Homily for Friday, 25 December 2020– Nativity of the Lord

Readings of the day (for Christmas Mass at Night): Isaiah 9:1-6; Psalm 96:1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14

This homily was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada.

Merry Christmas, sisters and brothers! How many of us can remember an event or several events, dates and places of local, even personal significance to us, but also of more worldwide significance? These are the events when we might say, “We know where we were when”…

Some of us, if we go back some time ago, may remember where we were when various wars began or ended: For example, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, or more recent conflicts in the former Yugoslavia or Iraq or Afghanistan. Some of us, or people we know and love, may have fought in or lost loved ones in these wars.

Within the Church, some of us might remember where we were when a so-called “caretaker pope,” St. John XXIII, shocked both the Church and the world by calling the Second Vatican Council, not because the Church or the world were in a particular crisis, but to open the Church and the world to discern the voice of the Holy Spirit in light of world events, “the signs of the times.” Vatican II, with a number of bishops in attendance never before seen at a Council in our Church’s history, as well as many Catholic expert theologians and non-Catholic observers, discussed topics ranging from the nature and mission of the Church itself, to its liturgy and sacraments, to the meaning of religious freedom and other human rights, to themes of peace and justice, to the role of social communications.

Many of us may remember where we were at the end of the Cold War, as the Berlin Wall was dismantled and the Soviet Union collapsed. From the first landing on the moon to the long-awaited approval and distribution of vaccines against COVID-19 (and many more events in between): We know where we were when these local events with worldwide, even universal significance, happened.

It may seem that 2020 has not given us much to be cheerful about. The news has been dominated by COVID-19, a disease with virulence not experienced since the flu pandemic after World War I. My experience has been that even conversations with friends, family, and my brother Basilian priests are often dominated by the latest COVID news: How many new cases today? How many deaths? Is the government about to put in place new restrictions? Terms like “physical distancing” have become part of our vocabulary. Mental and spiritual health concerns amid the distancing and aloneness have compounded with the physical health crisis of the pandemic itself. Our churches and businesses, if not shuttered completely, are allowed a small fraction of their capacity of people.

With that, I want to make a point of acknowledging with gratitude everybody who is joining us from afar, via livestream, to worship, and especially to celebrate this Christmas, the Nativity of our Lord. I thank you. I thank everybody who is here in person. I thank volunteers, cleaners, parish staff, priests and other liturgical ministers, people who serve the disadvantaged and vulnerable—everybody who has made it possible for us to celebrate here at all. Again, a Merry Christmas to everybody!

Back in March, the evening before COVID-19 forced many countries, including France where I was living then, into lockdown, I remember where I was: Hearing confessions in a small parish in Paris. That evening, the church was full of people trying anxiously to receive the sacrament of reconciliation before Easter. The next day, and for two months after that, the churches were closed, and all of France went into lockdown.

In the midst of this pandemic, on May 25, George Floyd, a Black man, was killed on a street in Minneapolis. This and other similar incidents ignited protests and a nationwide, even worldwide reckoning with socially systemic racism and abuses of power. I remember where I was, in the days after George Floyd’s death, on the phone with an African American friend from my first years as a priest in Rochester, New York; my friend who was distraught at the violence, the racism, the slurs to which she personally had been subjected; my friend who gave me that graced opportunity simply to listen, to pray with and for her as she spoke.

The COVID-19 pandemic, the reckoning with and protests against systemic racism and brutality in law enforcement: These are recent events with local, but also very universal dimensions. We know where we have been, but these events have affected the whole world. This relationship between the local and the universal brings to my mind a prayer our Basilian communities in Colombia often pray (and prayed while I served in several stints in those communities), based on part of Chapter 12 of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “Let us rejoice with those who rejoice; let us weep with those who are weeping”… How, then, do we accomplish what we pray for in that prayer?

How do we rejoice with those who rejoice, especially in this celebration of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus? How do we weep with those who weep; with those who are ill in mind, body, or spirit; with those who have been subject to racism, other forms of unjust discrimination or abuses of power; with those who have lost loved ones, or lost their livelihoods; who have lost the ability to worship in person and receive communion during this pandemic?

Perhaps our rejoicing with those who rejoice, and weeping with those who weep—in a word, solidarity—depends on our remembrance of where we are in the midst of world events and events that affect us personally. And, better yet, our solidarity with one another depends on our remembrance of who we are: A People of God, the Church, called together to celebrate this night and forevermore the birth of a child, Jesus Christ, Emmanuel (God-with-us; God in solidarity with us!) into a manger in Bethlehem; called together to celebrate this local event that has universal significance; that is essential to our salvation, not as disconnected individuals but together.

From the moment of Jesus’ birth, Luke’s Gospel says to us tonight, everybody who experienced this event was acutely aware of both its local and universal significance. Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and the angel who first spoke to the shepherds the “good news of great joy” of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem: Everybody knew where they were in those moments, but that this event held significance far beyond them.

Luke, the Gospel writer, the historian par excellence among the four Biblical Gospel writers down to the finest details, emphasizes the very local dimensions of Jesus’ birth. Caesar Augustus ruled the vast and powerful Roman Empire, which included Israel, land of Jesus’ birth, as the Roman province of Palestine. Quirinius, who is only mentioned this once in the entire New Testament, governed Syria, a rather insignificant part of the Roman Empire at the time. Mary and Joseph, a humble, we can imagine fairly ordinary Jewish couple, travel from “Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the City of David called Bethlehem,” Joseph’s hometown, to register in the Roman census. Mary, in a detail Luke gives us that is at least bizarre if not scandalous for the time, is engaged to Joseph but finds herself “with child.” She gives birth “to her firstborn son and [wraps] him in swaddling clothes, and [lays] him in a manger, because there [is] no place for them in the inn.”

Angels appear very specifically to “shepherds living in the fields.” These shepherds, and the place where the angels announce our Saviour’s birth to them, are what Pope Francis might call at “the peripheries”: Poor, dirty, smelling like their sheep, and probably feared or at least ignored by most people who lived in the cities and villages.

This, sisters and brothers, is how God chose to enter into solidarity as one like us, human, in all things but sin: To rejoice with us as we rejoice; to weep with us when we weep; to open to us the gates of salvation; to call us to remember where and who we are. The Nativity of our Lord was a very local event: Augustus ruled from Rome; Quirinius governed Roman Syria; a typical first-century Jewish couple, Mary and Joseph (typical except for Mary’s pregnancy) brought a baby into the world from its peripheries—into a manger!

The first announcement of this birth was equally “peripheral,” humble, local: From angels to shepherds. Yet, like so many of our world events but more decisively, this peripheral, humble, local event holds universal significance. Into a manger in Bethlehem, in first century Roman Palestine, is born for us; for the universe, for all times and places, “a Saviour, who is the Christ, the Lord.”

Homily for Monday, 10 June 2019– Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church

Readings of the day: Acts 1:12-14; Psalm 87:1-2, 3, 5, 6-7; John 19:25-34

Monday of the 10th week in Ordinary Time

What is the most important ministry in the Church?

My doctoral research in Paris is focused primarily on the development of ordained priestly ministry and how the Church expresses and understands the ministry of priests through its ordination rituals since Vatican II. Yet I am fascinated by the diversity of officially-recognized ministry, of both women and men, dating back to the earliest days of the Church. Very early in the Church, there were not only bishops, elders (or presbyters, the forerunners of today’s priests), and deacons, but women and men consecrated to focus their lives on particular forms of service for the good of the Church and the world. And then there were orders of virgins and widows, the minor orders (which persisted until after Vatican II) of porter, lector, acolyte, and exorcist, all with official rituals to install people into those ministries.

But do any of us notice that, in all this diversity of ministries, there is not and has never been a ministry of mothers officially recognized or marked by a formal ritual in the Church? This, I think, is why our Church’s veneration of Mary, mother of Jesus, under many titles, devotions, and feast days, is so significant. Not only is Mary celebrated as “Mother of God,” particularly on the first day of each calendar year, January 1, but since just last year Mary has been celebrated throughout the whole Catholic Church as “Mother of the Church” on this, the first Monday after Pentecost.

The Church herself is often called “Mother Church.” But what aspects of motherhood—the motherhood of Mary, the motherhood of the Church, the motherhood of mothers among the Church’s faithful—do we celebrate with this feast of Mary, Mother of the Church? How do these aspects of motherhood we celebrate on this day apply not only to Mary, but to each of us, whether we are actual mothers or not?

The portrayal of Mary, mother of Jesus and mother of the Church, “standing by the cross” in John’s Gospel from which we hear today, coupled with the specific mention in the Acts of the Apostles of Mary’s presence among the apostles and disciples of Jesus in “the upper room” in Jerusalem after Jesus’ ascension to heaven, stand out to me.

In both places, Mary shows motherhood to be a ministry of “standing with”; of praying with; of solidarity and empathy with those who are joyful; those who are waiting with hope; those who are suffering. This is a ministry to which each of us is called, sisters and brothers, whether or not we are actual mothers.

The motherhood of Mary, mother of the Church; the motherhood of the Church itself; the “motherly” ministry of each member of the Church’s baptized faithful, is a ministry that intentionally seeks out somebody to stand with and pray with and for, as Mary did beneath the cross and then in the upper room. Does each of us know somebody who is suffering in any way? Do we know people whose faith needs strengthening? Do we know anybody who is joyfully and energetically doing great work to better the Church or the world, who could benefit from our prayer and more vocal and deliberate recognition?

These are a few ways in which we could and maybe already do exercise our motherly ministry as Church. These are but a few ways in which we might emulate Mary, Mother of the Church, ways in which we stand and pray with one another, in times of joy as in the upper room and in times of sorrow as at the foot of the cross. Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for us.

Homily for Sunday, 9 September 2018

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 35:4-7a; Psalm 146:6-7, 8-9, 9-10; James 2:1-5; Mark 7:31-37

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

When is the last time any of us have attended a baptism? Have any of us ever noticed a strange part of the baptismal ritual, after the baptism itself, when the deacon or priest prays over the newly-baptized person while touching her or his ears and mouth? The deacon’s or priest’s prayer over the newly-baptized at this point in the ritual is this: “The Lord Jesus made the deaf to hear and the mute to speak. May he soon touch your ears to receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father.”

This part of the Rite of Baptism is known by a strange word: “Ephphatha.” We hear this originally-Aramaic word, ephphatha, translated for us as “be opened,” with the accompanying gestures from Jesus toward the deaf and mute man—Jesus puts “his fingers into [the man’s] ears” and touches his tongue—today in Mark’s Gospel.

Is it not remarkable that this Gospel event of which we hear today, Jesus’ restoration of hearing and speech to the deaf and mute man, “Ephphatha,” “Be opened,” was integrated in a set ritual of Baptism very early in the Church’s history, as early as the 600s? This was just as the Church was expanding beyond the geographical limits of the former Roman Empire north and west into then-pagan territories of Europe. The ephphatha has always had a double focus: First, to “open” the newly-baptized to God’s grace against sin. This is why, until it was moved in the baptismal ritual to after the baptism itself after Vatican II fifty years ago, the ephphatha introduced the renunciation of sin and profession of faith at the very beginning of the Rite. Second, the ephphatha held (and more dominantly today holds, especially since Vatican II) the significance of a call to the newly-baptized to spread our Christian faith in word and action, what we might call evangelization.

How, then, might we accomplish this, if at the heart of Jesus’ command to the deaf and mute man, “Be opened,” and at the heart of our calling as baptized Christians is evangelization, spreading the good news of Jesus Christ? Our Gospel and baptismal call to “be opened,” ephphatha, presents us with challenges both in the Gospel account of Jesus’ healing of the deaf and mute man itself and in the world in which we live. In Mark’s Gospel, as soon as Jesus heals the deaf and mute man, commanding him to “be opened,” he orders the crowds “to tell no one” about the healing. Do these two commands not contradict each other? And in our world today, how do we evangelize; spread the good news of the truth and beauty of our faith in Jesus Christ, while honouring the human beauty and dignity of those people to whom we communicate our faith; the dignity of people of other faiths; people who differ or disagree with us; people who may be resistant to our Christian message, even when proclaimed lovingly and reasonably? Is evangelization not out of place in a world as pluralistic as ours is in terms of faiths, cultures, politics, and worldviews?

Let me suggest that our response to these questions and challenges presented by our Gospel and our world might begin best with our attentiveness to the order of Jesus’ actions in healing the man in our Gospel reading today. This order of actions, by which Jesus touches the man’s ears and then his tongue, is reflected in the order of the ephphatha in our Rite of Baptism: “May [God] soon touch your ears to receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith”…

As in Jesus’ healing of the deaf and mute man in Mark’s Gospel, and from the moment of our baptism, Jesus opens our ears to hear before he opens our mouths to speak. If our evangelization, our proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, “to the praise and glory of God the Father,” is to be effective, it must be heard attentively before we are able to speak it with any authority. And if we are hearing God’s word attentively, it will become something heartfelt before we ever speak a word.

This is the message of the prophet Isaiah in today’s first reading, of which Jesus’ healing of the deaf and mute man may have reminded the crowds following him in our Gospel reading today. For Isaiah and for Jesus, the word of God is a message to be taken to heart. Isaiah’s first address today is to “those who are of a fearful heart.” Only then does Isaiah proclaim that “the eyes of the blind shall be opened… the ears of the deaf unstopped,” that “the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.”

If we remain “of a fearful heart,” we risk becoming paralyzed; closed in on ourselves by our fears. We risk closing our hearts to the Word of God and its invitation to us to “be opened.” When I speak of fear in this way, I speak not of fear as a legitimate response to the unfamiliar and even terrifying, but when we allow fear to take over our other senses so that we are attentive to nothing but our fear, which ends up destroying us from within. It will not matter, then, what we sense with our eyes and ears; the actions and words we communicate will be joyless, faithless, and meaningless, self-centered instead of God-centered.

Do most or all of us not know people who are so overtaken by fear in this way; people who are afraid to move beyond limited situations in which they are comfortable? Pope Francis has often lamented the number of Christians who are like this: “Like Lent without Easter,” Francis describes them in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium; with “faces like pickled peppers,” he said in an audience within his first months as pope. But the symptoms of fear that has taken over the heart and closed it off to God’s presence, closed us off to effective and joyful evangelization, can be more subtle.

From the moment Jesus enters into the pagan territories between Tyre and Sidon and the ten cities “of the Decapolis,” Jesus leads by example as to what he will mean in commanding the deaf and mute man to “be opened.” Before he heals the man the crowds bring before him or even speaks a word in today’s Gospel, Jesus actively shows us the true meaning of evangelization; of proclaiming the presence and good news of the Word of God in person, but in a strange land, not among his own people. There, we witness the healing of the deaf and mute man: “Ephphatha,” “Be opened,” ears first, to hear the Word of God attentively, and only then the tongue, to proclaim this Word of God with joy.

But all this presupposes an encounter of hearts between Jesus and the man, before any opening of his other senses is able to take place. “Jesus took him aside in private,” Mark’s Gospel says. Jesus takes the deaf and mute man aside, away from the noise of the crowds, away from his fears, but also possibly away from his comfort in the support of friends among the crowds who had brought him to Jesus. “Ephphatha”—“Be opened”: This invitation is effective only if a heart-to-heart with God takes place first. Only then will our efforts at evangelization be effective. These heart-to-heart encounters take several forms: Private prayer, examination of conscience, public worship, the celebration of Eucharist other sacraments, particularly the so-called sacraments of healing, reconciliation and the anointing of the sick, spiritual direction, even more informal private conversation about matters of faith, and so forth.

We encounter God heart-to-heart in the love of one another. We encounter God heart-to-heart in any moment that moves us beyond ourselves. We may even encounter God heart-to-heart, in ways in which our hearts are opened to deeper truths about our own faith, through encounters with people of other faiths or Christians who struggle with teachings of our own faith. To open our hearts is often discomforting. But this is necessary for any evangelization we do to be any more than mere noise; the mere noise of the crowds that Jesus orders to silence (albeit unsuccessfully) in today’s Gospel.

Evangelization, proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ, requires us first to open our hearts to this good news. With our hearts open, we are then able to have our ears opened to hear God’s Word attentively, and only then to have our mouths opened to proclaim it, not for our own comfort or glory but, according to our baptismal calling, “to the praise and glory of God the Father.”