Homily for Sunday- July 18, 2010

The Sixteenth Sunday of the Year (C)

A Jesuit from the Chicago province related that a father came to a parent-teacher conference in one of our Chicago province Jesuit high schools. During a talk with one of his son’s teachers, the father broke down and began to cry. After he regained his composure, the father apologized saying, “My son, no longer lives with me. But I still love him, and I want to know how he’s doing in school.” The father then told the teacher how his wife and four children had left him that afternoon. He was a building contractor and sometimes worked 16 hours a day. Naturally, he saw little of his family, and they slowly grew farther and farther apart.
Then the father said something very sad. He said: “I wanted to buy my wife and kids all those things I had dreamed of giving them. But in the process, I got so involved in working that I forgot about what they needed most: a father who was around at nights to give them love and support.”
I recently talked with a Stanford Business School alumnus who told me that his staff psychologist for his firm told him that he had better take a sabbatical or he will never really get to know his teenage sons. They will be gone before you know it, and so he did.
These true stories illustrate the point of today’s gospel reading. We can get so involved in what we are doing that we forget WHY we are doing it. We can get so involved in living that we forget the purpose of living. We can get so involved in pursuing the things money can buy that we forget about the things money can’t buy.
It is this kind of mistake that Martha made in today’s gospel. She got so involved in cooking and working around the house that she forgot why Jesus had come. He didn’t come for a free meal; he came to be with friends. I don’t know what it is, but mothers and fathers about 20 or so years ago had a beautiful ability to balance the material things and the spiritual things of life. But today, unfortunately, we live in a far different world and have to be more conscious of this need for balance.
It is so easy to lose our balance in today’s world. And it’s so easy to lose our perspective. It’s so easy to get our priorities mixed up. It’s so easy to lose sight of what we are doing and WHY we are doing it.
During World War II, a young soldier was stationed on the island of Saipan, north of Guam. He said that during his time off, he and his friends used to go for swims in a secluded spot, just off the steep cliffs of the island. It was a lovely place surrounded by rocks. When they arrived the water was so clear that they would see the fish ten feet below the surface. After they had swam for an hour, the water became so clouded with sand, churned up from the bottom, that they couldn’t see a foot below the surface. But the next day, when they returned for another swim, the sand had settled. The water was crystal clear again.
I believe that sometimes our minds get like the water. It, too, can get so clouded up from the turmoil of everyday living, that it’s very difficult to see things clearly. We lose sight of many things. Our perspective gets clouded; our priorities get confused; our balance gets out of kilter. What we need to do when this happens is to pause and let the murky waters of our minds become clear again. We need to do what Mary did in today’s gospel. We need to sit at the feet of Jesus in quiet prayer. We need to let Jesus teach us anew what is important and what is not. St. Teresa of Avila said: “that if we want to live a balanced life, we need both Martha and Mary in our lives.”
What if we have become so involved with things that we have lost the habit of prayer and reflection?
What if we have forgotten how to sit quietly and think about things? Is there anything we can do to learn how to pray once again?
We can begin tonight by employing a simple method of prayer that has helped many people rebuild the habit of prayer and to recapture the art of praying. I would like to describe it: Each night before falling asleep, let us take three minutes to do three things.
During the first minute, we pause and do a mental replay of our day. We pick out the day’s high point, something we are happy about, like getting a card, letter or e-mail from an old friend. Then, we speak to Jesus about it very sincerely. Finally, we conclude by giving thanks to Jesus for the letter and the friend.
During the second minute, we do a second mental replay of our day. This time we pick out the low point in it, something we may have done, that we are sorry about, like being edgy at work for no reason, or being sharp with someone. We speak to Jesus about this and ask Him to forgive us and heal us.
Finally, during the third minute, we look ahead to tomorrow or to a critical point. We think of something, maybe difficult we have to do, like talking with our children, spouse, boss, employee, friend about some sensitive issue. We speak to Jesus about it and ask His light and strength in dealing with it.
This simple method of prayer has helped many people rebuild the habit or prayer and to recapture the art of praying. The wonderful thing about this method of prayer is that it puts us not only back in touch with life, but also back in touch with Jesus.
John O’Neil in his book “The Paradox of Success: When Winning at Work Means Losing at Life” writes, “one of my perks was a company car, and I was inordinately proud of this badge of success. I loved to give my associates rides – what’s a perk without strutting? And I wanted my driver to be another friendly admirer, part of my supportive audience.”
“No matter how much I tried to chat with my driver, however, he remained distant, responding correctly but coolly. Finally, I asked him if there was a problem. Had I offended him in some way? He tried to duck the question, but eventually responded with classic New York directness. He said, “all you seem to think about or do is work and it doesn’t even look like you enjoy yourself. I guess you’re nice enough, but frankly, from my point of view, your life is really boring.”
A man tells this story. On a kayaking trip in the Apostles Islands in northern Wisconsin, my wife and I were talking to our tour guide as we ate lunch on a remote beach. I mentioned how unusual it was to have no television, no newspapers, and no radio. “In fact,” I said, “it’s going to be strange to return home and find out what’s happening in the real world.” NO one spoke for a few minutes. Then without taking his eyes form the horizon, the guide commented, “ I assume that’s what you came here for.”
A visitor to a Trappist Monastery was talking with the novice master. What’s the student monks’ biggest complaint, the novice master was asked. The senior monk replied:
“They have to up at 2:30 in the morning to attend Matins and Lauds, the Church’s early morning Prayer. They aren’t too happy about it. They tell me it’s much better when they’re in the fields, and they feel the ecstasy and love for God and hallelujah and so on. So I said to the, I forbid you to come to any services now except for the obligatory Masses.”
Well, after a while the novices came back and said to their superior, “We didn’t come here to be farmhands.” “What happened to your ecstasies?” the master asked. “They dried up,” said the novices. The novice master helped the young monks understand that it was what they were doing at 2:30 in the morning that gave them such joy and fulfillment in the abbey fields. This little story was found in “Spirituality and Health”, March-April 2007.
The novices – and Martha – and all of us come to realize that it is the awareness of God’s presence in our midst – the ‘better part’ that gives meaning and joy to every dimension of their lives. It is the things of God that should define the events and decisions of our lives – not the other way around. May we, too, seek the ‘better part’: the love of God that enables us to work our “fields” for the benefit of all and to make and keep our households as dwelling places of God’s peace.