Homily for Monday, 2 September 2019

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Psalm 96:1, 3, 4-5, 11-12, 13; Luke 4:16-30

Monday of the 22nd week in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. James Church, Vernon, BC, Canada.

Today, do we not hear Jesus make a bold statement in Luke’s Gospel? After reading from “the scroll of the prophet Isaiah” on the Sabbath in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth, Jesus rolls up the scroll and sits down. Then, with “the eyes of all in the synagogue… fixed upon him,” Jesus says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

May I ask us, then, what would be the message that, if we heard it today, would be like that “scripture… fulfilled in [our] hearing”? Here, would we not want to be somewhat careful, so not to confuse a message we want to hear with a message we may need to hear?

There is certainly a distinction in today’s Gospel between the message the people want to hear and the message they need to hear from Jesus in the synagogue in Nazareth. The people in the synagogue of Nazareth that day were happy with Jesus’ claim to be the one “anointed… to bring good news to the poor… to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, [and] to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” But what did Jesus’ claim to be the anointed one to accomplish all this mean? Jesus’ proclamation of “good news to the poor… release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,” freedom for the oppressed; Jesus’ proclamation of “the Lord’s favour” was not to be primarily for the people in the Nazareth synagogue that day. In fact, Jesus’ proclamation was not to be primarily for the people of Israel, but for foreigners, just as the Lord’s favour had been for the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian in the times of Elijah and Elisha.

The people who heard Jesus in the synagogue of Nazareth that day changed suddenly from all speaking “well of Jesus” to trying to “hurl him off [a] cliff.” Jesus’ inclusive offer of “the Lord’s favour,” not primarily for the people in the synagogue that day or even for the people of Israel but for foreigners, misfits; those for whatever reason unworthy of “the Lord’s favour” as Jesus’ hearers understood them, was not what the people in the synagogue in Nazareth that day wanted to hear. But it was the message they needed to hear. Not they; not any of us have a monopoly on “the Lord’s favour.”

Who, then, are “the poor… the captives… the blind” and “the oppressed” among us today? Who are the widows of Zarephath and the Naamans among us today, disfavoured because of our individual if not social prejudices?  If Jesus were to preach on this scripture from Isaiah today, would he not perhaps proclaim “the Lord’s favour” primarily toward our society’s poorest and most outcast, perhaps the unborn; refugees and migrants trying to integrate into Canadian society and our communities; people with disabilities; the elderly and the seriously ill; people who despair to the point of contemplating ending their lives or having physicians end their lives for them; people who have committed crimes and are trying to rebuild their lives and re-integrate into society, and so on.

Who will “proclaim… the Lord’s favour” to these people? Who will bring hope to those “who have no hope,” in St. Paul’s words today to the Thessalonians? Who will proclaim the inviolable dignity of all human life, without exception, even and especially when this message is ill-received and even ridiculed by people who hear it or see it in action from us?

“Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in [our] hearing.”

Homily for Tuesday, 27 August 2019– Memorial of St. Monica

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Psalm 139:1-3, 4-6; Matthew 23:23-26

Tuesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. James Church, Vernon, BC, Canada.

What do we know about St. Monica, whose memorial we celebrate today? Much of what we know about St. Monica, we know from the writings of her far more famous son, St. Augustine. But St. Augustine’s feast day is tomorrow, so we will speak more on St. Monica today and leave our focus on St. Augustine for tomorrow. Well, that is easier said than done, so interconnected is Monica’s life with that of Augustine.

From Augustine, we know that Monica was an exceptionally generous woman. When Monica sought advice from saintly bishops including Ambrose of Milan on how to bring her wayward Augustine to the Christian faith—it would have been notable enough, especially for a woman of Monica’s time, to have had the personal connections with bishops as Monica did—as Augustine would write later in his Confessions, Monica prepared food and drink to leave at churches and oratories where she would stop to pray. She explicitly instructed these churches to give this food and drink to the poor.

But Monica is maybe best known as a saint who suffered greatly because of the infidelity of her pagan husband Patricius and the unruliness of her son Augustine. We hear from 1 Thessalonians and Matthew’s Gospel today about the suffering St. Paul endured in places like Philippi and the suffering the religious leaders of Jesus’ time caused Jesus. In St. Paul’s case, instead of his suffering causing him to become bitter, because St. Paul had suffered so he became all the more generous not only in preaching “the Gospel of God” but in offering the witness of his life to care for the Christian community of Thessalonica. And, we know, Jesus’ suffering at the hands of the religious authorities of his day culminated in his death on the cross, the ultimate sacrifice of his very self for our salvation.

Still, the suffering St. Monica endured are especially remarkable because she endured this suffering from the people closest to her, her husband and her son. And her love, her suffering, her tears that have been the subject of several beautiful paintings and other works of art, were instrumental in bringing Patricius (on his deathbed) and later Augustine to the faith of Jesus Christ. Augustine spends some of the most poignant pages of his Confessions and other writings movingly mourning his mother, Monica, since she had died not long before Augustine became a bishop and perhaps the most prolific Christian writer to date. Monica was, without doubt, instrumental in Augustine’s and maybe Patricius’ (although he is not named as such) becoming saints.

Monica is the patron saint of people in difficult marriages, people who suffer difficult relationships with their children and family members, and victims of infidelity and abuse. I encourage anybody who has suffered or knows anybody who has suffered any of these experiences to pray for the intercession of St. Monica. Pray for the intercession of saints like Paul of Tarsus, who went from causing good people to suffer to suffering persecution for the Gospel. And may we unite our prayers to those of our Lord, whose suffering and death alone redeems all suffering once for all and saves us.

Let me be clear about this: The Church does not require anybody to remain in an abusive relationship that places our well-being and even life in danger. But saints like Monica and Paul and the suffering of Jesus himself show that no suffering; no perpetrator of suffering is beyond redemption. This is why the examples of saints like Monica and Paul; like Augustine, whose feast we will celebrate tomorrow, and like our Lord Jesus himself, and our prayers through these great figures of our faith matter.

Homily for Monday, 26 August 2019

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5, 8b-10; Psalm 149:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6a, 9b; Matthew 23:13-22

Monday of the 21st week in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. James Church, Vernon, BC, Canada.

Do we not hear quite a contrast between our readings today from 1 Thessalonians and our Psalm, on one hand, and our Gospel from Matthew on the other hand? Do we not find comfort in St. Paul’s first words of his first letter to the Thessalonians: “We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers”?

And is our Psalm not similarly comforting: “For the LORD takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with victory”? Our Psalm is the 149th of 150 of the Psalms in our Bible. The last three Psalms in the Biblical Book of Psalms, numbers 148, 149, and 150, make up a set known as the “Hillel” Psalms. If we think of a Hebrew word that sounds similar to “Hillel,” maybe we would think of “Hallelujah,” which literally means “Praise be to God.” And so our Psalm today begins, “Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise in the assembly of the faithful.”

This sounds a lot like what we do well already. Certainly, those of us who gather for Mass at 8:00 am daily here at St. James do so with a sense of joy. But it takes a particular amount of commitment anyway to gather here every day (for many of us), rain, snow, or shine, for Mass, to offer our praise to God “in the assembly of the faithful.”

So I think St. Paul’s words to the Thessalonians or the words of the Psalmist could very well be addressed to us. But then what should we make of the Gospel reading we hear today. Jesus’ seeming harshness in our Gospel today is startling: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven”!

I suppose we could focus our attention on the more consoling, gracious words of 1 Thessalonians or our Psalm, or interpret Jesus in our Gospel as directing his harshest criticism at the religious leaders of his time. Jesus’ excoriation of the Pharisees and scribes in Matthew is certainly challenging for me to hear as an ordained minister of the Church: Am I serving the Church with purity of heart? For the times when I or any leader in our Church, ordained or non-ordained, allows ego to take priority over leading us, the baptized faithful, to salvation, I ask for our forgiveness. I ask for our prayers for our leaders, in the Church and in public office in our civil society, that by God’s grace we will serve the betterment of the Church and our civil society.

But I do not think that we should simply put aside Jesus’ words in Matthew’s Gospel today as if they were directed at only religious leaders, or all leaders, in Jesus’ time or ours. Please let me say again: I have great confidence that our devotion to our faith and often-daily Eucharist is strong; it is eminently praiseworthy. So I think the words of praise to the faith communities of the Psalmist’s and St. Paul’s time apply to us here at St. James and in so many places all over the world.

Yet what is our ultimate motivation for all our devotions; our prayers; our gathering for Mass nearly every day, many of us? Do we speak and act for justice; toward bringing every one of the baptized faithful closer to God and God’s saving grace? Do we seek to reconcile divisions in our world, within our Church; within our own relationships, and do we pray for this reconciliation? If so, we rightly and with purity of heart may “sing to the LORD a new song,” a song of “praise in the assembly of the faithful” that God will hear and that will help to bring us to salvation.

Homily for Monday, 4 September 2017– Ferial

Monday of the 18th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Psalm 96:1, 3, 4-5, 11-12, 13; Luke 4:16-30

This homily was given at St. Clare Church, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

What is it possible for us to know about heaven? How much of eternal life, of being saved, is dependent on our own effort or works versus God’s free gift of grace?

On this Labour Day, our celebration of work and everybody who works, our readings point more toward eternal life as God’s free gift than as having anything to do with our effort. In his first letter to the Thessalonians, St. Paul writes words of tremendous hope. “Jesus died and rose again,” St. Paul says, and for this and no other reason, we have the possibility of eternal life. “Through Jesus,” who has died and has risen from the dead through no merit of ours, “God will bring with him those who have died.” All St. Paul asks of us is to “encourage one another with these words.” It is no wonder, then, that today’s reading from 1 Thessalonians is often one of the selections at funerals in our Church, a time when we want to be encouraged; to know that our God is merciful and wills most of all that we might have eternal life.

Luke’s Gospel, too, emphasizes God’s gratuitous gift. Neither the possibility of eternal life nor God’s presence with and care for us in this life is limited by our effort or factors like our ethnicity or religious tradition. God is the creator of the universe and so is the universal giver of the possibility of eternal life. When Jesus speaks this truth through the images of outsiders like the “widow at Zerephath in Sidon” receiving the prophet Elijah in a time of famine or “Naaman the Syrian” being cleansed before any of the “lepers of Israel,” the people in the synagogue of Nazareth become furious with him. How is it that these outsiders receive God’s preferential treatment? Does it matter that we believe in the right God in order to be healed; in order to be saved? Do our efforts matter for our salvation?

If we listen attentively to our Gospel reading today, we hear that our efforts and our right worship do matter for our salvation, but perhaps not in the way we might most naturally think. Today’s Gospel reading is Jesus’ basic “mission statement: “To bring good news to the poor… to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

But this is not only Jesus’ mission; it is ours also. How, then, are we bringing good news to those in need? How are we, in St. Paul’s words, encouraging one another by our words and our deeds? How are we working to free the oppressed and the marginalized and to welcome and integrate the outsiders? How are we doing all this without worrying about whom God will save and whom he will not?

Heaven is God’s gift of grace, but we are still called to cooperate in this life in making God’s gift of grace known universally. French philosopher Gabriel Marcel once said, “To love another is to say to that person, ‘You shall not die.’” To love is to will and work for eternal life for everybody and all creation, and to trust God’s grace to make this will; this dream of ours a reality. We are called to dream this dream and work to realize it; to love one another. If we do simply this, the rest of the work of our salvation is God’s.