This was my homily for the end of our Retreat for Oblates
and Friends Sunday, July 7, the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time at St.
Francis Retreat House in San Juan Bautista. The readings were Isaiah 66:10-14,
Galatians 6:14-18, and Luke 10:1-12.
There were a couple of articles from Michael Sean Winters’
blog “Distinctly Catholic,” which I follow, a few weeks back comparing the
evangelizing approaches of the extraordinarily popular and talented Bishop
Robert Barron and Pope Francis. (I hope you will forgive my obvious prejudice
on this. I have a great respect for Bishop Barron and one of his books, And Now I See, is an absolute favorite
of mine. We’re pretty much the same age and also grew up in the same part of the
world, him in Chicago and me right down the road in the Joliet area, but we had
a very different experience of the ‘70s and ‘80s.) Let’s assume both approaches
are valid in the right time and place, and Winters is a little too critical of
Barron for my taste.
I think of Bishop Barron’s as a rather muscular approach. It’s
very popular with a lot of seminarians these days. It’s very objective,
grounded on the intellectual tradition of the Church, especially Thomas Aquinas
and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Lately he has been promoting the work of the
controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, another muscular character
who criticizes political correctness and gender identity accommodations, and is
also associated with the semi-conspiratorial Political Dark Web. Bishop Barron
is an apologist, brilliant at explaining and defending Catholic doctrines.
The Holy Father on the other hand is known for leading with
mercy. Winters recounts Pope Francis telling a story about visiting an 87
year-old woman and a conversation about her recipe for ravioli, and he notes
how Francis remembers details about the woman. Francis, who is famous for
saying to priests that “the shepherd should smell like the sheep.” And, as you
may know, sheep are pretty smelly. The photo that won the world over and
certainly won me over Holy Thursday 2013 right after he was elected was of the
pope washing the feet of prisoners in Rome. Normally the pope would wash the
feet of 12 clergy, but this was not only not just priests; it was not just men,
and it was not just Christians. This of course threw the liturgists into quite
a tizzy, but it was right about then that some of the more conservative voices
started finding Francis a little smelly too. But he reminds me of that story of
Pope Paul VI again, when he opened the second session of the Vatican Council challenging
the council fathers to change their attitude toward the world: Not to conquer
but to serve; not to despise but to appreciate; not to condemn but to comfort.
Let’s say one approach is more objective and the other more
subjective; Michael Sean Winters says one is argument and the other is
accompaniment. One is apologetics and the other is evangelization––and Winters
wonders if apologetics actually is evangelization.
Broadly speaking (risking the ire of Jordan Peterson!) it struck me that one
approach is masculine and the other is feminine. I do not mean male and female;
I mean archetypally masculine and feminine, like anima and animus, or the
yin-yang of Taoism or the Ha-Tha of Yoga.
And the reason I bring that up is because it is pretty hard
to escape the overwhelming feminine imagery in the first reading from Isaiah
today. This is the kind of scripture passage sure to make a novice blush: O that you may drink deep with delight at
her abundant breast. But feminine also in that this is much more a message
of comfort rather than challenge. What is not completely clear is when Isaiah
is referring to Jerusalem and when he is referring to God. For example, the
last verses of the passage:
As
nurslings you shall be carried in her arms
and fondled in her lap.
and fondled in her lap.
As
a mother comforts her child so shall I comfort you.
In
Jerusalem you shall find your comfort.
It is hard not to see God portrayed as a mother here.
It’s worth doing our lectio on the symbol of Jerusalem in
this reading. At a literal level there is the historical city in a real place
in time. It name means the “abode of peace” but we know it is rarely if ever
been a place of peace, and it is not now and probably will not be in our
lifetime, so that can’t be the meaning. If we dig a little deeper, even during
the Babylonian exile the prophets were already dreaming of a new Jerusalem and
a new Temple as the symbol of God’s presence where the shekinah (another feminine symbol) rested. And certainly after the
Temple is destroyed that presence shifts to Torah and synagogue. The New
Testament picks this up and the Book of Revelation ends with that glorious
imagery (which I learned somewhere was the most quotes scripture passage in the
patristic era): I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming
down from heaven adorned like a bride. Jerusalem is both a symbol of God’s
presence and a symbol of the Church, but not a place, let alone a building or
an institution, but living stones and
St. Peter says, built into a holy priesthood. Finally, perhaps the mystical
meaning for the individual, Jerusalem is a symbol of God’s won comfort and
rest, God’s own peace, God’s dwelling with us and within us, pervading us, as a
loving-Presence, like a mother…
My tautology is this: Jerusalem happens whenever Jerusalem
happens. Jerusalem happens in whomever Jerusalem happens, because ultimately
Jerusalem happens in the heart united with God, resting in God, at peace with
God, ‘til it becomes yeast in the dough of our being, and we become salt for
the earth and light for the world. Then Jerusalem happens wherever we are and
for whomever we are among.
And that leads to Jesus in today’s gospel. What was his
evangelization like? The message he sends his disciples out with in today’s
gospel is simply this: “Peace be to this
house! The reign of God is at hand for you.” This is before “repentance for
the forgiveness of sins.” “Peace be with
you! The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” There’s the new Jerusalem. Jesus is
and his disciples are the new Jerusalem because God’s peace is reigning in him
and in them, and so their message is a message of peace, of comfort. “God’s
shalom is here because I am here, and so among you––in your midst, in your
heart and in your mind.”
I’ve noticed three different responses to the scandals that
have been plaguing the Church since at least 2002. One is this very masculine
approach, re-clericalize, show Father skiing in his Roman collar (I actually
saw this in a Catholic newspaper), shout down all detractors and prove that we’re
right, with a zillion Twitter followers. Another response may be despondency,
despair, depression, and to leave the whole darned thing behind, as many have.
A third way, which may be the middle way between fight and flight, is to go
down with Jesus and be the face of comfort, the voice of peace, the hands of
service, not the Church Triumphant or the Church Militant, but the Church
Servant. But the only way to access this energy is to do what Paul wrote in the
Letter to the Galatians––not to boast of Aquinas or von Balthasar but boast of
nothing but the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Let no one bother me; I bear
the brand marks of Jesus on my body. One of my favorite images of the
Church is at the end of the story of the multiplications of the loaves and
fishes when at the end they gather up twelve baskets of broken pieces. This
image occurs in all four Gospels. Only when we can admit our brokenness and our
need for mercy, our need for grace can we find compassion, sharing others’
pain. As the 12 Step Program teaches, the admission of our own powerlessness is
the beginning of recovery. And so only in imitating the kenosis-emptiness of
Jesus can we become the Church Comforter.
I am remembering the lyrics to Bob Hurd’s song “Pan de Vida”:
We are the dwelling of God,
fragile and wounded and weak.
We are the body of Christ
called to be the compassion of God.
And so what is the face of Christ that we want to convey?
The face of church, the face of Camaldolese monasticism…? Here I want to echo
Fr. Bede’s remarks from his presentation yesterday and say that our faith is
not a fortress of intellectual certainty and adherence to a set of propositions.
It’s a relationship, like a mother to
a child. And our message to ought not be a fortress of intellectual certainty
and adherence to a set of propositions. We need to move, with imagination and
hope, from beliefs to true believing. And I also want to echo Venerable Tenzin
Chogyi. She used one image that played right into my hand and my homily from
the Buddhist metta-compassion practice.
I actually picked up a post card from Tassajara Zen Mountain Center last week
with that very phrase on it that I have been carrying around. Our attitude
toward the world should be like God’s, like this: “Even as a mother protects
with her life her only child so with a boundless heart should we cherish all
living beings.” And we send you out from here today to be the face of Christ,
the Church, and the Camaldolese charism like this, not to conquer but to serve,
not to despise but to appreciate, not to condemn but to comfort. You are the dwelling of God, fragile and wounded and weak. You are the body of Christ, called to be the compassion of God.
