Homily for Sunday, 8 July 2018

Sunday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time


Readings of the day: Ezekiel 2:2-5; Psalm 123:1-2ab, 2cd, 3-4; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Mark 6: 1-6

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

How many of us have experienced being rejected at one time or another? I do not want to dismiss my experiences of being bullied at school as a child and teenager as insignificant, because this experience continues to play a role in forming the person I have become, and even played a role in my having become a Basilian priest. And yet, the more I think about my experiences of having been accepted or rejected, I realize how fortunate I have been, with some important exceptions, to have been, for the most part, accepted wherever I have been, from my home city of Edmonton, Canada to Paris, France, where I live now for most of the year, and beyond.

Coincidentally, this is the second year in a row I have visited Rochester, and St. Kateri Parish, during the Fourth of July holiday. Some of us who attended or walked with us during the Irondequoit Fourth of July parade may have noticed Fr. Joe Trovato riding in a Chevy Corvair convertible. From where Fr. Joe was in the parade, he was ideally placed to notice and be deeply moved by (as he said to me later that afternoon) how often I was called to either side of the parade route to greet St. Kateri parishioners and families, and often children I have known from St. Kateri School. To be called and welcomed along the Fourth of July parade route is delightful to me, too, although it has become somewhat second nature to me because I know how genuinely welcoming we are here at St. Kateri. And yet to hear from Fr. Joe how much joy seeing this gave him in turn reinforces my joy in and thanksgiving for you; for this parish community of St. Kateri.

I have lost track of the number of times people of St. Kateri have greeted me during my last ten days here with, “Welcome home, Father.” Almost as often, people who have greeted me in this way have then paused and then added something like, “Welcome to one of your many homes, Father”!

Truth be told, I always and will always feel at home here at St. Kateri. I will always feel at home because you, my sisters and brothers of St. Kateri, have made this such a welcoming place, for me and many other people. And, with this, I would like to extend a word of welcome to everybody who may be visiting St. Kateri Parish this weekend and for this Mass.

As I thank you and welcome us together as officially as I can through this act of preaching, though, I cannot help but wonder why Jesus was made to feel so unwelcome, not only in places he visited but in his hometown. In our Gospel reading today from Mark, Jesus laments that “a prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house.” We hear that Jesus is unable “to perform any mighty deed” in his hometown, “apart from curing a few sick people,” which is still significant enough that Mark would mention Jesus’ few healings in his hometown.

In Mark’s Gospel especially, this is not the first time and would not be the last when Jesus would be rejected. From the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, his family believes “he is out of his mind.” Today, we hear how Jesus is rejected in his hometown. And then, as Jesus is betrayed, arrested, beaten, mocked, and crucified, his most trusted friends and disciples flee from him. When Jesus is on the cross, “even God seems to have abandoned” him, and so Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”?

When I contrast Jesus’ repeated and constant rejection and abandonment to death on a cross alone with the welcome I and so many people receive in a place like St. Kateri Parish, I cannot help but feel horribly for Jesus. Our Lord’s rejection throughout the Gospel of Mark by his family, the people of his hometown, his best friends, and seemingly even God, also reminds me of a 1989 French Canadian film by Denys Arcand called Jésus de Montréal (Jesus of Montreal). In this film, actors stage a Passion play in a church in Montreal. Parishioners of the church become increasingly unhappy about the direction of the play, and so they turn against the actor who plays Jesus, who is the same person who has written the play. The plot parallels the Gospels’ telling of the increasing rejection of Jesus himself.

At the Vincentian Motherhouse’s St. Vincent de Paul Chapel, where I usually go to Mass when I am in Paris, one of the Vincentian brothers, who knows I am Canadian but is either confused about the distance (a five-hour flight) between Montreal and my hometown of Edmonton, or pretends to be confused about Canada’s expanse, for humorous effect, enjoys greeting me after Mass with, “How is Jesus of Montreal today”?

Suffice it to say that I feel precisely the opposite of rejected; precisely the opposite experience of Jesus of Montreal— or Jesus of Nazareth— when I am greeted as generously and joyfully as I am around the world, from Paris to Irondequoit to Edmonton. These greetings are also deeply humbling, especially if we think of other times in our Gospels in which Jesus warns against the pride and vanity that can result from our adulation by the people we serve as Christian disciples. If we are received well, sisters and brothers, may we pray for the grace to serve God’s glory and one another’s well-being before our own. And if we have ever been rejected for our faith and not for our own fault, may we take solace in that Jesus, in becoming fully human like us, has entered into solidarity with our rejection. He has put our rejection to death on the cross with him in order to accept; to receive; to greet us one day into eternal life with him.

And so all this leads me into an important question for us: If Jesus were to appear among us here and now— if Jesus of Nazareth, or at least Jesus of Montreal, were to show himself among us as Jesus of Irondequoit— as Jesus of St. Kateri Parish, how would we receive him? If your greeting, every time I visit St. Kateri, of this humble(d) priest-servant-brother in Christ of yours, is any indication, I have no doubt that you would greet and receive Jesus with your characteristic generous, warm St. Kateri welcome. You would make our beloved Fr. Joe, whether riding in a Corvair in the Fourth of July parade or pausing the Mass as he does so beautifully and often to greet our cooing youngest members of St. Kateri Parish, proud. But, most of all, you would be giving Jesus Christ the welcome befitting our God who became human like and for us; who put himself at the mercy of our welcome in this world to save us.

How well, then, would we receive our Lord, Jesus of Nazareth, if he were Jesus of St. Kateri;

if he were Jesus of the House of Mercy or of St. Joseph’s House of Hospitality, Jesus of Rochester’s poor and those who serve the poor here and everywhere,

If he were Jesus of the U.S.-Mexico border

If he were Jesus of Rochester General, Unity, Strong, or Monroe Community Hospital,

If he were Jesus of the vulnerable elderly and homebound,

If he were Jesus of those not yet born,

If he were Jesus of the crisis pregnancy,

If he were Jesus of the abused,

If he were Jesus of the imprisoned,

If he were Jesus of those affected by war and violence?

For Jesus is all these. Jesus, who lived, who experienced rejection, suffered, died, and rose again, will return again at the end of time and, once again, he will put himself at the mercy of our welcome.

Homily for Saturday, 7 July 2018– Ferial

Saturday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time

Our Lady's Saturday, optional memorial

Readings of the day: Amos 9:11-15; Psalm 85:9ab and 10, 11-12, 13-14; Matthew 9: 14-17

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

How would most of us characterize prophets? If we have been following the prophet Amos, from whom our first readings at Mass over the last several days have been drawn, might we have the impression of a prophet as somebody dour, who is usually frowning at, complaining, and criticizing the people?

We would not be faulted, I do not think, for understanding prophets in this way, as usually pessimistic characters, the longer we hear the likes of Amos, who is one of the more pointed and critical of the Old Testament prophets. Of course, there are more and less hopeful-sounding prophets than Amos in the Old Testament. We might think of Isaiah, on the one hand, as the author of some of the most hopeful, consoling passages in Scripture. On the other hand, if we think Amos is dour and critical, we might compare him favourably with somebody like Jeremiah. Of late, I am becoming more appreciative of the English word “jeremiad,” named after the prophet Jeremiah, in case any of us are looking for a synonym for “bitter rant.” (Who knows whether this may be a clue in a word puzzle in the newspaper sometime?)

In contrast to his criticisms of the Israelite society of his day that we have been hearing for several days, today we hear the prophet Amos strike a more hopeful and encouraging tone. The royal house of David, which had been reduced to a “fallen hut,” will be raised up and reinforced again, Amos says. The people of Israel, who would be exiled to the surrounding nations after the time of Amos, would eventually be returned from exile to their former land and prosperity, never to be overrun and exiled again: “I will plant them upon their own ground; never again shall they be plucked from the land I have given them,” God says through Amos.

As in Amos’ time, do we not know of prophets in our own time? One of the first prophets of recent memory, off the top of my head, is the Salvadoran archbishop and martyr Oscar Romero. When Pope Francis spoke almost three years ago to Congress, he named four historical prophets of these United States: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton. Each of these figures, including Pope Francis himself, have shown a prophetic tendency to criticize, fearlessly and sometimes loudly, the evils of individuals and of societies. But prophets do not only complain and criticize; if they do, they are not prophets but useless, angry complainers. They are the “prophets of doom” whom another prophetic figure, “Good Pope John” XXIII, warned against when he announced the opening of the Second Vatican Council.

A true prophet— and we may certainly include Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Oscar Romero, and even Pope Francis himself among true prophets— may complain and criticize when individual and social sin needs firm correction, but they will always offer the people hope to balance their jeremiads. The same is true of Amos in today’s first reading, all of the Biblical prophets, and all prophets before and after them.

Homily for Monday, 2 July 2018– Ferial

Monday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Amos 2:6-10, 13-16; Psalm 50:15bc-17, 18-19, 20-21, 22-23; Matthew 8, 18-22

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

How many of us are at least somewhat unsettled by the harshness of the prophet Amos in today’s first reading and of our Psalm? I do not particularly like to be reminded of my failings, even sometimes when I should be, much less criticized so intensely and at such length as Amos or the Psalmist criticize the people of Israel in the readings we hear today.

It does not seem to matter, at least to my ears, that Amos and our Psalm berate the people of Israel with a poetic style of writing. Can poetry not be just as harsh, and indeed more so, than other literary styles, since poetry is often designed to intensify a message in the way other ways of conveying a message cannot do, to make a point?

And what is the point Amos and our Psalm made to the people of Israel of their time, and to us today, with the intensity that only poetry can achieve? Amos and the Psalmist attack not only the sins of a few individuals, but the deep-seated, longstanding and, for many people of their time and society, subconscious evil of a whole nation; a whole society. For Amos and the other Old Testament prophets and often in the Psalms, the greatest social sin was not to care for the most vulnerable people of a society or a nation; the people summed up by the frequent Biblical motif of “the orphan, the widow, and the foreigner.”

Amos, like other Old Testament prophets, speaking in God’s voice, reminds his people that they were once as vulnerable and in need as the people they are ignoring or oppressing: “It was I who brought you up from the land of Egypt… to occupy the land of the Amorites.” And if the people of Israel did not treat the most vulnerable among themselves with greater justice, they would meet the same end as the Amorites whose land God had given them: Exile and destruction.

Social injustice, to be clear, though, is not a sin for its own sake. No, social injustice, especially toward the most in need and vulnerable, is so great a sin because it is a way of forgetting God. Social injustice puts us at risk of idolatry; of making gods of our wealth, security, might, and comfort in place of the one true God. I invite us to keep this in mind as we hear Amos and our Psalm today: “Remember this, you who never think of God.”

We are gathered here and now to worship God, so I do not think that our Psalm response is directed at us per se. We “think of God”; the evidence is here, among and around us. And yet I think today’s readings, in all their startling harshness, are a call to examine our individual but also social conscience: Who are the most vulnerable and in need in our society today? In what ways have I (or we) forgotten these “least” of our brothers and sisters, “the orphan, widow, and foreigner” of our time, if not oppressed them directly or indirectly through unjust social or political policies and support for those policies or laws? How well does our worship reflect our witness to God, how we “think of God,” by our acts of justice and mercy beyond the walls of this church?