Homily for Sunday, 26 August 2018

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b; Psalm 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21; Ephesians 4:32- 5:1-2, 21-32; John 6:60-69

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

Baseball great Yogi Berra once famously said, “If you see a fork in the road, take it.” Of course, he also once quipped, “I never said half the things I said,” so sometimes what Yogi Berra actually said is up for debate.

Our readings today present us with “fork in the road” situations; we are required to make choices: In Joshua, whether to “serve the LORD” or the gods of foreign nations and faiths; in Ephesians, whether to act in our relationships among one another with the love with which Christ loves us; in John’s Gospel, whether or not to continue to follow Jesus when his teachings and those of the Church he has founded become “difficult.” When have we been faced with situations in our lives when we have had to make choices, practically, morally, or otherwise? Does this not happen to us constantly?

Are we not all here because we have chosen to be here? Our reasons for being here at this Mass at Our Lady of Sorrows vary: Maybe we are here out of a simple joy and love for the Mass. Maybe we are here with friends or family. Maybe we are here because the time of this Mass allows us to sleep in just a bit longer before we drag ourselves to Mass (that is not necessarily a bad thing), or because “Mom, Dad, or somebody made me get up for Mass,” or some other sense of obligation, or maybe some other more or less noble motive. The point is that we have all made a choice to be here. And, from the choice to be here to worship as a Catholic community of faith to simpler everyday choices like what to eat or wear, we are constantly making choices.

But relatively few of our choices are of the magnitude of the “fork in the road” moments faced by the people of Israel in Joshua’s time, the early Christians addressed by the letter to the Ephesians, or Jesus’ disciples in John’s Gospel grappling with what Jesus meant by making eating his flesh and drinking his blood essential for their eternal life. Each of these groups of people featured in our readings today also faces great pressure in making the choices they need to make. Would it be fair for us to wonder whether these people may have been tempted to evade making choices at all, or tempted strongly to make the wrong choice?

We hear first today from the end of the Book of Joshua. By this point in the Book of Joshua, the people of Israel who had been led by Moses and his successor, Joshua, back to their land have conquered this land for themselves from the Canaanites with relative ease. They might have thought, and probably many of them did think reasonably that it would be just as easy to maintain the land they had conquered as it had been to take possession of it. Sure, there are nations more powerful than Israel surrounding Israel and who worship other gods than the LORD. It would be tempting for Israel, in this situation, to bow to these surrounding nations and their gods to avoid being invaded and overtaken by these more powerful nations. Still, Joshua, in his last address to the people of Israel before his death, gives Israel a choice: “If you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve.”

When Israel could have chosen the easy way of alliances with pagan nations and worship of their gods, they choose freely under Joshua’s leadership to be different from these other nations. The people of Israel choose freely to take a risk of angering these other nations by trusting solely in the one LORD they know to be the true God, and not to trust in alliances with worldly power to save them.

A similar choice to the one put before the Israelites under Joshua is put before Jesus’ disciples in John’s Gospel. We have arrived at a decisive point in our relationship with Jesus as his disciples. Jesus has repeatedly claimed that he is God, the one LORD the people of Israel have worshipped since the time of Moses and the gift of manna in the desert. Jesus claims to be the true food from heaven to which the manna only pointed. Jesus claims that the only way to eternal life is to eat his flesh and drink his blood. By this point, the people hearing Jesus are outraged. Most of them turn away from Jesus and return to the way they were living before encountering Jesus. His own disciples ask a very legitimate question, one perhaps many of us have asked about particular aspects or teachings of our faith: “This teaching is difficult. Who can accept it”? How can this man claim to be God, and how can he claim that the only way to eternal life is to eat his flesh and drink his blood?

Jesus’ disciples are at a fork-in-the-road moment, and they have only one choice: To take the fork. And our salvation depends on making the right choice.

“Do you also wish to go away”? Jesus asks his twelve closest disciples, his Apostles, as many if not most of his followers to that point turn “back and no longer [go] about with him.” Jesus knows that, even among these twelve, one will betray him outright, maybe not at this decisive point that is difficult for Jesus’ disciples to commit to following him, but at another fork-in-the-road moment not long thereafter. Might we imagine that even Simon Peter, the leader and usual spokesperson for the Twelve, may not have been so sure if he and the other Apostles in fact wanted to “go away” from Jesus at this point. Peter answers Jesus with a cautious, introspective kind of question at first: “Lord, to whom can we go”? Did Peter pause before continuing to answer Jesus, as if to say, “I need a second to think about this”?

We cannot know fully what was on the mind of Peter and the other disciples, only that this could not have been an easy question for him to answer on their behalf. I imagine Peter, looking up at the thinned-out crowd after many had turned away from Jesus, complaining and disputing among themselves. And yet Peter makes a decisive choice; the right choice. He answers Jesus, “You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe that you are the Holy One of God.” Peter answers “yes” to continuing to follow Jesus, not because he is the perfect disciple, but because he freely chooses to allow Jesus to strengthen him and the others who continue to follow Jesus. Peter freely chooses to continue to walk with Jesus, at least until the next fork in the road.

My sisters and brothers, this is all Jesus; all God asks of us (or at least all Yogi Berra asks of us): “If you see a fork in the road, take it.” There will be points in our lives, if there have not been already, when we must choose and there is no intermediate option between “yes” and “no”; between serving the LORD and serving other gods, ourselves, or worldly goods and pleasures as gods; between continuing to follow Jesus, who has the “the words of eternal life,” as difficult as his way and words can be to follow, and not.

There will be points in our lives, as the letter to the Ephesians reminds us with the imagery of a faithful marriage, when to love another person, let alone God, will be a difficult choice. Our readings call us beyond the attraction-infatuation stage we might experience at first in a relationship with somebody, and even with God. Love becomes a choice. Being Church, a community of faith in worship and actions of kindness and mercy, eventually becomes not mere infatuation but a choice. It becomes a difficult choice in love when any members of the Church, especially in leadership, idolize and abuse power and prestige. They walk among the crowds who turn from Jesus; who make the easy but wrong choice; who refuse to walk with Jesus beyond the fork in the road.

Will we, then, continue with Jesus beyond the fork in the road, at least until the next decisive moment? Will we choose to be Church? Will we choose to serve the LORD faithfully? Will we choose to love as Christ loves us and “gave himself up for” us? Will we choose to let the words of Simon Peter be ours: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Homily for Friday, 24 August 2018‒ Feast of St. Bartholomew

Friday of the 20th 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 St. James Church, Vernon, BC, Canada.

What is the difference between a disciple and an apostle, and how are these related to each other? Please forgive me for a somewhat academic beginning to my reflection here but, for most of the year, I live in Paris as a doctoral student and, when I am not in Paris, I teach theology courses at St. Joseph’s College at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

A disciple, from the Greek origin of this word, is a student. We might think of related words like “discipline,” which can mean either the necessary focus on a specific area of study, or the area of study itself. The simplest, most literal meaning of an apostle, again a word of Greek origin, is one who is sent out.

I like to think of my experience as a priest; in ministry; as a Christian as one of combining roles as a disciple and an apostle, a student drawn in to learn from experts and then one who is sent out to serve, to teach, and to draw other people to Jesus Christ. We hear today from John’s Gospel about the encounters between Philip and Nathanael and then Nathanael and Jesus, how Philip and Nathanael combine roles as disciples and apostles.

John introduces Philip to us as a newly-called disciple. He is Jesus’ newest student, and he is a straight-A student! Philip is quick to understand that his role will not only be a passive one as Jesus’ student, but an active one, an apostolic one, of seeking and attracting other disciples to the Lord. And so Philip immediately finds Nathanael, one whose standout characteristic is transparency: “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit,” Jesus says later about Nathanael.

This new student in Jesus’ class, Nathaniel, is the type of person who is honest enough to ask questions that the other students and even the teacher may not want to hear but need to hear, like, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth”? Nathaniel’s question does not faze Philip, who understands Nathanael’s quality of character and fitness to be a disciple and then an apostle. “Come and see,” Philip says to Nathanael. Come and be a disciple of this Jesus of Nazareth, “about whom Moses wrote in the law and also the prophets wrote.”

Nathanael, to his credit, takes up Philip’s invitation to be Jesus’ disciple. He starts, as Philip did, as Jesus’ disciple, at a “come and see” invitation, and Jesus transforms him, as he did Philip, into an apostle: “You will see greater things than these.” It is almost as though Jesus says to Nathaniel, “Not only will you see greater things than what you are experiencing now, but I will send you out to attract still more people to these greater things; to God; to eternal life.”

Jesus and Philip the Apostle extend to us the same invitation as they once did Nathanael: First, “come and see,” and then go, be sent out to attract still more disciples to Christ. Seek out and attract those who will, without deceit, ask a difficult but necessary question in today’s world: “What good can come out of the Church; out of being a Christian today”? And then may we be the good that attracts to Christ good people, disciples who will be formed by Christ through us into apostles; people who will “come and see” and then be sent out ourselves to serve the Lord.

Homily for Thursday, 23 August 2018– Ferial

Thursday of the 20th Week in Ordinary Time


Optional Memorial of St. Rose of Lima

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 36:23-28; Psalm 51:12-13, 14-15, 18-19; Matthew 22:1-11

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

What does St. Rose of Lima, whose feast we celebrate today, have to do with the relationship between the king and the guest in Jesus’ parable in today’s Gospel reading who arrives at the king’s wedding feast without his wedding robe?

Is Jesus’ parable we hear today not strange, in the sense that the king seems inconsistent in whether he metes out justice toward some who abuse his generosity, while he is abundantly merciful toward others we would expect him to punish more severely? In the case of the guest who arrives at the wedding feast not wearing his wedding garment, the king responds with particular harshness: “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Why is the king in Jesus’ parable so harsh with this guest? This man does not make light of the king’s invitation to his wedding feast or, worse yet, mistreat and murder the king’s slaves as other invitees to the wedding feast do, so why is the man who might merely have forgotten the proper or have been too poor to dress in attire for the king’s wedding singled out to be excluded from the banquet hall?

Here, I would like to return to my reflection on St. Rose of Lima, a third order Dominican from Peru who lived from 1586 to 1617. St. Rose of Lima was the first saint from the Americas ever canonized. Although she was a layperson (she had taken a personal vow of virginity but never took formal vows in a religious order), St. Rose of Lima is almost always depicted in art and icons in a Dominican habit.

The religious order to which I belong, the Basilians, has no habit besides the usual clothing of priests, a clerical shirt and Roman collar when serving in ministry. Yet our clothing, even when we are not in ministry, is meant to reflect the values we strive to live as religious and priests: Poverty as simplicity of life; modesty; solidarity with the people with whom we minister. And yet these values, expressed in the formal vows we take in religious life, poverty, chastity, and obedience, are values to which every one of us, as baptized Christians, is invited to strive toward.

This was true of St. Rose of Lima, regardless of whether, as a layperson, she ever actually wore a Dominican religious habit. She wore the garment of the king’s wedding feast; the Lord’s feast of heaven, in her heart, and this was expressed in a life of outward solidarity with the poor and suffering in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Lima.

Jesus asks this of all of us: To clothe our hearts with the Lord’s wedding robe, a garment we are given at baptism. The garment is what we most value, even more than what we wear outwardly, which ideally is a sign of the values deepest within our hearts. If what we most value is love of God, love of one another and especially solidarity with those most in need, then I do not think we will need to worry about meeting the same end as the man without his wedding garment in today’s Gospel parable. The values deepest in our hearts will naturally express themselves outwardly; they will be our God-given garment of the feast of eternal life.