Catholics and Residential Schools: A Time to Listen (4.C)

We were looking forward to the visit of Deacon Rennie Nahanee to the parish today. Deacon Rennie, a permanent deacon of our Archdiocese, is a member of the Squamish Nation and was to preach at Mass and bless the land acknowledgment plaque the parish has recently installed at the entrance to the church. Unfortunately, he fell ill last week and is now recovering at home.

The coordinator of Christ the Redeemer's reconciliation effort had the inspired idea to invite another permanent deacon to preach today so that we continue our focus on the residential schools and reconciliation . I had circulated to our committee an earlier homily given by Deacon Bruce Fraser and she thought he could readily revise it for our benefit.

Which is how Deacon Bruce came to preach at the parish this morning while we await Deacon Rennie's visit and the blessing of the plaque. His inspiring homily follows...

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is having a tough time in his hometown of Nazareth.

His family and friends can’t get over their preconceived notions of who He is.

As a result, they’re blocking His announcement of the Kingdom of God.

They can only see “Jesus, the guy we watched grow up”. They cannot see a prophet. In effect, they think that He is pretending to be something that He isn’t.

Jesus tells them as much to their faces, and they are so offended that they try to throw him off a cliff.

Jesus does not perform any public miracles at Nazareth. He recognizes that anything extraordinary He would do there would not help bring the Kingdom of God any closer to reality there.

If He were to perform a great sign, his friends and family would see it only as a show, a spectacle, not a symbol pointing to a deeper reality.

And so, unable to draw them closer to the Kingdom, Jesus chooses to do nothing.

However, Mark tells us in his version of this story that Jesus does, “lay his hands on a few sick people and cure them.” Where Jesus does find people who are receptive to the Kingdom, He does perform miracles for them, but these are quiet acts done for individual people, not public acts to inspire large crowds.

Jesus keeps his ministry in Nazareth low key because He sees that public spectacles and public speeches are not going to help.

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This is a tough time to be a Catholic Christian in Canada.

Last year, the discovery of unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School and the later discovery of unmarked graves near the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan left a lot of people angry at the Catholic Church. And this week we heard about 93 possible burial sites around the residential school near Williams Lake.

There are some people for whom these discoveries have opened old wounds and caused old pain to resurface.

There are others who were already angry at the Catholic Church for other reasons, and these discoveries have given them new energy and new ammunition.

There are also many Catholics who are angry that their Church could have been involved in something so wrong as the Residential School system.

So how should we cope with this situation, as Canadians and as Catholics?

How do we cope personally? Looking inward, how do we stop the onslaught of distressing news from crushing our spirits?

Looking outward, how do we cope with a newly hostile world?

 For my part, I have started to educate myself.

For breaking news, I stay away from the mainstream media.

I turn instead to interviews and opinions by the people closest to these events, 

to see what they have to say.

The words of the people directly affected by these events are both moving and inspiring. They speak of anger, but also of reconciliation and moving forward together. They speak of pain and suffering, but also of listening, learning, and solidarity.

For example, when the Catholic Church in Penticton burned down last year, I ignored the CBC and Global News, and went straight to the Penticton Western News, which printed a brief interview with Greg Gabriel, chief of the Penticton Indian Band. Chief Gabriel said that there was a lot of anger and a lot of pain in the community over the Residential Schools, but he condemned the burning of the church. He said, “Many in our community were members and involved in services.” He added that those people are hurting because the church was where they went to grieve and pray over what had been found in Kamloops. In reading his words, I realized that what was meant to hurt the Catholic Church in general had instead hurt the very people who were already suffering. It was not just a church that some angry people burned down, but their church.

The press releases sent out by the First Nations who commissioned the ground radar surveys speak of their pain, but also of their desire to be given time: time to process what has happened, time to find answers to their questions, time to grieve.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which ended in 2015, has a website containing all of its documents. Some of them are enormous, and I’m a slow reader. Nonetheless, I am working my way through them as I am able. I’m doing this to educate myself, but also because this is one of the few things that Indigenous leaders have asked non-Indigenous people to do in solidarity with them. They have called for all Canadians to educate themselves by reading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission reports. That is something that we can all do.

So far, what I have read speaks of the trauma and suffering experienced by Indigenous students at the schools, but it also calls for solidarity and reconciliation so that we can move forward together—Indigenous and non-Indigenous people—in gradual, small steps, as those who carry the trauma of the Residential School system in their hearts feel ready to do so.

 So, that’s educating ourselves, but how do we as Catholics deal with a newly hostile world?

This is where we can take an example from today’s Gospel. Jesus recognized that preaching the Good News of the Kingdom of God in Nazareth wasn’t going to go anywhere. He also recognized that defending His reputation by performing some flashy miracles wasn’t going to help. So, He didn’t do either.

This wasn’t an act of condemnation. It was, rather, a prudential assessment of the situation. “Wrong time, wrong place. Not now. Not yet. Maybe some other time.”

Right now, non-Christian Canadians are probably not going to be receptive to hearing about our Faith. They’re not going to be able to get past who they think we are in order to pay attention to what we are saying.

Nor is this the time to publicly correct any errors we’ve heard in the media. 

If someone is truly interested in the Catholic point of view, we should be happy to share it. But if someone is angry at the Church, then correcting mistaken ideas is just going to sound defensive. It’s going to sound like all we care about is protecting the Church’s reputation and that we don’t care about what the Residential School system did to the First Nations people.

Now is not the time to talk. Now is the time to listen.

Especially and always we must listen to the people directly affected by the Residential Schools: the survivors, the children of survivors, the groups of people coping with generational trauma as a result of the Residential School system.

However, it’s also time to listen to people who are angry at the Church for other reasons.

If I have educated myself about what happened at the Schools, using the stories and materials produced by the very people who lived that experience, then I can put what people are saying to me in some sort of context. I can acknowledge their pain and their anger without letting it crush me. I can focus on what I can do to help them, if they want my help, rather than becoming defensive and reacting out of my own pain and frustration.

 “Preach the Gospel at all times; when necessary, use words,” is the most famous thing that St. Francis of Assisi never said.

What this expression means is that there are times when telling people the Good News about God and His Kingdom… when telling people about the beauty and the majesty of our Catholic Faith… just comes across as noise. There are times when the people you meet, like the people of Nazareth, can’t see past their preconceived notions about who you are and what you are about in order to hear the message you have for them.

In cases like that, the best thing to do is to act like a Christian rather than making lofty speeches. In today’s climate, that means listening rather than talking.

In the second reading, St. Paul reminds us that “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.”

St. Paul is telling us that if we speak truth, but we do it defensively or rudely, then it doesn’t matter if we have our facts straight: we still lose. Love must come first. “What is the loving thing for me to do here?” is the first and most important question, and often that loving thing is just listening.

 In Mark’s version of today’s Gospel, though, Jesus does evangelize a little bit.

You may meet a few people who want to tell you about their pain and their anger, but also want to hear about your experience as a Catholic, people who are genuinely interested in your point of view.

If you meet someone like this, the first thing to do is apologize.

As Canadians, we recognize that the Residential School system was a bad idea. 

As Catholics, we’re sorry that the Church ever got involved in that system. 

If we could turn back the clock, knowing what we know now, we as a Church would not have cooperated in it. We’re also sorry that within the Church’s involvement in what we now know was a terrible system, some individual Catholics went beyond even that and abused the children in those schools, or turned a blind eye to their abuse at the hands of others, making their horrible experience even worse. We need to make it clear that the whole thing was a disaster and that we would never want to see it repeated.

Then, perhaps, having apologized, we can talk about how this has affected us as Catholics.

If that seems unfair, apologizing for something that you had no personal hand in doing, listening while other people rail at you for being Catholic, then remember that our discomfort is nothing compared to what many Indigenous children suffered at the Residential Schools.

In recognition of that level of pain and ongoing suffering, the Christian thing to do… the prophetic thing to do… the loving thing to do… is to listen.

Sunday of the Word of God 2022

Pope Francis missed out on last year’s Sunday of the Word of God because his sciatica was acting up. It must have been doubly painful for the Pope, since he had only established this special Sunday in 2019.

The Holy Father is making up for it this year: he’s celebrating Word of God Sunday by conferring the ministry of lector on lay men and women for the first time. Until now, only men were formally instituted as lectors, almost always on their way to ordination.

By admitting women to the ministry of lector or reader, the Pope is reminding us that all the baptized, not only the ordained, have a special relationship with Sacred Scripture. This formal recognition is, of course, just icing on the cake, since women have been reading at Mass for many years now.

And there’s even more happening at today’s historic celebration at St. Peter’s Basilica. The Pope will also confer the brand-new ministry of Catechist, which he established last year on several laywomen and men.

It will take a while before developments like these make their way from Rome to Vancouver. But the values behind them, the service and calling officially recognized by these lay ministries, is here already and here to stay.

So today’s a great day to ask: what am I called to do on this Sunday of the Word of God—not by the call of the Pope or Archbishop but by our baptism.

Because all the baptized are called and commissioned to proclaim the Word of God in one way or another.

At first glance today’s readings aren’t obviously about the Scriptures themselves—for instance, I would have preferred to hear what the Letter to the Hebrews says about the Word of God being living and active, a two-edged sword.

Yet the late Cardinal Vanhoye, my favourite Biblical scholar, says that this Sunday’s readings do an excellent job of showing us the importance of the Word of God. [See Albert Vanhoye, SJ, Le Letture Bibliche delle Domeniche: Anno C, p 178]

In the first reading, Ezra and his fellow priests moved the people to tears by reading from the Law, which is to say from the first five books of the Old Testament, traditionally written by Moses. The reaction of the crowd proves the point made by Hebrews. God’s word was living and active in the hearts of all who heard, piercing them right through.

In today’s Gospel, the circumstances in which the Scripture is read are ordinary—just a Sabbath service, a congregation much like ours this morning.

But the reader is anything but ordinary: as Jesus reads the prophetic words of Isaiah, they are fulfilled for all time. There’s a good reason the people in the synagogue could not take their eyes off him.

The reaction of the emotional crowd at the Water Gate and the attentiveness of the congregation in the synagogue at Nazareth are models of how to listen to the Scripture even for us today, because the liturgical reading of the Word requires both proclamation and reception—a partnership, as it were, between reader and hearer.

Personal contact with the Word of God through the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, can be life-changing. Cardinal Vanhoye tells us how important it is for us to be aware of this Word, because it can guide, comfort, and help us in every circumstance of life.

There are two ways this can happen. One, of course, is by turning to the Bible for guidance and consolation in times of trial. But this is hard to do if we are not familiar with the general outline of God’s Word—which is why the second way is listening attentively at Mass and privately studying the Bible in good times, so that we know where to turn in times of trouble.

On this Word of God Sunday let’s ask the Lord for the grace to be truly open to hearing his Word—for the grace of active listening to both Testaments, Old and New, in church and at home.

And during this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, let’s give thanks that we share the Scriptures with our fellow Christians, some of whom provide us with a fine example we would do well to imitate.

Epiphany: Offering What We Have

 

We live in anxious times.  Just when we thought the pandemic was cooling down, it starts to heat up. And the coronavirus isn’t the only reason for worry: we saw more natural disasters in BC last year than in a typical decade.

On top of all that, we have the opioid crisis, growing homelessness, refugees drowning, and growing political tensions at home and abroad.

It makes you feel a bit helpless, doesn’t it? What can we do in the face of so much calamity?

Today’s feast of the Epiphany contains at least one answer: do what you can. Offer what you have.

The wise men aren’t well-prepared for a newborn. Everyone’s seen the old internet joke that says if there’d been three wise women, they’d have made a casserole and brought practical gifts.

But what did the wise men do? They gave what they had.

Their example offers us a way to respond to any and every crisis: we do what we can, with what we have.

There’s even a name for this: Christian stewardship.

Christian stewardship “offers us a way to re-focus our energy and provides an opportunity to face today’s challenges.” (See the fine reflection of the International Catholic Stewardship Council here.)

Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that stewardship is all about money; that’s a particular danger on the Epiphany when the word treasure appears in the Gospel.

Yet “a conversion of the heart is needed before a conversion of the wallet or purse can happen.”

We’ll never be Christian stewards if we don’t experience the joy of the wise men, whose hearts opened wide when they reached their destination, who knelt in wonder when they saw the child Jesus and Mary.

It was the Holy Spirit who invited them to open their treasure chests in an act of homage that will be recalled until the end of time.

And it is the Holy Spirit who will help us discover what we can do to respond to the needs we see all around us.

We offer our gifts of time, talent, and treasure not simply to those in need but to God himself. Prayerfully, with the Spirit’s guidance, we ask him “what should I do?”

Over the years, we have talked about stewardship many times in the parish. But this feast of the Lord’s Epiphany can inspire us to think about what’s most precious to us, and how we are called to share it.

Surely the most precious of all our gifts is our faith. We are in church today because we believe in the mystery of Christ’s birth, the Word made flesh.

We believe that the ancient prophecies have been fulfilled, and that the world no longer needs to fear the darkness; the light has come.

Isn’t that the first treasure of which we are all stewards? Aren’t we called to take our faith out of its box and share it with others, especially those who most need the hope it offers in these difficult times?

In less than three weeks, Alpha will begin online.

If your heart needs to hear a Gospel message of hope, please sign up. Perhaps more importantly, ask the Holy Spirit to point you to the friends, neighbours, and family members for whom Alpha could bring light and peace.

Charity, as they say, begins at home. But today’s feast also reminds us of the global picture. All nations are called to Christ’s light and all people matter to us. We see this clearly in the psalm, where the tribute offered to God is given to the needy, to the poor, to the abandoned, and to the weak.

And so it is that the parish pastoral council and the parish finance council has decided that Christ the Redeemer will again sponsor a large refugee family, this time from Eritrea in Africa.

We’ll share details in the coming weeks, but for now I can only rejoice that our parish community can make this commitment thanks to its deep spirit of stewardship and charity.

There are many needs besides Alpha at home and refugees abroad. So this Epiphany let’s ask ourselves “what else is in my treasure chest? What more can I do with the time, talent, and treasure that God has given me?”

In a tough time, we do what we can, with what we have.

Mary, Model of Prayer (January 1)

 

Most of the reflections in my brief homily today are not my own: they are my rough translation of the commentary on the readings offered in Le Letture Bibliche delle Domeniche: Anno C by Albert Vanhoye, SJ. Cardinal Vanhoye, who died last July, was a brilliant and pastoral scripture scholar, and wrote in a wonderfully clear Italian, perhaps because it was not his first language.

But I have one personal thought to share. Those of you who have come to Mass today are doing a very Catholic thing.

All Christians have a solemn invitation to Sunday worship; it comes from the Ten Commandments and ancient tradition. It’s a matter of divine law.

But this holy day—other than Christmas, the last remnant of the seven or so holy days of obligation we observed when I was in elementary school—is a matter of Church law. You’re doing a truly Catholic thing, obeying the authority of the Church by attending Mass.

Of course, I am not suggesting that all or even most of you are here simply because you’re supposed to be! We begin a new year today and we begin it under the protection of Mary. That too is wonderfully Catholic.

Eight days after the birth of Jesus we recall his mother: and in a special way we ask her to obtain peace for us, since today is also the world day of prayer for peace.

The first reading is chosen precisely for the first day of the year: it’s a priestly blessing taken from the Book of Numbers.  The formula of the blessing is extraordinarily rich. It invokes the sacred name of the Lord three times and prays that we will live under the watchful and gracious gaze of our loving God.

But the last word of the blessing is peace. And here we ask not only for the absence of war but rather prosperity, welfare in all things, a truly happy new year free from conflict and distress.

The Gospel leads us back to Bethlehem, to that timeless picture of Mary contemplating her newborn son. At the beginning of this new year, we ask for the grace to know her a little better, to understand her place in our lives and in our Church.

We get a glimpse of Mary’s profound interior life as she ponders Christ’s birth in her heart. Deepening our own inner life through the reading of scripture, times of reflection, and especially by meditating with the Rosary would be a terrific new year’s resolution for any of us.

The second reading tells us that we will have lots of help if we decide to imitate Mary by treasuring the mysteries of our faith through regular prayer. The Holy Spirit who first came to Mary now comes to us; yes, she is the Mother of God, but we are sons and daughters of God, and the Spirit dwells in our hearts.

What a blessing for us to begin 2022 together with Mary, together with the Church, together with one another.