With Apologies to ABBA, Money, Money, Money: Homily for the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

Wis 7:7-11

Ps 90:12-12, 13-15, 16-17

Heb 4:12-13

Mk 10:17-30

 

Some of the most exquisite images in scripture describe the attributes of Wisdom.  Wisdom is not innate or genetic. It is never present at birth or the early stages of development, which go up to 25 or older.  It has nothing to do with IQ. It has even less to do with educational level or number of advanced degrees.  Wisdom is acquired and molded through long experience of success and failure, of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. It is the special possession of those with a listening heart who have the courage to enter into silence, prayer, and self-reflection.

 

Wisdom defines and supports civilization. It is fundamental to being human.  Wisdom definitively separates us from all lower animals, no matter how cute, cuddly, majestic, or clever they might be, only humans are capable of wisdom. Somewhere in the bowels of MIT worker bees are slaving away at artificial intelligence.  I’ve yet to hear of anyone working on artificial Wisdom.  A computer can be programmed to check the spelling of and translate the lyrical passage just proclaimed, but no computer can be programmed to create something as splendid from its circuit boards. 

 

The Wisdom literature is not inert. It is not an historical curiosity that explained the world to the benighted, non-scientific, and unsophisticated peoples of the Ancient Near East.  They weren’t all that different from us today.  Wisdom recognizes and supports all that God does in the world.  It should undergird all that we do in the world.

 

Though there is a pragmatic dimension to it, the Wisdom literature is not a handbook along the lines of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  It is much more than that.  Wisdom reveals the mystery of God, a mystery we cannot begin to approach through any literature but the mystical, the numinous, the poetic, and perhaps through music.  We come closer to understanding the mystery of God through the poetry of the psalms than we do through books of systematic theology or historical-literary criticism of the Gospels.

 

British neuropsychiatrist Sir Michael Trimble published The Soul in the Brain in 2007. The book emphasizes neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, and neurophysiology while outlining the role of the brain in the genesis of language and art.

 

Language and art are important components of religious belief and perhaps the most important means of transmitting that belief from generation to generation.

It is a brilliant book that also considers the ancient wisdom of philosophers and theologians.

 

Whether speaking of the Ancient Near East or the early years of the 21st century

one must ask what Jesus meant by the startling and uncomfortable image

of the camel passing through the needle's eye more easily than the wealthy.  Does wealth automatically condemn?  Are all the wealthy excluded

from the Kingdom of God? More specifically, what income level is damning?

Should I have saved all my W-2s?

 

Jesus is not warning against wealth as wealth.  He is warning about a human behavior that hasn't changed in millennia. That behavior is the drive to acquire more and more wealth.  The drive that demands more and more time, energy, and attention to maintain and increase that wealth, to the detriment of caring for and about others, if not outright destroying them. Too often the more one has

the less one shares. 

 

We've become almost jaded to news detailing the latest financial scandals

involving obscenely paid executives who appear to want even more. The saga of the recently imprisoned Elizabeth Holmes, the Stanford dropout foundress of Theranos Corporation, is a tale of greed mixed with the pursuit of wealth, fame, and magazine covers. She combined those desires with a callous and criminal disregard for the health of others.

 

As a society we tolerate, and even rationalize, the greed of overpaid athletes and their agents whose whiny demands for more and more astronomical salaries, have pushed the cost of taking a family to a game beyond the ability of many.  In an effort to increase its revenues, the NCAA is systematically destroying college football.  The impact of the business for profit model on medicine is a separate homily. There are also, of course,  middle and lower level atrocities in the pursuit of wealth committed by those with similar mindsets but much smaller budgets. 

Money seems to desire more money no matter the cost to others or the cost to oneself, as long as one doesn’t get caught.

 

It is not the cold hard cash that Jesus is decrying. Jesus is warning against the mind-set of wealth craving more wealth that is the well-beyond what is needed.  Unlike membership in a country club or a place on a Forbes Magazine list

salvation does not derive from human achievement.  One is not automatically saved because of rank, bank balance, or the number of toys one has upon death. 

Wealth is not one of the keys to the kingdom. It need not be an impediment to entering the kingdom,  but it will never move anyone to the front of the line.

 

True wealth is not what one possesses, but what one gives. True wealth is not what one hoards, but what one shares. The more we share our treasure with those in need, the treasure of money, time,  or the gift of presence, the larger the eye of that needle becomes. 

 

. . .  and that there camel gallops right on through.

 

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Photos are black and whites from the monastery.  When the inevitable day comes that I won't be able to get out with a camera--and the day will come--I hope to spend the time converting and processing much of what I've taken into black and white.   

The refectory set up for the midday meal which, in most monasteries is the main meal of the day.

Vessels in the small sacristy.

Leading to the consecration

Crucifix in a chapel

All monasteries need a body of water of three

Fr. Jack, SJ, MD

 

 

An Affair to Remember: Homily for 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

Gn 2:18-24

Ps 128

Heb 2:9-11

Mk 10:2-16

 

There are certain readings that make a homilist break out into a cold sweat when he looks ahead for the coming week.  Today's readings are of that type. There are, of  course, a few ways to avoid saying anything controversial. Tell a few cute stories from your past about how your family stopped at Dunkin' Donuts after Mass every Sunday,

Toss in a joke about a rabbi, a priest, and a minister . . . . . Use a few pious platitudes.  Decide it would be a good day for the deacon to preach Or plunge in.

 

Were a teacher or professor in a public school to say to a class today that "from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female" and indicate that there are only two sexes, (genders are for French nouns) the teacher's job would be on the line for contradicting the delusion that men can become women, women can become men, with multiple other options between.  But that is a separate homily.

 

Then we come to the matter of divorce,

 

Donahue and Harrington begin their commentary on this passage with a short summary that says it all: "Mark presents Jesus’ radical teachings on marriage and divorce.”  Radical is the key word.  The teaching on divorce is as radical, challenging, and difficult today as it was when Jesus answered first with a question of his own and then a teaching on marriage.

 

Jesus’ teaching was radical in His time because of the nature of marriage. Marriages were arranged and negotiated for financial, political, and social reasons.  Love or attraction had nothing to do with marriage. After a couple was engaged or betrothed they got to know each other for about a year before the woman moved into the man’s home. 

 

In their attempt to trap Jesus  into giving deviant teaching on marriage the Pharisees were alluding to two texts in Deuteronomy

regarding divorce.  Jesus, on his part, cited more ancient writing  from Genesis, as expressing God’s original plan:  “and the two shall become one flesh.”  Then, He elaborated and extended the teaching: 

“Therefore what God has joined together, no human must separate.”  

This charge is repeated following the giving of consent in the sacrament of marriage as celebrated in the Catholic Church. 

 

Divorce was the exclusive prerogative of the husband in the Ancient Near East.  The procedure was simple.  The husband gave the wife a certificate of divorce and sent her away.  She was now free to marry someone else.  

 

From Donahue and Harrington again, “In a society in which divorce was widely accepted and the controversial issue was the grounds for divorce Jesus’ teaching about no divorce went against custom and the cultural grain.”  The more things change the more the stay the same. 

 

The early Church struggled with the question as mightily as we do today.  There is Paul’s advice to those who found themselves in “mixed marriages” or marriages in which one party reverted to paganism.  And there are the “exceptive clauses” found in Matthew which permit divorce for porneia or what is translated as unchastity

though that translation does not fully capture what Matthew meant.  We continue to struggle with the meaning and implications of Jesus’ teaching on marriage today. 

 

Some time in the early 2000s I first heard a woman with whom I worked gleefully note that even at the wedding the family was referring to the groom as her sister's starter husband.  Even more mystifying are the celebrity types, --and many non-celebrities-- who have been "married" six or seven times.  After a certain point it seems silly to bother with the paperwork.

 

When considering Jesus' teachingwe have to ask if it Is an ideal to shoot for, a challenge to be faced,an extreme example, or divine law?”

 

Another line of questioning asks which part of New Testament evidence is more compelling: Jesus’ prohibition of divorce or the exceptions introduced by Paul and Matthew?”  These questions are destined to be debated

for a very long time

 

In today's world and, as was probably true in Jesus' time, there are marriages that never should have taken place and that must end. 

 

Perhaps one of the saddest commentaries on the misuse of Church teaching against divorce comes from the life of the actor Spencer Tracy.  Tracy carried on a twenty-five year long adulterous affair with Katherine Hepburn. The affair ended only with his death.  However, he remained legally and ecclesiastically married to his Episcopalian wife for 44 years.  As several sources confirmed he wouldn’t divorce his wife to marry Katherine because of his "staunch Catholicism." 

Apparently adultery posed no problem whatsoever to that staunch Catholicism.  

 

Some see Tracy and Hepburn, and similar stories as great romantic epics, when, in fact, they are tawdry stories of adultery. 

 

We live in odd and very troubling times marked by a frightening arrogance and egocentrism,  times in desperate need of prayer.  

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The photos are from St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, PA the first Benedictine monastery in the U.S. founded in 1846.  Alas, the original abbey burned.  The new one was built in brutalist style.  When you can't say something nice say nothing.  The grounds are beautiful. 

Fr. Jack, SJ, MD