Homilies & Reflections - August 2020

Homily of Sunday, August 30 2020
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

     About 600 years before the birth of Christ, the nation of Judah, the only remaining part of the great kingdom of Israel ruled over by David and Solomon, was conquered by the Babylonian Empire. Many of the people were then deported to Babylon, enduring a long trial known as the Babylonian Exile. It would naturally seem that God had broken the covenant he had made to Abraham, Moses and David. During the last years before this happened, God sent Jeremiah as a prophet, to instruct the people that this was to happen, not as a result of God breaking his covenant with Israel, but because the people of Israel had broken their covenant with God.

    When God first calls Jeremiah, he tells him that he has been consecrated as a prophet even before he was in the womb. This is his vocation, what God made him for: to proclaim God’s word among the people. This would not be an easy vocation. Concluding his call, God tells Jeremiah, “I make you this day a fortified city, an iron pillar, and bronze walls, against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the people of the land. They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you” (Jer 1:18-19). God sends Jeremiah to speak to the kings, princes, priests and people of the land of Judah, knowing that they will be hostile to his message. Initially, Jeremiah tries to call Judah back from the brink and warn them of the consequences for their apostasy, their rejection of God to serve idols. When that doesn’t work, God gives him actions to do that illustrate what Israel has done, and how God will respond, some of which seem a bit theatrical. Just before the passage we hear in today’s first reading, God instructed Jeremiah to buy a potter’s earthen flask, go with some of the elders of the people and some of the priests out to Topheth, or the Valley of Hinnom just outside the city, then break the flask, and tell the men with him, “Thus says the Lord of hosts: So will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel so that it can never be mended” (Jer 19, 11). This location is an interesting one: the Valley of Hinnom is where the Israelites had sacrificed their own children to worship the pagan gods of their neighbors, and so symbolizes the complete breakdown of their covenant with God. Another name for the location is Gehenna, which would become an image for hell used frequently by Jesus in the New Testament.

Jeremiah then returns to Jerusalem, goes into the temple and proclaims: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing upon this city and upon all its towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have stiffened their neck, refusing to hear my words” (Jer 19, 15). One of the priests, Pashhur, does not take kindly to this and has Jeremiah beaten and put in the stocks for a day. After he is released, Jeremiah complains to God using the words from today’s first reading. “You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped.” It’s pretty clear why every human being in this narrative is acting as they are. The authorities in Jerusalem, represented by the priest Pashhur, are worried about Jeremiah sowing dissension and spreading Babylonian propaganda; the people see a man breaking flasks, and yelling at people, surely a subject for mockery, especially the opposing message delivered by many other official prophets: Israel will be saved because it has turned back to God; and Jeremiah is frustrated that God tricked him: he is beaten, mocked, denounced, later thrown in a cistern to die, all for saying and doing what God compels him to say and do. This is probably not the kind of life he imagined he was getting into. This sense of being fooled is made even worse because the message God has sent him to give is that the city of God, and Temple of God will be destroyed, and the People of God will be exiled. He concludes his thoughts by wondering, “Why did I come forth from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?” (Jer 20, 18).

But how can we understand what God is doing through all of this? Why compel Jeremiah to give a message that is unwelcome and will be rejected? Why choose Jeremiah as a prophet in the first place? Other than telling Jeremiah to trust Him and that His words will be on Jeremiah’s lips, this is not directly explained. Understanding this requires the use of a larger lens, that of Salvation History, God’s plan for humanity that starts at Creation, includes all of human history, including the Babylonian Exile, reaches a turning point with the Crucifixion and Resurrection of the Word Made Flesh, and concludes in the New Heavens and New Earth of the book of Revelation. Jeremiah does not live to see it, but he prophesies that the people will eventually return to Jerusalem, formed into a new People centered on the worship of God because of their exile. Although it seemed like the final destruction of the people, God used the Babylonian captivity to reform the people of God, and prepare them for the arrival of the Messiah.

This brings us to today’s Gospel. Following Peter’s recognition of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus starts to prepare his disciples for his crucifixion. Peter privately rebukes Jesus for this, which leads Jesus to respond “Get behind me, Satan! … You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Looked at without a sense of Salvation History, the cross is simply the execution of a politically inconvenient man. From a human perspective, this seems completely undesirable, and potentially avoidable. From God’s perspective, however, the Paschal Mystery, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, is the central event through which human beings are saved from the consequences of our sins, and adopted as sons of God. God brings the greatest possible good out of what appeared to be total defeat. This does not, however, end Salvation History. The Gospel continues with Jesus applying this logic to his disciples, and, indeed, to all of us. He challenges us to carry our cross and follow Him. To deny ourselves and imitate Christ in his crucifixion. To incorporate ourselves into salvation history, and take up God’s point of view. For Jeremiah, this incorporation came through God directly compelling Jeremiah to speak for Him. For us, this typically comes through incorporation into the Church by the sacraments and by our participation in the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. 

Another way of expressing this same idea is given in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. St. Paul says we are called to offer ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is another way of saying we must take up our cross and follow Christ. Nevertheless, we are faced by an immediate opposition: “Do not conform yourselves to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” This is another way of saying that we must be incorporated into Christ, which requires a separation from our age: we must think as God does, and not as human beings do. We must put ourselves into Salvation History, seeing all things as God sees them. This often results, as it did in Jeremiah’s case, in a great deal of suffering: it is a cross, after all, that we’re asked to take up. As with Jeremiah, this suffering is both internal and external. It can be inflicted on us by the attachment to sin of those who have not conformed themselves to God’s point of view, and it can arise within us from our own hesitance to take on God’s point of view. It may even result in our questioning God, as Jeremiah did, since we see the life to which God called us from our incomplete, human perspective since our sins keep us from fully being incorporated into Christ.

Nevertheless, this suffering is not the end, and indeed we would lose far more by forsaking it. Through our incorporation into Christ, we experience not just the cross, but also the resurrection. Conforming ourselves to Christ, we die to sin, suffering through the crucifixion, offering ourselves as living sacrifices. Rising again in Christ, our mind and body are renewed, able to see from God’s point of view. Crucifying ourselves, we are made perfect to share in eternal life in the world to come, to rise again in a world that will be fully conformed to Christ, in which there will finally be no suffering.

Homily of Sunday, August 23, 2020
21st Sunday in Ordinary Time (Isaiah 22:19-23; Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20)

“I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

In today’s Gospel Jesus makes a staggering promise to Peter.  He tells him that he will give him power over the kingdom of heaven. Like Eliakim in today’s first reading, the person who has the keys to a house can decide who will enter and who won’t.  Since it’s precisely sin which keeps us from entering the kingdom of God, the power to forgive sins is included in the power of the keys given to St. Peter and, through him, to his successors. We were first freed from sin at Baptism. Sins committed after Baptism are remitted in the sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation, often called Confession.  For the most part, Protestants follow the lead of Martin Luther who simply discarded Confession.  They think that sins committed after Baptism can be forgiven by somehow returning to the faith of Baptism, a kind of do-it-yourself absolution.  Man-made solutions like this may cure our jitters for a while, but, as the teachings of Jesus assure us, they do not restore our innocence.

What he promised to Peter while living on earth, Jesus actually conferred on all the Apostles after his Resurrection, when he appeared to them and said: “Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  Then breathing on them he continued, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” (Jn 20: 21-23)  With this action and these words Jesus invested his Apostles with the power to forgive sins in his name.  This was not a personal gift.  Rather it was an office, and has been transferred through them to the Church as a permanent institution. Because sin remains a lasting and persistent reality, the continuation of this office remains necessary. When Jesus said “binding and loosing”, Peter and the Apostles would have recognized the words.  They referred to an actual judicial power in Israel with which people were formally included in the community or excluded.  Jesus used that phrase deliberately.  There are similarities between a judicial process and the sacramental forgiveness of sins.  Both consist of three parts: valid power, knowledge of the facts and an appropriate response. But the goals of the two differ completely.  The purpose of a judicial process is the restoration of offended justice and nothing more.  Sacramental judgement, on the other hand, aims far higher.  It’s an act of divine mercy which is healing and redemptive.  

In order to proceed, the confessor must understand two things.  He needs first to know clearly what the penitent is confessing, and, second, he must discern the quality of their repentance. This is why verbal communication is so important.  The sacrament always concludes with the great and merciful words that effect reconciliation:  “I absolve you from your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” And this is the main point:  Confession is about the forgiveness of sins.  Unfortunately, especially in the West, catechesis about this sacrament has been neglected for at least two generations.  So it’s hardly surprising that participation has become rare among the faithful.  And the disastrous effects of this are plain to see in today’s Church.

So, what exactly does the phrase “forgiveness of sins” mean?  Let’s begin with what it doesn’t mean.  It’s not God saying: “Your evil deed is undone.”  Nor is he telling us “You took something away from me and now I’m going to punish you.”  He’s also not saying “Your offense wasn’t really all that bad.”  Forgiveness isn’t God looking the other way.  And it certainly isn’t him covering up our misdeeds.  The truth is wondrous and really ought to astonish us. When we obtain absolution and walk out of that confessional we are no longer sinners.  In the eyes of God’s sacred truth and in the profoundest depths of our conscience, we are no longer guilty.  Without blotting out the reality of our wrongful deeds, we are made completely free from them.  We really have been created anew. We can never do this for ourselves, no matter how great our efforts, no matter how pure our intention. This is because only God who created us can re-create us.  Only God’s mercy both declares us fully innocent and truly makes us so.   In the sacrament of Penance the grace originating in Christ’s passion, death and Resurrection provides us with unimpeded access to the Divine Presence.  Those who are aware of this also know that this sacrament is essential to their eternal redemption. For the sake of the future of the Church and for the sake of our salvation, let’s pray earnestly that this attitude becomes common once again.