Hell

Homily

Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

“Hell”

I buried one of my dearest friends about ten years ago. She was one of the kindest people you would ever meet. A hairdresser by trade, after her retirement she spent the hours between doctors’ appointments visiting the sick and leading the rosary at the Nursing Home three times a week.

She was a good and faithful Catholic and loved the Lord and his Church and longed for the grace God gave her through the Sacraments. But, like many people, Loretta had an awful time believing in hell. “I just cant believe that God would send anyone to hell,” she used to lament. “Jesus died for us, and I cant believe he wouldn’t let everybody go to heaven.”

Well today’s Gospel presents a particular challenge to those who, like my dear departed friend, have a hard time believing in hell. For Jesus responds to the question, Will only a few people be saved? by a moral exhortation and a parable, both of which are instructive in the matter at hand.

First Jesus exhorts us “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.” The Greek verb which we translate as strive is agonizomai and its where we get our word agony from. Its used to refer to what a competitor in a sporting event does...giving it all he’s got to win. It implies sacrifice and suffering.

And in the context of the rest of these discourses in Luke, given by Jesus as he goes up to Jerusalem for the final time to offer his life on the cross, it clearly implies our participation in his passion, a loving and self-emptying unto death by joining our lives to the sacrifice of Christ, he who is the way, the truth, and the life.

But then comes the parable. It’s not unlike the one in Matthew about the wise and foolish bridesmaids. Here the Master of the House (a figure Jesus often used to describe himself) locks the door and there are a bunch of folks standing outside, knocking and yelling: ‘Lord, open the door for us.’ And he replies, just as in the story of the wise and foolish virgins: “I do not know you.”

They are undeterred, arguing their case that he should remember them because they ate and drank with him and he taught in their streets.” Notice, by the way, that they don’t say they learned from him, but that he happened to be teaching in the same town they were living in.

And he responds with the same words he uses for Satan when he was tempted in the desert at the beginning of his ministry: ?Depart from me, you evildoers!” At which these cast aways go off to the “wailing and grinding of teeth.”

Three points on Hell: The Ticket, the Destination, and the Alternative

The Ticket

First, notice (and this would please Loretta) that Christ does not buy the ticket for people to go to hell. People choose to go to hell and pay the fare with the way they live their lives. Angels with flaming swords do not drive sinners from the gates of heaven, rather it is the selfishness and sin of peoples’ lives that exile them from paradise. People place themselves on the outside of that locked door by the choices they make. They know about Jesus teaching in their streets, but they choose not to listen to his words.

The Destination

Second, the destination: hell is the other side of a locked door--eternal separation from God, eternal alienation from love, the eternal torment of being alone forever. Images of brim-stony fire and devils with horns, red suits and pointy tails, along with graphic depictions of grim torments and tortures have long occupied the imagination of artists and preachers. But the real torture, the real hell of hell, is that we can’t see God from there. And where there is no God there is no love. And where there is no love there is but selfishness, sin, death, and the never-ending dark frigidity of our alienation.

And how can we deny it? We sons and daughters of Adam and Eve...we children of a century in which more than a hundred million people were slaughtered in cruel wars and genocides, in which we first invented a weapon which could destroy the entire human race, and in which we legalized the abortion of babies and the euthanizing of old people. How can we deny there is a hell, chosen freely and justly deserved?

The Alternative

And finally, the alternative. Each of us have the ability at every moment of our lives to turn away from selfishness and sin, to reject Satan and all his works and all his empty promises, to pick up our cross and follow Christ through the narrow gate. The mercy of God is ever patient and like the father of the prodigal Son, Christ the merciful judge waits for us in that confessional to turn away from sin and give our lives back to him.

Conclusion

Such a little meditation on hell is not a bad tonic for the soul, and one which we modern men and women should perhaps partake of more often than we do. Saint Alphonsus Liguori used to recommend a daily meditation on the four last things: death, judgement, heaven, and hell.

It is a meditation which is so easy for me each time I look down from this sanctuary at a coffin lying before the Paschal Candle as mourners week and the smell of incense fills the Cathedral. For as I beg God’s mercy on the soul of the deceased, I cannot help but think of my own soul, and those last and most important things.

Do I really love or am I selfish? Do I believe the truth or do I spend my life foolishly on myself? Do I forgive those who hurt me or do I seek vengeance? Do I grab for all the stuff I can get or do I spend myself and my goods on those who need them more than me? Do I seek to keep pure the precious gifts God had given me, or do I cast his pearls before swine? Do I strive to be holy, or do I seek after my interests, my pleasures, and me?

Do I want to go to heaven or do I choose to go to hell?

Monsignor James P. Moroney

Rector

Love and Marriage

Nineteenth Sunday of the Year

Homily

Two couples stood before this altar yesterday afternoon and promised to be faithful to one another until death and to accept children lovingly from God and to bring them up according to the teaching of Christ and his Church.

Many in this world think they’re crazy.

• Where did they get all this from? they ask: That marriage is supposed to last a lifetime? Well, at least when they come to their senses there's an app for that. All you have to do is download it to your iphone or ipad, punch in your financial information and divorce apps.com will estimate how much it will cost to abandon your latest spouse.

• Where did they get all this from? they ask: That marriage requires lifelong fidelity? But what about all those nightly stories about the divorces of Sandra Bullock or Ivana Trump or Larry King? And what’s with those adds on Craigslist?

• Where did they get all this from? they ask: That marriage entails a commitment to having and caring for children? Why do you suppose that the Federal Government provides a substantial tax break for married people? Is it because marriages used to produce the next generation of children who will become citizens and so the state felt it had an interest in fostering their well being? But now we have sperm banks, and professional couples with no time for children, and we're able to make lifestyle choices which opt for a second car over a second child. Children and marriage you say? How quaint!

• Where did they get all this from? they ask: That marriage is between a man and a woman? Whose business is it anyway who I marry? Marriage is a choice and I get to choose who I marry and what it means and no one but a bigot can tell me otherwise. Just as we get to define the signage on South Main and the Racino in Ranham, the state has a right to define the meaning of marriage.

• Where does the Church get these ideas from, the world asks? She gets them from God. For it is the will of God as revealed through his Church down through the centuries that 'marriage is a faithful, exclusive, and lifelong union between one man and one woman, joined as husband and wife in an intimate partnership of life and love, a union established by God with its own proper laws. That marriage exists equally and inseparably for the mutual love and support of the spouses and for the procreation and education of children. Such a vision of marriage makes the human person whole and contributes to the dignity, stability, peace, and prosperity of the family and of society.'

And other definitions, by someone other than God, just aren't the same.

The California Ruling

This past week, a district court in California overturned the ban on same sex marriage in that state. The airwaves and the internet are replete with commentary, much of it generating more heat than light. But the Church remains committed to the light and the truth. And the truth is that marriage is not something open to anyone's redefinition, not even the Church's. Ours is a revealed religion, and we believe that God has ordained that marriage is for a man and a woman for life in fidelity, lived in co creation with God of life and of love.

Gay Marriage

So what of two gay people who want to be married? What does the Church have to say to them?

Many people are gay, indeed, probably many of those sitting before me right now have probably felt strong impulses of same sex attraction. The Church does not teach that you are bad, or defective, or broken, or sick. The Church teaches that all men and women are created in the image and likeness of God

At the same time, the Church teaches that the purpose of sex is love and procreation and that any and all all sexual activity outside the bond of marriage is sinful. Masturbation is sinful; and sex with someone to whom I am not married, of the same or the opposite sex, is sinful.

Celibacy

So what is a gay person to do? To live a life devoid of love? Never!...for the purpose of life, the reason for which each one of us were made, is to learn to love and serve God and my neighbor, and thus be happy with God forever in heaven.

Christ calls the gay Christian to love. He calls him or her to a heroic love, a sacrificial love, which draws them all the closer to his cross, to participate in his perfect sacrifice,...for the gay Christian is called to a lifelong faithful celibacy, shish to this world seems absurd, but to the one who accepts the cross is an incredible grace.

Celibacy? The world snickers and scoffs: it's not possible. But it's the same people who snicker at faithful celibacy who snicker at faithful married love. Ask the five priests who live across the street or the religious who teach in our schools, and care for our elderly, and feed the poor. Is celibacy possible? Ask me.

As a priest, I have been called to lifelong celibacy, and I am convinced that such is the will of God for me. And it is because of this celibacy that I have lived a life filled with love, given and received, far beyond my wildest imaginings. And to the degree that I have committed myself myself to a life of true chastity and authentic celibacy, to that extent have I been overwhelmed with the love of God showered upon me in my unworthiness through friends and family and fellow travelers in God's holy Church.

Will I ever know the joy of holding my own child in my arms or of hearing the voice of a wife who has pledged faithful love to me unto death? No, but real love, whether married or celibate, entails sacrifice, for sacrifice leads us to the cross, which is the only place where love is really learned.

A Final Word

So to all who are gay, I tell you this morning. God loves you, your Church loves you, and you are invited to a great adventure of lifelong celibate love.

And to you who are not gay, married or single, you too, each in the unique life experiences God has given you, in good times and in bad, are invited to love in the image of God.

For in the end, it is not a question of labeling people straight or queer, of condemning people to a hidden life of shame, or of casting anathemas over walls of hate, built of our own fears.

Rather, let us love one another in kindness and truth, as a great Bishop's motto and life once reminded us, and let us never fear to love as Christ has called us to, faithfully, for the rest of our lives.

Monsignor James P. Moroney

Rector

Stuff

Homily

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

“Stuff”

Today the Church puts before us the question of greed. The pursuit of stuff.

You hardly need a degree in behavioral economics to understand that we're all in love with stuff...with shopping, buying and possessing lots of stuff. When we’re depressed, we buy stuff. When we're happy, we buy stuff.

And as a famous product of our Catholic schools once noted, buying the stuff is just the beginning, for then we need a place to put it, so we drive to the Container Store, where we buy something to put our stuff in. In fact that's what our houses have become: big containers for all our stuff, where we can lock it up and keep other people from stealing it and putting it with their stuff. Even when we travel we carry little bags of our stuff, which we keep with us wherever we go.

And then there's the updating of my stuff, for last years stuff is never as good as thus year's stuff.....and after purchasing this years stuff I need to do something with last years stuff, so it's off to the Container Store once again.

And before you know it, taking care of my stuff is a full time job. And all my time, my affections, and my life are given over to the getting and keeping of stuff...to the point where I’m not sure whether I own them, or they own me. Indeed, there are days, I fear, when we treat our possessions like little Gods, while we treat God and the people he sends us to love, like just another collection of things.

Which is precisely the problem the man at the beginning of today's Gospel is grappling with. He has apparently been cheated out of his a bunch of stuff by his equally greedy brother, and so he demands of Jesus: "Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.” He wants what he has coming.

The tone of his demand is remarkably like the complaint of Mary against her sister Martha a couple of weeks ago. And once again, the Lord is not overly enthused about quelling a sibling rivalry, but rather chooses to teach a lesson, whose moral is right up front: "Take care to guard against all greed (the lust for stuff), for though one may be rich (with stuff), one’s life does not consist of possessions.”

What's wrong with spending my life seeking possessions? Three things: Time, Happiness, and Truth.

1. Time

Time. None of my stuff lasts forever. Ultimately, it all rots, rusts, and turns to dust. For as “leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.”

None of my stuff, none of it lasts forever.

Prospero understood this in Shakespeare’s Tempest when, interrupting his short play he suggests that like this performance, all we see and touch is but “the stuff as dreams are made on," stuff that "shall dissolve, and, like this insubstantial pageant faded....be melted into air, into thin air."

2. What's wrong with spending my life for possessions? Happiness. You’ve heard it said before, money can’t buy happiness. By the way, there's a friend of mine who likes to challenge that old truism, by suggesting that money may not buy happiness, but you can use it to rent it for a short time.

But what about real happiness. That kind that that makes you sleep like a baby and giggle like a little child? In a recent survey of 114 countries, respondents were asked to tell whether they were very happy, happy, unhappy, or very unhappy. You know which country in the world was the happiest? Nigeria, with an average annual wage of $300 per person. The United States came in fourteenth in happiness with an annual wage of over $40,000 per year.

3. What's wrong with spending my life for possessions? Truth.

For what does it really gain a man to purchase the whole world, pack it all up in a nice new barn, and be called to heaven the next day. Rather, Jesus warns us, ‘store up treasure for yourselves in heaven, and seek the higher things, the things the only things that last forever, faith in God, hope in his promise, and love in the image of Jesus, his Son.

All the rest if vanity, as Qoheleth reminds us...all the rest distracts us from finding our lives hidden with Christ in God.

The obsession with stuff, and its care and feeding, is our primary distraction from the real purpose of life: loving God and my neighbor, seeking after holiness and building up of the kingdom of God.

So what do w do? Do we give all our stuff to God and to his Church. Well, while that might make Monsignor Moroney happy, I have to admit that its not quite that simple. For God, St Augustine reminds us, does not want your gifts. God wants you.

He wants all of you.

He want you to be detached from the things of this earth, not because they are bad in themselves, but because they distract you from him.

He wants you, in the image of his only-begotten Son, to spend yourself, not for the goods of this earth, but for the good of those who need to be loved.

He wants you to shower mercy on everyone who hurts you, not because it is deserved, but because it is just.

He wants you to run out to find everyone who is lost or afraid or alone, not because there is anything in it for you, but because the lost sheep needs someone to cary him home.

He wants you to pray and to praise him, not because you will thereby gain heaven, but because he is worthy of all praise.

He wants you to feed the poor and clothe the naked, not so you can feel good about yourself, but because they need you.

He wants you to be like Jesus upon the cross, freed from the grasping fear that makes us hoard all that stuff for ourselves. He wants you to so open your arms, to so let go, to be so emptied, as to be filled only with his love.

Monsignor James P. Moroney

Rector

You are the Christ

Homily

Mission Sunday 2010

“You are the Christ”

Jesus turns to his disciples and to us and utters those stark words: Who do you say I am? To which Peter boldly responds: You are the Christ of God.

Such a dangerous profession commits each one us to believe...

• To believe that the purpose of life is to so cling to his cross that we die to our sinful selves and rise with him in glory.

• To believe that we are obliged to preach him by the manner of our lives to the ends of the earth.

• To believe that we will be judged on whether we have loved unto death the little ones whom everyone else has forgotten.

That is why I am honored to welcome Alicia Butkiewicz, the Director of Missions for Maryknoll Lay Missioners, who will speak to us after Communion in order that we might take up a collection for the Society of the Propagation of the Faith. I urge you to listen carefully to her witness, to be generous to her cause, and to seek to live by her example, as together we seek to live as those who believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God!

Monsignor James P. Moroney

Rector

Martha and Mary

Homily

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

“Martha and Mary”

Over the past two weeks I've been teaching a graduate course in inculturation. Just a few days ago I finished writing the final exam, which will be administered at the end if next week.

I am certain that as my students prepare for this exam the one thing they would most like to see would be the answer key. Because if you know the answers to the exam, it's easy to prepare for it.

Well we have the answers to our final exam. Not the one which Msgr Moroney will give to his students, but the one which Christ will give to Msgr Moroney and to each one of us. Christ gave us the answers when he told us that we would go to heaven or hell based upon how we treated the least of our brothers and sisters:

I was sick....did you care for me?

I was hungry....did you feed me?

I was in prison.....did you visit me?

I was naked....did you clothe me?

We've got the answers to the final exam. Shouldn't be too hard to prepare for it, then!

And remember when the Lord told about the rich man who failed the test. Remember Lazarus, the poor wretch who used to beg for food on the front steps of the rich man's house, and how the dogs used to come and lick the sores on Lazarus' body, while the rich man turned his head the other way and stepped over the beggar on his front stoop.

And you remember how Lazarus went to heaven and e rich man went to hell.

Why did the rich man go to he'll? Because he was rich? No...there's no sin there. He went to tell he'll because he failed to love his brother. And who is his brother. Well, that was last week's parable.

Hospitality, love for the stranger and the alien, the poor wretch and the one whom everyone else forgets is the only correct answer to get into the Kingdom of Heaven.

That's what Abraham and Sarah teach us today when the three strangers go walking by their tent on a stinking hot day. They could have ignored this trinity of strangers, but they did not. They invited them in, bathed their feet, gave them something cool to drink and cared for them. Why? Because they knew they were divine messengers? No. They invited them in because God would have wanted them to. And because they did, God fulfilled his covenant with the elderly and childless couple, promising them a son, Isaac, the son of laughter in their old age.

The first path to heaven, then, is hospitality, for hospitality's sake.

And the second is like unto it. Today we hear the story of another Lazarus, Jesus's dear friend, and the one he would raise from the dead. Lazarus is there along with his sisters Martha and Mary. Martha understands hospitality. She's cooking the meal, running around the kitchen, setting the table, seating the guests and breathlessly exhausting herself in order that everyone might be at home.

But then she looks over at Mary, who, we are told, is sitting at the Lord's feet, listening to him, deep in conversation with Jesus. The sweaty and exhausted Martha is enraged....so enraged that she goes right up to Jesus, and in words that could only have come from a friend says to him: tell that sister of mine to help me rather than sitting on her....chair chatting with you all day.

And then Jesus tells us something extraordinary. He tells us that there is an even more excellent way, a better part than hospitality. The better part which Mary has chosen, is to spend time alone with the Lord, and that better part shall not be taken from her.

So, hospitality, feeding the poor, forgiving and embracing the stranger, welcoming those rejected by everyone else...are indispensable to those who seek to walk the path to the Kingdom of God. But one thing more is required, to pray, to listen and to dwell with the Lord.

I have a lot of friends who are great social workers, selfless advocates for the poor and the downtrodden. Indeed, for many years, I used to do spiritual direction with a lot of Catholic Workers and Jesuit volunteers and the like. And you know what one thing they struggle with more than anything else. Its not the getting up in the middle of the night to drive someone to detox, or having the patience to put up with all the stresses of working with the poor...it's shutting up long enough to pray, and stopping “doing stuff” long enough to sit at the feet of the Lord and listen to him. The Martha in them would keep them going, twenty-four hours a day, like the energizer bunny, running in circles. But what they need is contemplation, and quiet and peace with the Lord, if it's all ever going to make sense.

I also have friends in monasteries, like the Trappists in Gethsemane Abbey in Tennessee, where I preached their retreat a couple years back. They are wonderful monks, who pray five times a day with an intensity and a joy which is a marvel to behold. But you know what their struggles are? Forgiving that monk who gave them a dirty look, or putting up with that guy who entered with them thirty years ago whom they've never been able to stand, or seeking out and caring for the monk who is struggling and alone.

A true story: A few years ago the Abbot of Gethsemane hired a P.R. firm to make a video about the monks which would be shown in the gift shop. It portrayed the monks as devout and caring, always at peace with God and one another, and devoted whole-heartedly to the Christian life. The night they showed it to the monks, asking them what they thought, one of the oldest members of the community raised his hand and said,

"Father Abbot, I’ve been a monk here for 52 years and I am now going to say something I thought I would never say.”

“What is it, Chrysogonus,” the Abbot inquired. “Didn't you like the video?”

“Oh, I liked it all right,” he responded. “But I liked it so much that I’ve decided to leave this crazy monastery and join the perfect one depicted in that film!”

Two paths get us to heaven: hospitality and prayer, Martha and Mary.

And not really two paths at all, but the one path which leads to the cross of Jesus, to the perfect sacrifice of love and devotion, which is our hope, our salvation and the only way to heaven.

Monsignor James P. Moroney

Rector

Priesthood

Homily

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

“Priesthood”

Thirty years ago I knelt before Bishop Flanagan and he laid his hands on my head and made me a Priest of Jesus Christ. Thirty hours ago, Father Nicholas Desimone, who concelebrates this morning’s Mass, knelt before Bishop McManus, who laid his hands on his head and ordained him to that same Priesthood.

I am honored by your presence, Father Desimone, for you are a sacrament for us...you remind us of Christ’s presence and action in his Church in every age, in every place...And you remind me of me, just thirty short years ago. Little did I suspect what God had in store for me. And here I stand, surrounded by as many memories as you have dreams...

....of Christ healing sinners and drying tears, of Christ offering his perfect sacrifice through your hands, of Christ proclaiming his good news through your lips, of Christ Baptizing into his death and resurrection, of Christ burying the dead...

And all through our hands. Simple, human hands, still moist (in your case) with Holy Chrism. It is a wonder, a miracle, and a perfect joy.

Accipe

Yesterday, following his ordination by the laying on of hands and the Prayer of Ordination, Father Desimone was vested, anointed, and finally knelt before the bishop, who, for the first time, handed him a chalice filled with wine mixed with water and a paten with the bread for the Eucharist. As he received these gifts, the Bishop said to him:

Accept from the holy people of God the gifts to be offered to him.

Know what you are doing, and imitate the mystery you celebrate:

model your life on the mystery of the Lord's cross.

Notice that as these ancient words were spoken, it is the gifts of the holy people of God, your gifts, that were placed into Father’s hands. For in a just a few minutes, a few of you will bring forward gifts of bread and wine for the celebration of the Eucharist. Mixed in with those pieces of bread are the sacrifices of your lives. And with the wine in that cruet are mixed the joys and sorrows, the longings and holy desires of each member of this gathered assembly. At this presentation you are like the Magi bringing gifts to the Christ child. But your gifts are of an even greater value than gold, frankincense and myrrh, for these are the gift of our very lives. For “your prayers, and your faith, and your blood, [are mixed]with His in the chalice. These, like the water and wine, form the matter of his sacrifice.”

The Priest receives those gifts in the person of Christ. He places them upon the altar in the same way that Christ placed his body upon the altar of the cross in a perfect sacrifice of praise. And these gifts are transformed by the great Eucharistic prayer into the very Body and Blood of Christ, and then returned to us as our nourishment that we might have the strength to continue to join ourselves with Christ’s sacrifice every day of our lives.

That is why the Bishop first tells the Priest to know what you are doing: to know that you take into your hands the sacrifices, the souls, and the very lives of the people of God to be joined to his perfect sacrifice of Praise and to be transformed into his own Body and Blood. He carries them in their victories and in their defeats, in their joys and in their sorrows, in their strength an in their brokenness. He kneels down and begs God’s mercy on them with his whole heart and soul.

Two years ago, Bishop McManus called me to serve this good Cathedral Church and the seminarians of Saint John’s; A dozen or so years before that, Bishop Reilly sent me to Washington to serve the Bishops’ Conference; Five years before that Bishop Harrington made me pastor of the newly formed parish in Spencer, before which, on the tenth anniversary of my ordination, he had sent me back to school.

Before that I had been sent by Bishop Flanagan to Saint Leo’s in Leominster, and before that to my first parish, Sacred Heart in Webster, and even before that, to my first temporary assignment in West Boylston, where the beloved Father John Burke, once of this great Church, was recuperating.

Father Desimone has just been sent by Bishop McManus to one of the new parishes in Fitchburg and then he will return to studies in ecclesiology at the Greg. Only God knows the wonders which will await him in the years to come. But one thing is certain. God has called us both to a great adventure, filled with more joy and peace than a human heart can contain. And each day for the past three decades, God has looked on this lowly servant and shown a mercy of which I am totally undeserving. And all I pray is that for the next thirty or sixty years, Nick, God does the same for you.

When I think of this Priesthood which we share, I think of a simple scene I witnessed during my sabbatical several years ago. As I sat at my desk in Assisi looking out across the piazza in front of the Cathedral, there were a dozen kids playing soccer. The twelfth century stone lions served as goal posts and the door of the Church was the goal.

The Pastor walked by the kids on his way to Mass and stopped. He puzzled over whether he should yell at them about possibly doing damage with their games. And then he smiled and went into Church.

They looked on with amazement at Father, this little incarnation of mercy. They wondered about him and about who he was. And as they played their games, they trusted that he was inside praying for them; that that when they would get lost in the coming years, that he would help them get home; and that when the pain would get like the cross he would help them to understand.

They need him to be their Priest, and to lead them to Jesus. And, with the grace of God, he will try.

Monsignor James P. Moroney

Rector

Pharisees

Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily

“Pharisees”

Opening

Sin is all around us. It’s insidious. You find it oozing into the strangest places, like some out-of-control oil spill, fowling everything it touches and smothering the life out of it.

Whether it’s the strangling in that hotel room in Peru or the shooting of that poor girl on Esther Street, or the unnumbered moments in our own houses of impatience, judgment, and selfishness, none of us can escape the fact that we are each a sinner before God and man.

Even David, the anointed of the Lord, the King of Israel can’t escape it. Oh, he thinks he can. In fact, having arranged the death of Uriah the Hittite to cover up his affair with Bathsheba, David’s pretty sure he’s gotten away with it.

Until the Prophet Nathan uncovers his crime and converts the King into a weeping penitent, whose sin will be told down through the ages. Even in the genealogy of Saint Matthew’s Gospel David is identified as “the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife.” The genealogy of the Son of God is replete with such characters. For there’s a strange appropriateness that the incarnation of him who became man to free us from sin should be descended from such a tainted ancestry.

Modern Day Pharisees

And so too with you and me. I fear I am too often one of those modern day Pharisees who are as convinced of their immaculate conception as they are of their ability to save themselves. But despite Pelagius, no one has ever really been able to save anyone, except for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Only Jesus saves. And only he and his Blessed Mother have lived lives entirely free from sin.

I can save no one, including myself, without the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. At the end of the day, when I make my nightly examination of conscience kneeling down by my bed, I can only rely on the unwarranted mercy of a gracious God, who looks upon me in my sinfulness and gives me the grace to live another day in his service.

The confession of my sins and the destructive patterns of sin which are woven into the very fabric of my life, is the second greatest truth I can profess; while the greatest truth is God’s undefeated mercy. Thus, with the Psalmist I can sing: “I confess my faults to the LORD, and you took away the guilt of my sin.”

Our Frailty, God’s Grace

It’s like the Collect, in the forthcoming translation, for this Sunday, which asks God to “graciously hear our pleas,” for “without you, mortal frailty can do nothing...”

Mortal frailty can do nothing.

Did you do good works this week?

Thank God, for he gave you the grace and the strength to accomplish them.

Did you manage to forgive that person who hurt you?

Thank God, for he taught you to look down from the cross they built for you with mercy and even love.

Yet, I sometimes strain the muscles in my right arm by my repeated attempts to pat myself on the back for just how wonderful I have been. I fed the hungry, I clothed the naked, I listened patiently to those who were a pain, I forgave someone who slighted me, I prayed for an extra five minutes. Open the cause for my canonization. God is just so lucky to have me as his servant.

Such self-congratulatory pablum was unknown to Blessed Theresa when she first experienced her calling to serve the poorest of the poor, and wrote this to the Archbishop of Calcutta:

“The thoughts of my unworthiness for all God’s gifts to me and to my children gets deeper and clearer. In my meditations and prayers, which are full of distractions nowadays, there stands one thing very clear: my weakness and his greatness. I fear all things from my weakness...I I trust blindly in his greatness.”

At Simon’s House

That’s what’s going on at the house of Simon the Pharisee when Jesus arrives in today’s Gospel. They eat, they talk, they have a good time. Simon’s the good guy, the friend of the Lord.

Then, in comes this woman, a sinner, who crawls up behind Jesus and clings to his feet, literally washing them with a flood of tears, begging for his mercy.

Meanwhile, Simon the Pharisee is furious. How can Jesus let this happen? Doesn’t he know who she is? This filthy woman disrupting his important supper and groping the Lord’s feet just as Simon is making his reputation as a friend of Jesus?

But Jesus does know who she is. And that’s why he lets her cling to him and weep. But Jesus also knows who Simon is. He knows his ambition, he knows his high self-regard, and his knows his sin of presumption. Simon’s just as sinful as that woman. The only difference between the two is that she accepted the grace to confess what a mess she was with her tears.

So Jesus says to Simon, you did not welcome me to your home with an embrace, but she cannot stop kissing me. You did not offer to wash my feet with water, but she has cleansed them with her tears.

Jesus has turned Simon’s house on its head and reminded Simon and me and you that our solitary boast is in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Without the grave which flowed with blood and water from his side, we can do nothing.

Conclusion

Psalm 22 is a Psalm that may, ionically, have been penned by King David himself. And in the sixth verse we find the truest words ever spoken: I am a worm and no man...I am nothing but a worm without his redeeming love.

Monsgnor James P. Moroney

Rector

Stewardship

Homily

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Stewardship

God’s greatest gift to us is love. And all he asks for in return is trust.

Trust in his care for us and for all of his creation.

Trust in his Holy Will, and the plan he has laid out for each one of us.

Trust that his promises to us will be fulfilled.

But trust is never easy, for it requires belief in what is unseen, hope in what others cannot readily discern, and belief that what is most real is known only by the heart that chooses to believe.

I think of the old trust game they used to use in Outward Bound: Close your eyes, fold your hands over your chest, and fall back into the secure arms of another. Trust that he will be there. Trust that he is strong enough to keep you from falling to the ground. Trust in his presence and in his care.

From our first breath to our last, life is but a series of exercises in trusting God. Do I so believe in his wisdom that I place my life in his hands more quickly than I will in my own? Do I so believe in his love that I let go of everything that does not lead me to or come from him? Is my faith so sure that I will let myself fall into his arms alone and trust that I will be safer than before I even started to fall?

But I am so tempted, with Jeremiah, to trust more in the flesh than in an invisible God!

To seek to be rich, over-stuffed, laughing, vengeful and victorious! To grab for all the gusto I can get in this life.

But then Jesus comes along and asks me to trust:

to trust enough to be poor, that he might enrich me with his grace

to trust enough to be hungry, that he alone might satisfy me

to trust enough to weep, that he might show me perfect joy

to trust enough to forgive, that he might shower me with mercy

to trust enough to take the last place, that he might lead me to glory with him forever.

On each dollar bill we carry in our pockets and pocket books appears the words In God We Trust. As a country, as a cathedral, and a Catholic may we live those words with all our hearts.

On Suffering

Homily

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

“Suffering”

They had run out of wine. Now that may not seem very serious, but just stop and think about the last wedding reception you went to, and imagine if they had run out of wine, and scotch and gin and absolute vodka.

And imagine that you were the mother of the bride or the father of the groom...what would you do? You'd probably throw a fit with the bar tender or fire the wedding planner or demand to speak with the cater.

But at the banquet hall in Cana, something else happens: two things happen. First, someone goes to Mary, and asks her to go to Jesus.

And then, they follow her explicit command: do whatever he tells you. They take simple, ordinary tap water (not San Pellegrino or Evian or even Vos), simple, ordinary tap water to him, and he turns it into the finest of wines.

They felt forsaken. But they did two things: they went to Mary and then did what he told them, and Jesus took whatever they had and changed it into something better than they had ever dreamed of.

So when you feel forsaken, do two things. First, pray to Mary and second, do what her Son tell you. Prayer is essential, but so is action.

It is said that when Moses sought to lead the chosen people through the Red Sea, he lifted his staff, but for a moment, nothing happened, until the first brave Israelite stuck a trembling toe into the water, at which the waters parted and the chosen people fled Pharaohs deadly wrath.

Ora et labora, as Saint Benedict used to say. When you feel forsaken, Ora et labora.

The Girl Under the Slab

Did you see the 14 year old girl in Haiti whose school collapsed on top of her? It was the first CNN video that ever made me cry. Here was this huge concrete slab above which five men with one shovel dug desperately. They had been attracted to the slab by a whimper, followed by a strange thudding sound. At least they thought at first that they were whimpers, until, after eight hours they pulled her out. Once they has dusted her off she was in remarkably good shape as they asked her what she had seen and heard and said.

She had seen nothing in the pitch blackness and heard only the weeping of an old woman somewhere down below her, who, with fading cries just kept saying, I'm going to die, I'm going to die.

It was then that the little girl under the concrete slab started to pray. I just kept saying the Hail Mary, she grinned, and I could see the mother Mary and I knew she'd get Jesus to help me. And after she prayed each Ave, she worked up the courage to bang on the roof of her concrete prison. Now and at the hour of my death. BANG. Now and at the hour of my death. BANG Now and at the hour of my death. BANG. And that’s the whimper and the thud which caught the attention of the rescuers above.

She had felt forsaken. And she went to Mary, who went to Jesus, and he changed the little she had into more than she could have imagined!

The People in Haiti

There is much we can do for our brothers and sisters in Haiti. To the world it looks hopeless...a third of the country homeless, tens of thousands of dead bodies decaying in the streets, roads so damaged that not even water can get through. Not even water.

They seem forsaken, but rest assured that He who made heaven and earth can recreate the darkest chaos with a new springtime of hope and of beauty and of light. And we can help.

• By going to Mary and beging her to ask her son to take what little they have and transform it into more than they could have ever gave hoped for. We can get down on our knees, rosaries in hand, and go to her who brought to birth the one who made the heavens and the earth.

• And to our prayer we can add our deeds. We can be a part of his recreating lives by our generosity to Catholic Relief Services in the second collection for Haiti today. We can urge our government and all relief agencies to do whatever they can to come to the aid of those who have suffered unimaginably in this island nation.

And while our hearts go out in a special way to those who suffer in Haiti, we should not forget all the others who need our prayers, as well.

• Like the 69 year old man in Spencer this week, who shot and killed his wife and then set the house on fire and took his own life. His wife had been dying of pituitary cancer and the house was about to be auctioned following foreclosure. He felt forsaken, Blessed Mother, pray to Jesus for him. And teach us how to reach out to and support all who labor under the ravages of disease or financial ruin.

• Or like the nine people were left homeless on Friday night after a fire destroyed their three-decker on Vernon hill. Those nine folks must feel so forsaken. Blessed Mother, pray for them to Jesus. And give us the will to find and help all who are homeless or alone or afraid.

• This coming Thursday is the anniversary of Roe versus Wade. On this day, and on every day, we should pray to the Mother of all Christians for the littlest victims among us. But let us do what he tells us, as well, like the busload of Cathedral marchers who will sleep on the bus all night in order to march all day in D.C. Let us recommit ourselves to work for life through our support of Visitation House, and Project Rachel, and by teaching all young men and women about the dignity of life from conception to natural death by the way we treat the weakest and the most vulnerable among us.

For all who suffer or who feel forsaken, let us pray to the Mother of God, and then, let us do whatever her Son tells us to do.

Monsignor James P. Moroney

Rector