2024 Nov 17 SUN: THIRTY-THIRD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Dn 12: 1-3/ Ps 16: 5. 8. 9-10. 11 (1)/ Heb 10: 11-14. 18/ Mk 13: 24-32

So this is the time of year when in our liturgical calendar we find ourselves thinking a lot about what theologically we would call the last things. More popularly people will refer to the end of the world, although that specific phrase is not found in the Scriptures. But obviously the idea of the end of the world works upon our imaginations. I was thinking about the fact that there are a number of popular songs that in fact have the end of the world in the title.

For instance you may be familiar with a 1987 song, "It's the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine." I found the lyrics; they go on for a couple of pages and I really couldn't do anything with that song. [Laughter] I would stress that it seems that a lot of the imagination surrounding the end of the world has to do with things happening outside. And it seems these days as if there are some people who want to see it happen, they want to see upheaval and a change of what we expect and they'd like to go and break things to help it along. I don't think that's a good idea. 

But in fact I believe that we can take some of these words of Jesus and other parts of the Scriptures and realize that internally each of us undergoes various upheavals that feel to us like it's the end or we have to start over or we don't really know the way. 

And when it comes to saying oh, it's upon us, well, yes, God is all-powerful, he is the master of his creation and he could
intervene at any time and say, well, this is over. But we have to appreciate the fact that God who is the author of time has been operating on a scale of time which is vast. I once put together what you could call kind of a "convincer" so we could get a feel for how vast the expanse of time has been since the Big Bang, which by the way this man did not give it that name, but this astronomer about a hundred years ago found evidence, and he aided this theory, and it happens he was a Catholic priest. Well, what I have here is a little notebook and instead of having a lot of pages it has just one long page of stiff paper and I used both sides of the paper in order to visualize how vast the expanse of time has been. [Shows whole expanse of timeline; laughter] And I like to ask people what one millimeter stands for on this timeline in all the time since the Big Bang, and I do it multiple choice:  is it 300 years or 3,000 years or 3 million years and the answer is 3 million years and you only go a millimeter on this. So that's a good thing to think about, and you know the cosmos will take care of itself, but we have to in fact consider what is going on within us; what are the upheavals that we experience within; what are our insecurities; how do we find that there are things that just don't sustain us. And with regard to those concerns I did find another song about the end of the world which I think really gets to the heart of things. This song is from 1962.

Why does the sun go on shining? 
Why does the sea rush to shore? 
Don't they know it's the end of the world? 
'Cause you don't love me anymore 

Why do the birds go on singing? 
Why do the stars glow above? 
Don't they know it's the end of the world? 
It ended when I lost your love 

I wake up in the morning, and I wonder 
Why everything's the same as it was 
I can't understand, no, I can't understand 
How life goes on the way it does 

Why does my heart go on beating? 
Why do these eyes of mine cry? 
Don't they know it's the end of the world? 
It ended when you said, "Goodbye" 

Well, happily, we have been reading from the great promise that the Letter to the Hebrews gives to us, and we have come today to the last portion [in the Sunday Lectionary] of that amazing book. We've been talking about Jesus as the great high priest and we hear a summary today. Jesus is the great high priest: the one who is at one and the same time the priest offering sacrifice and the sacrifice being offered. He has offered the sacrifice for all of us, once for all, and this is something that we need to search out in our own hearts. Have we accepted that this gift has been given to us? Do we accept that it is personal? Do we accept that it is the opposite of the lyrics of the song that I just recited? We can think about endings all we want but we do in fact have the good news today that accepting this gift is for us the beginning.

2024 Nov 10 SUN: THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
1 Kgs 17: 10-16/ Ps 146: 7. 8-9. 9-10 (1b)/ Heb 9: 24-28/ Mk 12: 38-44 or Mk 12: 41-44

Abundance and scarcity are on our minds as we consider the Scriptures today. We may have a variety of attitudes toward the gifts with which we have been entrusted.

We may think of our situation here and now and say, "There isn't enough for me and for everybody else. I have to hug everything I have to myself." On the other hand, there is the attitude of abundance which recognizes that God gives us gifts and does so unfailingly.

We also have the theme of widowhood in the first reading and the Gospel. We understand widowhood in our own day to be precarious, certainly from an emotional standpoint.

From an economic standpoint, we see that there are many things which make up what we call an economic safety net. But in the times of Elijah and Jesus, such a safety net did not exist.

So the widows we read about here are in an especially precarious position. We may think, "How can it be that a jar of flour will remain filled likewise for a jug of oil? How can that be?" 

Well, you and I are very much accustomed to looking at life in economic terms. We think almost constantly about buying and selling and storing up lest there be a shortage. But we are invited to think in different terms.

And we can gain something from a consideration of today's second reading. We have been reading for several weeks from the letter to the Hebrews, which makes a powerful argument that the sacrifice of Jesus is the one great sacrifice, which frees all of us and allows us to recognize abundance rather than scarcity.

We hear about the sacrifices of old: people slaughtering and burning up livestock. It may seem to us that this is kind of a crude way of thinking we have to get God's attention or we have to demonstrate how sorry we are for our sins.

We may think that this is antiquated behavior, but in fact, you and I engage in similar behavior. Somehow we want to prove that we have a right to be here. We want to prove, for instance, our competence or our closeness to God.

And this leaves us in a place which I would call nervous and unsettled. And in this case, there is an alternative. Jesus has offered the sacrifice of Himself.

He is a great high priest, and He does something that no one else can do. He acts as priest offering the sacrifice, and He is the sacrifice itself. And as Hebrews says, He enters the unique heavenly sanctuary with His own blood.

And therefore, He has given us salvation and everything that flows from that gift, including a mentality of abundance. So we can use our imaginations and think of ourselves perhaps finding every sort of goods, every sort of services in our lives, but then we still don't have a direction.

Now that is scarcity, but abundance is knowing that we are God's beloved children, that we can count on abundance in anything that we find making its way into our hands.

We are people, not of scarcity, but abundance.

It appears that I have copied over my November 3 homily.  It was about the great commandments of love of God and love of neighbor as you love yourself.