Homily for Tuesday, 24 November 2020‒ Memorial of Sts. Andrew Dung-Lac and Companions, Martyrs

Readings of the day: Revelation 14:14-19; Psalm 96:10, 11-12, 13; Luke 21:5-11

Tuesday of the 34th week in Ordinary Time

An old friend of mine used to watch televangelists who would interpret Bible passages like the one we hear today from Revelation as “proof” of all kinds of imminent calamities that would end with the spectacular and frightening destruction of the world as we know it. My friend and I would joke about these stereotypical televangelists: After all, does Jesus not say, including in the Gospel reading we have just heard: “Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them”?!

Then again, does what Jesus asks of us in today’s Gospel not call us to do more than avoid following after fearmongers who, in Jesus name (or maybe in the name of the almighty dollar) like to bend Scripture to scare people about the imminent end of the world? Jesus says, quite pithily, “Do not be terrified.” If we were among the first people hearing Jesus say this, would we maybe have wanted to reply to Jesus, “What do you mean, ‘Do not be terrified’”? In Jesus’ time and in the time of the Gospels, as now and at any time in our world’s history, there have been calamities and disasters. People and nations have fought one another. There have been “famines and plagues,” including the COVID-19 pandemic that grips the world now.

But “do not go after” those who say, “I am he” and, “The time is near”! “Do not be terrified,” Jesus says. What is Jesus asking of us? “The time” of which Jesus speaks is not so much “near” or something destructive or to be feared. Is “the time” of which Jesus speaks not, better yet, “the time” of Jesus’ presence among us; a presence that has always been, even (and maybe especially) amid the worst disasters, disease, or violence this world has known? And, in this way, is Jesus not calling to us, wanting to be present to us here and now, as always? “The time” is not “near”; “the time” of Jesus’ presence to the world through us is here now.

Jesus wants us to make him present in our world and to one another. This reminds me of a prayer, based on Romans 12, that our Basilian communities in Colombia and Mexico often pray, roughly: “May we rejoice with those who are rejoicing. May we weep with those who are weeping”…

By this kind of solidarity with one another, in our joys and sorrows, or when our beautiful temples, in a way of speaking even our best intentions to give glory to God, are “thrown down,” we become something far more important and necessary to the world: We become Jesus’ own presence.

If we, every day, try to reach out to at least one person (even if by phone, audiovisually, or some other “physically distanced” means of communication), in solidarity with that person in rejoicing or weeping, sickness or health, hope or fear, and so on, we make “the time” of which Jesus speaks a time not of fear but of communion and hope; a time of presence; a time that is not so much “near” but actively and always here.

Homily for Sunday, 18 June 2017‒ Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16a; Psalm 147:12-13, 14-15, 19-20; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; John 6:51-58

What is the Body and Blood of Christ? What do we mean when we speak of the Real Presence of Christ, Eucharist, the Feast of the Lord’s Table or the Lord’s Supper, of Mass, or of communion? These are just a few of the names we give to today’s celebration, officially the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, and to a reality that we Catholics celebrate every Sunday and may celebrate nearly every day of the year.

Also today Bishop Salvatore Matano has declared the beginning of a Year of the Eucharist in the Diocese of Rochester, and so we have not only today to celebrate this reality of many names, but a whole year to celebrate it, through to June 3, 2018, next year’s date of the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ. And so, as we begin this year-long celebration; our Year of the Eucharist, might it be worthwhile to ask ourselves this question once again: What is it?

“What is it” is the very question that has been asked since the people of Israel, returning home to their land from slavery in Egypt, first asked it. When the people of Israel were hungry in the desert, God sent them a strange, dewy substance to satisfy their hunger. As the people of Israel figured out that they could eat this substance, that it filled them, and that it tasted perhaps better than they would have thought, they looked at it cross-eyed, maybe (parents, you know better than I do) as a picky child eyes something like broccoli, and asked, “Manna”?

Yes, “manna” is actually a question, before it became the name given to this strange, dewy substance God gave the people of Israel in the desert. In the Hebrew of the Book of Deuteronomy from which we hear today, as well as in many other ancient languages of what are now Northeast Africa and the Middle East, “manna” means, “What is it”?

We still ask this question today. We still celebrate, as the people of ancient Israel did, “a food unknown to [our] fathers”; to our ancestors. We call it the Body and Blood of Christ, the Real Presence of Christ, the Eucharist, the Feast of the Lord’s Table, the Lord’s Supper, the Mass, or communion. But might we as well ask, “Manna” ‒ “What is it”?

In his pastoral letter announcing this Year of the Eucharist, which is in the Catholic Courier (I will have a brief further announcement about this letter in a few moments before we leave here today), Bishop Matano laments the “high percentage of Catholics who,” according to polls, “do not understand or who have not been taught” about, or “simply do not believe in” the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In many ways our bishop is right to be concerned about faltering practice and understanding of our faith among so many of our brothers and sisters under his pastoral care in this diocese.

At the same time, though, we are here at this celebration. I am confident that I am speaking in front of people who are here now because we at least recognize that something extraordinary, in fact a miracle, is taking place before our eyes. It is taking place in a way we are able to sense: To see here and soon to taste, touch, and smell in the form of bread and wine from the altar; to hear in the form of one another joining together in worship, from the prayers of our Mass, to the singing of hymns, to the cooing of small children, to perhaps more unexpected sounds that echo through this place. The miracle we witness here is so extraordinary, even though it remains always sensible, that we, like the people of Israel in the time of Moses and people since then, are right to ask an eternal question: “Manna” ‒ “What is it”?

Yet is the answer to this question not given to us in a beautiful way especially in the Word of God we hear this evening [morning] from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians? St. Paul asks, “Brothers and sisters, the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ”?

A major difficulty of what we celebrate here is that it is possible for us to place our focus on many different aspects of the celebration. Is the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ, the bread and wine on the altar in which Christ miraculously becomes really, truly, and fully present without changing what that bread and wine looks, tastes, smells, and feels like? Is the Eucharist centered on the prayer to the Holy Spirit to “make holy these gifts” of bread and wine, “that they may become the body and blood of [God’s] Son, our Lord Jesus Christ”? Is the Eucharist centered on the whole of the Eucharistic Prayer, which extends from my invitation, “The Lord be with you,” to, “Through him, with him, and in him”… and that I will pray with you in a few moments? Is the Eucharist centered on a second prayer to the Holy Spirit within this Eucharistic Prayer, in which we pray not only that the bread and wine be made holy and transformed to take in the real, true, and full presence of Christ, but that we, too, may be so transformed: “Grant that we, who are nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son, and filled with his Holy Spirit, may become one body, one spirit in Christ”? Is our Eucharist centered on what is on the altar; the whole of this celebration we often call the Mass; the priest who leads the celebration; all of us gathered in community, in communion, with one another?

Let me offer a too-easy answer to the long list of questions I have asked just now: “Yes.” Indeed, the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ we celebrate, is all of this and more. It is no wonder, then, that even the most faithful Catholic Christian might become easily confused by this celebration of many names and many faces. It is no wonder that the question we may be most drawn to ask is, well, then, “What is it”?

What is the Body and Blood of Christ; the Real Presence of Christ; Eucharist; the Feast of the Lord’s Table; the Lord’s Supper; Mass; communion? As I say to children I have taught when they look at me sheepishly, thinking they have asked what they are not sure is the right or on-topic question, “That’s an excellent question”! Our next step with this question about the Eucharist, “Manna ‒ What is it,” though, must be to turn this into no longer a “What” question but a “Who” question: “Who is it”?

And so “Who is it”? In some ways more fully than others, my experience is that most Christians know that Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist and that our salvation, our living “forever” with God, depends on this fact. We know that, as we hear Jesus himself proclaim in our Gospel reading, from John, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life… For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.”

“Jesus Christ” is our best answer to our question that has become, “Who is it”? Depending upon how fully some people actually believe Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist or how literally (or not) to interpret his words in our Gospel, some may be confused our outright scandalized in thinking about how Jesus could offer us his body and blood to eat and drink. I go no further, because my understanding here is at its limit.

And yet, I think, what could be even more challenging for us than to believe that Jesus Christ offers himself really, truly, and fully in flesh and blood; all that he is in this celebration in his memory, is to believe that Jesus Christ has chosen to offer himself to our world through us; that we are the first place from which Jesus Christ shows himself to our world really, truly, and fully through our flesh and blood; that we are part of the answer to the question, “Who is it”?

And from the moment we go forth from this celebration; our witness here to a miracle of Christ really, truly, and fully in flesh and blood, we are entrusted with working out together, in communion, in our world by how we act as Christ in our world the answer to our eternal question about our Eucharist: “Who is it”?

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.