I celebrated
Mass this morning for the Sisters of St. Francis at Clare Hall in St. Francis,
WI, a suburb of Milwaukee. I told them
that I couldn’t stay for brunch because my Jesuit community would be
celebrating the Solemnity of our founder, St. Ignatius. I also told them about the connection between
St. Francis of Assisi and St. Ignatius Loyola.
Here is more of my homily:
It’s nice to
be able to celebrate Mass today with Franciscan Sisters because, as I always
like to remind people, there would be no St. Ignatius without St. Francis. Reading about St. Francis while he was
convalescing from a war wound, Ignatius was inspired to leave his worldly
aspirations and follow St. Francis’ example of total dedication to Christ.
St. Ignatius’
“Spiritual Exercises” begin with a meditation called “The First Principle and
Foundation.” In it, he reflects on the
meaning and purpose of life. Humans are
created to give praise, reverence, and service to God here on earth and forever
in heaven. We’re created for love. The things of earth are given in order to
help us attain this goal. If they get in the way, then we are to avoid them; if
they help us attain the goal for which we are created, then we hold on to
them.
Then, after
reflecting on the love of God revealed in Jesus, St. Ignatius concludes the “Exercises”
with a reflection on all God’s blessings, including the gift of God’s very
self. Aware of such love, we will
naturally want to return love by making a total gift of ourselves. And here is where Ignatius’ famous “Suscipe”
prayer comes in: “Take, Lord, and
receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all
that I have and possess. You have given all to me. To You, O Lord, I return it. All is Yours.
Give me only Your grace and Your love.
With these I am rich enough and want nothing more.”
Today’s
readings (Ecclesiastes 1: 2; 2: 21-23; Psalm 90; Colossians 3: 1-5, 9-11; and
Luke 12: 13-21) offer us a way to further reflect on this.
Ecclesiastes
begins with the famous words, “Vanity of vanities. All things are vanity.” Another way of putting it today would be “Absurdities
of absurdities. All is absurd.” Why?
The author says that humans, like animals, are born, they live, and then
die. But for humans, life is absurd
because all that we work so hard for must be left behind. No hearse ever had a U-Haul trailer behind
it! Thus it seems best to eat, drink,
and be merry now for tomorrow we die. Or,
as the beer commercial says: “You only go around once in life so you gotta grab
for all the gusto you can.”
In the
Gospel, Jesus tells the rich man who builds bigger barns to accommodate his
wealth that he is a fool. He will die
and all that he worked so hard for will go to another. But what makes him
especially foolish is that he thinks this life is the only life. He has not used the things of this earth to
prepare for treasure in heaven. It’s
been said that the only thing we take with us when we die is all that we have
given away.
With this in
mind, Paul tells us to “think of what is above, not of what is on earth.” Thinking about our goal, we will try to use
the things of this world to prepare for the world to come. Our earthly life is fleeting, but the next
life is eternal.
This is what
the vow of poverty is designed to do.
The vows that consecrated persons take are “eschatological signs” that
point beyond this world to the next.
They witness to the entire world that this life is not the only one and
so we ought to live in such a way that we are prepared at any given moment for passage
to the next life. The vow of poverty witnesses to reality, to what is most
important. All people are called to live
in the spirit of poverty.
In the 1980’s
I lived and worked at our Jesuit novitiate in St. Paul. Every year a conflict arose. Some novices declared that the community was
not living poverty because it had a cookie jar.
Of course no one was forced to eat the cookies and it often happened
that those who complained about cookies were the first to defend having a cable
television. It’s always good to ask
questions about how we can live in the spirit of poverty more faithfully, how
we can live a more simple life in which we hold everything in common, like the
early Church communities. But ultimately
poverty is something deeper. It touches
upon the human condition.
The truly poor
do not have choices.
Peter Maurin
was a French immigrant who died in 1949.
He taught Dorothy Day that she did not have be a communist to work for
social justice. The Catholic Church has
a great tradition and great examples to guide us toward justice. Peter was committed to living in solidarity
with the poor. But it was always a
choice and he only truly became poor near the end of his life when he had no
choice and lost what was most precious to him.
In his book “Peter
Maurin: Prophet in the Twentieth Century,” Marc Ellis wrote: “Dorothy reflected on Maurin’s life and his
poverty, which, in her view, had now become absolute. Maurin’s mind was no longer keen and Dorothy
thought the decline significant. After all, the only thing he had retained in
his poverty had been his mind. But the last years had seen the deterioration of
the interior senses, the memory and the will. … Incontinent and bedridden, he began
his last days separated from the work and the people he loved” (161-2).
Ultimately
each of us is poor. We are not in
control and the day will come when we will have to let go of everything. We do so with the assurance of faith, that as
our lives are emptied of everything we will receive everything and more than we
can imagine.
And so, in
the spirit of the poverty that St. Francis and St. Ignatius lived, we say:
“Take, Lord,
and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will,
all that I have and possess. You have given all to me. To You, O Lord, I return it. All is Yours.
Give me only Your grace and your love.
With these I am rich enough and want nothing more.”
