Homily for Sunday, 24 January 2021– Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Readings of the day: Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20

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

When was the first time God called us? If we have ever been aware of God calling us, when was this?

When we speak of somebody calling us, specifically God calling us, especially in this religious sense we may speak of such a calling as a vocation. This word is from the Latin verb vocare, which means “to call.”

Our readings today are all about call, or vocation, events. I imagine most if not all of us are familiar with the Old Testament story of Jonah. What does Jonah do when God calls him to go to the “exceedingly large city” of Nineveh to urge the people living there to repent “from their evil ways”? Well, Jonah flat-out refuses to go where God calls him. And, before the part of the Book of Jonah from which we hear today, Jonah is thrown overboard from the ship on which he is trying to flee God, and spends three days in the belly of a fish for his efforts!

We also hear a more obvious call or vocation event in Mark’s Gospel today: Jesus calls the fishermen “Simon and his brother Andrew” and then “James son of Zebedee and his brother John.” Both pairs of brother fishermen respond to Jesus’ call to be “fishers of people” in completely the opposite way to how Jonah had responded to God’s call for him to set the Ninevites right. Simon and Andrew, James and John “immediately” drop their nets; leave the lives and family they knew behind and radically choose to follow Jesus’ call.

And, even if our reading today from St. Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians is less obviously about vocation events than today’s Gospel, it still centres on God’s call to us. St. Paul anticipates the imminent full realization of the reign of God on earth (as we should still anticipate today, since we do not know when this fulfillment of God’s reign will take place; we can only hope joyfully for it). St. Paul invites the Corinthians (and us) to examine and adjust our priorities; to live as if Jesus could return as he promised at a moment’s notice. God’s call or vocation through St. Paul to us is simply to be ready in joy for this event.

Yet how many of us think of a vocation as something related to the ordained priesthood or maybe joining a religious order of brothers, sisters, or nuns? How many of us have a broader understanding of vocation as any calling, specifically any calling from God? I invite us to think of vocation in this broader sense of any divine calling. This broader understanding of vocation, I think, will help us to answer the very first question I asked a few moments ago: When was the first time God called us? Whether or not most of us were aware of our first vocation—and I suspect most of us were unaware of when God first called us to anything, because probably most of us were infants at the time—we received our first vocation, in the religious sense of this term, at our baptism.

Right after the baptism itself, the pouring of water, we are anointed with a sweet-smelling oil called chrism. During the anointing with chrism at baptism, the priest or deacon prays over the newly-baptized: “God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has freed you from sin, given you new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and welcomed you into his holy people. He now anoints you with the chrism of salvation. As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet, and King, so may you live always as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life.”

This prayer speaks profoundly of our first Christian calling; our first Christian vocation. It is the same calling that Jesus Christ received from God the Father. The name “Christ” is not a surname, but means “anointed.” The Christ, Jesus who is anointed God’s own Son, receives a threefold vocation; a calling as “Priest, Prophet, and King.” We, in imitation of Jesus, the Christ, are called a priestly people, in a broader sense than the ordained priesthood, which is its own specific vocation. We are priestly from the moment of baptism in the sense that we are given a vocation “to glorify God by our lives”: To live holy lives, which involves worship of God and prayer, but certainly is not limited to worship (such as the Mass) and other forms of prayer. To be called priestly is to be called to orient everything we do and are toward God and toward our ultimate vocation, which is eternal life, never as disconnected individuals but always together, in and through Jesus Christ.

We, like Jesus, the Christ, are called a prophetic people. We are the voice of God on earth, not only by how we speak that attracts other people to God, but by how the way we live is coherent with the words we speak. Do we love one another, especially people we find difficult to love; disagreeable, in line with what we speak and hear from the Lord himself in our Scriptures: “Love one another as I have loved you.” No exceptions! To live up to our prophetic calling of our baptism is difficult but essential.

We, like Jesus, the Christ, are called a royal people. Our royal calling is not what many people may associate with royalty: Sitting on a throne, maybe distant from the people of a kingdom, with servants to wait on us. Or maybe, especially in Canada, where our official head of state is the Queen of England, we may associate with royalty what we see and hear of the British royal family or other world monarchies. But still this notion of royalty is distant from our everyday reality. Jesus and our Church mean precisely the opposite of this aloof sense of royalty when we speak of our royal calling.

To be called royal means for us to be called in some way to give ourselves in service to our sisters and brothers, somehow in memory of Jesus who gave his very life in service to us, for our salvation. Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium, whose focus is to answer the question, “What (or who) is the Church”?, beautifully defines Christ’s and our royal vocation as one by which we lead, again by the example of our lives—specifically acts of self-denial; self-restraint, even from what may in some ways be good, in favour of a greater good and in imitation of Christ—to the King who gave himself for us so that servants might be made kings like him. This is the heart of our royal calling, sisters and brothers in Christ: “To lead [one another] to that King for whom to serve is to reign,” as Lumen Gentium says; to give of oneself for the good and salvation of one another “is to reign.”

In all this, then, what does “vocation” mean, specifically to be called by God somewhere or to some activity in our lives? I think one problem (a good problem to have) is that “vocation” is such a broad term. We may define it along the lines of the priest, prophet, king motif, which connects nicely with baptism as our primary Christian vocation. We hear many professionals of all kinds speak, I think very rightly, of their professions not as jobs but as vocations. For me, as a priest of a religious order, it is easy to speak of having responded to a vocation, because our world, especially within the Church, is more likely to understand religious life and sacramental orders as vocations. But what about marriage, single life, the vocation to be a deacon, or lesser-known states in life like consecrated virginity, or liturgical service as lectors and acolytes (all of which are recognized with liturgical rites of our Church as true vocations)?

Do we understand how defining “vocation” can become very complicated, very quickly? And then how do we respond to a vocation if we discern that God is calling to us? Have we ever refused God’s call, as Jonah did, before he accepted to go to Nineveh? Were we immediately eager to accept God’s vocation to us, as Jesus’ first apostles seemed to be according to our Gospel? Or have we been somewhere in between refusal and immediate acceptance of God’s calling when we have discerned it? Was our response something like that of the Biblical Samuel, who wisely waited to be sure it was God and not his beloved priest Eli calling him? (We heard last week about God’s call to Samuel, and John’s Gospel version of Jesus’ call of his first apostles. Have we not been blessed with the richness of vocation events in our readings over these last few Sundays)? Maybe there is no “right way” to respond to a divine vocation, except, if I may say, to strive to orient our whole lives and conduct toward God, and toward eternal life in heaven, which is the ultimate vocation for each and every one of us.

Homily for Sunday, 15 July 2018

Sunday of the 15th Week in Ordinary Time


Readings of the day: Amos 7:12-15; Psalm 85:9-10, 11-12, 13-14; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:7-13

This homily was given at St. Basil's Church, Toronto, ON, Canada. 

Is anybody here a Mark Twain fan? One of my favourite sayings attributed to Mark Twain is a caution against being too wordy: “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.” But, in his work, “Refuge of the Derelicts,” in Fables of Man, Mark Twain writes, with special depth if less humour: “There are no accidents. All things have a deep and calculated purpose. Sometimes the methods employed by Providence seem strange and incongruous, but we have only to be patient and wait for the result: Then we recognize that no others would have answered the purpose, and we are rebuked and humbled.”

There are no accidents. Is the same not true of Mark Twain, as for the prophet Amos, as for St. Paul, as for Jesus’ disciples, as for us today? Can we not imagine Amos, in our reading from him today, as puzzled at first by the accusation against him by “Amaziah, priest of Bethel,” of essentially being a career prophet, having chosen purposely to be a thorn in the side of the king and people of Israel? Amos’ answer to Amaziah’s charge of careerism is that he is in fact “no prophet, nor a prophet’s son.” Amos, he says of himself, is a prophet, certainly not because he wanted to be a prophet, but essentially by accident.

And yet there are no accidents. However, there is what we call divine providence. And what is divine providence; God’s providence? Amos speaks of divine providence, not mere accident, when he says to Amaziah, “the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.”

It was no accident; I did not want to be a prophet (because who in their right mind would want to be a prophet, especially in Amos’ time?), Amos says, but the LORD made me do it… and I accepted and trusted the LORD’s call to be a prophet. I accepted and trusted that the LORD had and has a plan and a purpose for me; for each and all of us as individuals and as a community of faith, human species, and world, that will be the best for me in the end. I accepted; we accept and trust in divine providence, even if this means sacrificing something good in our lives for a greater, longer-lasting good, and ultimately for our salvation.

Because of this self-sacrificial dimension, divine providence and our trust in it, in God, differs from a kind of self-help, magic, or superstition: “Become rich or healthy immediately by following these ten easy tips. Send this to ten of your friends within 24 hours for good luck; if you do not send this message, you will experience bad luck for seven years.” Although I am being a bit facetious here, divine providence and our trust in God’s plan and purpose have nothing to do with these kinds of self-help, magic, or superstition. As for Amos, St. Paul, for Jesus, and for many of Jesus’ disciples through the ages, trust in divine providence may lead us to sacrifice even our lives for a greater good; the greatest good, eternal life.

Amos was not a career prophet, despite Amaziah’s accusation against him. He discerned a vocation, a calling, to be a prophet, which his own will alone, without the help of God’s grace, would not have accepted. The same was true of St. Paul and of Jesus from the moment he became fully human, one like us in all things but sin. And the same is, has been, and/or will be often true of us.

In the letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul speaks the language not of career but of vocation by God’s providence. St. Paul says that God “chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” And then he adds, “In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will.”

This language of vocation, of God’s calling; of God’s choice; of plan and purpose; of inheritance is not the same as the language of career. Jesus, like St. Paul after him and Amos before him, staked his life and teaching on his disciples’; on our understanding and practice to some extent of this difference in languages: Career versus vocation by God’s providence; career versus inheritance, plan and purpose of God.

Jesus sends “the twelve” Apostles “out two by two” and asks of them what is impossible without God’s grace: “He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.” In other words, the Apostles were to entrust themselves entirely and self-sacrificially to God’s providence, plan and purpose for their lives, which would ultimately be eternal life.

All this is not to say that, while a vocation is great, a career is necessarily bad. Many or most of us are in or would like to be in stable careers. And yet a vocation, unlike the best careers, does not allow us to retire, let alone early. A vocation holds no promise of a decent salary, pension, or other benefits… So much for workers’ rights the Church asks us to defend, right? A vocation, unlike a career, is something we would not accept on our own without God’s grace. And when we do accept a vocation, a calling by God’s providence and grace, our acceptance of vocation happens “when we recognize that no others would have answered the purpose,” as Mark Twain once said, “and we are rebuked and humbled.”

And yet each of us, at some point, have accepted not a career but a vocation from God: Those of us, for instance, who have been baptized or are preparing or preparing a loved one for baptism; those of us who are married; those of us raising children; those of us who, perhaps very sadly on a personal level, cannot raise children or work through the bureaucracy of the adoption process; those of us who are in religious life or priesthood. “No others” but you or me “would have answered the purpose” to which we are called by God as individuals and as a community of faith.

A vocation is not a career (although they may overlap), and is no accident. A vocation always involves self-sacrifice. I have been and continue to be personally reminded many times of this. A year ago, and again this summer, I visited the parish, St. Kateri in Rochester, just around Lake Ontario from here, where I had served as a deacon and first sixteen months as a priest (I was ordained a priest just over four years ago). In St. Kateri Parish is a young family, good friends of mine, whose first of two children has recovered from four bouts with leukemia in the last seven years and is now eleven years old. A year ago, I had a conversation with the guidance counsellor of the school attached to the parish, St. Kateri School. The guidance counsellor at St. Kateri School is also a personal friend, mother, wife, and cancer survivor. During this conversation, I spoke about how I had become friends with the first family with the daughter who has battled leukemia. After one of this girl’s relapses with cancer, I had anointed her on a Monday and given her first communion in the same hospital bed the following Friday. And I have had other encounters in ministry before and since then with this girl and her family, and we remain close friends. In this conversation, I said at one point to the guidance counsellor that I felt that my journey with this family; my friendship through ministry with them had been somewhat “by accident.”

At this point, my guidance counsellor friend stopped me. She said to me, “There are no accidents. You have become like an uncle to those children and a friend to this family.” Those words, a year and more later, continue to move this itinerant uncle-priest profoundly. I was (ever-so-gently) “rebuked and humbled” by these words of my guidance counsellor friend.

“There are no accidents. All things have a deep and calculated purpose” under God’s sometimes seemingly “strange and incongruous” providence. Perhaps “no others would have answered the call”; would have been in the right place at the right time to minister with and be ministered to by a then-very sick child and her family and friends. But I was there. And I thank God from my depths for this fact; for God’s purposeful providence; for vocation.

Homélie du mercredi, 25 avril 2018– Fête de St. Marc

Lectures du jour: 1 Pierre 5, 5b-14; Psaume 88, 2-3, 6-7, 16-17; Marc 16, 15-20

Mercredi de la 4ème semaine du Temps Pascal

Cette homélie fut donnée à la paroisse St. Louis d'Antin, Paris, France

Qui était St. Marc, l’évangéliste ? Eh, bien, on pourrait poser cette même question à propos de plusieurs personnages et auteurs de notre Bible : qui étaient-ils ? Souvent on ne peut pas bien connaître la réponse à cette question.

L’auteur de la première Épître de St. Pierre, d’où est extraite notre première lecture d’aujourd’hui, introduit brièvement Marc comme son « fils ». Les Actes des Apôtres font mention d’un homme appelé Jean Marc, qui accompagnait les Sts. Paul et Barnabé en voyage. Ce « Jean Marc » était-il parmi les quatre évangélistes de notre Bible ? Marc était-il le fils de St. Pierre ? Eh, bien, peut-être on ne le saura jamais, mais est-il essentiel qu’on le sache ?

La fin de l’Évangile de St. Marc, duquel on entend aujourd’hui, est d’autant plus bizarre. Si je me permets une incursion brève dans le monde des historiens et des biblistes, plusieurs pensent que l’Évangile de St. Marc a en fait deux terminaisons, une longue et une courte. La longue terminaison a été affirmée au Concile de Trente au XVIème siècle comme faisant officiellement partie de la Bible ; un message divinement révélé. Aujourd’hui, on écoute la longue terminaison de Marc, avec son récit de l’apparence du Seigneur à ses apôtres après sa résurrection, suivie de son ascension.

Bien sûr, on sait que cette longue version de la fin de l’Évangile de St. Marc est vraie. L’Église n’existerait pas si les apôtres n’avaient pas fait ce que le Seigneur les avait demandés de faire : « Allez dans le monde entier. Proclamez l’Évangile à toute la création ». On ne serait pas ici à louer et à célébrer en Église si l’Évangile s’était terminé, comme la terminaison courte de St. Marc, où les apôtres de Jésus se sont cachés chez-eux par peur des autorités qui venait juste de crucifier et de mettre à mort leur Seigneur, et les femmes venant du tombeau, qui « ne dirent rien à personne, car elles avaient peur ».

Que dit alors de nous cette différence entre les deux terminaisons de l’Évangile de St. Marc ; l’anonymat et l’incertitude sur qui était ce personnage qu’on appelle Marc à travers notre Nouveau Testament ? On pourrait dire, à partir de la terminaison courte de l’Évangile de St. Marc, que la peur fait partie de notre histoire ; de notre Évangile, comme la peur a fait partie de l’expérience des premiers apôtres de Jésus. Cependant, le Seigneur nous appelle à ne pas rester enfermés dans et paralysés par la peur ; par le trouble, la violence, et le péché du monde. Le Seigneur nous appelle à prolonger notre Évangile, de sortir « dans le monde entier » et à proclamer cette Évangile prolongé de résurrection et alors de l’espoir « à toute la création ». Par notre Parole de Dieu, avec toutes ses ambiguïtés, notre Seigneur nous appelle, par St. Marc et plusieurs personnages bibliques qui sont restés plus ou moins anonymes mais quand même importants, de ne pas craindre l’anonymat ou chercher la célébrité en proclamant son Évangile.

Parmi nous, il y a plusieurs saints anonymes, j’en suis convaincu. D’après St. Marc et d’innombrables saints dont les noms ne sont connus que par Dieu seul, on a tous aussi la vocation divine d’être saints ; d’être des évangélistes « à toute la création ».