Homily for Sunday, 27 November 2022– First Sunday of Advent, Year A

Readings of the day: Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122:1-2, 3-4, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:27-44

What words of hope we have heard today!

The prophet Isaiah says, about “Judah and Jerusalem, ‘In days to come the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains…raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream toward it.” Israel, faithful once again to its God—our God—would know no more injustice, no more war… swords beaten “into ploughshares and… spears into pruning hooks.”

This is quite the grand prophecy of a glorious future for Israel, for “Judah and Jerusalem.” This is especially true if we consider the sorry state Israel and its leadership were in during the time of Isaiah. The prophetic ministry of Isaiah overlaps with the reigns of two especially bad kings in Jerusalem, Jotham and Ahaz, and then the reign of Hezekiah, who tried to reform both religious practice (no more worship of idols; Israel would worship only the one God) and social practice (against corruption and disregard for the poor). But the damage was already done. Israel was on track to be sacked by the stronger nations around it, and its people exiled to Babylon.

Just before the prophecy we hear today from Isaiah, the prophet warns Israel of the consequences of its sin—idolatry and social injustice—in stark terms. Yet, even in that first chapter of Isaiah, there is hope for Israel. Isaiah gives Israel the opportunity to “set things right… Though your sins may be like scarlet, they may become white as snow.”

And then the prophecy we hear today, from Chapter 2 of Isaiah, is decidedly hopeful. Especially considering the depth of Israel’s sin, it is remarkable that Isaiah prophecies that sin, the invasion and destruction of Israel, Jerusalem and its temple, the succession of bad kings, the Babylonian Exile would not be the end of Israel as a nation. Israel would not only recover from all this, but Jerusalem would “be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills.” The temple of Jerusalem would be rebuilt, even more magnificent than before. There would be peace, right worship of the one God of Israel, and special care for the poor and disadvantaged, the widow, the orphan, the foreigner.

In contrast to Isaiah 2—and similar to Isaiah 1—Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew today strikes a much starker, foreboding tone. Jesus speaks to his disciples—and to us—about the end of time, his return, “the coming of the Son of Man” to judge the world. Jesus compares the events of the end of time with those of Noah’s time, when God sent a flood to wipe out the entire human race except for Noah and his family, so great was human wickedness on the earth.

A frequent theme in our Gospel reading today is the unknown. Jesus says about the people of Noah’s time that “they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away.” Likewise, Jesus says of his return at the end of time: “You do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”

I am not sure that to say to somebody—to us—that we cannot know, cannot prepare for a future event is all that reassuring. Imagine if your instructor in a course here at the university, instead of presenting clearly when each assignment was due and when exams were, said in the syllabus, “You do not [and cannot] know on what day your exam will be held. Too bad.” I am sure that would do wonders for students’ already-heightened anxiety. Thankfully we, your instructors, do not do this! There is reason to be hopeful, both about our studies and about the end of time!

But then imagine the anxiety of Jesus’ disciples when he said to them that they could “not know on what day” he would return, what day would be the end of time. Thankfully, Jesus gives us a way in which we can be prepared for his return, even if we cannot know its precise day. He says to his disciples, “Keep awake, therefore,” and, “You must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

How do we maintain hope, especially in this Advent time of hopeful waiting for our Lord’s return, and not allow anxiety to get the better of us? Jesus says, very simply, “Keep awake… be ready.” Isaiah’s message is similar to Jesus’ message, many hundreds of years before Jesus. How were the people of Isaiah’s time to “keep awake” and “be ready”? Isaiah says that they were to do so by acting with justice, especially toward the poor, the disadvantaged. The people to whom Isaiah prophesied were to “keep awake” and “be ready” by worshiping only the one God of Israel, our God, and not the gods of other nations. They were to “keep awake” and “be ready” by not making military and political alliances with one great nation surrounding Israel in an effort to avoid invasion by another.

“Keep awake… be ready”: In his letter to the Romans that we hear today, St. Paul is as insistent as Jesus is in our Gospel about the nearness of Jesus’ return in glory: “Now is the moment for you to wake from sleep… The night is far gone; the day is near.” St. Paul uses powerful imagery of putting “on the armour of light” and living “honourably as in the day.”

Sisters and brothers, for us not to be overtaken by anxiety at these words and images of St. Paul, of Jesus, of Isaiah, but to understand and live this message as hopeful, we must “keep awake” and “be ready.” The word of God today and through this time of Advent invites us today to hope in the return of our Lord at the end of time in a way that spurs us into action. Hope is not and cannot be a passive virtue. Hope must lead us to act concretely for justice, for peace in our world beginning in our own hearts, our households, our workplaces, our places of leisure, our Church. As we pray in our Psalm today, hope must lead us to seek the good of “the house of the Lord our God.” Sisters and brothers, we are a living “house of the Lord our God.” Let us pray with growing urgency for one another, then, “‘Peace be within you.’ For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.”

To seek one another’s good is to seek the salvation of one another by the end of time, but it is also to ensure that essential needs of our brothers and sisters are met now. If we are the living, active, hopeful “house of the Lord our God,” then the poorest and least advantaged of our world, of the people we ourselves encounter day to day, must be the cornerstone of the house of God that we are.

At Mass we pray, in the prayer Jesus taught us, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This is the ultimate Advent prayer of hope. But it presupposes action on our part to build the reign of justice, peace, salvation that God wills for us, “on earth as it is in heaven.” We offer one another a sign of peace. As we do that, at every Mass, could we not pray quietly the words of the Psalmist for the person we are greeting with peace: For your sake, “for the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good”?

This is how we “keep [actively] awake.” This is how we nourish the hope that dawns anew in us in this time of Advent. Our worship connects with our seeking one another’s good, one another’s salvation ultimately. Isaiah speaks of this essential connection between right worship and right practice of justice, peace, loving kindness. St. Paul speaks in contrasts: Putting “on the armour of light” instead of darkness, acting as people “of the day” and not of night, passive and anxious.

It is no accident, elsewhere in St. Paul’s writings, that hope is the middle virtue, the hinge point, of the three so-called “theological virtues,” faith, hope, and love. Active hope arises from our faith and it naturally leads us to love God, our neighbour, and ourselves. “The greatest of these is love,” yes, but hope is the virtue of keeping awake so that we may love.

My sisters and brothers, as we begin this time of Advent, I pray, “Peace be with you… Peace be within you.” May we act with justice, act and live with kindness. May we be a people of hope: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” May we be a people that seeks one another’s good, a people who keeps awake and is actively ready for the return of the Lord, our salvation and our peace.

Homily for Sunday, 6 December 2020– Second Sunday of Advent, Year B

Readings of the day: Isaiah 40: 1-5, 9-11; Psalm 85: 9-10, 11-12, 13-14; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8

This homily was given through St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, via Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

When we hear today’s readings—beautiful, comforting, and timely for our celebration of Advent—do any of us immediately think of George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah”? I am often tempted to break out into song from those very first words we hear today from the prophet Isaiah: “‘Comfort, O comfort my people,’ says your God, ‘Speak tenderly to Jerusalem”…

In fact, after an instrumental introduction to Handel’s “Messiah,” the next three movements of the “Messiah” follow the first part of our reading today from Isaiah closely: “Comfort Ye”; “Every Valley”; “And the Glory of the Lord… Shall be Revealed”! Handel’s glorious libretto, which begins with these as-glorious, comforting words from Isaiah we hear in today’s first reading, draws me into the “Messiah,” every time I hear it.

But, when we hear these first movements of Handel’s “Messiah,” or the prophecy of Isaiah on which they are based, do we ever pause to think of the original context of the time of Isaiah; of what experiences of the people of Israel inspired Isaiah to speak this message of comfort to them?

Fr. Jim spoke a bit about this last Sunday: Bible scholars believe that the Book of Isaiah as we know it is probably the work of at least three authors from three different phases of about a seventy-year period of ancient Israel’s history called the Babylonian Exile. Isaiah the First was active in the years just before the people of Israel were deported into exile in Babylon, through the beginning of the Exile itself. He tried, mostly without success, to warn the people of Israel and its kings that their injustices against their most vulnerable people and their worship of other nations’ false gods in a vain attempt to fend off these nations’ greater economic and military power would result in Israel’s ruin and exile. Isaiah the Second was active during the latter part of the Exile; Isaiah the Third prepared the people of Israel to return home, and to rebuild once they were back in Israel.

Today we hear the beginning of the prophecy of Isaiah the Second. If we were to read from just before the part of Isaiah we heard proclaimed a few minutes ago (maybe a little bit of homework—optional, of course—if we do not already have our fair share of end-of-term assignments and exams to focus on?), we would notice a distinct change in tone at, “Comfort, O comfort my people.” Just before this point in the Book of Isaiah, (First) Isaiah is still trying to warn Israel’s king of the impending exile to Babylon.

And then there is a great shift in Isaiah: “Comfort, O comfort my people,” (Second) Isaiah says to a people still in exile. Jerusalem, religious and royal center of Israel, was by then a distant memory. Many Israelites, we can imagine, would have given up hope by this point of ever returning to their homeland. They or the generations before them had witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, the heart of their religious practice, at the hands of the Babylonians. If they were ever able to return home, the people of Israel would be returning to ruins.

This is the glum context of Isaiah’s prophecy of comfort and God’s pardon. But Isaiah does not stop there. Isaiah gives his people some homework: Not a test to study for, or a paper to write, or a Bible passage to read. No, Isaiah asks the people of Israel to return to their ruined homeland, to Jerusalem, and to rebuild it, and also to rebuild all the roads leading back to their homeland. “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God,” Isaiah says to the people of Israel.

“Some comfort,” we might imagine many of the Israelites in Isaiah’s time thinking. We can only have comfort at the price of doing our homework; of rebuilding Israel from its ruins! We might imagine that many Israelites never took up Isaiah’s call to return and rebuild, but enough of them did. And they built Jerusalem back better than before. They rebuilt Jerusalem’s Temple. They made “straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Valleys were raised; ground leveled; hills “made low.” “Righteousness and peace”; peace and justice, in the beautiful imagery of our Psalm today, seemed to “kiss each other.”

But then, as the years passed, the people of Israel gradually forgot that right worship of God involves right action, especially in favour of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, the poorest, the sick, the lost, the persecuted and the abandoned; those without a voice among our sisters and brothers. Israel (like any nation including our own will do, if we let it) fell into disrepair: Physical, but also religious and moral. Several nations would take it over, one after another. Jerusalem’s glorious Second Temple would be destroyed by the Romans. Righteousness and peace, instead of kissing each other, would be driven back into exile from the hearts of Israel’s people.

Into this renewed mess of Roman-occupied Israel stepped (or waded, in the Jordan River) John the Baptist. “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the LORD; make his paths straight,” John preached as he baptized people in the Jordan. Sound familiar?

That homework that Isaiah gave his people in his time, well, it was the same homework that John gave the people he baptized in the Jordan. John the Baptist led and preached by example. He did the same homework Isaiah and he asked of us, preparing “the way of the LORD”: “I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he (Jesus) will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

I do not want to discourage us, sisters and brothers, but the homework Isaiah, John the Baptist, and then Jesus have assigned us is still not finished. Great, that is just what we need, the everlasting homework assignment, right? We will finish it and turn it in—do not despair—but only at the end of time, when Jesus returns to us as he promised. This, as much and even more than the anniversary of Jesus’ birth we celebrate at Christmas, is what we wait for; what this time of Advent is all about.

And we are uniquely strengthened by the gift of the Holy Spirit John the Baptist foretold and Jesus the Lord himself gave us at our baptism and confirmation, sisters and brothers, to complete this homework assignment; this feat of desert highway engineering!

But how do we complete our homework successfully, between now and the end of time? We do not need to look far: Take time to comfort somebody we know who is alone, who may be struggling with their mental health (especially during this COVID-19 pandemic and its distance from human contact), or who needs help with work, study, or some other task. Give to the poor; to those who can ensure the disadvantaged have food, shelter, clothing, medical care... Speak up, support, or volunteer for organizations that defend human rights regardless of race, religion, or any other factor; that defend the migrant and the refugee; that defend the environment; that defend all human life from conception to natural death... Forgive those who have wronged us. Seek forgiveness from God; from those we have wronged; from ourselves. Pray for one another. Practice simple acts of kindness toward one another.

This is how we “prepare the way of the LORD”; how we “make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” This is how we will reach the destination of our highway, which is eternal life; heaven (which is much better even than that A+ on any typical homework assignment).

This is how we live this prophetic message: “O comfort my people… Make straight in the desert a highway for our God… Speak tenderly,” words of consolation and forgiveness. This is how we will “see… together” the glory of God we proclaim together with Isaiah (the First, Second, and Third); with John the Baptist; with all the prophets and saints. This is how righteousness and peace “kiss each other” (or at least bow or text “peace” over Zoom, if we are concerned about physical distancing for now). This is like that glorious piece of music we can only fully appreciate as we live by it, as we complete our homework; our highway for our God: A sound more glorious yet than Handel’s “Messiah”; a sound that will draw still more of our sisters and brothers toward it; closer to God; closer to heaven, every time they hear it.

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

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

Tuesday of the 34th week in Ordinary Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

Homily for 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 Tuesday, 1 September 2015– Ferial

Tuesday of the 22nd week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6, 9-11;  Psalm 27:1, 4, 13-14; Luke 4:31-37

Do any of us ever find readings like those we hear today a bit frightening? Paul speaks in 1 Thessalonians of inescapable “sudden disaster” that will befall all who are not on their guard. Paul compares the end of time, “the day of the Lord,” to the “labor pains” of “a pregnant woman” in childbirth. And in Luke’s Gospel Jesus contends with “a man” possessed by “the spirit of an unclean demon.”

But our readings today from 1 Thessalonians and Luke do not need to frighten us. How, then, are we invited to respond to God’s Word today?

I imagine St. Paul trying to find a balance between two groups of people: Those who are frightened about what will happen at the end of time, or maybe about being persecuted for their faith, and those who are lulled into indifference by their prosperity, “peace, and security.” We know both types of people today. On the one hand we know the people who continually sound the alarm; those stereotyped by the image of the person on the street corner preaching or holding a sign that says, “The end is near”! Short of this extreme, we know people who are constantly complaining; who live in and on fear; who yearn for “the good old days”; who are convinced of our world’s path to moral destruction. On the other hand, we know of people whose prosperity has lulled them into a false sense of “peace and security.” These people become indifferent to social needs; to our responsibility to meet these needs and to uphold the dignity of human life and creation.

St. Paul is not trying to frighten us, but is inviting us to find a balance; to “stay alert,” neither alarmist nor indifferent but faithfully waiting for our Lord’s return in glory. If we are truly “alert” in our faith, we will not be surprised or frightened by Jesus’ return at the end of time. St. Paul speaks to us with great confidence in our faith: “You are children of the light and children of the day.” And so what is the faithful balance St. Paul asks us to seek? St. Paul says, “Encourage one another and build one another up.” Our common goal; God’s goal for every one of us; for our Church, is our salvation “through our Lord Jesus Christ.” God, through St. Paul, asks us to help one another toward this goal.

“Encourage one another and build one another up.” We hear a similar message to this today from Luke’s Gospel. The people  who hear Jesus teach and witness his healing of the man with a demon are “astonished at his teaching, because he [speaks] with authority.” The people spread “news of” Jesus’ healing “everywhere in the surrounding region.” The next step, for the people of Jesus’ time and for us who spread the Good News of Jesus Christ “everywhere,” is to realize that we are given the same “authority” with which Jesus spoke and acted. So many of us are realizing this already by accompanying those in need; by being a joyful presence to one another; by praying and by worshipping here. We are neither fearful nor indifferent. We are “children of the light and “of the day” building “one another up” toward salvation in Christ together.

Homily for Friday, 28 November 2014– Ferial

Friday of the 34th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Revelation 20:1-4, 11-21:2; Psalm 84:3, 4, 5-6a, 8a; Luke 21:29-33

What are and will be the signs of God’s Kingdom reaching its fullness? What will last beyond these so-called “end times”? These are two of perhaps many questions to which our readings today give rise.

What are and will be the signs of God’s kingdom reaching its fullness; of God’s final judgment? The Book of Revelation gives us terrifying images of the final judgment: The imprisonment, short release, and then final defeat of Satan; those who have given their lives for Christ reigning with Christ “for a thousand years” (for eternity, in the symbolic language of Revelation); “the sea” and “Death and Hades” giving up their dead for judgment; the book of life and the pool of fire…

Our Gospel reading from Luke presents us with much more gentle and peaceful images of the end times than does Revelation. Jesus compares the blossoming of the fig tree, the beginning of summer, to the coming to fullness of God’s Kingdom. More importantly, Jesus says, the signs of God’s Kingdom are discernible in the present: “When you see these things happening, know that the Kingdom of God is near.” Our Psalm response we have prayed today is even more to the point: “Here God lives among his people.”

What are and will be the signs of God’s Kingdom reaching its fullness? What are the signs of God’s Kingdom here and now; signs of God already living among us, “his people”? God’s Kingdom is most present to us in the peace of our prayer. It is in the celebration of the Eucharist and the other sacraments of the Church. God’s kingdom is present in the gentle coo of a child; grandchild; great-grandchild; in our time with parents; grandparents; great-grandparents. God’s kingdom has been present in our recent celebration of Thanksgiving. God’s kingdom is present in nature; in our winter landscape. God’s kingdom is present in our help to a person in need; in someone helping us in our need; in a kind or encouraging word we have spoken or heard. Perhaps we are to be signs of God’s Kingdom, already present and yet coming to fullness among ourselves, here and now.

What are and will be the signs of God’s Kingdom? “Here God lives among his people.” What will last beyond the “end times”? Jesus says in our Gospel reading, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” In Revelation John sees “a new heaven and a new earth… the holy city, a new Jerusalem” descending “out of heaven.”

What will the decisive coming to fullness of God’s kingdom look like? Will it be like the terrifying images of Revelation, or the gentle signs of which Jesus speaks in our Gospel? Nobody knows for sure. But we know that “here God lives among his people.” We know that Jesus’ “words will not pass away.” We are entrusted with being Christ-like in our words and actions among one another. We are to be signs of God’s kingdom coming into its fullness, here and now; signs, words, presence, and actions that “will not pass away.”