Asssumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Homily

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

15 August 2010

Mary, Queen of Heaven, pray for us!

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At the first Mass of our newly ordained priest, Fr. Scott Wallisch, at the St. Lawrence Center at KU, Fr. Scott gave his mother a gift. It was the maniturgium, the white linen cloth used to wipe off the excess chrism oil from his recently anointed hands. Fr. Scott's hands had just been anointed to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass, to confect through those hands the body and blood of Jesus for the redemption of many people. Yet as a symbol, Fr. Scott gave this cloth to his mother to indicate not only his gratitude to her for his life and for his faith that he received from his mom, but also to indicate that he wished any fruits from his priesthood to first be given to her. The maniturgium is a sign that of all the people that Fr. Scott wishes to save through his priesthood, he wishes first for his mother to be saved, and he wants of all people to see in heaven, for his mother to be the first he sees. In this, the priest imitates Jesus in a special way, who honored his own mother as we see in today's Solemnity of the Assumption. The maniturgium is sometimes referred to as his mother's ticket to heaven. It is oftentimes laid in the coffin with the mother at the time of her burial.

St. Paul tells us that the fruits of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead will first be given to those who belong to Christ. Today's solemnity of the Assumption of Mary body and soul into heaven indicates the truth of what Paul is writing to the Corinthians. In Christ, everyone will be brought back to life, but each in the proper order, until the last enemy death, is defeated. Mary from the moment of Her own conception received the fruits of her Son's resurrection, and was always growing younger in faith, hope and love throughout her life, and her Assumption body and soul into heaven shows that the last enemy, death, has been defeated, not only by Christ but by Mary who is the first member to arrive in heaven body and soul. We say that Mary did not die as much as she fell asleep, at the time of the Assumption of her body into heaven.

The solemnities of Mary are so important to us as Catholics, because they teach us something about Christ and also something about ourselves. The assumption teaches us that Christ loves his mother, and honors her role in the history of salvation, and of all people, he has chosen to give her life body and soul in heaven, from which she reigns as queen of heaven and earth. The solemnity also teaches us something about ourselves, who by nature are closer to Mary than we are to Christ. Mary is the one most like us in the order of redemption, for hers was a simple human nature like ours elevated by God's grace. Just as in the order of nature a mother is closer to her child than the father is, since she carries the child in her womb and then nurses the child, so also in the order of our redemption and salvation our mother Mary is closer to us by definition than God the Father. God the almighty Father deigned that we be brought into eternal life by a mother, just as we were born into this world through a mother. Today's assumption proclaims that the mother of Jesus given by Him to be our mother at the foot of the cross, is now also our mother in heaven. She is the new Eve, the mother of all those who will live for ever.

In the papal crest then of the late Pope John Paul II was a symbol indicating that the sure way to Christ is through Mary. His papal motto was totus tuus mariae. All is yours Mary, or you are everything Mary. In promoting devotion to Mary, the Holy Father is only trying to bring us into a deeper and more lasting relationship with Her Son. Of course, on this Marian feast, we are preparing once again to be perfectly joined to Jesus as we eat his body and drink his blood. The Eucharist is a perfect communion with Jesus, by definition. It is the way that he desired us to become one heart, one flesh with Him, who is the source of our redemption. Yet the Holy Father is wise to teach us that it is possible to receive the Eucharist without fruitfully receiving Jesus, if we do not have the humility and faith and readiness and receptivity of Mary. The pope teaches that it is only when we are first like Mary, and when we are close to her and allow her to be our Mother, that we are ready to receive Her Son as she did.

Imitating the humility of Mary is the most powerful weapon we have in our own spiritual battle. It is also the most powerful weapon in the world. Today's feast of the Assumption shows Mary to be victorious over the fiercest of dragons. Even though she endured many hardships in this world, she never stopped trusting in God and in His promises, nor waiting for his grace to be enough for her. Mary is powerful. She is raised high above every principality and power. She is the queen of heaven and earth. She wishes to obtain for us her children from her Son the grace to be victorious in our own battle against sin and death. In her apparitions, she encourages us to keep praying, to keep fasting, to keep going, for she is with us on the path to victory. Let us celebrate with great joy, then this solemnity of her assumption, and ask her to truly be our mother on earth and in heaven.

on pilgrimage - Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Homily
Monday of the 19th Week in Ordinary Time II
9 August 2010
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, virgin and martyr

I can think of no better companion for our trip today than St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, one of John Paul II's favorite saints, our patron for the day, and a saint for our modern times. We add her, as it were, to our list of friends and intercessors that we are accumulating on this pilgrimage. St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, Fr. Emil Kapaun, St. John Vianney, the patron of priests and the patron of the archdiocese, St. Charles Borromeo, the patron saint of seminarians, Mary, the mother of our vocations, and now St. Edith Stein. What a company of friends and witnesses go with us if we but invite them along. May we know their presence and rely more deeply upon their powerful intercession, and their willigness to obtain for us all that is good as we continue our travels. No matter how far we have come in our own conversion, and to get to the place where many of you now stand has required a lot of conversion, still St. Teresa leads the way for us. We have not allowed ourselves to be converted to the transforming love of God as much as she allowed herself to be captured by God. Teresa studied philsophy with greater ferver than we do. Her love of wisdom and truth and reality led her to profess faith in Jesus Christ, whom she found to be the way, the truth and the life. Through her example, let us never give anything less than the best to our studies, whether we are studying philsophy or theology or anything else that can help our minds to seek God above all things.

Teresa was a convert to Catholicism to Judaism, and not just an intellectual convert. She professed vows with the discalced Carmelites, and entered into a life of deep prayer and of sincere chastity, poverty and obedience, and she lived these vows to the point of arriving at a true sanctity. Known as a great philsopher, the Church honors her just as much or more for her virtuous life, for her purity of heart, and we too can rely on her intercession in our desire to be chaste spouses of the Church with Christ. And yet there is more. St. Teresa not only gave her heart and her mind and body to Christ, she was chosen to shed her blood as well. She is venerated as a martyr of the Church, being arrested by the Nazis in 1942 and dying in the Auschwitz concentration camp that same year.

Jesus teaches his disciples that he must be arrested and be killed, and the news of this filled them with grief. He teaches Peter that he and his disciples must remain focused on this witness that was to be consummated in Jerusalem, and not be distracted by issues that in the end amount only to a few coins. May we learn from Jesus today, and by the example of St. Edith Stein, how to keep before us the perfect and complete gift of our lives that we are to give in witness to Christ. Let us not be grieved over the witness that Christ wants to give in us, with us and through us, in the very circumstances of our lives. As we know well, there are thousands of issues and thoughts, feelings and desires that come to us in the course of our formation. A few of them are critical to our sincere conversion to the love of God. A few of them are critical to the fulfillment of our vocation, so that our lives can speak with power exactly the word that we have been given to speak. With a desire for our lives to speak like St. Edith Stein's, let us cast off with the virtue of humility all those things that do not really matter, and be more generous in advancing in the way that God would have us go.

Relating to God by faith - 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time C

Homily
19th Sunday in Ordinary Time C
8 August 2010
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center/St. Rose Philippine Duchesne Church Mound City
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I toured the Truman library a couple of weeks ago. At the end of the museum section of the library, there are dozens of quotes from prominent people commenting upon Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan in 1945. The quotes judge Truman's decision, and Truman the man. Even in Truman's own library, I would say the majority of the quotes are against the bombing that he authorized, although it is easy to find those who remained in favor of it. Without taking a stance in this homily on the dropping of the bomb, I would say that all of the quotes in the museum are made in hindsight, as history judges the dropping of the bomb. Truman's decision was made in real time.

We too have to make our decisions about whether to trust God in real time. Looking in hindsight, we can find people who criticize God's ways, and those who find Him to be good and faithful. You can read Christopher Hitchens' 'God is not Great' and Scott Hahn's 'A Father who keeps His promises' back to back in the same day and get two very different accounts of human history and the economy of salvation, and two different opinions about God the person. Looking with hindsight, you can interpret history differently. Hitchens generally reads history and its accumulation of evils as a sure sign that either God is absent or cruel or non-existent. Therefore, it is up to human persons alone, after discarding religion, to either defeat God or to establish without him whatever kingdom humanity desires for itself. Hahn reads history as a theodrama in which a God who allows human freedom and evil constantly acts in and with and through his chosen people to establish an everlasting kingdom where goodness and truth and love prevail. In real time then, Hitchens does not have faith in God. Hahn does. Hitchens remains a judge of God's ways. Hahn finds that despite the twists and turns in the economy of salvation, in the end God reveals Himself to be merciful, and to desire the salvation of all. Hahn offers himself as a servant of God's ways. Jesus reminds his disciples that they cannot be both. In real time, we have to make a decision of whether to be a judge of God or His servants. Our freedom is real, and so we constantly revisit the decision. Some of us spend a lot of time in no man's land, trying both to judge God and to serve Him.

The author of the letter to the Hebrews gives us Abraham as an example of a man who does not both try to judge God and to serve Him. Abraham is our father in faith, as we say in Eucharistic Prayer I. By faith He sees that the future kingdom of justice, truth, goodness and love being brought about by God not man, a God who nonetheless works with and in and through men to be the instruments of their own salvation. Knowing himself neither to be the origin nor the master of his own life, but knowing himself to be the steward of a good gift, Abraham relates to God by faith, trusting in the One whose ways by definition must be far above his own ways, and whose thoughts by definition must be far above his own thoughts. Using the gift of faith that he has received, a real way of directly relating to God who is much unlike him, Abraham does not remain in the no man's land of trying to both judge and serve God's ways, but abandons himself to be a most radical servant of God's ways, even offering his only son Isaac in sacrifice to a God whom he knew could raise from the dead.

Yet Abraham does not do this imprudently. Abraham does not serve God because He has no other real choice. His freedom is real, as is ours. Abraham chooses to serve God's ways because he knows himself to be one who is first served by God. Those of us who are called like Abraham to serve the kingly mission of the Father as handed on to us by Jesus Christ, have experienced like Abraham ourselves being served by God. Abraham was ready to offer his own son Isaac in response to the God who had blessed him with the gift of life and many other blessings and promises. With deep gratitude for the goodness of God, Abraham found God to be trustworthy. How much more trustworthy has God revealed Himself to be to us, who are witnesses to the shedding of Christ's blood for the forgiveness of our sins? Faith thus for us is not a one-way street, our finding a way to trust God even though we are tempted not to. Faith is something that has been poured into our hearts, as God has enough faith and love in us to hand over His only Son to us on the cross. Whoever seeks to follow Jesus, and to serve His mission of establishing God's everlasting kingdom, will find as today's Gospel suggests, that the Master Himself is serving the servant, having us recline at table, washing our feet, bandaging our wounds, and waiting at table upon us. This is the promise of today's Gospel, that whoever serves the Master faithfully will find that it is not he who is serving, but the Master who is serving him, and others through him, with him and in him.

In response to the body and blood of Jesus which we are privileged to receive again today, being served heavenly food from the heavenly table and having our sins forgiven as we recline at table, let us celebrate with great joy the faith that God has placed in us. He chooses not to save us without ourselves, nor to establish His kingdom without us, leaving us behind, but chooses us to share by the grace of confirmation and the strength of this Eucharist, in the mission of firmly establishing a heavenly kingdom. Let us not respond to the faith God puts in us by being pleased to give us the kingdom, with any less faith, for the ones to whom much is entrusted, much is expected. May the gift of faith reach many others through out witness of serving God's ways especially when they are not our ways.

The death of baptism; 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time C

Homily
18th Sunday in Ordinary Time C
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center
1 August 2010

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I visited the Truman home in Independence, MO this week. President Truman died in Independence in 1972, his wife the first lady Bess 10 years later, in the home owned originally by Bess' family. Since 1982 the 'summer white house' of the Trumans has been handed over to the national historical society. You can go in and see where the President, who left office with 30 percent approval rating but now ranks 5th in many polls of the most important presidencies in history, lived out his final days quietly. A simple kitchen and screened in porch where Harry took his coffee, read his papers, and did his own dishes are part of the tour. The man who made the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan lived out his years quietly, receiving few guests, in Independence, Missouri, living much like you and me.

Vanity of vanities, says Quoheleth, all is vanity. Everything that a man accomplishes, eventually fades away. All his possessions must be left to others who did not earn them and may not deserve them. The psalmist says that the most significant man is like the changing grass that quickly fades. In a religion, Christianity, which promises life in abundance, there is a lot of meditation on death. Ecclesiastes is one of the most often quoted books of the Bible, despite its negativity and conclusion that all is vanity. Catholics show up in droves every year to get ashes, and they volunteer enthusiastically to be reminded that they are dust and to dust they will return. A favorite psalm verse of mine is today's 'Lord, make us know the shortness of our lives, that we may gain wisdom of heart.' Christianity is a religion that promises victory over death, but this victory is won not by avoiding death, but by meditating upon it deeply, by learning about the enemy as it were, by keeping death daily before our eyes, and by choosing death before it chooses us.

Baptism itself, with all its symbols of life including candles, new garments and perfumes, is a celebration of new birth only insofar as it is also a true entering into death. St. Paul reminds the Colossians that death is not something that lies ahead of them, but something that lies behind them. He reminds them that they have died, that they are already dead, buried with Christ in baptism, and so free to stop counting the days they have left, and free to stop counting the ways that they can add to this life that is already over. St. Paul reminds the Colossians that because of their baptism, they are free to move away from sin, and to focus their lives on the things that are above. For the Christian, this must remain true everyday, that death is not something in the future, it is something in the past. That is why a true Christian should always be growing younger, not older, in his heart, and experience the freedom of being detached from this world in that way that Christ teaches his disciples to be.

The death that has been chosen for every Christian in baptism, and the death that we continue to choose in the renewal of that sacrament, is an altogether unique choosing in the history of philosophy and religion. It is not the same as a spiritual resignation that all life is suffering, so we must seek the peace that comes from no longer expecting anything out of this life. It is not the same as admitting with materialists that we are not that big of a deal, only a blip in the exchange of matter and energy in the cosmos, and so we must ignore as fantasy any desire for a relationship with the eternal. It is much more than the good bet baptism is sometimes caricatured to be, a magic trick of lowering expectations in this world in order to get more in the next. No, a Christian choosing death is quite different from these other spritualities and ideologies that are chosen by many around us, with whatever understanding of free will they are able to muster. A Christian choosing death in baptism is our use of a free will that is most apparent to us to respond to a love that we have received. A Christian choosing to die allows himself to be chosen by Christ who first loved Him and gave His life for him. Because Christ has died for me, I choose to die with Him, trusting in His love for me and in His promises that love and life are stronger than sin and death. Because Christ died for me, I have chosen to die with Him, and my life is no longer my own. It has been purchased, and at a price, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

This kind of death freely chosen in turn frees a Christian to grow younger even as he ages, as he knows the fear of death to be something conquered in the past and in the present, not something to be magically avoided in the future. The death of baptism frees the Christian to love the things of this world not less, but more, as he realizes that nothing can belong to a person who is already dead, for a person who has died with Christ has already left all his possessions to others. A Christian dead in baptism has been given the same relationship to the things of this world that God Himself has, a relationship not of needing them for anything, especially not for our self-esteem, but of enjoying them as gifts, and as revelations of the goodness, love and glory of God. Again, giving away our possessions is not so much in the future for us as Christians as something we have already done in the past, and this giving away, this charity, is the hallmark of a Christian life. What is more, a focus on charity frees the Christian to enjoy the providence and goodness of God in the things of the world, without ever putting pressure on anything in this world to provide a happiness that it cannot and should not ever provide. A Christian is able to move in the world grabbing nothing for himself, neither fearing death, but instead looking for ways to imitate the love of Christ, and looking forward to the revelation of his life that is the fruit of His love, to his life that is hidden with Christ in God.

Does prayer change the Father or us?

Homily
17th Sunday of Ordinary Time
25 July 2010
St. Lawrence Center/TEC National Congress
For daily readings. click here
Abraham on the surface seems to change God's mind. He persists, like Jesus asks his disciples to persist in their asking, and seems to win God over by his persistence, even as he apologizes all the while for his being annoying. Yet Abraham does not change God's mind, at least not in the way that we might think of someone deciding not to do evil and deciding instead to do something good. God is good. He cannot be anything else. He is not evil one moment, and good the next. When we hear of God planning to inflict what appears to be evil as a punishment, He is not thinking of doing evil anymore than someone who injects chemotherapy is doing evil. The intent is to destroy the bad, which a good God does allow to coexist with goodness, with as little damage to the good as possible, for the sake of the good. That is always God's intent, for He is good. He cannot be anything else. He is not anything else, or He is not God. So Abraham does not convince an evil God to be good by his pleas, or an unmerciful God to be merciful. He engages God in a discussion about what is good and merciful; and in this case, Abraham is the instrument of God's goodness. Theologically speaking, what is happening can be described as this: God wills absolute things absolutely, and contingent things contingently. That is, if God wills something absolutely, we will not change God's will, for he knows what is good better than we do, and any apparent evil that God is involved in must not be evil at all, not even as a means to an end. Yet God does not will everything absolutely, as we see in Abraham's plea and in Jesus' instruction to his disciples to pray with persistence. God wills contingent things contingently. He appears to change or to respond to some prayers of his people, not changing himself from bad to good but changing his faithful people through their own prayers to be the instruments of his goodness. So the axiom holds true, even when we are encouraged to pray persistently and to ask many things from God, which we are in this weekend's scriptures, that prayer does not change God, who is always good, but prayer does change us, who are not always good. It is through prayer that we become knowers and doers of the good, and as Luke tells us, the gift of one who prays unceasingly is the gift of the Holy Spirit, which which gives us a full communion in God's eternal goodness.
When we pray the Our Father, we pray a perfect prayer, because it is how Jesus taught us to pray. It is perfect in content, yes, and sufficient for a full consecration of one's life to God, even as it is a short prayer. But more perfectly, it is the prayer that Jesus himself prayed, and because He taught us to pray 'Our Father' instead of 'My Father', the Our Father is a prayer that we pray together, right before receiving communion, but it is also a prayer that Jesus prays in us and with us and through us. When we pray the Our Father, it is Jesus praying through us to His Father as much as it is us praying alone. That is what really makes the Our Father perfect. Perfect in its content, yes, but more importantly, we have confidence that it is Jesus Himself who did pray and does pray in this way, and it is a prayer that cannot and should not be prayed individually, but always with Jesus, and through Jesus and in Jesus.

Hospitality and Listening

Homily
16th Sunday in Ordinary Time
18 July 2010
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center

St. Benedict challenged his monks to greet all guests as Christ. He admonished as well, however, that after three days, guests are like fish. They begin to stink. The excitement that Abraham shows in welcoming the three men who happen by his camp reminds us, if we have fallen down in this area, of the importance of being hospitable. As Christians, we need not be the most popular of socialites, but our homes ought to be places of welcome, both for our friends and for strangers. We should regularly be inviting people to our homes, and truly living in our homes, despite the constant temptations to the extremes of always going out or vegging out. We all know how easy it is to ignore our neighbors, and to get out of the habit of inviting both friends and neighbors and strangers to our homes. We do this to our own detriment, for Abraham shows in today's reading, and St. Benedict rightly teaches his monks, and Christ also says to his disciples, that whenever we welcome someone, especially the stranger, there is the chance of welcoming God Himself. Today's readings challenge us if we are falling out of the habit of making our homes a place of welcome, to recommit ourselves to the ministry of hospitality. We must trust that whenever we get together, Christ indeed is in our midst, and He brings with Him a blessing and His Holy Spirit which uses such opportunities to draw people together in love.
Our own Catholic tradition is rooted most strongly in this ministry of hospitality. More than anything else we do as Catholics, including bingo and fish fries, we gather for the breaking of the bread, and in the very structure of our liturgy and worship is a sharing of who we are and what we have on a table, an altar, and the chance to receive in return the Lord's blessing and the opportunity for the Holy Spirit to draw us to God and to one another more intimately. In our Catholic tradition, it has always been and continues to be, one of the gravest of sins to miss Sunday Mass, despite many attempts to minimize the importance of this obligation that we have. The great sin is not so much that we have an obligation to give honor and glory to God, although we do, but is the development of a most poisonous attitude that we go to Mass for what we get more than for what we give. We should know by now, but still we need reminding, that we will receive something at Mass only if we first truly place our lives with Christ on the altar of sacrifice, as St. Paul instructs us to do again in today's reading about making up in our flesh what is lacking in the suffering of Christ. It is the most individualistic and selfish of attitudes to approach Mass as a customer, trying to put a relative value on everything, and thinking about what we might get before deciding if we might give. It is equally poisonous to think that our own presence and our own offering of ourselves and our resources in sacrifice is of minimal importance to our brothers and sisters in Christ around us. The devil loves it when we think that the Church will be fine without me. The better attitude is that of the owner, who attends Mass hoping that his faithfulness will help others to also be faithful. A Catholic who attends Mass not for himself, but that others might see and be strengthened by his faith, and vice versa, is a true Catholic. A true Catholic is one who understands that faith is Jesus Christ is more communal than individual. Faith in Christ is something that we must share, if we are to have the faith that Christ left us, and not one we have customized for ourselves. A true Catholic is one who is excited each week not only to encounter Christ in the scriptures and in the sacraments, but also in His fellow worshippers and brothers and sisters who are with him. We do not come to Mass only to see people and to meet people, but there is nothing wrong with being excited that this Mass I will attend today is an opportunity to see, and to be with, and to meet my brothers and sisters in Christ. It is good to be excited that my contribution today, and how welcoming I am, will do much to build up the family of God that will last forever.
Still, we would be missing the most essential message of today's Scriptures if we left Mass today only thinking about what we have failed to do, and promising to do better in the area of hospitality. Mary has chosen the better part in today's Gospel, even though Martha is externally doing more to arrange for a meaningful dinner with Jesus, because Mary knows that our listening closely to Jesus is the one necessary thing. Being a disciple of Jesus is not simply feeling guilty about what we have failed to do, and promising God as we leave Mass that we will find a way to do more. It is not about adding more to an already busy life. Being a disciple of Jesus means having the discipline of waiting to act until we hear a word from Him. It is doing only what He tells us to do, nothing more, but nothing less. Being a disciple is not about doing as much as we possibly can for God, hoping that His will for us is somewhere in the ballpark. It is listening more intently for His voice, knowing that if the ears of the heart are atrophied, in vain do we labor. Being a disciple is trusting that if we do only what Jesus is telling us to do, and sometimes this does mean doing more, but oftentimes, it means cutting back and doing less, that everything we do with Him, in Him and through Him will redound to the glory of God, to our good and the good of our neighbor, and will build up the family of God that will last forever. Amen.

Do what is written in your hearts!

Homily
15th Sunday in ordinary Time
11 July 2010
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

If Jesus Christ is not risen, your faith is in vain. If Jesus Christ is not risen, we Christians are the most pitiable people of all. St. Paul speaks to us bluntly, if ever we are attempted to think of Jesus as simply another great hero or teacher in human history. If we think of Jesus only in this way, Paul says we are stupid, and pitiable, and wasting our time. In today's letter to the Colossians, Paul gives an exalted theology of Jesus, defining Him as the origin and completion of all that ever was, or is or will be. Jesus is not just another teacher or hero. Paul says either He is everything or He is nothing.
Not that Jesus wasn't a great moral teacher as well. He teaches us so much about how to know and love and choose the good, and how to recognize, and hate, and avoid what is evil. If not the only great moral teacher, Jesus Christ is as good as any, and especially His parables like the Good Samaritan expose in a beautiful way if we are not living the best life we could live. If not the only great moral teacher in history, Jesus is especially good at rending our hearts wide open.
Yet Paul would remind us that we are not disciples of Jesus because we think we can prove He is the greatest moral teacher there ever was or ever will be. In fact, there are many who do not believe in Jesus precisely because they think His moral teaching can be found just as readily in something or someone else. There are many who do not follow Jesus because they find His disciples to be the most immoral of people. So we must remember that Jesus Himself did not ask us to follow Him because He alone knew how to teach us how to be good, nor does He say that anyone who does not follow Him is evil. No, Jesus says things that correspond to what Paul is trying to say to us. Jesus says things that confirm Paul's high theology of Jesus being the one through whom and for whom all things were made. Jesus proclaims Himself not to be the single greatest moral teacher of all time, but proclaims Himself to be the way, the truth and the life. He says that no one comes to the Father except through Him.
Regarding morality, Jesus might certainly agree with Moses, who in giving the decalogue received from God to the Israelites, tells them that the divine moral commands are not a new magic formula from heaven, but are to be a constant reminder of what is already written in their mouths and in their hearts. God has written his moral law to do good and to avoid evil in the very nature of the human person, so whenever Jesus or Moses or any other valid prophet speaks the divine law, it is not a law that imposes itself on the human person from the outside. We don't listen to God because we have to or else. We listen to God because He is helping to reveal us to ourselves. The divine law spoken well does not constrain an originally bad person from doing bad, it frees an originally good person to be good, and to know, and love and choose the good with all his heart and mind and strength. That the divine law is a law God has already written in the human heart, means that anyone who knows the natural law of man, anyone who can recognize what is true, good, beautiful and eternal, whether or not he possesses faith, can speak with Jesus and like Jesus about the moral law. Jesus never said that His voice was the only moral voice, or that His teaching could not be echoed and promoted and fruitfully elaborated on by many, even those who do not believe in Him. That is why there are and will always be and should be many good people who are not Christians.
Paul reminds us not to be Christians only because it is one of many paths to being good. He tells us to be Christians because Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead. He has revealed Himself as the One without which there is nothing. But of course we believe in Jesus not simply because we are afraid of Him and His judgements. No, quite the opposite, we believe in Jesus because in today's parable of the Good Samaritan, we are not the priest, the Levite, the Samaritan, or the innkeeper. We are not the scholar of the law seeking to justify himself by seeking a better definition of who is one's neighbor. No, in today's Gospel, we are the man in the ditch. We are Christians because Jesus continues to come to us when we are lost and naked, when we do not not how to live, and Jesus is the one who shows the greatest mercy to us. We are Christians because Jesus is the one who never tires of helping us. He is the one who forgives us, who pours oil and wine over our wounds, who bandages us, who carries us, and who redeems us by paying the price of redemption for us, as many times as we need redeemed. We are Christians because by the wounds of Christ we have been healed, and we have been washed clean by the blood of the innocent Lamb. We are Christians because Christianity is not a philosophy or a morality proposed to us from the outside, it is a relationship with a person who has healed us and set us free from the inside. We are Christians because anyone who has experienced the true love of God brought down from heaven, and delivered in the most intimate and perfect way by Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, no longer has need of the question - who is my neighbor?