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homily – February 1

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

1 Corinthians 7:32-35

Just a few words on our strange second reading and Paul’s advice to those who were thinking of getting married. Can you remember what it was like planning your own wedding? Remember the chaos. There was the date, the hall, the church, the dress, the tux, the wedding party, the guests; the list goes on and on. These are the anxieties Paul is writing about. For Paul, in the big scheme of things, these were non issues. He wanted people to be focused. The unmarried person is focused on God and the things of God whereas the married person is scattered, how to please his wife, how deal with the world around him.

We really have to put all this in the context of the times. Paul and most of the early Christians expected the world as they knew it to end soon. Paul expected to welcome the returning Jesus in his own life time. It was this firm expectation that made him caution people from entering into long-term relationships that might distract them from developing the most important relationship of their lives, their unhindered devotion to Christ. Paul was not against marriage or family life but because of his conviction of the imminent return of Jesus, marriage or planning for marriage was not a primary concern.

But let’s go back to the opening words of our second reading; “I want you to be free from anxieties.” The dictionary defines anxiety as a state of tension or uneasiness caused by apprehension of possible future misfortune. Does that sound familiar?

Imagine the anxiety of people living in communities facing the closure of auto plants and all the associated industries. Imagine the anxiety caused by the word, ‘downsizing’. Imagine the anxiety of retired men and women as they see their investments dwindle in value or see their pensions diminished. Imagine the anxiety of young couples with mortgages they may not able to carry. Imagine the anxiety of men and women who know their companies are planning lay offs. Imagine the anxiety of students at York University as they face the possibility of losing their academic year.

The financial melt down that impacts just about every country on the planet has united people of every land in one common reality: anxiety – a state of tension or uneasiness caused by apprehension of possible future misfortune. We can add to the definition, apprehension about present misfortune.

Paul’s wish for the church in Corinth would be the same wish he would have for each of us; ” I want you to be free from anxieties.” Can we ever be? After we say the Our Father we pray; “protect us from all anxiety,” but can we ever live a day without being anxious about something; our health, our job, our family, our relationships?

I have a friend called Anxious Annie. If she didn’t have something to worry about, she’d worry.

“I want you to be free from anxieties.” Paul wants us to stay focused on what is really important. Paul expected his world would end soon and for many people that’s exactly what is happening, their world is coming to an end, things are falling apart, their old securities are gone, and they face an uncertain future.

Let’s go back in our imagination to a night long ago when Jesus shared his last meal with his closest friends. It was a happy meal but it was an anxious meal. There was a sense of foreboding in the air. Jesus knew what the next day would bring, He would be betrayed, denied, abandoned and He would die. There must have been tension in the air. What does Jesus say to them, “Let not your hearts be troubles, trust in God, trust in me.” Time and again Jesus promises us He will be with us to see us through our anxious times. He will be with us to help us find our way. He promised us we would never be alone.

That’s what we have to hold on to, that trust. We will face these troubled times, we will face our disappointments, and with the presence and help of God we will see our way through. We will find strength and wisdom to do our own downsizing in our personal lifestyles and set for ourselves new priorities, new values and maybe live more lightly upon the earth.

To deny these are anxious times would be an insult, but these are not hopeless times. As we continue the Mass we pray for ourselves and for each other that we be free from anxieties and filled with trust in the Christ Who promised, “I am with you always.”



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homily – January 25

Sunday, January 25th, 2009

Conversion of St. Paul

The Holy Father designated the year 2008-09 as the year of Jubilee for St. Paul the Apostle. Today we celebrate the feast of the conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus. It was a pivotal event in the life of Paul of Tarsus and in the development of Christian faith. There is a saying that “every saint has a history and every sinner has a future.” This is certainly true of Paul. He had his history. He was an intense follower of his Jewish faith. He was convinced that those Jews who followed Jesus were unfaithful to their heritage. He was determined to stamp them out. As we heard in the first reading – “I persecuted this Way up to the point of death by binding both men and women and putting them in prison, breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” Every sinner has a future. Again this is certainly true of Paul. Christ made Paul the persecutor a vessel of election and His disciple to the Gentiles.

In his letter to the Galatians Paul wanted everyone to know that the good news he preached was not a human message that he was given by others, even the other Apostles, it was something he learned only through a revelation of Jesus Christ. After his conversion experience he went off to Arabia and in prayer and solitude sought out the meaning of what his own relationship with Christ was all about and what it demanded of him. From the insights he gained in that time we can learn what our own relationship with Christ can be. We can make our own Paul’s great wish, “For me, to live is Christ and all I want is to know is Christ and the power of His resurrection.” Again Paul testifies, “I live now not I but Christ lives in me and the life I live, I live trusting in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave His life for me.” That trust is what saw Paul through all the struggles and opposition to his ministry.

Few people realize that the letters of Paul to several early Christian churches were written long before the Gospels. In these letters we find the earliest understandings of whom and what Jesus Christ was all about and what was demanded of those who would be His followers.

Before the gospels were written Paul taught us about the mystery of Christ becoming human, quoting a hymn sung at that time in Christian communities which says, “Christ did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as we are; and being as we all are, he humbled himself even to accepting death, death on a cross. But God raised him high and gave him a name which is above all other names, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” This short hymn is about the shameful death and glorious resurrection of Jesus.

Paul gives us the first scriptural teaching on the Eucharist we celebrate today. In his letter to the Corinthians he writes, “For this is what I received from the Lord and in turn pass on to you; that on the same night on which he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread and thanked God for it and broke it, and he said, ‘this is my body which is for you, do this as a memorial of me.’ In the same way he took the cup after supper and said, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Whenever you drink it do this as a memorial of me. Until the Lord comes, therefore, every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are proclaiming his death.'”

For Paul the reality of the crucified Christ was the love of God made visible. Christ Crucified was central to Paul’s life. To those converts in Galatia who slipped back into seeking their holiness in keeping the Law he asked, “O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you before whom Jesus Christ was shown as crucified?” Paul would say of himself, “All I want to know is Christ crucified and the power of His resurrection.” Through his prayer and ministry Paul sought to “put on Christ and grow to full maturity in Christ.” In the end Paul gave his life bearing witness to his faith in and his love for his crucified Lord.

In one of his letters Paul, speaking of himself, describes the struggle all of us deal with throughout our lives when he writes, “the good that I would, that I do not, the evil that I would not do, that I do.” But Paul could count of the grace of Christ to see him through all his struggles, just as we can.

As we continue to celebrate this feast of the Conversion of St. Paul we can pray for ourselves and for each other that our life time effort will be as was Paul’s – to be as Christ like as we can in the daily living of our lives. May the living of our lives echo the desire of Paul, “I live now, not I but Christ lives in me – for me, to live is Christ.”



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homily – January 18

Sunday, January 18th, 2009

John 1:35-42

I’d like to put today’s gospel into context. Last week we celebrate the baptism of Jesus by John. Shortly after this event John tells in his gospel that the disciples of John the Baptist came to him complaining, “Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing, and all are going over to him.” Obviously they were very territorial and resented this intrusion of Jesus into John’s ministry. But the Baptist reminded them he never claimed to be the Messiah, but that one would come after him who would baptize with the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist makes his famous saying about his relationship with Jesus when he tells his disciples “I must decrease, he must increase.”

In today’s gospel we hear John the Baptist encouraging his loyal friends to move on, to follow Jesus. They do, at a distance. Jesus knows they are following Him and simply asks “what are you looking for?” In other words, “what is the hunger in your heart?”

They wanted to know where He was staying and, I think the most important words in today’s gospel are found in Jesus’ reply: “come and see.” It’s an open invitation to spend some time with Him, to listen to what He has to say and in that way get to know Him better. By responding to that simple invitation, “come and see” Andrew’s life was turned around. By taking the time to “come and see” Andrew came to a deeper knowledge of Jesus as a person and was touched by the teaching of his new friend. He couldn’t keep this to himself and went searching for his brother Simon convinced “we have found the Messiah” and Simon took the time to “come and see” and his life was changed forever.

So often in life Jesus offers each of us the invitation to “come and see” and spend a bit of time in peace and quiet with Him so that He can help us see how loved we are and appreciate the singular sacredness of each of us. Remember that song from the musical “The King and I”, Getting to Know You? Getting to know you getting to know more about you, day by day. It’s a variation of the invitation of Jesus, “come and see”. Jesus offers us the invitation ‘come and see’ with the simple hint that we spend a few minutes a day reading the scripture or attending a bible class with others who want to know Jesus in a new way. Come and see, take the time to get to know me better, take the time to let me show you how much you mean to me, take the time to let me show you the plans I have for you. We lose out on so much when we find ourselves too busy, too preoccupied, too involved in so many things that we don’t have time to accept His gracious invitation “come and see.”

When we stop to think of it our lives can be so enrich, enhanced, deepened, if we took the time to come and see. How often do we shut people out of our lives, how often to do shut our minds to new ideas and insights because we don’t care to “come and see”?

Because of our preconceived ideas or prejudices we close our minds and lives to other people, other cultures and other visions. Remember the saying, “Don’t confuse me with facts, my mind’s made up”? We rob ourselves of getting to know the goodness, the richness of other people’s lives because we don’t have the open mind and heart that would let us “come and see”.

There is a story told of a young couple moving into a new neighbourhood. One morning while they were having breakfast the young woman sees her neighbour hanging out the wash. That laundry is not very clean she says to her husband. She doesn’t know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap. Her husband looked out the window but said nothing. Every time the neighbour hung out her laundry to dry the woman said the same thing. After a couple of weeks she was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband, “look, she’s learned to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her.” The husband said, “I got up early this morning and washed the kitchen windows.” The story is a variation of the invitation, “come and see”, in other words, “take the time to get to know me.”

Isn’t true that when we observe others and wonder who they are and what they do, so much depends on how we see them, so much depends on how clean our own window is? We can all ask ourselves “Do I allow the grime of stereotyping or prejudice dim my ability to see the goodness, the beauty, the generosity, the integrity of men and women of other faiths, cultures and life styles?” If we do then we are the losers.

As we continue to celebrate this Mass we pray for ourselves and for each other that we set aside rash judgments and be graced with the openness to take the time to “come and see” and allow ourselves to be enriched by the goodness and generosity that can be found in all of us.



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homily – January 11

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

Mark 1:7-11

Today we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord. We see Jesus standing in a long line of men and women who have come to the Jordon to answer John the Baptist’s call to repentance, to a change in the way they live their lives.

In Matthew’s telling of this event John hesitates to baptize Jesus, “It is I who need baptism from you”. But Jesus refused any special treatment. “Leave it like this for the time being, it is fitting we should do what righteousness demands.” And John gave in to him, took him into the river and washed him, as the church prays, “in waters made holy by the one who is baptized”.

In both Mark and Matthew we are told that the heavens opened and God’s Spirit descended on Jesus and a voice was heard, certainly by John and Jesus if not others, “You are my son, the beloved. In you I am well pleased.”

We have all been baptized. That’s why we are here. Baptism is the most important of all the sacraments. Without baptism we cannot receive any other sacrament. We seldom think of our baptism, seldom think of the grace and dignity given each of us when we were baptized. At each of our baptisms the Spirit of God was poured into our very being binding us in a special relationship with God our Father. So often baptism is thought of as a one shot deal. The Irish have this saying, “we got to get the kid done’. But baptism is not a one time event. In fact in former times when infant deaths were not uncommon, parents were considered negligent if they didn’t have a child baptized soon after birth. But ‘getting the kid done’ is a very limited vision of what baptism is all about. Baptism is not a one time event it is the beginning of a life time process of our growing relationship with God and our willingness as Christian people to ‘put on Christ’.

There was a time when a very popular saying among young people was, “I didn’t ask to be born.” None of us did. Our conception and birth were beyond our control. But we were born and gifted with life and there comes a time when we have to take ownership of our lives and live them as best we can. It’s the same with baptism. Unless we are a convert to the faith we had no say in our being baptized, our being born into the family of God. As with our physical life so our spiritual life is meant to be nourished and grow. For the first years of our lives that growth and nourishment is the responsibility of parents. They are to bear witness to the faith by what they say and do. As small children we pick up our faith by osmosis, we are influenced by the lived faith of our parents. We are taught prayers, we celebrate feasts, and we are brought to church. If that lived faith of parents is not there then our baptism is sterile and its graces are untapped. We may be pampered, given the best of care and love physically but in the area of the spirit we are children of neglect.

There comes a time in all our lives when we decide whether or not the faith and values passed on to us by our parents have any meaning for us as individuals. If we are to be authentic believers in God and in His Christ, Who loved us and gave His life for us, then we are meant to deepen our relationship with the Father, a relationship which colors and gives life to all the other relationships in our lives. This is a lifelong effort as we try to be like Christ, Who sought always to do the will of His Father. This is a life long effort as we try every day of life to be Christ to others. This is a life long effort as we try to echo the words of St. Paul “I live now not I, but Christ lives in me and the life I live I live trusting in the Son of God Who loved me and gave His life for me.” Trusting in the Son of God, trusting in the wonder we celebrate at this Mass in which Jesus offers Himself to each of us, handing Himself over as He did on Calvary, ” this is my body, this is my blood, this is my life given for you, given to you.”

Our parish motto is, belonging, believing, becoming. Baptism was our invitation to ‘become’. We are ‘becoming’ when, with God’s help, we try to live Christ like lives even with all our faults and failings. We are ‘becoming’ when we will not give up because of the times we disappoint ourselves and others. We are ‘becoming’ when we do try to love others as Christ loved us. We are ‘becoming’ when, in our own ways we grow to full maturity in Christ. We are ‘becoming’ when we put on Christ so that the Father can see and love in us what He sees and loves in Christ. We are all helped in that ‘becoming’ as we believe and belong with each other in our Catholic/Christian communities.

As we continue to celebrate this Mass we can pray for ourselves and for each other that in all our struggles to believe, belong and become, the Father will look at us as He looked at Jesus coming out of the muddy waters of the Jordon and say of us what He said of Him – you are my beloved, in you I am well pleased.



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homily – January 5

Monday, January 5th, 2009

Matthew 2:1-12

On November 19th, 2006, Cardinal Ambrozic consecrated our church. Just before the ceremony began the choir sang a hymn titled “All are welcome” the refrain of the hymn was “all are welcome in this place.” Today’s feast of the Epiphany is all about “all are welcome.” The first reading from Isaiah tells of a future time when the kingdom of Israel is restored and returns to faithfulness to God, then kings and nations will come to bask in its light, exiles from far away will come home. All are welcome in this place.

St. Paul shocks the Jewish Christians of Ephesus when he tells them the shocking truth, “the Gentiles, the non Jews are their fellow heirs, members of the same body and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” All are welcome for in Christ there is neither Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female – all are one in Christ, all are welcome.

We hear in this story of the Magi following the star of God’s grace, seeking the new born king of the Jews, this same truth. This new born king has come for people of every land and nation and all are welcome.

One of the plagues of every religion has been the conviction that they have an exclusive ownership of God. You can’t get into heaven if you don’t know the password which only they can give you. This is why we’ve had such a long history of sectarian and religious conflicts. This is why we have tensions in our present society with the rise of radical fundamentalists – be they Christian, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhists, whatever. People who are convinced they have the truth and unless you agree with them, you are lost.

Just recently a group known as Pew Forum did a survey asking people whether or not they believed that people who did not share their faith would go to heaven. 65% of those who responded said yes. This upset a number of Evangelicals. They maintained that the question was not asked properly. So the Forum did it again making sure the question was as clear as possible. This time around the percentage of those who believed that those who did not share their faith would still go to heaven was 60% – again much to the consternation of some leading evangelicals. Thank God that we are finally getting the message of this feast, that Jesus came for all people and all are welcome. The way St. Peter expressed this truth was when he was a guest at the house of the centurion Cornelius, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.” All are welcomed; all are embraced by the crucified and risen Christ. How that will be worked out in the lives of persons who do not share our Christian faith will be worked out in God’s embracing love for us all.

What does this feast have to say to us? Maybe it can challenge us to look at the way we see and accept men and women of other faiths, cultures and lifestyles. Do we allow ourselves to be limited by our own bigotry, prejudice or discriminations? Do we exclude people from our lives, because of who they are, or what they believe, or how they live? Are we ready to accept the message of this feast of the Epiphany: “all are welcome”?

As we continue to celebrate this feast which challenges us to be happy with its wonderful truth “all are welcome” we can pray for ourselves and for each other that we put aside our prejudices and be willing to accept others for who and what they are; sons and daughters of our loving God, redeemed by the blood of Christ crucified. May we live the wonderful truth, in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male or female, slave or free but we are all one in the Christ Who loved us and gave His life for us all.



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