Note that this is the third in a series of three homilies focused on the Letter to the Ephesians.
17TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)
1. Two Sundays ago, last Sunday, today and for the next three weekends, the second reading at the Liturgy is taken from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. Such liturgical prominence underscores the Letter’s significance.
2. The Letter begins: Blessed be God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing. God has chosen us in Christ before the world began for holiness of life. This truth tells us – I suggest – that you and I are marked in the course of our lives this side of the grave for a variety of vocational callings – marriage, religious life, medicine, law, priesthood, business and finance, technology and skilled labor. However, over and above these callings and transcending them all, we all share the overriding, all-important vocation which is the call to holiness of life. This is what the Letter to the Ephesians is all about.
3. As I have already stated, because God wills to communicate with us here on earth, he has no choice but to speak our language. Thus we can say – God’s word, in human words, expressed in literary form in the Sacred Scriptures, has a two-fold context: first, a particular writer, under the grace of the Holy Spirit, writes for a particular group of disciples at a particular time in the later decades of the first century Church. That very teaching, always under the grace of the Holy Spirit, is now addressed, especially in and through the Liturgy, to us who follow Christ here and now as we gather in prayer here in Wellesley Hills. What the author of the Letter to the Ephesians once wrote to the Ephesians is now addressed to you and me, under the Holy Spirit, at this very Liturgy. And what has Paul written? He tells us – “We are what God has made us to be, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared for us beforehand to be our way of life.” Thus, the Ephesians yesterday and we ourselves today are admonished to walk always worthy of the crucified Christ.
4. Our excerpt today from the Letter to the Ephesians stresses the unity of the Church, a unity which is a gift from the Holy Spirit and a challenge for all of us who are members of Christ’s body which is the Church. Ephesians is that great letter in which Paul sets forth God’s plan, God’s strategy for the salvation of the world. Paul writes in Chapter 3 – You have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace which was given to me for your benefit to make known the mystery, the plan, which God had from the beginning of the world, to bring into unity both Jew and Gentile, announcing to the world that the Gentiles are co-heirs with the Jews, members of the same body, co-partners in the promises of Christ. In the opening lines of the Letter, Paul tells us that by reason of his self-giving love, God has destined us for adoption to himself through Our Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul borrows the expression of “adoption” from the legal system of ancient Rome. The Emperor Caesar Augustus had no heirs. He and his wife adopted an abandoned boy who succeeded his father with all the rights and privileges of sonship, even succeeding his father as emperor. This is what God does for us through Christ and the sacraments of the church. Making us, by the grace of divine adoption, daughters and sons of God, we truly become by grace what the Lord Jesus is by nature and that divine grace brings in its train the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity which unite us with God; and the moral or human virtues of prudence, justice, courage and temperance which are the virtues which make us human. The new law of Christ is summed up in charity and so Ephesians tells us – Be imitators of God, as his beloved children; follow the way of love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us.
5. It is important that we understand that the Christian life is not equivalent to the ethical life. It surpasses the ethical life but includes it. Morals and ethics are indeed important. However, the Christian life, by the grace of divine adoption, means our sharing in the life proper to our Three-Personed God, a life brought into human history through Christ the Lord and made available to all who believe by the sacraments of the Church. The ethics philosophers like to study are of great importance for all who possess human nature. However, they do not constitute Christian existence, Christian living. Christian existence is always under grace, and so we must speak of Gospel ethics. Faith, hope and charity are new virtues, new powers which come to us from the Holy Spirit. Aristotelian human or moral virtues are raised to the level of the Gospel by the Holy Spirit but are true virtues for us only when informed by Gospel charity.
6. How can we best describe this new life of our Catholic Christian life, our life in the Spirit? Two expressions come to mind which summarize the Christian life, namely, the love of God and the cross of Jesus. God the Father so loved us that he sent his only Son as our Savior. This Son of his so loved the Father and ourselves that he shows us the way to the Father, the safest way, the truest way, the surest way which we call the way of the cross. As we live this life it might be good to keep in mind some words of St. Cyprian, bishop and martyr in the early Church:
“It is with Christ that we journey, and we walk with our steps in his footprints: he it is who is our guide and the burning flame which illumines our paths: pioneer of salvation, he it is who draws us towards heaven, towards the Father, and promises success to those who seek in faith. We shall one day be that which he is in glory, if by faithful imitation of his example, we become true Christians, other Christs.”
P.S.: I have a summer suggestion for those reading this blog. Summer is a good time to catch up on some reading such as detective stories. My favorite mystery writer, perhaps a bit out of date, is Agatha Christie. Reading Agatha will get us caught up in her mysteries. Why not then read the Letter to the Ephesians. That will get us caught up in God’s mysteries.
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Letter to the Ephesians II (16th Sunday in Ordinary Time B)
Note that this is the second in a series of three homilies focused on the Letter to the Ephesians.
16th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)
1. A certain gentleman – Peter Maurin by name – a saintly sort of man, colleague and mentor of Dorothy Day in the apostolate called “The Catholic Worker Movement”, once made the following observation – “Some philosophers say: ‘Man is naturally good.’ Some titans of business say, and they should know: ‘Man is naturally bad; you can do nothing with human nature.’” If it is true, as businessmen say, that you can do nothing with human nature, then we need fewer priests and more policemen. But if God the Father sent his only begotten Son to redeem mankind, as St. Paul tells us in our second reading, then we need more priests and fewer policemen. Surely if we examine the world in and through newspaper headlines these days – wars, threats of nuclear confrontation, ecological and environmental issues, terrorism, gigantic economic disparities ready to erupt in all sorts of conflicts, then it seems quite obvious that we need fewer priests and more policemen. However, if our vision is more akin to the vision that St. Paul makes manifest in his remarkable Letter to the Ephesians, it would seem more than obvious that we need more priests and fewer policemen.
2. Last week, this week and next week our second readings are taken from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. We can say of Ephesians – it is Paul’s great letter on the Church, in fact on the unity of the Church for without that unity the Church is gigantically weakened. Unlike his other letters which focused on the concerns of a particular church, for example, at Philippi or Thessalonica or Corinth – Ephesians focuses on the then known worldwide Church whose head is the risen Christ and whose purpose is to be God’s instrument for making God’s plan of salvation known to the whole universe in time and in place. Paul’s vision is anchored in God’s saving love in Christ Jesus – made real and effective in the world by the power of the Holy Spirit. There are many ways, of course, of reflecting on the Church. The Church is institutional and necessarily so in light of the Incarnation. But the Church is much more than just institutional. Foolish persons are heard to say: “I am quite spiritual, but I don’t go for institutional religion.” All one can say to such foolishness is this – “No institution, ultimately no Church, no spirituality, no Good News. The Church can also be described as herald of the Good News to all the world or the great sacrament, that is, the outward sign of the invisible Christ who in his days of history became the sacrament of his invisible heavenly Father. In his Letter to the Ephesians, Paul stresses the Church as the body of Christ.
3. Paul opens his Letter – “Our God and Father of the Lord Jesus has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing. He has chosen us, before the world began, for holiness of life.” What are these blessings with which God has enriched us? – The call to holiness, the forgiveness of sins, the grace of our divine adoption, our sharing in God’s life through faith, hope and love, the pledge of eternal life through the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. In our Gospel today, Jesus goes about his ministry of healing by means of his many wonderful signs. Of course, the Lord Jesus knows they need much more than miracles and healings. These are what drew people to Jesus so he could tell them the Good News of all the wonderful gifts he brings to people from God the Father through the Holy Spirit, these wonderful blessings God has destined for all peoples – Jews and Gentiles alike. Notice what Ephesians says – “God sent his Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near.” By the expression – those who are near – Paul means the Jews, the first to hear the word of God; by the expression – those who are far off – Paul means the Gentiles, the non-Jews of his day, the Ephesians and many of us here in this church today. The great secret, the great mystery proclaimed in the Letter to the Ephesians is that Christ came to reconcile Jews and Gentiles, thus breaking down the dividing walls that have kept all peoples from unity with God and from unity with one another. The Good News is – God has made in Christ one new person, that is, the Christian community, a new corporate body, the very body of the risen Christ, thus destroying and displacing all divisions and barriers. It was given to Paul to make known the secret of God’s new plan in Christ; a plan never revealed before, that the Gentiles are co-heirs with the Jews, members of the same body, co-partners in the promises of Christ through the Gospel.
4. The unity of the Church is both a gift and a task: gift means that it is the Holy Spirit who makes the Church one, who is the principle of Communion in the Church; as task, Paul offers us this challenge – that we live in a manner worthy of the call we have all received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, called with one hope, with one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all , who is over all and through all and in all.
5. There are great riches in the Letter to the Ephesians. I began these few comments, you may recall, by mentioning some remarks from Peter Maurin – Do we need more priests or more policemen? If we follow the vision of St. Paul as seen in the Letter to the Ephesians, we obviously will need more priests, whether we mean the ordained priesthood or the priesthood of all the faithful through the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation. We need more and more people, caught up in the vision of the Letter to the Ephesians who will live the vision and inspire others to search for the vision. My summer suggestion is this: Why not read the Letter to the Ephesians? Summertime is a good time to read Agatha Christie and her mysteries. Why not read the Letter to the Ephesians. That will get us caught up in God’s mysteries.
16th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)
1. A certain gentleman – Peter Maurin by name – a saintly sort of man, colleague and mentor of Dorothy Day in the apostolate called “The Catholic Worker Movement”, once made the following observation – “Some philosophers say: ‘Man is naturally good.’ Some titans of business say, and they should know: ‘Man is naturally bad; you can do nothing with human nature.’” If it is true, as businessmen say, that you can do nothing with human nature, then we need fewer priests and more policemen. But if God the Father sent his only begotten Son to redeem mankind, as St. Paul tells us in our second reading, then we need more priests and fewer policemen. Surely if we examine the world in and through newspaper headlines these days – wars, threats of nuclear confrontation, ecological and environmental issues, terrorism, gigantic economic disparities ready to erupt in all sorts of conflicts, then it seems quite obvious that we need fewer priests and more policemen. However, if our vision is more akin to the vision that St. Paul makes manifest in his remarkable Letter to the Ephesians, it would seem more than obvious that we need more priests and fewer policemen.
2. Last week, this week and next week our second readings are taken from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. We can say of Ephesians – it is Paul’s great letter on the Church, in fact on the unity of the Church for without that unity the Church is gigantically weakened. Unlike his other letters which focused on the concerns of a particular church, for example, at Philippi or Thessalonica or Corinth – Ephesians focuses on the then known worldwide Church whose head is the risen Christ and whose purpose is to be God’s instrument for making God’s plan of salvation known to the whole universe in time and in place. Paul’s vision is anchored in God’s saving love in Christ Jesus – made real and effective in the world by the power of the Holy Spirit. There are many ways, of course, of reflecting on the Church. The Church is institutional and necessarily so in light of the Incarnation. But the Church is much more than just institutional. Foolish persons are heard to say: “I am quite spiritual, but I don’t go for institutional religion.” All one can say to such foolishness is this – “No institution, ultimately no Church, no spirituality, no Good News. The Church can also be described as herald of the Good News to all the world or the great sacrament, that is, the outward sign of the invisible Christ who in his days of history became the sacrament of his invisible heavenly Father. In his Letter to the Ephesians, Paul stresses the Church as the body of Christ.
3. Paul opens his Letter – “Our God and Father of the Lord Jesus has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing. He has chosen us, before the world began, for holiness of life.” What are these blessings with which God has enriched us? – The call to holiness, the forgiveness of sins, the grace of our divine adoption, our sharing in God’s life through faith, hope and love, the pledge of eternal life through the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. In our Gospel today, Jesus goes about his ministry of healing by means of his many wonderful signs. Of course, the Lord Jesus knows they need much more than miracles and healings. These are what drew people to Jesus so he could tell them the Good News of all the wonderful gifts he brings to people from God the Father through the Holy Spirit, these wonderful blessings God has destined for all peoples – Jews and Gentiles alike. Notice what Ephesians says – “God sent his Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near.” By the expression – those who are near – Paul means the Jews, the first to hear the word of God; by the expression – those who are far off – Paul means the Gentiles, the non-Jews of his day, the Ephesians and many of us here in this church today. The great secret, the great mystery proclaimed in the Letter to the Ephesians is that Christ came to reconcile Jews and Gentiles, thus breaking down the dividing walls that have kept all peoples from unity with God and from unity with one another. The Good News is – God has made in Christ one new person, that is, the Christian community, a new corporate body, the very body of the risen Christ, thus destroying and displacing all divisions and barriers. It was given to Paul to make known the secret of God’s new plan in Christ; a plan never revealed before, that the Gentiles are co-heirs with the Jews, members of the same body, co-partners in the promises of Christ through the Gospel.
4. The unity of the Church is both a gift and a task: gift means that it is the Holy Spirit who makes the Church one, who is the principle of Communion in the Church; as task, Paul offers us this challenge – that we live in a manner worthy of the call we have all received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, called with one hope, with one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all , who is over all and through all and in all.
5. There are great riches in the Letter to the Ephesians. I began these few comments, you may recall, by mentioning some remarks from Peter Maurin – Do we need more priests or more policemen? If we follow the vision of St. Paul as seen in the Letter to the Ephesians, we obviously will need more priests, whether we mean the ordained priesthood or the priesthood of all the faithful through the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation. We need more and more people, caught up in the vision of the Letter to the Ephesians who will live the vision and inspire others to search for the vision. My summer suggestion is this: Why not read the Letter to the Ephesians? Summertime is a good time to read Agatha Christie and her mysteries. Why not read the Letter to the Ephesians. That will get us caught up in God’s mysteries.
Letter to the Ephesians I (15th Sunday in Ordinary Time B)
Note: In the “B” Cycle of the readings, the Letter to the Ephesians figures prominently in our Sunday Liturgies. This is a wonderful Letter and tells us so much about what the Christian life is all about. In posts on the web, the following three homilies which I have given recently are on the Letter to the Ephesians.
15th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)
1. Because God wants to communicate with us he has no choice but to speak our language. Thus we can say, God’s word, in human words, expressed in literary form in the sacred scriptures, has a two-fold context: first, a particular writer, under the grace of the Holy Spirit, speaks to a particular group of disciples at a particular time in the later decades of the first century Church. That very teaching, always under the grace of the Holy Spirit, is now addressed, especially in and through the liturgy, to us who follow Christ here and now, gathered in prayer in Wellesley Hills. What the author of the Letter to the Ephesians once said to the Ephesians is now addressed to you and me here and now at this very liturgy. Thus we read – We are what God has made us to be, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared for us beforehand to be our way of life. In other words, the Ephesians yesterday and we ourselves this very day are admonished to walk always worthy of the crucified Christ.
2. Paul writes to the Ephesians – God chose us in Christ before the world began. One wonders what impact these words had when they were first heard in ancient Ephesus. What sort of people were the Ephesians? They were not like the sophisticated Athenians among whom Paul was least successful in his evangelizing efforts. The Ephesians were probably very much like the Corinthians to whom Paul once wrote – “Consider your own calling, brothers and sisters. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many very powerful, not many of noble birth, rather God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and the weak of the world to shame the strong, and the lonely and despised of the world, those who in the world’s eyes seem to count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who think they are something so that no human being might boast before God.”
3. For what purpose did God choose the Ephesians, and why us today? He called them and us to be holy and blameless in his sight, to be full of love. They were predestined to share through grace in God’s own life and thus to praise the glorious favor God has bestowed on us all in Christ Jesus. He chose them and us to live in the world, to bring the Gospel to the world by living the Gospel in the world so that the Lord’s words can be fulfilled – “He who sees you sees me, and whoever sees me sees the Father who sent me.”
4. Why in the world would God call the Ephesians and ourselves? They were Gentiles much given over to idolatry. Like ourselves they were sinners. The Letter to the Ephesians tells us that God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for the Ephesians and for us, even when we all were dead in our transgressions, God brought us to life in and with Christ. By grace we have been saved through faith. And this does not come from the Ephesians or ourselves; it is the gift of God. All this doesn’t come from what the Ephesians or we ourselves have done, so no one may boast. We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.
5. It is in the Letter to the Ephesians that Paul makes known God’s eternal plan for the salvation of all peoples everywhere. Paul reminds the Ephesians that they were at one time without Christ and alienated from the community of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise. They were without hope and without God in the world. But now, through the apostolic preaching which has brought them into the life of Christ, they who once were far off have become near by the blood of Christ. This is all very true about ourselves. The Letter to the Ephesians announces the revelation of God’s plan for human salvation, a plan revealed and made clear to Paul himself in his apostolic office, a plan of course revealed to all of Christ’s first apostles, that the Gentiles are co-heirs, members of the same body and co-partners in the promise of Christ Jesus through the Gospel. As Paul himself phrases it – “Of this divine plan I became a minister by the gift of God’s grace. To me, the very least of all the holy ones, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ and bring to light for all to hear the good news that salvation is for all peoples everywhere – Jews and Gentiles.”
6. Many of us who were born into Catholic families could very well reflect on the mysterious ways of God’s providence. God calls us as God called the Ephesians to be his New Testament people, members of Christ, members of the Church, temples of the Holy Spirit, bearers of God’s word to the world. Adult converts understand these obligations very well – they are so grateful for the gift of faith, they treasure their new and great love for the Church, they cherish their liberating faith that gives them a new vision of the world and a new approach to their brothers and sisters in the human family, a new way of existing as God’s leaven in human society.
7. Receiving the gift of God’s truth has little to do with being comfortable with the Church’s teachings. It strikes me that many today, both inside and outside the Church, judge the Gospel and the teachings of the Church in terms of their comfortability with such teachings. If we are comfortable across the board with the Church’s teachings, then either we should be canonized right away or something must be wrong. We are sinners. Therefore, we will always find ourselves uncomfortable with aspects of our faith. In fact, my own definition of heresy goes like this – Heresy results from one’s fruitless efforts to make oneself comfortable with the Gospel. After all, some aspects of the Church’s teachings are not easy to understand, and, as we all know from experience, the Church’s moral teachings are often difficult to practice, even with the help of God’s grace. As we reflect on Paul’s words to the Ephesians – “God chose us in Christ Jesus”, we can profitably allow the Opening Prayer of today’s Liturgy to inspire us: “O God, who shows the light of your truth to those who go astray, so that they may return to the right path, give all who for the faith they profess are accounted Christian the grace to reject whatever is contrary to the name of Christ and to strive after all that does it honor.”
15th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)
1. Because God wants to communicate with us he has no choice but to speak our language. Thus we can say, God’s word, in human words, expressed in literary form in the sacred scriptures, has a two-fold context: first, a particular writer, under the grace of the Holy Spirit, speaks to a particular group of disciples at a particular time in the later decades of the first century Church. That very teaching, always under the grace of the Holy Spirit, is now addressed, especially in and through the liturgy, to us who follow Christ here and now, gathered in prayer in Wellesley Hills. What the author of the Letter to the Ephesians once said to the Ephesians is now addressed to you and me here and now at this very liturgy. Thus we read – We are what God has made us to be, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared for us beforehand to be our way of life. In other words, the Ephesians yesterday and we ourselves this very day are admonished to walk always worthy of the crucified Christ.
2. Paul writes to the Ephesians – God chose us in Christ before the world began. One wonders what impact these words had when they were first heard in ancient Ephesus. What sort of people were the Ephesians? They were not like the sophisticated Athenians among whom Paul was least successful in his evangelizing efforts. The Ephesians were probably very much like the Corinthians to whom Paul once wrote – “Consider your own calling, brothers and sisters. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many very powerful, not many of noble birth, rather God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and the weak of the world to shame the strong, and the lonely and despised of the world, those who in the world’s eyes seem to count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who think they are something so that no human being might boast before God.”
3. For what purpose did God choose the Ephesians, and why us today? He called them and us to be holy and blameless in his sight, to be full of love. They were predestined to share through grace in God’s own life and thus to praise the glorious favor God has bestowed on us all in Christ Jesus. He chose them and us to live in the world, to bring the Gospel to the world by living the Gospel in the world so that the Lord’s words can be fulfilled – “He who sees you sees me, and whoever sees me sees the Father who sent me.”
4. Why in the world would God call the Ephesians and ourselves? They were Gentiles much given over to idolatry. Like ourselves they were sinners. The Letter to the Ephesians tells us that God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for the Ephesians and for us, even when we all were dead in our transgressions, God brought us to life in and with Christ. By grace we have been saved through faith. And this does not come from the Ephesians or ourselves; it is the gift of God. All this doesn’t come from what the Ephesians or we ourselves have done, so no one may boast. We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.
5. It is in the Letter to the Ephesians that Paul makes known God’s eternal plan for the salvation of all peoples everywhere. Paul reminds the Ephesians that they were at one time without Christ and alienated from the community of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise. They were without hope and without God in the world. But now, through the apostolic preaching which has brought them into the life of Christ, they who once were far off have become near by the blood of Christ. This is all very true about ourselves. The Letter to the Ephesians announces the revelation of God’s plan for human salvation, a plan revealed and made clear to Paul himself in his apostolic office, a plan of course revealed to all of Christ’s first apostles, that the Gentiles are co-heirs, members of the same body and co-partners in the promise of Christ Jesus through the Gospel. As Paul himself phrases it – “Of this divine plan I became a minister by the gift of God’s grace. To me, the very least of all the holy ones, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ and bring to light for all to hear the good news that salvation is for all peoples everywhere – Jews and Gentiles.”
6. Many of us who were born into Catholic families could very well reflect on the mysterious ways of God’s providence. God calls us as God called the Ephesians to be his New Testament people, members of Christ, members of the Church, temples of the Holy Spirit, bearers of God’s word to the world. Adult converts understand these obligations very well – they are so grateful for the gift of faith, they treasure their new and great love for the Church, they cherish their liberating faith that gives them a new vision of the world and a new approach to their brothers and sisters in the human family, a new way of existing as God’s leaven in human society.
7. Receiving the gift of God’s truth has little to do with being comfortable with the Church’s teachings. It strikes me that many today, both inside and outside the Church, judge the Gospel and the teachings of the Church in terms of their comfortability with such teachings. If we are comfortable across the board with the Church’s teachings, then either we should be canonized right away or something must be wrong. We are sinners. Therefore, we will always find ourselves uncomfortable with aspects of our faith. In fact, my own definition of heresy goes like this – Heresy results from one’s fruitless efforts to make oneself comfortable with the Gospel. After all, some aspects of the Church’s teachings are not easy to understand, and, as we all know from experience, the Church’s moral teachings are often difficult to practice, even with the help of God’s grace. As we reflect on Paul’s words to the Ephesians – “God chose us in Christ Jesus”, we can profitably allow the Opening Prayer of today’s Liturgy to inspire us: “O God, who shows the light of your truth to those who go astray, so that they may return to the right path, give all who for the faith they profess are accounted Christian the grace to reject whatever is contrary to the name of Christ and to strive after all that does it honor.”
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