Homily for Friday, 25 December 2020– Nativity of the Lord

Readings of the day (for Christmas Mass at Night): Isaiah 9:1-6; Psalm 96:1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14

This homily was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada.

Merry Christmas, sisters and brothers! How many of us can remember an event or several events, dates and places of local, even personal significance to us, but also of more worldwide significance? These are the events when we might say, “We know where we were when”…

Some of us, if we go back some time ago, may remember where we were when various wars began or ended: For example, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, or more recent conflicts in the former Yugoslavia or Iraq or Afghanistan. Some of us, or people we know and love, may have fought in or lost loved ones in these wars.

Within the Church, some of us might remember where we were when a so-called “caretaker pope,” St. John XXIII, shocked both the Church and the world by calling the Second Vatican Council, not because the Church or the world were in a particular crisis, but to open the Church and the world to discern the voice of the Holy Spirit in light of world events, “the signs of the times.” Vatican II, with a number of bishops in attendance never before seen at a Council in our Church’s history, as well as many Catholic expert theologians and non-Catholic observers, discussed topics ranging from the nature and mission of the Church itself, to its liturgy and sacraments, to the meaning of religious freedom and other human rights, to themes of peace and justice, to the role of social communications.

Many of us may remember where we were at the end of the Cold War, as the Berlin Wall was dismantled and the Soviet Union collapsed. From the first landing on the moon to the long-awaited approval and distribution of vaccines against COVID-19 (and many more events in between): We know where we were when these local events with worldwide, even universal significance, happened.

It may seem that 2020 has not given us much to be cheerful about. The news has been dominated by COVID-19, a disease with virulence not experienced since the flu pandemic after World War I. My experience has been that even conversations with friends, family, and my brother Basilian priests are often dominated by the latest COVID news: How many new cases today? How many deaths? Is the government about to put in place new restrictions? Terms like “physical distancing” have become part of our vocabulary. Mental and spiritual health concerns amid the distancing and aloneness have compounded with the physical health crisis of the pandemic itself. Our churches and businesses, if not shuttered completely, are allowed a small fraction of their capacity of people.

With that, I want to make a point of acknowledging with gratitude everybody who is joining us from afar, via livestream, to worship, and especially to celebrate this Christmas, the Nativity of our Lord. I thank you. I thank everybody who is here in person. I thank volunteers, cleaners, parish staff, priests and other liturgical ministers, people who serve the disadvantaged and vulnerable—everybody who has made it possible for us to celebrate here at all. Again, a Merry Christmas to everybody!

Back in March, the evening before COVID-19 forced many countries, including France where I was living then, into lockdown, I remember where I was: Hearing confessions in a small parish in Paris. That evening, the church was full of people trying anxiously to receive the sacrament of reconciliation before Easter. The next day, and for two months after that, the churches were closed, and all of France went into lockdown.

In the midst of this pandemic, on May 25, George Floyd, a Black man, was killed on a street in Minneapolis. This and other similar incidents ignited protests and a nationwide, even worldwide reckoning with socially systemic racism and abuses of power. I remember where I was, in the days after George Floyd’s death, on the phone with an African American friend from my first years as a priest in Rochester, New York; my friend who was distraught at the violence, the racism, the slurs to which she personally had been subjected; my friend who gave me that graced opportunity simply to listen, to pray with and for her as she spoke.

The COVID-19 pandemic, the reckoning with and protests against systemic racism and brutality in law enforcement: These are recent events with local, but also very universal dimensions. We know where we have been, but these events have affected the whole world. This relationship between the local and the universal brings to my mind a prayer our Basilian communities in Colombia often pray (and prayed while I served in several stints in those communities), based on part of Chapter 12 of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “Let us rejoice with those who rejoice; let us weep with those who are weeping”… How, then, do we accomplish what we pray for in that prayer?

How do we rejoice with those who rejoice, especially in this celebration of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus? How do we weep with those who weep; with those who are ill in mind, body, or spirit; with those who have been subject to racism, other forms of unjust discrimination or abuses of power; with those who have lost loved ones, or lost their livelihoods; who have lost the ability to worship in person and receive communion during this pandemic?

Perhaps our rejoicing with those who rejoice, and weeping with those who weep—in a word, solidarity—depends on our remembrance of where we are in the midst of world events and events that affect us personally. And, better yet, our solidarity with one another depends on our remembrance of who we are: A People of God, the Church, called together to celebrate this night and forevermore the birth of a child, Jesus Christ, Emmanuel (God-with-us; God in solidarity with us!) into a manger in Bethlehem; called together to celebrate this local event that has universal significance; that is essential to our salvation, not as disconnected individuals but together.

From the moment of Jesus’ birth, Luke’s Gospel says to us tonight, everybody who experienced this event was acutely aware of both its local and universal significance. Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and the angel who first spoke to the shepherds the “good news of great joy” of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem: Everybody knew where they were in those moments, but that this event held significance far beyond them.

Luke, the Gospel writer, the historian par excellence among the four Biblical Gospel writers down to the finest details, emphasizes the very local dimensions of Jesus’ birth. Caesar Augustus ruled the vast and powerful Roman Empire, which included Israel, land of Jesus’ birth, as the Roman province of Palestine. Quirinius, who is only mentioned this once in the entire New Testament, governed Syria, a rather insignificant part of the Roman Empire at the time. Mary and Joseph, a humble, we can imagine fairly ordinary Jewish couple, travel from “Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the City of David called Bethlehem,” Joseph’s hometown, to register in the Roman census. Mary, in a detail Luke gives us that is at least bizarre if not scandalous for the time, is engaged to Joseph but finds herself “with child.” She gives birth “to her firstborn son and [wraps] him in swaddling clothes, and [lays] him in a manger, because there [is] no place for them in the inn.”

Angels appear very specifically to “shepherds living in the fields.” These shepherds, and the place where the angels announce our Saviour’s birth to them, are what Pope Francis might call at “the peripheries”: Poor, dirty, smelling like their sheep, and probably feared or at least ignored by most people who lived in the cities and villages.

This, sisters and brothers, is how God chose to enter into solidarity as one like us, human, in all things but sin: To rejoice with us as we rejoice; to weep with us when we weep; to open to us the gates of salvation; to call us to remember where and who we are. The Nativity of our Lord was a very local event: Augustus ruled from Rome; Quirinius governed Roman Syria; a typical first-century Jewish couple, Mary and Joseph (typical except for Mary’s pregnancy) brought a baby into the world from its peripheries—into a manger!

The first announcement of this birth was equally “peripheral,” humble, local: From angels to shepherds. Yet, like so many of our world events but more decisively, this peripheral, humble, local event holds universal significance. Into a manger in Bethlehem, in first century Roman Palestine, is born for us; for the universe, for all times and places, “a Saviour, who is the Christ, the Lord.”

Homily for Friday, 7 June 2019– St. Kateri School Mass

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18; Responsorial Psalm: Mass with Children; Matthew 5:13-16

Friday of the 7th week of Easter

How many of us here like to eat the occasional salty food or snack? What are some of our favorite salty foods?

…

One of my favorite salty foods is tortilla chips. If tortilla chips are anywhere near me, I can very easily eat more of them than I probably should.

Yesterday morning I visited a few of your classrooms here at St. Kateri School. This brought back wonderful memories of when I was living here at St. Kateri Parish and would visit your classrooms and greet you at the front door most days. For four years now, which is way too many tortilla chips ago, not to mention other salty French foods like Paris’ own ham and butter sandwiches, I have been living and studying in Paris, France. One class I visited yesterday asked how old I am. When children ask me this question, I like to play a little game in which I ask the children to guess how old I am. No, I am not 103 years old… But I am probably at the age at which I should be more mindful of eating a good variety of healthy food: Not too much, not too little, not too sweet, and not too salty. The tortilla chip habit is difficult to break, though.

In fact, no matter how old we are, all of us could afford to be mindful of eating what we call a balanced diet. But in our Gospel today, from Matthew, Jesus asks us to do, or actually to be, something even more important than eating the right amount and kinds of every food, and not too many tortilla chips. Does anybody remember from the Gospel we have just heard: What, or who, does Jesus ask us to be? Who does Jesus say we already are and need to be more and more?

…

Jesus says that we “are the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” What does Jesus mean by calling us and asking us to be “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world”? God could have made us as great big light bulbs if God had wanted us to be light, or maybe those LED bulbs; they use less energy and are better for the environment, anyway. If God had wanted us to be salt, he could have made us as giant tortilla chips! Okay, that is not quite what Jesus means, but then how are we to be salt and light in our world?

In Jesus’ time, salt was very important for just about everything. It was used in food so it would not spoil, because there were no refrigerators back then. Salt was even used to pay people for their work, in place of coins and paper money. This is where the word “salary” comes from, to describe what somebody earns at her or his job. Even today, when we speak of people who are “worth their salt,” this means that they are to be trusted or do valuable, honest work.

Speaking of light, we started today’s Mass by singing the hymn, “We are Marching in the Light of God.” I especially love this song, because I learned it not only in English but in its original language, Zulu, while singing in a choir when I was in high school: “Siyahamba, ku-kan-yen’ kwen-khos, siyahamba, ku-kan-yen’ kwen-khos.” Not too many years ago, in South Africa, where this song comes from, this hymn was originally a song to protest the racism in much of the society and government there: People with dark skin were treated unfairly by people with lighter skin, because of the color of their skin. They could not buy land to farm to feed their families. They could not find work; could not “earn their salt,” so to speak, so the people protested by marching and singing peacefully, by “Marching in the Light of God.” And this worked to build a peaceful country with much less racism, violence, and injustice.

How, then, might we be called to march “in the light of God,” to be “salt of the earth” and “light of the world”? Here at St. Kateri School, do we not begin our day by praying for one another in our classrooms over the announcements, especially for people in our school community who are in any kind of need, who have experienced loss, who are hurt or sick? In our classrooms, do we ever notice our classmates who need extra help on their schoolwork; who need a friend; who need somebody to listen to them? How many of us, when we enter the school in the morning, hold the front door for the person entering behind us? These are a few ways in which we, at St. Kateri School, might be, as Jesus says we are and asks us to be even more, “salt of the earth” and “light of the world.”

Homily for Sunday, 20 August 2017

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 56:1, 6-7; Psalm 67:2, 3, 5, 6, 8; Romans 11:13-15, 29-32; Matthew 15:21-28

How do we understand the relationship between memory and identity? When I speak of memory and identity, a few of us may recall a book by Pope John Paul II by this title, Memory and Identity, which was published just before John Paul II died in 2005. St. John Paul II had lived through some of history’s worst imbalances between memory and identity, such that both memory and identity were emptied of their proper meaning. St. John Paul II had lived through the rise of Nazi Germany, the height of communism in Eastern Europe, and other regimes that replaced the worship of God with the worship of the state and of ideology. These forms of what we might call “identity politics” or nationalism brought the worst wars and mass murder ever wrought on humanity; more Christian martyrs in the past century than in all the previous centuries of Christianity combined.

And yet “identity politics” persist today. This past week’s tragedy in Charlottesville, Virginia, is only the latest symptom of a more profound disease. This disease surfaces anytime we identify as “liberal” or “conservative” (or now perhaps by the new code words of extremism, the “alt-right” and “alt-left”) more than as Christian or more broadly human, created in God’s image and likeness. This disease shows itself when we identify as “orthodox,” as those who obey the teachings of their faith tradition as they understand them, over and against those who do not to our satisfaction; those so-called “heterodox.” This disease shows itself among those who attack the person and character of other people, too often under the guise of “pro-life,” “social justice,” or some other cause. This disease shows itself when, out of fear of those who do not identify as we do, we fail to welcome and integrate the migrant, the stranger, the refugee. This disease still leads to war, to broken relationships, and to disgusting displays of racism, among other symptoms. This disease falsifies identity and neglects the proper place of memory altogether.

Of course, the opposite is also true and often overlaps with “identity politics” disconnected from memory in its rightful sense. Memory can become so disconnected from identity that it becomes a sham and neglects altogether our identity, first and foremost, as daughters and sons of God. St. John Paul II, and many of us, have known in our lifetimes the effects of this disconnection of identity from memory, which then becomes a fraudulent mirage of itself. Genocides in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere, tribal warfare, conflicts in Latin America over ideology, aided and abetted by more powerful nations seeking their own ideological, resource, and military interests, and the continued scourge of terrorism (on which note we pray for the victims and people of Barcelona especially this week) stand out especially in my mind as instances of false memory that ends up, ironically, forgetting our fundamental, God-given identity.

And so where do we find hope in all this? How might we connect and balance memory and identity correctly in our lives and in our world today? The prophet Isaiah begins today with a critical message for us to hear. He says, “Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed.” In what way does God call us, through Isaiah, to “maintain justice and do what is right,” hoping for the final completion of God’s work of our “salvation” at the end of time?

Isaiah identifies maintaining justice and doing “what is right” especially with how we treat the “foreigners” among us, specifically “foreigners who join themselves to the Lord.” Could this not be an excuse, though, for us to deepen divisions, presuming we know who the “foreigners” are, and which foreigners have joined “themselves to the Lord” and which have not? I do not mean primarily to speak of our natural human tendency to think and communicate in categories, to identify and differentiate ourselves from one another in terms of nationality, race, religion, or any other category. To think and communicate in categories is not in itself wrong, but it can become dangerous when what makes another person foreign to us, “other” than us— nationality, race, religion, wealth, position or level of prestige in our Church, immigration status, differences in opinion, in political ideology, or disagreements in weighing of moral questions, and so forth— becomes greater than what unites us to one another and joins us all “to the Lord.”

Is the counter to this danger; the cure for this disease not then to seek out among people who differ from us what unites us “to the Lord”? Is this not God’s call to us to identify one another not first as “other”; not as friend or enemy; not as black or white; Christian or not; orthodox or heterodox; liberal or conservative; straight or gay; citizen or migrant or refugee; male or female, but as people beloved of God whom God wants to save— each and every one of us? This is, to me, how we might understand identity in its rightful sense. And only if we understand identity in this sense will we be able to balance it rightly with memory. And what is memory in this context? If identity is to define how we belong to and originate in God, as daughters and sons of God, then memory is to be mindful of God as our final goal; our one and only Saviour; the one and only object of our worship. This excludes raising any leader in our world, particularly anybody whose goals are to divide, to dehumanize, to stoke fear, and to believe his power to be beyond any check and balance, including God, to the level of saviour. We have but one Saviour, Jesus Christ, Son of God.

St. Paul knew this, and he experienced a famous conversion from living memory and identity out of balance; from presuming to know the will of God in murdering many of the earliest Christians in the same way too many today destroy and dehumanize anybody they view as “other.” St. Paul’s conversion was to be able to balance memory and identity rightly, and to acknowledge not himself but God in Christ as Saviour. The converted St. Paul never considered himself better, not least in God’s eyes, than the people he taught and served. St. Paul’s identity remained that of a proud and intense Jew, but after his conversion his identity was dependent on God; he would identify himself as God’s first. And so his memory was fixed on God who would call him to preach; to teach; to suffer and to die; God who would call St. Paul to heaven.

Who better than St. Paul to speak to the Gentiles, those who did not share his own Jewish identity, but did share his more important identity as beloved of God? This is at the core of St. Paul’s message to us through his Letter to the Romans. Our ministry is to emphasize and to re-emphasize constantly, by our words and our lived example, our common identity as beloved of God and our common memory that the final goal for every one of us is salvation in and by our one God. And not we, finally, but our one God, in this work of salvation, will erase any worldly division; any evil that is contrary to our salvation between now and the end of time.

Do we trust God enough to let God be our Saviour, or will fear outweigh our trust in God? Do we have the courage and faith of the woman of Matthew’s Gospel, who persists long enough that Jesus must acknowledge that she, too, a foreigner; a non-Jew, shares in the identity of beloved of God and remembers that her salvation, and the life of her daughter, is from God. “Woman, great is your faith”!

Great is our faith insofar as we identify first as beloved of God and remember that we are saved by God in Christ alone. Great is our faith insofar as we seek our identity and build memory not on worldly divisions but on our unity as people of God; as one people created in God’s image and likeness, seeking to bring the joy of this, our common memory and identity in our God, to all people and to all creation.