Undercover

   Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time   B 

Readings

Have you ever seen the reality TV show, Undercover Boss?
I remember watching the premier
a couple of years ago after the Super Bowl
and thinking, “This is going to be pretty good!”
In case you haven’t watched it, the premise is that the boss—
and we’re talking about the CEOs of restaurant chains,
major resort hotels, manufacturing companies,
cruise lines, even the mayor of Cincinnati—
all these executives go undercover, 

leaving their cushy corporate offices and disguising themselves
to work on the gritty front lines of their industries.

In that very first episode,

the president of 
a waste management business

gets himself “hired” 

by his own company 
at the ground level:

picking up garbage, 

sorting through recyclables,

even cleaning porta-potties.

(I suspect there are 
quite a few people

who’d like to see their boss 

clean a porta-pottie!)

He’s not much good 
at all this, however,

and finds himself getting fired 

for the first time in his life.

The idea, of course, is that these bosses,

by getting their own hands dirty,

will understand their company’s operations and employees

a whole lot better because of this experience…

…not to mention, by their misadventures,

get you to tune in week after week.

If you think about it,

the gospel could easily be renamed, Undercover God.

We profess in our Creed that Jesus Christ is the Son of God,

that he is “consubstantial with the Father”:

Jesus is of the same stuff as God.

And we also profess

that Jesus is “incarnate of the Virgin Mary”:

he’s of the same stuff as his human mother, 

the same stuff as us.

We believe that almighty God 

has come undercover as an ordinary man

to experience everything that we do—even death.

Jesus is trying to prepare his Apostles for this.

We’ve just heard him predict for a second time

that he will be betrayed, will suffer, and will die.

But notice how dense those Twelve seem to be.

True: Jesus hadn’t yet completely blown his cover;

they didn’t yet recognize his divinity.

And, true: they didn’t—as we do—

have the benefit of Easter,

didn’t yet know 

what “to rise on third day” really meant.

Nevertheless, isn’t it a bit alarming 

that the Lord’s inner circle—
when they hear 

of his impending Passion—

can only think about 

who’s most important among them?

They appear consumed 

by the jealousy and selfish ambition

of which St. James warns—

and which still cause 

such scandal and division to this day

when they’re found in the Church.

But maybe things 

are not as they would first seem.

Maybe—

given Jesus’ repeated talk of dying—

the Apostles are just doing 

the logical, practical thing

and trying to figure out 

who should be in charge when he’s gone.

That would certainly help to explain not only their behavior,

but Jesus’ response.

Jesus wants to be sure the Twelve understand

why he—though innocent—will be beset by the wicked.

They won’t have all the pieces until later, after his resurrection,

but he wants them to eventually grasp

that God really, truly came as man.

And so Jesus tells them that whoever aspires to first place

must be willing to take the last—

must do just as he did, and be an “undercover boss.”

As someone once insightfully put it,

“Jesus took the last place so utterly

that no one has ever been able 

to get it away from him.” (cf. H. Huvelin)

To drive his point home, Jesus pulls a child into the circle.

I cringe every time I read or hear this gospel passage,

because the child is referred to not as “him” or “her but “it.”

Our world is dehumanized enough;

must we refer to children in the same manner

as we would our possessions or our pets—

things to dispose of as we please?

But that’s what’s in the original Greek…

…because that was the place of children in society.

Legally, a young child was considered on par with a slave.

They were the first to suffer in the community

when it was struck by war, famine, or disease.

While we look at that child in Jesus’ arms

as a symbol of perfect innocence and utter humility,

the Apostles likely saw a symbol of complete powerlessness.

And yet, if we’re honest with ourselves…so it remains today:

almost eight million children die each year

before their fifth birthday due to poverty;

one hundred and fifteen thousand children

die before birth every day because of abortion.

For Jesus to embrace that little child

should capture our attention just as much

as if we discovered our boss 

picking up our trash at the curb.

Jesus presents those of us 

who would follow him

with the challenge to serve 

the very least in our midst:

those without power or status;

the unwanted and neglected, 

the abused and ignored;

the outcast, the sick, the sinner.

Such are the ones 

with whom Jesus most identifies—

not the popular 

nor the wealthy nor the strong.

Born in a borrowed manger, 

dying on a criminal’s cross:

thus did Jesus take the last place;

thus did God go undercover.

Are we willing to seek and to serve him there?

Because that, my friends, 

is where we’re sure to find him:

Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me;

and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.

 

We will soon receive God “undercover” in the Eucharist:
the Savior of the world under the appearance of bread and wine.
May his hidden presence in this Sacrament
open our eyes to recognize the Lord
when he’s hidden in our neighbor.

  

Heading Up

Fr. Stitt and I took advantage of this exceptionally lovely fall day to take an afternoon hike up nearby Owls Head Mountain...

The view from below

A cool cave halfway up the mountain
"I think I hear something...maybe a bear...or a dragon?"

The colorful view from above

Nearby Mountain View Lake and Indian Lake beyond

The Cardinal & Colbert

Friday night, Cardinal Timothy Dolan (Archbishop of New York) and Stephen Colbert (host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report) spoke to 3,000 students at Fordham University on the intersection faithful and funny: "Humor, Joy, and the Spiritual Life."

While I'd just LOVE to see video of the proceedings (there was a press black out of the event, so no one's sure if such will ever surface) you can read the Cardinal's take, that of the NY Times, impressions of Fr. Jim Martin (who moderated the evening), and insights from yet another real live Jesuit.

Read on...and LOL.

P.S.  Now Zenit's talking about it, too...

Straw Man

A scene from today's Holy Harvest Festival...

I think Fr. Stitt should use this for the next vocations poster:

Become a priest...before we have to resort to this!

Who?

   Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time   B 

Readings

A Sunday School teacher asked her young students

to each share with the class one thing they knew about Jesus.

Bobby said, “Jesus was born in a manger.”

Susie said, “Jesus died on a cross.”

And then little Johnny said, “Jesus has a red pickup truck.”

Confused, the teacher asked, “And where did you learn that, Johnny?”

“From my Daddy,” he said. 

“The other day we were on the highway

when a red truck pulled out in front of us and my daddy yelled,

“Jesus, I wish you’d learn how to drive!”

Who do people say that I am?

Word was getting around about Jesus.

His miracles were drawing attention.

It was becoming harder for him 

to move about quietly.

Who do people say that I am?

Jesus is not taking an opinion poll here.

He’s not particularly concerned

about his reputation—

about whether people like him 

or approve of his message.

Who do people say that I am?

Jesus wants to know,

“Do they understand me?  

Do they ‘get’ it?

Or are they just going along with the crowd—

just coming out for a show?”

How about today?

Who do people say that Jesus is?

My friend’s son—when just a tike—

stood up on the pew during the homily at Mass and shouted,

“Don’t say that, Father!  That’s a bad word!”

The priest had simply spoken the name of Jesus.

How many young people today only know Jesus Christ as a cuss?

How many people take his holy name in vain…

…but don’t really know him?

We’ve reached a moment in history

when even decent, church-going Catholics—

not to mention all those we see only occasionally—

are rapidly losing touch with the One

who’s the very reason for our being here,

who’s at the heart of all we do and are.

I’m sure—by now—you’re catching on:

this isn’t a “feel good” homily;

it’s a rallying cry!

So…what do we do?

For the Church Universal,

our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI,

has declared a Year of Faith beginning October 11,

marking the fiftieth anniversary of the opening session

of the Second Vatican Council.

There are parts of the world—

Europe and the Americas, especially—

which were once essentially Christian,

but in which the faith is now dying out.

Many people today are Catholic in culture or name only.

The Pope is calling us to a “new evangelization”:

to be missionaries in our own backyards;

to stir back into flame the sparks of faith which have grown cold.

In the Diocese of Ogdensburg,

this Sunday marks the start of the 2012 Bishop’s Fund Appeal.

Yes, it is a fundraiser, and a crucial one

for many important programs across the North Country.

But it’s also a way for us Catholics in the region

to unite in a common cause—

to, quite literally, put our money where our mouth is

when it comes to sharing our faith.

It takes resources to do the work of the Church,
and we all need to work together.

Last year, just 372 households from our parishes

contributed to the Bishop’s Fund—less than eighteen percent.

I encourage all of our members to make a gift this year—

no matter how big or small.

If you did not receive information in the mail,

offering envelopes are available in the pews.

On behalf of the young people at Camp Guggenheim,

our seminarians training for the priesthood,

the poor, the sick, and the hungry aided by the Good Samaritan Fund,

and the tens of thousands of others who benefit from the Bishop’s Fund,

I thank you for your generosity.

Right here in the Malone Catholic Parishes,

we celebrate our fourth annual Holy Harvest Festival today.

As the seasons change,

we rejoice in the crops gathered in from local fields and gardens.

I do hope many of you will come and take part.

But more importantly,

there’s a holy harvest of souls out there that’s ripe for the picking.

By my best calculations,

our weekly Mass attendance has increased in the last year.

But even then, only about 20% of our registered parishioners

regularly come to church.

That’s not taking into account

the many Catholics who aren’t on our books,

or our many neighbors who are without a spiritual home,

who have yet to get to know Jesus.

Of course, if we expect a great harvest of souls,

we must first tend and cultivate our own.

Fr. Tom and I are now working on plans

for how our parishes will observe the upcoming Year of Faith;

watch for details in the months ahead.

But you don’t have to wait around for a special program

to start spreading the Good News.

We can’t expect others to know Jesus

if we—all of us!—don’t first get to know him better

and then make him better known.

Give a face to your faith,

and let your family and your coworkers,

your fellow students and your neighbors know

what a difference Christ makes in your life.

Who do people say that I am?  Who do you say that I am?

Being a Christian, being a Catholic,

means more than being “on the books,”

more than showing up at key moments,

even more than regularly coming to Mass.

Faith—true faith—requires taking action,

requires practice of what is preached.

That’s a challenge, since what we preach

isn’t all that popular these days.

Jesus knew well that he would be rejected and suffer.

And we, the Church—his Body and his Bride—

know well that we, too, will be rejected and suffer.

To follow Christ is to walk the way of his cross.

But the cross is not the end of the story.

The Son of Man will be killed, Jesus foretells,

and rise after three days.

And so we must be resolute, must not be deterred,

even when the going is tough,

even when the results are not yet as we’d hoped.

We as individual disciples, we as a Church,

must risk our lives in order to save them—

to think as God does, and not as worldly people do.

Our success cannot be measured in numbers—

whether people or dollars;

it is only measured in faithfulness.

A man recently wrote of his deceased father,

who’d been raised in the Church

but claimed in his later years to be an atheist.

And yet whenever he was working on something

and would hurt himself or was having great difficultly,

he’d holler, “Jesus Christ!”

“Gee, Dad,” his son would tease, “you say you don’t believe in God,

but you’re always calling out to him when you’re in trouble!”

We know that faith without works is dead.

So let’s put our faith to work!  

There’s plenty of work to do.

  

All Ears

   Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time   B 

Readings

A couple of months ago

I was offering Mass at one of our local nursing homes.  
The intended message of my homily

was to be one about the importance of listening. 

So I started out by asking the question,

“Does anybody here know

why God gave us two ears but only one mouth?” 

Which is when I got the thoughtful reply,

“So we’d have something to hold up our glasses!” 

Very true, very true…just not quite what I was looking for…

Every few months, when I’m preparing a homily,

a very frustrating thing happens.

I’ve been working long and hard,

really struggling to put something together,

and it’s nearly complete, when I realize:

This is the wrong message.  This is not what I’m supposed to say!

Oh, the first homily I’d put together was good enough—

not necessarily my best work ever, but certainly acceptable.

It just wasn’t the right homily.

In my heart of hearts,

I’ve realized it isn’t what God wants me to say.

And so it’s back to the drawing board

with a new message so lately arrived on the scene.

My initial reaction is to blame God for all the wasted time and effort.

Where have you been?  Why were you holding out on me?

But I know—deep down—that God isn’t the root of the problem.

The problem more often than not

is that I’ve been too eager to speak

without first taking enough time to listen.

In the gospel, Jesus heals a man who’s both deaf and mute.

The man’s dual handicaps are a vivid reminder

of the intimate ties between hearing and speaking.

It’s quite a curious thing Jesus does:

dramatically, miraculously curing the man,

such that his ears are open and his tongue loosed…

…but then ordering him—and all in the crowd—

to be sure and keep quiet about it.

Why should Jesus remove his speech impediment

if he’s not then going to let the man speak?

Well, because before the man or the crowds can speak aright—

before they can understand that this Jesus

is more than just a wonderworker, more than a folk hero—

they’ll need to take some time to listen.

If they’re going to be his messengers,

then they must hear the Good News Jesus came to announce

and not just spread their hasty first impressions.

After all, they’ve been given one mouth but two ears.

I can think of three ways—among many others, of course—

in which this insight from the gospel can be of particular help.

One is in prayer.

Many of us—myself included—

spend a whole lot of our time in prayer talking away.

No doubt, God likes to hear from us…

…but what about hearing from him?

If we treated any of our friends on earth

the way we do our God in heaven—

either jabbering away incessantly,

or only getting in touch when we really, really need something—

then they would have long ago charged their address

or put us on their Do Not Call List!

It’s been said that the real value of our prayer

is not that God will eventually hear us,

but that we will finally hear God.  (cf. W. McGill)

Let’s be sure that in prayer

our ears get at least as much use—if not more—than our lips.

Another area where this applies is in politics.

We’re sure getting a full dose lately, aren’t we?

And there’s still two months to go before Election Day!

Now, I’m not a particularly political person,

but I can’t help but take notice when Catholic politicians

take very public stands against this or that teaching of our faith.

Each one of us is entitled to his or her opinion;

each of us must follow the dictates of our own conscience.

But we have a duty to see that our consciences are properly formed.

And—especially when one’s a public figure—

we have a responsibility to avoid giving scandal,

to not lead others astray.

To authentically bring one’s faith to bear on one’s politics

means taking time—lots of time—to carefully listen

to what Christ and his Church have to say on the matters of our day.

That’s as true for us voters

as it is for those we would elect.

Prayer.  Politics.  And preaching.

I’ve already mentioned what this means for us clergy-types.

But we all have a role to play in proclaiming the Gospel.

It seems, however, that some of us are still taking Jesus literally:

He ordered them not to tell anyone.

That, my friends, was a temporary injunction!

I read this poignant reflection the other day,

written by a convert to the faith on the day after his conversion:

I have met Christ at the age of twenty-eight. 

I consider the years which preceded this encounter as wasted.

But am I the only one to blame for this waste of time? 

No one ever tried to get me interested in Christianity. 

I have friends and acquaintances, practicing Christians,

who have full knowledge of everything

religion brings to human life,

but none of them has ever spoken to me about his faith.… 

I was simply one of the thousands,

one of the millions of young [people]

who are neither good nor bad,

who have a vague and erroneous impression of Christianity. 

Do you know why I had to wait so long

before I discovered the truth? 

Because most of the faithful are too indifferent,

too attached to their own comfort, too lazy. 

They don’t bother themselves

about their neighbor’s soul.  (cited in Suenens, Christian Life Day by Day, p. 125)

Those stinging words were written back in the early 1960’s.

Isn’t it even more so the case today?

Those of us who come here time and again to listen

must be sure to then go out and speak up.

In the Church’s baptismal rites,

there’s a ritual known as Ephphetha—

drawn straight out from this Sunday’s gospel.

The priest or deacon touches the ears and mouth

of the newly baptized as he says:

The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the dumb speak.

May he soon touch your ears to receive his word,

and your mouth to proclaim his faith,

to the praise and glory of God the Father.

So be sure your two ears do more than hold up your glasses!

And even though it’s outnumbered,

make certain your mouth also does its part

to announce to all the Good News:

Be strong, fear not!

Here is your God; he comes to save you!

  

Sweet to the Finish

Today I said, "So long, sweet summer," by spending Labor Day in the Adirondacks with some of my brother priests.  We took a short hike into beautiful Copperas Pond (between Wilmington and Lake Placid)...

...before enjoying a nice meal out and one last ice cream cone from Donnelly's.  (Sigh.)  Hints of red here and there among the green made it clear that summer's beginning to give up her fight.
 

Washed Up

   Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time   B 

Readings

A teacher saw one of her pupils

entering the classroom with very, very dirty hands.

She stopped him and said,

“My goodness, Johnny! 

Please go and wash your hands! 

What would you say if I came into the room

with my hands looking like that?”

Smiling the boy replied,

“Well, I think I’d be too polite to mention it…”

Have you ever noticed that Jesus

has a real knack for doing all the wrong things?

He certainly knows the law 

is to do no work on the Sabbath…

…but he keeps curing the lame on Saturdays

and telling them to carry their beds home (Jn 5).

Jesus knows that hanging around

with tax collectors and public sinners

makes a person unclean 

for community worship…

…but he just keeps on having supper in their homes (Mt 9).

And Jesus knows the practice of never eating

without first ceremonially cleansing one’s hands…

…but his disciples dine without washing up anyway (Mk 7).

It seems like Jesus is always intentionally shocking his neighbors,

always going against the grain.

Did he have no regard

for the revered customs of his human ancestors?

Why would the Son of God be born a Jew

if he only intended to challenge and overthrow

the traditions of the religion?  (cf. R. Knox)

What Jesus observed in the Jewish people of his day

was not a failing unique to that time or culture,

but one which is common to the entire human race:

the tendency to be too concerned about appearances.

Today, we may not have the quite same hang-up

about ritual purification as back then.

(Although—I’d suggest—our constant use of hand sanitizers

might come pretty close.)

But in our consumer culture,

we do worry quite a lot about how things look.

As parents, no doubt, know from back-to-school shopping,

we want to make sure our clothes have the right label.

We want to make sure 

that our hair is done like that movie star,

that we’re following the right sports heroes,

listening to the right kinds of music,

using the right cell phone, driving the right car.

Otherwise: What will people think?  

What will people say?

We can fall into the same pitfall 

in our religious practices.

It may not be that we want to

flaunt our religiosity for others to see—

although spiritual pride is a real possibility—

but that practicing our faith 

becomes a well-worn routine:

little more than a habit, 

even though a good one.

(I think, for example, 

of the Catholics I’ve met over the years

who almost never get to Mass,

but always, always, always 

give up sweets for Lent.)

We can observe the tradition

without stopping to give much thought to its meaning—

without letting it penetrate to the heart—

and end up just going through the motions

Jesus didn’t have a problem with observing religious traditions.

We know that from a young age

he went up to the temple to worship with Mary and Joseph.

We know that ee participated in synagogue services on the Sabbath.

We know that, even just hours before he died,

he made provision to eat

a sacred meal—the Passover supper—with his disciples.

Jesus understood the vital place of ritual and custom

in shaping one’s faith, in nurturing one’s faith,

and in passing on one’s faith to the next generation.

(I dare say he’d recommend that our age

become more traditional, not less.)

But while what can be observed on the outside has its place,

it’s not nearly as important as what’s going on within.

That stinging word—hypocrite—

comes from the Greek for an actor:

one who wears a mask; one who isn’t what he seems.

Jesus—I believe—keeps bucking convention

to wake us up to the crux of true religion:

that our words and our actions match up

with what’s really happening in our hearts.

It’s quite right for us to be concerned

about someone else’s opinion of us…

…just as long as that someone else is God.

So keep on washing your hands—

before sitting down for dinner,

before heading back to school,

before coming here to Mass—

just as your elders taught you.

But make an even greater effort—with God’s grace—

to purify your soul of all that would defile it.

Cleanliness is, indeed, next to godliness

if what it clean is your heart.