Homily for Sunday, 14 July 2019

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 30:10-14; Psalm 69:14, 17, 30-31, 33-34. 36, 37 or 19:8, 9, 10, 11; Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, Edmonton, and Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada.

“What must I do to inherit eternal life”? The question the lawyer asks of Jesus in our Gospel, from Luke, today sounds perfectly legitimate, right? After all, would everybody here, and at least all Christians or people of faith, not share some kind of desire to “inherit eternal life”? If anybody is here who does not hope to “inherit eternal life,” I would sincerely like to speak with you after Mass, because I cannot understand why anybody would gather to worship God in this Eucharistic celebration if we did not hope to “inherit eternal life.”

In response to the lawyer in today’s Gospel—in fact the lawyer at first answers his own question correctly—Jesus says how he, and we, might “inherit eternal life”: “Do this and you will live.” “Do this”: Act in the way the lawyer in Luke’s Gospel knows all too well, and answers correctly, that will gain him, and us, eternal life: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.”

“Do this.” Again, this sounds like a simple enough commandment by which to live; by which we are to “inherit eternal life,” right? The lawyer’s answer to Jesus’ question—“What is written in the Law? What do you read there”?—should be no surprise to us. His answer, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself,” is the combination of the two laws regarded by Jews of Jesus’ time and even to this day as the most important in the Torah. Devout Jews still pray, morning and night, a variation of the first part of Jesus’ command and the lawyer’s answer: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is God; the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” This prayer, the Shema, is named after its opening exhortation, “Hear, O Israel,” or “Shema, Yisrael.” It is found in our Bible, in Deuteronomy 6:4-5. The second part of the lawyer’s answer is taken from the Book of Leviticus [19:18]: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself. I am the LORD.”

So should the first part of this command, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is God; the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might,” not be easy enough to observe, especially if we take this foremost commandment of God’s Law to heart and to prayer? Today we hear a similar commandment to “turn to the LORD [our] God with all [our] heart and with all [our] soul” in another part of Deuteronomy today (a near-repetition of Deuteronomy 6:4-5). This commandment to love or to “turn to” our God wholly is not “too far away.” “It is not in heaven… neither is it beyond the sea,” but “it is very near to us.” It is accessible to us, “in [our] mouth and in [our] heart,” so that we might observe it easily, at least in theory.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind”: This command; this invitation to go from command to prayer to action is easy to memorize by rote, but is it so easy for us to put into practice? In one sense, I think it is. Just as I do not believe we would be here to celebrate this Eucharist if we did not, in some way, want to go to heaven, to “inherit eternal life,” I do not believe (even if you are a child or a teenager to whom your parents or somebody had to insist a bit that you be at Mass today!) that any of us would be here if we did not, in some way, love God and recognize this celebration in this place as a way of expressing our love for God.

But how accessible or practical is the second part of Jesus’ commandment, spoken by the lawyer in today’s Gospel and derived from Leviticus, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”? Again, in one sense, this commandment to “love our neighbour as” ourselves is very accessible and practical to us. When I am in this place to preside at Mass, I see how this commandment to “love [our] neighbour as” ourselves is lived out in many, diverse holy and fruitful ways. Many of us are ministers within our Church, as servers, ministers of holy communion, musicians, hospitality ministers, and so on. Many of us show our love of neighbour and our love of our Church through works of community service and social justice. Many of us show our love of neighbour with a simple smile or acts of kindness one or several times every day.

Love of neighbour presumes that we love ourselves; that we acknowledge ourselves and live in some way as created in God’s image and likeness. Yet how many of us here or in our world suffer with mental illnesses, including addictions, or know somebody who does? Mental illnesses, like physical or spiritual ones, do not necessarily inhibit us from loving our neighbour as Jesus invites us. The late Dutch priest and contemplative Henri Nouwen developed the term “wounded healer,” coined by the psychologist Carl Jung, to describe people who show great love of neighbour in word and action despite (or maybe because of) their own mental, physical, and spiritual afflictions, which strengthen empathy for other people in similar situations. Similarly, Pope Francis offers us the image of the Church as a “field hospital”: The ill, afflicted, and suffering so often helping the ill, afflicted, and suffering by genuine and purposeful love of neighbour, leading one another to “inherit eternal life.”

How many of us, though, suffer through difficulties with our own body image? How many of us suffer from mental (or physical or spiritual) illnesses, diagnosed or not? How many of us suffer from addictions or know somebody who does: Addictions to alcohol, drugs, pornography, and so on? To some extent, our inabilities to love ourselves as creatures in God’s image and likeness (intentional or, in many cases, not so intentional) will inhibit our ability to love our neighbour, and our inabilities to love our neighbour will eventually inhibit our ability to love God.

Besides difficulties with body image; with mental, physical, or spiritual health; with addictions, these possible barriers to loving ourselves as befits the creatures in God’s image and likeness we are, other difficulties arise with respect to love of neighbour, and ultimately love of God, which make the lawyer’s question to Jesus, his attempt “to justify himself,” all the more real and personal to us.

The lawyer, having answered Jesus’ first question correctly as to the most essential commandment of God’s Law; the most essential commandment for us to “inherit eternal life,” then asks Jesus: “And who is my neighbour”? Before we scoff at the lawyer in today’s Gospel, let us ask ourselves the lawyer’s question: “Who is my neighbour”? Is my neighbour among the poor and disadvantaged? Is my neighbour an unborn child, or somebody in a crisis pregnancy situation? Is my neighbour an immigrant, a refugee, or a trafficked person, especially an undocumented migrant? Is my neighbour somebody of a non-Christian religion? Is my neighbour somebody with a mental, physical, or spiritual illness or addiction? Is my neighbour an acquaintance, a co-worker, somebody in the Church, a friend, or a family member with whom we have fallen out of regular and healthy relationship or even speaking terms? Is my neighbour an elderly person; somebody with a terminal illness or with an illness like dementia; somebody who perceives life itself to have become almost unbearable; somebody who has lost hope; somebody in great pain? Is my neighbour that Samaritan (a synonym in our Gospel today for our worst enemy conceivable) who encounters me when I am in my greatest need, at least figuratively-speaking, “half dead” on the side of the road? Is my neighbour the “half dead” person I encounter on the road?

Of course, our neighbour is all these people. Will we show neighbourly, life-giving mercy to our neighbour in all these and other vulnerable forms, then, or will we pass by her or him “on the other side” of the road? Will we or will we not choose to encounter Christ, the incarnate, fully human, visible “image of the invisible God,” in our neighbour? In his book The Holy Longing, the Oblate priest Ronald Rolheiser says that “the God of the incarnation tells us that anyone who says he or she loves an invisible God in heaven and is unwilling to deal with a visible neighbour on earth is a liar.”

“Who is my neighbour,” then? Our neighbour is anybody Jesus invites us to treat with the loving mercy befitting one created in God’s image and likeness. “Do this and [we] will live.”

Homily for Saturday, 8 August 2015– Memorial of St. Dominic

Saturday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 6:4-13; Psalm 18:2-3a, 3bc-4, 47, 51;  Matthew 17:14-20

How much or what depth of faith does God expect of us? Do we not find Jesus quite harsh in criticizing first the lack of faith of the crowds who bring a demon-possessed man to him and then the lack of faith of his own disciples, who are unable to cast out the demon?

Jesus ends our Gospel reading today, from Matthew, by saying to his disciples that if they “have faith the size of a mustard seed,” this little faith will be enough to move mountains (Faith to move mountains: Another popular English phrase we owe to Scripture!). With even minimal faith “nothing will be impossible for you,” Jesus says to his disciples.

Are Jesus’ words here not incredible? Would his disciples not have had to have some faith? Otherwise they would not have followed him at all. Without any faith, they probably would not even have tried to cast out the demon from the possessed man in today’s Gospel. And so why is Jesus so harsh with them? Why does he rebuke the crowd as a “faithless and perverse generation”? How much faith does Jesus expect of them or of us?

It is almost impossible for us to know exactly why Jesus speaks so harshly toward the crowds and his own disciples in Matthew’s Gospel. But I think our first reading, from Deuteronomy, hints at the depth of faith to which God calls us. The most important commandment of the Jewish faith, so important that observant Jews to this day pray it morning and evening and Jesus made it his own “greatest commandment, is part of our first reading today. “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone! Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.” This commandment; this prayer, Moses says in Deuteronomy, is to be taken “to heart” by the people; drilled “into [their] children”; spoken whether “at home or abroad,” when the people are “busy or at rest.” And the people are literally to wear this commandment on their sleeve (another English phrase we owe to Scripture); on their foreheads; on their “doorposts” and “gates.”

All this was to ensure one thing: That the people would never forget God. Deuteronomy goes on to say, “Take care not to forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.” This, I think, is also central to the faith Jesus asks of us: Remember God at all times. Give thanks to God in times of joy or prosperity. Complain to God and even express our anger at God in times of despair; of poverty; of illness; of loss. But “take care not to forget the LORD.”

We show by being here to worship that we remember God. We also show that we remember God by acting in kindness, justice, and patience, or by stopping our tongue short of destructive criticism, cursing, or gossip; by praying at least daily.

Had Jesus’ disciples or the “perverse and faithless” crowds in our Gospel forgotten God? This is difficult to say. But God calls us through Moses: “Take care not to forget the LORD.” Remember God: This is at the heart of our faith.

Homily for Thursday, 4 June 2015– Ferial

Thursday of the 9th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Tobit 6:10-11, 7:1bcde,  9-17, 8:4-9a; Psalm 128:1-2, 3, 4-5; Mark 12:28-34

If you were able to pray for anything you could imagine, for what would you pray?

Our Gospel reading today, from Mark, centers on the most important of Jewish prayers. It is called “Shema” in Hebrew for its first words, “Shema Yisrael”: Hear, O Israel, the LORD is God and the LORD is one. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” To this commandment to love God with our entire being Jesus joins the commandment, also from the Jewish Law, to love our neighbor, one another, with our entire being, too.

We can understand these commandments, as Jesus recites them to the scribe, just as they are, as commandments. But they are also a prayer. Jesus invites the scribe, who is already “not far from the Kingdom of God,” to deepen his ownership of this prayer, the Shema, for himself. Love God and neighbor with your entire being. To pray this will help us better to practice it. Hear, O Israel, the LORD is God and the LORD is one. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength… Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Our first reading, from Tobit, is actually a collection of several prayers. The angel Raphael leads Tobiah to the home of Raguel. There, Tobiah asks to marry Raguel’s daughter Sarah. Our reading gives us some prior background to Tobiah’s request to marry Sarah. Raguel’s daughter Sarah has been married seven previous times and, each time, her husband has died on the night of the wedding. And so we can understand if Raguel, not to mention Raguel’s wife, Edna, Sarah and, perhaps most of all, Tobias, were afraid of the same happening to Tobias!

And so how do Raguel, Edna, Sarah, and Tobias overcome their fear? They pray. After giving Tobiah the macabre history of Sarah’s seven previous husbands, he prays for Tobiah and Sarah: “She is yours today and ever after. And tonight, son, may the Lord of heaven prosper you both. May he grant you mercy and peace.” Edna prays over Sarah, “May the Lord grant you joy in place of your grief.”

And then we hear the most  magnificent prayer of all in our first reading: The prayer of Tobiah and Sarah for each other. They acknowledge God’s will in creation for woman and man; for marriage, that they be each other’s “love and support.” “Call down your mercy on me and on her, and allow us to live together to a happy old age.”

Tobiah and Sarah, Raguel, and Edna could have prayed for anybody; for anything, and they choose to pray for a happy marriage for Tobiah and Sarah, one that pleases God and is based on love of one another. This strange reading is also meaningful to me because part of it, the prayer of Tobiah and Sarah we hear, was the first reading chosen by my sister Deanna and brother-in-law Tyler for their wedding.

The scribe in Mark’s Gospel, too, could have prayed for anything; anybody, yet Jesus invites him to pray that he might deepen his love of God and neighbor. For what or for whom are we invited to pray?

Homily for Friday, 13 March 2015‒ Friday of the Third Week of Lent

Readings of the day: Hosea 14:2-10; Psalm 81:6c-8a, 8bc-9, 10-11ab, 14, 17; Mark 12:28-34

“Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength… You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Of the six hundred thirteen commandments in the Law and the Prophets (the bulk of our Old Testament), Jesus cites these two as the two greatest. They would have been very familiar to Jews of Jesus’ time: The first “greatest commandment,” about loving God with our whole being, is the Jewish Shema, named after the Hebrew word that begins this prayer: “Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Ehad” (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God; the LORD is One”). This prayer is in our Book of Deuteronomy, and is still prayed by observant Jews every morning and night to this day.  The second “greatest commandment” of Jesus, on love of neighbor,” is found in Leviticus. And so the scribe who asks Jesus in our Gospel reading “Which is the first of all the commandments?” would not at all have been surprised at Jesus’ answer.

 

But when we hear something that is familiar to us, like a prayer or a wise saying, how do we hear it? How many of us know the phrase, “familiarity breeds contempt”? This phrase may apply to the scribe in Mark’s Gospel who asks Jesus what the greatest commandment is, perhaps to test him. The scribe’s arrogance is shown by his reply to Jesus when Jesus has given the two greatest commandments. The scribe says, “‘Well said, teacher. You are right in saying’ love God with your whole being and love your neighbor.” Of course Jesus is right! And at the end of our Gospel reading, caught in their contempt for Jesus, “no one dared to ask him any more questions.”

And yet there is another way to hear a familiar word or saying or phrase. This way is to hear it, each time, with ears newly attuned and hearts renewed by the wisdom of what we are hearing.

For how many of us is there a saying that remains meaningful to us, no matter how many times we hear it? At our morning prayer, we remember our brother Basilians on their anniversary of death. Often we remember, with fondness and usually with humor, sayings of some especially quotable Basilians. A few days ago we remembered Fr. David Heath, author of many gems: “There’s no free lunch.” “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is better”…

Many of us remember Fr. Peter Etlinger here at St. Kateri. He would caution anyone who yearned for the “good old days”: “I was there. They weren’t that good.”

Familiarity does not need to breed contempt or arrogance. Jesus invites us to make the commandments he gives us anew today so familiar to us that they become how we act and who we are: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” And “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Homily for Monday, 6 October 2014– Ferial

Monday of the 27th week in Ordinary Time

Optional Memorial of St. Bruno

Readings of the day: Galatians 1:6-12; Psalm 111:1b-2, 7-8, 9, 10c; Luke 10:25-37

Are we not familiar with the centerpiece of the Jewish Law of the Old Testament: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself”? Thanks to Jesus or, in the case of Luke’s Gospel the “scholar of the Law” who answers his own question as to which law is central to inheriting “eternal life,” this law is also the centerpiece of our own Christian way of life. “Do this and you will live,” Jesus says to the lawyer.

But how deeply do we understand and put into practice what this law of love of God and of neighbor, and Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan that follows it, invite us to live out?

Do not most of us center Jesus’ parable today on the Samaritan who rescues the man robbed and left for dead on the Jerusalem-Jericho road? There is nothing wrong with this interpretation. After all, this parable is called the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is easy to assume that the Samaritan is the main character in this story.

But what if we were to place ourselves in this story as another character, say, the person robbed, beaten, and left for dead on his way “from Jerusalem to Jericho”? The priest and the Levite pass by without helping the wounded man on the side of the road. Were they concerned about ritual purity under the Jewish law or simply too busy; inattentive? Either way, Jesus does not fault them for failing to help the wounded man.

Yes, the Samaritan does stop to help the man. He becomes the unlikely hero of the parable by bandaging the man, pouring “oil and wine over his wounds,” and taking him “on his own animal” to an inn to recuperate. But what about the wounded man: Is he not also an example of living the law of loving God and neighbor as self?

The wounded man could well have refused the help of the Samaritan, hated enemy to Jews at the time. The Jerusalem-Jericho road was well-traveled. Without doubt someone else, probably Jewish, would have been along to help him, with concern for ritual purity being minor at best; an aside to this story. This is how a Jewish hearer of Jesus’ time would have heard this parable.

The surprise in this parable is less that a Samaritan, the enemy, helps than that the wounded (presumably Jewish) man would accept the Samaritan’s help. He, too, is an example (I say this parable’s main example) of love of neighbor as self, and so he shows love of God by accepting the care of the Samaritan.

How well do we humbly accept the help; the kindness; the love of others, especially those with whom we might have trouble getting along? Do we love in a way that makes ourselves vulnerable; without questioning whether the other has ulterior motives in being kind to us? From the wounded man’s perspective, this may be at the core of Jesus’ teaching: “Do this and you will live.”