You already have what you need . . . .

Homily
Tuesday of the 6th Week of Ordinary Time I
St. Lawrence Catholic Center at the University of Kansas
15 February 2011
Daily Readings

Watch out for the leaven of Herod and the leaven of the Pharisees. Jesus lumps Herod and the Pharisees into a single sentence, even though the pair is outwardly very different. Herod represented the height of preoccupation with worldly things - power and wealth. The Pharisees represented the height of obsession with religious things, observing carefully the Mosaic law. Yet Jesus lumps them together. He says their leaven, their core motivation, is the same. He tells his own disciples to watch out.

The disciples were afraid of being chastised because they had forgotten to bring something that was needed, the loaf of bread. Jesus instead chastises them, not for forgetting to bring bread, but for continuing to have in their hearts the same fundamental question that poisoned the leaven of Herod and the Pharisees. The question is this: do I have what I need? Jesus recognizes both in Herod and in the Pharisees that this was the fundamental question of their hearts. Even though Herod lived this question is a secular way, and the Pharisees in a religious way, the fundamental question of their hearts, their leaven, was the same. Do I have what I need? Jesus chastises his disciples for worrying about the same thing.

Jesus rightly teaches that once you start asking this question, you never quite finish answering it. It is a question that destroys a human person, a leaven that does not allow a human person to be free or to flourish. For there is no end to the needs that a human person can identify, and no end to human desiring on this side of heaven. Once you start asking the question, do I have what I need, there is no way to stop. Consequently, even today we see many people who live in fear.

The leaven that Jesus wishes for his disciples is a question of how they are called to serve. In this country, JFK coined a phrase that has echoed through the centuries - ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. JFK was seeking to motivate patriotism so that America could compete again. Jesus' motivations are much deeper, but the question is similar. The fundamental question he wishes to be in the hearts of his disciples, is not whether they have what they need, but do they have an opportunity to serve? Jesus recalls the story of the loaves and fishes, to remind them that the correct question in that situation was not do we have what we need? No, the question was did we have an opportunity to give, to love, to serve others? The answer to that question was yes. So too in the redemption of the world, if every human person asks first whether he has what he needs, there will never be enough to go around. If instead, every human person seeks only an opportunity to love and to serve, then there will be superabundance. As Pope Benedict XVI said in his encyclical God is Love, charity grounds justice. Charity goes deeper than justice, and even when there is justice, with everyone having what they need, it never eliminates the human need to show charity.

We see this played out so often in the lives of real people. There are those who seem to have everything, and yet are unhappy, and those who seem to have nothing, who are eager to give away what little they have as fast as they can, needing only an opportunity to love. There are those who live in fear, like Herod and the Pharisees, and those who live in gratitude. The mere fact that there is something rather than nothing, that there is me rather than not me, is enough evidence to saints that they are known and loved, that they have already everything they need, that the only thing lacking ever in their lives is the next opportunity to give. On the other hand, the mere fact that there is something I could want that I do not yet have, is enough evidence for many to quit believing in God.

Jesus tells us to beware of the leaven in our hearts, the fundamental question of our lives. The first question we ask is usually the one we never stop asking.