Homily for Monday, 1 June 2015‒ Memorial of St. Justin Martyr

Monday of the 9th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Tobit 1:3, 2:1a-8; Psalm 112:1b-2, 3b-4, 5-6; Mark 12:1-12

This Mass was offered in memory of my maternal grandmother, Simone Salt. May she rest in peace.

Why do good people suffer? This question does not have an easy answer, even for us as people of faith.

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Justin, a martyr of Rome almost two hundred years before the Roman Empire tolerated Christianity and then made it its official religion. St. Justin’s goal in his teaching and beautiful writings was to convince people of other faiths (Jews and pagans alike) of the truth of the Christian faith; that Christ is the Son of God by pointing to the way Christians lived. His way of teaching by conversation is called the “moral apology” or defense of the moral rightness of Christian faith. St. Justin, a good and faithful man, a saint, suffered greatly for his gentle way of teaching and was eventually killed for his faith.

Our opening prayer of today’s Mass speaks of “the folly of the Cross” that “wondrously taught St. Justin the Martyr the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ.” Why do good people like St. Justin suffer? Why are there more martyrs within the last century than in all previous centuries of Christian history combined?

Might we point to questions like these and wonder at the folly of when good people suffer? These questions have no easy answers. Our readings today speak to this same question. We are introduced to Tobit, who has been exiled to Nineveh, in our first reading today. Tobit searches for one of his own people who has been murdered, so that he can give him a dignified burial.

Would we not think that Tobit’s profound act of mercy would be praised? But instead Tobit is mocked both by the Ninevites and by his own people of Israel. To contact the dead physically would bring Tobit ritual impurity. Worse yet, his own life is endangered because he dares to bury a person who has been murdered. Why do good people like Tobit suffer?

Jesus’ parable of the tenants in our Gospel reading is the ultimate example of a good person experiencing suffering. After sending several servants into a vineyard and seeing them mistreated by the vineyard’s tenants, the vineyard owner sends in his own son. Instead of respecting the vineyard owner’s son as hoped, they plot to kill him and seize the inheritance!

We know that, in Jesus’ parable, God is the vineyard owner. Jesus is the innocent Son who is killed. Why does the innocent Son, Jesus, suffer? The Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth once said that the only way to make sense of suffering by innocent people is that Christ suffered and died for us. And yet why do some experience extreme poverty? Why are so many in our world threatened and killed for their faith? Why natural disasters that claim many lives? Why do young children experience terrible illnesses, and their families who care for them suffer also? Why did my grandmother, Simone, for whom we pray in this Mass, suffer for years in near-silence with dementia?

We have no easy answers. But God’s promise is that, by uniting ourselves to the “folly of” Christ’s Cross, our suffering is made temporary. We gain “surpassing knowledge” of Christ’s suffering for us. And we who share in Christ’s suffering will also have a share in his resurrection.

Homily for Sunday, 17 November 2013

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Malachi 3:19-20a; Psalm 98:5-6, 7-8, 9; 2 Thessalonians 3:7-12; Luke 21:5-19

We might ask from time to time: Why do some people who do evil seem to prosper, even if for a short time? Where is God in the midst of evil or even natural disasters like Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and Vietnam?  Why does a just God allow sin on an individual level or even social moral decay to go on? Why does God allow so many people to live in abject poverty? Why does Christ not come again immediately to end the evil; the strife; the violence done against life and the environment?

Those of us who have ever asked these kinds of questions might be consoled to know that people in Biblical times asked the same kinds of questions.

Biblical books, in whole or in part, are based on questions of why a just and all-good God allows natural and moral evil to persist. We encounter one such book‒ that of the prophet Malachi‒ from which we hear today’s first reading.

God’s message to the Israelite people through Malachi takes a question-and-answer form. The people question and lament God’s inaction in the face of evil. Even though the Israelites had survived having been overrun by neighboring powers and, most catastrophically, the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem and exile in Babylon, Israel was never quite delivered from foreign powers as earlier prophets had promised.

Malachi’s response to the people’s lament is to urge them to be patient: God will intervene in spectacular fashion to improve the lot of just people… eventually.

The question asked in response to prophetic promises of divine intervention like that of Malachi; the question asked of Jesus by the people in today’s Gospel; the question we might ask today in the face of suffering and evil might be similar: “When will this happen?” When will there be no more evil; no more violence; no more suffering; no more death?

These are fair questions to ask of God, and yet we are reminded by today’s readings not to give in to false hope. The prophet Malachi only says that the day of the LORD “will come.” St. Paul reminds the Thessalonian Christians that the proclamation of Christ entails work and sometimes “toil and drudgery”; making one’s self vulnerable to ridicule and persecution. Jesus warns his hearers against following those who offer all-too-ready solutions to the world’s problems; those who claim to be the world’s saviors.

There will indeed be evil and suffering before the kingdom of God is brought to its fullness, Jesus says: The magnificent temple of Jerusalem will once again be destroyed. There will be “wars, insurrections… earthquakes, famines, and plagues.”

Sadly, not much has changed from Jesus’ description of the world to our own day. So where do we place our hope?

Whether voiced through Malachi, Paul, or Jesus, God’s promise is not that evil and suffering will immediately be no more. However, God promises us that evil and suffering will be and is being transformed. Evil and suffering are being deprived here and now of any power they once had in and of themselves. God is taking this power of evil and suffering upon God’s self and transforming it.

God’s first act of transformation of evil and suffering is, to our eyes, a sign of total failure: the cross of Christ. But every time we come to Mass, “we proclaim” the death of Christ before we “profess [Christ’s] resurrection.” Only by the cross of Christ are suffering and evil transformed; only with death is there a resurrection, of Christ or of us. This is our hope. This is our “mystery of faith.”

That our hope as Christians depends on mystery will be of little consolation to any of us who are experiencing or have ever experienced deep or prolonged suffering. Why does a just and good God allow this suffering? Why does God allow natural disasters? Why does God allow individual and social evil to persist? Why does God allow the sudden loss from the St. Kateri Parish community of Fr. Jack Rosse: a man of great joy who constantly reminded us to “remember to share your smile”; a friend; a mentor; a priest, whose death leaves us with emptiness and sadness?

Nor I, nor the Church, have any easy answers to these questions. And yet we are a people of “the mystery of faith.” We are a people of hope. How can this be so? This can only be so if we as Christians play an active role in the transformation of evil and suffering into what is good and what gives us life. We play an active role in this transformation when we love one another as God loves us; when we work to heal divisions in our world, in our Church, in our community, in our families, and in our parish; when we listen actively and attentively, especially to those who have different perspectives than our own; when we speak the truth; when we care for life and for God’s creation; when we minister with compassion to the poor and the sick; when we worship together; when we “remember to share our smile.”

In all these ways, we show that we are a people of hope; a people that prays “thy kingdom come” at every Mass and meanwhile actively co-operates in building toward the fullness of God’s kingdom here on earth.

When will the coming of the kingdom or “the end of time” be definitive? When will there be no more evil; no more violence; no more suffering; no more death? No one knows, but we do know that the transformation of evil and suffering‒ the process of our salvation‒ has already begun with Christ’s death on the cross and is taking place here and now. We are actively part of this transformation; a part of our own “mystery of faith.” This is our hope.

In memory of Fr. John (Jack) Rosse. May he rest in peace.