HOMILY WEEK 28 04 – Year II
Chosen and Loved to be Saints –
Memorial of St. Teresa of Jesus
(Eph 1:1-10; Ps 98; Lk 11:47-54)
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Here are some one-liners that fit the readings today: Some people are kind, polite, and sweet-spirited-until you try to sit in their pews; Many folks want to serve God, but only as advisers; It is easier to preach ten sermons than it is to live one; People are funny – they want the front of the bus, the middle of the road, and the back of the church.
The liturgy today offers us a simple, clear yet challenging message: We are chosen and loved by God to be saints, holy and blameless in God’s sight.
There are some United Nations statistics that remind us how special we are. In 2011, it was announced that 108 billion people have lived in the world. In 2012, it announced that there were 7.2 billion people in the world. We await the next announcement, realizing that we are privileged to be one of those billions of people on the planet, yet individually loved by the creator of this universe.
The first reading adds depth to this specialness. Paul tells us (through the Ephesians) that we are chosen, loved, individually, totally, and unconditionally. We are adopted as children of God. Adoption is an amazing reality, as children born of other parents are taken as one’s own, including all the rights of inheritance of a biological son or daughter.
Paul adds that we are forgiven and redeemed by the blood of Jesus. St. Eugene de Mazenod, founder of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, had a profound conversion experience at the foot of the cross on a Good Friday, as he truly realized for the first time how much God loved him in Jesus and how profoundly he was forgiven. Like St. Paul, that experienced changed his life and led to the founding of a religious order as well as becoming a bishop to serve the church, and especially the poor. One quip put it this way: The best mathematical equation is 1 cross + 3 nails = 4 given.
The Ephesians are a model for us in terms of response. St. Paul calls them saints. We are also called to be holy and blameless, to be saints. The advice that St. Eugene gave to his Oblate missionaries was to help people be first fully human, then Christians, and finally, to become saints.
In the end, we are called to do God’s will, not our own. Our first concern upon getting up in the morning should be, “What is God’s will for me this day?” Step 11 of the 12 Step program reads, “We sought, through prayer and meditation, to improve my conscious contact with God, seeking only the knowledge of God’s will for me, and the power to carry it out.” The late President John F. Kennedy put a similar challenge before the American people: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask rather, what you can do for your country.”
The Pharisees Jesus confronted in the gospel today were just the opposite: full of false pride, hypocrisy, violence, lacking any compassion and focused only on externals. They were just the opposite of the Ephesians, and everything we should try to avoid in our own lives.
Today the Church honors St. Teresa of Jesus who had to deal with perhaps the opposite religious problem in her day, religious laxity. Teresa was born in Avila, Spain, on Mar 28, 1515. Of the many women who exercised leadership roles in the Church, Teresa must surely be considered among the greatest. When she entered the Carmelite convent, some thought Teresa was a spoiled young woman with an unremarkable prayer life, but she soon advanced in prayer and the spiritual life, experiencing visions and hearing voices. Dissatisfied with the laxity she perceived among the religious, she determined to institute reforms and established St Joseph’s Convent where enclosure and a strict rule prevailed. With the assistance of Peter of Alcantara and John of the Cross, she became a reformer and succeeded in founding the reformed (Discalced) Carmelite order of nuns and friars.
There was much resistance and pushback from even her own order. After the chapter in 1575 and for the next five years, every effort was made to destroy Teresa’s reforms and many of her followers (including John of the Cross) were imprisoned and cruelly treated. At length, in 1580 and with the support of King Philip II, the Discalced Carmelites were made independent and St. Teresa was able to found more new convents.
Teresa wrote several works considered classics of spiritual literature, including The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle. A great mystic and strong, intelligent and active leader, Theresa was canonized in 1622 and in 1970 became the first woman to be declared a Doctor of the Church. She is patron of Spain. She died, worn out by her efforts, on October 15, 1582.
The Eucharist we celebrate now is what the saints of Ephesus celebrated with St. Paul – an agape, a meal shared in love as God’s new chosen people.
So let us be grateful, appreciate how special and loved we are by God, and respond by living as saints, holy and blameless in God’s sight.
