Homily for Wednesday, 1 January 2020– Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God

Octave Day of Christmas

Readings of the day: Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 67:2-3, 4, 5, 6, 8; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21

This homily was given at St. Joseph’s College, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

The LORD bless you and keep you;

The LORD make his face to shine upon you

and be gracious to you,

The LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

This prayer with which the LORD asks Aaron, through Moses, to bless the people of Israel in the Book of Numbers, in the reading we have heard today, is maybe one of the most recognizable blessings in the Jewish or Christian traditions; in our Bible. But what is peace? With what kind of peace was Aaron to bless his people as he and Moses led them through the desert back to their homeland, Israel?

The Hebrew word for “peace” in this Aaronic or “priestly blessing” of Numbers is, I am sure, a word many of us have heard before: Shalom. But is shalom not one of those notoriously difficult words from an ancient language to translate into a current language like English? Shalom may mean “peace,” in a sense, though, that is much richer than the absence of a dispute or of war. It may mean anything from wishing somebody wholeness or prosperity to a simple hello or even goodbye.

“The LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you shalom.” This blessing of Aaron has several echoes throughout our Scriptures and our Mass. In John’s Gospel, at the Last Supper, Jesus blesses his disciples with a prayer for them reminiscent of Aaron’s prayer for the people of Israel in Numbers: “Peace I leave you, my peace I give you.” And then, in the same Gospel, the risen Jesus greets the disciples three different times: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

In a few moments here, we will echo these words of Jesus, which are in turn an echo of God’s voice through Aaron to his people: “Peace I leave you, my peace I give you… Shalom be with you.” In this way, we will exchange a sign of peace just before we receive communion, shalom given for us in the form of bread and wine. And then we will be sent forth from here at the end of this celebration: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you”… to be shalom to our world in profound need of our peace as a people of God.

Is it not appropriate, then, that each year, on January 1, New Year’s Day, in addition to this liturgical celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, as Church we also celebrate this day as the World Day of Peace? We have, I think, a lot to celebrate each year on this World Day of Peace, New Year’s Day, Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. Our world becomes more peaceful year by year: Fewer wars; more respect for freedom of thought, freedom of religious faith, and other basic human rights and freedoms; more governments and forms of government that uphold these human rights.

Still, our world is far from perfectly at peace, much less at shalom that is so much more than the absence of conflict; shalom that is peace only possible for us through God. Parts of our world still remain mired in war; still send record numbers of people fleeing from violence and abuse, in search of peace. Households, families, marriages still experience brokenness; shalom still eludes us at this most foundational level of any healthy human society.

Yet still we (rightly) celebrate as we pray for shalom; for peace. And we connect this celebration of and prayer for peace with a celebration of Mary as Mother of God. So what might Mary, Mother of God, have to do with peace, in our world, among and within nations, or within households and families? Let me suggest that our celebration of this Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, has a lot to do with peace; I will go so far as to say that a healthy Christian devotion to Mary is essential for our peace; for shalom.

Our Gospel today, from Luke, shows us this essential connection between the Blessed Virgin Mary and peace; shalom. When the shepherds first arrive at the scene of our Lord’s birth, we might imagine their excitement and the excitement and amazement of everybody present with them. Luke’s Gospel says in fact that, as the shepherds “made known what had been told them about this child… all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.”

All this excitement, activity, and even amazement is a good thing, especially this time of year, is it not? Yet (and maybe we can all relate to what I am about to say) is this Christmastime not one of the more exhausting times of the year? Amid all the activity, we need time to rest; to pray; to celebrate with joy, yet still to be at peace. So, after Luke describes the excited joy of the shepherds, everybody’s amazement “at what the shepherds” had to say “about this child,” Jesus, Luke turns our attention toward Mary. Luke says that “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”

My sisters and brothers, let me suggest that these two verbs, “treasured” and “pondered,” are most essential to the Gospel we have just heard. They are essential for our peace, in its fullest sense of shalom. Amid the noise, the excitement, the activity, the words of the shepherds, her own probable exhaustion at having just brought a child into the world, of all the people in our Gospel account today, Mary is the most “at peace.” And she teaches us something central to our own being “at peace”: Treasuring and pondering.

But to treasure and ponder as Mary does is not to hold onto the joy of this celebration of the Lord’s birth as if it is ours to keep to ourselves in a selfish way. The joy of this celebration has been given to us by God through Mary, a young woman God chose and preserved from sin in order to bring God’s own Son, Jesus, into our world. Because this joy; this gift of God’s Son through Mary that we treasure and ponder, has been given to us, God calls us now to hand on this gift of shalom enveloped in our human flesh to the world around us. And how might we treasure and ponder while handing on this gift we have received?

Again, may we look to Mary as an example of treasuring and pondering while handing on. From the moment Mary conceived Jesus in her womb, through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and Mary’s own assumption into heaven, body and soul, Mary allowed the peace, the shalom of God to settle into her very depths. Shalom became the foundation of who Mary was, treasuring and pondering, such that then this shalom was able to flow from her. God calls us now to the same willingness to treasure and ponder, to allow shalom to take on our human flesh and become the essence of who we are, not only the historical event of the birth of a child in Bethlehem two thousand years ago.

Every time our prayerful celebration here, our treasuring and pondering before the altar of the Lord, allows and strengthens us to act in even small ways of kindness, mercy, and justice toward one another, shalom incarnate becomes a little more who we are and flows from us as it did from Mary into the world.

Let me go back (briefly but to some time ago) in history, to the Council of Ephesus of 431. There, at Ephesus, our Church’s bishops first encouraged all Christians to pray through Mary under the title of Theotokos, “God-bearer” or, as we Roman Catholics usually refer to Mary, “Mother of God.” Outside the place where the bishops of Ephesus assembled, the faithful chanted, as if as a prayer for the unity of the bishops and the Church, which was anything but assured in 431, “Mother of God”…

Here, now, on this first day of 2020, may we join in this prayer of Ephesus: “Mother of God,” Mother and Queen of Peace, through your Son Jesus Christ, give us, our Church and our world the gift of shalom. May we treasure and ponder, allow to become incarnate in our depths, and then hand on this gift as you did. Shalom chaverim, as our Hebrew-speaking sisters and brothers might pray: “Let us go forth in peace” into this New Year to bear to the world, enveloped in our human flesh, the peace we have received, pondered, treasured, and that we celebrate today.

Homily for Sunday, 29 December 2019– The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Readings of the day: Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14; Psalm 128:1-2, 3, 4-5; Colossians 3:12-21; Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

This homily was given at St. Clare Church and St. Joseph’s College, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Did we miss something? Our Gospel reading today begins as “the wise men” have already left the place of the Lord’s Nativity in Bethlehem. At least I thought we did not celebrate the Epiphany, the “making known” of the Lord through these wise men to the world, until the first Sunday after the New Year. At this point in our Christmas season, we would not yet have the wise men at the Nativity Scene in our house. When I was a child, my sister, brother, and I would simulate the journey and belated arrival of the wise men to Bethlehem by inching the wise men figurines, day by day, a little closer to the Nativity scene at home until they finally arrived there on the Epiphany. By this point in the Christmas season, the magi would still have most of the living room to cover before arriving at the Nativity scene!

Yet today, on this Solemnity of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Matthew’s Gospel says that the wise men had already arrived and left. Maybe they simply decided to arrive early this year, right? Maybe they braved those Boxing Day sales on gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Well, not really. We will still celebrate the Epiphany, when we will hear of the arrival of the magi at Bethlehem from the same Gospel of Matthew. So what is going on here?

First, let us be clear that our Church’s celebration of Advent and Christmastime is not play-acting, and it does not follow an orderly timeline of historical events. If our Church’s celebrations this time of year do not follow a precise order of historical events, then what is their purpose? What was Matthew’s purpose in giving us the Gospel we hear today and, more importantly, what might it mean for us today?

This part of the infancy narrative, as it is called, of Matthew’s Gospel, from Matthew’s telling of how Jesus came to be born of Mary and Joseph, to the arrival and parting of the wise men, to the Holy Family’s flight to and return from Egypt to escape the massacre by Herod, is particular to Matthew in many ways. Compared to the other Gospels in our Bible, Matthew devotes much more detail especially to Joseph, husband of Mary. Even then, though, we know little about this Joseph of Nazareth from our Gospels; of the man Matthew first introduces to us as “a righteous man,” concerned not to put Mary in danger after she conceives Jesus “by the Holy Spirit” before she and Joseph live together. Joseph never speaks a word in Matthew’s or any of the other Gospels. But those three words of Matthew’s to describe Joseph, “a righteous man,” speak volumes about the saintliness of Joseph; about his care for his family—the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—about his care for us, the Church, and about how we might be called to model our lives after that of St. Joseph and the Holy Family.

Joseph may not speak a word in our Gospels, but he is a master communicator, especially with God but with us, too. Joseph communicates with God through an angel in three dreams in Matthew’s infancy narrative, the last two of them in today’s Gospel reading: First, when the angel says to Joseph not to fear and to take the pregnant Mary into his home as his wife; second, before the Holy Family’s escape to Egypt; and, third, when Joseph hears from the angel that Herod is dead and it is safe to return with Mary and Jesus from Egypt home to Israel.

In many ways Matthew’s presentation of Joseph of Nazareth parallels, deliberately or not on Matthew’s part, how another Joseph famous for dreaming and interpreting dreams is presented in the Old Testament Book of Genesis. God reveals his favour toward the Joseph of Genesis through dreams; God favours Joseph over his brothers in a way that angers Joseph’s brothers and leads them to leave Joseph in a cistern in Egypt to die. The Joseph of Genesis, of course, survives and goes on to be a prominent figure (and dream interpreter) in prison and then in Pharaoh’s court.

The parallels between Joseph of the Book of Genesis and Joseph of our Gospels are not perfect: The New Testament Joseph does not speak a word recorded in our Bible, whereas the Old Testament Joseph speaks plenty, interprets his dreams vocally, and would go on to have the story of his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (loosely) told in a famous Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera. Joseph of Nazareth is more of a humble behind-the-scenes dreamer, although he, like his Old Testament name counterpart, is a prophetic figure. Joseph of Nazareth plays a critical role in the fulfillment of “the law and the prophets” in Jesus Christ according to Matthew’s Gospel.

Joseph of Nazareth is a master communicator; an obedient communicator with God, not so much in the sense of blindly following what God’s angel tells him to do in his dreams as in the sense of attentive listening to what God reveals to him through these dreams. Joseph is, first and foremost, “a righteous man”; these are Matthew’s first words to describe Joseph.

Joseph of Nazareth is a model and a prophet from God to us; a master communicator to us in his faithfulness to and his care for Mary and Jesus. Joseph of Nazareth is a model and a prophet to us of solidarity with the most vulnerable among us. Without hesitation, Joseph the Righteous welcomes Mary into his home as his wife. Without hesitation, Joseph flees Herod’s tyranny, placing himself along with Mary and Jesus in solidarity with everybody through the ages who are unwelcome or subject to violence, even in their own homelands; people who continue to encounter not welcome but walls, literal and figurative, in the lands to which they flee desperately for safety; all people who, as Pope Francis reminded us on Christmas Day, continue to be subject to injustices that make them “cross seas and deserts that become cemeteries.”

Today, on this Solemnity of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we remember and we celebrate St. Joseph of Nazareth, who never hesitates to place himself within our human realities, from the joyful to the tragic. The obedience, faithfulness, and attentiveness of Joseph of Nazareth to God shows us the immaculate purity of Mary, Mother of God; mother of the Church; our mother. This, in turn, shows us the way to God and to God’s Son, Jesus Christ; the way to our salvation.

The Holy Family of Jesus our Lord and Saviour, Mary our Mother, and the righteous dreamer, Joseph, exemplifies a truth expressed so beautifully nearer to our time, in the opening lines of Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes: “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the followers of Christ… United in Christ, [we] are led by the Holy Spirit in [our] journey to the Kingdom of [our] Father and [we welcome] the news of salvation that is meant for every person. That is why this community [the Church] realizes that it is truly linked with humankind and its history by the deepest of bonds.”

Our “joys and hopes,” and if I dare say dreams, were the “joys and hopes” of the Holy Family. They were central to the dreams of Joseph the Righteous of Nazareth, Joseph’s silent yet prophetic communication and intercession between God and us. They are the “joys and hopes”; the dreams of our Church, of one another, for one another here at a most essential level. These are “the joys and the hopes”; the most essential dream of God for us: That, through Jesus Christ, through the intercession of the Holy Family and all the saints, our journeys; our lives, our experiences from the joyful to the tragic, will lead us home to God himself, to eternal life.

Homily for Sunday, 8 September 2019

Readings of the day: Wisdom 9:13-18b; Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14, 17; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

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

Full disclosure: Yesterday was my brother Eric’s and (officially) new sister-in-law Chelsea’s wedding at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Sherwood Park, a great celebration of love, family, friendship and, dare I say, Christian discipleship. What exactly, then, does Jesus mean when he says, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate their father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and sisters… and even their life itself cannot be my disciple”? How many of us here now, maybe with your family or friends, are here because you in fact really hate your father or mother, husband, wife, or children, brothers or sisters, or even your own life? And petty squabbles and, kids, sibling rivalries do not count. Jesus says we really need to hate each other to be his disciples, right?

Well, not quite. At least I hope that, having just celebrated my brother Eric’s and sister-in-law Chelsea’s wedding, I am now not supposed to hate them and the rest of my family if I want to be Jesus’ disciple! I think we may understand what Jesus says in today’s Gospel a little better with a brief lesson in Greek, because Jesus’ original meaning when he asks us to hate “father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and sisters… and even [our] life” in order to be his disciple gets lost in translation to English. When Jesus asks us to hate “father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and sisters… and even [our] life” in order to be his disciple, the word we hear as “hate” is from the Greek misei. In English, words like “miser” or “miserly,” for somebody who is not very generous with his or her money, derive from this Greek word.

So, does this mean that Jesus’ ultimate disciple would be somebody like Ebenezer Scrooge? Well, again, not quite. Misei in Greek means, more precisely, “to treat as nothing”; “as of minimal to no importance.” This may still be troublesome for those of us who love our families and like to spend a lot of time with them, as I do. One great blessing I have when I have taught here at St. Joseph’s College is to live, for a few months of the year, in the same city as most of my immediate family and many of my closest friends. I would have difficulty being Jesus’ disciple if this meant treating my family as if they were not important. This is simply not my reality; my experience.

But to be Jesus’ disciple, I think Jesus is saying to us today, is a question of priorities. Even if (as I hope we all do) we love our mothers and fathers, our wives, our husbands, our children, and know the beauty and dignity of our own lives, Jesus is asking us to put God first. Jesus is inviting us to put our relationship with God above all the other great relationships we may have with people closest to us and however much we may love our own lives. Compared with our relationship with God, Jesus invites us to consider even the greatest of our relationships with other people and with ourselves (and certainly our own ego) as of minimal to no importance. This is especially because all our relationships with other people—our families and close friends—and our ability to recognize and love the dignity of our own lives all find their source in God.

If we understand Jesus’ saying that, to be his disciple, we must “hate… father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and sisters… and even [our] life” in this way, this may also help us to place what Jesus says to us in the context of our other readings today, from Wisdom, the Psalms, and Philemon.

The Book of Wisdom, not surprisingly, invites us to prioritize and seek after wisdom. Now, the Book of Wisdom is a strange book of the Bible. It, like several books that make up the so-called “wisdom literature” of the Old Testament—Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Sirach, some of the Psalms, and Wisdom—barely mention God and at times include statements that are theologically problematic if they are not interpreted carefully. We hear even today, for example, that “a perishable body weighs down the soul, and this earthly tent burdens the thoughtful mind.” Texts like this would be used by people on the fringes of the early Church called Gnostics (from another Greek word, gnosis, that means “knowledge”), who taught that the human body is like a prison dwelling from which the soul had to free itself to go to heaven. This teaching, and the Gnostics’ view that there is knowledge, gnosis, that is essential for our salvation that is outside the Bible or the teaching of the Church handed on from Jesus’ Apostles, were eventually condemned by the Church as heresy. But the Biblical wisdom literature is also peculiar in that it mentions God sparingly and, at face value, tends to prioritize human faculties like wisdom over anything divine.

At least today’s reading from Wisdom acknowledges a divine source (who remains unnamed, but still) of wisdom. The Book of Wisdom asks, “Who has learned your counsel, unless you have given wisdom and sent your holy spirit from on high”? So, if Wisdom prioritizes or glorifies wisdom above all, we could say that it does so because to prioritize or glorify wisdom is to point us to the source of all wisdom, the ultimate source of “all that is good,” whom we call God.

Like the Book of Wisdom and Luke’s Gospel, St. Paul’s letter to Philemon also calls us to discern priorities. Philemon is the shortest and one of the latest of St. Paul’s letters that are included in our Bible. St. Paul writes from prison to a wealthy Christian of the time, Philemon, who was possibly a bishop or other leader of the Church and who owned slaves, but whose slave Onesimus had run away from him. In the meantime, Onesimus had become a Christian (possibly baptized by Paul) and was being accompanied and taught by St. Paul in the Christian faith. If the Old Testament Book of Wisdom prioritizes the human faculty of wisdom, Philemon gives pride of place to virtues like forgiveness and reconciliation. Like wisdom, forgiveness and reconciliation point us to our utmost priority, God. Who here has forgiven or reconciled with another person, or been forgiven, not least in the sacrament of reconciliation, and so knows of what I speak?

Philemon, whom St. Paul addresses with this brief yet moving letter, was in no way obligated to receive Onesimus back as his slave, much less as “a beloved brother” in Christ as St. Paul asks of him. St. Paul knows this; he knows Philemon’s legal rights toward Onesimus, yet he asks Philemon to receive Onesimus back anyway, using affectionate terms for Onesimus like “my child” and describing his relationship with Onesimus like that of a father to a son.

St. Paul’s letter to Philemon, Jesus in Luke’s Gospel, our Psalm today, and the Book of Wisdom all point us to our ultimate priority, who is God. But each reading we hear today points us to God in a different way. In the letter to Philemon, the way to God is through practice of the virtues of forgiveness and reconciliation, especially when we are not required to forgive somebody; to receive that person back as “a beloved brother” or sister. Forgiveness and reconciliation without conditions is how God acts toward us when we stray from God and hurt one another by our sin. Unlike Onesimus, though, we do not begin as slaves; we begin as beloved people, created in God’s own image and likeness.

Our Psalm, like the Book of Wisdom, prioritize wisdom among ways of seeking God first. To know the shortness of our earthly days is, in a way paradoxically, to know the “favour” and “steadfast love” of the LORD for us; to know God as the source of our life, both our finite life on earth and our eternal life with God in heaven for which this life is our preparation.

In this earthly life, family and close friends can help us to prepare for eternal life by acting as examples of God’s love toward us, and our acting as examples of God’s love toward them. It will be unlikely for us, but it does happen still in our world today that people, Christians, are asked to choose in a moment between love for family, friends, and this life, and God. It is for these moments especially that Jesus says, “Whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

Whether in the rare event we will be called to give our life for the Lord, or whether we seek wisdom, or love of family and friends, or forgiveness and reconciliation—all of which are good things—may we allow our seeking after these things to point us toward God. All earthly realities are secondary: Wisdom, human love and relationships, even giving our lives for our faith. God is and must be first. God is the source of “all that is good”; all that God gives us in this life for our salvation.