Homily for Sunday, 10 December 2023– Second Sunday of Advent, Year B

Readings of the day: Isaiah 40:1-5,, 9-11; Psalm 85:9-10, 11-12, 13-14; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8

We find ourselves at the beginning, sisters and brothers: “The beginning,” Mark’s Gospel proclaims by its very first words, “of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Mark wastes no time in revealing to us who Jesus is, “the Son of God,” and that his coming to live as one of us, in our human flesh—his advent—is “good news.” Spoiler alert! Mark does not even give us a nice, long account of Jesus’ infancy and childhood, to help us ease into the story, this “good news” he proclaims. Mark begins with the powerful preaching of John the Baptist, “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.” By this point Jesus is already an adult. Jesus, the one John announces as “more powerful” than he is, has probably already attracted followers. He has caused some “good [and necessary] trouble” in the minds and consciences of many already, the minds and consciences of the comfortable and powerful of this world.

So much for starting at the beginning of the story! And today we are not even at the beginning of Advent. We are a full week into the shortest possible Advent this year—three weeks and a day between the first Sunday of Advent, a week ago, and Christmas Day. And I do not know about any of us, but as of now I have yet to do much at all to prepare for Christmas. Gift shopping? Not started. Visiting family and friends I may not have seen for a while? Okay, I have done some visiting. Taking time to be with, or at least to pray for, people in need—the sick, the poor, those who find this time of year to be a struggle for many reasons? Okay, but I could do better. Tidying my physical spaces—my room, my office—let alone doing a little Christmas decorating?! Yikes! I think, if Jesus were to step into my room now, let alone the spiritual room that is my heart, my conscience, he might sound a little like my mother did when I was a kid: “Did a tornado hit here, or what”?!

(By the way, I will offer this little advertisement for those of us who want to do some spiritual—heart, mind, conscience—tidying soon: St. Joseph’s College’s Advent penance service is this Friday at 7:00 pm).

So, in a way it is okay if we are a little behind on our Advent-Christmas preparations, if our spiritual let alone physical spaces look chaotic to say the least. Advent offers us a new beginning. God meets us where we are in our present; in fact God sends messengers ahead of himself and his Christ—John the Baptist, the saints, holy people we know and meet in our own lives—to draw us closer to him and to eternal life. That is the “good news”!

Yet Advent is a bit of a strange time of year. We are at a beginning of the Church’s liturgical year, of the story of our world’s first encounter with God in the human person of Jesus. But we are, at the same time, well into this story, after many encounters in history and in our own lives already with God’s “good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Last Sunday, the first Sunday, the very beginning of Advent, our readings at Mass gave the sense more of an end, or a story very much in progress, than a beginning. We began this time of Advent by hearing from near the end of the Gospel of Mark: Jesus, just before his passion and death, urging his disciples to “keep awake,” ready for the events of Jesus’ passion and death that would happen right after that point, but more importantly for an unknown “Last Day” when Jesus will return in glory. St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians also oriented us toward that final “day of our Lord Jesus Christ,” exhorting the Corinthian Christian faithful to remain “blameless” until that day by the Lord’s strength and grace. The Psalm reinforced our plea for divine strength. And, a week ago, we heard Isaiah making final plans for the return of the people of Israel from a long exile in Babylon. That exile, it seems, had made the people of Israel stubborn; only a small “remnant” would return to their land to rebuild the nation and its temple in Jerusalem that had been the centre of the Jewish faith. So Isaiah pleads for divine intervention to break through Israel’s sin and hardness of heart: “O [LORD] that you would tear open the heavens and come down”!

Today, this second Sunday of Advent, our readings start back at beginnings: Mark speaks of “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” The second letter of Peter gives us a sense of being closer to a beginning than an end. The people for whom 2 Peter is written have become impatient. The first Christians of that community had suffered persecution. Many had already died. 2 Peter reminds them that, in God’s time, this is only the beginning: “The Lord is not slow about his promise… but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.”

Peter’s message is very similar to that of John the Baptist in today’s Gospel. For John the Baptist, there is urgency to repentance to prepare for the coming of Jesus, the “one after” John. Yet, 2 Peter says, there is also urgency to know God’s mercy and peace, God’s meeting us in the sometimes-chaotic events of this world and our lives, even as we strive to repent, to tidy our spiritual spaces, our minds and consciences.

Our God has never been one to wait until we have everything in order—our hearts, our minds, our consciences—before coming to be with us in our present time. The second letter of Peter offers us a very typical (for a biblical text) vision of the end of time. It will be chaos: “The heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire.” But 2 Peter invites us not to worry about this chaos. Instead, lead “lives of holiness and godliness,” practice conversion and repentance here and now; “strive to be found by [the Lord] at peace.”

Jesus promised to return at the end of time. I think we can be almost certain that the end of time, when Jesus will re-enter this world, will be chaotic. We do not know what the world will look like when Jesus returns on the Last Day. But we can remain at peace if we think back to the beginning, the first time Jesus entered our world. God took our human flesh in a world that was chaotic then. Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary into a poor, chaotic, smelly stable with barn animals, at a time when the Romans ruled Jesus’ homeland by force.

God does not wait for us to have everything in order before entering into our present in a way that changes our existence profoundly and irreversibly. Well before Jesus’ time, the prophet Isaiah was calling to a people still in exile in Babylon, preparing to return to, well, chaos and ruin—a ruined temple—in Jerusalem. And Isaiah says, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid.”

Isaiah’s cry to Jerusalem is something like, “Yes, what you see, what is left of your homeland is chaos, ruin. But God is not waiting. God brings comfort, peace, justice, salvation now.” As the Psalmist says, here and now, “justice and peace” are about to “kiss each other.” This is a new beginning for the people of Israel!

God does not wait for us to have everything in order. God enters and changes our existence when God wills it. That is what we celebrate this Advent season, sisters and brothers! God has already entered this world, amid its chaos—our not having everything quite in order—many times. Ultimately, God entered our world in the human person of Jesus Christ, into a poor, chaotic, smelly scene, a nation ruled by foreign force.

Finally, Jesus promises us that he will enter our world again on the Last Day. All we can do to be ready for the Last Day, Jesus’ return in glory, is the same thing we can do be ready for this day, for the next day, the day after that, and so on: Remember how God has intervened in our world in the past. Remember that God did not wait until we had everything in order to bring peace, justice, order, comfort, mercy. May we be at peace, knowing and reflecting on this. Our time of Advent takes us back to those beginnings even as we anticipate with hope the Last Day, Jesus’ return in glory.

Today, in the midst of Advent, we remember the beginning of God’s comfort to Israel, still in exile, through the prophet Isaiah. We remember the preaching of John the Baptist, a message of repentance and hope. We pray with the Psalmist for a time when “justice and peace will kiss each other.” We remember 2 Peter’s exhortation to remain at peace. These have been our new beginnings in history, God entering our story when we most need God, with peace, justice, order, comfort, mercy. This is the “good news” our Scriptures proclaim today, “the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Homily for Wednesday, 22 February 2023– Ash Wednesday

Readings of the day: Joel 2:12-18; Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 12-13, 8-9, 14, 17; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

Sisters and brothers, in a few moments we will bless and distribute ashes to remember that we are sinners before God, in need of God’s grace to live this time of Lent as a time of repentance: We turn from our sin and toward God’s mercy and love.

Yet, in Matthew’s Gospel from which we have just heard, Jesus warns against outward actions of faith or piety that draw attention to ourselves. Jesus says that, when we give alms, pray, or fast, not to do these things so that we may be seen by others, but “in secret,” so that our “Father who sees in secret may reward” us.

So, when we receive ashes and go forth from here with this sign on our foreheads, will we not be acting against everything Jesus has said in our Gospel reading today? Well, not quite: We are still acting within the spirit of what Jesus says, as long as our intention behind wearing ashes on our foreheads in public is right. In other words, the ashes we display today are not about us. They are all about God and God’s love for us.

These ashes with which we will sign ourselves today are not about doom, gloom, or how awful sinners we are. No, these ashes are our sign of joy to the world as we begin this time of Lent.

To say that the ashes we will receive are a sign of joy does not deny that we are sinners, or that there is great sin and evil in our world. On the contrary: Our ashes proclaim to our world, loud and clear, that sin is real and that we are, individually and socially, afflicted by sin.

At the same time, the ashes we show the world proclaim God’s love and mercy toward us. Think of the prayer we hear when we receive ashes on our foreheads: “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” Repentance, turning from sin so we can turn toward God, is only possible because God so loves us—“God so loved the world”—that he intervened in this world, giving us his Son, human like us in all things but sin, to give us the chance to be saved. God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, so that our repentance would have a point: We turn from sin to turn toward God, to recommit to living as God has lived among us in the person of Jesus. Without God’s initiative toward our salvation in this way, we would have no reason to repent: We would turn from our sin, but toward whom, if not God?

Repentance makes sense, and our salvation is possible, only because God loves us and wants us to be with him in eternal life. Yet it is not enough for God that God wants each of us to be saved. No, God wants us to proclaim this message to the whole world. God sends us forth, today with blessed ashes as a sign of God’s love, God’s mercy toward us, to be, as St. Paul says in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, “ambassadors for Christ.”

“Now is the day of salvation,” St. Paul proclaims. We proclaim this same message with ashes as St. Paul once proclaimed in words.

Undoubtedly, we might feel (and perhaps we should feel) a hint of unworthiness to be ambassadors, messengers, prophets of God’s salvation in Christ in the way God has sent us into the world to be. The older form of the prayer when we received ashes on Ash Wednesday was from the Book of Genesis, after Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil: “Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”

If we are honest with ourselves, I think it will be easy for us to remember how weak and sinful we are, our world is, the human condition is, fallen from the original state in which God created and blessed us. And we will be a bit broken-hearted about our sin.

The prophet Joel says to us today, “Rend your hearts and not your clothing.” We turn to God, our hearts broken by our sin. And God turns us back out into our wanting world, saying: O redeemed sinners, whom I have brought back to myself by the blood of the cross, now go out into the world wearing ashes. These ashes are not about you, God might say to us. This season of repentance we call Lent is not about us, sisters and brothers, or about our sin. Lent and our ashes are about God sending us back out into the world to be ambassadors of God’s love, grace, and mercy, for “now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation.”

Homily for Tuesday, 2 July 2019

Readings of the day: Genesis 19:15-29; Psalm 26:2-3, 9-10, 11-12; Matthew 8:23-27

Tuesday of the 13th week in Ordinary Time

Why is God, especially in the Old Testament, sometimes so cruel to people?

I ask this question in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek way, aware that the rejection of most of the Old Testament as part of our Bible because the God of the Old Testament was perceived as cruel, while the God of the New Testament (in Christ especially) was perceived as kind and merciful, was actually a heresy of the early Church. This heresy was called Marcionism, after its supposed proponent, Marcion of Rome.

We find many passages in the Old Testament that highlight God’s kindness and mercy, and passages in the New Testament in which God, or Jesus, become angry or even appear somewhat cruel (the overturning of the money changers’ tables in the Temple, or Jesus’ curse of an innocent fig tree in the Gospels come to mind).

But the reading we hear today from Genesis would have been excellent support for a Marcionite frame of mind back in the day. God is not (and was not, by Marcion) seen as cruel specifically because of God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. After all, Sodom and Gomorrah had been warned repeatedly to turn from their sinful ways, but chose not to do so. In this sense, Sodom and Gomorrah could be understood to have brought their destruction on themselves rather than God having chosen to destroy them. As an aside, nobody really knows the specific sin of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah that led to their destruction. Despite the weight of legendary tradition, the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was not necessarily or probably anything sexual.

But what about Abraham’s nephew Lot’s wife? Besides (we might think) her fairly innocent act of looking back at the burning Sodom and Gomorrah, what did she do that was so wrong so as to deserve God turning her “into a pillar of salt”? Surely here God seems unduly harsh toward Lot’s wife, right?

Well, if in turning Lot’s wife “into a pillar of salt” for looking back at Sodom and Gomorrah, God was not unduly harsh or cruel, God, or especially the author of this story of Sodom and Gomorrah, is quite “punny,” here and elsewhere in our Scriptures.

If we look back a chapter in Genesis to Abraham pleading with God to save Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of any righteous people there, Abraham at this point looks toward Sodom and Gomorrah (šāqap in Hebrew). To describe Lot’s wife looking back at Sodom and Gomorrah, another verb is used in the Hebrew text of the reading we have heard today: tāḇeṭ. Yet another set of Hebrew play-on-words is used to describe the destruction itself of Sodom and Gomorrah, possibly a darkly humorous reference to the vulnerability of the Dead Sea region of the Holy Land to occasional fiery and sulfurous volcanic activity and earthquakes. To this day, a tall column of salt near the Dead Sea and Mount Sodom is called “Lot’s Wife.”

All this is to say that the God of the Old Testament is not unduly cruel compared to the God of the New Testament. Take that, Marcion! God, or the Biblical authors, simply have a way with play-on-words that becomes lost in contemporary-language translations. If anything, as in Sodom and Gomorrah, the choice is ours to turn from sin or not. But failure to turn from sin has consequences for us: We incur our own destruction. And, as any “punny” Italian would say, “Traductore traditore”: “The translator is a traitor”!

Homily for Thursday, 18 August 2016– Ferial

Thursday of the 20th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 36:23-38; Psalm 51:12-13, 14-15, 18-19; Matthew 22:1-14

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

Our Gospel reading today raises many questions for me: Why do the first slaves “invited to the wedding banquet” of the king decline the king’s invitation? Why do they not simply decline politely, but instead “make light of” the invitation, while some go so far as to mistreat and kill the king’s other slaves? Why is the king so harsh toward the unfortunate man who shows up at the wedding banquet without his “wedding robe,” casting this man “into the outer darkness, where there [is] weeping and gnashing of teeth”?

These questions are difficult to answer with only the information that Matthew’s Gospel gives us. Maybe the first slaves thought their master, the king, to be harsh, and so they had planned a way of opting out of attending his wedding banquet. And maybe they mistreated his other slaves out of added spite. The king’s slaves would seem to have been right about his harshness and short temper, if the king’s treatment of the man without a wedding robe is any indication of this.

Then again, maybe we are asking the wrong questions if we are wondering why the slaves behaved the way they did or why the king in Jesus’ parable is so harsh. After all, the king is meant to be understood as God. And God would not be unduly harsh toward his people, would he? Perhaps we interpret God incorrectly as harsh for destroying the slaves and their city after they had mistreated and killed other slaves. Perhaps God, the king, has reason to cast the man without his wedding robe “into the outer darkness, where there [is] weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

But maybe we are being invited to focus less on the apparently harsh actions of God; of the king, and more on our own choices before God and one another. Now, I am in favour of the belief in a loving and merciful God who gives sinners and even serious evildoers almost infinite chances to turn from sin. And yet all of us are created with complete freedom, which includes the freedom to accept or to reject God’s mercy; God’s gift of salvation; God’s invitation to the wedding feast, the Kingdom of Heaven definitively, as it were.

And so might we direct these questions not toward God but toward ourselves: If we are given an invitation to the wedding feast, will we choose to accept God’s invitation? Will we go “into the main streets” and invite still others, without partiality, to the wedding feast? Will we wear the wedding robe of salvation given us by the king, God, at our baptism, when we were first invited to “bring” the “dignity” of this garment “unstained into the everlasting life of heaven”?

Will we pray with the humility and penance of the Psalmist: “Create in me a clean heart, O Lord,” even if our creation and re-creation by God entails breaking down our sin; our acts against God; against love; against one another, in order to rebuild dignity with which we were first created? Will we listen to prophets, of our time or of old, who call us to accountability; to repentance when necessary?

These choices are ours to make, with the freedom God has given us to make them.

Homily for Sunday, 5 July 2015

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 2:2-5; Psalm 123:1-2, 2, 3-4; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Mark 6:1-6

This homily was given at St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Parish, Annunciation Church, Rochester, NY.

When have we recognized, or failed to recognize, the presence of God in our midst? How are we called to be changed; transformed by God to recognize better the presence of God among us?

These are key questions to ask ourselves when we examine our consciences. Are not many if not most of us familiar with the practice of examination of conscience? An honest examination of conscience is a valuable way to prepare to celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation. Examination of conscience can be not only excellent preparation for reconciliation, but it is a practice I encourage us to take up daily. To make an examination of conscience is not only to recognize when we have sinned or done wrong, although this is part of it. It is primarily, I think, or recognition of moments when God has been present in our lives; in our encounters with one another; in prayer; in worship. It is, first and foremost, a profound act of trust in God’s mercy.

We pray in our Psalm response today: “Our eyes are fixed on the Lord, pleading for his mercy.” What is God’s mercy? Do not many of us; many Catholics; many Christians have a sense of God’s mercy as something we plead for when we have done wrong; when we feel guilty. How many of us have made a confession like this when celebrating reconciliation: “Father, forgive me for I have sinned. I did x twice and y five times and z ten times”? This kind of confession of a list of sins in number and in kind is well and good. I do not wish to criticize anybody who has made this kind of confession. We are meant to confess all serious sins and the number of times we commit them. I have made the “number-and-kind” confession myself. But God’s mercy; our trust in God’s mercy is so much more than this.

What is God’s mercy, then? What does it mean for us to trust in God’s mercy? For me, to trust in God’s mercy means first to be as aware as we are able of God’s presence in our lives through prayer; through works of service; through people we encounter; through worship. God’s mercy; God’s presence in our lives can and often does convict us of sin. God did precisely this through the prophets of the Old Testament. Prophets like Ezekiel in our first reading were sent to urge the people of Israel to repent from sin; to recognize their sin, their unfaithfulness to God and their injustice toward the most vulnerable of their own people. But they would only recognize their sin if they first recognized that God was not out to punish them; that our God is a God of mercy who loves us and wants us to love God and one another above all else.

Yes, God describes the people of Israel to Ezekiel as “rebels… hard of face and obstinate of heart.” But even in these harsh words there is hope for the people of Israel. God would not have sent Ezekiel or many other prophets to the ancient Israelites if there were no hope for them to repent; to turn away from sin and once again renew their trust in and faithfulness to God. This is God’s mercy at its heart: God hopes in us. God has created us as all-good. Sin is not of God but is our willful choice not to love as God loves us; not to act with God’s mercy and justice toward one another; not to act for peace; for one another’s good; the good and unity of our families; our friendships; of the Church.

God’s mercy can and does convict us of sin and urge us to repent. God’s mercy works this way through the prophet Ezekiel. God laments to Ezekiel that the people of Israel have become “rebels… hard of face and obstinate of heart”; that the future of their nation is at stake if they do not turn to God and away from sin. Yet God maintains hope that at least “they shall know that a prophet has been among them.” The people of Israel will have encountered the presence; the mercy of God, “whether they heed or resist.”

God’s mercy works in a similar way in our Gospel reading from Mark God’s mercy convicts of their sin those who do not repent and believe in Jesus; those who belittle him as “the carpenter, the son of Mary.” Jesus returns to “his native place… to teach in the synagogue” of his hometown. We would expect that many would have recognized and rejoiced in Jesus’ presence in his hometown. And probably many did. After all, by this point Jesus had become famous for his miracles; his healing the sick; his regard for the poor; his preaching and teaching. But enough people in Jesus’ hometown synagogue dismiss him as a mere “carpenter” so that Jesus “was not able to perform any mighty deed” in “his native place.” There, in Jesus’ home, “he was amazed at their lack of faith.”

But all is not lost with this bleak ending to Jesus’ visit home. Can we imagine that, if nobody there had faith in Jesus as God in their midst; if everybody had dismissed Jesus in his hometown, there would have been no Christian faith to hand on for over two thousand years. We would not be here if enough people who first encountered Jesus had not recognized him as God; had not been willing to be changed; transformed; healed; forgiven by him. Even in our Gospel reading we hear of “a few sick people” upon whom Jesus laid his hands to heal them. This is God’s mercy at work the day of Jesus’ visit home; this is God’s mercy at work among us now.

God’s mercy convicts of sin; convicts us when our faith is lacking; urges us to repentance. But God’s mercy works in so many other ways. God’s mercy keeps us steadfast; forms our conscience when we know we are acting rightly and justly. God’s mercy also keeps us humble: We recognize that we need God; God’s mercy; God’s grace to live as God has created us, for love of God and of one another.

Perhaps nobody in our Scriptures knew the reach of God’s mercy more deeply than St. Paul. By God’s mercy, St. Paul had experienced conversion from being a persecutor to an apostle, preacher, and builder of our faith. The same mercy of God kept St. Paul steadfast in his faith; in the knowledge that his works; the Gospel of Christ he preached were right. This same mercy of God kept St. Paul humble and yet confident in his mission (yes, it is possible to be both humble and confident!). St. Paul is able to endure times of seeming ineffectiveness in proclaiming and spreading our Christian faith. Especially in Corinth, a rich, independent, and stubborn community that was particularly troublesome to St. Paul, he is able to endure while being humbled by this “thorn in the flesh.” Because of God’s mercy, St. Paul has the boldness to proclaim to the Corinthians what would be beyond our logic without God’s mercy: “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

By God’s mercy we, like St. Paul, find strength when we are at our weakest. By God’s mercy we are able to proclaim and spread Christ’s Gospel confidently yet humbly. In mercy God convicts us of sin; urges us to repentance; makes us better able to confess when we have sinned; transforms us; heals us. By God’s mercy we are able to show one another mercy. By God’s mercy we are able to recognize the presence of God in our midst.

Homily for Tuesday, 9 June 2015– Ferial

Tuesday of the 10th week in Ordinary Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

Homily for Monday, 18 May 2015– Monday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 19:1-8; Psalm 68:2-3ab, 4-5acd, 6-7ab; John 16:20-23

How many of us have ever taught? How many of us are parents; grandparents; perhaps great-grandparents, and if so have been teachers in your own right? When teaching children (and sometimes adults), have you ever been in a situation where you did not know where to begin your teaching? How much do the people you are teaching know about the topic at hand?

I imagine St. Paul in our first reading, from Acts, in a situation similar to this. From Corinth he travels to Ephesus, which today is a region in western Turkey. In Paul’s time, imagine a remote area. Some people in Ephesus have heard something of Jesus; believe in him; have heard of the “baptism of repentance” offered by John the Baptist. But they have not had the same opportunities for instruction in their faith that people in larger cities (Corinth, for example) have had.

And so St. Paul encounters these Ephesians and asks them a question: “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers”? Their answer is not what Paul expects: “We have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” But Paul does not get discouraged by the Ephesians’ answer. He does not judge them. He leads them; teaches them, question to question.

In this way St. Paul discovers that these people of Ephesus have a strong faith, but one that needs refining; instruction through a supportive and universal faith community, the Church. St. Paul discovers that these Ephesians have been baptized “with the baptism of John”; that they already understand something of repentance and the mercy of God in their lives. And St. Paul is able to determine what they will still need and want: Baptism “in the name of the Lord Jesus”; the fullness of the Holy Spirit’s presence through the laying on of hands.

Paul shows himself a great teacher of the faith. And yet he is a great teacher precisely because he is a great learner. Paul learns the needs of the Ephesians; listens to them so that he is able to strengthen the faith they already have.

All of us are called to become teachers of our faith like St. Paul. We do not need to be trained educators; parents; ordained priests; belong to a religious order to teach our faith. But we are all called by God through our Christian baptism first to teach by example: To lead lives marked by kindness; gentleness; mercy. And, like St. Paul, we are invited to listen to one another’s needs; to ask questions and not to become discouraged or even scandalized by unexpected answers: What do you ask of God? What do you ask of the Church? What are some of your joys; your struggles with your faith? We are invited not to judge those of weaker faith; different faith than our own; people of no faith. Listen to them: They, too, have truths to offer us!

St. Paul shows us today that the best teachers, of faith or otherwise, are usually the best learners. And so many we become ever-better learners of our faith; listeners to one another’s joys, sorrows, knowledge, needs. We will be open to the Holy Spirit, who teaches us as we teach and learn from one another.

Homily for Sunday, 19 April 2015– Third Sunday of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 3:13-15, 17-19; Psalm 4:2, 4, 7-8, 9; 1 John 2:1-5a; Luke 24:35-48

This homily was given at Anglin House, the residence for elderly and infirm Basilians in Toronto, ON, Canada.

“You are witnesses of these things,” we hear today from Luke’s Gospel. Later, Peter echoes these words to the people he addresses in Acts, taking the identity of witness upon himself and the other disciples of Jesus: “To this we are witnesses.” To what are we witnesses? What is the central message that we have been invited to proclaim “to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem”; beginning from when the risen Christ stood among his first disciples in the upper room at Emmaus?

“Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day,” Jesus reminds his disciples, “and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name.” Repentance and forgiveness of sins: To this we are witnesses. Repentance and forgiveness of sins: This is at the core of the message of the risen Christ; the message that our Lord invites us to continue to proclaim and, more importantly, to live out day to day.

How are we to be witnesses to repentance and forgiveness of sins? We cannot go back to stand among the first witnesses to the risen Christ in the upper room, who first heard Jesus’ greeting, “Peace be with you.” We cannot stand with those first disciples who “in their joy” at seeing the risen Christ were “disbelieving and still wondering.” We cannot witness directly to Peter’s address to “the people” of Israel. These events are finished; in the past.

I like to imagine Peter’s speech in our first reading, from Acts, as the opening arguments at a courtroom trial. Only these opening arguments are not from the prosecution or the defense, but from the defendant. In Acts, Peter lays out the charge against the people: Rejection; denial of “the Holy and Righteous One”; asking “to have a murderer given to” them in the place of Jesus, the Christ; killing Jesus, “the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead.” “To this we are witnesses,” Peter says. But Peter speaks not as one who has any right to accuse the people of anything but as the guilty party. Peter stands for us. Peter and we are all guilty of this crime of having denied Christ; having handed Christ over to death for our sins.

And then something remarkable happens at this trial: We are clearly guilty beyond reasonable doubt, but we are not condemned. Instead, we are pardoned. We are forgiven. This was God’s will for us all along, “that his Messiah should suffer.” By Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection, we are forgiven and, even more remarkably, given the chance to be witnesses to our own forgiveness by our own lives. We, the defendants at this trial, represented by Peter, become this trial’s star witnesses. So how do we go about being witnesses?

We cannot go back in time to re-live these events of our Scriptures: Peter’s address to the people of Israel in Acts; Jesus’ appearance in the upper room to his disciples in Emmaus. Yet in his reflection for today’s readings in America Magazine, John Martens points out that we witness in two ways to the resurrected Christ and what Christ’s resurrection means for us as Christians. First, we witness to “the authenticity and trustworthiness of the” first “witnesses”; to Jesus’ first disciples and Apostles who first encountered our risen Lord physically present among them. We trust the truth revealed to us in Scripture and by the tradition of the Church, handed on to us from the first Apostles; from these first direct witnesses to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Second, even more importantly, we bear witness to the risen Christ by “the authenticity and trustworthiness of our lives.” How can we live our lives in a way that is most authentic and trustworthy? I ask this: How many of us have ever been forgiven of some wrongdoing? How many of us have been forgiven, especially when we did not expect to be forgiven by the person we had wronged, at least not as immediately or as generously as this person forgave us? I can think of a few instances in my own life in which I have been forgiven. I have even gone, filled with guilt on a few occasions, to people I have wronged, only to hear, “I forgive you; do not worry. No longer dwell on what you did wrong. Let it go.” How freeing! Has anyone ever approached us, having wronged us, thinking she or he would surely be scolded or condemned (maybe when we have heard confessions, those of us who are priests), and we have instead responded with great tenderness and forgiveness? This generous forgiveness is an image of God’s forgiveness for us, shown most fully by Christ’s death and resurrection for us. “To this we are witnesses.”

And being witnesses means extending the same forgiveness to others that we have received. Who is in most need of our forgiveness? I ask all of us, the next time we have a chance to pray silently for a few minutes, to think of one person who is most in need of our forgiveness. Maybe this person is a member of our family; a friend; an acquaintance; maybe even a member of our religious community; a Basilian confrère… This is the person to whom God is inviting you; inviting me today to reach out in forgiveness; to witness to the forgiveness we have all been granted because Christ died and is risen for us! This is how God invites all of us to ever greater “authenticity and trustworthiness” of our lives as Christians.

This is how God invites all of us today to witness to the “repentance and forgiveness of sins” that is central to Peter’s message to the people of Israel after Jesus had risen from the dead. This is how God invites all of us today to witness to the “repentance and forgiveness of sins” that is the central message of Jesus’ appearance to his disciples in the upper room at Emmaus.

This is the message that we as Church, beginning with the first disciples; “beginning from Jerusalem,” have been entrusted with proclaiming “in [Jesus’] name to all nations.” Proclaim by all means and, even more importantly, live by “repentance and forgiveness of sins.” Reach out with the same forgiveness we have been given by God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Reach out with the same forgiveness we have, at one time or another, received from another person. Reach out with forgiveness. “To this,” to God’s gift of forgiveness that impels us both to forgive and to repent from sin, “we are witnesses.”