Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

 

Deacon Dave · Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

Homily for the 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Oct. 26, 2025. Gospel of St. Luke 18:9-14. Theme: Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector 

 In today’s gospel a Pharisee and a tax collector go to the Jerusalem Temple to pray. These two men stand in stark opposition to one another and it seems that Jesus intentionally chose such a contrast of characters to emphasize that salvation is not something that we can earn or deserve. Rather, it’s a free gift of God that is given to the humble of heart and not at all the result of our efforts and religious practices. So, let’s take another look at these two men and see what they have to say to us. 

 On one hand we have a Pharisee. That name means “the separated ones” because the Pharisees prided themselves on remaining away from and untouched by the pagan influences all around them. Their idea of devotion to God was found in observing every little detail of the many religious rules and rituals that filled up daily Jewish life. Thus, they defined holiness in legal terms and their approach to God was like carrying out the various stipulations of a contract. The Pharisees represented the epitome of spirituality and righteous living to the people of Israel. So Jesus’ listeners would quite naturally assume that this man was the “good guy” of the story, the one who would obviously please God the most. 

 On the other hand we have a tax collector. Now, they were considered to be the most vile of Jewish men because they had turned their backs on the God of Israel in order to work for the pagan emperor-god of Rome. They were considered traitors who sold out their people for the sake of personal gain. Not only did they collect the unjust Roman taxes, but they padded their accounts to make sure that they got a nice fat commission off the blood, sweat and tears of their fellow Jews. They were despised in their villages and rejected by their own families. Those who heard Jesus speaking this parable would have been sure that there was no way that such a scoundrel could possibly be favored by God. But Jesus is always full of surprises! 

 As we just heard in the Gospel, the Pharisee entered the Temple and stood tall and proud as he confidently rattled off all his religious achievements. He was laboring under the false impression that he could sway God and purchase holiness with the currency of his spiritual practices and financial contributions. Now, his fasting and alms were both excellent deeds, but their religious value got spoiled when he turned them into a spiritual résumé that he assumed would win for him a divine pat on the back! 

 The parable then moves on to the tax collector who dared to enter the temple area. I say “dared” because it was a risky venture as he was not supposed to be there. You see, tax collectors were not allowed to enter the Jerusalem Temple since they were excommunicated from Jewish worship. But his inner desire to set things right with God made him take the risk. So, even before we hear his humble prayer for mercy, his actions reveal the deep yearning for God that was in his heart. Then once he was successfully inside, he wouldn't lift his eyes to gaze upon the sacredness of the Temple, for he felt himself unworthy to even look upon what was holy. Instead, he struck his chest in a gesture of penitence as he repeated: “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” That’s all. No résumé of spiritual works. No excuses for his bad choices and selfish behavior. No promises that he might not be able to keep. He didn’t pretend to be anything other than what he was: a sinner in need of redemption. And because of his stark honesty with God he went home justified, which means “being put into a right relationship with God.” 

 Jesus astounded his listeners by making this tax collector the “good guy” instead of the Pharisee. What made him the hero of the parable was what we call “humility of heart”, which is an honest assessment and a truthful awareness about who and what we are in relation to the glory and holiness of God. The Bible tells us from beginning to end that it is precisely this interior disposition that attracts God’s mercy to us sinners like iron shavings to a magnet! In fact, humility of heart is really the only way to open the door to living life with God. Otherwise we shut him out because we are so full of ourselves that there is no room left for him! 

 While humility enables us to see and fully admit that we are sinners it doesn’t stop there because that’s not the whole story of who we are. Humility goes on to remind us that yes, although we are indeed sinners, we are nevertheless passionately and personally each loved by God our Father who is rich in mercy. Humility opens our eyes to the truth that we are all in need of his grace and that none of us is greater than another in God’s sight. It enables us to acknowledge our sins and so receive forgiveness. It expands our hearts so that we can have patience and be understanding of others because it reminds us that they too are sinners who stand in need of redemption. Humility moves us to forgive others just as God has forgiven us and to accept others just as Christ has accepted us. 

 I think that one reason why Jesus told this Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector is because he knows that there’s a bit of both men inside each one of us. Sometimes, if we are honest about it, we pray like the Pharisee saying: “O Lord, thank you that I’m not like that inconsiderate person at work… Thank you that I am not like that annoying neighbor next door… Thank you that I am not like that dirty bum on the street…” But then at other times we become more aware of our true moral status. Like the tax collector, we clearly see our spiritual poverty and so we cry out : “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”. Jesus invites each one of us to choose to walk on the challenging pathway of humility. And to help us better do so he has given us the Sacraments of Confession and Holy Eucharist so that through the grace bestowed by these sacred rituals, the Pharisee within us will shrink and the tax collector within us will grow until finally, he is the only one left standing and praying in the temple of our hearts.

Seven Washings for Seven Sacraments

 

Deacon Dave · Seven Washings for Seven Sacraments

Homily for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Oct. 12, 2025. 2 Kings 5:14-17 (for the full story read 5:1-19). Theme: Seven Washings for Seven Sacraments 

Today’s first reading from the Old Testament about Naaman the Syrian took place around 850 years before the birth of Christ. Unfortunately, for some reason our Liturgy has us dropping into the story almost at its end! But if we don’t know the whole story then we’ll miss out on some extremely important details that enable us to better appreciate how Naaman’s cure, through the seven washings in the Jordan River, has meaning for us today. So, let’s take a quick look at the missing back-story. 

 Naaman was the prestigious commander of the great and powerful Syrian army. In one of his many raids upon Israel, he had captured a young girl whom he gave as a slave to his wife. After he contracted leprosy, this slave-girl told him about Elisha, a powerful prophet of the One True God back in her homeland. She assured him that through this holy man he could be healed. So, Naaman, filled with hope, set off for the land of the Hebrews seeking the cure. 

 Being a pagan he was used to a lot of fanfare and frenzy in religious rituals. And so, Naaman imagined that the God of Israel would manifest himself by means of dazzling displays of power and might! However, no such spiritual fireworks were connected with his instructions for a cure. Elisha simply told Naaman to go and immerse himself seven times in the Jordan River if he wished to be healed. This high and mighty soldier was insulted by such a lack of attention to what he thought should be a proper religious ceremony! He grew furious because he felt like he'd been treated disrespectfully and made to look like a fool. In his wounded pride, Naaman refused the offer, packed up his things and intended to head back to Syria. 

 However, Naaman’s servants convinced him to at least give it a try. They reasoned that if Elisha had told him to do some bizarre things, such as jumping up and down and chanting magic incantations, he would have surely done so. Then why not do as the prophet said and wash seven times in the Jordan River? What did he have to lose? What harm could that do, they reasoned? They encouraged him to at least give it a try and to see what happens. It’s at this point that we enter into the story in our first reading. And as we now know Naaman was indeed healed of leprosy and through this miracle was converted to faith in the One True God. 

 So, why do we Catholics bother to remember this story of an ancient Syrian and include it in our sacred Liturgy? Well, because it was foreshadowing, a prophecy in actions rather than in words, about how God’s healing presence and power enters into our own lives today. We see Naaman’s experience of God’s presence reflected in our seven sacraments that make use of ordinary things to bring the divine into our lives. Like Naaman, it’s easy for us to doubt that Heaven can touch earth through such seemingly ordinary things as the water of baptism, the oils of Confirmation and Anointing, the bread and wine of the Eucharist, the laying on of hands at Ordination, or the words of mutual love exchanged by bride and groom at Matrimony. 

 We understand Naaman’s initial doubt because at times we also find it in ourselves. I mean, it takes faith to imagine that simply through the pouring of water in baptism, we are healed of our spiritual emptiness and put into a right relationship with God. And it sounds incredible to say that ordinary bread and wine at Mass are truly transformed into the very Body and Blood of the Risen Lord Jesus! And we might even balk at the thought that through our simple apology to God in Confession our deepest sins are completely erased and our darkest past is totally forgiven. And yet this is precisely what happens to us and for us through the celebration of the Sacraments. They become the ways by which we share in the miraculous seven washings of Naaman in the Jordan River. 

 And so Naaman's story teaches us how we should approach the Sacraments if we hope to benefit from their blessings. He wasn’t cured by simply going through the action of seven washings. Naaman was healed because along with “the doing” he had “the believing” even if it wasn't a totally perfect belief. But it was enough to show God that he was humble and sincere. And it’s the same for each one of us in regards to the Sacraments. We know that their spiritual power doesn’t depend solely upon saying the right words or doing the right actions. That would be a superstitious pagan approach to religious ceremony every bit as much as Naaman did in the beginning. But if we receive the Sacraments with faith then God will surely reach out to us and touch us through these sacred rituals, just as surely as he once reached out to touch and heal Naaman through the seven washings in the Jordan River.

That Amazing Mustard-Seed-Sized Faith!

 

Deacon Dave · That Amazing Mustard-Seed-Sized Faith!

Homily for the 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Oct. 5, 2025. Luke 17:5-10. Theme: That Amazing Mustard-Seed-Sized Faith! 

In today’s gospel, Jesus teaches us about the power of a genuine faith and how it can bring about amazing and unexpected results. He uses the very tiny mustard seed that his listeners were all familiar with to illustrate this truth. Just as that mustard seed contains within it the potential of bringing forth a huge bush, so does an act of confident faith contain within it the power to do the impossible and accomplish much good in the world. But quite often this requires that we be willing to step out of our comfort zones to do something that we did not plan to do or even something that we do not think we can do. But this is where trust in God comes into play and once we take that first step in faith, God’s grace rushes in and enables us to do amazing things. Two inspiring examples of this mustard-seed sized faith at work happened right within the lifetimes of many of us. 

 In 1948, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was just an ordinary nun like so many others who spent their days teaching wealthy girls in India. But every day she had to come face-to-face with the destitute poverty and ravaging hunger of the poor outcasts in the city’s dirty streets. Her mustard-seed sized faith told her that God was asking her to do something about it. It was telling her to move out of her comfortable convent, to exchange her fancy nun clothes for a typical poor Indian woman’s sari, and to go live among the poor as one of them. 

 Mother Teresa trusted and then she began to do what God seemed to be asking of her even though she didn’t fully understand it. She took that first step of faith into the scary unknown and dedicated herself to a life of service among the poorest of the poor. At first she was all by herself but soon other women came to join her. Many of them had once been her wealthy students but now they had become her Sisters in a brand new religious community called the “Missionaries of Charity”, which is just another way of saying, “Ambassadors of God’s Love”. 

 Many years later, after she was world famous as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Mother Teresa was asked how it all started. She replied, “I never thought of doing anything big. I just saw one poor abandoned dying man lying in the street and so I picked him up and brought him home.” Today, there are over 4,000 Missionaries of Charity Sisters and Brothers, as well as lay Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, relieving the suffering of hundreds of thousands across the globe. All of this good happened because of God acting through one person’s mustard-seed-sized faith that was built upon confident trust in him. 

 On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a devout Christian black woman in Montgomery, Alabama, was on a segregated bus-ride home after a long day at work. At one of the stops, 4 black passengers were told to give up their seats for the newly boarding white passengers. Three of them got up. But Rosa stayed put. She was tired from a long day of work and and was even more tired of giving in to injustice and discrimination. Her mustard-seed sized faith inside her told her not to move. It reminded her that she had dignity as a human being, as a child of God, redeemed by Jesus Christ just like anyone else. The police were called and Rosa was arrested on the spot. She then lost her job. 

 Once word of what she did spread, the entire black population of Montgomery boycotted the bus system for 381 days. They brought it to a stop-still, causing it to fall right down on its financial knees. This protest eventually resulted in a Supreme Court decision of opening up the doors to racial equality to all Americans, no matter who or what they are. It jump-started the civil rights movement that became a tidal wave of justice washing across the entire nation. All of this good happened because of God acting through one person’s mustard-seed-sized faith that was built upon confident trust in him. 

 What small act of charity or justice, needing the power of a mustard-seed sized faith to jump-start it, might God be asking each of us? Is there something that we know we could be doing but don’t have the courage to step out of our comfort zones to do? Is there some person or group that needs our help but we are hesitant to get involved or change our schedule to do so? Whatever it might be, don’t fall for the lie that it has to be something great and significant in order to make any real and lasting difference in the world. 

 Mother Teresa never had the slightest clue that picking up one dying man off the streets of Calcutta would result in an international movement of charity on behalf of the poorest of the poor. And Rosa Parks had absolutely no idea that her refusal to give up her seat on that segregated bus in Montgomery would become the catalyst for a worldwide awareness of racial equality and justice. Each one of them was simply activating their mustard-seed sized faith and started off by doing just one seemingly little thing that they thought needed to be done at that time and in that place.. But it just goes to show us that it’s absolutely amazing what God can do through one person’s mustard-seed-sized faith when we have confident trust in him.

Mother Teresa & Rosa Parks, 1981

Poor Lazarus Today

 

Deacon Dave · Poor Lazarus Today

Homily for the 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time, September 28, 2025. Amos 6:1-7; Gospel of St. Luke 16:19-31. Theme: Poor Lazarus Today 

Jesus’ Parable of the Rich Man and Poor Lazarus is more than just a story that was told 2,000 years ago. It’s been playing out in flesh and blood reality throughout history because there have always been and still are the “haves” and the “have-nots”. The moral lesson of this story is that the good we fail to do in this life will have a direct connection as to where we will spend our eternity in the next. The parable informs us that it was precisely because the Rich Man failed to do good to poor Lazarus, his neighbor in need, that he found himself in a terrible and eternal predicament. 

 Jesus began his story by pointing out that the man was dressed in purple and fine linen. Now, why would he have bothered to mention this detail? Well, he wasn’t making a fashion statement! Rather, his listeners knew that the hard-to-get purple cloth and the fine Egyptian linen were among the most expensive fabrics in the entire Roman Empire. For this reason they were worn only by the nobility. So, this told them that the man wasn’t just well-off but was in fact what we might call today, “filthy rich”. In other words, he could have done whatever it took, he could have done whatever was required, to help poor Lazarus. He had all the means at his disposal, but he chose to do nothing. He ignored him as if he was invisible and went about his complacent, self-indulgent life as usual. 

 Poor Lazarus, a broken and suffering human being, was right there at the front gate of the Rich Man’s estate but he simply and frankly didn’t care. He didn’t even do so much as lift a finger to help him. He could have sent a meal out to him. He could have had one of his many servants go and check on the sick man’s condition. Instead, he just left poor Lazarus there to suffer alone. And I’m sure his suffering was increased by the fact that he could smell the food cooking and could hear the festivities happening just a few yards away. The Rich Man was just like the complacent people in our First Reading who were lounging on their couches and stuffing their bellies as they neglected the plight of the poor. God condemned them through his prophet Amos because of their self-focused, self-indulgent lives. 

 Through this parable, Jesus is reaching out to us and asking us to examine ourselves and our own lifestyles. He is calling us to have a compassionate heart for the many poor Lazaruses who sit and beg at the front doors of our stores, on the corners of our streets, and throughout our neighborhoods and towns. He is directing us to see and acknowledge their human dignity, no matter who they are, no matter what they are, and no matter where they come from. He is reminding us that we have a serious moral responsibility to take care of the many poor Lazaruses who are suffering in so many ways today. So, how can we respond to them as individuals, as a church, and as a nation? 

As individuals, one simple but vital thing we can do is to treat the poor in a respectful manner. A priest who has a lot of experience in street ministry once told me a simple way to do this. He said that when seeing a beggar don’t just walk past them looking the other way, but extend a greeting to them. And if we have something to give, don't just hand it off briskly but ask their first name and then address them by it. This kind of response costs us absolutely nothing but is a powerful way to show that we acknowledge them as persons. It tells them that they are not invisible to us. It shows that we recognize their human dignity and are not just putting them in a box labeled: ”Just Another Dirty Beggar on the Street”. 

 And as a Church we are supposed to respond to the poor with the kind of words and actions that Jesus displayed for the sick, the suffering, the outcast and the vulnerable. And so when we as a Church encounter poor Lazarus today we know that we must feed his hunger and tend his wounds. And one doable way any of us can accomplish this as part of the Church is by participating in or supporting the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. Our parish Vincentians extend mercy and provide help to so many of our neighbors in need. They bring hope and strength to those who struggle just to survive. Your participation in or financial donation to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul is a beautiful way to become part of this response of the Church to poor Lazarus right here in Marin County. Our special collection today on this St. Vincent de Paul weekend is precisely to provide you with the opportunity to do this. 

 Finally, we must respond to the plight of the poor as a united people, as citizens of one of the wealthiest nations on planet Earth. We Americans have long felt a responsibility to look after the vulnerable, to show compassionate concern for the neglected and to care for the weakest among us. But our national heart seems to be hardening. Our attention seems to be turning in on ourselves. And as a result, many of the poor Lazaruses in our world today continue to suffer. But as Christian citizens we are called to be like the prophet Amos and raise a public voice on behalf of the needy. We are supposed to go and announce the Gospel of the Lord that proclaims Jesus’ and the Church’s preferential love for the poor, the vulnerable, the neglected and the weak. We have an obligation in our civic and political activities to help build a nation that is rooted in justice and that shows mercy to all without exception, no matter who they are or where they come from. 

 Our personal, as well as collective national consciences, should be pricked by Jesus’ parable and make us ask: “Why is poor Lazarus still suffering inhumane conditions in our well-supplied nation? What in our political and social systems are perpetuating his destitution? How can we as a united people better tend to his oozing social wounds and heal them? These are hard questions but we have a responsibility before God to ask and to answer them. For if we choose not to, then we run the risk of ending up like that unrepentant Rich Man of the parable. We will find ourselves begging for even just a tiny drop of water to cool the torment that we have brought down upon ourselves by our complacent self-focused lives as individuals, as a Church and as a nation.

Are You Investing in Heavenly Treasure?

 

Deacon Dave · Are You Investing in Heavenly Treasure?

Homily for the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Sept. 21, 2025. Gospel of Luke 16:1-13. Theme: Are You Investing in Heavenly Treasure? 

 The Parable of the Shrewd Manager in today’s Gospel is not meant to give us a lesson in clever business management. So, no need to get caught up in the details of the steward cutting his employer’s profits nor in wondering why the story seems to approve the end justifying the means. These things are just embellishments that Jesus used to hold his listeners attention so that he could convey his teachings on the proper use of wealth and the importance of having a long-term perspective when it comes to our future security. 

 When Jesus tells us to be wise with our money (which the Bible calls “mammon”) he means that we need to have in mind the bigger picture of our existence. He doesn’t want us to be a short-sighted instant-gratification kind of people who think only about the limited span of life we have on planet Earth. He is directing us to plan ahead and make long-term investments that will yield for us amazing dividends in eternal life. In other words, like the clever steward of the parable, Jesus wants us to be purpose-driven but in the right direction. And that direction is towards Heaven! He is reminding us that the ultimate purpose for which each one of us was created is to know, love and serve God in this world so as to be happy with him forever in the next. 

 By both his words and his example, Jesus taught us the proper place that wealth and material things should occupy in our lives. You see, as God-come-in-the-flesh he could have pre-arranged for himself a life in a luxurious palace with royal parents and a multitude of servants. But instead, he freely chose to be born among animals in a stable. His years as an infant and a toddler, which should be filled with happy times and joyful experiences, were spent as a foreigner and refugee in Egypt, the land in which his human ancestors had been enslaved and mistreated. Returning back to Palestine, he grew up as the son of a poor working class family living in the backwoods village of Nazareth, which made him what some Americans would call “a hick from the sticks”. He then spent most of his life working in construction and the trades as a day laborer from sunrise to sunset. When he was around 30 years old, he became a traveling rabbi or Jewish teacher, who in his poverty had “nowhere to lay his head” as he himself described it. 

 So, you see, Jesus didn’t just talk the talk, but he walked the walk when it came to embracing a simple uncluttered life that puts material possessions in their proper place. He knew that the danger of wealth is not at all in the money itself but that we too easily run the risk of becoming possessed by it. And so because he loves us and wants us to know true happiness both there and hereafter, he warns us that we can too easily become consumed with an unhealthy desire for more and more – what we call greed. Almost without realizing it, we can allow our desires for wealth and possessions to become a driving force, a central motivation in our lives. For many, money can even become an idol, a false god that they worship seven days a week with all of their decisions revolving around it. 

 Jesus is teaching us that greed is such an ugly thing that can deceive even the best of us. It can blur our vision, making us see others as potential profits or debits instead of recognizing their innate dignity as persons. Greed tells us to use our wealth primarily for ourselves and our personal enjoyment. It can tempt us to dismiss the poor and needy as a drain on society or even to write them off completely as just being lazy. It motivates societies to sentence criminals to death rather than having to pay for their lifelong imprisonment. It fractures families of the deceased by leading them into fierce arguments over inheritances, destroying their bonds of relationship. 

 Jesus has taught in so many ways that an excessive preoccupation with money will ultimately ruin us and work against us in the eternal long-run. The only thing it will accumulate for the greedy is an investment with dividends awaiting them in Hell. Ultimately, what Jesus is telling us in today’s gospel is that from God’s point of view the amount of money we have is irrelevant to him. It’s our attitude towards whatever wealth we have and what we do with it that makes all the difference in this life and in the next.

The Healing Remedy of the Eucharist

 

Deacon Dave · The Healing Remedy of the Eucharist

Homily for Exaltation of the Holy Cross Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. Numbers 21:4-9; Gospel of St. John 6:13-17. Theme: The Healing Remedy of the Eucharist 

 Have you ever noticed the emblem on medical alert bracelets? It is a snake wrapped around a pole and it comes directly from the Old Testament story we heard in our First Reading. Jesus also makes reference to it in today’s Gospel. This bronze serpent lifted up on a pole was a foreshadowing or prophecy of Jesus being lifted up, both on the cross and then from the grave, for the spiritual healing of all humanity. 

 As I was pondering today’s Scriptures that speak about healing for those who are dying, I thought of my long career in radiology. I was thinking about the cancer patients who put themselves into the beams of radiation for a chance to receive healing. All they had to do was show up for treatment and stay under the invisible radiating beam. Its power and energy did the rest. But they had to do this faithfully and frequently no matter how they felt. If they wanted the best chances at healing and living a better life, they needed to make this treatment a priority. 

 And you know, it’s very much the same for us who are spiritually dying of what has rightly been called the cancer of sin. First, like oncology patients we have to realize that if left untreated it’s fatal. Second, as it ravages our soul, it plunges us into an unmanageable life here on planet Earth that just spirals into worsening spiritual health. But we have real hope for a complete healing if we put ourselves under the care of Christ the Divine Physician. He who was lifted up on the cross for us is the remedy and the cure. In him and by the power of his cross, we can and will be restored to spiritual strength and wholeness! 

 

How do we do this? Well we can once again look to the cancer patients to show us the way. They consent to the prescribed treatment because they trust their physician. They undergo radiation therapy because they trust the skills of their health care team. And this personal trust enables them to faithfully follow instructions even if they do not fully understand the why or the how. They just keep trusting and hoping all will go well. We need to have this same kind of trusting attitude and the commitment to see our treatment through to the end, convinced that it’s a matter of eternal life or eternal death. 

 And what precisely is our prescribed treatment? It’s being in the Presence of Jesus our Savior who heals us from the inside out through the Holy Eucharist. And so we faithfully attend the Liturgy as vital to our treatment plan, allowing the supernatural rays of grace from Word and Sacrament to penetrate our hearts. As we are about to receive Jesus, we first gaze upon him who is held up before our eyes and then we profess our trust in him by saying, “Amen”. We consume his Sacred Body and Blood allowing his healing Presence to enter into us and radiate spiritual healing within us. 

 We keep showing up for this Eucharistic treatment plan because we realize that healing is a lifelong process. It’s an ongoing encounter with Jesus. and each time we receive Him with faith, we become a little more whole, a little more spiritually healthy. And so, even though it takes time to see the results we never lose hope but we keep trusting because we firmly believe that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

The Hard Sayings of Jesus

 

Deacon Dave · The Hard Sayings of Jesus

Homily for the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Sept. 7, 20225. Gospel of St. Luke 14:25-43. Philemon 9-10, 12-17. Theme: The Hard Sayings of Jesus 

 I want to focus on our Second Reading, but I can't pass on explaining some potentially confusing words of Jesus that we hear in the Gospel today. So let me touch briefly on that first and then we’ll dive into the unusual and powerful Letter to Philemon. 

 When Christ talks about hating one's family and hating one's life, he is using a common idiom in his culture that means “to love less than”. He does not mean hate as we understand it as “detest” or “despise”. What Jesus is emphasizing is that our love and allegiance must be given to him first and above all of our other relationships. And when he talks of “renouncing” ones’ possessions, it’s another way of saying that we must be detached from the money we have and indifferent to the material goods we have accumulated. In other words, should our wealth and personal goods be taken away, it would not change our attachment to him. So, “hating” and “renouncing” are other ways of saying that we stand in need of conversion of heart, renewal of mind, and reorientation of priorities with Jesus as the Center. 

 We see these “hard sayings of Jesus” (as they have come to be called) lived out in a powerful way in the Letter to Philemon from which our Second Reading is taken. There are three main characters involved in the story: the Apostle Paul (the letter-writer), Philemon (the letter’s primary recipient) and Onesimus (the subject of the letter). Another thing we need to know in order to understand the full impact of our Second Reading is the backstory that leads up to the passage read at Mass. Philemon is such a short letter (it fits on one side of a sheet of paper) that I strongly recommend reading the whole thing so as to put today's passage in its proper perspective. 

 Ok so on to the backstory. Philemon was a well-respected Christian leader. We know he was extremely wealthy and prominent because the Christian community in his city gathered for Mass in his spacious home (there were no churches in early Christianity due to persecution). We also know of his upper class status because he had slaves and one of them, a pagan named Onesimus, seems to have done him some serious wrong and then hightailed it out of town! But the runaway eventually got arrested and was thrown into prison where he met Paul, who converted him to Christianity. The two of them formed a tight bond with one another. 

 It’s at this point that we come into the story in our Second Reading. Paul calls Philemon to have mercy on Onesimus and gives him accountability by making sure the letter is not private. It is also addressed to Apphia (Mrs. Philemon) and Archippus (his pastor) as well as to the entire parish! So everyone knows what is going on and is watching to see if Philemon will rise to the occasion and do the right thing. Paul urges him to reorient his relationship with Onesiumus now that the two of them had been made one in Christ by Baptism. Philemon was to see that they were equals and Onesimus was to be treated as a brother and not a slave. This might all sound pretty neat and clean to us but in 1st century Roman culture it was radical and revolutionary! 

 Paul was calling Philemon to a radical revamping of his attitudes based on Christ’s hard sayings in today’s Gospel. As a disciple of the Lord, Philemon was to love God more than his role as church-leader, more than his reputation, and more than himself. He was being asked to carry the cross of possible social humiliation by being a master who sees himself as equal to his slave. He was being called by Paul to give a real life example to his home-church parish of Jesus’ teaching about detachment and renunciation for the sake of the Kingdom of God! 

 The Letter to Philemon is a summons for all of us to reexamine our lives, our relationships, and our attitudes in the light of the hard sayings of Jesus. This means that we probably will need to reform and revamp our relationships with people and possessions as well as how we see ourselves. But like Philemon, we can find hope and help to do so in our parish community. For it is there that we celebrate and receive the Eucharist that gives us the supernatural strength to actually live these (and other) hard sayings of Jesus. And in our parish community we should be able to meet like-minded Christians whose example and spiritual support help us along this difficult pathway. A parish should be more than just where we show up on the weekend for Mass. 

 Oh! Do you wonder what happened to Philemon and Onesimus? Did they do as Paul said or did they have a bigger falling out? Well, Philemon was so deeply changed by Paul’s words that he sent copies of the letter to all of the Christian churches so that they, too, could learn that all the baptized are equal in God’s eyes and all are to live at-oneness with each other: rich or poor, slave or free, man or woman. As for Onesimus, he became a missionary of the Gospel and later in life was made the Bishop of Ephesus in Turkey, eventually becoming a martyr for Jesus Christ. Isn’t it amazing what God's grace can do to change hearts and transform lives once we choose to lower our pride and humbly set out to put the hard sayings of Jesus into practice?