Homilies & Reflections

Homily of Tuesday, January 19, 2021

The prayer over the gifts during the offertory this week is: “Grant us, O Lord, we pray, that we may participate worthily in these mysteries. For whenever the memorial of this sacrifice is celebrated, the work of our redemption is accomplished.” That is, the work of our redemption by Christ goes forward. Saint Paul says: “Christ was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” In the holy sacrifice of the Mass, all the work of Christ, all the work of our redemption is present. The suffering, the death, the resurrection, the ascension – all is made present to us and to the world. Pope Leo XIII said, which I think underlines the point: “There is no doubt that in this (mystery) [that is, the Holy Eucharist, the sacrifice of the Mass] alone, all supernatural reality is contained by an abundant variety of miracles which is unique.”

Homily for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 17, 2021

 At the beginning of the 1st book of Samuel, we hear the story of Hannah. Every year she and her husband would travel to Shiloh, the place where the Ark of the Covenant was kept at the time. Once while she was there, distressed because of her inability to bear children, she prayed that God would grant her a son, promising to give him to the service of God should her prayer be granted. This happened, and, after three years, Hannah returned to Shiloh, and gave her son Samuel to the care of Eli, the priest.

Today’s first reading is a story from Samuel’s childhood. Hearing a call in the middle of the night, Samuel gets up and checks on Eli, who is losing his eyesight. However, Eli is not calling him. After this happens two more times, Eli tells him to reply “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” The reading we are given in the lectionary ends here: Samuel does as Eli instructed him. As he grows up, God is with Him. Samuel has a special vocation: he is a prophet, consecrated to the service of God. This is not something he undertakes as the fulfillment of a promise made by his mother, but a vocation he is given and called to undertake by God. A vocation he takes up when he listens to God’s call and answers him.

We see something similar happen in the Gospel. This is our first introduction to Jesus in the Gospel of John. Before this, there is a preface, the Gospel read on Christmas day that explains the Word being made flesh, and a brief introduction to John the Baptist, the one who testifies to the Word. One day, as Jesus walks past John and two of his disciples, John points them to him, saying “Behold the Lamb of God,” and the two disciples follow Jesus. Jesus invites them to stay with him, and they converse with him that day. Late that afternoon, one of these two, Andrew, finds his brother Simon, tells him they have found the Messiah, and brings him to Jesus. Upon seeing him, Jesus tells him that he will be called Cephas, which translates as Peter. 

Each person presented reacting to Jesus: John the Baptist, the unnamed disciple, St. Andrew and his brother, St. Peter, hears a call and answers it. John the Baptist is called to testify to the Word: to be the last and greatest of the prophets. The Gospel of John doesn’t give us any story about how John hears his call, but his actions make clear that he has accepted the call to testify to Christ.  He heralds Jesus as the Lamb of God, and leads his disciples to him. Andrew and the unnamed disciple hear this call. Like the call Samuel hears, which requires Eli’s help to be understood, this call is given through an intermediary: John the Baptist, the great prophet they had been following. Like Samuel, they answer their call and seek to listen to God’s plan, and engage in it. We aren’t told what Jesus tells them while they stay with him during the day, but it leads at least Andrew to conclude that Jesus must be the Messiah, which leads him to call his brother to follow Jesus as well. Simon is thus brought to Jesus through his brother. Simon also answers the call and comes before Jesus, where he is given a higher call, illustrated by a new name: Peter. Simon becomes Peter, the rock on which Jesus will build his Church. 

Each call given in this Gospel is united by one essential characteristic: it points to Jesus Christ, and accepting the call is equivalent to following Him, although this can happen in different ways. John follows Jesus by pointing others to Him, and calls his disciples to follow Jesus. Andrew follows Jesus by staying with Him and bringing his brother to Him. Peter also follows Jesus, ultimately becoming the leader of the Apostles, the witnesses of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, serving as the rock on which Christ builds His Church. Besides following Jesus and listening to Him with Andrew, we know nothing else of the unnamed disciple. Like Andrew, he is given a call to stay with Jesus and speak to Him, one he at least initially fulfills. What happens after that point: whether or not he continues to follow Jesus, is unknown.

Similarly, all of us are called to follow Christ. Often, this call is mediated through someone, as happens for both Andrew and Peter in the Gospel, and, in a different way, for Samuel in the first reading. Like in the Gospel, where John the Baptist, Andrew, the unnamed disciple and Peter all are given different ways in which they are to follow Christ, our calls also take a variety of different forms. Some of us are called to be religious: nuns, monks, or some other form of consecrated life. Some men among us are called to be Priests. 

Regardless of what form our call to follow Christ takes, however, this call is one that must be lived out in our actions: it isn’t enough to say we follow Christ, and then do whatever we want. As St. Paul points out, answering the call involves becoming members of the Body of Christ. Joined to Christ, it is unfitting to then also do anything sinful, since sin alienates us from Christ. Answering our Christian call, and fulfilling our Christian vocation, requires us to dedicate our entire being to God, holding nothing back from Him.

Some of the difficulty in dedicating our entire being to God is illustrated by the full story of God’s call to Samuel. Eli, as can be seen in the passage read, is a genuinely kind man. He gives good advice to Samuel, to invite God to speak and to listen to his words. He mediates Samuel’s receptivity to God. However, his sons, also priests since it was a hereditary office, are not. In fact, they were in the habit of stealing the sacrifices offered by pilgrims who came to Shiloh, threatening anybody who would not willingly give them the best they had, and committing a number of other grievous sins. Eli’s blindness is not just a physical lack of sight, but also a spiritual blindness that keeps him from being able to correct the behavior of his sons. In spite of the otherwise exemplary life he lives, and his service to God, he holds one thing back: he fails in the difficult task of correcting the wickedness of his sons. In fact, he even profits from their immorality by eating with them from the sacrifices they had stolen. So, when Samuel tells God “speak, your servant is listening,” God tells him that, due to the sins of Eli’s sons, and Eli’s failure to correct them, God would punish the family of Eli. Ultimately, Eli’s wicked sons would die in battle against the Philistines, while allowing the Ark to get captured. Eli himself would die from a fall upon hearing the news. It is not having wicked sons, in itself, that is Eli’s sin: Samuel’s own sons, many years later, engaged in corruption and gave the people enough cause for concern that they cite it when they petition Samuel for a king. However, Eli partakes of what they have stolen, and fails to truly present God’s will to them, whether because it is too seemingly difficult or out of fear for how his sons might react.

Our call to holiness requires a true conversion of heart, and making ourselves temples of the Holy Spirit, as St. Paul describes. It requires us to hold nothing back from God: every part of our lives and every relationship we have is required for us to truly follow Christ. However, we have a benefit that Eli and his sons did not have: we have Christ’s death and r esurrection that heals us and saves us from the consequences of our sins. We are present at this sacrifice during the Mass; we apply it to all the sins that separate us from God at the sacrament of Confession. Even a person as heroic as St. Peter would ultimately be denied Christ three times the night before Jesus is Crucified. 

For our part, we must fulfill our call to holiness, our call to follow Christ, through our lives. This will sometimes be difficult, and may require us to tell difficult truths to people so that they can be brought to God. This call to holiness can happen within a variety of different vocations and can come through a variety of different mediating people. If we truly live our vocation, a part of that will be acting as intermediaries that help to bring others to Christ. And when and if our sins separate us from Christ’s body, we must return to Him through His cross and resurrection, made present to us through the grace of His sacraments.

Homily of Saturday, January 16, 2021

These are some reflections on Our Lady made by Francis Durrwell, a Redemptorist priest who wrote a very significant, important book on the resurrection (The Resurrection: A Biblical Study, 1960). “The whole history of God’s people has been lived by Mary. The beginning of her life belongs to the first moment of sacred history, and its end coincides with the final hour of that history, and every stage between these two poles has been covered by Mary. For sacred history began not with man’s first sin, but in the moment of redemptive mercy and the first promise of salvation – and it was in that moment that Mary was born, when God put in enmity between the woman and the serpent (in history’s evaluation). Sacred history will be complete when man is saved by grace even in his body, and at the end of her life Mary attend this final salvation (her Assumption, body and soul). All the events which mark out the way from these two opposite ends are found summed up in the life of Mary: like the people as a whole, she bore in her flash the seed of salvation, she gave birth to Christ and was associated in the work of redemption, for her own salvation and the salvation of the world. Yet she only sums up the history of the church under one aspect: all life tells us of sin and Grace. Mary is the image of humanity only in the history of its salvation, a sacred icon, as it were of the church. She is not just a figure of the church, its perfect representative; she is its personification. That is why Mary still sings, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior. For He that is mighty has done great things to me.”

Homily of Thursday, January 14, 2021

    Jesus does something a bit unexpected in today’s Gospel. After he cures the leper, he does not instruct him to tell everybody that the kingdom of God is at hand, using his miraculous healing power as evidence of this. Instead, he instructs him to tell no one, but only to follow the prescriptions of the law that allow for the leper to return to life in the community. In spite of this, the leper does tell everybody, making Jesus such a popular figure that it became impossible for him to enter any towns openly.
    Why does Jesus do this? I think an answer can be found by looking at the transfiguration. At the end of the passage, after Jesus has revealed his divinity in front of his closest disciples: only Peter, James and John are present, he instructs them to tell nobody until the son of man has risen from the dead. This is the context that allows us to make sense of His divine nature: Jesus Christ came to save us from the consequences of our sins, and to bring us into the Divine life. The healing he provides goes well beyond the cures of leprosy, which point towards his larger mission, but do not encapsulate it. So, out of pity for the man suffering with leprosy and because of the faith that man shows in Jesus, he cures Him. But, to prevent a misunderstanding and diminution of his mission, he tries to leave it there, instructing him to tell nobody, knowing that that will result in him being mobbed by people who do not truly understand His mission. Only after the Resurrection, when Jesus has conquered death and sin, is the context plain for all to see: the cures and exorcisms point towards the larger conquest Jesus has come to do: to conquer death and sin.
    Only through Christ, by conforming ourselves to Him in our actions and allowing him to drive our sins, the deepest sickness in our being, out from us, are we able to do what the Letter to the Hebrews asks of us: to hold the beginning of the reality firm until the end.

Homily of Wednesday, January 13, 2021

A long time ago when I was in Assisi, a Franciscan friend of mine took me around the north end of the Basilica of Saint Francis to show me some earthquake damage to the large foundation stones at the base of the apse. The main thing that amazed me was the gigantic size of those red sandstone blocks.  She told me that huge stones like those extended down 70 feet to the bed rock, supporting that end of the cathedral. When I think of Saint Hilary, today’s patron, the image of those foundation stones comes to mind.  That’s because St. Hilary, a Father of the church living in the 300's provided a solid foundation for all the others. His book on the Trinity, for instance, was the precursor to the well-known work on the Trinity by Saint Augustine, and of course the later work on the Trinity by Thomas Aquinas. Hilary also introduced the West to the vast riches of Eastern theology. When he saw how the Arians promoted their heretical ideas by creating popular songs, he composed Christian hymns that expressed accurate Catholic theology.  Inspired by his example, St Ambrose did the same a generation later. St. Hilary also popularized the idea of beginning every work with a prayer, something we find a generation or two later in the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict as a central principle. Saint Hilary, a foundational Father of the church, is certainly a saint whose writings and life are worth getting to know better.

Homily of Monday, January 11, 2021

Today is the feast of Saint Aelred, and we have one of our dormitories under his patronage – St. Aelred’s. This is what Donald Atwater says about him: He was born at Hexham in England in 1109 and he died in 1167. His father and grandfather were both priets [at this point in northern England the rules of celibacy had not be written down; that was one of the things the church was working to establish]. (The young Aelred) was taken into service by the King David of Scotland. When he was 24, after a sharp inward struggle, he entered the monastery of Rievaulx in Yorkshire, founded in the previous year as the first Cistercian house in England [remember, the Cistercians, St. Bernard more or less the leader of that, was a Benedictine reform]. Ten years later he was made abbot of a new house of his order in Revesby in Lincolnshire, and in 1147 returned to Rievaulx as its abbot. Throughout his busy life Alfred was distinguished for his energy and his sympathetic gentleness. His biographer, Walter Daniel, records: “I lived under his rule for seventeen years, and in that time he did not dismiss anyone from the monastery.” Aelred’s name, indeed, is particularly associated with friendship, human and divine, and one of the two best known of his writings is a little work On Spiritual Friendship; the other is the Mirror of Charity, a treatise on Christian perfection. His writings and sermons are characterized by a constant appeal to the Bible and to a love of Christ as friend and saviour that was the mainspring of his life. During his abbacy the number of monks at Riveaulx rose to over six hundred, and in addition to looking after these he had every year to visit other Cistercian houses in England and Scotland [and to travel through the contnent to visit Citeaux and Clairveaux – the motherhouses]. These journeys must have been a great trial for during his later years Albert suffered from a very painful disease; but such traveling, together with his writings, did much to extend the influence of this man who has been called “the St. Bernard of the North.” After being for a time virtually in a state of physical collapse, Saint Aelred died at his monastery, in a shed adjoining the infirmary which he had made his quarters. The historian of monasticism in England, Professor David Knowles, writes of him that he is a “a singularly attractive figure… No other English monk of the twelfth century so lingers in the memory.” May he pray for the monks and for all of us to grow in love of God and neighbor.

Homily from The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, January 10, 2021
Isaiah 55: 1-11; 1 John 5: 1-9; Mark 1:7-11

Today we celebrate the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. The theme uniting today’s Mass readings, though, is not so much about Jesus’ Baptism as it is about the water of Baptism as the symbol and sacrament of healing salvation. Isaiah, in our first reading reminds us that without water the earth, and our hearts, would remain fruitless and die. Water is one of God’s freely given gifts.  It cleanses and revives.  But for Isaiah water represents something far more. For him it’s a symbol of God’s immense, saving  love for us. “All you who are thirsty, come to the water, buy without money!” he sings (Is 55:1). God’s gift is limitless. And it’s absolutely free. There’s no commercial exchange with God. We can’t earn his gifts. That’s a mistake too many of us make. Rather our part is to learn how to prepare ourselves to receive, to accept his grace, like rain falling on well cultivated soil. John the Baptist, like Isaiah, was part of the Old Covenant. Water, for John too, was a symbol.  For him it was a symbol of repentance, of turning away from sin. His baptism was a baptism of repentance. But when he baptized Jesus, the New Covenant came to light.  Water, formerly a symbol, became sacramental. That means it was given the power to cause what it represents.  Incorporated into the baptism of Jesus, earthly water became indispensable for anyone wishing to be born again into divine life.

Next, the Gospel describes how with the baptism of Jesus the Spirit, descending upon him like a dove, hovered over him, while the Father proclaimed him his beloved Son. We received this very same Spirit at our Baptism.  Sin was forgiven.  We were born anew as children of God.  And above all, the Holy Spirit marked us with an indelible character.  It made us disposed to worship God and to fruitfully participate in all the other sacraments. This is what John the Baptist meant when he said: “I have baptized you with water; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (Mk 1:8). By the water of Baptism and the action of the Holy Spirit we were completely reborn.  This re-creation Jesus obtained for us by his sacrifice in the cross.  He spoke of this second birth when he said to Nicodemus: “No one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit” (Jn 3:5).

In our second reading today, John the Evangelist adds Blood as a third element to water and the Spirit. As he rose out of the waters of the Jordan, Jesus was called by the Father his beloved and chosen Son.  At that moment Jesus was chosen, that is destined, for the Cross.  There, by shedding his precious blood, he would fulfill the complete will of his Father, the Holy Spirit and himself: our salvation. On the cross, both blood and water flowed from the pierced side of Jesus.  Referring to this St. John speaks of Christ “who came not by water alone, but by water and blood” (1 John 5:6).  By this he’s saying that Jesus saved us by both the water of his baptism and the blood of his sacrifice on the cross, the very same sacrifice in which we’ll participate in a few minutes: the Eucharist. And St. John continues: “So there are three that testify, the Spirit, the water, and the blood and the three are of one accord.” (1 JN 5: 7-8) Only what is watered by the Lord, on the earth and in our hearts, can return proper fruit to him.  And this harvest is our liberation from sin. But remember, this grace isn’t meant for us alone as if it were our private property.  At Baptism each of us was missioned for life to be living channels for the passage of this new life to others. In support of this Jesus made us this promise:  “The water I shall give will become in them a spring of living water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14).

Homily of Thursday, January 7, 2021

This is from a sermon of Pope Saint John Paul II:
  "The Wisemen of the East are the first gentiles to receive the revelation of faith in Christ. They are the first ones to draw near the mystery of the inheritance that God offered to all men in Jesus Christ: the Incarnation of his eternal Son.
  "The Wisemen drew near that mystery revealed through the Holy Spirit even before it was revealed to the apostles, and even before the Gospel was made known as the way leading to faith. In them we find an example of pre-evangelization. We see God preparing their souls for salvation. This is also a work of the Holy Spirit, who reveals the meaning of the star that the wisemen followed on their journey towards Jerusalem. For the star symbolized that their salvation was still afar off.
  "On the day of Epiphany, the liturgy of the Church leads us on our own journey towards Jerusalem. We turn our hearts towards the Holy City which has become "the city of the great king." Even if the people of Jerusalem are unaware that the King of Glory has been born in their midst, we still rejoice. For she is the city of the great King."

Homily of Wednesday, January 6, 2021

Brother Andre, St Andre Bessette, is a great saint. Not because of his powers of healing or because he managed to get built a magnificent Church to St Joseph on Mount Royal in Montreal. He is not great because of the following he had when he had when he was alive and the even greater following he has now. He is great because he is a sign of hope and a witness to the power of God’s grace. He was a weak, uneducated, not very bright and not very healthy nobody who was reluctantly accepted by the Congregation of the Holy Cross. He was given the only job he could do. He was the porter or doorman. At the door he could wait and pray. As John Milton wrote on his blindness, they also serve who only stand and wait. At the door, he met people, he healed people, he prayed with people. At the door he communicated holiness and the love of God. At the door, this simple man became a saint. And if he could do that, imagine what God’s grace could do in us, if we only let God work in us as he wants and not as we want him to. Saint Andre Bessette, pray for us. 

Homily of Monday, January 4, 2021

Today we celebrate the feast of Mother Elizabeth Seton, who was the first American-born canonized saint in the church. She was a member of a prominent Episcopalian family in New York, and she married into another prominent family. Her husband got lung disease and so they went to Italy to try to get healing for him. It didn’t work and he died there. She was taken in by a wealthy Italian family; she is a widow now, she has no one in Italy. They befriended her and, among other things, taught her about the Catholic faith. It could be said that his is what brought her into the church. She began to conceive a great desire for Holy Communion, and a great belief in the Real Presence of Our Lord in Mass and in Holy Communion. She wrote to her sister in America and said, “How happy would we be if we believed what these dear souls [her hosts] believe, that they possess God in the Sacrament, and that He remains in our churches, and is carried to them when they are sick. Oh my – when they carry the Blessed Sacrament under my window, while I face the full loneliness and sadness of my case [as a widow and mother of five children] I cannot stop the tears at the thought, my God, how happy would I be even so far away from all that is dear, if I could find you in the church as they do (for there is a chapel in this very house…) how many things I would say to you of the sorrows of my heart and the sins of my life.” Well, she came back to New York. She was a member of the Episcopalian parish that is now Holy Trinity on Wall Street, and the rector of that parish tried to convince her that the Catholic teaching was wrong. They had a good number of sessions, I think. And her argument was, “Show me. Show me in the early church one writer who says what the Protestants say.” And, well, he can’t do that. So she became a Catholic. She tried to teach in New York and that failed because of opposition to her Catholicism. She then began teaching in Baltimore. Ultimately she founded the Sisters of Charity and died in Emmitsburg, Maryland, where she is buried. This is something she wrote much later as a Catholic: “Beg (Our Lord), supplicate Him, that He will permit you to receive with true faith. O heavenly bliss! Delight past all expression! How consoling, how sweet, the presence of Jesus to the longing, harassed soul! It is instant peace, and balm to every wound.” May Mother Seton pray for us to have a just evaluation of Mass and communion.