Homily for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

The Kind Of Death God Did Not Make

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Church of St. Bridget of Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, June 30, 2024

Death is a universal phenomenon common to all material beings. After we are born into life, we grow, and then die. This cycle, understandably causes people to ask, what’s the meaning of life? What’s the origin of death? For the latter question, there are plenty of claims and submissions. But in the Bible, particularly in our first reading for this weekend (Wisdom 1:13-15), we hear, “God did not make death.” I tell you, that statement is so odd and so strange. If God didn’t create death, then who did? Death is the most natural thing on earth. Every living thing—trees, plants, insects, animals from the beginning of the world has died. And those living today will eventually die. And we human beings are not an exception to this norm and rule, since we are part of the natural world. So, what does it mean to say that God did not make death when it seems eminently clear that he did? The Book of Wisdom goes on to state that “God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him. But by envy of the devil, death entered the world.”

Is Wisdom’s declaration hard to grasp? You betcha! For it does appear too simplistic and too mythical. How can death come through sin and through the envy of the devil? But what does “God did not make death” mean? Death here should not be taken in a literal and physical sense. It should not be understood to mean the dissolution of the body. Death, as the author of the Book of Wisdom intends the term, is about the psychological, spiritual and physical horror that we experience whenever death is mentioned and whenever we are about to lose a loved one. At the prospect of physical death, we usually recoil in horror. Why? Because we are all sinners and have become alienated from God who is the Source of life. It is this alienation from God that makes us see physical death as something strange and unknown. And the unknown always terrifies us and makes us see death as the end, as just darkness. The terrifying consequence of this kind of attitude is inability to surrender and to trust. If you are wondering why we are afraid of physical death, this is it. It is this kind of death— death of trust, death of hope in the resurrection that God did not invent. So, when the author of the Book of Wisdom says, “God did not make death,” he means it in the full sense, the full psychological, spiritual and physical experience of death that is conditioned by sin. That is what God did not make. God did not make death as something terrible, horrifying, and nihilistic. That’s what God did not invent. This is the death that in the words of St. Paul is “the wages of sin.” 

What could physical death be for someone who never sinned? What could physical death be for people who are truly ready? They have made peace with God; they have sacramentally reconciled with God and are truly ready to transition. For someone who has never sinned, we have the example of the Blessed Mother. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we read this line, “When the course of her earthly life was over…” Now, this is the sinless Virgin Mary immaculately conceived, yet, the course of her earthly life ended, which means that she was not meant to simply live within this dimension of space and time. More to it, her transition from this world to the next is not described as death, but as falling asleep. It was peaceful, effortless, and untroubled by fear. This is how it goes with someone without sin and someone whose sins are forgiven by the Lord (Psalm 32:1). The physical death of the Blessed Mother is spoken of as “falling asleep” because she was utterly confident in God’s love. She did not experience the alienation from God that we sinners experience. Mary fell asleep and woke up again in the transfigured life of the next world. That’s why on every August 15, we celebrate the Assumption of Mary, body and soul into heaven. Her transition was not a horrible and terrifying death, it was a Dormition (a falling asleep). 

With this background in mind, we turn to the Gospel (Mark 5:21-43). It begins with Jairus, a synagogue official falling at the feet of Jesus and intensely begging Jesus to come and cure his daughter who was dying. On his way to cure her, Jesus is approached by a woman who has had hemorrhages for twelve years. She was cured when she touched the tassel of Jesus’ cloak. Thereafter, he comes to Jairus’ home and receives the news that the young girl has died. What did Jesus do next? First, he disregards the message and says to Jairus, “Do not be afraid; just have faith.” Jesus receives word of death, the same reality that frightens us sinners the most. Our own death and the death of loved ones, terrifies us sinners. But in the face of this greatest fear, Jesus says, “trust.” That is the attitude of a person without sin. That is the attitude that God wanted us to have from the beginning in regard to our transition to the next world. The death that God didn’t invent and doesn’t want is the horrible death that generates lack of trust. And throughout the Bible, we are told in all circumstances, in all the ups and downs of life, and at the moment of death to trust in the Lord. Trust in God turns the terror of death into falling asleep. Second, after disregarding the news of the death of Jairus’ daughter, Jesus meets the mourners. Back in his time, there were professional mourners who were called upon to mourn when someone died. Their job is to publicly wail and express the grief of the family. Jesus meets them and says, “The child is not dead but asleep.” Understandably, the crowd ridiculed and laughed at him. If you visit a family that has lost a 12 year old child, and you tell them that their child is not dead but asleep, they will be insulted and would find your comment utterly ridiculous. That’s what happened here. Jesus was mocked and laughed at for saying what he said. But Jesus sends them all out, approaches the dead body of the little girl, touches her by the hand and says to her in Aramaic, “Talitha Koum,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” She hears Jesus and comes back to life as though waking up from sleep. How did the mourners see death? They saw death as something terribly horrible. How did Jesus see it? He sees it as falling asleep. This tells us how God sees our transition from this dimension of time and space to the next. God sees death as dormition, as “falling asleep” in anticipation of the greater life to come. We close our eyes here on earth and open them up in the next. Those whose sins are forgiven will definitely experience death as “falling asleep” here and waking up in heaven. What death did God not create? It is the terrible death of alienation from God. For the saints, death is simply a happy and peaceful transition from one world that is unstable to another that is utterly stable. 

God bless you!

Homily for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Christian Response To Jobian Suffering

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, June 23, 2024

What is that thing, that reality, that human experience that the vast majority of the people in the world dread and want to keep at bay? Human suffering! Human tragedy! And the threat of death! Surprisingly, these realities are on full display in our first reading (Job 38:1, 8-11) and the Gospel (Mark 4:35-41). As you already know, the most challenging book in the entire Bible is the Book of Job. It is a book that beguiles both the believer and the unbeliever, the young and the not too young. And the key troubling issue about the book of Job is the suffering of the just. It has continued to be on the minds of people up and down the centuries. 

Job is presented as an entirely righteous man, a good man, an upright man that walks with God. And he enjoys the blessings of his moral excellence. He has a functional family; he is blessed with wealth and has an admirable position in the society. But then something happens in the spiritual realm. God and Satan engaged in some kind of conversation. In that conversation, Satan tells God that the reason why Job is his friend is because God has blessed Job bountifully. But if he takes away all those blessings, Job would curse God. Surprisingly, God accepts the challenge. He allows Satan to strip Job of all his blessings. Thus, in one terrible swoop, Job loses everything. He loses his family, his loved ones. He loses all of his possessions. Add to that, he loses his health. In one fell sweep, everything he had and had enjoyed is stripped away. At the beginning of his woes, Job does not curse God. But as his suffering persists and intensifies, he falls, understandably, into depression. For seven days, Job sits on an ash heap sullen and mourning. He is joined by three friends, who sit silently with him. If you are involved in pastoral ministry, this approach is a welcome one. Rather than say something that might undermine or trivialize a person’s pain, just sit in silence. It is a rather beautiful gesture. After sitting in silence for seven days, Job’s friends began to speak and  articulate what most of us would consider a pretty commonsensical argument: Job, you must have done something bad to bring all this evil upon yourself. I know you look like you’re righteous, but you must have done something wrong because God is punishing you. 

But Job knows he’s righteous, and so he protests. Eventually, he dismisses the three friends, and then, in one of the most dramatic scenes in the Bible, he calls God into the dock, challenging God to explain why God has allowed him to suffer this way. In his deep anguish, Job cursed the day he was born, “Perish the day on which I was born, the night when they said, ‘The child is a boy!’ May that day be darkness: may God above not care for it, may light not shine upon it! May darkness and gloom claim it, and clouds settle upon it….” (Job 3:5). Job has had enough and he is speaking up, not to his friends, but to God. Job speaks for anyone who has gone through undeserved suffering. Job calls and challenges God: Why? Why would you allow this? Why would you preside over my misfortune and pain? Isn’t this the same question we hear all the time when people suffer? We may have posed similar questions too. Growing up in Nigeria without my father and without any honest helper or guide, I asked that kind of question too. And as a priest for almost 17 years, people in pain and suffering have come to me expressing those sentiments. But in Chapter 38 of the Book of Job, where our first reading for this weekend is taken from, God answers Job and basically takes him on a tour of the universe that Job does not know and did not contribute anything in putting into place. What is particularly interesting about God’s speech to Job is that it is almost about the non-human world. It is about aquatic animals, terrestrial animals, about the sea, about the cosmic realities and not about human affairs. What is God getting at? What does God want us to pay close attention to? God’s providence! God’s providence has to do with human affairs and with everything in the world. Everything we can see and cannot see is under the protective care of God. God is in-charge!

In our Gospel, Jesus and his disciples were in a boat together crossing to the other side.  The phrase, “crossing to the other side,” is evocative of our life on earth, which is basically a journey, a crossing to the other side. It is not always going to be a smooth sail, an unperturbed ride. Occasionally, something imperfect, something we don’t want will happen. But why must it be so? Because the world is a hospital and all of us, in some degree, are sick. We are all patients in this vast world. We are imperfect and from time to time, our actions are motivated by our imperfections. And God allowed imperfect things to happen to us. Why? One, adversity could be a test of your faith. Two, it can be redemptive. How? Suffering can rattle you and wake you up to start paying attention to something you have ignored for a long time. Think of a young man who refuses to cut back his drinking habit. If his doctor now tells him that he has liver cirrhosis and could die young, I tell you, he will make the change needed to survive. Three, misfortune can change your world-view about life, wealth, power, honor, pleasure, beauty, possession etc. It is capable of turning your life around. Four, human tragedy can make you more compassionate. A black nurse working in a hospital recounted how her non-black patients, having found themselves suffering and facing death in the hospital, became more human and more humane. Five, it can jolt and shock you and make you realize this biblical prayer, “Lord, make us know the shortness of our life that we may gain wisdom of heart,” (Psalm 90:12). 

What is the right response to Jobian suffering?  If you are having Jobian experience at this moment, what should you do? Take a cue from the disciples of Jesus. They were going to the other side with Jesus in the boat. Was the trip smooth? Not at all! Saint Mark says that “a violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up.” Their treasured life is under a serious threat. And as this is taking place, Jesus is in the back, sleeping. Shocked and bewildered, the disciples woke him and said, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Jesus wakes up, rebukes the wind and says to the sea, “Quiet! Be still.” Listen everybody, Jesus is in the boat with you. You are not alone and will never be alone as you cross to the other side. But if you face any storm just as the first disciples faced, and you feel that Jesus is silent, approach him and confidently say, “Lord, don’t you care that I am perishing?”  

Homily for the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Why Does God Start Small?

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, June 16, 2024

The parable of the mustard seed is one of Jesus’ most beloved parables. Speaking to the crowds, Jesus says, “To what shall we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable can we use for it? It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants.” 

How does God tend to work? What does the building up of the Kingdom typically look like? We know that God is good. We know that God is the supreme good, summum bonum in Latin. We also know that God is the source and sustainer of all good. But going by what we know of God, it is crystal clear that God prefers good things to start small and by a very slow and gradual process, the project becomes great. God tends to begin from the very small and over time, it grows to the very great. God, it seems, tends to operate under the radar, on the edges of things, quietly, secretly and not drawing attention to himself. If you have doubt about the point I have made, answer these simple questions: How did God enter human history? Was it through a noisy, earthshaking, earth-shattering and disruptive manner? Not at all! God came quietly, sneaking as it were, behind enemy lines. And to make the story of his coming even more acute, more delicious, God did not first appear in Rome or in Athens. He did not appear in Babylon or in some great cultural center. God appeared in a rather dusty, simple outpost of the Roman empire called Bethlehem. In other words, in Jesus Christ, God comes not as a great conquering hero, or a great king or emperor, rather he came as a helpless baby and in the manner of someone who is sneaking behind enemy lines. 

Now, have you ever thought about how Christianity became a global religion and eventually influenced and evangelized many ancient cultures? The spread of Christianity started through unassuming men called Apostles and a handful of other disciples that followed Jesus and through a handful of people that listened to St. Paul in Philippi and Athens. When St. Paul preached in Athens and witnessed the stubborn fact of Jesus’ resurrection, many of his listeners laughed at him and walked away from him. But there was a small number of people who said, “We will like to hear you again on this matter” (Acts 17:32b). Those are the ancestors who entered into Europe with the good news of Jesus Christ, and from there to the rest of the world. How did the Redemptorist Order make its way to 82 countries and on all five continents? It began through a young man of 27 years, Alphonsus Liguori, who after having lost an important case, the first he had lost in eight years of practicing law, resolved to leave the law profession. After that, he went to a church to pray. As he prayed, he heard God’s voice urging and saying to him, “Leave the world, and give yourself to me.” How did the mighty Franciscan movement come to be? It began with one strange and mystical young man of 24 years old. He was praying in the tiny church in San Damiano when Jesus spoke to him from the crucifix saying, “Francis, rebuild my Church, which is falling into ruin.” For St. Alphonsus and St. Francis of Assisi, a small number of people joined them in their unusual project, then dozens, then hundreds, then thousands. 

You might be tempted to say, “But God is great and omnipotent; so let him do great things on his own.” Yes, God can do anything without anyone. God could have rebuilt his Church miraculously, in an instant without St. Francis of Assisi, but God wanted him to get involved. God wants us to participate, through freedom, intelligence, and creativity, in what God is doing. And so he plants seeds, and he wants us to cultivate them. Similarly, God could have renewed the spiritual life of Christians in past centuries through a great infusion of grace, but he chose and inspired saints after saints to leave everything behind and get on with the task of renewing the Church. What we see over and over again in the Bible, in human history is that God delights in getting us involved in his projects and he rejoices in our cooperation and participation with him. This is the truth about the mustard seed and it is seen up and down the Christian centuries. God prefers to start small, he prefers to work under the radar, out of sight and out of mind and in a quiet way. And from these quiet beginnings, great things emerge. 

The central message for today is this: Don’t be afraid to do small things when prompted by God. You might feel that nothing you do might make a difference. You might think that against all the evil in the world, against all the injustice in the world, that there is nothing you could possibly do to make an appreciable difference. Your temptation might be that no one is paying attention to your project, which is, by the way, a good thing. Your worry might be that if people do notice, they might think you are a dreamer, or someone who is wasting his or her time, or a weird and crazy person. Don’t worry about it! Jesus too was accused of losing his mind (Mark 3:21). Totally disregard what people might think of you. If you feel the urge, the inspiration of God, sow the seed. Make the move. Do that good. Forgive that person. Give that love. Take that step. Do it even the smallest way and leave the rest to the mercy and providence of God. Check this out!When things start small, they can take off under the radar while you gain the strength, the knowledge, the wisdom and the seriousness vitally needed to make them great. If you want to do something great and you pray and God gives you massively what you want. Guess what? You might not be ready, and your project will fizzle out. So be patient and embrace the small divine invitations. 

God bless you!

Homily for the Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Where are you? 

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, June 9, 2024

In ordinary life, we are very familiar with actions and consequences, with cause and effect. In the family, parents tell their children the consequences of not learning the ethics, morals and virtues being communicated to them at home. In schools at every level, teachers and professors tell their students the heavy cost of ignoring their books.  At work, managers and supervisors tell other employees the price of not following rules. In the society at large, the law and law enforcements constantly remind us of the lacerating repercussions of not following the laws of the land. In the Bible, cause and effect is also not left out. In fact, what we see in our first reading for this weekend is the immediate consequences of Original Sin, that is, the Fall and its implications. 

After Adam disobeyed God’s command to not eat the forbidden fruit, God comes to Adam and asks a question, a question that is more profound and terrifying than it appears: “Where are you?” Now, don’t read this to mean that God cannot see Adam and cannot see us. God sees everything and everyone. Again, don’t read this to mean that God does not know the whereabouts of Adam and Eve. God knows everything about everything. The Book of Psalm 139 speaks clearly and eloquently of God’s omnipresence and omniscience: that God knows when I sit and stand, that I cannot possibly hide myself from God, that if I go to the heavens, God is there. If I lie down in Sheol, underworld, God is there. If I go to the sea and live beyond its depth, even there God can see me. And if I ask darkness to hide me, even the darkest night cannot hide me from God. Because of the aforementioned reasons, God’s question, “Where are you?” cannot mean that God is unaware of Adam’s whereabouts. God never loses sight of us. But what does the question mean? It is a powerful symbolic expression of the stubborn fact that sin always involves alienation from God. God is asking Adam, Eve and everyone of us: Now that you have removed yourself from my presence, now that you have left the relationship of faith, trust and obedience, now that you have declared your independence from me, where are you? Now that I am no longer at the center of your life, now that you’ve got what you want, where are you now? How’s that independence working out for you? Now that you have abandoned the theo-drama, the drama that I your God is writing, producing, and directing and followed your ego-drama, the drama that you are writing, producing, directing, and starring in, where are you now? And how is it working out for you? 

What’s Adam’s response to God’s question? “I heard you in the garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid myself.” I tell you, I can spend my entire homily on “I was afraid,” “I was naked,” “I hid myself.” Why is Adam afraid? Before the Original Sin, he was not afraid of God at all. He had a friendly association with God. And this friendly association, this easy walking with God is what God always wants. God wants us to walk in rhythm with him. But when sin gets in the way, it awakens in us the sense that God is angry, that God has changed. But God doesn’t change, we change. In alienation, we feel that God is angry with us and we are afraid of him consequently. But God is love. God is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrew 13:8). God never changes. Because Adam changed, God’s smile appeared like a frown of anger and wrath. In human relationships, the moment you sensed rightly or wrongly that someone has changed, even the person’s smile would appear to be anger or an expression of mockery.  Have you not said or heard people say something like “I don’t believe his smile.” “I don’t believe her smile.” “He's mocking me.” “She’s mocking me.” 

After expressing his fear, Adam confesses: “I was naked.” Prior to sin, Adam wasn’t aware of his nakedness. He was like a child at home easily walking around the house completely naked and unaware of it. What does sin do to us? It makes us spiritually naked. It strips us of our original innocence and brings about shame. The moment Adam spoke about his nakedness, God asked him, “Who told you that you were naked?Adam replied, “The woman whom you put here with me— she gave me the fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.” And when God inquired from the woman, she played the same blame game, “The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it.” One of the most fundamental functions of sin is blaming, finger-pointing, scapegoating, accusing. Did you watch TV this week, especially the conviction of the former president in New York? What did you mostly hear? Blame-game! I am not saying there is no objective analysis of why bad things happen either economically, socially, morally etc. I am talking about blaming, accusing, shaming, scapegoating etc. Do you know the two famous names of the devil in the Bible? Accuser and Scatterer! Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent. Pay attention to Adam’s words, “the woman that you put here with me…” and you will see a subtle blaming of God in the account. Adam is saying that it is not only Eve’s fault, but also God’s fault. For it is God who put Eve with him. We all do this. We are always looking for someone to blame for our actions and choices. 

Having now lost his innocence and incurred shame, Adam “hides” from God. Of course, he didn’t really succeed in his effort to hide. God can see why he sat or stood. But why did Adam hide? It’s the nature of sin and disobedience. Sin always wants to hide from light. Sin prefers darkness. In John’s Gospel, Jesus gives a verdict, “…the light has come into the world, but people prefer darkness to light, because their deeds are evil” (John 3:19). We all fear darkness. If we are out partying or attending official events, once it’s getting dark, there’s this natural urge to want to go home. But if we are planning to do something sinful or criminal, we naturally prefer darkness to light. We need the darkness to hide our sin. But we can’t possibly hide it from God. We can hide it from others, but we cannot hide it from God’s shining light.

What does God do now? Immediately God starts the process that will take all of human history to complete— namely, our rescue operation. In our Gospel for today (Mark 3:20-35) and in fact everywhere in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus functions as an exorcist, as a deliverer and Savior, as someone who comes to save us and lead us out of the garden of sorrow, distress and despair. The great good news of Christianity is that though God knows we have gone off-kilter, he doesn’t give up on us. Rather, what we see throughout the Bible is that he is seeking us out. Even when we feel a million miles from God, there’s still that strange voice that convinces us we are not where we are meant to be. There is still that voice asking you, where are you? That voice is the voice of conscience. The conscience is the aboriginal vicar of Christ; it is in that sanctuary that God speaks to everyone. If we listen to that voice and do its bidding, our reward is joy and peace that the world cannot give.  

God bless you!