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 Tuesday, 14 October 2014– Ferial

Tuesday of the 28th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Galatians 5:1-6; Psalm 119:41, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48; Luke 11:37-41

Is anybody here confused as to the seemingly inconsistent attitudes to the law (specifically Jewish Law or the Law of Moses) in our readings today?

Our Responsorial Psalm is drawn from Psalm 119, a magnificent song of praise for God’s Law given to the Jewish people and also handed on to us Christians. “I will keep your law continually,” we hear, “I will lift up my hands to your commands and meditate on your statutes.”

St. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, and Jesus, in Luke’s Gospel, are less admiring of the Law. “If you have yourselves circumcised,” St. Paul says, “Christ will be of no benefit to you.” Jesus criticizes the Pharisee at dinner with him for “observing the prescribed washing before the meal” and other legal rituals but not living by the spirit of the Law. “Inside you are filled with plunder and evil,” Jesus says to the Pharisee. I can imagine that Jesus’ evening at the Pharisee’s house did not last much longer after Jesus’ harsh words.

Why, though, do we hear this apparent inconsistency between our Psalm on one hand and our first reading and Gospel reading on the other?

I invite us to be cautious not to read into Galatians or Luke’s Gospel that St. Paul or Jesus considered the Jewish law, the Law of Moses, to be no longer important in light of Jesus Christ; that the teaching of Jesus and Apostles like St. Paul had taken over the significance of the now-abolished Jewish law. Neither Jesus nor St. Paul say that the Jewish Law is insignificant or has been superseded by Jesus’ own teaching. After all, both Jesus and St. Paul were Jews, obedient to the spirit of the Law of Moses.

The Law, whether the Law of Moses or the laws and rituals of our own Catholic Church, are to be respected and obeyed insofar as they lead us closer to God; insofar as they free us for love of one another and for God. This is the kind of obedience for the Law reflected today in the words of St. Paul, of our Psalm, and of Jesus alike.

For St. Paul, circumcision versus non-circumcision is a non-issue; this is a controversy manufactured by the Galatians whom he corrects. For Jesus, the ritual washing of vessels or not in and of itself is unimportant. Both St. Paul and Jesus ask the question: How do our legal and ritual observances lead us to God; lead us to act in a God-like manner, or not? If not, both circumcision and non-circumcision become empty gestures. On the one hand, is it not possible to wash the vessels ritually but “inside” one’s heart be “filled with plunder and evil”? Is it not possible to follow laws to the letter and yet be ungodly; lacking in love?

If we observe laws, religious or otherwise, in a Godly, loving spirit, then by all means let us join in the praise of the Psalmist for God and God’s Law: “I will keep your law continually… lift up my hands to your commands and meditate on your statutes.”

Homily for Thursday, 9 October 2014– Ferial

Thursday of the 27th week in Ordinary Time 

Optional Memorials of St. Denis and Companions and St. John Leonardi

Readings of the day: Galatians 3:1-5; Responsorial Canticle: Luke 1:69-70, 71-72, 73-75; Luke 11:5-13

Both Jesus, in Luke’s Gospel, and St. Paul, in his Letter to the Galatians, ask us questions centered on the Holy Spirit. Jesus points to the goodness and generosity of God by asking, “If you… know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him”? In his harsh-sounding correction of the Galatians, who had been deceived into thinking that adherence to religious law would earn them salvation, St. Paul asks, “Does… the one who supplies the Spirit to you and works mighty deeds among you do so from works of the law or from faith in what you heard?”

Perhaps it is easiest to find a connection between these questions; between our difficult-to-understand first reading and Gospel reading today, by interpreting them through the lens of our canticle response. We pray in this response, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; he has come to his people.”

We do not pray as if we are still waiting for God to come to his people. God has already come to us through the rich history of the people of Israel in the Old Testament; through kings, prophets, and sages; in God’s own Son, Jesus Christ, who lived as one like us in all but sin and died and rose again that we might be saved. Now, God continues to be present to us in the Holy Spirit, who lives and works in and through us. “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; he has come to his people.” Blessed be God who continues to come to his people; to us.

This, I believe, is at the heart of Paul’s message to the Galatians and Jesus’ message in Luke’s Gospel: Look to God; trust in God for all that we need, and ultimately for our salvation. Is not God generous, even more so than a parent who gives everything to her or his child to thrive? Is it not God who saves us; who “supplies the Spirit to us”?

The law, even religious law (today we may liken this to the teaching of the Church or Canon Law, the law of our Church), is important insofar as it points us to God, but no law alone saves. God saves. God is good and generous, more than any human being except Jesus has ever been or could ever be. God gives us his own Holy Spirit to enable us to act as God would act. God’s gift of the Holy Spirit makes possible our works of goodness and generosity toward one another.

Indeed, our having received the Holy Spirit makes good works; Godly works an expectation of us as people of God; as Christians. St. Paul and Jesus himself invite us not to settle for anything less; not even observance of law for the law’s own sake. Trust in God who is with us; who saves us. “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; he has come to his people.”

Homily for Wednesday, 8 October 2014– Ferial

Wednesday of the 27th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Galatians 2:1-2, 7-14; Psalm 117:1bc, 2; Luke 11:1-4

We hear at some length from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians today how St. Paul began his ministry as an Apostle of Christ. First, he preached to Gentiles, but only “to those of repute.” When he had gained the confidence of “James and Cephas” (Peter) “and John,” the three most trusted of Jesus’ first Apostles, St. Paul expanded his ministry to non-Jews. But what is at the core of St. Paul’s message for his own time and for us? Who is to be the main focus of our bringing Christ into our world; the same people as were the main focus for St. Paul in his time?

The question in Paul’s letter to the Galatians of how readily the Christian faith should be handed on to the Gentiles is secondary. St. Paul identifies the primary focus of his ministry when he says, “Only, we were to be mindful of the poor, which is the very thing I was eager to do.” Is this not also a beautiful, if challenging, invitation to us, too: “Be mindful of the poor”? Again I say that we do not need to look far to find the poor; the homeless; the unemployed. And right here among us are our sisters and brothers who have lost loved ones. Do we perhaps know people; families who are estranged from the Church; estranged within themselves? These are our poor today. These are the people to whom St. Paul invites us to reach out and with whom to identify; to empathize.

This week, I read an article in the British newspaper The Guardian on the immediate reaction of Pope Francis to his election as pope. As the two-thirds majority of votes to become pope was surpassed, Cardinal Claudio Hummes of Brazil embraced then-Cardinal Bergoglio (who took the name Francis) and said to him, “Don’t forget about the poor.”

At my ordination to the priesthood in May, I was greeted by Fr. Frank Amico, my Basilian superior from Cali, Colombia where I taught on two occasions while I was a seminarian. Fr. Amico said to me, “Remember the poor.” It is a message that I have taken to heart.

“Only, we were to be mindful of the poor,” St. Paul says to the Galatians. To all the baptized in Christ; to every one of us; to priests; to the pope, this invitation; this challenge still rings out in our time: “Be mindful of the poor… Don’t forget about the poor… Remember the poor.”

The poor are to be the focus of our service; our ministry as Christians, the people we are asked to be most eager to serve; to lift up; to welcome as sisters and brothers in Christ. How might we take up the invitation; the challenge of St. Paul; of Cardinal Hummes; of Pope Francis; of my brother Basilian, Fr. Frank Amico? They all echo this message, from the Letter to the Galatians to our own time: “Only, we were to be mindful of the poor, which is the very thing I was eager to do.”

Homily for Saturday, 4 October 2014– Memorial of St. Francis of Assisi

Saturday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Galatians 6:14-18; Psalm 16:1b-2a, 5, 7-8, 11; Matthew 11:25-30

When we think of St. Francis of Assisi, what images come to mind? Do we think perhaps of a nature and peace-loving saint who boldly (some in his time would have been less charitable) put aside his family’s wealth; his inheritance to take up a life of simplicity; poverty?

St. Francis loved nature and animals. Based on this characteristic of St. Francis, we have the tradition in many parishes of blessing pets on his feast day. This brings me to my plug for our blessing of pets at St. Kateri: I invite those of us with pets to bring them to this church this afternoon to be blessed on this feast day of St. Francis of Assisi!

St. Francis is a lover of peace; a lover of God’s creation. Possibly the two most renowned prayers of St. Francis are his “Canticle of Creation” or “Canticle of Brother Sun” and his prayer for peace, often called the “Prayer of St. Francis.” But there is more to St. Francis than a lover of peace and of nature. As important as peace and nature (rightly) were to St. Francis of Assisi, there is more to him than love of peace and nature; something more that makes Francis one of the most beloved saints of the Church even now, almost eight hundred years after his death.

I am drawn to the phrase in our reading this morning from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians in which St. Paul says that nothing has meaning for him except “a new creation.” In this way I think St. Paul and St. Francis of Assisi are similar. St. Francis was famously called in a vision of the crucified Christ to rebuild the San Damiano Church near Assisi. While the church building of San Damiano became in a way “a new creation,” this encounter with Christ crucified changed St. Francis forever. He, more than a building, became “a new creation.”

Yet are we not all called to become “a new creation” after St. Francis of Assisi; after St. Paul? We may not have the ability or the opportunity to build a church or any building. Unlike St. Francis or St. Paul, who may literally have borne “the marks of Jesus” crucified on their bodies, we probably do not. Some of us may be more or less wealthy; not called so much to give up our wealth if we have it, as St. Francis did, but to use it to benefit one another. Some of us are not so nature-inclined.

None of this has meaning so much as our becoming “a new creation” in Jesus Christ. How do we become “a new creation” as God calls us; as St. Paul speaks about in his letter to the Galatians; as St. Francis did by his lived example? With God’s grace we become “a new creation” by our daily small acts of kindness; by our welcoming new members or those who are lost or lonely into our communities; our parish. When we serve selflessly as so many of us already do here at St. Kateri; when we pray and work for peace; when we care for God’s creation we show that we are people of God. We show that we are “a new creation” in Jesus Christ.