Homily for Sunday, 31 July 2016

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 2:21-23; Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14, 17; Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11; Luke 12:13-21

This homily was given at the Monastery of the Carmel of St. Joseph near Spruce Grove, AB, Canada.

What is the point?

“Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,” the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes from which we hear our first reading today. “All is vanity”! Is this not a somewhat cynical and sad view of our world and of human labour?

After all, in our Psalm we have just prayed to God, “Prosper for us the work of our hands.” Does this not contradict the view of the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, who says of “the work of our hands”: “For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity”?

I am willing to admit that maybe the person who wrote Ecclesiastes may have been having a bad day at work. Maybe he was suffering from a severe case of writer’s block (if so, I can empathize with him, as a priest and graduate student). Maybe the Teacher had a difficult boss… or editor or publisher. Maybe (and by no means do I wish to make light of depression) he was depressed. And yet is there not surely more dignity than vanity in our work and in our world? If not, what is the point of anything we do? To borrow the title of a book from Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, a Dominican priest I had the joy of meeting a couple of years ago at his home at Blackfriars, Oxford, England, What Is the Point of Being a Christian, especially if “all things are vanity”?

I think both the Letter to the Colossians and our Gospel reading today from Luke give us clues toward answering questions like these. St. Paul says to the Colossians, “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above.” And Jesus reminds the crowd he teaches with the parable of the greedy rich man to seek to be “rich toward God”; to be “rich in what matters to God” and not to stockpile vain, perishable, earthly riches. And so our question shifts from “What is the point of our work; our faith; our worship; anything we do” to “How might we be rich in what matters to God; in what is of heaven and imperishable”?

Our world gives us many countersigns to “things that are above”; to richness “toward God” and “in what matters to God.” Some seek to be rich in money and material wealth. These are not bad in and of themselves, unless we rely on this material wealth in place of God or accumulate this wealth at the expense of other people. Some seek to be rich in military might and weaponry; rich in various forms of violence. Some seek to be rich in security and certainty. These people go so far as to want to build walls against anybody who may threaten their security. They go so far as to barricade their hearts and minds so not to need to respond to people who challenge their certainties (sometimes constructively), instead of defending the truths of God and of our faith, if necessary, with charity, kindness, and openness to better ways of expressing these timeless truths.

The “prosperity gospel”; the gospel of might and violence; the gospel of security; the gospels of greed and pride: These are not the Gospel of Jesus Christ; the Good News of our God. These are countersigns to the Gospel of Jesus Christ; these are false gospels. Yet enough people fall for these countersigns so that we have reached many crisis points in our world: Frayed and broken relationships in families; disregard for human life and dignity, especially of the not-yet-born, the elderly and the sick, and people with disabilities; wars; racism; a growing gap between the world’s wealthiest and poorest, many who lack even sufficient food and safe drinking water; acts of terrorism, most recently the murder of Fr. Jacques Hamel in France while he was celebrating Mass; more Christians and people of other creeds abused and killed than ever out of hatred for their faiths…

“This also is vanity.” This is appalling. And so what is the point, whether of our work, “of being a Christian,” or of being at all? What matters to God, and how might we be “rich toward God”? It can be well and good of us to condemn the “vanities”; the inhuman horrors of our time. It is well and good of us to speak to the truth of our Christian faith. But to condemn what is vain and false and to affirm truth is not enough. Religious faith cannot rest on the affirmation, “Because it is true.” “A religion,” Timothy Radcliffe says in What is the Point of Being a Christian?, “that tries to market itself as useful for some other purpose” than “to point us to God who is the point of everything… cannot be a religion that [we] could take seriously.” Religious faith demands a lived, ethical response. Our faith; our God calls us to live our response to these great questions: What is the point of who we are and what we do? How do we become “rich toward God”; “in what matters to God”?

And so how do we live our response to these questions? When I ask myself this, I think back to one of St. John Paul II’s earliest encyclicals; his teaching letters to the whole Church: Dives in Misericordia, or “Rich in Mercy.” “It is ‘God, who is rich in mercy,” Pope John Paul II begins. Mercy is “what matters to God.” Our God has revealed himself to us as mercy and invites us Christians to continue to reveal God to our world as mercy.

This, without doubt, is a difficult task for us, even before we consider all the countersigns in our world to mercy. Where do we even begin? I am not sure how many of us have been able to follow the news from World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland. This past Friday the Way of the Cross wound through the streets of Krakow. Each station of the Way of the Cross at this World Youth Day, during this Jubilee Year of Mercy, also included a meditation on one of the corporal or spiritual works of mercy. Might I suggest that these corporal and spiritual works of mercy would be great ways for us to reveal to our world our God “who is rich in mercy”?

Feed the hungry. Give drink to the thirsty. Clothe the naked. Shelter the homeless. Visit the sick and the imprisoned. Bury the dead. Instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, and admonish sinners, always with love and patience. Bear wrongs patiently. Forgive offenses willingly. Comfort the afflicted. Pray for the living and the dead.

These are all ways in which we, as Christians, reveal Christ; reveal our God to our world as “rich in mercy.” And we show, by doing these works of mercy ourselves and by encouraging one another to do the same, that we are “rich toward God”; “rich in what matters to God”; that we, too, are “rich in mercy.” It is all the better when we show God’s mercy in our world quietly; unassumingly, without regard for our own gain but for “[glorifying] God by our lives.”

This, I dare say, is “the point of being a Christian.” Mercy, with humility, is the antidote to injustice; to greed; to violence; to “vanity.” Mercy points us to God; toward “things that are above.” Mercy makes us “rich toward God” who is “rich in mercy” and who prospers “the work of our hands.”

Homily for Thursday, 28 July 2016– Ferial

Thursday of the 17th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 18:1-6; Psalm 146:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6ab; Matthew 13:47-53

This homily was given at the chapel of Kateri House Women's Residence of St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Has anybody here ever done pottery or known somebody who has? Has anybody ever fished or known somebody who has?

Both pottery and fishing can be painstaking and even frustrating work. I have fished although, perhaps thankfully, not for a living, and I know at least one of my brother Basilian priests who has done pottery. Often my Basilian confrère would bring home mugs or other pieces of pottery he had made, and I would think of how beautiful these pieces of pottery were; how much work he had put into each one! On one occasion, when I was out fishing as a boy, the fish in the lake where my family fished had all been infected with a strange parasite. Many of the fish we caught, although they were large enough that we did not need to release them, were no longer good to eat, but we could not know which fish were infected with the parasite until we examined them more closely.

Both pottery and fishing can be hard work. Today the prophet Jeremiah presents God as the potter, working and reworking the clay, the people of Israel, into a vessel that seems “good to him.” And, in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus presents God as the fisherman who has “caught fish of every kind” in “a net” and, “at the end of the age”; the end of time, will separate the good from the bad fish; “the evil from the righteous.”

Might images like the “furnace of fire” and like the clay vessel being broken down and “reworked… into another vessel” give us the sense of a harsh God? Instead, the reworking of the “spoiled” clay vessel “into another vessel” by the potter and the sorting of fish from the net in our Gospel reading are meant for us to be images of a patient, merciful God.

Our God does not want to break us down in order to re-mold us in his image. Our God does not want anybody to be lost to the “furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” But our reality is that sin exists in our world. It exists and infects us like a parasite: Divisions among and within nations; among and within families; fearmongering and gossip; exclusion of entire groups based on their ethnicity, religion, or other reasons; all forms of violence, verbal and physical.

Sin is real. And yet it would be a mistake, a heresy, to suggest that any person is totally depraved or beyond redemption. Our God keeps molding us as the potter breaks down and reworks one vessel into another, “as [seems] good to him.” This is an act of re-creation by our God, bringing us back to our beginnings, when God fashioned us and declared us “very good.” Our God will wait until the end of time to “separate the evil from the righteous.”

Until then, God will continue to work to heal us of the parasite of sin; to re-mold us. And God invites us to work with him with patience and mercy, until we are made fit for the Kingdom of Heaven.

Homily for Sunday, 24 July 2016

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Genesis 18:20-32; Psalm 138:1-2, 2-3, 6-7, 7-8; Colossians 2:12-14; Luke 11:1-13

This homily was given at the Monastery of the Carmel of St. Joseph near Spruce Grove, AB, Canada.

Please allow me to ask a couple of personal questions, and please do not answer aloud or even by a show of hands, but keep your answers between yourselves and God. First, has anybody here ever known somebody else to be a real pest to you? This person could be a co-worker; a relative; somebody in your family; a neighbour; somebody you hardly know and do not really want to know any better. For those of us here in consecrated religious life, the pest could be somebody in our religious community. Children among us: How often have you felt pestered by your brother or sister (if you have brothers or sisters); by another kid at school; by somebody else? This pest in your life may ask endless questions or make unreasonable demands. He or she gets under your skin. The pest will not simply give up and go away!

My second question is this: How many of us have ever been a pest to somebody? I have asked us to keep our answers to these questions between ourselves and God. But I must say that I am guilty as charged of having been a pest on a few occasions. As the eldest of three siblings in my family (I have one younger sister and one younger brother) and as a member of a religious community of priests, I have had many opportunities to be a pest. Sometimes the temptation is irresistible!

And sometimes to be a pest is fine. My sisters and brothers in Christ, today we hear first from the Word of God, from Genesis, the story of Abraham the Pest. Abraham is one of the finest pests in Scripture! God is on the receiving end of Abraham’s persistence “by the oaks of Mamre.” We have heard that all this begins with God’s plan to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for their great wickedness.

I suppose that God did not need to tell Abraham that he was about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Why invite the trouble; the endless questions? Just go and destroy those wicked cities! Yet God relents. Way to go, God; now Abraham the Pest is sure never to leave you alone! But God has a purpose in allowing Abraham to question him about Sodom and Gomorrah. God, even at his fire-and-brimstone best, is not consumed with anger or bent on destruction. God is our God of mercy; of “loving kindness”; of true justice through and through. This event in Genesis is not about the nature of Sodom’s or Gomorrah’s sin (of which, despite longstanding speculation, scholarly and not, nobody is really sure) but first about God’s merciful love. Destruction is God’s last resort.

Long before our current concept developed of “innocent until proven guilty,” God applies this principle by going “to see whether” the people of Sodom and Gomorrah have done as they are accused of doing. By doing this, God allows Abraham the chance to plead with him: “Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it”?

God must admit that Abraham has a good point here. To find fifty righteous people, even in cities as wicked as Sodom and Gomorrah, would be somewhat easy. But then Abraham persists: “What if there are only forty-five righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah”?

We might imagine God responding, “Fine. I will spare the city if only forty-five righteous people are there, but do not push your luck”! And so what does Abraham do? He pushes his luck further, of course: “Suppose forty are found there.” “Fine,” God says, “hold the brimstone.”

“Suppose thirty are found there.” “Fine,” God sighs, “I’m having trouble finding my flamethrower anyway.”

“Suppose twenty are found there.” God responds, “Abraham, what did I say about not pushing your luck? But, yes, no problem, I will not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if you know of twenty righteous people there. Now go away and do not bother me anymore”!

This does not deter Abraham the Pest: “Oh, do not let the LORD be angry if I speak just once more.” “What is it”?! God growls at Abraham, “I said not to bother me anymore about Sodom and Gomorrah! Then again, I’ve promised you everything else: A son; descendants to outnumber the stars… I kind of like you. In fact I love you dearly, even though you are such a pest! What do you want”?

“S-s- suppose ten are found there…” Abraham trembles. “Done,” God says, “for the sake of ten I will not destroy it… Now will you go relax under the oaks of Mamre and stop pestering me”? “Deal,” says Abraham.

… If we have such a great example of how to be a pest as Abraham in the Old Testament, can we not imagine that, in the Gospels, to be a pest would be raised to a fine art form? Jesus gives his disciples; gives us a prayer, the Our Father, the Lord’s Prayer, that is an acknowledgement of the holiness of God’s name, “Father, hallowed be your name,” followed by a series of petitions. We ask God for things in this prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, as we forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

Might we understand the Our Father, especially in light of the rest of today’s Gospel reading, as Jesus’ teaching on how to pester God effectively? The Our Father is not meant to be prayed only once. We pray it together every time we gather to celebrate our Eucharist. And many of us pray the Our Father multiple times a day. God wants us to pester him!

Now God invites us to join in the long tradition of pestering him effectively. Abraham, our father in faith, is also our father in persistence. Jesus was persistent. So were Jesus’ disciples, and so are we invited to be.

Jesus gives us a story, exaggerated for humorous effect, of the man who “at midnight” asks his friend for “three loaves of bread” because his “friend… has arrived.” The man is able to get “whatever he needs” in the end, Jesus says, if only “because of his persistence.” And then we hear from Jesus through Luke another memorable saying: “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”

Only here Jesus is no longer exaggerating. God will answer our prayer; our petition. God may not answer our prayer in exactly the way we expect, or even the first time we ask. But often, I think, God wants us to keep asking; to be persistent; to ask in a variety of ways for what we desire so to give us a chance to purify our desires. What, ultimately, do we all desire? I think the answer to this question is eternal life; salvation.

Our salvation is worth pestering God about, as are other desires of ours that lead us in the direction of salvation; of eternal life; of stronger relationship with God and one another. St. Paul, another of the Bible’s most brilliant pests, says this in his Letter to the Colossians: Do not be afraid to ask God to be saved; to ask God for forgiveness; for the strength to forgive others. Even “when [we] were dead in trespasses,” we were never beyond God’s saving love, kindness, and mercy.

Our God, Paul adds, has already anticipated our persistent prayer; our ultimate desire to be saved: “He forgave us all our trespasses… He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.” If Abraham were effective in pestering God to save Sodom and Gomorrah “for the sake of” only ten righteous people, now we have a chance to be saved because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; because of this action of the one and only truly Righteous One.

And so it is worth our while to pester God. Pray with persistence. Knock on God’s door at midnight, saying, “Our friends have arrived and we need bread for the great celebration of your merciful presence; the sacrament of salvation we call Eucharist.” And, with persistence, our desires will be purified, to lead us more directly to God; to salvation. After all, God began working on satisfying this ultimate desire of ours before we ever asked.

Homily for Wednesday, 20 July 2016– Ferial

Wednesday of the 16th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 1:1, 4-10; Psalm 71:1-2, 3-4a, 5-6ab, 15, 17; Matthew 13:1-9

This homily was given at the chapel of Kateri House Women's Residence of St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Have any of us ever been asked to do something we thought to be difficult, or even unreasonably beyond our capabilities?

Today’s readings are especially meaningful to me for a few reasons: Our reading from Jeremiah was the first reading during my ordination as a deacon three years ago this upcoming September. And, well before I was a priest, or a deacon, or a seminarian, or even a microbiology lab tech, the job I had immediately before entering the seminary, I was a mushroom farmer.

On the farm, if I may describe the process of planting or, as we called it, spawning the mushrooms, it was not like planting most ordinary vegetables. The spawn is like little sticky grains, each of the size and consistency of cooked rice. To spawn the mushrooms, the farmer takes a handful of these little grains and scatters them somewhat haphazardly on the growing beds that have been layered with soil. Most of the spawn lands on the fertile soil, where it quickly takes root and, after a month or so, produces tasty mushrooms. But some spawn lands on the farmer’s clothing, or on the floor of the growing room where it is trodden under foot, or in other places where it will not grow into mushrooms.

Does this sound familiar to any of us? Perhaps few if any of us have been mushroom farmers, and yet Jesus’ parable of the sower reminds me of the mushroom farm every time I hear it: The sower scatters seed haphazardly. Some seed falls “on good soil” and brings “forth grain” of a sizeable yield, but as much or more seed falls “on the path,” where the birds eat it. “Other seeds fall on rocky ground” where they lack soil and are scorched by the sun; still other seeds fall “among thorns” and are choked out.

I question God’s efficiency as a sower! Could our Almighty God not have sown seed more efficiently than haphazardly scattering it to fall where it may? Even we mushroom farmers are (maybe) more efficient and less messy when spawning than the sower is in Matthew’s Gospel. And, most inefficiently of all, God asks us to take part in the sowing!

As a priest, I consider this to be a most difficult task, although not beyond my capabilities most days. An exception lately has been when we hear and many are scared by the latest horror in the world: Terrorist attacks; police shooting or being shot; wars; other violence; gossip and bullying… I want to protest, in Jeremiah’s words, “Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.”

And there God is to say to me; to us: “Do not be afraid… Now I have put my words into your mouth.” Imagine, then, God handing us a large container of seed; a handful of mushroom spawn, and asking us: “Will you help me to scatter this seed; to speak my Word to a world in need? Do not worry first about efficiency. Do not be afraid; together we will make a great big creative mess in our world! Enough seed will fall on fertile soil that the yield will be amazing. I promise.”

Homily for Sunday, 17 July 2016

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Genesis 18:1-10a; Psalm 15:2-3, 3-4, 5; Colossians 1:24-28; Luke 10:38-42

This homily was given at the Monastery of the Carmel of St. Joseph near Spruce Grove, AB, Canada.

What is hospitality? What would be the best image we could form in our minds of the perfect host?

Our readings today present us with several images of hospitality; with several hosts. We hear in Genesis of the visit by “three men” to Abraham and Sarah at “the oaks of Mamre.” Abraham shows himself to be a gracious and even quite humorous host. He says to the three men, “Let me bring a little bread.” I imagine Abraham with a slight smirk on his face as he enters the tent to ask Sarah and his servant not to make only “a little bread” but a magnificent feast of “cakes… curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared.” Maybe Abraham thought, “These three visitors are in for a big surprise. They do not know the feast I have in store for them”!

At the end of this feast at Mamre, one of the servants says to Abraham, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” Might Abraham have thought at this point, “Wait a minute!? I have heard this promise of a son before. What a joke! Sarah and I are way too old to have a child”!

We know that Abraham had not always been the best host. God had made this promise of a child before to Abraham and Sarah, and they had dared to laugh at God and his far-fetched promise. Now, as he hosts his three guests “by the oaks of Mamre,” we see that Abraham is beginning to master the art of hospitality with a bit of humour. And just as the three men are about to leave, they deliver God’s announcement to Abraham that, from this point, in her womb Sarah has become the host to God’s last laugh at the expense of Abraham and Sarah: She is now pregnant with Isaac, whose name means “he who laughs.” One does not simply laugh at God and get away without consequences!

This would be far from the last or most direct time in which God would enter our world; in which God would teach us something about hospitality; in which God would go so far as to become human like us, to share in our life, our death, our sorrows yet also our joys, our tears and, I am sure, even our laughter. God has revealed himself to us in this utmost way in the person of Jesus Christ. Now we as Church are hosts to Jesus Christ; to God in our world. How do we go about hosting God in our world; revealing God to our world today?

The episode of Abraham with his three guests at Mamre is perhaps most famously depicted in the Russian Andrei Roublev’s fifteenth century icon called “The Trinity” or “The Hospitality of Abraham.” I do not dare to explain the sublime symbolism of this icon, which I do not understand well: Which angelic figure represents which person of the Trinity; why in some cases the angels’ wings overlap and in other cases do not; the significance of the chalice form of the space among the three figures and the wine-filled chalice on the table around which they are gathered; what the meaning is of the angels’ clothing, of the house in the upper right and of the tree at top centre… I would just as soon laugh at God as try to decipher Roublev’s “Trinity.”

I will only say this about the Most Holy Trinity: In the Trinity we have the ultimate revelation of hospitality; of the love among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit such that there is mysteriously distinction yet no division among the three persons of our one God. In the Trinity there is even more perfect hospitality; more perfect love than the hospitality and love shown by Abraham to his three guests at Mamre.

Yet I think there are simpler images of hospitality and of love, with humour, than Roublev’s “Trinity” or than Abraham’s feast with his guests at Mamre. I think of two images in my mind of great hospitality, one from my experience of being on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and the other from the history of my religious order, the Congregation of St. Basil or Basilians.

Three summers ago I was on a Basilian Peace and Justice Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. We were in the Palestinian territories of Bethlehem, Hebron, East Jerusalem, Jericho, Qumran, and the Dead Sea, south toward the Bedouin lands of the Negev desert, and elsewhere. It was the beginning of the Muslim month of fasting by day, Ramadan. In several of the homes in which we stopped, we were offered tea and sometimes small sweets. The hosts, if they were devout Muslims, would not partake of the food and drink they offered us. At the same time as we on pilgrimage felt for them, we were moved by some of the most profound hospitality we had ever experienced.

From our Basilian history I recall the story of our ten founding priests, who ran a clandestine minor seminary on a hill near Annonay, in the foothills of the French Alps, in the wake of the French Revolution. From time to time the Revolutionary troops would stop by our minor seminary to inspect us, to ensure we were not doing anything religious. One advantage of the hilltop placement of the minor seminary was that our founding confrères could see the troops approaching from a long distance. Our priests had enough time to prepare for their arrival by setting out the best French bread and wine their meagre resources could buy. The troops would go about their “inspection,” wining and dining with these priests-in-disguise until, suffice it to say, they went home more than full and satisfied, leaving our first Basilians and the minor seminary they served to survive another day.

The hospitality of our one God in three persons was alive and well in the meeting of Abraham with his guests at Mamre; alive and well in the Holy Land; alive and well among our early Basilians in Annonay. And our God of hospitality is alive, well, and present here now. Mysteriously, here in Carmelite community in this monastery, united with your Carmelite sisters and brothers throughout the world and all religious and the entire Church, particularly in this Eucharistic celebration, we are both the guests and the hosts in this house of God.

Yet in trying to take in this mystery we may try to do too much, so that we become less-than-ideally present to God; to God’s hospitality; to God’s love among us. And so Jesus offers us a gentle caution through our Gospel account of the encounter among Jesus, Mary, and Martha. I think we do well not to try to smooth over Jesus’ admonition of Martha who, Luke’s Gospel says, “was distracted by her many tasks.” At the same time, Mary is fully attentive to Jesus, sitting at his feet and listening “to what he was saying,” taking the posture of a disciple of the time. Jesus says to Martha, “Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

Would we not expect Jesus to give Martha more credit for welcoming “him into her home”; for serving him and Mary at table; maybe for caring for their other household, material needs? And yet Jesus sides with Mary over Martha! Why?

Somehow Mary, in sitting “at the Lord’s feet” and listening to him, was more hospitable to Jesus than was Martha, who was left “to do all the work by” herself. How can this be? Hospitality can take many forms. Sometimes hospitality means to “do… the work”; to serve at table; to expend energy serving our sisters and brothers. This is the “Martha” form of hospitality shown rightly by Abraham at Mamre; by our Palestinian Muslim hosts during our Holy Land pilgrimage; by the first Basilians to the Revolutionary troops in Annonay; often by us in religious life. But then sometimes the “Mary” form of hospitality is most appropriate: Simply listen, quietly but actively; be present; learn from our Lord and from one another.

The right form of hospitality for the moment will be a constant process of discernment. Yet this discernment; this hospitality is an essential part of our calling as Christians; as a people gathered here in celebration; as a people of God who is love; who is hospitality in person, always present to us.

Homily for Tuesday, 12 July 2016– Ferial

Tuesday of the 15th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 7:1-9; Psalm 48:2-3a, 3b-4, 5-6, 7-8; Matthew 11:20-24

This homily was given at the chapel of Kateri House Women's Residence of St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

How many of us have been faced with situations of extreme sorrow or devastation, or know somebody who has faced a situation like this with seemingly superhuman courage and faith? Maybe the situation was the loss of a home or employment, or other economic hardship. Maybe it was the serious illness or death of a family member or other loved one. Maybe, closer to the situation of today’s reading from the prophet Isaiah, some of us know people who have been forced to leave their homelands because of war or persecution.

Please pardon my loose Charles Dickens reference here, but today we are presented in our readings with the tale of three cities. The two towns in our Gospel reading from Matthew, Chorazin and Bethsaida, do not remain courageous and faithful and so are chastised by Jesus. And in one city, Jerusalem, in Isaiah, at least a few, a “faithful remnant,” face one invasion after another by neighbouring nations, and then deportation and exile, with great courage and faith in God.

I am not sure anybody really knows why Jesus scolds Chorazin and Bethsaida, two tiny fishing villages of his time, so harshly in Matthew’s Gospel. Nobody knows what circumstances they may have been facing that led them to turn away from Jesus and his message. All we have today as witness to this event is a small plaque next to the ruins of Chorazin (this according to a humorous story by my brother Basilian priest, Fr. Thomas Rosica of Salt and Light Television in Toronto, of whom some of us may have heard). The plaque reads, “Welcome to Chorazin. This is the village that Jesus cursed.”

Jerusalem of Isaiah’s time is faced with the weak leadership of Ahaz, the king of Judah, roughly the southernmost third of Israel including Jerusalem. Instead of trusting in the one God of Israel, our God, Ahaz had made alliances with neighbouring nations, including agreements to allow worship of their gods in Judah, in an attempt to stave off Judah’s invasion and destruction. We know that ultimately Judah and the rest of Israel are invaded and overtaken anyway.

But Isaiah gives us, in the name of one of his sons, Shear-jashub, meaning “a remnant shall return,” a clue of how this time of invasion, deportation, and exile will end. “A remnant shall return.” Most of Israel’s exiles would become comfortable in exile and never return home. Yet a small group would return to rebuild Jerusalem and Israel.

This remnant would need the prophet Isaiah’s encouragement to face the devastating destruction of their homeland once they had returned. Isaiah encourages this remnant people by pleading with them: “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint… Stand firm in faith” because this awful situation is temporary. Before God “it shall not stand.”

Could these be timely words of encouragement for us or for anybody we know who is dealing with extreme sorrow; devastation; even despair? These could be timely words to bring to prayer for all people who especially need our prayers and our encouragement today.

Homily for Sunday, 10 July 2016

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 30:10-14; Psalm 69:13, 17, 30-31, 33-34, 36, 37; Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Mercy: Is there a word more popular among Catholics; among Christians today, especially the many of us who admire and attentively follow Pope Francis? Our pope has mercy built into his motto as a bishop, Miserando atque eligendo, which means roughly, “by having mercy and by choosing.” In an interview a few months after his election as pope, Francis showed his deep sense of God’s mercy as essential to his life and ministry: “I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon”; chosen by God’s mercy as the Bishop of Rome to lead our Church. Mercy is one of the most common words in Pope Francis’ writings; his speech; his homilies. In April 2015, when Pope Francis proclaimed this Jubilee Year of Mercy we will be celebrating until December, he spoke of mercy as “the beating heart of the Gospel.”

But, as often as we; as Pope Francis speaks of mercy, how well do we actually understand and live out mercy? Is mercy not still one of the most mysterious and even scary words, even to the most faithful Christian? Should it not be?

Today we encounter in Luke’s Gospel a lawyer, literally a scholar of the law. I am not about to make any cheap jokes here about lawyers. I have a few personal friends who are lawyers, and there may be lawyers among us here this morning. Besides, I do not really want to follow Jesus in nearly being thrown off a cliff (as he does near the beginning of his public ministry in this same Gospel of Luke; it was a tough first attempt at preaching for Jesus)! In fact, the lawyer in today’s Gospel reading gets a bad rap, undeservedly at least at first. His motives are right, I think, as he asks Jesus: “Teacher… What must I do to inherit eternal life”? Who among us here does not want eternal life? If anybody here does not, I might question why you are here.

But the lawyer’s question is only a starting point. It takes this question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life,” for Jesus to begin the process of conversion of this lawyer; of us, from experts of religious law to experts of mercy; into people fully able and willing to live out God’s gift of mercy. How, then, does Jesus begin the process of the lawyer’s conversion from expert of law to expert of mercy? Jesus begins by meeting the lawyer where he is; by asking him basic first year law school questions: “What is written in the law? What do you read there”?

And the brilliant lawyer passes the test with flying colours; he even gets all the available bonus marks! He quotes from the heart of the Jewish Law, from a prayer that all observant Jews pray morning and night to this day and that is in our Bible in the Books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus: “Hear, O Israel… You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.”

But then the poor lawyer gets scared. Jesus announces with joy to the lawyer that he has just aced the graduate-level law course that sends most every student cowering. “Great work”! Now, “do this and you will live.” Next up is Mercy 101, which will last the rest of your life, not in the class or courtroom but in practice. You will die, unsure of having passed Mercy 101 until you are raised up and received into heaven by God with mercy beyond the comprehension of the best of students and even of the experts.

The lawyer sputters with fear: “And who is my neighbour”? Jesus could and maybe should have failed the lawyer on the spot. Clearly he is not ready for Mercy 101. Instead, Jesus uses this ideal teaching moment; a “mercy moment,” to give us the story of the Good Samaritan.

We all know the story of the Good Samaritan, right? A man on the road “from Jerusalem to Jericho” is beaten and left “half dead.” A priest and then a Levite, people in a position to help the wounded man, instead cross over to “the other side” of the road and continue on their way. A Samaritan becomes the unlikely hero. I say unlikely because the Samaritans were the enemies; the greatest misfits in Israel in Jesus’ time: Too pagan to be Jewish and too Jewish to be pagan. And yet this Samaritan binds up the man’s wounds, cares for him, and then entrusts him to an innkeeper, promising to pay any extra expenses, until the man is healed.

We know the story of the Good Samaritan well. Or do we? What if I were to suggest that the story of the Good Samaritan is taking place here and now? I suggest this not only because in our world, in our nation, within our families, even within our Church there continue to be people excluded; laughingstocks; enemies, although this is, sadly, part of our story. We would not experience Orlando; Istanbul and Baghdad; St. Paul and Baton Rouge; Dallas; countless tragedies met with silence, were the dignity of all human life honoured regardless of race, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, wealth, age, occupation, whether we are born or unborn, and so on… We would not need to wait for unlikely heroes; the Good Samaritans of our time (among them let me propose Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini) to stand with the excluded; those, literally or figuratively, left “half-dead” on the roadside or worse, because there would be nobody excluded; no “other”; no enemy, but each of us a neighbour.

“Do this and you will live,” Jesus says to the lawyer; to us. “Who is my neighbour?” the lawyer asks and then answers his own question; our question: “The one who showed… mercy.”

Mercy: This reason we live, this “beating heart of the Gospel,” perhaps scares us. We cannot fully comprehend mercy before we experience it in heaven. Yet in this world we are given many tastes; many previews of this fullness of mercy. Our world itself, creation, is a work of God’s mercy. Our Church gives us Christ, mercy really present in our Eucharist under the appearance of bread and wine; mercy really present in her other sacraments; mercy really present in one another and waiting to be worked in our world.

Mercy is present; spoken of in the Word of God. Moses speaks today in Deuteronomy: Mercy, God’s greatest law and gift, is neither “too hard” for us nor “too far away”; neither confined to the distant heavens nor “beyond the sea” but “in [our mouths] and in [our hearts] for [us] to observe.” We plead with the Psalmist to our God of “steadfast love… According to your abundant mercy, turn to me.” For “those who love [God’s] name,” Mercy, “will live in it.”

And the great hymn from Colossians speaks of Christ, God’s greatest act of mercy yet, as the one in whom “all things hold together,” from God’s creation of the world of which Christ is “firstborn” to our “peace through the blood of his cross”; from act of mercy to act of mercy.

God’s mercy is so great as to be overwhelming; often scary. Yet we are called to imitate this mercy as neighbours; without exclusion. And who is our neighbour? Who are we but the ones who show mercy?

“Go and do likewise”… “Do this and [we] will live.”
    

Homily for Wednesday, 6 July 2016– Ferial

Wednesday of the 14th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Hosea 10:1-3, 7-8, 12; Psalm 105:2-3, 4-5, 6-7; Matthew 10:1-7

Optional memorial of St. Maria Goretti, Virgin and Martyr

This homily was given at the chapel of Kateri House Women's Residence of St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

For how many of us, after hearing today’s Gospel reading from Matthew, does Jesus seem to exclude entire groups of people from having “the good news” proclaimed to them, for no particular reason?

After choosing his twelve apostles, Jesus says to them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Does Jesus’ instruction here not contradict other well-known instances in our Gospels in which Jesus goes out of his way to include the otherwise excluded: Gentiles; Samaritans; essentially anybody not Jewish; sinners; those with physical or spiritual illnesses; outcasts? We know, for example, of the story of the Good Samaritan or of Jesus’ healing of a Roman centurion’s son, in which Jesus teaches us that God has created; loves; and wills to save all people, not only the Jews or, later, us Christians.

And so why would Jesus instruct the Twelve to avoid the Gentiles and Samaritans; to “proclaim the good news” that “the Kingdom of God has come near” to only “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”? After all, among Jesus’ apostles are Peter, who would deny Jesus and leave him to die on the cross, “Matthew the tax collector”… “and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.” Why accept these people as apostles, among essentially a group of unknowns if not worse, but deny the hearing of “the good news” to the Gentiles and Samaritans?

Or is Jesus as exclusionist as it seems when we hear today’s Gospel? I suggest not. My interpretation of Jesus’ instruction to the Twelve here (and please feel free to differ from me but, more importantly, take some time to reflect on this or other parts of Scripture you may find troubling) is that he is not saying, “No, do not go to anybody but the Jews,” but “not yet.”

Many scholars consider Matthew, among the four Gospel writers, to be most concerned about a Jewish audience: Early Christians who had Jewish more than pagan (Roman, Greek, Assyrian or other) backgrounds. The Samaritans of Jesus’ time were considered by many to be on the borderline between Jews and pagans, not “pure” Jews. Matthew is clearly most concerned about the well-being of communities of these early Jewish Christians. Here, might we make a distinction between the time-conditioned and the timeless aspects of our Scriptures?

Jesus’ “not yet” through Matthew has, I think, become our “now.” We recognize more than ever our Jewish sisters and brothers as those who first heard the Word of God. And we might recognize ourselves as, while usually faithful to God, occasionally among “the lost sheep” in special need of God’s mercy. May we then be a people who continues to seek out “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”; the lost sheep among ourselves, to proclaim God’s mercy to our world without exclusion. Now, more than ever, “the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.”  

Homily for Sunday, 3 July 2016

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 66:10-14c; Psalm 66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20; Galatians 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

How many of us have ever been on a great journey or pilgrimage? Especially during my time as a Basilian and as a priest, I have had many opportunities to travel; to visit; to serve around the world. Since last September I have been a doctoral student in theology at the Catholic University of Paris. In the last eight years I have lived in Paris, in Toronto, in Windsor, in Cali, Colombia, in Madrid, and in Rochester, New York. There have been a few pilgrimages during this time, from the Holy Land to the Andean Highlands of southwestern Colombia and Ecuador, to a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary at over 3 000 metres above sea level!

But is there not a point, for anybody here who has traveled frequently or long distances, when you just want to return home and stay put for a while? For this and several other reasons, I’m grateful to be back here, in Edmonton, the city in which I grew up, and at St. Joseph’s College where my journey as a Basilian began. Here, I’ll be teaching a course beginning this week, Teaching as a Vocation: International Perspectives.

We hear in our readings today of people with more “international perspectives”; more experience of travel; of pilgrimage than any course could have provided them. The prophet Isaiah speaks to us of the people of Israel of his time who had plenty of experience of living in foreign nations, and not by choice. In Isaiah’s time, the people of Israel were in exile. Their home, Israel, and its centre, Jerusalem, had been conquered and laid waste. And Isaiah calls them in the midst of this devastation to return to their homeland and to rebuild it.

How would the people of Israel react to Isaiah’s call to return to Israel; to Jerusalem? Most considered Isaiah’s call to set out on this journey home to be foolish. Most of them had become comfortable after years in Babylon, even though they had lost their nation’s autonomy and their faith in the one God. Only a small (but significant) group took up Isaiah’s call to return and to rebuild their homeland. They remembered God’s care for them through Isaiah’s comforting, maternal imagery of Jerusalem, although it would take time, hard work, and renewed faith for the people of Israel once again to build the city over which the LORD would “extend prosperity… like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream.”

And if Isaiah calls the people of Israel to return home; to rebuild Jerusalem as the city of God, in Luke’s Gospel from which we hear today Jesus, too, calls seventy of his disciples to set out on a difficult journey. The journey to which Jesus calls the seventy, and the message of peace Jesus sends them to speak to the households of “every town and place where he… intended to go,” are just as demanding as Isaiah’s call to the exiled people of Israel to return and rebuild Jerusalem.

While Isaiah’s call had been to return home to Jerusalem, Jesus’ call to the seventy is to set out from the comfort of home and the certainty of being at Jesus’ side. They are to leave behind not only added comforts but what would seem to be necessities, too: “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals, and greet no one on the road.”

Now, how many of us would be more inclined to set out on a long journey away from home without these basic necessities: Cash in the right currency and in a hidden pouch (to avoid the occasional pickpocket); one of those new ultra-lightweight luggage sets; sturdy footwear; good company and conversation along the way? I do not think many of us would want to set out without at least the bare necessities. Yet this is what Jesus seems to expect of his seventy disciples: “I am sending you like lambs into the midst of wolves”; shake the dust off your feet as witness against the towns who “do not welcome you.” Some journey that is!

But the seventy disciples Jesus sends out ahead of him are undeterred. In fact, they return to Jesus brimming with confidence: “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us.” These disciples, though, have forgotten an important detail: This success they had as traveling preachers in Jesus’ name was not the end of their journey. Heaven is the endpoint of their journey; the goal of our journey. And so the seventy disciples draw a sharp caution from Jesus: “Do not rejoice… that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

Imagine ourselves for a moment among Jesus’ seventy disciples who hear this. Might we ask ourselves: “Is it so wrong of us to rejoice”? We have just returned from a long difficult journey; a mission to spread Jesus’ message, the Gospel, “to every town and place” ahead of him. Our mission has been more successful than we would ever have dreamed possible. Spiritual beings, let alone people whom we might have thought to be skeptical of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, have submitted to us; have opened themselves to our message. Why not throw a great celebration of our unexpected success upon our return? But wait, Jesus says…

Jesus does not say that we should not rejoice over our more significant successes in this world. But he invites us to keep our eyes and our hearts focused on the ultimate goal of our journey; our mission; our earthly pilgrimage: “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Keep your eyes and hearts focused on our journey’s goal that is pure gift, since it is God who has written our names in heaven before any of us ever existed except in God’s own loving imagination.

As pure gift, God has created us as uniquely capable of loving one another as God loves; as uniquely capable of setting out on this journey to which God calls us, a journey that leads us right back to God; to heaven, where God has written our names. And God has provided us with guideposts; signs along our journey to keep us focused and on the right path to heaven.

But these guideposts; these signs are just that: Signs. Jesus cautions us not to become focused on these as if they are the endpoint of the journey. Otherwise we become vulnerable to distractions; to false paths like greed; pride; careerism; boasting, as St. Paul cautions against in his Letter to the Galatians, in anything but the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Our earthly pilgrimage, even for the most successful of Christian disciples, will have its challenges; its crosses. I am not speaking here of the small (but still significant, in some areas of the world) proportion of Christians who are martyred; killed out of hatred toward our faith. Life on earth, for all of us, has a beginning and an end. Death may seem for us something more to be feared than in which to rejoice. But a holy death is the Christian disciple’s last major earthly sign, marking the last exit to heaven, where our names are written: Faithful servant; disciple of Jesus Christ.

Before we reach this sign; this guidepost, there will be other signs perhaps as fearsome that we are nevertheless on the right path to heaven; that our focus is right. Even at our most successful, for a Christian disciple a sense of exile must precede our arrival home to rebuild Jerusalem as God’s city as in Isaiah’s time. This sense of exile may be our price to pay for living as countersigns to evils in our world and our culture: Ideological polarization and attacks; militarism; lack of reverence for creation and human life, especially at its beginning and its end, to name a few. We are, after all, “lambs in the midst of wolves.” But, even so, rejoice! Rejoice, so long as our rejoicing itself becomes a sign of the greatest joy we will ever know, the joy promised to us at the ultimate goal of our journey: “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”