13h Sunday in Ordinary Time

13^th Sunday in Ordinary Time 

Mt 10:37-42

Today's Gospel reading from Matthew is not an easy one on which to preach.  Oddly, over thirteen years I've never preached on these particular verses.  Apparently I've been in hiding on the 13^th Sunday in Ordinary time every time Matthew came around in the lectionary. Overall, it was a good idea to hide.  As I was puzzling over how to approach the gospel I got a text from Fr. Peter Li Jiang-tao, a Chinese friend, asking if I could read over and edit his homily.  He recently moved into a parish just down the street from the theology school and had today's 8 AM Mass, I pretty much had to interrupt my work to get his done so he could put in the corrections.  We had both been working on the same gospel at the same time.  I was still in the scrawling unrelated thoughts and smacking my forehead phase while he was finished.   A teenage experience illustrated the difficulty preaching on this narrative.

'When I was a teenager I invited a friend to go to my parish for Mass.  He was interested in Christianity and wanted to learn more about it.  I remember that the Gospel passage was Luke's parallel to this passage.   As we walked home my friend said, "Hey, Jiang-tao, I have learned about the teachings of Confucius, Buddha, and Lao-zi.  None of them ever taught their followers to carry a cross and hate their parents and relatives.  Why did Jesus teach in such a way.  It is too harsh for his followers."  Peter's friend was correct.  It is harsh. It is off-putting.  

In his version of this teaching Luke wrote, "If anyone who comes to me and does not take up his cross and hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple."  As we just heard, Matthew softened the sentiment a bit by writing, "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me."  However, both commands are harsh no matter if they are proclaimed in Mandarin or English.  Both versions can cause us to bristle. Both are difficult sayings that we have to work through. 

Peter noted that it took years in college, seminary, and his early experience as a priest to figure out these verses.  One of the points he made had me reach for the phone to ask if I could use part of his explanation.  

Jesus is not commanding us to hate family members in the way we understand the word hate today.  Rather, he is telling us to realize who we truly are, and to whom we truly belong. We can say I am a daughter, a son, a teacher, a social worker, a nurse . . . . the list of self-descriptors can go on for pages.  Each of these identities shapes our lives, and perhaps the lives of others,  but none contains the fullness of those lives.  Our true identity grows out of being created in the image of God and being a child of God.  That is the identity out of which our other identities sprout, be they personal, social, professional, or religious.  We must keep in mind that before we assume any of the roles by which we define ourselves, indeed, from the moment of conception, we are sons and daughters of the Father.  Peter's take on this radical nature of discipleship pointed out something I'd never considered or heard.  

When Jesus makes such radical demands of us he is speaking first of all about himself and his own radical discipleship to the Father.  Out of obedience to the Father, Jesus descended from heaven and dwelt among us.  Through that obedience and because of his love for us he died on the cross and brought us forgiveness of sin and the gift of eternal life.  We can only follow Jesus when we carry our own crosses, the crosses that are sure to fall on our shoulders in the future, and the crosses we are bearing now as a result of the loneliness and pain of quarantine, social distancing, and the chaos the country is experiencing.

Another commentator augments Fr. Li's  interpretation when he notes, "This is the second time in Matthew's Gospel that Jesus instructs the disciples that if they wish to follow him, they must take up the cross." This demand tells Jesus' followers, both then and now, that serving the Lord must come before any other purposes in life, before all those identities we carry, since it is through following Jesus that we gain eternal life. 

The second half of today's gospel describes the result of following Jesus.  Only when we have made that radical commitment will we be able to recognize the prophet we are to receive,   We will recognize the righteous only through our discipleship.  And the compassion that compels us to give a glass of water to one of the little ones will grow out of that radical love that gave us the strength to carry the cross in the first place.  

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And so it continues . . . . The photos below are from the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.  Wouldn't mind being locked in there for a few days with an unlimited supply of photo cards and lots of battery, or at least both chargers.  Stunning place and a gold mine for photographers.  

Several years ago a Chinese SJ friend visited.  I took him there with no plans for afterwards.  Good thing.  He took photos of all 72 chapels.  We tacitly agreed that we would split up and I could do my own photography.  It was a great day.  Eager to get back there for a Slovenian Mass on the first Sunday of some month.

Show me a chandelier and the camera will be in evidence in moments.

The Shrine of Our Lady of Częstochowa.  Note the small round-framed picture of John Paul II.

Votive lights on the lower level.

.  +Fr. Jack, SJ, MD

Corpus Christi

Homily for the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ 

Dt 8:2-3, 14b-16a

Ps 147

1 Cor 10:16-17

Jn 6:51-58

Jesuits are oftentimes described as contemplatives in action.  Unlike our Carthusian brothers who live in the total silence of monastic cloister contemplating the word of God, praying for the world, and rarely leaving the charterhouse, we move around.  A lot.  Were you to have asked my mom how many phone numbers and addresses I had in my first ten years as a Jesuit--it is now twenty-three--she would have thrown her hands up and muttered something along the lines of . . .  well, we won't go down that road. At first she carefully erased the old address and phone number before putting the new ones in her book.  After she died, however, I found a bunch of reused sticky notes with recipes on them and my address along the edge. In pencil.

Jesuit Father Jerome Nadal noted that the Jesuit’s cloister is the highway.  Our work, oftentimes very mobile work, drives our prayer and our prayer, oftentimes entered into while on the move, drives our work.  Overall, action seems to trump contemplation most of the time.  It is a feast such as this, the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, or Corpus Christi, that reminds all of us of the contemplative side of our lives. This feast pulls us into the contemplative  because it is an abstract feast that does not recall a specific event. Our liturgical calendar is crammed with feasts—Christmas, Easter, The Ascension, The Annunciation—that recall specific events in the history of salvation and in the history of the world. 

  

Christmas, Easter and the other solemnities are events with a narrative flow, a story, that can be told and retold.  We can place ourselves in the action and participate in that history.  We can close our eyes and, with only a little imagination, see the events unfold on an inner movie screen.  Indeed, this composition of scene and entering into the action is the linchpin of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. On this Feast, however, we have to sit back in silence.  There is no script.  There is no “story line.” There is no cast of characters. We are forced to be less active and to enter more deeply into contemplative.  

We contemplate the gift of Christ present; truly and substantially present, in the Eucharist.  It is overwhelming to consider that Christ is present in the transubstantiated bread and wine we receive at communion. It is daunting to consider that  Christ is present in the Eucharist that we adore on the altar.  

For some, for too many, the real presence is a stumbling block.  They can understand symbol.  They can understand sign.  They can understand metaphor and simile.  But, they can’t understand real.  They refuse to wrap their minds around true presence.

The centrality of the Bread of Life is apparent in all three readings, the psalm, and the antiphon.  We heard in the first reading, "He . . . let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, . . . in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord."  The manna with which God fed the Israelites, prefigured and preceded the Bread of Life.  Perhaps even today, we can only appreciate the Eucharist and the privilege of receiving it,  when our spirits are hungry and yearning for that communion.

Paul asks two important questions in his letter to the Corinthians. They can be condensed into one answer: The cup we drink and the bread we share is a participation in the Body and Blood of Christ that reminds us of the communal nature of our faith.  A reminder that is necessary daily. 

I briefly thought that simply reading the gospel a second time would be a more eloquent homily than anything I could write. The most important statement in this gospel reminds us of this feast:  "For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink."  True not symbolic.

The Body and Blood of Christ is an unending source of nourishment, sustenance, and comfort.  From the bit of bread blessed, broken, and shared at the Last Supper, Jesus has nourished billions upon billions with the bread of life and the blood of salvation.  Today is not a feast for which we cook a special dinner. It is not a feast that needs a pageant. The only thing we need do on this feast is to sit in silence so as to contemplate this great gift, the bread of eternal life, the Body and Blood of our Lord the source of nourishment for the journey.

And to end that contemplation with Deo Gratias;

Thanks be to God. 

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Thirteen years ago Corpus Christi was on 10 June,   It was also the day of my first Mass at Campion Center in Weston, MA.  To say that I am calmer today than I was 13 years ago is an understatement.  Every year on Corpus Christi I can celebrate that I've gone through the lectionary yet again.  It is a good feeling. 

June 9, 2007 was "Corpus Christi Eve" and the day on which Andy Downing,SJ, Matt Monnig, SJ, and I were ordained at St. Ignatius Church on the edge of the BC campus.  Sean Cardinal O'Malley was the ordaining prelate.  The prostration during the Litany of the Saints is one of the most moving parts of the ordination, particularly for friends and family.  

The sacred vessels prepared for Mass at a men's monastic community.  The host and wine are awaiting the miracle of transubstantiation.

The chalice and paten were prepared for an Eastern Rite liturgy where the bread is leavened and then soaked in wine. 

+Fr. Jack, SJ, MD

Homily for Trinity Sunday

Today is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, a celebration that compels us to contemplate the essential dogma of our faith; it reminds us of the foundation of our faith.  We recall the Trinity every time we begin and end Mass.  We invoke the Trinity every time we pray.  We stand present before the Trinity whenever we say: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The Trinitarian formula is: In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  It is NOT the pathetically absurd gender-free version currently  in vogue among some circles that choose to begin prayer in the name of a creator, a redeemer, and a sanctifier. This aberration is linguistically awkward, theologically wrong, and reflects an inaccurate understanding of the nature of personhood.  

A person is not defined by a function.  A person is more than a function or a collection of functions.  Indeed, many people today express offense and outrage (among the more popular indoor sports in the U.S.) if they are described by their function, or, in the world of medicine, by their disease(s).   No person is fully defined by a function or several functions. The dogma of the Holy Trinity is One God in Three Divine Persons, not one object with three distinct functions.  

The Trinitarian formula--In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--is critical to the Church's sacraments, from baptism to the anointing of the dying.  The sign of the cross begins and ends everything the Church does. As it should and as it must.

We read in The Catechism of the Catholic Church, (#234):  “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in Himself.  It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the hierarchy of the truths of faith.”

Every time we make the sign of the cross we recall the mystery of the Trinity, a mystery that remains incomprehensible despite the many books attempting to explain it.  Each book may contain a fragment of insight into the nature of the Trinity.  However, the sum of all the books written does not come close to capturing the full essence of the Trinity.  The dogma of the Trinity depends on faith and can only be understood through the eyes of faith. This raises the question: What is faith?  

A dictionary definition describes faith as  “Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.”  The Letter to the Hebrews describes it as, "the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen. . . ."  By faith we understand that "the universe was ordered by the word of God, so that what is visible came into being through the invisible."  Thus, we must remain-- or become--comfortable with faith at its most mysterious and impenetrable, with the truth of that which is beyond understanding. While there is no chance of ever "explaining" the Trinity or "solving" the mystery of the Trinity, no one can declare him or herself a Christian if he or she denies the Trinity.

The word Trinity does not appear in scripture.  The understanding of the Trinity grew in the earliest years of the Church as she began to consider what Jesus said and did. Jesus always speaks of His Father as distinct from Himself but He also notes that  “I and the Father are One.”  The same is true of the Holy Spirit.  When Jesus refers to His oneness with the Father he is referring to substance and NOT to the sharply defined functions of creation, redemption, or enlightenment.  Thus, the ancient creeds in Greek used homoousion (one substance), which Latin translated into consubstantialem.  The English consubstantial, a word we will pronounce in a few moments, comes directly from the Latin. One essence or one substance has nothing to do with three specifically delimited and definable functions. 

The Trinity is a mystery. It is a mystery that, rather than being dissected into component parts or functions, compels us to sing in praise and thanksgiving with the psalmist: 

"Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of our fathers,
praiseworthy and exalted above all forever;
And blessed is your holy and glorious name,
praiseworthy and exalted above all for all ages."

And to conclude with the doxology that ends all prayer in the Divine Office: 

"Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.  

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, 

world without end."  

Amen.

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One of the advantage of quarantine is that it is forcing us to became reacquainted with solitude and silence.  The advantage of solitude is that it makes it possible to notice things that might otherwise go unnoticed, to pick up on the little details of life that remain invisible to most of us most of the time.  The photos below are from a year ago when I was at a monastery to celebrate the Holy Week liturgies.  There was a lot of alone time and a splendid milieu in which to shoot.  

Except for very rare occasions do not go shooting when anyone is tagging along.  If it is another photographer he is going to want to be doing his own thing.  If it is a non-photographer it can be somewhere between frustrating and boring.    Neither one is a fair situation for the other.  

+Fr. Jack, SJ, MD

Pentecost Sunday

Acts 2:1-11

Ps 104

1 Cor 12:3-7,12-13

Jn 20:19-23

The reading from Acts points out a fact that is generally missed, ignored, or unknown.  A feast named Pentecost is not unique to Christianity. The Church's Feast of Pentecost is historically, symbolically, and calendrically linked to the ancient Jewish feast of Pentecost, a feast more commonly known as Shavuot. 

The word Pentecost derives from the Greek root meaning fifty days.  The Jewish Pentecost commemorates Moses receiving the Ten Commandments fifty days after the Exodus.  In the Jewish liturgical year Pentecost or Shavuot falls fifty days  after the first seder of Passover. Shavuot began Friday evening and ended last night.  In the Catholic liturgical year Pentecost falls fifty days after Easter, with Easter Sunday counted as day number one.  Just as Moses received the wisdom of the Decalogue fifty days after the Exodus from Egypt, the disciples, and by extension the Church, received the wisdom of the Holy Spirit fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection, His exodus from death. 

The first reading is dramatic. Wind.  Fire.  Speaking in tongues. The populace was shocked when they heard the poorly educated and unsophisticated Galileans speaking whatever language was necessary to tell the city's many visitors the Good News of Jesus.  Scholars sometimes refer to the speaking in tongues as “the reversal of Babel,” the undoing of the event that caused the earth's multiplicity of languages, a multiplicity that is a source of division among the peoples. That division and periodic conflict will remain,  no matter how many COEXIST bumper stickers travel the highway.

At Pentecost, that which had been split apart  by man's pride at Babel was rejoined through Jesus’ obedience to the Father.

Upon the descent of the Holy Spirit, that which had been shattered by hubris, was reassembled by Jesus sending of the Holy Spirit.

Paul wrote, “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.”  We celebrate those manifestations today, we celebrate those gifts of the Spirit.  Each of us is given gifts in various combinations.  These gifts are neither identical to nor interchangeable with the gifts given to anyone else.  A major life task is to discover our unique gifts and develop them.  

In some strata of American society it is fashionable, if not required, to deny even the possibility, of differences and distinctions, abilities and inabilities, talents and complete lack of talent.  The reality is, however, that no one can be anything he or she wants to be simply by wanting it. It was never true.  It will never be true. 

Some in government and society go so far as to deny fundamental biological differences with delusional intensity, demanding that others buy into that delusion, a term psychiatrists call folie-á-deux. The result of denying differences in the name of equality results in a bizarre pseudo-equality that is a malignant form of exclusivity. This pseudo-equality fuels a heightened sense of specialness.  As a result each individual or group insists that his, her, or the group's specialness must be recognized as the most special of all specialness.

Med school professors like to share a number of parodies regarding the body during anatomy or physiology class. The general outline is an argument among organs or body parts about which of them is the most important,  which is the supreme controller, which is the MOST critical to the life, comfort, and survival of the organism.  But, except for the appendix, that does appear to be useless, there is no most important organ.  All of the body's organs are equally necessary.  Each has unique functions that cannot be replaced by another.  The lungs cannot do the work of the liver.  The liver cannot do the work of the heart. The pancreas certainly cannot replace the kidneys.  If one organ or organ-system fails the body dies as one by one the other organs and organ systems fail.  

No one can become anything he or she wants to be simply by wanting to be that thing or pretending to be it. No one can become something simply by "identifying" as it.  We must all live within limits that are chromosomal, physiological, psychological, and cognitive among many others. Some  of these limits are inborn others are acquired.  We all have strengths and abilities.  We all have weaknesses, inabilities, and disabilities. It will never not be so. The only true equality, the exclusive lowest common denominator among humans, is that we are sinners. We are sinners loved by God, but, sinners nonetheless. We can never afford to forget that. 

The gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit have been bestowed upon us. Our first task is to cooperate with those gifts and graces in the manner to which each of us is called. The second task is to use those gifts and graces to share the revelation of Jesus with those whom we meet using whatever language necessary.

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Had planned on posting this yesterday but, a wretched night sleep and total exhaustion after returning from Mass at noon and, to use two words from on old Steve Martin routine:  I  Forgot.  Mea culpa.  Slept several solid hours last night and then remembered upon awakening.  

Photos from the Sevenhill Jesuit Retreat House in Sevenhill, South Australia.  Sevenhill is the only active Jesuit winery in the world.  The retreat involved spending thirty days on over 1000 acres of active winery.  The silence at night was total.  

St. Aloysius Church.  An active parish.  Tourists to the winery frequently dropped in.  For that reason we were shown the key to the choir loft so as to be able to pray in the church if we wished without being disturbed.

 Sevenhill had an unusal amount of rain during January-February 2011.  Much of the harvest could not be brought in.  In the words of Frank Sinatra:  It Was A Very Good Year:  NOT.  However the photo opportunities.  This was taken at night in total darkness using a flash, something I don't often do.  

A moth caught in a spider web.

Loved the shape of this candelabra that stood in front of a statue of Mary. 

A study of the color pattern on a concrete wall.  Australian light can be intense.  Remember, January-February is summer in Australia.  Three years earlier one of my friends did his retreat here and almost left the retreat due to crushing heat.  I was a little anxious about that.  However, if anything the weather resembled Boston in October more than late July.  I didn't complain too much.  

One of the stained glass windows such as that seen below was responsible or the above shot.  The play of light was terrific. 

We'd had a downpour one night.  These decorative lamps presented an interesting opportunity.  Wish I had gone back at night with a lighter.  However, doing the long retreat is draining.  I don't think I was awake after 9 PM any night.  Generally woke about 2:30 to begin prayer and recite the office of readings.  There is a bit of the Trappist at work in me. 

Walked by this pond several times daily as it lay between the main retreat house and the small house in which three of us were lodged because there was insufficient space in the retreat house.  I will be perpetually grateful that I stayed with two other guys in the 'farmhouse' for too many reasons than I could possibly list. 

One of the men from Vietnam (we were a very international community of twelve) doing his evening meditation.  

 +Fr. Jack, SJ, MD