Homily for Saturday, 3 September 2016– Feast of St. Gregory the Great

Saturday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Corinthians 4:6b-15; Psalm 145:16-18, 19-20, 21; Luke 6:1-5

What is the purpose and meaning of the Sabbath? For the Pharisees of Jesus’ time and indeed for any faithful Jew, the Sabbath meant a day of rest from any and all work. This is why, in the Gospel reading we hear today, the Pharisees become angry at Jesus and his disciples for “picking… heads of grain” from the fields, “rubbing them in their hands, and eating them.” Jesus’ disciples had been doing work.

This concern among devout Jews about not working on the Sabbath day may seem foreign to our culture in which many people work and many workplaces and businesses are open on Sundays. But the Sabbath rest is not simply some practice of the distant past. I was reminded of this when I visited the Holy Land three years ago. In multi-storey buildings in Tel Aviv, where our pilgrimage stayed for a few nights, there are so-called “Sabbath elevators” that stop automatically on every floor. There is no need to push a button to stop the elevator on the desired floor; this would be considered doing work.

I am not trying to criticize either cultural practice: A more relaxed attitude toward work on Sundays here or the “Sabbath elevators” in the Holy Land. And yet, in our Gospel, Jesus calls us beyond the mere question of whether or not to work on the Sabbath, to question more deeply the motivation behind our actions. If we choose to keep the Sabbath day by not working this is well and good. If, as Christians,  we choose to go to Mass on Sundays as our way of keeping the Commandment to “keep holy the Sabbath day,” or not to shop on Sundays, or other practices, these, too, are excellent and to be encouraged.

But the purpose and meaning of our Sabbath; our worship once a week or more, is deeper than simply not working or gathering to worship one day a week. All our work and our worship, even on days that are not Sunday or the Sabbath, are to be oriented toward service to God by serving one another, especially people in any kind of need. Jesus is clear about this by his reminder to the Pharisees that King David once served the hungry people of Israel “the bread of offering” that “only the priests could lawfully eat” or even touch. Meeting human need is greater than slavishness to laws. The commandment to “keep holy the Sabbath Day” has an ethical component; it is meant to free us for service,  justice, and mercy toward one another, not simply to forbid us to work for one day each week.

Pope St. Gregory the Great,  whose feast we celebrate today, also reminds us of this greater purpose of the Sabbath day; of any human labor;  of our worship. In a homily, St. Gregory says that “when we attend to the needs of those in want, we give them what is theirs… We are performing a debt of justice.” And so our service; our works of justice and mercy;  our meeting of human need are the true meaning and purpose of the Sabbath day. Our service; our works of justice and mercy;  our meeting of human need ultimately point us toward God; toward “the Son of Man [who] is Lord of the Sabbath.”

Homily for Tuesday, 26 May 2015– Memorial of St. Philip Neri

Tuesday of the 8th Week in Ordinary Time

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

After hearing our Gospel reading today, do any of us feel a bit sorry for Jesus’ disciples? Peter, discouraged, says to Jesus: “We have given up everything and followed you.”

What precedes Peter’s discouragement? Our Gospel reading today, I think, requires some context for us to understand Peter’s reaction and then Jesus’ reply to Peter: “Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up” everything for me and for “the Gospel who will not receive a hundred times more.”

Jesus has encountered a rich young man in Mark’s Gospel just before the reading we hear today. How well do we remember this conversation between the rich young man and Jesus? The rich young man asks Jesus how he might enter eternal life. After all, he has “observed all” God’s commandments “from [his] youth.” Still, Jesus sends him away sad, saying, “You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have and give to the poor… Then come, follow me.”

Jesus does not turn the rich young man away primarily because of his excess wealth. But he lacks something more critical to his salvation than literally giving away his material possessions. What does the rich young man lack? What do Peter and the other disciples also lack? The rich young man, like Peter and the other disciples in today’s Gospel and like us, follow God’s law as faithfully as we can. We are here at Mass earlier than most people are awake, many of us daily. And then so many of us here at St. Kateri go forth from worship here to serve our communities our families by wonderful works of mercy; kindness; generosity of all kinds. I am almost sure that this is all God can ask of us!

Our first reading, from the Book of Sirach, praises people who “keep the law”; the commandments of God. To those who obey God’s commandments, Sirach says, “the LORD will give back… sevenfold.” And our Psalm assures us: “To the upright I will show the saving power of God.” And so to obey God’s law; God’s commandments is excellent and a significant starting point toward eternal life.

But there is more to entering eternal life than following a set of commandments. But what? How many of us know somebody who is almost obsessive about following rules perfectly? This kind of obsession can destroy a person spiritually and perhaps physically and mentally.

God invites us to obey his commandments. And yet, more importantly, God asks us to live God’s law with joy and perhaps a sense of humor. St. Philip Neri, whose feast we celebrate today, is known as a patron saint of humor, which he often directed at himself. A man once asked St. Philip Neri if, as a penance, he should wear a hair shirt. St. Philip allowed him to wear the hair shirt, if only outside his other clothing!

St. Philip Neri shows in episodes like this how to be obedient to God’s law with joy and humor. His example is an echo of the central point of our readings today: Live God’s law; the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not with obsessive perfectionism but with joy, and this will bring us to eternal life.

Homily for Saturday, 28 February 2015‒Saturday of the First Week of Lent

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 26:16-19; Psalm 119:1-2, 4-5, 7-8; Matthew 5:43-48

“I say to you, ‘Love your enemies.’” Might this be one of the most difficult of our Lord’s commandments to keep?

And yet Jesus is adamant in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew: For if [we] love” only “those who love” us, “what is unusual about that”? What good is it to love and to be kind only to those who return our love and kindness? In the words of many youth after falling for peer pressure, “Everybody does this”!

But to love only those who love us is not God’s way; the way of God who, Jesus says, “makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” Has Jesus set our moral standard too high when he urges us, “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect”?

Jesus calls us as baptized Christians to rise above the excuse that “everybody does it”; to let our Christian identity stand out as a light to our world. Each and every one of us is called to holiness; to be like God: “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

To be sure, this commandment of Christ is not only one of the most difficult we have to keep; it is impossible for us to keep without God’s grace. Who here is “perfect, just as [our] heavenly Father is perfect”? Our imperfection is why we have God’s grace available to us, especially through our Church’s sacraments; through Reconciliation and our Eucharist. God’s grace is available to us through our journey of Lent.

Even so, this commandment of Jesus was difficult to keep in his own time. The teaching we hear in today’s Gospel was Jesus’ response to a teaching of his day’s best moral teachers: “You have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” Love your neighbor, Jesus says, and “love your enemy,” too. Indeed, if we have enemies at all, we have not fully lived up to our Christian calling; our love is not fully like God’s love. This is how radical Jesus’ teaching was and is.

And Jesus’ teaching has only become more difficult in our time. Gone are the days, if they ever existed, when in the words of The Godfather: Part II, we could “hold [our] friends close and [our] enemies closer.” We live in a time of divided families; an ideologically divided nation and its political institutions; divisions that have even crept into our Church. We live in a world of fear in which our enemies are more difficult to define: Not nation states, but groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS.

But Bishop Angaelos, Coptic Orthodox leader in the United Kingdom, said this about ISIS’ murder of twenty-one Coptic Christians in Libya nine days ago: “I have a responsibility to myself and to others to guide them down this path of forgiveness… We don't forgive the act because the act is heinous. But we do forgive the killers from the depths of our hearts.”

“Love your enemies… “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Like Bishop Angaelos, we can live this commandment of Christ, if only by God’s grace.

Homily for Monday, 23 February 2015‒ Monday of the First Week of Lent

Readings of the day: Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18; Psalm 19:8, 9, 10, 15; Matthew 25:31-46

How many sets of commandments do we know of in the Bible? Most if not all of us know of the Ten Commandments. In fact there are two sets; two very similar versions of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament, one in the Book of Exodus and the other in the Book of Deuteronomy.

Are not most if not all of us familiar with Jesus’ distillation of all the Old Testament commandments, the Law and the prophets, down to two commandments: Love God and love neighbor?

Our first reading today from Leviticus presents us with a series of commandments. These commandments in Leviticus are similar in style to the Ten Commandments. We hear them as a series of laws against particular actions: “You shall not…” After every few laws is the divine emphasis: “I am the LORD.” If we love God and believe that God is the beginning and end of these commandments, we will keep these commandments.

Without changing the substance of the many Old Testament commandments or the sense that God is their beginning and end, Jesus simplifies them while framing them in a positive way: “You shall” in place of “you shall not.” We hear this simplification and positive re-framing of commandments in our Gospel reading today.

But let us not be taken off guard by the simplicity; the positive, even inviting, tone of Jesus’ words. Are there not still stark consequences to acting in favor or against what Jesus teaches? Jesus words are still commandments that we are urged to follow. They are every bit as significant as the Old Testament commands of “you shall not.”

Jesus, as in Leviticus (although perhaps more clearly than in our Old Testament reading), bases his teachings on pressing social concerns. Who are the most vulnerable in Jesus’ time; those most in need of protection? They are “the hungry… the thirsty… the stranger… the naked… the ill” and those “in prison.” The manner in which we act toward these most in need is the manner in which we act toward Christ himself.

Who are the most vulnerable; the most in need in our time? Perhaps they are the unborn; small children; the elderly; the poor person; the person working for a minimum wage that does not suffice to feed, clothe, and shelter her or his family members; the sick; the person with disabilities; the homebound.

“Whatever you did for one of these least… of mine, you did for me.” Jesus’ commandment still stands today: Protect those most in need as though they were Christ. Most if not all of us do well at heeding these teachings of Jesus. Some if not all of us have had experiences in which our actions toward those most in need, or at least our intention behind them, are in need of some purification: Am I acting for my own gain, or because I see Christ in the other person, or a bit of both?

Lent is the great time for this kind of purification of both action and intention; of praying for the strength to follow God’s commandments, especially for the benefit of “the least of [our] brothers” and sisters.

Homily for Thursday, 19 February 2015‒ Thursday after Ash Wednesday

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 1:1-2, 3, 4, 6; Luke 9:22-25

Moses says, “Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom… Obey the commandments of the LORD… Choose life.” Does this task not seem simple enough? After all, who would knowingly choose “death and doom” over “life and prosperity”?

If only it were this simple! And I do not only mean that it can occasionally be difficult for us to keep God’s commandments and so to “choose life.” Have not most if not all of us had experiences of temptation: Peer pressure; social and cultural pressure to act against what we know to be right, true, and life-giving? Have not likely all of us experienced falling for temptation; into evil; into sinful actions or even habits? Thankfully, when we fall into evil and sin, God is here, through one another; through the Church; through the Sacraments, especially of the Eucharist and of Reconciliation, to lift us up again. God is here to pardon us, if only we seek God’s mercy continually and tirelessly.

But then, in our Gospel reading today, Jesus says: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” Jesus is not contradicting Moses; saying that we should choose willingly to lose our lives; choose death over life for his sake, is he?

No, at least I do not believe that Jesus is saying this. Certainly our Church does not advocate endangering our lives purposely for the sake of our Christian faith. Early in our Church’s history, when the Roman Empire was persecuting Christians from time to time, and martyrdom, dying for our faith, was the way to be recognized as a saint (non-martyr saints began to be named only later), some people had this confused idea. And so our Church condemned this idea that Christians should actively put themselves in harm’s way for their faith.

This is not what Jesus meant by taking up our cross and following him. What Jesus meant was and is still as life-giving as Moses’ invitation to the people of Israel in his time: “Choose life.” But how can this be?

Many of us, even right here in our St. Kateri Parish community, bear crosses through little or no fault of our own: Questions and doubts about our faith, family strife, financial difficulties, loss of loved ones; illnesses both personal and within our families. Many more of us sincerely seek to be forgiven by one another; by God. May we in this community be God’s voice of healing; consolation; forgiveness to these people. Let us pray for people in our world whose lives are still in danger because of their faith.

Still others among us bear crosses of which Jesus invites us to let go; to lay on him: Despair of God’s mercy, for one. By supporting one another with our crosses; by building up and forgiving one another any wrongs, and by laying before Jesus any unnecessary crosses we bear, we can both “take up [our] cross daily and follow” Jesus and follow the invitation of Moses to “choose life” for ourselves and for our community of faith.

Homily for Friday, 14 November 2014– Ferial

Friday of the 32nd week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 2 John 4-9; Psalm 119:1, 2, 10, 11, 17-18; Luke 17:26-37

Is it not tempting, when we hear ominous readings like those we hear today, to think that they do not concern us? Jesus uses frightening images of the end times in our Gospel reading, which recall the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament. And then the Second Letter of John warns about “many deceivers” and the “antichrist.” Is it not easy to think that these “fire and brimstone” messages belong to the past or are for somebody else?

I can imagine the people of the time of Jesus and John falling into this temptation: “Somebody else is like Lot’s wife; not me. Somebody else is being compared with those destroyed in the Great Flood; not me. I am strong enough not to fall to the ‘antichrist’; John must be directing his message at other people.”

Could not frightening messages like those in our readings tempt us to deflect the harshness of these messages away from ourselves? And yet, if we deflect the harshness of our readings away from ourselves, we are in danger of missing their point; a point that is very much applicable to all of us. Jesus’ point is one of being prepared for the coming to fullness of the Kingdom of God. Within communities; within families; even within the Church there will be people (hopefully few) who will not recognize that this message is for them; for all of us. Some will attempt to influence others into their error and sin, dividing communities; families; the Church perhaps. But Jesus asks us to be prepared for the coming of God’s kingdom.

The Second Letter of John gives us a practical way to be prepared for this definitive coming of God’s kingdom; for the end times: “Love one another.” This so simple and yet so difficult (in fact impossible without God’s grace) commandment to live out is not “a new commandment,” John says. It is the same way we as Christians have been asked to act “from the beginning.”

But this commandment to “love one another,” like Jesus’ urging us to be prepared for the end times, can easily be lost if we focus on avoiding “the antichrist”; if we focus on to whom Jesus might be directing his frightening references to Sodom and Gomorrah; to the Great Flood.

If instead we focus on simple acts of kindness; on giving thanks to other people and to God for acts of kindness and service toward us; if we are mindful of the poor, the sick, and the disadvantaged; if we build unity in our communities, our families, and our Church; if only, as our beloved Fr. Jack Rosse, whose anniversary of death we mark today, said, we “remember to share our smile,” then I think we will have captured the point of our readings today.

This is no new commandment; it is “from the beginning”: “Love one another.” This message is as applicable to us now as in Jesus’ and John’s time. Love, in the many ways we can show it, is the best preparedness for the coming to fullness of God’s kingdom.