Homily for Sunday, 27 December 2020– Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Readings of the day: Genesis 15:1-6, 21:1-3; Psalm 105:1-2, 3-4, 5-6; Hebrews 11:8, 11-12, 17-19; Luke 2:22-40

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

If we were to take a little survey, what would we say is the most important part of the Mass? Would most of us say that the most important element of the Mass is the words of institution or consecration pronounced by the priest over the bread and wine, such that they become the body and blood of Jesus Christ: “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body… Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my blood”? We could not go wrong by presuming that these words of institution are the most important part of the Mass, right? After all, they are Jesus’ own words from the Last Supper before he died for us. And the Church considers these words the sacramental form of the Eucharist, the essential words for the validity of this entire celebration.

Then again, our Eastern Rite Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters, I think, tend to become nervous when we speak of the most important part of Eucharistic liturgy. They tend, more than we Roman Catholics do, to emphasize the unity of the entire celebration. I think the unity of the Eucharistic celebration is good to keep in mind. Then again, I remember when now-Cardinal Thomas Collins of Toronto was Archbishop of Edmonton, used to call to mind the importance of still another part of the Mass, the dismissal: “Go, the Mass is ended.”

If we know our Mass especially well, we know that the Latin of this last line spoken by the priest (or deacon, if one is present) at Mass is Ite, missa est. This literally translates into English as, “Go, it (meaning the assembly) is dismissed.” Our word for the whole celebration, Mass, comes from the Latin missa here. Archbishop Collins would often paraphrase this dismissal rather humorously in his preaching, as in something like, “Get out of here; we have work to do.”

Now, I do not want us to get up and leave this celebration just yet; we have the entire Liturgy of the Eucharist still to go. But why, then, this emphasis on the very end of Mass; on the dismissal: “Go, the Mass is ended”; “Go in peace”?... Our readings today focus on dismissals; on people being sent forth from beautiful events, beautiful graced encounters with God, to accomplish some important and holy work, or simply to prepare, as the righteous Simeon did in our Gospel today, for the end of his life and beginning of eternal life in heaven.

Simeon’s prayer in Luke’s Gospel after receiving the infant Jesus in his arms and the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in his presence in the Temple of Jerusalem is one of the three great prayers or canticles (songs) of the Liturgy of the Hours, also called the Divine Office. These canticles are all drawn from Luke’s account of the infancies of John the Baptist and Jesus. The Liturgy of the Hours is an ancient tradition that began in monasteries, by which monks would mark the passage of each day by praying at particular times of day or “hours” in community. Religious orders, including mine, diocesan clergy, and even many laypeople continue this tradition today.

At Morning Prayer, or Lauds, we pray the prayer of Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father, when John is born. This prayer begins with, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,” so is known as the Benedictus (“Blessed be”). At Evening Prayer, or Vespers, we pray the hymn of Mary from her visit with Elizabeth, the Magnificat, named for this prayer’s first word in Latin, Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord”… And the last “hour” of the Liturgy of the Hours each day is Compline, or Night Prayer. During Compline we pray those words of Simeon from today’s Gospel: “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples; a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.” Because the Latin of this prayer begins with Nunc dimittis (“Now you dismiss”), this prayer is often called the Nunc dimittis.

This prayer is about a dismissal, an Ite, missa est moment. But Simeon is not the only person in our readings today to be “dismissed”; to be asked at some point to set out somewhere. At the beginning of today’s Gospel reading, we hear that Mary and Joseph are “dismissed”—they set out at God’s command and that of their Jewish faith—to Jerusalem, to dedicate their newborn Son, Jesus, “to the Lord.” This dismissal, if we will, is the focus of our celebration today of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. This holiest of families is the model for our families, our households, to become holy families; holy households ourselves.

Our holiness as individuals; as families; as households depends on our faithfulness to God when we recognize that God is calling us to set out: “Get out of here; we have work to do,” as Cardinal Collins would say. From the beginning, Mary, Joseph and Jesus are faithful to God in the big and small “dismissals”: To go from Nazareth to Bethlehem to register for a Roman census and to give birth to the Son of God in a humble stable or cave; to go to Jerusalem to dedicate the Child Jesus to the Lord according to the Law of Moses. And, if we listen attentively to our Gospel today, at the end of it, we hear of another “dismissal” moment related to the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph: “When Mary and Joseph had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favour of God was upon him.”

During their time in the Temple of Jerusalem, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus experience other “dismissal” moments: Simeon follows his Nunc dimittis prayer with a prophecy to Mary, a disconcerting one about how Jesus will ultimately be dismissed from this world, as “a sign that will be opposed.” And Simeon adds, to Mary, “A sword will pierce your own soul, too.” This, sisters and brothers, is a foreshadowing of the Cross, the Holy Family’s ultimate act of fidelity to God’s mission for them and for our whole world. The Cross is God’s ultimate Ite, missa est or Nunc dimittis moment. Jesus would have to suffer a horrific death, be “dismissed” in such a way from this world, but in a way he chose faithfully and freely, in order to save us.

Of course, Luke the Gospel writer fairly deliberately connects this event of the Dedication of Jesus in the Temple, with its “dismissal” moments, to the great “dismissal” moments that mark our entire history as a People of God, all the way back to the first moments of creation. Today, the Book of Genesis centers on Abraham and Sarah, whom God invited to “be dismissed”: To set out boldly and faithfully toward a new way of life, which would eventually bring them descendants numbering as the stars of heaven, beginning with Isaac. The Letter to the Hebrews today picks up on the dismissal-setting out of Abraham and Sarah theme. Hebrews says of Abraham and Sarah: They “set out, not knowing where [they were] going.”

When have we been called to set out, sisters and brothers, to be dismissed, into the unknown or even fearful, either as individuals or as families? I think this year of 2020 has given us a lot of practice with “dismissal” moments. It has been a difficult year, to say the least, with COVID-19, loss of health, loss of lives, loss of work for many of us, loss of the ability to gather to worship and receive communion in person… Yet still we gather to pray together here. Many of us gather as whole families, in front of a computer screen, to participate in Mass by Zoom, Sunday after Sunday, together as this St. Joseph’s College community.

Still this is a graced opportunity, an Ite, missa est moment to show our faithfulness as individuals; a College community; households; families. And this will continue after the formal Ite, missa est of this celebration. We will “go in peace” from here, because we have “work to do”: The intentional works of loving kindness, big and small, that make us, our households, and our families holy. We have already had much practice, and shown ourselves faithful to such work. May we be “dismissed” and so be blessed, to continue to act after the example of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, every moment of our lives.

Homily for Friday, 25 December 2020– Nativity of the Lord

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

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

Merry Christmas, sisters and brothers! How many of us can remember an event or several events, dates and places of local, even personal significance to us, but also of more worldwide significance? These are the events when we might say, “We know where we were when”…

Some of us, if we go back some time ago, may remember where we were when various wars began or ended: For example, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, or more recent conflicts in the former Yugoslavia or Iraq or Afghanistan. Some of us, or people we know and love, may have fought in or lost loved ones in these wars.

Within the Church, some of us might remember where we were when a so-called “caretaker pope,” St. John XXIII, shocked both the Church and the world by calling the Second Vatican Council, not because the Church or the world were in a particular crisis, but to open the Church and the world to discern the voice of the Holy Spirit in light of world events, “the signs of the times.” Vatican II, with a number of bishops in attendance never before seen at a Council in our Church’s history, as well as many Catholic expert theologians and non-Catholic observers, discussed topics ranging from the nature and mission of the Church itself, to its liturgy and sacraments, to the meaning of religious freedom and other human rights, to themes of peace and justice, to the role of social communications.

Many of us may remember where we were at the end of the Cold War, as the Berlin Wall was dismantled and the Soviet Union collapsed. From the first landing on the moon to the long-awaited approval and distribution of vaccines against COVID-19 (and many more events in between): We know where we were when these local events with worldwide, even universal significance, happened.

It may seem that 2020 has not given us much to be cheerful about. The news has been dominated by COVID-19, a disease with virulence not experienced since the flu pandemic after World War I. My experience has been that even conversations with friends, family, and my brother Basilian priests are often dominated by the latest COVID news: How many new cases today? How many deaths? Is the government about to put in place new restrictions? Terms like “physical distancing” have become part of our vocabulary. Mental and spiritual health concerns amid the distancing and aloneness have compounded with the physical health crisis of the pandemic itself. Our churches and businesses, if not shuttered completely, are allowed a small fraction of their capacity of people.

With that, I want to make a point of acknowledging with gratitude everybody who is joining us from afar, via livestream, to worship, and especially to celebrate this Christmas, the Nativity of our Lord. I thank you. I thank everybody who is here in person. I thank volunteers, cleaners, parish staff, priests and other liturgical ministers, people who serve the disadvantaged and vulnerable—everybody who has made it possible for us to celebrate here at all. Again, a Merry Christmas to everybody!

Back in March, the evening before COVID-19 forced many countries, including France where I was living then, into lockdown, I remember where I was: Hearing confessions in a small parish in Paris. That evening, the church was full of people trying anxiously to receive the sacrament of reconciliation before Easter. The next day, and for two months after that, the churches were closed, and all of France went into lockdown.

In the midst of this pandemic, on May 25, George Floyd, a Black man, was killed on a street in Minneapolis. This and other similar incidents ignited protests and a nationwide, even worldwide reckoning with socially systemic racism and abuses of power. I remember where I was, in the days after George Floyd’s death, on the phone with an African American friend from my first years as a priest in Rochester, New York; my friend who was distraught at the violence, the racism, the slurs to which she personally had been subjected; my friend who gave me that graced opportunity simply to listen, to pray with and for her as she spoke.

The COVID-19 pandemic, the reckoning with and protests against systemic racism and brutality in law enforcement: These are recent events with local, but also very universal dimensions. We know where we have been, but these events have affected the whole world. This relationship between the local and the universal brings to my mind a prayer our Basilian communities in Colombia often pray (and prayed while I served in several stints in those communities), based on part of Chapter 12 of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “Let us rejoice with those who rejoice; let us weep with those who are weeping”… How, then, do we accomplish what we pray for in that prayer?

How do we rejoice with those who rejoice, especially in this celebration of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus? How do we weep with those who weep; with those who are ill in mind, body, or spirit; with those who have been subject to racism, other forms of unjust discrimination or abuses of power; with those who have lost loved ones, or lost their livelihoods; who have lost the ability to worship in person and receive communion during this pandemic?

Perhaps our rejoicing with those who rejoice, and weeping with those who weep—in a word, solidarity—depends on our remembrance of where we are in the midst of world events and events that affect us personally. And, better yet, our solidarity with one another depends on our remembrance of who we are: A People of God, the Church, called together to celebrate this night and forevermore the birth of a child, Jesus Christ, Emmanuel (God-with-us; God in solidarity with us!) into a manger in Bethlehem; called together to celebrate this local event that has universal significance; that is essential to our salvation, not as disconnected individuals but together.

From the moment of Jesus’ birth, Luke’s Gospel says to us tonight, everybody who experienced this event was acutely aware of both its local and universal significance. Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and the angel who first spoke to the shepherds the “good news of great joy” of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem: Everybody knew where they were in those moments, but that this event held significance far beyond them.

Luke, the Gospel writer, the historian par excellence among the four Biblical Gospel writers down to the finest details, emphasizes the very local dimensions of Jesus’ birth. Caesar Augustus ruled the vast and powerful Roman Empire, which included Israel, land of Jesus’ birth, as the Roman province of Palestine. Quirinius, who is only mentioned this once in the entire New Testament, governed Syria, a rather insignificant part of the Roman Empire at the time. Mary and Joseph, a humble, we can imagine fairly ordinary Jewish couple, travel from “Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the City of David called Bethlehem,” Joseph’s hometown, to register in the Roman census. Mary, in a detail Luke gives us that is at least bizarre if not scandalous for the time, is engaged to Joseph but finds herself “with child.” She gives birth “to her firstborn son and [wraps] him in swaddling clothes, and [lays] him in a manger, because there [is] no place for them in the inn.”

Angels appear very specifically to “shepherds living in the fields.” These shepherds, and the place where the angels announce our Saviour’s birth to them, are what Pope Francis might call at “the peripheries”: Poor, dirty, smelling like their sheep, and probably feared or at least ignored by most people who lived in the cities and villages.

This, sisters and brothers, is how God chose to enter into solidarity as one like us, human, in all things but sin: To rejoice with us as we rejoice; to weep with us when we weep; to open to us the gates of salvation; to call us to remember where and who we are. The Nativity of our Lord was a very local event: Augustus ruled from Rome; Quirinius governed Roman Syria; a typical first-century Jewish couple, Mary and Joseph (typical except for Mary’s pregnancy) brought a baby into the world from its peripheries—into a manger!

The first announcement of this birth was equally “peripheral,” humble, local: From angels to shepherds. Yet, like so many of our world events but more decisively, this peripheral, humble, local event holds universal significance. Into a manger in Bethlehem, in first century Roman Palestine, is born for us; for the universe, for all times and places, “a Saviour, who is the Christ, the Lord.”

Homily for Tuesday, 22 December 2020– Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Advent

Readings of the day: 1 Samuel 1:24-28; Responsorial Canticle: 1 Samuel 2:1, 4-5, 6-7, 8abcd; Luke 1:46-56

Here is bit of Catholic trivia for us: How many Catholics have been named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year”? The answer is fifteen.

The fifteenth and latest, of course, is U.S. President Elect Joe Biden, alongside Vice President Elect Kamala Harris (not a Catholic) for 2020. But the sixth of these fifteen Catholics to be named Time’s “Person of the Year” was Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, alongside fellow Apollo 8 crew members Frank Borman and Jim Lovell, in 1968. Anders took a famous photograph of the “earthrise” from just above the surface of the moon.

In the Time interview for 1968’s “Person of the Year” issue, Anders asked rhetorically about his “earthrise” photo that made him consider how insignificant the Earth is in the universe: “Are we really that special”?

In Luke’s Gospel today, in a similar but somewhat more eloquent way than Bill Anders, Mary acknowledges that, well, we are really not all that special. In fact, we are nothing on our own, but we are everything to and with God. Mary prays in her “Magnificat” that we hear today: “My spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on his lowly servant.”

I credit a former director of campus ministry at St. Joseph’s College [of the University of Alberta in Edmonton] for first pointing out to me that Mary’s “Magnificat” is almost verbatim the prayer of Hannah in the Old Testament in thanksgiving after conceiving her son Samuel. Hannah prays, and we hear in our Responsory Canticle today, “[God] brings low; he also exalts.”

To us, really not all “that special” as Bill Anders once pointed out, God has appeared to us as a fellow “lowly servant”; as human. And so we enter into these final preparations for our Christmas celebration of God having “looked with favour on” us, his “lowly servant(s),” a tiny speck in this immense universe and, by his Son, Jesus Christ, having exalted us; having become human like us; having made us special beyond all telling; having saved us.

Homily for Sunday, 6 December 2020– Second Sunday of Advent, Year B

Readings of the day: Isaiah 40: 1-5, 9-11; Psalm 85: 9-10, 11-12, 13-14; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8

This homily was given through St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, via Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

When we hear today’s readings—beautiful, comforting, and timely for our celebration of Advent—do any of us immediately think of George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah”? I am often tempted to break out into song from those very first words we hear today from the prophet Isaiah: “‘Comfort, O comfort my people,’ says your God, ‘Speak tenderly to Jerusalem”…

In fact, after an instrumental introduction to Handel’s “Messiah,” the next three movements of the “Messiah” follow the first part of our reading today from Isaiah closely: “Comfort Ye”; “Every Valley”; “And the Glory of the Lord… Shall be Revealed”! Handel’s glorious libretto, which begins with these as-glorious, comforting words from Isaiah we hear in today’s first reading, draws me into the “Messiah,” every time I hear it.

But, when we hear these first movements of Handel’s “Messiah,” or the prophecy of Isaiah on which they are based, do we ever pause to think of the original context of the time of Isaiah; of what experiences of the people of Israel inspired Isaiah to speak this message of comfort to them?

Fr. Jim spoke a bit about this last Sunday: Bible scholars believe that the Book of Isaiah as we know it is probably the work of at least three authors from three different phases of about a seventy-year period of ancient Israel’s history called the Babylonian Exile. Isaiah the First was active in the years just before the people of Israel were deported into exile in Babylon, through the beginning of the Exile itself. He tried, mostly without success, to warn the people of Israel and its kings that their injustices against their most vulnerable people and their worship of other nations’ false gods in a vain attempt to fend off these nations’ greater economic and military power would result in Israel’s ruin and exile. Isaiah the Second was active during the latter part of the Exile; Isaiah the Third prepared the people of Israel to return home, and to rebuild once they were back in Israel.

Today we hear the beginning of the prophecy of Isaiah the Second. If we were to read from just before the part of Isaiah we heard proclaimed a few minutes ago (maybe a little bit of homework—optional, of course—if we do not already have our fair share of end-of-term assignments and exams to focus on?), we would notice a distinct change in tone at, “Comfort, O comfort my people.” Just before this point in the Book of Isaiah, (First) Isaiah is still trying to warn Israel’s king of the impending exile to Babylon.

And then there is a great shift in Isaiah: “Comfort, O comfort my people,” (Second) Isaiah says to a people still in exile. Jerusalem, religious and royal center of Israel, was by then a distant memory. Many Israelites, we can imagine, would have given up hope by this point of ever returning to their homeland. They or the generations before them had witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, the heart of their religious practice, at the hands of the Babylonians. If they were ever able to return home, the people of Israel would be returning to ruins.

This is the glum context of Isaiah’s prophecy of comfort and God’s pardon. But Isaiah does not stop there. Isaiah gives his people some homework: Not a test to study for, or a paper to write, or a Bible passage to read. No, Isaiah asks the people of Israel to return to their ruined homeland, to Jerusalem, and to rebuild it, and also to rebuild all the roads leading back to their homeland. “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God,” Isaiah says to the people of Israel.

“Some comfort,” we might imagine many of the Israelites in Isaiah’s time thinking. We can only have comfort at the price of doing our homework; of rebuilding Israel from its ruins! We might imagine that many Israelites never took up Isaiah’s call to return and rebuild, but enough of them did. And they built Jerusalem back better than before. They rebuilt Jerusalem’s Temple. They made “straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Valleys were raised; ground leveled; hills “made low.” “Righteousness and peace”; peace and justice, in the beautiful imagery of our Psalm today, seemed to “kiss each other.”

But then, as the years passed, the people of Israel gradually forgot that right worship of God involves right action, especially in favour of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, the poorest, the sick, the lost, the persecuted and the abandoned; those without a voice among our sisters and brothers. Israel (like any nation including our own will do, if we let it) fell into disrepair: Physical, but also religious and moral. Several nations would take it over, one after another. Jerusalem’s glorious Second Temple would be destroyed by the Romans. Righteousness and peace, instead of kissing each other, would be driven back into exile from the hearts of Israel’s people.

Into this renewed mess of Roman-occupied Israel stepped (or waded, in the Jordan River) John the Baptist. “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the LORD; make his paths straight,” John preached as he baptized people in the Jordan. Sound familiar?

That homework that Isaiah gave his people in his time, well, it was the same homework that John gave the people he baptized in the Jordan. John the Baptist led and preached by example. He did the same homework Isaiah and he asked of us, preparing “the way of the LORD”: “I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he (Jesus) will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

I do not want to discourage us, sisters and brothers, but the homework Isaiah, John the Baptist, and then Jesus have assigned us is still not finished. Great, that is just what we need, the everlasting homework assignment, right? We will finish it and turn it in—do not despair—but only at the end of time, when Jesus returns to us as he promised. This, as much and even more than the anniversary of Jesus’ birth we celebrate at Christmas, is what we wait for; what this time of Advent is all about.

And we are uniquely strengthened by the gift of the Holy Spirit John the Baptist foretold and Jesus the Lord himself gave us at our baptism and confirmation, sisters and brothers, to complete this homework assignment; this feat of desert highway engineering!

But how do we complete our homework successfully, between now and the end of time? We do not need to look far: Take time to comfort somebody we know who is alone, who may be struggling with their mental health (especially during this COVID-19 pandemic and its distance from human contact), or who needs help with work, study, or some other task. Give to the poor; to those who can ensure the disadvantaged have food, shelter, clothing, medical care... Speak up, support, or volunteer for organizations that defend human rights regardless of race, religion, or any other factor; that defend the migrant and the refugee; that defend the environment; that defend all human life from conception to natural death... Forgive those who have wronged us. Seek forgiveness from God; from those we have wronged; from ourselves. Pray for one another. Practice simple acts of kindness toward one another.

This is how we “prepare the way of the LORD”; how we “make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” This is how we will reach the destination of our highway, which is eternal life; heaven (which is much better even than that A+ on any typical homework assignment).

This is how we live this prophetic message: “O comfort my people… Make straight in the desert a highway for our God… Speak tenderly,” words of consolation and forgiveness. This is how we will “see… together” the glory of God we proclaim together with Isaiah (the First, Second, and Third); with John the Baptist; with all the prophets and saints. This is how righteousness and peace “kiss each other” (or at least bow or text “peace” over Zoom, if we are concerned about physical distancing for now). This is like that glorious piece of music we can only fully appreciate as we live by it, as we complete our homework; our highway for our God: A sound more glorious yet than Handel’s “Messiah”; a sound that will draw still more of our sisters and brothers toward it; closer to God; closer to heaven, every time they hear it.