Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 18:1 - 8

Mother Theresa got n appointment to see the president of a large corporation and used her time to ask him for a sizable donation to her charities. He told her that this wasn't a good time for such a donation because the future of the company was a little uncertain. She thanked him and left. Later as he was leaving his office he saw her sitting there in the waiting room. “What are you doing here,” he asked. She replied, “You told me that it wasn't a good time for a donation, so I'm waiting here until it will be a good time.” She got the donation. She knew how to pray always. But maybe that's not what this parable is all about.

I don't want you to call me a heretic, but one of the things I don't like about Saint Luke is that he always tells us why Jesus told a particular parable. If you know something about how the gospels were put together, Luke, like the other evangelists, was writing the story of Jesus for a particular audience, in this case, for gentile Christians. Luke is also concerned about the poor, those who are outcasts, those who are neglected by society at large. When he tells the story of Jesus, he uses the information he has in order to make his point. Is the Holy Spirit there? Of course. Does Luke;'s gospel reflect what God wants us to know about his will for us? Of course. Does Luke's interpretation of why Jesus told a particular parable reflect Jesus' own reasons? Maybe not always. Because Luke has collected the parables Jesus told, and he has the framework of the Gospel of Mark, and he wants to show the Gentile Christians that they are as much welcome in the Christian community as the Jews, and he wants most of all to show those who read the story of Jesus that Christianity is about caring for those who can't defend themselves, those who are helpless, at the margins of society.

This parable on the surface seems to say that if we bother God enough, He will come through. If we pester and beg and nag, we'll finally win Him over. But our human experience is not like that. We all have had prayers that have seemingly not been answered; we've all been disappointed by God. Some of us finally give up and stop praying; others continue to pray, but make excuses for God. “God always answers our prayers,” we tell each other, “but sometimes the answer is 'no'”. And Luke is to blame, He is the one who tells us that if we nag God hard enough He will give in.

But for a moment imagine that you are hearing this story from Jesus' lips. You have not heard the introduction to the story that Luke gives. Look at the story with fresh eyes. Jesus makes sure we know that the judge doesn't fear God or man. And he is unjust. He takes bribes, he condemns innocent people, he can be bought. Does that sound like God? Not really. In fact, it sounds a little bit like a lot of people I know, people who might think about God on weekends but not the rest of the week. People who make compromises, people who look the other way when injustice is happening, people who don't want to rock the boat, who are great at coming up with excuses. “Those drug addicts brought their troubles on themselves.” “Those undocumented immigrants should have known better than to break our laws and enter our country illegally.” “I know that there are people who need help, but even if I gave everything I had it would hardly be a drop in the bucket.”. In fact, it sounds a lot like me. Saint John Chrysostom said that if we have two outfits and our neighbor has none, one of our outfit belongs to our neighbor. If that is the case, there are about nineteen people who have a share in my wardrobe. I am the unjust judge.

And who is the widow? Maybe the widow is God. Maybe the widow is standing outside constantly nagging at me to change my ways. Maybe no matter what I do, no matter how I try to shut her voice out, she never stops, she persists, she doesn't give up. She wants my sinful soul, she wants my heart, she wants me, and won't give up until I am hers or until I definitively reject her when I die.

Should we pray always? Of course. But we should pray in response to God's constant overtures to us. We should pray because we want to know what God wants from us, what is his will for us. And we should pray because we owe God, in justice, our whole beings, everything we have. And we should pray in the humility that we probably can't love God the way we should, but we can at least love Him in our own fallen, selfish and human way. And that may be enough, because the unjust judge responds, not because of justice, but because of shame, of fear, of public opinion.

God wants us and will take us no matter what our reasons turn out to be – just so we give ourselves freely to him.

The poet Francis Thompson was a drug addict and an alcoholic, and in order to keep body and soul together, sold newspapers on the streets of London. He had a conversion experience, stopped using drugs and alcohol, and spent the rest of his life between the tabernacle and helping other street people. He wrote poetry, and his most famous poem was the one he called “The Hound of Heaven”.

I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him”.

But God pursued him, in the words of the poem, "with unhurrying chase, and unperturbed pace, deliberate speed."

As the poem goes on, the author cannot shake the Hound of Heaven, who keeps pursuing him no matter what he says or does, no matter where he hides, until he finally gives up, at which point he surrenders himself to the relentless pursuer, who turns out to be a perfect lover.

If I am the unjust judge, there is no hope for me. But if God is the widow, there is hope, because God will not stop banging on the door and calling out to me until I answer with justice and mercy of my own.

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 17:11 – 19

In my family we were taught from infancy to say thank you whenever we received anything, and you probably were as well. It got to be second nature, and could be said without actually thinking. When you move around among people similarly trained, you don't notice the thank-yous; but when someone doesn't say thank you for something obvious, it's very noticeable.

To me the story of the ten lepers is puzzling for that reason. Nine did not return to give thanks. Nine lepers had been spared an agonizing and slow death. They who had had to avoid healthy people, even members of their own families, could now return to them. Their hearts should have been overwhelmed with gratitude. After all, they had cried out in desperation to Jesus, probably having heard that he could heal people, and they had obeyed him when he told them to go and show themselves to the priests. I don't know how far they had gone when they realized they were healed, but it couldn't have been very far; the whole story seems to unfold in a short time.

Why did the nine not return? You can think of some possible reasons. Maybe they were so overwhelmed at their good fortune that they wanted to rush home to their families and couldn't wait. Maybe they were angry with God for all the time they had been lepers, and didn't feel grateful; they felt like it was about time God intervened. Or perhaps they felt like the miracle came from somewhere else; after all, all Jesus did was tell them to go show themselves to the priests. He didn't order the leprosy to leave their bodies; he didn't lay hands on them, he didn't do anything that they could see. Or maybe they were just ungrateful people. But nine out of ten did not return.

One thing we learn from this episode in Jesus' life is that God expects us to have grateful hearts. Jesus himself often thanked the Father for events in his own life; even though he is God, he noticed when something good was happening and thanked the Father, who is the source of all that is good. And that should be our default as well – to give thanks.

God doesn't need us to thank him. He pours out his blessings on saints and sinners alike. We don't hurt his feelings when we don't thank him. But like everything God wants from us, he wants us to be grateful precisely because it moves us in the right direction – towards him.

And I have a ways to go in the gratitude department myself. I don't remember to thank God for the constant blessings that come into my life – my health, my wife, my family, the fact that I live in a warm house and eat well and have a little extra to help out my grandchildren – there is so much I should be thankful for, and I should be thanking God for. And I don't, not as much as I should. And there are times when I am like those nine lepers and my interior attitude is “what have you done for me lately, God?” Or “there are a lot of things you could be doing, God, to make my life better; why don't you?'

But one thing we forget is that we should thank God for the bad things that happen as well. That's what I like about the stories of the martyrs. The martyrs of Korea sang hymns and encouraged each other with cheers as they hung upon their crosses. One martyr in China was kept in a bamboo cage and taken out and tortured every day. He could have stopped everything if he would have trampled on a crucifix. Instead he would sing a song of gratitude when he was returned to his cage. Saint John Jones of Wales was sentenced to be executed by hanging. At the scene of the execution the hangman could not find any rope. During the hour that he was looking for rope, Saint John Jones thanked God that he had another hour to preach the gospel to the people who had turned out to watch. \ A lot of the martyrs recognized the truth of what Saint James said: “Every good thing comes from God.” And Jesus promised over and over again that Our Father would not give us bad things; and that nothing happens without God permitting it; and God loves us with an uncompromising, infinite love. And that means that even when we are burning at stake, hanging from a cross, about to be beheaded, or rotting away in a prison somewhere, God is behind this and God wants us to go through this precisely because he loves us and somehow what we are going through will make it more likely that we will enter into union with God, that we will enter eternal life.

Granted, it's really hard to thank God for something devastating, like being diagnosed with cancer, or learning that you have Alzheimer's disease. It's hard to see that being fired from your job or having a child of yours leave the faith may be part of God's plan for your salvation. But if we keep those principles in mind, principles taught by Jesus himself, that God loves us, that nothing happens without God;s permission, that because He loves us he wants us with Him for all eternity, that he is all powerful and all knowing.

How do we thank God for catastrophe? It starts with developing a grateful heart. We practice gratitude by making it a point to reflect on the past. How often were there times when we dreaded what we were about to go through, and after the event, we realized that the outcome was good in the long run. And then we thank God for that. Once we begin to glimpse, however dimly, how God has worked in our lives, we have gratitude.

Gratitude is recognition of God's involvement in our lives. God wants us to be grateful because the more we recognize God's good work in our lives, the more we desire to respond to his love for us. Louis Martin, the father of Saint Therese of Liseaux, himself a saint, told his priest that he was concerned that he had had a wonderful life, and very little suffering, and how could he ever hope to become a saint without some suffering. A short time later he had the first of many strokes that lead to helplessness and the loss of his mental facilities. And he thanked God for that, and according to the Catholic Church he is enjoying the company of the saints for all eternity.

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 17:5 – 10

This is one of those gospel passages that make you wonder how any of the apostles stayed with Jesus. They make a perfectly reasonable request. Jesus has been talking in parables – the prodigal son, the rich man and Lazarus, and several others we've heard. He just finished telling them that if they scandalized a child, it would be better that they have a millstone put around their necks and cast into the sea; and he told them to forgive over and over again, without limit. And the apostles, probably pretty confused by now, ask what you and I might ask – increase our faith.

And Jesus seems to reply with a flat out insult, and then a few verses in which he seems to compare the apostles to worthless slaves.

There have been many times I've wanted more faith. During my years taking care of cancer patients, how I wished I had the faith that allowed some saints to work miracles of healing. I still wish I had that kind of faith. And other times I've wished I had the faith to really understand some of the great mysteries of our religion – the Trinity, the Incarnation, how Jesus' death saves us, how Mary can be Virgin and Mother; what really happens when someone dies – what will happen when I die. And I've wanted the faith to see how to hate the sin and love the sinner – comes up all the time these days. And there have been other times when I've wished I had more faith because of my worries and anxieties – and I hear myself telling other people who are worried and anxious, “Have faith!”

Like the word “love” which can refer to my wife and children, to my car, to my job, to my pet, even to my favorite food, the word “faith” can mean a lot. And I guess you have to ask what Jesus means by faith. It seems like he often tells those who have come to him for a miracle that they have faith. He tells the foreign woman with the bleeding problem that her faith has made her whole. He tells his apostles in regard to the centurion who wanted his servant healed, “I have not found greater faith in Israel”. He tells a blind beggar, “Your faith has made you well.”. And what is common to all these individuals is that they turned to Jesus, trusting that He would do for them what he had done for others. For Jesus, faith is not working miracles, knowing how God can be one and three at the same time, or a remedy for anxiety and worry. For Jesus, faith is turning to him in trust.

And You all know that when I get confused by the gospel, I try to find out what it might have sounded like in the original Greek, and this is no exception. The words “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed” could be better translated as “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed – and you do”. Jesus is saying “You have all the faith you need” or maybe “you can't measure faith like a bunch of apples – it isn't quantifiable.”

And Jesus compares the life of faith to the life of a slave – and in those days slavery was taken for granted. Some people owned other people. Some were captives of war, some were people who had sold themselves in exchange for food and a place to sleep; and some were working off a debt that they could not pay in any other way. And we've met many slaves in the bible. A slave's life was not terribly exciting; some were treated well and some poorly, but you pretty much knew what you would be doing that day when you woke up. And you knew that if you did a lousy job, you might be beaten or mistreated; but if you did what was expected, things would go along as they had before. You would do your job, you would eat and drink and sleep and do your job again. And in those days, in that time, being a slave was preferable to starving or begging or other undesirable and even sinful ways of life.

And Jesus is probably telling his apostles that faith is not something you have, it's something you do. It's supposed to affect everything you do. It's the complement you offer when you didn't have to say anything. It's the taking time to listen to the person in the nursing home who doesn't make a lot of sense. It's getting up on Saturday morning and preparing food for shut-ins and people who are grieving. It's holding a pro-life sign in front of the abortion clinic on a cold afternoon. It's holding your tongue when you have the perfect words to put someone down who just said something you don't agree with. And you live this way because you trust Jesus, you believe that he can take little things that you do or don't do and make them great. And that's all that is expected of you – to do the little things and trust.

There is a current in Christianity that sort of expects that if I do something good, something worthwhile, something that brings the kingdom of heaven a little closer, I should be rewarded for that. The whole story of the New Testament is that we are given everything, free of charge, because Jesus took our place on the cross and conquered sin and death; we can only lose heaven if we choose that. But part of being a Christian is that we conform ourselves to Christ. We allow Christ to work in us and through us. And the good that comes from our actions really comes from Christ in us, working to do the will of his father. We just have to be open to all those moments every day that we can choose to act like Christ, or choose to act for ourselves. And acting like Christ is the default for someone who has been baptized into his life and death.

Their are several gospel translations around. When they all say slightly different things you begin to ask what did the original say? That's not easy to answer; the original is in Greek, and the Greek of 2000 years ago, with a totally different context than our own. But one scholar says that the words “unworthy servants” or “worthless slaves” really should translate as “slaves who aren't owed anything.” And Jesus is saying that when we do what we have been commanded to do, that is it's own reward.

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 16:19 – 31

I look at Facebook four or five times a week. I don't put much on facebook but I enjoy seeing what members of my extended family post. And there are a couple of communities I enjoy – one is for permanent deacons. A few days ago I ran across something called “global rich list”. It's a calculator that allows you to enter your annual income, or alternatively your total net worth, and find out how you stack up against the rest of humanity. I'm ashamed of where that puts me – but I think you would be as well. Face it, we Longmeadow people, even relatively poor ones, are way up there in the top 5% in terms of how rich we are.

Today Jesus in a few words paints a picture of a rich man – dressed in purple, when the only way you could get purple dye was to collect a certain species of shellfish and extract the dye; and fine linen, which was very expensive because it was spun from very fine threads, which took a lot longer than the coarse material most people wore. And while our gospel reading says “he dined sumptously” the actual Greek text says “he made merry in luxury” or as we might say today, every meal was a party. So to me he doesn't look like a mean-spirited king or a conniving merchant – he looks round and silly and oblivious to his surroundings, thinking primarily of himself.

Lazarus is a caricature as well. In fact he sounds a lot like Job, from the Old Testament, who was reduced to sitting on a pile of manure scratching himself with a piece of broken pottery. And I think Jesus is deliberately painting these extreme pictures. Notice that Jesus names Lazarus, the only time a person in a parable had a name. And Lazarus means “God is my helper”.

Now it sounds like the rich man went to hell and Lazarus to heaven. But that is not what Jesus says. He says they both ended up in Hades – which means “the netherworld”. There was a common belief that people went to a temporary place after death. Some people said that's where you spent eternity; others said that you would eventually move on – perhaps to reincarnation, perhaps to resurrection, as some Jews believed, or perhaps to something more in keeping with our concepts of heaven and hell. But a lot of people including many Jews believed that you had one final chance to learn what you needed to learn and move on to a good end. And I think when we look at this story, we can see that.

After all, if Jesus is trying to show us how to avoid hell, we never find out why the rich man is there in the flames. If all he did was enjoy life and burn through his money, does he deserve eternal punishment? I hope not. And he calls Abraham his father, and Abraham refers to him as “My son”. The bond between the holy patriarch of the Jewish people and the rich man is not broken. And there is that interesting reversal; “you had your good things during life; and it's Lazarus' turn now.” This doesn't make sense – if laying around having dogs lick your sores and longing for the crumbs of the rich man's table is enough to have eternal happiness.

And with Jesus' parables we often try to see which character we relate to. We don't relate to Abraham, we don't relate to Lazarus, and I would venture to say we shouldn't relate to the rich man either. We may be rich, but rich as we are, I think most of us would not step over a beggar on our porch and most of us would not spend our money on horribly expensive clothing, and most of us would not have a wild party for ourselves and throw food on the floor every day. And most of us do try to give something back – money, time, talent – we aren't oblivious to the fact that there are people in trouble, and most of us try to do something about that.

I don't think the rich man is burning for all eternity in hell. I think he is learning a lesson. He starts out seeing that he is in torment and Lazarus is up there with Abraham. He recognizes that he is supposed to be there – he doesn't ask to get out, he just wants a drop of water. And when that doesn't happen, he finally begins to think of someone else – his brothers. And he says that if someone rises from the dead, they will surely repent. And in the context, if they repent, they will change the way they see things, they will see their own Lazarus and be moved to take pity on him. And Abraham says, in effect, now you are catching on, that's why they have Moses and the Prophets. And Jesus ends the story there.

So who should we identify with? I think it's the brothers. I think this parable is a reminder that the most important thing about religion after our duty to God is our duty to our neighbor, the neighbor who has a name, a name we don't yet know. The neighbor who is loved by God just as much as He loves us, just as much as he loves the greatest saints, just as much as he loves the Blessed Mother; because God loves with His whole being, with all the love of which he is capable. A few weeks ago we heard about how Jesus shocked the pharisees because he sat down and ate with sinners. This was not because the Pharisees wanted nothing to do with sinners. They had a saying: “It is a good thing to feed a sinner who is hungry. It is an evil thing to sit down and eat with him.” The Pharisees thought that shunning a sinner was the best way to bring him back to righteousness, to rejoining the community. Jesus disagrees. Jesus wants each of us to be responsible for our brothers and sisters – on a personal level. And that is a real challenge.

We each have our Lazarus. Do you know his or her name? Do you step around him or her when you go out of your house or place of work? Or will you change the way you see things, which is what repentance means. And reach out to him or her in love.

I think the rich man will eventually learn his lesson and join his brother Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham, because God is infinitely merciful. But you can think what you want. Just recognize your brother. Once you learn his name, you cannot do otherwise.

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 16:1 – 13

We've just heard the parable of the unjust steward. Saint Augustine wrote a commentary on this parable, in which he said he could scarcely believe that Our Lord said these words. Saint Augustine was taken aback by the fact that Jesus seems to be praising someone who is dishonest, and furthermore, tells his followers to make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth. And if you can't be trusted with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth? You can see where Saint Augustine was having problems. But he isn't the only one. If you look at others who have commented on this parable, they are all over the map about what it means. And I don't know which interpretation is right either. But I think that's the point of Jesus' stories. They all deserve to be thought about, pondered over, and we should never stop at the first interpretation that comes to mind.

Jesus' audience lived in a time when there were very very rich people and people who had very little. They took that for granted; there wasn't really a middle class. The rich man was probably a land owner and had tenant farmers. They were allowed to grow things on his land provided they paid the rich man a commission – usually a large one, but what choice did they have? The rich man was probably barely able to read and do any kind of accounting, so that's what his manager did. And the manager made his living by taking part of what went to the rich man. Some people say that when the manager writes down the debts of the tenants, he is basically writing off his share of what they owe. Others say that he is playing fast and loose with his master's wealth, and that is probably what got him in trouble in the first place. But I don't think that we need to dwell on that. Some writers say that the steward is unjustly accused; after all, the master is acting on rumors and fires his manager without allowing him to respond to the rumors. But of course Jesus later refers to him as dishonest. But that is not the point either. I should point out that the word “dishonest” is a translation from the Greek word which literally means “unjust”. Luke has made it clear in other parts of his gospel that he thinks all wealth is somehow “unjust” because as long as some people have more than others, there is injustic in the world.

The point is that the steward found himself in trouble with a very bleak future. He was still the manager of his master's wealth, because his employment would seem to be terminated when he gave his master an accounting for his stewardship – so he used that position to prepare for the future. And what he did was pretty clever. First, he used his position to bring about gratitude in the tenant farmers. He knew, even if he was dishonest, that if you did something that made another person grateful, they would most likely feel that they were in your debt. When we feel in someone's debt, we are uneasy until we pay them back, and if we can pay them back with something more valuable, we feel at rest. So the steward brings about gratitude – probably significantly, because these were desperately poor people. But the other thing he accomplishes is to leave the impression that what he did was ok with the master. The master saw the cleverness of the steward, and that's probably why he commended him. If he had gone to the tenants and said that the steward was not acting on his authority and he wanted the originally agreed upon commission, it would stain his reputation; he might lose the tenant farmers to another rich person and he'd be in trouble. He would be seen as untrustworthy. So his only choice would be to smile and keep quiet when people told him how great he was for forgiving part of the debts that were owed him.

The steward is shrewd and clever, and takes care of his future, at least his future on this earth. And when Jesus says, “Make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings” it isn't that you are supposed to become friendly with it, but use it to make friends with those who can welcome you into eternal dwellings – and we know from other places in the gospel of Luke that he is talking about the people who can't pay us back on this earth, the poor, the outsiders, the abandoned; it's another way of saying “lay up your treasures in heaven”. And when he says, “If you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth?” he is pointing out that what has been given to us by almighty God, which we tend to think of as somehow related to our talents, our efforts, our cleverness, is not really ours – and we are stewards who will have to give an accounting.

And Jesus leaves us with that saying that always makes me nervous: “You cannot serve both God and Mammon.” Because the real lesson of the parable is that the steward used all his resources, all his cleverness, everything under his control, to achieve an end which at best would keep him in comfort for the rest of his life, or at least till he had another job. And because of Original Sin, you and I are always tempted to pay a lot more attention to the things of this world than those of the next. Here we are – and we are at least here giving an hour of our week to God. And here we are – and we are at most giving a small fraction of our income to build up God's kingdom; and the rest of our time and our treasure will be used to further the material goals of ourselves and our families. I'm not saying that's a bad thing; I'm simply pointing out that there is a danger here, because Our Lord makes it clear that there is no in-between position. Even when we are immersed in our day to day lives and have forgotten about Sunday Mass and the parables of Jesus, we must still be putting His kingdom as our priority. What he has given us must, in the long run, be used to serve Him.

So this is a good week to reflect upon our relationship with our money, our possessions, and indeed, the poor and the outcasts who have a claim on our wealth, because after all, what we do for them we are doing for Jesus Himself.

Twenty - fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 15:1 - 10

A telemarketer called a random number one day and a little boy answered.

“How old are you,” said the marketer?

“Five”, the boy replied.

“Could you let me speak to your mother?”

“No, she's busy.”

“How about your father?”

“He's busy too.”

“Do you have any older sisters or brothers?”

“Yes, I have a sister, but she's busy.”

“Is there anyone there I can talk to besides you?”

“Well, there are some police and firemen here, but they are busy.”

“Why is it that everyone in your house is busy?”

“They are all looking for me.”

We have the option today of reading the first two stories Jesus tells, or reading them along with the parable that we refer to as “the prodigal son”. I know you all are very familiar with that parable, because that's usually the one we preach about. But maybe today we should concentrate on the first two parables, about the shepherd who loses a sheep and the woman who loses a coin. Sometimes we interpret these stories as being about how God never gives up on sinners, or people who have left the church. That's probably a reasonable conclusion. But maybe we should think about what is really going on here.

First, Jesus is responding to Pharisees who are scandalized because he eats with sinners. The Pharisees had a saying, that if a sinner was hungry and you fed him, t hat was a good thing; but if you sat down and ate with him, that was a terrible thing. What they meant was that if you sat down and ate with the sinner, you were in a sense condoning his sin, and the best hope for winning him back was to show him that he wasn't welcome among the righteous. In another scripture Jesus says something similar when he talks about what to do if your brother offends you – remember? You make attempts to have him see that he's done wrong, and when nothing works, you treat him like a gentile. So the Pharisees are scandalized by Jesus, who seems to accept sinners as they are, and is making no effort to show them that they are sinful. And that brings on the parables.

Out west in the cattle drives ranchers would have their cowboys drive their herds to market. Usually several ranchers would combine their herds. It was expected that a few cattle would be lost in the drive; and I'm sure it was true of shepherds, as well. A man shepherding a hundred sheep would expect to lose a few. So our shepherd is totally out his mind, leaving the ninety nine to go after the stray. And the thing about the woman with the coins, each worth about a day's wage, is not that she would look all over for the coin – if you lost a fifty dollar bill you would probably look as well. But after she finds the coin, she throws a huge party, probably costing a lot more than the coin. She's out of her mind.

And remember, in both cases the sheep belongs to the shepherd, the coin belongs to the woman. I think Jesus is talking about you and I, not necessarily public sinners, people who have left the church, people who are in need of conversion. Really and truly, do you get lost sometimes? I do. I get lost all the time. Sometimes I feel abandoned by God; sometimes I fail to trust Him. I feel lost when my ministry doesn't seem to bear fruit. When someone close to me dies, I feel lost. People get lost in addiction, in anger, in the failure to forgive. And some of us get lost right here in church when our prayers seem dry and we begin to wonder if God is really here. We are in good company, though, because Mother Theresa wrote in her correspondence with her confessor that she felt like that a lot. I think lostness is part of the life of faith, it's normal, it's natural, and we need to recognize it. Because, you see, that was the Pharisee's problem; they refused to believe they could be lost and maybe sometimes were lost, and therefore they had no need to be found.

But think also about what these parables say about God? He experiences loss. Isn't that amazing? When I am in need of being found, God goes looking for me, because I am his, I belong to him. And God would leave the ninety nine behind to find me, and God would have a lavish celebration when he finds me.

For the Pharisees, God will only step in and involve himself with you when you follow all the rules, when you get rid of all your uncleanness – not only must your behavior conform to God's rules, but so must even the thoughts of your mind. But for Jesus, God is not what the Pharisees expect; he is out looking for his own. He is where his lost ones are. And even if we don't want to be found, like the little boy, He's still looking for us, because that is God, the busy God, the one who never gives up, who goes wherever he has to, even to dine with sinners, to rescue what he has lost.

This week reflect on where you might be lost, and as you do so try to see how God is there, working right in that part of you that needs to be rescued, and you might see that he is working in you to restore what is his.

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 14:25 – 33

My dear wife decided that we should re-organize our garage and paint it, so that's what I've been doing this past week. I should point out that when we moved into our house in 1984, there was stuff in the garage from the previous owner. Much of it was left-over vinyl siding which I saved, never knowing when I would have to replace a piece. There were chunks of wood as well, which I did not throw out, having grown up with a grandfather and a dad who both did not throw out wood, in case they would ever need it to build something. We then proceeded to cram thirty-five years of other stuff in the garage. So as I was beginning to clean out the garage I ran across two suitcases that we had purchased the first time we took a couple of grandchildren on a trip – they were seven and five. As I looked at them, I thought, these are full of memories, I'll keep them. My dear wife quickly brought me back to reality, pointing out that the grandchildren were now in college and we had a whole closet full of newer and better luggage, which we did not use. So I agreed to take them to the Longmeadow swap shop. When I got there the man told me to toss them in the trash bin, because they got suitcases all the time. I thought about bringing them home, then with a pain that tore through my very soul, I tossed them in the dumpster. There is a point to this story.

The gospel of today reminds us of Saint Anthony of the Desert, Saint Francis of Assisi, and countless other saints who literally renounced their possessions, left their families and carried their crosses and followed Jesus. But not all the saints renounced everything, or left their families, although I suspect everyone who gets to heaven has to carry a cross. And while Jesus' words are harsh here, we hear him in other gospels telling us that the important thing is to believe in him, to trust him, and it says nothing about family or possessions. And that is the emphasis of Saint Paul as well.

So I think of the Martins, Louis and Zelle, the parents of Therese of Liseaux. They are canonized saints – they are in heaven, but they lived a very middle class life, not wanting for much; they raised eight children and made their living running a business that manufactured items made of silk. Louis ran the business end and Zelle the factory; they employed people, they had friends and relatives, and if you had met them you would be impressed, I'm sure, but you probably wouldn't see a relationship between this passage from Luke and their lives. Of course they bore their crosses. Zelle died of breast cancer just a few years after Therese was born; Louis spend the last part of his life physically and mentally impaired. And you can think of other canonized saints who acted as though they had missed the class when this gospel was taught – Saint Margaret of Scotland; Saint Louis of France; Saint Henry of Bavaria, Saint Stephen of Hungary, Saint Thomas More – they all had lots of possessions and families they cared about.

So what does this gospel, these seemingly harsh words of Jesus, have to do with us? I don't hate my relatives, although there may be one or two ... I hope I'll be able to carry my cross, but I haven't renounced my possessions. Is Jesus just being hyperbolic? Is this mere rhetoric?

I think we need to look at the other part of this gospel, the part about the tower builder or the king. Jesus is giving reasonable advice here; before you begin something, make sure you will be able to finish it. And I think this puts the other words in context.

In the language of Jesus' time, the word “hate” didn't mean what it means today. It was more like Jesus would have said, “You must prefer me to even those you love; and when he calls on us to renounce our possession, it isn't like the young man whom he told to sell all he had and give it to the poor; renounce is a different word. So I think for you and I this gospel should lead us to three questions:

Are there people in our lives that we prefer to Jesus? A child, a spouse, a best friend whom we could not envision ourselves without? How do they get in the way of our relationship with Jesus? They may not even be aware that they are in the way. The fact is that everyone with whom we have a relationship is potentially a rival of Jesus. So we have to evaluate our relationships in view of this possibility.

The second question: are there possessions standing between you and Jesus? If you are like me, probably. That was the point of my suitcase story. I can go through my home and find things I've had for years and have no more use for, and yet, I hang on to them for sentimental reasons, or because I might possibly have a use for them in the future, or maybe one of my grandchildren will need it. My own children, by the way, have expressed no interest in taking any of my stuff. So attachments can slow us down, they can distort our thinking; and as Jesus told us in another passage, store up treasures in heaven, not here on earth.

The third question: am I prepared to carry my cross and follow Jesus? Some of us are already bearing heavy crosses, and others, like me, very tiny ones. But we all have crosses. There are circumstances in everyone's life that they would rather be different. We can name our crosses, and they can get in the way of our relationship with Jesus by leading us to self-pity or despair. Or, and this is the greatest thing about Christianity, we can use our crosses to draw closer to Jesus. My mother used to tell me when I scraped my knee as a little kid and came to her howling, “Offer it up”. We all knew in those days that there was something about suffering that could potentially draw us closer to God. And when we take advantage of that, with His help, we are walking with him to Calvary and then to resurrection.

So Jesus tells us today to be wary of people, possessions and pain, because they can all get in the way of our being his disciples – or, if our perspective is right, they can help us be better disciples.