26 January 2016

It Would Have Been Enough

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Ok; be honest: how many of you asked God to win the $1.5 billion Powerball prize?  You don’t have to raise your hand.  There were probably some people who were bargaining with God: if you give me the $1.5 billion, I’ll give 10% to the church.  I told a number of people: I’m not greedy; I only need about $10 million; the rest I can give away.  Maybe you didn’t want it.  But I bet we could all imagine what we would do with that much money.
And all of us were disappointed who wanted to win the jackpot.  No one won the jackpot from the State of Michigan.  It’s as if God wasn’t listening to us!!  How could he leave us in such a lurch.  Think of the good we could’ve done with $1.5 billion!!
It might lead us to think that God is a bit stingy.  After all, here we are in church, trying to do God’s will, and He won’t even give us a little financial reward for worshipping Him.  But, our readings today give us a different story.  They give us a different perspective, which is the truth, not our petty idea of what God is thinking.  And what our readings reveal is that God is generous.  He is not stingy.  His gifts overflow in abundance!
Think about the first reading from the Prophet Isaiah.  This part of the Book of Isaiah was written after the Babylonian Exile, where the Jews had lost everything.  Their unfaithfulness to God had meant the loss of the Promised Land and the loss of the Temple.  But God does not rub their noses in their past failures.  Instead, He promises that their new status, after they have turned back to Him, will be even better than the beginning.  No longer will people mock the Chosen People for what they don’t have, calling them, “Forsaken,” but will honor them as the spouse of the Lord, and call them “My delight,” and their land, “Espoused.”  They will be like a crown that adorns God’s brow.  That’s not stingy.
And St. Paul has a long list of the gifts that God pours out through the Spirit: wisdom, knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, mighty deeds, prophecy, discernment of spirits, varieties of tongues.  All of these are gifts that God pours out upon His people.  And while there are a variety of gifts, it is the one God who gives them all, for some benefit for the church.  God is not holding back, but is pouring out gifts such that our cups overflow.
And the Gospel really talks about God’s generosity.  Jesus, through the intercession of His Mother, saves the poor couple of Cana from shame.  Imagine if you ran out of food at your wedding party, and some people didn’t get any.  That’s bad enough!  But if you ran out of wine, well that’s just downright degrading!!  But Jesus saves them from that degradation, and turns the water into wine.  And it’s not just any wine; it’s the best wine.  Jesus does not just save the day in a mediocre way; He saves the day and His generosity makes sure that His wedding gift of wine is the best wine there is.
Top of the façade of the church in Cana 
The temptation for us is to be stuck on water, and not want the wine.  Water is very basic, and we need it to survive.  Wine is not so basic, takes more work, and produces a better effect after drinking than water (once you’re old enough to legally drink it).  We are certainly called to assist each other with our gifts and talents and treasures so that everyone has the basic necessities.  We cannot ignore the poor.  But, at the same time, it can be an easy temptation to fall into to simply want more money, a bigger house, a better car, the newest phone.  Those are all water.  God wants to give us the best gifts, the gift of His love, the gift of His mercy, the gift of new life.  Money will run out; homes will eventually collapse; cars will stop running; phones will become obsolete.  But God’s love, mercy, and life are for eternity.  Those are the gifts we should be striving for.
God is never outdone in His generosity.  He does not simply give us water; He gives us wine.  During the Passover, the Jews have a song called Dayenu, and that word, Dayenu, literally means, “enough for us” or “it would have been enough.”  They recall God’s great deeds, and how that would have been enough: “If He had brought us out from Egypt, and had not carried out judgments against them–Dayenu!  If He had carried out judgments against them, and not against their idols–Dayenu!  If He had destroyed their idols and had not smitten their first-born–Dayenu!  If He had smitten their first-born, and had not given us their wealth–Dayenu!  If He had given us their wealth, and had not split the sea for us–Dayenu!  If He had taken us through the sea on dry land, and had not drowned our oppressors in it–Dayenu!  If He had drowned our oppressors in it, and had not supplied our needs in the desert for forty years–Dayenu!  If He had supplied our needs in the desert for forty years, and had not fed us the manna–Dayenu!  If He had fed us the manna, and had not given us the Shabbat [Sabbath]–Dayenu!  If He had given us the Shabbat, and had not brought us before Mount Sinai–Dayenu!  If He had brought us before Mount Sinia, and had not given us the Torah–Dayenu!  If He had given us the Torah, and had not brought us into the land of Israel–Dayenu!  If He had brought us into the land of Israel, and not built for us the Holy Temple–Dayenu!”  But that wasn’t enough for God.  He then sent His Only Begotten Son, to be one like us in all things but sin, and even to die for us so we could live.  

God didn’t give us the jackpot of the Powerball, but He did give us Jesus.  Is that enough for us?

12 January 2016

What God Said at Your Baptism

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord
What happened on the day of your baptism?  For those of you who were baptized as babies, you may think it’s an impossible question to answer, as you were too young to remember.  Maybe some of you who were baptized as adults remember.  Even if you don’t remember, you can at least get the gist of things from the baptisms you’ve seen celebrated here or elsewhere: your parents asked to have you baptized, they professed their faith, and water was poured upon your heads or you were immersed in water, and then you were given the Sacred Chrism anointing, the white garment, and the baptismal candle.  But there’s something else that happened, something very big: when you were baptized, God the Father said, “‘You are my beloved Son; in you I am well pleased.’”
Now, if you’re a female, you might think this is a bit odd.  Did God not know which sex you are?  Of course He did!  But, when you were baptized, the very life of Jesus was given to you, so that, when the Father looks upon you, yes, He sees you, but He also sees the image of His Beloved Son, Jesus, in whom He is well pleased.  When you were baptized, you were made to be like Jesus.
Now, this isn’t like a costume that you put on.  It’s more like painting a portrait.  You, as a human person, are the canvas, and the artist cooperating with God.  You are the one who receives the image and craft the image that you display.  It’s part of who you are, not an added on extra.  When you were baptized, God traced the pattern of His Son in pencil, hoping that, with His help, you will color it in within the lines.  
Baptism is not a ritual we’ve come up with to celebrate new human life; it is not a ceremony to pass on a cultural identity.  Baptism is a remaking of ourselves, at the very core of our being, by God, so that we can live Jesus’ life.  Not that we ape Jesus; otherwise we’d all go to Israel and Palestine , wear sandals, and dress in tunics.  But we receive strength to live as Jesus did: in total obedience to the Father.  That, of course, is a tall order.  But God Himself makes it possible, and gives us assistance along the way.
Baptism is also not something that we did long ago that has no bearing on our life.  It is a life-long commitment to follow Jesus.  As infants, we don’t have a choice: our parents make the loving choice to have us baptized, because they want God to assist that child in living like Jesus.  Sometimes people will say, “Well, I never got to choose to be baptized; my parents forced it on me.”  Yes, it was forced upon many Catholics as infants.  So was food, clean diapers, love, and all that other “horrible” stuff.  Sometimes parents making choices for us as babies isn’t all bad.  True, as we grow older, we have to also claim it for ourselves and live it out, but we’re set on the right path when our parents have us baptized as infants.
The call that all of us receive in baptism, the outline that is given to us by God, is the call to be a saint.  When the life of Jesus is given to us in Baptism, we are set apart to be a holy man or woman of God.  We can do so as a husband or wife, priest or consecrated person, child or adult, CEO or McDonald’s worker.  No matter what our vocation, no matter what our job, it is possible for us to be saints (and I don’t mean that we all need to go to Siena Heights).  In every circumstance of life, if we are obedient to God the Father’s will, then we will be saints.  Maybe we won’t be canonized, but it will not go unnoticed by God, and His is the only measurement that truly counts.  

Today, celebrate your baptism.  Celebrate that you were called when you were baptized to be a holy man or woman of God.  Celebrate that God the Father looked upon you in love and said, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”  May our lives reflect that life of Jesus in all that we do and in all that we say.

07 January 2016

Two Sets of Kings

Solemnity of the Epiphany 
When we think about the Epiphany, which we celebrate today in this country, we probably think about the Three Magi, or Three Kings.  We hard about them in the Gospel today searching for Jesus, the “‘newborn king of the Jews’” and how they presented their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to Jesus: gold for a king, frankincense for God, and myrrh for burial.  The Scriptures don’t actually say there were three, but we presume that each magi brought one gift, and that there weren’t other kings who arrived empty-handed.
We’ve likely heard tons of homilies about how we should bring our gifts to Jesus, and how wise men (and women) still seek him, and the like.  So as I prepared my homily, I was trying to think of a different homily other than the usual one we hear on the Epiphany each year.  I even looked back at last year’s homily, where I preached about how the word Epiphany means to show off, and how God shows Himself off, but without bragging, and how we are also called to show off Jesus.  And as I was preparing, my heart was leading me to speak about the Magi.  But then it struck me: the Magi were not the only kings searching for Jesus.
I have never really focused on it before, though I have heard this Gospel at least 32 times, but there are two sets of kings looking for Jesus.  One is the Magi, following the star.  The other is King Herod, who wants to follow the Magi, but not to do Jesus homage, as he stated.  On the one hand we have people trying to find Jesus to honor Him.  On the other hand, we have people trying to find Jesus to kill Him.  The Magi bring their gifts to Jesus to honor who He is.  Herod brings the sword to kill Jesus because Herod is afraid of who Jesus is.  The Magi can see God’s design even in the stars, and are open to how God is communicating, though they are not Jews.  Herod has to ask the chief priests and the scribes where the king of the Jews would be born, and is not aware of God’s Holy Word which reveals that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem.  There are two very different searches going on
Th same is true today.  There are those who seek Jesus because they believe He is the King of Kings, and the answer to all their troubles.  There are those who seek Jesus in disdain because Jesus ruins all the “fun” they want to have and He threatens the way of life they prefer.  There are those who see with the eye of faith and notice how Jesus is the answer to the deepest longings of their hearts.  There are those who try to find ways to disprove Jesus’ teachings and find examples of how His disciples don’t live Jesus’ teachings out.  There are those who run to Jesus to obtain mercy.  There are those who run to Jesus and condemn Him for all the troubles in the world.
If Jesus is who He says He is, then gold, frankincense, and myrrh are the smallest gifts that we can give Jesus.  If Jesus truly is God and Man and rivals to humanity what it means to be human, then our response cannot be anything other than trying to change our life to follow Him.  Those who believe Jesus find in Him a new way to live, not just as a set of rules, but as a relationship with a person who prepares them for heaven.
But others, feeling that same tug at their hearts to change their lives, are more like King Herod, and fear what Jesus will take away from them.  They are worried that the change which Jesus requires for His disciples will diminish who they are, what they can do, and the joy that they will find.  They seek to put to death anything which threatens the reigns of their own ego, and will search for ways to discredit Jesus and His life as much as possible.

If we’re truly honest, we’re a mix of the two.  At times we are convinced by the Gospel and we want to be more like Jesus.  At other times we are afraid that Jesus will take away from us something that we need, and we do not trust Him.  May this celebration of the Epiphany, and our reception of the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Eucharist, make us less like King Herod who feared Jesus’ reign and sought to end it, and more like the Magi, who honored Jesus and brought Him gifts that represented so much more.  May we seek after Jesus, who wants to be found by us, so that we can give Him the gift of our very life.