Having warned them therefore against this grievous pest, and amended them, He instructs also how they may escape it; by humility. Wherefore He adds also, “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant. For whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased, and whosoever shall abase himself shall be exalted.”
For nothing is equal to the practice of modesty, wherefore He is continually reminding them of this virtue, both when He brought the children into the midst, and now. And, when on the mount, beginning the beatitudes, He began from hence. And in this place, He plucks it up by the roots hereby, saying, “He that abases himself shall be exalted.”
Do you see how He draws off the hearer right over to the contrary thing. For not only does He forbid him to set his heart upon the first place, but requires him to follow after the last. For so shall you obtain your desire, He says. Wherefore he that pursues his desire for the first, must follow after the last place. “For he that abases himself shall be exalted.”
And where shall we find this humility? Will ye that we go again to the city of virtue, the tents of the holy men, the mountains, I mean, and the groves? For there too shall we see this height of humility.
For men, some illustrious from their rank in the world, some from their wealth, in every way put themselves down, by their vesture, by their dwelling, by those to whom they minister; and, as in written characters, they throughout all things inscribe humility.
And the things that are incentives of arrogance, as to dress well, and to build houses splendidly, and to have many servants, things which often drive men even against their will to arrogance; these are all taken away. For they themselves light their fire, they themselves cleave the logs, themselves cook, themselves minister to those that come there.
No one can be heard insulting there, nor seen insulted, nor commanded, nor giving commands; but all are devoted to those that are waited on, and every one washes the strangers’ feet, and there is much contention about this. And he does it, not inquiring who it is, neither if he be a slave, nor if he be free; but in the case of every one fulfills this service. No man there is great nor mean. What then? Is there confusion? Far from it, but the highest order. For if any one be mean, he that is great sees not this, but has accounted himself again to be inferior even to him, and so becomes great.
There is one table for all, both for them that are served, and for them that serve; the same food, the same clothes, the same dwellings, the same manner of life. He is great there, who eagerly seizes the mean task. There is not mine and yours, but this expression is exterminated, that is a cause of countless wars. — Homily on Matthew XXIII
First reading: Malachi 1:14-2:2,8-10
Psalm: Ps 131:1-3
Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 2:7-9,13
Gospel: Matthew 23:1-12
They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger.
For weeks now, as I reflect on the scriptures, I kept bumping up against the notion of gift. The idea of gift has been the primary focus, the primary call, out of the gospels we have proclaimed.
I suppose it is fitting. After all, as I have mentioned, these are Jesus’ discourses in the temple precincts, made shortly before the Last Supper, His agony in the garden, and His trial and death. These messages are Jesus’ gift to us. They are core to the way we are to behave as Christians.
Brothers and sisters,
Faith has been given to us as a gift. That gift came at baptism. It marked our inclusion in the people of God. That faith was nurtured by our parents, godparents, SOCL teachers, and the fine priests that pointed the way to God. It was simple faith to be sure — an indelible mark and a simple faith. Jesus’ challenge to us is to move beyond simple faith to a life lived in conformity to the gospel. We are to grow in faith, grow in love, grow in witness.
This is illustrative of the fact that faith alone, no matter how strong, remains simple unless it has an environment that fosters its growth. Faith alone cannot assist us in maturing. Think of the parable of the sower. He casts seed here and there, and unless that seed falls on good soil, it will not grow to maturity. In order to mature our faith needs that good soil – and it must be a rich soil.
The rich soil, the firm foundation upon which our faith is built is the Church. The Church is God’s living gift. It is a living gift intended to be a gift.
Certainly our Holy Polish National Catholic Church is the constant that assists us in becoming spiritually mature, that connects us to the lived history of faith, and that acts each day as the place where the decisions of men are directed by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But beyond those of us sitting here today, is our Holy Church what God intended, a gift to all mankind?
Friends,
Faith is a gift. Our Holy Church is a gift. Both convey Jesus’ on-going action in the world.
Our personal faith, when we choose to give ourselves over to Christ, will grow into something that surpasses us as individuals. The Church as the community of believers, and guided by the Holy Spirit, is the authentic teacher working to guide us on the way to full union with God. Our faith, and the teaching of the Church, work to form us into mature followers of Christ, true witnesses to God among us. Together we work diligently to represent what God wants — that we become the gift God intends us to be.
Jesus shows us that the Jewish leaders fell in their hypocrisy. We see that in certain Churches even to this day. Jesus noted:
“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat”
Likewise, some Church leaders sit on thrones making heavy pronouncements, forgetting who established their seat. They talk of politics, property ownership, rights and wrongs to the exclusion of love, and in doing so they forget their role, their part as God’s on-going gift.
Those leaders write tomes of laws and they make very detailed analyses of sin. They can diagnose a sin to its minutest detail and prescribe the proper antidote, and that from six thousand miles away. They forget the presence of the Holy Spirit, or demand gifts from the Spirit, or see the Spirit as a vehicle for self aggrandizement.
It must not be so with us. Let it never be said of us that:
you have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by your instruction
Rather we must be like Paul speaking to the Thessalonians:
But we were gentle among you, like a nurse taking care of her children.
So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.
Our Holy Polish National Catholic Church is a gift to those hurt by the religion of worldly princes and kings. It is a gem of a Church, a gem that is not out of reach, or only for the rich, only for the suburbs, only for the perfect, only for the sinless and obedient. Our Holy Church is a gem that is available to all. It is a gift. As with Paul’s teaching among the Thessalonians people will receive and hear what we teach, accepting it in proportion to the way they see God working through us.
Brothers and sisters,
The gift we proclaim is this: God loves each and every person, without regard to yesterday’s problem. Jesus calls all, and came to show us the Father’s love. He established a community to be His gift of love in the world. He loves us so much that He gives all we need to reach our fullest potential as part of a home, a community of love and support, and most importantly as a place where we can learn to be faithful Christ followers.
Jesus sat in the temple precincts and told us how we are to live. We aren’t transformed into those perfect Christ followers overnight, but there is a way to get there. We hold a beautiful gem in our hands and everyone can have it. We offer this gem to those who are hurting, to those who feel alone, who see the Church as an impediment to God. Bishop Hodur broke down those barriers. The path is here.
In closing let us remember the words spoken in the 2nd century’s Epistle to Diognetus in which a disciple – a Christ follower – describes the Christian life in this way:
They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men… They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all
Amen.
Chuck Konkel wrote a beautiful reflection on family, memory, nation, and the souls of our fathers in In the Shadow of Steel Mills.
I grew up in Hamilton Ontario in the mid 1950s, in the very shadows of steel mills that were still vital and a football team that still won games, the only son of a refugee family who didn’t own a car, nor a television, nor a cottage and whose idea of a vacation was a yearly trek to the Canadian National Exhibition in far distant Toronto and a day’s outing to the great and bustling metropolis of Buffalo.
The neighborhood was diverse and vibrant, ringing with the voices of immigrant families from the wasteland that was postwar Europe, Poles, Ukrainians, Italians, a rag tag bundle of hopes and dreams and frustrations who knew their place in the scheme of things, though they might bridle at it, for it was the Irish who were the Lords of the Manor having arrived a generation before. And Canadians who thought of themselves first and foremost of British stock and only with much prodding admitted that they too were once immigrants with the same insecurities finding themselves at the bottom of the social ladder in a stranger and daunting land.
My father worked the mills and cleaned the open hearth and toiled and sweated in the honest labour it took to put food on our table. My Dutch mother learned to make (kapusta) – cabbage in a barrel and (polskie ogórki) – Polish pickled cucumbers and (pączki) – Polish doughnuts. And every night, without fail, we ate hearty helpings of potatoes and red beets and (kaszanka) -black barley sausage and Polish pierogi. Every Sunday we dressed up in our best for church, a long, languorous service held in a language that I could never master (Latin).
I was an altar boy; it was a rite of passage for all Catholic boys at the time. That was just the way it was. There was no shortage of servers for weddings and funerals and at the three daily masses held in St Stanislaus, the Polish parish church, sandwiched between the Irish rigidity of St Anne’s and modernist cubist lines of the Italian St Anthony of Padua. At Christmas, St Stan’s held two midnight masses, one in the church proper and one in the very basement of the building, there were 40-50 altar boys at the High Mass and the church was full to overflowing.
The ushers and sacristans were veterans all, strong, spare men with florid faces and piercing eyes, brushed back straw coloured hair, booming voices and loud raucous laughs and brown pin striped suits. Men with unpronounceable surnames and remarkable personal histories, Tobruk, Monte Cassino, the Eastern Front, Fallaise, Arnhem, the crinkle blue skies over Europe and the turbulent oceans of the North Atlantic. And among them the remnants of the Home Army and the doomed Warsaw Uprising of 1944, heroes – gallant, brave and foolhardy as only a Pole in battle can be.
Such men could be meek as lambs during Mass, kneeling obediently as knights errant before a gilded altar that was the work of a previous generation of equally stolid Poles, as they listened intently to a sermon from a twinkle-eyed Franciscan who’d been a paratroop chaplain at Arnhem; a bridge too far on Poland’s bloodied road to true nationhood.
They were members of the Royal Canadian Legion, one and all, using the Legion Hall to keep alive, if for only a few precious hours a week, the comradeships they so cherished and the memories of the many friends they had lost in far off lands.
Yet if the Legion branch was the heart of the community …the church was its soul. Replete with chanted hymn, “Boże, coś Polskę” (God Save Poland), Byzantine gold, heavy incense and babcie (grandmas) sitting glowering in the first few pews as, with gnarled fingers, they click-beaded their rosaries and waited for the Black Madonna to free a Poland once more enslaved, this time under the Soviet boot.
…
Time has passed. It is November and a fitting time for reflection.
The veterans are almost all gone, the graves of southern Ontario holding the soul of a truly valiant Polish generation; a lilt sometimes holding in the wind like the “Hejnal” so played long ago by that lone trumpeter of Krakow, a whispered dream of wandering souls, a faint fleeting memory in a widow’s failing eye.
Perhaps they are all together about us, singing and laughing forever young in our renewed recollection of their glories. I like to think that and I also like to think that you and I, good readers, though proudly Canadian, do carry their torch.
I buried my father in his 89th year. It was a cold Canadian December day and the Legion provided and escort, frail old men they were with the fire dimming in their eyes. They played the Last Post and uttered the words that all veterans do at the graveside of a fallen comrade.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.
And we answered solemnly: We will remember them!
Then, in the somber tradition of all Poles and dutiful sons from time immemorial, I retrieved some soil from the graveside to keep as a remembrance…
Eternal rest grant onto them O Lord and may the perpetual light shine upon them.
May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen.
Wieczne odpoczynek racz mu dać Panie, a światłość wiekuista niechaj mu świeci.
Niech odpoczywa w pokoju, Amen.
November 1 – St. Dionysius the Areopagite from the Liturgy of St. Dionysius, Bishop of the Athenians
Priest: “Giver of Holiness, and distributor of every good, O Lord, Who sanctifiest every rational creature with sanctification, which is from Thee; sanctify, through Thy Holy Spirit, us Thy servants, who bow before Thee; free us from all servile passions of sin, from envy, treachery, deceit, hatred, enmities, and from him, who works the same, that we may be worthy, holily to complete the ministry of these life-giving Sacraments, through the heavenly Pontiff, Jesus Christ, Thine Only-begotten Son, through Whom, and with Whom, is due to Thee, glory and honour.”
People: “Amen.”Priest: “Essentially existing, and from all ages; Whose nature is incomprehensible, Who art near and present to all, without any change of Thy sublimity; Whose goodness every existing thing longs for and desires; the intelligible indeed, and creatures endowed with intelligence, through intelligence; those endowed with sense, through their senses; Who, although Thou art One essentially, nevertheless art present with us, and amongst us, in this hour, in which Thou hast called and led us to these Thy holy mysteries; and hast made us worthy to stand before the sublime throne of Thy majesty, and to handle the sacred vessels of Thy ministry with our impure hands: take away from us, O Lord, the cloak of iniquity in which we are enfolded, as from Jesus, the son of Josedec the High Priest, Thou didst take away the filthy garments, and adorn us with piety and justice, as Thou didst adorn him with a vestment of glory; that clothed with Thee alone, as it were with a garment, and being like temples crowned with glory, we may see Thee unveiled with a mind divinely illuminated, and may feast, whilst we, by communicating therein, enjoy this sacrifice set before us; and render to Thee glory and praise.”
People: “Amen.” — Prayer of Reconciliation.