Homily for Sunday, 18 April 2021– Third Sunday of Easter, Year B

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

“Peace be with you,” alleluia!

How many of us have noticed that today, for the second Sunday Gospel reading in a row, Jesus’ first words to his disciples when he stands among them after he rises from the dead are, “Peace be with you”? Jesus’ greeting has become very familiar to us. And I imagine that Jesus’ greeting to his first disciples quickly became very familiar to them, too, after his resurrection. After all, both Luke’s and John’s Gospels, from which we have heard this Sunday and last, feature the risen Jesus greeting his disciples in this way. In fact, in John’s Gospel (think back to last Sunday), the risen Jesus greets his disciples not only once but three times—first to his disciples, except for Thomas, on the evening of the day he rose; a second time immediately after that, when Jesus also breathes the Holy Spirit on his disciples; and then a third time with Thomas present: “Peace be with you.”

Luke has Jesus greet his disciples only once, in Emmaus, “Peace be with you.” But it is effective. I imagine that, at this point, although Luke says that Jesus’ disciples were still “startled and terrified,” they began to think, “This is bizarre, even terrifying, but we have heard this greeting sometime, someplace before.”

And we hear from Luke today the second major part of the Easter story that, in Luke, begins with Jesus among only two of his disciples on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. By the beginning of today’s Gospel, these two disciples have already met up with and “told the eleven [apostles] and their companions what had happened on the road to Emmaus, and how Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”

My sisters and brothers in the risen Christ, Jesus is still making himself known by this same simple action; this same simple greeting as he did those first times to his first disciples: He “had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” He made himself known to them by greeting them, “Peace be with you.”

There is a reason why, since Vatican II, the sign of peace has been included as part of what we call the Communion Rite at Mass, which extends from the Our Father until we receive communion. To greet one another in the risen Jesus’ words, “Peace be with you,” is essential in order to recognize Jesus “in the breaking of the bread.” When we greet one another at Mass, “Peace be with you,” we recognize the Christ really and truly present in one another, in the Church. We need to recognize the Christ really and truly present in one another, in the Church, before we are able to recognize and worship him as really and truly present in the Eucharistic bread and wine that become his Body and Blood.

“Peace be with you” and “the breaking of the bread” are inseparable. But is the sign of peace, where it has been in the Order of Mass for over fifty years now, not still a bit startling? Most if not all of us have, I suppose, gotten used to the sign of peace where it is now in the Mass. Certainly it is not terrifying as Jesus’ disciples found it when Jesus greeted them, “Peace be with you,” that first time in Emmaus. And maybe we have gotten used to our “text of peace” during our Masses streamed over Zoom for the last year or so, even if it still commands our attention in (I still find) a bit of a jarring way when we exchange peace through Zoom’s chat function: Make sure we exchange a sign of peace with panelists and participants, and so on…

During Vatican II, where the sign of peace was to be placed within the Mass, and whether everybody in the assembly or only clergy during a Solemn Mass (as had been before Vatican II) would exchange peace ritually, were hotly-debated among the bishops at the Council. The English former Master of the Dominican order, Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, tells one of my favourite stories about the sign of peace when it was inserted back into the Mass just after the Our Father after Vatican II. Two French Dominicans Fr. Radcliffe visited at that time, Frs. Yves Congar and Marie-Dominique Chenu, both important figures at Vatican II, had very different approaches to the sign of peace although both lived in the same house in Paris. Congar’s sign of peace “was a grave and formal gesture, whereas Chenu affectionately punched and hugged… and pulled one’s hair”!

“Peace be with you”: We hear the same oh-so-familiar greeting; it is the same Christ really and truly present in one another as in the “grave and formal” Congar, the excitable Chenu, or the terrified disciples who had just witnessed Jesus’ death on a cross and “thought they were seeing a ghost.” It is the same Christ who makes himself known “in the breaking of the bread” and who opens our “minds to understand the Scriptures”: That death no longer has power over the risen Christ, or over us; that we are invited to proclaim the “repentance and forgiveness of sins” that Jesus’ resurrection has made possible, “to all nations.”

This seems to be a daunting task, does it not? How are we to proclaim this “repentance and forgiveness of sins… to all nations” in Jesus’ name? Well, we could begin with a familiar greeting, one that captured its hearers’ attention when Jesus said it, and still does whenever we say it and live it: “Peace be with you”; shalom!

The familiar peace Jesus offers us stirs the world to attention because it does not and cannot come from this world. Jesus’ shalom captures our attention, but it also consoles, reconciles, empowers each and every one of us not only to speak this greeting to one another, but to live it: To seek to console, to reconcile, to empower and so to point out God’s work to still more people in our world and to point one another to God, our only everlasting peace and salvation.

In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Peter gives us an example of how to proclaim and live the risen Christ’s shalom. Yet, I will admit, I find the way in which Peter addresses the people “at the temple gate” in Jerusalem a bit troubling at first hearing. His preaching sounds at first to be heavy on the fire and brimstone, speaking to the people about “Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate… You killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead,” Peter rails. This is not a homily I think I would be capable of giving!

But, if anybody knew their need for Jesus’ shalom—“Peace be with you”—it was Peter. It was Peter who stood before the temple gate, a redeemed sinner, witnessing to his reconciliation and peace with God made possible only by Jesus’ death and resurrection and that is now available to all of us, redeemed sinners whom we are. “Repent therefore, and turn to God”; turn toward the one who greets us, “peace be with you”… “so that your sins may be wiped out.” How remarkable is Peter’s message from the temple gate?

And the first Letter of John proclaims the same message, the same greeting at its heart, in a slightly different way than Peter. Jesus Christ is “our advocate with the Father… the atoning sacrifice for our sins” and the sins “of the whole world.”

Jesus Christ, crucified at the hands of sinners,

Jesus Christ, “our advocate with the Father” and the redemption of sinners,

Jesus Christ, our reconciliation with God,

Jesus Christ, who calls us to proclaim his peace to all peoples and nations,

Jesus Christ, really and truly present in all the Scriptures, in the Eucharist, and in each of us and our signs of peace,

Jesus Christ, of the familiar greeting that stirs the world to attention; that forgives; that quells fears and doubts; that saves,

Jesus Christ, risen from the dead,

Jesus Christ, our shalom.

“Peace be with you.”

Homily for Wednesday, 1 January 2020– Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God

Octave Day of Christmas

Readings of the day: Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 67:2-3, 4, 5, 6, 8; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21

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

The LORD bless you and keep you;

The LORD make his face to shine upon you

and be gracious to you,

The LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

This prayer with which the LORD asks Aaron, through Moses, to bless the people of Israel in the Book of Numbers, in the reading we have heard today, is maybe one of the most recognizable blessings in the Jewish or Christian traditions; in our Bible. But what is peace? With what kind of peace was Aaron to bless his people as he and Moses led them through the desert back to their homeland, Israel?

The Hebrew word for “peace” in this Aaronic or “priestly blessing” of Numbers is, I am sure, a word many of us have heard before: Shalom. But is shalom not one of those notoriously difficult words from an ancient language to translate into a current language like English? Shalom may mean “peace,” in a sense, though, that is much richer than the absence of a dispute or of war. It may mean anything from wishing somebody wholeness or prosperity to a simple hello or even goodbye.

“The LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you shalom.” This blessing of Aaron has several echoes throughout our Scriptures and our Mass. In John’s Gospel, at the Last Supper, Jesus blesses his disciples with a prayer for them reminiscent of Aaron’s prayer for the people of Israel in Numbers: “Peace I leave you, my peace I give you.” And then, in the same Gospel, the risen Jesus greets the disciples three different times: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

In a few moments here, we will echo these words of Jesus, which are in turn an echo of God’s voice through Aaron to his people: “Peace I leave you, my peace I give you… Shalom be with you.” In this way, we will exchange a sign of peace just before we receive communion, shalom given for us in the form of bread and wine. And then we will be sent forth from here at the end of this celebration: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you”… to be shalom to our world in profound need of our peace as a people of God.

Is it not appropriate, then, that each year, on January 1, New Year’s Day, in addition to this liturgical celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, as Church we also celebrate this day as the World Day of Peace? We have, I think, a lot to celebrate each year on this World Day of Peace, New Year’s Day, Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. Our world becomes more peaceful year by year: Fewer wars; more respect for freedom of thought, freedom of religious faith, and other basic human rights and freedoms; more governments and forms of government that uphold these human rights.

Still, our world is far from perfectly at peace, much less at shalom that is so much more than the absence of conflict; shalom that is peace only possible for us through God. Parts of our world still remain mired in war; still send record numbers of people fleeing from violence and abuse, in search of peace. Households, families, marriages still experience brokenness; shalom still eludes us at this most foundational level of any healthy human society.

Yet still we (rightly) celebrate as we pray for shalom; for peace. And we connect this celebration of and prayer for peace with a celebration of Mary as Mother of God. So what might Mary, Mother of God, have to do with peace, in our world, among and within nations, or within households and families? Let me suggest that our celebration of this Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, has a lot to do with peace; I will go so far as to say that a healthy Christian devotion to Mary is essential for our peace; for shalom.

Our Gospel today, from Luke, shows us this essential connection between the Blessed Virgin Mary and peace; shalom. When the shepherds first arrive at the scene of our Lord’s birth, we might imagine their excitement and the excitement and amazement of everybody present with them. Luke’s Gospel says in fact that, as the shepherds “made known what had been told them about this child… all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.”

All this excitement, activity, and even amazement is a good thing, especially this time of year, is it not? Yet (and maybe we can all relate to what I am about to say) is this Christmastime not one of the more exhausting times of the year? Amid all the activity, we need time to rest; to pray; to celebrate with joy, yet still to be at peace. So, after Luke describes the excited joy of the shepherds, everybody’s amazement “at what the shepherds” had to say “about this child,” Jesus, Luke turns our attention toward Mary. Luke says that “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”

My sisters and brothers, let me suggest that these two verbs, “treasured” and “pondered,” are most essential to the Gospel we have just heard. They are essential for our peace, in its fullest sense of shalom. Amid the noise, the excitement, the activity, the words of the shepherds, her own probable exhaustion at having just brought a child into the world, of all the people in our Gospel account today, Mary is the most “at peace.” And she teaches us something central to our own being “at peace”: Treasuring and pondering.

But to treasure and ponder as Mary does is not to hold onto the joy of this celebration of the Lord’s birth as if it is ours to keep to ourselves in a selfish way. The joy of this celebration has been given to us by God through Mary, a young woman God chose and preserved from sin in order to bring God’s own Son, Jesus, into our world. Because this joy; this gift of God’s Son through Mary that we treasure and ponder, has been given to us, God calls us now to hand on this gift of shalom enveloped in our human flesh to the world around us. And how might we treasure and ponder while handing on this gift we have received?

Again, may we look to Mary as an example of treasuring and pondering while handing on. From the moment Mary conceived Jesus in her womb, through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and Mary’s own assumption into heaven, body and soul, Mary allowed the peace, the shalom of God to settle into her very depths. Shalom became the foundation of who Mary was, treasuring and pondering, such that then this shalom was able to flow from her. God calls us now to the same willingness to treasure and ponder, to allow shalom to take on our human flesh and become the essence of who we are, not only the historical event of the birth of a child in Bethlehem two thousand years ago.

Every time our prayerful celebration here, our treasuring and pondering before the altar of the Lord, allows and strengthens us to act in even small ways of kindness, mercy, and justice toward one another, shalom incarnate becomes a little more who we are and flows from us as it did from Mary into the world.

Let me go back (briefly but to some time ago) in history, to the Council of Ephesus of 431. There, at Ephesus, our Church’s bishops first encouraged all Christians to pray through Mary under the title of Theotokos, “God-bearer” or, as we Roman Catholics usually refer to Mary, “Mother of God.” Outside the place where the bishops of Ephesus assembled, the faithful chanted, as if as a prayer for the unity of the bishops and the Church, which was anything but assured in 431, “Mother of God”…

Here, now, on this first day of 2020, may we join in this prayer of Ephesus: “Mother of God,” Mother and Queen of Peace, through your Son Jesus Christ, give us, our Church and our world the gift of shalom. May we treasure and ponder, allow to become incarnate in our depths, and then hand on this gift as you did. Shalom chaverim, as our Hebrew-speaking sisters and brothers might pray: “Let us go forth in peace” into this New Year to bear to the world, enveloped in our human flesh, the peace we have received, pondered, treasured, and that we celebrate today.

Homily for Sunday, 23 June 2019– The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

Readings of the day: Genesis 14:18-20; Psalm 110:1, 2, 3, 4; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Luke 9:11b-17

This homily was given at the Hermance Family Chapel of St. Basil the Great at St. John Fisher College, Rochester, NY.

Have any of us ever received a gift from somebody, or has somebody ever done a good deed for us that we felt we could never possibly repay adequately?

This would happen regularly when I ministered in Colombia, among the poor of Cali and Santa Marta, where the Basilians have a parish and school and had a novitiate house. The people would be so grateful for any good deed or anything we could give them, and even simply for our presence as Basilians among them, that they would often say to us, to mean that they did not have anything to offer us in return for what we had given them, “Dios te pague” (“May God repay you”). More recently, Fr. Paul English, my brother Basilian and a graduate of St. John Fisher College (with whom some of us may be familiar), who knows several Colombian seminarians, both our own Basilian brothers and seminarians of dioceses in which he has served, has occasionally added humorously to his hello or goodbye greetings to these seminarians: “Dios te pegue” (“May God smack you”)!

Our reading this morning from the Book of Genesis places both the king of Salem, Melchizedek, and Abram (later Abraham) in a Dios te pague moment. In Genesis, just before the reading we hear today, four kings who were Abram’s enemies had been making war against kings who were Abram’s allies, including Melchizedek. Even Abram’s nephew, Lot, had been taken captive by one of the enemy kings. Abram pursues Lot’s captors until he is victorious in favor of Melchizedek and his other allied kings, ending the war and recovering Lot and the other captives. Interestingly, the name of Salem, Melchizedek’s kingdom, derives from the same Hebrew root as does shalom. Like many words in ancient languages, shalom, which is usually translated to English as “peace”—so we could think of Melchizedek as a figure representing peace who, in our first reading today, has in fact just won victory and peace, ending a disastrous war—has a greater range of meaning than we often realize. Shalom can mean peace, but also wholeness or completeness, harmony, or prosperity. It may also take on the meaning of a simpler greeting like hello or goodbye. If we were to translate shalom in this idiomatic greeting sense into Spanish, we might say, Dios te pague (“May God repay you”), although hopefully not, unless with good humor, Dios te pegue (“May God smack you”)!

Our reading today from Genesis places us on the scene of a meeting of two representatives of shalom, Melchizedek, king of Salem (or perhaps, appropriately, king of “shalom”), and Abram. This meeting between Melchizedek and Abram, after which Abram has returned goods and prisoners taken by their enemies in the war they have just won, is a shalom moment; a Dios te pague moment.

To thank Abram, what does Melchizedek offer him but simple bread and wine? Melchizedek realizes quickly that he is unable to offer Abram any appropriate gift for having saved his kingdom and his people from the enemy kings who had attacked him and taken his goods and people captive. So Melchizedek offers Abram simple bread and wine, accompanied by a blessing of these gifts. Melchizedek’s offering to Abram of bread and wine, with a blessing, may call to our minds what we do every time we celebrate Mass; every time we celebrate our Eucharist (a Greek-derived word that means “thanksgiving”), especially on this feast focusing on the gifts of the Eucharist, the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ.

Like Melchizedek, we offer bread and wine because we can offer no more. When we bring bread and wine to the altar during our Eucharist, we bless it. The priest blesses the bread and wine with a prayer that is often silent, especially at Sunday Mass, but a prayer that hearkens back to Jewish table blessing prayers: “Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you: Fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life… Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the wine we offer you: Fruit of the vine and work of human hands, it will become our spiritual drink.”

And then, through our Eucharistic celebration, our offering of bread and wine to God because nothing we might offer to God measures up to God’s goodness to us, something altogether miraculous happens before our eyes: This blessed bread and wine, our all-too-little gift to God, becomes “for us the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.” God chooses this simple bread and wine, “work of human hands,” as the sacramental means by which God offers himself, God’s Son, really, truly, and fully to us. This becomes our Dios te pague moment: “May God repay you.”

More than we could ever repay God, God “pays” us with his very self, really, truly, and fully, in our Eucharist, under the form of simple bread and wine. God’s Son Jesus Christ has been offering himself really, truly, and fully since the night he freely accepted being “handed over” in an act of betrayal by one of his own apostles; an act of denial by another; an act of fearful fleeing from Jesus’ passion and death by still others. On that night, Jesus offered us his very self really, truly, and fully: “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me… This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” This deepens our Dios te pague moment and projects it into our history, as it becomes our Church’s celebration “in remembrance” of Christ’s passion and death, until he returns at the end of time.

But this first Dios te pague moment in which Jesus hands himself to us; this Dios te pague moment now projected into our history as Church, did not happen without any previous sign to prepare us for the moment when Christ gave himself to us under the form of bread and wine. This preparatory sign of Christ’s real, true, and full self-offering to us first at the Last Supper is recounted to us in the Gospel we hear today from Luke.

Any sign, any miracle, properly-speaking, is not only a nature-defying action of God, but it involves our action. At the Last Supper, Jesus said to his Apostles as he handed himself over to them, to us, really, truly, and fully: “Do this in memory of me.” What, then, are we to do in memory of him? What could we do; what could we offer God that could measure up to God’s real, true, and full gift to us of his very self?

Nothing we could offer could ever measure up to God’s offering of God’s very self to us: This is precisely the point of the Last Supper. This is precisely the point of Jesus’ miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes of which we hear from Luke today. Still, Jesus says to the Twelve, who have asked him to “dismiss the crowd” following them to buy themselves some much-needed rest and quiet: “Give them some food yourselves.”

This, without a doubt, would have caught Jesus’ disciples off guard. They were unprepared to “give them some food” themselves, out of the little they had to offer; out of their own poverty. For the Twelve, this was not only their Dios te pague moment—“May God repay you”—but, with all the due gentleness and good humor of the Son of God, it was Jesus’ Apostles’ Dios te pegue moment: “May God smack you.”

“Give them some food yourselves.” In other words, Jesus says to us, offer what you are able out of your poverty, and I will multiply it beyond your wildest imagination. But I will wait to multiply your gift; I will wait to work a miracle until you are confronted with your poverty, your inadequacy in offering any gift that could possibly measure up to God’s real, true, and full offering of self. I will wait until you are confronted, “smacked,” with having to bless and offer simple bread and wine, or five loaves and two fish for five thousand people.

I will wait until your Dios te pague moment meets a Dios te pegue moment. Give one another and the world “some food yourselves.” “Do this in remembrance of me.” Offer this world shalom, and only then will I multiply your “work of human hands” beyond your wildest imagination.