Homily for Sunday, 27 June 2021– Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Readings of the day: Wisdom 1:13-15, 2:23-24; Psalm 30:2, 4, 5-6, 11, 12, 13; 2 Corinthians 8:7, 9, 13-15; Mark 5:21-23

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

This week, I just finished teaching a Spring Term (May and June) Introduction to Catholicism course through St. Joseph’s College at the University of Alberta. The last lecture of the course was based on a topic the students proposed, which was meant to apply in a more focused way a theme we had discussed earlier in the course. The topic the students chose for the final lecture of this Spring Term centered on Catholic theology, ritual, and pastoral and ethical issues around death and dying.

How is that for a morbid way to end a course term? (I kid, but only to a point). I find it fortuitous that the last lecture of our course is so coherent with our readings for today. “God did not make death,” our reading the Book of Wisdom begins today. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus performs two interwoven miracles; the beginning and end of the Gospel reading we hear proclaimed focus on Jesus’ raising of the twelve-year-old daughter of a synagogue official, Jairus, who “is at the point of death” as today’s Gospel opens.

Also fortuitously, as we hear from the Book of Wisdom, “God did not make death,” from Mark’s Gospel Jesus’ raising of Jairus’ daughter, and in our Psalm response a hymn of thanksgiving for God’s victory over death—“I will extol you, Lord, for you have raised me up”—today [yesterday] we mark the first anniversary of the death of my grandmother, Barbara Schmidt. [We offer today’s Mass in her memory.] At Grandma’s funeral, and every funeral I attend, I am especially drawn to the beginning of what is called the prayer of commendation. At the end of a funeral Mass, we commend or leave our loved one who has died to the mercy of God. The priest prays: “Into your hands, Father of mercies, we commend our sister (or brother) in the sure and certain hope that, together with all who have died in Christ, she (he) may rise with him on the last day.”

I will admit that, at Grandma’s funeral Mass, since I was the presiding priest, it was especially difficult for me to pray those words: Sure and certain hope. Now, I consider myself immensely blessed, particularly as the priest in the family, to have ministered to Grandma as I did, especially in her last years. She was a person of tremendous and holy Christian hope; a hope that showed itself throughout her life through acts of outstanding generosity. Grandma was generous with every gift she had; with her time; with any wealth, even though for most of her life she could hardly have been considered wealthy. She became a widow at a young age, and raised five children on her own after Grandpa died, while also caring for her father until his death. Grandma embodied during her life what the prayer of commendation during a funeral Mass expresses, “Sure and certain hope” in our God who saves and raises us even from death.

Still, if I am honest with myself—and maybe many if not all of us will be able to relate—I consider myself a person of hope; of faith in a merciful and saving God. But am I a person of sure and certain hope? Sometimes I am not so sure my hope and my faith are that strong. In those moments, sure and certain hope becomes more of a prayer for God to fill in what I lack than a statement of something I have. This was certainly true at Grandma’s funeral, as I prayed those words, “in the sure and certain hope that, together with all who have died in Christ, she may rise with him on the last day.” This was true as I looked out upon family and a few of Grandma’s closest friends; as we remembered and prayed for Grandma in the midst of a COVID pandemic that also has made sure and certain hope difficult to come by for so many people.

Sometimes are we not (as I know I am) more like Jairus, who pleads desperately for Jesus to heal his sick daughter in today’s Gospel; Jairus who, after Mark purposefully has members of Jairus’ household tell Jesus that Jairus’ daughter has died, needs Jesus to remind him, “Do not fear, only believe”? I wonder what Jairus thought when Jesus spoke these words to him: “Do not fear, only believe.”

We know that the crowds at Jairus’ house “make a commotion and weep”; that they laugh at Jesus when Jesus says that “the child is not dead but sleeping.” We know that Jesus allows “no one to follow him,” but only the girl’s “mother and father and those who were with” Jesus; that Jesus puts everybody else outside the house. But Mark says little about Jairus until after Jesus raises his daughter. After Jesus raises Jairus’ daughter, Mark says that Jairus and all who witnessed Jesus’ miracle “were overcome with amazement,” that Jesus orders them not to make known his raising of Jairus’ daughter to anybody, and to give the girl “something to eat.”

Contrast this with the explicit faith of the woman, midway through today’s Gospel reading, who touches Jesus’ clothes and is healed of twelve years of hemorrhaging that no physician could treat, but only made worse. “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease,” Jesus says to the woman. This woman’s faith and hope that Jesus could heal her, if she only touched his clothing, is more obviously “sure and certain” than that of Jairus in today’s Gospel. Her faith is at least extremely bold.

Many Biblical experts have commented on how this woman’s flow of blood over twelve years would not only have been a physical health problem, but it would have put her in a state of ritual impurity. She would have been considered an outcast in Israel’s society of the time, so clearly, she has nothing to lose by desperately reaching for Jesus’ clothing so that he might heal her. But one commentator I read, more than pointing to the ritual impurity and social ostracism the woman’s hemorrhaging would have brought her, focuses on Jesus first address to her, as “Daughter.”

In Israel in Jesus’ time and well before then, “daughter” not only represented one person but was a metaphor for all of the people of Israel, especially the poor, sinners or, for whatever reason, outcast or exiled. Many times, the Old Testament prophets address Israel’s people as “daughter Jerusalem” or “daughter Zion” when they want to console and strengthen the people, or call them back from exile to their homeland. On the one hand, the woman with the hemorrhage in today’s Gospel could represent the people of Israel as a whole, especially the majority who were poor and many who were outcast, but who still lived with bold hope and faith that God would intervene in their favour. On the other hand, the synagogue official Jairus represents Israel’s elites, who needed to be challenged in a different way than the poor and outcast to live lives of bold hope and faith that were shown by acts of justice, mercy, and generosity.

Jesus’ last command to Jairus and his household is to give his daughter “something to eat.” I wonder if Jairus, in a way, represents us, to the extent that we have something to offer from what God has given us, especially to anybody who is poor, sick, outcast, or even “at the point of death.” The miracle is by God’s grace: “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease”; “Talitha cum… Little girl, get up”! But God entrusts us to receive God’s grace with hope and faith, as well as we are able, and then to communicate that saving grace to the world as generously as we have received it. “Give her”—give this world—“something to eat,” something that will nourish, sustain, and save!

“Sure and certain hope,” boldness in faith, are processes more than they are a destination. Each in their own way, the woman with the hemorrhage who touched Jesus’ clothes, Jairus who pleaded (with some boldness in his own right) for Jesus to heal his daughter, and each of us have the faith and hope in us that we need to receive God’s grace and to nourish the world with it. We may not (or maybe only rarely) feel that our faith; our hope in God is anything close to “sure and certain.”

In this case, “sure and certain hope” becomes not a statement about where we are, but our prayer for the process; our pilgrimage of faith: “God, make our faith; our hope in you ever more ‘sure and certain.’ Help us to overcome all fear and unbelief, to be generous with any gifts and blessings we have received. Give us the boldness of the woman who touched your clothes and was healed. Like Jairus, may we be sent forth to nourish a world you will to be raised up and saved. You did not make death, but have ‘made us for incorruption’; for eternal life. May we live to praise and ‘extol you, Lord, for you have raised [us] up.’”

Homily for Tuesday, 27 August 2019– Memorial of St. Monica

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Psalm 139:1-3, 4-6; Matthew 23:23-26

Tuesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. James Church, Vernon, BC, Canada.

What do we know about St. Monica, whose memorial we celebrate today? Much of what we know about St. Monica, we know from the writings of her far more famous son, St. Augustine. But St. Augustine’s feast day is tomorrow, so we will speak more on St. Monica today and leave our focus on St. Augustine for tomorrow. Well, that is easier said than done, so interconnected is Monica’s life with that of Augustine.

From Augustine, we know that Monica was an exceptionally generous woman. When Monica sought advice from saintly bishops including Ambrose of Milan on how to bring her wayward Augustine to the Christian faith—it would have been notable enough, especially for a woman of Monica’s time, to have had the personal connections with bishops as Monica did—as Augustine would write later in his Confessions, Monica prepared food and drink to leave at churches and oratories where she would stop to pray. She explicitly instructed these churches to give this food and drink to the poor.

But Monica is maybe best known as a saint who suffered greatly because of the infidelity of her pagan husband Patricius and the unruliness of her son Augustine. We hear from 1 Thessalonians and Matthew’s Gospel today about the suffering St. Paul endured in places like Philippi and the suffering the religious leaders of Jesus’ time caused Jesus. In St. Paul’s case, instead of his suffering causing him to become bitter, because St. Paul had suffered so he became all the more generous not only in preaching “the Gospel of God” but in offering the witness of his life to care for the Christian community of Thessalonica. And, we know, Jesus’ suffering at the hands of the religious authorities of his day culminated in his death on the cross, the ultimate sacrifice of his very self for our salvation.

Still, the suffering St. Monica endured are especially remarkable because she endured this suffering from the people closest to her, her husband and her son. And her love, her suffering, her tears that have been the subject of several beautiful paintings and other works of art, were instrumental in bringing Patricius (on his deathbed) and later Augustine to the faith of Jesus Christ. Augustine spends some of the most poignant pages of his Confessions and other writings movingly mourning his mother, Monica, since she had died not long before Augustine became a bishop and perhaps the most prolific Christian writer to date. Monica was, without doubt, instrumental in Augustine’s and maybe Patricius’ (although he is not named as such) becoming saints.

Monica is the patron saint of people in difficult marriages, people who suffer difficult relationships with their children and family members, and victims of infidelity and abuse. I encourage anybody who has suffered or knows anybody who has suffered any of these experiences to pray for the intercession of St. Monica. Pray for the intercession of saints like Paul of Tarsus, who went from causing good people to suffer to suffering persecution for the Gospel. And may we unite our prayers to those of our Lord, whose suffering and death alone redeems all suffering once for all and saves us.

Let me be clear about this: The Church does not require anybody to remain in an abusive relationship that places our well-being and even life in danger. But saints like Monica and Paul and the suffering of Jesus himself show that no suffering; no perpetrator of suffering is beyond redemption. This is why the examples of saints like Monica and Paul; like Augustine, whose feast we will celebrate tomorrow, and like our Lord Jesus himself, and our prayers through these great figures of our faith matter.

Homily for Sunday, 19 August 2018

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Proverbs 9:1-6; Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58

This homily was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada. 

When we gather for a meal, what are some of the things that happen before, during, and after the meal?

First, depending on how elaborate the feast is and how many people will gather together, we may invite people to the meal. And then, whether we are attending a grand feast with hundreds of people or with a small group of friends or family, or one friend, or our wife or husband, girlfriend or boyfriend, or whomever, we need to prepare or have somebody prepare the food and drink. Closer to the time of the meal, we set the tables. We gather at table. We pray in thanksgiving for the food and one another. As we eat and drink, we may tell stories, laugh, sing… We enjoy ourselves. Depending on the occasion, the number of people present, the culture, and so on, the meal may be simple or it may be a several-course feast that lasts all evening, or all day, or longer.

As somebody who enjoys good food and good company, and especially enjoys food and drink from all parts of the world and the cultures and people that inspire and prepare this food, I can think of many meals I have enjoyed over several hours. I think of the devout, generous families I have known and stayed with in places like Spain and France while working or studying there. For these families, meals after Sunday Mass would involve large groups of friends connected through their neighbourhoods or parishes, and would go on for what seemed like forever. I think of the impoverished people of my order’s parishes in Colombia whose doors were constantly open; who constantly offered what little food and drink they had; whose children, from house after house, seemed to stream out into the streets to greet their beloved Basilianos—Basilians. How humbling this giving of abundance out of poverty is when we see it! I think, most recently during my multi-city journey across North America this summer, of when I would enjoy meals with several families during the same day, or have a few hours to be with one family or good friend. Many times, my brother Basilians have put on great feasts. I think of many feasts after weddings, funerals, baptisms…

My sisters and brothers in Christ, we have all been invited to a great feast. When I say this, are many of us perhaps thinking of the Eucharist? If so, I cannot fault us for this. When we think of a great feast, it would be a good sign if we, as Catholic Christians, were to think immediately of the Eucharist. When we hear Jesus promise us his very self for our salvation in today’s Gospel reading from John, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life,” it is natural and right for us to connect Jesus’ promise with our experience of the Eucharist. And yet, while our Eucharist is Jesus really, truly, and fully present among and within us here in this celebration and in bread and wine that we consume, our Eucharist is a sign—we call it a sacrament—of an even greater feast we have yet to experience, the everlasting feast of heaven.

This everlasting feast of heaven requires us to prepare for it. So how, then, do we prepare for heaven? We might prepare for heaven, for a feast for whose glory we can only hope this side of heaven, the same way we prepare for any great feast we have seen and known in this earthly life. The way we prepare for and then partake in meals, everything from small-scale meals with family or one or a few friends to great feasts, goes back before Jesus’ time. We hear of it in the Book of Proverbs. The main character of our reading from Proverbs today is a personified Wisdom. First, Wisdom puts “her house,” a large banquet hall with “seven pillars,” in order. When we are receiving company at home, how many of us, like Lady Wisdom, clean our home? After cleaning, Wisdom prepares the food. She invites guests to the feast, not the rich or the elites first, but from “the highest places in the town,” she invites the poor; those of less-renowned intellect or understanding: “You that are simple, turn in here.” The feast that Wisdom prepares will nourish and strengthen those who enjoy it. They will grow, “live, and walk in the way of insight.”

The letter to the Ephesians picks up the banquet scene where the book of Proverbs leaves off. The feast is underway. The people invited have gathered and are eating, drinking, enjoying themselves, and are amusing one another with stories, humour, and song. Do we not often do the same when we gather for a meal? Sing “Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves… giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Ephesians asks of the people invited to this feast. And yet this permission from Ephesians to enjoy ourselves at the feast in God’s name, no less, comes with a call to moderation: “Do not be foolish,” the letter to the Ephesians says.

Perhaps many if not all of us have been to a feast or a party when somebody behaves foolishly; somebody or many people eat, drink, or behave excessively, or speak in a way that is not careful or ruins others’ reputations. “That is debauchery,” the letter to the Ephesians says, when we become filled and fill others with gossip; so filled with worldly food and spirits that we cannot “be filled with the Spirit” of God. As Christians, invited to this feast of the Eucharist, we are called to better than this. We are called to this feast, having already made room to some extent within ourselves and in our world for God; for God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

This making room for God is the wisdom and “insight” to which our readings from Proverbs and Ephesians call us. After all, God has invited us to the feast, so it would be foolish for us to act in ways that ignore the graciousness of our host, just as this would be foolish to do at any meal to which we were invited. And yet it is all too easy, even for usually well-mannered people like us, to fall into excess; to fall into the foolishness that Ephesians warns against. Is our foolishness and even sin not often a product of excess and a kind of impatience? Instead of accepting that heaven, for which we are invited to hope as Christians, remains something not yet fully realized—that the greatest feast is yet to come—sin is when we try too hard, to excess, to impose our incomplete experience of heaven on one another, ourselves, and our world as if it were complete. We abuse the gifts God has given us to enjoy wisely and in moderation; gifts that point us to heaven without revealing everything of the grandeur of heaven all at once: Food and drink, the gift of speaking, our sexuality… And when we try too hard to impose “heaven” on earth instead of hoping, praying for, and cooperating with God through works of kindness, mercy, and justice toward heaven’s full realization, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as in heaven,” we end up not creating heaven but hell on earth, for ourselves and for one another.

We hear of this kind of excess, the imposition of a false “heaven,” in our Gospel reading today from John. It is telling that, as Jesus repeatedly identifies himself as “the living bread that came down from heaven,” the people’s response progresses from complaining to grumbling to a full-on dispute in today’s Gospel. If our reading from Proverbs today speaks of the advance preparations for a great feast, and Ephesians speaks of enjoying the feast in moderation, in John’s Gospel Jesus reveals to us what heaven will be in its fullness and how we might taste already the heaven that awaits us: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in them.”

Do we, then, have the patience to make room within and among us for Jesus, the only “true food” and “true drink” that enables us to “live forever,” and not to grumble, dispute, or gossip among ourselves? Do we have the wisdom to enjoy without mistaking God’s gifts to us in this life, which point us to heaven, as heaven already in its fullness? To the extent we exercise this patience and wisdom, we taste the food of the everlasting feast of heaven to which God has invited us and of which this Eucharist is a sign of our hope.

Homily for Tuesday, 20 June 2017– Ferial

Tuesday of the 11th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 2 Corinthians 8:1-9; Psalm 146:2, 5-6ab, 6c-7, 8-9a; Matthew 5:43-48

Is there anybody here who is comfortable speaking about money, especially asking other people to give generously of their hard-earned money, even to worthy causes? I cannot speak for our other priests and staff of St. Kateri; I am only able to speak for myself. But I sense that, whenever we need to ask for added money contributions from St. Kateri parishioners, this is not one of the things we feel most comfortable doing, mostly because we recognize how generous so many of us already are.

In this part of 2 Corinthians from which we hear today, St. Paul is speaking of a collection that was taken up from the other Christian communities of the world to send to the church in Jerusalem, which was extremely poor at the time. St. Paul, like many if not all of us today, felt some unease at having to ask the other Christian communities for money to support Jerusalem.

Yet St. Paul speaks to the Christians of Corinth, a very wealthy church at the time, of the spontaneous generosity of another church, that of Macedonia, toward Jerusalem. Macedonia was neither extremely rich nor extremely poor, although it had its significant challenges and even “a severe test of affliction” from time to time. Despite not having much excess wealth, the Macedonian church begs Paul and his companions “insistently for the favor of taking part” in the collection to help Jerusalem.

My sisters and brothers of St. Kateri, I wonder if we here are more like the Macedonians and less like the Corinthians of St. Paul’s time. There are quite wealthy people, and some quite poor people, in our parish. But most of us are neither extremely wealthy nor extremely poor. We here at mainly “middle class” St. Kateri, as in “middle class” Macedonia of St. Paul’s time, have an opportunity here; a calling here to generosity with the resources we have.

And by resources, I do not mean only money or material wealth. Amid St. Paul’s appeal to Corinth to be like Macedonia, except much wealthier, in supporting Jerusalem, he also sends them Titus, whose mission it was to direct the Jerusalem relief effort; the collection in Corinth. I imagine Titus’ mission in Corinth was a difficult one, unless (and I imagine not) he was the type of person who was comfortable asking people for money.

In a few weeks, we at St. Kateri will welcome a new Parochial Vicar, Fr. Michael, in place of Fr. Morgan who is beloved of many people here, and rightly so. Might Fr. Michael be like St. Kateri’s latest Titus? Not only are we invited to be generous with our material resources, but also with our welcome of a new voice; a new (to us here) priest; a new way of preaching and living the Word of God, and so forth. As the Macedonians were generous toward Jerusalem in a way that was an example to other Christian communities, and as St. Paul called the Corinthians to receive Titus with generosity and love as he was entrusted with a difficult message and mission to them, may we ever be an example to everybody around us, to other parishes, of generosity and love, by “the grace of God.”

Homily for Wednesday, 10 August 2016‒ Feast of St. Lawrence

Wednesday of the 19th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 2 Corinthians 9:6-10; Psalm 112:1-2, 5-6, 7-8, 9; John 12:24-26

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

“God loves a cheerful giver,” St. Paul says in his second letter to the Corinthians. And Jesus says “to his disciples” in John’s Gospel, “Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.”

Who here is able to name “a cheerful giver,” somebody who is known for generous service to others; to our Church; to the world? When I think of a generous, “cheerful giver,” I think of a person like Mother Teresa, who founded the Missionaries of Charity to serve the poor around the world. Here in our own country, and longer ago than Mother Teresa, we might include Canada’s saints: Marie de l’Incarnation, who  established the Ursuline Sisters in Québec; Marguerite d’Youville, founder of the Grey Nuns; the Canadian Martyrs; many missionaries; more recently André Bessette… We may think of philanthropists who have given to their communities.

But so many “cheerful,” generous servants and saints are unheralded. Although he is named (many, even, I imagine, the vast majority of saints are not even known by name), we might consider St. Lawrence, whose feast we celebrate today, among these unheralded cheerful and generous servants. Most of what we know about St. Lawrence is legend or at least second-hand. Tradition back to the Acts of the Apostles was to appoint seven deacons to help the pope in Rome to serve those in need in the city. Under Pope Sixtus II, also a saint and martyr, St. Lawrence was one of these seven deacons during the reign of the Roman Emperor Valerian.

We might be familiar with St. Ambrose’s humorous, if graphic, account of The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence: As St. Lawrence was being burned to death, he asked his executioners: “Would you turn me over? I’m not done yet on the other side”!

Dark humour aside, I think another story from the same work by St. Ambrose even more beautifully captures the spirit of St. Lawrence, the kind of “cheerful giver” and generous servant of God whom Jesus promises “the Father will honour.” After Pope Sixtus was led to his death, three days before Lawrence was martyred, Valerian demanded the treasures of the Church of Rome be brought to him. On the day he was executed, Lawrence (we might imagine tongue-in-cheek) brought with him a delegation of the suffering, the poor, the sick, and the crippled of Rome, and announced to a furious Valerian, “Here are the treasures of the Church”!

Who are the cheerful givers; the servants among us whom “the Father will honour”? Who will present before God “the treasures of the Church”: The people of God most in need of our service; the people whose dignity is most vulnerable to being exploited? Perhaps the better question is to ask ourselves to what extent we are prepared to be servants ourselves; to recognize the suffering, the poor, the sick; people with disabilities; the unborn; the elderly as “the treasures” of our Church; of our world; of God’s creation.

We will most likely not be martyred for our efforts as St. Lawrence was. We may not even gain a name for ourselves, except before God. And yet, if we serve not for our own glory but glorifying God, we can be sure that God will love and honour the cheerful givers; those who serve generously.    

Homily for Friday, 12 June 2015– Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

Friday of the 10th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8c-9;  Responsorial Canticle: Isaiah 12:2-3, 4, 5-6; Ephesians 3:8-12, 14-19; John 19:31-37

What does it mean for us to love God? Fr. Larry Gillick, a Jesuit priest at Creighton University, has what I find to be a helpful answer to this question. Fr. Gillick says that “to love God is to let God love us.”

This leads me to more questions, which we might take to our examination of conscience; our prayer and meditation, maybe daily. My questions are these: When have we let God love us? And when have we not let God love us and so have been in need of God’s love and mercy more than ever?

Our answer to when we have let God love us is easier than we might think. Look around at all of us who are here in God’s presence; in Christ’s presence in this Eucharistic celebration. Our presence, here to meet God’s presence, is the foremost way in which we as Christians show that we are allowing God to love us. And so we show by gathering for this Eucharist that we love God. We also show that we are willing to let God love us; that we love God by our celebration of any of the Church’s sacraments. We show this by our works of kindness and justice; of service toward one another, especially those most in need: The poor; the sick; those who have lost a loved one; those whose loved ones experience need or hardship. We show our willingness to let God love us, and so we show we love God, when we allow ourselves to be served by another’s kindness and generosity when we are in need.

God’s love for us is certain. We can be confident in and never despair of God’s love for us, no matter our need; no matter how well or how often we pray; no matter our sin. Our readings today on this feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the feast itself, ask the fundamental question: How much are we willing to let God love us?

The Book of the Prophet Hosea, from which our first reading is drawn, is set during an especially troublesome time in ancient Israel’s history. The kings of Israel, in the line of King David, as well as the people had become corrupt, turning to false gods and committing all forms of social injustice toward the weakest and most vulnerable. The end of the monarchy and exile into foreign nations threaten if Israel continues to be unfaithful to God and unjust to its own people. But God is willing, out of love, to forgive; not to remain angry if Israel returns to faithfulness to God. Hosea’s question to the Israelites is this: Are you willing to let God love you?

This same question is at the center of our second reading, from Ephesians. God has been present; has loved us into being from the moment of creation. God sustains creation; us out of love. God has given us himself in the person of Jesus Christ: The utmost act of love possible. And our Gospel reading speaks of the events immediately after Jesus’ death on the cross. Jesus pours forth love, shown as blood and water, from his heart, pierced by the soldiers’ lance while Jesus hangs on the cross.

Our devotion; our feast today of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus draws us to answer this same question and, do we not believe, answers this question with a resounding “Yes”: Do we love God, and do we show our love for God by letting God love us?

Homily for Saturday, 6 June 2015– Ferial

Saturday of the 9th week in Ordinary Time

Optional Memorial: Our Lady's Saturday

Readings of the day: Tobit 12:1, 12-15, 20;  Responsorial Canticle: Tobit 13:2, 6efgh, 7, 8; Mark 12:38-44

Have you ever been helped or served by somebody and only after the fact found out who acted toward you with kindness? Have you ever done a hidden act of kindness for another person?

To act with kindness toward somebody without revealing to this person (at least not immediately) that you have done something kind toward her or him is difficult. I am not speaking primarily of those who boast to another that they have acted with kindness, as if to say, “Look at me! I was a great help to another person!”

Jesus cautions us in our Gospel reading against this kind of boasting. He condemns “the scribes who like to go around in long robes and accept greetings in the marketplaces, seats of honor in synagogues, and places of honor at banquets”; who “devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext, recite lengthy prayers.” Short of boasting of our kindness and seeking “greetings” and “places of honor,” are not the best acts of kindness those that are hidden? This is not to say that to keep our acts of kindness hidden is easy!

But our readings today give us examples of works of kindness in which the identity of the person acting with kindness is hidden, or at least not recognized at first. Today we near the end of the Old Testament story of Tobit and his family. Tobit’s son, Tobias, is happily married to Sarah. The angel Raphael, in disguise as a man, Azariah, sets up this wedding of Tobias and Sarah by accompanying Tobias to the home of Sarah’s parents Raguel and Edna to ask them to marry Sarah.

But Raphael does not take credit for his gift of company; friendship; even some instances of healing from illness on the journey. Until late in today’s reading; late in the Book of Tobit, Raphael does not even reveal who he is. Instead, when Tobias pays Raphael a handsome “bonus” for traveling with him, Raphael asks Tobias to thank not him but God. “Give [God] the praise and the glory. Before all the living, acknowledge the many good things [God] has done for you.”

And are not most if not all of us familiar with Jesus’ observation of the people contributing to “the temple treasury”? The “many rich people” who “put in large sums” to the temple treasury are not doing anything wrong. Yet, Jesus says, the “poor widow” who puts “in two small coins” makes the greatest contribution of all, because her contribution is hidden.

It is hidden beneath the large sums contributed by the rich who are able to give more. The widow’s contribution is hidden beneath even her poverty. “Poor” is not her true identity; “blessed by God” is. Her true identity is hidden beneath many layers: Her poverty; the wealth of the “many rich people”; cultural and religious expectations of both social classes.

Likewise, for us to be seen doing acts of kindness is not wrong. Sometimes to keep our kindness entirely hidden is difficult if impossible. So what does God ask of us? At least (after the example today of Raphael), give thanks to God for the opportunities we have to act kindly. And, if we have the opportunity to act kindly toward somebody in a hidden way, take this opportunity.

Homily for Sunday, 10 May 2015– Sixth Sunday of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48; Psalm 98:1, 2-3, 3-4; 1 John 4:7-10; John 15:9-17

“This is my commandment: love one another as I love you,” Jesus says to his disciples in our Gospel reading today, from John. What is love? What is the love with which Jesus commands us to love one another as he loves us?

Can any of us think of the first time you heard the word “love”? Who spoke this word to you? What did it mean to you? Might it have been when you were a child and your mother or father caressed you and whispered gently, “I love you”? My parents certainly have said this (and meant it) to me, to my sister and brother, and to each other countless times. I would not be here, a priest with and for you, our Church I love, without their love or yours.

But what is love? The range of meanings of “love” makes this question very difficult to answer. We love what brings us pleasure, comfort, or enjoyment: I love going out with friends; good food and drink; dessert (especially if there is chocolate!); sports; fancy clothes or cars, and so on… Some would love it if, during Mass, there were just a few seconds of silence to pray. Some others among us would love Mass to be as fast as possible while remaining reverent. And so liturgy, the work of and for the people, of and for the Church worshipping God, becomes the difficult and yet fruitful labor of love that it is.

In his first encyclical (a letter written to all Catholics of the world), Deus Caritas Est, or God is Love, Pope Benedict XVI speaks of the many meanings of love. “We speak of love of country,” Pope Benedict says, “love of one's profession, love between friends, love of work, love between parents and children, love between family members, love of neighbor, and love of God.” Perhaps the greatest expression of human love, Pope Benedict says beautifully, is the love between a woman and a man in marriage, in which “body and soul are inseparably joined and human beings glimpse an… irresistible promise of happiness.” In this way, married love is the sacrament; the great image between a woman and a man of God’s own life-giving love for us.

Love can take all these forms, all of which can be good. But what does Jesus say about love? In John’s Gospel we hear Jesus speak highly of love among friends: “I have called you friends.” How do we become friends with Jesus and so friends with one another, if friendship is so great an expression of love? Jesus says to us, “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Love is not an option for us to do when we like; toward those whom we like. Jesus raises love to the level of a commandment: “Love one another.” And how do we love one another most fully? “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Jesus sets the standard of laying “down one’s life for one’s friends” by dying on the cross for us. Jesus loves us even when we do not love him; when we have not loved one another, as we hear today from the First Letter of John: “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.”

Are we expected somehow to match this love that Jesus has for us? More Christians are killed for their faith than ever before in our Church’s history. And so we remember and we pray for those who, after Jesus, continue to “lay down [their] life for [their] friends”; for their faith. I encourage all of us to support those who work to build peace in troubled regions of our world. But here in these United States, is our chance of martyrdom, of literally laying “down [our] live for [our] friends” not slim? How, then, do we follow in this fullest sense Jesus’ commandment to “love one another as” Christ loves us?

We are not expected to die for our faith. Most of us probably will not become martyrs. But I believe Jesus does ask us to give of ourselves completely to another. Who, then, has acted selflessly toward us? Perhaps we could think of at least one example; one person who has loved us selflessly, in the way I think Jesus asks of us today in John’s Gospel. Maybe this person who loves us selflessly (since on this weekend is Mothers’ Day) is our mother. She is the one whose love has given us life; nurtured us; shown the love of Christ to us in all its depth. Children, especially those of you who will receive your first communion in a few moments: Have not your mothers been so important in bringing you here to this day of welcome to the Table of the Lord for the first time? Now you have a chance; the responsibility, even, to bring the love of Christ you receive for the first time in the Eucharist to our world; to your family and friends; to your schools; to your communities. Show love to your mother in a special way today.

All of us: Whisper to your mothers (and mean it!), “I love you.” If your mother is in heaven with God on this Mothers’ Day, pray to God through her with confidence: “Mom, give me the strength you have; the strength of heaven to love as Christ loves us.” Might we do what our fathers have so often asked us to do: “Ask your mother”? And God will hear the prayers of our mothers in heaven and on earth, the prayer of Mary, Mother of God, for God’s Son Jesus Christ says of our Father in heaven, “Whatever you ask the Father in my name he [will] give you.”

Ask for the strength to love as Christ loves us. Ask for the gifts of generosity and selflessness that we see already at work among us so beautifully. Ask for opportunities for small acts of kindness and follow through on them. Ask in prayer and work for peace in our world; in our country; in our cities and communities. Ask God for the strength to stand up to bullying, to gossip, to any action that destroys human dignity; that tears down the people whom Jesus loves. Ask in prayer; act with the love Jesus gives us, and God will hear our prayer. Ask for healing and consolation for all among us who are sick or dying.  “Whatever you ask the Father in my name he [will] give you… ”

“Love one another as I love you,” Jesus says. “This is my commandment,” certainly not an easy commandment but one that is possible with God’s grace; God’s strength. Jesus does not put before us an impossible commandment. “Love one another as I love you.” Be kind to one another as I am kind to you. Seek out the lost; the sinners; those who are without a friend, just as I have sought you out when you were lost; a sinner; short of friends. Receive me; my strength; my love in the Eucharist and in the other sacraments of the Church. Take this love to the world, and God promises us that we will “bear fruit that will remain.” Include others who would not be included in God’s embrace of love otherwise: The doubting; the troublesome; the disagreeable; those who think differently than we do; people of other cultures and faiths. We have a great example of this kind of inclusive love in our first reading today, from Acts, in which Peter reaches out in love to the house of the pagan Greek Cornelius, who in turn accepts baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit; a gift borne of God’s love through these early Apostles.

Love, then, is no longer a broad idea or concept but a simple commandment and our joy to live out. Jesus says, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete.” Ask for God’s love in prayer. Act in God’s love. Love with confidence as Christ loves us. This is the selfless love with which Christ gave his life for us, his “friends.” This is the love that saves us; that empowers us now by the gift of God’s Holy Spirit to “bear fruit that will remain” in our world that thirsts for love. This is the love with which God has loved us first. “Love one another,” Jesus says, “as I love you.”