Facing up in our own lives to the implications
of Christ’s Woe-sayings.
Just a little footnote or proviso to
start! Chapter 11 of Matthew’s Gospel is about the basic proclamation with its
call to repentance and conversion. There’s a lot which follows from this in
terms of how we should live the Christian life, but the all-important starting point
would seem to be that we’ve got to change our ways and we cannot dictate or
condition Christ’s message. John and Jesus both talk about repentance and
insist that we’ve got to change our ways. What that implies in detail for
various aspects of the Christian life would be another chapter of this talk (Stay
tuned!). Today we are just trying to learn from the example of St. John the
Baptist and get on track, get our hearts in order.
Here is the second half of chapter
11, Matthew 11:15-30!
15 Let
anyone with ears listen! 16 “But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children
sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, 17 ‘We played the flute
for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ 18 For John came neither eating nor
drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; 19 the Son of Man came eating and
drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax
collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” 20 Then he began to reproach the cities in which most
of his deeds of power had been done, because they did not repent. 21 “Woe to
you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had
been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and
ashes. 22 But I tell you, on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for
Tyre and Sidon than for you. 23 And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to
heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades. For if the deeds of power done in
you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. 24 But I
tell you that on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for the land of
Sodom than for you.” 25 At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord
of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the
intelligent and have revealed them to infants; 26 yes, Father, for such was
your gracious will. 27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and
no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the
Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. 28 “Come to me, all you
that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is
light.” NRSV,
Catholic Edition Bible (pp. 2683-2685). Catholic Bible Press. Kindle Edition.
I love in this
passage how Jesus, yes, really succeeds in catching His listeners off balance.
15 Let anyone
with ears listen! 16 “But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children
sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, 17 ‘We played the flute
for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ C’mon,
children! Enough of this gameplaying!
Woe to you! Jesus
says and He does His best to shake these privileged people up, who have had the
advantage of witnessing His deeds of power and yet have failed to repent, have not
been moved by the words of Christ. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you,
Bethsaida!” That is kind of the way things are in life. That John the
Baptist brutalized the Scribes and Pharisees, calling them a brood of vipers,
did not seem to phase in the slightest a goodly part of that bunch. It didn’t
shake their consciences and bring them to conversion. So too with Jesus – His deeds
of power and His teaching attracted to Him, won over to Him His disciples in
goodly number but not much more, you might say. In a sense you could probably
see something of the drama of the vocation crisis in the Church today in this
passage about Jesus’ admonition to the cities from which His disciples came to
Him. Given where we are at, let’s ask the question! Why didn’t Blue Cloud Abbey
survive much beyond the founding generation of monks who came out here from St.
Meinrad’s Abbey? Why did the Abbey age out? Why were the first monks not
followed by South Dakota boys in sufficient number to carry on its mission? Was
it simply a question of overgrazing, too much competition from other
monasteries in the region? Did Blue Cloud go beyond the limitations of what the
land/the Catholic population could support and lose out to the competition? Or
is it, as here in chapter 11, the case that people in the region failed to
embrace the fullness of Christ’s message as proclaimed by His Church? I pose
the question and I’ll leave it up to you to ponder it.
Verses 20-24 are
very much at the heart of chapter 11. They deserve to be repeated.
20 Then he began to reproach the
cities in which most of his deeds of power had been done, because they did not
repent. 21 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of
power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented
long ago in sackcloth and ashes. 22 But I tell you, on the day of judgment it
will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. 23 And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you
will be brought down to Hades. For if the deeds of power done in you had been
done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. 24 But I tell you
that on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom
than for you.”
In
terms of the general and historical question of the life of the Church here on
the prairie, were people not properly taught their faith? John and Jesus both
called their listeners to repentance. How is that supposed to look in the
Church, especially here in Eastern South Dakota? Did our predecessors fail to
pass on the faith in a living and vital manner? That is no simple question and how that is
supposed to happen may not be a foregone conclusion. Given my own personal
history of having been gone from the State for nearly the whole of my adult
life, some would say that sort of leaves me out of the question. You might be
permitted to say, “Archbishop, what do you know? Your almost lifetime absence
from home kind of puts you out of it. What makes you so sure you perceive just how
people who are serious about the faith talk these days? What do ordinary folks
in the pews expect of their priests? Are they dissatisfied with the leadership
of their bishops and priests? What do they really say? Can we summarize the
problem by simply saying that it is it just like in Jesus’ time? Are people
just plain fickle or contrary about accepting the challenge of living by God’s
law? 16 “But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children
sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, 17 ‘We played the flute
for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ I have heard tell that when talking about
Sunday homilies you could hear people say, “Father, enough of that sociological
stuff! Give me that old-time religion! A little more fire and brimstone from
the pulpit, please!” or “What’s wrong with these priests who never talk about
Hell and damnation anymore?” That all sounds kind of brutal and unfeeling but
when it comes to the woes pronounced by Jesus, I guess it is not too far from the
proper appreciation of how the message of the Gospel should be announced
according to the mind of Christ. In this second half of chapter 11, Jesus is
saying, “C’mon, Chorazim! C’mon, Bethsaida! And you, Capernaum, will you be
exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades. For if the deeds of
power done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this
day. Maybe we do owe people the call to repentance squarely between the
eyes.
Just the other
day, I got into a discussion on Facebook with a younger friend, Christopher Wells,
a layman from Aberdeen who works in the Communications Office of the Vatican.
He was saying that the absolute number of Catholics in the Diocese of Sioux
Falls is actually higher by census now than it was back when I was in high
school, when Bishop Hoch built the Minor Seminary. Why nowadays do we have so
few seminarians and even fewer ordinations? With a higher Catholic census, we
should not have a vocations crisis, but we do. Why aren’t young men presenting
themselves for priesthood? If parents were more generous with their children,
if people were more faithful in their practice of the Catholic faith, some even
say there would be no need for all this Set Ablaze business (Which is
not exactly true because of the way rural areas are dying out. Subsistence
farming, which is where both of my parents came from, was always tough but
really has no longer been a thing since after WWII. The death or disappearance
of the small rural parishes is less a crisis of faith and more a demographic
problem. Families are smaller and 110 acres are no longer considered enough to
feed and clothe Mom and Dad and the kids). Might I add, we cannot say that back
in the day, when people generally had fewer material goods, fewer gadgets, they
were necessarily happier, healthier, and holier. They had other problems to
face.
I
am not sure that people back when were better at contributing to the support of
the Church. The statistical breakdown of who contributes on Sunday has not
changed one iota since I was a high school boy. Even back then in his surveys
and studies, Fr. John Kasch of fond memory discovered that our parishes were
being carried by the sacrificial giving of 10% of the people and those were not
even the wealthiest in the parish. Especially in the towns, we learn from urban
legend how in the good old days some people were excused from sacrificial
giving and truly living out their faith, sometimes because their priest did not
think them capable of it. That held true at both ends of the wealth spectrum:
some people were excused, because seemingly they came from nothing both
culturally and economically. Others would claim that relatively wealthy people
kept their priest and parish at arm’s length. They were said to put on airs, in
that they were sure that they had come from something and knew better than the
pastor how this money discourse in the Church and oftentimes also how matters
of faith and basic morality were supposed to go down. 16 “But to what will I
compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and
calling to one another, 17 ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ Nothing new under the sun, you might
say.
The Lord Jesus wanted
all to be attentive to His disciples whom He sent out on mission two by two. He
wanted the disciples to show in their lives and preaching that same greatness
we talked about this morning which belonged to St. John the Baptist, out in the
desert, barely clothed in camel’s hair, eating bugs, and shouting “you brood of
vipers, …repent! We’ll stick to the description of the commission given by
Jesus to His disciples in Matthew’s Gospel and quote 10:5-10.
5 These twelve Jesus sent out with
the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town
of the Samaritans, 6 but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 7
As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 8
Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You
received without payment; give without payment. 9 Take no gold, or silver, or
copper in your belts, 10 no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or
a staff; for laborers deserve their food. Harper Bibles. NRSV, Catholic Edition Bible: Holy
Bible (pp. 2680-2681). Catholic Bible Press. Kindle Edition. They were to look and sound just
like the greatest man born of woman, St. John the Baptist. “Who told you to
flee from the wrath that is to come?” Jesus set the pattern for the work of all
who would cooperate with Him in the establishment of His Father’s Kingdom here
on earth. He wanted Catholics all to live by the Baptist’s motto, OPORTET
ILLUM CRESCERE, He must increase, I must decrease.
Please note! John
the Baptist did not impress by his chasing around the world as he knew it but
rather in living out fully his part as the friend of the Bridegroom, by not
getting in the way, but by letting Christ shine out. The disciples had a modest
or discreet mission. They were not to take their world by storm. So Matthew 10
continues in verses 11-15.
11 Whatever town or village you
enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. 12 As you
enter the house, greet it. 13 If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon
it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. 14 If anyone will
not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as
you leave that house or town. 15 Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable
for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. Harper Bibles. NRSV, Catholic Edition
Bible: Holy Bible (p. 2681). Catholic Bible Press. Kindle Edition.
By rights, this
is where I should start the next chapter of my talk about what should we expect
of a good Catholic. We could go through the 10 Commandments and the Precepts of
the Church. What role daily prayer and love of God and neighbor should play in
your life.
I am not going to
do that because the sticky part is your predisposition. It’s heeding and following
Christ, of allowing Him to be big in my life while I am ever smaller. OPORTET
ILLUM CRESCERE. He must increase.
At that time Jesus said, “I thank
you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things
from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; 26 yes,
Father, for such was your gracious will. 27 All things have been handed over to
me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows
the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. 28
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will
give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and
humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy,
and my burden is light.”
In a sense these
calls to repent and the threats of damnation may all seem very much in your
face. But is that really how it is? Is it not rather that when I get over
myself and bow under His gentle yoke, that all will become better? Give it a
try! Conform your life to that of Christ and like John the Baptist become less
so that in God’s eyes you can become great!
Pray for me as I
do for you!
