Homily for Friday, 4 August 2017– Memorial of St. John Vianney

Friday of the 17th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Leviticus 23:1, 4-11, 15-16, 27, 34b-37; Psalm 81:3-4, 5-6, 10-11ab; Matthew 13:54-58

What is authority, and how do we gain authority?

As the journey home to the land promised them continues for the people of Israel under Moses, we make the transition from Exodus to Leviticus today in the daily readings at Mass. But the authority Moses has in leading the people of Israel continues. It is an authority based on trust and reciprocal love between the people and Moses.

The kind of love and trust that builds between Moses and the people of Israel was the love and trust that the saint we celebrate today, John Vianney, enjoyed with the people he served in the tiny French village of Ars. John Vianney was known for his long hours hearing confessions. He was a devoted pastor, or “Curé” of Ars, in the tumultuous years after the French Revolution. Not long after John Vianney’s arrival in Ars, the humble parish priest began to draw travelers from long distances who would seek his spiritual guidance. St. John Vianney’s authority, like that of Moses, was based on love and building trust between himself and the people he served.

Jesus is not so fortunate insofar as building trust with the people he taught. Matthew’s Gospel says today that Jesus had arrived “in his hometown” and had begun “to teach the people in their synagogue.” Instead of recognizing Jesus’ authority; that he is the Son of God, the people of Nazareth question his authority: “Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary” and “his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas”?

By this point in Jesus’ public ministry, it would seem by Jesus’ remark that “prophets are not without honour except in their own country and in their own house” that he had enjoyed popularity and even genuine love from the people he had encountered before his return home. It is difficult to say why Jesus would have been received so poorly in his hometown after having had prior success; having established himself as a teaching authority in Israel. Perhaps the people of Nazareth were jealous of Jesus’ authority. Perhaps they were simply too familiar with Jesus and not willing to accept that a son of their hometown could be God. Perhaps that any human being could be God was too much of a stretch for the people’s Jewish faith already.

Whatever the reason Jesus was not accepted in Nazareth, I have found that my experience has been closer to that of John Vianney than to that of Our Lord. It has not been my experience to be derided; to have my authority questioned especially here in the city where I grew up. And so I find it somewhat difficult to relate to the events of today’s Gospel.

And yet, to return to the questions of what authority is and how we gain it, let me ask for your prayers on this feast of St. John Vianney, patron of priests, that any authority I exercise or any priest exercises through the ordained priesthood may, first, be a reflection of Jesus’ authority; God’s authority that sustains the world and our Church with loving kindness. And second, may any authority I or any priest; any minister of our Church exercises serve the authority we are all given through Baptism before any other sacrament, to be the presence of Christ we receive and celebrate here to our world.

Homily for Thursday, 22 June 2017‒ Feast of Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More

Patronal Feast of the Diocese of Rochester (USA)

Thursday of the 11th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Peter 4:12-19; Psalm 126:1bc-2ab, 2cd-3, 4-5, 6; Matthew 10:34-39

“I have not come to bring peace but the sword,” Jesus says to us today in Matthew’s Gospel. Does this not challenge our view of a peaceful Jesus, who called us to peace and to love one another and to love God with all our being?

One of the foremost ways of interpreting Jesus’ message here is that he is not calling for us to create divisions unnecessarily or to act with violence, or saying that his mission on earth was to be divisive or violent. Instead, Jesus says that his message will reveal divisions and violence that already exist: In our households, within and between nations, within our Church, in our workplaces, in our political assemblies, in our communities, and within our own hearts.

This interpretation is well and good, but then Jesus goes on to say today: “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” And so do we not hear Jesus calling us here not only to avoid violence and unnecessary divisions, but to some form of zeal? Our question we may want to ask ourselves is: “For what (or whom) am I prepared to die”?

We are called, I suggest, to hold two virtues in a difficult balance: On the one hand, the virtue of peace with everybody and, on the other hand, the virtue of zeal; of being prepared even to die for a good enough cause; for God; for our faith in Christ.

Our first reading today, from the first Letter of Peter, calls us to the same balance between peace and zeal. And, like Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, Peter acknowledges that to live this balance, a Christian balance, will lead us to suffer at least misunderstanding, perhaps ridicule, if not a martyr’s death. Yet Peter says, “Those who suffer in accord with God’s will hand their souls over to a faithful creator as they do good.”

Today we celebrate two saints; two martyrs, St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, patron saint of this Diocese of Rochester, who gave their lives to maintain this balance between peace and zeal.

This balance to which we are called may rest on a finer line than ever. On the one hand, is it not right to be concerned about too easy a peace, when we fail to confront important evils of our world? This false peace we may call moral relativism. On the other hand, when we too proudly presume that we are right and another is wrong, we fall into a false zeal that is a form of absolutism, relativism’s evil twin, and we forget all the same the greatest virtue of all: Love, or charity.

Charity is the hinge between peace and zeal. It leads us to seek dialogue and to guide with patience those who struggle to understand or live a moral ideal. It leads us to ask questions when we are uncertain of another’s position, instead of shouting down, gossiping, excluding, or posting that biting comment on the internet for all to see. Charity, the hinge between peace and zeal, is the central virtue of a Christian. It is our central virtue, and the central virtue for which Sts. John Fisher, Thomas More, and every saint and martyr through the ages, has died and has lived.