Luke 4;21-30. Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. January 31st, 2016
Today we read the conclusion to the Gospel we read last week. Last week we heard that Jesus was highly praised in the surrounding villages because of the great deeds He performed, like the changing of the water into wine at Cana. We read too that the people in Nazareth were astonished by His claim that He was the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies concerning the Messiah. This is where we pick up the account today. But today we hear of the rejection of Jesus from the same people who at first accepted Him.
Acceptance then rejection, so what happened? It would seem that the people of His own town would be proud of Jesus and accept Him as a favored Son. This is not the case. They had heard of Jesus’ miracles and were intrigued by His wisdom; however they were very superficial and narrow-minded. In their pride they felt hurt that Jesus, one their own townsmen, had not performed miracles in Nazareth as He did elsewhere. They presumed that they should receive special “favor” and so they insolently demand that He perform miracles, not to change their heart and lead them to deeper faith, but merely to satisfy their vanity. And so Jesus, knowing their hearts, performs no miracles; instead He reproaches them and uses examples from the Old Testament in order to show that one needs to be well-disposed if miracles are going to lead to faith. His attitude so wounds their pride that they are ready to kill him by throwing Him off a cliff. Then we have some the saddest words in all of scripture, “He went away.”
Jesus proclaimed the truth His whole life, He came bring us the Truth. For this, Jesus was rejected and crucified. The beginning of the rejection of Jesus as Truth itself, began here in His native Nazareth. This whole episode is a good lesson about understanding Jesus and His teachings, which He gives to us through His Catholic Church, the Church He founded. We can only understand Him and His teachings if we are humble and are genuinely resolved to make ourselves available fully to Him.
The problem is that the teachings of Jesus, the teachings of the Church are sometimes very tough. So tough in fact that many times there can be a false belief that the teachings of the Church are somehow different or other than the teachings of the Jesus. The Church however, carries on these teachings, which she receives from Christ through the Apostles, prophetically preaching them in all ages, without change, whether acceptable or unacceptable. And she calls all her children, especially her bishops and priests to preach and teach the doctrines of the Church, which are the Gospel—the very word of Christ, without apology and without compromise. If we are to live the type of Love which St. Paul speaks about in our second reading we need to hear the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, not water down, but in its fullness and splendor.
A few years back, when he was still the archbishop of Milwaukee, Cardinal Archbishop, Timothy Dolan, in and article printed in the Observer--our diocesan newspaper, said this:
Catholics need solid preaching about Jesus, the cross and the Church, and not “feel-good” spiritual advice that demands no sacrifice.
Preaching well means challenging people’s complacency and, like Christ, occasionally “shaking things up.” This cannot happen if preachers soft-pedal the cross.
He went on, “Maybe the greatest threat to the Church is not heresy, not dissent, not secularism, not even moral relativism, but this sanitized, feel-good, boutique, therapeutic spirituality that makes not demands, calls for no sacrifice, asks for no conversion, entails no battle against sin, but only soothes and affirms,” Speaking to future priests he said, “Our preaching can then become cotton candyish: a lot of fluff, air and sugar, but no substance.
Even though he was focusing on priests, Bishop Dolan reminded that preaching the Gospel is a mandate shared by ALL Christians, not just priests.
The problem is of course, no one likes to be a prophet; no one wants to get thrown off a cliff; no one wants to be crucified. And too often a priest or deacon who teaches something clearly and forthrightly will catch flak for it. Sadly, in our age where everyone is an expert and all truth is subjective, many people don’t want to hear uncomfortable teachings expounded. And so it becomes very easy for a preacher, to fall back on a feel-good approach to the homily, light on content, long on uplifting anecdotes and the power of positive thinking.
I think this fear of preaching the truth, prophetically is especially so in regards to the Church’s teaching on marriage, sexuality and life. Many Catholics have never even heard some of the teachings of the Church in these areas, or if they have, only heard them in a negative light, with regards to how the Church is out of step with the times and needs to get with. Well, of course Jesus is not out of step with the times, He owns time and all in it, and His teachings are always with it, because He is Truth itself.
Let me give you an example of such a teaching. And know that I bring this one up not to condemn anyone, but because if I love you and need to give you the truth, the truth that will not only make you happy, but prevent you from being hurt. I could not talk about this, but then that wouldn’t be true love, but only the selfishness that St. Paul speaks about. The teaching is the Church’s position on In Vitro Fertilization or IVF, better known as test tube babies.
I would guess that most Catholics are only vaguely aware of the Church’s position on making test tube babies. How many have used IVF without knowing that it is wrong or why? When asked why IVF might be immoral, people will usually mention the extra embryos that are frozen or discarded. Such embryos are certainly a serious concern--they are after all truly children, but they are not the primary reason the Church insists the procedure is immoral. Even if IVF were done without making any extra embryos at all, this way of making babies would still be morally objectionable, because the procedure strikes at the very core and meaning of the marital act.
When a couple comes before the altar to profess the vows of love, the Church prays that nothing should come between them- “what God has joined, let no man separate. In our world, sadly, separation in marriage does not happen at the time of a divorce, but much earlier- something is allowed to separate the spouses. The separation starts with withholding all of the love for the spouse- it often starts with artificial birth control. But any act that would separation the full gift of the spouses to each other is for our faith an evil. In IVF, the marital act is substituted by an act of laboratory manipulation for the loving act of bodily union between spouses. It turns procreation into production. Instead of the two become one flesh, IVF divides and puts a Lab technician in between; this can only hurt the union. IVF is really the flip-side of contraception: rather than trying to have sex without babies, we try to have babies without sex. There is a separation of love from the act of procreation.
That being said it is very important that we understand, that the wrongness of IVF does not in any way reflect upon the child, who is innocent. It is not the baby’s fault in any way. The child has no control over how he or she got here. Regardless of how a baby comes into the world, whether by IVF, whether by adultery, by pre-marital sex, by rape or incest or even by cloning, that baby is always a gift and blessing from God. Let me emphasize this point- each and every child is a gift from God. The problem with IVF is not with the child, but with a decision made by the parents, many times not through but ill will but through ignorance, concerning how to pursue the satisfaction of their own desire for a child. In other words, babies, even when very much desired, should not be brought into the world by making use of disordered means such as adultery, pre-marital sex, IVF, or cloning. They should be brought into the world only within that intimate love-giving moment of the marital embrace, where the two become one flesh. Children are entitled, have the right to come into being as the fruit of a singular parental love that is uniquely manifested in the spousal moment of bodily surrender to each other.
Through the incredibly rich language of the parents’ bodies, through their body to body contact, the new body of the child is engendered. In their one-flesh union, they en-flesh new life. The intimate bodily embrace is a sacred action that only spouses may share, and it represents the unique and privileged locus, by God’s design, in which human love is translated into new life. IVF violates this design by replacing that love-giving act with an act of production, whereby we manufacture our own children in Petri dishes and test tubes, as if they were products or objects to be manhandled at will. When we take this immoral step, others quickly follow, including the freezing or even the discarding of our own children, as if they were a form of medical waste. By making test tube babies, we first violate the sacred human act by which we hand on life. It is then but a short step to go further and violate the very life itself that we produce in the laboratory.
Is it not reasonable and right to insist, as the Church does, that new human life should be the fruit of married love, carried out through bodily self-giving between spouses, this act which allows each partner to enrich the other with the total gift of himself or herself? The marital act embodies spousal love directly, exclusively and authentically. Can we say the same for IVF, where the woman upsets her normal cycles and subjects herself to repetitive injections with powerful drugs to make her body produce unnaturally large numbers of eggs, not to mention what the man must do? Can we really say that IVF embodies spousal love in an authentic and exclusive way when a lab technician ends up being the causal agent of the pregnancy, instead of the spouses themselves through a sacred act proper to their married love? By any stretch, can we honestly believe that IVF is faithful to God's design for marriage?
Last week we spoke of pro-life. This week again we are speaking of pro-life. If we are pro-life we must protect not only life, but the way in which God intended life to come into being. If we do not, well we have already seen first results of if we do not, at least 54 million babies killed. Worse is yet to come, if we don’t accept the truth. I tell you this difficult teaching of the Church because I love you and don’t want any of you to be hurt and IVF definitely hurts individuals and couples. I also challenge all of you to learn more about the Churches true teachings in regard to IVF as well as other tough issues. These are teachings we just can not live without.
As we continue to celebrate this year of Mercy as proclaimed by Pope Francis let us realize that mercy only makes sense if we realize our need for God’s Mercy. And We need God’s mercy for our failure to not only accept fully but to live fully the truth that comes from God…this failure is of course known as our sin. God forgives our sins, if we acknowledge them and confess them and make a firm purpose of amendment to sin no more and live our live according to the teachings of the Church.
God loves and wants only what is best for us, this is why He sent his only Son Jesus to give us the truth that sets us free, to give us the truth that gives us life. And has hard as it can sometimes be, let us embrace His truth, the teachings of His Church, humbly and with open minds and hearts. Let us pray for those who need reconciliation and healing in the delicate matters regarding the Church’s unchanging teachings, for Christ’s healing truth is the remedy for this, because Jesus Is Truth and an so His truth which comes to us through His One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, will never let us down.
NOTE: The material on IVF in this homily was taken from a priest who writes for the National Catholic Bioethics Center on Health Care and Life Sciences
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