Homily for Sunday, 10 September 2023– Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 33:7-9; Psalm 95: 1-2, 6-7, 8-9; Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 18:15-20

When I served in Colombia as a postulant with the Basilians, we observed community spiritual practices that go way back in the Church and in religious orders, but which I found especially difficult: Culp and monitions. Culp is when you meet with a fellow member of the community (a postulant, seminarian, or priest) and tell him and ask his forgiveness for an offense you have committed, usually some wrong against the good of the community in the religious house. Monitions is when somebody in the local community confronts another about an offense he has committed.

It is not that I found culp easy: I could certainly think, without much difficulty, of a few ways in which I have tried and am still trying to live religious life better, be a better brother to the Basilians with whom I live; simply be a better human being. But, compared to culp, I sincerely disliked the practice in monitions of having to think of something of which to accuse one of my brother Basilians in the house. What if the offense of which I accused another made me look like a great hypocrite? Surely I am guilty of many things greater than the little offense of which I am accusing my brother, right? And I am not, by nature, confrontational.

I think this is healthy; I do not think I (or we) should go out of our way to reveal and confront the wrongs of others. If they are serious enough—like, real sins—they tend to reveal themselves quickly and widely in our social settings. And, contrary to the claim I hear occasionally that, because of increased secularization or other factors, our societies have “lost a sense of sin,” I think (maybe this is influenced by my experience of religious community life) that our societies, as secularized as they are, have increased in their sense of the social effects of evil, what we call sin, over its effects on the individual. This increase in awareness of “social sin” and its effects has been especially rapid in the last few generations, our lifetimes. I would like to know our thoughts on this.

But, I think, few of us enjoy confronting another person or a group, even if they are behaving in a truly wrong or sinful way. Nobody wants to be revealed as a great hypocrite for exposing the sins of others that may pale in comparison to the gravity of our own wrongs. Yet this is precisely the ministry God gives to the prophet in today’s reading from the Book of Ezekiel.

God has set Ezekiel as “a watchman for the house of Israel.” If Ezekiel refuses not only to confront a fellow Israelite who has sinned, but “to warn the wicked to turn from their ways,” he will meet the same end that they will. Ezekiel, like those who act wickedly, “will die in their iniquity.”

God asks quite the unenviable task of Ezekiel. Like most if not all the Old Testament prophets, I imagine that Ezekiel simply wanted to live a good life and go about his business without troubling anybody. Last week we heard from Jeremiah, another prophet who has a different vision for his life before God calls him to be a prophet to Israel. And when God calls Jeremiah to be a prophet, Jeremiah immediately wants to back out, but feels compelled—“enticed” is the word Jeremiah uses—to continue in the ministry to which God has called him, even though this has made him “a laughingstock” to his fellow Israelites.

So this is a common theme in the prophetic writings of the Old Testament: God insists on calling the prophets to a thankless ministry; the prophets’ reluctance to accept God’s call does not exempt them from it. In our Gospels, Jesus and his disciples are heirs to this same tradition of ancient Israel, the Jewish people. Jesus and his disciples, now we, are heirs to the same prophetic ministry as people like Ezekiel or Jeremiah exercised. So, what is this prophetic ministry? What does it look like for us to exercise it?

Inheriting the tradition and the ministry of the Old Testament prophets, of Jesus and his first disciples does not mean minding our own business, or even going about living our best lives as individuals when clearly evil exists and people do wrong in our world. Even if we are unsure if another’s actions are wrong or sinful enough to merit our intervention or confrontation—this was my problem with monitions—Jesus’ teaching and God’s call to Ezekiel say to us that it is not enough that we should simply mind our own business.

The greatest good not only of individuals but of the whole community—the “common good”—must be first and foremost when somebody has done wrong in a way that might have compromised the good of the community. Remember the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, before the Beatitudes in the same Gospel of Matthew from which we hear today. Jesus’ first teaching in Matthew in fulfillment of “the Law and the prophets” is: “When somebody wrongs you, first go and be reconciled with your brother or sister, and then offer your gift at the altar.”

That first teaching of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “First be reconciled,” conditions Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel reading about what to do when a brother or sister, a sharer in our faith, a member of our Church wrongs us. “First be reconciled,” or, as Jesus says today, “Go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.”

And, by “go and point out the fault,” Jesus is not saying that we should point out another’s fault, even a serious one, in a nasty or vindictive way. In this first step of how to act when another person wrongs us, I hear almost a presumption on Jesus’ or Matthew’s part that, most of the time, this step will suffice to bring the person who has committed the wrong to remorse and penance. How many times has this happened to us: We are about to say to somebody, in the most forgiving and empathetic tone we can muster (please pray for the graces of forgiveness and empathy in these situations!), “What you did or said really hurt me”? And, before we are even able to say something like that, the person says, “I’m sorry. I did or said something very hurtful and wrong.” This has happened to me many times. And it is most humbling when a person to whom I am closest—a friend, maybe even a family member or a brother Basilian—asks (in fact, anticipates) my forgiveness in this way. Just as often, this happens when I go into an encounter of reconciliation with such a person thinking I was in the wrong; that I said or did something to irritate that person and provoke a harsh response.

Forgiveness, communal and individual, must rule these encounters, Jesus says, for any wrong not to weigh down and destroy the community of faith. Maybe we tend (I am not sure about any of us, but I speak for myself) to think of Jesus’ promise at the end of today’s Gospel reading in the context of the Eucharist, the Mass, or other communal prayer: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

It is perfectly right for us to interpret Jesus’ promise in this way: Jesus is with us in this celebration, where there are “two or three,” or however many “gathered in [his] name.” But even with respect to the Eucharist, what is the first thing we do after the opening sign of the cross as a community, “gathered in [Jesus’] name”? As a community present together, we ask one another’s forgiveness. We pray a Penitential Act! Sisters and brothers, we are enacting the steps of today’s Gospel, our prophetic ministry after the likes of Ezekiel, every time we gather for Mass! That is quite remarkable, if you ask me.

And if encountering a brother or sister who has wronged us (or if we have wronged somebody) one-on-one in a spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness does not work, Jesus says, then bring witnesses: “Take one or two others along with you.” Those “one or two others” can be a check or balance if we are unsure whether the wrong of another really merits further action, if it has really hurt the good of the community. If it is a wrong worth pursuing further action and the enlisting of witnesses to forgiveness does not work, only then is it permissible to treat the person who has done wrong “as a Gentile and a tax collector,” Jesus says. And, even when it is necessary (on rare occasions this will happen!) to cast somebody out of the community—I think of the formal Church penalty of excommunication—the goal of such a penalty, of such exclusion must always be to remedy the break, the hurt caused by the sin. Even in this most extraordinary step, the goal must not be a vindictive, final exclusion, lacking hope for reconciliation.

When we seek first to forgive, Jesus is there among us. When we “first [are] reconciled,” alone with another who has wronged us or one whom we have wronged, and then with “one or two others” and then with the whole Church as witnesses, Jesus is there among us. When forgiveness and penance reign, we build a truly prophetic community of faith in which nobody is forever excluded “as a Gentile or a tax collector.” This last step becomes unnecessary when we are truly accountable not only for our own moral conduct or that of our brothers and sisters, but for how readily we forgive and are reconciled with one another. That, Jesus says, is at the heart of our identity as a Christian community of faith, the Church.

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 Saturday, 24 December 2022– The Nativity of the Lord, Mass at Night

Readings of the day: Isaiah 9:1-6; Psalm 96:1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:10-14

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

I marvel at this first line of our reading tonight from the prophet Isaiah every time I hear it. Isaiah proclaimed this message of “great light” in a very dark time for his people, the people of ancient Israel. The nation of Israel had been overrun by the Assyrians many years before Isaiah’s time. The corruption of Israel’s own leaders did not help. Long before Isaiah, Israel had split into two kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south, around Jerusalem. Assyria had conquered the north, and Sennacherib’s army, “like a wolf on the fold” in the poetic words of Lord Byron, had been stopped (barely) at the gates of Jerusalem, just before Isaiah’s time.

But things did not get any better for Israel and Judah from there. Israel was surrounded by much more powerful nations than it: Assyria, Babylon, Egypt. And each of those nations wanted Israel’s territory, its fertile land and its position on major trade routes. The kings of Israel and Judah tried to appease their mightier neighbours by agreeing to worship the other (pagan) nations’ gods and making military alliances with these nations against another. Israel had forgotten that a trusting relationship with its God, our God (we call this a covenant relationship), was the only way to ensure Israel’s survival as a nation. So, after Assyria, it was Babylon’s turn to conquer Israel and Judah. After Isaiah’s time, the people of Israel and Judah would endure about seventy years of exile in Babylon.

Amid all this darkness of impending national destruction and exile, Isaiah proclaims that “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Now there are a few possibilities for why Isaiah would proclaim a message like that. Maybe Isaiah was ignorant of the obvious reality, that Israel was doomed. Maybe, much like the people of Israel, Isaiah wanted to remain optimistic that Israel’s national disaster of conquest and exile was farther off than it really was. And maybe, against all odds, Israel’s God would miraculously and immediately save it from being overrun by its more powerful neighbours.

But Isaiah, like any true prophet, was no pollyannaish prophet. Nor was he ignorant of the disaster that awaited Israel and Judah in Babylon. After all, Israel, all but Jerusalem, was already occupied by the Assyrians by Isaiah’s time. And Israel’s God would not miraculously and immediately save Israel from being conquered by and exiled in Babylon. God saves, but not in that way. Isaiah, like the other prophets in our Bible, had no difficulty scolding Israel and its leaders for their corruption and idol worship that would surely bring Israel to doom, to exile. God saves, but there must be consequences for breaking the covenant relationship with God as the leaders of Israel and Judah and their people were doing in the time of the prophets.

So, what is this in Isaiah’s prophecy about people walking “in darkness” seeing “a great light”? Two weekends ago, I co-led an Advent retreat at the Providence Renewal Centre in Edmonton—a wonderful place to be on retreat, if any of us ever have this opportunity—with leaders of other Christian traditions, members of the Edmonton and District Council of Churches. One of the retreat speakers was Stephen London, the Anglican Bishop of Edmonton. Rev. London invited us to a practice he calls “slow spirituality.” It is “slow” in that it is a patient response to conflict or trouble in our world or our personal experience.

How often do we stop and realize that the usual human response to conflict or trouble is a fight-or-flight response, by hard-wired primitive instinct? Rev. London calls this the instinct, when faced with conflict, either toward aggressiveness (to confront and fight) or avoidance (to flee the conflict). It is amazing, when we think about it, how often we default either to aggressiveness or avoidance of conflict, to fighting or fleeing.

For me, I am perfectly fine, especially if I have my coffee first thing in the morning… That is, until I hear the news or read the newspaper! Here is my little (non-sacramental) confession: I hate all the senseless violence in our world, the nationalism, the instances of selfishness that scream: “My country first, my party first, my soapbox first, me first”! When I hear, from when I wake up in the morning, about Ukrainians trying to survive the winter, trying to survive the latest Russian bombing raids on their cities, their infrastructure, their civilian population; when I hear of demoralized Russian soldiers, not really wanting to be in Ukraine to fight their government’s unjust war, I become very angry. When I hear the latest plans to weaponize social media, attempts to promote the next convenient conspiracy theory under the guise of a little blue bird and “absolute free speech,” this, too, triggers my anger. And then I think, “What could I ever do about this silo mentality of our nations, our societies, and our media? It is seemingly each person for her or himself.” I suppose I try to live and preach the good, social justice and the common good as I see these. But, really, too frequently I (and I do not think I speak only for myself; not by far) retreat into a kind of despair, a kind of avoidance of conflict, of trouble, if I am honest with myself.

But this aggressiveness or avoidance response is not the way of a prophet. It was not Isaiah’s way. And it is not God’s way. So, what is the prophetic way forward? What is God’s way of responding to the troubles and conflicts (while also living the joys) of our world and our experiences? What is the way of patience, of “slow spirituality” of which Rev. Stephen London speaks? I think Isaiah gives us a clue to answer these questions in those first words of our first reading tonight: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

“The people” Isaiah addressed included himself. Isaiah and the other Old Testament prophets not only preached great oracles and visions—doom or consolation—to Israel. They lived what they preached, died for what they preached, witnessed Israel’s destruction, exile, and rebuilding, went into exile in solidarity with Israel’s people for what they preached. Isaiah and Israel’s other prophets “walked in darkness” with their people. This was the only way that light (hope, joy) would come from the darkness, so that the people could see and live it together.

This is the way of the prophets. This is the way of patience, of “slow spirituality” as Rev. Stephen London puts it. This is the way of what Pope Francis often calls “pastoral accompaniment” of God’s people. This is the way, from when Vatican II published its Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes (“The Joys and the Hopes”)—back in 1965—that our Church identifies as solidarity with all the “followers of Christ” in our “joys and… hopes…griefs and… anxieties,” especially those of people “who are poor or in any way afflicted.”

This is God’s way. This has been the way of our Lord Jesus Christ, from the moment he entered our world through Mary’s womb, fully human in all things but sin, fully in solidarity with us in our human “joys and… hopes…griefs and… anxieties.” This was Jesus’ way from that very first Christmas, in a stable in Bethlehem long ago.

And who were the first masters of “slow spirituality,” of patience, of overcoming our basest instincts to fight or flee trouble, at the moment of Jesus’ birth? The first masters of this—the prophets’ way, God’s way—were Mary and Joseph. And then Luke’s Gospel says to us this night that there were humble shepherds, “keeping watch over their flocks by night,” who are visited by “an Angel of the Lord.” And, sure, when “the glory of the Lord” first shone around them, Luke says, the shepherds “were terrified.” Those were terrifying times. Israel, not much differently than in the time of the Old Testament prophets, was under brutal foreign occupation. Caesar Augustus ruled from Rome; Quirinius ruled from Syria. The rulers of the world into which our Lord Jesus was born were all Roman.

But a baby, born into a manger—a food trough for animals—would rule over all these big names whose rule stopped at might and terror. Jesus was not to rule this world with might and terror, earthly power to match earthly power. No, Jesus’ rule begins as “a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” Jesus’ rule would involve dying at the hands of the big-name bringers of brutality and occupation and their enablers among Jesus’ own people, on a cross. Jesus’ rule, his light, hope, joy, and salvation, would involve walking in our human flesh, in our darkness, in solidarity with us.

This is the prophets’ way. This is God’s way. This is the way of Christmas, sisters and brothers. This is a way that has brought us everlasting “good news of great joy for all the people.” This is the only news—imagine reading this first thing in the morning—that can overcome and disempower the worst of our darkness, trouble, and conflict, if we dare not fight or flee but encounter the God of our salvation in this moment, in the trouble and conflict, but also then in the joy of this night.

For God has brought us “great joy”: To us “is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Christ, the Lord.”

Homily for Sunday, 30 January 2022– Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19; Psalm 71:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 15-17; 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13; Luke 4:21-30

One of my brother Basilian priests has said that, when we hear readings as we do today in which we hear a short verse or two, and then the reading skips over a section before continuing on, it is sometimes a good idea to pay attention to the part that is skipped over.

So what gets skipped over in our readings today? From the Book of Jeremiah we hear God’s call of Jeremiah to serve as God’s prophet. Luke’s Gospel also features a prophetic call story, that of Jesus, beginning his public ministry in the synagogue of his hometown, Nazareth.

The Book of Jeremiah begins with God’s call to the prophet, lines from our Scriptures than which few are more beautiful: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” For me, God’s opening revelation to Jeremiah, the beginning of God’s call to Jeremiah to be his prophet, is always a beautiful reminder that, whatever I had planned for my life; however we have discerned how God is calling us to live and serve God in our lives, God had a plan, for me and for each one of us, before we were even conceived!

But what if we do not want to do or be exactly who God is calling us to be? What if the vocation to which God is calling us is, say, one that will put our life in danger? Such is the case with Jeremiah. As soon as Jeremiah hears the call of God to be a prophet to God’s people, he senses the real danger to his life, and immediately tries to refuse God’s call.

And this is the part of God’s call to Jeremiah that our reading skips over today. Jeremiah protests: “I do not know how to speak. I am too young.” God, do you not know that every prophet before me has been a laughingstock in Israel; that some have even been killed? Yet Jeremiah’s protests are to no avail. God has his heart set on Jeremiah as God’s prophet, and even promises to protect Jeremiah against the worst the people would do to him. “They will fight against you,” God reassures Jeremiah, “but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you… to deliver you.”

I will admit that the part our Gospel reading from Luke skips over today is not really skipped over. We heard last Sunday what today’s Gospel reading does not repeat: The mission statement of Jesus’ public ministry, in the synagogue of his hometown, Nazareth. Jesus is given the scroll of the prophet Isaiah to read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

Our Gospel reading picks up again today where Jesus rolls up the scroll, sits down, and says to everybody gathered in the synagogue, with all eyes in the assembly “fixed on him”: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” I find it consoling to be reminded that Jesus’ public ministry started well that day in his hometown. In that synagogue of Nazareth, Luke says, “all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” Even the assembly’s identification of Jesus as “Joseph’s son” is spun positively in Luke’s Gospel, whereas in the other Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and John), when the people who hear Jesus ask, “Is this not Joseph’s son?”, they mean it in an insulting way. And, I do not know how all of us feel but, when Jesus’ audience belittles him by asking, “Is this not Joseph’s son”; the son of the carpenter, I begin to feel just a little indignant, wanting to defend not only Jesus but Joseph, the humble, righteous man whom God chose to mentor Jesus like a father in this world.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ public ministry begins well, even in the eyes of the people of his hometown. This is in marked contrast to Jeremiah, or in fact most if not all the prophets: Their ministry is poorly-received by the people from the start. It is no wonder that Jeremiah, from the beginning of the biblical book in his name, wanted to get out of being a prophet to Judah as God had called him from before he was even conceived in the womb.

But the good will of the people toward Jesus would not last. We know this from what we hear in Luke’s Gospel today. And we know this from the fact that, even though Jesus escapes the murderous rage of the mob who wants to “hurl [Jesus] off the cliff” at the end of today’s Gospel reading, his destiny—the focal point of our Gospels—is to be tortured and crucified; to die for us in this exceedingly cruel way.

It is unclear from Luke’s account what the people in the assembly that day in Nazareth wanted to hear from Jesus. But maybe they wanted to hear a message that would support elements of tribalism and sectarianism in their social and religious attitudes. Maybe they were unaware, until those tribalistic and sectarian attitudes were kindled into open fury at Jesus’ message in their synagogue, of the extent to which those attitudes had affected them and become engrained in them.

We, sisters and brothers, are not exempt, either, from the kind of insular tribalism and sectarianism—a “silo mentality”—that nearly led to Jesus being killed on the very first day of his public ministry, in his own hometown. It was the movement and the mentality among Jesus’ own people that cried out, “We are God’s chosen people,” over and against the people of other nations and faiths: The Phoenician people, represented in Jesus’ commentary in today’s Gospel by the widow of Zarephath, to whom Elijah was sent in a time of famine in 1 Kings; the Syrians, represented by the Syrian king’s general, Naaman, who is afflicted with leprosy but healed by Elijah’s prophetic successor, Elisha. “We are God’s chosen people,” the people in the synagogue of Nazareth protested. “God’s promise of salvation; God’s covenant; God’s presence would never be with other people as it is for us”! Why should we be concerned for the other; for people not of our nation? It was Israel first, after all. And so their rage was kindled against Jesus.

But how often do we hear or observe the same silo mentality at work today? How often do we hear cries of “our country first”; our tribe first; our religious creed first; our social “in” group first; and ultimately me first? Why should I be concerned about the other person, especially the poor or otherwise excluded person? Why should I be concerned (some say today) about protecting public health, out of love of neighbour, in the face of the public health crisis our world continues to face, and that disproportionately affects the already-disadvantaged? Jesus’ counter-message to this entitled and selfish insularity is as challenging and as controversial today as when he preached it in his hometown synagogue of Nazareth. It is challenging and controversial to many of our sister and brother Christians of our time.

Jesus’ message is challenging and controversial still, first because it did not begin with Jesus and, second, because his message is not some superficial all-inclusiveness, but an inclusiveness that is preferential toward the people whom this world’s elites exclude in the name of nation first; the well-to-do of society first; the advantaged first; me first. Jesus’ vision of the reign of God on earth—think of this when we pray, as part of the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come”—is one that is preferentially inclusive of the poor, the disadvantaged, the outsider, the poor first. Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of God is one preferentially inclusive of those whom the entitled and advantaged exclude: Not one Israelite, but the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian!

This vision of God’s reign on earth was the vision of God’s prophets: Isaiah, whose scroll Jesus reads and interprets in the synagogue of Nazareth; Jeremiah, whom we hear first from the word of God this morning. Isaiah’s message was preferentially inclusive: All the nations would know and be invited to witness the glory of God that had saved Israel time and again. Jeremiah’s message was preferentially inclusive: Israel’s slavishness to the temple of Jerusalem would mean nothing if its people did not open their hearts to practice justice preferentially toward the least well-off: The poor, the foreigner, the widow, the orphan.

So, indeed, may we pay attention to the parts our readings at Mass skip over. But, also, may we pay attention to those parts God is urging us not to skip over: The parts of the word of God that trouble us; that are controversial to us; that challenge us or our societies in fairly well-off countries like our own to open our hearts to the least-advantaged among us first.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” This is God’s vision of justice; God’s vision of the reign of God on earth for which we pray. It is a vision that calls us beyond ourselves; beyond our social circles; often beyond our comfort, to be “good news to the poor.” It is a vision we are invited not to skip over; a vision to ensure that God’s word of our Scriptures continues to be “fulfilled in [our] hearing.”

Homily for Sunday, 11 July 2021– Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Readings of the day: Amos 7:12-15; Psalm 85:9-10, 11-12, 13-14; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:7-13

We might find it curious that, in the Bible, nobody God calls to be a prophet wants to be a prophet. Why is this? There are several reasons why the Biblical prophets do not tend to want to be prophets. Some of them are all too aware of their own inadequacy, moral or otherwise, for the task. I think of Isaiah, who pleads with God, to no avail, to choose a better prophet than him, “a man of unclean lips living among a people of unclean lips,” or Elijah, who hides from God in a cave to avoid being sent out as a prophet: “Take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”

Other prophets in the Bible have other reasons for being reluctant to accept God’s call to prophesy. Prophets during the time of Israel’s kings in the Old Testament tended not to have good reputations, or they were not widely accepted by the people who were meant to receive their messages. Many kings of the time hired “professional” prophets, who usually told the kings what they wanted to hear. Some prophets of Israel’s royal court were not simply flatterers to the king in this way, but these court prophets who challenged the king (much less got away with it with their lives or reputations intact) were few.

Enter Amos, whose call to be a prophet we hear about today. Amos is no professional prophet of any royal court. He is a humble “herdsman, a dresser of sycamore trees.” In fact, Amos is not even from the Kingdom of Israel, but from Judah. Now, this becomes a bit confusing: After the death of King Solomon, son of King David, Israel split into two kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah, centered around Jerusalem, in the south. Judah often claimed to have held onto belief in only the one God, whereas Israel and its kings believed in or worshipped many gods. This led to Israel and Judah resenting each other, so we can understand a bit better why “Amaziah, the priest of Bethel,” orders Amos to return to Judah and “never again prophesy at Bethel.”

The setting of Bethel for Amos’ call as a prophet is appropriate; it is also a bit ironic. Bethel literally means “house of El” or “house of God” (El is a Hebrew name for God). It was near the border between Israel and Judah. Bethel is where the Book of Genesis says Jacob’s vision of angels ascending and descending on a ladder between heaven and earth took place. Yet because Bethel is situated where it is—not as far away as Jerusalem, for people who lived in the northern Kingdom of Israel—Jeroboam, the first king of Israel as a kingdom separate from Judah, built golden calves, one at Bethel, so that the people of Israel did not have to travel all the way to the temple of Jerusalem to worship. Does this story of a golden calf sound familiar? The presence of a golden calf in Bethel led the people of Israel to worship it, an idol, instead of the one God of Israel, just as the golden calf in Exodus had led the people of Israel into idolatry back then. Bethel, the “house of God,” had become a house of idol worship; a house of a false god.

God sends Amos to Bethel to preach against this worship of false gods, and all the unfaithfulness and injustices that went along with it. And, we can imagine, Amos and his message were not well-received by the king of Israel, the officials of his court, or most of the people of Israel. It would be as if a foreign leader or influential person were to travel to another country today and criticize the leaders and people of that country on their own soil. This is usually not received well, even if the criticism is justified.

“Amaziah, the priest of Bethel,” essentially tells Amos to go home to Judah and spare Israel and its king the criticism Amos directs against them. This would be well and good if Amos were one of those professional royal court prophets kings of that time were used to. But Amos’ prophetic mission is not his own; it is from God. Amos never wanted to be a prophet, but God had called him from tending his flock and sycamore trees to prophesy in Israel.

In Mark’s Gospel today, we meet more people—Jesus’ twelve apostles—who never wanted to be prophets and probably could not have dreamed of the mission with which Jesus would entrust them. Yet Jesus does just that: He entrusts his apostles with a prophetic mission; a difficult mission at that. They are to travel light, so to speak, with only a staff. (This would be a good skill for me to practice, as a priest of a religious order who has traveled and served in many places.) Jesus’ apostles are to be totally reliant on God and the hospitality of the people they meet. Should the people in any place “refuse to hear” the Twelve, they are to leave, shaking the dust off their feet “as a testimony against them.”

Jesus’ instructions to the Twelve highlight the difficulty of their journey and the message they are to preach. It is a message of repentance, after all. And maybe Jesus’ instruction to his apostles to shake the dust from their feet should some people not receive their message well especially calls to mind the difficulty of the apostles’ journey and message. Nowadays, like many good Biblical sayings, though, “shake the dust from your feet” has become a convenient, catchy phrase: Do not let a disagreement, or somebody’s ill reception of a message we want to communicate, bother us; simply move on. But, whenever I hear this Gospel, with this instruction of Jesus to his apostles, I try to understand it as a challenge to listen more attentively, especially as a priest and especially to people who disagree or are not receptive, for whatever reason, to my idea or message. I think a key prophetic skill for today might be to develop this reflex to listen; not to misunderstand “shake the dust from your feet” as an excuse not to listen to those with whom we differ (or even find disagreeable).

Another key characteristic of a prophet, if we look at Jesus’ Apostles, or Amos in the Old Testament, is that a true prophet recognizes that prophecy is a gift and a commissioning from God. Amos was not a professional prophet of a royal court, somebody who wanted to be a prophet. In fact, God called him to prophesy on foreign soil to a king and people who were not receptive to his message. The same was true of Jesus’ Apostles, in many ways. To what extent is the same true of us?

This may sound far-fetched to many people (maybe less so within this group), but God calls each of us, in virtue of our baptism, to be prophetic. In baptism, each and every one of us is anointed, as Christ himself was, “Priest, Prophet, and King.” This does not necessarily mean that we will accomplish great feats of faith, or be great and powerful communicators or educators of our faith, although some of us will be or are already.

Ultimately, a prophet by definition is one who speaks for God. Our speaking (or acting, or listening) in the place of God, impelled by the call of God, may lead us to communicate a message that is unpopular, in a place or time where we will be dismissed as strange or even ridiculed. This was Amos’ reality, as he preached faithfulness to one God to the unreceptive ears of Israel’s king and his court. Our prophetic baptismal calling may be more like that of Jesus’ first apostles, whom Jesus sent forth to preach repentance (similarly to how Amos was sent forth but, in the apostles’ case, they worked more as a team or in small groups than the more solitary prophets of the Old Testament, like Amos, did), but also to console and to heal the sick. More often, we will live out our prophetic mission in unassuming ways, making God known and heard through small everyday acts of kindness and mercy.

There are perhaps countless ways to live our prophetic calling from God, but each of us holds in common a baptismal calling to act, speak, listen—to do all we do—in a way that makes God most present in our world. And, as the letter to the Ephesians reminds us, we did not choose this prophetic calling from God, but God has chosen us for a purpose. God has chosen us “in Christ,” not only in baptism but “before the foundation of the world.” This is remarkable language from Ephesians!

In whatever particular way we live our prophetic calling from God, we can be assured, Ephesians says, that we have been blessed “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens.” We are called, yet also equipped with every blessing, to be God’s prophets in our time: To be God’s ears that listen, God’s mouth that speaks, God’s hands that work; that heal; that console, God’s feet that carry us to each encounter with God’s people, while we trust fully in God’s strength and blessings to see our prophetic journey through.

Homily for Sunday, 29 December 2019– The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Readings of the day: Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14; Psalm 128:1-2, 3, 4-5; Colossians 3:12-21; Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

This homily was given at St. Clare Church and St. Joseph’s College, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Did we miss something? Our Gospel reading today begins as “the wise men” have already left the place of the Lord’s Nativity in Bethlehem. At least I thought we did not celebrate the Epiphany, the “making known” of the Lord through these wise men to the world, until the first Sunday after the New Year. At this point in our Christmas season, we would not yet have the wise men at the Nativity Scene in our house. When I was a child, my sister, brother, and I would simulate the journey and belated arrival of the wise men to Bethlehem by inching the wise men figurines, day by day, a little closer to the Nativity scene at home until they finally arrived there on the Epiphany. By this point in the Christmas season, the magi would still have most of the living room to cover before arriving at the Nativity scene!

Yet today, on this Solemnity of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Matthew’s Gospel says that the wise men had already arrived and left. Maybe they simply decided to arrive early this year, right? Maybe they braved those Boxing Day sales on gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Well, not really. We will still celebrate the Epiphany, when we will hear of the arrival of the magi at Bethlehem from the same Gospel of Matthew. So what is going on here?

First, let us be clear that our Church’s celebration of Advent and Christmastime is not play-acting, and it does not follow an orderly timeline of historical events. If our Church’s celebrations this time of year do not follow a precise order of historical events, then what is their purpose? What was Matthew’s purpose in giving us the Gospel we hear today and, more importantly, what might it mean for us today?

This part of the infancy narrative, as it is called, of Matthew’s Gospel, from Matthew’s telling of how Jesus came to be born of Mary and Joseph, to the arrival and parting of the wise men, to the Holy Family’s flight to and return from Egypt to escape the massacre by Herod, is particular to Matthew in many ways. Compared to the other Gospels in our Bible, Matthew devotes much more detail especially to Joseph, husband of Mary. Even then, though, we know little about this Joseph of Nazareth from our Gospels; of the man Matthew first introduces to us as “a righteous man,” concerned not to put Mary in danger after she conceives Jesus “by the Holy Spirit” before she and Joseph live together. Joseph never speaks a word in Matthew’s or any of the other Gospels. But those three words of Matthew’s to describe Joseph, “a righteous man,” speak volumes about the saintliness of Joseph; about his care for his family—the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—about his care for us, the Church, and about how we might be called to model our lives after that of St. Joseph and the Holy Family.

Joseph may not speak a word in our Gospels, but he is a master communicator, especially with God but with us, too. Joseph communicates with God through an angel in three dreams in Matthew’s infancy narrative, the last two of them in today’s Gospel reading: First, when the angel says to Joseph not to fear and to take the pregnant Mary into his home as his wife; second, before the Holy Family’s escape to Egypt; and, third, when Joseph hears from the angel that Herod is dead and it is safe to return with Mary and Jesus from Egypt home to Israel.

In many ways Matthew’s presentation of Joseph of Nazareth parallels, deliberately or not on Matthew’s part, how another Joseph famous for dreaming and interpreting dreams is presented in the Old Testament Book of Genesis. God reveals his favour toward the Joseph of Genesis through dreams; God favours Joseph over his brothers in a way that angers Joseph’s brothers and leads them to leave Joseph in a cistern in Egypt to die. The Joseph of Genesis, of course, survives and goes on to be a prominent figure (and dream interpreter) in prison and then in Pharaoh’s court.

The parallels between Joseph of the Book of Genesis and Joseph of our Gospels are not perfect: The New Testament Joseph does not speak a word recorded in our Bible, whereas the Old Testament Joseph speaks plenty, interprets his dreams vocally, and would go on to have the story of his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (loosely) told in a famous Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera. Joseph of Nazareth is more of a humble behind-the-scenes dreamer, although he, like his Old Testament name counterpart, is a prophetic figure. Joseph of Nazareth plays a critical role in the fulfillment of “the law and the prophets” in Jesus Christ according to Matthew’s Gospel.

Joseph of Nazareth is a master communicator; an obedient communicator with God, not so much in the sense of blindly following what God’s angel tells him to do in his dreams as in the sense of attentive listening to what God reveals to him through these dreams. Joseph is, first and foremost, “a righteous man”; these are Matthew’s first words to describe Joseph.

Joseph of Nazareth is a model and a prophet from God to us; a master communicator to us in his faithfulness to and his care for Mary and Jesus. Joseph of Nazareth is a model and a prophet to us of solidarity with the most vulnerable among us. Without hesitation, Joseph the Righteous welcomes Mary into his home as his wife. Without hesitation, Joseph flees Herod’s tyranny, placing himself along with Mary and Jesus in solidarity with everybody through the ages who are unwelcome or subject to violence, even in their own homelands; people who continue to encounter not welcome but walls, literal and figurative, in the lands to which they flee desperately for safety; all people who, as Pope Francis reminded us on Christmas Day, continue to be subject to injustices that make them “cross seas and deserts that become cemeteries.”

Today, on this Solemnity of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we remember and we celebrate St. Joseph of Nazareth, who never hesitates to place himself within our human realities, from the joyful to the tragic. The obedience, faithfulness, and attentiveness of Joseph of Nazareth to God shows us the immaculate purity of Mary, Mother of God; mother of the Church; our mother. This, in turn, shows us the way to God and to God’s Son, Jesus Christ; the way to our salvation.

The Holy Family of Jesus our Lord and Saviour, Mary our Mother, and the righteous dreamer, Joseph, exemplifies a truth expressed so beautifully nearer to our time, in the opening lines of Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes: “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the followers of Christ… United in Christ, [we] are led by the Holy Spirit in [our] journey to the Kingdom of [our] Father and [we welcome] the news of salvation that is meant for every person. That is why this community [the Church] realizes that it is truly linked with humankind and its history by the deepest of bonds.”

Our “joys and hopes,” and if I dare say dreams, were the “joys and hopes” of the Holy Family. They were central to the dreams of Joseph the Righteous of Nazareth, Joseph’s silent yet prophetic communication and intercession between God and us. They are the “joys and hopes”; the dreams of our Church, of one another, for one another here at a most essential level. These are “the joys and the hopes”; the most essential dream of God for us: That, through Jesus Christ, through the intercession of the Holy Family and all the saints, our journeys; our lives, our experiences from the joyful to the tragic, will lead us home to God himself, to eternal life.