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Homily for January 20, 2002 Today’s scriptures give us a kind of preview of coming attractions. John the Baptist becomes the advance man for Jesus: Oleos coming! The Lamb of God - the one who will take away your sins. He is the Son of God - I saw the Spirit come descend on him at the river - and I know that this is the One for whom we have waited In a prophetic vision, Isaiah, in today’s first reading, writes of the One who will come to save not only Israel, but all the nations on the face of the earth. He will be a servant to his people, and a light for all to lead them out of the darkness of sin. And St. Paul, beginning his letter to the church at Corinth, names himself not as a prophet, nor as the Baptist, and certainly not as the promised One, but rather, as an apostle, literally, one who is Oconto sent to announce, as did John, that Jesus is Lord. But the light of the One for whom Israel waited has been shadowed and the mercy of the One whom John recognized in Jesus has been obscured; and the message Paul was sent to announce has been muted because our church has been indicted as woefully negligent by some, and as obstinately guilty by others. I am convinced that only openness about these issues will provide a path for us to the truth and to the kind of resolution that only justice will bring. In light of that I am open, for the rest of my homily time, to any questions you may want to put regarding the church and sexual abuse by priests. Please keep in mind that I have no inside information, that I have no particular authority in the case at hand, that I have no easy way out of this sad situation and I donor have all the answers! Bearing all that in mind’s what would you like to ask? (At this point, at the Saturday 5:00 and Sunday 7:30 Masses, I opened the floor to questions. I did the same at the Sunday 9:30 and 11:30 Masses on the following weekend.) -Rev. Austin Fleming ****************************************************** Homily for January 27, 2002 Jesus calls Simon and Andrew away from their job on the Sea of Galilee and invites them to fish for something else: for men, for women; to fish for others to hear what Jesus preaches and to follow the path of the gospel. How can I preach on this text without reference to the daily news of the past three weeks and the stories of how John Geoghan, and other priests, have used their call from Jesus for their own sick pleasure and at the cost of scores of children, their families, and indeed the church at large in the Archdiocese of Boston. I am among those who believe that somehow the voice of Jesus called them to use the Onsets of their gifts and talents to preach the gospel message and, if you will, Haul in a catch of others to hear the same voice of Jesus speaking his word of challenge and consolation. These have been awkward weeks for priests. But each time I feel awkward because of my Roman collar, I try to remember the pain, the nightmare existence of children and their families who have suffered the woeful indignity of sexual abuse. In the midst of all this, your local fisherman, your pastor, wants very much to somehow explain all of this to you, but unfortunately, he cannot even explain it to himself. There is no rational explanation for what happened. There was no common sense employed. There is no defense for what went on for years and years, and years... So I ask you to pray with me. I ask you to pray that Jesus will call us again. I ask you to pray that we here, loud and clear, the voice of Jesus calling us to share in his mission, his work. Every priest needs to hear again and again the call of the Lord who calls us not to serve ourselves, and certainly not to protect ourselves, but rather to surrender ourselves, to surrender the Onsets of our gifts and talents to the service of the gospel. But even more important: let us pray for those who have been abused, and for their families, and for the whole church. Let us pray for healing. Let us pray for honesty and truth. Let us pray for justice. And let us pray that those who have known the darkness of abuse will come to know the healing light, which is the peace of Christ. (At the 9:30 & 11:30 Masses this weekend, in lieu of a homily, I opened the floor to questions from the assembly regarding the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests.) - Rev. Austin H. Fleming ******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Homily for February 3, 2001
Yesterday, our parish celebrated a funeral Mass for Bill Cassidy.
A lifelong resident of Concord, Bill was 88 years old when he died, having
been married to his wife, Jeannette, for 65 of those 88 years. A week
ago, Bill’s son asked me to come to visit his dad, knowing that time was
growing very short. I found Bill surrounded by his wife, his children
and grandchildren. Bill was not conscious of his surroundings, his
breathing was labored. The family spoke of him, his life, how much he
had loved his family, and how much they had loved him. Before I left,
I said the prayers for the dying and as part of that, I reached over and
traced the sign of the cross on Bill’s forehead. Immediately, as I
did so, his hand raised up off the bed and he blessed himself with that same
sign of the cross. He opened his eyes, briefly, and fell back into his
deep sleep...
Imagine, if you can, how deeply embedded in Bill’s heart and and mind was
the sign of the cross of Jesus, that on his death bed, apparently unaware of
what was happening around him, he would respond to just the touch and trace
of my thumb on his forehead. I will come back to this story in a few
moments...
Today’s gospel places before us the familiar beatitudes. In the
whole of the bible there are actually more than 80 beatitudes, but these are
the ones with which we are most familiar. Each of these phrases begins
with the words, blessed are they..... Or perhaps you’ve read the
translation which uses Happy are they...
My scripture sources indicate that a better translation would read,
Truly honorable are they... And certainly that phrasing would offer a
different sense than Blessed or Happy Truly honorable... The
church is meant to be the place where the gospel of the beatitudes is
preached precisely so that all can come to understand who and what is truly
honorable (or blessed or happy) in God's eyes.
The recent news about the church, however, even last night’s news, has
cast us in a light that is certainly less than honorable, less than blessed
or happy. In a few weeks, on the first Sunday of Lent, hundreds of
catechumens and candidates for full communion, (including Meghan, Andre and
Paul from our parish) will gather at the cathedral in Boston to be
officially chosen by our bishop, Cardinal Law, as those who are preparing
for the sacraments of initiation at Easter 2002.
Many catechumens and candidates around the archdiocese (and the pastors and
teams of Catholic parishioners who are working with these newcomers) are
concerned about an uneasiness that will mark this ceremony, because of
recent events. If you have found it difficult to respond to
non-Catholic family members, friends, neighbors and co-workers, (and
to Catholics who have left the church) imagine the awkwardness of those who
are not yet Catholic, but who are preparing to join this church of ours
which lives under such a cloud of suspicion.
What a sign of God's grace and Spirit it is that such men and women still
find what is good, holy, and beautiful in our faith community and that they
continue to be drawn to us in spite of the church’s worst failings. How
are we, the church, and those who are preparing to join the church, how are
all of us to make some sense of what’s happening, and of what happened
years ago?
Perhaps we need to trust that in every age, as in the time of Zephaniah
the prophet in today’s first reading, that in every age God preserves a
Remnant of faithfulness among his people from which remnant the people of
God can grow, again, into people the Lord made and called them to be.
Or perhaps we might listen to the words of Ivan Illich, a socially radical
but theologically conservative Catholic reformer, who wrote, over 30 years
ago: I make a
scrupulous distinction between the Church as SHE and the Church as IT. She
is that surprise in the net, the pearl! She
is the mystery, the kingdom among us. The
identity of the Church-as-she
will
remain through whatever changes she's currently undergoing... Those
who believe in her
believe
in something that cannot be said in words. No
pronouncements, however stupid...
can
lessen my love for her and my faith in her mystery. People
who leave the Church because of what she says
don’t
understand love. IT,
however, is the institution,
the
temporary incarnational form. I
can only talk about it in sociological terms. I’ve
never had trouble creating factions and dissent
towards
the Church-as-it. It
is the chrysalis,
the
skin, the cocoon, which has to die
in
order for the butterfly to metamorphose to its true form. Yet
there can't be a butterfly without a chrysalis
As
in all things Christian, light breaks forth in the darkness, life rises up
out of death, and the butterfly takes flight only after it sheds its
cocoon...
Months ago, when we welcomed Meghan and Andre as catechumens, and
Paul as a candidate for full communion.
You may remember how we traced the sign of the cross on their
foreheads, and on their eyes, their lips, their ears, their hearts, their
hands, and even on their feet. We
claimed them for Christ our savior. We
claimed them for membership in Christ’s body, the church, and for
communion with us, one day, at the Lord’s Table.
When they join us, at Easter, for communion, they will be members of
the body of Christ, members of our faith family, of this community we call
the church. It was the church as She who was alive and aware in Bill
Cassidy’s heart and mind when I traced the cross of Jesus on his forehead
and he responded by blessing himself with that same cross.
At baptism, everyone of us was signed with the cross of Christ,
claimed for Christ and for the church, and for the life and beauty She has
to offer us. - Rev. Austin Fleming ********************************************************************************************************************************************************* Homily
for Holy Thursday 2002 After
Mass on Palm Sunday morning, a parishioner stopped me and said,
Fr. Fleming, someone at work asked me
why Christians don’t still celebrate Passover And
of course I said, Well we do. We
celebrate Passover every Sunday when we celebrate the eucharist;
when we gather at this Passover table and listen to the scriptures,
and remember what Jesus did on the night before he died
when HE celebrated Passover with his friends. Just
as Jesus and his friends, gathered in the upper room,
remembered what the people of Israel did
with unleavened bread and the blood of a sacrificed lamb
on the night when the angel of death passed over their homes, so
we gather every Sunday to remember what Jesus did
on the night before he offered his body and blood on the cross
as the sacrificial lamb,
and we celebrate the Passover meal he left for us to remember him:
a simple meal of bread and wine, become his body and blood,
and given to us so that the angel of death
might pass over us, too,
and that we might be delivered from the death of sin. Recall
the words of the eucharistic prayer we have been praying
all through the season of Lent:
When we were lost and could not find the way to you,
you loved us more than ever.
Jesus, innocent and without sin,
gave himself into our hands and was nailed to a cross.
Yet before he stretched out his hands between heaven and earth
in the everlasting sign of your covenant,
he desired to celebrate the paschal meal
in the company of his friends...
Take this bread, all of you and eat it:
this is my body, given up for you.
Take this cup and drink from it, all of you:
for this is the cup of my blood;
the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.
It will be shed, Just
as the Lord told Moses and the Israelites
to celebrate the Passover
as a memorial feast (for) all generations as a perpetual institution,
so
the Lord instructed us:
Do this in memory of me.
For as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup,
we proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.
1 Cor 26 And
do you recall these words from our Lenten eucharistic prayer,
after remembering the words of Jesus over the bread and wine,
we prayed:
We do this in memory of Jesus Christ,
our Passover and our lasting peace...Ó We
do this every Sunday, and we do this in a special way every Easter,
not only on this Holy Thursday night
when we especially remember the Lord’s Last Passover,
but also over these three sacred days:
Thursday night to Friday;
Friday night to Saturday;
Saturday night to Sunday. In
ancient Israel,
the angel of death passed over the houses of the Israelites
protecting them and delivering them from danger. And
for generation after generation after generation,
Jewish people have gathered on this same night
to remember the Lord’s saving love
and how God’s love delivered them from danger and death. How
very, very much we need this year to celebrate Passover,
the Passover that is ours in Christ Jesus. The
Israelites were oppressed in Egypt
beaten down by their enemies, enslaved by their taskmasters. September
11, 2001 gave us a bitter taste of what it is
to be grievously assaulted by an enemy. We
do not understand how or why
the angel of death so easily penetrated the safety of our homeland, but
we have begun to understand, perhaps for the first time,
the plight of nations and peoples who live, day and night,
in fear of violence and bloodshed and destruction and death. How
much we need these days of prayer,
celebrated under the Passover moon,
to remind us that the angel of death did not pass over Jesus:
that
the lamb of God was not spared but was sacrificed for our sakes
so that the power of sin might not penetrate
the sanctuary of the homeland of our hearts. How
much we need these days of prayer, this Passover time,
when we remember how one of those closest to Jesus,
on the night of Passover betrayed the Lord with a kiss;
when we remember how Peter denied, three times,
that he even had made the acquaintance
of the one he knew to be his friend, his brother, his Lord. Of
course, Judas and Peter are not the only ones responsible
for the sacrifice of Jesus as the lamb of God. On
this night some 2000 years ago,
Jesus was betrayed by the worst in us all. But
these are days when the betrayal and denial of some in our church
overshadow our Passover, our Easter celebration. On
September 11, we were assaulted by an enemy from outside our borders. In
the crisis facing the church, the assault comes from within
and so our vulnerability is all the greater. Our
Passover prayer as Christians reminds us that
all of us, not just a few, but all of us have failed in smaller or
larger ways,
and that all of us, not just a few,
are in need of the deliverance offered to us
in the sacrifice of our paschal lamb,
Jesus, who takes away the sins of the world. Imagine
the shame, the guilt, the confusion, the anger of the apostles,
over those 72 hours of the suffering, death and entombment of Jesus. Out
of such a story comes the Passover promise of Jesus
that the mercy and presence of God will never abandon us
and that even, and especially, in the worst of times,
the deliverance of the lamb of God
safeguards and preserves us for a life and a peace that have no end. Our
Passover sacrifice is Jesus The
gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke
recount for us the story of what Jesus did
with the unleavened bread and the blessing cup of Passover at his
last supper. But
the gospel of John tells the tale of the supper
with no reference to the food served at that meal, but
rather with the scene of Jesus washing the feet of his friends. The
master washes the servants feet As
surely as the Lord told us to break bread and bless a cup in memory of him,
so does he command us to be servants of one another. With
the shadow of the towers of the World Trade Center
no longer on the horizon, and
with our church overshadowed by a crisis of trust,
we gather for this Passover meal of eucharist,
and to carry out the instruction Jesus gave us,
that we who would share in the supper of the Lamb
must first wash one another’s feet... Rev.
Austin Fleming *********************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Homily for Good Friday 2002 Oh-o-o-o, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble... Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Sometimes
it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble...
Is that so? Does the thought of Jesus suffering and dying for my sins, sometimes cause me to tremble, tremble, tremble? How do we understand the story we have all just heard? Is it that? just a story? even if a true story? Is it simply a moving account of one man’s extraordinary goodness? Is it at least a story of spiritual significance to which we turn for comfort and consolation? Have I only heard the story - second-hand, or, was I there when they crucified my Lord? Were YOU there when they crucified the Lord? I was there... YOU were there... At least our SINS were there: every failure of ours to love God and to love our neighbor; every failure of ours to live according to the Lord’s word; every failure of ours to put love first - all of this, which is part of all of us, was there -when they crucified our Lord. We were there as God’s people and as priests and bishops; were there as sinful individuals and we were there as a sinful church ever in need of God’s mercy and healing. Jesus, the Christ, our brother, took upon his innocent shoulders the sinfulness of every time we have settled for anything less than what is true, just and good; the sinfulness of every time we have settled for anything less than what is real, pure and beautiful; for anything less than what is life-giving, nurturing and loving; the sinfulness of every time we have put ourselves first, ahead of others; every time we have forgotten the poor while we ourselves have more than we need; every time we have taken for granted all that we have. I was there, you were there, the church was there, when they crucified our Lord because he took on his shoulders all our sins: the ones we remember; the ones we have forgotten; and even the sins we have not yet committed - but surely will. Look! There is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world! Oh God of love and mercy: you are always ready to forgive. Time and time again we broke your covenant but you did not abandon us. Instead, through your Son, Jesus, you bound yourself even more closely to the human family by a bond that can never be broken. When we were lost and could not find the way to you, you loved us more than ever. Jesus, innocent and without sin, gave himself into our hands and was nailed to a cross, for our sins. (Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation I) For our sins, yours and mine and the sins of the world, Jesus suffered, and he died. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: It is immensely easier to suffer in obedience to a human command than to suffer in the freedom of one’s own responsible deed. It is immensely easier to suffer with others than to suffer alone. It is immensely easier to suffer open and honorably than apart or in shame. It is immensely easier to suffer through commitment of the physical life than in the spirit. Christ suffered in freedom, alone, apart and in shame, in body and spirit - for US. For us, for our sins - he wore a crown of thorns. For us and for our sins he suffered and died and yes, we were there when they crucified our Lord. When I look at the image of the crucified Jesus, it is so easy for me to say, But certainly, my sins were not the worst, nor the heaviest, nor the most...Ó and it is so easy for me to forget that if MY sins had been the ONLY sins he would have loved the same, he would have suffered the same, he would have died - for me alone. We do not say these things to make any of us feel guilty, sad, or uncomfortable. We say these things so that some time, at least once, that some time we might tremble, tremble, tremble, as we - ponder the weight of our sins on his shoulders - and come then to GLORY the in cross of Jesus who is our salvation, our hope, our peace and our life. For how shall we ever know the victory of the cross, the gift of the cross, the sweetness of the cross, unless first we understand the love with which Jesus shouldered our sins and our burdens as he laid down his life for us, his friends: his unfaithful friends, his redeemed friends. O Jesus: you who love all peoples; you alone are without sin: for us sinners, you gave yourself up to death, death on the cross. Through your suffering, you deliver us from the death our sins deserve. You are our Passover, our lasting peace. You are the lamb, slain for us, that the angel of death might spare us and mark us as those to be saved for life without end. What shall we render to you, Lord, what shall we return and give back to you for such undeserved goodness? We give you GLORY - friend of us all! We give you GLORY - merciful Lord! We give you GLORY - long suffering God! We give you GLORY - you who take away the sins of the world! We give you GLORY - you who took our flesh in the womb of your mother! We give you GLORY - you who were bound in cords! We give you GLORY - you who were whipped and scourged! We give you GLORY - you who were crowned with thorns! We give you GLORY - you who were mocked and derided! We give you GLORY - you who were nailed to the cross! We give you GLORY - you who were buried and are now risen! We give you GLORY - who are proclaimed to all the nations! We give you GLORY - Lord Jesus Christ, you who are king of ENDLESS glory! And all this we do, for we were there when they crucified our Lord, and sometimes it causes us to tremble, tremble, tremble... we were there when they crucified our Lord.... Glory and praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ! ************************************************************************************************************************************************************************* Homily for Easter 2002 We gather this morning to remember what happened at dawn, on another morning long ago, in a garden outside the walls of the city of Jerusalem, when Mary Magdalene and another woman named Mary came to keep a vigil of grief for their friend who had died, Jesus of Nazareth. But they did not find what they came to see. Rather, in place of a quiet sunrise, there was an earthquake; and instead of a peaceful retreat, an angel appeared who was certainly a super-angel with the power and strength to roll back the large stone that had sealed the entrance to the tomb. And the angel told the women three things: 1) Don’t be afraid... 2) Everything is changed... 3) Go and tell the others... Don't be afraid! says the angel. I think I would have been afraid, too, had I witnessed what these two women saw and experienced. And if I really believed it was an angel who was telling me not to be afraid, I think I would have become even more afraid! When nothing seems to be what we expect it to be, we become disoriented and fear is our natural reaction. The angel tells the women that everything is changed: the angel says: - you’re looking for Jesus but he’s no longer where you left him - you came to grieve for him but no need for that - he lives again - he is risen - you thought you had lost him but he’s on his way to Galilee to find - you! - you thought you’d seen the last of him but in just a little while you’ll meet him again - Everything is changed... And in the midst of this fear and confusion, the angel tells the women: Now go, and tell the others what you have seen. And the gospel tells us that the women, fearful and yet overjoyed at the news, ran to tell all of this to the other disciples. I can imagine them running and talking to each other at the same time! What are we going to tell them? Will they believe us? What will we say? What will they say? We should have asked that angel to come with us! Did you see the guards at the tomb? They were more frightened than us! Do you believe the angel? Do you think Jesus really rose from the dead AND THEN, | ||||||