It was a joy to welcome Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast--a good friend whom I first met when I was a high school student and he a Jesuit scholastic at nearby Regis College--to celebrate the morning Masses at Christ the Redeemer today. The Archbishop was in Vancouver to speak at the annual Priests' Study Week.
With his kind permission, his homily appears below.
As we gather for the Eucharist on the Lord’s Day I would
like to share with you the theme of our Pastoral Year in which the faithful of the
Alexandria-Cornwall and Ottawa dioceses proclaim that, “Christ is everything
for us”.
We
so value our relationship with Our Lord and his teaching that we have made our
own a challenging Scripture text: “Lord, to whom
can we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6.68).
We believe that when you
let Jesus into your life, when people put Jesus at the centre of their lives,
it changes everything and puts joy into their lives. Our big challenge today is
to introduce people to Christ so they get to know him. Isn’t this the purpose
behind the Archdiocese of Vancouver’s initiative called “Proclaim”?
To fully implement what
Archbishop Miller proposes in his recommending of Alpha, of Catholic Christian
Outreach’s Discovery series and other such parish encounters means that we have
to do so by introducing individuals to Christ one person at a time. We the
Catholic community have to appeal to each individual person’s mind and heart.
We know that a lot of
young people are looking for community and to belong to something. Our
challenge, then is to build trust and to open each person to building a relationship
with Our Lord so that together we might all experience the Joy of the Gospel.
And that will not be something we keep here in church rather such a
relationship with Jesus will push us to share it with his friends, the poor.
The Home Missions collection is being
held today to support the First Nations Catholic missions in your Archdiocese
along with the good work done with the seafarers who visit your ports; it is an
opportunity to assist them with ongoing prayer and a sharing of our blessings.
In
this way, we express that our experience of Christ Jesus as Lord and Saviour guides
us in all that we are and do as we wait in patient hope for his return in glory
at the end of time when all will be made right.
Today's
gospel is taken from the final address of Jesus’ public ministry to his
apostles then and now to us. Like the speeches found in Mark 13 and Matthew
24-25, this speech in Luke’s gospel is apocalyptic in nature. It “uncovers” or “reveals” God's designs for
the future of his chosen ones, in this case the disciples of Jesus, members of
the Church.
It
is important, however, to realize that, since the future of salvation for the world
remains hidden within God's sovereign wisdom, even what is revealed cannot be
fully understood by us human beings. So,
we draw from it general advice: don’t be afraid; don’t go after false prophets;
allow the Holy Spirit to give you the words you need to defend your faith; hold
fast to the end!
You
see, faith in God and trust in his saving designs are called for so that one
may correctly interpret what Jesus is telling us of the future.
Jesus
urges his disciples to a patient endurance, rooted in faith, love and
hope. They are not to be frightened or
led astray, but are to be assured that in persecution Jesus will give them an
eloquence and wisdom that their enemies will be unable to resist or contradict.
Finally they are to be confident about what is to come because he is the Lord
of History.
The
closing weeks of one Church year and the opening week of another—the First
Sunday of Advent in two weeks’ time—are linked by a focus on the “Parousia”, a
word that means the “Presence” or the return of Jesus in glory. Our Christian reflection today focuses on the
third part of the acclamation of faith we say or sing at Mass: “We proclaim
your death, O Lord and profess your resurrection, until you come again!”
“Malachi”
means “my messenger” and this Old Testament minor prophet tells of God's
promise to send a figure in the end times who would “prepare the way” for God's
renewal of Israel's faith life. The
anonymous author of these oracles lived in Judah two generations after the
people of God had come back from the Exile in Babylon (about 460 BC).
Though
the Temple had been rebuilt, it was a sorry sight. The 20,000 returned exiles were poor and
without material resources to rebuild the Temple.
As
well, the People of God had grown weary in their religious practice. Jews divorced the “wives of their youth”, to
marry pretty foreign women (Malachi 2.4).
The wealthy not only cheated the poor; they were even selling them into
slavery (Malachi 3.5).
The
prophet's oracles are a kind of catechism, laying out convictions about: God's
special love for Israel, the sins of the priests, God's opposition to divorce,
God's love of justice, criticism of ritual offenses and other signs of
religious tepidity.
Sometimes today we feel a similar discouragement. The evil around us
and the difficulties we face—such as the way
members of the Church have suffered through reports of sexual abuse and
other faults of our faith community and the pain so many in the church
experience—all of it causes us to grumble and grow weary. We need renewal.
Malachi's
prophecy said that the world could soon confidently look forward to a day when
the least shadow of evil would be blotted out.
He used the image of the sun of righteousness shining out with
healing in its rays.
In
the ancient world, one of the principal gods was the sun, who was believed to
provide for his devotees warmth, life, light and law. Malachi employed this symbolism, identifying
these qualities with God's saving action towards the remnant in Israel who had remained
faithful to God and neighbour in difficult times.
According to Pope
Francis, the fulfilment of this promise is what the Risen Lord Jesus offers us.
In
his recent apostolic exhortation Christus
vivit, Christ is alive, the Holy
Father says that the Risen Lord can and does continually
revitalize us.
Francis observes that, “Christ is
alive and he wants you to be alive! He is in you, he is with you, and he never
abandons you.…When you feel you are growing old out of sorrow, resentment or
fear, doubt or failure, he will always be there to restore your strength and
your hope.”
Today's epistle also
shares in the teaching about the end-times that colours the liturgy in these
closing weeks of the year. Paul’s conviction
proclaims a central biblical truth: we can trust Christ because he is steadfast,
he is our lord and our friend, he will never let us down.
Take courage, then in Christ’s closeness to you and strive
for ways to make him known to those whom he wishes to draw close to himself, namely
your family members, your associates at work and indeed every person you meet.
[Texts: Malachi 3.19-20 [Psalm 98]; 2 Thessalonians 3.7-12; Luke 21.5-19]
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