Homily for Tuesday, 1 September 2015– Ferial

Tuesday of the 22nd week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6, 9-11;  Psalm 27:1, 4, 13-14; Luke 4:31-37

Do any of us ever find readings like those we hear today a bit frightening? Paul speaks in 1 Thessalonians of inescapable “sudden disaster” that will befall all who are not on their guard. Paul compares the end of time, “the day of the Lord,” to the “labor pains” of “a pregnant woman” in childbirth. And in Luke’s Gospel Jesus contends with “a man” possessed by “the spirit of an unclean demon.”

But our readings today from 1 Thessalonians and Luke do not need to frighten us. How, then, are we invited to respond to God’s Word today?

I imagine St. Paul trying to find a balance between two groups of people: Those who are frightened about what will happen at the end of time, or maybe about being persecuted for their faith, and those who are lulled into indifference by their prosperity, “peace, and security.” We know both types of people today. On the one hand we know the people who continually sound the alarm; those stereotyped by the image of the person on the street corner preaching or holding a sign that says, “The end is near”! Short of this extreme, we know people who are constantly complaining; who live in and on fear; who yearn for “the good old days”; who are convinced of our world’s path to moral destruction. On the other hand, we know of people whose prosperity has lulled them into a false sense of “peace and security.” These people become indifferent to social needs; to our responsibility to meet these needs and to uphold the dignity of human life and creation.

St. Paul is not trying to frighten us, but is inviting us to find a balance; to “stay alert,” neither alarmist nor indifferent but faithfully waiting for our Lord’s return in glory. If we are truly “alert” in our faith, we will not be surprised or frightened by Jesus’ return at the end of time. St. Paul speaks to us with great confidence in our faith: “You are children of the light and children of the day.” And so what is the faithful balance St. Paul asks us to seek? St. Paul says, “Encourage one another and build one another up.” Our common goal; God’s goal for every one of us; for our Church, is our salvation “through our Lord Jesus Christ.” God, through St. Paul, asks us to help one another toward this goal.

“Encourage one another and build one another up.” We hear a similar message to this today from Luke’s Gospel. The people  who hear Jesus teach and witness his healing of the man with a demon are “astonished at his teaching, because he [speaks] with authority.” The people spread “news of” Jesus’ healing “everywhere in the surrounding region.” The next step, for the people of Jesus’ time and for us who spread the Good News of Jesus Christ “everywhere,” is to realize that we are given the same “authority” with which Jesus spoke and acted. So many of us are realizing this already by accompanying those in need; by being a joyful presence to one another; by praying and by worshipping here. We are neither fearful nor indifferent. We are “children of the light and “of the day” building “one another up” toward salvation in Christ together.

Homily for Sunday, 30 August 2015

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8; Psalm 15:2-3, 3-4, 4-5; James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

If we were to capture our readings today in pithy phrases or slogans, what would these phrases or slogans be?

Imagine Moses, long before it was popular in small towns to appoint somebody with a powerful voice as “town crier,” standing before the people and crying out loudly, “Hear ye! Year ye!” Moses does essentially this in the first reading we hear today, from Deuteronomy. “Now, Israel, hear the statutes and decrees, which I am teaching you to observe,” Moses says to the people he is leading through the desert into Israel. Moses’ message is more important than that of any town crier. Moses, unlike a town crier, is not simply reciting the daily news aloud in the town square for all to hear. Moses is asking the people to hear the Word of God; the Law of God. In the Hebrew culture of the time, before the Word of God was widely read or seen, it was primarily a message to be heard.

“Hear ye! Hear, O Israel!” For the people of Israel, whether or not they hear Moses’ message attentively is a matter of life and death. It is a matter of whether or not they will be able to inherit the land God has promised them and to prosper in it. “Hear the statutes and decrees, which I am teaching you to observe,” Moses says, “that you may live.”

What are some life-and-death messages we might hear today? I suppose that if a disaster were to strike where I am and I had a chance to avoid it and maybe to help others to safety in the process, I would want to hear: How long until disaster strikes? Where can we go for safety? If we or one of our loved ones were to become severely ill, and some kind of medical treatment were able to increase quality if not time of life, would we not want to hear this message from a doctor?

Yet most messages we hear, see, or read today are not, at least immediately, life-and-death. I do not mean by this that to hear, see, and read the daily news is not important or to be encouraged. I and many if not most of us read the newspaper; watch newscasts on television; connect to the internet on a daily basis. Our news is interesting; informative when it is not infuriating or distressing, like seemingly continual news about recent violence in our city; our nation; our world. But our daily news is usually not life-and-death. Yet how many of us would think of the Word of God as a life-and-death message?

I do not wish to discourage us if we have difficulty hearing God’s Word as life-and-death. Most if not all of us are here because we receive what we would not receive if we were not here. We receive nourishment of body and spirit from Christ really, truly present in our Eucharist. We are here in the presence of God and of one another as beloved friends; ourselves “one Body; one Spirit in Christ.” We receive the gift of the Word of God. And then we are sent forth from this celebration strengthened to act with truth, justice, and kindness in our world and in our everyday relationships.

But for Moses, for the people he leads through the desert to their promised land, and ideally for us, God’s Word; the Law, God’s Commandments means more than nourishment. To hear the Word of God well means more than impressing other people or nations, although Moses promises that other nations will say of Israel if they hear God’s Word well: “This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people.” To hear God’s Word well means more than the recognition by people of other faiths of how close our God is to us: At the same time our best friend and our Savior. God’s Law, or any law, means more than the greatness of the rule of law in and of itself. For Moses; for the people Moses leads through the desert; for us, the Word of God; the Law of God that we hear in Scripture is life-and-death. “That you may live”: This, our salvation, is Moses’ goal; God’s goal for us in inviting us to “hear”!

“Hear ye”! If this is Moses’ message in Deuteronomy captured in a pithy saying or slogan, St. James’ message in our second reading might be summed up as, “Just do it.” This predates Nike and its sales of high-quality shoes with a simple yet fashionable “swoosh” logo by almost two thousand years. Go James!

“Just do it,” we hear from the Letter of James today. To hear the Word of God is not enough if we do not act upon it. To hear but not to act on the Word of God, James says, is to delude ourselves. In this same part of his letter (this verse is left out of today’s reading), James compares the hearer of God’s word who is not also a doer to one who “looks at his” or her “own face in a mirror” and “then promptly… forgets what he” or she “looked like.” This image is absurd, and so we become absurd if we hear the Word of God but do not act on it. For us to hear and then not to act on God’s Word is impossible.

So how does James ask us to act on the Word of God we hear; “the Word of truth” that “is able to save [our] souls”? First, James says, care for society’s most vulnerable: “orphans and widows in their affliction.” We could add in our time refugees and migrants, those who are poor, especially the working poor; the underemployed and unemployed; those who are sick; people whose lives are marred by violence; the homeless… James does not say, “Check their papers to see if they are legally entitled to our care; to be in our country.” James invites us to hear and to act on the Word of God. “Just do it”! And do not act in ways contrary to the Word of God. “Keep oneself unstained by the world”; unstained by gossip; by passive-aggression; by violent actions or speech; by ideological polarization; by indifference to those in need; by any form of indignity toward human life and creation.

“Just do it”! Better yet, James says, if we hear the Word of God attentively we will naturally act on it. Jesus’ message in Mark’s Gospel is similar to that of James: Hear and then act on the Word of God. If James cautions those who hear and then do not act on God’s Word, Jesus addresses perhaps a much more common problem, both in his time, with the Pharisees, and in our time: Those who act without properly hearing the Word of God that is the foundation of all we do as people of faith. The Pharisees’ ritual purification of vessels; of beds; of their own bodies was not wrong. But it had become an obsession. Many had not paused to ask a brief but important question: “Why”? Why do we wash our “cups and jugs and kettles and beds”; our hands? Are we paying enough attention to what is within us that needs purification? Are we attentive enough to purify ourselves of the “evils” Jesus lists in our Gospel reading; of our prejudices and unjust judgments of one another; of divisions among races, among Christian people, among nations, and among and within families?

If Moses says to us today, “Hear ye,” and James says to us, “Just do it” (better yet, if you hear rightly you will also naturally do, but this slogan loses its pithiness), might Jesus be saying: “Hear and do, but for the right reason”?

Jesus invites us to discern; not be afraid to ask, “Why? What are  our reasons; our intentions for acting in a particular way; for our acts of personal devotion; for gathering here to worship; for any of our good works”? As individuals and as Church, we can only be strengthened by this careful discernment of our intentions. And so indeed, “Hear ye”! And when we hear the Word of God as Christians, “Just do it”: Act on the Word of God we hear, but for the right reasons and with the right intentions.

Homily for Thursday, 27 August 2015– Memorial of St. Monica

Thursday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 3:7-13; Psalm 90:3-5a, 12-13, 14, 17;  Matthew 24:42-51

How many of us love somebody so much that, when we are apart from this person, we long deeply to be with her or him again? The people we love could be our wife or husband, parents, children, or other family member, or close friends.

This, I imagine, is the longing St. Paul feels for the Church at Thessalonica. The Thessalonians had been among the first Christian communities established by St. Paul. And Paul, who had been away from Thessalonica for some time, says this today in our first reading: “Night and day we pray beyond measure to see you in person.”

And for what else does St. Paul “pray beyond measure” for his Thessalonian friends, some of the earliest Christians whom he longs to see again “in person”? St. Paul prays for those who are already strong in their faith; strong in their leadership of the Thessalonian community in their faith. “We have been reassured about you, brothers and sisters… through your faith.” St. Paul prays for those whose faith is weak, “to remedy the deficiencies of [their] faith” with prayer and with patience. We can imagine St. Paul praying for people not directly mentioned in our reading today from his first letter to the Thessalonians: Those who are prosperous, that they may use their wealth to support the community; those who are poor; those who are sick or grieving or in need in any way.

St. Paul prays out of a deep love for the Thessalonian Church. And he invites the Thessalonians to the same love for one another: “Abound in love for one another and for all, just as we have for you.” Jesus’ prayer in Matthew’s Gospel is borne out of the same love for us; the same longing for us. Jesus’ love is the source of his prayer for us “beyond measure”: That we may love Jesus and one another as he loves us and, because we love, that we may “stay awake” waiting for the return of Jesus, our beloved, at the end of time.

To “stay awake” is a sign of love. Those of us who are parents, especially of teenagers or young adults: How many of you have stayed awake, unable to sleep until your child returns home after a late night out, even if your child was probably not into any trouble? Your love for your children is what Jesus speaks of when he says, “Stay awake.” This is the same love with which we are able to “stay awake” for Jesus’ return and to live our lives accordingly until one day we are with God and one another in heaven.

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, whose feast day is tomorrow. But St. Augustine would not have become the great saint he is without his mother’s unceasing prayers and love for him. The love between Sts. Monica and Augustine is one of our Church’s greatest-ever love stories. St. Monica stayed “awake” in prayer “without measure” for the conversion of both her son Augustine and husband Patricius.

Monica models love for us: The love of St. Paul for the Thessalonians; the love of Jesus for us; the love that stays “awake,” praying “beyond measure” because we long for our beloved.

Homily for Monday, 24 August 2015‒ Feast of St. Bartholomew

Monday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Revelation 21:9b-14; Psalm 145:10-11, 12-13, 17-18; John 1:45-51

What is in a name? 

Today on this feast of St. Bartholomew, one of Jesus’ first Twelve Apostles, our readings center on the importance of names. The Book of Revelation gives us an image of the heavenly Jerusalem. This city, appearing “out of heaven,” has twelve gates, three facing each of the four directions and each inscribed with a name of one of the Twelve Apostles.

The names of Jesus’ Twelve Apostles, a reflection of “the names of the twelve tribes of Israel” in the Old Testament, are important in Revelation. But one difficulty is that neither the Book of Revelation (in which the Apostles are not actually named together) nor the four Gospels agree on the names of Jesus’ Apostles, only that there were twelve. John’s Gospel today highlights one of the most significant differences among the Gospels in names of the Apostles.

Today, on St. Bartholomew’s feast day, Bartholomew is not even mentioned in our Gospel. Instead we hear of Nathanael, who is found by Philip under a fig tree and introduced to Jesus, and then joins the other Apostles. But who is Nathanael (or Bartholomew?) but the kind of follower and friend Jesus seeks: “a true child of Israel”; honestly seeking God and what is right, without “duplicity”? Beyond this, we cannot know much about who Nathanael (or Bartholomew) was or were.

Yet this and other differences in the Apostles’ names among the Gospels is not necessarily a problem for us. It is possible, even probable, that Jesus’ Apostles had multiple names. We know that Peter, “the rock,” was also known as Simon, “God has heard,” and as Kephas, “the head.” After Jesus’ Ascension into heaven, his Apostles are traditionally understood to have spread our faith to faraway lands and cultures. St. Bartholomew is said to have gone as far as India. Could Jesus’ Apostles have acquired names and nicknames in these places? This, too, is possible. Having served in several countries as a Basilian, I have acquired nicknames and variations on my own given names. Colombian Basilians will often call me by my middle name, Roger, because Warren can be difficult for them to pronounce. Most moving is when they add “Hermano” (“Brother”) to Roger. Since my ordination, my Colombian confrères have delighted in stringing together excessively pious nicknames on top of “Hermano Roger” when calling me. This would irritate me if it were not clearly a lighthearted mark of affection from my Basilian brothers in Colombia.

And so it is possible for Jesus’ Apostles to have had many names. Bartholomew, the “son of a ploughman,” could also have been Nathanael, meaning “God has given.” But does this matter to us?

Our names matter. God called us to birth; to his service in this world by name. God will call each of us home to heaven by name. In baptism, before the priest or deacon asks what the parents and godparents seek from the Church for their child (presumably baptism), we ask, “What name will you give your child”?

We have one name that matters: That of Christian. From our baptism we Christians, like Nathanael (or Bartholomew), have been called to serve God as “true” children “of Israel”; children, friends and Apostles of Christ, with “no duplicity in” us.

Homily for Thursday, 13 August 2015– Ferial

Thursday of the 19th week in Ordinary Time

Optional Memorial of Sts. Hippolytus and Pontian

Readings of the day: Joshua 3:7-10a, 11, 13-17;  Psalm 114:1-2, 3-4, 5-6; Matthew 18:21-19:1

“How often must I forgive”? Jesus answers this memorable question from St. Peter: “Not seven times but seventy-seven times.” In other words, show unlimited forgiveness toward other people when they sin. But is this not easier said than done? What becomes of moral accountability when we forgive another person even when this person commits the same sin against us multiple times?

If we struggle with these questions, I think we can take comfort that even popes have had the same struggles. We begin with St. Peter, by tradition the first Bishop of Rome, who asks the question of Jesus that perhaps many of us have thought at some point: “Lord, if my [sister or] brother sins against me, how often must I forgive [this person]? As many  as seven times”?

Today we also celebrate the feast of two obscure saints, Hippolytus of Rome and Pontian, who were martyred in Rome in the early 200s. A fascinating detail about Hippolytus and Pontian is that for many years they were angry with each other; could not forgive each other until they were imprisoned and killed together by the Roman Emperor Maximus. Pontian had been pope. He and the two popes before him, Callixtus and Urban I, allowed people who had committed adultery and other serious sins back into the Church without, in Hippolytus’ eyes, a long and rigorous enough time of penance. Hippolytus was so outspoken against Popes Callixtus, Urban, and Pontius that he accepted election as an antipope (a rival claimant to the papacy of Rome). This got Hippolytus excommunicated. Thankfully, Hippolytus reconciled with the Church, probably under Pope Pontius while both were in prison, before he was martyred.

Hippolytus and Pontius were canonized together and share today as a feast day. Might we call this a great feast day of forgiveness, “not seven times but seventy-seven times”? Today is the feast day of a pope and the first antipope, who both were named saints and are examples to us of (eventual) forgiveness.

But how late is too late to forgive? How long before we become like the servant in our Gospel reading who is forgiven his debt but then refuses to forgive his fellow servant’s debt? Jesus invites us to be free and not to delay in forgiving one another. If we wait to forgive, we may not have the fortune of Hippolytus!

Who are the people in our lives whom we have most difficulty forgiving? Occasionally I hear people who are angry and have difficulty forgiving somebody in leadership: A president, a bishop, even a pope! But most often are not the people we have most difficulty forgiving those dearest to us: Close friends and family members?

I have seen over the last few days a saying on Facebook I find rings true. It says that to hold a grudge is to let somebody live rent-free in your head. The Church does not need to say this; psychologists will say this first. Jesus invites us to forgive. If we wait to become martyrs like Hippolytus before we forgive, it will become too late. And so make the demons of lack of forgiveness and unchecked anger in our heads and hearts pay the rent! This is all about accountability for our own mental and spiritual health.

Homily for Tuesday, 11 August 2015– Memorial of St. Claire

Tuesday of the 19th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Deuteronomy 31:1-8; Responsorial Canticle: Deuteronomy 32:3-4ab, 7, 8, 9, 12;  Matthew 18:1-5, 10, 12-14

To all grandparents here especially, and to all who have seen grandparents in action: Have you ever noticed how grandparents delight in their grandchildren? Is there not something special about a grandparent-grandchild relationship? Perhaps, unlike parents with their own children, a grandparent can spoil their grandchildren and then return them to their parents (all wound up, of course) at the end of their stay with Grandma and Grandpa.

In our first reading today, Moses has developed a grandfatherly relationship with the people he is leading home to Israel from Egypt. At “one hundred and twenty years old,” Moses is finally ready to retire; to hand over responsibility to Joshua for leading the people of Israel into the land God has promised them. Clearly Moses delights in the people of Israel. He shows concern for them and for young Joshua. The grandfatherly Moses’ parting advice to the people of Israel and to Joshua is to trust always in God: “He will never fail or forsake you.”

We know that Jesus did not have his own children or grandchildren. And yet he, even more than Moses, shows great delight in and concern for children; for the “little ones.” We hear in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus’ response to his disciples’ question, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven”? Jesus places a child in their midst and says: “Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.”

Jesus’ concern for and delight in the “little ones” reaches to those who have gone astray like lost sheep. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who will leave “ninety-nine” sheep in the hills to search for and to bring home the one lost sheep. Jesus is like the father or grandfather who loves his children; his grandchildren without condition; who delights in them.

In this respect my grandfather (Mom’s dad), Frank Salt, who would have turned eighty-nine years old today, was a lot like Jesus or Moses. My Grandpa perhaps did not quite have the patience of Jesus or of Moses, but like them he delighted and had great loving concern for his children; his grandchildren; his great-grandchildren.

During one of my last visits to my grandparents’ home before they moved to be closer to my parents, Grandpa was, like Moses in our first reading, more noticeably unable “to move about freely.” But one sure way to increase his energy was to speak with him about his grandchildren or his great-grandchildren.

Not long before this particular visit, my sister Deanna and brother-in-law Tyler had visited with my niece Molly, who was then just old enough to walk and to get into everything! Grandpa and Grandma put out old magazines so that Molly wouldn’t get into the new ones, and then watched with great sport (and laughed about it weeks later when I visited) as she shredded all their old magazines.

What delight Grandpa had in his new great-granddaughter! It was like the delight Jesus and Moses had in the children; in those they led; the delight of a grandfather. Grandparents: I only ask that you take more time than Moses to enjoy your grandchildren. Do not wait until age one hundred and twenty to retire!

Homily for Sunday, 9 August 2015

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 19:4-8; Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9; Ephesians 4:30-5:2; John 6:41-51

This homily was given at the House of Mercy, a homeless shelter in Rochester, NY.

How often do we think of our senses as ways of describing our relationship with God? Could touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste be means for us to strengthen our relationship with God?

Our readings today all speak of our experience of God in terms of our senses. Our Psalm praises God beautifully, inviting us to “taste and see the goodness of the LORD.” When Elijah, in our first reading today from 1 Kings, is in such deep despair that he asks God to take his life, an angel twice touches Elijah to wake him and then orders him to eat. And so God makes God’s presence known to Elijah through Elijah’s senses of touch and taste. In John’s Gospel Jesus speaks of himself as “the bread… from heaven.” Jesus is no ordinary food. Even the manna with which God fed the people of Israel in the desert while they were fleeing slavery in Egypt does not compare to the food Jesus offers. Manna had offered temporary relief from hunger. Jesus offers himself as the food necessary for our salvation; food that is eternal; “the living bread… from heaven” and “flesh for the life of the world.” Jesus offers us salvation we can sense: touch, smell, see, hear, and taste.

Yet Jesus invites us not just to take in God’s presence in our world by our senses. The Letter to the Ephesians from which we hear today says that “Christ handed himself over to us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.” But immediately before this we hear in Ephesians, “be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love.” Ephesians asks us to make God’s presence felt or, better yet, smelled as “a fragrant aroma” by the way we live “as beloved children” of God, “in love.”

And so my question is this: How does God smell in our world? How, by the way we live, are we making God smell in our world? Is God being smelled; touched; seen; heard; tasted; more fully experienced as a God of goodness and love; a “fragrant aroma”; “the living bread… from heaven… for the life of the world” because of the way we live as Christians?

Many if not all of us here at the House of Mercy could answer truthfully, “Yes,” to this question. God lives and is experienced here. We hear God; the Word of God in our Scripture readings and here at Mass. We hear God in our lively celebration of Eucharist each Sunday; the participation of all of us in our beautiful music at our Sunday Mass. We see God in one another gathered here and then going forth from here to act in justice on the gift of God we receive in our worship. We taste God: Jesus Christ really and truly present under humble bread and wine in our Eucharist. And we taste and smell God present when we are fed and provide food here for many of this city’s homeless and otherwise hungry. We touch God in our sign of peace here; our works of peace out in our streets. These are powerful signs of God’s presence especially in this part of Rochester still beset by poverty; homelessness; hunger; violence.

God lives and we sense God present and alive here at the House of Mercy! But I would be missing one of the means in which God has been present and alive here if I did not mention my late Basilian brother priest and regular presider at our Mass here, Fr. Joseph Lanzalaco. Today I stand in Fr. Joe’s place, since he was first scheduled to preside at this Mass. In his own humble, friendly, and loving way, Fr. Joe brought people; brought us together to where God could be experienced: Smelled; touched; seen; heard; tasted. Many of us met Fr. Joe and sensed God present at his funeral Mass a-week-and-a-half ago at my home parish, St. Kateri, at Christ the King Church. Those of us here who could not be bussed to Fr. Joe’s funeral were with us in spirit and in prayer. I cannot speak for Fr. Joe (and he will without doubt correct me if and when we meet in heaven), but I picture him on the day of his funeral with all of us; with God present, smiling down on all of us there. I can imagine Fr. Joe speaking words to us from heaven similar to those of St. John Paul II to the crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Rome in the moments before he died: “I came to you, and now you have come to me. And I thank you.”

God was present among us in Fr. Joe’s life and priesthood among us, was present on the day of Fr. Joe’s funeral, and is present here now: Smelled; touched; seen; heard; tasted. But is it not a bit arrogant and irreverent for us to reduce God to something accessible to our human senses; to something material? 

I do not believe so, for two reasons. First, God has made God’s self human, one like us in all but sin in the person of Jesus Christ. Yes, God is entirely “other”; spirit and not something material we can sense. But, in the person of Jesus Christ, our God “humbled himself to share in our humanity.” Our God chose freely to share in our ability to smell, touch, see, hear, and taste in order to raise us up to a “share in the divinity of Christ.” Would we fear a God who takes on our humanity; our senses in this way? I would hope not. We could fear God becoming human, but this fear is itself a kind of arrogance and irreverence; a way to limit God. At its extreme (this error has been committed and condemned in our Christian history), this fear makes matter; the world; all of us whom God created as good out to be somehow bad. This is a lie. We know and so God invites us not to fear a God who, as Pope Benedict XVI says of Christ, “worked with human hands… thought with a human mind… acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved.” So that we might be saved and so that, through our senses, we might glory in the love and goodness in God’s creation, Jesus Christ made himself like us, able to smell, touch, see, hear, and taste.

And here lies the second reason why I believe we are right to seek God by our human senses; that this is neither arrogant nor irreverent. God did not stop at sending an angel to wake Elijah from his sleep of despair with God’s touch. God did not stop at feeding Elijah on Mount Horeb so that his prophecy might continue. God did not stop at feeding the hungry people of Israel with manna in the desert, or at Jesus’ feeding the multitudes on a hillside in Galilee. God did not even stop at sending us his own Son, Jesus Christ, our “living bread… from heaven”; “flesh for the life of the world.”

No, our Psalm urges us to “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” But may we not stop at this. God still has not stopped working in and through us. God has given us our senses so that, in the love and goodness of God’s creation we may smell, touch, see, hear, and taste the presence and work of God the Creator. And yet we, with God, are co-creators. We have a mission: Make God seen and heard by our worship as one community of faith. Make God somebody we can touch by extending to one another a hand of peace; by working for peace and justice; nonviolence at all costs. Make God tasted by feeding those who suffer poverty and hunger; by inviting more people to the table of the Eucharist. Make God smelled; breathed in and out of us in everything we say and do. “Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love,” Ephesians says today.

This is our mission. At the end of time, when Jesus Christ returns, we may stop. Until then, we will not stop because God will not stop in each and every one of us. In Christ fully human God took on “flesh for the life of the world”; took on our senses: touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste. God has given us the gift of these same senses to bring us salvation and for us to make God’s goodness and love known; experienced; touched, smelled, seen, heard, and tasted.