February 26, 2006
Posted in Homilies
at 9:00 am
Eighth Sunday, Year B, Feb. 26th. 2006
The readings today remind us of God’s spousal, marital relationship with us, his people. In the first reading from the prophet Hosea, God speaks to Israel his spouse, saying, “I will allure her,” and “I will take you for my wife forever.” In the Gospel, Jesus reveals himself as the Bridegroom of the Church and the Spouse of our souls.
Jesus also tells us, “the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.” Fasting is a form of self-denial, of course, which we practice on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday; fasting is also a sign of mourning. The disciples of Jesus will fast and mourn when Jesus the Bridegroom dies and is taken from them. In the life of the Church today, the Bridegroom is both present and absent. Christ is with us, so we feast on days like Christmas and Easter. Yet, we still live in exile in this world, so we have days of fasting and mourning as well.
People who have lost a loved one, especially a spouse, can imagine some of the pain and grief of the disciples when Jesus the Bridegroom was taken from them. A woman who lost her husband in the tragic pile-up on the 417 last week cried uncontrollably and said, “he was my soulmate, my friend. I will never feel good again. My heart is just broken.”
The loss of a spouse is particularly painful, but no one in this life is immune to pain and loss. Who can go through life without ever having a broken heart? There’s rejection, the falling in love with someone who does not love you, divorce, the break-up of a romantic relationship,, the ending of a friendship that was once so much closer, and so on.
God can use this pain and loss to draw us closer to himself. Jesus the Bridegroom acknowledges the pain that comes from the ending of a close relationship when he says that the disciples will fast and mourn when he dies and is taken from them. But Jesus also explained that the ultimate purpose of his departure was to draw us closer to him. He promised: “when I lifted up, I will draw (or attract) all people to myself.” In the Old Testament, Yahweh allures Israel. God is the spouse of our souls, and he will use pain and loss, and the trials of this life, to draw us closer to him.
Has anyone heard of Pier Giorgio Frassati? He lived in Torino, Italy (the Olympic city!) from 1901-1925. He was perhaps the greatest athlete that Turin ever produced, because he was a saint (“Blessed” Pier Giorgio). His biographer describes him as a “daredevil athlete, a roguish prankster, an unrelenting activist, and unexpected mystic.” He fell madly in love with a devout Catholic girl named Laura, but he knew his parents would not approve of marriage, since she was not a part of Turin’s upper class (his father was a newspaper publisher). When he explained to his priest that he would never disobey his parents, the priest said, “you have no choice but to renounce your feelings for her.” At that, Pier Giorgio lowered his head and began to weep. But later he wrote, “I can only thank God, who in his infinite mercy desires to give me this heartache, so that through these difficulties, I might return to a more spiritual interior life” (Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, An Ordinary Christian, p. 89-90).
If only the rest of us had the same faith and insight as Pier Giorgio, to understand the ultimate purpose of pain and loss and broken hearts – that through these difficulties we might return to a more spiritual interior life, that we might draw closer to God.
God does not intend for heartache to lead us into depression and despair, but to inspire in us a longing for Him! In fact, it is only possible to find true joy in God if we long for him, and we will only long for God if something is missing in this life, if we have experienced some sort of heartache.
For those who do not long for God, for those who do not suffer any heartache, to those who are complacent and self-satisfied, I can only say to you what Jesus said, “WOE to you who laugh now, for you will weep and mourn.” Each human soul, on its journey through life, must pass through pain and loss, weeping and mourning, either on earth or in purgatory. It is part of God’s plan to inspire us to return to a more spiritual interior life, part of his plan to allure us and attract us to himself, part of his plan to prepare us for heaven and eternal happiness.
We are also meant to long for God in each Mass. For hundreds of years, in the ritual of the Latin Mass, the priest would recite part of Psalm 42 at the beginning of Mass, because it referred the longing for God’s presence in the Temple: “my being thirsts for the living God. When can I enter and see the face of God? My tears have become my food day and night, as I hear it said all the day long, ‘where is your God?’” The Psalmist longs for God like Pier Giorgio longing for Laura, or a woman whose spouse has suddenly died.
Do we long for God? Or are our hearts hardened? Can we at least understand that God can use tragedy and pain to wake us up and re-direct our thoughts and hearts to him, because it is only through him, with him and for him that we exist. Our hearts are restless until they rest in God. Our souls were made for union with Christ, the Bridegroom of the Church.
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February 19, 2006
Posted in Homilies
at 9:00 am
Seventh Sunday, Year B, Feb 19, 2006
Today I will focus on the second part of our Pope’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, on the practice of love in the Church, as it relates to today’s collection for our planned missionary trip to El Salvador in July.
First, a few words about the Gospel. If you remember back to last week, we heard about God’s love for us being both eros and agape. The Pope writes that God’s love for us is agape because he bestows it in a completely gratuitous manner, and it is love which forgives (#10). We see that in today’s Gospel as Jesus heals and forgives the paralyzed man – God’s agape love that forgives.
All of us need constant reminders of God’s forgiving love, and to hear Jesus speak these words to us: “Your sins are forgiven.” Why? Because, in the words Catherine Doherty of Madonna House: “We harass ourselves, thinking of the wrong decisions we have made, or the sins we have committed. We wound ourselves unceasingly, and we exhaust ourselves in the process.” We forget God’s mercy and forgiveness! (Repeat “We harass ourselves . . . )
We receive God’s mercy and forgiveness whenever we ask for it, especially in the sacrament of reconciliation. But I’m amazed at how we receive mercy from God when we show mercy to others, when we reach out to those less fortunate, when we “bring good news to the poor” (Gospel acclamation).
A missionary trip to El Salvador is only one way to bring the good news to the poor. We have the poor in our own midst. There are people in our parish for instance who work at the food bank in Embrun, serving the poor in a humble and hidden way. And we can all serve the spiritually poor simply by loving the people in our own families.
But there is something special about sharing God’s mercy with the materially impoverished people of other countries. God has personally shown me his merciful love through the poor families in El Salvador that I have come to know.
It is a paradoxical truth of human nature. We find God deep inside and way outside ourselves. Each of us needs to go deep within ourselves in prayer, to encounter the mercy and forgiveness of Christ. But we are also called to lift up our heads from our belly buttons and scan the horizon, to look way beyond ourselves and our narrow little worlds. God within and God in the starving child in El Salvador or Mozambique.
The first part of Benedict’s encyclical explores the mystery of God’s love for us; the second part addresses something more concrete – the practice of love by the Church and the importance of both justice and charity. An example: a friend of mine in El Salvador, Martin Garcia, works at a coffee plantation and makes only a few dollars a day, which is not enough to provide for his family. Justice would work toward promoting fair trade coffee and better wages for workers. Charity would work to provide for immediate needs, such as food for his family and a decent shelter (which the mission in El Salvador has been providing).
Benedict encourages us to lift our eyes to distant horizons: “concern for our neighbour transcends the confines of national communities” and, one of the “signs of the times” is “the inescapable sense of solidarity between all peoples” (30).
And solidarity goes beyond just “Send Money!” because Christian charity includes a personal, spiritual presence to the poor. “Love does not simply offer people material help, but refreshment and care for their souls, something which often is even more necessary than material support” (#28b).
And this care for their souls necessitates personal contact. “My deep personal sharing in the needs and sufferings of others becomes a sharing of my very self with them . . . I must give to others not only something that is my own, but my very self; I must be personally present in my gift” (34).
In any contact with the poor, whether in Embrun or El Salvador, we as Christians make a gift of our very selves. That’s why it’s worth it to spend all that money to travel so far in person. In El Salvador, we will give the poor food, money and clothing. But the greatest gift is our very selves, our bodily presence as a sign of God’s love for them and of our solidarity with them. Consider how God himself provides for our needs: He gives us the sun and rain to grow food; but God also sends us a Person, his dearly beloved Son, to preach the Good News to the poor.
I believe that God is also sending 5 people from our parish on this missionary trip to serve the poor in El Salvador. But God can’t do it without your help. The three youth from our parish who are all full-time students, from whom you will hear shortly, need your financial help. The priest doesn’t need the money, because being a Canadian priest, he is fabulously wealthy already. I didn’t want these students to stress out getting a job to fund their trip because it is more important that they spend their time learning Spanish. On my first trip to ES as a seminarian, I won a bursary, which allowed me to dedicate my spare time to learning the language. Any donation you could provide would be very much appreciated.
God is Love, as Pope Benedict reminds us in his beautiful encyclical. God’s agape love for us is a love that forgives, and reaches deep within our hearts, AND a love that sends us forth to love our neighbour and bring the Good News to the poor. May the love we receive in the Eucharist inspire us to do just that, and to follow Christ’s own example of love.
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February 12, 2006
Posted in Homilies
at 9:00 am
Sixth Sunday, Year B, February 12, 2006
“God is love.” And God loves you! Of course we know that, because we are Christians. But isn’t it nice to have our Pope reminds us of God’s love in his very first encyclical entitled, “Deus caritas est,” God is love. On this marriage weekend, I would like to talk about our Pope’s new encyclical on love, and relate it to today’s Gospel.
We as Christians have come to know and believe in the love God has for us, in the words of St. John (1 John 4:16). Benedict XVI writes, “(in my first encyclical), I wish to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others” (#1).
We see a beautiful example of the love of God in Jesus healing the leper in today’s Gospel. The leper comes before Jesus poor, begging, kneeling, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Jesus was “moved with pity,” literally, that he was “splagchnistheis,” meaning he was moved with pity or compassion in his bowels or inmost parts (since the bowels were thought to be the seat of love and pity). In this Gospel, we have a glimpse into the heart of God, who is always deeply moved by our suffering, and longs to heal us and pour his love into our hearts.
The Pope speaks of two kinds of love in his encyclical, and I only have time to sketch them briefly – eros and agape. Briefly, eros is a desire for union and embracing (gesture) and agape a desire to give (gesture).
I will use an example to try to explain the difference. Alanis Morisette has a beautiful song about agape love called “You owe me nothing in return.” . . . it would be nice if you could hear it, but I won’t sing it . . . I know my job is to preach, and their job (choir) is to sing. But I will recite the chorus: “You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give, you owe me nothing for caring the way that I have. I give you thanks for receiving; it’s my privilege, and you owe me nothing in return.” Later, she adds, “this is the only kind of love, as I understand it, that there really is.”
So what would Benedict XVI have to say about Alanis’ song? First, that this song captures the essence of agape love. Agape is the usual word for love in the New Testament, and refers to self-giving love (“oblative” love #7). St. Paul also mentions this love in the second reading when he urges the Corinthians: “Do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other.”
God lavishes his agape love upon us, and we in turn must share this love with others in self-giving (gesture). The Pope stresses, “anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift” (#7). We could only say to someone else, in total self-giving, “you owe nothing in return,” if we have gratefully received God’s love for us. (You can’t give what you don’t have).
There are many Christians, probably some of us here today, who wish to give love to others but fail to receive love from God. “We have come to know and believe in the love God has for us.” We must believe in and receive God’s love for us, this love that is revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
In Jesus’ compassion for the leper in the Gospel, we see an instance of God’s agape love for his people. As Jesus stretches out his hand to touch and heal the leper, it is part of that same movement in which he stretches out his hands on the Cross, his hands are pierced with nails and his heart is pierced with a spear, and from his heart flows out the love of God upon all his people (#8).
What would Benedict say to Alanis’ lyric, “this is the only kind of love, as I understand it, that there really is.” Well, she’s forgetting about eros, the usual content of most love songs. Very simply, eros expresses the desire for union (gesture); From eros comes erotic love, the love between a man and a woman (#3), the love that promises supreme happiness (#4). Contrary to secular opinion, the Christian tradition does not poison eros or ruin sex. But we recognize, in the words of Benedict, that there is always a danger that eros can be reduced to pure “sex” and become a commodity (#5); for this reason, eros must be continually disciplined and purified (#4).
The Pope then remarks – to the surprise of some — that God’s love for us is BOTH eros and agape (#9, #10). Yes, because God desires to be one with us, in a love is also total self-gift. In married love also, agape enters into eros (#7), and eros directs us toward marriage and only thus does it fulfill its deepest purpose (#11). For every person who strives for Christian maturity, we must seek a union between eros and agape.
There so much more to say about love but I’m running out of time and Tom Stephenson will be speaking after Mass! Remember, God is love, and we are made for love. We all have a deep longing to love and be loved. We cannot live without love. Our lives are meaningless without it. In this Eucharist, may we gratefully receive God’s love for us as we receive the Body and Blood of Christ. May we share this love with others, in our marriages, families, and in Christian friendship.
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Homilies