Homily for Sunday, 10 September 2023– Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 33:7-9; Psalm 95: 1-2, 6-7, 8-9; Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 18:15-20

When I served in Colombia as a postulant with the Basilians, we observed community spiritual practices that go way back in the Church and in religious orders, but which I found especially difficult: Culp and monitions. Culp is when you meet with a fellow member of the community (a postulant, seminarian, or priest) and tell him and ask his forgiveness for an offense you have committed, usually some wrong against the good of the community in the religious house. Monitions is when somebody in the local community confronts another about an offense he has committed.

It is not that I found culp easy: I could certainly think, without much difficulty, of a few ways in which I have tried and am still trying to live religious life better, be a better brother to the Basilians with whom I live; simply be a better human being. But, compared to culp, I sincerely disliked the practice in monitions of having to think of something of which to accuse one of my brother Basilians in the house. What if the offense of which I accused another made me look like a great hypocrite? Surely I am guilty of many things greater than the little offense of which I am accusing my brother, right? And I am not, by nature, confrontational.

I think this is healthy; I do not think I (or we) should go out of our way to reveal and confront the wrongs of others. If they are serious enough—like, real sins—they tend to reveal themselves quickly and widely in our social settings. And, contrary to the claim I hear occasionally that, because of increased secularization or other factors, our societies have “lost a sense of sin,” I think (maybe this is influenced by my experience of religious community life) that our societies, as secularized as they are, have increased in their sense of the social effects of evil, what we call sin, over its effects on the individual. This increase in awareness of “social sin” and its effects has been especially rapid in the last few generations, our lifetimes. I would like to know our thoughts on this.

But, I think, few of us enjoy confronting another person or a group, even if they are behaving in a truly wrong or sinful way. Nobody wants to be revealed as a great hypocrite for exposing the sins of others that may pale in comparison to the gravity of our own wrongs. Yet this is precisely the ministry God gives to the prophet in today’s reading from the Book of Ezekiel.

God has set Ezekiel as “a watchman for the house of Israel.” If Ezekiel refuses not only to confront a fellow Israelite who has sinned, but “to warn the wicked to turn from their ways,” he will meet the same end that they will. Ezekiel, like those who act wickedly, “will die in their iniquity.”

God asks quite the unenviable task of Ezekiel. Like most if not all the Old Testament prophets, I imagine that Ezekiel simply wanted to live a good life and go about his business without troubling anybody. Last week we heard from Jeremiah, another prophet who has a different vision for his life before God calls him to be a prophet to Israel. And when God calls Jeremiah to be a prophet, Jeremiah immediately wants to back out, but feels compelled—“enticed” is the word Jeremiah uses—to continue in the ministry to which God has called him, even though this has made him “a laughingstock” to his fellow Israelites.

So this is a common theme in the prophetic writings of the Old Testament: God insists on calling the prophets to a thankless ministry; the prophets’ reluctance to accept God’s call does not exempt them from it. In our Gospels, Jesus and his disciples are heirs to this same tradition of ancient Israel, the Jewish people. Jesus and his disciples, now we, are heirs to the same prophetic ministry as people like Ezekiel or Jeremiah exercised. So, what is this prophetic ministry? What does it look like for us to exercise it?

Inheriting the tradition and the ministry of the Old Testament prophets, of Jesus and his first disciples does not mean minding our own business, or even going about living our best lives as individuals when clearly evil exists and people do wrong in our world. Even if we are unsure if another’s actions are wrong or sinful enough to merit our intervention or confrontation—this was my problem with monitions—Jesus’ teaching and God’s call to Ezekiel say to us that it is not enough that we should simply mind our own business.

The greatest good not only of individuals but of the whole community—the “common good”—must be first and foremost when somebody has done wrong in a way that might have compromised the good of the community. Remember the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, before the Beatitudes in the same Gospel of Matthew from which we hear today. Jesus’ first teaching in Matthew in fulfillment of “the Law and the prophets” is: “When somebody wrongs you, first go and be reconciled with your brother or sister, and then offer your gift at the altar.”

That first teaching of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “First be reconciled,” conditions Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel reading about what to do when a brother or sister, a sharer in our faith, a member of our Church wrongs us. “First be reconciled,” or, as Jesus says today, “Go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.”

And, by “go and point out the fault,” Jesus is not saying that we should point out another’s fault, even a serious one, in a nasty or vindictive way. In this first step of how to act when another person wrongs us, I hear almost a presumption on Jesus’ or Matthew’s part that, most of the time, this step will suffice to bring the person who has committed the wrong to remorse and penance. How many times has this happened to us: We are about to say to somebody, in the most forgiving and empathetic tone we can muster (please pray for the graces of forgiveness and empathy in these situations!), “What you did or said really hurt me”? And, before we are even able to say something like that, the person says, “I’m sorry. I did or said something very hurtful and wrong.” This has happened to me many times. And it is most humbling when a person to whom I am closest—a friend, maybe even a family member or a brother Basilian—asks (in fact, anticipates) my forgiveness in this way. Just as often, this happens when I go into an encounter of reconciliation with such a person thinking I was in the wrong; that I said or did something to irritate that person and provoke a harsh response.

Forgiveness, communal and individual, must rule these encounters, Jesus says, for any wrong not to weigh down and destroy the community of faith. Maybe we tend (I am not sure about any of us, but I speak for myself) to think of Jesus’ promise at the end of today’s Gospel reading in the context of the Eucharist, the Mass, or other communal prayer: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

It is perfectly right for us to interpret Jesus’ promise in this way: Jesus is with us in this celebration, where there are “two or three,” or however many “gathered in [his] name.” But even with respect to the Eucharist, what is the first thing we do after the opening sign of the cross as a community, “gathered in [Jesus’] name”? As a community present together, we ask one another’s forgiveness. We pray a Penitential Act! Sisters and brothers, we are enacting the steps of today’s Gospel, our prophetic ministry after the likes of Ezekiel, every time we gather for Mass! That is quite remarkable, if you ask me.

And if encountering a brother or sister who has wronged us (or if we have wronged somebody) one-on-one in a spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness does not work, Jesus says, then bring witnesses: “Take one or two others along with you.” Those “one or two others” can be a check or balance if we are unsure whether the wrong of another really merits further action, if it has really hurt the good of the community. If it is a wrong worth pursuing further action and the enlisting of witnesses to forgiveness does not work, only then is it permissible to treat the person who has done wrong “as a Gentile and a tax collector,” Jesus says. And, even when it is necessary (on rare occasions this will happen!) to cast somebody out of the community—I think of the formal Church penalty of excommunication—the goal of such a penalty, of such exclusion must always be to remedy the break, the hurt caused by the sin. Even in this most extraordinary step, the goal must not be a vindictive, final exclusion, lacking hope for reconciliation.

When we seek first to forgive, Jesus is there among us. When we “first [are] reconciled,” alone with another who has wronged us or one whom we have wronged, and then with “one or two others” and then with the whole Church as witnesses, Jesus is there among us. When forgiveness and penance reign, we build a truly prophetic community of faith in which nobody is forever excluded “as a Gentile or a tax collector.” This last step becomes unnecessary when we are truly accountable not only for our own moral conduct or that of our brothers and sisters, but for how readily we forgive and are reconciled with one another. That, Jesus says, is at the heart of our identity as a Christian community of faith, the Church.

Homily for Sunday, 8 January 2023– 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

Imagine that you could travel to anywhere in the world you wanted. Where would you go?

I lived in Paris, “the City of Light,” for over five years while completing a doctorate, so I would put Paris at the top of my list of recommended destinations. As a Basilian priest, I have been blessed to have served in or visited all five countries in which my order serves: In France, the place of our founding in 1822, Annonay, “Historic City of the Hot Air Balloon,” and Paris. In Canada, I have lived in Toronto, “Hogtown, Hollywood or Broadway North, Queen City, TO, The Six,” and in Windsor, “Automotive Capital of Canada.” I have visited Basilian communities in Mexico: Tehuacán, “Place of Gods” and Mexico City, “City of Palaces.” I have served in the United States, in Irondequoit, New York, “A Town for a Lifetime,” which is a suburb of Rochester, “The Flower City.” And I have served in Colombia: In Cali, “A Branch of Heaven,” Santa Marta, “America’s Pearl,” Medellín, “The Eternal Spring,” and Bogotá, “2 600 Metres Closer to the Heavens” because of its altitude above sea level.

For over two years now already, I am happily settled back in Edmonton, “City of Champions,” the city where I was born and grew up. Edmonton’s nickname is not derived from some of the greatest professional sports teams ever assembled, especially in the 1980s, but from its recovery after the “Black Friday” tornado of 1987. *It always brings me great joy to return here to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, to this faith community, my home parish from when I was twelve years old until my early twenties. Now, Sherwood Park does not have a claim to fame or a showy nickname or motto. We could call it, “The Park,” or “The World’s Largest Hamlet: Guinness Book World Record Holder.” No, maybe it is better to be humble, without a nickname, a motto, or international fame.*

If there is one place in the world I have yet to visit where I would like to go, it might be Rome, The Eternal City, with Vatican City, the centre of the Catholic Church. I still have never been there. I have been to Bethlehem, where our Gospel today says a very important event took place. Bethlehem was the destination of a pilgrimage of magi or “wise men from the East,” who followed a star to a humble manger where the newborn Jesus, the Saviour of the world, lay.

Bethlehem, by its Hebrew name, is “the house of bread.” It was the birthplace of the biblical King David. But, whether in King David’s time, or Jesus’ time, or our time, Bethlehem has never been a very important city on the world stage. To this day Bethlehem is really a large town, a suburb overshadowed by nearby Jerusalem.

In Matthew’s Gospel, we hear today that even the wise men stopped in Jerusalem first, at Herod’s palace, on their way to Bethlehem. Herod and his line of kings had built the temple of Jerusalem, the centre of the Jewish faith at the time, into a structure larger and showier that it had ever been. Bethlehem was… just… little, by comparison to Jerusalem.

I doubt the wise men would have considered Bethlehem a top destination to visit. Could we imagine them showing up at the local camel rental agency one day?

— Yes, we will need as many camels as there are of us, with unlimited mileage; destination is Bethlehem, round trip, following a star.

— “So, three camels,” the camel rental agent asks, “Right”?

— Well, there are three gifts: Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. There may be more or fewer than three joining us on the trip. Can we add an extra driver on the largest camel, just in case?

— Sure, no problem. But you do realize how long a trip Bethlehem is from here by camel, right? And are all of you aged 25 or over? If not, those camels will require extra insurance.

— Yes, all of us are over 25. And we’ve worked out in our GPS the distance to Bethlehem. We considered flying, but, oh, the baggage fees for all the gold, frankincense, and myrrh we’re carrying… We’ll be fine, but one of our vehicles will need to be a sport utility camel, with extra luggage room. We have no budget limit; we’re astrologer-kings, so more than willing to spend good money on reliable camels.

— Okay, no problem at all. That will be ten shekels, taxes included. Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, I’ll just need your signatures at the bottom of the papyrus, and your initials where I’ve highlighted. And if Bob the fourth wise man decides to join you, an extra camel is free of charge. Have a great trip!

— That’s so generous of you! Thank you so much!

Bethlehem probably was not the top of the wise men’s list of destinations. But, for astrologers, people who followed the stars for a living, this pilgrimage would be once-in-a-lifetime. And, besides, a prophet had written years before that the wise men would encounter a certain Messiah had been born in little Bethlehem: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.”

Why astrologers from the East who were almost certainly not Jewish Israelites would fulfill a prophecy of ancient Israel (Micah, in this case) is a mystery. But it was not the first time, nor would it be the last, when people would set out to travel off the beaten track.

Toward the end of the Book of Isaiah—the part of Isaiah from which we have just heard—the prophet is trying to convince an entire people to travel off the beaten track. This part of Isaiah is about the time when the people of Israel had been in exile in Babylon for around seventy years (many generations). Isaiah tries to convince them to return home, because a new power, Persia, has conquered Babylon and has decreed that the Israelites may return home. But Israel lay in ruins, its first temple (before Herod rebuilt it, centuries later) destroyed. Isaiah convinces a small fraction of the people in exile in Babylon to return and rebuild their homeland. But this small remnant of Israel is just enough to save Israel as a nation.

Yet Isaiah does more than to convince this faithful remnant to return home. Isaiah preaches that Israel will draw peoples of other nations to itself: “Nations shall come to your light, [bringing] gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the LORD.”

Matthew interprets this prophecy from Isaiah in light of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus Christ. The “wise men from the East,” following a star to the cradle of the infant Messiah in little Bethlehem, represent for Matthew “the nations”—all the non-Jewish, non-Israelite peoples of the world, who were and still are most of the inhabitants of the world—who would “come to [God’s] light,” to God’s Messiah, God made flesh.

Only by setting out off the beaten track, toward a nation in need of rebuilding, would a remnant of the people of Israel in Isaiah’s time not only be able to rebuild Israel’s ruins, but they would be able to welcome the rich gifts of the nations of the world. And, in turn, Israel’s God, our God, would be revealed in glory and truth to those other nations.

The same thing happens with the magi in Matthew’s Gospel: They are bold enough to set out, off the beaten track. They are momentarily sidetracked in Jerusalem by the evil Herod. They return home from Bethlehem “by another road” to avoid Herod. But only by being bold enough to travel beyond the conventional—not to a top destination, or even to a place of comfort—do the “wise men from the East,” who represent “the nations” (all of us, sisters and brothers), encounter our God in human flesh. Only so are they “overwhelmed with joy.” Only so is God in turn revealed or made known to all the nations on Earth.

Epiphany, the name of today’s celebration, is a Greek word that means making known. So, ideally, God is made known to those who set out off well-traveled paths, not to top destinations. Will this change our travel plans, sisters and brothers? Will this make us more like the wise men in Matthew’s Gospel or the remnant of Israel who returned home to rebuild their nation? To encounter God-made-flesh, might we need to travel to such hot destinations as deliberate kindness, as reconciliation especially with people we may find troublesome, whom we have hurt or who have hurt or sinned against us? Might we need to go to places like attentive listening, prayer, generosity with the goods of the Earth with which we have been blessed? Those are some of our Bethlehems today.

These may not be (at least at first) places of utmost comfort, but they are the places, the words, the actions by which we will encounter God. We will be “overwhelmed with joy.” And from there we will be able to make God known, in glory and truth, to all the nations and peoples of the Earth.

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This homily was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Sherwood Park, AB, and St. Joseph's College, Edmonton, AB, Canada. The OLPH version of its text, in Paragraph 3, is above, marked with asterisks (*). Here is the version of the text for St. Joseph's College:

It always brings me great joy to serve here at St. Joseph’s College, where what is true, right, and beautiful is faithfully taught, studied, and lived, according to this place’s motto, Quæcumque vera doce me: “Teach me whatsoever things are true.”

Homily for Sunday, 12 September 2021– Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Readings of the day: Isaiah 50:5-9a; Psalm 116:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9; James 2:14-18; Mark 8:27-35

One of the great advantages of living in a religious community of priests, as I do with my brother Basilians Frs. Jim, Dave, and Glenn here in Edmonton, is the depth and diversity of conversation we get into among us. I pray this is also true in our families and households. But recently, just as classes were starting here at St. Joseph’s College and the University of Alberta, Fr. Jim (a philosopher) and I (a theologian) were having our usual deep conversation over breakfast. Fr. Jim asked me an interesting and important question: As a Christian, an academic theologian and instructor at our College, what sets Christianity apart? Why am I a Christian and not of any other noble faith in our world, or of no faith? And what gives me the passion to teach, preach, and study our faith as I do?

I found that, even for somebody who has had as much time to think about these questions as I have, to answer Fr. Jim’s question was difficult. After a long pause, and a short walk over to the coffee pot to fill my mug with the coffee that, for me, is essential to be able to answer such questions early in the day, I blurted out the best answer my insufficiently-caffeinated brain could come up with: The Incarnation. That God, in Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity who takes on our human nature, shares fully in all our experiences that make us human, including suffering and death, is to me what distinguishes Christianity from any other faith. The Incarnation, first and foremost, gives me the passion to preach, teach, and study our Christian, Catholic faith as I do.

As I reflect on my answer to Fr. Jim that morning, I do not want to put myself on the level of St. Peter in his answer to Jesus’ question in today’s Gospel: “Who do you say that I am”? But I think there are similarities between my answer and Peter’s answer to Jesus in our Gospel. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all include substantially this same event of Peter’s identification of Jesus as the Son of God, “the Christ.” The Gospels differ in some details, though. Only Matthew has Jesus emphasize to Peter how right his answer is, but that he could not possibly have answered so correctly had this not been revealed to him by God “the Father in heaven.” In Luke and Mark, Peter seems to identify Jesus much more fortuitously—“flying by the seat of his pants,” or maybe his tunic, so to speak. Of course, God’s grace in revealing to Peter Jesus’ identity as the Christ is implied by its context in Luke and Mark, if it is not as explicit as in Matthew.

But however Peter is able to answer Jesus’ answer about his identity correctly, amid all kinds of competing options—“John the Baptist… Elijah, and still others, one of the prophets”—with God’s grace (undeniably), before or after his morning coffee, Peter, thanks be to God, gets his answer right. For Peter as for me, the Incarnation is central to who Jesus is. In Jesus, the Son of God, already fully possessing the same eternal divine nature as the Father and the Spirit, has become fully human, fully one of us, and shares in every feature that makes us human, except sin. He takes on human flesh and blood, is born of a human mother, grows up a human child cared for by human parents, breathes, eats, sleeps, prays, serves, heals, teaches… dies a horrific, torturous death, rises from the dead, and ascends to heaven…

Wait, did we just go off script? Even if Jesus is human, he is also God. God cannot suffer and die, right? A significant part of me wants to leap to Peter’s defense when Jesus scolds him so harshly: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are thinking not as God does, but as humans do.”

Truly, though, I think part of me is so eager to defend poor Peter because I am so much like him. We are all so much like him. We would not be here, and we would not profess in our Creed all that we do about God who, in the Second Person of the Trinity, as Jesus, the Christ, became fully human if the Incarnation were not, as it was for Peter; as it is for me and for all of us, so essential to our faith. But, alas, like Peter, I tend; we all tend to think “not as God does, but as humans do.” This is not a criticism against us. If it were, I should be foremost in being criticized, because I have that much more responsibility, as a priest who studies and teaches theology, to understand and teach our faith accurately. We cannot help thinking “not as God does, but as humans do.” Our only experience is that of being human. We are not and cannot be God. We need God’s grace to reveal God’s self to us, Father, Son, and Spirit, so that we can think as God does and seek God in all things, all our thoughts, all our experiences, in our natural world and in heaven.

We are all so much like Peter. We are all here because we have all or will all, at some point, answer correctly; profess our faith correctly, as Peter did: “You are the Christ”…“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.”

Yet we are all so much like Peter. We all constantly need God’s grace to accept and enact the most difficult thing we say we believe: That Jesus, the Christ, suffered, died (or is even able to suffer and die), rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven. We, like Peter, need God’s grace to put Satan behind us; Satan who would never allow us to make the profession of faith we do in a God who can and does take our human nature, including our suffering and death, only to transform it into resurrection and ascension to eternal life.

If the Incarnation is truly, as we profess that it is, essential to our Christian faith, then we must be very much like Peter. We must be very much like the “suffering servant” whose hymn we hear today through the prophet Isaiah. Today’s reading from Isaiah is the third of four “servant hymns” in Isaiah. It is the lament of somebody who is suffering horribly for relief from that suffering, but it is also a hymn of hope; of trust in God. This hymn anticipates God’s final vindication of the suffering servant, but also places that vindication in the present tense: “The LORD God helps me… I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near.”

In our Church’s tradition, Isaiah’s servant hymns have long been connected to the passion and death of Jesus Christ. We hear the four servant hymns in order from the Book of Isaiah during Holy Week, just before Easter, each year. But who are Isaiah’s servants, really? (Isaiah was written centuries before Jesus’ time, so I think it is fair to say that Isaiah could not have been referring directly to a future coming of Jesus. Prophets do not foretell the future; they point out God’s action on our behalf in the present). Are the servants of Isaiah the prophet himself, suffering the reproach of Israel’s people, who were not open to his prophecy? Are they other prophets who spoke for God in Israel’s history? Do they stand for the entire people of Israel? Are they meant to remind us of ourselves as a people of God?

I ask this last question especially because, if we ourselves have not suffered, I think most if not all of us know somebody or know of somebody who has. How many of us have known somebody who has suffered greatly, yet has maintained faith and trust in God, that their suffering or even death will not have the final word? And, if we are not the person suffering in this way, yet continuing to believe and hope, how often do we tend to be drawn to those people; to the strength of God working through them?

This, I think, is at the heart of St. James’ bold claim that “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” If our faith is true; if the Incarnation is the centre of our faith as we say it is, then our faith will necessarily lend itself to solidarity with others, especially those who suffer in any way. This is so because our solidarity with those who suffer is in imitation of Jesus Christ who, in an unprecedented way in history—in a way no other world religion claims its founder did—entered into full solidarity with us by becoming human like us. In this way, Jesus is Isaiah’s servant, projected into our human history, but so are we.

In this way the Incarnation becomes enacted in our own lives. Jesus continues to take flesh and blood, die, rise, and ascend to heaven in us, insofar as we enter into solidarity with the suffering servants of our time; as we pray and act preferentially for their well-being. This allows us then to sing together the servant’s hymn of lament, but also of hope and trust in God, that eternal life and not suffering or death will have the final word.

Homily for Tuesday, 13 April 2021– Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 4:32-37; Psalm 93:1ab, 1cd-2, 5; John 3:7b-15

The first part of the Acts of the Apostles refers, in at least a couple of significant instances, to how united the earliest communities of Jesus’ disciples were. Today we hear that these first disciples “were of one heart and soul”; that the unity of these earliest disciples of Jesus was connected with their strict common ownership of material possessions: “Everything they owned was held in common.”

This passage is one of the most frequently-cited Biblical references to uphold the vow or counsel of poverty. I think, in this respect, of a book I studied during my novitiate on the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, Francis Moloney’s A Life of Promise. Might this also make us think of the variety in practice of the vow of poverty, even within our own Basilian Congregation, let alone among different communities of vowed religious? I think, for instance, of the many gifts from different countries in which my great aunt Jeanne, a Sister of Holy Cross, ministered, that she gave to family members, because she was not allowed to keep these gifts for herself. Her order’s vow of poverty was and is, by my observation, lived much more strictly than ours.

But how closely is the insistence in Acts on how the earliest Christians held “everything they owned… in common” a reflection of historical reality, versus an ideal for life especially in Christian community? Scholars still debate over this question. Francis Moloney, in A Life of Promise, points out that, after the reading we hear today, the very next event in Acts is that of Ananias and Sapphira, who keep part of the proceeds from the sale of property for themselves instead of turning it over to their community of disciples. And then both Ananias and Sapphira drop dead on the spot!

So which was it: Did the earliest Christian communities truly hold “everything they owned… in common,” or was this an ideal that was not necessarily (or usually) followed to the letter? My thought is that it was a bit of both historical reality—that these earliest Christian communities strove to practice common ownership of goods—and an ideal, much as it is both-and today. There was and is still variety in how material goods were owned or shared communally. And maybe how individuals or communities practiced, we may say, a precursor to our vows of poverty was not in itself essential to one’s standing as a good and faithful Christian.

Yet I think Acts’ emphasis on this common ownership characteristic of these earliest Christian communities may lead us to ask ourselves questions like: What, if not strict common ownership of material goods, is essential to our Christian way of life, from the message we hear from Acts today? And is there something that the example of these earliest Christians calls us to hold in common, if not strictly or only material goods?

Especially as somebody who has taken a public vow of poverty, I interpret Acts as inviting and reminding us that we (as vowed religious, but this is true of all baptized Christians) hold in common a responsibility for one another’s whole-person well-being—spiritual, mental, physical, and so forth—in this earthly life and, ultimately, for one another’s salvation. We are not saved as individuals so much as together, in and by one God. Common ownership of earthly goods, or any expression or vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience, can be a sign of our universal call to holiness and ultimately to salvation.

Homily for Thursday, 20 June 2019

Readings of the day: 2 Corinthians 11:1-11; Psalm 111:1b-2, 3-4, 7-8; Matthew 6:7-15

Thursday of the 11th week in Ordinary Time

“Please put up with me”: Am I underestimating the probability of success in beginning an important message or trying to convince somebody with such a plea? Well, we know from the fairly spread of the Christian faith in the time of St. Paul, especially in large cities of the then-Roman Empire like Corinth that developed thriving Christian communities even under intermittent persecution from Rome and some Jewish leaders, that St. Paul was quite successful and convincing in spreading our faith.

I think it is important for us to remember that these Corinthians of St. Paul’s time were especially difficult people to bring to the Christian faith. Corinth was a rich city and proud of it, thanks to its possession of not one but two ports on the Mediterranean Sea, which allowed for increased trade by sea and therefore wealth to enter the city. Change, especially conversion from one faith, Greco-Roman paganism, to another, Christianity, is a tough sell when all is going so well for a city the way it was for first-century Corinth.

Scripture scholars often refer to St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians as his “tearful letter.” St. Paul pleaded with the Corinthians in bringing them to the Christian faith to the point of tears, out of a deep love for them, like no other people or city to which he wrote and ministered. To the Corinthians especially, St. Paul’s message, his preaching of a poor, humble Christ who freely accepted death on a cross to save us was, we could say, a religious culture shock.

In wealthy cities like Corinth, one paid handsomely to study under an elite teacher. This clashed, as we hear from 2 Corinthians today, with St. Paul’s preaching of “the Gospel” to the Corinthians “free of charge.” No self-respecting teacher or preacher in an ancient Greek city like Corinth would have taught or preached “free of charge” as St. Paul did, not only to a few wealthy students but to the whole city and to the world. Yet St. Paul’s strategy, along with pleading with the Corinthians to “put up with” him, worked splendidly anyway, no doubt by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

If we reflect on St. Paul’s loving pleading with the Corinthians to the point of tears, “Please put up with me,” what are the messages we find most difficult to accept today in our lives? Have we ever had difficulty accepting change even when change is necessary or right?

Maybe we have difficulty hearing somebody and accepting her or his message when this person differs from us politically or in understanding of the Church and its mission, for example, or when another person does not share our Christian faith or moral understanding at all. Maybe as difficult for many of us (if I have heard accurately from some of us here at St. Kateri Parish) is the impending change in leadership in this parish after anywhere from nine to forty-three years of Basilian leadership here.

I pray that we at St. Kateri will not only “put up with” but come to love St. Kateri’s new pastor when he begins here next week. I pray that everybody who leads, who prays, and who loves in this parish will continue to lead, pray, and grow in love with a new pastor and vicars, as the Corinthians went from putting up with St. Paul in his time to leading, praying, and genuinely loving him and one another for the growth and unity of the Church.

Homily for Thursday, 23 August 2018– Ferial

Thursday of the 20th Week in Ordinary Time


Optional Memorial of St. Rose of Lima

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 36:23-28; Psalm 51:12-13, 14-15, 18-19; Matthew 22:1-11

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

What does St. Rose of Lima, whose feast we celebrate today, have to do with the relationship between the king and the guest in Jesus’ parable in today’s Gospel reading who arrives at the king’s wedding feast without his wedding robe?

Is Jesus’ parable we hear today not strange, in the sense that the king seems inconsistent in whether he metes out justice toward some who abuse his generosity, while he is abundantly merciful toward others we would expect him to punish more severely? In the case of the guest who arrives at the wedding feast not wearing his wedding garment, the king responds with particular harshness: “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Why is the king in Jesus’ parable so harsh with this guest? This man does not make light of the king’s invitation to his wedding feast or, worse yet, mistreat and murder the king’s slaves as other invitees to the wedding feast do, so why is the man who might merely have forgotten the proper or have been too poor to dress in attire for the king’s wedding singled out to be excluded from the banquet hall?

Here, I would like to return to my reflection on St. Rose of Lima, a third order Dominican from Peru who lived from 1586 to 1617. St. Rose of Lima was the first saint from the Americas ever canonized. Although she was a layperson (she had taken a personal vow of virginity but never took formal vows in a religious order), St. Rose of Lima is almost always depicted in art and icons in a Dominican habit.

The religious order to which I belong, the Basilians, has no habit besides the usual clothing of priests, a clerical shirt and Roman collar when serving in ministry. Yet our clothing, even when we are not in ministry, is meant to reflect the values we strive to live as religious and priests: Poverty as simplicity of life; modesty; solidarity with the people with whom we minister. And yet these values, expressed in the formal vows we take in religious life, poverty, chastity, and obedience, are values to which every one of us, as baptized Christians, is invited to strive toward.

This was true of St. Rose of Lima, regardless of whether, as a layperson, she ever actually wore a Dominican religious habit. She wore the garment of the king’s wedding feast; the Lord’s feast of heaven, in her heart, and this was expressed in a life of outward solidarity with the poor and suffering in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Lima.

Jesus asks this of all of us: To clothe our hearts with the Lord’s wedding robe, a garment we are given at baptism. The garment is what we most value, even more than what we wear outwardly, which ideally is a sign of the values deepest within our hearts. If what we most value is love of God, love of one another and especially solidarity with those most in need, then I do not think we will need to worry about meeting the same end as the man without his wedding garment in today’s Gospel parable. The values deepest in our hearts will naturally express themselves outwardly; they will be our God-given garment of the feast of eternal life.

Homily for Sunday, 19 August 2018

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Proverbs 9:1-6; Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58

This homily was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada. 

When we gather for a meal, what are some of the things that happen before, during, and after the meal?

First, depending on how elaborate the feast is and how many people will gather together, we may invite people to the meal. And then, whether we are attending a grand feast with hundreds of people or with a small group of friends or family, or one friend, or our wife or husband, girlfriend or boyfriend, or whomever, we need to prepare or have somebody prepare the food and drink. Closer to the time of the meal, we set the tables. We gather at table. We pray in thanksgiving for the food and one another. As we eat and drink, we may tell stories, laugh, sing… We enjoy ourselves. Depending on the occasion, the number of people present, the culture, and so on, the meal may be simple or it may be a several-course feast that lasts all evening, or all day, or longer.

As somebody who enjoys good food and good company, and especially enjoys food and drink from all parts of the world and the cultures and people that inspire and prepare this food, I can think of many meals I have enjoyed over several hours. I think of the devout, generous families I have known and stayed with in places like Spain and France while working or studying there. For these families, meals after Sunday Mass would involve large groups of friends connected through their neighbourhoods or parishes, and would go on for what seemed like forever. I think of the impoverished people of my order’s parishes in Colombia whose doors were constantly open; who constantly offered what little food and drink they had; whose children, from house after house, seemed to stream out into the streets to greet their beloved Basilianos—Basilians. How humbling this giving of abundance out of poverty is when we see it! I think, most recently during my multi-city journey across North America this summer, of when I would enjoy meals with several families during the same day, or have a few hours to be with one family or good friend. Many times, my brother Basilians have put on great feasts. I think of many feasts after weddings, funerals, baptisms…

My sisters and brothers in Christ, we have all been invited to a great feast. When I say this, are many of us perhaps thinking of the Eucharist? If so, I cannot fault us for this. When we think of a great feast, it would be a good sign if we, as Catholic Christians, were to think immediately of the Eucharist. When we hear Jesus promise us his very self for our salvation in today’s Gospel reading from John, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life,” it is natural and right for us to connect Jesus’ promise with our experience of the Eucharist. And yet, while our Eucharist is Jesus really, truly, and fully present among and within us here in this celebration and in bread and wine that we consume, our Eucharist is a sign—we call it a sacrament—of an even greater feast we have yet to experience, the everlasting feast of heaven.

This everlasting feast of heaven requires us to prepare for it. So how, then, do we prepare for heaven? We might prepare for heaven, for a feast for whose glory we can only hope this side of heaven, the same way we prepare for any great feast we have seen and known in this earthly life. The way we prepare for and then partake in meals, everything from small-scale meals with family or one or a few friends to great feasts, goes back before Jesus’ time. We hear of it in the Book of Proverbs. The main character of our reading from Proverbs today is a personified Wisdom. First, Wisdom puts “her house,” a large banquet hall with “seven pillars,” in order. When we are receiving company at home, how many of us, like Lady Wisdom, clean our home? After cleaning, Wisdom prepares the food. She invites guests to the feast, not the rich or the elites first, but from “the highest places in the town,” she invites the poor; those of less-renowned intellect or understanding: “You that are simple, turn in here.” The feast that Wisdom prepares will nourish and strengthen those who enjoy it. They will grow, “live, and walk in the way of insight.”

The letter to the Ephesians picks up the banquet scene where the book of Proverbs leaves off. The feast is underway. The people invited have gathered and are eating, drinking, enjoying themselves, and are amusing one another with stories, humour, and song. Do we not often do the same when we gather for a meal? Sing “Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves… giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Ephesians asks of the people invited to this feast. And yet this permission from Ephesians to enjoy ourselves at the feast in God’s name, no less, comes with a call to moderation: “Do not be foolish,” the letter to the Ephesians says.

Perhaps many if not all of us have been to a feast or a party when somebody behaves foolishly; somebody or many people eat, drink, or behave excessively, or speak in a way that is not careful or ruins others’ reputations. “That is debauchery,” the letter to the Ephesians says, when we become filled and fill others with gossip; so filled with worldly food and spirits that we cannot “be filled with the Spirit” of God. As Christians, invited to this feast of the Eucharist, we are called to better than this. We are called to this feast, having already made room to some extent within ourselves and in our world for God; for God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

This making room for God is the wisdom and “insight” to which our readings from Proverbs and Ephesians call us. After all, God has invited us to the feast, so it would be foolish for us to act in ways that ignore the graciousness of our host, just as this would be foolish to do at any meal to which we were invited. And yet it is all too easy, even for usually well-mannered people like us, to fall into excess; to fall into the foolishness that Ephesians warns against. Is our foolishness and even sin not often a product of excess and a kind of impatience? Instead of accepting that heaven, for which we are invited to hope as Christians, remains something not yet fully realized—that the greatest feast is yet to come—sin is when we try too hard, to excess, to impose our incomplete experience of heaven on one another, ourselves, and our world as if it were complete. We abuse the gifts God has given us to enjoy wisely and in moderation; gifts that point us to heaven without revealing everything of the grandeur of heaven all at once: Food and drink, the gift of speaking, our sexuality… And when we try too hard to impose “heaven” on earth instead of hoping, praying for, and cooperating with God through works of kindness, mercy, and justice toward heaven’s full realization, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as in heaven,” we end up not creating heaven but hell on earth, for ourselves and for one another.

We hear of this kind of excess, the imposition of a false “heaven,” in our Gospel reading today from John. It is telling that, as Jesus repeatedly identifies himself as “the living bread that came down from heaven,” the people’s response progresses from complaining to grumbling to a full-on dispute in today’s Gospel. If our reading from Proverbs today speaks of the advance preparations for a great feast, and Ephesians speaks of enjoying the feast in moderation, in John’s Gospel Jesus reveals to us what heaven will be in its fullness and how we might taste already the heaven that awaits us: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in them.”

Do we, then, have the patience to make room within and among us for Jesus, the only “true food” and “true drink” that enables us to “live forever,” and not to grumble, dispute, or gossip among ourselves? Do we have the wisdom to enjoy without mistaking God’s gifts to us in this life, which point us to heaven, as heaven already in its fullness? To the extent we exercise this patience and wisdom, we taste the food of the everlasting feast of heaven to which God has invited us and of which this Eucharist is a sign of our hope.