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.”
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