Homily for Sunday, 29 August 2021– Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8; Psalm 15:2-3, 3-4, 4-5; James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Perhaps not many topics in the Bible are as contentious as the Law. In what ways is the Law—and in the Bible we specifically mean the Law of Moses; the religious Law—a good thing or a benefit, and in what ways can the Law hold us back from the most right and just practice of our religious faith?

This tension about the Law is woven through each of our readings today. In Deuteronomy, Moses presents the religious Law as a gift from God, as a good in itself. Observance of the Law, while neither adding or taking anything away from the commands of God to Israel, would be Israel’s way of showing its greatness and its wisdom as a nation. Observance of the Law would be a sign of Israel’s closeness to God: “Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people,” other nations would say of Israel.

In Moses’ time, we know that the people of Israel were in the process of returning from Egypt to their homeland, promised them by God. Imagine ancient Israel, a people small in number, prosperity, and military might compared to powerful nations that surrounded it. Israel could not compete with these other nations insofar as these worldly signs of national power. The source of Israel’s power and greatness was not itself, but God and God’s Law, given through Moses.

These other nations around Israel believed in and worshipped all kinds of gods, but Israel would stand out for its belief and worship of only one God. This was not only because the God of Israel would uphold Israel militarily and economically against Israel’s much more powerful neighbours—although we hear often in our Bible when God does just that for Israel—but because the God of Israel desired to enter into a relationship of love with Israel. The God of Israel cared for Israel in a way that the gods of other nations did not for those other nations. This was to be the core identity of the people of Israel, and Israel’s obedience to the Law of God given through Moses would be a sign that Israel acknowledged and desired this personal, loving, caring relationship with its God as much as God desired a personal, loving, caring relationship with Israel.

But from time to time the people and the nation of Israel would forget that their religious Law was meant as a gift and a sign of the mutual relationship of love between Israel and God. The people; the leaders of Israel would use the Law to reinforce their own power and status instead of to show the goodness and love of God on Israel’s behalf to the world.

This manipulation of the religious Law by Israel’s elites, the Pharisees and the scribes in Jesus’ time, is the focus of Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees and the scribes in today’s Gospel. “Hypocrites,” Jesus calls the Pharisees and scribes, remembering a similar scathing criticism of Israel’s elites by the prophet Isaiah: “This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

Where are the hearts of Israel’s elites, the Pharisees and scribes, while they profess adherence to the Law of Moses, down to the finest details like the ritual washing of hands, vessels, and food? The hearts of these elites of Israel are not focused on God as the source of all that is good: Of the Law itself; of any prosperity and religious or social status they may have, and so on. The hearts of the Pharisees and scribes are focused on preserving their own power and status, against those they see as not as obedient to the letter of the Law, like Jesus and his disciples. The “look at me” attitude of the Pharisees and scribes toward the law is incompatible with looking toward God as the source of all goodness. This is why Jesus scolds them the way he does.

And who stands to lose the most when elites, whether social or religious, manipulate what is good as the Pharisees and scribes do in today’s Gospel? Inevitably those with the least power, the least status, the least wealth stand to lose the most when what is good is manipulated in this way. The Letter of James, from which we have just heard, is emphatic on this point: What is essential to true and right practice of our religious faith, “religion that is pure and undefiled before God”? James says that the care for the least well-off and most vulnerable, “care for orphans and widows in their distress,” is of the utmost priority. Here, James’ attention to social justice, especially to the benefit of “the least of [our] sisters and brothers,” is continuous with long-standing Biblical tradition. I think of Jesus’ own teaching: “Whatsoever you do to the least of these”… I think of the prophet Micah: God asks of us only that we “do justice, love goodness, and walk humbly with [our] God.”

And the Psalm we hear today is very much in line with this radical call through our Scriptures to social justice that does not reinforce human power or status but shows forth the goodness and glory of God. Our Psalm today offers us a long litany of the people God praises; the people who will gain eternal life, a dwelling in God’s tent: The one who “walks blamelessly” and rightly; who “speaks the truth from [the] heart; who “does no evil to a friend”; who does not take up “a reproach against a neighbour” or “a bribe against the innocent”; “whoever stands by their oath even to their hurt” (now that is radical!)…

This constant call to justice in a way that especially benefits the least of our sisters and brothers is so radical, even and maybe especially today, though, that might we be tempted to hear the Word of God today and think, “That is easier said than done”? The temptation, and frequent succumbing to the temptation, to seek our own power, status, wealth, self-sufficiency in a way that fails at least to appreciate God as the source of what is good, and deprives the most vulnerable and disadvantaged of these “goods,” is age-old. This is not a problem limited to the Pharisees and scribes of Jesus’ time, to the people of Israel of Moses’ time, to James’ time or the Psalmist’s time. No, the temptation to manipulate what God gives us—religious and civil laws, even just ones; material wealth; individual freedom and autonomy; authority; education—for our own gain at the expense of those less-advantaged is just as present in our time as in Biblical times.

But what could remedy this problem? Our readings today give us a hint toward the remedy to this problem; this temptation from human weakness and sin to manipulate the good God gives us for our own gain at the expense of others. God’s Law, from the time it was given to the people of Israel through Moses, was meant so that Israel could point to the goodness and love of God and its relationship of love with God, not to Israel’s self for its own sake. The many laws and rituals the Pharisees and scribes urged the Jewish people of Jesus’ time to follow to the letter were again designed to strengthen the relationship of the people who piously observed these laws with God. The same is true of the gift of the Word of God itself: St. James stresses that the Word of God necessarily directs us to care for one another, especially the less-advantaged.

If we care for the less-advantaged, James says, we become “doers of the Word, and not merely hearers.” We point one another not to our own power or status—not toward “me” or “us” for our own sake—but toward God who, regardless of our power, wealth, status, or authority in this world, calls not only each of us as individuals, but all of us as one People of God, to eternal life.

Homily for Sunday, 14 July 2019

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 30:10-14; Psalm 69:14, 17, 30-31, 33-34. 36, 37 or 19:8, 9, 10, 11; Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, Edmonton, and Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada.

“What must I do to inherit eternal life”? The question the lawyer asks of Jesus in our Gospel, from Luke, today sounds perfectly legitimate, right? After all, would everybody here, and at least all Christians or people of faith, not share some kind of desire to “inherit eternal life”? If anybody is here who does not hope to “inherit eternal life,” I would sincerely like to speak with you after Mass, because I cannot understand why anybody would gather to worship God in this Eucharistic celebration if we did not hope to “inherit eternal life.”

In response to the lawyer in today’s Gospel—in fact the lawyer at first answers his own question correctly—Jesus says how he, and we, might “inherit eternal life”: “Do this and you will live.” “Do this”: Act in the way the lawyer in Luke’s Gospel knows all too well, and answers correctly, that will gain him, and us, eternal life: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.”

“Do this.” Again, this sounds like a simple enough commandment by which to live; by which we are to “inherit eternal life,” right? The lawyer’s answer to Jesus’ question—“What is written in the Law? What do you read there”?—should be no surprise to us. His answer, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself,” is the combination of the two laws regarded by Jews of Jesus’ time and even to this day as the most important in the Torah. Devout Jews still pray, morning and night, a variation of the first part of Jesus’ command and the lawyer’s answer: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is God; the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” This prayer, the Shema, is named after its opening exhortation, “Hear, O Israel,” or “Shema, Yisrael.” It is found in our Bible, in Deuteronomy 6:4-5. The second part of the lawyer’s answer is taken from the Book of Leviticus [19:18]: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself. I am the LORD.”

So should the first part of this command, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is God; the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might,” not be easy enough to observe, especially if we take this foremost commandment of God’s Law to heart and to prayer? Today we hear a similar commandment to “turn to the LORD [our] God with all [our] heart and with all [our] soul” in another part of Deuteronomy today (a near-repetition of Deuteronomy 6:4-5). This commandment to love or to “turn to” our God wholly is not “too far away.” “It is not in heaven… neither is it beyond the sea,” but “it is very near to us.” It is accessible to us, “in [our] mouth and in [our] heart,” so that we might observe it easily, at least in theory.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind”: This command; this invitation to go from command to prayer to action is easy to memorize by rote, but is it so easy for us to put into practice? In one sense, I think it is. Just as I do not believe we would be here to celebrate this Eucharist if we did not, in some way, want to go to heaven, to “inherit eternal life,” I do not believe (even if you are a child or a teenager to whom your parents or somebody had to insist a bit that you be at Mass today!) that any of us would be here if we did not, in some way, love God and recognize this celebration in this place as a way of expressing our love for God.

But how accessible or practical is the second part of Jesus’ commandment, spoken by the lawyer in today’s Gospel and derived from Leviticus, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”? Again, in one sense, this commandment to “love our neighbour as” ourselves is very accessible and practical to us. When I am in this place to preside at Mass, I see how this commandment to “love [our] neighbour as” ourselves is lived out in many, diverse holy and fruitful ways. Many of us are ministers within our Church, as servers, ministers of holy communion, musicians, hospitality ministers, and so on. Many of us show our love of neighbour and our love of our Church through works of community service and social justice. Many of us show our love of neighbour with a simple smile or acts of kindness one or several times every day.

Love of neighbour presumes that we love ourselves; that we acknowledge ourselves and live in some way as created in God’s image and likeness. Yet how many of us here or in our world suffer with mental illnesses, including addictions, or know somebody who does? Mental illnesses, like physical or spiritual ones, do not necessarily inhibit us from loving our neighbour as Jesus invites us. The late Dutch priest and contemplative Henri Nouwen developed the term “wounded healer,” coined by the psychologist Carl Jung, to describe people who show great love of neighbour in word and action despite (or maybe because of) their own mental, physical, and spiritual afflictions, which strengthen empathy for other people in similar situations. Similarly, Pope Francis offers us the image of the Church as a “field hospital”: The ill, afflicted, and suffering so often helping the ill, afflicted, and suffering by genuine and purposeful love of neighbour, leading one another to “inherit eternal life.”

How many of us, though, suffer through difficulties with our own body image? How many of us suffer from mental (or physical or spiritual) illnesses, diagnosed or not? How many of us suffer from addictions or know somebody who does: Addictions to alcohol, drugs, pornography, and so on? To some extent, our inabilities to love ourselves as creatures in God’s image and likeness (intentional or, in many cases, not so intentional) will inhibit our ability to love our neighbour, and our inabilities to love our neighbour will eventually inhibit our ability to love God.

Besides difficulties with body image; with mental, physical, or spiritual health; with addictions, these possible barriers to loving ourselves as befits the creatures in God’s image and likeness we are, other difficulties arise with respect to love of neighbour, and ultimately love of God, which make the lawyer’s question to Jesus, his attempt “to justify himself,” all the more real and personal to us.

The lawyer, having answered Jesus’ first question correctly as to the most essential commandment of God’s Law; the most essential commandment for us to “inherit eternal life,” then asks Jesus: “And who is my neighbour”? Before we scoff at the lawyer in today’s Gospel, let us ask ourselves the lawyer’s question: “Who is my neighbour”? Is my neighbour among the poor and disadvantaged? Is my neighbour an unborn child, or somebody in a crisis pregnancy situation? Is my neighbour an immigrant, a refugee, or a trafficked person, especially an undocumented migrant? Is my neighbour somebody of a non-Christian religion? Is my neighbour somebody with a mental, physical, or spiritual illness or addiction? Is my neighbour an acquaintance, a co-worker, somebody in the Church, a friend, or a family member with whom we have fallen out of regular and healthy relationship or even speaking terms? Is my neighbour an elderly person; somebody with a terminal illness or with an illness like dementia; somebody who perceives life itself to have become almost unbearable; somebody who has lost hope; somebody in great pain? Is my neighbour that Samaritan (a synonym in our Gospel today for our worst enemy conceivable) who encounters me when I am in my greatest need, at least figuratively-speaking, “half dead” on the side of the road? Is my neighbour the “half dead” person I encounter on the road?

Of course, our neighbour is all these people. Will we show neighbourly, life-giving mercy to our neighbour in all these and other vulnerable forms, then, or will we pass by her or him “on the other side” of the road? Will we or will we not choose to encounter Christ, the incarnate, fully human, visible “image of the invisible God,” in our neighbour? In his book The Holy Longing, the Oblate priest Ronald Rolheiser says that “the God of the incarnation tells us that anyone who says he or she loves an invisible God in heaven and is unwilling to deal with a visible neighbour on earth is a liar.”

“Who is my neighbour,” then? Our neighbour is anybody Jesus invites us to treat with the loving mercy befitting one created in God’s image and likeness. “Do this and [we] will live.”

Homily for Sunday, 2 September 2018

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8; Psalm 15:2-3, 3-4, 4-5; James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

This homily was given at St. James and Our Lady of the Valley Churches, Vernon and Coldstream, BC, Canada. 

What do we make of the tensions in today’s readings between internal intentions and external actions; between observance of religious laws and traditions and what Jesus teaches is most important to God?

To some extent, I anticipate that most if not all of us have a high regard for laws, rules, and traditions, whether they are from God or from people; religious or secular. And there is nothing wrong with having a high regard for laws, rules, and traditions. In Canada, as in most or all developed countries at least, we speak of the “rule of law”—the Constitution and its Charter of Rights and Freedoms, civil and criminal law, precedent set by the rulings of several levels of courts of law—as a principle to govern our society. In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses instills among the people of Israel a “rule of law” system. Israel is to be ruled by God’s laws, which will not be difficult for the people to discern and observe. God’s laws, Moses says to the people of Israel, are not to be seen as an imposition or a nuisance, but as a gift.

Other nations around Israel at the time worshipped several gods, and many worshipped their human rulers as gods. Many gods and human rulers as gods meant complicated systems of laws for the people to follow. What, then, does God propose through Moses to Israel’s people? If there is one God, then there is one simplified system of laws to communicate to Israel the nearness to it of its God; the care of God for Israel. And so God asks rhetorically through Moses: “For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today”? The point is that no other nation would enjoy such closeness to its God. No other nation would enjoy the gift of a rule of law so intelligible and just as Israel would enjoy. This law would be a perfect echo of God’s voice, caring for and sustaining our well-being on earth, so there would be no need to add to or take away from it.

There is nothing wrong with laws, rules, and traditions, as long as we do not allow these laws, rules, and traditions in themselves to become our gods. This is the point Jesus makes in the Gospel of Mark from which we hear today; in his dispute with the Pharisees and scribes who come from Jerusalem to investigate how well Jesus and his disciples observe the laws about food, laws about the ritual purification of dishes and vessels for food and drink and their bodies.

Neither Jesus nor Mark, the Gospel writer, simply dismiss this set of laws the Jews had inherited from Moses’ time as unimportant. In fact, in this part of Mark’s Gospel we get a sense that, very soon after Jesus’ ascension to heaven, the earliest Christian communities had to contend with both Jews, who knew and followed the law given them through Moses, and Greek and Roman pagans, who did not, joining them. This is most likely why Mark explains the long list of laws the Jews had about food preparation and washing the food, the vessels to prepare the food, and themselves. The first Christian leaders after Jesus decided immediately that, as Jesus had taught and lived among them, their communities would include everybody: Jews and pagans alike who had come to believe in Jesus. This would create some uneasy tensions among different groups of people, each with their laws, rules, and traditions.

These laws, rules, and traditions would remain important, though, and even constructive of Christian community as long as these laws, rules, and traditions did not become gods in themselves. These laws, rules, and traditions would be praiseworthy as long as they were observed as a gift that pointed the people to the one God, who cares for and sustains our life and well-being here on earth. Neither could religious or cultural laws, rules, and traditions become reduced to decrees we merely follow externally, while they fail to change our hearts and bring us closer to God.

This is at the heart of Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees and scribes of his time, based on the words of the prophet Isaiah centuries before Jesus: “You hypocrites… ‘this people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.’” I offer this with a caveat that most Pharisees and other religious leaders of Jesus’ time followed with their hearts the sometimes-rigorous outward observance of religious law that they expected of themselves and everybody else. Mark’s Gospel today features a small group of Pharisees and scribes “from Jerusalem.” These were the self-proclaimed official police of observance of the Law of Moses, who thought themselves to be important because they had come from Jerusalem, the city at the centre of the Jewish faith. For them, the laws, rules, and traditions of faith were no longer a gift from God to point us back to God and to eternal life. They were no longer a sign of God’s care for us and for creation, but had been reduced to a means to power and prestige by this minority of religious leaders of Jesus’ time.

And when laws, rules, and traditions become inflexible, static means to power and prestige, how often does this show itself as self-righteous judgmentalism, in our own time as often as in the time of Jesus? If we appoint ourselves judges based on external observance of laws, rules, and traditions, we risk failing to discern accurately, as well as possible, the condition of the hearts of the faithful before God, which may or may not be well-reflected in external observance.

Yet how often do we hear, if we have not said ourselves, things like, “People who have committed or supported such-and-such an action should not receive communion? Those people come to Canada to take our jobs and change our culture and customs! How dare that person openly question that teaching; she or he is a heretic! That couple is ‘living in sin’”!

“This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me,” I imagine Jesus thinking of the people for whom laws, rules, and traditions become means to their own power and prestige instead of means toward patiently bringing external observances closer into line with the more universal longing of our hearts for God.

What, then, are the remedies for this self-righteousness; what we might call “Phariseeism”; for reducing laws, rules, and traditions, religious and otherwise, to means to power and prestige? First, I think it is important, as Jesus says in today’s Gospel, to recognize that evil (but also good) does not come from outside us; from external observances, no matter how faithful. Goodness or evil are conditions of the heart, of what is inside us. Second, as we hear in the Letter of James [the patron saint of this church], an important remedy to judging based on externals is to “be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive” ourselves.

We become “doers of the word” when we are deeply aware of the condition of our own hearts; the presence within each of us of good and evil. We become “doers of the word” when our external observances are a sincere reflection of the condition of our hearts; when we expect of others only what we ourselves are capable; when we consider everybody as loved by God and called to eternal life; when we consider nobody as excluded from the eternal life God offers us.

We become “doers of the word,” and our hearts are drawn to the heart of God, when the law becomes not a means to power if not to an abuse of power; when laws, rules, and traditions are not gods in themselves but a gift from God to point us to eternal life.

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 Sunday, 10 July 2016

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 30:10-14; Psalm 69:13, 17, 30-31, 33-34, 36, 37; Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Mercy: Is there a word more popular among Catholics; among Christians today, especially the many of us who admire and attentively follow Pope Francis? Our pope has mercy built into his motto as a bishop, Miserando atque eligendo, which means roughly, “by having mercy and by choosing.” In an interview a few months after his election as pope, Francis showed his deep sense of God’s mercy as essential to his life and ministry: “I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon”; chosen by God’s mercy as the Bishop of Rome to lead our Church. Mercy is one of the most common words in Pope Francis’ writings; his speech; his homilies. In April 2015, when Pope Francis proclaimed this Jubilee Year of Mercy we will be celebrating until December, he spoke of mercy as “the beating heart of the Gospel.”

But, as often as we; as Pope Francis speaks of mercy, how well do we actually understand and live out mercy? Is mercy not still one of the most mysterious and even scary words, even to the most faithful Christian? Should it not be?

Today we encounter in Luke’s Gospel a lawyer, literally a scholar of the law. I am not about to make any cheap jokes here about lawyers. I have a few personal friends who are lawyers, and there may be lawyers among us here this morning. Besides, I do not really want to follow Jesus in nearly being thrown off a cliff (as he does near the beginning of his public ministry in this same Gospel of Luke; it was a tough first attempt at preaching for Jesus)! In fact, the lawyer in today’s Gospel reading gets a bad rap, undeservedly at least at first. His motives are right, I think, as he asks Jesus: “Teacher… What must I do to inherit eternal life”? Who among us here does not want eternal life? If anybody here does not, I might question why you are here.

But the lawyer’s question is only a starting point. It takes this question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life,” for Jesus to begin the process of conversion of this lawyer; of us, from experts of religious law to experts of mercy; into people fully able and willing to live out God’s gift of mercy. How, then, does Jesus begin the process of the lawyer’s conversion from expert of law to expert of mercy? Jesus begins by meeting the lawyer where he is; by asking him basic first year law school questions: “What is written in the law? What do you read there”?

And the brilliant lawyer passes the test with flying colours; he even gets all the available bonus marks! He quotes from the heart of the Jewish Law, from a prayer that all observant Jews pray morning and night to this day and that is in our Bible in the Books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus: “Hear, O Israel… You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.”

But then the poor lawyer gets scared. Jesus announces with joy to the lawyer that he has just aced the graduate-level law course that sends most every student cowering. “Great work”! Now, “do this and you will live.” Next up is Mercy 101, which will last the rest of your life, not in the class or courtroom but in practice. You will die, unsure of having passed Mercy 101 until you are raised up and received into heaven by God with mercy beyond the comprehension of the best of students and even of the experts.

The lawyer sputters with fear: “And who is my neighbour”? Jesus could and maybe should have failed the lawyer on the spot. Clearly he is not ready for Mercy 101. Instead, Jesus uses this ideal teaching moment; a “mercy moment,” to give us the story of the Good Samaritan.

We all know the story of the Good Samaritan, right? A man on the road “from Jerusalem to Jericho” is beaten and left “half dead.” A priest and then a Levite, people in a position to help the wounded man, instead cross over to “the other side” of the road and continue on their way. A Samaritan becomes the unlikely hero. I say unlikely because the Samaritans were the enemies; the greatest misfits in Israel in Jesus’ time: Too pagan to be Jewish and too Jewish to be pagan. And yet this Samaritan binds up the man’s wounds, cares for him, and then entrusts him to an innkeeper, promising to pay any extra expenses, until the man is healed.

We know the story of the Good Samaritan well. Or do we? What if I were to suggest that the story of the Good Samaritan is taking place here and now? I suggest this not only because in our world, in our nation, within our families, even within our Church there continue to be people excluded; laughingstocks; enemies, although this is, sadly, part of our story. We would not experience Orlando; Istanbul and Baghdad; St. Paul and Baton Rouge; Dallas; countless tragedies met with silence, were the dignity of all human life honoured regardless of race, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, wealth, age, occupation, whether we are born or unborn, and so on… We would not need to wait for unlikely heroes; the Good Samaritans of our time (among them let me propose Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini) to stand with the excluded; those, literally or figuratively, left “half-dead” on the roadside or worse, because there would be nobody excluded; no “other”; no enemy, but each of us a neighbour.

“Do this and you will live,” Jesus says to the lawyer; to us. “Who is my neighbour?” the lawyer asks and then answers his own question; our question: “The one who showed… mercy.”

Mercy: This reason we live, this “beating heart of the Gospel,” perhaps scares us. We cannot fully comprehend mercy before we experience it in heaven. Yet in this world we are given many tastes; many previews of this fullness of mercy. Our world itself, creation, is a work of God’s mercy. Our Church gives us Christ, mercy really present in our Eucharist under the appearance of bread and wine; mercy really present in her other sacraments; mercy really present in one another and waiting to be worked in our world.

Mercy is present; spoken of in the Word of God. Moses speaks today in Deuteronomy: Mercy, God’s greatest law and gift, is neither “too hard” for us nor “too far away”; neither confined to the distant heavens nor “beyond the sea” but “in [our mouths] and in [our hearts] for [us] to observe.” We plead with the Psalmist to our God of “steadfast love… According to your abundant mercy, turn to me.” For “those who love [God’s] name,” Mercy, “will live in it.”

And the great hymn from Colossians speaks of Christ, God’s greatest act of mercy yet, as the one in whom “all things hold together,” from God’s creation of the world of which Christ is “firstborn” to our “peace through the blood of his cross”; from act of mercy to act of mercy.

God’s mercy is so great as to be overwhelming; often scary. Yet we are called to imitate this mercy as neighbours; without exclusion. And who is our neighbour? Who are we but the ones who show mercy?

“Go and do likewise”… “Do this and [we] will live.”
    

Homily for Sunday, 30 August 2015

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8; Psalm 15:2-3, 3-4, 4-5; James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

If we were to capture our readings today in pithy phrases or slogans, what would these phrases or slogans be?

Imagine Moses, long before it was popular in small towns to appoint somebody with a powerful voice as “town crier,” standing before the people and crying out loudly, “Hear ye! Year ye!” Moses does essentially this in the first reading we hear today, from Deuteronomy. “Now, Israel, hear the statutes and decrees, which I am teaching you to observe,” Moses says to the people he is leading through the desert into Israel. Moses’ message is more important than that of any town crier. Moses, unlike a town crier, is not simply reciting the daily news aloud in the town square for all to hear. Moses is asking the people to hear the Word of God; the Law of God. In the Hebrew culture of the time, before the Word of God was widely read or seen, it was primarily a message to be heard.

“Hear ye! Hear, O Israel!” For the people of Israel, whether or not they hear Moses’ message attentively is a matter of life and death. It is a matter of whether or not they will be able to inherit the land God has promised them and to prosper in it. “Hear the statutes and decrees, which I am teaching you to observe,” Moses says, “that you may live.”

What are some life-and-death messages we might hear today? I suppose that if a disaster were to strike where I am and I had a chance to avoid it and maybe to help others to safety in the process, I would want to hear: How long until disaster strikes? Where can we go for safety? If we or one of our loved ones were to become severely ill, and some kind of medical treatment were able to increase quality if not time of life, would we not want to hear this message from a doctor?

Yet most messages we hear, see, or read today are not, at least immediately, life-and-death. I do not mean by this that to hear, see, and read the daily news is not important or to be encouraged. I and many if not most of us read the newspaper; watch newscasts on television; connect to the internet on a daily basis. Our news is interesting; informative when it is not infuriating or distressing, like seemingly continual news about recent violence in our city; our nation; our world. But our daily news is usually not life-and-death. Yet how many of us would think of the Word of God as a life-and-death message?

I do not wish to discourage us if we have difficulty hearing God’s Word as life-and-death. Most if not all of us are here because we receive what we would not receive if we were not here. We receive nourishment of body and spirit from Christ really, truly present in our Eucharist. We are here in the presence of God and of one another as beloved friends; ourselves “one Body; one Spirit in Christ.” We receive the gift of the Word of God. And then we are sent forth from this celebration strengthened to act with truth, justice, and kindness in our world and in our everyday relationships.

But for Moses, for the people he leads through the desert to their promised land, and ideally for us, God’s Word; the Law, God’s Commandments means more than nourishment. To hear the Word of God well means more than impressing other people or nations, although Moses promises that other nations will say of Israel if they hear God’s Word well: “This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people.” To hear God’s Word well means more than the recognition by people of other faiths of how close our God is to us: At the same time our best friend and our Savior. God’s Law, or any law, means more than the greatness of the rule of law in and of itself. For Moses; for the people Moses leads through the desert; for us, the Word of God; the Law of God that we hear in Scripture is life-and-death. “That you may live”: This, our salvation, is Moses’ goal; God’s goal for us in inviting us to “hear”!

“Hear ye”! If this is Moses’ message in Deuteronomy captured in a pithy saying or slogan, St. James’ message in our second reading might be summed up as, “Just do it.” This predates Nike and its sales of high-quality shoes with a simple yet fashionable “swoosh” logo by almost two thousand years. Go James!

“Just do it,” we hear from the Letter of James today. To hear the Word of God is not enough if we do not act upon it. To hear but not to act on the Word of God, James says, is to delude ourselves. In this same part of his letter (this verse is left out of today’s reading), James compares the hearer of God’s word who is not also a doer to one who “looks at his” or her “own face in a mirror” and “then promptly… forgets what he” or she “looked like.” This image is absurd, and so we become absurd if we hear the Word of God but do not act on it. For us to hear and then not to act on God’s Word is impossible.

So how does James ask us to act on the Word of God we hear; “the Word of truth” that “is able to save [our] souls”? First, James says, care for society’s most vulnerable: “orphans and widows in their affliction.” We could add in our time refugees and migrants, those who are poor, especially the working poor; the underemployed and unemployed; those who are sick; people whose lives are marred by violence; the homeless… James does not say, “Check their papers to see if they are legally entitled to our care; to be in our country.” James invites us to hear and to act on the Word of God. “Just do it”! And do not act in ways contrary to the Word of God. “Keep oneself unstained by the world”; unstained by gossip; by passive-aggression; by violent actions or speech; by ideological polarization; by indifference to those in need; by any form of indignity toward human life and creation.

“Just do it”! Better yet, James says, if we hear the Word of God attentively we will naturally act on it. Jesus’ message in Mark’s Gospel is similar to that of James: Hear and then act on the Word of God. If James cautions those who hear and then do not act on God’s Word, Jesus addresses perhaps a much more common problem, both in his time, with the Pharisees, and in our time: Those who act without properly hearing the Word of God that is the foundation of all we do as people of faith. The Pharisees’ ritual purification of vessels; of beds; of their own bodies was not wrong. But it had become an obsession. Many had not paused to ask a brief but important question: “Why”? Why do we wash our “cups and jugs and kettles and beds”; our hands? Are we paying enough attention to what is within us that needs purification? Are we attentive enough to purify ourselves of the “evils” Jesus lists in our Gospel reading; of our prejudices and unjust judgments of one another; of divisions among races, among Christian people, among nations, and among and within families?

If Moses says to us today, “Hear ye,” and James says to us, “Just do it” (better yet, if you hear rightly you will also naturally do, but this slogan loses its pithiness), might Jesus be saying: “Hear and do, but for the right reason”?

Jesus invites us to discern; not be afraid to ask, “Why? What are  our reasons; our intentions for acting in a particular way; for our acts of personal devotion; for gathering here to worship; for any of our good works”? As individuals and as Church, we can only be strengthened by this careful discernment of our intentions. And so indeed, “Hear ye”! And when we hear the Word of God as Christians, “Just do it”: Act on the Word of God we hear, but for the right reasons and with the right intentions.