Homily for Sunday, 27 February 2022– Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Readings of the day: Sirach 27:4-7; Psalm 92:2-3, 14-15, 15-16; 1 Corinthians 15:54-58; Luke 6:39-45

Teaching two Bible courses as I am this semester here at St. Joseph’s College, I am realizing something more constantly and profoundly, but that I have known for as long as I can remember. I realize how much I appreciate the Bible not only as sacred, divinely-inspired text, but as works of literature. I appreciate the different literary genres and devices in the text: Works of poetry, prose or narrative; apocalyptic literature with its often fearsome and graphic symbolism; the use of irony, metaphor, and even hyperbole.

Yes, hyperbole: The writers of the Bible were not beyond using creative, literary exaggeration to make a point. Could we say that Jesus was not beyond hyperbole, either? We hear an example of it in today’s Gospel, from Luke. Jesus asks why his disciples who have a log in their eye do not notice the log in their eye, but readily notice “the speck in [their] neighbour’s eye.” Of course, Jesus means this, quite on purpose, to evoke the most ridiculous of images in his hearers’ minds: Somebody staggering about with a massive beam in their eye. First of all, by what kind of horrendous accident would somebody have taken a log beam through the eye? (I do not even want to think about this). Second, that person needs to be admitted to emergency immediately! Third, even the person hapless enough to have been stuck with a mere speck in the eye could experience a lot of pain.

Clearly, Jesus is exaggerating the size contrast between the speck and the log to make a point. And most if not all of us understand the point he is making: Sin can inhibit not so much our literal eyesight but the insight of our consciences into our own sinfulness and weakness, so that we become much less capable of discerning our own faults than we are at pointing out the faults of other people, even when they are less significant than our own.

I notice this as a university instructor and academic: I am much better at correcting even the fine details of somebody else’s writing than I am at correcting my own. I think to myself that, all those times in school when teachers would insist that we have somebody proofread our work for us, even if we thought we were good writers: My teachers were not kidding! When I write, I appreciate somebody who is adept at spotting all the specks (and the occasional log) in my written work. At the same time, I do not think most or any of us really appreciate the “speck-spotters” we encounter outside of maybe the academic setting; people who criticize others for every little fault, who are almost certainly not without fault themselves. But do we realize readily when we become the pedantic “speck-spotters”?

With the log and speck in the eye scenario, Jesus uses analogy and hyperbole to make a point that is very relatable to our everyday lives; to our experience as Jesus’ disciples. And Jesus introduces the log-and-speck saying with another parable, which also includes an element of hyperbole. He asks, “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into the pit? Like the log-and-speck analogy, the proverb of the blind person guiding another blind person plants a ridiculous image in our minds. “Can a blind person guide a blind person”? Jesus’ question is purposely designed to draw from us a decisive answer: “No, of course not”!

That is, we lean decisively toward answering “no” to whether a blind person can guide a blind person, until we change our perspective on this little hyperbolic proverb; until we think about it from the perspective of a blind person. Mary McGlone, a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet in St. Louis who writes for the National Catholic Reporter in the U.S., asks whether another blind person might, in some situations, in fact be the best possible guide or teacher for a blind person. Somebody who is blind, says Sr. Mary McGlone, may in fact “be the best teacher of the blind”; the one who best understands “the challenges blind people have to overcome… A sighted teacher might talk about a white cane; the non-sighted teacher realizes that the learner [if the learner has never been able to see] has no concept of whiteness” or colour.

Today’s Gospel parables (or, really, proverbs that use hyperbole for effect), part of Luke’s Sermon on the Plain, are all about changing our perspective. They are a good preparation for Lent, which, by the way, begins this upcoming Wednesday, Ash Wednesday. In Lent, we speak of changing our perspective; changing our minds (which is the literal meaning of the Greek word metanoia that our Gospels use for “repentance”). And today’s Gospel reading gives us an opportunity, sisters and brothers, to practice this change of perspective; this change of mind and heart; this repentance to believe in and live the Good News that is essential to Christian discipleship.

Jesus invites us to change our perspective; our minds and our hearts; to repent. Even if we have not sinned (at least since our last confession); even if we are not blind: Think the word of God; interpret it; live it from the perspective of the blind person; from the perspective of the sinner. This is the only way to be a true, authentic disciple of Jesus and not a hypocrite.

Incidentally, the word “hypocrite,” one of Jesus’ most frequent reproofs in the Gospels, evokes somebody playing a part, pretending to be somebody or something that person is not; literally-speaking, one under a mask, as an actor in theatre in Jesus’ time. A hypocrite is somebody consumed by playing a part that is not them; that is not authentic. A hypocrite plays the part of one without sin; pretends that he or she is not a sinner. A hypocrite is unable (or unwilling) to interpret; to live; to be a disciple of Jesus and a person of God from the perspective of the blind; the weak; the sinner. A hypocrite becomes unwilling to change one’s perspective, one’s heart and mind, in the way Jesus asks of us.

Hypocrisy, if we think about it in this way, is a serious sin, if only because Jesus himself, although he never sinned, is the model for us of shifting perspective. Jesus became human, one like us in all things but sin. In so doing, Jesus saw the world from our perspective, the point of view of us sinners; the blind; the weak; the perspective ultimately of looking upon us and the world from the cross. Jesus is the model for us of metanoia, even though he never committed any sin.

And we celebrate this every time we gather to celebrate the Eucharist. Every Mass, we begin our Eucharistic celebration by changing our perspective. We begin every Mass not by looking for the specks in the eyes of our neighbour while ignoring any potential logs in ours, but by praying, “I confess to almighty God… Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.” We pray for God’s mercy even if we are guilty of no sin, even if we have just been to confession minutes before Mass.

Why? We begin our Eucharistic celebration this way because none of this is about our sin. None of this is about us at all. All of it is about God, in Jesus Christ, having chosen freely to live from our perspective, that of our human nature weakened; blinded by sin, so that we might change our perspective to be more like that of God. That perspective of God is not one that seeks the faults of others to condemn them, but one that has mercy on our faults and seeks what is good in us, so that we might be saved.

Maybe paradoxically, we change our perspective to be more from God’s point of view of loving mercy toward us by changing our perspective to empathize more with one another and our weaknesses; our blindness; our susceptibility to sin. Sometimes the best teacher of the blind is another blind person! But how do we do this? In one word: Listen.

The Book of Sirach, from which we hear today, invites us to listen before we speak. To speak without listening first; without searching, as well as we are able, for good will in the other person first, is to reveal too soon where we lack wisdom. It is to reveal our faults; our sins. It is to reveal our uncanny ability to correct the work of others much better than we are able to correct our own. It is to reveal the ridiculousness of the logs in our own eyes while we spot the specks in the eyes of our sisters and brothers. It is to reveal our hypocrisy.

Instead, the word of God urges us—starting with me, first and foremost—to listen, to empathize, to discern good will in our sister; our brother, to change our minds and hearts (to repent!) before trying to change another person. This is authentic faith. This is wisdom. This is the way of the Good News of Jesus Christ that we celebrate and try to live, here and now.

Homily for Sunday, 1 September 2019

Readings of the day: Sirach 3:17-18; Psalm 68:4-5, 6-7, 10-11; Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a; Luke 14:1, 7-14

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at Our Lady of Sorrows Parish, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

What is humility? Is it possible to be confident yet still humble? In 1980, Mac Davis began his song with the sassy lyrics, “O Lord, it’s hard to be humble.” But none of us (including, I dare say, Mac Davis, despite the second tongue-in-cheek line of his song) have the luxury of being “perfect in every way.” So what exactly is humility?

Our readings today from the Book of Sirach and Luke’s Gospel prize the virtue of humility. What other virtues go together with humility, or could help us to understand what humility is and to practice it? Sirach plays on the apparent paradox between humility and greatness; being “lofty and renowned” yet humble. Even the Lord himself, Sirach says, is mighty, “but by the humble he is glorified.”

Do we often think of God as humble, or glorified especially when we are humble? Sirach goes on to connect humility with intelligence, attentiveness, and wisdom. How are humility, intelligence, attentiveness, and wisdom interconnected? Imagine this: Have we ever consulted an expert on something we knew little about? Have we ever taken time to ask an expert or a teacher questions, and then listen and dialogue for the sheer joy of broadening or deepening our knowledge? How many of us have listened to somebody in a difficult situation in life, or cared for somebody vulnerable or in need in any one of a variety of ways?

I have limited experience with monastic religious orders, but the sixth-century Rule of St. Benedict, on which the Rules of many religious orders, in and outside of monasteries, have been based, begins with a very important verb: “Listen.” St. Benedict considered attentive listening, inclination “of the heart,” to be critical to the community life among the monks under his guidance; their rhythm of work and prayer for which Benedictines are known. The abbot of the Benedictine Monastery of Christ in the Desert in New Mexico reflects on the reading we hear from Sirach today about how wisdom is connected to attentive listening. “Wisdom is not an intellectual activity,” the abbot says. “No, it is the gift of knowing how to live well in every situation while maintaining our deepest values.” And to discern what is most true, what is right, what “our deepest values” should be “in every situation”; to encounter God “in every situation” means to know “how to keep still and keep silence.” The abbot of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert suggests that, “as a practical spiritual exercise, today we might try to be still and silent and just listen to others and see what that listening does to us interiorly.”

How many of us have experienced that, the more attentively we listen or care for another person, interiorly we absorb the needs or concerns of the other person. Our needs, in the moment, often become secondary to those of the other person. It is in these situations when I have been the most at peace in ministry as a priest, when ministry is least about me and most about the other and about encountering God in the other person. These experiences of encounter with God in and through another person are made possible by attentive listening. These experiences also require humility: Ministry; listening attentively is not about me first but about another person, and ultimately about God first.

Humility, then, is the key to “our deepest values”; the key to relationship with our God who is mighty, “but by the humble he is glorified.” So humility has nothing to do with a lack of self-confidence or downplaying our natural talents. Our talents, after all, are from God. But, paradoxically, the more naturally talented or intelligent we are, the wiser we will be the more we can be still and listen, when caring for another person; when we are at prayer, especially for the needs of others. So wisdom, far from “an intellectual activity,” is a virtue, the twin virtue of humility, which is at its greatest when we listen for and attentively seek the Lord’s presence in others, because, again paradoxically, the mightier God is, the humbler God is. And the same is true of God as of us. For God, not God’s greatest might for might’s sake but our best interest, our salvation, is God’s greatest glory.

Jesus’ parable we hear today gives us another image of what humility is about. For Sirach, wisdom and humility are about the encounter with God through attentive listening and care for others. For Jesus, humility is to leave the position of greatest social status to another. The images of humility that Sirach and Jesus, through Luke’s Gospel, offer us today are complementary. Who among us has heard it said that human beings are both sacred and social? Sirach focuses more on the sacred dimension of human nature; Jesus in Luke’s Gospel today focuses more on our social dimension, but these two dimensions of our human nature go together.

Jesus was probably no stranger to being invited to dine with the social elites of his time. Today’s Gospel reading finds Jesus invited “to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath.” Presuming that, at this meal with the leading Pharisee, Jesus was a respected guest (since our Gospel reading does not say otherwise), can we not easily imagine Jesus’ host offering Jesus himself the place of honour at table? How would Jesus act in this situation? Would he not have acted as he teaches in his parable, taking “the lowest place” and waiting for his host to invite him up to a place of higher status?

In any case. Jesus turns social convention on its head with his parable we hear today through Luke. Take “the lowest place” at table and wait to be invited “up higher,” Jesus says. “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or rich neighbours,” but first “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,” those who cannot repay your act of kindness and humility.

In truth, this would neither be the first nor the last time Jesus would take the place of least status. The meal we hear about today would be the last time in Luke’s Gospel when Jesus would dine in a Pharisee’s home; the last time he would maybe have been offered the place of highest status at table. But Jesus was born into this world in the humblest place, a manger in Bethlehem. And he would again take the humblest, indeed the most humiliating place, on a cross, where he would die for us. This act of utmost humility is our only way to salvation. And, as a sign of this promise to us of salvation, the exalted place with God that awaits us to the extent we humble ourselves, Jesus would be raised from the dead, but he had to die on a cross first.

He had to, many times during his life, turn our social conventions of status and prestige on their head. “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” It will forever be hard for us “to be humble”; humility is a difficult virtue to define, much less to practice. Yet Jesus proposes what the wisdom of people like Sirach did for centuries before him, and what holy people inspired by Jesus have proposed since: Humility, intentionally placing others and ultimately God first, especially those who are the most in need, the most vulnerable, or the least reputed socially; listening attentively to the needs of others, is key to living up to our God-given human nature, both sacred and social.

We have already been created in God’s image and likeness. There can be no place of greater status than this; no greater prestige our world can offer. The measure to which we are humble, inspiring others by our words and actions to know how much dignity they have before God as creatures in God’s image and likeness, is the measure to which we will be exalted. We will know everlasting communion with our God, who is mighty and glorious beyond our comprehension precisely because he is humble. Indeed, our God is the source of the humility by which we will be saved.

Homily for Sunday, 31 December 2017– The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Readings of the day: Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14; Psalm 128:1-2, 3, 4-5; Colossians 3:12-21; Luke 2:22-40

This homily was given at St. James Church, Vernon, BC, Canada.

My sisters and brothers in Christ, we have just heard from Luke’s Gospel that, after the baby Jesus was presented to and blessed by Simeon and Anna in the Temple of Jerusalem, and then Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the Holy Family, had returned to their hometown of Nazareth, “the child [Jesus] became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favour of God was upon him.”

What, then, is wisdom, and what, or who is the source of wisdom? If you are thinking that, of course, God is the ultimate source of wisdom, you have the right answer to the question. You pass the pop quiz with flying colours! But, if God is the ultimate source of wisdom, then how, when, and where did Jesus receive this wisdom of God, and how might we receive this same wisdom, strength, and “favour of God” that Jesus once did?

Mary and Joseph, Luke says, took the infant Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem “to present him to the Lord.” When they had done this because it was “required by the law of the Lord,” they returned to their home in Nazareth. There, in the temple and in the home or, we might say as Christians today, the Church and the home, are the “favoured” places where God gives us his wisdom that strengthens us. Would the Church not seem a more obvious place where we receive God’s wisdom, strength, and favour? Yet the home is also an extension of the Church as a favoured place to encounter God’s wisdom, strength, and favour. We may have heard the term, referring to the home, the “domestic Church.” Also, if we are attentive to God’s presence in our world and our lives, we encounter God’s wisdom, strength, and favour everywhere around and within us. We are able to recognize God in God’s creation: God’s earth, God’s universe and everything and everybody in it that God has made and makes holy. But the first places; the favoured places of God’s strengthening wisdom are the Church and the home.

Having said this, I would like to share a story that begins not in a Church or at home, but in an airport. This is not only because I have been traveling, as many of us may do during the Christmas season, to be here with family. No, eight years ago, in an airport, I held my then four-day-old niece, Molly Janice Perrin, for the first time. Four days earlier, Molly was born as I was taking my first vows with my religious order, the Basilians, in Windsor, Ontario. And so, in good Biblical tradition (think perhaps of the three wise men), I arrived a few days late, but with good reason, to greet a newborn child. I think of the scene in the airport that day as a kind of presentation. Of course, I, my brother and Molly’s Uncle Eric, and my mom and dad, then-first-time grandparents, were not arriving to hold the baby Jesus, although I would say Molly is a pretty holy child. And she is, after all, named after the Blessed Virgin Mary, one of few people besides Jesus whom Luke’s Gospel explicitly calls “favoured” by God.

From this moment of Molly’s “presentation,” not in a temple or church but in an airport, one of my constant prayers for her has been that, like Luke’s Gospel says to us about Jesus, she would grow in strength and wisdom, and that “the favour of God” would be upon her. My sisters and brothers, some eight years, four months, sixteen days, and many fond prayers later, Molly is here among us, on this Solemnity of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, to celebrate her first holy communion. She is here to celebrate with her parents, my sister Deanna and brother-in-law Tyler. She is here with her brother, my nephew Liam. She is here with many members (and generations) of her extended family and still more people who are here in spirit. Molly, you join with all of us, the Church, in this celebration of your presentation before and welcome to the Table of the Lord. We, your family and the Church, try and promise to keep trying to be the example to you of Christian faith in Jesus; of kindness; of love, just as the members of the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, were for one another.

In this family celebration; this Church celebration, you will move up to the only “big kids’ table” that really matters: The Table of the Eucharist. I think my prayers and the prayers of many other people have been and are being answered: You, Molly, continue to grow in wisdom and strength— no doubt with a healthy side of sass— and clearly “the favour of God is upon” you!

If we think about it this way, in a family; in a home, where is an especially privileged place where members of the family, of the household, can gather together and grow in wisdom and strength? This place is the table. Yet with the often busy, active schedules today’s families lead, it can become difficult for many of us to share in a regular meal together. Still, it has been shown that the strongest and most united households and families are those who do share this regular meal time together. This same difficulty is connected to the difficulty many of us experience and the sacrifice it is to gather here before the Lord’s Table, the Table of the Eucharist. And so please let me offer this word of encouragement and thanksgiving to all of us who have gathered together in this celebration of the Eucharist, at the invitation of our Lord Jesus to gather at his Table.

We are gathered here, in this privileged place where we become filled with wisdom and strength, just as our Lord himself was in the home of Mary and Joseph. As we go forth from this celebration today, we might think of one person, one family, who is busy; who is struggling for any of a variety of reasons; who needs the same gentle encouragement we find here to gather together at the Lord’s Table. We might think of one person; one family in need of a little extra encouragement to grow in wisdom and strength in the peace of the home together; to share a regular meal together. Pray for this person, this one family, today and every day.

May we pray for those families and households who have trouble making ends meet; who struggle to fill their table with enough food to sustain themselves. Pray for those people, families and households who are new to our country, its culture, and its customs; those who may be working multiple jobs to provide the necessities for a stable home, a place to build up wisdom and strength, peace and unity.

Building up wisdom and strength, peace and unity, faithful and holy families after the example of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph begins at table. It begins in a special way at this, our Table of the Eucharist. At table, in our Church as in our homes, we have a privileged place to learn and put into practice the virtues of our faith of which St. Paul speaks to us today in his letter to the Colossians: “Compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience,” forgiveness, prayerful praise to God.

In our homes and in our Church, children learn and put into practice the wisdom of the fourth commandment: “Honour your father and your mother.” We hear a beautiful reflection and extension on this commandment this morning from a book of the Old Testament called, in longer form, the Wisdom of Sirach. Faithfulness to the commandment to honour father and mother, Sirach says, will ensure that children will one day “have joy in their own children,” that their prayers “will be heard,” and that their sins will be forgiven.

Here before us we, like Sirach, like St. Paul, and like the elderly Simeon in our Gospel, our “eyes have seen God’s salvation… prepared in the sight of all peoples.” We will go forth from this Eucharistic celebration, this celebration of peace and communion, to return to our homes as Mary and Joseph returned with Jesus from the Temple of Jerusalem to their home in Nazareth.

May our Eucharist remain for us always our particular source of joy and of faithfulness; of “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience,” forgiveness, and prayerful praise to God. And may we, like the child Jesus in his home in Nazareth, in our homes and in our Church, be “filled with wisdom” and strength, and may “the favour of God be” upon us.