Homily for Sunday, 27 August 2023– Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings of the day: Isaiah 22:19-23, 6-7; Psalm 138: 1-2, 2-3, 6, 8; Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20

Two images stick in my mind when I hear today’s readings from Isaiah and the Gospel of Matthew: One of keys and the other, of clothing.

The image of keys is the more obvious one of these two; it is explicitly included in Isaiah and in Matthew. In Isaiah, the chief steward of the royal house of King Hezekiah—like Hezekiah’s Prime Minister—is Shebna. And Isaiah condemns Shebna for many wrongful actions, abuses of his power. Today’s reading from Isaiah skips over a few lines that lay out the prophet’s charge against Shebna: He has tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade King Hezekiah to ally with Egypt in a revolt against Assyria (historically, the Assyrians had invaded Israel and Judah and made Hezekiah their puppet king, some years before Babylon would invade the same territory). And Shebna had built monuments to himself, including his tomb, in high places where his self-importance would be most visible.

So Isaiah says that Shebna will be “pulled down from [his] post” and his role at the right hand of the king—the robe, sash, and keys—be given to “Eliakim, son of Hilkiah.” Isaiah uses the images of a peg and of keys. The peg is the symbol of stability: Eliakim would bring stability and prosperity to the reign of Hezekiah and his successors in the royal line of King David. But the keys are a symbol of power. And, as I think we all know, power can be used for good or not-so-good purposes.

Isaiah’s handing over of Shebna’s keys to Eliakim is a bit ironic, considering what we know happened to Hezekiah and the House of David after him. Hezekiah would refuse Shebna’s advice that he ally with Egypt against Assyria, but he would ally with Assyria and essentially become a puppet king of the Assyrians. And his successors would fare even worse in trying to play one power among Israel’s neighbours off against the others and failing to trust in Israel’s God alone for Israel’s peace, stability, and prosperity.

But then the Gospel of Matthew presents us with the same image of keys as the prophet Isaiah does to speak of Eliakim’s rise within the royal court of Hezekiah. In Matthew, it is Jesus’ apostle Peter who receives the keys: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus says to him.

For Jesus to give the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” to Peter, of all people, is as curious (if not more) than when God, through Isaiah, gives the keys to the kingdom of David and his successors to Eliakim in place of Shebna. Not long before this point in Matthew’s Gospel, if we remember from last Sunday’s Gospel reading, Peter asks Jesus to be able to walk toward him on the stormy sea. But then he becomes afraid and sinks. Jesus calls Peter out, “You of little faith, why did you doubt”?

Today Peter repeats the cycle of bold statement—bold profession of faith—by God’s grace, followed by being surprised, unnerved we might say, by his own boldness, and then retreat from it, afraid of what such a profession of faith means for him. We do not hear the retreat, the fearful reservation part of the episode to which our Gospel introduces us today. We only hear Peter get the answer right, as he so often does and which is why Jesus entrusts him with so much; why Jesus gives Peter the “power of the keys.” Peter says what every other disciple of Jesus knows is true—what we all know by faith to be true but, people of little faith that we are, hesitate to say it: Jesus is a herald of the kingdom of heaven like John the Baptist, a prophet like Elijah, Jeremiah, or “one of the [other] prophets.” But he is more than they are. Peter says quite rightly: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

But even at this point, we have a clear sense that, for Peter or for any of us as Jesus’ disciples, first this is not the end of the story or the destination of our process of discipleship. And, second, like Peter, none of us can make this astounding profession of faith without God’s grace. Jesus says just that to Peter: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”

In a few moments, sisters and brothers, we will pray the Creed. But do we ever pause, after we have prayed the Creed, and hear Jesus say to us, “Blessed are you… For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven”? I invite us to try this at this Mass: Pause briefly after the Creed, before we offer our Prayer of the Faithful, and hear, imagine Jesus blessing us just as he blessed Peter after his profession of faith: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Because we know that this is not the end of the story, for Peter or for us. Almost as soon as Peter professes his faith in “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” if we continue to follow Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus leads Peter, James, and John up the Mount of the Transfiguration. There, the three apostles see a vision and then hear Jesus predict that he will die and rise for us. Jesus will die and rise for all of us who, like Peter, are men, women, and children “of little faith.” Jesus will die and rise for all of us who, like Peter, may be able to make an astounding profession of faith, as long as it is on our terms. The very next thing Peter says to Jesus after, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” after the end of today’s Gospel reading, is, “God forbid it, Lord” that you should die like this! “God forbid it” that I should profess my faith in a Christ, a God who will suffer for me, for my sin, for every time I am afraid of the bold words that, by God’s grace, escape from my mouth, and I retreat from them. “God forbid it, Lord,” that I will go so far as denying even knowing you, yet you will restore me to grace, remind me of why you gave me the keys and the power to bind and loose on earth what is bound and loosed in heaven!

“God forbid it, Lord”—But the Lord does just that, through each of us. Not long after Peter’s profession of faith, the gift of the “keys of the kingdom of heaven,” and then Jesus’ Transfiguration, in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus gives the same power to bind and loose, the same gift of participating with God in the restoration to grace, the salvation of the whole world, to all of us, sisters and brothers!

And this is where I want to go back to the beginning of what I have said here today, to my image of the keys but then also of clothing. Specifically, who here has ever bought clothing for an infant or maybe a teenager—those times in our lives when we grow physically (and in other ways) the fastest? When we buy clothing for somebody who is growing quickly, it is wise to buy clothing a few sizes too big for that person, so that they will grow into it.

This is what God, through Isaiah, does for Eliakim in the Book of Isaiah from which we hear today. This is what Jesus does for Peter in our Gospel reading today. This is what Paul speaks of to the Romans, as if he is unwrapping a gift of divine clothing that is too big for him or the Roman Christian community in the present moment: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways”! Actually, Paul is saying to us, to the Romans, that the clothing God has just bought for us will never fit us quite right (Sorry!). It will always be a bit (or a lot) big on us, this clothing of God’s grace that saves us. But then some baggy clothing is quite fashionable these days, right?

In the time of Isaiah—and Matthew picks up on this image when Jesus gives Peter “the keys of the kingdom of heaven”—keys were not so much the pocket-sized ones with which we unlock doors. For a king or royal official like Eliakim, the keys that they would receive would be part of their royal clothing: Large, decorative, and slung over the shoulder. So the robe, the sash, and the key given to Eliakim in Isaiah are not really two separate images or analogies—that of keys and that of clothing—but the same one.

God gives Eliakim the robe, the sash, and the keys that are too big for him in that moment. Jesus gives Peter a gift that, despite his astounding profession of faith, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” is too big for him in that moment. Peter will have to grow into those clothes and those keys. He will have to experience his frailty, his own “little faith,” most poignantly as Jesus dies on the cross and Peter denies ever knowing him.

We, too, dear Church, will have to continue to grow into the same clothing and the same keys that, for the moment, are just a little (or a lot) too big for our “little faith.” Still, though our “little faith” helped by none other than God’s grace, God enables us to profess with the astounding boldness of Peter the creed that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Homily for Thursday, 9 September 2021– Ferial

 Readings of the day: Colossians 3:12-17; Psalm 150:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6; Luke 6:27-38

Thursday of the 23rd week in Ordinary Time

Optional Memorial of St. Peter Claver, Priest

What clothing do we keep in our Christian wardrobe, so to speak? I have to admit, and I wonder if I speak for many of us: I am a little more concerned these days about what I wear now that we have returned to our work and study places in public after many months of working from home and online due to the COVID pandemic.

Speaking of our worship, I have served as a priest in enough places among the poor to know to be very careful about how to approach the subject of appropriate clothing for Mass; for our worship spaces. I am sure we have heard the term “Sunday best” to describe proper, dignified Church attire. In places I have served, because of poverty or other reasons, people have arrived at churches in shabby clothing. These people are always a reminder to me not to do or say anything, especially as a minister of the Church, that would marginalize them further. Neither I nor any of us know what is in a person’s heart, based on their clothing no less.

Today, the letter to the Colossians also invites us to put on a kind of clothing that is more important than our physical clothing. Colossians reminds us of the appropriate clothing of the heart: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion and kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” And again: “Above all, clothe yourselves with love.”

Love is not measured in percentages of cotton, wool, polyester, nylon, or other materials we might wear. And, in Luke’s Gospel today, Jesus raises the command to love to a new and radical level: “I say to you that listen, ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.’”

Here, Jesus is not asking us (figuratively) to wear our best clothing, the clothing of love including for our enemies, only on Sundays, or when we are at Mass, or when we feel like it. No, we are to put on this best clothing all the time, even when this clothing might be less comfortable than the clothing of bitterness, rudeness, or impatience that we (yours truly included) may be tempted to put on occasionally when people behave in less-than-loving ways toward us.

I pray sincerely that none of us have or will have enemies; people who challenge us profoundly to love them as God loves them (and us). I pray that none of us will ever be an enemy to anybody else; that, as Colossians says, “the peace of Christ [will] rule in [our] hearts,” and especially at the heart of our presence, our ministry, our study, and our worship here at St. Joseph’s College. But we know as Christians that, to the extent we live our faith in the public square, even humbly and quietly, we may not have enemies, but we will have people who misunderstand us or outright reject at least what they perceive to be important tenets of our faith that they cannot accept.

Our encounters with these people, our encounters with the poor or otherwise marginalized will be opportunities to put on our best clothing, that of love: The invisible clothing that few may perceive immediately that we are wearing, but the clothing that makes us who we are as disciples of Jesus Christ in our world.

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, 12 October 2014

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 25:6-10a; Psalm 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6; Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20; Matthew 22:1-14

What is so important about clothing: What we wear and how we wear it? Can our clothing not show something about who we are or what we do for a living?

I have been asked a few times by children, including once this week at St. Kateri School, about when priests wear clericals, black pants and shirt with a white Roman collar. A few days after I was ordained a priest, I spoke to students at the high school from which I graduated near Edmonton. The students there were asked to prepare two questions each for me to answer when I spoke in their classrooms. Again, some of the most frequently-asked questions were about when, where, and why I wore blacks and a Roman collar. One student asked, “Father, do you always have to wear priest clothes”?

No, I answered. I do not always have to wear “priest clothes.” I wear clericals when I serve in public as a priest: At Mass or other worship celebration, visiting our school, presenting or speaking as a priest, meeting other priests or the bishop, hearing confessions, making hospital or home visits to the sick, and so on… But I usually do not wear clericals if I am relaxing at home, on vacation, or on a day off. Are there any students here who wear a uniform at school? Is there anybody here who wears a uniform at work? A black shirt with a Roman collar is like my uniform. It shows who I am when I am serving in public as a priest.

And yet when and when not to wear our priestly “uniform” can be unclear, as one of my brother Basilians who teaches in one of our high schools found out the hard way this week. He was on his day off, and so not in his black shirt and Roman collar. He went to run a quick errand at the school where he teaches. As he was leaving the school, he greeted one of his students, who was slow in returning his greeting. When the student finally realized who was greeting her, she exclaimed, “Oh, sorry Father, I didn’t recognize you without your clothes!”

Lightheartedness aside, this is a similar plight to that of the man in today’s Gospel reading. We hear that this man is ordered out of the king’s wedding feast for not wearing the wedding garment given him by the king. “Many are invited but few are chosen,” Jesus’ parable ends. This man is unrecognizable without his clothes, and so cannot remain at the king’s feast.

Might we feel that Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast is a bit harsh? And yet clothing, how and what we wear and when we wear particular kinds of clothing, matters. In the case of the man who is expelled from the king’s wedding feast, we are asked to understand today’s Gospel parable in the social context of Jesus’ first hearers. In Jesus’ time, if somebody were to be invited to a wedding banquet of a rich person, like a king, this person would be given a wedding garment to wear at the feast. Not to wear it would be a great insult to the host! Add to this that, in today’s parable, many had been invited but had “ignored” the invitation to the king’s wedding banquet. One had gone back “to his farm, another to his business.” Others had mistreated and even killed the king’s servants who had been sent to deliver the invitation to the feast. And so more servants are sent, “into the main roads” with more invitations to the feast. A man attends the feast, but without his wedding garment provided to him by the king. He is unrecognizable without his clothes.

This harsh-sounding parable, then, is actually a parable about God’s generosity. God, represented by the king in the parable, has sent servants out “into the main roads”; out to the highways and byways; out to the poor; out to sinners like you and me, with invitations to the feast. Do we accept God’s exceedingly generous invitation to the wedding feast?

For us, the king’s wedding feast has been prepared. This feast is eternal life; the salvation to which we are all invited by God. If we do accept God’s invitation, will we show up for the wedding feast wearing the appropriate clothing for the occasion? Will we clothe ourselves in a way that shows others who we are while also reflecting God’s generosity to our world by the way we live? Will we wear the garment given us by God, our king, out of generosity; a garment we do not deserve but nevertheless a garment of salvation? At the king’s wedding feast, will we be recognizable in our clothes?

When I speak of clothing, I am aware that I am discussing a controversial topic for some of us. Have we not heard the term “Sunday best?” Most if not all of us, I am sure, share a desire that everyone dress reverently for a celebration such as the Mass. After all, our Eucharist is an image; a sacrament of the eternal wedding feast of heaven. But, within reason, one person’s definition of reverence may differ from that of another. We balance reverence for Mass with dressing for the weather. Some of us are wealthier than others, and so can afford fancier clothing than others…

All this is a caution against judging what is in others’ hearts, even reverence or lack thereof for God and God’s house, merely by the way they dress. Appropriate attire is important, but is it not even more important for us to wear the festive clothing that is not visible to our eyes but is recognizable nonetheless: The clothing of kindness; of compassion; of generosity that reflects God’s kindness; compassion; generosity to the world? Do we wear the clothing that invites others to join the king’s wedding feast; that invites our brothers and sisters to think and say: “Here is a Christian; a person of God: kind, compassionate, generous”? Some may even say, “I want to be one of them”; one of us! Visibly but also invisibly, are we recognizable in our clothes; the clothing of God’s wedding feast?

Outside of our Eucharistic celebration and also within it, we are given signs; sacraments of the wedding garment to put on; to be seen for who we are: Christians; a people of a generous God. [Today we will celebrate a baptism after Mass.] At baptism, we wear a baptismal garment that we pray will one day be brought “unstained into the kingdom of heaven.” Our servers and I wear an alb, which reminds us of our baptismal garment. Brides at weddings usually wear a white dress, not so much a sign of purity or virginity as, again, a reminder of baptism and the wedding feast of heaven. The pall over a casket at funerals also hearkens back to baptism and forward to eternal life. Over a priest’s alb and stole at Mass is the colorful chasuble, once again a reminder of the wedding garment to be given us by the king, God, when we enter the eternal feast of heaven.

We have all been called, in the prophet Isaiah’s words, to a feast of rich food and choice wines”; the feast of “the LORD of hosts”; the eternal wedding feast of heaven; a feast, in St. Paul’s words to the Philippians, of God’s “glorious riches in Christ Jesus.” We have been called; invited. Will we be chosen? The king, God, has provided us all with the garment for the wedding feast; a garment with visible; sacramental signs, but also a garment of kindness; compassion; generosity; a garment that shows to our world who we are and who God is. When we enter this wedding feast, God only asks that we be recognizable in our clothes.