Homily for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C). Translation of a homily, originally given in Italian in October 2019.
Why pray? Because the other team’s fans are praying, and we don’t want to give them any advantage? Because God seems a little indecisive, and maybe he needs our good advice? Because to get what we want, it helps to have powerful friends?
Ecstasy of St. Teresa, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1652
Unless we walked into church this morning by mistake, each of us believes that prayer is important in some way. In fact, we may feel that it is necessary. Maybe we can’t explain it, but we need prayer. Maybe we’ve learned from experience, maybe from hard experience, how necessary prayer is.
Homily for the twenty-eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time (C).
One of the lessons I remember being drilled into me as a child was the importance of saying “thank you.” As with so many of the lessons we learn in childhood, I may not have appreciated its importance at the time, but now I’m grateful for it. The next time I see my mom and dad, I’ll have to remember to thank them.
Today’s readings are all about remembering—and forgetting—to give thanks. The attention that Sacred Scripture dedicates to the theme suggests that we are dealing with something much deeper than polite social convention. Gratitude does make for more pleasant social interactions, but it is also necessary for us to see the world truthfully. And it is something we easily forget.
Certosa di San Martino, Naples
Today’s Gospel passage, in fact, hints that perhaps we are more inclined to forget to give thanks than to remember. Ten lepers were cleansed, Jesus points out, but only one returned to thank him. Busyness can distract us from gratitude—we need to move on to the next thing, we don’t have time. When we get what we want, often our tendency, instead of saying thank you, is to try to get more. This is part of what theologians call “concupiscence,” the habit of selfishness burned into human nature by original sin. Today we can add a sense of entitlement to concupiscence. We like to speak of our rights—and politicians like to promise more rights—but while the rights we claim for ourselves multiply exponentially, our sense of responsibility never quite seems to keep pace. We forget that we would have no rights whatsoever if these hadn’t been granted to us by our Creator. To this forgetfulness we can add advertising that pushes us to buy more, to watch more, to scroll more, to consume more, and not to waste time remembering where we came from. My parents did well to drill saying “thank you” into me because there are so many other voices saying, “Don’t worry—just give me your credit card.”
The loss of a sense of gratitude makes a truly Christian life impossible. It’s no accident that the word that describes the central action in the life of the Church—“Eucharist”—comes from the Greek word for thanksgiving. In some ways, this might seem surprising because in the celebration of the Eucharist, God’s action, and not ours, is central. It is Jesus who gives himself to us; it is his power that transforms bread and wine into his Body and Blood, his living presence among us. What we do in this sacrament we do only because he gave us the instructions. The initiative is always God’s. The same can be said of all of creation. Everything that is is an unmerited gift.
Homily for the twenty-fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time (C).
Detail of the statue of St. Matthew (St. John Lateran)
In 1920, Charles Ponzi devised a scheme to buy international postal coupons in Europe and sell them for a profit in the United States. So many people invested in Ponzi’s plan that he couldn’t keep up with demand, so he used the money from new investors to pay off old investors, which worked as long as there were more new investors. And, then, when there weren’t, the whole scheme went kaput. For a while, Mr. Ponzi made a lot of money using a financial trick without actually producing anything real. Today similar scams are known as “Ponzi schemes.”
The parable of the dishonest steward, which Jesus tells in the Gospel, is rather like a first century Ponzi scheme. The steward, learning that he is about to be fired, retires debts to his master at a steep discount. Doing so doesn’t cost him anything but comes at his master’s expense. His master’s debtors will now owe him for their savings, so he’ll have many grateful new friends when he becomes unemployed. What is surprising about the parable is that the master does not condemn his conniving steward but seems to think his trick is rather clever.
The explanation Jesus gives of the parable also surprises us because you’d expect the Lord to condemn obvious fraudulent behavior. But, instead, Jesus uses the story to make a different—very ironic—point. Jesus’ point is that people—like the steward—put so much cleverness and effort into making money that when it comes to what really matters—their relationship with God—they’re rather careless. So, he says, “Go ahead, make friends with dishonest wealth. Invest in the Ponzi scheme. Then, when it fails, and you see how clever you really were, maybe, then, you’ll start thinking about your eternal dwelling.” After all, if the steward had worked half as hard for his master as he did to save his own skin, he wouldn’t have been fired to begin with.
Homily for the twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (C).
Filippo Lippi, Madonna of Humility, 1420
Humility is the virtue that stands out both in today’s Gospel reading and in Sirach’s advice to “conduct your affairs with humility” and to “humble yourself the more, the greater you are.” I’ve been thinking about humility a lot this summer because I’ve been thinking about my grandfathers. One passed away in June, the other fourteen years ago, and “humble” is one of the first words that comes to mind when I think of either of them—perhaps in both cases because my grandfathers were the quiet ones, and my grandmothers were the talkers! One grandfather was a baker, the other lived his whole life in the same small town in Minnesota. I think of them both as great men not because they sought attention or prestige, but because they didn’t. Because they dedicated themselves to others, to their families and to their communities, without making a fuss about it, and left the lives of many better as a result. In the homely etiquette lesson Jesus offers in the Gospel—take the lower place instead of elbowing your way to the head of the table—he points to one way in which a humble act can leave one better off in the long run.
Luca Signorelli, The Last Judgment (1499-1504), Orvieto Cathedral
Homily for the twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Attention: this homily contains spoilers. A few years ago, Ted Danson and Kristen Bell stared in a comedy on NBC called “The Good Place.” The premise was that Kristen Bell’s character, Eleanor Shellstrop, had died and in the afterlife ended up in the “Good Place.” The only problem was that Eleanor was a shallow and selfish person. There had apparently been a mix-up in the calculations—points were awarded for good actions and subtracted for bad ones—and she had been confused with a much better woman also named Eleanor who happened to die at exactly the same moment. After not too long, Eleanor realizes that there had been an error and that she needs to hide her true identity to avoid being sent to the Bad Place, where she belongs. Since she had spent her whole life being petty, mean, and vulgar, she has no idea how to act and keeps slipping up and almost blowing her cover.
The show presents a picture of a very common understanding of heaven. It is a pleasant place, a never-ending vacation, tailored to the preferences—dietary, decorating, recreational—of its inhabitants. It is more or less religiously neutral; it’s a reward for good behavior, that’s it. In fact, though there are angels in the show—including Michael, played by Ted Danson—God is not mentioned at all. If you watch the show in light of Christian revelation—the way the Gospel talks about heaven—you figure out pretty quickly that the Good Place is most certainly not heaven. Understanding where the show goes wrong can help us to understand a bit better what makes the Christian offer of heaven so unique and surprising, and it can also help us to understand Jesus’ admonitory words in the Gospel today.
Homily for the twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (C).
The word “Jesuit” was first used to mock the early followers of St. Ignatius of Loyola. These first members of my religious order, the Society of Jesus, were derided for talking so much about Jesus and were given the name “Jesuit,” condescendingly, by those who apparently thought they had something better to talk about. Those first Jesuits took the criticism as a compliment, and the name stuck.
The letter to the Hebrews tells us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, and the Gospel’s hard words make the same point in dramatic fashion. We’ll return to the Gospel in a minute, but I want to start with the striking passage from Hebrews. The letter tells us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus so that we can “persevere in running the race that lies before us.” Races, by definition, are challenging events. It is possible to lose a race by giving up, by going off course, by laziness, by getting tripped up on some obstacle. Hebrews tells us to “rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us.” Sins are the sort of thing that will slow us down, trip us up, or send us running in the wrong direction. Running a race usually requires training, and Christianity is no different. We aren’t born Christians. Perhaps a century or two ago when our whole society was Christian, it was possible to imagine that we were, that being a Christian was the same thing as being a good citizen or an agreeable person, just going with the flow. That was always an illusion, and it is even more so today when the forces that shape our culture are often hostile or indifferent to Christianity.
Homily for the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (from 2021.)
Crowning of the Virgin, St. Martin’s Cathedral, Spišská Kapitula, Slovakia
Ounce per ounce, the largest bone in our body, the femur, is stronger than steel. Laid out end to end, the blood vessels from an adult’s body could circle the globe four times. Our brains contain 86 billion nerve cells, which are joined by 100 trillion connections.
Right now in your brains several million of those connections are lighting up asking, “What in the world is he talking about? Nice factoids, padre, but what do they have to do with anything?” The answer is that today’s feast, among the most solemn on the Church’s calendar, is a celebration of the human body.
Today we celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the dogma that at the end of her life Mary was taken up soul and body into heavenly glory. This dogma is more than just an interesting factoid. It is deeply relevant to each one of us because Christianity professes belief in the resurrection of the body. St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians talks about Christ’s resurrection as “the firstfruits” of a much larger harvest. In a sense, Mary’s Assumption is also a guarantee that the fruits of the resurrection will be shared with the whole Church. Mary, the first Christian believer, the first to receive the news of Jesus’ Incarnation, represents the Church in a way nobody else can.
We human beings are both body and soul. We are not souls trapped in a body; our bodies are part of who we are. Angels are souls without bodies, but we are not angels. If the resurrection were an entirely spiritual phenomenon, it wouldn’t be us rising from the dead. This is why Jesus became incarnate, coming in the flesh. It is why the Gospels insist so forcefully that, when Jesus rose from the dead, he had not become a ghost or a hologram but remained a man who ate food and whose flesh bore the wounds of his passion. It is why the sacraments require material elements, and not just any material elements but specific elements connected to Jesus’ physical existence on earth.
Homily for the seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Guido Reni, Trinity of the Pilgrims (1625-6)
Readings: Gn 18:20-32; Col 2:12-14; Lk 11:1-13
A few weeks ago, some friends were talking about watching a movie. They knew that it took a dark twist at the end, so they hit the stop button early to avoid the tragic finish. That’s exactly what happens in today’s first reading. The wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah becomes too great for God to ignore, and he decides to destroy the cities. Abraham questions him, as if bargaining him down. If just ten innocent people remain, God will spare the cities. But, as you probably know, if you read on, God does destroy the cities. They did not contain even ten good men. They were corrupt from top to bottom.
Still, it’s not an accident that today’s reading stops where it does. The premature ending focuses our attention on God’s reaction to human corruption. He is not eager for destruction or motived by vindictiveness. To use the terms of later Christian theology, we could say that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is one of the many stories in the Book of Genesis that express the reality of Original Sin. The Biblical message is clear: None of us is innocent. Mankind is corrupt from top to bottom. God’s reaction to Abraham—his desire to spare the innocent—shows that the destruction wrought by Original Sin is not what God wants. Our sinfulness is self-destructive.
If self-destruction were the end of the movie, we could understand turning it off early. But God’s full response to human sinfulness, which unfolds in the New Testament, is not to strike a deal, to plea bargain, or to negotiate. Nor is it to ignore our sinfulness or to excuse it. It is not to declare a new paradigm in which there are no longer any moral absolutes and what was once sinful is now OK, if circumstances are right or you get your pastor’s permission. No, God’s reaction is something else entirely. As St. Paul tells the Colossians, God has removed sinfulness from our midst by “nailing it to the cross.”
Throughout this month, I’ve been reposting the homilies I wrote for the Homiletic and Pastoral Review. You can check them all out on their site, as well as Friday’s Homily for the Sacred Heart. This feast seems especially joyful this year, coming so soon after the election of Pope Leo XIV.
Homily for the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul
Martyrdom of St. Peter (Doors of the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, Rome)
Martyrdom of St. Paul (Doors of the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, Rome)
Peter and Paul were great men. It is common in preaching to hear about Peter’s failures—his weaknesses and false steps, which the Gospels make no attempt to hide. And we first meet Paul, of course, when he is persecuting the Church. Peter and Paul were both flawed men, but nonetheless they are great men.
In fact, one of the things that makes them both great is that they acknowledge their flaws. Practically the first words out of Simon Peter’s mouth in the Gospel of Luke are, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Lk 5:8). In one of his letters, Paul claims to boast in his weakness (2 Cor 12:9).
Yet, in the Acts of the Apostles, Peter raises the dead to life. Paul becomes the most remarkable missionary in history. The faithful of Jerusalem bring their sick into the streets just so that Peter’s shadow will fall upon them. And in today’s Gospel we hear those remarkable words from the mouth of the Lord himself, “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.” The greatness of both Peter and Paul comes from Jesus.
This month I’ve been asked to contribute Sunday homilies to the Homiletic and Pastoral Review. You can find the rest of the month’s homilies there as well. Here’s this week’s contribution:
Homily for the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (C)
I thought I’d begin today by saying a word about Melchizedek. I’d wager most of you don’t know much of anything about Melchizedek. It’s a safe wager because nobody knows much about Melchizedek. His biographical details are limited to what you just heard in the first reading. But Melchizedek turns out to be an important figure. In the first reading, in Genesis, he seems to come out of nowhere. It turns out, when we get to the Letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament, that this mysterious origin is what makes him interesting. The New Testament speaks of Melchizedek as a forerunner of Jesus, the great high priest who has neither beginning nor end. Melchizedek, the Letter to the Hebrews says, represents an eternal priesthood — the priesthood of Jesus Christ.
In fact, perhaps it’s surprising that Genesis would mention Melchizedek at all. Even more surprising is that it mentions the sacrifice that he offers — bread and wine. At the time, bread and wine were not particularly impressive sacrifices. In the ancient world, if you wanted to impress, you offered meat. Birds were OK, lamb was better, a bull best of all. Bread and wine were not the sort of sacrifice a king would brag about.
Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 