October 26, 2008
Posted in Homilies
at 9:00 am
Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, October 26th, 2008
“Can love be commanded?” Pope Benedict asks in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est or God is love/charity (#16). What do you think: can love be commanded? The words of Jesus in today’s Gospel seem to suggest so: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” and “you shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Mt 22:37-39). “You shall love your husband as yourself. You shall love your wife as yourself.” Apparently these are commandments. But can love be commanded?
The Pope replies to his own question: “Love can be ‘commanded’ because it has first been given” (#14). It is not “a ‘commandment’ imposed from without and calling for the impossible, but rather a of a freely-bestowed experience of love from within, a love which by its very nature must then be shared with others” (#18)
We see this dynamic in psalm 18, chosen as the psalm for today’s Eucharist.
In the opening line, the psalmist sings “I love you, Lord, my strength” (v. 2). If we read the whole psalm, we discover why: “because he saved me” and “he saved me because he loves me” (v. 20). “I love you Lord, because you have first loved me.”
I am concerned that there are people in our parish – and people listening to me right now – who do not know that God loves them, who have not had a personal experience of God’ love for them.
On Tuesday I was chatting with a young man who is thinking of a vocation to the priesthood. He said he has young friends who go to Mass each week, but give no sign they had ever had a personal experience of God’s love for them. Frankly, I was a bit surprised. I can understand older people who come to Mass each week without having had such an experience,( because they come out of a sense of habit developed over many years, but young people too?) Apparently so.
Is the Church failing somehow? Are the Pope, bishops, priests and laity somehow failing to communicate God’s love to people when they come to Mass, or is there some sort of arteriosclerosis, some sort of spiritual blockage in some hearts that makes them insensitive to God’s love? In case someone hasn’t told you lately, God loves you. If only you knew how much He loves you . . . you would die of happiness!
In his encyclical, the Pope expresses his hope and desire that people truly experience God’s love. He writes that Christ in his love continues to be present to the Church “in the men and women who reflect his presence, in his word, in the sacraments, and especially in the Eucharist . . . (through all these means) “we experience the love of God . . . He has loved us first and he continues to do so; we too, then, can respond with love.” He continues: “God does not demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us see and experience this love, and since he has ‘loved us first’, love can also blossom as a response within us” (#17).
I would like to talk about some ways that we can grow in our love of God and neighbour:
1) Devotion to Mary
2) Reconciliation – that’s the theme of this pastoral year as chosen by our bishop in this Pauline year: “be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20)
3) Prayer
1) One way to grow in our love for God (and neighbour) is through devotion to Mary, because she is the model of receptivity of God’s love. “Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift” (#7), so writes Pope Benedict in his encyclical. This statement is axiomatic, like 2+2=4. Is there anybody who does not know this? “Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift.” But how many people live this by continually opening their hearts to receive the gift of God’s love?
Mary can teach us how to better receive God’s love. As one writer puts it,
“The wonderful thing about this dear Mother of ours is that she is more childlike than her children, and the object of her motherly mediation in Heaven is to make us more childlike . . .” – more open-hearted, more receptive to God’s will and God’s love (John Saward, The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty, p. 137)
And for the men here I would like to add another quote because it helps me. Sometimes women find it easier to love God than we do, because God the Son has revealed himself to us as a man, and it is easier for women to live this bridal love for God the Son. But this is where Mary our Mother steps in to assist us. I quote,
“It is through filial love for the Mother that the male soul learns the secret of bridal love for the Son” (The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty, p.156). Devotion to Mary helps men especially to better love Jesus.
2) Another way to grow in our love of God and neighbour is reconciliation. As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20) and I might add, to one another. I have heard married couples testify to one of several secrets to a happy lifelong marriage – never go to bed angry; always ask forgiveness before you turn out the light for the night. It’s the same with our relationship with God, that’s why Christians should do an examination of conscience every night and ask forgiveness from God for any sins of which we are aware.
To those who make this regular private examinations of conscience but rarely if ever go to confession, let me ask you this: are you absolutely certain that you are bringing your true self before God so that he can love your true self? How do you know whether or not you are deceiving yourself because of your pride or your fear? How do you know whether or not you are bringing a persona, a mask before God, someone God is incapable of loving simply because this person does not exist? Masks are for Hallowe’en, not for marriage and not for Christians in our relationship with God.
Sacramental confession demands honesty with ourselves. When we speak our sins out loud in the sacrament of Reconciliation, we are much more certain that we are not hiding from God, that we are bringing ourselves into his light, so that he can shine his love into every dark corner of our being. It might be possible to compare a good marriage to the joy of a good confession, in which we recover something of Paradise, the experience of being “naked without shame,” the joy of being loved by God (and another) for who we truly are (without masks), not for whom we would like to be, or pretend to be.
3) A third way to grow in love of God and neighbour is prayer – to ask for an increase in love. Doesn’t every Christian want to grow in love of God and neighbour? Don’t you want to grow in love for your husband, your wife?
Before a baptism of a child, I meet with couples who are not married in the Church to talk to them of the beauty of the sacrament of marriage, and present some reasons why they should have their marriage blessed in the Church. Only recently did it dawn on me, after about 4 years, the approach I should take. In the past, I was a bit minimalistic, saying something like, “well, we can’t force you to get married in the Church, but if you never do, you will never be able to receive Communion in the Church as long as you live, so you might want to get your marriage convalidated (blessed in the Church).”
But now I take a different approach on the beauty of the sacrament of marriage: how the sacrament strengthens them and as it were consecrates them, how the Holy Spirit comes upon them and fills them with faith, hope and charity (cf Gaudium et Spes, #48). The Church is offering them (for free!) the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of marriage so that they can love each other more. What are they going to say to that? Is the husband going to pipe up and say, “Thanks anyway, Father. But I think I love my wife enough as it is. I don’t really need more of that “grace” pixie-dust to love her more.” He’s going to say that with his wife sitting right next to him? She’ll say, “Excuse me?” (He:)“What? I go to work every day and take out the garbage. What else do you want me to do?” (And I’m there thinking, “O.K. Maybe you too should not get married in the Church”). Generally speaking, every Christian wants to grow in love of God and neighbour, for husband or wife, so let us pray daily to the Lord for this increase in love.
In the Second Eucharistic Prayer, we do just that when we pray, “Make us grow in love” a translation of the Latin “in caritate perficias” referring to the Church: “perfect (the Church) in love/charity.” In French, “fais-la grandir dans ta charite” (make her – the Church – grow in love/charity)
The English translation is admittedly a good prayer: yes, Lord, make us grow in love, change us, help us! I make this prayer all the time, so that my heart can be purified of so many lesser loves and respond more generously each day to the love without limits of Christ on the Cross and in the Eucharist.
I am reminded of the scene when St. Peter walks on water; he knows it is impossible without God’s grace, so he prays, “Command (keleuson) me to come to you on the water” (Mt 14:28). Peter wanted to come to Jesus, but knew he couldn’t on his own, so he prayed, “Command me.” Every Christian worthy of the name, has some desire to grow in love of God and neighbour. So we can pray to the Lord, “Command me to come to you and love you more, to love my neighbour as myself, to love my husband more, to love my wife more. Make us grow in love.”
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October 19, 2008
Posted in Homilies
at 9:00 am
Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, October 19th, 2008
Whose head is on the $5 bill? $10? $20? $50? What about the $100 bill, does any rich person know who’s head is on that one? And the $1000 bill? What is money? For some people it seems to be an idol or a god.
Our Pope recently commented that “We are now seeing, in the collapse of major banks, that money vanishes, it is nothing. All these things that appear to be real are in fact secondary. Only God’s words are a solid reality.”
I have here a $100 bill; just to show that money is nothing, I am going to light it from the altar candle and let it burn . . . What? Do you think I’m insane? I’m not going to burn a $100 bill!
For one thing, this $100 bill could buy a lot of sausages at Oktoberfest tomorrow night/tonight. But more importantly, I have taken this particular $100 from this envelope. This is money that you, the people of the parish, donated to the Alms for the Poor box for the months of July, August, and September. We raised $230 to sponsor a child in Honduras for one year. (It costs $250/year or about $20 month to sponsor a child).
Canadians are very concerned about money. Arguably, that’s one reason why Stephen Harper was re-elected as Prime Minister of Canada. He is seen as a good financial manager. On the other hand, people were wary of Dion and the mere suggestion of more taxes: carbon tax, green tax, whatever you call it. They didn’t want to pay more taxes in the time of Jesus, and people are the same today! But remember in today’s Gospel Jesus tells us, “Give . . . to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s” (Mt 22:21). One could take this as an endorsement of the necessity honestly paying all our taxes, (while praying for a government that will reduce them!).
Canadians are very concerned about money; I would even say obsessed. If you watch the news or read the papers, it would seem that we have only one way of measuring our success as a country – whether or not the economy is growing, and in the paper Saturday, the level of “consumer confidence.” Forget faith in God; “consumer confidence” is what matters. Earlier in the week, forecasters were projecting that our economy would grow 0.8% next year, but Friday some people were saying it would shrink by 0.2% – I don’t know if I can even say this word in Church – recession. It’s a sin that will send us all to hell. Recession. Come on: what’s the difference between +0.8 and -0.2? No big deal.
Thankfully, times are changing. Even the federal government is realizing that well-being cannot be measure in terms of material wealth alone. I was chatting earlier this week with someone who works for Human Resources Canada. It was news to me that they are working on assessing Canadians through “indicators of well-being” that include factors such as family life, social participation, leisure, learning, environment, and so on (www4.hrsdc.gc.ca/home.jsp?lang=en). Perhaps one day the functionaries in the federal government will discover the deepest source of our well-being – that we are all beloved children of God our Father who provides for all our needs.
Admittedly, we are living in uncertain and confusing economic times. Even financial experts are refusing to predict what will happen next. One day the stock market goes up and investors are happy, then it goes down and they’re sad. Up and down. Oil goes up and the Canadian dollar goes up. Oil goes down and the Canadian dollar goes down. Up and down.
We forget that Jesus lived in a time of economic turmoil and recession, if not depression, with a high unemployment rate. Just think back to the parable we heard one Sunday in September, of the workers in the vineyard, and the many unemployed men who were sitting idle all day in the marketplace – high unemployment as a sign of recession, if not depression (Mt 20: 6).
What are supposed to do when we are surrounded by so much economic uncertainty? I went to Scotiabank and took out all my money and bought gold bars and hid them under my mattress. So I’m set! Just joking. I only poke fun at those who worry obsessively about money, not those who are suffering because they are poor. As I mentioned to you after my mission trip to Honduras in May, the poor have already been suffering from this economic crisis for months now, due to the increase in world food prices.
Only now are we in Canada are starting to suffer a little bit. I think of the increase in the price of oil. We had a temporal affairs meeting the other day, when we examined the financial reports of our parish produced by the accountants. They wrote: “please note that the equal billing amount for oil to heat the Church has increased from $560 per month to $810 per month – an increase of 50%! Is that possible? Is that correct? Can we afford that? Someone from temporal affairs is looking into as we speak.
What are supposed to do about high prices and economic uncertainty? Well, the same thing we do, as Christians, when we are faced with physical suffering or emotional pain or family problems or spiritual trials: trust in God. He is our Father. We are his children. He is permitting this economic crisis, perhaps to heal us of our greed and materialism, to convert us back to a more spiritual life focused on our relationships with God and others.
Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mt 22:21), force us to consider: what exactly do we owe God? Very simply, we owe God everything, since He created us out of nothing. It is only because God loves us that he sustains us in being every moment of every day; if he were to turn his gaze away from us for a second, we would immediately fall back into the dust from which we came.
Since God gave us everything, is it not fair that we should give back something, and even in tough times, to give back at least 10% to God? The Jewish people in the time of Jesus were used to tithing, to giving back 10% to God. I think it is entirely reasonable to give back 10% of our wealth to the poor, to charity, and to the Church: for us “to live more simply, so that the poor can simply live.” Or as Archbishop Romero of El Salvador once said, “The glory of God is that the poor live.”
What is an economic crisis in North America, and what is an economic crisis in Honduras or Zimbabwe, where 5 million children are in danger of starving to death? Do you have enough food to eat? You’re wealthy. Do you have electricity and indoor plumbing? You’re well off. Can you drink the water in your house and not get sick? Do you have health care? You’re laughing! Do you have a grade 12 education, or are working towards one? You’re privileged. Do you have more than one pair of shoes? You’re rich.
The following remarks were not part of my original homily, but I thought I would share them with you. The material wealth we enjoy in North America poses a great spiritual danger to us: that we never acknowledge or accept our poverty before God, our need for him, our absolute dependence on him as our loving Father. But if we never discover our poverty before God, we never discover . . . God. God will rarely if ever reveal himself to someone who has no need of him.
One of the gifts of God that has helped to save and strengthen my priesthood and make me a generally normal and happy priest is the gift of some measure of poverty. I thank my friends in El Salvador and Honduras (and Dr. Simone and the people of Madonna House) for what they have taught me. It’s almost as if God is saying to me, “I am leading you in the way of poverty.” And my natural human reaction is “no, please don’t Lord. Not that way.” But then he says, “Trust me. This is the best way.” This is the way of Jesus Christ and the way of the Blessed Virgin Mary our Mother, who joyfully proclaimed in her Magnificat that God lifts up the poor and lowly, and fills the hungry with good things, with his own life and love.
In uncertain economic times, let us not be afraid to acknowledge our poverty before God and our need for him. And let us continue to be generous with others, so that the poor may live, and rich and poor rejoice together as brothers and sisters in God’s family. Jesus become poor for our sake, to make us rich out of his poverty (2 Cor 8:9). He became poor when he stripped himself of glory in taking on our human nature; he lived poor and died poor on the Cross. He comes to us today in poverty and humility, hidden in the host, to make us all rich with his Divine Presence.
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October 12, 2008
Posted in Homilies
at 9:00 am
Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, October 12, 2008
Thanksgiving is Monday and the election is Tuesday, but I’m not going to talk about either one. I do sincerely hope you all enjoy a pleasant and peaceful Thanksgiving dinner with your family. Just out of curiosity, how many people here eat Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday? How many on Monday? How many people don’t eat Thanksgiving dinner at all and try to avoid their families completely? And how many people here are planning to vote in Tuesday’s federal election? (I want to see all hands! This is a Christian and Catholic duty to vote, as deacon Tom mentioned last week).
I am going to talk about the readings instead: the commitment necessary to enter the wedding feast of heaven, and the “secret” lived by Mary and taught by Paul, that will help us joyfully keep our commitments.
We might have more Grade 2 students here than usual. Anyone here from Grade 2? For those students preparing for the sacraments of Reconciliation, Confirmation and First Communion, we have a few special Masses in which I will be addressing them briefly and handing out a little gift after Communion. Today I will be giving you this Rosary booklet. October is the month of the Rosary, and last Tuesday we celebrated the feast of the Holy Rosary.
So, children, in today’s Gospel we heard Jesus say that “the kingdom of heaven may be compared to . . . to what? . . . to a wedding”! In heaven, every human soul will be “married,” meaning perfectly united, with God. And the closest we can get on earth to the wedding feast of heaven is Holy Communion, which you will be receiving shortly after Easter. In Holy Communion, Jesus comes into your soul; it’s almost like he “marries” your soul. That’s why there’s a long tradition (which you don’t have to follow) of little girls wearing a wedding dress (“wedding robe” Mt 22:11 ) to their First Communion, preparing to be the “bride” of Jesus Christ.
In telling this parable, I think that Jesus wants all married couples to think back to the ecstatic joy of their wedding day, and to see in that a foretaste of the perfect and eternal joy of heaven! In our times, there is another aspect of this parable that we must underline: the joy that comes from keeping our promises and honouring our commitments.
In the parable, we noticed that those who had been invited were found unworthy to enter the wedding feast. They had all agreed to come, but on the day of the wedding, they changed their minds and made excuses: one went away to his farm, another to his business. They were not worthy to enter the wedding feast because they did not honour their commitments; they broke their promises.
In order to enter heaven, Jesus is teaching us that we must keep our promises. But what promises exactly? One is the promise of our baptism, when we promised to reject sin and to follow Jesus and practice our Catholic faith – until death. Another promise is the vows of your wedding day, to be faithful to one person until death; or the vows of a religious or priest, like the vows I took to be celibate and obedient until death. It can sound frightening, can’t it? Do you promise . . . UNTIL DEATH? (echo: Death, death, death . . . )
But it’s all about love. When we realize that Christ loved us until death, or even more personally, as St. Paul put it, “Christ loved me, and gave himself for me,” that gives us the courage to love in return until death, to love God and others in whatever vocation to which God is calling us.
To this day, however, the devil is still prowling like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour, and we must resist him, solid in our faith (1 Pet 5:8-9). In our times, more so than in the past, we are assaulted with intense, relentless and devious temptations to break our life-long commitments, or indeed, out of fear, never to make them in the first place – to avoid all life-long commitments. Do you have any idea, for example, how many Catholics do not get married anymore in the Catholic Church? This crisis in commitment is a very serious problem in our culture, in our Church, and in every human soul who wants to enter one day the wedding feast of heaven.
But there’s a “secret” we can all learn that will help us make and joyfully keep life-long commitments. It is a secret lived by the Blessed Virgin Mary, and taught by St. Paul. He alludes to it in today’s second reading from his letter to the Philippians when he writes, “I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Phil 4: 12-13). (Literally “I have strength (iskuo) through him who strengthens me, and only in him do I have strength).
St. Paul illuminates the secret even further in his second letter to the Corinthians, when he boasts, “I am content with weakness . . . for when I am weak then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10). If you are afraid of making a life-long commitment; if you are tempted to break a life-long commitment, then learn the secret lived by Mary and taught by Paul: “When I am weak, then I am strong.” When I humbly confess that I am weak and miserable whenever I rely on my frail, fallen humanity, AND if I turn to God and cry out for help, for grace, for love and salvation, then his strength enters me and makes all things possible.
By his power at work in us, he can accomplish far more than all we can ask or imagine, as St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians (3:20). But if we don’t discover this “secret” and live it – the secret of admitting our weakness and trusting in God, then I don’t see how it would be possible, amid all the temptations of this world, to make and keep life-long commitments.
(The following comments may apply more to those outside the Church, since those who fail to keep the promise of their baptism – to practice their faith – also have difficulty keeping other commitments. But in any case, here are the comments:)
We must beware of a temptation that can prevent us from discovering this “secret” and rejoicing in our commitments that will bring us to the wedding feast of heaven. Fantasy. Illusions. Escapist daydreams of another life. Our culture sells a lot of fantasies. One of the crudest is pornography, but there are other more subtle but very harmful fantasies. How does it happen that men who love their wives pollute their imaginations with pornographic images of other women? It traps the mind in a fantasy-land. When you live on fantasy island, you
run away from yourself and your weaknesses; you never learn the secret and grow as a person because you never face your weakness.
Women are less susceptible to pornography, but they too can fall victim to silly fantasies and escapist daydreams of another life. The marriage is passing through a rough patch. Her husband has seemed insensitive and distant lately. She notices a kind and friendly single man; she wonders what it would have been like to have married someone else, someone like him for instance . . . Although these “thought” temptations come to us all, we must unmask them for what they are –silly and stupid fantasies, escapist and harmful daydreams that prevent us from discovering the secret and even lead some people to act on these deceitful temptations and break their life-long commitments.
By the way, priests also suffer from similar temptations. The Lord in his goodness to me frequently reminds me of my weaknesses, so that I will turn to him for mercy and find my strength in him alone. One the great helps to me, in addition to the obvious graces of confession and Holy Communion, is the strength God gives me through the intercession of Mary, our Mother.
Pope Benedict was in Lourdes last month, and spoke very beautifully about devotion to Mary. He explained how Mary, like Jesus, was led to perfection through suffering (Heb 2:10); like St. Paul, Mary knew that when she was weak in herself, she was strong in God. When she appeared at Lourdes to St. Bernadette, she had a Rosary with her, and the first thing she did was to smile at Bernadette and beckoned her to come forward. The Pope went on to say that faithful people continue to seek the smile and favour of Mary; he referred to believers who are rich in faith, and “who have attained the highest degree of spiritual maturity.” So who do you think, according to the Pope, have reached the highest degree of spiritual maturity? . . . those who “know precisely how to acknowledge their weakness and their poverty before God.” I might add: those who have discovered the secret that “when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Finally, Benedict reminds us that we continue to try to elicit the smile of Mary “just as a child seeks to elicit its mother’s smile by doing what pleases her. And we know what pleases Mary, thanks to the words she spoke to the servants at (the wedding feast of) Cana: ‘do whatever he tells you’” (Jn 2:5).
(All quotes from the Pope’s Mass for the Sick at Lourdes)
Mary’s words at one wedding feast encourage us to be faithful to Jesus and to our life-long commitments. She directs us also to this wedding feast of the Eucharist (“Happy are those who are called to his supper”). Her words also point us toward the ultimate wedding feast – the one in heaven, where every human soul will be “married” to God. Our Blessed Mother, in her humility and poverty, also models for us the secret taught by St. Paul that will help us joyfully keep our life-long commitments and make us worthy of heaven.
Again, to the Grade 2 children, I will give each one of you a Rosary and a copy of this Rosary booklet after Communion. One very good way of prepare for your first Holy Communion (and Confirmation) is to pray. One very effective form of prayer is the Rosary. Why not try to pray at least a part of the Rosary every day?
Since this is the month of the Holy Rosary, I will end with this pray to Mary quoted by Pope Benedict: “Because you are the smile of God, the reflection of the light of Christ, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit . . . because you are the morning star, the gate of heaven and the first creature to experience the resurrection, we pray to you” O Holy Mother of God.
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October 5, 2008
Posted in Homilies
at 9:00 am
Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 05, 2008
In the parable we just heard, we have a landowner who goes to great lengths to create what seems to be the perfect vineyard. And he must have had great confidence in those tenants to have left this treasured property to their care. He trusted that they would take good care of the vineyard and give him his due when the time came.
Let’s look at ourselves as tenants in one of the vineyards that God has created. We live in a land that is amazingly blessed. Canada is nation with vast natural resources. We have productive farms, industries, and services. Through hard work and, for the most part, good stewardship, Canada is a thriving country.
One way that we have a responsibility to be good stewards, good tenants, to continue to care for our country, is…to vote! Everyone is planning to vote, right? The election is only a little over a week away, and the advance polls were open Friday and yesterday, and again tomorrow, so we need to seriously examine the issues and the candidates. Now, it is certainly not my place, nor is it the position of the church, to tell you how you should vote. It is, however, important to encourage you to get as much knowledge as you can, so that you can make your voting decisions based on the facts, and with an understanding of how our beliefs as Catholics inform those decisions.
It is not enough to decide to vote for a particular candidate, or not to vote for a particular party, just because of slogans, or sound bites, or the headlines we read.
Way back in the dark, misty past – 1972 – I worked for the campaign to elect George McGovern president of the US. Some of you may remember or have heard of that election. Whether or not he was the right candidate was decided by the American people. But my reasoning in deciding to support him was quite simple. He was running against Richard Nixon, so that was enough. At that time, I only discussed politics with others who thought the same way I did. I only read columns by those who had the same viewpoint. All the cool people I hung out with supported McGovern. I thought I didn’t need any more information than that.
Of course now, having a little more experience with life, I know that we do need more. We need as much accurate information as we can find in order to properly discern what will be the best approach to address the problems we are facing as a nation, as a society. How we view solutions to those problems cannot be separated from our faith. If what we profess is truly what we believe, we will cast our vote in accordance with those beliefs. We also need to listen to opposing viewpoints in order to be sure that we are not missing something important. If you’re a conservative, read some of the pro-liberal commentators. If you’re a committed liberal supporter, try at least to understand the conservative positions. And have a look at the proposals from the NDP & Green parties, too.
We also need to realize that, even in trying to vote with Christ’s
teachings in mind, the approach to some issues is not always clear cut.
In the Federal Election 2008 Guide published by the Canadian
Conference of Catholic Bishops, it states: “The Gospel does not give a
specific program for social and political action. Nor does the Church
“set forth specific political solutions to temporal questions that God
has left to the free and responsible judgment of each person.” Each
Catholic citizen has to exercise political discernment and prudential
judgment. Within a democratic society such as Canada, a number of
legitimate political approaches is possible. Even when basic Catholic
moral principles have been clearly defined, there can still be a variety
of ways for them to be respected and advanced in political life.”
On issues such as abortion, embryonic stem cell research, gay
marriage, euthanasia, there is no wiggle room. These are issues that
never should have become political in the first place. One way we can make our views known regarding abortion is to participate in Life Chain this afternoon, which Father Tim will give you more information about later. But on other issues, we need to decide which approach will best accomplish our objective. For example, we must have concern for those who are poor, but what is really the best way to alleviate poverty? We want to bring an end to the ravages of war, and as Canadians we have a special stake in Afghanistan – which party’s policies are likely to be successful there? On the environment, sustainable development, immigration & multi-culturalism – we have various choices and opinions as to which course of action may best produce results in keeping with Gospel values.
Our politics must be about more than special interests and partisan attacks. It should be less about “what’s in it for me?” and more about
“how does this serve to promote the dignity and sacredness of others?”. All of the political parties have plans that claim to be in society’s best interests. It is only with proper discernment, looking past the hype and the conventional wisdom, that we can be confident in making a good decision.
Let’s get back to the tenants in the parable. They were only concerned with themselves, and only in the short run. What happened to them, that they went from being trusted to being rebellious? This parable had specific implications for those to whom Jesus was speaking, and we cannot read more into the story than what Jesus told us. But it is natural to try to draw some conclusions, particularly in how this might relate to us. Perhaps they had become too comfortable, and had begun to take their position in the vineyard for granted. Or, perhaps they thought that they had done all the work, and that the absentee landlord did not deserve his portion. Regardless of the reason, the landowner showed great patience with them. Note that it is not Jesus who says that the tenants will be put to death, but it is the people around Him who say that. What He does say is that the kingdom of God will be given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. As we prepare to vote, let’s all be good stewards of this vineyard of Canada, and consider what policies will best produce the fruits of the kingdom.
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