Easter: Death is Overcome by Lifeand Life Overcomes the World

The following is the homily I preached at my first Paschal Vigil as a presbyter at St Theresa's Catholic Parish.  The vigil of the Lord's Resurrection was was truly a celebration in every sense of the word.  Eight people were received into Holy Catholicity that night.

During my last year in California, I used to take the train from San Francisco to Berkeley for grad school, getting off at Shattuck Street and walking up University Avenue and then taking Oxford Street, which runs in front of UC Berkeley.  I used to make the point of walking on the north side of the street because the south side was lined by tall buildings and the shadow on the sidewalk there made it always chilly.  Walking on the north side meant walking in the sun, walking to school, walking to what was, for me, a new life.

          Only two years prior, things weren’t so good.  I recall thinking, at the time, that no amount of sunshine, coffee, or books could shake off that grief I was going through.  It was a long, personal Good Friday.  But once I began my new life and walked on that sunny sidewalk in Berkeley, I discovered—for the first time—the meaning of Easter.  The sun, it seemed, shone for the first time in my life.

          There was no greater tragedy than our silencing the life of the “Firstborn of all creation”, who came for no other reason than to tell us how much we are loved by God.  Disturbed by the prospect that we—cosmic dust that we are—are actually the crowning achievement of the Big Bang, we tried to disarm Jesus whose proclamation of God’s love disarmed us.  “With everlasting love I will have compassion on you, says the Lord, your Redeemer.”

          Tonight, however, the deepest and darkest corners of the human condition was overcome by a violent love when God broke the chains of sorrow and, in a burst of divine energy, not only raised Jesus to new life but also put all shadows to flight.  ‘Easter’ means just this:  that in Jesus, death is overcome by Life and Life overcomes the world.  The Byzantines will sing tonight, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs, bestowing Life!”

          In all the Scriptures we read tonight, God’s people have been ‘on their way out’ of the tomb—from the tomb of nothingness to creation, from the tomb of slavery to liberation, from the tomb of sorrow to joy, and the tomb of the font to a life of grace.  Each of us here, tonight, has our own tombs, too.  As the Lord Jesus said to Lazarus, “Come out!” He invites us, also, to emerge from whatever tomb that holds us hostage and to receive His Light.  God created light on the first day; we have just passed the vernal equinox; the moon is full; and Christ our Light has risen from the dead.  Easter illumines not only the Church, but the whole universe, beginning with our hearts, and from the largest nebulae, stars, and planets, down to the last particles and quarks of an atom.  If only we could hear, if only we could see the universe’s celebration of Christ risen, we would not want to leave tonight.

          My friends, Christ is risen.  “We are an Easter people, and alleluia is our song!”  Let us continue our celebration.

The Cross: God's Solidarity with Human Suffering

The following is the first homily that I preached at my parish during its Good Friday "Celebration of the Lord's Passion," the second of three services during the Sacred Paschal Triduum.

Two nights ago I got a message on my phone that someone was in ER.  I was told to just pray for him, but when I found out why he went into ER, I stepped on the gas and shuffled the back seat of my car to make sure that my holy oils were handy.  This person was suffering from something quite serious.  He didn’t want anointing because he wasn’t a believer.  So I just stayed with him.  Then at one point I said, “Look, believe it or not, I know what you’re going through.  I’ve been through it myself.”  His face was buried in his hands, but when I said that, he looked up at me, and for that moment, a connection was made.  He wasn’t alone.

     We all know that feeling.  In our moments of grief and sorrow, the presence of a friend makes all the difference.  Husbands holding their wives’ hands during labour.  A hand on a shoulder at a funeral.  Sharing coffee or tea in silence with someone with depression.  An A.A. meeting.  A cancer survivors' group.  That human connection, of knowing that our suffering isn’t in isolation, bears a tremendous healing quality.

     “Our were the sufferings He bore; ours the sorrows He carried.”  During the Christmas season I said again and again that the Incarnation—God’s becoming man in Jesus—is God’s solidarity with the human race.  As one the carols say, “Pleased as man with men to dwell; Jesus our Emmanuel.”  Here, now, in the middle of the Paschal Triduum, we’ve come full circle:  With the crucifixion of God Incarnate, God’s solidarity with the human race extends even to the darkest of human experiences.  At the Cross, in the crucifixion, God is with us in our sufferings.  We are not alone.  The Cross, ultimately, is God telling us that love, God’s love, is such that if suffering can’t be taken away, God will certainly partake of it.  
     The Cross is, ultimately, God commiserating with us.
     Certainly God is all-knowing, and God ‘knows’ what suffering is.  But the Cross takes God beyond knowing and shows us, in that public display of gruesome execution, that divine love is found in shared pain.

     So many in this congregation, and outside those doors, have hurts.  Teenagers who feel isolated from the world.  Women who have been treated shabbily by lesser men.  Fragile or broken marriages.  Unemployment.  Family and friends stationed in war zones.  Financial stress.  Today is for you.  Know, and know well, that your distress is also God’s.  You do not suffer alone.  “By His wounds we are healed.” 
     But know this, too:  Tomorrow night will be your night as well.  What tomorrow night promises isn’t simply a reversal of tragedy.  It’s an overcoming of tragedy.  It was overcome because it wasn’t just the man Jesus who endured the Cross and grave.  It was the God-Man who did.  And since we are united to Him by baptism, whatever sufferings we put up with now will eventually have to put up with Him, who turned suffering on its head and worked a change that reaches into the deepest fabric of the universe and gives the Good, the True, and the Beautiful the last word.  It might not come right away, but it will come.

     And so we wait…  

Good Friday 2013

"To all God's beloved in Rome..."

The following was a sermon I delivered on 2 March 2013 following the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI from the Chair of St Peter.

            My friends, tonight I’d like to do something different.  The Holy Roman Church is without a bishop.  I’m sure that many of you are wondering why any of this should be a big deal.  Since we are in a rare situation called the ‘Vacancy of the Apostolic See,’ I have decided that we will talk about why the Church of Rome is so important to us as Catholic Christians.  So instead of a homily, you’re getting a sermon.  And if you’ve got a pen and paper handy, I would encourage you to take some notes.

          St Paul the Apostle went on three missionary journeys, covering what is now Greece and Turkey.  Christianity, we know, grew out of Judaism, and in the short four decades or so after Jesus’ earthly life, the Church was locked in a struggle about what to do with non-Jews who wanted to become Christians.  Do they have to follow the entire Jewish law, too?  Eat only kosher food?  Observe the festivals and Sabbaths?  And, boys:  For those non-Jews who came to believe in Jesus do they have to be…circumcised?  The short answer, according to St Paul, was No.  (Thank God for that.  I do love my bacon.)  If we think the aftermath of Vatican II was difficult, think about Sts Peter and Paul butting heads over the very question of whether Gentile Christians were bound to follow all 613 commandments in the Law of Moses.  Paul won the day—you can read all about that in Acts 15 and his rather hotheaded follow-up in his Letter to the Galatians.

          Hold that thought for a moment.

          Either on his Second or Third Missionary Journey, St Paul wrote his magnum opus, his great work:  the Letter to the Romans.  Think for a moment about how the eyes of the world are now turned towards Rome.  Bear this in mind, and listen to how St Paul opens his letter to the Romans:  “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an Apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God…  To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints:  Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” [Rom 1:7].  Paul greets the Christian community in Rome, and continues:  “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.”  The faith of the Roman Christians is “proclaimed in all the world.”  This is no small compliment.  This letter was written sometime in the mid-50s of the first century; St Peter would not go to Rome until at least the end of the 60s.  Already, then, less than three full decades after Jesus’ earthly life, the faith of the Roman Christians had already impacted the world from the world’s capital.  A few lines later, he writes:  “I mention you always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God’s will I may now at least succeed in coming to you” [vv. 9-10].  For some time, Paul’s wanted to visit the Christians in Rome, and prays that God would somehow make it happen.  He goes on, “For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you, that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.  I want you to know, brethren, that I have often intended to come to you (but have thus far been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles” [vv. 11-13].  There was already a sizeable Jewish community in Rome, many of whom became believers in Jesus Christ.  But St Paul wanted to win more souls for Christ—to win the pagan Romans to Christ, too.  “I am under obligation” he writes, “both to Greeks and to Barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish:  so I am eager to preach the Gospel to you also who are in Rome" [vv. 14-15].

          Now back to the Jewish Christian versus Gentile Christian imbroglio:  Christian or not, Paul’s agenda was bound to rile devout, Law-observing Jews.  Paul—and the rest of the Church’s leadership at Jerusalem—disagreed that Gentile Christians were bound by the Law of Moses.  So he was heckled, and the heckling became a riot, and St Paul was accused of insurrection.  After moving from one court of law to another, he finally saw his golden opportunity.  Before a judge, St Paul said, “I am standing before Caesar’s tribunal, where I ought to be tried…  If then I am a wrongdoer, and have committed anything for which I deserve to die, I do not seek to escape death”—here he is opening himself up to martyrdom.  But then comes that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity:  “…but if there is nothing in [the] charges against me, no one can give me up...  I appeal to Caesar.”  Little did the judge know that he would become an instrument of the Gospel:  “You have appealed to Caesar; to Caesar you shall go!”   Finally, I’m sure St Paul thought.  Finally, he would take that long-dreamed missionary trip to Rome.  Sure, he was in chains, the the Gospel can never be!

          Chapters 25 to 28 of Acts show Paul bouncing from one place to the next that you’d think he was taking the LRT.  The narrator pens these melodious words:  “And so we came to Rome” [Acts 28:14].  By this time, his Letter to the Romans had already been received and had nourished the Christians there, and of course Paul’s reputation in Rome was outstanding.  “And the brethren there, when they heard of us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns to meet us” [Acts 28:15].  That’s like walking from Leduc to Edmonton.  “On seeing them Paul thanked God and took courage.”  During his time in Rome, Paul explained the Gospel to anyone who would listen:  “And he expounded the matter to them from morning till evening, testifying to the Kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus from the law of Moses and from the prophets” [Acts 28:23].

          Remember:  At the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus commanded His Apostles to preach the Gospel “…and you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” [1:8].  At the end of Acts, the author closes with Paul proclaiming the Gospel from the City that governed the world, and it would be from Eternal Rome that Jesus’ commandment would be fulfilled:  “you shall be my witnesses…to the end of the earth.”  That St Paul did, and proclaimed Christ to his last moments, being beheaded, which is why his icon or statue always shows him holding a sword.  He was buried and now over his grave is the magnificent papal basilica of San Paolo Fuori di Mura.  In the cloister garden is a portrait of each pope, from the first to Benedict xvi.

          St Peter the Apostle, upon whom Jesus built his Church—“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church…I give you the keys of the Kingdom of heaven” [Mt 16:18]—in his first letter, hinted that he was in hiding in the world’s capital:  “She who is in Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings.”  Because of the persecution of Christians, Peter had to obscure his whereabouts by using ‘Babylon’ as a code-word for ‘Rome.’  In this letter, he tells the bishops in Asia Minor:  “So I exhort the presbyters among you, as a fellow presbyter and a witness to the sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that is to be revealed:  Tend the flock of God that is in your charge!” [1 Pet 5:1-2].  From Rome, Peter fulfilled the charge of Jesus to “confirm his brothers” in the far reaches of the Empire.

          But he, too, would proclaim Christ by his life to the end.  Convicted for being a Christian, he was executed; because he wasn’t a Roman citizen, he was crucified upside down.  He is now buried somewhere in the Vatican Hill west of the Tiber River, over which St Peter’s Basilica now sits.

          The historical records are fuzzy, but it seems that a Christian named St Linus was ordained by Paul [2 Tim 4:29?] and took up the leadership that Peter left behind:  Habemus papam, we have a pope.  One after the other; some great, others not so much; the march of centuries and the opposition of the world notwithstanding:  the Keys entrusted by Jesus to Peter were handed down, last picked up on 19 April 2005 and then laid aside last Thursday by our Most Blessed Father in God, His Holiness Benedict xvi.  Having abdicated the Ministry of Peter, he reminds us that the Church is governed, invisibly, by Christ Himself.  This situation we find ourselves in now, the ‘Vacancy of the Apostolic See,’ means that the seat of authority left by the great and glorious Apostles Peter and Paul, is empty and awaits another occupant to shepherd us, a visible sign of the invisible Good Shepherd.

          Dearest Sisters and Brothers in Christ:  This is why the Holy Roman Church is our Mother Church.  Thus the Lateran Basilica—the cathedral church of Rome, bears the following inscription on the façade:  Omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput—the Mother and Head of all the Churches in the City and in the World.”

          One last thing.  In ancient times, it was customary for the pope to leave aside a portion of the Sacred Body from his Mass and to have it sent to the neighbouring parishes outside of Rome; these parishes would receive their portion of the Sacred Body from the pope’s Eucharist and drop it into the chalice as a symbol of their fellowship with the Bishop of Rome.  That is why the priest breaks off a portion from the Host and drops it into the Chalice, to remind us that we, as Christians, are inseparably united with the Mother-Church at Rome, from whom we received the Gospel.

          Bear this in mind, and when you receive the Lord Jesus in Communion, ask Christ—who is the invisible Head of the Church—to give to us a shepherd who will boldly proclaim His Gospel “to the ends of the earth.”

Defending the Immaculata

The following is an email I sent to a Fundamentalist gentleman who approached me at a Deaf club several weeks ago and proceeded to attack the Catholic Church.  It may he helpful to our Protestant friends who do not understand the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and to help those Catholics in understanding it better.

I need to respond to your attack on the Mother of Jesus from two Fridays ago as (1) you do not understand what is meant by the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and (2) you misunderstand the Scriptures you used to attack the Mother of Jesus.

First of all, yes of course Mary needed a Saviour, and indeed she did call God her Saviour.  But here's the real question:  How could God be Mary's Saviour when the finished work of the Cross had not yet happened?  John Duns Scotus answers that question clearly for us, and we'll get back to that in a moment.

Notice that the greeting from the Archangel Gabriel to Mary was in the same pattern as the Old Testament saints whose names were changed:  Like Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, etc.  In like fashion, Gabriel does not say "Hail, Mary, full of grace!"  No; he says "Hail, full of grace!" (Lk 1:28, AV and RSV CE).  The Greek word for "full of grace" is κεχαριτωμένη,which is in the perfect passive participle voice.  In other words, (a) the perfect tense means that the action took place and was completed some time in the past; (b) the passive voice means that the action was done by somebody else.  Translated literally, it means "you-who-have been-graced."  Furthermore, the perfect tense indicates that the past action has implications for the present.  What's significant is that it's not in the aorist tense, which means a past event that remains past.  Thus κεχαριτωμένη means that Mary's being full of grace bears on the present circumstance of her becoming the Mother of the Incarnate Word.  Neither is it in the imperfect tense, in which case it would be translated as "you-who-are-being-graced"--because she is already "full" of grace that no more can be added; nor is it in the pluperfect tense (which is similar to the aorist tense).  This is exactly what we miss in English--the Greek New Testament is far, far clearer than any English translation because the "perfect tense" does not exist in English apart from the use of auxiliary verbs and because Greek tenses behave in ways that are untranslatable in English.

So if Mary is "full of grace" or κεχαριτωμένη (=you-who-have-been-graced), we need to ask two more questions:  If Mary's grace was begun sometime in the past, when did it begin?  This is significant because it is St Luke who is writing, St Luke who was a companion of St Paul the Apostle, the great theologian of grace and he doubtless has a Pauline understanding of grace.  This leads us to the second question:  How could Mary be full of grace prior to the Cross?  We know that the Cross is the fountain of every grace and blessing.  But Mary had not even conceived the Incarnate Word in her womb until her "Yes" to God's plan (Lk 1:38).

This question also speaks to the Magnificat:  "Mary said...my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour" (Lk 1:46, 47).  How could Mary be full of grace before the Cross, let alone the Incarnation (cf. Jn 1:14)?  And how could Mary claim God to be her Saviour before the finished work of the Cross?  St Paul is strikingly clear:  "[T]hey are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by His Blood, to be received by faith" (Rom 3:25).

The answer is simple:  Crux stat dum volvitur mundi--the Cross stands while the world turns.  The Mystery of the Cross of Jesus is that it was a reality even before creation.  Hence the Apocalypse speaks of "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev 13:8).  John Duns Scotus teaches that the Cross of Jesus transcends time, and it was the grace of the Cross which was retroactive in time which wrought the salvation of Mary.

But this still leaves unresolved as to when Mary's grace began.

The answer is found in the Protoevangelium (Gen 3:15):  "I will put enmity between you and the woman."  The enmity between the serpent--who is Satan (cf. Rev 12:9)--and the "Woman"--who is Mary (cf. Jn 2:4, 19:26; Rev 12:1).  But what is the extent of this enmity (Gk ,ἔχθραν, Heb וְאֵיבָ֣ה׀ )?  It is total enmity between Satan and the Woman--who is Mary since she gave birth to Christ who "crushed the head of the serpent."  The opposition between Mary and Satan is repeated in Rev 12 which actually echoes the Protoevangelium of Gen 3:15.  The enmity between Mary and Satan is absolute and total.

If the enmity between Mary and Satan is absolute and total, it follows that the total enmity on Mary's part is in the totality of her life--from conception.

It is at conception, then, that the first moment of Mary's being full of grace (Lk 1:28) took place (since, again, since κεχαριτωμένη  is in the perfect tense).  If Mary was full of grace at her conception, and since grace and sin are opposed (as the Woman and the serpent are opposed), it follows, then, that Mary's conception was an immaculate one.

But what about "All have sinned" as St Paul said?  He was referring to personal sin.  And despite the quantifier "all have sinned..." we still have to exclude Jesus a priori because He was without sin (2 Cor 5:21; 1 Pet 2:22) and, of course, children, who are incapable of committing personal sins before the age of reason.  

We cannot get into this question without starting another email but suffice it to say that the historic, Christian method of reading the Scriptures differs from the Fundamentalist in that Christians--especially Catholic Christians--use Scripture to interpret Scripture.  We do not, like Fundamentalists, use one Scripture to "cancel out" another--which is what you did in our discussion of humanity's sinfulness versus the Annunciation.  Thus we must be cognizant of the sinfulness of the human race; this bearing on Mary is such that she was saved from sinat the moment of her conception.  But we must be more specific:  the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception says that God preserved Mary free from all "stain of original sin."  Does that mean that the fallenness of humankind did not apply to Mary?  Absolutely not.  Whereas you and I are saved from sin in the same way that a lifeguard jumps into the water to save a drowning swimmer, Mary was saved analogous to that of a person who could not swim about  to fall into the water but was caught by the lifeguard.

So it is clear that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is consonant with the Scriptures:  Mary's being full of grace, on account of her total enmity with Satan, took place at the very beginning of her life, i.e., at conception, and the finished work of the Cross worked its power against the flow of time, backward, to Mary's life.  So Mary was indeed saved, and that more perfectly than any of us!

Vivat Iesus,

Revd Hysell

Wintertown: A Pastoral Possibility

Winter is upon us once again.  Edmonton, being one of the northernmost cities in North America and only seven degrees below the arctic circle, has gained the reputation of being 'Wintertown' or the 'Winter City.'  With October scarcely over, the city is covered by a blanket of fallen clouds and cut across by frozen rivers.
     Come February or March, the mood of Edmontonians will be far from pleasant--the frigid climate will continue to press on and memories of the recent summer all but disappears.  What makes the Edmonton winter all the more oppressive, though, is not so much the subzero temperatures as the nonstop conversation about what a horrible place Edmonton is.  In other words, Wintertown is only as bad as Edmontonians say it is.  So why not change our conversation?
     I do believe that there can be a viable pastoral response to this.  Visiting one of our Catholic schools one day, I noticed a stark contrast between the excitement of the children and the gloom of the adults when the first major snowfall took place.  Then I remembered my own childhood and the seeming magic of snowmen, sledding, and of course everything Christmas.
     My advice?  Pace ourselves.
     We can expect the snow to begin its exit and the first signs of spring in mid-April, even though the vernal equinox has already come and gone.  That having been said, let's keep Advent for what it is, a preparation for the Christmas season.  The tendency to throw Christmas parties before Christmas makes December 25th an end-point rather than a starting-point; by the time December 25th is past, we've exhausted our festivities, only to face another three months of gloomy, pale landscape.  Why not leave the gloomy, pale landscape to the penitential season that Advent is meant to be?
     More to the point, the Advent Season 'dawns' over the last two weeks of November, when the Roman Liturgy begins to speak of the End, a theme that is taken up during the first two weeks of Advent.  Only on the Third and Fourth Sundays of Advent do we get a hint of the upcoming Nativity of Our Lord, piqued by the celebration of Gaudete Sunday and the crescendo of the 'O Antiphons' beginning on 17 December.
     This is not to say that we should scrub any efforts at festivity during the early weeks of winter.  The Feast of St Nicholas--provided he remains in his proper context--offers a real and realistic possibility for a winter festival and one that can be twinned with his claim to fame:  charity towards the less fortunate.  As any Edmontonian can tell you, the plight of the homeless in Wintertown is especially brutal.  Why not be Christian instead of Coca-Cola about it?
     With Gaudete Sunday and the beginnings of the O Antiphons, the Christian community in Edmonton can begin to anticipate--anticipate--the birthday of Christ in a way that is intended by the Sacred Liturgy:  Jesse Trees, Old Testament hopes for the Messiah's advent (get it?), and of course the quintessentially English 'Service of Lessons and Carols.'
     Christian life and liturgical life should never be out of sync--otherwise the Sacred Liturgy is reduced to pageantry.  Thus Christmas decorations and Christmas greetings ought to be put on hold until Christmas Eve.  Practically speaking, however, one can begin to decorate the tree with ornaments based upon the Biblical motifs and the O Antiphons, only to place Christmas decorations on the tree and throughout the house after the Missa in Nocte.  (Why else would we begin to celebrate Christmas before the intoning of the Christmas Proclamation, "Today, the twenty-fifth day of December...  Today is the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh"?)
     By then, already two months since the first snowfall, we've only begun to celebrate the holidays.  Holidays, mind you.  We've still got Mary, Mother of God, Holy Family, Epiphany, Theophany, and finally Candlemas.
     Although it has been suppressed by a less thoughtful contingent of the liturgical reform, the time between Epiphany and Candlemas is enough stretch of time to allow for a continued celebration during the cold and dark.  How many parishes carry through the full celebratory tone of these holidays?  Do we exchange gifts on Epiphany--in commemoration of the Magi who presented gifts to the Infant Christ--or have we already been spent on (obligatory?) giving?  Do we take the time at the Epiphany Mass to solemnly announce the feasts for the upcoming liturgical year and conclude the day with a festive gathering?
     Although the Christmas season is already past, vestiges of 'Epiphanytide' remains in the reformed liturgical calendar.  The Church can still mark Candlemas--the Presentation (or Meeting) of Our Lord in the Temple--and keep to an authentic liturgical life by having February 2nd, instead of December 25th, as the end-point of the winter festivals.
     In this way we can keep to the true intent of the liturgy--proclaiming the wonders of God and the events of salvation history through the narrative of the seasonal cycles--and to offer a Christian response to a bleak worldview that offers only a Wal-Mart "holiday season" which ends on Boxing Day and nothing until the snow melts.
     After all, wasn't it our God who made the seasons?

Mark Seven Bible Institute 201219-15 August 2012

Announcing the upcoming Mark Seven Bible Institute 2012: "Mary in Scripture"

 

For more information, please visit our website here.

The Poor Christ Who Judges

The following was a reflection I preached before my community during a recent weekly Eucharistic Adoration liturgy.

We’ll begin with a true story. “Father John” was a well-known priest in New York City. Once a week in the middle of the night he would go to St Clare’s Hospital to clean the bedpans of patients dying of AIDS and to give pastoral counsel to those who despaired of life while suffering not only the agony of physical deterioration but also rejection by society, friends, and even family. Father John was so famous that he had to work in the middle of the night. In fact, every one of the hospital staff who knew him were under the strictest orders to refer to him only as “Father John” and were forbidden from using his last name.

Who was this “Father John”? None other than His Eminence John Cardinal O’Connor, Archbishop of New York, retired Rear Admiral of the United States Navy. A Prince of the Church, an occupant of one of the world’s premier episcopal Sees; he was such an important man that he had the American President, General Secretary of the United Nations, and even the Holy Father only one phone call away, and yet he did not think himself above cleaning infected waste and loving those who may—may—have rejected God’s plan for human sexuality. This man whom Pope John Paul II once addressed as “the Archbishop of the capital of the world” was a profound lover of the poor. Because of him, the Archdiocese of New York was said to be “haemorrhaging” two million dollars per year in works of charity. Those who had the privilege of meeting him could anticipate the same words of greeting every time: “What can I do for you?”

I think that the example of this late Archbishop of New York is an important one, because at the time of his appointment, the Church in America was in its most difficult moment. Cardinal O’Connor was one of the few but resounding voices who could articulate the teachings of Holy Church and who many bishops saw as their senior in the episcopate. He was a doctrinally sound Pastor who, at the same time, was keen on the Church’s social tradition. In fact his episcopal motto came from Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Populorum progressio—“There can be no peace without justice.”

I think we can all agree, more or less, that the Church in North America has been polarized, on one hand, between Catholics who wish to be loyal to the Magisterium but place less emphasis on social justice and charity, and on the other hand Catholics who are passionate about human dignity, the rights of workers, peace, but place less emphasis on doctrinal orthodoxy. For example, I’m sure we have heard otherwise doctrinally sound believers speak contemptuously of the Canadian Catholic Organisation for Development and Peace, and we’ve no doubt met Catholics who love Bl. John XXXIII’s Pacem in terris but dismiss Paul VI’s Humanae vitae. What has emerged is a tragic dichotomy between orthodoxy and orthopraxy. It is a false dichotomy and it has no place in the Catholic Faith. Our Father Rector has mentioned, on not a few occasions, of the unacceptability of pitting the ‘integralists’ and the ‘progressives’ against each other. I even accuse myself who am Catholic and Republican. Or perhaps I should say ‘Catholic but Republican.’

Let us no mistake: it is the same Christ of the Councils and Fathers who is the Christ of the Margins. It is Jesus Christ, God and Man, who is also Jesus Christ, hungry and poor.

We are at the threshold of a new liturgical year; on this last Sunday of Ordinary Time, the Roman Liturgy turns her attention to the Last Judgment. In the gospel we’ve just heard, the Lord Jesus makes it abundantly clear that He is Really Present in the margins—in the hungry and thirsty, in the immigrant and foreigner, in the homeless and imprisoned. “Amen, I say to you,” Christ will say to the blessed, “whatever you did for one of the least [sisters and] brothers of mine, you did for me.” He could not be clearer. “[F]or one of the least...” Who are the least for us? I shudder to think of what the Lord will say to me for all of those homeless people I pretended not to see, all of those mentally retarded people I ignored, all of those alcoholics I condemned, because it means I pretended not to see, I ignored, I condemned Christ of the Margins, Christ in distressing disguise.

We can be sure that there is indeed a ‘Real Presence’ of Christ in the poor for at least three reasons. In the first place, they too were created by Him, because every human person is the crowning work of Creation. It is fallen human nature to organize the human race into an hierarchy of ‘more valuable’ people over and against the ‘less valuable’—our culture prizes the successful entrepreneur but makes fun of those who have meagre bank accounts, let alone those who have nothing. But it is an authoritative teaching of the Magisterium that all people are of equal dignity— When God looks upon the world, there isn’t anyone who isn’t V.I.P.; there is not a whit of difference in dignity between a Hollywood celebrity or the Queen of Canada or even the pope and a person who lives on the streets and subsists on alcohol or sells her body to feed her children. This leads us to a second reason why we know that there is a ‘Real Presence’ of Christ in the poor—evangelizare pauperibus misit me, “He sent me to preach good news to the poor.” The Incarnation had in view not only God’s solidarity with the human race, but especially his solidarity with the poor. Finally, Christ died on the Cross for those on the margins no less than he died for those who are esteemed, financially secure, and impious.

Consider the words of another “Father John,” this time the fourth-century Archbishop of Constantinople, St John Chrysostom. We could not find a better time to listen to his words than here in the presence of the Most Blessed Sacrament whom we adore at this moment:

Do you wish to honour the Body of Christ? Then do not disdain Him when you see Him in rags. After having honoured Him in Church with silken vestments, do not leave Him to die of cold outside for lack of clothing. For it is the same Jesus Who says, “This is My Body” and Who says “I was hungry but you would not feed Me. Whenever you refused to help one of these least important ones, you refused to help me.”

The Eucharist, then, is the meeting-point between orthodoxy and orthopraxy, between right belief and upright life, the life which has as its foundation the precept of charity [cf. Jn 13:37], this charity which, as St Augustine tells us, is ‘why’ God is a Trinity. Doctrine and life—inseparable. Fidelity to the Magisterium, social action—absolutely mutually inclusive.

For us who are discerning a call to Holy Orders, our relationship to the Christ of the Margins is even more demanding—because priests are not simply called to a life of philanthropy but, in imitation of the Mystery of the Incarnation, to a life of solidarity with the poor. In the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Life of Ministry of Priests, we read that: “...priests are invited to embrace voluntary poverty. By it they become more clearly conformed to Christ and more ready to devote themselves to their sacred ministry.” Blessed John Paul II later wrote in his Pastores dabo vobis:

Poverty for the priest, by virtue of his sacramental configuration to Christ, the head and shepherd, takes on specific ‘pastoral’ connotations which the synod fathers took up from the Council's teachings and further developed. Among other things, they wrote: “Priests, following the example of Christ, who, rich though he was, became poor for love of us (cf. 2 Cor. 8:9)—should consider the poor and the weakest as people entrusted in a special way to them, and they should be capable of witnessing to poverty with a simple and austere lifestyle, having learned the generous renunciation of superfluous things” [n. 30].

So then: What is the bottom line? Cardinal O’Connor can answer that for us: the bottom line is eternity. In a homily he once gave, the Cardinal reminded the faithful of the crypt underneath the high altar at St Patrick’s Cathedral where the Archbishops of New York are buried. He was keenly aware that, on a fixed date pre-determined by God the just Judge, he will be interred in that narrow cubicle—about two feet wide, two feet tall, and six feet deep—and his body consigned to dust and ashes. What really matters, the Cardinal said, was not the fact that he was ‘Cardinal O’Connor,’ but rather, how he lived his life, and whether he lived it in faithful obedience to the precepts of Jesus Christ, the same Jesus Christ who commands us even now: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least brothers of Mine, you did for Me,” the same Christ who wanders around the Marian Centre, Hope Mission, or the Mustard Seed. Our salvation hinges upon our veneration of Christ, here in this Most Blessed Sacrament, and out there where He wanders cold, hungry, marginalised, and imprisoned.

Let us adore Christ, wherever we find Him, whether here in this monstrance of gold, or out there in a monstrance of rags. Let us love Christ, let us serve Christ.

O Jesus, You who are in disguise here, may we see You who are disguised in Your poor.