Live Lovely, Love Warmly!

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

St. Gerard Majella Church

Baton Rouge, LA, USA

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Christians have always had a problem of how to tell the world who they are. At some periods in history and still in some places in the world, Christians have put on uniforms that sell their identity to the world. Think of the various uniforms used by various Societies of Consecrated Life, which distinguishes consecrated people from other Christians, and which also distinguishes a Religious Order from others. These religious garment called habits are still being used today.  There are also times when we use badges, banners, pinups, signs etc to distinguish and show who we are. We are symbolic beings who use symbols to express our faith. Jesus himself wrestled with the question of how to distinguish his followers from non-believers around them. But his prescriptions go deeper than the externals. For Jesus, the essential mark of distinction between Christians and non-Christians is not in the way they dress but in the way they love. What marks us out is not what our banners, badges, pinups, stickers say, but how we love.

In today’s gospel taken from Matthew 22:34-40, a scholar of the law approached Jesus with a very good question: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” In answering his question, Jesus gives a profound definition of religion: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

Brothers and sisters, love is the Christian identity. It is the Christian uniform. If we are not wearing the habit of love, then we are not authentic. Love is the essence of our Christian Faith. Jesus defines the Christian religion as the love of God which is demonstrated in the love of others. Christianity is not only a faith believed, but also a faith lived and demonstrated. To Jesus, the definition of authentic religion is love- love of God and love of the people of God. He wants us to love God with all the emotion, with all the will, and with all the intellect. God should come first, second, and third in everything we do or plan to do. Everything we plan to do should be weighed on the scale of God. Loving the Lord with all your heart means allowing God to control and direct your emotions; loving God with all your soul means letting your will conform to the will of God; loving the Lord with all your mind means letting your intellect be directed by God. Jesus wants us to surrender our emotions, our will and our intellect to God. Our emotion should feel God; our decisions should be in consonance with the will of God; our thoughts should think God. Simply put, feel God; desire God, and think God!

Now, our love of God should translate into the love of others. In John 13: 35, Jesus says to his disciples, “If you love one another, everyone will know that you are my disciples.” Love makes God present among us. love enthrones the reign of God in our human family. It wipes away tears of frustration, hunger, sickness and hopelessness from the sufferers. Love breaks the chain reaction of evil and replaces it with a chain reaction of good. Love weakens evil. Love makes the whole of creation new. Love removes mourning or sadness. Even in suffering, love from others lightens the burden. 

Jesus wants us to love God with all we’ve got and to love our neighbor as well! According to Pope Benedict XVI, “The love of God and the love of neighbor have become one; in the least of the brethren we find Jesus himself, and in Jesus we find God.” 

Live justly, love warmly, Be happy! 

Dual Citizenship of a Christian

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

St. Gerard Majella Church, Baton Rouge, LA

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Today’s Gospel begins with “The Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech” (Matthew 22:15). Why? Because Jesus has been on the attack. He has been launching series of attacks against the chief priests and the elder of the people. He has spoken three parables in which he indicted them. In the parable of the two sons (Matthew 21: 28-32), Jesus presents the Jewish leaders as the disobedient son who never went to his father’s vineyard to work. In the parable of the wicked tenants (Matthew 21: 33-46), he regards the Jewish leaders as the wicked tenants who killed several servants and the son of the landowner sent by him (the owner of the vineyard) to obtain his produce. In the parable of the wedding feast, Jesus suggests that they are the condemned guest who was not dressed in a wedding garment and was thrown out of the wedding hall where there’s weeping and grinding of teeth.

Now, instead of reflecting on the parables of Jesus, instead of trying to examine their lives and make effort to do things differently, instead of asking Jesus what they should do to be authentic believers of God- to be saved, the Jewish leaders went away angry and started planning a counter-attack against Jesus. Sure enough, they found one. It was a carefully formulated question meant to entrap him and to bring him down. So, they sent some their disciples with the Herodians to Jesus to ask him, “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” 

Their question is a very tricky one. Their main goal is to set a trap for Jesus so that he could get himself in trouble. If he says it’s unlawful to pay tax to Rome, the Pharisees would quickly report him to the Roman government officials as a rabble-rousing and unpatriotic person and he would immediately be arrested. And if he says it is lawful to pay tax, they would jump on it, use his own words to discredit him before the people who bear the burden of paying these taxes. Jewish people hated paying taxes, but not for the same reasons that some people of our time hate paying taxes. They resented paying taxes not because they wanted to keep their money. The reason for the resentment is spiritual and religious. Their nation was a theocracy, which means, God was the only King; therefore to pay tax to an earthly king was to admit the validity of his kingship and it was an insult to God.

In his answer, Jesus demonstrates he is wiser and smarter than all. To the question, “Is it lawful to pay census tax to Caesar or not?” he replies, “Show me the coin that pays the census tax”. “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” They replied, “Caesar’s”. Then he shocks them, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.”

This Gospel passage (Matthew 22:15-21) calls for faithful citizenship and also reminds us of our double citizenship. Through birth, we’ve become citizens of the earth, and through baptism, we’ve become citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, each of us is called to be responsible citizens. Failure in good citizenship is also failure in Christian duty. “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” Caesar represents our leaders, political leaders to whom we owe a duty in return for the privileges which their rule brings to us. A lawless and chaotic society risks being extinguished from the global map. We give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar by being faithful citizens who keep the rules and laws of the land that Caesar swore to protect and uphold. The Christian is also a citizen of heaven. To give to God what belongs to God means offering ourselves as a living sacrifice, holy, and pleasing to God (Romans 12: 1). It means offering our life to God, everything we are, everything we have, and everything we have been through, and asking him to use them for his own glory.

Now, the two citizenships should not clash. The demands of the State and the demands of God ought not to clash. God ultimately will never ask us to do what will obstruct or destroy the human family; after all, he is the Origin. But when a Christian is so convinced that complying with a particular demand of the State will ultimately violate the commands of God, he or she should resist it. One thing that’s so clear in today’s Gospel is: An authentic Christian is also a good citizen of a country and a good citizen of the Kingdom Heaven. The Christian belongs to two cities: city of the earth and the city of God. As such, such a Christian will always strive to carry out what God requires and what the society demands, as long as what the society requires does not violate God’s command to love. In 1 Peter 2:17 says, “Fear God. Honor the emperor”.

All Are Invited!

Homily for the Twenty-Eight Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

St. Gerard Majella Church, Baton Rouge, LA

October 12, 2014

In today’s Gospel taken from Matthew 22:1-14, Jesus speaks about what the kingdom of heaven may be likened to. He tells of a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. Several guests were invited. On the day of this occasion, the king dispatched his servants and messengers to summon the invited guests for the feast, but they refused to come. The king did not give up on them, instead he sent other servants to go tell his guests: “Behold, I have prepared my banquet, my calves and fattened cattle are killed, and everything is ready; come to the feast.” But despite the second summon and beckon, some of the guests still ignored the invitation and went away; some of them mistreated the king’s servants, and even had some of them killed. Obviously the invited guests were neither hungry nor have any need. After all, some were property owners; some had farms; others had businesses. But some were just arrogant and vicious to the point of putting the king’s servants to death. The king became furious. In anger, he sent his army to wipe out the murderers and burn their city. Then he said to his servants: “The feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy to come. Go out, therefore, into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.” The servants went to the streets and invited everyone, ‘the bad as well as the good.’ The banquet hall was filled up. 

When the king came into the banquet hall to greet the guests, he saw a man who wasn’t dressed in a wedding garment considered proper for a wedding banquet. When he challenged him on it, the man had nothing to say. So the king told his guards, “Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”

What was wrong with the people who refused the king’s invitation? Why would they exclude themselves from the experience of a wedding feast? The answer is simple: they did not have any relationship with the king. In this parable of the wedding feast, Jesus makes it clear that just being a member of the church with official approval is not enough. When the king came to see his guests, he saw a man who had been admitted by the king’s own servants, but wasn’t dressed up for the wedding feast. The man was physically present, but wasn’t ready for the wedding feast. He was invited just like the others; he showed up just like the others, but he wasn't ready for the occasion. He was present, but just did not know what to do. His presence was not enough. He was physically present, but socially not ready. When I was in the seminary, there were guys who came to the seminary to study for the priesthood.  Like me, they were also invited by the Lord. Like me, they also wanted to be Redemptorists priests or brothers, but after a discerning process, which included them and the Formation Directors, they were found to be unready and unprepared. Eventually some of them were asked to leave. 

By the virtue of our baptism, we are all Christians. But you and I know that not every Christian is ready for the Wedding Banquet of the Lord. There are people who come to Mass every Sunday, but are yet unready for it. There are so many who claim to be in the church, but are hardly ready. Some of us are hardly physically unready (i.e. they only go to church when a family member or friend is wedding, a child related to them is being baptized, and when someone they know dies). Such persons cannot really be spiritually ready for the Wedding Banquet of the Lord. There are some who are physically ready, that is, they are seen in church every Sunday, but spiritually are not ready and prepared. They may honor the Lord with their lips, but their hearts are far away from him (Matthew 15:8). They may be calling the Holy One “Lord, Lord,” but hardly do his will. To be in the Church is to be in a relationship of love with Jesus Christ. 

The King who gave the wedding banquet is the Father. The Son is Jesus. The wedding banquet is that of the Lord found in Revelations 19:7, “Let us rejoice and be glad and give him the glory. For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.” It is the end of the time banquet which will mark the second coming of Jesus. Everyone is invited to this wedding feast. But only those who are prepared and ready, who are still wearing the spotless white garment given to us at Baptism will be admitted into the Banquet Hall. At Baptism the priest usually place a white garment on the newly baptized and say, “... you have become a new creation, and have clothed yourself in Christ. See in this white garment the outward sign of your Christian dignity. With your family and friends to help you by word and example, bring that dignity unstained into the everlasting life of heaven.” 

At this banquet, all are invited, but only those who retain their symbolic white garment given to them at Baptism unstained will be admitted into the banquet of the Lord. At this banquet, all are invited, but only those who are prepared and ready would be admitted into it. Everyone is invited, but only those who are ready would be chosen. To just show up in any kind of dress is not enough. To just show up at the right place and at the right time is not enough. Each of us must be spiritually ready to enter into the banquet hall of the King. To be ready is to be spiritually and morally alert, alive and healthy. To be ready is to be awake and alive in the spirit. To be ready is to be pure in heart. To be ready is to persevere in doing what is good. St. Paul tells us in Galatians 6:9 “Do not be tired of doing what is good, for at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” To be ready is to continue unceasingly to do what is just, what is honorable, what is lovely, what is gracious, what is amazing, what is excellent, what is true, and what is pure. In Matthew 5:8, Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” In today’s second reading from Philippians 4: 12-14, St. Paul assures us that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Yes, we can be faithful! Yes, we can be pure in hearts! Yes, we can keep our love relationship with Lord unstained and undivided! Yes, we can love the Lord above all things! And yes, we would be admitted into the wedding banquet of Jesus our Lord! 

Kings Without Kingdoms 

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

St. Gerard Majella Church

Baton Rouge, LA

October 5, 2014

Jesus tells another parable to the “chief priests and the elders of the people” and also to us. He tells about a landowner who leased his vineyard out to tenant farmers before embarking on a journey. While he was still away, he sent his servants to collect the rent, but the tenants turned on them with aggression and violence. Finally, the landowner sent his own son, thinking, “they will respect my son.” But on sighting his son, the tenants said to each other, “This is the heir to everything; if we kill him, we will have his inheritance!” So, they seized him, dragged him outside the vineyard, and killed him. Then Jesus asks his listeners, “When the owner of the vineyard returns, what do you think he will do to those tenants?” They answered him, “He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will make sure he gets his share when it is due.” Jesus ends the story with a warning, “Didn’t you ever read in the Scriptures, ‘The stone which builders rejected has become the keystone of the arch?’ Let me tell you something here: the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruits” (Matthew 21:33-43).

It’s not theologically wrong to assume that the landowner in this parable is God. The vineyard is the earth. The tenants are the chief priests, the elders of the people and God’s people in general. Before the advent of Jesus, God had sent several prophets to preach, teach, warn, straighten, and to guide his people. But several of these prophets were abused, ignored, and even killed by the Jewish leaders. Finally, God sent his Son, Jesus Christ. As soon as he began his ministry, he was an instant hit. He became a polarized figure: ordinary folks loved him, but the religious and political leaders hated him and sought for a way to put him to death. The chief priests and the elders of the people that Jesus spoke to in today’s Gospel were among those that hated him. They are the ones who would arrest him, judge him, accuse him before Pilate and get him executed. They would eventually throw the son out of the vineyard and kill him- a reference to Jesus being taken outside the city of Jerusalem to be crucified. But Jesus warns them that they would soon find themselves no longer in charge and others would be given the responsibility of leading God’s people and teaching them the ways of holiness. 

Jesus’ warning in today’s Gospel, “…the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruits” should be taken seriously by all and sundry. Professing Christianity, being outwardly pious, having an outward show of religion cannot guarantee anyone heaven unless they are matched by doing what is true, what is honorable, what is just, what is pure, what is lovely, what is gracious, what is excellent, and what is worthy of praise as St. Paul suggested in Philippians 4:8-9. When people ask what it means to be Catholic, we may attempt to answer such a question simply by making a reference to religious faith and practices like Mass, prayer, the sacraments etc. But being Catholic goes deeper than Mass attendance, saying the prayers and receiving the sacraments. Beyond these religious expressions must be an honest desire for justice, that is, living as God expects, doing as God wants, and thinking as God desires. Being a Catholic means welcoming God’s unsettling message and not seeking to silence God’s messengers. It means, not just looking at the quality of our religious practices, but at how these practices reflect and influence our lifestyles. It means allowing the Word of God we read in the Scripture and hear at Mass during preaching to confront our lives, influence the choices we make, challenge our attitudes and prejudices, expose our selfishness, and question our commitments. If we desire to be part of God’s kingdom, then our lives must be characterized by justice and integrity. We must bear the fruits of the kingdom which is living according to Jesus’ law of love. Christians who do not live according to the Lord’s law of love: “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34) are like a king without a kingdom. Christians who live under a different set of rules, rules not founded in love and compassion are like a king with no kingdom to call his own. Nominally, they are still Christians but they have left the fold and the Master. They may still be in the Church but they are out of the track. They are like a strayed flock of sheep that are no longer following the Shepherd.