Homily June 25, 2017: 3rd Sunday of Pentecost

As Preached by Sister Rebecca

June 25, 2017

Holy Wisdom Church

     Today’s Gospel is part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus begins his teaching with the beatitudes.  The following two chapters throw light on the path leading to the realization of the beatitudes in our lives.

Jesus’ teaching begins with: “The lamp of the body is the eye.  If your eye is single (or clear) then your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is evil then your whole body will be full of darkness.”  Mt6: 22-23.

Here, as in other sayings, Jesus is using Hebrew figures of speech, idioms, well-known to the Jewish people in Jesus time. 

We have our own idioms, too: “she just hit the ceiling” or “it is raining cats and dogs”, all which, literally, do not make sense. Likewise, a number of Jesus’ sayings contain cultural idioms that we simply do not understand but make perfect sense in Hebrew.   By understanding the Hebrew idioms in today’s Gospel we can get a much clearer understanding of Jesus’ teaching.

1.      The first idiom:  The lamp of the body is the eye:  The Biblical communities of old understood that the eye was an organ that actually projects light or particles of energy from within a person, similar to the light of a lamp.  The metaphor “lamp” is a person’s heart; the eye is the lamp’s light, meaning inner vision, attitudes, dispositions, and intentions of the heart. If your eye is said to be single:   the word, ‘single’, describes the person as one of integrity, wholehearted devotion to God, who does not have a secret agenda of self-advancement and self-aggrandizement, and one who trusts in God.

2.       “If your eye is evil”: The word evil is a hard one: as it has overtones of superstition, or something demonic.   We may dismiss this word because it scares us to think we could have evil within us. But in this context, the evil eye is simply a heart that conveys ill will, meanness, miserliness, stinginess, and discord within oneself. Perhaps in the light of today’s understanding of our inner world, it would be better to speak of our inner blind spots, places in us hidden more or less from our consciousness.  These words of Jesus challenges us to face the dark side of our personality and the emotional investment we have made in false programs for happiness and in our particular conditioning.  We are hard-wired to God but when we lose focus our inner ‘single eye’ we tend to react in ways that are negative, and dark for ourselves, and others, not to mention the ripple effect it has on God’s creation.   

3.          

 Today’s gospel invites us to be open to the gift of truly seeing. The enlightened person seeks no personal gain like Jesus who emptied himself and had nothing to gain for himself by coming into this world.  It urges us to become like Jesus who summons us to trust God with a whole and undivided heart and serve as he did.  Jesus expressly calls his followers to live in the present moment away from anxious worrying about life’s challenges.

By taking time each day for a period of prayer, a place of rest where our faculties are relatively calm and quiet, we learn to see our thoughts, our worries, our agitations fading away in the light of God’s presence and so we gradually let go of them and turn our lives in trust to God. 

 The poet Mary Oliver, a writer with a deep, natural mysticism, writes of a life free of egoistic constraints in these lines, "The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees - to learn something by being nothing." In other words, it is her prayer that we shift our attention to the soft gurgling sounds of a moving stream, to open our eyes to the light in the trees, the sun through the branches and therefore to God who shines in them and through them to be clear-sighted, consciousness, awake and aware, unencumbered and free. And if we look deeply enough with mindful, unobscured vision, what we shall see is God peeking through all things. The eye that is single sees the truth “That the cosmos is one vast burning bush, permeated with the fire of the Divine”. 

Homily June 11, 2017

As preached by Brother Marc
Holy Wisdom Church



In the gospels, the Lord urges us to trust in him and trust in God. He says, “Not a sparrow falls to the ground without God knowing. Are you not worth more than many sparrows?”

Theologians try to analyze the nature of God and prove God exists, and philosophers argue whether God is alive and relevant. We know these agendas are poor substitutes for seeking the presence of God.

So who is God? The anaphora of the liturgy says God is indescribable. Those who say they experience a certain closeness to God find they are unable to understand or define God. They can only “be there” in mute wonderment. It is too much to take in. It may shake the foundation of their beliefs.

We need the a mysterious hidden wisdom to make sense of Jesus' teaching on God’s love, on loving our enemies. We need deeper insight on the Beatitudes: “Blest are you when they insult you on my account."

One day Mother Teresa went to a bakery to ask for some bread to give to orphan children. The baker was outraged at people begging bread from him and spat in her face. Mother Teresa calmly took out her handkerchief, wiped the spit from her face and said to the baker, "Okay, that was for me. Now what about the bread for the orphans?" A dead silence followed and the baker filled her a basket of bread.

This moment was a flash of light and a dash of salt for the orphans, for the baker and for humanity as well. It did not spring from a feel-good mentality. It was the carrying of her cross and the following of Christ.

The German theologian Karl Rahner wrote: "Have we ever done something without expecting a bit of gratitude or appreciation in return? Have we ever acted unaware how decent and unselfish we were at that moment? …If we did, we can be sure the spirit was inspiring us. We encountered Eternity. We found out the spirit is more than simply one ingredient in a passing world.

Rahner wrote, “This explains the remarkable lives of the saints… They know there is a grace that can brighten the dull cycle of daily tasks well done. It can bring us a step nearer to God, and we may scarcely notice. We really do touch the realm of divinity." (Karl Rahner SJ 1904-1984 in Belief Today, 40-41).

“Blest are the gentle, the earth will be theirs...Blest the peacemakers, they will be called the children of God." When our burdens are weighing us down and like the saints we do something loving and unselfish, there is a strength in us that is more than ourselves...

The beatitudes are not another set of commandments and obligations. They do not make us saints, but they can point out the path of holiness and happiness. The saints and the beatitudes are signs of God's presence and incarnate love. The beatitudes help us recognize Jesus’ spirit here and now, in our weakness and vulnerability. “Blest are you who mourn...Blest are you when they insult you on my account…"

At times we might feel untouched by love or beauty, and separated both from the natural world and our intuition. Something blocks us from being the persons we are meant to be, except for moments we can probably count on the fingers of one hand.

Suddenly the curtains of inner noise, distraction, skepticism, and fog open up. We are caught up by someone else’s great energy, good mind or perfect beauty. A song, an ancient chant, or a poem, painting, icon, or yes even an indescribable sunset might stagger us with its intensity. Or we may be whelping a litter of puppies, witnessing the miracle of birth. For a brief moment, we perceive what is perfectly real, good and bad alike, in full color and stereo. We might feel the touch of happiness. The experience is a flash of light and a dash of salt for us. It's more than a feel-good mentality. We are sure God's indescribable Spirit is present. We know we are not alone in a passing world: we have encountered Eternity.