All Soul's Day

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/110214.cfm  (This homily is based off of the same readings suggested on the USCCB Website)

 

The famous comedian, Jerry Seinfeld, once did a stand-up piece in which he talked about human fears. He said that a survey done back in the 90's found that people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Number two! That means that for the average person, if you're at a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy. I don't know what that says about me: I often have to meet with families at the time of a death and speak at the funeral!

I don't know whether those are the real top fears of people or if that was just part of Seinfeld's shtick, but we don't have to go through all the trouble of a survey poll to see that many people do have a fear of death. I think that it's fair to say that this fear comes from a fear of the unknown. We really know so very little about what happens after death. Christ tells us about Heaven and Hell several different times in the Gospels. We can also find references in other Scriptures to Purgatory where we our souls are purified to get us ready for Heaven. However, these references provide hardly any details of what we can expect. We know Heaven is eternal paradise and that Hell is eternal suffering, but we still don't know what that really means. What is eternal paradise? What is eternal suffering? Will we be able to recognize our loved ones in Heaven? What exactly are we going to say or do for all of eternity? It's no wonder so many people are afraid of death when we know so little about life after death.

When we read Scriptures, like those we just heard today, we can see that God's intention is not that any of us should fear death. On the contrary, God wants us to be at peace about death. This peace is gained not by knowing exactly what life after death is going to be like, but rather by having faith in God who seeks to bring all who have faith in Him to eternal life.

Our first reading from the Book of Wisdom speaks eloquently about the difference between those of the world who fear death as opposed to those who have faith in God. King Solomon, who is given credit for writing the Book of Wisdom, says that “The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them”. To the foolish however, that is, those who have no faith, death is seen only as an affliction and utter destruction. In fact, notice that it is only the foolish who even refer to this “passing away” as death. For the just and those who believe, it simply means that they are with God and at peace. Solomon explains that even if there is suffering for a time in this life, blessings will follow in the hereafter. I think it is fair to say that those who are called “foolish” in this reading are the same people in this world who fear death the most. Not only does this reading teach us that God takes care of His faithful ones, but it also reminds us that if we have any fear of death then we must work to increase our own faith and trust in God.

In seminary, we were all expected to spend some time volunteering in some sort of ministry. One such ministry involved visiting people in nursing homes and hospitals. Often, this included working with hospice patients and their families and with families who had just lost a loved one. I can say today that this type of work scared me the most. It was a fear of my own mortality and a fear of not knowing how to help those people through the grieving process. I remember talking to my Mom about this fear of death. To try to help me she told me about an experience she had when she was just five years old. She told me about how her grandmother had come to live with her family. On school days, my mom would come home for lunch and see her grandmother. One day she came home to find her grandmother slouched in her chair, her arms hanging on the sides and her prayerbook lying on the floor. She had died there. Understandably, this frightened her a bit and she ran to her neighbor's to get help. But my Mom said that she learned something very important that day: that death can be peaceful. My Mom saw that her grandmother's face was peaceful in death. Her prayerbook had fallen from her hands: She had been praying when she died. Thanks to this and other accounts that people have told me about loved one's who have died in peace, I am less afraid of death and much more at peace, knowing that God cares for His people.

A big determining factor in how a person views death and the afterlife is the culture that he or she grows up in. In Mexico and other Latin American countries and communities, November 1^st and 2^nd are a time to celebrate Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead. It is a time to remember family members who have died. This isn't about only remembering that funny thing that Grandpa said or those fun times we had with Mom. This isn't about mourning their passing either. This is about celebrating the lives of those family members and the festivities include doing some of the things they enjoyed doing in life. Lot's of food, music, dancing, and decorations featuring skeletons and skulls are a big part of the celebration. A big part of the Dia de los Muertos is that the dead are still an integral and active part of the family. It is on the Day of the Dead that they wake from their slumber and join in the festivities. Death is simply a part of life, but not the end.

Even with our Christian faith helping us to see that God takes care of the souls of the just, we may at times still feel some fear around death. We may fear losing a loved one for instance, or we may still fear what our own death will be like. I think that is still to be expected. The point is that despite those fears, it is our faith in God and our hope in eternal life that win the day.

Jesus tells us in the Gospel that He was sent to do the will of the Father, and that the will of the Father is that those who believe in Christ will have eternal life and will be raised on the last day. It is in that promise that we have our hope for eternal life. Fear not, for we are in the hands of God.

Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/102614.cfm

Sometimes in life, we might be presented with a task to complete or a problem to solve or to deal with. When we first look at that task or problem and begin to size it up and figure out what we need to do in order to finish the job we might feel a bit overwhelmed. We may think that it is going to take a great deal of work in order to finish. We might think we need to pull together a great number of resources of one type or another in order to finish what we plan to do. The whole thing might even strike us as being impossible to complete all on our own. But once we begin to do the work and try different things out we discover, either for ourselves or with the help of another person, that the solution is nothing all that new or difficult, but really quite simple and obvious once we know what to look for. The once complicated or impossible problem becomes a straightforward and manageable task.

I can remember how in elementary school, I struggled with how to solve long multiplication and division problems and complicated word problems that I would get as homework. The problems and should have been pretty straightforward and I should have been able to work through the process to the solution fairly quickly. As the math problems got more and more difficult, I would get more confused. I would add or subtract where I didn't need to or I would forget to carry a number. Word problems were a complete mess for me as I would attempt to do steps that were really unnecessary for that problem. With help from teachers and my parents I eventually realized that I was making the problems more difficult than they really were. I needed to slow down and that would help me not get confused and I was able to see that the solution was much simpler and easier than I thought at first. Once I did that I became much better at math in my high school years.

I used my struggle with arithmetic as an example, but I hope that we can all see it as symbolic of tasks and problems that we have in our day to day lives. In spite of so many complicated things in this world from complicated jobs to complicated instructions on electronics to complicated relationships, there are still some things that are actually quite simple.

A great example of this can be found in our Gospel reading for today. A scholar of the law asks Jesus, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” For the Pharisees, all of the laws and commandments needed to be followed. The scholar isn't trying to say that one is greatest and the rest are not important. It was popular for the Pharisees to try to find ways to summarize the law and the faith in one or two sentences. So, the scholar is asking, “Is there a commandment that is so great that it summarizes all the rest of the commandments?” It's similar to if we asked an employer about a job description and he or she gave us a nice one or two sentence explanation of the job. The job itself might include other odd tasks and duties, but that short description gives an overall gist of what the job consists of.

Jesus not only summarizes the law of the Old Testament, but one could also argue that He summarizes the whole of Sacred Scripture. He does this by quoting two important laws that can be found in the Old Testament. “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” can be found in the Book of Deuteronomy. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” is from the Book of Leviticus. It's not that hard to see how all the laws depend on and are based off of these two commandments. When we look at the Ten Commandments and the other laws throughout the Old Testament, we can see that they are either based on honoring and loving the Lord, your God, or honoring and loving other people around you. So both of these make a very good summary of what God wants us to do.

Sometimes Catholics are criticized for having too many rules, and that these rules can get too difficult to follow. But this reading about “The Greatest Commandment” helps show that all those rules and precepts and encyclicals and Apostolic Exhortations that the Church has are really all based on those two commandments to love God and neighbor. Is just as simple as that: love. Going back to my original point, when we look at all the commandments of the Scriptures and all the rules found in the Catechism, we are essentially overwhelming ourselves thinking that we have all these rules that we have to follow. We worry about whether we will be good enough to enter into heaven and we might even despair of ever getting in. If we simply slow down and think about what those rules are really saying, we can see that it simply means that we must love.

When I first read this Gospel reading early this past week I first noticed that the message and overall theme was pretty straightforward. However, I struggled for most of the week trying to figure out how best to present this theme in a homily. This reading doesn't take a whole lot of explanation. Jesus tells us to love God and neighbor: now go out and do it. I kept thinking there has to be something more I need to talk about with this reading, but I realized I was making it too complicated. God wants us to love Him and each other. It's as simple as that. All the other stuff in the Church teaches us and guides us to that idea of love.

Back in 2013 when Pope Francis was elected as our current Pope, there was a flood of images posted on the Internet by Catholics talking about him. Some people were (and still are) of the impression that Pope Francis was changing the teachings of the Church. Many of those images responded to those claims and attempted to show how the Pope was following what had always been taught, just saying it in a new way. One of those postings showed picture of our two previous Popes and our current one. Under St. John Paul II it said, “This is what we believe”. Under Benedict XVI it said, “This is why we believe it”. Under Francis it said, “Now go do it”. Our faith has taught us how to love. Let's go do it.