God’s table of plenty heals with but a crumb – Matt 15:21-28, Isa 56:1, 6-7, Rom 11

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time; Holy Cross - St. Stan's.

In Dante’s comedy, after traveling through hell and purgatory, our hero eventually finds himself being taken on a tour through heaven.  Heaven, for him, is ordered, there’s lower-heaven and various grades of upper-heaven, each granting its residents an even more intense closeness to God from the last.  But, in a sense, the order is irrelevant, for all the inhabitants of heaven are incomparably blessed.  Dante starts his tour at the Moon, the lowest level of heaven.  Upon its pock-marked surface the first person he meets is Piccarda.  It takes him a while to recognize her, as her happiness has rendered her more beautiful than she ever appeared during her life on earth.  She is completely aware that there are higher levels of heaven above her, but she suffers not a jot for it.  She is happy.  Not just content, she lives a life of bliss.  She has been purified of all jealousy and wants nothing but what she has, for she only desires that God’s will be done.

Christ’s resurrection ripples raise us up

Solemnity of the Assumption (Mass during the Day); Holy Cross - St. Stanislaus.

Some things can’t help but spread.  Laughter would be one, hiccups definitely another.  True goodness is the same way, and that’s true in any field: the greatest musician isn’t the diva or divo who tuts about their accompanist’s tempo, but someone who makes everyone around them play better when they pick up their instruments; just as a great athlete doesn’t hog the ball, but raises the play of the whole team.  Virtue’s the same way too: the virtuous person is contagious with goodness and walks around lighting fires of zeal and coating everything with a soothing balm of hope and patience.  And if that’s what virtue does, then that’s what resurrection does too.  Resurrection is the fruit of the greatness of Christ’s love, it’s what happens when a human life was lived so perfectly, so holily, so virtuously that someone dared to love us enough not just to die for us, but loved us so much that not even death, death at our hands, could keep him from being with us.  The fiery furnace of Christ’s love erupts in resurrection.  And it spreads.

God’s power saves us when we realize we are overcome – Matt 14:22-33

19th Sunday of Ordinary Time; Holy Cross parish.

It was the first time he’d left them.  Our gospel says that Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead without them.  He had crowds to send forth, crowds that he’d just miraculously fed (this gospel picks up right where we left off last week). And, then, he needed some prayer time.  So, he goes up the mountain.  He mourns his friend and forerunner John the Baptist, whose death at Herod’s hands he’d just heard of.  Maybe he begins to fear for his own death which may come the same way.  He needs to experience anew and afresh the closeness of his father, to re-member whose Son he is, to re-find the strength to be God-with-us to this hungry world.  A world that suddenly looks more dangerous with John’s death.  A world that’s about to get a lot stormier.

God transforms all that we have into gift – Matt 14:13-21 (bilingüe)

Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time; Holy Cross parish and St. Adalbert's parish (in Spanish, see below English homily)

I was very pleased to find recently a website of “51 insanely easy ideas to transformyour everyday objects,” which includes turning funnels into candle holders, hangers into magazine racks and bread tags into loose key labels.  Even I can manage these, despite the fact that I’ve never been much good at DIY or craft activities, although I have great admiration for those who are; for people who can take lifeless supplies and create something useful or beautiful out of them.  I’m even more impressed by our art teacher Kim McClean at Holy Cross grade school, who doesn’t just create art but does it through creating artists out of children.  And it was in teaching that I discovered the kind of transformations that I can help effect: turning a mass of information and technique into something learnable, helping a student move from “I can’t” through “I currently struggle with” through “I kind of sometimes almost can” to “I’m good at.”  We all have some awareness both of what it’s like to transform things, and of the kind of transformations we struggle to effect.  We know how badly the world, and our neighborhood, needs people who can transform conflict into peace with justice; peace-makers.

God has planted goodness in the world for us – Matt 13:44-46

17th Sunday of Ordinary Time; Holy Cross Parish.

There are good things in the world.  And that’s worth celebrating.  Sometimes we work to seek those out.  I think of the joy musicians feel when, after hours upon hours of laborious practice, they participate in presenting something truly beautiful and receive the heartfelt gratitude and appreciation of a crowd.  The joy of being a cultivator of beauty is something worth seeking out.  Sometimes we just stumble on a good thing.  Maybe we’re in an accident or in trouble and a friend or even a stranger reaches out a hand and we encounter true goodness, unsought, unexpected, maybe even initially unwelcome, but eventually deeply appreciated.

God will grow his kingdom to include us – Matt 13:24-43

Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time; Holy Cross Parish.

If you had to guess whether she was wheat or weed, you’d probably have guessed weed.  A college dropout, who’d become a journalist and gotten mixed up with the Communists, who had fallen for a sorry excuse of a man who told her he’d leave her if she didn’t get an abortion and then left her anyway when she did.  If our eager servants had gone out, ready to pluck weeds, they’d probably have taken one look at this ne’er-do-well, and plucked her.  But the master bids the servants wait, because God knows better. 

God is with us while we await the lavish harvest – Matt 13:1-9, Rom 8:18-23

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time; Holy Cross Parish.

I wonder what we focus on when we hear this parable.  A lot of treatments of this parable focus on the dangers and the failures: birds who devour (a la Hitchcock?), paucity of soil, scorching sun, choking thorns.  And they’re real.  There are dangers and in the world.  But they can’t dominate our focus.  Because as we heard two weeks ago on the Feast of Ss. Peter and Paul, if even the gates of Hell assail the Church, they will not prevail.  As the Sermon of the Mount ends, even if we’re on rocky ground, buffeted by storms, our house will not fail.  As St. John XXIII put it, the prophets of doom have had their say, and the Church has found them wanting.