The Good Sanitation Worker (Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year C)

Today is often referred to as Good Shepherd Sunday, a time to pray for vocations and also for those who currently shepherd the flock. There are some problems with this image, at least for me. First of all, my guess is that most of you have never seen or touched or smelled a real, live sheep, much less a real shepherd. Our holy cards have sanitized what shepherds were really like.

In Jesus’ time, shepherds were looked down upon. They performed an essential task for the community, but their job made them highly unpopular. They smelled funny. They were uneducated and ill-mannered. Their job did not allow them the luxury of keeping the Sabbath and therefore, in addition to being unwashed, they were ritually unclean.

On the other hand, they were strong, dedicated and brave. They could easily flatten a wolf. They were tireless in their search for lost sheep. They acted as living gatekeepers, literally lying down at the entrance to the sheep pen at night so no sheep could escape and no wolf get in. My main objection to the image of shepherd, however, is not to how bad a shepherd smells but what his ultimate goal is: he protects the sheep until he can fleece them. Or worse.

I think a more appropriate image would be to think of Jesus as the Good Sanitation Worker. Think about it. Like shepherds in years past, the sanitation worker performs an essential function for our society. Nevertheless, most people look down on garbage collectors because, like shepherds, they also smell funny. But think of what a mess we would have if we had no sanitation workers.

Jesus, our good sanitation worker, takes away our spiritual garbage. But best of all, he helps us recycle. He looks at what is broken and worn out in our lives and shows us ways to repair and renew ourselves and our relationships.

Today’s priests follow in Jesus’ footsteps, more as spiritual sanitation workers than as shepherds, even though the word “pastor” originally meant shepherd. Through confession and the sacrament of reconciliation, priests help us unburden our souls of the garbage we have collected over time. Through counseling they help us recycle our lives.

These days, because of the scandals that continue to rock the Church, the priesthood has probably fallen lower in many people’s eyes even than sanitation workers. Power, privilege and prestige no longer mark the priesthood. Good. The only thing worse than a priest shortage would be for young men to want to become priests for the wrong reasons.

But the People of God still need men of courage, humility and sacrifice willing to take on the essential role of helping Christ clean up his church. We need good, Catholic parents who, though mindful of the faults of too many churchmen, are still proud to be known as Catholics and are willing to encourage their sons and daughters to enter religious life.

With fewer men entering the priesthood, is it any wonder the garbage is starting to pile up? Yet despite all its current problems, despite all its past sins, the Roman Catholic faith is still capable of great holiness and goodness and has the potential to once again bring the light of Christ to our wounded and broken world in dire need of healing, justice, peace, hope and love.

Perhaps as you listen to me this morning, some of you young people feel the stirrings of the Holy Spirit calling you to follow Christ by becoming a spiritual sanitation worker. We need you. We are counting on you. With you, the Church may once again become a shining example of sacred service to the Gospel of Christ and the Reign of God. Without you, what was once beautiful about Catholicism will be hidden by so much trash.

Peter's Penance (Third Sunday of Easter, Year C)

Poor Peter. What a sorry excuse for a disciple. He was not only a liar, denying Jesus three times, he was also a coward, running away when Jesus needed him most. No wonder when he heard the news Jesus had risen from the dead, his heart sank. He knew he was not worthy to be the prince of apostles, much less the first pope. So after the joy of that first Easter faded, he feared there was no place for him in the kingdom of God. He went back to the only thing he really knew how to do. He went fishing.

The trouble is, he wasn’t even good at that any more. He and his companions caught nothing. When Jesus again appeared to them, poor Peter was so confused he actually put his clothes on and then jumped into the water. That man was a mess.

Now Peter’s healing begins. He had denied knowing the Lord three times, so three times Jesus asks him to confess his love. Each time, Jesus tells him “Feed my sheep.” Jesus calls him by his original name: Simon, son of John. This is significant. Perhaps Jesus concedes Peter has forfeited the right to be called the “Rock,” since clearly his faith had been so shaky it would have made a poor foundation upon which to build a church.

Instead, Jesus wants him to feed the sheep with what Peter had personally experienced following his unspeakable sin: unconditional forgiveness. This wasn’t something he read about in a book. He could now preach to the world about forgiveness because he, the least worthy to be an apostle, had received forgiveness. In many ways, Peter’s sin was worse than Judas’s. If Judas isn’t a saint it’s not because he betrayed our Lord but because he refused the Lord’s forgiveness and, instead, committed suicide. Peter, for his part, when he realized what he had done, broke down in tears. Tears of repentance.

It is the forgiveness Peter received that feeds us here today. If he can be forgiven, than so can we. Our sins pale by comparison.

These days, as you know, our Holy Father, Pope Benedict, the successor of St. Peter, must also be feeling unworthy. He probably wishes he too can just forget about the whole mess and go fishing. No doubt his reputation and even his authority have been seriously damaged by recent revelations. Last week he called for repentance in the Church. This can only be accomplished in a spirit of humility. It does no good to blame the press, or blame this group or that group for problems you yourself created.

But if the Holy Father, whose past mistakes have been so painfully exposed, puts on the clothing of humility and jumps into the waters of sincere repentance, I for one am more than ready to join him. Yes, priests have committed unspeakable sins in the past; yes bishops, out of misplaced loyalty and shocking incompetence, have brought scandal and confusion to the People of God. But today the Risen Lord stands before each of them as he stood before Peter and asks, “Do you love me more than these? If so, then feed my sheep—from your humility, not from your arrogance; from your honesty, not from your belligerence; from your repentance, not from your pride.”

Do this and the world, which seems to take delight in the Church’s disgrace, will stand in awe at the Church’s inevitable resurrection.

Jesus’ Easter gift of peace (Divine Mercy Sunday, Year C)

After Mass one Sunday, a man said to the priest, “You know, Father, I’ve been attending Mass for many years now and you always talk about the same old thing, ‘Christ is born’ or ‘Jesus is risen.’” The priest didn’t recognize the man and asked him when he normally attended Mass. He replied, “I come faithfully every Christmas and every Easter.”

In today’s gospel, Thomas is like that man. He was away from the gathering of believers that Sunday evening when the Risen Lord appeared to them. He did not believe their testimony. He wanted to see and touch the wounds of Christ for himself. He wanted physical proof.

The Risen Lord turns Thomas’s initial doubt into the great confession of faith, “My Lord and my God!”

The name Thomas means twin, yet the gospel makes no mention of who his twin is. I think it’s all of us. We are very much like Thomas. We too often absent ourselves from gathering with the disciples and then wonder why our faith is shaky and doubt whether Christ is really, truly risen from the dead.

Why is this important? Because unless we gather with other believers and unless we experience the presence of Christ in our midst, we will not receive the divine gift of the Risen Lord: the peace of Christ.

What is this peace that Christ gives us? It doesn’t mean we’ll have no difficulties. It doesn’t mean we’ll experience no dangers. It doesn’t even mean we live lives free of controversy or confusion. It means that as we live our daily lives of faith in an increasingly hostile world, that despite all opposition, that despite all kinds of problems, failures and setbacks, that even though our world may be collapsing all around us, our hearts are calm, our spirits remain strong, our minds abide in peace because the risen Lord is with us and within us.

After receiving the peace of Christ, the apostles experienced increasing opposition and persecution because they dared proclaim Christ crucified and risen. But it was the peace of Christ that sustained them when they were cursed, beaten, arrested and even killed. It didn’t matter how much the world raged against them. They knew the battle was already over, the war was already won, the victory already assured.

May each of you experience that profound peace today and every day. It is the peace the world cannot give. It is not the peace that comes from humiliating, defeating and destroying our enemies, but rather it comes from our refusal to think and act like our enemies, and to destroy them—not by killing them—but simply by recognizing them as fellow sinners in need of the same mercy, forgiveness and peace of Christ, as are we all.

May the peace of Christ take you from confusion to conviction, from doubt to determination, and from fear to faith.

Empty tomb vs. Overflowing heart (Easter, Year C)

Today we stand at the entrance of the empty tomb and must decide for ourselves what it all means. Was Jesus’ body stolen? Was it perhaps misplaced in a different tomb and they forgot where they had buried him? Or did he, in fact and in truth, rise from the dead? Physically, with a body?

Our faith and our life depend on what we believe. Notice the apostles and the first persons to go to the tomb, notably Mary Magdalene, had thought the worst. What changed her sorrow to joy and her despair to hope wasn’t the empty tomb but a personal encounter with the Risen Lord.

For her especially, the death and resurrection of Jesus were not about theology but about a personal relationship. “Messiah”, “Savior” and “Son of God” did not mean as much to her as did the word “friend.” She had lost the person dearest to her heart and she mourned his death and had been devastated when his body was missing from the tomb.

Tears must have blurred her vision and sorrow her judgment when she at first mistook Jesus for the gardener. But when she heard her name spoken as only the way a lover can, the veil was lifted and she recognized the Lord. We cannot even begin to imagine her joy unless we think how wonderful it will be on that day when we meet our deceased family and friends again after our own resurrection from the dead. Our hearts could not contain such joy; it would overflow to everyone around us.

Meanwhile, back in Jerusalem, the brave disciples were huddled together behind locked doors wondering when the Romans would come for them. They had no time for Mary Magdalene’s hysterical nonsense that Jesus was risen. (What do women know about these things any way?) But just to be safe. Peter and John went to check things out.

For many years now, but especially this past Holy Week, the Catholic Church has walked its own Way of the Cross. To be sure and to be honest, we are more like the two thieves crucified with our Lord than we are like the Lord himself. He was innocent while we suffer the consequences of our sins. We can be like the Bad Thief who thought only of saving himself, overlooking the evil deeds that got him nailed to a cross; or we could in all humility be like the Good Thief and take responsibility for our actions and only hope Jesus remembers us when he comes into his kingdom.

Maybe the Church still has to die in order to rise. Maybe we need to give up more power in order to once again speak with authority. Maybe we need to stop letting politics cloud our vision so we might more clearly see with the eyes of faith. Maybe we need to actually put our faith in the Risen Lord and stop placing our hope in the remnants and trappings of the Roman Empire.

In order to survive, much less change, the Church needs not only to believe in and proclaim the resurrection of Jesus, we need to personally encounter the Risen Lord.

Until we do, all our proclamations and beliefs will be hollow echoes in an empty tomb.

Our vulnerable God (Good Friday, Year C)

Our small sacrifices of Lent bring us to this day. I gave up a whole slew of things for Lent (not the least being Facebook!), not because these are in any way harmful but because, over time, they had insidiously become mindless habits and put my life on automatic pilot.

I realized these past 40 days how much time I spent playing Sudoku, playing Bejeweled, drinking coffee or scarfing down desserts. I realized, too, I could get along quite nicely without these supports.

Today, Good Friday, the Church ritually takes away the last, great, seemingly irreplaceable support to our happiness and stability: Jesus himself.

A Good Friday liturgy is unlike any other in the year. There is no Mass. Rather, the people gather around 3 p.m. and the priest and deacon enter in silence. They prostrate themselves on the ground in front of a bare altar and an empty tabernacle. The emptiness taunts us. Jesus is gone.

The Passion (suffering) of Jesus Christ is solemnly chanted with no frills. At the point where Jesus breathes his last, all fall on their knees in silent mourning for a man who died on a cross 2,000 years ago.

Then a crucifix is held high for the people to come forward to venerate. Something visceral takes place as we worship a God so powerfully weak that he died. Human history has courted various gods over the millennia: Horus, Vishnu, Woden, Thor and Zeus, to name a few. All were powerful in their own way. But only one God was vulnerable and came to be with us in our weakness.

This liturgy does not end; it stops. The celebrants walk off with no song or music. The altar is stripped and we are taunted again by a small glimpse of what the disciples must have felt that Passover evening in Jerusalem.

Paradoxically, our omnipotent God has become infinitely more approachable, lovable and adorable (in the original meaning of the word!) precisely because God has become so vulnerable. This, in turn, reopens an old wound in our hearts and souls: life without Jesus.

Good Friday haunts us with the specter of our losing God.

Throughout history, different peoples have suffered the incomparable loss of all that they had once held dear. The Israelites certainly felt this when the Babylonians invaded Israel and destroyed their Temple. They went through this nightmare again in 70 A.D. when the Romans destroyed the second Temple and dispersed the Jews around the empire.

Imagine how we Catholics would feel if St. Peter's Basilica were destroyed. Does our faith depend on a building, even one as majestic and historical and beautiful as the Vatican? Or the papacy? Would our faith continue if we were suddenly deprived of these? But that's the emptiness Good Friday would have us consider.

In the void that is Good Friday we are forced to get our priorities straight. Before we can be filled with the joy that is Easter, we need to contemplate our utter emptiness in union with him who emptied himself for us.

A New Commandment (Holy Thursday, Year C)

FAR AND AWAY the best homily I ever heard on Holy Thursday was given by my good friend, Maryknoll Father John McAuley, currently serving in China. With unabashed pride (and very rare humility), I will attempt to recapture the essence of his talk for us to reflect upon this Holy Thursday.

It was during Holy Week in 2002 in the midst of the clergy abuse scandal that John delivered this homily at our retirement home in Los Atos, California, where we were holding a Vocations Retreat. (This in itself was no easy task, with the scandals coming out almost on a daily basis. I mean, really, how do you diplomatically say, "Welcome aboard the Titanic!"?)

As we gathered for this most ancient of Catholic rituals, John pointed out that Holy Thursday was more than a solemn celebration of the institution of the Eucharist and the priesthood, which it is. On the night before he died, Jesus and the apostles celebrated the Last Supper at a time of gut-wrenching disintegration. Everything they held dear was falling apart around them. Their future looked bleak. And their situation was about to get nightmarishly worse.

Yet in the midst of this time of uncertainty, fear and confusion, Jesus took bread and gave God thanks and praise. He blessed and broke the bread and asked us to share it in his name. And whenever we did this, he would be present to us: especially in the midst of our darkest moments of doubt, disillusionment and danger.

Eight years have passed since John gave this homily. Alas, the clouds of scandal have not dispersed nor the anger and confusion dissipated. Oh, the Vatican can react with righteous indignation at the secular press and media, no doubt stoked by enemies of the Church, intentionally dragging up and distorting old cases which may or may not have had the complicity of then Cardinal Ratzinger. IMHO this misses the point entirely.

In the public mind (both of Catholics and the wider society), the Church has not done adequate penance for its sins. Penance is more than just public apologies; penance is a good faith effort to make amends for the harm caused by our sins, and this cannot be satifised with mere dollar signs.

At a retreat later that same year, 2002, Father Richard Rohr said, "A problem cannot be solved by the same mentality that caused it." There it is in a nutshell.

Unless we (and I'm including all the clergy and hierarchy in this) rend our hearts and not just our garments, unless we convert our way of thinking, unless we put on the very mind of Christ, this situation may never go away, much less be resolved.

How do we celebrate Maundy Thursday? By the Washing of Feet. Jesus takes the position of a servant and commands us to do the same. This is not fulfilled by ceremoniously re-enacting some ritual once a year, and especially not by the pope washing the feet exclusively of priests and seminarians (God forbid he should wash the feet of women or of the victims themselves!) This gives the exact opposite impression Jesus was trying to make, and only serves to re-enforce the public perception of the Church as an "old boys club."

Jesus gives us a new commandment ("Mandatum" in Latin, hence "Maundy" Thursday via Old English). "Love one another, as I have loved you" (John 13:34). But if we clerical types limit this just to taking care of fellow priests in the ordained priesthood, our Church is doomed.

Oh would that the Holy Father felt for the victims as deeply as he does for the institutional Church! Would that he and every bishop and every priest in every parish around the world wash the feet of all the people whom we have offended by our arrogance, insensitivity, callousness and pride.

Granted it would take more than a few minutes during a once-a-year ritual, so this should be our attitude throughout the year. This would go a long way of not simply healing the Church of our self-inflicted wounds, but would, as much as the Eucharist itself, reveal the abiding presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that woud be Good News indeed.