Homily for Sunday, 5 January 2020– The Epiphany of the Lord

Readings of the day: Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13; Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12

This homily was given at St. James and Our Lady of the Valley Churches, Vernon, BC, Canada.

This solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, that is, the “making known” of Jesus to the world brings us each year the Gospel account, unique to Matthew’s Gospel, of the visit to Jesus’ birthplace in Bethlehem of the wise men or magi. The story of the magi is familiar to us: Guided by a star, the magi journey from their home country to the east of Israel to Bethlehem. They bring gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

But what does this visit of the wise men to the scene of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem mean for us today? I am especially drawn to a homily by Pope Francis of a couple of years ago in which the pope points to three key actions of the magi that make these wise men from the East relatable to us; an example to us in our lives of faith in a special way. First, the wise men follow a star to the Nativity scene in Bethlehem; second, they set out from their home country; and, third, they bring gifts.

When the magi arrive in Jerusalem, they know already that a life-changing event, the birth of a child, has taken place. The magi ask: “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we have observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” Is this not already a bit unusual that the magi would ask about a child “born king of the Jews” in the first place? For the most part, scholars consider Matthew’s description of the wise men as “from the East” to mean that they were neither Jewish nor Roman, but possibly Zoroastrians, a people who considered changes in the movements of the stars as signs of the divine.

The spirituality; the religion of these wise men centered on looking toward the heavens. But another strange detail, at least according to astronomers who study what the sky might have looked like at specific points in history, is that the star the wise men saw around the time of Jesus’ birth probably was not too bright a star, nothing far out of the ordinary. The magi may have had to have quite the discerning eye to detect as subtle a change in the night sky, this “star at its rising” that would guide them to Bethlehem, a village as near-ordinary as the star they saw; Bethlehem, the ordinary village God chose in which to enter our world as one like us.

The magi saw and followed this star. Yet how many of us have ever done exactly what these “wise men from the East” did; how many of us have ever simply looked up at the sky? During the day, our sun gives us just enough light and warmth to provide life on this planet. But even the sun is fairly ordinary insofar as stars go. As one who is not specialized in what to look for when I look at the night sky—I may be able to find a few major constellations—I doubt I would have the discerning eye that the wise men of Jesus’ time must have had. Sure, from my Boy Scout days I would be able to find Polaris, the North Star at the end of the Little Dipper, Ursa Minor, to point myself straight north. Lately the planet Venus has been near the brightest it ever appears to us, so it is especially easy to spot. We speak of full moons, blue moons, blood moons, and hunter’s moons, meteor showers at their most intense in August and November... If I am especially fascinated or looking for a specific star in the sky, I have an application on my phone called SkyTracker Lite.

But, in the days of the magi, there was no app for that. The wise men simply looked up. When have we looked up and, even if we have had no idea what to look for that might be out of the ordinary, simply been in awe? Have any of us ever peered into those almost fourteen billion light years of space and simply thought, “Wow! What kind of being—whom we call God—could create such magnificence”?

We, like the magi of Jesus’ time, look up and, if looking up gives us a sense of awe, then this awe sets us on a journey. Have we ever looked up and been in awe at the expanse of the universe and then, with eyes of faith, deepened our wonder at how the creator of all that expanse could, or would want to, be born into our world as one like us, and would want to show himself first to “wise men from the East” who simply began by following a star; by doing what they were used to doing, looking up to the heavens for signs of the divine; being in awe even at a subtle change in that sky?

From that first feeling of awe at looking up and seeing a star, the wise men set out from their home country. Why? Were these wise men not  perhaps wealthy, or at least comfortable with their way of life in their own country? What would cause them to set out for a land unknown to them? How were they able to encounter Herod in Jerusalem and then, on their return home, to heed the warning “in a dream not to return to Herod”? For Herod, in our Gospel, represents the exact opposite of the wise men. Herod greets the news of this child born in Bethlehem with fear that leads him to act with great evil. Herod, wealthy and comfortable, was unwilling to set out from his comfort zone, whereas the wise men were. And the wise men, upon arriving at the place of the Lord’s birth, “were overwhelmed with joy” at what must still have been to them a challenge to their comfort; to their old way of life.

Still, for the wise men to go beyond their comfort was their only way to utmost joy. The magi show us that the measure by which we are willing to set out from our comfort, from “this is the way we have always done it,” from our wealth if we have it, is the measure by which we will experience joy. It is the measure by which, in place of worldly comfort, wealth, and the way of life we know, our God is born among and within us. Our God lives among and within us in a way that, as I imagine it was for the wise men and certainly for the likes of Herod, was unnerving. But there can be no greater joy for us than this: God taking our human form and dwelling among us; God, beginning as a baby in Bethlehem, breaking down our comfort zones to take the place of greatest importance in our hearts, minds, and actions.

Yet if we are able to get so far as to look up and allow ourselves to be overtaken by awe, and then to let that awe impel us to set forth beyond our comfort, our wealth, our best-laid plans, or our existing way of life, still then, like the wise men, we are called to bring gifts.

The magi of Matthew’s Gospel brought three gifts to the newborn Jesus: Gold fit for a king; frankincense fit for God; and myrrh for the one who would die and rise to save us. What gifts will we bring to honour our king; to honour our Lord and God; to honour the one who has died and risen and will return at the end of time to save us; to bring us eternal life?

Might we begin by offering the gift of our worship, our presence in celebration here and now? We worship and we celebrate as the gifts God has already offered us, gifts of simple bread and wine, are changed and change us into the gift of Christ to our world. This urges us, then, to go forth from this celebration bearing intentional gifts of love and kindness especially toward the most abandoned, the most disadvantaged and vulnerable of our brothers and sisters: People not yet born; people of an advanced age; people who have few or no loved ones to care for them; people who are sick in mind, body, or spirit; people who are dying; people who flee violence, poverty, and persecution in their homelands for the safety of our country, and so on.

The gifts of love and kindness we bear especially to people who cannot repay us show to the world that we are, like the “wise men from the East” of Jesus’ time, a people who looks up and out at God’s world, God’s universe, with awe; that this awe impels us to set forth from our comfort, our best-laid plans, our wealth, into the unknown and the challenging.

We bring gifts freely because we have been given a gift, God’s own Son. This gift we have received and hand on, freely and without charge, is the gift that alone will overwhelm our world with joy because ours is the gift—the Epiphany, the “making known” of God’s dwelling among and within us—that we celebrate here and that will lead us to eternal life.

Homily for Sunday, 16 June 2019– The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Readings of the day: Proverbs 8:22-31; Psalm 8:4-5, 6-7, 8-9; Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15

Our brother Basilian priest of happy memory, Fr. Peter Etlinger, had little use for when people would compare our present time or experience with almost-mythical “good old days.” “Don’t tell me about the good old days,” Fr. Etlinger would grumble, “I was there; they weren’t so good”!

But does the Word of God we hear today not call us to remember the “good old days”? I do not mean to remember the “good old days” in the sense of imagining for ourselves a mythical golden age that never in fact existed, as if to diminish any good in our present world and present experience. No, the Book of Proverbs begins today by pointing us back to the very first moments of God’s creation of the universe, through a figure Proverbs names “the wisdom of God.”

Even before there were “good old days,” or any kind of days or nights to count; “before the earth” was formed; before heights and depths, “fountains or springs of water,” mountains, hills, or fields, the wisdom of God was there. And God’s creation of the world, of our universe, which “the wisdom of God” witnessed, was so very good. The Book of Proverbs is far from the first text of our Bible to marvel at the goodness of God’s creation. If we remember, in the very first lines of the Book of Genesis, after each “day” of God’s creation, God looks upon his creation and sees that it is good.

Yet in Genesis and even more so in Proverbs, the one being singled out as especially good, in whom God and “the wisdom of God” take particular delight, is us: “I found delight in the human race.” Why is this? What about all the chaos, the divisions, the violence, and the sin in our world; the suffering we human beings inflict on one another and on our world? What is there in “the human race” for God to delight in?

Even if there were no sin, no human-caused suffering in our world, our Psalm asks, “What [are we] that [God] should be mindful of” us; “the son of man that God should care for him”? And yet God has made us “little less than the angels”; little less than God himself. Why would God have made us so? Why does God delight in the human race so much?

This may be a completely inadequate answer on my part to such a deep question as why God should delight so much in “the human race,” but please let me do my best to answer this question here anyway. God delights in us so much because we are unique among creatures on earth in our ability to form relationships not only with one another but with our Creator, God. How many of us have looked up at the “heavens, the work of [God’s] fingers, the moon and the stars,” or looked out at nature and the life that fills it and thought, “Wow! It had to have taken an awesome creator—we call this creative being God—to make all this so beautifully and perfectly”?

How many of us have listened to the sounds that echo through this place and this Eucharistic celebration, both the expected sounds of the Mass itself, like its ritual and music, and more spontaneous sounds, like the cooing of small children? How many of us have thanked God for a success in life like a new job, a happy retirement, or graduation, or have prayed to God for any of these things? How many of us have thanked God for a good friend, or our wife or husband who, sacramentally, is the foremost person in our lives, for those of us who are married, who shows us the face of God and leads us to eternal life with God? How many of us have ever sought or received healing from God, for ourselves or for another person? How many of us, especially on this Father’s Day, have prayed and thanked God for our fathers or, for those among us whose fathers have gone to be with our Father in heaven, how many of us have prayed for our fathers to intercede for us and watch over us from on high?

In these and many more ways, we form relationships not only with one another but with our God, in a way that only we human beings can. And we also believe, fundamentally about ourselves as human beings, that we are created in God’s image and likeness. If this is so, then the God in whose image and likeness we are created, who enables us to marvel at God’s handiwork in his creation as “the wisdom of God” in Proverbs does; who enables us to ask for what we need from God and to thank God in prayer; to form relationships with one another and with God, must be a relational God.

But how can God be a relationship within God’s self—we speak of God as a relationship of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—if we also believe that God is fundamentally one? This is at the heart of the mystery we celebrate on this Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity: God fundamentally one and fundamentally a relationship of three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This and any other true mystery cannot be explained logically, theo-logically, or with any increase in our “head knowledge.” The mystery of the Trinity, how God is one and also three, and any other true mystery, may only be comprehended through faith-filled experience.

This is what Jesus says to his disciples in John’s Gospel, from which we hear today. To try to comprehend mystery through our reason alone would overwhelm and even frustrate and sadden us: “You cannot bear it now,” Jesus says. We, like Jesus’ first disciples, have experienced relationship with God the Son, especially because God the Son took on our human nature, which maybe makes the Son easier for us to relate to than God the Father or the Holy Spirit. We have experienced relationship with God the Father from the first moments of creation, to the giving of the Law and the Prophets to Israel, to God’s sending of his only Son as one like us in all but sin. And now, through the Son, God sends us God’s Holy Spirit, our promised guide “to all truth.”

But we cannot absorb “all truth” all at once, without becoming overwhelmed, frustrated, and sad. In order to grow in relationship with and in our experience of the Holy Spirit; in order to grow in our comprehension of “all truth,” not taking it to the head but taking it to heart, requires time. It requires patience. It requires prayer. It requires us to be disposed to awe at the beauty of God’s creation that surrounds us.

The process of which St. Paul speaks to the Romans, that of the Holy Spirit, sent to us from the Father through the Son and “poured into our hearts”; the process from endurance to “proven character” to hope that “does not disappoint,” even in times of affliction, is a process of love. It is a process of growth in relationship. Those of us who have ever been in love, think about this: Did you go from attraction to somebody to the deepest intimacy, perhaps marriage, in an instant? Probably not.

The same is true of our faith-filled experience of the one God as Trinity; as a relationship of three, as of love: It takes time, patience, prayer, and a disposition to awe to allow it to grow and deepen. This does not happen in an instant, but over a longer process. And then, as happens in the best of relationships—imagine again a long, happy marriage or a great friendship—our experience of relationship in all its complexity draws us closer to oneness with the person with whom we enjoy the relationship. This is true of our relationship with God as it is with our relationships with one another: We experience God in an awesome multiplicity of ways. We enter into relationship with the God we experience and name as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and, as we grow and deepen in this relationship of love with God, we are drawn closer to oneness with God.

We are drawn closer to the appreciation of God’s oneness. But, as in our human relationships, we never lose our unique individual personalities in our relationship with God, and the distinction in the ways we experience God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is never lost. Our relationship with God, three-in-one, grows and deepens into a future in which, more and more, we comprehend and take to heart “all truth,” while still remembering fondly the “good old days” when God first made us, when we first knew delight in God and when God first “found delight in the human race.”

Homily for Thursday, 28 May 2015– Ferial

Thursday of the 8th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Sirach 42:15-25; Psalm 33:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9; Mark 10:46-52

Have you ever, for a few moments, delighted in God’s creation? Have you marveled at the immensity of the universe or been amazed at the diversity and intricacy of the smallest creatures we know?

Sirach understands something of God’s wisdom; God’s glory when he sees God’s creation. Our first reading, from Sirach, is a hymn of praise for the beauty of God’s creation; an appreciation of the wisdom and greatness of the Creator. “Now will I recall God’s works,” Sirach begins, “At God’s word were his works brought into being; they do his will as he has ordained for them.”

But soon Sirach is at a loss to praise God for God’s creation because it is so splendid. “Even God’s holy ones must fail in recounting the wonders of the LORD,” Sirach acknowledges! Our creator God “plumbs the depths and penetrates the heart.” God lacks “no understanding”; no wisdom. And so we, like Sirach, are reduced to awe and wonder. Sirach asks, “Can one ever see enough of [the] splendor” of God’s creation? Even from the small amount of God’s creation that we see, can we not understand something of the greatness of God by sensing God’s creation?

And yet some do not easily experience the greatness of God’s creation. This is the experience of the blind Bartimaeus in our Gospel reading today from Mark. We cannot know the kind of “blindness” that afflicted Bartimaeus, whether it was literal inability to see or some other physical illness, or whether he was blinded spiritually; blinded by sin. Whatever Bartimaeus’ kind of blindness, it does not stop him. Bartimaeus has the faith and confidence to approach Jesus and ask him: “Master, I want to see.”

The blind Bartimaeus never despairs of God’s healing; of the mercy of the same God who created the universe and everything in it and sustains this creation. Bartimaeus trusts that Jesus will restore his sight so that he can sense the wonders of God’s creation more fully and give thanks to them by a life of following Jesus.

“Master, I want to see.” What if this were all we wanted of God, so to give praise to God for God’s creation? We trust in God, I am confident. We trust and show awe and reverence to our Creator God; to our God of mercy especially when our sins and failings are keeping us from experiencing God’s goodness even more deeply. We are here because we trust in God who gives himself in our Eucharist.

But what if we were to purify this trust; this desire to “see” and experience God, even more? What if, by God’s grace, we did not complain as much about small afflictions (I can be bad for this)? What if our prayer were more like that of the blind Bartimaeus: “Master, I want to see.”

Master, I want to give thanks more and more for the splendor of your creation. Master, for the times I have sinned I am sorry; “I want to” experience your mercy; I never despair of your mercy. I know that, this side of eternal life, we will never fully understand your greatness and the greatness of creation. But let us experience more of it to give you fitting praise. “Master, I want to see.”

Homily for Sunday, 24 May 2015‒ Pentecost

Mass during the Day

Readings of the day: Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; Pentecost Sequence; John 20:19-23

Imagine for a moment that you are in your favorite place in the world. What is this place? Is it your favorite vacation destination, perhaps one of the world’s great cities; a remote place to enjoy nature; a beach in the tropics? Is your favorite place somewhere you enjoy spending a day off work? Is it a place to be still; to encounter God in prayer; perhaps in silence; perhaps at Mass? Are you with somebody or alone?

I feel blessed to have many favorite places all over the world. I have encountered God in prayer; in the Eucharist everywhere from here at St. Kateri to the parishes in which I grew up, St. Theresa’s and Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Edmonton; to Notre Dame and Saint-Sulpice in Paris, to the chaotic Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the calm of the shore of the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus once walked; to St. Patrick’s in busy New York City; to my highlights in Colombia in South America: At twelve thousand feet above sea level, Monserrate in Bogotá, for instance. This is one of the only churches of which I can think where the congregation remains standing during Mass, barely even able to turn, because of the number of people present!

Last week I enjoyed my parents’ visit here to Rochester; to St. Kateri. We visited places like the Corning Museum of Glass; wineries and breweries in the Finger Lakes, Sodus Point and El Rincón Mexicano, a favorite Mexican restaurant in Sodus to which Fr. Paul introduced me; Chimney Bluffs…  These are only a few of my favorite places near here to spend a day off; to eat; to learn; to enjoy nature. But it was particularly wonderful to be with people I love;  to be with Mom and Dad to enjoy some of my favorite places in New York State (and some places where I had never been before) during the week they were here.

Is there not something special about being together in one place with people you love; with family; with friends? This is the experience of Jesus’ disciples on Pentecost. We hear in our first reading from Acts that “they were all in one place together” when the Holy Spirit descended upon them. For Jesus’ first disciples, this is the necessary condition to receive God’s gift of the Holy Spirit. Their unity “in one place together,” in an upper room in Jerusalem, is the required setting for the birth of a community of faith, our Church. But why is this so? If God had so chosen, why could the Holy Spirit not have descended upon each of the disciples individually, alone, instead of descending upon them as a community?

The trouble here is that, unlike when we are enjoying quality time off; a vacation; perhaps peaceful time at prayer, Jesus’ disciples were not gathered in their favorite place in the world. Our Gospel reading today, from John, says that “the doors were locked” to the room “where the disciples were, for fear of” the leaders of “the Jews”; those who had put Jesus, their hoped-for Messiah, to a shameful death on a cross. But it is into this fear that the risen Christ enters and breathes the Holy Spirit upon the disciples as a community: “Peace be with you.” This Pentecost event would not have happened in the same way had the disciples have been scattered, facing their fears alone.

Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ’s disciples; the birth of the Church, is not a one-time event. We are reminded of this by today’s readings: The Acts of the Apostles and John’s Gospel speak of two distinct encounters with the Holy Spirit. In Acts the Holy Spirit appears to the disciples in “tongues as of fire”; as “a noise like a strong driving wind.” In John, the risen Christ breathes God’s Holy Spirit upon his disciples: “Peace be with you.”

And Pentecost continues to happen, here and now. The Holy Spirit continues to work; to be present among and within us. How is the Holy Spirit present, working among and within us? Might many of us here now be feeling anything but like you are in your favorite place in the world? For many of us there is no better place to be than here, on a beautiful Sunday morning, celebrating our Eucharist. And yet many more of us bring to this celebration our griefs and sorrows: Personal or loved ones’ illnesses; loss of loved ones; loss of employment or underemployment; struggles with our faith; marriage or family disunity. We bring to this celebration our distractions: Some of us barely awake; others with small children in tow with their own needs; still others finding it difficult to remain focused in prayer… And yet how blessed we are as a community of faith by one another’s presence: Joys, hopes, griefs, distractions and all! Still more of us may be bringing to this Eucharist very real fears: Our fear of death; what will happen after our death and how the people we love will cope; our fear of economic instability; our fears for those we love who have turned away from their faith; our fear for the state of our world, full of hope but with many instances of despair; violence; evil…

Our joys and hopes but also our griefs; our distractions; our fears are similar and every bit as real as those Jesus’ first disciples faced on the first Pentecost when they encountered the Holy Spirit. Some first encountered the Holy Spirit in the stillness of Jesus’ breath, “Peace be with you.” Others encountered the Holy Spirit amid their fear of death at the hands of those who had put Jesus to death. These first disciples encountered the Holy Spirit as they touched the risen Jesus’ wounds, an image of our own woundedness; our own sin; our own need for forgiveness and healing. And they encountered the Holy Spirit as fearsome, rushing wind and “tongues as of fire.”

Our encounters with the Holy Spirit are as varied perhaps as the encounters with the Holy Spirit of Jesus’ first disciples. The gifts we receive from God’s Holy Spirit are as varied as the encounters with the Spirit themselves: “Different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit,” St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians. But do we not have something else in common with these earliest disciples in how they encountered the Holy Spirit? We, like them, are “all in one place together.”

In this “one place together” our joys and hopes meet their source, our God whom we are united here to worship and to celebrate. Here our diverse “spiritual gifts” are refined; made ready through this celebration to be put to service of the one Body of Christ; one community of faith; one world; one human race. A “body with many parts,” we become, more and more, “one body, one spirit in Christ” in the words of our Eucharistic Prayer that we will hear and pray in a few moments.

In this “one place together” our griefs; our distractions; our fears are transformed by the Holy Spirit. Together we are invited to let our fears that could paralyze us without community; without God’s Holy Spirit be transformed into “fear” in the sense of awe and reverence in God’s presence. This “fear of the Lord”; awe and reverence in God’s presence is the first and greatest of the gifts of the Holy Spirit we all receive in baptism and confirmation.

In this “one place together” is our Pentecost. In this “one place together” we encounter God’s Holy Spirit who strengthens, gifts, unifies, and transforms us. In this “one place together,” my sisters and brothers, Church is born. In the whole world the best place for us to be; the place where God is; the place where we are prepared to serve God as Christian disciples in our world that hungers for God’s Spirit, is right here, in this “one place together.”

Homily for Friday, 24 April 2015– Friday of the Third Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 117:1bc-2; John 6:52-59

Does the conversion of St. Paul, of which we hear today in the Acts of the Apostles, bring an awesome image to our minds? It does to mine. Saul, on his way to Damascus to bind any Christians there and to “bring them back to Jerusalem in chains,” sees a flash of light and is knocked to the ground. Ananias, at first reluctantly but convinced by the same Jesus who had flashed before Saul, takes Saul into Damascus to regain his sight.

I think of the painting above the sanctuary of St. Paul’s Basilica in Toronto, across the street from where I lived while I was in seminary there. It is a fantastic image of Saul being knocked from his horse on the road to Damascus. Underneath is the Latin inscription of Jesus’ words: “Saule, Saule, quid me persequeris”‒ “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me”? It is a fantastic image... except there is no horse from which Saul falls in the Biblical account. This is where I need to be converted from over-attention to literal detail and perhaps use my imagination a bit more freely!

This is a fantastic image above the sanctuary of St. Paul’s Basilica, except that at a particular point it becomes unrealistic to me. How? And does the story of Saul’s conversion have limited realism for us? How many of us have thought: This is great that Saul was converted on the spot into the great Apostle Paul; a defender of the early Church and writer with the same vigor with which he once persecuted it? This is not my experience. Conversion, in my experience, takes much longer; perhaps a lifetime.

We will hear from Acts as we continue our Easter season that conversion was not a one-time event for Paul, either. It was a lifelong process of becoming aware of Christ’s presence, as it is a lifelong process for us. But St. Paul’s conversion began with Christ’s appearance on the road to Damascus.

When did our process of conversion begin? Perhaps it was our birth; our baptism. Conversion, for us, is usually more subtle than being knocked down on a roadside by Christ himself! This subtle, everyday process of conversion; of becoming ever-more aware of Christ’s presence in our lives: When did this begin for us?

In an awesome way, we are aware of the presence of Christ in our lives here and now. I say this because we are here; we are partakers in this Eucharist. Christ, who became one of us, died, is risen, and ascended into heaven as fully human, is present under bread and wine in this celebration! Conversion: Is this not real to us, here and now? If it were not, I do not think that any of us would be here.

Conversion: Is it not as real to us as when Jesus first said (and we hear in John’s Gospel), “Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day”? These words were startling to those who first heard them. Now our conversion; our ever-increasing awareness of Christ’s presence among us, is much more subtle. But our ongoing conversion is every bit as real and awesome as when it began.