Homily for Thursday, 20 November 2014– Ferial

Thursday of the 33rd week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Revelation 5:1-10; Psalm 149:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6a, 9b; Luke 19:41-44

Who here has ever reached the end of a long journey and been disappointed, sad, or even angered by what we have seen? This is the experience of Jesus in our Gospel reading from Luke today and the experience of John, the narrator behind the Book of Revelation, in our first reading.

Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem takes up over a third of the Gospel of Luke, almost ten of twenty-four chapters. It begins with Jesus setting “his face toward Jerusalem… when the days for his being taken up were fulfilled,” a clear reference to Jesus’ passion and death. Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem in Luke ends with today’s Gospel reading. Jesus has reached Jerusalem after a long journey, and he looks over this glorious city and weeps.

Why does Jesus weep over Jerusalem? As it is today, Jerusalem in Jesus’ time was the cultural, economic, and religious powerhouse of Israel. But Israel of Jesus’ time was a society built on a few elites, under Roman occupation, with a great divide between rich and poor. By appearance, Jerusalem was a glorious city, but underneath its appearance it was a city that had not recognized “the time of [its] visitation”; had not built itself on the values of the kingdom of God: justice; peace; dignity; nobody being in need.

This is why Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. He has come to the end of a long journey, and what he sees disappoints him; makes him sad and angry. I can think of times in my life where I have reached the end of a journey and been disappointed, even sad and angry. While I was in Colombia the Basilian seminarians made a social justice pilgrimage to a town called Trujillo. About twenty years ago, Trujillo experienced massacres at the hands of drug lords and government-supported paramilitaries alike, who took the fertile land from poor farmers who were growing coffee and bananas to support their families, and processed cocaine from this land. Many people in Trujillo still face threats against their lives today.

Here in this nation, we see nothing as awful as in Trujillo, but we still see widening division between rich and poor. We still experience violence. We need only to go into the inner city of Rochester to see this; no need for a long journey.

Do we recognize “the time of [our] visitation”? Are we willing to build our city; our communities; our households; our Church on the values of God’s kingdom? If, instead of Jerusalem, Jesus were to come to the end of his long journey here in Irondequoit, how would he respond?

There is hope. The angel says to John in Revelation that we have been made into “a kingdom and priests to serve our God.” We near the end of a journey, the Church’s liturgical year, which ends next week. What is the city we see before us? Are we building our city on the values of God’s kingdom? Our Gospel calls us to build a city over which Jesus and we will not weep but be joyful; a people who recognizes “the time of [our] visitation,” here and now.

Homily for Saturday, 28 June 2014‒ Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Readings of the day: Lamentations 2:2, 10-14, 18-19; Psalm 74:1b-2, 3-5, 6-7, 20-21; Luke 2:41-51

On this feast of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, why are our readings from Scripture so gloomy?

We hear first today from the Book of Lamentations, in which Israel has been reduced to hunger; to exile; to fighting for survival as a nation. Lamentations and again the Psalmist invite the people of Israel to appeal to the Lord for their survival; “for the lives of [their] little ones” especially. We echo the Psalmist with our response: “Lord, forget not the souls of your poor ones.” (As we make this prayer, let us not forget the poor among us, here in our city and in our communities.)

The Gospel is not much brighter than our first reading, from Lamentations, or our Responsorial Psalm. Jesus becomes lost in Jerusalem during his family’s yearly Passover visit there. How many of us have ever lost sight of our child, even momentarily, in a busy public place? This can be a frightening experience! Imagine losing your child for three full days, as Joseph and Mary lost Jesus in Jerusalem for three days before he was found “listening to” the Jewish teachers in the Temple “and asking them questions.”

Last summer, I visited Jerusalem as part of a Basilian Peace and Justice Pilgrimage. One of my biggest fears was to become separated from our group and lost in Jerusalem, a city I do not know well, with large crowds and narrow, often uneven streets…

Jesus becomes lost for three days in the noisy chaos of Jerusalem. The Gospel writer Luke intends this event to be a foreshadowing of the passion and death of Christ. We are invited to read and hear the rest of the Gospel in light of the cross, death, and resurrection of Christ.

After his death on the cross, Jesus Christ becomes lost to us; lost for three days in the silent chaos of hell. God loves us so much that even hell cannot and will not remain forever without God’s presence. As we profess in our Creed on Sundays and important Holy Days, Jesus “descended into hell” to bring God’s salvation even there. And so the sorrow of the death of Christ, foreshadowed by the loss of Christ in Jerusalem, is not the end. Sorrow will end in joy; in Jesus and in us being found; in our being saved. Do not our gloomy readings today point to this joy; to our salvation?

And so what makes Mary’s heart especially “immaculate” that we celebrate her Immaculate Heart the day after her Son’s Sacred Heart? Mary is immaculate of heart, I think, because of what her heart treasured: Both the sorrows and joys of bringing into the world; of raising as a child; of watching suffer, die, and rise the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ. In her immaculate heart, Luke says, Mary “kept all these things.”

May we, after the example of Mary, treasure God’s presence in our hearts both in times of sorrow and of joy; trusting in God in times of sorrow and giving thanks to God in times of joy.