In this era of heightened partisanship, the homilist at the Sunday Eucharist is more easily vulnerable to accusations of taking sides, even if preaching basic Christian values. This is inevitable at any time, because the Gospel stands over against at least some aspects of any political program. But the Eucharist is a sacrament of unity and the assembly should disperse at the end of Mass with some sense of a common ground on which they can judge events. Are there fundamental principles that can be emphasized in preaching, provoke conscientious reflection and minimize the possibility of division?
For me, there are three themes that I draw out of our tradition and that I emphasize in my preaching: solidarity, empathy and gratuitousness.
Jesus’ solidarity with all humankind and his empathy for the most helpless is quite evident in the Gospels. What perhaps is not always attended to and is especially needed today is the gratuitousness of his saving action. Gratuitousness emphasizes the free and superabundant nature of God’s initiative for our salvation from the time of Abel to Jesus himself. It adds to the word “grace,” which we ordinarily use for God’s action in history and in ourselves, the qualities of the freedom and superabundance of God’s initiative.
The word “gratuitousness” is not one of common parlance. I introduce it by speaking of the gratuities—tips—that we give to those who have served us in some way—servers in restaurants, for instance, or attendants in parking garages. We generally give them more than what is required.
Divine gratuitousness is revealed most powerfully in Jesus Christ. One expression of this is what St. Paul declares in the Letter to the Galatians: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ.” (6:2) It is the law of gratuitousness, the law of Christians taking up one another’s burdens with a self-sacrificing love like that of Jesus.
Jesus taught this gratuitousness. We read this year in the Gospel for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic…lend expecting nothing back.” (Lk 6: 27-38)
On his first visit to the United States in 1979, Pope St. John Paul II said in his homily at Yankee Stadium, referring to the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, “America, Lazarus stands at your door.” He then challenged Americans to be generous not just from the surplus of what they have but from their substance. This is gratuitousness.
In his encyclical “Caritas in Veritate,” Pope Benedict XVI wrote extensively of gratuitousness as a necessary element in economic structures and government policies: “Economic, social and political development, if it is to be authentically human, needs to make room for the principle of gratuitousness as an expression of fraternity” (No. 34; italics in the original). He writes further: “…the logic of gift as an expression of fraternity can and must find [its] place within normal economic activity” (No. 36). He notes that since the papacy of Leo XIII, the church has taught that “the civil order, for its self-regulation, also needed intervention from the state for purposes of redistribution” (No. 39).
Gratuitousness, then, together with solidarity and empathy, are the themes that I try to draw out of the readings, the prayers, the liturgical season, the feasts, the saints. Sometimes current events or daily experiences provide concrete introductions to presenting a theme and then filling it out with the readings. The more concrete the better. As Cardinal Newman wrote in Grammar of Assent, “The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us.” I like to say that the person who dies with the most images—not toys—is the one who wins.
I propose that a particularly relevant image for our time is the helplessness of Jesus on the cross.
The cross was not simply torture, humiliation and shame; it was also total and abject helplessness. Jesus on the cross was the poorest man in the world. Helplessness is of course difficult to depict in art, where the face of Jesus crucified is either shown in great agony—perhaps too realistically at times—or with great serenity, itself also probably not very realistic. While drawing helplessness is difficult, in real life all of us have probably witnessed such helplessness on the faces of others. Perhaps it is only in music, such as Haydn’s “Seven Last Words of Christ,” or the words themselves—such as “I thirst” and “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me”—that best convey Jesus’ helplessness.
Jesus has become a companion to all the helpless men, women and children of all generations past, present and future. The one who has been called the most beautiful of the children of humankind is also the most helpless child of humankind on the cross. By that helplessness, Jesus enters into intimate solidarity with all those who are helpless through an absolute empathy. He immerses himself in their helplessness because of a love, a gratuitous love, that exceeds the capacities of the human heart.
The gratuitousness of that love has been celebrated in myriads of ways. As St. Anselm writes in Cur Deus Homo?, “For God did not compel Jesus to die, or allow him to be slain, against his will; rather, Jesus himself, by his own free choice, underwent death, to save men.”
As a preacher, I am confronted by the immense mysterium iniquitatis that stretches back to the first sin of human beings. I feel helpless at times in the face of that mystery, but that helplessness is paltry in comparison to the helplessness of myriads of human beings in the past and in the present. All I can do is hope that by my preaching I give them a voice and make present to them their companion in helplessness for the consolation that comes from his solidarity with them, out of his empathetic immersion in their helplessness, because of a gratuitous love, unexpected and superabundant.
Jesus’ will for every human being is fullness of life. Traditionally, we speak of our sins as crucifying Jesus today. Perhaps we can say that our sins today continue to render Jesus helpless in bringing fullness of life to others—especially those who are most helpless. We are all complicit in some way of frustrating the divine plan for each human being. Can I dare to hope that my Sunday homily will move one conscience toward awareness of a solidarity, empathy and gratuitousness that directs judgment and action beyond partisanship? Or at least my own?
