Homily for December 16, 2007 Third Sunday of Advent
First, I want to thank those who have braved the cold and the weather to come out this morning. Normally on these days, the church is packed. So I don't know what's going to happen after Mass with the food basket preparation. Somebody asked me, and I said I don't know. I'm not in charge. So, thank God. We'll hear later what's going to happen.
Normally I ask what parishes are represented. I'm not going to ask. I know we have some from Christ the King; thank you for being here. We have some from Holy Spirit. We have some people from Saint Matthew's who came for the music.
By the way, you noticed we have a youth orchestra today. That's something new that we hope to continue.
Are there any other parishes? Holy Cross. Yes! Normally I'm embarrassed to ask who's from Holy Cross for fear that the visitors will think we don't have any people, because they so far outnumber us on this day.
In my letter in the bulletin -- and this is what I want to go with today -- are some readings from Vatican II and from Teilhard de Chardin. To understand readings, we need to read two texts. The first is the text of life that is happening around us, and the second is the text of the Bible. In the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, in Vatican II, it begins with these words:
The joy and the hope, the grief and the anxiety of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, are the joy and the hope, the grief and the anxiety of the followers of Christ. Nothing that is genuinely human is alien to them.
Did you hear those words? What do they say to us as we read the text of life around us? I think of it often as I drive through the neighborhood, and you see people walking. The other night I went out to eat and drove through an underpass that was filled with homeless people bedding down for the night. You can see people with their grocery carts full of their belongings walking the streets. Their joys and their hopes, their grief and their anxiety are our joy and our hope, our grief and our anxiety. Does that ring true, or are those just nice words?
I think you have to avoid looking for the answer that will get you an A. Maybe a C would be good enough. But do those words ring true for us as a community? Not as well as they could, but perhaps we can find signs where they do begin to ring true. What we do today is one small token sign of that. As we pray today, I think let those words and whatever questions they raise be with you.
The other words I quoted in my letter in the bulletin are words from Teilhard de Chardin, a French priest who was a paleontologist and mystic who wrote on the priesthood. And he said, "To the full extent of my power, because I am a priest" -- we could say, "because I am a Christian” -- "I want to be the first to be aware of all that the world pursues, loves, and suffers. I want to be the first to unfold myself and to sacrifice myself; to be more widely human and more nobly of the earth, than any of the earth's creatures." I hope you remember those words and maybe reflect on them as we worship today.
The other scene I want to give you is John the Baptist and his question of Jesus. "Are you the one, or should we look elsewhere?" As we look at the world around us, with all of its hope and grief and anxiety, and think of ourselves preparing for Christmas, ask yourself that question. Is Jesus really the one, or do we look somewhere else for the answer?
Pope Benedict wrote a book on Jesus of Nazareth in which he said, what did Jesus really come to bring us? He didn't give us a blueprint for world peace. He didn't give us a detailed plan. He didn't even give us a strategy. What did he come to give us? He came to give us God, and with God all of those things can happen. Without God all of our efforts are doomed.
The images in the readings today are poetic images. Let me repeat them, and think of your memory of the readings. So if I leave any out, feel free to chime in.
What are the images? The blind see; the lame walk; the deaf hear; the tongue of the dumb will sing; the dead are raised; lepers are cleansed; the desert will bloom with flowers; knees that are weak will be strengthened; hands that are feeble will be made firm. Any other images you remember?
They're there, and by the way, the passages in scripture that have those images are always written in poetry, not in prose. I want to conclude with a reflection on poetry. I've been reading a marvelous book lately called Teaching with Fire. The editors invited teachers from all over the country to submit poems that gave them courage and sustained them. Let me ask you, how many of you have little poems or little sayings tucked away in your wallet or hidden in books or posted somewhere in your house? How many of you? We all do, don't we? It's poetry or some of those sayings that often sustain us in our hope.
And one teacher, in submitting a poem and by the way, when I quote this, I don't want to offend any of the engineers who might be here but who said, "What if the process of school improvement is more like interpreting a poem than it is reading a blueprint? And what if the task requires the skill of gardeners rather than engineers, gardeners who can nurture and tend and pay attention to the garden?" Today, let those poetic images speak to you.
Jesus didn't give us a blueprint, but he gave us wonderful hope. And maybe we can ask ourselves, as John the Baptist did, as we pray today, have the courage to ask the question all over again of Jesus: Are you the answer, or should we look somewhere else?
Normally I ask what parishes are represented. I'm not going to ask. I know we have some from Christ the King; thank you for being here. We have some from Holy Spirit. We have some people from Saint Matthew's who came for the music.
By the way, you noticed we have a youth orchestra today. That's something new that we hope to continue.
Are there any other parishes? Holy Cross. Yes! Normally I'm embarrassed to ask who's from Holy Cross for fear that the visitors will think we don't have any people, because they so far outnumber us on this day.
In my letter in the bulletin -- and this is what I want to go with today -- are some readings from Vatican II and from Teilhard de Chardin. To understand readings, we need to read two texts. The first is the text of life that is happening around us, and the second is the text of the Bible. In the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, in Vatican II, it begins with these words:
The joy and the hope, the grief and the anxiety of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, are the joy and the hope, the grief and the anxiety of the followers of Christ. Nothing that is genuinely human is alien to them.
Did you hear those words? What do they say to us as we read the text of life around us? I think of it often as I drive through the neighborhood, and you see people walking. The other night I went out to eat and drove through an underpass that was filled with homeless people bedding down for the night. You can see people with their grocery carts full of their belongings walking the streets. Their joys and their hopes, their grief and their anxiety are our joy and our hope, our grief and our anxiety. Does that ring true, or are those just nice words?
I think you have to avoid looking for the answer that will get you an A. Maybe a C would be good enough. But do those words ring true for us as a community? Not as well as they could, but perhaps we can find signs where they do begin to ring true. What we do today is one small token sign of that. As we pray today, I think let those words and whatever questions they raise be with you.
The other words I quoted in my letter in the bulletin are words from Teilhard de Chardin, a French priest who was a paleontologist and mystic who wrote on the priesthood. And he said, "To the full extent of my power, because I am a priest" -- we could say, "because I am a Christian” -- "I want to be the first to be aware of all that the world pursues, loves, and suffers. I want to be the first to unfold myself and to sacrifice myself; to be more widely human and more nobly of the earth, than any of the earth's creatures." I hope you remember those words and maybe reflect on them as we worship today.
The other scene I want to give you is John the Baptist and his question of Jesus. "Are you the one, or should we look elsewhere?" As we look at the world around us, with all of its hope and grief and anxiety, and think of ourselves preparing for Christmas, ask yourself that question. Is Jesus really the one, or do we look somewhere else for the answer?
Pope Benedict wrote a book on Jesus of Nazareth in which he said, what did Jesus really come to bring us? He didn't give us a blueprint for world peace. He didn't give us a detailed plan. He didn't even give us a strategy. What did he come to give us? He came to give us God, and with God all of those things can happen. Without God all of our efforts are doomed.
The images in the readings today are poetic images. Let me repeat them, and think of your memory of the readings. So if I leave any out, feel free to chime in.
What are the images? The blind see; the lame walk; the deaf hear; the tongue of the dumb will sing; the dead are raised; lepers are cleansed; the desert will bloom with flowers; knees that are weak will be strengthened; hands that are feeble will be made firm. Any other images you remember?
They're there, and by the way, the passages in scripture that have those images are always written in poetry, not in prose. I want to conclude with a reflection on poetry. I've been reading a marvelous book lately called Teaching with Fire. The editors invited teachers from all over the country to submit poems that gave them courage and sustained them. Let me ask you, how many of you have little poems or little sayings tucked away in your wallet or hidden in books or posted somewhere in your house? How many of you? We all do, don't we? It's poetry or some of those sayings that often sustain us in our hope.
And one teacher, in submitting a poem and by the way, when I quote this, I don't want to offend any of the engineers who might be here but who said, "What if the process of school improvement is more like interpreting a poem than it is reading a blueprint? And what if the task requires the skill of gardeners rather than engineers, gardeners who can nurture and tend and pay attention to the garden?" Today, let those poetic images speak to you.
Jesus didn't give us a blueprint, but he gave us wonderful hope. And maybe we can ask ourselves, as John the Baptist did, as we pray today, have the courage to ask the question all over again of Jesus: Are you the answer, or should we look somewhere else?
Labels: Homilies
posted by Fr. Larry Voelker at
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