Visitation

I had prepared a different homily for this morning.

On, Among you is the great and Holy One of Israel.

But then I came across this old document my father had collected.

The pages are discolored and fragile, falling apart.

But still fully readable.

And they describe today’s Feast—The Visitation.

Mary went to visit Elizabeth.

She was Mary’s cousin.

Elizabeth was happy to see her.

Mary helped take care of baby John.

After a long time, she went home.

That’s a pretty simple and limited description of the Visitation.

It focuses on just a few aspects of that visit.

Elizabeth’s joy at seeing Mary.

And Mary’s act of kindness in helping with baby John.

This document is part of a little booklet.

It includes descriptions of not only The Visitation,

But also The Annunciation, The Birth of Jesus,

The Presentation at the Temple,

And The Finding in the Temple.

Simplistic descriptions of the five Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary.

This document isn’t dated.

It’s clearly old but not ancient.

I estimate that it’s about 60 years old.

And written by a 2^nd grader in a Catholic school.

Maybe a combined project in Religion and Penmanship.

That estimate is based on the signature.

It was signed by me.

What struck me about this was seeing how much deeper we can go

From simple beginnings.

No matter how many times we’ve read or heard a Scripture story,

There’s always more we can get from it.

From re-reading, meditating, contemplating and listening.

From reimagining in the light of our added life experiences.

Today’s gospel account of the Visitation is packed with information.

Our carrying God within us.

The need for humility and charity.

The joy of receiving some proof that our faith was well placed.

The level of consciousness attained by infants in the womb.

The promise of God’s mercy throughout the generations.

And more.

Many of these truths are within the basic grasp of a 2^nd grader.

But these are truths too many in number to absorb all at once.

And too rich and nuanced and complicated to deem fully considered.

Clearly a 7-year-old could never 
Exhaust the consideration of these truths.

But could a 17-year-old?

Or a 37-year-old?

Or even a 97-year-old?

Feast of The Visitation

Lk 1:39-56   Read this Scripture @usccb.org

Repetition

Our Liturgical Year marches on.

Beginning with Advent and continuing for 52 weeks or so.

We re-experience the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

We revisit his revelations and his teachings.

And their Scriptural background.

Yesterday, we resumed counting off the weeks of Ordinary Time.

That is, the weeks we number in their order of arrival.

Outside the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter.

We’ve just ended 12 weeks of the Lenten and Easter Seasons.

The different seasons have their own specific themes and stories.

But throughout all the seasons and all the blocks of ordinary time,

Our Scripture repeats the same underlying, fundamental messages.

All rooted in those two most basic commands—love God and neighbor.

We have repetition throughout the year.

And repetition from one year to the next.

For a lifetime.

Mother Church is like Mom at home when we were kids.

If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times!

We evidently need that repetition.

We’ve heard the message, but we still haven’t fully absorbed it.

We haven’t reached our capacity for understanding.

We haven’t reached our capacity for action.

Today’s Gospel passage provides a good example of the repetition.

Jesus tells of his coming death and resurrection.

The Son of Man will be handed over and killed, and will rise.

Of course that’s a main theme of the Lenten and Easter seasons.

But there are repeated references in the Advent and Christmas seasons.

And in other blocks of Ordinary Time.

Presented with different emphasis and levels of detail and intensity.

But always calling our attention to that fundamental truth.

Always giving us an opportunity to contemplate the full meaning.

And respond to it.

Today’s Gospel also warns against our temptation to pride.

Jesus corrected the apostles for arguing over Who’s the greatest?

It also addresses our call to service.

Be ... the servant of all.

And our call to especially embrace the poor and the powerless.

He placed a child in their midst and put his arms around it.

These fundamental messages are repeated in all seasons and times.

Repetition is the mother of learning.

May that repetition move us to continually deepening levels.

Of understanding, gratitude, commitment, and action.

Tuesday 7th Week Ordinary Time

Mk 9:30-37   Read this Scripture @usccb.org

We Are the World

We are the world

We are the children

We are the ones who make a better day

So let’s start giving

... We are all a part of God’s great big family

An inspiring song from Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie in 1985.

Recorded by a stage-full of 45 of the world’s greatest music stars.

To raise funds to help the victims of famine—USA for Africa.

Words that make us proud of our ability to get into the spirit of unity.

A song so successful it raised about $150M in today’s dollars.

And was re-recorded again in 2010 
To raise funds for earthquake victims in Haiti.

Brotherhood, unity, oneness.

We are the world.

So what is Jesus talking about in today’s Gospel?

He says, I do not pray for the world,

But for the ones you have given me.

He’s giving his farewell to his disciples at the Last Supper.

As part of that farewell he prays to the Father.

He prays out loud.

Talking to the Father,
But including his disciples as part of the conversation.

His words are simultaneously a prayer to the Father,

And a lesson for the disciples.

He’s speaking for their benefit.

Their benefit from being able to listen and learn.

And their benefit from the fact that he asks the Father to help them.

They need help because he is leaving the world and they are staying.

But why won’t Jesus pray for the world?

And if we are the world, then what does that mean for us?

Fortunately for us,

Jesus and Michael Jackson are talking about two different worlds.

When Jesus makes a negative reference to the world, as he does today,

He isn’t talking about the individual humans who make up the world.

He’s talking about that place, that spirit, that attitude that resists God.

What Bible scholar William Barclay calls

A human society organizing itself without God.

The world that he prays his disciples will work to overcome.

When Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie refer to the world

They do mean all the individual humans.

And they see them united under God.

They’re looking to that better day when the world is one.

They’re urging us to help build that world.

They simply echo Jesus’ call.

His sending us out into the world to change it.

To carry his message of oneness and love and mercy.

To make sure that everyone has a chance to hear it and act on it.

Jesus didn’t pray for that old world.

But he did pray for us—his disciples.

Who for now, are in the world but not of the world.

Prayed that we would go out, and continue going out.

Continue working with the Holy Spirit,

Through our words and actions and example.

Until this world becomes the world it was meant to be.

Tuesday 7th Week of Easter

Jn 17:1-11   Read this Scripture @usccb.org

See the Video

Messages

We all have strong opinions and beliefs we’d like others to share.

We all have our own messages.

It’s fair to say we’re natural evangelists

When it comes to spreading our own messages.

Those messages are sometimes surprising.

I’m often amazed at what people will post on social media.

What they’ll endorse or promote.

On Facebook or a blog, or in a tweet.

For the whole world to see, virtually forever.

Sometimes friends and family will say things that make you cringe.

In a sort of sympathetic or proxy embarrassment for them.

For their lack of discretion.

Often you think, I know she’s better than that.

I know he doesn’t really believe that.

Maybe they did it as an attempt at humor.

Some of the outrageous statements you see actually are clever or funny.

But you still worry, What if they really believe that?

What if they really feel that way?

And we’ve probably all had occasion to cringe in retrospect

At something we ourselves sent out.

We don’t need to become humorless pillars of political correctness.

But we do have to consider impacts and perceptions.

The risk of sending out bad messages isn’t new or limited to the Internet.

We still have traditional opportunities to make our unworthy statements.

At the office or school, at a party, in the checkout line, at the dinner table.

Pretty much anywhere people meet and speak.

But the Internet makes them more public 
And widespread and permanent.

Our unworthy statement might be a quick, thoughtless unkindness.
Or it might be a more formal statement.
Promoting the worship of money;

Or a sense of total entitlement to all the good things we’ve been given;

Or belief we should keep a tight grip on those things 
And share with no one;

Or prejudice or lack of sympathy toward a particular group of people.

Like welfare recipients, immigrants, refugees, or even the wealthy 1%.

Evangelizing our own message comes naturally.

Whether we do it consciously and thoughtfully or not.

And our own message is probably a mix of good and bad.

But we’re also called to be evangelists for Jesus’ message.

In today’s Gospel he says:

As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

And he doesn’t send us out unprepared.

Last week, at the Ascension, we heard him tell his disciples to wait.

To stay in Jerusalem, to not go out.

Until they were made ready.

Until they’d received the power of the Spirit.

Well, today, at Pentecost, that power of the Spirit arrives.

They speak fearlessly, they speak knowledgeably, they speak in tongues.

For us, that’s good news and bad news.

The good news is that the Sprit has already come to all of us.

That the Spirit dwells within us.

He came to us individually in Baptism and Confirmation.

The bad news is that the Spirit has already come to us.

We have already been prepared.

We have no excuse to wait any longer.

It’s time to go out—as we were sent.

To spread Jesus’ message.

The message that God is a Father who loves us.

A God of Mercy.

A God who gave His only Son for our salvation.

The message that, in return, we are to love God.

And to love our neighbor.

We heard that the Spirit came to rest on the disciples as tongues of fire.

Today, on this final day of the Easter Season,

We see this Pascal Candle standing here on display.

Tomorrow we retire it to its resting place by the baptismal font.

It too is like a tongue of fire.

But it most directly represents not the Holy Spirit, but Jesus himself.

The light of the world.

This candle, standing unlit at our church entrance, 
Can be a reminder to us.

It’s now up to us to spread the light.

Indeed, we already are evangelists—

And people really are watching and listening.

We have greater influence than we probably realize.
As we preach with our words, spoken and written.

Preach even more loudly with our actions, and in-actions.

We're all spreading the message.

But whose message are we spreading?

Pentecost

Jn 20:19-23   Read this Scripture @usccb.org

Linked

For some reason it never occurred to me before.

But this year, on this Feast of Saints Philip and James, it did.

Why are these guys linked together?

Sure, they’re both Apostles.

They knew each other, they served together.

They’re both martyrs.

But why should they share a Feast Day?

Some of the others get their own Feasts.

We don’t know much about Philip.

But he’s one of the more frequently referenced Apostles.

He sometimes even gets a speaking role in the Gospel, as he did today.

Doesn’t he deserve his own Feast?

Today’s James is hardly known at all.

He’s not James the Greater, the son of Zebedee and brother of John.

This is James the Lesser.

We don’t really know who he is.

He’s referenced once as the son of Alphaeus.

Maybe he’s the same guy sometimes called James the Brother of Jesus.

Or maybe he’s the same guy sometimes called James the Just.

Maybe not.

There’s a James mentioned in our first reading today.

In the Letter to the Corinthians.

But that might be one of the other James’s.

So why should Philip and this James be linked together to share a Feast?

I did a little research and couldn’t find much.

One explanation was that some of their relics are housed together.

These relics—these remainders of them—

Have dwelt together in a church in Rome for over 1500 years.

Maybe that’s a good-enough answer.

But a better answer may be simply—Why not?

It really doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter that we don’t know all the details about the Apostles.

It doesn’t matter to them or to us whether they share a Feast Day.

Or which other Apostles they might be closely linked with.

What matters is that they were in fact Apostles.

Close followers of Jesus.

That they came to see and believe in the most critical links.

The link that Jesus speaks of in today’s Gospel.

That link between himself and the Father.

They dwell in each other.

And also that link Jesus assured them he would preserve.

That link between himself and his followers.

He would dwell in them and they in him.

What’s important to us is that those Apostles

Carried that message out through all the earth.

So we could know that we too are linked to Jesus.

And through him, to the Father.

Feast of Saints Philip and James

Jn 14:6-14   Read this Scripture @usccb.org