Xavier Jesudoss Royappan, 1962 - 2017

Nearly 13,000 kilometers from here, in the city of Chennai, stands the beautiful church of St. Joseph. It is a picturesque building of a distinctive design. It was Father Xavier’s pride and joy. Many times he spoke to me with great pride about that church, which he and his parishioners built with more love than money.

We might call St. Joseph’s church Father Xavier’s monument. But we’d be wrong.

If you’re looking for his monument, look around you. Look around you in the church this morning. Look at the parishioners—young and old—of Christ the Redeemer, whose lives he touched with his simplicity and gentleness. Looking at this congregation I can almost feel the beating heart of our parish family.

Look at his fellow Pallottine priests, confreres in the religious community he served as a formator and a promoter of missions. And see the diocesan priests, from the North Shore and elsewhere, who valued his fraternal warmth.

We even welcome representatives from Sacred Heart Parish in Terrace, where his passing has already been commemorated last week at Mass celebrated in a full church by the Bishop of Prince George.

Here is the true monument—the true memorial—of a priest who lived the Beatitudes with grace and conviction. This living monument, of course, of flesh and blood, is earthly while the reward of his labours—as Jesus has just told us in the Gospel—is in heaven.

We hear the Beatitudes read fairly often at funerals, but today they strike us with a particular force. In the first place, although Father Xavier was legitimately proud of his accomplishments both in India and in Canada, he had a purity of heart and a poverty of spirit that always gave the due credit to God.

A priest can preach effectively about virtues like charity or patience but the only homily he can really give on purity of heart and poverty of spirit is the witness of his life.

We also heard Jesus say “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Now I suspect there were Pallottine seminarians who didn’t think their prefect was particularly meek, but in his parish ministry he was unfailingly humble and gentle and kind.

And his meekness was the specifically Christian variety, not to be confused with being obsequious or unassertive. One day a large trailer pulled into the parking lot carrying a cow as an educational experience for our students at St. Anthony’s school–a bunch of city kids. Being a city kid myself, I ran back to the rectory and I urged Father Xavier to come over to the school to see the cow.

“A cow? A cow? I’m an —I'm not crossing the parking lot to see a cow!”

He was certainly merciful, especially to me. I found it too much to preach on the Sunday before he died, so Father Giovanni gave the homily at all the Masses. We heard the Gospel where Jesus tells Peter to forgive seventy-seven times. Because I was so emotional when I announced his illness at the start of the nine o’clock Mass, Father Giovanni in his homily said “You can see how much Monsignor loves Father Xavier. But living together for so long they must have had their fights.”

I promptly interrupted him from the chair, to exclaim “Father Xavier and I never fought”—which is more than I can say about Father Giovanni!

Although all the Beatitudes fit this peaceful and righteous man, the one he was called to live most fully was “Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.” The tragic death of his sister Nirmala Maria, a young religious who had just finished her training as a surgeon, was his own moment to join Jesus on the Cross. It was, I believe, the time when he lived Christ’s priesthood most fully.

The most intimate thing Father Xavier ever said to me came one day when we were talking about his sister’s death. “For six months,” he said, “I could barely offer Mass.”

But he did offer Mass. He did find the spiritual strength to believe that those who mourn will be comforted. He did find the courage not to grieve as those who have no hope.

He was able, along with the rest of his heartbroken family, to move through that darkness with faith in the Resurrection of Jesus and in the resurrection of those who have died in Christ.

Of course we are here today to pray for the repose of his soul, but if I can ask one thing of you this morning it is this: do pray especially for his mother, who has had to face two such terrible losses.

Today, as the first reading says, is our time to mourn. But it is also our time to embrace—to embrace one another and to embrace the consoling and encouraging word of God. It is what Father Xavier himself did and it is what he would have us do.

Stewardship = Discipleship

Welcome to Christ the Redeemer’s final Stewardship Sunday! You are also welcome after Mass to our parish’s last-ever Stewardship Fair.

Don’t be alarmed—we haven’t given up on stewardship. Far from it—I just returned from the annual meeting of the International Catholic Stewardship Council and I’m as keen on stewardship as I ever was.

But the more I listened to the committed and talented speakers at the stewardship conference the more convinced I became that stewardship is really just another name for discipleship. 

As our parish intensifies its commitment to forming intentional disciples I think we should remind ourselves that the only goal of our stewardship of time, talent, and treasure is the dedicated following of Jesus Christ.

And so, next year, you can look forward to the first annual Discipleship Fair!

The day our conference ended another took over the hotel. It was for young computer wizards and part of it was what they call a “jobs fair”—a bunch of companies sponsoring booths offering employment opportunities.

Our Stewardship Fair is a lot like that. It’s not advertising the great things we are doing in this parish—it’s inviting you to great things. Today’s Gospel shows how God puts each of us to work at different stages in our lives. One of the most committed volunteers in this parish is almost ninety; another one of the most active and generous parishioners is more than sixty-five years younger.

The amazing generosity of the Lord of the vineyard is something to celebrate—but we mustn’t forget that all the labourers did some work. There’s no parable about God’s generosity to those who do nothing at all.

So do visit the gym after Mass and listen for a voice that says “you also go into the vineyard.”

I need to keep this homily short, but I do want to offer a prayer that I heard at the conference in Atlanta. It’s printed also in the bulletin, but one of the things I learned at the conference was that only half the people take a bulletin and only half of those actually read it!

My parish is composed of people like me. I help make it what it is. It will be friendly, if I am. It will be holy, if I am. Its pews will be filled, if I help fill them. It will do great work, if I work. It will be prayerful, if I pray. It will make generous gifts to many causes, if I am a generous giver. It will bring others into worship, if I invite and bring them in. It will be a place of loyalty and love, of fearlessness and faith, of compassion, charity, and mercy, if I, who make it what it is, am filled with these same things. Therefore, with the help of God, I will dedicate myself to the task of being all the things that I want my parish to be. Amen.

Sunday Wasn't a "Duty" for Lily!

Last week one of the loveliest young women in our parish came to the 5 o’clock Mass looking like one of those photos you see on the internet labelled “plastic surgery gone horribly wrong.” Her eyes were almost swollen shut and her face was so puffy I did not recognize her.

The day before, she’d been enjoying herself at her family’s cabin on a small island when she found out the hard way that she is allergic to bee stings. A helicopter had to rush her off the island for emergency treatment in hospital.

Yet there she was at the five o’clock Mass. Why?

Why would someone who looked so awful—and who must have felt pretty awful, too—show up for Mass? Certainly she knew there was no Sunday obligation in those circumstances.

Can it have been that she needed the experience of community and fellowship? Liked the music? Wanted instruction from the homily?

These are all very good things, but they can’t adequately explain her sitting in the pew last week.

Only one thing, I suggest, could explain that—her belief in what happens at Mass. Specifically, a deep and personal belief that the Church is fulfilling the command of Jesus to “do this in remembrance of me” and that the same thing is happening as happened at the Last Supper: “Christ truly gives himself for us, and we truly gain a share in him” (Youcat 216).

The duty to attend Mass that we call the Sunday obligation was the farthest thing from the thoughts of that young woman. As Youcat, the Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “for a genuine Christian, ‘Sunday duty’ is just as inappropriate as ‘kiss duty’ would be for someone who was truly in love.”

I’m telling this story today because in a couple of minutes I will be mandating, on behalf of the Archbishop, our parish’s Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion—the women and men who assist in the distribution of Communion at Mass and who take the Eucharist to the sick and those in care homes.

I will ask them whether they are resolved to administer the Holy Eucharist with the utmost care and reverence. But it seems appropriate that we ask ourselves whether we are resolved to receive the Eucharist with the utmost care and reverence—with devotion, with respect, and with spiritual preparation.

The opening prayer or Collect this morning asks God to deepen our sense of reverence—not because He needs that but because we do. We prayed that by deepening our sense of reverence, God might nurture in us what is good. And surely the greatest of all goods is our relationship with him, the relationship that is nourished each time we receive Jesus in the Eucharist.