Homily for Friday, 16 June 2017– Ferial

Friday of the 10th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 2 Corinthians 4:7-15; Psalm 116:10-11, 15-16, 17-18; Matthew 5:27-32

Who among us is intense about our faith or knows somebody who is? I would describe most if not all of us here as intense in living our faith, simply because we are here now on a Friday morning at St. Kateri Parish at St. Cecilia Church to celebrate the Eucharist. How many people, even among the most devout Catholics, devote part of a Friday morning; part of almost every day for many of us, to our celebration of the Eucharist? We are in the minority, my sisters and brothers in Christ!

Please let me be clear: Many of our sister and brother Catholics, for reasons too many to count, are unable to be at Mass every day. They work, they raise families, they are aging, sick, or homebound… And many of these people live our faith just as intensely and devoutly as we who are here do. Add to this those among us who engage in ministries in the Church, or who work passionately for social justice causes including, fundamentally, the defense of the dignity of all human life and all creation.

I would say we are quite an intense group of people. And today our Word of God speaks to us and celebrates two of the most intense people who have ever walked this earth, St. Paul and Jesus. St. Paul encounters the intense pride of the wealthy Christian community of Corinth of the earliest Church. Yet Corinth’s intensity meets its match in St. Paul, who compares his ministry to death, uniting it in particular to the death of Christ.

A saint is one who knows how to die. A saint has received from God and applied in her or his life the grace of how to die to her or his own pride insofar as it inhibits this person’s ability to serve God in serving the needs of God’s people. A saint knows to die to any form of injustice, of lack of love or charity in action or speech. A saint knows when to die to one form of ministry or service to move to a new one. A saint knows the grace of death to partisan ideological narrowness; to gossip; to needless divisiveness. A saint knows how to die, in order to rise again; to ascend and transcend with Christ. A saint dies as she or he lives: Intensely.

This grace of dying in order to rise is true of St. Paul, so much so that many in his Corinthian audience likely found his message challenging, if not outright frightening, even morbid. And the same is true of Jesus himself. Jesus, and St. Paul after him, lived, died, and rose intensely. Today we hear Jesus’ second of six of what have been called “intensification” sayings in Matthew’s Gospel: “You have heard” this commandment, “but I say” live it more intensely; more demandingly.

It is not enough to obey this sixth of the Ten Commandments, not to “commit adultery.” If we so much as look at another person as no more than property to be used; to be taken from another (which is how Jesus views adultery, specifically the taking of another’s spouse for one’s pleasure), we will bear God’s judgment due to this sin. But the more we live self-control out of love, which is more demanding and intense than the commandment requires, as a kind of death to self, the closer we will be to rising to intense and eternal life.

Homily for Monday, 1 June 2015‒ Memorial of St. Justin Martyr

Monday of the 9th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Tobit 1:3, 2:1a-8; Psalm 112:1b-2, 3b-4, 5-6; Mark 12:1-12

This Mass was offered in memory of my maternal grandmother, Simone Salt. May she rest in peace.

Why do good people suffer? This question does not have an easy answer, even for us as people of faith.

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Justin, a martyr of Rome almost two hundred years before the Roman Empire tolerated Christianity and then made it its official religion. St. Justin’s goal in his teaching and beautiful writings was to convince people of other faiths (Jews and pagans alike) of the truth of the Christian faith; that Christ is the Son of God by pointing to the way Christians lived. His way of teaching by conversation is called the “moral apology” or defense of the moral rightness of Christian faith. St. Justin, a good and faithful man, a saint, suffered greatly for his gentle way of teaching and was eventually killed for his faith.

Our opening prayer of today’s Mass speaks of “the folly of the Cross” that “wondrously taught St. Justin the Martyr the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ.” Why do good people like St. Justin suffer? Why are there more martyrs within the last century than in all previous centuries of Christian history combined?

Might we point to questions like these and wonder at the folly of when good people suffer? These questions have no easy answers. Our readings today speak to this same question. We are introduced to Tobit, who has been exiled to Nineveh, in our first reading today. Tobit searches for one of his own people who has been murdered, so that he can give him a dignified burial.

Would we not think that Tobit’s profound act of mercy would be praised? But instead Tobit is mocked both by the Ninevites and by his own people of Israel. To contact the dead physically would bring Tobit ritual impurity. Worse yet, his own life is endangered because he dares to bury a person who has been murdered. Why do good people like Tobit suffer?

Jesus’ parable of the tenants in our Gospel reading is the ultimate example of a good person experiencing suffering. After sending several servants into a vineyard and seeing them mistreated by the vineyard’s tenants, the vineyard owner sends in his own son. Instead of respecting the vineyard owner’s son as hoped, they plot to kill him and seize the inheritance!

We know that, in Jesus’ parable, God is the vineyard owner. Jesus is the innocent Son who is killed. Why does the innocent Son, Jesus, suffer? The Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth once said that the only way to make sense of suffering by innocent people is that Christ suffered and died for us. And yet why do some experience extreme poverty? Why are so many in our world threatened and killed for their faith? Why natural disasters that claim many lives? Why do young children experience terrible illnesses, and their families who care for them suffer also? Why did my grandmother, Simone, for whom we pray in this Mass, suffer for years in near-silence with dementia?

We have no easy answers. But God’s promise is that, by uniting ourselves to the “folly of” Christ’s Cross, our suffering is made temporary. We gain “surpassing knowledge” of Christ’s suffering for us. And we who share in Christ’s suffering will also have a share in his resurrection.

Homily for Thursday, 14 May 2015– Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

Readings of the day: Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 47:2-3, 6-7, 8-9; Ephesians 4:1-13, Mark 16:15-20

This Mass was offered graciously by the staff of St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish, Irondequoit, NY, in memory of my maternal grandparents, Frank and Simone Salt.

What is the significance for us of this Solemnity of the Lord’s Ascension that we celebrate today? Our readings today focus, I think, on two related aspects of the meaning for us of the Ascension to heaven of our Lord Jesus Christ: Future promise and present mission.

The beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, which we hear today, focuses primarily on future promise. The Apostles have been instructed by Jesus to wait in Jerusalem for “the promise of the Father,” the Holy Spirit. But once they receive the Holy Spirit, Jesus says, they are to witness to him by their works and words “to the ends of the earth.” And so here in Acts we also have the beginning of present mission of the Apostles; of the Church.

Mark’s Gospel emphasizes this aspect of present mission. As he ascends to heaven, Jesus says this to his disciples: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” And in the Letter to the Ephesians these aspects of future promise of the Holy Spirit; future promise from God of ascension to heaven ourselves and present mission converge in a great statement of identity of our Church. We are united as Church in future promise and in present mission: “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit… one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

But might the sheer grandiosity of this present mission as Church given us by the risen and ascended Christ not scare some of us? How are we to “proclaim the Gospel to every creature”? What about the times (and we all have them) when we have not lived “with all humility and patience [and] love,” and promoted peace, not only in the world but in our own relationships, as Ephesians asks of us? We understand future promise. At least I hope, and I have confidence in this because we are here, that we all hope in the future promise of heaven. We hope to rise to eternal life; to ascend to heaven after our Lord one day. We hope, closer to the present, to receive more and more God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, whom we already receive in the sacraments of the Church; in baptism and confirmation; through one another.

We understand future promise; I think we might have more trouble with present mission. So what is our present mission as Church, so that we might better accomplish it? Many of us do not leave our city, our communities, or even our homes very often, let alone go “to every creature” the world over to work and preach in the name of Jesus. So what can we do to live out our Christian mission?

Since the intention for this Mass is for my maternal grandparents, Frank and Simone Salt, who went to be with God this past January, I look often to their example of how to live out both present mission and hope of future promise. When I first announced to my grandfather that I felt a call to the priesthood, he reminded me: “Live your faith with a sense of humor. If you aren’t living your faith with a sense of humor, you aren’t living your faith.” In their waning years, but while they were still living in their own house, Grandma and Grandpa would still walk every day to the new church that was being built in their neighborhood to unlock it before the construction workers arrived.

Late in their lives, Grandma and Grandpa were still “unlockers” of the Church. They lived by the future promise of resurrection; ascension to heaven; of having received the Holy Spirit. They lived by present mission, all within a few blocks of their home: Humility; patience; gentleness; love; unity; peace and, yes, a sense of humor. Their example is an excellent one for all of us: Show one another the love of God; the peace and good humor that derives from the Holy Spirit.

We do not need to travel great distances to do this. Unlock the Church; open the Church to all who seek God! In (usually) small ways, we are all called to live this present mission, even as we hope in future promise given us by the resurrection and ascension of Christ and the dwelling of God’s Holy Spirit in each and every one of us.

Homily for Sunday, 22 March 2015

5th Sunday in Lent

Readings of the day (Year A readings, Third Scrutiny): Ezekiel 37:12-14; Psalm 130:1-2, 3-4, 5-6. 7-8; Romans 8:8-11; John 11:1-45

What are some of Catholics’ most frequently-asked questions about our faith? When I was newly-ordained last May, I visited the high school from which I graduated, Archbishop Jordan Catholic High School in Sherwood Park, Alberta, just outside of Edmonton, Canada. Each student I spoke with was to write down two questions to ask the new priest. At first, I was somewhat surprised at the most frequently asked question to me of Archbishop Jordan students.

What was the most frequently-asked question, both overall and in each grade and classroom? “Father, have you ever done an exorcism”? Fortunately, I had the presence of mind whenever I was asked this question to respond, “Yes, every time I do a baptism.”

Our Catholic Rite of Baptism for Children includes a beautiful prayer of exorcism over the children to be baptized, after which the children may be anointed with blessed oil called “Oil of Salvation” or “Oil of Catechumens.” The prayer of exorcism, just before the baptism itself, is this: “Almighty and ever-living God,  you sent your only Son into the world to cast out the power of Satan, spirit of evil,  to rescue us from the kingdom of darkness, and bring us into the splendor of your kingdom of light. We pray for this child:  Set him (her) free from original sin, make him (her) a temple of your glory, and send your Holy Spirit to dwell with him (her). We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

When I was asked by the high school students, “Father, have you ever done an exorcism,” were the students thinking that I might have called down thunder and lightning from heaven once or twice? Or maybe like the priest in the movie, “The Exorcist,” I might have called out a demon by crying out, “The power of Christ compels you”! I have not done or witnessed any of this, mainly because the fire department would not be impressed if I did this in any of our parish’s churches! And God does not usually work this way, either, I do not think. Even when working amazing signs like exorcisms or raising the dead, God usually works gently, humbly, even silently.

And even though God can work these great signs on his own, does God not often work through us; ask us to co-operate with God in the greatest of signs? Is it not amazing that God would entrust himself to us in this way? And yet our readings today speak to us of this very desire of God to work with us; to be in relationship with us; a relationship that brings us life and that enables us to co-operate with God in God’s mighty works.

Our God, Ezekiel says in our first reading, has placed his “spirit in” us that we “may live.” “Christ is in you,” St. Paul says to the Romans and to us. “If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,” God “will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit dwelling in you.”

“I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus says to Martha in our Gospel reading today before raising his friend and Martha’s and Mary’s brother Lazarus from the dead. Yes, Jesus is “the resurrection and the life” but, even in this mightiest sign of Jesus in John’s Gospel, Jesus asks us to co-operate with him. Jesus asks his disciples to work with him in faith: It is so that they believe that he asks them to go with him to Lazarus’ tomb. Jesus asks Martha and Mary to believe in God; to believe in him: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this… Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God”? And just after calling Lazarus forth from the tomb Jesus again asks us to take on a central role in his greatest work yet, raising a person from the dead: “Untie him and let him go.”

With this let me return to frequently-asked questions. Within the last week or so, what is the most frequent question I have been asked here at St. Kateri? At least three times this week I have been asked this (not by anybody in our RCIA and RCIC who are preparing to be welcomed fully into our Church, interestingly): “Father, what is a scrutiny”? Apparently, our St. Kateri parishioners are less interested in exorcisms than are Canadian high school students…

So what is a scrutiny? For the last three weekends, at one of our parish’s Sunday Masses each week, we have prayed in a special way for our candidates and elect for Christian initiation as adults and older children. We have prayed for God to strengthen their faith and ours. As one faith community we have welcomed them and one another “to examine our spiritual lives and renew our faithfulness to the Lord.”

This careful examination of “our spiritual lives” is what our scrutinies are about. We have journeyed with our candidates and elect through three of these examinations of faith. First our candidates and elect received the Creed and we prayed it with them: the First Scrutiny. That week, two Sundays ago, we heard of the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well in John’s Gospel. At the end of this encounter, the Samaritan woman proclaims to her entire village the truth that Jesus is “the Savior of the world.” And we proclaim this truth with her; with our candidates and elect now, in the Creed: “I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God.”

A week later, our faith and that of those to join us in the Easter sacraments was examined; challenged again through hearing of Jesus’ healing of the man born blind from John’s Gospel: The Second Scrutiny. Do we believe that this man, Jesus, is God the Creator himself in human flesh, using the matter of creation to re-create us; to transform us; to heal us when we are in need of healing, physically and spiritually?

And today with our candidates and elect we experience the Third Scrutiny. Once more we examine “our spiritual lives” as we draw ever nearer to Holy Week. Is our faith strong enough to accept and to rejoice in being co-operators with God in God’s greatest of signs: Our salvation?

Jesus’ raising of Lazarus in John points directly to Jesus’ own resurrection from the dead. But it also points to our own resurrection with and in Christ; our own salvation through this mystery. Are we willing to accept our mission to work with God in this work of our own salvation? “Untie him and let him go.” How willing are we to untie and let go of anything that keeps us from fullness of relationship with one another and with God? How willing are we to let go of any sin; any guilt; any lack of forgiveness that keeps us from recognizing and acting fully by the mercy of God? This may be the greatest challenge yet to our faith; the greatest of the three scrutinies.

How deeply has this journey of Lent led us to acknowledge the mercy of our God who wills to save us; to acknowledge our co-operation in God’s saving mission in Christ for us? We may want to add this to our list of frequently-asked questions…

  

Homily for Thursday, 12 February 2015– Simone and Frank Salt Funeral Mass

Readings of the day: Isaiah 43:1-4; Psalm 23 (Music setting); 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17; John 21:15-19

This homily, at the funeral Mass for my maternal grandparents, Simone and Frank Salt, was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada. Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon them.

How deeply are we people of hope? I do not believe we would be here were we not people of hope. Beyond our grieving; our sadness; our loss of our grandmother and grandfather, Simone and Frank, mother and father; wife and husband to each other of sixty-five years; great-grandmother and great-grandfather; friends; beloved of us and of God, we are here because we hope.

And what, or who, is the focus of our hope? We hope in eternal life, for Simone and Frank and for ourselves. St. Paul begins the second reading we have heard today, from his first Letter to the Thessalonians, with these words: “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”

Today, by our presence here in God’s house, we honour Simone and Frank, Grandma and Grandpa; Mom and Dad; Great-grandma and great-Grandpa, who were people of great Christian hope. We honour God, who gives us hope; who is the focus of our hope. St. Paul’s words to the Thessalonians about hope remind me especially of a humorous quip that Grandpa repeated many times when I was a teenager. When we (my family) would visit their little house in Sechelt, I often slept next to the front door, which opened into their kitchen. Teenagers, of course, often need more sleep than most people, and so I would most often be the last person in the house to wake up in the morning. Grandpa would announce my belated rising enthusiastically: “Well, he is alive”!

With hope, we have gathered here to pray that this will be the same announcement as Grandma and Grandpa are welcomed into heaven: “Well, they are alive”! And this will be no ordinary life but eternal life; not only a magnificent and loving sixty-five years of marriage, but the eternal wedding feast of heaven. They are alive! This is our confident hope and our prayer, not only for Simone and Frank, but for ourselves; each and every one of us.

But what gives us this hope; this confidence that Grandma and Grandpa, that we all, will inherit God’s gift of eternal life? Does it not border on dangerous pride to be so confident that we are destined to be welcomed into heaven; destined to be with our God forever, beginning on a day none of us really knows?

Our Eucharistic Prayer offers an answer to this question. In a few moments, we will pray these words: “In [Christ] the hope of blessed resurrection has dawned, that those saddened by the certainty of dying might be consoled by the promise of immortality to come. Indeed for your faithful, Lord, life is changed, not ended and, when this earthly dwelling turns to dust, an eternal dwelling is made ready for them in heaven.”

Scripture says and our prayers during this Mass say that the great hope we have in eternal life for Simone and Frank and for each of us is not some misplaced pride. We have this hope not because we somehow deserve heaven, but because, by his love for us, God wants us all to inherit eternal life. God’s love is spoken of so beautifully in our first reading, from the prophet Isaiah. God, Isaiah says, has “created” us; has “formed” us. God, who loves us, makes us, human beings, uniquely capable of loving one another and of loving God in return. God has created us for himself, St. Augustine once said, and so our “hearts are restless until they rest in” God. It is our God who says to us; says to Simone and Frank now, in Isaiah’s words, “You are precious in my sight and honoured, and I love you.” 

But the words of our Scripture and our prayers of this Mass do not deny or belittle the process of grieving our loved ones, Simone and Frank; Grandma and Grandpa; great-Grandma and great-Grandpa; Mom and Dad. The same love, this gift from God that gives us hope in eternal life also enables us to grieve; to feel sadness at the death of our beloved. Simone and Frank: These are God’s beloved as they are our beloved. God grieves as we grieve. But neither God nor we shall lose hope. God offers us consolation. God offers us eternal life.

We know and we hope in eternal life; heaven as the end goal for each of us. And yet does it not seem that, on the way to eternal life, some of us especially experience sadness; suffering; distance from our loved ones and from God more than others? Our Gospel reading from John says that this was to be the experience of St. Peter. Jesus asks Peter three times, to the point where Peter is deeply “hurt” by the question: “Do you love me”? And then Jesus reminds Peter, “When you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone will… take you where you do not wish to go.” John remarks that Jesus said this to Peter “to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.”

Simone and Frank; Grandma and Grandpa; great-Grandma and great-Grandpa; Mom and Dad lived a life together of continuously answering Jesus’ question: “Do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know that [we] love you.” With age and through illnesses, could we not understand if it became more and more difficult for them to answer, “Yes, Lord, you know that [we] love you”; if they had an increasingly difficult time accepting being led where they “did not wish to go”; even if we understand death to be a necessary transition to eternal life?

Grandma has been led through her final, silent years of struggle with dementia. And yet, through being led to “where” I am sure she did “not wish to go,” she never lost her beauty; her smile, especially when she seemed to sense her family nearby: Her children; her grandchildren; her great-grandchildren Molly and Liam; Braiden and Jessica.

Grandpa, too, was led to a place where he did “not wish to go”; through separation from his beloved wife, Simone; through not being able to communicate in words with her (although, to the end, he communicated his undying love for her and for God in countless other ways); through his own health troubles.

Simone and Frank; Grandma and Grandpa; great-Grandma and great-Grandpa; Mom and Dad never gave up hope. They glorified God by their lives to the end: “Yes, Lord, you know that [we] love you.”

Can we imagine this now, God saying to them at the gates of heaven; God saying this to each of us one day: “I know that you love me; that you have loved me all along; that you have loved the people I love; that you are people of hope? Know this, ‘You are precious in my sight and honoured, and I love you.’ Welcome into eternal life; into my rest in heaven. You are alive!”

“Follow me.”