Homily for Thursday, 12 February 2015– Simone and Frank Salt Funeral Mass

Readings of the day: Isaiah 43:1-4; Psalm 23 (Music setting); 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17; John 21:15-19

This homily, at the funeral Mass for my maternal grandparents, Simone and Frank Salt, was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada. Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon them.

How deeply are we people of hope? I do not believe we would be here were we not people of hope. Beyond our grieving; our sadness; our loss of our grandmother and grandfather, Simone and Frank, mother and father; wife and husband to each other of sixty-five years; great-grandmother and great-grandfather; friends; beloved of us and of God, we are here because we hope.

And what, or who, is the focus of our hope? We hope in eternal life, for Simone and Frank and for ourselves. St. Paul begins the second reading we have heard today, from his first Letter to the Thessalonians, with these words: “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”

Today, by our presence here in God’s house, we honour Simone and Frank, Grandma and Grandpa; Mom and Dad; Great-grandma and great-Grandpa, who were people of great Christian hope. We honour God, who gives us hope; who is the focus of our hope. St. Paul’s words to the Thessalonians about hope remind me especially of a humorous quip that Grandpa repeated many times when I was a teenager. When we (my family) would visit their little house in Sechelt, I often slept next to the front door, which opened into their kitchen. Teenagers, of course, often need more sleep than most people, and so I would most often be the last person in the house to wake up in the morning. Grandpa would announce my belated rising enthusiastically: “Well, he is alive”!

With hope, we have gathered here to pray that this will be the same announcement as Grandma and Grandpa are welcomed into heaven: “Well, they are alive”! And this will be no ordinary life but eternal life; not only a magnificent and loving sixty-five years of marriage, but the eternal wedding feast of heaven. They are alive! This is our confident hope and our prayer, not only for Simone and Frank, but for ourselves; each and every one of us.

But what gives us this hope; this confidence that Grandma and Grandpa, that we all, will inherit God’s gift of eternal life? Does it not border on dangerous pride to be so confident that we are destined to be welcomed into heaven; destined to be with our God forever, beginning on a day none of us really knows?

Our Eucharistic Prayer offers an answer to this question. In a few moments, we will pray these words: “In [Christ] the hope of blessed resurrection has dawned, that those saddened by the certainty of dying might be consoled by the promise of immortality to come. Indeed for your faithful, Lord, life is changed, not ended and, when this earthly dwelling turns to dust, an eternal dwelling is made ready for them in heaven.”

Scripture says and our prayers during this Mass say that the great hope we have in eternal life for Simone and Frank and for each of us is not some misplaced pride. We have this hope not because we somehow deserve heaven, but because, by his love for us, God wants us all to inherit eternal life. God’s love is spoken of so beautifully in our first reading, from the prophet Isaiah. God, Isaiah says, has “created” us; has “formed” us. God, who loves us, makes us, human beings, uniquely capable of loving one another and of loving God in return. God has created us for himself, St. Augustine once said, and so our “hearts are restless until they rest in” God. It is our God who says to us; says to Simone and Frank now, in Isaiah’s words, “You are precious in my sight and honoured, and I love you.” 

But the words of our Scripture and our prayers of this Mass do not deny or belittle the process of grieving our loved ones, Simone and Frank; Grandma and Grandpa; great-Grandma and great-Grandpa; Mom and Dad. The same love, this gift from God that gives us hope in eternal life also enables us to grieve; to feel sadness at the death of our beloved. Simone and Frank: These are God’s beloved as they are our beloved. God grieves as we grieve. But neither God nor we shall lose hope. God offers us consolation. God offers us eternal life.

We know and we hope in eternal life; heaven as the end goal for each of us. And yet does it not seem that, on the way to eternal life, some of us especially experience sadness; suffering; distance from our loved ones and from God more than others? Our Gospel reading from John says that this was to be the experience of St. Peter. Jesus asks Peter three times, to the point where Peter is deeply “hurt” by the question: “Do you love me”? And then Jesus reminds Peter, “When you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone will… take you where you do not wish to go.” John remarks that Jesus said this to Peter “to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.”

Simone and Frank; Grandma and Grandpa; great-Grandma and great-Grandpa; Mom and Dad lived a life together of continuously answering Jesus’ question: “Do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know that [we] love you.” With age and through illnesses, could we not understand if it became more and more difficult for them to answer, “Yes, Lord, you know that [we] love you”; if they had an increasingly difficult time accepting being led where they “did not wish to go”; even if we understand death to be a necessary transition to eternal life?

Grandma has been led through her final, silent years of struggle with dementia. And yet, through being led to “where” I am sure she did “not wish to go,” she never lost her beauty; her smile, especially when she seemed to sense her family nearby: Her children; her grandchildren; her great-grandchildren Molly and Liam; Braiden and Jessica.

Grandpa, too, was led to a place where he did “not wish to go”; through separation from his beloved wife, Simone; through not being able to communicate in words with her (although, to the end, he communicated his undying love for her and for God in countless other ways); through his own health troubles.

Simone and Frank; Grandma and Grandpa; great-Grandma and great-Grandpa; Mom and Dad never gave up hope. They glorified God by their lives to the end: “Yes, Lord, you know that [we] love you.”

Can we imagine this now, God saying to them at the gates of heaven; God saying this to each of us one day: “I know that you love me; that you have loved me all along; that you have loved the people I love; that you are people of hope? Know this, ‘You are precious in my sight and honoured, and I love you.’ Welcome into eternal life; into my rest in heaven. You are alive!”

“Follow me.”

Homily for Tuesday, 10 February 2015– Memorial of St. Scholastica

Tuesday of the 5th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Genesis 1:20-2:4a; Psalm 8:4-5, 6-7, 8-9; Mark 7:1-13

If we were to write a book or make a movie about our first reading today, could we not call it something like, “God Saw How Good it Was: Part 2”? Yesterday we heard Part 1, the first four days of creation in Genesis 1, and today we hear the last three days of the Genesis 1 creation account.

“God saw how good it was,” Genesis repeats after each day of creation, the central and timeless truth of Genesis 1. But what does God create on the sixth day? God creates human beings “in his image… male and female.” God gives us great responsibility over the rest of God’s creation: “Be fertile and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it,” that is, act with God’s goodness and loving care for creation, not abusively but in grateful service toward creation. “Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.”

And then, on the sixth day the repetitive words of Genesis change slightly. We hear that, when God had finished creating the universe; all its living beings; us, “God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good.”

This leads me to ask a possibly controversial question of us this morning: Is it not perhaps arrogant of us to assume that we are the only beings in the universe who make God’s creation not only “good” but “very good”; the only beings in the universe capable of some kind of relationship and understanding of an infinitely loving and creative God?

I ask this question mainly because I just finished reading a wonderful book by a Jesuit brother and priest, Guy Consolmagno and Paul Mueller, astronomers at the Vatican Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. Their book, inspired by a question first raised at a General Audience by Pope Francis, is called, Would you Baptize an Extra-Terrestrial?

This assumes there are extra-terrestrials out there who would want to be baptized; that there are extra-terrestrials out there at all. I mean, there is no scientific proof that extra-terrestrial intelligent life exists, let alone with awareness of a loving creator God. There is no Biblical mention of extra-terrestrials either, unless, as my professor of Old Testament in the seminary used to joke, “They’re in the divinely-inspired footnotes”!

But still I ask, “What if”? As Guy Consolmagno, Paul Mueller, and Pope Francis have asked, what if we were to encounter aliens who exit a UFO, have pointy ears, bug eyes, and green skin like the ones in children’s drawings, or who look like ET from the movie; who, like us, have some awareness of relationship with a loving creator-God; who maybe speak in backward sentences like Yoda from Star Wars? Challenge our faith, would ET?

Challenge our faith… perhaps. But I hope we would be able to consider such a being, like any being or thing God has created, as even more evidence of timeless truths that go back to the Book of Genesis; to the beginning of our universe: God’s love is limitless. God’s love is creative. God looks upon all creation, known or yet unknown to us, and indeed it is “very good.”

Homily for Monday, 9 February 2015– Ferial

Monday of the 5th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Genesis 1:1-19; Psalm 104:1-2a, 5-6, 10. 12, 24, 35c; Mark 6:53-56

What was the beginning of our universe, or the beginning of our earth, like? Was there ever a time before suffering; before death; before sin?

Our first reading today from Genesis responds to questions like these, but not in the same way science or philosophy would respond to these kinds of questions.

Let us go back to the beginning; I mean literally to the beginning of Genesis. “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth,” the Book of Genesis starts, “the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind,” God’s own creative Spirit, “swept over the waters.”

The creation stories in Genesis move from image to image to speak of the beauty and goodness of God’s creation. “God saw how good [it] was,” Genesis 1 repeats no fewer than six times, four in today’s first reading. Genesis’ goal is not to confirm scientific theories like the Big Bang or evolution. These theories may be right, or may be shown one day by science to be outdated.

Genesis points us to another, universal, transcendent truth: That what God created (the universe; the earth; animals and plants; the sea and the sky; us) is, intentionally on God’s part, good. And this good that God created can be observed by the humblest of human beings because we are made in God’s image and likeness. English philosopher Sir Francis Bacon once spoke of our ability to observe God’s goodness both in “the Book of God’s Word,” the Bible, and in “the Book of God’s works” (creation). We are capable of knowing and sensing God’s goodness through God’s creation and giving thanks for it. It does not take a scientist to give thanks to God although, as a microbiology lab technician before I became a Basilian, I often saw God’s awesome goodness in the microscopic creatures I studied.

“God saw how good it was.” We can see this in relationships with one another: Within our households, with friends, within our parish; across oceans and borders between countries and languages. We can see this when we selflessly help other people in need. We can see God’s goodness when we look up at the stars on a clear night. What marvelous expanse; what enormous goodness! We can see this in our beautiful town of Irondequoit and State of New York; the nature and activities that I occasionally get a chance to explore. We can see God’s goodness in the falling snow… Wait: The six inches of snow forecast yet to fall here today and tomorrow may be evidence of the effects of Original Sin (I kid. We will hear more about Original Sin and its effects in the daily readings later this week, though). Please be safe.

“God saw how good it was.” This is the truth of which Genesis 1 speaks to us: A truth that is universal; transcendent; timeless. “God saw how good it was,” and now and forever we can sense how good it is and give thanks to our God for his Word both of Scripture and of creation.

Homily for Friday, 6 February 2015– St. Kateri School Mass, Memorial of St. Paul Miki and Companions

Friday of the 4th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 John 2:29b-3:1a; Psalm 119:129-130, 133, 135; Mark 9:33-37. (Readings for Masses with Children).

This homily included props: A signed painting I received as a gift from Basilian novices on my most recent visit to Colombia, a satchel-type bag with aboriginal design from an earlier visit to Colombia, and clip art pictures of a beach and sun, a mosquito, and the devil.

Greetings, children of God, students, teachers, staff, and parents of St. Kateri School! It has been just under a month since I went away to help the Basilians, the order of priests I belong to, in Colombia. Does anybody here know, more or less, where Colombia is? How about a little show and tell?

You see, I have this little bag, made by the descendants of the first people who lived in Colombia. My bag is filled with memories and things I like about Colombia: This painting of two Aboriginal people (the first people to live in Colombia), carrying a bag just like the one I have. These bags are designed by these “first people” of Colombia. This is a neat design, and a beautiful painting, isn’t it?

…This is a gift from the members of our order there, whom I love so much. I have the beach and the sun… Well, I carried up these pictures of the beach and the sun. The real beach and sun were too big to fit into my suitcase.

But, as much as I love Colombia (this was my fourth time there to serve with my order), I love being back here to celebrate Mass with all of us, children of God. How do we know, though, that we are children of God? Our first reading today, from the first letter of John, says so. We hear this from 1 John: “You know that everyone who does right is a child of God.”

Now, do we not all at least try to “do right”? I think so. Teachers and parents, would you not agree with me? And so 1 John says it: We are children of God. It gives me great joy as a priest to be able to go all over the world to celebrate Jesus, God made human, present during our Eucharist, our Mass; to celebrate with children of God from Colombia to right here at St. Kateri School and Parish!

And yet there are a just a few things I don’t like about Colombia, like mosquitoes. Who likes mosquitoes? ...Wait, how did a mosquito get into my bag? Good thing this is just a picture of a mosquito! And there is something even worse than mosquitoes; something I really dislike, whether it’s in Colombia or here. What is it? Well, I really dislike sin. All of us as children of God are called to dislike sin and try, with God’s help, not to sin. What is sin? It’s something that we know is wrong but we do it anyway. Now at least we all try our best as children of God not to sin, right? But there’s a problem… Yeah, him; Satan, the devil! [I pull a picture of the devil out of my bag.]

…Wait: How did you get in here, Satan? How did you get through airport security? How did you get into my soul [cringe]? I didn’t declare a devil when I went through customs. Get out of here, Satan! Jesus is here with these children, their parents, and their teachers and school staff, and we’re celebrating Mass!

Besides better airport security, how can we avoid letting the devil squeak into our lives and make trouble? How can we avoid sin and “do right” instead? Our readings give us a couple of ways. First, we can pray. We pray to God in our Psalm, “Keep your promise and don’t let me stumble, or let sin control my life… Lord, let your face shine upon me.” Isn’t this a beautiful prayer? Do you think we could all make this our prayer, every day? I know I’m going to try to pray something this every day, and then the devil won’t try to sneak into my luggage again!

An even better way to avoid sin and the devil is found in our Gospel reading today. The Gospel of Mark says that, while the disciples were “arguing about which one of them was the greatest,” Jesus welcomed “a child to stand near him.” Shouldn’t we all try to welcome one another as Jesus welcomes this child: To help each other with homework; to play nicely on the playground and at home; not to bully; to respect our teachers and parents? This is how we, like Jesus, welcome one another as children of God. And so I say again: Greetings, St. Kateri students; parents; teachers; staff! Welcome, people of prayer; people who, with God’s help, “do right.” Welcome and blessings, children of God!