Category Archives: Homilies

Homily on January 8 by Fr. Donald Bramble, O.P.

From the Jewish perspective EPIPHANY is an odd feast! Actually, it’s bizarre.

We have highly over-rated classical Roman and Greek culture. Life was short, life was brutish and life was sad in the Roman Empire, despite its brilliancies. Ethically, by contrast, the Jewish way of life was orderly, torah-surrounded, contained, predictable, and had attractions even for the pagans, who were sick of the civil religion practiced in many places. As a pagan, one might have to give money or in-kind sacrifices to doorway god-lets, mildew, or any number of ridiculous oddities for the sake of civil religion. One was often bullied by thugs, threatened by practitioners of black magic, left to die by one’s self, and family-values was a phrase touted by noble Romans but often unlivable by ordinary working class and poor folk.

Life, especially religious observance, was filled with sham.

If you were wealthy you could pay for just about anything you wanted, including strong-arms to force your will on others, and sacrifices to pay off the capricious gods. The epiphany story of Herod’s brutality would have surprised absolutely no one at the time! It would have been a messy business, but business as usual, standard operating procedure, for the Hasmonean or other dynasties!

It was in this negative, ethically-smoggy environment that Judaism shone out as a real ethical alternative, and Herod’s depravity would have been seen under the microscope. The torah, the wisdom-law-teaching of the Mosaic customs provided a community of meaning and religiosity that was real and attractive to many. The God of Judaism was personal and just and demanded justice of His children. The God of Judaism, as preached by the prophets, was not so interested in nationality or the vagaries of human culture, as He was passionately concerned for the forgotten ones, the vulnerable, the Poor Ones, the Anawim.

Given this, then Herod and his brutal ilk would have been morally discredited but politically powerful — sort of Muamar Gaddafi, Hozneh Mubarak, and Basheer Al Asad wrapped up together in one poisonous family. Needless to say, the food restrictions of KOSHER and the demands of circumcision were considered major hurtles that many pagans rejected as bizarre.

Still, what was the alternative?

Mystery cults with their reputation for secrecy, illegality and immorality?

Into this mélange, Christianity arrived with its new emphasis on Jesus of Nazareth and his teachings.

Jesus was a Jew, unambiguously and openly.

Yet, he spoke of God as His Father, promised the gift of the Holy Spirit of God, and witnessed to his teaching by suffering the ultimate capital punishment as a criminal crucified and abandoned. The God all-powerful had become all-vulnerable in the flesh and blood of Jesus.

This was astonishing news, good news, great news, staggering news!

Given the Jewishness of Jesus, the feast of Epiphany, or Manifestation, as it may be translated, is odd and bizarre.

Who are the magi?
What are they doing in this story?
How dare they butt in?
They are bizarre party crashers!

Startling, like Lady Gaga showing up uninvited at your house warming!
What do you do with her?
How do you keep her from singing Bad Romance or something equally appalling?
Your friends would be uncomfortable, your enemies would laugh out loud!
Nice families have nice guests at house blessings!
Interlopers are generally shown the door unceremoniously.

The magi come in with their gifts and their camels (the Mercedes Benz of the ancient near east) and cause a stir.

For St. Matthew’s Gospel and its Jewish & Gentile Christian community, the whole story of the magi presented a huge challenge. How can Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus get along and share table fellowship?

–Thank God that this is not a problem for us moderns!
We are at home with one another perfectly!
–We have the internet that is equally available to the wealthy and the poor!
–We have political power shared by first, second, third and fourth worlds.
Congresses and Parliaments around the world are unpolarized and seek the way of justice and peace without flinching!
–Right left and center do not hurl verbal Molotov cocktails at one another.
–There are no canyons between linguistic and cultural groups at home or abroad!
–There are no Taliban Muslims, Jews and Christians blowing each other up.
—There are no racial, ethnic and sexual divides between people of good will.
—-There are no wars or rumors of war. Natural disasters are smoothly dealt with.

…NOT!

Today’s feast of Epiphany manifests the desire of God the Father to draw all peoples, races, nations, languages and epochs into one people of God in the grace and incarnation of the Son, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. This will forever challenge us, in a parochiality, our narrowness and will stretch our hearts until the Lord returns in glory.

We must pray for peace, but we must desire a peace not simply on our terms, with the people we love.

When we sing the Christmas hymn, We Three Kings, let us remember how subversive the message of Epiphany really is! It calls each of us to a new way of thinking and operating in our world, in our communities and in our church!

Sept 11 2011 sermon  Fr. Donald Bramble, OP

Forgiveness, as Jesus understands it, is not naturally attractive, but we all need it!    We want it, but we don’t want it!  We need it but we fight it.  In fact, the Church could be defined as the community-of-reconciliation.  Yet, the implications of such a definition are tough for us!

THERE ARE SOME THINGS WE ALREADY KNOW DEEP DOWN INSIDE:

1)    Sometimes easier to receive than to give forgiveness.

2)    Hanging on to hatred and resentment poisons the holder

3)    The liturgy holds a mirror up to us and we must look in it! “I confess too Almighty God….

4)    The Gospels hold a mirror up to us, and we must look in it! “…forgive us our sins AS we forgive those who sin against us…”

5)    St. Matthew in today’s Gospel confronts his church with something they don’t do well. “Should you not have pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?”

6)    Sometimes we’re shocked when we realize someone hates us or deeply distrusts us.

7)    Sometimes we are falsely shocked!  We may deserve the hatred or distrust because of past issues we’ve failed to take into account!  Our insight is a very limited insight at times.  Sometimes we are fatally clue-less.  This makes forgiveness sometimes almost impossible. We don’t know that we need it!

Dag Hammarskol, the late United Nations secretary general once wrote:

Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who ‘forgives’ you—out of love—takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done.  Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.

John Foley SJ, a professor at St. Louis University responds by saying:

There is a price you must pay for your own liberation. Since it is through another’s sacrifice, you in turn must be willing to liberate in the same way, in spite of the consequences to yourself.  You absorb the consequences, if doing so truly flows out of love.

Forgiveness is a radical restructuring of our relationships.  It is not simple or easy or unconscious.  It is not typical in most of the world’s cultures.  No one, including Christ, said it would come naturally to us!  It is the conscious refusal to get even, so it is patently distasteful to most of our notions of fairness and justice.  Forgiveness transcends common notions of fairness.  It comes from one who has experienced the radical forgiveness of another.  It is not attractive on its face.  It is disturbing!  It is a grace and a gift that is undeserved, yet absolutely vital.  Despite our protests, none of us is naturally talented at forgiving!

I mentioned last week the preconditions for communication, and stated that sacrifice is essential.  So also, in this case, NO PAIN NO GAIN.  Forgiveness requires a certain amount of pain for the forgiver and the forgiven.  That’s why the Cross, an instrument of torture, is the ultimate sign of at-one-ment, forgiveness.  It is the bridge that overcomes the distance between the forgiver and the forgiven.

Larry Gillick, SJ  of Creighton University says:

The closer we get to others, the closer we get to our own deepest truths.

But, I would add, we also get closer to our own deepest lies and despairs!  Our refusal to forgive others from the heart says a great deal about how we deceive ourselves!  We really want two standards, one that gets us off the hook, and the other that leaves everybody else on the hook squirming!  Forgiveness has to be more than that duplicity!

Raymond Brown, the Scripture scholar was once asked how he would define the cross in modern terms.   He did not hesitate for a moment:  He said:  ANYTHING BUT THAT!

Whatever we see as radically impossible has something of the cross in it!  Anything but that…. 
Whatever frightens us, or perhaps repells us, and makes us withdraw has something of the cross in it.   Anything but that…. 
Whatever seems a burden has something of the cross in it.  So forgiveness will necessarily have something of the cross in it. And that is true whether we are forgiving another, forgiving our self, or receiving forgiveness from another.    Anything but that….

Forgiveness is profoundly humbling and breaks us open.  It’s effects ripple across time and space.  When we begin to forgive in one area, it pops up in surprising other places! …rather like those carnival games where the ground hog emerges where we didn’t strike….  We begin to have to apply forgiveness sometimes where we would rather not!   It has unforeseen consequences.

On this September 11 weekend, our scripture readings confront us with an uncomfortable perspective:  How does forgiveness fit in to our observance of the tenth anniversary of 9-11?

How does forgiveness illuminate what we as a catholic people, as a modern nation have done in reaction to the devastation?

The question of forgiveness remains in front of us, but has not been answered by politics, national policy, or our societal rhetoric!  I don’t have an easy clear answer to my questions but I have a growing sense that we can do better.  And we will not heal until we discover that better way, as painful as it may be.

Fr. Donald Bramble’s 10 Rules for Community/Communication & Communal Correction:

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1.  Anything worth doing will take time!
2.  Shut up and listen more than you talk!
3.  Don’t demonize/demoralize the other.
4.  What will I wish I had said ten years from now?
5.  The role of witnesses is to increase the flow of information, not to justify one or the other plaintiff’s position!
6.  How much am I willing to change in order for you to succeed?
7.  Have I studied the problem carefully, or only read writers who agree with me?
8.  How well can I state the opposition’s viewpoint?
9.  Have I been respectful or arrogant?
10. What am I willing to suffer for this person? For how long?

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The GOAL is not to win the argument but to grow in WISDOM, compassion and fidelity-to-Christ in His covenant community!