Get behind me, Satan

22^nd Sun in Ord Time   SJU Aug 30

Who is this Jeremiah, this Old Testament prophet who complains telling God how ruthlessly God is treating him? “You duped me, overwhelmed me.  And because you force me to speak the truth about your people’s corruption, I am mocked and scorned in the public square.   And it is your fault.   But it exhausts me to keep silent.”

Lots of complaints to God but he continues to answer his call.   He engages in condemning the Jewish leadership for forty years or so until they are hauled off to Babylonia.   He himself accompanies a group of Jews who flee to Egypt and there is a widespread belief that he dies at their hands some years later.

Yes, a classic complainer.  Most of us complain to God about something or other.  I am happy, for example, to know that the Son of God came in Jesus Christ to experience our human life.    But then I complain that Jesus died young and really doesn’t know about the experience of a full human life into the mature years.   And I get the answer from Jesus that fits many of us here.   “You are among those called to live a long life.  You have been chosen to fulfill what I was unable to experience.”   Yes, I hear that encouragement. But, then, I do think of one of the Jesuits ordained with me on the same day years ago.   He died suddenly just two years after our ordination, a terrible loss.   Now that blessed guy, however, has 50 years of heaven under his belt, 50 more years than I will ever have.   But I shouldn’t complain. Indeed some of us ask him for graces from time to time and I believe he helps us.

Now there are, of course, in the public media many Catholic voices these days who earn the right to really complain just like Jeremiah.    They encounter ugliness and hate speech on the social networks, even sometimes threats to their lives.   Bishop Robert Barron believes that there are people who actually work hard to discredit him by using AI to create a huge community of detractors.   Pope Francis and Jesuit Jim Martin encounter similar reactions.  As these men deliver the Word of the Lord, they can easily complain like Jeremiah that it “brings them derision and reproach all the day.”

But let’s turn now to our third reading, the gospel reading today.   I want to look at it because it features Jesus with a personal complaint directed to one of his disciples.  Jesus is so upset that he curses his follower, the disciple Peter who later becomes the one we recognize as the first Pope.   We remind ourselves about the context of this surprising curse: that is, for already a year or two Jesus has been leading the disciples as they join in preaching about the coming kingdom of God.   Apparently, like many others in the day, Peter expected this kingdom of God to be led by a triumphant Messiah whose reign would bring unparalleled strength and integrity to Israel.   Finally, however, Jesus decides to mince no words and he tells his disciples about the suffering and death that he will endure under the Temple leadership.

Peter is absolutely incredulous and, though still fresh from calling Jesus the Messiah, boldly contradicts Jesus:   “Suffering and death!  No such thing will ever happen to you.”  But Jesus turns his back to Peter and rebukes him naming Peter with the name of his own deadly enemy:  “Get behind me, Satan.  You don’t know anything about how God thinks.”   These words of Jesus, “Get behind me, Satan”, remind us of similar words he used when, much earlier before he begins his mission, he himself is in the wilderness and tempted by the devil.   There he dismisses the devil with these words: “Begone, Satan.”   His use of a strikingly similar phrase with Peter indicates that Peter’s remark is a troubling reminder to Jesus of the temptations in the wilderness.   Peter must be defiantly dismissed.

This flash of temper from Jesus seems to me to be a sign of how troublesome the future appears even to him.   Indeed, later right before the arrest of Jesus, Matthew writes about him in the Garden of Gethsemane with these words: “Anguish and distress came over him.”  Here, however, after dismissing Peter, Jesus collects himself and immediately finds the voice with which his Father blesses him.   He realizes here and now that he has not instructed the disciples very well about how the Father has planned the life of his Son and how they, too, hearing about this plan, are to act.   Yes, the two great commandments are love of God and love of neighbor.  But their practice will demand from those who follow Jesus a radical kind of love.   So immediately Jesus uses this occasion after his striking rebuke of Peter to tell his followers the whole truth, a part of which we just read.           "Those who wish to come after me must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.  For those who  wish to save their lives will lose them, but those who lose their lives for my sake will find them.” 

Matthew records here no questions or comments from the disciples even though they have just been directed to die to themselves. Really!  Surely some of them must have wondered what this meant?  Were they going to face crucifixion, too?     Some one of them must have thought about Jesus's first instruction to them, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand”.    Is this death to self the essence of repenting and accepting the Kingdom of God?

Yes, I would love to hear how the disciples talked among themselves or with Jesus. What did they think about finding life through death to self for his sake.   But absent their comments, let us all think of our own approaches:

There are, of course, quite graphic examples of people who died to themselves just as Jesus did: Jean Donovan, Maryknoll lay missionary: though easily destined for a very comfortable life, instead was brutally murdered in El Salvador in 1980, because she loved and served the poor.  

But death to self happens in a great variety of ways:  I think of a very successful and gifted older man whose days off were usually spent on the golf course.    But after his retirement his wife was severely struck by Alzheimer’s disease.   For a year or two He spent the major part of each day at her nursing home bedside, she never once able to acknowledge him as someone she knew. 

 I pray for the help of Jean Donovan and my friend, the golfer.  We are called to join them and die to ourselves every day.   Dying to our laziness, dying to our doubt and cynicism, dying to our pride, dying to our self-pity, and, along those lines of self-pity, of course, dying to public complaints about personal things big and small.   If we lose our lives for the sake of Christ, we will surely find them.

 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time     Matthew 16: 13 - 20

Matthew 16: 13-20       Matthew’s gospel account now has come to the middle chapters.   They are a turning point after Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount and after journeys with his disciples on a mission of healing and public teaching.   In these chapters the Pharisees challenge many of the things that Jesus promotes.  Among them healing on the Sabbath and less strictures about diet and about rules of cleanliness.   Then news comes that John the Baptist has been brutally killed by Herod.                

Here Jesus knows he must reveal himself more directly to the men and women who have joined him in his teaching and healing.   So he feeds the five thousand.   So walking on the water he appears to the disciples.   So he drives out demons.  And today we hear him make his own identity clear to his followers and in this action he declares also who his followers are called to be.   He does this with a general question about the Son of Man, the one mentioned in so many of the Hebrew Scriptures who will free Israel from the prison of their sins and their oppressors.   Jesus asks his followers, “Who is the Son of Man?”   And they suggest some names, not one of them fully convincing.   The answers do not reflect any strong opinions.   The great prophets are all dead and now even the Baptist is dead.  

Jesus limits the discussion by asking the follow-up most important question: who do you say that I am?  Here Peter makes a more complete statement of faith than what seems possible at this point in the story of Jesus:  “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”   Somehow the evangelist Matthew cannot wait to get the truth out on the table.                         

And also at the same time, Matthew lets us know how persons who proclaim such an identity for Jesus are now to be identified.    All those who proclaim Jesus as the Messiah become “rocks” and creators of community for those who are ignorant or confused, afraid or indifferent.  Jesus’s interrogation is a moment of revelation not only about him but also about those whose imaginations move them to proclamations about him.          

The exchange reminds me of an exercise that a teacher of adolescents suggested for them.   “Take the sentence “I am imaginary and not real.”    Repeat it and then add a description that further describes yourself.”   One lad said.   “I am imaginary and not real.   I am courageous and not afraid.”   A girl said, “I am imaginary and not real.   I sing and dance and don’t sulk.” 

Using this model Jesus might repeat what Peter says:   “I am imaginary and not real.  I am the Messiah, the Son of God and not a failed teacher.”   For Jesus the aspiration as Messiah breaks into reality.             What do I say:  “I am imaginary and not real.  I am a human being dignified in God’s creation, even a “rock” and not simply sore and stiff and tired with life.”   Let’s all take a moment and fill in a sentence to complete “I am imaginary and not real.”

                                                                      Puppies and Pigs

20^th Sun in Ord Time   Syro-Phoenician Woman

 

What did we hear in our scripture readings today?   in our first reading the Prophet Isaiah looks forward to the day when foreigners will worship with Jews in the Temple so that it becomes a house of prayer for all peoples.  

 

Then in the second reading St. Paul in his letter to the Church in Rome presents his understanding of the relationship between the new Christian communities and the Jewish communities of his own time.  He was confident that God would one day bring us together, showing mercy to all of us as sons and daughters of our divine Creator.   Such communities of Jews who accept Jesus as the Messiah exist, a few of them in our own Archdiocese, but independently of Christian congregations.

 

And then the gospel tells a story of Jesus blessing an insistent pagan woman with a miracle though he himself and his disciples, too, both hesitate to even listen to her request.  Today Let us look at that gospel story.

 

Imagine the disciples passing with Jesus through the narrow streets of a small village on the edge of Israel where Jews often mixed with people from different countries and different religions.   A pagan woman who knows about Jesus’ miraculous powers moves quickly trying to catch up with them.   She shouts out, “Jesus have pity on me.    My daughter is possessed by a demon.   Jesus, I must talk with you.  Jesus please wait.”  Jesus and the disciples know that she is a pagan and pay her no attention.  

 

But she keeps raising a ruckus and the disciples plead with Jesus to at least recognize her, even simply to send her away.  Jesus tries to send her away and declares, “I came only for the lost sheep of Israel.”  But the woman is desperate and hastily falls kneeling at Jesus feet and continues to plead her cause.  Jesus sticks to his guns with a further remark that seems so out of character, "It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs."  Meaning, of course, that his Father in heaven is giving graces to the Jews and there are none to spare even for those who are not Jews. 

 

But this woman will not be scared off or offended.    "Please, Lord,” she says, “for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters."   She throws Jesus’ line right back at him.  She expects more from him and he finally relents.  Jesus praises her faith in him and cures the daughter.   “Great is your faith; be it done for you as youdesire.”

 

In this exchange with the pagan woman, Jesus and his disciples come to understand that his Father’s power will extend beyond the Jews.   They finally listen to the pagan woman and learn how God will let some graces fall on her from the abundance with which God blesses the Jews.   Jesus has already healed some pagans in other circumstances but this incident brings out the tension between his mission to the Jews and to the world at large.   Here Jesus shows his willingness to act on his compassion for non-Jews.

 

In today’s gospel the mention here by Jesus and then the woman of “dogs” and the position of dogs in the culture of the day is something to look at.  Earlier in another context, Matthew, our gospel writer today, quotes Jesus sending out his disciples to preach and instructing them not to offer to dogs anything that is holy or throw pearls to the pigs.   We know that pigs were considered unclean to the Jews in Jesus’s time but even dogs are noted here as similar.  With  this expression Jesus is telling the disciples not to waste their time with non-Jews and Gentiles.   But he seems to place a harsh characterization on them.

 

Indeed dogs in ancient Jerusalem were not loved house pets.   They were known, rather, as unfriendly scavengers searching in the streets for something to eat.   Yes, some shepherds used dogs in the countryside to help them with herding of sheep but dogs had no place in the towns and cities of Jesus homeland.  

 

In today’s reading when Jesus refuses to heal the daughter of a pagan woman, he describes the mother and daughter as dog-like scavengers not worthy of the food from the table.   But the pagan mother out wits Jesus by describing how often a puppy eats what falls from the master’s table, slightly changing the word for dog to refer to a puppy,  Here she speaks of the rare occurrence of a puppy in the Jewish house.   Jesus knows that this scenario is unlikely in the Jewish household, nevertheless with the woman’s image of the dog as a puppy, she softens Jesus’ heart.   And he himself then yields to the deepness of faith that this woman has in his own ability to bless her daughter. 

 

When I was an adolescent, my older sister got a mixed-breed puppy as a birthday present.   And we all enjoyed her.   A year or two later she had a litter of seven puppies who, to our delight, spent their first two months in our basement.   All seven puppies found good homes with mostly word of mouth advertising.   But the experience with these puppies helped me understand how Jesus grew in compassion at the mention by the Gentile woman of puppies eating scraps.

 

And I take this opportunity to share another short conversation I had about dogs years ago after hearing the confession of a nine-year-old farm boy.   He shared with me the duties that he had in the family farm yard, the care of several dogs and cats.  His older siblings, meanwhile,  took care of the cows and pigs.    I got a bit curious and asked him if he thought that dogs went to heaven.   Without hesitation, he said, “Yes.”   And cats?  “Yes.”    And then I asked about the pigs and he said, “I don’t know.”  This lad would give something holy to the dogs but would not be ready yet to give something holy or throw pearls to the pigs.    

 

But we do long for that day that Paul promised us in the second reading, the day when Jews and Gentiles will sit together at God’s merciful table and share their good fortune with the rest of creation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Sunday, July 26, 2026    17th Sun in Ord Time

 Matthew 13:44-46

Jesus said to his disciples:
"The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field,
which a person finds and hides again,
and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. 
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant
searching for fine pearls. 
When he finds a pearl of great price,
he goes and sells all that he has and buys it."

Hidden Treasures and Priceless Pearls  Mt 13  44-46  

This is the season.   After those crowds of sunbathers and swimmers down the shore have flocked all day to the beaches of New Jersey, in the evening twilight one can see a lone individual here and there pacing up and down swinging a metal detector back and forth across the tired sand.  He is searching for a buried treasure or, so to speak, a pearl of great price.    Occasionally he stops, he stoops, he digs through the sand to find the metal that set off a signal.    Jesus's parable vividly describes this person coming upon a treasure hidden in the ground.  

 

First some general words about Jesus’s teaching and then some reflections on the two simple parables in today’s gospel.

Jesus attempts to teach us the truth of the kingdom of God through a series of miracles and stories.   For some who witness his miracles, the miracles are a source of faith in God’s hand powerfully present in Jesus’s words and works.   Even if we have trouble believing the miracles, say, of healing , we should remember that Jesus undertakes them, yes, with love for those healed but to illustrate his  preaching and teaching.   They are not simply magic unconnected to Jesus message and his love for all people.

As for the stories that Jesus loves to tell in his preaching, they include the simple parables that we read today about the kingdom of God as well as more complicated stories that might have two or three scenes such as the parable of the prodigal son, his father and his brother.     These parables shed light on some characteristic of God’s care of us.   So in the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus is illustrating for the pharisaical among us that his Father in heaven not only forgives the repentant sinner but strives to welcome and embrace the sinner.    Both the full story parable of the prodigal and the two very simple comparison parables in today’s reading underline for those listening the characteristics of God where God might be experienced as elusive or hidden.

Today we hear that the kingdom of God is like a treasure buried in a field or a pearl of great price…   Jesus paints pictures of astonished  seekers who have suddenly found some great value within their reach.

"The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field,
which a person finds and hides again,
and out of joy goes and sells all they have and buys that field. 

Some individual happens to dig up a treasure in what can be thought of as a farm field.   Then he reburies it so that he can convince the owner of the field into selling the field cheaply.    Jesus often spices up his parables with actors of unsavory behavior not to approve of this behavior but to fully engage listeners with the emotions of surprise, of desire and of anxiety.    These are the emotions that Jesus brings out in his New Testament listeners.   His listeners are surprised that he, someone coming from a small country town and not Jerusalem, is announcing God’s Kingdom; he leads these listeners to desire to be part of this saving kingdom; these listeners are anxious to find a way into membership

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant
searching for fine pearls. 
When he finds a pearl of great price,
he goes and sells all that he has and buys it."

The merchant who finds the pearl of great price might need to keep to himself the value of the pearl in order to prevent others from bidding up the price but, unlike the hidden treasure, in this situation the seller knows or should know something about its value, too.   Here again the desire and the anxiety of a possible loss of the pearl drives the merchant into an intense strategy so that he can become its owner.

The intense desire to give up all that one has in order to have the means to purchase the field or the pearl highlights our longing for the values found in the kingdom of God, divine values that we may have been neglecting in our general seeking but values that surprise us: human dignity, human life supported by the sharing of God’s gifts, compassion for ourselves and others in times of suffering.  Dignity, shared gifts, compassion.   Such characteristics of life are priceless.   

These gifts, of course, are by their nature gifts to be shared with others.  Though, I did read one commentator that considers these parables as illustrating God’s union with the heart of the individual as more the key to understanding them.   And here Jesus does not discuss any sharing of these treasures with the community.

But surely we express our gratitude for human dignity when genuine relationships are shared with others, when our practical needs are shared with one another and when we support each other in times of trouble.   All these are the signs of some otherwise hidden treasure.   Most of us would miss these signs dearly if they were absent even for a day. 

Fortunately in this time of war, and government measures of arrest and deportation of immigrants, and gaping disregard for truth, there are treasures everywhere but we need to look in the right place.  

For example, I was invited two weeks ago to accompany two young immigrants from Colombia, a married couple, as they waited for their appointments on the sidewalk outside the Philadelphia ICE office.  Each has applied for Asylum because their lives were threatened in their former home.    Their work with young people in their native city interfered with the recruiting of gang members.   Thus their need to flee to the United States.  Fortunately after the ICE office hearings each one returned to the sidewalk free for another year.  May this coming year provide them a road to citizenship.   Each day now their restaurant employers welcome them but surely  someday their new community can put their talents to full use.   Why do we make them hide their gifts?

 

Or visit the St. Raphaela’s retreat house in Haverford and meet a young man who earlier completed the Ignatian retreat in everyday life while he dedicaated much of his time to landscaping the retreat house property.    Now happily married with a master’s degree in human development, he will be creating advocates for God’s creation by leading ecology retreats on the same grounds he landscapes.

 

Or be present two months ago at this year’s ceremony celebrating about forty graduates of St. Joseph’s University whose first year out of college will be a volunteer year in one of many different service programs, all involving service of community needs and most involving community living and spiritual enrichment.

 

And, of course, I note the twenty men in the United States who will be pronouncing their first vows as Jesuits this August.

 

You all have men and women like this in your memories.  Wave your metal detector over them who are among our treasures, our pearls of great price.   Hear a loud bleep.   God chooses them to tell us about the kingdom.

 

 

 

LOUIS PAUZANO   JULY 7, 2026

Readings:   Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8

                   Romans 14: 7=9, 10-12

                   John 14: 1-6

 

We pray now for consolations for Lou’s wonderful family, RoseAnne, Lauren. Lou, Jr. and Christopher and the grandchildren.   The family took a look at the scripture readings for funerals suggested by the Church and they have chosen two illuminating readings for dad’s funeral liturgy and I have added the gospel.   In the light of these readings we all mourn with them and put our arms around them in sharing their sorrow.  

First the words of Ecclesiastes.   The ancient wisdom reading from Ecclesiastes proclaims that God makes every moment beautiful within God’s own time. 

There is an appointed time for everything,

and a time for every affair under the heavens.

A time to give birth, and a time to die;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

 

Yesterday I opened my copy of the St. Joseph’s Prep yearbook of 67 years ago and there is a picture of Lou’s smiling open face.   And I notice that his parents are listed as patrons of that Yearbook.  So there was a time for Lou to be a son of his parents.  And we give thanks for that.    A time for him to further his education at St. Joseph’s University with both a bachelor’s and a Master’s degrees preparing him for service in the banking community of Philadelphia retiring finally as a Vice President.   There were times for him to constantly support both alma maters even with gifts sent in the last years of his life.  He never forgot his education.  And especially at the Prep he led the alumni association for some years.   His phone calls and signature reminders helped support scholarships at the Prep now lasting into the future.   And he always kept his ’59 classmates at the center of these relationships.

 

But more personally: a time to marry, a time to give of himself as husband to RoseAnne, a time of fatherhood and grandfatherhood.   A time to laugh and to dance.  All the while a time as banker and planner to support and encourage others, even to support the successful, shall we say family enterprise, important to so many families, First Impressions Daycare.   Later Lou had a time to seek life-saving medical care.   A time to depend on the love of Roseanne and that of the three stars in their lives, his children who helped him keep up with activities of all kinds.  So it was a time to engage with his Prep classmates especially at class reunions. 

 

And for many decades it was always a time to welcome family and friends to that sanctuary of welcome on Cleveland St.   I myself was a half-dozen times welcome there in recent years.   Lou, not so mobile, but always with time to engage and encourage and RoseAnne always feeding me as she did anyone who came into their sacred place.

 

But now, now, a time of sorrow for Lou’s family and all of us here.    But also now: all in God’s time we can put the pieces of Lou’s life together into a beautiful mosaic of commitment and love.

 

The Letter to Romans which we also read this morning affirms the faith that sustained Lou and Roseanne and their family for all these years.

 

“For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”

Paul in Romans states this belief: living and dying we belong to Jesus Christ.   This might not be so easy to see in the lives of some people.   But for Lou it is self-evident.  Lou’s life is proof of a personal source of Creation who orients our hearts and souls to love and to service.   And in that Spirit Lou lives now with Jesus the Lord of the risen life.   Lou and his family in both life and death belong to the Lord.

Let me take one moment to remember Lou’s Prep class of 1959.    In the last four or five years at least twenty of Lou’s Prep classmates have taken up residence with the risen Lord and I see them welcoming Lou and preparing a place for all of us.   This welcoming event is for us an image of joy.

And in that spirt some brief words about the gospel: the words from the gospel of John remind me of how Lou lived his own life in the same way that Jesus lived his life.   Jesus taught us about the love of God whom he called Father.   And Lou, as well, in his lived experience taught us about the love of God.

In this gospel Jesus is saying goodbye to the men and women who had been following him; he tells them that in the kingdom of God there are many dwelling places and, when he goes there, he will prepare a place for them.   I think that Lou is now at work with Jesus doing just that.  That is, he is doing what he did so ably while among us.  He now is preparing places for us, heavenly places like those that cared here for his children and so many other children, heavenly places for the young to learn what they might have missed on earth, heavenly places to gather families just like the sacred place on Cleveland Street and places, too, for the different communities of heaven.   For Lou heaven is a joyful time for him with Jesus to prepare our future homes.  I see him there and I thank God for sending him among us here.

 

13^th Sun in Ord Time  SJU June 28, 2026

Gospel  Matthew 10:37-42

Jesus said to his apostles:
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." "Whoever receives you receives me,
and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet
will receive a prophet’s reward,
and whoever receives a righteous man
because he is a righteous man
will receive a righteous man’s reward.
And whoever gives only a cup of cold water
to one of these little ones to drink
because the little one is a disciple—
amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.”

 

13^th of the Year   SJU 11 AM  June 28, 2026

Suddenly it is the middle of summer, a favorite time for many of us because of the long hours of light and the lively colors of the season:  the flowers and the blue skies.   As I speak families are setting up their Sunday barbecues just a mile or two away in West Fairmount Park.   The John B. Kelly Pool there will open at Noon.   We will try to finish on time.  But putting God first as we are encouraged to do in today’s gospel, we bring ourselves into the Chapel here with its own beautiful windows and we give thanks for the leisure of the season.  Some of us might welcome silence right now.   So yes, I will be brief to allow for that.

Our three readings are intriguing.   I comment on the first reading about the prophet Elisha and also the gospel.    Jesus in the gospel reminds us that before anything else in our lives God comes first.   Indeed, before any person, God comes first, first even for parents who adore their beautiful children.   Parents must love God first.   It is God who presents children as gifts for parents to love and nourish.   Parents are called by God to this love of their children.   In general, of course, all of us, parents or not, are to lose and then rediscover life in the love and service of others.

The gospel goes on:  A sentence or two later Jesus talks about welcoming prophets.   Whoever receives a prophet because the person is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.   This phrase about reward for those who welcome prophets occurs, as I indicated, in today’s gospel.  But let us go to the first reading from the Second Book of Kings where “reward” is what happens after the Old Testament prophet Elisha is welcome by a woman and her husband.  This story about Elisha and his hostess comes to us from nearly three thousand years ago.  

 A woman suggests to her husband that they provide hospitality for the prophet Elisha.   And so they do.    Elisha discovers that the woman and her husband are childless, this in a culture where a woman unable to have children is considered a humiliating failure and even someone punished in this way by God.   Elisha therefore plans a reward for her.   The prophet summons the woman and says to her:  “This time next year, you will be fondling a baby son.”  Yes, the point Jesus made in the gospel is clear here:  Whoever receives a prophet because the person is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.

Jesus also claims that simple gestures extended even to the least important disciple are also worthy of reward.  The gesture need not be room and board for a famous prophet.   Even the person who sees a thirsty disciple (repeat a thirsty disciple) and rushes in with a drink of cold water for that disciple, no matter how unimportant he or she is, will surely not go without a reward.

First of all, Jesus tells us, the thirsty person must be recognized as a disciple.   On occasion, to give an evident example, I see two women from the local Protestant church standing on the sidewalk on 54^th St. across from the Hagan Arena.    They have a large sign proclaiming how Jesus comes to save us.  They are eager to engage those passing by in conversation and to hand out flyers with invitations to their church.   Yes, I could offer them a drink but Jesus is not discussing such an offer as a part of a simple transaction, that is, not every drink offered automatically means we earn something from God.   No, offering a drink must be part of an act of love and support for the disciple.    Yes, give those two women glasses of water and also exchange praise and thanks to God while doing this.   Such a gesture benefiting thirsty sidewalk preachers is praiseworthy in God’s sight.  

But let’s be clear a disciple is any human being offering love or service to any other human being.  The simple encouragement of such a person is like a glass of cold water feeding the person’s desire to assist others, important as a glass of cold water offered to a thirsty Pope.

Yes, a thirsty Pope.  And Pope Leo is surely thirsty.    Let me conclude with his timely request.    Day after day he is thirsting for peace.  Two days ago on Friday once again the Pope repeated his condemnation of war.  This time during an address to the Cardinals of the Catholic Church gathered in Rome.   I quote:  “War is never worthy of humanity, and it is never blessed by God, because, even if we are equipped with high-tech weapons, the Creator has endowed us with intelligence and free will to resolve conflicts as human beings and not as beasts. That the unity of the human family takes precedence over individual peoples and states is not merely a biological fact; it is an ethical principle. Peace is a duty of justice because we are one human family, a ‘magnifica humanitas’ that finds its head and redeemer in Christ.” 

I know that Jesus is enjoying the peace and blessings of heavenly joy in the life of the resurrection.    Theologians think of Jesus as first offering sympathy to those of us who are still suffering on this earth and also as sending us the Spirit to strengthen us.    But I sometimes imagine Jesus looking at Magnifica Humanitas in deep sorrow when he sees the children who are starving and the families who are losing loved ones in war.    Theologians tell me, however, that in heaven there is no sorrow or suffering.   So I have to imagine that Jesus already suffered all things for us while on earth.  

As the Pope indicates the Spirit is sent to inspire us to use our intelligence and free will to bring peace to this earth.   Our glasses of cold water, our simple gestures, are part of the package.

Even a glass of water, and even any gesture of encouragement, offered to anyone seeking to do God’s will not go without reward.

 

 

Corpus Christi   June 7, 2026    SJU 11:00 AM

 

     This feast of Corpus Christi always has a special place in my heart because it is the anniversary of my First Mass some 54 years ago.   The Feast, the Mass, and my ordination the day before all came together to make a coherent celebration.

 

     And over all these past years the Body of Christ in the Eucharist accompanied me in thousands of places.

 

E. g. I concelebrated at a  Corpus Christi Feast Day Mass in a small town in Mexico.  Firecrackers were going off actually inside the church.   This was, I am told, accidental but the noise and the burst of color added to the explosion of praise and song led by the mariachi band.

 

And as grace would have it, my one opportunity to visit the great Gothic Cathedral of Chartres in France occurred on the Feast of Corpus Christi.   I surprised myself arriving at the doors of this Cathedral dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God at exactly the hour when the Sunday Mass of Corpus Christi was beginning. 

 

     And those of us present 50 years ago at the 1976 Eucharistic Congress here in Philadelphia remember it for several reasons.    Our Jesuit Father Ed Brady, so active in justice issues here at SJU, was conscious of the broad meaning of the Eucharist.   He helped Cardinal Krol and the local church organize a shipment of grain and emergency food sent that summer to a drought stricken part of the world.  That Congress, too, was memorable because three saints, each short of stature but tall on holiness and hope appeared together on the same stage in Philadelphia: Dom Helder Camara from a poor area of Brazil, Jesuit Father Pedro Arrupe who founded Jesuit Refugee Services and  Mother Teresa who founded services for the dying poor in several continents.  All three witnesses of terrible human suffering; all three proclaiming a message of hope and God’s love.

 

     And still just yesterday in our City a prayerful Corpus Christi procession with great devotion took part in South Philadelphia through the streets between two of the Latino parishes (Annunciation and St. Thomas Aquinas) and ending at the Shrine of St Rita of Cascia on South Broad St.   I was blessed to join a part of the walk in which the monstrance displaying the Body of Christ was carried led by a dozen young altar servers with flower petals, incense and the Cross.   Teenage girls scattered the flower petals along Tasker St. to beautify the Lord’s path.  We called upon Jesus and his Mother in song and prayer to protect our Latino families from deportation and ended with Mass at St. Rita’s.   Among the hundreds in the procession were many young people, many Latino families, parents with their children of all ages.   The event was organized by a prophetic local group called Faithful Philadelphia which has been proclaiming the need for just paths to citizenship for our neighbors.   

    

     To summarize these events that I describe: Catholics who have an experience of their community as the Body and Blood of Christ find support in their lives from both the word of God and the sacrament of Holy Communion.   The sacrament invites us into a culture of solidarity far different from a contrasting national Christian culture which sometimes acts as a cover for white supremacy.   To be fed by the Body of Christ is to take part in the willingness of the community to contribute to the common good.   We are one body in the one Lord living together and guided by Catholic Social Teaching.   Its most important principle: the dignity of every single human being created in God’s image.   Just this morning P:ope Leo while celebrating Mass for over a million people in Madrid expanded this message preaching that God identified with the poor, the downtrodden and those who are alone and forsaken.

 

     I mentioned in the opening remark that my own First Mass took place years ago on the Feast of Corpus Christi, a Sunday like today.   At any First Mass Families like my own go out of their way to provide extra music and flowers and very often a reception afterwards.  Such celebrations actually introduce a tension between their optimistic richness and the basic original Eucharistic event at Jesus’s Last Passover Supper when he foretells the tragedy to come.

 

Let me complete my homily by a short presentation about this tension.

 

               Scripture commentators in their discussion of the Last Supper as reported in the gospel of Mark, remind us that yes, Jesus’ shares his body and blood in the bread and wine at that table meal.    But this sharing is sandwiched within words of Jesus that on one side predict the betrayal of Judas who helps the Temple authorities arrest him.   And on the other Jesus tells of his imminent abandonment by the disciples.  Further the last words of Jesus at this Supper are these: “I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I will drink it new in the kingdom of God.”   The commentators write that Jesus’ vow of fasting is a prophetic symbol of his coming death.  In fact one commentator goes so far as to say this: “At the Last Supper Jesus neither ate of the Passover lamb nor drank of the wine; probably he fasted completely.

 

     Jesus’ Last Supper was not a happy event.  There is a foreboding starkness.   I quote in summary: “Mark’s somewhat sober account stresses above all the sacrificial death of Jesus ‘for many’… We recall not only a meal, but the final meal of one who was to be executed as a criminal for our sake.”   

 

But thanks to the return of the risen Jesus to his disciples the report of the last supper in the gospel of Mark can generate hopeful feelings of a redemptive solidarity.   The risen Jesus sends the Spirit who helps us understand the importance of finding solidarity in the sharing of the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist.   The celebration of the Mass and the sharing of the Eucharist becomes the way in which the Catholic Church takes part in his complete saving action, his life, death and resurrection.   Indeed this celebration gives us the courage to be for and with others in their sorrows as well as their joys.

 

Finally, I imagine, in solidarity with the suffering of this world, Jesus is still fasting from the fruit of the vine.   He will so fast until that time when together with him we bring about the victory of the common good.    Then with us he will drink the fruit of the vine new in the kingdom of God.

 

We thank Jesus for inviting us to the celebration of Mass…. as always an encouraging preview of the Kingdom of God.   And we commit ourselves to joining in his mission so he may drink from the fruit of the vine once again.