Homily for Wednesday, 24 August 2016‒ Feast of St. Bartholomew

Wednesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Revelation 21:9b-14; Psalm 145:10-11, 12-13, 17-18; John 1:45-51

This homily was given at Anglin House, Cardinal Flahiff Basilian Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada.

The other day I was reading a fascinating article on Mother Teresa about an interview with the priest promoting the cause for her canonization. We might ask: What does Mother Teresa have to do with St. Bartholomew the Apostle, whose feast we celebrate today?

The priest in the interview says of Mother Teresa that she “did ordinary things extraordinarily well.” I think that this is the connection between Blessed Mother Teresa and St. Bartholomew and indeed all the saints: They “did ordinary things extraordinarily well.” How well does this describe us? After all, we are all called to holiness; we are all called to be saints.

God does not expect us to do the extraordinary. If God did expect this of us, I do not think that St. Bartholomew, or Mother Teresa or anybody else for that matter, would ever become a saint. St. Bartholomew is so ordinary that the Gospels differ on his name. St. Bartholomew is called Nathaniel in John's Gospel. Whatever his name, or whether or not Nathaniel and Bartholomew were two different Apostles, John speaks of a man who is completely ordinary. Nathaniel, or Bartholomew, is completely transparent in his need to be led to the Lord by St. Philip; completely open and without “deceit” in questioning whether “anything good” could “come out of Nazareth”; but also completely truthful to Jesus as to how he comes to believe that Jesus is “the Son of God... the King of Israel.”

St. Bartholomew is an example to us of a completely, refreshingly ordinary saint. He is not after his own glory, but the glory of God. Our Psalm response describes people like St. Bartholomew fittingly: “Your friends tell the glory of your kingship, Lord.”

Our calling is like that of St. Bartholomew, Blessed Mother Teresa, all the Apostles and saints: To point to and to point one another toward “the glory of the Lord.” Our calling is to “do ordinary things extraordinarily well.”

Homily for Sunday, 21 August 2016

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 66:18-21; Psalm 117:1, 2; Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13; Luke 13:22-30

This homily was given at St. Joseph’s College, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Is it not easy to admire the candour of the person in the crowd who asks Jesus in our Gospel reading today, “Lord, will only a few be saved”? How many of us have asked or at least thought similar questions?

Today’s Gospel reading is part of a section of loosely-connected sayings of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel on the Kingdom of God. And Jesus never quite answers the question of the person in the crowd, “Lord, will only a few be saved”? Instead, Jesus gives us three somewhat unclear, inconsistent images of God’s Kingdom: “The narrow door,” the locked door, and the great banquet at which “Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets” are joined by “people… from east and west” and “from north and south.” The images of the narrow door and the locked door suggest that, yes, it is likely that “only a few” will “be saved.” But the third image of God’s Kingdom, the banquet scene, suggests that more than “only a few” will “be saved.” Yet, here again, Jesus says that many, even among the people who have followed him from village to village, will find themselves “thrown out” of the great banquet. And so does it not seem that to “be saved” will be difficult for us?

In light of these three images of God’s Kingdom, it would be difficult to fault any of us for thinking this way; for asking questions like, “Lord, will only a few be saved”? To take the harsh edge off of Jesus’ parables of God’s Kingdom, we might understand Jesus as drawing a line between those who were for and those who were against his message. Jesus’ images of the entrance to God’s Kingdom as a “narrow door” that would eventually be locked, and of God’s Kingdom itself as an exclusive banquet, were directed especially at the the religious and political elites of Jesus’ day. Many of these elites were not acting with justice; were not living in an upright way. They were oppressing and excluding the very people they were supposed to be helping; making sure they had the basic necessities of life; leading toward God and toward salvation by their own teaching and example. These were the people who would arrive at the Kingdom of God before a locked door, not be able to enter “through the narrow door,” or be “thrown out” of the banquet. And those least expected to enter the Kingdom of God would enter ahead of those who would have expected to enter first: “Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”

Nowadays, who are the people we would name among the “first” to enter God’s Kingdom; to “be saved”? Who are among the “last,” or those who will not enter the Kingdom of God at all? Part of our answer to who is “first” is easy. Especially as good Catholics, we might answer, “the saints.” But even the named (canonized) saints, those we recognize officially as in heaven; experiencing eternal life, are far from the total number of people already in heaven; already saved. And people who are not Catholic or who are not Christian are not necessarily to be counted among the “last” or those who will be excluded from salvation. We cannot even be sure that people who have done great evil will not ultimately be saved. And so to answer the question of who “will be last” or who will not be saved is even more difficult than to answer who “will be first.” In fact for us to answer either question is impossible.

“Lord, will only a few be saved”? We cannot answer this question. And Jesus does not give us the answer. We can answer, faithfully to our Christian tradition, that God wills everybody to be saved, but this is as much as we may know and believe. Our Church names a few of the many, mostly anonymous, saints through the ages, and does not place anybody in particular in hell, for good reason.

But can it still not be tempting for us to speculate on who might be saved; on which actions or choices might place a person definitively beyond salvation? Have any of us ever been asked a question like, “Have you been saved”? I have been asked this question a few times, by well-meaning Christians. Questions like this tempt me to make a snarky reply like, “I don’t know. Have you”? This is when I believe most deeply that biting one’s tongue should be added as the eighth corporal work of mercy!

Humour aside, I think that to make our salvation out to be an individual pursuit like this (“Have you been saved”?) or to become otherwise obsessed with salvation, with whether we or anybody else “will be first” or “last,” is dangerous. What do I mean by this? If and when we become obsessed with salvation and make it individualistic, about whether I will be saved, we neglect key aspects of salvation.

First, our salvation is God’s gift of grace to us; God’s choice, not ours. This is not to say that our works; our words and our actions do not matter to God. Our second reading, from the letter to the Hebrews, calls us to accept with humility “the discipline of the Lord.” Moral accountability is vital to our salvation. Are we yielding “the peaceful fruit of righteousness” by the way we live? Are we working in some way for peace and justice in our world; our nation; our communities; our households; our Church? Without concrete works (words and actions) that strengthen our relationship with God and with one another; without works that show the Kingdom of God dwelling within our world here and now, salvation becomes an empty obsession with a distant reality.

Second, the key word in all this is “we.” Salvation, building the Kingdom of God here and now so that we might inherit it in its fullness by the end of time, is not an individual but a communal, relational effort. This is the message of the prophet Isaiah we hear in our first reading today. Isaiah encourages the people of Israel to return to their homeland after a long exile in Babylon. But God, speaking through Isaiah, not only calls individuals, or only the people of Israel, home. No, God says through Isaiah, “I am coming to gather all nations and tongues, and they shall come and see my glory.” The message is the same in Luke’s Gospel, in Jesus’ sayings about the Kingdom of God. Who will be present at the great banquet of God’s Kingdom? Jesus says that “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets,” and then “people from east and west [and] from north and south” will be at this great feast. All will celebrate together not their own glory but the glory of God; the fullness of relationship with God and communion with one another.

“Lord, will only a few be saved”? Perhaps, yes, “only a few,” if any, will be saved if we try to be saved as individuals, alone, before God. But I dare say that this is not what God wants of us. God wants all of us; all of creation to be saved. God is gathering “all nations and tongues” together to “see [God’s] glory.” And God has given us signs here, now on earth, of the future fullness of God’s Kingdom. The greatest of these signs, of these sacraments, is this Eucharist we celebrate; our communion in God and in one another. Salvation is not distant reality, but starts right here, not for a select few but for all of us.

“Lord, will only a few be saved”? “Will only a few” be able to “enter through the narrow door” before it is locked? Not if we work and if we entrust ourselves to God’s saving grace and mercy together…

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.