2025 Feb 23 SUN: SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
1 Sm 26: 2. 7-9. 12-13. 22-23/ Ps 103: 1-2. 3-4. 8. 10. 12-13 (8a)/ 1 Cor 15: 45-49/ Lk 6: 27-38

HOMILIST'S NOTE: I ran afoul of Pope Francis's directive from his general audience of December 4, 2024, when he said that a homily should be in the six-to-eight-minute range.  This one ran over 12 minutes.

We all know that at every weekend Mass following the Profession of Faith, we have a prayer that goes by a lot of different names. You've heard it called the Prayers of the Faithful. It's also called the Universal Prayer. If you go to other English-speaking countries, you may hear it called the Bidding Prayers. My favorite term for it is the General Intercessions.

Now for some months I have been writing the general intercessions and I believe in keeping them concise and for the lector who has those prayers, I want to make sure it's on just one sheet of paper, one side of the one sheet of paper. And in fact when I'm keeping it concise, I'm able to present it in a pretty good-sized font. So much the better for the lectors.

But this weekend they're running a little bit longer and they're in a little smaller font. I had some parishioners of Saint Jerome say to me that they wanted to supply some intercessions of their own for this particular weekend, the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, the year of Luke, because of the emphasis we have today on the mercy of God. We've heard this in the first reading. We're aware of how King Saul, the first king of Israel, was obsessed with his belief that David was a rival to him and that he had to kill David. And so we have this Scripture today about that deep slumber that the Lord put Saul and his men into and in which David and his assistant were able to come right up to Saul and they could have killed him, but they did not.

We also hear from First Corinthians today about the fact that you and I have to move from being the first Adam to being the second Adam. That is, we need to be transformed by the gift of salvation in Jesus. We must be transformed. We must experience conversion. And, you might say, become a surprise even to ourselves. 

So there is an awful lot in the gospel and it starts with love your enemies. Three years ago I think I said that I misread that for a very, very long time. I was thinking it said "don't have enemies" and I put it on myself to go make peace. No, that doesn't work. No, if you are a genuine Christian you will have enemies. And what you can do for them is love them. Particularly as we think about what we're witnessing in our country these days, we do have to ask about God's gift of mercy and about whether it has taken hold. And I'm thinking of two of the principals right now in this process we're seeing. And based on the reading I have done about the upbringing of these two people, it appears to me that in their upbringing they never had mercy shown to them. And that is a serious deficiency in character. They may never have known mercy as they were growing up. And it's possible that in more recent times people have attempted to show them mercy but they didn't understand it. So we need to acknowledge these facts and we need to look at the rest of the things here in this gospel. There's an awful lot. 

turning the other cheek and giving to people. These are things that, again, I tended to misinterpret these. I thought it meant I had to be a doormat. Actually when you turn the other cheek you're offering a challenge. You give the attacker something to think about. And then, yes, with giving, it doesn't mean that you abandon any sense that you have rights and dignity of your own. It means that you know that life is much more than your possessions. Do to others as you would have them do to you. Now that's been called the golden rule, but Jesus didn't call it the golden rule. We know that Jesus as an infant received gold but he demonstrated through the course of his life that he was not interested in gold. So I don't know whether calling it the golden rule is any great compliment; but this is something that makes total sense to us as we try to grow in a sense of empathy, to see our neighbor as another self and to respond to them as we would like to be responded to. And I think that keeps us at a level of realistic, kind interaction which does respect the other. And that gifts will be given to you that full measure falling into your lap: For me that is quite simply the sense of peace which I have discovered in myself, and it is a wonderful thing when we discover it, because all of us can enter into an anxious state in which we are placing pressure on ourselves. When we are saying we have to do A, B or C in order to prove that I have the right to be here, that anxiety is existing in all of us and we are greatly blessed when we can come to see that as something that we use to block the very peace of our God. It is wonderful when we can lay that anxiety aside. So we have so much to think about and as we sang in the Psalm, "The Lord is kind and merciful." And we need to reflect on the people who have shown us mercy,  and realize that it [mercy] is real and that it is transforming and that as much as so many people in the world are moved by other influences, we know we give a witness that says peace is possible and peace begins with what is going on in your own heart.

2025 Feb 16 SUN: SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Jer 17: 5-8/ Ps 1: 1-2. 3. 4. 6 (40: 5a)/ 1 Cor 15: 12. 16-20/ Lk 6: 17. 20-26

We know that in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus at the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount gives us eight or maybe nine depending on how you count them, eight or nine beatitudes. They are promises that people are going to be happy in unexpected ways. We remember the first one, "Blest are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God." 

Well, we turn to Luke's Gospel and this is called the Sermon on the Plain. It says there that they're on a level stretch of ground. And it's interesting that Luke has Jesus proclaiming four beatitudes and four woes. And you know I've been in the habit recently of referring to people to whom I believe the woes reply -- [rather,] to whom the woes refer. But to some extent every one of us has sold out to one of these things that Jesus warns are woeful. We trust in wealth and we trust in not missing very many meals. And instead of developing a genuine sorrow, we do try to treat life as a joke. And we rely on people speaking well of us. So we need to consider how we are to be among the people who enjoy the beatitudes, the people who are blessed. We have a hint from the first reading and the Psalm today. Jeremiah talks about the need for a tree or some other plant not to be just out in some salt and empty lava waste. Instead that plant must rely upon a steady source of water. And this is the same thing we just sang about in Psalm number one. We know that we cannot rely upon ourselves. We must be rooted in the God who has given us all things and who is calling us to fullness of life, to eternal life, to heavenly life. We know we can do this because, because Jesus is risen from the dead. 

And we hear this truth proclaimed effectively by St. Paul. He is responding to people who they probably have gotten their Christianity mixed up with some other philosophy. And there are some who are saying there is no resurrection from the dead. And St. Paul says you have to get rid of that idea. The faith stands or falls on the fact of Jesus' resurrection, or not. We come together on the day of resurrection every Sunday to celebrate the fact that Jesus did die for us and he had to die before he could rise. He died for all of us. He is risen for all of us. We take this to heart and we are happy to reevaluate the things that bring us true happiness.

2025 Feb 9 SUN: FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Is 6: 1-2a. 3-8/ Ps 138: 1-2. 2-3. 4-5. 7-8 (1c)/ 1 Cor 15: 1-11/ Lk 5: 1-11

If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? You've heard that expression. And it seems that in our culture, the test of whether you are intelligent is whether you make a lot of money. Now, in fact, there are plenty of intelligent people in the world who go about their lives doing things for which money is not the main object.

But what do we have today? We have some people who consider themselves very smart and who happen to be very rich, and who say, "It's my riches that prove to me and to you that I am the most intelligent and I will go about doing things from my mind alone." These people are so full of themselves that they allow no room for some other inspiration, perhaps the voice of God Himself.

In contrast, as we turn to the Gospel here, we find Peter with his net empty. And obviously he identifies with his net, and he feels himself empty. And that is a good thing for him, because in his emptiness, he does make room for the God who gave him life in the first place to surprise him and change him.

And so the nets are tearing and the boats are in danger of sinking. And what does Simon Peter say to Jesus: "Depart from me, I am a sinful man." This is similar to the call of Isaiah when Isaiah responds, "I am a man of unclean lips." He is likewise empty and ready to receive what God gives him. And the gift is symbolized by the use of a burning coal on his lips, and the angel says, "There, now you are ready." 

We cannot understand ourselves by means of our own projects. We must understand ourselves as being converted and remade by our God. And we have a very good example of this in what Paul has to say today. He says, "I do not deserve to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Christian way, but by the grace of God I am what I am." And it is important -- indeed it is necessary -- for us to understand ourselves as being defined by the grace of God which has changed us, has given us peace, has given us a sense of generosity. And we can use that Psalm that we've sung today, Psalm 138. One of the lines in that Psalm is, "I thank you for your love for me which excels all I ever knew of you." 

We are not to go through life full of ourselves. We recognize our emptiness and we make room for the love of the God who transforms us, who changes us, who gives us peace.

From time to time I have heard people speak of what is called an elevator speech. I don't know if you've ever heard of that. If you are in some sort of group that is sponsoring a cause of some kind, for instance, the elevator speech is the way you summarize and distill your message to such a brief amount of time that you can give this speech during a journey in an elevator.

I don't think I've ever succeeded at this, mainly because the things that I care about I think require a lot of explanation. But it occurs to me that today's feast of the Presentation of the Lord gives us something close to an elevator speech about who Jesus is and what he came to do.

So we have this remarkable Gospel, a moment when Mary and Joseph are bringing the child Jesus, when he is 40 days old, to the Temple in Jerusalem.

And then we have the figure of Simeon. Simeon who has waited into old age so that he himself can gaze upon the consolation of Israel. He takes the infant Jesus in his arms, blessing God, and he offers a prayer which in the official daily prayer of the church we offer every night at night prayer. It is what you might call a prayer of submitting to our own limits and remembering that God is carrying out salvation. Simeon says, "Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace. Your word has been fulfilled. My own eyes have seen your salvation which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel." We say this prayer when we are about to retire for the night, and it's saying, "Yes, I have my human limits and I have to go to sleep and someday I will die, but your salvation will be carried out." 

Then we have his words to Mary, and we have this image of the fall and rise of many in Israel. And I think it's good to connect this with what we heard in the first reading about purifying gold and silver. Now that to carry this out, the gold or the silver must reach a very, very high temperature. So it is, if we imagine ourselves in the place of gold or silver, we find this to be a real test, a true stress. And I believe we can say that when we think of the fall of people, that this fall is not permanent; that in the process of conversion, as God changes our hearts and makes us more alive to His very presence, as He does this, we find that we can be truly ourselves as God created us to be.

We also have the passage from Hebrews, from chapter 2 of that 13-chapter letter. And it is saying, and we cannot say this too many times, that the Son of God was absolutely pleased to enter into our existence, to take on our human flesh, to suffer for us so as to lift us up.

And there we have, I believe, the elements of an elevator speech. We know that the Son of God has been pleased to show mercy to the human family, and to do so by being completely one with us.