Homélie du vendredi, 15 septembre 2017– Mémoire de Notre-Dame des Douleurs

Lectures du jour: 1 Timothée 1, 1-2.12-14; Psaume 15(16), 1-2a.5, 7-8, 11; Jean 19, 25-27

Vendredi de la 23ème semaine du temps ordinaire

Cette homélie fut donnée à  la chapelle de la Maison-Mère de la Congrégation de la Mission (Lazaristes), Paris, France.

This homily was given at the Congregation of the Mission (Vincentian) Motherhouse chapel, Paris, France.

Celles d’entre nous qui sont mères de famille ; ceux et celles qui sont parents : Vous avez connus sans doute des moments de joie, mais aussi des moments de douleur en famille, en élevant vos enfants.

C’est maintenant le temps de l’année où les enfants rentrent à l’école. Bien qu’étant prêtre, je n’aie jamais eu d’enfants, j’ai déjà été enseignant dans des écoles. J’ai une nièce et aussi un neveu de 5 ans qui vient de commencer l’école au Canada, et j’ai plusieurs amis à travers le monde qui sont parents de jeunes enfants. À chaque début d’année scolaire, il me semble, dans n’importe quel endroit ou culture où j’ai été en ministère avec des jeunes et leurs familles, il y a toujours au moins quelques petits enfants, lors de ses premiers jours d’école, qui ont peur, qui ne veulent pas être séparés de leurs parents, qui entrent dans l’école en pleurs. Je remarque— et plusieurs de mes amis qui sont parents me l’ont dit— comment ces expériences peuvent être douloureuses pour les parents. Les mères et pères de famille ont aussi souvent de la difficulté à ne pas avoir leurs petits enfants chez eux pendant autant de temps qu’avant ; ils laissent aller leurs petits à l’école que difficilement. Cela se reproduit quelques années plus tard, quand les enfants, rendus jeunes adultes, partent de chez eux pour travailler ou pour étudier.

J’observe en étant prêtre qu’être parent, ce n’est pas facile. Pourtant, mères et pères de famille, vous n’êtes pas seuls, dans vos moments de joie ou dans vos moments de douleur ou de tristesse. Aujourd’hui on commémore la mère de notre Seigneur, Jésus Christ, notre mère et la mère de toute l’Église, Marie, sous le nom de Notre-Dame des Douleurs. Pourquoi, alors, le nom Notre-Dame des Douleurs ?

Ce nom est une reconnaissance qu’en tant que mère, Marie partage avec nous toutes nos expériences humaines ; toutes nos expériences d’Église, les joyeuses et les douloureuses. Elle a partagé avec son fils Jésus également toutes ses expériences humaines. On reconnaît officiellement sept de ces expériences ; ces événements dans la vie de Marie et de Jésus comme les « sept douleurs » : La prophétie de Syméon dans le temple qu’un glaive percerait le cœur de Marie ; la fuite de la Sainte-Famille en Égypte ; la disparition de Jésus, âgé de douze ans, dans le temple pendant trois jours ; la rencontre de Marie et de Jésus sur le chemin de la croix ; les souffrances et la mort de Jésus sur la croix ; la décente et la mise au tombeau de Jésus.

On peut imaginer, à part ces « douleurs » officiellement reconnues par la dévotion de notre Église, si on imagine bien toutes les expériences que peuvent avoir une mère— les joyeuses comme les douloureuses— toute une vie ensemble, Marie avec Jésus, où ils se sont dit continuellement : dans tes joies comme dans tes douleurs, « tu n’es pas seul. » Pourtant, c’est lors de ses derniers moments sur la croix où Jésus nous confie sa mère, qui devient alors mère de toute notre Église, de tout notre monde : « Femme, voici ton fils », et où il nous confie à sa mère.

On devient alors tous « le disciple qu’il aimait », auquel Jésus dit, « voici ta mère », qui partagera toutes vos joies ; toutes vos douleurs. Nous ne sommes jamais seuls sous la protection de notre mère.

Homily for Monday, 4 September 2017– Ferial

Monday of the 18th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Psalm 96:1, 3, 4-5, 11-12, 13; Luke 4:16-30

This homily was given at St. Clare Church, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

What is it possible for us to know about heaven? How much of eternal life, of being saved, is dependent on our own effort or works versus God’s free gift of grace?

On this Labour Day, our celebration of work and everybody who works, our readings point more toward eternal life as God’s free gift than as having anything to do with our effort. In his first letter to the Thessalonians, St. Paul writes words of tremendous hope. “Jesus died and rose again,” St. Paul says, and for this and no other reason, we have the possibility of eternal life. “Through Jesus,” who has died and has risen from the dead through no merit of ours, “God will bring with him those who have died.” All St. Paul asks of us is to “encourage one another with these words.” It is no wonder, then, that today’s reading from 1 Thessalonians is often one of the selections at funerals in our Church, a time when we want to be encouraged; to know that our God is merciful and wills most of all that we might have eternal life.

Luke’s Gospel, too, emphasizes God’s gratuitous gift. Neither the possibility of eternal life nor God’s presence with and care for us in this life is limited by our effort or factors like our ethnicity or religious tradition. God is the creator of the universe and so is the universal giver of the possibility of eternal life. When Jesus speaks this truth through the images of outsiders like the “widow at Zerephath in Sidon” receiving the prophet Elijah in a time of famine or “Naaman the Syrian” being cleansed before any of the “lepers of Israel,” the people in the synagogue of Nazareth become furious with him. How is it that these outsiders receive God’s preferential treatment? Does it matter that we believe in the right God in order to be healed; in order to be saved? Do our efforts matter for our salvation?

If we listen attentively to our Gospel reading today, we hear that our efforts and our right worship do matter for our salvation, but perhaps not in the way we might most naturally think. Today’s Gospel reading is Jesus’ basic “mission statement: “To bring good news to the poor… to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

But this is not only Jesus’ mission; it is ours also. How, then, are we bringing good news to those in need? How are we, in St. Paul’s words, encouraging one another by our words and our deeds? How are we working to free the oppressed and the marginalized and to welcome and integrate the outsiders? How are we doing all this without worrying about whom God will save and whom he will not?

Heaven is God’s gift of grace, but we are still called to cooperate in this life in making God’s gift of grace known universally. French philosopher Gabriel Marcel once said, “To love another is to say to that person, ‘You shall not die.’” To love is to will and work for eternal life for everybody and all creation, and to trust God’s grace to make this will; this dream of ours a reality. We are called to dream this dream and work to realize it; to love one another. If we do simply this, the rest of the work of our salvation is God’s.

Homily for Sunday, 3 September 2017

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 20:7-9; Psalm 63:2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16:21-27

In hearing the Gospel we have just heard from Matthew, how many of us wonder why Peter cannot seem to catch a break?

Our Gospel reading today follows immediately after Peter makes a profession of faith so astounding that he could not have made it up on his own; it must have been from God: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” It might be helpful for us to think that, whenever Peter speaks or acts in our Scriptures, he speaks or acts in our place. In his great profession of faith, Peter speaks for the other Apostles. Peter speaks for us when he identifies Jesus as “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” We remember that Jesus had asked his disciples; had asked all of us, “Who do you say that I am”? And, by God’s grace, Peter gives the right answer on behalf of all the Apostles; of all Jesus’ disciples; of all of us.

When we are able to answer with Peter that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” we are, as Peter was, at our most vulnerable. How so? We are most vulnerable at this point to all our experiences of life that try our faith; that tempt us; that distract us from our faith that Jesus Christ is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” At this very point of making our greatest profession of faith, we are most vulnerable to our guilt for the times we have not lived up to the truth of the faith we profess. We are most vulnerable to all the false images by which the world around us might identify Jesus, not “the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” but as a static, dead god, somehow contained by our expressions and categories of human language; as a god who rules by might and violence; as a god who blesses wealth, no matter how it is acquired, and curses those unfortunate enough to find themselves in need; as a god who is distant and invincible to human experiences we fear, most of all death.

These images are not true images of our God; they are false images, idols. Our God will never hold us guilty for when we have not lived up to our words by which we profess our faith, when we have sinned. God does not rule by might, anger, or violence, as so many human rulers of nations have and still do. God blesses us all; God has created us all in the image of his supreme, living goodness. Our God curses neither the rich nor the poor, although God especially upholds the dignity of those in need and invites us to do the same: Open the doors of our churches, our nations, our homes, our hearts preferentially to the poor, the migrant, the refugee; the unborn; the young people; the sick; the aged; those seeking sincerely and struggling in the way of faith; those as vulnerable somehow as each of us are. Our God is not invincible to any of our human experience, least of all death, but became human in the person of Jesus, to share in our every experience of being human except sin; to share even in our suffering and our death in order to make eternal life possible for us.

It seems almost too good to be true that God should not be a dead god of guilt but a living God of mercy; not a dead god of anger or violence or of hoarding wealth and the world’s resources at the expense of those in need but a living God who upholds the dignity of all creation; not a dead god of invincibility and distance from creation but a living God who has become human in every way we are human, including our suffering and death, so that we might be saved. When, as Peter did, we profess our faith in a living God; in Jesus Christ as “the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” we leave ourselves vulnerable to Satan, who will tempt us to give into our fear that all we say we believe is too good to be true. Satan tempts us when we are most vulnerable, yet paradoxically when we have just made the greatest profession of faith possible, not to think “as God does.” This is Peter’s experience and perhaps it is, more often than we would like to admit, our experience. Peter stands in our place. This is also why Jesus rebukes Peter as harshly as he does: “Get behind me, Satan”!

But all our vulnerability; all our temptation to deny the almost incredible faith we profess; all our sin, when we fall into Satan’s traps and substitute dead gods in place of our living God, does not change who we are at our most profound: Sons and daughters ourselves “of the living God.” Sure, when we fall into sin; when we fall for dead gods in place of “the living God,” we are weakened. Our will to do good is corrupted and weakened, but never lost. Peter knew this truth and, again, Peter stands for all of us. When he takes Jesus aside and rebukes him, “God forbid it Lord,” that you might suffer and die in our place; that you might share in this fullest way possible in our humanity, Peter is still the “rock” on which Jesus has chosen to build his Church. Peter’s God-given name, his most profound nature, is not lost, even when the rock becomes “a stumbling block”; a scandal to himself and to the other disciples.

Still, Peter’s great profession of faith is still intact: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” We are sons and daughters of the same living God, in whom “we live and move and have our being,” as we will pray in a few moments here at Mass. The “stumbling block,” in the midst of his denial of a Messiah who must suffer and die as we do in order that we might live as God lives, is still the “rock.” The “stumbling block” who would deny Jesus not once but three times, proclaiming a dead god of fear as Jesus traveled the Way of the Cross, would still be the “rock” called to proclaim the living God of salvation by the cross and resurrection to our world.

Peter, at once the rock and the “stumbling block,” stands for us. And so how do we, like Peter, become more rock and less “stumbling block” to one another and to God’s grace working through us? How do we proclaim a “living God” and not any one of a variety of dead gods to our world? The easy answer to these questions; the answer given in our Gospel, is to accept any suffering we might experience. “If anyone wants to become my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” And yet, for many, this answer is almost too easy. We know in our world and may even have experienced personally forms of suffering that are unbearable or unjust. Suffering is not of God; is not willed by God. This side of eternal life, though, Jesus, through his cross, has taken upon himself our suffering as a means of conquering it.

We participate in Jesus’ solidarity with and victory over our suffering and death especially when we find somebody, even one person, who is suffering; who is oppressed; who is marginalized; who is in need and when we work to alleviate this person’s suffering. Sometimes to alleviate another’s suffering takes heroic effort, but more often to alleviate another’s suffering— to enter into solidarity with Christ on the cross and with another who bears the cross with Christ— takes a simple smile, a listening ear, or some other simple gesture of love.

This is learning, after Peter and every disciple of Jesus who has ever lived, to be less “stumbling block” and more rock of faith. This is taking up our cross and following after Jesus, “Son of the living God,” in becoming more authentically ourselves sons and daughters “of the living God.”