Homily for Sunday, 1 August 2021– Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Readings of the day: Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15, 31a; Psalm 78:3-4, 23-24, 13-14, 25, 54; Ephesians 4:20-24; John 6:24-35

Many of us may know of the Canadian children’s author Robert Munsch. He is known for his many heartwarming if zany, and vividly illustrated stories for children, but that also appeal to adults.

Today’s readings, especially from Exodus and John’s Gospel, center on food—Exodus’ manna in the desert; Jesus’ Bread of Life Discourse that follows the multiplication of the loaves and fish in John’s Gospel. In both Exodus and John, the people who are fed are unsatisfied and complain about the food.

The Robert Munsch story that comes to my mind is called Something Good. In Something Good, a father takes his young children grocery shopping. His daughter, Tyya, complains that, whenever her dad takes her grocery shopping, he never buys her any good food, like ice cream, cookies, chocolate bars, or ginger ale. Instead, Tyya’s father only ever buys food like bread, eggs, milk, cheese, and (ugh!) spinach—“nothing any good”!

Has this ever been our experience, especially those of us who are or have been parents of young children, when we take the kids grocery shopping? And, kids, I hope you do not quite behave like Tyya in Something Good when you are with your parents at the grocery store, and that you eat the bread, eggs, milk, cheese, and even spinach your parents buy to feed you! Anyway, in Something Good, when Tyya’s father is not watching, she gets her own shopping cart and fills it with all the “good” junk food she wants, much to her dad’s dismay. While Tyya’s father is returning all the one hundred boxes of ice cream and other goodies with which Tyya has filled her cart, Tyya is in fact very well-behaved: Just as her father tells her, she does not move or make any sound while he returns all the junk food to the shelves. Tyya is so well-behaved and still that she is mistaken for a doll, placed on a shelf with a price tag on her nose, $29.95, and even nearly bought for this bargain price by a few would-be shoppers. Finally, while Tyya’s father, Tyya, and her brother and sister are all arguing with the cashier—“This is my own kid. I don’t have to pay for my own kid”!— Tyya says to her dad, “Don’t you think I’m worth twenty nine dollars and ninety-five cents”? Tyya’s father pays the cashier, gives Tyya “a big kiss… and a big hug,” at which point Tyya says, “Daddy, you finally bought something good after all.”

Now, unfortunately, neither the people of Israel in Exodus or in John’s Gospel were as well-behaved or as endearing as Tyya in Robert Munsch’s book. In fact, many passages in our Bible and a few places in Israel (Meribah and Massah, for example) are named for the habit the people under Moses and Aaron had of complaining constantly, testing not only Moses and Aaron but God. We could say that the people of Israel in the Bible are consistently among the world’s biggest complainers.

In the Book of Exodus today, they are like little children trailing behind their father in the grocery store, while he buys bread, eggs, milk, cheese, and (ugh!) spinach… —“nothing any good”! No, worse yet, while they are in the depths of hunger, walking through a hot, dry desert, God gives them manna to satisfy their hunger. But how do the people of Israel receive this frost-like substance God gives them to eat? They look at it sideways and wrinkle their noses at it as if it were (ugh!) spinach or something; “nothing any good,” anyway. They ask (we can imagine, grumbling), “What is it”?

I find it amusing that, in Hebrew and related languages from the ancient Middle East, “manna” or “man” is a question word (an interrogative pronoun), so the Israelites’ question about what the flaky, frosty substance was that coated the ground in the desert becomes the name of this substance: “Man(na) (What is it)”? Manna!

But, by the time of Jesus and our Gospels, several generations later in Israel, the people of Israel do not seem to have progressed much beyond their old habit of complaining constantly. Jesus has just multiplied the few loaves and fish by thousands, so that everybody had more than enough to eat, and still the people clamour and complain; still they ask Jesus for a sign so that they may believe in him. How exasperating! The crowds in Jesus’ time, like the Israelites led by Moses and Aaron, are like little Tyya in the grocery store in Robert Munsch’s story: They keep asking for “something good,” not realizing that the something good, earthly sustenance, which points to something even better, eternal life, has already been offered to them. Maybe if Jesus had multiplied the ice cream, cookies, chocolate bars, or ginger ale, instead of loaves of bread and fish, the crowds would have gotten the point. On second thought, somehow I doubt this.

The point I suggest Jesus makes through the multiplication of the loaves and his Bread of Life Discourse that follows in John’s Gospel and that we will hear over the next few Sundays, is that the sign itself does not matter so much as how we receive it and what we do with it. The same is true of any of Jesus’ signs in the Gospels, or any of the signs of God’s presence among God’s people (like the manna in the desert) in the Old Testament: How we receive and what we do with these signs matters.

What do I mean by this? Jesus does not ask the crowds to arrive at a pithy, maybe philosophical name or formulation of Church teaching that would describe the essential meaning of the sign: Real Presence or transubstantiation, for example, however true and right (if mystifying) those terms are. Jesus does not ask us, first and foremost, to connect his multiplication of the loaves and fish and Bread of Life Discourse to our Eucharist (although certainly that connection can be and has been made, rightly so). No, Jesus asks only one thing of us in today’s Gospel from John: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

To believe in Jesus, the one whom God has sent, means to trust completely that Jesus has our best interest at heart. Jesus desires one thing for us: Eternal life. And to trust completely in Jesus and his one desire of eternal life for us is to allow our hearts; our minds, whenever we experience a sign in nature, in this earthly life, of God’s presence and goodness, to connect that sign to God’s ultimate desire for us to have that same experience on an infinite level. That is eternal life. But I think, maybe, to ask of us to trust Jesus completely, without reservation, in this way, is to ask something very difficult of ourselves. This level of trust in anybody is difficult, simply because nobody on Earth; nobody we know; no leader within the Church; certainly not I can possibly command the completeness of trust that Jesus can and does ask of us. There are some people who come close to the kind of authority and command of our trust that Jesus is able to ask of us. Those people are the saints who walk among us. And, thank God, there has never been an age when we have been without a saint who has walked this earth with us and then interceded for us from heaven with God.

Who, then, might our role models be in receiving Jesus’ signs as a call to trust completely in God and God’s call to eternal life? Do we remember the boy in last Sunday’s Gospel, the one who gave the few loaves and fish to Jesus, who then multiplied those loaves and fish to feed the thousands? That little boy in John’s Gospel is our example of complete trust in God and in Jesus, whom God has sent. The boy does not complain that he only has a few loaves and fish to offer. He simply, humbly gives what he has to Jesus. And Jesus multiplies what he gives him into a sign of what heaven will be: A banquet beyond our wildest imagination, where everybody is fed, with abundant leftovers.

If we still have difficulty trusting in God and in Jesus, whom God has sent, in a world that gives us not a few sad countersigns to heaven; signs that instead point to the scandal of human sin, I invite us to familiarize ourselves with the example of at least one of the many saints who have trusted in God in the way Jesus asks us; have recognized signs of the greatness of heaven in nature—God’s creation—sometimes amid great adversity. I think of the cry of St. Augustine of Hippo to God: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” From the last century or so, we have the simple prayer of St. Faustina Kowalska: “Jesus, I trust in you.” Or there is the profound prayer of total trust in God of Blessed Charles de Foucauld, founder of the Little Brothers of Jesus, hermit, evangelist to the Touareg people, martyr of the desert of Tamanrasset, Algeria: “Into your hands I commend my soul. I offer it to you with all the love of my heart, for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself, to surrender myself into your hands without reserve, and with boundless confidence, for you are my Father.”

In these prayers of saints, there is no complaint. There is no turning up our noses at the nourishment God offers us or asking, “What is it”? There is no seeking something good, or better than what God has already offered us. There is only complete trust that God will take what we offer back to God of his goodness, and multiply it so that the saving food God gives us will last forever.

Homily for Sunday, 5 August 2018

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15; Psalm 78:3-4, 23-24, 25, 54; Ephesians 4:17, 20-24; John 6:24-35

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

What is a sign, and how might a sign point toward the quality of our relationship with somebody?

When we think of signs, we might start with the simplest examples: Traffic lights, for instance. Regardless of where we are in the world, or the language spoken there, the colours of traffic lights and their order are consistent: Red, yellow, green, from top to bottom or left to right. Another simple example of signs might be when we are in an airport in a foreign country with a different language. We need simple picture signs to point us toward the baggage claim, through customs, to our connecting gate, to the bathroom, and so forth.

Yet it is difficult to form a relationship with a sign at the airport or a traffic light. That is, unless I were to consider my impatient grumbling of a few days ago as I sat in front of an interminable red light, with the crossing arms down, lights on and bells sounding (speaking of signs) as three LRT trains passed in front of me. It is difficult to consider this to be an example of a relationship with a sign, unless maybe one of disdain! But this is not usually what we mean by relationship.

When we enter into relationship with somebody, more complex signs allow us to gauge the health of the relationship. When my mom and dad, after forty-two years of marriage, embrace lovingly in what we call public displays of affection, totally focused on each other and the moment, those PDAs are a clear sign that their relationship is healthy. When my brother Basilian priests gather together with joy in one another to pray, eat, or to recreate in community, we see a clear sign that relationships among us and with God are healthy.

One especially important, and undeniably complex, sign of healthy relationship, is the giving and sharing of food. Our Scriptures offer us many instances of the giving, receiving, and sharing of food, and our readings today from Exodus and John’s Gospel are no exception. The ability to give, receive, and share food is an essential measure of the health of relationships in Scripture. The sharing of food is at the centre of our celebration of Eucharist here and our Christian living by works of kindness, mercy, and justice that flow from this celebration. There may be no greater sign of the health of relationships, of love and trust among people and between us and God, than the frequency and quality of our fellowship around food.

Food is essential to love, bonding, and building trust from the first moments between a mother and her newborn child and maybe even before then, while the child is in the womb. Moms and dads: Your children’s dislike of broccoli and love for the Sunday brunch here at St. Joseph’s College probably goes way back! As an uncle, I think of the first time I met my nephew Liam, when he was about two months old, at Christmastime. While the amazing smell of Christmas dinner wafted through the house, my sister Deanna, Liam’s mom, handed Liam and a bottle to me so that I could feed him. How delighted and relaxed Liam was! A few years passed and, once again, my family was together at Christmastime. Liam had developed a taste for corn tortilla chips (a boy after my own heart). My then-toddler nephew, who is now almost seven years old, made a game of repeatedly circling the living room, charming and soaking in the love from everybody, and then, with great anticipation, opening his mouth wide in front of me so I could fill it with a chip. Deanna made the astute observation to me that the way to Liam’s heart was through food. This was nephew-uncle bonding time at its finest!

If only the people of Israel in Exodus or the crowds following Jesus in John’s Gospel had been as appreciative of what God fed them as Liam was of tortilla chips! Instead, when God feeds the people of Israel with a dewy, “flaky substance” in the desert, they look at it sideways and ask “What is it”? They call it “manna.” This strange name the Israelites give God’s food to them is one of the fairly frequent instances in most if not all languages in which a word used one way—in this case “man” or “manna” introduce a question, as in “What?” in Hebrew—may be used in another way, as in the name for something. Here, the Israelites’ question on encountering the food God gives them becomes their name for it: Manna? What is it?

At least by this point in their exodus from Egypt, the people of Israel have progressed beyond complaining about being hungry, longing to sit “by the fleshpots” and to eat their “fill of bread” they had enjoyed in Egypt. But they still do not understand the sign value of the manna in the desert: What did the manna signify about God’s relationship with his people?

God could have abandoned the people of Israel when they “complained against Moses and Aaron” and God, or scolded them, as God did at other times when they complained. But God does not abandon his people or scold them. Instead, God tests them: “Alright, Israel, your constant complaining is driving me crazy! But if I give you food, even a strange kind of food you will not know I gave to you or what it is until you try it, will you recognize me as the God who delivered you out of slavery, who has sustained you for forty years in the desert, and who will lead you back to your homeland? Will you at last learn to trust me”?

And Israel still does not quite pass God’s test. They do not quite understand the sign behind the manna from heaven: That this nourishing if strange food is yet another sign of God’s promise to be with them always, to sustain them, and to save them, whether from slavery or their own ignorance and complaining, no matter what. God’s promise, called a covenant, is greater than the bread that only points to God’s promise of salvation. And so, even if the people of Israel fail the test; fail to understand the covenantal sign of the manna in the desert, God and God’s salvation, and not the people’s failure, will have the last word.

The same is true of Jesus’ encounter with the crowds in John’s Gospel, who continue to look for him after the sign of the multiplication of the loaves and fish. The crowds look for Jesus “not because [they] saw signs, but because [they] ate their fill of the loaves.” Again, they fail to understand the covenant value of Jesus’ sign of the multiplication of loaves; how this fits into God’s ongoing promise to us of sustenance toward eternal life. They fail to understand that God has upped the sign ante, so to speak: Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves shows that Jesus, in our human form, is the same God who saved the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, formed a covenant relationship with them and guided them through the desert under Moses and Aaron to their homeland. Again, the sign points us to something, or better yet somebody, beyond the sign itself: God; relationship with God; God’s continued offer of salvation. No longer should it be any question of “manna”?—“What is it”?—but of our relationship with God, who is behind these earthly signs leading us to salvation, “the food that endures for eternal life.”

The question, then, becomes how well we understand the signs God gives us today to point us toward relationship with God; toward the unbreakable covenant God has made with us to save us. Maybe if God were to try to give us tortilla chips instead of manna or loaves and fish, we might understand the promise of salvation God has tried since the first moments of creation to communicate to us. My nephew Liam would certainly understand that God wants to save us if God were to send us tortilla chips!

How well do we understand God’s signs of salvation, greatest of all our Eucharist, in our lives? Even if we struggle or fail outright to understand God’s signs, as the episodes of the manna and after Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves and fish show us, God will keep trying to strengthen his relationship with us; to point us toward eternal life. And so our failures; our ignorance; even our sin will not have the last word. God and God’s salvation, loving relationship with God forever, will. This is God’s promise to us; God’s covenant with us.

Homily for Friday, 4 August 2017– Memorial of St. John Vianney

Friday of the 17th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Leviticus 23:1, 4-11, 15-16, 27, 34b-37; Psalm 81:3-4, 5-6, 10-11ab; Matthew 13:54-58

What is authority, and how do we gain authority?

As the journey home to the land promised them continues for the people of Israel under Moses, we make the transition from Exodus to Leviticus today in the daily readings at Mass. But the authority Moses has in leading the people of Israel continues. It is an authority based on trust and reciprocal love between the people and Moses.

The kind of love and trust that builds between Moses and the people of Israel was the love and trust that the saint we celebrate today, John Vianney, enjoyed with the people he served in the tiny French village of Ars. John Vianney was known for his long hours hearing confessions. He was a devoted pastor, or “Curé” of Ars, in the tumultuous years after the French Revolution. Not long after John Vianney’s arrival in Ars, the humble parish priest began to draw travelers from long distances who would seek his spiritual guidance. St. John Vianney’s authority, like that of Moses, was based on love and building trust between himself and the people he served.

Jesus is not so fortunate insofar as building trust with the people he taught. Matthew’s Gospel says today that Jesus had arrived “in his hometown” and had begun “to teach the people in their synagogue.” Instead of recognizing Jesus’ authority; that he is the Son of God, the people of Nazareth question his authority: “Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary” and “his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas”?

By this point in Jesus’ public ministry, it would seem by Jesus’ remark that “prophets are not without honour except in their own country and in their own house” that he had enjoyed popularity and even genuine love from the people he had encountered before his return home. It is difficult to say why Jesus would have been received so poorly in his hometown after having had prior success; having established himself as a teaching authority in Israel. Perhaps the people of Nazareth were jealous of Jesus’ authority. Perhaps they were simply too familiar with Jesus and not willing to accept that a son of their hometown could be God. Perhaps that any human being could be God was too much of a stretch for the people’s Jewish faith already.

Whatever the reason Jesus was not accepted in Nazareth, I have found that my experience has been closer to that of John Vianney than to that of Our Lord. It has not been my experience to be derided; to have my authority questioned especially here in the city where I grew up. And so I find it somewhat difficult to relate to the events of today’s Gospel.

And yet, to return to the questions of what authority is and how we gain it, let me ask for your prayers on this feast of St. John Vianney, patron of priests, that any authority I exercise or any priest exercises through the ordained priesthood may, first, be a reflection of Jesus’ authority; God’s authority that sustains the world and our Church with loving kindness. And second, may any authority I or any priest; any minister of our Church exercises serve the authority we are all given through Baptism before any other sacrament, to be the presence of Christ we receive and celebrate here to our world.