Sunday, August 30, 2015

RELIGION?

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 22 Sunday in Ordinary Time [B] is, “Religion?”

"Religion" with a question mark after it?

When you see the religion question on a little box on a questionnaire, what do you answer?

“Catholic?”

“Christian?”

What?

Or maybe at times you even leave it blank. It’s none of their business.

Sometimes it’s asked when someone is admitted to a hospital.

Then someone from a church or a religious group shows up to welcome them - say some prayers - bring them communion - and for a Catholic to give them the sacrament of the sick.

For some Catholics they think the sacrament of the sick is still the sacrament of the dying. Yes - but there’s been a change. It’s also the sacrament of the sick - the anointing on one’s forehead and the palms of one’s hand - to give one the strength of the Lord and the community one belongs to - in times of sickness or going into an operation.

As priest, that’s a wonderful moment to be a priest.

And I love the word for communion for a person who is dying, “Viaticum”. It’s food for the journey - the journey into the world of death - and with faith - with Christ - heading to the Eternal Banquet of Heaven.

RELIGION

I’m sure you heard in today’s second reading from the Letter of James the following description of religion. “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

Very interesting…..

How would you describe religion? How would you describe your religion?

Has your understanding of your religion changed with the years?

A guy named John Morley wrote - way back in April of 1905, “There are said to be ten thousand definitions of religion.” [John Morley, Nineteenth Century, April, 1905]

Who’s counting?

What’s yours?

I remember hearing a talk by an alcoholic who said, “I was looking for God at the bottom of a bottle.”

Freud said that religion is a childhood neurosis as well as in illusion.

Karl Marx said religion was the opium of the masses. Sometimes at Mass I get nervous when I put people to sleep.

Others say sports is the religion of America.  Russell Baker once said in The New York Times that sports is the opiate of the masses.

I’m a Giants fan in football and the Knicks in basketball and both put me to sleep last year.

I remember hearing in the seminary that the word religion simply means, “What you wrap your life around.” Then the teacher who said that added, “Notice the root word ‘ligare’ in the word religion. It means to tie, to bind, as in ligaments - as in those tight bands of tissue that hold our bones and organs in place.

I also remember a field day in the seminary. I was kidding a fat guy and he called to a fast guy and they both chased me across a field and the fast guy tackled me and the fat guy fell on top of me and ripped my shoulder ligaments. Bummer: I was tied up in a bandage from Thanksgiving to St. Valentine’s Day, 1960 - 1961. I learned the hard way: Don’t pick of fat or fast people.

TODAY’S READINGS

Besides that comment from the Letter of St. James about what religion is, what about today’s other two readings?

Today’s first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy has Moses bragging about how great the commandments are - as well as the statues and decrees. He adds that anyone hearing them would certainly say, “This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people.”

For the sake of transparency,  Moses is the one who came down the mountain with the Ten Commandments - and is given credit for the first five books of the Bible - especially all those laws in Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

And to some people,  it seems they see religion as the Ten Commandments and to keep them.

Today’s gospel has Jesus going against his own people when they see religion as washing hands and cups and jugs and kettles - but inside the cup and kettle of their mind and heart are evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance and folly.

That’s quite a list of sins and tendencies that can possess us.

RELIGION CAN MESS SOMEONE UP

We’re living in an age where religion can scare us.  We’re living in an age where people are killing people in the name of God.

I know when I sit down with a couple who are planning to get married, I always ask them about their religion. And I add: I hope you are a thinking Catholic. I hope you are an informed Catholic. And when one is Catholic and the other isn’t, I add: “If you the Catholic don’t go to church and don’t practice your religion and you the non-Catholic do go to your church, please bring your children up with your religion and your religious values.”

We hear reports about various religions in our world beating and even killing people who don’t keep the religious practices of the faith of that religion and that tribe or country.

We live in a country with separation of Church and State.  Please study and read up about the why of that rule.

Many people came to this country for religious freedom. But we ought to be aware of how religion can be very tough on people. We Catholics have our own track record - our own sins - and our own problems. I hope and pray I have not driven anyone out of our church. That scares me. I know some people want priests in the pulpit to be much tougher than they are.

I would love them to know the following about New England Puritanism.

Keeping in mind today’s gospel about complaints about Jesus and his disciples by the scribes and the Pharisees, here’s a quote to think about, “Under the blue laws of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Puritans administered religion to unwilling subjects by means of the whipping post, the ducking stool, the stocks, fines, and prisons. Mrs. Alice Morse Earle’s history, The Sabbath in Puritan New England, lists such examples: ‘Two lovers, John Lewis and Sarah Chapman were accused and tried for sitting together on the Lord’s day under an apple tree. A Dumstable soldier, for wetting a piece of old hat to put in his shoe to protect his foot, was fined forty shilling for doing this heavy work. Captain Kemble of Boston in 1656 was put in public stock for two hours for his ‘lewd and unseemly behavior’ which consisted of kissing his wife in public on the Sabbath on the doorstep of his house after his return from a three-year voyage. A man who had fallen into the water absented himself from church to dry his only suit of clothes; he was found guilty and publicly whipped.’”

CONCLUSION

Religion is tricky stuff.

It can also be scary stuff.

Hopefully it’s wonderful and our religion gives us life.

I want to get it right.

Thomas Merton, way back in 1949 wrote in his book, The Waters of Siloe, “The greatest enemy of religious Orders is not the persecutor who closes monasteries and dispels communities and imprisons monks and nuns; it is the noonday demon who persuades them to go for enterprises that have nothing whatever to do with the ideals of their founders.”

St. Alphonsus was the founder of the order we Redemptorists in this parish are part of.

If I heard anything from our founder it’s this: the whole deal - the real deal - when it comes to religion and life is this: It’s the practice of the love of Jesus Christ.

If I learned anything about Christianity it’s this: our religion is not words. It’s about a word spoken by God the Father to us: and that Word became flesh and lived and breathed and walked and taught amongst us - and my religion is knowing and loving and  following that person.

I’m not making this up. As G.K. Chesterton put it, “Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.”

We’re here in church today hopefully because of our love affair with Jesus Christ.

No comments: