Homily for Tuesday, 9 June 2015– Ferial

Tuesday of the 10th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 2 Corinthians 1:18-22;  Psalm 119:129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135; Matthew 5:13-16

When was the last time you said “yes” to God? I invite us to look around for a moment. Look at all of us who are here. Our first act of the morning is to be here to celebrate Christ present among us in our Eucharist. This is a resounding “yes” to God!

Some of us might ask: What about any ills of mind, body, or spirit that we bring to this celebration? What about our sins, when in St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians we have said at best “‘yes’ and ‘no’” to our God who always says “yes” to us? Once again, I say, we are here, with all our ills, our distress, our poverty of spirit if not material poverty, our distractions, our inability to focus at prayer… We are here; we have brought to this celebration all this: Our many times of saying “yes” to God through our worship, our actions of love and kindness, and our service to people in need in countless ways. And we bring our instances of saying “no” or “yes and no” to God; to one another. Nevertheless we are here.

And the more instances we bring here to this celebration of having said “yes and no”; of being in need of God’s forgiveness and healing make our “yes” by being here all the greater! We begin our Eucharistic celebration by asking for God’s mercy: “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy,” not because of the weight of our sins; our having said “yes and no” to God or (although I believe this is rare) “no” outright to God. We pray for God’s mercy because of our confidence in God’s “yes” to us. And in this prayer for mercy just as we gather before the Word of God; before the Lord’s Table, our “yes” to God receives and embraces God’s “yes” to us. And then we receive and embrace God’s ultimate “yes” to us, God’s Son Jesus Christ truly and fully present in our Eucharist; in our communion of faith with one another. The Christ we receive and embrace here then gives us the strength to be Christ to our world. “Yes,” over and over again, to God and to one another: How wonderful!

May we never despair of God’s mercy; God’s constant “yes” to us, in our Eucharist and in all the sacraments of the Church. Our “yes” back to God; our partaking in the life and sacraments of our Church takes much courage. Yet I cannot count the ways in which we, people of St. Kateri, say “yes” to God by the way we live. God is here with mercy through the Church when our “yes” is imperfect; when our “yes” needs the added strength of God. But we have already made the utmost act of courage just by being here, many of us daily. We hear the Word of God proclaimed here; the homily given. But we are, perhaps as importantly, the best homily ever given; the Word of God proclaimed among one another and in our world with conviction; with courage by the way we live: With deliberate if small acts of kindness, with joy, with patience, with gentleness, with mercy…

“Yes” to God who is always “yes” to us.

Homily for Thursday, 9 April 2015– Thursday in the Octave of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 3:11-26; Psalm 8:2ab, 5, 6-7, 8-9; Luke 24:35-48

We hear from Luke’s Gospel today of Jesus’ first appearance to his disciples after he had risen from the dead. Jesus stands “in their midst” and greets them, “Peace be with you.”

And what are among the first responses of the risen Jesus’ disciples to his presence and greeting? We hear that the disciples “were startled and terrified”; “troubled.” They “thought they were seeing a ghost” until Jesus “showed them his hands and his feet” and ate “a piece of baked fish… in front of them.” And then they were “incredulous for joy and… amazed.” Would we have responded any differently if the risen Christ had stood among us in this way?

The disciples do not encounter a spirit. No, they encounter the risen Christ in “flesh and bones”; every bit as human as they are; as we are. I think it is natural (and not necessarily bad) for us to downplay, to distance ourselves even, from the full humanity of Christ, before and especially after his resurrection, and what this means for us.

Today we hear what may be my favorite Psalm in the Bible, Psalm 8. We respond, “O LORD, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth.” We pray to God, “What [are we] that you should be mindful of [us]”? What is “the son of man that you should care for him”? We give praise to God for giving us “rule over the works of [God’s] hands”; having put “all things under [our] feet.” I find these words deeply consoling and beautiful. And yet is there perhaps some distance between us and God inherent in this Psalm?

We are grateful to God for having made us almost like gods ourselves, with dominion over God’s creation like no other creature of which we know. But when God is so “mindful of” us; cares for us so deeply as to become one like us, we are, I think naturally, somewhat “startled and terrified.”

God took on our “flesh and bones” in the person of Jesus Christ, who suffered and died to redeem us from our sins. The risen Christ shows himself to his disciples, again in “flesh and bones” but also bearing the wounds of his passion and death.

We get a sense of what this means for us in our penitential rite at the beginning of this Mass. We pray: “Lord Jesus, you came to reconcile us to one another and to the Father. Lord, have mercy. Christ Jesus, you heal the wounds of sin and division. Christ, have mercy. Lord Jesus, you intercede for us with your Father. Lord, have mercy.”

Jesus reconciles us “to one another and to the Father”; heals our “wounds of sin and division” by taking our wounds; our sin upon himself and showing them to us in his risen fully human body. Jesus is able to “intercede for us with [our] Father” because he, God, has made himself human like us. There is no sanitizing this; making this “clean” and easy; keeping God at a distance from us. But, if and when the risen Christ’s full humanity scares us, he is there to calm us, too: “Peace be with you”!

“O LORD, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth.”

Homily for Thursday, 7 August 2014– Ferial

Thursday of the 18th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:12-13, 14-15, 18-19; Matthew 16:13-23

Jesus asks his disciples in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew, “Who do people say the Son of Man is”? And “who do you say that I am”? These are good questions for us. Who do we say Jesus is? Who do we say God is?

The prophet Jeremiah gives us a good idea of who God is in the last verse of our first reading. Jeremiah says to the people of Israel that God “will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.” In God’s mercy, God does not stop at forgiving our sins; God remembers our “sin no more.”

This distinction is crucial, and yet how many of us understand it? How many of us, when we ask forgiveness from somebody for a wrong action we have done, or even when we confess our sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, think of God as able and willing to forgive our wrongdoing through these encounters? If we do think of God in this way, this is correct, because God is a forgiving God. No sin is too great to forgive, except perhaps the sin of not even asking for forgiveness. And yet God does not stop at forgiving our sin. God, as Jeremiah puts it, remembers our “sin no more.”

God, in the words of our Responsorial Psalm, does more than forgive our sin. We pray to God, “Create a new heart in me.” In similar words, the Colombian Blessed Laura Montoya Upegui, who worked with indigenous people deep in the jungles of Colombia, once prayed: “Lord, destroy me and, upon my ruins, build a monument to your glory.”

Lord, destroy what leads me away from you; destroy my sin; remember my sin no more. This is what absolution is about: “Create a new heart in me”; a heart after your glory; a heart after your own heart.

If we understand that God is more than forgiving; that God’s will is to destroy our sin and to re-create us fully in God’s image, does this not radically re-orient our understanding of God? Does it not radically re-orient how we identify Jesus Christ when he asks us, “Who do you say that I am”?

This might radically re-orient how we understand the effect of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or even our Penitential Rite during Mass. Reconciliation becomes more than just confessing a list of sins and being assigned a formula to pray as a penance.

Our sins are not just forgiven, but destroyed and their void filled with God’s own presence. This is not only radical; but may be (and perhaps should be) scary to us! I say scary because, when we are reconciled with one another and with God; when we not only “do” penance but live penitentially, we are invited to let something die within us; to let go of our sin; to let God destroy our sin so that God can fill its void. “Get behind me, Satan.” God, remember our sin no more. “Create a new heart in” us. Destroy what keeps us from you and build within us “a monument to your glory.”