Homily for Monday, 23 July 2018– Ferial

Monday of the 16th Week in Ordinary Time


Optional Memorial of St. Bridget of Sweden

Readings of the day: Micah 6:1-4, 6-8; Psalm 50:5-6, 8-9, 16bc-17, 21, 23; Matthew 8:18-22

This homily was given at the Kateri House Women's Residence Chapel at St. Joseph's College, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

What is the minimal requirement for something, anything?

I am now into my third summer here at St. Joseph’s College as a sessional instructor. A significant part of any course outline I prepare details the minimal requirements for the course: Which courses students must complete, if any, before taking my course, the assignments required in the course and what percentage of the final grade each assignment is worth, and so forth.

Today, the prophet Micah imagines the people of Israel complaining to God that they do not know what God expects of them. Micah structures this section of his book as a trial speech or dialogue, in which God is the defendant and the people of Israel are the plaintiffs. The people of Israel, in Micah’s time, are being overrun by more powerful nations surrounding Israel and, as Micah and other prophets warn Israel, are about to be overtaken completely and taken into exile in Babylon.

But Israel protests to God through Micah: You say we must change our ways; that our sacrifices of “burnt offerings, with calves a year old” are not enough to stave off conquest and exile. What, then, God, do you require of us? What is required to pass this course, and how much is the final exam worth?

In these kinds of trial speeches, which are fairly common in the prophetic books of the Bible, an important feature is that, when the plaintiff begins by presenting the case against the defendant, in this case God, immediately the defendant has a chance to defend himself. In our reading today from Micah, God does just that against the charge of being unclear to the people of Israel as to God’s ethical expectations of them in order not to be exiled to Babylon.

We hear God say essentially through Micah that he has done everything to uphold and save the people of Israel in their worst moments in history, and now the onus is on Israel to behave ethically, especially by defending the dignity of the most vulnerable and in need of this land, Israel, God has given them. “I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam,” God pleads with the people of Israel. What more could Israel want from God?

As an instructor, if I were challenged on clarity of requirements in my course, I might be tempted to say to a student: “The requirements for the course are in the syllabus. Please download and read it”! Might we imagine God saying, “The ethical requirements to avoid exile have been made clear by the example of my relationship, called a covenant, with you in history.”

And yet, as in many prophetic trial speeches and like a good instructor in class, God patiently and repeatedly answers the people’s questions as to what is required of them: “To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” God is our living example of justice, kindness, and humility; of doing more than what is minimally required of us. God is just, kind, and humble (which is always poignant to me, because how often do we think of God as humble?). God’s lived example to us of how to behave ethically is better than any course outline on paper could ever be.

Homily for Thursday, 11 September 2014– Ferial

Thursday of the 23rd week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Corinthians 8:1b-7, 11-13; Psalm 139:1b-3, 13-14ab, 23-24; Luke 6:27-38

What is the most loving action in a particular situation? What is the action that will build up an individual or community? These are the questions that our readings today invite us to consider.

St. Paul faces a divided Corinthian Christian community in our first reading today. Some Christians in Corinth would not eat meat if it had been “sacrificed to idols.” For others, this was not a concern. St. Paul seems to agree that there is no moral problem in eating meat, even “sacrificed to idols,” because pagan idols are not gods. There is only one God, and so sacrifices to false gods are meaningless. But then St. Paul accommodates those whose “conscience” is too “weak” to withstand this level of moral nuance: “Therefore, if food causes my brother to sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I may not cause my brother to sin.”

Why does St. Paul reach this conclusion? I think this can only be out of love for the Corinthians; for the Church. St. Paul shows us love that goes beyond the mere legal or moral minimum. He shows us love that goes beyond obligation. He shows us love that goes beyond the reciprocal relationship of “I will do this for you if you do that for me.” St. Paul’s love is not merely sentimental. It is for the good of the people he serves; for building up of community and human relationships.

Jesus invites us to this same kind of love in our Gospel reading today. Jesus’ love is a love that seems difficult for us to emulate: “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you… Do to others as you would have them do to you… Be merciful, just as also your Father is merciful… Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven.”

Nowhere in our Gospel does Jesus oblige us to love our enemies; to love those who hate, curse, or mistreat us (or, perhaps appropriately on this anniversary of September 11, 2001, those who commit terrorist acts against our country). Jesus does not oblige us to be merciful, or not to judge or condemn, or to forgive people who have wronged us. If this were an obligation, our love would be reduced to, “I will love those people, I suppose, if I must.” Jesus does not invite us to love merely on moral or legal grounds, or to love only those who love us, or to love in only a sentimental way.

No, Jesus, like St. Paul, reminds us that, at its fullest and most authentic, love is a gift exchange. Jesus describes God’s love; the ideal of love for us as this: “Gifts… given to [us]… a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing.” An exchange of gifts; an exchange of love is not something we must do; not something that there are laws to regulate; not something that we only do if we are promised to receive the same or a better gift in return; not something merely sentimental. If love is only this, it is not love. True love, to which St. Paul and Jesus invite us, builds relationships, builds community, brings us closer to God, and is the utmost exercise of our freedom which is itself God’s gift to us.

Homily for Friday, 8 August 2014– Memorial of St. Dominic

Friday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Nahum 2:1, 3, 3:1-3, 6-7; Responsorial Canticle: Deuteronomy 32:35cd-36ab, 39abcd, 41; Matthew 16:24-28

Are not the questions Jesus asks us in today’s Gospel reading strange? He asks, “What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life?”

We are led to answer “none” and “nothing” to these strange rhetorical questions. But then, in answering that there would be, of course, no profit in gaining “the whole world” and losing one’s life, or that nothing can possibly be given in exchange for life, we are led to examine our thinking.

As a parish community and as individuals we do countless great acts of love; acts of kindness; acts of witness to the Christian faith we profess. And yet, when we perform these good works, how many of us have ever thought, even subconsciously, “What will I gain from doing this? What is ‘in it’ for me?” Maybe more insidious even is to do good only because we should; because this will please God and others while perhaps giving ourselves a sense of accomplishment.

To please God and the people we serve, and even to gain enjoyment, praise, or wealth out of our service, are of themselves right motivations, and yet Jesus invites us to think beyond our own personal gain; to think even beyond doing right simply because we should.

We were created to do good works; to serve God through service toward one another, especially those most in need. To do good works is within our very nature as creatures made in the image and likeness of God. For us to understand this; to make this our motive for doing good instead of lesser motivations such as personal gain or even pleasing others or even God, takes a radical reset in ethical priorities.

We call this reset conversion. This conversion, for most of us, is not instantaneous but a lifelong process. This conversion will sustain us in times when doing good works, doing what is both God-like and befitting our human dignity as created in God’s image and likeness, does not bring us worldly gain; when instead it brings ridicule; when it involves being counter-cultural (not for the sake of being counter-cultural but because we come to know in our hearts that it is right; it is of God); when doing right means accepting suffering; our crosses in life.

“What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life?” Our answers to these questions, of course, are “none” and “nothing.” Jesus’ invitation to faith; to discipleship; to self-denial; to “take up [our] cross and follow” Christ is more than profit and exchange, as good as these worldly priorities can be. Jesus’ invitation to us is one of conversion; of resetting our ethical priorities: Not just because we should, but because of who we are, created in God’s image and likeness and baptized into fellowship with and in Christ. 

Homily for Monday, 23 June 2014– Ferial

Monday of the 12th week in Ordinary Time 

Readings of the day: 2 Kings 17:5-8, 13-15a, 18; Psalm 60:3, 4-5, 12-13; Matthew 7:1-5

“Stop judging, that you may not be judged.” Do any of us know someone who has difficulty understanding or putting into practice these words of Jesus in our Gospel reading today? Do we ourselves have this difficulty at times? Anyone who has difficulty understanding or practicing what Jesus teaches us, “Stop judging, that you may not be judged,” I think deserves not criticism but great empathy.

We live in a culture of opposite extremes surrounding “Stop judging.” These are opposite ethical “dictatorships,” if you will. Just before he was elected Pope Benedict XVI, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger spoke of a “dictatorship of relativism” especially in Europe and North America that says: Do not judge another culture’s or individual’s actions or ideas as better or worse than those of another culture or individual. All actions or ideas are right insofar as a culture or individual feels they are right, and no other individual or group has the right to say otherwise.

Equally damaging and incoherent is the opposite to the “dictatorship of relativism,” that is, the dictatorship of absolutism: Individuals, societies, nations, or even churches may suggest that they know all the answers; that they hold absolute truths besides God, the only absolute Truth, for those who seek certainty. I do not say that, if a society, a nation, or a church develops teachings, norms, or guidelines with which we disagree, we should reject these teachings, norms, or guidelines out of hand, or that we should accept what we agree with uncritically, either.

Both relativism, in which there is no right and wrong, and absolutism, in which there is no nuance between absolute right and absolute wrong, are failures to think; to put our hearts and minds with which God has gifted us to the service of God and of one another in love.

“Stop judging, that you may not be judged.” Jesus, I think, teaches us with these words to distinguish between judging an action or idea as right or not, and judging the person as good or evil. Judgment of actions or ideas as right or wrong is, I say, healthy and even our responsibility to do. But is not judging another person beneath her or his dignity as created by God, even though in our fallen state we all sin, itself wrong? This, I think, is the kind of judgment Jesus speaks against in our Gospel reading today. This kind of judgment destroys peace; destroys human community; does not see the beams in our own eyes but focuses on the splinters in the eyes of others.

I am confident that I am not directing these harsh words at any of us here; that Jesus’ teaching is not directed at any of us here now. And yet can we not all benefit (I know I can) from the reminders our Gospel offers us today? Judge the ethics of the action or idea; not the dignity of the person created by God as anything less than fundamentally good. Strike an ethical balance between the dictatorships of relativism and absolutism. Let us pray, then, for the strength to judge wisely when we are called to judge; to judge as God judges, with love; to judge in a way that responsibly upholds what is ethically right yet respects the God-given dignity of all people and all creation.