God’s ‘Inclusiveness’

 

(Epiphany 2014: This homily was given on January 5, 2014 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I. by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Ephesians 3: 2-6; Matthew 2: 1-12.)

 

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Epiphany 2014]

 

A buzzword is defined as “a word or phrase . . . that is fashionable at a particular time or in a particular context.” 

Every age has its buzzwords.  Some modern ones include: “globalization;” “Generation X;” “millenials;” “viral;” “gravitas;”—and one that you hear all the time these days: “inclusiveness.”

What brought this to mind was an editorial from the Times of Trenton newspaper that I came across online the other day.  It was entitled, “Pope Francis Offers Refreshing Message of Inclusiveness.”

The good news is that this was a very complimentary editorial--at least it was complimentary toward Francis.  The bad news is that it was not so complimentary toward the popes that came before him.  In fact, the editors tried to portray our new Holy Father as being completely different from his predecessors, and as teaching things that are actually in direct conflict with the teachings of previous popes.  He’s humble; they were not.  He’s compassionate; they were not.  He’s not materialistic; they were.  He’s not concerned with doctrine; they were obsessed with it.  He’s “inclusive”—he accepts everybody, almost totally ignoring their sins; they divided and excluded people, because they were almost exclusively focused on people’s sins.

And to support that last point they wrote the following, quoting Francis himself: “[The Church’s true] message, says Pope Francis is ‘the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives.’”

Now I presume the editors of the Times of Trenton were English majors (or that they at least took an English course or two in college); however they seem to be completely unaware of the fact that there’s a very big difference between the word “before” and the expression “in place of”.  Pope Francis did not say, ‘the saving love of God comes IN PLACE OF moral and religious imperatives’”—which is what they imply in their editorial.  Rather, he said, ‘the saving love of God comes BEFORE moral and religious imperatives’”—which is, in essence, the very same thing that Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope John Paul II, and every other good pope of the past has said!

The teaching, in other words, that God loves us and has saved us through his Son, Jesus Christ, comes first.  It has a certain priority over other aspects of the Faith.  But that teaching about the Father’s love and the sacrificial death of Jesus doesn’t negate or replace the teaching on the commandments!

If anything, it makes the teaching on the commandments more important!

I mention this today because the Feast of the Epiphany which we celebrate in the Church this weekend is about “inclusiveness”—but not the kind of inclusiveness that the editors of the Times of Trenton advocate.  This feast is about the inclusiveness of God’s plan of salvation.

The Magi were the first Gentiles—the first non-Jews—to worship Jesus.  Scripture tells us that they were “from the east”—which probably means that they were from ancient Persia (an area now known to the world as Iran).

The very fact that St. Matthew—who was writing primarily for Jewish converts to Christianity—mentioned these Magi in his gospel was significant.  He wanted to make the point to his fellow Israelites that Jesus didn’t just come into the world to save the Jews.  He came to save EVERYBODY—Jew and Gentile alike.

God’s plan to save the human race, in other words, is characterized by inclusiveness!  The best kind of inclusiveness!  As St. Paul put it in today’s second reading: “the Gentiles are now coheirs with the Jews, members of the same body and sharers of the promise through the preaching of the gospel.”

Everyone is included in the plan.  To that we Gentiles should say, “Praise God!”  But this does not mean that everyone will actually be saved! 

This is the point that often gets forgotten or ignored.

To be saved we need to follow the example of the Magi, who, we are told here “prostrated themselves [before Jesus] and did him homage.”

You prostrate yourself in front of someone who has authority over you and over your life.  You give homage—that is to say, worship—to God.  So by this simple act of prostrating themselves before Jesus and doing him homage, these Magi were implicitly acknowledging our Lord’s divinity, and proclaiming their desire and intention to obey him—and his commandments.

Simply put, the Magi were included in God’s plan of salvation, and, just as importantly, they did nothing to exclude themselves from the fulfillment of that plan in them.

The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for Herod.

God loved Herod, of course, just like he loved the Magi; he loved Herod and wanted Herod to be saved—just as he wanted the Magi to be saved.  As one of the great saints put it in a meditation he wrote:

A tiny child is born, who is a great king.  Wise men are led to him from afar.  They come to adore one who lies in a manger and yet reigns in heaven and on earth.  [But] when they tell of one who is born a king, Herod is disturbed.  To save his kingdom he resolves to kill him, though if he would have faith in the child, [Herod] himself would reign in peace in this life and for ever in the life to come.  (Second reading from Office of Readings, December 28)

Herod, as evil as he was, was included in the plan of God for the salvation of the world, but the Scriptures indicate that he did almost everything he could possibly do to exclude himself from the fulfillment of that plan in him.

Like murdering the Holy Innocents.

What the editors of the Times of Trenton (and many others in the secular media) don’t seem to understand is, yes God’s salvific plan includes each and every one of us—but it does not include our sins!  Which means that if we refuse to repent and insist on clinging to our sins (as, it seems, Herod insisted on doing in his life), then we will exclude ourselves from the fulfillment of the Lord’s plan in us.

Which obviously means we will exclude ourselves from the glorious and eternal kingdom of heaven.

If the Times editors and others like them actually took the time to read and study—in context—all that Pope Francis has said and written, they would see that his message is substantially the very same message that was given to the world by Benedict XVI and John Paul II and every good pope that came before them. 

They all preach and teach “inclusiveness”—but not an inclusiveness that denies or ignores sin!  Rather, they preach and teach an inclusiveness that calls people to repentance and to freedom from their sins.

And ultimately to eternal life!

Pope Francis put it simply and beautifully at the beginning of his recent apostolic exhortation when he wrote this line: “Those who accept [Jesus’] offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness.”

To which the Magi—and every good pope of the past—would certainly say, “Amen!”

Mary: She Pondered the Past to Prepare for the Future

Mary "pondering"

 

(Mary, the Mother of God, 2014: This homily was given on January 1, 2014 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Luke 2: 16-21.)

 

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Mary, the Mother of God 2014]

 

She pondered the past to prepare for the future.

I’m talking, of course, about Mary, our Blessed Mother.

She pondered the past in order to prepare herself for what was to come in her life.

We know this from today’s gospel reading, in which we read the following line: “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.”  We also know it from Luke 2: 51 which says pretty much the same thing.  There the evangelist writes, “[Jesus] went down with [Mary and Joseph] and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart.”

And what exactly were “these things?”

Well, very simply, they were the events surrounding Jesus’ birth and youth.  That’s obvious since the first reference to Mary “keeping these things in her heart” occurs during St. Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus, while the second one occurs after he tells the story of the finding of Jesus in the Temple when our Lord was twelve-years-old.

At the time, Mary didn’t know exactly what the future held for her and for her family.  Much of that was hidden from her eyes—as our future is hidden from our eyes.  Yes, Mary knew that her Son, Jesus, was unique—the only man ever to be conceived directly through the power of the Holy Spirit.  She knew that her Son Jesus had a special relationship with God, and that he was the fulfillment of the messianic prophecies which are found in what we now call the Old Testament.  She also knew that Jesus would somehow “save his people from their sins” (as the angel had told Joseph before our Lord was born).  And she knew that he would establish some kind of kingdom that would never end.

But beyond that Mary didn’t know too many other things regarding God’s plan to reconcile the world to himself through his divine Son.  She certainly didn’t know all of the details of the story that we know—although she was aware of the fact that, in some way, she—and her Son—would suffer greatly.  She became aware of that disturbing detail courtesy of the holy man Simeon, who said to her at the Presentation, “And a sword will pierce your own soul too, so that the secret thoughts of many will be laid bare.”

But our Blessed Mother faced all those future events with faith and strength when they actually occurred—because she had prepared for them well by “pondering” the past.  In other words, she got ready to face the future events of her life by reflecting on—by meditating on—by praying about—the things God had already done for her and for her family.

And even for her nation.

We see evidence of this in her Magnificat: that prayer of praise that Mary said when she visited her pregnant cousin, Elizabeth, at the Visitation.

Notice how the lines of that prayer that I’m about to read to you point to past events either in Mary’s own personal life or in the life of the nation of Israel—past events that Mary had obviously pondered and reflected on in her heart.  Mary said in her Magnificat, “God has looked with favor on his lowly servant; the Almighty has done great things for me and holy is his name; he has shown the strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit.  He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly.  He has filled the hungry with good things, and rich he has sent away empty.  He has come to the help of his servant Israel, for he remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever.”

As I said a few moments ago, just as Mary’s future was hidden from her eyes, so our future is hidden from our eyes.  None of us knows what tomorrow—or even the rest of today—will bring.  And this uncertainty about the future can easily cause us to become fearful or anxious or depressed (or all of the above!)—unless we learn from our Blessed Mother, and follow her example of pondering the past.

In this case, our past!

This is something we should do frequently when we pray—and especially when we pray in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.  We should spend some time reflecting on the ways—the many ways—that God has been there for us in the past; on the ways he has helped us and provided for us in the past; on the ways he has gotten us through every difficulty and trial that we’ve faced in the past.

And he has!  In one sense, at least, Almighty God has helped each and every one of us to deal successfully with everything we’ve had to face in our lives thus far.  We know that because we’re still here!  We know that because we’re still alive!  The very fact that we’re still breathing and have a pulse after all that we’ve been through is a living testimony to the faithfulness of God!  His words to St. Paul are true for everyone: “My grace is sufficient for you, for in your weakness my power reaches its perfection.”

This means that we can—and that we should—have confidence and trust in God as we look to our uncertain future, as Mary had confidence and trust in God in the face of her uncertain future.

Her pondering prepared her well—and helped her to stay faithful to God and on the road to heaven.

May our pondering help all of us to do the very same thing.

‘Sin-itis’ and How to Get Rid of It

Pope Francis hearing confessions

 

(Christmas 2013: This homily was given on December 25, 2013 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Isaiah 62: 1-5; Matthew 1: 18-25.)

 

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Christmas 2013]

 

The title of my homily this Christmas is, “’Sin-itis’ and how to get rid of it.”

When you have a chronic or serious illness—and you know you have a chronic or serious illness—you normally become very interested in it (which is a good thing!).

And you become especially interested in how to cure it (if there is a cure available out there).

Prior to December 23, 2010, for example, I had no special interest in Parkinson’s Disease.  That was something “out there,” so to speak.  It was something Michael J. Fox had; it was something some of my friends and parishioners had.  I knew that researchers were working very hard to find a cure.  I prayed for them (for all those doing morally acceptable research), and I prayed for all those afflicted with the disease.

But I didn’t feel any great urgency or compulsion to learn more about it and the treatments that were available for it—until two days before Christmas in 2010 when the neurologist told me I had it.

Then I suddenly got REALLY INTERESTED in the subject!  It became a top priority, such that now rare is the day when I don’t go to “Google News” and plug in “Parkinson’s Disease” to see what’s going on in the world of research.  I want to know if and when a cure is found—and how to get it as soon as it becomes available.

I usually also ask the Lord in prayer every day to grant me a healing if it’s his will—just in case he wants to take the direct route in making me well.

A cure or a healing: either is fine with me.

I’m not fussy!

Now some people have chronic or serious illnesses, but they’re not at all interested in them.  That’s usually because they don’t know they have them.  I now realize that I had Parkinson’s long before I was ever diagnosed.  Since I’ve learned what the symptoms of the disease are, I realize that I had some of the more minor ones as long as a decade ago.

“Well, thank you for sharing these things with us, Fr. Ray, but what does all this have to do with Christmas?”

The answer is: Quite a lot.

You may be in perfect physical health right now (and I hope you are); you may just have a few of those middle-age aches and pains that can’t be avoided; or you may have a chronic or serious illness like yours truly—it really doesn’t matter.  Spiritually speaking, we’re all the same!  Spiritually we’re all afflicted with the very same disorder.  If you want to make it sound like a medical condition, you might choose to call it “sin-itis”.  But this is not a physical disease; it’s a spiritual disorder—a sickness of the soul—that we’ve all caught from Adam and Eve.  (Obviously it’s highly contagious.)

Simply stated, it’s the condition of being a sinner, who sins—every day.

Some people, unfortunately, don’t know they have this disease—like I didn’t know I had Parkinson’s for many years.  Others don’t want to know they have it; and some, sad to say, don’t care that they have it.

But that doesn’t change the fact that they do!

It’s a universal condition.

And since it’s sin that messes up our lives—the anger, the selfishness, the lust, the unforgiveness, the materialism, etc.—we should be extremely interested in finding the cure!

And there is a cure available!  That’s the good news.  But the cure—the antidote—doesn’t come from a purely human source!  Because, it can’t.  You can’t cure yourself of “sin-itis,” even if you’re a medical doctor; you can’t cure yourself of this spiritual illness even if you’re a priest.

Because you’re not God and neither am I!  Only God can cure it; only he can provide the antidote to this ailment.

And he has, through his divine Son, Jesus Christ, born for us on Christmas Day!  That’s what this feast is all about.

As the angel said to Joseph, “[Your wife Mary] will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.”

He came to do for us what we could never do for ourselves.

Pope Francis described our human situation perfectly, when he wrote these words in his recent apostolic exhortation: “The salvation which God offers us is the work of his mercy.  No human efforts, no matter how good they may be, can enable us to merit such a gift.” (Evangelii Gaudium, 112)

The name Jesus literally means “Savior”—not “teacher,” not “guru,” not “philosopher,” not “all-around nice guy”.  His name signifies what he was, first and foremost: the one who saves us from our sins.

If we let him!

And that really is the key to the whole process.  In Titus 2 it says, “The grace of God has appeared, saving all . . .” 

Saving all!  That means there’s no other work that needs to be done to save a person—even the worst sinner on planet earth—from his sins and the eternal consequences of those sins.  By his passion, death and resurrection Jesus has stored up enough antidote for everybody.

But we don’t actually experience eternal salvation unless we first access and then take the antidote—the cure—and then keep taking it as often as we need it.

Someday, God willing, there will a cure for Parkinson’s.  But that cure won’t do me any good whatsoever if I don’t go to the doctor to get it and then take it—and take it as often as necessary.

Well, as Catholics, Jesus has given us the means to access and receive from him the cure for sin-itis.  He’s given it to us in the sacraments: first, Baptism; and then, after Baptism, Confession.

Some of you here at this Mass have probably not been to Confession in years.  I encourage you to consider going.  If you had a serious physical illness and a knowledgeable doctor told you, “Here’s how you get cured,” you’d probably follow that doctor’s advice immediately.

I know I would!

All the more should we be concerned with our souls and their health, since our souls will long outlast our bodies.

If you’ve been away from the sacrament for a long time, don’t worry, the priest will help you to make a good confession.  And if he doesn’t, go find another priest!  There are still plenty of us around.

The powerful effect of confession was illustrated beautifully for me last Thursday night after youth group.  One of the teenage girls there said to me, “Fr. Ray, I’ve got a good idea: I’ll trade you my sins right now for your absolution.”

(That was a very creative way to ask me to hear her confession.)

I said to her, “Sounds like a good deal.”

And it was—for her, because her “sin-itis” was cured instantaneously. 

Let me give the last word today to our new Holy Father, who, when he was asked to describe himself at the beginning of his papacy answered the interviewer by saying, “I am a sinner.”  Do you remember that?  Pope Francis knows he has “sin-itis,” but he also knows how to access the cure.

And he does—often (which is why he’s always smiling!).

Let me leave you with something he said a couple of months ago in a talk he gave in St. Peter’s Square.  It’s very appropriate for Christmas.  He said:

“Jesus is all mercy, Jesus is all love: he is God made man. Each of us, each one of us, is that little lost lamb, the coin that was mislaid; each one of us is that son who has squandered his freedom on false idols, illusions of happiness, and has lost everything. But God does not forget us, the Father never abandons us. He is a patient father, always waiting for us! He respects our freedom, but he remains faithful forever. And when we come back to him, he welcomes us like children into his house, for he never ceases, not for one instant, to wait for us with love. And his heart rejoices over every child who returns. He is celebrating because he is joy. God has this joy, when one of us sinners goes to him and asks his forgiveness.” (Pope Francis, excerpted from Sunday Angelus, St. Peter’s Square, September 15, 2013)

May God give us all the grace to respond to Pope Francis’ words and go to confession—and get rid of our “sin-itis”.

Mary, Joseph and ‘the Obedience of Faith’

(Fourth Sunday of Advent (A): This homily was given on December 22, 2013 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Romans 1: 1-7; Matthew 1: 18-24.)

 

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Fourth Sunday of Advent 2013]

 

“The obedience of faith.”

That’s an expression that St. Paul uses in today’s second reading, which is taken from the first chapter of his letter to the Romans.  He writes, “Through [Jesus Christ] we have received the grace of apostleship, to bring about the obedience of faith.”

Now we know that this idea was very important to Paul because 16 chapters later—at the very end of Romans—he uses the exact same expression.  He says, "To him who can strengthen you, according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret for long ages but now manifested through the prophetic writings and, according to the command of the eternal God, made known to all nations to bring about the obedience of faith, to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ be glory forever and ever. Amen.”

It’s the thought he begins the letter with, and it’s the thought he wants to leave us with as we finish the epistle.

My question is: Was he thinking of Mary and Joseph when he wrote it?  When he was writing about “the obedience of faith,” were Mary and Joseph on his mind?

They certainly could have been—and I dare say they should have been—because I can’t think of two people who demonstrated faithful obedience to Almighty God more completely than they did.

Remember, neither Mary nor Joseph understood all that we understand concerning the events surrounding the birth of Jesus.  Neither of them saw the complete picture.  Neither fully understood what God was doing in them and through them.  But whenever Mary and Joseph did come to recognize what God wanted them to do in a particular situation, they obeyed God’s instruction—immediately, and regardless of the cost. 

Joseph, for example, as we heard in today’s gospel, did not initially understand how Mary got pregnant.  But once he did understand, he acted as God wanted him to act—even though it probably tarnished his image in the eyes of other people.

The same was true for Mary.  She was pregnant during the betrothal period, which typically lasted for several months.  During that period of time a couple was actually considered married according to Jewish law—although they did not live together as husband and wife.

Which means, quite simply, that Mary was pregnant at a time when she should not have been! 

Can you imagine what the talk around Nazareth was like concerning this situation?  The gossip must have been flying around all over the place!

“I always thought Mary was such a good girl.  Do her parents, Joachim and Ann, approve of this?  Do they know what’s going on?”  “And how about Joseph?  Why is he still with that woman?  Why didn’t he do the honorable thing and divorce her?”

Obviously, for both Mary and Joseph, the obedience of faith was much more important than the gossip of their neighbors.

And this is what we see throughout the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke: constant obedience rooted in trusting faith.  After Jesus’ birth, for example, Joseph was told by the angel in a dream to take our Lord and his mother down to Egypt and to stay there.  Matthew describes the scene in this way (and here I quote): “Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt.”

The implication there is that Joseph acted IMMEDIATELY!  He didn’t even wait until morning.  Once God’s will became clear to him, he carried it out without any hesitation whatsoever.

He acted just as quickly and decisively when the angel told him to take Mary and Jesus and to go back to Israel after Herod had died.

We see the same faith-filled obedience in Mary:

Gabriel said, “Mary, Almighty God is asking you to be the instrument through which his Son, Jesus, will be born into the world.”

Mary answered, “Be it done unto me according to your word.”

And, of course, given the fact that our Blessed Mother was without sin, this was her attitude in every situation of her life, not just in the events surrounding her Son’s birth.

“Be it done unto me according to your word.”  In other words, “Whatever you want, God, I want.”

The kind of faithful obedience that we see in Mary and Joseph is something we don’t see enough of in our world today—as Pope Francis has been reminding us in many of his recent talks and writings.  There he’s been making the point that Christians need to act according to what they say they believe!

Our Holy Father is well aware of the fact that, nowadays—unfortunately—faith and obedience are often treated as if they are separate and distinct realities.  So people think they can profess faith without having to obey: “I believe, but I hate that person who hurt me;” “I believe, but I steal from my employer;” “I believe, but I cheat on my wife;” “I believe, but I don’t pay my employees a just wage;” “I believe, but I contracept;” “I believe, but I don’t care about the less fortunate;” “I believe, but I won’t forgive”—and on and on the list goes.

And you’ll notice that those who say these kinds of things will always have a “good excuse” for the disobedience!

Is it any wonder that so many people do not experience great blessings from the Lord?

The obedience of faith is what eventually brings us God’s greatest blessings.

Because of the obedience of faith that was present in the lives of Mary and Joseph, the world was blessed with the birth of its Savior—and through that Savior we have been blessed with the hope of eternal salvation!  We’ve been blessed with forgiveness and mercy and the truth that sets us free—the truth that leads us to eternal life!

And these blessings that come from the obedience of faith can come to us even after we’ve first been disobedient (which is very good news, since all of us are disobedient, at least from time to time).

It reminds me of a young woman I know, who, 18 years ago—back in 1995—got pregnant out of wedlock.  She was (and is) Catholic; she has good Catholic parents, so she knew the right thing to do in that situation.  And she did the right thing—what her faith required her to do: she took the child to term, and gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby boy named Eric.

Then she made another difficult decision and gave Eric up for adoption, believing that it would be better for him to be raised by two loving parents in a good, stable Catholic home.

She arranged the adoption through Catholic Social Services, with the understanding that, if the adoptive parents and Eric were in agreement, there could eventually be some contact—but it would have to be through the agency.

Thankfully, there was some contact over the past 18 years between them all (letters and such) and it was all good.

But over the last several months, a whole new dimension has been added, by the grace of God. 

(Eric, by the way, graduated from high school this past June, with honors.  From what I know of him, he’s a fine young man with a very bright future.  He’s now a freshman in college with a double major!)

But anyway, several months ago, his birth mom sent him, through the agency, the journal she kept during her pregnancy, in which she wrote about her experience, and about her love and hopes for her child.

Well, it seems that Eric was so moved by what he read that he said, “Forget about the agency, I’m going to contact my mother directly!”

And he did, via Facebook (yes, Facebook does have some good uses!).

Since then there has been personal, face-to-face contact and visits—and many blessings for everyone involved: the birth mom, her parents, the adoptive parents, and, of course, Eric himself.

Let me close my homily now by reading to you the brief note that Eric sent to his birth mother this past Mother’s Day.  This shows how her “obedience of faith” 18 years ago, has been the source of countless blessings from God—and continues to be so.  This was written, obviously, before they had physically met.  Eric wrote:

Though I have never met you, I know that you love me more than anything in the world.  I just wanted to let you know that I love you too.  I am grateful for your decision 18 years ago when you became a mommy.  And you gave me up so that our lives would be fulfilling.  Look at where we are now and what we have done.  Separate paths slowly becoming one.  Happy Mother’s Day, mommy!!!

Somewhere in heaven, my brothers and sisters, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mary and Joseph—and Jesus—are smiling.