Church of St. Mary at Clinton Heights

I am sure you all join me in prayer for those who were killed as they worshipped last Sunday morning.  I cannot imagine the horror that the people in that church felt.  Jesus tells us that “My Father’s house is a house of prayer”; yet, too many times in the last few years it has become a place of violence and mourning.  In many ways, it drives home to me the need to realize how risky the life of a Christian can be.  Our very worship is a statement of who we are and a challenge to those who do not agree with us.

I cannot help but think of the French priest who was murdered a few years ago as he celebrated Mass.  I could not think when I read about it, how many times I had said morning Mass and never worried about my safety.   I firmly pray that our Sunday worship will never be something to fear.

Many people are wondering why this happened and the news has all sorts of explanations.  The reality is that we may never really know.  Who can really know what happens inside a person when they commit such an act?  I am not willing to jump to the catch-all phrase that he was mentally ill.   Too many people already are afraid of mentally people and think that a person is violent.  Some statistic show that many of the victims of violence are actually those with mental illness.  Do some people who are mentally ill do violent things in a psychotic state? Yes.  But many “sane people” also do violent things and are completely rational!

I am a firm believer that we need to take precautions and be aware of keeping ourselves safe; but, I also think a siege mentality will create more anxiety.  Out places of worship must be a place of safety,  but, a safety based on our hope and trust in the Lord

God is always with us and I am sure he was with those people last Sunday morning, even in the midst of all the violence.  We are connected to them in our common baptism.  They are our brothers and sisters in faith.

May the Lord grant those who died eternal peace and healing to those who were injured.  May the healing spirit of Jesus surround the families of those now have to cope with the effects of this violent act.

At the risk of dating myself, do any of you remember the old song that Dionne Warwick sang in 1966:

 

What the world needs now is love, sweet love

It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of

What the world needs now is love, sweet love,

No not just for some but for everyone.…

 

Jesus , when asked by the Pharisee, what the greatest commandment is resounds with the Shema.  The Shema is said everyday in the Jewish community.  It is akin to the Our Father for us.  The greatest commandment is to love God above everything.  What does it mean to love God?  I think is is total dedication to Him.  Love is not a feeling.  It is a commitment.

I love to eat chocolate chip cookies, but that feeling goes away when I am hungry again. Also, if I eat too many, than I am putting my health and waistline at risk.  To love God is to actively commit ourselves everyday, every hour, every moment to God.  It is not dependent our our feelings.    God’s love is incarnate in Jesus; God gave us everything he could give us; his very self.  Why would Jesus go the Cross if not for Love?  I think what we need to teach our young people is about God’s abiding love.  We need to help them (and ourselves) commit our entire life’s to God.

But, the Shema and Jesus don’t stop there.  After, we commit ourselves to love of God, we commit our selves to love all people.  It is very clear who our neighbor is:

Isaiah is quite clear:

Do not molest an alien..remember you were aliens in Egypt

There are no strangers in the Christian Community

God loves each of us equally; saint and sinner

We need to ask ourselves who is the alien among us; the stranger,

the person who needs us

 

You shall not wrong the orphan and the widow.  Remember there was no Social Security, no Food Stamps, no governmental assistance.  A widow had no standing in society..she was dependent on her family and friends to survive and if they didn’t take care of her, then she could starve, or have to beg, or worse

Who are the widows and orphans among us?

Who do we as a church community need to reach out to…..who has no one?

 

Finally, the Love that God shares us with us and calls us to share with others….it is a call to justice.  Justice meaning everyone is treated with fairly.   To take someone’s cloak and not return it, is equal to making someone sleep on the street; hopefully over a subway grate; if there is one.    If not, the person will sleep on the cold hard ground.

 

Granted we need to prudent with our sharing, but we can take care of the homeless and poor in many different ways.

 

Finally, we are called to love our selves……this is to see ourselves as God sees us.  Too many times, we cant love ourselves because of old messages that say we are not worth anything or because we don’t feel like we deserve anything.  This is not how God sees us.   God looks at us, even in our sinfulness and shortcomings, and sees himself.  We are told in Genesis that each human person is created in the image of God.  Our love of self and others is the rooted in the divine image within.

 

So maybe, Dionne Warwick had it right.  The world needs love……..from you and me

This weekend’s Gospel is a challenge for us.  It would appear that Jesus is telling us to keep our civil responsibilities and our religious responsibilities separate from one another.  Pay your taxes; pray to God, but not at the same time.  At one time in the history of the Church, pre-Vatican II, this was the prevailing attitude.  In this view, the world was not a good place, but the Church promised heaven.  However, since Vatican II, the documents of the Council have challenged us to be salt and leaven to society.

We read in Lumen Gentium 31: ” But the laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God. They live in the world, that is, in each and in all of the secular professions and occupations. They live in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life, from which the very web of their existence is woven. They are called there by God that by exercising their proper function and led by the spirit of the Gospel they may work for the sanctification of the world from within as a leaven. In this way they may make Christ known to others, especially by the testimony of a life resplendent in faith, hope and charity. Therefore, since they are tightly bound up in all types of temporal affairs it is their special task to order and to throw light upon these affairs in such a way that they may come into being and then continually increase according to Christ to the praise of the Creator and the Redeemer.”

In other words, we all are called to season society with our witness to the faith.  This includes the ordained bishop,priest and deacon and religious women and men.  Each one of us, no matter our state in life, is challenged to bring the message of Jesus into the world.

Our world today is in need of the saving message of Jesus.   You just need to listen to the news for 2 minutes to hear of violence, war, bullying, latent and overt racism and prejudice,  sexism, and the list continues.  The call of the Gospel is not isolate ourselves into a rigid world set off from the world with walls; I truly believe that the reality of Vatican II challenges to embrace the world with the same love and acceptance that Jesus embraced the Cross.  Salt flavors the food we use and can be coarse at times, but is needed.   So too our faith.  We need to flavor the world with our beliefs even when it may rub someone the wrong way.  Leaven makes bread rise and grow.  The leaven of our love will help the world grow into the Kingdom of Jesus.

May we witness in our world to the love of God may real in Christ.

How much time do you and I spend worrying about the future? Speaking only for myself, sometimes too much. Much of what I get thinking about and worrying about, I really have no control over and it all works out somehow. When St Paul wrote in the second reading, “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.”, the word “anxiety” in this passing end in Greek means ” to be unduely concerned about the future.” One of the commentators, I read that the Scripture was translated into English, the word used meant “to strangle”. What a great way to think about all the worrying we do about the future: it strangles out our joy and our hope. St Paul doesn’t mean that to worry or to have concerns is a bad thing. Parents worry about their children. The shooting in Las Vegas needs to concern each one of us. Worry about a bad storm, worry about a health crisis, and the list continues is normal. Paul tells us these are things we bring to the Lord. Our worries and our concerns are the “stuff” of our prayer. When it becomes a problem is when we allow the worry to take over. We all can get into the mentality of, sure I’ll bring it to the Lord, but I am not really sure God is going to take care of it….and we don’t let the undue worry go….and it strangles out our joy. Our worries and concerns can become an opportunity to put our care on the Lord. A practice of prayer we all can learn is to through out the day to just say to the Lord: Here is what I am worried about, I give it you” and then allow the peace that only comes from God, to fill our hearts. A prayer like that demands trust; but it also is the root of joy. It can is active commitment to a God who is our hope and our shield. To put our trust in the Lord means we have to take active steps like prayer and refocusing ourselves so our hope and trust is not strangled by our over whelming worry. St Paul reminds us to keep our focus in the Gospel that He taught: the Good news of Jesus who conquered all and give us hope by the power of the Cross and Resurrection. I would like to end with a poem we all know:

One night I dreamed a dream. As I was walking along the beach with my Lord. Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, One belonging to me and one to my Lord. After the last scene of my life flashed before me, I looked back at the footprints in the sand. I noticed that at many times along the path of my life, especially at the very lowest and saddest times, there was only one set of footprints. This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it. “Lord, you said once I decided to follow you, You’d walk with me all the way. But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life, there was only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me.” He whispered, “My precious child, I love you and will never leave you Never, ever, during your trials and testings. When you saw only one set of footprints, It was then that I carried you.”

 

A lot of people will say that the reason they don’t come to Mass is because it is boring and they don’t get anything out of it. Today’s First reading and the Gospel give us an insight into what the Eucharist is all about. It is a promise of what is to come; it is the reality of a God who loves us so much that he died and rose and continue to be present to us and to feed us until the day the promise is fulfilled in heaven. This is the wedding feast that the Gospel is talking about. This is the mountain of Isaiah . Take a few minutes and think about that……we have been invited here by the Lord. That invitation began on the day of our baptism. On that day, Jesus invited us to his wedding feast. He gave us the garment of righteousness and faith. On that day, we were enlighten by Christ and given new vision to see the Kingdom in our midst. On that day, we were given a mandate to go the highways and by ways of our time and invite all, not just a chosen few, to the wedding feast of the Lamb. I always thought the guy at the end of the Gospel got a bum rap. The King can’t find people to the wedding feast. He invites all these people and then throws this guy out because he isn’t dressed right. My thought is he probably didn’t have any good clothes; after all he was poor. However, some of the scholars tells us that in the time of Jesus, the host would have provided a wedding garment to each guest. Now, it makes sense. The man choose to not use a precious gift. His choice was what got him kicked out. Of course, this is all symbolic. What we wear to Mass, how we look, if we have tattoos, if we are a baby crying, a teen who would rather be home in bed on a Sunday morning or a older person who walks slow, if we are dealing with depression or schizophrenia, if we are poor or rich, gay or straight, the invitation is the same. Come and eat with me. Come and I will give you life. Come and share the banquet of my Love. It is our choice to respond to this gift and promise. This is the wedding feast of the Lamb who took away our sins and died for us and who continues to be the Holy Food and Drink of the altar. It is the Jesus who died and rose who comes us, and abides with us in the Blessed Sacrament in the Tabernacle. This is also the foretaste of what is to come. This is the promise of the heavenly wedding feast. Every Sunday we glimpse of what life will be when we die. Clothed in the glory of heaven, invited to our place at the heavenly table, we will praise God for all eternity and the angels and saints and our beloved dead who wait for us to come to the wedding feast of the Lamb This feast and promise is enough to for me to keep coming even when it might seem boring, or I get distracted (and it happens to me too), when I would rather be somewhere else….I need the Holy Food and Drink to live and I need to see the promise of what is to come. I hope you do, too.

 

 

 

 

O Divine Father, you have invited us to the wedding feast of heaven. You have clothed us with garment of salvation and grace. Help each of us to grow in love of this awesome gift. Give us the grace to see beyond our sins and failings and see your Mercy made real in this Holy Sacrament Give us the eyes of faith to see beyond what we do here and catch a glimpse of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb Lord Jesus, walk with your brothers and sisters who wear the wedding garment of the Kingdom. Amen