Homily for Monday, 25 December 2023– The Nativity of the Lord, Mass during the Day

Readings of the day: Isaiah 52:7-10; Psalm 98:1, 2-3, 3-4, 5-6; Hebrews 1:1-6; John 1:1-18

Sisters and brothers, a Merry Christmas to you, our families, our loved ones, our friends!

Increasingly, one of Pope Francis’ favourite words is, “Closeness.” Pope Francis uses the word “closeness” nine times in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers and Sisters All,” which owes its title to an Admonition of St. Francis of Assisi to the friars of his religious community. This Admonition of St. Francis invites the friars to practice fraternal care and kindness toward one another and toward the poor, after Jesus’ example of fraternal closeness with us, with humanity.

The most perfect expression of closeness our world has ever known is when God took on our human nature in the person of Jesus Christ, that first Christmas morning in Bethlehem. But this was not the first time God expressed closeness with us, with the created world. From the very first moments of creation, God has ordered creation, intended it, to exist in closeness, interdependence of one being on another for us to flourish, the “common good.”

John’s Gospel on this Christmas morning takes us back to “the beginning” of God’s relationship of closeness with creation. John’s Gospel recalls God’s intention, from the beginning, that all things, all beings enjoy the same closeness and depend on one another to flourish. “In the beginning,” John’s Gospel begins this morning, “the word was with God, and the word was God.”

Here, in the majestic beginning of John’s prologue, “the word” is logos, the reason everything is. And, in the Greek of the Gospel of John, God is Theos (think of words like theology, the study or pursuit of God). In this beginning, Theos meets logos; God draws into intimate closeness with the reason anything and everything exists, so that these become one. From the very first moments of creation, God is the reason all things exist, why we exist and are called to participate in our own flourishing, God’s own project for our everlasting well-being and salvation.

And the one God, we profess by faith, exists in the intimate closeness of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father sent the Son, begot the Son, to live “among us,” John’s Gospel says, in our human flesh. And then the Son would breathe his Spirit upon the earth to continue to ensure our closeness with God, the greatest good of each of us and of the Church, meant to live in closeness with one another.

We are sacred creatures, created in the image and likeness of God, sisters and brothers, but we are also social creatures. As the Book of Genesis says near its beginning, “It is not good for [us] to be alone.” As Pope Francis is fond of saying, “Nobody is saved alone.” God has made us for closeness, between us and God, St. Augustine of Hippo says, “For, O God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” And God has made us for closeness among one another. This is how we have been created, and how we will be saved, how we will be in heaven.

That design of God—for closeness, between us and God, among ourselves, between us and every other creature—is captured in our readings today. That design of God, for closeness, has been from the very beginning, when Theos and logos became one.

God’s drawing us into ever-greater closeness—with God, among ourselves, with all created things—has played out in history. Today the Letter to the Hebrews proclaims that “long ago God spoke to our ancestors.” God spoke his will, his design of closeness to us through prophets. But now God “has spoken to us by the Son.” There can be no greater closeness than God becoming human, one like us in all things but sin in the person of Jesus Christ.

And the prophet Isaiah announces a blessing to the messenger of peace, good news, salvation. “How beautiful upon the mountains,” Isaiah says, “are the feet of [this] messenger”; the messenger who proclaims the closeness God has desired for and with us from “the beginning,” the closeness now fulfilled in God becoming a human being, sharing in our human experiences from birth to death and resurrection.

God made us for closeness—with God, one another, all creation—from “the beginning.” But that is not all, according to John in his Gospel prologue we hear this Christmas morning. John’s language in the Gospel we have heard this morning is, par excellence, the language of closeness. Theos and logos are one “in the beginning.” God, the word, God’s Son Jesus Christ “became flesh and dwelt among us.” The word John uses here for “flesh” is not the more sanitized of the two words Greek has for “flesh,” soma. No, John says, in Jesus Christ God became sarx. God shares in Christ with us every aspect of our human experience, including the messiest, least sanitized aspects like birth, suffering and death.

There is another hidden gem in this phrase of John’s Gospel proclaiming the Incarnation, God taking human flesh in Jesus Christ. John says, “The word became flesh and lived among us.” The word we hear as “lived” among us is an ancient Greek word referring to theatre, not so “lived” as that Jesus “pitched his tent” (skene) among us. We owe the English word scene, as in a play, to the Greek skene. Only God is not acting when God desires and achieves this intimate closeness with us, taking our human flesh and sharing in our human experiences.

God has “pitched his tent” among us, a permanent dwelling, a permanent, intimate closeness. God pitching his tent among us is meant by John to evoke the early history of the people of Israel. Before Israel was ruled by kings like David and Solomon, before there was a fixed temple in Jerusalem as the centre of the Jewish faith, God was said to dwell under a tent, the Ark of the Covenant. The ancient Israelite tribes would transport the Ark of the Covenant wherever they went, so God was always with God’s people, close to them. In Jesus, God was once more pitching God’s tent with humanity. Only now God’s tent was not made of fabric or animal skins; God’s “tent” was one of human flesh, all our possible human experiences.

John uses another remarkable word in today’s Gospel reading to point to God’s closeness with us, the closeness God wants us to enjoy among ourselves and with all created things. At the end of today’s Gospel reading, John says, “It is God the only-begotten Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made [God] known.”

More literally, the Son dwells not so much “close to the Father’s heart” but “at the breast” or bosom of God. Those of us who have ever nursed a baby will say that there are not too many more intimate acts we perform with our body than a mother feeding an infant at the breast. What a beautiful image of maternal closeness John’s Gospel gives us of the relationship of the Son to the Father!

God desires this same closeness for us, the same relationship between God and us. In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis invites us to special “closeness marked by gratitude, solidarity, and reciprocity,” a closeness that values the poor and their faith by which they are closest to God, to the Lord who made himself poor, who humbled himself, taking on our human likeness. Pope Francis urges us to a particular “closeness to the underprivileged [in] the promotion of the common good.”

Sisters and brothers in the Christ born to us this day: This is how we live and experience the closeness God intended for us from “the beginning”; the closeness that unites God to the reason we and all created things exist; the closeness by which God willed to be born, to live, to die, and to rise from death in our human flesh; the closeness with which the Son dwells at the very bosom of the Father; the closeness that is ours to enjoy and by which we flourish and are saved.

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, 10 December 2023– 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

We find ourselves at the beginning, sisters and brothers: “The beginning,” Mark’s Gospel proclaims by its very first words, “of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Mark wastes no time in revealing to us who Jesus is, “the Son of God,” and that his coming to live as one of us, in our human flesh—his advent—is “good news.” Spoiler alert! Mark does not even give us a nice, long account of Jesus’ infancy and childhood, to help us ease into the story, this “good news” he proclaims. Mark begins with the powerful preaching of John the Baptist, “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.” By this point Jesus is already an adult. Jesus, the one John announces as “more powerful” than he is, has probably already attracted followers. He has caused some “good [and necessary] trouble” in the minds and consciences of many already, the minds and consciences of the comfortable and powerful of this world.

So much for starting at the beginning of the story! And today we are not even at the beginning of Advent. We are a full week into the shortest possible Advent this year—three weeks and a day between the first Sunday of Advent, a week ago, and Christmas Day. And I do not know about any of us, but as of now I have yet to do much at all to prepare for Christmas. Gift shopping? Not started. Visiting family and friends I may not have seen for a while? Okay, I have done some visiting. Taking time to be with, or at least to pray for, people in need—the sick, the poor, those who find this time of year to be a struggle for many reasons? Okay, but I could do better. Tidying my physical spaces—my room, my office—let alone doing a little Christmas decorating?! Yikes! I think, if Jesus were to step into my room now, let alone the spiritual room that is my heart, my conscience, he might sound a little like my mother did when I was a kid: “Did a tornado hit here, or what”?!

(By the way, I will offer this little advertisement for those of us who want to do some spiritual—heart, mind, conscience—tidying soon: St. Joseph’s College’s Advent penance service is this Friday at 7:00 pm).

So, in a way it is okay if we are a little behind on our Advent-Christmas preparations, if our spiritual let alone physical spaces look chaotic to say the least. Advent offers us a new beginning. God meets us where we are in our present; in fact God sends messengers ahead of himself and his Christ—John the Baptist, the saints, holy people we know and meet in our own lives—to draw us closer to him and to eternal life. That is the “good news”!

Yet Advent is a bit of a strange time of year. We are at a beginning of the Church’s liturgical year, of the story of our world’s first encounter with God in the human person of Jesus. But we are, at the same time, well into this story, after many encounters in history and in our own lives already with God’s “good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Last Sunday, the first Sunday, the very beginning of Advent, our readings at Mass gave the sense more of an end, or a story very much in progress, than a beginning. We began this time of Advent by hearing from near the end of the Gospel of Mark: Jesus, just before his passion and death, urging his disciples to “keep awake,” ready for the events of Jesus’ passion and death that would happen right after that point, but more importantly for an unknown “Last Day” when Jesus will return in glory. St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians also oriented us toward that final “day of our Lord Jesus Christ,” exhorting the Corinthian Christian faithful to remain “blameless” until that day by the Lord’s strength and grace. The Psalm reinforced our plea for divine strength. And, a week ago, we heard Isaiah making final plans for the return of the people of Israel from a long exile in Babylon. That exile, it seems, had made the people of Israel stubborn; only a small “remnant” would return to their land to rebuild the nation and its temple in Jerusalem that had been the centre of the Jewish faith. So Isaiah pleads for divine intervention to break through Israel’s sin and hardness of heart: “O [LORD] that you would tear open the heavens and come down”!

Today, this second Sunday of Advent, our readings start back at beginnings: Mark speaks of “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” The second letter of Peter gives us a sense of being closer to a beginning than an end. The people for whom 2 Peter is written have become impatient. The first Christians of that community had suffered persecution. Many had already died. 2 Peter reminds them that, in God’s time, this is only the beginning: “The Lord is not slow about his promise… but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.”

Peter’s message is very similar to that of John the Baptist in today’s Gospel. For John the Baptist, there is urgency to repentance to prepare for the coming of Jesus, the “one after” John. Yet, 2 Peter says, there is also urgency to know God’s mercy and peace, God’s meeting us in the sometimes-chaotic events of this world and our lives, even as we strive to repent, to tidy our spiritual spaces, our minds and consciences.

Our God has never been one to wait until we have everything in order—our hearts, our minds, our consciences—before coming to be with us in our present time. The second letter of Peter offers us a very typical (for a biblical text) vision of the end of time. It will be chaos: “The heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire.” But 2 Peter invites us not to worry about this chaos. Instead, lead “lives of holiness and godliness,” practice conversion and repentance here and now; “strive to be found by [the Lord] at peace.”

Jesus promised to return at the end of time. I think we can be almost certain that the end of time, when Jesus will re-enter this world, will be chaotic. We do not know what the world will look like when Jesus returns on the Last Day. But we can remain at peace if we think back to the beginning, the first time Jesus entered our world. God took our human flesh in a world that was chaotic then. Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary into a poor, chaotic, smelly stable with barn animals, at a time when the Romans ruled Jesus’ homeland by force.

God does not wait for us to have everything in order before entering into our present in a way that changes our existence profoundly and irreversibly. Well before Jesus’ time, the prophet Isaiah was calling to a people still in exile in Babylon, preparing to return to, well, chaos and ruin—a ruined temple—in Jerusalem. And Isaiah says, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid.”

Isaiah’s cry to Jerusalem is something like, “Yes, what you see, what is left of your homeland is chaos, ruin. But God is not waiting. God brings comfort, peace, justice, salvation now.” As the Psalmist says, here and now, “justice and peace” are about to “kiss each other.” This is a new beginning for the people of Israel!

God does not wait for us to have everything in order. God enters and changes our existence when God wills it. That is what we celebrate this Advent season, sisters and brothers! God has already entered this world, amid its chaos—our not having everything quite in order—many times. Ultimately, God entered our world in the human person of Jesus Christ, into a poor, chaotic, smelly scene, a nation ruled by foreign force.

Finally, Jesus promises us that he will enter our world again on the Last Day. All we can do to be ready for the Last Day, Jesus’ return in glory, is the same thing we can do be ready for this day, for the next day, the day after that, and so on: Remember how God has intervened in our world in the past. Remember that God did not wait until we had everything in order to bring peace, justice, order, comfort, mercy. May we be at peace, knowing and reflecting on this. Our time of Advent takes us back to those beginnings even as we anticipate with hope the Last Day, Jesus’ return in glory.

Today, in the midst of Advent, we remember the beginning of God’s comfort to Israel, still in exile, through the prophet Isaiah. We remember the preaching of John the Baptist, a message of repentance and hope. We pray with the Psalmist for a time when “justice and peace will kiss each other.” We remember 2 Peter’s exhortation to remain at peace. These have been our new beginnings in history, God entering our story when we most need God, with peace, justice, order, comfort, mercy. This is the “good news” our Scriptures proclaim today, “the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Homily for Sunday, 15 October 2023– Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings of the day: Isaiah 25:6-10a; Psalm 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6; Philippians 4:12-14,19-20; Matthew 22:1-14

If you were able to attend a lavish banquet free of charge, invited by the host, would you say, “Sorry, I have better things to do than attend the banquet”? I would probably not say, “I have better things to do,” even if I did; “I have better things to do” would sound very rude to the host, even if this were true. And, if I had a reason not to attend the banquet, it would have to be a very good reason. I simply like food too much to miss a banquet that good, especially the food promised in the banquet we hear about today from the Book of Isaiah: “A feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.” As our Fr. Jim says when he anticipates that a meal will be especially tasty: “Yum, yum, yum”!

But that is precisely what the guests invited to the king’s wedding banquet in Jesus’ parable do: They refuse the king’s invitation, not once but twice in today’s Gospel reading. The king sends his slaves out a second time after his original guests refuse to attend (or maybe even to RSVP) after the first invitation. And the king’s second attempt to invite the original guests is even less successful than the first. The original would-be guests make light of the king’s invitation. One goes “to his farm, another to his business, while the rest” seize, mistreat, and kill the king’s slaves.

If I were the king in Jesus’ parable, I would almost certainly say after the first unsuccessful attempt to invite guests let alone the second: “Well, those people are not worth the trouble of inviting. They are rude, they make fun of me, if they are not downright evil.” I would have gone straight to inviting people from “the main streets”—from the highways and byways—“the good and the bad” to the banquet. I would have saved a few of my servants from being mistreated and murdered in the process! But I am not the king in Jesus’ parable. The king in Jesus’ parable, God, is far more patient and richer, even more extravagant, in graciousness and mercy, in second chances and beyond, than I think any of us is. And there are many very patient, gracious, and merciful people in this chapel right now; I know this first-hand, so I do not intend this as a slight against any of us.

It is easy for us, I think, from today’s Gospel reading to find points to dispute the richness, the infinity of God’s (the king’s) patience, grace, mercy. After all, why would the king, if he is so infinitely patient, gracious, and merciful, ever become so enraged that he would send his troops after the invitees who refused two attempts to invite them to the wedding feast and mistreated and killed the king’s slaves, destroy them, and burn their city for good measure? I have difficulty imagining God readily punishing even the worst sinners. I prefer to think that we have the freedom to refuse God’s grace, mercy, patience, love, salvation as definitively as God offers these gifts to us; as definitively and purposely as God invites us to the wedding banquet. We are free to bring eternal punishment upon ourselves. Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar once said that this is why he had to believe that hell exists: We are free to accept or to refuse God’s invitation to the heavenly banquet, once, twice, forever. But von Balthasar (and I agree with him) hoped very few people if anybody had refused God’s invitation so definitively.

Still, why would God (the king in Jesus’ parable) destroy the invitees to the wedding banquet, even if they had killed his slaves? And our Gospel parable becomes even more troublesome if we consider the end of it: Of all the guests from the streets who show up at the wedding feast—we might think, understandably, that the important thing is that they show up at all; they are already better than the earlier guests who refused the king’s invitation twice—one is not wearing the wedding robe provided him by the king. So the king throws him out “into the outer darkness, where there [is] weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Again, why would the king throw this poor guest, who had already gotten into the banquet hall and possibly ordered his complimentary drink at the bar, out of the hall?

I think that, at this point, we need to accept to some extent that Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet is a story. It is a condensed account of how many times would-be guests could dishonour the king at a royal wedding banquet before being punished. There are cultural elements at play in Jesus’ parable, too: Guests at royal weddings in Jesus’ time, even if one were a lowly person who managed to be invited to the feast by default, would be provided a robe by the king. To refuse to wear this robe was a supreme insult to the banquet host. And Jesus was not beyond using a little exaggeration to make a point.

The point of Jesus’ parable today is, I think, this: God or the king is indeed infinitely patient, gracious, merciful with us. As Hans Urs von Balthasar says, the freedom is ours to refuse (even definitively, finally) or to place limits or obstacles before God’s invitation to the wedding feast of heaven. The freedom is ours to refuse to do God’s will by being kind, just, patient with one another in this life on earth. And our actions—either accepting or refusing God’s invitation to the feast—have consequences. Our Gospel says, “many are called, but few are chosen.” Sisters and brothers, we have all been called by our baptism to the king’s wedding feast, the feast to celebrate the mystical marriage of the king’s Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and his bride, the Church. But the freedom is ours to RSVP or not, to show up or not, to wear the wedding robe the king gives us or not. God will not stop us if we do not wish to attend or wear the robe, although he might try a few times (at least twice, according to the parable) to send servants—our fellow sisters and brothers in faith—to invite us to the feast if we do not accept the invitation right away.

I do not wish to discourage us. But please let me suggest that the ways in which we can refuse God’s invitation to the wedding feast can be much subtler than refusing to show up at the banquet, much less committing murder, as the first invitees do in our Gospel reading today. It is possible for us to be admitted to the banquet hall even if, like the poor guest at the end of today’s Gospel, we are not wearing the king’s issue wedding robe.

One way I think we find ourselves admitted to the wedding feast, or at least this sacrament of it, without (figuratively) wearing our robe is if and when we overestimate the gravity of our own sin or, we may think of it this way, when we underestimate the infinity of God’s mercy. There is a whole concept of what (or who) the Church is, a whole ideology of the seriousness of human sin and modern societies’ failure to account for it, at play here. So I will not dwell too much on this right now. But I only want to say how much it saddens me profoundly when somebody denies her or himself communion at Mass unless they are (and this is up to the person’s conscience, which I cannot judge) truly in a state of very serious or mortal sin.

Our Gospel reading today says that, after the first guests refused the king’s invitation outright, the king sent servants to call in “the good and the bad” from the streets to fill the banquet hall. If any of us is, according to your conscience, among the “bad,” please remember this: You are here, attending this Eucharistic sacrament of the king’s, God’s, heavenly wedding banquet. Wear your robe! If the sin on your conscience is less serious, the Penitential Rite at the beginning of Mass solves that problem. Less serious sins are absolved, forgiven during the Mass itself. Do we not acknowledge, just before receiving communion, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof.”

The Lord says to us, “Good, then. I will invite you under my roof, to my sacrament, my Eucharistic feast.” Please never turn down the Lord’s invitation to this celebration under God’s roof! Please wear the robe marked “redeemed sinner” that God has given each of us at our baptism! And if you have committed a truly serious or mortal sin, the sacrament of reconciliation will solve that problem. Please resolve to go to confession as soon as possible. As a priest, I personally have never and will never turn somebody down who asks me for the sacrament of reconciliation! We will wash your wedding robe, with a few generous squirts of stain remover, dry clean it (figuratively) if we need to and, Voilà, it will be as good as on the day of our baptism!

God’s mercy, God’s generosity, God’s loving kindness, God’s salvation are infinite. It is up to us to RSVP, to attend, to wear the robe when we receive God’s invitation to the wedding feast, in heaven and sacramentally here on earth, in this Eucharistic celebration. Take up, sisters and brothers, God’s invitation to eat and drink without reservation of God’s “rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.” Or as Fr. Jim would say to that offer of eternal salvation, “Yum, yum, yum”!

Homily for Sunday, 27 August 2023– Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings of the day: Isaiah 22:19-23, 6-7; Psalm 138: 1-2, 2-3, 6, 8; Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20

Two images stick in my mind when I hear today’s readings from Isaiah and the Gospel of Matthew: One of keys and the other, of clothing.

The image of keys is the more obvious one of these two; it is explicitly included in Isaiah and in Matthew. In Isaiah, the chief steward of the royal house of King Hezekiah—like Hezekiah’s Prime Minister—is Shebna. And Isaiah condemns Shebna for many wrongful actions, abuses of his power. Today’s reading from Isaiah skips over a few lines that lay out the prophet’s charge against Shebna: He has tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade King Hezekiah to ally with Egypt in a revolt against Assyria (historically, the Assyrians had invaded Israel and Judah and made Hezekiah their puppet king, some years before Babylon would invade the same territory). And Shebna had built monuments to himself, including his tomb, in high places where his self-importance would be most visible.

So Isaiah says that Shebna will be “pulled down from [his] post” and his role at the right hand of the king—the robe, sash, and keys—be given to “Eliakim, son of Hilkiah.” Isaiah uses the images of a peg and of keys. The peg is the symbol of stability: Eliakim would bring stability and prosperity to the reign of Hezekiah and his successors in the royal line of King David. But the keys are a symbol of power. And, as I think we all know, power can be used for good or not-so-good purposes.

Isaiah’s handing over of Shebna’s keys to Eliakim is a bit ironic, considering what we know happened to Hezekiah and the House of David after him. Hezekiah would refuse Shebna’s advice that he ally with Egypt against Assyria, but he would ally with Assyria and essentially become a puppet king of the Assyrians. And his successors would fare even worse in trying to play one power among Israel’s neighbours off against the others and failing to trust in Israel’s God alone for Israel’s peace, stability, and prosperity.

But then the Gospel of Matthew presents us with the same image of keys as the prophet Isaiah does to speak of Eliakim’s rise within the royal court of Hezekiah. In Matthew, it is Jesus’ apostle Peter who receives the keys: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus says to him.

For Jesus to give the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” to Peter, of all people, is as curious (if not more) than when God, through Isaiah, gives the keys to the kingdom of David and his successors to Eliakim in place of Shebna. Not long before this point in Matthew’s Gospel, if we remember from last Sunday’s Gospel reading, Peter asks Jesus to be able to walk toward him on the stormy sea. But then he becomes afraid and sinks. Jesus calls Peter out, “You of little faith, why did you doubt”?

Today Peter repeats the cycle of bold statement—bold profession of faith—by God’s grace, followed by being surprised, unnerved we might say, by his own boldness, and then retreat from it, afraid of what such a profession of faith means for him. We do not hear the retreat, the fearful reservation part of the episode to which our Gospel introduces us today. We only hear Peter get the answer right, as he so often does and which is why Jesus entrusts him with so much; why Jesus gives Peter the “power of the keys.” Peter says what every other disciple of Jesus knows is true—what we all know by faith to be true but, people of little faith that we are, hesitate to say it: Jesus is a herald of the kingdom of heaven like John the Baptist, a prophet like Elijah, Jeremiah, or “one of the [other] prophets.” But he is more than they are. Peter says quite rightly: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

But even at this point, we have a clear sense that, for Peter or for any of us as Jesus’ disciples, first this is not the end of the story or the destination of our process of discipleship. And, second, like Peter, none of us can make this astounding profession of faith without God’s grace. Jesus says just that to Peter: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”

In a few moments, sisters and brothers, we will pray the Creed. But do we ever pause, after we have prayed the Creed, and hear Jesus say to us, “Blessed are you… For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven”? I invite us to try this at this Mass: Pause briefly after the Creed, before we offer our Prayer of the Faithful, and hear, imagine Jesus blessing us just as he blessed Peter after his profession of faith: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Because we know that this is not the end of the story, for Peter or for us. Almost as soon as Peter professes his faith in “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” if we continue to follow Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus leads Peter, James, and John up the Mount of the Transfiguration. There, the three apostles see a vision and then hear Jesus predict that he will die and rise for us. Jesus will die and rise for all of us who, like Peter, are men, women, and children “of little faith.” Jesus will die and rise for all of us who, like Peter, may be able to make an astounding profession of faith, as long as it is on our terms. The very next thing Peter says to Jesus after, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” after the end of today’s Gospel reading, is, “God forbid it, Lord” that you should die like this! “God forbid it” that I should profess my faith in a Christ, a God who will suffer for me, for my sin, for every time I am afraid of the bold words that, by God’s grace, escape from my mouth, and I retreat from them. “God forbid it, Lord,” that I will go so far as denying even knowing you, yet you will restore me to grace, remind me of why you gave me the keys and the power to bind and loose on earth what is bound and loosed in heaven!

“God forbid it, Lord”—But the Lord does just that, through each of us. Not long after Peter’s profession of faith, the gift of the “keys of the kingdom of heaven,” and then Jesus’ Transfiguration, in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus gives the same power to bind and loose, the same gift of participating with God in the restoration to grace, the salvation of the whole world, to all of us, sisters and brothers!

And this is where I want to go back to the beginning of what I have said here today, to my image of the keys but then also of clothing. Specifically, who here has ever bought clothing for an infant or maybe a teenager—those times in our lives when we grow physically (and in other ways) the fastest? When we buy clothing for somebody who is growing quickly, it is wise to buy clothing a few sizes too big for that person, so that they will grow into it.

This is what God, through Isaiah, does for Eliakim in the Book of Isaiah from which we hear today. This is what Jesus does for Peter in our Gospel reading today. This is what Paul speaks of to the Romans, as if he is unwrapping a gift of divine clothing that is too big for him or the Roman Christian community in the present moment: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways”! Actually, Paul is saying to us, to the Romans, that the clothing God has just bought for us will never fit us quite right (Sorry!). It will always be a bit (or a lot) big on us, this clothing of God’s grace that saves us. But then some baggy clothing is quite fashionable these days, right?

In the time of Isaiah—and Matthew picks up on this image when Jesus gives Peter “the keys of the kingdom of heaven”—keys were not so much the pocket-sized ones with which we unlock doors. For a king or royal official like Eliakim, the keys that they would receive would be part of their royal clothing: Large, decorative, and slung over the shoulder. So the robe, the sash, and the key given to Eliakim in Isaiah are not really two separate images or analogies—that of keys and that of clothing—but the same one.

God gives Eliakim the robe, the sash, and the keys that are too big for him in that moment. Jesus gives Peter a gift that, despite his astounding profession of faith, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” is too big for him in that moment. Peter will have to grow into those clothes and those keys. He will have to experience his frailty, his own “little faith,” most poignantly as Jesus dies on the cross and Peter denies ever knowing him.

We, too, dear Church, will have to continue to grow into the same clothing and the same keys that, for the moment, are just a little (or a lot) too big for our “little faith.” Still, though our “little faith” helped by none other than God’s grace, God enables us to profess with the astounding boldness of Peter the creed that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Homily for Sunday, 20 August 2023– Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings of the day: Isaiah 56:1, 6-7; Psalm 67: 2-3, 5, 6, 8; Romans 11:13-15, 29-32; Matthew 15:21-28

I am not sure how many of us, if anybody here, attended the recent World Youth Day in Lisbon, Portugal, or watched coverage of it on television. I ran a quick search of the official text of Pope Francis’ Address during the Welcome Ceremony to World Youth Day pilgrims on the first day of the event. In that speech, Pope Francis uses the word “everyone” (todos in Portuguese) eighteen times!

Clearly, I think, Pope Francis desires a Church that is inclusive of all kinds of people. During a key part of his speech at the World Youth Day Welcome Ceremony, each time Pope Francis repeated “everyone” (todos), he encouraged the young people present to chant back to him, “Todos, todos”:

“In the Church, there is room for everyone, everyone. In the Church, no one is left out or left over. There is room for everyone, just the way we are. Everyone. Jesus says this clearly. When he sends the apostles to invite people to the banquet a man had prepared, he tells them: ‘Go out and bring in everyone,’ young and old, healthy and infirm, righteous and sinners. Everyone, everyone, everyone! In the Church there is room for everyone. ‘Father, but I am a wretch; is there room for me’? There is room for everyone… That is the Church, the Mother of all. There is room for everyone. The Lord does not point a finger but opens his arms. It is odd: The Lord does not know how to do this [pointing] but that [opening his arms wide]. He embraces us all. He shows us Jesus on the cross, who opened his arms wide in order to be crucified and die for us.”

This was not the first or the only time during the World Youth Day events when Pope Francis pleaded for a Church open to all people. The day before his Welcome Ceremony speech, in a meeting with Portuguese bishops, priests, religious, and lay pastoral ministers, Pope Francis invited them: “Please, let us not convert the Church into a customs office,” which admits only the “just, good,” and “properly married ‘while leaving everyone else outside.’… No, the Church is… a place for righteous and sinners, good and bad, everyone, everyone, everyone (todos).”

On the flight back to Rome after World Youth Day, journalists were unpacking just how far the pope meant to go toward a Church that includes “everyone.” Pope Francis responded to a question about various people and groups often excluded from the Church and her sacraments by saying, “The Church is open to all, but then there are rules that regulate life inside the Church.”

I will admit I have some difficulty understanding what Pope Francis meant by this: “The Church is open to all,” but, once we are within the walls of the church, once we are baptized, we are subject to its rules that do indeed distinguish good and bad, those who adhere faithfully at least to the Church’s most important teachings (and which are these?) and those who do not, those who may or may not receive the Church’s sacraments. Which is it?

I do not say all this to criticize Pope Francis; far be it from me to do that! I say what I have to draw a parallel between Pope Francis’ claim that, on the one hand, the Church is fully open to all (todos) and, on the other hand, that it has rules to regulate the practice of the faith once we are inside, and a similar tension we hear in our readings today.

Pope Francis’ appeal to todos—all, everyone—in an all-inclusive Church is in the spirit of what we hear from the prophet Isaiah today. In this part of the Book of Isaiah, the prophet is preparing the people of Israel to return to their homeland from a long exile (about seventy years) in Babylon. Persia has conquered Babylon and decreed that the people of Israel should return home and rebuild their temple in Jerusalem that the Babylonians had destroyed. The problem is that, by the time of the Persian conquest of Babylon and the writing of this part of Isaiah, many people from Israel had become quite comfortable in Babylon. Many had forgotten their homeland, their faith, their worship of the one God of Israel. At the same time, Israel lay largely in ruins. The people the Babylonians had not deported from there to Babylon were mostly poor peasants.

Isaiah encourages the people of Israel in Babylon to return to their homeland and to rebuild especially the temple of Jerusalem. But the rebuilt temple, like our Church today, Isaiah says, should be a place where not only the people of Israel are welcome, but “all peoples” of all nations. But there is a catch to Isaiah’s inclusiveness! Foreigners will be welcome in the rebuilt temple, but only those “who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, [who] love the name of the LORD,” are willing “to be his servants… who keep the Sabbath and do not profane it, and [who] hold fast [God’s] covenant.”

It is unclear which “foreigners” Isaiah has in mind. It would make more sense if the “foreigners” in Isaiah were in fact people from Israel who had lived for some time in a foreign nation (Babylon) in exile. Otherwise, how many non-Israelites would want to worship in a rebuilt temple, what would become a rather exclusively Jewish place of worship? How many non-Israelites would willingly adhere to God’s covenant with Israel, an exclusive promise that Israel would be God’s people and God would be Israel’s God alone? Not many, I suspect.

Isaiah seems to say that all are welcome—todos, todos—as long as they play by our Israelite, Jewish rules. We Catholics have (and I think most if not all religious traditions do in some way) expressed this same kind of inclusiveness with strings attached as Isaiah does, or Pope Francis did on the flight from Lisbon back to Rome. How many of us here, for example, were Protestant Christians who became Catholics? Until at least Vatican II, sixty-plus years ago (and a small but significant number of Catholics still hold this view today), the dominant Catholic view was that non-Catholics were welcome to become Catholic. The reverse was strongly discouraged: Say, if a Catholic married a non-Catholic and worshipped in the non-Catholic spouse’s religious tradition. A person was welcome to “swim the Tiber” (be a non-Catholic who became Catholic) but not the Bosphorus (a Catholic who became Eastern Orthodox), the Forth (a Catholic becoming Presbyterian), the Rhine (becoming Lutheran), or the Thames (becoming Anglican). What theologians refer to as an “ecumenism of return,” a one-way street leading the faithful to Rome, was much more dominant in our Catholic Church than it is today.

Yet in Matthew’s Gospel today we hear about a foreigner, the Canaanite woman who pleads with Jesus to heal her daughter of possession by “a demon.” Jesus’ first move is to exclude her, twice: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel… It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Is Jesus’ tone with the Canaanite woman not quite insulting? After all the Canaanite woman could be forgiven for not being willing or even ready to follow the rules of the Jewish faith (to swim the Jordan, maybe?); all she wants is for Jesus to heal her daughter of a demon. She follows a more fundamental rule than the more exclusive demands of the Jewish Law or the law of any religion; the Canaanite woman is guided by the law of seeking the help of the most qualified, the holiest person she knows (Jesus) out of desperation.

And so the Canaanite woman persists with Jesus: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ tables.” If we cannot admire the Canaanite woman’s faith at this point, then surely we can admire her wit! She has enough faith—and follows the rules of what faith she has, as well as she can—to call Jesus “Lord” and to plead for his healing help. And Jesus eventually relents; he includes her, includes her daughter among those he heals: “Woman, great is your faith”!

Jesus tests the Canaanite woman; why he tests her like this is a mystery that defies the explanation of the best experts on the Bible and its Gospels. And she is up to his challenge. She recognizes that she has no claim to the faith, the covenant, the houses of worship of the Jewish people, the people of Israel. She acknowledges that she has less of a claim to the faith of Israel and Jesus’ attention than even the people of Israel with claim to Israel’s faith, covenant, house of worship and all, who would reject Jesus as the Messiah by St. Paul’s time. (This greatly distresses St. Paul, as we hear today in the Letter to the Romans. Yet St. Paul still commends Israel’s people who reject Jesus as their Messiah to God’s mercy, which is truly all-inclusive, more than any church or religious institution on Earth, I think we need to acknowledge).

And the Canaanite woman, an example of faith to us all, sisters and brothers, knows that she, too, is not beyond the reach of God’s mercy. Even “the crumbs that fall from [the] masters’ table” will be enough to nourish her, heal her daughter, draw her closer to God who is the merciful creator, sustainer, saviour of everyone—todos, todos.

Homily for Sunday, 16 July 2023– Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings of the day: Isaiah 55:10-11; Psalm 65:10, 11, 12-13, 14 (R: Luke 8:8); Romans 8:18-23; Matthew 13:1-23

I have been discovering a wonderful new podcast on Sunday homilies through the website of America Magazine over the last few weeks. The podcast is called “Preach.” This week on “Preach,” the featured homilist (who is a different person each week) is Fr. Bryan Massingale, a Black priest, theologian, and professor of social ethics at Fordham University.

Fr. Massingale begins his homily on “Preach” this week by asking how many of us have heard a preacher—a homilist, a retreat preacher—ask, about the Gospel reading we have just heard, something like: What kind of soil are you?

I will presume that we all know, and could practically recite without a text, Jesus’ parable of the sower in Matthew’s Gospel today. It is one of Jesus’ most memorable parables. The parable features four types of soil. Few of us, maybe even if, as Matthew’s Gospel says, we are lured away from our faith by “worldly anxiety and… riches” would readily admit to being the thorny soil. Few of us would admit to being the rocky soil, people of a joyless faith that does not allow the seed of the kingdom of heaven to take root. A few more of us might be willing to admit to being like the path: Those who hear “the word of the kingdom” but occasionally (or frequently) have difficulty “understanding it.” It would be very honest of us to admit when we are like the little wisp of soil that gets spread over a pathway, in which the seed of the kingdom cannot take root and sprout. Few of us (including myself) are Bible scholars; sometimes what exactly the Bible is saying—or what Jesus is saying—can be difficult for us to understand.

So it is fair, I think, that more of us could admit to being like the soil on a pathway than rocky or thorny soil. After all, the first Christians, before they first called themselves Christians at Antioch according to the Acts of the Apostles, were simply called “the Way.” They were “the Way,” the path. Maybe we are on to something if we consider that, even most of the time, we are the soil on the path, far from the most effective soil for sprouting and growing the fruits of the reign of heaven from seed.

I think that, only if we are really too proud and self-centered in our faith, will we most readily claim to be the good, rich soil that is most effective for growing the kingdom of heaven on earth. Often the greatest saints have also been the greatest at identifying their own deficiencies, even their own sins. So may we not delude ourselves into thinking that we are, even most of the time, like the rich soil that is most effective at sprouting and growing the kingdom of heaven among us.

What kind of soil are you; what kind of soil are we? Or, as Fr. Bryan Massingale might ask, does it matter what kind of soil we are? If we take the frequent approach to interpreting the parable of the sower, which is to assess how good we are (or not) at nourishing the seed that is God’s grace, God’s gifts to us that lead to salvation, we might become easily discouraged. If we are honest with ourselves—I know if I am honest with myself—we can point to many times in our lives when we have been anything but good soil to nourish the seed of grace God has sown in our lives and in our world. And if we are not so honest with ourselves, the only thing we nourish by the “quality of soil” approach to placing ourselves within Jesus’ parable of the sower is our own pride.

So please allow me to say that the “quality of soil” approach to interpreting the parable of the sower will never work well for us. We need to find another approach to interpreting this parable. The focus of Jesus’ parable of the sower is not us, or how good we are at nourishing the seed the sower, God, sows. No, the focus of the parable of the sower is—by the very name of the parable—the sower.

What is the most prominent quality of the sower in Jesus’ parable? The sower in this parable is ridiculous and reckless. This sower is messy. This sower scatters seed seemingly without care as to where it lands: On good soil, on the path, on rocky ground, or among thorns.

But for all this sower’s deficiencies—the sower is reckless, messy, careless as to where he sows seed—he seems awfully confident in the yield of his harvest; that even the small amount of seed that will land “on rich soil” will yield “fruit, a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.” With exceeding confidence in his abilities as a sower, Jesus says to the crowds who hear his parable, “Whoever has ears ought to hear.”

I am surprised that, if we read on past the end of today’s reading in Matthew’s Gospel, the Gospel does not say that the crowds laughed heartily at Jesus’ ridiculous parable of the sower. No sower in his right mind would sow seed so indiscriminately, knowing that so little seed would fall on soil capable of nourishing it and allowing it to take root—No sower, that is, except God!

The focus of the parable of the sower is not us, or how “good” our soil is, which can vary from one moment to the next; the focus of the parable of the sower is and must be God, the sower of the seeds of grace, love, mercy, kindness, ultimately salvation. Jesus’ parable of the sower is and should be tremendously encouraging to us: God knows that the quality of our soil, so to speak, is variable. And only rarely will the seed of God’s saving grace land on the ideal soil. But enough of it will so that the world will be saved. Enough seed will land on good soil so that it will more than make up for our bad days, the times when we become discouraged by our own failings or the failings of others, the times when we sin, the times when we do the very best we can in the moment and, as Fr. Massingale says, through no fault of our own our best is simply not good enough. Yet enough seed will land on good soil as to increase the yield of good “a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.” Jesus’ message and its promise to us are remarkable!

I want to go back in our Christian history from our time, the time of excellent preachers like Fr. Bryan Massingale, oh, about seven hundred years to the time of St. Thomas Aquinas. In a part of his Summa Theologiae, the mother-of-all-theology-texts-of-all-time, St. Thomas imagines and addresses objections related to the Incarnation, God’s becoming human in the person of Jesus Christ. The first objection St. Thomas lists in this section of the Summa Theologiae is that “the Son of God ought not to have assumed human nature with defects of body,” like vulnerability to sickness (Did Jesus ever catch even a minor cold?), unsavory bodily functions, ultimately subjection to death.

St. Thomas Aquinas treats this objection graciously, but counters it by responding that the Incarnation, how it took place and the “defects of body” that Jesus assumed through it, are the will of God for our salvation. A shorthand for this argument of St. Thomas Aquinas is that God’s will for our salvation accounts for our deficiencies, our “defects,” even our sin. That is just the way God willed to save the world, to sow the seed of the reign of God in our world, in and through God’s Son, fully divine but also fully and perfectly human. And who are we to question how God willed to save the world through his Son? How are we to question how God sows the seed of God’s kingdom of heaven in our world, our experiences, our relationships, our successes and our failures?

God has a long history of sowing the seed of his grace through what he has created. We could say that God’s history of sowing this seed goes back to before the first moments of creation themselves. God’s way of sowing seed seems reckless, messy, careless as to where the seed lands. But God is confident in its yield, that enough will land on good, faithful soil as to produce “a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.”

The prophet Isaiah today speaks of this same confidence of God that God’s grace, God’s word “shall not return to [God] void, but shall do [God’s] will, achieving the end for which [God] sent it.” And the same confidence in the saving yield of God’s grace permeates St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, from which we hear today. St. Paul does not deny that we can experience times when we do everything we can with the utmost faith, goodness, and kindness, and it simply is not good enough. St. Paul admits that “all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now.” Anybody here who has ever experienced a long, difficult childbirth knows what St. Paul is speaking of better than I do and probably even better than St. Paul himself did. We labor, and sometimes we are successful; other times we feel like our labour in God’s name has been a failure. Still other times we are guilty of sin outright: St. Paul speaks in Romans of creation’s “slavery to corruption.”

But with God as the sower of seeds of grace, none of this matters. God has promised a great yield, “a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold” or, as St. Paul says to the Romans, “the redemption of our bodies.” God will not be denied; we will be redeemed. We will be saved, sometimes with our (successful) cooperation by being the “good soil” for the seed of God’s grace, other times in spite of not being the ideal soil. Yet God continues to go out to sow, in God’s own reckless, messy way that is the only way in which we will be saved.

Homily for Sunday, 8 January 2023– The Epiphany of the Lord

Readings of the day: Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13; Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12

Imagine that you could travel to anywhere in the world you wanted. Where would you go?

I lived in Paris, “the City of Light,” for over five years while completing a doctorate, so I would put Paris at the top of my list of recommended destinations. As a Basilian priest, I have been blessed to have served in or visited all five countries in which my order serves: In France, the place of our founding in 1822, Annonay, “Historic City of the Hot Air Balloon,” and Paris. In Canada, I have lived in Toronto, “Hogtown, Hollywood or Broadway North, Queen City, TO, The Six,” and in Windsor, “Automotive Capital of Canada.” I have visited Basilian communities in Mexico: Tehuacán, “Place of Gods” and Mexico City, “City of Palaces.” I have served in the United States, in Irondequoit, New York, “A Town for a Lifetime,” which is a suburb of Rochester, “The Flower City.” And I have served in Colombia: In Cali, “A Branch of Heaven,” Santa Marta, “America’s Pearl,” Medellín, “The Eternal Spring,” and Bogotá, “2 600 Metres Closer to the Heavens” because of its altitude above sea level.

For over two years now already, I am happily settled back in Edmonton, “City of Champions,” the city where I was born and grew up. Edmonton’s nickname is not derived from some of the greatest professional sports teams ever assembled, especially in the 1980s, but from its recovery after the “Black Friday” tornado of 1987. *It always brings me great joy to return here to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, to this faith community, my home parish from when I was twelve years old until my early twenties. Now, Sherwood Park does not have a claim to fame or a showy nickname or motto. We could call it, “The Park,” or “The World’s Largest Hamlet: Guinness Book World Record Holder.” No, maybe it is better to be humble, without a nickname, a motto, or international fame.*

If there is one place in the world I have yet to visit where I would like to go, it might be Rome, The Eternal City, with Vatican City, the centre of the Catholic Church. I still have never been there. I have been to Bethlehem, where our Gospel today says a very important event took place. Bethlehem was the destination of a pilgrimage of magi or “wise men from the East,” who followed a star to a humble manger where the newborn Jesus, the Saviour of the world, lay.

Bethlehem, by its Hebrew name, is “the house of bread.” It was the birthplace of the biblical King David. But, whether in King David’s time, or Jesus’ time, or our time, Bethlehem has never been a very important city on the world stage. To this day Bethlehem is really a large town, a suburb overshadowed by nearby Jerusalem.

In Matthew’s Gospel, we hear today that even the wise men stopped in Jerusalem first, at Herod’s palace, on their way to Bethlehem. Herod and his line of kings had built the temple of Jerusalem, the centre of the Jewish faith at the time, into a structure larger and showier that it had ever been. Bethlehem was… just… little, by comparison to Jerusalem.

I doubt the wise men would have considered Bethlehem a top destination to visit. Could we imagine them showing up at the local camel rental agency one day?

— Yes, we will need as many camels as there are of us, with unlimited mileage; destination is Bethlehem, round trip, following a star.

— “So, three camels,” the camel rental agent asks, “Right”?

— Well, there are three gifts: Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. There may be more or fewer than three joining us on the trip. Can we add an extra driver on the largest camel, just in case?

— Sure, no problem. But you do realize how long a trip Bethlehem is from here by camel, right? And are all of you aged 25 or over? If not, those camels will require extra insurance.

— Yes, all of us are over 25. And we’ve worked out in our GPS the distance to Bethlehem. We considered flying, but, oh, the baggage fees for all the gold, frankincense, and myrrh we’re carrying… We’ll be fine, but one of our vehicles will need to be a sport utility camel, with extra luggage room. We have no budget limit; we’re astrologer-kings, so more than willing to spend good money on reliable camels.

— Okay, no problem at all. That will be ten shekels, taxes included. Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, I’ll just need your signatures at the bottom of the papyrus, and your initials where I’ve highlighted. And if Bob the fourth wise man decides to join you, an extra camel is free of charge. Have a great trip!

— That’s so generous of you! Thank you so much!

Bethlehem probably was not the top of the wise men’s list of destinations. But, for astrologers, people who followed the stars for a living, this pilgrimage would be once-in-a-lifetime. And, besides, a prophet had written years before that the wise men would encounter a certain Messiah had been born in little Bethlehem: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.”

Why astrologers from the East who were almost certainly not Jewish Israelites would fulfill a prophecy of ancient Israel (Micah, in this case) is a mystery. But it was not the first time, nor would it be the last, when people would set out to travel off the beaten track.

Toward the end of the Book of Isaiah—the part of Isaiah from which we have just heard—the prophet is trying to convince an entire people to travel off the beaten track. This part of Isaiah is about the time when the people of Israel had been in exile in Babylon for around seventy years (many generations). Isaiah tries to convince them to return home, because a new power, Persia, has conquered Babylon and has decreed that the Israelites may return home. But Israel lay in ruins, its first temple (before Herod rebuilt it, centuries later) destroyed. Isaiah convinces a small fraction of the people in exile in Babylon to return and rebuild their homeland. But this small remnant of Israel is just enough to save Israel as a nation.

Yet Isaiah does more than to convince this faithful remnant to return home. Isaiah preaches that Israel will draw peoples of other nations to itself: “Nations shall come to your light, [bringing] gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the LORD.”

Matthew interprets this prophecy from Isaiah in light of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus Christ. The “wise men from the East,” following a star to the cradle of the infant Messiah in little Bethlehem, represent for Matthew “the nations”—all the non-Jewish, non-Israelite peoples of the world, who were and still are most of the inhabitants of the world—who would “come to [God’s] light,” to God’s Messiah, God made flesh.

Only by setting out off the beaten track, toward a nation in need of rebuilding, would a remnant of the people of Israel in Isaiah’s time not only be able to rebuild Israel’s ruins, but they would be able to welcome the rich gifts of the nations of the world. And, in turn, Israel’s God, our God, would be revealed in glory and truth to those other nations.

The same thing happens with the magi in Matthew’s Gospel: They are bold enough to set out, off the beaten track. They are momentarily sidetracked in Jerusalem by the evil Herod. They return home from Bethlehem “by another road” to avoid Herod. But only by being bold enough to travel beyond the conventional—not to a top destination, or even to a place of comfort—do the “wise men from the East,” who represent “the nations” (all of us, sisters and brothers), encounter our God in human flesh. Only so are they “overwhelmed with joy.” Only so is God in turn revealed or made known to all the nations on Earth.

Epiphany, the name of today’s celebration, is a Greek word that means making known. So, ideally, God is made known to those who set out off well-traveled paths, not to top destinations. Will this change our travel plans, sisters and brothers? Will this make us more like the wise men in Matthew’s Gospel or the remnant of Israel who returned home to rebuild their nation? To encounter God-made-flesh, might we need to travel to such hot destinations as deliberate kindness, as reconciliation especially with people we may find troublesome, whom we have hurt or who have hurt or sinned against us? Might we need to go to places like attentive listening, prayer, generosity with the goods of the Earth with which we have been blessed? Those are some of our Bethlehems today.

These may not be (at least at first) places of utmost comfort, but they are the places, the words, the actions by which we will encounter God. We will be “overwhelmed with joy.” And from there we will be able to make God known, in glory and truth, to all the nations and peoples of the Earth.

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This homily was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Sherwood Park, AB, and St. Joseph's College, Edmonton, AB, Canada. The OLPH version of its text, in Paragraph 3, is above, marked with asterisks (*). Here is the version of the text for St. Joseph's College:

It always brings me great joy to serve here at St. Joseph’s College, where what is true, right, and beautiful is faithfully taught, studied, and lived, according to this place’s motto, Quæcumque vera doce me: “Teach me whatsoever things are true.”