Sow Your Minutes on Rich Soil

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 16, 2023 — Year A
Readings: Is 55:10-11 / Ps 65 / Rom 8:18-23 / Mt 13:1-23
by Rev. Nixon Negparanon, Pastor

A story is told of a young man named Eric, who was giving testimony regarding the turnaround in his life.  Two years before, he confessed, he had no appetite for the Word of God.  On Sundays he would shop around the neighborhood churches for the priest that gave the shortest homilies.  So, his idea of a good church service was one that took as little time as possible; the shorter the better.  After the big change in his life, he could sit down and listen to the preaching of God’s word without thinking about the time.

Our disposition for the Word of God is a good indication of our relationship with the Lord.  Today’s gospel is an opportunity to reveal our attitude to the Word of God.

Often, as we listen to the readings each weekend, we may have the feeling that they don’t apply to our lives.  Today’s gospel could be one of those instances.  Jesus talks about sowing seeds, but what do we know about seeds?  Perhaps if you mention supermarkets, restaurants, or McDonald’s, we might have paid attention to it.  Most of us don’t scatter seeds to obtain our food, and we probably don’t know much about the growth process of most of the crops from which we get our daily sustenance.  But if we reflect upon it, is there anything else that we sow, that we spread, that does have an effect upon our lives?

What about our time?  Yes, we do scatter the minutes of our day just in the way that a farmer would scatter seed in the field.  We scatter 60 seconds each minute, and 60 minutes each hour, for about 16 hours each day.  That’s about 57,000 seconds that we scatter throughout our daily routine.  And that’s a lot of seeds.

So how does this apply to the words that Jesus spoke to His followers?  He said that if the farmer scatters his seeds in certain ways, he will not create a bountiful harvest.  His message to each one of us today is the same.

Jesus mentioned the seeds sown on the ground that is so hard that nothing can take root.  That is like sowing grass seed on our driveway – nothing will grow.  If we are sowing minutes each day on hard ground, pursuing money, power, or influence, we are making the same mistake the farmer made.   If we have no time for prayer, no time for our families, no time for helping others, our minutes will not bear fruit.  We will not store up an abundance of grace or of charity.

We, too, can spread our minutes on rocky ground.  We can spend hours at the office or on the golf course.  We can attend luncheons or bridge parties, and, like the seed that fell on rocky ground, we will have no roots.  We will not have time to attend Mass during the week, or will be forced to pray the rosary while driving our cars.  So, therefore, our minutes will not bear fruit.

Jesus said, “Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew and choked it.”  If anyone sows their seed in the thorns of drugs, alcohol, and sins against the Sixth Commandment, Jesus warns us that our lives will be choked out.  Some here are probably familiar with friends who sowed their seeds among the thorns and did not find the fulfillment of a rich harvest, but the agony of tragedy.  Think of them as you listen to the words of Jesus this morning.  There is a better way.

Is Jesus saying we shouldn’t work hard in order to support our families?  Or that we should never relax and enjoy ourselves, or engage in wholesome entertainment with our friends?  Not at all.

Jesus died so that we could be happy, so that our lives could be full, and so that we could have an eternal future with Him.  However, for that to happen we must make a decision.  We must recognize that He’s been talking about seed, but He’s talking about how we spend our minutes:  whether or not we are making the same mistake the farmer made.

Going back to Eric’s story, prior to his conversion…  Eric did not relish the preaching of the Word of God.  Many young people today, and many who are not so young, are in a similar situation.  The responsibility for this attitude toward God’s Word could be shared between those who communicate it and those who receive the message.

Some preachers often take pride in saying it just as it is.  The fact that Jesus uses stories and parables to teach tells us that it is not enough to say it just as it is.  How the Word is communicated is important, but the parable focuses more on how it is received.  The parable today is a reminder that the Kingdom of Heaven is a mystery.  It is something that we cannot fully understand with our minds, but we can understand it with our hearts if we are willing to believe and obey the Word of God.

Often, we read the Gospels and dismiss them as ancient history.  In a way they are, because in the world in which we live we must be much more vigilant than those who lived in Jesus’ time.  Look around us, and consider the challenges we face.  Turn on the television or attend movies, and you will see graphic depictions of people living lives that were condemned by all in the time of Jesus.

In order to counteract the immoral society, Jesus is telling us to sow our minutes on the rich soil.  Sow them in such a way that we can find happiness and fulfillment.  But the question is:  Where is the rich soil?  It is right here; here in this church this day.  We are all spreading our seeds, our minutes, in an atmosphere that allows us to grow, not in a worldly fashion, but in a way that ensures us of real life, a life of fulfillment in Jesus’ word.

What is real happiness?  We find it in being charitable, prayerful, loving our children, loving and helping our parents.  We find real happiness in honesty, chastity, sobriety, and freedom from drugs.  We find happiness in the words of Jesus, when He said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments,” or “Love one another as I love you.”

Jesus has promised that we will reap a huge harvest by following His teaching.  By following His commandments, by loving others as we love ourselves, by using our minutes to help those less fortunate, by spending time each day in prayer, and by realizing that His words guide us to true happiness, we can reap the harvest He has promised.  Jesus has promised all this to us:  we can have everything by spending our minutes wisely, both in His service and in following His commandments.  He points the way to true happiness.

More Than a Contender

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 9, 2023 — Year A
Readings: Zec 9:9-10 / Ps 145 / Rom 8:9, 11-13 / Mt 11:25-30
by Rev. Mr. Barry Welch, Guest Homilist

“You was my brother, Charley. You should have looked out for me just a little bit. You don’t understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody. Instead of a bum.” Anybody recognize that? It’s Marlon Brando, the actor, and he’s portraying Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront, a movie from 1954. If you haven’t seen that film, why not?

Terry is striving to be somebody. And his route is boxing. Fighting. Winning. His goals: money, fame, respect, accolades, honor. Maybe he could have been a contender. Maybe he could have gotten that title fight. But we know that he put his faith in these goals, the money, the fame, accolades. And he put his faith in those people wrapped up in that world, including his brother Charley.

I don’t want to spoil the movie for you, if by some miracle you haven’t seen it. But his faith in these goals? Well, they let him down. The enticements. The allure. They became false burdens on his soul. And their contradictions labored his moral sense. He hitched himself to glory, and the weight took him down.

You’ll have to watch or rewatch it to learn of Terry’s redemption, but for now, I could have been somebody. I want to be somebody. Deacon Barry, I want to be somebody. All of us want to be somebody. It’s in our nature. And so we strive and we work. And we work and we push, and we push and we learn, and we learn more, then we strive again. Progress, progress, progress. If we’re not doing it, if we’re not progressing, we’re going backward.

And for what? The end game is money. The recognition. To reach the top or the pinnacle. To get all the accolades, the attaboys. That’s what our culture wants. Our culture affirms these as our primary goals. Our culture wants us to become a contender, at the very least. And our stories are how we are becoming somebody or how we became somebody.

But I’m telling you now, today, right here in this homily: You are somebody. You’re absolutely somebody. You are somebody because Jesus loves you, and He wants you to be with Him. He knew you before you were stitched in your mother’s womb. In last week’s gospel, we heard that even all the hairs on your head are counted. Do not be afraid.

You and I, we have a terribly difficult time realizing just how “somebody” we are to Jesus. And even at times when we realize it, we forget it. And we hitch ourselves right back onto Charley and the glory and the things of this world in our rise to be a contender. And that carries a heavy, heavy burden. In last week’s gospel, we also heard: Whoever does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. Whoever does not take up his cross.

That sounds hard. I want to say, Oh Jesus, please take me, but without a cross. Give me a mission or project. A goal, something I can strive and push and push and learn and strive again to achieve. But not a cross. That sounds like a burden.

But this week in the gospel we hear: The burden is light. His yoke – His cross – is light. That is not a burden. My burden is light. What a relief. My burden is light. How liberating is that? We don’t need to reach; we don’t need to strive to become somebody. Really, it’s the closer we get to nobody, the more we become who we’re truly meant to be: this somebody that Jesus knows and loves and wants to be with. When we stop trying so hard to become somebody, that’s when we become who we truly are.

Letting go of pride. Letting go of ego. Let go of the striving and make room. Create some space for Jesus to enter and pick up the weight with His yoke and remove the burden.

Who is Jesus talking to? Who’s this message for? He says we have hidden these things from the wise and the learned and yet revealed them to the little ones. Of course, His message is for every human who ever existed. Everyone. But we are so full of ourselves. So caught up in this worldly striving for power and honors, the message is hidden, it’s out of reach. We’re like know-it-alls, not open to the spiritual and mystical and the unseen.

But the little ones, the little ones are his disciples, those that have chosen to follow Jesus, those that are childlike. Seeking wonder and open to the amazing. Low and humble in their hearts. Let go. Surrender to His will and make ourselves low. Jesus did it. God on Earth did it. The creator of everything became the servant to everyone. And He’s our example. He said meek and humble of heart. Die to self, become nobody. Strive to become nobody, and as we approach “nobody,” we gain everything. And recognize deeply that we are somebody.

The paradox, let go and let God. Let go and let God. Then life becomes a miracle. Everything, every day, every person becomes a miracle. My burden is light. I am the light of the world. Light from Light, true God from true God. Take heart, dear friends, for you are somebody. When you empty room for Jesus and you are more than a contender, so much more than a contender, for the victory is already won by Him who conquered death.

Faith in Him, faith in Jesus Christ. That is the victory. That is the victory that overcomes the burden and labors of the world. Amen.

Raise the Bar

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
February 12, 2023 — Year A
Readings: Sir 15:15-20 / Ps 119 / 1 Cor 2:6-10 / Mt 5:17-37
by Rev. Mr. Barry Welch, Guest Homilist

I was at lunch several years ago with a very kind priest, and we got to talking about a young man we knew who started missing Mass and avoiding church and the sacraments and prayer life. In fact, he was openly disagreeing with many of the Church’s teachings. I said, “Father, even so, he’s a good guy; he’s nice and thoughtful, kind and generous,” and as I was saying that, the priest started getting visibly agitated. And pretty strongly he said, “Deacon, I’m tired of hearing ‘He’s a good guy, or a good boy, or a good girl.’ We’re not called to be good; we’re called to be holy.”

So, I had to kind of think and take it back a little bit; one, it was uncharacteristic of his demeanor, but two, it made me think quite a bit about it. And in a way, in today’s gospel, Jesus is saying something similar.

Does it work for me to say, “I’m ok, I’m a good guy, I haven’t killed anyone.” That’s our goal? That’s our standard? That’s the bar that we set for ourselves in our moral and spiritual lives? Just to simply avoid the major obvious sins, and I’m ok, I didn’t kill anyone, haven’t cheated on my wife, haven’t bad mouthed God. I haven’t lied, at least no big ones, just little white ones.

No, brothers and sisters, that’s not the goal. Jesus says today, “I have come.” That’s pretty important, the Son of God has said, “I have come.” What’s going to follow? I have come to fulfill the law and the prophets. I have come to fulfill, to extend, to complete, to make perfect. I have come. I have come. He’s come to call us to something higher, something better, something more noble, something heaven-like.

He shows us that worldly dominance passes the closer we get to God, and it’s replaced with humility, and love, and mercy. He sets the bar higher and calls us, not only to recognize that bar, especially the thou-shalt-not bars, but to look the other way for our goal: to look the other way from that bar, and to look inside for the ideals, inside of us where He planted His Holy Spirit at our baptism.

Do I look at that boundary, that thou-shalt-not-kill, that murder boundary, and just see how close I can get to it in my life without crossing over it into moral badness, if you will? I stay safe on this side: I really want to hurt the guy, but I’m not stepping over the line.

Or do I hold in my heart the love of my neighbor, the love of the other, and of their God-given true dignity? Do I work to remove my anger, or my resentment, or my jealousy, and replace it with love? Love, wishing the good of the other, wishing for that person to join me in the kingdom?

The ideal is a high bar and it’s not defined by a list of borders, a list of boundaries, a list of what’s morally good and what morally isn’t. It’s not contained in two lists: Here are the do’s and here are the don’ts. The bar is a change in our hearts; it’s a modification of the direction of our lives and our love.

What must I do to follow Jesus, to be a good Christian, to become holy? Every now and again in my spiritual life I ask myself that question, and I imagine some of you have asked it as well; what am I supposed to do to be a good Christian? And oftentimes when I’m talking with folks in RCIA who are considering coming into the Church, they have that same general question: What do I do to be a good Christian, and follower of Jesus?

And in moments of clarity, very rare moments of clarity, I can give them an answer: If you want to be a good Christian, doing what Jesus asks is a good start. Pope Francis had a similar answer, and he didn’t ask me for any help when he came up with it. He explains, “So if anyone asks what one must do to be a good Christian, the answer is clear: We have to do, each in our own way, what Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount.”

We’re in the third out of four weeks of going through the Sermon on the Mount during this ordinary time. Two weeks ago, we did the Beatitudes: “Blessed are they…” Last week we were salt and light. We’re still salt and light this week too. Next week we have another reading from the Sermon on the Mount.

So Pope Francis says, “Just do what Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount.” That’s pretty easy, isn’t it? Pretty simple? Well, it isn’t quite so easy when we probably have to hear the message over and over. Let’s read about it, let’s pray over it, let’s meditate over the gospel of Matthew, chapters five through seven. Wash, rinse, repeat. Read it again.

Let it sink into our hearts, so they’re pointing the opposite directions of those boundaries, those borders, the “I didn’t kill anybody.” Because the message is love centered on Christ, and it is directed toward others, wishing, praying for the good of the other. It’s our relationship in the world. It’s salt and light, and it’s mercy, forgiveness and mercy.

Now remember, mercy doesn’t mean leniency. It doesn’t mean morally compromising. It doesn’t mean lowering the bar. When Jesus is giving His teaching today, you don’t see Him lowering the bar, He’s extending the bar into the heart. He’s not appeasing the social norms or the civil norms or the governmental norms of his day, He’s not doing it then, He’s not doing it today, because the ideal is high and we as Christians are bound to Him and our goal is heaven, our goal is to be a saint. That’s my goal, I pray that it’s your goal as well. It’s a very high ideal.

Mercy is there, mercy is available, sure, when we fall short of the ideal, when we miss the mark, which is another way to say when we sin. But Jesus and His Church don’t lower the bar, because it’s that important. Instead, we are called to extend His love, and extend His mercy, to live a moral life. We can’t do that alone; we cannot do it by ourselves; we need help.

And we get help, praise God we get help, because we’re washed of our sin and filled with light at our baptism, the light of Christ at our baptism. So that Jesus accompanies us and assists us because he becomes our moral compass and He is our only goal, He is our moral bar, and our earthly wish is to carry Him always in our hearts, because we don’t want to just be a good guy or a good girl or a good woman or a good boy. We don’t want to be just a good guy, but we want to be saints.

At the beginning of every mass, we have this opening prayer, when Father says “let us pray” after the Gloria. It’s called the “Collect.” That’s when we’re all collecting together and beginning the Mass, and that prayer is a summary of the purpose of today’s Mass. I want to repeat it because I think it’s beautiful: “O God who teach us that You abide in hearts that are just and true, grant that we may be so fashioned by Your grace as to become a dwelling pleasing to You.” Isn’t that beautiful? Praise God and amen.

True Happiness

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
January 29, 2023 — Year A
Readings: Zep 2:3; 3:12-13 / Ps 146 / 1 Cor 1:26-31 / Mt 5:1-12a
by Rev. Nixon Negparanon, Pastor

A newspaper in England once asked this question of its readers: Who are the happiest people on earth?  The four prize-winning answers were: a little child building sandcastles; a craftsman or artist with a job well done; a mother bathing her baby after a busy day; and a doctor who has finished a difficult and dangerous operation to save a human life.

The editors of the newspaper were surprised to find that virtually no one submitted kings, emperors, millionaires, or others of wealth and rank as the happiest people on earth.  Even W. Béran Wolfe, a psychiatrist and author, said, “If you observe a really happy man, and you find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert, he will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under a radiator.   He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself.  He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living twenty-four crowded hours of the day.”

In our gospel today according to St. Matthew, Jesus is talking about this popular heavenly constitution – the Beatitudes.  In Greek, the word beatitude is makarios, which means happiness.  So the meaning of the word “blessed,” as Jesus told it, is that this is happiness.  All that Jesus wants is for us to be happy, not according to the understand of the world of what happiness is all about, but according to what God meant by this word.

“Happiness is that which all men seek,” so says the great philosopher Aristotle.  Aristotle also observed that everything people do twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, is what they believe will bring them happiness in one form or another.  But the problem is that what people think will bring them happiness does not, in fact, always bring them true and lasting happiness.

Think of the drunkard who believes that happiness is found in a beer bottle – one bottle too much and he is driving home, runs the red light, hits a car, and wakes up the following morning in a hospital with plaster and stitches all over his body.  Then it begins to dawn on him that the happiness promised by alcohol may be too short lived.

Or take the man who frequents the casinos to deal with excitement – by the end of the month he finds that his account is in the red, and that he can no longer pay his mortgage.  Creditors go after him until he loses his house and his car.  Then it dawns on him that the happiness promised by the casino is fake.

So, Aristotle says that the ethical person is the person who knows and does what can truly bring them not just excitement or pleasure, but true and lasting happiness.

Another word for true and lasting happiness is blessedness, or beatitude.  In today’s gospel, Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, shows that He wants His followers to have true and lasting happiness – the happiness that the world and everything in it cannot give.  This is the state of blessedness that Jesus calls being in the Kingdom of God or being in the Kingdom of Heaven.

The beatitudes that we have in today’s gospel constitute a road map for anyone who seeks to obtain the happiness of the Kingdom.  So why does Jesus deem it necessary to establish this guidepost to the Kingdom from the very first teaching that he gives the disciples?  It is because of the importance of this teaching.  Everyone seeks happiness, but often we look for it in all the wrong places.

Ask people around you what makes them happy and compare the answers you get with the answers Jesus gave.  We see that the values prescribed by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount are in fact countercultural.  We cannot accept these teachings of Jesus and at the same time accept all the values of the society in which we live.

Of course, Jesus does not demand that we abandon the world, but He does demand that we put God first in our lives, because only God can guarantee the true happiness and peace that our hearts long for.  Nothing in the world can give this peace, and nothing in the world can take it away.  Our God wills us to be happy.

It is interesting to note that the first miracle of Jesus happened in the wedding party at Cana, where everyone was enjoying the occasion, the wine, and the food.  He chose such an occasion of joy to make His first miracle in order to show that He was a happy person who could love and enjoy Himself.  He wanted to show that each of us has a right to happiness.

Happiness is not wrong or a sin.  Since joy is one of the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit, a happy person does not fall into sin very easily.  Satan stays away from happy and joyful people; they are too hard to tempt.

The eight beatitudes do not describe eight different people such that we need to ask which of the eight suits us personally.  No, they are eight different snapshots taken from different angles of the same godly person.  The question for us today, therefore, is this – do we live our lives following the values of the world as a way of obtaining happiness or do we live by the teachings of Jesus?

If we live by the teachings of Jesus, then we may rejoice and be glad, for the reward in Heaven is great.

Our Mother

The Octave Day of Christmas
Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God
January 1, 2023 — Year A
Readings: Nm 6:22-27 / Ps 67 / Gal 4:4-7 / Lk 2:16-21
by Rev. Nixon Negparanon, Pastor

During the Christmas season, the image of the Most Holy Virgin Mary with her child comes readily to mind.  We see this image in all Nativity things, right in front of us, and in many other places, on many Christmas cards or postcards that we receive from our families or friends.  It should also be in our hearts.

We have come together here today as a family of God on this first day of the New Year.  We celebrate the maternity of Mary, the event around which this feast is celebrated.  As we start the New Year, we celebrate the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, thus reminding us of our other mother:  of course, Mother Mary.

When a child is in danger, it will instinctively call out, “Mom” or “Mama.”  That’s because the essence of being a mother is care, love, help, support, and concern for her children.  As a Jewish proverb puts it succinctly, “God cannot be everywhere, so he created mothers.”

As we commemorate this solemn feast, the Church has for us these brief reminders.  In the year 431 AD, the Council of Ephesus, an ecumenical council of bishops of the Catholic Church, settled whether Mary was to be called “Mother of Christ” – Christotokos, implying Jesus is merely human, or “Mother of God” – Theotokos.  The Council decided on the title Theotokos, Mother of God, for Mary.  The Council said that Mary is rightfully the Mother of God, therefore affirming the divinity of Christ.

In the Bible, the very first person to refer to Mary as the Mother of God is her own cousin, Elizabeth, who said in a loud voice, “Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”  There is nothing wrong with invoking Mary with the title “Mother of God.”

So what do we mean when we invoke Mary as the Mother of God?  When we say Mary is the Mother of God, we do not mean that from all eternity, our God took His Godship from Mary, or that Mary is the source of the Godship of Jesus.  As the Catholic Church teaches us, Jesus Christ was eternally begotten by God, Light from Light, True God from True God, eternally begotten by the Father.  It means that Mary did not give Jesus Christ His Godship; Mary only gave birth to the humanity of Jesus Christ.

However, right from the moment of conception, the baby in the womb of Mary was truly God and truly man at the same time.  Therefore, the baby born from the womb of Mary is God and man.  Mary gave birth to God and man.  When we say Mary is the Mother of God, it does not mean that she gave Godship to Jesus; it only means that Jesus was God right from her womb.

Saint Thomas added to this by asking, “Do mothers beget bodies or persons?”  As one priest asked, “Do our mothers merely give birth to our bodies, or to ourselves as persons?”  As people, of course.  Thus, Mary conceived in her womb the Son of God, not just His human nature, but His divine nature as well.

If we look at the attitude of the mother, it is very beautiful.  At the start, when she still bears the child in her womb, she must take care of herself, in order that the child is not in danger.  She can’t sleep at night, because she watches the child sleep.  As the child goes to school, she’s the one preparing the provisions.

But on the other hand, the womb of the mother becomes a battlefield or war zone, the worst enemy of the unborn, defenseless child.  The enemies of the unborn child are many:  abortion, artificial birth control, cigarette smoking, drinking hard liquor, and many more.  That is why the child, while still in the womb of the mother, experiences rejection, insecurity, human rights violations, and lack of love from the parents.  This is not so of Mary, who follows God’s will to be the mother of Jesus, even though she is in danger of being punished through stoning.

There was a teacher who had just given her primary grade class a lesson on magnets.  In the follow-up test, one question read My name starts with M, has six letters and I pick up things.  What am I?  She was surprised to find half of the class answered the question with the word mother.  Of course, the answer was supposed to be magnet.

People especially need their mothers in times of need, of uncertainty, or insecurity.  We need our mothers to pick us up.  Perhaps even more so for those of us who are already old, not necessarily physically, but emotionally and spiritually.

So as we begin another year, with all the uncertainties that it may bring us, the Church is telling us that we need our Blessed Mother Mary.  May we all be like Mary with our total trust and faith in the Lord.

Let us not put our hopes in someone or something that may only give us false and ephemeral hope in the end.  Instead, we place our entire lives in the loving and caring presence of our God who is always there for us.  He is Emmanuel, “God with us.”  With Mary, we pray that the Lord will bless us this new year, and all the days of our lives.

Waiting on, Waiting for

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 17, 2022 — Year C
Readings: Gn 18:1-10a / Ps 15 / Col 1:24-28 / Lk 10:38-42
by Rev. Nixon Negparanon, Pastor

There is a story about three prisoners on death row, who were asked for their last wish.  The first one wished for pizza.  It was given to him, and then he was executed.  The second one asked for a steak.  It was given to him, and then he was executed.  The third one asked for cherries.  When the guard told him that cherries were not yet in season, he replied, “Well, that’s all right, I can wait.”

In today’s gospel, Jesus reminds us about the value of waiting, and the ways of waiting.  Martha was the one waiting on the Lord, while Mary was the one who waited and listened at the Lord’s feet.  Martha was busy and anxious serving the Lord, while Mary was still and calm, listening to the Lord. And in the end, Jesus tells us that Mary has chosen the better part.  

There are a Martha and a Mary in each one of us.  In prayer, may we be given the wisdom to know who we really are and what we should be, as we follow and serve the Lord.  Mary sat beside the Lord at His feet, listening to Him speak.  Martha, burdened with much serving, came to Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?” 

The gospel also introduces us to two women:  Martha, the perfect host, and Mary, the perfect disciple.  They are both eager to serve Jesus, but they go about it in different ways.  

Martha is the perfect host.  She prepares the house for Jesus and His disciples.  She cooks the food and serves everyone because she thinks they are tired and hungry.  She has no idea that Jesus comes, not to be served, but to serve. 

That is why Martha is so upset, so preoccupied with preparing nice food.  She becomes anxious and even snaps at Jesus for allowing Mary not to help her in the household chores.  But Jesus gently rebukes her.  “Martha, Martha, you fret and worry about so many things, but just one thing is needed.  Mary has chosen the best portion.”  Mary listens to Him, learns from Him, experiences His presence, and occupies a place that only men should have – sitting at the foot of her master – in order to learn and be taught. 

Actually, Brothers and Sisters, we also experience this.  When we invite someone to our house, after we greet them and welcome them, sometimes we leave them alone for some time while we continue to prepare their food.  For example, we may give them photo albums to look at, or give them magazines to read, or the remote control for them to watch television.  Like Jesus, our visitors didn’t come for a free meal; they came to be with friends.  They came to be with us. 

On the other hand, Mary is the perfect disciple.  She sits beside the Lord at His feet, listening to His instructions and teachings.  She seems to know instinctively that there is need for only one thing:  to listen to the good news that Jesus brings. 

This might be the reason that God created us with two eyes and two ears, but only one tongue.  He wants us to speak less, but see and listen more, especially in our hearts.  God cannot speak to a noisy heart.  Second, the heart must be obedient and submissive.  God cannot speak to a heart that denies, rationalizes, or postpones.  Third, the heart must be open, so that all the deepest concerns and chambers can be reached and cleaned.  In the same way, God cannot clean and heal a heart that is closed tight. 

It does not mean that Jesus did not appreciate Martha’s hospitality, but He chided her for being so anxious and upset about many things.  She forgot a very important element in her relationship with Jesus.  That is, to allow time to listen to a friend, a beloved, and most of all, to her Lord and Savior. 

Brothers and Sisters, we can discern from the action and reaction of Martha and Mary in serving the Lord their different forms of spirituality.  With Martha, we have an active form of spirituality, while for Mary we have the contemplative spirituality.  It is a combination of prayer and action and reflection which we need in our lives as Christians.  Action and contemplation are not viewed as opposing forms, but complementary. 

We are drawn to the danger of too much activity; we work and work as if there is no tomorrow.  We are so involved in our apostolic activity, outreach programs, and looking for money, but we miss giving attention to enlivening our relationship with God, family, and friends, and listening to them. 

If we have given so much time to work, we must also in the same manner, have time for prayer, meditation, reading scripture, and the Eucharist.  All of us are a bit of Martha and Mary.  We are both body and soul, and we must keep both in balance.   We must give each of them its due.  Jesus does not need people who work for Him; He needs people who do His work.

Lastly, let us pray that the Lord may teach us the value of being prayerful, hopeful, and joyful in waiting. 

A New Day, a New Life

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
June 26, 2022 – Year C
Readings: 1 Kgs 19:16b, 19-21 / Ps 16 / Gal 5:1, 13-18 / Lk 9:51-62
by Rev. Jay Biber, Guest Celebrant

This was a week like no other, with the big elephant in the little living room: major cultural shifts.  And to many of us, what came down from the courts is not necessarily friendly.

There were three decisions that came down from the high court.  The first one was about the second amendment. The second sort of gets blocked out, about faith in education.  It was a case brought from the state of Maine, in which the county agreed to pay for public or private schools, as long as there was no religion involved.   Parents challenged the decision that no religion could be involved.  The court’s ruling stated that as long as a full education was offered, public funding could be used regardless.  So, we’ve all learned that it’s very important for Catholic parents to keep a close eye on education.

The third one on Friday has to do with the whole culture of life.  I think of all of your prayers that have been going up for these forty-nine years since January of 1973, for an end to abortion and to respect the dignity of every human being from moment of conception to moment of natural death.  That’s the first right, after which all other rights follow.

The Supreme Court decision does not mean an end to abortion.  It was more of a judicial thing that says we took a case forty-nine years ago that was not settled law.  In fact, it overturned state law for most of the states in the country and almost guaranteed an ongoing controversy.  And so it returns to the states, for those of us who consciously wish to establish that culture of life in which every life is welcomed.

When I visit the nursing home and see the person whom I once knew in the prime of life, ranting and incontinent – no, you’re not a vegetable!  You’re never a vegetable; you’re a human all the way to the end of your natural life.  We don’t interfere with that.  And you are human from the moment of your conception.

So, it’s up to us going forward, because in Virginia nothing has changed between Thursday and Saturday.  To work for that right to life is still what lies before us.  It has just been brought back to the state level now.  The feeling was that the judiciary had been too activist – they had taken too active a role in what should have been up to the people at the polls to decide, not the unelected judge, so it wasn’t a constitutional issue.

I have the sense that you are probably getting hammered by those who know you are Catholic, because not everybody out there is friendly to what we stand for.  Like in the early Church, in some ways we stand alone.  I hope to give you a couple of things that you can say, because I don’t want to see you unequipped or defenseless.  I want to see you with some words that you can believe in.

Long ago, as early Christians, we separated ourselves, often at the cost of life and limb, from the Roman Empire, and it was remarked upon by commentators and historians, that all these Christians don’t want to abort their children and they don’t expose their children.

What was common under the Roman Empire was that children who weren’t wanted were put out where the animals were, or in the forest, or on the roof overnight.  Of course, many of them didn’t survive.  That was called exposing, and if they survived, the family would often take them back.  Christians didn’t do that.

And I suspect that it was because we were taken from all walks of society, and we recognized that since Christ came for all, and since all were made in the image and likeness of God, and that since Christ had taken on flesh, that means that I have to treat their lives with enormous respect.

I always love first confessions.  You know when the kids come in, and some of them have very keen consciences, and some not so much.  But I always remind them that God loves you and that you are not here by accident.  You’re not some cosmic waste; you’re here for a reason (although they may not know it yet), but you’re not here by accident.  And so, it opens us up early on, hopefully.  From the beginning we stood apart, regardless of how the empire went, and regardless of how the empire goes now.

This is in the future and I don’t have a crystal ball for you.  Whatever happens, we’ll stay the same.  Now we think it’s a great way to live.  It is profoundly liberal, because it says there’s room for you.  We don’t know how we’re going to put that extra plate at the table, but there’s room for you.  That’s the best of the word “liberal” – an openness to the unexpected, an openness to what God’s doing that I may not be completely in touch with.

So, not only do I go back to the beginnings of things, I go back to when my own life began, which wasn’t the day that I appeared to the world in August of 1947.  I’m guessing it was around Thanksgiving time the year before when my life first began inside my mom.  She didn’t know I was there.  Dad didn’t know; I guess God was the only one who knew.  But what I know now that I didn’t know then is that even at that point, I was a person.  I had a right to life.  I was a human being.  And now we know scientifically that I even had my own DNA.  My mother was the one who carried me, but I wasn’t her, I wasn’t a part of her in that sense.  I was dependent on her, but I was not her; I was somebody different.  And that’s what we keep saying – the baby is somebody different, and the baby deserves that protection.  We speak of the baby because maybe our first experience of faith was to think of a baby, because babies are voiceless.

A number of different numbers come to mind as I reflect back.  The number 49.  The number 43.  The number 95.  Forty-nine years ago, when I had just quit the seminary, I had been in for ten years – high school, college in Rhode Island, where I am from, and then over to Belgium for my graduate work for three years.  Times were sort of wild in 1972; it was a crazy, crazy time.  I said to myself that I had too many reservations, so I left the seminary, stayed in Europe after being in Belgium for three years where it was always cloudy and gray.  I needed to clear out the cobwebs, so I hitchhiked down to the south of Spain and worked there for six months, got some sun, and then hitchhiked up to Switzerland where I waited on tables in the Alps and was a ski bum for six months before coming back to the states.

It was during that time that the Roe ruling came down.  Of course, it was not on my radar, so I knew nothing about it.  I only heard about it later on, and life has a way of coming full circle. After a business career I was drawn back to the priesthood, and I moved from Boston down to Virginia and was ordained here.  There I became involved in the Pro-Life movement, because once I began to think about it, I said, “This can’t be.”

And on a day like today, I think of those in parishes throughout the world who are praying.  I think of all those Marches for Life rarely covered by the news media and the longest peaceful protest in history.  All those people who said, “This ain’t right.”  In a culture that doesn’t have an attention span of 49 seconds, this is 49 years and that March for Life becomes like a great family reunion every year.  It’s sort of like Woodstock without the dope – it’s the same average age as Woodstock was.  There’s a sense of ‘we need to be here.’  And of course, now that is reversed and sent back.  I think of all the people who have gone before us during those forty-nine years and those whose prayers, in this respect, have been answered.

Think of the number 43.  There was no long history, no constitutional right to abortion.  It was a very activist decision because the laws of 43 states were changed by this, overnight.  And that was hard to swallow.  So, this time around, the court says it is not constitutional – it must be taken back to the people.

I think of the number 95, for it was 95 years ago, not far from here in Amherst and Charlottesville – that the Supreme Court case was Buck v. Bell, dealing with involuntary sterilization of imbeciles, feebleminded, and people who were ‘less.’  It was the eugenics movement.  It eventually got exported to the Third Reich.  The eugenics movement – some lives are worth more than others – who would breed and who wouldn’t.  And that Supreme Court, perhaps the most illustrious of all time, came down to permit it.

All the way up to the 60s, thousands were victims of involuntary sterilization, and that Supreme Court consisted of luminaries.  Former President Taft was on it, and perhaps the most well-known of all Supreme Court justices, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis.  This is a list of the greats, and they came out 8 to 1 in favor of eugenics.  Now it had to get overturned and was overturned in the 1940s, when we saw what it wrought.  But the one dissenter, which sort of struck me, was the one Catholic justice.  He was raised not in the lap of luxury, not with a silver spoon, but in a log cabin in Minnesota with ten other kids in the family.  Somehow, he knew.

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and I feel very inadequate.  The first time around we didn’t have the words; we didn’t know what to say.  Perhaps when you get confronted, maybe we can begin to get the words now.  What I always ask is if a baby is a baby is a baby, and I was who I was before my mom knew I was there.  Science tells me that.  I wasn’t part of Mom in that sense.  I was who I was.  The other thing I say is when you look at much of this back and forth is that nobody talks about Baby.  And I simply say, “Who speaks for Baby?”  You’d expect Mom to be the one to speak for Baby, but if not, we will.  Keep Baby at the center of the conversation.

Listening to today’s gospel, I would say put this on my tombstone.  Where he says to Jesus, I will follow you wherever you go.  And Jesus says, “Foxes have dens and the birds of the air have their nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest His head.”  That to me, is the great romance of the priesthood, or trying to follow Christ, I think for all of us.  To eventually let go of all the little props and little securities that I need, and to turn myself over completely to Him.  Where the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head, there is no security but Him.

This is a chance for us to move forth, to say no, we think a culture of life is a great thing, and yes, we may have to revise the whole sexual revolution.  We may have to revisit that and say that it was not such a great idea.  Look at a lot of the results.  Now we may have to go back and do a lot of work, but the battle is always Christ’s, and so may we be graced with all the fruits of the spirit in going forth.