September 13, 2020
24^th Sunday – Abbot Daniel Maloney, OSB

According to a book on the death of President Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War in the United States came to an end in April of 1865 at a courthouse in Virginia.  General Robert E. Lee, the general in charge of the Confederate Army surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant, the commanding general of the Union Army.  Historians say that General Grant asked General Lee for his sword as a sign of surrender.  However, at the end of their conversation General Grant told General Lee that he was free to go and that the Confederate Army was free to go.  General Lee apparently was surprised by the mercy shown him by General Grant, as General Lee thought that he would be imprisoned and probably put on trial for his role in the rebellion against the Union government.  This merciful action by General Grant and other Union leaders helped to bring about reconciliation between the North and the South.  One former Confederate general, General Rosser, later worked in Bismarck as an engineer.  Our readings for this Sunday speak of the need for showing mercy and forgiveness to others.  We are to be thankful for God’s mercy and forgiveness on our behalf.  We are to imitate God’s mercy and forgiveness in our dealings with others, and we need to seek God’s grace and help so that we are able to forgive others and show them mercy.

The Gospel reading today from the 18^th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew tells us first of all that we have to forgive others over and over again, just as God forgives us again and again.  Peter asked Jesus how often he needs to forgive a brother who sins against him.  The Jewish rabbis at the time of Jesus apparently said that three times was the limit.  So, Peter thought he was being generous when he suggested that seven times would be the limit.  But Jesus tells him “Not seven times but seventy-seven times.”  The big number indicates that there is to be no limit in our forgiveness of others.  Jesus goes on to give us the parable of the king who settled with his servants, which apparently included high-ranking officials.  There was a servant who owed a huge amount to the king.  The king was going to have the servant sold, as well as the servant’s family and property to help pay the debt.  The servant asked for mercy, and the king forgave the servant’s debt.  Later the servant found another servant who owed the first servant a much smaller amount.  The first servant demanded payment and had the second servant put into prison when that servant was unable to pay the debt.  All the other servants were upset by this and reported the matter to the king.  The king called in the servant whose debt had been forgiven and had him punished severely.  We are told that we will suffer a severe penalty if we do not forgive our brother or sister from our heart.  The message seems to be that God has forgiven us a huge debt that we could not pay by forgiving our sins.  Any sin against us by another person is very small by comparison., so we should be willing to forgive the other person.  There is another aspect to this parable in that if we are unable to forgive someone, we will not be forgiven.  There is a psychological truth in this that many examples and studies have shown.  If we are unable to forgive someone, this will do us both physical and psychological harm.  We will be bitter and unhappy, without peace and joy.  There was a religious film made several years ago that had nine stories about forgiveness.  One story concerned some Jewish people who had trouble forgiving those who had been involved in the persecution and death of many Jews in World War II.  One Jewish man said three times was the limit one could forgive, and some sins seemed to be unforgiveable.  On the other hand, there was a story about a man who had killed several Amish children and their teacher.  The Amish people forgave the man and offered material and spiritual help to the man and his family.  Forgiveness involves a decision on our part to seek the good of another, especially their eternal salvation, no matter who they are.

We may wonder how we can carry out the command of Jesus to forgive others and to do so again and again, if that is necessary.  Many of us find it hard to forgive others, especially if they have done us harm.  But the first reading today, from the Book of Sirach tells us that wrath and anger are hateful things.  Also, this reading tells us that “the vengeful will suffer the Lord’s vengeance.”  So, somehow we have to forgive others.  We have to be humble enough to realize that we need the help of God’s grace to do this.  We won’t be able to do this on own power.  There was a Protestant Christian woman named Corrie Ten Boom who lived in the Netherlands during World War II.  Corrie and her sister sheltered Jews.  This was eventually discovered by the Nazi rulers, and Corrie and her sister were sent to a German concentration camp.  Corrie survived the camp, but her sister died there.  After the war, Corrie proclaimed the Gospel message to others.  At one talk she gave, a man came up afterwards.  He said that he had been a guard in the camp where Corrie’s sister had died.  He asked Corrie to forgive him.  Corrie found that she could not do so at first, but she prayed for God’s help, and she found herself able to forgive him publicly.  She then had peace in her heart in his regard.  We can receive the help of God’s grace in our prayer and in the Sacraments, especially the Sacrament of the Eucharist.  Let us pray for the ability to forgive others, whether they are present or absent.

In our Eucharist today, we are once again asked to thank God for his mercy and forgiveness of our sins.  We are to give thanks that Jesus suffered and died on the cross on our behalf and took away a huge debt that we were not able to pray.  Let us pray for the ability to forgive others that we and they may someday be able to enter the fullness of God’s Kingdom.
 

September 6, 2020
23^rd Sunday – Abbot Daniel Maloney, OSB

There was an unusual story in the news lately that you may have noticed.  It concerned a priest in Michigan who was ordained in 2017.  Or, he thought that he was ordained, but he probably was not ordained because of an unusual circumstance.  This priest had a video of his own baptism, which was performed by a deacon in the parish where his family belonged.  The priest noticed that the deacon said, “We baptize you….”  Normally the priest or deacon who baptizes says, “I baptize you.”  The priest showed this to his bishop, and the bishop asked someone at the Vatican if this baptism was a valid baptism.  The official ruling from Rome was that it was not a valid baptism, which meant that the ordination of the priest had not been valid, since one requirement for ordination is a valid baptism.  So, the priest had to be re-baptized and re-confirmed and then ordained.  I am not sure how sacraments performed by this priest were handled.  The deacon who performed the invalid baptism is no longer active in ministry.  All this shows that things can go wrong in the Church, and an effort has to be made to make things right.  Today’s readings are somewhat unusual as they speak of situations where someone in the Church has a disagreement with another Church member.  How do we make things right?  The main concern is today’s Gospel reading from the Gospel of St Matthew concerns someone in the Church who sins against us.  Jesus says, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.  If he listens to you, you have won over your brother.”  This refers to the general category of what spiritual writers call “fraternal correction.”  We sometimes may have to correct some member of the Church who has a conflict with us.

Sometimes efforts at settling conflicts do not go smoothly.  What do we do then?  The general principle is given in our second reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans.  St. Paul says that the commandments can be summed up by saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  St. Paul goes on to say that “Love is the fulfillment of the law.”  So, our main concern is to seek the spiritual good of the other person.  To be in unity and harmony with other members of the Church is a goal that is worth seeking.  Someone told me recently that his mother had died a few years ago, and she was buried in a Catholic cemetery.  His father wanted to be buried next to her when he died.  He was told that he would have to purchase that cemetery place right away, and the cost would be $800.  So, his father paid $800 in cash to the person in charge of the parish cemetery and received a receipt that noted, “Paid in cash.”  The person’s father died last year, and the family went to make the funeral arrangements.  There was now a different person in charge of the parish cemetery, and he said that he had no record of a payment being made and so the family should pay $800 before they could proceed with the funeral and burial.  The family went back, got the receipt, and apparently brought a lawyer with them.  The person in charge of the parish cemetery agreed that payment had been made, and the funeral and burial was able to proceed.  Our Gospel account gives a three-step process to settle the conflict.  The first step is to approach the person individually, but if that doesn’t work, one should take along one or two other witnesses.  A document can be helpful as well.  But if all this doesn’t settle things, one should tell the Church.  We may need a Church authority, such as a pastor or a bishop or even someone at the Vatican in Rome.  Sometimes, all our efforts may not succeed in bringing about a peaceful settlement of the conflict.  We have to leave the matter to God.  Perhaps the passage of time may help.

The process of “fraternal correction” may involve a situation that does not affect us directly.  The Gospel passage says, “if your brother sins against you.”  The phrase “against you” does not appear in some major manuscripts.  We may notice that a member of the Church is on the wrong path, and we may believe that we have some responsibility to help the person to get his or her life back in order.  The first reading from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel says that the prophet is like a watchman who is supposed to reach out to the wicked.  If the person agrees and changes his or her ways, then all is well.  If the person does not accept correction, then we have done our best and the burden is on the other person.  Our Gospel reading makes reference to prayer, especially when two or three agree on something that should be prayed for.  Our prayer may be helpful to the other person, although it may take time.  Many years ago there was a story about a man who opened up a store that sold pornographic materials.  Some Christian people prayed that the store would close.  Nothing changed for several months.  Then the Christian people decided to change their prayer somewhat by praying for the conversion of the man who owned the store.  In a couple of months, he was converted to the Christian faith.  Once the man became a Christian, he decided to close the store.

There is at least one other possibility to consider in regard to “fraternal correction.”  What happened when I am the one at fault and someone attempts to correct me.  How do we handle that?   I heard a program on Catholic radio recently about Christian leadership.  The hosts of the program mentioned a study of business leaders that had been make about twenty years ago by a secular source.  The book mentioned that the most important quality of a good business leader was humility.  A good leader has to be willing to admit that he or she has made a mistake or that some employee has a better idea on how to solve some problem.  There may be situations where we have to be humble enough to admit that we were wrong or that someone else has a better way to solve some problem.  When I travel somewhere, I sometimes get lost and need to get directions from someone in order to get to my destination.  We may need to get direction from others in various situations.

Today we are reminded that Jesus came to reconcile us to God and to one another.  There is the possibility of someone in the Church sinning against another person in the Church and thus there is a need for reconciliation.  We can be an instrument of reconciliation in some situations.  We pray that we will be able to live in peace and harmony with other Christians.  We also pray that if there is a conflict, God will help us to restore peace.  May God help us to love our neighbor as ourselves and to reach out to others when this is necessary.  May we be faithful disciples of Jesus and someday enter into the fullness of his Kingdom.
 

September 6, 2020 –
23^rd Sunday of Ordinary Time – Boniface Mugglie, OSB

How often have you noticed how starting a new project or relationship goes? It might be a school year or a new job. Marriages are notorious for this. Maybe it’s moving to a new home and town. We often start full of enthusiasm and anticipation. Then difficulties begin to crop up, and we realize it’s not going to be as good as we had dreamed. So we settle down to the daily grind, hoping to get through what we must. Maybe—eventually—w break through into mastery of what we are doing or a true friendship. But it takes some time.
So, how can we recover that sense of hope we had at the beginning? There are plenty of option in different settings. Professions have continuing education. Religious have retreats. In general, there are ways to return to the basics, to remember the simple, clear truths and hopes that first inspired us, and (we hope) will still inspire us today.
It’s no different when it comes to the faith. One reason for requiring regular Mass is to feed our souls, to remind us of the heart of faith. We get this notably today in the readings. St. Paul points to love, the foundation of the great commandments of the Gospel—Love God with all you are; love your neighbor as yourself.
Of course, this idea of love as the greatest human good is not particularly new. Greek philosophers said philia, human friendship or love, was the greatest human good. Jewish rabbis debated, but many did say that love was the heart of the all the commandments of the covenant. Even some in the Enlightenment saw love as the fulfillment of humanity. On the other hand, this idea is new, in a way: Love, for Christians, is not just the highest good and the first and greatest commandment, but it becomes the source of all that exists, for God is love. Love is, for us, the essence of being; Love creates and sustains the world; Love is the core of human nature, what makes us who we are.
More, we speak of a different kind of love. Love, for us, is not primarily erotic, or romantic, or platonic. Love is best expressed as serving the other, caring for them, working for their good. Love, above all, is willing to accept the cross, to die, even for those who do not yet accept our love.
We see yet another side of this love in the Gospel, as Matthew describes it. Mathew today speaks of forgiving others, and I find this call to forgive as being even more distinctive than love. For all those who speak of love as the primary human commandment, few stress the need for forgiveness as the Gospel does. Forgive the repentant sinner, as we’ve been forgiven. This is something we ask daily, sometimes several times each day, every time we pray the “Our Father.”
But perhaps here we show our weariness. When it comes to forgiving, we wait for the other person to repent and come to us, we grudgingly accept their request, perhaps after long consideration. We may, or may not, actually give up the irritation and hurt with them. We certainly let them know that we are granting them a big favor, and it’s not easy.
This, however, is not at all what Matthew describes. Here it’s the one who bears the hurt and loss of sin who goes to the sinner, reaches out and begs for repentance, offering forgiveness. And that’s not the end. If that appeal fails, come back with one or two others to help support the plea. Then include the wider church. Take every opportunity to reach out, to plead for the sinner to come back, to start over.
This is, after all, how God treats us. God sent Moses and the prophets, calling his people to come to him. God sent his own Son to show us the way, to plead for us to come home, and sent out the Apostles with the Good News of salvation: to repent and believe, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
Can we do less than that to those who may have hurt or rejected us?
 

August 30, 2020
22^nd Sunday – Abbot Daniel Maloney, OSB

Father Pierre Jean (Peter John) De Smet, S.J., was a famous American Indian missionary in the 19^th century.  One of our abbey monks, Father Louis Pfaller, O.S.B., wrote a short book called Father De Smet in Dakota.  This book contains a story about a Yankton Sioux chief named Struck-by-the-Ree.  Father De Smet first met this chief in 1844, but there was not enough time to prepare him for baptism.  Father De Smet did give the chief a miraculous medal and a large crucifix, and the chief hung them around his neck.  In 1853 cholera broke out in the Yankton camp, and several people died.  When Struck-by-the-Ree returned from a hunting trip, he placed the miraculous medal on an animal hide and implored the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Three thousand members of the Yankton tribe devoutly kissed the medal, and there was not a single death among them from cholera after this.  I am not sure of the cause and effect relationship in this incident, but it did show the change in their thinking in regard to the Christian and Catholic faith.  Father De Smet did baptize Struck-by-the-Ree in his visit to the tribe in 1866 along with 100 children and 14 other adults.  The readings for this Sunday call us to a change in our thinking, if this is necessary.  When Jesus tells his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly and be killed, Peter takes Jesus aside and rebuked him, saying, “God forbid, Lord!  No such thing shall happen to you.”  Jesus then said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me.  You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”  Like Peter, we are called to think like God does, not like human beings do.  We are to change our thinking about the mission of Jesus and about our role as disciples of Jesus.

Last Sunday we heard that Peter and the other apostles began to realize that Jesus was the promised Messiah or Savior of the Jewish people, but they tended to think, as did many other religious Jews of that time, that the Messiah would lead the Jewish people to military and political success.  Jesus had to inform them that when he went to Jerusalem, he would suffer greatly from the elders, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day he would be raised. In the Gospels Jesus tells his disciples three times that he would have to suffer and die and be raised on the three day.  Today’s Gospel reading is the first warning in the Gospel of Matthew.  When something is repeated three times, it usually is important.  When I was growing up, if a Catholic couple would be getting married in a Catholic ceremony, the bans of marriage would be read on three successive Sundays.  This was in the days before background checks, so apparently part of the reason was to determine if someone had any information that would prevent the wedding going forward.  Jesus was trying to tell the apostles something that was important, but they did not understand it until he did suffer, die, and rise again.  Then they realized that Jesus was to be a suffering Messiah who had to suffer and die and rise again to free us from our sins and enable us to live a holy life.

The apostles also had to change their way of thinking in regard to their call as disciples of Jesus.  The same may be true for us today.  Jesus told his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”  Jesus goes on to say that whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for the sake of Jesus will find it.  We also have to suffer and die in some way if we are to be a disciple of Jesus.  Some people seem to think that if they follow Jesus, everything will go their way.  It usually doesn’t work that way.  To say that we must deny ourselves means that we must give up our own will and do the will of God.  The prophet Jeremiah thought that he had been duped or tricked because being a prophet brought him suffering and trouble, but proclaiming the word of God can make life difficult.  In our second reading today from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, we are told that we have to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice.  St. Paul also says that we should not conform ourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of our mind that we may discern what is the will of God.  The will of God often goes against worldly wisdom.  Jesus also says that we must take up our cross and follow him.  We have to be willing to suffer in order to be faithful to what Jesus commands.  The suffering involved can vary from one person to the next.  Our suffering may involve health issues, financial troubles, or relationships with others.  We may be called to a way of life that is difficult, whether it be marriage or the call to the religious life or to ordained ministry.  Above all, we are to follow Christ and imitate his example.  We need to forgive others, to renounce revenge, and to seek the best interest of others, whoever they may be.

So, today we once again are to give thanks that Jesus came to be our Savior and that he was willing to suffer and die to bring this about.  We are to give thanks that we have been called to be disciples of Jesus.  Let us pray that Jesus will help us to think as God does, rather to think as human beings do.  We also pray that Jesus will give us the spiritual help and strength that is needed so that we can deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus.  May we live as faithful disciples of Jesus and someday be found worthy to enter into the fullness of his Kingdom.