Homily for Tuesday, 9 June 2015– Ferial

Tuesday of the 10th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 2 Corinthians 1:18-22;  Psalm 119:129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135; Matthew 5:13-16

When was the last time you said “yes” to God? I invite us to look around for a moment. Look at all of us who are here. Our first act of the morning is to be here to celebrate Christ present among us in our Eucharist. This is a resounding “yes” to God!

Some of us might ask: What about any ills of mind, body, or spirit that we bring to this celebration? What about our sins, when in St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians we have said at best “‘yes’ and ‘no’” to our God who always says “yes” to us? Once again, I say, we are here, with all our ills, our distress, our poverty of spirit if not material poverty, our distractions, our inability to focus at prayer… We are here; we have brought to this celebration all this: Our many times of saying “yes” to God through our worship, our actions of love and kindness, and our service to people in need in countless ways. And we bring our instances of saying “no” or “yes and no” to God; to one another. Nevertheless we are here.

And the more instances we bring here to this celebration of having said “yes and no”; of being in need of God’s forgiveness and healing make our “yes” by being here all the greater! We begin our Eucharistic celebration by asking for God’s mercy: “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy,” not because of the weight of our sins; our having said “yes and no” to God or (although I believe this is rare) “no” outright to God. We pray for God’s mercy because of our confidence in God’s “yes” to us. And in this prayer for mercy just as we gather before the Word of God; before the Lord’s Table, our “yes” to God receives and embraces God’s “yes” to us. And then we receive and embrace God’s ultimate “yes” to us, God’s Son Jesus Christ truly and fully present in our Eucharist; in our communion of faith with one another. The Christ we receive and embrace here then gives us the strength to be Christ to our world. “Yes,” over and over again, to God and to one another: How wonderful!

May we never despair of God’s mercy; God’s constant “yes” to us, in our Eucharist and in all the sacraments of the Church. Our “yes” back to God; our partaking in the life and sacraments of our Church takes much courage. Yet I cannot count the ways in which we, people of St. Kateri, say “yes” to God by the way we live. God is here with mercy through the Church when our “yes” is imperfect; when our “yes” needs the added strength of God. But we have already made the utmost act of courage just by being here, many of us daily. We hear the Word of God proclaimed here; the homily given. But we are, perhaps as importantly, the best homily ever given; the Word of God proclaimed among one another and in our world with conviction; with courage by the way we live: With deliberate if small acts of kindness, with joy, with patience, with gentleness, with mercy…

“Yes” to God who is always “yes” to us.

Homily for Thursday, 21 May 2015– Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 22:30, 23:6-11; Psalm 60:1-2a, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11; John 17:20-26

For what or for whom do we pray most frequently? We have heard of frequently-asked questions. What are our most frequently-prayed prayers?

Do we most often pray in times of sorrow; times of need, or do we find ourselves praying in praise and thanksgiving to God; praying in moments of joy; peace; prosperity? Perhaps we know somebody who is struggling with her or his faith; or has turned away from faith altogether, and we pray for this person. Perhaps some of us are experiencing health difficulties, or we know somebody who is ill in mind, body, or spirit, and so we pray for these people.

These are only a few of the more frequent circumstances, all of them good, in which we may be inspired to pray. Do we pray, maybe often, that we might enter eternal life? I pray this often for myself, but also for the people I love; the people I serve as a baptized Christian and as a priest.

And have we ever asked ourselves: What were Jesus’ most frequent prayers? For what or for whom did Jesus pray most often? Might this be a model for our most frequent prayers?

Our Gospel reading today is drawn from John 17, which is often called Jesus’ “high priestly prayer.” We hear Jesus’ last long prayer, during the Last Supper, before his passion and death on the cross. And yet I hear John 17 as a collection of shorter prayers that Jesus prays for his disciples. For what does Jesus pray for his disciples? Jesus prays to our Father in heaven that we, Jesus’ disciples, “may be one, as” God the Father and Son “are one.” Jesus prays for his disciples “that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that” the Father has sent him. Jesus prays at length and repeatedly in this Chapter 17 of John for our unity.

For what else does Jesus pray for his disciples? He prays that they may gain eternal life: “I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me.”

And I find one of the most beautiful intentions of Jesus’ high-priestly prayer to be when he prays for the people who will believe in him because of the witness of his first disciples. Jesus prays in our Gospel reading today: “I pray not only for these, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.”

How, then, can we make Jesus’ high priestly prayer our own? Jesus gives us his own example of excellent prayers to make into our most frequent prayers: Pray for one another’s unity. Important divisions still exist among Christian churches and traditions, although great strides toward unity have been made, especially in recent years. Pray that all may inherit eternal life. God has created every human being, all of us, out of love. God has created us for himself; for everlasting life. And pray in particular for the quality of our witness to Christ by the way we live, so that still more may be attracted to Christ and to our faith by our words and our works.

Homily for Tuesday, 12 May 2015– Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 16:22-34; Psalm 138:1-2ab, 2cde-3, 7c-8; John 16:5-11

Have any of us ever heard of events like those in our reading today from the Acts of the Apostles and wished we had the strength Paul and Silas did under persecution? Paul and Silas continue to praise God while in prison and then, miraculously, they break free of prison. Also, the jailer and “everyone in his house” suddenly embrace the Christian faith.

Or, when we hear today’s Gospel reading, from John, do any of us feel some empathy for Jesus’ disciples? Jesus is about to be taken from them; about to die a shameful death on a cross. Jesus senses that “grief has filled” his disciples’ hearts, so that they are too afraid and sad even to ask questions anymore. None of them asks Jesus, “Where are you going”? I can identify with Jesus’ disciples here in John’s Gospel. I am not sure, if I were in their situation, whether I would behave any differently than they do.

But Jesus encounters his disciples’ grief with the promise of “the Advocate”; the Holy Spirit. He does not reprimand his disciples for not having the strength to understand that his death will not be the end, but only the beginning of their mission; of the Church. No, Jesus promises his disciples the strength they will need for this mission; the strength that only the Holy Spirit can give them.

And even amid their grieving, Jesus’ disciples show tremendous strength. They show that they are already receiving the strength of the promised Holy Spirit; the strength they need to admit that they are sad; confused; in need of God’s presence to carry on. And only when Jesus’ disciples admit their need for God; for the strength of the Holy Spirit for their mission, does Jesus give this strength to them.

The strength to grieve; the strength to admit when we are troubled; when we need the support of loved ones and from God, is the same strength from the same Holy Spirit that empowers Sts. Paul and Silas to break from jail and bring the jailer’s household into the Christian faith. Imagine the jailer and his family when they accept baptism: Did they not know that accepting baptism put them at risk for the same persecution that Paul and Silas experienced? Their trust in God and in the message of Christ preached by Paul and Silas is as much the work of the Holy Spirit as the strength to grieve and to be sad but, in grieving and sadness, to continue to trust in God.

We have this same strength in ourselves as did Jesus’ disciples in our Gospel reading; as did Sts. Paul and Silas in Acts. God invites us today to trust that we have this strength of the Holy Spirit in us and among us. God invites us to let the words of our Psalm today resonate within us: “Your right hand saves me, O Lord.” Give us the strength you have already given us, Lord; the strength of your Holy Spirit. Give us the strength that advocates for us always, in good times and in bad; in our successes and happiness as in our sadness and our grief; the Holy Spirit’s strength that brings us your salvation.

Homily for Saturday, 2 May 2015– Memorial of St. Athanasius

Saturday of the Fourth Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 13:44-52; Psalm 98:1, 2-3ab, 3cd-4; John 14:7-14

Are any of us confused or even troubled by some of Jesus’ words in our Gospel reading today?

Jesus says to Philip, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me”? And he assures us, “Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these.”

Do we not all take Jesus at his word, simply because we trust the words of our Lord? And yet this indwelling of the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father is deeply mysterious to us. To understand this mystery was one of the greatest struggles of the early Church. St. Athanasius, fourth-century bishop of Alexandria, in Egypt, whose feast we celebrate today, was exiled from Alexandria five times and spent most of his life trying to explain how Christ could be both fully God and fully human. How could God the Father be in this man, Jesus, and the Son be in the Father?

And how is it possible for us to do “greater works” than those of Jesus, the Son of God? I think an answer to this question lies in our first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles. We hear that after Paul, Barnabas, and the other Apostles were rejected and persecuted by many Jewish leaders (let us be careful here: Many Jews, the first to hear the Word of God, did accept Jesus as God), they took Christ’s Gospel to the Gentiles; pagan Greeks. And Acts says that, in Iconium, the Apostles “were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.”

Jesus no longer physically walks this earth. He has ascended to heaven. Yet he has given us his Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit lives in us and is the inspiration for all our good works; the life breath behind our faith and our works. One of the gifts of God the Holy Spirit is joy. When we act with joy, even in small works of kindness; of service; of love, our world takes notice. Not only other Christians but people of other faiths or no faith can feel joy; can and do experience love. This is, I think, what Jesus means when he says to us, “Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these.”

Individually, we can do very little. Even as believers in Christ, we are limited by our physical bodies. But as a community of faith, we move with and through the Holy Spirit. We can do the works that Jesus did, even limited by his human body while on earth, and even more when we work together.

It is then, as a community of faith, that we get the fullest sense of what Jesus means when he says, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” The Father, Son, and Spirit dwell in one another and are one. And God, the Trinity, dwells in us. And we act; we serve; we love with joy, in a way that magnifies even the works of Christ! And so “whoever believes in [Christ] will do the works that [Christ does], and will do greater ones than these.”

Homily for Tuesday, 28 April 2015– Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 11:19-26; Psalm 87:1b-3, 4-5, 6-7; John 10:22-30

What is the importance of Antioch? Our first reading this morning, from Acts, says that “in Antioch… the disciples were first called Christians.” At this time Antioch was not in Jewish territory but, for the most part, inhabited by pagan Greeks. Acts says that the first disciples of Christ had been scattered “by the persecution” during which Stephen, the first martyr recorded in Scripture, had been killed. Almost in spite of this persecution, for the first time the Gospel message of Jesus Christ was reaching not only Jewish ears, the first to hear the Word of God, but a large center of pagan Greeks. And many people of Antioch were accepting and living this faith in Jesus as God when their lives might have been endangered by their faith.

But still, do not these events of early Christian Antioch seem remote to many of us today? Before I became a Basilian but was studying at St. Joseph’s College, a Basilian college of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, every year our student retreat was called the “Antioch Retreat.” This was a way, by name of our retreat, to unite ourselves to the witness of these first Christians of Antioch not long after Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven.

Antioch today is in Syria. Christians are a small minority there and are threatened by political unrest, by Syria’s dictatorship, and more recently by the evil of ISIS. And yet still Antioch, this ancient cradle of our faith, can seem remote to us. We face our own challenges as a nation; as a city. We awaken this morning to the destruction in Baltimore; the ravages of gang violence and racial inequity here in these United States. Many not far from us awaken to broken relationships; families; marriages.

And so how are we to remember the first or even the current Christians of faraway Antioch when we are faced with so many events; challenges closer to home? How do we remember the first people who put a name to our belief in Jesus’ promise that we hear today in John’s Gospel: “I know them, and they follow me.  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish”?

Families and households: I encourage you to pray together at least once a day. Pray in thanksgiving for blessings. Ask God for what you need in time of trial. Pray even in silence for a few moments. Pray together!

All of us: I encourage us to commit to non-violence by word and action; to upholding the dignity of human life, of people of every race and tongue. I encourage us to speak and act for the rights of the working poor; for migrants and refugees. I encourage us to be mindful of our duty to protect creation; the earth God has given us. Pray for those persecuted for their faith. Visit the sick and the dying if you are able.

These are a few ways in which we can make ancient Antioch somewhat less remote. We bear the name “Christian” as they did in Antioch just after Jesus’ time. Like them, then and now, we witness to Christ’s promise to all of us: “I know them, and they follow me.  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.”

Homily for Monday, 20 April 2015– Monday of the Third Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 6:8-15; Psalm 119:23-24, 26-27, 29-30; John 6:22-29

What does it mean to be a witness?

Witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the most consistent themes in Acts that we continue to hear during this Easter season. Who are the witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ? We are witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And we witness in an even greater way to the resurrection of Jesus Christ by uniting ourselves to the spirit and experience of the first witnesses to Christ’s resurrection.

Today we encounter one of these first witnesses, Stephen. We hear of St. Stephen, the New Testament’s first martyr; the first to witness to Christ by his life and by his death. And how does Stephen witness to Christ? The Acts of the Apostles says that he was “filled with grace and power… working great wonders and signs among the people.” Stephen spoke with a divine wisdom, the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, which those persecuting him “could not withstand.”

But how do we witness to the risen Christ today? For us, to give our lives as martyrs for our faith is improbable. But we are all still called to be witnesses. How? In our reading today from John’s Gospel, Jesus gives us some idea of how we are to be witnesses to him. Jesus says to the people he has just fed by the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fish: “You are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.”

In this Eucharistic celebration we, too, eat and drink of bread and wine, which becomes in our presence the Body and Blood of Christ, and we become “filled.” Our becoming “filled” with the presence of Christ himself, more than having seen any sign, makes us witnesses; gives us the responsibility to witness to the risen Christ by the way we live.

We witness to Christ, upon whom God “has set his seal.” But we also have received the “seal” of God. We, too, have been sealed with God’s Holy Spirit in baptism and confirmation. This seal with God’s Spirit whom we have received makes us witnesses; indeed makes us “little Christs” in our world.

How do we fulfill this mission of being “little Christs”; being witnesses to Christ in our world? We do not need to (and probably will not) become martyrs like St. Stephen. We are not expected to work miracles. All Jesus asks of us is this: “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life.” And “believe in the one [God] sent.”

“The food that endures for eternal life” is our faith community. It is our community when we reach out to one another with works of kindness, justice, and forgiveness. It is our community gathered here for Eucharist; to pray together. “The food that endures for eternal life” is our creativity in helping those most in need; in being present to the sick; the dying; those who have lost loved ones. In these and so many other ways, we show to our world that we “believe in the one [God] sent,” Jesus Christ. We act as Christ acted, and we are true witnesses to his death and resurrection.