Homily on Lk 7:1-10
Only twice in the gospels do we hear Jesus remark about faith. This is one. He's remarking about the great faith he finds in the centurion.
And the other one is the absence of faith in his hometown. He could do no miracles because of their lack of faith. So what is it that captured his attention? What did he see in this centurion who was, as far as we can see, of no religious history? And I think what he must have sensed in the centurion is he sensed that the centurion lived in a purpose filled world.
I give orders and they obey. Now in the purpose filled world that the Centurion lived in, the purpose is imposed on the world. This is the Roman, peace. These garrisons were sent to ensure peace and security, but they did it by imposing their will on a culture. There was purpose but it came from outside.
But what the centurion senses somehow in Jesus is that there is a deeper purpose in life that is not imposed, but unfolds. He somehow sensed in his encounter with Jesus that there's at work in creation a purpose, a plan, a power that he needs to be submissive to. And if it's the will of this purpose and plan that his servant be healed, then so be it. Do we have that same confidence about the world we live in? Do we have the same confidence that there is a purpose unfolding in this world as we speak?
It doesn't need to be imposed. It is unfolding. It is happening. What we need to do, like the centurion, is sense it, somehow find ourselves in tune with it, and work with it, whatever this purpose is. But the bigger question is, do we have the confidence that the world in which we live is has a purpose and the purpose is alive and the purpose is unfolding?
Or do we think we're in a world that is haphazard and chaotic? Or even worse, a world that's in the power of evil. Where do we find ourselves on that spectrum? Convinced we live in a world that has a purpose and it's unfolding? Neutral, we're living in a world that is evil and against us.
Homily on Mk 3:22-30
So what are we to make of all this conversation about dividing, and this, and that, and kingdom cannot stand? So one of the things that when Jesus steps into the human landscape, he comes into the
human landscape as a whole human being. Now you think about our own life and our own journeys, that we live so much of our life caught in different struggles, we're pulled in this direction, we have that.
Our appetites pull us in different directions, our old memories pull us in different directions.
And so when we look at our life, if we're honest, we can very often discover that we're very conflicted, very divided. And it's our emotions pull us, our history pulls us, our appetites pull us.
When Jesus steps into the human landscape, he's a whole human being, and he's an incarnate of what a whole human being looks like.
And so in our evangelization, whatever we might make, or whatever tactics we might adopt, one of the things we have to find a way to communicate is a very unique experience that he brings into human existence that is a whole human being who is not divided.
And that's why he can say, nothing can overcome me because I only have one, I only exist for one thing that's to serve the Father. I have no other conflicting ideas, emotions, appetites, histories, only one thing to serve the Father.
But that's the DNA he gives to us, right, he communicates that to us, and our goal is to become a whole human being, authentic whole human being.
Now, what do we to make of this sin against a Holy Spirit?
Well, as I was thinking back to our journey, and we talked about different kinds of atheism. And we thought a lot of atheistic postures actually are sympathetic to us if we can find a way to travel with them.
For instance, those who are protesting the injustice of the world around us and blaming it on God, there are fellow travelers. For those who are pursuing truth and goodness and beauty but have never named these as God, there are fellow travelers.
But there is an atheism that comes from indifference to human suffering, an indifference to the suffering
of our sisters and brothers, and that atheism is very hard to crack. Because when someone says, well, I just don't care about other people, it's very hard for them to ever be awakened to the presence of God.
And I wonder to myself, if that's the sin against the Holy Spirit that Jesus is speaking about, indifference to the sufferings of your sisters and brothers is a sin that cannot be forgiven.
It really invites us to tune up our own game too and say, is there some of that indifference that creeps into my life from time to time? And if there is, I should be very attentive to it and make sure that I don't give into
it and don't let it ever breed in my heart. Because that separates from us from God in a way that even the authentic Jesus cannot heal. So let's stand on offer our prayers as we continue our journey.
Homily on Lk 10:29-32
As a Jew, Jesus would have been very familiar with the story of Jonah, this reluctant prophet who did everything in his power to avoid the mission that God had for him until God, the God of all creation, including the land and the sea, caused a storm, which resulted in Jonah being thrown overboard until he finally got swallowed up by the whale and spat up on the beach to conclude the mission that God had for him. So when Jesus is asked for miracles and a nice solution and some razzle dazzle, he says, nope. The only sign you get is the experience of Jonah. I think what he's saying is conversion happens only after we've spent some days in the belly of a whale. And you know something?
I kinda think that's where our church is at, that we're in the belly of a whale. All of so much, I think, has caused upheaval. I think the sexual abuse scandals, the clericalism, our condemnation of different things, I think it is so alienated in church. It's so that it's almost like God says, well, I'm just gonna fire you into the belly of a whale. Let you sit there in the dark for a time, and then I'm gonna spit you up, and you can go about what you're supposed to do from the beginning.
Kinda think that's sort of what's going on. Interestingly, our diocese is beginning this parish pastoral renewal program, which is going to be our focus for the next 3 years. Really interesting. So it lines up with what's going on in Rome, and diocese, a chance to come back to our beginnings, to come to our senses about what we're supposed to be about, let go of the preoccupations that have distracted us, and set out to have these conversations with people on the edges about the meaning of life, which is what Jonah Feiney reluctantly did, and it produced this wonderful conversion of the people of Nineveh. I think that's what is in store for us.
We're kind of in the belly of the whale at the moment, but God's gonna spit us up on the beach, and we can finally come to our senses and say, oh, that's what I was supposed to be about from the very beginning, to proclaim Jesus Christ crucified and risen in me, not in a catechism book, in me, not in some pamphlet we hand out. In me, Jesus Christ crucified and died in me. That's the story we have to learn how to tell. And if we can tell that story, and that's what Jonah Vinchey told the people of Nineveh, that he'd been crucified, died, spent 3 days in the belly of a whale, and is now risen. And look what it did.
It produced all of this wonderful result. So as many of you have said, we should be very hopeful, but we've got a few days in the belly of a whale to get us there. So be patient. Put up with the darkness. Eventually, we're gonna find ourselves on the beach, and we're gonna know what we're supposed to be doing.
So let's stand and offer our prayers now for our church and for our
Homily on Mk 2:23-28
There's a lovely story in one of the early church fathers about an encounter that took place. This is in the Roman empire before Constantine became a Christian and Christianity became a legal religion. So Christians were not permitted to offer worship to anyone but the emperor, to Caesar. And so they were forbidden from celebrating Eucharist on Sunday. And so this little group of Christians are discovered to be celebrating Eucharist in their home.
And when they're accosted by the authorities who ask them, you know what the costs are for doing this. What on earth possessed you to celebrate to do this when it's clearly against the law? And this was the reply. If we don't celebrate the lord's supper on the lord's day, we are not the lord's people. It's really interesting.
They put those three things together. If we don't celebrate the lord's supper on the lord's day, we are not the lord's people. And so it it was That celebration was coincidental with their very identity. Without it, they weren't who they were supposed to be or who they claimed to be. And at the center of that mystery of celebrating the lord's supper on the lord's day is entering into the lord's rest, the culmination of god's work of creation.
And on the day of the lord's rest, we are invited to lay down our burdens. And one of the burdens that we are invited to lay down are those old hurts and angers and resentment that we pack around with us, that we carry around with us. Memories of old hurts, old wounds, old unfairnesses that we have suffered at the hands of someone else. So one of the mysteries of the Sabbath rest on the Sabbath is for us to identify, here's an injury, here's an old wound, here's an old memory, and am I gonna pray on the Sabbath to god, help me to let go of that one. And every Sabbath to be able to say, what burden am I going to let go of to lay down today so that I can more fully enter into the mystery of the lord's rest?
So I offer that to you as a suggestion for how to keep the lord's day and experience the rest that god created for us when god completed his mystery of creation.
Homily on Lk 18:35-43
First reading today is a wonderful description of secularization. It's really quite dramatic. And think about it where it dates is back to the Maccabean revolution about how, well, let's just be just like the Gentiles.
Let's build a gym and we'll have athletic competitions. And so interesting to see that this tug to just simply cave in and be part of the surrounding culture has always accompanied God's people on their journey. Against that, we have this lovely story about Bartimaeus. It's one of the favorites of Pope Francis because he does see the church as very much like Bartimaeus in his situation. So keep this in mind that Bartimaeus is blind.
The ordinary senses that might have been capable of revealing God to him are not available. He can't see that way. And in a sense, this is how how we're going to have to move forward, except that science, the things that are self evident are not gonna support our faith. We're going to have to proceed intuitively, listening to our heart, sensing Jesus who is always passing by, sensing his presence, presence, and then crying out to him and overcoming the, the objections of the crowd because people keep saying to Bartimaeus, be quiet, silence, don't say anything, and persist in asking Jesus to help us to see and to follow him. So it's a wonderful model both of where the church is at today and even where we are at, that we're going to have to proceed with other senses.
That what served us well in the past, reason, scientific demonstrations, our authority coming from all of the great philosophers, is not gonna be as helpful. We're gonna have to listen to our our hearts, and we're gonna have to listen to the hearts of our sisters and brothers and listen to what their heart is saying to them about the presence of God who's also passing them by, and encourage them in their own way to reach out to the God that they're sensing and trust that together we'll find ourselves following the same Lord on the same path into the kingdom. So let's unite together and offer our prayers now to the Lord for God's church and for God's world.
Homily on Lk 12:13-21
Just wanna say a few words about an odd phrase that we hear in Paul's letter to the Ephesians. He talks about you were dead following the course of this world, and then he has this phrase, following the ruler of the power of the air. Interesting phrase. Following work among those who are disobedient.
Really interesting description here. So what's going on here? What one of this is when they began to think about evil, they were searching for a place, well, where do we put evil? Where do we put Satan? How do we locate Satan?
So in their cosmology, the world was divided into heaven, where God lives, and earth, where we live. But the spirit obviously has been cast down or the Satan has obviously been cast down, but Satan doesn't live here with us. So they came to the conclusion, Satan must be in the air. God rules in the heaven. We stumble along on earth. Satan rules the air. He's all around us all the time. Now it's really interesting because when Jesus talks about because when Jesus talks about the source of our self centeredness, he said these things come with from within you. They don't come from the air. He said they come from inside of you. They come from your heart. So he's kind of moving this awareness along in a sense by saying, don't locate Satan in the air, because it's very tempting then to say, the world is a bad place. Don't go outside. Because if you go outside, and outside could be outside the church or outside your circle or outside wherever you might be. You're going to be pray to Satan. Jesus is saying, no, no. Satan can be in the church. Satan can be in your heart when you're at prayer. Satan doesn't occupy the air. He's somehow inside of us. It isn't until Freud comes along that we become aware of the unconscious, that there's a whole unconscious world that's going on that we are completely unaware of in our minds. And then Jung comes along and he introduces us to archetypes and this strange phenomenon that people who are physically unconnected, unrelated, can be using the same kind of archetypal imagery in their dreams to talk about something they're trying to process or some try to make sense of some crisis in their life. If Jesus had been aware of, or if the culture had been aware of, the unconscious, they might have worded all of this very differently. And it helps us to appreciate that it's this in our unconscious that we become the the the that these self centered ideas are given birth to. So when you have this story in the gospel about this individual who says, I know what I will do, well that idea... he didn't just create it.
That came from the world in which he lives, where people think this way, that money belongs to me and I can do anything I want with it, and it permeates into our unconscious, and then it leaks back out into our behavior. We need to be much more aware of what's going in behavior. We need to be much more aware of what's going in what we're putting inside of our hearts, what we're putting inside of our minds, what we're putting inside of however we think. Because if we're putting dystopic ideas in there, if we're putting images and ideas in there that are toxic, then eventually those ideas are gonna leak out, and they're gonna shape our behavior. So we have to, in a sense, be on guard not about the world around us, but about what we're taking in with our senses, what we're what we're reading, what we're looking at, what we're reflecting on, and making sure that it's all true and beautiful and good.
And as long as we're putting all of those things that are true and beautiful and good into our minds, into our unconscious, then good will then come forth.
Homily on Jn 5:1-16
So to appreciate this encounter, it's helpful to have a kind of a visual picture of what's going on here at the temple. So the temple was divided into all these areas. And, one of the areas is the one that Jesus enters into and encounters this individual. And that area had all of the people who were frail, elderly, sick, invalid, who were hoping and waiting for healing. It's one area. Over in another area, there was an area where the scribes, religious authorities, they sat and taught. And then another area is where all the animals would have been taken to be sacrificed for all the different festivals. We have all of these different areas in the temple. Now what's tragic about this scene is that all of this religious activity, the scribes, teaching, the animals being sacrificed, doesn't produce any healing. We still have all of this big collection of the sick, the frail, the elderly, the invalid.
So all of this isn't accomplishing anything. It's making the temple holy, but it's not making the people holy. Into that environment comes Jesus, and he encounters this individual. John wants us to understand some some things about this encounter. So he paints a picture of this man who's been waiting 38 years. Now the culture would have understood that. That's a whole generation. That would have been a whole generation has been sitting here waiting and nothing has been happening. So what is his hope? This individual has been waiting. So the legend was that you can imagine they would have these pools, stone pools. And the legend was if the water was stirred in the pool, it meant that an angel had brushed by with its wings. And if you got in the water right there, you would encounter the angel and be healed. It's a lottery. One person gets healed if they get there fast enough before the angel leaves. You know? So it's it's very much like the culture that pope Francis has been describing. We're fragmented. We're separated from each other. The weak, the frail, the elderly have been, siloed, set apart.
We have religious activity going on that doesn't affect people, doesn't change their lives, doesn't give them hope, doesn't give them nourishment. And he said, and then we're hanging on to lottery tickets we picked up at Seven Eleven, hoping that we'll win the big prize and we can escape life and go on to some personal individual dream. So it's very it's very it's an affront to Jesus. It's a huge offense to him because of the neglect, the fragmentation, the sense of futile dreams. So immediately, he steps in and this is over.
I'm this is gonna end. Get up. Walk. Let's change this right now. So what he does is he brings this face of compassion, the face of the mercy of God to bear in the life of this man immediately at whatever cost because it triggers this resistance and this eventual... the desire to kill him.
So right away but you see, I don't I don't care about that. You need to be experience the merciful face of God. And I think what Pope Francis is asking the church to do is to be that. Quit getting distracted with with irrelevant issues and be the face of the merciful god somewhere. Touch somebody and show them the mercy and kindness of God. Show them that there is a God who cares and it's not a lottery. You don't have to wait and win the prize. You matter today and now. So that's really the mission of that he's sort of presented an offer to the church and said, this is what we're called to be and all of us can do that in some form. Some ways we could all present the merciful face of God to the world.
Homily on Jn 6:22-29
Jesus tells this crowd that's looking for him not to work for perishable food. So I wanted I wanna talk a little bit about perishability and imperishability, because we know the difference. You and I, we consider ourselves to be perishable. So when we die, and this is part of our faith, we commit their body to the earth. You've heard this before. What's happening there? So when we say we commit their body to the earth, we're saying we're returning them to the place from which they came. God fashioned us from the dust of the earth. So when we say when someone dies, they perished and we commit their body to the earth. We don't just commit their body to the earth. We commit the sound of their voice. We commit their laughter. We commit their touch. We commit to look in their eyes when they see us. We commit all of those deep human realities to the earth. In a sense, we're saying they have returned to the place before God. Remember, God fashioned us from the earth. So if we're committed to the earth, we're returning to the place before God. That's what it means to perish. All those deep human things that we love are perishable. You know, we've accepted a kind of an assumption that spirituality, religion, is about spiritual feelings. It's about the sacraments. It's about prayer. It's about our soul. That spirituality is about all of these intangible realities. But it has nothing to do with our body. It has nothing to do with creation. It has nothing to do with families, journeys, struggles... Now what's profound about what happens at Easter, in the passion of Jesus, is Jesus descends to the earth. He goes to that place where no living being has ever been. You have to think about that. God has never been to the place of the dead, ever. That was always another world, ruled by death. When Jesus is dying, he goes to the place of the earth. And for the first time, the living God is present in this place of death. The living God, for the first time, is now present in this place where death rules over all the things that we love and that we consider to be perishable. So at Easter time, God didn't send us a message saying, be nice. He didn't he didn't he didn't he didn't inspire a disciple to write down a message saying, live like Jesus. God acted. He acted. He brought to life something that was dead as a demonstration that God had overcome that world of the dead. Now, if you wanted to a eruption with molten fire, tremendous heat, lava pouring out of the center of the earth. That's what the resurrection was. It was this huge shock that at the place where there was only death, there's now life. It's a place where death ruled, death's been conquered. And in his resurrection, Jesus demonstrates that. That. He says, God has taken this over. God has taken over this world of perishability. So at Easter, God doesn't just roll the stone away from the grave of Jesus. He rolls the stone away from all of those things that we love, that we long to preserve. All those deep connections we have with each other that when someone dies, they're gone. God has rolled away the stone from all those hopes. You know, we live our life with all its ups and downs, back and forth. So we we have sense, well, it's who knows where it's going, you know? Who knows how it's gonna turn out in the end? We've had no idea. Not anymore. God is now at the center of that. God has now given us the assurance that every community's journey is going to end in glory. God has given us the assurance that every one of your families is gonna end in glory. Your individual journey is gonna end in glory. Every project that you undertake and that you suffer disappointment with is going to end in glory. That's the reality of Easter. Easter is two things. It's a promise and it's a demonstration of power. By raising Jesus, God demonstrated his power over the world of death and said it is no longer in charge. And God has said, and I'm giving you a promise that every good thing that you put your hand to will end in glory. That's what Easter phase is.
In some strange ways, it's like we are gonna be living in Holy Saturday for the rest of our life. Easters come completely for Jesus. It's the fulfillment. You and I, we're in the not yet. You know? We talked about that. We're living a holy Saturday, but we know what the future is. We know that glory is coming, but we're at Holy Saturday, and so is creation. So is every living person. We're all at Holy Saturday. But you and I know what the future is. Goods of this world recognizing that they are now they possess imperishability. Friendships have an imperishable component to them. Love has an imperishable component to it. Good work has an imperishable component to it. It deserves our very best because we know God wants to bring it to glory. Yes. It's Holy Saturday. It's gonna be Holy Saturday for the rest of your life, but you know what's going to happen then. It happened first to Jesus, and then it's gonna happen to us.
Homily on Jn 3:7-15
The people of Hong Kong are engaged in a resistance movement against China. Pretty lop sided affair. You may have caught pictures of some stages of this resistance. So one of the stages of the resistance was the umbrella movement, was everybody had umbrellas. And part of the reason for that was if they could be identified, they would be arrested. So the umbrellas serve to protect identity. And then, what they're opposing is a law that China's seeking to pass, that if you're charged with a crime in Hong Kong, your trial will take place in China. Not much hope there. So the last stage of their resistance, or the current one, is be water. Really interesting. Be the water. So it seems it's a little bit about water. So what they understand by that is water is very fluid. It occupies whatever vessel it's put in. Put it in a cup, it takes the shape of the cup. Put it in a bowl, it takes the shape of the bowl. Try to grab it, slips through your fingers. Try to cut it in half, flows back together. Be the water. Water. But water has enormous power as well. Even though it's subtle, water has enormous enormous power. It can take all these different forms, but if it seeps into a crack, a crevice, and then freezes and expands, it can shatter a rock. Or if a wave has enough force behind it, it can overwhelm a structure. So that's how the people of Hong Kong are imagining their resistance. Everybody is invited to be part of the water. They understand what's at stake. Big freedom's at stake. And so people participate in different ways, some online, some personally, but everybody sees themselves as part of the water. As I was learning a little bit about that, that here's a culture that ostensibly doesn't have any roots and faith, and yet they've managed to grasp hold of an image that's very similar to what Jesus says to us about the wind. You hear it. You can see it's coming. You don't know its origin, but we all recognize its power. So we see those things in nature. We see this demonstration in Hong Kong about their efforts to stand up and resist the oppression of China.
And here we are, and we've been given this invitation to prayer and been promised that the prayer we offer is not our own words. It's this impulse that comes from God, created from God. The words themselves are shaped by the Holy Spirit. And so they are words from Jesus. They are God's words. And we know that the word of God from the whole story of creation is powerful. We know the word of God fashioned everything. So here we are as believers, and we have been given this tool and promised that it's effective and that it will produce fruit. And I think in some ways, we're almost like, well, we dismiss it and say, well, what are my words? Of what value is my few prayers going to accomplish? So I think those examples from the culture and from our own experience of creation should give us a bit of a boost, which is what Jesus is trying to do to Nicodemus. He's trying to say, get off your seat. You know better. You know what these words can do. You know what the spirit can accomplish. You have to get up and put it to work. And I think, in some ways, that's the message for the church. We've been given this wonderful tool of prayer. We've been assured that these are God's own words. We need to have some confidence that whatever form they take, however they're expressed, whatever our particular concern might be, those words are powerful. And eventually, they are going to accomplish and produce the fruit that God seeks. So we wanna kinda stir up our own faith in this Easter season to have a new and a flesh fresh look at this wonderful gift that we've been given and renew our own commitment to put that gift to work on the issues and challenges of the world.
Homily on Lk 10:1-9
Saint Luke could probably be described as a patron saint of a company of yours. His gospel is filled with these lovely stories of compassion. The Good Samaritan, the lost coin, the prodigal son. Just think about all the accompanying images that are associated with those stories. He's, the stories are just filled with them.
So what we have in the Gospel today, we have the sending out of the Seventy two. And basically, Jesus is seeing himself as rebuilding the covenant relationship that is in tatters between Israel and God. And it's been trampled down by a combination of two oppressive forces. On on the one hand is the Roman occupation, which has forced Israel and Israelites to cooperate with this occupying force and therefore contaminate themselves because it was necessary for survival. So their being a faithful child of God has been hammered by their cooperation with Rome and the shame that has gone with it.
Over here is the occupation or not the occupation, but the insistence on ritual purity that, officials have imposed on people of Israelites that were that was impossible to to measure up to. No matter how hard you tried, you were ritually unclean and filled with shame. So you have shame over here because of their cooperation with Rome. You have shame over here because they're failures to keep themselves ritually clean. And into this environment, Jesus sends this community, and basically what he asked them to do is encounter, encounter, encounter.
Pope Francis's favorite word, encounter, encounter, encounter. Have deep encounters with these people. When you go to a house, stay there. Encounter them. Eat what's set before you.
Don't worry if it's been contaminated. Don't carry money with you. Encounter their generosity, and their generosity will be there. Basically, what we see acted out on the part of the seventy two is this ministry of meeting people where they are ashamed and abiding with them and embracing them and and allowing this grace to rebuild their their dignity, their covenant love between God and his people. And it's rebuilt by encountering people in their experience of shame and letting them know they are loved.
Not a bad model for the church. You know? Seventy two sending people out, encountering people, embracing them, looking past their faults, looking past their shame, and helping them to see their true dignity as a child of of God, a brother and sister to the Lord, and our ministry. That's that's our task. So let's gather our thoughts together and offer our prayers to God that we can be faithful accompaniers, willing to take our sandals off before the dignity of our sisters and brothers.
Homily on Lk 8:19-21
Well, if you're a little bit like me, for the past two weeks we've been preoccupied with the royal family. It's been an amazing journey. And Queen Elizabeth is truly an amazing sign of service and devotion and faithfulness. It's quite extraordinary. It's interesting that while she's lived a pretty extraordinary life, her children and even her grandchildren have lived pretty ordinary lives, even faulty lives, broken lives. Perhaps because they're such an object of attention, but one of the messages that has been sent is that faulty and broken lives are not acceptable. They don't belong.
They're not acceptable in the royal family and they're not acceptable in our families. We've heard the royal family described as the firm, almost like a business empire with a certain brand about a slimmed down royal family, about who gets to be considered a working royal. And the whole message has been, if you don't measure up to a certain bar that you don't belong. Pope Francis at a mass for the disabled disabled said, in our age we're surrounded by by images of the perfect. As if populating the world with perfect people can somehow bring us into a renewed age.
Anything imperfect, he says, has to be hidden away since anything imperfect threatens the happiness of the privileged few and endangers this dominant model that all of us should be perfect. He says the real meaning of life is to be found in accepting limitations and imperfections. And from the beginning God has shown us the patience needed to allow the imperfect to grow. One of the things that's emerged as in the conversations around the synod is a renewed emphasis in the value of the gradual, that not everything happens at once. And that's part one of the mysteries of this accompanying journey.
When we're journeying with somebody, they don't change all at once. Change is gradual. And is it possible that this idea of gradualness can be found in the heart of God? Here's a really interesting snapshot. It's from the book of Exodus and God is encouraging Israelites to enter the promised land and God assures them that God will accompany them on the journey.
God says, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you and to bring you to the place I have prepared. My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Hittites and the Amorites. And then God says this, but I will not drive them out in a single year because the land would end up desolate. Little by little I will drive them out until you have increased in strength. Isn't that a wonderful line?
Little by little, I will bring you into the land. Little by little, I will help you to take possession as you grow in strength. I love that image that in the very heart of God there's an awareness of the value of gradual. And in this accompanying journey that pope Francis is encouraging us to make, we are responding all the time to progress. What progress is happening?
What progress is possible? How do we encourage that and not worry about the finish line? Not worry about whether or not we have accomplished everything. So when Jesus says to his disciples, my family are those who hear the word of God and act on it. I don't think he means that we act on all the words at the same time.
That that's not possible for us. We act on what we can do and we should be encouraging one another. Act on what you can do, and then listen and see what you can act on tomorrow. Act on what you can do today, and see what God makes it possible for us to do tomorrow. So accompanying our sisters and brothers, whether it's at home or in a health care center or at a resident, means taking our sandals off in reverence to who they are and encouraging each other to hear a word from God and to act on that word each day.
Homily on Mk 2:18-22
Over and over again, we we have Jesus' encouragement to see things with a new lens and in particular to find a new source for our spiritual life. And the shift that he's advocating is a shift from external things that measure religious behavior to internal realities from which eternal things should come. That's this whole language about fresh skins, tearing away, it's hard to mix those external things with this fresh energy that comes from the inside. There's a natural human process that happens when things, new things spring up. So someone starts a movement, whether it's a peace movement or a social justice movement or some kind of energy.
It begins with some human activity and then it becomes a movement where people are kind of involved in it. And then over a period of time, it it begins to acquire more machine like elements, repetition, similarity. And then if it progresses and isn't reenergized, then it becomes a monument. And all we do is look at it. And if it progresses even more than that, it eventually becomes a memory of something that once was.
So that's restart it, unless they start it, unless they acquire again their original impetus, their original source. In some ways, I think that's what Jesus is talking about. We have to reacquire the sense that God loves us, that we are part of God, that God is living in us, and God is inspiring good things to come from us. And so let's listen to that and put that into practice. But those four m's are not a bad tool for us to say, where am I in my spiritual life?
Am I at the movement stage? Has it become more machine like? Am I at the monument stage where I just look at it? Or am I hope hopefully not at the memory stage where all I can all I have is the memory of what once was. We always have to go back to the beginning to renew ourselves again and then to act again from that original impulse.
Homily on Lk 9:22-25
So actually that Gospel was from Tuesday when we were gonna be here. And I was gonna just change it, but I thought it's such a good Gospel, especially when you think about Simeon and Anna in the temple holding this child and Jesus using the same image. But there's some interesting he teaches them about Jesus as the one who accepts be killed, be crucified, all of these things. They don't accept that.
Then we have this really interesting conversation. He says, he waits until they're in the house and then he asks, what were you arguing about on the way? Now Mark wants us to hear those words because he's not just describing what was probably historical event. This actually did happen. But by describing it using that language, his hearers, they would have realized, oh, that's us.
Because in the house was the church. Their churches are really small. When they were thinking about in the house, that's what that's what that would ring a bell, that they're in the house or in the church. And the early Christians, that's what they were called. They were called the people of the way.
So when Mark uses that language, it's like Jesus is all of a sudden not talking to the disciples. Now he's talking to the the people, the church right now. You are the people of the way and you know better is basically what he's saying. Because they they knew the whole story. They knew that Jesus didn't come to provide some really sophisticated teaching.
He came to show a particular way of living that was very humbling and very serving of others and attentive especially to those who were vulnerable, whose lives were not in their own control. That that's who we're supposed to be attentive to and who we're supposed to care for. And so he uses the image of a child. So when you think about the image of a child, children spend most of their life like this, you know. They're being taken somewhere.
That's an adult's hand that's got them and they're being taken. Taken here, taken there, do this, told to go to bed, put this on, go there, be quiet, go to bed, do this. Children are the ones who receive. They're the ones who to whom life happens. And he's saying those are the people you should be attentive to, the ones who are vulnerable, who are not in control, and that's how you should be willing to live your own life.
You are not the most important. You are not powerful. You are not in charge. You are the ones who are going to suffer and witness and allow life to happen to you in imitation of the way life has happened to me. So as we celebrate this Eucharist today, we keep in mind that Jesus is going to put himself into our hands in the in the Eucharist.
He does that. He says, I'm gonna put myself in your hands and I'm gonna trust that you are gonna do well by me. You are going to use me and use the gaze with which I look at you to be inspired, to be attentive to those who are vulnerable, whose lives are not under own control, who are not in charge. That's what it means to be handed over. It didn't just happen on the cross.
It happened in the life of the church. It happens at the altar. It happens when we receive communion. So let's lift up our prayers now for the church and for the world around us and pray that we'll be examples of this childlike faith that Jesus calls us to live today.
Homily on Mt 25:31-46
As God is my witness, I did not choose these readings. Quite amazing. I mean, you think to yourself, well, that certainly was meant I was meant to hear that today with all of this. And, there isn't much we need to say about that. One of the things in there is the surprise.
Right? The surprise on both parts. And I think part of the surprise is we tend to think we're already doing what's expected of us. And so the surprise is to discover, well, it was okay, but you left out the really important stuff, you know? That's a surprise for all of us.
It's, yeah, what you're doing is okay, but you can't leave out the important stuff. So maybe our message for today, and we could carry it home with us, is I need to be more attentive to strangers and to be able to see strangers as my encounter with the divine. And in that encounter, God will reveal God's presence to me, and together, we will actually build the kingdom. That's pretty good for us today.
Homily on Jn 8:1-11
There's a great deal in the story. I just wanna mention draw three things to your attention. One is Jesus doesn't look at the woman. The silence on Jesus's part through by way of contrast to the noise of the crowd, and finally, how the encounter ends. Those three things. Now, keep in mind what mother Maria has been saying to us about sharing and the suffering of others. At the cross, Mary doesn't feel for her son. She feels with him. He suffers. She suffers with him. His body is broken.
Her body is broken. I think in some ways, we see the same drama unfold in Jesus's encounter with the woman. She's not an object. He doesn't look at her. He stoops down and writes in the sand.
He doesn't theorize about her. He doesn't analyze her. What are we to make about that silence? I don't think it's a big reach to say that in that silence, he is sharing in her suffering. He is allowing himself to feel her pain.
He is allowing himself to share in her humiliation as he does with us. And finally, look at how the encounter ends. When we've been instrumental in helping somebody or assisting someone in whatever form that might take, there's a temptation on our part to want to possess them, to want to have them, to control them. We don't see that. The end of the encounter, Jesus says, go.
Your sins are forgiven. Cool. He doesn't own her. She's not property. His example, I think, is a real challenge to us to say, how do we enter into the encounter of someone else's pain?
Are we observers, or do we feel with them? Do we share in that suffering, or do we watch and analyze? And at the end of it, however we may have helped or assisted, are we willing to let them go and live their life? They're not our property. So I think the drama that unfolds in this story is a real invitation for us to say, how do we imitate what Mary did at the cross in our own lives in a way to make other people truly become the children that God intended them to be.