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Blog Author: Fr. John Jay Hughes

Related Audio Course: A Journey Through the Parables

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A. Rom. 11:33-36; Mt.16:13-20.
AIM: To help the hearers encounter God in the mystery of suffering.

Thirty years ago next Tuesday, on August 26, 1978, a little known Italian bishop and cardinal, Albino Luciani, was elected Bishop of Rome. He took the name, John Paul I, becoming, according to Catholic belief, the successor of the fisherman Simon, to whom Jesus in today’s gospel gave the name “Peter — the Rock.”

In reality, Peter was anything but rock-like. On the contrary, he was impulsive: quick to make great resolutions, but just as quick to abandon them under pressure. The rock on which Jesus built his Church was certainly not Peter’s strength of character or willpower. The Church’s foundation is Peter’s faith: his trust in God and in the One whom he calls in today’s gospel: “Son of the living God.”

Peter had to learn this trusting faith from mistrust of himself. Every one of Peter’s successors, our present Holy Father included, carries the heavy burden of Church leadership in this same spirit: mistrusting himself, trusting solely in God and in his divine Son Jesus Christ. Pope Benedict stated this explicitly in his first public appearance on the day of his election: “After our great Pope, John Paul II the cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble worker in God’s vineyard. I am consoled by the fact that the Lord knows how to work and how to act, even with insufficient tools, and I especially trust in your prayers.” Pope Benedict said the same in different words last April, at the end of the Mass he celebrated in New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Responding to the tribute paid to him on the third anniversary of his election he said: “At this moment I can only thank you for your love of the Church and Our Lord, and for the love which you show to the poor Successor of Saint Peter. I will try to do all that is possible to be a worthy successor of the great Apostle, who also was a man with faults and sins, but remained in the end the rock for the Church. And so I too, with all my spiritual poverty, can be for this time, in virtue of the Lord’s grace, the Successor of Peter.”

The man who became Peter’s successor thirty years ago exercised his office for only thirty-three days. Early in the morning of September 29, 1978, Catholics were shocked to learn that during the preceding night the man we had already grown to love as “the smiling Pope” had gone home to God.

Catholics the world over asked: Why? At the Pope’s funeral the cardinal who preached made no attempt to answer that question. Instead he cited the words we heard in our second reading: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!”

We cannot scrutinize God. We cannot analyze him. As we read in the prophet Isaiah: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Is. 55:8f)

How important it is for us to remember those words in our scientific, technological world. We are comfortable today with things we can count, measure, weigh, observe under a microscope, or analyze with a computer. God cannot be measured. He cannot be observed, analyzed, calculated. God is not like a computer. God is the utterly other. He does not act predictably, automatically. God acts in sovereign freedom — yet in love so strong, so passionate, that the greatest human love is like a child’s infatuation by comparison.

All across this land there are families with a loved one serving overseas in the military. They share a common fear: a ring or a knock on the door announcing the visit of two figures in military uniform, one of them a chaplain, to tell them that a husband, a father, a son, or a brother has fallen in the service of his country. And now that the feminists have succeeded in getting women sent into combat, it may also be a wife, a mother, a daughter, or a sister. In the agony of such sudden and tragic bereavement, there is no one who does not ask, Why? Why him? Why her?

Perhaps there is someone here today who is asking that question. Maybe it is a grave illness: your own or that of a loved one. For someone else the blow may be the death of a relationship. A marriage, or a wonderful friendship, which once filled you with joy, hope, and love is turning to indifference, sullen resentment, or even hatred. For yet another the blow may be the collapse of great hopes and dreams.

All of us have received such hard and bitter blows. I received such a blow when I was only six. It was the day after Christmas, 1934. My father came home from the hospital, to which my mother had been taken just a week before, and spoke the most terrible words I have ever heard: “Mummy is dead.” That was seventy-four years ago. I still ask, Why?

Does our Christian faith answer this agonized question? I must be honest and tell you: it does not. To try to give someone who is suffering bereavement, injustice, or illness reasons why it is all for their own good — why it all makes sense if only they will be reasonable and think about it — is an insult. It is especially insulting when such easy answers are clothed in religious language — as if God were somehow responsible for sickness, suffering, injustice, and death. Such seemingly religious answers insult those who are suffering. They also insult God. God is not responsible for suffering, for sickness, for injustice. God does not kill people. People kill people. So do deadly diseases. Why those things happen is a mystery — a dark mystery.

I cannot tell you just when I discovered God in the darkness that descended on me at my mother’s death. But I know it was by age eight at the latest. It came home to me one day with blinding certainty that I would see my dear mother again, when God called me home. From that day to this the spiritual world of God, of the angels, the saints, and our beloved dead has been real to me. I know people who are there: my mother first, and now so many others who have gone home to God.

Decades later I realized, looking back, that that childhood insight was the seed from which my call to priesthood grew. It planted in me the desire to be close to that spiritual world. At Mass I have the privilege, far beyond any man’s deserving, of leading you, the holy people of God, to the threshold of that world. Heaven comes down to earth, and earth is lifted up to heaven as we praise our inscrutable yet passionately loving God with the angels’ song: Holy, Holy, Holy; heaven and earth are filled with your glory. Amen.

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“THE GIFTS AND CALL OF GOD ARE IRREVOCABLE”
20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A.  Is. 56:1, 6-7; Rom.11:13-15, 29-32; Mt. 15:21-28.
AIM: To counter anti-Semitism by showing the role of the Jews in God’s plan.

Some of you may recall the enormous flap some years ago occasioned by the statement of a Baptist minister in Texas that God does not hear Jewish prayers because Jews do not accept Jesus as God’s Son.  During most of Christian history this remark would not have been controversial at all.  Hadn’t the Jews demanded that Christ be crucified?  When the Roman governor Pontius Pilate tried to evade responsibility for Jesus’ death, didn’t the Jewish leaders respond: “His blood be on us and on our children”? (Mt. 27:25).  For the better part of twenty centuries most Christians believed that the sufferings of the Jews were God’s answer to that cry, divine revenge for the crime of killing God’s Son.

Moreover, there is a long and too little known history of Christian  persecution of Jews.  This culminated during World War II in the slaughter of some six million Jews by Adolf Hitler, for twelve years ruler of a nominally Christian country, Germany.  Most of the killing was done in the Catholic country of Poland. Other supposedly Christian countries, including our own, did shockingly little to halt the Holocaust, and must thus share some of the guilt.  Hitler justified his persecution of Jews by the false, but widely believed, claim that he was merely putting into practice what the Church had taught for centuries: that the Jews were enemies of God because they crucified God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

We need to consider this painful subject of anti-Semitism from time to time.  This Sunday is a particularly good time to do so.  All three readings concern the special role of Jesus’ own people, the Jews, in God’s plan.  In the first reading Isaiah prophecies a time when the Temple at Jerusalem will become a house of prayer not just for his own people, but “for all peoples.”  In the gospel Jesus initially rejects the request of a Gentile woman for healing because she is not a Jew.  He grants her request because of her courage and persistence.  She refuses to give up despite her double handicap: first, as a woman in a man’s world; and second as an outsider in the Jewish world of Jesus.  Finally, in our second reading, Paul confronts the problem which tormented him, as a devout Jew: how was it possible that God’s own people rejected God’s Son, their long awaited Messiah, when he finally came.

Paul’s answers this question in three ways.  First, he says, Israel’s rejection of Jesus is only partial: many Jews have accepted Jesus (Rom. 11:7).  Second, even this partial rejection of Jesus is only temporary (11:22-24, 31-32).  In the end, Paul says, all Israel will accept Jesus because — and this is the third part of Paul’s answer — “the gifts and call of God are irrevocable.”

What does this mean?  It means that God has not rejected the people he first chose for his own just because some of them did not recognize God’s Son when he came.  In Jesus’ day Jews were already scattered throughout the Mediterranean world.  Many never even heard of Jesus Christ during his lifetime.  Of those who lived in Palestine and knew Jesus, many did accept him.  Jesus’ mother, his apostles, and Paul himself were all Jews.  Jesus’ condemnation was the work of small group of religious and political leaders.  And both Jesus himself, and his first followers, said that they acted in ignorance (Lk 23:34; Acts. 3:17; 1 Cor. 2:8).

This background helps us understand the statement of the Second Vatican Council: “Neither all Jews indiscriminately at [Jesus’] time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crime committed during his passion. … The Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or accursed as if this followed from holy Scripture. … The Church deplores all hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism leveled at any time or from any source against the Jews.  The Church always held, and continues to hold, that Christ out of infinite love freely underwent suffering and death because of the sins of all men, so that all might attain salvation” (Nostra aetate 4, emphasis supplied).

How will God’s plan be fulfilled, that all of Jesus’ own people come to accept him as God’s Son?  And when will this happen?  We do not know.  We do know, however, that every kind of Christian anti-Semitism is an obstacle to God’s plan, and a sin.  It is a monstrous perversion of our holy faith to say that God does not hear Jewish prayers.  The Council, commenting on Paul’s statement in our second reading, that God’s call is irrevocable, says: “The Jews remain very dear to God for the sake of the patriarchs, since God does not take back the gifts he bestowed or the choice he made” (loc. cit.)  The first of the patriarchs is Abraham.   Our first Eucharistic prayer calls Abraham “our father in faith.”  Every year, on Good Friday, Catholics all over the world pray, in the Church’s public liturgy, “For the Jewish people, the first to hear the world of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name, and in faithfulness to his covenant.”

That prayer expresses the Council’s teaching, “The Jews remain very dear to God.”  We need to take that statement to heart.  There are a number of synagogues within our parish boundaries.  On Friday evening and Saturday morning, the Jewish Sabbath, we see many people walking: Orthodox Jews observing the strict Sabbath rule which forbids riding in a car.  How many Catholics would come to Mass on Sunday, if we were required to walk?

Let me conclude by reading to you the conclusion of an address given to a group of rabbis in Jerusalem eleven years ago by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

“Already as a child … I could not understand how some people wanted to derive a condemnation of Jews from the death of Jesus, because the following thought had penetrated my soul as something profoundly consoling: Jesus’ blood raises no calls for retaliation but calls all to reconciliation.  It has become, as the letter to the Hebrews shows, itself a permanent Day of Atonement of God. …

“Jews and Christians should accept each other in profound inner reconciliation, neither in disregard of their faith nor in its denial but out of the depth of faith itself.  In their mutual reconciliation they should become a force for peace in and for the world.  Through their witness to the one God, who cannot be adored apart from the unity of love of God and neighbor, they should open the door into the world for this God so that his will be done, and so that it becomes on earth ‘as it is in heaven’; so that ‘his kingdom come.’”

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MARY, WOMAN OF FAITH
The Assumption, August 15th.  1 Cor. 15: 20-27.
AIM:    To present Mary as the model of faith and our intercessor before God.

Mary, the Second Vatican Council says, “shines forth on earth, until the day of the Lord shall come, a sign of certain hope and comfort to the pilgrim People of God” (LG 68).  The Council spoke often about God’s “pilgrim people.”  The phrase expresses the awareness we have today that in the Church we are underway to a goal we have not yet reached.  Our pilgrim way is beset with difficulties.  We are reminded of them each time we read the morning headlines, or watch the news on television.

On this feast of Mary’s Assumption we are reminded that Mary also confronted difficulties on her own pilgrim way.  We know remarkably little about Mary’s life.  What we do know, however, shows that she had to walk often in darkness.  There were many things which, as Luke tells us, Mary “did not understand” (Lk 2:50) and could not understand.

What did Mary understand about the angel’s message that even before her marriage to Joseph she was to become the mother of God’s Son?  She understood at least this: that in a tiny village where everyone knew everyone else and gossip was rife, she was to be an unmarried mother.  Yet Mary responded without hesitation in trusting faith: “I am the servant of the Lord.  Let it be done to me as you say” (Lk 1:38)

That act of trusting faith was not blind.  Young as Mary was – and the Scripture scholars think she may have been only fifteen – she asked what any girl in her position would have asked: “How can this be, since I do not know man?” (Lk 1:34)  Even this question, however, reflects faith.  Mary was questioning not so much God and his ways as her own ability to understand God’s ways.

Nor was Mary’s faith a once-for-all thing.  It needed to be constantly renewed.  Before her Son’s birth, Joseph wanted to break their engagement.  When the couple presented their newborn child to the Lord in the Jerusalem temple, Mary heard the aged Simeon prophesy the child’s rejection and his mother’s suffering (Lk 2:34f).  Three decades later, after Jesus left home, he seemed on more than one occasion to be fulfilling his command to his disciples about turning one’s back on parents and other relatives (cf. Lk 14:26).  At the marriage at Cana Jesus seemed to speak coldly to his mother.  She seems not to have been present  at the Last Supper.  Only at Calvary was Mary permitted to stand beside her now dying Son, along with “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 19:26); deliberately unnamed, many Scripture scholars believe, to represent the ideal follower of Jesus Christ in every time and place.

The last glimpse we have of Mary in Scripture is immediately before Pentecost.  With the apostles and Jesus’ other relatives, she is praying for the descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:14).  Thereafter Mary disappears.  Her work of bringing Christ to the world was taken over by the Church.

How did Mary’s life end?  We do not know.  In defining Mary’s Assumption on All Saints Day 1950, Pope Pius XII said simply: “When the course of [Mary’s] early life had ended, she was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven.”  The body the Pope referred to is Mary’s new resurrection body: the body with which Jesus rose from the dead – the heavenly and spiritual body which, as St. Paul says, each one of us will receive in heaven (cf.1 Cor. 15:35-53).  There Mary continues to pray for us on our pilgrim way.  As the Catechism says: “The Church loves to pray in communion with the Virgin Mary … and to entrust supplications and praises to her.” (No. 2682).

For many Christians, however, and for almost all Protestants, Catholic teaching about Mary, and our devotion to her, are troubling.  Especially troubling is the Catholic practice of praying to Mary.  Surely, Protestants say, we can pray only to God.  Strictly speaking, they are right.  When we Catholics pray to Mary, or to any of the other saints, what we are really doing is asking them to pray for us and with us.  The conclusion of the classic Marian prayer, the Hail Mary, makes this explicit: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.”

If it makes sense to ask our friends on earth to pray for us, doesn’t it also make sense to ask the prayers of our friends in heaven, the saints?   The Catechism says it does: “Being more closely united to Christ, those who dwell in heaven … do not cease to intercede with the Father for us. … We can and should ask them to intercede for us and for the whole world.” (No. 956 & 2683) Without Mary’s prayers, I would not be a Catholic priest today.  Let me tell you how I know this.

I had the great privilege of serving for six years, like my father and grandfather before me, as a priest of the Anglican Church, called in our country the Episcopal Church.  Leaving the church which had taken me from the font to the altar, and taught me almost all the Catholic truth I know, even today, was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.  Starting in 1959 and for almost a year, the questions of the church, and of my conscientious duty before God, were not out of my waking thoughts for two hours together.

One of the many obstacles to my decision was the need to abandon, possibly forever, the priesthood to which I had aspired from age twelve, and which had brought me great happiness, with no guarantee that it would ever be given back to me.  In Holy Week 1960 a Trappist monk at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, himself a convert from Judaism, who was helping me along the last stretch of my spiritual journey, said to me: “Why don’t you give your priesthood to Our Lady, asking her to keep it for you, and to give it back to you when the time is right?”  With his help I did this.

Had I known then that it would be eight years before I could once again stand at the altar as a priest, I should never have had the courage to go through with it.  During those years I had many difficulties – so many that well meaning priest-advisers told me I should forget any idea of priesthood and embrace a lay vocation.  This I was never willing to do.  I knew that Our Lady was keeping my priesthood for me, and I was confident that she would give it back to me one day.

After eight years, on January 27th 1968, I knelt before the bishop of Münster in northern Germany, where I was then living, to receive the Church’s commission to stand at the altar once again, as a Catholic priest.  I had never told the bishop about entrusting my priesthood to Our Lady.  You can imagine my joy, therefore, when, at the end of the ninety-five minute ceremony in his private chapel, the bishop turned to the altar and intoned the Church’s ancient Marian hymn: Salve regina, “Hail, Holy Queen.”    **

________________________

**  For details of this story, see John Jay Hughes, No Ordinary Fool: A Testimony to Grace (Tate Publishing and Enterprises, 2008; 344 pages, soft cover; $19.99) to be published Sept. 2nd.

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Welcome to Get Smart about Investing. Everyone is calling themselves financial advisors these days and to make matters worse, anyone could start their own financial planning company within a few weeks just by going through the paperwork despite not having any schooling or experience in the financial field. Reassuring, isn’t it? There are so many different credentials and initials after advisors’ names that making sense of it all can be daunting. Let’s look at the credentials that really matter.

A CFP stands for Certified Financial Planner. This is the highest designation for providers of comprehensive financial planning covering many different areas of personal finance. Basically it means that the person took advanced classes ranging from retirement planning to insurance, passed a 10-hour exam on all areas of financial planning, has industry experience, and has taken an oath to give ethical advice. When you are looking for an advisor to address a lot of different areas, you definitely want to look for someone who is a CFP.

A CFA stands for Chartered Financial Analyst. This is the highest designation for advisors who specialize in analyzing companies and making investing decisions. The advisor must pass three, very comprehensive tests over a three-year period, covering economics, security analysis and portfolio management.

A CLU stands for Chartered Life Underwriter. This is the highest designation for advisors who specialize in the insurance industry. It’s given to those who completed a lengthy series of 10 courses covering insurance and financial planning.

A CPA stands for Certified Public Accountant. This is the highest designation for advisors who specialize in taxes. You may not need a CPA right now to do your taxes, but as your tax situation becomes more complex, a CPA would be the person to see.

There are literally dozens of other certifications. There isn’t anything wrong with them,  but I would still recommend that you keep to the ones that we talked about. There are many good advisors out there without any designations, but all other things being equal, your chances of finding a good one increase if you find someone who meets these credentials.

I’m Greg McGraime and Now You Know!

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“TAKE COURAGE, IT IS I.”
19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A. Matthew 14:22-33.
AIM: To show that Jesus is always close in times of peril.

It was not a long voyage across the lake — five miles at most. The water was calm when Jesus sent his disciples off. In such conditions, they could row across in two hours at most. Should a favorable wind come up, they would hoist the sail and reach the other shore in half that time.

Jesus’ friends were disappointed when he refused to join them. He insisted, however, that they set off alone. He would get passage in another boat the next day. Otherwise he would hike round the lake and join them. Meanwhile Jesus needed to be alone. Following the miracle of the feeding of the multitude, which we heard about in last Sunday’s gospel, Jesus needed to spend time in prayer, restoring his spiritual energy as he waited upon God in stillness through the night.

What began as a routine evening crossing of the lake soon turns into a nightmare for Jesus’ friends in their small boat. Still today Galilean fishermen fear the treacherous storms caused by cold winds blowing off the surrounding hills, creating a sudden tempest in the warm air covering the low-lying water. The storm which breaks on the disciples so unexpectedly this evening comes from just the direction in which they are heading. Against wind so strong, and waves so high, they can make no headway. But the disciples know they must not allow the boat to be driven back to the shore they have left. The waves could dash them against the rocks, smashing their frail craft and everyone in it. Their only hope is to ply the oars as long as the storm continues, trying to remain a good distance from the land, in deep water.

This explains why they are still far from their destination in “the fourth watch of the night.” The night, in those days, was divided into four equal periods or watches. If there were eight hours of darkness, each watch would be two hours long.. Assuming that they had embarked before nightfall, they would have been in the boat seven hours at least. They are exhausted, soaked to the skin, cold, and frightened. Small wonder, then, that they cry out in fear as they see a human figure approaching across the wind-whipped waves. It is Jesus. “Take courage,” he calls out. “It is I; do not be afraid.”

One man in the boat is more impulsive than his companions. He no sooner recognizes Jesus than he wants to be with him. He will react in the same way upon recognizing the risen Lord on the shore after a fruitless night of fishing in the lake. (Cf. Jn. 21:7) It is Peter. “Lord,” Peter calls out, “if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”

“Come,” Jesus replies.

Peter’s willingness to do the unthinkable enables him to experience the impossible. He climbs out of the boat and starts to walk to Jesus across the storm tossed waves. “But when he saw how strong the wind was,” Matthew tells us, “he became frightened. And, beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’”

Jesus had a special role for Peter. He was to be the leader of Jesus’ friends and thus of the Lord’s Church. This terrifying experience was part of Peter’s preparation. Years later he would remember: as long as he had kept his eyes on the Lord, he was safe. When he looked down, and saw the danger, he began to sink.

Every detail in this story has rich symbolic significance for Matthew, the gospel writer. Like most people in antiquity, Jesus’ people, the Jews, regarded the sea as the domain of supernatural, demonic forces. To the Hebrew mind wind and waves were perilous: only God could master them. When Jesus’ people were fleeing from bondage in Egypt, they were terrified to find themselves trapped between the advancing army of their former masters, and the impassable waters of the Sea of Reeds ahead of them. In this desperate crisis, God had led them through the waters to safety. Their pursuers had perished. They never forgot it. Repeatedly the psalms speak of God’s power to “rule the surging sea and calm the turmoil of its waves” (Ps. 89:10; cf. 93:3f; 107:23-30). By walking on the raging waves, and calming the stormy sea, Jesus shows himself to be acting as only God can do.

The boat too is significant. From biblical times Christians have viewed the Church as a boat, carrying those who are in it safely through the storms of an often hostile world, like the ark which kept Noah and his family safe amid the great flood.

Six years ago, in the midst of the media firestorm about the abuse of minors by some priests, Bishop Wilton Gregory, then bishop of Belleville and President of the Bishops’ Conference of our country, and now archbishop of Atlanta, spoke to St. Louis priests about this painful crisis. In his talk he referred to the story in today’s gospel. We’re in that boat, he told us. And like the disciples, we’re frightened. But Jesus is with us. He still has power to still wind and wave. “Ought we not realize,” he said, “that we have within this Bark of Peter, which is being so terribly tossed about in the public arena, the source of calm and peace. We priests and bishops must be more devoted to our life of prayer as the only reliable source of courage and hope that will bring peace to our troubled hearts and souls.” Bishop Gregory’s words were the message we needed to hear.

This beautiful story speaks also to each one of us individually. Somewhere in this church right now there is someone facing a personal crisis: an illness, perhaps, your own or that of a loved one; a family problem; a humiliating failure; the sudden collapse of long held hopes, plans, and efforts. You are filled with fear. When you look down, you see only peril and ruin. But look up! Keep your eyes on Jesus. He still has power to save.

The story assures us that when the storm rages and the night is blackest; when we cannot see the way ahead; when we are bone weary with life’s struggle and our hearts fail us for fear, Jesus is close. He only seems to be absent. In reality he is never far from us. He knows at every moment the difficulties against which we contend. Across the storm waters of this world he comes to us and chides us, as he chided Peter: “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Happy if we today, in this hour, can respond to the Lord’s saving presence and power as his friends did in that boat. Happy if we too can bow before him in awe-struck worship and say, with those first friends of Jesus:

“Truly, you are the Son of God!”

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“THEY ALL ATE AND WERE SATISFIED.”
18A. Is. 55:1-3; Mt. 14:13-21.
AIM: To show that our deepest longings are satisfied only by Jesus Christ.

We Americans live in one of the richest societies on earth. More people in this land have access to more of the good things of life than, perhaps, any other people anywhere. Even those whom we reckon to be living beneath the poverty level would still be considered well off by millions of truly impoverished people in today’s Third World. Few countries anywhere would not be happy to exchange their economic difficulties with ours.

Amid this material abundance for so many, however, are people truly satisfied? A glance at the morning’s headlines or at the daily TV news provides plenty of evidence that many are not. Why? Because it is never enough to satisfy people’s physical hunger if their spiritual hunger remains unfed.

“Why spend your money for what is not bread; your wages for what fails to satisfy?” God asks in our first reading from the prophet Isaiah. Isn’t that what many of the glossy ads on TV and in the magazines are urging us to do? Promising happiness if only we’ll buy their product or service? Let’s be fair: much advertising is useful. If I’m looking for a pair of lightweight trousers for the brutal heat of a St. Louis summer, and I see an ad telling me about a sale on men’s clothing, I’ll hurry in to get what I need. The ad has served me well.

Too often, however, advertising is designed to kindle our desire for things we never knew we needed till we saw the ad. We find that after we have parted with our money, an inner emptiness remains. How can we get rid of that? How can we satisfy the deepest hunger of all: our spiritual hunger? In our first reading Isaiah gives us God’s answer to that haunting question: “Heed me, and you shall eat well. … Come to me heedfully, listen, that you may have life.”

Jesus knew that deep inner hunger which only God can satisfy. At the beginning of today’s gospel reading he has just received the terrible news that his cousin, John the Baptist, has been executed in Herod’s prison. Jesus knows that he must get away from the crowds, to be alone with his heavenly Father. He withdraws in a boat “to a deserted place by himself.”

But the people will not leave Jesus alone. Discovering his destination, they get there ahead of him. Upon disembarking, Jesus sees a “vast crowd.” What has brought them there? Some, surely, are attracted by Jesus’ wonderfully simple yet vivid way of speaking. Others may hope to witness his healing power, or to experience it themselves. Beyond such fully understandable reasons, however, there is another: somehow the very ordinary people in that vast crowd sense in this man, Jesus, someone who has the answer to life’s greatest problems; a man who comes from another world — from God.

Jesus’ heart goes out to these people. He realizes, Matthew tells us in a previous passage, that they are “like sheep without a shepherd, harassed and helpless” (Mt. 9:36, NEB). By the time Jesus has healed many sick people in the crowd, it is evening. His disciples want to send the people away to the neighboring villages to get provisions. With what must have been at least the trace of a smile, Jesus challenges them to provide food. His disciples are aghast. “Five loaves and two fish are all we have here,” they respond.

Why didn’t Jesus use his miraculous powers to provide food on his own? He wanted to teach his disciples a lesson. In telling them, “give them some food yourselves,” Jesus wanted the disciples to learn to trust not in their own resources, but in his power. What the disciples have to give is pitifully inadequate. When those meager resources are entrusted to Jesus, however, they are transformed beyond imagining. When every person in the vast crowd has eaten to the full, each of the Twelve is still able to fill his basket with leftovers. This detail too teaches a lesson: when Jesus gives, he gives not just abundantly, but superabundantly.

This story, recounted six times over in the four gospels, shows us who Jesus Christ is, and what he does for us. Jesus is the story’s central figure, the giver of God’s gifts in abundance. To distribute his bounty, he relies on his friends. What they have to give is totally inadequate. They are entirely dependant on Jesus. The story continues today — in every Mass. We who are called to distribute the Lord’s gifts to his people wear special clothes: not the uniform of masters, but the livery of servants, whose task it is to pass round the dishes and to see that everyone is fed: from the Lord’s two tables, of the word and of the sacrament.

This gathering of the Lord’s people — like every Mass anywhere — is the continuation of what Jesus did in the upper room at the Last Supper the night before he died. It is also the continuation of that lakeside meal when a vast throng was fed by Jesus from pitifully inadequate resources. Here, and here alone, is the satisfaction of our deepest hunger. Here the beautiful words of our first reading are fulfilled:

“All you who are thirsty, come to the water!
You who have no money, come, receive grain, and eat;
come without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk!”

Here we, the joyful people of God, repeat with a full heart the words of our responsorial psalm:
“The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.”

Filed under "Catholic Homilies" by jhughes

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Welcome to Get Smart about Investing. Asset allocation was step one: Make sure you maintain a balance between aggressive and conservative investments. Diversification is step two: Make sure that within each of these areas, you’re exposed to many different assets so no area can dictate your entire investment return. Again, participate in areas that are doing well and limit yourself in areas that are not. Step number three is portfolio rebalancing.  Rebalancing is simply adjusting your investments to get back to the plan that you were following.

Over time, all of your investments will vary in performance and some investments will do better than others. What if you started the year with 80 percent of your money invested in stocks and 20 percent invested conservatively because you were following an 80/20 plan? If the stock market did very well over the next few years, it’s very possible that 95 percent of your portfolio’s value would be invested in stocks and just 5 percent of it in bonds, because the stocks grew faster than the bonds. Your portfolio is now overly exposed to stocks, with 95 percent of it invested in the stock market. The right plan for you to follow should have been an 80/20 plan. Rebalancing your portfolio would involve selling a small portion of your stocks and buying bonds to get back to the plan you were following.

By not rebalancing, you would actually be taking on too much risk. You’d be in a plan that’s more aggressive than the one you’re supposed to be in. The same concept would apply to each of the subcategories of different investment types we’re looking at. If the healthcare industry does really well, you’ll probably end up overinvesting in healthcare and would need to move into other areas so you’re not overexposed to any one risk. If small companies were performing poorly, perhaps too much of your stock portfolio would end up in large companies; and thus your diversification would be reduced; again, increasing your risk.
Why is rebalancing so important? The answer is it forces you to do three things that most investors don’t do:
1. Follow and stick to a consistent investment plan each year, tailored to your particular situation.
2. Keep emotions out of investments. Following a plan helps you make investment decisions based not on your emotions, but on a logical framework consistent with what your portfolio needs.
3. Rebalance investments. This forces you to buy investments that have gone down in value and sell investments that are going up. It’s the opposite of how most people think about investing. Think about it. If an investment did great, no one would want to sell it. Very few investors will ever take money off the table when they’re doing well. Look at the late 90’s as an example. Investors were receiving 50 to 100 percent returns and it was not enough for them.
If you were rebalancing your portfolio, you would have shifted some money from technology stocks to bonds and more conservative areas before the market conditions changed. On the other hand, no one wants to buy an investment when the market is doing terribly, although that’s the best time to invest. 2002 and 2003 would have been the best time to buy stocks, but very few people did. By rebalancing, you’re forcing yourself to make investment decisions that very few people can make on their own. Creating a successful plan is all about removing your emotions and gut feelings from the investment situation.

I’m Greg McGraime and Now You Know!

Filed under "Investing by Greg McGraime" by gmcgraime