Sunday, November 8, 2009

Do It 'Til It Hurts

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle B
1 Kings 17:10-16
Heb 9:24-28
Mk 12:38-44

About 14 years ago St. Mary’s embarked on our capital campaign to build this beautiful new church. As part of the fundraising, we hired a professional consultant to help us. He said that as part of the fund raising effort we should have some people from the parish get up at Mass and tell everyone what they planned on giving to the project. As you might expect, there were some folks who said they’d give some substantial sums, after all, this is Park City. But most of the people said they would give smaller amounts, because that was all they could afford. The idea was not to show how rich some folks were and how not so rich others were. It was to show that everyone could give something, and that everyone should give enough to make a difference…to them, not to the building. The gifts given were to be enough so that it took a leap of faith to give them. To give out of our need, not our surplus. It’s not the amount that matters, but the cost.

We can see that wonderful things do come out of sacrificial giving. Beautiful buildings, wonderful programs, vital aid to those in need. But I wonder how that sacrificial giving affected the people who gave it. It would be interesting to have those same people who stood here fourteen years ago to commit to giving from their need, and hear how it ultimately affected their lives.

The two widows in today’s readings had no idea of how their lives would be affected by their decision to give until it hurt. They trusted in God open-endedly, with no conditions and without asking for anything in return. What we don’t hear in today’s scripture is that after the widow gave her all to Elijah, her son died, and Elijah restored him to life. She had no idea of the payback she would receive for her generosity. She gave anyway. She didn’t even believe in Elijah’s god. She gave anyway. We never hear if Jesus did anything for the widow in the gospel. He uses her to teach a lesson to his disciples and to us, but we don’t know if he ever said anything to her or did anything to ease her situation. The folks who gave generously to the building of the new St. Mary’s church had no idea what they would receive in return. But I would hazard a guess that they, like that poor widow, could point to many little things that have gone right in their lives since that time.


Why do we believe that if we do what is right God will reward us? Because the entire history of God’s interaction with the human race has had one consistency – God is always faithful to us, even when we abandon him. We heard it again today in the responsorial psalm: The Lord keeps faith forever. We never know how our lives will be enriched by our giving of ourselves to God and his people. We never know when it will happen either, but we believe that it will happen because we have faith in God’s faithfulness to us.

Why does God ask us to give out of our need? Why does he ask us to sacrifice for the benefit of others? Because he wants us to rely on him completely. He wants us to prove to ourselves that we can’t always do it all by ourselves. And he never lets us down when we surrender ourselves to his will. He wants us to be like Him, and he gave his only son to us to die for our sins on the cross. What better example of giving until it hurts?

A friend of mine told me once that he had been having a hard time breaking some sinful habits, and he had been embarrassed to keep going to confession and telling the priest the same sins over and over. In frustration he said he couldn’t seem to change his ways. His confessor stopped him in mid-sentence and said, “Wait right there. It’s not about you. That’s the problem. You can’t do it all by yourself. But God can. Give it to Him and let Him take those sins away.”

What are you carrying around in your heart that needs healing? What fears are keeping you awake at night? We all have them. And we all seem to want to take care of them all by ourselves. We don’t think God can help us, or we don’t even let God into the equation. And what do we do when God’s answer is for us to give more of ourselves? What do we do when we ask God to give us more and he turns around and says, “No, you give more instead?” What we have to offer may seem insignificant, but if we give it to God he will magnify it and use it for great good.

What these two widows did is extremely difficult for all of us. No matter how great our faith is, it is profoundly difficult to put our total trust in God. There is something within us all that looks for solutions to our problems outside of the realm of faith. Perhaps as rugged individualists we think that we can solve our own problems, conquer all obstacles ourselves. Certainly, we are all tempted to believe that the proper amount of cash applied in the right places can heal all ills.

I know you will agree that the great fallacy of our age is that money can solve our problems. It is the job of advertisers to convince us that we can buy happiness. The fact is that among those who have been blessed with material success the happiest are those who have no qualms about sharing their wealth. Too often the comfortable give to God as though they were poor. And the poor give to Him as though they were wealthy. And not just monetarily.

Someone has enumerated four different types of giving. The first is called grudge giving. I hate to part with this twenty dollars but I will. The second is shame giving. I must match whatever the Jones family is giving. The third is calculated giving. We part with our money with what, someone deliciously called, a "lively sense of favors to come." Bingos, Las Vegas nights, and raffle tickets fit in very nicely in this category. The final category is thanksgiving. I part with my funds precisely because God has been so wonderfully generous to me. The widow of today's Gospel fits comfortably into this area. The folks who gave so generously to the building of St. Mary’s do too.

This tale also points to another truth about our Christian selves. The majority of us do not fully give ourselves to Christ. We are marking time with our Catholic lives. We are hedging our bets. The clever Mark situates his famous story during the last week in the life of Jesus. None too subtly he is reminding us that in a few days He will give His life for us on Calvary. What do we give Him in return?

Monday, November 2, 2009

Good and Faithful Servant

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle A
Prv 31:10-13, 19-20,30-31
1 Thes 5:1-6
Mt 25:14-30

My father died two years ago last September. He was a holy man. I remember him as a man of deep prayerfulness, gentle and kind. His was an innocent faith, not based upon great learning but on great love. He had been given many talents. Trained as a simple draftsman, he went on to become a designer of complicated machinery and a builder of homes. He could create wonderful things with his hands. And in everything he exhibited a wonderful enthusiasm…for his work, his family, his God, his life.

I remember him today for two reasons. First, because this reading was one we used at his funeral. Second, because in the month of November we remember those who have gone before us marked by the sign of faith. As I was preparing this homily his Mass card fell out of my prayer book, and something in me wanted to tell his story.

My dad was given much in this life, just like the servant in today’s gospel who was given the five talents. And like that servant, Dad invested his talents wisely. Not just the good things he was given, but also the bad. A talent in Jesus’ day was not a measure of money, it was a measure of weight. A talent weighed about 75 pounds, so five talents of silver was a considerable thing indeed. To invest it required strength, and usually a bit of help.

In the last third of his life, Dad’s talents were very heavy indeed. He was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx when he was 47, my age, and had his voice box removed completely. For an Italian male, that may be one of the worst things that could happen to you, to lose your ability to talk. One minute he could communicate and the next he was completely speechless. Completely helpless and dependent upon the help of others.

He invested those heavy talents well. He trained himself how to speak again, swallowing air in his eshophogus and letting it out slowly to form words. We said he sounded like a frog. He could have used a small electronic device to amplify his voice, but he didn’t because he wanted to show other people who had had laryengectomies that they could return to normal life again. He went on to do just that, even taking his place again on the altar as a lector.

The master was away a long time, and so the servants had a long time to invest the talents he left them. And the value of those talents compounded over time. My father eventually suffered through three more bouts with cancer over a 32 year period. He had prostate cancer, kidney cancer, and finally melanoma, which claimed him. By the time he died he was a physical shell of the strong, vibrant man he had been. But throughout all his sufferings he became a much stronger man, a much more peaceful man, a holy man. He took each and every one of those heavy talents and invested them in other people, in his faith, and in his family. He never did it with words, he did it by quietly taking each one and placing this one here with a prayer, that one there with a hug, and that one over there with a smile. The illnesses that could have ground him down in fear, that could have forced him to bury his talents in the ground, instead paid the greatest dividends. He died in great peace, not in fear.

I tell you this story today not to brag about my dad, although I do so unashamedly. It’s because we all know people like him. We remember them especially in the month of November each year. We have their names enshrined in the Book of the Dead on our altars, and we dust off their prayer cards and their pictures, and relive our moments with them. Many times they are still among us, are even here this morning. We realize that we are indeed given great things from our Master, and not all of them are pleasant. But they are all worthwhile and valuable, and we are called to invest them wisely.

A good and faithful servant is good and faithful in all things. We are all called to be that servant, and best of all, to share our master’s joy.

Never Surrender!

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle C
Mal 3:19-20
2 Thes 3:7-12
Lk 21:5-19

We’ve surrendered. We’ve given up. We suffer persecution and do nothing. We aren’t even aware we’re being persecuted.

Some of the persecution we suffer is outright.

Go to the other side of the world, and we find Christians being tortured in China. Caught distributing Bibles, the police tied John's hands behind his back, stood him on a wooden box in the prison courtyard, and put a noose around his neck. For twelve days, John stood on the box. No rest, no food. His legs swelled to twice their size. Finally, delirious, John fell. Impressed with his faith, the guards cut him down, and he lived.

Other persecutions of Christians include selling women and children into slavery. In Sudan, to become a Christian brings a death sentence under Sudanese criminal laws against apostasy. Soldiers will raid a village, kill the men, then sell the women and children as slaves. One slave, a 17 year old boy, was nailed to a board by his master and left to die. Other times government forces will raid a Christian village, burn it and all the crops. Any who survive can only escape across the desert in 115 degree heat. Sudanese Christians live with daily danger of being persecuted.

We are truly persecuted for our faith today. Around the world Christians are still being martyred by the thousands. Pope John Paul II called the 20th century the “Century of the Martyrs”, with more Christians killed for their faith in the last 100 years than in all other years since Christ combined. We don’t see Christians martyred in America today, but in a way we’re all martyrs. The word martyr means “witness”, and while we don’t shed our blood for Christ, we still suffer pain. While we may not die for our faith, we may commit social suicide for giving our testimony.


We're the lucky ones. In our country, Christians do not have to worry about being killed or tortured or sold into slavery. But, don't think we are not persecuted. Just by more subtle persecutions.

There’s a lot of Catholic bashing going on today, and we’re blind to it. Some of it is because we’re the big kid on the block, and it’s the American way to take pot shots at large organizations, whether it’s the government, or Wal Mart, or the Catholic Church. But it seems that the last acceptable prejudice out there is anti-Catholicism. Our clergy are portrayed in movies and on television as either corrupt perverts or bumbling fools, but never with any respect. We’re annoyed to read that the Southern Baptist Convention shuns prayer with other Christians. Even pronouncing that Roman Catholics are not legitimate Christians. Any time our bishops speak out on a moral issue threatening us today they’re brushed off as part of the wacko religious fringe. How can they talk about morality after what they’ve done? You’d never hear people talking about the Jews or the Muslims the way they talk about us. And nobody says a word to defend us.

We’re persecuted by a law that states that it’s ok to rip a baby out of its mother’s womb because the right to make a choice is greater than the right to live. We’re persecuted by the fact that our tax dollars are used to fund Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the country, without our consent. We’re persecuted by a science that says it’s ok to manufacture fetuses and clones for medical research. We’re persecuted by the media that throws ever more graphic sex and violence at our senses, numbing us and making the bizarre seem ordinary.

Why don’t we speak up to give witness to the gospel? Is it because we’ve bought into the culture’s values ahead of our own? Is it because we want to fit in, to be liked, to not rock the boat? Is it because we’ve bought into the ideas of relativism? Who are we to tell other people how to act or how to live their lives? Whatever they want to do is ok with me as long as I don’t suffer because of it. Is it because we don’t want to be labeled alongside those “right wing Christian conservative wackos” who everyone seems to hate? “Traditional Family Values” has become a political hot button, but what about traditional gospel values? Why should we be ashamed of telling others about what our faith in Jesus Christ means to us? If the message of Jesus is one of compassion, love, and justice, why are so many opposed to it? Why isn’t being a Christian something to be proud of in our society?

For many years in this country Catholics were persecuted outright, denied jobs and homes and even attacked physically because of our religion. Well, now we’re 23% of the population, the largest single denomination in the country, and still we act as if we’re being oppressed. We cower in the shadows, and the only time the country hears from us is when there’s this scandal or that, or when we’re criticizing our own church. Where are the voices ringing out the gospel message of Jesus? We are called today to give testimony. Where is that testimony?

There’s a difference between standing up for what we believe, for bringing the message of Jesus Christ to the world, and forcing our beliefs on others. However, we seem to equate the two, so we don’t do either. Don’t you dare bring a bible to school or work because you might offend someone, but don’t dare limit what someone says or does on television because that would be squelching free speech. Freedom of religion has become freedom from religion.

We need to offend people more. Jesus’ message is offensive to the world because it rips the façades away and lays bare all evil. It exposes the false prophets and false gods to the light. It shows us what it truly means to be human, and it’s not about possessing the most stuff or having the biggest house or letting anyone do whatever they want to do. It’s about true freedom, freedom from sinfulness, freedom from attachments that distract us from what’s truly important. That’s why people hate us and our message. Because it hurts them to see how they really should live. It hurts them to see that they need to change their attitudes about things.

But we’ve surrendered. We’ve given up. We are overwhelmed by the images and messages around us and think we can’t make a difference. We’ve become desensitized by the sex and violence we see every day in the media, so much so that we’ve come to accept it, even promote it. Language that only a generation ago would never have been condoned in public is now commonplace. Traditional relationships have been thrown aside, and the acceptable, “normal” thing to do these days is not to get married and raise a family, but to shack up and hook up. I don’t know how our kids will ever get a healthy concept of relationships if all they see on TV is people jumping into bed ten minutes after meeting each other. We let every form of immoral behavior slide in the name of blind tolerance. Jesus tolerated people; he didn’t condone or tolerate their behavior. I wonder if Jesus saw the sin of the woman caught in adultery as just another “lifestyle choice”.

The messages are mixed, and the gospel is losing. Because we’ve given up. We have not persevered so our lives are not secure. We are afraid of the persecution we’ll experience if we stand up for Jesus. I’m afraid of the persecution I’ll suffer if I stand up for Jesus.

Today's gospel is indeed frightening. But it is not frightening for the reason some fundamentalists would give: the fear of the end. It is frightening because Jesus demands that we give witness, become martyrs, if we want to be saved. It is frightening because the Lord demands that we stand up for him, his kingdom and the Christian way of life in a materialistic, self-centered world. It is frightening because it demands that we accept grief from those who mock us. It is frightening because it proclaims that only by patient endurance can we be saved.

Jesus warned us that following him would require sacrifice. He warned us that it would not be easy. We will be called to give testimony, and we are called to be tireless in our struggle against evil. To be a Catholic today requires that we be a counter-cultural people. What a force for good we could be! We can’t give up, we mustn’t give up, because only by our perseverance will we secure our lives and the salvation of all humanity.