Another dog homily - preached July 28/29 at Blessed Kateri parish, St. Cecilia site:

We have two dogs at home, a big one and a little one.  And Sadie, our little dog, has a game that she likes to play with her food.  And it works like this.  She comes around and lets us know in her own way that she’s hungry –  she follows me to the garage as I pour some food into her dish, and then she follows me back into the house, and there she lays down right next to her bowl to protect her food.  She’ll even sometimes growl at Maddie, our big dog, to dare her to try to come over here and eat my food.  And, if we’re out of the room and forget to put Sadie’s food up out of reach, Maddie will usually do just that – she’ll walk right over and eat Sadie’s food.  Now this game of Sadie’s, this guarding her food and growling to keep Maddie away consumes most of Sadie’s waking hours.  She even seems to sleep with one eye open so as to protect her food.  She doesn’t understand that out in the garage there this giant bag of dog food, and I don’t think she appreciates that one of us goes out to fill her dish pretty much whenever she asks.

            Sadly, I see a lot of myself in both dogs’ behavior, especially Sadie’s.  I jealously protect and guard what is mine, often forgetting, not appreciating, that everything I have is a free gift from God.  And sometimes I find myself looking at what others have and wishing it was mine, unsatisfied with what I’ve been given.  For me, the temptation to guard what is mine and growl at anyone who may want some of it is especially strong at times like this, in an economy like we have today.  I sometimes let fear get the best of me, and I tend to forget, or if not forget then not trust, that God is generous, that God provides, that figuratively, God has a big bag out in the garage.

            And that brings us to today’s Gospel.  For there is one way of looking at Jesus’ miracle that we read about today, and perhaps you’ve heard this before, that says that Jesus didn’t have to create loaves and fishes out of thin air.  Rather, so this theory goes, there was something in what Our Blessed Lord said, or perhaps in the way He looked right into the peoples’ hearts, that caused them that day to open up their cloaks and bags and give freely of the loaves and fishes that they had brought with them.  Food that perhaps they had been guarding, food that they had been protecting, grasping.  Giving so freely that there were twelve baskets left over.  And I suppose if Our Lord were able to change hearts that quickly and that profoundly, that would qualify as a miracle, or so this line of thinking goes.

            I actually like that way of looking at this Gospel passage, but it leaves me sort of unsatisfied.  I mean, Jesus wasn’t just some unusually effective, or charismatic preacher.  No, Jesus was the Son of God, the very Word of God made flesh.  The healer of lepers, who made the blind see and the deaf hear.  Who could change water into wine and even raised folks from the dead.  So I don’t doubt for a second that he had the power to multiply five loaves and two fish and feed thousands. 

            I want to believe, I choose to believe, that somehow He took these bread and fish, blessed them, broke them and shared them with the multitude such that there was plenty for everyone and some left over, and my 21^st-century brain doesn’t need to know how He did it. 

            For aren’t most of seven billion people somehow fed every day from the goodness of the earth He created?  And isn’t the earth God created capable of feeding every one of us?  If you stop to think about it, isn’t that absolutely amazing?  And yet, we don’t know exactly how that happens.  It comes to mind especially at times like this when we read about drought facing much of our nation’s farmlands. 

            Further, don’t we believe that all that is seen and unseen was created through Him?  The moon and the sun and the stars? 

            And don’t we believe that for 2000 years, in the person of the Priest, Jesus has been taking, blessing, breaking and sharing His very Body and Blood with His followers the world over?  Nourishing us and feeding us to heal us and unite us and send us forth to do His work?  So I believe that our God who created the universe could and did a miracle, a wonder, a sign that day.  One that so impressed the people, so impressed his disciples, that this is the only miracle that all four Gospel writers describe.

            But for us here, for us now, if WE want to be miracle workers, if we want to let Jesus work miracles through us, then I sorta like the newfangled way of explaining today’s Gospel.  If my own heart were to be so changed, so transformed, if all of our hearts were to be so touched by Our Lord, such that each of us would fully trust, that each of us would share freely from our abundance, recognizing that everything we have is God’s gift, well it seems to me that all the poor and hungry of the world would be fed.  The children of Africa and Haiti and other third-world places would have plenty to eat and none would die today of starvation, or bad water, or rampant disease.  Instead of clutching and grasping and protecting what God has given, if every person were to trust in the goodness and providence of the Lord and share from our abundance, no one would go without. 

            And that WOULD be a miracle, wouldn’t it?

            Let me close with a very simple prayer: 

            Heavenly Father, give bread to all who hunger.  And to all who have bread, give a hunger for justice.  We pray in Jesus name.  Amen.

Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 14/15 2012, St. Margaret Mary:

Our Yorkshire Terrier is always the first to notice someone coming to our door.  She perches on our sofa, and peers out the front window, watching and waiting, and she loudly barks to warn us whenever our home is about to be attacked.  OK, it might just be the UPS driver, but she doesn’t know the difference.  To her, every visitor is a potential menace, and she earns her dog chow by being a heckuva good watchdog. 

            Hearing her barking, one of us will usually peek out the window to see who’s coming to the door, and if you’re like me, if you see two young men in pressed dress trousers and clean, white shirts and ties, you immediately think “Oh no, the Mormons!” and you might leap into the coat closet before they see you through the window.  And wait there until the dog stops barking to let you know the coast is clear.

            At least that’s the way I used to act.  But somehow, that seemed cowardly to me, so the last time I was home when the young Mormon missionaries came around, I bravely greeted them at the door with a smile.  I explained that they probably wouldn’t be making any converts that day at our Catholic household, especially since I was approaching ordination as a deacon. 

            But before sending them on their way, I told them that I truly admire what they were doing – how much I admire their dedication, their courage, and their faith.  And I wished them well.

            And I meant it.  These young people, with a faith that is alive and on fire, are doing precisely what Our Lord sent His apostles out to do in today’s Gospel  – He sent the twelve out two by two to preach the Good News of repentence.   To the neighboring towns and villages.  This wasn’t yet the great commission that we read about at the end of Mark’s Gospel, when Jesus sends the disciples out to the whole world to proclaim the gospel to every creature. 

            But it’s a commission nonetheless, and it seems to me that it’s quite instructive for us here at Blessed Kateri parish, at this time and in this place.  Perhaps we are likewise being sent out right here into our Town of Irondequoit to preach the Good News, with our words, yes, but more importantly with the witness of our lives.  Perhaps not door to door, but it’s a call to evangelize nonetheless.

             Blessed Kateri parishioners are a minority of the Town’s population, and those who regularly come to Mass are but a fraction.  There are many folks in our Town who have no faith at all.  Moreover, there are  people in our Town who have never experienced the love of Jesus, who have no idea how much God loves them and cares for them.  Who is gonna tell them?  Who is gonna show them, if not us?

            But it’s a call that requires that our own faith be alive and on fire.  If we stop to think about how blessed we are as Catholic Christians, about what we have right here, how can we NOT spread this great good news?  How can we not proclaim the Lord from the rooftops?

            Have you ever received some really good news?  Marriage proposal?  Birth of a child?  You want everyone you know to hear about it.  I recall 15 years ago, after my wife Pam and I made a Marriage Encounter weekend, how alive and on fire our love was after that weekend.  I wanted every single married couple we knew to have the gift we had received. 

            Now if we stop to think about what we have right here in our faith community, shouldn’t we want EVERYONE to have what we have?

            For we have here a community  - the community of Christ’s companions, living the Faith passed on to us for over 2000 years.  A community of sinners, hopefully open and inviting to other sinners.  Sinners striving here to become saints.

            We have here Christ’s unbounded mercy - the forgiveness of sins He promised us, and the assurance of His forgiveness we hear in the words of absolution.

            We have here a tradition of justice and service to the poor, the sick, the uneducated, those who mourn, a mission of love which flows forth from the realization that God loves each of us and so we must love.

            And we have here the very Body and Blood of Our Blessed Lord, broken and shared at this table, to strengthen us and unite us and send us forth in love and service. 

            Yes, we have here the very presence of Jesus Christ in the Town of Irondequoit.  We ARE the very presence of Jesus Christ in the Town of Irondequoit.  You and I are being called to live and proclaim that presence everywhere we go, in everything we do.  It’s the reason we’re here.  I dare say it’s the very reason we were created.

            May we be truly thankful today and always for all of the good gifts God has given to us here.  And let us go forth with faith alive and on fire to proclaim Our Blessed Lord in our words and in our deeds.  For we exist for the praise of His glory, now and forever.  Amen.

Homily for Feast of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, Saturday, July 14, 2012:

What can we possibly learn from a young Native American woman who died in her mid-20s over 330 years ago, a young woman not baptized until age 20 whose Christian life lasted only four years? Who was orphaned at age four and died single and in a strange place, hundreds of miles from her closest relatives? Well, reading quite a bit over the past few days about the patroness of our parish, Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, the answer is “quite a bit.” We have quite a bit that we can learn, individually and as a parish community, from the life and example of this soon-to-be saint.

Things like Courage. Trust. Perseverance. Faith.

Born near Auriesville only ten years after the martyrdom of St. Isaac Jogues and his companions at the hands of the Mohawks, Tekakwitha was the daughter of a Mohawk Chief and a Catholic Algonquin woman who had been abducted from her village in Quebec. It was no small miracle that at age four young Tekakwitha survived a disease outbreak that took the lives of her parents and brother. Still, the disease weakened her body, disfigured her face, and damaged her eyesight. Raised by her uncle and aunt, she must have recalled her mother’s teaching her the faith as a small child when years later Jesuit missionaries returned to her village. The desire arose in her to learn about Our Lord and despite the severe discouragement of her foster-parents and entire village, this desire only grew in young Tekakwitha, and at age 20 she was baptized at the Easter Vigil and took the name Kateri.

Perhaps the village’s only Christian, she was subjected to the scorn and ridicule of her people and even physically threatened, so eventually she moved to her mother’s native Quebec. There she received First Eucharist and took a vow of perpetual virginity, dedicating her life to Jesus as her spouse. And where only a few years later she succumbed to illness at age 24.

Why do we remember her today? Why is our faith community entrusted to her protection and patronage? I think the answer comes down to the radical life she lived. As a Christian, Kateri was noticeably different from her people.

• She lived in a time of war, violence and cruelty and here was this model of peacefulness.

• Called the Lily of the Mohawks, she became known for her purity and her dedication to chastity.

• Mocked and ridiculed, she was devoted to Our Blessed Lord and united her sufferings to His, enduring her great hardship and anguish with grace.

Such that she had a profound effect on all those she encountered.

Kateri was the personification of Christ’s encouraging words in today’s Gospel: “do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” and because she was unafraid to proclaim our Lord, we remember her to this day. For Jesus promises that “everyone who acknowledges me before others, I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.”

We will do well to follow Kateri’s example. To boldly proclaim our Savior even in the midst of opposition and hatred. Witnessing to peace in a culture of violence and death. Patiently enduring suffering with our eyes firmly on the goal. To be a sign of Christ’s presence to the world around us.

And to one day live eternally in heaven, with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.