Homily by Fr Mathew 33rd Sunday

33^rd Sunday Year A 2014 Homily

Nov 14,2014

Mt 25: 14-30 The Parable of Talents

A doctor, a lawyer, a young boy and a priest were out for a Sunday afternoon flight on a small private plane. All of a sudden, the plane developed engine trouble. In spite of the best effort of the pilot, the plane started to go down.

Realizing the situation very dangerous, the pilot grabbed a parachute and yelled to the passengers that they had better jump, and then he bailed out.

Unfortunately there were only three parachutes. The doctor grabbed one of them and said,  “I am a doctor. I save lives. So I must live.” Then he jumped.

The lawyer then said, “I am a lawyer. We are the smartest people in the world. So I deserve to live.  Then he grabbed a parachute and jumped.

The priest looked at the little boy and said, “my son, I have lived a long full life. You are so young and you deserve to live. Take the last parachute and live in peace.

The little boy handed the parachute back to the priest and said, “Not to worry, father, the smartest man in the world just took off with my back pack.

How smart are we in our spiritual life? In other words, how smart are we in in terms of our eternity?

The parable throws light on the very nature of God. God is a risk taker. God risked his only son on a cross. The risky nature of God is revealed in the parable of the sower.  He scatters the seed all over the place indiscriminately by the way side, in the bushes and on the rock. God is not calculative in his actions. God also is very generous. He invests heavily in his three servants. He trusts them. He loves them.

The parable also  throws light on our attitude toward God. Those three servants are us. Two of the servants are proactive. They know they are supposed to take risk like their master.

This parable reminds us that the greatest gift that God has ever given to us is our human life. We human beings are the peak of living organisms.  It is the greatest gift that we have ever received from God. God wants us to cherish that life to the fullest. God wants us to use that life to uplift other people.

What this life is for? This life is to be expended to have more life. The parable of the seed expounds this principle in a vivid way! A grain of wheat is very tiny. If it chooses to remain in a shelf, it is good for nothing. It remains just as a tiny seed. On the other hand, if it falls on the ground, it loses its identity, and sprouts up and produces hundreds of grain of wheat.

Look around to see the greatest things that  happened in the world because of the life  expended by Jesus on a cross.  

We know how the world has dramatically changed  over the last couple of centuries because of the lives expended by Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Bishop Romero.The world has never been the same. Our life well cherished and expended produces much fruit.

On the other hand,  we see the opposite in the third steward who refused to take the risk. How would you characterize the steward? I would say he is very sour, angry, afraid, toxic, blaming, grouchy,bitter,complaining, grumpy and negative. Poor man! he is very miserable. He blames everybody, even God.

He digs a big hole and buries his life in it. We love such people as God loves them, but we don’t want to be around them because they are very toxic.

Jesus told this parable in the context of his second coming. We do not know when the world is going to end. There are so many self proclaimed false prophets who claim it would happen tomorrow. Nobdy knows when the world is coming to an end.  However, we know for sure that the world will come to an end to every one of us when the physical death happens to us.

Who do you want to be identified with, when you meet Jesus? Will you find yourself  like those two servants who cherished and expended their lives for the good of others or like the third servant who is grouchy, bitter, toxic and miserable?

Life Night: Protestant Reformation & Counter Reformation

The Protestant Reformation

and Counter Reformation of the Catholic Church

            The Protestant Reformation was the schism within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other early Protestant Reformers. Although there had been significant attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church before Luther, he is typically cited as the man who set the religious world aflame in 1517 with his Ninety-Five Theses. Luther started by criticizing the selling of indulgences, insisting that the pope had no authority over purgatory and that the Catholic doctrine of the merits of the saints had no foundation in the gospel. The attacks widened to cover many of the doctrines and devotional Catholic practices.

            The Reformation movement within Germany diversified almost immediately, and other reform impulses arose independently of Luther. The largest groupings were the Lutherans and Calvinists (or Reformed). The National Church of England (Anglicans/Episcopalians) was made independent under King Henry VIII in the early 1530s. There were also reformation movements throughout continental Europe known as the Radical Reformation which gave rise to the Anabaptist, Moravian, and other pietistic movements.

            The Roman Catholic Church responded with a Counter-Reformation initiated by the Council of Trent. Much hard work in battling Protestantism was done by many saints who worked tirelessly to reform from the inside and repair relations on the outside:

• St. Ignatius of Loyola - Society of Jesus 1537, Jesuits took up the cause through Catholic renewal and by defending the Church against those who worked against her.
• St. Charles Borromeo - Trent called for reform in the Papacy, Cardinals, Bishops, and all clergy. It also made many important decrees on things such as Sacraments, absenteeism, Purgatory, Saints, relics, and salvation- all upholding what the Church has always believed and denying what the Protestant Reformation was saying.
• In 1529 Thomas More worked to keep England part of the Roman Catholic Church but was beheaded in the Tower of London on July 6, 1534. King Henry VIII divorced Catherine, was remarried to Ann Boleyn, and broke from the Catholic Church denying the authority of the Pope and declaring himself as head of the Church of England.
• St. Francis de Sales - A pivotal figure in the history of the Catholic Counter Reformation because of his tireless devotion and unwavering faith to Christ and the Church. He is well known for his writings and his gentle, yet impassioned, way of encouraging souls to strive for holiness.
• St. Teresa of Avila did not necessarily actively engage in checking the spread of Protestantism, but she reformed her own Carmelite order. In effect, she took to heart the abuses and corruptions pointed out by the Protestant Reformers, and began to set them aright.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation 

http://www.catecheticsonline.com/Saints/ignatius.php

http://ascentofcarmel.blogspot.com/2013/07/top-10-saints-of-counter-reformation.html

Homily by Fr Mathew Nov. 9,2014

The dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome

(November 9,2014)

Three friends were hunting together: One was a lawyer, one a doctor, and the other a preacher. As they were walking, they came up on a big deer. The three of them shot simultaneously. Immediately the deer dropped to the ground and all three rushed to the spot to find that the deer was dead. To their surprise, it had only one bullet hole. So all of them claimed that it was his bullet that killed the deer. As they were arguing about whose deer it was, a game officer came along that way. He asked them what they were arguing about. As the doctor described to him what was going on, the officer suggested that he would take a look at the deer and tell them who had shot it. In five seconds he came back and said with much confidence, "Folks, I can tell you this. The preacher shot the deer!" They all wondered how he knew that in five seconds. The officer said, "Easy. The bullet went in one ear and out the other."

 How often we listen to the Gospel message on one ear and let it go through the other! I hope this will not happen today as we celebrate the dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome.

Many of you wonder why we celebrate a building in Rome. It is the cathedral of the Bishop of Rome. The Pope lives very close to the St Peter’s Basilica.  However, the St. Peter’s Basilica, which is a magnificent Church, is not his cathedral.

The Lateran Basilica is the mother church of all the churches in the world.  Through Our parish Church, we’re united to our Mother church in Rome which reminds us that we are one body united in Christ by our one faith. In the words of Pope Francis, “today’s feast is an invitation to reflect on the communion of the Church around world.”

The second Vatican council says, as we heard in the second reading, we’re the Church and we are its living stones and Jesus Christ is the corner stone.  The church building is  nothing but a place where the body of Christ gathers. However, Fr Robert Barron in his homily suggests that “the building matters” because we are a sacramental church. We use external signs to experience what is transcendent. So Our Church building is Sacramental. In the words of Pope Francis, “The Church Herself is a sign and an anticipation of this new humanity, when it lives and spreads the Gospel with Her witness, a message of hope and reconciliation for all mankind.”

Today we celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the collapse of  the Berlin wall. The wall represented the ideological divisions in the word. The wall stood there for many years as a sign of wounds and brokenness inflicted on the very heart of humanity by war, violence and exploitation. By bearing witness to our faith and living that faith, we are called upon to bring about reconciliation and unity in this world. As a church our mission is to bring down all the walls that divide us.

So the church is an inevitable sign in a divided world. However, many people think the Church and religion are unnecessary.  According to a recent pew report, one in five Americans says that they are spiritual but not religious. I have heard people say that “I am a good person; I pray at home. I’m spiritual, but I don’t have to belong to an organized religion to tell me what to do ln my life.” 

I can understand institutional disenchantment. Institutions can get corrupted. It can become redundant. 

But institutions are also the only mechanism human beings know to perpetuate values and actions. If books were enough, why have universities? If guns enough, why have a military? If self-governance enough, let’s get rid of Washington and the government in Lansing.

The point is that if you want to do something lasting in this world, we need something concrete. We cannot operate in vacuum. Do you have a vision? Then Get a blueprint.

If we were simply spiritual and didn't care about religion, many of the largest world renowned charities like Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, and Food for the poor would not have existed.

One of the things I studied about alcoholism in my psychology class was that we cannot treat this addiction with pills or psychotherapy.

The Only proven successful method so far known to us is AA program. People who belong to this group get together every week and confess to each other their fragility and failures. Only with the support of the like-minded people (from where they derive our spiritual strength) they know they can overcome  their demons and addiction. This is very true of our spiritual life, too. We are wounded animals. We will not be able to deal with our wounds and brokenness and grow in spirituality unless we have the support of a community which we call Church.

As Aristotle says, we’re a social animal. Our life, whether it is spiritual or physical, becomes stagnant when we cut off from the community or the Church. When we travel together supporting each other, our pilgrimage to our final destiny becomes more easy and tangible.