Homily for Sunday, 5 August 2018

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15; Psalm 78:3-4, 23-24, 25, 54; Ephesians 4:17, 20-24; John 6:24-35

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

What is a sign, and how might a sign point toward the quality of our relationship with somebody?

When we think of signs, we might start with the simplest examples: Traffic lights, for instance. Regardless of where we are in the world, or the language spoken there, the colours of traffic lights and their order are consistent: Red, yellow, green, from top to bottom or left to right. Another simple example of signs might be when we are in an airport in a foreign country with a different language. We need simple picture signs to point us toward the baggage claim, through customs, to our connecting gate, to the bathroom, and so forth.

Yet it is difficult to form a relationship with a sign at the airport or a traffic light. That is, unless I were to consider my impatient grumbling of a few days ago as I sat in front of an interminable red light, with the crossing arms down, lights on and bells sounding (speaking of signs) as three LRT trains passed in front of me. It is difficult to consider this to be an example of a relationship with a sign, unless maybe one of disdain! But this is not usually what we mean by relationship.

When we enter into relationship with somebody, more complex signs allow us to gauge the health of the relationship. When my mom and dad, after forty-two years of marriage, embrace lovingly in what we call public displays of affection, totally focused on each other and the moment, those PDAs are a clear sign that their relationship is healthy. When my brother Basilian priests gather together with joy in one another to pray, eat, or to recreate in community, we see a clear sign that relationships among us and with God are healthy.

One especially important, and undeniably complex, sign of healthy relationship, is the giving and sharing of food. Our Scriptures offer us many instances of the giving, receiving, and sharing of food, and our readings today from Exodus and John’s Gospel are no exception. The ability to give, receive, and share food is an essential measure of the health of relationships in Scripture. The sharing of food is at the centre of our celebration of Eucharist here and our Christian living by works of kindness, mercy, and justice that flow from this celebration. There may be no greater sign of the health of relationships, of love and trust among people and between us and God, than the frequency and quality of our fellowship around food.

Food is essential to love, bonding, and building trust from the first moments between a mother and her newborn child and maybe even before then, while the child is in the womb. Moms and dads: Your children’s dislike of broccoli and love for the Sunday brunch here at St. Joseph’s College probably goes way back! As an uncle, I think of the first time I met my nephew Liam, when he was about two months old, at Christmastime. While the amazing smell of Christmas dinner wafted through the house, my sister Deanna, Liam’s mom, handed Liam and a bottle to me so that I could feed him. How delighted and relaxed Liam was! A few years passed and, once again, my family was together at Christmastime. Liam had developed a taste for corn tortilla chips (a boy after my own heart). My then-toddler nephew, who is now almost seven years old, made a game of repeatedly circling the living room, charming and soaking in the love from everybody, and then, with great anticipation, opening his mouth wide in front of me so I could fill it with a chip. Deanna made the astute observation to me that the way to Liam’s heart was through food. This was nephew-uncle bonding time at its finest!

If only the people of Israel in Exodus or the crowds following Jesus in John’s Gospel had been as appreciative of what God fed them as Liam was of tortilla chips! Instead, when God feeds the people of Israel with a dewy, “flaky substance” in the desert, they look at it sideways and ask “What is it”? They call it “manna.” This strange name the Israelites give God’s food to them is one of the fairly frequent instances in most if not all languages in which a word used one way—in this case “man” or “manna” introduce a question, as in “What?” in Hebrew—may be used in another way, as in the name for something. Here, the Israelites’ question on encountering the food God gives them becomes their name for it: Manna? What is it?

At least by this point in their exodus from Egypt, the people of Israel have progressed beyond complaining about being hungry, longing to sit “by the fleshpots” and to eat their “fill of bread” they had enjoyed in Egypt. But they still do not understand the sign value of the manna in the desert: What did the manna signify about God’s relationship with his people?

God could have abandoned the people of Israel when they “complained against Moses and Aaron” and God, or scolded them, as God did at other times when they complained. But God does not abandon his people or scold them. Instead, God tests them: “Alright, Israel, your constant complaining is driving me crazy! But if I give you food, even a strange kind of food you will not know I gave to you or what it is until you try it, will you recognize me as the God who delivered you out of slavery, who has sustained you for forty years in the desert, and who will lead you back to your homeland? Will you at last learn to trust me”?

And Israel still does not quite pass God’s test. They do not quite understand the sign behind the manna from heaven: That this nourishing if strange food is yet another sign of God’s promise to be with them always, to sustain them, and to save them, whether from slavery or their own ignorance and complaining, no matter what. God’s promise, called a covenant, is greater than the bread that only points to God’s promise of salvation. And so, even if the people of Israel fail the test; fail to understand the covenantal sign of the manna in the desert, God and God’s salvation, and not the people’s failure, will have the last word.

The same is true of Jesus’ encounter with the crowds in John’s Gospel, who continue to look for him after the sign of the multiplication of the loaves and fish. The crowds look for Jesus “not because [they] saw signs, but because [they] ate their fill of the loaves.” Again, they fail to understand the covenant value of Jesus’ sign of the multiplication of loaves; how this fits into God’s ongoing promise to us of sustenance toward eternal life. They fail to understand that God has upped the sign ante, so to speak: Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves shows that Jesus, in our human form, is the same God who saved the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, formed a covenant relationship with them and guided them through the desert under Moses and Aaron to their homeland. Again, the sign points us to something, or better yet somebody, beyond the sign itself: God; relationship with God; God’s continued offer of salvation. No longer should it be any question of “manna”?—“What is it”?—but of our relationship with God, who is behind these earthly signs leading us to salvation, “the food that endures for eternal life.”

The question, then, becomes how well we understand the signs God gives us today to point us toward relationship with God; toward the unbreakable covenant God has made with us to save us. Maybe if God were to try to give us tortilla chips instead of manna or loaves and fish, we might understand the promise of salvation God has tried since the first moments of creation to communicate to us. My nephew Liam would certainly understand that God wants to save us if God were to send us tortilla chips!

How well do we understand God’s signs of salvation, greatest of all our Eucharist, in our lives? Even if we struggle or fail outright to understand God’s signs, as the episodes of the manna and after Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves and fish show us, God will keep trying to strengthen his relationship with us; to point us toward eternal life. And so our failures; our ignorance; even our sin will not have the last word. God and God’s salvation, loving relationship with God forever, will. This is God’s promise to us; God’s covenant with us.

Homily for Sunday, 26 July 2015

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 2 Kings 4:42-44; Psalm 145:10-11, 15-16, 17-18; Ephesians 4:1-6; John 6:1-15

How many of us are familiar with Jesus’ miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish? I expect most of us are familiar with Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand. This may be the most popular miracle story in our Scriptures. Today we hear John’s version of Jesus’ feeding of the thousands, but this story is the only one of Jesus’ miracles told in all four Gospels.

Yet how many of us put some distance between ourselves and Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand? We would be right to think: This was a great miracle that Jesus performed! It was so important in fact that it is mentioned in all four Gospels; all four books of our Bible that center on Jesus’ life on earth. Jesus satisfied the hunger of thousands of people on that hillside in Galilee two thousand years ago. These people “followed [Jesus] because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick,” and they were healed and fed in a way greater than they ever imagined. And it all started with only “five barley loaves and two fish.” What an amazing event; a miracle!

But would we not be missing something were we to think of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand as merely a great one-time event in history; a miracle that happened over two thousand years ago? We have many ways in which we can bridge some of the (at least historical) distance between Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand and our own time. Might we imagine ourselves as one of the people who witnessed Jesus’ miracle with the loaves and fish? When I was in seminary and worked as a children’s catechist in Toronto, one of my favorite ways of bringing familiar Bible stories alive for the children was to ask the children to imagine themselves as a person in the story. To make the activity fair, nobody could be Jesus or God; they had to “be” somebody else in the story!

So if you were on the hillside in Galilee when Jesus multiplied the loaves and fish to feed five thousand people, would you have been one of Jesus’ Apostles? Can we imagine ourselves as somebody like Philip: Truthful; to the point; matter-of-fact? “Two hundred days wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little,” Philip says when he sees the multitudes and Jesus asks where they are to “buy enough food” to feed them. Or are we more like Andrew? Like Philip, we wonder how we will feed so many people with so little food. But, more clearly than Philip (although I have a feeling Philip, too, may have thought, knowing Jesus, that Jesus would somehow provide for the multitude), Andrew is open to any action that may help in this situation.

Andrew sees “a boy” with “five barley loaves and two fish.” He announces to Jesus that this generous boy is willing to give his loaves and fish to the hungry people. This might have been supper for the little boy and his family, after all. Andrew, like Philip, is cautious and practical: “What good are these” five loaves and two fish “for so many”? But Andrew, like Philip, knows that anything is possible with Jesus. And so faithful Andrew gives Jesus the boy’s loaves and fish and watches in amazement as Jesus prays to God in thanksgiving and the loaves and fish are multiplied into an abundant meal!

Or are we perhaps like the little boy who gives to Andrew the five loaves and two fish that are later multiplied? “Mom and Dad just sent me to the market to buy five barley loaves and two fish… And maybe a dozen eggs, a gallon of milk, and some vegetables… If I return empty-handed, Mom and Dad will be really upset and we’ll have no supper. But then Mom and Dad have said how much they like this Jesus. They have heard him speak and seen him heal the sick. And Andrew, Philip, and the other ten guys who work for him are really nice, too! Maybe I’ll give Mr. Andrew my bread and fish and see what happens. Mom and Dad won’t know any better if what I bring home are the leftovers”! Sure enough, the boy sees Jesus feed five thousand people from his five loaves and two fish. He is amazed to be the hero (he and Jesus, of course) to the hungry crowd. The Apostles send him home with as much leftover bread and fish as he can possibly carry. Mom and Dad are relieved as their son staggers in the door under the weight of the food, a bit late but safe and sound. Supper is on!

It is good for us, I believe, to put ourselves into familiar events in our Scriptures; especially in our Gospels as somebody in the Bible story. I have done this myself, at prayer, many times: “If I were this person, how would I have experienced the multiplication of the loaves?”, and so forth… But, if we stop at imagining ourselves as other people in these great events in our Gospels, could these events of which we hear in the Bible remain merely distant events in history? Even if we imagine ourselves as one of the Apostles; somebody in the crowd; the little boy perhaps, we could still hear this Gospel story as if it happened once two thousand years ago on a hillside in Galilee.

But this miracle of the feeding of five thousand was not just a one-time event two thousand years ago on a hillside in Galilee. It continues to take place among us here and now. What do I mean by this?

How many of us are connecting in our minds Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand with our celebration of Eucharist here and now? This connection would be quite appropriate. Yet what happens when we celebrate our Eucharist? Yes, we are witnesses to a transformation: By the power of the Holy Spirit Jesus becomes really and truly present under ordinary bread and wine on the altar. We celebrate a sacrament: Christ really present here is also a sign of what awaits us in heaven, when we will be with God forever. We speak of “the holy sacrifice of the Mass”: Christ offers himself to us in our Eucharist as the perfect memorial of his death and resurrection for us. We could even say that, when we celebrate Eucharist, a miracle happens. Gifts of bread and wine and also we are “consecrated” by God; made holy in and through this celebration.

But what also happens when we celebrate Eucharist? We offer something. I know, it does not seem like we offer much: Bread; wine; water; perhaps a money offering to support our parish and broader Church when the gifts (our “offertory”) are brought to the altar at Mass. We offer, if nothing else, our presence and prayerful participation as we are able in our Eucharist. Those who are homebound; who are sick offer their presence with us in spirit, and we as a community offer them our prayers.

This all does not seem like much of an offering. But here is our connection between the events of our Gospel, Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand, and this Eucharistic celebration. And so Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves and fish is no longer merely a one-time past event but is made present in action to us here. A few months ago, Pope Francis said this about Jesus’ miracle of the loaves and fish: It is indeed a miracle. Yet it is as much about the offering by the people: The hungry crowd; Jesus’ Apostles; the boy who brings the loaves and fish to Andrew… Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves and fish is the people’s “sharing inspired by faith and prayer.”

Is this not what we are doing here: “A sharing”; an offering “inspired by faith and prayer”? Sure, we may not think we are offering much: Our offertory gifts at Mass; our works of peace and justice; small acts of kindness to which we are called by our faith; our sorrow when we have sinned and our trust in God’s mercy especially through the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist itself… But our Lord Jesus asks us; invites us only to offer what we have; to give our best with God’s grace; to entrust what gifts we are able to give to one another and back to God in “faith and prayer,” and then not to be too surprised when God works miracles with what we offer.  

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 Monday, 16 March 2015‒ Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Readings of the day: Isaiah 65:17-21; Psalm 30:2, 4, 5-6, 11-12a, 13b; John 4:43-54

Are not the images in our first reading today, from the prophet Isaiah, fantastic? At this point in Isaiah, the people of Israel are returning to Jerusalem from Babylon. In reality Jerusalem lay in ruins, but the point of this ending of the Book of Isaiah is to give the people the courage necessary to return and to rebuild the city.

Imagine, Isaiah says to the people: God is “about to create” something wonderful out of the ruins of Jerusalem; not only to return Jerusalem to its former greatness but to “create new heavens and a new earth”! In this kind of utopia there will be never-before-experienced “rejoicing and happiness.” “I will create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight,” God says through Isaiah. There will no longer be “weeping… crying”; no longer suffering. All this new city’s people will live a full lifespan and be prosperous beyond what they ever were before.

The difficulty for me, and likely for the people of Jerusalem of Isaiah’s time or any time, is that all this sounds a bit too fantastic to be true. Look around even this parish: Do not most if not all of us know somebody who has suffered? Do we not know good people who have suffered through no fault of their own: People who have lost loved ones; people who are unemployed; who are poor; people suffering from severe, even terminal, illnesses; children and their families who suffer? Where is God in this suffering? Where is the fulfillment of prophecies like that of Isaiah: the creation of “new heavens and a new earth”?

This problem of suffering in our world can lead and has led many to question even God’s existence. Do we know of somebody who looks for a sign; a miracle from God, perhaps lessening of or deliverance from suffering, to support their faith in God?

Through his encounter with the royal official’s son in today’s Gospel reading from John, Jesus cautions us not to seek “signs and wonders” as the first means to support our faith. God is capable of working through the fantastic; the miraculous, but this is not God’s usual way of acting in our world.

There is at least one regular exception to this rule: our Eucharist. Every time we celebrate Mass, we witness a miracle before our very eyes. The gifts of bread and wine we bring to the altar are transformed into the body and blood of Christ! But even this happens without fanfare; humbly; prayerfully; silently. This is how God usually acts in our world.

In John’s Gospel, after confirming the royal official’s faith, Jesus works one of his great signs: The healing of the royal official’s son. But Jesus brings the boy back from the brink of death not with fanfare, but humbly; prayerfully; with the simple words to the royal official: “You may go; your son will live.”

God has redeemed us and our world through Jesus Christ. God is still working to save us; to free us from suffering and death, usually without fanfare; humbly; prayerfully; silently creating “new heavens and a new earth.” We will live. This is how God acts in our world.