St Andrew: Romans 10.9-18 and Matthew 4.18-22They were fishermen, fishing on the
And they follow on feet growing more beautiful with every step. Each step a word. Each word a name. Each name a soul, a mouth to confess, a heart to believe, a tongue to proclaim the Word. Each word a step. Each step a name. And with every step and name and soul, the fishers of men called by Christ net a back-breaking haul, a net ripping load. Having become preachers by hearing the Word and following Christ, these fishermen have also become apostles (ones sent out and away) and they have become prophets (ones who see justice at The End and warn).
Let’s ask with Paul: do we not hear? Certainly we do. Do we not preach? Certainly we do! Do our voices for Christ go forth to all the earth? Our words to the ends of the world? What do preachers do if not speak the word of truth and hunger to see God’s justice done? We leave behind our nets: the teacher’s chalkboard, the architect’s rulers, the social workers files, the chemist’s chemicals, the student’s tests. We leave behind the professor’s committees, the linguist’s books, the businessman’s deals and lawyer’s arguments. We walk away to walk with. We walk away to speak Christ’s word so that his name is known to all peoples in all tongues for all time. We walk behind Jesus, following Christ. We walk with Jesus, becoming Christ. We become Christ to preach his saving Word so that all who hear may believe, all who believe may be justified, and all who are justified may see God’s justice done among the living and the dead.
How beautiful are the feet and hands and tongues and hearts of those who bring the good news! And those who receive him!
Click HERE to receive a partial indulgence! YouHat tip to Fr. Z. for pointing out this excellent piece by Fr. Michael Kerper. If, like me, you are a priest who would rather boil and eat America Magazine than read it, take the time to read this piece. If you are one of those priests who think America Magazine, Commonweal, and NCR(eporter) should be added to the biblical canon, pay attention to the highlighted parts of the article. Fr. Kerper is showing us what it means to serve in humility!
Fr. Michael Kerper
The old Missal’s rubrical micromanagement made me feel like a mere machine, devoid of personality; but, I wondered, is that really so bad? I actually felt liberated from a persistent need to perform, to engage, to be forever a friendly celebrant. When I saw a photo of the old Latin Mass in our local newspaper, I suddenly recognized the rite’s ingenious ability to shrink the priest. Shot from the choir loft, I was a mere speck of green, dwarfed by the high altar. The focal point was not the priest but the gathering of the people. And isn’t that a valid image of the church, the people of God?
A few posts down from this one, I ask regular readers to give me some serious feedback on my homilies. Since I firmly believe that the preacher preaches to himself first and that I've been feeling that my homilies have been somewhat BLAH lately, I thought it would be a good idea to hear from those of you who listen. Below is an exemplary critique from a former student of mine. This is what I'm looking for, folks!
I think you tend to sound more Protestant in your homilies with respect to delivery and style, or at least what my very narrow experience of Protestant preaching has been. Your content is, obviously, Catholic, but the mannerisms of speech can come across to me as a cross between a Baptist minister and a car salesman and like you're trying to be too clever. Now, a decent amount of the Protestant delivery feeling could be my Bostonian upbringing shining through and really more about northern vs. southern speech, but I think that there is a legitimate issue there as well. You sound every bit the academic that you are when you are speaking, and that's fine in general but sometimes it can result in sounding talked AT versus talked TO/WITH, particularly with the over-reliance on rhetorical devices. Answering your own questions to that degree (case in point: The Resurrection! So What?) can feel exclusive and condescending.
34th Week OT(M): Daniel 1.1-6, 8-20 and Luke 21.1-4Jesus praises the widow in this gospel b/c she does not risk, plan, or weigh proportionate options when she drops her two coins into the collection box. She doesn’t offer a reasonable amount, a prudent portion given her income,. Nor does she weigh benefit against cost. She offers her whole livelihood. Jesus says, “I tell you truly, this poor widow put in more than all the rest.” How does Jesus reach this obviously erroneous conclusion? The widow gives freely, completely, without reservation out of her poverty, her lack. The others give of their surplus wealth. She has acquired the virtue—the good habit—of magnanimous sacrifice. The virtue that Jesus himself will practice by dying gratuitously on the cross at
We know the Scandal of the Passion and the Cross: Christ our King is whipped, ridiculed, and executed as a criminal by the Roman and Jewish authorities. This is a scandal because he has claimed again and again to be the Christ, the Anointed One of God, one who possesses divine power to heal, heavenly authority over demons, and the prestige of being the only Son of God. Power never yields to weakness. Authority never abdicates its place of honor, its elevated status.
There is another scandal here as well: the Scandal of Excessive Generosity. For creation to be redeemed, for all of God’s creation to be brought back into right relationship with its Creator, nothing more is strictly required than that the Creator bring us back. A simple act of divine will. SNAP! And we are back right where we were in
Jesus watches a widow drop two coins in the collection box, but in her he sees a kindred soul: one who gives not just a large portion of her wealth, not a calculated percentage of her leftover income but one who gives everything she has, her whole livelihood. And he sees in this widow a vision of his own sacrifice on the cross, his own excessively generous, needlessly gratuitous offering of body and blood for the reconciliation of creation to its Creator. It would have been more practical to leave Christ among us! To have skipped his suffering and death! But then, how would our Father have shown us His abundant love? His exceeding compassion?
Our faith is not an investment in risk-taking, planning, or prudently calculating cost/benefit. Our faith is a wildly generous, open-handed, open-hearted, full-throttled run, a redemptive marathon sprinted behind our Chosen Victim. We cannot give a portion of ourselves, a piece of our surplus wealth. We must give our whole livelihood, everything, all of it. . .nothing less was given for us.
Christ our King!Christ the King (C): 2 Sam 5.1-3;
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
We have two starkly opposed images of Christ the King: first born of all creation, head of the body, the Church AND the suffering servant, a ridiculed criminal nailed to a Roman cross. Savior and rebel. Messiah and rabble-rouser. Only Son of God and only a son of Joseph and Mary. He is the image of the invisible God and a convicted insurgent. He is the beginning, preeminent in all things and he is “King of the Jews,” sneered at and executed by the state. We know from Paul that the Son of God “took on the form of a slave, to be human like one of us,” and we know that he reigns in heaven at the right hand of the Father. The political question for us Christians, the leadership question for us is: How does a king rule while nailed to a cross?
Jesus hangs on the cross, nailed hands and feet to the wood. Pilate has placed a sign above Jesus’ head. It reads, “This is the King of the Jews.” The Roman soldiers, reading the sign, shout up at him, mocking him, “Hey, if you are King of the Jews, save yourself.” Without waiting for an answer, the soldiers give him vinegar to drink. More mocking, more scorn. For a Roman there is nothing more ignoble, more inhuman than to die a rebel, executed on a cross. It is the punishment reserved for lowest of the low. Their mocking of Christ is not only morally acceptable; it is required. It is part of the punishment. Stripping Jesus of his human dignity, stripping him of his identity, his vocation is just part of the price they make him pay for allegedly defying Roman rule. Nothing about Jesus’ teaching rises to the nobility and art of Roman philosophy. Nothing he did—heal the sick, forgive the sinner, feed the hungry—nothing about his ministry strikes the Romans as particularly religious or moral. Why save the weak from disease? Why rescue the poor from their fate? Why look with favor on slaves, foreigners, atheists, and cowards? Honor the gods, your family and ancestors, your country, and show no mercy to your enemies. The soldiers’ taunt—“Save yourself if you are King!”—is a spiteful but nonetheless predictable display of Roman disdain for weakness.
Given all of this, how does Christ rule from his cross? One thief, hanging next to our Lord on a cross of his own, says to Jesus, reviling him, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us.” The other thief, hanging on his cross on the other side, says, “Have you no fear of God. . .we are guilty of our crimes and we have received a just punishment but this man has done nothing criminal.” This thief admits his guilt and asks Christ for mercy. He receives it. Jesus says to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in
Let’s ask our question one more time: how does a king rule while nailed to a cross? The weakest answer we could muster is: he rules by example. So did the Romans. We could say that he rules by moral force. Well, so did the Romans. They ruled by what they thought of as a moral order, an imperial imperative to bring the Pax Romana to the world. We could answer: he rules by invoking in us a kind of patriotic fervor for the Church. How dare the Romans and the Jews kill Christ! They must pay for their blasphemy! Is hatred and revenge our destiny as Christians? If not by example or moral imperative or an incitement of righteous vengeance, how then does Christ the King rule while nailed to a cross? How does he rule even now? We cannot forget that our suffering servant, our broken and bleeding Jesus is the one who delivered us from the power of darkness; gave us to his Father’s kingdom as sons and daughters, heirs to the wealth of eternity; in him we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. He is more than merciful; he is Mercy. He is more than loving, he is Love.
Paul reminds us and we cannot forget: “…in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible…all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Christ the Crucified rules from his cross because in him “all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him…” Christ for us is everything. There can for us be no appeal to economic efficiency, political expediency, popular demand, or incremental progress. Christ rules by transforming cold hearts, by turning hard heads, by overthrowing obstinate wills; he rules in virtue, in strength, by being for us weak in condemnation and mighty in compassion. And we, as his body, his members can be nothing less, nothing weaker. We are subjects of a Crucified King.
Here we are, Lord, your bone and your flesh. Make of us mighty slaves, strong servants; make of us virtuous rebels, holy insurgents. Make of us a compassionate nation, a merciful tribe; make us a sacred people, a church bought by the blood of the cross and given away, freely given as a gift to the world.
I need some feedback from regular readers/listeners. . .
St Andrew Dung-Lac & Companions: 1 Mac 6.1-13 and Luke 20.27-40We would need several days and lots of good, strong Starbucks coffee (or several bottles of good bourbon!) to work our way through the biblical, philosophical, theological history of and all the nuances of what it means for us to be raised from the dead as a body in the flesh. Dogmatically, we know this will happen. What will this resurrection look like? I mean, with camcorder in hand and a crystal clear digital mpeg file to review later, what would a person rising from the dead actually look like? We have no idea. Well, that’s not entirely true. It would look like Jesus’ vacating his Good Friday tomb, but do we really know what that looked like? No. We only know that the tomb was empty on Easter morning. Nothing remained of our Lord but his burial garments and the inferno of faith possessed by those who spread the Good News of his departure. We know this: without the resurrection of Christ from the dead as a body in the flesh, there is no resurrection of his Body, the Church. We remain in the grave, dead and decomposing. We thrive then on the hope of our resurrection; that is, we prosper, abundantly flourish on the sure knowledge that just as we have died with Christ, risen with Christ, and lived with him to become Christ for others, our hope is that we will rise again with him on the last day.
So what? Good question. Here’s another good question: do you live right now “as if” you were already resurrected? Are you a glorified person? One who is radiant with the glory of God? Are you an indisputable sign of Christ’s coming, his death, and his rising from the dead? We can argue endlessly about the physics and metaphysics of our resurrection, but the point for us now, this morning, is take seriously, deadly seriously, how we live these gifted-hours as women and men who accept the Lord’s promise of eternal life. Are you living an eternal life now? Dependent on God’s generosity? Loosed from the bonds of rebellious passion? Freed from the death of sin? Are you a child of the living God, the One for Whom “all are alive”? If not, then you will end your gifted-days with King Antiochus, crying on your death-bed, “I know that this is why these evils have overtaken me; and now I am dying in a foreign land bitterly grieved.”
UH? What!
St. Pope Clement of Matthew reports that Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” We would expect this question and its subsequent answer to lead Jesus to teach his friends and students the nature of the Son of God and
Peter, in his first letter, writes to his fellow priests, as a “witness of the sufferings of Christ,” that they, his priestly co-workers, must be exemplary shepherds, tending God’s flock “willingly” not by constraint, “not for shameful profit but eagerly” as God Himself desires it. In other words, priestly authority must be wielded FOR the people and not against the people; for the truth and beauty of the faith and not for personal wealth or power, for public celebrity, overblown ego, or career advancement. The scandal of authority raises its ugly, lying head most dangerously in clerical narcissism—the use and abuse of the gifted-keys for MY glory, for MY elevation, for MY Self, bloated and callous, hungering after attention and fame. Priestly authority, used for this purpose, will divide the church, destroy the preaching, deny God’s people the truth of their faith, and ultimately, kill the spirit of both the shepherd and his flock. Our own “crisis of authority” is less about the failure of the Father’s good sheep to obey (the failure to listen) but more about the failure of our shepherds to lead in the way that “God would have it.”
How would God have His priests and bishops lead? Peter’s answer, “You are the Christ…” does not lead Jesus to expound a theology of the Messiah. Peter’s answer, “You are the Son of the living God” leads Jesus to appoint Peter to the office of vicar, steward of the kingdom, Rock for the church! Peter and his co-workers draw the fresh water of ecclesial authority from a deeply seeded trust, a root system of flourishing faith and love, and they branch out, across the church and the world, to speak the Word, to teach and preach The Truth that liberates. It is out of the deep well of abiding love for Christ and his people that any priest, any bishop draws the power to announce the Good News, to admonish and correct error, to set right those wandering away from the beaten path of our ancestors in faith. For a priest or bishop to use that well to slake a thirst for power, for fame or glory, or to puff up a failing ego is to drink his own destruction. And what is more scandalous for legitimate authority, what could throw on the path of the Way a stone larger than one of Christ’s apostles self-destructing before the eyes of the world?
Peter, the Rock, admonishes his priestly co-workers, “Do not lord [your authority] over those assigned to you, but be examples to the flock.” Show them Christ and they in return will show you redeeming love.
My Pod-O-Matic account is quickly filling up, so I've been reviewing older podcasts and pondering which can be erased. . .
