Homily for Friday, 26 September 2014– Ferial

Friday of the 25th week in Ordinary Time

Optional Memorial of Sts. Cosmas and Damian 

Readings of the day: Ecclesiastes 3:1-11; Psalm 144:1b, 2abc, 3-4; Luke 9:18-22

This homily was given at the Church of the Most Holy Trinity, Webster, NY.

Who is really in control of our lives; our world; creation? The easy answer to this question is that God is ultimately in control. Our first reading today from Ecclesiastes hints at this answer: “There is an appointed time for everything… [God] has made everything appropriate to its time… without [our] ever discovering… the work [that] God has done.”

But is it not foolish, indeed dangerous, for us to leave everything up to God’s control, when we are capable of shaping our relationships with one another, some events in our lives, in our communities, and even sometimes national and worldwide events?

There is “a time to be born and a time to die.” We have no control over birth and death. But do we not have some say in promoting peace or promoting or alleviating conflict in our interpersonal relationships; in our families; in our Church; even in our world? Are we not invited as Christians to love and not to hate; to care for one another and for God’s creation? And so why does Ecclesiastes allow for “a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace” when to love one another and, at least in part, to work toward peace is up to us? Is there ever “a time to hate”?

When I prepare with families for a funeral of a loved one, many choose this reading from Ecclesiastes as the first reading at the funeral. And yet often the short version of this reading, which leaves out “a time to hate,” is chosen. Clearly this phrase raises a fair objection. How can hatred be accepted as part of the way God has made us; made our world to be?

I think the answer to these kinds of questions is expressed toward the beginning and again toward end of our first reading today. Ecclesiastes says that, on the one hand, “there is an appointed time for everything.” On the other hand, God “has put the timeless into [our] hearts.” God has created time itself, and has also given us an awareness of “the timeless”; what we can control and influence and what we are invited to leave trustingly up to God are both God’s gift to us. Even more, the ability God has given to each and every one of us to discern the difference between what we influence and even have responsibility over and what is “timeless,” what is mystery, is God’s gift to us.

We have perhaps heard the so-called “Serenity Prayer” whose message is similar to that in our reading from Ecclesiastes: “God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Both the “Serenity Prayer” and our first reading today raise the question: Who is in control? Ultimately God is in control of our lives; our world; creation. God “has put the timeless into [our] hearts.” But God has also given us the gift of helping to shape his creation; to influence interpersonal, local, and more far-reaching relationships and events; a gift God has given to no other creature that we know.  This is our time to accept this role; this gift from God, with trust in God, balancing and discerning it along with the sense of mystery; of “the timeless,” a gift that God has also “put… into [our] hearts.”

Homily for Thursday, 25 September 2014– Ferial

Thursday of the 25th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ecclesiastes 1:2-11; Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14, 17bc; Luke 9:7-9

Do our lives; does our work have any significance? If we hear only the cynical words of Qoheleth in today’s first reading, the beginning of the Book of Ecclesiastes, it would seem that nothing we do, nor even our lives, have any significance. “Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!” Qoheleth says. “What profit” have we “from all the labor which [we toil] at under the sun”?

Would not many of us be inclined to agree with Qoheleth? Life is cyclical: birth; growing up; work; taxes; death… Does all this have any meaning? Perhaps atheists of our time would be proud that even Scripture questions whether our existence has any meaning. Would a loving, present, and merciful God allow this kind of meaningless existence?

But wait… Should Qoheleth’s questions be interpreted not literally but rhetorically? Perhaps what Qoheleth is saying is that, indeed, nothing matters, neither our lives nor our work nor even belief in God, if it is self-serving and not oriented toward serving others and God. Toward whom are our lives; our work; our faith; our worship oriented: God and others or ourselves? Are our lives; our work; our faith; our worship maybe oriented toward God and others sometimes and toward ourselves at other times? Our lives; our work; our faith; our worship are meaningless “vanity” if they are “all about me.” Our lives; our work; our faith; our worship are given meaning if they are all about God and about the people and the world we serve and love in God’s name.

On the one hand, our Gospel gives us the example of King Herod, for whom life was all about him. And so he is perplexed by Jesus; neither able to “see him” nor to “hear” accurately the truth about who Jesus is: the Christ; the Son of God.

On the other hand, perhaps many of us could identify with the writer of today’s Psalm. We at least try (if we are not often successful) at making our lives; our work; our faith; our worship all about God and the people we serve. Yet we recognize, as in our Psalm, that we cannot live a life of faith; we cannot worship properly; we cannot have any meaning beyond “vanity of vanities” without relationship with God. And so the writer of our Psalm prays and invites us to pray to God, “Prosper the work of our hands!”

Lord, “prosper the work of our hands for us”! You give meaning to our lives; our work; our service; our faith; our worship, which are not first about “me” but about you, O God, and the people and world we serve and love in your name.