Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time Micah 6: 1-4. 6-8 Psalm 50 Matthew 12:38-42   Sisters and brothers, good Fathers and friends, Twenty-two years ago next month, the American Bishops published Fulfilled in Your Hearing: The Homily in the Sunday Assembly.  In a pointed reference to the role of the homily, one repeated often in speech and in writing by Walter, they wrote  A homily is not a talk given on the occasion of a liturgical celebration.  It is “part of the liturgy itself.”  In the Eucharistic celebration the homily points to the presence of God in people’s lives and then leads a congregation into the Eucharist, providing, as it were, the motive for celebrating the Eucharist in this time and place.   Again, “… the homily should flow quite naturally out of the readings and into the liturgical action that follows.”  Further, “While the etymology of the word suggests communicating with a crowd, its actual use [i.e. homileo] in the New Testament implies a more personal and conversational form of address than that used by the classical Greek orator.”  Pp.23-24. I want to suggest, sisters and brothers, with an economy of expression, that Father Burghardt’s life, work and future fulfill the description of the homily. And you have lived and worked in such a way, dear friend, that we move effortlessly with you from Word to Sacrament here, to Agape and celebration in the Jesuit residence, and our prayer is that this personal and conversational time together and with you, Walter, will refresh us all for mission.  And so, I’ve learned, three points: Happy Birthday, prophecy and conversion as a lifework, passion and imagination will see you and us through, and all of this in praise and thanksgiving for the Jesus whose company you keep. Happy Birthday, Walter, from your Jesuit companions of the greater Washington area, those here and those who would be here were they not hard at work elsewhere, from your friends and colleagues, and from those who may only learn of this celebration later.  Brother Joe Ritzman and Father Gap LoBiondo want no mention, but they and Brian McDermott who is giving the long retreat at Wernersville as we pray, deserve our thanks as does the staff of the Jesuit Residence.  Walter is delighted that you, John Langan, are leading us in prayer.  Thank you, dear Jesuit brothers, for your hospitality. July 10, 1914.  New York City.  Saint Patrick’s Cathedral had been completed and consecrated just six years before you arrived on the scene. Your entrance into the Society of Jesus on February 11, 1931, at the precocious and tender age of sixteen and a half, happened ten years to the day before I was born.  Surely that accounts for both the bond between us and for our mutual appreciation of Mary’s miraculous interventions.  I think the U.S. Jesuit Catalog needs an editor’s red pencil.  Walter, you arrived on February 10th  at Saint Andrew on Hudson where you and your father were given a generous fifteen minutes to say your goodbyes.  I believe you entered the next day, the feast of the Lady of Lourdes. Always on the fast track, you were ordained priest on June 22, 1941, and took final vows on August 15, 1948.  That’s ninety years and nine days of living, seventy-three as a Jesuit, and sixty-three as a priest.  I am sure you will gather us again for seventy-five as a Jesuit and sixty-five as a priest.  And you should.  And by 2014, the outlines of justice for the new millennium might become clearer in fact.  Happy Birthday, Walter! The prophet speaks on behalf of God and surely helps people realize the presence of God in their experience and nature.  The prophet and the weaver of parables call to conversion.  Always weak, sometimes unsure, the prophet recognizes that the gift comes from a source all-holy, all just, all-peaceful, that the message is of a wisdom greater than Solomon, and the prophet works diligently, persistently, to speak in ways we can understand.  Your lifework, Walter.  The gift of your latest work, Justice: A Global Adventure, (Orbis, 2004), was one I read cover to cover just Saturday as I flew home from San Francisco.  I think it exciting, inviting, a text for our collegians, and a blueprint for the reconstruction of our church and the ongoing reform of the Society of Jesus.  Would that the realities you describe might find their way into our political, economic, ecclesial, parochial and artistic communities. You end your book with the ending of our first reading from Micah.  You use the Jerusalem Bible translation.  “This is what Yahweh asks of you, only this: to act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with your God.”  It was the work of John Donahue and Jim Walsh of the Maryland Province, with the urging of General Congregations Thirty-Two and Thirty-Four, along with the move from the woods of Woodstock to the wilds of New York City and Washington, D.C., that you turned that most recent third of your life to God’s justice, biblical justice, fidelity to relationships that stem from the covenant.  Those relationships God provides: with Godself, with all sisters and brother, with all of created reality, all living and breathing manifestations of God.  The prophet, particularly the Jesuit, turns up our God in the strangest locales.  We have come a long way, but a quick check of the front page tells us how far we have to go.  And how much we need to preach and teach.  This latest work may be your crowning achievement.  Justice analyzed, applied, sacramentalized, globalized and communicated.  With generous dedications, a well deserved recognition of Gerard Walker who has taught us both how to use today’s technology, and of Katharyn Waldron for her literally making this possible, you go on to use what you have learned from the last fifteen years of Preaching the Just Word.  Half of those assembled here and for dinner are referenced in the book.  Buy or borrow a copy.  We have a few here, and can take your order.  You not only bring us together here, you bring us together in the work of prophecy and conversion. Your sight may be dimmed a bit, but this book is evidence that your vision for church, synagogue and mosque has a clarity that takes us to the deepest kinds of conversions of our persons and institutions.  And that work takes us to worship. Last week in Santa Cruz, an octogenarian Sister of the Holy Names handed me this work you wrote in 1976 for the Conference of Bishops.  Seven Hungers of the Human Family.  She said it was her first exposure to your imagination and your passion for relating our spiritual and material hungers.  After leafing through Justice, and waving this at me, the good sister said, “I hope you folks don’t let him rest on his laurels.  I don’t care if his sight and hearing are failing.  Make him talk. Put him on tape and videos and the web.  He’s got more to say at ninety than most of these writers and he does it with such class, passion and imagination.” Your friend, Bill Coffin, has just had an editor glean any number of his quotable quotes into a fine little book called Credo.  We might begin there.  Here’s a line of Bill’s to take us to the altar: “to show compassion for an individual without showing concern for the structures of society that make him [or her] an object of compassion is to be sentimental rather than loving.”  As we remember what Jesus did, and thank our God for you and for the way you have pulled us in to your work of acting justly and loving tenderly, let us, each of us, figure the ways you might walk and talk humbly with our God and us in bringing on the reign of God’s justice.  Now. Rev. Raymond B. Kemp St. William's Chapel, Copley Hall Georgetown University July 19, 2004