11/16/2014 – Sunday of 33rd week in Ordinary Time – 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6, Matthew 25:14-30

      For you know that the Day of the Lord will certainly come like a thief in the night.  People will say “peace and security,” but suddenly, disaster will come.  And the people will not escape. Paul wrote these words to the Christian community he founded at the bustling Greek seaport of Thessalonica.  The members of that community had converted to the Way of Jesus from pagan religions.  They put aside all the other messages that were calling out to them in the world, choosing to follow the Way of faith.  Paul had to leave that community abruptly, but he remained concerned for their welfare.  He wrote them a letter of encouragement and advice in the midst of the trials and persecutions that they were experiencing.  Paul told them that the Second Coming of the Lord would come at an unexpected and unannounced time, so they needed to be ready.

       Even though Paul wrote those words in the middle of the first century, they still speak to us in our present day.  Today – November 16, 2014 – is the 25th anniversary of the martyrs of El Salvador, of 8 Catholics who were killed for their faith in that small country in Central America.  Since the early days of the Church, martyrs have had a special place in the community of saints. As we honor and remember these martyrs from El Salvador, we might wonder: How do their lives and their stories affect us in our lives here in Mississippi? These killings took place in November 1989 at the height of the Salvadoran civil war.  The military forces in that country were ordered to kill Jesuit Father Ignacio Ellacuría, the rector of the University of Central America, and to leave no witnesses.   So they killed him with the 5 other priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter who were all present at the residence on that day.

       Why would military forces want to kill a Catholic priest?  It was out of fear of the message that he proclaimed.   That message reached out to the pain of the people that he saw around him in a country torn apart by Civil War.  That message cut to the heart of the poverty and the oppression that afflicted so much of the population in El Salvador.  Why was there so much injustice?  Why is the oppression in our society overlooked?  These Jesuit priests asked those questions and those in power felt threatened, taking action to destroy these priests and the message they brought to the world, the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That is why it is important for us to remember these 6 Jesuits priests and their companions who were murdered.

          It is without a doubt an inspiring story, but what is the connection to us?  We think of all the justice issues we are grappling with as a society.  Last summer, we heard about the many accompanied minors were coming to our country to start a new life from places like El Salvador.  What the home countries doing to remedy the harsh situation so many of its citizens facing, forcing them to flee for their lives?  And how is the Gospel challenging us here in the United States to respond?  Immigration reform is a topic that divides our country and that sparks a lot of arguments and debates.  How are our Gospel values asking us to respond to the immigrants who are looking for answers, for hope,  and for a safe place to live?  Do we respond in fear and anger?  Or do we respond as children of the light, as Paul calls the Thessalonians.   We all know that we have a lot of complicated issues that face our country and our world, and burying our heads in the sand and not taking action is not what our faith calls us to do. 

      The Jesuits have said that the lives and the loss of these martyrs in El Salvador have influenced the Jesuit community in the United States and throughout the world, calling them to think about what it means to be a parish community or a Catholic school.  It harkens us to think about what it means to address issues of social justice in our Church.  

        We shouldn’t be afraid to bring up the Gospel of Justice in our world.  In fact, with the topic of so-called “mercy killing” or euthanasia making news, Pope Francis this weekend called it is a false sense of compassion to say that euthanasia brings dignity when it is in fact an act against God and against creation.   Some may criticize our Pope, our Bishops, and our Priests when we bring up topics that may be controversial in society.   However,  what so many admire about Pope Francis is that he is real.  He is not afraid to have a conversation, to listen, to challenge, to look at the reality around us right in the face.  And he wants us to infuse the world with the values of our faith in the same way.

       I recently read a staggering statistic: 50 years ago, about 75% Catholics went to mass every Sunday and on holy days of obligation.  Today, of those who identify themselves as Catholic, only about 25% regularly attend Sunday mass.  And if we feel like we aren’t getting out of mass what we need to, what are we doing to change that?  Going to mass is not like going to a movie or to a football game.  It is not entertainment.  It is a holy encounter with God. 

       God gives us gifts and talents – we are not to conserve them or hide them like the one servant in the Gospel today.  Let us not be afraid to dream, to take risks, to challenge others in the faith.   As Paul says, let us be children of the light.

11/18/2012 – Daniel 12:1-3; Mark 13:24-32 – 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

     Today marks the 33^rd Sunday in ordinary time; in 2 more weeks, we'll begin our new liturgical year with the start of Advent.  At the end of our Church's year, it seems appropriate for our readings to focus on the end times today.  The apocalyptic nature of today’s first reading and Gospel can be frightening and disconcerting to us at first glance as we hear these words with our modern way of thinking.  The Book of Daniel talks about the end times as “a time unsurpassed in distress”.  After the end times, some will live forever, while others will be in everlasting horror and disgrace.  Mark's Gospel tells us that the sun will be darkened, the moon won't give light, the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers in heaven will be shaken.  What dark and jagged images we have in these reading.  But this apocalyptic message brings us not only an expectation of the light that is to come, but also enlightenment and hope in the darkness itself.

     These readings are in the apocalyptic tradition of Jewish literature, which has a dual purpose. They speak about the evils of the current age, in the trials and tribulations that are endured, but they also call us to the glorious age that is to come.  There is a promise of a future moment when God will intervene, when history as we know it will come to an end.  At that time, all evil will end and the righteous will be saved. The coming of this future age brings hope to the oppressed, hope to those in pain and in suffering.

      In its context in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus' pronouncement about the end times comes just before the last supper with the apostles, leading up to Jesus' passion, death, and resurrection.  The time of this Gospel reading was indeed a dark time in Jesus’ life.  Those communities in the early Church that first heard this Gospel reading were experiencing dark times as well, as they lived under the cloud of fear, persecution, and oppression.

      As human beings, we've probably all known darkness in our lives to one extent or another.  We can experience darkness in many ways:  disappointment, disillusionment, depression, loss or despair. Darkness can come in the loss of a job, the death of a loved one, struggles in our family and personal life, drug and alcohol addiction, or mental or physical illness.  The poet Mary Oliver wrote about darkness in a short poem entitled “The Uses of Sorrow.”  This poem came to her in a dream after the death of her life-long companion.  Oliver writes: “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.”  The love we're called to as Christ's disciples, as human beings, can bring us great joy, but our experiences as disciples also can bring us pain and darkness; all of this makes up our journey.  We can relate this to the darkness that Christ’s disciples experienced when their Savior and Redeemer was brutally killed on the cross.  Think about how when loss occurs in the death of a loved one: we grieve and mourn the void in our lives, in addition to the deep emptiness we feel inside of our hearts. But, at the same time, we celebrate the life of our deceased loved one, how that life was a gift to us and a gift to our world.   A box full of darkness may not seem like a gift at all.  It might be anything but a gift at first when we’re struggling to come to terms with the darkness and loss in our lives.  But in time, darkness can give way to awareness, understanding, forgiveness, and peace.  We then can appreciate what comes out of the darkness, and what we gain from it. 

      Just as Christ's journey and today's apocalyptic message from Mark help us to understand the darkness in our lives, the journey of the Jewish people in the Book of Daniel brings us a message originally written for a community of persecuted Jews.  Daniel speaks for the first time in the Hebrew Scriptures about resurrection, about the people of God being brought to new life.  Daniel tells them that they’ll shine brightly like the splendor of the firmament of the heavens.  Daniel spoke to the community at a time of unsurpassed distress, but the message and reassurance from God is that they have nothing to fear, that they will be brought to new life.  This message still speaks to us in our modern era today.

     Each time we gather together around the Lord's table as a community of faith to celebrate the Eucharist, we remember how Jesus faced the darkness.  We remember and we give thanks for the gifts that he brought out of this darkness.   We celebrate the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ with the hope that it gives us to face the darkness in our own lives. We are called to gain understanding from the darkness, and to hold fast to the light that Christ is to us and to our world.  We are now near the end of Church’s liturgical year; perhaps we are at a point when we are experiencing great darkness in our lives.  But we'll enter a period of waiting in the beginning of the new liturgical year in Advent where there is the promise of a great light in the birth of Christ.  We trust that the darkness is perhaps not what it seems on the surface, that it isn’t something permanent.   We are called to cling to the radical commitment that is the hope of our faith, as God promises us hope even in the midst of the brokenness & darkness of our world.   Yes, our hope goes way beyond our words & our prayers – it is indeed the light of Christ shining in the darkness.