Greg O'Meara, S.J.
Homily from Mass on May 26, 2004
Today's readings present images and concepts
which complement our discussions
and challenge us to go further.
Both describe communities of believers
taking leave of those they love.
They join the feminine image
wherein the community is gathered together
with the masculine image of scattering, sending forth,
sowing the good seed.
The Ephesians weep and embrace Paul,
conscious they would never see him again.
In John, we get a foreboding sense
of the Twelve gathered at the Last Supper
through the lens of Jesus' prayer.
The disciples share
the emotions present in Ephesus.
Like those left behind by Paul,
the twelve felt themselves alienated and fearful,
and so, perhaps, do we.
Echoing through both Acts and John
is a persistent refrain revealing
a fear of abandonment in a place of danger,
a realm that requires surveillance and attention.
The words are:
"Keep watch," "guard,"
"When I am gone, savage wolves will come among you,"
"From your own number will emerge those who distort the truth,
lead you astray."
"I guarded them."
"The world hated them."
Words all too familiar to our ears in this time of war.
And so, Paul commends his community
to God and to God's gracious Word
that can build us up and place us with the holy ones.
Jesus likewise gives his disciples, gives us, God's Word.
What does the Word do?
The Word, I suggest, is both the source of our salvation
and the locus of our unease.
It provides a lens, a stance,
whereby we can separate ourselves
from the world's values.
In so doing, we are no longer OF the world;
rather, says Jesus, the world hates us.
Granted, John is writing for a different culture
at a different time,
but are his words so culturally bound,
so historically limited,
that they mean nothing?
And if the Gospel still speaks to us,
can we as educators say with honesty
that the world hates us
for the reasons it hates a true disciple?
My fear is that it may not.
For some see Jesuit Universities and Colleges as
merely an incubators for yuppie larvae,
producing a stream of future consumers,
eager to define themselves by their next purchase.
There is, as Greg, Karen, Chuck, and Joyana indicated,
another way.
We can be transformed by the Word.
We can enter into the lives of others.
We can let the Word use us
both to challenge the world,
and to decipher the tracing of God's finger therein.
But such a plan is not without consequences.
In the opening lines of his poem "Patmos,"
Holderlin writes:
Near, near and
Difficult to grasp is the Almighty.
Yet, where the danger lies, there
Likewise lies the salvation.
Somehow, to attain salvation,
we must confront danger,
we must confront our demons,
we must move from our natural urge to be safe
and stand with those on the margins.
The Word our scriptures
are not merely entertaining fictions.
They are, as Johann Baptist Metz observes,
"Stories in the face of danger. . . [which]
do not invite one just to ponder, but to follow,
and only in risking this Way
do they manifest their saving mystery."
Christianity, if lived well, cannot be
"the exaltation of the status quo,"
a sentimental justification for what is happening anyway.
Rather, to be engaged by the Word,
we must act in the concrete and historical world.
We do this because we are Christians;
we do this because we are human beings.
In the words of the Second Vatican Council,
The joys and the hopes,
the griefs and the anxieties of all peoples,
especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted,
these are the joys and hopes,
the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.
Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails
to raise an echo in their hearts.
In the Gospel, Christ sends us into the world to
do what he did:
stand in the right place,
feed the hungry,
heal the sick,
give hope to the hopeless,
and voice to the voiceless.
Let us risk being touched by this Word,
by this world,
and move from our fortresses of safety.
It is in this action that we are built up;
it is in this action that we are healed;
it is in this action that we take our places with the Holy Ones.
And they will be there. Waiting to gather us
into the arms of a God who loves us.