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homily – October 28

Sunday, October 28th, 2007

Sirach 35:12-14, 16-18 and Luke 18:9-14

Just a few words on the first reading of today’s Mass, centering on the words of Wisdom; “the prayer of the humble pierces the clouds and will not rest until it reaches its goal.”

It is easy to see who is the truly humble person in the parable Jesus offers in today’s gospel. The tax collector stood at the back of the temple, would not raise his eyes to God while repeating his truthful, humble prayer. “Lord be merciful to me a sinner.”

The word ‘humble’ is often very misunderstood and has messed up a lot of people. I was taught a great lesson in humility a number of years ago. We’d just come in from Mass and one of the ministers of the Eucharist said to me, “that was a wonderful sermon; I got a lot out of it.” My ‘humble’ response was, “my mother wrote it”. That did not go down well. She saw that I had dismissed her compliment and she was not amused. She asked me a very stinging question, ‘when are you going to be mature enough to accept a compliment graciously and get over this phony humility’? To say the least I was chastened and had to think about what she said. Have you ever refused a compliment under the illusion that to accept would be a sign of pride? I think it is an all too common fault because we have this distorted notion of humility.

So often we imagine we are being humble when we belittle ourselves, put ourselves down, and see little of good in ourselves. This is not humility, it is self deprecation. Humility is truth. Humility is accepting who we are and what we are. Humility is recognizing the gifts with which we’ve been blessed. The Blessed Mother was being humble when she said of herself, “He Who is mighty has done great things for me, holy is His name.” Mary accepted the truth of herself, she was blessed and chosen by God and she rejoiced in that truth.

Everyone at this Mass can echo the words of Mary, “He Who is mighty has done great things for me” No matter what our faults and failings, no matter the sins of which we may be conscious there is a truth beyond them. “Before the world began God chose us in Christ to be God’s adopted sons and daughters”. No matter what we may think of our own worth as we think about our sins and failings there is a truth beyond them, no matter how often we put ourselves down, are disappointed, maybe even disgusted with ourselves, there is a truth beyond, Jesus Christ thought enough of each one of us He was willing to die on the cross for us and as St. Paul reminds us “nothing can ever come between us and the love of God made visible is Christ Jesus our Lord.”

In the parable we have the example of the truthful, humble tax collector. He was a sinner. He probably defrauded and extorted any number of people. He admits his sins. Jesus is blessing the truth but obviously not the sin.

Our distorted version of humility can cause us to deny or belittle the gifts with which we’ve been blessed. We are humble when we admit, recognize and celebrate these gifts. The gift of our generosity and sensitivity to the needs of others, the gift of compassion, the gift of our being willing to be there for others, the gift of patience and perseverance as we care for aging parents or spouses, the gift of perseverance as you stayed in and grown through the better or worse of married life, the gift of understanding and patience as you parent your children through the madness of adolescence.

We are humble when admit to God the truth. “against you alone have I sinned, what is evil in your sight I have done.” We are humble when we admit the truth, “we are good people” and He Who is mighty has done great things for us.

As we continue to celebrate this Mass together, we can pray for ourselves and for each other that we be blessed with the gift of true humility, the truth to be recognize of faults and failing, the truth to recognize and celebrate the wonderful humbling truth, “He Who is mighty has done great things for me – holy is His name.”



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homily – October 21

Sunday, October 21st, 2007

Mission Sunday

A couple of weeks ago when the parish had that birthday reception for me after the 12:30 Mass, one of the highlights of the celebration was when they sang ‘happy birthday’ in six different languages. My first year here at St. Gabriel’s was in 1960 – such a thing would not have happened back then. Our parish was pretty white and squeaky clean. It’s wonderful how the parish has changed through the years – we are a real ‘catholic’ – universal parish.

This past week I was at the annual workshop put on for the priests of the Archdiocese. Every year I seem to know fewer and fewer priests. I met one young priest who has been in Toronto for three months. He is from Mexico but studied in Brazil so he speaks Spanish, Portuguese and English and works in St. Anthony’s Parish down on Bloor. Years back St. Anthony’s was all Irish, then it became an Italian parish and now it’s Spanish and Portuguese. I think I may have mentioned before that Sunday Mass is celebrated in over 50 different languages in Toronto.

Today is mission Sunday. It’s a day we pray for and support the missionary works of the universal church. For years Canada has been sending priests, brothers and sisters to many countries around the world bringing the gospel to people of many lands. I remember the Breen family down the street from us in Saint John. Two brothers, George and Harold were priests. They were Holy Cross Fathers. In the 1920s they went of to the missions in India. The understanding was that they would never come home. They had one way tickets. That’s the way it was in those days, men and women made a life time commitment to the missions. They built churches, opened schools and hospitals, ran orphanages – they spread the faith through good works.

In those days the Canadian church was on the giving end of things. Now, the truth of the matter is, we are on the receiving end of things. The church in Toronto could not function without the presence of priests from Africa, India, the Philippines, Latin America, and Indonesia.

In our own Passionist Community, we have few vocations in Europe or North America. But the Passionist communities we established in the Philippines, India, and Indonesia and throughout Africa are strong and healthy. We are blessed to have Fr. Brando with us from the Philippines for another year. Every now and then I hear people from other parishes complaining about a new priest they have who is struggling with English. We can’t understand a word he says, they’ll complain. Passionists from the States went to Hunan Province in China in the early twenties. Can you image what the good Christians of that area had to endure as our men tried to learn and preach in Chinese? What goes around comes around. Because there are so few vocations to the priesthood and religious life here in Canada we need priests from other lands to keep the Canadian church alive.

In the second reading from today’s Mass Paul is encouraging Timothy to be faithful to what he was taught as a child – Paul’s words to Timothy can be addressed to all of us, “proclaim the message, be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable, convince, rebuke, encourage. We have been blessed with the gift of our Catholic Christian faith. We are meant to share that gift with others. It doesn’t mean going to another country or culture but it does mean living one’s faith right here, right now. Often when people come to take Mary Landry’s course of becoming a Catholic, the reason they give for making such a decision is how a Catholic friend or acquaintance made such a deep impression on them.

Years ago when I could shop at K Mart in the plaza there was an elderly gentleman who stood at a windy corner offering the Watchtower – the Jehovah newspaper. He would be there in all kinds of weather trying to share his faith with others. I always admired that man. How many of us would be willing to stand on a street corner and pass out information about our Catholic faith?

Mission Sunday is one day a year, but our mission, our responsibility to share our faith is a day by day reality. By the way we live our lives; by the way we relate to other people, we are to bear witness to our Christian Catholic faith by what we say, by what we do, always in the ordinary living of our ordinary lives.

I like going back to those words St. Francis of Assisi spoke to his friars. “Preach the gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”

As we continue to celebrate this Eucharist we thank God for the gift of our faith, we pray for the men and women around the world involved in missionary activity and we ask for the willingness to bear witness to our faith by what we say and by what we do, every day of our lives.



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homily – October 14

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

Luke 17:11-19

We all know about the antagonism between the Jews and the Samaritans. One time Jesus and some of His disciples were on their way to Jerusalem and looked for lodging in a Samaritan town but because they were heading for Jerusalem they were refused hospitality. Because of this deep animosity there was no love lost between Jews and Samaritans.

Jesus grew up influenced by that animosity. The Samaritans were different, they were to be avoided. It took Him time to overcome this mind set as it took him time to overcome the normal mind set of the place of women in society. It took Him time to see the goodness in these people who practiced a faith close to but different from His own. Faced with the formalistic, lifeless religious leadership of His day, the strict observance of formalities, He would point to the Samaritans, the outsiders, as examples of those who lived their faith in God in far deeper ways than His own people.

We all know good people who do not share our faith but who live lives that express our faith better than we do ourselves in their compassion and care for others, in their sense of justice and fairness. In many ways they put us to shame.

Jesus often uses the Samaritans as examples of good people who are far better at living out the spirit of the law than His own people who gave the Law nothing but lip service. It was more than annoying to the scribes and Pharisees to have these heretics praised by Jesus. Today’s gospel is one example of such praise and then there is the example of the good Samaritan who cared for a total stranger, a stranger the priest and Levite avoided as much as possible lest they become unclean. We have the example of Jesus breaking the taboo of talking with the Samaritan woman at the well and offering her a new vision of both their faiths.

After cleansing the ten lepers from their dread disease Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priests who would verify their being clean and welcome them back into the very society that excluded them. The cleansed Samaritan would not have been accepted by the priests so he doesn’t bother going, instead he returns to Jesus to thank him for the way in which He turned his life around.

There were other occasions when Jesus involved Himself in the lives of people who were non Jews. The Syro-Phoenician woman whose daughter was so ill. She begged Him for help and He cured her daughter and praised this woman’s great faith.

So often when we hear this gospel we think that its main point is the need for gratitude. We admire the effort of the Samaritan to come back to Jesus and thank Him, we wonder at the ingratitude of the other nine.

Maybe we could hear this gospel from another point of view- the view of Jesus as he recognizes and praises the goodness of this Samaritan, just as He recognized and praised the faith and generosity of others who did not share His Jewish faith and traditions. Jesus knew that God lives and loves in and through the lives of men and women who did not share His faith. He knew that God was praised and manifested in the lives of good people of any nationality. Peter came to that conviction through his association with the pagan Cornelius when he said, ‘the truth I have come to realize is this, that any person of any nationality who does what is right is acceptable to God.’

As we continue to celebrate this Eucharist together, we can pray for ourselves and for each other that we be graced to understand this awesome truth; that God’s grace and love and power is not confined to the Catholic church, nor the Christian faith and that good men and women of other faiths and even no faith are the instruments of God’s love and grace and mercy, in this world, maybe even to us.



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homily – October 7

Sunday, October 7th, 2007

Luke 17:5-10

I’d like you to fantasize this scene: it’s Thanksgiving Day. The mother of the family spends the day preparing the thanksgiving meal. She cooks the turkey, makes homemade pies and cookies; she does the vegetables, sets the tables and then calls the family to supper. She serves the meal and enjoys the company of the family. At the end of the meal the rest of the family gets up from the table and heads to the rec room to watch Monday night football. She stands there and shakes her head in disbelief and says, “isn’t anyone going to say ‘thank you’?” The family turns from watching TV and says, “well sure, thanks, great meal, but isn’t that what you are supposed to do as wife and mother?” In other words, you have done only what you ought to have done.

Don’t even try to imagine the atomic explosion that hit that house after such a question, isn’t that what you are supposed to do?

The story Jesus tells in the gospel and especially the last sentence we heard seems awfully harsh. “When you have done all you were ordered to do, say “we are worthless slaves and we have done only what we ought to have done.” Thanks a lot.

At the beginning of the gospel we hear the apostles asking for an increase of faith – a greater strength to trust Jesus and His teaching. They were stunned by Jesus’ teaching about the dangers of wealth and the blessedness of the poor. His demand that He come first in their lives, before mother, father, brothers or sisters was quite severe. This was all new to them. They wondered if they could handle it all. So they ask,”Lord increase our faith.” In other words give us strength we need to trust you and the things to which you call us.

We’ve been taught that faith is a gift, something we can’t earn, something freely given. This gift gives us the ability to trust the truth that we are loved by God, trust the truth that Jesus loved us with such intensity that He was willing to die for us, live the truth that we are brothers and sisters to all who come into our lives.

We are not entitled to our faith, we are entrusted with it and so we are expected to accept and live the deepest truths of our faith; that we are created of love, for love and are to return to that love. As the church prays, ‘love is our origin and love is our constant calling, love is our fulfillment in heaven.’ In living our lives as Christian people, struggling to live the great commandment, “love on another as I have loved you” we are doing only what we ought to do.

This gift of faith is given us so that we who believe may become more like the person in whom we believe. This gift is given so that we who believe may ‘put on Christ’ in the way we live our lives, in all its dimensions.

In the story Jesus tells He would identify Himself with the servant, not the master. In His passion and death He did what He ought to have done, He kept His commitment to do the will of the Father, no matter what the cost. “I have come to do Your will.”

Take for example the person who is gifted, entrusted with the ability to play a musical instrument. They will practice and practice to develop that gift and in doing so they will have done only what they ought to have done with their gift. To say that is not belittling their efforts but it is recognizing the fact that they have appreciated the gift entrusted to them. In doing so they have given glory to the gracious God Who so gifted them. This can be said of any of the gifts and talents a person may have.

We’ve been entrusted with our Christian faith, a gift that requires of us we seek to become more like the person in whom we believe. This is a lifetime struggle and there are times when that struggle becomes quite intense, when we suffer the death of one we love, when we are hit with serious illness, when we lose a job, when we are hit with a situation that leaves us spinning and we question the very existence of God and beg from the bottom of our hearts, ‘increase our faith’.

As we continue to celebrate this Mass, we can pray for ourselves and for each other that we treasure the gift of faith entrusted to us, a gift to which we were not entitled. May each of us seek to become more like the person in whom we believe and accept the reality that in all our efforts to live a Christian life, we are doing only what we ought to do.



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homily – September 30

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

Luke 16:19:31

The gospel story of Lazarus and the poor man is powerful. The rich man had it made. He had not a worry in the world. He was well dressed and well fed. His life style was a lot like that of the people Amos went after in our first reading. Stretched out on beds of ivory, eating the best of food, enjoying their own music while completely oblivious to the social ills that surrounded them.

This rich man was probably not an evil man. He may have worked hard for his money. Luke says, ‘he loved it.’ When we really love something or someone it can become the centre of our lives. Obviously his money meant more to him than the suffering beggar at his door. But he never drove Lazarus away from his gate, he never set the dogs on him, he may have thrown him some of the leftovers from his table. He was convinced he was entitled to his life style, he was probably convinced that this is the way things are meant to be, there are the ‘haves’ and the ‘have knots.’ He saw no need to change things. He could have been sure that this is the way God meant things to be.

In death he knew things differently. The good things he enjoyed in life were of no good to him in his torments. Lazarus, who in life had little, in death had everything.

The rich man’s appeal to Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers to shape up went nowhere. As Abraham said, “if they don’t listen to Moses and the prophets, if they are deaf to their long Jewish tradition of caring for the poor and needy, they will be deaf to someone who comes back from the dead.”

What does this gospel say to us? Compared to other people in other lands we are really well off. Our life style is at the expense of countless people in other lands. We are living high on the hog. But forget about global issues – what about the social conditions here in our own city. How conscious are we, how concerned are we about the homeless men, women and children in our city of Toronto? What do we care about the families who depend on food banks or the children who go to school hungry? Are we aware of the Lazarus’ in our own community?

There was a great letter to the editor of the Star last Tuesday – it echoes the concerns of the prophet Amos: “I am amazed and horrified that the people of Ontario have allowed the major political parties to sabotage the true election issues by focusing on the faith-based school funding. Hungry children can’t learn. Families living in unsafe and substandard housing can’t provide a secure environment to foster learning. People earning the minimum wage or less can’t provide the necessities of life for their families. The poor who live on the streets without basic health care suffer from myriad health problems. Without clean air and water, Ontario’s environment will be unsustainable. Without a supply of knowledgeable workers our economy is in jeopardy. Poverty, the economy and the environment are the main election issues. Parties need to address them and share their policies with the electorate so that we can make informed choices on Oct. 10.”

I love this letter. It goes to the heart of the matter. Is it because we are indifferent to the needs of the poor, the homeless, those trying to survive on the minimum wage; is it because we take clean air and water for granted; and is it because these issues make us uncomfortable that we allowed ourselves to be distracted by this issue of faith-based school funding? For sure such funding is a matter of justice but the issues named in this letter are far more pressing. What a difference it might make if the media spent as much time covering these issues as it did covering the matter of funding faith-based schools.

Amos was expressing a holy discontent with the social indifference that let people ignore the poor and needy of his day. Jesus’ parable was doing the same. His story challenges all those who are content with the way things are, who see it to be quite normal that there be the ‘haves’ and the ‘have knots’ especially when they are among the haves.

As we continue the celebrate our Eucharist and are nourished by the bread of life, we can pray for ourselves and for each other that we be blessed with a holy discontent with the social ills and injustices of our city and province and find a way to question those who seek our votes as to whether or not they share in our discontent and judge them accordingly.



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