Homily for Monday, 29 September 2014– Feast of Sts. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael

Monday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Revelation 12:7-12ab; Psalm 138:1-2ab, 2cde-3, 4-5; John 1:47-51

Who are angels? What is their purpose? Today we celebrate the feast of three of the most important angels, or archangels, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. But are not angels somewhat mysterious creatures to us? None of us has ever seen an angel; they are spiritual beings.

We might be familiar with the prayer to St. Michael, based loosely on our first reading today from the Book of Revelation:

St. Michael the Archangel,

defend us in battle.

Be our defense against the wickedness

and snares of the devil.

May God rebuke him,

we humbly pray, and do thou,

O Prince of the heavenly hosts,

by the power of God,

thrust into hell Satan,

and all the evil spirits,

who prowl about the world

seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

The Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are rarely mentioned in Scripture. Michael is named five times: three times in Daniel, once in Revelation, and once in the Letter of Jude. Gabriel is named four times, twice each in Daniel and the Gospel of Luke. Raphael is named a whopping twenty-eight times, all in the Book of Tobit!

But what is the purpose of angels, and specifically of these three Archangels? By the well-known prayer to St. Michael and his mention in books of the Bible written in times of crisis (these “apocalyptic” books project struggles against occupying powers, Babylon in Daniel; Rome in Revelation, on a cosmic scale: heaven versus hell; God versus Satan), we can associate Michael with defense in times of crisis and battle. Is anyone here named Michael here? If your name is Michael, you may be interested to know that your name is a rhetorical question in Hebrew: “Who is like God”? Of course we know the answer to this question, or do we? No one is like God except God, we could answer. But then all of us are created in God’s image and likeness. All of us in this sense are like God. And yet Jesus Christ alone is at once fully human and fully God. “Who is like God?” Michael stands in place of God, in our defense against Satan or any force that could degrade our God-given dignity; our being in God’s image and likeness.

Gabriel is associated both with crises and battles, like Michael, and with the Incarnation, Jesus becoming human in Mary’s womb. Gabriel means “God is my strength.” How does St. Gabriel give us God’s strength; the strength to say “yes” to God as Mary did to bring our Savior into the world?

Raphael heals the cataracts from Tobit’s eyes in the Book of Tobit. His name means “God has healed.” St. Raphael shows us the healing power of God.

The word “angel” itself means “messenger of God.” A messenger is important, but never more important than the message. For us, God is the message, pointed to by the angels. Jesus Christ, God’s Son, like us in all but sin, is God’s message in human flesh, pointed to by St. Gabriel. We celebrate Sts. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, along with all the angels, as God’s messengers. In special ways they show us God’s strength, God’s healing, and who is like God.  

Homily for Sunday, 28 September 2014

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 18:25-28; Psalm 25:4-5, 8-9, 10, 14; Philippians 2:1-11; Matthew 21:28-32

Who here wants to go to work in God’s vineyard? God needs your help urgently. God and our Church are now accepting applications from the unfailingly reliable; those who have never sinned (or at least have confessed and repented of their sin right away); have never disobeyed or even questioned any of the moral teachings of the Church; have never been late or absent from work without a good reason; have never refused to commit to a task and then grudgingly committed to it later… The greatest perk of this job in God’s vineyard is a free VIP pass for you and your household to heaven. Interviews will take place next week after all Masses. Only successful candidates will be notified.

If this were the application process for God’s vineyard, I think interviews would be few. The sacristy would be a lonely place after Mass; the confessional perhaps not so much... Fortunately, we have word from one St. Matthew, former tax collector-turned-Gospel writer who is God’s assistant hiring manager to St. Peter of Pearly Gates Inc., that the hiring requirements for God’s vineyard have been relaxed. In fact, sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, the son who refused to work in the vineyard as he agreed to do but then changed his mind later, and other miscreants are all gaining entry into God’s vineyard (along with their VIP passes into heaven) ahead of everyone else! Does anyone here have any objections to this hiring practice?

Here, I have one objection. It landed on the desk of the prophet Ezekiel late last night. It reads: “The LORD’s way is not fair”! This goes to show that even God cannot please everybody… Poor Ezekiel went into a prophetic angry rant over this complaint that still has yet to end! Ezekiel says that, “if a sinner turns from the wickedness he has committed [and] does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life.” Sinners who repent sometime between now and when they stand at the gates of heaven will be hired in God’s vineyard; will receive their VIP passes into heaven.

“Fine,” we might say, “but I am still uneasy with this hiring practice. It is too uncertain to determine who gets hired; who gets her or his VIP pass into heaven and who does not.”

But is not Jesus saying to us that this focus on who is hired and who is not; this focus on who gets her or his VIP pass into heaven and who does not, may be the wrong focus? Should not our focus be on times when we have sinned; when we have agreed to work in God’s vineyard, so to speak (which all of us have in our baptism and confirmation), and wilfully not shown up for work; when we have agreed only belatedly to return to the work, to a fuller expression and obedience to the Catholic Christian faith we profess; when we have not loved as God invites us to love; when we have excluded others whom we judge as less faithful; when perhaps we have considered others beyond the pale of God’s salvation?

I am not saying that we should test God by deliberately not living in ways we know to be morally right. I am not saying that we should disregard the moral teachings of the Church that are meant to point us toward God and toward harmony in our human relationships. I am not saying, “Be like the son in today’s Gospel reading who refuses to work in God’s vineyard.” You may not be hired back if you wait until too late to reconsider; to repent… But anyway this is up to God, not me. I am not saying that we are all saved regardless of how morally we live, nor am I saying that we are all corrupt sinners and cannot be saved no matter how hard we try: No VIP pass to heaven for you!

No, these are heresies and have all been tried before. We do not know who will be saved; who will get into heaven and who will not. For good reason, our Church teaches that there is a heaven and a hell. We know that many people are in heaven already. They are the saints, and they are many more than the saints whose names we know. But we do not know if anyone is in hell. My hope is that hell is good and hot… and empty.

Yet we do not know this; only God knows who is and will be in heaven and who is not and will not be. God’s salvation is a mystery to us. We are invited to live this mystery by giving one another the best possibility of salvation. How do we do this?

Would we not want to give one another the best possibility of salvation by following the invitation of St. Paul in our second reading from his letter to the Philippians? Instead of asking who will get into heaven first; who has the VIP pass versus who will get in later, last, or not at all, might we seek “any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit” from and with one another? Indeed, might we encourage one another in Christ; love one another; show one another “compassion and mercy” before seeking our own interests? Might we seek out workers for God’s vineyard; “co-heirs” to God’s kingdom as we pray in our Eucharistic Prayer; people with their flaws, weaknesses, and sins that we all have but who are also seeking God; seeking salvation as we all are?

Maybe there are people among us who are like the first son in our Gospel reading today who refuse to work in God’s vineyard but then, with some encouragement, will change their minds. Maybe some people we know will be like the second son, full of eagerness at first to work in God’s vineyard but who will need our encouragement; prayers; forgiveness when remaining faithful; working the vineyard; seeking and building God’s kingdom is not easy. We may know people like the “tax collectors and prostitutes,” the last people we would think of as having a chance at heaven. Do not write them off; they are our brothers and sisters in Christ, too. God created them and loves them as God created and loves all of us and wants us all to be saved.

“Complete my joy,” St. Paul says to the Philippians, “by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing.” And what is this “one thing” of which St. Paul asks us to think? It is not how to hang on for dear life to our own VIP passes into heaven, if we can even be sure that we have them. It is not self-righteously trying to discern who is saved and who is not: Saved, saved, not saved, saved, no chance… It is, as St. Paul says, “looking out not for our own interests,” unless we are looking out for our, hopefully, common interest that is our salvation. But it is looking out for the interests “of others.” This is how, together, we will have the best chance at the salvation God wants for all of us. This is “the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus” of which St. Paul asks that we “have in” us.

So who wants eternal life? Who wants to be saved? Who wants to work in God’s vineyard in the interests of one another so we all get there? You are all hired, with a chance at a VIP pass for you and your household to heaven. Work starts immediately. 

Homily for Friday, 26 September 2014– Ferial

Friday of the 25th week in Ordinary Time

Optional Memorial of Sts. Cosmas and Damian 

Readings of the day: Ecclesiastes 3:1-11; Psalm 144:1b, 2abc, 3-4; Luke 9:18-22

This homily was given at the Church of the Most Holy Trinity, Webster, NY.

Who is really in control of our lives; our world; creation? The easy answer to this question is that God is ultimately in control. Our first reading today from Ecclesiastes hints at this answer: “There is an appointed time for everything… [God] has made everything appropriate to its time… without [our] ever discovering… the work [that] God has done.”

But is it not foolish, indeed dangerous, for us to leave everything up to God’s control, when we are capable of shaping our relationships with one another, some events in our lives, in our communities, and even sometimes national and worldwide events?

There is “a time to be born and a time to die.” We have no control over birth and death. But do we not have some say in promoting peace or promoting or alleviating conflict in our interpersonal relationships; in our families; in our Church; even in our world? Are we not invited as Christians to love and not to hate; to care for one another and for God’s creation? And so why does Ecclesiastes allow for “a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace” when to love one another and, at least in part, to work toward peace is up to us? Is there ever “a time to hate”?

When I prepare with families for a funeral of a loved one, many choose this reading from Ecclesiastes as the first reading at the funeral. And yet often the short version of this reading, which leaves out “a time to hate,” is chosen. Clearly this phrase raises a fair objection. How can hatred be accepted as part of the way God has made us; made our world to be?

I think the answer to these kinds of questions is expressed toward the beginning and again toward end of our first reading today. Ecclesiastes says that, on the one hand, “there is an appointed time for everything.” On the other hand, God “has put the timeless into [our] hearts.” God has created time itself, and has also given us an awareness of “the timeless”; what we can control and influence and what we are invited to leave trustingly up to God are both God’s gift to us. Even more, the ability God has given to each and every one of us to discern the difference between what we influence and even have responsibility over and what is “timeless,” what is mystery, is God’s gift to us.

We have perhaps heard the so-called “Serenity Prayer” whose message is similar to that in our reading from Ecclesiastes: “God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Both the “Serenity Prayer” and our first reading today raise the question: Who is in control? Ultimately God is in control of our lives; our world; creation. God “has put the timeless into [our] hearts.” But God has also given us the gift of helping to shape his creation; to influence interpersonal, local, and more far-reaching relationships and events; a gift God has given to no other creature that we know.  This is our time to accept this role; this gift from God, with trust in God, balancing and discerning it along with the sense of mystery; of “the timeless,” a gift that God has also “put… into [our] hearts.”

Homily for Thursday, 25 September 2014– Ferial

Thursday of the 25th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ecclesiastes 1:2-11; Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14, 17bc; Luke 9:7-9

Do our lives; does our work have any significance? If we hear only the cynical words of Qoheleth in today’s first reading, the beginning of the Book of Ecclesiastes, it would seem that nothing we do, nor even our lives, have any significance. “Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!” Qoheleth says. “What profit” have we “from all the labor which [we toil] at under the sun”?

Would not many of us be inclined to agree with Qoheleth? Life is cyclical: birth; growing up; work; taxes; death… Does all this have any meaning? Perhaps atheists of our time would be proud that even Scripture questions whether our existence has any meaning. Would a loving, present, and merciful God allow this kind of meaningless existence?

But wait… Should Qoheleth’s questions be interpreted not literally but rhetorically? Perhaps what Qoheleth is saying is that, indeed, nothing matters, neither our lives nor our work nor even belief in God, if it is self-serving and not oriented toward serving others and God. Toward whom are our lives; our work; our faith; our worship oriented: God and others or ourselves? Are our lives; our work; our faith; our worship maybe oriented toward God and others sometimes and toward ourselves at other times? Our lives; our work; our faith; our worship are meaningless “vanity” if they are “all about me.” Our lives; our work; our faith; our worship are given meaning if they are all about God and about the people and the world we serve and love in God’s name.

On the one hand, our Gospel gives us the example of King Herod, for whom life was all about him. And so he is perplexed by Jesus; neither able to “see him” nor to “hear” accurately the truth about who Jesus is: the Christ; the Son of God.

On the other hand, perhaps many of us could identify with the writer of today’s Psalm. We at least try (if we are not often successful) at making our lives; our work; our faith; our worship all about God and the people we serve. Yet we recognize, as in our Psalm, that we cannot live a life of faith; we cannot worship properly; we cannot have any meaning beyond “vanity of vanities” without relationship with God. And so the writer of our Psalm prays and invites us to pray to God, “Prosper the work of our hands!”

Lord, “prosper the work of our hands for us”! You give meaning to our lives; our work; our service; our faith; our worship, which are not first about “me” but about you, O God, and the people and world we serve and love in your name.

Homily for Tuesday, 23 September 2014– Memorial of St. Pio of Pietrelcina

Tuesday of the 25th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Proverbs 21:1-6, 10-13; Psalm 119:1, 27, 30, 34, 35, 44; Luke 8:19-21

Who are Jesus’ mother; brothers; sisters? Is it possible to use phrases like “brothers and sisters in Christ” (one that I use often) or “people of God” to the point that they become emptied of meaning?

“My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it.” Jesus gives us two verbs in our Gospel reading today to characterize those closest to his heart; to the heart of God: hear and act. Jesus’ “mother and brothers” and sisters are not primarily those related by blood but those who hear and act on God’s word.

What does Jesus mean by hearing and then acting the word of God? We know that to hear the word of God is not a passive reception of sound into our ears that does not invite; does not impel us to do anything. The kind of hearing to which Jesus invites us is itself active. If we hear God’s word well, our hearing will give rise to action: kindness; joy; service toward those in need of our service and presence; humbly allowing others to serve us and to be present to us in our need.

St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, whose feast we celebrate today, once said that there are two ways to speak and listen to Christ; to God: with our lips and with our hearts. St. Padre Pio goes on to say, “On certain occasions we should only speak to [Christ] with our hearts.” This is, I believe, the kind of active speaking and hearing of the word of God that enables us to act on the same word of God; to serve one another, individually and communally; to build one another up as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Who are Jesus’ mother; brothers; sisters? Those who hear actively and then act concretely on the word of God are Jesus’ mother; brothers; sisters. Active hearing and concrete active living of the word of God is a sign of our love for God and for one another; a sign to our world that the word of God has changed the quality of our relationship both with God and with one another. We hear and act on the word of God, which frees us to love God and one another. I would like to share some words of Pope Francis from his homily on Sunday in Tirana, Albania, which to me speaks to hearing and acting on God’s word in a way that frees us for loving Christian service; for being true brothers and sisters in Christ: 

“The secret to a good life is found in loving and giving oneself for love’s sake… In this way, there is no longer any fear of making important choices in life, but they are seen for what they are, namely, as the way to personal fulfillment in freedom.” 

“When love for Christ is placed above all else, even above our legitimate particular needs, then we are able to… move towards Jesus who, in our brothers and sisters, comes to us. His wounds are still visible today on the bodies of so many men and women who are hungry and thirst; who are humiliated; who are in hospital or prison. By touching and caring for these wounds with tenderness, it is possible to fully live the Gospel and to adore God who lives in our midst.”

Homily for Tuesday, 16 September 2014– Memorial of Sts. Cornelius and Cyprian

Tuesday of the 24th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Corinthians 12:12-14, 27-31a; Psalm 100:1b-2, 3, 4, 5; Luke 7:11-17

Who here has ever received visitors at your home: family; friends; someone trying to sell something; someone bringing a religious message door-to-door; someone you do not know? Who here has been a visitor to someone else’s home? I imagine that most of us have.

On the one hand, having visitors in our homes can be a wonderful experience. On the other hand, visitors can sometimes make us feel uncomfortable or irritate us, or sometimes we just do not know what to expect, whether as the host or as the visitor…

Now what if God came to visit our homes? First of all, I would want to make sure my house was spotless!

Jesus is a visitor in our Gospel reading today from Luke. He joins a funeral procession in a small city called Nain. The funeral is for the only son of a mother who is also “a widow.” We hear from Luke that Jesus raises the young man to life again: “Young man, I tell you, arise!” And then Jesus gives the man, raised from the dead, “to his mother.” This event foreshadows Jesus’ own death and resurrection: Jesus dies on the cross, is given to his mother, and rises after three days in the tomb.

I am sure the people of Nain in that funeral procession did not expect the young man to be raised to life. The miracle that this visitor, Jesus, performs, fills the people present with “fear.” They exclaim, “God has visited his people”!

What if we were to enter a home and, when we left, our host were to say, “God has visited his people”; “God has visited” this home in the person of any one of us? Have we ever said this of a visitor to our homes? Neither I nor, to my knowledge, anyone here, has ever succeeded in raising someone from the dead as Jesus did in Nain (If you have, I want to see you after Mass!). And yet the events of which we hear today surrounding the funeral procession in Nain remind me of the times I have visited homes for wake services before or for receptions after funerals. I often do not know what to say, if anything, to a family and friends grieving a loved one. I only know that I have been invited simply to be present to them. Families in these instances have shown to me the presence of God by their generosity and kindness in ways I could never repay. I can say in these instances after the people of Nain: “God has visited his people.”

We, too, are invited to be God’s presence to people in need: to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to help the homeless find shelter, to visit the sick and comfort the dying, to free the unjustly imprisoned, to bury the dead, to teach, to profess, and  to live our faith in a way that convinces the doubtful and the lost, to bring sinners to God’s mercy, to be patient with one another’s shortcomings, to forgive one another, and to pray for the living and the dead… These are called corporal and spiritual works of mercy by our Church for a purpose: They are ways in which, through us, God visits his people.