First, Be Reconciled

Homily for 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time  

Can we talk about the election? Not the candidates, or the issues, but the attitudes and conflicts that it has engendered not only in our public discourse, but in our conversations within our Church. This election in particular seems to be so much more vitriolic and nasty than those in the past. Or maybe I’m just getting old.

A friend of mine posted a great meme on facebook the other day. It said, “I just saved a ton of money on Christmas presents by discussing politics on Facebook”. And there is too much truth to that to be really funny.

Bishop Malone released another “Consider This” on Friday about Faithful Citizenship and voting. Bishop Malone: “Ordinarily I’d be looking forward to the day after the election – at least the war of words would be behind us. This time, however, I expect that I will feel no better about the national situation then than I do right now. In fact, I may feel worse…”

Where will be as a nation after the election is over? Where will be as a Church? Are we creating so many divisions based on our political views that we forget the common good of the nation? Will we be able to start a process of reconciliation and healing in our country, in our church, in our families?

Think about today’s parable of the widow and “unjust judge”. St. Luke tells us that it is about praying, but maybe there’s something else going on as well. When you look at it carefully, it is clear that neither character is morally exemplary, and neither is even likable.

In the parable, vengeance rules. It is the desire for vengeance that drives the widow – this desire may be, especially in relation to law courts, more pressing than the desire for justice. The parable challenges us – do I want to be in the widow’s company?

The widow’s behavior is consistent: a person who seeks to be avenged against her opponent is not a person who “loves her enemies”. And certainly the judge perceives the possibility of getting a “black eye” if he doesn’t rule in her favor. Whether it would really happen or not is not the point – the judge believes that there is a real possibility of it.

Where was the attempt in the parable of the widow to reconcile? Where was the attempt of the judge toward “restorative justice” rather than retributive justice? The only closure that the parable creates is that in which the widow and the judge – and so us, too! – become complicit in a plan to take vengeance and certainly not to find reconciliation.

In another part of the Gospel, Jesus tells us that when we are offering our gift at the altar, if we remember that our brother or sister has something against us, we are to leave our gift there and first be reconciled to our brother or sister, and then come and offer our gift.

What do each of us need to do to heal the wounds and divisions that are being created among us now? Can we leave our gifts at the altar and seek out those with whom we disagree so that we may be reconciled?

If you follow international affairs, you may have heard about the peace agreement in Colombia. Colombia has suffered under a civil war for 52 years. 52 years! And they finally negotiated a peace agreement that would cease all the fighting, and would provide amnesty for some of the fighters in the conflict. The agreement had to be put to a referendum for all citizens.  In supporting the referendum, one woman said, “I don’t win anything if I continue to hate. I have to vote yes because peace depends on each of us. There are more of us who are good, and we simply have to keep fighting for a quiet country for our children and grandchildren.” In the end, however, by a slight margin, the referendum rejected the peace agreement. According to one family that a student of mine has contact with, “we wanted more punishment for those who did bad things during the war.”

There is no reconciliation in this parable, there is only revenge. There is no compassion, neither by the judge for the widow nor by the widow for the judge. The “justice” the unjust judge offers is not the justice of God or a program of fairness – it is granting a legal decision based not on merit, but on threat. Jesus was invested in fairness, reconciliation, and compassion. As his disciples, as people of faith, we too must be willing to find the opportunities for reconciliation and compassion – especially after a very contentious election. So, his question at the end should give us pause: when the Son of Man comes, will he find vengeance, and violence, and discord? Or will he find faith on the earth?

Before It's Too Late - Homily for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time - C

23 Million. 23 million is the number of refugees that are currently in the world. Over 5 million of them are from Syria and over half of them are children under the age of 18.

Many of you know that I was privileged to go with Catholic Relief Services to Greece and Serbia earlier this year to work with the Syrian refugees – to see their plight, to hear their stories, to provide what aid we could. So I was very interested to hear about the UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants that was held earlier this week.

At that Summit, President Obama read a letter from Alex who saw the picture of 5 year old Omran Dagneesh, a casualty of the bombing in Aleppo, as he sat filthy, bloodied, and dazed in the ambulance. Here is what the letter said:

Dear President Obama,

Remember the boy who was picked up by the ambulance in Syria? Can you please go get him and bring him to [my home]? Park in the driveway or on the street and we will be waiting for you guys with flags, flowers, and balloons. We will give him a family and he will be our brother. Catherine, my little sister, will be collecting butterflies and fireflies for him. In my school, I have a friend from Syria, Omar, and I will introduce him to Omar. We can all play together. We can invite him to birthday parties and he will teach us another language. We can teach him English too, just like my friend Aoto from Japan.

And I will share my bike and I will teach him how to ride it. I will teach him additions and subtractions in math.

Thank you very much! I can't wait for you to come!

Alex

6 years old

“We will give him a family and he will be our brother”.

I was thinking about Alex and about the rich man in the parable. Alex was willing to share his toys, his time, his home – and make him his brother. The rich man behaved as if he wasn’t even aware of Lazarus lying at his gate, and if he was aware, he was too complacent to care. What had happened to the rich man? Where did he lose the compassion and the kindness that even 6 year old Alex could display? Had he grown into a life of cynicism? Was he ruined by a habit of self-indulgence? Did he just react to people like Lazarus out of fear?

The rich man is not named in the parable – maybe he could be any of us. It’s not his wealth that’s the problem – it’s his indifference. He isn’t able to reach across the gap that separates him from Lazarus, and as a consequence, that gap becomes an enormous abyss in the afterlife. After death, he recognizes Lazarus, he even knows his name, but it’s too late. The abyss is already too large to get across.

There is a gap, too, between us and young Omran and all the Syrian refugees. In a sense, these refugees lie at our gate, perhaps not covered in sores, but wanting only to take some of the crumbs that fall from our very, very, rich table. They are:

·       Ahmed whom I met in Serbia - an electrical engineer and who had to move his family three times to escape the bombing and the violence that threatened him, his wife, and his four boys

·       Hiatt – whose husband was killed in this brutal war, and who was making this trip with her 5 children. Her children hadn’t been to school in three years because of the war, she explained, and she was trying to find a new home where, in her words, her children could learn, and not just learn war

·       Or Samir – a young boy of about 8 who lost his shoe when his foot got stuck in the muck as he got out of the overcrowded rubber raft that had brought him and his family from Turkey to Greece. Since we didn’t have any shoes to give him, we tried to make a new shoe out of 5 or 6 pairs of socks

·       Or Saad, Nabil, and Hussein – three young men in their 20s whose families had sent them all on ahead to be “ice-breakers” as they are called – to find places to live for their families to establish a base so that they could pave the way for their Mom and Dad, brothers and sisters, Grandma and Grandpa.

In commenting on this parable earlier in the year, Pope Francis said that as long as Lazarus was lying in front of his house, there was a chance for salvation for the rich man – but once they are both dead, the situation was irreparable. It was too late.

The rich man had squandered his chance to do the right thing. He had missed the sign of God’s kingdom in the everyday affairs of his life.

We must reach out to Lazarus, and Ahmed, and Hiatt, and Samir, and Saad, and Nabil, and Hussein and bridge the gap – “give them a family and make them our brothers and sisters “– and we have to do it now - before it’s too late.