First Sunday of Advent

Dominica I Adventus A

1 December 2019

 This annual season of Advent is a gift from the Church that reminds us to wait and to prepare.  Our waiting and preparation focuses on the two main arrivals of Jesus.  We wait and prepare to be renewed by the annual observance of Jesus’ first coming when he was born at Bethlehem.  We also wait and prepare for Jesus’ second coming, a coming which we begin to experience on the particular day of our death, which will be fulfilled more generally at the Second Coming at the end of time.  Both main arrivals of Jesus get our attention in Advent.  However, since the first coming at Jesus’ birth has already happened in history, we should give a priority to our preparation for the Second Coming, which we still await, and which will have specific consequences for us.  We give attention to the far more important preparation that each of us must do to be in a state of grace and ready to meet Jesus at his second advent, his second arrival; we do this all the more because in this time of year the Second Coming we await is so easily eclipsed by an exclusive focus on the first coming in that event we call Christmas.  If we lack this proper priority of focus on the Second Coming of Christ then the Scripture selections might seem odd to us this weekend.  We’re beginning Advent, the start of a new Church liturgical year, but we are still hearing about the end times and the final judgment when Christ will come again.  That might seem odd if our priorities are out of order.

 First, I want to dismiss a notion popular among some Christian groups that this Gospel passage speaks of the idea of the “rapture,” that is, a secret coming of the Lord when the faithful will be taken and others left behind.  This is not a Catholic teaching and is not supported in the Scriptures.  If you back up several verses from the start of the Gospel passage it is clear that the entire context here is that of the end times and the final judgment, in other words, not a secret coming of Christ, but the very public return of Christ to judge the living and the dead.  And in this proper context it is clear then why the analogy of the “days of Noah” serves here: Because that too was a very public, dramatic, and sudden end while people were occupying themselves about their daily, ordinary activities.

We begin this new Church liturgical year with a focus on our end.  It reminds me of a Latin motto: Finis noster, principium nostrum, which means “Our end is our beginning.”  The lesson transmitted in that motto is that we begin with our end in mind.  We have a clear goal.  And this translates into our spiritual life as well.  With a clear goal or end in mind, we can then travel toward that end with far greater focus and success.  The opposite is also true: If we travel without a goal or an end in mind, we are far more likely to wander aimlessly, and who knows where we might end up?  We believe that we will meet the Lord when he comes.  Our end or goal is that we should be ready for that meeting so that we can attain the offer of eternal life in his Kingdom.

 Jesus said in the gospel: “For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.”  One of the biggest mistakes we can make for our soul is to think we will always have enough time to get ready to meet the Lord.  If we think we know with certitude that death is still far away from us or that we can accurately predict its arrival and have time to be ready, we are making a risky gamble.  And even if death is still far away, such a gamble  will likely breed a laziness that will not bode well for our spiritual growth.  This attitude inclines us to become spiritually lazy, lax in confessing sin, absentminded in prayer, and unconverted to Jesus.  And then we are ripe for the plucking to spend eternity in the kingdom of darkness.

This is exactly what the gospel teaches us.  Jesus told his disciples that on the day of his coming people will be about ordinary tasks, thinking it just like any other day.  He compared it to the days of Noah when folks were about their ordinary lives, thinking nothing was different, and then came the flood.  Jesus said, “they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark.  They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.”  Some activities are good and some are bad.  Some lead us to Christ.  Some are sinful, making us poor friends of Christ.  And some sins lead us to Hell.  What things are on the list of your activities when you examine your life?  Which are good?  Which are sinful?  Which things need to be removed so that you are not like someone in the days of Noah, likely to be swept away in a sudden flood?  What things need to change so that you are not like someone asleep as his house is broken into?  In the second reading St. Paul spoke of some examples: works of darkness, he called them, orgies, drunkenness, promiscuity, lust, rivalry, jealousy, the desires of the flesh.

 Jesus says, “you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”  In Advent we prepare ourselves to more sincerely celebrate Christ’s birth.  Advent also focuses our attention to a task we must never set aside: namely, to prepare to meet the Lord when he comes.  We will not know for sure when that will be.  So, we can only prepare and live each day ready to meet him.  St. Augustine wrote: “Let us not resist his first coming, so that we may not dread the second” (Ps. 95, 14. 15: CCL 39, 1351-1353).  The Lord Jesus loves us and has come to save us.  Our preparation must be to love him in return and always the more.  We must love him more than our sins.  More than works of darkness.  We must love him more than worldly pursuits.  Then on whatever day he comes, we will be prepared to meet him, for the Judge who comes will be the One we have longed for with Advent focus and with loving hearts.

Fall Finance & Stewardship Sermon (33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time)

Dominica XXXIII per Annum C

Fall Finance & Stewardship Sermon

17 November 2019

 As a Pastor it is necessary for to me to speak from time to time about the material needs of the parish.  We can all agree it is not the most exciting topic.  Yet it is important to do.  In fact, it is a reality that the ancient Church knew and understood too.  Did you notice the second reading today (2 Thess. 3:7-12)?  It’s the very reason for today’s second reading.  St. Paul writing to a community, the Thessalonians, to speak to them about the practicalities of their common life together, and how it should be orderly.  Therefore, he needed to confront some of the disorder that was in that community.  Some are trying to eat for free, he said.  Others are not keeping busy but are acting like busybodies.  And so, his direction is work quietly and eat your own food!  I try to follow the pattern of giving a major address on parish finances and our stewardship of treasure a couple of times a year: in the early spring and again in the early fall.  I have delayed the fall talk until now so that we could first focus on our spiritual response to local reporting of abuse in our archdiocese.  But this weekend I want to turn our attention to the financial responsibility we each share by being a member of the parish of St. Monica Church.

 Since beginning my ministry as your Pastor I have initiated regular public reporting on parish finances.  These appear in the bulletin four times per year.  Upon the completion of each quarter of the fiscal year you will see a report and charts printed in the bulletin that reflect a summary of the income and expenses of the past quarter.  The consistent financial story is that we usually have a tight budget.  And there are times, as in the quarter completed on September 30, that we run a slight deficit.  I would bet the average person in the pew doesn’t have a real clear sense of what it costs to run a parish.  Thus, I want to share with you a sampling of parish expenses.  The parish Finance Council and I hope that this knowledge can serve both greater appreciation of what we do here and also serve a greater awareness of the need to share the responsibility to be sacrificial givers as stewards.  For context, I have pulled some budget numbers from the last Fiscal Year to share.

When we gather here and in the many spaces we use for worship, for meetings, formation classes, and small group events, we hope for a comfortable atmosphere with heat/air, electricity, and water.  Our annual utilities cost us a bit more than $76,000.  In addition to that cost for use, we must keep our aging heat/air units maintained and functioning.  The majority of our units date from the initial construction of our parish, meaning they are 19-23 years old.  Last year our service agreements for units cost more than $26,000 and repairs cost us an additional $16,000.  By way of a current budget number, just two months ago we had a monthly utilities bill for over $8,000.  Our facilities are heavily used and need regular cleaning and stocking.  Janitorial service and supplies cost us more than $32,000 last year.  Repair and maintenance to our buildings, including our parking lot, cost us more than $24,000 last year.  We want our campus to appear beautiful and maintained and so landscaping and gardening cost us more than $20,000 last year.  Thanks to our volunteer parishioners who work mowing teams our parish saves a lot of money that we would otherwise have to spend on paying for mowing.  However, we still have maintenance on our mowing equipment.  That, together with maintenance of our irrigation system, cost us more than $9,000 last year.

 Totaled up, this sampling of campus and facilities expenses, cost us more than $205,000 last year.  Those expenses required 16% of our annual income last year.  To give a current example: Just this week we learned that the heat unit (which is 19 years old) for our choir room isn’t working.  If all we do is repair it that will cost more than $2,000.  Or if we replace the unit that will cost $9,000.  We are on borrowed time with most of our units and we can expect a significant expense one day soon. 

 Let’s look now at the cost of some of our formation programming, the far more exciting stuff we do here.  We have many offerings for children and youth formation.  This covers high school formation, middle school formation, youth and whole family summer activities, the annual Steubenville youth conference, our discipleship groups, Family Formation, Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, and more.  We spent almost $62,000 on these programs last year.  Formation enrollment fees help us recover some of that cost, but the parish still covers the vast majority of cost, almost $56,000, out of our budget.  We serve approximately 327 children and youth in these programs.  This part of our budget means the parish spends on average about $170 per child.  We serve the women of our parish who are mothers in our Mom’s group.  That serves approximately 40-45 women.  We spent almost $4,000 last year, or about $92 per participant.  Our nursery operating expenses and supplies represents $23,000 of last year’s budget.  We serve approximately 40 men in our St. Augustine Men’s Group.  Last year we spent almost $1,400 on that program, or about $34 per participant.  Our annual observance of Our Lady of Guadalupe costs the parish over $5,000.  And our Parish Festival requires about $7,000 from the annual budget.  This sampling of our formation expenses totals about $96,000 or about 7½% of our annual budget.  From September through April each year we have invoices for a food service vendor due to our monthly pancake breakfasts and five fish frys in Lent.  Those food invoices total over $8,000 and breaks down to over $600 per event.  Clearly, you can see we are not making money on these offerings nor coming anywhere close to covering the actual cost.

We have a construction loan on the blessing of our St. Ambrose Center with a current balance of about $720,000.  I am happy to report that we have paid off around $160,000 on that loan in the past year alone.  These numbers are just a sampling of the real costs and requirements of having a parish.  I haven’t even mentioned insurance and liability costs, salaries and employee health insurance and retirement, supplies for things in church (like candles, altar bread, vestments, etc.), nor assessments that each parish pays the archdiocese for diocesan operations, priest retirement, and subsidies to the catholic schools where students from our parish attend.

 You also should know the good news that our parish tithes 10% from its own income.  I invite you to see the report of weekend collections, called “Stewardship of Treasure,” that we print in each weekly bulletin.  In that report you see not only the income we collect from e-giving and envelopes, but you can see that we pull out 10% off the top of each weekend’s collection. That money is placed in a separate bank account and is not available for our operating expenses.  Rather, from that account we make charitable gifts to local, national, and international beneficiaries to support their charitable works.  We should be proud that the parish grants around $77,000 annually in charitable gifts that come from the gifts you give in the weekend offertory.  That does not even account for additional service to the poor that we offer.  Thus, the parish itself gives the example that we ask of each member here, to be sacrificial givers and even to commit to tithing from your income.  Trust me, it would be nice to have that additional $77,000 for our regular operating expenses, but we are committed to stewardship and promoting that style of life that each disciple should strive for: to be a sacrificial giver who tithes and who takes that tithe off the top, and not from what is left over after paying other bills.   Thus, in my oversight of the parish budget and, in my own personal charitable giving, I am keenly aware of the type of giving we ask of each member here.  I also know it is possible to do.  In addition, I know you will experience blessings in forming that type of spiritualty if, whatever your current giving level is, you move in that direction of giving more and even tithing.

 We often speak by analogy that the parish, the Church, is a family.  The familial relationship is one reason why the priest is called “father” and you the flock are called his spiritual “children.”  Of course, a significant difference in this family arrangement is that the children pay the bills and it is a safe bet that all of the children who have jobs make more than the father does!  But seriously, the parish has only the money that you give.  A key area of financial health that we must always evaluate is each parishioner’s commitment to sacrificial giving, to making regular financial contributions to the life of our parish.  I want to thank the many of you who embrace stewardship and who tithe.  This parish has a higher percentage of people who tithe than the average parish does, thanks to our history and our foundation with stewardship.  I also want to thank the many of you who give sacrificially and who are still working toward the practice of tithing.  But truthfully, it is clear that a vast number of people are not in the habit of charitable giving to the parish and a surprising number give nothing.  It is important to consider that, just like the expenses of running your home, the expenses here never go down, right?  They are always on the rise.  Our common life here and our shared responsibility for this parish mean that our giving needs to keep pace with expenses.  I hope my sharing of the sampling of expenses can help you appreciate that.  With this in mind, I want to highlight regular Sunday offertory contributions.  This is the single largest source of parish income.  For a healthy parish budget, we need regular Sunday contributions to be strong and consistent.  With a greater response to this shared responsibility for the life of our parish we will be able to maintain the programs we currently offer but also be in a stronger position for ever increasing needs and costs for ongoing evangelization and the operations of our campus.  In particular, I want to promote one way of making your regular offertory contributions: Our electronic, or eGiving program, called Faith Direct.  It is a convenient way to commit to regular giving to the parish and a convenient way to manage your Sunday contributions and special gifts from wherever you are.  If you have not yet signed up for Faith Direct I ask you to consider that possibility.  There is information in your pews and out in the narthex.  Signing up and using Faith Direct is easy and is something you can control from your own computer and even your smartphone, using the Faith Direct app.  Contact the Parish Office for more information and for help in beginning to use Faith Direct, or go to faithdirect.net to sign up.  Many of you, like I do, already use Faith Direct.  Has it perhaps been some time since you considered your gift and increased it?  If so, I encourage you to enter a prayerful time of reflection and to make a new intention for your generous gifts.

 The larger reality for a disciple is that our parish giving can’t be simply about choosing a number and paying out, as if this giving is like any other bill we pay.  Rather, I am asking each of you to develop a way of the spiritual life as regards stewardship of all your resources.  I am asking you to recognize that giving to God first, and giving to care for His Church, is a practice that is really a spirituality, that shows its marks not only in numbers in your bank account but, more importantly, in all areas of your life as a disciple, in the way it transforms you as a follower of Jesus.  The foundation of this spirituality of stewardship in our financial giving is a recognition of what we all know is true: Where we put our money reveals where our priorities are.  It shows what we believe to be of value.   Jesus spoke similar words: “…where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt. 6:21).  In 1993 our parish was formed and its first members stepped out in faith to be stewards who built the foundations we enjoy today.  What is our response to that gift that we have inherited?  Is our response in sacrificial giving appropriate and proportional to the gift received?  Or have the ideologies of individualism and consumerism crept into our hearts and minds such that we tend to keep our gifts to ourselves or tend to view Church as a commodity or a transaction lacking a deeper personal investment of myself?  To develop a spirituality of stewardship and to evaluate your own response to our shared responsibility here, I ask you to first commit to a regular time of prayer before the Lord in our Adoration chapel.  Open your heart to him there and ask him to increase your trust, trust that he gives you gifts that you are capable to use for his glory and that you will still have what you need if you put him first.  Then from the foundation of prayer in adoration, evaluate your response to sacrificial giving.  Like the twofold Great Commandment of love of God and love of neighbor, the primary purpose and function of the parish is twofold.  We exist first of all to worship God.  It is a matter of the virtue of justice that God is owed worship from us, His creatures.  Worship is our loving response to the generous love of God for us.  Secondly, we exist for love of neighbor.  The different facets of our communal life, whether simply fraternal gatherings, educational/formational gatherings, or service opportunities, are ways in which we show love of neighbor.  Our love of neighbor must have an outward focus too, in that we are called as disciples to be on mission in this world to serve the salvation of souls by evangelization and the formation of new disciples.  Our mission here and our work is spiritual.  But, as we learned in the second reading, it is not only spiritual because it is not immune from the requirements, the organization, the order, and even the costs of the things of the “real world.”  The mission and desire of God the Father is to save us.  His Son took on our flesh to accomplish that mission.  This can serve as a reminder that our communal life and mission is also incarnate, just like Jesus.  Jesus is God, yet he took on human flesh.  He chose to live with the needs and demands of a human body, as well as its limitations, most prominent in that being incarnate in a real body made it possible for him to suffer and die.  As a parish community our mission, too, is lived out in an incarnate, concrete reality.  This means that we too have to face the needs, the demands, the requirements and limitations of being a visible community of the Lord in this place and in this time.  I ask each of you to make a response and to strive for a new moment and a new practice of the stewardship that will meet our parish needs, that will transform each of us personally, and that will transform the world we serve with the Gospel of the Kingdom of God!

Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXXII per Annum C

10 November 2019

 Ideas have consequences.  We see that in the Gospel exchange today between Jesus and the Sadducees.  The Sadducees were a distinct movement or party within Judaism.  They were a rather small but influential and elite group owing to their descent from a priestly line and thus, their influence in the Temple and the functions of worship.  They were also distinct in some of their beliefs.  For example, they had a much more restrictive approach to Scripture, accepting only the Books of Moses as authoritative (the Books of Moses being the Pentateuch, the first five books of our Bible).  They did not believe in the existence of angels.  And they rejected the notion of a resurrection.  So, it was not only their aristocratic lineage that set them apart, but also their thoughts, opinions, and beliefs.  Ideas have consequences.

 With this in mind let’s look at the two Gospel lessons (marriage and angels) and see just how different popular thought in society today is from the thought formed by divine teaching from Jesus.  I’ll start with angels.  It is a popular thought in society to claim that when a person dies he becomes an angel.  At the time of funerals, you see on cards and hear in poems direct claims that the deceased is now an angel watching over us or that Heaven has gained an angel.  Pinterest will literally explode with examples of this idea.  Now that idea may be based more on sentimentality, yet it has consequences.  Based on the revelation of Scripture and philosophical reasoning, angels are distinct beings that are purely spiritual.  As such it is not proper to their being to have a body.  That’s what it means to be an angel: an intelligent personal being that is purely spiritual and not bodily.  Quite a different level of being is the human being who properly exists as a unity of body and soul.  A human being has both a bodily element and a spiritual element.  As creatures of superior intelligence, and not being limited by a body, angels are, to use less technical terms, higher on the “food chain” than a human being, just as a human being is higher on the food chain than an animal, which is higher on the food chain than a plant.  So, what is the consequence of the popular idea that after death we become angels?  Now I hope no one brought any rotten produce from your backyard garden, but I have to break it to you that, first of all, such a notion is not true, is not consistent with the Scriptures, and therefore not a belief a Catholic should adopt.  Secondly, if after death we hold that a person can go up the food chain to become an angel, then we have to accept the possibility and logical consequence that we can also go down the food chain and become a dog, or worse a cat.  No one wants to accept going down the food chain and I don’t see popular poems around death and dying making any claims when a person dies that Heaven, or Hell for that matter, has gained a cat!  But wait!  Didn’t Jesus say that in the resurrection and in the age to come we will become angels?  Be careful.  He said those deemed worthy to attain to the age to come will be “like angels” and he says that not to indicate that a dead human being changes his rank of being and joins the choirs of angels.  Rather, he says they become like angels specifically in that they no longer die.  The dead person enters immortality, like the angels, but the dead person does so awaiting to be rejoined to his resurrected body.  It’s the way we properly exist as human beings.  In other words, a human being remains a human being and an angel remains an angel.

 Switching gears to the Gospel lesson on marriage, in society, popular thought and opinion (these days anyway) is that marriage is primarily, or even only, about the adults, that it is first and foremost about the fulfillment of the adult parties.  Therefore, whatever fulfills any two consenting adults is good and acceptable; and, is as good and acceptable as what fulfills any other two adults.  There are consequences of this thought.  So, we have slogans like “love is love.”  And we have bumper stickers of a blue square containing a yellow equal sign, and a red version of the same image.  This has consequences and it leads to a completely subjective understanding of marriage that results in marriage being whatever anyone wants to make of it.  And so, the consequence of popular thought leads to two men or two women simulating marriage and doing so nowadays with legal codification.  And it would be hopelessly naïve to think that this opinion about marriage won’t easily and quickly become no longer mostly about what two people want but will become any combination of numbers or genders or transgenders.  But what the Scriptures reveal, and therefore what a Catholic holds, about marriage is very different.  The Gospel selection today gives a small glimpse of this divine lesson.  Jesus responds to the situation presented by the Sadducees.  They present a silly hypothetical case of a woman married seven times in this world.  If you believe in a resurrection, well then, whose wife will she be when she returns to a bodily life in the new world to come?  Jesus responds that those who are deemed worthy to attain to the resurrection do not marry.  This is the case because in the resurrection he says specifically that “they can no longer die.”  So, what is the consequence of that thought?  What do we learn from it?  If in the resurrection people do not marry because they cannot die that means that a primary reason for marriage in this age is precisely for procreation, the continuation of life, since we can and do die in this world.  Society’s opinion leads to the rejection of children as a primary purpose and blessing in marriage by the promotion of contraception.  And society’s opinion rejects the exclusive nature and value of the complementarity of the two sexes whose unity in marriage models the unity of God Himself whose image in creation is shown in making us both male and female.  Based on the Natural Law, based on Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, the Catholic holds that openness to life and the unity of the spouses are the primary purposes of marriage.  Furthermore, we hold that it is precisely these fundamental purposes that are for the good of the spouses and which lead to their fulfillment and flourishing.

 Ideas have consequences.  We need to be careful about what we permit to influence our thoughts and opinions because that translates into our beliefs and our actions.  I fear that it is fashionable, especially these days and in the arena of the faith, to want quick and easy answers and to not treat seriously that Scripture and Tradition are our guides and that they need to be carefully studied.  If we are people of faith who know Jesus to be God and master of our life, then popular opinion in society needs much greater scrutiny so that we make sure we are not led astray.  For the consequence of being led astray would mean not only the possibility of being wrong but could also mean we are not worthy to attain to heavenly resurrection.

 The Maccabean brothers in the first reading give us a powerful example of just how important it is to be aware of which ideas we permit to form and influence us.  These seven brothers, together with their valiant mother, are examples of fidelity in the face of the popular and secular thinking of their time.  When societal pressure and the secular force of the king demanded they violate God’s law they refused and died for that faith.  Their witness remains for us today.  For as much as we value the present life, and we should, we can’t compromise the offer of the life to come.  If we permit ourselves to be formed by the uncritical adoption of popular societal opinion how will we ever hope, to be like the Maccabees, to provide an example of fidelity in our time?  Ideas have consequences.  We come from God and we are made for Him and we are called to return to Him.  In the meantime, we have the duty to stand as witnesses to divine truth so that others reject falsehood and share our hope for a heavenly resurrection.  As we prayed in the Collect of this Holy Mass: “Almighty God, …keep from us all adversity, so that… we may pursue in freedom of heart the things that are yours.”

Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXXI per Annum C

3 November 2019

 Still on Jesus’ extended journey to Jerusalem narrated by St. Luke, in the verses immediately before today’s Gospel passage, just outside the city gate of Jericho Jesus had healed a blind beggar who wanted to see.  Now inside the city, amid throngs of people, Zacchaeus wants to see Jesus.  Zacchaeus could see with his eyes; his eyes functioned properly.  The Gospel narrative tells us important details, however, about Zacchaeus’ moral stature, not just his physical height.  Tax collectors were viewed as public sinners.  The Israelites who were tax collectors were viewed as cheats among God’s people because they cooperated with the occupying Roman government to take money from their own kind.  Added to that, tax collectors made money by taking their own cut from their own people.  Zacchaeus is not just any tax collector but a “chief tax collector AND a wealthy man.”  First century ears would hear this description and immediately hear that Zacchaeus was a very grave, dishonest, and public sinner.  The difference between the blind beggar and Zacchaeus then becomes clear: Unlike the blind beggar, Zacchaeus had the use of his eyes but he is morally blind and in spiritual darkness for he is lost and headed to eternal destruction.  The final line of the Gospel selection fills in the picture of just how important for salvation was Zacchaeus’ encounter with Jesus: “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.”

I find this Gospel account intriguing for who is doing the seeking.  The first part of the Gospel shows us that Zacchaeus had a strong desire to see Jesus.  He fights his way in the crowd but, being short, he knows he won’t be able to catch a glimpse of Jesus.  Zacchaeus desires to see Jesus and he employs whatever is necessary to see him.  But as Jesus passes by notice that the subject switches and it is Jesus who is doing the seeking.  Jesus, who is, as the first reading said, the “Lord and lover of souls,” reads Zacchaeus’ heart.  Jesus knows that despite his great sin, Zacchaeus is in the process of changing.  Zacchaeus’ desire to see Jesus is not a matter of his eyes, which function well, but of his faith and its expression in moral conversion.  And so, it is Jesus who stops and looks up at Zacchaeus.  Jesus meets Zacchaeus’ desire and Zacchaeus’ efforts, and so Jesus calls out to Zacchaeus with an invitation for more intimate life and communion with him.  “Come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.”  As the light of new life dawns on Zacchaeus he moves from being the chief tax collector who has cheated everyone to – we might say – being the chief of stewardship who now gives half of his belongings to the poor and who repays those he has extorted by repaying four times over – far more than required by Jewish law.  When you have Jesus, the greatest treasure, well, giving up material things is of comparatively little consequence.

 What are you seeking in life?  Or better yet, Whom are you seeking in life?  Is it Jesus?  Is it a relationship with him?  Is it salvation in his kingdom?  And if you want to seek Jesus are you taking a cue from Zacchaeus and using the means necessary to accomplish that goal?  Are you rising up, like climbing that sycamore tree, to place your eyes on Jesus?  Are you ready and willing to receive Jesus with joy today into your house?  If I say I seek Jesus but I’m not working to focus my way of thinking and acting to be like the Gospel, then not only am I NOT climbing that tree to see Jesus, but I’m actually descending; I’m digging a hole.  If I want to see Jesus but I won’t battle that tendency to gossip or to drink heavily, or any other sin, then not only am I NOT climbing that tree, but I’m actually digging a hole.  If I say I seek Jesus but I won’t work to eradicate lust and to live greater purity of heart, mind, and body, then I’m not placing myself in a position to see Jesus; rather, I’m digging a hole.  If I hang out in the crowd somewhere near Jesus but I don’t make the effort to pray and to confess my sins then I’m not making my way up that tree, but I’m digging a hole.  That hole won’t help me see Jesus.  But it will swallow up my body and result in seeing damnation!  The choice to let oneself be transformed by Jesus is yours and it is mine.  Ultimately, what it comes down to, as it did for Zachhaeus, is will I let myself be found by Jesus?  Will I put myself where I can be found by Jesus?

 Jericho is a place in the Old Testament where walls tumbled down so that God’s people could enter the fortified city and be victorious.  That setting in today’s passage – Jericho – is rich then.  What walls need to tumble down in our lives, walls that prevent us from seeing Jesus?  What walls in our moral life prevent us from entering deeper life with Jesus?  What walls in our spiritual life keep us distant from the Lord who seeks us and who desires us to have salvation?  Truly seek Jesus.  Truly desire life with him.  And then, like Zacchaeus, employ the effort necessary to make that happen.  And you know what?  Jesus will look up at you, tell you he’s been seeking you, and then he’ll ask to come dwell with you while the grumblers and complainers remain lost and unsaved.  The salvation that Jesus brings – the salvation that he himself is! – means that he invites us to come down from the tree while he himself climbs up the tree: not a sycamore tree, but the tree that is the wood of the Cross, where all who look upon him lifted high (cf. Jn. 3:14-15; Num. 21:8-9) find that “today salvation has come to this house.”

Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXIX per Annum C

20 October 2019

 This weekend I am going to continue reflections on the state of things in the Church and in the world, motivated by the recent abuse report from our Archdiocese.  The sinful and criminal scourge of sexual abuse together with the moral rot within so much of our leadership that has contributed to failures in handling abuse is a subject that I think we simply must talk about and it cannot be swept under the rug.  I think it is also owed to you to hear words on this from a priest.  Given the realities of disorder and immorality in our society and within the Church I do NOT, sadly, anticipate that this will be the last time we have to reflect upon this topic.  But I do hope that a new level of transparency is happening now, which can only bode well for the witness the Church can give to our world such that other institutions and groups might be driven to more transparently address abuse where we know it also takes place in the secular world.  In God’s Providence, His Sacred Word in the scripture selections this weekend seems quite appropriate for the pulse I sense in our community.  In particular, I find great consolation in the Old Testament (first reading) image of fraternal support and intercessory prayer: Moses having help holding up the staff to gain victory for God’s people.  And I find consolation in considering the new staff of God, that is the Cross of Jesus, by which on the hill of Calvary his arms are outstretched to gain us the ultimate victory of salvation.  And then the perfect Gospel for us today.  Maybe I shouldn’t assume to attribute this to you as a group, but I know this Gospel speaks to me: Jesus gives his disciples a parable “about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary.”

Thank you, Lord!  That’s just the message I needed to hear right now because weariness I think describes my general sentiment.  Maybe that resonates with you too.  All week I have been reflecting upon weariness and trying to notice how weariness is just sort of hanging in the air.  The original Greek in this passage that we translate in English as “weary” has a rich variety of meaning.  It refers to what can happen when we are in a bad situation, when we are immersed in suffering or in evil.  The literal root of the word refers to the tendency to faint or to turn coward when being “in evil.”  The connotation of the word in this use carries the sense of being disappointed, or losing heart, or growing weary when we suffer evil.  Now, to be clear, I am not at all suggesting that there isn’t joy in daily living or that there aren’t so many good things that take place over the course of a day.  However, when I stop to think and to reflect upon the state of affairs in our world, both the secular world outside and the state of affairs inside the Church, I think I notice a sense of being fatigued, of being dissatisfied, and being impatient.  Maybe I’m not the only one.

Looking at the broader secular world things seem more and more unhinged from truth and reality.  And more to the point, the velocity with which we have become unhinged seems to have increased exponentially.  I suggest that our political discourse in the United States can serve as the magnifying glass to see the dissolution in our secular world.  Looking into that magnifying glass I think we see a fanatical blood lust for abortion on demand, that seems like its own evil, distinct from the fact of the evil of abortion itself.  I think we also see a rapid rise in the tyranny of the transgender movement which, frankly, just looks like complete chaos.  Switching gears now to look to the Church, I don’t think we can just assume that life within the Church is our little safe haven because disorder and chaos mark the Church too, at least in her human membership.  More and more I hear from so many Catholics who are disturbed by the confusing decisions, documents, and actions that come even from the Vatican.  There is a Synod of bishops going on currently in Rome and it, like the couple of previous synods in the last few years, seems determined to sew confusion even in already settled matters of doctrine and in long-standing disciplines.  We look to our bishops, but so many seem to be lacking real apostolic courage to proclaim authentic Catholic faith when it might cost them popularity among people or among fellow bishops, or even higher ups in Rome.  How much do they need to hear today’s second reading from St. Paul: “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, … proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient.”  Added to all this is the great sadness of the abuse scandal and the complete loss of trust it carries with it.  I’m not going to burden us with any more observations than these few examples.  Again, maybe it is just me, but I know I need to hear the divine command to not grow weary, to not become a coward, to not despair.  Rather, we pray always and await God to secure the rights of His chosen ones and to do justice speedily.

 So what do we do?  What can we do here?  First of all, our turbulent times outside and inside the Church are a painful but important lesson that our firm and lasting foundation given to us by Jesus is Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture.  Our only answer and solution to the problems in society and in the Church is to be more deeply immersed in authentic Catholic Tradition.  That Tradition is the full deposit of God’s Word to us and contains the spoken, oral teaching and discipline of the Apostles and that privileged portion of oral teaching written down in the Sacred Scriptures.  To be immersed in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition gives us an anchor and a firm foundation that does not move even though the winds of chaos batter us.  Secondly, taking the lesson from today’s Gospel, we must be persistent in prayer and not give in to weariness.  You and I want our prayers answered right away, correct?  I have some sobering news for us.  Notice that final line of today’s Gospel?  Jesus said, “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”  I hate to have to tell you this but that seems to frame Jesus’ teaching in this Gospel in the terms of the end times, meaning that Jesus is saying the justice and the vindication that will speedily come from God is in reference to the final judgment.  In other words, he does not mean that we should expect our prayers to bring a speedy resolution of earthly injustice.  And not, sadly, on our timeline.  So, we must be determined to pray and to be persistent and to not become weary of the events of our times.  I promised you some guidance in our prayer response in light of our local abuse report.  (1) I suggest that we invoke the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph in our prayers, with a specific focus of having before our eyes authentic feminine and masculine examples of discipleship.  The daily Rosary is clearly a great prayer to adopt.  (2) I suggest that we make time to be committed to be before the Lord in our Adoration Chapel and to make every effort to incorporate adoration into our spiritual life.  To be there simply before the Lord who is present.  To raise to him all the concerns that rise up in our hearts.  And to have ourselves prepared to receive from his open Heart the gift of merciful love that flows so abundantly from that Divine Heart.  (3) I suggest that you consider how you might make attendance at daily Mass possible.  To be more regularly, frequently, nourished by the Sacred Scriptures proclaimed at Mass and to receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the Lord more regularly strengthens us in battle.  And, finally, (4) something we will do together is that on the first three Wednesdays of November we will move the daily Mass into the main church and we will offer those Masses in particular for reparation for the sin of abuse and for the healing of victims.  As you responded so enthusiastically to this last year, I hope you will make the effort to join together on those first three Wednesdays of November for the evening daily Mass held here in the main church.

  In the first reading, God’s people were victorious against a fierce enemy while Moses held his arms aloft with the staff of God.  Moses was not alone.  He had the help of others to raise the staff.  That gives us an early example of intercessory prayer and the value of coming together in mutual support and prayer.  My friends, the new staff of God is the Cross of Jesus, where his arms are spread out for our salvation.  The psalm today tells us we lift our eyes toward the mountain whence shall come our help.  Lifting our eyes to the mountain and to the Cross is precisely what we do sacramentally at the Holy Mass.  In the raised sanctuary, like the Hill of Calvary, we set our eyes upon the ultimate victory of God, both the crucifixion by which the debt of sin is paid, and upon the resurrected flesh of Jesus Christ given to us in Holy Communion to aid our weariness!  If exhaustion, loss of trust, and loss of hope wage war upon you then hear the Gospel remind you how much more the just Judge will respond to our persistent prayers.

In the face of so many challenges both in secular culture and in the Church, and in places far away and also near, what you and I can do is to live the orthodox Catholic faith in the only place that matters for us: Here and now… in the family, the domestic Church; in the witness of our lives out in our small segment of the world, at work, at school, in our neighborhood, in gatherings of friends; and in this parish.  This is our sphere of influence.  This is where we are called to pray always and to help one another when we grow weary.  This is the place where the lives of the saints – YOU –  these saints are made!  That “book,” we might call it, of local holiness is the answer to present crisis and it needs to be written upon the pages of our very lives.  Gods gives us the grace – the “ink,” so to speak – to write that story.  God the Father’s answer to this fallen world is Jesus Christ.  But we must never forget that by faith and baptism we have been made members of the Body of Christ.  And so, it is up to you and to me to respond to God’s gifts and to be disciplined and zealous in our cooperation with His grace so that we become more and more the living image of Christ in our broken world.

Audio: Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

In his homily for this Sunday, Fr. Stephen Hamilton once again reflects upon the state of the Church in light of the recent clergy abuse report released by the archdiocese.

Reading 1 EX 17:8-13
Responsorial Psalm PS 121:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8
Reading 2 2 TM 3:14-4:2
Alleluia HEB 4:12
Gospel LK 18:1-8

Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXVIII per Annum C

13 October 2019

 Once we get past Labor Day one presumes most people have settled back into a regular routine with a new academic year under way at schools and a new formation year in full swing at the parish.  Parish programming running full-steam means the parish budget sees a dramatic uptick in expenses.  And this is also a time of year when we have the joy of seeing and greeting new faces who have recently joined the parish.  For all of these reasons it is a fairly common practice in parishes in the early fall to address stewardship, a time to reflect upon and to renew our call to sacrificial giving and our use of time, talent, and treasure.  Stewardship is one of the foundational practices of a disciple who believes in Jesus and who believes what the words mean to say that Jesus is the master of my life.  I previously told you that I would be specifically addressing parish finances and last month I had set this weekend for that talk.  But the recent release of the investigative report of abuse allegations in our archdiocese causes me to conclude that it would be more prudent for me to delay that talk for a few more weeks as we each wrestle with our reactions and pray about our response to that report.  Since it is helpful for current and new parishioners who do not know about or use our electronic giving program, Faith Direct, we are still doing a normal fall promotion of Faith Direct.  Faith Direct materials can be found in the narthex and an invitation will be coming to you by email.  But my more detailed treatment of parish finances and our common responsibility for sacrificial giving will wait until at least next month.  Together with that delay, and as I organized last year, I want you to know that I am taking time to pray and to consider parish opportunities for prayer and penance as our spiritual response to our local report.         

 I think the Gospel selection today teaches us a basic principle for life that applies equally to our spiritual life with God.  That lesson is a two-fold awareness: First, the awareness of ourselves and our afflictions.  And, secondly, the awareness of what God is doing in us.  One of the challenges of modern life marked by its frenetic pace, noise, and interruptions is that we can be easily swept along in daily living with little discipline to spend time in reflection and prayer.  The result is that we can tend to be rather numb and unaware of what stirs within us, the good and the bad.  My friends, we aren’t meant to be machines.  We are a unity of body and soul, mind and heart, reason and faith.  Emphasize the one to the exclusion of the other and you aren’t living a fully human life.  How easily and frequently we bury our faces in the backlit screen of a phone or other device, I think, serves as the sign for how easily we can be swept up in distractions that make us less aware of all that stirs in us.  Distraction is one thing; but the result is my main concern as a pastor.  The result is loss of self-awareness and awareness about God’s work with us and in us.  The Gospel shows us how important this basic principle of awareness is.

I can recall events of life when I have wondered why did I react to a given situation in the way I did?  And I have been surprised upon deeper reflection to realize that my reaction was less about the facts of the given situation and more about something else under the surface.  I can recall times of life when, much to my surprise, I came to realize that something like fear or shame or sadness was the deeper reality that explained my surface reactions.  Maybe you would agree that it is generally better overall health and functioning to be aware of what stirs inside you.  But I suggest there is a still more important reason for awareness than just overall health.  And that reason is because awareness impacts our relationship with God, our admitting the truth of what we each bring to the relationship with God.  And it impacts our ability to notice what God is doing in us.

 I’ll give a couple of examples from my own experience.  It took me years to finally notice and admit anger with God about some experiences of life.  I wondered why my prayer seemed dry or why God seemed distant.  I was tempted to believe He wasn’t there for me, wasn’t there in my attempts to pray.  Imagine my surprise when I realized that God was waiting for me where the anger was.  In other words, it was really I who was not authentically there in prayer.  God was at the place where I really was, where I needed to be… but I had to be aware and admit and go to the anger to find Him.  Another example from just a few years ago was when the priests of the archdiocese were gathered to learn about how we would each run the recent archdiocesan capital campaign in our parishes.  In that gathering, I asked some rather pointed questions, with just enough edginess, that unwittingly I became branded as “the opposition.”  But you know what I realized upon further self-reflection?  My reaction was really fear, more than it was any opposition to the campaign strategy or to the things the campaign would support.  I was afraid to have to directly ask someone for money.  I was afraid of rejection.  I was afraid of having to rely on someone else and to appear needy.  And going still deeper I had to admit it made me insecure, and I don’t like that.  And that is where this awareness took a particularly important spiritual turn.  I had to ask myself, so where do I place my security?  And I had to notice that I wasn’t placing my security in God.  You see, if I know and trust that God is my security then I can both have or not have money or resources and all will be well.  If I have God as my security then I can both give money and resources to others, or receive money and resources from others and its okay.  If I know and trust that God is my security then I can ask someone else for a pledge gift and whether they say yes or no, my security doesn’t change because it is in God and not in a person’s response to the request.  Learning the value of awareness has been for me not only a good life lesson for natural health; it has been a powerful lesson about spiritual health because awareness permits me to be honest, sincere, real, and authentic in my relationship with God.  That in turn helps me take note of what God is doing in me and to then be able to make a response to Him.

 I suggest awareness is a valuable lesson for us from the Gospel today.  It is really quite simple but profound.  It’s a lesson that is easy to miss in the scene with the lepers.  But listen again.  “As [Jesus] was entering a village, ten lepers met him,… saying ‘Jesus, Master!  Have pity on us!’  And when he saw them, he said, ‘Go show yourselves to the priests.’  As they were going they were cleansed.  And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God… and fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.”  Only one of them realized.  It’s the lesson of awareness.  And it had a direct impact on the healed leper’s relationship with God because that awareness led him back to Jesus in a posture of worship (he fell at his feet) and in gratitude.  Leprosy is a clear affliction, a disease.  But the truth is we each have and carry afflictions, both physical and spiritual, some obvious and public, like leprosy would be; others, more subtle or hidden.  Perhaps it is those hidden spiritual diseases that are even more dangerous than something like an obvious physical disease.  I say, “more dangerous,” because we can remain unaware of hidden disease, or we can simply hide it, leaving it unconfessed and unaddressed.  Is our awareness of our afflictions and awareness of what God is doing in us a critical lesson with spiritual implications?  I think so.  I think the Gospel shows us just how much is riding on awareness.  The passage doesn’t tell us everything that happened with the other nine healed lepers.  We know they were physically healed.  But what about deeper healing in their relationship with God?  What about the deeper matter of their salvation?  Can we know anything about that?  I think we can.  For only one of the ten – the one who was aware and realized – heard these words: “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”        

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXVII per Annum C

6 October 2019

In today’s Gospel selection, the apostles have some private time with the Lord on the extended journey to Jerusalem and in the context of the many difficult and challenging parables we have been hearing from this section of St. Luke for many weeks now.  The apostles say to Jesus something that I bet could easily be the prayer each of us makes to Jesus: “Increase our faith.”

God is so very good and so very good in the mysterious ways He operates, even when His ways are inconvenient to our way of thinking and far from ideal in our desire to control our lives and our own surroundings.  Time and again I have to say, God is so good to us and to what we truly need to grow in this life and to arrive at Heaven!  I try to give a lot of attention to my preaching by prayer, study, and preparation.  I usually need at least all week to do this.  But late this week on Thursday the long-awaited independent report of clergy abuse and the critique of the handling of abuse in our archdiocese from 1960 to the present was finally released.  I feel compelled to speak to you about it this weekend.  But I have had only a few hours and not all week to prepare for this.  The report is a devastating topic about real victims whose lives and whose faith are severely harmed.  The report is about local people.  The report includes some people I respect and trust.  The report has me shocked and furious.  Given all this and given only a few hours to switch gears to talk about this before you, what kind of crazy man am I to say “God is so good to us?”  Because as I began reflecting on our local report and noticing my own internal reactions my eyes fell again, but in a new way, on those words to the Lord, “Increase our faith.”  God is good to us because in His mysterious Providence things have happened such that we have this devastating report together with the messages of this weekend’s Scripture selections from His word to us!

Lord, increase our faith, we beg you!  Listen to how perfect these words are for us at this time.  Back up a few verses and see how this passage begins, the setting of these words.  Jesus said to them, “Temptations and sin are sure to come; but woe to him by whom they come!  It would be better for him if a millstone were hung round his neck and he were cast into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin” (Lk. 17:1-2).  Jesus goes on to tell the apostles to rebuke sinners and to forgive them if they repent.  To all this the apostles beg, “Increase our faith!”

But what is the precise meaning of this request?  What kind of faith do the apostles reference?  “Faith” is typically understood or treated in two broad categories.  There is the objective content of what is believed.  We might call this the intellectual “stuff” of faith.  I suggest that is most likely typically the meaning you and I immediately have when we speak of having faith.  But there is also the subjective dimension of the word “faith,” meaning the personal adherence by the one who believes.  We might call this the trust of the believer, that deeper movement beyond what I believe that aids my having trust in the one in whom I believe.  The Greek word for “faith” in the Scripture carries both these dimensions and we should stop to consider that because I suspect that in English we often hear and use the word “faith” in mostly the first dimension of the intellectual content of what is believed.  Given this notion of trust that is also part of the concept of faith I want to reflect with you on the apostles request and make it our own: Lord, increase our faith.  Lord, increase our trust!  Like the original setting of this apostolic prayer, we are rocked and unsettled by scandal, by crime, and by sin.  We know the content of the faith tells us of the reality of sin and the reality of God’s power to heal it.  We know we ourselves must receive mercy and forgiveness for our sins.  And we too wrestle with that uncomfortable challenge to be people of mercy who forgive when a sinner repents.  Can we not easily also cry out, “Lord, increase our faith?!”

 As we each pray for an increase in a trusting faith in this difficult time I want to make some observations about the Independent Investigation that our Archdiocese commissioned into the instances of abuse and the method of handling abuse locally.

First, I want to say again and unequivocally, that focus, care, support, and prayers needs to always first be given to victims.  Nothing can undo the harm done to them.  But the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus bring for them too healing and new life, as it does for all of us in whatever wounds we carry.

This investigation was commissioned in August 2018 with the indication that its results would be published in a few months.  More than a year later, I think we can see and understand now why the report took so long… because it was so extensive and thorough... and because there were serious complications along the way.  The Archdiocese gave unprecedented access to files and every time the independent law firm came across an allegation they had to pursue it as far as it could go.  This took much more time than anticipated.

Last year at this time I said in a homily that I hoped we could just get everything out at once and stop the piecemeal release of things that prolongs this ordeal and makes it like a wound that never seems to heal.  I think our Archdiocese’s report goes a long way to that goal.  There will be more to come as earlier time periods are also investigated.  But as difficult as this is, we can have confidence that we are on the path of the unvarnished truth.  We cannot draw back from or fear the truth.  The commitment to transparency and accountability in this report is remarkable.  The Archdiocese is choosing truth over secrecy, even when the truth shows us in a poor light and reveals ongoing systemic failures in our leadership.  If you are like me you may desperately want to believe that our local report stands out among other dioceses for its scope and transparency.  Let me assure you that is true.  There is an international organization called SNAP, which stands for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.  You can imagine that there is usually some tension and high criticism of the Church from SNAP, and with good reason.  In Friday’s article on our report in the Oklahoman newspaper there was one such critical quote from a SNAP national board member.  So imagine my surprise when later in the day I came across an online religion journal [“Audits of Oklahoma dioceses identify 22 accused clerics,” Crux, 4 October 2019, by Sean Murphy, https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2019/10/04/audits-of-oklahoma-dioceses-identify-22-accused-clerics/] that ran a story about the report from both Oklahoma dioceses and in that story a man identified as the Executive Director of SNAP USA had some unheard of positive commentary to make about the Archdiocese’s unprecedented reporting.  I think you need to hear this.  I of course really wanted to believe that people like SNAP who follow all of this reporting around the world truly had complimentary things to say about what we did here.  But, I’m gun shy to say things I really don’t have firsthand knowledge of.  So, I got a sort of wild idea.  I did a Google search and I called up the Executive Director of SNAP USA, Mr. Zach Hiner.  He answered the phone and I identified myself as a priest of this archdiocese.  We had a very pleasant conversation in which I asked him to confirm for me what SNAP has to say about the OKC report.  Obviously, the matter of the report is criminal and sinful, devastating and damning, and disturbing in the revelation of systemic failures in record keeping and the loss and destruction of records.  But Mr. Hiner was incredibly positive and effusive in his praise of the report the Archdiocese freely commissioned here.  He has read countless reports from dioceses about abuse allegations.  He says they mostly offer a list of names of the accused, dates of ordination, date of removal from ministry, current whereabouts of the accused, and date of death if deceased.  He said rarely is there ever even a bit of information about the particulars of the accusation.  Mr. Hiner said if all we did here was offer a bit of additional information that would have already been noteworthy.  But that we permitted such depth of investigating, with details about the accusations including timelines, and information about the internal handlings of accusations and accused priests… this, he said, is something he has never seen in any report.  He went on to say that the fact our local leadership actually “got out of the way” – his words! – and let outside investigators see it all, even while knowing it would reflect poorly on our personnel and on our procedures, but that we did it anyway is noteworthy and incredible.  For as ugly as the report’s findings are Mr. Hiner says he sees in the actions of our local leadership in this matter real signs of the tenor of things in our local Church by which we get the problem and are committed to the transparency that will truly address abuse and seek to ensure that it does not happen again.  He thanked me for wanting to make sure I had accurate information to share with you about how SNAP views our report and he thanked me for taking the time to call and make sure I had good information.  I thanked him for giving me his time and being willing to talk to me.  Oddly enough, in God’s mysterious ways, my conversation with the Executive Director of SNAP was one of the more positive highlights of my last few days.

I invite you to go to the website of the Archdiocese and follow links to the report and to related information about the topic.  The Archdiocese has made some graphs that can be helpful as we each wrestle with the reality of abuse.  In the current report the files of all priests who were active in our archdiocese from 1960 until the present were investigated.  This represents about 545 priests.  Of those 545 priests, 11 were found to have substantiated allegations of abuse, which is about 2% of the priests represented in the report, with the most recent instances of substantiated abuse taking place in the 1990s, but none substantiated since that decade.  Without minimizing the real harm that 2% represents we should note that our Safe Environment protocols are working and that our environment in the Church is safer now than ever.  We can sometimes be frustrated on the parish level with all the paperwork and what seems like hassle to undertake background checks and Safe Environment training.  But given the reality of abuse and the reality of how improved things are because of our protocols we should recommit ourselves to these procedures, if for no other reason than to honor the victims from earlier decades who did not benefit from this vigilance from the Church they trusted.

 Perhaps by this point in history we are not as shocked as we once were by the notion that even a priest could be a horrifically evil sinner and a disgusting criminal who engaged in the abuse of a soul in his charge.  Maybe what is more shocking to us now is to learn of the failures of Church officials as we see their mishandling of abuse allegations revealed.  Maybe we are each different in what shocks us most depending on our personal circumstances and life experiences.  Whatever the case, and admitting my own deep disappointment and sadness at seeing on display the failures of leaders I held in esteem, we do have to be rather sober in our application of present-day understanding and standards regarding abuse to the actions of those in the past as they attempted to handle abuse.  That in no way absolves their abysmal failures because in instances of clear patterns of repeated abuse by the same cleric they should have been better in their handling of matters.  But being sober in our application of present standards to past activities can help temper our reaction since the truth of the past is more complicated than our feelings are usually ready to admit.

However our understanding of abuse and standards of handling abuse allegations may have evolved over time, especially in the last few decades, we are now without excuse in how we address this and handle it.  It is my enduring hope that the unprecedented depth of this report can permit us to go to the very core of this ugly wound in our Church and in our world.  Just as a doctor or nurse has to go right to a wound, into its ugliness and pain, to scrub it, clean it, and treat it…. the pain of treating a wound is accepted and embraced with the view of the healing that this leads to.  It is my hope that our opening of this wound in our Church is just such a beginning toward an equally unprecedented healing of this scourge.

And so, rocked and stunned, unsure, and angry we can only cry out to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”  Increase our trust!  We will be tempted to adopt the attitude found in the words of the first reading, “How long, O Lord?  I cry for help but you do not listen!  I cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not intervene.  Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?”  I can assure you that in our prayer, individually and collectively, if we are honest and sincere in surfacing the truth of our feelings and raising them to the Lord in all their raw woundedness, that we will find healing, renewed peace, and strength to be Jesus’ disciples.  The key will be also noticing that tendency of the human heart to shut down.  And so the psalm today is a good reminder as we pray for victims of abuse, as we pray for purification of our beloved Church, and as we beg of the Lord for increased faith.  The psalm said, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”  Lord, we are nothing but unprofitable, unworthy servants.  We beg you, increase our faith!  Increase our trust!

Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXV per Annum C

22 September 2019

In the Gospel selection we are told that “a rich man had a steward who was reported to him for squandering his [that is, the rich man’s] property.”  The steward was not managing well the property that did not belong to him, but belonged to the rich man.  And so, the steward is called “on the carpet” and told “Prepare a full account of your stewardship.”  The steward has to face reality that what he has been exercising control and authority over is actually not his property.  The steward realizes he can’t go on living in the same way.  He has to give an account for what he has done and for what he has failed to do.  This frightening reality motivates the steward to act with urgency to quickly to establish a new future for himself.  It is this urgent action to establish security that is what the parable encourages and teaches, what Jesus calls “acting prudently.”  This parable can leave us wondering, “Is Jesus putting forward the example of a dishonest person to encourage us to be… dishonest?”  No, the example of the dishonest steward is meant to grab attention for the real point of Jesus’ lesson.  That lesson is that we must act prudently and decisively to establish our true and lasting security.

The word “stewardship” has a particularly evocative ring within these walls.  Those of you who have been long-term parishioners know that our parish was established with a particular focus on being a stewardship parish, meaning that to be an active disciple here all parishioners are invited and expected to make a sacrificial commitment of their time, their talent, and their treasure to our common life here and to our work to form, support, and build the Kingdom of God in our midst.  When the parish first began and we had nothing but a plot of empty land it was perhaps easier to see and to respond to the urgency of being a steward.  After all, if we weren’t good stewards we’d have nothing but weeds growing up in an empty plot.  But years later now, communicating the message of being stewards at St. Monica Church and communicating what that means for how we each use our time, our talent, and our treasure is, we might say, a bit more difficult… structures are already built, programs are in place, activities are already offered.  We are no longer just a plot of empty land and so it can be easy now for each of us to fail to think about making an account of our stewardship to God when most of what we expect from a parish is already here.  While I think it is important that each of us recalls our parish’s stewardship history, the truth is that there is another reason the word “stewardship” should be evocative for each of us… because far from being only a characteristic of our parish as an institution, the truth is that stewardship is a foundational habit of being a disciple.  What we have care of, what we exercise authority and control over, is actually not ours.  We are its stewards.  It belongs to the One who is rich.  And that is not just a generic rich man, but it is God Who is rich in all things, but Who bestows generous blessings upon us to use for His Kingdom.  It is to this rich “man” that each of us must give an account of our stewardship.  But still more, it is with this rich “man” that we are called into relationship because He has made us His stewards.  So, what is our relationship to the things God gives us?  To our time, our talent, and our treasure?  Do we view them as exclusively ours?  Is our focus to amass more for ourselves?  Is my security in the fact that I believe God does and will provide for me?  Or is it more in what I can provide for myself?

The start of a new formation year with summer travel over and regular activities back in swing is a good opportunity to focus on stewardship for the coming year.  In the coming weeks I will focus one weekend on our parish’s financial position, on our stewardship of money and the need we have for sacrificial giving from each parishioner.  But this weekend is a good opportunity to step back and to focus more broadly, more generally, on the call to be stewards of all of God’s gifts.  In this way, before focusing on giving and parish finances, we can first listen to God’s word and pray and reflect upon the foundation of all stewardship: namely, that a basic habit of a disciple of Jesus is the recognition that all that we have is a gift from God.  We are called to receive from God’s generosity, to care for what we receive, and to use it for His glory, knowing that ultimately we must return what we have to God, and, as we heard in the Gospel today, prepare a full account of our stewardship to the One who is rich and who is the source of all things.

In the parable our attention is grabbed because Jesus seems to be encouraging us to follow the example of a dishonest person.  The steward is clearly cheating his master by stealing from what properly belongs to him in order to write off debts owed to the master.  The steward does this to ingratiate himself to others such that when his master judges him poorly, he will have a new security among those who will want to repay him once he loses his role in the master’s house.  We should not be confused about this parable.  The parable commends the steward not for dishonesty but for acting prudently, more prudently than the children of light, that is you and I, to establish a lasting security for himself.  When what he values is threatened the dishonest steward acts quickly and decisively to establish a new security.  This is what Jesus commends: “For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”  What gets you to act with urgency and decisiveness when something you value is threatened?  If you reflect on that, the answer to that, doesn’t that show you something of where you place your security?  Then as a follow up it is critical to ask: Is your security placed in God, the things of God, His gifts to you here, and the offer of eternal life in Heaven?  Or is what gets you to act with urgency a sign that your security is misplaced on something or someone else?  We might do some soul searching and ask ourselves, do we feel better about ourselves when we have more recognition?  More belongings?  More power?  More money?  Or when we have less of these things, do we feel worse about ourselves and our life?  These questions can be very revealing about where we place our security.  None of us likes to be dependent on others.  It often evokes fear.  The pressure to secure our own future and to control our lives, we would have to admit, does not find support in the Scriptures (A Spirituality of Fundraising, Nouwen, pp. 31-32).

Jesus knows our need for security.  He also knows that we can’t find that security, lasting security, when our heart is divided.  In what lies our security?  This is a good question to ask as we each reflect on the foundations of stewardship and how we either live well or not well that basic habit of being a disciple.  As disciples we are called to be prudent in establishing our security in God, rather than placing a false security in the things of this world and material goods kept for ourselves.  Jesus says: “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.”  We have to make a choice if we will find true and lasting security.  In a few weeks I will address our shared responsibility as stewards for the financial needs of our parish.  But today I think we have an invitation to consider the foundational lesson of stewardship: Namely, to recognize that what we have and what we use belongs to God and we are called to be trustworthy with what belongs to Him.  As stewards our security must be placed in our relationship with God, over Whose goods we exercise stewardship.  Any other security we seek to make for ourselves will not be lasting and in fact would be a false god.  Jesus knows our need for security.  He knows we cannot find that lasting security with divided hearts.  And so he teaches us today, “You cannot serve both God and mammon.”