Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

One of the most vicious lies told about Christians, a lie we sometimes believe ourselves, is that to a be a good Christian we need to cover up who we really are. We need to paint on a little happy face and go through life pretending to be something we are not. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, St. John Chrysostom, who lived in the fourth century and may have been the greatest preacher Christianity has ever produced, taught that each Christian’s goal is to become the person we truly are.

St. Augustine teaches that to be really free is not to be running around and doing anything that comes to mind – that is just being foolish and irresponsible. To be free is to be able to see the difference between what is important and what is not and to be able to use that knowledge to become the kind of person God created you to be. That’s what we mean when we say that knowing Jesus makes you free.

As Jesus’ parable from tonight’s Gospel reading points out, the "master" entrusts each of us with gifts that we are supposed to use for the good of the community around us. We don’t all have the same gifts, but whatever we are given, we are called to use.
It’s not always easy to know what your gifts are. Sometimes it’s easier to figure out what they aren’t. I remember as a kid in grade school working and working to draw a horse. It always ended up looking something like a dog. We would do penmanship exercises where we were supposed to produce long beautiful circular coils. Mine always looked like someone had stomped on them. I took music lessons and came to love music deeply, but I could never really get the music to come out of an instrument the way it was in my heart.

But as I got older I found that I loved teaching. I loved studying something and then figuring out a way to help other people understand it. I loved being in a classroom and I loved helping students outside of class. And people told me that I did a pretty good job at it.

One of the most important signs that you are using a gift God has given you is that you feel close to God when you are using that gift, and the gift tends to make others more aware of God’s goodness. When I’m preparing a class or teaching, I am lifted up. I feel closer to God.

I serve on a board for a group that raises money to support an orphanage in Mexico. One of our board members is an accountant who keeps track of all our funds. As far as I know, he’s only been to the orphanage once. He’s not a carpenter or a plumber who can make the repairs we often need to make. He’s not an organizer or a speaker who can raise the $40,000 or $50,000 a year we have to raise to keep our kids safe, healthy, and well-cared for. But he is a tiger when it comes to protecting our income, expenditures, and accounts. He watches every penny. He knows where it came from and where it goes. He protects and loves those kids and our donors like you wouldn’t believe, but instead of doing it by wielding a hammer or wearing a badge, a way for which he is probably not very well suited, he does it by protecting our accounts. He is using the gifts God gave him to do God’s work, and he grows in his love for God and others as he does it.

Maybe you are lifted up by visiting with lonely or sick people. Maybe you are lifted up by writing or performing music. Maybe you are lifted up by drawing, making signs or posters, putting together a newsletter. Maybe you find yourself closer to God when you are repairing or building. I know a young woman who loves to organize things. She has a gift for administration, and everything works better when she is around. I know another young woman who has a gift for leadership. She walks into a situation and says, "Hey, let’s try this," and the whole group gets focused and heads off to do wonderful and loving things and have fun in the process. I know a woman who works in a high-pressure job processing huge amounts of mail. She’s good at it, but she is especially good at caring for the people she supervises on that job. She knows their needs, their joys, and their sorrows. And everyone who works with her is lifted up by her concern and attention.

Sometimes all we have to bring to the table is our brokenness, our knowledge of what it feels like to be lost, or afraid, or betrayed. I’ve seen incredible things happen when someone just brings those gifts and offers them.

Every year my wife and I help with a healing retreat for people who have been harmed by abortions, either having had one themselves or been close to an abortion in some other way. The retreat helps people to truly accept the forgiveness and love that God offers and to begin to see themselves as lovable again. And I’ve seen these people use the powerful gift they’ve been given – the gift of really knowing what it means to be forgiven and loved – to make an incredible difference in their own lives and the lives of people around them.

We see in the reading from Proverbs the gift that this wonderful woman with the hard work of her "loving hands" is to her family and the whole community. It might not have seemed at first that the humble work she did could be holy. But it was powerful work in building up God’s kingdom.

Don’t be afraid to seek out the gifts that God has given you – you might even try to attend a "called and gifted" weekend. They’ll be having one at St. John’s Feb. 22 and 23. It is a retreat devoted to finding out what gifts God has given you. On our fall retreat at St. Paul’s, we worked through a similar process, and some people gained some real insights into the way that God is working in their lives.

And don’t ever think that God doesn’t have a contribution for you to make. Nobody else can love God in exactly the way that you can. Nor can God love and protect and nurture our poor suffering world through anyone else in exactly the way that God can work through you. My prayer for each of us is that we can come to realize more clearly that God loves and trusts us and calls each of to the joy and fulfillment of a life with a purpose. My prayer is that we will each hear the words, "Well done, good and faithful servant. Come, share your master’s joy."


[Prv 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31; Ps 128:1-2, 3, 4-5; 1 Thes 5:1-6; Mt 25:14-30]

What's the deal with holy water?

Hey everyone, someone recently asked, “What’s the deal with holy water and why are those holy water holders (fonts) at the entrance to the church?”

Catholics have signs of our faith, some of which are unique to Catholicism, called sacramentals: holy water, crucifix, prayer beads (rosaries), and palm branches for Palm Sunday. All of these are used to remind us of something greater, but they, “[do] not so fully express the nature of the Church and which, according to Catholic doctrine, [do] not carry the guarantee of grace associated with the seven sacraments.” (from Richard McBrian’s Catholicism). What does that mean as far as holy water is concerned?

Holy water is intended to remind us of our baptism, but holy water is not enough to constitute a baptism. For example, if you invite a non-Christian friend to Mass and there happens to a Rite of Aspersion (Sprinkling), that friend isn’t suddenly baptized against their will. For a Catholic, holy water is a reminder of incorporation into the body of Christ, reminding us that we are sons and daughters of God (Ephesians 4:25).

The purpose of the holy water font or baptismal font at the entrances of the church is for us to call to mind our baptism before Mass, especially that we are, “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may announce the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (1 Peter 2:9). Holy water has more uses than that. For example, after Mass, one will have well in mind our unity with God, but the holy water can be used as physical sign praising God for our being blessed with, “every spiritual blessing in the heavens,” (Ephesians 1:3) which is something we always need to keep in mind.

Reflections on a Banquet (28th Sunday in Ordinary Time)

I’m sure you’ve read reports in the newspaper or seen them on TV of suicide bombers in the Middle East. One of the reports I saw emphasized that Muslims believe that those who die in such a way will go directly to heaven, and according to the reports be "attended" by groups of virgins. The idea that one report put forward was that the Muslim idea of heaven is almost orgiastic. We’ll, a couple of years ago, I decided to read the Quran myself to see exactly what it said. What the Quran actually says is quite a bit different from what news reports say, which should be no surprise to anyone who has tried to follow religious matters in the popular press.

In the Quran heaven is pictured as a banquet with really good waiters and some wonderful guests. Among the guests are women who are of high moral character (that probably gets translated "virgins" in some places), who are very intelligent and excellent at conversation. It also says that these women have exceptionally large and beautiful eyes. So in the Muslim view, heaven is a great party with wonderful guests and terrific conversation.
It’s really no surprise that the Prophet Muhammad tended to see heaven as a banquet. That view came directly from the Hebrew prophets whom Muslims read and venerate. Isaiah, in looking forward to the day of the Lord, says that the banquet will happen right here on this mountain, the mountain on which Jerusalem sits. And on that day, God will "destroy the veil that veils all people," the veil that separates them from God and from each other.
In the city of Jerusalem about 500 years after Isaiah wrote, Jesus gathered a group of followers in an upper room and held that banquet, a banquet that has continued since then and will continue in heaven forever. Jesus lifted up the bread and the wine and gave thanks for them and said the words of consecration which made them his body and his blood for us. When we come together here at Mass we don’t start another banquet, we join into the very banquet that Jesus held in the upper room. We join into the very banquet that Jesus holds even now in heaven.

But in the story that Jesus tells in this evening’s Gospel reading, a lot of the people who are invited aren’t coming to the banquet. Why not? One of the reasons that so many of those originally invited didn’t come was that the real banquet looked so much different than they had imagined. The Jewish people worked hard for more than 1,000 years before Jesus to keep their faith separate from the worship of the pagan peoples around them. A large part of the story of the Hebrew people is their succumbing time and again to the temptation to adopt the pagan forms of worship, and time and again God sending prophets to purify the faith, to get the pagan practices out of their worship and pagan philosophies out of their thinking. So by the time of Jesus, the sense of separateness was so deep that it was impossible for some to recognize that in Jesus, the faith was now opened up to all the nations. This was very difficult issue for the early church, and it led to fractured communities all over the Mediterranean region. The issue was only settled when Peter, Paul, James, and others held a church council in Jerusalem where they made the decision to admit gentiles as full Christians -- recognize that in Jesus, God was bringing something absolutely new into the world.
But the story tacked on at the end of this evening’s Gospel reading hints at a different and bigger reason for people to refuse the invitation to the banquet. Recall that one of the guests was not properly dressed for a banquet and was forced to leave. What is that all about?
Accepting the invitation to God’s banquet requires a change in us. We need to take off our regular street clothes, the idea that what life is all about is getting and spending, the idea that we need position and power, the philosophy of "me first." We need to put on different clothing. We need to remember that each of us is God’s beloved child. We need to know that each of us is here for a purpose, and that purpose isn’t to accumulate the most toys. We are here to love and to accept love. To support and to heal and to nourish and to protect, to leave this world a better place than it was before we came. To come close to God in this life in anticipation of being close to God in eternal life.

Thank you so much for being here and accepting the invitation to God’s banquet. Here is the banquet table. And just look at all the intelligent women of high moral character with large and beautiful eyes. You must be in the right place. Thank you for letting Christ’s light shine through you so that it warms and brightens the whole world.