Homily for Thursday, 16 August 2018– Ferial

Thursday of the 20th Week in Ordinary Time


Optional Memorial of St. Stephen of Hungary

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 12:1-12, 12-15, 18-22; Psalm 78:56-57, 58-59, 61-62; Matthew 18:21-19:1

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

How might poetry help us to put ourselves in Peter’s place in today’s Gospel; to empathize with Peter? And then how might a bit of background in poetry, specifically the poetry of the Old Testament prophet Amos, help us better to understand Jesus’ invitation to Peter to unlimited forgiveness?

When we think of Peter the Apostle, we might imagine him as a humble fisherman. We might imagine Peter, as one of Jesus’ best friends, hand-picked by Jesus to lead the community of Jesus’ disciples, the Church, after Jesus’ ascension to heaven. But I do not think we often imagine Peter as a poet.

Having said this, Peter the fisherman-turned-head of the Church was no slouch at poetry, or at Scripture for that matter. A faithful Jew of the time like Peter may well have known by heart a text like that at the beginning of the Book of Amos, and the culture behind it, in which Amos poetically condemns the nations that were Israel’s enemies: “For three times and for four.” In other words, one way of interpreting Amos is that God would forgive Israel’s enemies, and expected Israel to forgive its enemies, up to “three times and… four.”

And so Peter may have been creating a poetic parody of Amos as he asked Jesus, “How often would I forgive? As many as seven times”? Seven times were far beyond the “three times and for four” that Amos asked Israel to forgive its enemies. We may want to give Peter the benefit of the doubt more often than we do in our Christian tradition. Peter was already perhaps suggesting to Jesus that forgiveness and mercy meant going beyond the minimal demands of the Jewish Law and prophets: Forgive not only “three times and for four,” but “up to seven times.”

As a great teacher and pastor does, Jesus recognizes that his student and best friend, Peter, is on the right track, and then leads him toward an even greater truth. To forgive “three times and for four” is good. Peter’s proposal to go beyond “three times and for four” is better, not to mention his is an astute application of the poetry of Amos. But unlimited forgiveness is best: Not only “three times and for four”; “not seven times but seventy-seven times.” If Peter shows himself a decent poet and student of prophets like Amos, Jesus is even better. Jesus, as the Son of God, is the teacher and pastor of poets; of apostles; of each of us.

What, then, are our greatest strengths? Maybe not all of us are poets, or apostles, or teachers, or prophets. Perhaps not all of us would consider ourselves great at forgiving and reconciling with one another. But our Lord, gently if somewhat poetically, knows and uses our greatest strengths to lead us to something even better: Not only “three times and for four”; “not seven times but seventy-seven times.” Today, Jesus takes Peter’s greatest strengths to deepen his sense of forgiveness; of mercy. And today, Jesus takes our greatest strengths and leads us beyond our limits to be closer to God who, as we know, is limitless.

Homily for Saturday, 7 July 2018– Ferial

Saturday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time

Our Lady's Saturday, optional memorial

Readings of the day: Amos 9:11-15; Psalm 85:9ab and 10, 11-12, 13-14; Matthew 9: 14-17

This homily was given at St. Cecilia Church,  St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish, Rochester, NY, USA. 

How would most of us characterize prophets? If we have been following the prophet Amos, from whom our first readings at Mass over the last several days have been drawn, might we have the impression of a prophet as somebody dour, who is usually frowning at, complaining, and criticizing the people?

We would not be faulted, I do not think, for understanding prophets in this way, as usually pessimistic characters, the longer we hear the likes of Amos, who is one of the more pointed and critical of the Old Testament prophets. Of course, there are more and less hopeful-sounding prophets than Amos in the Old Testament. We might think of Isaiah, on the one hand, as the author of some of the most hopeful, consoling passages in Scripture. On the other hand, if we think Amos is dour and critical, we might compare him favourably with somebody like Jeremiah. Of late, I am becoming more appreciative of the English word “jeremiad,” named after the prophet Jeremiah, in case any of us are looking for a synonym for “bitter rant.” (Who knows whether this may be a clue in a word puzzle in the newspaper sometime?)

In contrast to his criticisms of the Israelite society of his day that we have been hearing for several days, today we hear the prophet Amos strike a more hopeful and encouraging tone. The royal house of David, which had been reduced to a “fallen hut,” will be raised up and reinforced again, Amos says. The people of Israel, who would be exiled to the surrounding nations after the time of Amos, would eventually be returned from exile to their former land and prosperity, never to be overrun and exiled again: “I will plant them upon their own ground; never again shall they be plucked from the land I have given them,” God says through Amos.

As in Amos’ time, do we not know of prophets in our own time? One of the first prophets of recent memory, off the top of my head, is the Salvadoran archbishop and martyr Oscar Romero. When Pope Francis spoke almost three years ago to Congress, he named four historical prophets of these United States: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton. Each of these figures, including Pope Francis himself, have shown a prophetic tendency to criticize, fearlessly and sometimes loudly, the evils of individuals and of societies. But prophets do not only complain and criticize; if they do, they are not prophets but useless, angry complainers. They are the “prophets of doom” whom another prophetic figure, “Good Pope John” XXIII, warned against when he announced the opening of the Second Vatican Council.

A true prophet— and we may certainly include Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Oscar Romero, and even Pope Francis himself among true prophets— may complain and criticize when individual and social sin needs firm correction, but they will always offer the people hope to balance their jeremiads. The same is true of Amos in today’s first reading, all of the Biblical prophets, and all prophets before and after them.

Homily for Monday, 2 July 2018– Ferial

Monday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Amos 2:6-10, 13-16; Psalm 50:15bc-17, 18-19, 20-21, 22-23; Matthew 8, 18-22

This homily was given at St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish, St. Margaret Mary Church, Rochester, NY, USA.

How many of us are at least somewhat unsettled by the harshness of the prophet Amos in today’s first reading and of our Psalm? I do not particularly like to be reminded of my failings, even sometimes when I should be, much less criticized so intensely and at such length as Amos or the Psalmist criticize the people of Israel in the readings we hear today.

It does not seem to matter, at least to my ears, that Amos and our Psalm berate the people of Israel with a poetic style of writing. Can poetry not be just as harsh, and indeed more so, than other literary styles, since poetry is often designed to intensify a message in the way other ways of conveying a message cannot do, to make a point?

And what is the point Amos and our Psalm made to the people of Israel of their time, and to us today, with the intensity that only poetry can achieve? Amos and the Psalmist attack not only the sins of a few individuals, but the deep-seated, longstanding and, for many people of their time and society, subconscious evil of a whole nation; a whole society. For Amos and the other Old Testament prophets and often in the Psalms, the greatest social sin was not to care for the most vulnerable people of a society or a nation; the people summed up by the frequent Biblical motif of “the orphan, the widow, and the foreigner.”

Amos, like other Old Testament prophets, speaking in God’s voice, reminds his people that they were once as vulnerable and in need as the people they are ignoring or oppressing: “It was I who brought you up from the land of Egypt… to occupy the land of the Amorites.” And if the people of Israel did not treat the most vulnerable among themselves with greater justice, they would meet the same end as the Amorites whose land God had given them: Exile and destruction.

Social injustice, to be clear, though, is not a sin for its own sake. No, social injustice, especially toward the most in need and vulnerable, is so great a sin because it is a way of forgetting God. Social injustice puts us at risk of idolatry; of making gods of our wealth, security, might, and comfort in place of the one true God. I invite us to keep this in mind as we hear Amos and our Psalm today: “Remember this, you who never think of God.”

We are gathered here and now to worship God, so I do not think that our Psalm response is directed at us per se. We “think of God”; the evidence is here, among and around us. And yet I think today’s readings, in all their startling harshness, are a call to examine our individual but also social conscience: Who are the most vulnerable and in need in our society today? In what ways have I (or we) forgotten these “least” of our brothers and sisters, “the orphan, widow, and foreigner” of our time, if not oppressed them directly or indirectly through unjust social or political policies and support for those policies or laws? How well does our worship reflect our witness to God, how we “think of God,” by our acts of justice and mercy beyond the walls of this church?