Homily for Sunday, 17 August 2014

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 56:1, 6-7; Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8; Romans 11:13-15; Matthew 15:21-28

Who among us has ever experienced not belonging; not “fitting in” to a social group or even within the Church? Have any of us ever excluded others from groups to which we belong, for whatever reason?

Our Gospel reading today begins with Jesus and his disciples going into “the region of Tyre and Sidon”‒ pagan, non-Jewish territory. Can we not imagine Jesus and his disciples, as Jews, being excluded or simply ignored by the majority Gentiles near Tyre and Sidon? Can we fault Jesus and his disciples if, amid their not “fitting in” among the people of Tyre and Sidon, they wanted to return to a more comfortable social environment; to focus their ministry on “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”?

More broadly, today’s Gospel reading occurs immediately after Jesus has scolded the religious leaders of his time, the Pharisees and scribes, for excluding those who do not follow their interpretation of the Jewish Law to the letter. This section of Matthew’s Gospel is all about who is included in and who is excluded from the faith community, a great controversy in Jesus’ time and in the time of the earliest Christians. Who is “in” and who is “out”?

In “the region of Tyre and Sidon,” Jesus and his disciples, probably already outside their cultural and religious comfort zone, encounter “a Canaanite woman” who is clearly “out”; clearly does not belong to the social and religious group of Jesus and his disciples, let alone in her own social environment. There are several reasons for which the Canaanite woman in today’s Gospel reading might not have belonged socially and religiously. First, she is a woman. Women had few social rights at the time: They could not own property (in fact they were considered property of their fathers and then their husbands); they had no authority in their faith communities, whether Jewish or Gentile; they had no right to vote or even to work outside their homes… Second, she is a Gentile, surrounded by Jews: Jesus and his disciples. Third, she is quite simply annoying! And so Jesus’ disciples want to be rid of her. “She keeps calling out after us,” they complain.

At first, it seems that Jesus is receptive to his disciples’ discomfort with this annoying Canaanite woman. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” Jesus says. Even more offensively, even for Jesus’ time, he says to the woman, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”

Would we not be aghast if someone, even Jesus perhaps, were to insult another in this way? I wonder: Were Jesus’ disciples offended by his insult of the Canaanite woman? “How dare you call her a dog?” one of them might have asked (and probably would have asked had our Gospel story happened today). But then my question becomes this: Should Jesus’ disciples have been offended by his harsh words to the woman? To what extent, in this “living parable” in our Gospel, does the attitude of the Canaanite woman become a contrast to that of Jesus’ disciples’ as to who belongs; who “fits in” socially and religiously and who does not?

The Canaanite woman, as well as Jesus’ disciples and Jesus himself, are among those who do not belong; do not “fit in.” And yet the ways in which the woman, the disciples, and Jesus respond to their not belonging differ. The disciples try to exclude the Canaanite woman from their “in” group; the only place they feel any sense of belonging and comfort: their communion with Jesus. The woman’s faith is so great as to be annoying. It matters less to her that she is among those who do not “fit in” than that she knows Jesus to be “Lord”; to be the one who can heal her daughter.

And Jesus leaves himself open (perhaps deliberately, for the sake of furthering the conversation?) to her witty retort: “Please, Lord… Even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” Jesus recognizes the woman’s faith, not primarily the fact she is a Canaanite, or a woman, or how annoying she is, or how uncomfortable he might have been in Gentile territory. “Let it be done for you as you wish,” Jesus says to the woman.  “And the woman’s daughter was healed from that hour,” we hear from Matthew’s Gospel.

And so I ask again: Who among us has ever experienced not belonging; not “fitting in”? Have any of us ever excluded others from social groups to which we belong? Have we ever responded to our own discomfort; our own exclusion, as Jesus does in our Gospel reading, by nevertheless including others who may be even more excluded than some of us are? Or have we responded to our own exclusion, if we have experienced it, by excluding others? Perhaps some of us have been bullied at school or at work. Perhaps some of us have been ridiculed for our Catholic faith. Perhaps some of us have experienced divisions within our own families. What is our response to these forms of exclusion? Do we exclude in turn or do we respond with kindness; by including others; by befriending others; by seeking one another out as sisters and brothers in Christ?

Let us take the example of the Church. Who is the Church? We are the Church. And yet are not many estranged from the Church? Many feel or have been made to feel such deep guilt for sin that they are driven away from the Church. How sad, when we are by our nature a community of redeemed sinners! We know people who differ from us in our political views; who differ from us in how we understand Church. We have people in our communities who are poor; who are unemployed; who have lost loved ones; who have experienced familial breakdown; who are migrants or refugees; who differ from us in spirituality; who are perhaps simply annoying to us… How great an effort are we willing to make to seek out and to welcome these people? 

To the extent that we welcome those who are excluded and estranged, we heal divisions in our world and in our Church. We become more perfectly, as we pray in our Eucharistic Prayer at Mass, “one body; one spirit in Christ.” We might say, as Jesus says to the Canaanite woman in our Gospel reading, “Let it be done for you as you wish.” Welcome, those who are excluded; welcome, those who do not “fit in”; welcome, sinners. Welcome into the real presence of Christ. Welcome into the one body of Christ.

Homily for Friday, 15 August 2014‒ Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Mass during the Day

Readings of the day: Revelation 11:19a, 12:1-6a, 10ab; Psalm 45:10, 11, 12, 16; 1 Corinthians 15:20-27; Luke 1:39-56

“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant…” Priests, women and men in religious orders, and many laypeople pray Mary’s beautiful song we hear from the Gospel of Luke every day at Evening Prayer. How are we invited to make Mary’s prayer our own prayer of praise to God?

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, our mother and the Mother of God, body and soul into heaven, which we celebrate today, is not primarily about Mary. The Assumption, first and foremost, points us to truths about who God is and who we are.

God has given us his only Son, Jesus Christ, who has redeemed us from sin and death by his death and resurrection. Indeed, Mary was chosen by God to be the perfect means of bringing the Son of God into the world as a human being. Mary did not remain without sin from Conception to Assumption into heaven under her own strength. No, God made this possible for her. God “looked with favor” on Mary, who responded with her “yes” to God’s plan of salvation for us to make it all possible.

We might ask then: How can we echo Mary’s “yes” to God that brought our Savior into the world? Some ways in which we echo Mary’s “yes” are significant. We echoed Mary’s “yes” when we were baptized and confirmed: Yes, I place Jesus Christ at the center of my life. Yes, Jesus takes first place, before material possessions; our careers; our leisure time, as good as these can be.

Placing Jesus first in our lives leads us (and has led us already) to echo Mary’s “yes” to God in many smaller ways: Yes to service toward others; yes to helping those in need in our communities and in our parish community; yes to holding my tongue and resisting temptation to gossip; yes to repentance; to turning to God and to one another for forgiveness when we fail; when we sin. God will pardon us when we need it. God will make our hearts once again as immaculate as the heart of Mary, and our prayer will be that of Mary: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…”

The promise that God shows through Mary’s Assumption into heaven is not just a promise to Mary; it is a promise to us; to “all generations… to Abraham and his children forever.” We, too, are promised heaven, not just our souls, but body and soul. The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the foretaste of what will be for all of us.

Mary’s Assumption, body and soul, into heaven is about God looking “with favor” on all who are faithful to God, beginning with Mary, our model of faithfulness; model of the Church. God makes the Assumption possible, not only for Mary, but for each and every one of us. And so, by word and the active witness of our faith; our “yeses” to God big and small, we can give thanks to God in the words of our mother Mary; Our Lady of the Assumption: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant… he has remembered his promise of mercy; the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever.”

Homily for Thursday, 14 August 2014– Memorial of St. Maximilian Kolbe

Thursday of the 19th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 12:1-12; Psalm 78:56-57, 58-59, 61-62; Matthew 18:21-19:1
 

Who here has ever owed anyone anything; has been owed something by someone else; has borrowed from someone or had someone borrow from us? How many of us has ever owed or been owed a debt that was simply too large to repay?

We hear Peter ask Jesus, “If [somebody] sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” And we hear Jesus answer Peter, “Not seven times but seventy-seven times,” and then go on to tell the parable of the unmerciful servant.

The truth is that we all owe a debt to God that is too large to repay. Only because God is merciful, whether we have sinned once, seven times, seventy-seven times, or even more often, do we have any chance at salvation. We have been redeemed and have a chance at salvation only because of God’s gratuitous mercy toward us shown us in Christ’s death for us on the cross. By this mercy of our God, our debt; our sin, no matter how bad or how many times, is forgiven. We would never be able to repay our debt to God; we would never be able to be saved otherwise.

And so, in light of God’s gratuitous mercy toward us, can we think of someone who owes us a comparatively smaller debt; someone who has sinned against us, even repeatedly; someone we are being invited to forgive today? Perhaps we could think of and forgive this person while we pray the Our Father as we will in a few moments: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Is it not good to have a clear sense of right and wrong? This is itself a gift from God, but can it not, if we are not careful, lead to a kind of obsession with the wrongs of others and what others ought to do to repay the debt, so to speak, of having wronged us? Jesus invites us to model his own gratuitous and unlimited mercy toward us, “Not seven times but seventy-seven times”; the kind of mercy that accepts the cross as Christ did for our sins; and yet the kind of mercy that ultimately brings us freedom.

Jesus models for us this kind of mercy that paid our debt of sin on the cross even though Jesus was without sin. We have in St. Maximilian Kolbe, whose feast we celebrate today, an example of the same kind of mercy; a mercy that accepted death at Auschwitz in place of a young father who was chosen randomly to be killed because other prisoners had escaped. St. Maximilian Kolbe, who had done no wrong, took upon himself a debt that the man he saved could not repay: “I am a Catholic priest. I will take his place.”

What courage and what witness to Christ; to our God who gave his son to die for us; who pays our debt of sin that we cannot repay, and who invites us to the same kind of mercy toward one another!

Homily for Wednesday, 13 August 2014– Ferial

Wednesday of the 19th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 9:1-7, 10:18-22; Psalm 113:1-2, 3-4, 5-6; Matthew 18:15-20

What does Jesus mean when he says to his disciples in our Gospel reading today: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven”? How does Jesus’ saying apply to the situation of having to correct a sister or brother in Christ who has done wrong? Have any of us ever had to stand up to someone who was doing wrong (for those in our Faith Formation Summer Intensive Program here today, what about someone who was bullying another who did not “fit in,” for example?) What if the wrong action creates discord between individuals or within families, or even public scandal? How does the power of binding and loosing that Jesus gives to us apply then?

There is right and wrong, and so we are called to stand up for what is right and against evil and sin. And yet the power of loosing the bonds of sin is balanced with the power of binding; of holding others and ourselves accountable for sin.

And yet this power to bind and to loose is not meant to lead us to a sense of superiority, as though each of us are not ourselves sinners. Binding and loosing; the power to forgive sin and also the responsibility to hold one another accountable for good and evil actions, is meant to be both the exercise of individuals and of the whole Church community. Above all, when we must correct a member of the Church, we are invited to ask ourselves: Am I correcting the other person to stoke my own pride, or to strengthen the Christian community; the Body of Christ; the Church?

How often do we think of the good of the whole Church community when we correct somebody who has committed a sin? And yet this is what Jesus asks of us: If the sinner does not listen to one other person who corrects her or him, then bring witnesses. If the sinner will not listen to witnesses, then bring the case before “the Church.” Only when the sinner will not listen to the Church community might she or he be excluded from it; treated “as… a Gentile or a tax collector,” in Matthew’s words.

To bind and to loose; to forgive sin and to hold one another accountable for sin is not primarily about the sinner or even about the sin, but about the good of relationships; the good of community; the good of the Church. And even if one must, as a last resort, be excluded from this community for sins especially damaging to the community or persistent, serious sin, this exclusion (what we might call “excommunication”) is always meant to be a step toward healing; toward bringing the lost member back into community; back to the Church.

On binding and loosing, St. Augustine once said that, if we need to rebuke a sister or brother in Christ who has sinned, “our rebuke is to be in love, not eager to wound but anxious to amend.” May we let this be our test as to how we respond to sin, sisters and brothers in Christ. “Whatever [we] bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever [we] loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven,” not for our own gain but for the strengthening of the Church; the Body of Christ.