27^th Sunday of Ordinary Time

LINK to Fr Tony Diaz Sunday Homily

The request of the disciples of Jesus is a familiar one: “Increase our faith.”  Why did the disciples (and us) ask for an increase of faith? Jesus’ response to the disciples’ (and our) request is that when it comes to faith the issue is not quantity.  Genuine faith, the kind of faith that relies, trusts and obeys God is not about quantity, but quality.  I can have faith that God exists; that God is compassionate and merciful, but if there is no relationship in trust and obedience to this God, then that is not the saving faith that Jesus is talking about. Perhaps the disciples (and us) see faith only as functional: to accomplish things, for miracles, to succeed. What about when things do not go my way; when miracles do not happen; when I fail?  Do you trust that God is also present in these situations?  Faith is relational and it is through the relationship with God that amazing things can happen even when things do not go my way.

The second part of today’s gospel deals with some fundamental realities of faith: Is God obligated to us when we are loving, forgiving and faithful?  The answer from today’s gospel is clearly “NO”. “When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’” God does not owe the disciple anything for faithfulness? To love, be kind, merciful, compassionate, and faithful is the nature of what it means to be a Christian, a disciple, a son/daughter of God. We do not live and behave in this manner to demand anything from God.  What about heaven; God’s love and grace; don’t we earn these things through our good deeds?  Well, no! If I could earn my way into heaven, earn God’s love and grace, what do I need God for? Heaven, God’s love and grace are always a gift from God and never something we earn, merit or deserve. 

Sadly, many religious people live their entire lives trying to please God with their good deeds.  They try to convince God and themselves that they are worthy and deserving of God’s love, grace and heaven because of their religious actions. The sad reality is that they will never reach that point of neither convincing God nor themselves that they are worthy of God’s love.  They live in a constant experience of frustration and misery because they will never be “good enough” because of their failure to be perfect. This is the experience of the older son in the parable of the Prodigal Son.  To do what God asks of us is our duty.  I do not need to prove or convince God of anything; God’s love and grace, heaven itself is a gift from God.   There is a tremendous sense of freedom and peace in finally grasping this.  We strive to be good, decent and holy people because that is the nature of a Christian. Everything else is on God. That is Good News!

Fr. Tony Diaz, CMF

26th Week of Ordinary Time

Last week Jesus said to his disciples: “You cannot serve both God and mammon.”  Mammon here is personified as another god to whom loyalty is given, therefore, idolatry. In saying this Jesus is not demonizing money.  Money is neither good nor evil.  What makes it good or evil is how it is acquired and used. In today’s gospel Jesus is addressing Pharisees on the same topic of wealth. He tells them a story of a rich man, who lives extravagantly, but who chooses not to care for the poor man in front of his house.  When both the rich man and Lazarus, the poor man, die Lazarus is taken to heaven and the rich man to hell. The rich man goes to hell not because he is rich, but rather, because of his indifference to the needs of Lazarus.

Even in the scene from hell the rich man fails to recognize the dignity of Lazarus.  He asks Abraham to send Lazarus to him and to his brothers, just as in life the rich man would only recognize Lazarus as someone who serves him.  There are two issues that this story is addressing. The first one is that wealth is never only for oneself.  If wealth is seen as a blessing, then it is never purely for oneself. It is also meant to be shared with those who have less.  The second issue is that wealth does not determine the dignity of a person.  The rich man saw himself as more important than Lazarus who was poor.  In the story, we are not told what kind of person Lazarus was.  The name Lazarus means “God helps”. Is Lazarus loved by God simply because he is poor?  Not necessarily.  There are also many poor people that are sinners.  Lazarus in this story is not only poor, but also not able to care for himself.  He represents the most vulnerable in any society.  The question that follows from this is this: is it the responsibility of society to solve the problems of poverty or is charity be the answer?

Some years back Dom Helder Camara, a Brazilian archbishop said this: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.  When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.”  Most people in every society would rather address poverty and hunger through charity, whereas Jesus (vision of God’s Kingdom) addresses poverty and hunger through solidarity.  Charity involves the temporary relief of the problem and of our guilty conscience; solidarity involves questioning the roots of poverty and hunger, and finding systemic solutions to the problem (God’s Kingdom). The fundamental statement of this parable is this: our common humanity and relationship to God call us to solidarity and kinship with one another.  Wherever there is hunger, poverty, oppression, and injustice we are mutually responsible for its existence.  The problem is not lack of food, but poor distribution of the resources.

Fr. Tony Diaz, CMF

25th Sunday of Ordinary Time

We have in today’s gospel a parable that is difficult to interpret.  Jesus seems to be praising the actions of the dishonest steward.  Let us unpack the parable to understand more clearly what Jesus is actually saying.  Jesus is talking to his disciples only, not to a large crowd. In the parable a rich man is told about the dishonesty of his administrator.  The rich man decides to dismiss his dishonest administrator. Before he is dismissed the dishonest administrator acts to reduce the debts of those who are indebted to his master.  The administrator is trying to create favorable conditions for himself after his dismissal from his job.  The reduction of the debts is most likely the percentage that the administrator earned for himself on top of what he earned for his master.  The rich man was still going to get his share of the debt, but the dishonest administrator was sacrificing his share for the sake of gaining friends to receive him once he was fired. 

What Jesus praises is the initiative of the dishonest steward in securing his life after he is fired.  Jesus is not praising the morality of his actions, but only his initiative.  If dishonest people can plan for their future with dishonest practices, should not the sons/daughters of light strive for eternal life through the practices of righteousness? In other words, the initiative of the dishonest administrator is worth imitating for the sake of eternal life, but not the morality of his actions. There is, however, another possible interpretation of these words of Jesus. Sarcasm and exaggeration are not uncommon in the gospels (“why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but you do not see the beam in your own eye” Lk 6:41).  Just like the dishonest steward is trying to win friends with his dishonest actions, others try to win their way into heaven through a life of dishonesty.  Jesus is mocking this.

The application of the parable in the following verses makes clear Jesus’ intention: faithfulness and loyalty to God and the Kingdom must be absolute in big situations as well as in small ones.  “The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.”  Two Sundays ago when Jesus spoke about discipleship (Lk 14:25-35) he also talked about faithfulness and loyalty to God and the Kingdom.  Here too, Jesus is being specific about what discipleship means: “No servant can serve two masters.  He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.”  Mammon here is personified as another god to whom loyalty is given, therefore, idolatry. In saying this Jesus is not demonizing money.  Money is neither good nor evil.  What makes it good or evil is how it is gained and used. 

Fr. Tony Diaz, CMF

Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross

Click HERE to listen  to FR. Tony's SUNDAY HOMILY

On this Feast Day of the Exaltation of the Cross, I offer you part of a theological reflection on St. Paul’s theology of the Cross that Pope Benedict XVI gave in a public audience on October 29, 2008.

For St Paul the Cross has a fundamental primacy in the history of humanity; it represents the focal point of his theology because to say "Cross" is to say salvation as grace given to every creature. The topic of the Cross of Christ becomes an essential and primary element of the Apostle's preaching: the clearest example concerns the community of Corinth. Facing a Church in which disorder and scandal were disturbingly present, where communion was threatened by internal factions and ruptures which damaged the unity of the Body of Christ, Paul did not present himself with sublime words or wisdom but with the proclamation of Christ, of Christ crucified. His strength is not in the use of persuasive language but, paradoxically, in the weakness and trepidation of those who entrust themselves solely to the "power of God" (cf. 1 Cor 2: 1-5). The Cross, for all it represents, hence also for the theological message it contains, is scandal and folly. The Apostle says so with an impressive force that it is good to hear directly from his words: "for the word of the Cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. " (1 Cor 1: 18-20).

But why did St Paul make precisely this, the word of the Cross, the fundamental core of his teaching? The answer is not difficult: the Cross reveals "the power of God" (cf. 1 Cor 1: 24), which is different from human power; indeed, it reveals his love: "For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (ibid., v. 25). Centuries after Paul we see that in history it was the Cross that triumphed and not the wisdom that opposed it. The Crucified One is wisdom, for he truly shows who God is, that is, a force of love which went even as far as the Cross to save men and women. God uses ways and means that seem to us at first sight to be merely weakness. The Crucified One reveals on the one hand man's frailty and on the other, the true power of God, that is the free gift of love: this totally gratuitous love is true wisdom.

St Paul gave a wonderful synthesis of the theology of the Cross in the Second Letter to the Corinthians (5: 14-21) where everything is enclosed between two fundamental affirmations: on the one hand Christ, whom God made to be sin for our sake (v. 21), he died for all (v. 14); and on the other, God reconciled us to himself without imputing our sins to us (vv. 18-20). It is from this "ministry of reconciliation" that every form of slavery is already redeemed (cf. 1 Cor 6: 20; 7: 23). Here it appears how important this is for our lives. We too must enter into this "ministry of reconciliation" that always implies relinquishing one's superiority and opting for the folly of love. St Paul sacrificed his own life, devoting himself without reserve to the ministry of reconciliation, of the Cross, which is salvation for us all. And we too must be able to do this: may we be able to find our strength precisely in the humility of love and our wisdom in the weakness of renunciation, entering thereby into God's power. We must all model our lives on this true wisdom: we must not live for ourselves but must live in faith in that God of whom we can all say: "he loved me and gave himself for me".

Fr. Tony Diaz, CMF

23^rd Sunday of Ordinary Time

The main theme of today’s gospel is the cost of discipleship.  

Click HERE to listen  to FR. Tony's SUNDAY HOMILY

In today’s gospel Jesus is followed by a “huge crowd.” Most likely the people in the crowd had different motivations in following Jesus.  Perhaps some were just curious; others may have been in need of healing; still others were genuinely interested in what Jesus taught and did.  Jesus stops and addresses them the cost of discipleship.  What Jesus demands is complete loyalty. To make sure the crowd understood clearly the kind of loyalty he expected, he placed it against the loyalty to family.  In all cultures loyalty to family is held as the highest expression of love and honor. Yet, Jesus places loyalty to him and the Kingdom as something above the loyalty to family.  How are we to understand this cost of discipleship, especially when the word “hate” of family and self is used?  The demands of disciple must have scare many in the crowd as it still does today.

When we are faced with the cost of discipleship and the demands of love, mercy and compassion we can easily lose heart if we forget that it is God who makes discipleship possible.  We are unable to accept the demands of discipleship unless there is a prior experience of having been touched by God’s grace and love.  It is the experience of having been forgiven, healed and loved by God that makes discipleship possible.   Religion is always a response to the initiative of God.  Although it is common to hear from people who have had a religious experience that they have found God, it is actually God who has found them. God was not lost, they were. Religion and spirituality are the pursuit of that “something” that has awakened the person to some greater reality.

But then the gospel has Jesus using some very disturbing words.  “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Are we to take this literally? Is it either Jesus or my family? The answer is “no”.  Jesus is not anti-family; if he was, he would be violating the commandment to honor father and mother. Yet, there are situations when faithfulness to Jesus and the Kingdom will place us in conflict even with family.  The word “hate’ in this gospel has to be understood in relationship to love of God.  Love of God has to be above everything, even family.  It is God’s love that can makes love of family possible beyond flesh and blood.  The word “hate” in this gospel simply means to love family less than loving God.  The slogan, “my family (or country), right or wrong”, can never be the slogan of a Christian.  When family (or country) promotes unjust, hateful, racist, divisive and violent behavior discipleship to Jesus will force us to make difficult decisions. 

Fr. Tony Diaz, CMF

Click Here to Listen to Fr Tony's Sunday Homily

22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time

One major topic in the first reading and gospel for this Sunday is humility. The end of the first parable says: “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”  Humility is a major virtue that the Old and New Testament encourage us to acquire.  In Christian spirituality, particularly in the Fathers of the Church, humility is described as the “mother of all virtues.”  Yet, most Christians find it tremendously challenging to understand how to live the biblical and spiritual command to be humble and having a healthy sense of dignity and assertiveness in the world.  In Western cultures humility is not a highly praised virtue. In the world where freedom, power and self-aggrandizement are valued humility is seen with contempt.  This is a topic that requires much reflection and personal soul searching.  But, perhaps approaching the subject through what humility is not may be a good place to start.
 
The biblical and spiritual notion of humility is not the denial and denigration of one’s worth and dignity.  To be humble does not mean weakness of character, feeling insignificant or unimportant. A humble person is not a door mat that others walk all over him/her. To be humble does not mean that one accepts humiliation unquestionably.  At the heart of what biblical and spiritual humility points to is complete dependence on God. Humility is the “deep awareness of our limitations and shortcomings in the presence of divine perfection.” The first reading says, “God’s power is great and he is honored by those who are humble.” Humility is to grasp, by the grace of God, the truth of God and who God says we are.  The biblical and spiritual model of humility is seen most clearly in Jesus Christ. He models complete dependence, reliance and submission to God’s will, while never losing sight of his dignity.
 
Is it weakness of character and lack of dignity that Jesus models? Quite the contrary!  Jesus models a profound sense of freedom because he knows clearly who he is the eyes of God.  His freedom was expressed most clearly in freely accepting God’s will.  When he humbled himself at the washing of the feet of his disciples there was no humiliation.  He modeled for us that authority and leadership are for the sake of service and not for self-aggrandizement. Jesus was respected and admired because he moved and acted with a profound sense of dignity.  He had no need to prove anything to anyone or to himself because he had no ego or need for pride.  He is God’s beloved son and this is precisely what we are told in and trough our baptism: you are my beloved son/daughter in whom I am pleased. Yet, humility can only be understood in relationship to one’s experience of love by the Father.  It is only when we experience love that we are willing to live, suffer and sacrifice for God and others.

Fr. Tony Diaz, CMF

21st Sunday of Ordinary Time

In today’s gospel Jesus is asked a fascinating question: “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” The Jewish notion that they are the “chosen people” is not unique to them. Almost every religion makes the same claim that they are the “chosen people” and that only they will be saved.  We find this notion among many Catholics as well.  Today’s gospel throws a monkey wrench into this notion of the “chosen people”. Typical of Jesus he does not answer the question he is being asked, but rather redirects the question to something more important.  All religions have a fascination in trying to create demarcation lines to decide who is saved and who is not.  We often want to tell God where these demarcation lines are and to act accordingly. Yet, in today’s gospel Jesus avoids being cornered and having to draw any demarcation lines.  The decision of who is saved and who is not belongs to God alone, not to us. And so Jesus redirects the question to where it belongs: “Strive to enter through the narrow gate”. To strive with God’s grace is our responsibility and calling, the rest belongs to God.

Then Jesus gives us a vision of God’s Kingdom that should give us a lot to meditate and contemplate. The vision is of the master of the house locking up the door. And “then will you stand outside knocking and saying, ‘Lord, open the door for us.’”  Who are the “you”?  Are these the “you” that claim they are the “chosen” or the “saved”? The master of the house does not seem to recognize them even when they say, “we ate and drank in your company, and you taught in our streets.” He tells them, “I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, all you evildoers!” Are you, we, some of these “you” who are left on the outside of the Kingdom? “And there will be wailing and grinding of teeth, … and you yourselves cast out.” The “wailing” is the desperate hopelessness of finding ourselves on the outside, and “grinding of teeth” may be the rage and anger at finding others, especially those whom we have condemned, in the inside, in God’s Kingdom.

The vision that Jesus provides closes with, “and people will come from the east and the west and from the north and the south and will recline at table in the kingdom of God.” Notice that Jesus places no labels (Jewish, Gentile, Greek, etc.) or categories on who the ones coming from the East, West, North, and South are.  All those who strive to do the will of God; all those who strive to enter through the narrow door enter the God’s Kingdom. And who they are (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc.) is known only to God. The Church does not exist to create boundaries and demarcation lines as to who is saved and who is not.  What a frightening possibility to find ourselves left out of the Kingdom and to be told: “I do not know you.  Depart from me!”

Fr. Tony Diaz, CMF

20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Images of sports and competitions are everywhere around us. So, the sport image for the life of faith that the second reading from Hebrews gives us is very appropriate for us this Sunday.  The author encourages us to “persevere in running the race that lies before us.”  We are not alone in the race, “we are surrounded by a so great cloud of witnesses.” These witnesses are not merely spectators around us, but fellow runners in the same race with us.  They encourage us to persevere by their witness of life of faith.  This is the nature of a community of faith, to support one another.  Like athletes we are to remove all obstacles to our race.  Notice in sports how athletes wear only what is essential to their sports in order to move with the least amount of hindrance.  What are the hindrances in your life that prevent you from living your faith more effortlessly? Notice also how the athletes in sports are so sharply focused.  They visualize the competition even before they start. The author of Hebrews encourages us to keep our eyes focused on Jesus.  Jesus is not only the goal, but also the inspiration for he himself also ran the race.

Our ancestors in the Old Testament only had the promise, but the community of the Kingdom, the time we are now living, has the fulfillment of that promise in Jesus.  Jesus is the “leader and perfecter of faith.”  He models for us faithfulness, trust and intimacy with God.  And even though he was nailed to a cross, an instrument of torture and shame, he removed the shamed of the cross and transformed it into an instrument of salvation.  The cross, suffering, and life itself, seen through the mind and heart of Jesus, become sources of strength as we persevere in faithfulness and trust in the new reality called God’s Kingdom.  Jesus’ own life models perseverance in the midst of his passion so that “we may not grow weary and lose heart.”

Yet, this Sunday’s gospel leaves us with a troubling image of division that is hard to reconcile with Jesus.  “Do not think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” These words are in contrast to the other declarations where Jesus offers peace to us (Luke 2:14; 7:50; 8:48, 10:5-6; Acts 10:36). There are some that will reject Jesus and what he offers.  But there is a choice that must be made as to whether we accept the Kingdom and its implications or we stand against it.  Eventually, we must take sides; we must live with the consequences of following Jesus and the values of the Kingdom.  Jesus was no stranger to the experience of division.  Many within his own community rejected him, his own family did not understand him at the beginning, and even his own disciples abandoned him in his hour of need.  However, he never lost sight of the Kingdom.  He trusted the One who sent him and he asks us to also trust on him and the Kingdom he reveals to us.

Fr. Tony Diaz, CMF

19th Sunday of Ordinary Time