Feel the Joy! (Christmas 2022 Year A)

 

What’s your favourite Christmas carol?

If you chose “Joy to the World” you picked a winner. Although the internet is filled with lists of ‘most-popular’ carols, Joy to the World is the most published. 

Surprisingly, it was not written for Christmas. The Protestant minister Isaac Watts, who also wrote “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” and “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” wrote the song for a 1719 hymnal of psalms set to music.

But where it started out is not where “Joy to the World” ended up: it’s been called “one of the most joyous Christmas hymns in existence; not in the sense of merry-making but in the deep and solemn realization of what Christ’s birth has meant to mankind.”

It didn’t hurt that some of the tune is taken from Handel’s Messiah. But I suspect that its first word is what attracts so many people to this carol.

Joy is a simple word but a powerful one. It appears about sixty times in the New Testament. And it appears three times in the scriptures we’ve heard tonight: twice in Isaiah’s prophecy to those who lived in darkness, and once in what the angel said to the frightened shepherds.

Let’s take a close look at what the angel said. “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.”

Good news of great joy! The angel seems confident in his message. Which makes me wonder: are we? We all agree that the birth of Christ is good news—you wouldn’t be here tonight if you thought it was bad news! But do we experience it as “good news of great joy”?

Even for the shepherds, the angel’s announcement brings joy from the outset. Look how the angel begins by acknowledging that they are frightened: his first words were “do not be afraid.” But the next thing he said was “I bring you good news of great joy.”

This news overcomes the shepherds’ fear: by the end of the Gospel reading, they are heading off to Bethlehem, something no shepherd in his right mind would do without a very good reason, unless, of course, they took the sheep along—and if they did, St. Luke really ought to have told us.

It’s very clear that the angel’s words are not intended just for the frightened shepherds. The angel says he is bringing “good news of great joy for all the people.” This message is for everyone.

It’s for everyone, in the first place, because Jesus came to save the whole world. That’s precisely what St. Paul says to Titus in our second reading today: “The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.” We find confirmation of this in chapter three, verse sixteen of St. John’s Gospel, a reference which we see on signs held up at American football games: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

But let’s be careful! “The world” and “all people” seems a long way from me. From my family. My friends.

If there’s good news for all the people, there better be good news for me—for my messiness, for my troubles, for my sins and fears.

And there is. The engaging Christian writer Rick Warren puts it this way: “Regardless of your background, religion, problems, or circumstances, Christmas really is the best news you could get.

“Beneath all the visible sights and sounds of Christmas are some simple yet profound truths that can transform your life for the better here on earth and for forever in eternity.”

And, Pastor Warren adds, “it doesn’t matter who you are, what you’ve done, or where you’ve been, or where you’re headed—this news is for you.”

So, really, the angel brought the shepherds more than good news—it was the best news. And if that’s not a reason for joy, what is?

Yet there are still some among us who view Christmas—or Christianity at least—with anything but joy. It’s about being naughty or nice—mostly naughty. Rules. Duty. Burdens.

The fact is, you can’t separate Christian faith from joy. St. Paul tells the Philippians to rejoice in the Lord always—not some of the time but all of the time. In good times and in bad, we can find a baseline of peace in knowing that we are loved, and that God has a plan for us.

It’s not a feeling, but a conviction—an attitude of gratitude rooted in belief that the Lord has come and will come again in glory. Our faith in his appearing brings the blessed hope of his final coming; and between the two, we live serene in the knowledge that God works for good in all things for those who love him (Romans 8:28).

Of course, it’s not only Christmas that gives us joyful hope. The baby in the manger, who becomes the man on the Cross, dies for us. In the most joyful moment of all history, he rises from the dead. We celebrate this at Easter with hymns even more glorious than Christmas carols!

Everything we do to serve God and neighbour, however difficult, can be joyful if we do it in gratitude for what God has done for us by becoming man. It’s been said that Mother Teresa left happiness to find joy.

In fact, Saint Teresa of Calcutta understood very well the difference between true joy and mere human happiness at Christmas. She is quoted as saying “The coming of Jesus at Bethlehem brought joy to the world and to every human heart. May His coming this Christmas bring to each one of us the peace and joy He desires to give.”

My trusty dictionary of Catholic spirituality points out that while we might experience an ecstatic kind of joy from time to time, “the principle aim of the Christian life is to serve God and neighbour joyfully.”

At the same time, “in the spiritual life, God is the supreme joy and the greatest delight” (Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, p. 578).

Four or five weeks ago I promised to give a one-sentence summary of every homily. Today, what I am saying is that the joy of Christmas is joy to the world and for every single one of us. I can make that even shorter: Feel the joy!

The angel’s message to the startled shepherds was meant for all of us: rich, poor, young, old, Christian, and non-believer. It’s a message of joy—a joy that is personal and that can give meaning and purpose to our challenges and struggles.

This joy is more powerful than our fears, because ultimately it is deeper and more real.

We’ve  heard the Christmas story so many times that we can forget it’s not a story. Nothing could be more real than what took place at Bethlehem when heaven and nature sang.

Even the first words of tonight’s Gospel are intended to remind us that this event actually happened. St. Luke does not begin “Once upon a time,” like a fairy tale. He says “In those days,” when Augustus Caesar ruled the Roman Empire and Quirinius was governor of Syria. Scholars argue about the exact date but that’s not really the point here. Luke wants to make it clear that we are talking about a historical event.

A historical event that changed the world. Tonight we ask ourselves whether we will let it change our world—our hearts, our homes, our society—even our parish. What will we do with God’s invitation to a more joyful life?

We are going to sing “Joy to the World!” tonight. As we do, will we accept the gift of joy ourselves?

Go to Joseph (Advent.4.A)

 

Whether it’s a Shakespeare play or a Broadway musical, the first page of a script or program always lists the cast of characters. Today’s liturgy presents a cast of three: Mary, Joseph, and an Angel. We will wait a week for Jesus to enter the Christmas drama.

I thought we might shine the spotlight today on St. Joseph, who doesn’t always get the attention he deserves. He appeared at the Christmas concert put on by St. Anthony’s School on Thursday, played very well by a youngster from junior kindergarten. But I heard about another school’s Christmas pageant where the boy who was to play St. Joseph took ill.

They didn’t replace him—and nobody missed him!

We don’t want that to happen as we reflect on Joseph’s role in the Christmas story. St. Matthew, whose Gospel is the only source of our information, tells us just how important he is—not just historically but for us today.

The first thing Joseph does is to conquer his fears. The Annunciation to Mary, which we hear about from St. Luke, is quite different. When the angel tells her “Do not be afraid,” he is simply reassuring her, telling her not to be afraid of him. After all, who wouldn’t be unnerved by such a strange encounter with a heavenly visitor?

But in today’s Gospel, Joseph is already in distress when the angel appears in his dream. His fiancée is pregnant, and he is not the father. In this difficult situation, the angel tells Joseph not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife. God is at work!

Sometimes we must conquer our human fears before we can do what God calls us to do. We can have no better model of that than St. Joseph.

That’s not all we should imitate. Joseph is obedient to God. When he wakes up, he did as the angel commanded; he didn’t overthink or argue but put his trust in the word that was spoken to him.

In our second reading today, St. Paul gives us a nice phrase to describe Joseph’s reaction to his call: “the obedience of faith.”

St. Joseph’s obedience was formed by faith. In the passage we’ve just heard, Matthew quotes our first reading from the prophet Isaiah.  This is typical in his Gospel, since he wrote for Jewish Christians and often quotes the Old Testament to show how its prophecies are fulfilled in Christ. I wonder if St. Joseph made the connection? While we will never know, as a devout Jew he would have studied Isaiah’s text. It’s worth thinking about—the more we know our Bible the easier it is to see God at work.

The future foster father of Jesus Christ was not only an obedient and faithful man—he was a man of commitment. Even when he thought it would be necessary to dismiss Mary, he resolves to do so quietly as a mark of the past commitment to her that he wished to honour.

Commitment is in short supply nowadays, which may be one of the reasons for the falling marriage rate, and high rate of divorce, not to mention priests and religious abandoning their vows and public figures their responsibilities.

“Joseph could have walked away from his commitment to Mary and Jesus, even after this dream, but he didn’t. Christmas is a good time to renew our commitment to our families, our vocations, our work, and our Church.”

“Maturity is defined,” one of my favourite homilists says, “not by the number of options we keep open but by the commitments we keep even when it isn’t easy.”

Joseph “is a model of adult commitment which our culture desperately needs and a reminder to us to renew those commitments that shape our life and our soul.” (Captured Fire: the Sunday Homilies—Cycle A, Rev. S. Joseph Krempa.)

I should mention that these thoughts come only from this morning’s Gospel. St. John Paul, in his letter on St. Joseph titled “Guardian of the Redeemer” lists many other ways in which St. Joseph can guide us: as guardian of the mystery of God; as a just man—a husband; a worker; and a model of devotion and the inner life.

Speaking of keeping commitments, I want to keep my recent promise to provide a one-sentence summary of my Sunday homilies. I’ll even give it to you in Latin: Ite ad Joseph. “Go to Joseph.”

These words of Pharaoh to the Egyptians in the book of Genesis are about a different Joseph, but they are inscribed at the base of the statue of St. Joseph in front of St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, founded by St. André Bessette, who obtained many miraculous healings through the intercession of St. Joseph.

By declaring St. Joseph as its universal patron, the Church tells us to go to St. Joseph in our times of need, just as Pharaoh told the hungry to go to that other Joseph. 

Although I’ve left the Blessed Mother aside for now—she will take center stage at Christmas—let’s finish by recalling that her “yes” to the angel came before St. Joseph’s obedience to another angel.

Advent is the season when we too say “yes”—yes to the gift of Christ in our hearts, yes to the plan of God for our lives. Each of us also has our part to play in the joyful drama of Christmas.

Wait for the Lord (Advent 3A)

Our weather around the province during the past few years is something of a joke. We go from floods to droughts without much in between. It even seems to be inspiring jokes. 

Just this week: Q: What does daylight saving time mean in Vancouver? A: An extra hour of rain.

The weather is one of those things that we don’t think much about unless it’s extreme, but it touches every aspect of our lives. No wonder there are so many phrases and expressions revolving around it.

You can be under the weather. Or have a fair-weather friend. Sometimes, you have to keep a weather eye open. Other days, you just have to weather the storm.

It’s not surprising that weather appears often in the Scriptures. Psalm 148 says “Praise the Lord from the earth… Fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command!”

Isaiah 29 says “You will be visited by the Lord of hosts with thunder and with earthquake and great noise, with whirlwind and tempest…”, while elsewhere the book promises that we “shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.”

 Jesus himself uses the weather as an image when he says “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”

And we see him rebuking the winds and the waves, and he tells us that God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”

 Those words, by the way, inspired a Sister I know to write a very cute bit of rhyming theology. Her poem went “The rain it raineth, everyday, upon the just and unjust fella. But more upon the just—because… the unjust’s got the just’s umbrella.”

We could spend a lot of time reflecting on weather in the Bible, but let’s just focus on weather in today’s readings.

The background to the first reading is a drought—something we experienced not very long ago, as we watched lawns and even trees turn brown. Few things in the ancient world were more devastating. No water, no crops. No crops, no food or money. Animals, a rare form of capital for some, would die of dehydration.

Against that dry desert background, these words from Isaiah are all but ecstatic. What joy when the flowers appear! The prophet spends hardly a moment on this wonderful event before telling us he’s really thinking about something even more important than water—the coming of the Lord, the avenger, the just One. Salvation. Healing. An end to sorrow.

The dryness of the desert was just a metaphor. We’re talking about the dryness of our souls, parched by sin, hardship, fear, and discouragement.

Whether we are oppressed, hungry, prisoners, blind, bowed down, lonely, widowed or orphaned—today’s Psalm mentions all the major misfortunes of life—we are called to hope in the Lord who brings justice, food, freedom, sight, and protection from despair.

But in the concrete circumstances of each of our lives, how do we gain access to the liberation and encouragement of the Lord who loves us and keeps faith forever? After all, who hasn’t experienced unanswered prayer or unrelieved distress?

The second reading answers the question in a very practical way: “Be patient, brothers and sisters.”

Be patient like the heroic farmers of old and of today, who wait for rain or who endure floods without giving up. Wait for what’s coming—wait in hope for the weather to change. In our age of instant gratification, when we’re annoyed if it takes two seconds for a webpage to load, this is crucial advice. God is not a computer.

It's not good theology, of course, but I once said that God has only one fault: He has no sense of timing.

But he does—his timing is as perfect as he is. Just as nature cannot be hurried by farmers anxious for their harvest, neither can God be hurried by our expectations of instant answers to our prayers.

Which doesn’t mean we do nothing in times of trial. The apostle James, one of the most practical writers in the Bible, tells us what to do as we wait: “Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.”

This, of course, is my one-sentence summary of today’s homily:  “Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.”

How? By prayer. By actions like planning to attend the Tuesday Advent Masses and adoration. By going to confession. By some time reading the Word of God—ideally reading one or all of the Sunday Mass readings on line or from your missal. By attending Water in the Desert next Saturday evening—that especially can be the experience of joy Isaiah so beautifully describes in the first reading.

A final point. I was at Mass earlier today with the Archbishop and our permanent diaconate community. Archbishop Miller stressed that the “coming of the Lord” that is near is not Christmas but the second coming. We’re not trying to strengthen our hearts just so we have a better celebration on December 25.

We are not patiently waiting for Christmas like children eager for the arrival of Santa—not even the arrival of the Christ Child in the crib.

We are waiting for the second coming of the Son of Man, who will come to judge the living and dead. For that we must wait patiently, but like any good farmer do the best to yield a crop of holiness in hope.

SAID not MAID

Homily at the Funeral

of the Late Leo Goulet

It’s painfully clear that some of our fellow Canadians are so terrified of death that many have embraced so-called medical assistance in dying, or MAID.

Today I would like to share with you an experience of SAID, spiritual assistance in dying, because that is what Leo Goulet had. He died surrounded by the prayer of the Church and of his loved ones; he died as he lived, supported by the grace of God and the love of his family.

We should all pray to be as blessed as Leo was in his final hours.

I arrived at Inglewood Care Centre at the same time as Marylin and Denise, having heard just minutes before that Leo was nearing the end. When we got to his bedside we found Michelle, who had just finished singing him Christmas carols.

Louise was on her way from the airport, but I thought we should probably start the prayers for the dying right away. It was a good decision insofar as one more voice might have made people think we had a whole church-full in Leo’s room.

The introduction to the prayers of commendation for the dying says that “Christians have the responsibility of expressing their union in Christ by joining the dying person in prayer for God’s mercy and for confidence in Christ.” At Leo’s bedside that responsibility was fulfilled with faith and devotion.

Reflecting on those precious moments in Leo’s room I found myself marvelling at the power and splendour of the liturgy we celebrated.

We began with a series of short scripture texts that express the full range of the promises of salvation and eternal life. The Gospel the family chose for this funeral Mass conveys the same thing—the assurance of paradise for those who put their faith in Christ.

And although we were only four in number, the room then filled with angels and saints as we prayed the litany invoking everyone from the patriarch Abraham to St. Teresa of Calcutta, with the resounding response “pray for him.” We prayed “Bring Leo to eternal life first promised to him in baptism,” and “Raise Leo on the last day, for he has eaten the Bread of Life.”

We commended Leo to his Creator and prayed that his home would be with God in Zion, which is another way of referring to Jerusalem, the holy city of our first reading from the prophet Isaiah.

We prayed that he would live in peace with Mary, with Joseph, and all the angels and saints, asking that he would see his Redeemer face to face, and enjoy the vision of God forever.

Hearing is widely thought to be the last sense to go when someone is dying. Recent research at UBC suggests that people may still be able to hear while in an unresponsive state at the end of their life. I sure hope that was true of Leo.

It’s hard to imagine that he did not hear the hope echoing as his family answered the prayers and litanies as if they were cheering him across the finish line. Whatever weeping there was took a distant second place to the joyful vision of a new Jerusalem.

I might mention here that one of the litanies took us back to the beginning of the history of salvation. In a most unusual prayer, we asked that Leo be delivered from every distress as God rescued Noah from the flood and Job from his sufferings.

We prayed that he be delivered as Daniel was from the lions’ den and David from Goliath. But the litany ended “Deliver your servant, Lord, through Jesus our Saviour, who suffered death for us and gave us eternal life.”

The ritual says that the presence of a priest shows more clearly that the Christian dies in the communion of the Church, which indeed Leo did. It was my privilege to absolve him and to grant him the apostolic pardon by which the Church prays that the dying person be released “from all punishments in this life and in the life to come.”

While I do hope that Leo himself was listening, my prayerbook says that those who are praying with the dying will “draw consolation from these prayers and come to a better understanding of the Paschal character of Christian death.” I have spoken at such length about these prayers in the hope that all of you might also experience that consolation and understanding.

And although we put our faith in God’s goodness, let’s pause for a moment and think about Leo’s own goodness. It is beautifully captured in the second reading, an excerpt from St. Paul’s hymn to love. If you knew Leo or if you just listened carefully to the eulogy, you know very well just how fitting that text is.

Few of us may be blessed with his gentle temperament and loving manner, but all of us can resolve—to end with words from the psalm—to “serve the Lord with gladness,” as Leo did.

And may we all have ‘spiritual assistance in dying’ when our time comes.

 

First Sunday of Advent (Year A): Awake and Prepare for the Lord is Coming

I hope God listens to excuses. Because I have plenty!

When I go to confession, I never say “I was impatient with a parishioner.” I add “but I was in a rush.” I don’t say “I ate too much,” without adding “but that parishioner really can cook!”

So let’s hope God listens.

However, this Sunday’s Gospel clearly tells us there’s one excuse God will not buy on the day of judgement: “I didn’t know.” We Christians will not be able to face him and say, “but you never told me!”

St. Paul calls us to turn away from sin and turn to Christ. Most of us are unlikely to be surprised by his message. We already knew that being debauched and licentious was not a good preparation for Christmas! I’m not making light of the apostle’s catalogue of sins, which include things that aren’t exactly uncommon like quarreling, jealousy, and drinking too much. But it’s no revelation that these are a serious problem on our spiritual journey.

The warning Jesus gives us is more subtle. It probably targets more of us than St. Paul’s. Still, both the Gospel and second reading share a central message. In keeping with my recent resolution to sum up my homilies in a few words, that message is: wake up!

The contrast between the second reading and the Gospel is fascinating. St. Paul warns us that serious sin can put us to sleep—it can anesthetize our consciences. We become people of the flesh and not of the Spirit. Jesus warns us about another risk, which may be a greater problem because it’s so much harder for us to recognize.

That risk is allowing routine activities to distract us from the deepest realities of life. We’re not turning away from God by deliberate sin but losing sight of God because we are so busy, even with good things such as work and family life.

Johann Sebastian Bach even set that message to music in the beautiful cantata Wachet auf. It begins “Awake! the voice calls to us…” The powerful text was written by Philipp Nicolai, who was so good at writing hymns that the Lutheran Church venerates him as a saint.

Wachet auf is not based on St. Paul’s exhortations to wake from sleep; nor is it based on today’s Gospel. The hymn refers to the parable of the wise and foolish virgins which is another of the many passages in the New Testament that warn us to be prepared and ready for the coming of the Lord.

In the text, it’s the voice of watchmen calling the virgins to wake up, pick up their lamps, and welcome the bridegroom. On this First Sunday of Advent, it’s the voice of Jesus himself.

In last week’s homily I shared a vision for our parish—that Christ the Redeemer becomes ‘irresistible’ to parishioner and non-parishioner alike.

That’s a vision specific to our times. No one needed an irresistible parish in 1950—there was so much less competition for our minds and hearts. Today, we need to work twice as hard to awaken people to the vision of our first reading and psalm: becoming a joyful people journeying together to the house of the Lord.

Today’s psalm was sung by pilgrims arriving at the gates of Jerusalem. In the holy city they hear God’s word and praise him in response. And in the final verse, they pray for their family and friends.

What stops the average person in our parish from sharing all the joy and enthusiasm of those Jewish pilgrims? I can put it in one word, busy-ness.

Anyone want to guess what makes prayer difficult for me? When I was in the seminary, I would have said distraction, the universal problem when praying. Today the answer is my iPhone. Heaven forbid I would go into the church without it! I might miss a call.

You all know what keeps you from praying at home or from coming to Water in the Desert, for instance. Driving kids to soccer practice. Early morning and late-night trips to the gym. Binge watching.

These aren’t things we can entirely avoid. But as Advent begins, we can take stock and wake up to unbalanced priorities. We can stay awake, alert to the ways our busy lives may be making us spiritually drowsy. To use a very tired phrase, Advent is a wake-up call.

Effective changes in lifestyle and priorities are almost never radical. We need simple, realistic goals aimed at making some progress in our relationship with Jesus Christ.

Choosing one simple thing can help overcome our spiritual drowsiness during this sacred season and prepare us for a more meaningful celebration of Christmas.

And there’s no shortage of ideas. You’ll find a whole page devoted to Advent on the parish website with wonderful suggestions.

One of the easiest but most powerful things we can do is attending Water in the Desert on Saturday December 17. As it happens, our Advent webpage has a quote from Pope emeritus Benedict where he says that the Church, like Christ, must “lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance.” That’s certainly what our evening adoration, music, and testimony can do for people wearied by the pre-Christmas rush.

Every Tuesday in Advent, there’s a wonderful opportunity to awaken our souls. We will have Mass at 7:00 pm followed by adoration and confession at 7:30.

Speaking of confession, it’s the ideal way we can, “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh,” to use St. Paul’s words. There’s no better way to be ready for the unexpected coming of the Son of Man about which Jesus warns us. We will have many priests celebrating the sacrament at our penitential service on Wednesday December 21. There’s even an online guide on the Advent website to help you prepare if it’s been a while.

Needless to say, we need to be alert not only to our own spiritual needs but to the needs, spiritual and material, of our brothers and sisters. That’s why the website lists no fewer than five opportunities for service and charity in Advent.

I’ll end with my two-word summary of God’s words to us as Advent begins: wake up! Shake off the fog of our overly busy lives for the next four weeks. Be ready for the coming of the Lord, awake and alert as Jesus has commanded, whether that be his final coming or the arrival of the Christ child on December 25.

However important our daily routine, it cannot be allowed to keep us from what matters most. No excuses!

Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe: Our Parish Feast Day! (34.C)

A friend was driving in the States recently. He spied a church where he thought he might be able to attend Sunday Mass. Sure enough, one was about to start with a priest who introduced himself as a visitor.

He then announced, “Mass this morning will be two hours long.” The congregation was still laughing when he said “No, I’m serious. Mass is going to be two hours long.”

My friend told me that the priest, an imposing African American, preached for one hour and fifteen minutes. I said, “That’s just awful!”

“No!” said my friend; “I didn’t want him to stop.”

Turns out that the priest had quite a story to tell. He’d been a successful accountant who was considering the priesthood. But he couldn’t decide. One day he was sitting in an empty church, and asked God out loud what he should do. An old Black woman sitting some distance away heard him and came over with her walker. 

She said to him, “He’s calling you, boy. You go runnin’!”

So he quit his job to enter the seminary. He went up to his old office to say goodbye to his colleagues. 

Ten days later a plane crashed into that floor of the World Trade Center, and all his co-workers died.

What would it take for parish life to be as compelling as that homily?

That’s the question God is asking each of us on our parish feast day.

And now I’m going to preach for two hours. No, I’m not.

But I could. Because there is a lot to say on this solemn celebration of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. And there’s a lot to say about our parish as it grows and adapts to meet the challenges of a changed universe.

Today we are given a vision of Christ: the King, the shepherd, the ruler—“the image of the invisible God.”

And from that vision comes a vision of Christ the Redeemer Parish.

Father Zidago and I have just got back from the annual Priests’ Study Week. And what a week it was: speaker after speaker told us, “God is calling, boys: you go runnin’.”

What the speakers were calling us to was a new vision of parish life—a vision of the future of our parish that would hold our attention even better than the most powerful preacher at a two-hour Mass.

What is a vision? A vision is a God-inspired picture of the future that produces passion.

What’s not a vision? A plan to get absent parishioners back to Mass. As one wise pastor said “Bringing people back isn’t vision; moving people forward is.”

From the Cross, where Christ seems weakest, he is calling his people to share a vision of a new world, a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love, and peace. Those are words from the Preface of today’s Mass, which begins “lift up your hearts.” But to lift up our hearts the vision has to take hold of us; it must inspire passion.

And a God-given vision must answer the question ‘what’s most important?’ We know the answer: the second reading tells us that Jesus Christ is “the head of the body, the Church.” And it is Jesus Christ who is the head and cornerstone of our parish.

Only he can renew our community, only he can attract new members, only he offers a relationship that answers every longing and heals every wound.

Over the summer, members of the parish core team and others sweated over a vision for Christ the Redeemer Parish. Well, we didn’t actually sweat, since there was air conditioning, but we did suffer from Langley’s mosquitoes. It was hard work, and it took five full days.

At the end of the process, we had a remarkable set of ideas and commitments that I’ll be sharing with you down the road. But it all boiled down to one daring goal: To become an irresistible parish.

Not to become irresistible to increase our numbers or collection, but because Jesus is irresistible. We cannot keep Jesus a secret: we are called to make him known and loved by making people feel loved and known.

We want to be a community of disciples who attract others because of the joy, purpose, and generosity that stems from a personal relationship with Jesus.

Is the idea of an irresistible parish an impossible dream? I asked myself that while writing this homily. But the Holy Spirit answered the question for me. A long-time parishioner almost tackled me in the parking lot yesterday. Out of the blue, she said, with undisguised enthusiasm, “How I love my parish! What a difference it makes in my life, and what a joy it is to serve here.”

And that’s just a quick summary of a conversation that was bursting with passion.

I’m holding here the latest edition of our parish magazine. The table of contents alone is better than any two-hour sermon I could ever preach.

My own contribution shares some thoughts about creating a culture of encounter as a way of navigating our changed world. We want our parish to be a place of encounter—with one another and with Jesus. And we want to meet Jesus in our weakness, like the good thief on the cross, sharing not only our successes but failures as well.

Listen to the titles of some of the other articles: “An antidote to loneliness in a cup of coffee,” “The oasis at Water in the Desert,” “Youth Ministry: a safe place to talk about faith.”

Of course, they say a picture is worth a thousand words. I think the joy-filled photographs alone can inspire tremendous hope for the future.

And, no surprise, there’s an article called “Becoming an Irresistible Parish.” It describes what an irresistible parish could look like; but much more important it tells us in three words how we’ll get there: pray, lead, invite.

We must pray because only fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit can bring about this kind of growth. We must lead because we need everyone if we are going to fulfill our God-given vision. You can’t create an irresistible parish without irresistible parishioners.

Thirdly we must invite. “As we begin to build an irresistible parish, others will naturally be attracted to our joy, but first they must be invited.”

When we asked members of the Parish Pastoral Council what they loved about CTR they highlighted connection, belonging, and beauty. When we asked what drives them nuts about the parish they mentioned pedestrians, people who walk in and walk out quickly but don’t engage.

And when we asked them to imagine walking into the parish three years from now, they had a vision of being known as a place where—Catholic or not—you can come and sit in peace, talk to someone if you’re down, and find people who care about you.

Each of you has a vision of what would make this parish as irresistible to you as it is to the buoyant and fulfilled woman who spoke to me in the parking lot.

You’re in church today—something is drawing you here. What is it? Do you want more of it? Do you want to be part of the irresistible parish? Think about it and pray about it this week; come back next week.

You can find the answers in a deeper relationship with Jesus, Christ our King, Christ our Redeemer.

He’s calling us, people! Let’s go running.

Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time – the Lord is Coming

 

Recently one of my seminary classmates brought me up short when I called to congratulate him on his 65th birthday.

He was the youngest in our class and the most athletic. When I asked how he was doing, he said “Just fine. But thinking a fair bit about death these days.”

He has some health challenges like most people our age, but he’s not dying. Really, all he’s doing is what the Church hopes we’ll all do as the liturgical year winds down.

The readings for today’s Mass aren’t particularly subtle. The Gospel talks about the end of the world, prefigured by the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem. The first reading is a prophecy about the end of the world—the day of the Lord’s wrath.

And the end of the world is the background to the second reading, which doesn’t even mention it. St. Paul is correcting the wrong thinking of those who are convinced that the end is so near that there’s no point working!

Wouldn’t it be nice to know when the world would come to an end? The Apostles are certainly keen to know the timetable for the destruction of the temple.

But elsewhere in the Gospels Jesus makes it clear that this is not information he wants us to have. In St. Matthew’s Gospel he says, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Mt 24:36)

So what’s the point of all the drama in today’s liturgy?

I think the Psalm gives us the key in one sentence: “The Lord is coming, coming to judge the earth.” What does it matter ‘when,’ if the coming is certain?

The opening prayer—or Collect—of today’s Mass tells us how to avoid fearing that day: by serving with constancy the author of all that is good. The first reading promises that even on the last day for those who revere God’s name the sun of righteousness shall rise with  healing in its wings.

Those who revere God’s name, who do their work quietly, and ultimately those who endure persecution, trials and tribulations will stand confidently before the Lord when he appears.

Given the fact that the teaching of today’s scriptures has been shared in the Church for two thousand years and the end of the world hasn’t happened I wondered whether something’s going on here that is more immediate.

It seems to me that the focus on the inevitable end of the world on an unknown day is meant to turn our minds and hearts to the inevitable end of our lives, also on an unknown day. Because the same principles apply: the day is coming, for each of us, and there will be a particular judgement that precedes the general judgement on the last day.

For some death comes gently, while for others it can be harder, but for all the promise is made: for those who revere God’s name the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.

Two weeks ago, I summarized the message of my homily in four words: pray for the dead. Today I can summarize it in three words: think about death.

On this Sunday next year, the message is quite explicit. St. Paul says that since “the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night…let us not fall asleep as others do, but stay awake and be sober.”

Because what the word of God says about the world’s end applies equally to our own end. Maybe even more. It is easier to picture our own mortality than the fact that the world as we know it is passing away.

Let me end with some practical thoughts. November seems to be my month for important funerals. It began with Arlene Boreham’s, a beautiful celebration of our long-time parishioner. Yesterday morning I attended the funeral of Vito Curalli, the father of Nick, the conductor of our 9:00 am choir. And this coming Saturday I will celebrate the funeral for Connie Zweng, whose hundredth birthday party I attended not long ago.

I think that anyone, Catholic or non-Catholic would have been moved at the faith-filled funerals of Arlene and Vito and I expect the same will be true when Connie’s funeral Mass is celebrated.

The funerals of the righteous are wonderful homilies on the kind of readings we have heard today. They acknowledge the Lord as judge but show him a righteous and just judge ready not only to forgive but to reward. They are inevitably sad but are overlaid with joy and beauty.

I encourage everyone of a certain age to do some funeral planning. Practically, it can assist your loved ones. Spiritually, it can help you prepare and ponder.

And it can even have a certain element of fun. Long before her final illness, my friend and colleague Mary-lynn, Connie Zweng’s daughter, kept her funeral arrangements on her computer at work. If you annoyed her, she would take you off the list of readers or pall bearers. And you stayed off until you were back in her good graces. Not a bad way of dealing with life’s frustrations, all in all.

And also, a reminder that God never takes us off his list. Only we can do that, and we never want to stay off for long because life is short, and no one knows the day or the hour.

Sunday, October 30, 2022 — Before All Souls

 

The other day, a parishioner whom I like and respect gave me some feedback on my preaching. He likes my homilies, but says I say too many things. Not that I preach too long, but that I preach too much.

He explained that it’s hard to take home one key point to think about.

So today I am following his good advice. Please listen carefully: Pray for the dead.

Four words, but especially important for every Catholic. Pray for your dead.

There are four reasons why we pray for the dead.

First, because that’s what Catholics do. When I Googled “Catholic Catechism, prayer for the…” I got seven suggestions from the search, including prayer for the Church, prayer for the sick, and prayer for the day. But the top of the list was prayer for the dead.

Our Catholic faith holds that we can indeed continue to care, help, and express generosity toward people—even after they have died—through prayer. It is a distinctive Catholic belief not shared by all our fellow Christians.

Second, because praying for our deceased loved ones and those who have done good to us is a duty. It’s something we owe our parents, mentors, friends, teachers and—yes, priests—who have left this life.

If they have been a blessing to us, we thank them with the gift of prayer. If they have been a burden to us, we forgive them through our prayers.

Third, because praying for all the faithful departed is part of belonging to the great communion that is the Church. Notice how at every single Mass we pray for the dead. No exceptions. And not only our own dead, but the unknown dead.

In the first Eucharistic prayer we pray to the Lord for his servants who have gone before us with the sign of faith. In the second Eucharistic prayer we remember “our brothers and sisters who have fallen asleep in the hope of the resurrection” and all who have died in God’s mercy.  And so on in all the Eucharistic prayers, not to mention the intercessions or prayers of the faithful each week.

All Souls Day “reminds us that the bonds of Baptism make us one in Christ and are stronger than death.” (S. Joseph Krempa, Daily Homilies: Seasonal and Sanctoral, Vol. 3, p. 211)

Fourth, because if we don’t continue praying for the dead—if we become the first generation of Catholics who no longer take this tradition seriously—who is going to pray for us?

I have some skin in this game, a real personal interest. If those to whom I have ministered stop praying for the dead, I’ll be spending a lot more time in Purgatory than I want to.

As St. Augustine said somewhere, monuments are built for the living; prayer is the best way of helping the dead. I truly do want people praying for me when I’m gone.

Let me return to my one key point. We must pray for the dead.

The point isn’t only important—it’s urgent. As you know, I have been a priest for over 35 years. In my first parish, the church was full every year for multiple Masses on All Souls Day. Here at Christ the Redeemer, we’re lucky to see an extra 75 people even though we offer three Masses every year.

It’s time to reverse the trend and to pray for the dead—not only as a duty but a privilege. What a joy to know we can try to repay the goodness of our departed loved ones, make up for some of our failings toward them in life, and exercise a sacred responsibility as members of the Mystical Body of Christ.

And how simple it is! We have Mass on Wednesday, All Souls Day, at 7:30 in the morning, at 9:00 with the school children, and at 7:00 in the evening. If you’re so busy none of those times work for you, well maybe you’re too busy.

The Church even turbocharges our prayer on All Souls Day with what is called an indulgence—remitting in the eyes of God the temporal punishment (think Purgatory) due to sins whose guilt has been forgiven. A plenary or full indulgence for the souls in Purgatory is offered just for visiting a church on Wednesday, with the prescribed condition of praying the Our Father and the Creed.

The same indulgence for the faithful departed is available all week—from November 1st through the 8th—if you visit a cemetery and pray, even silently, for the dead.

Pray for the dead.

What could be easier? Or perhaps I should ask: what could be more important?

Whatever Your Personality, Don't Judge (30.C)

 

The New York Times has a feature called “Overlooked,” a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths they failed to report over the years. Recently they told the story of Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers.

Theirs is one of the most interesting stories of modern psychology. Together they created one of the most widely used personality assessment tools in the world, now “standard at hundreds of companies and universities and in government. More than two million people take the Myers-Briggs personality test each year.” 

Before the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator came along, most psychological tests “concluded that each personality category has a positive and a negative: An extrovert is good, an introvert was bad, for instance.”

Rather than build a test that favoured one type of personality over another, Myers and Briggs had the idea to create one that was judgement-free, emphasizing what was right with a person, not what was wrong.

The results of the test are sixteen possible personality types, based on four dimensions of personality. I’ve already mentioned the first dimension: introvert or extrovert. But it’s the fourth that really interests me: how a person deals with the outside world, either as a judge or a perceiver.

It really shouldn’t surprise anyone that my Myers-Briggs profile shows me to be an E: an extrovert. But it might make you nervous coming to me for confession when I tell you I am a J: someone who judges.

If we know the positive nature of the test we won’t “confuse Judging with judgmental, in its negative sense about people and events. They are not related.” In fact, those are the words of  Mrs. Myers, who was a J herself.

These observations help us to understand what Jesus meant when he said, “Judge not lest ye be judged” (Mt. 7:1). Christians have struggled with that since the earliest times. Eventually the theologian Tertullian concluded in the second century that the command to “judge not” is a reminder to us that judgement and punishment belong to God, not to us.

Yet even if judgement ultimately resides with God,  Christians still struggle with putting these words into practice, given how naturally judgement comes to us.

Jesus and the Evangelists who recorded his teachings would have known of this problem—which may well explain why we just heard a parable that presents the wrong kind of judgement in such a truly awful light.

“Judge not lest ye be judged” might not be enough to derail our natural tendency to be judgemental, especially if we are Js on the Myers-Briggs scale. However, Jesus gives us, in just a few words, a portrait of the Pharisee that is a wonderful antidote to the poison of judgementalism.

In the first place, we naturally recoil at the self-satisfied words of the Pharisee. Even when we admire someone it’s most uncomfortable to hear them blowing their own horn.

There’s a wonderful story about a businessman known for his ruthlessness telling the American humorist Mark Twain “Before I die, I plan to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I will climb Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments out loud at the top.”

 “I have a better idea,” said Twain, “you could stay home and keep them.”

And in the second place, our Gospel today offers clear judgements on the proud Pharisee. St. Luke tips us off at the very beginning of the story, telling us that the parable is about those who think they are righteous but regard others with contempt. Then Jesus himself tells us that it was the tax collector, not the Pharisee, who went home justified.

I owe a lot to the television series called “The Chosen,” even if it is a dramatization not to be confused with the Scripture texts themselves—something like the Netflix show “The Crown.”

High on the list is the figure of Matthew the tax collector. We’ve heard many times about the reputation of tax collectors at the time of Jesus, but it really took the oily and slimy Matthew in “The Chosen” to give me a vivid picture. (Thank Heaven for his conversion!)

Jesus could not have picked a better contrast to make the point of this parable. Despite their bad reputation today, Pharisees were religious men and some of them were very serious about their faith. The Pharisee Nicodemus comes off very well in “The Chosen,” and despite Matthew’s conversion, tax collectors were the bottom of the pile. Even today, my seminary classmate who had worked for the British equivalent of Revenue Canada took a lot of ribbing about his past employment.

When Jesus tells us that the tax collector’s act of contrition brought him into God’s favour—indeed that he was exalted in God’s sight—he tells us almost all we need to know about humility.

And when he tells us that God did not consider the generous Pharisee to be righteous, Jesus lets us see how God judges.

Clearly these are not side issues in Christ’s teaching. In the next chapter, St. Luke tells the story of a real tax collector, Zacchaeus, who receives the same divine judgement as the fictional one in the parable. To him Jesus speaks directly: “Today salvation has come to this house.”

To make progress the world needs every kind of personality, introverts and extroverts and the judges and perceivers. But the Kingdom of God welcomes only the penitent and the humble, because they are those whom Jesus came to save.

If we make no other prayer at Mass today, let it be “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”