By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Homily by Archbishop Thomas Wenski at Installation Mass for Father David Zirilli as pastor of Nativity Church. Sunday, March 6, 2016.
This morning I join you on this Laudate Sunday to formally install Father Zirilli as your new pastor. He will be asked to make once again a public profession of his faith and to pledge to lead the people of God entrusted to him to a greater knowledge of and love for Jesus Christ who calls him, as he calls each one of us, to be merciful like the Father.
The parable we have just heard in the Gospel reading is perhaps the one that is the most familiar to us of all of Jesus’ parables. Here, on display, for us all, is the depth and the breath of God’s love for each one of us. Most of us know this parable as the Parable of the Prodigal Son; but, perhaps it would be more descriptive to say that this is the Parable of the Merciful Father.
In the parable, the younger son asks for his share of his inheritance. In doing so, this young man is treating his father as if he were already dead. He wants what is coming to him now � instead of waiting until after his father dies. Like, how cold is that?
Today, we live in a world in which God has been exiled, pushed aside � as it were � to the margins of our lives. Perhaps we don’t hear many people saying that God is dead although at one time, not too long ago, it was fashionable in many circles to say so. But today, we live � or many of us live � as if he didn’t matter which is tantamount to the same thing. And what happens to us when we live our lives, when we organize our society as if God doesn’t matter finds its parallel to what happened to the younger son who wasted his inheritance in a life of dissipation. Pope Benedict � our Pope emeritus � described this situation very accurately during his visit to Cuba over three years ago. In Santiago de Cuba, he said: “�when God is put aside, the world becomes an inhospitable place for man, and frustrates creation’s true vocation to be a space for the covenant, for the ‘Yes’ to the love between God and humanity who responds to him.”
From that “inhospitable place” which was the pigs’ sty where the younger son ended up, he finally comes to his senses � and makes his return to his Father’s house. In spite of his depravity, he retains the memory of his Father’s goodness. But, as we saw in the parable, the reality of the Father’s goodness far exceeded what the son remembered of that goodness. Even before he gets to the Father’s House, his Father rushes out to greet him and he smothers him with kisses and embraces. The Father whom he had treated as if he were already dead rejoices that the son who “was dead has come back to life, who was lost has now been found.”
Who among us can say that we too have not been surprised by God’s goodness? Of course, sometimes, we are hard pressed to understand the ways in which God surprises us. The younger son who expected no more than to be treated as a hired hand by his Father is surprised at his Father’s magnanimity; but so is the elder son surprised � and none too pleased by his Father’s generous forgiveness of his wayward brother. I am sure that not a few of us can readily identify with the anger of the elder son. After all, the Father in killing the fattened calf and giving his young son a new robe and ring is spending what would be by rights the elder son’s inheritance.
But God’s ways are not our ways � and God’s generosity cannot be measured by human standards. The economy of God’s grace is not a zero sum game � God’s forgiveness given freely to me doesn’t mean that there will be less for you. St. Theresa of Lisieux, the Little Flower, understood this very well. In her “Story of a Soul”, she writes: “What joy to remember that our Lord is just � that he makes allowances for all our shortcomings, and knows full well how weak we are. What have I to fear then? Surely the God of infinite justice who pardons the prodigal son with such mercy will be just with me ‘who am always with Him’.”
This weekend, at the request of Pope Francis, parishes throughout the world offered extended hours for confession. Lent is a time of grace and we celebrate this Lent during a Year of Mercy. Hopefully, here at Nativity and in our other parishes, many people - like the young son - were able to become “homesick” for the Father’s house and found the courage to return to his embrace in the sacrament of penance, the tribunal of Divine Mercy. And of course as Easter approaches, this parish and others will offer further opportunities for confession.
Today we all know of those who give God the cold shoulder, or who are angry with God, or for any number of reasons choose to live in alienation and distance from God. But those who are still out there in that “inhospitable place,” which is a world in which God doesn’t matter, need to hear the Good News that God still loves them anyway, that he hasn’t forgotten them, that he is waiting for them to begin again by coming to him here at the Eucharistic banquet. No matter how far they come from, not matter how great the distance they have placed between themselves and God, if he sees them coming back home he will rush out, throw his arms around them, embrace them and bring them back into his House. We could say that that feast given for the once lost but now found son anticipated the Eucharist. We do not feast on the fattened calf but on the Body and Blood of the Lord himself.
Father Zirilli, as the pastor of souls here in Nativity Parish, you must tend to the sheep entrusted to your care � and that also includes those lost sheep, those who continue to stand “on the outs” with God stand “on the outs” with God. They live in a world that is cynical, bitter, and seemingly without hope; but you have a message to share, a powerful message that their cynicism, their bitterness, their hopelessness is only symptomatic of a deeper “homesickness” � a “homesickness” that can be easily cured by a “coming to one’s senses” and returning to the Father’s house.
As pastor you are called to help your parishioners to become faithful disciples so that too, having encountered Christ in his Word and Sacrament, they become missionaries of hope. In this way, Nativity parish will be a reconciled and reconciling community.
Father Zirilli will serve you well � as Father Pat Murnane served you well. And he will do so not by calling attention to himself but by calling attention to the Lord; he will do so not by seeking his own interests but by putting first God’s will and his people’s good and well-being; he will do so not by trying to please everyone � for one who tries to do that usually ends up pleasing no one; rather he will do so by trying to please the Lord in all things.
