Homily for Sunday, 13 August 2023– Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a; Psalm 85:9, 10, 11-12, 13-14; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33

I must say I feel badly for Elijah and Peter! Elijah in the First Book of Kings and Peter in Matthew’s Gospel from which we hear today cannot seem to act in such a way that fully pleases other people or, more importantly, pleases God.

By the time Elijah finds himself in a cave on Mount Horeb in 1 Kings, we find ourselves, in a way, dropped into the middle of the story of the reading we have just heard. Before Elijah ends up in the cave on Horeb, he confronts the king of Israel, Ahab, and his wife Jezebel, over their worship of false gods. If there is a way to combine a comedy and tragedy into a single scene, the part of 1 Kings just before Elijah hides in the cave on Mount Horeb may be it! God has sent a drought over Israel to punish Jezebel’s and Ahab’s idol worship.

After three years of drought in Israel, God orders Elijah to speak with Ahab to end the drought. On top of worshipping foreign gods—for which we could excuse Jezebel somewhat, because she was not from Israel—Jezebel spent the years of drought slaughtering the prophets of the LORD, the God of Israel. So Elijah organizes a great contest on Mount Carmel between the prophets of Jezebel’s gods, the Ba’als and Asherah, and himself, representing the true God of Israel. The four hundred fifty prophets of the Ba’als (pagan gods of storms and rain) and the four hundred fifty prophets of Asherah (a fertility goddess) will call on their gods to send down fire to consume a bull presented as a sacrifice. Elijah will do the same. Whichever side’s gods send down fire will decide which god(s) the people of Israel will worship.

This sounds like a great idea: Elijah, the prophet of the LORD, true God of Israel, allows himself to be outnumbered nine-hundred-to-one by the prophets of the Ba’als and Asherah! Thankfully, God accepts Elijah’s sacrifice and sends fire over the altar Elijah builds to God, consuming the bull. The gods of the nine hundred prophets are shown not to exist, because they do not send fire on request to consume the bull sacrifice. Israel’s people (except for Jezebel and Ahab) are moved to worship the one true God of Israel, not the Ba’als or Asherah. For good measure, Elijah—spectacularly because, remember, he is outnumbered nine-hundred-to-one—has all the prophets of the Ba’als and Asherah killed.

All this makes Jezebel and Ahab very angry at Elijah. Jezebel wants Elijah dead. At least, besides reporting Elijah to his wife Jezebel for so-called “murder” of her false prophets, Ahab only calls Elijah “disturber of Israel” for bringing Israel back to the worship of the one true God. But now Elijah sinks into despair. Jezebel’s army is after him, so he hides in a cave on Mount Horeb. Elijah (and who could fault him?) wants nothing of God’s fire that consumes bull sacrifices. He wants nothing of the sword with which he has slain nine hundred false prophets. Elijah just wants to die. This “disturber of Israel” is done disturbing the peace. But God is not done with Elijah yet.

Today’s reading from 1 Kings begins at this point. The LORD disturbs the peace, and the sleep, of the once-“disturber of Israel,” Elijah. God calls Elijah to “stand on the mountain” outside the cave, “for the LORD is about to pass by.”

Just then, “a great wind” begins, “so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks before the LORD.” We have had some pretty good storms this summer, but none quite that strong. Elijah seems to know right away that the LORD “is not in the wind,” that the wind and storms were said to be signs of the Ba’als, the false gods worshipped by Jezebel and Ahab. I imagine Elijah saying into the wind, “You do not scare me. Try again.” And so there is an earthquake, “but the LORD [is] not in the earthquake,” either. Elijah is too good at discerning when God is truly present, so the earthquake does not faze him. Neither does the fire. It is a little more surprising that Elijah is not duped into believing that God is present in the fire, since this is how God was present to him in consuming the bull sacrifice. But, no, “the LORD [is] not in the fire.”

“After the fire,” Elijah (rightly) discerns the presence of God in the “sound of sheer silence.” Elijah is, we have to admit, really good at knowing when God is present and responding to God’s presence. But the reading we hear from 1 Kings today leaves out two short lines (or the same line, twice) from this story in the Bible. In 1 Kings, before and after the sequence of the wind, earthquake, fire, and silence, God asks Elijah, “Why are you here”? Both times, Elijah answers God, in short: “I give up. The people of Israel are unconvinced by the spectacular pyrotechnics on Mount Carmel, the bull sacrifice now a heap of ash. They are still worshipping false gods. Jezebel and Ahab want to kill me for killing nine hundred of their false prophets. I will admit that was pretty spectacular, too, a bit gruesome, but… just… You know what, God? Just leave me alone and let me die.”

But neither time does God take Elijah’s “no” for an answer. The first time God asks Elijah why he is hiding on Mount Horeb, God tells Elijah to wait outside the cave for God “to pass by.” And, the second time, God tells Elijah to go toward Damascus and anoint Hazael as the king of that region (Aram). God tells Elijah to anoint Jehu as king of Israel, which means Ahab’s time as king is almost up; Jehu will be the one to order Jezebel’s servants to kill her. And God tells Elijah to anoint Elisha as his own successor as prophet of Israel.

It is as if God repeats to Elijah, “I will not let you give up! You are too good a prophet to end like this”! Elijah will become even greater than a prophet: A kingmaker and a prophet-maker. God takes who Elijah is and calls him to be something, somebody even greater.

Can we think of a time in our own lives when somebody has challenged us at the right time to be even better than we are, even better at something we are already good at? I can think of many instances in which this has happened to me. I think of my colleagues at St. Joseph’s College when they say, “You will be very good at teaching that course, at researching in that area of theology. Here is a challenge that will push you just beyond the limits you sometimes impose on yourself.” I think of my students, when they say, “We really enjoyed this activity, this assignment in class. But we only got to do it once or twice. We should do more of this, or you should do more of that the next time you teach this course.” Outside myself, I think of great minds, great athletes, great anything, who are great in part because a coach, an advisor, a friend, a student, God pushed them to be greater than they thought they could be in a critical moment.

This is true of Elijah, when God appears twice to him in the silence, the “still small voice” on Horeb and asks, “Why are you here, Elijah”? And it is true of Peter in his relationship with Jesus in our Gospel today.

Please allow me to say that I feel a lot of empathy toward Peter when I hear today’s Gospel reading. My retreat before professing final vows as a Basilian and being ordained a deacon ten years ago was in the Holy Land. I will always remember standing on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, feeling a slight increase in the wind, and seeing the surface of the water go from completely still to white-capped waves in minutes. So I can appreciate how this (so I understand) frequent weather phenomenon could have frightened Peter and Jesus’ other disciples that day. And then to have Jesus walk toward them on the stormy sea: I am not surprised at all that Peter and Jesus’ other disciples responded with the terror they did!

Still, as Peter does so often, he (almost) gets it right; he recognizes (as well as Elijah recognized God in the silence on Horeb) that it is Jesus walking toward him on the sea. And Peter asks Jesus to command him to walk toward him “on the water.” That is, may I say, very bold of Peter. It is a display of faith from Peter maybe second only to when he identifies Jesus as “the Christ, Son of the living God.”

So why, at this moment, does Jesus call Peter, “You of little faith”? Is this not unfair of Jesus not to recognize the (in fact) great faith with which Peter asks Jesus to command him to walk toward him on a stormy sea? Sure, Peter becomes scared right away after that and starts to sink. But maybe he was not a great swimmer. Surely there are worse things than not being able to swim well, right?

I think here, though, Jesus is doing with Peter something very similar to what God does with Elijah in 1 Kings. Jesus sees the great faith of which Peter is capable in word and action, in this and many other instances in our Gospels. But in any moment, Peter’s faith will always be littler than what it can be with some coaching. It is as if Jesus says to Peter (and, through Peter, to us), “It is not me, but you, who does not see in this ‘stormy’ moment how bold your faith actually is. Come to me on the water, so you see how great your faith can be. You, like the great prophet Elijah, have an uncanny ability to discern and reach out to God in the most challenging circumstances. Like Elijah, with my help and grace, you will become even better at reaching out to me, praying, walking on water, discerning my presence in the storms of life as in the sacred moments of ‘sheer silence.’”

Homily for Sunday, 26 August 2018

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b; Psalm 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21; Ephesians 4:32- 5:1-2, 21-32; John 6:60-69

This homily was given at Our Lady of Sorrows Parish, Vancouver, BC, Canada. 

Baseball great Yogi Berra once famously said, “If you see a fork in the road, take it.” Of course, he also once quipped, “I never said half the things I said,” so sometimes what Yogi Berra actually said is up for debate.

Our readings today present us with “fork in the road” situations; we are required to make choices: In Joshua, whether to “serve the LORD” or the gods of foreign nations and faiths; in Ephesians, whether to act in our relationships among one another with the love with which Christ loves us; in John’s Gospel, whether or not to continue to follow Jesus when his teachings and those of the Church he has founded become “difficult.” When have we been faced with situations in our lives when we have had to make choices, practically, morally, or otherwise? Does this not happen to us constantly?

Are we not all here because we have chosen to be here? Our reasons for being here at this Mass at Our Lady of Sorrows vary: Maybe we are here out of a simple joy and love for the Mass. Maybe we are here with friends or family. Maybe we are here because the time of this Mass allows us to sleep in just a bit longer before we drag ourselves to Mass (that is not necessarily a bad thing), or because “Mom, Dad, or somebody made me get up for Mass,” or some other sense of obligation, or maybe some other more or less noble motive. The point is that we have all made a choice to be here. And, from the choice to be here to worship as a Catholic community of faith to simpler everyday choices like what to eat or wear, we are constantly making choices.

But relatively few of our choices are of the magnitude of the “fork in the road” moments faced by the people of Israel in Joshua’s time, the early Christians addressed by the letter to the Ephesians, or Jesus’ disciples in John’s Gospel grappling with what Jesus meant by making eating his flesh and drinking his blood essential for their eternal life. Each of these groups of people featured in our readings today also faces great pressure in making the choices they need to make. Would it be fair for us to wonder whether these people may have been tempted to evade making choices at all, or tempted strongly to make the wrong choice?

We hear first today from the end of the Book of Joshua. By this point in the Book of Joshua, the people of Israel who had been led by Moses and his successor, Joshua, back to their land have conquered this land for themselves from the Canaanites with relative ease. They might have thought, and probably many of them did think reasonably that it would be just as easy to maintain the land they had conquered as it had been to take possession of it. Sure, there are nations more powerful than Israel surrounding Israel and who worship other gods than the LORD. It would be tempting for Israel, in this situation, to bow to these surrounding nations and their gods to avoid being invaded and overtaken by these more powerful nations. Still, Joshua, in his last address to the people of Israel before his death, gives Israel a choice: “If you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve.”

When Israel could have chosen the easy way of alliances with pagan nations and worship of their gods, they choose freely under Joshua’s leadership to be different from these other nations. The people of Israel choose freely to take a risk of angering these other nations by trusting solely in the one LORD they know to be the true God, and not to trust in alliances with worldly power to save them.

A similar choice to the one put before the Israelites under Joshua is put before Jesus’ disciples in John’s Gospel. We have arrived at a decisive point in our relationship with Jesus as his disciples. Jesus has repeatedly claimed that he is God, the one LORD the people of Israel have worshipped since the time of Moses and the gift of manna in the desert. Jesus claims to be the true food from heaven to which the manna only pointed. Jesus claims that the only way to eternal life is to eat his flesh and drink his blood. By this point, the people hearing Jesus are outraged. Most of them turn away from Jesus and return to the way they were living before encountering Jesus. His own disciples ask a very legitimate question, one perhaps many of us have asked about particular aspects or teachings of our faith: “This teaching is difficult. Who can accept it”? How can this man claim to be God, and how can he claim that the only way to eternal life is to eat his flesh and drink his blood?

Jesus’ disciples are at a fork-in-the-road moment, and they have only one choice: To take the fork. And our salvation depends on making the right choice.

“Do you also wish to go away”? Jesus asks his twelve closest disciples, his Apostles, as many if not most of his followers to that point turn “back and no longer [go] about with him.” Jesus knows that, even among these twelve, one will betray him outright, maybe not at this decisive point that is difficult for Jesus’ disciples to commit to following him, but at another fork-in-the-road moment not long thereafter. Might we imagine that even Simon Peter, the leader and usual spokesperson for the Twelve, may not have been so sure if he and the other Apostles in fact wanted to “go away” from Jesus at this point. Peter answers Jesus with a cautious, introspective kind of question at first: “Lord, to whom can we go”? Did Peter pause before continuing to answer Jesus, as if to say, “I need a second to think about this”?

We cannot know fully what was on the mind of Peter and the other disciples, only that this could not have been an easy question for him to answer on their behalf. I imagine Peter, looking up at the thinned-out crowd after many had turned away from Jesus, complaining and disputing among themselves. And yet Peter makes a decisive choice; the right choice. He answers Jesus, “You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe that you are the Holy One of God.” Peter answers “yes” to continuing to follow Jesus, not because he is the perfect disciple, but because he freely chooses to allow Jesus to strengthen him and the others who continue to follow Jesus. Peter freely chooses to continue to walk with Jesus, at least until the next fork in the road.

My sisters and brothers, this is all Jesus; all God asks of us (or at least all Yogi Berra asks of us): “If you see a fork in the road, take it.” There will be points in our lives, if there have not been already, when we must choose and there is no intermediate option between “yes” and “no”; between serving the LORD and serving other gods, ourselves, or worldly goods and pleasures as gods; between continuing to follow Jesus, who has the “the words of eternal life,” as difficult as his way and words can be to follow, and not.

There will be points in our lives, as the letter to the Ephesians reminds us with the imagery of a faithful marriage, when to love another person, let alone God, will be a difficult choice. Our readings call us beyond the attraction-infatuation stage we might experience at first in a relationship with somebody, and even with God. Love becomes a choice. Being Church, a community of faith in worship and actions of kindness and mercy, eventually becomes not mere infatuation but a choice. It becomes a difficult choice in love when any members of the Church, especially in leadership, idolize and abuse power and prestige. They walk among the crowds who turn from Jesus; who make the easy but wrong choice; who refuse to walk with Jesus beyond the fork in the road.

Will we, then, continue with Jesus beyond the fork in the road, at least until the next decisive moment? Will we choose to be Church? Will we choose to serve the LORD faithfully? Will we choose to love as Christ loves us and “gave himself up for” us? Will we choose to let the words of Simon Peter be ours: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Homily for Thursday, 16 August 2018– Ferial

Thursday of the 20th Week in Ordinary Time


Optional Memorial of St. Stephen of Hungary

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 12:1-12, 12-15, 18-22; Psalm 78:56-57, 58-59, 61-62; Matthew 18:21-19:1

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

How might poetry help us to put ourselves in Peter’s place in today’s Gospel; to empathize with Peter? And then how might a bit of background in poetry, specifically the poetry of the Old Testament prophet Amos, help us better to understand Jesus’ invitation to Peter to unlimited forgiveness?

When we think of Peter the Apostle, we might imagine him as a humble fisherman. We might imagine Peter, as one of Jesus’ best friends, hand-picked by Jesus to lead the community of Jesus’ disciples, the Church, after Jesus’ ascension to heaven. But I do not think we often imagine Peter as a poet.

Having said this, Peter the fisherman-turned-head of the Church was no slouch at poetry, or at Scripture for that matter. A faithful Jew of the time like Peter may well have known by heart a text like that at the beginning of the Book of Amos, and the culture behind it, in which Amos poetically condemns the nations that were Israel’s enemies: “For three times and for four.” In other words, one way of interpreting Amos is that God would forgive Israel’s enemies, and expected Israel to forgive its enemies, up to “three times and… four.”

And so Peter may have been creating a poetic parody of Amos as he asked Jesus, “How often would I forgive? As many as seven times”? Seven times were far beyond the “three times and for four” that Amos asked Israel to forgive its enemies. We may want to give Peter the benefit of the doubt more often than we do in our Christian tradition. Peter was already perhaps suggesting to Jesus that forgiveness and mercy meant going beyond the minimal demands of the Jewish Law and prophets: Forgive not only “three times and for four,” but “up to seven times.”

As a great teacher and pastor does, Jesus recognizes that his student and best friend, Peter, is on the right track, and then leads him toward an even greater truth. To forgive “three times and for four” is good. Peter’s proposal to go beyond “three times and for four” is better, not to mention his is an astute application of the poetry of Amos. But unlimited forgiveness is best: Not only “three times and for four”; “not seven times but seventy-seven times.” If Peter shows himself a decent poet and student of prophets like Amos, Jesus is even better. Jesus, as the Son of God, is the teacher and pastor of poets; of apostles; of each of us.

What, then, are our greatest strengths? Maybe not all of us are poets, or apostles, or teachers, or prophets. Perhaps not all of us would consider ourselves great at forgiving and reconciling with one another. But our Lord, gently if somewhat poetically, knows and uses our greatest strengths to lead us to something even better: Not only “three times and for four”; “not seven times but seventy-seven times.” Today, Jesus takes Peter’s greatest strengths to deepen his sense of forgiveness; of mercy. And today, Jesus takes our greatest strengths and leads us beyond our limits to be closer to God who, as we know, is limitless.