Homily for Sunday, 26 June 2022– Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:16b, 19-21; Psalm 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11; 1 Galatians 5:1, 13-18; Luke 9:51-62

Who would follow somebody so demanding as Jesus; who would dare be the disciple of somebody who asks for our focus to be exclusively on following him? This is the question one of my favourite columnists reflecting on the word of God on Sundays lately, Sr. Mary McGlone of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, outside of St. Louis, asks in her reflection this week for the National Catholic Reporter.

She asks the question this way: “Who in their right mind would take up with an unarmed, violence-avoiding preacher headed to the big city to face jealous, powerful foes who would stop at nothing to get rid of him”? Sr. McGlone proposes two images of people of our own time who boldly, resolutely, visibly chose non-violence in response to violence, war, evil. The first image Sr. McGlone proposes is the “tank man” of the Tiananmen Square protests of June 5, 1989, who stood unarmed before a line of tanks leaving Tiananmen Square in Beijing the day after the Chinese government had violently cleared the square of protesters. The second image she reflects on is of Ukrainians during the still-ongoing war there handing cell phones to Russian soldiers so they can call their mothers.

Who in their right mind would go, unarmed, to look death in the face: Before a line of tanks; before the guns of the invading enemy? But this is precisely how Jesus asks us to follow him. And these acts of non-violence have disarmed and will disarm, at least momentarily, a world still beset by violence and threats to the dignity of human life across its span, from conception to death.

Yet we hear from Luke’s Gospel today how the discipleship Jesus asks of us was difficult for his first disciples. Today’s Gospel begins as “the days [draw] near for [Jesus] to be taken up,” when he sets “his face to go to Jerusalem.” Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, where he will die, rise, and ascend to heaven, is the single longest continuous section of Luke. It takes up more than one-third of Luke’s Gospel.

The words Luke uses in this short introduction to today’s Gospel reading are rich in subtle but important details. The word in Luke’s Greek we hear translated as to be “taken up” is an unmistakeable reference to the cross of Jesus. This same Greek word can also mean ascension to heaven. So the connection of this one word to Elijah, of whom we hear today in our reading from 1 Kings calling Elisha to succeed him, is a little less intentional on Luke’s part than its connection to the crucifixion and death of Jesus, but it is still fairly obvious. Before he is taken up to heaven on a chariot of fire (in 2 Kings), Elijah chooses Elisha to succeed him (in 1 Kings). And before Jesus is “taken up” on a cross outside Jerusalem, he likewise chooses disciples who will succeed him.

But do Jesus’ disciples understand what Jesus will ask of them as he sets “his face to go to Jerusalem”? They are decidedly not prepared for what Jesus will ask of them as disciples. From this point our Gospel reading today can be broken into two main parts. The first part focuses on people who are already Jesus’ disciples, in particular James and John. The second part of today’s Gospel focuses on people who want to, or whom Jesus calls, to be his future disciples.

By this point in Luke’s Gospel, James and John have been following Jesus as his disciples for some time. But they are about to experience something new, a bit of a dark turn in their story; their relationship with Jesus. Jesus sets “his face to go to Jerusalem,” where he will be “taken up” to die a horrific death. Surely James, John, and Jesus’ other disciples knew the risk Jesus was taking by so decisively setting out for Jerusalem. As Sr. Mary McGlone says, Jesus, the “unarmed, violence-avoiding preacher,” was “headed to the big city to face jealous, powerful foes who would stop at nothing to get rid of him.”

Worse yet, Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem from Galilee had to pass through Samaria. And we know that the Samaritans, especially in Luke’s Gospel, are synonymous with “most hated enemies,” especially if one were a Jew in Jesus’ times. Going back to Old Testament times, the Samaritans had intermarried with the pagan Assyrians who invaded Israel. So devout Jews hated their half-pagan, half-Jewish neighbours of Samaria. And, to add insult to injury, as Jesus and his disciples pass through this enemy territory, they are (not surprisingly) denied hospitality by the Samaritans. James and John ask Jesus if he wants them “to command fire to come down from heaven and consume” the Samaritans. Jesus immediately rebukes his somewhat overzealous disciples. Jesus’ way, our way to salvation, will be the way of non-violence. It will be, paradoxically in his disciples’ eyes, the way of submitting to inhospitality, to violence, and ultimately to death on a cross outside Jerusalem. It will be a way that I would not be surprised if James, John, and Jesus’ other disciples to this point thought was completely senseless; if, in his disciples’ eyes, Jesus was out of his mind.

Yet the story continues after Jesus and his disciples pass through Samaria. Somebody on the road, a would-be disciple, calls out to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go.” At face value, this offer by a would-be disciple to follow Jesus wherever he goes seems like one he could not refuse, right? But Jesus’ reply to this first prospective disciple seems strange at first hearing: Jesus does not accept this disciple, but does not really refuse him, either. Jesus only reminds him of the single-minded focus following him demands. That focus cannot be on worldly comforts or even necessities. Discipleship of Jesus is total dependence on God for our needs, until death, with the hope of eternal life.

“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”: This little, bizarre proverb reminds me of when I first became a Basilian; when I took first vows, and then final vows; when I was ordained. At each point in my Basilian journey, I have said to Jesus through my brother Basilians (sometimes in writing, as our Rule and Church law demand), “I will follow you wherever you go.” And, if I may say so, this is easier said than done. It is easier said than done when, sealed by the Spirit at confirmation, we say “Amen”; we choose for ourselves to be disciples of Jesus. Although I was too young to remember my own baptism, I am sure it was a case of eager discipleship, but easier-said-than-done in reality, when my parents and godparents—our parents and godparents—replied to the question from the priest or deacon, “Do you clearly understand what you are undertaking”: “Yes.” It is easier said than done when we promise, those of us who are married in the Church, “to be faithful… in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health.” It is easier said than done when we say, “Amen,” when we receive communion.

“I will follow you wherever you go,” we say to Jesus at each of these points in our lives. Fairly often, I hear, even from family, relatives, and close friends: “You have given up so much to be a priest: Being married, raising a family, and so on.” And I usually respond, “Maybe, but I have gained so much more than I have given up.” And, besides this, I am far, in my own estimation, from depending totally on God even for necessities, let alone comforts. This again reminds me of Fr. Joe Trovato, whom I mentioned in my homily a week ago. Our parish at the time, St. Kateri in Rochester, would have delicious and filling fish and chips meals prepared by the Boy Scouts on Fridays during Lent. At table, Fr. Joe would invariably look at me, with his hint of a smile, and say gently, “You know, we are not suffering”! We really are not sacrificing anything, for Lent or otherwise.

“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” Jesus says to the first prospective disciple on his way to Jerusalem. And he is not done yet. Jesus meets two other would-be disciples in our Gospel today. But instead of them asking to follow him, Jesus takes the initiative with the other two: “Follow me.” Each time, though, these two would-be disciples have other priorities: “Lord, first let me go and bury my father… Let me first say farewell to those at my home.”

These two disciples’ priorities are legitimate, we must admit. To bury one’s dead relatives was the supreme act of honour to another person. To greet one’s family when entering or leaving home was close behind burying the dead as a supreme act of honour and mercy in Jewish culture of Jesus’ time. These are still considered corporal works of mercy in our Church today. And it was what we hear in our reading today that Elijah allowed Elisha to do before he accepted to follow Elijah and succeed him. So it is strange to us that Jesus would refuse these would-be disciples’ requests to bury their dead or to bid farewell “to those at [their] home.”

What, then, does our Gospel today say about discipleship, following Jesus? Discipleship of Jesus, sisters and brothers, does not tolerate violence in word or action. Discipleship of Jesus includes everybody; excludes nobody, even (and maybe especially) our enemies, from God’s grace. Discipleship of Jesus demands single-minded focus: Dependence on God for our needs in this life, if we are to set our faces in the direction Jesus travels; toward Jerusalem, toward the cross, with the hope of eternal life.

Homily for Sunday, 30 June 2019

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:16b, 19-21; Psalm 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11; Galatians 5:1, 13-18; Luke 9:51-62

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time

What is the most difficult choice you have ever had to make? Has there ever been an important choice you have had to make that you hesitated to make, or one that you made immediately; that you were “resolutely determined” to make, maybe despite or because of its difficulty?

Today the word of God invites us to make a choice, to set out on a journey. The choice, the journey, to which our readings invite us today is a difficult one. The destination of our chosen journey is the cross, yet still we are invited to set out “resolutely determined” on this journey.

We have, as Church, just celebrated the great liturgical seasons of Lent and then Easter. Our Eastertime celebrations have extended into the feasts of Pentecost, the Most Holy Trinity, and the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. Could we be faulted if we felt somewhat of a liturgical let-down since now, as of this weekend, we ease back into the more familiar rhythm of Ordinary Time, after the great liturgical high points of our Church over the last several weeks?

After the penitential intensity of Lent, the great joy of Easter, the Church’s day of birth in the Holy Spirit that is Pentecost, the celebrations of our experience of sublime divine mysteries through the Solemnities of the Most Holy Trinity and Most Holy Body and Blood, now we are invited to set out, with only a few basic necessities and with resolute determination, on a journey.

Thankfully, we are not alone on our journey. We have each other. We are led on this journey by our Lord, “resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem,” where he, although faultless, is to die as a common criminal, crucified for us between two thieves. Our Lord even sends “messengers ahead of him” to prepare towns whose people we are to encounter in advance of meeting them. Still, that we are accompanied by one another and led by the Lord does not make this journey much easier for us. The destination of our journey is still the cross, and even the intermediate steps of this journey promise to be difficult.

Why, then, should we even bother setting out on this journey, let alone be “resolutely determined” to do so? Would it not be easier for us to continue happily as “we have always done it”? Would it not be easier for us to envision a static world; a static Church in which styles of and the kinds people in leadership change slowly if at all, whether at the parish level, the diocesan level, or the universal Church level? Would it not be easier for us to accept a Church in which doctrine or liturgical practice and their interpretation did not develop with time, but remained certain, clear, and unambiguous forever? Would it not be easier for us to accept, as Christian disciples, to live in a world in which we would never be misunderstood or even ridiculed for our beliefs and for trying to live them? Would it not be easier to be able “to call down fire from heaven,” as James and John wished to do to the Samaritans who would not accept them because their destination was Jerusalem, on those who differ from us or who ridicule and misunderstand us? Would it not be easier to accept a Church in which Christians never would, as St. Paul says to the Galatians; to us today, “go on biting and devouring one another,” renouncing their freedom for Christ won by Christ’s self-sacrifice on the cross to sell themselves back into a form of slavery? (I speak here especially of a pervasive and abusive form of seeking after power and status in the Church at the expense of the faithful whom the power of those who have it is supposed to serve).

It would be nice if our world, our Church, our journey were so simple and promised clear success at its end. But this is not the reality of our Church, our world, or the journey on which Jesus invites us to set out. The journey on which Jesus invites us to set out “resolutely determined” features a few aspects that are clear and certain: This journey will end in the cross. It will end in failure, at least insofar as the world sees. It will end in shame. It will end in death. Even its intermediate steps, its passage through Samaritan towns so to speak, will be difficult. Does anybody here still want to join our Lord Jesus on this journey, let alone with resolute determination?

Thankfully, we already have some experience of this very journey to which Jesus calls us: We who have been baptized have taken at least the first steps (or our parents and godparents have taken them for us) on this journey. We have been baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ. Yes, we know that the cross toward which Jesus and we are “resolutely determined” to journey is not the end of our story. Eternal life is; resurrection is. But to reach our resurrection to eternal life, our journey must pass through the cross: Failure; shame; death; Jerusalem; solidarity with the Son of God crucified between two thieves.

Today we as Church invite, during this celebration, RJB to be the latest disciple to be baptized into this journey toward Jerusalem, through death to resurrection, on which Jesus leads us. Almost four years ago, on August 1, 2015, on a sweltering day across this St. Kateri Parish from here at St. Margaret Mary Church (which, without air conditioning on hot summer days, may be an apt description of an earthly form of purgatory), R’s parents, B and P, with me as the Church’s witness, were married.

B and P, and all our married or to-be-married couples, you, too, are living a particular experience of the journey to which Jesus invites us, this journey to Jerusalem, through the cross to resurrection. You made a promise before this Church of faithfulness and truth to each other “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health,” to “love and honor [each other] all the days of” your life. I imagine that this promise you made, on some days more than others, is lived out more like that of the passage of Jesus and his disciples through Samaritan towns: You know the difficulty in resisting the temptation “to call down fire from heaven” on each other!  

B and P, you accepted “children”—this child, your son RJ—“lovingly from God, [to] bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church.” You accepted; you were and are “resolutely determined” to set out on this journey, led by Jesus Christ, to Jerusalem, through death to resurrection.

Our Church now blesses all your “yeses”; all your promises; all your steps of choosing to accept to join our Lord Jesus Christ on this journey to Jerusalem, through this earthly life and its sacraments through death to resurrection, “resolutely determined.” Our Lord Jesus continues to invite you, B and P, and all of us, to make difficult choices, from the moment of our baptism. They are choices that, we pray, will bring you great joy not only in eternal life but in this earthly life. But they are and will be difficult choices nonetheless.

Our Lord Jesus invites us, through our baptism into one Church, to prioritize Christ and his mission toward Jerusalem above all else: “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”; “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God”; “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what is left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Our Lord Jesus invites us to join him in proclaiming the kingdom of God, a difficult mission in our world, to “glorify God by our lives.” Our Lord Jesus invites us to choose, “resolutely determined,” to follow him to Jerusalem, through death to resurrection to eternal life.

Homily for Sunday, 3 July 2016

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 66:10-14c; Psalm 66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20; Galatians 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

How many of us have ever been on a great journey or pilgrimage? Especially during my time as a Basilian and as a priest, I have had many opportunities to travel; to visit; to serve around the world. Since last September I have been a doctoral student in theology at the Catholic University of Paris. In the last eight years I have lived in Paris, in Toronto, in Windsor, in Cali, Colombia, in Madrid, and in Rochester, New York. There have been a few pilgrimages during this time, from the Holy Land to the Andean Highlands of southwestern Colombia and Ecuador, to a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary at over 3 000 metres above sea level!

But is there not a point, for anybody here who has traveled frequently or long distances, when you just want to return home and stay put for a while? For this and several other reasons, I’m grateful to be back here, in Edmonton, the city in which I grew up, and at St. Joseph’s College where my journey as a Basilian began. Here, I’ll be teaching a course beginning this week, Teaching as a Vocation: International Perspectives.

We hear in our readings today of people with more “international perspectives”; more experience of travel; of pilgrimage than any course could have provided them. The prophet Isaiah speaks to us of the people of Israel of his time who had plenty of experience of living in foreign nations, and not by choice. In Isaiah’s time, the people of Israel were in exile. Their home, Israel, and its centre, Jerusalem, had been conquered and laid waste. And Isaiah calls them in the midst of this devastation to return to their homeland and to rebuild it.

How would the people of Israel react to Isaiah’s call to return to Israel; to Jerusalem? Most considered Isaiah’s call to set out on this journey home to be foolish. Most of them had become comfortable after years in Babylon, even though they had lost their nation’s autonomy and their faith in the one God. Only a small (but significant) group took up Isaiah’s call to return and to rebuild their homeland. They remembered God’s care for them through Isaiah’s comforting, maternal imagery of Jerusalem, although it would take time, hard work, and renewed faith for the people of Israel once again to build the city over which the LORD would “extend prosperity… like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream.”

And if Isaiah calls the people of Israel to return home; to rebuild Jerusalem as the city of God, in Luke’s Gospel from which we hear today Jesus, too, calls seventy of his disciples to set out on a difficult journey. The journey to which Jesus calls the seventy, and the message of peace Jesus sends them to speak to the households of “every town and place where he… intended to go,” are just as demanding as Isaiah’s call to the exiled people of Israel to return and rebuild Jerusalem.

While Isaiah’s call had been to return home to Jerusalem, Jesus’ call to the seventy is to set out from the comfort of home and the certainty of being at Jesus’ side. They are to leave behind not only added comforts but what would seem to be necessities, too: “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals, and greet no one on the road.”

Now, how many of us would be more inclined to set out on a long journey away from home without these basic necessities: Cash in the right currency and in a hidden pouch (to avoid the occasional pickpocket); one of those new ultra-lightweight luggage sets; sturdy footwear; good company and conversation along the way? I do not think many of us would want to set out without at least the bare necessities. Yet this is what Jesus seems to expect of his seventy disciples: “I am sending you like lambs into the midst of wolves”; shake the dust off your feet as witness against the towns who “do not welcome you.” Some journey that is!

But the seventy disciples Jesus sends out ahead of him are undeterred. In fact, they return to Jesus brimming with confidence: “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us.” These disciples, though, have forgotten an important detail: This success they had as traveling preachers in Jesus’ name was not the end of their journey. Heaven is the endpoint of their journey; the goal of our journey. And so the seventy disciples draw a sharp caution from Jesus: “Do not rejoice… that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

Imagine ourselves for a moment among Jesus’ seventy disciples who hear this. Might we ask ourselves: “Is it so wrong of us to rejoice”? We have just returned from a long difficult journey; a mission to spread Jesus’ message, the Gospel, “to every town and place” ahead of him. Our mission has been more successful than we would ever have dreamed possible. Spiritual beings, let alone people whom we might have thought to be skeptical of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, have submitted to us; have opened themselves to our message. Why not throw a great celebration of our unexpected success upon our return? But wait, Jesus says…

Jesus does not say that we should not rejoice over our more significant successes in this world. But he invites us to keep our eyes and our hearts focused on the ultimate goal of our journey; our mission; our earthly pilgrimage: “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Keep your eyes and hearts focused on our journey’s goal that is pure gift, since it is God who has written our names in heaven before any of us ever existed except in God’s own loving imagination.

As pure gift, God has created us as uniquely capable of loving one another as God loves; as uniquely capable of setting out on this journey to which God calls us, a journey that leads us right back to God; to heaven, where God has written our names. And God has provided us with guideposts; signs along our journey to keep us focused and on the right path to heaven.

But these guideposts; these signs are just that: Signs. Jesus cautions us not to become focused on these as if they are the endpoint of the journey. Otherwise we become vulnerable to distractions; to false paths like greed; pride; careerism; boasting, as St. Paul cautions against in his Letter to the Galatians, in anything but the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Our earthly pilgrimage, even for the most successful of Christian disciples, will have its challenges; its crosses. I am not speaking here of the small (but still significant, in some areas of the world) proportion of Christians who are martyred; killed out of hatred toward our faith. Life on earth, for all of us, has a beginning and an end. Death may seem for us something more to be feared than in which to rejoice. But a holy death is the Christian disciple’s last major earthly sign, marking the last exit to heaven, where our names are written: Faithful servant; disciple of Jesus Christ.

Before we reach this sign; this guidepost, there will be other signs perhaps as fearsome that we are nevertheless on the right path to heaven; that our focus is right. Even at our most successful, for a Christian disciple a sense of exile must precede our arrival home to rebuild Jerusalem as God’s city as in Isaiah’s time. This sense of exile may be our price to pay for living as countersigns to evils in our world and our culture: Ideological polarization and attacks; militarism; lack of reverence for creation and human life, especially at its beginning and its end, to name a few. We are, after all, “lambs in the midst of wolves.” But, even so, rejoice! Rejoice, so long as our rejoicing itself becomes a sign of the greatest joy we will ever know, the joy promised to us at the ultimate goal of our journey: “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

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.