Homily for Wednesday, 28 August 2019– Memorial of St. Augustine of Hippo

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13; Psalm 139:7-8, 9-10, 11-12ab; Matthew 23:27-32

Wednesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. James Church, Vernon, BC, Canada.

The Psalmist asks God today, “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence”? This question in our Psalm today is, of course, rhetorical; there is no way we may flee from the presence of God and God’s all-knowing spirit. But we should have no need to flee from God, either. God knows we are weakened by the effects of sin. Still, God sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem and save us, not waiting for us to save ourselves (which is impossible), but encountering us and lifting us from our present state: Good, because after all we are created in God’s image, but corrupted by sin.

There is no point in trying to flee from God, but do we not try to do so from time to time anyway, when we know we have done wrong and are ashamed or afraid of the consequences of our wrongdoing? The saint we celebrate today, Augustine of Hippo, knew something about the futility of trying to flee from God. Before he became one of the most beloved saints and most prolific Christian writers of all time, a bishop and a doctor of the Church (which means that the teaching value of a saint’s writings is especially recognized by our Church), Augustine spent many years trying to flee from God.

In trying to turn himself away from his wild youth, Augustine experimented with philosophical movements that diminished the goodness of the physical human body, understanding it to be the source of the evil, especially sexual evil, within us. But at this point Augustine was still far from God. In his Confessions, Augustine even admits to having prayed during this time in his life, “God, grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.”

So Augustine spent much of his youth running and trying to flee from God. But God, in an especially spectacular way (but not an unprecedented way, since there are many saints like Augustine whom God found and turned from their sin), caught up to Augustine. Again, in his Confessions, Augustine includes the prayer that reflects God’s persistence in bringing him to conversion: “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient yet ever new… You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you… You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness… I have tasted you; now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”

As a bishop, Augustine reasoned against the Pelagians, who argued that we could will our own salvation without God’s grace. Augustine taught that the effects of “original” sin, while not negating the goodness of our human nature, created in God’s image and likeness, have made our will, incapable of achieving our salvation without God’s grace. Augustine knew this truth from experience.

There is no point in behaving as hypocrites, in the way the religious leaders of Jesus’ time did and whom Jesus rebukes in our Gospel today. Jesus rebukes the pride and hypocrisy of the Pharisees and scribes, who lorded their social prestige over people they perceived to be inferior; more sinful than they. In fact, this hypocrisy was just another way to try to flee from God.

What Jesus knew and taught because he is God, Augustine had to learn and live by experience: It is futile for us to run from God. God will find us. God will redeem us, and we, like Augustine, will burn for God’s eternal peace.

Homily for Thursday, 20 June 2019

Readings of the day: 2 Corinthians 11:1-11; Psalm 111:1b-2, 3-4, 7-8; Matthew 6:7-15

Thursday of the 11th week in Ordinary Time

“Please put up with me”: Am I underestimating the probability of success in beginning an important message or trying to convince somebody with such a plea? Well, we know from the fairly spread of the Christian faith in the time of St. Paul, especially in large cities of the then-Roman Empire like Corinth that developed thriving Christian communities even under intermittent persecution from Rome and some Jewish leaders, that St. Paul was quite successful and convincing in spreading our faith.

I think it is important for us to remember that these Corinthians of St. Paul’s time were especially difficult people to bring to the Christian faith. Corinth was a rich city and proud of it, thanks to its possession of not one but two ports on the Mediterranean Sea, which allowed for increased trade by sea and therefore wealth to enter the city. Change, especially conversion from one faith, Greco-Roman paganism, to another, Christianity, is a tough sell when all is going so well for a city the way it was for first-century Corinth.

Scripture scholars often refer to St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians as his “tearful letter.” St. Paul pleaded with the Corinthians in bringing them to the Christian faith to the point of tears, out of a deep love for them, like no other people or city to which he wrote and ministered. To the Corinthians especially, St. Paul’s message, his preaching of a poor, humble Christ who freely accepted death on a cross to save us was, we could say, a religious culture shock.

In wealthy cities like Corinth, one paid handsomely to study under an elite teacher. This clashed, as we hear from 2 Corinthians today, with St. Paul’s preaching of “the Gospel” to the Corinthians “free of charge.” No self-respecting teacher or preacher in an ancient Greek city like Corinth would have taught or preached “free of charge” as St. Paul did, not only to a few wealthy students but to the whole city and to the world. Yet St. Paul’s strategy, along with pleading with the Corinthians to “put up with” him, worked splendidly anyway, no doubt by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

If we reflect on St. Paul’s loving pleading with the Corinthians to the point of tears, “Please put up with me,” what are the messages we find most difficult to accept today in our lives? Have we ever had difficulty accepting change even when change is necessary or right?

Maybe we have difficulty hearing somebody and accepting her or his message when this person differs from us politically or in understanding of the Church and its mission, for example, or when another person does not share our Christian faith or moral understanding at all. Maybe as difficult for many of us (if I have heard accurately from some of us here at St. Kateri Parish) is the impending change in leadership in this parish after anywhere from nine to forty-three years of Basilian leadership here.

I pray that we at St. Kateri will not only “put up with” but come to love St. Kateri’s new pastor when he begins here next week. I pray that everybody who leads, who prays, and who loves in this parish will continue to lead, pray, and grow in love with a new pastor and vicars, as the Corinthians went from putting up with St. Paul in his time to leading, praying, and genuinely loving him and one another for the growth and unity of the Church.

Homily for Thursday, 27 July 2017– Ferial

Thursday of the 16th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Exodus 19:1-2, 9-11, 16-20b; Responsorial Canticle: Daniel 3:52, 53, 54, 55, 56; Matthew 13:10-17

Did any of us hear in our readings today the contrast between how God makes God’s self known in Exodus versus in Matthew’s Gospel?

How God makes God’s self known to us; reveals himself to us: We call this divine revelation. In Exodus today we hear the immediate lead-in to the Ten Commandments, which we will hear tomorrow. God is most concerned that the people being led by Moses in the desert will hear him when he speaks with Moses; when he gives Moses the Ten Commandments. God says to Moses, “I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, in order that the people may hear when I speak with you and so trust you ever after.” The people need to be able to trust Moses and so to trust God. This is the primary way in which God reveals himself in the part of Exodus we hear today.

In Matthew’s Gospel, do we not get the sense of a more distant and even irritable God through Jesus’ explanation of why he speaks “to the people in parables”? Jesus offers us a strange and even somewhat troubling explanation for why he teaches in parables: “[So] that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.” Does Jesus speak in this way because he really does not want the people hearing him to “perceive… listen,” and understand what he is saying? This seems to me to be unlikely. Perhaps Jesus speaks this way because the people have had a chance to “perceive… listen” and understand him, to believe that he is the Messiah, and they have missed their chance.

But how long do we have before we have missed our chance to “perceive… listen… understand” believe what has been divinely revealed to us, that Jesus is the Messiah, and to back up our belief in Jesus as the Messiah by the way we live? As one bishop I know is fond of saying tongue-in-cheek, we have “between now and five minutes after death” to believe in Jesus as the Messiah and to act by what we believe. In other words, this process that we might call conversion takes a lifetime. But how long do we have?

Nobody fully knows the answer to this question. The Ten Commandments, the introduction to which we hear today in Exodus, were one event of God’s self-revelation to the people of Israel during a forty-year journey through the desert to their homeland. The journey of conversion, of grappling with divine revelation, would take the people of Israel more than one generation. Yet they did enter their homeland, although Moses did not.

We cannot know how much time we have left to believe in what God has revealed to us; what is essential to our faith; in Jesus Christ as the Messiah, and to live by it. Perhaps, then, Jesus is inviting us; pleading with us not to wait. Conversion is not a process we might begin in the future, but a process to live out in the present. And only if conversion for us is a present more than a future reality will we also experience the promise of Jesus to his disciples in today’s Gospel in the present: “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.”

Homily for Friday, 24 April 2015– Friday of the Third Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 117:1bc-2; John 6:52-59

Does the conversion of St. Paul, of which we hear today in the Acts of the Apostles, bring an awesome image to our minds? It does to mine. Saul, on his way to Damascus to bind any Christians there and to “bring them back to Jerusalem in chains,” sees a flash of light and is knocked to the ground. Ananias, at first reluctantly but convinced by the same Jesus who had flashed before Saul, takes Saul into Damascus to regain his sight.

I think of the painting above the sanctuary of St. Paul’s Basilica in Toronto, across the street from where I lived while I was in seminary there. It is a fantastic image of Saul being knocked from his horse on the road to Damascus. Underneath is the Latin inscription of Jesus’ words: “Saule, Saule, quid me persequeris”‒ “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me”? It is a fantastic image... except there is no horse from which Saul falls in the Biblical account. This is where I need to be converted from over-attention to literal detail and perhaps use my imagination a bit more freely!

This is a fantastic image above the sanctuary of St. Paul’s Basilica, except that at a particular point it becomes unrealistic to me. How? And does the story of Saul’s conversion have limited realism for us? How many of us have thought: This is great that Saul was converted on the spot into the great Apostle Paul; a defender of the early Church and writer with the same vigor with which he once persecuted it? This is not my experience. Conversion, in my experience, takes much longer; perhaps a lifetime.

We will hear from Acts as we continue our Easter season that conversion was not a one-time event for Paul, either. It was a lifelong process of becoming aware of Christ’s presence, as it is a lifelong process for us. But St. Paul’s conversion began with Christ’s appearance on the road to Damascus.

When did our process of conversion begin? Perhaps it was our birth; our baptism. Conversion, for us, is usually more subtle than being knocked down on a roadside by Christ himself! This subtle, everyday process of conversion; of becoming ever-more aware of Christ’s presence in our lives: When did this begin for us?

In an awesome way, we are aware of the presence of Christ in our lives here and now. I say this because we are here; we are partakers in this Eucharist. Christ, who became one of us, died, is risen, and ascended into heaven as fully human, is present under bread and wine in this celebration! Conversion: Is this not real to us, here and now? If it were not, I do not think that any of us would be here.

Conversion: Is it not as real to us as when Jesus first said (and we hear in John’s Gospel), “Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day”? These words were startling to those who first heard them. Now our conversion; our ever-increasing awareness of Christ’s presence among us, is much more subtle. But our ongoing conversion is every bit as real and awesome as when it began.