Homily for Sunday, 27 June 2021– Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Readings of the day: Wisdom 1:13-15, 2:23-24; Psalm 30:2, 4, 5-6, 11, 12, 13; 2 Corinthians 8:7, 9, 13-15; Mark 5:21-23

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

This week, I just finished teaching a Spring Term (May and June) Introduction to Catholicism course through St. Joseph’s College at the University of Alberta. The last lecture of the course was based on a topic the students proposed, which was meant to apply in a more focused way a theme we had discussed earlier in the course. The topic the students chose for the final lecture of this Spring Term centered on Catholic theology, ritual, and pastoral and ethical issues around death and dying.

How is that for a morbid way to end a course term? (I kid, but only to a point). I find it fortuitous that the last lecture of our course is so coherent with our readings for today. “God did not make death,” our reading the Book of Wisdom begins today. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus performs two interwoven miracles; the beginning and end of the Gospel reading we hear proclaimed focus on Jesus’ raising of the twelve-year-old daughter of a synagogue official, Jairus, who “is at the point of death” as today’s Gospel opens.

Also fortuitously, as we hear from the Book of Wisdom, “God did not make death,” from Mark’s Gospel Jesus’ raising of Jairus’ daughter, and in our Psalm response a hymn of thanksgiving for God’s victory over death—“I will extol you, Lord, for you have raised me up”—today [yesterday] we mark the first anniversary of the death of my grandmother, Barbara Schmidt. [We offer today’s Mass in her memory.] At Grandma’s funeral, and every funeral I attend, I am especially drawn to the beginning of what is called the prayer of commendation. At the end of a funeral Mass, we commend or leave our loved one who has died to the mercy of God. The priest prays: “Into your hands, Father of mercies, we commend our sister (or brother) in the sure and certain hope that, together with all who have died in Christ, she (he) may rise with him on the last day.”

I will admit that, at Grandma’s funeral Mass, since I was the presiding priest, it was especially difficult for me to pray those words: Sure and certain hope. Now, I consider myself immensely blessed, particularly as the priest in the family, to have ministered to Grandma as I did, especially in her last years. She was a person of tremendous and holy Christian hope; a hope that showed itself throughout her life through acts of outstanding generosity. Grandma was generous with every gift she had; with her time; with any wealth, even though for most of her life she could hardly have been considered wealthy. She became a widow at a young age, and raised five children on her own after Grandpa died, while also caring for her father until his death. Grandma embodied during her life what the prayer of commendation during a funeral Mass expresses, “Sure and certain hope” in our God who saves and raises us even from death.

Still, if I am honest with myself—and maybe many if not all of us will be able to relate—I consider myself a person of hope; of faith in a merciful and saving God. But am I a person of sure and certain hope? Sometimes I am not so sure my hope and my faith are that strong. In those moments, sure and certain hope becomes more of a prayer for God to fill in what I lack than a statement of something I have. This was certainly true at Grandma’s funeral, as I prayed those words, “in the sure and certain hope that, together with all who have died in Christ, she may rise with him on the last day.” This was true as I looked out upon family and a few of Grandma’s closest friends; as we remembered and prayed for Grandma in the midst of a COVID pandemic that also has made sure and certain hope difficult to come by for so many people.

Sometimes are we not (as I know I am) more like Jairus, who pleads desperately for Jesus to heal his sick daughter in today’s Gospel; Jairus who, after Mark purposefully has members of Jairus’ household tell Jesus that Jairus’ daughter has died, needs Jesus to remind him, “Do not fear, only believe”? I wonder what Jairus thought when Jesus spoke these words to him: “Do not fear, only believe.”

We know that the crowds at Jairus’ house “make a commotion and weep”; that they laugh at Jesus when Jesus says that “the child is not dead but sleeping.” We know that Jesus allows “no one to follow him,” but only the girl’s “mother and father and those who were with” Jesus; that Jesus puts everybody else outside the house. But Mark says little about Jairus until after Jesus raises his daughter. After Jesus raises Jairus’ daughter, Mark says that Jairus and all who witnessed Jesus’ miracle “were overcome with amazement,” that Jesus orders them not to make known his raising of Jairus’ daughter to anybody, and to give the girl “something to eat.”

Contrast this with the explicit faith of the woman, midway through today’s Gospel reading, who touches Jesus’ clothes and is healed of twelve years of hemorrhaging that no physician could treat, but only made worse. “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease,” Jesus says to the woman. This woman’s faith and hope that Jesus could heal her, if she only touched his clothing, is more obviously “sure and certain” than that of Jairus in today’s Gospel. Her faith is at least extremely bold.

Many Biblical experts have commented on how this woman’s flow of blood over twelve years would not only have been a physical health problem, but it would have put her in a state of ritual impurity. She would have been considered an outcast in Israel’s society of the time, so clearly, she has nothing to lose by desperately reaching for Jesus’ clothing so that he might heal her. But one commentator I read, more than pointing to the ritual impurity and social ostracism the woman’s hemorrhaging would have brought her, focuses on Jesus first address to her, as “Daughter.”

In Israel in Jesus’ time and well before then, “daughter” not only represented one person but was a metaphor for all of the people of Israel, especially the poor, sinners or, for whatever reason, outcast or exiled. Many times, the Old Testament prophets address Israel’s people as “daughter Jerusalem” or “daughter Zion” when they want to console and strengthen the people, or call them back from exile to their homeland. On the one hand, the woman with the hemorrhage in today’s Gospel could represent the people of Israel as a whole, especially the majority who were poor and many who were outcast, but who still lived with bold hope and faith that God would intervene in their favour. On the other hand, the synagogue official Jairus represents Israel’s elites, who needed to be challenged in a different way than the poor and outcast to live lives of bold hope and faith that were shown by acts of justice, mercy, and generosity.

Jesus’ last command to Jairus and his household is to give his daughter “something to eat.” I wonder if Jairus, in a way, represents us, to the extent that we have something to offer from what God has given us, especially to anybody who is poor, sick, outcast, or even “at the point of death.” The miracle is by God’s grace: “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease”; “Talitha cum… Little girl, get up”! But God entrusts us to receive God’s grace with hope and faith, as well as we are able, and then to communicate that saving grace to the world as generously as we have received it. “Give her”—give this world—“something to eat,” something that will nourish, sustain, and save!

“Sure and certain hope,” boldness in faith, are processes more than they are a destination. Each in their own way, the woman with the hemorrhage who touched Jesus’ clothes, Jairus who pleaded (with some boldness in his own right) for Jesus to heal his daughter, and each of us have the faith and hope in us that we need to receive God’s grace and to nourish the world with it. We may not (or maybe only rarely) feel that our faith; our hope in God is anything close to “sure and certain.”

In this case, “sure and certain hope” becomes not a statement about where we are, but our prayer for the process; our pilgrimage of faith: “God, make our faith; our hope in you ever more ‘sure and certain.’ Help us to overcome all fear and unbelief, to be generous with any gifts and blessings we have received. Give us the boldness of the woman who touched your clothes and was healed. Like Jairus, may we be sent forth to nourish a world you will to be raised up and saved. You did not make death, but have ‘made us for incorruption’; for eternal life. May we live to praise and ‘extol you, Lord, for you have raised [us] up.’”

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, 21 July 2020– Barbara Schmidt Funeral Mass

Readings of the day: Ecclesiastes 3:1-7, 10-11, 14; Psalm 23 (music setting); Revelation 21: 1-5a, 6b-7; John 14:1-6.

This homily was given at the funeral Mass for my paternal grandmother, Barbara Janice Schmidt, at the Church of the Assumption, Powell River, BC, Canada. Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon her.

“Sure and certain hope”: These words from the Prayer of Commendation, the last prayer of a Catholic funeral Mass, which we will hear and pray together in a few moments, have always been deeply moving to me. “Into your hands, Father of mercies, we commend our sister Barbara, in the sure and certain hope that, together with all who have died in Christ, she will rise with him on the last day.”

My dear family; sisters and brothers gathered in Christ our Lord to remember and pray for eternal rest in our Lord for our mother; our grandmother; our great-grandmother; our friend; our sister in Christ, Barbara Janice Schmidt: Is it not somewhat bold to pray (or to suggest that we are praying) “in the sure and certain hope” that God will receive our Barbara into eternal life? Is our hope, as long as we live this life on this earth, ever fully “sure and certain”? Or are we maybe more like the Apostle Thomas of our reading for this celebration from John’s Gospel; Thomas who responds with great uncertainty and alarm to his growing awareness that Jesus is about to be taken away from him and the other Apostles to die, rise and ascend to heaven? Are we not much like Thomas who, even though Jesus reassures his Apostles, “Where I am going, you know the way,” replies, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way”?

Like Thomas, our uncertainty and our grieving are not signs of weakness or lack of faith or hope in eternal life, whether for our beloved Barbara or for ourselves. “How can we know the way?” is a humble recognition that “sure and certain hope” is more about the journey to eternal life with our God, to heaven, than about the destination. When we commend our faithfully departed to the mercy of God, “in the sure and certain hope that… all who have died with Christ… will rise with him on the last day,” we, like Thomas, pray in one sense for our God to build on the hope and the faith we already possess but that have not yet reached their fullness.

Our God, mysteriously, has called his and our beloved Barbara home to heaven in these extremely uncertain, even unsettling times. We gather here, with many more of our relatives and friends (whom I want to acknowledge with special gratitude) joining us from afar thanks to modern technologies of communication, amid a worldwide pandemic with no known cure or resolution yet, to celebrate, remember, and pray for eternal life, not only for Barbara but for ourselves. We would not be here now, especially amid the uncertainty and the unsettling nature of our world, if we did not hope; if we did not have faith.

Our faith in God’s saving grace; our “sure and certain hope” can and must coincide with the uncertainty inherent in living in this world; with our cry, like that of the Apostle Thomas: “How can we know the way”? It is only if we have the courage; the hope; the faith; the humility of the Apostle Thomas—courage, hope, faith, and humility that were certainly modeled for us by our beloved Barbara Janice—that, by allowing ourselves to plead with the Lord, “How can we know the way,” we may be open to and take heart in Jesus’ reply: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.”

Throughout Grandma’s life, “How can we know the way” met “sure and certain hope” in ways that were open and took heart in our Lord: “I am the way and the truth and the life.” How so? A beautiful dialogue between “sure and certain hope” and “How can we know the way”; between God and our Barbara Janice, began just over ninety-four years ago. It continued on a farm in Rochfort Bridge and in a one-room schoolhouse where she taught in Jalna, Alberta; and then in Oakland, California, where Grandma met, married, and raised a family with a dapper U.S. Air Force veteran, Clem, Grandpa. And when God called Clem home to himself at a young age, Grandma’s dialogue with God, “the way,” led her back to Rochfort Bridge; to the farm where she cared for her father in his later years. In the meantime, “the way, the truth, and the life” led Grandma to raise five children—John, Raymond, David, Anne Marie, Nanette—to hope in God the way she did.

I suppose we could fill pages, and I could speak here forever (we almost certainly do not want that!), about the lifelong dialogue between God and our Barbara Janice: “How can we know the way”? “I am the way and the truth and the life.” This dialogue; this encounter; this life of Barbara Janice in God and his Christ, which we have witnessed and we celebrate here today, has been God’s sign to us in this earthly life of the reason for our “sure and certain hope” in eternal life, for Barbara and for ourselves.

In many ways, our Grandma’s life on this earth has mirrored the wisdom of the Book of Ecclesiastes from which we have heard this morning. There is, for Grandma and for each of us, “a time to give birth and a time to die” and, in between these, “a time for every affair under the heavens.” Why does the wise “teacher,” the author of Ecclesiastes, teach us that “there is an appointed time for everything”? He teaches us this so that, as he says, God may fill our hearts with what is “timeless,” so that by our experience of this truth, God “may be revered.”

Grandma exemplified this truth; this reverence for the timeless God through the time-bound realities of our earthly life. For our Grandma, there was a time for great generosity with any time; any talent; any material wealth she had. Grandma experienced poverty, especially as a widowed mother caring for five children and her father, and never forgot this as she supported various causes throughout her life in favour of the less fortunate; the forgotten; the poor; truly in favour of the intrinsic dignity of the human person, from conception to natural death.

For Grandma, there was time for great tenderness and love. There was time for healthy and endearing doses of sassiness. There was time for joy; time for music and nature; time for devoted service at the rectory of this Church of the Assumption in Powell River for fourteen years. There was time for Grandma, in her waning years, to be cared for by family both here and in Vernon, and by the home care nurses of BC Interior Health’s Choice in Supports for Independent Living program, to whom I and our family are especially grateful. There was time with her beloved and many friends, relatives, her husband Clem whom we pray is now re-united with Barbara in heaven; time with her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. There has been, and is, “an appointed time for everything”; “a time to give birth and a time to die.” And now is our time to “commend our sister Barbara” to God and the new life he offers her and will one day, we pray, offer us: A life “changed, not ended”; finite earthly life transformed by God into the infinite life of heaven.

I suppose, too, that, as we remember, celebrate, and pray for eternal life for God’s and our beloved Barbara, we might allow ourselves to envision what that eternal life might be for Barbara and for us. This vision might be something like the vision of St. John of Patmos in the Book of Revelation we hear today, the vision of “a new heaven and a new earth.” But let us not stop at envisioning “a new heaven and a new earth.” Instead, may we hear and take up God’s mission, entrusted to each of us, to build “a new heaven and a new earth,” beginning here and now, in cooperation with God’s grace.

How might we do this? Seek, first, the eternal life and the well-being in this earthly life of everybody. Seek and pray for this utmost well-being especially for people who have wronged us; people who are disadvantaged in any way; people who do not know or have forgotten their relationship with God; people who are sick; dying; alone; lost. Seek to be forgiven and to forgive for when we or our loved ones fail, as we all do by human weakness, to build one another up in Christian love and divine grace; for when we have hurt one another. Seek unity and charity (not necessarily uniformity, which is often a false unity), in our hearts; in our households and families; in our world. Seek to be generous and joyful.

These concrete actions were at the heart of the mission entrusted to our beloved Barbara: Grandma, Great-grandma, Mom, friend, sister in Jesus Christ. They are at the heart of how Grandma did her prayerful best to live, as a sign of God’s saving love for us. These actions are at the heart of our mission now as we pray for heaven for our Barbara and, one day, for ourselves. These are the ways in which we enter the dialogue between the “appointed time for everything” and “the timeless,” which God has put into Barbara’s heart and ours; between “How can we know the way?” and “I am the way and the truth and the life”; between us and God; between this finite life and eternal life, with “sure and certain hope.”