God Sees and Looks Kindly Upon Every Person

Zacchaeus! Come Down from There! 

Sermon by Fr. Joseph Mungai

31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Oct. 30, 2016

St. John the Apostle Awasi Catholic Church, Kisumu Archdiocese, Kenya

Today’s gospel reading (Luke 19:1-10) presents us with the encounter Zacchaeus had with Jesus which led him to his radical conversion and transformation.

Jesus was passing through Jericho when Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore tree just to catch a glimpse of Him. Similarly, Jesus constantly passes through our lives in the experiences we have, places we visit and persons we meet. As  Zacchaeus did, do we go out to meet Him? 

Encountering Christ simply means giving Him

the attention He desires in order for our hearts to be softened and transformed. When we meet Him, we are but the recipients of His divine favour. It is actually Jesus who searches us out to encounter Him. Like the parables of the lost sheep and coin, He is the shepherd looking for his own. But there could be a number of things that prevent that wonderful encounter.

Ordinarily speaking, Zacchaeus -- who was short -- would have seen Jesus if there were no crowd surrounding him. His inability to see Christ did not depend on his short stature, which was no fault of his. 

Instead, it depended on the insurmountable obstacle of the crowd surrounding him.  He needed to get away from the crowd in other to

see and encounter Jesus. This crowd for us could mean a number of things. It could be a relationship, a sinful habit, an environment, an attitude of the mind, an association with a sect or group or even an unsound doctrine or belief that could prevent us from having a clear view of the presence of Christ around us. To encounter Christ therefore, we have to alienate ourselves from these obstacles by aiming to be higher than them as Zacchaeus did. By climbing the tree, Zacchaeus was able to leave the crowd and see Jesus.

Most often, the crowd tends to impose certain limitations on us. These limitations could be in the form of ideologies or the “popular mentality,” which includes the vain feeling of self-pride. Zacchaeus conquered this mentality by humbling himself to climb a tree. Even Jesus had to work against this mentality, which considered it unfit for Him to associate himself with supposed sinners. This merited Zacchaeus the favour of receiving a divine invitation from Jesus.

Biblical scholars have advanced two interpretations of the encounter Zacchaeus had with Jesus in his home based on how one understands the words he addressed to Jesus: “Half of my goods Lord, I give to the poor and if I have cheated anyone, I pay him back four time as much.”

The first interpretation is that Zacchaeus, a sinner underwent a radical conversion and transformation that enabled him to do what the rich and devout Jew of Mathew 19:21 could not do (sharing his possessions with the poor and following Jesus). By implication, an encounter with God could transform us into better Christians. The second interpretation, so much conscious of the expression “if I have cheated …” considers Zacchaeus perhaps as a truly righteous man whom the crowd identifies as a sinner because of his profession as a tax collector. But Jesus truly judges who a man is and not who people thinks he is. Last Sunday, he praised a repentant tax collector against a proud and arrogant Pharisee. Today, he praises a tax collector whom he knows to be a good and generous person.

God truly sees in us unique individuals and not stereotypes. He is more interested in our positive potentialities than in our negative actualities. He wants the best in us because He loves us. The first reading (Wis. 11:22-12:2) reminds us of this fact that the Lord loves all that exist and would not have made anything if he hated it. Though we are sinners, He knows we can be saints if we cooperate with His grace. That is why we don’t have to judge people as stereotypes by condemning them as sinners on account of their profession, race or religion. 

Therefore beloved brethren, like St. Paul in the second reading (2 Thess. 1:11-2:2), let us pray that God may make us worthy of His calling as his children. So that each encounter we have with Him will bring about a radical conversion and transformation in us and qualify us to be with Him at the second coming. Happy Sunday for God loves you.

Sleeping Beauty: Wait for True Love

He Loves Me. He Loves Me Not. 

by Susan Fox 

“I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream

I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam

Yet I know it's true that visions are seldom all they seem

But if I know you, I know what you'll do

You'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream”

 (Once Upon a Dream from the 1959 Disney classic Sleeping Beauty) 

I was that little girl twirling and singing “Once Upon A Dream” at recess on the school grounds the weekend after the Disney movie Sleeping Beauty was released in 1959. 

Six years old, I closed my eyes, danced, and experienced the dream of love. I knew I wanted to be loved forever by one man in marriage. And no other. 

But can a six-year-old marry? Should she marry? No she must grow up. She must learn first to be a friend and how to discern real friendship and its counterfeit: some men will desire her outer beauty, not herself. They will pretend to care. They will try to use her. 

This is a critical choice. Allow your hormones to choose the wrong man and you condemn your children to a lifetime of misery. For the man you choose will help raise your children. He will be intimately responsible for your protection.

Sexuality becomes truly human when it is integrated into a relationship of one man to one woman in a complete and lifelong mutual gift. Chastity allows the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being. (CCC 2337)

Either a human being governs his own passions or allows his lower powers to dominate his life, and then he becomes a slave. In fact, he becomes stupid. And because sexuality is a generative power, how you use it will affect the future of those you will come to love most intimately, your own family. 

I was painting stripes on a parking lot in one of my summer jobs during college, when I overheard a conversation in one of the apartments. It was a mother talking lovingly to her baby to try and protect it from the voice of its father — a harsh drunken voice, speaking to her in a derogatory manner, mocking her in front of the infant. It was a battle of sorts.

Clearly the child was in an unsafe condition and so was its mother. She had made a bad choice. No Prince Charming here. No dream of lifelong love. Not even friendship was possible in that conversation. You cannot love when the love is not reciprocated. The poor woman had fallen into the arms of lechery, and she conceived her child in that compost pile.

Oh but he was gorgeous! And in the beginning he paid attention to her. She was hungry for male attention. She wanted to be loved. Perhaps her father was absent or had

Pope Saint John Paul II

behaved in the same manner. The sexual urge is a force of nature, and the first thing aroused is our emotions. This is called attraction by Pope Saint John Paul II in his book on Love and Responsibility. 

But he may have only reacted to her in a sensory manner. He did not look at her character, her humanity — just the pretty package. She failed to heed the warning signs, and imagined he had virtues and values that he didn’t possess. Or she might have hoped to change him. Their relationship probably reached the level of sympathy or co-passion. Such is purely affective love, in which the decision and will do not play a role. 

They undoubtedly experienced desire, each seeking the missing good in the other. She became his food, a means to satisfy his desire. She failed to recognise the shallowness of his regard. They never became friends. Benevolence is necessary

for true friendship to exist. Not only must you desire a person as a good for oneself (she’s gorgeous! I want her) but also you must above all desire her good. I want her to be happy. I will make sacrifices so that she may be happy. That’s true love. 

She seemed to benevolently desire good for him. She desperately wanted him to love their child and herself. But the problem was that there was no equal response on his side of the equation. So the attraction and desire fell into hatred in his heart.  Concupiscence perverted it. The first born daughter of unchastity is blindness of spirit. He was unhappy, enslaved by his lower powers. 

Did they have similar interests? A common purpose? People tend to bond with others with similar personalities. Gifted with the first woman, Adam’s happy response was "At last! This one is bone from my bone, and flesh from my flesh! She will be called 'woman,' because she was taken from ‘man.’" (Gen. 2:23) It’s hard to tell from the conversation I overheard. 

Love is by nature not one-sided. It is between persons. If both of them had contributed personal love, full of ethical value, to the relationship then their daughter would be raised in a stable and loving  environment. Cardinal Karol Wojtyla — the future Pope John Paul II — called this reciprocity. When only personal utility (the useful good) or pleasure determines reciprocity, he said, then the relationship is unstable. Trust is impossible in that situation. If she had trusted her spouse, she would not have been correcting him using her conversation with the child.

The future pope concluded that we must test love thoroughly before it is declared to each other, and especially before one starts building  one’s vocation and whole life on it.  

Every human being has the dream of reciprocal love. Only a lifelong committed relationship, full of ethical value, to a person of the opposite sex can create a  happy marriage. 

Today, I walked past the anxious spouse of one of our students. His wife is pregnant, and she was sick with the flu. He didn’t go to work. He was staying by her side all day to see to her care.  

That self-sacrificing love is the kind to engender trust. Their baby will be born to a happy family. 

Susan Fox is working on a master's degree in Marriage and Family at the International Theological Institute in Trumau, Austria. 

Interested in studying at the International Theological Institute? You can apply here.

Each student at ITI is only charged 6,000 Euros a year in tuition, but the actual cost of the education is 20,000 Euros.
Donate here
Or in Europe, contact: Dipl. Ing. Alexander Pachta-Reyhofen, Director of Development (Europe), International Theological Institute, Email: a.pachtareyhofen@iti.ac.at

Go Home Justified! Confess Your Sins

Sermon by Rev. John Paul Shea

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 23, 2016

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish, Tucson, AZ

“For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”(Luke 18:14)

In today’s Gospel passage (Luke 18:9-14), we receive a lesson on the importance of humility. 

Our Lord tells a parable about a religious 

leader and a common tax collector who find themselves praying in Jerusalem’s holy temple. Both the Pharisee and tax collector stand facing the high altar offering their prayers and lives to God. 

The Pharisee stands by himself looking up to heaven as was custom delivering a prayer with “I” in every breath. He says, “I thank you that I am not like the others, I fast twice a week, I pay tithes on my whole income.”

Meanwhile, a few yards away, a tax collector prays. Pious Jews regarded such a man as the scum of the earth. He bows his head to the ground, beating his chest, confessing his absolute need for God because of his sins.

He prays, “Be merciful to me God for I am a sinner.” Our Lord Jesus says, “I tell you, this man, the tax collector, went to his home justified rather than the other.” 

Today’s Gospel passage reminds us that the practice of our faith has nothing to do with ourselves. The practice of our faith is instead about conforming our will to the will of God.  Mass, prayer, the precepts of the Church, the commandments, the sacraments -- all that we do as Catholics is meant to conform us to the way of God’s plan for eternal life.

Today’s Gospel therefore calls us to examine our intentions. Do we come to Mass to give gratitude to God for all He has done for us? Do we come to fall in love with Christ and His Church? Or do we come to Mass out of obligation and in boredom? 

God wants us to be happy. He wants us to come before Him acknowledging our weaknesses and our need for His mercy! Our 

Go Home Justified 

Church has the sacrament of Confession. This sacrament is the most perfect opportunity to go home justified as did the tax collector in today’s Gospel.

When we come into Church, do we humble ourselves before the presence of God? Our Lord wants us to approach Him in the Holy Eucharist with utmost reverence. It is the Lord whom we receive! And if we can’t receive our Lord in the Holy Eucharist for whatever reason, we show our Lord much humility when we come up in communion line and ask for a blessing.

In our time today, some Catholics do not walk

humbly before the Lord, but instead challenge Our Lord’s teachings. For example, the Church's teachings on contraception are widely ignore by many Catholics.

Politicians  claim to be Catholic yet publicly espouse beliefs that are contrary to our faith. They support gay relationships and abortion. This is not an attitude of humility, but of pride toward Our Lord and His Church.

My brothers and sisters, the overall message of today’s Gospel is that if we want to grow in our relationship with God, than we

must humble ourselves before Him. Our Lord wants our faith to be real. He wants our worship to be sincere. 

Such humility allows us to become who God made us to be. We  no longer rely on ourselves but on the Lord. In humility, our Lord works in us and through us because our lives no longer become about us but about Christ living in us.

This is what we see in the examples of the lives of the saints. Some -- such as Saint Paul -- had to be humbled before becoming the holy man Christ called him to be. Others such as Saint Therese of Lisieux were living a saintly life since childhood. Yet, what all holy men and women have in common is their extreme desire to humble themselves before Our Lord! 

Just yesterday our Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson, Arizona, processed together under the protection of Our Blessed Mother to pray the Holy Rosary. Next to Our Lord Jesus Christ, our Blessed Mother is the most perfect example of humility. Our Blessed Mother did not seek to do her will. She sought nothing but to do the will of God!

Ordination of Fr. John Paul Shea

My brothers and sisters, let us learn from the example of our Blessed Mother! Let us learn from the saints! We cannot decide right and wrong for ourselves. We must trust the Church. The bottom line is that if we want to enter into the kingdom of Heaven than we must humble ourselves before Our Lord acknowledging that we are nothing without Him!

As we come to receive Our Lord Jesus in the Holy Eucharist this evening, let us recognize our need for humility. We Catholics have been given the gift of eternal salvation! We have been given the gift of Our Lord Jesus Christ present in the Holy Eucharist! Let us never place ourselves and our own self will in front of this great gift! Let us never dare to allow the spirit of pride which is so prevalent in our society today to turn our hearts from living our faith for God alone. “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Christ washing the feet of His apostles. "Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross." (Phil 2:6-8)

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