Homily for Monday, 20 April 2015– Monday of the Third Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 6:8-15; Psalm 119:23-24, 26-27, 29-30; John 6:22-29

What does it mean to be a witness?

Witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the most consistent themes in Acts that we continue to hear during this Easter season. Who are the witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ? We are witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And we witness in an even greater way to the resurrection of Jesus Christ by uniting ourselves to the spirit and experience of the first witnesses to Christ’s resurrection.

Today we encounter one of these first witnesses, Stephen. We hear of St. Stephen, the New Testament’s first martyr; the first to witness to Christ by his life and by his death. And how does Stephen witness to Christ? The Acts of the Apostles says that he was “filled with grace and power… working great wonders and signs among the people.” Stephen spoke with a divine wisdom, the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, which those persecuting him “could not withstand.”

But how do we witness to the risen Christ today? For us, to give our lives as martyrs for our faith is improbable. But we are all still called to be witnesses. How? In our reading today from John’s Gospel, Jesus gives us some idea of how we are to be witnesses to him. Jesus says to the people he has just fed by the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fish: “You are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.”

In this Eucharistic celebration we, too, eat and drink of bread and wine, which becomes in our presence the Body and Blood of Christ, and we become “filled.” Our becoming “filled” with the presence of Christ himself, more than having seen any sign, makes us witnesses; gives us the responsibility to witness to the risen Christ by the way we live.

We witness to Christ, upon whom God “has set his seal.” But we also have received the “seal” of God. We, too, have been sealed with God’s Holy Spirit in baptism and confirmation. This seal with God’s Spirit whom we have received makes us witnesses; indeed makes us “little Christs” in our world.

How do we fulfill this mission of being “little Christs”; being witnesses to Christ in our world? We do not need to (and probably will not) become martyrs like St. Stephen. We are not expected to work miracles. All Jesus asks of us is this: “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life.” And “believe in the one [God] sent.”

“The food that endures for eternal life” is our faith community. It is our community when we reach out to one another with works of kindness, justice, and forgiveness. It is our community gathered here for Eucharist; to pray together. “The food that endures for eternal life” is our creativity in helping those most in need; in being present to the sick; the dying; those who have lost loved ones. In these and so many other ways, we show to our world that we “believe in the one [God] sent,” Jesus Christ. We act as Christ acted, and we are true witnesses to his death and resurrection.

Homily for Sunday, 19 April 2015– Third Sunday of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 3:13-15, 17-19; Psalm 4:2, 4, 7-8, 9; 1 John 2:1-5a; Luke 24:35-48

This homily was given at Anglin House, the residence for elderly and infirm Basilians in Toronto, ON, Canada.

“You are witnesses of these things,” we hear today from Luke’s Gospel. Later, Peter echoes these words to the people he addresses in Acts, taking the identity of witness upon himself and the other disciples of Jesus: “To this we are witnesses.” To what are we witnesses? What is the central message that we have been invited to proclaim “to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem”; beginning from when the risen Christ stood among his first disciples in the upper room at Emmaus?

“Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day,” Jesus reminds his disciples, “and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name.” Repentance and forgiveness of sins: To this we are witnesses. Repentance and forgiveness of sins: This is at the core of the message of the risen Christ; the message that our Lord invites us to continue to proclaim and, more importantly, to live out day to day.

How are we to be witnesses to repentance and forgiveness of sins? We cannot go back to stand among the first witnesses to the risen Christ in the upper room, who first heard Jesus’ greeting, “Peace be with you.” We cannot stand with those first disciples who “in their joy” at seeing the risen Christ were “disbelieving and still wondering.” We cannot witness directly to Peter’s address to “the people” of Israel. These events are finished; in the past.

I like to imagine Peter’s speech in our first reading, from Acts, as the opening arguments at a courtroom trial. Only these opening arguments are not from the prosecution or the defense, but from the defendant. In Acts, Peter lays out the charge against the people: Rejection; denial of “the Holy and Righteous One”; asking “to have a murderer given to” them in the place of Jesus, the Christ; killing Jesus, “the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead.” “To this we are witnesses,” Peter says. But Peter speaks not as one who has any right to accuse the people of anything but as the guilty party. Peter stands for us. Peter and we are all guilty of this crime of having denied Christ; having handed Christ over to death for our sins.

And then something remarkable happens at this trial: We are clearly guilty beyond reasonable doubt, but we are not condemned. Instead, we are pardoned. We are forgiven. This was God’s will for us all along, “that his Messiah should suffer.” By Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection, we are forgiven and, even more remarkably, given the chance to be witnesses to our own forgiveness by our own lives. We, the defendants at this trial, represented by Peter, become this trial’s star witnesses. So how do we go about being witnesses?

We cannot go back in time to re-live these events of our Scriptures: Peter’s address to the people of Israel in Acts; Jesus’ appearance in the upper room to his disciples in Emmaus. Yet in his reflection for today’s readings in America Magazine, John Martens points out that we witness in two ways to the resurrected Christ and what Christ’s resurrection means for us as Christians. First, we witness to “the authenticity and trustworthiness of the” first “witnesses”; to Jesus’ first disciples and Apostles who first encountered our risen Lord physically present among them. We trust the truth revealed to us in Scripture and by the tradition of the Church, handed on to us from the first Apostles; from these first direct witnesses to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Second, even more importantly, we bear witness to the risen Christ by “the authenticity and trustworthiness of our lives.” How can we live our lives in a way that is most authentic and trustworthy? I ask this: How many of us have ever been forgiven of some wrongdoing? How many of us have been forgiven, especially when we did not expect to be forgiven by the person we had wronged, at least not as immediately or as generously as this person forgave us? I can think of a few instances in my own life in which I have been forgiven. I have even gone, filled with guilt on a few occasions, to people I have wronged, only to hear, “I forgive you; do not worry. No longer dwell on what you did wrong. Let it go.” How freeing! Has anyone ever approached us, having wronged us, thinking she or he would surely be scolded or condemned (maybe when we have heard confessions, those of us who are priests), and we have instead responded with great tenderness and forgiveness? This generous forgiveness is an image of God’s forgiveness for us, shown most fully by Christ’s death and resurrection for us. “To this we are witnesses.”

And being witnesses means extending the same forgiveness to others that we have received. Who is in most need of our forgiveness? I ask all of us, the next time we have a chance to pray silently for a few minutes, to think of one person who is most in need of our forgiveness. Maybe this person is a member of our family; a friend; an acquaintance; maybe even a member of our religious community; a Basilian confrère… This is the person to whom God is inviting you; inviting me today to reach out in forgiveness; to witness to the forgiveness we have all been granted because Christ died and is risen for us! This is how God invites all of us to ever greater “authenticity and trustworthiness” of our lives as Christians.

This is how God invites all of us today to witness to the “repentance and forgiveness of sins” that is central to Peter’s message to the people of Israel after Jesus had risen from the dead. This is how God invites all of us today to witness to the “repentance and forgiveness of sins” that is the central message of Jesus’ appearance to his disciples in the upper room at Emmaus.

This is the message that we as Church, beginning with the first disciples; “beginning from Jerusalem,” have been entrusted with proclaiming “in [Jesus’] name to all nations.” Proclaim by all means and, even more importantly, live by “repentance and forgiveness of sins.” Reach out with the same forgiveness we have been given by God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Reach out with the same forgiveness we have, at one time or another, received from another person. Reach out with forgiveness. “To this,” to God’s gift of forgiveness that impels us both to forgive and to repent from sin, “we are witnesses.”

Homily for Friday, 17 April 2015– Friday of the Second Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 5:34-42; Psalm 27:1, 4, 13-14; John 6:1-15

Is Jesus’ feeding of the multitudes not a very familiar story to us? It is one of the few events of Jesus’ life that is recounted in all four Gospels. Today we hear John’s version of Jesus feeding of the multitudes from five loaves and two fish.

This event is familiar to us on many levels. Perhaps because Jesus’ actions here are at the core of our liturgy; our Eucharist, are we most familiar with Jesus’ taking, blessing, breaking, and distributing the loaves to the people? We hear every time we are at Mass how Jesus “took bread and, giving thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples.” And so the feeding of the thousands anticipates Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples; his Passion and death; his giving of himself to us under the form of bread and wine. He took; he gave thanks; he broke; and he gave: These actions are openly Eucharistic. On this level, we are familiar with this event of Jesus feeding of the multitudes in our Gospels.

But is there another level at which we are invited to become more familiar with this event; to live this event more deeply in our own lives? On one hand, how often do we consider our talents; our gifts we have been given by God for one another’s good? How often have we, on the other hand, ever complained of a lack of expertise for some tasks, or a lack of resources or time? Can we put ourselves in the place of the Apostles Philip or Andrew in today’s Gospel?

Philip sees the great, hungry crowds and says to Jesus, “Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little.” Andrew asks “But what good are these [loaves and fish] for so many”? I do not think that here Philip or Andrew show a lack of faith. Philip and Andrew likely knew at this point that Jesus was capable of a miracle if he willed it. But the two Apostles respond to the immediate need in front of them: Too many people and not enough food.

Remarkably, Jesus does not scold Philip or Andrew but calms them by asking them to “have the people recline.” Have the people take up a communal meal posture that was familiar to anyone in Israel in Jesus’ time. Jesus multiplies the loaves and fishes, but in so doing he asks us what he asked of Philip or Andrew: What do you bring to help in this situation? What talents do you have; gifts from God that we are invited to use effectively? What is familiar to us in this situation?

Jesus does not ask us to work miracles. But in order to reach the point at which God can work a miracle, we are invited to give back to God what God has given us: Our gifts, our talents. We give to God what God gives us in this Eucharistic celebration. Is this a miracle before our eyes? Indeed, and yet even here we begin with our gift; the “work of human hands”; bread and wine; again, the familiar with which God works miracles.

Homily for Wednesday, 15 April 2015– Wednesday of the Second Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 5:17-26; Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9; John 3:16-21

How many among us have ever taken on a task or become involved in a way of life from which we were confident that something good would result, but we were unsure where it would lead?

This is the situation in which Jesus’ first Apostles find themselves in today’s reading we hear from Acts. This group; this movement has been founded by Jesus Christ; filled with the Holy Spirit; commissioned to preach and to live the way Christ lived. But to this point the way these Apostles live has no name besides the fairly nondescript “the way.” And then, we hear today, they are imprisoned for their efforts. The religious authorities of the day, the Sanhedrin or class of temple priests in Israel, must have been concerned about this group of adherents to Jesus; to a movement these authorities had tried to stifle by having Jesus crucified.

To a point, can we not empathize with the Jewish religious authorities of this time? Have we not all heard of political and even religious movements in our world that lack a focus but nevertheless seem to draw followers and even cause trouble among groups of people; seem often lead to violence in regions of our world? I see the Sanhedrin of the earliest Apostles’ time as concerned with precisely this kind of unrest in Israel.

Of course, we know in hindsight that this Jesus movement would lead to great good; would develop a focus, inspired by the Holy Spirit. But today, in our first reading from Acts, we hear just the beginning of our Christian story. The first Apostles have been imprisoned, but are set free by an “angel of the Lord.”

And what is the instruction to the Apostles by the angel as they are released from prison? “Go and take your place in the temple area, and tell the people everything about this life.” Here the Jesus movement, long before we became known as “Christians,” is given its first name; its first focus: “This life.” I wonder: How reminiscent, for the Apostles, were these words of the angel to Jesus’ words; to how they knew Jesus: “I am the way and the truth and the life”… “I have come so that you might have life and have it abundantly”?

What is “this life” about which the angel speaks? Here was the first focus of the first Apostles, and our focus now: Preach and do what is most life-giving in the name of Jesus Christ. Build a world in which nobody is in need of basic necessities of life; a world of kindness. Build a world ready to forgive our failings freely; to heal “the wounds of sin and division.”

The most life-giving action will depend on the circumstances of our lives. For some of us, this will mean caring especially for those who are poor; sick; unemployed; underemployed; homeless; refugees or migrants… For many of us this might mean making a special effort to be kind or to pray for somebody difficult to us, or enjoying time with our wives; husbands; children; relatives, or simply a smile; a random act of kindness…

“This life”: Here is our focus, that we might all have life in the name of the risen Christ.