Homily for Sunday, 5 March 2023– Second Sunday in Lent

Readings of the day: Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22; 2 Timothy 1:8b-10; Matthew 17:1-9

When we think about our identity—what reveals to the world around us who we are—where do we start? We might start with our names, the identity we were given when we were born. I was born Warren Roger. Roger recalls the French heritage on my mother’s side. It was my great-grandfather’s name, and I also have an uncle (my mom’s brother) whose name is Roger. Warren is Old Germanic, related to caring for animals. I do not think my parents—unless they have a special ability to see into the future that I do not know about—could have predicted how much I love animals when they named me at birth. But I think my name is fitting.

At baptism, we (if we are baptized as adults or older children) or our parents (if we are baptized as infants) give our name to the Church. We take on a new identity, a new name of baptized Christian. How many of us took another name, often a saint’s name, when we were confirmed? At confirmation, once again, our identity changes. We become a new being, sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Today in the Book of Genesis, we hear about Abram. God tells Abram to set out from his homeland, Ur (in what is now Iraq near the Persian Gulf), to an unknown, unnamed place. All God tells Abram is that the place to which he will relocate will be a place of blessing: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”

At this point, Abram is seventy-five years old. He would have to wait until he was eighty-five to have his first son, Ishmael, with Hagar. Abram was ninety-nine years old when God gave him a new name, Abraham. And, finally, when Abraham was one hundred years old, God followed through on his promise to give Abraham a son, Isaac, with his wife Sarah. The process of Abraham’s change of identity, from Abram to Abraham to the father in faith of many nations, takes time in the Book of Genesis. But already we hear the first movements of God giving Abram that new identity. Not only will the land where Abraham will settle be blessed, or Sarah and Abraham together be blessed with a child in their old age, but Abram will bless the land and its people where he settles. God has already given Abram a new name, a new identity, even before he leaves Ur: “You will be a blessing.”

The process for Jesus and for us, Jesus’ disciples, toward taking on a new identity before God is much shorter than it was for Abram. Jesus’ public ministry through the founding of the Church at Pentecost lasted maybe a few years; Abraham moved to a new home at seventy-five, waited over eighty years for a new name, and one hundred years for a child with Sarah.

Today from the Gospel of Matthew we hear the account of Jesus’ transfiguration. Of all the Gospels, Matthew is the most focused on questions of identity: Who is Jesus? Who were Jesus’ ancestors? Who are we, Jesus’ disciples, the Church? Matthew begins his Gospel with a spectacular genealogy of Jesus, a list of forty-two generations of names, before identifying “Jesus, who is called the Messiah,” as the son “of Joseph, the husband of Mary.”

In the order of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus’ transfiguration happens right between two other important “identity” sections in Matthew. Just before Jesus’ transfiguration, Jesus takes his disciples to the far northern reaches of Israel at Caesarea Philippi. There, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do you say that I am”? Among all the different identities the people were associating with Jesus—“Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets”—Jesus’ apostle Simon Peter is the only one to identify Jesus correctly: “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.” And Simon receives a new identity in the process of correctly identifying Jesus as the Messiah: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.”

Just after Jesus is transfigured, it seems that Jesus’ disciples are very confused, not only about Jesus’ identity and mission but their own. When they are barely down the mountain of the transfiguration, Jesus’ disciples question, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven”? Jesus places a child among them, saying that the only way to go to heaven, never mind be identified as “the greatest in the kingdom of heaven,” is to be as humble and dependent on God as the child is on those who care for it. And then Peter, who had almost aced the identity of Jesus as the Messiah before the transfiguration (I have a lot of empathy for Peter for his trouble grappling with the need for Jesus to suffer and die), stumbles on the question of forgiveness.

Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how many times must I forgive him”? By this point, Jesus has already turned this issue about how many times to forgive a sinner into a question about the identity of the whole faith community, the whole Church, all of us. Jesus has told the parable of the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep to seek the one lost sheep and bring it back to the fold. And then Jesus gives us our new identity and mission. It is the same identity and mission Jesus had given only to Peter at first, when Peter identified Jesus as the Messiah. Now that identity and mission belongs to all of us, sisters and brothers. Jesus repeats his identification and commissioning of Peter to all of his disciples: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven… For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

In other words, we now all share in the identity and mission of Jesus himself: An identity and mission of forgiveness and mercy, not only “seven times” (in Peter’s figure of speech), “but seventy-seven times.” We now share without limit, infinitely, in Jesus’ identity and mission of forgiveness and mercy. At this moment we become “other Christs” who are anointed and sent out to “take away the sins of the world” and lead one another to God, to eternal life.

And, in between these two “identity vignettes” in Matthew’s Gospel—exchanges between Jesus and his disciples that are all about who Jesus is as the Messiah, who Peter and Jesus’ other disciples are, and who we are—Jesus goes up the mountain with Peter, James, and John to be transfigured. Jesus’ identity as the Messiah, so correctly identified by Peter, does not change in his transfiguration. Jesus’ identity is only revealed in a way to us that is almost overwhelming. Jesus’ transfiguration reveals him to us more fully than before as the fulfilment of the Law and the prophets (remember how Jesus identifies himself in this way earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, at the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount).

Yet the transfiguration not only reveals Jesus’ identity to us more fully than ever before. And the transfiguration reveals to us our own identity—who we are through, with, and in Christ—more fully than ever before, so fully that we cannot help in the moment but be overwhelmed.

When the voice from the cloud says of Jesus, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” this voice, the voice of God, also says this of us. Sisters and brothers, we are transfigured in this very moment. God looks down on us and says, “These are my beloved sons. These are my beloved daughters. This is my beloved Church.”

God reveals to us a new name, a new identity, a new mission. Abram becomes Abraham. Peter reveals Jesus as “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus reveals us, identifies and commissions us, as the community that will bind and loose, that will seek the lost sheep in infinite forgiveness and mercy. From the cloud God reveals Jesus once again as “my beloved Son.” In the same moment God identifies, commissions, transfigures us as his beloved daughters and sons. In this Eucharistic celebration God sends the Holy Spirit upon us to solidify our identity and commissioning as “one body, one spirit in Christ.”

But from the moment of the transfiguration we still have one more major step so that God might reveal to us fully Jesus’ identity and mission, and ours. That last step we call, we experience as the Paschal Mystery: The events of the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven of Jesus Christ. This is why, after Jesus’ transfiguration in our Gospel today, Matthew says that the disciples are “overcome with fear.” Now, fear is not a feeling that we like to experience, I do not think. But our experience of suffering, our experience of death, an end to this earthly life, is necessary for us if who we are is anything like who Jesus is. By his passion and death, Jesus has transformed (we could say transfigured) the last event in our human experience that needs to be transformed and transfigured: Death itself.

In the time we have left this Lent, between now and Easter, we will continue to have God reveal our fullest identity to us. God does so one step, one event at a time, sharing with us in Christ our human sufferings but also joys: Between the mount of the transfiguration and the mount of Calvary, between Calvary and heaven, where Jesus has ascended and awaits us. There, in heaven, awaits our fullest vision of Jesus—the Messiah, the Son of the living God—and our fullest vision of who we are: Beloved daughters, beloved sons, beloved Church; beloved, redeemed, and saved disciples of the Son of the living God.

Homily for Wednesday, 22 February 2023– Ash Wednesday

Readings of the day: Joel 2:12-18; Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 12-13, 8-9, 14, 17; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

Sisters and brothers, in a few moments we will bless and distribute ashes to remember that we are sinners before God, in need of God’s grace to live this time of Lent as a time of repentance: We turn from our sin and toward God’s mercy and love.

Yet, in Matthew’s Gospel from which we have just heard, Jesus warns against outward actions of faith or piety that draw attention to ourselves. Jesus says that, when we give alms, pray, or fast, not to do these things so that we may be seen by others, but “in secret,” so that our “Father who sees in secret may reward” us.

So, when we receive ashes and go forth from here with this sign on our foreheads, will we not be acting against everything Jesus has said in our Gospel reading today? Well, not quite: We are still acting within the spirit of what Jesus says, as long as our intention behind wearing ashes on our foreheads in public is right. In other words, the ashes we display today are not about us. They are all about God and God’s love for us.

These ashes with which we will sign ourselves today are not about doom, gloom, or how awful sinners we are. No, these ashes are our sign of joy to the world as we begin this time of Lent.

To say that the ashes we will receive are a sign of joy does not deny that we are sinners, or that there is great sin and evil in our world. On the contrary: Our ashes proclaim to our world, loud and clear, that sin is real and that we are, individually and socially, afflicted by sin.

At the same time, the ashes we show the world proclaim God’s love and mercy toward us. Think of the prayer we hear when we receive ashes on our foreheads: “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” Repentance, turning from sin so we can turn toward God, is only possible because God so loves us—“God so loved the world”—that he intervened in this world, giving us his Son, human like us in all things but sin, to give us the chance to be saved. God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, so that our repentance would have a point: We turn from sin to turn toward God, to recommit to living as God has lived among us in the person of Jesus. Without God’s initiative toward our salvation in this way, we would have no reason to repent: We would turn from our sin, but toward whom, if not God?

Repentance makes sense, and our salvation is possible, only because God loves us and wants us to be with him in eternal life. Yet it is not enough for God that God wants each of us to be saved. No, God wants us to proclaim this message to the whole world. God sends us forth, today with blessed ashes as a sign of God’s love, God’s mercy toward us, to be, as St. Paul says in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, “ambassadors for Christ.”

“Now is the day of salvation,” St. Paul proclaims. We proclaim this same message with ashes as St. Paul once proclaimed in words.

Undoubtedly, we might feel (and perhaps we should feel) a hint of unworthiness to be ambassadors, messengers, prophets of God’s salvation in Christ in the way God has sent us into the world to be. The older form of the prayer when we received ashes on Ash Wednesday was from the Book of Genesis, after Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil: “Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”

If we are honest with ourselves, I think it will be easy for us to remember how weak and sinful we are, our world is, the human condition is, fallen from the original state in which God created and blessed us. And we will be a bit broken-hearted about our sin.

The prophet Joel says to us today, “Rend your hearts and not your clothing.” We turn to God, our hearts broken by our sin. And God turns us back out into our wanting world, saying: O redeemed sinners, whom I have brought back to myself by the blood of the cross, now go out into the world wearing ashes. These ashes are not about you, God might say to us. This season of repentance we call Lent is not about us, sisters and brothers, or about our sin. Lent and our ashes are about God sending us back out into the world to be ambassadors of God’s love, grace, and mercy, for “now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation.”

Homily for Sunday, 28 February 2021– Second Sunday in Lent, Year B

Readings of the day: Genesis 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18; Psalm 116:10, 15, 16-17, 18-19; Romans 8:31b-34; Mark 9:2-10

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

How many of us are giving up something or have ever given up something for Lent? Might this be a strange question to ask, especially in our present situation? After all, we are still in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic that keeps us and many people from being able to worship in person and receive communion. We have given up a lot, and not only in terms of worship and the sacraments, over almost a year since the first COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns began.

Yet, when we speak of giving up something, especially during Lent, do we not usually refer to giving up what may be comfortable or good for us, but that we do not really need? I, for one, have never been very good at giving something up for Lent. I usually try to think of a very small comfort to give up; even better if this is something I am able to give up beyond Lent. One year, when I was a novice, in the beginner stages of religious community life in preparation to take first vows, I decided to give up not coffee altogether—if I were to give up coffee altogether, I think I would be lethargic or miserable, or both, in the morning—but simply to give up the sizable amount of sugar I used to put into my morning coffee. That Easter Sunday, I put sugar in my coffee as I had until Lent that year, and it made my coffee far too sweet. I have never gone back to putting sugar in my coffee since then. Great, then, I thought, I would need to think of something else to give up for Lent after that!

Those of us who have given up something for Lent or are doing so this year: What kinds of things to we give up? Are they food and drink-related comforts: Junk food, alcoholic beverages, chocolate, or coffee (or simply the sugar in our coffee, maybe)…? Have any of us given up social media, like Facebook or Twitter, as I know some of my friends do during Lent? How about taking this time of Lent to master our habits: Quitting smoking, minding our language, and so on? How many of us have heard or seen Pope Francis’ list of things from which to fast and on which to feast during Lent? Pope Francis’ list is a few years old, and has been made into a convenient image on social media: Fast from or give up hurting words, anger, pessimism, worries, complaints, bitterness, selfishness, and grudges, says Pope Francis, so that we may “feast on” kind words, gratitude, patience, hope, trust in God, simplicity, prayer, compassion, and reconciliation. Finally, Pope Francis says, “Fast from words and be silent so we can listen.” Hmm… There’s another thing—wordiness—from which I know I could fast in order to listen and appreciate silence better!

Do we begin to understand, through all this, that there are many things we could fast from or give up during Lent? But what if we simply acknowledged that God is already way ahead of us in terms of giving something up? And the something, or better yet somebody, God has given up is not only a worldly comfort or something good that God did not really need. No, God gave up—for us!—his only Son so that we might have eternal life. God gave up, for us, something not only comforting yet unnecessary, but God gave up what is essential to himself. And this whole season of Lent focuses us toward our celebration of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday; our celebration in a few weeks from now of God having given up his only Son for our salvation.

God’s sacrifice of self for us; God’s having given up his Son so that we might have eternal life, which we celebrate not only through Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday, but every time we assemble for Mass, is foretold in Jesus’ transfiguration. Mark, whose account of Jesus’ transfiguration we hear today, clearly connects this event to the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Is there not an almost overwhelming amount of detail in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration? There are many points on which we could focus in this transfiguration event: Jesus, for instance, does not take with him all his disciples or even the Twelve apostles, but only (presumably) his most trusted three apostles, Peter, James, and John, to witness the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah, usually interpreted as the presence of the Law and the prophets of Jewish tradition, speak with Jesus. We have what many Biblical scholars have commented as a full making known of the one God in three distinct persons of the Trinity: Jesus, present in human form, also the divine Son of God; the Father, especially represented by the voice from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”; and the Holy Spirit, most often connected with the cloud that overshadows the transfiguration scene.

We have Mark’s peculiar emphasis (more than Matthew or Luke, who also each feature an account of Jesus’ transfiguration) on Jesus’ order to Peter, James, and John, “to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” Mark, though, is pithier than the other Gospels about the fear Peter, James, and John felt during the transfiguration and Jesus’ foretelling of his own suffering, death, and resurrection. Yet all the accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration in our Biblical Gospels share the all-but-speechless Peter’s exclamation, “It is good for us to be here.” Peter then suggests, in all Gospel accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration, that they build three tents. This could be a hearkening back to the Ark of the Covenant tradition of the earliest tribes of Israel in the Old Testament. These ancient people of Israel were mobile, and carried the Ark of the Covenant, the tabernacle in which God was said to dwell among his people on earth, within a series of tents.

But allow me to suggest that the main focus of Mark’s Gospel especially, amid all Mark’s spectacular detail of the transfiguration, is on the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. When we think of the transfiguration, Mark wants us to connect with Jesus’ sacrifice, his willing giving up of self to death on a cross, so that we might have eternal life. Jesus, through Mark, wants us to contemplate prayerfully the events of his transfiguration in light of his resurrection from the dead. We have the gift of hindsight: Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is a completed past event. From Peter’s, James’, and John’s standpoint in time, Jesus’ resurrection was still yet to take place, so the apostles could do no better than to be (understandably) perplexed and afraid.

But even with our gift of hindsight, is not only the transfiguration but the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus it foretells not so extraordinarily rare that, in a way, it should not only have struck fear in Peter, James, and John, but in us? The transfiguration points ahead to Jesus’ giving up of self on a cross for our salvation. There is only one other figure in the Bible (and the only one who is not God)—Abraham—who is willing to give up his only son, in this case Isaac, simply because God calls him to do so.

Like Mark’s Gospel account of Jesus transfiguration, Genesis’ account of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac is so detailed as to be troubling; as to raise more questions in us than it answers: Why would God test Abraham? Is God really that mean that he would play Abraham like that, expecting him to sacrifice Isaac only to stop him at the last moment? Here, although I think we are right to focus always on God in any Biblical event, I think Genesis invites us to focus on Abraham’s response to God; on his complete willingness to do as God asks of him, even to sacrifice his only, long-promised son, Isaac. Abraham’s willingness to give up his only son is presented as a prefiguring of God’s own complete willingness to give his only Son, Jesus Christ, up to death so that we might have eternal life.

What, then, do Abraham’s willingness to give up Isaac to death, and the transfiguration, which foretells God’s giving his Son Jesus up to death for our salvation, mean for us in terms of how we live here and now? For me, how well we answer this question for ourselves amounts to how we answer a few questions related to this first one: If we make some kind of Lenten sacrifice, say giving up something for Lent, does what we have given up make us more mindful of God’s sacrifice of his only Son for us on the cross; the only sacrifice capable of gaining us eternal life? Do our sacrifices make us more mindful of God always with and for us, as St. Paul asks today in his letter to the Romans: “If God is for us, who is against us”? Do we sacrifice willingly, as God does and has for us, and without boasting or appearing gloomy, or sacrificing something because we feel we have to do so? Does our sacrifice change us; transfigure us to be more like our selfless; self-sacrificing God? If we can answer “yes” to these questions, I think we are on the right track, this Lent and in our lives of faith overall.

Homily for Friday, 19 February 2021– Friday after Ash Wednesday

Readings of the day: Isaiah 58:1-9a; Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 18-19; Matthew 9:14-15

Memorial Mass for Barbara J. Schmidt

Here we are, as of this past Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, into the season of Lent, so is it not appropriate that we speak about the discipline of fasting? But what is fasting, why do we (or should we) fast, and what kind of fast does God, let alone the Church, ask of us?

Isaiah’s message is clear enough: The people of his time in Israel, who thought that all their religious rigour and discipline should be more than enough to please God, were mistaken. And, while by outward appearances they were fasting and practicing acts of humility and penance, inwardly they were carrying on the same old acts of sin and injustice that Isaiah denounces. What kind of fasting; what kind of penance or humbling of ourselves does God want of us?

God, through Isaiah, asks the people of Israel: “Is not this the fast that I choose: To loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke”? Here I think of our Lenten practice of giving something up for Lent, something not necessarily bad or sinful, but maybe something that we enjoy yet we do not really need. Giving something up for Lent is a good and noble practice; I certainly do not intend to criticize this. Yet I (mea culpa!) have never been very good at giving up something for Lent.

I do not wish to justify my difficulty with this Lenten discipline, a kind of “fasting” from something I do not really need. Still, though, does God want us to do something more than giving up something enjoyable but not really necessary for Lent? This tends to bring to my mind, instead of, or in addition to, giving something up for Lent, adding something to my usual spiritual routine, if you will. Is there somebody or a group of people we have recently encountered or become aware of who has a particular need? Have we become increasingly aware lately of a relationship that needs mending or maintaining in love, or a broader social problem that a little more prayer; a little more Christian care and charity; a little more perhaps going out of our way to encounter somebody disadvantaged or on society’s (or the Church’s) fringes in some way, could help?

My sisters and brothers, today we offer this Mass in memory, in prayer for the repose of the soul of, and in celebration of the life of my grandmother, Barbara Janice Schmidt. Today would have been her ninety-fifth birthday.

In many ways, Grandma’s lived example spoke to what God asks of his people through the prophet Isaiah: The number of charitable causes, in defense of human life and dignity truly from conception to natural death, especially of people in need or disadvantaged, which Grandma supported is astounding. She was, I have no doubt, much better than I am at fasting and penance as Lenten disciplines, but what marked her life were the acts of justice, charity, and humility she added on, often without other people knowing, and not only during Lent but all the time. Grandma was constantly seeking bonds of injustice and “thongs of the yoke” to undo, as God invites us to do through the likes of Isaiah.

It is, I think, quite easy to become fixated on outward appearances, especially during a time like Lent. This was the problem with “the disciples of John” in Matthew’s Gospel today. By appearances, they and the Pharisees were fasting; giving something up. But, Jesus reminds them (and us), they were missing the point: “The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they”?

As we celebrate, remember, and pray for our sister in Christ, Gramma, Mom, friend, Barbara Janice Schmidt, may we take something from her example. In this celebration, even (maybe especially) in the midst of Lent, the Bridegroom; the Christ, is among us and is in us, too. The death of God’s faithful, especially one as close to us as our Barbara, naturally causes us to mourn. But we are united in the Bridegroom, the Christ, with our Barbara by the bonds of Christian love; the bonds of having added something to make our world better. This is cause for joy. This is the reason we celebrate, we remember, and we pray here and now.

Homily for Monday, 8 July 2019

Readings of the day: Genesis 28:11-22a; Psalm 91:1-2, 3-4, 14-15ab; Matthew 9:18-26

Monday of the 14th week in Ordinary Time

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

Might many of us have difficulty thinking, if we want to think at all, about Lent from the midst of Ordinary Time in which we are presently? Yet do we remember what the minister says to us when we receive ashes on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday? Usually at this point we hear, “Repent and believe in the Good News.” But an older tradition, which some may still use in administering the ashes, is to say, “Remember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.”

These words spoken by the minister of the ashes on Ash Wednesday hearkens back to Genesis 3, when God says to Adam, who has just eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, “Remember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.”

Our first reading today, also from Genesis, gives us another perspective on what it means for us to be dust. In the context of God’s words to Adam after Adam has committed the first human sin, “Remember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return” has a gloomy sense to it. Is to consider ourselves dust, more broadly, not a somewhat gloomy, underappreciated view of our dignity as human beings?

Unlike Adam, in today’s reading from much farther on in Genesis, Jacob has not sinned. In fact, he has received a vision, communication of the height of love between God and humankind, represented by “the angels of God… ascending and descending upon” a ladder stretching between heaven and earth.

Despite not having sinned and despite having received this magnificent vision of the communication of divine love between God and us, God still goes on to remind Jacob that not only he but his descendants are and “shall be like the dust of the earth.” Why would God identify Jacob and his descendants with something as gloomy as dust?

Clearly, in our reading today, this is meant as a compliment, even a blessing of Jacob by God: Jacob’s “offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and… shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south.” In this sense, God’s words to Jacob are more reminiscent of God’s first blessing to Adam and Eve, and God’s command to them to “multiply” and “fill the earth,” than of God’s gloomy reminder to Adam after he has sinned that he is “dust, and unto dust [he] shall return.”

But, even as God blesses Jacob and, by association, blesses us, may we be reminded that we are dust in both senses of the term: We are blessed and even commanded to “spread abroad”; “multiply”; “fill the earth” according to our fundamental God-given human dignity, yet God reminds us at the same time to acknowledge and live our own finiteness and mortality as beings on this earth. God invites us to acknowledge and to live the finiteness of all of creation, and to care for God’s creation accordingly in this life, our transition stage from present finiteness to the infinity of eternal life.

Homily for Friday, 27 March 2015‒ Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 20:10-13; Psalm 18:2-3a, 3bc-4, 5-6, 7; John 10:31-42

Who here has ever felt stressed, or even distressed? What causes our stress or even distress? Perhaps our distress is from the loss of a loved one; the loss of employment; living in poverty; severe or terminal illness or that of a loved one; our own guilt; strife in our families and marriages; unrest in the world; our children or grandchildren not attending Mass; not being baptized or receiving the other sacraments…

As a priest I am privileged to hear of our many joys as people of faith. I also hear much of what brings us stress and distress. Often, when people speak to me of their stress and distress, I also sense a kind of guilt, especially if somebody’s stress or distress is accompanied by anger; even more if this person is angry at God.

Holy Week begins in just two days. Increasingly in our readings at Mass we hear of stress and distress of the people in our Scriptures. This will continue and intensify as we journey through Holy Week next week. Today the prophet Jeremiah is being denounced; terrorized; betrayed even by the people he once counted as friends. Jesus is in danger of being stoned to death for claiming (rightly) to be God. And the author of our Psalm today is also distressed by his “enemies.”

But what do Jeremiah, Jesus, the Psalmist, and we have in common? I think we have in common the invitation to be honest with one another and with God. If we are joyful, speak of our joy to one another; pray in joy and thanksgiving to God. If we are stressed or distressed, find an outlet for this stress or distress, too: A trusted friend; a family member; a priest; God. But might some of us be thinking: “Nobody likes a complainer? Is it ever right to complain to God in prayer; to be angry with God?”

Over the past several days, even weeks, I have reminded a few people, even myself sometimes, of the value of an effective complaint! Well over half of the Psalms are psalms of lament. The prophets complain often; we hear one of Jeremiah’s bitter laments today. As Jesus hangs on the cross (we will hear this on Palm Sunday, this weekend), he speaks the words of Psalm 22, one of the deepest laments in all of Scripture: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me”?

And so I think it is sometimes appropriate, even to be encouraged, to complain, even to God. Are we not a culture averse to complaining? One of my favorite books about this is Walter Bruggemann’s The Costly Loss of Lament. What a costly loss indeed if we lose the trust in God and in one another necessary to complain effectively when we need to do so!

I am convinced that a good lament arises from trust in one another; trust in God. Listen again to our Psalm response today, so trusting in God’s deliverance from distress: “In my distress I called upon the LORD, and he answered me.”

Yes, lament when necessary in times of distress. Raise your joys and your distress to God, as an act of honesty; an act of trust in one another and in our God.