Homily for Friday, 2 April 2021– Friday of the Passion of the Lord (Good Friday)

Readings of the day: Isaiah 52:15-53:12; Psalm 31:6, 12-13, 15-16, 17, 25; Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42

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

Let me, if we will, propose two key terms, freedom and solidarity, through which we might remember the events we do today, of the Passion and death of our Lord Jesus.

In his recent reflection for Good Friday in America Magazine, published by the Jesuits in the U.S., Fr. Terrance Klein, a priest of Dodge City, Kansas, asks what exactly God might have willed in allowing Jesus to go to his death, on a cross no less. Did, or could God, in fact, will his Son Jesus’ death in this horrific and humiliating way? This question may be both a common puzzle for us as Christian faithful and a major obstacle, Fr. Klein says, to non-believers: Who would want to believe in a God who would will, or at least allow, his Son to undergo a death like this?

Yet John’s Gospel today invites us to behold not so much God as a Father who would will or permit his Son to be given up to death, but the Son, Jesus, as freely in command of his self-sacrifice on the cross to its final moment, when “it is finished.” Our faith proclaims this freedom of Jesus; the freedom, Jesus says of himself at one point in John’s Gospel, to lay down his life and “to take it up again.”

And, if we go all the way back to the first moments of creation, we see that, of all the creatures God created, God willed from the very beginning to give us the same freedom God has. This is quite remarkable! This was and is also quite risky on God’s part: God gave us the freedom that nobody else but God has, to accept and to love whom God has made us to be or to reject and to hate this; to accept and love God; to accept and love one another as God loves us, or to reject and refuse to love God and one another.

When we have chosen to misuse the freedom God gave us to accept and love or to reject and refuse to love—this to some extent willing rejection and refusal to love, we might call sin—God has not rejected us in turn, although God was free to do so. No, God has responded to our sin by continually calling to us and being with us in history, through the Law and the prophets and, finally, by becoming like us in all but sin in the person of Jesus Christ. And we remember today how Jesus, Son of God, completed his free act of solidarity with us sinners: By redeeming us from all our sin, our rejection, our violence and hatred; by submitting to all this at the hands of sinners, on a cross, and transforming this into our ultimate good; the only possible means of our salvation.

“It is finished” now, this free act of God of solidarity with us, the only way we can be freed from sin and saved. We are witnesses, this and every Good Friday, to God’s re-creation of us, as remarkable as God’s first act of creating us with God’s own freedom. We are witnesses to this renewed freedom God has given us to love, to accept, to enter into solidarity with one another, especially anybody in any way disadvantaged, rejected, or abandoned in our world, as God freely entered into solidarity with us; as God freely took on our human experiences of joy and sorrow; good and evil; life, death, and resurrection, we pray, to eternal life.

Homily for Sunday, 30 June 2019

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:16b, 19-21; Psalm 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11; Galatians 5:1, 13-18; Luke 9:51-62

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time

What is the most difficult choice you have ever had to make? Has there ever been an important choice you have had to make that you hesitated to make, or one that you made immediately; that you were “resolutely determined” to make, maybe despite or because of its difficulty?

Today the word of God invites us to make a choice, to set out on a journey. The choice, the journey, to which our readings invite us today is a difficult one. The destination of our chosen journey is the cross, yet still we are invited to set out “resolutely determined” on this journey.

We have, as Church, just celebrated the great liturgical seasons of Lent and then Easter. Our Eastertime celebrations have extended into the feasts of Pentecost, the Most Holy Trinity, and the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. Could we be faulted if we felt somewhat of a liturgical let-down since now, as of this weekend, we ease back into the more familiar rhythm of Ordinary Time, after the great liturgical high points of our Church over the last several weeks?

After the penitential intensity of Lent, the great joy of Easter, the Church’s day of birth in the Holy Spirit that is Pentecost, the celebrations of our experience of sublime divine mysteries through the Solemnities of the Most Holy Trinity and Most Holy Body and Blood, now we are invited to set out, with only a few basic necessities and with resolute determination, on a journey.

Thankfully, we are not alone on our journey. We have each other. We are led on this journey by our Lord, “resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem,” where he, although faultless, is to die as a common criminal, crucified for us between two thieves. Our Lord even sends “messengers ahead of him” to prepare towns whose people we are to encounter in advance of meeting them. Still, that we are accompanied by one another and led by the Lord does not make this journey much easier for us. The destination of our journey is still the cross, and even the intermediate steps of this journey promise to be difficult.

Why, then, should we even bother setting out on this journey, let alone be “resolutely determined” to do so? Would it not be easier for us to continue happily as “we have always done it”? Would it not be easier for us to envision a static world; a static Church in which styles of and the kinds people in leadership change slowly if at all, whether at the parish level, the diocesan level, or the universal Church level? Would it not be easier for us to accept a Church in which doctrine or liturgical practice and their interpretation did not develop with time, but remained certain, clear, and unambiguous forever? Would it not be easier for us to accept, as Christian disciples, to live in a world in which we would never be misunderstood or even ridiculed for our beliefs and for trying to live them? Would it not be easier to be able “to call down fire from heaven,” as James and John wished to do to the Samaritans who would not accept them because their destination was Jerusalem, on those who differ from us or who ridicule and misunderstand us? Would it not be easier to accept a Church in which Christians never would, as St. Paul says to the Galatians; to us today, “go on biting and devouring one another,” renouncing their freedom for Christ won by Christ’s self-sacrifice on the cross to sell themselves back into a form of slavery? (I speak here especially of a pervasive and abusive form of seeking after power and status in the Church at the expense of the faithful whom the power of those who have it is supposed to serve).

It would be nice if our world, our Church, our journey were so simple and promised clear success at its end. But this is not the reality of our Church, our world, or the journey on which Jesus invites us to set out. The journey on which Jesus invites us to set out “resolutely determined” features a few aspects that are clear and certain: This journey will end in the cross. It will end in failure, at least insofar as the world sees. It will end in shame. It will end in death. Even its intermediate steps, its passage through Samaritan towns so to speak, will be difficult. Does anybody here still want to join our Lord Jesus on this journey, let alone with resolute determination?

Thankfully, we already have some experience of this very journey to which Jesus calls us: We who have been baptized have taken at least the first steps (or our parents and godparents have taken them for us) on this journey. We have been baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ. Yes, we know that the cross toward which Jesus and we are “resolutely determined” to journey is not the end of our story. Eternal life is; resurrection is. But to reach our resurrection to eternal life, our journey must pass through the cross: Failure; shame; death; Jerusalem; solidarity with the Son of God crucified between two thieves.

Today we as Church invite, during this celebration, RJB to be the latest disciple to be baptized into this journey toward Jerusalem, through death to resurrection, on which Jesus leads us. Almost four years ago, on August 1, 2015, on a sweltering day across this St. Kateri Parish from here at St. Margaret Mary Church (which, without air conditioning on hot summer days, may be an apt description of an earthly form of purgatory), R’s parents, B and P, with me as the Church’s witness, were married.

B and P, and all our married or to-be-married couples, you, too, are living a particular experience of the journey to which Jesus invites us, this journey to Jerusalem, through the cross to resurrection. You made a promise before this Church of faithfulness and truth to each other “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health,” to “love and honor [each other] all the days of” your life. I imagine that this promise you made, on some days more than others, is lived out more like that of the passage of Jesus and his disciples through Samaritan towns: You know the difficulty in resisting the temptation “to call down fire from heaven” on each other!  

B and P, you accepted “children”—this child, your son RJ—“lovingly from God, [to] bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church.” You accepted; you were and are “resolutely determined” to set out on this journey, led by Jesus Christ, to Jerusalem, through death to resurrection.

Our Church now blesses all your “yeses”; all your promises; all your steps of choosing to accept to join our Lord Jesus Christ on this journey to Jerusalem, through this earthly life and its sacraments through death to resurrection, “resolutely determined.” Our Lord Jesus continues to invite you, B and P, and all of us, to make difficult choices, from the moment of our baptism. They are choices that, we pray, will bring you great joy not only in eternal life but in this earthly life. But they are and will be difficult choices nonetheless.

Our Lord Jesus invites us, through our baptism into one Church, to prioritize Christ and his mission toward Jerusalem above all else: “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”; “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God”; “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what is left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Our Lord Jesus invites us to join him in proclaiming the kingdom of God, a difficult mission in our world, to “glorify God by our lives.” Our Lord Jesus invites us to choose, “resolutely determined,” to follow him to Jerusalem, through death to resurrection to eternal life.

Homily for Sunday, 9 July 2017

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16a; Psalm 89:2-3, 16-17, 18-19; Romans 6:3-4, 8-11; Matthew 10:37-42

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

What is humility? How many of us find humility a difficult virtue not only to practice but to define? We might think of humility in terms of what it is not, or in opposition to attitudes and habits of people and of cultures that we judge as lacking in humility.

Does our own culture not tend to value the individual: Self-confidence; competition? Anybody here who has ever played a sport; applied for a job or competed for a more advanced position within our line of work; earned a large salary; owned or run a business; sought higher education; spoken, performed or shown some other talent publicly, and so forth, has conformed in some way to our cultural norm, centered on the individual. In themselves, these actions are not evidence of a lack of humility, in an individual or in a culture. Many people who have been successful, talented, and even well-paid, some who are among us here now, are among the humblest people we know.

So what is humility? I do not believe that it is necessary to act too differently from the norm of our culture, focused on the individual, in order to be humble. Humility, though, within a culture that values the individual, is the virtue that seeks to use whatever individual advantage or advancement we gain to benefit one another. In other words, the good of each individual person is praiseworthy, as long as those who have advantages; who are successful, well-paid, or talented in a variety of ways use these advantages toward what we call the communal or “common good”; the good of all people as one human race; the good and dignity of all creation.

The more we are successful or talented, the more we have the responsibility to use our success and our talents toward the good of all; the “common good.” And so who might be our model, in our own experiences, of humility? Many if not all of us know somebody we would consider humble, but what if I were to suggest that our model of humility is God himself?

To place God as our first model of humility is quite a lofty goal. We know this, I am sure. Would be not better off trying to match the humility of somebody we have known and experienced as humble than to try to live up to the humility of God? Yet our readings today present God as humble. Who here thinks often of God as humble? But there God is, pictured by the prophet Zechariah in our first reading as “humble and riding on a donkey” into a rebuilt, glorious city of Jerusalem. Zechariah’s image of the humble king (human kings were understood as ruling in the place of God) takes nothing away from the greatness of God (also the king), described by Zechariah as “triumphant and victorious” as well as “humble.”

God’s triumph and victory is not a triumph or victory of military might. In Zechariah’s time, the people of Israel were just returning to their homeland from a long period of exile in Babylon. Who could fault them, in a way, after their experience of the superior military power of the Babylonians to that of Israel, for developing an image or expectation of a God who would bring them back from exile with even greater might than the Babylonians had. But this is not the God of Israel, Zechariah says to his people. This is not our God. Our God is a God of humility, and it is precisely by God’s humility that God will be forever triumphant and victorious.

Might this reminder that God, and so we, are most triumphant in humility and not by military strength or any form of violence, in word or action, be just as timely for us today as it was for the people of Israel in Zechariah’s time? In fact, our national motto of Canada, “from sea to sea” (or, in Latin, “a mari usque ad mare”) is drawn from the prophecy we hear from Zechariah today and from several other places in our Scriptures. God’s “dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.”

God’s “dominion” is a dominion; a triumph of humility. Imagine, then, all of us called to co-operate in establishing this divine dominion of humility. This is what God’s Kingdom, “on earth as in heaven,” looks like. And what other virtues; what effects are associated with humility? Zechariah associates humility, God’s and ours, with peace. The Psalmist speaks of graciousness and mercy, slowness “to anger” and abundance “in steadfast love”; faith, compassion and, yes, power and glory in humility. 

Of course, humility means recognizing our sinfulness; our need for God to save us. St. Paul reminds us of this in his Letter to the Romans from which we hear today. “We are debtors,” St. Paul says, meaning that a price; a debt has had to be paid for us, because of our sin. That price is the Cross, the supreme act of humility, indeed humiliation paid for us by our Lord Jesus Christ that is necessary for our salvation. When we pray in our Creed that Jesus “was crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered death and was buried,” we acknowledge that God, in Jesus Christ, has taken our place in death; in burial in the earth (in Latin, humus, meaning earth or soil, the root of our English words like “humble” and “humility”), only to rise again and so to carry us with him into his resurrection. By his suffering, death, burial and resurrection, Jesus invites us into a share in God’s own humility in humbling himself for our sake.

And so humility is linked to our salvation. Humility is also linked to freedom and to joy. How freeing Jesus’ words are in our Gospel reading today from Matthew: “Come to me, all you [who] are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls”!

Those of us who have ever cared for children: Is it not so freeing and joyous to watch little children take in the world around them, while remaining totally dependent on a parent or other caregiver? This, I suppose, is behind Jesus’ prayer of joy in today’s Gospel: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” What do “infants” see that “the wise and the intelligent,” at least in their own estimation independent even sometimes of God, do not? Infants, and anybody willing to make themselves totally dependent on God, our ultimate fatherly caregiver, see heaven. And in observing children; infants, do we not catch a glimpse of heaven in their smiles, their coos, their first words, their curiosity at the world around them?

This is joy; a glimpse of heaven that is only accessible to the humble. In humility we find joy, we find freedom, we find peace, and ultimately we find our salvation. Why is this? In humility we find all these— joy, freedom, peace, salvation— because it is as we become humble that we become more and more like God, who is humble. And as we, in a way like little children taking in the world around them, take in this mystery of our salvation, we share in God’s own triumphant dominion of humility; a dominion that, from God through us, extends from this place, indeed “from sea to sea, and… to the ends of the earth.”