33 OT B Nov. 15, 2009
This past week as I was driving home one night a news report from Mexico caught my attention. The reporter was talking about the 40,000 people who have been killed in Mexico over the past few years especially since the Mexican government decision to take on the drug dealers.
So far it seems to be a stand-off:
as soon as the government takes out one drug lord, a new one emerges to take his place.
However, and this was what the reporter wanted to report on, a new factor is emerging in the drug war.
That new factor is the Mexican bishops who were meeting last week to outline a policy that would align the church firmly on the side of the government.
Interestingly enough, in preparation for the meeting, as the reporter explained, the bishops had consulted the bishops of Italy to see what kind of policies the Italian bishops had adopted when they decided to join forces with their government in its war on the mafia.
This is serious business. Already in Mexico, one cardinal, several bishops and several more pastors have been executed gang-land style.
As the bishops laid out their plans last week public denunciations of local drug lords
excommunications for known drug lords refusal to accept any gifts from known drug lords refusal to conduct marriages or to bless buildings or anything connected with known drug lords as they laid out their plans, the bishops know that they are putting themselves on the line.
But even more, they know that it’s going to be the pastors of local parishes who will be in the trenches fighting this war against drugs. The pastors are the ones expected to carry out the church’s plan of action on the local level.
The reporter had interviewed one pastor who candidly admitted that many priests in Mexico were now being asked as he said: “to put our lives on the line.”
When he added: “many of us are going to have to make a decision.” I thought to myself: what would I do if I were in his situation? What would my decision be?
We tell the stories of martyrs and we honor them but I’m not sure if I feel all that prepared to be one of them.
And yet: are there not times, when we have to take a stand, to be counted, to make a decision., whether we are prepared or not. In the bible, such times are known as “the end times” and we can speak of such decisions as “end time decisions.”
The gospel today is from that section of Mark that speaks of the end times.
Some of the most dramatic language about those times is found in Mark:
the stark contrast between good and evil
the apparent victory of evil
a time of persecution and suffering.
In the midst of how awful things can get stands the believer who, for Mark, is challenged to make a decision:
to choose the victory that he or she can not yet see
to trust that the future belongs to God
to stand firmly and confidently that God is with me
and will bring me safely through to the end.
to choose a path that will bring life even if that means the risk one’s own life.
In looking this past week at Mark’s end of the world passages I thought of my brother priests in Mexico who are truly facing a test of biblical proportions and who are being called on to make an “end time” decision for themselves.
But I also thought about all of us who today face the worst economic and social crisis in 80 years or who may be facing a test of biblical proportions in our own personal lives:
Are these not times when so many are being called on to take a stand to say what we really trust, to say where our hope for the future really is placed?
Are these not the times when we are challenged to say I too believe in that victory that I cannot always clearly see and that I choose not to live in fear. There may be good reasons to fear, to doubt and to be confused. But for people who believe in the victory that Jesus has won for us we have greater reasons to set those fears aside to not let them rule our lives.
Why? Because we believe that something greater than mere human effort is at work, fashioning our future , guiding the course of human events.
That’s what we now celebrate in the Eucharist the victory that we cannot yet fully see:
the hope that Jesus gives to us that draws us into his future.
He Jesus, the Risen one, victorious over death - whose Spirit breathes life upon us. He, Jesus is here for us
For all near and far, who find themselves facing times and tests that seem larger than life may this banquet provide the strength and nourishment needed in these end times to take a stand, to be counted, to make the decision that brings life and hope to others as well.
Amen.
© James W. Lothamer, s.s.
Nov. 15, 2009
Hom 32B OT
St. Agnes Church Nov. 8, 2009
Quite a few years ago when I was pastor at St. Joseph’s in Adrian I had the funeral of a very elderly woman who had died. I didn’t really know her very well. Because of illness, she didn’t often come to Mass. She had no real family in the area. There would be only a couple of distant cousins that would come to the funeral.
I did know that she was living on not much more than a small social security check.
To prepare for the funeral, I decided to check what we had on her in the parish file. When I opened up her file, what I found touched my heart very deeply. This nearly nameless woman had faithfully sent to the parish each week for the past four years a check for $3.38. I suspect that after carefully budgeting her expenses each month, it was all that she had left.
Staring at that parish file, I can’t tell you how humbled I felt by her generosity.
I also felt a sense of regret: regret that I would never have a chance to thank her for such faithfulness and generosity.
The gospel today reminds me of that nearly nameless woman whose funeral I had so many years ago. There is a human quality to this story from Mark. Who would not feel for this poor widow who has nothing . . . who gives practically nothing – and yet she gives everything.
Her generosity is all the more remarkable because according to Mark she had two coins. She could have given one and kept the other for herself. Isn’t that what we would do? Who would have faulted her? In giving both, her generosity is not only remarkable
it is absolute. She could not have done more.
To this whole scene, Mark portrays Jesus as a bystander, an observer, looking on from a distance at what is transpiring. With his eyes fixed on the woman, Jesus calls his disciples over. Pointing her out, he says to them: This poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth but she from her poverty has given all she had, her whole livelihood.
As we hear this story from Mark’s gospel, we may well wonder: why is Jesus so distant? so pensive? so allusive in his words? This woman who has opened her hand, surrendering all - - could it be that in the simple action of a poor widow woman that Jesus sees himself when he would be called on to give everything to surrender everything he possesses? She opened her hand and surrendered to the Lord of Israel all she had as he would open his arms and surrender to the Father all he had.
When we look closely at Mark’s gospel, we see that this is the scene that comes almost at the end of Jesus’ public ministry.
And then we begin to understand: This is the scene Mark is using to prepare us to go on to read and to understand the story of Jesus suffering for us.
On the cross, Jesus will be as alone as any widow could ever be stripped of even his own garments he will be as poor as any poor woman could ever be. Like the widow, Jesus will give all that he has: not two coins but only himself, his love for us and his faithfulness to the Father. Like the widow’s, the generosity of Jesus will be absolute.
He could not give more.
But out of that gift, out of his gift we are reborn. Out of his poverty, we are made rich in God’s grace.
There is indeed an emotional quality to this morning’s gospel that helps us connect with the stories of people who give so completely whether those are stories of a widow, of Jesus or of people from our own lives.
And when we hear these stories we realize that in some important ways we all have life because someone else was generous in their care for us someone else love for us was absolute. In some cases it may be that they could not have given more.
And so, these stories challenge to us: How absolute has my generosity been? What of myself am I holding back, afraid to surrender for the sake of another? So that another may have life more abundantly.
In celebrating the Eucharist this evening and taking in our hands the bread that is broken and the cup poured out we retell the story and renew the challenge:
that such love and faithfulness as we find in the widow, in Jesus and in others that such love and faithfulness are to be the heart of my story as well. Amen.
© James W. Lothamer
Nov. 8, 2009
All Saints Nov. 1, 2009 Sunday
During his 27 years as chief shepherd of the church Pope John Paul II canonized 483 saints and declared 1340 more as blessed.
That was more than all of his predecessors combined for the past 500 years.
Because of his actions, John Paul was severely criticized by conservative cardinals and bishops within the Vatican who let it be known that not only did they not approve of this break with tradition but that they also considered his actions a cheapening of the official title of “saint.”
Had these cardinals and bishops been reading their bibles more closely they would have discovered that St. Paul almost always refers to those who are baptized as “the saints of God.”
Had they listened to Pope John Paul himself more closely they would have discovered his motives for all these canonizations: his conviction that it’s God’s grace -and not our failed efforts that abounds in our world that God’s grace triumphs in the lives not just of priests and religious but in the lives of mothers, fathers, farmers, teachers, catechists, workers, Christians who serve the poor.
And so when we read through the list of these new saints: that’s what we find: ordinary people who were outstanding as witnesses to Christ and the gospel in their daily lives. People like Josephine Bakhita from Africa who was sold as a slave in the late 1800’s, found her freedom and went on to be recognized in her life time as a holy woman, a spiritual protector and a prophet.People like Giana Molla, a mother who gave up her own life so that her daughter could live Manuel Morales, a husband and father from Mexico who was outstanding as a lay catechist and teacher Katherine Drexel, a rich American who in this century gave away her railroad fortune as she labored in the slums and on Indian Reservations.
Even more than his conviction about the triumph of grace in the lives of ordinary people John Paul also believed that the church, particularly in the 20th. century had relived the age of the martyrs and that the stories of these heroic men and women, people from just one and two generations ago who gave their lives for the sake of Christ or the gospel that their stories needed to be told as well.
And so, through the canonizations of Pope John Paul II we began to learn about martyrs that came from the Nazi concentration camps, like Maximilian Kolbe who took on the death sentence of an inmate so that the inmate, who had a family, might live or like Edith Stein – a philosophy professor who became a Catholic executed because she was Jewish martyrs from the gulags of the Soviet Empire and Communist China people like Bishop Budka and his three companion Bishops who died in exile the 1950’s from starvation and freezing: Siberia or Nicolas Bui of Viet Nam, a layman, executed for organizing catechism classes martyrs from Africa as well as martyrs from right wing and left wing dictatorships in Central and South America people like Franz Jagerstadt, a farmer and father of three who refused to enlist in the Army of the Third Reich people like the 19 Women of Catholic Action from Valencia Spain all executed in the 1930’s because Catholic Action was a forbidden organization people like Oscar Romero of San Salvador assassinated by government soldiers because he sided with the poor and stood against a dictatorship ordinary women, men, teens and young adults who were willing to stand fast in their faith, people who were faithful to the values of the gospel.
The message of John Paul and his canonized saints is the same message as this feast of All Saints:
it’s not priests, sisters, monks or bishops who are called to holiness we are all called to holiness of life we are all called to an imitation of Jesus in our lives we are all called to reflect the face of Christ to the world in which we live.
To be faithful to Jesus and the gospelin the midst of our everyday life whether as a mom or a dad, as a worker, a student, a teacher, a priest or a religious sister.
That’s what all these canonized saints are saying to us the saints on earth:
witness and faithfulness to Jesus and to the gospel:
it’s your vocation and it’s possible.
This feast gives us hope:
it’s not our efforts – though our cooperation is needed in the end it’s God’s grace that is able to transform our humanity into something beautiful in the end it’s God’s grace that is able to give every one of us a story that’s worth telling.
Finally, I want to say that closely aligned with the Feast of All Saints is the commemoration of our brothers and sisters who have died during this past year.
And so, following the creed, we listen as their names are called out and we get a glimpse of their lives.
On this day, as we celebrate the Feast of All saints we remember these our faithful departed. And we thank God for them for all of the ways in which they reflected Christ in their lives to us for all the ways in which they were saints in our midst
and we commend them to God, praying that if there be anything that keeps them from being filled with love that God’s purifying and healing grace make their passage to Him more perfect.
For them the ancient prayer of the church is ours today: may they rest in peace. Amen.
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OT 30 B.
Oct. 25, 2009 Mass of Anointing
At the parish in Baltimore where I used to work on weekends the 8th. grade confirmation class would always participate in the city’s annual Special Olympics.
Their job was to be huggers. At the Special Olympics, as you may know, huggers are the ones who shout encouragement and show enthusiasm.
And as each child comes across the finish line huggers, true to their name, embrace each contestant in a gesture of acceptance and belonging.
I always thought that these grade school kids were truly sacramental signs of Christ
images of God’s goodness and of his love, freely offered and freely given.
This morning (evening) through the laying on of hands and anointing with oil we as a congregation become a community of huggers.
Through the gestures of this sacrament we communicate to all of you who are anointed a simple human message of encouragement, enthusiasm, warmth and affection.
At a deeper level, though, our human gestures are the outward signs of a sacrament that tells us of the presence of Jesus the Healer the compassionate physician who touches our bodies with healing, strength forgiveness and a love that is freely and generously given.
For any who are sick or ill, for any who feel the uncertainties of your retirement years for any who feel the weight of mental anxiety and struggle and who approach this sacrament in faith with a heart that is open to Jesus here is your time to say:
Lord, I place myself into your care, into your hands. Here is your time to pray for physical healing if that be God’s will but also for the healing of broken hearts and spirits
a healing that allows us to have the strength to accept the things I cannot change a healing that allows all of us to say “thank you” to those who love us and care for us when we are most vulnerable.
We hear the echo of this prayer in the gospel this evening:
What would you have me do for you. And Bartimaeus replies:
Lord, I want to see.
That’s a prayer on the part of Bartimaeus
for the strength to accept the things I cannot change
the courage to change the things I can.
And wisdom to know the difference.
May our anointing this night (day) done in the name of the Lord Jesus reminds us that sickness, illness and the burdens of age need not isolate us from one another.
In becoming huggers speaking words of encouragement, enthusiasm, warmth and affection we hope that you see us for what we are: a visible, sacramental sign of Christ
lifting you up.
Through our embrace, may you know a true anointing, that outpouring of the Spirit into your hearts that renews all of us us in mind, body, soul and spirit.
Amen.
Fr. James W. Lothamer,s.s.
