Homily for Sunday, 15 January 2023– Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings of the day: Isaiah 49:3, 5-6; Psalm 40:2, 4, 7-8, 8-9, 10; 1 Corinthians 1:1-3; John 1:29-34

This time of year is a time of change. We change to a new calendar year. I am not sure if I speak for many of us, but it takes me a few days (or weeks?) at the beginning of a new year before I am able to write this year’s and not last year’s date on papers I am signing, without having to think about it.

How many of us have ever made New Year’s resolutions, or made these this year? We commit to changing old behaviours and habits for our own health, or we resolve to be kinder to ourselves or others somehow.

Not long ago, we were in the midst of the Christmas season, the celebration of Jesus’ birth. It is a time of joy, not only for religious reasons, but for many of us (I hope) a time to be with loved ones, family, and friends. If there is a time that reminds us that we, human beings, are both sacred and social creatures, Christmas is it. And Jesus willed to share in our sacred and social human nature in all things but sin. In this we rejoice. And we had four weeks of Advent before Christmas, as a preparation of our hearts and minds to celebrate Jesus’ birth and our hope in his return at the end of time.

Now we are back in Ordinary Time. It is quite the change from Advent and Christmas. Some of my closest friends and family members know how excited I get (and poke fun at my expense for this) about being able to wear green vestments at Mass for the first time since November. Liturgists (or maybe it is just me) get excited about such things. But really, we find ourselves past one of the high points of the Church year, back in Ordinary Time.

We could say (and we would be right) that Ordinary Time does not have to be ordinary in the sense of boring or nothing special. Ordinary Time, these thirty-four-plus weeks of the Church’s liturgical year, is a season of counting time. Toward what do we count time in the Church? In Ordinary Time, we count or keep time with hope toward Jesus’ return in glory on the Last Day. The “ordinary” in Ordinary Time does not mean boring, nothing special, but it means to count, keep track, or number something. Still, this is quite a sudden change from Advent and Christmas back into Ordinary Time.

John’s Gospel today speaks of more or less sudden change of another kind. John the Baptist, who has been baptizing people in the Jordan River, sees Jesus approaching him and exclaims, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”! Something is about to change in this encounter between Jesus and John, which ends with John baptizing Jesus. Something is about to change for the entire people of Israel of John’s and Jesus’ time. Something is about to change for the whole world. Something is about to change for us.

John’s Gospel is clear that Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist changes John the Baptist most immediately of anybody. John may have been part of a movement of Jewish people in Israel who withdrew from the noise and distractions of the big cities and towns, mainstream Judaism either of the Pharisees with their strict adherence to the Jewish Law or the temple priests, to pray and encounter God. The baptisms John had been performing carried the main meaning of repentance, washing clean of sin as much as any physical or ritual impurity. Baptisms like John was performing were quite common, even in more mainstream Judaism, in Jesus’ time.

But then Jesus meets John the Baptist at the River Jordan. John says in our Gospel that he had been baptizing with a certain hope for the Messiah, the coming of the Saviour of Israel and the world. John was doing something similar to what we are doing, sisters and brothers: Counting toward or counting on (anticipating) with hope the coming of the Saviour, only we are counting with hope toward the second coming (we Christians believe) of Jesus Christ at the end of time. John the Baptist was counting on the first coming of the Messiah: “I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he [the Messiah] might be revealed to Israel.”

And John is able to identify Jesus quickly when he arrives on scene: “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”! John is changed radically by this encounter with Jesus. No longer will he need to baptize with water in anticipation—as a counting toward in hope— of the coming of the Saviour of the world. The Saviour is there, standing before John: “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

The meaning of baptism, as much as the role of the Baptist, also changes radically in this encounter between John and Jesus. No longer is baptism, or the role of John the Baptist, primarily about repentance or washing clean of sin or other impurity. This is still, to the present day, one of many meanings of this very complex ritual. Baptism continues to include a dimension of cleansing from sin, both original sin that we inherit through the generations from the first people who lived on earth and the sin we commit. Baptism continues to include a dimension of receiving and being sealed by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Those of us who have attended a baptism of an infant may remember that, after the baptism itself, the infant is anointed with chrism, a very strong, pleasant-smelling oil. This is the same oil we receive at confirmation, a sacrament of renewing and intensifying the gift of the Holy Spirit with which we are first sealed in baptism.

But the first and foremost meaning of baptism, ever since John baptized Jesus in the Jordan, is that we become more like Jesus who, by becoming human and by being baptized by John, became like us in all things but sin. By our baptism we are made members of a priestly, prophetic, and royal people, the Church, in imitation of the high priest, the prophet of prophets, the King of Kings, Jesus Christ. In baptism, sisters and brothers, we have a share in Jesus’ life and ministry: A life in service and love toward one another that draws us to God, that draws us toward eternal life. In baptism we especially have a share in the death of Christ so that, by Jesus’ resurrection (in which we also share through baptism), death is transformed. Death is made no longer final. Eternal life in heaven is our final state.

By being baptized in the Jordan by John the Baptist, Jesus changes for us the meaning of baptism. In baptism, who we are radically and suddenly changes. We become sharers, full participants, in the eternal life Jesus offers us by his becoming human, his baptism, his life, death, and resurrection. Each of us becomes like Christ, the perfect human being, as Christ became like us. Each of us becomes, in a way, “another Christ.”

We (very purposefully on the part of the Church) hear John’s Gospel account of Jesus’ baptism as we begin Ordinary Time. All this happens: We become more like God “who humbled himself to share in our humanity” in the person of Jesus Christ, from the moment of our baptism. Hopefully (let us pray for this) our becoming more like God, more like Christ, by the grace of God will help us to be kinder, more just, and more loving toward one another. All this happens as we continue to count forward in hope toward the return of our Saviour on the Last Day. All this happens as we continue to count forward in hope, the true meaning of “Ordinary” Time, toward eternal life.

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 Sunday, 9 June 2019‒ 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 14:15-16, 23b-26

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

A proverb I heard not long ago says this: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” How might this proverb speak to our culture, including how we understand and live as Church? What might this kind of proverb have to do with Pentecost, which we celebrate today?

If I were to ask us when each of us thinks the Church began, historically or otherwise, how many of us would answer, “At Pentecost”? But then what is (or was) Pentecost? What is Church and why?

Might the readings we have heard today give us a clue toward the answers to these “brainstorm”-type questions? Fifty days after Jesus had risen from the dead (which is the meaning of the word “Pentecost,” fifty days), the Acts of the Apostles says to us that Jesus’ apostles, if not a larger group of Jesus’ disciples, those who had followed Jesus during his public ministry, passion, death, and resurrection, “were all in one place together.” It was at this point, when Jesus’ disciples “were all in one place together,” when the Holy Spirit descended upon them “like a strong driving wind” and in “tongues of fire.”

The rest of this account of Pentecost we hear from Acts also speaks of togetherness among the disciples of Jesus and an even larger group of “Jews from every nation under heaven” gathered in Jerusalem at the time. But this togetherness was not and could not be a too-simple and artificial uniformity. The group that witnessed to this first Pentecost, the birth of our Church, was too large and too diverse to be so uniform. All these different people from all over the world would witness together, but each “in their own tongues” to “the mighty acts of God”; to the power of God’s Holy Spirit; to the birth of a Church.

Does this not sound a lot like the Church today; like our reality here in Rochester and at St. Kateri? “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I do not believe that proverbs like this are meant to be a criticism of those who “go alone” in our Church or civil society, or in our St. Kateri Parish for that matter, as if acting together is always better than acting alone; as if going far is always better than going fast.

The rightful diversity within the Church will forever welcome the faithful who view change in the Church—in decisions made at various levels of Church leadership, the people who lead, or sometimes even the teachings that guide and result from those in leadership—as more often good, and the faster the better. And the same rightful diversity within the Church will necessarily welcome those with usually the opposite view, who are wary of change or who stress caution or consensus before allowing change; who prefer going far to going fast; going together to going alone.

Instead of serving as an indictment of people with either view, I think our experience of Pentecost, in a similar way to that first Pentecost of which the Acts of the Apostles speaks to us today, has two effects on the Church and on us as the Church’s faithful. First, our experience of receiving the Holy Spirit, our experience of Pentecost, puts in right order these two complementary movements in the Church of going alone and therefore faster, and of going together and therefore farther. Second, our experience of Pentecost purifies our intentions behind preferring either to go alone and therefore fast, or together and therefore far, or a bit of each preference depending on our particular circumstances of life.

Our experience of Pentecost, like the very first experience Jesus’ disciples had of Pentecost, rightly orders the desire or movement in our same Church toward going together and therefore far, versus the desire or movement toward going alone and therefore fast. We hear of this right ordering in our readings today. The Holy Spirit first draws all this diversity of peoples together, so that they will be able to go far once they are sent out by the same Spirit, not in spite of but precisely because of their diversity. But the diversity of these earliest disciples of Jesus is a diversity whose unity is safeguarded by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and the same is true of the Church today. The same Holy Spirit who once drew together the diverse peoples of the earliest Church draws us into this “one place together” so that we may honor and celebrate together our diversity held in unity by the Holy Spirit. We may not be “Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs.” But we are from East Irondequoit, West Irondequoit, elsewhere in greater Rochester, New York State, or beyond; rich, poor, and middle class; ideologically left, right, and center; people who prefer more pre-Vatican II liturgy or post-Vatican II liturgy, and so on, all called to this “one place together.” We might only want to be wary of letting in certain Canadians who study in France; they may be a little suspect…

Only once we have been drawn together by the Holy Spirit into the unity of “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” in this one celebration will we be able to set out, each in the particular ways in which we are called, to proclaim the Gospel, “glorifying [the one] God by our lives.” Only by learning by celebrating here and now our “going together,” our being “in one place together,” will we then be effective, if not sometimes surprisingly fast, if and when the Holy Spirit calls us to “go alone,” each putting our individual or unique gifts to the service of the same Gospel, remaining faithful to our unity as Church.

In John’s Gospel today, Jesus reinforces this point: To learn by celebrating our “going together” is necessary if and when the Holy Spirit, who keeps us together as one Church, calls us within this Church to “go alone”; to exercise our more particular or unique gifts at the service of the Gospel. In the same discourse as when Jesus promises his disciples the Holy Spirit, “another advocate to be with [us] always,” Jesus says to his disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments… Whoever loves me will keep my word.” My sisters and brothers, love; keeping the commandments of Jesus, first among which is to love one another as Jesus has loved us; keeping Jesus’ word: These are not individual actions that we accomplish without any grounding in community; as one Church that gathers together to hear and celebrate God’s word in our Eucharist, together. To keep Jesus’ commandments, to love, presupposes our gathering “in one place together.” In fact, God himself is a communion, a “togetherness” of three distinct persons (more on this next Sunday, when we will celebrate more specifically the Most Holy Trinity).

Yet togetherness, unity, communion does not stifle diversity, individuality, uniqueness of spiritual and other gifts. In fact, our unity reinforces and honors our diversity, individuality, uniqueness of gifts. Our Pentecost experience of the Holy Spirit not only puts in right order the complementary movements in the Church of going together and therefore farther so that we may be able to, if necessary, go alone and therefore maybe faster, but also our Pentecost experience of the Holy Spirit purifies these two seemingly opposite movements, so that indeed they are complementary and will never stifle each other. As 1 Corinthians says to us today, we remain “one body though [with] many parts. We receive “different spiritual gifts” by “the same Spirit.” We perform “different forms of service” by the grace of our “one Lord” and God.

By “going together,” we gain the strength and unity we need for when we are called to “go alone.” As Church, we breathe with two lungs. Our unity and then our diversity are inspired by the same Spirit. Insofar we gather “in one place together” to celebrate this, we will both “go far” and “go fast,” because our Pentecost experience empowers us to do both.

Homily for Sunday, 12 August 2018

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:4-8; Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9; Ephesians 4:30-5:2; John 6:41-51

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, Edmonton, AB, Canada. 

How often are we asked to do or not to do something? Children and teenagers, maybe you have been asked occasionally to do or not to do something at home: Clean your room, make your bed, set the table, do the dishes, take out the garbage, do not argue with your brother, sister, or parents, and so on. Maybe you have been asked to go to bed, or to get out of bed on time. Anybody here who works: Maybe your supervisor or employer has asked tasks of you. If you are an employer, a supervisor, a parent, or anybody in a position of authority or responsibility for another, maybe you have asked others to do something, or not to do something, more or less frequently.

In our readings today, we hear several instances of people asking and being asked to do or not to do something. We hear of Elijah who, in 1 Kings, has fled “into the wilderness” to escape the murderous rage of Queen Jezebel of Israel. Elijah had just killed all the false prophets of the Baals, the false gods Jezebel was worshipping and encouraging the people of Israel of the time to worship. Elijah flees for his life, but soon begins to despair of his own life: “It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” (In no way do I wish to trivialize despair, or even what we might recognize nowadays as depression, or thoughts of or attempts at suicide. If anybody we know ever experiences despair or depression, or thinks or speaks about taking her or his own life, please reach out to this person. If anybody here has experienced or is living through depression or outright despair, please know the dignity of your life, and that I; our faith community; our Church is here to support you; to reach out to you.)

Amidst Elijah’s despair is when an “angel of the LORD” wakes him and asks him to do something, twice: “Get up and eat.” Might we empathize with Elijah: The last thing he probably wants to do is “get up and eat.” In fact, he wants to die. To his credit, though, Elijah does as the angel asks, gets up, and eats some cake and drinks some water. As one of my brother Basilians says whenever another of our priests eats cake or other sweets for breakfast, “Ah! The breakfast of champions”! And so, if I were to ask us to do anything (especially parents whose children might think tomorrow morning, “Father said at Mass last night that it was okay to eat cake for breakfast”!), it would be not to be upset with me. I did not give your children permission to eat cake for breakfast; the angel of the LORD in the Bible did, and only to Elijah because he was despairing for his life. I am sorry to anybody who is disappointed!

The letter to the Ephesians, as in the story of Elijah in 1 Kings, gives us instructions about what and what not to do as people of God: “Brothers and sisters, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God… Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice.” Our Psalm asks of us, “Taste and see that the LORD is good.” And today in John’s Gospel Jesus asks the people not to “complain amongst” themselves.

Our Scriptures include many instances of people asking others and being asked to do something: Get up. Eat cake for breakfast. Avoid “bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander… [and] malice.” “Do not complain among yourselves.” “Taste and see that the LORD is good.” But how often do we ask somebody or are we asked not to do something but to be or to behave in a particular way?

To ask or to be asked to be some way may be less common than ask or be asked to do something. Yet have we not still asked or been asked not to do something but to be or behave in a particular way: Be kind. Be careful. Be happy with what you have. Be humble. Be prayerful. Be on time. Be brave. Be hard-working…?

Nowhere in our reading today from 1 Kings does anybody ask anybody else to be some way. But we hear this kind of command today in the letter to the Ephesians: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

This kind of calling to be or to behave in a particular way is not present in our Gospel reading, either, at least not word-for-word. Jesus is more content to describe to the people who he is, not so much who the people are or should be. “I am the bread of life,” Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” Of course, Jesus’ use of emphatic “I am” statements, twenty-four times in John’s Gospel, as many times as in the rest of the New Testament combined, is a characteristic of John. It is John’s particular way of identifying Jesus as the same God who has been present in history all the way back to the first moments of creation; the same God who once identified himself to Moses as “I am who I am.”

But Jesus rarely calls us to be or behave in a particular way in John’s Gospel, at least at first hearing. Today we hear Jesus identify both himself as “the living bread that comes down from heaven” and the bread as something (or somebody, himself; his flesh?) he “will give for the life of the world.”

Here, I ask us to go back to the beginning of our Gospel reading today, and to connect the beginning of our reading from John to the end of what we hear today. Our Gospel reading today begins with the people grumbling because Jesus had said he was “the bread that came down from heaven.” It ends with Jesus saying that this bread, in fact his own flesh, is “the bread [he] will give for the life of the world.”

What if I were to suggest that the people were not complaining about Jesus’ identification of himself as God, or because they were put off by Jesus’ suggestion that they would eat his flesh? At least this is not yet what they were complaining about. This would become the heart of the people’s complaint only later, when Jesus would link the people’s salvation with eating his flesh and drinking his blood. This is a good time for a spoiler alert on next Sunday’s Gospel reading, but today the people’s complaint is for a much simpler reason.

Let me suggest that, today, the heart of the people’s complaint is not Jesus’ identification of himself as God or because he commands the people to eat his flesh, or because Jesus asks the people hearing him to do anything else.

This bread that Jesus offers, his own self whom we receive sacramentally in our Eucharist, is beyond anything “the manna in the wilderness” could ever have been. Jesus’ gift of himself is greater than any other earthly food, because it alone changes who we are. It alone promises us eternal life. When Jesus says to us today, “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh,” behind these words Jesus is asking us to change. My sisters and brothers, Jesus is asking us, with the help and grace Jesus offers us in this celebration, to be more and more like him; more and more like God. Jesus is asking us to be, as he is— “I am” — “bread for the life of the world.” This is extraordinary!

And so we, like the people following Jesus in John’s Gospel, could easily complain among ourselves, because changing who we are is difficult. But, as St. Augustine says, when we receive the Eucharist, “we are what we receive.” And so how do we become more like Jesus; like God in our world? Our Eucharist compels us to go out and give “life [to] the world” by our works of justice, of mercy, and of kindness. Our Eucharist compels us to repent from our failures and sins. Our Eucharist compels us to defend all life and creation and its God-given dignity. Our Eucharist compels us to do all these things, but in so doing it compels us to change: To be, at our very heart, different than we have ever been; to be more like God, like Jesus; to be “what we receive”; to be, ever more, “bread… for the life of the world.”