Homily for Monday, 1 January 2024– Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God

Readings of the day: Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21

Sisters and brothers, Happy New Year and a happy Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God!

Our Church has also celebrated New Year’s Day as the World Day of Peace since Pope St. Paul VI first connected this day to an ongoing prayer for and reflection on peace in our world in 1967. Peace is much richer than the mere absence of conflict. Perhaps the absence of conflict sometimes (if not frequently) can mask the absence of true peace in our world and in our relationships.

Since Mary’s time, Jesus’ time, and well before then, since the time the Book of Numbers from which we hear God’s blessing of peace through Aaron today was written, peace has been based on the multidimensional Hebrew word, shalom. Shalom can mean a simple, friendly greeting, like, “Hello,” “goodbye,” or “farewell.” It means peace in the fullest sense possible, the desire for wholeness, well-being, harmony, for ourselves and everybody.

From when I was an elementary school-aged child, I remember the Hebrew traditional song we learned in music class:

Shalom, chaverim. Shalom, chaverim.

Shalom, shalom.

L’hitra’ot, l’hitra’ot

Shalom, shalom.

Farewell (or greetings), my friends.

Farewell, my friends. Peace! Peace!

Until we meet again, until we meet again.

Peace! Peace!

Aaron’s blessing of the people of Israel that we hear today in Numbers is similar in spirit to this little folk song. Aaron blesses the people of Israel in God’s words to him:

The LORD bless you and keep you,

the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace [shalom].

Those of us who attend the 9:30 am Mass here at St. Joseph’s College with the Children’s Liturgy of the Word will be familiar with this blessing of Aaron. Our music ministry has been singing a lovely arrangement of it when our children go out for the Children’s Liturgy downstairs.

I have said that shalom, peace, is a multidimensional word. It is a word that suggests movement. Shalom can never be static or stationary. In the Book of Numbers, the Aaronic blessing, shalom begins as a gift of God, a gift we receive from looking upon the face of God, from God turning God’s face to look upon us and, in a word from Aaron’s blessing, shining on us.

Few natural events suggest peace—God’s love for us, for the world; calm, wholeness, well-being, harmony—than a sunrise. This is the first image in my mind when I think of God’s face “shining” upon us. Yet lately, often as soon as I picture a sunrise in my mind and connect it to God’s shalom, my mind is haunted by images from half a world away—say, on the evening news, from war zones like those of Gaza or Ukraine: Cities reduced to rubble. Yet the sun rises over the ruins, the loss of life. These images drive home for me how far we are—how far humanity is—from the peace God wills for the world. They emphasize for me how far we are from the shalom with which God shone his face on Aaron and Moses for the people of Israel; the shalom for which God sent his only-begotten Son into our world, born as one like us of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God. But still, far as we are from God’s perfection of shalom, God makes the sun rise over us, even over our ruins, our anti-shalom.

If God’s shalom is to be effective in our world, God invites us to do two things with it: First, treasure it, ponder it in our hearts and, second, go out “with haste,” with a joyful urgency, to hand it on to people we encounter. Shalom cannot stand pat if it is to be effective in our world in need of it; it must be actively put into motion!

Mary, Mother of God, Luke says to us today, “treasured all [the] words” of the shepherds “and pondered them in her heart.” This is the second of three times in which Luke’s account of Jesus’ infancy describes Mary as treasuring or pondering the mysteries of God’s shalom as they unfold. And each time Mary profoundly treasures or ponders is when perplexing, even frightening, peace-disrupting events are taking place around her.

First, the angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she “will conceive in [her] womb and bear a son,” whom she is to name Jesus. Luke says that Mary ponders “what sort of greeting this might be.” Second is Mary’s encounter with the shepherds in today’s Gospel reading. By the time the shepherds have reached “Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger,” it seems that they have already told everybody they could “what had been told them about this child.” They had organized the baby shower, done the “gender reveal,” and everything, all before Mary had had a chance to breathe, to meet these excitable shepherds for the first time. Still, Mary treasures and ponders shalom, calm, wholeness, well-being, harmony at her very core. And, a third time, when Mary and Joseph find the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple, teaching and listening to the teachers, after three days of frantic searching, again Mary keeps “all these things in her heart.”

Mary is the master of the first movement of shalom, treasuring and pondering. For the shepherds’ part, in today’s Gospel reading they are masters of the second movement of shalom, going with haste—with a joyful urgency—to communicate shalom once they have received it. The shepherds’ setting out “with haste to Bethlehem” and then returning just as quickly to their fields, “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen,” echoes Mary’s own action earlier in Luke’s Gospel of going “with haste” to visit Elizabeth when Mary learns that Elizabeth is pregnant with John the Baptist at the same time she is pregnant with Jesus. Mary is Mother of God, the God-bearer in both these movements of shalom: Treasuring-pondering and going out with haste, actively bearing shalom to the world.

The shepherds, Joseph the husband of Mary, and especially Mary, whom we celebrate today as Mother of God, are master communicators of shalom. They are models for us of how we can be God-bearers in the sense of peace-bearers, shalom-bearers to our world. For us to be consistent bearers, communicators of shalom in our world, in our relationships, households, among our friends, in our places of work and leisure, in our Church can be challenging.

I find it interesting that, in his Message for the World Day of Peace this year, Pope Francis reflects as deeply as he does on the effects of new and ever-developing technologies—in particular artificial intelligence—on peace in our world and our human relationships. “Progress in science and technology,” Pope Francis says, “insofar as it contributes to greater order in human society and greater fraternal communion and freedom… leads to the betterment of humanity and the transformation of the world.”

How science, technologies like AI, the media of social communications lead “to the betterment of humanity and the transformation of the world” depends on how we use them, regulate them toward “the integral development of all individuals and peoples.” Scientific and technological progress can bear great promise, but also great risk. Pope Francis says, and I think this is easy to see, that science and technology, the ways we communicate and gain knowledge, pose challenges not only for any understanding of the human person as sacred but also social. These pose challenges in ethics: Political, social, economic; challenges in the areas of international law and the resolution of armed conflict when nations create weapons that can cause greater destruction more remotely than ever before. Progress in science, technology, communication pose challenges for education, for upholding especially the God-given dignity of the poor and people in need, for alleviating poverty and need, for protection of the natural environment.

How are we, this community of faith here at St. Joseph’s College, to manage all this? Understandably, maybe many or most of us feel powerless to effect any good against great global dangers to human well-being, human relationships, human life. But we can start small, local. We can start by helping the poor when we can. We can start by consuming less of what we do not need to consume. We can start by challenging ourselves to think critically about the information we absorb from media; as Pope Francis asks, “What are the social and ethical aspects of the development and [our] uses of technology”? We can start by challenging ourselves to one or two simple acts of kindness a day if we are not already doing this.

We can start by imitating the way of Mary, Mother of God, of Joseph, of the shepherds: First, treasure and ponder. How am I—how are we—being called to be bearers of peace, shalom, to our world and in our human relationships? Second, go “with haste”: If we have peace, kindness, mercy, calm, truth, hope, love to communicate, do not hesitate to communicate it, by word or the simplest of actions, like a friendly smile!

And, most important of all, pray, all of us, for shalom in our relationships, our world. That is the prayer God gave Aaron to pray for the ancient people of Israel. That is the prayer of Mary, Mother of God, for us:

Shalom, chaverim… Peace, my friends.

The LORD bless you and keep you,

the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

Homily for Sunday, 31 December 2023– Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Year B

Readings of the day: Genesis 15:1-6, 21:1-3; Psalm 105:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9; Hebrews 11:8, 11-12, 17-19; Luke 2:22-40

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Yet our readings today invite us to a broader understanding of three related realities: Family, holiness, and blessing. The word of God invites us to see the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as the culmination in human history of family, holiness, and blessing.

For Jews, Christians, and Muslims, the faithful of the three great Abrahamic religions, that history begins with Abraham. It is difficult, I think, for us not to feel badly for Abraham at the beginning of the reading we hear this evening from the Book of Genesis. God promises Abraham a son with Sarah, an ancestor to many nations, several times within a few chapters of Genesis. By the time Genesis introduces us to Abram, he is seventy-five years old. He is one hundred years old when Sarah gives birth to Isaac. So Abraham has had to wait a long time for God’s promise of descendants to become reality. Abram begins to feel like God has abandoned him and Sarai. His slave “Eliezer of Damascus” is, so far, his only heir. At this point, Abram has no family, no descendants of his own blood. “Maybe,” Abram could have thought, “I or Sarai have done something wrong. Maybe we have been less than steadfast in holiness.” God certainly seems, so far, to be denying Abram and Sarai the blessing of a child, of descendants.

So, what does God do with Abram? God does not ask Abram to look upon Sarai with love and imagine her expecting a child with him. And Genesis is clear that Abram has been nothing but faithful and patient with God. Abram’s faith and trust in God’s promise of descendants is “reckoned… to him as righteousness.” God does not ask of Abram any greater sign of his faith toward God. So, why does God continue to delay (or deny) Abram the only blessing he really longs for, a child, a family, descendants to populate all nations?

God asks only one thing of Abraham in the reading from Genesis we have just heard: Go outside; “look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them… So shall your descendants be.”

So, what does this encounter between God and Abram—God’s renewed promise (again) to Abraham of a great number of descendants—say to us about family, holiness, blessing? Sisters and brothers, family, holiness, and blessing are not things to be counted in the biblical imagination. In the Bible—the epics of Abraham and Sarah, of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and all the people and generations in between them—family is not limited to blood relationships. Holiness and blessing, too, are from God. So these are uncountable, infinite gifts to us of God’s grace.

God asks of us that we live according to the holiness and blessing that has been ours since the first moments of our creation. God saw that we were—humanity was—“very good”; God had created us in God’s image and likeness, blessed us, and given to us the care of everything God had created.

For Abraham and Sarah, to live according to this original state of holiness and blessing meant to trust in God’s promise of descendants, a family of nations in faith. It meant to go outside and look up with awe into the limitlessness, uncountable as the stars are uncountable, of God’s blessing to them and all people, all creation for all time. For this, Sarah’s and Abraham’s trust in God, Genesis says today twice, God blesses Sarah, places her and Abraham at the head of God’s historical family in faith.

For the people who hear the Letter to the Hebrews—for us today, hearing this proclamation anew—to live in good faith according to our original state of holiness and blessing is to recognize in God’s faithfulness to his promise to Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob the prefigurement of God’s restoration of us to that original state of holiness and blessing in and through Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ we have the human manifestation of “God [who] is able even to raise someone from the dead.” God has raised Jesus from the dead, giving us a share in the blessing of eternal life.

For the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in Luke’s Gospel today, to live according to our original state of holiness and blessing is not so much to look up in awe at the limitlessness of the stars as Abram did, but to look and travel toward the temple of Jerusalem. In the time of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the temple was the centre of the Jewish faith, the dwelling place of God on earth, centred on the Holy of Holies.

Mary and Joseph set out, obedient to God’s call and their faith, to present Jesus in the temple. There is some ambiguity here: The Holy of Holies of the temple is the Holy Family’s destination, the dwelling place of God on earth. Yet Mary and Joseph hold God in human flesh, the infant Jesus, in their arms as they set out on their pilgrimage to the temple. Once the Holy Family arrives at the temple, the Holy of Holies, the baby Jesus, meets the Holy of Holies. But then the focus of this encounter of the Holies becomes the arms of the “righteous and devout” Simeon.

At that point, Simeon has nothing more on earth to live for. God’s Holy Spirit had “revealed to him… that he would not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord.” God’s promise, God’s blessing to the holy Simeon has been fulfilled. So Simeon is able to praise God, Luke’s Gospel says, with one of the most beautiful prayers in all of Scripture. For those of us who pray the Breviary or Liturgy of the Hours, at Night Prayer (Compline) the Church still prays Simeon’s prayer: “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”

This moment of prayer is a moment of encounter: Blessing, holiness, family all meet in this moment. Now, Simeon may depart this life for eternal life in heaven. He who has looked upon the presence of God, who has held God in the Christ Child in his arms, is an heir to God’s promise to Abraham, who looked up at the limitlessness of God’s promise, God’s holiness, God’s blessing of family: “Look toward heaven and count the stars… So shall your descendants be.”

There is only one thing on earth left for Simeon to do as he returns the baby Jesus to Mary and Joseph: Simeon blesses the Holy Family as he sends them on their way back to Nazareth, their hometown. It is a strange sort of blessing, I imagine unnerving if we had been Mary or Joseph in that situation. “This child,” Simeon says, “is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

What is Simeon talking about? And how are his words to Mary there a blessing? Simeon’s words are a blessing, but with a dose of reality. God has given us every blessing possible under heaven. God has created us with holiness, in God’s own image and likeness. And God has given us the gift of a Saviour, who has restored us to the dignity of being called members of God’s holy family, the People of God.

Yet our mission is to accept these gifts from God. Our mission is to hand on these gifts to still other people, so that all people for all time become heirs to God’s blessing, God’s holiness; all become members of God’s family of peoples and nations. The Christ Child, the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph stand as “a sign that will be [and to this day continue to be] opposed” by many who want to exclude from God’s blessing, God’s people on the grounds that these are somehow not “worthy” of God’s grace, God’s blessing, being called God’s people: The poor, refugees and migrants, people whose relationships are irregular by Church law, and so on. This is the cruel reality present in our world. Yet the encounter between Simeon and Anna and the Holy Family in the temple, prefigured by the encounter of Abraham and Sarah with God, shows us that God’s grace, God’s blessing, God’s holiness, God’s call to us to be universal family of God’s chosen people, will not be so easily limited.

The leaders of Jesus’ own people, of his own time, would try to limit God’s grace, God’s blessing by crucifying the Lord of all grace and all blessing: “A sword will pierce your own soul too.” But life, grace, blessing overcame even that violent attempt to limit it, to limit God. So God continues to call us forth, now from this place of encounter with God to be heralds of God’s blessing, God’s holiness with which we have been created and that is our original state of being, in God’s image and likeness. In the name of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, God invites us to bless the world, to exclude nobody from God’s blessing, so that we become ever more perfectly and universally the holy family of the People of God.

Homily for Sunday, 24 December 2023– The Nativity of the Lord, Mass during the Night

Readings of the day: Isaiah 9:1-6; Psalm 96:1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:10-14

Once again, sisters and brothers, a blessed and Merry Christmas to all of us, our families, friends, and loved ones!

In our Opening Prayer for this celebration of the Nativity of our Lord, we praised God who has “made this most sacred night radiant with the splendor of the true light.”

God has made “this night,” not some other night far from our experience, “radiant with the splendor of the true light.” Yes, it is right for us to say, God made a night over two thousand years ago over Bethlehem especially “radiant with the splendor of the true light.” That was the night when Jesus was born of the blessed Virgin Mary, “wrapped… in swaddling clothes and laid… in a manger.” That night was greeted by an angel, sent with a message of “the true light” to “shepherds living in the fields.”

“The true light” would reach from Bethlehem to the ends of the earth! Shepherds were about as marginal as could be in Jesus’ time. They lived outside the cities and villages. Experts on Luke’s Gospel often speak of shepherds as people with a somewhat poor reputation. They did not regularly participate in social and religious ritual. They probably smelled a little off, like their sheep. But Luke’s Gospel says that they are the first to hear the message of our Saviour’s birth. And then that one angel sent to tell the shepherds of Jesus’ birth joins “a multitude of the heavenly host.”

The light, the sound of joyous song spreads from there: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours”! And it all starts with the message of one angel to a group of shepherds. Those shepherds have nothing to lose, so they set out “with haste and [find] Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.”

Already within our Gospel account of Jesus’ birth, the focus of the action has shifted, from an angel’s encounter with shepherds in their fields to those shepherds, heeding the invitation by the angel, encountering the Saviour of the world in a manger in Bethlehem. And this, sisters and brothers, the manger scene—we might say Act One, Scene Two of the Nativity event, if Act One, Scene One is the shepherds’ fields—is not the last scene of the birth of our Lord on earth, robed in our human flesh.

Today, here and now, we are experiencing another scene of the birth of our Lord into our world, sisters and brothers. “The splendor of the true light” that was first made known by an angel to shepherds, and then made manifest to the shepherds in their encounter with the Christ Child in a manger alongside Mary and Joseph, continues to grow in our present time. “The splendor of the true light,” the sound of joyous song, the encounter with the world’s peace and salvation in our human flesh continues to grow brighter, clearer, and closer in and through us.

How is this so? Is it not a little presumptuous to put ourselves in the Nativity story, so to speak, as if we should imagine ourselves as somehow important enough to be among the first to encounter God in our human flesh! But remember who was first to encounter the Christ Child, after Mary and Joseph: Shepherds were first. But, then, we might ask, was Jesus’ birth not a one-and-done event in history? This event could not still be happening; that is absurd!

In a way this is true: Jesus was born once for all into our world as a human being, there, done, over two thousand years ago in Bethlehem. And some (maybe many) of us may not feel very comfortable—we may feel unworthy—to imagine ourselves “on scene” with the first people to encounter the newborn Son of God.

Some (if not many) of us here tonight may not exactly be comfortable or feel worthy to be here. Some (if not many) of us may not have been to church for a long time. Some (if not many) of us may be conscious of some serious wrong, or have been wronged seriously by somebody else, or may be experiencing broken relationships, divisions within our households and our friendships.

If you are one of these people, I want you to know you are welcome here. Your presence here to celebrate this night of Jesus’ birth, “this most sacred night [made] radiant with the splendor of the true light,” has nothing to do with worthiness: Yours, mine, that of anybody celebrating this Christmas night anywhere in the world. It has nothing to do with whether this is your first time in a church in a long time, a short time, or ever. It had nothing to do with worthiness—of the shepherds, or even of Mary and Joseph—the night Jesus was born. Besides, the shepherds were first on scene at Jesus’ birth, after Mary and Joseph. Let us remember this.

From the shepherds the joyous song, “the splendor of the true light” could only grow. And it continues to grow in and through us. If this were not true, there would be no point in us gathering here to celebrate Christmas. God wants to grow the light in and through us.

This has been God’s desire from the very first moment of creation, when God spoke over the darkness, the primordial chaos and nothingness: “Let there be light.” And, from then on, the light has only grown. Sure, there have been and continue to be moments in our world, its history, our own lives when the light that is God’s presence in our world, in us, has been obscured. There have been moments when people have—when we have—tried to extinguish the light. That is what sin is and does. But our sin is no match for God, who this night takes on our human nature; who this night comes to dwell as one like us in all but sin; who this night invited shepherds through an angel to be the first after Mary and Joseph at the newborn Jesus’ bedside.

If we reflect on when God has intervened in our world, when God has reignited the light of God’s presence in our world, this tends to be when the light has become dimmest to our eyes, when we are most deeply mired in the darkness of sin. The word of God speaks to that this night. When the people of Israel in Old Testament times were at their most sinful, when they had nearly forgotten God in favour of the false gods of militarily and politically powerful nations around Israel, and when Israel had forgotten its responsibility of justice especially toward the most marginalized among themselves, God’s prophet Isaiah spoke to them. Isaiah said to Israel, in the depths of darkness and sin, “The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

And that light would only grow brighter. The joyous song would only resound more clearly: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours”! The people of Israel and then the people of the whole world would see, would encounter, would experience the mercy of “a child… born for us, a son given to us… Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” That child would be “born for us” into a world, once again, “in deep darkness.” Israel of Jesus’ time was ruled by the Romans, just the latest in a succession of brutal foreign powers to rule the Holy Land.

We can point out many instances of “deep darkness” in our world still today: Wars, poverty, homelessness, other injustices, broken relationships. Yet, once again, God enters our world: Sure, not as God did just over two thousand years ago, as a baby in the womb of the Virgin Mary, born and laid in a manger in Bethlehem. Sure, God may not be entering the world in our own time through the words of a prophet like Isaiah or through the mighty acts of creation that set this universe in motion at the beginning of time: “Let there be light.”

But now God ignites the light anew, on “this most sacred night radiant with the splendor of the true light.” And God entrusts us, no matter how unworthy we might think we are, with this light. Our Gospels say in another instance that we “are the light of the world.” Each of us, and the Church communally, is “another Christ,” another focus point of God’s light and joyous song in our world.

Christ continues to make his dwelling in our human flesh, the human presence of everybody who celebrates his Nativity throughout the world on this night. Here we welcome and we celebrate the rekindling of the light, God’s entrusting us with the light so that, by our words and deeds of kindness, of justice, of mercy, of peace, of joy, each of us may be a first point of encounter with the light of the Lord. Each of us may become ever more “radiant with the splendor of the true light.” And that true light, that song of true joy, that closeness of encounter with Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world, will only grow brighter and clearer in and through us.

Homily for Sunday, 24 December 2023– Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year B

Readings of the day: 2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16; Psalm 89:2-3, 4-5, 27, 29; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

I do not wish to dampen our mood too much. But traveling around this City of Edmonton—walking around the neighbourhood where I live, seeing the poverty and the homelessness; seeing the encampments of homeless people whenever I drive through downtown—quickly makes me sad these days. How do we respond to the many complex social problems that lead to more people without adequate shelter, more people with mental and physical health challenges, addictions; more people living in tents where their safety and sometimes the safety of the public is at risk?

Sisters and brothers, there are no easy answers to these questions. But I often wonder: If I; if we were able to contribute to enough social services and to the building of enough affordable housing for everybody who needs shelter in this city—or even just one person each—would we?

Today, on this Fourth Sunday of Advent, which happens to fall this year on the day before Christmas, we hear the noble idea of King David in the Second Book of Samuel: He wants to build God a house! Now, if King David lived in our time and place, I might want to ask him if I were in the place of, say, his prophet Nathan: It is wonderful that you want to build a house for God. But are all the poor, the marginalized in your kingdom sheltered, fed, cared for?

Old Testament tradition presents David as a good king (with some very significant flaws). So it is probable—and the Bible points to this in places—that David did care for, feed, and shelter the poor, as well as look after the spiritual needs of his people. If any king in ancient Israel were close to worthy to build a house for God, having done his best to care for his human subjects, it was David.

In 2 Samuel the prophet Nathan seems to agree with this. He approves David’s plan: “Go, do all you have in mind, for the LORD is with you.” But then, that night, we hear, God appears to Nathan and vetoes the king’s plan. David is not to build God a house. Instead, God will “make for [David] a great name,” an everlasting reign. God will do this by coming to dwell in our homes and our hearts.

Until the reign of David’s son and successor, King Solomon, who built the first temple—God’s first stationary house, we can say—in Jerusalem, God’s earthly dwelling was a tent, the Ark of the Covenant. And the Ark of the Covenant and the tabernacle at its centre were mobile. The Ark of the Covenant traveled where the tribes of ancient Israel traveled. God was always with God’s people.

Now, there are advantages to building God a stationary house, a temple, over having God dwell under a tent that traveled around with the tribes of Israel. The temple that David planned to build (and Solomon had built) would be imposing and ornate. It would call to mind God’s greatness, God’s sovereignty over the people and leaders of Israel.

On a much smaller scale but still beautiful, this chapel here at St. Joseph’s College serves the same purpose. The lovely stained-glass windows draw our attention upward toward heaven. They tell the story our Scriptures tell, from God’s creation of our universe through the ascension and reign of Christ the King in heaven, but in glorious bursts of colour, sunlight filtering through them. The Blessed Sacrament chapel invites us, right at this chapel’s entrance, to stop a while, pray, adore Jesus present in the tabernacle (and sometimes in the monstrance on the altar, especially every Friday evening when classes are in session). The altar centres our attention during Mass, calling to us with the Lord’s own invitation, “Come and eat.”

But there are possible disadvantages to building a stationary house for God. King David surely knew this; King Solomon and his successors would know this all too well. There is an ever-present temptation to immobilize, to limit God to our imaginations, our boxes, our houses that we build for God. So, in our comfortable enclosures, God can only fill with grace and blessing those who are somehow worthy of that divine grace and blessing. That bread and wine only becomes the real sacramental presence of Jesus Christ—body, blood, soul, and divinity—at that specific point in the Eucharistic prayer when the priest prays the words of institution…

If we begin to think in these ways, we have begun to forget God’s warning to King David through the prophet Nathan: It is not up to us to build God a house, stationary and static. No, God will make of us, sisters and brothers, a house. We are God’s dwelling when we emerge from this place, having partaken of the Eucharist, and we bring God’s grace and blessing out to the world by how we act with kindness, with love, with peace, with joy, especially toward those on the margins. Let us heed God’s reminder to King David at his most noble: “Are you the one to build me a house to live in”?

God wants to make of us a house, a living, moving Ark of the Covenant in which he will dwell. And the realization in history of God coming to dwell with us as one of us in all things but sin begins with the message of the angel Gabriel to a humble virgin, Mary of Nazareth. Mary is the first and most perfect model of the living, moving Ark of the Covenant, the earthly dwelling of God that God wants us all to be.

Now imagine us going out to our world, encountering somebody in special need of hearing the words Gabriel spoke to Mary: “Hail, full of grace; the Lord is with you.” And let us speak those words to at least one person today, tomorrow, this week in which we celebrate the Nativity of our Lord: “Hail, full of grace”; “May God bless you.” Our greeting can be as simple as that! And then let us enact that grace and blessing, that real presence of God that dwells in each of us, especially as we leave this Eucharistic celebration, as we celebrate Christmas tonight and tomorrow: Be kind; be at peace; forgive and be reconciled with somebody who needs forgiveness and reconciliation through us; try to remind ourselves to see and experience God’s presence primarily in somebody who lives on the margins, somebody outside the fixed houses, the places of worship we build for ourselves and for God.

If we are wondering or, in our Gospel’s words today to describe Mary upon hearing Gabriel’s greeting, if we are “perplexed” at why I am insisting on this, in a way this is good. Mary is “much perplexed,” Luke says, “by [Gabriel’s] words.” She says “to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin’”? Who am I to bear the Son of God in human flesh into this world? Who am I (and who are we) to be the focus of God’s blessing into the world right now, God’s living, moving Ark of the Covenant here and now?

I am sure that St. Paul, as he traveled and wrote his letters—the magnificent conclusion to his Letter to the Romans we have heard today—felt the same perplexity that Mary did. “Who am I,” St. Paul asks in a few places in his letters, “to be the messenger of peace and salvation, the apostle to the Gentiles? Who am I but a persecutor and a murderer (at first) of the disciples of Jesus”?

Who is St. Paul to be an ark, a living and moving home to bear God, to write about this new promise (covenant) of salvation in Christ to the ends of the world?! He is as worthy of that mission as Mary was, as we are. That is, not worthy at all, because this mission to be God’s living, moving home in this world does not depend on our worthiness. It did not depend on how noble King David was, or how perfect and humble Mary was (except that God made her exceptionally humble and sinless), or how fit Paul was to be an apostle.

God calls us, invites us, now with less than a full day to go before Christmas: “Who are you ‘to build me a house to live in’? I will make of you (of each of us, of our Church as a communion of faith) a living, moving house of grace, of blessing, of peace, of reconciliation, of joy, of welcome and shelter to those on the margins. And I will send you (all of us) to the ends of the earth to be home to my presence, my salvation that first entered the world in human flesh just over two thousand years ago through the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem.”

Homily for Sunday, 1 January 2023– The Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God (Octave of Christmas)

Readings of the day: Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 67:1-2, 4-5, 6-7; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21

Happy New Year, sisters and brothers, and a Happy Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God!

For as long as I can remember, I have treasured the blessing God gives to the children of Israel through Moses and Aaron in the Book of Numbers. When I was a deacon and for my first year as a priest, I served at St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish in Rochester, New York. Just inside the front door of our rectory at St. Kateri was this prayer. So, it seems appropriate that I offer us, my sisters and brothers of St. Joseph’s College, the same blessing: “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”

Sisters and brothers in Jesus Christ, we are still in the season of Christmas. Today is what we call in the Church the Octave Day of Christmas, the eighth day of Christmas, including Christmas Day itself. And the Octave of Christmas, New Year’s Day, is always celebrated in our Church as the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God.

The Gospel reading we have heard today from Luke is the continuation of the Gospel reading many of us would have heard if we were at Mass on Christmas Eve. At Christmas Mass at Night, we hear of shepherds who receive a message from “an angel of the Lord” that the Saviour of the world, Jesus Christ, “has been born to us this day in the city of David,” Bethlehem. And the shepherds are to find this newborn Saviour, of all places, “wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

Today those shepherds have arrived at the place where Jesus was born, in a manger in Bethlehem. Luke’s Gospel says that the shepherds “went with haste to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.” And the shepherds seem to have left in just as much haste as they arrived.

The shepherds who visited Jesus, Mary, and Joseph while Jesus was a newborn in the manger in Bethlehem also seem not to be the type to keep secrets too well (although who could blame them, really; they were the first people on Earth, besides Mary and Joseph, to meet God in the flesh). When the shepherds leave, Luke says, they tell everybody around them “what had been told them about this child.”

The shepherds’ news to the world was news worth proclaiming, that is for sure. It was amazing news, in fact: God, the Saviour of the world, born as a human infant in a manger in Bethlehem, City of David. Luke’s Gospel tells us that “all who heard [this] were amazed at what the shepherds told them.”

But Luke’s Gospel, characteristically so detailed about the events of Jesus’ life, so quickly passes over these amazing events of Jesus’ birth: “The child lying in the manger” tended to by Mary and Joseph, the shepherds arriving and then leaving the manger scene just as quickly, telling everybody they could find about the amazing events they had witnessed, and then returning to their fields, their livelihoods, but “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.”

These first eight days of Christmas have passed by so quickly, have they not? And that is even if we have found time to glorify and praise God for all we “have heard and seen,” all the times and all the people in whom we have encountered the human face of God in a special way. We are doing just that right now, sisters and brothers, the worship of the shepherds, glorifying and praising God for all we “have heard and seen.”

Yet it all happens so quickly. And, on this Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, we hardly hear anything about Mary. Rightly, especially because we are still very much in this Christmas season, our New Testament readings today, from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians and Luke’s Gospel, all focus on Jesus. We are still celebrating Jesus’ birth. So why, when we are still so focused on celebrating the Nativity of Jesus, do we insert today’s celebration of Mary as Mother of God into this Christmas season?

The doctrinal and historical reasons for celebrating the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God on this eighth day of Christmas are many and complicated. The Council of Ephesus in 431 gave Mary the official title of Mother of God, to distinguish from Mother of Christ, a popular title given to Mary at the time. This is to say that Mary is not only the mother of the human Jesus Christ, as if Jesus could not be God and human at the same time after his birth. So to give Mary the name Mother of God is, indirectly, an affirmation that Jesus the Christ, human from his conception in Mary’s womb, is also God.

Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, says that “clearly from the earliest times [of the Church] the Blessed Virgin is honoured under the title of Mother of God.” This is true, yet only since the mid-1700s has a day been set aside specifically to honour the motherhood of Mary, in a way that is not overshadowed by other important events in her life, like the Annunciation or her Assumption, body and soul, into heaven. And only since 1969, under Pope Paul VI (talk about recent!), has the feast day dedicated to the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary been returned to January 1. Some countries, like Portugal, had celebrated the Maternity of Mary in October.

I like to think of this January 1, Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, as the Church’s Mothers’ Day of sorts. This celebration proposes for us Mary as the ultimate of mothers, the one chosen by God to bear his Son in human flesh into the world. And, for the same reason as I pray this on Mothers’ Day on the second Sunday in May, I pray (and I invite us to pray with me) for all mothers, still living on earth and those in heaven. I invite us to pray for all future mothers, would-be mothers who have had difficulty conceiving, mothers who are raising children in poverty and other difficult circumstances, and mothers whose children have died. Mothers of our Church, my sisters in Christ: I dedicate you to Mary, Mother of God and I ask Mary to bless you with joy, peace, and strength in your vocation as mothers.

I have been reflecting on how little Mary is featured in our readings today, how our New Testament readings focus mostly on Jesus. This is appropriate, especially since we are in the midst of the Christmas season. But Luke’s Gospel today includes one short mention of Mary, one I think is very important, particularly on this Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. Luke says that, as the shepherds arrived and then left the manger scene, and then told the world about Jesus’ birth to everybody’s amazement, “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”

Mary, ever the humble mother, our Mother and the model and Mother of the Church, gives us the ideal example of silently treasuring and pondering before her newborn Son, the Saviour of the world. I imagine the shepherds and everybody who visited Jesus, Mary, and Joseph during those days in Bethlehem, returning home more at peace than when they arrived at the manger scene. They returned home treasuring and pondering as Mary did, “glorifying and praising God.”

Sisters and brothers we, too, through this celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, ask the Lord for the grace to treasure and ponder, to glorify and praise God by our words, our actions, our worship. May we be the living blessing to the world and everybody we meet—the blessing Jesus communicated to humble shepherds through his mother Mary, and that God gave the people of Israel through Moses and Aaron in the Book of Numbers: “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”

Homily for Saturday, 24 December 2022– The Nativity of the Lord, Mass at Night

Readings of the day: Isaiah 9:1-6; Psalm 96:1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:10-14

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

I marvel at this first line of our reading tonight from the prophet Isaiah every time I hear it. Isaiah proclaimed this message of “great light” in a very dark time for his people, the people of ancient Israel. The nation of Israel had been overrun by the Assyrians many years before Isaiah’s time. The corruption of Israel’s own leaders did not help. Long before Isaiah, Israel had split into two kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south, around Jerusalem. Assyria had conquered the north, and Sennacherib’s army, “like a wolf on the fold” in the poetic words of Lord Byron, had been stopped (barely) at the gates of Jerusalem, just before Isaiah’s time.

But things did not get any better for Israel and Judah from there. Israel was surrounded by much more powerful nations than it: Assyria, Babylon, Egypt. And each of those nations wanted Israel’s territory, its fertile land and its position on major trade routes. The kings of Israel and Judah tried to appease their mightier neighbours by agreeing to worship the other (pagan) nations’ gods and making military alliances with these nations against another. Israel had forgotten that a trusting relationship with its God, our God (we call this a covenant relationship), was the only way to ensure Israel’s survival as a nation. So, after Assyria, it was Babylon’s turn to conquer Israel and Judah. After Isaiah’s time, the people of Israel and Judah would endure about seventy years of exile in Babylon.

Amid all this darkness of impending national destruction and exile, Isaiah proclaims that “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Now there are a few possibilities for why Isaiah would proclaim a message like that. Maybe Isaiah was ignorant of the obvious reality, that Israel was doomed. Maybe, much like the people of Israel, Isaiah wanted to remain optimistic that Israel’s national disaster of conquest and exile was farther off than it really was. And maybe, against all odds, Israel’s God would miraculously and immediately save it from being overrun by its more powerful neighbours.

But Isaiah, like any true prophet, was no pollyannaish prophet. Nor was he ignorant of the disaster that awaited Israel and Judah in Babylon. After all, Israel, all but Jerusalem, was already occupied by the Assyrians by Isaiah’s time. And Israel’s God would not miraculously and immediately save Israel from being conquered by and exiled in Babylon. God saves, but not in that way. Isaiah, like the other prophets in our Bible, had no difficulty scolding Israel and its leaders for their corruption and idol worship that would surely bring Israel to doom, to exile. God saves, but there must be consequences for breaking the covenant relationship with God as the leaders of Israel and Judah and their people were doing in the time of the prophets.

So, what is this in Isaiah’s prophecy about people walking “in darkness” seeing “a great light”? Two weekends ago, I co-led an Advent retreat at the Providence Renewal Centre in Edmonton—a wonderful place to be on retreat, if any of us ever have this opportunity—with leaders of other Christian traditions, members of the Edmonton and District Council of Churches. One of the retreat speakers was Stephen London, the Anglican Bishop of Edmonton. Rev. London invited us to a practice he calls “slow spirituality.” It is “slow” in that it is a patient response to conflict or trouble in our world or our personal experience.

How often do we stop and realize that the usual human response to conflict or trouble is a fight-or-flight response, by hard-wired primitive instinct? Rev. London calls this the instinct, when faced with conflict, either toward aggressiveness (to confront and fight) or avoidance (to flee the conflict). It is amazing, when we think about it, how often we default either to aggressiveness or avoidance of conflict, to fighting or fleeing.

For me, I am perfectly fine, especially if I have my coffee first thing in the morning… That is, until I hear the news or read the newspaper! Here is my little (non-sacramental) confession: I hate all the senseless violence in our world, the nationalism, the instances of selfishness that scream: “My country first, my party first, my soapbox first, me first”! When I hear, from when I wake up in the morning, about Ukrainians trying to survive the winter, trying to survive the latest Russian bombing raids on their cities, their infrastructure, their civilian population; when I hear of demoralized Russian soldiers, not really wanting to be in Ukraine to fight their government’s unjust war, I become very angry. When I hear the latest plans to weaponize social media, attempts to promote the next convenient conspiracy theory under the guise of a little blue bird and “absolute free speech,” this, too, triggers my anger. And then I think, “What could I ever do about this silo mentality of our nations, our societies, and our media? It is seemingly each person for her or himself.” I suppose I try to live and preach the good, social justice and the common good as I see these. But, really, too frequently I (and I do not think I speak only for myself; not by far) retreat into a kind of despair, a kind of avoidance of conflict, of trouble, if I am honest with myself.

But this aggressiveness or avoidance response is not the way of a prophet. It was not Isaiah’s way. And it is not God’s way. So, what is the prophetic way forward? What is God’s way of responding to the troubles and conflicts (while also living the joys) of our world and our experiences? What is the way of patience, of “slow spirituality” of which Rev. Stephen London speaks? I think Isaiah gives us a clue to answer these questions in those first words of our first reading tonight: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

“The people” Isaiah addressed included himself. Isaiah and the other Old Testament prophets not only preached great oracles and visions—doom or consolation—to Israel. They lived what they preached, died for what they preached, witnessed Israel’s destruction, exile, and rebuilding, went into exile in solidarity with Israel’s people for what they preached. Isaiah and Israel’s other prophets “walked in darkness” with their people. This was the only way that light (hope, joy) would come from the darkness, so that the people could see and live it together.

This is the way of the prophets. This is the way of patience, of “slow spirituality” as Rev. Stephen London puts it. This is the way of what Pope Francis often calls “pastoral accompaniment” of God’s people. This is the way, from when Vatican II published its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes (“The Joys and the Hopes”)—back in 1965—that our Church identifies as solidarity with all the “followers of Christ” in our “joys and… hopes…griefs and… anxieties,” especially those of people “who are poor or in any way afflicted.”

This is God’s way. This has been the way of our Lord Jesus Christ, from the moment he entered our world through Mary’s womb, fully human in all things but sin, fully in solidarity with us in our human “joys and… hopes…griefs and… anxieties.” This was Jesus’ way from that very first Christmas, in a stable in Bethlehem long ago.

And who were the first masters of “slow spirituality,” of patience, of overcoming our basest instincts to fight or flee trouble, at the moment of Jesus’ birth? The first masters of this—the prophets’ way, God’s way—were Mary and Joseph. And then Luke’s Gospel says to us this night that there were humble shepherds, “keeping watch over their flocks by night,” who are visited by “an Angel of the Lord.” And, sure, when “the glory of the Lord” first shone around them, Luke says, the shepherds “were terrified.” Those were terrifying times. Israel, not much differently than in the time of the Old Testament prophets, was under brutal foreign occupation. Caesar Augustus ruled from Rome; Quirinius ruled from Syria. The rulers of the world into which our Lord Jesus was born were all Roman.

But a baby, born into a manger—a food trough for animals—would rule over all these big names whose rule stopped at might and terror. Jesus was not to rule this world with might and terror, earthly power to match earthly power. No, Jesus’ rule begins as “a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” Jesus’ rule would involve dying at the hands of the big-name bringers of brutality and occupation and their enablers among Jesus’ own people, on a cross. Jesus’ rule, his light, hope, joy, and salvation, would involve walking in our human flesh, in our darkness, in solidarity with us.

This is the prophets’ way. This is God’s way. This is the way of Christmas, sisters and brothers. This is a way that has brought us everlasting “good news of great joy for all the people.” This is the only news—imagine reading this first thing in the morning—that can overcome and disempower the worst of our darkness, trouble, and conflict, if we dare not fight or flee but encounter the God of our salvation in this moment, in the trouble and conflict, but also then in the joy of this night.

For God has brought us “great joy”: To us “is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Christ, the Lord.”

Homily for Sunday, 19 June 2022– The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

Readings of the day: Genesis 14:18-20; Psalm 110:1, 2, 3, 4; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Luke 9:11b-17

The Body and Blood of Christ, the Eucharist, the Mass: This reality we celebrate now has many names and many dimensions. And the readings we hear proclaimed from the word of God today, and the prayers of today’s Mass, each highlight particular dimensions of this celebration more than others.

The beauty, variety, and complexity of Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi, reminds me of the many different celebrations of this day I have experienced. Maybe some of us have participated in outdoor processions through the streets with the Blessed Sacrament. I have experienced this less here than in Colombia, where Corpus Christi processions are often quite elaborate.

Of course, Corpus Christi reminds me of first communions at which I have presided as a priest—the first one being the first communion of my godparents’ grandson, during my very first Mass as a priest. But I am especially remembering lately my many conversations at table with a brother Basilian priest I lived with in Rochester, New York, when I was just ordained, whom I especially loved and who was especially beloved of the whole Basilian community and people with whom he ministered. Fr. Joseph Trovato went to be with our Lord a couple of years ago. Quite often, though, when conversations with Fr. Joe would turn toward the Mass, the Eucharist, he would say, with his characteristic gentle voice, that the dimension of the Eucharist he found most difficult to live was that of sacrifice.

I was always somewhat surprised to hear Fr. Joe say this. When I think of priesthood (and not only the ordained priesthood but our common priesthood as baptized Christians), I think of one of my favourite prayers, St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Suscipe: “Take, Lord (Suscipe, Domine), all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will; all that I have and possess. You have given all to me. To you, O Lord, I return it. All is yours; dispose of it wholly according to your will. Give me your love and your grace, for this is enough for me.”

Another thing that would surprise me about Fr. Joe, when I would bring up Ignatius’ Suscipe, is how he would look me directly in the eye and, with all the sternness he could muster (which was not much), say to me, “I do not like that prayer.” When I would ask him why, he would say, “Because I find it such a difficult prayer to live out.” I think that, if Fr. Joe found Ignatius’ Suscipe difficult to live out, the rest of us are in big trouble! Instead of the Suscipe, Fr. Joe’s favourite prayer or saying was from St. Francis de Sales: “There is nothing so strong as gentleness, and nothing so gentle as real strength.”

There have been few people, let alone few priests, who have lived the sacrifice demanded of Ignatius’ Suscipe—the total surrender to God of liberty, memory, understanding, our “entire will” to our Lord who has “given all to” us—as well as Fr. Joe Trovato. He certainly lived the radical (and, dare I say, more than humble, but self-sacrificial) gentleness to which St. Francis de Sales’ saying invites us.

The self-sacrificial gentleness of Ignatius’ Suscipe, of St. Francis de Sales, or of Fr. Joe Trovato is a Eucharistic self-sacrificial gentleness. It is a gentleness and a self-sacrifice to which the Lord in his grace invites us. There are many moments in our Mass, every time we celebrate it, when we remember Jesus’ sacrifice of his entire being, his having “given all to” us, for our salvation.

Maybe the most important moment during our Eucharistic celebration when we remember Jesus’ self-sacrifice for us is when we pray the same words Jesus did at the Last Supper, on the night before he gave himself up to death for us: “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body, which will be given up for you… Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my blood.”

The earliest disciples of Jesus remembered Jesus’ sacrifice, his giving of his body and blood for us, at the Last Supper and on the cross, in Jesus’ own words. “This is my Body that is for you… This cup is the new covenant in my Blood. Do this… in remembrance of me.” St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, which we hear today, is an early witness to this way in which Jesus’ first disciples remembered his sacrifice for us and its meaning for our salvation.

The Eucharistic dimension of sacrifice is closely connected to its dimension of memorial: Of memory not of artifacts in museums, but memory that projects Jesus’ giving of self to us into our history, so that it becomes always and everywhere present. And it becomes a self-sacrifice we can and are called to imitate: “Do this in memory of me… You have given all to me. To you, O Lord, I return it.”

But how, through remembrance of Jesus, our greatest act of self-sacrifice, or otherwise, could we ever return such a sublime gift as Jesus has given to us: His Body and Blood; his life, on the cross? At Mass, in our Eucharistic prayers, we use a lot of language of sacrifice and of returning to God some element of God’s sacrifice of himself in Jesus for us. During our table conversations, Fr. Joe often liked to point out this language of sacrifice in our Eucharistic prayers that, like Ignatius’ Suscipe (so he would say) he had difficulty living out, much less understanding. Sometimes our Eucharistic language of sacrifice can be bold. We pray, for instance: “May this sacrifice of our reconciliation… advance the peace and salvation of all the world.” We still await with Christian hope, sisters and brothers, the fulfillment of this “peace and salvation” for which we pray every time we celebrate our Eucharist.

Sometimes our language of sacrifice in our Eucharistic prayers can be difficult to understand: “Look, we pray, upon the oblation of your Church.” What is an oblation? It is another word for sacrifice; for offering back to God what God has given us in this very celebration: The sacramental yet very real presence of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so, we pray, “We offer you in thanksgiving this holy and living sacrifice… May [Christ] make of us an eternal offering to you, so that we may obtain an inheritance with your elect.”

But can we ever offer God back what he has offered us; what God continues to offer us through our Eucharist: His very self, for our salvation? Can we ever match the sacrifice of self that Jesus offered for us on the cross? Without God’s grace, the short answer to these questions would be no. I have no doubt that Fr. Joe Trovato was on to something when he would say he had difficulty living out the meaning of the Lord’s sacrifice for us; the meaning of St. Ignatius’ Suscipe: “You have given all to me. To you, O Lord, I return it.”

I will go a step beyond Fr. Joe here: Without God’s grace, to remember and to live in imitation of Jesus’ sacrifice for us is impossible. Yet, should we ever despair of God’s grace, we need only to remember the abundance of that grace of which Jesus’ greatest miracles were a sign. We hear from Luke’s Gospel today how Jesus multiplied the “five loaves and two fish,” so that there was enough to feed “about five thousand men,” and women and children in addition to them, with food still left over.

In this way, God will multiply even our smallest efforts at imitating God’s self-gift to us in our lives. God will multiply even our smallest efforts at kindness; at the kind of hospitality and blessing Melchizedek, the priest-king, shows Abram, and Abram returns to Melchizedek, in our reading from Genesis today.

God’s abundant grace will multiply our “I find this difficult to live out” into more than enough to nourish the world. In God’s grace, all the dimensions of this great celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ come together: Sacrifice, memorial, hospitality. God’s grace enables us to celebrate here now, and then to bring God’s real, nourishing presence to our world by all we say and do. God’s grace “is enough for us,” so that all we have received, we now return; we now give to a world hungering and thirsting for peace and salvation.