Homily for Sunday, 20 August 2017

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 56:1, 6-7; Psalm 67:2, 3, 5, 6, 8; Romans 11:13-15, 29-32; Matthew 15:21-28

How do we understand the relationship between memory and identity? When I speak of memory and identity, a few of us may recall a book by Pope John Paul II by this title, Memory and Identity, which was published just before John Paul II died in 2005. St. John Paul II had lived through some of history’s worst imbalances between memory and identity, such that both memory and identity were emptied of their proper meaning. St. John Paul II had lived through the rise of Nazi Germany, the height of communism in Eastern Europe, and other regimes that replaced the worship of God with the worship of the state and of ideology. These forms of what we might call “identity politics” or nationalism brought the worst wars and mass murder ever wrought on humanity; more Christian martyrs in the past century than in all the previous centuries of Christianity combined.

And yet “identity politics” persist today. This past week’s tragedy in Charlottesville, Virginia, is only the latest symptom of a more profound disease. This disease surfaces anytime we identify as “liberal” or “conservative” (or now perhaps by the new code words of extremism, the “alt-right” and “alt-left”) more than as Christian or more broadly human, created in God’s image and likeness. This disease shows itself when we identify as “orthodox,” as those who obey the teachings of their faith tradition as they understand them, over and against those who do not to our satisfaction; those so-called “heterodox.” This disease shows itself among those who attack the person and character of other people, too often under the guise of “pro-life,” “social justice,” or some other cause. This disease shows itself when, out of fear of those who do not identify as we do, we fail to welcome and integrate the migrant, the stranger, the refugee. This disease still leads to war, to broken relationships, and to disgusting displays of racism, among other symptoms. This disease falsifies identity and neglects the proper place of memory altogether.

Of course, the opposite is also true and often overlaps with “identity politics” disconnected from memory in its rightful sense. Memory can become so disconnected from identity that it becomes a sham and neglects altogether our identity, first and foremost, as daughters and sons of God. St. John Paul II, and many of us, have known in our lifetimes the effects of this disconnection of identity from memory, which then becomes a fraudulent mirage of itself. Genocides in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere, tribal warfare, conflicts in Latin America over ideology, aided and abetted by more powerful nations seeking their own ideological, resource, and military interests, and the continued scourge of terrorism (on which note we pray for the victims and people of Barcelona especially this week) stand out especially in my mind as instances of false memory that ends up, ironically, forgetting our fundamental, God-given identity.

And so where do we find hope in all this? How might we connect and balance memory and identity correctly in our lives and in our world today? The prophet Isaiah begins today with a critical message for us to hear. He says, “Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed.” In what way does God call us, through Isaiah, to “maintain justice and do what is right,” hoping for the final completion of God’s work of our “salvation” at the end of time?

Isaiah identifies maintaining justice and doing “what is right” especially with how we treat the “foreigners” among us, specifically “foreigners who join themselves to the Lord.” Could this not be an excuse, though, for us to deepen divisions, presuming we know who the “foreigners” are, and which foreigners have joined “themselves to the Lord” and which have not? I do not mean primarily to speak of our natural human tendency to think and communicate in categories, to identify and differentiate ourselves from one another in terms of nationality, race, religion, or any other category. To think and communicate in categories is not in itself wrong, but it can become dangerous when what makes another person foreign to us, “other” than us— nationality, race, religion, wealth, position or level of prestige in our Church, immigration status, differences in opinion, in political ideology, or disagreements in weighing of moral questions, and so forth— becomes greater than what unites us to one another and joins us all “to the Lord.”

Is the counter to this danger; the cure for this disease not then to seek out among people who differ from us what unites us “to the Lord”? Is this not God’s call to us to identify one another not first as “other”; not as friend or enemy; not as black or white; Christian or not; orthodox or heterodox; liberal or conservative; straight or gay; citizen or migrant or refugee; male or female, but as people beloved of God whom God wants to save— each and every one of us? This is, to me, how we might understand identity in its rightful sense. And only if we understand identity in this sense will we be able to balance it rightly with memory. And what is memory in this context? If identity is to define how we belong to and originate in God, as daughters and sons of God, then memory is to be mindful of God as our final goal; our one and only Saviour; the one and only object of our worship. This excludes raising any leader in our world, particularly anybody whose goals are to divide, to dehumanize, to stoke fear, and to believe his power to be beyond any check and balance, including God, to the level of saviour. We have but one Saviour, Jesus Christ, Son of God.

St. Paul knew this, and he experienced a famous conversion from living memory and identity out of balance; from presuming to know the will of God in murdering many of the earliest Christians in the same way too many today destroy and dehumanize anybody they view as “other.” St. Paul’s conversion was to be able to balance memory and identity rightly, and to acknowledge not himself but God in Christ as Saviour. The converted St. Paul never considered himself better, not least in God’s eyes, than the people he taught and served. St. Paul’s identity remained that of a proud and intense Jew, but after his conversion his identity was dependent on God; he would identify himself as God’s first. And so his memory was fixed on God who would call him to preach; to teach; to suffer and to die; God who would call St. Paul to heaven.

Who better than St. Paul to speak to the Gentiles, those who did not share his own Jewish identity, but did share his more important identity as beloved of God? This is at the core of St. Paul’s message to us through his Letter to the Romans. Our ministry is to emphasize and to re-emphasize constantly, by our words and our lived example, our common identity as beloved of God and our common memory that the final goal for every one of us is salvation in and by our one God. And not we, finally, but our one God, in this work of salvation, will erase any worldly division; any evil that is contrary to our salvation between now and the end of time.

Do we trust God enough to let God be our Saviour, or will fear outweigh our trust in God? Do we have the courage and faith of the woman of Matthew’s Gospel, who persists long enough that Jesus must acknowledge that she, too, a foreigner; a non-Jew, shares in the identity of beloved of God and remembers that her salvation, and the life of her daughter, is from God. “Woman, great is your faith”!

Great is our faith insofar as we identify first as beloved of God and remember that we are saved by God in Christ alone. Great is our faith insofar as we seek our identity and build memory not on worldly divisions but on our unity as people of God; as one people created in God’s image and likeness, seeking to bring the joy of this, our common memory and identity in our God, to all people and to all creation.

Homily for Sunday, 31 July 2016

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 2:21-23; Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14, 17; Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11; Luke 12:13-21

This homily was given at the Monastery of the Carmel of St. Joseph near Spruce Grove, AB, Canada.

What is the point?

“Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,” the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes from which we hear our first reading today. “All is vanity”! Is this not a somewhat cynical and sad view of our world and of human labour?

After all, in our Psalm we have just prayed to God, “Prosper for us the work of our hands.” Does this not contradict the view of the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, who says of “the work of our hands”: “For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity”?

I am willing to admit that maybe the person who wrote Ecclesiastes may have been having a bad day at work. Maybe he was suffering from a severe case of writer’s block (if so, I can empathize with him, as a priest and graduate student). Maybe the Teacher had a difficult boss… or editor or publisher. Maybe (and by no means do I wish to make light of depression) he was depressed. And yet is there not surely more dignity than vanity in our work and in our world? If not, what is the point of anything we do? To borrow the title of a book from Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, a Dominican priest I had the joy of meeting a couple of years ago at his home at Blackfriars, Oxford, England, What Is the Point of Being a Christian, especially if “all things are vanity”?

I think both the Letter to the Colossians and our Gospel reading today from Luke give us clues toward answering questions like these. St. Paul says to the Colossians, “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above.” And Jesus reminds the crowd he teaches with the parable of the greedy rich man to seek to be “rich toward God”; to be “rich in what matters to God” and not to stockpile vain, perishable, earthly riches. And so our question shifts from “What is the point of our work; our faith; our worship; anything we do” to “How might we be rich in what matters to God; in what is of heaven and imperishable”?

Our world gives us many countersigns to “things that are above”; to richness “toward God” and “in what matters to God.” Some seek to be rich in money and material wealth. These are not bad in and of themselves, unless we rely on this material wealth in place of God or accumulate this wealth at the expense of other people. Some seek to be rich in military might and weaponry; rich in various forms of violence. Some seek to be rich in security and certainty. These people go so far as to want to build walls against anybody who may threaten their security. They go so far as to barricade their hearts and minds so not to need to respond to people who challenge their certainties (sometimes constructively), instead of defending the truths of God and of our faith, if necessary, with charity, kindness, and openness to better ways of expressing these timeless truths.

The “prosperity gospel”; the gospel of might and violence; the gospel of security; the gospels of greed and pride: These are not the Gospel of Jesus Christ; the Good News of our God. These are countersigns to the Gospel of Jesus Christ; these are false gospels. Yet enough people fall for these countersigns so that we have reached many crisis points in our world: Frayed and broken relationships in families; disregard for human life and dignity, especially of the not-yet-born, the elderly and the sick, and people with disabilities; wars; racism; a growing gap between the world’s wealthiest and poorest, many who lack even sufficient food and safe drinking water; acts of terrorism, most recently the murder of Fr. Jacques Hamel in France while he was celebrating Mass; more Christians and people of other creeds abused and killed than ever out of hatred for their faiths…

“This also is vanity.” This is appalling. And so what is the point, whether of our work, “of being a Christian,” or of being at all? What matters to God, and how might we be “rich toward God”? It can be well and good of us to condemn the “vanities”; the inhuman horrors of our time. It is well and good of us to speak to the truth of our Christian faith. But to condemn what is vain and false and to affirm truth is not enough. Religious faith cannot rest on the affirmation, “Because it is true.” “A religion,” Timothy Radcliffe says in What is the Point of Being a Christian?, “that tries to market itself as useful for some other purpose” than “to point us to God who is the point of everything… cannot be a religion that [we] could take seriously.” Religious faith demands a lived, ethical response. Our faith; our God calls us to live our response to these great questions: What is the point of who we are and what we do? How do we become “rich toward God”; “in what matters to God”?

And so how do we live our response to these questions? When I ask myself this, I think back to one of St. John Paul II’s earliest encyclicals; his teaching letters to the whole Church: Dives in Misericordia, or “Rich in Mercy.” “It is ‘God, who is rich in mercy,” Pope John Paul II begins. Mercy is “what matters to God.” Our God has revealed himself to us as mercy and invites us Christians to continue to reveal God to our world as mercy.

This, without doubt, is a difficult task for us, even before we consider all the countersigns in our world to mercy. Where do we even begin? I am not sure how many of us have been able to follow the news from World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland. This past Friday the Way of the Cross wound through the streets of Krakow. Each station of the Way of the Cross at this World Youth Day, during this Jubilee Year of Mercy, also included a meditation on one of the corporal or spiritual works of mercy. Might I suggest that these corporal and spiritual works of mercy would be great ways for us to reveal to our world our God “who is rich in mercy”?

Feed the hungry. Give drink to the thirsty. Clothe the naked. Shelter the homeless. Visit the sick and the imprisoned. Bury the dead. Instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, and admonish sinners, always with love and patience. Bear wrongs patiently. Forgive offenses willingly. Comfort the afflicted. Pray for the living and the dead.

These are all ways in which we, as Christians, reveal Christ; reveal our God to our world as “rich in mercy.” And we show, by doing these works of mercy ourselves and by encouraging one another to do the same, that we are “rich toward God”; “rich in what matters to God”; that we, too, are “rich in mercy.” It is all the better when we show God’s mercy in our world quietly; unassumingly, without regard for our own gain but for “[glorifying] God by our lives.”

This, I dare say, is “the point of being a Christian.” Mercy, with humility, is the antidote to injustice; to greed; to violence; to “vanity.” Mercy points us to God; toward “things that are above.” Mercy makes us “rich toward God” who is “rich in mercy” and who prospers “the work of our hands.”

Homily for Sunday, 9 August 2015

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:4-8; Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9; Ephesians 4:30-5:2; John 6:41-51

This homily was given at the House of Mercy, a homeless shelter in Rochester, NY.

How often do we think of our senses as ways of describing our relationship with God? Could touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste be means for us to strengthen our relationship with God?

Our readings today all speak of our experience of God in terms of our senses. Our Psalm praises God beautifully, inviting us to “taste and see the goodness of the LORD.” When Elijah, in our first reading today from 1 Kings, is in such deep despair that he asks God to take his life, an angel twice touches Elijah to wake him and then orders him to eat. And so God makes God’s presence known to Elijah through Elijah’s senses of touch and taste. In John’s Gospel Jesus speaks of himself as “the bread… from heaven.” Jesus is no ordinary food. Even the manna with which God fed the people of Israel in the desert while they were fleeing slavery in Egypt does not compare to the food Jesus offers. Manna had offered temporary relief from hunger. Jesus offers himself as the food necessary for our salvation; food that is eternal; “the living bread… from heaven” and “flesh for the life of the world.” Jesus offers us salvation we can sense: touch, smell, see, hear, and taste.

Yet Jesus invites us not just to take in God’s presence in our world by our senses. The Letter to the Ephesians from which we hear today says that “Christ handed himself over to us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.” But immediately before this we hear in Ephesians, “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love.” Ephesians asks us to make God’s presence felt or, better yet, smelled as “a fragrant aroma” by the way we live “as beloved children” of God, “in love.”

And so my question is this: How does God smell in our world? How, by the way we live, are we making God smell in our world? Is God being smelled; touched; seen; heard; tasted; more fully experienced as a God of goodness and love; a “fragrant aroma”; “the living bread… from heaven… for the life of the world” because of the way we live as Christians?

Many if not all of us here at the House of Mercy could answer truthfully, “Yes,” to this question. God lives and is experienced here. We hear God; the Word of God in our Scripture readings and here at Mass. We hear God in our lively celebration of Eucharist each Sunday; the participation of all of us in our beautiful music at our Sunday Mass. We see God in one another gathered here and then going forth from here to act in justice on the gift of God we receive in our worship. We taste God: Jesus Christ really and truly present under humble bread and wine in our Eucharist. And we taste and smell God present when we are fed and provide food here for many of this city’s homeless and otherwise hungry. We touch God in our sign of peace here; our works of peace out in our streets. These are powerful signs of God’s presence especially in this part of Rochester still beset by poverty; homelessness; hunger; violence.

God lives and we sense God present and alive here at the House of Mercy! But I would be missing one of the means in which God has been present and alive here if I did not mention my late Basilian brother priest and regular presider at our Mass here, Fr. Joseph Lanzalaco. Today I stand in Fr. Joe’s place, since he was first scheduled to preside at this Mass. In his own humble, friendly, and loving way, Fr. Joe brought people; brought us together to where God could be experienced: Smelled; touched; seen; heard; tasted. Many of us met Fr. Joe and sensed God present at his funeral Mass a-week-and-a-half ago at my home parish, St. Kateri, at Christ the King Church. Those of us here who could not be bussed to Fr. Joe’s funeral were with us in spirit and in prayer. I cannot speak for Fr. Joe (and he will without doubt correct me if and when we meet in heaven), but I picture him on the day of his funeral with all of us; with God present, smiling down on all of us there. I can imagine Fr. Joe speaking words to us from heaven similar to those of St. John Paul II to the crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Rome in the moments before he died: “I came to you, and now you have come to me. And I thank you.”

God was present among us in Fr. Joe’s life and priesthood among us, was present on the day of Fr. Joe’s funeral, and is present here now: Smelled; touched; seen; heard; tasted. But is it not a bit arrogant and irreverent for us to reduce God to something accessible to our human senses; to something material? 

I do not believe so, for two reasons. First, God has made God’s self human, one like us in all but sin in the person of Jesus Christ. Yes, God is entirely “other”; spirit and not something material we can sense. But, in the person of Jesus Christ, our God “humbled himself to share in our humanity.” Our God chose freely to share in our ability to smell, touch, see, hear, and taste in order to raise us up to a “share in the divinity of Christ.” Would we fear a God who takes on our humanity; our senses in this way? I would hope not. We could fear God becoming human, but this fear is itself a kind of arrogance and irreverence; a way to limit God. At its extreme (this error has been committed and condemned in our Christian history), this fear makes matter; the world; all of us whom God created as good out to be somehow bad. This is a lie. We know and so God invites us not to fear a God who, as Pope Benedict XVI says of Christ, “worked with human hands… thought with a human mind… acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved.” So that we might be saved and so that, through our senses, we might glory in the love and goodness in God’s creation, Jesus Christ made himself like us, able to smell, touch, see, hear, and taste.

And here lies the second reason why I believe we are right to seek God by our human senses; that this is neither arrogant nor irreverent. God did not stop at sending an angel to wake Elijah from his sleep of despair with God’s touch. God did not stop at feeding Elijah on Mount Horeb so that his prophecy might continue. God did not stop at feeding the hungry people of Israel with manna in the desert, or at Jesus’ feeding the multitudes on a hillside in Galilee. God did not even stop at sending us his own Son, Jesus Christ, our “living bread… from heaven”; “flesh for the life of the world.”

No, our Psalm urges us to “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” But may we not stop at this. God still has not stopped working in and through us. God has given us our senses so that, in the love and goodness of God’s creation we may smell, touch, see, hear, and taste the presence and work of God the Creator. And yet we, with God, are co-creators. We have a mission: Make God seen and heard by our worship as one community of faith. Make God somebody we can touch by extending to one another a hand of peace; by working for peace and justice; nonviolence at all costs. Make God tasted by feeding those who suffer poverty and hunger; by inviting more people to the table of the Eucharist. Make God smelled; breathed in and out of us in everything we say and do. “Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love,” Ephesians says today.

This is our mission. At the end of time, when Jesus Christ returns, we may stop. Until then, we will not stop because God will not stop in each and every one of us. In Christ fully human God took on “flesh for the life of the world”; took on our senses: touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste. God has given us the gift of these same senses to bring us salvation and for us to make God’s goodness and love known; experienced; touched, smelled, seen, heard, and tasted.

Homily for Saturday, 1 November 2014– Solemnity of All Saints

Readings of the day: Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14; Psalm 24:1bc-2, 3-4ab, 5-6; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12a

Who are saints? Has anyone here ever thought that there may be many more saints‒ people who have entered heaven‒ than our Church has officially named, or canonized?

Here are some figures on saints: From the year 1000 to 1978, when John Paul II became pope, “fewer than 450” saints were canonized. St. John Paul II, ordained a priest on the Solemnity of All Saints 68 years ago today, alone canonized over 480 saints and beatified 1 300 more people in his 28 years as pope. There are more than double the canonized and beatified people (those declared “blessed,” with one more attributed miracle needed to be canonized a saint) now than before John Paul II became pope. And those are just the named saints. They are more than the number of days in the year on which we Catholics celebrate saints.

Fortunately we have this Solemnity of All Saints on which we celebrate literally all saints, those named and unnamed. This, I think, is our Church’s way of saying that there are many more saints than those we formally recognize and canonize.

This is not some strange idea. Our readings for today resonate with this sense that there are many saints, officially recognized or not. Some saints (for the first few centuries of Christian history these were all the saints recognized) are martyrs; those who have given their lives for our faith. Our first reading, from Revelation, speaks of these saints, courageous witnesses to Christ whose “robes” have been “washed in the blood of the Lamb.” Our second reading includes all people who have lived with the purity of “children of God,” and in our Gospel reading Jesus calls many people “blessed”: “The poor in spirit… those who mourn… the meek… those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… the merciful… the clean of heart… the peacemakers” and those “who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.”

Our Responsorial Psalm is especially inspiring to me because it speaks of all who long for God. We have all prayed here, “Lord, this is the people that longs to see your face.” Is this not the first step toward being a saint: To long for the face of God; to desire to be with God for eternity? Do we not all have this desire in some way?

Please allow me to say with confidence that I do not think we would be here if we did not desire to be with God. We all desire to be with God, now and forever. Am I right? We are all called to be saints; called to be among the holy people of God.

There are many saints-to-be here now who live this universal call to be saints, to be children of God who “long to see God’s face,” better than I could ever preach it in words. Our Church and our world have many anonymous saints; I believe more than the saints whose names we know. This, more than just the saints canonized by our Church, is our cause for celebration. This is why we are here on this day to remember All Saints.

Homily for Monday, 20 October 2014– Ferial

Monday of the 29th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ephesians 2:1-10; Psalm 100:1b-2, 3, 4ab, 4c-5; Luke 12:13-21

Do we not hear often of the value of poverty? Pope Francis has invited us to be “a Church of the poor… for the poor.” Perhaps we know many people (me included) who profess a vow of poverty when we enter religious life. Our Church does not view it as good that so many in our world; our city; our local communities live in deep material poverty. In fact we advocate an end to destitution; a living wage for workers; just social security and health care coverage… And yet there is value in poverty in another sense.

How is this? And is there not also value in being rich? Our readings say yes; there is value in richness, as long as, in Jesus’ words in our Gospel reading, we are “rich in what matters to God.” But what “matters to God”? In what are we invited to be rich; indeed to accumulate and share our riches?

Our first reading from the Letter to the Ephesians gives us an answer to this question. The Letter to the Ephesians says that “God… is rich in mercy.” Are we not also, then, invited to be “rich in mercy” as God “is rich in mercy”?

St. John Paul II’s second Encyclical, written in 1980, is called Dives in Misericordia; “Rich in Mercy.” The title of this Encyclical letter is taken from our first reading today: “God… is rich in mercy.” Just as Jesus laments greed in our Gospel reading, the storing up of wealth by a few to the detriment of the many in need, St. John Paul II laments in Dives in Misericordia the problems of our world caused by the storing up of wealth that is not of God. The pope criticizes social structures, especially in wealthy nations, that deepen for so many “suffering, injustice, and poverty.” He complains of a lack concern for “the common good” and, in its place, a reduction of human relationship to individualism; failure to recognize the sacredness of human life; the sacredness of marriage; the sacredness of God’s creation; social structures that do not encourage merciful and equitable sharing of wealth.

How, then, do we become “rich in what matters to God”? It is not wrong to be materially wealthy yet, if we have wealth, we are called to share it with those in need. If we have talents to put at the service of community; of the Church, we are invited to share these, not out of a misplaced notion of “What is in it for me” but out of love; because we are a people of God who is “rich in mercy.” Some of us have money to contribute to the poor; to a favorite charity; to our parish that in turn supports initiatives for those in need inside and outside our parish. Some of us know another person in need of forgiveness; someone healing from a broken relationship. At the very least, we have small acts of kindness; our smile to share (as the late Fr. Jack Rosse often reminded us!).

These are all ways, and I am sure we can think of many more, in which we are and can be “rich in mercy”; “rich in what matters to God.”