Homily for Tuesday, 21 July 2020– Barbara Schmidt Funeral Mass

Readings of the day: Ecclesiastes 3:1-7, 10-11, 14; Psalm 23 (music setting); Revelation 21: 1-5a, 6b-7; John 14:1-6.

This homily was given at the funeral Mass for my paternal grandmother, Barbara Janice Schmidt, at the Church of the Assumption, Powell River, BC, Canada. Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon her.

“Sure and certain hope”: These words from the Prayer of Commendation, the last prayer of a Catholic funeral Mass, which we will hear and pray together in a few moments, have always been deeply moving to me. “Into your hands, Father of mercies, we commend our sister Barbara, in the sure and certain hope that, together with all who have died in Christ, she will rise with him on the last day.”

My dear family; sisters and brothers gathered in Christ our Lord to remember and pray for eternal rest in our Lord for our mother; our grandmother; our great-grandmother; our friend; our sister in Christ, Barbara Janice Schmidt: Is it not somewhat bold to pray (or to suggest that we are praying) “in the sure and certain hope” that God will receive our Barbara into eternal life? Is our hope, as long as we live this life on this earth, ever fully “sure and certain”? Or are we maybe more like the Apostle Thomas of our reading for this celebration from John’s Gospel; Thomas who responds with great uncertainty and alarm to his growing awareness that Jesus is about to be taken away from him and the other Apostles to die, rise and ascend to heaven? Are we not much like Thomas who, even though Jesus reassures his Apostles, “Where I am going, you know the way,” replies, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way”?

Like Thomas, our uncertainty and our grieving are not signs of weakness or lack of faith or hope in eternal life, whether for our beloved Barbara or for ourselves. “How can we know the way?” is a humble recognition that “sure and certain hope” is more about the journey to eternal life with our God, to heaven, than about the destination. When we commend our faithfully departed to the mercy of God, “in the sure and certain hope that… all who have died with Christ… will rise with him on the last day,” we, like Thomas, pray in one sense for our God to build on the hope and the faith we already possess but that have not yet reached their fullness.

Our God, mysteriously, has called his and our beloved Barbara home to heaven in these extremely uncertain, even unsettling times. We gather here, with many more of our relatives and friends (whom I want to acknowledge with special gratitude) joining us from afar thanks to modern technologies of communication, amid a worldwide pandemic with no known cure or resolution yet, to celebrate, remember, and pray for eternal life, not only for Barbara but for ourselves. We would not be here now, especially amid the uncertainty and the unsettling nature of our world, if we did not hope; if we did not have faith.

Our faith in God’s saving grace; our “sure and certain hope” can and must coincide with the uncertainty inherent in living in this world; with our cry, like that of the Apostle Thomas: “How can we know the way”? It is only if we have the courage; the hope; the faith; the humility of the Apostle Thomas—courage, hope, faith, and humility that were certainly modeled for us by our beloved Barbara Janice—that, by allowing ourselves to plead with the Lord, “How can we know the way,” we may be open to and take heart in Jesus’ reply: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.”

Throughout Grandma’s life, “How can we know the way” met “sure and certain hope” in ways that were open and took heart in our Lord: “I am the way and the truth and the life.” How so? A beautiful dialogue between “sure and certain hope” and “How can we know the way”; between God and our Barbara Janice, began just over ninety-four years ago. It continued on a farm in Rochfort Bridge and in a one-room schoolhouse where she taught in Jalna, Alberta; and then in Oakland, California, where Grandma met, married, and raised a family with a dapper U.S. Air Force veteran, Clem, Grandpa. And when God called Clem home to himself at a young age, Grandma’s dialogue with God, “the way,” led her back to Rochfort Bridge; to the farm where she cared for her father in his later years. In the meantime, “the way, the truth, and the life” led Grandma to raise five children—John, Raymond, David, Anne Marie, Nanette—to hope in God the way she did.

I suppose we could fill pages, and I could speak here forever (we almost certainly do not want that!), about the lifelong dialogue between God and our Barbara Janice: “How can we know the way”? “I am the way and the truth and the life.” This dialogue; this encounter; this life of Barbara Janice in God and his Christ, which we have witnessed and we celebrate here today, has been God’s sign to us in this earthly life of the reason for our “sure and certain hope” in eternal life, for Barbara and for ourselves.

In many ways, our Grandma’s life on this earth has mirrored the wisdom of the Book of Ecclesiastes from which we have heard this morning. There is, for Grandma and for each of us, “a time to give birth and a time to die” and, in between these, “a time for every affair under the heavens.” Why does the wise “teacher,” the author of Ecclesiastes, teach us that “there is an appointed time for everything”? He teaches us this so that, as he says, God may fill our hearts with what is “timeless,” so that by our experience of this truth, God “may be revered.”

Grandma exemplified this truth; this reverence for the timeless God through the time-bound realities of our earthly life. For our Grandma, there was a time for great generosity with any time; any talent; any material wealth she had. Grandma experienced poverty, especially as a widowed mother caring for five children and her father, and never forgot this as she supported various causes throughout her life in favour of the less fortunate; the forgotten; the poor; truly in favour of the intrinsic dignity of the human person, from conception to natural death.

For Grandma, there was time for great tenderness and love. There was time for healthy and endearing doses of sassiness. There was time for joy; time for music and nature; time for devoted service at the rectory of this Church of the Assumption in Powell River for fourteen years. There was time for Grandma, in her waning years, to be cared for by family both here and in Vernon, and by the home care nurses of BC Interior Health’s Choice in Supports for Independent Living program, to whom I and our family are especially grateful. There was time with her beloved and many friends, relatives, her husband Clem whom we pray is now re-united with Barbara in heaven; time with her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. There has been, and is, “an appointed time for everything”; “a time to give birth and a time to die.” And now is our time to “commend our sister Barbara” to God and the new life he offers her and will one day, we pray, offer us: A life “changed, not ended”; finite earthly life transformed by God into the infinite life of heaven.

I suppose, too, that, as we remember, celebrate, and pray for eternal life for God’s and our beloved Barbara, we might allow ourselves to envision what that eternal life might be for Barbara and for us. This vision might be something like the vision of St. John of Patmos in the Book of Revelation we hear today, the vision of “a new heaven and a new earth.” But let us not stop at envisioning “a new heaven and a new earth.” Instead, may we hear and take up God’s mission, entrusted to each of us, to build “a new heaven and a new earth,” beginning here and now, in cooperation with God’s grace.

How might we do this? Seek, first, the eternal life and the well-being in this earthly life of everybody. Seek and pray for this utmost well-being especially for people who have wronged us; people who are disadvantaged in any way; people who do not know or have forgotten their relationship with God; people who are sick; dying; alone; lost. Seek to be forgiven and to forgive for when we or our loved ones fail, as we all do by human weakness, to build one another up in Christian love and divine grace; for when we have hurt one another. Seek unity and charity (not necessarily uniformity, which is often a false unity), in our hearts; in our households and families; in our world. Seek to be generous and joyful.

These concrete actions were at the heart of the mission entrusted to our beloved Barbara: Grandma, Great-grandma, Mom, friend, sister in Jesus Christ. They are at the heart of how Grandma did her prayerful best to live, as a sign of God’s saving love for us. These actions are at the heart of our mission now as we pray for heaven for our Barbara and, one day, for ourselves. These are the ways in which we enter the dialogue between the “appointed time for everything” and “the timeless,” which God has put into Barbara’s heart and ours; between “How can we know the way?” and “I am the way and the truth and the life”; between us and God; between this finite life and eternal life, with “sure and certain hope.”

Homily for Sunday, 11 August 2019

Readings of the day: Wisdom 18:6-9; Psalm 33:1, 12, 18-19, 20-22; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19; Luke 12:32-48

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Have any of us ever delayed in accomplishing a task or making a decision? What was the reason for the delay? Did we delay because of fear or insecurity in acting or deciding to act? Have we ever been afraid of how somebody might judge us for an action or decision, and so delayed acting or deciding on something important? Have we ever feared a loss of control over a situation, or maybe a relationship, and so have delayed in acting or deciding something?

Have we ever had good reason to delay an action or decision? Good reasons for delaying an action or key decision might be that we have needed to take time to consult others who have expertise in the kind of action or decision we are making, or who may be affected by the action or decision we make. We might want to delay sending that biting e-mail or social media post when we are frustrated or angry. There can be good reasons to delay important actions or decisions.

But our readings today tend to favour people who decide or act with the most conviction and with minimal delay. The Book of Wisdom today takes us back to “the night of the deliverance [of the people of Israel] from Egypt.” These Israelites were, in many ways, ready to return home, led by Moses to Israel already by the time the LORD called them to leave Egypt. Wisdom says that this “night of deliverance was made known beforehand to our ancestors” and that “the deliverance of the righteous and the destruction of their enemies were expected by [God’s] people.”

The reading we hear today from the Letter to the Hebrews takes our memory back even farther than Wisdom, to the time of Abraham and Sarah. Hebrews praises the faith of Abraham and Sarah; that when Abraham and Sarah were called by God to act “by faith,” they did so decisively. “By faith Abraham obeyed” God when God called him and Sarah “to set out for a place… not knowing where he was going… By faith he stayed for a time” in this place. This was “a land [Abraham] had been promised” by God, but only as a stopover point on their way to a more permanent homeland. “By faith Sarah… received power to conceive” and bore a son, Isaac. From Isaac, as a reward for their faith Abraham and Sarah received the promise of descendants. But even these descendants, Hebrews says, would not see for many generations the fullness of God’s reward for their faith: The resurrection from the dead we as Christians believe is made fully possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Still, from at least the time of Abraham and Sarah, people have been acting “by faith”; decisively and with conviction that God has promised them (and promised us) eternal life; a permanent homeland in heaven with God. We hear from Hebrews that these long-ago generations, and every generation since, has had one fundamental longing in common that has driven us to act with faith; with conviction; without delay: We long for heaven. We, like our ancestors in faith, “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one,” Hebrews says.

Like the Book of Wisdom and the Letter to the Hebrews, Jesus’ two parables we hear today in Luke’s Gospel, those of the Waiting Servants and the Faithful and Unfaithful Servants, also favour people who are ready; who act with decisive and faithful conviction. Jesus’ parables urge us to be ready to encounter God, “the master” of his parables. Jesus’ parables are full of strong, decisive action verbs: “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet… You must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

Luke’s Gospel was probably written fifty or so years after Jesus’ ascension to heaven. By that time, the faith of Luke’s Christian community, a generation or two removed from those who had known Jesus personally, had become a bit slack. Jesus had promised to return at the end of time. And, well, the end of time had yet to happen, so writers like Luke, leaders of their early Christian communities, had to rally the people, to keep their faith ready and active. If we are able to understand how people in Luke’s time may have allowed their faith to become a bit slack, not as ready for Jesus’ return as they had once been, can we not understand how this may be an even greater challenge today, more than two thousand years after Jesus walked this earth?

We “must also be ready”: This invitation to faith; to convicted decisions and actions oriented toward our desired goal, heaven, is just as timely now for us as it was in the time of Luke’s Gospel. Today’s Gospel reminds me of an experience when I was about twelve years old and visiting my father in Montreal. Dad had been in Montreal, away from home for a year, on a course needed to begin his career in meteorology. One day, like most days Dad was on his meteorology course, he arrived home, exhausted from a long day’s studies, and set his clipboard on the end table in his apartment. I was constantly fascinated by the complicated math formulas that would fill the pages in Dad’s clipboard, so I would look in awe at Dad’s clipboard when he set it down on the end table. This one day must have been especially exhausting for Dad because, when I looked at his clipboard, thinking I would see some awesomely complicated math formulas, the page was completely filled with, “Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake”… written in capital letters!

“Stay awake”… “You must also be ready.” I doubt that, on that day, Dad was anticipating the immediate return of Jesus, although the swift arrival of the end of time then might have relieved Dad’s exhaustion and boredom in that class. I may just now have given anybody here who is a student an idea for when we are bored or tired in class: Fill a sheet of paper with, “Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake”…

Whether we are simply trying to ward off exhaustion or boredom, or (at least I hope and I believe that, ultimately, we are as Christians) faithfully anticipating the promised return of Christ at the end of time, the message is the same: We “must also be ready… Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return.” “Stay awake”!

But to heed this call to action; to alertness to the presence of the Lord even now among us; to await heaven faithfully; to orient our decisions and actions with conviction toward the eternal life with God we desire can be easier said than done. Do we not often experience situations in our lives when it is best to delay: To “sleep on” or, better yet, give ourselves time to pray over a key decision or important message we need to communicate? In these kinds of moments, our delay in acting or deciding something important is anything but disobedience to the call of God’s Word today to faithful action; alertness; convicted orientation of our decisions and actions toward heaven. On the contrary.

And our discernment of when it is better to delay, especially prayerfully, a key action or decision, or when it is better to act or decide immediately and decisively, is often difficult. From our hearing today of Wisdom, Hebrews, and Luke, might it seem to us that it was all too easy for the people of Israel to leave Egypt under Moses; for Abraham, Sarah, and their descendants, and for the people to whom Jesus addressed his parables in Luke’s Gospel to remain faithful, convicted, alert, and not to delay unreasonably? We know from the rest of the Bible that obedience to this urgent call from God was often difficult for all these people.

It is and will always be difficult for us, too, to remain faithful, convicted, alert, and to orient our actions and decisions toward our ultimate heavenly goal. This takes a commitment on our part to depend on God; to prioritize God and our relationship with God in our prayer and our worship as a community of faith above all else. In this way, we will remain faithfully and decisively alert to how God calls us to act in the concrete situations of our lives. We will be like the people of Israel whom Wisdom describes; like Abraham and Sarah; like those who “seek an unfailing treasure in heaven,” who are “dressed for action” with our “lamps lit”; like those who are constantly alert for the Lord’s final return for our salvation. We will be the people who “Stay awake”…

Homily for Sunday, 28 July 2019

Readings of the day: Genesis 18:20-32; Psalm 138:1-2, 2-3, 6-7, 7-8; Colossians 2:12-14; Luke 11:1-13

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. Alphonsus Parish and St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

“How is your prayer life? How do you most like to pray”?

These are questions I frequently ask people of faith in the course of my ministry as a priest. These are questions I frequently ask myself. When I ask these questions, often I observe that people to whom I ask these questions wonder what precisely I am asking: Do I mean to ask the time of day at which people prefer to pray, or whether people tend to prefer “formula” prayers like the Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, the rosary, prayers at mealtime, or devotional prayers to particular saints, or simply free verse? Do I mean to leave my intent of these kinds of questions open to interpretation? (Usually I do, in fact, like to leave these questions a bit open-ended).

Is prayer not somewhat of a delicate subject for many of us? Many experts on prayer (if there are such people) suggest that there is no single right or wrong way to pray. Those of us familiar with the Baltimore Catechism of the 1940s may remember its definition of prayer as “a lifting of the mind and heart to God.” More recent prayer “experts” like the late Jesuit Fr. Thomas Green, whose book Opening to God and its sequel Weeds among the Wheat I highly recommend for anybody interested in deepening your prayer experience, reflect on difficulties with definitions of prayer like that of the Baltimore Catechism. The definition of prayer in the Baltimore Catechism, “a lifting of the mind and heart to God,” is well and good, but can lead us, Fr. Green says, to place undue emphasis on our own efforts at prayer over God’s effort to reveal God’s self to us in our prayer. And so prayer is difficult if impossible to define, except maybe as an act of attentive listening to God without trying to limit God; an act of Opening to God that is easier said than done.

In this context of attentive listening to God, Opening to God, I would like to connect this difficulty, if impossibility, in defining prayer to what we hear today from Luke’s Gospel. Luke begins by placing Jesus and his disciples at prayer “in a certain place”; a nondescript, undefined place. In this place, which the usually-detailed Luke does not even name, Jesus’ disciples ask him: “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”

But how did John teach his disciples to pray? The trouble for us is that, at least in the Bible, there is no account of how John the Baptist taught his disciples to pray. We know from elsewhere in the Gospels that John had disciples, people following him, and that John’s and Jesus’ disciples were not mutually exclusive groups; some of John’s disciples were probably also Jesus’ disciples, and Jesus’ disciples also John’s disciples. We know from the Gospels that John preached a message of justice and repentance in anticipation of the Messiah, Jesus, but the Gospels never explicitly speak of John the Baptist teaching his disciples to pray.

“Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples”: When Jesus’ disciples ask him this, Jesus gives them, and ultimately us, the Lord’s Prayer or the Our Father. Now, neither Jesus nor the Gospel writers seem to be too fussy about the exact formula of this prayer, the Our Father. Who here noticed that the wording of the Our Father we have heard in today’s Gospel reading is not exactly the formulation of this prayer we are used to praying, whether privately or together, say, at Mass? The form of the Our Father we are more used to is from Matthew’s, not Luke’s, Gospel. We might presume that these differences between forms of the Our Father in Matthew and Luke are due to one form being older than the other (Luke’s version of the Our Father is shorter, so it is probably older than Matthew’s). We might presume that these differences are due to differences in the needs of the early Christian communities Matthew and Luke were trying to reach with their messages: Luke, for instance, focuses more on the social needs and challenges of his community, whereas Matthew focuses more on the spiritual good and cohesion of his community.

This is all fine, but how does this meet our needs; the spiritual and social needs of our community of faith here? If Jesus were standing among us here, and we were to ask him to “teach us to pray,” what prayer would he teach us? Would Jesus prayer be a particular formula, to be prayed at particular times of day, or for a specific amount of time every day, or would Jesus ask us simply to pray from our hearts; to lift our hearts and minds to God as the Baltimore Catechism says, however we see fit, at least when we pray in private?

I think we hear a clue to the answer to these questions from the rest of our Gospel reading as well as our first reading, from Genesis, and our Psalm today. As soon as Jesus teaches his disciples the Our Father, he goes on to tell a strange parable in today’s Gospel. The friend in Jesus’ parable, who is asked for “three loaves of bread” at midnight—Luke does not say why anybody would ask a friend for “three loaves of bread” at midnight—Jesus says will eventually give the person who asks for the bread what he asks for, not so much “because he is his friend” but “because of his persistence.” And if any of our human friends might be convinced by our persistence to give us what we need, even when meeting our needs is inconvenient for our friend, Jesus asks us to imagine “how much more… the heavenly Father [will] give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him”!

I interpret from this that there is never really an inconvenient time to pray to God for what we need. Jesus does not give us a correct formula with which to pray, but only asks us to pray persistently: “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”

If we go back to the Book of Genesis, to our first reading today, we find a model of persistence in Abraham. In fact, please allow me to introduce to us, as a model for our prayer, Abraham the Pest! Abraham the Pest probably knew as well as anybody the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah, so it could not have been much of a surprise to Abraham when the LORD revealed to him his plan to destroy these cities. Yet Abraham knew, as the LORD had to have known, that there were at least a few righteous people among the wicked of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham’s own nephew, Lot, and Lot’s family were among these righteous. So Abraham the Pest begins to bargain with God: “Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city… Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five”? “Suppose forty [righteous] are found there”… Thirty… Twenty… Ten… Okay, just my nephew and his family, please, unless Lot’s wife looks back at the burning city, then I will accept that you turn her into a pillar of salt”  (but that is another story).

How might God have responded to Abraham’s persistent bargaining to save anybody righteous among the wicked inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah? I try to imagine God’s tone of voice with Abraham as The Pest bargains with God: “Alright, Abraham, I suppose I have given you my blessing to be the pest you are. Note to self: Create limits on persistence of future humans when they pray. No, wait, it is too late; I have already created the ‘pest gene’ in all Abraham’s descendants, who are to number as the stars. What was I thinking? Alright, Abe, you win, you big pest! I will save the righteous people of Sodom and Gomorrah, even if there are only a few of them”!

Our Psalm today gives us a guide for when our persistence in prayer, our being a pest like Abraham to God, pays off: Give thanks to God for when God answers our prayer. “I give you thanks, O Lord… On the day I called, you answered me,” we pray with the Psalmist. Give thanks to God when God does not give us exactly what we asked for, but gives us something even better, or when God helps us to endure suffering, because in Christ God took the suffering and evil of our world on himself on the cross to redeem it, so says the Letter to the Colossians to us today.

What does all this say about how we should pray? I think, first of all, we are invited to pray with the likes of Abraham the Pest, our Father in Persistent Faith; of Thomas Green the Contemplative; of John the Baptist; of Jesus our Saviour. Pray for our needs and for the needs of one another, especially the least well off. Listen attentively without imposing limits on God. And, when our prayer, the “lifting of [our] mind and heart to God,” is answered, give thanks that “on the day” we call, God answers us.