Homily for May 17, 2009

Father Tom’s Homily
6th Sunday of Easter
May 17, 2009

In today’s discussion of the torture technique called waterboarding, we are hearing about the Inquisition that took place in the mid-1200s.
The Inquisition was an authorized effort to root out false beliefs that became popular at that time. When persuasion failed, some church authorities introduced the use of certain torture tactics such as waterboarding to extort confessions of heresy.
A monument in Rome offers a commentary against this institutionalized cruelty.

One of the important ancient churches is Santa Maria sopra Minerva, so called because the present-day church was built over the ruins of a Temple of the Roman goddess Minerva.
In the middle of the piazza in front of the church there is an interesting monument. Elevated on a platform there is a life-sized marble figure of an elephant, a work of the great sculptor Bernini (1667).

On a walking tour of Rome, our theologian/tour guide, Fr. Paul Chioppi offered in interesting insight about the elephant monument.
Understanding the political subtleties of Roman monuments, Father Chioppi noted that the elephant’s behind was pointed at the building that had been the headquarters of the Inquisition.
It is a reminder that the Inquisition was one of the shabbiest chapters in the entire history of the Church.

Most religious traditions seem to promote the notion that God shows partiality only/mostly to true believers.
The presumption of these traditions goes something like this: “If you worship in my church/temple, I can get you a better deal with God.”

In today’s first reading from the 10th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, St. Peter has a life-changing revelation.
He says, “I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears the Lord and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.”
All religions, not only Peter’s Judaism, were convinced that God’s love was given only to the chosen few – namely, the members of one’s own ethnic religion.
In ancient religions, membership in God’s household was determined by tribal boundaries, whether in the heart of Africa, or among the nordic tribes of the polar regions, or among the Mediterranean people, or in the Roman religion, or in Judaism. God was always exclusively “ours,” and no one else’s.

In saying, “I see that God shows no partiality,” Peter was breaking from a long honored taboo. He was breaking from the old belief that gentiles were unworthy of God’s friendship and any Jew’s friendship – because they were heretics.
In a vision, Peter had learned that he must reach beyond the old traditional religious boundaries he once accepted.
He displayed this new understanding by visiting the household of a gentile. And more than any ordinary gentile, Cornelius was a high ranking officer in the Roman military force that was hated by almost every Jew. To have anything to do with a non-Jew was forbidden to a devout Jew. To befriend a Roman soldier was even worst.

Today’s reading begins at the point of Peter’s crossing the threshold of Cornelius’s home, where Cornelius met him.
When Cornelius falls on his knees to welcome him, Peter would have none of it. He pulls him off his knees and offers him a more appropriate greeting – as an equal in the sight of God (“a fellow human being.”)
Peter’s refusal to have Cornelius kneel before him reminds me of the way that Pope John XIII often raised people up from their knees laughing at the idea that others should kneel before him.

At his request, Cornelius receives baptism as well as his family and friends.
The story of Cornelius’ conversion is also the story of Peter’s conversion. It is meant to convert us as well, from the false notion that God’s love is exclusively for us and not for others.
It instructs us to cross over forbidden thresholds to embrace others who are also earnestly seeking God.