Jerry Quinn - a Rich Man Poor in Spirit

”The rich young man’s face fell” (Mk. 10:22)

 Jerry Quinn - a Rich Man Poor in Spirit

October 14, 2012, 28^th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Wisdom 7:7-11        Hebrews 4:12-13     Mark 10:17-27

Alleluia, alleluia.

A reading from the holy Gospel according to mark  

Glory to you, Lord.

The rich young man’s face fell

As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus answered him, "Why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother." He replied and said to him, "Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth." Jesus looked at the young man and feeling genuine love for him said, "There’s one more thing you must do. Go, sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor and you will have treasures in heaven. Then come back and follow me."

At these words the rich young man’s face fell, and he went away with a heavy heart; for he had many possessions. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God!" His words shocked the disciples, but Jesus insisted, “My children, how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." That shocked them even more, and they asked," Then who can possibly be saved?” Jesus looked straight at them and answered, "Without God it is utterly impossible. But with God everything is possible."

The Gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
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Introduction

A camel or a rope?

In Greek (the origninal language of the New Testament) the word for camel is kamelos, and the word for rope is kamilos.  Originally the biblical text had kamilos (rope) and read, “It is easier for a rope to pass through the eye of a needle….” In the course of time, however, transcribers of the bible mistakenly wrote kamelos (camel) instead of kamilos. That's how we got a 'camel' instead of a 'rope' passing through the eye of a needle. At the end of the day, it really doesn't make much difference; the bottom line is the same.  “It is easier for a camel (or a rope) to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." 
 

“The young man’s face fell.”

When a rich young man asks Jesus what he must do to gain eternal life, Jesus tells him he must keep the commandments. When the man replies that he has kept them all from his youth, Jesus tells him there’s one thing left for him to do: he must go, sell all his possessions, give the money to the poor, and then come back and follow Him. Scripture says, “The young man’s face fell and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.” (Mk 10:22)

 A friend writes,

The young man’s face fell because he understood the cost of discipleship. He understood the cost of following Jesus: now he has to get rid of all his possessions. So what do you expect the rich young man to do? Jump up and down for joy?  P.S. I’m still getting rid of all my possessions, and I still have to go back and follow Him.

 

Wonderful possessions

It’s obviously unrealistic to think we can get along without any possessions, especially in our society. Furthermore, very few of us are ready to give up our wonderful possessions which are the fruits of human technology and of our own personal labor. They make our lives human, enriched and pleasant. My Toyota Rav enables me to go shopping for daily bread, visit friends and find a change of scenery when I need one. My Samsung TV provides me with a welcome escape from the real world by cozily watching the Green Bay Packers playing on a snowy winter afternoon. My Samsung TV also keeps me in touch with the real world of terrorism, of the school and theatre massacres, and of the raucous politicking preceding presidential Election Day, November 6, 2012. And then there is my Gateway Computer which enables me to travel on an incredible super-information highway running right through my study. They’re all wonderful possessions, and I’m not ready to sell them and give the money to the poor.

Farming out the call

Jesus tells the rich young man to go, sell all his possessions, give the money to the poor and then come back and follow Him. (Mk. 10:21) On another occasion Jesus tells a crowd, “Whoever does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.” (Lk. 14: 33) Some dismiss as unrealistic Jesus’ sweeping call to renounce one’s possessions and follow Him.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran minister executed by Hitler on 9 April 1945. In his book The Cost of Discipleship he wrote that the Roman Church didn’t dismiss outright Jesus’ sweeping call to renounce one’s possessions. Instead, it was clever enough to `farm out’ the call to a group of specialists in the Roman Church, namely its monks and nuns. Their task was to obey Jesus’ sweeping call to discipleship, and to do it in the name of all the other faithful. But that, Bonhoeffer maintained, created a double standard in the Roman Church: a maximum standard of Christian perfection for the few who are really earnest about following Jesus, and a minimum standard for the rest of the faithful. Bonhoeffer rejected that; he wrote that “God showed Luther through the Scriptures that the following of Jesus is not a call to a chosen few; it's a divine command to all Christians without distinction.”

Making some sense of the call

We can dismiss Jesus’ call to renounce all our possessions as not really serious and practicable. Or if we are `too pious’ to dismiss it outright, we can at least farm out the call to monks and nuns. In either case `our faces don’t fall’ and we simply get on with our possession-ridden and driven lives. There is, however, a third alternative: we can choose to take seriously Jesus’ call to renounce our possessions, and then try to make some sense of it. That requires a little disquisition on `possessions.’

Ideological possessions

The materialist mindset in us sees possessions only as things in our hands. But there are possessions which are not things in our hands, but which, indeed, need to be renounced. There are ideological possessions which are not in our hands but in our heads and hearts. The Nazi ideology which proclaimed that only the master race (the tall, blue eyed and blond) had a right to live was incredibly lethal; it ignited the ovens of the Holocaust and turned six million innocent human beings into a burnt offering.  Yes, indeed, some of our worst possessions are not in our hands but in our heads and hearts. Of them especially Jesus says, “Unless you renounce your possessions you cannot be my disciple.”

 Like the Nazi of yesterday the extreme Islamists of today also have an ideological possession in their hearts and heads which proclaims that the Islamic way and civilization is the only way. That ideology also proved to be very incredibly lethal. It brought down the Twin Towers and three thousand innocent human beings in Lower Manhattan. It sets two civilizations--Christian West and Islam—on a collision course of confrontation. In a lecture entitled, The Cross and the Crescent, George Carey (former Archbishop of Canterbury) characterized that confrontation as “the most dangerous, most important and potentially cataclysmic issue of our day.” Yes, indeed, some of our worst possessions are not in our hands but in our heads and hearts. Of them especially Jesus says, “Unless you renounce your possessions you cannot be my disciple.”

 Theological possessions

The Church has a whole list of theological possessions concerning issues like human sexuality, artificial birth control, homosexuality, divorce, celibacy, ordination of women, open communion, etc. A whole list of prophets has risen in the Church challenging those possessions and inviting the Church to a free and open discussion about them. Among those prophets are men like Archbishop Hunthausen of Seattle, Bishop Untener of Saginaw (1937- 2004), Bishop Gumbleton of Detroit, and Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini of Milan who died on August 31- 2012. All of them were prophets challenging some of the Church’s theological possessions. To the Church also Jesus says, “You cannot be my disciple unless you renounce your possessions.”

Emotional possessions

It’s not enough to point fingers at Nazis, Islamists and narrow-minded church people who have prized possessions which they should give up but don’t want to. We must eventually point to ourselves who have emotional possessions which we should give up, but which we strangely prize and don’t want to give up. You can ask almost anything of us human beings, but don’t ask us to give up our anger which has us talking angrily to ourselves through months and even years of our lives. Or don’t ask us to give up our self-pity which has us constantly licking our wounds so that they never heal. Or don’t ask us to give up our guilt which preoccupies us so much that we can’t get on with our lives. Or don’t ask us to give up our sorrow which mires us down in unavailing tears. Anger, self-pity, guilt, sorrow, etc. in some strange sense are possessions, and they call for renunciation.

A long list of possessions

A woman who came one day to a Sunday Mass I was celebrating obviously got what she was not looking for. In a letter sent with great dispatch on Monday morning she complained:

The faithful have a right to have Mass celebrated in obedience to liturgical rules and regulations. Among many things, I noticed that you did not give the prescribed absolution at the penitential rite. You did not recite the Gloria prescribed for Sunday Mass and you did not read the gospel in its entirety [It was a very hot summer Sunday]. In the reading of the Sunday scriptures, you took it upon yourself not to use the masculine pronouns of the approved texts, but instead you chose to use gender-neutral words. You didn’t take Communion before the people but after the faithful had communicated. Etc.”

What a long list of possessions weighs her down! After contending with that frame of mind through many years, I’ve acquired a very personal and powerful persuasion that our worst possessions are not in our hands but in our heads and hearts. And such possessions demand Christian renunciation far more urgently than does my Toyota Rav or my Samsung TV or my Gateway Computer or any other material possession of mine. The thought that I can keep them, use them and enjoy them lifts my human spirit. But the thought that I have to give up some of the possessions that are in my head and heart `makes my face fall.’ 

A rich man poor in spirit

We must be careful, however, to not overly `spiritualize’ Christian renunciation. At the end of the day, Christian renunciation must be materialized. It must be given flesh and blood. That’s what Jerry Quinn did. He gave Christian renunciation flesh and blood. Quinn was a fairly well-off man who owned a bar and restaurant in Boston. In the morning newspaper one day he read about the plight of Franklin Piedra, an Ecuadorian, 33 years old, suffering from chronic kidney failure. His mother wanted to give him one of her kidneys. The transplant would cost at least 100,000 dollars, and he had no private health insurance. The Ecuadorian Consulate suggested that he go home and die.

 Quinn, however, had a better idea. “I’m not a very wealthy guy,” he said. “I’m comfortably well off, but I got this thing in my life—you can use only one car, you can use only one kitchen, you can use only one bathroom, you can only eat so much. That’s my theory of life. So what more do I need?” Quinn was saving his money for a down-payment on a two-bedroom apartment in a suburban part of Boston with a river view and all. But another thought kept popping up, and it wouldn’t go away.  He called the reporter at the New York Post who wrote the story. He told her that he wanted to help Ecuadorian gentleman in need of the costly surgery. She asked, “How much do you want to donate—a hundred bucks? A thousand bucks?” He replied, “I’d like to do the whole thing! The whole $100,000!” After a successful operation Piedra and Quinn met. Quinn said, “He hugged me and kissed me and told me I was an angel. As I thanked him I could feel the shivers going up and down my back.” Quinn was a rich man poor in spirit, and the Kingdom of God is his.

Conclusion

A rich man who entered the Kingdom of God

The article doesn’t say much about Quinn himself. Who knows, he might be a devout Catholic, as many Irishmen are. He might be even a `roaming’ Catholic, as many Catholics are these days. He might even be some kind of a `rounder.’  We don’t know. But, at the end of the day, we know for sure Quinn was a true disciple, for he sold his possessions and gave the money ($100,000) to a poor man. It’s difficult for a rope (or a camel) to pass through the eye of a needle. It’s even more difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. But it’s not impossible, as Jerry Quinn so powerfully proved.

 

 

The Spirit is a Groovin' for a Vatican III

The Spirit is a Groovin’ for a Vatican III

October 9, 2011, 28^th Sunday in Ordinary Time 
   Isaiah 25:6-8   Philippians 4:12-14   Mathew 22:1-10  

First reading: a banquet for all the nations

Here on Mount Zion the Lord Almighty will prepare a banquet for all the nations of the world—a banquet of the richest food and the finest wine. Here He will suddenly remove the cloud of sorrow that has been hanging over all the nations. The sovereign Lord will destroy death forever! He will wipe away the tears from everyone’s eyes and take away the disgrace his people have suffered throughout the world. The Lord Himself has spoken.

The Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

Alleluia, alleluia.

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew

Glory to you, Lord.

A wedding banquet for a son

Jesus again used parables when speaking to the people. The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He dispatched his servants to summon the invited guests to the feast, but they did not want to come. Then he sent other servants to tell the invited guests, “Behold, I have prepared my banquet, my calves and fattened cattle are killed, and everything is ready. So come to the banquet.”  Some ignored the invitation and went away, one to his farm, another to his business. The rest laid hold of the servants, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged and sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his servants,”The feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy to come. Go out, therefore, into the streets and invite to the banquet whomever you find.” The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike, and the wedding banquet was filled with people.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Introduction

The year is rolling on

The last leaves of brown are tumbling down. There’s crispness in the air. The football season has finally arrived to distract us from the sad state of the economy, and to make life worthwhile living again. The stores are already bedecked with the Halloween motif. Even the Christmas season is already popping up on store-shelves. The new year of 2011 has indeed grown old.

The Banquet-theme

The banquet-theme abounds in Sacred Scripture which was written by and for hungry people. When Jesus notices how guests were looking for the best places at a wedding banquet, He tells a parable about the advantage of purposely looking for the lowest place at table, “For whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” (Lk 14:7-11) Jesus tells another parable about a loving father who holds a banquet for a prodigal son returning home after a wild fling in a foreign land. (Lk 15: 11-32) When the wine runs out at a wedding banquet in Cana of Galilee, Jesus works a miracle to change tasteless water into the nectar of human celebration. (Jn 2:1-12) The wedding-banquet-theme is painted on the very last pages of the New Testament: an angel says to John, “Write this: Happy are those who have been invited to the wedding banquet of the Lamb.” (Rev. 19: 9)

The invitees’ fault

For Catholics Sunday Mass is the weekly invitation to the wedding banquet of the Lamb. Though all are invited to come weekly, some do not come. Like the invitees in today’s gospel, they’re too busy to come: one has to look over a field he’s just bought, another has to try out five pairs of newly purchased oxen, and a third has just gotten married and can’t come. (Lk 14:15-24) Some of the busyness of life is indeed inevitable. Some of it, however, is of our own choosing.
 
Some don’t come to the Sunday banquet because they’re too stuffed to come. Gorging themselves at the cultural trough, they simply have no yen for Isaiah’s “banquet of the richest food and the finest wine.” The Sunday banquet has to compete with the cultural trough, and that’s a very big job. Either too busy to come or too stuffed to come - in both cases it’s the invitee’s fault, if the banquet fails.

The banquet’s fault

Sometimes, however, it’s the fault of the banquet itself. That's the case when the menu offered is a platter full of out-of-touch reality, pious platitudes, or just pure boredom. Karl Jung, the father of modern psychology, powerfully describes how the day of his very first Holy Communion (which was supposed to be the Banquet of Banquets) had miserably failed him. That day, which he waited for with great expectation, was utterly boring and disappointing.

I waited for the day with eager anticipation, and it finally dawned. There behind the altar stood my father in his familiar robes. He read prayers from the liturgy. On the white cloth covering the altar lay large trays filled with small pieces of bread which came from the local baker whose goods were nothing to brag about. I watched my father eat a piece of the bread and then sip the wine which came from the local tavern. Then he passed the cup to one of the old men.  All were stiff, solemn, and it seemed to me, uninterested. I looked on in suspense, but could not see nor guess whether anything unusual was going on inside the old men. I saw no sadness and no joy. Then came my turn to eat the bread which tasted flat and to sip the wine which tasted sour. After the final prayer the people went out, neither depressed nor illumined with joy, but with faces that said, "Well,  that's that." (Memories, Dreams, Reflections)

Gradually it dawned on Jung that nothing had happened on that very long-anticipated day. It had, in fact, utterly bored him: “Well, that’s that.” When the service was over, he with the majority of the congregation peeled out of the church, happy to get back into the real world. The banquet of his very first Holy Communion had failed him so miserably that it turned out to be the day of his very last Communion; Jung never took Communion again!

Vatican II -- 49 years ago this coming Tuesday

Pope John XXIII was elected in November of 1958, and in January of 1959 he announced his decision to summon the Church to an Ecumenical Council. It took three years to prepare for it. Then on October 11^th 1962 (49 years ago this coming Tuesday) Vatican II opened. Pope John, like the king in the parable, said to the Church, “Behold, I have prepared my banquet, my calves and fattened cattle are killed, and everything is ready. So come to the banquet.” (Mt. 22:4) 2860 bishops came flocking into Rome and Vatican City from the four corners of the earth to celebrate the bittersweet banquet of Vatican II.

 On the evening of the Council’s opening day, October 11, good Pope John appeared at the window of the papal apartment, in response to the chanting and singing coming from a sea of a half million people assembled in St. Peter’s Square below. The Pope addressed the sea of humanity, saying, “Dear children, I hear your voices.” After expressing in the simplest language his hopes for the Council, he pointed upward towards the moon which was glowing brightly in that late summer night. The moon, he said, was looking down on them, and was watching that great spectacle taking place. Then John added, “Though my voice is a solitary one, it echoes the voice of the whole world, for here the whole world tonight is gathered and represented.” Then he told the throng in the square below, “Now go back home and give your children a kiss, and tell them it’s from Pope John.”

Ecclesia semper reformanda

When the Church was in dire need of reform in the 16th century, it summoned the Council of Trent which lasted for 18 years (1545-1563).


When the Church was again in need of reform in the 20th centuries, Pope John XXIII summoned the Second Vatican Council which lasted for 3 years (1962-1965). Now less than a half-a-century (49 years) after Vatican II, the Church is again in need of reform. That shouldn’t surprise us. The battle cry of the Reformation was “Ecclesia semper reformanda” -- “The Church is always in need of reform.”

In a long letter to Pope Benedict Jesuit Fr. Henri Boulad[1] makes the point that the Church, reformed a little less than a half-a-century ago by Vatican II, is again in need of reform. Boulad writes:

"Religious practice is in constant decline. The churches of Europe and Canada[2] are frequented only by an increasing number of aging people who will soon be gone. Soon there will be nothing left to do but close those churches or transform them into museums, mosques, club houses or municipal libraries - something that’s already under way."

Boulad blames the empty churches partly on the menu offered; it’s simply old hat and very tasteless. He tells Benedict:

"In the matter of morality and ethics, the injunctions of the Magisterium, repeated ad nauseam on marriage, contraception, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, clerical celibacy, divorce and remarriage, etc. touch nobody and only engender weariness and indifference. All these moral and pastoral problems deserve more than preemptory declarations. They deserve an approach that is pastoral, sociological, psychological and humane."

Conclusion

“Dear children, I hear your voices.”

Towards the end of his long letter to Benedict, Boulad suggests the convocation of a general `synod.’ (He doesn’t like the word `council.’) The synod would, in fact, be a `Vatican III.’ It would last for three years, and would courageously listen to the voices of God’s People expressing their needs and hopes for the 21^st century. The synod would then culminate in a  general assembly. Fifty years after Vatican II, Fr. Boulad believes that the semper reformanda Church is again in need of being reformed. For him the Spirit in God’s People is “a groovin’ for a Vatican III.” And Boulad hopes and prays for the day when the Benedict will come to the window of the papal apartment and say to God’s People, ”Dear children, I have heard your voices. Come to the banquet of Vatican III.”

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[1] Fr. Henri Boulad, an Egyptian Jesuit, is superior of the Jesuits in Alexandria, regional superior of all the Jesuits in Egypt, professor of theology in Cairo, director of Caritas-Egypt, and vice-president of Caritas Internationalis for the Middle East and North Africa.

[2] Boulad rightfully does not say that US churches are empty. They aren’t empty!