Homily for Tuesday, 13 April 2021– Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 4:32-37; Psalm 93:1ab, 1cd-2, 5; John 3:7b-15

The first part of the Acts of the Apostles refers, in at least a couple of significant instances, to how united the earliest communities of Jesus’ disciples were. Today we hear that these first disciples “were of one heart and soul”; that the unity of these earliest disciples of Jesus was connected with their strict common ownership of material possessions: “Everything they owned was held in common.”

This passage is one of the most frequently-cited Biblical references to uphold the vow or counsel of poverty. I think, in this respect, of a book I studied during my novitiate on the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, Francis Moloney’s A Life of Promise. Might this also make us think of the variety in practice of the vow of poverty, even within our own Basilian Congregation, let alone among different communities of vowed religious? I think, for instance, of the many gifts from different countries in which my great aunt Jeanne, a Sister of Holy Cross, ministered, that she gave to family members, because she was not allowed to keep these gifts for herself. Her order’s vow of poverty was and is, by my observation, lived much more strictly than ours.

But how closely is the insistence in Acts on how the earliest Christians held “everything they owned… in common” a reflection of historical reality, versus an ideal for life especially in Christian community? Scholars still debate over this question. Francis Moloney, in A Life of Promise, points out that, after the reading we hear today, the very next event in Acts is that of Ananias and Sapphira, who keep part of the proceeds from the sale of property for themselves instead of turning it over to their community of disciples. And then both Ananias and Sapphira drop dead on the spot!

So which was it: Did the earliest Christian communities truly hold “everything they owned… in common,” or was this an ideal that was not necessarily (or usually) followed to the letter? My thought is that it was a bit of both historical reality—that these earliest Christian communities strove to practice common ownership of goods—and an ideal, much as it is both-and today. There was and is still variety in how material goods were owned or shared communally. And maybe how individuals or communities practiced, we may say, a precursor to our vows of poverty was not in itself essential to one’s standing as a good and faithful Christian.

Yet I think Acts’ emphasis on this common ownership characteristic of these earliest Christian communities may lead us to ask ourselves questions like: What, if not strict common ownership of material goods, is essential to our Christian way of life, from the message we hear from Acts today? And is there something that the example of these earliest Christians calls us to hold in common, if not strictly or only material goods?

Especially as somebody who has taken a public vow of poverty, I interpret Acts as inviting and reminding us that we (as vowed religious, but this is true of all baptized Christians) hold in common a responsibility for one another’s whole-person well-being—spiritual, mental, physical, and so forth—in this earthly life and, ultimately, for one another’s salvation. We are not saved as individuals so much as together, in and by one God. Common ownership of earthly goods, or any expression or vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience, can be a sign of our universal call to holiness and ultimately to salvation.

Homily for Sunday, 4 April 2021– The Resurrection of the Lord, Mass of Easter Sunday

Readings of the day: Acts 10:34a, 37-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9

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

Christ is risen! He is truly risen! Alleluia, alleluia!

If I can name one person, besides our risen Lord Jesus, my family, friends, or brother Basilians, who especially drew me toward religious life and priesthood, simply by the example of holiness she lived, it was perhaps my great aunt (my maternal grandmother’s sister), Jeanne d’Arc Brunelle. Aunt Jeanne was a sister of the Congregation of Holy Cross, in religious vows for 71 years. Just before and during my time in seminary as a Basilian, and for my first years of ordained ministry as a deacon and then a priest, I lived near enough to Aunt Jeanne while I was in Toronto and Rochester and she in Cornwall and then Montreal that I could drive to see her fairly often. And, for as long as I can remember, Aunt Jeanne would call our home at Christmas, and we e-mailed back and forth constantly.

Especially if it had been longer than usual since Aunt Jeanne and I had heard from or written each other, she would apologize for having taken so long to show “signs of life from your old, great aunt”! Aunt Jeanne, suffice it to say, lived with an attractive, holy, and fearless joy. She suffered with cancer for the last fourteen years of her life, but the disease never took away her joy and mildly sassy edge; it never took away those “signs of life” from our Aunt Jeanne. Her funeral, at Pavillon Saint-Joseph, the Holy Cross infirmary in Montreal, four years ago this past November, was about as joyful as a funeral could be. In fact, I do not remember a wake service, ever, with as many peals of laughter and tears of joy as from the (mostly) elderly sisters at Pavillon Saint-Joseph at Aunt Jeanne’s wake service, as memories of Aunt Jeanne’s 71 years of religious life, living and ministering in countless countries in the world (some very poor or marred by violence) were recounted.

A funeral, we may think, is a strange place to encounter “signs of life.” Yet I had a feeling I would encounter just this when the Superior of Pavillon Saint-Joseph contacted me to let me know Aunt Jeanne had died, so I could plan to attend her funeral. Today, our Gospel recounts another event, one central to our Christian faith, when the people involved, Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and Jesus’ beloved disciple, go to the scene—the tomb of Jesus—not expecting, we can be sure, to find “signs of life” there.

We have the gift of hindsight. We know this is just what Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the beloved disciple find: The ultimate sign of life; the empty tomb; our Lord Jesus, risen. But Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the beloved disciple did not know that they would find any signs of life at Jesus’ tomb. After all, it was a tomb; a resting place of the dead, not a place to encounter signs of life. So unexpected was it for each of them to encounter our risen Lord that this encounter, in a different way for each of Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the beloved disciple, was truly jarring.

Each of them—Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the beloved disciple—encounter signs of life where they expected to find death. Yet, in a way none of them realized in the moment, each of them brought their own “signs of life” when they went, that first Easter morning, to Jesus’ tomb. They brought with them signs of life in the depths of their hearts; signs of life that, as John’s Gospel recounts this event, anticipated the resurrection of Jesus.

How is this so? John’s Gospel is not clear why Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb at first, only that she goes to the tomb “while it [is] still dark” and finds the stone removed from the tomb’s entrance. But there is a tradition in our Church, from Mark’s and Luke’s Gospel accounts of Mary Magdalene’s Easter morning arrival at the tomb, of Mary as the first to bring spices to anoint Jesus’ body. Even the name Mary derives from myrrh, which was used then as a burial spice.

My sisters and brothers, the Easter morning visit to Jesus’ tomb by Mary, the “myrrh bearer” of Magdala, is a supreme act of love; a first sign on the part of Mary Magdalene of the risen Lord’s own life deep within her, before she even realizes it is there. And this love of the “myrrh bearer” and the Lord’s life source within Mary Magdalene overwhelm and overflow from her. She cannot remain at the empty tomb, but returns to tell Simon Peter and the beloved disciple, with some alarm: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” The three disciples of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the unnamed disciple “whom Jesus loved,” return together to the tomb. But only Mary remains there, weeping, until she is able to encounter her beloved; our beloved, the Risen One, Jesus. Maybe just as unnervingly for Mary Magdalene as it was to find the stone rolled away and the tomb emptied of the Lord’s body at first, we hear Jesus command Mary sharply, “Do not hold onto me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

“Do not hold onto me”: It is as if Jesus says to Mary Magdalene, “Do not hold onto the source of love; the sign of life that is already within you and that you communicated so freely and beautifully already by going to the tomb to anoint my body with myrrh, and then by returning to tell my disciples that I had risen. “Do not hold onto” Love; I must be free to ascend “to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God,” Jesus says. This is the only way that the source of love, the sign of the life of the risen Lord that is already within Mary Magdalene, may be received by God the Father and then showered on the whole world in the person of God the Holy Spirit.

My sisters and brothers, what we begin to celebrate today—our Easter time that runs from today’s celebration of our Lord’s resurrection, through the celebrations of Jesus’ ascension to heaven and the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost—Mary Magdalene and then Simon Peter and the beloved disciple experience in an instant. They are able to experience this entire Paschal mystery in an instant and then to found our Church on it because, in a sense, it is only possible to encounter love of this magnitude if we who set out to encounter love, to encounter the Lord’s “signs of life” in our world, already have that love within us and are willing to give it to the world freely, not to “hold onto” it simply for ourselves.

“Do not hold onto me”: At this point the risen Jesus gives Mary Magdalene the strength to release God’s love already within her, the love that enabled her to go to the tomb that first Easter morning in the first place, upon the world with an attractive, holy, and fearless joy. And amid these events at the empty tomb, Simon Peter and the beloved disciple are given this same strength, which they show in different ways: The beloved disciple arrives ahead of Simon Peter and enters the tomb. This “sign of life,” the disciple “whom Jesus loved,” enters a place of death and finds it, physically, empty of any body; empty not only of life or death, but simply empty. Biblical experts have commented on how this encounter of the beloved disciple with the emptiness and utter absence of the tomb may be John’s way of directing our memory back to the earliest tradition of Israel of the Ark of the Covenant of the Old Testament. The ancient people of Israel traveled with an empty box under a tent; emptiness in which God was believed to dwell.

So the beloved disciple encounters ultimate presence in utter absence. The beloved enters the absence of the tomb, as the Carmelite reformer St. John of the Cross would write centuries later in a poem in which he is the seeker, “seeking love.” And the beloved disciple finds the ultimate presence of the Love he seeks in the absence. “He saw and believed,” John’s Gospel says. Simon Peter does not enter the Presence of the empty tomb that has become the new Ark of the Covenant; the new Holy of Holies. Instead, he contemplates from outside. Simon Peter is set on a mission to understand these “signs of life” by which God chose to save the world; “to understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”

We, too, celebrate today because we love and have come to encounter Love Risen. We seek to understand this encounter in light of the Scripture, “that he must rise from the dead.” We believe once we realize we have encountered ultimate, saving love in utter emptiness. And our faith drives us to release the “signs of life” we have deep within us already, the love of the risen Christ, upon our world with attractive, holy, and fearless joy.

Homily for Monday, 5 June 2017‒ Memorial of St. Boniface

Monday of the 9th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Tobit 1:3, 2:1a-8; Psalm 112:1b-2, 3b-4, 5-6; Mark 12:1-12

What do Tobit of the Biblical book named for him and of the first reading we have just heard, St. Boniface, a sister in a religious order, and (I hope and pray) we have in common?

I do not intend this question to be the beginning of a strange riddle. And yet might the Book of Tobit, and the reading we hear today from it, seem a bit strange if not morbid to us? Tobit is written in the form of a legend or “novelette.” I am not sure if anybody here is an expert on the Book of Tobit; I am certainly not. Tobit features “intrigue,  mysterious deaths, passionate love, and [even] a fish who heals.” Among books of the Bible, Tobit is quite a page turner!

Today we hear of a “kinsman” of Tobit and his son Tobiah who is found murdered at the hands of the Assyrian King Sennacherib, the enemy of Tobit’s and Tobiah’s people of Israel. When Tobit hears from Tobiah of the murder, he sets out to bury the person who has been killed. To bury the dead of Israel at the time of Assyrian control over Israel was punishable by death, and so by burying his kinsman Tobit was risking his own life. Also, not only does Tobit but himself in mortal danger by what we Catholics consider one of the corporal works of mercy, burying the dead, but he risks— and receives— mockery by his own people! Tobit’s neighbors say mockingly of him as he buries his dead countryman, “He is still not afraid”!

Some or many of us may know of the legend of St. Boniface, whose feast we celebrate today, and Thor’s oak tree. In the legend, Boniface is mocked by the pagan worshippers of the god Thor in what is now Germany. The pagans say to Boniface that, if he were to cut down Thor’s oak tree as he wishes to build a church dedicated to St. Peter, Thor will strike him dead. And so Boniface takes up their challenge. He cuts down Thor’s tree, aided by a gentle wind in finishing off the great oak, and he builds the church dedicated to St. Peter. The pagans find Boniface still alive, with the church built from the oak tree, and so they ask Boniface for Christian baptism. Boniface, like Tobit, was “not afraid,” whether of mockery or of the non-god Thor.

The sister in a religious order I spoke of at first is my maternal great aunt, Sr. Jeanne d’Arc Brunelle, a Holy Cross Sister who passed away this past November. Aunt Jeanne was a fine teacher (instruction, especially of those of weak or no faith, is for us a spiritual work of mercy). She taught in some of the most dangerous places in the world, like Haiti and Zaire (now the still-dangerous Democratic Republic of the Congo). She had a stint teaching biker gang members recently released from prison in Canada so that they might not return to lives of crime after their prison terms ended. Some of Aunt Jeanne’s greatest friends and protectors were those reformed gangsters! She, like Boniface and Tobit, was “not afraid.”

How do we fit in, then, among the likes of Tobit, St. Boniface, Sr. Jeanne d’Arc? What are we willing to risk to act with mercy; to build up the Church, one another, in our world that is still often chaotic and even violent: Martyrdom, or at least some ridicule; friendship with a few gangsters? Would that more people might mock us, for we are “still not afraid”!

Souvenir de Sr. Jeanne d'Arc Brunelle, CSC, mardi, 22 novembre 2016– Words of Remembrance of Sr. Jeanne d'Arc Brunelle, CSC, Tuesday, 22 November 2016

Mon souvenir de ma grande-tante, Sr. Jeanne d'Arc Brunelle, CSC, donnée le mardi 22 novembre 2016, lors de la veille de ses funérailles au Pavillon Saint-Joseph, l'infirmerie des Sœurs de Sainte-Croix à Montréal (Québec), Canada

My words of remembrance of my great-aunt, Sr. Jeanne d'Arc Brunelle, CSC, given last evening, Tuesday, November 22, 2016, during the vigil prayer service at Pavillon Saint-Joseph, the infirmary of the Sisters of Holy Cross in Montreal, QC, Canada:

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Chères sœurs, religieuses de la Congrégation de Sainte-Croix, et aux membres de notre famille étendue qui sont présents dans l’Esprit : s’il vous plaît me laisser commencer cette petite réflexion sur la vie de notre Sœur, tante, et grande-tante Jeanne d’Arc Brunelle, aussi dite Sœur Marie-de-Saint-Roger-de-la-Croix, avec un mot de remerciement. Durant ces derniers jours de sa vie terrestre, vous avez bien reconforté, veillé sur, et prié pour notre Sr. Jeanne d’Arc. Étant le petit neveu de Jeanne d’Arc et doctorant actuellement à Paris, j’ai éte durant ces derniers jours en communication régulière avec la Sr. Lucie Germain, CSC, dont je suis particulièrement reconnaissant et qui a gardé notre famille au courant de Jeanne d'Arc au jour le jour.

About a week ago, my mother Carol Schmidt and uncle Roger Salt traveled from Edmonton, Alberta, to be with our Aunt Jeanne in the last days of her earthly life. Although neither Carol nor Roger are able to be with us in person today, they are with us in spirit and in prayer. While they were here at Pavillon Saint-Joseph, they were able to remember and celebrate the life of another family member and Holy Cross Sister of this community, Sr. Alberta Pilon, CSC, and to be with our relatives from Lafontaine, Ontario, the hometown of Srs. Jeanne and Alberta, all the way to Edmonton, at Sr. Alberta's funeral Mass.

Nous reconnaissons que ces derniers jours ont été difficiles, exceptionnellement même pour une communauté telle que celle-ci où l'âge, l'infirmité, et les décès sont des réalités quotidiennes. J’empathise avec, j’honore, et je partage votre tristesse par rapport au décès de la Sr. Jeanne d'Arc et après les plusieurs décès récents dans cette communauté du Pavillon Saint-Joseph, et je prie pour vous.

Mais, bien que nous soyons attristés, sœurs et frères, notre tristesse n’est-elle pas peut-être amoindrie en ayant connus la joie que notre chère Sr. Jeanne d’Arc a apportée à nos vies, notre communauté, nos familles, et notre monde? Aunt Jeanne’s life is all but impossible to sum up in one word, but if I were to try to capture her life, her spirit, and her example of religious life and Christian faith and love that is a model for us all, that word would be “joy.”

The first time I remember meeting Aunt Jeanne was when I was 12 years old. Aunt Jeanne lived at the time in the Holy Cross convent in Cornwall. I quickly became acquainted with Aunt Jeanne’s joyful and welcoming character, and with the place on the outside of the 2nd Street Cornwall convent house where group photos would be taken, always with somebody positioned to hide the large electrical outlet on the house from the camera exposure... Try as the Sisters of Holy Cross might to hide that electrical outlet, it was impossible for Aunt Jeanne to hide her joy and energy that I am convinced were from God more than from any human source or outlet!

La petite publication francophone de la région de Lafontaine et de la Baie Géorgienne, savons-nous peut-être, s’appelle « Le goût de vivre ». Notre sœur Jeanne d’Arc avait bien ce goût de vivre en abondance, et elle n'avait peur de rien ni de personne. Dans un monde qui paraît de plus en plus marqué par la peur, la division, la violence et l'exclusion, notre Sr. Jeanne fut naturellement un exemple jaillissant de foi, d'unité, d'espoir, de charité, d'humilité et surtout de joie. Toujours l’une de mes plus grandes inspirations dans la vie religieuse (je suis Basilien, bien que j'ais aussi dans l'âme un peu de Sainte-Croix), dans mon enseignement, mes études et mes voyages à travers le monde, la Sr. Jeanne a enseigné à Lafontaine et à Cornwall et plusieurs années durant ses « vacances » d’été, notamment dans quelques pays de l’Afrique [*Zaire at the time, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso, and Fiji in the South Pacific... En ce temps le Zaïre, actuellement la République démocratique du Congo, Upper Volta, actuellement le Burkina Faso, et le Fidji dans le Pacifique du Sud].

Quand je suis né, notre Sr. Jeanne avait vécu déjà presque la moitié de ses soixante-quatorze ans de vie religieuse. À l’âge où la plupart des personnes commencent à planifier leur retraite, Sr. Jeanne est partie enseigner dans un collège de filles en Haïti, pays à l'époque sous l'épouvantable dictateur Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier. Ceci a profondément inquiété le père de Jeanne, Roger Brunelle. En plus, Sr. Jeanne et sa communauté cachaient en Haïti des dissidents contre Duvalier, et alors, de ce que je comprends, les sœurs de là ont dû être sorties d'Haïti parce qu'elles étaient menacées de mort aux mains des paramilitaires. Notre Sr. Jeanne n'a raconté cet histoire qu'à peu de personnes, même à sa famille et à d'autres religieuses de Sainte-Croix.

Si on n’aimait pas Sr. Jeanne d'Arc (je ne peux pas imaginer comment il serait possible de ne pas l'aimer), au moins on la respectait. À Cornwall,  jeune religieuse à l'époque, elle était respectée et même protégée par les gangsters qu'elle enseignait, avant et après qu'ils sachent qu’elle était une religieuse! Et, vers la fin de sa vie remarquable, rendue douleureuse par le cancer entre autres infirmités, Sr. Jeanne a humblement laissé derrière elle ces merveilleuses aventures pour habiter ici au Pavillon Saint-Joseph, où elle aida à soigner les Sœurs en pire état de santé qu’elle.

Aunt Jeanne was afraid of nothing and nobody, from the world’s worst dictators to the bikers who respected and even protected her, before and after they knew she was a sister, in a classroom in Cornwall! She was always among the first to welcome, as she did me, both on my way to (accompanied by Srs. Rachel Lavoie and Cécile Bouvier, CSC, of blessed memory) and back through Montreal on the bookends of my undergraduate exchange year in Lille, France, in 2001-2002. On my return from France, my flight was extremely late into Montreal. No matter, Aunt Jeanne waited joyfully and patiently for me, window shopping (but remaining faithful to her vow of poverty), for all of fifteen minutes of conversation and a quick coffee before I was to board my connecting flight.

Aunt Jeanne will be remembered as a messenger – dare I say, an apostle – of God's joy and lively Spirit. For all our extraordinary memories of our Sister and (great)-aunt, may we recognize above all that her life and example are God's work through her; God’s continued work through us, to bring us all to the eternal life we now pray Aunt Jeanne is inheriting. May she rest now in the peace of our merciful Lord, hearing the words promised by Christ himself in our Holy Scriptures: “Well done, good and faithful servant... Enter now into the Kingdom prepared by my Father.”

Que notre Sr. Jeanne d’Arc Brunelle repose en la paix de notre Seigneur miséricordieux. Qu'elle rejoigne là ses bien-aimé(e)s: Sa sœur, ma grand-mère Simone Salt (née Brunelle), son beau-frère Frank Salt, ses parents Alida (Desroches) et Roger Brunelle, sa cousine la Sr. Alberta Pilon, CSC, Saint André Bessette et le Bienheureux Basile Moreau, tous et toutes les sœurs, frères, et pères de Sainte-Croix. Et  que notre Sr. Jeanne d’Arc entende la promesse de vie et de joie éternelle de Jésus-Christ à ses fidèles dès notre sainte Écriture : « Très bien, serviteur bonne et fidèle... Entrez maintenant dans le Royaume préparé par mon Père ».