Preachers face a delicate balancing act: while crafting homilies to draw young people to the pews, they must also engage the elders, who make up the majority of the congregation. The also deserve homilies that resonate with the particular joys and challenges of their lives. “I try to read the scriptures through their eyes,” says Jack Rathschmidt, an 80-year-old Capuchin friar. “Older people have this wisdom and these gifts, and so I just try to honor them.”
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Jack has been a friar for 62 years and a priest for 54 years. He has preached in more than 60 dioceses and led over 100 retreats across the U.S. and the world. Despite holding four master’s degrees and a doctorate in theology, he hopes that his legacy extends beyond his academic achievements. “I come from a very lower middle class background; my father never made $100 a week until 1968,” he says. “I hope people catch from me, the essence of St. Francis; I am an everyday person who has been called to a particular vocation and role. I tried to live simply, I tried to identify, especially with the poor.”
Listen to Jack’s homily for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, on this week’s episode of “Preach.” After the homily, Jack shares with host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., how he keeps the fire for preaching alive.
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Older people have this wisdom and these gifts, and so I just try to honor them.
Scripture Readings for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
First Reading: Mal 1:14b-2:2b, 8-10
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 131:1, 2, 3
Second Reading: 1 Thes 2:7b-9, 13
Gospel: Mt 23:1-12
You can find the full text of the readings here.
Homily for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, by Jack Rathschmidt, O.F.M. Cap.
The composer Gustav Mahler once wrote, “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of the fire.” I know a little bit about Mahler, maybe you do too. He was on the cusp of a new kind of music. And he was afraid that other composers were clinging to old forms that were strangling people.
When I thought about what he said, and how we lived, I started to think about the Prophet Malachi, who we listen to today, and Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew in the 23rd chapter. So, listen to Malachi just for a moment.
“Now he says, ‘Oh, priests, this commandment is for you. You have turned aside from the way and have caused many to falter by your instruction.’” I’m glad I wasn’t around during Malachi’s time, especially since I’m a priest, maybe not the same kind of priest in the old law but a priest and say, “O.K., guilty.” But let’s go on because Jesus says, “You know, you lay heavy burdens on people’s shoulders and don’t do a thing to help or lift them up. You gotta stop this.”
“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of the fire.”
So when I think about these texts, I keep saying to myself, “How can we preserve the fire?” And I immediately went to: “Do we do enough with the Hebrew Scriptures and with the language of the covenant.”
Some of you will remember that after God promised to make a covenant with Abraham, he fell asleep and had a terrible dream. In the dream, he saw a covenant being made with animals split in half. And he imagined God walking through the split animals, and then he was invited to walk through them as well. This was the way in the ancient world that people made a covenant and promised not to break the law. This gesture said to everyone listening, “If I don’t keep this covenant, you can do to me what we did to the animals; you can kill me. And Abraham has this terrible dream saying, “I know God’s gonna keep the covenant. I’ve never kept all of the covenants; I’m in big trouble.” Then he sees in a vision, a flaming torch go through those split animals. The notion of covenant was changed forever.
Up to that point, covenants were bilateral; two chieftains would say, “This is what I’ll do not to offend your tribe, and this is what you will do not to offend mine.” But God said, in a theophany or an epiphany, “This is a unilateral covenant.”
The Hebrew word hesed has changed my life; maybe it’ll change yours. It means “I love you totally, unconditionally, and gratuitously.
The Hebrew word hesed has changed my life; maybe it’ll change yours. It means “I love you totally, unconditionally, and gratuitously. Just accept My Love, proclaim it, and live it. And make sure you offer it to others, that I will never stop loving you, it’ll be total, and you can’t earn it. My love for you is like a mother of a newborn baby; her baby doesn’t earn her love but she’s weeping in gratitude.” I want to invite you to think of God weeping in gratitude for us; So that we won’t allow the tradition which sometimes strangles us, and Jesus suggests that’s what the leaders of the Jewish community were doing to their own people; they were strangling them.
There are some scholars who talk about that with 2000 ways to break the Sabbath in the time of Jesus. Who can do that? Who can keep it? And Jesus is very clear. People weren’t made for the Sabbath, the Sabbath is made for people; it’s a time to rest. It’s a time to recover; it’s a time to remember how much I love you, and how you need to express this love in your own family, your own community and your own local church.
So, in family systems therapy, and leadership training, I’ve learned a distinction that I think is very helpful here in helping us enter into this text. They talk about transactional leadership and transformational leadership.
Transactional leadership is necessary; the best example I ever heard was a friend of mine who was married and he said, you know, in my marriage, sometimes it becomes totally transactional. My wife says, “Pick up some milk” or “pick up Billy on the way home; you know, he’s playing soccer.” And I do all of those things that I’m happy to do. But if our marriage is reduced just to transactional things and doesn’t lead us into the sacrament in which we celebrate God’s love for us with each other, and try in our love for each other to proclaim good news to the world, then why get married? And unfortunately, it seems that the Jewish leaders, in order to protect their own power, were doing that at the time of Jesus; they had all kinds of prescriptions, prescriptions that bound people and strangled them, but very little transformed them and reminded them of God’s unconditional love.
So, practically speaking, how do we keep the fire alive? How do we preserve the fire and not get trapped in worshiping ashes? How do we do that? In our tradition, I think there are simple ways but powerful ones.
How do we preserve the fire? In our tradition, I think there are simple ways but powerful ones.
Gather faithfully with other believers and take a look, these days, and whether everybody thinks like you or everybody looks like you. I’ve had this great privilege to worship with communities all over the world and it changes me because they interpret God’s Word in such distinctly different and wonderful ways, and I grow from it. So don’t let yourself get trapped in a particular way of worshiping or exclusively with one community. That’s first.
The second thing is to study God’s Word together. And especially with people who differ from you. Timothy Radcliffe, in opening the synod, was very clear to people: We need to learn how to walk as friends across our differences in order to proclaim the joy and happiness of the Gospel. That’s the challenge because, he said, “Everybody here is different. And a lot of you are coming here to protect your old way of life. Pray for the strength and the grace not to do that.” And I say the same thing. So listen to people from your heart, and especially how they interpret the Gospel.
Then break bread with people regularly, especially in diverse communities. Pope Francis, I love this man because he says, “You want to be converted; you want to be re-evangelized, go to the periphery of a community and make friends with poor people, a poor person.” I’ve had that opportunity; it’s transforming, it’s wonderful, and I continue to be grateful for it.
And lastly, if you want to keep the fire alive, serve, and generously, especially those people living on the edge of every society whose voice is almost never heard, and whose heart is breaking. Tradition isn’t the worship of ashes; it’s the preservation of the fire. Let’s see if we can do it together.
