Homily for Sunday, 13 August 2017

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a; Psalm 85:9, 10, 11-12, 13-14; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33

How deeply do our own experiences; our society and culture; our families, friends, and acquaintances; people we regard as leaders, in society and in our Church, influence our basic image of who God is? Of how many different images of God; popular understandings of God are we able to think?

Maybe thanks to the influence of Pope Francis, although God has been understood in these terms long before him, we may be developing an increasing awareness in our Church and broader world of God as merciful; a God who calls us to be merciful and kind to one another. My observation, though, is that this increased emphasis on a merciful God calling for a more merciful Church and world has not pleased everybody. How do we balance mercy with moral accountability? How do we respond to people who persist stubbornly in defiance of moral norms of Church or of societies; who persist in sin? Might an authoritarian God resonate better with some who are worried about too permissive an image of God, so that moral decay and, eventually, the whittling away of any sense of right and wrong, continue unchecked?

What other images of God, besides the merciful God, the permissive God, and the authoritarian God, vie for space in our minds and in our experience? Much like the authoritarian God is the angry, punishing God. There is the God of military might, or the God who blesses wealth (for some, this God of the so-called “prosperity Gospel” also curses people who are poor, sick, with disabilities, or otherwise disadvantaged). The God who sets the universe in motion and then leaves it, and us, to our own devices, is also alive and well in our world: The impersonal, distant, “blind watchmaker” God or, as I have heard this god called among my brother Basilians, “Yoyo” God, as in “You’re on your own”!

These are only a few predominant images of God, of the top of my head, that we might experience. None of these images of God are perfect, although some are better than others. Some have more of a basis in Scripture than others. Today we hear about the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings. Elijah hides in a cave on Mount Horeb. Why would Elijah want to hide himself in a cave on Mount Horeb? The reading we hear today from 1 Kings is right after Elijah has killed all the prophets of Ba’al, a false god in Israel worshipped by the queen, Jezebel. In a rage, Jezebel calls for Elijah to be killed and so, fearing for his life, Elijah flees to the cave on Horeb.

Who could fault Elijah, his life in danger for obeying God against the prophets of Ba’al, for believing himself to be a failure, “no better than [his] ancestors” in eliminating from Israel any worship of foreign gods? More importantly, who could fault Elijah for understanding God first and foremost as a God of might; an angry and violent God? After all, this kind of God had been Elijah’s experience: The God who, through Elijah, had responded to the idolatry of Jezebel and the people of Israel, and Jezebel’s murder of the prophets of the LORD, by having the prophets of Ba’al slain by the sword? This same God now seemed content to leave Elijah on his own on Horeb to die.

At this point, though, when Elijah is most stuck on his images of God as mighty and perhaps angry and violent, and then as distant and allowing Elijah to sink into despair, God calls Elijah out of the cave. The LORD says to Elijah that he “is about to pass by.” Will Elijah recognize the presence of the LORD when he passes by Mount Horeb? The first vision Elijah experiences that might be God is of a strong wind, “splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces.” And, we hear, “after the wind” is “an earthquake” and then “a fire.” Do any of us wonder what Elijah may have been thinking as he was witnessing these visions? Might he have been thinking how closely the wind, the earthquake, and the fire resonated with his prior experience of God: Mighty, angry, violent, and even destructive; a God to be feared more than loved?

To Elijah’s credit, he is able to discern that none of these visions; none of these images— the wind, the earthquake, and the fire— are adequate images of God. Elijah’s and our God is “not in the wind… not in the earthquake,” and “not in the fire.” No, Elijah’s and our best and fullest experience of God is in “the sound of sheer silence.” It is as though, through the silence, God says to Elijah, “Do not be afraid. Do not fear the wrath and destruction of Jezebel. Do not fear me, as though I am an angry and violent God. I have chosen you as my prophet. Rise and wait for me at the entrance to the cave. I will be with you, in calm silence.”

Is this God who called Elijah from the cave on Horeb; is our God not the same God who has been with us from the first moments of creation? St. Paul pleads with his own people in his Letter to the Romans to recognize that the God who once appeared to Elijah in “the sound of sheer silence” is the same God who has been with us all along. This God, our God, gave to the people of Israel first “the adoption, the glory, the covenants… the Law, the worship, and the promises… the patriarchs” and finally “the Christ.” Our God is not to be feared but to be worshipped in love. Our God is “not in the wind… not in the earthquake,” and “not in the fire,” but in “the sound of sheer silence”; in the peace and unity we build in our Church, our communities, our households, and among nations. God is with us in his kindly sustenance of creation; in forgiveness of our sin and of our false images of God that we too often still promote to our world: The gods of fear, of anger, of escalating threats, of violence, of military “fire and fury”; or the impersonal “yoyo” god— “You’re on your own”!

Do we not, though, still in our day have difficulty with all these incomplete and inadequate images of God? Does our world not still, too often, fear God instead of loving God and, in loving God, learn to love one another and uphold one another’s basic dignity as creatures of God? Do too many people today (including ourselves perhaps; including me sometimes) not still doubt the loving kindness of our God by which we are ultimately saved?

To us as to Jesus’ disciples on the boat in Matthew’s Gospel who “cry out in fear” amid the storm; to us as to Peter who, thinking he is able to walk on water by himself before he becomes frightened by the wind and begins to sink; to us as St. Paul to the people who first heard him; to us as to Elijah hidden in despair on Mount Horeb, God extends a hand of kindness, encouragement, and peace, and calls out: “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Firmly yet gently, God challenges our incomplete and inadequate images and understandings of who God is; our fear that prevents us from loving God and one another as we are called to do: “You of little faith, why did you doubt”?

Our God is in the calming of the storm at sea; in the calming of our fears; in the calming of the chaos and conflict of our world; in the calming of our false or at least incomplete images of God as either behind the chaos or distant from it. Our God “not in the wind… not in the earthquake,” and “not in the fire,” but in the silence; in the calm. May we not doubt. May we not fear, but may we worship and celebrate in love of God and of one another.

Homily for Sunday, 25 June 2017

Sunday of the 12th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 20:10-13; Psalm 69:8-10, 14, 17, 33-35; Romans 5:12-15; Matthew 10:26-33

Could we imagine ourselves as among Jesus’ first Twelve Apostles? Jesus goes up a mountain one night to pray and, when he returns, he chooses you and eleven other people to be his closest and most trusted friends. How would you feel? I, for one, would have been thrilled to have been chosen as one of Jesus’ first Twelve Apostles! That is, until the very first time we meet together. Suddenly, Jesus starts warning us that, as his closest friends, we will be persecuted, ridiculed, and eventually killed.

Who here would want to continue to be Jesus’ close friend then? How many of us would be afraid to continue openly to be Jesus’ close friend; one of his Apostles? I would be afraid. Yet, just when Jesus, I imagine, has his newly-chosen Apostles quaking with fear, unsure of whether they want to continue to be close to him, he speaks to them the first words we hear of today’s Gospel reading, from Matthew: “Fear no one.”

If we were among Jesus’ first Apostles, how many of us would still not be convinced by Jesus’ asking us to “fear no one”? For how many of us is Jesus’ assurance that we are “worth more than many sparrows”; indeed that we are worth more and of greater dignity than any other creature, created in the image and likeness of God, still not quite enough to overcome our fear?

I ask these questions, sisters and brothers, because we live in a world today that gives us many reasons to fear. In this respect, little has changed since the time of Jesus, or since human beings have walked this earth. The names of the persecutors; of those who make us afraid; of those who even endanger human lives have changed, but the fact of our world giving us many causes to fear has not changed. And fear is a natural human response; a feeling; an emotion. Fear is neither good nor bad; it simply is, in each one of us. If we are honest with ourselves, does not each of us fear something or somebody at some point in our lives?

Since I have been back here at St. Kateri for this short time, I have been deeply moved by how many of us, members of this parish, continue to voice concern for me and pray for me while I am studying in Paris. Many of us have asked me, “Isn’t it becoming unpredictable and even dangerous in Paris? Have you been near to the terrorist attacks that have taken place there”? My response to you has been something like, “Yes, there has been chaos and violence in our world recently, even close to me in Paris. But so far I am safe, and we cannot live in fear.” If we live in fear in response to violence and terrorism in our world, we give those who commit these hideous, murderous acts, who do Satan’s work in our world, exactly what they want. Those who commit violence and terrorist acts want us to be afraid; after all, we call their actions terror-ism.

In reality, though, I cannot help but feel fear when these acts of violence and terrorism occur, especially when they happen near me or people I know and love. On November 13, 2015, barely two months after I first arrived in Paris, 130 people were killed across the city. The nearest site of the Paris attacks, the Bataclan concert theatre, is only four miles from my apartment. For a few days, an eerie silence hung over Paris. I felt and lived this fear, even as I did my best to let as many people; as many of us know as possible that I was safe. Since then, there have been attacks in Brussels, Berlin, Nice, London, Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt, and other places including the little village of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen, France, where Fr. Jacques Hamel was killed while celebrating Mass last July. Bloodshed continues in places like Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and around the world.

Our world gives us many reasons to fear. Let me say, then, a heartfelt thank you for your concern and your prayers. And let me continue to offer my prayers for us and for our well-being. When I say we cannot live in fear, I do not mean to be curt or to ignore your concern and even your fear for me or at the state of our world. Whenever I am here at St. Kateri, I sense an almost familial love that often expresses itself as concern: Is Father safe? How are his studies going? Is he getting enough to eat (all questions that have been asked of me here in these last two weeks, by the way)? These are questions similar to those my mother asks me, as mothers (and fathers, too) naturally do, even many years after I have left home, have taken vows with the Basilians and been ordained a priest, and have travelled around much of the world. To us, I will always be a brother in Christ; a son of St. Kateri. St. Kateri is always “home away from home.” Together, might we here at St. Kateri be like Jesus’ first Apostles, whom Jesus called from home to our heavenly home, and who in the process eventually succeeded in making our world a little less chaotic, violent, and fearsome.

Might we be like Jesus’ first Apostles, to whom our Lord said, “Fear no one… And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” May we be like the prophet Jeremiah, who from God accepted a similar mission to Jesus’ Apostles’ and our mission: Go out into the world. Speak and live not the message that the people necessarily want to hear, but that they need to hear (and pray to discern the often fine line between these). Risk everything; risk being denounced, misunderstood, and ridiculed; risk even our own lives for the message that God gives us to proclaim and to live: A message of love beyond all telling; a message of love that saves us; a message of love that is greater than any fear.

In response to the violence and the fearsomeness of the world, might we be like the Psalmist, who today cries out through our song, “Lord, in your great love, answer me.” Those who wrote the Psalms in our Bible experienced fear. They knew the fear of suffering, illness, and death; the fear of enemy nations and their more powerful armies; the fear of the effects of their own sin. It is no wonder, then, that about two thirds of the Psalms in the Bible are laments. The Psalmists were some of the best and most effective complainers our world has ever known! Fear not; may we cast our fears and anxieties on God, for God has a thick skin.

“Lord, in your great love, answer me.” Knowing God’s great love for us, then, might we be like St. Paul or the Romans he first addressed with the letter from which we hear today in our second reading. May we fear no longer even our own sin. There is no sin too great for God to forgive. And may our Church, through Reconciliation, Eucharist, and her other Sacraments, and by the way we live, welcoming each other as redeemed sinners, be ever more our world’s instrument of forgiveness; of absolution; of freedom from sin. St. Paul says to the Romans that sin and so “death reigned from Adam to Moses.” Sin and death reigned until Jesus Christ conquered these by his death on the Cross. Sin and death and, with these, fear, reign no more over our world.

Love reigns in our world now, and enables us to go out into a still sometimes-fearsome, violent, sinful world. We go out into this world with an Apostle’s mission; a mother’s, father’s, sister’s, or brother’s mission; a prophet’s mission; a Psalmist’s mission; Christ’s own mission entrusted to us to love as he loves us; to love one another from this world into heaven, and to “fear no one.”

Homily for Thursday, 22 June 2017‒ Feast of Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More

Patronal Feast of the Diocese of Rochester (USA)

Thursday of the 11th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Peter 4:12-19; Psalm 126:1bc-2ab, 2cd-3, 4-5, 6; Matthew 10:34-39

“I have not come to bring peace but the sword,” Jesus says to us today in Matthew’s Gospel. Does this not challenge our view of a peaceful Jesus, who called us to peace and to love one another and to love God with all our being?

One of the foremost ways of interpreting Jesus’ message here is that he is not calling for us to create divisions unnecessarily or to act with violence, or saying that his mission on earth was to be divisive or violent. Instead, Jesus says that his message will reveal divisions and violence that already exist: In our households, within and between nations, within our Church, in our workplaces, in our political assemblies, in our communities, and within our own hearts.

This interpretation is well and good, but then Jesus goes on to say today: “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” And so do we not hear Jesus calling us here not only to avoid violence and unnecessary divisions, but to some form of zeal? Our question we may want to ask ourselves is: “For what (or whom) am I prepared to die”?

We are called, I suggest, to hold two virtues in a difficult balance: On the one hand, the virtue of peace with everybody and, on the other hand, the virtue of zeal; of being prepared even to die for a good enough cause; for God; for our faith in Christ.

Our first reading today, from the first Letter of Peter, calls us to the same balance between peace and zeal. And, like Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, Peter acknowledges that to live this balance, a Christian balance, will lead us to suffer at least misunderstanding, perhaps ridicule, if not a martyr’s death. Yet Peter says, “Those who suffer in accord with God’s will hand their souls over to a faithful creator as they do good.”

Today we celebrate two saints; two martyrs, St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, patron saint of this Diocese of Rochester, who gave their lives to maintain this balance between peace and zeal.

This balance to which we are called may rest on a finer line than ever. On the one hand, is it not right to be concerned about too easy a peace, when we fail to confront important evils of our world? This false peace we may call moral relativism. On the other hand, when we too proudly presume that we are right and another is wrong, we fall into a false zeal that is a form of absolutism, relativism’s evil twin, and we forget all the same the greatest virtue of all: Love, or charity.

Charity is the hinge between peace and zeal. It leads us to seek dialogue and to guide with patience those who struggle to understand or live a moral ideal. It leads us to ask questions when we are uncertain of another’s position, instead of shouting down, gossiping, excluding, or posting that biting comment on the internet for all to see. Charity, the hinge between peace and zeal, is the central virtue of a Christian. It is our central virtue, and the central virtue for which Sts. John Fisher, Thomas More, and every saint and martyr through the ages, has died and has lived.