Thought for today: “You know a person by the kind of desk he keeps …. If the president of a company has a clean desk
… then it must be the executive vice president who is doing all the work.”
The title of my homily for this 18th Wednesday in Ordinary Time is, “Thinking and
Talking About War.”
Today’s
first reading talks about war.Should it
lead listeners to talk and think about war?Or do we just ignore it - like we do with many of our first readings?
I remember I
was at a wedding and a Rabbi was there and we got talking. It was after
September 11th. He asked me if I read the Koran. I said, “No….” He said, “I ought to read it.”
So I bought
a copy and I’ve read it one and a half times. The thing
that stood out was the violence - especially the call to burn, burn, burn.
Somewhere in
the time I was reading the Koran, I began to notice that our scriptures - including
the New Testament - could also be violent and talk about war.
TODAY’S
FIRST READING
Today’s
first reading from Numbers has Moses
sending men to check out Canaan.The
reason: invasion.
There’s a
key reason for war - a key cause of war - wanting land.
They scope
and spy out the land for 40 days and report how difficult awar it would be to get that land. The people
who live there are fierce. They are strong. They are giants and we are grasshoppers in comparison to them.
I think of a
poem by Carl Sandburg entitled, “Private Property”.It’s from his book, The People Yes, 1936.It
goes like this. A man steps onto another person’s
property.The owner says to the
stranger,
“Get off this estate.” “What for?” “Because it’s mine.” “Where did you get it?” “From my father.” “Where did he get it?” “From his father.” “And where did he get it?” “He fought for it.” “Well, I’ll fight you for it.”
There it is - the same story: the fight for land. It’s
key to understanding the history of our world.
I think
about the recent killings in El Paso and Dayton.
There is a
lot of uproar and worry as a result.
I think of a
poem by Bertold Brecht from his Selected
Poems,
“The first time it was reported that our friends were being
butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a
thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of
silence spread.
‘When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody
calls out 'Stop!'" “When crimes begin to pile up they become
invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard.
The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.”
That suggests to me there is a need to talk
about war from time to time. Is that why today’s first reading is here?Is that why it’s put into our scriptures?
OTHER
REASONS FOR WAR
There are
other reasons for war besides land grabs.
There’s
nationalism and race and prejudice and one group thinking they are better than
other groups.
We see and
hear some of this going on today.
We see some
of this in today’s gospel.Here’s this
woman - a Canaanite woman - the same group the Israelites were scoping out - to
wipe out - that we heard about in today’s first reading.She
asks Jesus, a Jew, for help, and Jesus says, “It is not right to take the food
of the children and throw it to the dogs.” Then she out growls and out barks Jesus and says,
“Please, Lord, for even the dogseat the
scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”
Some
commentators think this story is put in here because the Canaanites - in their
region of Palestine - were becoming Christian and some Christians were
prejudiced against these new comers, these outsiders, these non-established
Christians.
We see this
same pattern in other gospel stories with regards the Samaritans - who become
the heroes in some gospel stories.
Prejudice,
racism, trying to betop dog in the show
is found everywhere and is part of the dialogue about wars.
Listen to Haile Selassie on all this. Remember that old warrior from Ethiopia:
“Until the
philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior is finally and
permanently discredited and abandoned ... Everything is war. Me say war. "That until the're no longer 1st class and 2nd
class citizens of any nation... Until the color of a man's skin is of no more
significa...nce than the color of his eyes, me say war.
"That until
the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race me
say war!”
CONCLUSION
The title of my homily for today was, "Thinking and Talking about War." What say you
of war?
What think
you of war?
August 7, 2019
Thought for today:
“In the business world, everyone is paid in two ways coins: cash and experience.Take the experience first; the cash will come
later.”
The title of my homily is, “Trans:[T R A N S]:A Wonderful Prefix.”
Today, being the feast of the TRANSfiguration, that’s the
thought that hit me.
There are some neat religious and spiritually uplifting
words beginning with the prefix TRANS. For example: transcend, transform,
transparent, transpire, and for us Catholics, transubstantiation.
For the sake of transparency, there can be negative words
with trans in them. There’s sin. It has
been called a transgression. A person does a nasty - an aggression or crosses
over a boundary and hurts another and themselves. That’s a transgression.
PREFIX
A prefix means goes before - PRE - a short beginning part
of a word that - indicates what’s
happening - so trans means going across, going beyond, going through to the
other side.So we have words like
transportation, transfer,transalpine,
transcontinental, transatlantic, transoceanic.
So here in Christ’s story - we’re given a looksee into
the beyond, into the holy - intowho
Christ is - and how he can take us into the next.
IN ISRAEL
In Israel there is a mountain called “The Mount of the
Transfiguration.”
In the year 2000 I went to Israel- being asked by our provincial- to chaperone Leo there - an older priest whom I was stationed
with.Leo never went anywhere, so our
provincial, George, knowing how much Leo loved the Bible - that he would love a
trip to the Holy Land, but would never ask, pushed him to go and got him
someone to carry his suitcase.
Me.Wonderful.
So we took British Airlines - BA - on a transatlantic
flight from Kennedy to Heathrow in England and then a transeuropean or
transmediterannean flight down to Israel - and we saw it all.
One day we had a trip by bus to the Mount of the
Transfiguration. We went to the base of the mountain and then 25 priests - we
were on a priests retreat - headed up the mountain in white Mercedes cabs.
We had Mass in the small church up there - then
we each made an holy hour - in silence. I spotteda house with a ladder up to a roof so I climbed it. What a view! What a spot for some quiet time - and it had a nice chair for relaxing, listening and seeing.
Then we had a spaghetti dinner in a Franciscan monastery
up there.
The whole experience of Israel was super. I had a day where I could say, “I’ve been to the
mountain”. I also had a day in Nazareth, a day on the Lake of Galilee, a day in
Capernaum, , then Jericho Dead Sea and then finishing up in Jerusalem. It
was a transfiguring moment for me.Reading the Gospels from then on, I read them in a new way.So I too can say of my trip to Israel, “Lord
it is good that I was there ….”
I saw so much in a new light.That’s transfiguring. That’s transfiguration.
CONCLUSION
The goal of the Christian life is to be one with Christ.
It’s to be pictured with Christ. It's to go figuring with Christ. It's to be transfigured with Christ. So why not start walking anew with him into every scene - well a lot of scenes - and notice how a lot of what we see will be transfigured.
