Homily for Sunday, 29 August 2021– Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8; Psalm 15:2-3, 3-4, 4-5; James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Perhaps not many topics in the Bible are as contentious as the Law. In what ways is the Law—and in the Bible we specifically mean the Law of Moses; the religious Law—a good thing or a benefit, and in what ways can the Law hold us back from the most right and just practice of our religious faith?

This tension about the Law is woven through each of our readings today. In Deuteronomy, Moses presents the religious Law as a gift from God, as a good in itself. Observance of the Law, while neither adding or taking anything away from the commands of God to Israel, would be Israel’s way of showing its greatness and its wisdom as a nation. Observance of the Law would be a sign of Israel’s closeness to God: “Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people,” other nations would say of Israel.

In Moses’ time, we know that the people of Israel were in the process of returning from Egypt to their homeland, promised them by God. Imagine ancient Israel, a people small in number, prosperity, and military might compared to powerful nations that surrounded it. Israel could not compete with these other nations insofar as these worldly signs of national power. The source of Israel’s power and greatness was not itself, but God and God’s Law, given through Moses.

These other nations around Israel believed in and worshipped all kinds of gods, but Israel would stand out for its belief and worship of only one God. This was not only because the God of Israel would uphold Israel militarily and economically against Israel’s much more powerful neighbours—although we hear often in our Bible when God does just that for Israel—but because the God of Israel desired to enter into a relationship of love with Israel. The God of Israel cared for Israel in a way that the gods of other nations did not for those other nations. This was to be the core identity of the people of Israel, and Israel’s obedience to the Law of God given through Moses would be a sign that Israel acknowledged and desired this personal, loving, caring relationship with its God as much as God desired a personal, loving, caring relationship with Israel.

But from time to time the people and the nation of Israel would forget that their religious Law was meant as a gift and a sign of the mutual relationship of love between Israel and God. The people; the leaders of Israel would use the Law to reinforce their own power and status instead of to show the goodness and love of God on Israel’s behalf to the world.

This manipulation of the religious Law by Israel’s elites, the Pharisees and the scribes in Jesus’ time, is the focus of Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees and the scribes in today’s Gospel. “Hypocrites,” Jesus calls the Pharisees and scribes, remembering a similar scathing criticism of Israel’s elites by the prophet Isaiah: “This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

Where are the hearts of Israel’s elites, the Pharisees and scribes, while they profess adherence to the Law of Moses, down to the finest details like the ritual washing of hands, vessels, and food? The hearts of these elites of Israel are not focused on God as the source of all that is good: Of the Law itself; of any prosperity and religious or social status they may have, and so on. The hearts of the Pharisees and scribes are focused on preserving their own power and status, against those they see as not as obedient to the letter of the Law, like Jesus and his disciples. The “look at me” attitude of the Pharisees and scribes toward the law is incompatible with looking toward God as the source of all goodness. This is why Jesus scolds them the way he does.

And who stands to lose the most when elites, whether social or religious, manipulate what is good as the Pharisees and scribes do in today’s Gospel? Inevitably those with the least power, the least status, the least wealth stand to lose the most when what is good is manipulated in this way. The Letter of James, from which we have just heard, is emphatic on this point: What is essential to true and right practice of our religious faith, “religion that is pure and undefiled before God”? James says that the care for the least well-off and most vulnerable, “care for orphans and widows in their distress,” is of the utmost priority. Here, James’ attention to social justice, especially to the benefit of “the least of [our] sisters and brothers,” is continuous with long-standing Biblical tradition. I think of Jesus’ own teaching: “Whatsoever you do to the least of these”… I think of the prophet Micah: God asks of us only that we “do justice, love goodness, and walk humbly with [our] God.”

And the Psalm we hear today is very much in line with this radical call through our Scriptures to social justice that does not reinforce human power or status but shows forth the goodness and glory of God. Our Psalm today offers us a long litany of the people God praises; the people who will gain eternal life, a dwelling in God’s tent: The one who “walks blamelessly” and rightly; who “speaks the truth from [the] heart; who “does no evil to a friend”; who does not take up “a reproach against a neighbour” or “a bribe against the innocent”; “whoever stands by their oath even to their hurt” (now that is radical!)…

This constant call to justice in a way that especially benefits the least of our sisters and brothers is so radical, even and maybe especially today, though, that might we be tempted to hear the Word of God today and think, “That is easier said than done”? The temptation, and frequent succumbing to the temptation, to seek our own power, status, wealth, self-sufficiency in a way that fails at least to appreciate God as the source of what is good, and deprives the most vulnerable and disadvantaged of these “goods,” is age-old. This is not a problem limited to the Pharisees and scribes of Jesus’ time, to the people of Israel of Moses’ time, to James’ time or the Psalmist’s time. No, the temptation to manipulate what God gives us—religious and civil laws, even just ones; material wealth; individual freedom and autonomy; authority; education—for our own gain at the expense of those less-advantaged is just as present in our time as in Biblical times.

But what could remedy this problem? Our readings today give us a hint toward the remedy to this problem; this temptation from human weakness and sin to manipulate the good God gives us for our own gain at the expense of others. God’s Law, from the time it was given to the people of Israel through Moses, was meant so that Israel could point to the goodness and love of God and its relationship of love with God, not to Israel’s self for its own sake. The many laws and rituals the Pharisees and scribes urged the Jewish people of Jesus’ time to follow to the letter were again designed to strengthen the relationship of the people who piously observed these laws with God. The same is true of the gift of the Word of God itself: St. James stresses that the Word of God necessarily directs us to care for one another, especially the less-advantaged.

If we care for the less-advantaged, James says, we become “doers of the Word, and not merely hearers.” We point one another not to our own power or status—not toward “me” or “us” for our own sake—but toward God who, regardless of our power, wealth, status, or authority in this world, calls not only each of us as individuals, but all of us as one People of God, to eternal life.

Homily for Sunday, 15 August 2021– Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Readings of the day: Revelation 11:19a, 12:1-6a,10ab; Psalm 45:10, 11, 12, 16; 1 Corinthians 15:20-27; Luke 1:39-56

A priest who is a theology professor at a university began his reflection on today’s Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary with a story from one of his classes. He asked his students if anybody could explain the Assumption of Mary. One student answered, “Yeah, that is when the Church teaches that we assume that Mary is in heaven”!

I have never had a student answer me this, or anything similar, about the Assumption of Mary in any of my classes at St. Joseph’s College. I suppose that if a student were to answer in this way, I would quickly but gently correct the student.

Today we celebrate our belief as Catholics that, at the end of her earthly life, Mary, Mother of God; Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, was taken by God (what we mean by “assumed”) body and soul into heaven, so no trace of her earthly existence was left on earth. This is about as simple and brief a definition of the Assumption of Mary as I think we can give.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was defined only in 1950 by Pope Pius XII as an essential point of our Catholic belief, that is, a dogma. But this does not mean that our belief that Mary was taken (assumed) body and soul into heaven does not go back much farther than the last seventy-one years. In fact our belief in the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is among our Church’s most ancient beliefs, dating back to at least the third century after the earthly life of Jesus.

Until the early 300s after the time of Jesus, every so often the Roman Empire endured periods of political and social instability. In response to that instability, Roman emperors tended to persecute Christians and other minority peoples within the Empire—anybody who did not worship the Roman gods. These persecutions produced martyrs in the Church, people who died to uphold their Christian faith. Until the 300s, almost all saints—people the Church proclaims as in heaven—were martyrs. Only after persecution and death for one’s faith became rare in the Roman Empire, which by then had accepted Christianity and then made it the official religion of the Empire, did the Church consider other ways than dying for one’s faith—living an exceptionally holy life—as a sign that a person was in heaven; was a saint. During this time, a tradition started in the Church of collecting any physical remains (relics) of martyrs and storing them in a visible place (catacombs) for veneration by the faithful. These Roman Martyrs were especially celebrated on the anniversaries of their deaths, their “birthday,” the day on which God took them into heaven.

But how does the veneration of saints and their relics relate to the Assumption of Mary? At about the same time as the veneration of martyrs was beginning, the Church was becoming increasingly aware that, while we have from our beginning placed Mary first and most important among the saints, no relics; no physical reminders of her earthly existence have ever been found. By this time, a tomb at the foot of the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem was already being celebrated as the place where Mary was laid at the end of her earthly life. Let us remember that our Church has never taught, one way or the other, whether Mary died; only that her body never decayed before God assumed her into heaven. In fact our Eastern Catholic and Orthodox sisters and brothers focus today’s celebration more on Mary’s Dormition, or “falling asleep” at the end of her life on earth; we Roman Catholics focus more on God having taken her into heaven. We celebrate (rightly) two aspects of the same event.

And the great celebration of Mary’s “birthday” into heaven has been on this day, August 15, since the Church’s earliest centuries. But this tomb at the Mount of Olives was empty: No body. Coincidentally, it is near another empty tomb that many Christians consider to have been the tomb of Jesus between his death and resurrection. Based on the empty tomb the Church reasoned that God must have taken Mary’s whole being (what we mean by “body and soul”) to heaven, leaving no trace; no relic of her on earth. There is even a Biblical tradition in the Jewish as well as Christian faiths of God taking especially holy people into heaven, body and soul together: Enoch in Genesis and Elijah in 2 Kings, for instance.

Today’s celebration of Mary’s “birthday,” her Assumption body and soul, into heaven has a long and beautiful history, certainly longer than the dogmatic definition of the Assumption of Mary in 1950! Yet, please allow me to say something maybe a bit controversial here: That maybe the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is not a celebration about Mary, first and foremost, but about God and God’s Son our Lord, Jesus Christ, and about us.

What do I mean by this? Our reading today from the Book of Revelation is full of fantastic imagery that I will not dare to unpack in all its detail and symbolism. We are on scene of a great cosmic battle between a “great red dragon” with “seven heads and ten horns” with a diadem on each of its heads—I envision one ugly beast, I think we can say who stands for everything that is evil—and a woman, “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet,” crowned with “twelve stars,” in the midst of childbirth. Only since the Middle Ages has any frequent connection been made between this woman and Mary. A far more ancient tradition in the Church is to understand this woman as a metaphor for the whole Church; all of us in our resistance toward sin and evil, which will last until the end of time.

Yet to identify the woman of Revelation as Mary is not wrong, per se, because Mary stands for all of us, the Church, and our ultimate hope as a community of faith: Eternal life; heaven. This is to say that we hope (otherwise I do not think we would be here or profess faith in “the life of the world to come” in our Creed) to reach the same destination; the same end as Mary did by her glorious Assumption. We hope, at the end of our earthly lives, to be taken, as Mary was, not only soul but body, too, into heaven. After all, in our Creed, we profess our faith in the resurrection of the body.

Mary’s Assumption into heaven is not hers alone. It is a sign and a mystery of our collective hope as Church to be taken up into heaven, body and soul, at the end of our earthly lives; at the end of time. St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians makes this “order of things” clear today: First, “Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Because of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven, Mary; all the saints; all of us are called through the same process and the same end: Death, resurrection, ascension to heaven, body and soul. And only because of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension is any of this possible for us, and was any of this possible for Mary.

Today especially we greet Mary with great joy as Elizabeth did in Luke’s Gospel: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb”! Yet I think it is important that, immediately after this joyful greeting by Elizabeth, Mary praises not herself but the Lord in the beautiful words of the prayer we know as the Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.” But, once again, the Magnificat is not Mary’s prayer alone. It is part of a long, and very Biblical, tradition of especially women praising God for God’s saving presence among his people. We have Deborah in the Book of Judges and Moses’ sister Miriam during the Exodus as some examples of Old Testament women who praise God for God’s presence and offer of salvation to a whole people in this way. Hannah’s prayer when she conceives Samuel is almost verbatim Mary’s Magnificat in Luke.

And now the Magnificat is our prayer. We, not as disconnected individuals but as a community; a communion of faith, offer this prayer of joyful praise to God that Mary did. Yet by this prayer we acknowledge and assent to God’s way of saving us: The weak are strengthened; the proud humbled and scattered. The powerful are brought low; the lowly raised up. The hungry are filled; the rich “sent… away empty.” In God’s mercy, heaven is seen as our worldly concepts of power and worth quite literally overturned. Mary is our first model of this overturning: The insignificant young Jewish woman of a tiny village, Nazareth, who becomes the Mother of our Lord and Saviour and is taken up into heaven this day. This is only so that we will follow Mary and the saints to our “birthday” into eternal life, where there is no excess wealth or food at the expense of those who have too little; no pride at the expense of the humble; no “me” disconnected from or at the expense of “us.” If we follow Mary’s example, we will gain heaven together as Church, God’s people, a communion of faith, body and soul.

Homily for Tuesday, 3 August 2021– Ferial

Readings of the day: Numbers 12:1-13; Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 6cd-7, 12-13; Matthew 14:22-36

Tuesday of the 18th week in Ordinary Time

“You of little faith”… Whenever I hear this Gospel account of Jesus walking on water, Peter taking up Jesus’ invitation to walk toward him on the water and then becoming frightened and sinking before Jesus reaches out to save him, I have a lot of empathy toward Peter and Jesus’ other disciples.

Much of my empathy toward Jesus’ disciples here derives from my having stood on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and seen a fascinating (and possibly frightening, if one were ever caught out on the water when it happened) phenomenon about this body of water. The Sea of Galilee is not especially large. But, because of how it forms a basin surrounded by hills and how this orients the wind over the Sea of Galilee, the water can go from perfectly calm to white-capped or even choppier waves in little time and with seemingly harmless winds.

Much of my empathy toward Jesus’ disciples here derives from my having stood on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and seen a fascinating (and possibly frightening, if one were ever caught out on the water when it happened) phenomenon about this body of water. The Sea of Galilee is not especially large. But, because of how it forms a basin surrounded by hills and how this orients the wind over the Sea of Galilee, the water can go from perfectly calm to white-capped or even choppier waves in little time and with seemingly harmless winds.

And I am sure it is not every day that one witnesses a person walking on water, even if that person is the Son of God! So in many ways I empathize with Peter’s and the other disciples’ reaction to Jesus walking on water, when the wind had already been “against them.”

Peter and the other disciples endear themselves to me by how bold they in fact are when they witness Jesus walking on water. I do not think I would have asked Jesus, as Peter does, to command me to walk toward him on the water, even if I knew it was Jesus, the Son of God.

Jesus seemingly chides Peter, “You of little faith, why did you doubt”? But I interpret this less as Jesus scolding Peter than motivating him to see just how significant the “little faith” he has is. Peter’s “little faith” enables him to ask Jesus to command him to walk toward him on the water. Although Peter takes his focus away from the Lord and begins to sink, the fact that Peter has already willed himself to get to this point is significant.

We can think of other moments in the Gospels—the parables of the mustard seed and of the small measure of leaven come to mind—when Jesus points out how significant even a small amount of faith can be, because Jesus will take our small contributions and multiply them: Quell our fears, motivate us to see the best in ourselves. In today’s Gospel is not so much a moment when Peter is scolded as a “you can do this… See what you did there?” moment.

And I pray that Jesus will motivate me in the same way as he once did his disciples on the sea, when I need to be motivated or to exercise a quality in myself that I may not value as I should. I pray that I will be able to perceive the best in other people—confrères, family members, friends, the People of God who are the Church—to be able to encourage them, people of (a) “little faith” as we all are, so that the “little faith” we contribute will enable us to act with great boldness, great courage, great loving kindness in the Lord’s name.