Homily for Thursday, 16 September 2021‒ Memorial of St. Cornelius, Pope, and St. Cyprian, Bishop, Martyrs

Readings of the day: 1 Timothy 4:12-16; Psalm 111:7-8, 9, 10; Luke 7:36-50

Thursday of the 24th week in Ordinary Time

Meals can be great occasions to unite people. But have some of us not experienced how meals can be occasions, sadly, for the creation or deepening of divisions among friends and acquaintances, households and families? The conflict over a contentious political or moral issue at a meal for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or other holidays is even somewhat stereotyped.

Fr. Eugene LaVerdière, a priest and Biblical scholar of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, wrote a book in the mid-1990s entitled Dining in the Kingdom of God. This book comments on the many meal scenes of Luke’s Gospel. Fr. Laverdière considers the meal scene we hear in today’s Gospel to be the centrepiece of a lengthy section of Luke (chapters 6 to 8) that extends from Jesus’ naming of his twelve Apostles to his healings of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with a hemorrhage. In this section of Luke, Jesus emphasizes unity that transcends many social and religious distinctions: Gender, social and religious status, ritual cleanliness, sinners versus the less sinful (since nobody, except for Jesus and Mary, is sinless), and so forth.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus finds himself at dinner at the home of Simon the Pharisee. A woman enters Simon’s house, bathes Jesus’ “feet with her tears and [dries] them with her hair,” and anoints his feet with oil. Immediately, Simon questions this woman’s presence in his house: If Jesus were a true prophet, he would know “that she is a sinner.” This draws from Jesus the parable of the two debtors, with the essential point that the greater debt or sin a person has to be forgiven, the more love with which that person will respond to having been forgiven.

The meal scene in Luke’s Gospel today is lengthy and detailed. We might focus, rightly, on the extravagance of the probably expensive oil with which the woman anoints Jesus; the drama of her washing Jesus’ feet with her profuse tears and drying them with her hair, as a sign of the main point of Jesus’ parable that follows: The woman’s sin is great, and so is her love poured out for Jesus upon forgiving her.

But Eugene LaVerdière says that this meal scene, placed within a longer section of Luke on Jesus’ call of his Apostles and early Galilean ministry, centres, in a word, on unity. Jesus chooses twelve Apostles to recall the twelve tribes of the one nation of Israel in the Old Testament. Meals in Jesus’ time, LaVerdière says, were ideally a sign of unity across tribal and social or religious status boundaries; the unity of the nation of Israel.

Other commentators on today’s Gospel meal scene invite us to pay attention not only to the fact that a woman interrupts Jesus’ meal with Simon in this way and that the woman is a serious sinner, or that she takes the place of a servant or slave by washing and anointing Jesus’ feet. This is despite her obvious wealth, since she could afford expensive ointment.

On top of all this, the woman would have had to enter the dining room along its edge to anoint Jesus’ feet as she does. This is because, at meals like this in Israel at Jesus’ time, the meal guests would usually recline, with their heads toward the table at the centre of the room and their feet toward the outer walls. This woman—because she is a woman and a serious sinner, but also literally, physically—enters and anoints Jesus’ feet from the periphery of the room. When Simon the Pharisee attempts to ostracize her further, to push her farther to the (more figurative) periphery on account of her sin, Jesus corrects him with a parable. And then he restores the woman to unity, social and religious: “Your faith has saved you, go in peace.”

The well-being of the ancient nation of Israel depended on this kind of unity. The well-being of our social units, households, and families depends on the unity to which Jesus calls us today. And our salvation depends on this same unity.

Homily for Thursday, 20 June 2019

Readings of the day: 2 Corinthians 11:1-11; Psalm 111:1b-2, 3-4, 7-8; Matthew 6:7-15

Thursday of the 11th week in Ordinary Time

“Please put up with me”: Am I underestimating the probability of success in beginning an important message or trying to convince somebody with such a plea? Well, we know from the fairly spread of the Christian faith in the time of St. Paul, especially in large cities of the then-Roman Empire like Corinth that developed thriving Christian communities even under intermittent persecution from Rome and some Jewish leaders, that St. Paul was quite successful and convincing in spreading our faith.

I think it is important for us to remember that these Corinthians of St. Paul’s time were especially difficult people to bring to the Christian faith. Corinth was a rich city and proud of it, thanks to its possession of not one but two ports on the Mediterranean Sea, which allowed for increased trade by sea and therefore wealth to enter the city. Change, especially conversion from one faith, Greco-Roman paganism, to another, Christianity, is a tough sell when all is going so well for a city the way it was for first-century Corinth.

Scripture scholars often refer to St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians as his “tearful letter.” St. Paul pleaded with the Corinthians in bringing them to the Christian faith to the point of tears, out of a deep love for them, like no other people or city to which he wrote and ministered. To the Corinthians especially, St. Paul’s message, his preaching of a poor, humble Christ who freely accepted death on a cross to save us was, we could say, a religious culture shock.

In wealthy cities like Corinth, one paid handsomely to study under an elite teacher. This clashed, as we hear from 2 Corinthians today, with St. Paul’s preaching of “the Gospel” to the Corinthians “free of charge.” No self-respecting teacher or preacher in an ancient Greek city like Corinth would have taught or preached “free of charge” as St. Paul did, not only to a few wealthy students but to the whole city and to the world. Yet St. Paul’s strategy, along with pleading with the Corinthians to “put up with” him, worked splendidly anyway, no doubt by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

If we reflect on St. Paul’s loving pleading with the Corinthians to the point of tears, “Please put up with me,” what are the messages we find most difficult to accept today in our lives? Have we ever had difficulty accepting change even when change is necessary or right?

Maybe we have difficulty hearing somebody and accepting her or his message when this person differs from us politically or in understanding of the Church and its mission, for example, or when another person does not share our Christian faith or moral understanding at all. Maybe as difficult for many of us (if I have heard accurately from some of us here at St. Kateri Parish) is the impending change in leadership in this parish after anywhere from nine to forty-three years of Basilian leadership here.

I pray that we at St. Kateri will not only “put up with” but come to love St. Kateri’s new pastor when he begins here next week. I pray that everybody who leads, who prays, and who loves in this parish will continue to lead, pray, and grow in love with a new pastor and vicars, as the Corinthians went from putting up with St. Paul in his time to leading, praying, and genuinely loving him and one another for the growth and unity of the Church.

Homily for Wednesday, 28 June 2017‒ Memorial of St. Irenaeus

Wednesday of the 12th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 2 Timothy 2:22b-26; Psalm 37:3-4, 5-6, 30-31; John 17:20-26

How might we define glory? Does glory not seem like a somewhat abstract concept? Glory could be what is achieved in military victory or, usually less violently, when we out-argue somebody in a debate. These kinds of concepts of glory are in the background of our readings today on this feast day of St. Irenaeus, second century bishop and martyr. The second letter to Timothy asks us to “avoid foolish and ignorant debates” that only “breed quarrels” and so lead to nobody’s greater glory.

In Jesus’ great “high priestly” prayer from which we hear today in John’s Gospel, our Lord is especially concerned with both God’s and his Apostles’ glory. Jesus prays to God the Father, “I have given them the glory you gave me… I wish that where I am they may also be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me.”

Of what kind of glory is Jesus speaking? Our glory and our giving glory to God depend first and foremost on one thing: Our unity. And so Jesus prays for his Apostles; for us: “That they may be one, as we are one.” How often do we pause to think and to pray over the beauty and the significance of this prayer? What would our unity look like? Perhaps our unity might show itself as greater unity among Christians, or maybe unity would mean a greater striving for the virtues listed in our first reading, from 2 Timothy: “Pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace”…

In 2 Timothy, unity that gives glory to God is shown through patience and gentleness, even (or maybe especially) with people in error and sin. “Be gentle with everyone,” 2 Timothy says, “able to teach, tolerant, correcting opponents with kindness.” In religious communities like the Basilians, we may refer to the kind of gentle, kind, and sometimes tolerant approach to error as “fraternal correction.” Too swift or too harsh, and correction may drive people away, making them less likely to be convinced of their error or even sin. Too permissive or slow an approach to correction may encourage the error. Neither approach forms consciences; neither approach contributes to our glory or to recognizing God’s glory. And is the line between these two false approaches not perhaps finer than we realize?

St. Irenaeus, whom we remember today, is not often remembered as a patient, gentle, or kind corrector of the errors of his day. One of his most famous writings is the Treatise Against Heresies. But Irenaeus did have a gentle, kind, and even tolerant side. Within his Treatise Against Heresies, Irenaeus encourages a cautious approach against heresy as against lesser errors. He says that now “we receive a certain portion of [God’s] Spirit” and are “little by little” made “accustomed to receive and bear God.”

This “little by little” approach resembles that of 2 Timothy and of Jesus himself. Irenaeus also says in Against Heresies that “the glory of God is the human person fully alive.” To become “fully alive”; to be perfected for heaven, takes us a lifetime. If we follow Jesus, 2 Timothy, and St. Irenaeus, it would seem that our journey to being “fully alive”; to meeting the fullness of God’s glory in our unity, is a journey taken “little by little.”

Homily for Tuesday, 30 August 2016– Ferial

Tuesday of the 22nd week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Corinthians 2:10b-16; Psalm 145:8-9, 10b-11; Luke 4:31-37

This homily was given at the chapel of Frassati House, a residence of the Basilian Fathers in Toronto, ON, Canada.

Is it not remarkable how St. Paul describes “the Spirit of God” in our first reading today, from 1 Corinthians? St. Paul begins with a somewhat distant description of the Holy Spirit as the one who “searches everything, even the depths of God.” Might this sound almost frightening to us?

But then St. Paul says to us that “we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is of God.” Paul says to us in his first letter to the Corinthians that “we have the mind of Christ.” These are bold statements, that somehow we have the very presence of God; the Spirit of God dwelling within us!

And so the Spirit is not something distant; a being that watches us and is beyond our comprehension. Each of us, and together as a Christian community of faith, the Church, we have the Spirit of God with and in us. This indwelling “Spirit of God” makes possible for us the most intimate of personal and communal relationships with our God.

We have the freedom to reject this indwelling of the Spirit, although I believe this kind of total rejection among anybody who has ever truly experienced relationship with God is exceedingly rare. St. Paul may be speaking of those who have rejected God; have rejected the Gospel when he speaks of “those who are unspiritual” and so “do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit.” I am not sure of this. And yet, between St. Paul’s message to the Corinthians and our Gospel account today of Jesus’ healing of the demon-possessed man in Luke, I think we might say that “those who are unspiritual”; those who, knowingly or not, have. become possessed or controlled by anything that is not of God, may be able to discern and even name God’s presence (as the demon in Luke’s Gospel is able to do: “I know who you are, [Christ] the Holy One of God”), but is no longer able to enter into relationship with God.

Yet a far greater problem in our world than the few who have rejected God and God’s Spirit are those who have never known relationship with God; the presence of the Holy Spirit within them as we do. There are still many, even in “Christian” parts of the world like ours, who long for the spiritual. This is an invitation to us to satisfy this longing while keeping our own relationship with God strong.

How do we do this? Our response to God’s invitation to make God’s Spirit and our relationship with God’s Spirit known in our world (what we call evangelization) begins with prayer. It begins with our prayerful celebration of Eucharist as we are doing here. But it does not end here. Our celebration here calls us to work in our world for justice and peace; for unity among Christians; among people of faith; among all people. These are works of the Spirit. These are works that show our world that “we have received… the Spirit that is of God” and that, as one, “we have the mind of Christ.”

Homily for Monday, 29 August 2016‒ Memorial of the Passion of St. John the Baptist

Monday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 1:17-19; Psalm 71:1-2, 3-4a, 5-6. 15ab, 17; Mark 6:17-29

This homily was given at Anglin House, Cardinal Flahiff Basilian Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada.

What would have been the response of John the Baptist’s and of Jesus’ disciples to the news of John’s death at the hands of Herod? I imagine John’s and Jesus’ disciples as having been heartbroken and probably afraid. John’s beheading would have been a great blow to the earliest Church, second only in devastation to Jesus’ own death.

Might we not imagine John’s and Jesus’ disciples thinking about abandoning their lives as disciples out of fear; wanting to return to their former livelihoods; wondering whether their own deaths at the hands of the authorities of their time and place were at hand? This was certainly the case for these same disciples after Jesus’ death.  But, had the disciples of John the Baptist and of Jesus fled after John was killed, their story and ours as Christians would have ended there. And even though most of Jesus’ disciples fled after his death, they reassembled, even if in fear at first, to witness to Jesus’ resurrection and to take up the Christian mission with the strength of the Holy Spirit.

These first disciples’ story; our Christian story continues because these first disciples, of John and then of Jesus, did not give into fear. They accepted their own vulnerability, the finiteness of their own earthly lives, their sin and their need for God’s mercy and forgiveness. The disciples’ example is in marked contrast to that of Herod, who would not accept his own vulnerability and finiteness of his rule or his life. He would not accept John’s speaking truth to Herod’s wrongful marriage to his brother’s wife Herodias, beyond a superficial level of liking “to listen to” John. Herod’s lack of acceptance of vulnerability and of truth led him to commit murder.

John the Baptist’s and Jesus’ disciples’ example of acceptance of vulnerability and of their need for God is an invitation to us to follow suit. Our world gives us many reasons to be afraid. Over this summer, while I have taught in Edmonton and so far travelled here to Toronto, I have been asked many times about the response in France to several terrorist attacks: Those in Paris last November; the killing of Fr. Jacques Hamel in July while he was presiding at Mass near Rouen; the Bastille Day attack in Nice… I have been encouraged that many French have not retreated in fear after these attacks; they have back out on the café terraces, living as French people do, within days of these awful events.

This is not to say that the French, nor we nor anybody, are or should be completely without fear. But may we not allow our fear, our vulnerability, even our sin to break us. May what could break us instead be what brings us together and brings us closer to God, after the example of the disciples of John the Baptist and of Jesus, and of John and Jesus themselves.    

Homily for Sunday, 2 August 2015

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

Have any of us ever considered the questions the people ask of Moses and Aaron in Exodus, our first reading, and of Jesus in John’s Gospel from which we hear today?

When God gives the people in the desert in Exodus a strange dew-like substance to eat, they ask “What is this?” When the crowds find Jesus in Capernaum after the multiplication of the loaves and fish, they ask, as if surprised that Jesus has arrived there before them, “Rabbi, when did you get here”? Jesus invites the people who were fed by the loaves and fish to work not “for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life.” The people wonder what Jesus might mean by this; what kind of work Jesus might expect of them.

What exactly is this “food that endures for eternal life”? The people ask, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God”? Jesus’ answer to them is simple: Believe in him; “believe in the one [God] has sent.” But do the people despair of ever meeting the demands of faith they feel Jesus is placing on them? How could they ever match the miracle they had just witnessed of the multiplication of the loaves and fish? And so the people ask Jesus another question, to deflect the spotlight away from the weakness of their faith and back onto Jesus. They ask no longer “what can we do” but “what sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do”?

But before we criticize the people in Exodus for not being more grateful to God for feeding them with manna, or before we fault those who follow Jesus for seeking another sign; for their weak faith, might we try to empathize with their experience? Where does their experience; where do their questions resonate with ours as people of faith?

“What is this”? “Rabbi, when did you get here”? In one sense, we know the answers to these questions. “What is this”? Here in our Eucharistic celebration we are not given to eat and drink strange food that we have never seen before, as the people were when God gave them manna in the desert. We clearly see, touch, and taste bread and wine that are brought to the altar by our community of faith to become the Body and Blood of Christ. And so there is no question for us of, “What is this”?

“Rabbi, when did you get here”? Again, we know the answer to this question: Jesus Christ is and will forever be here with us. Jesus is really and truly present in our Eucharist, and also in each and every one of us; in our relationships; in our works of love and kindness; justice and peace; in our care for all of creation. Jesus is present in making holy; consecrating not only bread and wine here before us but all of us gathered here. Jesus is present in making our entire Church more and more, in the words of our Eucharistic Prayer, “one Body, one Spirit in Christ.” And so there is no question of, “Rabbi, when did you get here”? Christ is here, with and in us, now and forever.

Yet how many of us experience times in which we ask: “Where is God in this”? These experiences may be personal illness in mind, body, or spirit, or the illness or death of a loved one. Many of us, in our wider communities and some right here in our parish, experience poverty; hunger; unemployment or underemployment. How many of us find it difficult to pray from time to time, as if God is at a distance; not readily answering our prayers? How many of us have perhaps had a bad experience with somebody in our Church; somebody in leadership in our Church? Perhaps the onslaught of tragedy; of violence; of war; of injustice in our daily news is enough to lead us to ask, “Where is God in this”?

And if we are asking where God is in our lives; in our world, then are we not asking a question very similar to the question the people of Israel asked in the Egyptian desert, or the question the crowds asked Jesus: “What is this”? “Rabbi, when did you get here”? 

These questions can then lead us to ask a question like what the crowds ask Jesus next in John’s Gospel: “What can we do to accomplish the works of God”? Like the crowds in Jesus’ time, we may not know where to start “to accomplish the works of God.” For those among us who have suffered, who have even experienced despair, can suffering; despair; even the weight of evil in our world not make us seem powerless? Jesus’ answer to what we can “do to accomplish the works of God,” “believe in the one whom [God] has sent,” may seem unhelpful to us in these situations.

“What can we do to accomplish the works of God”? To show in words and especially actions that we “believe in” Jesus, “the one whom [God] has sent,” is at the core of our faith. Jesus calls us all to believe in him and to show our belief in him by the way we live. But how do we do this if we genuinely have little materially or spiritually to offer? What if we have the resources but are unsure who is most in need; where or to whom best to direct them?

It is not in and of itself wrong for us to ask the next question the crowds ask Jesus: “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do”? But today Jesus returns our question with a question, whether we are rich or poor; whether our faith is strong or weak: Not what can I do, but what can you do with what God has given you?

What can we do? How has God gifted all of us “to accomplish the works of God? We may not have received much in order “to accomplish the works of God.”  But if we are baptized into Christ; if we have received Christ in our Eucharist, we are all called “to accomplish the works of God.”

Within the last week I have witnessed many examples from this very faith community of accomplishing “the works of God.” We Basilians and many beyond our order continue to grieve the sudden loss of our brother Fr. Joe Lanzalaco, a man who authentically accomplished “the works of God” in this life. Fr. Joe brought people; Christian community together by his presence; his cheerfulness; his depth of faith. Many of us, from Bishops  Matano and Clark to the homeless of House of Mercy, who could offer almost nothing but their presence, joined together to worship; to remember Fr. Joe at his funeral. Many more of us offered ministry during the funeral Mass; food and drink before and after… If nothing else, many more offered words of consolation; offered prayer. On behalf of my brother Basilians I thank you. And I pray for you. Like Fr. Joe, you are accomplishing “the works of God” to which Jesus calls us.

How else can we “accomplish the works of God”? Mother Teresa of Calcutta once said, “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” And the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel said, “To love another is to say, ‘you, too, shall live.’” To love another is to will that this person have eternal life. And so I ask us to look around here for a moment. Whether the first person you see is a family member; a friend; a complete stranger, are we able to offer this prayer for this person: “Lord, I will that this person shall live; may this person have eternal life”? 

If we can offer this prayer for another, we show in a small but significant way our love for one another: “You, too, shall live.” We worship here; celebrate Eucharist together as a community of faith. “What is this”? “Rabbi, when did you get here”? “What can we do to accomplish the works of God”? Our “Rabbi,” Jesus Christ, has always been here in our worship; our words and works of love; kindness; peace; justice; our support of those in particular need. This is our willing one another toward eternal life; toward inheriting “the food that endures for eternal life.” This is the visible and active sign we offer our world that we “believe in” Jesus Christ, “the one [God] has sent.”

Homily for Tuesday, 30 June 2015‒ Mass of the Holy Spirit

Tuesday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time

This homily was given during a votive Mass of the Holy Spirit celebrated with faith formation and youth ministry leaders of the Diocese of Rochester at St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry, Rochester, NY.

Readings of the day: Isaiah 11:1-3a; Psalm 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; Luke 4:16-21

My sisters and brothers, I feel humbled to celebrate with you, faith formation and youth ministry leaders of this Diocese of Rochester, this Mass of the Holy Spirit. Have any of us ever experienced how the Holy Spirit is beyond our words; concepts; images? We are in danger of limiting the Holy Spirit; limiting God if we try to describe the Holy Spirit by our words, concepts, and images.

And yet we are teachers; we are engaged in faith formation of our young people; sacramental preparation for confirmation. We work and live in a world of words; concepts; images. And so where do we begin in understanding something of the Holy Spirit? Or is not the Holy Spirit somebody, not something, not primarily to be understood but first a personal relationship with God that we experience?

How, then, do we experience the Holy Spirit? How are the youth we form in our parishes; the youth we form for the sacrament of confirmation experience the Holy Spirit? During my years in seminary in Toronto I ministered in children’s sacramental preparation. One of my favorite activities, when speaking of our experience of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, was to give the children three blank sheets of paper. On one sheet, I would ask them to write or draw the first word or image in their minds when they thought of God the Father, then the same for the Son, and then the same for the Holy Spirit. Each year I received many drawings of an old, wise, and kind-looking man in the clouds to represent God the Father; a young, handsome, bearded man on land to represent the Son (the hippie Jesus?); and doves, wind lines, or occasionally fire to represent the Spirit. One year, when we were discussing our images of the Holy Spirit, one child handed me his still-blank page. “I don’t get it,” the child sighed, frustrated. To this day this child’s blank page is the best response to this activity I have ever seen!

Where do we begin with the Holy Spirit? Our readings today do not help us much. Isaiah speaks of “the Spirit of the LORD” as a series of gifts received by the prophet: Gifts “of wisdom and of understanding… of counsel and of strength… of knowledge and fear of the LORD.” These are the seven spiritual gifts listed in the Rite of Confirmation; the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit received or, perhaps better yet, intensified in us when we receive the sacrament of confirmation.

Like Isaiah, St. Paul understands the Holy Spirit as many “spiritual gifts but the same Spirit.” This is analogous to Paul’s description of our Church, Christ’s Body, as one body “though it has many parts,” or his emphasis on God as one yet inspiring in us “different forms of service”; “different workings,” all given to us “for some benefit”; for our unity as a community of faith. Unlike Isaiah, St. Paul does not even presume to list off individual gifts of God’s Spirit. Again, Paul’s emphasis is on the unity among us wrought by the Holy Spirit: “We were all baptized into one body… and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.”

The Psalmist conceives of God’s Spirit as a force for our renewal. We pray, “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.” And the high point of God’s renewal of “the face of the earth” is reached in God’s Son, Jesus Christ. In Luke’s Gospel we hear Jesus, standing before the synagogue crowd in his hometown of Nazareth, and proclaiming anew the words of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the LORD.”

Who is in need of the Spirit’s renewal today? Of course all of us are. But who are those especially in need of God’s Spirit: “The poor… the blind… the oppressed” among us today? It is no secret that our city; our diocese includes some of the poorest people in our nation. Even in the richest parishes, do we not encounter the materially poor; the unemployed and underemployed; the migrant; the refugee child and family? Have we not already encountered those “oppressed” by the breakdown of marriages and families; children who can become “blind” to God’s love for them by suffering; by experiences we would wish on no child; no person?

These are the people to whom the Lord sends us especially “to proclaim the Good News”: “Today the Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Today God’s Holy Spirit is present among us. Today God’s Holy Spirit calls us to unity in Christ: “Many spiritual gifts” but “one body, one spirit in Christ.”

How do we proclaim this message today to those who are well-off; to those who are in stable households; to those who already have a strong faith; a strong relationship with God, and to those who do not; who are among “the poor,” the “oppressed,” and the “blind”? Today we are this living message. Today we are “the Scripture… fulfilled” in one another’s hearing; one another’s experience. Today we are sent to bear the Holy Spirit to all we meet; all we teach; all whom we form in our faith.

We may from time to time be like the child with a blank sheet of paper: “I don’t get it”! But is the Holy Spirit not less about “getting it” than living it? “The Holy Spirit is upon me.” How deeply do we believe and act by these words of Isaiah; words echoed by our Lord Jesus? If we live by kindness toward those we serve, even in the smallest ways; if we live in a way that seeks out those in special need and seeks to satisfy those needs as we are able; if we are humble enough to learn from those we teach; catechize; form; to place ourselves where they are in their experience of our faith, then we will know the Spirit more deeply than we could ever express in words or images.

We will then be able to say after our Lord: “The Spirit of the LORD” is upon me… Today this Scripture… is fulfilled in [our] hearing.” Today we are in relationship with our God of loving service as faith formators. Today God’s Holy Spirit dwells among us and is at work through us in the renewal of “the face of the earth.”

Homily for Thursday, 21 May 2015– Thursday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 22:30, 23:6-11; Psalm 60:1-2a, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11; John 17:20-26

For what or for whom do we pray most frequently? We have heard of frequently-asked questions. What are our most frequently-prayed prayers?

Do we most often pray in times of sorrow; times of need, or do we find ourselves praying in praise and thanksgiving to God; praying in moments of joy; peace; prosperity? Perhaps we know somebody who is struggling with her or his faith; or has turned away from faith altogether, and we pray for this person. Perhaps some of us are experiencing health difficulties, or we know somebody who is ill in mind, body, or spirit, and so we pray for these people.

These are only a few of the more frequent circumstances, all of them good, in which we may be inspired to pray. Do we pray, maybe often, that we might enter eternal life? I pray this often for myself, but also for the people I love; the people I serve as a baptized Christian and as a priest.

And have we ever asked ourselves: What were Jesus’ most frequent prayers? For what or for whom did Jesus pray most often? Might this be a model for our most frequent prayers?

Our Gospel reading today is drawn from John 17, which is often called Jesus’ “high priestly prayer.” We hear Jesus’ last long prayer, during the Last Supper, before his passion and death on the cross. And yet I hear John 17 as a collection of shorter prayers that Jesus prays for his disciples. For what does Jesus pray for his disciples? Jesus prays to our Father in heaven that we, Jesus’ disciples, “may be one, as” God the Father and Son “are one.” Jesus prays for his disciples “that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that” the Father has sent him. Jesus prays at length and repeatedly in this Chapter 17 of John for our unity.

For what else does Jesus pray for his disciples? He prays that they may gain eternal life: “I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me.”

And I find one of the most beautiful intentions of Jesus’ high-priestly prayer to be when he prays for the people who will believe in him because of the witness of his first disciples. Jesus prays in our Gospel reading today: “I pray not only for these, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.”

How, then, can we make Jesus’ high priestly prayer our own? Jesus gives us his own example of excellent prayers to make into our most frequent prayers: Pray for one another’s unity. Important divisions still exist among Christian churches and traditions, although great strides toward unity have been made, especially in recent years. Pray that all may inherit eternal life. God has created every human being, all of us, out of love. God has created us for himself; for everlasting life. And pray in particular for the quality of our witness to Christ by the way we live, so that still more may be attracted to Christ and to our faith by our words and our works.

Homily for Sunday, 17 May 2015– Seventh Sunday of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 1:15-17, 20a, 20c-26; Psalm 103:1-2, 11-12, 19-20; 1 John 4:11-16; John 17:11b-19

“We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us,” we hear today from the First Letter of John. Is this not one of the great “starting point” statements of our faith? What is the foundation of our Christian faith; of any faith; the reason why we are here; of why any one of us or anything exists? The foundation of all this is God’s love for us.

“We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.” We know and believe as Christians, as one community of faith, that God delights in us. Is it so remarkable for our Scriptures to say that God loves and delights in us precisely because to say this is so problematic?

What do I mean by this? I do not wish to be pessimistic or to discourage us, but I ask: How many of us have experienced divisions and brokenness in our families; our households; our marriages, or knows somebody who has or is experiencing these realities? Many regions of our world know war, extremism, other forms of violence, hunger, and poverty, most often due to the concentration of resources in the hands of a few. But we need not go far to see the greed of a few while large groups of people (sadly still too often set apart by race, in these United States especially) are at a social and economic disadvantage, frequently through little fault of their own. We need not go far, right here in Greater Rochester, to see or hear of violence.

We live in a culture that, on the one hand, is revered for its work ethic and generosity and, on the other hand, is known for increasing division between left and right; between rich and poor; among races. Even in our Church, we see competitiveness over adherence to teachings of the Church, often as we understand them. Those of weaker conscience can find themselves condemned instead of having their conscience strengthened by the support of loved ones and the community of faith, to understand and live by the teachings of our faith more fully. And we know the scandal of division among Christians: Catholics; Protestants; Orthodox.

All these divisions; all this brokenness in our world; among Christians; within our Church even, is because of sin in our world. We know “the love God has for us.” God’s love for us is the reason for our existence; why God has created anything; why God sustains this creation; keeps it and us alive. And we know our freedom to love God and one another as God loves us, or to misuse our freedom and so not to love as God loves us. And yet even when we do not love; even when we sin; even when we have created scandal and division in a world God created to be good, God still loves us. God delights in us and will always delight in us. How can this be? And how does this fact; this foundation of our faith that God loves and delights in us impel us to act as Christians; as Catholics?

“We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.” We know and believe that God delights in us. We know and believe this because, from the very moment of creation, “God saw that [his creation] was good.” God pronounced us “very good.” When we fell away from God in sin; in not loving and delighting in God; in one another; in God’s creation as God delights in us, God sent us God’s only Son to live, to die, to rise, to ascend to plead our cause “at the right hand of the Father” in heaven. And the Son of God, Jesus Christ, promises to return in glory to complete God’s work of our salvation.

Here is our evidence of “the love God has for us”; that God delights in us! And the same Jesus who lived, died, rose, ascended, and will return as one like us in all but sin shows his delight in us most of all by praying with and for us. We hear perhaps the most magnificent prayer of Jesus with and for us in all of Scripture today in our Gospel reading from John. What does Jesus pray in what is often called his “high priestly prayer”; his prayer with and for his disciples; with and for us just before he suffered and died for us?

Two features of Jesus’ prayer in John’s Gospel; two things for which Jesus prays for us stand out for me in particular. What are they? Jesus prays for us: “Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are one.” Jesus prays for our unity. And then Jesus prays to our Father in the same prayer, “Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.”

What would it mean for us to own this prayer of Jesus with and for us for ourselves? How might we “be one” as God the Father, Son, and Spirit are one? What does it mean for us to be consecrated; made holy “in the truth” that is the word of God? Does this not all seem extremely daunting to us: Achieving the ultimate unity that exists among the persons of the Trinity of the one God; being made holy in the truth of God’s word?

This is daunting for us, to be sure. But by God’s grace the unity and love among us that Jesus prays with and for us can be ours. How? Begin with prayer. Pray especially for the people with whom we disagree; the people who irritate us; the people who have even sinned against us. Pray for their good: “Lord God, who is all good and created us all good; who loves us although we are sinners, keep this person well and in your grace. Bring the person for whom I pray to the promise of your salvation for all whom you have created for yourself. Bring all people to deeper experience of the truth that you love and delight in us.” Pray a prayer like this not only once but until we can actively feel God’s love for the person for whom we pray being expressed through our words. Pray until our words become works of kindness; of charity; of opening up opportunities for dialogue with people who are different from us; who struggle in their faith or in living some of its teachings; who are of other faiths or no faith.

Prayer will not bring us to uniformity, so that we all agree on everything. But prayer as a community of faith and individually but for one another is at the root of unity around one central truth of our faith: God loves us; delights in us. And “we have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.” Prayer that becomes action for peace; for forgiveness; for unity; for an end to divisions and violence is our starting point for showing our world God’s love for our world; God’s delight in us and in our world.

“That they may be one just as we are one… Consecrate them in the truth.” This is Jesus’ prayer of utmost love for us; delight in us. Jesus invites us to pray this prayer for one another; to live this prayer for one another. If we live this prayer for one another, the First Letter of John says, God’s “love is brought to perfection in us.” Jesus promises as he prays in John’s Gospel that, if we live this prayer for one another; if we pray for one another; forgive one another as we need to be forgiven; dialogue with one another and avoid the temptations of gossip; hyper-competition, and passive aggression, we will have the same joy in one another as Jesus does in us. We will have this same joy of Jesus Christ if we overcome ideological divisions; divisions among Christians of differing traditions; racial divisions; all greed; all forms of violence. “I speak this in the world,” Jesus says, “so that they may share my joy completely.”

Jesus speaks “this in the world”; prays this with and for us “in the world” because he loves us; because God delights in us. God calls us to love and to delight in what is good in one another; what is of God in one another. God wants to bring his love; joy; delight in us to perfection in, with, and through us. This is the very foundation of our Christian faith; of Christian and human unity; of our joy and of our salvation.