Homily for November 25, 2007 The Feast of Christ the King

Today I want to talk about the feast that we celebrate, rather than the readings. When we look at a feast that we celebrate in church, two questions are always very important. How old is the feast? What was going on in the world when this feast was established?
Now if you've already read my letter in the bulletin, don't answer. If you haven't, how old do you think this feast is? Well, how many would think it's old? How many would think it's relatively new? Okay. Any guesses as to when it was established? Yeah, you read my letter. Pope Pius XI instituted this feast on December 11, 1925. So that's pretty new, as the liturgical calendar of the church goes.
It got moved around a lot. When I was growing up, it was the last Sunday in October. Since Vatican II, it has been the last Sunday in ordinary time.
In 1925, whatever was going on, it had more to do with European politics than it did with our faith. So, what was going on in Europe in 1925? Any guesses? Recovery from World War I. Communism as a very active political philosophy and force. Socialism, increasing democratic movements. Different currents in philosophy that were less theologically centered.
By the way, at that time many theologians in the church still believed in the divine right of kings, So that was the dominant political philosophy in the church. Also, the church was losing its influence in culture and in society. So one of the ways of stating the purpose of this feast -- and I'm going to quote it from a website called Catholic Culture "The feast of Christ the King was established by Pope Pius the XI as an antidote to secularism, a way of life which leaves God out of man's thinking and organizes life as if God didn't exist."
Well, what do you think about that? Is it good or bad? Any thoughts? By the way, where I want to go today is just to leave you thinking. I don't want to promote anything or promote any particular way of thinking, but I want to leave you questioning. So what do you think? Is this feast relevant to today? Yes?
[Inaudible answer] So Veronica thinks it would be, because today most people don't put God in the forefront of their life. [Inaudible answer] So John is saying that the images we use speak very powerfully to us, and does the image of king speak to our culture today? And so maybe we're in a time when newer images speak to us.
By the way, on the image of kingdom, Wendell Berryis one of my favorite authors,.Do you know what image he uses for the kingdom of God? The great economy. And he says there are little economies that pretend that they're the whole picture, and then there's the big economy, which is God's economy and, well, economy is a relevant word.
As I was thinking of it  and this is only my own personal opinion  I think we have to be careful with that image of Christ the King and the intention of the feast. If by it you mean should the church have more power in our political life, I'm not very comfortable with that. If you mean should the bishops have more to say about the way we vote  how many of you would be comfortable with that? One. How many would not be comfortable? Okay.
[Inaudible answer] Yes. She said she read the recent bishop's statement that came out and thought it was easier to understand, more broadminded.
By the way, there are some bishops who refuse communion to Catholic politicians who don't vote the way the bishops think they should. The body of bishops did not choose to take that position. So the bishops who do that are not our bishop, thank God, and they're not representative of the body of bishops as a whole. So I think there are some cautions you have to take.
At the same time, I think this is where I would challenge all of us. It's my opinion and only my opinion, that most of us form our political and social views without having them really be shaped by our faith, and then we proof text. We start looking for Bible quotes that will justify what we already think, or we start looking for church teachings that will justify what we already think. Would you agree with me about that, and that our views seldom come from a real prayerful consideration and reflection on our faith and on its values?
In that sense, I think the feast we celebrate today is very relevant, maybe not the image of king, or not the image of militarism, but the question of what role does our faith and the convictions of our faith play in shaping our views. I think it's still relevant and very worth praying over and considering.
On Thanksgiving Day I quoted the Declaration of Independence. What is the beginning of the Declaration of Independence? Can anybody quote it to me? Yes? [Inaudible answer: “We the People.” ] That's the constitution. Thank you. Somebody said that Thursday.
What is the beginning of the Declaration of Independence? Okay, very good. [“When in the course of human events . . .”] That's not what I was thinking of, but you're right, the preamble to that. By the way, it's very important that the framers of the Declaration of Independence felt that they owed it to the rest of humanity to offer some explanation and some reason for what they were doing. They owed it to the rest of the world to offer some justification for what they were doing. And the justification they offered was the belief that there are certain self-evident truths. "We hold these truths to be self evident,"
What were those truths? That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Do you buy that? And those are pretty much grounded in a natural law view of morality that comes from our biblical and faith tradition.
By the way, they also believed that the glue that would hold our society together was virtue and our common pursuit of certain virtues. Do you think that's relevant today? We might have a lot of discussion about what those virtues should be, and there is a lot of room for discussion and what those self evident truths should be. I think we need desperately, in our culture and our society, places where we can come together to talk about them and to share in a mutually respectful way that listens to one another and that begins to ask what are those self evident truths.
The last thing I want to close with -- and this has stayed with me for 36 years --  36 years ago, when I was running for the legislature, one of the old pros pulled me aside one night, and this is what he said to me. He said, "Listen, you're saying too much. You're telling people what you think about the issues. Don't do that. Just smile, and shake a lot of hands, and make them like you. And they won't care what you do when you get in there."
Now, that's a little cynical, isn't it? I would submit that it's the operating premise on which a lot of people work, isn't it? Avoid at all costs revealing where you really stand and what you really think. That's where I would say I think we need forums and places where we can talk about the issues of our society, where we can bring to bear on them the values of our faith and of our religious convictions, not to dictate what people should think or feel, never to dictate how they should vote. But these things are very important.
Anyway, that's just my reflection on the feast we celebrate today. Maybe as we continue our liturgy, let the question be in your mind about what role you think our faith should play in shaping our attitudes.

Homily for November 18, 2007 Thirty-Third Sunday of the Year

The Gospel story for today is Luke 21: 5-19. Jesus tells the people commenting on how the temple is adorned with costly stones and votive offerings that the day will come when not one stone is left standing on another. They ask, “When?” and “What will be the sign?” He answers, “Take care not to be misled” and talks of wars, insurrections, persecutions etc.
The second reading was from 2 Thessalonians 3: 7-12. Whoever will not work, should not eat.
This was also the Sunday on which people came from different parishes (over 10 were represented) to help prepare Thanksgiving Food Baskets.
I read this Gospel thinking of all of you from different parishes who would be coming to help us and, as I often do, I said, "Could I have another Gospel?"
How does that fit? I want to try to make it fit. As I listened to the second reading today - and I had overlooked it in my preparation for Mass - St. Paul said, "Remember how we didn't eat anyone's food while we were among you." I thought, "How ironic, to read that when we are gathering here to prepare food baskets to give away."
Paul did not take any money for preaching. He supported himself by his own labor, and he was quite proud of that. There's a biblical scholar that wrote a book once on the biblical ministry of priesthood, and among them he included ordinary work. I don't feel so good when I read that, because I get paid for preaching. For Paul, it was very important that he earned his own way and that he earned his own keep.
He said if anyone won't work they should not eat. Well, when I heard that, just to throw out for your awareness, most of the people who come here tomorrow to receive free food will be working people, not people who don't work and are unemployed, but people who work in jobs that do not pay enough money to allow them to buy food for themselves and to support their family. I think it's just very important for us to keep them in mind, the vast number of people who work in jobs that do not pay a living wage and do not allow them the dignity of buying their own food. Just be mindful of that.
Then in the Gospel, I want to talk about hope, and what is the source of our hope. We all want to know the future, don't we? We all want to know what's going to happen. Who are the experts today to whom we look to tell us the future? Any guesses? What? Statisticians! The pollsters! We want to know who's going to be elected for president next year. We read the polls, and the polls give us a sense of being in control, because we know what people are thinking.
If we want to know what the likelihood of something happening is, we look at statistical probabilities. If we want to know how we're doing in our schools, where do we look? Not where should we look, but where do we look today? ISTEP, test scores. We don't talk to teachers who know the students; we don't listen to the experience of people. We want numbers, and the numbers will give us the illusion that we're in control.
Do you know where I'm going? We are preoccupied with measuring things and with statistics and probabilities. Is that a source of hope?
I read recently of some people who did an experiment in the health care system. They took one group of patients that was having surgery, and they gave them all the statistics about their surgery. They took another group of patients and they helped them frame what was happening to them in positive terms. Which group of patients do you think fared better? The second group, right? Statistical information doesn't really help anybody. That's one thought about hope. Usually when we talk about hope we are talking about the probability that something will happen.
The other thought about hope I had is that young people seem to have more hope than older people. Does that seem true to you? Does it? Why is that? Cynicism. The older we get, the more prone we are to say, "We tried that and it didn't work." Right? The more our experience, it limits our ability to hope. Well, what is hope, then?
Forty some years ago I read a book about hope that has stayed with me for 40 years. It was a book by a French philosopher, Gabriel Marcel, and it was on the metaphysics of hope. Don't be put off by the big words. But he defined hope in this way: Hope is the experience of someone who has entered deeply enough into communion to, in the face of everything that we know, rise above it all.
Does that make sense? Well, you see, in the Gospel today, when Luke wrote his Gospel about Jesus predicting all those bad things, by the time Luke wrote his Gospel, all those bad things were already happening. What he was calling them to is to remember that Jesus told you that all of these things would happen. So don't be discouraged, but live with that communion, and let that be your source of strength and hope.
Well, to tie all that together today, we are coming together. We are experiencing communion with each other in doing a good thing, and, I think, in that communion we have with one another, with our God, gathered around the altar, and with the people who will come tomorrow.
Look around this church and imagine that more people than you see in this church will come through those doors tomorrow and come down the aisle to receive food. So think not only of our communion with each other, but of our communion with them, and somehow God is in all of that. I think that is our source of hope for the world and for life.

Homily for November 11, 2007 Thirty Second Sunday

Gospel: Luke 20: 27-38. The Sadducees, who do not believe in the Resurrection questioned Jesus about a brother who married and left a wife childless. He had seven brothers. The second, then the third and finally all seven married the woman. They asked, “In the Resurrection, whose wife will she be?”

I was happy to see some of you laugh and smile when I read the Gospel and got to the question, “In the Resurrection, whose wife will she be?” It shows that you were following, and that you got the joke that they were trying to pull on Jesus. I really had difficulty figuring out what to do with this Gospel. Frankly, it didn't do much for me when I first read it. It was one of those Sundays when I was tempted to say, "Could you give me another Gospel to talk about?"

But then I got to thinking: How many of you have ever found yourself speculating about questions of life after death? How many have ever asked similar questions? All right. Maybe not just like that one, but, what are some of the questions that you've found yourself asking?

[inaudible] You'd like to know what it feels like. Right.

[inaudible] When you're resurrected, how old will you be?

Somebody told me a joke the other day. It doesn't fit the homily, but it's a good joke.
This man and woman were in a deep argument, and the prayer angel appeared and said, "I'll give you each a wish."

The woman went first and she said, "I'd like a million dollars." And, poof! there was a million dollars on the table.

Then the man, who was really still angry, said, "I'd like a wife 30 years younger than me." So there was a moment of silence and, poof! a flash of lightning, and he was 90 years old. [laughter] So, you'd like to know how old will you be.

[inaudible] Who will you see there, and who won't you see there?

[inaudible] Is there a rainbow bridge for the pets that entered your life?

[inaudible] Who came for your past ancestors, and who will come for you?

[inaudible] You have a list of questions for God, and you  by the way, I hope you indulge me
another joke that came to my mind. You know who T. D. Jakes is? He's a black preacher on television, very popular. Well, he and Billy Graham died, and they went to heaven. And they said to St. Peter, "Which one of us is the Lord like?"

And St. Peter said, "Well, he's around the corner. I'll ask him." And he said, "Hey, Lord, we have a question for you."

And the Lord came out and said, "Buenos dies!" [laughter]

Yes? [inaudible] Will the answers even be relevant to us?

That's a good segue-way. It wasn't set up this way, but you see, many of our questions involve projecting what we know of this life into the next life, the same conditions, and that's normal. But what if the questions are no longer even important?

That's what Jesus seems to be answering the scribes and the Pharisees. In a way, I imagine that he's saying to the Sadducees, "Get a life! I mean, the question isn't even relevant to the resurrection."

I read a commentary by the theologian John Shea on this Gospel. He had a very good treatment of it, in which he quoted a woman; Patricia Monaghan was her name. And there is an article by her in a book that was published, The Best American Spiritual Writings from 2004. It's an anthology of writings, and her article was entitled, "The Physics of Grief." She recalls a conversation with somebody where somebody asked her, "What helped you deal with your grief?"
She said, "Physics." What she talked about was a time when she lost her keys, and she was feeling sorry for herself and suddenly realized she was angry at her husband for leaving her. She said, "Find my keys for me."

Well, then she thought how she was challenging all the laws of nature. She then thought of modern physics, which teaches us that time and space are far more mysterious than we can imagine, and that time and space are full of probabilities and possibilities that we haven't even conceived. She thought of Einstein and his theory of relativity, and she could imagine Einstein saying, "Everybody's alive to God." And isn't that what Jesus was saying? God is God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and he is God, not of the dead, but of the living.

Somehow that opened her to a sense of hope  not certainty, in the sense of being able to visualize what life after death is like, because none of us can do that  but that basic sense of hope, that God is God of the living, and that union with God that we enjoy now will never be taken from us, however we might imagine it.

I found then, further, as I was reflecting on this and reflecting on my time several years ago in the hospital  and I didn't know how bad I was; I slept through all that, and you all were doing the worrying  but when I woke up, I realized that the idea of faith didn't mean near as much to me as the idea of hope. Somebody asked me if I believed, and I said, "I don't know, but I sure hope it's true." I think hope comes from our sense of communion with God, and that's what I think Jesus points us to in the Gospel today.

Homily for November 4 2007 Thirty First Sunday of the Year

We've been talking about stewardship the last three weeks, and if you're tired of it, so am I. And I can't wait until I don't need to talk about it. But I do need to talk about it today.
First, I want to talk about the Gospel. I just want to rattle your chain a little bit with the Gospel, and I want to be an “equal opportunity chain rattler.” So if the first one or two examples rattle your chain too much, know that I am going to rattle somebody else's chain, too, the other way.
Imagine that Jesus comes to town  now, let your town boundaries be very broad  imagine Jesus coming to town. Whose house will he stay at?
Well, for some of you, imagine this: Jesus comes to town, and he stays at Dick Cheney's house. Or for others, imagine this: Jesus comes to town and he stays at Bill Clinton's house.
Or Jesus comes to town and he stays at the house of the head of Planned Parenthood. Or Jesus comes to town and he stays at the house of somebody who is very active in the pro life movement.
Or Jesus comes to town, and imagine Cardinal George in Chicago seeing him stay with the president of Call To action or Voice of the Faithful; or imagine, if you're the president of Call to Action, that he stays with Cardinal George.
Or imagine he comes to Holy Cross, and we all want him to go home with us, and he says, "No thanks. I think I'll stay here at church.”
And we think, "That's nice. He wants to be at his Father's house." And we come in church, and to our horror, the word "beware" has been written on everything. It's been written on my microphone; it's been written on the altar; it's been written on the pulpit; and we wonder, "Why would he do that?" And we begin taking it to heart. Our preaching, our talk becomes much more reflective and aware of the limitations of our vision and certainties.
Well, I've tried to throw out several categories of judgment, because I want to ask the question, "What if none of those categories exists in God's eyes? What if they're all human inventions, or what if there is a fundamental identity underneath all of them that we all share?”
I think Jesus did that in the Gospel, with Zaccheus. He said, "This man, too, is a descendant of Abraham, and that identity cuts across all of your scribe and Pharisee and tax collector and sinner categories? What would be that identity today?
Now, the question about stewardship. I have several things I want to do today, so I just hope you'll be patient with me. Next Sunday I'll ask you to turn in your stewardship intention card. It will have 3 parts: The United Catholic Appeal to support the Archdiocese, your support for the parish, and your stewardship of time and talent.
About the Archdiocese, if you've already decided you want to give to that, wonderful. If you're one of those who are ambivalent about that, just a word. First of all, in every denomination, people are ambivalent about giving to the headquarters. Whether you're Catholic, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist, Disciple of Christ, there is always tension between the local congregation and the denomination.
The second thing I want to say is, when I look at things organized by humans, there is nothing so good that everybody has to support it, and there is nothing so bad that nobody can support it. So, whatever it is, if it's organized by humans, if you're looking for a reason not to support it, you will succeed in finding one. And if you're looking for a reason to support it, you will succeed in finding one.
So, you all have your own priorities. I ask you only one thing, and that is the initial good will that would allow you to look with an open mind at some things that are worthy of your support. In my letter in the bulletin, I point out, too, the work of Catholic Charities, and I singled out in that Holy Family Shelter for the homeless, and the support of our inner city Catholic schools.
I remember when I came here almost 12 years ago, people were still smarting from the thought that the Archdiocese wanted to close our school. Not only has it not closed it, but it has really stepped up to the plate to support it. So I encourage you to join in stepping up to the plate.
About our parish and its needs, obviously we need to do a lot more than we're doing. I think what we do as a parish is not nearly enough. We don't do nearly enough for our youth, or religious education of young people, or of adults; we don't do nearly enough by way of outreach. But we don't have enough to support what we already do. So I just encourage you again to be open and to be generous.
And lastly, about our stewardship of time and talent, I want to do something that might look a little gimmicky, but bear with me. And I want to start with things outside the parish. How many of you are involved in some form of community service? Would you please stand?
How many of you are involved in the parish in St. Vincent de Paul Society and its many works? Would you stand? Oh, keep standing.
How many of you are involved in our liturgy functions, as a reader or musician or greeter or Eucharistic minister?
How many of you are involved in athletic programs for the young people? And if you're young people, stand. How many of you have some involvement with our school?
How many are involved in prolife activities? How many are involved in some form of religious education, RCIA? How many are involved in health ministry in any sense?
Help me now. I didn't make an exhaustive list. What am I leaving out?
How many are involved in selling raffle tickets? [laughter, applause]
What else? How many are involved in food baskets, the Thanksgiving and Christmas food baskets? How many are involved in prison ministry?
Okay. How many come to Mass on Sunday? [laughter]
Well, thank you. On your stewardship card you will have the opportunity to list all of those things, and be patient with us if you do. We're not very good at following up; we've yet to develop the system. By the way, that's true of every organization, too. People say, "How do you get involved?" And then you've got another group of people saying, "How do you involve people?" And they never meet together.
Then lastly, there is one thing that the parish council wanted to do today. This is last, but by no means least. We've talked over the years about the need to honor and recognize stewardship when it exists, and I think more than any sermon on stewardship, the living example of people stands out. Well, we have one person that the parish council wanted to really recognize today.
Joan Boersig has been around  when did you first come to Holy Cross? When you were 55! [Laughter] Twenty four or twenty five years ago. The first summer Joan was here, she literally went and knocked on the door of every house in this neighborhood, inviting them to come to Holy Cross. Joan has been involved  well, she has been the St. Vincent de Paul Society for many years, making home calls week after week to needy people; coming here at the office to answer the phone, to give out food vouchers and clothing vouchers every week; going to Horizon House every week to give out food and clothing vouchers there; I think just generally being an example to all of us for reaching out, for being concerned, and for going that extra mile to help people. So we wanted to give her a special recognition today, I think, as an example of stewardship for all of us to emulate. So Joan, would you want to say anything? [Applause]
Joan: Thank you so much, thank you.
[Applause]
[a moment of confusion avour standing or sitting] Well, we'll figure it out. I've only been doing this 40 years, and I still don't get it right all the time.