Homily for Thursday, 22 June 2017‒ Feast of Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More

Patronal Feast of the Diocese of Rochester (USA)

Thursday of the 11th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Peter 4:12-19; Psalm 126:1bc-2ab, 2cd-3, 4-5, 6; Matthew 10:34-39

“I have not come to bring peace but the sword,” Jesus says to us today in Matthew’s Gospel. Does this not challenge our view of a peaceful Jesus, who called us to peace and to love one another and to love God with all our being?

One of the foremost ways of interpreting Jesus’ message here is that he is not calling for us to create divisions unnecessarily or to act with violence, or saying that his mission on earth was to be divisive or violent. Instead, Jesus says that his message will reveal divisions and violence that already exist: In our households, within and between nations, within our Church, in our workplaces, in our political assemblies, in our communities, and within our own hearts.

This interpretation is well and good, but then Jesus goes on to say today: “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” And so do we not hear Jesus calling us here not only to avoid violence and unnecessary divisions, but to some form of zeal? Our question we may want to ask ourselves is: “For what (or whom) am I prepared to die”?

We are called, I suggest, to hold two virtues in a difficult balance: On the one hand, the virtue of peace with everybody and, on the other hand, the virtue of zeal; of being prepared even to die for a good enough cause; for God; for our faith in Christ.

Our first reading today, from the first Letter of Peter, calls us to the same balance between peace and zeal. And, like Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, Peter acknowledges that to live this balance, a Christian balance, will lead us to suffer at least misunderstanding, perhaps ridicule, if not a martyr’s death. Yet Peter says, “Those who suffer in accord with God’s will hand their souls over to a faithful creator as they do good.”

Today we celebrate two saints; two martyrs, St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, patron saint of this Diocese of Rochester, who gave their lives to maintain this balance between peace and zeal.

This balance to which we are called may rest on a finer line than ever. On the one hand, is it not right to be concerned about too easy a peace, when we fail to confront important evils of our world? This false peace we may call moral relativism. On the other hand, when we too proudly presume that we are right and another is wrong, we fall into a false zeal that is a form of absolutism, relativism’s evil twin, and we forget all the same the greatest virtue of all: Love, or charity.

Charity is the hinge between peace and zeal. It leads us to seek dialogue and to guide with patience those who struggle to understand or live a moral ideal. It leads us to ask questions when we are uncertain of another’s position, instead of shouting down, gossiping, excluding, or posting that biting comment on the internet for all to see. Charity, the hinge between peace and zeal, is the central virtue of a Christian. It is our central virtue, and the central virtue for which Sts. John Fisher, Thomas More, and every saint and martyr through the ages, has died and has lived.

Homily for Monday, 22 June 2015‒ Diocese of Rochester Patronal Feast of Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More

Monday of the 12th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Genesis 12:1-9; Psalm 33:12-13, 14-15, 20, 22; Matthew 7:1-5

We pray in our Psalm today, “Blessed the people the LORD has chosen to be his own.” Have we not all been “chosen to be [God’s] own” by our baptism? But how many of us have been chosen for a task or vocation, especially when this was a great change in our lives, temporary or permanent? Maybe the point at which you were “chosen” was when you began your first job. Maybe it was when you were married (if you are or have been married) when you were chosen to be another’s “own,” in loving service to your wife or husband; to your family; to God. Maybe you experienced being “chosen to be [God’s] own” if you became Christian; Catholic as an older child or adult. Maybe it was when you were asked to care for somebody in special need, possibly sick relative or friend. Maybe you have been the person to whom your family has looked for strength in a time of loss of a loved one.

I have felt the blessing of being called God’s “own” many times. I was recently recalling having been called to serve for a few weeks in our novitiate in Colombia, with young men just beginning to discern their call to religious life and priesthood. On a Friday afternoon before Christmas, I was working quietly on my Advent Sunday homily when Fr. Morgan called from his meeting with the governing body of the Basilian order, in Toronto: “Would you be able to help for a few weeks in Colombia”? And then (somewhat less of a surprise than being asked to serve in Colombia) was my call to the priesthood. Again, I felt a deep sense of being blessed to share in Christ’s priesthood here at St. Kateri.

“Blessed the people the LORD has chosen to be his own.” Today we celebrate Abram, one of the first to have been “chosen to be [the LORD’s] own.” We hear in Genesis of how God chose Abram to “go forth from the land” of his family; from everything and everybody he knew. Long before God made good on his promises to Abram (later Abraham), Abram lived on nothing more than a promise. Abram lived on a sense that he and Sarai were blessed to be “chosen to be [God’s] own.” Abram’s trust in God’s promise of blessing made him our “father in faith.”

And today we also celebrate the feast day of St. John Fisher, patron saint of this diocese; Bishop of Rochester in England; cardinal of our Church; martyred by King Henry VIII, and St. Thomas More, Henry VIII’s Chancellor and also a martyr of Henry VIII. Both John Fisher and Thomas More had a keen sense of having been “chosen to be [God’s] own”; of serving God and following their conscience over their allegiance to the king. Perhaps St. Thomas More’s most famous line is, “I remain the king’s humble servant but God’s first.”

Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More were blessed to serve the king; blessed even more for having accepted martyrdom. They, like Abram, trusted in God’s promise of blessing, and call us to the same trust. “Blessed the people the LORD has chosen to be his own.”