Homilies and Talks
Fr. Mark 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time (9/29/24)
At that time, John said to Jesus, "Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us." Jesus replied, "Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us. Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward. Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna into the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life crippled than with two feet to be thrown into Gehenna. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. The Gospel of the Lord. Probably some of the most to the point and gut wrenching readings if we actually heard what they were saying to us that we get in the reading cycle. But such is the way of life in ordinary time, especially as we approach the end of the liturgical year, we're cruising towards the last Sunday in ordinary time, the Feast of Christ, the King. And so all of our readings turn to the theme of the last things. Death, hell, heaven, and judgment, right? And these questions that are put before us about what we value in life, what we're doing with our lives, and whether or not they're conformed to the way God has made us, what he's made for us, enjoy, and happiness. I think, though, a theme that kind of runs through these three readings and is worth reflecting on is really the question of where our hearts are. In the book of Numbers, that first reading, it's really not well-named. It's called the book of Numbers because it has two times that they take a census in it, but it's really a narrative about the exile, what happens after Exodus, as the people move from Sinai into the desert. Probably some of the richest, as far as the story of what's going on with the Israelites, as they move away from God's mountain, and they move away from God's mountain, they actually move away from God is what we find out in the book of Numbers. And so God's constantly searching after them, trying to draw their hearts back to that moment of union when he made a covenant and gave a law. So it's focused on the heart. In that second reading from James, the issue that's central to what he's talking about as far as our relationship with wealth is actually the heart. The Christian understanding of the way in which we engage this world is not one that requires a universal rejection of everything. I think sometimes we can think of the story of the rich young man and think that that has a universal application to each one of us in its total radicality. But the way that Christians have always understood that passage is that it's a vocational reality for that young man. He had fulfilled the law and Christ asks more of him in the perfection. For each one of us, that's not necessarily the case, but what is true and what is universal about the way in which we have to engage with the material world around us, especially with the way in which we engage in the wealth that we have or don't have, is about the heart, where our heart is, what we value, why we hold on to some things, why we give it away. That's the central drama of wealth and the Christian, and that's what James is really getting at. He's rebuking people who hold on to their own ability to provide for themselves and refuse to provide for others. That's a problem of the heart. It's a heart that's blind to the reality in front of them in another person. It's a heart that's blind to the end of time and to what life is actually about. And so it invites us in to reflect on how do I relate to the goods of this world? How do I relate to my wealth, my comfort with the proper disposition of a heart that is known the love of God and knows the importance of what our lives are about, which is Christ himself loving service to others towards the building up of his kingdom in this world. And this gospel is really about the heart as well. You know, in numbers we saw the sort of little rumors going around and everything about the prophecy, this issue of who can speak God's powerful word into the world, who has the authority to. And that comes up again in this gospel that someone else is speaking authoritatively, casting out demons who isn't a member of the group that's following Christ visibly. And it's an issue of the heart. A heart disposed to the will of God can reflect his will in this world, can prophesy, which is to really remind people of the promises that God has made and what he desires for us and can cast out evil in this world. A heart set on Christ can do those things even if that heart is maybe not visibly connected to his body or to his body of followers. What I want to focus on especially is this last little section where Jesus speaks three really intense images, right? If your hand causes you to sin, if your foot causes you to sin, and if your eye causes you to sin, he says, "Cut it off, pluck it out." I think sometimes we can hear that and there's a danger because we can overly, literally interpret it to say, "Oh yeah, if I'm doing something with my hand and it's causing to sin," he's saying, "Literally cut it off." He's not saying something that would require the mutilation of the person, but not because he's not speaking literally, he is speaking literally. The problem is that it's not our hands and our eyes and our feet that cause us to sin. We know from the rest of this reflection it's the heart that causes us to sin. And so Jesus is speaking literally not in relation to what we would do to our body as though our members would cause us to sin, but rather it's a way to express what happens in the heart. Those things in our heart that cause us to sin have to be cut off from our heart, just like you would a disease in the body. If your leg was diseased and killing you, you would have to cut it off. But for each one of us, because we're not God, I can guarantee that there's some part of our heart that causes distance from God. There's some part of our heart that reflects a selfishness or a desire to control beyond our ability to actually control. There's some part of our heart that might blind us to the reality in front of us and in other person. It might blind us to the reality of our judgment at the end of time and what we're responsible for in this world as we journey through life. And it's precisely these images of hand, eyes and foot that get us into the more real image of what's going on in the heart. In our spiritual exercises, in our life as Christians, we have to constantly be willing to cut those things off of our hearts that are doing us damage. And there are many things that do us damage in the heart. I think that one of the more helpful examples to draw this or illustrate this is actually what they've found about cell phones. Because we can all relate to the sort of addiction of smartphones that we all, for the most part, experience. What they've found is that a lot of people wish that they didn't sort of rely on their cell phone or smartphone as much. But when that desire is strong, there's still an impossibility to get it out of our life. There's a real problem of regulating our use of these sort of addictive technologies. And it's a great example because what they've consistently started to find is, in order to reset, in order to have a good, healthy relationship with that type of technology, which is possible, you actually have to start from zero. You have to completely cut it out of your life first. And then you can bring it back in slowly, but what you can't do is what we think we can do even in the spiritual life, which is just do incremental sort of reductions of our use. How much so would that apply to what Jesus is saying about the heart in his command to cut out of our lives, that which is damaging us? In those different ways in which we can see our connection to sin, maybe the seven deadly sins would give us a great reflection of pride, of lust, of gluttony, of sloth, of anger, all these things. Where in our life do we find ourselves influenced in the heart and attached in the heart to things that keep us far from God? And how can we act today, through the grace we receive at this mass, to begin to cut at least one thing off of our heart, to cut my attachment to the anger that I can't resolve in my life against this person, to cut off the unforgiveness I have of some past hurt, to cut off my attachment to my own comfort, to my own desire to control my life, to my own comfort when it comes to food or drink or sexual pleasure? How can we cut those things off of our hearts so that we can see God more clearly, that we can relate to Him and know His love and mercy in a more radical way, so that we can be built up in our faith and share it with other people? [BLANK_AUDIO]