Homily for Thursday, 11 July 2019– Memorial of St. Benedict

Readings of the day: Genesis 44:18-21, 23b-29, 45:1-5; Psalm 105:16-17, 18-19, 20-21; Matthew 10:7-15

Thursday of the 14th 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.

How do we exercise hospitality in our lives?

When Jesus commissions his disciples in the Gospel reading we hear today from Matthew, he sends them out to accomplish fairly great ministries with fairly little: They are to “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” In doing so, Jesus’ disciples are to set out without many even basic possessions, let alone luxuries: “Take no gold or silver or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff.”

Not only does Jesus ask his disciples to travel lightly, but he goes on to invite them to live hospitality as essential to their ministry: To “give without payment” as they have “received without payment”; to take what is offered them in each house “and stay there until [they] leave.”

Modeled on Jesus’ invitation to his disciples to exercise hospitality, St. Benedict of Norcia, the sixth-century abbot of Subiaco and then Monte Cassino, Italy, whose feast we celebrate today, developed his Rule of Benedict for the communities of monks he founded. The first lines of the Rule of Benedict urge the monks to listen: “Listen, O my son, to the precepts of your master, and incline the ear of your heart, and cheerfully receive and faithfully execute the admonitions of your loving Father, so that by the toil of obedience you may return to [God], from whom by the sloth of disobedience you have gone away.” In the original Latin of Benedict’s Rule, the commands to “listen” and to “obedience” are derived from the same verb, audire, to hear or to listen. Obedience, ob-audire, in this sense of listening, is the foremost act of hospitality, toward another person or toward God.

Farther on in Benedict’s Rule, St. Benedict devotes a chapter to the proper reception of guests into Benedictine monasteries. “Let all guests who arrive be received as Christ,” St. Benedict writes, “and let due honor be shown to all, especially to those ‘of the household of the faith’ and to wayfarers.”

The Rule of Benedict has become the basis for the rules of many religious orders to this day, both monastic and more active orders, including mine, the Basilian Fathers. The Basilian Way of Life [39] pays homage to the Rule of Benedict when it says that “hospitality is a Christian virtue and a Basilian tradition. We must recognize the Lord not only in strangers and in those in need, but in all those who visit our communities.” The Basilian Customs, the next-most important Basilian document after our Way of Life, says this about hospitality and table fellowship, not only among Basilians but with anybody who visits our communities: “We ought to pay special attention to the art of conversation, both at the table and elsewhere, not allowing ourselves to be satisfied with minimal courtesies, but finding in our conversation support and encouragement.”

In other words, first, may we recognize the Lord in our neighbour, created in God’s image and likeness, and treat our neighbour, whether guest or stranger, with appropriate hospitality. Second, conversation that offers “support and encouragement” is essential to the hospitality to which not only the Rule of St. Benedict, the Basilian Way of Life and Customs, or other religious orders’ rules invite us, but to which Jesus himself invites us, his disciples, through the Gospel of Jesus’ own way of life.

Homily for Thursday, 28 July 2016– Ferial

Thursday of the 17th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 18:1-6; Psalm 146:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6ab; Matthew 13:47-53

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

Has anybody here ever done pottery or known somebody who has? Has anybody ever fished or known somebody who has?

Both pottery and fishing can be painstaking and even frustrating work. I have fished although, perhaps thankfully, not for a living, and I know at least one of my brother Basilian priests who has done pottery. Often my Basilian confrère would bring home mugs or other pieces of pottery he had made, and I would think of how beautiful these pieces of pottery were; how much work he had put into each one! On one occasion, when I was out fishing as a boy, the fish in the lake where my family fished had all been infected with a strange parasite. Many of the fish we caught, although they were large enough that we did not need to release them, were no longer good to eat, but we could not know which fish were infected with the parasite until we examined them more closely.

Both pottery and fishing can be hard work. Today the prophet Jeremiah presents God as the potter, working and reworking the clay, the people of Israel, into a vessel that seems “good to him.” And, in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus presents God as the fisherman who has “caught fish of every kind” in “a net” and, “at the end of the age”; the end of time, will separate the good from the bad fish; “the evil from the righteous.”

Might images like the “furnace of fire” and like the clay vessel being broken down and “reworked… into another vessel” give us the sense of a harsh God? Instead, the reworking of the “spoiled” clay vessel “into another vessel” by the potter and the sorting of fish from the net in our Gospel reading are meant for us to be images of a patient, merciful God.

Our God does not want to break us down in order to re-mold us in his image. Our God does not want anybody to be lost to the “furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” But our reality is that sin exists in our world. It exists and infects us like a parasite: Divisions among and within nations; among and within families; fearmongering and gossip; exclusion of entire groups based on their ethnicity, religion, or other reasons; all forms of violence, verbal and physical.

Sin is real. And yet it would be a mistake, a heresy, to suggest that any person is totally depraved or beyond redemption. Our God keeps molding us as the potter breaks down and reworks one vessel into another, “as [seems] good to him.” This is an act of re-creation by our God, bringing us back to our beginnings, when God fashioned us and declared us “very good.” Our God will wait until the end of time to “separate the evil from the righteous.”

Until then, God will continue to work to heal us of the parasite of sin; to re-mold us. And God invites us to work with him with patience and mercy, until we are made fit for the Kingdom of Heaven.

Homily for Friday, 17 October 2014– Memorial of St. Ignatius of Antioch

Friday of the 28th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ephesians 1:11-14; Psalm 33:1-2, 4-5, 12-13; Luke 12:1-7

What are some things that we fear? When I was a very young boy, I wanted to become a firefighter. There was one problem with this, though: I was afraid of the sound of sirens. So here, a few steps in vocational discernment later, I am a priest and not a firefighter!

I am sure that our fears as we grow; become adults; progress through life become somewhat more complex. Jesus, though, speaks of one basic fear that I wonder if it ever leaves us, no matter how courageous we may be: The fear of death.

Jesus says to his disciples in Luke’s Gospel, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but after that can do no more.” Let us put ourselves in the place of Jesus’ disciples. By this point in Jesus’ public ministry, would they have known clearly that Jesus’ life was going to end in a humiliating death; that of a common criminal on a cross? Would this not have made Jesus’ disciples afraid not only for Jesus’ life but for their own lives?

Perplexingly yet comfortingly, Jesus invites his disciples not to fear death. But he does not entirely dismiss fear, which is natural, human, and sometimes an appropriate reaction to obvious danger. Jesus says this to his disciples after inviting them not to fear either their deaths or his: “Be afraid of the one who after killing has the power to cast into Gehenna.” The significance of Gehenna here is that this was the place outside the city walls of Jerusalem where garbage burned and the poor, the ritually unclean, and the especially wicked were often buried in undignified graves. If there were a hell on earth for anyone living in Israel in Jesus’ time, Gehenna was it. Just the mental image of Gehenna would have struck fear in Jesus’ hearers of today’s Gospel.

Do not fear death, Jesus asks us, but do fear hell. And yet fear hell and the one “who has the power to cast into Gehenna,” into hell, only in the context of God’s love and mercy toward us. Would a loving and merciful God who created us in God’s own image and likeness; next to God in dignity and worth, allow us to be cast into hell easily? I think not.

This does not mean that we test God by acting in ways beneath the worth with which we were created and called as daughters and sons of God. This does not mean that we may not encounter ridicule or, less likely, true persecution and even martyrdom for our faith. As we celebrate today the feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch, martyred in Rome about one hundred years after Jesus’ time, we recognize that courageous disciples continue to be martyred in our time.

And yet this is not to make us fearful. Do not fear death, Jesus says. Fear hell and the one who can cast us into hell but, more importantly than any fear, trust God who saves; who in Christ will be victorious over the power of hell itself.

Homily for Thursday, 2 October 2014– Memorial of the Guardian Angels

Thursday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Job 19:21-27; Psalm 27:7-8a, 8b-9abc, 13-14; Matthew 18:1-5, 10

This second feast of angels in just a few days, that of the Guardian Angels, may again raise in us these kinds of questions: Who are angels? What is the purpose of angels? Are angels real or are they mythical creatures to which some people hold an outdated or childish belief (have any of us been asked this question)? And why do we have two celebrations of angels in the Church just days apart, first the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, and then today the Guardian Angels?

The word “angel” means messenger, and so the angels are God’s messengers. We might find Jesus’ reference to angels in our Gospel reading today to be interesting. Jesus responds to his own disciples’ question, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” by placing a child from the crowd among them. The most humble; those who trust God as a child trusts her or his parents are “the greatest in the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus says. But then Jesus leaves his disciples with this saying: children’s “angels in heaven always look on the face of my heavenly Father.”

Are not the angels in this way like two-way messengers for those who trust in God as a child does its parents and all those who care for her or him; for the humble? On the one hand, guardian angels act as messengers from us to God; as intercessors for us to God. On the other hand, these angels reflect God’s glory to us who trust in God. We will pray to God at the beginning of our Eucharistic Prayer today: “For the honor we pay the angelic creatures… redounds to your own surpassing glory, and by their great dignity and splendor you show how infinitely great you are.”

And so these guardian angels; these two-way messengers both show our dignity as God’s creatures before God and reflect to us God’s greatness. Our belief in angels, then, is not some outdated belief. And not only are there the big-name Archangels like Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael for the bigger jobs, but each of us has a guardian angel for the smaller everyday task of bringing our humble prayers to God and showing us God’s greatness and care for us. Jesus asks us to trust in God’s greatness and care for each of us in the way children do; children whose “angels in heaven always look on the face of [our] heavenly Father.” 

Homily for Friday, 8 August 2014– Memorial of St. Dominic

Friday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Nahum 2:1, 3, 3:1-3, 6-7; Responsorial Canticle: Deuteronomy 32:35cd-36ab, 39abcd, 41; Matthew 16:24-28

Are not the questions Jesus asks us in today’s Gospel reading strange? He asks, “What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life?”

We are led to answer “none” and “nothing” to these strange rhetorical questions. But then, in answering that there would be, of course, no profit in gaining “the whole world” and losing one’s life, or that nothing can possibly be given in exchange for life, we are led to examine our thinking.

As a parish community and as individuals we do countless great acts of love; acts of kindness; acts of witness to the Christian faith we profess. And yet, when we perform these good works, how many of us have ever thought, even subconsciously, “What will I gain from doing this? What is ‘in it’ for me?” Maybe more insidious even is to do good only because we should; because this will please God and others while perhaps giving ourselves a sense of accomplishment.

To please God and the people we serve, and even to gain enjoyment, praise, or wealth out of our service, are of themselves right motivations, and yet Jesus invites us to think beyond our own personal gain; to think even beyond doing right simply because we should.

We were created to do good works; to serve God through service toward one another, especially those most in need. To do good works is within our very nature as creatures made in the image and likeness of God. For us to understand this; to make this our motive for doing good instead of lesser motivations such as personal gain or even pleasing others or even God, takes a radical reset in ethical priorities.

We call this reset conversion. This conversion, for most of us, is not instantaneous but a lifelong process. This conversion will sustain us in times when doing good works, doing what is both God-like and befitting our human dignity as created in God’s image and likeness, does not bring us worldly gain; when instead it brings ridicule; when it involves being counter-cultural (not for the sake of being counter-cultural but because we come to know in our hearts that it is right; it is of God); when doing right means accepting suffering; our crosses in life.

“What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life?” Our answers to these questions, of course, are “none” and “nothing.” Jesus’ invitation to faith; to discipleship; to self-denial; to “take up [our] cross and follow” Christ is more than profit and exchange, as good as these worldly priorities can be. Jesus’ invitation to us is one of conversion; of resetting our ethical priorities: Not just because we should, but because of who we are, created in God’s image and likeness and baptized into fellowship with and in Christ. 

Homily for Thursday, 7 August 2014– Ferial

Thursday of the 18th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:12-13, 14-15, 18-19; Matthew 16:13-23

Jesus asks his disciples in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew, “Who do people say the Son of Man is”? And “who do you say that I am”? These are good questions for us. Who do we say Jesus is? Who do we say God is?

The prophet Jeremiah gives us a good idea of who God is in the last verse of our first reading. Jeremiah says to the people of Israel that God “will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.” In God’s mercy, God does not stop at forgiving our sins; God remembers our “sin no more.”

This distinction is crucial, and yet how many of us understand it? How many of us, when we ask forgiveness from somebody for a wrong action we have done, or even when we confess our sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, think of God as able and willing to forgive our wrongdoing through these encounters? If we do think of God in this way, this is correct, because God is a forgiving God. No sin is too great to forgive, except perhaps the sin of not even asking for forgiveness. And yet God does not stop at forgiving our sin. God, as Jeremiah puts it, remembers our “sin no more.”

God, in the words of our Responsorial Psalm, does more than forgive our sin. We pray to God, “Create a new heart in me.” In similar words, the Colombian Blessed Laura Montoya Upegui, who worked with indigenous people deep in the jungles of Colombia, once prayed: “Lord, destroy me and, upon my ruins, build a monument to your glory.”

Lord, destroy what leads me away from you; destroy my sin; remember my sin no more. This is what absolution is about: “Create a new heart in me”; a heart after your glory; a heart after your own heart.

If we understand that God is more than forgiving; that God’s will is to destroy our sin and to re-create us fully in God’s image, does this not radically re-orient our understanding of God? Does it not radically re-orient how we identify Jesus Christ when he asks us, “Who do you say that I am”?

This might radically re-orient how we understand the effect of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or even our Penitential Rite during Mass. Reconciliation becomes more than just confessing a list of sins and being assigned a formula to pray as a penance.

Our sins are not just forgiven, but destroyed and their void filled with God’s own presence. This is not only radical; but may be (and perhaps should be) scary to us! I say scary because, when we are reconciled with one another and with God; when we not only “do” penance but live penitentially, we are invited to let something die within us; to let go of our sin; to let God destroy our sin so that God can fill its void. “Get behind me, Satan.” God, remember our sin no more. “Create a new heart in” us. Destroy what keeps us from you and build within us “a monument to your glory.”