Matthew 1:18-24, Revised for Modern Americans

(Fourth Sunday of Advent (A): This homily was given on December 18, 2016 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Matthew 1: 18-24.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Fourth Sunday of Advent 2016]

The words we just heard in this gospel were written by St. Matthew sometime in the mid-to-late first century.  He wrote them primarily for Jewish converts to Christianity. 

But what if he were writing this same gospel story today, for a modern, American audience?  (This was the thought that occurred to me as I pondered this gospel passage during the past week.)  If Matthew were writing this story for American citizens in 2016, could he tell it in the same way that he told it here in this passage?

I don’t think so.

If he wanted to tell the story of Jesus’ conception and birth and make it understandable to the vast majority of people in our nation right now, I’m convinced that St. Matthew would be forced to modify the text in several ways.  Basically, he would have to make the story longer by explaining certain things—certain very important things: things that he did not have to explain to people back in the first century.

First of all, he’d have to mention the basic and foundational truth that marriage is between a man and a woman—that is to say, one man and one woman.  He would also have to explain the Jewish marriage customs of his day.  For example, it says there that Mary was “betrothed” to Joseph.  That’s an important point.  The betrothal period in first century Israel lasted for about a year—and it was more than an engagement.  If you were betrothed to somebody, you were legally married to that person, but you were not yet living together as husband and wife.  That’s why it says that Joseph was thinking of “divorce” and not of breaking off an engagement.

St. Matthew would also need to explain that having sexual relations outside of marriage is a serious sin (which, of course, many people today don’t believe it is).  The whole reason why Joseph considered divorce was because he thought that Mary had committed that sin and been unfaithful to him.

Which leads to something else that Matthew would need to mention.  In his expanded gospel story he’d have to note the fact that Joseph initially believed that Mary’s child had been conceived in the normal way.  Matthew would need to make that point to an audience in 2016 because nowadays you can’t presume that’s how a child is conceived.  Even though the Church teaches that every child has the right “to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents,” (CCC, 2378) that’s not always the way it happens.  Sometimes conception results from the use of immoral reproductive technologies.  It should be noted here that not all reproductive technologies are bad.  But some are.  And those bad ones often lead to terribly difficult situations—like the one actress Sofia Vergara finds herself in at the present time.  In case you haven’t heard, she and her former fiancée are in a big legal battle right now over frozen embryos that they created through in vitro fertilization back in 2013.

Here we have innocent human lives being treated like commodities.  How sad—and how tragic.

Oh yes, that’s another thing Matthew would need to mention in his modern version of the story.  He’d need to make it very clear that the entity inside the womb of Mary was actually “a baby.”  Not “a cluster of cells” or “the product of conception”, but rather “a baby”—a living, distinct human being.  Matthew could presume that people in the first century knew that; he could not make that same presumption in 2016.  I thought it was interesting, on his television show the other night Jimmy Kimmel said (and here I quote), “Another thing I wanted to mention.  My wife is hosting a baby inside her body.  So that’s exciting.”

He’s absolutely correct, of course.  His wife’s pregnancy is exciting.  I mention it here because I think it’s highly unusual for someone in Kimmel’s position in 2016 to describe a pregnancy in that way.

However, I’m very glad he did—since it’s the truth.

It’s also unusual for a man and a woman to have the kind of relationship that Mary and Joseph had—love without sex.  Actually, it’s not unusual—although a lot of people nowadays would say it is.  They don’t believe you can deeply love a member of the opposite gender without physical, genital intimacy.  (It just goes to show how our society has twisted the idea of love.)  This would be another issue that Matthew would have to address in making this gospel reading understandable to a modern audience.

Finally, Matthew would have to deal with Joseph’s response to the message that God gave him here—the message of God that came to him through the angel.  Specifically, Matthew would have to explain why Joseph had to obey the instruction to take Mary into his home, and why it would have been a sin—a very serious sin—for him to do otherwise.  In other words, Matthew would need to make it clear to his modern readers that when Almighty God gives an instruction like this to somebody, it’s a command.  It’s not a suggestion; it’s not a recommendation.  It’s an order to be obeyed.

That would clarify the matter for all those who think that the Ten Commandments are just the Ten Suggestions or the Ten Recommendations.

So, what exactly would this passage of Scripture sound like after it was revised by Matthew for a modern audience?  Well, I can’t say for sure, but I can certainly venture a guess—which is what I’ll do to close my homily this morning.

I think Matthew’s revised story would sound something like this:

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.  It all centered around the permanent and exclusive bond between one man and one woman that we call “marriage.”
Sometime during the year that Jesus’ mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph—that is to say, in that time period when the couple were legally bound to one another as husband and wife, but before they lived together, Mary was found with child through the Holy Spirit.
Initially, of course, Joseph was unaware of the miraculous circumstances surrounding the child’s conception.  Consequently, when he learned that Mary was pregnant, he felt betrayed, since he naturally presumed that this new human life had been conceived in the normal way.

Yet Joseph was a righteous man, who was unwilling to expose Mary to shame as an adulteress.

He was unwilling to expose her because he still loved Mary with an intense and chaste love—in spite of her apparent infidelity.

He decided instead that he would divorce her quietly.
Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home.  For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her.  She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the Old Testament prophet Isaiah: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.”
When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home—because when God gives a command like this, we human beings must obey!  Disobedience is not an option.  Ever!

There you have it—a story that every American in 2016 should be able to understand.

John the Baptist’s Annual Advent Call to Repentance

(Second Sunday of Advent (A): This homily was given on December 4, 2016 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Matthew 3: 1-12.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Second Sunday of Advent 2016]

• Can you imagine how they felt?
• Can you imagine the thoughts that were running through their minds?
• Can you imagine the things they were tempted to do to John the Baptist?

I’m talking about the Pharisees and Sadducees who came to be baptized by John in the Jordan River.  These were dignified men, respected men, revered men—the religious leaders of the Jewish people.

And then one day this scruffy-looking guy dressed in weird clothes comes out of the desert and has the audacity to call them a “brood of vipers” and to threaten them with God’s judgment—basically telling them that if they didn’t change their ways they were going to hell!

• Can I imagine how these Pharisees and Sadducees felt?  How about livid—enraged—infuriated—irate—and embarrassed?!
• Can I imagine the thoughts that were running through their minds?  Yes—but I can’t say those words from this pulpit!
• Can I imagine the things they were tempted to do to John the Baptist?  Of course.  They’re the things you see done in horror films nowadays (none of which is very pretty).

The problem with the Pharisees and Sadducees, of course, was that they weren’t sincerely repentant.  They were sinners like everybody else who was there that day, but weren’t prepared to admit it.  John the Baptist recognized that fact, and confronted them in this very forceful manner—not to embarrass them, but rather to motivate them: to motivate them to examine their consciences, repent of their sins—and receive forgiveness.

But it was impossible for these men to receive forgiveness that day when they first arrived on the scene, because they didn’t think they had done anything wrong.  And John the Baptist knew that.  Yes, God will forgive anything; yes, God will forgive everything—but not without our cooperation!  He loves us too much to violate our freedom in that way.

Did some of the Pharisees and Sadducees respond to the words of John by getting beyond their initial feelings of anger and then sincerely repenting of their sins?

I hope so.  I pray so.

But, in all honesty, it would have been difficult for them to do that, given the fact that they were very proud people, and proud people don’t like to admit that they need to change—anything.

I thought of all this the other day, after I read an online article by Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.  The article was about “Bad Santa 2” and three other “Christmas movies” that have come out of Hollywood this year—none of which is what you would call “wholesome entertainment”.

Donohue begins the article by saying this:

The corruption of American culture is evident in many ways, but few markers are more telling than the way Hollywood entertains us at Christmastime. It was 70 years ago when “It’s a Wonderful Life” was released. NBC describes it as “a holiday classic and remains the movie people associate with Christmas more than any other. Frank Capra’s definitive film is a tearjerker that proves that, even in our darkest hours, the human spirit can and will rise triumphant.” Today, we are being treated to obscene lyrics, raw sex, misogyny, and violence. Not one of the four Christmas-themed films released this season is worthy of being described as a family movie. There are no guardian angels directing the lead characters to consider how the world would be without them; no triumph of self-sacrifice; no statement against greed; no childhood sweetheart to marry; no inspiration of any sort. Just filth.

He then gets into some of the gory details—which I will spare you!  Suffice it to say that they would need to be censored for a church audience.

But what was most upsetting were the comments of two men associated with these films: producer Bob Weinstein and actor Billy Bob Thornton.  Here we have two men who are not only unrepentant like the Pharisees and Sadducees were; these two guys are actually PROUD of their sins!  Here’s what Bill Donohue wrote:

Bob Weinstein recently commented on why he accepted the script for the original “Bad Santa.” He did so after Universal Studios decided not to pick it up. “I asked a Universal executive,” Weinstein said, “Why’d you guys pass on it?” The executive replied, “It was the most foul, disgusting, misogynistic, anti-Christmas, anti-children thing we could imagine.” To which Weinstein said, “That’s exactly why I bought it.” Billy Bob Thornton was attracted to doing “Bad Santa 2” precisely because the original was so vulgar.  [He said], “I think part of it was that there hadn’t been a movie that profane and unapologetic about itself. I think it’s the alternative to the real syrupy Christmas movies.”

Yeah, Billy Bob, God forbid that we should have wholesome, uplifting, “syrupy” modern Christmas movies!  What a tragedy that would be!

Unfortunately, we can’t change modern Pharisees like Bob Weinstein and Billy Bob Thornton (how I wish we could!).

But the good news is we can change ourselves.

And the Lord invites us to do that every Advent.  He invites us through John the Baptist.  As many of you know, there is a three year cycle of readings that we use for Sunday Masses in the Catholic Church.  But it doesn’t matter which year we’re in—year A (which is the one we’re in now), year B or year C—the gospel reading on the Second Sunday of Advent is always the same.  It’s always the story of John the Baptist and his call to repentance.

John came 2,000 years ago to prepare people to meet their Messiah and Savior by helping them to clear out the sin from their lives.  John comes to us through the Scriptures in 2016 to help us to deepen our relationship with our Messiah and Savior by calling us to do the same thing—by calling us to repent of our sins.

The best way to do that as Catholics, of course, is in and through the sacrament of Reconciliation—also known as “Confession.”

When was the last time you went?

Nine Things That Young People Have Been Taught by the 2016 Presidential Campaign

(Thirty-third Sunday of the Year (C): This homily was given on November 13, 2016 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read 2 Thessalonians 3: 7-12)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Thirty-third Sunday 2016]

The title of my homily today is, “Nine Things That Young People Have Been Taught by the 2016 Presidential Campaign.”

What brought this topic to mind were the words of St. Paul in today’s second reading from 2 Thessalonians 3.  There Paul talks about the GOOD example that he and his companions had set for the Thessalonians when they visited Thessalonica on one of their missionary journeys.  Listen again to his words:

Brothers and sisters: You know how one must imitate us. For we did not act in a disorderly way among you, nor did we eat food received free from anyone. On the contrary, in toil and drudgery, night and day we worked, so as not to burden any of you. Not that we do not have the right. Rather, we wanted to present ourselves as a model for you, so that you might imitate us.  

Paul and his missionary companions taught the people by their words, and even more importantly by their deeds.  And so the young people of Thessalonica were truly blessed.  They had a leader—St. Paul—who was a good role model and who taught them well.  He taught them the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and he taught them to take personal responsibility for their lives.  He did the latter by working among them and earning his keep.  As he said there, “In toil and drudgery, night and day we worked, so as not to burden any of you.”

Unfortunately, the youth of the United States were not so blessed during this past presidential campaign.  Yes, they were taught lessons—many lessons—by the words and the deeds of the two major party candidates.

But most of those lessons were not good.

I’ll give you some examples—nine to be exact.  (What I’m about to share with you, by the way, is not an exhaustive list.  These are just the ones I came up with the other day—in about 5 minutes!  Sadly, there were a lot to choose from!)

Lesson number 1 that these candidates taught our young people: It’s okay to mislead others, as long as your intention is good.  Or, to put it another way, As long as your cause is noble (noble, at least, in your own mind) it’s okay to lie.

Now there’s a lesson that will take them places!

Lesson number 2 that our youth were taught this year: Don’t take responsibility for your own actions; rather, always pretend it’s someone else’s fault.  Actually, most of our young people had already been exposed to this idea—many times; this year’s campaign merely reinforced it.

Lesson number 3: If you’re rich and powerful enough, you can treat women as objects for your amusement—and get away with it.

What a great lesson for young men to learn early on in life!

Lesson number 4: If you’re rich and powerful enough, you can live by your own set of rules.  The law of the land will apply to other people but not to you.  In this regard, do you know that one of the presidential candidates actually spoke at an African American church service in Philadelphia last Sunday?  Now, can you imagine what would happen if a Catholic priest invited a politician to do that in a Catholic church at a Sunday Mass?  The ACLU would be all over that in a heartbeat!  But the ACLU was nowhere to be found last Sunday.  Neither they nor the people in the mainstream media had anything negative to say about this blatant violation of the “separation of church and state.”  That’s because they know: If you’re rich and powerful enough, you can live by your own set of rules.  The law of the land will apply to other people but not to you.   

That brings us to lesson number 5: When you can’t argue against something rationally and intelligently, just call your opponent names—and make the names as vile as possible!

That lesson was given pretty much on a daily basis during the campaign.

Lesson number 6:  What’s important is not the truth; what’s important is winning the argument.

Or the debate (call it what you will).

Lesson number 7: If someone will help you to get what you want, ignore the evil that they do—even if it happens to be selling the body parts of aborted babies for profit.

Just pretend the evil isn’t happening.

Lesson number 8: Calumny (telling slanderous lies about another person) and detraction (telling the sins of another person) are useful tools to help you get what you want.  So use them!  And if you can get your friends to join you in the calumny and detraction, all the better!

After all, what are friends for?

And, finally, there’s this one (which, in a certain sense, sums up a lot of the others): All’s fair—if YOU say it’s fair.

Let me close my homily now with two requests.  First of all, a message for parents: Talk to your children about this!  Have a conversation with your children about what’s gone on in our country—politically—in the last several months.  That’s so important!  The lessons I just shared with you are some of the underlying messages that the events of this presidential campaign have given to all of us.  And young people (and even not-so-young people) are negatively influenced by these messages—even if they’re not conscious of it.  These messages are part of the cultural atmosphere that young men and women are breathing in every day.

And it’s toxic!

They need you to help them get a healthy perspective on it all.  They need you to help them understand that sometimes adults don’t act like adults, and that there’s a better way—a more virtuous way—to deal with conflict and disagreements in this life.

And secondly, remember to pray for our President-elect.  Pray that he will be a good leader, a moral leader, a unifying leader.  Pray that he will work to enact laws that respect the dignity of every human person from natural conception to natural death.  In other words, pray that he will be a much better president than he was a presidential candidate.

Preparing to Vote in the 2016 Election

(Thirty-second Sunday of the Year (C): This homily was given on November 6, 2016 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read 2 Maccabees 7: 1-2, 9-14; 2 Thessalonians 2:6-3:5; Luke 20: 27-38.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Thirty-second Sunday 2016]

Some people believe that God is like a clockmaker.  That is to say, he’s distant from his creation.  A clockmaker builds the clock and winds it up (nowadays he puts a battery in it).  But then he goes on his merry way, allowing it to run on its own. 

As Catholic Christians, we don’t believe in that kind of God.  As Catholics we believe—as did our Jewish spiritual ancestors—in a God who is very close to us, a God who is intimately involved in human history (as well as in our individual lives).

Therefore it should not surprise us in the least that our three Scripture readings today were what they were!  There’s an election coming up in two days here in the United States of America (just in case you weren’t aware of that), and these readings are perfect to prepare us for that very important event in our nation’s history.

But that’s exactly what we should expect from a God who’s deeply involved in our lives, and who consequently knows exactly what we need to hear!

Take this first reading from the second book of Maccabees.  It’s about what eventually happens when a civil government does not believe in religious freedom—which is why freedom of religion needs to be a major issue for Catholics (and for Protestants, Jews, Muslims and all other believers) in this election.

Here we have seven sons and their mother brutally murdered by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Greek king who was ruling over Israel at the time. 

A little historical background is needed in this regard:

Alexander the Great, you will recall, had conquered much of the known world in the 4^th century before Christ.  After his death, his generals divided up his empire.  One of those generals was named Seleucus.  He began what historians refer to as the Seleucid Empire, which eventually included Israel.  Antiochus IV Epiphanes was a descendant of Seleucus, who became king in 175 B.C.  Seven years later, in 168 B.C., Antiochus invaded Jerusalem, desecrated the Temple, and instituted laws that prevented the Jews from practicing their religion freely.

Those who violated those laws and who tried to remain faithful to their Judaism were immediately put to death—like those 7 brothers we heard about in today’s first reading.  And, by the way, what you heard this morning was the “PG, Readers’ Digest version” of the story.  If you want the full version with all the blood and gore read all of 2 Maccabees 7 sometime.  Just don’t do it after a meal.

Our situation in the United States right now is not as bad as the situation was in Israel at the time of the Maccabees—at least not yet. 

But it’s definitely moving in that direction—and faster than you might realize!  I’ll give you one example of what I mean.  In September of this year, the chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (appointed by President Obama in 2011) wrote in a government report that religious liberty is a “code word” for discrimination and a host of other evils.  Here’s the exact quote: “The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.”

Translated that means: If you believe in the Gospel message of Jesus Christ, you’re a bigot who must be silenced!

I hope you realize, my brothers and sisters, that it’s a very short step from an attitude like that to the kind of open persecution that King Antiochus engaged in.

Obviously, then, we need to know where our candidates stand on this very important issue.  And do not be fooled by those who say that they support freedom of worship.  That’s not enough!  Freedom of religion is what our Constitution guarantees; consequently, THAT’S what we need to demand from our civil government.  Freedom of religion, you see, is much more than freedom of worship.  Freedom of religion means that you can live your private life—and your public life— according to the dictates of your faith.  Freedom of worship means, “You Christians can pray however you like within the four walls of your church building, but outside in the real world you had better think and act and live like the rest of us—or else!”

Which brings us to the Gospel reading, where the Sadducees express their confusion to Jesus concerning matters related to marriage.

Apparently ours is not the only age in which people have been confused about this issue!

Well, as Catholics, we should not be confused.  We should be crystal clear about the fact that a true marriage can only take place between two people who have the natural potential to procreate (i.e. a man and a woman)—because children are one of the intrinsic “goods” of marriage.

I don’t think it’s asking too much to expect our civil leaders to be clear on this issue as well.  Satan is working very hard to destroy the traditional nuclear family, and we need people governing us who will resist those destructive trends—because as the family goes, so too a society goes.  Most of our social problems begin as family problems.

Do you know where the people for whom you intend to vote stand on the marriage issue?

You should.

You should also know where they stand on the other issues that the people at Catholic Answers have described as “non-negotiable” for good Catholics, namely abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research and human cloning.  Those issues are referred to as “non-negotiable” because they’re intrinsically evil and involve direct attacks on innocent human life.

This means, for example, that any candidate who supports Planned Parenthood—an organization that has sold the body parts of babies for profit—does not deserve a Catholic’s vote (or anyone else’s vote for that matter!).

The words of St. Paul in our second reading today are important in this regard.  I’m talking about the line where he prays (and here I quote) “that we may be delivered from perverse and wicked people.”

I told you God gave us perfect readings this weekend!

That’s a great prayer to say OFTEN during the next few days: “O Lord, deliver us from perverse and wicked people!”

Now you might say, “But Fr. Ray, what about other issues like the economy and immigration?”

Here I think it would be good for me to quote from Catholic Answers’ Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics.  There it says this: “Some issues allow for a diversity of opinion, and Catholics are permitted leeway in endorsing or opposing particular policies.  This is the case with the questions of when to go to war and when to apply the death penalty.  Though the Church urges caution regarding both of these issues, it acknowledges that the state has the right to employ them in some circumstances (Cf. CCC 2309, 2267). . . .  [As Pope Emeritus Benedict said, back in the days when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger:] ‘There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.’”

The guide goes on to say, “The same is true of many other issues that are the subject of political debate: the best way to help the poor, to manage the economy, to protect the environment, to handle immigration, and to provide education, health care, and retirement security.  While the underlying principles (such as solidarity with the poor) are non-negotiable, the specific applications being debated politically admit of many options, and so are not ‘non-negotiable’ in the sense that this guide uses the term.”

Practically speaking, this means there is no official Catholic Church teaching on how to deal with our economic and immigration problems, or on how to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, or on how to get rid of poverty in our country.  In good conscience, Catholics can hold very different views on policies involving these and similar subjects.

But the non-negotiables are always non-negotiable.  Always!

At least they are for all good, serious Catholics.

For those who may still have some difficulty understanding and accepting all this, let me leave you with this question:

If an elected official cannot be counted on to show respect for the most innocent and vulnerable among us (the unborn, the sick, the elderly), how can we trust that person to do the right thing in other situations?  How can we trust that person to do what’s best for us and for our country?

Think about that.