Homily for Sunday, 29 December 2019– The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Readings of the day: Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14; Psalm 128:1-2, 3, 4-5; Colossians 3:12-21; Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

This homily was given at St. Clare Church and St. Joseph’s College, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Did we miss something? Our Gospel reading today begins as “the wise men” have already left the place of the Lord’s Nativity in Bethlehem. At least I thought we did not celebrate the Epiphany, the “making known” of the Lord through these wise men to the world, until the first Sunday after the New Year. At this point in our Christmas season, we would not yet have the wise men at the Nativity Scene in our house. When I was a child, my sister, brother, and I would simulate the journey and belated arrival of the wise men to Bethlehem by inching the wise men figurines, day by day, a little closer to the Nativity scene at home until they finally arrived there on the Epiphany. By this point in the Christmas season, the magi would still have most of the living room to cover before arriving at the Nativity scene!

Yet today, on this Solemnity of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Matthew’s Gospel says that the wise men had already arrived and left. Maybe they simply decided to arrive early this year, right? Maybe they braved those Boxing Day sales on gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Well, not really. We will still celebrate the Epiphany, when we will hear of the arrival of the magi at Bethlehem from the same Gospel of Matthew. So what is going on here?

First, let us be clear that our Church’s celebration of Advent and Christmastime is not play-acting, and it does not follow an orderly timeline of historical events. If our Church’s celebrations this time of year do not follow a precise order of historical events, then what is their purpose? What was Matthew’s purpose in giving us the Gospel we hear today and, more importantly, what might it mean for us today?

This part of the infancy narrative, as it is called, of Matthew’s Gospel, from Matthew’s telling of how Jesus came to be born of Mary and Joseph, to the arrival and parting of the wise men, to the Holy Family’s flight to and return from Egypt to escape the massacre by Herod, is particular to Matthew in many ways. Compared to the other Gospels in our Bible, Matthew devotes much more detail especially to Joseph, husband of Mary. Even then, though, we know little about this Joseph of Nazareth from our Gospels; of the man Matthew first introduces to us as “a righteous man,” concerned not to put Mary in danger after she conceives Jesus “by the Holy Spirit” before she and Joseph live together. Joseph never speaks a word in Matthew’s or any of the other Gospels. But those three words of Matthew’s to describe Joseph, “a righteous man,” speak volumes about the saintliness of Joseph; about his care for his family—the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—about his care for us, the Church, and about how we might be called to model our lives after that of St. Joseph and the Holy Family.

Joseph may not speak a word in our Gospels, but he is a master communicator, especially with God but with us, too. Joseph communicates with God through an angel in three dreams in Matthew’s infancy narrative, the last two of them in today’s Gospel reading: First, when the angel says to Joseph not to fear and to take the pregnant Mary into his home as his wife; second, before the Holy Family’s escape to Egypt; and, third, when Joseph hears from the angel that Herod is dead and it is safe to return with Mary and Jesus from Egypt home to Israel.

In many ways Matthew’s presentation of Joseph of Nazareth parallels, deliberately or not on Matthew’s part, how another Joseph famous for dreaming and interpreting dreams is presented in the Old Testament Book of Genesis. God reveals his favour toward the Joseph of Genesis through dreams; God favours Joseph over his brothers in a way that angers Joseph’s brothers and leads them to leave Joseph in a cistern in Egypt to die. The Joseph of Genesis, of course, survives and goes on to be a prominent figure (and dream interpreter) in prison and then in Pharaoh’s court.

The parallels between Joseph of the Book of Genesis and Joseph of our Gospels are not perfect: The New Testament Joseph does not speak a word recorded in our Bible, whereas the Old Testament Joseph speaks plenty, interprets his dreams vocally, and would go on to have the story of his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (loosely) told in a famous Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera. Joseph of Nazareth is more of a humble behind-the-scenes dreamer, although he, like his Old Testament name counterpart, is a prophetic figure. Joseph of Nazareth plays a critical role in the fulfillment of “the law and the prophets” in Jesus Christ according to Matthew’s Gospel.

Joseph of Nazareth is a master communicator; an obedient communicator with God, not so much in the sense of blindly following what God’s angel tells him to do in his dreams as in the sense of attentive listening to what God reveals to him through these dreams. Joseph is, first and foremost, “a righteous man”; these are Matthew’s first words to describe Joseph.

Joseph of Nazareth is a model and a prophet from God to us; a master communicator to us in his faithfulness to and his care for Mary and Jesus. Joseph of Nazareth is a model and a prophet to us of solidarity with the most vulnerable among us. Without hesitation, Joseph the Righteous welcomes Mary into his home as his wife. Without hesitation, Joseph flees Herod’s tyranny, placing himself along with Mary and Jesus in solidarity with everybody through the ages who are unwelcome or subject to violence, even in their own homelands; people who continue to encounter not welcome but walls, literal and figurative, in the lands to which they flee desperately for safety; all people who, as Pope Francis reminded us on Christmas Day, continue to be subject to injustices that make them “cross seas and deserts that become cemeteries.”

Today, on this Solemnity of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we remember and we celebrate St. Joseph of Nazareth, who never hesitates to place himself within our human realities, from the joyful to the tragic. The obedience, faithfulness, and attentiveness of Joseph of Nazareth to God shows us the immaculate purity of Mary, Mother of God; mother of the Church; our mother. This, in turn, shows us the way to God and to God’s Son, Jesus Christ; the way to our salvation.

The Holy Family of Jesus our Lord and Saviour, Mary our Mother, and the righteous dreamer, Joseph, exemplifies a truth expressed so beautifully nearer to our time, in the opening lines of Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes: “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the followers of Christ… United in Christ, [we] are led by the Holy Spirit in [our] journey to the Kingdom of [our] Father and [we welcome] the news of salvation that is meant for every person. That is why this community [the Church] realizes that it is truly linked with humankind and its history by the deepest of bonds.”

Our “joys and hopes,” and if I dare say dreams, were the “joys and hopes” of the Holy Family. They were central to the dreams of Joseph the Righteous of Nazareth, Joseph’s silent yet prophetic communication and intercession between God and us. They are the “joys and hopes”; the dreams of our Church, of one another, for one another here at a most essential level. These are “the joys and the hopes”; the most essential dream of God for us: That, through Jesus Christ, through the intercession of the Holy Family and all the saints, our journeys; our lives, our experiences from the joyful to the tragic, will lead us home to God himself, to eternal life.

Homily for Thursday, 11 July 2019– Memorial of St. Benedict

Readings of the day: Genesis 44:18-21, 23b-29, 45:1-5; Psalm 105:16-17, 18-19, 20-21; Matthew 10:7-15

Thursday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time

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

How do we exercise hospitality in our lives?

When Jesus commissions his disciples in the Gospel reading we hear today from Matthew, he sends them out to accomplish fairly great ministries with fairly little: They are to “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” In doing so, Jesus’ disciples are to set out without many even basic possessions, let alone luxuries: “Take no gold or silver or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff.”

Not only does Jesus ask his disciples to travel lightly, but he goes on to invite them to live hospitality as essential to their ministry: To “give without payment” as they have “received without payment”; to take what is offered them in each house “and stay there until [they] leave.”

Modeled on Jesus’ invitation to his disciples to exercise hospitality, St. Benedict of Norcia, the sixth-century abbot of Subiaco and then Monte Cassino, Italy, whose feast we celebrate today, developed his Rule of Benedict for the communities of monks he founded. The first lines of the Rule of Benedict urge the monks to listen: “Listen, O my son, to the precepts of your master, and incline the ear of your heart, and cheerfully receive and faithfully execute the admonitions of your loving Father, so that by the toil of obedience you may return to [God], from whom by the sloth of disobedience you have gone away.” In the original Latin of Benedict’s Rule, the commands to “listen” and to “obedience” are derived from the same verb, audire, to hear or to listen. Obedience, ob-audire, in this sense of listening, is the foremost act of hospitality, toward another person or toward God.

Farther on in Benedict’s Rule, St. Benedict devotes a chapter to the proper reception of guests into Benedictine monasteries. “Let all guests who arrive be received as Christ,” St. Benedict writes, “and let due honor be shown to all, especially to those ‘of the household of the faith’ and to wayfarers.”

The Rule of Benedict has become the basis for the rules of many religious orders to this day, both monastic and more active orders, including mine, the Basilian Fathers. The Basilian Way of Life [39] pays homage to the Rule of Benedict when it says that “hospitality is a Christian virtue and a Basilian tradition. We must recognize the Lord not only in strangers and in those in need, but in all those who visit our communities.” The Basilian Customs, the next-most important Basilian document after our Way of Life, says this about hospitality and table fellowship, not only among Basilians but with anybody who visits our communities: “We ought to pay special attention to the art of conversation, both at the table and elsewhere, not allowing ourselves to be satisfied with minimal courtesies, but finding in our conversation support and encouragement.”

In other words, first, may we recognize the Lord in our neighbour, created in God’s image and likeness, and treat our neighbour, whether guest or stranger, with appropriate hospitality. Second, conversation that offers “support and encouragement” is essential to the hospitality to which not only the Rule of St. Benedict, the Basilian Way of Life and Customs, or other religious orders’ rules invite us, but to which Jesus himself invites us, his disciples, through the Gospel of Jesus’ own way of life.

Homily for Friday, 28 July 2017– Ferial

Friday of the 16th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19:8, 9, 10, 11; Matthew 13:18-23

What commandments do we find the easiest to keep? And what commandments do we find the most difficult to keep?

Today we hear in Exodus of God calling Moses up Mount Sinai to give him the Ten Commandments. We know that the people of Israel whom Moses was leading through the desert were able to hear God as he gave the Commandments to Moses, so God hid nothing from the people as to the Law he expected them to observe. Do we ever wonder, though, if the people of Israel were standing at Mount Sinai, hearing God give the Ten Commandments to Moses, and thinking if not saying things like these among themselves: “That commandment not to kill should be easy enough, but that commandment not to covet— what does “covet” mean again?— may be more difficult. We know that one of the first of the Ten Commandments the people of Israel would break, when they made the golden calf, was the commandment not to make idols; images of other gods. What were the most and least difficult commandments to keep for the people of ancient Israel?

We might ask the same question of our time and culture.  Almost ten years ago now I was a postulant, just beginning formation with the religious order I belong to now, the Congregation of St. Basil or Basilians. I am originally from here in Edmonton, and the first place to which I was appointed by the Basilians was Cali, Colombia, to teach high school French and English. An article at the time written in a religious newspaper or magazine reflected on the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience that we in religious orders both of men and women take. Let me say, on this note, that poverty, chastity, and obedience are not only vows that set men and women of religious orders apart from the rest of us. These are standards by which we are all called to live by our Baptism and any specific vocation that flows from Baptism: Religious life, priesthood, single life, married life, and so on. Poverty, chastity, and obedience are called “evangelical counsels”; they are essential standards for all of us to live by. They are somewhat like commandments.

The article, as I remember, said that in more wealthy parts of the world, poverty is the most difficult of the evangelical counsels to live by, and obedience is the least difficult. In less wealthy regions, as in my experience in Colombia, poverty is the easiest of the counsels to live by. I do not mean this, and neither did the article, simply because regions like these have less material wealth, although might less wealth allow us to live with greater gratitude and take less for granted? And, at the same time, there tends to be a greater focus in wealthier regions on social and moral order, and so obedience.

Each of us; each culture and region of the world has its commandments; its social and moral standards that are more or less difficult than others to keep. Let me suggest that, hearing the Ten Commandments from Exodus, our prayer today might be one of thanksgiving to God for the commandments we find easier to keep, and for help with those we find more difficult. In this way, in the words of our Psalm, we might more and more hold God’s commands in reverence, as “words of everlasting life.”

Homily for Saturday, 11 July 2015– Memorial of St. Benedict

Saturday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Proverbs 2:1-9; Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9, 10-11; Matthew 19:27-29

“Listen carefully, my child…” These are the first words of the Rule of St. Benedict, whose feast we celebrate today. Who is St. Benedict, and to whom does he ask us to “listen”? What is the goal of our listening?

St. Benedict founded the famous Benedictine monastery in Monte Cassino, in Italy, in the early 500s. He is often called the “father of Western monasticism”; the father of life in religious community as the Church has known it for most of its history. And so as a Basilian religious I have a special fondness for St. Benedict.

“Listen,” St. Benedict begins his Rule, which has influenced the rules of many religious communities including our own Basilian Way of Life. We might say, “Be obedient,” since words like “obedience” are from the same Latin root as to listen. And the Rule of St. Benedict continues: “Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving Father’s advice, so that by the labor of obedience you may return to him.”

“Listen”; be obedient. These words are for more than religious under vows. They are an invitation to all of us. To whom, then, are we to “listen”; to direct our “labor of obedience”? I believe we are all called not only to listen to the advice of wise people; children to their parents and grandparents; religious to their superiors (although I am sure Fr. Paul1 appreciates this), but first to God. And what is the goal of our listening; our obedience to God? Our goal (all of us, not only vowed religious!) is eternal life; that we “may return to” God.

This is Jesus’ promise to all of us who listen for God; who discern; who “receive willingly and carry out effectively” the will of God in our lives: “Eternal life.” But I have a slight issue with our Gospel reading today, from Matthew. Jesus reminds us that careful listening; obedience is a sacrifice. He hears Peter’s objection: “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us”? And we hear Jesus’ reply to Peter: “Everyone who has given up” material belongings; family “for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life.” My issue is not that following Jesus or particularly religious life does not involve sacrifice. It does. But every vocation involves some sacrifice. Might many if not most of us have had in the back of our minds the concern of Peter when discerning our vocation: “What will there be for us”?

My slight issue is that in my experience vowed religious life, poverty, chastity, and obedience, has been much more a joy than a sacrifice. But if we have discerned our vocation from God; God’s will for our lives well, I think it is well for us to enjoy living our vocation: A loving marriage; single life or priesthood given in service to God and our Church; the great community life we Basilians of St. Kateri; that many religious enjoy… These are signs to us now of our ultimate goal and joy, “eternal life,” which God promises to all who listen to and for God; who “receive willingly and carry out effectively” the “labor of obedience”; the vocation to which God has called us.
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1 Fr. Paul English, CSB, is Pastor and Rector of the Basilian Fathers of St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish, Irondequoit, NY.