HOMILY WEEK 17 06 – Year I
Jubilee, Justice and Hope:
Optional Memorial of St Frédéric Jansoone
(Lev 25:1-17; Ps 67; Mt 14:1-12)
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Have you walked through a Holy Door during the Jubilee Year of Mercy?
Although that Jubilee Year ended in November of 2016, we are invited, as followers of Jesus, to live in rejoicing and gladness every day of our lives.
The idea of jubilee dates from the time of the Exodus, as we read in the first reading today. According to The Word Among Us, God instructed the Israelites to hold a jubilee every fifty years once they had settled in the Promised Land. It was meant to be a time when the land could rest, slaves would be freed, and all sins and debts would be forgiven. It was meant to be a reminder of God’s goodness to God’s people as well as an invitation for them to treat each other with mercy. Imagine the hope a jubilee year, when honoured, gave to the poor, the unfortunate and the downtrodden who could look forward to a fresh start in life.
A consistent feature of a jubilee year was to be justice and honesty. People were supposed to treat each other fairly and never take advantage of another person. In the gospel that justice includes speaking truth to power, as St. John the Baptist did to King Herod in pointing out the immorality and unfairness of his actions. Fr. Andrew Britz OSB, former editor of the Prairie Messenger, did just that in many of his editorials that after his death became a book by that name.
Although the jubilee year has ended, as Christians we are living in a permanent state of jubilee because of Jesus death and resurrection: Jesus is risen; death is overcome; forgiveness of sins is always available; healing of soul and body is always possible; God’s mercy is always accessible to every person and in every land. We can now rest from our labours, especially from our vain attempts to make ourselves holy or to earn God’s love.
The idea of jubilee naturally carries with it the idea of a celebration, as the root of the word “jubilee” is the same as the root for the word “rejoice.” So why is it that we are not more joyful and free? Why are so many living under a cloud? Why are there so much fear and paranoia, depression and addiction in our society? As Henri Thoreau once claimed, many people are living lives of quiet desperation.
Perhaps it is because the evil one tries to whisper depressing, divisive and oppressive thoughts into our minds, trying to convince us we can’t be forgiven or that we have to earn God’s love, persistently trying to rob us of our joy and lead us into unbelief that so characterized the Jewish leadership in the time of Jesus.
Our response is to praise God for God’s goodness, as expressed by the psalm, and to hold fast to the truths that are the basis of jubilee: Jesus does not condemn us (Jn 8:11); nothing can separate us from God’s love (Rm 8:39), and Jesus calls us his children (1 Jn 3:1) as well as his friends (Jn 15:15). We have been loved, redeemed (forgiven), sanctified (healed), filled with the Spirit of the Risen Jesus and set free to love and to be loved. An entire age of jubilee is ours to celebrate!
Eddie Hecker, former Oblate, was in charge of the exhibition of a replica of the Shroud of Turin at a Ukrainian Catholic Church in Edmonton recently. He recounted how a coroner in Los Angeles told him he had conducted hundreds of autopsies on people who had died a violent death, and that the violence of their deaths was visible on all their faces. Looking at the shroud, he commented it was obvious this man had died a violent death, yet his face was totally at peace!
Jesus, on the cross, was totally at peace, because he knew he was accomplishing the Father’s will to reveal the depth of the Father’s love. I suspect he may even have felt a subtle joy, despite the fact he was also experiencing the “apparent absence of God” that in Psalm 22 turns into a magnificent burst of praise for God’s goodness. In the end, peace and joy are not just passing emotions – they are gifts of the Holy Spirit we can claim as believers in, and disciples of, Jesus Christ risen from the dead.
Blessed Frédéric Janssoone
Today, the church honours Blessed Frédéric Janssoone, someone who lived these readings in an exemplary way. Born in 1838 in Flanders, Frédéric was the 13th and last child of well-to-do farmers. In 1856, Frédéric left school to support his widowed mother. After his mother died in 1861, he completed his studies and joined the Franciscans. Ordained in 1870, he was assigned as military chaplain during the Franco-Prussian War. In 1876, he was sent to the Holy Land, where he reinstated the Stations of the Cross through the streets of Jerusalem, built a church in Bethlehem and negotiated an accord among the Roman, Greek and Armenian Christians concerning the use and maintenance of the sanctuaries of Bethlehem and of the Holy Sepulchre.
When Frédéric came to Canada in 1881 on a fundraising tour, his skill as a businessman, diplomat and preacher assure him a successful mission. He moved to Canada permanently in 1888 and set about helping organizers develop the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Rosary (Notre-Dame-du-Cap) at Cap-de-la-Madeleine near Trois-Rivières. Frédéric died in Montreal on August 4, 1916. Buried in the crypt of the Franciscan chapel at Trois-Rivières, he was beatified in 1988 by Pope John Paul II. I feel a particular attachment to this saintly person for two reasons – he helped build the shrine my missionary order runs, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, and also was involved in the present arrangement of the holy sites in Jerusalem, where our pilgrimage groups worshipped.
The Eucharist is a daily mini-jubilee. It is certainly a celebration of faith, a cause for rejoicing, a source of hope, and a mandate for us to go forth and live out the Eucharist working for justice with joy in our hearts as we wait for the final consummation of jubilee in eternity.
