There is a little detail in this gospel passage that I never paid attention to before. Matthew tells us that Jesus went up the mountain to teach the disciples. What a lesson he taught them! For us, 2000 years later, the beatitudes still present a challenge, but that is because some of us still have no clue where Jesus is coming from. He certainly was not speaking to a crowd of American pilgrims visiting the Holy Land.

Unquestionably, the beatitudes are among the most famous and beloved lines in the Bible. They list the kinds of persons whom Jesus declares to be blessed, happy and fortunate, and they tell us what such persons can hope for. They place before us what our goal as Christians should be and can be. They also show us how we can reach our goal. Jesus assures us that our hopes can be fulfilled. From a teacher’s point of view, one could say that the beatitudes are the entrance requirements for entering the kingdom of heaven along with a description of the blessings that will be enjoyed by those who are there.

One drawback for many of us who are listening to Jesus share those lessons today is that we are apt to take this passage literally and miss what is truly beneath the surface. Keep in mind that each beatitude has two parts. The first part declares blessed or happy those who display certain attitudes or perform certain actions. These are the qualifications for entering the kingdom of heaven. We tend to focus on the first part and neglect the second, which lists our hopes and dreams, thus turning the beatitudes into ethical rules instead of blueprints for living.

The first part of each beatitude lists the qualities, characteristics and behaviors of those who aspire to fully participate in God’s kingdom. Such persons try to be poor in spirit, compassionate, meek, merciful, clean of heart, and peacemakers, and in the process, they are willing to be insulted and persecuted. Alas, their values stand in stark contrast to what is often celebrated and glorified in the media today.

As I said, we need to do a bit of digging to better understand where Jesus is coming from. The value that prompted all behavior back then was honor, not money. Honor was your claim to acceptance by others and their acknowledgement of that claim. What Jesus proposes here is honorable behavior on the part of his disciples. Among the basic honorable behaviors being suggested by Jesus was being poor in spirit. “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Now, before you think heaven can’t be yours unless you are poor, keep in mind that Jesus isn’t speaking economics or money here. For him, being poor describes someone who has lost honorable status and must at all cost seek to regain that status.

So blessed are the poor in spirit! Jesus is not commending those who are literally poor or putting down those who are well off; he is lauding those who realize that they have lost their honor in the sight of God. Now, they see their need to repent, to change their ways, to regain the status they once possessed, and when they do, he says the kingdom of heaven will be theirs.

In our consumer-driven society, we tend to view things as the source of happiness, but Jesus is telling us not so, not so. As William Barclay, a well known scripture scholar notes, “The one who is poor in spirit is the one who has realized that things mean nothing and God means everything.” The readings today show us once again that God does not conform to the standards of the world, but rather, God turns them upside down. Those who truly love will recognize the beatitudes as examples of love in action, love that they are already showing in what they do. Lent, which begins in a few days, will provide us an opportunity to judge just how poor in spirit we really are and to see for ourselves how blessed we truly are.
 

A little boy and his father spent the morning making a kite, they spent hours carefully gluing together the pinewood slats, fitting the paper onto the frame, and fashioning the tail. On the following windy day, they set off to launch their paper and wood space ship. Dad instructed his son on how to hold the string tight and run as fast as he could as he let go. After a few false starts, the kite was finally airborne. The boy was in total control as his father showed him how to let out the string little by little. The kite flew higher and higher. The boy was mesmerized. Then to his father’s surprise, he let go of the string. With sheer joy, the boy watched the kite soar until it was only a speck in the distance.

Walking home together, the father realized that he’ll have to soon loosen the tie that binds him to his son, to let the boy go to make his place in the world and one day fly kites with his own child. And he wonders, “Will I release the string as unselfishly as that?”

Today’s gospel is about letting go…letting go of our anxieties and fears, letting go of our self-centeredness and our need to control, letting go the strings in our lives that tie us down and tie us up from living a life of joyful compassion and selfless generosity. Jesus calls the fishermen on the shore of Galilee, and he calls us, as well to abandon our “nets,” nets that will never “catch” what we truly seek and follow him to discover the life giving and healing love of God in our midst.

Most of us yearn for a life of peace, love, kindness and compassion. We yearn for the kingdom of heaven that Jesus promises in the gospel, yet in fact we are often drawn to do the opposite. We sin. We are reluctant to follow the advice we hear in this gospel, “Repent,” unaware that the kingdom of heaven is not a distant place, but an experience that will emerge when we recognize God’s just and rightful rule over all creation. When we repent, we are seeing the need for God’s rule in our lives. Now, we might not think of our priorities and choices in life as being sinful yet whenever they create confrontation, indifference, cruelty, or hatred, we are not bringing about the kingdom of heaven. Doing whatever we can to get whatever we want at the expense of someone else is a pathway toward sin.

We sin because, like the delicious tantalizing desert loaded with empty calories, wrongdoing offers us fleeting pleasure. As any dietician will tell us, our craving for sugar, if left unchecked, can threaten our physical health. Likewise, if left unchecked, our compulsion to sin will threaten our spiritual health, potentially harming our relationships with others and with God.  Instead of building the kingdom of heaven, sin tears apart the world God has in mind for us.

At the very start of his public ministry, Jesus proclaims the secret for bringing about the kingdom of heaven, “Repent!” Now, you might be thinking, “But, Father, this isn’t Lent.” So true, but when you stop to think about it, repentance is not a seasonal activity; it characterizes the life of every faithful follower of Jesus Christ. We hear the message often so that we will make this our way of life. If we want to experience the kingdom of heaven in this lifetime, and that is something Jesus says we can do, we must consciously strive to include practices of repentance in our daily lives.

For starters, consider, if you are not already doing so, examining your conscience every night before going to bed. This need not be a formal, big deal. All we need to do is spend a couple of quiet moments thinking over the day. We might ask ourselves a few simple questions, “How was I faithful to Jesus’ call to repentance? How did I reach out to others, bringing the goodness of Christ to them? How did another person make me aware of Jesus’ presence today?” When we get into the habit of recognizing Jesus’ saving ministry in our daily lives, we are opening ourselves to his ministry of repentance. The kingdom of heaven is unfolding before us.

Secondly, the Church prescribes that every Friday is a day of penance that calls for repentance and conversion. Many of us grew up with the tradition of abstaining from meat every Friday; a practice that became voluntary except during Lent after Vatican II. The Church still expects us to observe all Fridays as days of penance as a sign uniting us to Jesus in his passion and death. A practical way to do this would be to keep Fridays as a day of fasting, prayer, and doing charitable works. These time-honored practices are sure ways to repentance and conversion, that is, bringing about a change of heart. If we can get ourselves into the habit of keeping Fridays as a day of penance, we will see a difference in our lives and our relationship with Christ.

There was a man who had a reputation for being the best fisherman around. While others would catch one or two fish, he always came in with the limit. The game warden, curious to know how he did this, went fishing with him early one morning. He noticed no fishing tackle. When they arrived at a secluded cove, the man opened a box, pulled out a stick of dynamite, lit it, then threw it in the water. When it exploded, a bunch of fish floated to the surface. The warden identified himself and told the man that he was in a lot of trouble. The man reached into his box, pulled another stick of dynamite. He lit it and handed it to the warden, saying, “Are you going to just sit there or are you going to fish?”

Jesus is urging us to repent, acquire a new heart, and make a decision. One of the hardest things for us today is making a firm decision. We have so many options and we like to keep them open. That is fine if you are shopping for a new car, but disastrous in our relationships with God. In that most vital area we have to make a decision. Like the boy, are we going to let go and let God? Like the guy in the boat, are you going to sit there or are you going to fish? The kingdom of God is not something up in the skies, but down here on earth; ours to be discovered when we heed Jesus’ advice and dare to repent. 

We are inclined to define ordinary as being something routine or unexceptional. For this reason, you may think that ordinary time is called that because there is nothing special about this season. Actually, this time is called ordinary for a different reason; this is when the Church “orders” us to do our mission in life, to organize our thoughts and commitments toward the mission that Christ has given us.

And what might that be? Recall that last line from Isaiah, “I will make you a light to the nations that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth.” You might think this line is describing Jesus, but in fact God is speaking to you personally, “You are my servant, through whom I show my glory.”  Isaiah’s message, intended for all believers, conveys the very purpose of our baptism. Paul puts the same expectation differently when he tells the people at Corinth, “you have been called to be holy.”

By virtue of our baptism, we are called on to, shall I say, join the club along with Isaiah, Paul, John the Baptist and those whom they first preached to. We are called, not only to see ourselves as being numbered amongst God’s holy people, but entrusted with the mission of calling others to holiness as well.

Now, you might be thinking, “That mission belongs to Father or Deacon Bob,” but imagine where you would be if those who influenced you the most had not done their bit to evangelize you and the world around them. Imagine what shape our society would still be in today if others had shied away from calling us to holiness.

The world is a very different place because they weren’t afraid to proclaim their convictions, recognizing Jesus as the Lamb of God, the one who has come to take away the sins of the world; they also knew that Jesus was counting on them to do their part to rid the world of sin as well.

This weekend, our nation recalls the legacy of Martin Luther King. Eloquently and peacefully, he confronted the sin of racism; doing what he did to uphold the dignity of all peoples. I will never forget how he shared his dream on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that one day his children would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Admittedly, we have miles to go before the sin of bigotry is completely wiped out, but thanks to Dr. King and others who cared, we have come a long ways toward erasing the shame of segregation in our midst.

We must not ignore the tragedy of abortion, a sin made legal by the Supreme Court 35 years ago, a sin that continues to challenge the fabric of our society in numerous ways, including our politics, just as slavery once did. While the rate of abortions has dropped significantly in recent years, the numbers still remain high with more than 1.2 million done in 2005. Mother Teresa once offered this insight, worth reflecting upon, “We are here to be witnesses of love and to celebrate life because life has been created in the image of God. Life is to love and be loved. That is why we all have to take a strong stand so that no child, boy or girl, will be rejected or unloved. Every child is a sign of God’s love that has been extended over all the earth.”

At the other end of the spectrum of life, the voters of this state may find themselves once again wrestling with the issue of euthanasia. A similar initiative was rejected in 1991; hopefully we will do our part once again to be a light for the terminally ill as well as the conscience of our state, helping others to know that suicide is not a step toward holiness.

Few of us knew about our mission in life when we were baptized. Our parents and godparents spoke on our behalf, testifying that they would raise us in the Catholic faith. If they have done their homework, the one lesson they instilled in us is that being a follower of Jesus Christ also means being a doer. God is counting on us to give voice to our Christian convictions and bring them to life. I hope today’s response speaks for you, “Here I am, Lord, I come to do your will.”

Have you ever heard of Steve Whitimore? As a youngster growing up in Atlanta, he became fascinated with puppets. At age 19, he began working on the Muppet Show, doing the background voices and characters. When the show’s founder, Jim Henson, unexpectedly died in 1990, his widow and son asked Steve to take over as Kermit. “I remember feeling very scared,” he said in an interview, “but I looked Kermit in the eyes, and it was almost as though he was saying, ‘Come on, I need a voice.’”

Likewise, Jesus needs a voice. Like John the Baptist, we are being called to give voice to the presence of the Lamb of God in our midst. The work of the gospel, namely, justice, compassion, and reconciliation, does not belong only to the Mother Teresas or Martin Luther Kings of the world who have followed Christ. In every act of humble compassion and generosity, the Lamb of God is given the chance to walk in our midst.

All of us, parents and teachers, doctors and gardeners, builders and plumbers, accountants and cooks, and yes, priests and politicians, have been called to declare to our contemporaries that Christ is in our midst. John the Baptist declared his witness to Christ in preaching. Our witness as Christians can be done quietly yet just as effectively in our unfailing compassion for others, in our uncompromising moral and ethical convictions, in our efforts to celebrate the art of forgiveness with others, and in our daily sense of joy and purpose. That to me is what holiness is all about. And one could also say that serving the Lord is ordinary thing a Christian is expected to do.
 

Last weekend, we celebrated the Feast of Epiphany, that moment in time when God revealed his son, Jesus, to wise men from the east. Today’s gospel goes one step further. This time Jesus finds out who he is. “This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased.”

History tells us little of what Jesus did as a young adult. We can presume that he lived in Nazareth and worked as a carpenter, following in the footsteps of Joseph. After his baptism, he had a religious experience that forever changed the world. He was gripped by a deep unforgettable awareness of being fully loved by God. Such an experience, which one would call mystical, is never forgotten. From then on, no matter what happened, no matter how others reacted to what he said, Jesus carried on with his mission, fully aware that he was indeed God’s beloved son.

In those days, such a notion was radical. Until then, the relationship between God and humanity had been anything but intimate. Although they viewed themselves as God’s chosen people, even the Jews considered God as a distant deity; so sacred that his name could not even be said. Jesus narrowed the gap considerably. When asked how one should pray, he said, “When you pray, pray, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven.’

For most of us, that prayer is a daily experience. To his peers, the thought of addressing God so intimately was unthinkable. God was seen as one who was to be appeased or they would be punished.  Yet as Jesus taught repeatedly, God does not want to punish. To the contrary, God has always wanted to save humanity from the consequences of sin. Now the moment has arrived to send forth his Son to accomplish this mission.  Like any Sunday readings, however, the message here is not merely historical or biographical.

There is more to this story than simply the baptism of Jesus. This story is our story as well.

As Christians, we share the common experience of baptism, for it is only through baptism that one becomes a Christian. This sacrament is our initiation into the Christian community. Together, we profess our common belief in God as Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God isn’t to be seen as a distant deity out to punish us, but as a Father who has invited us to be one with his Son in a relationship anointed by the Holy Spirit.

Through baptism, we became sons and daughters of God. Our humanity was gifted with a share in Jesus’ divinity.  One thought comes to mind, could God, looking at the way we treat one another, say of each of us, “Here is my beloved daughter, my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased”?

Only Matthew recounts John’s resistance to baptizing Jesus, but Jesus tells him that the point of his baptism is “to fulfill all righteousness.” Fr. John Donohue, a scripture scholar, surmises that a better way to translate that line would be, “bring to fullness all justice.” That makes sense to me for this envisions Jesus continuing the mission of the servant that we heard about in the first reading from Isaiah.

In the first of his four servant songs, Isaiah describes Jesus very well. At his baptism, Jesus recognized himself taking on the role of the suffering servant. “I formed you, and set you as a covenant of the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.”

But God is not speaking only to Jesus. God is calling on us to listen to this servant song as well. Out of the sea of humanity, we have been chosen to manifest the same message of hope that Isaiah spoke of so long ago. In his commentary on Isaiah, Fr. Daniel Barrigan writes, “If I am chosen, if you are chosen, if, as a community, we are chosen, it is in order to be sent as a sign of God’s loving compassion to the world.”

I long thought this was an odd feast for closing out the Christmas season; after all, Jesus is now an adult, but now I see the logic. If the message we heard at Christmas, summed by the angels as peace on earth and good will toward all, is to be manifested in the coming year, it can only happen through us. And that won’t be done unless we freely choose to do what we can individually and collectively as a faith community to heed God’s call to justice.

As followers of Christ, we must open our eyes to the blind: instructing, explaining, evangelizing. That is one reason why we must learn our faith well, studying and reading any chance we have. We must liberate prisoners from the confinement of their inferiority complexes, their fears and their physical limitations by lending a helping hand, saying an encouraging word, uttering a prayer.  As the Hindu greeting expresses it, namaste…the God in me greets the God in you.

While the season closes with this Mass, we are by no means finished with Christmas. It is now time for us to make use of its treasures. The good news spoken by angels continues to unfold as we endeavor to seek out the lost, to heal the sick and the hurting, to feed the hungry, to liberate the imprisoned, to rebuild families and nations, to bring peace to peoples everywhere, especially in our own families.

Baptism is the most precious gift we have received. Clothed in the Spirit; let us resolve to live new lives that will prompt God to say to us one day, “This is my beloved child with whom I am well pleased.”
 

The Real Meaning of Epiphany

The feast of Epiphany is a very important feast in its own right. For me, it is particularly important. Two years ago, I visited St. Hubert’s for the first time. Fr. Spicer was kind enough to allow me to serve on the altar as a deacon. I told you then that I was a deacon in the Archdiocese of Washington DC. I told you that I would be moving to Whidbey Island, and that I hoped to serve you as your deacon. Just like two years ago, the Washington Redskins lost to the Seattle Seahawks that weekend!

Through God’s grace, all of that has happened. So let me take this opportunity to say that now that I am here as your deacon, and have gotten to know many of you well, I am even more pleased to be here. I thank you for allowing me to serve you, and I pray that Fr. Rick, the staff of St. Hubert and all parishioners feel that two years from the first time I met you, we continue to grow in faith and love in this wonderful parish.

The feast of Epiphany is a feast where one can easily get lost in the liturgical history. For example:

-We often hear people call this feast, the feast of the Three Kings. But the three historical figures, Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, were not really kings at all. They were part of pagan religious group from modern day Iran, or perhaps also modern day Iraq, Syria, or Saudi Arabia. The term magi, which is translated roughly speaking as part prophet, part priest, part advisor to royalty is probably the most accurate name for them. We actually don’t even know if there were three of them; their names are more of legend than what we would consider real historical research. We also know that Gaspar was considered a very kindly man; when he passed away, he became a kind spirit known as Gaspar the Friendly Ghost. Just seeing if you were paying attention!

-This feast was not celebrated in the early Church at all. And its origins actually come from the Eastern part of Catholicism, not the Roman or Western part; In the East, Epiphany commemorated the birth of the Lord as Christmas did in the West. All told, it took Catholic leaders more than a thousand years to get on the same page about when Epiphany was to be celebrated.

-And finally, despite the choreography of the crèche sets or nativity scenes you see or keep in your home, when the Magi made the decision to visit the very young Jesus, it would have taken them nearly a year by camel, to follow the star from Iran or Iraq to Bethlehem.  So the Jesus to whom they presented their gifts was more likely a toddler than a baby. Our Gospel from Matthew this morning talks about the Magi entering a house, not a stable or a manger.

Now you might ask at this point, why should we care about this? What is the real meaning of Epiphany and why do we continue to celebrate it? And why does it matter to us Catholics here on Whidbey Island on January 6, 2008?

The main reason we should care about Epiphany is because it is directly related to why Jesus Christ came to earth. When the Magi came to earth, they were demonstrating to the world for the first time something very important. The Magi visit demonstrated that Jesus came to redeem all of us, not just Jews but also Gentiles, all of us. He came to redeem not just the rich or powerful, but also the poor, the downtrodden, the despised.  Our first reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah presages the Gentile worship of the Messiah that the Magi manifested. St. Paul in the letter to the Ephesians we read this morning reminds us that all people in every age are coheirs to the promise of Jesus’ coming and in the living of the Gospel life.

The Magi believed the star they saw was a prophecy about a very important king being born. They were certainly right about that. But the Magi also believed that Jesus was to be a political revolutionary, who would usher in a new age of earthly justice and prosperity.

Jesus was not a political revolutionary. He did not overthrow the despised Roman Empire. Rather, as He would later tell a different set of religious leaders, the Pharisees, as they undertook to murder Him, that His Kingdom was not of this world.

The Magi reflected this misunderstanding. In today’s Gospel they bring gold, frankincense and myrrh to Jesus as a sign of respect typically given to royalty. But while their gifts were appropriate in a cultural sense, they were also irrelevant.

But let us not be too hard on the Magi. For Jesus was certainly a spiritual revolutionary. God could have come to earth in many different ways, including as a rich and powerful King. Instead He came as the most ordinary of human beings. And this says something very, very important brothers and sisters. It says that the most ordinary of persons is a king in the kingdom of God. The most ordinary of people that Jesus chooses as his followers can be prophets.  And the most ordinary people, indeed all of us, are called to spread the faith, explain the faith, and practice the faith as priests in a common priesthood.

Even ministerial priests in Christ’s Church are called to be servants, and not be a religious class like the Magi. And so all of us are kings, all of us receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit that can include prophecy. And all of us are priests. Jesus calls us to full partnership in bringing about the Kingdom of God, a kingdom of mercy, justice, and peace.

So Jesus was a very different kind of king, in a kingdom not at all like the kingdoms the Magi knew or we know about in human history.  He came to show us how to live, so that we could eventually be united with him in heaven forever. He gave us the roadmap to peace on this earth and in ourselves through his teachings. He gave us strength and graces for the journey to salvation through the Scriptures, the sacraments, and prayer. His presence with us is intimate and real, available every day of our lives if we simply ask for it.    

Brothers and sisters, epiphany is a Greek word that roughly means a sudden recognition of something or insight of deep meaning. And so let us pray that on this feast of Epiphany more than two thousand years after the epiphany of the Magi, may we come to recognize the real meaning of Epiphany, and act on that meaning by living everyday, in the Kingdom of God Jesus revealed to us.