Homily for Sunday, 18 April 2021– Third Sunday of Easter, Year B

Readings of the day: Acts 3:13-15, 17-19; Psalm 4:2, 4, 7-8, 9; 1 John 2:1-5a; Luke 24:35-48

“Peace be with you,” alleluia!

How many of us have noticed that today, for the second Sunday Gospel reading in a row, Jesus’ first words to his disciples when he stands among them after he rises from the dead are, “Peace be with you”? Jesus’ greeting has become very familiar to us. And I imagine that Jesus’ greeting to his first disciples quickly became very familiar to them, too, after his resurrection. After all, both Luke’s and John’s Gospels, from which we have heard this Sunday and last, feature the risen Jesus greeting his disciples in this way. In fact, in John’s Gospel (think back to last Sunday), the risen Jesus greets his disciples not only once but three times—first to his disciples, except for Thomas, on the evening of the day he rose; a second time immediately after that, when Jesus also breathes the Holy Spirit on his disciples; and then a third time with Thomas present: “Peace be with you.”

Luke has Jesus greet his disciples only once, in Emmaus, “Peace be with you.” But it is effective. I imagine that, at this point, although Luke says that Jesus’ disciples were still “startled and terrified,” they began to think, “This is bizarre, even terrifying, but we have heard this greeting sometime, someplace before.”

And we hear from Luke today the second major part of the Easter story that, in Luke, begins with Jesus among only two of his disciples on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. By the beginning of today’s Gospel, these two disciples have already met up with and “told the eleven [apostles] and their companions what had happened on the road to Emmaus, and how Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”

My sisters and brothers in the risen Christ, Jesus is still making himself known by this same simple action; this same simple greeting as he did those first times to his first disciples: He “had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” He made himself known to them by greeting them, “Peace be with you.”

There is a reason why, since Vatican II, the sign of peace has been included as part of what we call the Communion Rite at Mass, which extends from the Our Father until we receive communion. To greet one another in the risen Jesus’ words, “Peace be with you,” is essential in order to recognize Jesus “in the breaking of the bread.” When we greet one another at Mass, “Peace be with you,” we recognize the Christ really and truly present in one another, in the Church. We need to recognize the Christ really and truly present in one another, in the Church, before we are able to recognize and worship him as really and truly present in the Eucharistic bread and wine that become his Body and Blood.

“Peace be with you” and “the breaking of the bread” are inseparable. But is the sign of peace, where it has been in the Order of Mass for over fifty years now, not still a bit startling? Most if not all of us have, I suppose, gotten used to the sign of peace where it is now in the Mass. Certainly it is not terrifying as Jesus’ disciples found it when Jesus greeted them, “Peace be with you,” that first time in Emmaus. And maybe we have gotten used to our “text of peace” during our Masses streamed over Zoom for the last year or so, even if it still commands our attention in (I still find) a bit of a jarring way when we exchange peace through Zoom’s chat function: Make sure we exchange a sign of peace with panelists and participants, and so on…

During Vatican II, where the sign of peace was to be placed within the Mass, and whether everybody in the assembly or only clergy during a Solemn Mass (as had been before Vatican II) would exchange peace ritually, were hotly-debated among the bishops at the Council. The English former Master of the Dominican order, Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, tells one of my favourite stories about the sign of peace when it was inserted back into the Mass just after the Our Father after Vatican II. Two French Dominicans Fr. Radcliffe visited at that time, Frs. Yves Congar and Marie-Dominique Chenu, both important figures at Vatican II, had very different approaches to the sign of peace although both lived in the same house in Paris. Congar’s sign of peace “was a grave and formal gesture, whereas Chenu affectionately punched and hugged… and pulled one’s hair”!

“Peace be with you”: We hear the same oh-so-familiar greeting; it is the same Christ really and truly present in one another as in the “grave and formal” Congar, the excitable Chenu, or the terrified disciples who had just witnessed Jesus’ death on a cross and “thought they were seeing a ghost.” It is the same Christ who makes himself known “in the breaking of the bread” and who opens our “minds to understand the Scriptures”: That death no longer has power over the risen Christ, or over us; that we are invited to proclaim the “repentance and forgiveness of sins” that Jesus’ resurrection has made possible, “to all nations.”

This seems to be a daunting task, does it not? How are we to proclaim this “repentance and forgiveness of sins… to all nations” in Jesus’ name? Well, we could begin with a familiar greeting, one that captured its hearers’ attention when Jesus said it, and still does whenever we say it and live it: “Peace be with you”; shalom!

The familiar peace Jesus offers us stirs the world to attention because it does not and cannot come from this world. Jesus’ shalom captures our attention, but it also consoles, reconciles, empowers each and every one of us not only to speak this greeting to one another, but to live it: To seek to console, to reconcile, to empower and so to point out God’s work to still more people in our world and to point one another to God, our only everlasting peace and salvation.

In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Peter gives us an example of how to proclaim and live the risen Christ’s shalom. Yet, I will admit, I find the way in which Peter addresses the people “at the temple gate” in Jerusalem a bit troubling at first hearing. His preaching sounds at first to be heavy on the fire and brimstone, speaking to the people about “Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate… You killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead,” Peter rails. This is not a homily I think I would be capable of giving!

But, if anybody knew their need for Jesus’ shalom—“Peace be with you”—it was Peter. It was Peter who stood before the temple gate, a redeemed sinner, witnessing to his reconciliation and peace with God made possible only by Jesus’ death and resurrection and that is now available to all of us, redeemed sinners whom we are. “Repent therefore, and turn to God”; turn toward the one who greets us, “peace be with you”… “so that your sins may be wiped out.” How remarkable is Peter’s message from the temple gate?

And the first Letter of John proclaims the same message, the same greeting at its heart, in a slightly different way than Peter. Jesus Christ is “our advocate with the Father… the atoning sacrifice for our sins” and the sins “of the whole world.”

Jesus Christ, crucified at the hands of sinners,

Jesus Christ, “our advocate with the Father” and the redemption of sinners,

Jesus Christ, our reconciliation with God,

Jesus Christ, who calls us to proclaim his peace to all peoples and nations,

Jesus Christ, really and truly present in all the Scriptures, in the Eucharist, and in each of us and our signs of peace,

Jesus Christ, of the familiar greeting that stirs the world to attention; that forgives; that quells fears and doubts; that saves,

Jesus Christ, risen from the dead,

Jesus Christ, our shalom.

“Peace be with you.”

Homily for Tuesday, 13 April 2021– Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 4:32-37; Psalm 93:1ab, 1cd-2, 5; John 3:7b-15

The first part of the Acts of the Apostles refers, in at least a couple of significant instances, to how united the earliest communities of Jesus’ disciples were. Today we hear that these first disciples “were of one heart and soul”; that the unity of these earliest disciples of Jesus was connected with their strict common ownership of material possessions: “Everything they owned was held in common.”

This passage is one of the most frequently-cited Biblical references to uphold the vow or counsel of poverty. I think, in this respect, of a book I studied during my novitiate on the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, Francis Moloney’s A Life of Promise. Might this also make us think of the variety in practice of the vow of poverty, even within our own Basilian Congregation, let alone among different communities of vowed religious? I think, for instance, of the many gifts from different countries in which my great aunt Jeanne, a Sister of Holy Cross, ministered, that she gave to family members, because she was not allowed to keep these gifts for herself. Her order’s vow of poverty was and is, by my observation, lived much more strictly than ours.

But how closely is the insistence in Acts on how the earliest Christians held “everything they owned… in common” a reflection of historical reality, versus an ideal for life especially in Christian community? Scholars still debate over this question. Francis Moloney, in A Life of Promise, points out that, after the reading we hear today, the very next event in Acts is that of Ananias and Sapphira, who keep part of the proceeds from the sale of property for themselves instead of turning it over to their community of disciples. And then both Ananias and Sapphira drop dead on the spot!

So which was it: Did the earliest Christian communities truly hold “everything they owned… in common,” or was this an ideal that was not necessarily (or usually) followed to the letter? My thought is that it was a bit of both historical reality—that these earliest Christian communities strove to practice common ownership of goods—and an ideal, much as it is both-and today. There was and is still variety in how material goods were owned or shared communally. And maybe how individuals or communities practiced, we may say, a precursor to our vows of poverty was not in itself essential to one’s standing as a good and faithful Christian.

Yet I think Acts’ emphasis on this common ownership characteristic of these earliest Christian communities may lead us to ask ourselves questions like: What, if not strict common ownership of material goods, is essential to our Christian way of life, from the message we hear from Acts today? And is there something that the example of these earliest Christians calls us to hold in common, if not strictly or only material goods?

Especially as somebody who has taken a public vow of poverty, I interpret Acts as inviting and reminding us that we (as vowed religious, but this is true of all baptized Christians) hold in common a responsibility for one another’s whole-person well-being—spiritual, mental, physical, and so forth—in this earthly life and, ultimately, for one another’s salvation. We are not saved as individuals so much as together, in and by one God. Common ownership of earthly goods, or any expression or vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience, can be a sign of our universal call to holiness and ultimately to salvation.

Homily for Sunday, 4 April 2021– The Resurrection of the Lord, Mass of Easter Sunday

Readings of the day: Acts 10:34a, 37-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Christ is risen! He is truly risen! Alleluia, alleluia!

If I can name one person, besides our risen Lord Jesus, my family, friends, or brother Basilians, who especially drew me toward religious life and priesthood, simply by the example of holiness she lived, it was perhaps my great aunt (my maternal grandmother’s sister), Jeanne d’Arc Brunelle. Aunt Jeanne was a sister of the Congregation of Holy Cross, in religious vows for 71 years. Just before and during my time in seminary as a Basilian, and for my first years of ordained ministry as a deacon and then a priest, I lived near enough to Aunt Jeanne while I was in Toronto and Rochester and she in Cornwall and then Montreal that I could drive to see her fairly often. And, for as long as I can remember, Aunt Jeanne would call our home at Christmas, and we e-mailed back and forth constantly.

Especially if it had been longer than usual since Aunt Jeanne and I had heard from or written each other, she would apologize for having taken so long to show “signs of life from your old, great aunt”! Aunt Jeanne, suffice it to say, lived with an attractive, holy, and fearless joy. She suffered with cancer for the last fourteen years of her life, but the disease never took away her joy and mildly sassy edge; it never took away those “signs of life” from our Aunt Jeanne. Her funeral, at Pavillon Saint-Joseph, the Holy Cross infirmary in Montreal, four years ago this past November, was about as joyful as a funeral could be. In fact, I do not remember a wake service, ever, with as many peals of laughter and tears of joy as from the (mostly) elderly sisters at Pavillon Saint-Joseph at Aunt Jeanne’s wake service, as memories of Aunt Jeanne’s 71 years of religious life, living and ministering in countless countries in the world (some very poor or marred by violence) were recounted.

A funeral, we may think, is a strange place to encounter “signs of life.” Yet I had a feeling I would encounter just this when the Superior of Pavillon Saint-Joseph contacted me to let me know Aunt Jeanne had died, so I could plan to attend her funeral. Today, our Gospel recounts another event, one central to our Christian faith, when the people involved, Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and Jesus’ beloved disciple, go to the scene—the tomb of Jesus—not expecting, we can be sure, to find “signs of life” there.

We have the gift of hindsight. We know this is just what Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the beloved disciple find: The ultimate sign of life; the empty tomb; our Lord Jesus, risen. But Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the beloved disciple did not know that they would find any signs of life at Jesus’ tomb. After all, it was a tomb; a resting place of the dead, not a place to encounter signs of life. So unexpected was it for each of them to encounter our risen Lord that this encounter, in a different way for each of Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the beloved disciple, was truly jarring.

Each of them—Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the beloved disciple—encounter signs of life where they expected to find death. Yet, in a way none of them realized in the moment, each of them brought their own “signs of life” when they went, that first Easter morning, to Jesus’ tomb. They brought with them signs of life in the depths of their hearts; signs of life that, as John’s Gospel recounts this event, anticipated the resurrection of Jesus.

How is this so? John’s Gospel is not clear why Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb at first, only that she goes to the tomb “while it [is] still dark” and finds the stone removed from the tomb’s entrance. But there is a tradition in our Church, from Mark’s and Luke’s Gospel accounts of Mary Magdalene’s Easter morning arrival at the tomb, of Mary as the first to bring spices to anoint Jesus’ body. Even the name Mary derives from myrrh, which was used then as a burial spice.

My sisters and brothers, the Easter morning visit to Jesus’ tomb by Mary, the “myrrh bearer” of Magdala, is a supreme act of love; a first sign on the part of Mary Magdalene of the risen Lord’s own life deep within her, before she even realizes it is there. And this love of the “myrrh bearer” and the Lord’s life source within Mary Magdalene overwhelm and overflow from her. She cannot remain at the empty tomb, but returns to tell Simon Peter and the beloved disciple, with some alarm: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” The three disciples of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the unnamed disciple “whom Jesus loved,” return together to the tomb. But only Mary remains there, weeping, until she is able to encounter her beloved; our beloved, the Risen One, Jesus. Maybe just as unnervingly for Mary Magdalene as it was to find the stone rolled away and the tomb emptied of the Lord’s body at first, we hear Jesus command Mary sharply, “Do not hold onto me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

“Do not hold onto me”: It is as if Jesus says to Mary Magdalene, “Do not hold onto the source of love; the sign of life that is already within you and that you communicated so freely and beautifully already by going to the tomb to anoint my body with myrrh, and then by returning to tell my disciples that I had risen. “Do not hold onto” Love; I must be free to ascend “to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God,” Jesus says. This is the only way that the source of love, the sign of the life of the risen Lord that is already within Mary Magdalene, may be received by God the Father and then showered on the whole world in the person of God the Holy Spirit.

My sisters and brothers, what we begin to celebrate today—our Easter time that runs from today’s celebration of our Lord’s resurrection, through the celebrations of Jesus’ ascension to heaven and the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost—Mary Magdalene and then Simon Peter and the beloved disciple experience in an instant. They are able to experience this entire Paschal mystery in an instant and then to found our Church on it because, in a sense, it is only possible to encounter love of this magnitude if we who set out to encounter love, to encounter the Lord’s “signs of life” in our world, already have that love within us and are willing to give it to the world freely, not to “hold onto” it simply for ourselves.

“Do not hold onto me”: At this point the risen Jesus gives Mary Magdalene the strength to release God’s love already within her, the love that enabled her to go to the tomb that first Easter morning in the first place, upon the world with an attractive, holy, and fearless joy. And amid these events at the empty tomb, Simon Peter and the beloved disciple are given this same strength, which they show in different ways: The beloved disciple arrives ahead of Simon Peter and enters the tomb. This “sign of life,” the disciple “whom Jesus loved,” enters a place of death and finds it, physically, empty of any body; empty not only of life or death, but simply empty. Biblical experts have commented on how this encounter of the beloved disciple with the emptiness and utter absence of the tomb may be John’s way of directing our memory back to the earliest tradition of Israel of the Ark of the Covenant of the Old Testament. The ancient people of Israel traveled with an empty box under a tent; emptiness in which God was believed to dwell.

So the beloved disciple encounters ultimate presence in utter absence. The beloved enters the absence of the tomb, as the Carmelite reformer St. John of the Cross would write centuries later in a poem in which he is the seeker, “seeking love.” And the beloved disciple finds the ultimate presence of the Love he seeks in the absence. “He saw and believed,” John’s Gospel says. Simon Peter does not enter the Presence of the empty tomb that has become the new Ark of the Covenant; the new Holy of Holies. Instead, he contemplates from outside. Simon Peter is set on a mission to understand these “signs of life” by which God chose to save the world; “to understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”

We, too, celebrate today because we love and have come to encounter Love Risen. We seek to understand this encounter in light of the Scripture, “that he must rise from the dead.” We believe once we realize we have encountered ultimate, saving love in utter emptiness. And our faith drives us to release the “signs of life” we have deep within us already, the love of the risen Christ, upon our world with attractive, holy, and fearless joy.

Homily for Friday, 2 April 2021– Friday of the Passion of the Lord (Good Friday)

Readings of the day: Isaiah 52:15-53:12; Psalm 31:6, 12-13, 15-16, 17, 25; Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Let me, if we will, propose two key terms, freedom and solidarity, through which we might remember the events we do today, of the Passion and death of our Lord Jesus.

In his recent reflection for Good Friday in America Magazine, published by the Jesuits in the U.S., Fr. Terrance Klein, a priest of Dodge City, Kansas, asks what exactly God might have willed in allowing Jesus to go to his death, on a cross no less. Did, or could God, in fact, will his Son Jesus’ death in this horrific and humiliating way? This question may be both a common puzzle for us as Christian faithful and a major obstacle, Fr. Klein says, to non-believers: Who would want to believe in a God who would will, or at least allow, his Son to undergo a death like this?

Yet John’s Gospel today invites us to behold not so much God as a Father who would will or permit his Son to be given up to death, but the Son, Jesus, as freely in command of his self-sacrifice on the cross to its final moment, when “it is finished.” Our faith proclaims this freedom of Jesus; the freedom, Jesus says of himself at one point in John’s Gospel, to lay down his life and “to take it up again.”

And, if we go all the way back to the first moments of creation, we see that, of all the creatures God created, God willed from the very beginning to give us the same freedom God has. This is quite remarkable! This was and is also quite risky on God’s part: God gave us the freedom that nobody else but God has, to accept and to love whom God has made us to be or to reject and to hate this; to accept and love God; to accept and love one another as God loves us, or to reject and refuse to love God and one another.

When we have chosen to misuse the freedom God gave us to accept and love or to reject and refuse to love—this to some extent willing rejection and refusal to love, we might call sin—God has not rejected us in turn, although God was free to do so. No, God has responded to our sin by continually calling to us and being with us in history, through the Law and the prophets and, finally, by becoming like us in all but sin in the person of Jesus Christ. And we remember today how Jesus, Son of God, completed his free act of solidarity with us sinners: By redeeming us from all our sin, our rejection, our violence and hatred; by submitting to all this at the hands of sinners, on a cross, and transforming this into our ultimate good; the only possible means of our salvation.

“It is finished” now, this free act of God of solidarity with us, the only way we can be freed from sin and saved. We are witnesses, this and every Good Friday, to God’s re-creation of us, as remarkable as God’s first act of creating us with God’s own freedom. We are witnesses to this renewed freedom God has given us to love, to accept, to enter into solidarity with one another, especially anybody in any way disadvantaged, rejected, or abandoned in our world, as God freely entered into solidarity with us; as God freely took on our human experiences of joy and sorrow; good and evil; life, death, and resurrection, we pray, to eternal life.

Homily for Sunday, 21 March 2021– Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year B

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:3-4, 12-13, 14-15; Hebrews 5:7-9; John 12:20-33

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

What would we think if I said, “The days are surely coming”; that some event or great news we have been looking forward to, maybe for a long time, was imminent? What if God were to say this to us, or somebody we think of as a prophet—like Jeremiah was to ancient Israel, but in our own time—or a person otherwise in a position of authority were to announce to us, “The days are surely coming”?

“The days are surely coming, says the LORD” through his prophet Jeremiah and to us anew today! I wonder, though, how the people who heard Jeremiah in their time announce this to them felt at first. Would they have been especially excited or joyful? Would they have wondered what this “new covenant” God was announcing through Jeremiah meant? Would they have felt guilty for their sins as a people since, as we hear from Jeremiah, the very reason God was proclaiming a “new covenant” with Israel was that Israel had broken the first covenant with God? Israel, God’s people, had been unfaithful to God, in a way similar to when there is infidelity between spouses in a marriage. But would the people of Israel, when they heard Jeremiah’s promise of “a new covenant” between them and God, been all the more resolved not to remain paralyzed by their guilt, but to repent?

Maybe many of them would have thought Jeremiah to be too dramatic and simply ignored him or become irritated by him (after all, Jeremiah is known among the Old Testament prophets to have been especially dramatic, fiery, even angry in his speech). Many may have been moved by Jeremiah’s tireless passion to listen to his announcement of this “new covenant” between them and God. More than likely, ancient Israel’s initial responses to Jeremiah’s announcement of “the days… surely coming” were a bit of “all of the above.”

“The days are surely coming”! How do we continue to hear and discern this message in our time? For about a year now, since the first COVID-19 control measures started, I have been praying Evening Prayer over Zoom every day with a group of relatives and friends from different places where I have ministered as a priest. Within the last few weeks, people in our prayer group have announced and been receiving doses of the vaccines against COVID-19. And, this past week, [one of our Basilian confrères in our house], whom many of us may know from his time at St. Joseph’s College, was so excited that he was finally able to book an appointment to receive a vaccine.

I was and am so happy for him! I could not help think of God’s first words to the people of Israel through Jeremiah in today’s reading: “The days are surely coming”! The days are surely coming when this pandemic will be in the past; a memory. The days are surely coming when we will be able to gather safely in our chapels at St. Joseph’s College for Mass. The days are surely coming when COVID-related restrictions on in-person attendance at Masses will be relaxed and then be no more; when we will be able to celebrate Eucharist and other sacraments freely, without anxiety about becoming sick, and as the health and nourishment of our souls, minds, and bodies requires.

These “days are surely coming”; this gives me great hope, and I cannot wait to welcome all of us, St. Joseph’s College’s worshipping community; faculty; students; staff colleagues, back to in-person worship; classes; prayer and work at our College as soon as we are able. “The days are surely coming” and, may I say, the days are already upon us (and not only because we have weathered a pandemic) when we have acquired an acute sense of Christ-like service to and prayer for anybody in need; anybody who is especially poor or disadvantaged, or simply anybody who longs (as we do) to gather together in one worship space to pray; hear God’s Word; sing; take, bless, break, and eat the bread that becomes Christ’s body, given for us and for our salvation, together. I am deeply grateful and joyful, sisters and brothers, whenever I look upon our community of faith here at St. Joseph’s College, whether (for now) in little insets in a Zoom window or (in not too long, we pray) in our College chapels, halls, offices, and classrooms.

“The days are surely coming” or, as Jesus says in John’s Gospel today, “The hour has come.” Now, when Jesus says in our Gospel, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified,” is this not a rather ominous reference to “the death he was to die”? Once again (Fr. Jim spoke a bit about this last Sunday), John’s Gospel today repeats Jesus’ connection between his being raised on the cross and the bronze serpent in Moses’ time being raised on a pole to heal the people of poisonous snakebites.

The crowd of Greeks who approach the Apostle Philip at the beginning of our Gospel today simply “wish to see Jesus.” I imagine this crowd is a lot like us: We, too, simply and nobly, “wish to see Jesus.” My prayer for us, sisters and brothers, is that our simple and noble “wish to see Jesus,” to worship and receive Jesus in the Eucharist, be granted very soon; that this “hour has come”; that at least those “days are surely coming” for us. Yet the crowds’ “wish to see Jesus” in John’s Gospel is met not with immediate consolation but with Jesus’ unsettling, even morbid at first hearing, reference to his approaching death on a cross.

And Jesus says that, for us to be in any way like him—like whom we are called to be through our baptism—means that we, too, will have a share in his passion and death. We, too, will be like the “grain of wheat [that] falls into the earth and dies.” If not, we will “remain just a single grain” but, to the extent we share in Jesus’ passion and death, we, like the grain of wheat that dies, will spring from the earth and “bear much fruit.”

My sisters and brothers in Christ, I feel impelled to think, with Christian hope, that we have been through a “grain of wheat” experience for a long while now. And, as the Lord knows, certainly better than me, many if not all of us have been through maybe several “grain of wheat” experiences in our lives: Maybe we have been ill, or a loved one or friend has experienced illness. Maybe we have loved ones who have died. Maybe we have served among the poor or those who lack basic necessities, or been in those situations ourselves. May any of us who have ever suffered know the Lord’s solidarity with you in your suffering. Today, we hear from the Letter to the Hebrews, the same reading we will hear again on Good Friday, of Jesus who “offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death.”

These same “prayers and supplications… loud cries and tears” Jesus now offers for all who suffer in any way; for all who, simply and nobly, “wish to see Jesus”; for all who long to be able to gather and worship in one space again soon, to take, bless, break, and eat the bread that becomes for us the Body of Christ, together in person again; for all of us who have experienced and continue to experience in mind, body, or spirit, what Jesus meant when he referred to the “grain of wheat” that must fall “into the earth” and die, in order to bear “much fruit” and “keep it for eternal life.”

With Jesus’ solidarity with us in times of suffering; privation; isolation, we are and will be the grains of wheat that spring from the earth and give it and one another life and joy. Already we sense the signs that those “days are surely coming.” In and through Christ’s passion and death, which we know by faith will end in the joy of resurrection, for us as once for Jesus, our “hour has come,” for our good and God’s glory forever.

Homily for Tuesday, 16 March 2021– Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12; Psalm 46:2-3, 5-6, 8-9; John 5:1-16

Do our readings today not give us, as is common especially during these high points of the Church’s year like Lent, an almost overwhelming amount of detail?

I visited the Holy Land and Jerusalem in 2013 during our Basilian Peace and Justice Pilgrimage with my confrère [and then-coordinator of the Basilian Centre for Justice and Peace,] Fr. Bob Holmes. I think the reason Pope Paul VI referred to the Holy Land as “the fifth Gospel” (Pope Benedict XVI echoed Paul VI in this sentiment more recently) is apparent for people who have visited the Holy Land: I will cherish memories of seeing these holy sites forever, or at least until (perhaps) my next visit…

The scene John’s Gospel sets for us today is near the Sheep Gate, at a pool whose Hebrew name is “Beth-zatha” or Bethesda. John plants in our minds a vision of a rather sophisticated pool, one with “five porticoes,” but also in this scene, John says, there “lay many invalids,” including the man who had been laying there “for thirty-eight years” and whom Jesus asks, “Do you want to be made well”?

Since I enjoy finding out the meanings especially of names of people and places, I find it fascinating that “Beth-zatha” or Bethesda mean “house of mercy” or “house of grace.” This could be a touch of irony from John, since the Pool of Beth-zatha was known, as John points out, to be a gathering place for the sick, “blind, lame, and paralyzed.” Despite its sophisticated structure, and the fact it was a major water supply for Jerusalem in Jesus’ time, with multiple deep pools joined by a system of locks or dams, the presence of the sick made it a place of dis-grace to the more well-off people of Jerusalem of the time; it was the opposite of the “house of grace” that Beth-zatha’s name suggests.

But by his healing of the paralyzed man in today’s Gospel, Jesus turns the ironic dis-grace of this place, and that of the paralyzed man personally, into a moment and place of grace and mercy. This also brings me to a memory from my own ministry: When I lived in Rochester, I often said Mass at a homeless shelter called House of Mercy, in a hardscrabble part of the city. House of Mercy is still run by the indomitable Sr. Grace Miller, a Sister of Mercy. It is a present-day Beth-zatha, a House of Mercy and, well, a house of grace for more reasons than the name of its founder and director.

The Biblical Beth-zatha is also near the beginning of the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem. Here, where Jesus healed the paralyzed man in today’s Gospel, he would begin his Way of the Cross. Again, a place of our dis-grace; our sin; our sickness would, starting from this place, be transformed—on a Sabbath, no less, as in today’s Gospel—into a place of grace, mercy, and salvation by our Lord.

Jesus, clearly, develops a reputation for transforming dis-grace; lack of mercy; sin; sickness; paralysis into grace, mercy, wellness, physical and spiritual movement and vigour. He does so for the paralyzed man in today’s Gospel and, soon thereafter, Jesus would do so for us, by giving his own life, beginning his Way of the Cross at the pool by the Sheep Gate called House of Mercy or House of Grace: Our Beth-zatha.

Homily for Sunday, 28 February 2021– Second Sunday in Lent, Year B

Readings of the day: Genesis 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18; Psalm 116:10, 15, 16-17, 18-19; Romans 8:31b-34; Mark 9:2-10

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

How many of us are giving up something or have ever given up something for Lent? Might this be a strange question to ask, especially in our present situation? After all, we are still in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic that keeps us and many people from being able to worship in person and receive communion. We have given up a lot, and not only in terms of worship and the sacraments, over almost a year since the first COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns began.

Yet, when we speak of giving up something, especially during Lent, do we not usually refer to giving up what may be comfortable or good for us, but that we do not really need? I, for one, have never been very good at giving something up for Lent. I usually try to think of a very small comfort to give up; even better if this is something I am able to give up beyond Lent. One year, when I was a novice, in the beginner stages of religious community life in preparation to take first vows, I decided to give up not coffee altogether—if I were to give up coffee altogether, I think I would be lethargic or miserable, or both, in the morning—but simply to give up the sizable amount of sugar I used to put into my morning coffee. That Easter Sunday, I put sugar in my coffee as I had until Lent that year, and it made my coffee far too sweet. I have never gone back to putting sugar in my coffee since then. Great, then, I thought, I would need to think of something else to give up for Lent after that!

Those of us who have given up something for Lent or are doing so this year: What kinds of things to we give up? Are they food and drink-related comforts: Junk food, alcoholic beverages, chocolate, or coffee (or simply the sugar in our coffee, maybe)…? Have any of us given up social media, like Facebook or Twitter, as I know some of my friends do during Lent? How about taking this time of Lent to master our habits: Quitting smoking, minding our language, and so on? How many of us have heard or seen Pope Francis’ list of things from which to fast and on which to feast during Lent? Pope Francis’ list is a few years old, and has been made into a convenient image on social media: Fast from or give up hurting words, anger, pessimism, worries, complaints, bitterness, selfishness, and grudges, says Pope Francis, so that we may “feast on” kind words, gratitude, patience, hope, trust in God, simplicity, prayer, compassion, and reconciliation. Finally, Pope Francis says, “Fast from words and be silent so we can listen.” Hmm… There’s another thing—wordiness—from which I know I could fast in order to listen and appreciate silence better!

Do we begin to understand, through all this, that there are many things we could fast from or give up during Lent? But what if we simply acknowledged that God is already way ahead of us in terms of giving something up? And the something, or better yet somebody, God has given up is not only a worldly comfort or something good that God did not really need. No, God gave up—for us!—his only Son so that we might have eternal life. God gave up, for us, something not only comforting yet unnecessary, but God gave up what is essential to himself. And this whole season of Lent focuses us toward our celebration of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday; our celebration in a few weeks from now of God having given up his only Son for our salvation.

God’s sacrifice of self for us; God’s having given up his Son so that we might have eternal life, which we celebrate not only through Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday, but every time we assemble for Mass, is foretold in Jesus’ transfiguration. Mark, whose account of Jesus’ transfiguration we hear today, clearly connects this event to the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Is there not an almost overwhelming amount of detail in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration? There are many points on which we could focus in this transfiguration event: Jesus, for instance, does not take with him all his disciples or even the Twelve apostles, but only (presumably) his most trusted three apostles, Peter, James, and John, to witness the transfiguration. Moses and Elijah, usually interpreted as the presence of the Law and the prophets of Jewish tradition, speak with Jesus. We have what many Biblical scholars have commented as a full making known of the one God in three distinct persons of the Trinity: Jesus, present in human form, also the divine Son of God; the Father, especially represented by the voice from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”; and the Holy Spirit, most often connected with the cloud that overshadows the transfiguration scene.

We have Mark’s peculiar emphasis (more than Matthew or Luke, who also each feature an account of Jesus’ transfiguration) on Jesus’ order to Peter, James, and John, “to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” Mark, though, is pithier than the other Gospels about the fear Peter, James, and John felt during the transfiguration and Jesus’ foretelling of his own suffering, death, and resurrection. Yet all the accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration in our Biblical Gospels share the all-but-speechless Peter’s exclamation, “It is good for us to be here.” Peter then suggests, in all Gospel accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration, that they build three tents. This could be a hearkening back to the Ark of the Covenant tradition of the earliest tribes of Israel in the Old Testament. These ancient people of Israel were mobile, and carried the Ark of the Covenant, the tabernacle in which God was said to dwell among his people on earth, within a series of tents.

But allow me to suggest that the main focus of Mark’s Gospel especially, amid all Mark’s spectacular detail of the transfiguration, is on the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. When we think of the transfiguration, Mark wants us to connect with Jesus’ sacrifice, his willing giving up of self to death on a cross, so that we might have eternal life. Jesus, through Mark, wants us to contemplate prayerfully the events of his transfiguration in light of his resurrection from the dead. We have the gift of hindsight: Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is a completed past event. From Peter’s, James’, and John’s standpoint in time, Jesus’ resurrection was still yet to take place, so the apostles could do no better than to be (understandably) perplexed and afraid.

But even with our gift of hindsight, is not only the transfiguration but the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus it foretells not so extraordinarily rare that, in a way, it should not only have struck fear in Peter, James, and John, but in us? The transfiguration points ahead to Jesus’ giving up of self on a cross for our salvation. There is only one other figure in the Bible (and the only one who is not God)—Abraham—who is willing to give up his only son, in this case Isaac, simply because God calls him to do so.

Like Mark’s Gospel account of Jesus transfiguration, Genesis’ account of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac is so detailed as to be troubling; as to raise more questions in us than it answers: Why would God test Abraham? Is God really that mean that he would play Abraham like that, expecting him to sacrifice Isaac only to stop him at the last moment? Here, although I think we are right to focus always on God in any Biblical event, I think Genesis invites us to focus on Abraham’s response to God; on his complete willingness to do as God asks of him, even to sacrifice his only, long-promised son, Isaac. Abraham’s willingness to give up his only son is presented as a prefiguring of God’s own complete willingness to give his only Son, Jesus Christ, up to death so that we might have eternal life.

What, then, do Abraham’s willingness to give up Isaac to death, and the transfiguration, which foretells God’s giving his Son Jesus up to death for our salvation, mean for us in terms of how we live here and now? For me, how well we answer this question for ourselves amounts to how we answer a few questions related to this first one: If we make some kind of Lenten sacrifice, say giving up something for Lent, does what we have given up make us more mindful of God’s sacrifice of his only Son for us on the cross; the only sacrifice capable of gaining us eternal life? Do our sacrifices make us more mindful of God always with and for us, as St. Paul asks today in his letter to the Romans: “If God is for us, who is against us”? Do we sacrifice willingly, as God does and has for us, and without boasting or appearing gloomy, or sacrificing something because we feel we have to do so? Does our sacrifice change us; transfigure us to be more like our selfless; self-sacrificing God? If we can answer “yes” to these questions, I think we are on the right track, this Lent and in our lives of faith overall.