Homily for Sunday, 28 February 2021– Second Sunday in Lent, Year B

Readings of the day: Genesis 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18; Psalm 116:10, 15, 16-17, 18-19; Romans 8:31b-34; Mark 9:2-10

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

How many of us are giving up something or have ever given up something for Lent? Might this be a strange question to ask, especially in our present situation? After all, we are still in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic that keeps us and many people from being able to worship in person and receive communion. We have given up a lot, and not only in terms of worship and the sacraments, over almost a year since the first COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns began.

Yet, when we speak of giving up something, especially during Lent, do we not usually refer to giving up what may be comfortable or good for us, but that we do not really need? I, for one, have never been very good at giving something up for Lent. I usually try to think of a very small comfort to give up; even better if this is something I am able to give up beyond Lent. One year, when I was a novice, in the beginner stages of religious community life in preparation to take first vows, I decided to give up not coffee altogether—if I were to give up coffee altogether, I think I would be lethargic or miserable, or both, in the morning—but simply to give up the sizable amount of sugar I used to put into my morning coffee. That Easter Sunday, I put sugar in my coffee as I had until Lent that year, and it made my coffee far too sweet. I have never gone back to putting sugar in my coffee since then. Great, then, I thought, I would need to think of something else to give up for Lent after that!

Those of us who have given up something for Lent or are doing so this year: What kinds of things to we give up? Are they food and drink-related comforts: Junk food, alcoholic beverages, chocolate, or coffee (or simply the sugar in our coffee, maybe)…? Have any of us given up social media, like Facebook or Twitter, as I know some of my friends do during Lent? How about taking this time of Lent to master our habits: Quitting smoking, minding our language, and so on? How many of us have heard or seen Pope Francis’ list of things from which to fast and on which to feast during Lent? Pope Francis’ list is a few years old, and has been made into a convenient image on social media: Fast from or give up hurting words, anger, pessimism, worries, complaints, bitterness, selfishness, and grudges, says Pope Francis, so that we may “feast on” kind words, gratitude, patience, hope, trust in God, simplicity, prayer, compassion, and reconciliation. Finally, Pope Francis says, “Fast from words and be silent so we can listen.” Hmm… There’s another thing—wordiness—from which I know I could fast in order to listen and appreciate silence better!

Do we begin to understand, through all this, that there are many things we could fast from or give up during Lent? But what if we simply acknowledged that God is already way ahead of us in terms of giving something up? And the something, or better yet somebody, God has given up is not only a worldly comfort or something good that God did not really need. No, God gave up—for us!—his only Son so that we might have eternal life. God gave up, for us, something not only comforting yet unnecessary, but God gave up what is essential to himself. And this whole season of Lent focuses us toward our celebration of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday; our celebration in a few weeks from now of God having given up his only Son for our salvation.

God’s sacrifice of self for us; God’s having given up his Son so that we might have eternal life, which we celebrate not only through Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday, but every time we assemble for Mass, is foretold in Jesus’ transfiguration. Mark, whose account of Jesus’ transfiguration we hear today, clearly connects this event to the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Is there not an almost overwhelming amount of detail in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration? There are many points on which we could focus in this transfiguration event: Jesus, for instance, does not take with him all his disciples or even the Twelve apostles, but only (presumably) his most trusted three apostles, Peter, James, and John, to witness the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah, usually interpreted as the presence of the Law and the prophets of Jewish tradition, speak with Jesus. We have what many Biblical scholars have commented as a full making known of the one God in three distinct persons of the Trinity: Jesus, present in human form, also the divine Son of God; the Father, especially represented by the voice from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”; and the Holy Spirit, most often connected with the cloud that overshadows the transfiguration scene.

We have Mark’s peculiar emphasis (more than Matthew or Luke, who also each feature an account of Jesus’ transfiguration) on Jesus’ order to Peter, James, and John, “to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” Mark, though, is pithier than the other Gospels about the fear Peter, James, and John felt during the transfiguration and Jesus’ foretelling of his own suffering, death, and resurrection. Yet all the accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration in our Biblical Gospels share the all-but-speechless Peter’s exclamation, “It is good for us to be here.” Peter then suggests, in all Gospel accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration, that they build three tents. This could be a hearkening back to the Ark of the Covenant tradition of the earliest tribes of Israel in the Old Testament. These ancient people of Israel were mobile, and carried the Ark of the Covenant, the tabernacle in which God was said to dwell among his people on earth, within a series of tents.

But allow me to suggest that the main focus of Mark’s Gospel especially, amid all Mark’s spectacular detail of the transfiguration, is on the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. When we think of the transfiguration, Mark wants us to connect with Jesus’ sacrifice, his willing giving up of self to death on a cross, so that we might have eternal life. Jesus, through Mark, wants us to contemplate prayerfully the events of his transfiguration in light of his resurrection from the dead. We have the gift of hindsight: Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is a completed past event. From Peter’s, James’, and John’s standpoint in time, Jesus’ resurrection was still yet to take place, so the apostles could do no better than to be (understandably) perplexed and afraid.

But even with our gift of hindsight, is not only the transfiguration but the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus it foretells not so extraordinarily rare that, in a way, it should not only have struck fear in Peter, James, and John, but in us? The transfiguration points ahead to Jesus’ giving up of self on a cross for our salvation. There is only one other figure in the Bible (and the only one who is not God)—Abraham—who is willing to give up his only son, in this case Isaac, simply because God calls him to do so.

Like Mark’s Gospel account of Jesus transfiguration, Genesis’ account of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac is so detailed as to be troubling; as to raise more questions in us than it answers: Why would God test Abraham? Is God really that mean that he would play Abraham like that, expecting him to sacrifice Isaac only to stop him at the last moment? Here, although I think we are right to focus always on God in any Biblical event, I think Genesis invites us to focus on Abraham’s response to God; on his complete willingness to do as God asks of him, even to sacrifice his only, long-promised son, Isaac. Abraham’s willingness to give up his only son is presented as a prefiguring of God’s own complete willingness to give his only Son, Jesus Christ, up to death so that we might have eternal life.

What, then, do Abraham’s willingness to give up Isaac to death, and the transfiguration, which foretells God’s giving his Son Jesus up to death for our salvation, mean for us in terms of how we live here and now? For me, how well we answer this question for ourselves amounts to how we answer a few questions related to this first one: If we make some kind of Lenten sacrifice, say giving up something for Lent, does what we have given up make us more mindful of God’s sacrifice of his only Son for us on the cross; the only sacrifice capable of gaining us eternal life? Do our sacrifices make us more mindful of God always with and for us, as St. Paul asks today in his letter to the Romans: “If God is for us, who is against us”? Do we sacrifice willingly, as God does and has for us, and without boasting or appearing gloomy, or sacrificing something because we feel we have to do so? Does our sacrifice change us; transfigure us to be more like our selfless; self-sacrificing God? If we can answer “yes” to these questions, I think we are on the right track, this Lent and in our lives of faith overall.

Homily for Friday, 19 February 2021– Friday after Ash Wednesday

Readings of the day: Isaiah 58:1-9a; Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 18-19; Matthew 9:14-15

Memorial Mass for Barbara J. Schmidt

Here we are, as of this past Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, into the season of Lent, so is it not appropriate that we speak about the discipline of fasting? But what is fasting, why do we (or should we) fast, and what kind of fast does God, let alone the Church, ask of us?

Isaiah’s message is clear enough: The people of his time in Israel, who thought that all their religious rigour and discipline should be more than enough to please God, were mistaken. And, while by outward appearances they were fasting and practicing acts of humility and penance, inwardly they were carrying on the same old acts of sin and injustice that Isaiah denounces. What kind of fasting; what kind of penance or humbling of ourselves does God want of us?

God, through Isaiah, asks the people of Israel: “Is not this the fast that I choose: To loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke”? Here I think of our Lenten practice of giving something up for Lent, something not necessarily bad or sinful, but maybe something that we enjoy yet we do not really need. Giving something up for Lent is a good and noble practice; I certainly do not intend to criticize this. Yet I (mea culpa!) have never been very good at giving up something for Lent.

I do not wish to justify my difficulty with this Lenten discipline, a kind of “fasting” from something I do not really need. Still, though, does God want us to do something more than giving up something enjoyable but not really necessary for Lent? This tends to bring to my mind, instead of, or in addition to, giving something up for Lent, adding something to my usual spiritual routine, if you will. Is there somebody or a group of people we have recently encountered or become aware of who has a particular need? Have we become increasingly aware lately of a relationship that needs mending or maintaining in love, or a broader social problem that a little more prayer; a little more Christian care and charity; a little more perhaps going out of our way to encounter somebody disadvantaged or on society’s (or the Church’s) fringes in some way, could help?

My sisters and brothers, today we offer this Mass in memory, in prayer for the repose of the soul of, and in celebration of the life of my grandmother, Barbara Janice Schmidt. Today would have been her ninety-fifth birthday.

In many ways, Grandma’s lived example spoke to what God asks of his people through the prophet Isaiah: The number of charitable causes, in defense of human life and dignity truly from conception to natural death, especially of people in need or disadvantaged, which Grandma supported is astounding. She was, I have no doubt, much better than I am at fasting and penance as Lenten disciplines, but what marked her life were the acts of justice, charity, and humility she added on, often without other people knowing, and not only during Lent but all the time. Grandma was constantly seeking bonds of injustice and “thongs of the yoke” to undo, as God invites us to do through the likes of Isaiah.

It is, I think, quite easy to become fixated on outward appearances, especially during a time like Lent. This was the problem with “the disciples of John” in Matthew’s Gospel today. By appearances, they and the Pharisees were fasting; giving something up. But, Jesus reminds them (and us), they were missing the point: “The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they”?

As we celebrate, remember, and pray for our sister in Christ, Gramma, Mom, friend, Barbara Janice Schmidt, may we take something from her example. In this celebration, even (maybe especially) in the midst of Lent, the Bridegroom; the Christ, is among us and is in us, too. The death of God’s faithful, especially one as close to us as our Barbara, naturally causes us to mourn. But we are united in the Bridegroom, the Christ, with our Barbara by the bonds of Christian love; the bonds of having added something to make our world better. This is cause for joy. This is the reason we celebrate, we remember, and we pray here and now.

Homily for Tuesday, 16 February 2021– Ferial

Readings of the day: Genesis 6:5-8, 7:1-5, 10; Psalm 29:1a, 2, 3ac-4, 3b, 9c-10; Mark 8:14-21

How easy is it for us to become distracted by small external details, especially when hearing or reading Scripture, such that we have difficulty grasping “the heart of the matter,” so to speak, of a Biblical text? Or how good are we at resisting these kinds of distractions by external details?

I confess that I am vulnerable to distraction by external details (mea culpa!). Readings like those we hear today are a challenge to me, for this reason. I can empathize with Jesus’ disciples, whom Mark often presents as bumbling and distracted, including in the Gospel reading we hear today. Jesus rebukes his disciples harshly: “Are your hearts hardened… Do you not yet understand”? I admit that my first reaction to Jesus’ rebuke here in Mark’s Gospel is that I am not sure I would have understood Jesus’ point about “the yeast of the Pharisees and… of Herod,” and why he is so harsh with his disciples, simply from the scant context Mark gives us, any more than his disciples did. What did Jesus’ disciples do that was so wrong?

In the Book of Genesis, we again encounter a harsh God, who goes so far as to be “sorry that he made human beings on the earth.” All I can think when I hear that is, “Ouch! Would God ever be sorry that he made us”? But this, too, risks too much focus on surface details: Would God be “sorry” or regretful of his own actions, like creation? Would a loving God really ever will to destroy all living things on earth, no matter how wicked we had become? Would God ever change his mind, from seeing that his creation was “very good” to, in the space of ten generations from Adam to Noah, wanting to destroy it?

The flood narrative in Genesis, like Jesus’ irritable encounter with his disciples in Mark’s Gospel, invites us to reflect more deeply than on these surface details, however attractive or troubling they may be. In both Mark and Genesis, the hearts of God and of God’s people are not in the same place; God and the people, be they Jesus’ disciples or the people of Noah’s generation, with the exception of Noah and his household, clearly do not have the same will; the same priorities. Genesis describes “every inclination of” the hearts of the people as “evil.” Mark describes Jesus’ disciples’ hearts as “hardened.”

How exactly the people’s hearts are inclined toward evil or “hardened” is perhaps forever a mystery; a detail. But we know that it is still possible, in the midst of hearts that are “hardened” or inclined toward evil, to set our hearts to pleasing God; to doing the will of God. Noah did it, as Genesis says: He “found favour in the sight of the LORD.” And, if we read today’s Gospel in the context of all of Mark, we see that, no matter how bumbling and distracted Jesus’ disciples almost always seem to be in Mark, Jesus never gives up on them. In fact, he willingly gives himself up to death for them, and us.

I find this especially consoling, as an (often) distractible disciple of Jesus: That I, and we, know something of the deepest, most heartfelt and ultimate will of God. Our God wills from the heart to save us, and has sent his Son for this purpose. And, somehow, our task is only to discern and cooperate with this ultimate will for us from the heart of our God.

Homily for Sunday, 14 February 2021– Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Readings of the day: Leviticus 13:1-2, 45-46; Psalm 32:1-2, 5, 11; 1 Corinthians 10:32-11:1; Mark 1:40-45

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

Is the exchange between the “man with leprosy” and Jesus in Mark’s Gospel today not remarkable?

“If you choose, you can make me clean,” the man with leprosy pleads with Jesus. “I do choose. Be made clean,” Jesus says to the man.

Our reading today from the Book of Leviticus gives us the context in Jewish Law of the conversation between the man with leprosy and Jesus in today’s Gospel. The religious law about leprosy and all kinds of skin diseases is outlined in great detail in Leviticus. If anybody had a disease like leprosy, not only did they have to contend with the disfigurement brought on by these diseases and the lack of knowledge and effective treatments for them but, Leviticus says, they were to tear their clothes, “let the hair of their head be dishevelled… cover their upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’” A person with one of these diseases was to isolate him or herself from other people and “live alone with their dwelling outside the camp.”

Now, before we judge the laws in Leviticus that required people with leprosy and similar skin diseases to isolate themselves from other people too harshly, might we place ourselves in the context of the people of Israel of the time? A disease like leprosy, especially when it was seen to be contagious, would have caused fear among the people. The spread of disease could be difficult to control, especially in a nomadic people like Leviticus describes. The most ancient people of Israel tended to live in tents in small groups or camps that moved often. More permanent settlements, as in cities or towns, tended to be small. And without effective medicines and doctors as we know them today, the religious elites—the priests—were the most educated people in these ancient societies. The people turned to them for the best advice not only on religious matters but for practical knowledge, too, like treating disease.

Still, can we not put ourselves in the place of a person in ancient Israel who was affected by one of these diseases, who had to isolate from society, even from loved ones, and “live alone… outside the camp”? For about a year now, we have been in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic. Many people, maybe many of us, know somebody who has had to self-isolate, either because she or he was sick, or was in contact with somebody who was sick, or returned from international travel. Governments and media (rightly, I think) report the latest numbers of people infected with COVID, numbers of deaths, rates of transmission and positive tests, and so on. But do we find maybe that the mental health toll of this pandemic goes more unnoticed than the rates of physical illness? Even if this is necessary for disease control, people are isolated; restricted from seeing family and loved ones. Others suffer and die alone. Like no other disease in memory for most or all of us, COVID has caused widespread fear and anxiety. And we have the science and medical expertise and treatments that the people of ancient Israel did not.

With this in mind, let us return to the conversation between Jesus and the man with leprosy in today’s Gospel: “If you choose”… “I do choose. Be made clean.” When we hear Jesus’ healing of this man with leprosy, or other actions of Jesus that challenge rules or taboos, how many of us think that this is awfully bold of Jesus to do so? I think we are right to think this; Jesus is bold, in this and other instances, to challenge rules or taboos or, more precisely, to orient us toward the heart of any good law or social or moral practice, which is to uphold human dignity and a common good.

But may I say that the man with leprosy in today’s Gospel is just as bold in challenging the established rules or taboos as Jesus is in the encounter between them in today’s Gospel? This man is bold enough to kneel before Jesus and ask him, before Jesus says a word, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Did this man know Jesus before this encounter, or did he know of Jesus’ reputation as a great preacher and healer? Was he simply desperate to be healed and reintegrated into the community? It is hard to say. Would the man not have known that, by approaching Jesus for healing, he himself was acting against the Jewish Law, the Law of Leviticus, which demanded he be isolated?

And the man with leprosy surely knew that Jesus owed him nothing; Jesus was as bound by the Law to keep distance from people with diseases like leprosy as the man with leprosy was. Yet the man asks Jesus, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Would the man with leprosy have been just as surprised as anybody—as we may be to hear these words in our Gospel reading—to hear Jesus reply the way he did: “I do choose. Be made clean”?

The man’s bold but unassuming request of Jesus, “If you choose” can only be met by Jesus’ just-as-bold response, “I do choose. Be made clean.” Jesus does not pause and count the cost of his choice to heal the man with leprosy. In fact, Mark’s Gospel says, “Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him.” My sisters and brothers, “moved with pity” is a rough translation of the Greek, which means something closer to (literally) “moved to his very depths.” The same Greek verb would be used to refer to the state of one’s gut when eating food that didn’t agree with us!

How many of us have heard of, or ever had, a “gut feeling,” as in, “I just knew in my gut that this was the right thing to do.” How often have we heard of people hailed as heroes for saving somebody’s life or acting in a situation dangerous to themselves, who say something like, “I was just trusting my gut. I’m no hero”?

By touching the man with leprosy, Jesus may have realized that he risked entering the same state of the man he touched to heal: He, too, could have been considered “unclean” and been shunned from the community. Yet what begins with Jesus’ “gut feeling” ends with a conscious choice: “I do choose. Be made clean.” Something in the letter of the Law is less important than this man’s health; this man’s dignity as a child of God; this man’s belonging to a social and faith community; this man’s wholeness.

But if we follow Jesus through our Gospels, this move from “gut feeling” to conscious choice for another’s good is a typical pattern of action for Jesus. His healing of the man with leprosy is only one instance of this greater pattern. Have we ever noticed, when we pray the Eucharistic Prayer we will pray in a few moments that, when we commemorate Jesus’ Passion, death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, we remember what Jesus did to save us as a willing action of God: “Look, we pray, upon the oblation of your Church and, recognizing the sacrificial Victim by whose death you willed to reconcile us to yourself, grant that we, who are nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son and filled with his Holy Spirit, may become one body, one spirit in Christ.”

The former Master of the Dominican order, Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, in his book on the Mass called “Why Go to Church? The Drama of the Eucharist,” reflects on how Jesus willed to save us: Jesus “willed to reconcile us to” God by taking the place of the man with leprosy; taking our place; taking the place of everybody who has ever had to make their dwelling “outside the camp,” as Leviticus puts it. In fact, Jesus went so far, in his willingness to save us, that he would choose to die for us, says Fr. Radcliffe, “outside the camp”; outside the city walls of Jerusalem, on Golgotha, on a cross. And we remember this as the very reason for this Eucharistic celebration, every time we celebrate Mass.

Who, then, are the people to whom this willing act for our salvation by our Lord is calling to us to reach out? Who are the ostracized; the isolated; those “outside the camp”; the serious sinners; those outside the good graces of the Church, for whatever reason, in fact or because they simply feel unwelcome; the sick, physically but also mentally and spiritually, of our time and our experience? Have we ever had a “gut feeling”; been “moved with pity”? If this has been or will ever be our experience, to what extent have we or will we allow our “gut feeling” of what is right become bold action, putting ourselves at risk of being sent “outside the camp” ourselves? To what extent are we willing to echo those first words of Jesus to the man with leprosy: I do choose?