22nd SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, 2017

When I was 22 years old, a senior in college, I finally decided that I would study for the priesthood. My father expressed reservations about my plans and said much about my having led a rather sheltered life. He suggested that I take some time off for a long trip to see the world or for a work experience or anything that would have the effect of maturing me in the ways of the world and the realities of life. I remember understanding his point of view while at the same time being very sure that this was the thing for me to do and that now was the time to do it.

My father was motivated, in giving me that advice, by the desire to help me avoid making a mistake in a matter of importance — my future. More than that, I believe he thought of the priesthood as a life of personal denial and lack of freedom that, although entered with romantic idealism, could eventually leave me regretful and unhappy. He was doing his job as a parent to protect the oldest of his children from harm.

It seems to me that Peter was acting like a protective parent toward the young Jesus in the incident we heard proclaimed today. Along with Jesus’ other disciples and apostles, Peter had an idea of what being the Messiah meant, and he was absolutely certain that it could not possibly involve suffering and death. How could it? Messiah is savior, conqueror of evil forces, bringer of life. “Suffering Messiah” is a contradiction in terms.

All Jesus’ many references and predictions concerning future suffering for him and his followers escaped their comprehension. As we’d say today, “They just didn’t get it.” Eventually, but only when they experienced it themselves, they did learn that there’s an inevitable price attached to being Messiah — and to following Messiah.

And so must we learn the same.

It is misplaced kindness to discourage those we love from what the Spirit of God is moving them to do when we think we see more clearly than they do that there are sufferings ahead. It is the right thing to do, instead, to discern with them what they are probably facing and to encourage them to trust that, if they believe that this is really what God wants them to do, then God will provide for every future conflict and difficulty.

Just being a faithful Catholic is going to involve pain and suffering.

We all run the risk of being called extremists and fundamentalists if we speak and act boldly when we feel that our government or society itself is taking the wrong stand in a moral issue of our day.

To resist the madness of out-of-control-consumerism can mark us as hopelessly out of step with our fast-paced society.

To belong to one political party or another and oppose, on grounds of Gospel principles, some of what it stands for takes courage and firm commitment.

We don’t need, any more than Jesus did, to be talked out of our moral principles; we don’t need to be saved from hurt or loss. We need to encourage each other to consider prayerfully his mind and heart and to act accordingly, certain only that at precisely the right time support and confirmation will be given us — as it was given to him.

HOMILY FOR 15TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, 2015

Remember the comedian Flip Wilson’s stock-in-trade, “The devil made me do it?” Guilty as sin, the character he played would shift the blame for his own failings to the ever-lurking devil. The line came originally, I assume, from the Bible, in which Adam blames Eve and she blames the serpent.  Convenient scapegoats!  The TV evangelists and their ilk employ the idea very profitably: convince the people that they are being pursued by the devil and then tell them what they need to do to get God more actively present on their side.  Hefty money donations help, of course.  You have to wonder when such ignorance and deception will end.  Let’s hope it will be sooner than we have reason to expect.

What do we do, however, with St. Mark’s report, heard in today’s gospel passage, that the apostles went off on the mission Jesus was entrusting to them and “expelled many demons”?  Some people interpret that literally and cannot be persuaded otherwise.  Others recognize that the Scriptures, in order to be correctly understood, must be viewed as very much influenced by the limited scientific knowledge of their time and contain, therefore, abundant factual error along with childish notions that even today’s children understand perfectly well.

Here’s an example: knowing absolutely nothing about congenital diseases, or the nature and cause of epilepsy or mental disorders and other such health problems, they simply concluded that all of these were caused either by God as punishment for the sins of human beings or by the devil, whose nature and reason for being were the harassment of the human race and the destruction of the gift of life that comes from the Creator God.  In that belief system, what else could the apostles and disciples have thought than that they were called to continue the war against the evil powers that hated God and were demonstrating their presence in the miseries of innocent human beings?

More sophisticated than they were, do we dismiss these references as unworthy of us or do we find in them timeless truth?  I choose the latter option, as I believe virtually all of us have chosen.  We talk about demons in our lives, not in the same sense in which the word is used by our ancestors, but in an updated sense that is true.  People today regularly speak of addictions as demons, meaning that there are areas of their personal lives that are virtually out of control and have become destructive in such a way that they appear to have an independent life of their own.  We go so far as to refer to them as living within us, as possessing us.

These “demons” are not always in the categories of chemical substances; there are so many others that reach the same intensity of compulsion and that elude our control. And we are victimized by these too, and against them we can be almost totally helpless.  We believe, as he asked us to, that his power can give us mastery over these demons, if we are open to it.

Some of these demons work through mouths & tongues with chronic criticism, put-downs, and humiliation.  Others have more to do with denial & default, like the withholding of affirmation and the failure to listen with attention to the mind & heart of others.  And then there are demons that function within materialism & consumerism, insensitivity to the cries of the poor, the disenfranchised and the oppressed.  A virtual mob of them keep us from forgiving, forgetting and reconciling.

No need to expand the list; the point is made, I hope.  Our demons are behavioral habits, dispositions and attitudes that we may actually despise and regret and, at the same time, with which we have made peace – or at least a cold war.

We need help, not only psychological, but spiritual.  In prayer, we should ask the healing Jesus to do for us what we seem unable to do for ourselves.