Homily for Wednesday, 28 May 2014‒ Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

This homily was given at the convent of the Holy Child Sisters, Oxford, United Kingdom

Readings of the day: Acts 17:15, 22-18:1; Psalm 148:1-2, 11-12, 13, 14; John 16:12-15

St. Paul speaks in our first reading today from the Areopagus to the people of Athens who, according to Paul, were worshiping “an unknown God.” Have any of us ever known someone to worship “an unknown God”? Among worshipers of “an unknown God” I include those who may not know they are worshiping any god at all.

Have any of us ever heard someone say, for instance, “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual”? In my experience, people who say this usually mean that they do not identify with any organized religious tradition; almost as often they do not want to. Their lack of desire to be associated with an organized religion may be based on an objection they have to a particular religious tradition or to organized religion in general, or they may perceive that religion limits their freedom to think and to believe as they wish. But I wonder if there are “spiritual but not religious” people who describe themselves this way because they do not know at enough depth what a particular religious tradition practices and teaches.

It is difficult to judge whether the Athenians to whom Paul speaks at the Areopagus worshiped “an unknown God” in the sense that the “unknown God” of their altar inscription was actually unknown; whether they wanted no association with any organized religion (unlikely, since the pagan Greek understanding of the divine was somewhat sophisticated); or whether some had rejected Christianity in favour of their own religion.

Paul’s audience in Athens may have included all these types of people. We hear from the Acts of the Apostles that, upon listening to Paul, some Athenians genuinely accepted the Christian faith. Others “scoffed” at Paul and immediately rejected the faith he was preaching. I doubt that many among Paul’s hearers, if any, truly rejected any and all religion whatsoever. This stance of “spiritual but not religious” is, I think, a more modern and even contemporary phenomenon, but I will leave this question to philosophers…

Nevertheless, in our time we still know people who are “spiritual but not religious.” We know people who have built spiritual places of worship “to an unknown God.” We know people who have, for a variety of reasons, perhaps anger or simple indifference, rejected religion altogether; rejected Christianity; rejected the Catholic Church. I find it fascinating that the University of Oxford is home to both Blessed John Henry Newman who, by his own writings, grew from worship of “an unknown God” toward embracing Christianity, and to Richard Dawkins, the biologist and vehement atheist of our own time. This university is also home to (I suspect) a majority of people who stand between the likes of Newman and Dawkins in their approach to religious faith.

May our mission as Church be to act with special kindness and to pray for those who reject religious faith. May we respect and uphold the freedom of religion of people of other faiths; and may we encourage and also pray for those genuinely searching for a religious home; those who build their altars “to an unknown God.”

Homily for Tuesday, 27 May 2014‒ Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

This homily was given at the convent of the Holy Child Sisters, Oxford, United Kingdom

Readings of the day: Acts 16:22-34; Psalm 138:1-2ab, 2cde-3, 7c-8; John 16:5-11 

Who is “the Advocate” whom Jesus promises us repeatedly in John’s Gospel, who has been the focus of our Gospel readings for the last few days, and who is again the focus of today’s reading from John?

The easy answer is that “the Advocate” is the Holy Spirit whom Jesus sent into our world when he ascended to the Father. But then the Holy Spirit is a mysterious presence. We, like Jesus’ disciples, often do not know what to make of the Holy Spirit. It is unsurprising to me that, the more Jesus says to his disciples not to be saddened at his death and at their own eventual suffering and death in Jesus’ name, because he will send them “the Advocate,” the more saddened they become.

Jesus’ disciples do not understand just who “the Advocate,” the Holy Spirit, is. And yet is our understanding of who the Holy Spirit is any better than these first disciples? Unlike their lives, ours are not threatened because of our faith, although many Christians do face this threat of death even today. Nevertheless, the work of Satan, “the ruler of this world” in the words of John’s Gospel, is still very much felt in our world. Just this week, we have heard the news of four dead in a shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels and seven more in Santa Barbara, California. Violence and war continue in Ukraine, in Syria, and elsewhere. Who then is this “Advocate” promised us by Jesus, and where is the Holy Spirit amid this continued evil?

In answering this question, it may help us to consider how Jesus depicts “the Advocate” in today’s Gospel reading. Let us imagine a great trial in a courtroom. “The Advocate” or the Paraclete (closer to the word used here in John’s Greek for the Holy Spirit) is literally “the one who calls from beside” us. We are on trial for our sin; the sin of the world, yet the Holy Spirit is our marquee defence lawyer!

Opposite the Holy Spirit is the devil, whom John presents as a diabolical[1] (again in the literal sense of this word; no offense to lawyers in general) prosecuting attorney, or the one who “throws across” accusations against the defendant. But an amazing event happens at this trial: We are not put on trial; the devil is. With the Holy Spirit, our Advocate, defending; encouraging; consoling us, Satan is condemned before the trial even begins.

On the one hand, Satan will continue to make his presence felt for a time, since this great trial is still going on in order to “convict the world,” as John says, of “sin and righteousness and condemnation.”

On the other hand, let us take heart that we know from Jesus Christ the outcome of this trial before it ends: We are sinners but will be acquitted because we are defended by the best; “the Advocate”; the Holy Spirit. The devil will be condemned in only a matter of time. God is our righteousness and ultimately the salvation of the world.

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[1] The devil here is the “diabolos” in Greek, from dia-, across, and -bollein, to throw, so to throw across an argument as in a court of law; to accuse. Elsewhere in the New Testament (as in Rev 12:10), the devil is sometimes called “the accuser” in English whereas the Greek word is the same, “diabolos.” The Holy Spirit is the "Paraclete," from the verb "parakalein," to call (-kalein) from beside (para-), so to console, defend, or encourage. While I would not normally engage in such academic word parsing in a homily, I do here only because this homily in part derives from a scholarly conversation I had with one of the Holy Child Sisters with whom I am staying during my current visit to Oxford.

Homily for Monday, 26 May 2014‒ Memorial of St. Philip Neri

This homily was given at the convent of the Holy Child Sisters, Oxford, United Kingdom

Monday of the Sixth Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 16:11-17; Psalm 149:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6a, 9b; John 15:26-16:4a

What words or concepts do we associate with poverty? Does poverty mean to be materially poor or even destitute? Does poverty mean to give up wealth in order to live by the Word of God? Do we perhaps relate poverty with one of the religious vows we have taken and a principle by which all Christians are called to live?

How many of us would think of Lydia, the “dealer in purple cloth” we encounter in today’s first reading, as poor? I suspect that not many people would think of Lydia as poor. After all, she was a wealthy merchant whom Acts says had a home large enough for the Christian community of Philippi to gather in for worship. Lydia was one of the first leaders of the early Christian “house churches.”

For this reason I see Lydia as an example to us of poverty. How so? Lydia was not poor materially (the Book of Acts notes otherwise), but she was poor in the sense that she generously opened her home to St. Paul and to the Christians of Philippi. Even before this, and before Lydia and her household were baptized, Acts says that “the Lord opened her heart to pay attention” to St. Paul and his message, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour.

“The Lord opened her heart”; Lydia allowed her heart to be opened by the Lord. This is an example to us of courage and humility; of poverty of heart and spirit; of openness to the Lord that extends beyond mere material poverty. It is possible to be materially wealthy and yet to be poor in the way Lydia was.

Speaking of poverty, I deeply appreciate that for the last several days I have been visiting Oxford, the home city and university of Blessed John Henry Newman. The English cardinal was an Oratorian and an admirer of St. Philip Neri, the founder of the Oratorians whose feast day we celebrate today. John Henry Newman admired Philip Neri especially because of his poverty.

Newman writes this of St. Philip Neri toward the end of The Idea of a University: “He would be but an ordinary individual priest as others: and his weapons should be but unaffected humility and unpretending love… He came to the Eternal City and he sat himself down there… He sat in his small room, and… the rich and the wellborn, as well as the simple and the illiterate, crowded into it… And who was he, I say, all the while, but [a] humble priest, a stranger in Rome... great simply in the attraction with which a Divine Power had gifted him?”

St. Philip Neri in Rome, Cardinal John Henry Newman here in Oxford, and Lydia in Philippi in the Acts of the Apostles are all examples to us of poverty. May we, too, live their way of poverty; of humbly allowing God to open our hearts “to pay attention” to the Lord and to the Lord’s Gospel.

 

Homily for Saturday, 24 May 2014‒ Saturday of the Fifth Week of Easter

This homily was given at the convent of the Holy Child Sisters, Oxford, United Kingdom

Readings of the day: Acts 16:1-10; Psalm 100:1b-2, 3, 5; John 15:18-21

How many of us have ever had the experience of simply knowing “that God had called us” to take a particular action or to speak in a particular way relating to our faith? This was the experience of St. Paul and Timothy and of the other “Apostles and presbyters” of whom we hear in our first reading. Guided by the wise discernment of God’s will for them and for the Church by these leaders, the earliest Christian communities “grew stronger in faith and increased in number,” we hear from Acts.

The Acts of the Apostles presents us with a scenario of the earliest Church that is almost too good to be true. We know that Christians of this time faced sometimes severe persecution, even martyrdom. In our own time we may (I think rightly) question someone who says that she or he knows, without qualification, that she or he has been called by God to act or speak in a particular way.

And yet, with this caution in mind, I wonder if, in limited circumstances, it is possible, even probable, that we may be called by God to particular actions or words.  Perhaps these circumstances may include when we took religious vows. For priests, they may include when we were ordained. For others yet, moments when they know that God’s will for them is to serve in mission lands or to risk their own lives for our faith raise for me the question of whether these people have discerned a calling that is beyond their strength alone. Prayerful discernment of our calling; our vocation from God, in my experience and in that of many people I know, leads those who discern their divine vocation to a deep sense of peace that at times is not readily explained.

This sense of peace in knowing that we are discerning how God is calling us to act or to speak can even help us as Church to overcome persecution. It can help us to overcome a kind of estrangement from “the world,” in the words of our Gospel reading today; a world from which God has called us to God’s service because God nevertheless loves the world, despite its (and our) rejection of God when we sin.

In the times that gave rise to the Acts of the Apostles and to John’s Gospel, as in our times, our experience as Church is a mixed one. On the one hand, in places the Church was and is growing rapidly both in numbers and in the strength of faith of its members. The situation depicted primarily in Acts still takes place in many places today. On the other hand, the Church is still persecuted; martyrs still shed their blood in a world that “hates” God and rejects God’s Christ at times.

And yet, amid both the growth in numbers and strength and persecution and rejection, we are called as Christians to come to know, as well as we are able, God’s will for us; to discern how we are to act as God acts and how we are to speak the words of God. In discerning this will of God and our vocation in light of it, we find our greatest peace.   

Homily for Friday, 23 May 2014‒ Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter

This homily was given at the convent of the Holy Child Sisters, Oxford, United Kingdom

Readings of the day: Acts 15:22-31; Psalm 59:8-9, 10, 12; John 15:12-17

How often do we pray to the Holy Spirit?

Pope Francis asks us this very question in his homily this morning. The pope had been reflecting on our first reading today from the Acts of the Apostles in which the first “Apostles and elders” of the Church seek the will of the Holy Spirit and of “the whole Church” in making two important decisions. First, Judas and Silas are sent to serve in Antioch alongside Paul and Barnabas. Second, the new regulations imposed on the Christians of Antioch are to be only those minimally necessary for the good of the Christian community: “Abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, from blood, from meats of strangled animals, and from unlawful marriage.”

We hear in our first reading that the people receive these teachings on food and marriage and their messengers, Judas and Silas, with joy. The Christians of Antioch are joyful because these teachings and the choice of Judas and Silas to proclaim them are clearly the fruit of prayer to the Holy Spirit. “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us” is “the message to be proclaimed in Antioch “by word of mouth.”

But how, then, is it possible for us to know that decisions we make and teachings we interpret in faith are the fruit of attentive prayer to the Holy Spirit? How often do we pray to the Holy Spirit, perhaps even unaware that the Holy Spirit is working through our prayer to teach us, to console us, or maybe to encourage us?

As distinct from the Father and the Son, the Spirit is difficult if not impossible to capture in an image, so how might we pray to the Spirit? When I was a seminarian in Toronto, Canada, I also prepared children for first communion at my religious congregation’s parish there, St. Basil’s Church. One of the activities the children would do during their preparation for first communion was to write down or draw the first images that came to their minds when they thought of the Father; the Son; the Holy Spirit. Almost invariably, on the sheets of paper that the children returned to me after this activity, there would be drawings of an old man in the sky for the Father and a young man on land for the Son. The Spirit almost always proved more difficult to image. The children would draw a dove, fire, or sometimes something more creative…

My point is that, if we take for granted that to capture the Holy Spirit in a concept or an image is next-to-impossible, how can we expect to pray to the Holy Spirit? How often do we pray to the Holy Spirit?

Perhaps the answer to this question is that we pray to the Holy Spirit more often than we are aware. Our invitation to pray to the Holy Spirit in today’s readings and in Pope Francis’ homily may be simply an invitation to allow the Holy Spirit to work through us both in the greater decisions we may have to make, but also in our everyday living of our faith.