Deacon Dan Wright

Love in the Season of Lent

We enter the first Sunday of the 40 days of Lent considering the depth and meaning of the Lenten experience at this time in our lives. We look for spiritual purpose and reconciliation. Our practice of observing Lent varies from person to person. To be frank, I never cared that much myself for the penitential aspect of Lent, but it holds value in the overall scheme for us because Lent leads us to the Cross. No greater love has one than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. As a jumping off point for our first Sunday of Lent, I’d like us to consider the somewhat unusual theme of love during the season of Lent. Think of it as a belated gift from our Ash Wednesday Valentine’s Day.

The antiphon for the psalm for today reads, “Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant,” and in the text of the psalm itself we see, “Remember that your compassion, O Lord, and your love are from of old.” If I were to make a goal of Lent personally, rather than giving up something, I might consider the value that exists in exploring the terrain of God’s infinite love for us… Certainly, it is a rich field of experience when we consider it.

In the first reading God establishes an everlasting covenant with Noah and his descendants that never again will there be a flood of the magnitude that had occurred. From the depths of an act of punishment, 40 days of relentless torrential flooding, that is, from a penitential experience, springs forth love: a love that was immanent from the beginning but made manifest by the salvation of a remnant of humankind—just eight souls. I can imagine hearing the voice of the Spirit say, “I have set my bow in the clouds as a sign of my great love for you.” We also see the covenant as being between God and the Earth, which shows us the love God has for creation, an ever-present reminder of the call to environmental stewardship.

St. Peter reminds us in his first epistle that the flood of Noah was a sign of a much greater saving event, one that destroys sin and regenerates the human soul; one that washes us clean in the waters of eternal charity. God gives us life, in an act of pouring out divinity into the cup of humanity, in the waters of baptism. So, on this first Sunday we consider our calling, a calling to live out our baptismal promises and pour out that with which we have been so abundantly filled.

Lent serves as a reminder of love as a journey of faithfulness and truth. Its a time for reflection, repentance, and drawing closer to God’s love and truth; it’s an opportunity to live out that which has been given to us by embracing others with the same gift we have received. We put love into actions and we call it the praxis of faith. It’s a beautiful lesson that extends to all times of the year, not just here in our Lenten season. 

Take Lent as a time of year to reach out to someone in a positive way, give more of yourself when it comes to kindness and generosity. But also remember that we have a great calling to establish justice on Earth, to rebuild it, and to establish a world where we freely share the things we need.

What we are called to do and who we are called to be are not easy tasks by any means, but we count on help, spiritual help from God and from our fellows. It might be something as small as a smile or friendly glance. There are abundant temptations in our world. The greatest is the temptation to despair. Love is such that it has the power to conquer despair, but often we fail. This too we consider in the Lenten journey; again, it is a path of reconciliation as well. 

Jesus entered a world of temptation, compelled by the Spirit, he fasted in the desert for 40 days. The narrative showcases his steadfast love and commitment to God’s will. Jesus’ refusal to succumb to temptation is not just a rejection of sin but rather it affirms his deep love for humanity and his commitment to fulfill the purpose for which he came into our world. His love is sacrificial, it leads to the Way of the Cross by which we follow his steps and see him stripped bare and humiliated. His is a love willing to endure death for us.

In Lent we receive a call to recognize God’s enduring love in our lives, and to respond by living in accordance with the covenant, grounded in love and truth. We are reminded this weekend that one does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God. God’s ways are indeed love and truth to those who keep the covenant.

Sunday Homily: Poverty, the Poor, and the Sermon on the Plain

This past Sunday we heard the Sermon on the Plain found in Luke. Besides being the best example of sermon length found in scripture, it is also the most difficult text to work with in preparing a homily. After all, it is the Lord’s own sermon. What can anyone add to it? What more can be said? Many years ago at the beginning of my journey as a convert to Catholicism I listened to a priest preach on the Beatitudes and his conclusion was that basically they show us where we miss the mark. While I don’t disagree with his assessment, I do hope that today’s gospel can show us more.

The sermon begins with poverty. Poverty sets the tone for all that follows. That in itself should set us back a bit, and make us think and consider the contrast between our comfortable state of life and true poverty, a state of having nothing, no home, no food, owning nothing, but also often a life where there is too frequently little hope; a life where oppression and subjugation are a daily reality. In the face of such a dire situation Jesus hands us the first and greatest contradiction in his sermon: he announces the blessedness of poverty.

It’s worth noting that the Lucan sermon differs qualitatively from Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount. Here in Luke we have no qualifier of “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” It is simply the poor the Lord considers. These poor little ones are the captives he has come to set free, the ones to whom he proclaims liberation and a year acceptable to the Lord. The contradiction of the blessedness of poverty is followed then by yet more contradictions of blessedness—those of hunger, sorrow; of being hated, secluded, segregated and slandered. Those who experience such are blessed because they are simultaneously the object of liberation and the impetus for systemic change.

We should contrast this view of poverty and the poor with the popular “prosperity gospel” message. Prosperity gospel pronounces wealth to be a sign of divine blessing, whereas poverty reveals God’s rejection and curse. Undoubtedly the same view existed in the time of Jesus, but in his way of turning the world order upside down he shows a reality that differs starkly from what must have seemed as self-evident then as it does even now. Poverty is an undesirable experience. The idea that poverty could contain blessing runs so contrary to modern-day thinking that there is even a theological position within evangelicalism that accompanies prosperity gospel claiming the beatitudes are not meant in any way whatsoever for Christians. This is a key tenet within the evangelical idea of dispensationalism.

Here I want to add that evangelicalism is the tradition I came from, and that prosperity gospel is not necessarily part of what is on its own a beautiful spiritual expression. Rather prosperity gospel has entered as a perversion that serves only to bolster the inherent inequality of an unjust system and attempt to justify what is contrary to the gospel message. Prosperity gospel ignores that the dispossessed have a primordial role in salvation history. They are the “crucified people.” So, rather than being an indictment against evangelicalism, prosperity gospel is an indictment against a system that relies upon inequality and oppression for personal gain.

Perhaps the most difficult thing for us to understand is how poverty can in any way be a blessing. Not the poverty in spirit that offers the possibility of beatitude by grace to any who choose to possess the right frame of mind or attitude, but actual real poverty—the poverty of those who have lost hope, lost even the will to try and find a way out, the ones who experience complete despair, who no longer can find strength to rise each morning. They are the ones who have only God, with nothing left to grasp upon earth. Yet in the crucifixion of their experience they serve as Christ in our midst, both the cause and doer of justice. 

Worth noting also here is that the church teaches that we are to make a fundamental option for the poor. This too can be a hard concept to grasp. It speaks of spirituality being ordered toward the poor in a real way, one that seeks to liberate, to make systemic changes and eradicate oppression. It speaks of a life in the faith built upon the foundations of embracing the poor, sick, and dying, and not only embracing them but also working to understand and eliminate the causes of systemic injustices. 

Something also needs to be said about the second part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain that sets it apart from the Sermon on the Mount; namely, that it contains a list of woes following the beatitudes. I take the woes partly as a consequential warning. Those who grasp and cling to material comforts stand the greatest chance of total spiritual loss because they have set their sights on what is passing rather than on that which endures. It is also, and perhaps more, a warning to those who participate uncritically in the oppression of humankind.

Perhaps the simplest lesson to be had is that the deepest realities Jesus taught puts us far outside our feelings of comfort. He forces us to embrace realities that are starkly contradictory to the ways that we have come to accept as normative. The lesson is indeed spiritual as much as is it is a statement concerning the imposed poverty of injustice, and as such it invites us to experience discomfort. Furthermore, it invites us to be in a place we experience as unfamiliar and uncomfortable, one where we may extrapolate even beyond poverty, and find in the company of Jesus all who are on the outside of the current society’s acceptable class of individuals. When we find common ground with those on the outside, then we find beatitude.

Thoughts on the temptation narratives for the first Sunday of Lent

The lectionary readings this weekend give us the theme of temptation to consider. We see, in the first reading in Genesis, the story of humanity falling from its incipient stage of innocence and unknowing and gaining moral awareness. Eve engages in a dialectic with the tempter just as we see Jesus also dialoging with the tempter in today’s gospel reading. 

Both narratives represent the dialectic of opposing forces encountering one another, struggling with one another, and emerging from the struggle is a new or successive phase in human history. Although the temptation narratives are not history in a scientific or historical-critical sense, they relate to our interpretation and understanding of salvation history.

In the temptation of Jesus, looking closely, the devil searched for a particular human weakness—trying hunger, belief, wealth and power. In many ways we might say that the same temptations continue to challenge us and are pervasive in our struggle. They relate to our situation as well as any in history. Temptation is a complex thing. It’s something we deal with daily. We encounter multiple temptations in our day-to-day discourse and encounter with lived experience; moreover, it’s something much closer to our actual lives than the ultimate existential either/or of both the Genesis and gospel narratives. 

Often a view from another religion gives us a broader perspective. I recently found a social media discussion which referenced perspectives from the Talmud, so I thought we might look at a Jewish view, bearing in mind that it’s one Jewish view among many. Temptation is more connected here to personal sins than original sin, which is totally a Christian concept, rather than a Jewish one. It’s also important to realize also that not all Christian denominations have worked out the idea of original sin in the same way that it’s formulated in Catholic teaching. The second reading from Romans gives us the biblical source material from which the idea of original sin received further development. Understanding temptation from a unique non-Christian perspective gives insight into how sin occurs. Temptation is such that it evokes sin.

Three things evoke sin, according to Talmud (Berakhot 55a). In a view very different from ours they are: standing next to a wall that is about to fall; assuming that your prayer will be answered (say because of who you are, be it priest, President, or leader of the PTA), and lastly, passing judgment to heaven (or better, passing it off), and by this one should understand judgment as a just responsibility. In this case rather than taking responsibility the sin lies in asking heaven to make the judgment instead and thus relinquishing one’s rightful duty.

We recall that true judgment has more to do with pursing justice on earth, and therefore belongs to all of us. We do not pass judgment, rather we keep it ourselves and use it wisely. If we believe that we will stand in judgment then let justice be ours. Let us own judgment. Judgment is our job, our bound duty, but we must learn to see judgment positively as actions deep and sweeping, remaking, healing, rebuilding and renewing the earth (tikkun olam).

In all three talmudic cases, the leaning wall, assumed answer for prayer, and passing judgment to heaven, there is presumption about the height of one’s spiritual standing, clearly a dig at self-righteousness. Here Christians should recall the stance Jesus took against those who were righteous in their own estimation. The problem in each case is that they shift the responsibility of things that individuals should take care of themselves to the other, even to heaven. There are things that are our responsibility individually and collectively, and the temptation in our world is to pass them along. “YP not MP” we are prone to say. We’ve gotten sensitive about people saying, “I’ll keep you in my thoughts and prayers,” and for good reason. It’s a way to push off responsibility. “I’ll leave it in God’s hands.”

For many people faith involves letting go completely and turning everything over to God. For a long time I’ve considered faith to be something different than credulous assent to any proposition that somehow comes along and speaks to our religious sensibilities. We all know of someone who believes any large amount of irrational stuff hoping that it qualifies for faith. It does not. We have to learn what faith really is. Part of one’s identity in being a Christian does indeed involve faith, but we learn to see it as a dynamic part of life. Faith needs to be something more than merely believing certain things. Doing so succumbs to the temptation to abandon our responsibility for the world today, a responsibility that belongs to us. 

The most important things about to happen in our world are completely and totally in our hands. We recall our responsibility to the hungry of our world. We claim to be followers of the teachings of Jesus, who taught us to love the poor and to prefer their company above that of the rich; who taught us to follow humility, and to offer ourselves to as he gave to us, and who saw power and wealth as a temptation to be avoided.

We live with temptation but we learn to deal with it. Perhaps we learn to speak to it, to dialogue with it. One of the greatest temptations is fear. Fear grips our society in a stranglehold; however, we should bear in mind that perhaps the opposite of faith is not unbelief, but rather fear. In coming to terms with temptation we find the courage to face life’s most difficult challenges.

Epiphany: the revolutionary light

The beginning of the year is a time traditionally to have resolve for the coming year. This seems to be even truer for the beginning of a new decade. Typically we reflect on the past, and perhaps on ways that we have been sidetracked and we make our resolve to make a difference or to do things differently.

While Epiphany celebrates the coming of the promised messiah and the visit of the Magi, it also speaks to us in the here and now and offers us opportunity to state our resolve in a way that goes beyond our personal or individual lives. Epiphany invites us to be a part of a future that is unlike anything that has been before. To make Epiphany happen in all of its promised splendor means that the inhabitants of the Earth join together in such a way that our actions are nothing less than foundation-shaking and even revolutionary. It sounds like quite a task, even one that might be impossible without something or someone to lead the way.

Epiphany celebrates the rising of a new star that shines a great light into the world. It is a light that is to illuminate every path; to show the way forward toward a future for generations upon generations ahead. While the prophecy of Isaiah in today’s first reading tells of the “wealth of the nations” being brought before Jerusalem, we recognize that the historic reality surrounding the birth of Jesus tells a different story altogether. It is the story of one who comes not to be glorified among the princes of the world, not one who is to celebrate wealth and political power, but rather one among the poor who brings reparation to the downtrodden.

Looking closely at the lectionary readings for today the idea of world power figures prominently. Epiphany challenges set notions concerning the ruling class and the dominant political and economic structures of the world. Does the light serve to glorify the power of wealth and kings or does it show a different way? Undoubtedly the invitation lies before us to change the structures of how things in our world work. We are to put ourselves into the workings of the world in such a way that we stand for the common good of our fellow people and put the future of the planet ahead of the concerns of amassing wealth, profit, and power.

An interesting question has to do with how we are to participate in rebuilding the world, in bringing reparation and planetary healing. It’s nothing less than sharing or participating in the salvific mission that we understand as a partnership, a duty, and an ethical obligation. In times past such participation may have taken on a much different theological understanding or approach, but part of what we always need is to interpret faith according to the demands of the times in which we live. Without such ongoing reinterpretation and engagement there is the threat of the loss of relevance. 

Surely our resolve comes into play as we look for ways to be partners in revealing justice to the world, as we look to making justice, and here we should read justice as reparation and restoration for the poor, the homeless, the marginal and struggling. Resolve requires courage if we are to change the world for the better, to light the world with the hope of lasting peace. 

Changing the world begins with changing ourselves individually. It requires that we see a bigger picture of where we live, what is important, and who is among our family. We move beyond being concerned about our personal interests alone. Rather, the resolve to have courage, to build a better world, means standing with others, as partners and co-workers with whom we share a common vision. 

Recent world events show clearly that we live in times when peace is threatened. Kings and demagogues make their ungodly play for power. We live in times where children cry out as the prophetic voice but the world fails to hear them. This new year the new decade offers the opportunity to follow a rising star, one that lights the way of peace and hope for all. Yet the question of who will find the courage to follow it remains to be answered.

Homily 1 Advent Yr A 12012019 Vision

We begin Advent this year with a call to be a people of vision. We are to lay sight on the coming of the rule of peace and righteousness, and we are to carry it forth into the days and events that lie ahead of us. The message is one that gives us hope that something better lies along the way, “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” 

In our times the reality of a world in which there is peace and unity of purpose seems far off. We know well that we live in a divided society where people have taken their positions along certain issues and lines, and rarely feel moved toward restoring unity. Yet our preparation that occurs in Advent urges us to set our sights on that which is to enter our world and make us one.

Too often we have taken the vision of peace expressed in today’s Isaiah reading as having to do with heaven and what lies beyond. If we are to focus on what lies beyond the time and confines of our individual and personal sojourn here on earth, I’m of the mind that the most important things that we might focus on are those that will affect the lives of future generations—the lives of those children we bring into the world and the lives of their children and children’s children. This is what having vision is most about.

To set our sights on the world to come means in many ways that we are to set our sights on this world and how we can make it be a different and better place, and this—at least partly—is the source of much of our disagreement. Each believes their way is the better way, the way of righteousness even.

Too infrequently do we stop to consider where the ideas that enter our minds and lives come from. We are bombarded, especially this time of year, with advertisements and messages of all sorts that tell us the path to happiness follows the way of the marketplace. Even as I prepared this homily, with the USCCB website set to one side of the screen with the readings, I was distracted by advertisements for titles aimed directly at me: Rebuking the Devil, Creating a Culture of Encounter, the new Order for Baptisms for Children. I had to pause and wonder how much of that would enter the homily today.

Part of the vision for peace that we must have involves separating ourselves, inasmuch as we possibly can, from the power that is the enemy of unity, whatever name we give it; however, naming it is important. In our culture we are driven by forces that claim our lives part and parcel. I recently pointed out to a friend that there are things that have become for us our economic subconscious. The realities we live by are programmed into us daily. Where do we turn?

Serious questions lie before us in our times. Should we reconcile with everyone, even those with whom we most strongly disagree, or is our task more to rightly delineate between good and evil? Perhaps we should consider the option that it is neither. Perhaps we are merely to live our lives according to the vision that is encapsulated in the spirit of Advent, and that is the vision of the coming of peace into the world. Peace is open ended. We go out and discover it, meet it on the street, make it, build it daily. We have the materials to create peace.

With all the voices in our world, the voices of politics and the voices of the market, we seldom find clarity in knowing where to turn. Yet our hope must also lie in the vision of the gospel, which for us today switches to Matthew and promises that evil will be swept away “as it was in the days of Noah.” The Gospel offers hope for a world to come, one in which evil will not be.

Each year Advent prepares us for Christmas, and each year it speaks to us in a different way. We know the themes: slow down, declutter, focus. Advent points us in a direction that speaks in the here and now. Have vision, work for peace, build a world where justice prevails, where the structures of health and happiness do not depend on what you are able to purchase but on what you are able to give of yourself, to take up the hammer and beat the sword into an instrument of harvest.

On Suffering and Our Response

What a great contrast there is that exists between Job who tells us that our life on earth is a pitiful drudgery, in which he will never see happiness again, compared to the words we hear in Psalm 147 that tell us the Lord heals the brokenhearted and rebuilds and gathers. There are a number of different directions that we could go with this Sunday’s readings, but what stands out to me is that Job sets the tone for everything else that follows by first stating the problem of suffering in the world. First we recognize the problem, then we look to solutions.

I was once invited a number of years ago to contribute on a regular basis to a journal that dealt primarily with suffering. I declined at the time, mostly because I had too many other things going on then, though the idea didn’t really hold a lot of appeal. However, I also have to wonder whether if somewhere in my subconscious mind I had a fear of synchronicity somehow manifesting suffering in my own life. After all, suffering is something to which almost all of us who are adults can relate to some degree. Suffering is real in our world. In retrospect I probably should have addressed the issue and contributed a few articles.

Theologians have long attempted to answer how it is that evil can exist in the world alongside the presence of an all-powerful, all-good, and all-loving God. The same question can be asked about suffering, but I believe it’s much more fruitful to ask, rather than why God can allow it, what we can do about it, and certainly in my mind the wrong answer here is that we would be stoic and simply accept it as such. A true assessment of an existential experience is one that demands human response.

So we have a good example to consider. In the readings both Job and St. Paul refer to themselves as slaves. The Job reading probably comes closer to the meaning of slave that likely comes to our minds in the United States with our history of slavery, a history that also demands a response from us in how we engage others, especially those who are the descendants of slaves. It speaks of our willingness to make reparations and to rebuild what has been broken. The response we make reveals a great deal about us and about how truly willing we are to see the suffering Christ in our midst.

It’s in a different way that St. Paul uses the image of slavery. For him slavery is more akin to servitude, of being in service to another. We see this somewhat in the gospel today where Simon’s mother-in-law got up and served immediately after being healed. While St. Paul’s servitude lacks the element of suffering, at least as he presents it in the Corinthians reading, it still promotes solidarity with others. It’s where we get ideas like servant-leadership, or even we who are in the order of deacons as seeing our ministry as being servants, bearing in mind that diakonia is service. However, St. Paul does frame his role as one that is obligatory and one where he lacks complete freedom. He says it’s been imposed upon him. I think of this as being akin to the idea moral duty.

Where I’d to take this is to impart that Christian ethics imposes an obligation, a responsibility, on each of us. I know these are strong words, but it’s not my intention to paint an either/or, a heaven or hell choice, but we can take the obligation and keep on being Christians, or we can reject it and be something else despite what we call ourselves. The responsibility, the obligation or duty incumbent upon us is to our fellow human beings. Specifically we have a sacred duty to those who suffer in this world. We bear in mind the plight of migrant workers, immigrants, the undocumented, the poor and economically distressed among us. We bear in mind also the basic human right to healthcare and those who suffer because they have none or cannot afford it.

This brings us to Jesus in the gospel today who we see clearly as a healer. He reaches out not only to those who are sick physically but reaches to those who suffer in ways that were understood in the ancient world as having to do with possession. I’m of the opinion that Jesus took his responsibility to reach to those who suffered mentally as well as physically. Once at my former parish I used these readings to talk about healthcare as a human right. It wasn’t a popular homily. It actually got me a letter of complaint written. Perhaps people perceived something political in my message, though that wasn’t actually the intent. Still, I stand by what I said then and I say it now. Healthcare is a basic human right regardless of an individual’s capacity to pay for it.

Suffering in our world today is not confined to physical and mental illness. It includes all the ills that we might find in society, especially social ills like the sin of racism or of hate directed at others, such as LGBTQ people, because of who they are or how they define themselves.

What we have is a message to humanity telling us that rather than ask why there is suffering, our role is to alleviate suffering ourselves wherever we may find it by acting concretely and standing with those who suffer. The lesson for us today is about our personal responsibility in the world. The true mark of maturity is to begin to see that we are not alone, but that we bear responsibility for the other, always accompanying one another, we bear each other’s joys and pains. In that sojourning we ask how can I make this world a better place for you.

On Listening and Hearing

Several years ago I wrote a homily on these very readings that we have today. I have to admit that it was a temptation to use it again. Homilists sometimes do that: it makes life easier for us and it frees up a little time, but I think what we say ought always to be relevant to where we are now, and certainly 2017, and all the things in life that go along with it, is quite a bit different than where we were several years ago.

Six years past what stood out to me was that our readings for the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, contained a message that had to do with warning us against sin and offering a remedy for it—in what ever way we choose to paint missing the mark, which is what sin is, the remedy is to take the big brush of love and cover it up. Specifically cover it up by giving of ourselves to all others in a complete and total way. That’s not a bad message really. I could have repeated it and been just fine and no one here would have ever known that I was guilty of recycling a homily.

However, if I had done that I would have missed out on the great point that living our lives as Christians involves our ability to listen and to hear. Really, anyone who is married knows the importance of listening, and I make this point because I do think that today’s message has to do with love overall. If we love God, and if we love others, we learn to hear and to listen. Following Jesus demands that we hear his voice.

Now if you ask wives whether their husbands have trouble listening, many are going to say they certainly do. I don’t know—some husbands may say their wives don’t listen, but It seems more to be a problem we guys have. I’m aware of it, even in my own life, and it’s something that I’ve counseled couples preparing to marry about. “Learn to listen to each other,” I’ve told them. “It’ll go a long way in your marriage.” Over the years, having had it pointed out that I could do a little better job of listening I came to a realization—a life freeing epiphany even. The problem isn’t so much listening (at least if we’re talking about marriage), rather it’s about paying attention, and that’s is an entirely different thing.

In my experience working as a public school teacher I’ve heard a lot hard-working people make many comments on the topic of paying attention. I’ve even heard the nearly serious suggestion that we put Ritalin salt-licks in our classrooms. Amusing, yes, but not something I hope that we would seriously consider. If I could find a cure for attention problems I’d be a billionaire in no time. The ability to pay attention perfectly, and to listen and hear are two different things. God isn’t so much asking us to pay attention as God is asking us to let things touch our hearts.

Early on in my ministry formation to become a deacon I was told, along with the rest of my cohort, that to be an effective minister I should learn to be a good listener. What today’s message tells each of us, not just deacons, priests, and other ministers, is that we have to learn to let things touch our hearts in a very deep way. We have to let things reach us and move us, and that’s what hearing and listening, even loving others is all about. We can give completely, materially, with time and talent, and if it hasn’t touched our hearts then we haven't yet heard; we haven't yet listened, and this is where I had to depart from my previous conclusion: love has to be about more than giving. Love has to do with hearing others in such a way that it reaches the deepest recesses of our being and moves us in a novel way.

Beyond whatever we might say about what’s involved in being a Christian, beyond the love of churchy things, beyond devotion and even worshipful piety, there’s something required of each one of us. It’s something essential. So essential actually that if I fail to impart it I may have failed the prophet Ezekiel’s admonition, which we heard in the first reading, to dissuade the erring from their way: we have to be moved by others. It’s a sign that we have listened and a sign that we’ve heard them.

Indeed love is demanded of us, but often we take it to mean that we just love everyone with that big brush that covers our sins, but we think we don’t have to listen to everyone. Too often we want to love the ones who are easy to listen to. Too often we want to turn away from those whose cries are most difficult for us. We love insiders but we turn a deaf ear to the outsiders.

It may sound somewhat radical but what following Jesus calls us to do isn’t so much that we love everyone, that we give equally to the rich and powerful in the same manner as we give to the poor and powerless. Rather, it’s that we learn to stand with those who have no one to stand with them. We have to be inventive and creative and find new ways to be for those who have no one to be for them or to speak on their behalf. We must allow their lives to touch ours, and when we do that we will know that we have both listened and heard.

Transfiguration Sunday: Revealing the Prophetic Message

In the midst of the ordinariness of summer, as our vacations end and we begin to prepare to return to school, we have an opportunity in the liturgical life of the Church to celebrate something special—a feast day Sunday in the middle of the mundane of the year.

As we look at today’s feast, and the scripture readings for it, let’s consider their significance for us. For me, the transfiguration has always been one of the most awe-inspiring narratives in the New Testament. When I was a young Christian in my early 20s, long before I became a Catholic, I was part of an evangelical community and I took a literal approach to the bible. What I saw in the transfiguration narrative was the dazzling brilliance in the imagery of the event. It was hard to see beyond it.

About that time in my life I considered myself to be something of a painter, though I had no formal art training. Looking back I think my dad might have thought that my talent would have best been spent painting eaves and overhangs. So, I wasn’t that great but I was inspired. I had read the story of the transfiguration in the three synoptic gospels and I felt moved to do an artistic interpretation of it. I gave the painting to a friend at church and a couple weeks later went to his house hoping to find the painting occupying a place of honor. I actually found it in his closet with his big, orange bulldog lying on top of it. Obviously he had a different interpretation of the transfiguration event, at least as I had depicted it. So this says something about what we see, what we value, and how we interpret things. My friend went on in life to become a smuggler. He smuggled bibles into the Soviet Union and years later returned to Russia as an evangelical missionary. The point is that God has placed something special in each of us, something we may not always see in ourselves and others, and it’s up to us to reveal it to the world.

For me, in my youth, the transfiguration was something that I understood only on the level of a mystical experience. Not that I was having mystical experiences, but what the transfiguration story meant in terms of day-to-day life escaped my grasp. At that time in my life the transfiguration pointed me only to the revealed divinity of Jesus, and not anything beyond that. It was a heavenly-minded narrative and my community at that time supported a heavenly-minded interpretation. The light of light of divinity was such that it blinded me to everything else. I think of this as something of a cautionary experience because too often we miss what is most important because of what stands out first. Too often we refuse to look deeper at the things that may challenge us where we need challenged most.

So although the transfiguration story may be a christological narrative—having to do with asserting the divinity of Christ—that’s not all it ought to say to us, and it may even have something more important to say to us in terms of how we live our lives. Our feast days and readings should always ask us what we are going to do, and better what we ought to do.

The story of the transfiguration is a story of transformation as well. I don’t think it’s incorrect to see the transfiguration as one of the great biblical symbols of transformation. In that there is also a eucharistic dimension because it concerns becoming something other than what first appears. If the transfiguration reveals the divinity of Jesus in his humanity, then it also reveals the potential for divinity in our humanity which we share with Jesus, and this gives us an imperative for our actions. It places moral demands on us. Sure, we can take the transfiguration narrative as a symbol of personal and individual transformation, but at the same time it urges us in an unparalleled way to look beyond ourselves and the things that stand as strongholds in our personal lives to greater societal concerns.

Clearly there are many challenging issues that we face, and not just as a church or a nation, but as the whole of humanity. Frankly, I believe that we live in the most decisive time in history, and I’m not saying this as an overstatement to make a point. We live in a time now like no other ever before because of the potential that exists for destruction.

In many ways it would be wrong not to mention where August 6 stands in history. It was on the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, August 6, 1945, seventy-two years ago that the United States unleashed nuclear destruction on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later we also destroyed the city of Nagasaki, an important center of Japanese Catholicism. For me, I can’t allow August 6 to pass without mentioning these events because, in ways that surpass other challenges we face in our times, they inform us concerning our moral imperative as a transfigured and transformed people.

In our world today is there not plenty to cause doubt or to inspire fear? Not that we should live in fear, but have not many of the old cold-war threats returned? However, even more, do we not far too easily find great crimes perpetrated against peace and justice around the world? Is there not a pervasive attitude that holds the poor, the migrant and refugee, and any others who are different in contempt? Do we not still separate and segregate? These are important questions because if it is true that God has revealed divinity in the humanity of Jesus Christ, in the humanity that we share with Jesus, then the responsibility for allowing his transfigured glory to be visible to the world rests upon our willing cooperation. It is our task to allow the light that has arisen in our hearts to be revealed. Our task is nothing less than to be peacemakers upon the earth, and to reveal the transfigured presence of God in the world today.

As daunting as it may seem the worst thing we can do is resign to the attitude that there is nothing anyone can do. In this case stoic acceptance is not of value. The exact opposite is true, and each and every one of us must be determined to be a peacemaker in the world today. Each one of us has the potential to go out and transform the face of the earth.

Just as a word of summary, the Letter of Peter tells us that we have received a prophetic message and that we will do well to be attentive to it. In our world today it is the duty of religion to be prophetic. All of us, not just the clergy, owe it to the world to be courageous about the issues we face, but the bravest thing that any of us can do is to take strong stands on a broad spectrum of issues with peacemaking as our guiding principle. No doubt, the Transfiguration is a heavenly-minded celebration in the Church, but what it calls us to do has everything to do with life in the here and now.

Palm Sunday Homily

On this Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion the gospel reminds us that Jesus entered Jerusalem with crowds preceding him. He is the focal point of a great procession in which the crowds go ahead with shouts of praise to the one who comes in the name of the Lord, Jesus, the prophet, from Nazareth in Galilee. “Hosanna,” they say, “hosanna to the Son of David, hosanna in the highest!”

We also began our liturgy with a procession. In one way it’s a procession that began for us at the beginning of Lent, which we have followed during these weeks that have led up to today, our liturgical celebration of Passion Sunday, just as Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem also led him to his actual passion, which we will relive again in word on Good Friday. Today we begin with the entry, with the praise, bearing in mind what lies ahead.

It is important, I believe, to see ourselves situated in a greater procession. It is one we live each day, but even more one that began long before the time of Jesus; one that began at the dawn of humanity. If we reflect back to our readings on the first Sunday of Lent, we see our first parents initiating their search to recover what they had lost in the fall from grace and innocence. They went forth from the garden and began a long journey.

The procession also takes us back even further to another Lent in the history of salvation, to the time of the Exodus from Egypt and the wandering of the Hebrew people as refugees in the desert for 40 years. However, the procession is one that is always moving forward. It never rests for long in one place. It moves us ahead to the time of Jesus; to an event that we recall each each day we gather for Mass. Our procession takes us along all the stations of the way of salvation. It is for us and all, both past and future, a liberation story.

Each Sunday we process in a line with one another to the altar, and each time we gather we come to this place, this altar, that re-presents the sacrifice that we know as the Passion of the Lord. Still this is not yet the place we stop. We also go forth as we are sent out into the world beyond this moment along the way. Our procession looks ahead and beyond, just as Jesus entry in Jerusalem looked beyond the passion to Easter.

In our going forth we find ourselves in the company of others. We experience the journey as a migration story with the human family, and in our migration we find solidarity with our fellow migrants. In our journey we look to one another and take note of our needs and what we have that we may share along the way. We prepare our hearts to give freely and abundantly of what we possess. We look at our relationships, and not only our relationships with those who are closest to us, but also those who are farthest away because they too journey with us. They share in our wandering.

We arrive at Easter next weekend. It serves to remind us that the passion is not an end but something lies beyond it. The journey to Easter asks us to be a people of faith. True believers always look forward, always look beyond, but also always look to see who accompanies them, and they ask, “How might I better stand with you and take your hand? How might I better take your part and walk this path, this journey of liberation, with you my fellow migrants, my brothers and my sisters?”

Sunday Homily: Faith and the Restoration of Community

“Your faith has saved you.” The words of today’s gospel continue a “faith” theme that has been in our readings recently, and one that we will see continued next week as well. Clearly belief in the power of God is something that will bear fruit in our lives. Believing has the necessary ingredients, as it were, to invite and effect the action of God in our day-to-day living.

It’s not incorrect in any way to see an abundance of grace connected to faith. This may be one of the easiest things for us to understand about Christianity. It's possible for us to enter the mystery of salvation because God directs love toward us, and there is absolutely no limit to God’s love. When we apprehend the love of God, when we grasp it or take hold of it, we do so with faith. God meets us where we are, just as in today’s reading where Jesus meets the lepers as they are, in their place in life, without question—and most importantly—without judgment.

As wonderful and complex as faith is we may sometimes misunderstand faith as occurring in a single direction of our merely believing in and then hoping to receive from God, which is at least a start but it lacks the more mature and important aspects and nuances of living a life of faith. We might note that many people leave it at merely believing. Sometimes out of curiosity I will tune in to TV preachers. “Believe in God and receive” they say. However, understanding faith too simplistically leaves us feeling like there must be something more, though I have to admit that many years ago I was taught to accept faith on face value as belief. I well recall my mother teaching me her favorite bible verse: Mustard seed faith—“just believe,” she would tell me, “and you can move mountains.” However, I must add that mine was also primarily a “God and me” relationship, which only minimally considered the place of faith in the experience of community.

As a convert to Catholicism, coming from the evangelical tradition, I was relieved in many ways to learn that God wanted a partnership with humankind in faith. I was delighted, even, to learn that my actions could in some way effect in the big picture of what it means to participate in salvation. I had come to the conclusion as a young adult that there wasn’t much I could do in that regard. Practically everything was up to God and very little was up to me. Still, from the time I was a small child, I was taught that, at least where Christianity was concerned, faith was to be sought above all other things. I learned to value faith even if I didn’t necessarily hear a lot about how faith matures.

Both our Old Testament reading and the gospel today show us the restorative effects of faith as response to others, and this what I think we should consider today. In Second Kings, our Old Testament reading, Naaman who is a foreigner in the land, obeyed the word of God. He heard the prophet and he acted on it the word of God; he went forth and plunged himself in the Jordan seven times. He desired restoration. His doing so shows the dimension of faith as action and response to having heard the word of God. He then steps into a communal relationship of belonging and offering sacrifice to the God of Israel.

We see the same thing yet again in the gospel. Jesus meets the 10 lepers who were crying out, “Have pity!” Rather than immediately healing them, he demands restorative action. Again, it’s the action of faith. He tells them go and show yourselves to the priests. It’s not just believing and receiving that counts for faith: it’s believing, and doing that thing that will restore their place in the community.

This now brings us to the place of asking what we should do. I’m reminded of those who had gathered on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon all flesh, who in response to the things they saw asked Peter, “What shall we do?” So, where do we go? What actions do we take. What shall we do? It would be anachronistic for us to plunge seven times in the Jordan, though some might arrange a pilgrimage. However, for most of us that’s a bit out of reach. In the gospel Jesus offers the model of God’s faithfulness to us that we can imitate in our own lives.

To get a better idea let’s return to the gospel. Of the 10 lepers Jesus healed the one whom he championed as having faith was a Samaritan. We hear about Samaritans in the gospels but we typically may not know much about them. Perhaps we may recall from the familiar story of the woman at the well that Jews and Samaritans had nothing to do with one another, but do we know why? Was it because of some ethnic or racial separation? I don’t believe that was it.

Samaritans still exist today as a small ethnic minority in the Middle East, in the nation of Israel. They are known as Shomronim. Their religious practice differs very little from the time of Jesus. It is still the same “unorthodox” version of Judaism as they practiced in the 1st century. They still revere Mt. Gerizim and go there for their holiest rites. They still live near the mountain, and they are still understood—in terms of religion—as being “other.” In Jesus’ time this difference caused Samaritans to be known as outsiders, foreigners and as people on the edge, as marginal and unwanted people. They experienced broken community with those who lived around them

The healing of the 9 restored them to community, but where did it leave the Samaritan? My work outside the parish is as a special education teacher serving students with low-incidence disabilities, and one of the things that I’ve learned over the years is the value of community. Many times my students have told me what they really want more than anything else is just to belong to the larger group. They want community.

It's greatly ironic that Jesus tells the Samaritan to go and show himself to the priests because he knew well that the Samaritan had no priests, at least not at the temple, and not in Jerusalem. Instead, the Samaritan, acting on faith, returns to Jesus, and I have an idea in that in that latter encounter with Jesus he discovers restoration, community and belonging.

Our acting on faith takes many different forms, and what it is that we are to do is ultimately something that we discover for ourselves. However, we may find that our faith has matured when we begin to reach out and find ways to heal others by participating in the restoration of community. We find our own salvation, healing, and restoration, indeed we find Jesus, when we reach out in faith and offer belonging.