Homily for Thursday, 23 October 2014– Ferial

Thursday of the 29th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ephesians 3:14-21; Psalm 33:1-2, 4-5, 11-12, 18-19; Luke 12:49-53

How many of us are troubled by Jesus’ words in our Gospel reading? If Jesus’ words cause us uneasiness, I suspect that our reaction to Jesus is similar to that of Jesus’ first disciples.

Do not most of us like to think of God; of Jesus as a God of peace?  And yet today Jesus warns us: “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” This division affects not only people distant from us but, most sadly, those closest to us; our households; our families. “A father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,” Jesus says.

How many times have I been sought to console people, even in our parish, whose families are divided? I hear occasionally, “My daughter or son has nothing to do with the Church. I am concerned as to whether or not my grandchild will be baptized…” Those of us who experience divided families; some of your loved ones who have turned away from their faith; our faith; family members lost and estranged from the Church: You share in Christ’s Cross in a profound way. You share in the baptism by fire that Jesus wishes in today’s Gospel “were already blazing.” Indeed it blazes already in the hearts of many of our faithful.

The hope in all this is that those of us who share in Christ’s Cross; who suffer family disharmony; who are not at peace are also promised a share in Christ’s resurrection. How is this?

Know that division, especially within families, is not of God. By his words in our Gospel reading, Jesus does not mean that he himself will create division. But divisions have occurred and will continue to occur over how faithfully or not members of our communities; our Church; our families follow Christ and learn from Christ’s Gospel of peace.

How, then, do we know we are following Christ and his Gospel? Our consciences are our best witness to the authenticity of our following Christ. On the one hand, if we are making deliberate attempts to seek peace; to heal relationships; to listen to others before we speak, even if the message is not something we want to hear, we are close to following Christ’s Gospel. By following in this way we may bear crosses, but with Christ we will rise to new life; to a fullness of peace.

On the other hand, if communication is lacking; if there is exclusion; if there is insecurity, envy, or arrogance; if there are words and actions meant to hurt, even in return for having been hurt; if we feel the need to appease our guilt; to justify our actions that divide; to present those actions in a perverse way as love, then we are in need of repentance.

This repentance; this healing of God is ours if we seek it. Jesus warns of division, but promises resurrection to us who share in his Cross, and peace to people; to families who live by Christ’s Gospel of peace.   

Homily for Tuesday, 21 October 2014– Ferial

Tuesday of the 29th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ephesians 2:12-22; Psalm 85:9ab-10, 11-12, 13-14; Luke 12:35-38

“The Lord speaks of peace to his people,” we respond to our Psalm today. Many of us may ask: How is the Lord speaking of peace to his people?

Much of what we see in our world; our communities; possibly even in our families and our homes is anything but peaceful. We see one in four children in Monroe County living in poverty; our city’s poverty rate now second-highest in this country among large cities after Detroit. We see violence in our city’s homes and streets, although there are small but significant victories like a forty-year low in annual homicides in Rochester reported in yesterday’s Democrat and Chronicle. We see homelessness; unemployment; hunger; a migrant and refugee crisis; family breakdown and discord; broken relationships… These problems are in addition to natural disasters; diseases like the Ebola virus.  How, when, and where is the Lord speaking of peace to his people today?

I do not mean to discourage us; quite the opposite. And yet within the last few days, here in our parish and beyond, I have spoken with people who lament a litany of problems in our world and closer to home. Some I have heard are angry. And then some wonder whether it is wrong of them to be angry at obvious instances of suffering and injustice. My response is that anger may be justified if it is based on compassion for those who are wronged; those who suffer. It hurts me to see my people; our people; people of God; disciples of Jesus Christ; people of our parish suffering; hurt; angry at the state of our world.

And yet there is hope. The words we hear in our readings today, in our Psalm, “The Lord speaks of peace to his people,” and in our first reading Ephesians, God “is our peace,” are words of hope. How does God speak “of peace to his people” today? How is God “our peace”?

Let us hear carefully the words of our Psalm: “Kindness and truth shall meet; justice and peace shall kiss. Truth shall spring out of the earth, and justice shall look down from heaven.” Our Psalm speaks of kindness, truth, justice, and peace as though they are people: Meeting, kissing, springing “out of the earth” and looking “down from heaven.” These are action words; verbs of compassionate care for one another and for the world God has created and loves. How does God speak “of peace to his people” today? How is God “our peace”?

God “speaks of peace to his people” through us. God “is our peace”; we are instruments of God’s peace. We do well as instruments of God’s peace when we work for justice; work for reconciliation. Blessed Pope Paul VI, beatified this past Sunday, once said, “If you want peace, work for justice.” Let “kindness and truth” meet in and through us; justice and peace kiss; truth “spring out of the earth” and justice “look down from heaven.” In this way we will speak and act out God’s peace; we will be God’s “peace to his people.”

Homily for Monday, 20 October 2014– Ferial

Monday of the 29th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ephesians 2:1-10; Psalm 100:1b-2, 3, 4ab, 4c-5; Luke 12:13-21

Do we not hear often of the value of poverty? Pope Francis has invited us to be “a Church of the poor… for the poor.” Perhaps we know many people (me included) who profess a vow of poverty when we enter religious life. Our Church does not view it as good that so many in our world; our city; our local communities live in deep material poverty. In fact we advocate an end to destitution; a living wage for workers; just social security and health care coverage… And yet there is value in poverty in another sense.

How is this? And is there not also value in being rich? Our readings say yes; there is value in richness, as long as, in Jesus’ words in our Gospel reading, we are “rich in what matters to God.” But what “matters to God”? In what are we invited to be rich; indeed to accumulate and share our riches?

Our first reading from the Letter to the Ephesians gives us an answer to this question. The Letter to the Ephesians says that “God… is rich in mercy.” Are we not also, then, invited to be “rich in mercy” as God “is rich in mercy”?

St. John Paul II’s second Encyclical, written in 1980, is called Dives in Misericordia; “Rich in Mercy.” The title of this Encyclical letter is taken from our first reading today: “God… is rich in mercy.” Just as Jesus laments greed in our Gospel reading, the storing up of wealth by a few to the detriment of the many in need, St. John Paul II laments in Dives in Misericordia the problems of our world caused by the storing up of wealth that is not of God. The pope criticizes social structures, especially in wealthy nations, that deepen for so many “suffering, injustice, and poverty.” He complains of a lack concern for “the common good” and, in its place, a reduction of human relationship to individualism; failure to recognize the sacredness of human life; the sacredness of marriage; the sacredness of God’s creation; social structures that do not encourage merciful and equitable sharing of wealth.

How, then, do we become “rich in what matters to God”? It is not wrong to be materially wealthy yet, if we have wealth, we are called to share it with those in need. If we have talents to put at the service of community; of the Church, we are invited to share these, not out of a misplaced notion of “What is in it for me” but out of love; because we are a people of God who is “rich in mercy.” Some of us have money to contribute to the poor; to a favorite charity; to our parish that in turn supports initiatives for those in need inside and outside our parish. Some of us know another person in need of forgiveness; someone healing from a broken relationship. At the very least, we have small acts of kindness; our smile to share (as the late Fr. Jack Rosse often reminded us!).

These are all ways, and I am sure we can think of many more, in which we are and can be “rich in mercy”; “rich in what matters to God.”

Homily for Friday, 17 October 2014– Memorial of St. Ignatius of Antioch

Friday of the 28th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ephesians 1:11-14; Psalm 33:1-2, 4-5, 12-13; Luke 12:1-7

What are some things that we fear? When I was a very young boy, I wanted to become a firefighter. There was one problem with this, though: I was afraid of the sound of sirens. So here, a few steps in vocational discernment later, I am a priest and not a firefighter!

I am sure that our fears as we grow; become adults; progress through life become somewhat more complex. Jesus, though, speaks of one basic fear that I wonder if it ever leaves us, no matter how courageous we may be: The fear of death.

Jesus says to his disciples in Luke’s Gospel, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but after that can do no more.” Let us put ourselves in the place of Jesus’ disciples. By this point in Jesus’ public ministry, would they have known clearly that Jesus’ life was going to end in a humiliating death; that of a common criminal on a cross? Would this not have made Jesus’ disciples afraid not only for Jesus’ life but for their own lives?

Perplexingly yet comfortingly, Jesus invites his disciples not to fear death. But he does not entirely dismiss fear, which is natural, human, and sometimes an appropriate reaction to obvious danger. Jesus says this to his disciples after inviting them not to fear either their deaths or his: “Be afraid of the one who after killing has the power to cast into Gehenna.” The significance of Gehenna here is that this was the place outside the city walls of Jerusalem where garbage burned and the poor, the ritually unclean, and the especially wicked were often buried in undignified graves. If there were a hell on earth for anyone living in Israel in Jesus’ time, Gehenna was it. Just the mental image of Gehenna would have struck fear in Jesus’ hearers of today’s Gospel.

Do not fear death, Jesus asks us, but do fear hell. And yet fear hell and the one “who has the power to cast into Gehenna,” into hell, only in the context of God’s love and mercy toward us. Would a loving and merciful God who created us in God’s own image and likeness; next to God in dignity and worth, allow us to be cast into hell easily? I think not.

This does not mean that we test God by acting in ways beneath the worth with which we were created and called as daughters and sons of God. This does not mean that we may not encounter ridicule or, less likely, true persecution and even martyrdom for our faith. As we celebrate today the feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch, martyred in Rome about one hundred years after Jesus’ time, we recognize that courageous disciples continue to be martyred in our time.

And yet this is not to make us fearful. Do not fear death, Jesus says. Fear hell and the one who can cast us into hell but, more importantly than any fear, trust God who saves; who in Christ will be victorious over the power of hell itself.

Homily for Thursday, 16 October 2014– Memorial of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

Thursday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ephesians 1:1-10; Psalm 98:1, 2-3ab, 3cd-4, 5-6; Luke 11:47-54

In what ways have we been blessed by God, sisters and brothers in Christ? Have we not been blessed by God in more ways than we could count?

Today St. Paul gives us from his letter to the Ephesians a beautiful hymn of gratitude for the many ways in which God has blessed us. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens,” St. Paul writes.

St. Paul goes on to name some of these blessings we have received: “Adoption” as daughters and sons of God “through Jesus Christ”; the calling in light of being daughters and sons of God in Christ “to be holy and without blemish before” God. For the times when we have not been so “holy and without blemish,” we have been blessed with “redemption by [Christ’s] blood; the forgiveness of transgressions.” We have been blessed with “the riches of [God’s] grace”; by God’s plan to save us in “the fullness of time.” Like us, St. Paul cannot list all the blessings we have received as a people of God; as sisters and brothers in Christ. He stops at speaking of God’s plan; God’s blessing of us as the sum of “all things in Christ.” Have we not been so blessed by God that the amount and ways in which we have been and will continue to be blessed becomes a mystery?

St. Margaret Mary, patron saint of our parish whose feast we celebrate today, speaks of God’s many blessings in a similar way to that of St. Paul. St. Margaret Mary developed and promoted the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus that is shared by many saints and by many of us here. In a letter she speaks of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as the fount or “abyss of all blessings” into which “the poor” are invited to “submerge all their needs.” The Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ, St. Margaret Mary says, “is an abyss of joy in which all of us can immerse our sorrows. It is an abyss of lowliness to counteract our foolishness, an abyss of mercy for the wretched, an abyss of love to meet our every need.” In the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ we are blessed with “peace of heart” ourselves, St. Margaret Mary writes in the same letter. This “peace of heart” is the same “grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” with which St. Paul greets the Ephesians.

On this feast day of St. Margaret Mary, we pray for our parish in a special way through one of its patron saints. United especially through the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, we pray in gratitude to God who gives us his grace; who has given us his beloved Son by whose cross and resurrection we are saved; who has given and continues to give us “every spiritual blessing in the heavens.”