Homily for September 23, 2007 25th Sunday of the Year

First Reading: Amos 8:4-7
Hear this, you who trample upon the needy
and destroy the poor of the land!
“When will the new moon be over,” you ask,
“that we may sell our grain,
and the sabbath, that we may display the wheat?
We will diminish the ephah,
add to the shekel,
and fix our scales for cheating!
We will buy the lowly for silver,
and the poor for a pair of sandals;
even the refuse of the wheat we will sell!”
The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
Never will I forget a thing they have done!
Gospel: Luke: 16:1-13
Jesus said to his disciples,
“A rich man had a steward
who was reported to him for squandering his property. 
He summoned him and said,
‘What is this I hear about you? 
Prepare a full account of your stewardship,
because you can no longer be my steward.’
The steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do,
now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me? 
I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg. 
I know what I shall do so that,
when I am removed from the stewardship,
they may welcome me into their homes.’
He called in his master’s debtors one by one. 
To the first he said,
‘How much do you owe my master?’
He replied, ‘One hundred measures of olive oil.’
He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note. 
Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’
Then to another the steward said, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’
He replied, ‘One hundred kors of wheat.’
The steward said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note;
write one for eighty.’
And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.
“For the children of this world
are more prudent in dealing with their own generation
than are the children of light. 
I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth,
so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
The person who is trustworthy in very small matters
is also trustworthy in great ones;
and the person who is dishonest in very small matters
is also dishonest in great ones. 
If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth,
who will trust you with true wealth? 
If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another,
who will give you what is yours? 
No servant can serve two masters. 
He will either hate one and love the other,
or be devoted to one and despise the other. 
You cannot serve both God and mammon.”
Somewhere, many years ago, a committee met, and that committee decided what readings we would have today. And I don't know who they were, because I don't operate at that level. But anyway, that committee decided that the first reading from the prophet Amos would be a good reading to put with the Gospel today. And I don't know how they came by that, because Amos seems to condemn people for having dishonest measures and crooked weights, and for dishonesty in their dealings, and the Gospel seems to commend a steward who is a little bit shady in his dealings with the master.
Now, I'm going to try to put those together. But first, I want to talk about the prophet Amos, and I want to do that by talking about prophets in general.
First I want to ask, what is your image of a prophet? I'm just going to ask for a show of hands. How many of you grew up with the impression that prophets were people who predicted the future? That's not what prophets are, by the way. The word "prophet" means mouthpiece, so the prophets are the mouthpiece of God, and what they predict are the dire consequences of not living the way God wants you to live. So more often than not, they are social critics, and they criticize the people -- well, not the people. More often than not they criticize the king, and they criticize the priests, and they criticize religious leaders and the other false prophets.
I want to just share with you some facts about prophets in the Old Testament. Often they are accused of undermining the morale of the people. They are accused of not supporting the troops and undermining the morale of the troops. They are accused of this because they don't support the policies of the king, and because they predict that the policies of the king will fail. They predict defeat for the people or for the king's endeavors. And oftentimes the king sends out other prophets that tell them to be quiet. And, they are accused of disloyalty.
They universally predict dire consequences for neglect of the poor. That's what you hear today. The prophet Amos is very big in doing that. He says, "Hear this, you who trample on the needy, you who go to church and say, 'When will church be over so we can get back to the marketplace and to our crooked scales? When can we get back to our corrupt business practices that trample down the poor and the needy?'"
And the prophet Amos says, "God says, 'I will never forget what you do.'"
There are many places in the Scripture, by the way, where God forgives our sins and God wipes them out. But the prophet Amos says, "If you trample on the poor, I will never forget it." And he says that Israel will be destroyed for its neglect of the poor.
The prophet Amos condemns two things: He condemns a court system which does not deliver justice for the poor, and he condemns business practices which grind the poor beneath their feet.
He also condemns worship. By the way, the prophets are always concerned about purity of worship, but purity of worship for them means taking care of the poor and taking care of the needy. They condemn, as empty and meaningless, worship which does not take care of the poor.
Well, where do you think the prophets would weigh in on the issues that we discuss today? I'm not going to attempt to tell you, because sure as I did, and it conflicted with your views, you would disagree with me. So I just want to put the hook in there and ask you, from the facts that I've mentioned -- and if you doubt those facts, read the prophets; those are the facts of the ministry of the prophets -- where do you think they would weigh in today? And think about it. And, you know, evaluate what you read in the paper from the perspective of an Amos, or an Isaiah, or a Jeremiah, or a Hosea. Let the question be there.
Now, how do you get from there to the Gospel? I just want to do a little check. How many of you were troubled by that Gospel? What troubled you? "Take care of yourself now, do wrong," and he's praised, isn't he? Did anybody like that steward? I did.
I just have a confession to make: I love stories about people who beat the system. How many of you do? And that's what this is. It's the story about a man who beats the system. And you know, if you read through the lives of the saints, there's something a little bit like that in all of them. They are not perfect representatives of the system; they always undercut it somehow. Many of the saints are always slightly irreverent.
I read a poem the other day by Saint Theresa of Avila, and she said, "How did these priests get so serious, preaching all that gloom? Maybe God hasn't tickled them yet. Hurry." Well, I think there's an element of that in saints and mystics and prophets -- and maybe the conclusion of the Gospel: "The children of this generation are more clever in dealing with their own kind than are the children of the age to come."
Do you know, if you want to preserve your mental health in the working environment that we so often have, if you want to preserve your spirit in the culture that we live in, if you want to preserve your spiritually, you really have to work hard at it, and you really have to be determined, don't you? Because there is so much out there that kills the spirit.
And I think that's what this Gospel means. It tells a story of somebody who is able to be pretty determined to take things in his own hands and beat the system, and in doing so, preserve something.
And just think for a moment: If we who call ourselves Christian were as clever and determined and skillful and artful at promoting the values that we claim as people are in getting ahead in business in this world, would the world be a little bit different?
And if we were as good at promoting spiritual values as people in business are at cultivating the bottom line, wouldn't this world be a different place? And anyway, that's how I put the two readings together.
And by the way, a final thing I want to say about the prophets is that, in spite of being severely critical of the way things are, they are always, always deeply hopeful about what can be and what can become. And as we worship today, let's ask God maybe to give us that combination of looking at the way things are with a critical eye, but also being deeply hopeful about what our world can become.

Homily for September 16, 2007 Feast of the Holy Cross

I'm going to try something new today -- rather than the mike around my ear -- to use this handheld to see if you can hear any better with this. So, please, let us know at the end of Mass whether this made any difference.
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Cross. And when the liturgy committee met and we talked about how we might celebrate this feast, we thought we would like to celebrate who we are as a people living under the sign of the cross. Two stories popped into my head at the beginning of Mass, that -- I don't know how they connect -- but, I want to share them with you.
My first year here, one day I invited the kindergarten teacher to bring the kids over so I could give them a tour of the church. Now, what follows will explain to you why you would never want to turn me loose in a grade school. But the kids were all standing here, and the teacher was lining them up to be very proper, and probably to impress me with how well behaved they were, and I looked at them and I said, "Well, why don't you just go around church and look at whatever you want to look at, and come back and ask me questions."
Well, they shot off in all different directions, and the kindergarten teacher was horrified. And anyway, we finally got them all back, and one of the kids said to me, "Sure are a lot of crosses in this church."
Well, look how many you can see. There are a lot: There are 14 on the stations; there's one on the wall; there's the Celtic cross on top there; there's the one in the gold. There are a lot here, aren't there? So I said to him, "Why do you think that is?"
And one of them finally said, "Well, because it's the Church of the Holy Cross."
And I said, "Yes."
And then I remembered also, when I was in grade school, we used to look forward to this feast, because if the pastor was in a good mood, after Mass he would give us all a free day. Well, those were the good old days. That's why I wanted to be a priest: I wanted that power. Well, we don't have it anymore today.
But what we wanted to do today is maybe solicit your memories of Holy Cross and your own encounter with it. And I want to begin by asking how long people have been here. I'll start with myself. I was baptized here in 1940. I went to grade school here. Mike was a classmate of mine. Mary Ann, what year did you graduate?
(Inaudible response.)
Fortyseven, so you're a few years ahead of us. Anybody here longer than that?
Fortysix, okay.
Okay, who came here in the 50's? Anybody? Okay.
How many came in the 60's? Your family was here long before that, but you were born in the 60's. Okay.
How many in the 70's? Okay.
How many in the 80's? A lot, then.
How many in the 90's. Okay. Joe, have you only been here since the 90's?
(Inaudible). Okay.
How many in the two thousands? Wow, okay.
So, now, think for a moment. What was the neighborhood like when you came?
(Inaudible.) I'll have to get closer to hear you. Yes? She thought the neighborhood was richer than the neighborhood she grew up in, because the houses had doorbells. Okay.
What are your other memories of what it was like?
"Father Jim Byrne had been working with ECI when I arrived in the early '80s, and so there was renewal happening. And it was a good situation for me, because there were nine women in the neighborhood at that time that met monthly -- and Gwen O'Connor was one of those women -- and so there are some enduring friendships as a result of that."
So you came in the 80's. That was a period of a lot of community organization on the Near East Side, a lot of church involvement in the neighborhood and in the community, and a lot of contributions of that.
What are some other memories you might have?
Well, if we move from the 80's to now, we're seeing a lot of rejuvenation in the neighborhood. I think of our own church renovation and a lot of improvements we've made here, as we think toward our future. A question is how we relate to that.
We've seen a lot of changes in the neighborhood composition, haven't we? When I was growing up, this was an Irish Catholic neighborhood. If you look in our church history, on Arsenal Street, practically every home was Catholic. Then we had an influx of people from Appalachia. When I was in grade school we would go home and we'd say, "Kentuckians moved in there." No offense to anybody from Kentucky. But there is always a neighborhood.
And then there was an influx of African American population. And now we're experiencing an influx of Hispanics in the neighborhood. Look around us in church. We see the absence of many of our neighbors here.
What are some of your fond, your memories of Holy Cross? I did this with the parish council the other night. Think of a time when you experienced Holy Cross at its best.
I want to give other people a chance to think, and then I'll call on Jose. Can you all think of a time? I'm going to call on your daughter first. Yes?
"I remember the first time I realized that church was more than a Sunday thing for me. It was when I was very young. The sun was streaming through the greenhouse windows, which was right off our kitchen. And my mom and I were sitting at the kitchen table, and it was so warm, and then we hear the church bells tolling. And we stopped what we were doing -- I think we were baking cookies, because we did that a lot -- and we said prayers when we heard the church bells tolling. And it brought church to me in the middle of the week, and that was very profound for a young girl."
The bells -- the angelus -- they're still rung every day at noon, and the women at the women's prison tell me that they hear those bells over there, and that they think at times of Holy Cross and the people who come there, for Bible study, myself for Mass, and they think that there are a group of people here who care about them.
"I guess the Werles are the only ones that have voices today. But, I remember during the 70's there was a lot of liturgical renewal, and Father Byrne's ability to bring in people to the Christmas celebrations, and to include everything, like dance. And during the procession for Christmas, they had an actual woman with a baby come forward. And people came from all over the city to come back for Christmas Mass, like they still do, but even in greater numbers. And so you could see the connection between the old families and the new families, and the life that the church had given generations of people. And we're still doing it. That was just a good thought and a good feeling, that we're here with a lot of other people."
Any other memories people would have? Yes?
"One of my fondest memories is in '96 when my son and I both were baptized here together at Holy Cross."
Okay. Any others to share? Yes?
"Coming from a Protestant background, I remember the very first time I came here with Mom and Dad McGuire. And Sister Paulette was reading the part of Christ, which I thought, 'Oh, my gosh!' I had never expected that in a Catholic church. But you can just feel -- and in fact, everywhere I go, when people, especially my Protestant friends, are -- I don't know if I want to say 'be bolder' -- but, you know, sometimes they don't understand me becoming a Catholic, which -- this is where God wanted me. And I always tell them, 'You know, there is no church anywhere like Holy Cross. It doesn't matter whether you're homeless, or you're a doctor or a lawyer, you walk through the door and you feel the love.' And that is what church is about; that is what God is about; that is what Christ is about, is the love. And there is no place like Holy Cross for the love."
Thank you. Mary Ann?
"I remember when there used to be Masses starting at 5:15 a.m., and going 'til noon. And most of the times there was a crowd at every Mass. We walked, too. We didn't drive our cars. We didn't have to park in the schoolyard."
Thank you. I remember getting up at 4:30 in the morning to come over and serve those 5:15 Masses. That's when the pews went all the way up to the communion rail. There were -- the composition was quite different.
I want to share with you -- and I'll close with this -- when you look at the bulletin, you'll see our mission statement: Holy Cross parish is people offering worship connected to people's lives and proclaiming that everyone is worthy to be here."
I want to share with you the first meeting I ever went to at Holy Cross when I was pastor. And I -- well, it's the second meeting. The first one was a search committee for hiring a new principal -- and I had just moved into my office, which was in that room right there in those days, and I noticed the light were on. So I went to turn out the lights, and there were about 15 people in my office having a meeting, unbeknownst to me. And it was a meeting of the then liturgy committee.
And the first question they had was, "We want to know what the role of the liturgy committee is. We know what downtown says it is. What do you say it is." Well, they'd obviously been having a disagreement about something; I forget what it was.
So I met with them the next day and I said, "Why don't we talk about what we value in worship and in liturgy, rather than different roles."
So we had a meeting of some people with a facilitator, and we asked, "What is it that you value in our being together on Sunday and in our worship?" And two things came out.
One was a sense of connection to other things in life: A sense of connection to the neighborhood, a connection to the food pantry, connection to the prison, and connected to people's brokenness in life. And the other was the sense that everybody is worthy to be here -- a very consciously seeking to be that.
And I offer that to you as a reflection on the cross. What does that symbol mean to us? I can't explain how Jesus saved us by dying on the cross. I've read some very good explanations and very bad ones. The bad ones were that God was mad at us and had to be appeased by the death of His Son, and I don't believe that at all. The better ones I've read are that Jesus took upon Himself all of the things that weigh us down and achieved freedom over them. But what is constant is believing that that symbol of the cross means God's overwhelming love for all of us, and our ability to share that love and to live in its freedom.
And that's what we celebrate today, when we celebrate this Feast of the Holy Cross. And I'll close with just a question: What would your life be like if you knew that you were unconditionally loved, no matter what? If you really, really believed that? Well, live the way you would live if you really knew that to be true.

Homily for September 2, 2007 22nd Sunday of the Year

Gospel
Lk 14:1, 7-14

On a sabbath Jesus went to dine
at the home of one of the leading Pharisees,
and the people there were observing him carefully.

He told a parable to those who had been invited,
noticing how they were choosing the places of honor at the table.
“When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet,
do not recline at table in the place of honor. 
A more distinguished guest than you may have been invited by him,
and the host who invited both of you may approach you and say,
‘Give your place to this man,’
and then you would proceed with embarrassment
to take the lowest place. 
Rather, when you are invited,
go and take the lowest place
so that when the host comes to you he may say,
‘My friend, move up to a higher position.’
Then you will enjoy the esteem of your companions at the table. 
For every one who exalts himself will be humbled,
but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” 
Then he said to the host who invited him,
“When you hold a lunch or a dinner,
do not invite your friends or your brothers
or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors,
in case they may invite you back and you have repayment.
Rather, when you hold a banquet,
invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind;
blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.
For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
I want to have a little fun with the Gospel today, and I'm indebted to the theologian, John Shea, for many of these examples.
He imagines that, as Jesus is saying, "When you're invited to a banquet, sit at the lowest place so you will be invited up higher," he imagines Jesus looking at his hearers and watching their minds dream up a strategy. And Jesus says, "Gotcha," because he caught them plotting how to get honor and recognition.
Then he says, "One of my worst nightmares about this Gospel would be that I go to a banquet, and I sit at the lowest place hoping that I will be noticed and invited to come higher, and somebody comes and looks at me and says, 'I'm glad you know your right place.'”
Or another possibility would be that you go to the banquet, and you sit in the lowest place, and you like it there, because the people are a lot less stuffy than the people at the head table. So the next time you go to the banquet and you sit there and you are invited up higher, you say, "No thanks. I'd rather stay here."
Or one of the things I thought of: I used to like to be at the head table at banquets. Now I like sitting by the door. That's in case I have to get up and go to the restroom, and it's also in case I want to leave early. I can slip out without being noticed. If you're at the head table, it's kind of hard not to be noticed.
I think the readings might be an invitation to look at all the games we play with our ego to try to get recognition, or to try to get honor, or to try to be in those recognized places.
Has anybody here ever been there? Have you ever gone to a banquet and noticed where you were sitting relative to where other people were sitting? Or have you ever gone someplace and noticed who got greeted first and who seemed to be made a fuss over and been a little envious? Or have you ever been brought up short in your desire to be recognized?
I want to take a little risk. I am not going to ask you to share this, but I would like to give you about two or three minutes. Turn to somebody you're sitting with, and recall your most embarrassing moment connected with jockeying for recognition. Can you do it?
How many of you thought of a moment? You know what I mean? We've all been there. We've all encountered our ego and our need for recognition and honor, or being made a fuss over, and what do we do with it? I think in the Gospel today, Jesus would invite us to notice it and to smile, and to laugh at ourselves and enter a place of humility.
And, by the way, I don't know how this fits, but I want to say humility is something that you can practice only when you have a basic sense of your own goodness and your own worth. Because if you try to be humble without a sense of your own basic dignity, it can get pretty unhealthy and lead you to unhealthy places.
So I'm assuming that, first of all, we need to have a healthy sense of ourselves as loved and valued and having dignity, and then look at ourselves and the ways that our ego comes into play. And, as I said at the beginning, I notice that many times, in myself, when those things crop up, I say, "Big surprise. Here you are again."
The other thing I do sometimes: Remember in the 60's - well, some of you will remember - there was a song by Simon and Garfunkel? It went, "Hello darkness, my old friend..." Remember that song?
When I encounter my darker moods, I sometimes sing that song to myself, "Hello anger, my old friend, you've come to be with me again." Or, "Hello envy, my old friend, you've come to be with me again." Do you see what I mean? You welcome those feelings and laugh at them.
Dag Hammarskjold once wrote something that I remember reading in the 60's and have remembered ever since. He said, "A grace to pray for - that our self-interest, which is inescapable, may never cripple our sense of humor, that fully conscious self-scrutiny which alone can save us." You don't need to try to remember that. It's in my letter in the bulletin this week.
But anyway, just an invitation as we worship today: Let's try to enter into a spirit of lightheartedness, realizing that we are loved very much by God, and we can afford to laugh at our foibles and at all of the tricks that our ego plays on us.