Homily for Thursday, 5 January 2023– Christmas Weekday

Readings of the day: 1 John 3:11-21; Psalm 100:1b-2, 3, 4, 5; John 1:43-51

Today John’s Gospel picks up just as Jesus has chosen Andrew and Peter to be his first disciples. And immediately after choosing Andrew and Peter, Jesus decides “to go to Galilee.”

I find it interesting about this beginning of our Gospel reading today that Jesus’ choice “to go to Galilee” after calling Andrew and Peter to be his first disciples immediately suggests that Jesus is not in Galilee, the region of Israel that includes his hometown, Nazareth. And neither are Andrew and Peter, Galilean fishermen whose calling to be Jesus disciples Matthew, Mark, and Luke all situate on the Sea of Galilee—John differs from the other Gospels in this respect—near their homes when Jesus chooses them to be his disciples in John’s Gospel.

Andrew, Peter, and also Jesus are away from home when Jesus’ call of his first disciples takes place. So are Philip and Nathanael, the next two people John says became Jesus’ disciples.

Sisters and brothers, I think that here John is suggesting that to be Jesus’ disciples will occasionally (if not frequently) mean being called beyond our homes, figurative if not literal and physical; beyond our comfort zones.

We hear that this is true of Andrew and Peter. This is certainly true of Jesus. His being called outside of his home, his comfort extended all the way to his being called to die on a cross outside of Jerusalem, the city at the heart of Israel, yet so far and different from Galilee’s peace and tranquility.

To have been called outside of their home, their region, their comfort was true of Philip and then Nathanael. This is clear from Nathanael’s response to Philip’s invitation to be the disciple of this “Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth.” Nathanael asks Philip, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth”?

Nathanael is called at that moment beyond the comfort of his own biases. It was probably a bias against people from Nazareth shared among many people. The reason for this bias, or Nathanael’s anti-Nazareth comment, is unclear. Maybe Nazareth was the rival village to other Galilean communities like Bethsaida, home to Philip, Andrew, and Peter. Maybe this bias was like Edmonton versus Calgary today… It is hard to say.

Yet Philip’s invitation calls Nathanael beyond this bias, beyond identifying strictly with his home, his region, or any other comfortable markers of identity. Now Nathanael will identify first as a disciple, an apostle of Jesus.

But how jarring this must have been for Nathanael! Incredulous (but, as Jesus says of him, without deceit), Nathaniel’s first question of Jesus is, “Where did you get to know me”? To know Jesus is an important theme throughout John’s Gospel and letters in our Bible. Remember the Gospel reading of a couple of days ago: John the Baptist, by his own admission, did not know Jesus until God revealed Jesus to him as “the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.” And only then does John readily testify that Jesus “is the Son of God.”

Nathanael does something very similar to John the Baptist earlier in John’s Gospel: Jesus replies to Nathanael that he got to know him when he saw him “under the fig tree.” Nathanael gets to know Jesus at the invitation of Philip, and is then able to identify Jesus, very correctly: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel”!

Nathanael’s correct identification of Jesus as “the Son of God” is possible, even from within a (somewhat) comfort zone. Our worship here, sisters and brothers, is good and right, yet possible from comfort. Jesus will always acknowledge our good will—our rightness and goodness in loving and serving him as his disciples, and in loving and serving one another in Jesus’ name. But Jesus will call us, little by little, beyond our comfort, until we are ready, he says, to “see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending above the Son of Man.”

In these days in which our Church mourns the death yet celebrates the life of a true Servant of the Servants of God, Pope Benedict XVI, I am reminded of a line from his 2007 encyclical on Christian hope, Spe Salvi. Pope Benedict says in Spe Salvi: The human person “was created for greatness—for God himself; [each of us is] created to be filled by God. But [our] heart is too small for the greatness for which it is destined. It must be stretched.”

Our hearts “must be stretched” beyond mere comfort to be true hearts of disciples of our Lord; to enter eternal life, the “greatness” for which God has created us, to be forever with Jesus our Saviour; to “see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending above the Son of Man.”

Homily for Tuesday, 3 January 2023– Christmas Weekday

Readings of the day: 1 John 2:23-3:6; Psalm 98:1, 3cd-4, 5-6; John 1:29-34

Optional Memorial: The Most Holy Name of Jesus

In these days between Christmas Day and the Baptism of the Lord, which marks the end of the Christmas season, we hear a lot from the Gospel and letters of John at Mass. And there is, in these readings we hear, a pattern. Our readings from John’s Gospel and letters remind us of who God is (or who Jesus is) and who we are.

Neither who Jesus is nor who we are changes. Jesus is, has been, and will always be “the Son of God.” We are, have always been, and will always be “called children of God.” But our perception of who Jesus is and who we are is what changes. Our faith is not static. Could we not say that our faith is a constant process of growing into our realization of those central truths of who we are, “children of God,” and who Jesus is, “the Son of God,” God made flesh?

Over this Christmas season, I have been able to spend some time with my youngest nephew, August or Gus, who is almost a year old. Gus received several articles of clothing from family and loved ones over Christmas. Those of us who have had (or still have) young children or grandchildren will appreciate this: It is very difficult, I find, to know what size of clothing to buy for a baby. Many people bought Gus clothing sized for an eighteen-month-old. Now, most of those eighteen-month-old clothes are a little big for him (although he is already beginning to fit comfortably into some of them). In six months, will he have outgrown some of those outfits already?

This is a similar reality to our Christian faith, sisters and brothers. Who we are and who God is do not change. But faith is an invitation to grow into, and maybe even eventually to outgrow, how we perceive God and how we perceive ourselves before God now.

If the great John the Baptist had to put on the “baby clothes” of faith, before he was baptizing people in the Jordan—and before he baptized Jesus himself—how much truer is this of us? John admits that, not long before he baptized Jesus, he “did not know” Jesus. But, John says, “the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’” Only then is John the Baptist able to testify to Jesus “that this is the Son of God.” Only then is John the Baptist ready for the next size up in faith clothing: “That will be one camel hair onesie, please, men’s size, hand washable in a river.”

And the same is true of us, sisters and brothers. The First Letter of John says, “Beloved, we are God’s children now.” We have always been and will always be God’s children; this will never change. But the same letter goes on to say that “what we will be has not yet been revealed.” Yet when God “is revealed,” 1 John says, “we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”

This is quite a bold statement: We will grow in our faith. We will outgrow our present faith clothing. In fact, our faith will grow so much that, sometime between now and when we are in heaven, when God’s presence is revealed to us fully, we will need extra-extra-large, God-sized clothing, because “we will be like” God. We, like John the Baptist, if we are not able to do so already, will be able to point to Jesus and testify that he “is the Son of God.” We will be able to point to other people in our experience who live as Jesus Christ did, who are the saints living among us, and say, “this is a daughter, this is a son of God, beloved of God.”

It looks as though we will need to start looking for the next-size-up outfit!

Homily for Sunday, 15 August 2021– Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Readings of the day: Revelation 11:19a, 12:1-6a,10ab; Psalm 45:10, 11, 12, 16; 1 Corinthians 15:20-27; Luke 1:39-56

A priest who is a theology professor at a university began his reflection on today’s Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary with a story from one of his classes. He asked his students if anybody could explain the Assumption of Mary. One student answered, “Yeah, that is when the Church teaches that we assume that Mary is in heaven”!

I have never had a student answer me this, or anything similar, about the Assumption of Mary in any of my classes at St. Joseph’s College. I suppose that if a student were to answer in this way, I would quickly but gently correct the student.

Today we celebrate our belief as Catholics that, at the end of her earthly life, Mary, Mother of God; Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, was taken by God (what we mean by “assumed”) body and soul into heaven, so no trace of her earthly existence was left on earth. This is about as simple and brief a definition of the Assumption of Mary as I think we can give.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was defined only in 1950 by Pope Pius XII as an essential point of our Catholic belief, that is, a dogma. But this does not mean that our belief that Mary was taken (assumed) body and soul into heaven does not go back much farther than the last seventy-one years. In fact our belief in the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is among our Church’s most ancient beliefs, dating back to at least the third century after the earthly life of Jesus.

Until the early 300s after the time of Jesus, every so often the Roman Empire endured periods of political and social instability. In response to that instability, Roman emperors tended to persecute Christians and other minority peoples within the Empire—anybody who did not worship the Roman gods. These persecutions produced martyrs in the Church, people who died to uphold their Christian faith. Until the 300s, almost all saints—people the Church proclaims as in heaven—were martyrs. Only after persecution and death for one’s faith became rare in the Roman Empire, which by then had accepted Christianity and then made it the official religion of the Empire, did the Church consider other ways than dying for one’s faith—living an exceptionally holy life—as a sign that a person was in heaven; was a saint. During this time, a tradition started in the Church of collecting any physical remains (relics) of martyrs and storing them in a visible place (catacombs) for veneration by the faithful. These Roman Martyrs were especially celebrated on the anniversaries of their deaths, their “birthday,” the day on which God took them into heaven.

But how does the veneration of saints and their relics relate to the Assumption of Mary? At about the same time as the veneration of martyrs was beginning, the Church was becoming increasingly aware that, while we have from our beginning placed Mary first and most important among the saints, no relics; no physical reminders of her earthly existence have ever been found. By this time, a tomb at the foot of the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem was already being celebrated as the place where Mary was laid at the end of her earthly life. Let us remember that our Church has never taught, one way or the other, whether Mary died; only that her body never decayed before God assumed her into heaven. In fact our Eastern Catholic and Orthodox sisters and brothers focus today’s celebration more on Mary’s Dormition, or “falling asleep” at the end of her life on earth; we Roman Catholics focus more on God having taken her into heaven. We celebrate (rightly) two aspects of the same event.

And the great celebration of Mary’s “birthday” into heaven has been on this day, August 15, since the Church’s earliest centuries. But this tomb at the Mount of Olives was empty: No body. Coincidentally, it is near another empty tomb that many Christians consider to have been the tomb of Jesus between his death and resurrection. Based on the empty tomb the Church reasoned that God must have taken Mary’s whole being (what we mean by “body and soul”) to heaven, leaving no trace; no relic of her on earth. There is even a Biblical tradition in the Jewish as well as Christian faiths of God taking especially holy people into heaven, body and soul together: Enoch in Genesis and Elijah in 2 Kings, for instance.

Today’s celebration of Mary’s “birthday,” her Assumption body and soul, into heaven has a long and beautiful history, certainly longer than the dogmatic definition of the Assumption of Mary in 1950! Yet, please allow me to say something maybe a bit controversial here: That maybe the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is not a celebration about Mary, first and foremost, but about God and God’s Son our Lord, Jesus Christ, and about us.

What do I mean by this? Our reading today from the Book of Revelation is full of fantastic imagery that I will not dare to unpack in all its detail and symbolism. We are on scene of a great cosmic battle between a “great red dragon” with “seven heads and ten horns” with a diadem on each of its heads—I envision one ugly beast, I think we can say who stands for everything that is evil—and a woman, “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet,” crowned with “twelve stars,” in the midst of childbirth. Only since the Middle Ages has any frequent connection been made between this woman and Mary. A far more ancient tradition in the Church is to understand this woman as a metaphor for the whole Church; all of us in our resistance toward sin and evil, which will last until the end of time.

Yet to identify the woman of Revelation as Mary is not wrong, per se, because Mary stands for all of us, the Church, and our ultimate hope as a community of faith: Eternal life; heaven. This is to say that we hope (otherwise I do not think we would be here or profess faith in “the life of the world to come” in our Creed) to reach the same destination; the same end as Mary did by her glorious Assumption. We hope, at the end of our earthly lives, to be taken, as Mary was, not only soul but body, too, into heaven. After all, in our Creed, we profess our faith in the resurrection of the body.

Mary’s Assumption into heaven is not hers alone. It is a sign and a mystery of our collective hope as Church to be taken up into heaven, body and soul, at the end of our earthly lives; at the end of time. St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians makes this “order of things” clear today: First, “Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Because of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven, Mary; all the saints; all of us are called through the same process and the same end: Death, resurrection, ascension to heaven, body and soul. And only because of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension is any of this possible for us, and was any of this possible for Mary.

Today especially we greet Mary with great joy as Elizabeth did in Luke’s Gospel: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb”! Yet I think it is important that, immediately after this joyful greeting by Elizabeth, Mary praises not herself but the Lord in the beautiful words of the prayer we know as the Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.” But, once again, the Magnificat is not Mary’s prayer alone. It is part of a long, and very Biblical, tradition of especially women praising God for God’s saving presence among his people. We have Deborah in the Book of Judges and Moses’ sister Miriam during the Exodus as some examples of Old Testament women who praise God for God’s presence and offer of salvation to a whole people in this way. Hannah’s prayer when she conceives Samuel is almost verbatim Mary’s Magnificat in Luke.

And now the Magnificat is our prayer. We, not as disconnected individuals but as a community; a communion of faith, offer this prayer of joyful praise to God that Mary did. Yet by this prayer we acknowledge and assent to God’s way of saving us: The weak are strengthened; the proud humbled and scattered. The powerful are brought low; the lowly raised up. The hungry are filled; the rich “sent… away empty.” In God’s mercy, heaven is seen as our worldly concepts of power and worth quite literally overturned. Mary is our first model of this overturning: The insignificant young Jewish woman of a tiny village, Nazareth, who becomes the Mother of our Lord and Saviour and is taken up into heaven this day. This is only so that we will follow Mary and the saints to our “birthday” into eternal life, where there is no excess wealth or food at the expense of those who have too little; no pride at the expense of the humble; no “me” disconnected from or at the expense of “us.” If we follow Mary’s example, we will gain heaven together as Church, God’s people, a communion of faith, body and soul.

Homily for Sunday, 6 December 2020– Second Sunday of Advent, Year B

Readings of the day: Isaiah 40: 1-5, 9-11; Psalm 85: 9-10, 11-12, 13-14; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8

This homily was given through St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, via Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

When we hear today’s readings—beautiful, comforting, and timely for our celebration of Advent—do any of us immediately think of George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah”? I am often tempted to break out into song from those very first words we hear today from the prophet Isaiah: “‘Comfort, O comfort my people,’ says your God, ‘Speak tenderly to Jerusalem”…

In fact, after an instrumental introduction to Handel’s “Messiah,” the next three movements of the “Messiah” follow the first part of our reading today from Isaiah closely: “Comfort Ye”; “Every Valley”; “And the Glory of the Lord… Shall be Revealed”! Handel’s glorious libretto, which begins with these as-glorious, comforting words from Isaiah we hear in today’s first reading, draws me into the “Messiah,” every time I hear it.

But, when we hear these first movements of Handel’s “Messiah,” or the prophecy of Isaiah on which they are based, do we ever pause to think of the original context of the time of Isaiah; of what experiences of the people of Israel inspired Isaiah to speak this message of comfort to them?

Fr. Jim spoke a bit about this last Sunday: Bible scholars believe that the Book of Isaiah as we know it is probably the work of at least three authors from three different phases of about a seventy-year period of ancient Israel’s history called the Babylonian Exile. Isaiah the First was active in the years just before the people of Israel were deported into exile in Babylon, through the beginning of the Exile itself. He tried, mostly without success, to warn the people of Israel and its kings that their injustices against their most vulnerable people and their worship of other nations’ false gods in a vain attempt to fend off these nations’ greater economic and military power would result in Israel’s ruin and exile. Isaiah the Second was active during the latter part of the Exile; Isaiah the Third prepared the people of Israel to return home, and to rebuild once they were back in Israel.

Today we hear the beginning of the prophecy of Isaiah the Second. If we were to read from just before the part of Isaiah we heard proclaimed a few minutes ago (maybe a little bit of homework—optional, of course—if we do not already have our fair share of end-of-term assignments and exams to focus on?), we would notice a distinct change in tone at, “Comfort, O comfort my people.” Just before this point in the Book of Isaiah, (First) Isaiah is still trying to warn Israel’s king of the impending exile to Babylon.

And then there is a great shift in Isaiah: “Comfort, O comfort my people,” (Second) Isaiah says to a people still in exile. Jerusalem, religious and royal center of Israel, was by then a distant memory. Many Israelites, we can imagine, would have given up hope by this point of ever returning to their homeland. They or the generations before them had witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, the heart of their religious practice, at the hands of the Babylonians. If they were ever able to return home, the people of Israel would be returning to ruins.

This is the glum context of Isaiah’s prophecy of comfort and God’s pardon. But Isaiah does not stop there. Isaiah gives his people some homework: Not a test to study for, or a paper to write, or a Bible passage to read. No, Isaiah asks the people of Israel to return to their ruined homeland, to Jerusalem, and to rebuild it, and also to rebuild all the roads leading back to their homeland. “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God,” Isaiah says to the people of Israel.

“Some comfort,” we might imagine many of the Israelites in Isaiah’s time thinking. We can only have comfort at the price of doing our homework; of rebuilding Israel from its ruins! We might imagine that many Israelites never took up Isaiah’s call to return and rebuild, but enough of them did. And they built Jerusalem back better than before. They rebuilt Jerusalem’s Temple. They made “straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Valleys were raised; ground leveled; hills “made low.” “Righteousness and peace”; peace and justice, in the beautiful imagery of our Psalm today, seemed to “kiss each other.”

But then, as the years passed, the people of Israel gradually forgot that right worship of God involves right action, especially in favour of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, the poorest, the sick, the lost, the persecuted and the abandoned; those without a voice among our sisters and brothers. Israel (like any nation including our own will do, if we let it) fell into disrepair: Physical, but also religious and moral. Several nations would take it over, one after another. Jerusalem’s glorious Second Temple would be destroyed by the Romans. Righteousness and peace, instead of kissing each other, would be driven back into exile from the hearts of Israel’s people.

Into this renewed mess of Roman-occupied Israel stepped (or waded, in the Jordan River) John the Baptist. “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the LORD; make his paths straight,” John preached as he baptized people in the Jordan. Sound familiar?

That homework that Isaiah gave his people in his time, well, it was the same homework that John gave the people he baptized in the Jordan. John the Baptist led and preached by example. He did the same homework Isaiah and he asked of us, preparing “the way of the LORD”: “I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he (Jesus) will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

I do not want to discourage us, sisters and brothers, but the homework Isaiah, John the Baptist, and then Jesus have assigned us is still not finished. Great, that is just what we need, the everlasting homework assignment, right? We will finish it and turn it in—do not despair—but only at the end of time, when Jesus returns to us as he promised. This, as much and even more than the anniversary of Jesus’ birth we celebrate at Christmas, is what we wait for; what this time of Advent is all about.

And we are uniquely strengthened by the gift of the Holy Spirit John the Baptist foretold and Jesus the Lord himself gave us at our baptism and confirmation, sisters and brothers, to complete this homework assignment; this feat of desert highway engineering!

But how do we complete our homework successfully, between now and the end of time? We do not need to look far: Take time to comfort somebody we know who is alone, who may be struggling with their mental health (especially during this COVID-19 pandemic and its distance from human contact), or who needs help with work, study, or some other task. Give to the poor; to those who can ensure the disadvantaged have food, shelter, clothing, medical care... Speak up, support, or volunteer for organizations that defend human rights regardless of race, religion, or any other factor; that defend the migrant and the refugee; that defend the environment; that defend all human life from conception to natural death... Forgive those who have wronged us. Seek forgiveness from God; from those we have wronged; from ourselves. Pray for one another. Practice simple acts of kindness toward one another.

This is how we “prepare the way of the LORD”; how we “make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” This is how we will reach the destination of our highway, which is eternal life; heaven (which is much better even than that A+ on any typical homework assignment).

This is how we live this prophetic message: “O comfort my people… Make straight in the desert a highway for our God… Speak tenderly,” words of consolation and forgiveness. This is how we will “see… together” the glory of God we proclaim together with Isaiah (the First, Second, and Third); with John the Baptist; with all the prophets and saints. This is how righteousness and peace “kiss each other” (or at least bow or text “peace” over Zoom, if we are concerned about physical distancing for now). This is like that glorious piece of music we can only fully appreciate as we live by it, as we complete our homework; our highway for our God: A sound more glorious yet than Handel’s “Messiah”; a sound that will draw still more of our sisters and brothers toward it; closer to God; closer to heaven, every time they hear it.

Homily for Thursday, 1 August 2019– Memorial of St. Alphonsus Liguori

Readings of the day: Exodus 40:16-21, 34-38; Psalm 84:3, 4, 5-6a, 8a, 11; Matthew 13:47-53

Thursday of the 17th Week in Ordinary Time

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

What kinds of homes do we live in, and with what kinds of keepsakes or treasures do we fill our homes?

Is it fair for me to presume that, since we are near the middle of a major city, most of us live in houses, apartments, or other, say, permanent dwellings? Having said this, I think of and invite us to pray for everybody, especially in the midst of our city of Edmonton but around the world, who are homeless or who otherwise do not have a permanent home; a permanent and safe place to keep even a few treasures.

As a member of a religious order under a vow of poverty, my experience is nowhere near the experience of poverty, of uncertainty as to where to find safe shelter, food, and other necessities that homeless people experience. Yet, as a Basilian, I have had the experience of moving from one place and one form of ministry to another often enough that this tends to minimize the amount of material goods I and my Basilian brothers might accumulate. We have in our Basilian houses decorations that show both that these are religious houses and that they are places of warm hospitality, not only toward fellow Basilians but anybody who may visit our homes.

Today, the Book of Exodus features Moses, who builds the tabernacle that is to house the Ark of the Covenant, and all this within a structure called the Tent of Meeting. The impermanence of this structure, even though it was to be the dwelling of God himself among the people of Israel, is remarkable to me. The Ark of the Covenant and its tabernacle within the Tent of Meeting was designed to be disassembled and reassembled as the people of Israel under Moses’ leadership journeyed from Egypt to their more permanent homeland of Israel. It would be many more centuries before the home of the God of Israel on Earth would become a more permanent structure, the Temple of Jerusalem, and even this first temple and its successor would not last forever.

Our Gospel reading today, from Matthew, focuses on our most permanent dwelling of all: The Kingdom of Heaven. It is to be the dwelling of “the righteous,” those people who have acted according to God’s love for us toward one another, especially people most in need. The Kingdom of Heaven will not be a place for people with the greatest number of earthly treasures, but for people who have made in their hearts a permanent dwelling for our God, our ultimate treasure, “beauty ever ancient yet ever new,” as St. Augustine of Hippo once prayed.

Through the likes of Moses and Jesus, God proposes for us today a dwelling that is much more permanent than anything we have ever known. God proposes to make God’s dwelling, heaven, forever our home. All God asks of us is to make of our hearts God’s home on earth—a tabernacle of sorts, meant to move about, to change, to be disassembled and reassembled as our earthly pilgrimage progresses—but still God’s home on earth. As St. Alphonsus Liguori, whom we celebrate today, once said, “The human heart is, so to speak, the paradise of God.” Jesus, too, asks us to make of our hearts “the paradise of God,” the storehouse of “what is new and what is old,” while God prepares our permanent home in heaven.

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 Monday, 4 September 2017– Ferial

Monday of the 18th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Psalm 96:1, 3, 4-5, 11-12, 13; Luke 4:16-30

This homily was given at St. Clare Church, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

What is it possible for us to know about heaven? How much of eternal life, of being saved, is dependent on our own effort or works versus God’s free gift of grace?

On this Labour Day, our celebration of work and everybody who works, our readings point more toward eternal life as God’s free gift than as having anything to do with our effort. In his first letter to the Thessalonians, St. Paul writes words of tremendous hope. “Jesus died and rose again,” St. Paul says, and for this and no other reason, we have the possibility of eternal life. “Through Jesus,” who has died and has risen from the dead through no merit of ours, “God will bring with him those who have died.” All St. Paul asks of us is to “encourage one another with these words.” It is no wonder, then, that today’s reading from 1 Thessalonians is often one of the selections at funerals in our Church, a time when we want to be encouraged; to know that our God is merciful and wills most of all that we might have eternal life.

Luke’s Gospel, too, emphasizes God’s gratuitous gift. Neither the possibility of eternal life nor God’s presence with and care for us in this life is limited by our effort or factors like our ethnicity or religious tradition. God is the creator of the universe and so is the universal giver of the possibility of eternal life. When Jesus speaks this truth through the images of outsiders like the “widow at Zerephath in Sidon” receiving the prophet Elijah in a time of famine or “Naaman the Syrian” being cleansed before any of the “lepers of Israel,” the people in the synagogue of Nazareth become furious with him. How is it that these outsiders receive God’s preferential treatment? Does it matter that we believe in the right God in order to be healed; in order to be saved? Do our efforts matter for our salvation?

If we listen attentively to our Gospel reading today, we hear that our efforts and our right worship do matter for our salvation, but perhaps not in the way we might most naturally think. Today’s Gospel reading is Jesus’ basic “mission statement: “To bring good news to the poor… to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

But this is not only Jesus’ mission; it is ours also. How, then, are we bringing good news to those in need? How are we, in St. Paul’s words, encouraging one another by our words and our deeds? How are we working to free the oppressed and the marginalized and to welcome and integrate the outsiders? How are we doing all this without worrying about whom God will save and whom he will not?

Heaven is God’s gift of grace, but we are still called to cooperate in this life in making God’s gift of grace known universally. French philosopher Gabriel Marcel once said, “To love another is to say to that person, ‘You shall not die.’” To love is to will and work for eternal life for everybody and all creation, and to trust God’s grace to make this will; this dream of ours a reality. We are called to dream this dream and work to realize it; to love one another. If we do simply this, the rest of the work of our salvation is God’s.