Homily for Sunday, 4 September 2016

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Wisdom 9:13-18b; Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14-17; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33

This homily was given at St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish, Rochester, NY.

What would we be willing to give up in order to be disciples of Jesus Christ? What should we reasonably expect being disciples of Jesus Christ to cost us?

We might imagine ourselves among the “great crowds” that Luke says “were traveling with Jesus.” At one point, where today’s Gospel reading begins, Jesus stops and speaks to these “great crowds” about the demands of being his disciple; of continuing to follow him. But here Jesus does not speak in terms of what is required to be among his disciples: Do this, go there, take this with you… No, Jesus speaks in terms of “non-starters”; of what any would-be disciple of his would need to give up in order to follow him. First, Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Even if we understand “hating” not as an intense dislike toward another person or thing but, in its rightful sense in Jesus’ time, to mean “to turn away or detach one’s self from” somebody or something, this saying of Jesus still sounds harsh. Who here would be willing to leave behind all our loved ones; our friends; our family immediately and forever, even if doing so were the only way to be a true disciple of Jesus? Who here would not hesitate to give up life itself to follow Jesus? 

I suspect that to leave behind the people dearest to us immediately and forever would be difficult for most if not all of us. And, as if giving up our loved ones and even our lives is not enough to be Jesus’ disciples, Jesus says that anybody who “does not carry his own cross and come after [him] cannot be [his] disciple.” Not only does Jesus expect us, in order to be his disciple, to leave behind the people dearest to us and even to give up our lives, but Jesus expects us to be ready to lay down our lives in the most shameful way possible. It is true that Jesus would go on to die this kind of shameful death on a cross, yet even Jesus, God in human flesh, would pray to our Father to “take this cup from” him,  “but not my will but yours be done,” so horrifying was the suffering he would undergo for us. Could Jesus reasonably expect the cross to be a minimal requirement to be his disciple?

Can we not imagine now the “great crowds… traveling with Jesus” beginning to thin?  After all, Jesus’ demands of any would-be disciple go against his earlier teachings on the dignity and value of human relationships;  of life itself.  And yet Jesus continues to speak:  “Anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”

Already Jesus seems to be softening his message, if only slightly. If we are unable to leave behind the people we love most; if we are not quite ready to give up our lives for Jesus, then at least some of us may be able to part with our material possessions. Then again (I speak for myself and probably everybody who belongs to a religious order), I have not yet been able to detach myself from many material possessions, and I am under a vow of poverty.

And so what does Jesus truly expect of anybody who would be his disciple? Are our efforts to be Jesus’ disciples, those of us who attend Mass faithfully every week if not more often; whose worship so often inspires works of great love, justice, and mercy toward those most in need in our communities, not enough? Fortunately, in among Jesus’ three sayings about those who have not been able to leave behind loved ones,  are unprepared to give up their lives, or are unable to part with their possessions, and so “cannot be” his disciples, Jesus offers us two images of the process of weighing the cost of our discipleship. Jesus offers us the images of the builder of a tower and of the king who wages a battle against another king who has a much larger army.

Both of these images invite us to ponder prayerfully the important questions about our own discipleship of Jesus Christ: What is the cost of being a disciple of Jesus? What cost are we willing to pay? Our process of weighing these great questions is lifelong. And I propose that there are at least three kinds of answers to these questions. There is the premature, individualistic, and foolishly optimistic answer, which usually.  amounts to no more than mistaken pride: “Whatever the cost, I am willing to pay it. I am fully ready to be a disciple of Jesus. I am even ready to die for my faith in Jesus Christ, here and now. No matter the cost of building the tower or going into battle outnumbered, I will start building that tower now; march into battle now.” Besides exceedingly few Christians, let me suggest that most who, in this way, respond without weighing and praying over the cost of their discipleship are setting themselves up to fail.

There is also the pessimistic and even cynical answer: “The cost of discipleship is too high. There is far too much evil in the world for one person to conquer alone. The tower is too expensive to build; the opposing king with twice as many troops too powerful. Why even try”? This answer, I believe, is just as individualistic, proud, and foolish as the excessively optimistic approach to discipleship.

And then there is the patient, prayerful,  trusting answer to what the cost of discipleship is and how much we are willing to pay. This response requires of us the most time, the most effort, and the most prayer. This kind of answer places not ourselves but God first. Discipleship will mean putting God ahead of family, friends, and loved ones, and even my own life. It will mean service; intentional works of justice, love, and mercy. Discipleship will mean building unity; community; communion. Discipleship will mean risking misunderstanding and even ridicule for speaking and acting as Christ would speak and act. But God will make up for what we lack in strength; in courage; in knowledge; in wisdom. Not we, but God, will overcome the evil in our world, because by Christ’s death and resurrection God has already overcome it.

The same calling in our Gospel to patient, prayerful weighing and acceptance of the costs of discipleship with trust in God is present in the Book of Wisdom and in St. Paul’s letter to Philemon, from which we hear today. Wisdom speaks of the limitation of the human mind and body. Without God and God’s spirit within us, we are nothing. But with God’s spirit we become everything; the “paths of those on earth [are] made straight.”

And St. Paul gently calls the slave owner Philemon to accept his runaway slave Onesimus back willingly, “no longer as a slave, but [as] a brother.” St. Paul is aware of the cost to Philemon should he take Onesimus back as a free “brother” in Christ. St. Paul urges Philemon no longer to be a slave to the law that would have allowed him to punish Onesimus severely as a runaway, but to free himself to love; to free himself for following after Christ; for discipleship. And so St. Paul’s letter to Philemon offers us yet another image of weighing and acceptance of the cost of discipleship, trusting more and more fully in God.

Only by placing God first in this way is it possible to ponder rightly and to accept the cost of discipleship, slowly, patiently, and prayerfully, little by little over the course of our lifetimes.  Only then is it possible to give ourselves ever more fully to God; to Christ in loving service to one another. Only then are we made truly free, sisters and brothers and true disciples of Jesus Christ.

Homily for Saturday, 3 September 2016– Feast of St. Gregory the Great

Saturday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Corinthians 4:6b-15; Psalm 145:16-18, 19-20, 21; Luke 6:1-5

What is the purpose and meaning of the Sabbath? For the Pharisees of Jesus’ time and indeed for any faithful Jew, the Sabbath meant a day of rest from any and all work. This is why, in the Gospel reading we hear today, the Pharisees become angry at Jesus and his disciples for “picking… heads of grain” from the fields, “rubbing them in their hands, and eating them.” Jesus’ disciples had been doing work.

This concern among devout Jews about not working on the Sabbath day may seem foreign to our culture in which many people work and many workplaces and businesses are open on Sundays. But the Sabbath rest is not simply some practice of the distant past. I was reminded of this when I visited the Holy Land three years ago. In multi-storey buildings in Tel Aviv, where our pilgrimage stayed for a few nights, there are so-called “Sabbath elevators” that stop automatically on every floor. There is no need to push a button to stop the elevator on the desired floor; this would be considered doing work.

I am not trying to criticize either cultural practice: A more relaxed attitude toward work on Sundays here or the “Sabbath elevators” in the Holy Land. And yet, in our Gospel, Jesus calls us beyond the mere question of whether or not to work on the Sabbath, to question more deeply the motivation behind our actions. If we choose to keep the Sabbath day by not working this is well and good. If, as Christians,  we choose to go to Mass on Sundays as our way of keeping the Commandment to “keep holy the Sabbath day,” or not to shop on Sundays, or other practices, these, too, are excellent and to be encouraged.

But the purpose and meaning of our Sabbath; our worship once a week or more, is deeper than simply not working or gathering to worship one day a week. All our work and our worship, even on days that are not Sunday or the Sabbath, are to be oriented toward service to God by serving one another, especially people in any kind of need. Jesus is clear about this by his reminder to the Pharisees that King David once served the hungry people of Israel “the bread of offering” that “only the priests could lawfully eat” or even touch. Meeting human need is greater than slavishness to laws. The commandment to “keep holy the Sabbath Day” has an ethical component; it is meant to free us for service,  justice, and mercy toward one another, not simply to forbid us to work for one day each week.

Pope St. Gregory the Great,  whose feast we celebrate today, also reminds us of this greater purpose of the Sabbath day; of any human labor;  of our worship. In a homily, St. Gregory says that “when we attend to the needs of those in want, we give them what is theirs… We are performing a debt of justice.” And so our service; our works of justice and mercy;  our meeting of human need are the true meaning and purpose of the Sabbath day. Our service; our works of justice and mercy;  our meeting of human need ultimately point us toward God; toward “the Son of Man [who] is Lord of the Sabbath.”

Homily for Thursday, 1 September 2016– Ferial

Thursday of the 22nd week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Corinthians 3:18-23; Psalm 24:1bc-2, 3-4ab, 5-6; Luke 5:1-11

This homily was given at St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish,  St. Margaret Mary Church, Rochester, NY.

What do our readings today say to us about wisdom? Might it seem that St. Paul especially, in our first reading from his first letter to the Corinthians, takes a negative view of wisdom?

Is it so wrong of us to seek to be wise; to gain knowledge, even of what is not particularly spiritual or sacred (we could say, of what is secular)? I think that the issue for St. Paul is not so much about wisdom as about acknowledging God as the source of all wisdom, whether of the so-called sacred or secular. Our key to interpreting St. Paul’s words is in his last line we hear today: “All belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God.” Through Christ we belong to God. All wisdom and all knowledge belong to God. Our Eucharistic celebration here; our ability to give thanks to God for “all that is good” in our lives and in our world belongs to God and is God’s gift to us.

We gather here at varying points of acknowledging and living our belonging to God; of witnessing by our lives our thanksgiving to God for “all that is good,” in the words we will pray shortly in our Eucharistic Prayer. We are on a kind of journey. In Luke’s Gospel from which we hear today we meet St. Peter and Jesus’ other apostles and disciples, and “the crowd” who are on the same journey as we are. And Jesus meets us along this journey.

St. Peter becomes the spokesperson for everybody besides Jesus in our Gospel. He is our spokesperson. And I think we would be correct to suggest that St. Peter does not exactly strike us as wise. Yet Jesus chooses Peter, sometimes the weakest and most foolish of the apostles, at best a humble fisherman, to speak for everybody else; to speak for us.

Jesus finds St. Peter on a journey. And the first response of St. Peter to his encounter with Jesus is one of trust: “At your command I will lower the nets.” But then, at the great catch of fish, Peter’s trust in Jesus quickly changes into a sense of his own powerlessness and sinfulnes: “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”

Fortunately for St. Peter and for us, Jesus does not do as Peter says. God stays with us along our journey until we are able to do as Jesus’ apostles do: “They [leave] everything and follow him.” At this moment, the apostles, led by Peter, James, and John, not only trust in God or acknowledge their powerlessness or sinfulness, but are able to give themselves entirely to God in Jesus Christ, who has given us all wisdom and all goodness. At this moment, the journey is no longer about Peter, James, John, or us, but about God.

So we find ourselves, at some point along the same journey as Jesus’ apostles and everybody who has ever lived: From trust to a sense of our own sinfulness, powerlessness, and lack of wisdom apart from God, to being able to give our all to our God to whom we belong, the source of “all that is good,” when we are able to leave “everything and follow him.”  

Homily for Tuesday, 30 August 2016– Ferial

Tuesday of the 22nd week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Corinthians 2:10b-16; Psalm 145:8-9, 10b-11; Luke 4:31-37

This homily was given at the chapel of Frassati House, a residence of the Basilian Fathers in Toronto, ON, Canada.

Is it not remarkable how St. Paul describes “the Spirit of God” in our first reading today, from 1 Corinthians? St. Paul begins with a somewhat distant description of the Holy Spirit as the one who “searches everything, even the depths of God.” Might this sound almost frightening to us?

But then St. Paul says to us that “we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is of God.” Paul says to us in his first letter to the Corinthians that “we have the mind of Christ.” These are bold statements, that somehow we have the very presence of God; the Spirit of God dwelling within us!

And so the Spirit is not something distant; a being that watches us and is beyond our comprehension. Each of us, and together as a Christian community of faith, the Church, we have the Spirit of God with and in us. This indwelling “Spirit of God” makes possible for us the most intimate of personal and communal relationships with our God.

We have the freedom to reject this indwelling of the Spirit, although I believe this kind of total rejection among anybody who has ever truly experienced relationship with God is exceedingly rare. St. Paul may be speaking of those who have rejected God; have rejected the Gospel when he speaks of “those who are unspiritual” and so “do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit.” I am not sure of this. And yet, between St. Paul’s message to the Corinthians and our Gospel account today of Jesus’ healing of the demon-possessed man in Luke, I think we might say that “those who are unspiritual”; those who, knowingly or not, have. become possessed or controlled by anything that is not of God, may be able to discern and even name God’s presence (as the demon in Luke’s Gospel is able to do: “I know who you are, [Christ] the Holy One of God”), but is no longer able to enter into relationship with God.

Yet a far greater problem in our world than the few who have rejected God and God’s Spirit are those who have never known relationship with God; the presence of the Holy Spirit within them as we do. There are still many, even in “Christian” parts of the world like ours, who long for the spiritual. This is an invitation to us to satisfy this longing while keeping our own relationship with God strong.

How do we do this? Our response to God’s invitation to make God’s Spirit and our relationship with God’s Spirit known in our world (what we call evangelization) begins with prayer. It begins with our prayerful celebration of Eucharist as we are doing here. But it does not end here. Our celebration here calls us to work in our world for justice and peace; for unity among Christians; among people of faith; among all people. These are works of the Spirit. These are works that show our world that “we have received… the Spirit that is of God” and that, as one, “we have the mind of Christ.”

Homily for Monday, 29 August 2016‒ Memorial of the Passion of St. John the Baptist

Monday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 1:17-19; Psalm 71:1-2, 3-4a, 5-6. 15ab, 17; Mark 6:17-29

This homily was given at Anglin House, Cardinal Flahiff Basilian Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada.

What would have been the response of John the Baptist’s and of Jesus’ disciples to the news of John’s death at the hands of Herod? I imagine John’s and Jesus’ disciples as having been heartbroken and probably afraid. John’s beheading would have been a great blow to the earliest Church, second only in devastation to Jesus’ own death.

Might we not imagine John’s and Jesus’ disciples thinking about abandoning their lives as disciples out of fear; wanting to return to their former livelihoods; wondering whether their own deaths at the hands of the authorities of their time and place were at hand? This was certainly the case for these same disciples after Jesus’ death.  But, had the disciples of John the Baptist and of Jesus fled after John was killed, their story and ours as Christians would have ended there. And even though most of Jesus’ disciples fled after his death, they reassembled, even if in fear at first, to witness to Jesus’ resurrection and to take up the Christian mission with the strength of the Holy Spirit.

These first disciples’ story; our Christian story continues because these first disciples, of John and then of Jesus, did not give into fear. They accepted their own vulnerability, the finiteness of their own earthly lives, their sin and their need for God’s mercy and forgiveness. The disciples’ example is in marked contrast to that of Herod, who would not accept his own vulnerability and finiteness of his rule or his life. He would not accept John’s speaking truth to Herod’s wrongful marriage to his brother’s wife Herodias, beyond a superficial level of liking “to listen to” John. Herod’s lack of acceptance of vulnerability and of truth led him to commit murder.

John the Baptist’s and Jesus’ disciples’ example of acceptance of vulnerability and of their need for God is an invitation to us to follow suit. Our world gives us many reasons to be afraid. Over this summer, while I have taught in Edmonton and so far travelled here to Toronto, I have been asked many times about the response in France to several terrorist attacks: Those in Paris last November; the killing of Fr. Jacques Hamel in July while he was presiding at Mass near Rouen; the Bastille Day attack in Nice… I have been encouraged that many French have not retreated in fear after these attacks; they have back out on the café terraces, living as French people do, within days of these awful events.

This is not to say that the French, nor we nor anybody, are or should be completely without fear. But may we not allow our fear, our vulnerability, even our sin to break us. May what could break us instead be what brings us together and brings us closer to God, after the example of the disciples of John the Baptist and of Jesus, and of John and Jesus themselves.    

Homily for Wednesday, 24 August 2016‒ Feast of St. Bartholomew

Wednesday 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

This homily was given at Anglin House, Cardinal Flahiff Basilian Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada.

The other day I was reading a fascinating article on Mother Teresa about an interview with the priest promoting the cause for her canonization. We might ask: What does Mother Teresa have to do with St. Bartholomew the Apostle, whose feast we celebrate today?

The priest in the interview says of Mother Teresa that she “did ordinary things extraordinarily well.” I think that this is the connection between Blessed Mother Teresa and St. Bartholomew and indeed all the saints: They “did ordinary things extraordinarily well.” How well does this describe us? After all, we are all called to holiness; we are all called to be saints.

God does not expect us to do the extraordinary. If God did expect this of us, I do not think that St. Bartholomew, or Mother Teresa or anybody else for that matter, would ever become a saint. St. Bartholomew is so ordinary that the Gospels differ on his name. St. Bartholomew is called Nathaniel in John's Gospel. Whatever his name, or whether or not Nathaniel and Bartholomew were two different Apostles, John speaks of a man who is completely ordinary. Nathaniel, or Bartholomew, is completely transparent in his need to be led to the Lord by St. Philip; completely open and without “deceit” in questioning whether “anything good” could “come out of Nazareth”; but also completely truthful to Jesus as to how he comes to believe that Jesus is “the Son of God... the King of Israel.”

St. Bartholomew is an example to us of a completely, refreshingly ordinary saint. He is not after his own glory, but the glory of God. Our Psalm response describes people like St. Bartholomew fittingly: “Your friends tell the glory of your kingship, Lord.”

Our calling is like that of St. Bartholomew, Blessed Mother Teresa, all the Apostles and saints: To point to and to point one another toward “the glory of the Lord.” Our calling is to “do ordinary things extraordinarily well.”

Homily for Sunday, 21 August 2016

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 66:18-21; Psalm 117:1, 2; Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13; Luke 13:22-30

This homily was given at St. Joseph’s College, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Is it not easy to admire the candour of the person in the crowd who asks Jesus in our Gospel reading today, “Lord, will only a few be saved”? How many of us have asked or at least thought similar questions?

Today’s Gospel reading is part of a section of loosely-connected sayings of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel on the Kingdom of God. And Jesus never quite answers the question of the person in the crowd, “Lord, will only a few be saved”? Instead, Jesus gives us three somewhat unclear, inconsistent images of God’s Kingdom: “The narrow door,” the locked door, and the great banquet at which “Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets” are joined by “people… from east and west” and “from north and south.” The images of the narrow door and the locked door suggest that, yes, it is likely that “only a few” will “be saved.” But the third image of God’s Kingdom, the banquet scene, suggests that more than “only a few” will “be saved.” Yet, here again, Jesus says that many, even among the people who have followed him from village to village, will find themselves “thrown out” of the great banquet. And so does it not seem that to “be saved” will be difficult for us?

In light of these three images of God’s Kingdom, it would be difficult to fault any of us for thinking this way; for asking questions like, “Lord, will only a few be saved”? To take the harsh edge off of Jesus’ parables of God’s Kingdom, we might understand Jesus as drawing a line between those who were for and those who were against his message. Jesus’ images of the entrance to God’s Kingdom as a “narrow door” that would eventually be locked, and of God’s Kingdom itself as an exclusive banquet, were directed especially at the the religious and political elites of Jesus’ day. Many of these elites were not acting with justice; were not living in an upright way. They were oppressing and excluding the very people they were supposed to be helping; making sure they had the basic necessities of life; leading toward God and toward salvation by their own teaching and example. These were the people who would arrive at the Kingdom of God before a locked door, not be able to enter “through the narrow door,” or be “thrown out” of the banquet. And those least expected to enter the Kingdom of God would enter ahead of those who would have expected to enter first: “Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”

Nowadays, who are the people we would name among the “first” to enter God’s Kingdom; to “be saved”? Who are among the “last,” or those who will not enter the Kingdom of God at all? Part of our answer to who is “first” is easy. Especially as good Catholics, we might answer, “the saints.” But even the named (canonized) saints, those we recognize officially as in heaven; experiencing eternal life, are far from the total number of people already in heaven; already saved. And people who are not Catholic or who are not Christian are not necessarily to be counted among the “last” or those who will be excluded from salvation. We cannot even be sure that people who have done great evil will not ultimately be saved. And so to answer the question of who “will be last” or who will not be saved is even more difficult than to answer who “will be first.” In fact for us to answer either question is impossible.

“Lord, will only a few be saved”? We cannot answer this question. And Jesus does not give us the answer. We can answer, faithfully to our Christian tradition, that God wills everybody to be saved, but this is as much as we may know and believe. Our Church names a few of the many, mostly anonymous, saints through the ages, and does not place anybody in particular in hell, for good reason.

But can it still not be tempting for us to speculate on who might be saved; on which actions or choices might place a person definitively beyond salvation? Have any of us ever been asked a question like, “Have you been saved”? I have been asked this question a few times, by well-meaning Christians. Questions like this tempt me to make a snarky reply like, “I don’t know. Have you”? This is when I believe most deeply that biting one’s tongue should be added as the eighth corporal work of mercy!

Humour aside, I think that to make our salvation out to be an individual pursuit like this (“Have you been saved”?) or to become otherwise obsessed with salvation, with whether we or anybody else “will be first” or “last,” is dangerous. What do I mean by this? If and when we become obsessed with salvation and make it individualistic, about whether I will be saved, we neglect key aspects of salvation.

First, our salvation is God’s gift of grace to us; God’s choice, not ours. This is not to say that our works; our words and our actions do not matter to God. Our second reading, from the letter to the Hebrews, calls us to accept with humility “the discipline of the Lord.” Moral accountability is vital to our salvation. Are we yielding “the peaceful fruit of righteousness” by the way we live? Are we working in some way for peace and justice in our world; our nation; our communities; our households; our Church? Without concrete works (words and actions) that strengthen our relationship with God and with one another; without works that show the Kingdom of God dwelling within our world here and now, salvation becomes an empty obsession with a distant reality.

Second, the key word in all this is “we.” Salvation, building the Kingdom of God here and now so that we might inherit it in its fullness by the end of time, is not an individual but a communal, relational effort. This is the message of the prophet Isaiah we hear in our first reading today. Isaiah encourages the people of Israel to return to their homeland after a long exile in Babylon. But God, speaking through Isaiah, not only calls individuals, or only the people of Israel, home. No, God says through Isaiah, “I am coming to gather all nations and tongues, and they shall come and see my glory.” The message is the same in Luke’s Gospel, in Jesus’ sayings about the Kingdom of God. Who will be present at the great banquet of God’s Kingdom? Jesus says that “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets,” and then “people from east and west [and] from north and south” will be at this great feast. All will celebrate together not their own glory but the glory of God; the fullness of relationship with God and communion with one another.

“Lord, will only a few be saved”? Perhaps, yes, “only a few,” if any, will be saved if we try to be saved as individuals, alone, before God. But I dare say that this is not what God wants of us. God wants all of us; all of creation to be saved. God is gathering “all nations and tongues” together to “see [God’s] glory.” And God has given us signs here, now on earth, of the future fullness of God’s Kingdom. The greatest of these signs, of these sacraments, is this Eucharist we celebrate; our communion in God and in one another. Salvation is not distant reality, but starts right here, not for a select few but for all of us.

“Lord, will only a few be saved”? “Will only a few” be able to “enter through the narrow door” before it is locked? Not if we work and if we entrust ourselves to God’s saving grace and mercy together…