All God's People as Prophets! (26.B)

Poor Joshua. He’s just doing his job as chief lieutenant to Moses by reporting that he’s seen two men prophesying without a permit.

But instead of thanking Joshua for the information, Moses exclaims “Would that all the Lord’s people were Prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!”

In today’s Gospel, St. John has “a bad case of Joshua-itis.” He’s “offended and shocked that a renegade exorcist is casting out demons” in the name of Jesus.

But “like Moses, Jesus is not upset that the Lord’s Spirit has landed on an outsider.” (Robert P. Waznak, Lift Up Your Hearts: Homilies and Reflections for the "B" Cycle, p. 280).

What Moses and Jesus said to Joshua and John is an urgent call to action for every single person in church today.

Let’s start with the first reading. “Would that all the Lord’s people were Prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” Moses tells his worried assistant.

In plain language, “we need all the help we can get.”

“Would that all the Lord’s people were Prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” That’s as good a prayer for the New Evangelization as any.

It’s an Old Testament version of what Pope Francis has said: “The new evangelization calls for personal involvement on the part of each of the baptized. Every Christian is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelization.”

The Holy Father adds “anyone who has truly experienced God’s saving love does not need much time or lengthy training to go out and proclaim that love.” (Evangelii Gaudium, n. 120).

As Archbishop Miller told those gathered for Upper Room last Saturday, “The mission is not a ministry reserved to a few. Each and every believer, in his or her own way, is called to bear witness to Jesus Christ and the rich and full life that is given in him.”

Moses and Jesus are teaching us something vital. On the surface, they seem to be saying “calm down!” But what they’re really saying is “get excited.”

Get excited because the mission is a lot bigger than our small ideas. A lot bigger than our traditional structures and institutions.

In his Upper Room talk, Archbishop Miller warns against outmoded strategies “devised for a religious culture that is no longer present.”

“This way of seeing the Church’s mission, makes us ineffective in evangelizing the current culture.”

What he’s saying is that we can’t preach the Gospel in our new cultural and social environment the same way we did in very different times—and expect it to work.

Because it doesn’t.

Look around you. You know who is not beside you in the pews. Brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, even parents.

Who will bring them back?

In the past, missionaries had to learn the language and culture of those they sought to evangelize. When they didn’t, their efforts often failed.

We know this was true right here in Canada. The apology issued to the Indigenous Peoples yesterday by the assembly of Canadian bishops says that the Residential School system failed “to respect the rich history, traditions and wisdom of Indigenous Peoples.”

Missionaries trying to evangelize from outside the culture run into a wall.

But you are called from within the culture, even in ways that priests are not. It’s you who “have the relationships, the influence, the keys to the doors of those who do not yet know Christ,” as Archbishop Miller says.

So, who will gather our lost? You are their missionaries. As Pope Francis says, “Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus.”

Maybe I could even use a simple slogan: If it is to be, it is up to me.

But how? How do we confront the modern crisis, adapt to modern conditions, and proclaim the Gospel with power?

First, we shift our rusty Catholic gears and accept that evangelization is our personal responsibility, not something for priests and Sisters, not even just for lay missionaries with CCO.

And then we figure out the best approach, depending on where we are and with whom we are speaking.

There is terrific help available to anyone ready to tackle this challenge. Hundreds of people in our Archdiocese have found the Proclaim Movement helped awaken their call to be missionary disciples and given them practical training.

Proclaim can help you prepare yourself for a new way of looking at your faith and teach you practical ways to share it, right at your computer. It’s all laid out on a splendid website: weareproclaim.com.  Take a look.

And, of course, Alpha. Ed Zadeiks spoke about Alpha at all Masses last weekend. He got more passionate each time. His message was simple: there are people in your life who will never know the joy of the Gospel if you don’t share it with them. Brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, even parents.

And despite his passion, Ed did not make our job seem scary. Just invite. As my boss told me when I first worked in sales, “Ask. All they can say is ‘no.’”

Alpha launches here at CTR on Tuesday evening. There’s also a morning Alpha on Tuesday geared to parents dropping off their kids to St. Anthony’s School. All the details are in the Weekly Update on our website, there’s a signup sheet at the back, or you can phone the office on Monday.

I don’t like it when people put guilt trips on me, so I try not to put them on you. If you came to Alpha and didn’t like it, no problem.  But if you’ve never come, you’re missing a simple and reliable way to share the Gospel with those you love or care about. Or maybe your own heart might need Alpha’s message.

If Alpha didn’t click for you, or if taking part right now is just not practical, how about something else? Our parish’s Weekly Update looks a bit like the menu at Earl’s—there’s something for everyone starting in the next few weeks.

But we’re like Earl’s in another way—the pandemic’s caused a shortage of servers and cooks! And since Alpha is mostly virtual, I don’t mean that literally. We need more help as parish life resumes: ministers at Mass—to read, to welcome, and to distribute Holy Communion—not to mention Alpha volunteers…

Please call or email the office, or speak to me, if you would like to consider a new responsibility, big or small. We do things in teams, so you won’t get stuck on your own, whatever you’re called to do.

Finally, the parish phase of our annual campaign, Project Advance, is now underway. Maybe your situation at work or home really does prevent you from taking part in Alpha or volunteering at church. But everyone can be a part of everything we do by supporting Project Advance with a sacrificial gift.

As we look ahead to happier times, the parish council has chosen a powerful theme for Project Advance: Gather Together. We’ll tell you more about the campaign projects in the coming week, but you can already see one of them underway: we’re getting the meeting rooms ready for our return to normal. When that times comes, comfortable and bright spaces for conversation, community, and faith studies will be waiting.

All these things—inviting others to Alpha, volunteering in the parish, and your financial generosity—are ways to “seize the adventure of working with the Holy Spirit to live and share the saving message given to us by Jesus Christ,” to borrow the Archbishop’s words from the Upper Room.

I already said “finally,” but I want to close with something that’s close to many of our hearts, the restoration of relationships with the Indigenous peoples wounded by the Residential Schools. This Thursday is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and I will offer a special Mass at 8:15 a.m. During that Mass we will pray for this intention and read together the Canadian bishops’ statement of apology.

There’s much to do. So, let’s remind ourselves: If it is to be, it is up to me. And let’s pray hard that all the Lord’s people become Prophets and evangelizers, and that the Lord sends his Spirit upon them.

Stepping Out of the Upper Room (25.B)

 

Preaching at the end of the Upper Room conference was a bit like following a combination of the Sermon on the Mount and the Gettysburg Address.  Archbishop Miller’s address was particularly profound and groundbreaking.

I figured, therefore, that for the sake of the folks who’d watched the conference all day I should lighten up my homily with joke. But that wasn’t easy—it’s been a year and a half since I tried a joke in church. During the livestream months it was pretty risk to try to get a laugh from a congregation of four!

I decided to try a few “good news/bad news jokes,” since many of them come from parish life.

They fell flat except for this one:

Good News: Church attendance rose dramatically the last three weeks. Bad News: You were on vacation.

So, let’s get a bit serious. As you know, the word gospel comes from old English words meaning good news. And evangelize comes from a Greek word meaning the same.

In his exhortation “The Joy of the Gospel,” Pope Francis says that the Gospel “will always remain good news until it has been proclaimed to all people, until it has healed and strengthened every aspect of humanity, until it has brought all men and women together at table in God’s kingdom.”

The Pope reminds us that our faith is not just a bunch of rules and doctrines but a life-giving proclamation full of hope and promise. Someone calculated that in that document, Pope Francis uses the word “love” 154 times, “joy” 109 times, and “peace” 58 times.

But how are we to handle the bad news about the Good News? Because today’s readings, at first glance, don’t sound like good news.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus foretells his suffering and his death. Another discouraging note appears when ambition rears its ugly head among his disciples.

And our reading from the Letter of James makes it clear that ambition was just one of the vices that messed up life in the earliest Christian community.

The first reading, from the Book of Wisdom, is a graphic prophecy of the death of Jesus. And it casts a shadow on every Christian, since the hatred of the godless for the righteous did not end with the Crucifixion but remains a fact of life today.

Can we doubt that, when every day 13 Christians worldwide are killed because of their faith, 12 churches or Christian buildings are attacked. And when every day, 12 Christians are unjustly arrested or imprisoned, and another 5 are abducted.

That’s the 2021 report from the World Watch List of the top 50 countries where Christians are persecuted for following Jesus. The watch list, compiled by Open Doors, a respected charitable organization, found 309 million Christians living in places with very high or extreme levels of persecution, up from 260 million in last year’s list.

Bad news for sure.  Or not?  David Curry, the president of Open Doors has said “You might think the [list] is all about oppression. … But the [list] is really all about resilience.

“The numbers of God’s people who are suffering should mean the Church is dying—that Christians are keeping quiet, losing their faith, and turning away from one another,” he stated. “But that’s not what’s happening. Instead, in living color, we see the words of God recorded in the prophet Isaiah: ‘I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert’.”

One of the greatest challenges a disciple faces is understanding that bad news can never overpower or contradict the good news of Jesus Christ, who overcame sin and death and all that oppresses us.

Yet Pope Francis writes “The Gospel, radiant with the glory of Christ’s cross, constantly invites us to rejoice.” [n. 5]

The cross is a radiant symbol of glory. And it’s not only about Christ’s glory but ours. As St. Paul writes in words I quote so often, “we know that all things work together for good for those who love God,” or, in another translation, “God makes all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28). 

All things—even suffering.

Calling our archdiocesan evangelization conference “Upper Room” was brilliant—because the upper room or Cenacle in Jerusalem is the traditional location of the Last Supper, the place where the apostles huddled in fear after the Crucifixion, the place where the risen Lord appeared to them, where the gathered in prayer with Mary awaiting the Holy Spirit, and where that Spirit was given.

What a tapestry of bad news and good news: dejection and fear, redeemed by joy and empowering.

The joy of the Gospel is meant to overcome not only our big fears but even the smaller ones. Pope Francis writes that “many lay people fear that they may be asked to undertake some apostolic work and they seek to avoid any responsibility that may take away from their free time.”

He even gives an example we experience right here at CTR: “it has become very difficult today to find trained parish catechists willing to persevere in this work.”

And he doesn’t spare the clergy, saying that “Something similar is also happening with priests who are obsessed with protecting their free time.”

Whether it’s priests or laity, the Pope says, “people feel an overbearing need to guard their personal freedom, as though the task of evangelization was a dangerous poison rather than a joyful response to God’s love which summons us to mission and makes us fulfilled and productive.”

What’s the “bad news” of  losing some free time against the “good news” of sharing the Gospel with others?

Dear friends, the first gathering in the Upper Room was the first Eucharist. The last of which we are aware was the sending forth of the first missionaries empowered by the Holy Spirit.

As we gather today for the Eucharist, let’s make the connection between our worship and our work: between our coming to church, and our going out to the world.

The good news is that everyone of us has been called and commissioned to share the joy of the Gospel with others. The bad news is… Well, there really isn’t any bad news.

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*Lasky, Mike Jordan:“Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium: Work for justice at the heart of discipleship.” Millennial Journal. See Wikipedia, “The Joy of the Gospel.”

Deacons and All the Baptized Called to Suffering

 

Yesterday was a big day for three of our parishioners. It was a big day for Steve Whan and Marty Cayer, who received diplomas in pastoral ministry from St. Mark’s College, having completed their academic studies for the permanent diaconate.

It was a big day for our longtime parishioner Angus Reid, who was presented with an honorary doctorate in sacred letters at St. Mark’s convocation, where he was acknowledged for his many contributions to Catholic education and the wider community.

And it was a big day for me as well. Seven other men preparing for ordination as deacons next month were also awarded their diplomas at the graduation ceremony and one his master's degree; as director of the archdiocese’s permanent diaconate program, I have been involved with all nine since they began their formation.

Not to mention the fact that I taught them all their favourite subject canon law!

I was like a proud father during the convocation, although I was on the edge of my seat until they announced Steve’s name.  The program had misspelled his name, and I was wondering if what would happen if they called Steve Wham to the stage.

Happily, they got it right.

This morning Angus Reid is already in Toronto, but all nine of the diaconate candidates are in church with us, and I welcome them warmly on behalf of all of us at Christ the Redeemer. We need to keep them in our prayers as they prepare spiritually for the Sacrament of Holy Orders on October 7.

And, of course, our deacons and future deacons owe a prayer or two to this parish community, which has supported the permanent diaconate program in many ways since Archbishop Miller asked me to start it ten years ago.

With less than a month to go before their ordination, I thought I would preach a happy, lighthearted homily today that would encourage the ordinands and help the congregation look forward to the ministry of deacons soon to be a part of parish life.

But today’s readings didn’t give me the chance. There’s simply nothing lighthearted about them. Whether from the perspective of ordained ministry or the vocation of all the baptized, the messages of Sacred Scripture this morning are entirely serious.

Jason Costa, whom many parishioners remember from his time in the parish office, now runs the Permanent Diaconate Office with me, in a most efficient fashion. On Thursday he came to me with a powerful article on the diaconate and suggested we might give the Archbishop a copy to help him with his ordination homily next month.

I took one look at the title and told Jason to forget it—the last thing the candidates would want to hear about at the ordination Mass was a reflection on “The Diaconal Call to Spiritual Martyrdom: Suffering as the Foundation of the Servant Mysteries.” (Deacon Robert T. Yerhot, Josephinum Diaconal Review Spring 2021 51-57)

But what have we just heard in today’s Gospel? “Whoever wants to become my follower, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

And notice something very important. The first part of today’s Gospel is a conversation with the inner circle of disciples. But Jesus calls the crowd to him before he delivers the key message. It’s not “whoever wants to be my apostle, or my deacon, or my priest” but “whoever wants to become my follower.”

As Mary Healy writes, “the conditions that Jesus is about to outline apply not only to some of his followers but to all without exception.”

Jesus doesn’t want us to be in any doubt about the cost of discipleship. As Dr. Healy says, “to be a Christian is not something that happens by default or cultural heritage: it is a personal decision that must be made with the utmost sincerity and resolve—and with at least a partial grasp of the implications.” (The Gospel of Mark, 168)

Inviting others to that personal decision, or making it ourselves, is Christ’s imperative call. And it’s not easy.

We try to make it as easy as possible, by providing parishioners with a straightforward way to invite people by bringing them to Alpha. The Upper Room conference taking place here at CTR next Saturday helps us become proclaimers of the Gospel in as effective and non-threatening ways as possible.

But nothing we do can eliminate the suffering that disciples will always face.

In some ways, you might think that our permanent deacons have it easier. Since they’ll be known as ordained ministers—professionals, if you will—their coworkers and family members and fellow parishioners won’t be annoyed by their efforts to share the Gospel; they won’t be written off as quickly.

Or are we sure about that? St. John Paul said that deacons “are called to participate in the mystery of the cross, to share in the Church’s sufferings, to endure the hostility she encounters in union with Christ the Redeemer.”

He goes even further: “It is this painful aspect of the deacon’s service that makes it most fruitful.”

The article on the diaconate that Jason handed to me says that “the central question for the deacon is always ‘Will I embrace this suffering to which I am called by the Father as martyr, as witness? Will I, in obedience, be sent in his name, as his envoy, to herald that Gospel that is entrusted to me, or will I avoid it by withdrawing and with using distracting activity?’” (Yerhot, p. 54)

In light of this morning’s Gospel, can we not say that this is the central question for every follower of Jesus? Isn’t it just another way of asking whether we are willing to take up our cross? Whether we are willing to put this life in second place for the sake of the Good News and all it promises?

Dear future deacons, and dear diaconal wives and family members, the Church is entering into a new era of suffering. Through ordination, the deacon enters in a special way not only the suffering of the Church, but of that of Jesus himself.

It’s enough to make you think twice about showing up at the Cathedral on October 7.

The fact is, while the deacon’s call has a special intensity and special challenges, the Sacrament he receives in Holy Orders provides him with special strength and graces.

And that’s not all. In the final analysis, it’s not just ordination that demands suffering: it’s baptism. All the baptized are called to a redemptive suffering. 

Pope Emeritus Benedict has said that “the task of proclamation and the call to suffering for Christ are inseparably together.”

Dear deacons-to-be, we’ve worked hard to prepare you for the task of effective proclamation. Dear parishioners, a key focus at Christ the Redeemer has been preparing each of you for effective sharing of the faith.

Only Christ can prepare you for suffering for the sake of the Gospel. Let us ask him now for that grace, and for the grace to think not as humans do, but as God does.