Sunday, July 19, 2015

The Shepherd's Voice: My Homily for July 18/19, 2015

Since I'm giving homilies and stuff now, I am gonna put up my Sunday homilies on this blog whenever I preach. So without further ado, my homily from this weekend:




The other day, I saw an amazing video on YouTube. The video was an illustration of the connection sheep have with their shepherd. The video shows a field of grazing sheep, and a group of tourists. One by one, the tourists walk to the edge of the field and call to the sheep. First one, then another, then a third and a fourth, walk to the fence: “Tik-tik-tik-tik.” Every one of them. And after every one of them, nothing happens. The sheep stand there, grazing, not responding at all. Then, the shepherd approaches. “Tik-tik-tik-tik.” The shepherd calls to his sheep. All of a sudden, one sheep, then the other, and then more and more, all of the sheep raise their heads, turn to the shepherd, and run to meet him at the fence on the edge of the field. It was amazing! By the sound of his voice, the shepherd knew the shepherd, and came to him.
Before the Gospel today, we heard this verse from John’s Gospel: “My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord; I know them, and the follow me.” This verse has never made as much sense to me as it did when I watched that video. When we know the voice of our shepherd so intimately that we can tell it’s him without any question or doubt and respond to him alone; that is when we are true disciples of the Lord.
Today, in the Gospel, we see something a little bit different. Rather than sheep who know their shepherd, we see sheep without a shepherd. Jesus is moved with pity for the crowds, who are lost and wandering, looking for someone to follow, something to grasp on to, somewhere to find meaning. I think this, rather than the sheep who know the shepherd, is more like most of our experience in today’s world, and even perhaps in this church today.
We wander around, looking for meaning in our lives, and we hear all kinds of voices giving us their plugs for the answer. We have advertisers telling us that if only we had “better ingredients, better pizza,” we would be happy, or asking us “what’s in your wallet?”, as if answering this question the right way would give us some sort of higher status in the world. We go from product to product, sport to sport, hobby to hobby, all the while looking for something that will fulfill us, and always we come up short, we always want something more, we are never satisfied. The only thing that will truly bring us fulfillment is hearing and following the voice of our true Shepherd, Jesus.
So, our question then becomes, how do we hear this voice? How do I distinguish between the voice of my shepherd, and the voice of all these false shepherds competing for my attention in the world today? Today’s Gospel reading gives us two hints, two pieces of practical advice for blocking out the voices of false shepherds and coming to know him intimately to the point where we know without a doubt when he is speaking to us.
First: “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” In order to better hear the voice of our shepherd, we first need to cut out all of the other voices. We spend so much time bombarded by voices, whether on the radio, TV, at work, at school, pretty much everywhere we go, and we know from the story of Elijah the prophet that the Lord’s voice is not in powerful winds or earthquakes, but in the still small whisper. If we constantly have these voices in our heads, they drown out the still small whisper of the Lord’s voice. Now, I’m not saying that we need to completely stop watching TV, or listening to the radio, but perhaps even taking twenty to thirty minutes every day to have quiet and spend some time listening for the Lord’s voice would help us to hear him.
The second thing we can do comes from the last line of the Gospel: “And he began to teach them many things.” Jesus spends time with his sheep, speaking with his voice, so that they come to know him and his voice. In the same way, we must come to know the voice of the Lord in order to be sheep that know him and follow him. The best way to come to know the voice of the Lord is to read the Scriptures. St. Jerome, a great scholar of Scripture from the 4th Century, says that “Ignorance of Scripture is Ignorance of Christ.” If we want to know Jesus and his voice, we must spend time reading the Scriptures and allowing the Lord to speak to us through them.
If we do these two things: spend time in quiet, and read the Scriptures, we can come to know the voice of the shepherd, and we will be more able to respond without any hesitation whenever he calls. As we approach the Lord today in the Eucharist, let us ask for the grace to be sheep who know the shepherd, and to follow his voice without hesitation among all of the other voices in the world.

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Saints Benedict and Scholastica, the Pharisees, and the Primacy of Love

February 10, Memorial of St. Scholastica



This morning, as I was praying the Office of Readings for St. Scholastica, I was struck by something in the second reading, and I was even more struck by its connection to the Gospel passage from the Mass for today.

The Second Reading for the Office of Readings is from a work by St. Gregory, and it describes the scene depicted above in the mural from Conception Abbey, where I was in school for four years. The story goes that Benedict and Scholastica, who were twins, lived in monasteries that were about five miles apart in Italy. Every once in a while, they would meet each other at a hut outside the gates of Benedict's monastery to speak about God and the spiritual life.

One time, as they were speaking, they were so enthralled that the sun began to go down, and Benedict needed to leave to go back to his monastery. Scholastica asked him to stay, so they could continue their conversation about the spiritual life. Benedict refused saying, "I simply cannot stay outside my cell." At this, Scholastica bowed her head and began to pray. Immediately it began to storm outside, and the storm raged so much that "neither Benedict nor his brethren could stir across the threshold of the place where they had been seated."

Benedict expressed his disapproval to Scholastica, to which she replied, "I asked you and you would not listen; so I asked my God and he did listen. So now go off, if you can, leave me and return to your monastery." Against his will, Gregory says, Benedict stayed with her and they conversed about the spiritual life throughout the night.

The part of this story that really struck me is what Gregory says next about Saint Scholastica and what she was able to do: "It is not surprising that she was more effective than he, since as John says, God is love, it was absolutely right that she could do more, as she loved more." She could do more, because she loved more. The primacy of love is a key part of my faith, and I think it is the key to the spiritual life.

There is nothing inherently wrong in what St. Benedict desired, that is, to go back to his monastery and stay the night in his own cell. However, God's call for Benedict in that moment was not to go back to his cell, but to love his sister by staying with her and growing closer to God with her.

In the Gospel from Mass today, Jesus is reprimanding the pharisees after one of them asks Jesus why his disciples don't wash their hands before they eat. "Why do your disciples," they ask, "not follow the tradition of the elders, but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?" Mark tells us that there are many traditions that the Pharisees and the Jews followed, like washing their hands and "purifying" cups and dishes.

Jesus rebukes them saying, "You disregard God's commandment but cling to human tradition." In other words, they took what was dictated by men, and placed it on a higher level than the command of God.

Looking back at the Office of Readings, we can see that St. Benedict was being somewhat of a pharisee in his desire to go back to his cell. He was concerned, not necessarily in a bad way, with living out the Rule that he himself wrote and gave to his monks. However, the rule is a human tradition, and love is the greatest commandment of God. St. Benedict forgot about this great commandment of love.

As I look forward to my own ministry as a priest in a year and a half, I found myself asking the Lord, as a Spiritual Director once suggested, to make my life interruptible. If I ignore love for the sake of keeping up with my routine, my goals, my plans, my will, etc., then how can I minister to people the way they ought to be ministered to. I cannot be a priest who tells someone, "Sorry, I just started my Holy Hour, can you wait for an hour and come see me again?" If I am five minutes into my holy hour, and God places someone in front of me for me to love, than that person is the way that I express my love to God. Loving that person becomes my prayer to the Lord.

Perhaps this is something we can all afford to reflect on. How often do we ignore love for the sake of our own plans and routines? Do we allow ourselves to love God in other people, even when it breaks the rules we set for ourselves? Are we Scholastica or Benedict?

Lord, make our lives interruptible...