"...the Christian message has been an integral part of the language, thought and culture of the peoples of these islands for more than a thousand years." -Pope Benedict XVI at Holyroodhouse on Thursday
Homily
Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Tomorrow morning in Crofton Park, not far from the airport in Birmingham, England, Pope Benedict XVI will beatify John Henry Cardinal Newman in the presence of 100,000 people, including Monsignor Sullivan. And in his homily, the Pope will recall Newman’s heroic accomplishments as a “champion of English spirituality,” a ‘synthesizer of faith and reason,’ and one of the finest theologians ever born on the British isles.
We’ll hear of how Leo XIII named him a Cardinal, how15,000 people stood in the rain at his Funeral, and how even the secular press hailed him as “a man of singular purity and beauty of character...”
Quite a man, and quite a saint.
Almost makes you wonder, though: if it took over a hundred years to beatify someone like that, what chance do we have?
What chance indeed? Especially if what made him holy were those mighty deeds and vast accomplishments! But the truth is, that holiness comes neither from mighty deeds, nor from vast accomplishments, but from the infinite number of little moments of sacrifice and love which conform us to Christ, bit by bit. It’s like the Lord tells his disciples in the Gospel today: Who’s the one whom God can trust in great thing? “The person who is trustworthy in very small matters...”
Saints get to heaven when, as Mary declared, God looks upon them in their littleness, and accepts the thousand little ways, the seemingly insignificant sacrifices of a person’s life.
Listen to what one nun once wrote in her journal:
“There's one sister in the community who has the knack of rubbing me the wrong way at every turn; her...manner, her...speech, her character, [all] just strike me as unlovable. But, then...God must love her dearly; so I wasn't going to let this natural antipathy get the better of me. So I determined to treat this sister as if she were the person I loved best in the world. Every time I met her, I used to pray for her, offering to God all her virtues and her merits...But I didn't confine myself to saying a lot of prayers for her, this sister who made life such a tug-of-war for me; I tried to do her every good turn I possibly could. When I felt tempted to take her down with an unkind retort, I would put on my best smile instead, and try to change the subject. Once at recreation she actually said, beaming, ..."...Sister, what it is about me...? You've always got a smile for me whenever I see you."...I could only say that the sight of her always made me smile with pleasure--naturally I didn't explain that the pleasure was entirely spiritual.”
That’s how Sister Theresa of the Child Jesus became Saint Theresa of Lisieux.... by choosing to love the most unlovable person in her house through a thousand daily sacrifices...and doing it so convincingly that until her death everyone around her, including her two sisters, were convinced that this nun (the one who really drove her so crazy all the time) had been her dearest friend!
And it’s the same with us. We do not find real holiness in the great, the dramatic and the spectacular, but in the every day moments of life.
For “This is how we go on:,” a modern writer reminds us, “one day at a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time. Dentists go on one root canal at a time; boat builders go on one hull at a time. If you write books, you go on one page at a time...and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on.”
And this, is how we get holy.
After thirty years of being a priest, I am absolutely clear on what moment I witnessed the greatest act of holiness. It was in the hospital in Leominster, late one night.
Helen and John has been married for over fifty years and Helen was at the end of a long and painful struggle with cancer. While she was conscious, she was barely able to whisper and it was clear that she was very much near the end. I said the litany and the prayers for the commendation of the dying amidst many tears and hugs and gestures of good bye, all the while with my right hand in Helen’s and my left arm around old John...until Helen, at one point, pulled her hand from mine and gestured for me to come closer.
“Father,” she softly whispered, “ I need you to do me a favor.” “Anything,” I told her. “Anything you want, Helen...” “When I die,” she whispered weakly in my ear, I want you to go to our house...and in the bedroom closet, up on the shelf there’s a white box. Open the box. And inside you will fine a new white shirt. Make sure John wears it to the funeral, because I don’t want them saying I didn’t make sure he had a clean white shirt.”
She smiled weakly as I stood up and they all looked at me, anxious to hear her dying wish. I just smiled back, and watched as John held Helen and Helen held John with an affection they had shown in a billion little ways for ten thousand days...And only at the funeral, did I reveal her secret request, and after they all stopped laughing, including John in the clean white shirt, there was silence, as they all realized that Helen and John had taught us all the way to holiness...through the little things....the “ordinary contact with God..the daily encounter with Christ...
[A life]...lived without fuss, with simplicity, with truthfulness.
So you wanna be holy, you wanna be a like Blessed John, or Saint Theresa, or even Helen?
There’s only one way: "be faithful, very faithful, in all the little things."
Monsignor James P. Moroney
Rector
Homily
Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The Pharisees accuse Jesus of hanging around with sinners and eating with them, and he responds with three questions: Did you ever meet a sheepless shepherd, a coinless housekeeper, or a sonless father?
No father I know, no housekeeper I know, no shepherd I know would ever act like that. For Jesus is not talking about earthly shepherd, housekeepers and father.
This shepherd is the good shepherd. And this housekeeper is the God who never gives up on us. And this father is the one who waits for us in all our prodigality.
The good shepherd knows his sheep and they know him. He lays down his life for them and protects them from the wolf. But today we hear what happens when just one wanders away. Just one. For just one sheep he leaves the flock and goes in search, so much does he love the stray.
I've had a favorite print of this scene hanging in my room since I was first ordained. Just over the edge of a cliff, a lost lamb is entangled in the brambles, having lost it's footing. As a vulture circles overhead the lamb is literally petrified, its joints locked with fear. While with one hand precariously grasping a tree branch, the good shepherd reaches over the cliff to save the lamb, whom he will soon carry home on his shoulders, to the safety of the other ninety nine.
The lost sheep is the young person who, flush with the newfound freedom of early adulthood, wanders away from the Church in search of pleasure and soon falls off the cliff of his own desires, entangled in the selfishness of opportunism, while the vultures of greed circle around his head. But don't worry. For the Good Shepherd is out there seeking him along with his Blessed Mother and every angel and saint. Pray to them for him. For when things look the most precarious, when life appears to have finally fallen hopelessly apart, the goos shepherd will be there to grasp his hand, to pick him up, and to carry him home.
We can never stray so far that God cannot find us. And the Good Shepherd never gives up on the lost sheep.
As the Good Housekeeper values each one of her coins, even when she loses just one penny in the middle of the night. It doesn't matter that its just a penny. She still gets up out of bed, lights the lights, and sweeps every possible corner until she finds it.
She loves even the littlest penny the way that God loves the lowliest sinner. The penny is the addict, who has robbed, cheated and stolen his way through life. His wife gave up on him. The kids, from all three women, gave up on him. Even his mother and father and brothers gave up on him. And he sits in a cell, bloated with emptiness and bitter regret. He is the least of men, and no one will even notice when he dies.
No one but the God who made him, and who has been searching for him through the darkness of each night of his life, sweeping the alleys, looking among the broken dreams that define his horizons. He seeks him
And when this lost penny is found, there will be more rejoicing in heaven than over a whole Cathedral full of righteous ones. And he will call in the angels and saints to celebrate...for this lost little penny of mine is found....let the celebration begin.
As the Father of the prodigal Son, your father and mine, gives us everything....more than our share of the estate...he gives us the cool Fall breezes, the giggling and smile of a little child, the blueness of the sky and the beauty of the flowers, the sound of the voice of the person who loves you, and the whole world, for as far as you can see. It’s all for you.
And what do we do with this grand inheritance? We abuse his creation for our entertainment, we use people for our pleasure, and head off for distant countries, far from his love, where we squander our inheritance on a life of dissipation.
And when we have spent everything....our purity, our innocence, and even our love...when we have sold it all to the highest bidder, we come running back to him, seeking to strike one more bargain....seeking to treat him like just one more merchant to be bought and sold.
And what does he do? Does he scream at us, “You did what?” Do the corners of his mouth inflict a scowl of disappointment and remind us of our sin? Does he turn his back on us in justice and deserved derision?
No, he runs out to meet us, throws his arms around us, interrupts our silly bargaining, and throws a banquet in our honor, never ending, in his Heavenly Kingdom. All because we were sorry, and all because we came home.
And when we complain about how merciful he is being to our brothers when we’ve been working our hands off and he doesn't care when when we whine that he should have thrown the little runt out on his head. When we return bitterness for love and ambition for kindness.
He patiently reminds us of his love, and how he’s made all this for us, of how we will be with him forever, of how we have to celebrate and rejoice, for the one who was dead has come back to life and the one who was lost is found.
That’s what he does, this friend of sinners, this seeker of the lost, this lover of the prodigal, who has mercy on Pharisees and on us.
Monsignor James P. Moroney
Rector
Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Homily
Onesimus was a slave, sent by Philemon to take care of Saint Paul in prison. Now the idea of sending a servant to someone in prison makes little sense in our own day, but in Paul's prison, the residents were expected to provide for their own needs, and the elderly Paul was not quite up to the task. Remember, by this point in this life he had been imprisoned several times, arrested on four occasions, and once stoned and left for dead.
So Philemon sends his slave Onesimus to the old Paul in order to help him to get by. But, it appears from Saint Paul's words, that Onesimus did not remain a slave for long. Indeed, he becomes a dear friend to the old Apostle, one whom he refers to as "of my own heart."
And then, in a curious turn of phrase, Saint Paul suggests that Onesimus is something even more than a friend...he is, in Pauls own words, a man and a brother.
From slave to beloved to brother. What does this all mean?
From Slaves to Friends
In the beginning, we are all duloi,or slaves. Slaves to our passions, slaves to our needs, slave to selfishness and sin. And then, starting with those fights with our younger sisters and older brothers and by the competitions of the schoolyard, we turn from slaves to free men and women, liberated from our narcissism, we become beloved friends.
Do you remember your first friends? I do. We'd ride bikes together and take the bus to Worcester on Saturdays to buy Superman comic books at the old Bus station (see how old I am?) and visit the old Science Museum behind the chancery, the library and the Cathedral. It's almost fifty years ago, but I can still remember the joy and the trials of first being called a friend.
And since then, each friendship has been more of the same. Best friends, spouses, colleagues and acquaintances. Each beloved not for what they can do for you, but for who they are. In the image of Christ Jesus, who commands us to love one another as he has loved us, we learn the meaning of passion and sacrifice, of self-emptying and letting go, of dying and rising in loving those whom we call beloved in our lives.
Such love is never easy, but it is the treasure beyond all price, for in true love we see a true reflection of the face of Christ upon the cross. Such love, Saint Paul tells us, is patient, kind, does not put on airs...and most of all, is merciful.
Perhaps mercy is the acid test of love, for it is given at the moment when we have precisely nothing to gain and all to give. Father forgive them, Christ prays from the altar of the cross, for they know not what they do.
I remember one day several years ago flying out of Washington DC with an old friend of mine. It was a cross country flight and one for which we had planned for many months. Upon leaving the house he went to drive to BWI, the airport about a half hour up the Baltimore Washington Parkway. What are you doing, I practically shrieked...we're flying out of DCA, a half hour in the other direction. I don't think so, James, he calmly came back. Im sure the itinerary said BWI. Well you're just not as used to traveling as I am, Im sure it was DCA. And when he suggested we get out and look at the packed itinerary, I stubbornly insisted: Trust me, it's DCA.
Well, as we left DCA a half hour later, having discovered he was right all along, with the fear that we would now miss our flight due to my insufferable self-assuredness, I was very quiet, until I sheepishly looked up at him, expecting, at the very least, to be berated for my mistake.
But to my surprise, he smiled, laughed softly, and mercifully reminded me, we can
always get get the next flight. I make mistakes like that all the time.
Love is patient. Love is kind. And most of all, it is merciful.
Brothers
But the story of Onesimus brings us one step further in relationship. Further than a best friend, further than a spouse. For Onesimus goes from slave to beloved to brother.
Brothers or adelphoi in Greek, is one of Saint Pauls favorite words, but he uses it advisedly. Adelphoi is a non-gendered word in Greek...it means brothers and sisters alike...like the Italian fratelli or the Spanish hermanos.
We become brothers and sisters by virtue of our relationship to Jesus, who no longer calls us slaves, but friends, brothers and sisters. And because we have become his adelphoi, we have become adopted sons of his Father in heaven. And that's the whole point! We are Gods children, the siblings of the Son of God and the children of God.
That changes everything. Because if God is our Father, we can pray to him, trust in his mercy and are heirs to his heavenly kingdom.
It changes everything, because if God is our Father and Jesus is our brother, we can learn from the first born Son how to live and to love, trust that when we get lost, he will go out to look for us and will carry us home and rest assured that our judge on the last day is also our intercessor, the one who desires not the death of his brother, but that he repent and live!
This is why Saint Paul so often begins his letters to the various churches he has founded with the vocative Adelphoi: Brothers and sisters, Church, sons and daughter of the one Father. For this is our essential identity, and the very reason for our being. Why did God make me? To be a brother to you in Christ: a part if this holy people, this royal priesthood, no longer a stranger in a strange land, but your brother, joined to you in an intimate union of sacrificial life and love.
For, we do not get to heaven alone, Saint Paul and Onesimus teach us, but as God's holy people, joined in a bond of sacrificial love as his Church...no longer a slaves...but more than a slave, as brothers and sisters in the Lord.
Monsignor James P. Moroney
Rector