Homily for Sunday, 21 August 2016

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 66:18-21; Psalm 117:1, 2; Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13; Luke 13:22-30

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

Is it not easy to admire the candour of the person in the crowd who asks Jesus in our Gospel reading today, “Lord, will only a few be saved”? How many of us have asked or at least thought similar questions?

Today’s Gospel reading is part of a section of loosely-connected sayings of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel on the Kingdom of God. And Jesus never quite answers the question of the person in the crowd, “Lord, will only a few be saved”? Instead, Jesus gives us three somewhat unclear, inconsistent images of God’s Kingdom: “The narrow door,” the locked door, and the great banquet at which “Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets” are joined by “people… from east and west” and “from north and south.” The images of the narrow door and the locked door suggest that, yes, it is likely that “only a few” will “be saved.” But the third image of God’s Kingdom, the banquet scene, suggests that more than “only a few” will “be saved.” Yet, here again, Jesus says that many, even among the people who have followed him from village to village, will find themselves “thrown out” of the great banquet. And so does it not seem that to “be saved” will be difficult for us?

In light of these three images of God’s Kingdom, it would be difficult to fault any of us for thinking this way; for asking questions like, “Lord, will only a few be saved”? To take the harsh edge off of Jesus’ parables of God’s Kingdom, we might understand Jesus as drawing a line between those who were for and those who were against his message. Jesus’ images of the entrance to God’s Kingdom as a “narrow door” that would eventually be locked, and of God’s Kingdom itself as an exclusive banquet, were directed especially at the the religious and political elites of Jesus’ day. Many of these elites were not acting with justice; were not living in an upright way. They were oppressing and excluding the very people they were supposed to be helping; making sure they had the basic necessities of life; leading toward God and toward salvation by their own teaching and example. These were the people who would arrive at the Kingdom of God before a locked door, not be able to enter “through the narrow door,” or be “thrown out” of the banquet. And those least expected to enter the Kingdom of God would enter ahead of those who would have expected to enter first: “Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”

Nowadays, who are the people we would name among the “first” to enter God’s Kingdom; to “be saved”? Who are among the “last,” or those who will not enter the Kingdom of God at all? Part of our answer to who is “first” is easy. Especially as good Catholics, we might answer, “the saints.” But even the named (canonized) saints, those we recognize officially as in heaven; experiencing eternal life, are far from the total number of people already in heaven; already saved. And people who are not Catholic or who are not Christian are not necessarily to be counted among the “last” or those who will be excluded from salvation. We cannot even be sure that people who have done great evil will not ultimately be saved. And so to answer the question of who “will be last” or who will not be saved is even more difficult than to answer who “will be first.” In fact for us to answer either question is impossible.

“Lord, will only a few be saved”? We cannot answer this question. And Jesus does not give us the answer. We can answer, faithfully to our Christian tradition, that God wills everybody to be saved, but this is as much as we may know and believe. Our Church names a few of the many, mostly anonymous, saints through the ages, and does not place anybody in particular in hell, for good reason.

But can it still not be tempting for us to speculate on who might be saved; on which actions or choices might place a person definitively beyond salvation? Have any of us ever been asked a question like, “Have you been saved”? I have been asked this question a few times, by well-meaning Christians. Questions like this tempt me to make a snarky reply like, “I don’t know. Have you”? This is when I believe most deeply that biting one’s tongue should be added as the eighth corporal work of mercy!

Humour aside, I think that to make our salvation out to be an individual pursuit like this (“Have you been saved”?) or to become otherwise obsessed with salvation, with whether we or anybody else “will be first” or “last,” is dangerous. What do I mean by this? If and when we become obsessed with salvation and make it individualistic, about whether I will be saved, we neglect key aspects of salvation.

First, our salvation is God’s gift of grace to us; God’s choice, not ours. This is not to say that our works; our words and our actions do not matter to God. Our second reading, from the letter to the Hebrews, calls us to accept with humility “the discipline of the Lord.” Moral accountability is vital to our salvation. Are we yielding “the peaceful fruit of righteousness” by the way we live? Are we working in some way for peace and justice in our world; our nation; our communities; our households; our Church? Without concrete works (words and actions) that strengthen our relationship with God and with one another; without works that show the Kingdom of God dwelling within our world here and now, salvation becomes an empty obsession with a distant reality.

Second, the key word in all this is “we.” Salvation, building the Kingdom of God here and now so that we might inherit it in its fullness by the end of time, is not an individual but a communal, relational effort. This is the message of the prophet Isaiah we hear in our first reading today. Isaiah encourages the people of Israel to return to their homeland after a long exile in Babylon. But God, speaking through Isaiah, not only calls individuals, or only the people of Israel, home. No, God says through Isaiah, “I am coming to gather all nations and tongues, and they shall come and see my glory.” The message is the same in Luke’s Gospel, in Jesus’ sayings about the Kingdom of God. Who will be present at the great banquet of God’s Kingdom? Jesus says that “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets,” and then “people from east and west [and] from north and south” will be at this great feast. All will celebrate together not their own glory but the glory of God; the fullness of relationship with God and communion with one another.

“Lord, will only a few be saved”? Perhaps, yes, “only a few,” if any, will be saved if we try to be saved as individuals, alone, before God. But I dare say that this is not what God wants of us. God wants all of us; all of creation to be saved. God is gathering “all nations and tongues” together to “see [God’s] glory.” And God has given us signs here, now on earth, of the future fullness of God’s Kingdom. The greatest of these signs, of these sacraments, is this Eucharist we celebrate; our communion in God and in one another. Salvation is not distant reality, but starts right here, not for a select few but for all of us.

“Lord, will only a few be saved”? “Will only a few” be able to “enter through the narrow door” before it is locked? Not if we work and if we entrust ourselves to God’s saving grace and mercy together…

Homily for Wednesday, 6 July 2016– Ferial

Wednesday of the 14th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Hosea 10:1-3, 7-8, 12; Psalm 105:2-3, 4-5, 6-7; Matthew 10:1-7

Optional memorial of St. Maria Goretti, Virgin and Martyr

This homily was given at the chapel of Kateri House Women's Residence of St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

For how many of us, after hearing today’s Gospel reading from Matthew, does Jesus seem to exclude entire groups of people from having “the good news” proclaimed to them, for no particular reason?

After choosing his twelve apostles, Jesus says to them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Does Jesus’ instruction here not contradict other well-known instances in our Gospels in which Jesus goes out of his way to include the otherwise excluded: Gentiles; Samaritans; essentially anybody not Jewish; sinners; those with physical or spiritual illnesses; outcasts? We know, for example, of the story of the Good Samaritan or of Jesus’ healing of a Roman centurion’s son, in which Jesus teaches us that God has created; loves; and wills to save all people, not only the Jews or, later, us Christians.

And so why would Jesus instruct the Twelve to avoid the Gentiles and Samaritans; to “proclaim the good news” that “the Kingdom of God has come near” to only “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”? After all, among Jesus’ apostles are Peter, who would deny Jesus and leave him to die on the cross, “Matthew the tax collector”… “and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.” Why accept these people as apostles, among essentially a group of unknowns if not worse, but deny the hearing of “the good news” to the Gentiles and Samaritans?

Or is Jesus as exclusionist as it seems when we hear today’s Gospel? I suggest not. My interpretation of Jesus’ instruction to the Twelve here (and please feel free to differ from me but, more importantly, take some time to reflect on this or other parts of Scripture you may find troubling) is that he is not saying, “No, do not go to anybody but the Jews,” but “not yet.”

Many scholars consider Matthew, among the four Gospel writers, to be most concerned about a Jewish audience: Early Christians who had Jewish more than pagan (Roman, Greek, Assyrian or other) backgrounds. The Samaritans of Jesus’ time were considered by many to be on the borderline between Jews and pagans, not “pure” Jews. Matthew is clearly most concerned about the well-being of communities of these early Jewish Christians. Here, might we make a distinction between the time-conditioned and the timeless aspects of our Scriptures?

Jesus’ “not yet” through Matthew has, I think, become our “now.” We recognize more than ever our Jewish sisters and brothers as those who first heard the Word of God. And we might recognize ourselves as, while usually faithful to God, occasionally among “the lost sheep” in special need of God’s mercy. May we then be a people who continues to seek out “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”; the lost sheep among ourselves, to proclaim God’s mercy to our world without exclusion. Now, more than ever, “the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.”  

Homily for Sunday, 24 May 2015‒ 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 20:19-23

Imagine for a moment that you are in your favorite place in the world. What is this place? Is it your favorite vacation destination, perhaps one of the world’s great cities; a remote place to enjoy nature; a beach in the tropics? Is your favorite place somewhere you enjoy spending a day off work? Is it a place to be still; to encounter God in prayer; perhaps in silence; perhaps at Mass? Are you with somebody or alone?

I feel blessed to have many favorite places all over the world. I have encountered God in prayer; in the Eucharist everywhere from here at St. Kateri to the parishes in which I grew up, St. Theresa’s and Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Edmonton; to Notre Dame and Saint-Sulpice in Paris, to the chaotic Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the calm of the shore of the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus once walked; to St. Patrick’s in busy New York City; to my highlights in Colombia in South America: At twelve thousand feet above sea level, Monserrate in Bogotá, for instance. This is one of the only churches of which I can think where the congregation remains standing during Mass, barely even able to turn, because of the number of people present!

Last week I enjoyed my parents’ visit here to Rochester; to St. Kateri. We visited places like the Corning Museum of Glass; wineries and breweries in the Finger Lakes, Sodus Point and El Rincón Mexicano, a favorite Mexican restaurant in Sodus to which Fr. Paul introduced me; Chimney Bluffs…  These are only a few of my favorite places near here to spend a day off; to eat; to learn; to enjoy nature. But it was particularly wonderful to be with people I love;  to be with Mom and Dad to enjoy some of my favorite places in New York State (and some places where I had never been before) during the week they were here.

Is there not something special about being together in one place with people you love; with family; with friends? This is the experience of Jesus’ disciples on Pentecost. We hear in our first reading from Acts that “they were all in one place together” when the Holy Spirit descended upon them. For Jesus’ first disciples, this is the necessary condition to receive God’s gift of the Holy Spirit. Their unity “in one place together,” in an upper room in Jerusalem, is the required setting for the birth of a community of faith, our Church. But why is this so? If God had so chosen, why could the Holy Spirit not have descended upon each of the disciples individually, alone, instead of descending upon them as a community?

The trouble here is that, unlike when we are enjoying quality time off; a vacation; perhaps peaceful time at prayer, Jesus’ disciples were not gathered in their favorite place in the world. Our Gospel reading today, from John, says that “the doors were locked” to the room “where the disciples were, for fear of” the leaders of “the Jews”; those who had put Jesus, their hoped-for Messiah, to a shameful death on a cross. But it is into this fear that the risen Christ enters and breathes the Holy Spirit upon the disciples as a community: “Peace be with you.” This Pentecost event would not have happened in the same way had the disciples have been scattered, facing their fears alone.

Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ’s disciples; the birth of the Church, is not a one-time event. We are reminded of this by today’s readings: The Acts of the Apostles and John’s Gospel speak of two distinct encounters with the Holy Spirit. In Acts the Holy Spirit appears to the disciples in “tongues as of fire”; as “a noise like a strong driving wind.” In John, the risen Christ breathes God’s Holy Spirit upon his disciples: “Peace be with you.”

And Pentecost continues to happen, here and now. The Holy Spirit continues to work; to be present among and within us. How is the Holy Spirit present, working among and within us? Might many of us here now be feeling anything but like you are in your favorite place in the world? For many of us there is no better place to be than here, on a beautiful Sunday morning, celebrating our Eucharist. And yet many more of us bring to this celebration our griefs and sorrows: Personal or loved ones’ illnesses; loss of loved ones; loss of employment or underemployment; struggles with our faith; marriage or family disunity. We bring to this celebration our distractions: Some of us barely awake; others with small children in tow with their own needs; still others finding it difficult to remain focused in prayer… And yet how blessed we are as a community of faith by one another’s presence: Joys, hopes, griefs, distractions and all! Still more of us may be bringing to this Eucharist very real fears: Our fear of death; what will happen after our death and how the people we love will cope; our fear of economic instability; our fears for those we love who have turned away from their faith; our fear for the state of our world, full of hope but with many instances of despair; violence; evil…

Our joys and hopes but also our griefs; our distractions; our fears are similar and every bit as real as those Jesus’ first disciples faced on the first Pentecost when they encountered the Holy Spirit. Some first encountered the Holy Spirit in the stillness of Jesus’ breath, “Peace be with you.” Others encountered the Holy Spirit amid their fear of death at the hands of those who had put Jesus to death. These first disciples encountered the Holy Spirit as they touched the risen Jesus’ wounds, an image of our own woundedness; our own sin; our own need for forgiveness and healing. And they encountered the Holy Spirit as fearsome, rushing wind and “tongues as of fire.”

Our encounters with the Holy Spirit are as varied perhaps as the encounters with the Holy Spirit of Jesus’ first disciples. The gifts we receive from God’s Holy Spirit are as varied as the encounters with the Spirit themselves: “Different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit,” St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians. But do we not have something else in common with these earliest disciples in how they encountered the Holy Spirit? We, like them, are “all in one place together.”

In this “one place together” our joys and hopes meet their source, our God whom we are united here to worship and to celebrate. Here our diverse “spiritual gifts” are refined; made ready through this celebration to be put to service of the one Body of Christ; one community of faith; one world; one human race. A “body with many parts,” we become, more and more, “one body, one spirit in Christ” in the words of our Eucharistic Prayer that we will hear and pray in a few moments.

In this “one place together” our griefs; our distractions; our fears are transformed by the Holy Spirit. Together we are invited to let our fears that could paralyze us without community; without God’s Holy Spirit be transformed into “fear” in the sense of awe and reverence in God’s presence. This “fear of the Lord”; awe and reverence in God’s presence is the first and greatest of the gifts of the Holy Spirit we all receive in baptism and confirmation.

In this “one place together” is our Pentecost. In this “one place together” we encounter God’s Holy Spirit who strengthens, gifts, unifies, and transforms us. In this “one place together,” my sisters and brothers, Church is born. In the whole world the best place for us to be; the place where God is; the place where we are prepared to serve God as Christian disciples in our world that hungers for God’s Spirit, is right here, in this “one place together.”