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homily – March 8

Sunday, March 8th, 2009

Romans 8:31-34

We all know this story of God demanding that Abraham offer his only son Isaac as a sacrifice. We wonder what kind of a God would ask for such a thing, ask a father to kill his only son. We have to remember we are talking about a very primitive stage in the development of religious belief. In order to placate God or plead with God or thank God people offered sacrifices – gifts – to God. Many times the gift offered was what was most important and most precious to the person offering the gift. There were times when that gift was a child, a son, a daughter. Human sacrifice was not unheard of in those days. So when God made this request of Abraham he was not shocked, confused for sure, but not shocked. Abraham would be confused because God made him a promise that through his only son Isaac Abraham would have descendents as numerous as the sands on the sea shore. Through Isaac his family name would continue til the end of time. This demand of God was in complete contradiction to this promise. Abraham still trusted that God would fulfill that promise no matter what and so he offered what God asked of him.

We hear in the story that God stayed the knife wielding hand of Abraham and God restated his former promise to him, “I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand on the seashore because you have obeyed my voice.”

Abraham became the father of all believers, the model of all those who trust in the presence, the fidelity and the love of God no matter how many circumstances in their lives tell them differently.

Our second reading tells of another Father, a Father who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all. God stopped the hand of Abraham from striking his son but God did not stop the hands of those who whipped His Son, God did not stop the hands of those who wove the cruel crown of thorns and pressed them down into His Son’s head, God did not stop the hands of those who slapped His Son’s face to humiliate and mock Him, God did not stop the hands of those who put a cross on His Son’s shoulders, God did not stop the hands of those who drove the nails through His Son’s hands and feet, God did not stop the hands of those who raised His Son up on the cross.

In our first reading God asked Abraham to give Him what was most precious to him, his only Son Isaac. In our second reading we heard of God giving up what was most precious to Him, Jesus His only Son as a sign and pledge of God’s great love for each of us.

So often, when we face our own faults and failings and we imagine God to be so angry or fed up and tired of our weaknesses we can’t seem to get our heads around what today’s scripture is telling us, “God who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, will he not, with him, give us everything else?”

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” The love of the crucified Christ sweeps over us like a tsunami; it overwhelms us, engulfs us, and sweeps us up. In one of his letters St. Paul claims, nothing can come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord. What we’re talking about here is not our love for God but God’s love for us. God’s love for us is a given, proven beyond all doubt. Our response, our openness to that love is another issue.

The only thing that can come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus is ourselves and our unwillingness to open our lives to the love and life offered us by the crucified Christ. The only thing that can come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord is our unwillingness to distance ourselves from persons or places or mind sets or life styles that come between us and the life and love Christ offers us.

You’ve heard of the story of the young couple out for an evening drive. He’s behind the steering wheel, she over by the passenger door. She looks at him and says, “We didn’t sit like this when we were courting”. He looks at her and says, “I haven’t moved.” If anything can come between us and the love of God, it is our distancing ourselves from such a love.

During these days of Lent we can pray for ourselves and for each other that we come to grips with the awesome truth we celebrate and remember in this Eucharist, “God did not spare His Own Son but gave Him up for us all.”



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homily – March 1

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

Mark 1:12-15

It is stating the obvious to say life is all about relationships. Lent offers us all a time to reflect upon our relationships, relationship with family and friends and co-workers and neighbours, fellow parishioners and especially our relationship with God. The truth of the matter is that the quality of all these relationship determines the quality of our relationship with God. In the gospel we hear of Jesus driven into the desert by the Holy Spirit. In that bleak place He was to ponder His own relationship with God and what that relationship would demand of Him. Once he understood what was asked of him He came back from the desert with the demanding message ‘repent and believe in the good news’.

To repent requires a change of mind and heart, a change in our attitudes and understanding of things. This is a life long process. Repentance goes way beyond giving up chocolate or scotch for forty days. That may take will power but the repentance to which Jesus calls us is an invitation to turn away from habits and mindsets that have become almost a part of our make up as persons but are barriers to our becoming the men and women God calls us to be. When we hold back from loving others, accepting others, respecting others we hold back and diminish our relationship with God.

If we want to, we can use these days of Lent to take a look at what is good and what is needed in all our relationships. Instead of saying ‘do we need to’ maybe we could say, ‘do we want to’. Do we want to spend more time with the family, do we want to be more patient with children, do we want to show we appreciate those we say we love, do we want to take the time to call or visit aging parents, do we want to be more aware of the poor and needy in our community, do we want to mend broken relationships, apologize for the wrong we’ve done, do we want to forgive those who have wronged us, do we want to deepen our relationship with God by spending a few minutes in peace, quiet and prayer each day, do we want to mend a broken relationship with God through the Sacrament of Reconciliation? The list could go on and on.

In our first reading from Genesis we heard the story of Noah and the Ark. According to the story God sent the flood because of the sins and the infidelity of the people. He found Noah and his family faithful and so they were spared. The part we heard today seems to have God saying, ‘let’s give this another try’ and so He enters into a new covenant, a bonding with Noah and his family. God makes the promise never to destroy the earth again by a flood. To show God is at peace with humanity God sets His bow in the sky. God changes an instrument of war, the bow and arrow into a sign of peace. God enters into a new relationship with humanity. But not just with humanity. God’s covenant is with Noah and his family and with every living creature that is with him. God binds Himself to all living things upon the earth.

One of our relationships that needs the most healing, the most attention is our relationship with all living things that share this planet with us. The truth of the matter is, we have alienated ourselves from the earth community by our exploitation of earth’s resources, living and not living. Because of our disconnect with the earth community we have done great damage to earth. We have done great damage to ourselves. As you’ve heard me say before; “the earth does not belong to us we belong to the earth and what we do to the earth we do to ourselves.”

Last December there was an article in the Star titled “Don’t fix the economy, change it”. A main topic of concern in Canada right now is the budget. The article talks about the ecological budget and the need for nations to plan their budgets around the ecological budget.

The article says “the ecological budget on which all life and consequently the human economy depend is already in dramatic deficit.” Why is this budget more important than the fiscal budget? The author claims that September 23, 2008 was Earth Overshoot Day. The period after Sept 23rd represents the time the human population causes an ecological deficit, using up the earth faster than the earth can regenerate. Every year Earth Overshoot Day comes earlier. This moving date tells the story of a global environment rapidly losing its ability to support life; accelerating climate change, the loss of species, the proliferation of ocean dead zones, diminishing fresh water resources. All these are indications of a harsh reality we avoid facing; that the global environment is rapidly losing its ability to support life, our life, all life.

This is heavy stuff but Lent is about heavy stuff, repentance, changing our mindsets and attitudes. If we are willing to use Lent as a time to take a serious look at the health and wholeness of our relationships then this is one relationship that needs our attention – our relationship with all living creatures that share the earth with us. We can use Lent to examine our life styles, the way we consume, the way we waste, the way we litter. Because of the economic crisis touching so many nations, including our own, people are going to have to make changes in the way they live their lives. Because of the ecological deficit facing the globe we are all going to have to look at the way we live upon the earth. We do this not because we have to but because we want to. We want to heal our relationships with every living creature that share earth with us.

Think on this: our daily small actions multiplied by millions are having a devastating effect on the planet, but by the same token our daily positive actions multiplied by millions can have a healing effect on the planet. Two examples: think of how things have changed since people became more and more aware of the ill effects of smoking. Think of how things have changed since Loblaw’s started charging for plastic bags. Little things, but little things have a powerful impact.

As we continue to celebrate this Mass we can pray for ourselves and for each other that we all be blessed with the gift of repentance, a desire to change the way we think of and relate to God’s good creation. May we make our own this native prayer; Gracious God, give us hearts to understand; never to take from creation’s beauty more than we give; never to destroy wantonly for the furtherance of greed; never to deny to give our hands for the building of earth’s beauty; never to take from her what we cannot use. Give us hearts to understand that to destroy earth’s music is to create confusion; that to wreck her appearance is to blind us to beauty; that to callously pollute her fragrance it to make a house of stench; that as we care for her, she will care for us.



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homily – February 22

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

Mark 2:1-12

As we’ve heard before, illness and infirmity of any kind were seen as a punishment for one’s sins. We can imagine that the paralytic in the gospel, his family and the very friends who dug through the roof and lowered him to Jesus, were probably convinced that at some time in his life he offended God in a serious way and that’s why he suffered as he did. We can imagine that he was so ashamed at what he did he was convinced God would never forgive him. His life sentence of paralysis was proof of it. No matter how many times he read or heard those loving words of Isaiah ‘though your sins are like scarlet they shall be white as snow, though they be red as crimson, they shall be like wool’, no matter how many times he heard the story of God’s mercy and forgiveness toward King David after his great crimes of adultery and murder, this poor man, as paralyzed in his spirit as he was in his body, could not move toward the healing power of God.

He is like so many of us who cannot imagine or trust in the mercy of God. He is like so many of us who project unto God our own inability to forgive and be at peace with those who offended us. He is like so many of us who think God is as stingy with love and hard hearted in forgiveness as we are. He is like so many of us plagued with memories of past sins he can’t trust the truth that when it comes to our sins, we are weighed down with memories but God has amnesia. Paralyzed by guilt and shame he cannot move toward the love and mercy of God.

Jesus see the paralysis in this man’s soul, He reaches out to him and tells him “Child, frightened child, desperate child, your sins are forgiven.” With these gracious words Jesus breaks through this man’s roof, his barrier to an encounter with God’s grace and mercy.

To answer those scandalized by His words and their complaint that only God can forgive sins Jesus shocks them even more saying to this man still paralyzed in body “get up take up your mat and walk.” Free to move the man gets up, picks up his mat and walks out accompanied by those who carried him to Christ. He leaves behind people filled with amazement, people who had never seen anything like this.

Which is easier to say – which is easier to hear, which is easier to believe – your sins are forgiven or take up your mat and go home. That’s the question for all of us today. It is one thing to unbind a body it is another thing to liberate a soul. If we are paralyzed in spirit, unable to move beyond feelings of guilt and shame, or if we are paralyzed by an unwillingness to move beyond hurt and resentment and forgive those who wronged us, we need the Christ to break through our roofs, our barriers that block out the healing touch of Christ.

Each of us can experience the freedom granted the paralyzed man when, in a moment of quiet prayer we face our faults and failings, face the wrong we’ve done to others, no matter what they may be and ask for God forgiveness. Each of us can experience the pardon and peace of Christ when we celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation. Not as we experienced it in the past, a routine rattling off of peccadilloes, routine that brought us to giving up on this sacrament, but a soul searching admittance of some great wrong or injustice we may have done to another. The coming season of Lent has always been that special time to look into the way we live our lives, the way we relate to God and to others and admit the wrongs we’ve done, those rare times we’ve said a definite no to God and through this sacrament of reconciliation come to know pardon and peace.

Maybe we could be blessed with the spirit of St. Paul, who never suffered from spiritual paralysis. He never forgot how he deeply offended Christ by his persecution of the Church and yet he would say, “One thing I do, I forget what is behind and I strive on to what is ahead and I go with confidence to the throne of grace and forgiveness.”

As we continue to celebrate this Eucharist we can pray for ourselves that we do not let fear or shame or anger and resentment paralyze us. May each of us find it easy to hear and believe those wonderful words of Christ ‘your sins are forgiven’ whether in the quiet of our prayer or in the sacrament of reconciliation.



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homily – February 15

Sunday, February 15th, 2009

Mark 1:40-45

A couple of years ago around noon on a Saturday I got a call from the Chaplain’s office at North York General Hospital. The SARS fright was going on at that time. I’d been to the hospital the day before for my weekly Friday morning rounds. I saw a number of people, some in the Intensive Care Unit, some in emergency and some in Isolation. That particular Saturday we were to celebrate the First Communion of the children in our Children’s Faith program. Back to the phone call. As I said it was from the Chaplain’s Office at the hospital.

The Chaplain, Rev. Joan Silcox-Smith, called to inform me that they discovered a new outbreak of SARS in the hospital and that I had to go into quarantine immediately. I told her I couldn’t do that, I had the children’s First Communion at the 4:30 Mass. She wasn’t impressed. Get someone else to do it. She’d just called Rabbi Weiss and told him the same thing, he was quarantined. He was not to conduct the Sabbath Service that day. One phone call turned everything up side down. Being quarantined meant I couldn’t go out for 12 days, I had to eat alone and I couldn’t be in the same room with the other priests and I couldn’t leave the house. As I mentioned when all this was over, I was so bored I even ended up watching Oprah and Dr. Phil.

Imagine what it would be like to quarantined, to be cut off from all interpersonal contact for the rest of your life.

Through no fault of his own that was the situation of the leper in today’s gospel. As we heard in the first reading, by law he was forced to live outside the camp. By law he could not have contact with family or friends. By law a leper was to make his appearance as unpleasant as possible. He was to warn people off by calling himself unclean. Talk about isolation, separation, talk about loneliness.

When the leper meets Jesus they are both outside the town, Jesus by choice, the leper by law. I wonder what was going on in the leper’s mind as he approached Jesus. He must have been in turmoil. Dare he get close to Jesus, dare he speak to him. Again, by law he was not supposed to come close to anyone but he had to, he was desperate. He wanted so badly to be clean, to get back to his family and friends, to get back to work. Summoning up his courage he says, “If you choose you can make me clean.” The old translation was, “if you want to, you can make me clean” and Jesus’ response was, “course I want to.” And then Jesus does the unthinkable, he put out his hand and touched the leper and the leper’s life was changed forever. A simple touch caused such a wonder.

A friend of mine worked at the Catholic hospital in London, she was a pastoral visitor. The bishop asked her if she would take a course that prepared people for working with men and women with AIDS. She took the course. The first day she was to meet a patient with AIDS she was a nervous wreck. She had to force herself to go into the young man’s room. When she went in she was shocked by his appearance. She approached his bed, took a chair and sat down beside him. She reached out and took his hand in hers and said, “I don’t know what to say.” He looked at her and said, “You’ve said everything, you touched me.” You touched me. That gentle gestured made such a difference in that man’s life.

I guess every time we hear this gospel story of the meeting of Christ and the leper we wonder, who are the lepers in my life? Who do we shun, exclude or keep out of our lives. Who do we rule out of our love and concern and acceptance because of who they are or what they are? Do we see people of different faiths or cultures, life styles or social standing as people to be avoided? Are they outside the area of our acceptance?

Or, do we see ourselves as unclean? Haunted or obsessed by our own past sins and failings do we see ourselves as unworthy of God’s love or shunned by God? Do we question whether or not Christ cares for us, answers prayers – do we wonder if Christ would reach out and touch us and make us clean? The truth of the matter is, our spiritual life consists of being made clean over and over again which is the same thing as allowing Christ into our lives to touch us with His healing grace. Remember His response to the leper plead, if you want to – of course I want to, be made clean.

As we continue to celebrate this Mass we can think on this; if we want to be touched and made clean by the healing Christ, we must be willing to reach out and touch and embrace those who, for whatever reason, we exclude from our lives and offer them the same love and acceptance we so desire from Christ.



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homily – February 8

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

Job 7:1-7

You’ve probably heard the story of the man in church who kept crying out “why me?’ The people around him sympathized with him; he’d had a lot of heart ache and hard times. But they wearied of hearing him calling out “why me?” Suddenly there was a roll of thunder and a flash of lightening and fist came through the roof of the church and a finger pointed to the man and voice bellowed, “because you really bug me.” There are other versions of this story but this is the safest to use.

We could call this Sunday the “Why Me Sunday”.

We might consider Job as the original “why me person”. Job was good man. He was blessed with a huge family, extensive lands, great flocks of sheep and goats. Job’s prosperity was a sign to all his neighbours that Job was a friend of God. As Job said of himself, “I rescued the poor who cried out for help, the orphans and the unassisted, the heart of the widow I made joyful, I was eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame, I was father to the needy and the rights of the stranger I studied.” Now, why me?

In the gospel Jesus is on what someone called, “a holy roll.” He had just started His ministry and His reputation was spreading from town to town. In His home town of Capernaum the whole city gathered at Peter’s door bringing all those who were sick with various diseases and those tormented by demons. He cured many of them. Of course the citizens wanted Jesus to stay with them and take care of their needs but Jesus was determined to go to all the cities of Galilee to preach and to heal, because that is what He had come to do.

Just as Job’s prosperity was taken from him, so too Jesus’ popularity was short lived. We see this happen in the week we call holy. Within seven days the welcoming crowds of Palm Sunday turned into the cruel mob yelling, “crucify him, away with him”. Like Job, Jesus would ask “why”. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

How often have we, for whatever reason, asked why? Why me, why this, why now? Can’t we often relate to Job’s own depressing thoughts, do we not have hard service upon the earth, and are not our days like the days of a laborer. As good people we go out to jobs we really don’t like and do work that are not appreciated and is neither fulfilling nor energizing. We see our lives swiftly passing by and wonder, what have I accomplished and who will remember. Life will be over too quickly. Don’t we sometimes long for a shade of relief and endure sleepless nights? Don’t we sometimes wonder “will my eyes ever see good again”?

We know this short quote from the Book of Job is not the end of the story. Because of his faithfulness in his time of trial things did turn around for Job. But Job can be an example for us. When things are not going well, when everything seems to work against us, when we wonder if God even cares, then like Job we talk to God from our hurts and disappointments, we let God know what’s on our minds and how upset we are. When St. Teresa of Avila was having a hard time in her life, she is supposed to have said to God, “If this is the way you treat your friends, is it any wonder you have so few of them.” Teresa’s remark speaks of a healthy relationship with God. It’s ok to let God know we are not happy with the way things are going in our lives, it’s ok to let God know we need patience, courage and hope, we need help.

We know from the story of Job and the story of Jesus that they both experienced the worst loss of all; their assurance that God remained with them through it all. But both remained faithful even with that lost assurance and both were vindicated, Job with the restoration of his goods, Jesus by His resurrection.

There is a moral we can learn from the story of Job and the story of Jesus. Sickness, disappointments, the loss of a job, the loss of a relationship, the loss of love, the loss of a career, even the loss of life can not take away the special relationship each of us has with the God of mercy and love. St. Paul tells us, “nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” When these losses come our way, and they certainly will, we have to remember we are not being punished but we are being tested. And our most important question is not why but what, what am I going to do with this, how will I handle this? Will I let this loss crush me, embitter me, sour me on life or will I see this adversity for what it is, a challenge to my faith and trust in myself?

As we continue to celebrate this Eucharist we pray for ourselves and for each other that when we face our own troubles we be able to ask not why but what and never lose trust in that special relationship that is ours with our God of mercy and love. Our God Who did not spare His Own Son but gave Him up for us all.



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