Homily for Tuesday, 7 August 2018– Ferial

Tuesday of the 18th Week in Ordinary Time


Optional Memorial of Sts. Sixtus II and Companions and St. Cajetan

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 30:1-2, 12-15, 18-22; Psalm 102:16-18, 19-21, 22-23, 29; Matthew 14:22-36

This homily was given at the Kateri House Women's Residence Chapel at St. Joseph's College, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Could our readings today be the Biblical version of “Mission: Impossible”?

In the book of Jeremiah, God promises the people of Israel the impossible, in light of the social and political situation of Israel at the time. And in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus enables Peter, the other Apostles, and then all the people in the region of Lake Gennesaret to do what would have been impossible without Jesus’ stilling of the storm and healings: To have faith in him as the Son of God.

The book of Jeremiah raises a theological question, more than other Biblical prophetic books do, as to whether God is capable of abandoning his people completely if the sin of the people of Israel becomes great enough. Jeremiah, more than any other prophet, leans toward a “yes” answer to this question. Also, Jeremiah says to the people of Israel, they are already at the point at which their sin, their injustice and, worst of all, their worship of other gods has put them beyond redemption; beyond the ability even of God to save them from the consequences of their wrongdoing.

We might imagine how this message did not make Jeremiah a popular figure in Israel. To Israel’s people, Jeremiah’s message was as if to say that God’s unbreakable relationship, called a covenant, with his people, was in fact breakable; that God could be unfaithful to his own covenant. This contradicted what other prophets of Jeremiah’s time and before and after were saying.

Yet, amid Jeremiah’s harsh message, like any true prophet he offers his people hope. Indeed, the evil Israel was committing would entail consequences, finally exile to Babylon. Even God was not going to prevent due consequences for Israel’s sin. But out of the destruction and exile of Israel, God would do the almost impossible: God would bring Israel back to its homeland and rebuild Israel around social justice and right worship of the one true God. “I am going to restore the fortunes of the tents of Jacob, and have compassion on his dwellings,” God says through Jeremiah. In light of Israel’s sin and unfaithfulness to their covenant with God, this restoration of Israel would be like “Mission: Impossible,” except for God.

In Matthew’s Gospel, the storm on the lake is not because of anybody’s sin, but still it must have seemed to Jesus’ disciples in the boat that everybody and everything, including, as Matthew says, even “the wind was against them.” Amid this chaos, of which the Gospel writer may have thought as a parallel to God’s ordering the chaos in the first Genesis creation account, Jesus invites Peter to walk toward him on the water.

Peter almost makes “Mission: Impossible” possible, until his focus shifts from God’s presence, which alone makes possible the impossible, to his own fear. At this point, he recognizes how “little faith” he truly has; how much greater his fear is than his faith. But his “little faith” is enough, together with God’s great grace in Jesus Christ. God’s grace in Jesus Christ allows Peter’s “little faith” to multiply and spread. “Those in the boat,” and then the people in the region, worship Jesus. If only we “might touch even the fringe of his cloak,” the impossible might become possible for us, too: Healing; quelling chaos and fear; salvation.

Our “little faith,” too, upheld by God’s grace, is just enough to make possible the otherwise impossible. It is just enough to save us.

Homily for Sunday, 3 September 2017

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 20:7-9; Psalm 63:2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16:21-27

In hearing the Gospel we have just heard from Matthew, how many of us wonder why Peter cannot seem to catch a break?

Our Gospel reading today follows immediately after Peter makes a profession of faith so astounding that he could not have made it up on his own; it must have been from God: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” It might be helpful for us to think that, whenever Peter speaks or acts in our Scriptures, he speaks or acts in our place. In his great profession of faith, Peter speaks for the other Apostles. Peter speaks for us when he identifies Jesus as “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” We remember that Jesus had asked his disciples; had asked all of us, “Who do you say that I am”? And, by God’s grace, Peter gives the right answer on behalf of all the Apostles; of all Jesus’ disciples; of all of us.

When we are able to answer with Peter that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” we are, as Peter was, at our most vulnerable. How so? We are most vulnerable at this point to all our experiences of life that try our faith; that tempt us; that distract us from our faith that Jesus Christ is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” At this very point of making our greatest profession of faith, we are most vulnerable to our guilt for the times we have not lived up to the truth of the faith we profess. We are most vulnerable to all the false images by which the world around us might identify Jesus, not “the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” but as a static, dead god, somehow contained by our expressions and categories of human language; as a god who rules by might and violence; as a god who blesses wealth, no matter how it is acquired, and curses those unfortunate enough to find themselves in need; as a god who is distant and invincible to human experiences we fear, most of all death.

These images are not true images of our God; they are false images, idols. Our God will never hold us guilty for when we have not lived up to our words by which we profess our faith, when we have sinned. God does not rule by might, anger, or violence, as so many human rulers of nations have and still do. God blesses us all; God has created us all in the image of his supreme, living goodness. Our God curses neither the rich nor the poor, although God especially upholds the dignity of those in need and invites us to do the same: Open the doors of our churches, our nations, our homes, our hearts preferentially to the poor, the migrant, the refugee; the unborn; the young people; the sick; the aged; those seeking sincerely and struggling in the way of faith; those as vulnerable somehow as each of us are. Our God is not invincible to any of our human experience, least of all death, but became human in the person of Jesus, to share in our every experience of being human except sin; to share even in our suffering and our death in order to make eternal life possible for us.

It seems almost too good to be true that God should not be a dead god of guilt but a living God of mercy; not a dead god of anger or violence or of hoarding wealth and the world’s resources at the expense of those in need but a living God who upholds the dignity of all creation; not a dead god of invincibility and distance from creation but a living God who has become human in every way we are human, including our suffering and death, so that we might be saved. When, as Peter did, we profess our faith in a living God; in Jesus Christ as “the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” we leave ourselves vulnerable to Satan, who will tempt us to give into our fear that all we say we believe is too good to be true. Satan tempts us when we are most vulnerable, yet paradoxically when we have just made the greatest profession of faith possible, not to think “as God does.” This is Peter’s experience and perhaps it is, more often than we would like to admit, our experience. Peter stands in our place. This is also why Jesus rebukes Peter as harshly as he does: “Get behind me, Satan”!

But all our vulnerability; all our temptation to deny the almost incredible faith we profess; all our sin, when we fall into Satan’s traps and substitute dead gods in place of our living God, does not change who we are at our most profound: Sons and daughters ourselves “of the living God.” Sure, when we fall into sin; when we fall for dead gods in place of “the living God,” we are weakened. Our will to do good is corrupted and weakened, but never lost. Peter knew this truth and, again, Peter stands for all of us. When he takes Jesus aside and rebukes him, “God forbid it Lord,” that you might suffer and die in our place; that you might share in this fullest way possible in our humanity, Peter is still the “rock” on which Jesus has chosen to build his Church. Peter’s God-given name, his most profound nature, is not lost, even when the rock becomes “a stumbling block”; a scandal to himself and to the other disciples.

Still, Peter’s great profession of faith is still intact: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” We are sons and daughters of the same living God, in whom “we live and move and have our being,” as we will pray in a few moments here at Mass. The “stumbling block,” in the midst of his denial of a Messiah who must suffer and die as we do in order that we might live as God lives, is still the “rock.” The “stumbling block” who would deny Jesus not once but three times, proclaiming a dead god of fear as Jesus traveled the Way of the Cross, would still be the “rock” called to proclaim the living God of salvation by the cross and resurrection to our world.

Peter, at once the rock and the “stumbling block,” stands for us. And so how do we, like Peter, become more rock and less “stumbling block” to one another and to God’s grace working through us? How do we proclaim a “living God” and not any one of a variety of dead gods to our world? The easy answer to these questions; the answer given in our Gospel, is to accept any suffering we might experience. “If anyone wants to become my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” And yet, for many, this answer is almost too easy. We know in our world and may even have experienced personally forms of suffering that are unbearable or unjust. Suffering is not of God; is not willed by God. This side of eternal life, though, Jesus, through his cross, has taken upon himself our suffering as a means of conquering it.

We participate in Jesus’ solidarity with and victory over our suffering and death especially when we find somebody, even one person, who is suffering; who is oppressed; who is marginalized; who is in need and when we work to alleviate this person’s suffering. Sometimes to alleviate another’s suffering takes heroic effort, but more often to alleviate another’s suffering— to enter into solidarity with Christ on the cross and with another who bears the cross with Christ— takes a simple smile, a listening ear, or some other simple gesture of love.

This is learning, after Peter and every disciple of Jesus who has ever lived, to be less “stumbling block” and more rock of faith. This is taking up our cross and following after Jesus, “Son of the living God,” in becoming more authentically ourselves sons and daughters “of the living God.”  

Homily for Thursday, 1 September 2016– Ferial

Thursday of the 22nd week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Corinthians 3:18-23; Psalm 24:1bc-2, 3-4ab, 5-6; Luke 5:1-11

This homily was given at St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish,  St. Margaret Mary Church, Rochester, NY.

What do our readings today say to us about wisdom? Might it seem that St. Paul especially, in our first reading from his first letter to the Corinthians, takes a negative view of wisdom?

Is it so wrong of us to seek to be wise; to gain knowledge, even of what is not particularly spiritual or sacred (we could say, of what is secular)? I think that the issue for St. Paul is not so much about wisdom as about acknowledging God as the source of all wisdom, whether of the so-called sacred or secular. Our key to interpreting St. Paul’s words is in his last line we hear today: “All belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God.” Through Christ we belong to God. All wisdom and all knowledge belong to God. Our Eucharistic celebration here; our ability to give thanks to God for “all that is good” in our lives and in our world belongs to God and is God’s gift to us.

We gather here at varying points of acknowledging and living our belonging to God; of witnessing by our lives our thanksgiving to God for “all that is good,” in the words we will pray shortly in our Eucharistic Prayer. We are on a kind of journey. In Luke’s Gospel from which we hear today we meet St. Peter and Jesus’ other apostles and disciples, and “the crowd” who are on the same journey as we are. And Jesus meets us along this journey.

St. Peter becomes the spokesperson for everybody besides Jesus in our Gospel. He is our spokesperson. And I think we would be correct to suggest that St. Peter does not exactly strike us as wise. Yet Jesus chooses Peter, sometimes the weakest and most foolish of the apostles, at best a humble fisherman, to speak for everybody else; to speak for us.

Jesus finds St. Peter on a journey. And the first response of St. Peter to his encounter with Jesus is one of trust: “At your command I will lower the nets.” But then, at the great catch of fish, Peter’s trust in Jesus quickly changes into a sense of his own powerlessness and sinfulnes: “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”

Fortunately for St. Peter and for us, Jesus does not do as Peter says. God stays with us along our journey until we are able to do as Jesus’ apostles do: “They [leave] everything and follow him.” At this moment, the apostles, led by Peter, James, and John, not only trust in God or acknowledge their powerlessness or sinfulness, but are able to give themselves entirely to God in Jesus Christ, who has given us all wisdom and all goodness. At this moment, the journey is no longer about Peter, James, John, or us, but about God.

So we find ourselves, at some point along the same journey as Jesus’ apostles and everybody who has ever lived: From trust to a sense of our own sinfulness, powerlessness, and lack of wisdom apart from God, to being able to give our all to our God to whom we belong, the source of “all that is good,” when we are able to leave “everything and follow him.”  

Homily for Thursday, 13 August 2015– Ferial

Thursday of the 19th week in Ordinary Time

Optional Memorial of Sts. Hippolytus and Pontian

Readings of the day: Joshua 3:7-10a, 11, 13-17;  Psalm 114:1-2, 3-4, 5-6; Matthew 18:21-19:1

“How often must I forgive”? Jesus answers this memorable question from St. Peter: “Not seven times but seventy-seven times.” In other words, show unlimited forgiveness toward other people when they sin. But is this not easier said than done? What becomes of moral accountability when we forgive another person even when this person commits the same sin against us multiple times?

If we struggle with these questions, I think we can take comfort that even popes have had the same struggles. We begin with St. Peter, by tradition the first Bishop of Rome, who asks the question of Jesus that perhaps many of us have thought at some point: “Lord, if my [sister or] brother sins against me, how often must I forgive [this person]? As many  as seven times”?

Today we also celebrate the feast of two obscure saints, Hippolytus of Rome and Pontian, who were martyred in Rome in the early 200s. A fascinating detail about Hippolytus and Pontian is that for many years they were angry with each other; could not forgive each other until they were imprisoned and killed together by the Roman Emperor Maximus. Pontian had been pope. He and the two popes before him, Callixtus and Urban I, allowed people who had committed adultery and other serious sins back into the Church without, in Hippolytus’ eyes, a long and rigorous enough time of penance. Hippolytus was so outspoken against Popes Callixtus, Urban, and Pontius that he accepted election as an antipope (a rival claimant to the papacy of Rome). This got Hippolytus excommunicated. Thankfully, Hippolytus reconciled with the Church, probably under Pope Pontius while both were in prison, before he was martyred.

Hippolytus and Pontius were canonized together and share today as a feast day. Might we call this a great feast day of forgiveness, “not seven times but seventy-seven times”? Today is the feast day of a pope and the first antipope, who both were named saints and are examples to us of (eventual) forgiveness.

But how late is too late to forgive? How long before we become like the servant in our Gospel reading who is forgiven his debt but then refuses to forgive his fellow servant’s debt? Jesus invites us to be free and not to delay in forgiving one another. If we wait to forgive, we may not have the fortune of Hippolytus!

Who are the people in our lives whom we have most difficulty forgiving? Occasionally I hear people who are angry and have difficulty forgiving somebody in leadership: A president, a bishop, even a pope! But most often are not the people we have most difficulty forgiving those dearest to us: Close friends and family members?

I have seen over the last few days a saying on Facebook I find rings true. It says that to hold a grudge is to let somebody live rent-free in your head. The Church does not need to say this; psychologists will say this first. Jesus invites us to forgive. If we wait to become martyrs like Hippolytus before we forgive, it will become too late. And so make the demons of lack of forgiveness and unchecked anger in our heads and hearts pay the rent! This is all about accountability for our own mental and spiritual health.