VOICES AND VISIONS

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 4th Sunday of Easter - C - is, “Voices and Visions.”

If you hang around religion long enough, you’ll run into people who are off on “Voices and Visions.”

It’s tricky to preach on this – because some of you sitting here might be off on voices and visions. Relax I’ve been to Lourdes and I’ve been to Chartres in France – the most famous shrine of Mary in the Western World – up until Lourdes and Fatima.

Whatever…. yesterday this is what hit me – to say a few words about voices and visions – something I’ve been thinking about for a long while now.

Just the other day I saw a lady outside of church holding a little baby and I said to this other lady who was also standing there, “Isn’t that a beautiful baby?” And this other lady says looking right at the mother and the little baby girl, “Yeah, but you know what Nostradamus says about the world ending in 2012.”

At that I was hoping the little baby girl would give her a Bronx cheer, “Pfatt!”

If you hang around religion long enough, you’ll run into people who are off on “Voices and Visions” – “Predictions and Prophecies.”

TODAY’S READINGS

Today’s 3 readings triggered for me this question about voices and visions.

Today’s second reading from The Book of Revelation begins this way, “I, John, had a vision….”

Today’s gospel has Jesus saying, “My sheep hear my voice.”

If you come here to church, you’ll hear 3 readings every Sabbath and 2 readings on weekday Masses. The reader says at the end of the first and second reading, “The word of the Lord” and we all answer, “Thanks be to God.” The deacon or priest reads the Gospel and concludes by saying, “The Gospel of the Lord” and everyone answers, “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.”

By making those two responses, we are saying something very profound. In today’s first reading a whole group of people rejected Paul and Barnabas when they said they were speaking the word of God.

And there are billions of people around this world – who don’t hold what we hold – that the Bible is in a profound way – the Word of God.

PRIVATE REVELATIONS

If you hang around the Catholic Church long enough, you’ll run into people who are off on religious revelations: visions and voices.

And voices and visions sometimes fill churches and collection baskets. That’s a dig – but I’ve seen that taking place here and there.

Down through the centuries there have been many, many, many predictions about the end of the world – giving dates.

I always think that’s stupid – because dates come and go. Of course it has impact, if you give an exact date – and it’s coming soon.

Here we are in 2010. We made it past 2000 and 2001.

I loved the comment that someone made to someone in California who was worried about the world ending at midnight on January 1, 2000. “Relax it was midnight hours and hours ago in Australia and we’re still here.”

Volcanoes, hurricanes, violence and war – expect more.

Predictions of the end of the world – expect more – but it’s my take to say, “Don’t believe them – unless someone says that the sun is going to run out of fuel 5 to 8 billion years from now – or whatever scientists figure out.” We know that by just watching a fire in our fire place fade or the battery in a cell phone running out – till we recharge it. So when the sun runs out of fuel, this world will end – but folks might be on a dozen other planets. There’s a lot of future ahead of us.

I spent 8 and ½ years before I was stationed in Annapolis, preaching all over the country – and let me tell you – it’s my experience that people are fascinated by religious revelations. I also spent 14 years of my life working in two different retreat houses – and people would ask from time to time about books that claimed to be voices and visions from God or the Blessed Mother.

To be transparent, to be P.C. correct, I have to announce that I’m a skeptic when it comes to private revelations.

To be priest, I’ll say that the Church is very, very hesitant to approve private revelations. The Church also has announced non-approval of revelations that people claim – voices from Mary and Jesus – and who have you.

So if someone pushes some of this stuff on you, do what I was hoping that little baby would do to the Nostradamus lady, “Pfatt!” Or just say, “Interesting – and ooops I’m late for an appointment.”

If you want to know more about this stuff – and if you’re a Google Doodler on your computer – just type in, “Private Revelations” or “End of the World Predictions.” And if you’re retired, you won’t run out of stuff on private revelations.

Just know that the basic position of the Catholic Church is that you don’t have to accept private revelations. That statement is well documented – and has been publicized many times.

THE SCRIPTURES

Next pinch yourself – for being a Catholic. When it comes to the Bible we have wonderful teachings. And the Bible is filled with voices and visions.

It took us a long time and a lot of struggle to get to where we are today when it comes to how we understand the Bible – and there will be more growth in years to come.

The best thing I like is that we are not fundamentalists.

Today’s second reading from The Book of Revelation has been a great source for many interpretations and conjectures. If you want to know more about The Book of Revelation – take courses – and do your homework.

Now we made mistakes. When scholars at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century said that The Pentateuch, the first 5 books of the Bible, were not written by one person, Moses, the Catholic Church criticized such scholars – even when some of them were heavy duty specialists like Pere Marie Joseph Lagrange – a Dominican priest who taught and wrote from the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem. The scholars said there are various authors and voices in Genesis and the next four books. It’s like a scholar saying, “If I picked up a play by Shakespeare and another play by Arthur Miller, or a story by Hemingway and a story by Dickens, I can tell these are different writers.”

So someone like Pere Lagrange – after a lot of study and research – said such things about The Book of Genesis and from 1902 till 1938, he was labeled “suspicious”. In 1912 he was exiled.

By now many Catholics have heard about the 4 schools of writers in The Book of Genesis. It’s a theory – but to many it makes some sense – and we understand the Adam and Eve stories, etc. a lot better.

Years ago we priests hesitated to say something like this from the pulpit – because folks who had different assumptions about the Bible would make an inner, “Uh oh!” But Catholics for the past 50 or so years have read and attended Bible classes and talks and heard preachers from time to time go from these different premises. And folks instead of saying, “Uh oh!” would say, “Oh okay, that makes sense.”

And it helped very much when Pope Pius XII in 1943 came out with his liberating encyclical on the Bible, Divino Afflante Spiritu. Pere Lagrange didn’t live long enough to see this.

And then we have development in The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation [Dei Verbum] by the Second Vatican Council on November 18, 1965.

When I see people pushing or reading private revelations – especially in prayer groups, I say to myself, “I wish they would read the Bible and the Documents of Vatican II instead.” I wish they would use the many excellent commentaries on the Bible, like “The New Jerome Biblical Commentary”. I would add, there are very few – if any - scholarly commentaries on private revelations.

HEARING THE VOICE OF GOD

In Thomas Szasz’ book, The Second Sin, [1973] which I found fascinating and challenging, the several times I’ve read it, he says, “If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God talks to you, you are a schizophrenic.”

Today’s gospel begins, “Jesus said, ‘My sheep hear my voice ….”

Have you ever heard Jesus speak to you? Have you ever had a God experience?

Andrew Greeley – in his work as a sociologist – said that many people have had God or Jesus experiences. I’ve had a few – but I don’t make them Gospel.

I’ve found out many people have had so called “private revelations”. A few times I thought they were crazy – I didn’t use the word, “schizophrenic” – but many times I have been moved by people telling me stories and experiences they have had of God’s presence and love and voice of reassurance after a loved one died or on a vacation in the mountains or at the ocean or while sitting in the Eucharistic Chapel – or sometime in the middle of a late night moment when they looked out the window at a star filled sky.

CONCLUSION

In fact, I hold – and I hold this very strongly – that if we pray – and sit or kneel in the presence of God on a regular basis – even though one has many distractions and doubts in prayer, at times in doing this, we’ll have so called “God’s presence feelings and moments.”

Having taught spirituality for 9 years, I add that saints who write about this sometimes say, “God is more present in the dark nights of the soul than in the bright morning light of spiritual delights.”

Then I add, if we pray on a regular basis, we will see and hear God’s voice on a regular basis. We’ll hear God’s voice and see God’s presence in a baby’s looking at us in church or an old person’s smile at a 90th birthday party or and old person with a great smile sitting there at the edge of a dance floor at a wedding watching everything – or a wave from a little kid to us when there is a car next to us at a red light – or when we see the beautiful green of a piece of steamed broccoli or a bird on a branch outside our kitchen window – over and over again. We’ll hear God saying, “I’m here. Hi! I’m with you all days – even to the end of the word and we say, “Thanks be to God.”