Homily for Thursday, 18 August 2016– Ferial

Thursday of the 20th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 36:23-38; Psalm 51:12-13, 14-15, 18-19; Matthew 22:1-14

This homily was given at the chapel of Kateri House Women's Residence of St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Our Gospel reading today raises many questions for me: Why do the first slaves “invited to the wedding banquet” of the king decline the king’s invitation? Why do they not simply decline politely, but instead “make light of” the invitation, while some go so far as to mistreat and kill the king’s other slaves? Why is the king so harsh toward the unfortunate man who shows up at the wedding banquet without his “wedding robe,” casting this man “into the outer darkness, where there [is] weeping and gnashing of teeth”?

These questions are difficult to answer with only the information that Matthew’s Gospel gives us. Maybe the first slaves thought their master, the king, to be harsh, and so they had planned a way of opting out of attending his wedding banquet. And maybe they mistreated his other slaves out of added spite. The king’s slaves would seem to have been right about his harshness and short temper, if the king’s treatment of the man without a wedding robe is any indication of this.

Then again, maybe we are asking the wrong questions if we are wondering why the slaves behaved the way they did or why the king in Jesus’ parable is so harsh. After all, the king is meant to be understood as God. And God would not be unduly harsh toward his people, would he? Perhaps we interpret God incorrectly as harsh for destroying the slaves and their city after they had mistreated and killed other slaves. Perhaps God, the king, has reason to cast the man without his wedding robe “into the outer darkness, where there [is] weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

But maybe we are being invited to focus less on the apparently harsh actions of God; of the king, and more on our own choices before God and one another. Now, I am in favour of the belief in a loving and merciful God who gives sinners and even serious evildoers almost infinite chances to turn from sin. And yet all of us are created with complete freedom, which includes the freedom to accept or to reject God’s mercy; God’s gift of salvation; God’s invitation to the wedding feast, the Kingdom of Heaven definitively, as it were.

And so might we direct these questions not toward God but toward ourselves: If we are given an invitation to the wedding feast, will we choose to accept God’s invitation? Will we go “into the main streets” and invite still others, without partiality, to the wedding feast? Will we wear the wedding robe of salvation given us by the king, God, at our baptism, when we were first invited to “bring” the “dignity” of this garment “unstained into the everlasting life of heaven”?

Will we pray with the humility and penance of the Psalmist: “Create in me a clean heart, O Lord,” even if our creation and re-creation by God entails breaking down our sin; our acts against God; against love; against one another, in order to rebuild dignity with which we were first created? Will we listen to prophets, of our time or of old, who call us to accountability; to repentance when necessary?

These choices are ours to make, with the freedom God has given us to make them.

Homily for Thursday, 13 August 2015– Ferial

Thursday of the 19th week in Ordinary Time

Optional Memorial of Sts. Hippolytus and Pontian

Readings of the day: Joshua 3:7-10a, 11, 13-17;  Psalm 114:1-2, 3-4, 5-6; Matthew 18:21-19:1

“How often must I forgive”? Jesus answers this memorable question from St. Peter: “Not seven times but seventy-seven times.” In other words, show unlimited forgiveness toward other people when they sin. But is this not easier said than done? What becomes of moral accountability when we forgive another person even when this person commits the same sin against us multiple times?

If we struggle with these questions, I think we can take comfort that even popes have had the same struggles. We begin with St. Peter, by tradition the first Bishop of Rome, who asks the question of Jesus that perhaps many of us have thought at some point: “Lord, if my [sister or] brother sins against me, how often must I forgive [this person]? As many  as seven times”?

Today we also celebrate the feast of two obscure saints, Hippolytus of Rome and Pontian, who were martyred in Rome in the early 200s. A fascinating detail about Hippolytus and Pontian is that for many years they were angry with each other; could not forgive each other until they were imprisoned and killed together by the Roman Emperor Maximus. Pontian had been pope. He and the two popes before him, Callixtus and Urban I, allowed people who had committed adultery and other serious sins back into the Church without, in Hippolytus’ eyes, a long and rigorous enough time of penance. Hippolytus was so outspoken against Popes Callixtus, Urban, and Pontius that he accepted election as an antipope (a rival claimant to the papacy of Rome). This got Hippolytus excommunicated. Thankfully, Hippolytus reconciled with the Church, probably under Pope Pontius while both were in prison, before he was martyred.

Hippolytus and Pontius were canonized together and share today as a feast day. Might we call this a great feast day of forgiveness, “not seven times but seventy-seven times”? Today is the feast day of a pope and the first antipope, who both were named saints and are examples to us of (eventual) forgiveness.

But how late is too late to forgive? How long before we become like the servant in our Gospel reading who is forgiven his debt but then refuses to forgive his fellow servant’s debt? Jesus invites us to be free and not to delay in forgiving one another. If we wait to forgive, we may not have the fortune of Hippolytus!

Who are the people in our lives whom we have most difficulty forgiving? Occasionally I hear people who are angry and have difficulty forgiving somebody in leadership: A president, a bishop, even a pope! But most often are not the people we have most difficulty forgiving those dearest to us: Close friends and family members?

I have seen over the last few days a saying on Facebook I find rings true. It says that to hold a grudge is to let somebody live rent-free in your head. The Church does not need to say this; psychologists will say this first. Jesus invites us to forgive. If we wait to become martyrs like Hippolytus before we forgive, it will become too late. And so make the demons of lack of forgiveness and unchecked anger in our heads and hearts pay the rent! This is all about accountability for our own mental and spiritual health.

Homily for Tuesday, 28 July 2015– Ferial

Tuesday of the 17th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Exodus 33:7-11, 34:5-b-9, 28;  Psalm 103:6-7, 8-9, 10-11, 12-13; Matthew 13:36-43

We hear today from the book of Exodus of a particularly frustrating time for Moses as he leads the people of Israel home out of slavery in Egypt. Does it not seem that, at every turn, the people of Israel complain about something on their journey: The desert heat; not enough food; not enough water… “Moses, he looked at me funny”?! 

The people of Israel are badly behaved in other ways. They fail to trust on many occasions in God, through Moses, to lead them back to their homeland. But this is also a time at which Moses especially seeks the help of the LORD to lead Israel. A tent, “called the meeting tent,” is set up in the middle of the desert to be a place where the people could “consult the LORD.” The people of Israel had access to God like never before through this “meeting tent.”

Moses enters the “meeting tent” and, “for forty days and forty nights,” he is alone with the LORD. And what does Moses ask of the LORD? We hear that Moses asks for God’s mercy and forgiveness toward the “stiff-necked people” he is leading. Moses first acknowledges God’s name, “LORD.” And then Moses acknowledges the greatness of God’s mercy: “The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.”

God’s mercy does not mean that the people of Israel will escape without consequences for their unfaithfulness toward God. And yet if, in the highly symbolic language of Exodus, God will punish the people “to the third and fourth generation for their fathers’ wickedness,” God promises to continue his kindness “for a thousand generations” toward those who remain faithful. God’s mercy; God’s forgiveness, even before we ask for it, always greatly (we could say infinitely) outweighs God’s wrath; God’s punishment.

And here in the book of Exodus God’s greatest act of mercy yet is to have Moses write on another set of tablets the Ten Commandments. Do we remember perhaps how, earlier in Exodus, Moses descends the mountain after receiving the original Ten Commandments on tablets and, when he sees the people making a golden calf idol, he destroys these tablets. Here, through Moses, God offers the people a new beginning. God offers them mercy and forgiveness, even if it is difficult for us to understand God offering a set of commandments as an act of mercy. This is the people’s opportunity by God’s mercy to renew their vows; their promise to remain faithful to God and just toward one another.

In a similar way we are continually given a chance at renewal, especially through the sacraments of reconciliation and Eucharist, because God is merciful toward us. God’s infinite mercy and forgiveness toward us are shown by Moses’ re-presentation of the Ten Commandments to the people and again through Jesus’ parable of the weeds among the wheat in Matthew’s Gospel.

God invites us not to pull up the weeds too early and so to risk destroying the wheat. God gives us a renewed chance at faithfulness, captured in the image of Moses writing the Ten Commandments a second time. Our God is infinitely merciful toward us and invites us to the same mercy and forgiveness toward one another and ourselves.