Homily for Tuesday, 8 September 2015– Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Tuesday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Micah 5:1-4a; Psalm 13:6ab, 6c; Matthew 1:1-16, 18-23

How many of us recycle?

I am speaking primarily of a different kind of recycling than the kind that is good for our environment. I speak of the recycling, over and over again, of God’s love from the first moment of creation. Today we celebrate the Feast of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I cannot help, on today’s feast day, to do a bit of recycling of my own.

It was this past December, a few days before our celebration of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. (This Feast of Mary’s Nativity is, of course, connected with the Solemnity of her Immaculate Conception, when Mary was conceived without original sin by Sts. Anne and Joachim. Today we are exactly nine months after the Immaculate Conception, December 8). On that day I was, as on most days during the school year, greeting the children as they entered St. Kateri School to begin their school day. This one day, a child stopped me in my tracks with a brilliant question: “How did God create Jesus and Mary”? Only occasionally is a priest completely outwitted by a third-grader!

A few days later, I had recovered enough from this St. Kateri School edition of “Stump the Priest” to try to answer the girl’s question in my homily for the Immaculate Conception, also last December’s monthly St. Kateri School Mass. “How did God create Jesus and Mary”? In short, my answer is this: God recycles.

God is a master recycler of love. Mary’s conception by Anne and Joachim, her protection by God from original sin and, about nine months later, her birth, was only one instance of God’s love for us. Through Anne and Joachim; through Mary, God was putting the finishing touches on his work of our salvation through Jesus Christ. But this was far from the first act of God’s love for us. Our Gospel reading today from Matthew includes a lengthy genealogy from Abraham, our father in faith, through to Joseph and Mary, “of [whom] was born Jesus who is called the Christ.”

Matthew’s genealogy includes three parts or “cycles”: Abraham through King David, David through “the Babylonian Exile,” and the Babylonian Exile through Jesus’ Nativity. Each cycle begins well but becomes tainted with human error and sin; with some questionable historical figures involved. And each time God, out of love for us, recycles. God constantly renews us: In Abraham, our father in faith, in Israel’s kings beginning with David (Matthew does not mention David’s predecessor King Saul, perhaps a false start), in the rebuilders of Israel after the Babylonian Exile, and finally in Jesus Christ.

God recycles. And today we celebrate one very significant step in this divine recycling of love for us, the Birth of Mary; the last step necessary for the Birth of Christ, the fullness of our salvation. But this was not the first time God recycled. Nor does God intend it to be the last. An Orthodox Christian prayer for today’s Feast proclaims: “From you,” Mary, “arose the glorious Sun of Justice, Christ our God.” The work of justice; of reflecting the light of Christ, the Sun of Justice; of God’s recycling of love in our world is now ours. And so I highly encourage us to recycle.

Homily for Wednesday, 17 December 2014– Ferial

Wednesday of the 3rd Week in Advent

Readings of the day: Genesis 49:2, 8-10; Psalm 72:1-2, 3-4ab, 7-8, 17; Matthew 1:1-17

“O Wisdom of our God Most High, guiding creation with power and love; come to teach us the path of knowledge”!

What is the significance of this prayer? It is our acclamation we have heard just before our Gospel reading today. From today until the morning before Christmas Day, our Gospel acclamations at Mass will all begin with the same word, “O.” These acclamations are called the “O Antiphons.” We can follow the “O Antiphons” through the hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”: “O come… Wisdom… Might… Rod of Jesse’s stem… Key of David… Dayspring from on high… Desire of nations.”

Today we begin the “O Antiphons” by acclaiming God’s wisdom, most fully expressed in God’s gift to us of his Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. What is this wisdom of God? How does God show us his wisdom? Our readings are all about how God has shown us his wisdom from the beginning of creation, just not in ways we would expect. In Genesis, of the twelve sons of Jacob, Judah is associated with the image of the lion, an image of strength; of leadership; of wisdom. But Judah is the fourth of Jacob’s sons, neither the stereotypically independent oldest child nor the beloved youngest child, but a “middle child.” (Those of us who are middle children may be able to identify best with Judah). Judah, the “middle child,” would not ordinarily be the model of wisdom, or known for anything in particular among twelve sons in a story, but so he is.

Matthew’s Gospel begins with a magnificent genealogy from Abraham, our father in faith, to “Jesus who is called the Christ.” This genealogy, too, is an expression of God’s wisdom. But again, Matthew’s genealogy shows, God’s wisdom is demonstrated in unexpected ways; through unexpected people.

In Jesus’ family tree we hear of five women (it was rare to include women in a Jewish genealogy at all): Tamar, who disguised herself as a prostitute to marry Judah; Rahab, who was a prostitute; Ruth, the foreigner from Moab, not from Israel; Bathsheba, “the wife of Uriah,” whom David had killed so he could marry Bathsheba; and Mary, the virgin.

The men in this story are no less strange than the women. They range from the sinful (David, who was at least as great at repenting as in sinning, and many of Israel’s kings who misgoverned Israel into the Babylonian Exile) to the bizarre (Boaz: Who in Israel would marry a foreigner in those days?) to the silent, courageous, and obedient (Joseph, who took Mary as his wife and cared for Jesus as his own son).

God shows his wisdom in the unexpected: Through a line of strange people, sinners, “middle children” who would have been insignificant without God; through each and every one of us. Ultimately, God’s wisdom gave us a Savior, “Jesus who is called the Christ.”

And so today we celebrate in a special way God’s wisdom; a wisdom that shows itself in the unexpected; a wisdom that saves. And we pray, in the words of our Gospel Acclamation, “O Wisdom of our God Most High, guiding creation with power and love; come to teach us the path of knowledge”!

Homily for Sunday, 2 November 2014– Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls)

Readings of the day: Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6; Romans 6:3-9; John 6:37-40 (Any readings for Masses for the Dead may be used on this day.)

What is heaven like? What happens to us after we die? Does anyone know the answers to these questions? I presume that none of us do fully. But then if nobody really knows what heaven is like or what happens after we die, then what is the point of our celebration today, our Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed; of All Souls?

Our commemoration; our remembrance of all who have gone before us in death and are experiencing or awaiting heaven would be pointless if it were about knowledge. While we live here on earth, we cannot know fully what heaven is like, or what will happen at the end of our earthly lives. Jesus’ first disciples saw him after his resurrection and witnessed his ascension into heaven. They have handed on to us their experience of these events. But none of us, as far as I know, have experienced firsthand what happens after our earthly lives end.

What we lack in knowledge of what happens after death, we make up for in hope. The point, the foundation, of our remembrance as Church of All Souls is hope. In what specifically do we hope? We hope in eternal life with God, for those who have gone before us in death and, one day, for ourselves also.

But is hope not a kind of unreasonable desire or foolish optimism? Some of us may hope to win a lottery, for instance, but this expectation would be unrealistic. Our hope for eternal life is not this kind of expectation of the near-impossible. Ours is a founded hope: Based on God’s past and present loving, merciful action in our favor, we hope in God’s future promise of eternal life.

Our first reading, from the book of the prophet Isaiah, and our Gospel reading today from John speak especially about this founded hope we have in eternal life. God has been with us in the past, Isaiah says to a people in exile, many of whom were dying without ever seeing Israel, their homeland, again. This, Isaiah says, is the God “to whom we [have] looked to save us.” God has saved us already, many times: In the garden after Adam and Eve had first fallen into sin; in protecting Cain although Cain had murdered his brother Abel; from the waters of the great flood; through Moses from slavery in Egypt…

This history of God’s past loving, merciful action; of God’s salvation is all in Isaiah’s background as he speaks. Based on this history of God’s salvation, Isaiah invites an exiled people to hope in God’s promise of an even greater fullness of this salvation. The same God who has saved us in the past and is with us in the present “will destroy death… will wipe away the tears from all faces… On that day it will be said: Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us”! Have hope in God who has saved us before, is with us to save us now, and will save us again, once and for all, in the future, Isaiah says.

We hear this same message through Jesus’ raising of Lazarus in our Gospel reading. God has been with us and has loved us in the past. God’s saving presence and love carries over into the present. Even those who did not believe that Jesus was God acknowledged the love of God past and present being worked through him: “See how he loved” Lazarus. Jesus trusts and hopes in our Father because of God’s past saving action: “Father… I know that you always hear me.” Because of this trust; this founded hope, Jesus is able to make God’s past saving action present: “Lazarus, come out”!

And there is more: Jesus, like Isaiah, invites us to hope in future fullness of salvation. “Untie [Lazarus] and let him go,” Jesus says to the crowds.  This act is only possible for the people to whom Jesus speaks if they have hope; founded yet nonetheless bold hope. The raising of Lazarus is a sign of the decisive salvation to come through Jesus’ own resurrection. We are invited to hope for salvation and, even more remarkably, Jesus asks us to cooperate with him, with God, in God’s work of salvation; of untying the bonds of death that hold us; of raising us all to eternal life; of bringing us home to our God who made us and has loved us all along.

Might we imagine salvation; what happens to us after our lives on earth end; eternal life as going home? We pray this in our Eucharistic Prayer; words we hear at funerals and will pray here in a few moments: “For your faithful, Lord, life is changed, not ended and, when this earthly dwelling turns to dust, an eternal dwelling is made ready for them in heaven.”

Our baptism is especially a sign of our salvation; eternal life; going home. St. Paul reminds us in our second reading from Romans that “we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death” but that “if we” are united “with [Christ] in a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection.” We are united by baptism with Christ in his death and in his resurrection, and we are also called by this same sacrament to be united with Christ in going home one day to our loving God.

After a long journey, how many of us want nothing more than to be home? Joseph Bernardin, the late Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, also understood our entry into eternal life as going home. In his final memoir, The Gift of Peace, Cardinal Bernardin reflects on a visit to his “parents’ homeland… in Northern Italy,” a place he had only seen previously through his “mother’s photo albums.” Cardinal Bernardin writes of his visit, “As soon as we entered the valley, I said, ‘My God, I know this place. I am home.’ Somehow I think crossing from this life into eternal life will be similar. I will be home.”

An experience of mine is similar to that of Cardinal Bernardin. Ten or more years ago, my mother worked out the genealogy of her mother’s (my grandmother’s) family. I helped by translating records and newspaper clippings that were in French into English for non-French speakers in my family. But I had never been to the little village north of Toronto where my grandmother and her ancestors were from. Between my last two years in seminary, I finally went with my parents to Grandma’s birthplace. We were met there by Grandma’s cousin and his wife, who drove us to the house of another of Grandma’s cousins. This cousin, named Jim,* had lived most of his life as a recluse after finding his father’s body in a barn. Jim’s father had taken his own life. Unexpectedly, Jim came out of his house to greet us that day. And then he was at supper with us, regaling us with stories of our family history! Like Lazarus in our Gospel reading, did Jim respond to a call to “come out” from years of loneliness and sadness to share his story? Were we who were at table that evening the people asked by Jesus, “Untie him and let him go”? There was joy at table that evening, Jim’s and all of ours; a sign of the eternal joy that I imagine awaits us in heaven.

I could have said with Cardinal Bernardin upon visiting my ancestral homeland, “My God, I know this place. I am home.” I think similarly of what eternal life will be, for me and for all of us. This, at least is my hope. Is it our hope? It is a bold hope not based on knowledge, but nonetheless a founded hope. God has been with us and loved us in the past, is with us and loves us in the present, and calls us to future hope; our hope we first expressed through our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection; our hope in the fullness of God’s salvation, when together we “will be home.”

*Name has been changed.

Homily for Monday, 8 September 2014– Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Monday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Romans 8:28-30; Psalm 13:6ab, 6c; Matthew 1:1-16, 18-23

Whose birthday are we celebrating today, anyway? Why, on this Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, do we hear in our Gospel reading a genealogy from Joseph’s side of the Holy Family? And then we hear nothing of Mary’s Nativity. In fact Matthew turns his focus to Jesus’ Nativity.

True, Mary is mentioned in Matthew’s genealogy, and then again as having conceived of Jesus by the Holy Spirit and brought him to birth. Even so, Mary is not the focus of this beginning of Matthew’s Gospel. Joseph is, and then Jesus is. Mary’s nativity is never even mentioned in the Bible. And so why do we celebrate this birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary?

 I like to think of Mary in Scripture as somebody who points to realities and people beyond herself. St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans, from which we hear today, that “those [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” Mary is the first person in God’s plan to save us, a plan that reaches its fullness in the birth of Jesus Christ, to have been perfectly “conformed to the image of [God’s] Son,” but not because it was ever Mary’s plan to bring the Son of God into the world. This was God’s plan, although Mary had to consent to it.

Mary’s birth is part of God’s plan of salvation, and this plan of salvation is for us; to save us. Mary shows us how we, too, might be “conformed to the image of” Christ as she is. Mary points to us. Mary’s birthday is a celebration of our birthday as a redeemed people; a people promised God’s salvation through Christ’s becoming human, like us in all things but sin.

We are given a beautiful prayer for today’s Feast of the Nativity of Mary that we will pray in a few moments over the gifts of bread and wine when they are brought to the altar. We pray in this prayer “to be given strength by the humanity of [God’s] Son, who from [Mary] was pleased to take flesh.” Just before this Prayer over the Offerings, at every Mass the priest silently prays in similar words as the water and wine are mixed: “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity” (this for those of us who may wonder sometimes what we priests pray under our breath at the altar!).

Jesus’ humanity, not only his divinity, matters for our salvation. Mary’s “yes” to God’s plan made Jesus’ becoming human possible. But God’s plan to save us did not start with Mary’s “yes” to God. It started from the moment of creation. It took shape in a special way through the Birth of Mary, perfect image of Christ in his humanity; perfect image of who we are called to be: a people redeemed and saved; a people perfectly “conformed to the image of [God’s] Son.”