Homily for Sunday, 1 September 2019

Readings of the day: Sirach 3:17-18; Psalm 68:4-5, 6-7, 10-11; Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a; Luke 14:1, 7-14

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at Our Lady of Sorrows Parish, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

What is humility? Is it possible to be confident yet still humble? In 1980, Mac Davis began his song with the sassy lyrics, “O Lord, it’s hard to be humble.” But none of us (including, I dare say, Mac Davis, despite the second tongue-in-cheek line of his song) have the luxury of being “perfect in every way.” So what exactly is humility?

Our readings today from the Book of Sirach and Luke’s Gospel prize the virtue of humility. What other virtues go together with humility, or could help us to understand what humility is and to practice it? Sirach plays on the apparent paradox between humility and greatness; being “lofty and renowned” yet humble. Even the Lord himself, Sirach says, is mighty, “but by the humble he is glorified.”

Do we often think of God as humble, or glorified especially when we are humble? Sirach goes on to connect humility with intelligence, attentiveness, and wisdom. How are humility, intelligence, attentiveness, and wisdom interconnected? Imagine this: Have we ever consulted an expert on something we knew little about? Have we ever taken time to ask an expert or a teacher questions, and then listen and dialogue for the sheer joy of broadening or deepening our knowledge? How many of us have listened to somebody in a difficult situation in life, or cared for somebody vulnerable or in need in any one of a variety of ways?

I have limited experience with monastic religious orders, but the sixth-century Rule of St. Benedict, on which the Rules of many religious orders, in and outside of monasteries, have been based, begins with a very important verb: “Listen.” St. Benedict considered attentive listening, inclination “of the heart,” to be critical to the community life among the monks under his guidance; their rhythm of work and prayer for which Benedictines are known. The abbot of the Benedictine Monastery of Christ in the Desert in New Mexico reflects on the reading we hear from Sirach today about how wisdom is connected to attentive listening. “Wisdom is not an intellectual activity,” the abbot says. “No, it is the gift of knowing how to live well in every situation while maintaining our deepest values.” And to discern what is most true, what is right, what “our deepest values” should be “in every situation”; to encounter God “in every situation” means to know “how to keep still and keep silence.” The abbot of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert suggests that, “as a practical spiritual exercise, today we might try to be still and silent and just listen to others and see what that listening does to us interiorly.”

How many of us have experienced that, the more attentively we listen or care for another person, interiorly we absorb the needs or concerns of the other person. Our needs, in the moment, often become secondary to those of the other person. It is in these situations when I have been the most at peace in ministry as a priest, when ministry is least about me and most about the other and about encountering God in the other person. These experiences of encounter with God in and through another person are made possible by attentive listening. These experiences also require humility: Ministry; listening attentively is not about me first but about another person, and ultimately about God first.

Humility, then, is the key to “our deepest values”; the key to relationship with our God who is mighty, “but by the humble he is glorified.” So humility has nothing to do with a lack of self-confidence or downplaying our natural talents. Our talents, after all, are from God. But, paradoxically, the more naturally talented or intelligent we are, the wiser we will be the more we can be still and listen, when caring for another person; when we are at prayer, especially for the needs of others. So wisdom, far from “an intellectual activity,” is a virtue, the twin virtue of humility, which is at its greatest when we listen for and attentively seek the Lord’s presence in others, because, again paradoxically, the mightier God is, the humbler God is. And the same is true of God as of us. For God, not God’s greatest might for might’s sake but our best interest, our salvation, is God’s greatest glory.

Jesus’ parable we hear today gives us another image of what humility is about. For Sirach, wisdom and humility are about the encounter with God through attentive listening and care for others. For Jesus, humility is to leave the position of greatest social status to another. The images of humility that Sirach and Jesus, through Luke’s Gospel, offer us today are complementary. Who among us has heard it said that human beings are both sacred and social? Sirach focuses more on the sacred dimension of human nature; Jesus in Luke’s Gospel today focuses more on our social dimension, but these two dimensions of our human nature go together.

Jesus was probably no stranger to being invited to dine with the social elites of his time. Today’s Gospel reading finds Jesus invited “to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath.” Presuming that, at this meal with the leading Pharisee, Jesus was a respected guest (since our Gospel reading does not say otherwise), can we not easily imagine Jesus’ host offering Jesus himself the place of honour at table? How would Jesus act in this situation? Would he not have acted as he teaches in his parable, taking “the lowest place” and waiting for his host to invite him up to a place of higher status?

In any case. Jesus turns social convention on its head with his parable we hear today through Luke. Take “the lowest place” at table and wait to be invited “up higher,” Jesus says. “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or rich neighbours,” but first “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,” those who cannot repay your act of kindness and humility.

In truth, this would neither be the first nor the last time Jesus would take the place of least status. The meal we hear about today would be the last time in Luke’s Gospel when Jesus would dine in a Pharisee’s home; the last time he would maybe have been offered the place of highest status at table. But Jesus was born into this world in the humblest place, a manger in Bethlehem. And he would again take the humblest, indeed the most humiliating place, on a cross, where he would die for us. This act of utmost humility is our only way to salvation. And, as a sign of this promise to us of salvation, the exalted place with God that awaits us to the extent we humble ourselves, Jesus would be raised from the dead, but he had to die on a cross first.

He had to, many times during his life, turn our social conventions of status and prestige on their head. “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” It will forever be hard for us “to be humble”; humility is a difficult virtue to define, much less to practice. Yet Jesus proposes what the wisdom of people like Sirach did for centuries before him, and what holy people inspired by Jesus have proposed since: Humility, intentionally placing others and ultimately God first, especially those who are the most in need, the most vulnerable, or the least reputed socially; listening attentively to the needs of others, is key to living up to our God-given human nature, both sacred and social.

We have already been created in God’s image and likeness. There can be no place of greater status than this; no greater prestige our world can offer. The measure to which we are humble, inspiring others by our words and actions to know how much dignity they have before God as creatures in God’s image and likeness, is the measure to which we will be exalted. We will know everlasting communion with our God, who is mighty and glorious beyond our comprehension precisely because he is humble. Indeed, our God is the source of the humility by which we will be saved.

Homily for Thursday, 29 August 2019‒ Memorial of the Passion of St. John the Baptist

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

Thursday of the 21st week in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. James Church, Vernon, BC, Canada.

How many saints get two feast days, one to commemorate their birth and another to commemorate their death, in our Church?

The answer to this question is that two saints are commemorated in our Church both on their dates of birth and dates of death: Mary, mother of God, and John the Baptist. But why, when our Church already offers us the beautiful Solemnity of the Nativity of John the Baptist, which we celebrate on June 24, do we add this memorial of his brutal death by beheading at the hands of King Herod Antipas, who caves in to the demands of his wife Herodias and daughter Salome to put John to death?

Today’s memorial of the Passion of John the Baptist dates back to the earliest centuries of the Church. It is almost as old as the Solemnity of the Nativity of John the Baptist, and is one of the few feasts to have been celebrated in both Eastern and Western Christianity that early in the Church’s history.

Today, I think, this memorial of the Passion of John the Baptist serves as an “echo” celebration to that of the Passion of Jesus Christ, which we commemorate through Holy Thursday and Good Friday. But it also serves as a reminder of our sisters and brothers in faith who continue to give their lives for their faith and for its truths, moral or otherwise. This reality may seem distant to us here in a place like Canada, but perhaps a greater proportion of the world’s total number of Christians are subject to anti-Christian violence or give their lives for their faith than at any time in history.

People of faith, not only Christians, are harmed and killed simply for being who they are; for the most part they are not people who preach religious faith or its teachings in a way that would upset people. They are not the likes of John the Baptist, who as we know from our Gospel confronted Herod Antipas over his wrongful marriage to his brother’s wife Herodias, and so drew the ire of Herodias, who wanted John dead.

The martyrs of today are, by and large, silent witnesses; prophets more by the integrity of their lives than by their words of teaching or preaching. So how can we, here in a place where it is quite safe to practice our Christian faith, live in solidarity with our sisters and brothers today whose faith leaves them in harm’s way?

Like our sisters and brothers in faith who continue to suffer violence and even give their lives for their faith in our world, our first way of living in solidarity with them will usually be to live as they do: Quietly, humbly, but with integrity. Some of us, though, may be called to proclaim truths that will cause discomfort; cause us to be ridiculed, even in our personal and social interactions. We will be called to defend the dignity of all human life, from the first moments of conception to natural death. We are and will be called to live and speak to the truth of the dignity of all creation, against unchecked concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, which breeds (if we are hearing the news reports just within these latest weeks) the evils of greed, nationalism, racism and other forms of xenophobia; the destruction of forests and the accelerated extinction of species.

John the Baptist lived and gave his life for the truths he discerned by faith in his time. In solidarity with John and many people of faith who live and give their lives in similar ways still today, we are and will be called to do the same.

Homily for Wednesday, 28 August 2019– Memorial of St. Augustine of Hippo

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13; Psalm 139:7-8, 9-10, 11-12ab; Matthew 23:27-32

Wednesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. James Church, Vernon, BC, Canada.

The Psalmist asks God today, “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence”? This question in our Psalm today is, of course, rhetorical; there is no way we may flee from the presence of God and God’s all-knowing spirit. But we should have no need to flee from God, either. God knows we are weakened by the effects of sin. Still, God sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem and save us, not waiting for us to save ourselves (which is impossible), but encountering us and lifting us from our present state: Good, because after all we are created in God’s image, but corrupted by sin.

There is no point in trying to flee from God, but do we not try to do so from time to time anyway, when we know we have done wrong and are ashamed or afraid of the consequences of our wrongdoing? The saint we celebrate today, Augustine of Hippo, knew something about the futility of trying to flee from God. Before he became one of the most beloved saints and most prolific Christian writers of all time, a bishop and a doctor of the Church (which means that the teaching value of a saint’s writings is especially recognized by our Church), Augustine spent many years trying to flee from God.

In trying to turn himself away from his wild youth, Augustine experimented with philosophical movements that diminished the goodness of the physical human body, understanding it to be the source of the evil, especially sexual evil, within us. But at this point Augustine was still far from God. In his Confessions, Augustine even admits to having prayed during this time in his life, “God, grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.”

So Augustine spent much of his youth running and trying to flee from God. But God, in an especially spectacular way (but not an unprecedented way, since there are many saints like Augustine whom God found and turned from their sin), caught up to Augustine. Again, in his Confessions, Augustine includes the prayer that reflects God’s persistence in bringing him to conversion: “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient yet ever new… You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you… You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness… I have tasted you; now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”

As a bishop, Augustine reasoned against the Pelagians, who argued that we could will our own salvation without God’s grace. Augustine taught that the effects of “original” sin, while not negating the goodness of our human nature, created in God’s image and likeness, have made our will, incapable of achieving our salvation without God’s grace. Augustine knew this truth from experience.

There is no point in behaving as hypocrites, in the way the religious leaders of Jesus’ time did and whom Jesus rebukes in our Gospel today. Jesus rebukes the pride and hypocrisy of the Pharisees and scribes, who lorded their social prestige over people they perceived to be inferior; more sinful than they. In fact, this hypocrisy was just another way to try to flee from God.

What Jesus knew and taught because he is God, Augustine had to learn and live by experience: It is futile for us to run from God. God will find us. God will redeem us, and we, like Augustine, will burn for God’s eternal peace.

Homily for Tuesday, 27 August 2019– Memorial of St. Monica

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Psalm 139:1-3, 4-6; Matthew 23:23-26

Tuesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. James Church, Vernon, BC, Canada.

What do we know about St. Monica, whose memorial we celebrate today? Much of what we know about St. Monica, we know from the writings of her far more famous son, St. Augustine. But St. Augustine’s feast day is tomorrow, so we will speak more on St. Monica today and leave our focus on St. Augustine for tomorrow. Well, that is easier said than done, so interconnected is Monica’s life with that of Augustine.

From Augustine, we know that Monica was an exceptionally generous woman. When Monica sought advice from saintly bishops including Ambrose of Milan on how to bring her wayward Augustine to the Christian faith—it would have been notable enough, especially for a woman of Monica’s time, to have had the personal connections with bishops as Monica did—as Augustine would write later in his Confessions, Monica prepared food and drink to leave at churches and oratories where she would stop to pray. She explicitly instructed these churches to give this food and drink to the poor.

But Monica is maybe best known as a saint who suffered greatly because of the infidelity of her pagan husband Patricius and the unruliness of her son Augustine. We hear from 1 Thessalonians and Matthew’s Gospel today about the suffering St. Paul endured in places like Philippi and the suffering the religious leaders of Jesus’ time caused Jesus. In St. Paul’s case, instead of his suffering causing him to become bitter, because St. Paul had suffered so he became all the more generous not only in preaching “the Gospel of God” but in offering the witness of his life to care for the Christian community of Thessalonica. And, we know, Jesus’ suffering at the hands of the religious authorities of his day culminated in his death on the cross, the ultimate sacrifice of his very self for our salvation.

Still, the suffering St. Monica endured are especially remarkable because she endured this suffering from the people closest to her, her husband and her son. And her love, her suffering, her tears that have been the subject of several beautiful paintings and other works of art, were instrumental in bringing Patricius (on his deathbed) and later Augustine to the faith of Jesus Christ. Augustine spends some of the most poignant pages of his Confessions and other writings movingly mourning his mother, Monica, since she had died not long before Augustine became a bishop and perhaps the most prolific Christian writer to date. Monica was, without doubt, instrumental in Augustine’s and maybe Patricius’ (although he is not named as such) becoming saints.

Monica is the patron saint of people in difficult marriages, people who suffer difficult relationships with their children and family members, and victims of infidelity and abuse. I encourage anybody who has suffered or knows anybody who has suffered any of these experiences to pray for the intercession of St. Monica. Pray for the intercession of saints like Paul of Tarsus, who went from causing good people to suffer to suffering persecution for the Gospel. And may we unite our prayers to those of our Lord, whose suffering and death alone redeems all suffering once for all and saves us.

Let me be clear about this: The Church does not require anybody to remain in an abusive relationship that places our well-being and even life in danger. But saints like Monica and Paul and the suffering of Jesus himself show that no suffering; no perpetrator of suffering is beyond redemption. This is why the examples of saints like Monica and Paul; like Augustine, whose feast we will celebrate tomorrow, and like our Lord Jesus himself, and our prayers through these great figures of our faith matter.