Homily for the Week of October 30, 2011

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time 2011

Mal 1:14b-2:2b,8-10 • 1 Thes 2:7b-9,13 • Mt 23:1-12

We expects the persons we meet to be real and not phonies, and we expect the same of ourselves. These include members of our family, our work place, our school, our clubs. We expect the truth. Our whole legal system is based on trying to get facts that support the truth. For nearly a month the local newspaper provided us with hundreds of details as to why a particular person killed two well known local persons. We go to museums because we want to really see what happened years ago. I remember visiting the Baseball museum in Coopestown. I saw many persons do about everything but kneel down front of the bat which Babe Ruth's used to hit his 61st homer in 1927. We keep old pictures of our parents and grandparents, and even ourselves. I am always amused when I see in the newspaper the before and after pictures of those celebrating their 40th or 50th or 60th wedding anniversary.

We tend to disrespect the phoney, but so often we can be phoney, if not to others, at least to ourselves. A great danger for anyone in a position of authority is to lose touch with ordinary people. It's easy to become separated and distant from the concerns of the people under us, unaware, unappreciative of their needs, concerns, and worries. This can happen to me as a priest, to parents, to political leaders as well as students who have been placed in leadership positions because of their abilities. As Jesus once said it is easy for us to see the splinter in another person's eye but easy to miss the log in our own eye.

In the gospel reading for today, Jesus is attacking exactly that same sort of distance and lack of concern for the lot of the common person on the part of the religious and spiritual leaders of his time. He attacks them because they do not practice what they preach. By their great show of piety, they were capitalizing on religion, making themselves important in others' eyes, feeding not just their bodies but their egos in the process. But at the same time, they were laying down rules and regulations that ordinary people could not hope to keep. They were imposing impossible religious demands on people who then felt inferior, sinful, and laden with guilt. They had so separated themselves from people they were suppose to serve. They turned religion from being an expression of love between God and God's people into a burden of rules and laws that few could live up to.

Jesus also attacked their superiority, their seeking after titles, status, and recognition. Jesus warned them against putting themselves in God's place and setting themselves above the rest of humanity. Jesus offers us an alternative model for authority, one modelled on the true ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity ,

Equality means treating all with the same dignity and respect. It also means all have a say in the life of the community. All have a common responsibility to make sure that the community is being faithful to its ideals and its mission to spread the good news. Being authentic spiritually also means that we speak out when we believe that others are not being authentic.

Unity as brothers and sisters means that we cannot escape our responsibilities by retreating or not getting involved or feel responsible for the needs and concerns of our sisters and brothers. It means we can't pass the buck.

The key word used by Jesus to sum up all this is service. In the Gospel today Jesus tells us that The greatest among you must be your servant. At Baptism we received the call to Christian service. Some like priest, parents, teachers, civic and school leaders must also be a model of service. That service can be words of consolation, or of a listener when trust and hope are so distant. Only in serving can we find true freedom, true equality, and real sisterly and brotherly love and concern. Our greatness will be found in the quality of our service.

Think of all the groups you belong to: Church, work, school, athletics, clubs and activities, family. How are you a servant in each of these situations? In what ways do you sometimes demand that others serve you? What must we change so that we will give glory to God and not ourselves?

So it is with each of us. Today Jesus calls us to be ourselves. To realize that there are in fact many good things about each of us. These are there because we try to do our best. God is real and he deals with reality. God does not love the person you think you are, or the person you would like to be. God loves you just the way you are.

Just as no caterpillar ever became a butterfly without going through a cocoon, so none of us can do what Jesus did, except by accepting whom we are today. Praying, reading the Bible, and talking to someone we trust about spiritual things are ways of changing ourselves for tomorrow.