Ambitious Brothers & Jealous Others

When it comes to human behavior, there really does seem to be nothing new under the sun. In today’s Gospel [Matthew 20:17-28], Jesus has again told his disciples what lies in store for him in Jerusalem. The 1st time he did this, Peter had tried to talk him out of it, prompting both a severe reprimand and a no-nonsense instruction on what being a disciple really means. The 2nd time, the disciples they argued among themselves about which was the greatest. When asked what they’d been arguing about, their silence suggested at least some sense of embarrassment. Here, however, with no hint of embarrassment, two of Jesus’ most favored disciples (and thus the ones most especially susceptible to a sense of entitlement) have their mother request that they be given the best seats in the kingdom.

Not surprisingly, the other 10 quickly became indignant. Apparently, they neither accepted nor were willing to cater to the particular status hierarchy favored by James and John. Jealousy (as Britain’s Queen Alexandra famously said 101 years ago) is the source of so many problems in life. The 10’s jealous indignation in turn prompted yet another much needed instruction from Jesus – clarifying both what his life is about and what the life of any would-be disciple must be about.

What makes this incident so wonderful is the brilliant way Jesus handled his hard-to-teach disciples – both the 2 ambitious brothers and the 10 jealous others. Jesus was obviously a very good teacher. He recognized his disciples’ natural ambition. Rather than condemning them, he affirmed their ambition and gave it completely new content.

So you want to be great, Jesus tells his disciples. OK, then, be great – but not by imitating all those rich and prominent people you all admire and envy so much, but by imitating me. “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” How’s that for an ambition to aspire to, an accomplishment to envy?

If following Jesus is to have any real meaning, Jesus is telling us, then it must be different with us from the way it is with the rest of the world. By his own life – and above all by his death – Jesus illustrated that by showing how different it is with him from the way it tends to be with us. Our task is not to analyze the world, which is just being the way the world is, but to change the world – but to do so by having him change us.

Homily at Lenten Ecumenical Service at Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, March 23, 2011

183

Besides being the 2^nd Sunday in Lent and the 1^st day of Spring, yesterday was also the anniversary of my first blog post. While hardly an occasion of world-historical significance, it certainly at least warrants a moment’s reflection – if only to consider whether these 182 postings to date have been worth it (and are worth continuing).

Although I can often talk easily and at length, I frequently find writing much more onerous – one reason perhaps why I was never really cut out to be an academic. I have always envied people who can write, for example, a regular newspaper column. (To some extent, that’s what a blog tries to approximate – without, of course, the mass audience!).

Some of my postings have been Sunday or occasional homilies preached primarily either at St. Paul the Apostle Church in New York City or, more recently, at Immaculate Conception Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. Averaging approximately one such homily per week, that means somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of my postings would have been composed in any case, blog or no blog.

The other postings run the gamut of social, political, and personal reflections - all of varying length, significance and (one must also assume) quality. Certainly, a lot has happened in society and politics these past 12 months to warrant my modest reflections. A lot has happened in my personal life too, only some of which - for example, my moving from New York to Knoxville - has found its way onto the pages of this blog.

In creative writing terms, perhaps it seems like "cheating" to have included so many homilies, all of which would have been composed in any case, blog or no blog. On the other hand, the fact that one-quarter to one-third of these posts have been homilies does say something significant. The fact that so much of my blogging has been explicit preaching - preaching that took place in a church as part of a liturgy - highlights that I am very much a preacher. Preaching is a central dimension of my vocation as a priest and a Paulist - ordained to proclaim to the world the Word of God in all its fullness in the Person of Jesus Christ, accessible in the life of the Church. I don't only preach, of course; and I am far from being a stellar preacher by any standard or measure; but preaching is at the heart of who I am; and it seems only right to reflect that in these pages.

Climbing the Mountain

“Lord, it is good that we are here”! [Matthew 17:4]

Any modern pilgrim, who’s had the scary experience of reaching the top of Mount Tabor after a high-speed taxi ride up the narrow mountain road might well be tempted to echo Peter’s sentiments!

Peter presumably had walked up the mountain and in any case the experience to which Peter was reacting was a much more transcendent one. For what Peter, James, and John were being treated to was nothing less than an experience of the glory of God, an awesome peak into another world, and a glimpse of Jesus’ divine nature as Son of God and his fulfillment of the Old Testament (represented by Moses and Elijah). It must have been a very exciting experience! No wonder Peter was so glad to be there! Wouldn’t we all? No wonder he wanted to stay there as long as possible – to make three tents there, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah! No wonder he thought that this was it and that he’d reached where he was going! No wonder he didn’t yet understand that this was just the beginning – an invitation to join Jesus on his journey.

In contrast to Peter, today’s Mass offers us the image of Abraham’s first direct encounter with the Lord, whose very first word to Abraham was Go! [Genesis 12:1]

(Last spring and summer, when I was dealing with the stress of moving from New York to Knoxville, I occasionally tried consider what it must have been like for Abraham to be completely uprooted – at age 75!)

Today’s 1st reading from Genesis recounts that pivotal historical moment when Abraham first appeared in the world stage. Until then, human history had been one tragic calamity after another – culminating in the decisive breakdown of the human community at the Tower of Babel. Suddenly, God was intervening in history in a new way, singling out one individual – and, through him, one family and, eventually, one special nation – to be his partner, his human partner, in repairing the damage done by human beings to God’s good creation. Under the provisions of the extraordinary covenant God made with Abraham, God and Abraham – and Abraham’s descendents – will collaborate together and so become a blessing for the whole world.

Abraham is considered the common spiritual ancestor of Judaism and its two daughter religions, Christianity and Islam. In all three religions, Abraham is revered for his faith, a faith that summoned him (at age 75!) to go forth to a new land. But the destination was vague. We call Abraham “our father in faith.” If Abraham is a model of faith for us, he also reveals how much faith requires. What we call Abraham’s “faith” was a way of responding to the ambiguous and complicated events in his life, a way that reflected his recognition of the presence and action of God in those events. His “faith” meant a total trust, confidence, reliance on God through whatever changes and challenges might be required.

Change is always challenging. That’s why we wisely try to avoid it unless necessary. I am particularly fond of Chesterton’s line (at least I think it was Chesterton who said it): “If change is not necessary, then it is necessary not to change.” But sometimes it is necessary, and therein lies the challenge. It may mean abandoning the familiar for the frightening. It may mean something totally new. Or it may not. It may mean, rather, recovering what we’ve lost or forgotten or abandoned. Indeed, the most challenging change may be to undo bad decisions and recent choices in order to return to an older and better path.

We all talk about making necessary changes in our lives. Sometimes we may even mean it. But we’re just as likely to conclude that we have too much at stake to change course. Lent is our annual opportunity to let Abraham demonstrate the power of faith to overcome our cynicism, despair, defeatism, and spiritual inertia.

All this has finally and effectively been made accessible to us through Abraham’s greatest descendent, Jesus, who fulfilled in himself his nation’s destiny and made Abraham’s blessing fully available to the entire world.

Even so, the temptation will always be to do the opposite of Abraham and to think, like Peter, that we’re there already, without having to make the journey. But the God who first called Abraham continues to invite us through Jesus, saying what he said to Peter and now is saying to us: “This is my Son ... listen to him”! [Matthew 17:5]

Homily for the 2nd Sunday in Lent, at Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, March 20, 2011.

St. Joseph

Last night, at our weekly parish Lenten supper before the Stations of the Cross, I blessed the meal using the formula for the “Blessing of St. Joseph’s Table” – a tradition of blessing food in honor of St. Joseph, who provided for the Holy Family, and whose feast the Church celebrates today.

In modern times, St. Joseph has, so to speak, come into his own. Even this morning's Knoxville News Sentinel featured a column devoted to him, entitled "Honoring Joseph, a father who 'manned up'."

In the New Testament, however, St. Joseph appears only briefly (and silently) in connection with the early life of Jesus. Matthew’s gospel praises him as a righteous man [Matthew 1:19], but significant devotion to him did not develop until much later. Amid the many calamities of 14th and 15th century Europe, however, popular preachers like St. Bernardine of Siena saw St. Joseph as a model family head and household administrator. In the 16th century, St. Teresa of Avila placed her reform of the Carmelites — and the dangerous journeys it involved — under his protection. As part of the Counter-Reformation’s strategy of re-evangelization, families were encouraged to imitate the Holy Family headed by St. Joseph. In 1729, his name was inserted in the Litany of Saints. After the Kingdom of Italy conquered Rome from the Pope in 1870, Blessed Pope Pius IX proclaimed him the Patron of the Universal Church, under which title the Church venerates him today. In 1955, Pope Pius XII established an additional new feast of St. Joseph the Worker on May 1, to counteract the Socialist-Communist May Day holiday. In 1961, Bl. Pope John XXIII made St. Joseph patron of Vatican Council II, and the following year inserted his name in the Roman canon (et beati Ioseph, eiusdem Virginis Sponsi).

In 1851, a group of Redemptorist missionaries (among them the relatively recently ordained Isaac Hecker) sailed from Europe to the U.S. Delayed by bad weather, they made a novena to St. Joseph in the hope of arriving in New York by March 19. “St. Joseph will have to do his very prettiest to get us in,” the Captain retorted. On March 16, he said “St. Joseph can’t do it – give it up.” But the priests persevered in their prayers. That night the wind changed, and the ship began to speed – at 14 m.p.h.! After 52 days at sea, the ship arrived in New York on March 19, the feast of St. Joseph, and the Redemptorists were soon ready to commence the first English-language parish mission in the U.S. - at St. Joseph’s Church in Manhattan.

In one of his most famous sermons (“The Saint of Our Day,” preached in New York 1863), Isaac Hecker, said of St. Joseph: “His virtue was like the light, colorless because it was complete. He was an all-sided man. He combined in himself the sanctities of different and variously separated states and conditions. … He was in the world and found God where he was. He sanctified his work by carrying God with him into the workshop. … He attained in society and human relationships a degree of perfection not surpassed, if equaled, by the martyr’s death, the contemplative of the solitude, the cloistered monk, or the missionary hero.”

The Pope's Book

I recently finished reading Jesus of Nazareth: Part Two, the 2nd volume of Pope Benedict’s book about Jesus' life, words, and actions. These 2 volumes are, in the Pope’s own words, his attempt “to develop a way of observing and listening to the Jesus of the Gospels that can indeed lead to personal encounter and that, through collective listening with Jesus’ disciples across the ages, can indeed attain sure knowledge of the real historical figure of Jesus.” The book presupposes but “seeks to transcend” historical-critical exegesis “to arrive at a genuinely theological interpretation of the scriptural texts.”

For whatever reason – perhaps because this second book deals with the Passion narratives or perhaps for purely personal circumstantial factors – I found the second book both easier to read and more interesting. The Pope’s approach – alluding to and occasionally answering academic theories but always rooted in the text itself and in the ancient traditions of patristic interpretation – is engaging and clearly oriented toward its stated goal “to make possible a personal relationship with Jesus.”

It is always refreshing to read a work which takes the canonical text and the way it has been interpreted int he Church's life seriously as a fundamental point of departure. Since the book basically covers Holy Week and Easter, it offers some fresh insights for prayer and preaching as Holy Week approaches.

With their personal books, Pope Benedict and his soon-to-be-beatified predecessor, Pope John Paul II, have certainly raised the bar in terms of what will now be expected intellectually from contemporary popes!