Homily for Sunday, 27 December 2015– The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Readings of the day: 1 Samuel 1:20-22, 24-28; Psalm 84:2-3, 5-6, 9-10; Colossians 3:12-21; Luke 2:41-52

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

Are we not right to celebrate the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, as a timeless model of family life? And yet for how many of us does the Holy Family seem like an unrealistic model for our families; our households here to take after?

I think of my own family members; of their gifts and acheivements. I think of all the ways in which being with my family, especially in this Christmas season, brings me great joy and even a sense of awe in their presence. My parents will celebrate forty years of marriage in May. Dad’s logical mind is in constant dialogue with his commitment to deepening his faith; his clear awe of God’s creation in dialogue with his love for science as a retired meterologist. Dad will often say how often he turns to me for the advice of a priest; as or more often, as independent as I can be, I turn to Dad for the advice of a father. Mom has the uncanny ability to discern the character of other people accurately and to bring calm, reason, and listening skills to any conversation. My sister and brother-in-law, both engineers, are two of the most talented mathematicians I know. They have given our family and our world the gift of two beautiful children, my niece and nephew. My brother is the easy-going one; reserved yet humorous, and he is your go-to person if you need your car windows replaced. I was born with neither the mechanically-inclined gene nor the math gene; my talents are elsewhere.

And yet, as far as I know, unlike in the Holy Family, nobody in my family or any of our families here is God. Just think of the disadvantage this would be if one of our family members were God made human! A cartoon of three couples of proud parents on donkeys on their way to Bethlehem circulates on the Internet at this time of year. Each of the donkeys displays a bumper sticker. The first says, “Our son is an honour student.” The second donkey’s bumper sticker reads, “Our son is in medical school.” And on the back of the third donkey, bearing a pregnant Mary with Joseph looking on, says, “Our Son is God”! Those on the other two donkeys scoff, “Well, if it isn’t Joseph and Mary”…

So it is probably fortunate for us that none of us have been tasked with raising the Son of God, as Mary and Joseph were. But for us to take after Jesus, Mary and Joseph in our lives of faith; in our households, our families, may be more realistic than we think. The Holy Family may have more in common with our families here now than we realize at first.

Our Gospel reading today ends with twelve-year-old Jesus returning home with Mary and Joseph to Nazareth, where Luke says he “increased in wisdom and in years, and in favour with God and human beings.” To their joy and relief, Mary and Joseph have just found Jesus safe and sound among the teachers in the Temple of Jerusalem after three days of searching for him in the crowded city during the Passover festival. Is it not a temptation for us, when we speak reverently of Mary and Joseph (as is right of us), to gloss over incidents like this in which Mary and Joseph are anxious, even frantic?  “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety,” Mary says to Jesus.

Parents here, especially of teenagers or pre-teens: Might you be more likely to relate to Mary’s experience of anxiety than, for instance, those of us without children? At this age, children begin to assert their independence. They need the space to question and to listen as Jesus did in the Temple of Jerusalem; to discern their faith on their own terms; to build a peer group. This in itself does not mean they love you any less as parents. Teenagers and pre-teens: Please do not take this as permission from me to become lost for days at a time. Your parents will never stop worrying about you when you are not with them, even well into your adult years. And Luke’s Gospel does say that, when Jesus returned to Nazareth, he “was obedient to” Joseph and Mary. Here the Son of God models for us obedience. But if you ever become lost, few places are better in which to become lost than a temple or, in this case, a church. May our Church always be a place of welcome for you, young people; young families!

Might we be able to relate in still other ways to the experience of the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph? After Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the Temple, Joseph is not mentioned again in the Gospels. Joseph models for us the prayerful, silent love of a father. And Luke says of Mary that she “treasured all these things in her heart.” Even amid times of anxiety, of being unable to understand why Jesus “must be in [his] Father’s house”; of accompanying Jesus from manger to cross to resurrection to his sending forth of his Holy Spirit who gave birth to our Church, Mary models for us the contemplation; the pondering, treasuring heart of a mother. And so Mary is Mother of God. Mary is our mother.

Mary, Joseph, and Jesus together model for us the gift of attentively hearing; discerning the presence of God in our day-to-day experiences, in particular our experiences of family relationships. I imagine that few if any of us have the “perfect” family. Our families experience anxiety. Our families experience illnesses, even deaths. Our families experience physical distance among members. Our families experience conflict, sometimes to the point of division, stemming from our sin. And still God invites us; our families, through the example of the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, to be holy people; holy families ourselves.

And so how might we hear God’s invitation to us, as individuals; as households; as families, to holiness? How might we hear and discern God in our day-to-day experiences and relationships? Besides taking after Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the most perfect model we have of family life, we might take up the example of Hannah and Samuel, mother-and-son of our reading today from 1 Samuel. The name “Samuel” is Hebrew for “God has heard.” Hannah recognizes that God has heard her prayer for a son. Her grateful response to God is to dedicate Samuel for life to God. “God has heard,” and so Hannah and eventually Samuel, through his mentor Eli, hear God. Hannah and Samuel model for us; for our families the gift of hearing God with gratitude. Their example in the Old Testament sets up for us that of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in the New Testament.

And how else might we build holy families for our time? Prayerful gratitude is an essential, timeless value of holy families, says the Letter to the Colossians from which we hear this morning: “With gratitude in your hearts sing Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.” Jesus, Mary and Joseph; Hannah and Samuel prayed with gratitude to God. And God calls us, too, as families and as a Church, to pray with gratitude.

The Letter to the Colossians gives us a long list of other essential values of holy families: “Compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” And when, in our weakness and sin, we fail to live up to our God-given holiness, Colossians invites us to forgive. Forgiveness (and our honest discernment of our need to be forgiven) is a must for holy families: “As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

Forgiveness is the foundation of love. Forgiveness is the foundation of the “perfect harmony… peace” and “wisdom” to which God calls us through the Letter to the Colossians. Forgiveness is the foundation of unity in our families; our Church; our world. Forgiveness is so often the way to gratitude; to hearing the “Word of God” that dwells “in [us] richly.”

Forgiveness, harmony, peace, wisdom, and gratitude; compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience: These are challenging but not unrealistic values that God asks us to treasure in our hearts and to live out among ourselves and within our families. We have the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph; Hannah and Samuel, and countless saints and holy families through the ages as models of these values on whom to draw. They, and we, the Church, make these gifts of holy families; of the Holy Family, real and active in our world here now, today, forever.

Homily for Friday, 24 October 2014– Ferial

Friday of the 29th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ephesians 4:1-6; Psalm 24:1-2, 3-4ab, 5-6; Luke 12:54-59

How does Jesus call us “to interpret the present time”? In the Gospel reading we hear today, Jesus criticizes “the crowds” of his time, those who follow Jesus from place to place, who hear his message, but do not wish to commit to the radical but ultimately saving demands of his message; his Gospel.

We hear Jesus admonish two particular groups of people: First, those who can predict rain when “a cloud” rises “in the west” and heat when the wind is “from the south” but cannot “interpret the present” signs of the kingdom of God, beginning with Jesus’ presence among them. Second, Jesus speaks against legalistic types who bring petty disputes before higher courts instead of settling them among themselves.

I have no personal slight against lawyers. I know of faithful and honest lawyers here in our parish. But I do have a soft spot in my heart for meteorologists. My father is a retired weather forecaster. Once, during my second stint teaching in Colombia, I was on pilgrimage, riding on the back of a Jeep in the mountains with other Basilian seminarians and people of the coffee and banana farming community we were visiting.  Farmers are interested in the weather, and so I was interested in the discussion they were having on the back of the Jeep. I was even able to predict correctly the storms that would hit or miss us that day. Was I channeling my father’s forecasting skill, or was this sheer luck? I suspect it was the latter.

Jesus’ point in our Gospel reading (perhaps meteorologists like my father and some lawyers may disagree) is that there is something more important than the weather or manipulating the law to resolve disputes in our favor. Most importantly, we are invited “to interpret the present time.” How do we do this?

One Vatican II document that speaks verbatim of discerning “the signs of the times” is the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes. This document laments much of the state of the world in 1965, from hunger, widening disparity between rich and poor, challenges of rapid improvements in technology and social communication (well before Facebook and Twitter!), spiritual indifference especially among youth, to the arms race and increasing destructiveness of war. And yet Gaudium et Spes was criticized by some as too optimistic!

The bishops who wrote Gaudium et Spes were optimistic or, better yet, discerned one point with profound accuracy: Despite the world’s problems, there is still a longing for God. Gaudium et Spes begins by acknowledging “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of [people] of this age” as the same “joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the followers of Christ.”

Is this not the most significant sign of “the present time”? Jesus invites us “to interpret the present time”; to discern “the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of [people] of this age”; to discern God’s presence in our midst and to build the Kingdom of God, a project brought to the present time through the life and Gospel message of Christ.

Homily for Sunday, 27 October 2013

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
World Youth Sunday 

Readings of the day: Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18; Psalm 34:2-3, 17-18, 19, 23; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14

How many of us gathered here are in middle school, high school, or college? How many of you are involved in some form of service activity in your school; in your community; in the Church?

Maybe you are part of a peer support group at school, or you tutor other students, or you are on a student council, or you are involved in social justice initiatives through your school. Maybe you help to feed, clothe, and shelter the poor, or advocate for pro-life causes. Maybe you write for a school yearbook or newspaper, or play a sport or are a member of a band or choir. Maybe you do volunteer work. Maybe you are an altar server. Maybe you support a friend who struggles with their faith, or you are accompanying someone who has recently become Catholic or is thinking about it. Maybe you minister with seniors. You probably serve your school; your community; your Church in many ways I have not mentioned…

Often young people do not think of how many ways they serve their community; their country; their Church unless someone asks, and how much this service means to people you serve and, yes, to the Church.

The Church blesses all its people of all ages who serve God through the Church but also through broader society. Particularly on this World Youth Sunday, our youth will receive a special blessing during this Mass. The Church blesses you; God blesses you, our young people; all people of St. Kateri Parish, and your service to others and to the Church.

In light of this, I do not wish to dampen your joy and enthusiasm in serving others, and yet if we are attentive to today’s readings just proclaimed, God’s and the Church’s blessing for all the wonderful ways you are serving and acting as God has created us to serve and act comes with a caution.

Many of us could probably re-tell Jesus’ parable in today’s Gospel about the Pharisee and the tax collector almost by heart. The Pharisee stands before God in the temple and lists his accomplishments. His holiness is exemplary and to be encouraged: He fasts twice a week and gives more than fairly of his income to worthy causes, he obeys all the religious laws to the letter, and he lives moderately, is honest, and faithful and chaste.

Meanwhile, the tax collector, who would have been regarded as a traitor to his own Jewish people for charging them taxes above the amount to be paid to the occupying Romans in order to make himself rich, cannot even lift his eyes to God in prayer. In his shame, the tax collector pleads, “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

We know that the tax collector, not the Pharisee, ends up right with God. But who among us has ever stopped to ask why the tax collector “went home justified” before God at the end of this parable?

The answer to this question seems easy. The Pharisee is boastful, whereas the tax collector humbly recognizes what all of us are called to acknowledge: That all of us are sinners and that there is no salvation without God.

The Pharisee’s prayer is not, in fact, a prayer. In our Gospel reading we hear that the Pharisee “speaks [his] prayer to himself,” not in gratitude to God. The tax collector actually prays to God for mercy. The Pharisee even says, “Thank God I am not like the rest of humanity… or even like this tax collector.” How arrogant can one be?!

Now let us bring this parable into the context of the present. I speak primarily, but not exclusively, to the young people among us. Youthful exuberance and a willingness to serve one another, to serve the Church, and to serve God are wonderful and blessed. However, have any of us ever listed off, even in prayer, what we have done that should earn favour from other people and even from God?

Imagine this as a prayer: “Lord, I help others in need at school; at work; in my community; in the Church. I give of my time and talents; I give of my income to worthy causes. I defend life from conception to natural death, and I support those in public office who also do so. I live moderately and chastely. I am not aggressive or rude or a bully.”

“Thank God that I am not like the kid who has trouble learning at school or the kid who does not ‘fit in’; that I am gainfully employed or studying, not like that street person; that I am not like the person whose family is in crisis; that I am not like the person who has contemplated, carried out, or participated in an abortion; that I am not like that dishonest politician whose party’s policies I oppose.”

“Thank God I am not like that Pharisee in Jesus’ parable… Or am I?”

The truth is that we are all “like the rest of humanity”; like that Pharisee in today’s Gospel at one time or another, and to be like the Pharisee is usually a good way to be. In Jesus’ time, most Pharisees were well-respected teachers of the Jewish faith. They were not exceptionally rich, nor did they live extravagantly. Most Pharisees did their best to practice the Jewish Law that they preached. Some Pharisees were among the most valued early Christian disciples.

A young, energetic person of Jesus’ time would have wanted to serve as a Pharisee! This is why Jesus’ parable in today’s Gospel works so well. The maligned, traitorous tax collector adds shock value to the story. Who would want to be like him when I could be like the righteous Pharisee? Jesus’ assertion that the repentant tax collector “went home justified” would have been scandalous to many of his hearers. Unfortunately, the shock value of the tax collector is lost on many of us today, even if we know this parable almost by rote. 

But all is not lost for the Pharisee. All is not lost (in fact there is much to be gained) for us who are in many ways like the Pharisee. The parable ends short of saying whether the Pharisee ever repented of his self-righteous “prayer-to-self” and, maybe later, prayed to God in thanksgiving for the gifts God gave him to teach and put into practice before the people he served. 

Especially to our young people gathered here (although I address this to all of us): The parable in our Gospel reading today invites us to be like the repentant tax collector. It also invites us to be like the Pharisee; to finish the Pharisee’s prayer in a way that puts us right with one another and with God.

Now try this prayer: Thank you, God, for the blessing of youth. Thank you for the energy and exuberance that you have given to me, so that I might serve your people at school, in my community, in the Church.

I thank you that I am just like the rest of humanity: blessed; gifted; learning from your wisdom and the wisdom of others; loved by you and by other people; in need of your loving and saving presence, O God.

For the times when I have thought your gifts to be my own; when I have prayed to myself in arrogance instead of to you in thanksgiving; when I have set myself apart from those less visibly gifted; from “the rest of humanity,” “Lord have mercy on me, a sinner!”

The parable of our Gospel reading, placed in today’s context, might then end like this: Having made this prayer to God in thanksgiving and for mercy, the young person (or at least the person young at heart), already blessed beyond measure, went home justified before God.