Homily for Sunday, 30 June 2019

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:16b, 19-21; Psalm 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11; Galatians 5:1, 13-18; Luke 9:51-62

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time

What is the most difficult choice you have ever had to make? Has there ever been an important choice you have had to make that you hesitated to make, or one that you made immediately; that you were “resolutely determined” to make, maybe despite or because of its difficulty?

Today the word of God invites us to make a choice, to set out on a journey. The choice, the journey, to which our readings invite us today is a difficult one. The destination of our chosen journey is the cross, yet still we are invited to set out “resolutely determined” on this journey.

We have, as Church, just celebrated the great liturgical seasons of Lent and then Easter. Our Eastertime celebrations have extended into the feasts of Pentecost, the Most Holy Trinity, and the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. Could we be faulted if we felt somewhat of a liturgical let-down since now, as of this weekend, we ease back into the more familiar rhythm of Ordinary Time, after the great liturgical high points of our Church over the last several weeks?

After the penitential intensity of Lent, the great joy of Easter, the Church’s day of birth in the Holy Spirit that is Pentecost, the celebrations of our experience of sublime divine mysteries through the Solemnities of the Most Holy Trinity and Most Holy Body and Blood, now we are invited to set out, with only a few basic necessities and with resolute determination, on a journey.

Thankfully, we are not alone on our journey. We have each other. We are led on this journey by our Lord, “resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem,” where he, although faultless, is to die as a common criminal, crucified for us between two thieves. Our Lord even sends “messengers ahead of him” to prepare towns whose people we are to encounter in advance of meeting them. Still, that we are accompanied by one another and led by the Lord does not make this journey much easier for us. The destination of our journey is still the cross, and even the intermediate steps of this journey promise to be difficult.

Why, then, should we even bother setting out on this journey, let alone be “resolutely determined” to do so? Would it not be easier for us to continue happily as “we have always done it”? Would it not be easier for us to envision a static world; a static Church in which styles of and the kinds people in leadership change slowly if at all, whether at the parish level, the diocesan level, or the universal Church level? Would it not be easier for us to accept a Church in which doctrine or liturgical practice and their interpretation did not develop with time, but remained certain, clear, and unambiguous forever? Would it not be easier for us to accept, as Christian disciples, to live in a world in which we would never be misunderstood or even ridiculed for our beliefs and for trying to live them? Would it not be easier to be able “to call down fire from heaven,” as James and John wished to do to the Samaritans who would not accept them because their destination was Jerusalem, on those who differ from us or who ridicule and misunderstand us? Would it not be easier to accept a Church in which Christians never would, as St. Paul says to the Galatians; to us today, “go on biting and devouring one another,” renouncing their freedom for Christ won by Christ’s self-sacrifice on the cross to sell themselves back into a form of slavery? (I speak here especially of a pervasive and abusive form of seeking after power and status in the Church at the expense of the faithful whom the power of those who have it is supposed to serve).

It would be nice if our world, our Church, our journey were so simple and promised clear success at its end. But this is not the reality of our Church, our world, or the journey on which Jesus invites us to set out. The journey on which Jesus invites us to set out “resolutely determined” features a few aspects that are clear and certain: This journey will end in the cross. It will end in failure, at least insofar as the world sees. It will end in shame. It will end in death. Even its intermediate steps, its passage through Samaritan towns so to speak, will be difficult. Does anybody here still want to join our Lord Jesus on this journey, let alone with resolute determination?

Thankfully, we already have some experience of this very journey to which Jesus calls us: We who have been baptized have taken at least the first steps (or our parents and godparents have taken them for us) on this journey. We have been baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ. Yes, we know that the cross toward which Jesus and we are “resolutely determined” to journey is not the end of our story. Eternal life is; resurrection is. But to reach our resurrection to eternal life, our journey must pass through the cross: Failure; shame; death; Jerusalem; solidarity with the Son of God crucified between two thieves.

Today we as Church invite, during this celebration, RJB to be the latest disciple to be baptized into this journey toward Jerusalem, through death to resurrection, on which Jesus leads us. Almost four years ago, on August 1, 2015, on a sweltering day across this St. Kateri Parish from here at St. Margaret Mary Church (which, without air conditioning on hot summer days, may be an apt description of an earthly form of purgatory), R’s parents, B and P, with me as the Church’s witness, were married.

B and P, and all our married or to-be-married couples, you, too, are living a particular experience of the journey to which Jesus invites us, this journey to Jerusalem, through the cross to resurrection. You made a promise before this Church of faithfulness and truth to each other “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health,” to “love and honor [each other] all the days of” your life. I imagine that this promise you made, on some days more than others, is lived out more like that of the passage of Jesus and his disciples through Samaritan towns: You know the difficulty in resisting the temptation “to call down fire from heaven” on each other!  

B and P, you accepted “children”—this child, your son RJ—“lovingly from God, [to] bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church.” You accepted; you were and are “resolutely determined” to set out on this journey, led by Jesus Christ, to Jerusalem, through death to resurrection.

Our Church now blesses all your “yeses”; all your promises; all your steps of choosing to accept to join our Lord Jesus Christ on this journey to Jerusalem, through this earthly life and its sacraments through death to resurrection, “resolutely determined.” Our Lord Jesus continues to invite you, B and P, and all of us, to make difficult choices, from the moment of our baptism. They are choices that, we pray, will bring you great joy not only in eternal life but in this earthly life. But they are and will be difficult choices nonetheless.

Our Lord Jesus invites us, through our baptism into one Church, to prioritize Christ and his mission toward Jerusalem above all else: “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”; “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God”; “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what is left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Our Lord Jesus invites us to join him in proclaiming the kingdom of God, a difficult mission in our world, to “glorify God by our lives.” Our Lord Jesus invites us to choose, “resolutely determined,” to follow him to Jerusalem, through death to resurrection to eternal life.

Homily for Friday, 28 June 2019– The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 34:11-16; Psalm 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6; Romans 5:5b-11; Luke 15:3b-7

What is mercy? What images can we think of that express the mercy of God?

We have prayed for the last nine days before a great image of God’s mercy, that of Jesus’ Most Sacred Heart. At the conclusion of this novena we have been celebrating here at St. Kateri Parish, in this St. Margaret Mary Church, named for one of the most important promoters of the worship of the Sacred Heart, we celebrate this Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus with this Eucharist. The image of the Most Sacred Heart is most often that of the heart of Jesus, crowned with thorns, topped with a cross and burning fire, wounded and bleeding out of loving mercy for us.

This past week, my brother Basilian Fr. Kevin Mannara, Director of Campus Ministry at St. John Fisher College, took me on a tour of the lovely new Hermance Family Chapel of St. Basil the Great on campus. One of the too many highlights to count of the new chapel at Fisher is the large cross behind and above the sanctuary: Seven feet from the top of Jesus’ head to his toes, and seven feet from fingertip to fingertip, with Jesus’ arms spread wide on the cross. But it is Jesus’ gaze from the cross upon us, either the people who approach to receive communion at the foot of the sanctuary steps or priests, deacons, servers, or anybody preparing to enter the sanctuary at the beginning of Mass or exit it after Mass, that perhaps most strikingly expresses the Lord’s mercy. It is as though Jesus, crucified but still alive as he is shown on the cross in the Chapel of St. Basil the Great, is at the moment of saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” before he gives up his spirit.

Jesus’ gaze of mercy from this cross is so intensely beautiful as to be unnerving to anybody who should look up at Jesus’ face. There is nothing quite like a penetrating stare-down of mercy from our crucified Lord to express the depth of God’s saving love for us and all creation. The gaze of Jesus from the cross in the Hermance Family Chapel of St. Basil the Great is also inspired by and meant to evoke Pope Francis’ motto as a bishop, in turn derived from a text by the Venerable Bede: Miserando atque eligendo, literally, “By having mercy and by choosing.”

Our readings today propose for us yet another image of God’s mercy, that of a shepherd. Compared to a bleeding, wounded heart crowned with thorns and topped with a cross and flames, or a giant sculpture of the crucified Jesus gazing intensely into our eyes when we look up at him from in front of a church’s sanctuary steps, shepherds may not necessarily have the same unnerving quality to them. But then when was the last time anybody here has seen a shepherd? Shepherds may not be as unnerving an image to us as a bleeding, wounded, thorn-crowned, flame-and-cross-topped heart, or a sculpture of a crucified man gazing right into our eyes, but shepherds still share a strange, mysterious quality with these other depictions of God’s mercy.

And, if we listen more attentively to our readings today, a shepherd, or at least Jesus depicted as a shepherd, can be just as unnerving as Jesus’ wounded heart with thorns, a cross, and fire, or Christ crucified gazing into our eyes. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus asks, “Who ‘among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it’”? If we were among the first hearers of this parable, our answer, if we were in our right mind, would probably have been something like this: “Nobody, Lord. No sensible shepherd would leave ninety-nine of one hundred sheep to search the desert for one lost sheep. What an almost unnervingly ridiculous question”!

Yet if we think of God’s history of loving mercy toward us and all creation, dating back to the very first moments of creation, God’s history with us has been one of unnervingly ridiculous loving mercy, of leaving the ninety-nine sheep to search the desert for the one lost sheep. One of my favorite retreat talks of all time by the late founder of l’Arche, Jean Vanier, focuses on God’s first response to Adam’s and Eve’s sin of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Jean Vanier invites the retreatants to remember the first directly-spoken words of God in the Bible. When nobody on the retreat is able to remember the first words God speaks in the Bible, Vanier gives the silenced group the answer: God says to Adam and Eve, “Where are you”? “God does not say to them, ‘You’re bad,’” Vanier emphasizes; God asks, “Where are you”?

From this earliest point in the history of God-with-us; Mercy-with-us, our ridiculously loving, merciful God has been leaving the “ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance”—in fact, this image is itself ridiculous, because each and every one of us, at one point or another, has been and will be in “need of repentance”—to seek out the few lost, vulnerable ones in the desert, beyond the pasture or garden: “Where are you”?

Still early in our history as a people of God, God-with-us; Mercy-with-us sent us prophets like Ezekiel, from whom we hear today, to speak God’s ridiculously unnerving loving-mercy to us. Ezekiel speaks to us from a time not, sadly, too different from our own in many respects, even and especially in our Church, when the elites in positions of power; those positioned to shepherd God’s people in God’s place, instead misled, scattered, wounded, and deceived the people. These bad shepherds, abusers of power, were more concerned with protecting their own power and afraid of appearing ridiculous by having mercy on the people they served; by going out, seeking and bringing back the most vulnerable purposefully and preferentially. So Ezekiel, speaking for God, promises the people; promises us: “The lost I will seek out, the strayed I will bring back, the injured I will bind up, the sick I will heal, but the sleek and strong I will destroy, shepherding them rightly.”

Ezekiel’s vision of a shepherd God would not be so ridiculous, or possibly unnerving, if Ezekiel were to restrict his vision of whom is to be shepherded to the people who were, for the most part, faithful to God, strong and morally upright. But no, Ezekiel’s vision is of a God who preferentially seeks out, brings back, and heals “the lost… the strayed… the injured… the sick” and destroys those who think they are among “the sleek and the strong” (or allows them to destroy themselves by their own pride).

St. Paul’s letter to the Romans takes Ezekiel’s “preferential option,” if you will, for “the lost… the strayed… the injured… the sick” to yet another level. St. Paul proposes for our belief, our worship as Christians, an unnervingly, ridiculously merciful God. St. Paul proposes for our worship a God and God’s Son, Jesus Christ, who did not shepherd only the worthy; those who would never stray far from pasture. St. Paul proposes for our worship a God who, in the person of God’s Son Jesus Christ, died for us “while we were still sinners… while we were enemies” of God and of one another.

My sisters and brothers, the readings we hear today on this Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the images themselves that we might associate with this celebration, put before us a God of unnervingly ridiculous, extravagant mercy: The shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to search for the one lost sheep; who preferentially seeks out “the lost… the strayed… the injured… the sick”; who dies for us “while we were still sinners… while we were enemies.” We worship and we celebrate on this day the unnervingly ridiculous God-with-us, Mercy-with-us, who gazes intensely into our eyes from the cross; whose wounded heart bleeds and is ablaze with love for us and who, in that great mercy of God that God calls us to imitate among ourselves, chooses us for his own.

Homily for Wednesday, 26 June 2019

Readings of the day: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 105:1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8-9; Matthew 7:15-20

Wednesday of the 12th week in Ordinary Time

Whenever I or my family would travel in the Rocky Mountain National Parks of my home province of Alberta, Jasper or Banff, I would get a chuckle out of one of the t-shirts in the gift shops in these parks. The t-shirt I enjoyed features a bear standing next to a sign, like the many real signs seen throughout these parks, that reads, “Do not feed the bears.” The bear on the t-shirt wears a hat with moose antlers, and carries a sign that says, “I am not a bear. Trust me.”

In Matthew’s Gospel, today we hear Jesus warn us to “beware of false prophets, who come to [us] in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves.” Do we not wish maybe that these “false prophets” would be easy to discern as if they wore “sheep’s clothing” but held up a sign that read, “I am not a wolf, trust me”? Unfortunately, when speaking of our faith, to differentiate “false prophets,” those who deceive and distract us from the true and right priorities of our faith, from those who speak and teach the truth, is occasionally not so easy.

To add to our challenge to discern real sheep from wolves “in sheep’s clothing,” or good trees bearing good fruit from rotten trees bearing rotten fruit, do Jesus’ pithy proverbs we hear today not sometimes work in different, even opposite ways? On the one hand, even among self-professed Christians there are people who do seek to seek to deceive and distract us from God and the true priorities and ethics of our faith. At the risk of judging them too harshly myself, I become especially irritated at people with authority who promote what I hear as a charade of the Christian faith that more closely resembles idolatry of wealth and prosperity, nationalism, militarism, or forms of xenophobia (a rejection of anybody who does not look, think, or behave “like us”), than anything Christ or his Apostles taught.

On the other hand, I encounter brother and sister Christians (and I have been guilty of this myself) who are at times too quick to seek errors in other Christians’ message or how their message is articulated and lived. Words like “heretic” have become the most recent curse words from ostensibly-Christian media outlets, especially but not only on the internet, against fellow believers who hold differing views or struggle more openly to understand or live by some of the Church’s teachings. Quick insults like this and the animosity that can exist today even among Christians create and aggravate divisions and breed still further animosity. Too-ready a search for wolves “in sheep’s clothing” risks misjudging as wolves our sisters and brothers who are in fact sheep, if black sheep, within our Church and even our social groups and families.

Please let me suggest these possible remedies to these problems, for me as much as for each of us: The next time somebody says something or acts in a way with which you disagree or that you think is wrong, make an intentional effort to discern (if not write down) something good or true in the other person’s message or action, even if the balance of this person’s message or action is still wrong or erroneous. This intentional seeking of the good in one another will help us to differentiate sheep from wolves, good trees and their fruit from bad, while maintaining the charity for one another, especially as Christians, which our Lord teaches us is the highest good of all.