Carmelite homily for Thursday (Week 14), July 9, 2020 – Lectionary 386 (Matthew 10:7-15)
In today’s Gospel Jesus sends out the Twelve Apostles to begin to preach in his name. He gives them four instructions. He says:
proclaim that the Gospel is at hand,
cure the sick,
raise the dead,
drive out demons.
But then he gives them a ton of instructions – a lot more – on what they’re supposed to take or not take. Don’t take sandals, don’t take a second tunic, don’t take a backpack, don’t take gold, don’t take silver, don’t take any money, don’t take a walking stick. It just seems like a lot more instructions of what not to do than what to do. Why? I think John of the Cross may have the answer here. John of the Cross writes, “The soul must empty itself of all that is not God in order to go to God.” I think that’s what Jesus is trying to get at here. All this stuff – the walking staff and the money and all that – is about insecurity and security and about power and status and everything. Let that go. Let the stuff go. And just proclaim love. That’s the invitation; that’s the gift; that’s the real instruction to the Twelve.
Carmelite homily for Wednesday (Week 14), July 8, 2020 – Lectionary 385 (Matthew 10:1-7)
everyone here is ‘people’ – you know, with politics going on, and turf going on, and judgmental and maybe gossiping going on. It can get sometimes pretty negative and they’re surprised. In today’s Gospel we have Jesus calling the Twelve. And when you look at these Twelve, you have
Peter – Peter, remembered, doubted when Jesus told him to walk on water and he sank; and then he denied him three times when Jesus was arrested.
Andrew – Peter complains about Andrew, ‘when my brother wrongs me how many times do I have to forgive him?’
James and John – who send their mother because they’re ambitious to get the premier spots on Jesus’ left and Jesus’ right.
Thomas – who doubted.
Matthew – who is a Roman collaborator because he is a tax collector.
Simon the Cananite, who is a Zealot and Zealots took a vow to kill Roman sympathizers. How are Matthew and he going to get along?
It’s a hodgepodge of problems. That’s what people are, but that’s where salvation is. I think that’s the gift and the warning and the instruction of today’s Gospel. Yes, we’re all working towards sanctity, but we start off as people.
Carmelite homily for Tuesday (Week 14), July 7, 2020 – Lectionary 384 (Matthew 9:32-38)
In today’s Gospel we have Jesus very busy. He’s going to, it says, all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming that the kingdom of God is at hand. And he sees the crowds. He says that they’re like sheep without a shepherd. Let us pray for shepherds for these people. Saint John of the Cross, in the famous opening of his poem, One Dark Night, writes, “One dark night, fired by love’s urgent longings – ah, the sheer grace – I went out unseen; my house being now all stilled.” Oftentimes we think that is us – me, you – going to search for the Lord, but in today’s Gospel it’s the Lord going out searching to all the towns and villages for us. It works both ways. As we search for God, God searches for us.
Carmelite homily for Monday (Week 14), July 6, 2020 – Lectionary 383 (Matthew 9:18-26)
There’s a quotation from Saint Teresa of Avila that I’ve relied on when the going gets rough. She writes, “When you ask for something difficult you pay God a compliment.” I think that’s what describes what’s going on in today’s Gospel. There’s a lot going on. This man comes to say that his daughter has died, ‘Jesus, can you lay your hands on her and she will live?’ That’s a difficult one. And a woman with twelve years with a hemorrhage asks for healing. That’s a difficult one. Everything in today’s Gospel is difficult. And Jesus does them, showing that with God’s help and God’s grace these things can be done. Now what about the opposite though? I’ll extend Saint Teresa’s thought a little bit. What if God asks you or asks me for something difficult? Do we think ‘this is a burden’ or ‘this is a tragedy’ or ‘this is awful’ or can we say ‘thank you, God, for paying me that compliment’?
Carmelite homily for Friday, July 3, 2020, the Feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle – Lectionary 593 (John 20:24-29)
On the day that Saint Therese of Lisieux professed her vows in Carmel, she had written a prayer and put it in her pocket. And part of the prayer says, “Jesus, I ask you for nothing but peace, and love, infinite love; love which is no longer ‘I’ but ‘You.” This is my interpretation of this Feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle. Because we have Thomas who returns to the Upper Room after Jesus has left and he says, ‘I will not believe; I need to put my hands in the nail marks; I need to put my hand in his side.’ It’s all I, I, I. So the next time Jesus appears and Thomas does that he says, ‘My Lord and my God.’ What happened to all the I? I think that’s what Jesus does – he pulls us out of the I, the me, the selfishness – to the you, which is neighbor, which is God, which is those in need, the poor. That’s the call, the invitation, of today’s Gospel and this Feast: to not live in the I but in the you.
Carmelite homily for Thursday (Week 13), July 2, 2020 – Lectionary 380 (Matthew 9:1-8)
Saint Mary Magdalene d’Pazzi was an Italian Carmelite, a contemporary of Saint Teresa of Avila, and she writes, “Trials are nothing else but the forge that purifies the soul of all its imperfections.” I think that’s what we see in today’s Gospel, or at least my interpretation of it, when they bring the paralytic on a mat and Jesus says, ‘your sins are forgiven.’ What is forgiveness but cleansing, purifying? That’s the language we use. That whatever has put him on that mat, whatever paralyzed him, or paralyzes us, can be forgiven, cleansed, purged. But it’s those trials that bring us to great depth, bring us to a deeper heart, a purified heart, a rich heart. So let’s turn everything to Jesus and watch what happens.
a commentary by Gregory Houck, O.Carm. – Friday, June 5, 2020
We are living in racially-charged times and race has become a ‘front burner’ issue with protests and even rioting throughout the United States in response to the killing of an African-American, George Floyd, by a policeman in Minneapolis; this on the heels of other recent racially-charged events in New York, Georgia and Kentucky. What is the Carmelite response?
First, some history. Spain of the 1500s, after driving out the Moors (Muslims) and the Jews from the land, put in Purity of Blood laws throughout the Spanish empire. Not only did a person had to be a natural-born white European to
become a priest,
become a nun,
be a member of the aristocracy,
teach in a university,
to hold any government position,
but that person had to also show that his/her parents and grandparents also had ‘pure blood.’ This prevented anyone of Jewish, Muslim, or native American ancestry from having any kind of employment, any kind of power or even a family anywhere in Spanish lands.
Yes, those were racially-charged times. In the middle of that Saint Teresa of Avila founded her first reformed Carmelite convent in 1568. She told the sisters that they would not follow the Purity of Blood laws when admitting new members to the Order. Some of those sisters, and much of Spain, were not happy with Teresa. Some accused her of being a lawbreaker or a free-thinker; and some plotted to have her arrested and locked up. She did not flinch – even when the Spanish Inquisition began looking into her policies. This is the Carmelite response – to support any oppressed minority and work against oppression but also to empower and include them fully.
This inclusive policy did not begin with Saint Teresa though. On Mount Carmel in the 1200s the first Carmelites were formed from a mishmash of nationalities and cultures and, yes, races; pushed together onto Mount Carmel by war. In those racially-charged times, those first Carmelites worked through all those issues and all those differences forming one Order and made it work. From its founding and throughout an 800-year history, this is the Carmelite way. Today, we too can work through this and make it work!
Creation and the Cross: the Mercy of God for a Planet in Peril by Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ | Orbis Press, 2018 | pp 256
Many people consider Sister Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ, the foremost theologian, let alone Catholic theologian, in the world today. Her newest book is entitled Creation and the Cross: the Mercy of God for a Planet in Peril (Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY 2018). This book is delightfully written as a dialogue between Elizabeth and Clara (i.e., clarity) where Clara serves as a type of ‘Greek Chorus’ bringing in popular thought, or history, or rephrasing what Elizabeth just said. This is modeled on the same type of dialogue in his book, Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man), by Anselm of Canterbury (born 1033, died 1109). Not only is this book modeled on Anselm’s book, Creation and the Cross refutes it and tries to replace it with an understanding of Redemption that makes sense today.
Johnson begins her book with Anselm’s ‘Satisfaction Theory’ as an explanation for the Incarnation of Jesus Christ; namely, that God’s honor needed to be satisfied after the dishonor of the sin of Adam and Eve and all humanity. God has infinite honor and therefore requires infinite satisfaction to make it right. Jesus, being human, can offer the satisfaction and Jesus, being divine, makes that satisfaction infinite. Although this ‘Satisfaction Theory’ made sense in Anselm’s era, Elizabeth finds this just too medieval and too feudal, as well as not scriptural. The scriptures tell us that God has never requires satisfaction; rather, God restores, renews, comforts, and forgives throughout the scriptures. Johnson then looks at what other possible meanings are there for Jesus’ death (the Cross) besides satisfaction.
Beginning with scripture she sees a myriad of theologies of the Cross:
salvation means to ‘salve’ or to heal – a medical metaphor,
conquering sin and death – a military metaphor,
reconciliation – ala where only the Prodigal Son, not the Father, needs it,
redemption – a restorative metaphor (cloak returned, property returned),
justification – a judicial metaphor when a judge declares you ‘not guilty,’
sacrifice – a ceremony that restores ‘right relationship’ with God,
adoption – a family metaphor for how we move from slave to son/daughter,
rebirth – a family metaphor to how we move into the Divine family,
nurturing – a family metaphor, how a mother (or father) nutures a child,
new creation – a metaphor contrasting Old Adam and New Adam,
servant – how the Servant Songs of 2nd Isaiah are metaphors for Jesus.
In all these, Johnson warns us to never literalize any metaphor, and that no one metaphor of these scriptural theologies of the Cross has been ‘declared’ as the official theology of the Cross by the Church. She notes that none of these scriptural meanings are ‘satisfactional;’ rather, they are all God-initiated and God-completed.
Johnson then asks if these are necessarily to humans only. She quotes John Muir, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” Johnson agrees and she uses the term ‘Deep Incarnation’ to indicate that since everything is connected, Incarnation must be for everything. She then notes that the Cross and Resurrection are intrinsically tied; in fact, unified, to tell us that the Resurrection is for all creation and not just humanity. She notes that this idea is common in the Orthodox Churches’ understanding of Resurrection.
I would say that Chapter Six, “Conversion of Mind and Heart: Us,” is the lynchpin of Johnson’s book. She has effectively argued for a horizonal (not pyramidal) understanding of all creation including humanity’s place in creation. So through a series of five ‘thought experiments’ she tries to bring the reader to a “conversion of mind and heart” in our interaction with creation, especially regarding life on this planet. She notes that “dominion” does not mean domination. In the passage, “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth” (Genesis 1:26). God is giving them stewardship. She adds that a Lord (dominus, domina) was a steward in the king’s service. Johnson concludes, “An important step will be taken if Christians see that the grace of the crucified and risen Christ washes over all creation, to practical and critical effect.”
Although I have not read everything that Elizabeth Johnson has written (yes, there is a lot), but in this book and in her recent articles we see her thought move squarely into the center of a creation-centered and stewardship-centered theology. The contribution that an ecological ‘Theology of the Cross,’ seen so clearly in Creation and the Cross: the Mercy of God for a Planet in Peril, is a valuable and much-needed contribution to theology, to the Church, and to the world.
Carmelite homily for Tuesday (Easter VI), May 19, 2020 – Lectionary 292 (John 16:5-11)
What I like about the Carmelite saints is that they see things a little bit differently, a little more deeply. For example, this is what Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity writes, “If you do not practice sweet silence, it will be impossible for you to taste the things of God.” I think it’s in silence that the brain, the mind can say is this indeed so? Is this indeed correct? Is this indeed God? Is this indeed holy? That’s what, I think, Jesus is inviting us to in today’s Gospel where he’s talking about sin, righteousness, and condemnation, and saying, ‘it’s different than you think.’ I think practice sweet silence; think these things out. I think the Gospels are always saying, ‘think differently, think deeply.’ That’s the invitation of today’s Gospel.
