Homily - The Fifth Sunday of Easter - 15 May 2022

The Fifth Sunday of Easter (C)

Dear brothers and sisters,

At first hearing, it may seem as though we receive two contradictory statements in the Scriptures today. First, Saints Paul and Barnabas tell us – curiously enough, by way of encouragement – that “it is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Second, Saint John tells us that God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 21:4). The first saying is disarming and striking; the second saying is comforting and desirous. Can it be that the Beloved Disciple contradicts what the Apostle to the Gentiles says?

When considering such a question, it is good for us to remember that the Sacred Scriptures do not compete against each other. Rather, taken in their entirety, the Sacred Scriptures form a great harmony. It is for us to attune our ears to their hymn so that we might hear it properly.

When Saints Paul and Barnabas remind us that it is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God, they say this as a matter of fact. This is a central fact of the Christian life. Even so, the centrality of the Cross in each of our lives is often either rejected or denied – whether implicitly or explicitly – by many Christians today. This rejection of a tenet of discipleship is, in part, what hinders our efforts to evangelize our culture and society that drifts further and further away from Christian life.

If we are to find the harmony between what Paul and Barnabas and John say, we have to consider who the they are to whom Saint John refers. Looking at his words in their full context, we see that they are those found in the holy city, in the new Jerusalem, those who names are found in the book of life at the Last Judgment. Their tears will be wiped away precisely because they endured the time of tribulation, because they underwent hardship, because they remained faithful to Christ Jesus, and for this reason they now live with God. We have the relics of two of these here in this very Cathedral Basilica.

What Paul and Barnabas say, then, about the necessity of hardship and what John says about the final and enduring comfort are not contradictory statements at all, but are instead part of a whole, two sides of the same coin, if you will; both are the fruits of an authentic discipleship. Both are to be found in the faithful adherence to Jesus’ command: “As I have loved you, so you should love one another” (John 13:34).

It should come as no real surprise that our society does not understand what love is. True love is always a willingness to suffer for the beloved; true love always entails a willingness to sacrifice for the beloved; true love always entails a renunciation of self in favor of the beloved. If there is no wiliness to suffer, if there is no willingness to sacrifice, whatever else it may be, it is not love.

Is this not what made the ministry of Saint Damien, of Saint Marianne, and of the Servant of God Joseph Dutton so very fruitful compelling? Did they not each in their own choose to suffer for those they loved, to sacrifice for those entrusted to their care, to renounce themselves in favor of those who needed their assistance? They did not choose the easy way out because they knew “it is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” Their lives were fruitful because they lived and loved like Jesus; they willingly suffered for others and made heroic sacrifices for their benefit.

Some today might think that this aspect of love is difficult to discover because so few of us seem to recognize it. But there are always examples of authentic love to be found, and hints of love can be found in perhaps surprising places. We can find one such hint in the Hawaiian language in a word we all know well, though it is famously difficult to translate in English terms.

The word aloha, so I understand, has something of a kaleidoscope of meanings. While its best known meaning is love, it is not simply a romantic or rosy love; it is instead a love that also connotes compassion and patience, which is to say a love that involves suffering, hardships, and sacrifices. It is a love as we encounter and receive in Christ Jesus.

Father Damien, Mother Marianne, and Joseph Dutton each understand this, even if each in their own unique way. Saint Damien famously said, “I make myself a leper with the lepers.”

Saint Damien of Moloka'i

Saint Marianne said, “I am hungry for the work.”

Saint Marianne Cope

And Joseph went to Kalawao on his own accord as a personal penance to atone for his past sins. This heroic trio show us as if through a prism what it means to undergo hardships so as to enter the kingdom of God. They show us what it means to love others as Jesus love them and as he loves each one of us. And in the joy they exhibited in their care of the lepers, they received a foretaste of God wiping away their tears from their eyes; they were comforted by the Lord Jesus because they united themselves to him and loved like him. 

They did so in the extremes of the leper settlement, but you and I do not have to go so far. Joseph Dutton once said to a correspondent who lamented he could join Joseph at Kalaupapa, “One’s Molokai can be anywhere.”

The Servant of God Joseph Dutton

It remains then for us to undergo hardships wherever they come to us out of love for Jesus Christ and out of love for others. It remains for us to unite ourselves to the Lord Jesus and to love like him so to suffer for those we love, to sacrifice for those entrusted to our care, and to renounce ourselves in favor of those who need our assistance. For if we live and love in this way, being united to Christ Jesus, on the last day he will wipe away every tear from our eyes and welcome us into his kingdom. Amen.

Homily - 24 February 2019 - The Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)

Dear brothers and sisters,

Today, the Lord Jesus gives us, if you will, our marching orders in the Christian life: “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27-28). If we do this, then everything he says afterwards will follow. Here in these islands, in the lives of Father Damien and of Mother Marianne, we have two outstanding examples of how to keep Jesus’ command to love our enemies; following them, we, too, can become “children of the Most High” (Luke 6:35).

Contrary to so much of our society’s understanding of love, love does not consist so much in feelings or sentiments, as much as it does in the will and in action. Love is the desire for the good of another person, together with a willingness to bring it about. We see this in the Lord’s further subcommands, if you will, to do things to our enemies: we are to do good to them, we are to bless them, and we are to pray for them; in other words, we love our enemies precisely by doing good to them, by blessing them, and by praying for them. In this, we see that love entails actions to bring about the good, even, and especially, at loss to myself. “In the end, in fact, love alone enables us to live, and love is always also suffering: it matures in suffering and provides the strength to suffer for good without taking oneself into account at the actual moment.”[1]

When the Lord tells says to us, “love your enemies,” he is “proposing his model of life to [us] in radical terms.”[2] Because it seems so unnatural for us to love our enemies - we would much rather revile them, slander them, and gossip about them - we have to ask what it means to love our enemies. 

If we take Jesus seriously and give his words careful consideration, we will see that

...Christ's proposal is realistic because it takes into account that in the world there is too much violence, too much injustice, and therefore that this situation cannot be overcome except by countering it with more love, with more goodness. This "more" comes from God: it is his mercy which was made flesh in Jesus and which alone can "tip the balance" of the world from evil to good, starting with that small and decisive "world" which is the human heart.[3]

Is this not what Father Damien and Mother Marianne both set out to do, to tip the balance from evil to good, and is this not, in fact, what they achieved at both Kalawao and at Kalaupapa? Yes, they both sought to love their enemies, such as they were, so that their enemies, too, might become children of the Most High.

When Father Damien arrived at Kalawao in 1873, he found the settlement to be a land of vice and he quickly set about uprooting the sin to plant virtue so that the good could flourish. His actions were not always welcome and he surely thought often about Jesus’ counsel to “do good to those who hate you.” This led him to provide medicines and bandages to the patients, regardless of who they were, and even to build their coffins and dig their graves, all because he loved his enemies and wanted what was good for them.

As news of his mission spread and he made the needs of his mission know, the world responded with great generosity, causing his superiors at the Board of Health and even within his religious community, to become jealous of him. Thinking he sought to make them look bad, they said many uncharitable things about him and to him. And though Father Damien sometimes reacted with justifiable anger, still he remembered to “bless those who curse you,” all because he loved his enemies and wanted what was good for them.

When Mother Marianne and her Sisters arrived at Honolulu in 1883, they were sent to serve at the Kakaako Branch Hospital. For three years, they were refused permission to go to Kalawao because it was deemed women were not made of strong enough stuff to live among the settlement and she remembered to frequently “pray for those who mistreat you,” all because she loved her enemies and wanted what was good for them.

Father Damien and Mother Marianne could have responded to their enemies in any number of ways, in ways that would have perpetuated the violence and the injustice, yet they chose instead to follow Jesus’ radical model of life and transformed that lawless land into a land of love.

Our own enemies may not be as strong or as numerous as theirs, but we surely all have someone with whom it is not easy to get along, someone who always seems to be antagonistic towards us. These two Saints of Hawai’i show us the way forward, they show us how to follow Jesus’ model of life. Indeed, they show us that

Love of one's enemy constitutes the nucleus of the "Christian revolution", a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political or media power: the revolution of love, a love that does not rely ultimately on human resources but is a gift of God which is obtained by trusting solely and unreservedly in his merciful goodness. Here is the newness of the Gospel which silently changes the world! Here is the heroism of the "lowly" who believe in God's love and spread it, even at the cost of their lives.[4]

Let us, then, each look to the example of Father Damien and Mother Marianne and learn from them how to love our enemies and become true children of the Most Hight. Amen.

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[1] Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the Clergy of Aosta, 25 July 2005.

[2] Ibid., Angelus Address, 18 February 2007.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

Homily - 10 December 2017 - The Second Sunday of Advent

The Second Sunday of Advent (B)

Dear brothers and sisters,

As Sister Mary Vicentia McCormack, one of Saint Marianne’s Franciscan Sisters, knelt at the deathbed of Saint Damien, she wept upon the quilt that covered his bed and asked herself, “Can I do as much for God?”[1] We have here, in this Cathedral Basilica, the blessed opportunity to do the same. We, too, can gather near to our beloved Father Damien and contemplate the example of his heroic life. We, too, can ask of our own hearts, “Can you do as much for God?”

What is it that Father Damien did for God? What example was it that Sister Mary Vicentia considered? Father Damien well these words of Jesus: “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). This is why he spent his life in the service of others. What he did for his fellow lepers, he did for God.

There is, of course, much to say that he did, but above all it might be said that he sought to give comfort to those forcibly removed from their ohana, from their friends, and from their livelihood (cf. Isaiah 40:1). He sought to speak tenderly tot hose who felt abandoned and dejected (cf. Isaiah 40:2). Is this not why he freely ate with them and shared their calabashes? Is this not why he built their homes and made their coffins? Is this not why he bandaged their wounds without concern? In all of this, he sought to proclaim peace to his people by calling back to the Lord who longed to gather them into his arms and them close to his heart (cf. Psalms 85:9; Isaiah 40:11).

When a certain patient was concerned for his well-being, Father Damien said to him, “Don’t get excited, son. Suppose the disease does get my body, God will give me another on resurrection day. The main thing is to save your soul, isn’t it?”[2] He went so far as to say, “I want to sacrifice myself for my poor lepers” because “the harvest seems ripe.”[3] The harvest is ripe even today; are we willing to sacrifice ourselves for others and for God today?

In his fellow exiles, Father Damien realized what so many others did not, namely, that the time had come for the leveling of pride and for the raising up of despondency; the time had come for the leveling of hearts to “prepare the way of the Lord,” and this he did with everything he had, just as Mother Marianne did after him (Isaiah 40:3). “If I can’t cure them,” he said, “I do have the means of consoling them. I am confident that many, purified by the sacraments, will one day be worthy of heaven.”[4] Truly, he was one who learned to “judge wisely the things of earth” and so taught others to “hold firm to the things of heaven.”[5] Can you and I do as much for God?

While these days of Advent focus our attention on preparing ourselves to stand before the Lord Jesus when at last he comes to judge the living and the dead, we must be more concerned about our readiness today than about our readiness tomorrow, for tomorrow may not come. As such, the question we should each ask of ourselves today is not, “Can I do as much for God?”, but, “Am I doing as much for God?”

Certainly, we do not all have the same personal qualities with which the Lord Jesus endowed Father Damien; we cannot do the same as him, but that does not mean we cannot do as much, nor does it mean we should not strive to do as much. What are we doing to prepare the way of the Lord to come to us and to those who are dear to us? What are we doing to speak a word of comfort to those forcibly removed from their families, from their friends, or from their livelihood? What are we doing to speak tenderly to those who feel abandoned or dejected? What are doing to level the mountains of pride and to fill in the valleys of the despondent? What are we doing to prepare the way of the Lord?

We know that when the Lord Jesus comes to us, he longs to gather us into his arms, just as shepherd takes up one of his sheep to carry it across a ravine. The Lord Jesus wants to lift us up to his Sacred Heart to experience the fullness of his merciful love. To do so, it is not enough to simply look at his love, to gaze upon his heart; rather, we must follow Mother Marianne’s counsel and “creep down into the heart of Jesus.”

If we do not resist his embrace, if we do not close our ears to his voice, he will teach us to judge wisely the things of earth and to hold firm to the things of heaven. Then, strengthened by the sacraments, we can do as much for God as Father Damien did, each in our own way. Then, we at least he comes, the Lord will find us prepared to meet him. We will see his kindness and he will grant us his salvation (cf. Psalm 85:8). Amen.

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[1] In Vital Jourdain, The Heart of Father Damien: 1840-1889, trans. Francis Larkin and Charles Davenport (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1955), 421.

[2] Ibid., 142.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 179.

[5] Roman Missal, Prayer After Communion for the Second Sunday of Advent.