Preached for the 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Sat/Sun Sept 26/27 - all six St. Kateri Masses

Mass readings:  http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/092715.cfm

           

            First of all, a warm welcome to all who are visiting today – especially those who might have seen and heard Pope Francis this week and are here to “check out” what’s this Catholic Church is all about, up close and in person?  We’re glad you’re here.

            Now my name is German, but I’m roughly half Irish by origin, so I’m quite fond of telling this one:

            There was a farmer named Muldoon who lived alone in the countryside with a little dog that he loved very much. After many long years of faithful companionship, the dog finally died, so Muldoon went to his parish priest:

            “Father, my dear old dog is dead. Could you be saying a Mass for him?"
            Father Patrick replied, "Oh, I’m so sorry to hear about your dog's death, Muldoon.  But, unfortunately, I can't say Mass for the poor creature..."

            Muldoon said, "I understand, Father, I do. I guess I'll go to this new protestant denomination down the road; no tellin' what they believe... By the way, do you think $500 is enough to donate for the service?"

            To which Father Patrick replied: "Muldoon, why didn't you tell me your wee dog was Catholic?!"

            This little joke came to mind as I was thinking and meditating on the first part of today’s Gospel.  For don’t we often tend to think in terms of “Catholic” or “non-Catholic?”  Christian or non-Christian?  We put up walls around our groups, walls that keep others out and keep ourselves in.  I know I do – guilty as charged.  I can often find myself feeling quite uncomfortable with anyone who doesn’t believe exactly the same things as I believe.  And in my sinful pride, I have the unspoken but implicit belief that exactly what I believe must be right, must be correct.

            Now if there’s one thing that Jesus makes clear in this first part of the Gospel, it’s that no faith, no religion, no group, no person, not even the Holy Father Pope Francis Himself, “owns” God.  None can appropriate God as their own, as their own possession.  None can control, fence in, put a leash on, the power of the Lord God, or the working of His Son Jesus Christ.

            The disciples - the original Church - were Our Lord’s “insiders” so to speak.  After all, they were the ones who had left family and dropped nets and followed Him day in and day out.  And they thought of themselves as such.  We’re in.  They’re out.  Sort of a private club, you could say.  And so they forbade the man from casting out demons in Jesus’ name. 

            Our Lord rejects this way of thinking, for them, and for me, and you.  While the Church is the sacrament of Christ’s salvation in the world, it’s not a private club, closed in on itself, in sole possession of the Lord’s power.  No.  And while not all religions are equal, what I think Our Lord wants us to know is that He is bigger than the Church, and He can do and is doing His will in other faiths and in the works of other people of good will who may not even know Christ.  We should welcome that; we should be joyful about that!

            For some, and I can speak for myself, this might be a real challenge, to take these words of the Lord into our hearts and let go of what really amounts to pride, and look for, and discern, the Lord working for good and against evil wherever and whenever that may be.  In our own and other Christian faiths, and outside of Christianity.

            But while Christ is bigger than the Church, in the second half of the Gospel He challenges us who follow Him, who as “Christians” bear His name, to holiness.  While on the one hand He is saying that we are to be open to His power and working outside of “our group” of His followers, on the other hand if we are to be His followers, there are requirements. 

            And this is no mealy-mouth, “nice” guy Jesus speaking here.  One of our parishioners asks me if my homily is going to be challenging today or if it’s going to be, and this is his word, a lollipop.  Make no mistake, the Lord is not serving up lollipops in this Gospel.  He’s quite direct – if your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off!  Gouge out your eye if it causes you to sin.  And if you cause others to sin, better that you be weighed down and thrown overboard to sleep with the fishes.  Strong stuff, huh?

            Now Our Lord is not to be taken literally, or I dare say we’d have an awful lot of maimed, blind Catholics, but He wants to be taken seriously!  He wants us to know He means it!

            Two quick examples come to mind  – the eye, especially, seems to be a problem these days.  We live in a very visual culture – so much of what enters our minds and hearts comes through our eyes.  But do we guard our eyes?  Are we careful about what passes through our eyes from TV, movies, the computer screen?  Our Lord is calling us not to gouge out our eyes, but to have custody of our eyes, to be mindful of what we allow into our eyes, minds and hearts.

            And money – in his condemning the rich, in the second reading today St. James gives us no lollipop, either, huh?  Strong stuff – for compared to most of the world, you and I are pretty rich.  Now to be sure, James isn’t condemning the rich so much as condemning becoming rich through injustice.  But St. Paul in his first letter to Timothy, (6:10) teaches us that the love of money is the root of all evil.  Scripture makes clear - if we’re attached to money, to possessions, to material goods, how we can we also be attached to the Lord?

            Sisters and brothers, in this Gospel Our Blessed Lord is calling each of us, as His followers, to change.  To lives of conversion and discipline.  It’s no accident that “discipline” and “disciple” come from the same Latin root.

            And it’s not so much the eye or foot or hand that needs to change as our hearts!  For He tells us in Mark’s 7^th chapter, verses 21 and 22, that “from within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed” and so on.  Our hearts need pruning.  Cutting.  Gouging.

            But Deacon, doesn’t God loves each of us as we are? Yes, but He loves each of us so much that He doesn’t want us to stay the way we are.  We are called to grow in holiness.  And to pray down His help, His grace to do just that.  For true change, true conversion, true pruning of our hearts can only come through the grace Our Lord showers on us.

            We will find as we grow in holiness, we will grow in true joy.  The world will see our difference, the difference faith in the Lord Jesus Christ makes in our lives, and the world will want what we have.

Homily preached Sat/Sun September 5/6 - all three St. Kateri sites (4:30p, 9a, 11a)

Today's readings:  http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/090615.cfm

            My father in law is 84 and a wonderful guy, but like many his age, he’s hard of hearing – to carry on a conversation with him you have to speak quite loudly and enunciate your words very clearly.  Which reminds me of a story I recently heard:

An older man had serious hearing problems for many years.  He went to the doctor and the doctor was able to have him fitted for a set of hearing aids that allowed the man to hear 100%.

The old man went back to the doctor a month later and the doctor said, “your hearing is perfect.  Your family must be really pleased that you can hear again.”

The man replied, “Oh, I haven’t told my family yet.  I just sit around and listen to their conversations.  I’ve already seen my lawyer to change my will three times!”

            Many of us have also hearing problems – I know I do.  With each passing year I find myself more and more asking others to repeat themselves.  My wife has started to tell me “you really need to get your hearing checked.”  The other day I tried out an on-line hearing test, one that has progressively higher-pitched sounds.  Our dog was going crazy but I couldn’t hear a thing.

            In our first reading from Isaiah, the prophet is speaking hopeful words to the people in captivity in Babylon.  Promising, says the Lord, that God is coming to save you, to vindicate you, to clear the ears of the deaf, open the eyes of the blind, and the tongue of the mute will sing!

            And in today’s Gospel, the people bring a deaf man to Jesus, a man who also had a speech impediment, and we hear the amazing story of Jesus’ cure of both his deafness and his speech.  As we journey through the Gospel of Mark, as we witness these miraculous works of Our Blessed Lord, we learn more and more that this Jesus is “the one,” the one who is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.

            This is “good news” indeed, but the message, I think, is not so much for those with physical disabilities- blindness, deafness, speech impediments – as it is for all of us who by original sin are to some extent blind, or deaf, or unable to speak clearly.

            I’m speaking now of spiritual deafness, spiritual blindness.  And we all suffer from it, don’t we?  Are our eyes fully open to the needs of those around us?  To the injustices in the world around us?

            We come to church and sing “the Lord hears the cry of the poor” but do we?  Are our ears fully open to hear the cries of the poor?  Now I’m preaching here as much to myself as to anyone else here today, for truth be told, I don’t hear, spiritually hear, all that well.  Or maybe a better way to put it is I don’t listen all that well.

            Nor do I see all that well, or maybe I too often close my eyes to put out of my mind that which is going on in the world around me.  This became very apparent a couple days ago when I was confronted with the vivid image of a little three-year-old boy, who along with his family had been fleeing, refugees from the ongoing war in Syria, trying to join relatives in Canada.  The dinghy they were in was overloaded with people and capsized, and this little boy, his brother and his mother all drowned.  And this picture showed this tiny little boy lying prone in the sand, his lifeless body having washed up on the beach.

            How could I help but have my eyes opened to the plight of these immigrants, I asked myself?  And not just the immigrants “over there” but the immigrants right here among us, whom our faith calls us to welcome.

            And all summer there have been these undercover videos, nine of them released to date, which lift the veil so to speak and starkly show the utter depravity of what’s going on day in and day out at Planned Parenthood clinics across the country.  I’ve considered myself “pro-life” all my life, have opposed the evil of abortion, but these videos, difficult as they are to watch, have opened my eyes and my heart in a new way.

            And while I haven’t yet read all of it, Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si” presents some real challenges to us in many many ways but most especially in how we care for our common home, the earth.  The Holy Father is calling each of us, all of us, to open our eyes and our ears to what’s happening around us, to reflect on the fact that this little planet is our only home, that this little planet of ours isn’t ours, but belongs also to all the generations who will come after us.

            In our Christian faith, we are all on a spiritual journey, a journey of conversion of heart, a process of being more and more molded and fashioned by God’s grace into images of Our Blessed Lord.  And this process requires that Our Lord do the same to you and me that He did to this deaf man in Mark’s Gospel – that He open your ears and mine, your eyes and mine, your heart and my heart. 

            We see a vivid example of this process of transformation in the life of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, Mother Teresa.  Already devoting her entire life to Christ’s service, already having served as a schoolteacher for nearly twenty years, Our Lord gradually opened her eyes and ears to the suffering and hopelessness of the poorest of the poor on the streets of Calcutta.  One day she heard clearly the voice of Christ Himself, the words of Our Lord from the cross, “I thirst!”  And Mother left her teaching position, headed out into the streets, caring for those poorest of the poor.

            Sadly, as many of us grow older we gradually lose our hearing, our spiritual hearing.  Become more blind, more hard of heart, more set in our ways.  More pridefully clinging to our ways of thinking.

            But today Jesus says to us, commands us, “be opened!”  This is a call to humility.  It’s a call to open our minds and our hearts, to question, to search, to allow Him to mold us and transform us, more and more into His own image. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans said that we are all to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, conformed not to this world but to the pattern of Jesus Christ.

            And so, brothers and sisters, let us pray and meditate today, this weekend, this week on Our Lord’s simple but life-changing command to the deaf man, and to you and to me – “ephphatha! Be opened!”  And let us listen with new ears and hearts for the voice of God. 

            Open my ears, Lord, help me to hear your voice.  Open my eyes, Lord, help me to see your face.