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Father Peterson's Weekly Homily
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A Homily for March 6, 2011 - Ninth Sunday- Ordinary Time
The film is famous but the scene is infamous. I refer to that episode in “The Godfather” that flashes back and forth between the baptism of Michael Corleone’s baby and the series of mobster killings that he himself has ordered. The priest prays the ancient Latin words over the baby before pouring the life-giving water, while we are made also to watch men die in a spray of bullets. The brutal clash of good and evil could not be more graphic or shocking.
That is the sad place my mind led me to as I first read this section of Matthew and Jesus’ ominous warning about hollow religion. “Not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father in heaven.” The Holy Spirit is using Matthew’s writing to test our mettle in this twenty-first century Western world that has erased God from the picture. We say he or she “walks the walk” to compliment someone’s authenticity. But for believers in Christ that means only one thing: doing God’s will.
Anybody past the age of seven knows how difficult it is to live that three word coda to the commandments. But how dreadful it will be for those who don’t even try! We learn that they will hear the Lord utter an awful judgment: “I never knew you.” I must admit that reflecting on having lived six decades so imperfectly gives me a shudder at that revelation.
Meanwhile, in our youth-obsessed society, plastic surgeons, hair dye and makeup manufacturers limp to the bank carrying heavy bags of money. That would not have been true in Moses’ time. What his people had to resist was an easy idolatry of some granite statue versus the strict commands of an invisible God. Scripture depicts them as freed from a silly pursuit of youth because they venerated age. Yet we hear Moses in the First Reading demanding even more of his people in the form of what we might call “an ongoing conversion of heart and soul.” Their visual aid to memory was to be a wristband. I suppose a “WWJD” button is our less dignified counterpart of this.
St. Paul, in the Second Reading, takes Moses’ command past blessings and curses. He writes centuries later in his Letter to the Romans that we dare not try to be self-sufficient. Our efforts depend on the power of God’s grace won for us by Christ to sustain them. That is a huge consolation. The youth among us have to learn that from us. We deny them to our peril and theirs. But our lessons need not have any words to be effective.
That powerful teaching by example is the foundation which I was fortunate to have from my parents. But were they still here on earth, I think even they would have to admit that forty or fifty years ago it was far easier to be a Catholic than today. Even outside the so-called “Catholic ghetto” in those bygone days, nearly everyone at least seemed to believe in God. “Closed on Sunday” was a common sight in store windows, and families had Sunday breakfast after Mass shared around the home table, and nobody left for football or field hockey practice. Now believers have to swim against the strong current of secularism that is presented in full color with lavish sound effects by the multiple media, ever available even on one’s I-phone.
Certainly the present scandal in our Church and the belated hyper reactivity of Church leaders is like a heavy weight tugging on the “swim strokes" of the innocent. But, as the great Bishop Sheen once said “Dead bodies float downstream. One has to be alive in Christ to swim upstream.”
So we labor on, you and I, with trust and confidence. As Lent begins this week, we already have our hair shirts. All we need do is to rev up the prayer, fasting and almsgiving, in that traditional triad of the season. Also, I think we would all do well to pause in our daily rushed routines to rekindle our awareness of the obvious truths that God inserts into the rhythm of our days. That way we won’t keep seeking lesser leaders, such as TV talk show hosts and teleprompter readers for how and what to think.
I began with a story involving a baby. Let me end with another that makes my last point. The comedian Sam Levenson told the story about the birth of his first child. The first night home the baby would not stop crying. His wife, Sarah, frantically flipped through the pages of Dr. Spock to find out why babies cry and what to do about it. Since Spock’s book is rather long, the baby cried a long time.
Grandma was in the house, but since she had not read books on child rearing, she was not consulted. The baby continued to cry until Grandma could stand it no longer. She shouted downstairs, “For heaven’s sake, Sarah, put down the book and pick up the baby!”
Fr. Leonard N. Peterson
The film is famous but the scene is infamous. I refer to that episode in “The Godfather” that flashes back and forth between the baptism of Michael Corleone’s baby and the series of mobster killings that he himself has ordered. The priest prays the ancient Latin words over the baby before pouring the life-giving water, while we are made also to watch men die in a spray of bullets. The brutal clash of good and evil could not be more graphic or shocking.
That is the sad place my mind led me to as I first read this section of Matthew and Jesus’ ominous warning about hollow religion. “Not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father in heaven.” The Holy Spirit is using Matthew’s writing to test our mettle in this twenty-first century Western world that has erased God from the picture. We say he or she “walks the walk” to compliment someone’s authenticity. But for believers in Christ that means only one thing: doing God’s will.
Anybody past the age of seven knows how difficult it is to live that three word coda to the commandments. But how dreadful it will be for those who don’t even try! We learn that they will hear the Lord utter an awful judgment: “I never knew you.” I must admit that reflecting on having lived six decades so imperfectly gives me a shudder at that revelation.
Meanwhile, in our youth-obsessed society, plastic surgeons, hair dye and makeup manufacturers limp to the bank carrying heavy bags of money. That would not have been true in Moses’ time. What his people had to resist was an easy idolatry of some granite statue versus the strict commands of an invisible God. Scripture depicts them as freed from a silly pursuit of youth because they venerated age. Yet we hear Moses in the First Reading demanding even more of his people in the form of what we might call “an ongoing conversion of heart and soul.” Their visual aid to memory was to be a wristband. I suppose a “WWJD” button is our less dignified counterpart of this.
St. Paul, in the Second Reading, takes Moses’ command past blessings and curses. He writes centuries later in his Letter to the Romans that we dare not try to be self-sufficient. Our efforts depend on the power of God’s grace won for us by Christ to sustain them. That is a huge consolation. The youth among us have to learn that from us. We deny them to our peril and theirs. But our lessons need not have any words to be effective.
That powerful teaching by example is the foundation which I was fortunate to have from my parents. But were they still here on earth, I think even they would have to admit that forty or fifty years ago it was far easier to be a Catholic than today. Even outside the so-called “Catholic ghetto” in those bygone days, nearly everyone at least seemed to believe in God. “Closed on Sunday” was a common sight in store windows, and families had Sunday breakfast after Mass shared around the home table, and nobody left for football or field hockey practice. Now believers have to swim against the strong current of secularism that is presented in full color with lavish sound effects by the multiple media, ever available even on one’s I-phone.
Certainly the present scandal in our Church and the belated hyper reactivity of Church leaders is like a heavy weight tugging on the “swim strokes" of the innocent. But, as the great Bishop Sheen once said “Dead bodies float downstream. One has to be alive in Christ to swim upstream.”
So we labor on, you and I, with trust and confidence. As Lent begins this week, we already have our hair shirts. All we need do is to rev up the prayer, fasting and almsgiving, in that traditional triad of the season. Also, I think we would all do well to pause in our daily rushed routines to rekindle our awareness of the obvious truths that God inserts into the rhythm of our days. That way we won’t keep seeking lesser leaders, such as TV talk show hosts and teleprompter readers for how and what to think.
I began with a story involving a baby. Let me end with another that makes my last point. The comedian Sam Levenson told the story about the birth of his first child. The first night home the baby would not stop crying. His wife, Sarah, frantically flipped through the pages of Dr. Spock to find out why babies cry and what to do about it. Since Spock’s book is rather long, the baby cried a long time.
Grandma was in the house, but since she had not read books on child rearing, she was not consulted. The baby continued to cry until Grandma could stand it no longer. She shouted downstairs, “For heaven’s sake, Sarah, put down the book and pick up the baby!”
Fr. Leonard N. Peterson