Homily for Thursday, 28 March 2024– Holy Thursday, Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper

Readings of the day: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; Psalm 116:1-13, 15-16bc, 17-18; 1 Corinthians 11:24-26; John 13:1-15

There is a legend surrounding Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of “The Last Supper.” Da Vinci took many years to find people to be subjects for the painting of Jesus and each of his apostles. First he found a young, handsome man in his late teens to paint as Jesus.

Seven years later, Leonardo da Vinci had finally found enough subjects, out of hundreds of possible people, to have painted Jesus Christ and eleven of his apostles. The only apostle who remained to find a subject and paint was Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Jesus. After another long search, da Vinci was told that his ideal subject for Judas Iscariot was a wretched prisoner in a dark dungeon of Rome. So, da Vinci went down into the dungeon and met the prisoner. Da Vinci had made a deal with the authorities that the prisoner could be released from prison and into da Vinci’s care if he agreed to be the figure of Judas Iscariot in the “Last Supper” painting.

When da Vinci finished painting Judas in the likeness of the haggard prisoner, he showed the prisoner his Judas in the “Last Supper.” The prisoner, taken aback, said back to da Vinci, “You don’t recognize me, do you? I’m the man you painted seven years ago as Jesus Christ. O God, I have fallen so low”!

Sisters and brothers in Christ, who has invited us to tonight’s Eucharistic memorial of his Last Supper: Even if our sinful state weakens our ability to recognize another person, or maybe even ourselves—to recognize the likeness and dignity of God with which God created us—God will never fail to recognize us. God will always and forever recognize God’s own image and likeness, God’s beauty as in the young man Leonardo da Vinci first painted as Jesus Christ in the “Last Supper,” in each of us.

God will always welcome us, tonight in a special way and every time we gather to celebrate the Eucharist, to his table in memory of Jesus’ Last Supper. Our God in Jesus Christ once welcomed twelve very imperfect men to eat his final meal with him before he died. One of those Twelve, the head of the apostles Simon Peter, would go on to deny even knowing Jesus, three times, as Jesus was being led to his crucifixion. Another, Judas Iscariot, would betray Jesus to the authorities to have him killed. All the others except “the disciple whom [Jesus] loved”—who stood by Jesus’ cross with the three Marys: Jesus’ mother, “the wife of Clopas,” and Mary Magdalene—would flee the scene of the cross.

All except one of Jesus’ Twelve apostles would fail to recognize Jesus as he was arrested, condemned, crucified to death. But God, in Christ, would recognize them for who they truly were. God recognizes us for who we truly and fundamentally are, sisters and brothers, even when we do not recognize the God-given dignity in one another or sometimes in ourselves or in all creation; even if, like the prisoner Leonardo da Vinci painted as Judas Iscariot, we “have fallen so low” into the wretchedness of sin.

Sin, and the blindness toward the image and likeness of God in each of us that sin causes, is not our original state of being. Our original state of being is one of beauty, blessing, dignity as God intended: “God blessed them and gave them dominion” over creation, the Book of Genesis says of the first people God created, Adam and Eve. This “blessed” state of being is the state God will always recognize in us, even if or when we obscure it, corrupt it by sin. This blessed state is the figure our Lord invites to share his Last Supper, this Eucharistic memorial of his Last Supper, with him.

But what about our sin? Jesus’ Last Supper; Jesus’ Passion, death, and resurrection that follow his Last Supper show us two main ways in which God responds to our sin, our “fall” from the state of divine grace and blessing in which God first created us. First, the events of Jesus’ Last Supper, Passion, death, and resurrection that we will commemorate over these next three days show us that God’s response to our sin will urge us to confront our sinfulness, our woundedness, our betrayals, our denials, our fleeing the scene of the cross. Jesus’ first disciples who confronted their sinfulness would be the first to be restored to God’s grace through these Paschal events: Peter, who would weep immediately at his denial of Jesus and later be able to confess, three times, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you”; Mary Magdalene, who would be the first to tell the beloved disciple and Peter of the empty tomb on Easter morning; the other disciples upon whom the risen Christ would breathe the peace of the Holy Spirit and ask that they forgive as they had been forgiven; Thomas, who would overcome his doubt to make an astounding profession of faith, “My Lord and my God”!

Second, these events of Jesus’ Last Supper, his Passion, death, and resurrection are a continuation (and a fulfillment) of how God has always acted in history toward us, especially in response to our sin, our lack of recognition of our original state of divine blessing. Whenever we have sinned, God has not waited to begin the process of restoring us to his grace and friendship.

From the moment Adam and Eve first sinned by eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, God did not wait to promise that the woman’s offspring would crush the serpent, the Satan, the prince of deceit and evil. God would put an end to all evil, all corruption from our original state of divine blessing.

We have heard tonight from Exodus part of the long epic of how God guided the people of Israel through forty years of wandering through the desert wilderness, from slavery under Pharaoh in Egypt to the land God promised them. These people of Israel were so often not exactly worthy to be delivered from slavery, from wandering through the wilderness, as God did for them many times. The people of Israel would sin. They would complain about everything. They would test God. They would worship false gods, not the God constantly working to save them. Yet today we hear the high point of the Exodus story, Israel’s deliverance story: When God struck down the firstborn of Egypt but (literally) passed over the people of Israel, allowing them to live and continue their escape from slavery.

And tonight we have heard the fulfillment of the first Passover through the second, which began with Jesus Christ gathering his disciples for a Last Supper before he died. Jesus gives us in this renewed Passover a new commandment, “an example,” a mandate for us that gives this celebration its old name of Maundy Thursday, mandate Thursday: “That you should also do as I have done for you.”

What has Jesus done for us that is so radical, such a fulfillment of the first Passover, and why has he done this for us? He has started by washing feet, which we will remember in a few moments by replicating in this celebration. John’s Last Supper account starts with Jesus taking the place of a slave before his disciples. This act is startling to his disciples, to Peter, who refuses at first to allow Jesus to lower himself to that level.

But this is only the beginning. Jesus will go so far as to take upon himself all our sin, everything that obscures our view, our recognition of the beauty, the grace, the blessing with which God first created us, and have it nailed to a cross with him on Calvary. Tomorrow we will hear the prophet Isaiah’s foretelling of how, on Good Friday, Jesus accepted being made as one “despised and rejected… as one from whom others hide their faces” and who hold “him of no account.”

Jesus would do none of this for us, for our salvation, because we are worthy. On the contrary! But Jesus once gathered his disciples together for a Last Supper. The next day, “he was crucified, died, and was buried… And on the third day he rose again.” Jesus did all this because, no matter whether we recognize our blessedness, our beauty, the image and likeness of God that we all bear, how much God loves each and all of us (so that he, God in Jesus Christ, would die for us!), God will always recognize all this in us. To Jesus, we will always be like the figure Leonardo da Vinci painted as Jesus. We will always be, as maybe one of my favourite Psalm in the Bible (Psalm 8) begins by describing us, “little less than gods.”

And, through this celebration of Holy Thursday of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus only asks of us two things: First, remember what he has done for us on this night. And, second, do as he does: “Do this in remembrance of me”… “You should also do as I have done to you.” We remember and we do for one another as Jesus has done for us when we remember our blessedness, God’s love for us. We remember and fulfill Jesus’ Last Supper commandment to us when we recognize ourselves and one another as Jesus recognizes us perfectly. We remember and fulfill Jesus’ Last Supper commandment when we act on what we recognize, most fundamentally, in ourselves and one another: A people blessed from the first moments of our creation; a people created in and bearing God’s image and likeness (as in a da Vinci painting, but much more beautiful!); a people called to take, eat, and drink of this Last Supper of friendship, of salvation, of God’s self-emptying, of the blessing of our Lord.

Homily for Sunday, 28 May 2023– Pentecost, Mass during the Day

Readings of the day: Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23

I invite us to think of how often we gather together in a place only to set out from that place. This is a very ordinary human experience. We might meet with one or several friends, and then set out for home happy and grateful that we have had that time with friends: The joy and the strength that we receive from friendship. If we work, many times we have regular meetings in our workplaces, to discuss individual and collaborative tasks in the workplace. And then we go forth to do the work. Some of us may gather for regular family or household meetings, or pray together at home.

In a religious sense, on Sundays (and, for many of us, on weekdays also) we gather in this place, in a church. We celebrate the Eucharist. And after we receive communion—a word that literally derives from gathering in one place as one, in union—we are sent forth to put into action in our world what we hear from the word of God: “Go, the Mass is ended”!

Pentecost is a special occasion of gathering together so that we may then be sent forth. Many of us may think of Pentecost as the birthday of the Church. The Acts of the Apostles recounts for us today the first time in Christian history that people of such astounding ethnic, linguistic, and geographical diversity—“Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome…Cretans and Arabs”—were all gathered into one place and heard Jesus’ apostles proclaim the word of God in their own language.

Acts’ account of the first Pentecost is truly an amazing story! Yet, if we have ever read Acts, Chapter 2, beyond the end of the reading we have just heard (and I encourage us to open our Bibles and do so at home, especially if you have rarely or never done so), we quickly notice that what we have heard from Acts today is only the beginning of the story. It is only the beginning of the first Pentecost event! The earliest Christians from all over the Roman Empire at the time stay in the one place long enough to hear a long speech from Peter, covering the earthly life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. But then, at some point, all those people need to return to their homes. They take their Pentecost experience back home with them and tell of it to their friends, families, neighbours. And, by the end of this chapter, the Acts of the Apostles says, the number of believers—the number of “those who were being saved”—was growing astoundingly “day by day” in all those parts of the Roman Empire and beyond.

But that first Pentecost would not be the first time, nor the last, when God would gather great numbers of people together only to send them forth with something to nourish the whole world; to nourish their homes, their workplaces, their relationships. It is no accident that Pentecost, fifty days after Easter, coincides closely with the Jewish feast of the “weeks of weeks” (Shavuot) or of “seven times seven” days after Passover.

On that first Pentecost day, of which we hear in Acts, Jewish people scattered all over the Roman Empire and beyond are on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the holy city that is the center of their faith. Shavuot is originally an agricultural holiday; it had been the day on which Jews gave thanks to God for the harvest and made a sacrifice of part of their harvest at the temple in Jerusalem. By Jesus’ time, Shavuot had developed into a feast of thanksgiving not only for the harvest but of thanksgiving to God for the gift of the Law, the Commandments on Sinai God gave the Jewish people through Moses. There are seven weeks of seven days between two great Jewish pilgrimage feasts: Passover—when God delivered the people of Israel from Egypt—and Shavuot, when God gave the same people of Israel the Law on Sinai.

Between Passover and the Festival of Weeks (Shavuot), the particular gift that God gives to God’s people, as a sign of God’s loving promise of salvation to us, changes. First, God gives freedom from slavery in Egypt. And then second, God gives the harvest—food from the earth to sustain our bodies—together with the Law to sustain our souls. But together with this second feast, God gives us yet another gift: God gives God’s own Holy Spirit. This divine gift of God’s Holy Spirit is the most universal yet. If the feasts of Passover, of the harvest, and of the receiving of the Law of Moses had been Jewish feasts, even if they were for all Jewish people living everywhere, God’s Holy Spirit would be for all people and all nations, starting with the Jewish people and then those who had come to believe in Jesus as the Messiah.

The Book of Acts is clear about this: God’s gifts to us keep escalating. God’s gifts to us keep becoming more and more universal. God’s gifts (and God’s ultimate gift of salvation that awaits us at the end of time) are not static; they keep becoming greater and more widespread. This is why God waits until all the pilgrims from all over the known world at the time were in Jerusalem to give them his Holy Spirit through the preaching of the apostles. The Holy Spirit descends on the apostles “like the rush of a violent wind” and as tongues of fire. But then God gives the Holy Spirit to everybody present as the sound of speech, each speaking—giving the Holy Spirit—to one another in their own languages.

God waited to give this astoundingly expanding, audible gift of the Holy Spirit to the nations until all those people were gathered together in pilgrimage to the Holy City, Jerusalem. But this gift was not for the people who received it to hold onto it for themselves. Those whom God had gathered together in Jerusalem, God now would send back to their homelands, to give God’s Holy Spirit to all the people there. And so the Church, those baptized, those being saved, would keep expanding, becoming more truly universal. Pentecost is the birthday of the Church. Yet it is only the beginning of the story of the birth and rebirth of the Church in God’s Spirit. The first Pentecost was only one of many times God has gathered God’s people together to receive a great gift, only so that God might send us forth to offer to all people the gift we have received.

God gathers together only to send forth. Every time we gather for Mass is a celebration of this reality. Every Mass is a little Pentecost!

But we can resist going forth with the gifts, with the Holy Spirit God offers us to give to all peoples and all nations. We are free to do this. And to resist or even try to impede God’s gift of the Holy Spirit in this way is easier for us than maybe we would like to think. Just ask Jesus’ apostles, huddled in the upper room after Jesus had died, for fear of the Jewish authorities who had had him crucified.

This is the setting as our reading today from John’s Gospel begins: Hardly an auspicious start for the apostles, to the history of our Church! Like the apostles, we may find ourselves afraid to emerge from where we are gathered, holding onto God’s gift of the Spirit for ourselves, sometimes not even realizing that we possess it. We might find ourselves afraid of, mired in, our own sin. We might find ourselves in a state of pessimism about the world, or our own relationships: What good will my going forth with the Holy Spirit, living my faith boldly yet lovingly and kindly, do amid all the problems and even evil of the world?

It is into this anxiety, this pessimism, our own sinful state, that Jesus breaks through and offers us, once again, God’s Holy Spirit. And once again, it is audible: Jesus’ voice proclaims, “Peace be with you (shalom)… Receive the Holy Spirit.” And, yet again, we whom God has gathered together are sent forth: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

That is some power God gives us, to forgive and retain sins! This was a power Jews of Jesus’ time—including Jesus’ own apostles—would have said that only God possesses, no human being. Now Jesus gives us the height of divine power, the power over sin, evil, and death itself! God’s gift of the Holy Spirit is not to be kept for ourselves. It is not static but living and dynamic. It is meant to be given away. It is meant to grow. It is meant for all peoples and all nations, this gift for which God continually (and here, yet again) gathers us together only to send us forth, to proclaim audibly, for the rest of the world to hear: “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Homily for Sunday, 8 May 2022– Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year C (Good Shepherd Sunday)

Readings of the day: Acts 13:14, 43-52; Psalm 100:1-2, 3, 5; Revelation 7:9, 14b-17; John 10:27-30

Appropriately, on this Good Shepherd Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Easter, our readings present us with all kinds of images and metaphors of shepherds and shepherding; of lambs and sheep. And, every fourth Sunday of Easter, especially if I am in an urban area with few if any sheep or shepherds (like Edmonton), I think how amazing it is that this image of shepherding; of sheep is still one of the most pervasive images we have of Jesus. This is true even of people who have little or no experience of sheep or shepherding.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd. We have art and icons that depict Jesus slinging a lamb over his shoulders, carrying it to safety. Today we hear the end of Jesus’ Good Shepherd Discourse from John’s Gospel. Jesus makes bold claims to be no ordinary shepherd. While the best of shepherds, we could presume, would protect their sheep from predators and other threats to their life and well-being in this life, only Jesus can claim that he, the Good Shepherd, guarantees his sheep “eternal life”: “They will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”

If we continue in John’s Gospel just past the end of today’s reading, John says that the Jewish leaders who listened to Jesus became infuriated with him: They “took up stones again to stone him.” Going back to the Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament, stoning was the penalty prescribed for blasphemy; for claiming to be God.

Today Jesus clearly claims to be one and the same with the one God of Israel: “The Father and I are one.” To address God in this way, let alone claim to be God, was preposterous and a great evil in Israel of Jesus’ time. Such a claim would violate the great commandment-prayer of Deuteronomy: “Hear, O Israel, the LORD is God; the LORD is one.” If the LORD is one, Jesus, this man of Nazareth, could not possibly be the LORD, God of Israel, so the Jewish leaders thought, in a way reasonably.

Put another way, as I remember Dr. Denis Lamoureux, Science and Religion professor here at St. Joseph’s College, saying, Jesus’ claim to oneness with the one God of Israel would have left the people hearing Jesus with three ways to interpret his claim: First, that Jesus is out of his mind; second, that he is a liar; and third, that he is in fact God.

We know the answer as to which of these three options is true. Or at least we presume and believe it, or else we would not be here: Jesus is God. But we (I think we need to understand) have the gift of hindsight that the people who first heard Jesus claim, “The Father and I are one,” did not have.

Even before Jesus got to this decisive line, “The Father and I are one,” his use of shepherding metaphors were clear references to the depiction of the God of Israel as a shepherd in the Old Testament. We can think of one of the most memorable Psalms of trust and consolation, Psalm 23: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.” The prophet Isaiah also depicts the God of Israel; our God as a shepherd: “He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.” And we know that when the St. Louis Jesuits write a hymn after a Bible passage, it is a memorable passage: “Like a shepherd he feeds his flock, and gathers the lambs in his arms; holding them carefully close to his heart, leading them home.”

There are other people in the Bible who are shepherds. We might think of Moses, “tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law” before he climbed Mount Horeb and encountered God in the burning bush. And King David is first introduced as a shepherd in 2 Samuel. But these great biblical shepherd figures are really stand-ins for the God of Israel. David was the shepherd-king after the LORD’s own heart. God worked through Moses to shepherd the people of Israel back to their homeland from slavery in Egypt.

The main point in all this, though, is that, when Jesus applies the image of the Good Shepherd to himself, it is no accident. Already, well before Jesus explicitly identifies himself as one with God the Father, he has claimed to be one with Israel’s God by invoking these Old Testament images of God the shepherd.

These are images that carry over into the New Testament. One of the most frequent ways of depicting God; depicting Jesus in the New Testament is that of the shepherd. We hear this today from the Book of Revelation, but with a counter-intuitive twist. In John of Patmos’ vision of the “great multitude” of the saved—the “great multitude” of those who had given their lives for our faith—the Lamb seated on the heavenly throne is also the shepherd. This lamb, also the chief shepherd, Jesus Christ, “will guide” these martyrs for our faith, all who are saved, “to springs of the water of life, [where] God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

The image of the sacrificial lamb who becomes the chief shepherd, and who leads the saved to springs of living water, also recalls several Old Testament depictions of lambs and shepherding, and other images of agriculture; growth and giving of life. If we were at the Easter Vigil, the mother-of-all-church-celebrations that begins this fifty-day celebration from Easter to Pentecost, we would have heard (not really a shepherding metaphor, but) the majestic song from the prophet Isaiah to which we respond, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” Psalm 23 refers to the LORD as shepherd leading the Psalmist “beside still waters.” Our Psalm today speaks of us as God’s “people, the sheep of his flock.”

In the familiar story of the first Passover, the people of Israel are prepared to escape slavery in Egypt, shepherded by Moses and Aaron. The LORD tells the people of Israel to slaughter a lamb per household and eat it hurriedly. The people of Israel are also to put blood from their lamb on the doorposts and lintels of their houses. The LORD will pass through Egypt and “strike down every firstborn” of Egyptian households but leave the firstborn of any house showing lamb’s blood at its entrance.

These images that compare God; compare Jesus to a lamb, a shepherd, or both at the same time continue in history through the prayer of the Church; our liturgical prayer as a community of faith and individual prayer. Our prefaces that introduce our Eucharistic Prayer during Eastertime are especially rich in these images of the Lord as a lamb. The preface we will pray today says that Christ “never ceases to offer himself for us, but defends us and ever pleads our cause before [God]: He is the sacrificial Victim who dies no more, the Lamb, once slain, who lives forever.” In our prayer after communion, we will pray, “Look upon your flock, kind Shepherd, and be pleased to settle in eternal pastures the sheep you have redeemed by the Precious Blood of your Son.” And, of course, just before we receive communion (and at the beginning of Mass, during the Gloria), we pray together, “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us… Lamb of God… Grant us peace.”

So we remain familiar with these images and metaphors of lambs, sheep, and shepherding to describe the Lord and his relationship with us, down to the present day. And it does not matter whether we have ever (or often) seen a real shepherd or sheep.

We understand, we believe, and we celebrate, sisters and brothers: Jesus Christ is both lamb and shepherd. He is the Passover lamb sacrificed once for all, “who dies no more.” Yet he is the shepherd who “leads us by still waters” to nourishment, peace, protection from evil, and to eternal life. He is not out of his mind, or a blasphemer, or a liar. He is God; the Good Shepherd-“Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.” In him and only in him, the Good Shepherd, do we find salvation.

Homily for Thursday, 2 April 2015– Holy Thursday, Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper

Readings of the day: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; Psalm 116:1-13, 15-16bc, 17-18; 1 Corinthians 11:24-26; John 13:1-15

When have we ever felt vulnerable; at the mercy of one or more other people? How many of us, if we think for a moment, realize that we enter the world as vulnerable; at another’s mercy? We begin in our mother’s womb, and we are born weak and totally dependent on others’ care. Who here has held a newborn child, and so knows very well of what I speak? We grow from newborns to older children, and then we become… teenagers: Again, an extremely vulnerable time!

And then who here remembers their first love? Who here is married? When you were married, you made yourself vulnerable; put yourself at the mercy of a person you love, for life. Other sacraments and rituals of our Church also celebrate our making ourselves vulnerable to others; to God. At baptism, we were entrusted to a community of faith, the Church, and to our parents and godparents to be examples to us of the love of Jesus Christ for us. Who here has been confirmed, “sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit” by sacred Chrism oil; made vulnerable to the love of the Holy Spirit? If we think of confirmation in this way, is this not almost scary? My sisters and brothers in religious life; my brother priests and deacon here tonight, who have received the sacrament of orders: Do we not all have stories of being made vulnerable; having to trust other members of our religious communities; priests; families; God at critical times?

Who here has been anointed with the oil of the sick? Illness and age again put us at the mercy of others; at the mercy of God. Who here has received the sacrament of reconciliation? We entrust our darkest moments; our suffering; our sins to a priest, a human being, standing in place of God and the Church, yes, but still a frail, vulnerable human being; a sinner. Is this not making ourselves deeply vulnerable? Are not the sacraments and rituals of our Church all profound acts of courage; of making ourselves vulnerable to another?

Tonight’s celebration of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, Holy Thursday, is a celebration of this most profound vulnerability. Only it is God; the Son of God, Jesus Christ, making himself vulnerable; entrusting himself completely to us. “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me… This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians and our Gospel reading, from John, celebrate two different instances of Jesus Christ making himself completely vulnerable to us. First Corinthians speaks of Jesus giving himself to us under the form of bread and wine, now Christ’s body and blood, our “new covenant” in “remembrance of” him. And John speaks of Jesus’ washing the feet of his own Apostles and then asking us to do the same: Wash one another’s feet; make yourselves vulnerable to one another. Put yourselves completely at one another’s mercy, as I have done for you, Jesus says.

And so we will, in just a few moments, remember and follow Jesus’ “new model” for us, a “model” of action that makes us vulnerable; perhaps unsettles us. This was an act of humiliation for Jesus, even before his ultimate humiliation for us on the cross. The washing of the feet was so unbecoming of the Son of God; the Savior of the world, that Jesus’ first Apostles, led by Peter, the Church’s “rock,” protested: “You will never wash my feet”! And yet tonight we will witness the washing of feet of twelve people chosen from among us, in remembrance of that first act of complete vulnerability by our Lord.

But why would Peter and the Apostles have been so unsettled by Jesus’ washing of their feet? Why would Jesus, God’s Son, choose willingly to wash their feet, as a slave would do for a master? In short, Jesus did this out of love. And Jesus’ Apostles were unsettled at this act because they had never quite experienced this depth of love before.

Jesus “loved his own who were in the world, and he loved them to the end.” In the words of John’s Gospel, this is why Jesus chose to put himself at his Apostles’ and our mercy in this way. This is why Jesus gave himself to us the night before he suffered and died for us, saying, “This is my body… This… is the new covenant in my blood. Do this… in remembrance of me.”

“He loved his own who were in the world, and he loved them to the end.” Indeed, God has loved us, “his own… in the world,” from the very beginning. God has loved us into being. We are all here because of an act of God’s love for us. God’s chosen people were brought out of slavery in Egypt. They were assured safe passage that first Passover if they marked the doorposts of their houses with lamb’s blood, we hear tonight from the Book of Exodus. All this was made possible because God loves us. God loved us from the beginning and will love us “to the end.” Still, the first Passover was without doubt an unsettling experience for God’s people in the Egyptian desert under Moses, an encounter with God’s love deeper than they had ever experienced before.

And then Jesus washes our feet. And he places himself completely at our mercy in this Last Supper: “This is my body… This… is the new covenant in my blood.” This is no longer lamb’s blood, but the blood of Christ; the body and blood of God made every bit as human as we are.

This kind of love; this kind of intimacy with us is unsettling. Are we willing to let Jesus enter into every aspect of our lives: To share in our joys and sorrows; our wellness and our illness; our prosperity and also our poverty? Are we willing to let Jesus be the very source of “all that is good” in us, but also to take upon himself our sins and have them nailed to a cross? Are we willing to allow Jesus to be both meal and sacrifice in this celebration? Are we willing to let Jesus wash our feet: All the grit, sweat, and stink (since I do not believe pedicures were readily available in Jesus’ time)? Are we willing to be loved more deeply than we have ever been loved before?

If not, Jesus’ answer to us is stark: “Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.” But, if so, we are invited to do as Christ does: Put ourselves at one another’s mercy; make ourselves completely vulnerable to one another out of love; sacrifice ourselves in daily, small ways, out of love. Love one another “to the end”; love one another more deeply than we have ever been loved before.

Homily for Thursday, 19 March 2015– Solemnity of St. Joseph, Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Readings of the day: 2 Samuel 7:4-5a, 12-14a, 16; Psalm 89:2-3, 4-5, 27, 29; Romans 4:13, 16-18, 22; Luke 2:41-51a

Who was St. Joseph? He never speaks a word in Scripture. He is traditionally said to be a carpenter. He worked hard at his trade and was a good and holy husband to Mary. He was of the family line of King David, begun with the prophecy of Nathan we hear in our first reading today from 2 Samuel. We know from Scripture that St. Joseph was a man of deep faith. Our second reading today from Romans, on this feast day of St. Joseph, remembers Abraham, whose faith “was credited to him as righteousness.” Abraham’s faith was a gift from God.

And the same could be said of Joseph: He held a deep yet humble, even silent faith that was God’s gift to him. Joseph’s faith was the faith of Abraham; God’s gift of “righteousness.” Because of how Joseph lived his faith, God gave him the remarkable, and sometimes terrifying, responsibility along with his wife Mary of raising Jesus, the Son of God made human.

But other than this, do we know much about St. Joseph? The last we hear of St. Joseph in the Bible is in today’s Gospel reading. When Jesus “was twelve years old,” Luke says, he went with Joseph and Mary to Jerusalem for the Passover. Jesus becomes separated from Joseph and Mary, who frantically search for him. Imagine the crowds in Jerusalem; having to search for a child in a city of this size during the Passover! Having been to Jerusalem, I can imagine the crowds for the Passover and Joseph’s and Mary’s distress at losing Jesus. Can any of us who have children; who have ever experienced losing a child in a crowd, imagine how terrifying this would have been for Joseph and Mary, even more clearly than I can?

And yet Joseph never says a word. He leaves the speaking to Mary: “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” Was Joseph so terrified at losing Jesus in Jerusalem? Was he so relieved at finding him in the Temple, or so “astounded” to find Jesus teaching the best teachers of the Jewish faith in the Temple about the Law and the prophets; “listening to them and asking them questions,” that Joseph was speechless? All this is possible, even probable, but we will never fully know.

We cannot know from Scripture fully who St. Joseph was: Was he really a carpenter, or what did he do to earn a living? Did St. Joseph ever take questions about his faith to prayer? Why does St. Joseph never speak in Scripture, and why is he not mentioned after Jesus is found in the Temple?

We know little about who St. Joseph was. Still, we celebrate St. Joseph with today’s feast: Faithful Joseph, husband of Mary; descendant of David; earthly father to Jesus; patron and protector of the family; of fathers; of those who are poor (whom we remember especially with our parish’s St. Joseph Tables!). We celebrate what we know of St. Joseph; what we do not know; what we hold humbly; silently as mysteries of faith.