Homilies in a New Key

Harvey D. Egan SJ

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781666719178
  9781666719185
• eBook ISBN:
  9781666719192
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Ministro del culto cristiano

These homilies on special liturgical feasts, on Jesus Christ, on spiritual topics, on the feasts of celebrated saints, and on special family occasions rethink--creatively but in an orthodox way--significant aspects of Christianity. They resulted, in part, from over sixty years of Jesuit spirituality, philosophical-theological study, graduate and undergraduate university teaching, scholarly research and publishing, and pastoral experience as well. They reflect years of prayerfully contemplating and thinking deeply about the great Christian heritage in the context of the Second Vatican Council, the recent biblical, historical, and theological scholarship, and contemporary issues arising in American culture. More specifically, behind these homilies, there stand, unobtrusively, the philosophical-theological thinking of Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan, the historical work of Bernard McGinn on the Christian mystical tradition, and the outstanding biblical scholarship of N. T. Wright. And yet my homilies attempt to remain faithful to the Mass readings and to the catechism of the hearts of those worshiping and prayerfully drinking in God's word addressed to them. Those who have heard them claim they are "deep," "existential," "exceptional," and "timely."

HOMILIES FOR SPECIAL FEAST DAYS

Homily 1

ADVENT AND EXPECTATION

“Therefore, stay awake. Be prepared!”

The church’s Advent season reminds us that everyone, not only a Christian, is a person of expectation, anticipation, longing, yearning, waiting. “Therefore, stay awake!” How we dislike waiting! Dorothy Day maintained that the poor are forced to wait more than anyone else. In Samuel Beckett’s absurdist play, Waiting for Godot, two characters, Vladimir and Estragon (good names for a dog?), wait endlessly and in vain for the arrival of someone named Godot. The salient way this play captures the haunting expectation, advent, rooted in every human heart is stunning.

The teenager in the novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, also highlights the heart’s immense longing. She says to her parents: “I feel that something really big is going to happen to me.” Her mother cruelly retorts: “I felt the same way when I was your age. You’ll get over it.” The mother is wrong; we never get over it.

We all yearn for the one purchase (look at the Black Friday crowds), the one event (getting into our choice university, promotion, manuscript accepted for publication), the one person (is he or she the one to be my spouse?) that will totally fulfill us. If you had one wish, what would you wish for? Be very careful because when you get what you want, will you want what you get?

This morning’s first reading and responsorial psalm both focus on the Jerusalem Temple. If you were to combine in one place the functions of St. Peter’s basilica in Rome, Wall Street, the White House, the Federal Reserve, and the Pentagon, then you would have an idea of how central the Jerusalem Temple was to Jewish life and expectations. The desire in the prophet Isaiah’s heart in this morning’s reading and Jewish expectations in the Jesus’ time—Jewish Advent—coincide: God will be faithful to his covenant promises, finally and permanently dwell in the fully restored Jerusalem Temple, forgive the Jews their sins, free them from pagan rule them by kicking out the Roman occupiers, and over-throwing the pseudo-king Herod. Then the Jews will be what God through Moses had promised them: to be the light of the nations that brings salvation and peace to the whole world. Jesus also stresses this: “Salvation is from the Jews.” And note how this worldly the Jews and Jesus understood the kingdom of God.

God the Father, however, sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to be the fulfillment and transformation of all Jewish yearning: Jesus, the true light of the world; Jesus, the enfleshed, personal kingdom. In him one finds total human fulfillment. It had been revealed to Simeon—who yearned for the consolation of Israel—that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s anointed, the Christ. And he does, when Jesus is presented in the Temple.

Yet notice how even John the Baptist, the highpoint of Jewish spirituality, gets his Advent longings wrong and asks of Jesus-Messiah: “Are you the one who is to come or should we look for another?” The Emmaus disciples also get it wrong: “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” The apostles ask Jesus after the resurrection, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” On the other hand, the apostle Paul imprisoned in Rome got it right. Even though the Romans still ruled, Herod was still king, Paul never wavered in his belief that Jesus and Jesus alone is the messiah, the Lord, and the seed of the kingdom of God. Do we get it right?

I was asked point blank recently if, given my age and health, I were waiting for, expecting, death. In this Advent season, I wait for, expect the risen Christ, and pray the final words of the Scriptures, “Come Lord Jesus, come.” The great Jesuit scientist-mystic, Teilhard de Chardin, complained that Christians no longer expect anything. Moreover, I look forward to, await, the new heavens and the new earth, as depicted in the Book of Revelation—not heaven the way it is usually understood as out or up there—but here, transformed. The Boston Globe writer, Alex Beam, started a ruckus a while back when he claimed that dogs will be in heaven. My view: of course! I’ve had many family dogs, kissed a killer whale, nuzzled an Alaskan wolf, danced with an orangutan, and surfed with porpoises. I fully expect to see them again—transformed, resurrected.

The Advent season should remind us that the risen Jesus is the seed of the new heavens and the new earth, which will consist not only of us as resurrected and transformed but also of the earth, oceans, lakes, streams, valleys, mountains, plants, trees, animals, stars, sun—in short, everything created now—resurrected and transformed. What God has created, he loves and will bring to total fulfillment. I await not only seeing my mother and again, but also our family dogs and our perky canary Mario. I know, too, that my orangutan friend is looking forward to dancing with me again. “Come Lord Jesus come.”

Homily 2

ADVENT: THE OLD AND THE NEW

“The least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John the Baptist.”

When I wrote my dissertation in Germany in the early nineteen-seventies, I used a manual typewriter and carbon paper. The younger Jesuits laugh when I tell them this fact. However, the old ways did work—with much work. Now, whenever I write, I have my computer, two word-processing programs, a scanner, and an excellent speech recognition program. The old and the new: John the Baptist and Jesus.

This morning’s gospel underscores Jesus’ knowledge of Malachi’s prediction, “See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes.” He also assigns the role of prophet who ushers in the age to come to John the Baptist—whom he claimed was the greatest of those born from women. Still, Jesus-Messiah contends that the least in God’s kingdom is greater than John. I have long been fascinated that John the Baptist, the high point of Jewish spirituality, failed to understand Jesus as Israel’s true messiah and asked, “Are you he who is to come or should we look for another?” Jesus says essentially that the old days and ways of trying to bring in God’s kingdom, Israel fulfilled and this earth renewed and healed—as predicted by Isaiah in the first reading—are over. The days of the old typewriter are over. Jesus inaugurates the true kingdom of God in his person and in his own way through his exorcisms, parables, healings, miracles, and raising people from the dead. Jesus-Messiah is the true king of the universe and no one else.

Pope Francis’s recent encyclical on the environment, Laudato si’ (Praise Be to You), brings out the full meaning of the kingdom and Jesus-Messiah as king. He wrote that the ultimate destiny of the entire universe is in the fullness of God, which has already been attained by the risen Christ. Did not the apostle Paul write that in Jesus all things have been created, in him all things hold together—and that because of Jesus, God shall be all and in all? Does not the Book of Revelation teach that the Messiah-King-Lamb who sits on the throne makes all things new and that every creature in the new heaven and on the new earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, shall praise and worship the slain lamb.

I was speaking a while back with a sickly old man and he mentioned that his golden retriever dog, “Chance,” had died. When I told him that he would see Chance again, he began to cry. I maintain that Jesus, the Messiah-King, is not only the king of humans and angels, but also of animals, insects, vegetation, rivers, oceans, the sun, the moon—the king also of the entire future new earth and the new heaven. In any of my homilies that refer in any way to new creation, I emphasize that I’ve kissed a killer whale, danced with an orangutan, surfed with dolphins, nuzzled an Alaskan wolf, and always had family dogs. I fully expect to see them again. As the prophet Isaiah concludes in this morning first reading: “The hand of the Lord has done this, the Holy One of Israel has created it.”

Homily 3

THE VISITATION: TWO PREGNANT WOMEN

“Blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

This morning’s gospel focuses on the six-months pregnant Elizabeth and her also pregnant cousin, the blessed Virgin Mary. When they meet, Elizabeth—who suffered mentally for many years because of her infertility—cries out that the infant in her womb leaped for joy. Then she calls Mary, “the mother of my Lord.” Very early, the church used this text to designate Mary as “God-bearer”—Lord, being the Greek Old Testament name for God.

As I prayed over this text, I thought of my mother and a close family friend, in adjacent maternity-ward beds, who gave birth to baby girls the same day. My sister and the other daughter Marsha are still close friends. “Blessed is the fruit of your womb.” The mighty warrior Jephthah the Gileadite promised God that he would sacrifice the first Israelite he met on his way home, if he were victorious against the Ammonites. Unfortunately that person turned out to be his own daughter. She told him to fulfill his vow but also to allow her to spend two months in the mountains to mourn her virginity. When some students snicker when I tell this story, I remind them that for a Jewish woman no worst shame existed than being childless. In some ways, it was a living death— an affliction still true in some parts of the contemporary world. Elizabeth of this morning’s gospel had so suffered. Contrast this with Jesus’ woeful beatitude: Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never gave birth—a prophecy of the trials that would befall those when the Roman occupiers would destroy Jerusalem and its Temple.

I know a marvelous woman here at Boston College who was told by doctors that she would never have children. The sheer joy on her face when she related to me that one morning—after seven years of marriage—she exclaimed: “I’m pregnant.” She now has two lovely children. “Blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Years ago a former graduate student came to the Jesuit residence at Boston College to see me. It was evident that she was pleasingly pregnant. She told me that doctors advised her to abort because the baby would either be born dead or live only a short time. With an incredible peace that only faith in the crucified and risen Lord can give, however, she and her husband had firmly decided to have the baby. A few months later she met with me again. The baby had been born, baptized, and named Elizabeth—this morning’s gospel. Baby Elizabeth died a few weeks later, a funeral was held, and Elizabeth was buried. “Blessed ...

Table of contents

• TITLE PAGE
• FOREWORD
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• HOMILIES FOR SPECIAL FEAST DAYS
• HOMILIES CENTERED ON JESUS CHRIST
• HOMILIES ON SIGNIFICANT CHRISTIAN TRUTHS
• HOMILIES FOR THE FEAST OF SAINTS
• HOMILIES FOR FAMILY OCCASIONS