Pampered Puppies

 

Photo by Andrew Lancaster on Unsplash

There are many types of prayer.

Prayers of petition are probably the most common.

The Our Father itself is primarily a list of petitions.

We’ve been taught to pray and to ask God for what we want.

We’ve learned that we don’t always get what we pray for.

At least not right away.

But we know God does listen to our prayers.

And that His ultimate plan for us,

Is to give us even more than we ever thought to ask for.

We already have a lot to be thankful for.

 

With that background and with that generosity in mind,

We might be taken aback by Jesus’ behavior in our Gospel today.

The Canaanite woman repeatedly begs for his help.

First, he completely ignores her, then he says he won’t help her.

That’s shocking enough.

But even more, he compares her and her people, the Gentiles, to dogs.

That would include all of us non-Jews.

“It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”

 

No analogy is perfect.

But, though it stretches our modern-day bounds of political correctness,

Jesus did come up with a pretty good one.

The image he evoked clearly conveyed his message to the woman.

He was here to minister to the Jews—the children.

Not to the other nations—the dogs.

She immediately understood—and embraced—the image he’d created.

And she came right back at him with a quick, bold, clever retort.

“Even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”

She may be the only person in the Gospels to top Jesus in a verbal exchange.

And her bold resolve has made her a model for persistence in prayer.

 

There are very serious matters involved in their encounter –  

For her, a desperate plea for healing.

For him, an attempt to hold to his mission,

T0 serving the Jews as God’s first chosen people.

Despite that gravity, there’s a touch of lightheartedness to their exchange.

And a sense of respect rather than malice or offense.

The woman calls him Lord and Son of David.

Jesus, who could read her heart, pushes her a bit.

But, in the end, he praises her for her great faith, and grants her request.

 

This was one of the few times Jesus directly ministered to a Gentile.

But those few instances began to open the door for the whole world.

As Isaiah foretold in our first reading,

The time would come when foreigners could join themselves to the Lord.

And after Jesus’ earthly ministry was completed, we hear

Paul, calling himself the Apostle to the Gentiles.

Announcing in his letter to the Romans, that that time had come.

God’s plan, by then, had moved forward to the next stage.

Jesus had raised us, as his sisters and brothers,

To the ranks of the children.

God would lavish His gifts and His mercy not only upon the Jews.

But upon all of us.

We were no longer the dogs in Jesus’ analogy.

. . .

 

And really, when you stop to think about it, especially in our culture,

Was it so bad to be compared to a dog?

The word Jesus used can also be interpreted as “puppy.”

That makes for an even fuzzier, friendlier analogy.

Dogs can’t come before the children, but they can be treasured.

They have some truly praiseworthy qualities.

Fr. Tom Hart, a scholar who’s been staying with us the past few weeks,

Pointed me to some saintly authority for that.

St Xanthias, one of the 3^rd Century Desert Fathers, said,

A dog is better than I am, for he has love and does not judge.

 

Today, on Capitol Hill, we love and pamper our dogs.

You see people walking their dogs at all hours of the day and night.

I used to walk my German Shepherd, Rosebud, late at night.

People who would probably never have stopped to talk to me,

Would stop to say hello to her.  

 

We’re funny about our dogs.

Many of us treat them as if they were our children.

In return they give us their complete and unconditional love and loyalty.

They happily accept us as their masters, and follow our commands.

It seems that there’s nothing they’d rather do than just be with us.

 

Even as an accustomed member of that Capitol Hill dog culture,

I was surprised, when I visited Paris.

It wasn’t uncommon to go into an upscale Parisian restaurant

And see people holding their little dogs on their laps.

Hand-feeding them at the table.

 

Again, no analogy is perfect.

But one comes to mind, at least for me,

When we look ahead to that ultimate gift—the Heavenly banquet.

Or when we look at what we already have in Communion at Mass.

We see that Jesus has indeed elevated us to the ranks of the children.

But we can also see that

We’re still very much like those pampered Parisian puppies.

Not scrambling for scraps on the floor.

But reclining at the table

Being hand-fed by our loving Master.

 

And all He asks in return is that we give Him our love and loyalty.

20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Mt 15:21-28

  Read this Scripture @usccb.org 

View the Homily (at 13:55)

One Wheat

Try for a minute to imagine—if you can—

A land of wheat and weeds.

A world, a country, a society,

Seemingly split into two clear camps.

The only thing they can agree on is that 

There are indeed two distinct camps.

The weeds and the wheat.

Those who call themselves the wheat will quickly tell you—

The weeds are evil, they’re destroying the land.

Slightly less harsh wheat might allow that 

Some weeds aren’t truly evil.

They’re just misled—unthinking sheep, or zombies.

Or just hopelessly ignorant.

But, whether evil or merely stupid, the weeds have to go.

Is that a land any of us would want to live in?

Can you imagine any place worse than that?

Let me help.

Imagine that in addition to the deep division 

And tension and animosity,

And the urge to get rid of the weeds.

There’s also universal confusion.

It turns out that everyone is self-confident

That they are the wheat.

They and those like themselves are fine.

The others—the weeds—should be uprooted, destroyed.

Or at least banished or pushed out of the way.

As hard as all that may be to imagine today, in America.

The problem of weeds was something that

Jesus thought worth mentioning 2,000 years ago.

And his solution was to leave the weeds 

To grow along with the wheat.

There was too much risk that uprooting the weeds 

Would harm the wheat.

Some wheat might be mistaken for weeds.

Other wheat might be swept up with the weeds

Because of their close proximity.

In explaining his parable, Jesus says the good seed

Sown by the Son of Man—the wheat—

Are the children of the kingdom.

And the bad seed sown by the evil one—the weeds—

Are the children of the Devil.

But we can’t take that too literally.

The Devil can’t create souls, create children.

He can’t sow life.

Only God has that power.

So, all the children are children of God.

What the Devil can do is win over children 

And make them his own.

Transform them—deform them—turn them into weeds.

But his hold on them isn’t necessarily permanent.

Those weeds can transform again—reform—

To become wheat again.

And so, Jesus tells us to hold back our judgement.

To let him be the judge.

When we’re ready to label someone a weed,

Even if we’ve successfully put our prejudices aside,

There’s still a good chance we could be wrong.

And even if we’re right at that instant,

That particular weed might yet grow into wheat.

That’s not to say that there aren’t some people 

Doing truly evil things.

There are.

And we do have to protect ourselves and others from them.

But, we can’t just quickly lump others in with those weeds.

Especially not over mere disagreements.

Jesus also told us that 

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

So, we need to find a way 

For all of us self-confident wheat to reconcile.

It won’t be easy, divisions are deep.

There’s a lot of damage to repair.

I remember when my daughters were in grade school.

One of their teachers, Mrs Liardi,

Had an impressive way of addressing misbehavior.

When someone was doing something wrong

She would ask, usually in a loud voice:

Child of God, what are you doing?

Imagine how much better things could be

If all of us self-proclaimed wheat 

Could look at the supposed weeds

And give them that same recognition.

Reminding ourselves, and them, that 

We are all children of God.


More on Weeds 

16th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Mt 13:24-33

  Read this Scripture @usccb.org 

Photo by Warren Wong at Unsplash

Makin' A List, Checkin' It Twice

Photo by Ben Smith at unsplsh.com

Here we are just three days from Christmas.

Time for that last-minute rush if we haven’t yet prepared

All the gifts we plan to give.

Gifts—offered, accepted, given, received and reciprocated—

Are a common underlying theme of Scripture.

And that theme is particularly strong in the Advent season.

For example, this Gospel passage from Matthew that we hear today

Tells of gifts.

And this Gospel is repeated three times in these pre-Christmas days.

In addition to today, we heard it, last Wednesday

And it’s an option for Tuesday’s Christmas Vigil.

All our Scripture readings today deal, at some level,

With the offering, giving and acceptance of gifts.

Underlying all the readings is that one great gift of

Jesus coming into the world as our Savior.

But we see other gifts as well.

Ahaz is offered the gift of a sign.

Somewhat surprisingly, he refuses it.

He doesn’t want a sign proving that God will protect Jerusalem.

Because he’s already chosen to have Assyria protect him.

But Isaiah gives him a sign anyway.

Foretelling the coming of Emmanuel—God with us.

The Psalm also speaks of God’s gifts to us.

The creation of the world and all that’s in it, including us.

The blessings that God bestows on us.

In that long greeting, opening the Letter to the Romans,

Paul speaks of the gift of that coming of Emmanuel, the Son of God.

And the grace and the blessings, and the calling, he brings.

Our Gospel passage again refers to that primary gift,

The coming of Jesus—Emmanuel.

But it tells of other gifts as well.

Joseph’s planned gift to Mary; a gift of mercy.

Not exposing her to the law, which could have led to her stoning.

God’s gift of a reassuring message to Joseph, through Gabriel.

God’s gift of faith to Joseph, that enabled him to accept the message.

And Joseph’s reciprocating gift of obedience to God.

In this Christmas Season, we think a lot about giving and receiving gifts.

And about being thankful for all we’ve received,

It brings to mind a suggestion from St Ignatius.

We should ask ourselves and consider:

Look at all that God has given me …

What will I give in return?

Ignatius’ answer was his prayer, called in Latin the Suscipe—

Which in English means, receive or accept.

It says:

Take Lord and receive

All my liberty, my memory, my understanding, my entire free will.

All that I have and call my own.

You have given it all to me Lord.

To you I return it.

All of it is yours.

Take it and do with it what you will.

Give me only your love and your grace.

That is enough for me.

It’s a bit shocking when you first think about those words.

How can I give all those things away?

What would be left of me?

Without them, what use would I be to myself or anyone else?

But then we realize that, in our prayer, 
We’re not throwing all those things away.

We’re offering to use them for God.

To let Him use us.

In return for all he’s done for us.

There’s a popular poster that tries to sum it up:

What we are is God’s gift to us.

What we become is our gift to God.

In the old days when I was an altar boy and the Mass was in Latin,

We had to memorize another prayer, the Suscipiat, 
So we could recite it at Mass.

The congregation didn’t recite it, just the altar boys.

Suscipiat Dominus sacrificium de manibus tuis, ad laudem et gloriam nominis sui, ad utilitatem quoque nostram, totiusque ecclesiae suae sanctae.

We didn’t have to understand it, we just had to recite it.

And indeed, we didn’t understand it.

So we’d just compete to see who could say it fastest.

Nowadays at Mass we all recite the Suscipiat, in English.

But even in English we might not understand or appreciate

The full meaning when we pray those now-familiar words:

May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands,

For the praise and glory of His name, for our good

And the good of all His Holy Church.

We say that in response to the priest’s words:

Pray, brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours

May be acceptable to God the almighty Father.

When the priest says my sacrifice and yours,

He’s adding the gift of ourselves to those gifts of bread and wine.

Offering our whole selves to God.

And asking God to accept us.

Our response with the Suscipiat

Is our opportunity to voice our agreement to that offer.

To make a conscious renewal of the gift of ourselves.

A gift including all that detail that Ignatius spells out in his prayer.

So, for those of us who haven’t yet decided

What to give God this Christmas.

What to give Him in return for all he’s given us.

There’s an idea.

It’s very convenient.

Sincerely adopting that simple prayer from Ignatius.

Or making a sincere re-commitment 
Whenever we say the Suscipiat at Mass.

It may not be the easiest gift to deliver on.

But it will be the most greatly appreciated.

And, even though we give it in return for what we’ve already received.

God will respond with still more grace and blessings on us.

We’ll enter a continuous cycle of giving ourselves and receiving grace.

And as Ignatius’ prayer says:

Give me only your love and your grace.

That is enough for me.

Asking for only God’s love and grace.

It seems like an almost comical understatement.

What more could we ask for, or want?

4th Sunday of Advent

Mt 1:18-24

  Read this Scripture @usccb.org 

Three in One

Photo by Enver Güçlü on Unsplash

What do we know about God?

And how do we know it?

Many philosophers, including Thomas Aquinas, have argued that

Through reason and observation, we can know that there is a God.

Yet, 10% of Americans say they don’t believe in any God or higher force.

And there are even more agnostics, who aren’t sure.

So, maybe there’s some element of faith, or intuition, or openness,

That we need before we accept that God exists.

Just knowing or believing that God exists doesn’t tell us a lot about God.

Reason and observation take us only so far.

Some cultures have ended up worshiping idols and trees and animals.

Some believe in wrathful gods, and gods who demand human sacrifices.

Even the great thinkers of Ancient Greece missed the mark.

For any substantial understanding of God, we need trusted revelation.

That does require an element of faith—

Not blind unquestioning faith, 
But faith tested by reason and observation.

Much of our understanding of the One True God was handed down to us

Through Jewish Scripture—the Old Testament.

God revealed a lot about himself through His statements and actions.

And through the rewards, punishments and Commandments he gave.

We learned still more about God through Jesus’ revelations.

We learned about the surprising extent of His love for us.

Jesus taught us to call Him Our Father—even Abba—

A more intimate term like, Daddy.

We learned more about what He expects from us.

More about the plans he has in store for us.

We learned more about His very nature.

An intimate glimpse into His internal being.

And that brings us to the Feast we celebrate today.

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.

Without Jesus’ revelations, we’d have no idea that God is Trinity.

In fact, God spoke of Himself in the singular—I AM WHO AM.

And He declared in His First Commandment that he alone was God.

Jesus never used the actual term Trinity, in reference to God.

But he spoke often of his intimate relationship with the Father.

How he and the Father were one.

How he was in the Father and the Father was in him.

How if you’d seen him, you’d seen the Father.

He referred to himself as the Son.

And said that he was with the Father before the world began.

He said no one knows the Son except the Father.

And no one knows the Father except the Son,

And anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal Him.

Jesus also spoke numerous times of the Spirit.

As he did in today’s Gospel.

And he linked the three of the Trinity, and implied their equality.

As when he gave the Great Commission:

Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus gave us those facts regarding the relationships within God.

But he didn’t pull out shamrocks or triangles 
And offer to solve the mystery for us.

Maybe because the details weren’t really critical.

Or maybe because he knew we couldn’t grasp it yet.

And he was leaving us something to work on.

How could a creature think he can fully comprehend the creator anyway?

But we’ve tried, and we continue to try.

And it’s been a big deal.

We’ve had debates and heresies, and excommunications, and schisms.

But finally, by the 400’s,

Through Councils in Nicea, Chalcedon, Ephesus and Constantinople,

The Fathers of the Church reached the inescapable conclusion

From their study and reflection on Jesus’s teachings.

The One True God, the God of Abraham, is One God, one Divine Being.

But, at the same time, a Trinity of three—Father, Son and Spirit—

Equal, distinct but fully united, divine persons.

The dogma was settled, and expressed in the updated Nicene Creed.

As we recite that creed in a few minutes, notice how it

Emphasizes the oneness of God.

But also emphasizes the seemingly-contradictory truth of the Trinity.

Full understanding of God is clearly beyond our comprehension.

But we can get to know Him better.

By the same ways we get to know anyone better.

We might hear more about them.

We might read more about them.

We might converse with them on social media, or email or text.

But the best way is to sit down with them and talk with them.

We have that opportunity to sit down with God.

We have a Heavenly Father, Abba, Daddy, who’s always available.

The Trinity and other mysteries are good conversation starters.

We can try expressing what we think we understand.

Asking for greater insight.

Listening for any response.

On this Father’s Day, we might pray especially to the Father.

Knowing that the Son and the Spirit are included as well.

We might add a prayer for our earthly fathers.

Those of us who are fathers ourselves

Might ask God to help us become more like our Heavenly Father.

Being always available to our children.

Being always, along with mothers, 
Ready to do what’s best for our children.

The Fathers group includes,

Not just those of us who are called Dad more often than Father.

But also our priests, who we all call Father.

And while we’re on the topic of Fathers, we should note and give thanks

That yesterday ten new Fathers were ordained for our diocese.

And one of them was Deacon Stefan, now Father Stefan Megyery,

Who served us here at St Josephs for the past year.

Our Fathers’ Day prayers just might lead to responses

That boost us along the road to greater understanding of the mysteries.

But even with limited understanding,

Our faith lets us accept the great mysteries.

I don’t know which is the greatest or most mysterious.

The Trinity—with three persons in one Supreme Being.

The Incarnation—with two natures in one person.

Jesus fully God and fully Man.

The Transubstantiation—with Christ’s true presence, in body and blood, Under the appearance of bread and wine.

Or some other mystery.

We are familiar with these mysteries.

We accept them, we believe them.

Yet they remain mysteries.

We can benefit from exploring these mysteries.

There are many who don’t explore at all.

Some simply dismiss them as foolishness.

Clearly, they say, this is impossible.

Others simply accept the mysteries as Truth without much concern.

Their faith tells them to simply accept it.

It’s good to be in that faith-filled group.

We’re blessed to be there, with our gift of faith.

But it’s also good to step back 
And struggle with the mysteries now and then.

Each time we do that, we might get a flashing glimpse of that Truth.

Each time we might advance a little.

Get a boost and a reassurance that we’re on the right track.

That, even though we lack full understanding,
We can hope to—someday— understand more fully.

And, as St Paul says in today’s Scripture, hope does not disappoint.

On our ultimate Someday, we’ll stand before God,

And enjoy the beatific vision.

We’ll be given the fullest understanding a glorified human can achieve.

Then, we’ll know all that we can possibly know about who God is.

Trinity Sunday

Jn 16:12-15  Read this Scripture @usccb.org