November 03, 2019. Homily for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time of Year (C)

Readings: Wisdom 11:22 – 12:2; 2 Thes.1:11 – 2:2; Lk 19:1-10

God Calls us to Repentance

God calls us to communion and friendship with him. Jesus said: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain…” (Jn.15:16). Even when we are not faithful to God’s covenant of love, He never abandons us. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (Jn.3:16).

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Jesus calls to conversion. This call is an essential part of the proclamation of the kingdom. ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.’ In the Church’s preaching this call is addressed first to those who do not yet know Christ and his Gospel. Also, Baptism is the principal place for the first and fundamental conversion. It is by faith in the Gospel and by Baptism that one renounces evil and gains salvation, that is, the forgiveness of all sins and the gift of new life.” (1427).

The first reading of today states: “But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things; and you overlook people’s sins that they may repent. For you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated, you would not have fashioned.” We are special before God; no one is loathsome before him. When we sinned, God does not abandon us. He rebukes “offenders little by little, warn them and remind them of the sins they are committing, that they may abandon their wickedness and believe in you, O Lord!”

Since we are so loved by God, do we feel His love? If we are special to Him, do we love who we are? Are we willing to acknowledge our sins and go to Him for mercy? These questions are answered in the Gospel reading of today. Last week we read of two men who went to the temple to pray. We reflected on the Pharisee as he prayed to himself. He had no need of God. The tax collector, on the other hand, found mercy and was justified. His humility showed his need for God. Today we are presented with another tax collector, the chief of them all – Zacchaeus. He was a Jew, a son of Abraham and a member of God’s chosen people. In spite of his exulted status, his profession as a tax collector, brought him indignity and notoriety. It reduced him to a public sinner, nay, the enemy of the people. He was wealthy but lacked recognition and respect. He was looked down upon, despised and ridiculed. His being small in stature was more than a physical appearance. He was nobody. He had money but no salvation. He yearned for fellowship but found none.

And, so his search began. Zacchaeus might have heard about Jesus and his love for the poor, the rejected, the nobodies, the despised, the tax collectors, prostitutes and sinners. On hearing that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, passing through Jericho, Zacchaeus was anxious to meet Him. But then there was the crowd. The crowd could represent so many things. It could be the barriers that could prevent him from pursuing his goal. It could be fear of what people might say to others about him. It could be fear of rejection, of not being good enough, fear of his height, his background, his race. Oh, the fault-finding crowd; the finger-pointing crowd, the unforgiving crowd, the self-righteous crowd. There were people in the crowd who wanted to take revenge on him, those who felt he had betrayed their race by working for the Romans. Others felt that Zacchaeus’s riches deprived them of their wealth; and just wanted to punch him in the face. Yes, this was intimidating crowd in deed! But Zacchaeus was determined to see Jesus. This was his only chance, nothing and nobody will prevent him. So, Zacchaeus climbed a tree, away from the crowd, just to catch a glimpse of Jesus.

Lance Wallnau relates a story of the fight between an eagle and a snake. “The Eagle does not fight the snake on the ground. It picks it up into the sky and changes the battle ground, and then it releases the snake into the sky. The snake has no stamina, no power and no balance in the air. It is useless, weak and vulnerable unlike on the ground where it is powerful, wise and deadly. Take your fight into the spiritual realm by praying and when you are in the spiritual realm God takes over your battles. Don’t fight the enemy in his comfort zone, change the battle grounds like the Eagle and let God take charge through your earnest prayer. You’ll be assured of clean victory.” Zacchaeus took his fight up the sycamore tree. He changed the battle ground, and the Lord Jesus found him up there and made him an offer he could not refuse: “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house…Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham.” (Lk. 19:5-9).

One can only imagine the joy of this sinner who found favor with the Lord. Zacchaeus may have been one of the reasons Jesus Christ passed through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem. He had unfinished business there, to seek and find he who was lost. Christ always searches for the lonely, the sick, the sinner, and those who have no friends; to restore them to their rightful state in life, to give them the grace they so desperately need. He knows our weakness, He understands our faults, He sees our hearts and knows those who seek Him with a sincere heart. He thirsts for our love and calls us to a new life. Today Salvation has come to this house. There is joy in Heaven over a sinner who repents than over the ninety-nine who have no need of repentance. (Lk. 15:7).

Despite the grumbling of the crowd, that Christ dared to enter the house of a sinner, Zacchaeus renounces his possessions: “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.” Can anyone really prove that he had extorted anything from them? Is it possible that he could have been rich without stealing from people? Regardless of what the crowd thought of him, he came clean and made restitution. He needed Christ more than material wealth, and so I will give it all away just to have Christ my Lord. He showed his gratitude to Christ by accepting to live like Christ. “His public confession shows the sincerity of his repentance. As part of his repentance, Zacchaeus wants to right his wrongs. Biblical repentance always goes hand-in-hand with restitution because conversion is a radical life-changing event.” (Fr. John Pichappilly – Kindle Your Spirit).    

Christ calls on us to repent of our sins and embrace His life of grace. We may be confronted by the crowd of our lives, but Zacchaeus has shown us the way. Take your fight away from the crowd, change the battle ground and allow Christ to find you. Accept His invitation and welcome Him to your house and allow Him to eat with you. “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me.” (Rev. 3:20).

Questions to ponder:

·      Do you know that you are loved personally, specially and intimately by God?

·      Do you know that He wants you to enjoy a life of grace with Him?

·      When did you go to confession last?

   

“And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day” (Jn. 6:39).

“Don’t forget to pray today because God didn’t forget to wake you up this morning”

October 27, 2019. Homily for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time of the Year (C)

Readings: Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18; 2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18; Lk 18:9-14

The Prayerful Posture of the Penitent Man

The posture we adopt during prayer can express the attitudes of our hearts. I remember my pastor when I was growing up. Many nights between 10 and 11 pm, I saw him kneel, at the back of the church, on the last pew praying silently, with his eyes fixed intently on the crucifix behind the Altar. I used to wonder what he prayed for and why. I thought as a priest, he did not need to pray so much. Now I know better!

Biblical characters adopted different postures when they prayed. Abraham prostrated himself before God, (Gen. 17:3, 17). Moses prayed on the hill with uplifted hands for the defeat of the Amalek. (Ex. 18:8-13). Solomon knelt down with hands outstretched toward heaven, (1Kings 8:54). The leper prostrated and pleaded ‘Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.’ (Lk. 5:12). Jesus prayed looking up to heaven, (Mk. 6:41; Jn. 11:41; 17:1). Ps. 95:6 urged us, “Enter, let us bow down in worship; let us kneel before the Lord who made us.” What is your prayer posture?

“Pride goes before the fall”, is a saying we are familiar with. It means, if you are too conceited or self-important, something will happen to make you look foolish. This saying captures the attitude of the Pharisee, one of the two men who went to pray in the temple in today’s Gospel. Let us look at the Pharisees and their kind of prayer: Pharisees were members of a party that believed in the resurrection and in following legal traditions that were ascribed not to the Bible but to “the traditions of the fathers.” They were “lay people who dedicated themselves to trying to keep God’s law as perfectly and as scrupulously as they could. They performed spiritual practices over and above what the law demanded and looked down upon anyone who failed to live up to their standards.” (Homilies by Fr. Joe Robinson, Cycle C).

The prayer in the Gospel is typical of a pharisaic prayer. “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity – greedy, dishonest, adulterous – even like this tax collector” (Lk. 18:11). According to William Barclay, “There is a recorded prayer of a certain Rabbi which runs like this, “I thank, Thee, O Lord my God, that thou hast put my part with those who sit in the Academy, and not with those who sit at the street corners. For I rise early, and they rise early; I rise early to the words of the law, and they to vain things. I labor, and they labor; I labor and receive a reward, and they labor and receive no reward. I run, and they run; I run to the life of the world to come, and they to the pit of destruction.” Rabbi Simeon ben Jocai once said, “If there are only two righteous men in the world, I and my son are these two; if there is only one, I am he!”

So being puritanical and scrupulous, the Pharisee may have, no doubt, done all that he said he did. He may not have cheated anyone, was not adulterous. He fasted, prayed many times a day, paid tithes on all he had and more; but he said the prayers of himself and to himself, not God. He was not humble but conceited. He was like a peacock, who flashed his beautiful colored tail feathers for everyone to see how handsome he was. He was ostentatious, boastful, proud and narcissistic. He called attention to himself! His, was not prayer, but a list of accomplishments, expecting God to praise him. His, is the sin of Lucifer - “bringing light”, referred to as ‘the morning star’ (Is. 14:12), who turned that light on himself and refused to worship the Most High God. He gave his advertisement to God for his glorious achievements and expected God to congratulate and reward him. He clearly demonstrated that he had no need of God. In fact, he felt that God needed him more than he needed God, to show the world how true holiness looks like. True prayer should be directed to God and God alone. God does not need a record of our good works. He knows them all. Rather, He needs us to have a contrite heart; a heart that is forgiving, caring, loving, compassionate and merciful. Not condescending, boastful, conceited and spiteful heart. Such a heart is loathsome to God. That is why the Pharisee was not justified before God. 

 

“The proud place themselves at a distance from others and seen through that distance, others perhaps appear little to them even contemptible, as the tax-collector appeared to the Pharisee. “I thank God that I am not like…this tax-collector”. How morally contemptuous his words are! Moral contempt is far greater indignity and insult than any kind of crime. We can feel good about our gifts, but genuine self-esteem is ruined by arrogant self-righteousness that judges others. I once saw a poster of a powerful tawny bearded lion with a caption: “It is so difficult to be humble”. And yet, it is “the prayer of the humble that pierces the cloud and does not rest till it reaches its goal” (Sir. 35:17); because only the humble can fully appreciate the grace of God.” (His Words Lives by Vima Dasan, SJ)

This brings us to the tax-collector and his prayer. As was commonly known, tax collectors, though Jews, were public employee of the Romans. They collected taxes and sent to Rome, but they had to pay themselves by collecting more than stipulated. They made quite a decent living for themselves but also gained a bad reputation as a result. They were despised, hated and considered as public sinners. This man knew who he was and was not in doubt that God knew him too. Since he had no friends, he depended on God for everything, and so with a heavy heart, he went in to pray. He could not even raise his eyes to God, he was unworthy. He simply beat his breast and prayed for mercy. He saw himself, not as a sinner, but as the sinner. It was that heart-broken, self-despising prayer that won him acceptance before God. He was at peace with God because of his humility. For no man who is proud can pray to God.

These readings warn us against comparing ourselves with human-beings. We should always compare ourselves to God. Our yearning in this world should always be how to please God, not human beings. All that we are and all that we have is pure grace and a free gift from God. Therefore, we must look down on no one, but with the strength we have been given by God, we should work to lift people up not pull them down. If we place our life side by side with that of our Lord Jesus Christ, one thing will be very obvious: we are not as holy as we think; and will soon discover that we are all sinners in need of God’s mercy and love. We will then see ourselves as the publican at prayer, and we will soon join him to say: “Lord be merciful to me the sinner.”

Questions to ponder:

·      Am I as good as God wants me to be?

·      Do I approach God with pride or with a humble spirit?

·      What posture best describes my attitude to God in prayer?

·      What do I need to pray for this week?

“The prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds; it does not rest till it reaches its goal nor will it withdraw till the Most High responds, judges justly and affirms the right, and the LORD will not delay” (Sir. 35:18).

“Don’t forget to pray today because God didn’t forget to wake you up this morning”