Homily for Sunday, 30 July 2017

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 3:5, 7-12; Psalm 119:57, 72, 76-77, 127-128, 129-130; Romans 8:28-30; Matthew 13:44-52

This homily was given at St. Clare and St. Alphonsus Churches, Edmonton, AB, Canada

If we were able to ask God for anything; if God were to say to us what he once said to Solomon and that we hear today, “Ask what I should give you,” for what would we ask God?

I am teaching this summer here in Edmonton at St. Joseph’s College of the University of Alberta. I know some teachers (and I have said this myself) who refer to the kind of question I have just asked as the famous, or perhaps infamous, “teacher’s leading question.” We know already, from our first reading today, that what Solomon asks for, wisdom to govern the people of Israel, pleases God. Solomon could have asked God for anything: “Long life or riches, or for the life of [his] enemies,” and God would gladly have granted it to him. Instead Solomon asks this of God: “Give your servant… an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this, your great people”? To return to the classroom analogy, Solomon is like the eager and brilliant student, always the first to raise a hand, who gives us the best answer— although here there is no wrong answer to God’s initial invitation— “Ask what I should give you.”

To God’s invitation, there is a good answer, a better answer, and a best answer, and Solomon gives the best answer: “Give your servant… an understanding mind… able to discern between good and evil.” All we might need to do now, if God were to ask us to ask him for anything we wished, is to answer, “What Solomon said.” This is what makes God’s invitation to Solomon and to us to ask for anything a kind of “leading question”; the kind of question a teacher would ask students in a classroom, the correct answers to which the teacher already has in mind.

Solomon’s answer; his petition to God to give him wisdom and the ability “to discern between good and evil” is the best answer. Would it not be wonderful if more, if not all, the people who govern us; who hold public office or are otherwise in positions of power were to make Solomon’s prayerful wish more profoundly their own? This, though, does not mean that how we would answer God if God offered to give us anything we wished would not be a good answer or at least a good try. God invites us here, as he once invited Solomon, to be honest with ourselves, not only to give the answer we think would most please God (although pleasing God is important), but to answer from our hearts: What would we most desire if God were to invite us to ask for anything we desired?

What is wrong with asking, as perhaps God might have expected Solomon to ask, “for… long life or riches”? Nothing is wrong, essentially, with asking for these things. Might we also ask for peace in our world, our communities, and our families? Might we ask for God’s mercy toward the sick, the suffering, and those who have died? Might we ask for God to guide and protect our Church? If we were to ask, since it was apparently one of the options possible for Solomon, for the lives “of [our] enemies,” we might need to talk. We and God might need to talk…

Humour aside, these are only a few of the items on our “wish list” we might have if God were to offer to give us anything we desired. And every time we are at Mass, we offer God our wish list. We call this wish list, our list of petitions to God, the Prayer of the Faithful. “Lord, hear our prayer”… There is nothing wrong with this; in fact, to pray this way is to be encouraged and an important part of our Mass.

In our Prayer of the Faithful, in the dialogue we hear today between God and Solomon, in God’s pleasure at Solomon’s wish for wisdom and discernment, and in our daily prayers and petitions, we have a sense of what St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God.” In other words, we cannot go wrong if all our deepest desires stem from love for God and love for one another. And so go ahead; raise your hand up in class when the teacher asks one of those leading questions. Answer God’s invitation: Pray without worrying about whether you are asking for the right things. Be bold, yet be honest: What do you desire most? If you love God and neighbour, or at least are trying your best to love, there is no unworthy desire. There is no wrong answer. There is no bad prayer. After all, God did say to Solomon, “Ask what I should give you.” Here, God says the same to us.

Some of us may know the heartwarming childhood story one of the Church’s great saints, Thérèse of Lisieux, tells about herself in her autobiography, her Story of a Soul. One day, her sister Léonie (who eventually entered the Sisters of the Visitation; all the other sisters of the family became Carmelites in Lisieux) was giving away her toys that she had outgrown and no longer played with. Each of the sisters chose their favourite item from the giveaway basket. And then along came Thérèse, who announced “I want everything,” and then, as she says in The Story of a Soul, made off “without further ado” with the entire basket!

“Ask what I should give you”… “I want everything”! Later, St. Thérèse would refine her desire for “everything” into a desire to be everything for the love of God and of God’s people; of us. This once impish, sassy child would come to understand that “love included all vocations, that love was everything, that it embraced all times and all places; in a word, that [love] is eternal,” and that “in the heart of the Church,” she was to be “love.”

“All things work together for good for those who love God.” In Thérèse of Lisieux and King Solomon we have two prime examples of people who loved and desired God above all else. In loving and desiring God, they were able to proclaim boldly and honestly, “I desire wisdom and discernment”; “I want everything… In the heart of the Church, I shall be love.” In the same way God invites us to desire all that stems from love of God and shows itself in works of love toward one another. And God promises us that, for those who love; for those who desire love above all, “all things work together for good.”

Those who desire love will enter “the Kingdom of Heaven” of which Jesus speaks in the parables of our Gospel reading today. Those who desire love will find “the treasure hidden in a field” or the “pearl of great value” and will give anything up for it. Those who desire love will be found among the righteous; “the good” who will be saved, because “the Kingdom of Heaven” is where our desire for love will meet Love itself, God, who has created us to love as he loves us.

Heaven is the place for the bold and the honest; those unafraid to put up our hands first; unafraid of not having worked out the best answer yet when God asks us that leading question: What do you most desire? “Ask what I should give you.”

Lord God, we desire wisdom. We desire the grace to discern good from evil and to do good. We desire the entire basket of toys; “everything” that works “together for [our] good.” We desire the “treasure hidden in a field”; the “pearl of great value.” We desire to be saved. We desire eternal life with you in “the Kingdom of Heaven.” We desire love, O God. Show us to love. Show us, “in the heart of the Church,” in the heart of our world that thirsts for your love, to be love, for it is in being love that, embracing “all times and all places,” we have and are everything we most deeply desire.

Homily for Thursday, 8 June 2017– Ferial

Thursday of the 9th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Tobit 6:10-11, 7:1bcde, 9-17, 8:4-9a; Psalm 128:1-2, 3, 4-5; Mark 12:28-34

How many of us enjoy reading novels? I am more of a non-fiction than fiction reader, even when reading for pleasure, outside of studies or spiritual reading. And yet one of my brother Basilian priests I have lived with in community will often announce, as he is going to bed at night, that he will go and enjoy some of his “trashy novel” before falling asleep. Whether he is actually about to read a novel or the quality of the novel are irrelevant; the humorous effect of the “trashy novel” announcement is what matters.

The Book of Tobit is among a few legend or “novelette”-type books of the Bible. And, if I dare say, although I am no expert on Tobit, the more I read and pray with Tobit, the more this book fascinates me. Certainly Tobit is no “trashy novel”; it is a legendary yet profound story of love, of suffering, of mercy, and of God’s presence in all these events surrounding Tobit, his family, and his people of Israel who are in exile in Babylon.

Today, within the Book of Tobit, we are treated to what I think is one of the Bible’s most beautiful prayers: That of Sarah, daughter of Edna and Raguel, and Tobiah, son of Tobit, as they are about to go to bed on the night of their wedding. If we follow Tobit, we know that Sarah’s and Tobiah’s wedding night was no time for either of them to read themselves to sleep with a “trashy novel.” Sarah had been married seven times before marrying Tobiah. Each time, her husbands had been killed on their wedding night by the “demon Asmodeus.” And so, instead of reading themselves to sleep with novels of dubious quality (or, if this had taken place today, would they have watched television or been surfing the internet on their laptops, tablets, or smartphones?), Sarah and Tobiah pray together. “The angel Raphael,” whose name incidentally means, “God heals,” has already promised to protect Tobiah from meeting the same end as Sarah’s previous seven husbands.

Of course,  I have a special reason to love the prayer of Sarah and Tobiah that we hear today. A week from Saturday my sister Deanna and brother-in-law Tyler will celebrate ten years of marriage. The first reading they chose for their wedding celebration included the prayer of Sarah and Tobiah we hear today.

And so, especially for the married couples, future married couples, and everybody among us still discerning prayerfully a possible vocation to marriage, please let me echo the prayer of Sarah and Tobiah for you, perhaps several times between now and when I go to bed tonight. And I suggest that you pray this prayer for one another: “Blessed are you, O God of our fathers, praised be your name forever and ever.” May our God “who made Adam and… gave him his wife Eve to be his help and support” bless and keep our married couples and those who are engaged or discerning marriage. May they be strengthened and kept healthy and happy for the “noble purpose” of reflecting your face; your mercy; your love to one another in a world that often leaves our married and discerning couples feeling “alone,” against your will for your people, O Lord. “Call down your mercy upon” our current and future married couples, “and allow [them] to live together to a happy old age.”

“Amen, amen.”

Homily for Tuesday, 19 May 2015– Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 20:17-27; Psalm 68:10-11, 20-21; John 17:1-11a

How do we know we are in the right vocation? I am asked questions like this regularly, especially around important anniversaries like those of ordination to the priesthood or profession of religious vows: “When did you know for sure you were being called to be a priest”?

I would like to ask all of us the same questions: When did you know you were living the vocation to which God called you, if you have discerned this yet? How do you know you are in the “right” vocation?

Many will say to me how much of a sacrifice the priesthood must be, but is there not as much or more sacrifice in living out the vocation to marriage, in raising children, in living consecrated single life, or in taking religious vows as a sister or brother? And yet there is great joy in all these vocations if this is the vocation to which God is calling or has called you. There is great joy for me; greater than any sacrifice, to being a priest in a religious community.

So again, how might we discern the vocation to which God is calling us? In our readings today, we hear that Jesus’ first Apostles made great sacrifices to follow our Lord. In Acts, St. Paul recognizes that he is at the end of his life; that he may be “going to Jerusalem for the last time, to face death for his faith. St. Paul is also saddened for the people he has served so faithfully; those who will probably never see him again.

And yet Paul is convinced that he has lived the right vocation all along. How does Paul know this? He knows that he is in the vocation to which God has called him because his ministry has never been about him, but the people he serves. Paul says in his parting words to the Christians at Ephesus: “I did not shrink from proclaiming to you the entire plan of God.”

Jesus also knows that he has followed after “the entire plan of God”; he is convinced of the vocation to which God the Father has called him. Jesus prays in John’s Gospel, as he is about to die for us on the cross, “Give glory to your Son… so that your Son may give eternal life to all you gave him.” Jesus’ vocation has never been about him, but so that all whom God has called him; his disciples; we might have “eternal life.”

And Jesus asks, “What is eternal life”? What is the very purpose for God having sent us his Son, Jesus Christ? “This is eternal life,” Jesus says, “That they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.”

This is “eternal life.” This is why God has sent us Jesus Christ, God’s only Son. This is the very mark of our having discerned the vocation to which God has called us. This is how we know we are living the vocation to which God has called us: When our vocation is bringing us closer to God; when our vocation is leading us closer to eternal life; to knowing God; to this ultimate vocation to which we are all called.

Homily for Saturday, 28 March 2015‒ Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 37:21-28; Responsorial Canticle: Jeremiah 31:10, 11-12abcd, 13; John 11:45-56

Who are prophets among us today, those whom we recognize and those whom we do not recognize?

Our Gospel reading today from John presents us with an unlikely prophet: The high priest Caiaphas. How many of us are thinking, “Caiaphas, a prophet, really? Does Caiaphas not contribute to the evil that results in Jesus’ death?”

Indeed Caiaphas contributes to Jesus’ death, but he speaks some of the most prophetic words in John’s Gospel to the Sanhedrin, the governing body of Jewish religious authorities in Jesus’ time. Caiaphas says: “You know nothing, nor do you consider that it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish.” John explains that Caiaphas prophesies Jesus’ death “not only for the nation, but also to gather into one the dispersed children of God.”

Let us put John’s explanation here into historical context: By the time of Jesus, the people of Israel had a long history of failing to listen to prophets. True prophets like Ezekiel, whom we have heard in our first reading today, and Jeremiah, whom we have heard in our Responsorial Canticle, were ignored, persecuted, or even killed for doing exactly what Jesus did: Trying to gather Israel, God’s chosen people, into one nation. Because these true prophets were ignored and prosecuted, the people of Israel suffered periods of exile and occupation by neighboring nations.

Ironically, precisely because most religious authorities ignored and then planned to kill Jesus, Caiaphas’ prophecy that Jesus was the one “to gather into one the dispersed children of God” by his death came true; is still coming true today. We are a people being gathered together under Christ our Lord.

Who are the prophets today who signal our being gathered together as one people; as God’s people? Who are the unrecognized; unheralded prophets among us? Can we think of anybody today who, like the high priest Caiaphas, is disagreeable or even wicked, but who occasionally speaks profound words of truth, even unintentionally: Words that unite; words that examine our motivations; words that might expose some of our own sin; our own need for repentance?

Who are the Caiaphas figures of our time? Does it not take more discernment; more effort on our part to find the grain of truth that a false prophet like Caiaphas speaks, and to live this truth for our own good? This it does, and yet this is the calling to us through the Word of God today: To discern prophecy; to discern truth even from the unlikeliest of sources. The dull, those of weak faith, the disagreeable, and even the wicked are sometimes as much instruments of God as the strong, true, and faithful prophets to do God’s work: To gather us together as one people under Christ our Lord.

Homily for Friday, 24 October 2014– Ferial

Friday of the 29th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ephesians 4:1-6; Psalm 24:1-2, 3-4ab, 5-6; Luke 12:54-59

How does Jesus call us “to interpret the present time”? In the Gospel reading we hear today, Jesus criticizes “the crowds” of his time, those who follow Jesus from place to place, who hear his message, but do not wish to commit to the radical but ultimately saving demands of his message; his Gospel.

We hear Jesus admonish two particular groups of people: First, those who can predict rain when “a cloud” rises “in the west” and heat when the wind is “from the south” but cannot “interpret the present” signs of the kingdom of God, beginning with Jesus’ presence among them. Second, Jesus speaks against legalistic types who bring petty disputes before higher courts instead of settling them among themselves.

I have no personal slight against lawyers. I know of faithful and honest lawyers here in our parish. But I do have a soft spot in my heart for meteorologists. My father is a retired weather forecaster. Once, during my second stint teaching in Colombia, I was on pilgrimage, riding on the back of a Jeep in the mountains with other Basilian seminarians and people of the coffee and banana farming community we were visiting.  Farmers are interested in the weather, and so I was interested in the discussion they were having on the back of the Jeep. I was even able to predict correctly the storms that would hit or miss us that day. Was I channeling my father’s forecasting skill, or was this sheer luck? I suspect it was the latter.

Jesus’ point in our Gospel reading (perhaps meteorologists like my father and some lawyers may disagree) is that there is something more important than the weather or manipulating the law to resolve disputes in our favor. Most importantly, we are invited “to interpret the present time.” How do we do this?

One Vatican II document that speaks verbatim of discerning “the signs of the times” is the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes. This document laments much of the state of the world in 1965, from hunger, widening disparity between rich and poor, challenges of rapid improvements in technology and social communication (well before Facebook and Twitter!), spiritual indifference especially among youth, to the arms race and increasing destructiveness of war. And yet Gaudium et Spes was criticized by some as too optimistic!

The bishops who wrote Gaudium et Spes were optimistic or, better yet, discerned one point with profound accuracy: Despite the world’s problems, there is still a longing for God. Gaudium et Spes begins by acknowledging “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of [people] of this age” as the same “joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the followers of Christ.”

Is this not the most significant sign of “the present time”? Jesus invites us “to interpret the present time”; to discern “the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of [people] of this age”; to discern God’s presence in our midst and to build the Kingdom of God, a project brought to the present time through the life and Gospel message of Christ.