Homily of Archbishop George Niederauer

HOMILY - 27TH SUNDA Y - CYCLE "C"

Most Holy Redeemer Parish Visit

Sunday, 10/7/07, 10:00 am

When we do a good deed, we naturally like to see that it has an impact.  What would happen, though, if we started expecting—even demanding—some tangible reward for every single positive thing we say or do, no matter how small it is?  How could we get through life if we had to pay out some reward for absolutely everything others do for us?

In reality there are many things that we do simply out of love for our family and our friends.  Doing these things already carries a reward: we are happy to make them happy.  For example, think of a family’s daily life.  How do parents teach their children this sense of things freely given, freely done?  Do they try to bribe them or reward them for everything they do, even if it is their duty, or do they communicate to them a sense that there are things one does out of love?  Of course they teach them to thank others and not take them for granted.

If we hear a mother say to her child, “Come here and help me in the kitchen, please,” and the child answers, “What will you pay me?” we may be tempted to say to ourselves, “What a brat!”  In the gospel reading today, Jesus is teaching us not to think and act like God’s brats.

--God gives freely and out of sheer love for us, his children. We could never repay God for everything we receive, and God does not expect us to. We "belong" to God, as his dear children.  Now it's true, that idea is expressed in today's gospel reading as our being his servants, and that's a rather uncomfortable word in our culture. However, the Greek word "achreioi", doesn't so much mean “servant” as we imagine it; it literally means "someone to whom nothing is owed." Jesus is saying that we are not God's wage earners, his employees; we don't have something coming to us from him, since everything about us, including our very existence, is his gift. Just as children in a human family are not on their parents' payroll, we are not on God’s payroll.

--Faith in God is also a free gift, and by it we become filled with love for God and for others and are capable of doing great works. The prophet Habbakuk, in that first reading, complained to God how hard it was for a believer to live a faithful life, and God reassured him that faith-filled people can live in the midst and not be overcome by it.  In the second reading, St. Paul, writing to Timothy, echoes that sentiment: hardships will challenge us in our lives as disciples, but faith can overcome those hardships.

--If we have a deep faith in Jesus, as he tells us today, our world can be much better, because we will be able to uproot from our lives the trees of selfishness, injustice and evil.  If we believe in him, Jesus says, we can face the world with courage.  The Savior reminds us that this courage comes from him, not from ourselves: he is the shepherd of the flock, and the flock is his, not ours. Our service to him is to be centered in him, not in ourselves. We should not put on airs and boast to ourselves what wonderful disciples we are, what faithful Catholics. We should be grateful to be called and chosen by him, and ready to do what he asks of us. Eternal life with Christ is not a "reward" that we "earn."  Instead, we belong to Christ in life now, as we hope to belong to him for all eternity.  This belonging is rooted not in some service contact, but in Jesus Christ’s bottomless, redeeming love for us. 

--Through the power of our faith in Jesus we Catholic Christians can perform miracles we have never even dreamed of: we can overcome fears, give up selfishness, let go of habits of sinfulness,   share with others, forgive, love and join in the struggle against evil and injustice in our neighborhoods and communities. We can do all these things with faith. Through faith we can work and struggle without expecting any other reward than the happiness of being with, and serving, God.

--So this reading today, which sounds so stern and demanding, is about belonging to God in love, and the challenge that presents us with.  Moreover, there is a beautiful passage in the same Gospel of Luke, five chapters earlier, which is a perfect balance and companion for this passage in its talk about our being the loving servants of a loving God. Jesus teaches in these words in Chapter 12 of Luke: “be like servants who await their master's return. . . , ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival. Amen, I say to you he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them." (Lk. 12:36-37)

We can find at least two levels of meaning in these words of Jesus.  Certainly the master’s “return” suggests the moment at the end of our lives when Jesus comes to bring each of us home with him to eternal life.  But listen again to those final words in the passage:  “ . . . he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.” 

These words refer to Eucharist, to this Eucharist. Around the Archdiocese of San Francisco, when I talk to our young people at Confirmation, I remind them and their families of the same truth that I’m calling to your attention this morning.  Do you recall what probably bothered the Pharisees most about Jesus Christ?  His awful taste in people!  Their exact words were: “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them!”  And twenty centuries later, Jesus Christ is still welcoming sinners and eating with them.  Indeed, feeding them with his own Body and Blood. 

We Catholics are a Eucharistic people.  We are not a people who believe that, on the night before he died, Jesus had supper with his apostles and told them, “Crawl the mall in memory of me.”  Or, “have brunch in memory of me.”  No, we are the people who believe that, on Holy Thursday night, Jesus took bread, broke it, and said, “This is my Body.” Then he took the cup filled with wine, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.”  Then Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”  So each Sunday, the Lord’s Day, we do this in remembrance of Jesus Christ, and we believe that it gives meaning and purpose and direction to everything else in our lives, even the mall and the brunch.

The gift of Eucharist has the power to shape our responses and choices, to let Christ guide and teach us through his Church, the assembly of believers.  If we need to make changes in our lives, in our priorities, it is through the power of Eucharistic faith that we will be able to do so.  This morning we disciples here at this Eucharist address to Jesus the same three word prayer the Apostles used at the beginning of today’s gospel: “Increase our faith.”   We ask the Lord we receive to make us faith-filled and faithful, to his loving will for us, for his Church, and for the world we live in.