Homily for Thursday, 15 August 2019– Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Mass during the Day

Readings of the day: Revelation 11:19a, 12:1-6a, 10ab; Psalm 45:10, 11, 12, 16; 1 Corinthians 15:20-27; Luke 1:39-56

Thursday of the 19th Week in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at the Kateri House Women's Residence Chapel, St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, and Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada.

My sisters and brothers, today we celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, body and soul into heaven. But do we really celebrate Mary on this day?

Let me offer a “yes, but” answer to my own question here. I was not about to scandalize us by saying that we do not in fact celebrate Mary on this Solemnity of her Assumption. Yet, if I dare say, there is more to this celebration of Mary’s Assumption than a celebration of a woman being taken up body and soul into heaven, in a way that might conjure some almost fanciful images in our minds if we think about it long enough: How is somebody taken, body and soul, into heaven?

There have been many artistic representations of Mary’s Assumption, but none, as beautiful as they are, quite do the event justice. Even one of my favourite depictions of the Assumption of Mary, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, draws on imagery from our reading from Revelation today and a superimposition of Mary on the mythical woman God promises to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, who will crush the serpent’s head and so remit the sin introduced into the world in the Fall of Adam and Eve. Our Lady of Guadalupe is surrounded by twelve stars. She stands above the earth and heavens, on the crushed head of a snake, and she is supported by St. Juan Diego, who experienced this vision of Mary, clothed also in a tilma, an Aztec garment made from cactus fibre and overflowing with roses.

I suppose it is easy enough to depict, in art or icons, a beautiful woman ascending bodily into heaven. But how would we depict a soul? This is impossible, because a soul is not visible to our senses. How do we distinguish an ascension to heaven, like that of Jesus, from an assumption, like that of Mary? Why celebrate the Assumption of Mary anyway, since this event is mentioned nowhere in the Bible (but it is, from not long after the writing of the last books of the New Testament, mentioned in writings that reflect the beliefs of the earliest Christians)?

These are all wonderful questions but, first of all, I think the difficulty we have in answering them points to the Assumption of Mary as mystery. Second, do all these questions and all of our imperfect ways, even the most beautiful ones, of depicting the Assumption of Mary, not miss a very important point about why we celebrate this Solemnity as Church?

This important point, I think, is that the Assumption of Mary is less about Mary, as important as she is as Mother of God and model of the Church and all, and more about God and about us. What do I mean by this? Mary’s Assumption is not so much a form of witness to Mary’s own power but to God’s power to work through Mary to make her the ideal mother of God’s own Son made human, Jesus Christ. Our readings today give this due praise to God. 1 Corinthians says that Jesus is the only way to the destruction of death, and so eternal life. Mary herself, as well as Elizabeth before her, also praise God, Mary through her Magnificat—“My soul magnifies the Lord”—and Elizabeth through her recognition that Mary is “the mother of my Lord”; of our Lord.

Mary, uniquely in history, has been raised to heaven body and soul by God immediately after her earthly life ended. But we, too, await not only an ascension to heaven of our souls when we die, but of our bodies, too, between now and the end of time. So we pray, especially when we pray the Apostles’ Creed, that we believe “in the resurrection of the body.” The gift Mary receives in being raised body and soul to heaven immediately is a gift we will receive, too, only in a more deferred way.

But Mary’s Assumption is nonetheless the great witness to the power of God over death itself, and to the promise of eternal life, body and soul, that awaits us and that we celebrate here and now.

Homily for Sunday, 11 August 2019

Readings of the day: Wisdom 18:6-9; Psalm 33:1, 12, 18-19, 20-22; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19; Luke 12:32-48

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Have any of us ever delayed in accomplishing a task or making a decision? What was the reason for the delay? Did we delay because of fear or insecurity in acting or deciding to act? Have we ever been afraid of how somebody might judge us for an action or decision, and so delayed acting or deciding on something important? Have we ever feared a loss of control over a situation, or maybe a relationship, and so have delayed in acting or deciding something?

Have we ever had good reason to delay an action or decision? Good reasons for delaying an action or key decision might be that we have needed to take time to consult others who have expertise in the kind of action or decision we are making, or who may be affected by the action or decision we make. We might want to delay sending that biting e-mail or social media post when we are frustrated or angry. There can be good reasons to delay important actions or decisions.

But our readings today tend to favour people who decide or act with the most conviction and with minimal delay. The Book of Wisdom today takes us back to “the night of the deliverance [of the people of Israel] from Egypt.” These Israelites were, in many ways, ready to return home, led by Moses to Israel already by the time the LORD called them to leave Egypt. Wisdom says that this “night of deliverance was made known beforehand to our ancestors” and that “the deliverance of the righteous and the destruction of their enemies were expected by [God’s] people.”

The reading we hear today from the Letter to the Hebrews takes our memory back even farther than Wisdom, to the time of Abraham and Sarah. Hebrews praises the faith of Abraham and Sarah; that when Abraham and Sarah were called by God to act “by faith,” they did so decisively. “By faith Abraham obeyed” God when God called him and Sarah “to set out for a place… not knowing where he was going… By faith he stayed for a time” in this place. This was “a land [Abraham] had been promised” by God, but only as a stopover point on their way to a more permanent homeland. “By faith Sarah… received power to conceive” and bore a son, Isaac. From Isaac, as a reward for their faith Abraham and Sarah received the promise of descendants. But even these descendants, Hebrews says, would not see for many generations the fullness of God’s reward for their faith: The resurrection from the dead we as Christians believe is made fully possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Still, from at least the time of Abraham and Sarah, people have been acting “by faith”; decisively and with conviction that God has promised them (and promised us) eternal life; a permanent homeland in heaven with God. We hear from Hebrews that these long-ago generations, and every generation since, has had one fundamental longing in common that has driven us to act with faith; with conviction; without delay: We long for heaven. We, like our ancestors in faith, “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one,” Hebrews says.

Like the Book of Wisdom and the Letter to the Hebrews, Jesus’ two parables we hear today in Luke’s Gospel, those of the Waiting Servants and the Faithful and Unfaithful Servants, also favour people who are ready; who act with decisive and faithful conviction. Jesus’ parables urge us to be ready to encounter God, “the master” of his parables. Jesus’ parables are full of strong, decisive action verbs: “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet… You must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

Luke’s Gospel was probably written fifty or so years after Jesus’ ascension to heaven. By that time, the faith of Luke’s Christian community, a generation or two removed from those who had known Jesus personally, had become a bit slack. Jesus had promised to return at the end of time. And, well, the end of time had yet to happen, so writers like Luke, leaders of their early Christian communities, had to rally the people, to keep their faith ready and active. If we are able to understand how people in Luke’s time may have allowed their faith to become a bit slack, not as ready for Jesus’ return as they had once been, can we not understand how this may be an even greater challenge today, more than two thousand years after Jesus walked this earth?

We “must also be ready”: This invitation to faith; to convicted decisions and actions oriented toward our desired goal, heaven, is just as timely now for us as it was in the time of Luke’s Gospel. Today’s Gospel reminds me of an experience when I was about twelve years old and visiting my father in Montreal. Dad had been in Montreal, away from home for a year, on a course needed to begin his career in meteorology. One day, like most days Dad was on his meteorology course, he arrived home, exhausted from a long day’s studies, and set his clipboard on the end table in his apartment. I was constantly fascinated by the complicated math formulas that would fill the pages in Dad’s clipboard, so I would look in awe at Dad’s clipboard when he set it down on the end table. This one day must have been especially exhausting for Dad because, when I looked at his clipboard, thinking I would see some awesomely complicated math formulas, the page was completely filled with, “Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake”… written in capital letters!

“Stay awake”… “You must also be ready.” I doubt that, on that day, Dad was anticipating the immediate return of Jesus, although the swift arrival of the end of time then might have relieved Dad’s exhaustion and boredom in that class. I may just now have given anybody here who is a student an idea for when we are bored or tired in class: Fill a sheet of paper with, “Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake”…

Whether we are simply trying to ward off exhaustion or boredom, or (at least I hope and I believe that, ultimately, we are as Christians) faithfully anticipating the promised return of Christ at the end of time, the message is the same: We “must also be ready… Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return.” “Stay awake”!

But to heed this call to action; to alertness to the presence of the Lord even now among us; to await heaven faithfully; to orient our decisions and actions with conviction toward the eternal life with God we desire can be easier said than done. Do we not often experience situations in our lives when it is best to delay: To “sleep on” or, better yet, give ourselves time to pray over a key decision or important message we need to communicate? In these kinds of moments, our delay in acting or deciding something important is anything but disobedience to the call of God’s Word today to faithful action; alertness; convicted orientation of our decisions and actions toward heaven. On the contrary.

And our discernment of when it is better to delay, especially prayerfully, a key action or decision, or when it is better to act or decide immediately and decisively, is often difficult. From our hearing today of Wisdom, Hebrews, and Luke, might it seem to us that it was all too easy for the people of Israel to leave Egypt under Moses; for Abraham, Sarah, and their descendants, and for the people to whom Jesus addressed his parables in Luke’s Gospel to remain faithful, convicted, alert, and not to delay unreasonably? We know from the rest of the Bible that obedience to this urgent call from God was often difficult for all these people.

It is and will always be difficult for us, too, to remain faithful, convicted, alert, and to orient our actions and decisions toward our ultimate heavenly goal. This takes a commitment on our part to depend on God; to prioritize God and our relationship with God in our prayer and our worship as a community of faith above all else. In this way, we will remain faithfully and decisively alert to how God calls us to act in the concrete situations of our lives. We will be like the people of Israel whom Wisdom describes; like Abraham and Sarah; like those who “seek an unfailing treasure in heaven,” who are “dressed for action” with our “lamps lit”; like those who are constantly alert for the Lord’s final return for our salvation. We will be the people who “Stay awake”…

Homily for Sunday, 4 August 2019

Readings of the day: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 2:21-23; Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14, 17; Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11; Luke 12:13-21

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Who went to Mass today to hear a discouraging message? I will venture to say that few if anybody here today is here to hear a discouraging message.

Yet do we not hear just this, a real “downer,” from the Book of Ecclesiastes today: “Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher… All is vanity.” All your toil “with wisdom and knowledge and skill”; your work, even if you work extended or irregular hours for some perceived good to yourself or to other people, our society, our country, or our world: All this means nothing. All the benefits of our hard work will be left behind “to be enjoyed by another.”

“All is vanity,” sorry. The Jesuit priest and columnist for the newspaper The Catholic Register out of Toronto, Fr. Scott Lewis, who taught me in a course at Toronto’s Regis College, says (I think rightly) in his Register column, “God’s Word on Sunday,” for this week that “the author of Ecclesiastes will never win a prize for being the most joyful or hopeful individual in the Bible.” In fact, Fr. Lewis says, the Jewish Rabbis a few centuries after the writing of Ecclesiastes who decided on which books to include in the Bible were leery of including Ecclesiastes in the Bible as we know it today for a number of reasons: Ecclesiastes is too discouraging. Its message could have been written for anybody already cynically dissatisfied with life enough to have been waiting for an authoritative message to support their cynicism. Ecclesiastes’ message is not particularly religious. The Book of Ecclesiastes barely mentions God.

For good or for ill, though, the Book of Ecclesiastes and its “vanity of vanities” message are in our Bible. But if we fast-forward to the chaotic 1960s, thanks to The Byrds’ 1965 single, “Turn, Turn, Turn,” it would seem that the message of the cynical teacher of Ecclesiastes has gained new receptivity. “To everything… there is a season… and a time to every purpose under heaven”: Today, over fifty years since “Turn, Turn, Turn” was released, its lyrics are engrained in the memory of many people. Is this maybe because, in the 1960s (I think this is true of any time period), people were reflecting on both the joys and the chaos of the time, individual and social successes and problems, by asking the foremost question, “What does it all mean”?

If we fast-forward again to our own just-as-chaotic time, are we not still asking similar questions? What does our life on earth mean? Of what benefit is wealth, or work, or anything? After all, the people who die with the most wealth, or having worked the hardest or the longest, still die. “Vanity of vanities,” it would seem still today, “All things are vanity.” Yet, at least by my observation, Ecclesiastes—not usually the reading we hear today, but the “to everything there is a season” reading, from Ecclesiastes 3—is a staple at Catholic funerals, when people are, I would think, searching for some message of hope or meaning in our own lives and in the life of our deceased loved ones.

These questions are age-old: What is the meaning of our life on Earth? Of what benefit is wealth, or work, or our acts of justice and kindness toward others? Why bother, anyway, if “all is vanity”? Our Psalm today, the letter to the Colossians, and the Gospel of Luke all speak to these enduring questions we have about the meaning of our earthly life and of our activity during it, although maybe not with the same cynical edge as the Teacher in Ecclesiastes.

Our Psalm speaks to the finiteness of our life on earth; our life that is “like grass that… in the morning… flourishes and is renewed [and] in the evening… fades and withers.” Still, for the Psalmist, our earthly life and work within it have great meaning and dignity. We ask God, through our Psalm, to bless our lives, however short, and our work: “Prosper for us the work of our hands.”

The letter to the Colossians invites us to prioritize “the things that are above… not… things that are on earth.” The context of Colossians is both a form of laxity in the practice of Christian faith that had developed within a few decades of the earthly life of Jesus, and a response to that laxity. The more time passed after Jesus’ ascension into heaven, we might understand, Jesus’ disciples got increasingly impatient for Jesus’ promised return to Earth at the end of time. The longer Christian disciples waited for Jesus’ return, the more they became lax or ignorant about accumulating material goods that, while not bad in themselves, risked distracting them from placing their foremost hope in God and in eternal life. The letter to the Colossians’ response to this laxity is radical, even for its time. Colossians asks its hearers to think of themselves as already dead: “For you have died, and your life is hidden in Christ with God.”

In case we think that this call in Colossians to think of ourselves as already dead is morbid or simply bizarre, I invite us to think of our own baptism. Our Church’s Rite of Baptism is full of references to death: Death to our finite earthly life so that we may rise to eternal life with Christ.

But do we not experience in our world today the same tension that would have inspired the letter writer to the Colossians to invite us to think of ourselves as dead to this finite world in order to place our priority and our hope on God and eternal life? On the one hand, do we not hear from some people even today an Ecclesiastes-like despair, without the context of the world and spirituality of the author of Ecclesiastes, who lament the “vanity”; the lack of any meaning in this earthly life? On the other hand, maybe more often today, we hear the “evil twin” of this despair of any meaning in our earthly life; we hear a “prosperity gospel” mentality that encourages greed and material accumulation, even under sometimes Christian pretexts. This “prosperity gospel” holds that either the material poverty of the poor is a curse from God and wealth a blessing, or social justice and an equitable distribution of earthly goods do not matter anyway, because God will make all our inequity and injustice right at the end of time, no matter how justly or unjustly we act now.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus offers us, I think, a counterweight either to a mentality that despairs of any meaning to our life on earth or to the “prosperity gospel” view, which, similarly to its evil twin, holds this earthly life to be of no meaning but, in doing so, encourages greed and social injustice, all too frequently under a religious mask. In our Gospel reading today, Jesus encounters a man who asks him to order his brother to divide his inheritance with him. In refusing to do as the man requests, Jesus turns to “the crowd” and warns them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

Jesus does not say that the possessions themselves are bad, or even that the man he encounters at the beginning of today’s Gospel reading is unjust in demanding his share of his inheritance. For us to understand Jesus as teaching that material possessions are in themselves bad, or that this man’s demand for his inheritance is in itself unjust, would miss the point of Jesus’ teaching. Such an understanding would be inconsistent both with the balance of Biblical teaching and with our Church’s historical teaching on the meaning of our earthly life and on justice concerning earthly possessions or wealth.

Neither Jesus, in our reading today from Luke or elsewhere in the Gospels, nor the author of Ecclesiastes—especially if we read Ecclesiastes beyond his cynical-sounding “vanity of vanities” lament we hear today—nor the letter to the Colossians, nor the Psalmist consider all wealth, all human work, or earthly life to be in themselves meaningless. Instead, Jesus and the authors of Ecclesiastes, Colossians, and our Psalm ground all meaning of earthly, material wealth, of labour, and of life itself, in God.

Human wealth, labour, and even our work toward individual charity and social justice have great meaning and dignity, but only if they are grounded in God first. If these are anything but God first—might first, nation first, wealth first, or me first—they become empty, meaningless “vanity of vanities.” Only by placing God first in all we possess, do, and are may we have eternal life, the life of ultimate meaning. And only with God first does our prayer, that of our Psalm, have any meaning for us here and now: “Prosper for us the work of our hands.”