The Holy Spirit Does the Work (Easter 6.C)

Not long after I came to the parish, a couple of young men started a social group with some help from me and our hardworking housekeeper.

Their plan was to play poker and eat my food.

But very soon, they abandoned the plan, at least the poker playing part, and founded M.E.A.T.—Men Eating and Talking.

Over the years, MEAT went from the five or six men at the rectory dining room table to as many as thirty. I shudder to think of how much pasta and pizza the members devoured.

Eventually, for a variety of reasons, we disbanded. But the fruits of this group continue to this day.

Three of the MEAT men, including one of the founders, joined Catholic Christian Outreach. Two are lay missionaries to this day. One of the occasional visitors is now a priest. Another went to the seminary. And I’ve celebrated marriages and baptisms for members of the group.

The devil may yet prove me wrong, but I don’t know any regular member of the group who doesn’t practice the faith. I don’t know of one who choose to live with a girlfriend; all their marriages were in the Church, many to Catholic women.

What was the secret? Simple: in their fellowship with one another, the men who were eating and talking learned from each other that Christian life was real, and possible.

We might say that their enthusiasm for the faith was caught, not taught.

Today, Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit. He says clearly that the faith gets taught by the Spirit, who will teach us everything. But the Lord could just as easily have said that we are caught by the Spirit—captured by his action within us.

We see the Spirit at work in today’s first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles. False teachers are at work, but the Spirit guides the apostles in setting things right. Because what’s taught in the Church must, of course, be true.

In the second reading, St. John is carried away “in the spirit.” This could be read as meaning he was carried away “in spirit,” but I think it’s fair to say he was given this vision “in the Spirit”—by the Holy Spirit.

It’s not a teaching moment for John. He’s not being given a definition or even a literal description of heaven—he’s having an experience of it. He is caught up in this vision, caught up in the beauty of what God promises him and all believers.

This is how the Holy Spirit works best—by giving us an experience. This is how faith was caught when those young men met in the rectory—by an experience of Christian community in which God was at work.

Parents, teachers, and priests all worry about how to make the faith relevant to the younger generation and how to adapt it to a changing culture. But, in a certain sense, that’s not our job but the Holy Spirit’s.

In the first reading, we see a clash of cultures—between that of the emerging Church and existing Jewish beliefs.

The answer wasn’t obvious. The first Christians were Jews, faithful Jews, and it made some sense for Christianity to remain a Jewish movement. But when the apostles gathered and invoked the Holy Spirit—we don’t hear the whole story in this shortened passage—God showed his plan clearly, and they communicated it to the believers.

The Church has consistently asked the Spirit for help in meeting the demands of each generation, most recently at the Second Vatican Council. The Spirit will help each of us do the same in our homes, schools, and parishes—if we ask, if we pray for guidance.

The content of our Catholic faith is, of course, absolutely important. Without orthodox belief, we would be a ship without a sail. But the Spirit fills our sails with more than doctrine and teachings, however important they are.

A famous Anglican preacher wrote that “a Christian is someone caught by Christ’s spirit, the Holy Spirit, encountered in the life of some other man or woman, and in the worshipping community we call ‘the Church.’

 “And when we have been caught, then Jesus of Nazareth steps out of the pages ohistory, where he is not walled in, and becomes for us… the Christ whom we worship and in whose name we pray.” (D.W. Cleverley Ford, Preaching on Great Themes, p. 83)

How will this happen here at Christ the Redeemer?

More than one of our parishioners is blessed with what St. Paul (see Rm 12:6, 1 Cor 12:28, 29; 13:1-3, 8; 14:6, and Eph 4:11) calls the gift of prophecy, which doesn’t mean they stand on the church steps shouting out like John the Baptist.

We don’t talk much about prophecy, but St. Paul mentions it more than any of the other spiritual gifts. And although he doesn’t necessarily present them in order of importance, we usually find the gift of prophecy near the top of the list.

A while back, one of these parishioners gave the parish a simple prophetic message: “We need more Holy Spirit.”

“We need more Holy Spirit.” Those words are simple, but they have the power to change our lives.

Changed lives don’t happen automatically from good programs or good liturgies or even good teaching. The Spirit does the real work of evangelization, of conversion, and of growth.

As St. Paul tells the Christians in Corinth “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow” (1 Cor 3:6).

Parents and teachers planted seeds in those young men who gathered in the rectory, their fellowship watered the seeds, but God made them bear a rich harvest.

Only with the Spirit’s help will faith be both taught and caught by those who are following in the footsteps of the MEAT men and of the young women who formed their female counterpart, a smaller group called Imprint.

(If you are wondering why I have only talked about the men it’s because I didn’t belong to the women’s group so there’s less I can say!)

Only if we ask will we receive the Spirit’s help. Pentecost is around the corner—two Sundays from now. It’s time to pray for more of the Spirit in our parish as we rebuild after the pandemic.

Let’s pray for more of the Spirit in our families and schools.

Most of all, let’s pray for more of the Spirit—a real outpouring—in our own hearts.

How do we do that? It’s sure not difficult: all we need to do is pray three words morning and evening for the next two weeks, and especially for the nine days before Pentecost.

“Come, Holy Spirit!” Words of power that ask God to grant us a faith that is not only taught but caught.

All Called to be Shepherds Like Christ! (Easter 4.C)

 

Turn on the evening news, read the paper, or watch TV, and you’ll think this is a very violent world. Crime seems to be everywhere, almost the greatest risk of everyday life.

Well, let me tell you the true crime story for four generations of my family. My grandmother had her purse snatched in the carport of her apartment building more than forty years ago. End of story.

A purse-snatching. Not so scary. But not nice either, because it’s unexpected and sudden. In a single moment you lose many things of value, from money to keys, and you wonder where your credit cards will end up.

Today we hear Jesus talking about sheep snatching. Earlier in this chapter of John’s Gospel he talks about the thief who comes only to steal and kill and destroy; this verse is more about kidnapping than murder. Both, of course, are violent crimes that represent here the theft or murder of a soul.

Are we more afraid of  a thug in a parking lot than of the one who can steal our souls?

We should be. Sometimes the sheep-snatcher tries to carry off a lamb who belongs to us—a child, a sibling, a student, a friend.

We’ve almost all had the pain of seeing a loved one “fall away,” as we like to say. Maybe we should say “snatched away.”

But how does that square with what Jesus says in today’s Gospel: “What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand”? Is Jesus keeping his promise to protect his flock?

We know that God keeps his promises. If people are walking away from his flock, it can’t be that they’ve been snatched from the loving arms of the Good Shepherd. They must freely be leaving the sheepfold and wandering off. They can’t be taken violently, but they can leave freely.

There’s some consolation in this. Our fallen-away friends are not victims but free people. And we ourselves are not at the mercy of the Evil One and his schemes—the Good Shepherd is guarding us if we remain a part of his flock.

How does the Good Shepherd guard and protect us?

First, through the ministry of bishops. If Catholics couldn’t be sure of the truth, they would be easy pray for the snatcher of sheep. They wouldn’t recognize a wolf in sheep’s clothing, because his falsehoods would be camouflaged as new ideas, fresh ideologies, or just plain modern thinking.

Christ’s gracious plan protects those the Father has given him by allowing any member of the flock to recognize deception; whenever we hear doctrines or ideas in conflict with the authentic teaching office of the Church we know the sheep-snatcher is on the prowl.

Authentic apostolic teaching is the first protective fence around the flock of Christ. Brave bishops are good shepherds. This year, on the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, I think we should be praying that the Lord calls good men to be his bishops. Not only that, we should also pray that those whom he calls have the courage to say yes.

Second, through the ministry of priests. I can’t recall a parishioner who was faithful to Confession leaving the Church, although I am sure it’s happened. Faithful attendance at Mass also makes us strong, less vulnerable to being carried away from the sheepfold. It’s hard to go from worshipping the Lord with gladness, singing in his presence—as the Psalm says today—to rejecting Christ or his Church.

The increasing shortage of priests will soon mean decreased opportunities for Sunday Mass, especially outside of cities, and fewer opportunities for the celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. When we pray for more vocations to the priesthood, we are praying for ourselves, that we will be shepherded by priests who are instruments of God’s grace and mercy.

Third, through the ministry of parents. Although we associate Good Shepherd Sunday with priests and religious, the vocation of the Christian mother and father has never been more crucial. Let’s face it: who tended Christ’s flock in my family with care and sacrifice? My mother and father, and especially my mother who as was normal in those days did the lion’s share of shepherding her lambs!

I once argued that the reason our prayer for vocations mentions only priests, deacons, and consecrated men and women was that there was no shortage of marriages, so we didn’t really need to pray for those. Of all the things I’ve got wrong over the years, this is near the top.

In the first place, there is a shortage of marriages! Outside the Church, cohabitation has taken its place. And even among good practicing young Catholics such factors as housing costs and social uncertainties have meant a plummeting number of marriages in almost every parish.

But more than that, we desperately need to understand marriage as a calling from God, a calling as indispensable as any ordained vocation. Every time I talk with Catholic teachers, in both secondary and elementary schools, I hear how the partnership between school and family falls apart when parents do not realize they are called to be shepherds—good shepherds, loving shepherds, countercultural shepherds.

Neither the best teacher nor the best pastor can protect the young without help at home.

Today is Mother’s Day. We honour our mothers. We give thanks for our mothers. But let’s also pray for the next generation of mothers, for they will need to be a sort of “tiger mother” to protect their children from the daily attacks they face in our confused society.

Finally, the Good Shepherd must have the help of every member of Christ’s Church. Every single one of us—priests, deacons, mothers, fathers, unmarried people—has a call to be a shepherd of the lambs and sheep around us.

As with so much else, our responsibility to shepherd one another comes from baptism and confirmation. This is particularly easy to see at the baptism of infants when the child is anointed with the oil of chrism. The celebrant says, “As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet and King, so may you live always as a member of his body.”

What kind of a King was Christ? Like King David, he was a shepherd-king. So too with us. We are all called in baptism to lead others, young and old, with authority and courage, even into battle with the thief and kidnapper of their souls.

I watched a so-called “ordinary” parishioner take hold of the shepherd’s crook at our on Friday morning men’s group when he gave a presentation as part of our series on the Ten Commandments.

He had been assigned the two commandments modern society most rejects: the fifth, which deals with life issues such as abortion and assisted suicide, and the sixth, which covers human sexuality. Without hesitation or compromise, he shared solid Catholic teaching with the other men.

He led us directly from present confusion to the green pastures of solid truth.

Not everyone gets a chance to give a talk about the fifth and sixth commandments. I don’t recommend it at the dinner table with your teenagers.

What I do recommend is a lot easier. Lead your friends and family members to still waters. That’s what they’ll find next week at our “Water in the Desert” event on Saturday evening.

In a time of quiet and prayer, they can meet the Good Shepherd himself.

Abundant Catch, Abundant Grace (Easter 3)

 

We all have different tastes, so I expect some of you like my homilies and some of you don’t. But one thing’s for sure—you can all be glad that I am not a saint! Because if one of the ancient Church fathers or the great doctors of the Church came to preach at Christ the Redeemer most of us would be left scratching our heads.

The homilies of these saints are full of meaning and insight, but they sure weren’t easy listening.

Still, the heavy hitters of early centuries had some fun with today’s Gospel—because, like us, they were struck by that curious number 153 in the story of the miraculous catch of fish.

We are used to symbolic numbers in the Bible. Twelve apostles, twelve tribes of Israel, ten commandments, and so on. But 153? That’s an odd number, and not just mathematically.

Many centuries ago, three of the greatest Christian thinkers tried to figure out the meaning of the 153 fish.

St. Augustine had the most fun with the number. He wrote that the catch of fish represents salvation, which requires keeping the ten commandments. But, on account of original sin, we cannot keep the commandments without the help of grace and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, the number seven signifies holiness, since God blessed the seventh day and made it holy (Gen 2:3).

But 10 plus 7 equals 17, and if all the numbers from 1 to 17 are added together (1+2+3…+17), they equal 153. Hence, the 153 fish signify that all the God’s chosen people are to be saved by the gift of grace (7) and the following of the commandments (10).

How’s that for holy arithmetic?

My patron saint, Pope Gregory the Great says: There are ten Commandments representing the Old Testament plus seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, which also represents the New Testament, which added together make seventeen. This, times three times three, for our faith in the Trinity makes 153.

Much simpler is the theory of St. Jerome: In his time, they thought that there were only 153 species of fish in all the world. So, the disciples caught 153 fish, signifying the salvation of all the world.

Did all these great saints get the meaning of the miracle wrong?

Or did they all get it right? Not in mathematical terms, but spiritually. Because their convoluted answers teach us to pay attention to details.

The famous modern architect Mies van der Rohe said “God is in the details.” He was talking about buildings, of course, but his words apply to our spiritual journey also: God speaks in the details of our daily life and invites us to find him there.

The French spiritual writer Jean Pierre de Caussade wrote of “the sacrament of the present moment”—the place where we find God at work in all things and respond to him there.

De Caussade taught that there is not a single moment in life when we can say: this is an instant God has forgotten, an empty moment.

We just need to look to find God in everyday life.

Today’s Gospel reminds us that God has more than one way of speaking with us. Certainly, he meets us in church. But he also meets us at breakfast.

At the afternoon Mass on Easter Sunday, we heard the beautiful story of Jesus meeting the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. He spoke with them by explaining Scripture and showed himself in the breaking of bread. That direct communication is important.

But it’s not the only way. In today’s Gospel Jesus communicates with the disciples while they are at work. The amazing catch of fish is not exactly an everyday occurrence, but it’s something the apostles could easily understand.

And then he meets them not at a eucharistic table but at breakfast on the beach. The Lord makes his presence known to us in all kinds of ways if we will look for him in the events of our lives.

For all we know, Jesus didn’t have any number in mind when he granted the apostles a miraculous catch. You can ask Father Lucio or any fisherman — if you want to describe a whale of a catch, 153 is as good number as any!

Perhaps it was St. John who recognized that 153 represented abundance, that in counting the fish the apostles were counting their blessings, which were beyond number.

Maybe we can do something of the sort. Having three slices of pizza on my plate has nothing to do with the Trinity, that’s for sure. But it’s a reminder of an abundance of food at a time when many are hungry.

I made seven trips to Toronto to see my brother as he began recovering from his stroke. The seven sacraments were not part of my planning—yet I found God present and at work during every visit, often through the Eucharist and the anointing of the sick, but also in small details like the consistent welcome at the hotel where I stayed.

Perhaps this week you can keep an eye out for God’s presence in your life, for the ways he calls you to be aware of his love. Let’s cast the net and find him in daily details.

At the same time, we can’t forget that 153 fish reminds us of the rich and abundant life offered us by the Risen Lord. Graces overflow in this joyful Easter season and God calls us to land that catch in our daily lives.

The "Why" of Easter

A Protestant pastor says my homily this morning is probably going to flop.

I don’t take it personally. He thinks almost every Easter homily, Protestant and Catholic, is likely to fail.

Carey Nieuwhof says our sermons won’t connect with the people we want to reach the most —the folks who aren’t regularly in church. The seekers. The curious. The former members.

Where’s the problem and why isn’t there any easy fix?

Nieuwhof says that I and most other preachers, Catholic and Protestant alike, can't help talking today about what happened at Easter. We’re going to proclaim and exclaim the marvelous news that Jesus has risen from the dead.

The only problem is that you already know that. From the most devout soul in church to the most disillusioned, everyone knows that Easter is about the resurrection of the Lord. Even those who don’t believe that know what Easter is about.

So, the homily is “like knowing how a movie ends before you begin watching it; the suspense is gone.”

Year after year I preach about the “what” of Easter. Like countless others, I talk about what you already know. We don’t get from what to why.

Yet if we can’t figure out the “why” of Easter, we’ll never be changed by what we’re celebrating today.

In his blog post about Easter sermons, Carey Nieuwhof challenges his fellow pastors to preach the why; but he doesn’t tell us how to do it.

I came up with five answers to the question “why should Easter matter to me?”

One. Easter matters because it’s the foundation of faith. St. Peter says that there were people—trustworthy people, real people—who ate and drank with Jesus after he was crucified.

The Bible is full of appearances of the risen Lord, in different places, at different times, to different people. Once you believe that there really were eyewitnesses and that their testimony is reliable, you are getting pretty close to faith.

It’s not easy to deny the historic truth of Easter unless you think an awful lot of ancient history is also made up, because some of it rests on weaker documentation than the Resurrection.

And let’s not get too stuck on the “show me” argument—“I have to see him for myself.” St. John “saw and believed” when he went into the empty tomb, not when Jesus later appeared to him.

Two. Easter matters because it’s the start of something more. Much more. Jesus tells Mary Magdalene “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” Easter is the supreme moment, but it’s part of a continuous act of redemption that includes the Ascension and the sending of the Holy Spirit.

We’re not celebrating today a one-day wonder, but the high point in a drama with more acts to follow, and which continues to unfold—and to enfold us.

Three. Why Easter matters has much to do with us, with each of us. It may sound brash, but Easter is not only about Christ. It also about us. St. Paul says in our second reading “you have died, and your life is hidden in God.” When are we going to start to unpack that, if not today?

Each of us is a part of the Easter mystery, because when Christ is revealed, we “also will be revealed with him in glory.”

Is it any wonder that the second reading tells us to set our minds on things above? Do we think that truths as deep as these will sort themselves out without any effort on our part? Easter is an annual challenge to “seek the things that are above, where Christ is.”

You can sail sentimentally through Christmas, but you can’t really engage Easter without some work.

A fourth “why.” Easter arms and equips us against the greatest sorrows of life. If we’re suffering right now, this feast offers some relief. If we’re not, it gets us ready for when the time comes, as it does for everyone.

If, as I’ve said, Easter is not only about Christ but us as well, then his victory over suffering and death is our victory as well. It’s not a vague promise of redemption but a here-and-now triumph that we can claim as our own in times of trouble.

Finally, a fifth reason why Easter can make a difference in our lives: it puts everything else in perspective.

The opening prayer at Mass today says that the Son of God “unlocked for us the path to eternity.” Think about that. When Christ rose from the dead in a human body, he inserted humanity into eternity. Mortality, the most final thing about being human, is overcome at Easter.

I’ve been reading a book about what a rush we are all in. It talks about the stress of trying to get everything done or wanting to do everything. We suffer from what the author calls “existential overwhelm.”

But the book says “premodern people weren’t much troubled by such thoughts, partly because they believed in an afterlife: there was no particular pressure to ‘get the most out of’ their limited time, because as far as they were concerned, it wasn’t limited, and in any case, earthly life was but a relatively insignificant prelude to the most important part.”

Easter is not the end of a story but the beginning. We can make that story our own.

Preachers will never stop proclaiming the what of Easter. There’s a good reason we all know what we are celebrating. But today let’s remember why Christ rose from the dead: to make all the difference, for all of us.

Our Exodus: Freedom from Slavery to Sin and Fear

 

We’ve all seen romantic comedies—or even romantic tragedies—where a poor bride is left at the altar, standing in the middle of a beautifully decorated church full of people.

I was afraid that this year’s Easter Vigil would look something like that. We had no one to baptize, and although the Vigil has many other wonderful aspects, baptism is an important one.

But I saw one rom-com where there was a man ready to step into the groom’s shoes and marry the bride, whom he’d loved all along.

Tonight, Joseph Newfield is playing that role. After attending Alpha and just several weeks into our RCIA program, he asked to be baptized.

I had resigned myself to the disappointment of a Vigil without a baptism, so I didn’t get too excited until Joseph and I had a serious conversation about his faith journey and knowledge of Christ and his Church.

And then I got excited. It was clear that the Lord had been leading him well before Alpha and RCIA.

Joseph, we thank God that he has led you here. And not just because you're playing a role at our Easter Vigil! 

We also pray that God will continue to lead you in the days ahead. It has been many centuries since the Christian faith has been this difficult in what were formerly Christian societies.

Joseph, while preparing for tonight, you learned that the Easter Vigil has seven readings from the Old Testament. The Church only insists on three. But whatever a parish chooses to do, one of the seven is never omitted.

That reading is from the fourteenth chapter of Exodus, where the chosen people are led through the waters of the sea, escaping from Pharaoh and his army.

There’s a good reason why we always read this passage at the Vigil: the Israelites are saved by water, clearly prefiguring the sacrament of Baptism.

The Israelites are led through the darkness by a divine light, just as our church and our hearts were illuminated by the light of Christ as we began this liturgy tonight.

God saved his chosen people from slavery to Pharaoh by leading them to freedom.  Now Christ has saved his chosen ones from slavery to sin by leading them to freedom in baptism.

Joseph, you were in Victoria a few Sundays ago when I preached about the Jefferson Bible—the bible that President Thomas Jefferson produced by cutting out all the miracles, including the Resurrection.

Since that Sunday, I’ve come across another edited version of the scriptures called “the Slave Bible,” currently on display in Washington, D.C.

The miracles are there all right, and the Resurrection too.  What the Slave Bible omits is the story of the Passover and the Exodus that is so important tonight. As the name suggests, this was a bible produced for slaves. Its editors didn’t want slaves in the Caribbean being inspired by Moses. It didn’t want to encourage the hope for freedom from oppression.

We roll our eyes at the Jefferson Bible, and we lament the attitudes that gave rise to the Slave Bible. No one is likely to publish a bible nowadays that has no miracles or no Exodus.

But, Joseph, that doesn’t mean you won’t have to confront the errors that these books contained. The world will try very hard to convince you that the miracles of Jesus are, at best, theatre and that his Resurrection is mainly an excuse to eat too much chocolate.

Even more seriously, the world today tempts us to ignore the call to freedom that resounds in the scriptures. The world calls us daily to slavery—in small ways, by promoting selfishness and sin, and in big ways by addicting us to comfort, lust, and success.

Joseph, you will receive many blessings and graces on this night of your baptism. Among them is freedom. As St. Paul says, “you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.”

Paul adds in the next chapter “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Accept with gratitude and hope the gift of freedom promised to his disciples.

Let me conclude with words of St. Peter. God has “called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”  

That’s as good a summary of this night as any. So now let us step into the light as we celebrate the sacraments of baptism and confirmation.

Holy Thursday: A Family Affair

If you don’t mind, I think I’ll pull up a chair. After all, tonight’s liturgy is a family affair.

At Easter we hope to have many visitors—folks who’ve never been to Mass before or who only come once or twice a year like to join us on Easter morning. We’re happy to have them.

But tonight, it’s “just us.” A few welcome visitors, but mostly the faithful flock—those who turn up regularly for our celebrations, big and small.

The crowd at Easter is like a big wedding reception. Holy Thursday’s more like Sunday dinner.

Which isn’t to say the Church doesn’t take you all seriously! After all, the priest is instructed to give a homily “in which light is shed on the principal mysteries that are commemorated at the Mass, namely the institution of the Holy Eucharist and of the priestly Order, and the commandment of the Lord concerning fraternal charity.”

The institution of the Eucharist and the priesthood, and the Lord’s command to love one another.

That’s a lot of light to shed!

But I am not lighting up these things for a bunch of people sitting in the dark. You, faithful members of the parish family, already know what Jesus did at the Last Supper. You’ve heard his words “This is my Body” hundreds if not thousands of times.

You’ve lived the moment when He broke the bread over and over again, celebrating Sunday after Sunday “as a festival to the Lord”  as the Lord commanded the Chosen People to do at Passover.

 Your support for me and the many other priests who have served at Christ the Redeemer has been founded on a great love for Christ’s priesthood. You express your trust in the priesthood every time you come to us in Confession, a trust that even decades of scandal have not been able to extinguish.

As for “the commandment of the Lord concerning fraternal charity” … well, you are the ones who have been helping to feed the poor, shelter the refugees, support prisoners, educate the young, and visit the elderly and ill. Do I need to connect these works of generosity and service to the Mass?

Our parish is centered on the Mass; it revolves around the Mass; all its charitable outreach flows from the altar, where we begin by thanking God for his gifts to us.

If there is one thing that I might say to you, the insiders of our parish, it is simply thank you. You know well that you carry much more than your fair share of the load when it comes to serving your brothers and sisters.

Pope Francis highlighted the service we give to one another in his homily for Holy Thursday this year.  He said that we wash each other’s feet, we serve one another. One serves the other, without self-interest.

Christ’s action on Holy Thursday has been interpreted over the centuries as washing the feet of the poor, and that’s important symbolism for sure. The Pope himself washes the feet of prisoners each year.

But we have to start by washing feet of our fellow parishioners. If we imitate the example of Jesus, then we will have the kind of strong community that reaches out beyond itself.

As I said, we’re deeply grateful to the twenty percent who do eighty percent of the serving, donating, reading, and volunteering that makes our parish able to fulfill the Lord’s commands “do as I have done to you” and “do this in remembrance of me.”

Most of the twenty percent are here tonight. But if you’re someone who hasn’t found your place in parish ministry and service, I invite you to think about that this evening, and pray in the words of our Psalm: “How can I repay the Lord for his goodness to me.”

It’s not a so-called rhetorical question. God asks a small return on the investment he has made in us, the sacrifice of his own Son. What can we do to serve?

I won’t list the many needs of the parish in these difficult days. They are many. Just ask God what you can do, and then let us know you are willing. We’ll help you find a way to repay his goodness without strain or stress.

To the twenty percenters: you know as well as I do where your strength and commitment comes from. It comes from your participation in the Eucharist and your membership in this Eucharistic community.

But precisely because you love the Eucharist and the family of faith, you are also the ones most sad when family members and friends stop attending Mass. You understand completely that the Sunday celebration is “a perpetual ordinance”—a command Jesus has given every generation in every age.

How can so many of the young—and the not-so-young—turn away from this “thanksgiving sacrifice”?

I’m not sure of all the reasons—there are many—but I know it’s time we did something about it.

As I thought about it, I realized that getting people back to Mass or getting people to Mass is not the first step on our journey. For those we want to invite to explore Christian faith, the Sunday Mass can be confusing.

Nothing makes you feel like an outsider so fast as attending an event where you feel you’re the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on.

And if you’re a Catholic who stopped attending Mass a while back, you might be worrying that people are thinking “where has he been?” or might even ask you the question!

This Lent I was convinced that although the Eucharist must be the centre of our efforts at inviting people into or back to the Church, inviting them to or back to Mass isn’t likely to be effective.

That might sound contradictory. So let me explain what happened to me Saturday nights this past Lent. I sat in the church during a one-hour adoration event we called “Water in the Desert.”

Unlike Mass, nothing was expected of me or anyone else. The Lord looked at us from the altar and we looked at Him. I didn’t have to sing, which was good because I didn’t know the songs anyway. The music was like prayerful oil poured out from the loft.

A highlight of each evening was a parishioner’s personal story of faith. Each was unique but they were all powerful and moving.

Two things happened for me at this oasis. My otherwise dry and dreary Lent was renewed, at least for a time. Second, and most important, I became convinced that we need times of quiet reflection before the Blessed Sacrament to restore our weariness and prepare us to share fully in the Sunday Mass.

And there was something more. I felt the Holy Spirit saying that we need something like those Saturday nights to which we can invite the unchurched, uncertain, or unhappy. We need peaceful places that can introduce people to the Eucharistic mystery without making them feel it’s mysterious.

Some of the generous leaders of “Water in the Desert” seemed to have felt the same way, because they volunteered on the final night to keep it going monthly.

We’ll be telling you, faithful friends more about this in the weeks ahead. But on this holy night as we celebrate Christ’s gift of Himself, let us pray that we have fresh opportunities to share that gift with others.

If you are one of those already living the Eucharistic life, pray now that the Lord will show you whom you should bring with you when we announce our next peaceful time of adoration, song, and witness.

Giving others a chance to share what we celebrate is a more perfect act of charity than washing their feet.

And if you yourself are longing to get more out of Sunday Mass, pray now to find the commitment to join the first night of adoration when the date is announced.

As we offer tonight “a thanksgiving sacrifice” and “call on the name of the Lord,” we can be confident the Lord will hear our prayers.

Palm Sunday: More than Words

I'm not much for recycling my homilies... but since my homily in 2010 recycled one from St. Gregory Nazianzen from the fourth century, I think it has stood the test of time, especially since I am only preaching once this Palm Sunday, at a sparsely attended Saturday afternoon Mass. Tomorrow I fly to Toronto to accompany my brother Stephen and his wife during his surgery on Monday.

There’s a famous scene in Shakespeare where Polonius asks Hamlet what he is reading. Hamlet replies “Words, words, words.”

What have we just heard? Certainly there were words and words in the long account of our Lord’s passion. But was there more than words? How is our reading of the passion—or of any Gospel—different from reading a history book, or a newspaper?

To answer this question, we need to start with the prologue of St. John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Obviously, for Christians, “word” has more than one meaning. But these meanings are not unrelated.

Jesus is the Word of God; the Word of God is God. The Bible is the Word of God. And the written Word of God is made up of, obviously, words.

To discuss any one of these uses of the word “word” would take us longer than today's Gospel. I only want to point out that the solemn reading of the Passion is not only about the words on the page; it is not only about the Word of God, the Scriptures. It is an encounter with the Word of God, God himself.

As we listened to the words of St. Luke, we were invited to enter into what we heard—not through the time travel of modern movies, but by the timeless travel of the heart and spirit.

Contemplating the Word himself as we hear the account of his passion, we can answer the question posed by the old spiritual “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”

In an ancient sermon, St. Gregory Nazianzen invites us to “take our part in the Passover...not in a literal way, but according to the teaching of the Gospel; not in an imperfect way, but perfectly; not only for a time, but eternally.”

He calls us to “sacrifice ourselves to God, each day and in everything we do, accepting all that happens to us for the sake of the Word, imitating his passion by our sufferings, and honouring his blood by shedding our own. We must be ready to be crucified.”

He says that each of us has a role in this timeless Passion Play. “If you are a Simon of Cyrene,” St. Gregory says, “take up your cross and follow Christ. If you are crucified beside him like one of the thieves, now, like the good thief, acknowledge your God.”

“If you are a Joseph of Arimathea, go to the one who ordered his crucifixion, and ask for Christ’s body. ... If you are a Nicodemus, like the man who worshipped God by night, bring spices and prepare Christ’s body for burial.”

“If you are one of the Marys, or Salome, or Joanna, weep in the early morning. Be the first to see the stone rolled back, and even the angels perhaps, and Jesus himself.”

So, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”

We answer yes. We were there, and we are there. The passion is not “then,” it is now.

We walk the way of the Cross with the Lord, and we share even now in his suffering and death. And we shall therefore share too in his Resurrection.