Newtown Tragedy

GAUDETE SUNDAY 20012

3 Advent  #9

Zep 3, 14-18a

(Ps) Is 12, 2-6

Phil 4, 4-7

Lk 3, 10-18

Peter Maurin Farm, Marlboro, N.Y.

December 16, 2012

Deacon Tom Cornell

                  

                   It’s a challenge to faith, the problem of evil.  How can a good and loving and all-powerful God allow such things as happened in Newtown last Friday?  On the other hand, how can we bear such loss without faith, and without a community of faith, our church?  Our own parish family is still staggering under the loss of our Sarah Saturday before last, a sixteen year old girl killed in an automobile accident.  Now this, so close to us, ten miles over the Connecticut border, twenty first graders and six teachers.  I did my teaching internship at Newtown High School in 1959 and I was student counselor and English and Latin teacher in the next town over, Brookfield, for three years after that, and might well have stayed there but for Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement.  You couldn’t ask for, you couldn’t imagine better towns, better public schools, peaceful, orderly, safe.   And yet…. 

          No one is safe.  Every breath we take may be our last.  Be prepared!  And remember the words of Julian of Norwich, “The worst has happened and been repaired.” 

          This is Gaudete Sunday.   Gaudete is Latin for rejoice!  Rejoice?  How rejoice?  We are more than half way through Advent, the period of waiting, waiting for the repair.  The worst has happened?  The Fall!  And been repaired?  How repaired?   Jesus Christ, Christ himself, Christmas, Emmanuel, God with Us, come to suffer, die and rise again. 

          Evil entered that classroom in Newtown, but God was in that classroom too, and he is the stronger.  He has taken the little ones to himself.  We weep for ourselves!  They are our children too.  All children are our children.  Their families have only their memory.  They will not see those beautiful children grow and learn, see them at First Communion, Confirmation!  There will be no weddings, no grandchildren!  It is for ourselves that we weep.  They are in bliss, eternal bliss, forever innocent, to rise in glory on the Last Day.  That’s a Promise! 

          Last week a similar number of children in Afghanistan were killed by a bomb blast near their school.  Was it unexploded ordinance?  There have been so many more.  Drone strikes are not surgical, as we have been led to believe.  Many children have been killed by these fiendish weapons, nearly three hundred in the Afghan-Pakistan border area.  Afghani and Paki mothers and fathers feel the same anguish, anger, grief and loss as American mothers and fathers do.  Does this in any way diminish our loss, our pain?  Of course not!  Are those kids our children too?  God’s children?  Of course they are.  So why do we let these things happen?

          The Popes have spoken of a culture of death that pervades our society, a culture of violence, violence against the most vulnerable among us, the unborn and the elderly, against the poor, against immigrants, against children, against women.  We will balance the budget they say, but not by pulling out of unnecessary and unwinnable wars paid for on the credit card.  Let the old, the sick, disabled war veterans and children pay.  We have been lied to by politicians as long as I can remember, consistently, by Democrats as well as Republicans, and that’s a form of violence in itself.  I refer also to child pornography, widespread and easily available to feed unnatural lust and loathing, and the trafficking of women. 

          Too many guns, too little mental health evaluation and care in this country.  The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in his first address to the diplomats assigned to the Holy See, announced that the Church’s first priority in the field of international relations is the building of a culture of peace, a culture of nonviolence, a culture of life.  Do we need any more evidence that this is what we need in our country today?

          “His winnowing fan is in his hand,” John the Baptist announced.  Even here in an agricultural setting we may need to explain what a winnowing fan is, and what it means to winnow.  Before mechanization, the way a farmer removed the grain of wheat from its husk, or chaff, was to spread the wheat stripped from the stalk on the barn floor.  He would then take a large fan and stir the air over it all.  The dry husks, or chaff, are lighter than the grains of wheat, so the breeze the fan creates lifts the chaff and scatters it a few feet away from the heavier wheat.  The farmer can then gather up the wheat for storage and sweep up the chaff to compost or to burn.  That’s what it means to winnow, and the fan used is called a winnowing fan.  John’s words are harsh.  “The chaff he will burn in unquenchable fire!” a terrible judgment.  We have to take his words seriously, for we will be called to account. 

          Think on these words, think on what we have just experienced in that first grade classroom when you are selecting toys for your little ones this Christmas.  If you have already bought a war toy, or a violent video game, TAKE IT BACK!  Exchange it for a teddy bear, or a chess set!  Teach peace! 

          Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace!  Peace  be with you!     W

Cast Your Whole Ballot

26 Sunday B   #137

Nm 11, 25-29

Ps 19

Jas 5, 1-6

Mk 9, 38-43. 45. 47-48

September 30, 2012

Peter Maurin Farm

Marlboro, N.Y.

Deacon Tom Cornell

                   Imagine this passage from the Letter of Saint James being read aloud at a recent national political convention.  I won’t say which one.  We just heard the words, God’s words.  They’re important.  So let’s hear them again and take careful heed:

                   “Come now, you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries.  Your wealth has rotted away, your clothes have become moth-eaten, your gold and silver have corroded and that corrosion will be a testimony against you, it will devour your flesh like fire…. Behold, the wages you have withheld from the workers who harvested your fields are crying aloud and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.  You have lived on the earth in luxury and pleasure and you have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter.”

                   Word as harsh as these might well have been directed at the other party convention too, I won’t say which one, words of condemnation for the crime that cries to heaven for vengeance, the slaughter of the innocent yet-to-be-born.  The legal right to abortion at any stage of gestation or even birth for any reason whatsoever is now part of that party’s orthodoxy.  How long will the hand of God’s justice be stayed?  "God is not mocked."  (Gal 6, 7)  “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord, “I will repay!”  (Deut 32,35;  Rom 12, 19)

                   The president from one party declares that anything the president does is by that very fact legal.  The president from the other party acts upon that and authorizes assassination by drone missile, targeted assassination of individuals he chooses to designate enemy combatants without any judicial process, appeal, oversight or review, and ten or more innocent women, children and other by-standers die as “collateral damage.”  Obscene!  And some people wonder why they hate us. 

                   Our bishops have given us guidelines, guidance, not in how to vote, but in how to weigh the candidates and party platforms.  It is not their place or mine or anyone else's to tell you how to vote.  But we who are ordained to teach the faithful the principles of social justice based on Scripture and natural law have it laid upon us to do just that.  The bottom-line is this: how will your choice affect the most vulnerable in our society?

          Catholic social teaching holds that all citizens have the right to participate in the political life of their communities and nations, that is, among other things, to vote.  The right to participate entails the responsibility to participate.  Any who fail to exercise that right endanger the right of others to do so.  Catholics make a better showing at the polls than our fellow citizens.  We make up 20% of the population but 27% of the voting public.  There was a time when we tended to vote as a bloc, for the New Deal, for instance, up to 80 percent!  But we are not beholden to any party, nor should we ever be!  And voting is not the only way we participate in public life. 

                   Here we are about five weeks from Election Day.  I confess to you, I haven’t made up my mind yet, whom to vote for or even whether to go to the polls at all, the choices are so bad.  Choosing the lesser of two evils is choosing an evil, after all.  Maybe a third party.  But they’re all compromised.  Then again….

          I am consoled by the words of a great American once scorned but now seen as a national treasure, Henry David Thoreau.  “Cast your whole vote, not just a piece of paper.”  If we live the life that Jesus taught us to live, a life centered on the works of mercy, we cast our whole vote every day of our lives.

                   God be with you and God be with us all on November 6, a day of tears for the poor, the aged, the sick and the unborn.  God forgive us! 

                                             W

The Subversive Lord

25 Sunday  #134

Wis 2, 12, 17-20

Ps 54

Jas 3, 12-4,3

Mk 9, 30-37

September 23, 2102

Peter Maurin Farm
Marlboro, N.Y.

Deacon Tom Cornell

                    In last Sunday’s Gospel we heard Jesus predict his passion and death.  Peter objected.  Then Jesus rebuked Peter, “Get behind me you Satan; you are thinking as men do, not as God does.”  Today we hear Jesus predict his passion and death once again.  The chief priests and the scribes would betray him.  The disciples, who had been with him through his travels, didn’t know what to make of it!  How could that be?  What had Jesus done or said that would turn the Temple authorities against him so that they would turn him over to the Romans for execution?  He had cured the sick, cast out demons, he had done all things well, had made the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.  His words – they were the most sublime anyone had ever heard, or would ever hear, the Sermon on the Mount.  What was wrong with that?  Where is the crime in that?   

                   Plenty!  That’s the point.  The world teaches us to seek power, wealth, influence, control.  The Beatitudes, the whole Sermon on the Mount, turn the world upside down.   Jesus puts forward a little child in today’s reading.  Who welcomes a little child welcomes me, and not me but the one who sent me, God!  Power, wealth are not evil in themselves, they are in fact good if, and only if, they are used for the common good and the relief of suffering.  But how easily we fool ourselves, making necessities out of luxuries!

          In this story, the disciples are mirror images of ourselves.  They failed to see how Jesus was upsetting the apple-cart, until perhaps, he upset the tables of the money-changers and the merchants in the Temple precincts.  The Sanhedrin feared Jesus would bring down Rome on them so they handed him over.  So Rome had to take him down.  The Roman authorities were in fact very liberal in their administration of the provinces of their vast Empire.  They allowed conquered peoples to retain their own legal systems, their customs and religious rites insofar as they did not interfere with Rome’s ultimate control.  But at any sign, at any hint of insurrection or subversion, Rome came down hard and fast, ruthlessly, crucifying hundreds, thousands, to make any example of them.  

          Jesus knew his days were numbered.  His insight into the meaning of the kingdom of God made it clear to him how opposed it was to the kingdom of mammon. But it remained a mystery to his followers how anyone would not love Jesus as they did, even as they failed to grasp the depth of his meaning. 

          Their failures, their unwillingness to understand, prefigure the patterns of future generations of disciples over the ages, people just like you and me, slow to understand the radical message of Jesus, and slower yet to follow.  The Good News of Jesus Christ, the Gospel is subversive, subversive of every pattern and structure of oppression, domination, discrimination and war and the piling up of superfluous wealth when any of God’s children are starving.

           Jesus didn’t give up on the first disciples.  He won’t give up on us either.   Jesus teaches us to stand with the powerless, the marginalized and the disenfranchised rather than seek favor by catering to the rich and the powerful to feather our own nests. 

          They had to kill him.  But they couldn’t keep him dead!  “He rose again on the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures.  …. His kingdom will have no end.”  It begins here and now, when we embrace that little child.  W

Joshua Casteel, R.I.P.

Tom Cornell

posted on America Magazine blog
and Independent Catholic News, London 
August 27, 2012

Joshua Casteel died, August 25, in New York City, after a long, brave and painful battle with cancer, another victim of the war in Iraq, at age 32.    

If ever there was an “all-American boy!”  A photo of Josh as president of the Young Republicans in his high school is charmingly naïve.   Tall and handsome, blue-eyed and blond-haired, of Norwegian stock, he must have looked quite at home as a cadet at West Point Military Academy.  But he couldn’t take the mindless chauvinism, he told me.  No critical thinking!  “I could take orders, but I can’t give them in an outfit like that,” he said.  He thought it only right to fulfill the commitment he made when he signed his enlistment contract, so he asked not for release but for reassignment as a common soldier.  He was sent to language school, in California, where he learned Arabic well enough to be assigned to Abu Graib Prison in Baghdad as an interrogator.  He arrived there just after the prisoner abuse scandal broke in 2004.  He had over one hundred interrogation sessions with prisoners, 90% of whom, he determined, were guilty of nothing but being Arab.  General Janis Karpinski, in charge of the prison at that time, disagreed, maybe 80%.  One was 14 years old, another nine!

Joshua was brought up in a fervently Evangelical family.  But Josh’s Christian faith began to falter.  He read Cardinal Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity.  That not only revived but strengthened his faith.  He was received into full communion with the Catholic Church.  An admitted jihadi prisoner challenged Josh’s commitment to the New Testament ethic of nonviolence.  The jihadi had the better of the argument, Joshua decided.  He came to the conclusion that he was in fact a conscientious objector to war and to military service.  He applied for early discharge as a conscientious objector.  His commanding officer recognized the sincerity and validity of his claim.  Joshua was released with an honorable discharge and returned home to study and to write plays and stories based upon his experience. 

Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza, retired, of Galveston-Houston, arranged for Michael Griffin, theology professor at Holy Cross College in South Bend and editor of the Catholic Peace Fellowship The Sign of Peace and me to present Joshua to Pope Benedict in Rome, March 2007 at an outdoor Mass.  The Holy Father was obviously impressed with Josh’s story.  As he was led away, Mike Griffin told the Holy Father the purpose of our trip to Rome, to spur further development of ministry to conscientious objectors, support and encouragement.  “You mean men like him?” said the Pope, pointing to Joshua. “Yes, Holy Father, men like him!”

Having earned an MFA at the University of Iowa, Joshua started advanced studies at the University of Chicago when he suddenly took sick.  It was lung cancer, 4th stage, metastasized.  The disease progressed rapidly.  He was soon in excruciating pain and dependent upon strong opioids.  Treatment seemed at times hopeful.  He was admitted to an experimental therapy program at a secret location in Lower Manhattan.  He responded very well.  Then a sudden downturn, due to pancreatitis.  In little more than a week, attended by his mother, Joshua slipped away. 

 A victim of the war?  Yes, probably, but there is no proof.  Joshua believed that his cancer was caused by living at Abu Graib near an open burn-pit operated by the US military.  All manner of refuse including plastics was dumped into open-air pits to be incinerated.  The fumes are toxic. 

Let Joshua have the last word, or words he spoke to Aaron Glantz, in a radio interview on Pacifica Radio KPFA, San Francisco, on our trip to Rome:  “We were seeking pastoral guidance from the Holy See as to how to best address the issue in America, which at the core is an issue of spiritual formation and catechesis, that people don’t know the history of Catholic conscientious objectors….  And this is where the issue of nationalism is front and center….  In this country, Catholic Christians often don’t act as if their Catholic identity is their primary identity – that somehow it’s ok to closet your Christianity when the State tells you to.  That’s not the history that Christianity hails from; it’s simply not the case.”

Pray for us, Josh, that God will grant us even a small share of your faith and courage, and consolation to your bereft mother Kristi and sisters Naomi and Rebekah.    

Bread of Life

20 Sunday B  #119

Pvb 9, 1-6

Ps 34

Eph 5, 15-20

Jn 6, 51-58

Peter Maurin Farm
Marlboro, N.Y.
August 19, 2012

Deacon Tom Cornell

          Our first reading from the Book of Proverbs speaks of the Temple of Wisdom built upon seven columns, or pillars.  But it doesn’t tell us what those seven pillars are.  Let’s say they are the seven virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, courage, and faith, hope and charity. 

          Or they might be what scholars of religion call the pillars of all major religions:  the contemplation of God, the ultimate mystery;  then where do we come from  and where are we going and why;  the destiny of the universe itself;  salvation, redemption, from what and for what;  and what other planes of existence there might be.  Christians will deal with these questions from our understanding of Hebrew and Christian Scripture and our own and our common experience, Sacred Tradition, and ultimately, through the person of Jesus Christ.  Wisdom, Sophia, Logos was with God and danced at the Creation, to become man in Jesus Christ.

            For the past three weeks, now four, we have been hearing “The Bread of Life Discourse” from the 6^th Chapter of the Gospel according to John.  Jesus speaks of himself as the bread of life, his own flesh and blood as food for eternal life.  Many of the Jews who heard these words found them intolerable; they couldn’t bear to hear them. They walked away; they would listen to him no more. 

          The bread of life come down from heaven will be offered to you in minutes.  This is the whole purpose of the priesthood.  Jesus would leave this earth, go back to the Father, sit at his right hand until he comes again to judge the living and the dead.  But until that time, Jesus remains with us.  “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there in their midst.”  Jesus is present in the poor the sick and the suffering. “When you did these things for the least of these my brethren, you did them for me.”  Jesus is also truly present, body, blood, soul and divinity in every particle of the bread and wine consecrated by a valid priest at the altar.  He remains with us in sacramental sign because, no matter how badly we go astray, no matter how foolish we become, he wants to be with us, to nourish and guide us even despite ourselves.  Such is the infinite mercy of God.  

         God the Father did not directly will that his only begotten son should die, mocked and scourged, upon a felon’s cross.  But it was inevitable.  It was God’s will that Jesus submit and resist not the evil of men.  This would be the ultimate sacrifice which we commemorate at every Mass. 

          If the Incarnation had been postponed for two thousand years and Jesus had been born in Bethlehem, Connecticut or Marlboro, New York instead of Bethlehem in Juda, the outcome would have been the same.  We would have killed him.  One way or another we would have killed him.  That’s what we do to the lambs of God. 

          And Jesus would forgive, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do,” just as he did at Golgotha.  And we would be forgiven, saved.  Saved from the consequences of our own blind stupidity, willfulness, pride, greed, gluttony, lust, envy, sloth and anger, saved from the isolation we put ourselves into when we hide from each other’s pain and want and need. 

          The bread of life!  Communion!  The word means oneness with God and oneness with each other.  So we must bear one another’s burdens, live as brothers and sisters, not judging, but sharing, just as God has shared with us, shared his own very self!  Such a gift we have been given!  How can we not share with others then?  Our hearts should be so full of gratitude that they open and pour out whatever we have, even foolishly.  God will not be outdone in generosity.  His eye is on the sparrow.  I know he watches you and me!   W

Fortnight of Freedom

13 Sunday B  #98

Wis 1, 13-15. 2, 23-24

Ps 30

2 Cor 8, 7. 9. 13-15

Mk 5, 21-43

Peter Maurin Farm
July 1, 2012

Deacon Tom Cornell

                   Our first reading from the Book of Wisdom reminds us that all creation is good, and that God created human beings in his own image and likeness, the basis of all human rights.  The reading from Second Corinthians is a clear command to us Christians to share what we have beyond our own needs with those who have not.  Our reading from Mark’s Gospel is deceptively simple.  Mark is like that.  Sometimes Mark seems overly simple, if I may say so.  Jesus did this and then Jesus did that; this happened and then that.  The most common phrase in Mark is “and then.”  Sounds like a kid reprising a movie, doesn’t it?  But take a second look.

          Jairus was an official of the local synagogue, a well-respected and presumably a wealthy man.  He didn’t have to push through the crowd to approach Jesus.  People made way for him.  Then he fell at Jesus’ feet to beseech him.  It was important in those days how one approached another person in public, especially someone he did not know, and especially if he was going to ask a favor.  Although Jairus was a leading citizen, he prostrated himself on the ground before the penniless itinerant preacher-healer Jesus and begged:  “My daughter is at the point of death.  Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live!”   

                   Mark interrupts the story abruptly.  A poor old woman enters the scene.  Jairus is kept waiting, by an old impoverished woman, a woman suffering from a flow of blood.  It is not just that she is ill and poor and a woman; she is unclean, ritually unclean.  Women were considered unclean once a month, but this poor woman had been haemorrhaging for twelve years straight.  By the letter of the law she should not have been in any crowd.  She should not have come into contact with any other person lest that one too be declared unclean, but up in Galilee the Law was not as strictly observed as it was in Jerusalem. 

                   Notice how the woman approaches Jesus.  The crowd makes no way for her, she does not fall before him, she is afraid even to approach him face to face.  She dares only to stretch out her hand and touch his clothing, “the hem of his garment,” from behind.  When Jesus realizes that healing power has gone out of him, he demands to know who has touched him.  Then in fear and trembling she comes forward and falls before him to explain herself.  “Daughter,” he tells her, “your faith has saved you.  Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.” 

                   Then Mark returns to the story of Jairus and his daughter.  Word comes that she has died.  Jesus counsels faith instead of fear.  Then the din of wailing as they approach Jairus’ house.  Finally the touching scene: Jesus takes her hand and says, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!”  She gets up and walks around, and finally the charming detail, “Give her something to eat.” 

                   What are we to take from this “miracle within a miracle,” as it is called, the story of Jairus interrupted by the story of the woman with a flow of blood?  The action stops, the powerful synagogue leader is put on hold, for the sake of a woman, a second-class citizen in those days, and worse, one who is poor and  worse than that, “unclean.”  The lesson is this:  in the economy of Jesus, in God’s economy, it’s not the big-shots, but the poor, the sick, those who are pushed around and those who are pushed aside who come first, not the big-shots, but the little-shots.   Nowadays we call it “the preferential option for the poor.” 

          But aren’t the poor poor because they are lazy?  Isn’t it their own fault in the richest nation on earth, the richest in world history?  During this time of economic distress, I don’t think many of us are going to fall for that line.  For decades many of us, I included, have lived one pay check from homelessness, and worse.  Imagine what it feels like when the clerk at the Unemployment Office hands you your last check and says, “Good luck!”  It could happen to any one of us.

  

          It is hazy, hot and humid, but we can not let pass our nation’s birthday without reflection.  On July 4^th, 1776, our forefathers declared our independence in the most powerful document of political history.  For the first time in history a nation was founded on the premise of God-given inalienable rights for all, at least on paper.  No government can in justice take away our rights because no government has given us our rights.  They are from God! 

          And yet today, in the middle of the “Fortnight of Freedom” that our Archbishop, Cardinal Timothy Dolan has declared, let us take heed of the threats to our heritage of freedom.  They are real.  The President claims the right to order the assassination of anyone he deems a “terrorist,” foreign or US citizen, with no review, no appeal, no need to explain or justify.  Since 1215 the British government has been obliged to justify imprisonment, no less execution.  US law is based upon English Common Law, including Magna Charta.  Good-bye, habeas corpus!  Good-bye, Magna Charta!  One hundred and sixty-eight men are being held in Guantanamo Prison in Cuba, most of them, admittedly, simply because they are Muslim, of Oriental ancestry and in the wrong place at the wrong time.  They have been there for over ten years despite the lack of any evidence that they have committed any offense!  They are there because we simply don’t know what to do with them.

          Ours is the most wealthy country in the world, in world history, so we pride ourselves!  According to one standard that is correct.  But if you take the aggregate wealth of the nation and divide it up among the citizens, nowhere near!  Norway is the richest country in the world by that calculation.  In quality of health care, we have the best in the world, yes, for those who can pay for it; for most of us it ranks about 36, just ahead of Slovenia according to the World Health Organization. 

          Having destroyed Iraq in order to save it, we are now at war in four countries.  We spend as much on war, wars past, current and future, as the rest of the world combined.  That money could heal our sick, educate our young, create jobs to repair our crumbling infra-structure and see to a dignified retirement for our aged workers.  And yet, college students graduate burdened by debt they may work their lives to liquidate and we congratulate ourselves that they will not have to pay 7% interest on their loans, only half that for the next year.  And thereafter?  As for religious freedom, Catholic Air Force officers are forced to sign a pledge that they will not hesitate to launch nuclear weapons of mass destruction upon command even though their use has been condemned unequivocally by the highest teaching authority of the Church, the Second Vatican Council . 

          These are crimes against life itself, at least as much as contraception.  Everyone knows our Church’s stand on abortion and contraception.  How many know our stand on nuclear weapons?  The Vatican has informed the United Nations that there is no longer any legal or moral justification for the production and maintenance of nuclear weapons!  

          Yes, our religious liberty is indeed under threat.  Habeas corpus is under threat.  Magna Charta is under threat.  The planet itself is under threat.  Why all this hullaballoo about the Affordable Health Act?  Do you sense a lack of proportion here?  W

Faith Works!

11 Sunday B  #92

Ez 17, 22-24

Ps 92

2 Cor 5, 6-10

Mk 4, 26-34

Peter Maurin Farm
June 17, 2012

Deacon Tom Cornell

                   Happy Fathers’ Day!  When a man becomes a father it changes his life.  It changes him.  He takes his first look at the little creature reddish and wrinkly at his wife’s breast and he knows, but it takes a while before the enormity of it all sinks in:  life has changed;  he’s no longer the man he was.  Women seem to understand these things instantly.  It takes us men a little longer.  We know we have been given a mighty gift, to be co-creators with God and our wives, co-creators of a new human life.  We have taken our place on the ladder of life, passing on what had been passed on to us from all generations since the beginning of time.  Knowing this gives us a feeling of deep satisfaction, worth, happiness.  May that feeling be renewed in all fathers today and stay with you all.

                   Jesus taught us to call God “Our Father,” and so we do.  But we know that God is neither male nor female.  He is neither a man nor a woman.  God is spirit, to be worshiped in spirit and in truth.  Our God did not create and then walk away.  God is involved in His creation.  Like an earthly father, God provides and protects.  He led the People out of slavery in Egypt.  He gave the People the Law, and then He gave his only begotten son over to us that we might have life everlasting through faith in him.  But God has a feminine side too, nurturing and comforting, like a mother hen who would gather her chicks under her wings, as Jesus put it of himself.  

                    In Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians today we read, “…we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one might receive recompense according to what he did in the body, whether good or evil.”     

          In today’s Gospel we hear Jesus compare the Kingdom of God to a field of wheat.  The farmer scatters the seed and of its own accord, he doesn’t know how, it grows until he can harvest another crop.  The seed the farmer scatters is our good deeds, the works of mercy, feeding the hungry, giving shelter to the homeless, visiting the sick and imprisoned and counseling the doubtful, forgiving injuries, praying for the living and the dead and so forth, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.  We need not know how, we need not even see the results, ever, but these will build the Kingdom of Heaven until Jesus comes again to bring it to fulfillment.  But we can’t do them without faith.  And so with the mustard seed.  Faith, as weak as it may be, can be nurtured and grow to sustain great deeds.  Without faith we can do nothing and faith is a free gift, a grace of God, Paul tells us (Rom 3, 21-26).  Pope Benedict in his encyclical, Spe salvi, Saved by Hope, he tells us the same.  By hope he means a confident expectation, faith.  So what is it?  Are we saved by faith or by good works as Paul seems to imply in today’s reading?  

          Theologians have been teasing this question for centuries.  Good works will flow from authentic faith firmly held, but faith is itself a gift, a grace freely given.  However we understand the relation of faith with works, in the end we must neither presume nor despair.  These are sins against the Holy Spirit.  We presume if we say, “I’m saved.  It doesn’t matter what I do, what I have done.  My sins are paid for by Christ’s blood.   I won’t be called to account because I believe.”  That’s wrong!  That’s a grave sin.  But it would be just as grave a sin to despair:  “I’m so bad, I’ve done such horrible things in my life that not even Christ could forgive me!  So I might as well keep being the wretched creature I am and keep doing the same damned thing. ” 

          Jesus stands there and knocks at the door.  Do not dare to lock it.  He wants to enter and sit down with you at the table.  If you have any doubts about that, bring them to our new pastor, Father Bassett.  His door is open, the deacons’ too.  And be glad, rejoice and be glad.  We have a Savior and we have an Advocate, the Holy Spirit of God, and we have a Church community holding each other up.  We have the Word in Scripture and we have the Bread of Life at the altar table.  Come and be filled!   W