The Church of Saint Matthew - Saint Paul’s West Side

11.07.2020 Homily

During the month of November, the church invites us to reflect on our lives and that our lives have a purpose. They have a goal. They are going somewhere. And this month, the church takes us to the 25th chapter of St. Matthew's gospel. There are three stories in that 21st chapter about being awake and waiting and being aware that the Lord is coming. And then the last part of that 25th chapter is Matthew's description of the end of the world and the final judgment, when Jesus calls the nations of the world around him and separates them some on the right and some on the left, like a shepherd separates sheep from goats.
But the point is that the church is inviting us to take stock of the fact that there is more to life than just the here and now. That you and I are made for something beyond what we presently experience. That the fulfillment of what it is to be a human being is to be in union with God. And that as we pass from this way of living to another way of living, a non-physical way of living, we come into union with the living God.
That's our faith. That's our belief. And we're called to order our lives in such a way as to reflect that. So the church says through the scriptures, the moral of the story is stay awake, be alert, be aware, be ready, have things in order.
The older we get, the more immediate that seems. When I was a young person the end of life was not a thing I thought about at all. And the older I got, the clearer it became to me that life is limited. And all of us are called at one point or another, not today, but sometime you pass from this way of living into the presence of the living God. And I think the older we get, the more central that truth is to our lives. The more we reflect about the goal that is within human beings.
Well, every time we gather at the table of the Lord, what we celebrate is not only the mystery of Jesus dying and rising again, not only the mystery of his death and resurrection of 2000 years ago. We celebrate, we celebrate that final resurrection, that final coming to life, that final entrance into eternal life, that all of us are invited and encouraged and are destined to inherit. So as we pray today, we pray in gratitude for the gift that God has given us in leading us, in urging us, in calling us to be awake, to be aware, to be clear about what the real meaning of life is all about.
 
 

11.07.2020 Gospel Matthew Chapter 25

Jesus told his disciples another parable.
The kingdom of heaven is like 10 virgins who went out to meet the bridegroom. Five were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps, but no supply of oil. And the wise ones took both lamp and oil. The bridegroom was delayed, and so they got weary and they fell asleep. After midnight, the cry went out, "Behold, the bridegroom comes. Come out to greet him. And with that, all 10 of them stood up and began to trim their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise ones, "Share with us your oil because our lamps are going out. And the wise ones said, "No, there may not be enough for both you and us. You go into town to the merchants and purchase oil."
So they went off to purchase the oil, and while they were gone the bridegroom arrived and all who were ready went into the banquet with him and the door was closed and locked. Later the others returned and they went to the door and knocked on it and cried out, "Lord, Lord open for us." And from inside the bridegroom says, "I do not know who you are."
The message is, stay awake. You do not know the day, nor the hour.

10.31.2020 Homily

We celebrate today the feast of all saints. Saints are men and women who have lived their Christian life in an extraordinary way. And there are all different kinds of saints, a great variety of saints. But to understand the truth of the gospel, I think it is good to go to those lives of the saints, because they're the ones who, we are told, lived out the truth of the gospel in an exemplary fashion. And I would suggest going to the lives of the saints who are, if you will current, if they are part of our culture, people like Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton, and Walker Percy. And then from a few years back, people like Mother Cabrini or Elizabeth Ann Seton. Those are people who are part of our culture, part of our history, part of what it is that we are. And they in so many others lived extraordinary lives.Well, I'd like to take just a moment this afternoon and reflect on one of them, and that is Thomas Merton. It was November 16th of 1938 when Thomas Merton was baptized and received his First Communion at Corpus Christi Church on 121st Street in New York City. Four of his friends were there. This was early in the morning, it was the early mass. One of his friends, Edward Rice, served as the witness, as the godfather. And three other friends, all of whom were Jewish, were there to share in Thomas' experience--Robert Lax, Cy Freedgood, and Bob Gurdy. Robert Lax would be interviewed many years later and he talked about what he thought drew Thomas Merton to Catholicism. And I would suggest that what he saw in Thomas Merton ultimately occurred in his own life, as he too entered the church years later. He said, "I think the feeling of God's love for the world--God's mercy to sinners; I think that made an actual strong appeal to Thomas. I think it never occurred to him that this was at the very center of Christianity.”Now in Thomas' own words in his autobiography, he writes this, “Robert Lax and I were walking down Sixth Avenue one night in the spring. The street was all torn up and trenched and banked with dirt, and marked out with red lanterns where they were digging the subway. We picked our way along the front of the dark little stores going downtown to Greenwich village. I forgot what we were arguing about, but in the end, Lax turned to me suddenly and said the question, “What do you want to be anyway?” I said, “I don't know. I guess what I want to be is to be a good Catholic.” He said, “What do you mean, you want to be a good Catholic?” Now the answer I gave was pretty lame, and it expressed my confusion and how little I had really thought about it at all. Lax did not accept that. He said to me, “What you should say is that you want to be a saint.” It struck me--a saint. That's a little weird for me. How can I expect to be a saint?” Lax said, “By wanting to be a saint. “I can't be a saint. I can't be a saint,” I said, my mind darkened with confusion. The knowledge of my own sins, the false humility, which makes one say they cannot do the things that they must do and cannot reach the level that they must reach, this cowardice said, “I am satisfied to save my own soul and keep out of mortal sin.” What that really means is I really do not want to give up my sins and my attachments. Lax said to me, “All that is necessary to be a saint is to want to be one. Don't you believe that God will make you what he created you to be if you will consent to let him go do it? All you have to do is to desire it.”The next day, when I went to Columbia University, I spoke to one of our teachers, Mark van Doren. I said, “Lax is going around saying that all one needs to do to be a saint is to want to be one.  Mark Van Doren smiled at me. And he said, “Of course. He was absolutely right.” Well, that's true about every single one of us, there is nothing we have to do to be a saint. God will do it all. What I need to do is to let him do it, to desire it enough to open my heart and my soul, my mind, and my spirit and let him enter in, let him do what he wants to do.Thomas Merton wrote his biography in the early forties, The Seven Story Mountain. It was a best seller throughout this country for months and months. Men and women, Catholic and non-Catholic, were attracted to this book. And the story of his life, his conversion is coming into the monastery. There was something about the Merton story that touched the hearts of people in the 1940s and 1950s. The only time I ever saw my father read a book, I was five or six years old and he had his copy of The Seven Story Mountain. And I remember after supper in the evening, he would sit at the kitchen table and he'd read day after day after day. 
The truth that is found in Merton's biography is the truth that should be found in ours. All of us can be a saint. All it is is that we need to want it.
 

10.31.2020 Gospel Matthew Chapter 5

The Lord be with you.  
The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew
When Jesus saw the crowd He went up the side of the hill, and there He sat down and He gathered his disciples around Him and He began to teach them. He said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit. Theirs is the kingdom of God. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek. They will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and who thirst for what is right. They will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful. They will see God. Blessed are those who are pure of heart, for they shall be called children of God. Blessed are the peacemakers. They will be called children of God. And blessed are those who are willing to suffer persecution for the sake of justice. The kingdom of God is theirs. And blessed are you when people exclude you, defame you, all because of me. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in the kingdom of heaven. It was just in such a way that your ancestors treated the prophets.” 
The gospel of the Lord.

10.25.2020 Homily

Judaism is a religion that is highly contained within the law. The observance of the law is the sign of holiness. The observance of the law is a sign of one's commitment to God. And while there are some major laws, there are so many minor laws as well, over 600. And the Pharisees were people who really were focused on the law. And they really wanted to hold people accountable to the law, a law that was almost impossible to observe because it was so broad, so wide, so multiple, that a human being would find it really difficult to keep it straight.So when this student of the law comes to Jesus. When this gentleman asks Him, "What is the greatest commandment?" he's asking, "Of all of this, what is the hook we hang all of this on? What is the central piece of all of this?" And Jesus gives the answer, the answer which is for the Jew, the Shema. It's the statement of the creed. Hear oh Israel, I, the Lord and Lord alone, you shall love the Lord with all your mind, all your heart, all your soul and all your strength. That's the Shema. That's the creed which expressed the heart of faith of the Jew.If you visit a home of a Jewish family, you will notice that as you go into the house there is a little box on the door. And the Jew will touch that box before he goes into the house and he will touch his forehead and his lips. And as he's leaving the house, he'll do the same thing. He'll touch that box and his forehead and his lips. And in that little box is a small piece of parchment on which the Shema is written. Hear oh Israel, the Lord your God is Lord alone. You shall love the Lord with all your mind and heart and soul and strength.  And what it means is that I pray that my mind, my head might embrace that truth and know it. I pray that my lips, my senses, may express that truth. Well, Jesus goes one step further, and he says there really is a corollary to that command. That the manner in which I demonstrate my love for God is really the way in which I care for my neighbor. And that I'm called to love my neighbor in the same way that I would want to be loved. I would do for my neighbor, exactly what I would want others to do for me.Now the question is, who's my neighbor? And in St. Luke's gospel that question is raised to Jesus and Jesus tells the story of the good Samaritan. You see among the culture of Jesus' time, people saw neighbor as being the tribe, the community, the family, that very defined familial grouping. And Jesus says it's got to go beyond that. It's got to go beyond between your cousins and your aunts and uncles and your relatives and your next door neighbor. It's got to go beyond that. And as we heard in the first reading from the book of Ezekiel, that the immigrant, the traveler, the foreigner is to be seen as my neighbor. That I am to love that person truly as much as I would expect to be loved. As I would care for that person, as I would expect to be cared for. That person may look differently than I do. That person may be of different color. That person may be of different ethnic body. That person may be of different religion. That person may think differently, speak differently, act differently. None of that, none of that absolves me from the responsibility of loving that person in the way I would want to be loved. Going further in that reading from the book of Exodus, God says to the people of Israel that you are to make room for the orphan and the widow, not just within your family, but all through the creation. That the orphan and that widow, the unprotected, those who have no name and no face, and those who have no power, you are to treat them as you would want to be treated. So the call to love one's neighbor is really the call to demonstrate one's love for God in the way in which we treat each other. St. John will say, "How can you say that you love the God whom you do not see, when you cannot love your neighbor, who you do see.” As we pray today, we pray that our hearts may be opened and our minds may be opened, so that we might be able to embrace that truth in our own lives and encourage others by our action to live that truth--love of God and love of neighbor.

10.25.2020 Gospel Matthew Chapter 22

The Lord be with you.  
The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together in a group. And one of them, a student of the law, asked Jesus, "Teacher, of all the commandments which is the greatest? Jesus said, "You will love the Lord your God with all your mind, with all your heart, with all your strength. And you will love your neighbor as yourself. The entire law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” 
The gospel of the Lord

10.17.2020 Homily

The Pharisees continued to try to trap Jesus. They continued to try to get Him to say something that they can hold against Him. Now the difficulty with the Pharisees is they are really wed to binary thinking. A thing must be good, or it must be bad. A thing must be right, or it must be wrong. A thing must be something we do or something we avoid, exclusively seeing the world as black and white. So do we pay the tax or don't we pay the tax?If Jesus says don't pay the tax, then He offends the civil authority. And if Jesus says, do pay the tax, then He offends some of His own people who really resent having to pay that tax. They tried to put Jesus in an impossible situation and He won't have any of it. You see, the problem is that being aware of something is not the same thing as thinking. We think our way through things, but awareness has to do with what's inside us. Awareness has to do with what's in our spirit. And most of things in life are not black and white. Most of things in life admit of great complexity. So how do I hold all of that together? How do I keep all of that without driving me crazy? Well, one of the great mystics of the church, Saint Teresa of Avila, said, "I have come to realize by experience, that thinking is not the same thing as awareness. I had not been able to understand why? If my mind is one of the faculties of the soul, yet it is sometimes restless--thoughts fly around so fast that only God can anchor them. It was driving me crazy to see the faculties of my soul calmly absorbed in the remembrance of God, while my thoughts on the other hand were wildly agitated. Now, when the Buddhists think about this issue, they think about the thoughts and they call it ‘monkey mind.’ "The issue is not thoughts. The knowledge and the truth that Jesus invites us to is a truth of knowing in the heart, a truth of being at peace with the fact of who God is and who I am to God. The fact of being in right relationship with God that allows me then to be in right relationship with others. And what it does is it allows us to take the complexities of life and hold on to them, even though we can't sort them out. 
And it will not drive us nuts, we'll know that that's just the reality. And the reality is terribly complex. And I am not one who is able to sort it out. So I'm just going to hold it. I'm just going to let it be. I'm just going to be at peace. There are so many ways in which our lives are turned upside down by all kinds of images and thoughts and reasons that we end up being frustrated. We end up being anxious. And that gets us nowhere.And most of it is because we have an either/or approach to life rather than a both/and. The morality of the church, the teaching of the church around human action is really not an either/or teaching. It really is a both/and teaching. And how do we hold the seemingly contradictory, but not the seemingly contradictory elements together and not allow it to destroy us? Well, we pray that the Lord might grant us that gift and that we in our own lives might practice the quietness, the meditativeness, the slowness, the emptying our thoughts, and allowing us just to be aware. Aware of what is going on around me, that I don't have to sort it out. But it's important that I be aware, that I be sensitive, that I be accepting. And that I know that some place in all of that is found God.

10.17.2020 Gospel Matthew Chapter 22

The Lord be with you.  
The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew
The Pharisees left and went to plot how they could catch Jesus in his speech. They sent their disciples and the Herodians to Jesus, and they said, "Teacherwe know you are a truthful man. And we know that you teach the ways of God in all truth. We know that you fear not the opinions of others because you do not give regard to people's stature. So now we ask you, is it right to pay the census tax or not?"Jesus knew the malice that was in their heart, and so He said to them, "Why have you come out to test me, you hypocrites? Show me the coin with which we pay the census tax." So they offered him a Roman coin. And He said to them, "Now, whose image and whose inscription is found on that coin?" And they said, "Caesar’s." And Jesus said, "Well then, pay back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and pay to God what belongs to God.
The gospel of the Lord. 

10.10.2020 Homily

The teaching of this parable is about being called, being invited, being welcomed. And what Jesus says is the kingdom of God is like a king who welcomes people into the feast; who calls them into the feast. Now the call is very important, but just as important is the response to the call, saying yes. We're told in the gospel today that people had excuses. One had to go to the farm and another one had to go and do business. St. Luke tells the whole story and St. Luke fleshes it out a little bit. He says, one person said, “ I have bought a farm and now I must go and see it.” Another one says, “I have bought five yoke of oxen and I must go and try them out.” Another one says, “I have been married and I must stay at home.”Now those are not flimsy excuses. Those three excuses would excuse a person from military service. If a person had to tend to his property, if a person had to tend to his livestock, and for the first year after marriage no one was called into military service. But we're talking about very serious things that these people are saying, “I can't come to the wedding because I've got to do this.” Now the secret is that Jesus wanted them to understand that the invitation sometimes calls us to put something aside that is very important for us, or that we think is very important.Most of us don't ever say no to the invitation. Most of us say, well, just wait a minute. Most of us don't walk away, we just procrastinate. Most of us, if we're not going to accept the invitation immediately, we've got something else on our mind or something else on our plate. And we want to get that done first. And then we can answer the call. The fact is that Jesus always asks a little bit more than you and I are intending to give. What He's doing is He's asking for everything. He's saying you're invited into the kingdom, but the kingdom must come first. The response must come first.And if I say no, or if I put it off and I do it again and again, and again, I become more and more deaf to the invitation. Sixty years ago an Italian film, La Dolce Vita appeared--one of Fellini's films. It really is the story of God's invitation. The invitation that Jesus speaks about being made again, and again, and again. The figure is a journalist, a person who has got some reputation in the city of Rome as a journalist. Marcello Mastroianni played that role. Well, the story starts with a helicopter carrying this huge gigantic statue of Christ over the city of Rome. And it's Fellini's way of saying, now the star of this movie is Jesus Christ. The protagonist is Jesus Christ. All the work is going to come from Jesus Christ. And then what happens is over seven days, we see this man's life and we see the invitation to grace that he rejects at one point. And then the following day, there's another invitation to grace. And what we learn is that over a period of time, he becomes less and less attuned, less and less open, less and less sensitive to the invitation. The invitation never stops. The Lord continues to call. He continues to invite. In the last scene, this gentleman is on the shore of the Mediterranean. And what litters the seashore is dead fish.The man's soul was dead. He had closed his ears. He chose not to live. Well that's the message that Jesus is giving to whom? He's speaking to the chief priests and the elders of the people. He's saying, "I am inviting you. Come to the feast. Don't give me excuses." Well, you and I are invited to come to the table. We're invited to do that week after week after week. And the Lord wants us to be there, and He wants us to open our hearts to receive the good that He has to offer. And so, just as the king said to his servants, go and tell them everything is prepared. Come to the feast. He says that to you and to me. “Everything is ready. Now come to the feast.”

10.10.2020 Gospel Matthew Chapter 22

The Lord be with you.  
The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew
Jesus spoke to the chief priests and the elders of the people, and he told them this parable, "The kingdom of heaven is like a king who gives a wedding banquet for his son. He sends his servants to call the invited guests, but they refuse to come. He sends other servants to again call the guests and he says, Everything is prepared. I have killed the fatted calf and the cattle. Come to the feast. So they went and again, they refused to come. One said he had to go off to his farm and another to his business. And the rest of them laid hold of the servants and they manhandled them and they killed them. 
Now when the king heard this, he was enraged. He sent his army to destroy those murderers and to burn down their town. And then he said to his servants, "Those who were invited were found to be unworthy. Go now and gather all from the streets and the alleys and the byways and bring them into the feast." And so they went out, they gathered all these people, both good and bad and brought them into the banquet hall. And the banquet hall was full.
The gospel of the Lord