Homilies: August 2009 Archives

Jeremiah 1:17-19
Psalm 70:1-2, 3-4a, 5-6ab, 15ab and 17 (R. 15ab)
Mark 6:17-29

Birth, Passion, Death

Each year the Church gives us two feastdays of Saint John the Baptist: the first on June 24th to mark his nativity, and today’s feast to mark his passion and death. We celebrate the nativity of Saint John the Baptist because, unlike everyone else with the exception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, John was born in holiness. Our Lord Jesus Christ sanctified John when both of them were still hidden in the wombs of their mothers.

Appearance and Disappearance

Jesus hidden in Mary approached John hidden in Elizabeth and, when the voice of the Holy Mother of God reached the ears of Elizabeth, the babe in her womb leaped for joy (cf. Lk 1:44). Although John, like all men, was conceived marked by Adam’s sin, he was born already touched by the saving grace of Christ mediated by His Immaculate Mother. Clearly, a child born in such extraordinary circumstances was destined by the Lord for even greater things. At the peak of summer on June 24th we celebrated the appearance of John the Baptist. Today, as summer begins to fade, we celebrate his disappearance.

More Than A Prophet

“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High” (Lk 1:76). John the Forerunner is a prophet and he is more than a prophet. By his preaching he speaks truth in the breath of the Holy Spirit. By his captivity, passion and death, he prefigures the Suffering Servant, the immolated Lamb who takes away the sins of the world, the Victim “by whose wounds we are healed” (1P 2:24). Our Lord Himself says: “A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. I tell you, among those born of women none is greater than John” (Lk 7:27-28).

This Joy of Mine

John the Baptist recognizes in Jesus the Light, the Christ, the Lamb of God and the Bridegroom. “Behold the Lamb of God!” (Jn 1:29). All John’s joy is to gaze upon His Face and to hear His voice. “I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full. He must increase but I must decrease”(Jn 329-30).

The Burning and Shining Lamp

The vocation of John was to be visible only for a time. “He was a burning and shining lamp,” says Jesus, “and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light” (Jn 5:25). John’s shining light was hidden away in the darkness of a prison cell. The Bridegroom had arrived; the Friend of the Bridegroom had to disappear.

This is a most unusual depiction of Saint Augustine washing the feet of Christ. A Capuchin friar named Strozzi painted it in 1629. Augustine, wearing an apron over his black monastic habit, is assisted by an angel. A tonsured monk looks on from a distance. With his right hand Augustine clasps the foot of Our Lord. His gaze is wholly turned towards the Face of Christ, who appears to be instructing him on what he is doing.

1 John 4:7-16
Psalm 118: 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
Matthew 23; 8-12

The Doctor of Charity

The words of Saint John in today's First Lesson are the perfect expression of Saint Augustine's own experience. Augustine is called the "Doctor of Charity," and with good reason. Saint John speaks of the discovery of charity that grounds every Christian life:

"Dearly beloved, let us love one another, for charity is of God. And every one that loveth, is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God: for God is charity. By this hath the charity of God appeared towards us, because God hath sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we may live by Him. In this is charity: not as though we had loved God, but because He hath first loved us, and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins" (1 Jn 4:7-10).

He Hath First Loved Me

For Saint Augustine, however, the words of the Beloved Disciple became intensely personal: "By this hath the charity of God appeared towards me, Augustine, because God hath sent His only begotten Son into the world, that I may live by Him. In this is charity: not as though I had loved God, but because He hath first loved me, and sent His Son to be a propitiation for my sins."

The discovery of the love of God came late in Augustine's life. It is always late. One cannot discover the love of God too soon. And so, the Doctor of Charity laments his tardy discovery of the One Thing Necessary:

Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new!
Too late have I loved Thee.
And lo, Thou wert inside me and I outside,
and I sought for Thee there, and in all my unsightliness
I flung myself on those beautiful things which Thou hast made.
Thou wert with me and I was not with Thee.
Those beauties kept me away from Thee,
though if they had not been in Thee, they would not have been at all.
Thou didst call and cry to me and break down my deafness.
Thou didst flash and shine on me and put my blindness to flight.
Thou didst blow fragrance upon me and I drew breath,
and now I pant after Thee.
I tasted of Thee and now I hunger and thirst for Thee.
Thou didst touch me and I am aflame for Thy peace....
(Confessions, Book X:38)

Twentieth Sunday of the Year B

Proverbs 9:1-6
Psalm 33:2-3. 10-15
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58

Today's Grace

We have arrived at the fourth of five Sundays on which the Word of God speaks to us of the astonishing mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist. How important it is to profit from these five weeks dedicated to the Bread of Life. Do not let them pass without leaving an impression on your souls. The particular grace offered you today will not be there tomorrow.

Sadness and Grumbling

Read and re-read the entire sixth chapter of Saint John. Take the Compendium of the Catechism to prayer and review, point by point, exactly what the Church believes and teaches concerning the Most Holy Eucharist. Saint Bernard says, "When men grow weary of studying spiritual doctrine and become lukewarm, when their spiritual energies are drained away, then they walk in sadness along the ways of the Lord. They fulfil the tasks enjoined on them with hearts that are tired and arid, they grumble without ceasing." Never say, "I have already read that, I have had enough: there is nothing more for me to learn."

Like Jacob's Ladder

We offer the Holy Sacrifice over and over again, in obedience to the command of the Lord, "Do this in remembrance of me" (2 Cor 11:24). The Mass is inexhaustible. The reality of the Eucharist stretches, like Jacob's ladder (Gen 28:12), from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven.

Good Things As Yet Unseen

Today's Mass opened with a Collect that drew us into the very heart of the Eucharist. We prayed, "O God, who have prepared for those who love You good things as yet unseen." What is the Most Holy Eucharist if not a glimpse and foretaste of these good things, "what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him" (1 Cor 2:9)? We asked God to "pour into our hearts such love for Him, that we, loving Him in all things and above all things, may obtain His promises, which exceed all that we can desire." This is no ordinary love. This is the love that "takes the kingdom of heaven by violence" (Mt 11:12), a love that permeates every part of us, a love "strong as death" (Ct 8:6). The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass opens onto infinitely more than we can see or think, ask or imagine, onto things that "exceed all that we can desire."

A Table for the Little and the Poor

How then are we to approach the adorable mystery of the Eucharist? In the first reading we encounter Lady Wisdom. She lays the table and pours out her wine. She calls the little and the poor inside to her table, sending out her servants to cry aloud from the highest places. "Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed" (Prov 9:5). The mistress of the house bakes her bread, airs her wine, and attends to all the details of a gracious hospitality.

God's Own Hospitality

Wisdom appears as the handmaid of God's own hospitality. She appeals to the simple, to those without understanding, without knowledge, in a word, to those without power. The First Reading gave us the very passage that completely changed the life of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face, and became the foundation of her "Little Way." Thérèse read it in the translation of the Vulgate where is it is rendered, "Whosoever is a little one, let him come to me" (Prov 9:4). We are to approach the Most Holy Eucharist conscious of our powerlessness, of our need for something that "exceeds all that we can desire." The Eucharist calls us to the poverty of empty hands. Saint Thérèse understood this.

To Offer Ourselves

Saint Bernard teaches that it is not enough for us to take and eat the Bread from Heaven. We must also offer ourselves to be eaten. Holy Communion is a wondrous exchange in which we become the bread of Christ. Listen to Saint Bernard:

My penitence, my salvation are His food.
I myself am His food.
I am chewed as I am reproved by Him;
I am swallowed by Him as I am taught;
I am digested by Him as I am changed;
I am assimilated as I am transformed;
I am made one with Him as I am conformed to Him.
He feeds upon us and is fed by us
that we may be the more loosely bound to Him."

Saint Bernard, ever the poet, uses images of eating and assimilation to describe how Christ unites us to Himself. Our Lord becomes our food that we might become His. We need the language of poets and preachers in our approach to the Eucharist; we need song as well.

The Inadequacy of Mere Words

In the Second Reading, Saint Paul says, "be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart" (Eph 5:18-19). The Church has always sung her way through the Eucharist. The Mass cries out to be sung because mere words, uttered in the routine and conventional tones of our everyday exchanges, fail to convey that the Most Holy Eucharist is something awesome and heavenly, divinely inebriating, powerfully transforming.

Liturgical Singing

The Synod on the Eucharist warned us that we are in danger of losing our sense of awe, in danger of wanting to tame the mystery, of trying to contain it with the narrow margins of our own comfort zones. The Sacred Liturgy demands a kind of singing that suggests more of heaven than it does of earth, a kind of singing that echoes the angels' ceaseless song.

O Taste and See

In the early ages of the Church, Christians always approached the Body and Blood of Christ singing. Their favourite Communion chant was the one we heard as today's Responsorial Psalm. They never tired of repeating, "O taste and see . . . taste and see" (Ps 33:8) because in the Body of and in the Chalice of His Blood they had discovered, already here below, the taste of Wisdom's eternal banquet.

Complete Union

In the Gospel Our Lord brings Wisdom's invitation to fulfillment. "As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me will live because of Me" (Jn 6:57). Saint Bernard says, "Christ eats me that He may have me in Himself, and Christ in turn is eaten by me that He may be in me, and the bond between us will be strong and the union complete." What awaits you in Holy Communion exceeds all that you can desire. Eat, then, and offer yourself to be eaten. Receive the Bread of God and become the bread of God.

I preached this homily several years ago. Allow me to share it with you again.

A lovely icon for Marymas or Lady-Day-in-Harvest

Luke 1:39-56
1 Corinthians 15:20-26
Psalm 44:10-12.16
Apocalypse 11:19; 12:1-6.10

The Pascha of Summer

Today's festival, the Pascha of summer, signals the beginning of the final phase of the liturgical year. The Church enters into the splendours of her harvest time. With the feasts of late summer and autumn, the Church turns the shimmering pages of the book of the Apocalypse and draws us into their mystery. "Blessed is he who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, writes the Apostle, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written therein; for the time is near" (Ap 1:3).