A Homily for the Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Isaiah 45:1, 4-6 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b Matthew 22:15-21
What makes a man? That is a question I lived intensely during four years as a boarder at an all-boys Catholic high school.
Thomas More Prep had been created two years before my arrival in the early ’70s, when Capuchin Franciscan friars combined their minor seminary and their military academy. In my time, the school was much closer to the latter than the former. Faculty, almost exclusively male, addressed us by our surnames. Daily announcements included the names of those assigned to work crews called “penalty periods.” A banner hung in the school chapel, proclaiming, “Youth was made for Heroism.”
Last week I returned for my 50th class reunion. We were joined by the women of the once-neighboring Marian High, as the two schools have long since been combined.
Turnout was terrific. When you already have 14 classmates “gone but not forgotten,” you want to keep in touch. Half a century has passed since I last saw most of these men and women, but I know from Facebook the story of a fellow boarding student. These past years, Bob has fought to survive, undergoing multiple cardiac surgeries with long hospitalizations.
We were not close in high school. Bob and I moved in different worlds. Had the military academy and minor seminary not merged, we never would have met. He represented the masculinity I craved but considered unattainable. Bob was large, with a deep, perhaps even gruff, voice. He played varsity football. Unable to measure up, I never sought his attention.
Bob was our first classmate to “go steady.” Do people say that anymore? He married our classmate Jeanette shortly after graduation. The love of his life has stood by Bob through illness, and she accompanied him to our celebration.
I attended the reunion with some trepidation. I had never been bullied in high school, but I wondered if I would still be intimidated by these men. I adopted an athletic lifestyle late in my college years, running and skiing. I have been a gym rat for years, though now I cringe when young men ask if I need help putting weights on the machines. Still, I wondered, have I finally measured up?
In Kansas homecoming parades, honored alumni ride on flatbed trucks, sitting on bales of wheat stock. Many of us joked that this would undoubtedly be the last time we would be able to mount a flatbed, even with the aid of step ladders.
Bob climbed on last. Having recently broken a femur, he was using a cane. A couple of guys helped him onto the step ladder. Several of us who were already on the float came to assist, but ministry has left me a bit more accustomed to those needing physical assistance. Bob required help placing his feet on the ladder steps, but he knew what he needed. Our arms were entwined. When he told me to pull, I did. Bob mounted the truck.
What makes a man? Let me cut through so many of our contemporary debates on gender by saying that, in the end, a man, like a woman, has got to be a good human being.
There are no shortcuts, which is what the adversaries of Jesus seek. They want life to be divided into clear categories of paid and unpaid, victory and loss, advantage and disadvantage. Our Lord does not dismantle the distinctions, but he refuses to play their percentages.
Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar
and to God what belongs to God (Mt 2:21).
Being a man or a woman is part of what it means to be a creature, to realize that all that we have and are comes to us from a creator. God tells King Cyrus of Persia, the big man of his day,
I am the LORD and there is no other,
there is no God besides me.
It is I who arm you, though you know me not (Is 45:5).
Having recognized that we are creatures, dependent upon others, we are then called by Christ to imitate him in surrendering everything to the one whom Jesus called “Father.”
In high school, I presumed that Bob had already become a man and that I had little promise of following. Fifty years later, I no longer presume. I know that Bob is a man, someone who has embraced his humanity and returned it to the Lord who gave it to him. Because of his health, Bob’s absence would have been easily accepted. But how much courage, humility and strength does it take to allow yourself to be lifted into place?
We are creatures, called to cede ourselves to the creator. Distinct and different as they are, in all their permutations, to be a man or a woman is to receive gratefully and then graciously to give away. That, of course, includes our image of self. Fifty years later, and Bob is still so far ahead of me!
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