25^th Sun Ord Time SJU 2026  (Golden Hawks Mass  9/20)

 

In general I celebrate a public Mass every Sunday, sometimes with young audiences, sometimes with families, sometimes in religious communities.   Despite the culture or age group, I never change the readings that the Church has assigned for that particular Sunday.    I preach about them, even those not suited for a given congregation.  We play it as it lies.      But today the readings assigned for the Sunday Mass are quite fitting for a group of us who are experiencing the mature years.   In fact it is hard to imagine more fitting readings for the Golden Hawks, and for us other golden agers.   

These selections from Scripture address some of my complaints over the years.   As I grew older, for example, I started to complain to Jesus Christ himself.   Yes, God in him experienced human life and terrible sufferings, too.   But God in Jesus Christ does not know what a mature human life is like; God in Jesus Christ does not know what growing old is like.   Sometimes I complain about this but some of God’s general responses are in the readings today.

In the first reading from the Book of Isaiah, for example, I quote: My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.  (repeat)  God has clear words here for us Golden Agers:  The Father of Jesus says, “Jesus could not do everything in human experience.   For you Golden Agers I have chosen a longer life so that you can help me understand what a longer life is like.”   Yes, many of us in the chapel today are helping God understand mature human life, filling up what was missing in Jesus’ life.

And in the second reading the apostle Paul in his own mature years, addresses his friends in the community in Philippi with these words: that I (Paul) remain in the flesh rather than die in Christ is more necessary for your benefit. (repeat) We can imitate Paul and address our families and friends this same way.   We seniors remain in the flesh for their benefit.  Christ choses us to grow old for the benefit of others.

And finally our gospel reading: here Jesus tells the surprising story of the generous landowner who on a certain day pays each of his day workers the same standard daily wage.   It matters not whether they started work early in the day expecting the standard daily wage or came late and only worked for an hour or so.  When those who worked all day saw the standard daily wage given to those joining in the work only in the last hour, they complained.  Who would not?    So Jesus ends the story with the question that the landowner asks the complainers who worked all day:  ‘Are you envious because I am generous?'  (repeat)   Yes, not only are they envious, they are angry at being treated like fools for getting up early.

We Jesuits still surviving from my large first novitiate class in the Jesuits, are only a small number, now surviving 67 years.  The first of these Jesuit colleagues to die was a young priest teaching at St. Joseph’s Prep in 1974, Bill Moody.   A tragic loss.   Now I think of him as having at least an extra 52 years of heaven that I will never have.   Not that it makes much difference in the timeless kingdom of heaven.   But sometimes I am envious and sometimes can get more so as more of my friends reach heaven.          God, however, is generous either way.   All divine gifts: some present Bill with 52 years of heavenly life and some present me with 52 years of human life.    And I have a sense that Bill is among the first to pray for me and our Jesuit mission here in Philadelphia.  Let us remember God’s words in our first reading: My ways are not your ways.

So the message is clear for all of us: God has a plan for us that might change the way we plan for ourselves.    God always for us has in mind lives that have the potential for love and care of others.  And finally whatever our measure of evaluating the gifts that we have received, each of us is the product of God’s specific generosity for us.          

This gospel of God’s generosity reminds me of the final scenes of the Evelyn Waugh novel, “Brideshead Revisited”, memorable also as a movie.   In those scenes the patriarch of a wealthy English Catholic family accepts the sacraments on his death bed after a faithless life of lax living.   When asked by a priest at his bedside if he wants to receive the sacraments, the barely conscious man struggles and dramatically makes the sign of the cross.  His unexpected pious death rekindles faith in his daughter and the novel ends with a visitor to the mansion finding a prayerful peace while praying quietly in the mansion’s Catholic chapel.

This story comes into my mind because I knew a nun who also read the novel but she was scandalized that any author should think that God would welcome this sinful man into heaven.   I rephrased for her the sentence from today’s gospel:   “Are you jealous because God was generous to this man who had not born the heat of the day?”

Whatever our personal circumstances, it is clear that after 175 years our University will continue to bear the heat of the day staying alert to the different needs of our community.  Of most importance to us as a Catholic University has been the development of Catholic Social Teaching since the publication of the encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891.   This teaching has encouraged our contributions to the common good.    Grandly now, of course, SJU provides a professional education for women and for minorities and the underserved.   And in smaller matters:  In 1851 who would have thought that a group of students preparing for medical careers would often walk the streets of Kensington to treat the skin wounds of the addicted?   Who would have thought that students considering teaching careers with the neurodivergent would have face to face opportunities to learn directly in service with autistic children?    Who would have thought that student-led groups would take the opportunity to pray on the streets of Philadelphia at an abortion clinic or an immigration office?   And in the sphere or worship: Who would have thought that what was rare in 1851, that is, receiving communion at Mass, is now normal each day for students in the University chapel?  

And more generally: Who would have predicted that St. Joseph’s would have an Institute studying business ethics now in an age when the practice of justice is an essential addition to our faith?    Or an Institute dedicated to a dialogue of Jewish and Catholic scholars in the spirit of a 1965 Vatican document, a document that would have provoked a general backlash among the Jesuits of 1851?  And while it is likely that many of the students in those first University classes served in the military during the Civil War, still who would have predicted our own Air Force ROTC program preparing students for leadership in the Air Force.   And this while also the University offers plenty of support for the education of Veterans.   Yes, our University continues to bear the heat of the day, pharmacy, many health care programs, leadership programs especially for women, the list goes on.

Just as St. Paul spoke about himself, we can speak of our University: That St. Joseph’s University remains in the flesh rather than dies in Christ is more necessary for the common good.   Always!  Forward!  Ad multos annos!

 

 

 

   23rd Sunday  Old St. Joseph's   Sept 6, 2026   

 When Jesus gathers his followers around him, very often his discussions with them are about real every-day situations.   Healing on the Sabbath, duties as sons and daughters toward parents, diet restrictions, the stance toward women caught in adultery.   And here in today’s gospel Jesus gives us some very wise directions about how to deal with very common and often quite disturbing experiences, the divisions and dissensions that so frequently upset our family life, our work life or our community lives.

Jesus theme today and every day: Reconciliation, bringing persons back together again.   Indeed, reconciling us with his Father in heaven.

The sort of dissension in the example that Jesus uses occurs because one person hurts another with words or actions.   Often, yes, an innocent person is mistreated by another.   Sometimes, however, it takes two to tango.   I remember an incident in my own life when I was teaching in high school.   I was arranging with another teacher a program for a small group of students.  One of them misbehaved in some minor way and my fellow teacher decided that this student did not belong in this program and put him out.   I disagreed with his decision and started yelling at him judging his authority to dismiss the kid.   Jesus asks us to be more judicious.  Yelling was not the best start to reconciliation.    Two offenders here.  

For an offender we are to follow a careful path in seeking reconciliation. Jesus describes three successive strategies to address someone who has offended us.    First, yes, we ask the person to listen to us one-on-one.   Our words must be chosen judiciously and yelling  practically guarantees the need to go to Jesus’ second step.   If one-on-one fails, then Jesus tells us that the discussion between the parties demands some third party to help clarify all the facts of the disagreement.    In my case with my co-teacher this process with a third party brought about an acceptable reconciliation.   We were able to work together even though more time was needed to establish real trust. 

But Jesus also speaks quite wisely about a third step if needed.   That is a broader attempt at reconciliation within a community of people.  Here he speaks of the church, both the office of authority in the church but also the culture of the church community.

In my own example Jesus third step to reconciliation contributed to the establishment of full trust as the relationship was repaired within our daily actions in the broader school community.   So one, two, three:  first reconciliation one-on-one if possible, second with one or two others as witnesses and mediators and third within a community of common purpose.

No one of these three steps to reconciliation, some commentators suggest, can succeed without some basic realization among the parties of the dignity of the other.   Just the other day I was at lunch with a friend who brought a friend with him to the table, a person I did not know.   They related how they had met.   Both were antique and household item dealers who set up their folding tables in flea markets.   Habitually the one I knew took a certain space at a certain weekly market.  But when my friend arrived a little late one morning, another dealer, this one new to the place and unaware of the usual set up had taken what was regularly the space of the one who arrived late.   After a bit of arguing my friend who was harmed suggested a solution.   They rearranged the space so that they each had their separate tables side by side.      They told me the story with smiles because the two of them have been fast friends since that day.  Their common interests, their respect for one another helped them understand the need to agree to a suitable solution.  Each of them honored the role of the other.   Life, sadly, does not always unfold this way.

Family divisions are the ones that most trouble us.   In my own family, my older sister and her husband were together raising five children with lots of happiness until my brother-in-law decided to leave the household and live with another woman.   It shocked the family and deeply troubled the three of the children still living at home.   Fast forward: the marriage was annulled and their father married again.   Fast forward again and a tragedy struck the family, the oldest among my nieces in the family, Lisa, suffered a terrible illness.  It was devastating for some time and she died from it.

Father and mother had to deal with all the complications of care.  This Lisa, in her suffering, became an example of the third party about whom Jesus speaks.   Love shared for her brought the family together.  Since this time and Lisa’s death they all have celebrated family events together.  In no way could they continue alienated. Their reconciliation honors Lisa.

Jesus not only gives instructions on steps to bring about reconciliation, his whole life and death is the work of reconciling all of humanity to his Father.  His execution by the Temple authorities is so appalling that it forces us to see the evil in ourselves and in humanity, forces us to join together to find ways to prevent such sins of all kinds.

Finally Jesus himself practices in his own daily life some such tactics of reconciliation among the disciples.  We remember how James and John privately seek the support of Jesus so that they can get the best seats in the coming kingdom of God.   Jesus makes no promises but simply asks them to follow in his own footsteps.    But the other disciples find out about the self-promotion of James and John.   And want to isolate them from companionship with them.   Here Jesus steps in to suggest better ways for all the disciples to create community among themselves and reconcile their differences.   They are to do this not be lording over each other but rather by serving one another.   Jesus with such a suggestion takes on the role of that third party who assists in reconciling in the midst of dissension.  

Some hostilities between people seem hard to crack, of course, but well it is to practice what Jesus preaches even in situations which seem most difficult.   Simply put, as hard as it can be, let us find ways of serving those from whom we are alienated.  Such acts honor the dignity of both parties.