CLICK HERE: AUDIO OF SUN. AUG. 29, 2021 HOMILY
Homily – August 29, 2021 / 22nd Sunday (Year B) ● Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8 ● Psalm 15 ● James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27 ● + Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 ●
Click Here for VIDEO / Lourdes YouTube Channel for Mass to watch.
Title: Hypocrite !
[__01__] We use the word “HYPOCRISY” or “HYPOCRITE” to describe someone who puts on a false appearance, and in particular a false appearance of values. This has also been called ’virtue – signalling’ – i.e., pretending to have a virtue or value that one does not actually hold to.
Who is a hypocrite?
Am I a hypocrite?
Are you a hypocrite?
[__02__] Have
you ever been – or have you ever been afraid you might be turning into a
HYPOCRITE? Or being hypocritical, living a life of hypocrisy.
Jesus says the Pharisees are hypocrites. The Pharisees –
OTOH – think Jesus is a hypocrite. Accusations of hypocrisy are constantly
breaking in the 24 hour news cycle of the Gospel.
When
we think of the word – HYPOCRITE – which is really also an ancient word that
comes down from Greece – the Greek language – and it means one is an actor on a
stage and one who wears a mask to pretend to be someone else.
Or, a hypocrite stretches himself or herself into a new
appearance…that is far from reality.
When we think of the word – HYPOCRITE – we often think of 2
types of people:
(1) Someone
who is not me, often someone famous as a sports star or politician or corporate
executive.
(2) Or,
we if we do think of “hypocrite” – for ourselves, we think of something in the
past….
But,
the simple definition of a hypocrite is someone who doesn't do what he says
he's going to do, or does something he says he would not do….sometimes with
millions of YouTube views or Facebook followers
But, hypocrisy is not only for the lifestyles of the rich
and famous. How does hypocrisy apply to you ? to me ? right now ?
[__02__] NOT-FEELING
WELL EXAMPLE
If you've
ever been NOT FEELING WELL, if you've ever not felt, well, one of the things
you ask yourself is, how did this happen? Right? Where did this happen? And why
did this happen? Okay. And the other thing about sickness is there's two types
of sickness in the world, the sickness that is we say contagious or
communicable and sickness that is not contagious, are not communicable.
And
right now, we live in a world with a lot of fear of sickness that is contagious
or communicable. Right?
And,
we fear the CONTAGIOUS sickness – in particular. So, if you or or someone your family does not feel well, and you find
out that it is due to allergies, you are relieved because an allergy is not
contagious.
The
question about “not feeling well” is really not – am I a hypocrite? Is
James Ferry. Father James Ferry “padre” a hypocrite ? The
question REALLY is, am I a repenting hypocrite? Or am I a non repenting hypocrites?
Am I
aware of my own hypocrisy even now? So as a preacher once heard a preacher once
say, if you don't know the bad news, then the good news is no news.
So
we are called to know the bad news about
hypocrisy in order to hear the good news of the gospel.
I’d
like to talk about 3 aspects of the bad news of hypocrisy [H] and also the 3 Good
News of the Gospel.
The 3 bad news aspects are :
[H] is contagious DISEASE
[H] is self-DECEPTIVE
[H] is one-DIMENSIONAL
(superficial)
[__03.01_-contagious disease_]
+
G.Mark ch. 7, v. 5. à “Why do your
disciples not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal with
unclean hands?”
Hypocrisy is [contagious], it is
communicable. If I see someone else I respect being a hypocrite, or not living
a life of integrity. This might give me permission to jump a hurdle or jump a
boundary that is really for my benefit. Here is an example, from a story/joke you may
have heard about the kid who came home from school:
HOMEWORK: 1 day a child came home from school and said
to his parents, "Mommy, Daddy today in school I was ACCUSED by my
schoolteacher of something that I myself did NOT do."
The
parents were indignant and exclaimed, "That's terrible! I'm going to talk
with your teacher: by the way, what was it that you did NOT do?"
The
child replied, "My homework."
Is the child is a hypocrite? I will postpone answering
that… it all depends on what the “homework” is.
And, Jesus gets into an argument – about the value of
HOMEWORK - with the Pharisees and the scribes who say, Why do your disciples
not do their HOMEWORK ?
i.e.,
why wash their hands before they eat? Jesus says to them, you're hypocrites,
because you don't understand the original, really the intent of the Mosaic law,
the Mosaic law, the law of Moses, in the Old Testament, was meant for the
priests in the temple whenever they touched holy objects, to wash their hands
before they touch those holy objects. But then it became kind of a contagious
thing. It's contagious idea. It spread to many people, that, whenever you do
anything, you better wash your hands. So then Jesus becomes accused of why
don't you wash your hands. And the other
reason the Pharisees are accusing them of this is because Jesus is professing
to be a holy person, a sanctified person, he's professing to be the Son of God.
So the
Pharisees want to catch him in a lie. They want to say, You're, you're saying,
You're the Messiah, people think you're the Messiah, and you're not washing
your hands. How can this be true? But Jesus is saying that, you know, he's
saying, Don't purify just your hands, purify your hearts.
So,
what is the solution to something that is CONTAGIOUS. To refer back to the
“pandemic” playbook of lessons, I suggest we need to do some contact tracing.
And,
to recognize as we read in the letter to the Romans 10:17 –
Romans 10:17-->
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
Matthew 11:15 -->
He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Now,
the other thing I'm called to remember myself, for example, is that I'm never
not a priest, a Catholic priest. In other way, I'm always in public.
My
contacts are always TRACED. Your contacts are traced.
They
are traced to your family …and even if you live alone, there is someone who is
driving by Our Lady of Lourdes – 5 or 10 minutes after Mass is over that will
see you going to your car in the parking lot. You are witness. And, in this
regard your presence is a way to build up “health contacts”… a spiritual
network and immunity against hypocrisy.
John
Henry Newman in a sermon called “Witnesses of the Resurrection” preached that
it does not matter if there are only a few witnesses…these can be contagious in
a good way:
It
was necessary that Jesus started with only a few…
“It is,
indeed, a general characteristic of the course of His providence to make the
few the channels of His blessings to the many; but in the instance we are
contemplating, a few were selected, because only a few could (humanly speaking)
be made instruments. As I have already said, to be witnesses of His
resurrection it was requisite to have known our Lord intimately before His
death. This was the case with the Apostles; but this was not enough. It was
necessary they should be certain it was He Himself, the very same whom they
before knew. You recollect how He urged them to handle Him, and be sure that
they could testify to His rising again.””
Yes, hypocrisy is contagious… but so also is our prayer and
contact tracing and witness is our medicine by uniting ourselves to Jesus on
the Cross.
[__03.02_-self-Deceptive_]
+G.Mark ch. 7, v. 6 à “This people honors me with their lips, but
their heart is far from me. This people honors me with their lips, but their
heart is far from me.”
(Mark 7:6)
And sometimes we honor people with our lips,
but not with our hearts. And, this begins with a self-deception. A classic example of this in the Gospel is
the parable of the prodigal son. Do you remember that parable? The prodigal
son? The prodigal son is the one who goes to his father. Father, GIVE ME
(demanding !!) the inheritance that belongs to me, he takes all the money, he
leaves home, he spends all the money, loses all the money, and then he comes
back and he wants to move back and he has to come back and work for his father.
Okay. But the younger son is a hypocrite. Why is he a hypocrite? And why is he
deceiving himself? Because the first thing he has to do in order to get the
money is he has to deceive his father.. And then he has to deceive himself. But
first he has to deceive themselves. How does he assume he has to convince
himself that his father is already dead…
Or,
I might deceive myself – or at least not be fully truthful – if I do not recognize
the DIGNITY and VALUE of others around me…it’s easy to see the DIGNITY of
people I already know and like … what about the person who causes me
difficulty? Do I deceive myself about him or her?
You might be saying – how can Father Jim Ferry – you padre -- talk about hypocrisy? You're saying to yourself I know he's a hypocrite that priest that priests that the microphone in the front of the church, you might say, is it hypocritical for a hypocrite to talk about hypocrisy? But what if we agree that I'm not here to give you my medicine for hypocrisy, but that of Jesus's medicine for hypocrisy? What if we could simply say it were, it would be hypocritical not to notice hypocrisy? So, and I'm called to notice hypocrisy in my life. So and that it's self-deceptive. Okay. Now, I said before that hypocrisy is like it's a disorder. It's a disorder. It's like a disease. It's and what do we do about disease right now? That is the pandemic disease. What's thing we do we quarantine? Okay, and I'd like to apply that principle of quarantining to this. What we are called to do everyday as Christians and as Catholics is to examine our lives to examine our conscience. It's like a mini quarantine. I'm not saying you have to lock yourself in a room for 14 days and not see anybody but a mini quarantine, meaning take some quiet, take some stillness, especially at night to examine what happened that day. Okay. To examine what was true about today, what happened? Was I true to myself, okay, that that's the stillness that we need in order to get away from the waywardness of hypocrisy. Okay?
All
right. So that's one medicine for the self. That hypocrisy is self deceptive.
And I'm recommending the quarantine as a medicine or the examination of
conscience.
[__03.03_superficial, 1 dimensional_]
+G.Mark
ch. 7, v. à “Do you not realize that everything that goes
into a person from outside cannot defile,
… but what comes out of a person, that is what
defiles. … From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity,
theft, murder adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy,
arrogance, folly”
I’d
like to connect hypocrisy as 1 dimensional to this part of the Gospel, our
Savior acknowledges that food – at the surface level at one dimension – is not
unclean – or spiritually toxic – but that what is inside of us – in our hearts,
souls, stomachs, below the surface, can be toxic. We need God’s grace and mercy
to heal….
I
would say that these things are kind of like viruses.
VIRUS
EXAMPLE
They're kind of like, like, each one is a
different virus. And one of the things I heard recently about the COVID virus
or about viruses in general, it was interesting is that a virus is not a living
thing. A virus isn't a living thing. A virus only survives because it attaches
itself to a living thing. Or to a host exactly, which is the technical word.
So
that the so in order for the this list of bad things that Jesus says to survive
the list that he says, greed, malice, adultery, envy, blast me, these are like
viruses, and they attach themselves to a host, sometimes I am that host, and I
let those things attach themselves to me. So in order to the medicine that I
need in order to get away with from this hypocrisy that is, you know, that is so
one dimensional is I need to look deeper, I need to look deeper than one
dimension of my life, I need to look deeper than the one dimension I see of
somebody else's life. So for example, and so these are questions, I have to ask
myself all the time, do I judge somebody else? Or do I hold somebody else to a
standard that I would not hold myself to? Do I sometimes do that? Yes. I can be
a hypocrite. Okay. And I have to be I'm called to be a repenting hypocrite for
that.
The waywardness
of hypocrisy can make us one dimensional (superficial). The Pharisees --
they're really not purifying their hearts. They're one dimensional. So we're
called to judge our actions, not just based on outward appearance, or even not
to judge the actions of others based on outward appearance.
Let's say I have to say, say I'm sorry to somebody. Okay?
We do this all the time, sometimes we want to say are sorry. And we bring a
gift to the other person, maybe we bring a gift of the person's favorite
flowers, or we bring a gift
Or
we maybe give a gift of like, get a person have an extra special birthday
present, or an extra special Christmas present, we give a gift. But do we
sometimes give that gift without our heart being in it? Sometimes the gift is
in our hands, but it's not in our heart. Maybe we give the gift even with some
resentment that we even have to do it.
So
Jesus is saying, don't just purify your hands, don't just give gifts with your
hands give gifts with your heart to others. Because otherwise, we're just one
dimensional.
FOOD
PANTRY EXAMPLE –
1 of
my mentors, another pastor, shared with me his guidance of how to receive
visitors – without “hypocrisy” – especially if we think someone else is guilty
of hypocrisy. In short, do not judge.
LESSON:
if you see somebody drive to food pantry in a really nice car or dressed in
very nice clothes, do not judge by the 1 dimension of a luxury automobile. The
person still may be in crisis …
Hypocrisy is self-deceptive. We need the QUARANTINE OF QUIET -- by that
quiet by that stillness by except by sitting in prayer and in humility before
God and also going to confession to confess my sins? The quarantine is key to
getting away from the self deception.
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