Homily for Thursday, 13 August 2015– Ferial

Thursday of the 19th week in Ordinary Time

Optional Memorial of Sts. Hippolytus and Pontian

Readings of the day: Joshua 3:7-10a, 11, 13-17;  Psalm 114:1-2, 3-4, 5-6; Matthew 18:21-19:1

“How often must I forgive”? Jesus answers this memorable question from St. Peter: “Not seven times but seventy-seven times.” In other words, show unlimited forgiveness toward other people when they sin. But is this not easier said than done? What becomes of moral accountability when we forgive another person even when this person commits the same sin against us multiple times?

If we struggle with these questions, I think we can take comfort that even popes have had the same struggles. We begin with St. Peter, by tradition the first Bishop of Rome, who asks the question of Jesus that perhaps many of us have thought at some point: “Lord, if my [sister or] brother sins against me, how often must I forgive [this person]? As many  as seven times”?

Today we also celebrate the feast of two obscure saints, Hippolytus of Rome and Pontian, who were martyred in Rome in the early 200s. A fascinating detail about Hippolytus and Pontian is that for many years they were angry with each other; could not forgive each other until they were imprisoned and killed together by the Roman Emperor Maximus. Pontian had been pope. He and the two popes before him, Callixtus and Urban I, allowed people who had committed adultery and other serious sins back into the Church without, in Hippolytus’ eyes, a long and rigorous enough time of penance. Hippolytus was so outspoken against Popes Callixtus, Urban, and Pontius that he accepted election as an antipope (a rival claimant to the papacy of Rome). This got Hippolytus excommunicated. Thankfully, Hippolytus reconciled with the Church, probably under Pope Pontius while both were in prison, before he was martyred.

Hippolytus and Pontius were canonized together and share today as a feast day. Might we call this a great feast day of forgiveness, “not seven times but seventy-seven times”? Today is the feast day of a pope and the first antipope, who both were named saints and are examples to us of (eventual) forgiveness.

But how late is too late to forgive? How long before we become like the servant in our Gospel reading who is forgiven his debt but then refuses to forgive his fellow servant’s debt? Jesus invites us to be free and not to delay in forgiving one another. If we wait to forgive, we may not have the fortune of Hippolytus!

Who are the people in our lives whom we have most difficulty forgiving? Occasionally I hear people who are angry and have difficulty forgiving somebody in leadership: A president, a bishop, even a pope! But most often are not the people we have most difficulty forgiving those dearest to us: Close friends and family members?

I have seen over the last few days a saying on Facebook I find rings true. It says that to hold a grudge is to let somebody live rent-free in your head. The Church does not need to say this; psychologists will say this first. Jesus invites us to forgive. If we wait to become martyrs like Hippolytus before we forgive, it will become too late. And so make the demons of lack of forgiveness and unchecked anger in our heads and hearts pay the rent! This is all about accountability for our own mental and spiritual health.

Homily for Tuesday, 11 August 2015– Memorial of St. Claire

Tuesday of the 19th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 31:1-8; Responsorial Canticle: Deuteronomy 32:3-4ab, 7, 8, 9, 12;  Matthew 18:1-5, 10, 12-14

To all grandparents here especially, and to all who have seen grandparents in action: Have you ever noticed how grandparents delight in their grandchildren? Is there not something special about a grandparent-grandchild relationship? Perhaps, unlike parents with their own children, a grandparent can spoil their grandchildren and then return them to their parents (all wound up, of course) at the end of their stay with Grandma and Grandpa.

In our first reading today, Moses has developed a grandfatherly relationship with the people he is leading home to Israel from Egypt. At “one hundred and twenty years old,” Moses is finally ready to retire; to hand over responsibility to Joshua for leading the people of Israel into the land God has promised them. Clearly Moses delights in the people of Israel. He shows concern for them and for young Joshua. The grandfatherly Moses’ parting advice to the people of Israel and to Joshua is to trust always in God: “He will never fail or forsake you.”

We know that Jesus did not have his own children or grandchildren. And yet he, even more than Moses, shows great delight in and concern for children; for the “little ones.” We hear in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus’ response to his disciples’ question, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven”? Jesus places a child in their midst and says: “Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.”

Jesus’ concern for and delight in the “little ones” reaches to those who have gone astray like lost sheep. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who will leave “ninety-nine” sheep in the hills to search for and to bring home the one lost sheep. Jesus is like the father or grandfather who loves his children; his grandchildren without condition; who delights in them.

In this respect my grandfather (Mom’s dad), Frank Salt, who would have turned eighty-nine years old today, was a lot like Jesus or Moses. My Grandpa perhaps did not quite have the patience of Jesus or of Moses, but like them he delighted and had great loving concern for his children; his grandchildren; his great-grandchildren.

During one of my last visits to my grandparents’ home before they moved to be closer to my parents, Grandpa was, like Moses in our first reading, more noticeably unable “to move about freely.” But one sure way to increase his energy was to speak with him about his grandchildren or his great-grandchildren.

Not long before this particular visit, my sister Deanna and brother-in-law Tyler had visited with my niece Molly, who was then just old enough to walk and to get into everything! Grandpa and Grandma put out old magazines so that Molly wouldn’t get into the new ones, and then watched with great sport (and laughed about it weeks later when I visited) as she shredded all their old magazines.

What delight Grandpa had in his new great-granddaughter! It was like the delight Jesus and Moses had in the children; in those they led; the delight of a grandfather. Grandparents: I only ask that you take more time than Moses to enjoy your grandchildren. Do not wait until age one hundred and twenty to retire!

Homily for Sunday, 9 August 2015

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:4-8; Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9; Ephesians 4:30-5:2; John 6:41-51

This homily was given at the House of Mercy, a homeless shelter in Rochester, NY.

How often do we think of our senses as ways of describing our relationship with God? Could touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste be means for us to strengthen our relationship with God?

Our readings today all speak of our experience of God in terms of our senses. Our Psalm praises God beautifully, inviting us to “taste and see the goodness of the LORD.” When Elijah, in our first reading today from 1 Kings, is in such deep despair that he asks God to take his life, an angel twice touches Elijah to wake him and then orders him to eat. And so God makes God’s presence known to Elijah through Elijah’s senses of touch and taste. In John’s Gospel Jesus speaks of himself as “the bread… from heaven.” Jesus is no ordinary food. Even the manna with which God fed the people of Israel in the desert while they were fleeing slavery in Egypt does not compare to the food Jesus offers. Manna had offered temporary relief from hunger. Jesus offers himself as the food necessary for our salvation; food that is eternal; “the living bread… from heaven” and “flesh for the life of the world.” Jesus offers us salvation we can sense: touch, smell, see, hear, and taste.

Yet Jesus invites us not just to take in God’s presence in our world by our senses. The Letter to the Ephesians from which we hear today says that “Christ handed himself over to us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.” But immediately before this we hear in Ephesians, “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love.” Ephesians asks us to make God’s presence felt or, better yet, smelled as “a fragrant aroma” by the way we live “as beloved children” of God, “in love.”

And so my question is this: How does God smell in our world? How, by the way we live, are we making God smell in our world? Is God being smelled; touched; seen; heard; tasted; more fully experienced as a God of goodness and love; a “fragrant aroma”; “the living bread… from heaven… for the life of the world” because of the way we live as Christians?

Many if not all of us here at the House of Mercy could answer truthfully, “Yes,” to this question. God lives and is experienced here. We hear God; the Word of God in our Scripture readings and here at Mass. We hear God in our lively celebration of Eucharist each Sunday; the participation of all of us in our beautiful music at our Sunday Mass. We see God in one another gathered here and then going forth from here to act in justice on the gift of God we receive in our worship. We taste God: Jesus Christ really and truly present under humble bread and wine in our Eucharist. And we taste and smell God present when we are fed and provide food here for many of this city’s homeless and otherwise hungry. We touch God in our sign of peace here; our works of peace out in our streets. These are powerful signs of God’s presence especially in this part of Rochester still beset by poverty; homelessness; hunger; violence.

God lives and we sense God present and alive here at the House of Mercy! But I would be missing one of the means in which God has been present and alive here if I did not mention my late Basilian brother priest and regular presider at our Mass here, Fr. Joseph Lanzalaco. Today I stand in Fr. Joe’s place, since he was first scheduled to preside at this Mass. In his own humble, friendly, and loving way, Fr. Joe brought people; brought us together to where God could be experienced: Smelled; touched; seen; heard; tasted. Many of us met Fr. Joe and sensed God present at his funeral Mass a-week-and-a-half ago at my home parish, St. Kateri, at Christ the King Church. Those of us here who could not be bussed to Fr. Joe’s funeral were with us in spirit and in prayer. I cannot speak for Fr. Joe (and he will without doubt correct me if and when we meet in heaven), but I picture him on the day of his funeral with all of us; with God present, smiling down on all of us there. I can imagine Fr. Joe speaking words to us from heaven similar to those of St. John Paul II to the crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Rome in the moments before he died: “I came to you, and now you have come to me. And I thank you.”

God was present among us in Fr. Joe’s life and priesthood among us, was present on the day of Fr. Joe’s funeral, and is present here now: Smelled; touched; seen; heard; tasted. But is it not a bit arrogant and irreverent for us to reduce God to something accessible to our human senses; to something material? 

I do not believe so, for two reasons. First, God has made God’s self human, one like us in all but sin in the person of Jesus Christ. Yes, God is entirely “other”; spirit and not something material we can sense. But, in the person of Jesus Christ, our God “humbled himself to share in our humanity.” Our God chose freely to share in our ability to smell, touch, see, hear, and taste in order to raise us up to a “share in the divinity of Christ.” Would we fear a God who takes on our humanity; our senses in this way? I would hope not. We could fear God becoming human, but this fear is itself a kind of arrogance and irreverence; a way to limit God. At its extreme (this error has been committed and condemned in our Christian history), this fear makes matter; the world; all of us whom God created as good out to be somehow bad. This is a lie. We know and so God invites us not to fear a God who, as Pope Benedict XVI says of Christ, “worked with human hands… thought with a human mind… acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved.” So that we might be saved and so that, through our senses, we might glory in the love and goodness in God’s creation, Jesus Christ made himself like us, able to smell, touch, see, hear, and taste.

And here lies the second reason why I believe we are right to seek God by our human senses; that this is neither arrogant nor irreverent. God did not stop at sending an angel to wake Elijah from his sleep of despair with God’s touch. God did not stop at feeding Elijah on Mount Horeb so that his prophecy might continue. God did not stop at feeding the hungry people of Israel with manna in the desert, or at Jesus’ feeding the multitudes on a hillside in Galilee. God did not even stop at sending us his own Son, Jesus Christ, our “living bread… from heaven”; “flesh for the life of the world.”

No, our Psalm urges us to “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” But may we not stop at this. God still has not stopped working in and through us. God has given us our senses so that, in the love and goodness of God’s creation we may smell, touch, see, hear, and taste the presence and work of God the Creator. And yet we, with God, are co-creators. We have a mission: Make God seen and heard by our worship as one community of faith. Make God somebody we can touch by extending to one another a hand of peace; by working for peace and justice; nonviolence at all costs. Make God tasted by feeding those who suffer poverty and hunger; by inviting more people to the table of the Eucharist. Make God smelled; breathed in and out of us in everything we say and do. “Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love,” Ephesians says today.

This is our mission. At the end of time, when Jesus Christ returns, we may stop. Until then, we will not stop because God will not stop in each and every one of us. In Christ fully human God took on “flesh for the life of the world”; took on our senses: touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste. God has given us the gift of these same senses to bring us salvation and for us to make God’s goodness and love known; experienced; touched, smelled, seen, heard, and tasted.

Homily for Saturday, 8 August 2015– Memorial of St. Dominic

Saturday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 6:4-13; Psalm 18:2-3a, 3bc-4, 47, 51;  Matthew 17:14-20

How much or what depth of faith does God expect of us? Do we not find Jesus quite harsh in criticizing first the lack of faith of the crowds who bring a demon-possessed man to him and then the lack of faith of his own disciples, who are unable to cast out the demon?

Jesus ends our Gospel reading today, from Matthew, by saying to his disciples that if they “have faith the size of a mustard seed,” this little faith will be enough to move mountains (Faith to move mountains: Another popular English phrase we owe to Scripture!). With even minimal faith “nothing will be impossible for you,” Jesus says to his disciples.

Are Jesus’ words here not incredible? Would his disciples not have had to have some faith? Otherwise they would not have followed him at all. Without any faith, they probably would not even have tried to cast out the demon from the possessed man in today’s Gospel. And so why is Jesus so harsh with them? Why does he rebuke the crowd as a “faithless and perverse generation”? How much faith does Jesus expect of them or of us?

It is almost impossible for us to know exactly why Jesus speaks so harshly toward the crowds and his own disciples in Matthew’s Gospel. But I think our first reading, from Deuteronomy, hints at the depth of faith to which God calls us. The most important commandment of the Jewish faith, so important that observant Jews to this day pray it morning and evening and Jesus made it his own “greatest commandment, is part of our first reading today. “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone! Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.” This commandment; this prayer, Moses says in Deuteronomy, is to be taken “to heart” by the people; drilled “into [their] children”; spoken whether “at home or abroad,” when the people are “busy or at rest.” And the people are literally to wear this commandment on their sleeve (another English phrase we owe to Scripture); on their foreheads; on their “doorposts” and “gates.”

All this was to ensure one thing: That the people would never forget God. Deuteronomy goes on to say, “Take care not to forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.” This, I think, is also central to the faith Jesus asks of us: Remember God at all times. Give thanks to God in times of joy or prosperity. Complain to God and even express our anger at God in times of despair; of poverty; of illness; of loss. But “take care not to forget the LORD.”

We show by being here to worship that we remember God. We also show that we remember God by acting in kindness, justice, and patience, or by stopping our tongue short of destructive criticism, cursing, or gossip; by praying at least daily.

Had Jesus’ disciples or the “perverse and faithless” crowds in our Gospel forgotten God? This is difficult to say. But God calls us through Moses: “Take care not to forget the LORD.” Remember God: This is at the heart of our faith.

Homily for Thursday, 6 August 2015– Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord

Thursday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; Psalm 97:1-2, 5-6, 9; 2 Peter 1:16-19;  Mark 9:2-10

What is the central message of the Transfiguration of the Lord, which we celebrate today? What truths does Jesus’ Transfiguration proclaim about Jesus and about us?

Before I became a Basilian, my spiritual director at the time asked me a similar question to these about the Transfiguration: What is this event’s central point? I felt hopelessly distracted from the central point of the Transfiguration by the dramatic narrative our Gospels place around this event.

To me, the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ Transfiguration read like the script of a brilliant drama or action film: Jesus takes his three most trusted disciples, Peter, James, and John, up a mountain alone. In Scripture, mountains are usually the place of encounter with God, so something is bound to light up the big screen! Almost on cue, Jesus’ “clothes [become] a dazzling white.” Then Moses and Elijah, the Law and Prophets in person, appear and speak with Jesus. Peter, James, and John are left by themselves in the distance. A cloud casts a shadow over them. Could this be the presence of God’s Holy Spirit? A voice from on high (Could this be God the Father?) says to “listen to” Jesus. We hear clear mention of “the Son of Man” having to die and then rise from the dead. Who is this “Son of Man”? Obviously on one level the Son of Man is Jesus, but could it also be all of us, daughters and sons of God; Jesus’ disciples? And what does death and “rising from the dead” mean, for Jesus or for us?

Understandably, Mark’s Gospel says, Peter and James and John “hardly [know] what to say, they [are] so terrified” at Jesus’ Transfiguration. But amid their terror, Peter, James, and John are in danger of missing the central point of the Transfiguration; what this event proclaims about us and about Jesus. And what is this central point of the Transfiguration? If only for a moment, Peter gets it right. Peter’s words reveal a truth about us: “Rabbi, it is good that we are here”! This truth about us is coupled with a truth about the identity of Jesus as God in the words spoken from heaven: “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

The rest of this scene: The secluded mountain setting; Jesus’ bright transfigured clothing, the cloud; Moses and Elijah all point us to this dual truth. But these “special effects” can also be a distraction from a superb central plot line perhaps rarely seen in action films (I would give this one five stars): “Rabbi, it is good that we are here… This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

How many of us are vulnerable to similar distractions? Not only the fear of death can be this distraction, as it was for Peter, James, and John on the mountain of the Transfiguration. Can our fears; worries about loved ones’ or our own health and well-being; our work or lack of work; our struggles with prayer not also distract us?

And so we ask God to center us on the truths of Jesus’ Transfiguration; truths about us and about Jesus and our response to Jesus: “It is good that we are here… This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”