Homily for Tuesday of the Twenty-ninth week in Ordinary Time (Year 2).
Perhaps Saint Paul’s description of the life of the Ephesians before their incorporation into Jesus Christ seems overly blunt. You were far off, Paul says, strangers, excluded, separated from God by a wall of enmity. We are not used to this kind of rhetoric.
But Paul’s blunt words are not written to reproach the Ephesians for their past life. They are already converted, and now they do live in the friendship of Christ. Paul’s words are written so that the Ephesians do not take this conversion for granted. This message is perhaps even more relevant to us, who were baptized as children and grew up as Christians.
The friendship with God that we enjoy in Christ is not the condition into which a person is born. It is a gift obtained by Jesus through the cross and shared with us in baptism. No other religion promises friendship with God or the divine sonship shared with us in the sacraments. Not the pagan religions of antiquity, not Buddhism, not Islam.
Christ is unique. His sacrifice, his love, and his friendship must never be taken for granted.
Homily for Thursday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time (Year 2).
(Going through some old files, I came upon this reflection from my days studying philosophy at Loyola University Chicago.)
Today’s gospel is a difficult one to hear, frankly, because Jesus is not very nice. Building off of yesterday’s condemnation of the Pharisees as self-serving, Jesus today accuses them of complicity in the murder of the prophets. On the surface of it, his argument is not even particularly fair. Not only are the opponents he addresses guilty of murder, but they are charged “with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world.” One yearns for the moderation of a good old-fashioned political attack ad.
One is tempted to whisper in Jesus’ ear, “Don’t you know you aren’t going to get anywhere by condemning people.” “You can’t just beat people over the head with the truth.” “All this fire and brimstone really isn’t that pastoral.” I could stand up here and try to spin Jesus’ words into something inoffensive, but they are offensive. In fact we know they are offensive because at the end of Jesus’ speech, the scribes and Pharisees plot to kill him. And you don’t try to kill someone for words that while perhaps a tad exaggerated, really are basically calls just to be nice. No one has ever suffered martyrdom over Chicken Soup for the Soul.
The Miracles of St. Ignatius, Peter Paul Rubens 1617-8
Homily for Friday of the Twenty-seventh week in Ordinary Time (Year 2).
Today’s Gospel passage begins with a question of discernment. Where does the power that Jesus manifests in his actions come from? From God or from Beelzebul? Jesus drives out demons, and his response seems to me like a “rule for discernment” that Jesus suggests in another passage: “Every good tree produces good fruit, and every bad tree produces bad fruit… Thus, by their fruits you will recognize them” (Mt 7:16-20).
Faithfulness to Jesus, lived with integrity, gives us a stability and a peace that allows for growth. Jesus creates a peace in which life can flourish. Even if the circumstances surrounding us are marked by disorder and conflict, we must try to maintain that inner peace which is the sign of the Holy Spirit. The final words of the Gospel, however, warn us not to confuse an empty space with the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is not enough to eliminate demons. We must also invite the Lord Jesus to take up residence in our home.
He is the source of life, and the Gospel also contains the most fundamental question for discernment of all: are we with him or against him? “Whoever does not gather with me scatters,” says the Lord. But whoever is with him will find eternal life.
At the beginning of the summer, I posted about three short trips I took in Europe during the first half of the year that left me encouraged about ways in which the Church here is experiencing renewal. I spent a summer in the USA filled with pastoral activity and reconnecting with friends, so I thought it only fair to point out the many encouraging moments I had in the States as well. With quite a bit of international experience, I have to say that it is striking how much the American Church has going for it — energy and pastoral creativity, lots of committed and generous lay people, big families, sincere seminarians, and a sense of discipleship adapted to the religious pluralism of post-modernity.
I spent a good part of the summer giving retreats, first an 8-day retreat for Jesuits centered on the liturgy. It’s particularly humbling to lead a retreat for my Jesuit brothers, and I’m grateful to all the guys who were on it. Reviews were good, and I’ve already had sign-ups for next year’s retreat (June 30-July 8).
I also preached back-to-back weekend retreat at Cloisters on the Platte outside of Omaha; the days in between gave me time to enjoy the beautiful retreat center grounds in a way I never had time to before. Plus, I got to catch up with friends and an aunt and uncle in Omaha. The conversations one has on those retreats are always moving and inspiring. It’s wonderful to see people putting away their devices for a few days and turning the time over to God…
I made it back to South Dakota, where I was delighted to see that the trees I’ve planted at St. Isaac Jogues parish over the past couple of years are all alive and flourishing — the apple trees already had apples and the oaks had acorns. More digging and planting are planned for next year.
One of the summer’s most exciting events for me turned out to be a panel discussion sponsored by the tremendous Theology on Tap team at St. Wilfrid’s Church in Woonsocket, South Dakota. Woonsocket is, let’s just say, a long drive from wherever you are, so I was expecting a handful of people. Instead, 200 turned out. Woonsocket is a lovely small town, and St. Wilfrid’s overlooks an idyllic little lake. The town is said to produce the best melon in the country — and it didn’t disappoint. The panel’s theme centered on the story of Baby Brian, baptism of desire, and infant loss. Serious stuff, and I was really impressed to see so many people turn out, stick around to chat afterwards, and show such a strong desire to dive deeper into their faith on complicted issues.
Homily for the twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A).
St. Ambrose and the Emperor Theodosius, Peter Paul Reubens 1615-6
One of the most important works of Italian literature is a collection of 100 short stories supposedly told by a group of people from Florence who were locked down in a country house during the Black Plague. They didn’t have Netflix, so they told stories. Some of the stories are really just off-color jokes, but since they’re more than 600 years old, now they’re considered literature. One of those stories deals with a problem that’s at the heart of today’s Gospel.
There were two merchants, one Christian, one Jewish, living in Florence, and the Christian was always trying to convince his Jewish friend to convert. One day, the Jewish merchant announced that he had to go to Rome for business, and his Catholic friend despaired. You see, the fourteenth century was the low point of Church corruption, and he knew that if his Jewish friend went to Rome he would see the pope and the cardinals using the Church to enrich themselves, their relatives, and their illegitimate children. And the Catholic merchant thought, “Now he’ll never become a Christian.”
So he was shocked a month later when his friend returned from Rome a devout Catholic. He tried to ask delicately, “But didn’t you see anything wrong in Rome?” And his newly baptized friend said, “Oh, it’s a swamp. But if that is how the Church is run, and it’s still here after 1300 years, it can only be God who is keeping it going.”
Jesus consigning the keys to St. Peter, G. Battista Cassignola, 1569
Homily for the Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A).
It’s hard to imagine a better Gospel reading with which to end an Ignatian retreat. We find this episode at the middle point of Matthew’s Gospel, and the question that Jesus poses to his disciples is the hinge on which everything else turns: “Who do you say that I am?”
We have heard the episode before, so perhaps we don’t register what a strange question Jesus asks. When I test my students at the end of the semester, I ask them about the content of the course, not about my own identity. But Jesus asks about himself, not his message. Were he any other teacher, such a question would be pure arrogance. But Jesus is not like anyone else, and everything depends upon our recognizing the difference.
Public opinion, as the disciples tell it, seeks to put Jesus into a recognizable category; he is one of the prophets, like Elijah or Jeremiah. Perhaps he is the reincarnation of John the Baptist. But Jesus does not let such answers go, and the disciples themselves have been with him long enough that they are not satisfied with such an answer, either. There is a right and a wrong answer to the question Jesus asks. It is not a matter of opinion. Jesus is not administering a Rorschach test to prompt the disciples to look more deeply into themselves. The question is not what is inside, but who is standing here before you.
Homily for the twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A).
Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well, Annibale Carracci, 1604-5
When I teach my introduction to the sacraments course in Rome, at the end of every sacrament I assign one question and ask my students to write a one-page response. I try come up with unusual questions to keep them on their toes—and to keep myself entertained when I’m grading. This year’s question for the sacrament of marriage was: “Can you marry a chatbot?” Chatbots are essentially AI characters that you can have conversations with; over the past couple of years stories have appeared in the media about people—usually women—becoming emotionally attached to the chatbots they create, to the point where some felt like they had gone through a breakup with a boyfriend when the AI programs they used were discontinued.
There’s not always a right or wrong answer to my questions, but in this case, you will be happy to know that all of my students responded, “No. You cannot marry a chatbot.” And they all passed. There are lots of reasons you can’t marry a chatbot; for one thing, they aren’t actually human, and they don’t have bodies. What a number of my students pointed out, which I found particularly insightful, is that chatbots are designed to give us the answers that we want. An AI program doesn’t have emotions or needs of its own, and it is designed to keep us happy so that we keep using it. This feature is what makes chatbots seem like the perfect boyfriend. The chatbot is programed to always tell you exactly what you want to hear. It never gets impatient. If you wake up at three AM, the chatbot is happy to talk and doesn’t have to go to work in the morning. It feels like the chatbot really understands you because it’s a product of your own design.
My students were right to recognize that conversing with a chatbot is not a real relationship. A relationship means interacting with someone else—someone who is different. Our differences make relationships hard at times, but they are necessary for us to grow. Relationships challenge us to grow because sometimes we don’t get the answer that we want from the other person, and then we have to learn how to respond. This is why marriage is always dynamic, always in progress. In marriage, the fact that men and women are different—physically, emotionally, socially—is what makes the relationship fruitful; the biological difference is necessary for our species to survive.
So why am I bringing up chatbot romance to explain this Sunday’s readings? The reason is because Jesus’ behavior in today’s Gospel story is definitely not what you would expect from a well-programmed chatbot. What Jesus says and does doesn’t quite make sense to anybody. Even for us, reading the Gospel at some distance, his response is jarring because it seems to put a woman seeking help from him in greater difficulty. She comes to him not for anything selfish, but asking for her daughter’s healing. We feel natural sympathy for her, but Jesus, at first, ignores her. An AI boyfriend would never do that.
Homily for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)
Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, Rome
Today’s marvelous Gospel story of Jesus walking across a stormy sea shows us how faith grows from fear to true understanding. The disciples move from a superstitious worldview, imagining that the Lord is a ghost, to true faith, confessing to Jesus, “Truly, you are the Son of God.” But since the same reading came up at daily Mass earlier this week and some of you already heard what I had to say about it, I thought today I would step out onto a different kind of stormy sea: the second reading, taken from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. The reason this particular passage from Romans means walking on turbulent waters is because it deals with St. Paul’s attitude toward his own people, the Jews. It has implications, therefore, for what attitude Christians should take toward the Jewish people today.
I decided to risk stepping out onto such waters this morning because over the past several years we have seen a sharp rise in anti-Semitic rhetoric and an increase in violence directed against Jews. In March, a synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan was attacked and, soon after, the FBI thwarted a plot to firebomb synagogues in New York, Los Angeles, and Scottsdale, Arizona. The situation in Europe is worse, and it should disturb anyone of good sense and good will that in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023—which included murder, rape, and hostage-taking—anti-Semitic rhetoric in the West increased.
Yesterday I wrapped up a retreat for Jesuits about praying with the liturgy in Parma, Ohio. It was the second time I offered the retreat, and I was blessed to have another wonderful group of participants. As I’ve worked with young Jesuits in studies in Rome and encountered others around the world, I’ve sensed a renewed interest in celebrating liturgy well. (I made some brief remarks on the topic at the Jungmann Society Congress a few years ago.)
While working on my retreat conferences this year, I read several of the talks that Pope Leo XIV gave on the subject of liturgy at his Wednesday morning catechesis earlier this summer. The Holy Father has been reflecting on Sacrosanctum Concilium, the document from Vatican II dedicated to the liturgy. As to be expected, the Pope’s reflections are solid, touching on the document’s key strengths. In his first talk, for example, he points out that merely changing the rites was not the Council’s goal; instead, the Council wanted us to appreciate just what liturgy is — an encounter with Jesus.
In drafting this Constitution, the Council Fathers sought not only to undertake a reform of the rites, but to lead the Church to contemplate and deepen that living bond which constitutes and unites her: the mystery of Christ. Indeed, the liturgy touches the very heart of this mystery: it is at once the space, the time and the context in which the Church receives her very life from Christ. For in the liturgy, “the work of our redemption is accomplished” (SC, 2)
Today, the Church in Europe is sometimes portrayed as ready for last rites, and the decline in Church participation, vocations, and the general vibrancy of the faith there since the mid-1960s is undeniable. But, if the history of Christianity on the continent has taught us anything, it is that the Church can survive ups and downs because she is endowed with a supernatural capacity for renewal.
My own decade living in Europe has taught me that, in times like ours, we need to be attuned to the danger of historical determinism and cultural conformity. We must resist the temptation to think that history moves in an inevitable direction so we might as well just go along with the times. Such an attitude is a recipe for managed decline and eventual extinction.
In contrast, as I’ve noted in previous posts on the Church in Scandinavia (reflecting on my trip to Sweden and and the fine work of Norway’s Bishop Erik Varden), times such as ours present unexpected opportunities if we know where to look and are bold and unapologetic enough to seize them.
