Homily for Sunday, 27 December 2015– The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Readings of the day: 1 Samuel 1:20-22, 24-28; Psalm 84:2-3, 5-6, 9-10; Colossians 3:12-21; Luke 2:41-52

This homily was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada.

Are we not right to celebrate the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, as a timeless model of family life? And yet for how many of us does the Holy Family seem like an unrealistic model for our families; our households here to take after?

I think of my own family members; of their gifts and acheivements. I think of all the ways in which being with my family, especially in this Christmas season, brings me great joy and even a sense of awe in their presence. My parents will celebrate forty years of marriage in May. Dad’s logical mind is in constant dialogue with his commitment to deepening his faith; his clear awe of God’s creation in dialogue with his love for science as a retired meterologist. Dad will often say how often he turns to me for the advice of a priest; as or more often, as independent as I can be, I turn to Dad for the advice of a father. Mom has the uncanny ability to discern the character of other people accurately and to bring calm, reason, and listening skills to any conversation. My sister and brother-in-law, both engineers, are two of the most talented mathematicians I know. They have given our family and our world the gift of two beautiful children, my niece and nephew. My brother is the easy-going one; reserved yet humorous, and he is your go-to person if you need your car windows replaced. I was born with neither the mechanically-inclined gene nor the math gene; my talents are elsewhere.

And yet, as far as I know, unlike in the Holy Family, nobody in my family or any of our families here is God. Just think of the disadvantage this would be if one of our family members were God made human! A cartoon of three couples of proud parents on donkeys on their way to Bethlehem circulates on the Internet at this time of year. Each of the donkeys displays a bumper sticker. The first says, “Our son is an honour student.” The second donkey’s bumper sticker reads, “Our son is in medical school.” And on the back of the third donkey, bearing a pregnant Mary with Joseph looking on, says, “Our Son is God”! Those on the other two donkeys scoff, “Well, if it isn’t Joseph and Mary”…

So it is probably fortunate for us that none of us have been tasked with raising the Son of God, as Mary and Joseph were. But for us to take after Jesus, Mary and Joseph in our lives of faith; in our households, our families, may be more realistic than we think. The Holy Family may have more in common with our families here now than we realize at first.

Our Gospel reading today ends with twelve-year-old Jesus returning home with Mary and Joseph to Nazareth, where Luke says he “increased in wisdom and in years, and in favour with God and human beings.” To their joy and relief, Mary and Joseph have just found Jesus safe and sound among the teachers in the Temple of Jerusalem after three days of searching for him in the crowded city during the Passover festival. Is it not a temptation for us, when we speak reverently of Mary and Joseph (as is right of us), to gloss over incidents like this in which Mary and Joseph are anxious, even frantic?  “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety,” Mary says to Jesus.

Parents here, especially of teenagers or pre-teens: Might you be more likely to relate to Mary’s experience of anxiety than, for instance, those of us without children? At this age, children begin to assert their independence. They need the space to question and to listen as Jesus did in the Temple of Jerusalem; to discern their faith on their own terms; to build a peer group. This in itself does not mean they love you any less as parents. Teenagers and pre-teens: Please do not take this as permission from me to become lost for days at a time. Your parents will never stop worrying about you when you are not with them, even well into your adult years. And Luke’s Gospel does say that, when Jesus returned to Nazareth, he “was obedient to” Joseph and Mary. Here the Son of God models for us obedience. But if you ever become lost, few places are better in which to become lost than a temple or, in this case, a church. May our Church always be a place of welcome for you, young people; young families!

Might we be able to relate in still other ways to the experience of the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph? After Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the Temple, Joseph is not mentioned again in the Gospels. Joseph models for us the prayerful, silent love of a father. And Luke says of Mary that she “treasured all these things in her heart.” Even amid times of anxiety, of being unable to understand why Jesus “must be in [his] Father’s house”; of accompanying Jesus from manger to cross to resurrection to his sending forth of his Holy Spirit who gave birth to our Church, Mary models for us the contemplation; the pondering, treasuring heart of a mother. And so Mary is Mother of God. Mary is our mother.

Mary, Joseph, and Jesus together model for us the gift of attentively hearing; discerning the presence of God in our day-to-day experiences, in particular our experiences of family relationships. I imagine that few if any of us have the “perfect” family. Our families experience anxiety. Our families experience illnesses, even deaths. Our families experience physical distance among members. Our families experience conflict, sometimes to the point of division, stemming from our sin. And still God invites us; our families, through the example of the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, to be holy people; holy families ourselves.

And so how might we hear God’s invitation to us, as individuals; as households; as families, to holiness? How might we hear and discern God in our day-to-day experiences and relationships? Besides taking after Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the most perfect model we have of family life, we might take up the example of Hannah and Samuel, mother-and-son of our reading today from 1 Samuel. The name “Samuel” is Hebrew for “God has heard.” Hannah recognizes that God has heard her prayer for a son. Her grateful response to God is to dedicate Samuel for life to God. “God has heard,” and so Hannah and eventually Samuel, through his mentor Eli, hear God. Hannah and Samuel model for us; for our families the gift of hearing God with gratitude. Their example in the Old Testament sets up for us that of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in the New Testament.

And how else might we build holy families for our time? Prayerful gratitude is an essential, timeless value of holy families, says the Letter to the Colossians from which we hear this morning: “With gratitude in your hearts sing Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.” Jesus, Mary and Joseph; Hannah and Samuel prayed with gratitude to God. And God calls us, too, as families and as a Church, to pray with gratitude.

The Letter to the Colossians gives us a long list of other essential values of holy families: “Compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” And when, in our weakness and sin, we fail to live up to our God-given holiness, Colossians invites us to forgive. Forgiveness (and our honest discernment of our need to be forgiven) is a must for holy families: “As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

Forgiveness is the foundation of love. Forgiveness is the foundation of the “perfect harmony… peace” and “wisdom” to which God calls us through the Letter to the Colossians. Forgiveness is the foundation of unity in our families; our Church; our world. Forgiveness is so often the way to gratitude; to hearing the “Word of God” that dwells “in [us] richly.”

Forgiveness, harmony, peace, wisdom, and gratitude; compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience: These are challenging but not unrealistic values that God asks us to treasure in our hearts and to live out among ourselves and within our families. We have the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph; Hannah and Samuel, and countless saints and holy families through the ages as models of these values on whom to draw. They, and we, the Church, make these gifts of holy families; of the Holy Family, real and active in our world here now, today, forever.

Homily for Friday, 25 December 2015– Nativity of the Lord

Readings of the day (for Christmas Mass at Night): Isaiah 9:1-6; Psalm 96:1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14

This homily was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada.

From the prophet Isaiah we hear tonight [this morning]: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness‒ on them light has shone.” And from Luke’s Gospel we hear of shepherds, about to travel to Bethlehem to meet our newborn Saviour, Jesus Christ. These shepherds are “keeping watch over their flocks by night” when their night watch is interrupted by “an angel of the Lord” who announces Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, “City of David.” Their night watch is interrupted by “the glory of the Lord” that shines “around them.” And we hear from Luke that these shepherds “were terrified” at this light breaking into the darkness surrounding them.

And yet is this not what our celebration of Christmas is all about: light breaking into; interrupting our darkness? Yet, unlike the shepherds outside Bethlehem on the night of Jesus’ birth or the people of Israel of Isaiah’s time, I imagine not many of us are terrified at light taking the place of darkness. In fact we celebrate it; we celebrate him, Jesus Christ, with a joyous song of thanksgiving: “Today is born our Saviour, Christ the Lord”… “A child has been born to us, a son given to us… He is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

We celebrate the Birth of “our Saviour, Christ the Lord,” in many ways. We celebrate by gathering together with family and friends. We celebrate by decorating our homes and often our workplaces and public spaces. We celebrate by exchanging gifts. Very importantly we celebrate by gathering here as a community of faith; a People of God to worship. Most of us here are anything but terrified.

But how many of us have experienced darkness as a reality deeper than physical, literal darkness? I think that here, in the centre of Alberta, we are somewhat privileged. We live far enough north to experience Christmas as near the shortest day of the year. I am now living and studying in Paris, France, and so on my way home to visit family here I have been keeping a close eye on the weather in the Edmonton area over the last few days, maybe like those shepherds near Bethlehem so many years ago, but for more selfish reasons: I wanted to be prepared for any extreme weather on my way here. Now, I expect cold weather in Alberta at this time of year. But in the corner of my computer screen, a reminder of the shortness of late December days here would stare me back in the face: Sunrise 8:50 am; sunset 4:15 pm. I love you, Alberta; even at your darkest and coldest you are my home; our home!

And still, amid not even seven and a half hours of sunlight each day this time of year, at Christmas we celebrate. The sun is unconquered by darkness. The unconquered Son of God, Jesus Christ, also promises to return. Christ promises once again to break into and interrupt our darkness, as he did more than two thousand years ago, to complete God’s work of our salvation at the end of time.

We celebrate, even though Christmas brings many of us face-to-face not with joy and light, but with our world’s darkness and, for some of us, the darkness in our families and among our loved ones and in our own experiences. Our world faces an unprecedented number of refugees and of people displaced within their own countries by violence and persecution: A record sixty million people worldwide who have been forced to flee their homes! More wars begin than end in our world today. The dignity of all human life; of creation is so often disregarded. This has led even the ever-joyful Pope Francis to lament recently that our world’s violence threatens to reduce our celebration of Christmas to a kind of charade!

But this does not need to be. Our celebration of Christmas, of Christ’s Nativity, has meaning if we renew here and now the Biblical call to welcome refugees and migrants; people who experience physical, mental, or spiritual illness; people who have lost family members or loved ones; people living in poverty; the unemployed; people with disabilities; people who are alone, without family or loved ones with whom to celebrate Christmas; people who are estranged from our Church... This parish, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, is a place where all these people are supported and given dignity. OLPH has sponsored refugee families. Through a wide variety of ministries OLPH supports the economically disadvantaged; the bereaved; those who are alone; those who are searching in their lives of faith. Here the heart of the Christmas message is lived out.

And our celebration of Christmas is meaningful as long as we do our best, knowing our imperfections; even our sin; our darkness, but also the light of God’s grace and mercy, “to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly,” in St. Paul’s words to Titus. Our Christmas celebration finds meaning in our response to God’s call to welcome all who are on the same pilgrim’s path that we are all on, back to a manger scene in Bethlehem and forward to Christ’s return in glory.

Luke’s Gospel renews this call to us today by the simple remark that, when Jesus was born into our world, Mary and Joseph “laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” There was no place amid the darkness of our world for our Saviour. In fact our world would reject its Saviour. Life that began in a manger would be nailed to a cross, in the greatest act of darkness and sin ever known. Yet even death would not stop Jesus Christ, the Light of our world. The manger, a place beneath human dignity where animals fed, would be transformed into a place where our God entered our world in human flesh from the Virgin Mary’s womb. The cross, a place beneath human dignity where common criminals were publicly tortured and killed, would be transformed into a place where our God gave his very life to save us. Likewise, are we allowing our lives, our experiences of light, goodness, and peace but also of darkness and sin, any experiences we have that are beneath our human dignity, to be places into which Christ is welcome? Are our hearts the “inns” into which Christ enters to transform; to redeem us?

Sure, our lives; our hearts probably are not, even by some of our own standards, fit to welcome the King of the Universe; our God. Fear not! Jesus is not asking us for a five-star hotel. After all, he first entered our world “wrapped… in swaddling clothes,” lying “in a manger.” Even there, in the darkness and stench of a manger, Jesus brought light. Even there, Jesus brought peace. Even there, Jesus calmed the fears of the shepherds who left their flocks and fields at the invitation of an angel, an invitation that left them “terrified” at first, to welcome Jesus into our world. Even there, from a manger, Jesus brought heaven and earth, angels and all “people of good will” to joyful song, a song we still hear in our world today; a song we still hear from the beginning of today’s celebration of our Eucharist: “Glory to God in the highest”!

Glory to Jesus Christ, Light of our world! Do we dare to join in this song of joy? Is our song too much of an interruption; a breaking into our world’s violence, hostility, and darkness for it to bear? Are we in need from time to time for Jesus to interrupt our own darkness with his light; his mercy? Is Jesus Christ; is his Gospel proclaimed and authentically lived in ways that are “self-controlled, upright, and godly” a danger to the security and comfort of some who would prefer to bar his way into our countries; our public spaces; our hearts; our relationships; our lives?

Yes, but this has yet to stop God in Christ. If Jesus must, he will enter as he has already entered our world in the deepest of darkness to bring us God’s own light. This is why Isaiah proclaims so boldly that  “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”; that “those who lived in a land of deep darkness‒ on them light has shone.”

And this is why today, on this Christmas night [morning], we sing just as boldly as of old to welcome the Light that interrupts and breaks through our world’s darkness: “Today is born our Saviour, Christ the Lord”… “A child has been born to us, a son given to us… He is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Homélie du samedi, 12 décembre 2015– de la férie

samedi de la 2ième semaine de l’Avent

Mémoire facultative de Notre Dame de Guadalupe

Lectures du jour: Ben Sira le Sage 48:1-4, 9-11; Psaume 79 (80):  2ac, 3bc, 15-16a, 18-19; Matthieu 17:10-13

Les disciples de Jésus lui posent une question bizarre dans notre Évangile d’aujourd’hui de Saint Matthieu: «Pourquoi donc les scribes disent-ils que le prophète Élie doit venir d’abord»?

Pourquoi, avec Jésus présent devant eux, et alors qu’ils le croient déjà Messie, ses disciples lui posent-ils cette question à propos du second avènement d’Élie? Qui était Élie dans l’esprit juif de l’époque de Jésus, l’esprit par lequel les disciples de Jésus pensaient et agissaient?

La Bible témoigne de la grande importance d’Élie. Celui-ci était le premier prophète d’Israël de l’Ancien Testament, un personnage «pont», on peut dire, entre les origines tribales d’Israël et l’époque d’Israël comme nation sous des prophètes et des rois. Notre première lecture, de Ben Sira le Sage, raconte l’assomption, nous pouvons dire, corps et âme, d’Élie aux cieux parmi un «tourbillon» et des «coursiers de feu». (Nous croyons alors dans notre tradition catholique en l’Assomption de la Vierge Marie. Mais plusieurs juifs, même avant Jésus Christ, croyaient déjà que Dieu pouvait élever quelqu’un de spécialement digne intégralement aux cieux, bien que ces assomptions étaient rares). Ces juifs croyaient qu’Élie, qui avait été porté corps et âme aux cieux, allait revenir sur terre un jour pour annoncer l’arrivée imminente du Messie. Ceci est le contexte de la question des disciples à Jesus sur le second avènement d’Élie.

Cependant la réponse que donne Jésus à ses disciples leur est au moins aussi bouleversante que leur question: Élie est déjà revenu, mais en la personne de Jean le Baptiste! Comme Élie, Jean est aussi prophète; aussi un personnage «pont» de la Bible. Jean devient l’annonciateur de l’arrivée au monde de notre Messie, Jésus Christ. Mais ni Élie, ni Jean-Baptiste sont venus pour eux-mêmes. Ils sont venus pour nous, pour être prophètes de Dieu dans notre monde. Et Jean-Baptiste, comme Élie, nous donne une mission d’être prophètes à notre tour.

Donc de quoi et de qui sommes-nous prophètes? Nous ne sommes pas, prenant les paroles du pape Jean XXIII en ouvrant le Concile Vatican II, «prophètes de malheur». Nous ne sommes pas prophètes de la peur; de la violence; de l’exclusion de l’étranger, du réfugié ou de l’immigrant; de ceux et celles qui diffèrent de nous en religion ou en pensée. Nous sommes prophètes de bonheur; de joie; de justice; de bonté; de charité. Je suis donc confiant qu’il y en a parmi nous des prophètes, choisis par Dieu pour être, comme Jean-Baptiste et Élie, des personnes «ponts». Parmi nous sont celles et ceux qui nous amènent par parole et exemple vers notre rencontre avec Jésus Christ notre Sauveur à la fin des temps, ce que nous espérons en célébrant ce temps d’Avent.