topleft05.jpg (18208 bytes)HOMILY
Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
14 November 10
 


 

In the book and movie, Tuesdays With Morrie, the successful sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press, Mitch Albom, related a tidbit of wisdom that Morrie Schwartz, Albom’s terminally-ill former sociology professor at Brandeis University and mentor, uttered during one of Albom’s Tuesday visits: “Everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it.  If we did, we would do things differently.”

What might that be?

Schwartz quotes his favorite poet, W.H. Auden: “We must love each other or perish.”

Like Morrie Schwartz’s used this gem of wisdom to evaluate his life when confronting his mortality, one of Jesus’ statements in today’s gospel offers a metaphor we might use to evaluate our lives, as all of us are mortal.

When you leave church today and get settled in at home, take some time to engage in a little experiment.  Sit down in a comfortable chair or on the couch and take a really good, hard look all around.  Do this slowly so that you can consider each and every item you see.  The furniture.  The pictures.  The books and the trash can.  The paintings.  The lamps.  The chair in which you are sitting.  The television.  The plants.  The carpet or hardwood flooring.  The warmth and the light or the cool and the shade .  The computer.  The telephone.  The fur which the cat or dog recently shed.  Take your time to take in the panorama of all that provides your comfort and security.

The statement Jesus made in today’s gospel, “All that you see here—the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down,” referred to the Temple in Jerusalem, adorned as it was with costly stones and votive offerings.  But, consider Jesus’ statement from this perspective: All that you see in that panorama and perhaps have worked so hard to acquire—everything which you value—one day will be gone.  None of it will remain.

So, how does that make you feel?

Several generations back, immigrant Catholics—most of them from Europe and perhaps they were our great-grandparents or grandparents—flooded into our nation’s urban centers.  Within a very short period of time, they built strong and vibrant Catholic communities.  These were called “neighborhoods” and most were defined by the local parish and its boundaries.  Many of these Catholic immigrants were poor, but they built large, beautiful, and ornate churches reflecting their ethnic heritage.  Even though all of these edifices were “Catholic” churches, each was distinctive in its architecture.  “Bigger and better” meant “more like the ‘in the old country’” but also allowed the immigrants feel “nearer my God to thee.”  Considering the money spent to adorn these churches with costly stones—imported marble was highly prized—and votive offerings—statuary and stained glass windows, also imported—there is little doubt these immigrant Catholics took great pride in their neighborhood, their parish, and their church.  The steeples of these magnificent places of worship dotted the skylines of our nation’s cities and towns.  And, the higher the steeple reached into the heavens, the more pride their communities felt.

Yet, within a period of just a couple of generations—a very short period of time in human history—most of those churches are now stand closed and empty.  Some have been sold to other Christian denominations.  Some have been turned into mosques or put to a variety of uses, including restaurants, offices, and trés chique boutiques.  More than a few have been brought down by the wrecker’s ball.  Moreover, what provided those Catholic immigrants so much meaning came to mean absolutely nothing to their progenythat’s you and me.  Like the people in Jerusalem during Jesus’ day, the Catholic immigrants who built their communities and houses of worship through the sweat of their brow would never have believed destruction of this magnitude possible.

Today, many of our elderly parents and grandparents share a similar experience.  No longer able to take care of themselves or their homes as they used to, many now confront the reality that they have to leave the homes they constructed and in which they built their marriages and raised their families.  It’s now that season of their lives when it’s time to give up what gave so much meaning and to move on to what they all know is an inevitable fact, but many would rather deny.  (In the monastery, we call it “moving into the ‘launching pad’.”)  And, like those Catholic immigrants, most of our elderly parents’ and grandparents’ possessions mean little, if anything to their progeny.  Sure, some may be given away; but, the simple fact is that most will be relegated to the landfill.  Believe it or not—and I personally know this to be true because many elderly persons have told me—they hope to “hang on just long enough,” their goal being to die at home and avoid having to confront the inevitable fact that everything which gave them so much meaning over the years and decades, now means very little, if anything, to anyone else.

In this regard, many of our young people resemble many of our elderly.  Just tell a young person that something which provides security and comfort is about to change.  “We’re going to have to move, honey,” a parent might say.  In these tough economic times, many parents have told a child: “We can no longer afford to pay tuition, so you’re going to have to transfer to the public school.”  Upon hearing these and other, similar statements, the first thoughts that cross the young person’s mind burst forth almost instantaneously from that young person’s mouth in the form of the question, “Why are you doing this to me?”

The simple fact is that almost all of us regale very much in all of those material things which provide so much security and comfort.  Yet, what we fail to consider, to one degree or another, is that we also happen to live in fear of losing those material things.  And, when we do lose them, the pain we experience reveals a very sad truth.  Even though we all know these things don’t last forever, none of us wants to believe it.  As Morrie Schwartz observed, “If we did, we would do things differently.”

That’s why, when we hear Jesus say, “All that you see here—the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down,” we think to ourselves, “Well, that’s all fine in so far as it concerns the Temple….”  But, just as quickly, we put out of our minds and don’t contemplate those temples we have constructed for ourselves and adorned with costly stones and votive offerings.

Those generations of Catholic immigrants as well as many of our elderly and our young people as well fail to realize how all of these material things transform very quickly into idols we worship, yet also keep us from constructing something that is truly important.  Graucho Marx once said, “You’re dead a very long time” and, in light of Jesus’ statement in today’s gospel, the truth may be that many of us have already been dead for a very long time.

How so?

We’ve spent too much of our time constructing temples adorned with costly stones and votive offerings which, although they bring us much comfort and security, will perish just as we all will perish.

When Jesus spoke about the Temple’s destruction, no one could imagine anything damaging this sacred building where heaven and earth intersected and God’s shekinah shined. Yet, around 70 a.d., the Romans did just that.  They not only destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem but they also killed more than 1.1 million Jews during the siege and made captives of more than 97,000 additional Jews.

Morrie Schwartz said to Mitch Albom, “Everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it.  If we did, we would do things differently.”

What would that be?

Build more temples?

Likely not.

Schwartz answered the question by quoting his favorite poet, W.H. Auden: “We must love each other or perish.”

St. Paul relates this insight in a somewhat different way, although the end—“to love each other or perish”—is the same.  In the section of his letter to the Thessalonians which we heard in today’s epistle, St. Paul wrote: “We wanted to present ourselves as a model for you, so that you might imitate us.”  That is, we demonstrate our love for others as we present ourselves as a model for them to imitate.

Think for a moment about St. Paul’s teaching: Imagine the difference it would make for each of us personally and for all of those around us, if we busied ourselves not constructing temples of material things but constructing a temple of the Holy Spirit, one adorned not with costly stones and votive offerings, but a character adorned with virtue—with wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord—so that we would be able to present ourselves to others as models so that they might imitate us.

What is it that we want others to imitate in us?  Our avaricious desire for acquiring things that give us comfort?  Or, the wealth of virtue dwelling in our souls?  Which of these are immortal?

It’s much easier to fret about when we will die or how the world will end, isn’t it, than to contemplate the truth that the temple many of us have been so busy constructing—and filling with the idols we worship because they provide so much comfort and security—is sure to end?

“All you see here—the days will come,” Jesus said, “when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.”

Nothing in this world will last, no matter how desperately we wish to believe the opposite or hope that we will die before it all comes crashing down to its inevitable and final end.  But, as we construct that temple of the Holy Spirit that is adorned not with costly stones and votive offerings, but a character that is adorned with virtue, Jesus teaches, “[by] your perseverance you will secure your lives.”

 

 

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