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.”

Homily for Friday, 26 September 2014– Ferial

Friday of the 25th week in Ordinary Time

Optional Memorial of Sts. Cosmas and Damian 

Readings of the day: Ecclesiastes 3:1-11; Psalm 144:1b, 2abc, 3-4; Luke 9:18-22

This homily was given at the Church of the Most Holy Trinity, Webster, NY.

Who is really in control of our lives; our world; creation? The easy answer to this question is that God is ultimately in control. Our first reading today from Ecclesiastes hints at this answer: “There is an appointed time for everything… [God] has made everything appropriate to its time… without [our] ever discovering… the work [that] God has done.”

But is it not foolish, indeed dangerous, for us to leave everything up to God’s control, when we are capable of shaping our relationships with one another, some events in our lives, in our communities, and even sometimes national and worldwide events?

There is “a time to be born and a time to die.” We have no control over birth and death. But do we not have some say in promoting peace or promoting or alleviating conflict in our interpersonal relationships; in our families; in our Church; even in our world? Are we not invited as Christians to love and not to hate; to care for one another and for God’s creation? And so why does Ecclesiastes allow for “a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace” when to love one another and, at least in part, to work toward peace is up to us? Is there ever “a time to hate”?

When I prepare with families for a funeral of a loved one, many choose this reading from Ecclesiastes as the first reading at the funeral. And yet often the short version of this reading, which leaves out “a time to hate,” is chosen. Clearly this phrase raises a fair objection. How can hatred be accepted as part of the way God has made us; made our world to be?

I think the answer to these kinds of questions is expressed toward the beginning and again toward end of our first reading today. Ecclesiastes says that, on the one hand, “there is an appointed time for everything.” On the other hand, God “has put the timeless into [our] hearts.” God has created time itself, and has also given us an awareness of “the timeless”; what we can control and influence and what we are invited to leave trustingly up to God are both God’s gift to us. Even more, the ability God has given to each and every one of us to discern the difference between what we influence and even have responsibility over and what is “timeless,” what is mystery, is God’s gift to us.

We have perhaps heard the so-called “Serenity Prayer” whose message is similar to that in our reading from Ecclesiastes: “God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Both the “Serenity Prayer” and our first reading today raise the question: Who is in control? Ultimately God is in control of our lives; our world; creation. God “has put the timeless into [our] hearts.” But God has also given us the gift of helping to shape his creation; to influence interpersonal, local, and more far-reaching relationships and events; a gift God has given to no other creature that we know.  This is our time to accept this role; this gift from God, with trust in God, balancing and discerning it along with the sense of mystery; of “the timeless,” a gift that God has also “put… into [our] hearts.”