Generally, we don’t like to be criticized. In whatever way it comes to us, if it’s from our boss or supervisor, a close friend or family member, we usually don’t like being criticized, and we don’t like it because, bottom line, we don’t like to be corrected. We always like to think we’ve got everything together, and it feels like any criticism violates my own individualism and ego. Rather than allowing humility receive it, our pride kicks in and we react negatively. On the flip side, while we don’t like to receive criticism, for some it’s also hard to give criticism. We can be afraid of offending the other person. We might be more concerned about hurting the relationship with that person rather than saying what needs to be said, and so, we choose to remain silent.
Yet, there are times when criticism is necessary for growth, to help improve our lives, and to make sure we stay on the right track. Coaches have to critique their athletes to help them excel in their sport. Good teachers have to critique their students to help them learn the material. Obviously, I bring this up because our Scripture readings for this Sunday are about criticism. The readings tell us of God’s command of spiritual responsibility and accountability that all of us have to our neighbor – family members, friends, our community both in society and in the church. Jesus gives this as part of our mission. He’s counting on us to help our brothers and sisters in the faith to follow in his footsteps, to encourage them when they are doing well and to help them when they are going off the path that Jesus asks us to follow. However, just because Jesus says that this is part of our mission as Christians, doesn’t mean that we have the license to go around and rip people apart. I’m sure we’ve all come across someone who just feels very free to criticize everything, and just doesn’t seem capable of saying anything good about another person. Criticism that’s harsh, negative, and belittling defeats the very purpose of Christian living. It’s damaging not only to the person being criticized but also undermines what Jesus is calling us to do. We want to offer growth, not discouragement. We want to build up, not put down. This is a mission given to us by Jesus that has to come from real love, as St. Paul points out. “Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another.” “Love does no evil to the neighbor.” And as you all know, loving in that capacity is not always easy, and to love someone in the way that God wants us to might mean at times correcting them, showing them the way to what is good. That’s the example that Jesus gives us. His love for us led to his crucifixion and his death, to show the detriment of sin. Criticizing and correcting in our context is not meant to win an argument, to prove that I’m right and you’re wrong. The whole point is to bring about a greater communion with Jesus. It’s what our Lord is getting at in the practical steps he lays out in the Gospel. “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.” If someone has wronged you, talk to that person. By not saying anything, what happens? How easy it is to allow that hurt grow inside of us and how it can cloud our thinking and actions. We gossip and slander, and do all sorts of other things except the one thing that is good, and that’s to go and talk to that person. If that doesn’t work, Jesus says, “Take one or two others along with you.” But that doesn’t mean ganging up on that person and force that person to admit to their wrong, but that the added witness and the love shown can help put things in a clearer light. And then finally Jesus says, “If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church,” to those who can join you in prayer, and to help show what is good when it comes to our salvation. There are those today who would just wish that the Church would be silent when it comes to certain issues, but the Church has her mission to carry out God’s love in the world, and at times it has to be a “tough love” to emphasize what is good for our salvation and to help us stay on that path that Jesus has shown us. So, we have these readings to remind us that we have a clear duty to make ourselves responsible for others’ actions. Ezekiel says that if we do not warn others of their evil ways we will be held responsible for their spiritual death. The Gospel is the same thing. And, the reason we’re given these readings is to really help us live out what we’re all about. We love God and we desire to show that love to our neighbor, even in those moments when it is hard, and with God’s help, we know that anything that is done out of love will bear much fruit and to bring about a greater communion with each other and with God. Of all the interactions that Jesus has with his disciples – from hearing him preach to all the amazing miracles he performs, healing the sick, walking on water, raising the dead – from all his interactions, I always find this Sunday's Gospel to be particularly moving, and relevant to my own spiritual life and my own relationship with God.
Matthew writes that Jesus and his disciples went to the region of Caesarea Philippi, a a city that was twenty miles north of the Sea of Galilee. It was still considered to be part of the Jewish territory, but was highly influenced by pagan practices, and was known for a great temple that was dedicated to Caesar Augustus, who was revered as a god-like figure in the Roman empire. It’s here that Jesus poses these significant questions to his disciples. “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” Jesus is asking them what people have been saying about him? What rumors are going around about me? And so, the disciples tell him, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." While those aren’t offensive answers, we also know that not everyone had a favorable opinion about Jesus. Some of the Pharisees said he was possessed by the devil. In other words, Jesus is an evil person. Even his own family said that he’s out of his mind, he’s crazy. But then, Jesus asks his disciples a very personal question, “But who do you say that I am?” When you’re asked to describe someone to another person, how you describe that person depends on how you relate to that person. How you describe your boss or a co-worker will be different than how you describe your spouse or a sibling. You’ll describe someone that you love differently than someone you know professionally or by acquaintance. It comes from the heart, how you’re moved by that person and your memories of that person. If Jesus were to ask you these two questions, how would you answer them? “Who do people say that I am?” I would imagine that most Christians would give the right answer. Jesus is God who became man. He died on the cross and rose from the dead. Jesus is the Savior of the world. But while they are correct answers are they actually personal answers that come from the heart or simply theoretical? It’s easy to believe things about Jesus rather than believing in Jesus. So if Jesus were to ask you then the second question, “But who do you say that I am?” What would you say? Is he your God, the one who has saved you from your sins, who gives and sustains your life, the source of your joy and peace in life? And if you were to answer in that way, are your answers just the responses that you're told that you're supposed to say, theoretical, or does it come from a deep and personal relationship with God that flows from your heart? This is why I find this Gospel passage so moving and relevant to my own spiritual life. To put it in a different perspective, if someone were to ask you a similar question, why do you go to Church, why are you a Catholic? Would your answer convince that person that you’re truly in love with Jesus Christ? That’s the only reason why we go to Church and why we persevere in our Catholic faith, because we love and believe in God and in everything that he has given us to help us in our faith. If we desire to grow in our love for Jesus Christ, and to stay in love with him, we have to have those moments of being with him. We want to spend time with him. Being with him in our prayer, where we speak to him from our heart. Hearing him speak to us in the Scriptures, where we read and reflect over his life. It’s that excitement of wanting to learn more about him, and we can do that from what the Church teaches about Jesus. And of course, we encounter him here at the Eucharist, where we receive his very own body and blood. All these can help us to answer Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” Answers that truly come from the heart, because we love and believe in God. Like Peter, we can sincerely and wholeheartedly say, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Today's Gospel of the Canaanite woman (Mt 15:21-28) seems to be a very confusing Gospel. Not that it’s hard to picture what’s going on in this story, but what’s confusing is Jesus’ reaction to this woman. It seems to go against everything we know about Jesus. He seems rude, cold-hearted, and even offensive to the woman. Why does it seem like he reacts in this way?
Well, one reason we could say is that it was cultural at the time. Jewish rabbis would never speak to women in public, but not only that, the Gospel says that she was a Canaanite woman, in other words she was a pagan, and Jews and gentiles would seldom interact with each other. But, we know that can’t be the reason why it seems like Jesus reacts in this way because there are plenty of other examples when Jesus would go against cultural norms. He would always be going outside the boundaries. So, what’s the deal? Why does it seem like Jesus doesn’t want to help this woman? If Jesus truly is God, wouldn’t he have wanted to help this woman right away? Everything that Jesus does is for a reason, and how he interacts with this woman can actually reveal a lot about how God deals with all of us. This woman comes to Jesus with a request, and this request wasn’t for herself, and the request wasn’t something small or insignificant. Her request to Jesus was to save her daughter. And what was Jesus’ response? Silence. The Gospel says, “Jesus did not say a word in answer to her.” He was silent. He didn’t say a single word to this woman. I’m sure we can all relate to this experience. How many times have we gone to God with a request, and not just for something selfish or minor, but with a pretty significant request, and all we get in response is silence? Yet, the woman isn’t discouraged. She persists, enough to the point where the disciples ask Jesus to send her away. Now, if Jesus’ silence wasn’t painful enough, he gives this heart-breaking response, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” It’s not just silence now, but rejection. And not for something she did, but for who she was, because she wasn’t a part of the house of Israel. She was being faulted for being a Canaanite. That still doesn’t stop the woman. The Gospel says that she did him homage. In other words, she prostrated herself at the feet of Jesus, she was worshipping him, pouring her heart out to him, and with so much desperation she says, “Lord, help me.” Think of those times when you’ve poured out your heart to God, with that same desperation, and praying, “Lord help me.” But even that wasn’t enough. “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” If silence wasn’t enough, if clear rejection wasn’t enough, now it seems like there’s insult and humiliation. Surprisingly, without responding with any kind of offense, not saying to Jesus, “How dare you!” we have this remarkable response from the woman, “Even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” And now, finally, delighted with her response, Jesus praises her faith and grants her request. Again, like I said, this is a confusing story. What do we make of this? Jesus didn’t need to be convinced. Jesus didn’t need a reason to grant her request. What Jesus is clearly doing is testing this woman. He’s testing her so that she would come to know how great her faith really is. If Jesus were to simply grant her request right away, would she really have appreciated her faith in God? It was in this exchange with Jesus that allowed her faith to grow, to have such a strong and determined faith that nothing would break it, not even silence or rejection or insult. If God were to grant everything we asked Him right away, how would we actually grow in our faith, to learn what it means to have that same determined and unwavering faith? We wouldn’t. Jesus often doesn’t answer our petitions right away, because if he did, we’d risk becoming “spiritually spoiled.” We would pray to God with an attitude of self-righteousness, thinking as if somehow God owes me something. Sometimes silence, rejection, even humiliation is needed to help expand and purify our faith, to show that persistence and humility. Being tested is not always a bad thing. Needing to be persistent is not a bad thing. God knows what we need, especially to help us to grow in our faith. And so our response when we might feel like this is happening to us is not discouragement and to walk away. No, our response is like this woman, that we can also come to know how great our faith in God really is. There are many encouraging statements we hear when it comes to overcoming our fears: “Face your fears,” “Don’t let fear hold you back.” Of course the most famous one said by Roosevelt, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” All these statements want to stress the same point – fear limits who we are. It limits our experiences, our growth and capabilities. These fears can range from a fear of heights or flying, to a fear of public-speaking or fears that stem from social anxiety. Sometimes, we can drown ourselves so much in our fears that it actually starts harming our physical health – we have trouble sleeping and it weakens our immune system.
Not only our physical health, but fear can certainly have harmful effects to our spiritual lives. The more we give in to fear, the less we trust God. Fear can make us feel like God is distant and far away from us, and our thoughts and actions as a result of our fear can make it look like we don’t actually believe in God or that He cares about us. This theme is at the heart of our readings today. We see in a very dramatic way how fear can prevent us from living our lives in the way that God has called us to, how fear can prevent us from knowing the true freedom and peace that can only come from God. In our first reading we have the prophet Elijah, and he climbs the mountain, Horeb, and goes into a cave. The reason why he did this is because he was afraid. The chapters before this passage, Elijah’s been preaching a message of repentance and conversion to the Israelites urging them to turn away from false idols and return to worshipping the true God. But the Queen, Queen Jezebel, despised what he was doing, and being filled with so much hatred for him, she was determined to have Elijah killed. And so, it says in chapter 19, verse 3, “Elijah was afraid and fled for his life.” He abandoned what God wanted him to do because he was driven by his fear. He was so afraid that he escapes to the mountain to hide. This passage actually depicts well the common response that we all have when it comes to fears, and it’s the fight or flight response. Clearly, Elijah has a flight response from his fear by hiding in the mountain, but the next part can be seen as how he wished his fight response would’ve looked like. God tells him to go outside the mountain because he will see again God’s presence, but it wasn’t in the storm, or the earthquake, or the fire, but in a tiny whispering sound. Maybe Elijah, again because of his fear, wanted God to be in those strong fearful events as a way to show how God is fighting for Elijah, but God wasn’t in those strong fearful events. What brought Elijah back to his senses was that recognition of God in that tiny whispering sound. Once he saw the true God again, rather than how he wanted God to be as a result of his fear, he recaptured his confidence and remembered what really gave him purpose and life. That encounter with God brought him back to what he was all about. And then we have this incredible Gospel. Peter and the other disciples are told by Jesus to get into a boat and to meet him on the other side of the sea, and the Gospel says that during the fourth watch of the night, which would’ve been around 3:00 in the morning, the darkest hours of the night, there was a major storm and their boat was being tossed around. Certainly there was a lot of fear among the disciples, but Jesus comes to them walking on the water. “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid,” he says, and he invites Peter to come to him. Then, the best part of the Gospel, it says, “Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus. But when he saw how strong the wind was he became frightened; and, beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’” Peter actually walked on water. For that brief moment he wasn’t afraid and did what was impossible, as long as Peter kept his eyes fixed on Jesus, but when he looked away, when he saw again how strong the storm was and the waves splashing on his feet, he became afraid, and began to sink. While it won’t be as dramatic for us like the Gospel, the lesson is still the same – keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. Anything is possible when we can do that, but when we take our eyes off of Jesus, how quickly we can sink. We believe in God, a God who loves us and will never abandon us, a God who knows our fears and will come to us, maybe not in the ways that we expect like Elijah, but he will come to us to help us rise above those storms in our lives that can stir up so much fear and anxiety. There are many statements that encourage us to overcome our fears, but there is none better than what Jesus said to his disciples, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” Ask God for the grace to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and to be attentive to his voice, so that we can always have that confidence and the peace that can only come from God to help us overcome those fears in our lives. This day that we celebrate – the feast of the Transfiguration – when Jesus gave a glimpse of His glory to Peter, James, and John, can actually raise more questions rather than affirm something of our faith. One question is, why was Jesus transfigured for that brief moment on the mountain? What was its purpose? And secondly, after experiencing such an event, why did the Apostles still not understand who Jesus was?
One thing we can affirm is that the Transfiguration was an epiphany, a glimpse that Peter, James and John saw of divine glory, manifesting Jesus as the Son of God, but the Transfiguration wasn’t the only event where they saw this divine glory. The same three were also present when Jesus brought back to life the daughter of Jairus, and the number of other examples seeing Jesus’ power and authority. But, despite all these experiences, the Apostles couldn’t see the full picture of Jesus’ mission. While they saw a glimpse of that divine glory and Jesus’ power and authority, they didn’t see that his greatest glory would come from the suffering and death that he would have to endure. Right before the Transfiguration, Jesus revealed for the first time to his apostles that he would suffer greatly, be rejected by the elders, be killed and then rise on the third day. So, hearing that news for the first time obviously caused a lot of fear and confusion among the Apostles, so much so that Peter rebuked Jesus, criticized Jesus that that can’t happen. And so, the need for the Transfiguration – the need for Peter, James and John to be reminded of who Jesus really is, being encouraged by their vision of Moses and Elijah as a way of saying to Peter, James and John that everything that Jesus said has to take place to fulfill everything that’s been said about Him in the Old Testament, and in case they needed any further encouragement, God the Father’s voice saying to them, “This is my beloved son, listen to him.” There is a lesson for us with this event of the Transfiguration. We’re like the apostles. We want to see God’s glory, His power, working in my life, but like the apostles, we also get afraid and even run away if it means there is some form of suffering involved. “God, that can’t happen. There has to be another way.” Sometimes, like the apostles, we just don’t get it. How many times in our prayer do we ask God to do all these incredible things: to get rid of all sickness, to end violence, poverty and war? Of course we should be praying for these things and for many other things as well, but, sometimes our attitude can be that when we ask for these things, we ask for them without wanting to be involved at all. We can pray in such a way so that we ourselves don’t have to sacrifice anything for it. Coming back to the feast we celebrate today, it’s clear that the Apostles still don’t get it. Peter, having just seen Jesus transfigured before him wants to build three tents; in other words, he has no idea what’s going on. And the only thing that Jesus says to them in response is to wait until the Son of Man has risen from the dead. My interpretation of that is Jesus saying to them, “You won’t understand what just happened until you actually see me suffer, die, and rise again.” This is what’s so helpful about today’s feast, that God wants to show us His power and His glory, but a glory that is revealed only through suffering. Can God choose to reveal His power in other ways, in other easier ways, of course? Jesus didn’t have to die on the Cross. He was God, he could’ve done whatever he wanted, but he chose to die at the hands of his enemies and take up his cross. And now, all of a sudden, he has given meaning to suffering, death no longer has the final word, and the fullness of God’s power and glory has been revealed to us in the resurrection of Jesus. It is with the experience of Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection that finally the Apostles get it! We are reminded today that we frequently think of Jesus’ divinity only in terms of heavenly glory, without recognizing God’s presence on the cross, as if Jesus is only the Son of God in glory, but not in suffering. With the Transfiguration, we’re reminded that God is God even in the midst of suffering, that there is always hope and purpose in whatever difficult moments we have to go through, and it’s especially in those moments when there are crosses to carry that we can experience in our lives more fully God’s power and His glory. The last several weeks we’ve been listening to Matthew 13, Jesus giving various parables to try to describe what the Kingdom of God is like. Of all of Jesus’ teachings, the most important was the Kingdom of God. There are almost 150 references to God’s Kingdom in the New Testament, and 52 of them are in Matthew’s Gospel.
With each reference there is something new we learn about God’s Kingdom. There is the image of a shepherd and the lost sheep, the prodigal son, the seed that falls on good soil. Today, Jesus gives us even more images about the Kingdom of God – the net that catches fish, both good and bad, which is like the image from last week of the wheat and the weeds. And then we have the image of a hidden treasure and a precious pearl. A person discovers a hidden treasure in a field. He buries that treasure again in the field, goes and sells everything he has and buys that field. Same thing with the precious pearl. A merchant is trying to buy precious pearls, and when he finally finds one, he sells everything he has in order to get that pearl. One bit of explanation with the hidden treasure parable because it seems strange that the person who discovers the treasure would re-bury it and buy the entire field. During Jesus’ time, because there weren’t banks like we use them, people would actually bury their valuables in the ground for safekeeping. And so for this person to discover this treasure he couldn’t just walk away with it because it didn’t belong to him. He had to buy that plot of land in order to have possession of the treasure. It seems a little manipulative for him to do that, but if the previous owner of that land had no idea he had that treasure on his property what fault did this guy commit? In fact, there is a significant message we can learn from this situation, as well as from the parable about the precious pearl. The two obvious characters in these parables are the individuals who discover the treasure and the pearl, but there are also two other characters that need to be considered: the previous owner of that plot of land who had no idea he had this treasure on his property, and the person who sold to the merchant that precious pearl not knowing at all of the value. They had no idea what they had and they just easily gave it away. Of course, for Jesus to give us these two parables, it’s his desire that we’re like the two main characters who discover the joy and value of God’s Kingdom, but there’s also a caution that he gives in these two parables, which we see from those two other characters – don’t give up your faith so easily. For some, because they don’t see what’s so valuable about their faith, it’s easy to give it away, in other words, becoming complacent in their life of faith and easily compromising it – deciding not to go to Mass on Sunday, not really having a prayer life, becoming that cafeteria Catholic – choosing what to believe and ignoring the rest. Wanting to be like the two main characters in the parables, how do I grow in that desire for God’s Kingdom? It’s hard to desire something we really don’t know much about. What is God’s Kingdom? What does it mean to be part of God’s Kingdom, and how can I start realizing it now? One characteristic that stands out with the parable of finding the hidden treasure or the pearl of great price is the careful searching for it. There is a real care and diligence in finding that treasure. It’s searching hard for it and persevering in that search. It’s that desire like Solomon in our first reading. When God asks him what he needs, he doesn’t ask for a long and comfortable life that’s free from all trouble and stress. What Solomon asks for is to have an understanding heart, an understanding heart in order to know what is right and wrong. That needs to be a request that we make to God as well, to have an understanding heart to know what takes me away from God and what helps me to discover the beauty and the richness of God’s word. Going back to the parable that Jesus gave us a few weeks ago of the seed that is sown in the different soils, Jesus gave an explanation of that parable and he said that the seed sown on rich soil “is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.” Simply hearing the Word of God is very different from understanding the Word of God. Understanding the Word of God touches us to the core of our being and challenges us to make a choice either for or against God. It’s only by understanding the Word of God that we know what is so valuable about our faith. So, hearing again these parables, and knowing that Jesus really wants us to have that care and diligence in finding that treasure of God’s kingdom, ask God that we can have that understanding heart so that we can truly discover the joy and the value of our faith. I’m sure all of us have had the experience while reading a book that after getting through a few pages you don’t recall anything of what you just read. It’s not only with books that this can happen to you. Even while someone might be speaking to you, after a few minutes, you realize you have no idea what the other person was just talking about. Isn’t this what Jesus means from our Gospel today when he says, “they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.” I’m hearing the other person talk to me, but I’m really not listening, or I’m looking at the words in the book, but really not understanding. We know that it’s a common experience, and we know that it can happen because we can so easily be distracted. Maybe it’s being preoccupied with a work issue or family situation, or thinking of all the things you have to do. Maybe you’re unmotivated, sad or bored and just can’t be engaged with what it is that you’re supposed to be doing. And so, as a result, we can look but not see, hear but not listen. As people of faith, it can also happen in our own spiritual lives. We’re at Mass but really not present at Mass. In our Gospel today, Jesus gives us the parable of the sower so that we can evaluate how well I see and hear God in my life. If we really pay attention to the parable we realize that it’s all about our relationship with God. It’s obvious that our Lord uses primarily farming images in this parable, but if Jesus was giving farming advice, he would’ve been a very bad farmer. No farmer would carelessly scatter seed wherever not caring where it fell but rather he would be very careful to always put seed in good soil. Jesus isn’t giving farming tips in this parable. For him, there is a reason for the seed to be scattered everywhere. Even if it’s the path, the rocky ground, or among thorns, wherever that seed lands that soil always has the possibility to become good soil. The path that Jesus describes is the most hardened soil. As a result of people walking on a dirt path, that dirt became so packed down and hardened that a seed wouldn’t be able to penetrate it. But even with that kind of soil, it can be changed into good soil. There are many reasons why a person’s soul can become so hardened that it can seem impossible to see or hear God: loss of a loved one, suffering an evil or injustice, or experiencing disappointments. But the seed that God sows can make the most hardened soil into good soil. Look at the life of St. Paul who went from killing Christians to becoming one of the greatest missionaries in the church. One of my closest friends who went from living an immoral life and never going to church experienced a major conversion and eventually became a priest. While there are those that we know who might have that hardened soil, it’s a more common experience to know those, or even in our own lives, to be that rocky ground or the seed falling into thorns. The rocky ground, as Jesus describes it, “is the one who hears the word and receives it at once with joy, but he has no root and lasts only for a time.” One example that comes to mind is when Lent comes around and there are some who can be very motivated on Ash Wednesday to be better about practicing their faith, but then loses that motivation after a few weeks. Or the “worldly anxieties” that Jesus attributes to the thorns that choke the seed can happen when too much focus is given to what others might think or being distracted by worldly attractions. Whatever it might be, the hardened path, the rocky ground or falling among the thorns, it always has the capacity to receive God and become that good soil. Once the fruit of that seed is tasted, once a person truly tastes the goodness of the Lord, experiencing real love and mercy from God, knowing the peace that only God can give, how easy it is to become that good soil. And just as much as we ourselves are called to hear and see God operating in my own life – God calling me in to a deeper relationship with Him – we can also help till the soil in the life of another to help them receive and experience God. How well do I see and hear God in the presence of my neighbor? When we leave church today and go about our week, can I easily fall back into my own distractions that when a person is talking to me and I don’t listen I miss an opportunity to show compassion and sympathy? Can I put aside my own preoccupations and try to see and hear how God wants me to be in service to those that I might encounter today? As we receive again that seed, the Word of God, Jesus in the Eucharist, may He help us to see and hear Him in others so that we can help them to become that good soil to know the fruit of that seed that only God can give. Who of us aren’t carrying any heavy burdens in our lives? Especially here in D.C. where there’s such a high level of competition in the work environment, where everything is so expensive, where there’s such an expectation to fit in to a certain lifestyle, it’s easy to have so many burdens in our lives.
Aside from D.C., some other burdens that weigh us down could be personal health issues, bad relationships, family problems, feeling used or under appreciated. And all these can lead to shame, guilt, and a lack of self-worth. We all have burdens, and when we come to Mass we bring these burdens with us. We pray to God to help us, to help us with whatever we’re going through. Today, we hear those very comforting words from Jesus, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” Who doesn’t find those words comforting and attractive? Jesus wants to give us rest from our burdens. How could anyone not be attracted to what Jesus wants to give? But we have to be careful with how we interpret these words. Jesus wants to give us rest, but it’s not simply by wiping out whatever fears or anxieties we have in our lives, by getting rid of whatever struggles we have with sin, or just automatically fixing whatever problem we have. Faith is not magic. We don’t go to God with the expectation that He’ll just remove our burdens from our lives. Look at Jesus’ own life. His life wasn’t painless or without any burdens. There was a lot of pain in his life, and he carried the heaviest burden of all – the weight of the cross and to die on it for our salvation. And so, Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest.” Jesus wants to give us rest, and the way he offers it is by what he says next. “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, and you will find rest for yourselves.” We have to put on the yoke of Jesus if we want to know this rest. A yoke is actually a beautiful image that Jesus uses. What is a yoke? It’s mainly used for farming purposes, and it’s used on animals. It’s a wooden beam used to keep two oxen together so that the two of them can pull some heavy load. It’s interesting that Jesus uses the image of a yoke. A yoke always implies two things carrying some load. And so, if Jesus is insisting that we put on his yoke, he’s also saying, don’t put on some other yoke. Never do we go through some burden alone, we want help, we want to feel some consolation and strength. But what are those things? What other yoke do we put on? Maybe it’s those things that we escape to where we just want to feel better and forget for a moment - indulging in food or drink, misuse of the internet, wasted hours in front of the tv - putting on that yoke to think that it will help lighten that burden, but we know it doesn’t. Maybe another yoke that we put on is self-pity, feeling sorry for ourselves, and the reason why we put on that yoke is because we want people to know how miserable we are, and perhaps the sympathy we get can try to give some relief. Jesus is saying if you really want rest, put on his yoke. In other words, let Jesus be your strength. He wants to help carry our burdens. He wants us to find strength from him. It’s the realization that when we turn to God, we don’t expect Jesus to do things for us, but that Jesus does things with us. Faith is not magic. Faith gives us a perspective that no matter how hard or difficult things can get, we can still find peace and rest, but only with Jesus. He doesn’t promise a life without burdens. He doesn’t show us the easy way out of problems, but if we’re truly yoked to him, we will know that rest. When we say that something is worthy, what do we mean by that? It’s clear in our Gospel that Jesus is describing for us what it means to be a worthy disciple, but if we’re to have a right understanding of what it means to be a worthy disciple, what’s our understanding of someone being worthy?
Worthiness is often associated with having great value and showing great excellence. And when we say we admire someone as having great worth, it’s more than just someone who is the most intelligent, or the most successful, or the most accomplished. For me, it’s more about seeing someone as being fully alive – meaning a person that really cherishes life, values the meaning of relationships, shows great virtue, puts others before self, and doing it all with a real understanding of humility. But when applying that sense of worthiness to your own self, we can often struggle with it. It’s easy to fall into the trap of placing a sense of self-worth based upon accomplishments and that sense of worthiness coming from the recognition and praise you get from others, or that you have to earn your self-worthiness by your behavior, needing to be perfect in every possible way in order to show worthiness. But when we don’t get the recognition, or your reputation being slandered, or confronted again with your own insecurities and shortcomings, do we still have a sense of worthiness? Being worthy comes, not from what we get from others, but more from what we give. All of our readings today remind us that a right understanding of worthiness first of all comes from God. Being a worthy disciple of God is ultimately about the generous giving of ourselves. And that doesn’t mean the amount of money we give away or our contributions to worthy causes. It’s more about the giving of ourselves to people: real acts of service without thinking of what we can get in return, the ordinary practices of how you speak about others, building others up rather than tearing them down, forgiving others that makes us worthy disciples of God because of what we give. The woman in our First Reading is a great example of this, who displays her worth in her hospitability to the prophet. There was no thought of what she would get in return, how she might be rewarded, it was an entirely selfless act, knowing that her charity was her own way to show her love and charity to God Himself. Ultimately that is the heart of what it means to be a worthy disciple of God – that everything about us, what we say and what we do, is all done out of a love for God. That is the whole point of what Jesus says in the Gospel. “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.” Nothing is more important than God. Period. No relationship in our lives is more important than God. And no suffering or sacrifice is too much to give up on God. The more we glorify God the more we are known as worthy. From a strictly human standard that doesn’t sound right. It can certainly seem demeaning and undignified to carry out those expectations in order to be considered worthy, but God doesn’t operate according to our standards. Last week we had the feast day of St. Irenaeus, a 2nd century martyr of the faith, and he is famously known for saying, “The Glory of God is man fully alive.” The more we glorify God the more we know how to live life. Being fully alive is not according to cultural standards of living a life that just wants to maximize pleasure without having any worries or cares in life. That’s not a person being fully alive. Being fully alive is when we can recognize that all things come from God, and are dependent upon God, nothing would exist without God. And even when there are trials and hardships – crosses to carry – they are not seen as if God is punishing me or doesn’t care about me, but an opportunity to grow in endurance, perseverance, and courage for the sake of my love for God. Because even though we know that nothing would exist without God, we also know that God places an immeasurable amount of worth to our lives. “You are worth more than many sparrows,” as we remember Jesus saying from last week’s Gospel. In order to live a life that is fully alive by glorifying God, it’s good to consider, on a practical level, how much time we actually give to God each week? If one hour on Sunday is all the time I give God in a week, does that really show how important God is in my life? From all the choices that I make in a day do I consider how it serves God or is it more about how it serves me? Having that sense of worthiness comes, not from what we get from others – the recognition and attention we get for some work or success that makes us worthy, but more from what we give. And as much Jesus wants us to be those worthy disciples, it’s also for us to know how to live life fully. As St. Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” And so give God the glory He deserves, and in turn, to know how to live our lives more fully as worthy disciples of God. I know that we have all had the experience of having some plan made up, but then it doesn’t turn out the way we expected it to happen. And certainly that can happen with more ordinary situations like your weekend plans getting changed, or a last minute cancellation, which in itself is still frustrating but nothing that we can’t get over and move on with.
But I’m sure many of us have also had the experience when that unexpected change in our plan was something more substantial, and more painful to deal with when it doesn’t go according to plan. It might’ve been something with our professional life – something you worked so hard for and planned for a very long time, but then all of sudden, that plan doesn’t end up happening in the way we expected it to happen. Or something involving our personal lives and a particular relationship that we’ve been involved in for some time but doesn’t result in the way that we thought. And with any of those experiences, when those plans don’t pan out as we expected, and life takes a drastic turn in another direction, and all those feelings of frustration and fear set in, what do we do? Do we choose to live in fear or choose to live in faith? In our Gospel today, we hear those very consoling words from Jesus, “Do not be afraid.” It’s tempting to think that of course for Jesus it’s easy for him to say that. He’s God, what does He have to be afraid of, what does He know of this experience I’m going through. He knows exactly what we’re going through. Becoming fully man, Jesus knows everything we experience except sin. He knows what fear is. He knows what it’s like to experience pain and death. He knows what we can go through because He himself has experienced it all: having his heart broken, betrayed by his closest friends, knowing what it’s like to be lonely, disliked and unappreciated. And so, he can confidently say to us, “Do not be afraid.” In fact, he says those words 16 times throughout the Gospels, and he says it so often because he knows that we all need to hear it over and over again, otherwise it’s so easy to give in to our fear and everything else that comes along with it – worry and anxiety, placing our hope in the wrong things, or trusting in the wrong people. Jeremiah the prophet, in the First Reading from today at Mass, certainly knew the temptation to give in to his fears and turn away from God. As he said in the reading, "I hear the whisperings of many: 'Terror on every side! Denounce! let us denounce him!' All those who were my friends are on the watch for any misstep of mine.” Jeremiah was called to preach a message of conversion to his own people, but all he got in return were threats and insults from the people to get him to stop preaching that message. He could’ve easily said to God that this is too much and give up on the life that he was called to, but he continued to place his trust in God. “But the Lord is with me, like a mighty champion,” as he said in the reading. Likewise, in the Gospel, the reason Jesus said those words to not be afraid to his disciples was to prepare them for the persecutions they would experience for witnessing their faith in Jesus. The disciples could easily have thought the same thing like Jeremiah. “This is too much. My life was so much easier before. God, I don’t know if I can do this.” With these readings, God wants us to look at our fears. Maybe it’s the fear that results from a family situation, or our financial condition, fear of all the violence in our world, or the fears comes from not having a sense of meaning or worthiness in life. Whatever fear that might be in our lives, do we choose to live in that fear or do we live in faith in God? Choosing to live in that fear ultimately comes from a lack of trust and a lack of faith in God. We all know that it’s a challenge today to remember these words of Jesus to not be afraid when there are so many other persuasive words in our society, wanting us to give in to those fears and placing our hope in the wrong things. Those words telling you to do whatever you want to do – if it feels right, do it. Or those words telling you that we’re out of date, the Church is so far behind the times, there’s no need for you to be a part of it. Why put up with so much suffering? Don’t listen to those words. Don’t allow the words of others be more important than the word of God. Listen to Jesus. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid to place your full faith in God even while dealing with trials and difficulties in your life. Trust in the love that God has for you and to trust that all things work out for the good for those who love God, as St. Paul reminds us. Jesus never promised that he would make our lives easy and comfortable without any hardships or struggle. In fact, he knows that there are crosses that we have to carry, sufferings that we have to endure, but as we know from Jesus’ own suffering, death and resurrection, we don’t live just for this life, but we believe in life eternal with God in Heaven. That’s what we trust, and why there’s no reason to live in fear but to live in faith. |
AuthorFather Adam Park grew up in the Washington, DC area. He discovered his vocation to the priesthood while on retreat during his senior year in high school. Being ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Washington, he has served in different assignments throughout the archdiocese. |