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Blog Author: Fr. John Jay Hughes

Related Audio Course: A Journey Through the Parables“

WHICH COMMANDMENT …  IS THE GREATEST?”
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A.  Exodus 22:20-26; Matthew 22:34-40.
AIM:    To explain the command to love both God and neighbor.

“Which commandment of the law is the greatest?” Jesus is asked in today’s gospel.  Many people wonder about that.  Is it more important to love God, or to love other people?  There are good people on both sides of this question, ready to defend their position with excellent arguments.  And the debate can become quite heated, as we see in the following example.

The Pastor and parish council of an affluent suburban parish decided to embark on a half-million dollar renovation of their church, which over the years had become somewhat shabby, and which no longer conformed to the building code.  Not many miles away, in the inner city, there was a Catholic Worker house where dedicated Catholics served the poor and homeless and advocated their cause.  The Pastor of the suburban parish had encouraged his parishioners to help these poorer neighbors.  They had done so generously for a number of years.

When the leaders of the Catholic Worker house learned of the costly renovation program which their benefactors were planning, they suggested that the figure be cut by twenty percent, and the money used to renovate an abandoned inner city tenement to shelter evicted families.  This proposal aroused strong feelings on both sides.  The suburban Pastor pointed out his parishioners’ long history of generosity to the urban poor, and disclosed that the parish had operated at a deficit for three of the last five years.  Leaders of the Catholic Worker house criticized their benefactors for spending large sums to beautify their parish plant, while not far away people were suffering and homeless.  Media coverage of the controversy raised the temperature of debate, and led to escalation of conflict.  The suburban church was picketed on Sunday, while inside people stood during the Mass in silent protest.

The story I have just told you is fiction.  But it is typical of much that we have experienced in recent decades.  It is an excellent example of two sharply contrasting views of our Christian faith: the vertical view, and the horizontal view.  Both have their passionate defenders.

Those who hold the vertical view say that our religion has to do with God, or with nothing at all.  We come to Mass on Sunday, they argue, not to celebrate what wonderful people we are, to experience human fellowship, or to be uplifted by an interesting, inspirational homily.  We come to worship: to be still and know that God is here; that we are his people who owe him everything.

Proponents of the vertical view claim support from Jesus himself.  He showed that worship of God is our highest duty by worshiping regularly in the synagogue and in the temple at Jerusalem.  He spent whole nights in prayer.  When Martha of Bethany complained about her sister Mary sitting and listening to Jesus, leaving all the housework to Martha, Jesus told her that Mary had chosen “the better portion” (Lk 10:42).

So when the Church talks too much about social justice, proponents of the vertical view contend, it is in danger of defiling the sanctuary with worldly things, mixing up earth and heaven, and bringing politics into the pulpit.  Don’t we hear enough about such subjects during the week, they ask?  When we come to church on Sunday, we want to hear about spiritual things.

Proponents of the horizontal view, on the other hand, say that it is a scandal for the Church erect magnificent buildings when people nearby lack basic necessities.  Those who hold the horizontal view also claim support from Jesus.  They remind us that Jesus was the friend of the poor and downtrodden.  He said, “Blest are you poor … Woe to you rich” (Lk 6:20 & 24).  Jesus attacked the Establishment of his day.  If we wish to be faithful to him, they say, we must do the same.  Jesus tells us in his great parable of the sheep and the goats, that in judgment we won’t be asked how many prayers we have said, but how much we have done for people in need.  (Cf. Mt. 25:31-46)

Which of these two views is correct?  Both are right in what they affirm, but wrong in what they deny.  Authentic discipleship of Jesus Christ is not a compromise between the vertical and horizontal views. It is the pursuit of both, at whatever personal cost.  We followers of Jesus Christ are people who live neither according to the vertical nor the horizontal view, but at the place where the vertical and horizontal intersect.  Jesus tells us in today’s gospel that love of God is “the greatest and the first commandment.”

But the religion Jesus practiced also emphasized justice for the poor and downtrodden.  It did more.  Jesus’ religion said that mere justice was not enough.  Our first reading shows that Jesus’ religion taught compassion.   “If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge,” God tells his people in that reading, “you shall return it to him before sunset; for this cloak is the only covering he has for his body.  What else has he to sleep in?  If he cries to me, I will hear him; for I am compassionate.”  That goes beyond justice.  God demands that, like him, we must show to others some of the compassion he shows to us.

Worship of God is primary.  But if our worship has no consequences in daily life, it is hypocrisy which cries to heaven for vengeance.  On the other hand, service of others which is not performed for love of God, but for the uplifting feeling of serving a noble cause, or some other human ideology, is not genuine service.  Those “served” in this way experience not the warmth of compassion, but the cold impersonalism of bureaucracy, which undermines so many of the best intentioned efforts of the welfare state to help the poor and disadvantaged.

We followers of Jesus Christ are called to live at the intersection of the vertical and the horizontal.  That is where Jesus lived.  It is also where he died. The cross, which is itself the literal intersection of the vertical and the horizontal, tore Jesus apart and killed him.  For us too the attempt to live where the vertical and horizontal intersect will mean pain, rending asunder, and ultimately death. But this is precisely that dying-in-order-to-live of which Jesus himself speaks several times over in the gospels.

For behind the cross Christians have always seen, and we must always see, the open portals of the empty tomb.

*                    *                    *

Readers continue to express appreciation for my book No Ordinary Fool: A Testimony to Grace.  Some examples:

“I have been glued to your book ever since I started reading it. It is a great work.  I shall do all I can to get many to read it.” (From a former Anglican bishop, now a Catholic priest.)

“Your book is fabulous. Your words convey such raw emotion and humanity. I’ve laughed out loud and cried quietly (as any Mother would) … and I’m just getting started!
[later] Your book gets better every step of the way and I must concur with Tom, hard to put down.  What a fascinating life you have experienced and you tell the story with such grace. ” (From a mother of four)

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Blog Author: Fr. John Jay Hughes

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“REPAY TO GOD WHAT BELONGS TO GOD.”
29TH Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A. Matthew 22:15-21.
AIM: To help the hearers live as stewards of God’s gifts.

Imagine, for a moment, that our country had been defeated in war. Foreigners would rule us, their troops stationed in every American state, city, and town. Arabs, perhaps? Chinese? Russians? Who knows? Imagine how we would feel. That was the situation in Palestine in Jesus’ day. His people deeply resented the Romans who ruled their country. Especially hated was the annual head tax imposed by the military government. It wasn’t the amount of money involved, only a small sum, but the principle of having to pay it at all, to foreigners.

A small group of collaborators, called “Herodians” in today’s gospel, took the position that you can’t fight City Hall. Best to pay the tax, they said, and keep on the right side of the law, and of the authorities who imposed it. They were opposed by people called Zealots, who enjoyed wide popular support. The Zealots said that the tax was an infringement of God’s authority over his people and hence should not be paid at all. In the middle of this controversy were the Pharisees. They agreed with the Zealots in principle, but rejected direct political action, whether through a tax revolt or other means.

Matthew makes it clear that the Pharisees and Herodians who ask Jesus his view about the tax were really interested in one thing only: “how they might entrap Jesus in speech.” Matthew’s Greek text says they were plotting to entrap him “in word.” Either of two possible words would spring the trap: Yes or No. If Jesus said Yes, it was lawful to pay the Roman tax, he would forfeit his popularity with the masses, who resented the payment. If he said No, the tax was unlawful and should not be paid, he could be denounced to the authorities for inciting people to break the law.

Jesus does not give either of the answers his questioners were looking for. He seldom did. Instead he demands that they show him the coin used to pay the tax. It is a Roman coin. By producing it from their own pockets Jesus’ questioners show that, whatever their theoretical position, in fact they recognize the existing situation. The country is ruled by foreigners. It is their money which is legal tender, and no other.
Jesus’ words, “Repay to Caesar what is Caesar’s” reject the radical position of the Zealots, who claimed that the Roman government was unlawful and should not be obeyed at all. All the emphasis, however, is on the second part of Jesus answer: “Repay to God what is God’s.” Do that, Jesus is saying, and everything else will fall into place.

Jesus’ questioners had asked him whether it was lawful to pray the hated head tax. When Jesus answers the question, he speaks not or paying but of repaying: “repay to God what is God’s.” What does that mean? What is God’s anyway? The answer is inescapable: everything! From God we receive all that we are and have, sin excepted. God has given us the gift of life, using our parents as his instruments. It is God who has preserved our lives until now in the midst of heaven knows how many dangers to life. God has given us our talents: everything from the five senses which we share with the animals, through the uniquely human gifts (thought, speech, love, and laughter), to the individual talents that make each person unique: how dull life would be if we were all the same.

God even gives us our possessions and our money. Perhaps you’re thinking: Wait a minute, I’ve worked for what I have. Undoubtedly you have. But how long would you retain your possessions and earning power if you lost your health or even one significant human faculty? At bottom even the things we own are gifts for the creator and giver of all: God.

If repaying to God what is God’s means anything, it must mean putting God first in our lives. Here are some questions for self-examination. Am I putting God first in my life? Or does he get the leftovers? My spare time (if any)? The gifts and talents which are left over when I have finished doing the things I want to do? The loose change that remains after I have satisfied all my needs and as many luxuries as I think I can afford?

Jesus would have been shocked at the idea of giving God leftovers. The religion he learned from Mary and Joseph, and at the synagogue school in Nazareth, taught Jesus that we must give God the firstfruits. In the pastoral society of that day the farmer and shepherd offered God the first fruits of field and flock. They did this not just to fulfil a legal obligation. They gave God first claim on all they had out of gratitude. This grateful giving of firstfruits was based on the truth that, at bottom, everything comes from God, and hence everything belongs to God.

If we truly want to “repay to God what is God’s,” as Jesus tells us to do in today’s gospel, then we must put God first in our lives – in all areas of our lives. There must be no fenced off areas where He is second, or third; where God is not allowed to enter at all. Does that sound threatening? In reality, it is the key to happiness.

Even nature teaches us this lesson. There are two well known bodies of water in the world which jealously hoard every drop of moisture they receive from rain, snow, and their tributary streams. Their names tell us what they have become: the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and the Dead Sea in Israel. Show me a lake whose waters are sweet and fresh, teeming with fish, pleasant to drink and swim in, and I will show you a body of water that gives up all the moisture it receives. You can’t keep it, unless you give it away!

The trees teach us the same lesson: soon they will be shedding their leaves, so that they may put forth new ones next spring. The evergreens are no exception. Walk through a forest of pine, hemlock, or spruce, and you will find the ground covered with a carpet of old needles.

In a mountain village in Switzerland I saw, years ago, a fountain, fed by a bubbling spring which ran day and night. Carved on it was a little rhyme in German: “Wie schön ist das Leben / Bloß geben, nur geben” – in English: “How great to be living, just giving, only giving.”

People who are always giving, who put God first in their lives, make a beautiful discovery. They find that God will never permit himself to be outdone in generosity. They find that what is left over for themselves is always enough, and more than enough. They discover that Jesus’ words are really true: “There is more happiness in giving than in receiving” (Act 20:35).

There are people here, right now, who have made that discovery. They are the truly happy, the truly rich. Are you one of them? If you’re not, Jesus is inviting you to join their happy company – today.

* * *

My new book No Ordinary Fool: A Testimony to Grace is now available at a discount from Amazon.

Readers’ comments:

“I found that every sentence held my attention and that the book as a whole moved me deeply, something that very few books have done. It has inspired me to review my prayer and devotional practices about which I had grown very complacent over the past few years.”

“Thank you for sharing your journey with such honesty and such exquisite use of language. So beautifully written! Your words brought me to dream, to question, to yearn, to smile, and brought me to tears. “

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28^th Sunday in Year A.  Isaiah 25:6-10a; Matthew 22:1-14.

ANSWERING GOD’S CALL, PROMPTLY AND COMPLETELY

AIM:  To show the importance of centering our lives on God.

I am one of a dwindling number of people able recall the days, before universal air travel, when people traveling to Europe crossed by ship. Hardly had the vessel left port than the passengers were bombarded with “last chance” announcements on the public address system urging them to come to the Chief Steward’s office “right away’ to reserve a deck chair “before they’re all gone.” Novice travelers believed the hype and spent a long time standing in line. Seasoned voyagers knew there were plenty of deck chairs. They waited until the lines had gone and got their chairs without delay.The people in Jesus’ story who ignore the king’s invitation to his son’s wedding banquet are like yesteryear’s seasoned ocean travelers. They see nothing special in this particular invitation. They assume there will be many more. They are wrong. Too late they discover that, for them, this was their last chance.

The story is Jesus’ warning to people who failed to respond to him and his message. Like the heedless guests in the story, they were turning down their last and final chance. Soon they would discover that they were excluded from the joyful wedding banquet which God had prepared for his people, of which Isaiah writes in our first reading. Others, not originally invited, will take their places.

There are, in every life, times when God offers us opportunities which will not come again. Can we identify them at the time? Often we cannot. We need not worry, however, about missing such opportunities, as long as we are trying to live with God at the center of our lives.

Where is God in your life? Is he at the center? Or is he somewhere out on the fringe? Are you more interested in finding out how little you need to do for God, rather than how much you can do? Is “avoiding sin” more important to you than practicing virtue? Does the practice of your faith stop short when you have fulfilled your “minimum obligation”? If the answer to any of these questions is Yes, then God is on the fringe of your life, not at the center. Then Jesus’ story is addressed to you. You could be in danger of throwing away opportunities offered to you by God which will not come again.

There is a further danger when God is at the fringe of our lives, rather than at the center. Even when we do respond to the opportunities God offers, we may do so casually, like the man in the second part of Jesus’ story who came to the banquet unprepared, and was thrown out. That seems unfair. After all, if the man had just been brought in from the street, how could anyone expect him to be properly dressed? The scripture scholars speculate that Matthew may have combined two originally separate stories. The first was Jesus’ warning to those who failed to respond to him that they were throwing away their last chance to join the banquet God had prepared for his people. The second story was addressed to people in the community for which Matthew wrote his gospel. Many of them were Gentiles — people not originally invited to the feast. This story warned them that though God had now extended his invitation to all, no one could accept the invitation casually.

Today’s Catholic grandparents, looking back to their own First Communion, remember hearing so much about preparing for a worthy Communion that many people thought of Communion as a kind of reward for making a good confession. Back in those days Communion, for many, was associated with fears about receiving unworthily.

Today we emphasize that Communion is not a reward. It is medicine for sick sinners. The danger now is that people come to the Lord’s Table casually, with no preparation at all. Here is what the Catechism says: “We must prepare ourselves for so great and so holy a moment. St. Paul urges us to examine our conscience: ‘Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself’ (1 Cor. 11:27-29). Anyone conscious of grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation before coming to communion.” (No. 1385)

God does not want us to be fearful when we approach his Holy Table. He does want us, however, to be careful. Listen, again, to what the Catechism says on this point: “Bodily demeanor (gesture, clothing) ought to convey the respect, solemnity, and joy of this moment when Christ becomes our guest.” (No. 1387)

Once again, dear friends, I have the privilege, though unworthy, of extending to you the invitation you have heard so many times before: “Everything is ready; come to the feast.” God, the host at this banquet, longs to have you with him. He wants to fill you with his goodness, his power, his purity, his love.
He cannot fill you unless you come.
He cannot fill you unless you are empty.
He cannot fill you unless you confess your need, which means preparing by acknowledging your unworthiness.

How often have you heard this invitation before? How often will you hear it again? One day you will hear it for the last time. Then you will receive another invitation: to appear before your divine Master, your King, your Creator, your Lord. When you encounter him, will you recognize him with joy as your familiar host at this banquet? Or will you be encountering a stern judge, before whom you shrink in fear?

The answer is in your hands — right now!

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27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A. Isaiah 5:1-7; Matthew 21:33-43.

AIM: To help the hearers see how much God has given us, and hence how much he espects from us.
Jesus had a way of seizing people’s attention at once. He spoke about things that vitally interested people. Today he might speak about the Iraq war, affirmative action, the death penalty, abortion, feminism, illegal immigration — all subjects about which most people have strong opinions.

A matter about which people in Jesus’ day felt strongly was the amount of land in Palestine owned by foreigners. Jesus’ fellow Jews resented the windfall profits reaped by wealthy tycoons in far-off Rome from some of the most fertile property in the country, while those to whom the land rightly belonged often had difficulty eking out a bare existence. The story we have just heard about tenant farmers who mistreated the agents of an absentee landowner may have been based on an actual case familiar to Jesus’ hearers.

Three details in the story would immediately have seized the attention of anyone familiar with the Hebrew scriptures: the hedge around the vineyard, the wine press, the watchtower. All three details are mentioned in Isaiah’s tale of his friend’s vineyard which we heard in our first reading. Jesus’s hearers were familiar with that passage from Isaiah. They knew that the vineyard in that passage was a parable of God’s loving care for his people, and of their ungrateful response. Isaiah is quite specific about this. He represents God as saying: “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I had not done? Why, when I looked for the crop of grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes?”

Isaiah used the parable to expose the ingratitude of God’s people for all the care he had lavished on them, and to warn them that a day of reckoning was coming. The warning came from God himself: “Now, I will let you know what I mean to do with my vineyard …
I will make it a ruin.”

In retelling the familiar story, Jesus makes it clear that Isaiah’s day of reckoning is now at hand. The religious leaders of his people are about to reject him. Up to now they have held back because of Jesus’ popularity with the crowds. Now, however, the small ruling clique is becoming bolder. Jesus gives them a final, solemn warning: “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”

Is that all long ago and far away? Don’t you believe it! Jesus’ warning is as up-to-date as the morning headlines. It contains lessons for us today: for our country, for us American Catholics, for each of us personally.

First, the warning for our country. Few nations have been so blessed by God as ours. We are rich in natural resources, and rich in the diversity of races, nations, and tongues which have come to these shores seeking a new and better life. For more than two centuries two protecting oceans enabled us to develop a largely unpeopled continent. For most of our country’s history we were able to work out our national destiny little troubled by struggles elsewhere. Even today the United States, despite all our problems, remains the richest and most powerful country on earth — since the fall of communism in 1989 the world’s only superpower. Jesus’ parable warns us that all this wealth and power will be taken from us, and given to others, if we are not willing to share with those less fortunate than ourselves the abundance God has given us.
The parable is also a warning to us American Catholics. The position of influence we enjoy in the Church, because of our numbers and financial resources, will be taken away from us and given to Catholics in Third World countries, if our Catholicism is complacent, conventional, and lukewarm — while theirs is dynamic, daring, enthusiastic.

In 1974, thirty-four years ago now, a Capuchin Franciscan priest from Switzerland, Fr. Walbert Bühlmann, wrote a book which the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner called “the Catholic book of the year.” It was called The Coming of the Third Church. Bühlmann’s “Third Church” was the church of the Third World: Latin America, Africa, parts of Asia. By the end of the twentieth century, Bühlmann said, most of the world’s Catholics would live in the southern hemisphere. The older churches of Europe and North America would no longer rank first. Bühlmann’s prophecy has proved correct. The next Pope could well come from Latin America, from Africa, or from Asia.

For each of us personally Jesus’ parable is a warning that merely conventional, formal religion is not enough. And our religion is conventional if all it means, at bottom, is fulfilling a list of “minimum obligations”: dropping in at Sunday Mass to get our card punched, avoidance of serious sin, but not much beyond that: little generosity, little love or consideration for others, because we’re too busy looking after Number One. How much would a marriage be worth in which the spouses were merely concerned to fulfil their “minimum obligations” to one another? Think about it!

In the great family of God which we call the Catholic Church God lavishes on us treasures beyond counting: all his truth, all his goodness, power, and love (the theologians call it “grace”). He looks for our answering love in return. The treasures God bestows on us are meant to be used, not put away for safe-keeping. They are to be shared, not hoarded. If we fail to pass on to others what God so generously give to us, we shall lose God’s gifts. We can’t keep them, unless we give them away. That is what Jesus’ warning words mean: “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”

Someone has said: It doesn’t take much of a person to be a Catholic Christian. But it does take all of him — or her — that there is!

* * *

America Magazine for Oct. 6th has published this review of my new book:

All He Ever Wanted

By Robert P. Imbelli | OCTOBER 6, 2008

No Ordinary Fool: A Testimony to Grace
By John Jay Hughes Tate Publishing. 344p $19.99 (paperback)

In his most affective and affecting epistle, St. Paul wrote to the Philippians: “I give thanks to my God for all my memories of you” (Phil 1:3). Paul’s eucharistic remembering came repeatedly to mind while reading the Rev. John Jay Hughes’s lovely and moving autobiography, No Ordinary Fool. Calling to mind and narrating the events of his life—the sorrow of his mother’s death when he was but six years old, the emotional and spiritual closeness to his Anglican priest father, his own ordination to the priesthood as an Episcopalian and subsequent reception into the full communion of the Catholic Church, his painful alienation from his beloved father, his fruitful scholarly and pastoral ministry—all this and more Hughes celebrates as a testimony to grace.

As a precocious and sensitive child, the loss of his mother at so early an age had and continues to have an indelible impact. He says simply: “From this blow I have never recovered. I belong today to the walking wounded.”

Yet, from this unfathomable sorrow there came a conviction of grace. Let me allow Hughes to recount the decisive occurrence in his own voice:

I can no longer recall the exact day when I discovered God in the

darkness. I can fix it, however, before the age of nine. One day I

realized the parting was not forever. With blinding certainty it came

home to me that I would see my mother again, when God called me

home. From that day to this the unseen spiritual world—the world

of God, of the angels, of the saints, and of our beloved dead — has

been real to me…. Decades later I realized that this insight was the

beginning of my priestly vocation.

Hughes spent six happy years as a priest in the Anglican Communion, mostly in parish ministry. Four aspects of that priestly service continue to characterize his approach to priestly ministry to this day. They have relevance not only for priests, but for all those seeking to respond generously to the Lord’s call.

First, early in his ministry he made a commitment to tithe whatever income he received. To his surprise he found the practice of tithing not a burden, but a source of blessing. He writes: “Since it is based on faith (trusting that our needs will be taken care of if we give away the first portion of our income), it deepens faith. It enables us to use money sacramentally, by making something material a vehicle of the spiritual—gratitude.”

Second, Hughes soon became convinced of the need for a sustained prayer life as the soil of fruitful ministry and, indeed, of all growth in Christ. Moreover, this discipline must be practiced in season and out of season, whatever feelings of consolation or desolation accompany one’s prayer. As he writes wisely: “Neglect of this fundamental truth is the root cause of much of the Church’s present difficulties.”

Third, from teenage years the practice of confession has been crucial to his spiritual life. Indeed, one of the sorrows he experienced in becoming Roman Catholic before the Second Vatican Council was that he did not hear pronounced the consoling words of absolution, which he had heard and rejoiced in as an Episcopalian. Instead, Catholics before the council were instructed to pray the Act of Contrition while the priest mumbled absolution in Latin. The irony, of course, is that the linguistic intelligibility of the sacrament has also witnessed a decline in its celebration—though there are welcome signs of a rediscovery of this great grace.

Finally, a practice that Hughes learned from his Anglican mentors and which he has followed faithfully is never to preach on Sunday without a written text before him. The obvious advantage is that one thereby disciplines oneself to a clear beginning, middle and ending to structuring the interconnections among them. Those who have read Father Hughes’s published homilies know the care and the imagination they exhibit. He tells us that in homilies he shuns “moralism.” He explains that even when preaching the moral law, he presents it “not as the standard we must meet before God would love and bless us, but rather as the description of our grateful response to the blessings and love bestowed upon us by our loving heavenly Father as a free gift.”

Father Hughes writes with passion and conviction, spicing his recollections with telling incidents and wry humor, often enough directing his wit at his own false steps and follies. But it is the author’s Jacob-like wrestling with the call to Catholicism that provides the distinctive drama of the narrative.

In his early 20s he began to wonder whether the Anglican tradition had not in fact splintered itself from the Catholic Church, a questioning that his high-church father dismissed as “Roman fever.” Resolved for a time, the questions re-emerged forcefully after his ordination as an Episcopal priest. The stumbling block was his suspicion of exaggerated papal claims. But as he studied and consulted about them, he found them less an obstacle than he had feared.

The decision, in 1960, to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church was motivated by no emotional appeal or aesthetic attraction to the preconciliar church, but solely by his persuasion of the truth of its claim. In his view this entailed no repudiation of his past nor of the abundant graces he had received. As he wrote his father at the time, “It was not so much that I had come to find Anglicanism wrong, as incomplete.” But all efforts at explanation were spurned; the elder Hughes barred his son from the family home; and, though correspondence continued between them, they never saw each other again.

Hughes’s subsequent studies in Innsbruck (where he attended the lectures of Karl Rahner, S.J.) and in Münster (where he heard and greatly appreciated Joseph Ratzinger) were followed by his conditional ordination as a Catholic priest. His account of his many years of priestly ministry in the postconciliar church as teacher, theologian and pastor will elicit respect, gratitude and frequent moments of recognition as readers recall their own experiences and enter (as I did) into silent, yet spirited conversation with the author.

One will find much to relish and to learn from in this marvelous testimony to grace. Eucharistic remembering provides the cantus firmus that inspires and sustains Hughes’s honest and joyful witness. His book evokes, in an almost sacramental way, what St. Paul saw to be the fruit of grace: “an overflow of thanksgiving to the glory of God.”

Rev. Robert P. Imbelli, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, teaches systematic theology at Boston College.

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26^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A. Matthew. 21:28-32.

AIM: To show that our only claim on God is our acknowledgment of sin and our prayer for forgiveness.

On the day after Christmas 1958 Angelo Roncalli, who had become Pope John XXIII not quite two months before, visited Rome=s central prison. A murderer asked the Pope: ACan there be forgiveness for me?@ The Holy Father responded by enfolding the man in his arms. No words were necessary. The embrace said it all.

AYou can=t come to me,@ Pope John told the prisoners. ASo I have come to you.@ He went on to tell them that he had some personal experience of jails: his brother had once been arrested for poaching. In the account of the visit which appeared in the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano the next day this remark was censored. The editor feared that readers would be scandalized to learn that a Pope=s brother had been in trouble with the law.

Pope John=s experience with the Church Establishment, represented in this instance by the editor of the Vatican newspaper, was not unlike that of Jesus Christ. ATax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you,@ Jesus says to the religious leaders of his people at the end of this story about the man with two sons. He was addressing Athe chief priests and elders of the people@.

Jesus= association with people of bad moral character (represented here by Atax collectors and prostitutes@) scandalized his pious critics. His acceptance of such people did not mean approval of their sinful lives, any more than Pope John=s embrace of the murderer implied approval of violent crime. By welcoming notorious sinners Jesus was appealing to the spark of goodness that was still in them as God=s children. He knew that kindness and love can break through the hardened human heart far more effectively than moral denunciation.

Today=s parable of the two sons was Jesus= way of bringing home the contrast between the religious leaders, who rejected him, and the outcasts of society, who heard him gladly. To Jesus= hearers, living in a patriarchal society, the father in the story was a figure of unquestioned authority. His sons owed him obedience not merely because they lived in his house. Obedience was also a sacred duty enjoined by the fourth commandment: AHonor your father and your mother.@

The first son=s response to the father=s request for help on the family farm was an in-your-face refusal of his duty which would have deeply shocked Jesus= hearers. ABut afterwards [he] changed his mind and went,@ Jesus tells us. The second son responds courteously and at once: AYes, sir!@ ABut [he] did not go,@ Jesus says.

Immediately Jesus confronts his critics with a question. AWhich of the two did what his father=s will?@ Jesus= critics give the only possible answer: AThe first.@ They are convicted out of their own mouths. AAmen, I say to you,@ Jesus tells them, Atax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you. When John came to you in the way of righteousness, you did not believe him; but tax collectors and prostitutes did. Yet even when you saw that, you did not later change your minds and believe him.@

The second son in the story, who told his father he was on the way to work and then failed to go, is like Jesus= upright critics. Proud to be members of God=s chosen people, they were confident that faithful performance of their religious duties gave them a claim on God which he was bound in justice to honor. They had forgotten that we never have a claim on God. God has a claim on us, and it is an absolute claim. AWhen you have done all you have been commanded to do,@ Jesus says on another occasion [and which of us has?], Asay, >We are useless servants. We have done no more than our duty=@ (Luke 17:10).

The first son in the story, who told his father there was no way he was going to work for him any longer, and later regretted his insolence and went to work after all, is like the depraved outcasts who heard Jesus gladly. Their lives proclaimed rebellion against God. But the welcome they gave Jesus showed there was still goodness in them. Jesus appeals to this goodness by his compassionate love. Perhaps, like the first son, they will yet feel regret and turn from the darkness of their wasted lives to the sunshine of God=s forgiveness and love. This hope is the basis for Jesus= stern warning to his hard-hearted and self-righteous critics: ATax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you.@

For us the story contains a warning C but also encouragement. Faithful performance of our religious duties is in itself no guarantee of salvation. Such obedience is profitable only if it brings us closer to others and makes us more loving people C and if it brings us closer to God. And the closer we come to God, the more clearly we shall recognize our remaining sinfulness and unworthiness of all the love he showers on us. Jesus gives the same warning in the sermon on the mount: ANone of those who cry out, >Lord, Lord,= will enter the kingdom of God but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven@ (Matthew 7:21).

Who are those who cry, ALord, Lord@? Certainly not the declared enemies of Jesus Christ. No, we are the people who cry, ALord, Lord.@ Day by day, and Sunday by Sunday, we utter the Lord=s name: in petitions, intercession, thanksgiving, praise, and penitence. That is right and good. The parable warns us, however, that if our piety does not bear fruit in our lives, we are still far from God. The warning is not for outsiders, for others. It is for us, the declared followers of Jesus Christ.

If the story=s second son is a warning to us, however, the first son is an encouragement. As followers of Jesus Christ we have been taught that readiness to respond to God=s= call is a virtue, slowness or refusal a sin. We have been told not to complain, and to avoid the rebellious attitude which produces and nurtures complaints. Few of us, however, avoid these things completely. Often we are slow to respond to God=s call, coming to us through the teaching of the Church, through the inner voice of conscience, through the needs of a sister or brother whom we encounter along life=s way, or in the legitimate commands or requests of those in authority. Sometimes we refuse such calls altogether.

All that is, in the last analysis, of little account, Jesus is telling us. What counts is not what we say, feel, or intend. The only thing that counts is what we do. Negative feelings, resentment of God=s demands or of the demands of others, are not important if, despite such feelings, we are still trying to do what we know is right. Indeed, being generous with God and others when this is difficult, in spite of the sullen resentment within, is of greater value than obeying God=s call in times of spiritual fervor and zeal.

God sees the difficulties with which we must contend. When we stumble and fall, and think we can rise no more because we=ve been down so often before, we need to ask God to do for us what we can no longer do ourselves. When we approach God in that way, we do have a claim on him: the claim of a sinner seeking God=s mercy.

Let me conclude with the verses of an evangelical hymn. If you have ever watched a Billy Graham revival on television, you have heard it sung softly by the massed choirs as people come forward to give their lives to Jesus Christ. It goes like this:

Just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me

And that thou bid=st me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come.

Just I am, though tossed about, with many a conflict, many a doubt

Fightings and fears within, without, O Lamb of God, I come.

Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind; sight, riches, healing of the mind,

Yes, all I need, in thee to find, O Lamb of God, I come.

Just as I am: thou wilt receive; wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;

Because thy promise I believe; O Lamb of God, I come.

Just as I am, thy love unknown, has broken every barrier down;

Now to be thine, yes, thine alone, O Lamb of God, I come.

Just as I am, of thy great love, the breadth, length, depth, and height to prove,

Here for a season, then above: O Lamb of God, I come.

* * *

John L. Allen, Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, syndicated columnist, TV commentator on things Catholic, and author of 3 books about Pope Benedict XVI, writes about my book, No Ordinary Fool: A Testimony to Grace:

“Catholic literature abounds in conversion stories, and many of these ‘Home to Rome‘ tales have a sort of apologetic edge. No Ordinary Fool, however, transcends that genre. While no one could miss Fr. John Jay Hughes’ deep love for Catholicism, this is far more than an argument for Roman verities. It is a piercing, wise memoir, written by a priest who has prayed and thought deeply about matters of both head and heart. Hughes is admired across ideological fault lines because he cuts to the core of things, to the restless need of the human heart for a love that lasts. Anyone who wishes to take that journey would do well to have Hughes as a guide.”

Amazon has temporarily sold out and lists the book as “currently unavailable.” Until they restock, it can be ordered directly from the publisher, Tate Publishing and Enterprises.

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Blog Author: Fr. John Jay Hughes

Related Audio Course: A Journey Through the Parables 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A. Matthew  20: 1-16a.

AIM: To help the hearers trust not in their own merits, but in God’s mercy

It seems terribly unfair, doesn’t it? Even a child can see that is isn’t right to pay people who have worked all day in the blazing sun no more than those who have worked only an hour. Many years ago I spoke about this parable to some fine Sisters in St. Louis with whom I lived for seventeen years. When I had finished reading the story, I could see an elderly German Sister in the front row frowning.

“They all get the same,” she said. She was pretty burned up about it.

We should be burned up about it. If we’re not, we haven’t been listening: or the story is so familiar that it no longer disturbs us. To understand the story we have to realize that it is not about social justice. It is about God’s generosity. If Jesus were telling the story today, it might go something like this.

A rancher in one of the “salad factories” of California’s San Fernando valley is eager to harvest his crop before a threatened change in the weather. So at dawn he’s off to the hiring hall at the edge of town. The men he finds there are able-bodied and eager to work. They also know their rights. They bargain with the rancher about the conditions of work, and about their wages. When they strike a deal, they feel good about it. The work will be hard, but they know they will be well paid.

At intervals during the day, the foreman tells the rancher that more workers will be needed if they want to get in the whole harvest in time. So the rancher makes repeated trips to town to hire additional help. Each time the workers he encounters are less promising. The men he finds lounging around in mid-afternoon are the dregs of the local labor market: drifters, panhandlers, winos. While those hired at dawn have been working in the hot sun, these men have spent another day idle, reflecting glumly on the hopelessness of their lot. There is no bargaining with men like that. As much out of pity as for any real help this sorry lot can offer, the rancher tells them:

“Get into the truck, fellows. There’s work for you out at my place.”

At quitting time, those hired last are first in the pay line. These are the men whom life has passed over. They have learned through bitter experience that every man’s hand is against them. They wish now that something had been said about wages before they got into the rancher’s truck a couple of hours earlier.

The first man in line receives his pay envelope. He rips it open — and can’t believe his eyes. It contains a whole day’s pay! He stands there dazed, tears of joy welling up in his eyes. He expected to be swindled. Instead, he has been treated generously — far more generously, he knows, than he deserves.

Meanwhile, news of what the first men in line are receiving is being passed back to those in the rear. These are the men who have worked hard all day. They calculate how much they will receive at the same hourly rate. Imagine their indignation when they receive exactly what they had bargained for in the early morning. They protest angrily to the rancher.

“It’s my money, isn’t it?” he answers them. “If I want to be generous to someone else, what’s that to you?”

We are left with the injustice. The story begins to make sense only when we ask: who was happy? who was disappointed? and why? Those who were happy were the men hired last and paid first. They had not bargained. They had nothing to bargain with. They were little better than beggars. It was these beggars, however, who went away happy, while the bargainers were unhappy.

Why? Not because they had struck a bad bargain. No, at the beginning of the day they knew it was a good bargain. Nor were they unhappy because the bargain was not kept. On the contrary, it was kept to the letter. At the end of the day, however, they thought of something that had never occurred to them when they were hired. They thought they deserved more.

The men who went away happy did not appeal to what they deserved. They knew they deserved very little. The only thing they could appeal to was the rancher’s generosity. That is the key to a right relationship with God, Jesus says. Appeal to God’s generosity and you will be flooded with joy. Appeal to what you deserve, and God will give it to you. God is always just. He never short-changes us. When we discover, however, how little we actually deserve, we’ll probably be disappointed.

We know the story as the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. A better title would be the parable of the Bargainers and the Beggars. The story is important for us. It flies in the face of everything we’ve been taught. Society says we should not be beggars. We should work for what we get, not depend on handouts. In everyday life that is fine. With God, however, different standards apply. He loves to give handouts! To receive them, however, we need to stand before him empty-handed, appealing (if we must appeal at all) not to God’s justice but to his mercy. More, we must forget about keeping track of what we think we “deserve” and stop worrying that others whom we consider “less deserving” (or not deserving at all!) share the Lord’s overflowing bounty with us.

The full-time workers in this story resemble the elder son in the story of the Prodigal Son, angry at the undeserved welcome extended to his shiftless younger brother. Like those who had worked all day in the vineyard, the elder brother thought he had been short-changed. He was mistaken. “Everything I have is yours,” his father told him (Luke 15:31). What more could he have received than that? The elder brother in that story needed to stop keeping score and join in welcoming the family member who, despite his folly and sin, was still his brother.

Are you a score-keeper, always reckoning what’s coming to you? Are you, with God, a bargainer — or are you a beggar? If you want to experience God’s justice, be a bargainer. He is a God of justice. He’ll never short-change you. When you discover, however, how little you deserve on any strict accounting, you’ll probably be disappointed, perhaps even shocked.

So perhaps you’d rather experience God’s generosity. If so, then you must learn to be, before God, a beggar. Then you will be bowled over with the Lord’s generosity. You will know Mary’s joy at the news that she was to be the mother of God’s Son: “The hungry he has given every good thing, while the rich he has sent empty away” (Luke 1:53).

Ask the Lord who bestows his gifts not according to our deserving but according to his boundless generosity to give you that hunger which longs to be fed; that emptiness which yearns to be filled. Stand beneath his cross and say, in the words of the old evangelical hymn: Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to your cross I cling.

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Blog Author: Fr. John Jay Hughes

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“GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD … “
Exaltation of the Cross. John 3:13-17.
AIM: To proclaim God’s unconditioned love, and appeal for a response.

At the center of every Catholic Church in the world is a cross. The cross hangs around the necks of hundreds of thousands of people in our world who give no other outward sign of being religious. Teachers of young children report that when they offer the youngsters a selection of holy cards and ask them to choose one, time and again children choose the picture of Jesus on the cross.

Why is the cross so important, and so central? Why is it hanging, right now, around the necks of countless fighting men and women in the Middle East? Why, after two thousand years, has the cross lost none of its fascination and power? The best answer is also the simplest: because the cross is a picture of how much God loves us. “There is no greater love than this,” Jesus tells us, “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).

“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,” we heard in the gospel. It was the most God had to give. That is why the cross is at the center of every Catholic Church in the world. That is why the cross is also at the center of the Church’s preaching. Many people associate the words “preaching” and “sermon” with a list of Do’s and Don’ts: all the things we must first do or avoid before God will love us and bless us. Yet the gospel is supposed to be good news. Is it good news to be told that God won’t love us until we have kept enough of God’s rules to show that we are worthy of his love? That doesn’t sound like very good news to me. It sounds like horribly bad news.

The gospel is the good news that God loves us just as we are, right now. How much does God love us? Let me tell you. Some of you will remember the little Chinese girl, Doris, who entered our pre-school last year just few weeks past her third birthday. She calls me Grandpa Jay. On most days I would go to meet Doris when she was dismissed from school. Together we would stand at the front door, waiting for Doris’s mother. How excited Doris when she spotted her mother. She would run across the school yard as fast as her little legs could take her, to her mother’s waiting arms. It was heart-stopping. Beautiful as that was, however, it doesn’t begin to compare with God’s love for us.

So how much does God love us? An e-mail I received some time ago put it like this. “If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If He had a wallet, your photo would be in it. He sends you flowers every spring. He sends you a sunrise every morning.” He never lets you out of his sight. Do you know why? Maybe you’re thinking it’s because he wants to catch you breaking one of his rules. Many people think that. They’re wrong – dead wrong. God never lets you out of his sight because he loves you so much that he can’t take his eyes off you. Face it, friend — he’s crazy about you! God doesn’t promise days without pain, laughter without sorrow, sun without rain; but he does promise strength for the day, comfort for the tears, and light for the way.

Here is another story. Marie is eighty-seven years old and a widow. She has lived for several years in a nursing home. It is hard to grow old, to have to give up your own place and to be dependent on others. Marie has never been able to adjust. She is crabby and disagreeable much of the time. She complains over trifles. She criticizes those who look after her, often for little or no reason. Her loved ones have reproached her for her bitterness, and tried to talk her out of it. They’ve failed.

One day Marie received a letter from her grandson at college. He told her how much the whole family loved her, how she was an inspiration to them. He said how much he admired her. Shortly after she received the letter a priest visited her. He found her clutching the letter, in tears.

“I want you to read that, Father,” Marie said. When he had, she told him she wanted to go to confession. She did so and received the Lord’s forgiveness: that love that will never let us go, which heals us and makes us well again.

Afterwards Marie was transformed. For the first time anyone could remember she was kind to the nurses. Instead of criticizing them, she thanked them for all they did for her. What had changed her was simply a letter which said: “Grandma, we love you.” It is love that breaks through. And the cross is a picture of God’s love for us.

“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,” we heard in the gospel, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

The One who hangs on the cross, to show us God’s love, says elsewhere in this gospel according to John: “I am the light of the world” (8:12). And in today’s gospel he tells us that our eternal destiny is being determined, even now, by how we react to his light: “Everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.”

Are you walking in the light of Jesus’ love? Or do you fear his light because of what it might reveal in the dark corners of your life which, like all of us, you try to keep hidden? We all have those dark corners. Now, in this hour, Jesus Christ is inviting you to put away fear. Come into the bright sunshine of his love. Once you do, the fire of Christ’s love will burn out in you everything that is opposed to his light. Then the reason for your fear will be gone. Then you will have no need to hide. You will be home. You will be safe: safe for this life, but also for eternity.

“Whoever believes in [Jesus Christ] will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their words were evil.”

The eternal destiny of each one of us is being determined by our response to the light, and love, of Jesus Christ. He is waiting for your response, right now.

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