Homélie du mercredi, 30 septembre 2015– Mémoire de Saint Jérôme

Ceci est ma première homélie donnée en France, de ce matin à la chapelle de la Maison Mère de la Congrégation de la Mission (Lazaristes), Paris.

Here is my first-ever homily given in France, from this morning in the chapel of the Motherhouse of the Congregation of the Mission (Lazarists), Paris.

mercredi de la 26ième semaine du temps ordinaire

Wednesday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time

Lectures du jour/readings of the day: Néhémie/Nehemiah 2:1-8; Psaume/Psalm 137:1-2, 3, 4-5, 6; Luc/Luke 9:57-62

De quoi s’agit-il suivre Jésus?

Nous entendons aujourd’hui de l’Évangile de Saint Luc l’histoire un peu bizarre (pouvons-nous même dire exagérée?) de trois disciples aspirants de Jésus. À l’un de ces disciples Jésus lui demande de le suivre, mais il s’excuse en voulant enterrer son père. Les autres deux disciples ont d’encore moins bonnes excuses. Ils disent à Jesus, «Je te suivrai», mais eux aussi en mettent d’autres priorités devant celle de suivre le Christ.

Nous pouvons prendre ceci comme point saillant de notre Évangile d’aujourd’hui: Être disciple de Jésus Christ veut dire de n’avoir aucune priorité plus grande que celle-ci; de nous dévouer entièrement et sans réserve au Christ.

Cette suite de Jésus sans réserve est au fond l’histoire de la vie de Saint Jérôme, la fête de qui nous célébrons aujourd’hui. Saint Jérome avait une personnalité; une spiritualité dite dans notre collecte (notre prière d’entrée de cette Messe) «intense». Jérôme a vécu les plus de trente dernières années de sa vie intensément à l’oeuvre, nous pouvons dire, utilisant comme moyen de suivre au Christ son don de traduire les Écritures Saintes‒ la Bible‒ de l’hébreu ou le grec en latin.

Mais comment pouvons-nous devenir, comme Saint Jérôme peut-être, de meilleurs disciples du Christ au quotidien; faire notre priorité suivre le Christ? Le monde est plein de distractions, parfois des distractions bonnes et nécessaires. Mais pourrait-cela être notre prière d’aujourd’hui; notre prière de disciples: «Jésus, je te suivrai. Je veux être ton disciple. Aide-nous à réaliser mieux ce but à chaque jour». Déjà cette prière démontre notre volonté de suivre avec fidélité notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ.

Homily for Tuesday, 8 September 2015– Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Tuesday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Micah 5:1-4a; Psalm 13:6ab, 6c; Matthew 1:1-16, 18-23

How many of us recycle?

I am speaking primarily of a different kind of recycling than the kind that is good for our environment. I speak of the recycling, over and over again, of God’s love from the first moment of creation. Today we celebrate the Feast of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I cannot help, on today’s feast day, to do a bit of recycling of my own.

It was this past December, a few days before our celebration of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. (This Feast of Mary’s Nativity is, of course, connected with the Solemnity of her Immaculate Conception, when Mary was conceived without original sin by Sts. Anne and Joachim. Today we are exactly nine months after the Immaculate Conception, December 8). On that day I was, as on most days during the school year, greeting the children as they entered St. Kateri School to begin their school day. This one day, a child stopped me in my tracks with a brilliant question: “How did God create Jesus and Mary”? Only occasionally is a priest completely outwitted by a third-grader!

A few days later, I had recovered enough from this St. Kateri School edition of “Stump the Priest” to try to answer the girl’s question in my homily for the Immaculate Conception, also last December’s monthly St. Kateri School Mass. “How did God create Jesus and Mary”? In short, my answer is this: God recycles.

God is a master recycler of love. Mary’s conception by Anne and Joachim, her protection by God from original sin and, about nine months later, her birth, was only one instance of God’s love for us. Through Anne and Joachim; through Mary, God was putting the finishing touches on his work of our salvation through Jesus Christ. But this was far from the first act of God’s love for us. Our Gospel reading today from Matthew includes a lengthy genealogy from Abraham, our father in faith, through to Joseph and Mary, “of [whom] was born Jesus who is called the Christ.”

Matthew’s genealogy includes three parts or “cycles”: Abraham through King David, David through “the Babylonian Exile,” and the Babylonian Exile through Jesus’ Nativity. Each cycle begins well but becomes tainted with human error and sin; with some questionable historical figures involved. And each time God, out of love for us, recycles. God constantly renews us: In Abraham, our father in faith, in Israel’s kings beginning with David (Matthew does not mention David’s predecessor King Saul, perhaps a false start), in the rebuilders of Israel after the Babylonian Exile, and finally in Jesus Christ.

God recycles. And today we celebrate one very significant step in this divine recycling of love for us, the Birth of Mary; the last step necessary for the Birth of Christ, the fullness of our salvation. But this was not the first time God recycled. Nor does God intend it to be the last. An Orthodox Christian prayer for today’s Feast proclaims: “From you,” Mary, “arose the glorious Sun of Justice, Christ our God.” The work of justice; of reflecting the light of Christ, the Sun of Justice; of God’s recycling of love in our world is now ours. And so I highly encourage us to recycle.

Homily for Sunday, 6 September 2015

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 35:4-7a; Psalm 146:7, 8-9, 9-10; James 2:1-5; Mark 7:31-37

“Ephphatha”! …“Be opened”!

How many of us remember our own baptism or have been to a baptism that we remember? Most of us here were probably baptized as infants and so do not remember our own baptism. But if anybody here has attended a child’s baptism recently, do you remember this strange but beautiful prayer over the ears and mouth of the newly-baptized child? We pray, touching the ears and mouth of the child: “The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the mute speak. May he soon touch your ears to receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father. Amen.”

This prayer is called the “ephphatha,” or “be opened” prayer. It is one of the oldest prayers of the Rite of Baptism of Children as we know it. The “ephphatha” in our Rite of Baptism is drawn from the Gospel reading we hear today, from Mark. We hear of Jesus’ encounter with “a deaf man who had a speech impediment.” Jesus takes this man “away from the crowd.” He puts “his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, [touches] his tongue.” Jesus says to the man in Aramaic, “ephphatha”‒ “Be opened”! The man is able to hear and speak again. The crowd is astonished: “He has done all things well,” they exclaim. And the people who witness Jesus’ healing give us the words we hear to this day at children’s baptisms: “He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

For me as a priest, at least some of the beauty of the “ephphatha” prayer at baptisms is not so much in the words of this prayer. But often at the moment I touch and pray over the child’s mouth, the baby will try to suck on my thumb. It is as if the baby, newly alive; baptized into Christ, is saying, “I’m opened, alright… And your thumb tastes way better than my pacifier”!

Is it not most beautiful that, from the moment of Jesus’ healing of the deaf and mute man; from the very moment of our baptism, we are called to “be opened”? And in what ways are we called by our baptism to “be opened”? What are some of our obstacles to being “opened”; to hearing and proclaiming the Word of God; the faith of Jesus Christ?

I ask you these questions. But in my two years here at St. Kateri, my diaconate and first year of priesthood, you have shown me; shown one another; shown our communities and our world in countless profound ways what it means to “be opened.” You show time and again by word and action what it means to live out the baptismal calling we have in common. The number of ministries and devotions here at St. Kateri is truly astounding. We have people here who visit and bring communion to the sick and homebound. We have people who accompany those who have lost loved ones; who help to prepare and assist at funerals. We have people who prepare the many aspects of our liturgies day after day; weekend after weekend. We have people who care for our young people; who prepare “care packages” for our college students; who are involved in Faith Formation and sacramental preparation. We support a lively parish formed from five parishes. We support St. Kateri School. We have the Ladies’ Guild, the Knights of Columbus, many other groups who build friendship; build social justice; build up the Kingdom of God. So many times I have entered one of our churches and seen a prayer group meeting here; a rosary or a novena being prayed there; somebody praying in private; in silence…

It is impossible for me to list all the ways in which we live here at St. Kateri by Jesus’ words: “Be opened.” If I have not named you here I certainly hold you in grateful prayer. I am blessed to be ordained a priest for you; for our universal Church; to have served here for these past two years. Yet my and my brother priests’ ordained priesthood exists to lead; to unite us in our common priestly, prophetic, and royal baptismal vocation. And if I may say this again, I believe we live this vocation very well here at St. Kateri. By ordination I am your priest; in baptism I am forever your brother in Christ.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, you are my great teachers in being “opened” as we are called in baptism. And yet we still may experience obstacles to fully living out our baptismal calling. What are these obstacles, and perhaps some remedies to what keeps us from being fully “opened”? One of the greatest obstacles we face to being opened, to hearing and proclaiming Christ, is fear. Isaiah speaks in our first reading to a people living in fear; people who were living in exile in the prophet Isaiah’s time. Isaiah says, “Be strong, fear not”!

What or whom might we fear? Do we fear speaking the truth; speaking for our faith in Christ, even if (as hopefully is the case) we speak and act with love? Perhaps we fear somebody with power over us. Perhaps we have experienced fear of those who disagree with us; those who are different from us. Perhaps we fear our own weakness; our own sin. Isaiah speaks to our fears the same words he once spoke to the people of Israel in exile in Babylon: “Be strong, fear not”! Here is your God. He comes with vindication. With divine recompense he comes to save you.” Isaiah’s prophecy of the deaf hearing, the lame leaping with joy; the tongue[s] of the mute singing is realized in Jesus’ healing of the deaf and mute man in our Gospel reading today.

Even more importantly, this prophecy is realized in us. In baptism we are called: “Be opened”! But there is another obstacle, related to fear, to our being “opened” to hearing and proclaiming Christ. This obstacle is undue “partiality”; exclusion of people or groups. St. James speaks in our second reading today of this kind of partiality in our churches; the temptation to give the rich places of honor while poor people, if they are present in our worship spaces at all, are sidelined and excluded: “‘Stand there’ or ‘Sit at my feet.’”

I do not see this kind of exclusion here at St. Kateri. Yet I invite us, in light of St. James’ words, to continue and to strengthen our effort to welcome those who are poor. I invite us not only to go out to our streets; to the House of Mercy; to Bethany House and the Catholic Worker to meet those who are poor and homeless but to take increasingly active steps to welcome the otherwise socially excluded into this worship space. In this way we make St. Kateri Parish not “our” space into which we allow a foreign group of people (“they” or “them”), but God’s space in which “they” become part of “us.” This takes a constant conversion of our hearts to be welcoming; a constant effort to “be opened.”

But if the horrific image this week of a drowned Syrian refugee boy on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea is any indication, our world presents us with many temptations against being “opened.” We hear cries from many countries to close borders; to limit the number of refugees and immigrants accepted; to build walls and prisons to keep the unwanted out. We hear attitudes, spoken or silent, shouted forth in their increasingly harmful effects on our society: Be closed to the right to life from conception! After all, some regard the unborn as mere commodities to be bought and sold. Be closed to those in need of social assistance! Be closed to racial integration! Be closed to the elderly; to the sick! Be closed to those who struggle to practice every teaching of the Church to my satisfaction! Be closed to reconciliation in our relationships; our families! Be closed to peace! Be closed to protecting the dignity of all creation! “Be closed”: This attitude is a direct countersign to the Gospel that calls to us, “Be opened”! And only death can result from being closed.

Our Gospel calls us to life. Christ’s Gospel; our Christian baptism calls us: “Be opened”! Isaiah’s prophecy of the deaf hearing; the mute speaking; the lame leaping; social need being met with justice and kindness; God’s “vindication” and “salvation” present and alive in our world is not something of the distant past. Isaiah’s prophecy was not only realized once, two thousand years ago when Jesus healed a deaf and mute man. This prophecy is being realized in us here and now, to the extent we live our Gospel; our baptismal calling: “Ephphatha! …Be opened!”

Homily for Thursday, 3 September 2015– Memorial of St. Gregory the Great

Thursday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Colossians 1:9-14; Psalm 98:2-3ab, 3cd-4, 5-6; Luke 5:1-11

What are some of the emotions and images that run through our Gospel reading today, from Luke? Luke’s Gospel gives us today a lively account of Jesus’ call of his first Apostles, the fishermen Peter, James, and John.

We begin with emptiness: An empty boat “belonging to Simon” that Jesus enters while “the fishermen” are on shore “washing their nets; the empty nets of the fishermen after a long, fruitless night of fishing. This emptiness is filled: Jesus enters Simon’s boat. From this waterborne “pulpit” Jesus teaches the crowds, filling them with the Word of God. Jesus asks Simon Peter, James, and John to “put out into deep water and lower [their] nets for a catch.” And their nets, too, are filled, with a miraculous catch of fish.

We begin with a wide range of emotions; perhaps everyday distractions. What were the crowds thinking when they arrived at the shore of the Lake of Gennesaret to listen to Jesus? What were their concerns, both material and spiritual? Did they have questions for Jesus about their faith? Were they simply trying to make an honorable living; trying to care for their family and other loved ones? Peter, James, and John feel deep frustration: “We have worked hard all night and have caught nothing.” But this Jesus is not a complete stranger to the fishermen; Simon Peter calls Jesus “Master.” And so Simon takes Jesus up on his invitation to “put out into the deep.” And he, James, and John are rewarded with a great catch of fish. For a moment, this miracle only increases their fear; their insecurity; their sense of their own weakness. “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man,” Simon Peter says to Jesus. But this fear gives way to a trust in Jesus almost as astonishing as the initial catch of fish: “They left everything and followed” Jesus.

Do these vivid shifts in images and emotions not seem to be a lot for us to absorb in a short episode of our Gospel? And yet I think the liveliness of our Gospel reading shows us something of who we are as human; as Christian disciples. We are alive, and our experience of Jesus Christ in the Word of God; in our Eucharist; in our love for one another and works of kindness and justice makes us all the more alive.

This brings us to the heart of our Gospel reading today. Jesus says “to Simon: ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.’” This saying is especially strange in the original Greek of Luke’s Gospel. Jesus’ words to Peter are closer in meaning to “from now on you will be catching people who are alive.”

Only if we are alive can we experience the images and emotions the people in Jesus’ time; Jesus’ first Apostles did: Concerns of everyday life; fear; insecurity; the effects of our human weakness and sin; all this giving way to trust; to following Jesus without reserve. And because we are alive; because we are human Jesus calls us, too, to trust; to put aside fear enough to work with him in his mission; to be fishers of others who are as alive as we are.

Homily for Tuesday, 1 September 2015– Ferial

Tuesday of the 22nd week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6, 9-11;  Psalm 27:1, 4, 13-14; Luke 4:31-37

Do any of us ever find readings like those we hear today a bit frightening? Paul speaks in 1 Thessalonians of inescapable “sudden disaster” that will befall all who are not on their guard. Paul compares the end of time, “the day of the Lord,” to the “labor pains” of “a pregnant woman” in childbirth. And in Luke’s Gospel Jesus contends with “a man” possessed by “the spirit of an unclean demon.”

But our readings today from 1 Thessalonians and Luke do not need to frighten us. How, then, are we invited to respond to God’s Word today?

I imagine St. Paul trying to find a balance between two groups of people: Those who are frightened about what will happen at the end of time, or maybe about being persecuted for their faith, and those who are lulled into indifference by their prosperity, “peace, and security.” We know both types of people today. On the one hand we know the people who continually sound the alarm; those stereotyped by the image of the person on the street corner preaching or holding a sign that says, “The end is near”! Short of this extreme, we know people who are constantly complaining; who live in and on fear; who yearn for “the good old days”; who are convinced of our world’s path to moral destruction. On the other hand, we know of people whose prosperity has lulled them into a false sense of “peace and security.” These people become indifferent to social needs; to our responsibility to meet these needs and to uphold the dignity of human life and creation.

St. Paul is not trying to frighten us, but is inviting us to find a balance; to “stay alert,” neither alarmist nor indifferent but faithfully waiting for our Lord’s return in glory. If we are truly “alert” in our faith, we will not be surprised or frightened by Jesus’ return at the end of time. St. Paul speaks to us with great confidence in our faith: “You are children of the light and children of the day.” And so what is the faithful balance St. Paul asks us to seek? St. Paul says, “Encourage one another and build one another up.” Our common goal; God’s goal for every one of us; for our Church, is our salvation “through our Lord Jesus Christ.” God, through St. Paul, asks us to help one another toward this goal.

“Encourage one another and build one another up.” We hear a similar message to this today from Luke’s Gospel. The people  who hear Jesus teach and witness his healing of the man with a demon are “astonished at his teaching, because he [speaks] with authority.” The people spread “news of” Jesus’ healing “everywhere in the surrounding region.” The next step, for the people of Jesus’ time and for us who spread the Good News of Jesus Christ “everywhere,” is to realize that we are given the same “authority” with which Jesus spoke and acted. So many of us are realizing this already by accompanying those in need; by being a joyful presence to one another; by praying and by worshipping here. We are neither fearful nor indifferent. We are “children of the light and “of the day” building “one another up” toward salvation in Christ together.

Homily for Sunday, 30 August 2015

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8; Psalm 15:2-3, 3-4, 4-5; James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

If we were to capture our readings today in pithy phrases or slogans, what would these phrases or slogans be?

Imagine Moses, long before it was popular in small towns to appoint somebody with a powerful voice as “town crier,” standing before the people and crying out loudly, “Hear ye! Year ye!” Moses does essentially this in the first reading we hear today, from Deuteronomy. “Now, Israel, hear the statutes and decrees, which I am teaching you to observe,” Moses says to the people he is leading through the desert into Israel. Moses’ message is more important than that of any town crier. Moses, unlike a town crier, is not simply reciting the daily news aloud in the town square for all to hear. Moses is asking the people to hear the Word of God; the Law of God. In the Hebrew culture of the time, before the Word of God was widely read or seen, it was primarily a message to be heard.

“Hear ye! Hear, O Israel!” For the people of Israel, whether or not they hear Moses’ message attentively is a matter of life and death. It is a matter of whether or not they will be able to inherit the land God has promised them and to prosper in it. “Hear the statutes and decrees, which I am teaching you to observe,” Moses says, “that you may live.”

What are some life-and-death messages we might hear today? I suppose that if a disaster were to strike where I am and I had a chance to avoid it and maybe to help others to safety in the process, I would want to hear: How long until disaster strikes? Where can we go for safety? If we or one of our loved ones were to become severely ill, and some kind of medical treatment were able to increase quality if not time of life, would we not want to hear this message from a doctor?

Yet most messages we hear, see, or read today are not, at least immediately, life-and-death. I do not mean by this that to hear, see, and read the daily news is not important or to be encouraged. I and many if not most of us read the newspaper; watch newscasts on television; connect to the internet on a daily basis. Our news is interesting; informative when it is not infuriating or distressing, like seemingly continual news about recent violence in our city; our nation; our world. But our daily news is usually not life-and-death. Yet how many of us would think of the Word of God as a life-and-death message?

I do not wish to discourage us if we have difficulty hearing God’s Word as life-and-death. Most if not all of us are here because we receive what we would not receive if we were not here. We receive nourishment of body and spirit from Christ really, truly present in our Eucharist. We are here in the presence of God and of one another as beloved friends; ourselves “one Body; one Spirit in Christ.” We receive the gift of the Word of God. And then we are sent forth from this celebration strengthened to act with truth, justice, and kindness in our world and in our everyday relationships.

But for Moses, for the people he leads through the desert to their promised land, and ideally for us, God’s Word; the Law, God’s Commandments means more than nourishment. To hear the Word of God well means more than impressing other people or nations, although Moses promises that other nations will say of Israel if they hear God’s Word well: “This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people.” To hear God’s Word well means more than the recognition by people of other faiths of how close our God is to us: At the same time our best friend and our Savior. God’s Law, or any law, means more than the greatness of the rule of law in and of itself. For Moses; for the people Moses leads through the desert; for us, the Word of God; the Law of God that we hear in Scripture is life-and-death. “That you may live”: This, our salvation, is Moses’ goal; God’s goal for us in inviting us to “hear”!

“Hear ye”! If this is Moses’ message in Deuteronomy captured in a pithy saying or slogan, St. James’ message in our second reading might be summed up as, “Just do it.” This predates Nike and its sales of high-quality shoes with a simple yet fashionable “swoosh” logo by almost two thousand years. Go James!

“Just do it,” we hear from the Letter of James today. To hear the Word of God is not enough if we do not act upon it. To hear but not to act on the Word of God, James says, is to delude ourselves. In this same part of his letter (this verse is left out of today’s reading), James compares the hearer of God’s word who is not also a doer to one who “looks at his” or her “own face in a mirror” and “then promptly… forgets what he” or she “looked like.” This image is absurd, and so we become absurd if we hear the Word of God but do not act on it. For us to hear and then not to act on God’s Word is impossible.

So how does James ask us to act on the Word of God we hear; “the Word of truth” that “is able to save [our] souls”? First, James says, care for society’s most vulnerable: “orphans and widows in their affliction.” We could add in our time refugees and migrants, those who are poor, especially the working poor; the underemployed and unemployed; those who are sick; people whose lives are marred by violence; the homeless… James does not say, “Check their papers to see if they are legally entitled to our care; to be in our country.” James invites us to hear and to act on the Word of God. “Just do it”! And do not act in ways contrary to the Word of God. “Keep oneself unstained by the world”; unstained by gossip; by passive-aggression; by violent actions or speech; by ideological polarization; by indifference to those in need; by any form of indignity toward human life and creation.

“Just do it”! Better yet, James says, if we hear the Word of God attentively we will naturally act on it. Jesus’ message in Mark’s Gospel is similar to that of James: Hear and then act on the Word of God. If James cautions those who hear and then do not act on God’s Word, Jesus addresses perhaps a much more common problem, both in his time, with the Pharisees, and in our time: Those who act without properly hearing the Word of God that is the foundation of all we do as people of faith. The Pharisees’ ritual purification of vessels; of beds; of their own bodies was not wrong. But it had become an obsession. Many had not paused to ask a brief but important question: “Why”? Why do we wash our “cups and jugs and kettles and beds”; our hands? Are we paying enough attention to what is within us that needs purification? Are we attentive enough to purify ourselves of the “evils” Jesus lists in our Gospel reading; of our prejudices and unjust judgments of one another; of divisions among races, among Christian people, among nations, and among and within families?

If Moses says to us today, “Hear ye,” and James says to us, “Just do it” (better yet, if you hear rightly you will also naturally do, but this slogan loses its pithiness), might Jesus be saying: “Hear and do, but for the right reason”?

Jesus invites us to discern; not be afraid to ask, “Why? What are  our reasons; our intentions for acting in a particular way; for our acts of personal devotion; for gathering here to worship; for any of our good works”? As individuals and as Church, we can only be strengthened by this careful discernment of our intentions. And so indeed, “Hear ye”! And when we hear the Word of God as Christians, “Just do it”: Act on the Word of God we hear, but for the right reasons and with the right intentions.

Homily for Thursday, 27 August 2015– Memorial of St. Monica

Thursday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 3:7-13; Psalm 90:3-5a, 12-13, 14, 17;  Matthew 24:42-51

How many of us love somebody so much that, when we are apart from this person, we long deeply to be with her or him again? The people we love could be our wife or husband, parents, children, or other family member, or close friends.

This, I imagine, is the longing St. Paul feels for the Church at Thessalonica. The Thessalonians had been among the first Christian communities established by St. Paul. And Paul, who had been away from Thessalonica for some time, says this today in our first reading: “Night and day we pray beyond measure to see you in person.”

And for what else does St. Paul “pray beyond measure” for his Thessalonian friends, some of the earliest Christians whom he longs to see again “in person”? St. Paul prays for those who are already strong in their faith; strong in their leadership of the Thessalonian community in their faith. “We have been reassured about you, brothers and sisters… through your faith.” St. Paul prays for those whose faith is weak, “to remedy the deficiencies of [their] faith” with prayer and with patience. We can imagine St. Paul praying for people not directly mentioned in our reading today from his first letter to the Thessalonians: Those who are prosperous, that they may use their wealth to support the community; those who are poor; those who are sick or grieving or in need in any way.

St. Paul prays out of a deep love for the Thessalonian Church. And he invites the Thessalonians to the same love for one another: “Abound in love for one another and for all, just as we have for you.” Jesus’ prayer in Matthew’s Gospel is borne out of the same love for us; the same longing for us. Jesus’ love is the source of his prayer for us “beyond measure”: That we may love Jesus and one another as he loves us and, because we love, that we may “stay awake” waiting for the return of Jesus, our beloved, at the end of time.

To “stay awake” is a sign of love. Those of us who are parents, especially of teenagers or young adults: How many of you have stayed awake, unable to sleep until your child returns home after a late night out, even if your child was probably not into any trouble? Your love for your children is what Jesus speaks of when he says, “Stay awake.” This is the same love with which we are able to “stay awake” for Jesus’ return and to live our lives accordingly until one day we are with God and one another in heaven.

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, whose feast day is tomorrow. But St. Augustine would not have become the great saint he is without his mother’s unceasing prayers and love for him. The love between Sts. Monica and Augustine is one of our Church’s greatest-ever love stories. St. Monica stayed “awake” in prayer “without measure” for the conversion of both her son Augustine and husband Patricius.

Monica models love for us: The love of St. Paul for the Thessalonians; the love of Jesus for us; the love that stays “awake,” praying “beyond measure” because we long for our beloved.

Homily for Monday, 24 August 2015‒ Feast of St. Bartholomew

Monday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Revelation 21:9b-14; Psalm 145:10-11, 12-13, 17-18; John 1:45-51

What is in a name? 

Today on this feast of St. Bartholomew, one of Jesus’ first Twelve Apostles, our readings center on the importance of names. The Book of Revelation gives us an image of the heavenly Jerusalem. This city, appearing “out of heaven,” has twelve gates, three facing each of the four directions and each inscribed with a name of one of the Twelve Apostles.

The names of Jesus’ Twelve Apostles, a reflection of “the names of the twelve tribes of Israel” in the Old Testament, are important in Revelation. But one difficulty is that neither the Book of Revelation (in which the Apostles are not actually named together) nor the four Gospels agree on the names of Jesus’ Apostles, only that there were twelve. John’s Gospel today highlights one of the most significant differences among the Gospels in names of the Apostles.

Today, on St. Bartholomew’s feast day, Bartholomew is not even mentioned in our Gospel. Instead we hear of Nathanael, who is found by Philip under a fig tree and introduced to Jesus, and then joins the other Apostles. But who is Nathanael (or Bartholomew?) but the kind of follower and friend Jesus seeks: “a true child of Israel”; honestly seeking God and what is right, without “duplicity”? Beyond this, we cannot know much about who Nathanael (or Bartholomew) was or were.

Yet this and other differences in the Apostles’ names among the Gospels is not necessarily a problem for us. It is possible, even probable, that Jesus’ Apostles had multiple names. We know that Peter, “the rock,” was also known as Simon, “God has heard,” and as Kephas, “the head.” After Jesus’ Ascension into heaven, his Apostles are traditionally understood to have spread our faith to faraway lands and cultures. St. Bartholomew is said to have gone as far as India. Could Jesus’ Apostles have acquired names and nicknames in these places? This, too, is possible. Having served in several countries as a Basilian, I have acquired nicknames and variations on my own given names. Colombian Basilians will often call me by my middle name, Roger, because Warren can be difficult for them to pronounce. Most moving is when they add “Hermano” (“Brother”) to Roger. Since my ordination, my Colombian confrères have delighted in stringing together excessively pious nicknames on top of “Hermano Roger” when calling me. This would irritate me if it were not clearly a lighthearted mark of affection from my Basilian brothers in Colombia.

And so it is possible for Jesus’ Apostles to have had many names. Bartholomew, the “son of a ploughman,” could also have been Nathanael, meaning “God has given.” But does this matter to us?

Our names matter. God called us to birth; to his service in this world by name. God will call each of us home to heaven by name. In baptism, before the priest or deacon asks what the parents and godparents seek from the Church for their child (presumably baptism), we ask, “What name will you give your child”?

We have one name that matters: That of Christian. From our baptism we Christians, like Nathanael (or Bartholomew), have been called to serve God as “true” children “of Israel”; children, friends and Apostles of Christ, with “no duplicity in” us.