Twenty-Fourth Sunday In Ordinary Time
The gospel reading today is very powerful. Along one stretch of the way, Jesus asks the disciples to identify him. They know him; they’ve lived with him and listened to him for a while now, but who is he, really? They compare him with iconic religious figures, according to what people are saying. Herald, miracle worker, prophet. No surprises here. Jesus certainly exhibits these characteristics. Peter alone comes up with something new to say: Christ, Messiah, Anointed of God. We too follow Peter as he recognizes Jesus as the Christ then to a moment of struggle, questioning and doubting and finally Jesus affirming the need for surrender. First, Jesus is inviting us to answer the question “Who do you say that I am?” Do we know Jesus as the Christ? Do we think Jesus is human? Divine? A symbol? An example? Take a moment and consider “Who do you say that I am?”
Being God’s Anointed doesn’t mean what is popularly expected. Just as the Kingdom sayings are misinterpreted, and the healings and miraculous feedings, events are going in a direction the crowds neither anticipate nor want. The Messiah didn’t come to rule, but to die. Even faithful Peter is repulsed by this teaching and objects strenuously. He doesn’t want this kind of Christ!
We like Peter, take Jesus aside and we barter, blame and we say anything but this Lord. Peter and the Peter in all of us struggle with the script of the Jesus and how it played out. We still struggle with it and try and wrap him up in nicety and we tell the world he is our personal savior as long as well, it remains not personal. But when he demands something of us, some new growth, some words of healing and forgiveness, when he challenges us to see with new eyes then He becomes complicated. When He asks us to take up our cross and follow Him we then enter the most profound journey of what it means to be a human being.
Today’s readings say demonstrate your faith. Even if, especially if, you’re reluctant. It’s going to be hard, but you’ve got to show what you know. Prove it. Take up your cross. Do the work. We all walk a thousand miles of oh no lord not I before we discover that life has meaning, that suffering has meaning, that in our brokenness and vulnerabilities lie our greatest strength. Oftentimes we walk through illness, betrayal, abuse of all kinds and little by little (if we want) we walk our way into insight, into healing and into hope. The cross oh the beautiful cross is in fact our greatest teacher if we only embrace it. Elbert Hubbard wrote: if you suffer, thank God!—it is a sure sign that you are alive.
It is good to be back to live the Gospel with you after a time of blessed rest in Newfoundland. Stay tuned for many opportunities to renew and enter renewal during these times of promise and challenging hope.
Abundant blessings,
Father William
Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
In the Letter of James this week we hear of the importance of showing the same impartiality to others that God shows to us. If God doesn’t make distinctions between rich and poor, neither should we. In fact, if there is to be any partiality, it should for the poor whom God choose to be the people through whom the kingdom of God is passed on to the rest of humanity.
Jesus did the same. Look whom he not only attracted but also invited to be with him: the poor, social outcasts, the sick. It’s understandable to want life to be prosperous and neat and tidy and full of agreeable people, but what do you do when other things happen and other folks show up—the same kinds of marginal situations and people Jesus himself welcomed? What do you do when you encounter Christ, as Mother Teresa once said, “in his most distressing disguise”? An Italian proverb conveys deep meaning… once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.
The Letter of James drive home the point that we Christians should, in the words of last Sunday’s reading, “be doers of the word and not hearers only,” and in the words of next Sunday’s, “faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” Those works, James goes on to say, involve acts of charity and virtue: helping the helpless like orphans and widows, respecting the poor, doing corporal works of mercy, living justly and morally. These gospel readings reinforce this message of service and sacrifice, healing, and righteous living, but they also provide some counterpoint. While faith without works may be dead, works without faith are empty gestures, as last Sunday’s gospel story said. The disciple of Jesus needs both faith and works, words and deeds.
As we become more and more faithful in our efforts, regardless of the external results, our hearts will become freer from fear and we can more readily accept God's Word. Our ears will be opened and we, too, will be able to speak more plainly. May we ask Jesus to lay his hand on us, to heal us from our fears and whatever impediments we might have? May we trust that this will happen? Through God's graces, may we stand with others who live in fear and proclaim this Good News to them, plainly and with conviction? Tagore writes: when we stand before God at the day’s end, God shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing. I look forward to our fall beginnings as I return west this week.
Let us be healing agents of hope
Father William
Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Be doers of the word and not hearers only.
On the Sundays of Ordinary Time this month the church reads from the Letter of James. The message is pretty consistent: hearing God’s word leads to living justly and generously. Those who only listen politely to scripture and homilies and recite creeds and prayers perfectly but do not take those words to heart and live them are “deluding” themselves. Of course redemption starts with words—they have the power “to save your souls”—but if they skip lightly across the surface of people’s faith without sinking in and making some waves, they are squandered. External words or actions cannot by themselves save. What’s most important is what happens inside and how that shapes what happens outside. Integrity is when your inside and outside match. Jesus models that today.
In the gospel Jesus found himself in the kind of conflict that would eventually accelerate into his Passion: Going against the deeply held beliefs of influential people. He and his disciples not only violated the traditional religious practices regarding eating and other matters of purity, but Jesus turned the whole episode into a stinging rebuke of the hypocrisy of his critics. No matter how hard you tried, he said, following the rules did not make you pure and righteous if your heart were otherwise. The practices of religion are not unimportant, but have you ever let observing them substitute for true faith? Do your outer actions reflect what’s really going on inside?
What would happen if we focused on purifying our hearts? We’d have to give up gossip, envy, and bias. We’d have to discipline our thoughts and stop entertaining delicious resentments and nursing old injuries. We’d have to stop telling some old tales that bring welcome attention to ourselves. We’d have to create a new repertoire of helpful things to say in their place. Purity of heart demands vigilance, daily and hourly practice, and a lot of space for self-forgiveness. The sooner we begin, the sooner we’ll get there. Saint Francis de Sales said all of us can attain to Christian virtue and holiness, no matter in what condition of life we live and no matter what our life work may be. We must weigh every act in light of God’s law of love.
Love in word and deed
Father William