Our Gospel reading begins with very harsh words. Jesus turns around to the “great crowds” tagging along with him and tells them: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” There are times after reading a passage such as this that I am less than cheery proclaiming “the Gospel of the Lord!” Especially for first year students, who recently have left fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, these opening lines come across as anything but “good news.”
One challenge for us is to move beyond the aggressive word “hate” and the particulars of family relations and get to the demand for radical detachment Jesus is making on those who want to be disciples. As the Gospel of Luke continues, it is this detachment from all other claims on our time and affections that will distinguish disciples from the “great crowds” that make up Jesus’ entourage. And for first century Christians, losing fathers, mothers and siblings were not unrealistic demands but often the result of baptism. One question that should nag us as we prepare for Sunday is “what are the attachments that compete with our unconditional love of Christ?”. From what do we need to be detached if we are to be a disciple and not just part of the throng?
Last week, CNN published an article on their website that made the rounds of emails and the blogosphere. Princeton Theological Seminary professor and ordained minister, Kendra Dean writes in her new book Almost Christian that American teens are embracing a watered-down version of Christianity she calls “moralistic therapeutic deism” which stresses being nice and boosting self-esteem. They have been imbibing this “almost Christian” point of view from well meaning parents and pastors and has resulted in general incoherence and indifference. The findings are based on the National Study of Youth and Religion and warn that because “many teenagers thought that God simply wanted them to feel good and do good,” they are not passionate about their faith and are likely to abandon it when life throws them a curve ball. You can read the CNN article here.
Both the article and the study have generated plenty of controversy. I wonder about how applicable some of the categories are to Catholics (though we tend to be cool on the passions we are not indifferent!). But in light of this Sunday’s Gospel on the cost of discipleship, it does raise the uncomfortable question whether we are reducing the values of the gospel to simply “being nice.” One hopeful observation of Dean’s is that young adults are more than capable of being inspired by a demanding message-in fact, they are asking for it.
Fr. Peter Walsh, CSC is an Assistant Chaplain at Saint Thomas More, the Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale.
First, welcome back to our blog, which has been on hiatus for the summer! As we begin this new academic year, we hope that this blog will continue to be a resource for sharing insights and ideas in campus ministry! Remember that you are always welcome to add comments to keep the conversation going.
As we look to the Sunday readings, we can be overwhelmed by the practicality of them. Both the wisdom literature in the book of Sirach and the Gospel parable about hospitality can lead us to wonder if we are reading an advice columnist rather than the Bible! And yet this focus is a great one to welcome students into a new year of sharing faith and food in our campus ministry settings.
The word that links both the reading from Sirach and the Gospel is humility. Because of a word that sounds similar to it–humiliation–humility tends to have a bad reputation. Add to that the ways in which people show a false humility, a self deprecation that is in fact self promotion, and students can be quite confused over the meaning of this message. And yet, in Christian tradition, humility is a virtue because it calls us to a fair assessment of our lives–both our shortcomings and the gifts we bring to the table. Humility calls us to be honest with ourselves and with others, to be grounded (as the etymology of humility suggests).
Standing on the ground, we level the playing field which allows us to be truly hospitable. Many of our campuses are welcoming new students this weekend. For some it is tough to remember how daunting that first year of college. The focus on humility helps us to remember, to place ourselves on level ground, and imagine ways to welcoming newcomers to our communities. What are some of the ways in which you are welcoming new students to Catholic life on your campuses?
Between Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday are nine days of prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit–the first “novena.” Today we are on day 5, the midpoint of the novena. I’ve been praying the novena by using prayers posted on the blog of a pastor of a parish in Concord, MA. If you haven’t been praying the novena–or if you are from one of those provinces that celebrated the Ascension on Sunday, you can find days 1-5 of the novena here. Fr. Austin’s blog is an excellent resource of pastoral materials and insights–I highly recommend it. Plus, he is a fellow Domer!
Pentecost this year falls on commencement weekend here at Yale. What a great celebration to send forth graduates! Our prayer is that they will continue to develop the gifts of the Spirit and offer them in service to the Common Good as they live out their vocation.
The first reading from the Acts of the Apostles has such vibrant imagery of the descent of the Spirit, which overturns the babble of Babel and allows the disciples to speak the gospel message with one voice. A few weeks ago, I came across the YouTube video “Lux Arumque,” in which voices all over the world are joined together into a “virtual choir” by Eric Whitacre. The video offers us a parable of sorts on the power of the Spirit.
I think Katie anticipated me with her video last week!
Fr. Peter Walsh, CSC is an Assistant Chaplain at Saint Thomas More, the Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale University.
Our gospel reading this Sunday is taken from the Last Supper discourse in John’s Gospel. Having just washed his disciples’ feet and after dismissing Judas, Jesus gives his disciples a “new commandment” to love. This context is helpful for us to understand what is “new” about this commandment and why this love is to be the emblem of discipleship. How are we to love? We are to love others not only as we love ourselves. We are commanded to love one another as Jesus loves us. It is by this sacrificial love, by our loving service, that we will be known as disciples.
Last week I had a conversation with one of the professors here who is well known for his rapport with students. He told me that the best advice he got when starting out was from an older professor: “just love the kids.” Every year brings with it some disappointments. We make mistakes. We struggle with the task of having to communicate a decision that some won’t like. We have to give students the bad news that the idea they have for a program doesn’t fit in the budget or can’t be done the way they want it. In spite of these challenges, the one thing that will remain with them is our love for them.
In these remaining days, before students make their own departures, may we be challenged by this new commandment and take advantage of every opportunity for charity.
Fr. Peter Walsh, CSC is an assistant chaplain at Saint Thomas More, the Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale University.
Our first reading has the apostles leaving the Sanhedrin “rejoicing that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name.” What an amazing approach to persecution that they are displaying! They are living the beatitude “blessed are you when men revile and hate you because of me.” For most of us, we need some distance from difficult times to the point when we see something good coming out of them.
A year with many challenges is coming to a close. Our campuses have been troubled by budget concerns; our ministries have tried to respond to any number of crises. We have prayed in support of campuses that have suffered the death of students, some by suicide. Our Church has been called to account again for a history of abuse. Perhaps it is too soon to try to draw out something good from these experiences of suffering. But we know that it is the paschal mystery to do just that.
In our gospel this Sunday, Jesus is able to transform the three fold denial by Peter into an affirmation of Peter’s love. In doing so, he gives us a model of redemption. It is not that in redemption, we lose the experiences or tendencies that have led us to failure. Rather, they are themselves brought into grace.
Shakespeare, in his play “As You Like It” has these great lines about the hope that we may expeirence triumph out of adversity:
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
I would not change it.
Fr. Peter Walsh, CSC is an assistant chaplain at Saint Thomas More, the Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale University
This Sunday has many names. It is the Second Sunday of Easter in the current calendar. It is also known as “Low Sunday” since it is the second Sunday in the Octave of Easter. Traditionally, it is called Quasimodo Sunday after the introit (”quasi modo geniti infantes”–as newborn babes) in reference to the neophytes. Continuing to refer to the newly baptized, it is called Domenica in albis, because the neophytes continued to wear their white baptismal garments through the Octave of Easter. It is also known as “Thomas Sunday,” because of the prominent role St. Thomas plays in the gospel. Of course, it is also called Divine Mercy Sunday in part because of the gospel message about the forgiveness of sins and in special reference to the devotion that St. Faustina encouraged for this Sunday.
This is a Sunday that bears a lot of weight with those rich titles. Can it bear more weight? Like many other preachers, I grappled with the question of to what extent I should refer to the ongoing media frenzy about the abuse scandal in the Church in my homilies of Holy Week. On the one hand, I wanted the important message of redemption to be central to the liturgies of Holy Week, especially the Triduum. On the other hand, I knew students were very concerned about news reports that probed the behavior of Pope Benedict XVI when he was Archbishop of Munich and head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. They were and are at a loss to respond to classmates who question them about the scandal. Does our silence about the problem of abuse add to their confusion and dismay? I decided to dedicate some of my homily on Easter Sunday to a simple acknowledgment of the abuse and mismanagement and my own dismay that such behaviors could have happened in the Church.
It struck me, as I began my preparations for this Sunday, that the gospel for Divine Mercy Sunday has something important to say about abuse and the tendency by previous generations in the Church to hide abusive behavior rather than subject the Church to scandal. The very wounds that Thomas insists to see and feel, that remain part of the body of the Risen Christ, become the focal point in the gospel. The wounds are not hidden; rather they are brought into the light and reckoned with. St. Augustine makes an insightful point in one of his homilies on this gospel passage:
Now we may ask: could not the Lord have risen with a body from which all marks of wounds had been erased? No doubt he could have; but he knew his disciples bore within their hearts a wound so deep that the only way to cure it was to retain the scars of his own wounds in his body.
The Divine Mercy is, in the words of Henri Nouwen, the image of the wounded healer. That image is one that we need to have as we continue as a Church to respond to the victims of abuse and confront this difficult history.
Fr. Peter Walsh, CSC is an assistant chaplain at Saint Thomas More, the Catholic Chapel & Center at Yale University.
This Sunday, we celebrate Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday. In the Church calendar before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, these were two different feasts. Last Sunday would have been Passion Sunday and the two weeks prior to Easter formed a mini season called Passiontide. Older Catholics remember Passiontide most for the veiling of statues in churches, since the representation of the human body in sacred art depends on the hope of the resurrection. In a way, this practice anticipated a bit of the starkness of Good Friday and Holy Saturday, as we deprive ourselves of other signs of the resurrection–the linens that drape the altar, holy water in our fonts and, most importantly, the Eucharist itself.
This Sunday brings together the joy of Palm Sunday and Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem with the reading of the Passion from the Gospel of Luke. We move very quickly from singing “hosanna” to proclaiming “crucify him.” The homily for this Sunday is always very brief. We need some time to catch our breath, as it were. Since we no longer have “Passiontide” to ease us into this mystery of Christ’s sacrifice, we do need to provide students with a way to come to some understanding of the events of our faith that we begin to celebrate this Sunday and continue through the Triduum.
Tomorrow, March 24th, is the thirtieth anniversary of the martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. Much has changed since 1980 when he was killed by right wing death squads in El Salvador’s ugly civil war that was a battleground for the Cold War. Among the many events that mark the passing of time since then has been the birth of most (all) of our students. For some of them, their knowledge of Romero is scant, if they have any at all. Perhaps they watched an episode of “The Daily Show” last week where he spoofed the decision of the Texas School Board to remove references to him from school text books because no one knows about him. But those much has changed, his witness, which cost him his life, is a timeless reminder that the Passion of Christ we celebrate continues in the lives of Christians today. Archbishop Romero’s anniversary gives us a bit of a “passiontide” this year.
Fr. Peter Walsh, CSC is an assistant chaplain at Saint Thomas More, the Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale University.
First off, I’d like to say that I have always taken comfort in the fact that when confronted by the Pharisees about what to do with the woman caught in adultery, Jesus procrastinated! One of my spiritual guides once wisely told me “why put off until tomorrow what can be done the next day?”. I don’t mean to validate every form of procrastination, but there is something about letting a problem sit for a while.
Can we learn something from Jesus’ hesitation in the midst of this confrontation? Rather than directly answering the question posed, he waited in a kind of holy silence. He preferred to let the mercy of God “droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven” until it could have its effect. In our culture, where instant responses and sound bytes are valued, there is something countercultural and consoling about Jesus waiting in silence.
Along with last Sunday’s parable of the prodigal son, this gospel makes clear that the theme of Lent is mercy. The mercy of God is something we all know about intellectually, but do we know it experientially? And if we do know it in our own lives, how do we communicate it to those who are struggling with the reality of sin? Is simply restating it enough? One of the most overlooked parts of a homily–at least a component that I often overlook–is silence.
Fr. Peter Walsh, CSC is an assistant chaplain at Saint Thomas More, the Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale University
As Katie mentioned in her blog yesterday, she had the privilege of crafting the 100th post of this collaborative blog. I have the joy of posting 101, which as you all know is the number often given for basic undergraduate courses (basket weaving 101). A number of years ago, one of our interns devised a catechetical program titled Catholic 101, which was an attempt to update young Catholics on some basic information about the faith. Topics ranged from prayer forms and liturgical celebrations to Catholic Social Teaching. You have to begin somewhere and 101 is a good place to start.
As I write this, Yale is on a two week spring break. Many other campuses have spring break somewhere in the middle of March. That means for many of our students, the season of Lent includes an interruption for some time with families, fun in the sun, or service projects during an Alternative Spring Break trip. But while our communal celebration of the season is in hiatus, it is helpful to remind students that Lent doesn’t take a break! While it is popular to think that “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” the reality is that certain experiences have a way of staying with us for quite some time. More importantly, campus ministers have to be sensitive to ways of incorporating experiences students have during break once they return to Sunday Mass. How do we incorporate references to spring break into the homily or the prayers of the faithful in ways that help students bring some reflection to their time away and the choices they made during break?
This Sunday’s readings from Cycle C speak eloquently of choices–good choices and bad choices. As the first reading reminds us, the people of Israel continued to keep the Passover celebration even during their pilgrimage through the desert and into the Promised Land. Well, not ever one remained faithful, but some did! As they enter the land of Canaan, their faithfulness to God’s call out of slavery and to the covenant God established finds fruition in the promised land. No longer are they sustained on manna; now they will enjoy the fruit of the land. Just as much as want posed a challenge to their fidelity, prosperity–and the choices they will make with the wealth of the land–will pose equally difficult choices. Much of what the prophets criticized about Israel some centuries after this Passover remembrance is their failure to be faithful to the great value of solidarity and their responsibility to the common good with the wealth that the land would provide.
In the gospel, some of these choices get played out in dramatic fashion. The younger son burns through his inheritance at break neck speed and finds himself destitute and desperate. The older son, though obedient to his father and frugal in his management of wealth, doesn’t quite live up to being faithful, in the sense that he hasn’t internalized the values of gratitude and compassion so clearly evident in the father. Sometimes even the right choices we make fall short when we do so grudgingly or in a way that is judgmental of or ignores the needs of others.
As much as he is criticized for showing partiality, the father is the only one who makes good choices with both sons. His bountiful compassion is like a land flowing in milk and honey, which is our great hope during this Lenten season.
Fr. Peter Walsh, CSC is an assistant chaplain at Saint Thomas More, the Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale University.
This Sunday, our chapel uses the readings from the Third Sunday of Lent, Cycle A because of the scrutiny that will take place during the liturgy. Rather than offer comments on the readings this week and forcing the choice between A and C, I thought I’d offer some thoughts on preaching the first reading.
Among the many liturgical initiatives that came from the Second Vatican Council, the call for a fuller reading of the Bible at Mass–especially incorporating readings from the Old Testament–realizes a cultural shift as important as the use of the vernacular. Not only did the expansion of the lectionary give Catholics a greater appreciation of the Word of God, but along with Nostra aetate it signaled a renewed respect for our “elder brothers in the faith,” the Jewish people.
The rubric used by the drafting committee for choosing readings from the Old Testament give priority to the gospel reading. The first reading is chosen for how it connects to the gospel. Preachers tend to follow this rubric and focus on the gospel text and use the first reading as a gloss. But the GIRM clarifies that the homily can be based on any of the three readings, in addition to the feast celebrated or on any text of the Mass. What happens when the first reading becomes the focal point of the homily?
In my experience, what happens is that rather than using the first reading to explicate the gospel, the first reading becomes a necessary context for understanding the gospel reading. The gospel passage is returned to the Jewish theological and cultural milieu of which it is an integral part. When the theology of the first reading is given its due, the paradigm shifts a bit but the result is a richer appreciation of the gospel. By preaching on the first reading, we gain a healthy modeling of the relationship between Old Testament and New Testament as well as between Jews and Christians that is consistent with the goals of the council as expressed in Sacrosanctum concilium and Nostra aetate. It is always a challenge as a Christian to preach the first reading, by giving the theology of the Old Testament full credit, but I often hear much appreciation for both the explication and the vibrancy it adds to the homily.
Fr. Peter Walsh, CSC is assistant chaplain at Saint Thomas More, the Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale University.
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