Homily for May 5, 2002
St. Paul writes:
"Always
be ready to give an explanation
to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope..."
We read the papers,
we listen
to the news, we know what's going on...
You are here..... I am here.....
Again..... Why are we here?
Why do we keep coming back?
What explanation can we give for a reasons for our hope,
a reason for our being here?
Well, YOU are the biggest reason for my hope!
Whatever it might be that keeps you faithful to our gathering for prayer,
YOU are the reason for my hope.
All of you show me,
you LIVE
for me the very faithfulness of Jesus himself.
If you went away,
if you did
not come together for prayer, if our church began to empty out,
my hope would be severely wounded.
The scriptures are also a reason for my hope.
Year in, year out; week in, week out,
the word
of the Lord speaks to us:
it challenges us, it comforts us, it calls us beyond ourselves.
In the scriptures we hear the voice of the Lord:
in good times
and in bad, in sickness and in health, in pain and in joy.
This weekend,
a married
couple in our parish celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary
and they
chose to began the party here, in church,
with their family and friends,
asking me
to invite God's blessing
on their 35 years of faithfulness and love.
Even in these troubled times, in their moment of joyous celebration,
they asked
the church to bless their happiness,
and they became another reason for my hope.
Last week the young men and women of our parish
and St. Bernard
Parish were confirmed.
They chose to stand before a bishop of the Catholic church
with their
sponsor and parents as witnesses,
and they
were anointed with chrism
and they completed their initiation
as Roman Catholic Christians -
and they gave me over 60 reasons for my hope.
You've seen in the bulletin our schedule for baptisms and first communions.
Parents are bringing their babies to make them members
of the Catholic
family of faith.
Parents of second graders are bringing their children
so that they
might take their place at the Lord's table
and be in
communion with us,
and with
the hope we find in them
whose innocence
is a blessing to behold.
After they receive their first Communion, the children join me in front of the
altar,
and I lead
them in singing,
"I've
got that joy, joy, joy down in my heart...
and I want
to share it with you!"
And I have to keep myself from shouting out
that this
is how priests and children
are meant
to be together:
in prayer, in joy, in trust, in Jesus.
The 48 children who are making their first communion
and their
parents who present them,
are reasons for my hope.
In my appointment book are the names of people
who come to me for counseling and spiritual direction-
and it gives me hope that the crisis in our church
has not precluded
my ministry as one which people can approach
with the
burdens and pain and heartbreak they carry.
And these people give me reason for my hope.
Last Sunday night over 100 people came to our "listening" session
on the crisis
in the church.
On Wednesday night 65 of them returned
to discuss
the formation of a chapter of Voice of the Faithful in our parish.
That's over 165 reasons for my hope!
The generous outreach of our parish community:
to the Family
Life Center in Boston; to Lazarus House in Lawrence;
to those
in need in Concord;
to the people
of Fond des Blancs in Haiti;
to the St.
Bonaventure Navajo Mission in New Mexico;
to Spring
House; to the Crop Walk; to the Walk for Life;
to the parish
baby shower; to the food pantry;
to Concord Prison Outreach;
the work
of our parish St. Vincent de Paul Society;
the work
of our parish Social Action and Justice Commission;
the harvest
of the Green Team from fields in Lincoln...
all these are reasons for my hope as a Roman Catholic Christian.
I put my hope in the people and in the work where I see
the members
of the body of Christ
making real
the message and the promise of the gospel.
In a few moments, in the power of God's Holy Spirit,
we will make
a sacrament of our hope
when we offer gifts of bread and wine
in hope that
God will make of them for us the gift of Christ's life,
laid down, broken, poured out, given to us
with the
hope-filled promise of a peace and life that have no end.
May the sacrament of this table nourish in us:
hope for
healing; hope for the church;
and hope
for the mission of the gospel of Jesus.
Rev. Austin Fleming
*******************************************************************
Homily for June 2, 2002
I am frequently asked if attendance at Mass or the weekly collection
is "down"
in these days of crisis.
Comparing the collections for the last month and a half
with the
same time period last year,
there is only a difference of $1,000 - that is to say,
you have
a given a thousand dollars more this year than last.
With regards to Mass attendance,
I don't have
statistics to which I can refer,
so I have to rely on my own observations.
I would say that our attendance has been a little down
and I base
that observation on the number of standees I see
at the 9:30
and 11:30 masses on Sunday morning.
Pews are full, but fewer people are standing at the back of the church,
and down
the side aisles.
Of course, this is also the time of year, in any year,
when attendance
dips as a number of folks in our parish
go away for
the weekends.
Generally speaking, though, coming to church
and contributing
at the parish level remains fairly constant.
I mention these facts and figures precisely because on this day
the church
celebrates in a special way
what we do
every Sunday - we celebrate the Eucharist.
Today is the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ,
or as some
of us knew in the past - Corpus Christi Sunday.
Do you know what answer you will get
if you ask
a theologian the question,
"What is the primary sacrament of reconciliation?"
The answer, the traditionally correct answer, is this:
"The
primary sacrament of reconciliation is the Eucharist."
It's not confession, which we now call the sacrament of reconciliation.
Certainly going to confession is a celebration of reconciliation.
But the primary celebration of that is the Eucharist itself.
Those whose sins are grave must avail themselves of penance,
but precisely
so that they might again
enjoy the
reconciling communion that is ours in Christ,
and with each other, in the Eucharist.
We are all sinners
and we come
each week, as sinners,
to be reconciled
with God and with each other
in the communion
that Jesus offers us at this table.
Many of us are old enough to remember the days
when one
didn't go to communion
unless one
had been to confession the day before.
That practice reveals a misunderstanding of the Eucharist
and a misunderstanding
of the sacrament of penance.
Today, very few people ever come to the sacrament of penance
while most people receive communion on a regular if not weekly basis.
This reveals a much better understanding of the Eucharist
but a still
deficient understanding of confession.
But since this is the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ
and not the
first Sunday of Lent,
let's look at how our present practice
reveals a
much better understanding of the Eucharist
that our
practice 30 or more years ago.
If we look at the ministry of Jesus,
we will see
that he spent so much of his time
having dinner with people
and that
he regularly used the image of a dinner,
a party or a wedding feast
to speak
of who was and who was not invited
to the heavenly banquet he came to tell us about.
And over and over again he surprised those around him
by his having dinner with known sinners,
with tax
collectors, with prostitutes, with lepers
and in general
with anyone who was marginalized from society
on account of their life style or a disease they had.
These, he told us again and again,
these are
the ones who will be welcome at my table.
And those who will be least welcome, Jesus told us,
will be those
who stand in judgment of others,
pointing
fingers and saying,
"No, there's no room for you at the table."
Jesus did not dine with sinners or use these images to promote sin!
But rather to teach us that his table
is a table
of forgiveness, a table of healing, a table of mercy,
a table of - reconciliation.
In these days of crisis for our church,
it is precisely
to this table that all of us must come,
for all of
us are sinners, all of us have failed.
Most people do not find their sins detailed in the daily newspaper
or broadcast
on the 11:00 news.
Most of us are able to keep our sins a private matter,
known only
to a few persons who might have been hurt
by our failings.
But the sins of some of our leaders are the stuff of the daily news
and has shaken
the trust, the hope and the faith of us all.
But for us who have gathered at the Lord's table for most of our lives,
I know of
no better place to deal with our mistrust,
our dashed hopes, and our loss of faith
than right
at this same table.
The work of justice and reconciliation in this crisis must take place
in a number
of different forums
but for us Catholic people, the primary reconciliation of all this
will happen
when we gather again at this table
with recovered
trust, hope and faith.
For this we hunger, and this table of Jesus is meant to satisfy our hunger.
Rev. Austin Fleming
Homily for June 16, 2002
So, did you recognize the reference to us in the scriptures this morning?
Did you catch that place where the Lord was talking about us?
Anyone get it?
"If you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant,
you shall
be my special possession,
dearer to
me than all other people, though all the earth is mine.
You shall be to me a kingdom of priests,
a holy nation."
(Exodus 19:2-6a)
If we don't think that scripture is about us,
if we think
it's only about the people of Israel,
then you need to go back and take a course called
Intro to
Christianity 101!
Those words in Exodus are indeed addressed to the people of Israel,
the chosen
people of God,
but with exactly the same truth those words are addressed to us,
the church,
those chosen in Christ, the new people of God,
the Lord's "dear and special possession, "a kingdom of priests,
a holy nation."
Why do we not immediately recognize ourselves in that scripture?
Why after 2000 years of Christian history,
why do the
people of God fail to recognize themselves as a kingdom of priests?
Well, the answer to that is in today's scriptures, too, in the gospel.
"At the sight of the crowds,
Jesus"
heart was moved with pity for them
because they were troubled and abandoned,
like sheep
without a shepherd.
Then he said to his disciples,
"The
harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;
so ask the
master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest."
The heart of Jesus must be moved with pity for his people today, too,
because the
chosen people of the church are very troubled
and many
feel abandoned -
especially those who have been hurt by the church.
And many in the church do feel like "sheep without a shepherd"
because their
trust in their shepherds has been broken.
Isn't it curious that this setting in the gospel
where Jesus'
heart breaks for his people,
that this setting should immediately precede
the call
of the twelve apostles,
the twelve
whose ministry is seen as the model
for the ministry
of those we now call our bishops.
These two scriptures, Exodus and Matthew
give us two
different vantage points
from which
to understand the church.
The Exodus text reveals the church to be the community,
the assembly
of believers, the people of God
whom God
recognizes as a kingdom of priests, a priestly people.
The Matthew text shows us a leadership team,
missioned
by Christ with authority over unclean spirits,
sent out
with power to heal and cure illness and disease,
commanded
to rescue the lost sheep of the flock,
and to proclaim
the kingdom of God -
and to do all this freely,
with no expectation of reward or payment.
Unfortunately, over hundreds of years,
we have forgotten,
in many ways,
that all
of us have been called by God to be a priestly people,
The Exodus text reveals the church to be the community,
the assembly
of believers, the people of God
whom God
recognizes as a kingdom of priests, a priestly people.
The Matthew text shows us a leadership team,
missioned
by Christ with authority over unclean spirits,
sent out
with power to heal and cure illness and disease,
commanded
to rescue the lost sheep of the flock,
and to proclaim
the kingdom of God -
and to do all this freely,
with no expectation of reward or payment.
Unfortunately, over hundreds of years,
we have forgotten,
in many ways,
that all
of us have been called by God to be a priestly people,
Unfortunately, over hundreds of years, we have forgotten, in many ways,
that all
of us have been called by God to be a priestly people,
Would that our bishops, when confronted with the language of "priestly
people,"
would that they would take pains to point out to us how many are the similarities
between the priesthood of the faithful and the priesthood of the ordained.
Indeed, over centuries,
if any were
guilty of having stolen someone's priestly status
it was the
hierarchy who stole the people's priestly identity.
If this were not the truth,
why would
it have been such great news at Vatican Council II
in the early
1960's
to hear, as if for the first time,
that the baptized faithful are indeed God's priestly people?
The priestly status has been reconfirmed on paper -
but much
work must be done to move from documentation
to lived experience.
Perhaps the day will come when our great grandchildren
or great,
great grandchildren - or their grandchildren,
will readily recognize themselves in the Exodus story
as the people
named by God as his dear, priestly people.
Perhaps, I pray, the day will come
when they
recognize the truth of the Exodus story
as readily
as we recognize the truth in today's gospel from Matthew.
Every time we gather at this table,
it is the priestly people of God who offer this Eucharist.
I, a priest, have been ordained to serve you in the offering which is yours
to make.
You can't do this without me, and I wouldn't do this without you.
It was Cardinal Newman who said many years ago,
that without
the people of the church,
the hierarchy looks rather peculiar, indeed.
Apart from my service to God's holy and priestly people,
what meaning
would my priesthood have.
We are all here because we share a common baptism,
through which
we were initiated into the people of God.
Let us go then to the altar of God, the table of Jesus,
and offer
there the sacrifice he left us
on the night
before he died.
- Rev. Austin Fleming
******************************************************************
Homily for June 23, 2002
What gets us through the hard times in our lives?
Who gets us through the hard times in our lives?
How is it that we survive those things
that we once
thought were beyond our surviving them?
How do we make our way through nights and days,
through weeks
and months, and even years and years
when there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel?
If such darkness has not been your own experience,
then surely
you are close to someone whose experience this is.
Our church is living through hard times
and on some
days it may seem that the hard times will never end.
Even more so, those who have been abused know the suffering and fear
that all victims share:
fear that the pain may never end,
and fear that the hurt may never heal.
Suffering abounds, and we all wait for healing.
The prophet in today's first scripture, Jeremiah,
was living
through a nightmare of hard times.
Jeremiah's friends had become his enemies
and they
were out to get him - they were out to kill him.
How did Jeremiah survive the unsurvivable?
Jeremiah knew that he might die at the hands of his enemies
but he knew
that he had something his enemies could not take:
the indomitable
spirit of God living within him,
that soul of faith which God will always champion and rescue.
Although Jeremiah lived hundreds of years before Jesus
he seems
to have known what Jesus said in today's gospel:
"Fear no one...
Do not be afraid of those who can kill the body
but cannot kill the soul..."
There are realities today
that may
threaten the heart and soul of the church,
and certainly
the hearts and souls of the abused.
Abuse feels like it threatens the life of the soul
precisely because abuse does damage to trust
and trust
is at the heart of our souls.
In some ways, for all of us, shaken trust
is at the
heart of all our hard times.
We do not expect hard times when they come upon us.
We wonder if we did something to deserve them.
We do not understand how our loving God
could allow
such hard times to shadow our path.
The harder the times, the more our trust in God may be shaken.
Certainly, Jesus himself wondered these same things.
The trust in his heart was shaken, too.
On the night before he died,
he begged his father to take away the cup of his suffering.
From the cross, he cried out,
"My
God, why have you abandoned me?"
But his final words are the most telling:
"Father,
into your hands I entrust my spirit."
Jesus believed, as did Jeremiah, that a higher power
would see
him through the darkest night of his soul.
To be rescued from death
Jesus needed
to trust again, to en-trust his soul
into hands
of the one he feared had abandoned him.
When trust is broken,
only trust
can restore the broken trust.
Trusting again, after trust has been broken,
is what gets
us through the hardest times in our lives.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu sums this up in a wonderful prayer:
Goodness is stronger than evil;
love is stronger than hate;
light is stronger than darkness;
life is stronger than death.
Victory is ours, victory is ours
through him who loved us.
Take a moment to call to your mind and heart
some of your
hardest times,
realities
you feared you might not survive...
Now, pray the simple prayer above,
again, and
again, and again...
When trust is broken,
we are tempted
to trust not again.
When evil has violated us
we are tempted
to believe that there is goodness in us.
When hate has beat us down
we are tempted
to believe we are not lovable.
When darkness becomes our refuge
we are tempted
to believe that the light is extinguished.
When escape through death seems sweet,
we are tempted
to believe that the living spirit of God
is not enough to sustain us.
For all of us:
trust, and
goodness, and love, and light, and life are restored
when we believe that a power greater than ourselves
will rescue
what no one can kill:
the life
of God within us.
We go now to the Lord's table where,
in the Eucharist,
Jesus promises to be with us at all times,
and especially
in the hard times when all seems lost.
We gather at that table under the shadow of the cross of Jesus
because victory
is ours,
victory is
ours in Christ who loved us.
ú- Rev. Austin Fleming
******************************************************************
Homily for June 30, 2002
When I was in the second grade at the Maple Street School
in Danvers,
Massachusetts, Mrs. Stanton was my teacher.
Every morning, at the beginning of the school day,
we had "opening
exercises"
which had
nothing to do with jumping jacks or pushups,
but which
included:
-Mrs. Stanton reading the 23rd psalm
from the King James Version of the bible;
-the whole class reciting the Lord's Prayer
which some students elongated with the so-called
"Protestant ending"
(for thine is the kingdom, and the power
and the glory...)
which ending we Catholic students had been taught,
at home and in Sunday school, not to say;
- and finally, the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.
It was when I was in the second grade
that President
Eisenhower added the two words, "under God,"
which, I
learned this past week, was in reaction to the threat
of the spread
of godless communism around the globe.
And now someone wants to change the Pledge again,
and that
has riled up most Americans
and, surprisingly
enough, a bipartisan majority in Congress.
In the 1950Õs we seemed to have a pretty good solution
to the disagreement
about the end of the Lord's Prayer:
"Say it if want to -- keep your mouth shut if you don't."
A similar thing happens in Roman Catholic churches every Sunday
when we recite
the Nicene Creed.
There are those who object to the translation, which reads,
"For
us men, and for our salvation..."
and so they say, instead,
"For
us, and for our salvation..."
Seems like a good solution - at least until there's a new translation.
But simply refusing to add the phrase "under God"
In the Pledge
of Allegiance is not enough for some
and so they have gone to court to get those words removed.
In Jesus' day there was no United States of America,
and no Pledge
of Allegiance to the flag,
and no American flag at all.
But there were other things demanding allegiance
and that's
what Jesus is getting at in the gospel today.
In Jesus' time,
the Middle
Eastern family was very large and quite extended.
(John Pilch in The Cultural World of Jesus, p. 103-104)
It consisted
of a father and all his children,
including his married sons with their entire families,
all living in one place.
In fact,
the ideal marriage partner was a first cousin,
which bound this close-knit family together
with even tighter bonds.
The resultant
mentality was
"our family" against "everyone else."
Family allegiance was fierce!
The consequences of marrying outside the family were dire.
One gave up claim to honor, and status,
and all of
the family's economic, religious, educational,
and social connections.
Most seriously, marrying outside the family
cut you off from inheriting the family's land or money.
Family allegiance was, in a sense, everything!
And this is just what Jesus, in today's gospel,
asks those who follow him to give up:
"Whoever loves father or mother more than me
is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me
is not worthy of me."
Jesus isn't asking his followers to include "under Christ"
in their
pledge of allegiance to their families -
he's asking them to pledge allegiance to him -
INSTEAD of
to their families.
He's not so much asking them to abandon their families
as much as
he's asking them, and us,
"how deep is your allegiance to me,
to my word, to my message,
and to the cross I'm asking you to take up?"
Most often, our allegiance to our family is not in conflict
with our
allegiance to our God.
But what is such a conflict should arise?
Whose standard
would we salute?
The family
flag - or the cross of Christ?
Is blood thicker than water?
I believe it's a shame that more and more in the U.S., the tail wags the dog:
that protection
of the rights of a few
tramples
the protection of the rights of the many.
But it matters little to me if the phrase "under God"
is removed
from the Pledge of Allegiance.
What I find much more important is how, or if our nation LIVES "under God"
-
whether or
not the phrase is in the Pledge of Allegiance.
If you consider the changes in American culture and society
over the
past 48 years since the phrase "under God" was added to the Pledge,
I think you would agree that the inclusion of those two words
has not done
much to improve the godliness of America.
Are our nation's statutes on capitol punishment "under God"?
Are our nation's laws on abortion "under God"?
Is our nation's foreign policy "under God"?
Are our nation's penal policies "under God"?
Is our nation's entertainment "under God"?
Is the distribution of our nation's wealth "under God"?
Is our nation's understanding and implementation
of the establishment
clause "under God"?
Jesus, in the scriptures this day,
asks us to
whom we will offer the allegiance of our hearts.
As Christians, our answer to that question is that our first allegiance is to
God:
to God who
made us, and to Jesus who saved us,
and to the Spirit who sustains us.
We offer allegiance, also, to our nation and its laws
insofar as
they are truly "under God"
We can pledge no allegiance to anything in our nation and its laws
which is
apart from the word and the law of God.
And we go now to the table of Jesus
who claimed
our hearts and lives in baptism
and under
the shadow of whose cross we are nourished
by the living
sign of his loving allegiance to us:
his body and blood, broken and shed,
and shared with us in the bread and cup of the Eucharist.
Jesus, in his suffering and death, in his rising from the dead,
and in his
presence among us in sacrament pledges his allegiance to us.
To whom, to what shall we pledge our allegiance
that we might
be worthy of him
whose love for us knows no bounds?
Rev. Austin Fleming
*******************************************************************
Homily for July 7, 2002
A year after my mother's death in 1994,
my sister
and brother and I sold our home in Danvers to the Jackson family.
No one named Fleming has lived there for the past seven years.
My sister lived at home until she got married in 1970.
She has not lived in our family's home, then, for almost 32 years.
And yet, last week,
when the
Jackson's went to the mailbox at their front door,
they found
an issue of Time magazine, delivered by the Danvers Post Office,
with the
original mailing label bearing my sister Ruth's name,
and dated
December 26, 1969!
The Jackson's were kind enough to mail me this issue of Time
which I will
send along to my sister who now lives in Colorado.
I'm hoping that it will not take 33 years to reach her!
I'm not sure that I would have told you about this curious event
if it weren't
for the cover of this particular issue of Time.
(show the magazine)
It reads: "Is God Coming Back to Life?"
If you are under 50 years old,
that cover
question may seem odd indeed,
because if you're under 50 then you wouldn't remember a 1966 cover
of Time magazine
which posed the question, "Is God Dead?"
Indeed, in the mid-1960’s
a number
of theologians were wondering, even claiming that God
(at least God-as-we-knew-God) was dead.
Thirty-six years later we can certainly testify
that the
rumors of God's death were terribly exaggerated;
in fact it took Time magazine only 3 years to report
the possibility
that God was coming back to life.
I suspect that as well as on the covers of national news magazines,
the question
of God's life and death,
indeed, the
very question of God's existence
is raised
in the hearts of individual believers,
more often than we might imagine.
I'm not referring here to atheists - to those who deny the existence of God.
I'm speaking, rather, of believers:
people who
believe in God but who have serious questions
about who God is, and how God relates to us,
and how God acts, or apparently fails to act,
in the drama of our lives.
In the gospel today, Jesus seems to tie up the "God question" rather
neatly:
"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and your will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy and my burden light."
If you're having a good day, these words are sweet and comforting indeed.
But if times are tough, then these words of Jesus may be tough to take.
"My yoke is easy and my burden light..."
How do we
understand those words after September 11?
"My yoke is easy and my burden light..."
Is that something
to preach
to the millions of homeless, hungry people in the third world?
"My yoke is easy and my burden light..."
It's precisely
this kind of text
that those who have been abused find so difficult to understand.
In pain and anger, in disappointment and hurt,
they ask:
"Where was the God of easy yokes and light burdens
when I needed his help the most?”
“My yoke is easy and my burden light...”
How do we
speak these words in response to the Holocaust,
and the slaughter of millions of God’s chosen people, the Jews?
“My yoke is easy and my burden light...”
How do I
speak of rest to a man from our parish,
now at Emerson Hospital, whose disease has yoked him
in a body paralyzed from the neck down -
a paralysis that now threatens his voice and his breathing?
“My yoke is easy and my burden light...”
How do I
explain these words to a young mother in our parish
whose heart is yoked by fear
because she has just been diagnosed with cancer?
Many, perhaps most of us, have wondered, in our pain,
“Where
is God?” “Has God abandoned me?”
A friend asked me just last week:
Why do we so readily “lower the bar” for God?
When things
get really tough,
why are we so quick to let God get away with it?
Is a God
who allows so much suffering
deserving our praise and worship?
If I had a really satisfying and easy answers to my friend’s question,
I would probably
be on the front cover of Time next week!
I don’t have such answers. But I do know some things that are true.
I know that suffering is part of every human life:
It’s
the price, it seems,
of having hearts that are vulnerable
to both love and pain, and disappointment and joy.
I know that Jesus promises none of us a rose garden.
What distinguishes the God Jesus reveals to us is that our God chooses
to share in our suffering.
I know that when Jesus promises us a light yoke,
he also invites
us to learn from him, or as he puts it:
“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me...”
The cross is the yoke of Jesus.
and if we
are to learn from Jesus,
that means we are going to learn from the cross
and from the path that leads us to it.
I know that Jesus wept over Jerusalem,
and I know
that he weeps over the Holocaust;
that he weeps
over the devastation of September 11;
that he weeps
over the hunger of his brothers and sisters everywhere;
that he weeps
over the abuse that shatters trust and hope;
and that
he weeps over every sickness
that yokes us so easily to pain and fear.
I know that faith in Jesus offers me no easy way out of suffering.
And I know that in my suffering,
Jesus is
with me every step of the way.
But then the question comes: “Is that enough?”
Is it enough
that our
God chooses, for now, to be with us in our suffering
rather than
to readily rescue us from it?
Is it enough
that our
God chooses to feed the hungers of the human heart
not with a great buffet,
but with
a morsel of bread and a sip from a cup.
Is it enough
that in this
simple meal there is a taste of the very life of Jesus?
Is it enough
that this
table,
and the people gathered here,
provide a
place for us to bring and lay down our burdens,
if only for a while,
as we worship
of our God
who chooses to be revealed in our pain as well as in our joy?
Is this enough?
Did God die in the 1960's?
Is God coming back to life?
In Jesus,
our God lives,
and dies, and comes back to life again,
and again and again, day in and day out,
in the love
and the pain,
in the disappointments
and the joys
that bless and burden the human heart.
Pray with me.
Pray with me that the food of this table be enough to sustain us
in our faith and in our doubts.
Pray with me that the food of this table
be enough
to nourish us
that we might
serve one another, and especially the poor.
Pray with me that the food of this table
be enough
to make us hungry and thirsty
for the mystery
of God’s dying and rising within us,
and among us.
Pray with me that all of this,
as much as
it is, and as little as it is,
be enough to strengthen and unite us
on the journey
that has gathered us here together, today.
Rev. Austin Fleming
********************************************************************************************
Homily for July 14, 2002
The prophet Isaiah’s words are sweet for us in the middle of July!
“Just as the SNOW comes down from the heavens
and does
not return there till it has watered the earth...
so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth...”
Snow? in July?
Sing:
“Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!”
(Website readers: you need to visualize my walking down the center aisle,
singing this song, and showering the assembly with hundreds
of 4x4 inch tissue paper snow flakes!)
Sing:
Well, the weather outside is summer,
and the news,
well, it’s a bummer,
and because we’re all feeling low,
let it snow,
let it snow, let it snow!
When we wonder whom we can trust,
and we don’t know which way we can turn,
And we wonder
what we can do,
and whether at last we will learn:
That the word of the Lord is truthful
and always,
ever fruitful,
And if we hope to heal and grow,
let it snow,
let it snow, let it snow!
Let it snow,
let it snow, let it snow!
I trust that you know that I am not trying to make light
of the pain
of those who have been hurt,
or the pain
of the church in facing its problems.
But if we’re going to understand what the Lord is saying here
about his
word and how it will not fail to achieve its end,
if we’re going to understand that,
then we’ll
have to go out and play in the snow for a while!
It’s true, isn’t it, that the blooming of spring each year
depends at
least in part on the snow of the proceeding winter.
We need the melting of January and February snow
to make the
earth fertile and fruitful for the greening of April and May.
The snows fall and melt
but do not
return to the atmosphere
until that
moisture has been drawn up out of the earth
by all the
vegetation around us.
So it is with the Lord’s word.
It falls upon us even in the dark times,
when things
may seem stark, barren, cold and lifeless.
But the Lord’s word will not be wasted.
It will wait, and wait, and wait,
nourishing
the earth deep within
as a mother
nourishes the child of her womb.
The word, the seed the Lord plants in us waits
until it
is time for spring, until it is time for birth,
until it
is time for that word to become flesh and to bear fruit.
In the life of the church, even these hot summer days
can seem
like one long winter of discontent and disappointment.
I wonder what word, what fruitfulness, what promise of healing and new life
the Lord is planting in us now?
I wonder what springtime will come of these barren months?
I wonder how the Lord’s word will heal and nourish us towards a harvest
greater than
any we have ever known.
You may think my words and my hope premature,
but it is
only this hope of a new spring
that helps
me through these wintry times.
And I hope, and believe, that the Lord is planting seeds in the church for new
growth.
I believe that the Lord is preparing us, the soil of his vineyard
for new ways
to heal,
new ways to proclaim the gospel,
and new ways to shape the church.
He feeds us now, at this table, with a taste of that new harvest:
with a morsel
of bread
fashioned from wheat and water,
with a sip
from a cup of wine,
made from pressing the moisture out of the gift of grapes.
He feeds us with his own body and blood,
his life
which, like a seed, was buried that it might come to life again.
Pray with me that this simple meal will nourish us as we wait for a new spring
time.
And pray with me that the Lord will:
(sing)
“Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...”
Rev. Austin Fleming
********************************************************************************************
Homily for July 21, 2002
Have you seen how lovely Main Street has become?
and the little
matching gardens many neighbors have planted?
(Note: a recent street improvement project included a running width of
grass
between the new sidewalks and the curb; many neighbors collaborated in
planting
two small squares of flowers in the grassy strip, just opposite each home’s
walkway.)
One day this past week,
I looked
out the window of the parish office
and saw a
neighbor, Carol Jamison,
kindly weeding
the little garden in front of the rectory.
I went out on the front porch to thank Carol.
She told me that weeds were growing in all the sidewalk gardens
and that
these weeds bore a striking resemblance to the day lilies
that were
coming up right next to them.
At the time, I was grateful for Carol’s horticultural knowledge
and her willingness
to weed my garden.
But imagine my chagrin when I looked at today’s gospel,
only to find
that Jesus says “Leave the weeds alone!”
Who would have guessed
that what
I foolishly took to be Carol’s good deed
should turn out to be something Jesus warns us not to do!
Well, as the saying goes, “No good deed goes unpunished!”
But - do I really think Carol did something wrong?
Of course
not!
Do I hope she continues to volunteer to weed my garden all summer?
Yes, indeed!
Even if Jesus says leave the weeds alone? Absolutely!
Clearly, and to paraphrase the book of Ecclesiastes,
“There’s
a time for everything under the sun:
a time
to weed, and a time not to weed.”
I certainly don’t want those day lilies being overrun by weeds.
But then what’s the point Jesus is trying to make? What’s the lesson
for us?
We’ll get back to that question in just a minute...
Yesterday, I spent the day at the Hynes Auditorium in Boston
at the national
convention of Voice of the Faithful.
Over 4,200 Catholics attended. Over 50 from
our parish.
The 4,200 Catholics came from 36 states,
more than
600 of them from outside of Massachusetts.
Eight nations were represented at the convention.
Unfortunately, among the 4,200 people
gathered
in the heart of down-town Boston,
some Catholics were conspicuously absent.
Cardinal Law was not there.
None of the 6 auxiliary bishops of the archdiocese of Boston was there.
They had all been invited.
None of them came.
Why did the Cardinal and the bishops not come?
I wonder if they fear that the organization, Voice of the Faithful,
is a patch
of weeds growing in their garden.
And I wonder if they are afraid to allow what they think might be weeds
to grow alongside
the flowers they have planted and tended?
I only wish the Cardinal and the bishops
had come
to the garden yesterday
to get a
closer look at the growth about which they’re worried.
I am not taking a shot at the Cardinal and the bishops here,
I truly regret
that “fear of weeds”
may have
kept them taking a ride into Boston
to join over
4,000 Catholics gathered together
out of love
for the church.
I regret, too, that more of you were not there
to see for
yourselves the energy for healing and growth
that filled
the faithful who are working to find their voice
in their
own church.
I wish that the cardinal, and the bishops, and you
had been
there to see the beautiful garden of faithful people,
and not a
weed to be found among them!
Ours is a church that has often been compulsive, even obsessively so,
about weeding
its garden clean
of anything
unusual, suspicious, or simply new.
Sadly, when the church garden was infested with poisonous growth,
rather than
root out those deadly weeds,
the church was often content to simply “rake” them
from one part of the garden to another.
During a break at the convention yesterday,
a woman with
whom I was speaking
noted the
powerful energy in the gathering, and said,
“You know - this could be dangerous!”
And I said, “Yes, it could. But what we’ve had was dangerous,
too.”
The Lord has entrusted his garden to our care.
That was a dangerous thing for him to do, because:
-sometimes
we plant too early, and sometimes too late;
-sometimes
we prune too much,
and sometimes we are afraid to put the pruning shears
to the branches;
-sometimes
we fail to weed out what needs to be gone,
and sometimes
we weed out the good with the bad.
Yes, it’s all dangerous gardening.
But still the Lord keeps us as his tenant farmers.
The church’s garden needs a lot of work
and there
are many laborers ready to go out to the fields.
They are not all male. They are not all celibate. They are not all
ordained.
And neither are they afraid to work:
-they
ready to prune what must be pruned,
-and to plant
what must be planted
-and their
only agenda is to preserve the Lord’s garden
for beautiful blooms and a bountiful harvest,
for crops that nourish rather than poison those they feed.
For now,
the Lord uses the harvest of wheat fields and vineyards
to nourish
us here, at his table,
for the work
he entrusts to our hands.
May the meal we share,
his very
life given for us,
his life
planted and harvested for us.
May this simple meal make us strong for the work that is ours
in tending
the garden of the church.
Rev. Austin Fleming
*******************************************************************
Homily for July 29, 2002
In this week’s Concord Journal, Ed Mavragis,
the departing superintendent
of the Concord-Carlisle
Regional School District, wrote:
“When I first arrived here... there were lots of signs on lawns:
“vote NO!” - “vote YES!”
Clearly a town divided.
Interestingly, people on the “no” side
thought I was clearly in the camp of the “yes” side.
And if I spent quality time listening to the “no” side
I was accused of changing my values...
In balance, however, it is far better to listen longer,
than not to listen at all.
We live on the edge of impatience,
forgetting the impact of our desire to have it all now...
“Yes’s” and “No’s” need to spend more time
with one another...”
If I read him correctly,
what the
former superintendent is telling us is that
what we presume
to be the wisdom of a particular stance we take,
may be heavily influenced by our own bias or prejudice.
He’s suggesting that there might be a greater, deeper wisdom,
that can
sometimes only be gained
by looking
beyond the limits of our own wisdom.
This is a fine application of Solomon’s prayer
in today’s
first lesson:
“Give me your wisdom, God,
the wisdom I need to make right judgements
and to distinguish right from wrong.”
Particularly when our own interests are stake
are we likely
to deem our understanding of things as wise
and the understanding
of those who oppose us as foolish.
Solomon, and Mr. Mavragis,
are suggesting
that sometimes what we think of as our wisdom
needs the
help of a greater wisdom,
even a wisdom apparently at odds with own.
This problem has a long history.
In the book of Genesis, in the garden of Eden,
the man and
woman standing at the foot of the tree decided,
at the serpent’s
urging,
that their
wisdom was greater than God’s.
The consequences of their foolishness are with us still.
In the gospel,
the images
of the treasure buried in a field and the pearl of great price
are intended to whet our appetite for God’s wisdom
so much so that we might prefer it to our own wisdom.
But there’s a cost involved.
The one who finds the treasure buried in a field
must go and
sell everything
in order
to buy the field and the hidden treasure.
The same is so for the one who wants to buy the pearl of great price.
The question comes, then:
How much are you and I willing to surrender
in order
to have a share in the very wisdom of God?
Sometimes the wisdom of God
will cost
us in material terms,
if something
we own or desire is at stake.
Sometimes, the price of wisdom is in more personal terms.
Wisdom might cost us our pride, point of view, ideology, politics, social standing,
or ego.
The wisdom of God is usually surprisingly simple - and yet perplexing -
because it
is often the opposite of “conventional wisdom.”
God’s wisdom is not arbitrary or capricious, it is constant and unfailing;
it is not
selfish or self interested,
it is self-giving and reaches out;
it is not
testy or angry,
it is docile and peaceable.
If we want a share of God’s wisdom in our lives,
we would
do well to judge our own assumed wisdom
against the
categories of constancy, self-sacrifice, and all that is peaceable.
Do we need God’s wisdom?
Yes!
The world needs the very wisdom of God
as it deals
with the scourge of terrorism around the globe.
Parents need the wisdom of God
for raising
children in a world that is often so foolish.
The church needs God’s wisdom
as it reaches
out to the victims of its past failures,
struggles
to deal with its monumental crisis,
and strains
to look for and to shape the future.
The people of Concord are in need of God’s wisdom
as they seek
to resolve issues around development
and affordable
housing.
Students in school, at all levels,
need God’s
wisdom as they choose their friends and make decisions
that shape
their own lives and the lives of their classmates.
Those in the workplace, on every level need the wisdom of God to help
them discern what is honest, what is fair, and what is just.
All of us, on any and all sides of every issue are in need of the wisdom of
God.
And I know, personally,
that as soon
as I begin to feel sure that God is on MY side
- and not the other -
that’s
when I probably need God’s wisdom most of all.
King Solomon could have asked for a long life, for wealth,
for victory
over his enemies - or for anything he dreamed,
but what he asked for was simply the wisdom
to know right
from wrong, good from evil.
As you can see:
there was
already wisdom in his prayer for wisdom.
In the Hebrew scriptures,
wisdom is often imaged as a woman.
who builds a house for her children and sets a table
for them
She does that for us today at this table.
If we are hungry for God’s wisdom,
she will
nourish us here
where the
constant, self-sacrificing, peaceable love of Jesus
becomes our
food, our wisdom, in his body and blood,
in the bread
and cup of the Eucharist.
Wisdom has set her table for us, her children,
that she
might nourish us to know
good from evil,
right from wrong,
the wise from the foolish.
Come to the banquet wisdom has prepared for us!
Rev. Austin Fleming
******************************************************************
Homily for August 9, 2002
So, what do you think about the 9 miners in Pennsylvania?
Was their rescue a miracle? Was it the result of prayer?
Searching on the internet for some information about the rescued miners,
I came across a similar story with a less happy ending.
On June 26 of this year, on one day, twenty-nine miners died
in two separate mining accidents, in the same county
in northern China's Hebei province.
The miners were trapped after heavy rain caused torrents of water
to flow from hillsides into the two coal mines.
Sixteen miners were trapped in one mine
and another 13 were trapped in the other.
So far this year, accidents in China's mining industry
have cost the lives of more than 3,300 workers: 3,300
-
so far this year...
We can neither prove nor disprove God’s miraculous intervention
in the Pennsylvania mine story.
But we sure could use a few miracles in the world, these days,
so I’m not surprised that so many have so quickly determined
that this rescue was miraculous.
But the problem with pronouncing particular events as miraculous
is where this leaves us as we try to understand the circumstances
in which God’s help
(when and where it was so desperately
needed, desired and prayed for)
was apparently not given.
Would the same God be so generous in one instance,
and apparently so miserly in another?
Do you suppose that the families of Chinese miners
pleaded for the lives of their trapped loved ones
any less than the families of the men in Pennsylvania?
Certainly you do not suppose that God is more attentive
to the prayers of his children in one faith
as contrasted with the prayers of his children in another
faith!
Understanding how God responds to our prayer
is something we all face at some time in our lives,
particularly when we are praying extra hard (not to win the lottery!)
but for the healing of someone suffering,
or employment for someone who is
jobless,
or peace
of mind for someone who is anxious or depressed.
Sometimes it seems that God answers our prayers.
Sometimes God seems to ignore our prayers.
Sometimes God answers in ways we neither expected or wanted.
Sometimes we are disappointed by God’s apparent silence.
But more often than not,
even those who are disappointed in, or angered
by God’s response to their
prayer
will pray just as hard
the next time there’s someone
or something in their lives
in need of the very help of God.
In the first scripture today,
Elijah goes to a cave to find God, and waits for God to come
to him.
Elijah does not find God in a terrifying storm,
or in an earthquake, or in the fire,
but only in a tiny, whispering sound...
Conversely, in the story in the gospel today,
Jesus comes in the storm,
upon waves that are tossing his friends’
fishing boat;
he comes in a storm that threatens to sink and to drown them.
Elijah, after hearing the tiny, whispering sound,
hides his face in the presence of God.
Peter, hearing the voice of Jesus,
finds the faith and courage
to step out and walk towards Jesus on the waves.
Each is responding, in a different way,
to the presence of God...
Each is praying, Elijah and Peter,
seeking to be closer to God...
Prayer is not, first of all,
about getting God to do things for us;
rather, prayer is, first of all, about intimacy with God...
intimacy with God...
seeking God’s presence
and wanting to draw nearer and closer to that presence...
I do not know if the rescue of the miners in Pennsylvania
was a miracle or not.
But I know that I do not believe that the 3,300 Chinese miners
who have died so far this year were in any way
forgotten or abandoned by God.
What might really help us is to know if and how
the prayer offered by the 9 miners in Pennsylvania
has deepened their relationship, their intimacy with God.
Have their lives not only been lengthened,
but more importantly - changed?
And how about any of us who prayed for the miners
while they were trapped?
Does their rescue deepen our intimacy with the God to whom we prayed?
If they had not been rescued, if they had perished in the mine,
how would that answer to prayer affect our intimacy with
God?
How does learning that so many Chinese miners have died in mines
affect our intimacy with God in prayer?
Perhaps the most miraculous thing of all is simply this:
that in Jesus,
we can dare to speak
of having intimacy with God...
of drawing close to the presence of God in our day to day
lives...
Isn’t that why we have gathered here today?
To seek the presence of God in this assembly of God’s people?
To hear the presence of God in the word of the scriptures?
To be fed with the presence of God in the eucharist?
Here, we sit down at table with our God!
Here, we are offered the Lord’s life
as our nourishment - as our supper!
As a mother feeds her child with the milk of her breasts,
so the Lord feeds us with the food of his body and blood.
How intimate!
Intimacy with God -
now, that’s miraculous!
-Rev. Austin Fleming
