Fr. Matthias Neuman's Homily for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Ex 22:20-26; 1 Thess 1:5-10; Mt 22:34-40

Way back in 1968 when I was doing my graduate studies in Rome at Sant Anselmo, it was an exclusively scholastic and intellectual atmosphere. I was deeply seeking to get involved in something pastoral. That’s not easy to find in a foreign country. Well, by a long and complicated series of events, I found myself as the assistant scoutmaster of the American Girl Scout troop in Rome. The girls were all children of military personnel, diplomats or international business managers. My task was to prepare the Girl Scouts to present a play at the end of the year for their parents on the site of Cicero’s villa in the Alban Hills. To do this I had to travel to the far north side of Rome to the American school one afternoon a week after their school let out and work with them for an hour. And so I found myself with twelve fifth to eighth grade girls trying to prepare a play. To get a play for them I adapted and wrote a version of the book of Ruth.(Still have it.) But getting the girls to practice the play was something else. I would take a couple of them, practice their parts, but when I wanted to take the next group....they were all gone. They were all outside playing, laughing and running in the schoolyard. I would go out and round up the next group. By the time I had got them back to the classroom, the first group had disappeared. And so it went, for weeks and months. Finally, I just gave up at one session and sat in a chair and hung my head down. After a while someone touched me. I looked up and there they all were, standing in a semi-circle around me. One of them said, "Is something wrong?" I answered, "Look! I’m supposed to prepare you for this play. But you won’t practice. You are always running outside, laughing, playing and yelling around. This play is going to be a disaster and I’ll be blamed for it." There was a pause and one of them said, "But when we are with you is the only time we ever get to have any fun during the week." I thought about it and said, "You know what: go play, have fun and I’ll take the blame for it."

Over the course of that year I got to know a number of those girls pretty well. Their world was so very different from the world I grew up in. Their family would move somewhere different in the world every two or three years. I asked one of them, "How do you make friends?" She responded, "We don’t even try anymore. It’s too hard to make a friend and then move in a year and never see them again." I thought to myself, "What a different world they live in." I struggled to understand it.

It’s not easy to understand the mindset of someone who sees the world so differently from you. And yet that’s what the book of Exodus in the first reading asks the Israelites to do. "You shall not molest an alien for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt." We should remember that the Israelites for whom this was written had no living memory of being slaves themselves. They were powerful individuals in their own land. Now they were told to see the world as a stranger does.

The same thing is true of all pastoral ministry. If you are going to serve someone well, you have to make a real effort to see the world as they do. And that’s not easy. It’s not just the angle of perspective you try to see, it’s also all the emotions that flow from it, the personal relationships that result, and the hopes and goals in life the person has. That’s at the heart of good pastoral ministry.

By the way, at our last scheduled practice all the girls on their own showed up in the classroom. I walked them through all the parts of the play. Four days later they absolutely aced the performance at Cicero’s villa. They aced the performance with one practice. Unbelievable!

Fr. Matthias Neuman's Homily for the 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time

I had a request to continue posting Fr. Matthias' homilies...so I am honoring that request. Enjoy and God bless your journey!


Readings: Is 45:1-6; 1 Thess 1:1-5; Mt. 22:15-21

Next month we will celebrate the feast of Thanksgiving, one of the most beloved of our American holidays. This day has a diverse history of sources. The most common one takes it back to the Puritans in 1621 and their celebrating their first harvest in their new land. But all the European settlers in America brought some kind of feast celebrating the end of the fall harvest season. Scholars today dispute whether the first thanksgiving feast on American soil took place in Massachusetts, or Virginia or even Florida (with the Spanish explorers).

Religiously, thanksgiving goes back a lot farther in time. The oldest materials in the Old Testament, from the book of Psalms, shows that praise and thanksgiving were the two dominant responses of the ancient Israelites to their God, Jahweh. That was quite unique among all the religions around them. In those other religions people feared their gods, appeased their gods, and then made requests to their gods. Seldom do we find any mention of praise and thanksgiving. But it runs through the whole Psalter of the Old Testament. There were sacrifices of thanksgiving offered to the Lord God, and these were accompanied by people praying the psalms of thanksgiving while a priest was doing the sacrifice. Here’s an example of that: "I praise you, Lord, because you have saved me....You have changed my sadness into a joyful dance...you have taken away my sorrow and surrounded me with joy...Lord, you are my God; I will give you thanks forever." (Ps. 30)

Those same attitudes of praise and thanksgiving carried over into the early Christian communities. All of their literature is characterized by them. I’ve always been impressed by the passage of today’s second reading from Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, which is probably the oldest Christian document we possess. I still remember the first time I read it as a novice at St. Meinrad. As novices, we were encouraged to read the Bible, especially the New Testament, during our novitiate year. When I first read those lines, "We give thanks to God always for all of you, remembering you in our prayers..." I just sat there in stunned silence for a while. Wow! I thought. Thanking God for the people who are and were part of my life. I realized how easy it is to take them all for granted. I just started right there to pray for my mother and my father, my two sisters, my teachers in high school and so on. I realized for the first time that to thank God for these people IS to pray.

That same attitude of thanksgiving carried on in the whole Christian Church. They called their basic worship service Eucharistia, the Thanksgiving. What we call the mass—they called Eucharistia, the Thanksgiving. What we are doing here today is one big act of giving thanks to God.

It would be good for all of us to call that to mind explicitly and often.

Thanksgiving is, indeed, one of the basic characteristics of Christian spirituality and life. Sometimes it can be very hard to be thankful for our lives. There can be so much illness and such difficult settings in a person’s life that it’s hard for people to be thankful. And that’s understandable. But that’s all the more reason to participate in the Eucharist. There people can join a general setting of thanksgiving and participate in a group setting, when they find it very hard to be thankful on an average day. So we are performing here today a group act of thanksgiving, not just for ourselves but for all the people we know who find it hard to give thanks themselves. Let’s take a moment now and remember them in our hearts.

Blessings

Thank you for taking time to read this blog over the years. My energy for blogging is depleted for now. I'll no longer post entries. I'll post a few pictures every now and then. I won't delete this site. Who knows what may happen in the future!

Let's continue to give God the glory and pray for one another.

Blessings,
Sr. Nicolette

Fr. Matthias Neuman's Homily for the 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Readings: Is 5:1-7; Phil 4:6-9; Mt 21:33-43

Sometimes the Apostle Paul seems so idealistic, it’s unreal. I have a pretty good idea how people today would react after hearing the second reading: "Have no anxiety at all." I think most would respond, "Maybe you can say that, but I can’t. I have too many responsibilities that are hanging over my head all the time." People have families to feed, children to raise and educate, debts to pay, aging parents to look after. The list goes on and on. "Have no anxiety at all? You have to be kidding."

But maybe we are looking at Paul’s words from the wrong perspective. Maybe he’s not talking about the daily pressures and cares of life. Paul knew very well that we will all have to bear our share of the cross. For many people those daily anxieties are part of the cross that it is theirs to bear. Maybe Paul was talking about our basic relationship to God. In other words he was saying: "Have no anxiety about this: the God of Jesus Christ cares for you. If you remember that, and bring that to mind often, then you will have a basic peace of heart." We should remember that Paul is writing to people who were a part of a very religiously diverse Greco-Roman culture. There were many, many religions and thousands of gods in the Roman Empire at that time. People worried about offending a god, maybe a god from some religion they didn’t even know about. Paul is also writing to people who are only recently Christian, so they may very well have carried some of their old religious attitudes with them. Paul wants to reassure them. In the Christian faith there is only one God and that God cares deeply for them. I am always moved by the words of the Fourth Eucharistic Prayer for Various Occasions: "By his words and actions Jesus proclaimed to the world that you care for us...." That says so very much about our Catholic Christian faith.

So the issue that is placed before us today is: what is our basic attitude toward our relationship with God. That’s a weighty issue, to be sure. In the last fifty years the Catholic Church has gone through a monumental shift in this regard. In the Counter-Reformation Church over the four hundred years before Vatican II, the general image of God was not of a caring God. God wasn’t angry or punishing, but he was sternly just. And he kept close tabs on each one of us. He was always watching over our shoulder and keeping his little notebook to mark a good grade or a demerit for every action we did. Just like the sister used to do in the grade school classroom. I recall one time when I was riding home on my bicycle and I came to a point where I could cut off a lot of my trip by cutting down an alley and then through a man’s private driveway. I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I wanted to get home quickly. I stood there for a long time and I swear I could see God with his little notebook and pen in hand ready to make a good or bad mark against me. (I honestly don’t remember what I did in the end.) But that was a common view of God before Vatican II.

The Second Vatican Council began to change that image of God for me and for lots of other Catholics. My classes in theology, especially in Scripture, really made me think and reassess my views. One passage that had a profound effect on me was from the prophet Hosea: "When Israel was a child, I loved him. ... It was I who taught Ephraim to walk. ...I led them with cords of human kindness, with hands of love." (11:1-4) Slowly my image of God shifted from the one with the notebook and pen to that of a parent coaxing a child to walk, holding hands on either side to catch the child if it falls. My image of God became one of an invisible power who wants us to discover our abilities and share them for the good of others. So Paul’s exhortation to "have no anxiety" is a good reminder for all of us to examine our own image of the basic relationship between God and ourselves.

Fr. Matthias Neuman's Homily for the 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Readings: Ez 18:25-28; Phil 2:1-11; Mt 21:28-32

Last Monday morning I was watching the news on TV and there was a guest being interviewed; he was a marriage counselor. Some of his observations perked up my ears. He said that, on average, when a couple comes to see him for the first time they have been having problems in their marriage for six years. And in more than half the cases they are not really coming for marriage counseling; they are coming for pre-divorce counseling. He was asked what were some of the more difficult issues that people have to face. One of the first ones he mentioned was "forgiveness." He said, "Most people don’t know what it is." They either underestimate it or overestimate it. They underestimate it by thinking that it’s not really important. They overestimate it by making it into something that is almost humanly unreachable. Wow! I thought; many people don’t know what forgiveness is. That’s a crucial issue not only in religion but also in basic human relationships.

I know what he was talking about. Having been a spiritual director for over forty years, I’ve seen the same problem in lots of people—seminarians, sisters, priests and lay people. The biggest problem is that they overestimate forgiveness and make it into something that is almost humanly unreachable. And then they criticize and blame themselves because they can’t reach it. They think that forgiveness is to wipe the slate clean. The offense one suffered isn’t remembered anymore. All animosity is set aside and it’s like we are good friends again. Nonsense! In a human perspective forgiveness means that we no longer seek any retaliation either from ourselves or in general. I used to give the seminarians this example. You’ve had a longstanding disagreement with another student. He has said some things that really made you mad and embarrassed. But now you are trying to forgive him and put it behind you. But you keep having occasional remembrances and then traces of the old anger flares up. Have you truly forgiven him? Well, ask yourself this: if you were walking alongside a river and you noticed that particular individual struggling to swim and crying for help. You also see that there is a life preserver right beside you, would you throw it to him? If you can say, "Yes, I would," even though you don’t like him, then you have forgiven him. If you say to yourself, "No, let the him die," then you haven’t.

One of the problems is that people think they have to completely erase any bad thoughts from their memory, so that the whole unpleasant event is never thought of again. That doesn’t happen with human beings. Unpleasant events leave psychological scars that remain all our lives, just as some physical events leave bodily scars that remain all our lives. I have a scar on my leg that I got from some roughhousing we were doing in the boy scout cabin when I was in grade school. It was an accident that was mostly my fault. But every time I see that scar it takes me back to that episode in my life. The same is true of our psyches. When we have been deeply hurt, we get psychological "scars" (so to speak) that will stay with us all our lives. Years later when some random association brings that to memory, we can begin to feel the anger and animosity all over again. But that’s not a sign that we haven’t forgiven the other person; it just tells us what our psychological history has been.

The first reading we heard today from the prophet Ezekiel is an account of divine forgiveness. And in divine forgiveness everything is wiped clean. God holds nothing against us. Later in Jesus Christ that divine forgiveness is going to make things better than they were before. Human forgiveness is like divine forgiveness, but it doesn’t measure up to it fully. That’s why it’s always good to remember the life preserver story; it gives us a solid point of reference for measuring human forgiveness.

Fr. Matthias Neuman's Homily for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Is 55:6-9; Phil 1:20-27; Mt 20:1-16

There are some stories you hear or read about and remember all your life; they somehow always stay fresh. I have one of my own in mind right now. The story takes place in France in the 1890s and concerns a young man who was avidly studying to be a scientist at the University of Paris. He was lapping up every bit of knowledge he could get. One holiday season he boarded a train to go back to his family home for vacation. Looking for a compartment to sit in, he came upon one which was occupied only by an old man who was looking through some notes. The student went in and sat down; neither acknowledged the other. After some time the old man put his notes away and began to pray his rosary. This was too much for the student and he spoke up: "Surely you don’t believe in that superstition any more; science is showing that all such religious stuff is false." The old man looked at him quizzically and asked, "What is this science you are talking about?" And the student began to tell him about the rise of modern science, the experimental method, the use of mathematical calculations, and projections, and so on. The old man put his rosary away and listened intently. As the train began to slow down, the old man said, "This is my stop coming. If I give you my card, will you write to me more about this ‘science’ you speak of. " The student said he would gladly. He slipped the old man’s card into his pocket and jumped up to help the old man get his bag from the upper rack. He assisted him to the door and off the train. The old man thanked him and told him to remember to write him. The student went back very satisfied to his seat. After the train had left the station, he pulled out the old man’s card to see who he would be writing to. It said simply: Louis Pasteur, President of the French Academy of Science.

The young student was so sure he had everything in hand; he knew exactly where everything was going. The world was operating the way it should be. And then he met the old man. That ‘s a lot like the disgruntled workers in today’s gospel passage. They were pretty sure they had figured out that they would get a nice bonus. And then they were caught up short by the owner’s justice and generosity at the same time.

These are really stories about all of us and the common human temptation of thinking that we have got it all figured out. We like to do that so often with things religious. We want to think that we have a pretty good bead on God’s intentions. That’s why we surely don’t like to hear the first reading from Isaiah: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord." This has to be pretty disconcerting for anyone who takes religion as a part of daily life. You have to wonder how you can ever move forward.

Maybe it’s not about moving forward. There is a strain of Jewish spirituality that begins and ends with those famous words from the book of Job: "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." (1:21) In this spirituality you can’t know ever what God’s plans are, so there’s no use trying. All one can do is praise God’s name.

I think that was the attitude of Louis Pasteur. Certainly he was one of the greatest medical scientists of modern times—a pioneer in so many medical breakthroughs. No one was a stricter scientist than he was. He believed fully in science. And yet he left explicit instructions that he was to be buried with a rosary in his fingers. "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

Fr. Matthias Neuman's Homily for the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Readings: Sir 27:30-28:7; Rom 14:7-9; Mt 18:21-35

The themes of the first reading and the gospel are pretty clearly anger and forgiveness. And I don’t suppose we can ever reflect too much on those. The best book I ever read on anger and forgiveness is David Mace’s Love and Anger in Marriage (1982). It hooked me from the start: "The Blue Dolphin Restaurant in San Leandro, CA has been the scene of numerous memorable gatherings, but none perhaps so quite unforgettable as the wedding reception that took place in mid-June. As the 300 guests chatted happily among themselves they suddenly grew silent when the newly weds began arguing in loud voices. Dismay turned to disbelief when the groom grabbed the wedding cake and shoved it in his bride’s face. By the time a police squad had pulled up, guests were breaking chairs and smashing mirrors. It took half an hour for more than 30 police to get the crowd under control. By that time the newlyweds had left on their honeymoon." (P. 9) Mace, a family psychologist, then gives some of the basic themes he will develop in the book. The very first one stands out: "The state of marriage generates in normal people more anger than they are likely to experience in any other type of relationship in which they find themselves." (Chalk one up for celibacy.)

We need to do some reflection on anger because it has become a social problem on the national level. Perhaps it’s better to say anger, which has progressed to rage, is a national social problem. We read so often of incidents of road rage, parking lot rage, check-out line rage; it takes so little to set some people off, to send them into furious, unthinking behavior.

We, in religious communities, have our problems with anger as well. But we are usually down at the other end of the spectrum; our problem is with repressed anger. There was for so long a common teaching in the Catholic Church that all anger was sinful. So angry feelings, even legitimate angry feelings, got pushed under the skin and were never expressed. There they festered for years and years. I saw an example of that in my own community. About twenty years ago we had a workshop on community building. The workshop had the exact opposite result from what was originally intended. It didn’t build community; it showed what divided the community. The monks were to write in, anonymously, what bothered them about the monastic community. The results of this poll were made known to everyone. I was completely surprised to find out how many monks were still angry, some bitterly angry, over something that had happened thirty or forty years ago. That festering anger didn’t contribute anything positive to their monastic life.

We need to do a serious re-assessment of anger in Catholic spirituality. And we need to begin with a recognition that the feeling of anger is not bad or sinful in itself. Anger is one of our natural emotions, is part of our whole psychological make-up, is created by God and is therefore good in itself. Anger serves a very useful purpose in our lives. Anger alerts us to a danger that threatens us in some way. But that should be the lead-in to explore more carefully the nature of the danger. Is it real or mistaken? Is it a genuine threat of something else altogether? We don’t get much emotional education anywhere in our culture, and so we aren’t used to exploring our emotions and testing their truthfulness. We just let it race on toward guilt or rage.

We should appreciate anger. It serves a purpose in our lives. But we have to learn how to make a good and proper use of it.