Our Lenten theme this year is “Jerusalem, Our Destiny.” Jerusalem,
standing for Our Lord’s life and his teaching there and his dying
there and his rising, and telling us we are going to rise from the
dead. That’s Jerusalem, our destiny.

This morning when we are together I would like to make a couple of
stops along the way to Jerusalem. And the first stop would be on a
park bench opposite Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, a week ago. A
former student of mine, named Beth, (I got her permission to tell
this.) came to visit and we are sitting in this little park opposite
the Cathedral. She was talking. She is forty-four, and she is married
about eight years. She has two kids. She was talking about Kevin,
her husband. She says, “I love him. So, of course, I fight with him.”
She says, “When I fight with him on Sunday night, I look in the
mirror on Monday morning and I say to myself, ‘You’re no prize
either!’ “ ... “You’re no prize either,” she says to herself in the
mirror. And then she said to me, “Do you know what I’m saying,
Father?” I said, “Yeah, I think so. I sure do.”

In the gospel today, Our Lord is saying to the Scribes and the
Pharisees, “You’re no prize either.” Then, to the woman, “Woman, has
no one condemned you?” Now, the word “woman” in English is casual.
But in Our Lord’s language, it is great reverence, great deference
and gentility. Our Lord calls Our Lady, “Woman” when he is dying.
“Woman, behold your son.” It has much more tenderness to it than it
has in English. And then when she says, “No one, Sir,” “Sir” is bland
in English. In Our Lord’s language, even in the Greek translation,
the “Sir” is great respect, and awe. “No one, Sir.” ....”Neither will
I condemn you.” Now, do you and I, here this morning, know what he
was saying? OK.

The Scripture scholars, and I always boast, but I check up on these
six great Bible scholars, Roman Catholic professionals on the Bible.
And when I got to this gospel in the six books, they kind of didn’t
discuss it. No, not twenty-six footnotes! And I thought this is like
a filet mignon steak gospel. You don’t have to pour all kind of
scholarly interpretation catsup all over it. It can stand on its own
feet! It’s sublimely simple, this beautiful gospel. But one of the
six Bible scholars, Catholic, had a footnote. And in the footnote, he
said, “Over many decades, especially in the United States, there has
grown up among Roman Catholics, a conviction that sex is the
deadliest sin.” Clearly, from the gospels and from the words of Jesus
Christ, it is not the deadliest sin. Here are the deadliest sins from
the mouth of Jesus Christ. Listen to this unholy trinity. Pride, the
sin of the devil, Hypocrisy, and Greed! Our Lord is constantly
condemning those. The sexual sins bring such almost quick remorse and
shame, and all through the gospels, Christ forgives them gently and
quickly. But not those three!
Does no one condemn you? You’re not such a prize yourself, you
Scribes and Pharisees, you Proud hypocrites! Hard for Christ to fight
it because, if you think you’re right, you don’t even have to ask for
pardon. Over the past forty years (I know you know this already, but
it’s so important for people my age to remember.) in the Roman
Catholic Church, much more attention has been paid to the teachings
of Jesus, that is to say, scripture, Bible study. As I remember, in
the seminary, and I was there for twelve years, starting at fourteen,
it was as if we spent eighty percent of the time on sin, mortal,
(different degrees and punishment,) venial, (different degrees and
punishment,) imperfections (a lot of time on imperfections), bad
habits. Eighty percent on sin and the law, and maybe twenty percent
on the study of the gospels, because that’s kind of Protestant stuff!
Now, it’s changed, and the more we see what Jesus meant, the flavor
of his words, the geography, the topography, the psychology, it’s
much more the Christ of mercy. It is, not just ‘cause we are left-
wingers! You’re not such a prize yourself, you Scribes, proud, proud!

Now, Easter confessions are coming up and we have communal
confessions here. And you are urged, when you come up here to
confession before Easter, just to say one sin. By saying that one,
you have covered all the sins. But just you select one. And you try
to pick the one that bedevils you the most, that has stayed with you
most of your life. ...”Well, all of them do!!” I know, but just pick
one. When we are together on Sundays, I have often told you that mine
is jealousy. Since I was six years old, consumed with jealousy and
envy. “Look at the physique on that one! ... What a jock that one
is!” And I once wrote this down, about jealousy: “That which you
spurn the most may be that for which you yearn the most.” Example: A
new teacher arrives in the high school where I taught. A young guy
teaching walks in. And I’m sitting there. I’ve been there for.....
“Look at him, smarming around the room, oozing charm from every pore
as he foils his way around the floor. And that hair! I think he
spends thirty minutes combing that pompadour! Who does he think he
is? Elvis? Going around hugging people, being friendly to people.
He’s new. He should act new. He should be diffident and timid and
hide in the corner. Look at him! I don’t think it’s very manly for a
man to be that concerned about his hair.” ...That which you spurn the
most may be that for which you yearn the most.

Now, jealousy, St. Thomas Aquinas says, “Of all the capital sins,
jealousy is the one that’s no fun.” I mean you can’t even brag about
jealousy. I know I’ve said this to you before. But it’s mine, you
know. You can brag about other sins, “Boy, did I tie one on last
weekend!” or “When I was young, I was so handsome, women stood under
my window at night and pawed the turf and said, “Come down. We want
you!” But not jealousy. It’s so mingy and so embarrassing. It’s such
a sad.... Leave it to me to pick the sin that’s no fun. And the
gospel, as we get closer to Our Lord’s arrest and crucifixion, St.
John points out in the gospel, “It was out of envy that Our Lord’s
enemies turned him over to the Romans.” Out of jealousy, jealous of
Jesus. It’s an awful sin, and it’s no fun!

The next thing is Timidity and then Rigidity. Timidity. Can timidity
be a sin? Yeah, sometimes, keeping quiet when you should speak up.
Even if by nature, you are diffident and gentle, now and then we’ve
(we, not you!) got to, now and then. OK. Forty-seven years ago, I was
a young priest. (It’s all me, me, me, I know.) But forty-seven years
ago, as a young priest in a little town in Upstate New York, I was
green. I was new. I was one month in the parish. (I have written this
all down. I should tell it to the movies!) Within one month, I was
accused of being a home-wrecker. Within one month, a couple that
lived some distance away in the parish, let’s call them Nick and
Marge, Nick said I was after “his woman.” He was going to shoot me
down. The police were called in. We had to appear before a judge who
was drunk. There were shotguns and the man who thought I was trying
to steal his wife said, “I’ll shoot that..... down on Franklin
Avenue!” There was a summer storm! OK, now there’s a man who calls me
once a month. He’s eighty-eight. He was there at the time. I say he’s
eighty-eight because he has acquired a certain senior sagacity. And
he and some of the other people in this little parish, they kind of
built a little spa where older people can go in this pool and get rid
of aches and pains. And he said that this past week, he mentioned he
calls Father Dibble, you know, once a month. And one of the women in
the pool with him said, “Oh-h, that one with the Nick and Marge
scandal!” And another woman said, “Oh, I never thought that meek
little mouse would ever be involved in anything like that.” I guess
she thought she was defending me! And the first lady said, “Where
there’s smoke, there’s fire!” And I said to Joe, “Joe, I told you
all about it at the time. I was as chaste as a slab of Carrara
marble! I hope you spoke up!” And Joe sighed over the phone, three
thousand miles ago, and said, “Oh, Father, I just figured I’d let it
go.” Now, sometimes it’s spiritually sane to let some things go. But
at other times, even the most diffident and recessive of us has to
say something. It could be a sin of timidity. An example: This is
just a cartoon hyperbole, But if you’re in a situation where somebody
says something like “Poor people are poor because they like being
poor. They deserve to be poor. If you give them any money, they will
spend it on liquor. God probably wants them to be poor. If they’d
pull themselves up by the bootstraps, they wouldn’t be poor.”
Somebody, sometime, including me, has to sometimes speak up gently,
courteously and say, “That is a wild generalization.” Takes a lot of
courage! But now and then we have to avoid the sin of timidity.

The sin of Rigidity is “war!.... war!.... war!” “I want to hear more
about sin!” I used to hear that all the time on the East Coast. “Why
don’t the priests talk more about sin?” Well, because, you see the
past forty years there has been much more emphasis on Jesus, and
Jesus’ message is mercy. “Ah, sin!” On the East Coast, for several
Mondays, a long time ago, I would go for a walk, after hearing
confessions at dusk, and there would be a gent sitting on a bench at
the East River, a gent. And he looked up one Monday afternoon and he
said, “You’re a priest. Right?” I said, “Yes.” And we would go for
walks for several Mondays, around supper time. “Well, I’m a miserable
sinner!” (Direct quote.) I haven’t seen him since; so I didn’t get
his permission. It was a long time ago. “I’m a miserable sinner!” And
he told me his story. He was not a miserable sinner. He was a
bachelor. He had been taking care of his sick mother his entire life.
Just he. He was a bachelor. And she’d finally died, and he was living
alone. And he was getting along in years. And he said, “I commit the
sins of solitude.” And he was right about that, sins of solitude:
rancor, bitterness, resentment, hurt, bad memories, sensual sins of
solitude, being alone. That really tormented him. He’d run to
confession every week. The sensual sin that comes from being all
alone. And the second Monday, I had the book, the new Catholic
Catechism. I said, “You know if you look up number 382B, that
particular sin is discussed. And it says in this catechism approved
by John Paul II, hardly a swinging liberal, that that particular sin
of lonely sensuality, that sin can become such a habit and be a
result of so much stress and loneliness and sexual starvation and
exhaustion, that, many times, the guilt is mitigated and, in some
cases, altogether removed.” He said, “Are you telling me it’s all
right?” I said, “No. This is John Paul II approved this
catechism.” ... “You liberal priest!” I know he thinks that, when I
taught, I taught with love beeds and gave therapy in a hot tub or
something. And he stalked off! Our Lord said, out loud, on a couple
of occasions, to Scribes and Pharisees, such as in today’s gospel,
“Go and learn what this means.” Our Lord said that. “I desire
mercy. ... I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” Not misery and heart-
wrenching guilt all the time. OK.

And finally the sin of More.... more.... more.... more. A man in that
little parish (And I checked with him. He’s still alive. His wife has
died.) many years ago he had a great job at IBM, big money. One day
he started out to work and he came back twenty minutes later, and he
walked into the living room and he sat there on the rug and put down
his attache case and said, “I can’t do this anymore.” over and over.
“I can’t do this anymore.” And his wife, Florence, said, “Father,
that used to be his favorite word, ‘more.’ “ Big money. Big beautiful
house. More space in our summer house. We’ll add another wing. More
journeys. We’ve seen Europe. Now we’ll see the Caribbean. We’ll go to
Asia. More praise from my boss. I need a little more. More.... more.
After his breakdown where he said, “I can’t do this anymore,” he got
another job, a good one, but a lot less and he said, over a long
period, ”I discovered my kids again! I like my kids, and the back
yard.” It may sound banal, but I’m not making it up. And I’m sure if
I were out there sitting with you, I would be thinking “These priests
don’t know anything about the hard, competitive life out there in the
work force. They don’t know anything about money.” True. But we can
observe. We can observe a human being who has stopped saying “More,”
settle for less. And you see the way they breathe better. Our Lord
said, “What does it gain a human being if he gets the whole world and
loses his soul, loses his peace of mind?” .... The “More” sin!

And, finally, the psychological rationalizations. I used to love
doing that, and probably still do. You know, for little bad habits,
not so much sins. OK. Igor I and Igor II. Igor I has just retired. He
has his own small house. True story. And he lives in chaotic clutter
and confusion. To get through the door to go to the first chair you
have to clamber over piles of magazines, old cartons, old wrappers,
old newspapers. So I said to his brother, Igor II, “Why do you think
your retired bachelor brother lives in such chaotic clutter?” He
said, ‘Well....” I said, “I know. I have a couple of explanations
rooted in psychological underpinnings. The reason he lives in such
utter chaos and clutter is his job was precision micromanaging, every
i dotted, every t crossed. Now that he is retired, this is his
subconscious, subliminal rebellion against the precision and neatness
of his job.” Dead silence from Igor II.... “Or, if that’s not a valid
explanation, it could be that, since he is a bachelor and never had a
wife and kids, that all that junk is his surrogate, symbolic
family.” ... Dead silence. Then Igor II said, “You know, Igor I has a
good heart and a fine mind. But the fact that he lives in such chaos
is just because he is a slob. When you and I go to confession, got to
keep it simple. You got to keep it simple. The candor of a very open,
honest confession. I’m full of lust. I’m full of anger. I’m full of
More. I’m no prize either.

Now, it says Christ wrote on the ground. I had a freshman in freshman
religion, Damien. I told you about Damien before. He was kind of
funny. When we did this gospel in class, he said, “I know what Jesus
wrote.” I said, “Well, I think he was just doodling. I think he was
just telling these clowns, ‘This is boring. You Scribes and Pharisees
are doing it again, dragging some poor messed up lady in front of us.
How come the guy never gets dragged in? Did he get through the window
in time?’ “ Doodling, doodling. “No,” Damien said. “No. What he did,
he wrote down the names of some of the Scribes and Pharisees who were
holding the stones.... Mo, Curly, Larry.... And he bent down a second
time.... Bugs, Elmer, Daffy....” Why did he do that? “Because,”
Damien said, “Jesus knew what those guys were up to and he wrote
their names down to tell them ‘You better be careful. You’re no
prize either.’” It’s the only time Jesus wrote anything, and the wind
blew it away. Sometimes people say, “Did Jesus ever laugh?” How could
he not?! How could he not laugh, or at least grin, with those twelve
apostles? It’s a laugh fest in itself. And today’s gospel, isn’t that
a great line? “The guys disappear, beginning with the oldest.”
That’s hilarious. That’s Marx Brothers stuff. Jesus smiled and maybe
he shouted, good and loud, not just at the lady who he sent off in
peace, but so some of those guys would hear him, “Neither will I
condemn you.” Hypocrits!

OK, this is the end. You are going to be receiving Holy Communion
soon, the Eucharist. You know it is not just a blessed biscuit. In
some mysterious, marvelous way, it’s the Real Presence of Jesus, in
all of us as a community of believers and in your body for a few
moments. So you speak to the Lord. It is he there. You speak to him.
Imaginary conversation: “Welcome, Lord. You know how I spent the past
week, judging people, wanting More, rationalizing. Oh, Lord, welcome,
but I’m no prize. You know what I’m saying?” And then the gospels are
absolutely certain that the kind of response Our Lord will give is,
“Neither will I condemn you. Do you know what I am saying?” Amen.