Homily for Wednesday, 28 June 2017‒ Memorial of St. Irenaeus

Wednesday of the 12th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 2 Timothy 2:22b-26; Psalm 37:3-4, 5-6, 30-31; John 17:20-26

How might we define glory? Does glory not seem like a somewhat abstract concept? Glory could be what is achieved in military victory or, usually less violently, when we out-argue somebody in a debate. These kinds of concepts of glory are in the background of our readings today on this feast day of St. Irenaeus, second century bishop and martyr. The second letter to Timothy asks us to “avoid foolish and ignorant debates” that only “breed quarrels” and so lead to nobody’s greater glory.

In Jesus’ great “high priestly” prayer from which we hear today in John’s Gospel, our Lord is especially concerned with both God’s and his Apostles’ glory. Jesus prays to God the Father, “I have given them the glory you gave me… I wish that where I am they may also be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me.”

Of what kind of glory is Jesus speaking? Our glory and our giving glory to God depend first and foremost on one thing: Our unity. And so Jesus prays for his Apostles; for us: “That they may be one, as we are one.” How often do we pause to think and to pray over the beauty and the significance of this prayer? What would our unity look like? Perhaps our unity might show itself as greater unity among Christians, or maybe unity would mean a greater striving for the virtues listed in our first reading, from 2 Timothy: “Pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace”…

In 2 Timothy, unity that gives glory to God is shown through patience and gentleness, even (or maybe especially) with people in error and sin. “Be gentle with everyone,” 2 Timothy says, “able to teach, tolerant, correcting opponents with kindness.” In religious communities like the Basilians, we may refer to the kind of gentle, kind, and sometimes tolerant approach to error as “fraternal correction.” Too swift or too harsh, and correction may drive people away, making them less likely to be convinced of their error or even sin. Too permissive or slow an approach to correction may encourage the error. Neither approach forms consciences; neither approach contributes to our glory or to recognizing God’s glory. And is the line between these two false approaches not perhaps finer than we realize?

St. Irenaeus, whom we remember today, is not often remembered as a patient, gentle, or kind corrector of the errors of his day. One of his most famous writings is the Treatise Against Heresies. But Irenaeus did have a gentle, kind, and even tolerant side. Within his Treatise Against Heresies, Irenaeus encourages a cautious approach against heresy as against lesser errors. He says that now “we receive a certain portion of [God’s] Spirit” and are “little by little” made “accustomed to receive and bear God.”

This “little by little” approach resembles that of 2 Timothy and of Jesus himself. Irenaeus also says in Against Heresies that “the glory of God is the human person fully alive.” To become “fully alive”; to be perfected for heaven, takes us a lifetime. If we follow Jesus, 2 Timothy, and St. Irenaeus, it would seem that our journey to being “fully alive”; to meeting the fullness of God’s glory in our unity, is a journey taken “little by little.”

Homily for Thursday, 21 May 2015– Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 22:30, 23:6-11; Psalm 60:1-2a, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11; John 17:20-26

For what or for whom do we pray most frequently? We have heard of frequently-asked questions. What are our most frequently-prayed prayers?

Do we most often pray in times of sorrow; times of need, or do we find ourselves praying in praise and thanksgiving to God; praying in moments of joy; peace; prosperity? Perhaps we know somebody who is struggling with her or his faith; or has turned away from faith altogether, and we pray for this person. Perhaps some of us are experiencing health difficulties, or we know somebody who is ill in mind, body, or spirit, and so we pray for these people.

These are only a few of the more frequent circumstances, all of them good, in which we may be inspired to pray. Do we pray, maybe often, that we might enter eternal life? I pray this often for myself, but also for the people I love; the people I serve as a baptized Christian and as a priest.

And have we ever asked ourselves: What were Jesus’ most frequent prayers? For what or for whom did Jesus pray most often? Might this be a model for our most frequent prayers?

Our Gospel reading today is drawn from John 17, which is often called Jesus’ “high priestly prayer.” We hear Jesus’ last long prayer, during the Last Supper, before his passion and death on the cross. And yet I hear John 17 as a collection of shorter prayers that Jesus prays for his disciples. For what does Jesus pray for his disciples? Jesus prays to our Father in heaven that we, Jesus’ disciples, “may be one, as” God the Father and Son “are one.” Jesus prays for his disciples “that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that” the Father has sent him. Jesus prays at length and repeatedly in this Chapter 17 of John for our unity.

For what else does Jesus pray for his disciples? He prays that they may gain eternal life: “I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me.”

And I find one of the most beautiful intentions of Jesus’ high-priestly prayer to be when he prays for the people who will believe in him because of the witness of his first disciples. Jesus prays in our Gospel reading today: “I pray not only for these, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.”

How, then, can we make Jesus’ high priestly prayer our own? Jesus gives us his own example of excellent prayers to make into our most frequent prayers: Pray for one another’s unity. Important divisions still exist among Christian churches and traditions, although great strides toward unity have been made, especially in recent years. Pray that all may inherit eternal life. God has created every human being, all of us, out of love. God has created us for himself; for everlasting life. And pray in particular for the quality of our witness to Christ by the way we live, so that still more may be attracted to Christ and to our faith by our words and our works.

Homily for Sunday, 17 May 2015– Seventh Sunday of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 1:15-17, 20a, 20c-26; Psalm 103:1-2, 11-12, 19-20; 1 John 4:11-16; John 17:11b-19

“We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us,” we hear today from the First Letter of John. Is this not one of the great “starting point” statements of our faith? What is the foundation of our Christian faith; of any faith; the reason why we are here; of why any one of us or anything exists? The foundation of all this is God’s love for us.

“We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.” We know and believe as Christians, as one community of faith, that God delights in us. Is it so remarkable for our Scriptures to say that God loves and delights in us precisely because to say this is so problematic?

What do I mean by this? I do not wish to be pessimistic or to discourage us, but I ask: How many of us have experienced divisions and brokenness in our families; our households; our marriages, or knows somebody who has or is experiencing these realities? Many regions of our world know war, extremism, other forms of violence, hunger, and poverty, most often due to the concentration of resources in the hands of a few. But we need not go far to see the greed of a few while large groups of people (sadly still too often set apart by race, in these United States especially) are at a social and economic disadvantage, frequently through little fault of their own. We need not go far, right here in Greater Rochester, to see or hear of violence.

We live in a culture that, on the one hand, is revered for its work ethic and generosity and, on the other hand, is known for increasing division between left and right; between rich and poor; among races. Even in our Church, we see competitiveness over adherence to teachings of the Church, often as we understand them. Those of weaker conscience can find themselves condemned instead of having their conscience strengthened by the support of loved ones and the community of faith, to understand and live by the teachings of our faith more fully. And we know the scandal of division among Christians: Catholics; Protestants; Orthodox.

All these divisions; all this brokenness in our world; among Christians; within our Church even, is because of sin in our world. We know “the love God has for us.” God’s love for us is the reason for our existence; why God has created anything; why God sustains this creation; keeps it and us alive. And we know our freedom to love God and one another as God loves us, or to misuse our freedom and so not to love as God loves us. And yet even when we do not love; even when we sin; even when we have created scandal and division in a world God created to be good, God still loves us. God delights in us and will always delight in us. How can this be? And how does this fact; this foundation of our faith that God loves and delights in us impel us to act as Christians; as Catholics?

“We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.” We know and believe that God delights in us. We know and believe this because, from the very moment of creation, “God saw that [his creation] was good.” God pronounced us “very good.” When we fell away from God in sin; in not loving and delighting in God; in one another; in God’s creation as God delights in us, God sent us God’s only Son to live, to die, to rise, to ascend to plead our cause “at the right hand of the Father” in heaven. And the Son of God, Jesus Christ, promises to return in glory to complete God’s work of our salvation.

Here is our evidence of “the love God has for us”; that God delights in us! And the same Jesus who lived, died, rose, ascended, and will return as one like us in all but sin shows his delight in us most of all by praying with and for us. We hear perhaps the most magnificent prayer of Jesus with and for us in all of Scripture today in our Gospel reading from John. What does Jesus pray in what is often called his “high priestly prayer”; his prayer with and for his disciples; with and for us just before he suffered and died for us?

Two features of Jesus’ prayer in John’s Gospel; two things for which Jesus prays for us stand out for me in particular. What are they? Jesus prays for us: “Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are one.” Jesus prays for our unity. And then Jesus prays to our Father in the same prayer, “Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.”

What would it mean for us to own this prayer of Jesus with and for us for ourselves? How might we “be one” as God the Father, Son, and Spirit are one? What does it mean for us to be consecrated; made holy “in the truth” that is the word of God? Does this not all seem extremely daunting to us: Achieving the ultimate unity that exists among the persons of the Trinity of the one God; being made holy in the truth of God’s word?

This is daunting for us, to be sure. But by God’s grace the unity and love among us that Jesus prays with and for us can be ours. How? Begin with prayer. Pray especially for the people with whom we disagree; the people who irritate us; the people who have even sinned against us. Pray for their good: “Lord God, who is all good and created us all good; who loves us although we are sinners, keep this person well and in your grace. Bring the person for whom I pray to the promise of your salvation for all whom you have created for yourself. Bring all people to deeper experience of the truth that you love and delight in us.” Pray a prayer like this not only once but until we can actively feel God’s love for the person for whom we pray being expressed through our words. Pray until our words become works of kindness; of charity; of opening up opportunities for dialogue with people who are different from us; who struggle in their faith or in living some of its teachings; who are of other faiths or no faith.

Prayer will not bring us to uniformity, so that we all agree on everything. But prayer as a community of faith and individually but for one another is at the root of unity around one central truth of our faith: God loves us; delights in us. And “we have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.” Prayer that becomes action for peace; for forgiveness; for unity; for an end to divisions and violence is our starting point for showing our world God’s love for our world; God’s delight in us and in our world.

“That they may be one just as we are one… Consecrate them in the truth.” This is Jesus’ prayer of utmost love for us; delight in us. Jesus invites us to pray this prayer for one another; to live this prayer for one another. If we live this prayer for one another, the First Letter of John says, God’s “love is brought to perfection in us.” Jesus promises as he prays in John’s Gospel that, if we live this prayer for one another; if we pray for one another; forgive one another as we need to be forgiven; dialogue with one another and avoid the temptations of gossip; hyper-competition, and passive aggression, we will have the same joy in one another as Jesus does in us. We will have this same joy of Jesus Christ if we overcome ideological divisions; divisions among Christians of differing traditions; racial divisions; all greed; all forms of violence. “I speak this in the world,” Jesus says, “so that they may share my joy completely.”

Jesus speaks “this in the world”; prays this with and for us “in the world” because he loves us; because God delights in us. God calls us to love and to delight in what is good in one another; what is of God in one another. God wants to bring his love; joy; delight in us to perfection in, with, and through us. This is the very foundation of our Christian faith; of Christian and human unity; of our joy and of our salvation.