"Whew!"
Homily of February 11, 2001
by Father Michael Dibble
You know that sound, "Whew!" I've told you that my father was a
cartoonist, and I grew up seeing cartoon figures with balloons over
their heads, and many times, the balloon would be "W-H-E-W-!" "Whew!"
meaning that's big or that's heavy, or Wow!...or "Can you imagine!?"
Listening to today's gospel... (And I sit over there and I watch you,
and you do. You do listen.) It's kind of a "Whew!" gospel. Those are
blessings? Poor, and hungry, and people don't like you... In 1951, I was
a high school kid, studying to be a priest, and, in those days, you
work in the rectory at night. I was locking up at ten o'clock. And the
priest who was in the rectory came in. H e was working with a Jewish
gentleman who was becoming a Catholic. And the priest was laughing. As I
was going home he was coming into the rectory, and he said, "Oh! I was
just going over the Beatitudes...." (That's what we heard, the
Blessings.) "with this Jewish convert-to-be, and the Jewish
convert-to-be said to me, 'Oy! If those are the blessings, what are the
coises like?" And I'm imitating the priest imitating the guy.
I hasten to add that, since so many of you come to Mass every Sunday,
sometimes you're bound to say, "Hey! Wait a minute. I've heard that same
gospel, but in a different way." Oh, sure! You have. Today we heard
Luke. Now Matthew says that Our Lord said, "Blessed are the poor and the
hungry.." and all that ..."IN SPIRIT." Our Lord added the words,
"Blessed are the poor in spirit," and so forth. Well, according to the
Bible experts (not just Catholics, but the Protestants, people who have
studied their whole lives, studying the Bible, the original Greek and
the Latin and all...) they say that Matthew wrote his gospel first and
Luke wrote his later, and Matthew gives exactly the full thing our Lord
said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, the hungry in spirit..." and then
Luke gives you the gist. Luke wrote later on. He gives you the gist.
Have you ever gotten a message, to your annoyance, and you only got the
gist? Dumb example, but let's say Isadora, high school senior, is in
love with Igor, same high school. And Isadora is going to the movies,
one night, with her girlfriends, and she says to her kid brother,
"Listen. I think Igor may call. Make sure you get the message." And
little kid brother says, "OK. OK" And Igor does call while she's at the
movies. And he says, "Tell her I love her with all my heart." The kid
says, "Yeah. Yeah. OK." And then she comes home, and she says, "Did he
call?" And the little kid says, "Yeah. He said he says he loves ya."
And the next day she meets Igor at the lockers. She says, "Oh, I got
your message. You love me." And then Igor says, "You tell that little
weasel of a brother he didn't give you the whole message. I said 'I love
you with all my heart.'" She goes home and she bops the little kid on
the head. He says, "I gave you the GIST!" And that's what many of the
gospel writers do. They give you the gist, and others like Matthew give
you the whole thing. That's all right. Doesn't bother you, and it
shouldn't.
But Our Lord does add the words, not just hungry in the body. That's bad
but there can be a hunger up here. Our Lord gives us an attitude that's
not only physiological, but spiritual. And there can be a hunger here...
hunger of body, hunger of brain. Now, sometimes you'd get kids in class,
good kids. I was very lucky. These kids were great I taught. But,
sometimes you'd get a kid... (I'm thinking of one in particular.) In
English class, believe it or not, he was like this. (very attentive) I
mean he really loved stories and fiction and emotions and literature.
But, when it got to religion class, he was more like this. (sleeping
soundly) I exaggerate all the time, but you get the idea... He went to
Princeton. And he kind of said after graduation, before going to this
Ivy League, he said, "You know, I kind of think all that stuff is made
up. It's lovely, and Jesus was a nice story. But it's kind of all made
up..."
Over the thirty years I taught, I got many letters like this, later on.
This kid went to Princeton, and he was talking to the Chaplain. And he
wrote me a letter. It's long. I'll just give you a little bit. He said,
"Did you know, Father, Professor Bruce of Manchester University who is
THE New Testament scholar in England says, 'For the entire New Testament
there is more proof that it is valid, authentic history than for all the
other ancient writings put together. Why, do you know there are three
thousand Greek manuscripts alone of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?' (page
6) And Professor Albright, of Johns Hopkins University, the world's
foremost archeologist..." (He was, number 1 in the world.) "...has gone
through twenty years of going through evidence, and he says...." (the
guy from John Hopkins) "...'The New Testament proves to be, in fact,
what people have believed it to be, the authentic teachings of Jesus,
His words, His miracles, and His rising.'" It's as if this kid at
Princeton said, "Whew! You've fed my mind. It isn't just stuff that was
made up that I learned as a little Catholic kid. Now I'm too
sophisticated. Whew! Thank you, Lord, for feeding my mind. It was awful
hungry."
Then, Our Lord says today, "Blessed are you if people hate you!" Hate
you? Sometimes you can see real hate in some eyes. (I'm repeating again,
but I'll make it fast.) In the fifties, when you're studying to be a
priest, during the summer, when you went home to work and so forth, you
could get a job at night, not a paying job, but you'd volunteer to get
up and talk about the Catholic Church and Christ and "Is there a God?"
It was called "The Catholic Evidence Guild." And we'd have a soap box. I
mean literally, with a flag. And we'd dress up in our black suits, in
the middle of August, and a black tie and a white shirt, like a very
stylish undertaker, two of us, and we'd get up. We did this for four
summers, on street corners, and we just started talking about
Catholicism and Jesus, "Is there a God? Are miracles real?"
I remember one Irish cop came along one night. He said, "Get out of
here, you Commie!" I said, "I'm not a Commie. I'm a nice little
seminarian who prayed for an earthquake today that I wouldn't have to do
this." And you'd see people... My post was Columbia University Campus,
cause I lived there... And you'd really see intense dislike in some
faces. And most of the time (And I think a lot of you will understand
why...) most of the time, we'd get heckled or an occasional very graphic
gesture, was from people who used to be Catholics and were mad at the
Church. And they'd really heckle! And the people in my experience (four
summers) who came along and listened... (And they'd say to the hecklers,
"Leave him alone. Let the little guy talk.!") ...were Jewish people,
Jewish professors or students, in my experience, or athiests. And they
would come and they'd listen. And many times, you'd go off and have
coffee later. So that the people that hated us, disliked us so
intensely, provoked these other people, "Quiet. Leave him alone. Let him
talk."
And one of them, who also became a convert to the Church, also Jewish,
he said to me... (It was in Schraft's. He leaned over past the ice cream
and the coffee.) He said, "You know there are so many people on campus,
on the faculty, among the student body, I dislike so intensely and they
dislike Catholics intensely. So you must be doing something right. If
they loathe you, I think I want to learn more about you." And he did. In
two years, he became a Catholic. So people hate you? Whew! Sometimes
they can provoke people to be your allies.
And blessed are the poor. Poverty of body and poverty of outlook.
Poverty of example. We'll call this guy "Fred." And he came from a
little town, upstate New York, called "Fishkill." So, Fred of
Fishkill... There really is such a town. He went to Catholic school,
Catholic college. In his senior year in Catholic College, (Blessed are
the poor in Spirit.) he told his parents, very devout Catholics, "I want
to spend a year before Med School, I want to spend a year working with
some nuns and priests in Belize, among the poor. Just a year. And I
checked with Med School. They are going to give me a year off to do
this, before I start Med School."
His mother said that her heart sank. So did the father, heart sank,
putting everything on hold for a whole year, where you could get your
life, your practice started, career going.... and putting it on hold?
Anyhow, Mama was walking down the main street of Fishkill, and she met
another Catholic mother in the parish. And the other Catholic mother
said to her, "You poor thing. We've heard all about Fred, putting his
whole career and future medical practice on hold to go to someplace
called Belize. You poor thing." And the Mama suddenly found her lips
coming out with, " I guess Fred believed everything we taught him." And
she said to me, "I didn't feel poor anymore. I felt..." And he told me
(I still hear from Fred.) that was the richest year of his young life,
that year with the poor.... I know you know what he meant.
Could I take a quick parenthesis on this "Blessed are the poor?" There's
another kind of poverty which is bad, and sad. And that's a poverty of
courage, and a poverty of imagination, especially in ...(I love movies
and TV.)... but especially people who write movies and write TV. There's
a great poverty of imagination and guts among a lot of them.
Example: bad poverty. I recently saw a movie that's beautifully done,
called "Castaway." And it's a story of a man who is cast away, all alone
on an island for four years. It's beautifully photographed and acted.
And towards the end of the movie, he is (I won't ruin it for you.), but
he is separated from a kind of companion that he's found on the island.
He's separated. And, I was sitting there with my friend, a doctor, who
drove me to the movie, and I was weeping. I was crying. And, behind me,
a couple of people were laughing. So I got up and said, "You insensitive
jerks, how can you ......" and then I ran to the men's room.
But, on the way home, talking it over with my doctor friend, Tom Hanks,
who acts the part beautifully, but not once, according to the script,
not once does he refer to Our Lord or God. Not once does he make the
slightest effort to pray. And it's not just because I'm a priest that I
got that... You know, something's missing. It might occur to... Why? And
them I remembered, "Well, it's contemporary Hollywood script writers who
have a poverty of imagination and a poverty of guts, which is bad."
A few years earlier, there was another film. Now, "Castaway" is fiction.
It's made up. But, a few years ago, there was a film based on fact,
called "Titanic." And at the end of Titanic, people who had surrendered
their lives so that others could get off in the lifeboats, women and
children particularly, these other people, still on this boat that is
sinking, they join hands and they sing a prayer. Remember? "Nearer My
Godto Thee!" That really happened because the people drifting away in
the lifeboats heard them singing that hymn until the boat went down,
praying. That was fact. Am I glad the scriptwriters of Titanic didn't
decide to be sophisticated and "with it" and drop the fact that people
prayed in real life.
And finally, weeping.... Our Lord says if you are weeping now, you'll
laugh. And the Greek word of laugh is like "guffaw," a deep laugh, right
from your viscera, wonderful laugh. And, last example: In the 60's,
when we were young priests... young priest, 1960, you're kind of naive
and idealistic and bursting with zeal.... And at that time, lots of
things happened, including a cover article of Time Magazine, (I'll never
forget it!) "Is God dead?" Pages and pages of philosophy of God is dead.
No one really takes that seriously anymore. And I had religious
magazines up to here, all my life. I've read Catholic stuff. But Time
Magazine is really telling me the truth of how people feel. God is dead,
and the whole thing is just too quaint to be believed.
And that summer I had to take courses at NYU. And in the corridor of
NYU somebody had written in big letters, scrawled right on the wall,
"God is dead," signed Nietzsche. Nietzsche was a famous German
philosopher who propounded the thesis, "God is dead." And I kind of
walked down that corridor, inside weaping, because I thought it
reflected the whole mentality and culture of the age in which I was made
a priest.... God is dead.... and Ho-hum.... Nobody cares.... weeping
inside, kind of. And then a week later, I saw written under the same
inscription, in very neat print, "Nietzsche is dead," signed God. And
then, like you, I stopped weaping and I laughed because it was suddenly
such strong humor... to restore perspective, and balance, and sanity.
In the end, the blessings that can come to the hungry, the hated, the
poor and the weeping can only arrive after a large "Whew!" That sigh of
relief, that "Whew!" may even have been from the lips of Our Lord
Himself after an especially grueling day. We're entitled, as human
beings, to sigh this sigh, knowing Christ Himself may well have done the
same.
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