Homily for Monday, 25 December 2023– The Nativity of the Lord, Mass during the Day

Readings of the day: Isaiah 52:7-10; Psalm 98:1, 2-3, 3-4, 5-6; Hebrews 1:1-6; John 1:1-18

Sisters and brothers, a Merry Christmas to you, our families, our loved ones, our friends!

Increasingly, one of Pope Francis’ favourite words is, “Closeness.” Pope Francis uses the word “closeness” nine times in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers and Sisters All,” which owes its title to an Admonition of St. Francis of Assisi to the friars of his religious community. This Admonition of St. Francis invites the friars to practice fraternal care and kindness toward one another and toward the poor, after Jesus’ example of fraternal closeness with us, with humanity.

The most perfect expression of closeness our world has ever known is when God took on our human nature in the person of Jesus Christ, that first Christmas morning in Bethlehem. But this was not the first time God expressed closeness with us, with the created world. From the very first moments of creation, God has ordered creation, intended it, to exist in closeness, interdependence of one being on another for us to flourish, the “common good.”

John’s Gospel on this Christmas morning takes us back to “the beginning” of God’s relationship of closeness with creation. John’s Gospel recalls God’s intention, from the beginning, that all things, all beings enjoy the same closeness and depend on one another to flourish. “In the beginning,” John’s Gospel begins this morning, “the word was with God, and the word was God.”

Here, in the majestic beginning of John’s prologue, “the word” is logos, the reason everything is. And, in the Greek of the Gospel of John, God is Theos (think of words like theology, the study or pursuit of God). In this beginning, Theos meets logos; God draws into intimate closeness with the reason anything and everything exists, so that these become one. From the very first moments of creation, God is the reason all things exist, why we exist and are called to participate in our own flourishing, God’s own project for our everlasting well-being and salvation.

And the one God, we profess by faith, exists in the intimate closeness of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father sent the Son, begot the Son, to live “among us,” John’s Gospel says, in our human flesh. And then the Son would breathe his Spirit upon the earth to continue to ensure our closeness with God, the greatest good of each of us and of the Church, meant to live in closeness with one another.

We are sacred creatures, created in the image and likeness of God, sisters and brothers, but we are also social creatures. As the Book of Genesis says near its beginning, “It is not good for [us] to be alone.” As Pope Francis is fond of saying, “Nobody is saved alone.” God has made us for closeness, between us and God, St. Augustine of Hippo says, “For, O God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” And God has made us for closeness among one another. This is how we have been created, and how we will be saved, how we will be in heaven.

That design of God—for closeness, between us and God, among ourselves, between us and every other creature—is captured in our readings today. That design of God, for closeness, has been from the very beginning, when Theos and logos became one.

God’s drawing us into ever-greater closeness—with God, among ourselves, with all created things—has played out in history. Today the Letter to the Hebrews proclaims that “long ago God spoke to our ancestors.” God spoke his will, his design of closeness to us through prophets. But now God “has spoken to us by the Son.” There can be no greater closeness than God becoming human, one like us in all things but sin in the person of Jesus Christ.

And the prophet Isaiah announces a blessing to the messenger of peace, good news, salvation. “How beautiful upon the mountains,” Isaiah says, “are the feet of [this] messenger”; the messenger who proclaims the closeness God has desired for and with us from “the beginning,” the closeness now fulfilled in God becoming a human being, sharing in our human experiences from birth to death and resurrection.

God made us for closeness—with God, one another, all creation—from “the beginning.” But that is not all, according to John in his Gospel prologue we hear this Christmas morning. John’s language in the Gospel we have heard this morning is, par excellence, the language of closeness. Theos and logos are one “in the beginning.” God, the word, God’s Son Jesus Christ “became flesh and dwelt among us.” The word John uses here for “flesh” is not the more sanitized of the two words Greek has for “flesh,” soma. No, John says, in Jesus Christ God became sarx. God shares in Christ with us every aspect of our human experience, including the messiest, least sanitized aspects like birth, suffering and death.

There is another hidden gem in this phrase of John’s Gospel proclaiming the Incarnation, God taking human flesh in Jesus Christ. John says, “The word became flesh and lived among us.” The word we hear as “lived” among us is an ancient Greek word referring to theatre, not so “lived” as that Jesus “pitched his tent” (skene) among us. We owe the English word scene, as in a play, to the Greek skene. Only God is not acting when God desires and achieves this intimate closeness with us, taking our human flesh and sharing in our human experiences.

God has “pitched his tent” among us, a permanent dwelling, a permanent, intimate closeness. God pitching his tent among us is meant by John to evoke the early history of the people of Israel. Before Israel was ruled by kings like David and Solomon, before there was a fixed temple in Jerusalem as the centre of the Jewish faith, God was said to dwell under a tent, the Ark of the Covenant. The ancient Israelite tribes would transport the Ark of the Covenant wherever they went, so God was always with God’s people, close to them. In Jesus, God was once more pitching God’s tent with humanity. Only now God’s tent was not made of fabric or animal skins; God’s “tent” was one of human flesh, all our possible human experiences.

John uses another remarkable word in today’s Gospel reading to point to God’s closeness with us, the closeness God wants us to enjoy among ourselves and with all created things. At the end of today’s Gospel reading, John says, “It is God the only-begotten Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made [God] known.”

More literally, the Son dwells not so much “close to the Father’s heart” but “at the breast” or bosom of God. Those of us who have ever nursed a baby will say that there are not too many more intimate acts we perform with our body than a mother feeding an infant at the breast. What a beautiful image of maternal closeness John’s Gospel gives us of the relationship of the Son to the Father!

God desires this same closeness for us, the same relationship between God and us. In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis invites us to special “closeness marked by gratitude, solidarity, and reciprocity,” a closeness that values the poor and their faith by which they are closest to God, to the Lord who made himself poor, who humbled himself, taking on our human likeness. Pope Francis urges us to a particular “closeness to the underprivileged [in] the promotion of the common good.”

Sisters and brothers in the Christ born to us this day: This is how we live and experience the closeness God intended for us from “the beginning”; the closeness that unites God to the reason we and all created things exist; the closeness by which God willed to be born, to live, to die, and to rise from death in our human flesh; the closeness with which the Son dwells at the very bosom of the Father; the closeness that is ours to enjoy and by which we flourish and are saved.

Homily for Sunday, 24 December 2023– The Nativity of the Lord, Mass during the Night

Readings of the day: Isaiah 9:1-6; Psalm 96:1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:10-14

Once again, sisters and brothers, a blessed and Merry Christmas to all of us, our families, friends, and loved ones!

In our Opening Prayer for this celebration of the Nativity of our Lord, we praised God who has “made this most sacred night radiant with the splendor of the true light.”

God has made “this night,” not some other night far from our experience, “radiant with the splendor of the true light.” Yes, it is right for us to say, God made a night over two thousand years ago over Bethlehem especially “radiant with the splendor of the true light.” That was the night when Jesus was born of the blessed Virgin Mary, “wrapped… in swaddling clothes and laid… in a manger.” That night was greeted by an angel, sent with a message of “the true light” to “shepherds living in the fields.”

“The true light” would reach from Bethlehem to the ends of the earth! Shepherds were about as marginal as could be in Jesus’ time. They lived outside the cities and villages. Experts on Luke’s Gospel often speak of shepherds as people with a somewhat poor reputation. They did not regularly participate in social and religious ritual. They probably smelled a little off, like their sheep. But Luke’s Gospel says that they are the first to hear the message of our Saviour’s birth. And then that one angel sent to tell the shepherds of Jesus’ birth joins “a multitude of the heavenly host.”

The light, the sound of joyous song spreads from there: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours”! And it all starts with the message of one angel to a group of shepherds. Those shepherds have nothing to lose, so they set out “with haste and [find] Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.”

Already within our Gospel account of Jesus’ birth, the focus of the action has shifted, from an angel’s encounter with shepherds in their fields to those shepherds, heeding the invitation by the angel, encountering the Saviour of the world in a manger in Bethlehem. And this, sisters and brothers, the manger scene—we might say Act One, Scene Two of the Nativity event, if Act One, Scene One is the shepherds’ fields—is not the last scene of the birth of our Lord on earth, robed in our human flesh.

Today, here and now, we are experiencing another scene of the birth of our Lord into our world, sisters and brothers. “The splendor of the true light” that was first made known by an angel to shepherds, and then made manifest to the shepherds in their encounter with the Christ Child in a manger alongside Mary and Joseph, continues to grow in our present time. “The splendor of the true light,” the sound of joyous song, the encounter with the world’s peace and salvation in our human flesh continues to grow brighter, clearer, and closer in and through us.

How is this so? Is it not a little presumptuous to put ourselves in the Nativity story, so to speak, as if we should imagine ourselves as somehow important enough to be among the first to encounter God in our human flesh! But remember who was first to encounter the Christ Child, after Mary and Joseph: Shepherds were first. But, then, we might ask, was Jesus’ birth not a one-and-done event in history? This event could not still be happening; that is absurd!

In a way this is true: Jesus was born once for all into our world as a human being, there, done, over two thousand years ago in Bethlehem. And some (maybe many) of us may not feel very comfortable—we may feel unworthy—to imagine ourselves “on scene” with the first people to encounter the newborn Son of God.

Some (if not many) of us here tonight may not exactly be comfortable or feel worthy to be here. Some (if not many) of us may not have been to church for a long time. Some (if not many) of us may be conscious of some serious wrong, or have been wronged seriously by somebody else, or may be experiencing broken relationships, divisions within our households and our friendships.

If you are one of these people, I want you to know you are welcome here. Your presence here to celebrate this night of Jesus’ birth, “this most sacred night [made] radiant with the splendor of the true light,” has nothing to do with worthiness: Yours, mine, that of anybody celebrating this Christmas night anywhere in the world. It has nothing to do with whether this is your first time in a church in a long time, a short time, or ever. It had nothing to do with worthiness—of the shepherds, or even of Mary and Joseph—the night Jesus was born. Besides, the shepherds were first on scene at Jesus’ birth, after Mary and Joseph. Let us remember this.

From the shepherds the joyous song, “the splendor of the true light” could only grow. And it continues to grow in and through us. If this were not true, there would be no point in us gathering here to celebrate Christmas. God wants to grow the light in and through us.

This has been God’s desire from the very first moment of creation, when God spoke over the darkness, the primordial chaos and nothingness: “Let there be light.” And, from then on, the light has only grown. Sure, there have been and continue to be moments in our world, its history, our own lives when the light that is God’s presence in our world, in us, has been obscured. There have been moments when people have—when we have—tried to extinguish the light. That is what sin is and does. But our sin is no match for God, who this night takes on our human nature; who this night comes to dwell as one like us in all but sin; who this night invited shepherds through an angel to be the first after Mary and Joseph at the newborn Jesus’ bedside.

If we reflect on when God has intervened in our world, when God has reignited the light of God’s presence in our world, this tends to be when the light has become dimmest to our eyes, when we are most deeply mired in the darkness of sin. The word of God speaks to that this night. When the people of Israel in Old Testament times were at their most sinful, when they had nearly forgotten God in favour of the false gods of militarily and politically powerful nations around Israel, and when Israel had forgotten its responsibility of justice especially toward the most marginalized among themselves, God’s prophet Isaiah spoke to them. Isaiah said to Israel, in the depths of darkness and sin, “The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

And that light would only grow brighter. The joyous song would only resound more clearly: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours”! The people of Israel and then the people of the whole world would see, would encounter, would experience the mercy of “a child… born for us, a son given to us… Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” That child would be “born for us” into a world, once again, “in deep darkness.” Israel of Jesus’ time was ruled by the Romans, just the latest in a succession of brutal foreign powers to rule the Holy Land.

We can point out many instances of “deep darkness” in our world still today: Wars, poverty, homelessness, other injustices, broken relationships. Yet, once again, God enters our world: Sure, not as God did just over two thousand years ago, as a baby in the womb of the Virgin Mary, born and laid in a manger in Bethlehem. Sure, God may not be entering the world in our own time through the words of a prophet like Isaiah or through the mighty acts of creation that set this universe in motion at the beginning of time: “Let there be light.”

But now God ignites the light anew, on “this most sacred night radiant with the splendor of the true light.” And God entrusts us, no matter how unworthy we might think we are, with this light. Our Gospels say in another instance that we “are the light of the world.” Each of us, and the Church communally, is “another Christ,” another focus point of God’s light and joyous song in our world.

Christ continues to make his dwelling in our human flesh, the human presence of everybody who celebrates his Nativity throughout the world on this night. Here we welcome and we celebrate the rekindling of the light, God’s entrusting us with the light so that, by our words and deeds of kindness, of justice, of mercy, of peace, of joy, each of us may be a first point of encounter with the light of the Lord. Each of us may become ever more “radiant with the splendor of the true light.” And that true light, that song of true joy, that closeness of encounter with Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world, will only grow brighter and clearer in and through us.

Homily for Sunday, 24 December 2023– Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year B

Readings of the day: 2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16; Psalm 89:2-3, 4-5, 27, 29; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

I do not wish to dampen our mood too much. But traveling around this City of Edmonton—walking around the neighbourhood where I live, seeing the poverty and the homelessness; seeing the encampments of homeless people whenever I drive through downtown—quickly makes me sad these days. How do we respond to the many complex social problems that lead to more people without adequate shelter, more people with mental and physical health challenges, addictions; more people living in tents where their safety and sometimes the safety of the public is at risk?

Sisters and brothers, there are no easy answers to these questions. But I often wonder: If I; if we were able to contribute to enough social services and to the building of enough affordable housing for everybody who needs shelter in this city—or even just one person each—would we?

Today, on this Fourth Sunday of Advent, which happens to fall this year on the day before Christmas, we hear the noble idea of King David in the Second Book of Samuel: He wants to build God a house! Now, if King David lived in our time and place, I might want to ask him if I were in the place of, say, his prophet Nathan: It is wonderful that you want to build a house for God. But are all the poor, the marginalized in your kingdom sheltered, fed, cared for?

Old Testament tradition presents David as a good king (with some very significant flaws). So it is probable—and the Bible points to this in places—that David did care for, feed, and shelter the poor, as well as look after the spiritual needs of his people. If any king in ancient Israel were close to worthy to build a house for God, having done his best to care for his human subjects, it was David.

In 2 Samuel the prophet Nathan seems to agree with this. He approves David’s plan: “Go, do all you have in mind, for the LORD is with you.” But then, that night, we hear, God appears to Nathan and vetoes the king’s plan. David is not to build God a house. Instead, God will “make for [David] a great name,” an everlasting reign. God will do this by coming to dwell in our homes and our hearts.

Until the reign of David’s son and successor, King Solomon, who built the first temple—God’s first stationary house, we can say—in Jerusalem, God’s earthly dwelling was a tent, the Ark of the Covenant. And the Ark of the Covenant and the tabernacle at its centre were mobile. The Ark of the Covenant traveled where the tribes of ancient Israel traveled. God was always with God’s people.

Now, there are advantages to building God a stationary house, a temple, over having God dwell under a tent that traveled around with the tribes of Israel. The temple that David planned to build (and Solomon had built) would be imposing and ornate. It would call to mind God’s greatness, God’s sovereignty over the people and leaders of Israel.

On a much smaller scale but still beautiful, this chapel here at St. Joseph’s College serves the same purpose. The lovely stained-glass windows draw our attention upward toward heaven. They tell the story our Scriptures tell, from God’s creation of our universe through the ascension and reign of Christ the King in heaven, but in glorious bursts of colour, sunlight filtering through them. The Blessed Sacrament chapel invites us, right at this chapel’s entrance, to stop a while, pray, adore Jesus present in the tabernacle (and sometimes in the monstrance on the altar, especially every Friday evening when classes are in session). The altar centres our attention during Mass, calling to us with the Lord’s own invitation, “Come and eat.”

But there are possible disadvantages to building a stationary house for God. King David surely knew this; King Solomon and his successors would know this all too well. There is an ever-present temptation to immobilize, to limit God to our imaginations, our boxes, our houses that we build for God. So, in our comfortable enclosures, God can only fill with grace and blessing those who are somehow worthy of that divine grace and blessing. That bread and wine only becomes the real sacramental presence of Jesus Christ—body, blood, soul, and divinity—at that specific point in the Eucharistic prayer when the priest prays the words of institution…

If we begin to think in these ways, we have begun to forget God’s warning to King David through the prophet Nathan: It is not up to us to build God a house, stationary and static. No, God will make of us, sisters and brothers, a house. We are God’s dwelling when we emerge from this place, having partaken of the Eucharist, and we bring God’s grace and blessing out to the world by how we act with kindness, with love, with peace, with joy, especially toward those on the margins. Let us heed God’s reminder to King David at his most noble: “Are you the one to build me a house to live in”?

God wants to make of us a house, a living, moving Ark of the Covenant in which he will dwell. And the realization in history of God coming to dwell with us as one of us in all things but sin begins with the message of the angel Gabriel to a humble virgin, Mary of Nazareth. Mary is the first and most perfect model of the living, moving Ark of the Covenant, the earthly dwelling of God that God wants us all to be.

Now imagine us going out to our world, encountering somebody in special need of hearing the words Gabriel spoke to Mary: “Hail, full of grace; the Lord is with you.” And let us speak those words to at least one person today, tomorrow, this week in which we celebrate the Nativity of our Lord: “Hail, full of grace”; “May God bless you.” Our greeting can be as simple as that! And then let us enact that grace and blessing, that real presence of God that dwells in each of us, especially as we leave this Eucharistic celebration, as we celebrate Christmas tonight and tomorrow: Be kind; be at peace; forgive and be reconciled with somebody who needs forgiveness and reconciliation through us; try to remind ourselves to see and experience God’s presence primarily in somebody who lives on the margins, somebody outside the fixed houses, the places of worship we build for ourselves and for God.

If we are wondering or, in our Gospel’s words today to describe Mary upon hearing Gabriel’s greeting, if we are “perplexed” at why I am insisting on this, in a way this is good. Mary is “much perplexed,” Luke says, “by [Gabriel’s] words.” She says “to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin’”? Who am I to bear the Son of God in human flesh into this world? Who am I (and who are we) to be the focus of God’s blessing into the world right now, God’s living, moving Ark of the Covenant here and now?

I am sure that St. Paul, as he traveled and wrote his letters—the magnificent conclusion to his Letter to the Romans we have heard today—felt the same perplexity that Mary did. “Who am I,” St. Paul asks in a few places in his letters, “to be the messenger of peace and salvation, the apostle to the Gentiles? Who am I but a persecutor and a murderer (at first) of the disciples of Jesus”?

Who is St. Paul to be an ark, a living and moving home to bear God, to write about this new promise (covenant) of salvation in Christ to the ends of the world?! He is as worthy of that mission as Mary was, as we are. That is, not worthy at all, because this mission to be God’s living, moving home in this world does not depend on our worthiness. It did not depend on how noble King David was, or how perfect and humble Mary was (except that God made her exceptionally humble and sinless), or how fit Paul was to be an apostle.

God calls us, invites us, now with less than a full day to go before Christmas: “Who are you ‘to build me a house to live in’? I will make of you (of each of us, of our Church as a communion of faith) a living, moving house of grace, of blessing, of peace, of reconciliation, of joy, of welcome and shelter to those on the margins. And I will send you (all of us) to the ends of the earth to be home to my presence, my salvation that first entered the world in human flesh just over two thousand years ago through the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem.”

Homily for Sunday, 27 November 2022– First Sunday of Advent, Year A

Readings of the day: Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122:1-2, 3-4, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:27-44

What words of hope we have heard today!

The prophet Isaiah says, about “Judah and Jerusalem, ‘In days to come the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains…raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream toward it.” Israel, faithful once again to its God—our God—would know no more injustice, no more war… swords beaten “into ploughshares and… spears into pruning hooks.”

This is quite the grand prophecy of a glorious future for Israel, for “Judah and Jerusalem.” This is especially true if we consider the sorry state Israel and its leadership were in during the time of Isaiah. The prophetic ministry of Isaiah overlaps with the reigns of two especially bad kings in Jerusalem, Jotham and Ahaz, and then the reign of Hezekiah, who tried to reform both religious practice (no more worship of idols; Israel would worship only the one God) and social practice (against corruption and disregard for the poor). But the damage was already done. Israel was on track to be sacked by the stronger nations around it, and its people exiled to Babylon.

Just before the prophecy we hear today from Isaiah, the prophet warns Israel of the consequences of its sin—idolatry and social injustice—in stark terms. Yet, even in that first chapter of Isaiah, there is hope for Israel. Isaiah gives Israel the opportunity to “set things right… Though your sins may be like scarlet, they may become white as snow.”

And then the prophecy we hear today, from Chapter 2 of Isaiah, is decidedly hopeful. Especially considering the depth of Israel’s sin, it is remarkable that Isaiah prophecies that sin, the invasion and destruction of Israel, Jerusalem and its temple, the succession of bad kings, the Babylonian Exile would not be the end of Israel as a nation. Israel would not only recover from all this, but Jerusalem would “be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills.” The temple of Jerusalem would be rebuilt, even more magnificent than before. There would be peace, right worship of the one God of Israel, and special care for the poor and disadvantaged, the widow, the orphan, the foreigner.

In contrast to Isaiah 2—and similar to Isaiah 1—Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew today strikes a much starker, foreboding tone. Jesus speaks to his disciples—and to us—about the end of time, his return, “the coming of the Son of Man” to judge the world. Jesus compares the events of the end of time with those of Noah’s time, when God sent a flood to wipe out the entire human race except for Noah and his family, so great was human wickedness on the earth.

A frequent theme in our Gospel reading today is the unknown. Jesus says about the people of Noah’s time that “they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away.” Likewise, Jesus says of his return at the end of time: “You do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”

I am not sure that to say to somebody—to us—that we cannot know, cannot prepare for a future event is all that reassuring. Imagine if your instructor in a course here at the university, instead of presenting clearly when each assignment was due and when exams were, said in the syllabus, “You do not [and cannot] know on what day your exam will be held. Too bad.” I am sure that would do wonders for students’ already-heightened anxiety. Thankfully we, your instructors, do not do this! There is reason to be hopeful, both about our studies and about the end of time!

But then imagine the anxiety of Jesus’ disciples when he said to them that they could “not know on what day” he would return, what day would be the end of time. Thankfully, Jesus gives us a way in which we can be prepared for his return, even if we cannot know its precise day. He says to his disciples, “Keep awake, therefore,” and, “You must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

How do we maintain hope, especially in this Advent time of hopeful waiting for our Lord’s return, and not allow anxiety to get the better of us? Jesus says, very simply, “Keep awake… be ready.” Isaiah’s message is similar to Jesus’ message, many hundreds of years before Jesus. How were the people of Isaiah’s time to “keep awake” and “be ready”? Isaiah says that they were to do so by acting with justice, especially toward the poor, the disadvantaged. The people to whom Isaiah prophesied were to “keep awake” and “be ready” by worshiping only the one God of Israel, our God, and not the gods of other nations. They were to “keep awake” and “be ready” by not making military and political alliances with one great nation surrounding Israel in an effort to avoid invasion by another.

“Keep awake… be ready”: In his letter to the Romans that we hear today, St. Paul is as insistent as Jesus is in our Gospel about the nearness of Jesus’ return in glory: “Now is the moment for you to wake from sleep… The night is far gone; the day is near.” St. Paul uses powerful imagery of putting “on the armour of light” and living “honourably as in the day.”

Sisters and brothers, for us not to be overtaken by anxiety at these words and images of St. Paul, of Jesus, of Isaiah, but to understand and live this message as hopeful, we must “keep awake” and “be ready.” The word of God today and through this time of Advent invites us today to hope in the return of our Lord at the end of time in a way that spurs us into action. Hope is not and cannot be a passive virtue. Hope must lead us to act concretely for justice, for peace in our world beginning in our own hearts, our households, our workplaces, our places of leisure, our Church. As we pray in our Psalm today, hope must lead us to seek the good of “the house of the Lord our God.” Sisters and brothers, we are a living “house of the Lord our God.” Let us pray with growing urgency for one another, then, “‘Peace be within you.’ For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.”

To seek one another’s good is to seek the salvation of one another by the end of time, but it is also to ensure that essential needs of our brothers and sisters are met now. If we are the living, active, hopeful “house of the Lord our God,” then the poorest and least advantaged of our world, of the people we ourselves encounter day to day, must be the cornerstone of the house of God that we are.

At Mass we pray, in the prayer Jesus taught us, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This is the ultimate Advent prayer of hope. But it presupposes action on our part to build the reign of justice, peace, salvation that God wills for us, “on earth as it is in heaven.” We offer one another a sign of peace. As we do that, at every Mass, could we not pray quietly the words of the Psalmist for the person we are greeting with peace: For your sake, “for the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good”?

This is how we “keep [actively] awake.” This is how we nourish the hope that dawns anew in us in this time of Advent. Our worship connects with our seeking one another’s good, one another’s salvation ultimately. Isaiah speaks of this essential connection between right worship and right practice of justice, peace, loving kindness. St. Paul speaks in contrasts: Putting “on the armour of light” instead of darkness, acting as people “of the day” and not of night, passive and anxious.

It is no accident, elsewhere in St. Paul’s writings, that hope is the middle virtue, the hinge point, of the three so-called “theological virtues,” faith, hope, and love. Active hope arises from our faith and it naturally leads us to love God, our neighbour, and ourselves. “The greatest of these is love,” yes, but hope is the virtue of keeping awake so that we may love.

My sisters and brothers, as we begin this time of Advent, I pray, “Peace be with you… Peace be within you.” May we act with justice, act and live with kindness. May we be a people of hope: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” May we be a people that seeks one another’s good, a people who keeps awake and is actively ready for the return of the Lord, our salvation and our peace.

Homily for Thursday, 28 July 2022– Ferial

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 18:1-6; Psalm 146:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6ab; Matthew 13:47-53

We hear two distinct messages from Matthew’s Gospel today. First, Jesus offers us one of his many similes of the kingdom of heaven that are very typical of the Gospel of Matthew: “The kingdom of heaven is like”… Second, Jesus extols the ideal scribe (maybe the ideal faith leader?) as “the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is old and what is new.”

Today, Jesus likens the kingdom of heaven to a net, thrown in the sea, in which many “fish of every kind” are caught. Once the net is ashore, the fish are sorted into good and bad; the bad are thrown out. The comparison to heaven—in fact, to the final judgment at the end of time—is simple: Angels will, at the end of time, “separate the evil from the righteous”; the righteous will enter heaven, while the evil will be cast into a place (or state) of eternal punishment, “the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Matthew will take up this image of strict separation of the good from the bad in the end times toward the end of his Gospel, just before the Passion of Jesus, when Jesus gives an extended discourse of the sheep and the goats. In that discourse, in Matthew 25, we hear more about what kinds of actions or inaction will result in us finding ourselves either among the sheep, those who will enter the kingdom of heaven, or the goats, those who will be excluded from heaven and punished eternally.

In Matthew 25, whether we inherit the kingdom of heaven hinges mainly on our attention to social justice, to care for our sisters and brothers most in need: The hungry, the thirsty, the homeless, the imprisoned, and so on. This is a good reminder to us in our quite individualistic cultures in well-off countries (mostly) in the global north that our Gospel understands what we might experience at the end of time—our Church once spoke more often about death, judgment, heaven and hell, the “last things”—less in terms of reward or punishment for individual righteousness or evil (although we are still, individually, morally accountable to God and one another) and more in terms of a social or common good.

Among the biblical Gospels, Matthew is maybe the most sensitive to the corporate, social, common, communal good. We are not saved or condemned eternally alone, but together, depending on our society’s attention to the common good of one another, care for all of creation.

I have had this thought many times as Pope Francis continues what he has called his penitential pilgrimage to Canada, to further reconciliation with our Indigenous peoples against whom our Church participated in horrific, intergenerationally traumatizing abuses; cultural assimilation and colonialism, especially through the residential school system. From his first public address of this pilgrimage, just south of here in Maskwacis, a former residential school site, Pope Francis has begged forgiveness for the wrongs of Catholics and other Christians in the name of our faith and in collaboration with Canada’s governments against our Indigenous people.

There have been calls for Pope Francis to acknowledge not only the wrongs of many Christian individuals against our Indigenous people, but the evils perpetrated against them as corporate, institutionalized, social sin of the Catholic Church. We may be inclined to dismiss these calls as unnecessary, the special interest of “the media” often looking for a counter-narrative (in this case to the acknowledgement of the pope’s sincerity). But, considering today’s Gospel, I suggest that these calls include a valid and important reminder for us: Just as we are not saved or condemned alone, reconciliation and forgiveness are not individual pursuits but those of the whole Church. Matthew the Gospel writer had a keen sense of this whole-Church, whole-community dimension of sin and grace, judgment, accountability, forgiveness and reconciliation.

To forget this is to forget the value of Jesus’ second point in today’s Gospel reading. To forget this is to continue to devalue the treasures, new and old, that Indigenous cultures can offer that enrich our Church, that remind us of our social, communal, familial roots that ultimately draw us back to God, the common Creator of us all. It is easy for many (even, maybe especially, in the leadership of the Church) to fall back on blaming “media” contrarianism for speaking messages we do not want to hear. It is easy to fall back on forms of clericalism, slavishness to existing power structures—all forms of perpetuation of colonialist, nationalist, individualist attitudes that continue to create victims, have-nots, and to commodify human lives.

Instead, today’s Gospel invites us to reflect and act on the communal, social dimensions of sin and evil, but also grace and reconciliation. Our Gospel invites us to be like the ideal scribe, who brings out of our treasure the best of who we are, in a gift exchange with other peoples and cultures who also bring us their treasures, their memories, their recognition of God’s gifts—lands, ancestors, communities—both old and new.

Homily for Sunday, 13 February 2022– Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 17:5-8; Psalm 1:1-2, 3, 4, 6; 1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20; Luke 6:17, 20-26

The message of our Gospel today is, I think (or maybe I hope) a familiar one to us: The beatitudes. Jesus pronounces certain groups of people “blessed”: The poor; those who “are hungry now”; those “who weep now”; those who are hated, excluded, reviled, defamed “on account of the Son of Man”; because of their belief in Jesus and imitation of how he lived.

But our Gospel message today might be just different enough from the beatitudes we are familiar with, so as to be, to say the least, a sharp challenge for us to hear and put into practice. We hear today Luke’s version of the beatitudes: Four blessings, toward the poor; the hungry; those who weep; those who are hated and excluded “on account of the Son of Man,” and four corresponding woes, toward those who are rich; those who are full; whose hunger has been satisfied; toward those who laugh; and toward those of whom “all speak well.”

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke each include versions of the beatitudes. Matthew’s beatitudes are often numbered as eight, without any corresponding woes, unlike Luke. Bible experts say that Matthew’s beatitudes may have been intended primarily to encourage an audience of Jews—Jesus’ own people—who had come to believe in Jesus as God; as the Messiah. If we are trying to encourage people, reminding them of the woes they will experience if they behave badly does not often work. God looks with special blessing upon the poor; those who mourn; those who are hated for the sake of their belief in Jesus as the Messiah and living as he has lived. And, Matthew says, if we are not poor, or mourning, or hated, all is not lost. The key is to attune ourselves to the experience and concerns of the less-advantaged, the poor, the mourning, those who are mistreated for their belief in and emulation of our Lord: To be as they are “in spirit” if we cannot be so in our actual experience. This is called solidarity with the poor, those who mourn, the mistreated and rejected.

I think we are much more familiar with Matthew’s version of the beatitudes than Luke’s version we hear today. Matthew’s beatitudes are far more frequently commented than Luke’s. We hear many more church hymns, at least in my experience, based on Matthew’s than Luke’s beatitudes. Besides, I cannot imagine the St. Louis Jesuits singing, “Cursed are your rich, for the kingdom shall not be theirs”… It simply does not have the same ring to it as, “Blessed be your poor”… Maybe we could compose a church hymn with Luke’s woes, in some dreadful minor key… On second thought, this is probably not a good idea. I would not want us all to get up and walk out of Mass!

Whatever the reason(s), Luke’s beatitudes and accompanying woes are much more direct and immediately challenging than Matthew’s. Matthew has Jesus proclaim the beatitudes at the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount. Again, I think we are maybe more familiar with this setting of the beatitudes, thanks to religious art and music. Matthew presents Jesus as the great teacher; the one to fulfill and uphold the authority of the Law of Moses and the prophets, but who exceeds even Moses and the prophets in authority. In Matthew, Jesus goes up a mountain with his disciples, but preaches his Sermon on the Mount toward the crowds below. We might imagine a kind of natural amphitheatre created by the hilly landscape of Galilee, where Jesus gave his Sermon on the Mount. I can attest to this: As a teacher, I want people to be able to hear me well. The hills surrounding where the crowds gathered to hear Jesus would have helped Jesus’ voice to carry more powerfully.

But Luke sets Jesus’ Sermon differently than Matthew. In Luke, it is not an extended discourse but a brief collection of sayings. Luke begins with the crowds, but has Jesus direct his preaching toward a smaller group of his disciples, already more committed to him and his message than the crowds would have been. Luke features not the Sermon on the Mount but the Sermon on the Plain: Jesus stands on his disciples’ level; on our level.

There is something to be said here for what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, for the disciples in Jesus’ time, in our Gospel, and for us. In Jesus’ time and place, a person who was wealthy enough could (usually for a handsome fee) study under a mentor or master teacher. The student, or disciple, of the teacher was expected to learn enough from the teacher’s instruction to be able to put it into practice. But the disciple was not usually expected to become the teacher; the teacher was one-of-a kind, irreplaceable.

Yet discipleship of Jesus worked a bit differently than discipleship of just any expert teacher in most or all of the ancient world. A person became (and becomes) a disciple of Jesus, not by that person’s choice of a master teacher or by paying a fee, but by Jesus’ choice. Jesus would take the initiative to call people to be his disciples. And Jesus’ disciples—we as Jesus’ disciples—are expected in some way to imitate the teacher, Jesus, so well as to be able to be his presence to our world forever, until he returns in glory.

So how are we to imitate the teacher, Jesus, so well that we almost become the teacher? Clearly, Jesus mission to his disciples, to us, to imitate his example and to become like him is urgent as Luke puts it in his Gospel. There are not only blessings in store for Jesus’ disciples if we should be successful in being like him, but there are woes or curses toward those who should fail. And the mission Jesus gives us to imitate him—to be the teacher’s presence in our world; a presence of justice, kindness, compassion—and the consequences of living this mission well or not are immediate: “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh… Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.”

Now, please let me be clear that Jesus does not say that to be wealthy is a sin, or that, if we are not hungry or miserable then, woe to us, we must be doing something wrong. But Jesus is saying, I think, that if we have wealth that we could use to alleviate the suffering of others who struggle to make ends meet; if we have the resources to help ensure that nobody has need of basic necessities of life—food, water, shelter; if we have the gift of joy or laughter that could brighten the experience of somebody who is sad or despairing, then use these gifts for the benefit of the less well-off… now! The call is urgent; this is how we imitate Jesus Christ, the teacher. This is how we become like him, now, in our present world; our present experience; our present relationships.

But when our concern for worldly priorities becomes an obstacle to the mission of justice, kindness, and compassion to which Jesus calls us, then the woes apply. When our concern for ourselves and our own individual well-being inhibits us from striving for the common good, Jesus challenges us: “Woe to you who are rich… Woe to you who are full now… Woe to you who are laughing now… Woe to you when all speak well of you.”

Jesus’ message is without doubt challenging, especially in our culture that prioritizes (as it should, but perhaps even frequently does to excess, over the common good and social justice) values like wealth, individual comfort and freedom, everybody speaking well of us.

Luke’s beatitudes hearken to a longstanding biblical motif of blessings and curses (or blessings and woes). We hear this not only in Luke’s Gospel today but from the prophet Jeremiah, although Jeremiah lists the curses or woes first, and then the blessings. But Jeremiah’s core message is similar to Luke’s today: On the one hand, “cursed are those who trust in mere mortals”; in passing things like wealth, comfort, and individual freedom at the expense of common, social well-being, and ultimately at the expense of trusting God above all else. On the other hand, “blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD.”

Our Psalm today, the first of the biblical Psalms, carries on this message of Jeremiah and Luke: “Blessed is the [one] who does not follow the advice of the wicked… but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law meditates day and night.”

My hope, sisters and brothers, is that this message of the word of God has not lost its edge; its ability to be somewhat discomforting and controversial in our time, as it was in the times of Jeremiah, of the Psalmist, of Luke the Gospel writer, of Jesus. How do we “delight” in the law of the LORD? How do we put it into practice, for the common good and salvation of everybody, now? How do we become like the teacher; the Christ?

I return to a word I used just a few minutes ago: Solidarity. When we enter into solidarity; into something of a relationship of care and of justice for the least of our sisters and brothers, so that all are blessed by the bounty of the Lord together, we will have imitated the teacher. We imitate a teacher, Jesus, who died and rose again to save us. His death was utter failure; utter woe to the world’s eyes, yet Jesus overcame this, so that we may follow Christ into the resurrection from the dead, as St. Paul says today, “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

Jesus gave us his Sermon on the Plain. He stood on our level, so that we could be raised one day to his in heaven. But he stood on the level ground with us, his disciples, so that we could begin to imitate him now; to be blessed now in our care, our compassion, our kindness especially for the least among us; so that we could be like the teacher who stands with us on the level ground.

Homily for Sunday, 30 January 2022– Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19; Psalm 71:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 15-17; 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13; Luke 4:21-30

One of my brother Basilian priests has said that, when we hear readings as we do today in which we hear a short verse or two, and then the reading skips over a section before continuing on, it is sometimes a good idea to pay attention to the part that is skipped over.

So what gets skipped over in our readings today? From the Book of Jeremiah we hear God’s call of Jeremiah to serve as God’s prophet. Luke’s Gospel also features a prophetic call story, that of Jesus, beginning his public ministry in the synagogue of his hometown, Nazareth.

The Book of Jeremiah begins with God’s call to the prophet, lines from our Scriptures than which few are more beautiful: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” For me, God’s opening revelation to Jeremiah, the beginning of God’s call to Jeremiah to be his prophet, is always a beautiful reminder that, whatever I had planned for my life; however we have discerned how God is calling us to live and serve God in our lives, God had a plan, for me and for each one of us, before we were even conceived!

But what if we do not want to do or be exactly who God is calling us to be? What if the vocation to which God is calling us is, say, one that will put our life in danger? Such is the case with Jeremiah. As soon as Jeremiah hears the call of God to be a prophet to God’s people, he senses the real danger to his life, and immediately tries to refuse God’s call.

And this is the part of God’s call to Jeremiah that our reading skips over today. Jeremiah protests: “I do not know how to speak. I am too young.” God, do you not know that every prophet before me has been a laughingstock in Israel; that some have even been killed? Yet Jeremiah’s protests are to no avail. God has his heart set on Jeremiah as God’s prophet, and even promises to protect Jeremiah against the worst the people would do to him. “They will fight against you,” God reassures Jeremiah, “but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you… to deliver you.”

I will admit that the part our Gospel reading from Luke skips over today is not really skipped over. We heard last Sunday what today’s Gospel reading does not repeat: The mission statement of Jesus’ public ministry, in the synagogue of his hometown, Nazareth. Jesus is given the scroll of the prophet Isaiah to read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

Our Gospel reading picks up again today where Jesus rolls up the scroll, sits down, and says to everybody gathered in the synagogue, with all eyes in the assembly “fixed on him”: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” I find it consoling to be reminded that Jesus’ public ministry started well that day in his hometown. In that synagogue of Nazareth, Luke says, “all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” Even the assembly’s identification of Jesus as “Joseph’s son” is spun positively in Luke’s Gospel, whereas in the other Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and John), when the people who hear Jesus ask, “Is this not Joseph’s son?”, they mean it in an insulting way. And, I do not know how all of us feel but, when Jesus’ audience belittles him by asking, “Is this not Joseph’s son”; the son of the carpenter, I begin to feel just a little indignant, wanting to defend not only Jesus but Joseph, the humble, righteous man whom God chose to mentor Jesus like a father in this world.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ public ministry begins well, even in the eyes of the people of his hometown. This is in marked contrast to Jeremiah, or in fact most if not all the prophets: Their ministry is poorly-received by the people from the start. It is no wonder that Jeremiah, from the beginning of the biblical book in his name, wanted to get out of being a prophet to Judah as God had called him from before he was even conceived in the womb.

But the good will of the people toward Jesus would not last. We know this from what we hear in Luke’s Gospel today. And we know this from the fact that, even though Jesus escapes the murderous rage of the mob who wants to “hurl [Jesus] off the cliff” at the end of today’s Gospel reading, his destiny—the focal point of our Gospels—is to be tortured and crucified; to die for us in this exceedingly cruel way.

It is unclear from Luke’s account what the people in the assembly that day in Nazareth wanted to hear from Jesus. But maybe they wanted to hear a message that would support elements of tribalism and sectarianism in their social and religious attitudes. Maybe they were unaware, until those tribalistic and sectarian attitudes were kindled into open fury at Jesus’ message in their synagogue, of the extent to which those attitudes had affected them and become engrained in them.

We, sisters and brothers, are not exempt, either, from the kind of insular tribalism and sectarianism—a “silo mentality”—that nearly led to Jesus being killed on the very first day of his public ministry, in his own hometown. It was the movement and the mentality among Jesus’ own people that cried out, “We are God’s chosen people,” over and against the people of other nations and faiths: The Phoenician people, represented in Jesus’ commentary in today’s Gospel by the widow of Zarephath, to whom Elijah was sent in a time of famine in 1 Kings; the Syrians, represented by the Syrian king’s general, Naaman, who is afflicted with leprosy but healed by Elijah’s prophetic successor, Elisha. “We are God’s chosen people,” the people in the synagogue of Nazareth protested. “God’s promise of salvation; God’s covenant; God’s presence would never be with other people as it is for us”! Why should we be concerned for the other; for people not of our nation? It was Israel first, after all. And so their rage was kindled against Jesus.

But how often do we hear or observe the same silo mentality at work today? How often do we hear cries of “our country first”; our tribe first; our religious creed first; our social “in” group first; and ultimately me first? Why should I be concerned about the other person, especially the poor or otherwise excluded person? Why should I be concerned (some say today) about protecting public health, out of love of neighbour, in the face of the public health crisis our world continues to face, and that disproportionately affects the already-disadvantaged? Jesus’ counter-message to this entitled and selfish insularity is as challenging and as controversial today as when he preached it in his hometown synagogue of Nazareth. It is challenging and controversial to many of our sister and brother Christians of our time.

Jesus’ message is challenging and controversial still, first because it did not begin with Jesus and, second, because his message is not some superficial all-inclusiveness, but an inclusiveness that is preferential toward the people whom this world’s elites exclude in the name of nation first; the well-to-do of society first; the advantaged first; me first. Jesus’ vision of the reign of God on earth—think of this when we pray, as part of the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come”—is one that is preferentially inclusive of the poor, the disadvantaged, the outsider, the poor first. Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of God is one preferentially inclusive of those whom the entitled and advantaged exclude: Not one Israelite, but the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian!

This vision of God’s reign on earth was the vision of God’s prophets: Isaiah, whose scroll Jesus reads and interprets in the synagogue of Nazareth; Jeremiah, whom we hear first from the word of God this morning. Isaiah’s message was preferentially inclusive: All the nations would know and be invited to witness the glory of God that had saved Israel time and again. Jeremiah’s message was preferentially inclusive: Israel’s slavishness to the temple of Jerusalem would mean nothing if its people did not open their hearts to practice justice preferentially toward the least well-off: The poor, the foreigner, the widow, the orphan.

So, indeed, may we pay attention to the parts our readings at Mass skip over. But, also, may we pay attention to those parts God is urging us not to skip over: The parts of the word of God that trouble us; that are controversial to us; that challenge us or our societies in fairly well-off countries like our own to open our hearts to the least-advantaged among us first.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” This is God’s vision of justice; God’s vision of the reign of God on earth for which we pray. It is a vision that calls us beyond ourselves; beyond our social circles; often beyond our comfort, to be “good news to the poor.” It is a vision we are invited not to skip over; a vision to ensure that God’s word of our Scriptures continues to be “fulfilled in [our] hearing.”

Homily for Sunday, 29 August 2021– Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8; Psalm 15:2-3, 3-4, 4-5; James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Perhaps not many topics in the Bible are as contentious as the Law. In what ways is the Law—and in the Bible we specifically mean the Law of Moses; the religious Law—a good thing or a benefit, and in what ways can the Law hold us back from the most right and just practice of our religious faith?

This tension about the Law is woven through each of our readings today. In Deuteronomy, Moses presents the religious Law as a gift from God, as a good in itself. Observance of the Law, while neither adding or taking anything away from the commands of God to Israel, would be Israel’s way of showing its greatness and its wisdom as a nation. Observance of the Law would be a sign of Israel’s closeness to God: “Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people,” other nations would say of Israel.

In Moses’ time, we know that the people of Israel were in the process of returning from Egypt to their homeland, promised them by God. Imagine ancient Israel, a people small in number, prosperity, and military might compared to powerful nations that surrounded it. Israel could not compete with these other nations insofar as these worldly signs of national power. The source of Israel’s power and greatness was not itself, but God and God’s Law, given through Moses.

These other nations around Israel believed in and worshipped all kinds of gods, but Israel would stand out for its belief and worship of only one God. This was not only because the God of Israel would uphold Israel militarily and economically against Israel’s much more powerful neighbours—although we hear often in our Bible when God does just that for Israel—but because the God of Israel desired to enter into a relationship of love with Israel. The God of Israel cared for Israel in a way that the gods of other nations did not for those other nations. This was to be the core identity of the people of Israel, and Israel’s obedience to the Law of God given through Moses would be a sign that Israel acknowledged and desired this personal, loving, caring relationship with its God as much as God desired a personal, loving, caring relationship with Israel.

But from time to time the people and the nation of Israel would forget that their religious Law was meant as a gift and a sign of the mutual relationship of love between Israel and God. The people; the leaders of Israel would use the Law to reinforce their own power and status instead of to show the goodness and love of God on Israel’s behalf to the world.

This manipulation of the religious Law by Israel’s elites, the Pharisees and the scribes in Jesus’ time, is the focus of Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees and the scribes in today’s Gospel. “Hypocrites,” Jesus calls the Pharisees and scribes, remembering a similar scathing criticism of Israel’s elites by the prophet Isaiah: “This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

Where are the hearts of Israel’s elites, the Pharisees and scribes, while they profess adherence to the Law of Moses, down to the finest details like the ritual washing of hands, vessels, and food? The hearts of these elites of Israel are not focused on God as the source of all that is good: Of the Law itself; of any prosperity and religious or social status they may have, and so on. The hearts of the Pharisees and scribes are focused on preserving their own power and status, against those they see as not as obedient to the letter of the Law, like Jesus and his disciples. The “look at me” attitude of the Pharisees and scribes toward the law is incompatible with looking toward God as the source of all goodness. This is why Jesus scolds them the way he does.

And who stands to lose the most when elites, whether social or religious, manipulate what is good as the Pharisees and scribes do in today’s Gospel? Inevitably those with the least power, the least status, the least wealth stand to lose the most when what is good is manipulated in this way. The Letter of James, from which we have just heard, is emphatic on this point: What is essential to true and right practice of our religious faith, “religion that is pure and undefiled before God”? James says that the care for the least well-off and most vulnerable, “care for orphans and widows in their distress,” is of the utmost priority. Here, James’ attention to social justice, especially to the benefit of “the least of [our] sisters and brothers,” is continuous with long-standing Biblical tradition. I think of Jesus’ own teaching: “Whatsoever you do to the least of these”… I think of the prophet Micah: God asks of us only that we “do justice, love goodness, and walk humbly with [our] God.”

And the Psalm we hear today is very much in line with this radical call through our Scriptures to social justice that does not reinforce human power or status but shows forth the goodness and glory of God. Our Psalm today offers us a long litany of the people God praises; the people who will gain eternal life, a dwelling in God’s tent: The one who “walks blamelessly” and rightly; who “speaks the truth from [the] heart; who “does no evil to a friend”; who does not take up “a reproach against a neighbour” or “a bribe against the innocent”; “whoever stands by their oath even to their hurt” (now that is radical!)…

This constant call to justice in a way that especially benefits the least of our sisters and brothers is so radical, even and maybe especially today, though, that might we be tempted to hear the Word of God today and think, “That is easier said than done”? The temptation, and frequent succumbing to the temptation, to seek our own power, status, wealth, self-sufficiency in a way that fails at least to appreciate God as the source of what is good, and deprives the most vulnerable and disadvantaged of these “goods,” is age-old. This is not a problem limited to the Pharisees and scribes of Jesus’ time, to the people of Israel of Moses’ time, to James’ time or the Psalmist’s time. No, the temptation to manipulate what God gives us—religious and civil laws, even just ones; material wealth; individual freedom and autonomy; authority; education—for our own gain at the expense of those less-advantaged is just as present in our time as in Biblical times.

But what could remedy this problem? Our readings today give us a hint toward the remedy to this problem; this temptation from human weakness and sin to manipulate the good God gives us for our own gain at the expense of others. God’s Law, from the time it was given to the people of Israel through Moses, was meant so that Israel could point to the goodness and love of God and its relationship of love with God, not to Israel’s self for its own sake. The many laws and rituals the Pharisees and scribes urged the Jewish people of Jesus’ time to follow to the letter were again designed to strengthen the relationship of the people who piously observed these laws with God. The same is true of the gift of the Word of God itself: St. James stresses that the Word of God necessarily directs us to care for one another, especially the less-advantaged.

If we care for the less-advantaged, James says, we become “doers of the Word, and not merely hearers.” We point one another not to our own power or status—not toward “me” or “us” for our own sake—but toward God who, regardless of our power, wealth, status, or authority in this world, calls not only each of us as individuals, but all of us as one People of God, to eternal life.