is more important than even one’s family. Infused with God’s love, we are more concerned about others than ourselves. We are more concerned with their eternal salvation than anything they can do to us in this lifetime. We know God loves us and we know that God wants others to experience His Love. Filled with the warmth of his love, we will happily join the Lord in setting the world on fire with love. And we will do this no matter what personalcost this entails: For the cost of discipleship is temporary, but the Treasure of God’s Love is forever.