March 15, 2019
ST. CLEMENT
HOFBAUER:
BAKER & BREAKER OF BREAD
INTRODUCTION
The title and the theme of my homily this morning is, “St.
Clement Hofbauer: Baker and Breaker of Bread.”
As you know the Redemptorists were founded by St. Alphonsus Liguori. Then there is our second founder: St. Clement
Hofbauer – who got us rolling on the other side of the Alps.
There is a little known quote from the book of Lamentations
that Alphonsus used to quote. I believe that it sums up his life, his vision,
and his ministry. “The little children
go begging for bread; no one spares a scrap for them.” A vulgar modern
translation could be: “The little children are begging for bread and nobody
gives a crap about them.”
The Redemptorist is called to bring the bread of the word to
the people of the world who are starving for the Bread of Life. But there is a
nuance - a major nuance that is part of the Redemptorist tradition, lore and
myth. It’s this. You just don’t give people loaves of bread. You first have to
cut it up in smaller pieces so that they can eat it. You don’t just give them
sermons, you simplify and cut them down so people can understand and digest
what you are talking about. KISS. You don’t overdo it with too many points, too
many big words, too many metaphors.
The call is to be good bakers, good preachers and then good
cutters, good breakers of the word into small pieces, so the children of the
world can be helped to eat it.
Unless you be like little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of God.
ST. CLEMENT AND ST. ALPHONSUS: DIFFERENCES
St. Clement and St. Alphonsus were two totally different
characters.
Alphonsus was from the upper crust of society and Clement
from the lower crust. You see the top side of the bread, you don’t see the
underside of the bread. Who sees the poor?
Alphonsus was a lawyer, who grew up hobnobbing with the rich
and the powerful of society and ending up working with the poor and the
powerless - who sometimes were outside society. Clement was a baker. He grew up
as a poor kid, with little means for a school education and ended up being well
known not just to the poor of Vienna,
but also to some of the great intellectuals and high society of the city.
One was born in the capital city of Naples and moved out of it. One was born in a
small town and ended up in the capital city of Vienna.
There could not be 2 more different men.
ST. CLEMENT AND ST. ALPHONSUS: SIMILARITIES
Yet there are some points that both of those saints had very
much in common.
Both are the founders of our Congregation - one on each side
of the Alps. Both of the them had struggle
after struggle to get foundations and approval. Both of them never really lived
to see the results of their work. As we heard in today’s first reading: 1 Cor.
3: 6-11, Paul said that he planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.
Or it’s like a building, Paul said, I laid the foundation. Another is building
upon it. But Christ is the corner stone. Neither of these men really saw the
great growth that resulted from their lifetime of hard work. Each of these men
are the ground on which we stand, the foundation of our congregation, the
bottom line why we are here today.
However, besides these men being our founders, where I see a
great similarity, is in the image of bread. Clement, as I said was a baker.
Alphonsus was a lawyer who ended up having a great love affair with Jesus in
the Bread of the Altar, the Bread of the Eucharist.
However, what I would like to stress today is the bread of
the word.
Now by stressing this I am not implying that neither of
them, nor us Redemptorists should not be concerned about the people on the
planet who are starving for actual bread
- those with physical hunger. As human beings, as Christians, as Redemptorists,
if we see our brother or sister starving for bread, we better feed them. “The
little children go begging for bread; no one spares a scrap for them.” Clement
fed his orphans at St. Benno’s in Warsaw and Alphonsus worked to get food for
the people of Agatha of the Goths in the famine of 1763 - 1764 and
Redemptorists ever since have been deeply concerned about helping those who are
starving and poor.
But I am stressing that the end of our Institute, the
purpose of our Congregation from the very beginning, as our first constitution
puts it is to “follow the example of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, by preaching
the word of God to the poor, as he declared of himself: `He sent me to preach
the Good News to the poor.’”
In today’s Gospel: Luke 10:1-9 we see Jesus appointing
disciples and sending them 2 by 2, to work in teams. The harvest is
plentiful, the laborers are few. Jesus
sent them forth to bring peace to others. If a son of peace is here, then your
peace will rest on you, if not it returns to you. The Kingdom of God
has come to you.
The stress then is on the Bread of the Word - Good News -
Gospel - preaching. The stress is on giving people meaning in their lives, when
they don’t have meaning. The stress is on prophetic preaching that will convert
the hearts and minds of people so that there will more peace and justice in our
world and less selfishness. The stress is on prophetic preaching against
structures that cause poverty and prophetic preaching that in the meanwhile,
since we always have the poor with us, we see those scrounging with the dogs
for scraps at the garbage pails outside our houses.
Both Alphonsus and Clement saw a Europe in their times where
people were starving for the word of God and a) preachers were not giving them
that bread or b) if they were giving it, they were not breaking it up for them.
Both saw that people need sermons that are down to earth, meat and potato
stuff, bread not cake, stuff not fluff.
Our tradition then is not just to preach the word, the bread
of the word, but to break it up into pieces so that people will understand it
easily and no longer be starving.
CONCLUSION
Today, yes our world has a lot of people who are starving.
Today, yes our world has a lot of food that could be used by those who are
starving, but there is greed, laziness, use of food as weapons, poor
distribution of food etc. Yes to all that.
But where our provinces work, I see that most people have
the means to get physical food. What they lack is spiritual food: the bread of
the word. The people are hungry for the Word of God. “The little children go
begging for bread; no one spares a scrap for them.” "I was hungry and you gave me to eat."
The people we serve seem to me to have much of the world’s
goods, but are also starving for meaning, prophecy, Good News, the Word made
Flesh: Jesus.
The harvest is plentiful, the laborers are few. Jesus
invites us to work in the field. Alphonsus and Clement said, yes. Do I?
AMEN COME LORD JESUS!
