This November, as we remember our beloved dead and our liturgy begins to contemplate the end times, the stark reality of war is even more pronounced. In times like these, as at funerals, “sometimes, the best thing you can do,” says Bruce Botha, S.J., “is acknowledge someone else’s pain and say, ‘I can’t imagine how you’re feeling.’”
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Father Botha, a priest of the Southern Africa province of the Jesuits, has been in parish ministry for the last 15 years. He serves as the pastor of Holy Trinity Catholic Church and chaplain for two universities in Johannesburg, South Africa. Previously, he worked at St. Martin de Porres, a Jesuit-run parish in Soweto, “a historic township,“ he says, which was “the epicenter of a lot of the anti-apartheid struggle.” The parish is a stone’s throw from the world-famous Vilakazi Street, which he reminds, is "a street that has the homes of two Nobel Peace Prize Laureates in it: Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.”
On “Preach” this week, host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., engages Bruce on the challenges of preaching in fearful, uncertain times of COVID and war, and especially at intimate moments of personal grief, like funerals.
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“Sometimes, the best thing you can do is acknowledge someone else’s pain and say, ‘I can’t imagine how you’re feeling.’”
Scripture Readings for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
First Reading: Wis 6:12-16
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 63:2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8
Second Reading: 1 Thes 4:13-18
Gospel: Mt 25:1-13
You can find the full text of the readings here.
Homily for the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, by Bruce Botha, S.J.
In June of 1989, Solidarity, a Polish political party, won the national elections in Poland, leading to the dismantling of communism not only in Poland but across all of Eastern Europe. For most people in Eastern Europe, the time between 1945 and 1989 must have felt a little like that long night spoken of by Jesus as the 20 maidens waited for the bridegroom to come to the feast.
A long night, a difficult night—a night filled with so much uncertainty. COVID is still fresh in the minds of many of us. I don’t know a single person who was not affected by it. It is our long and dark night, a fearful waiting for the dawn and what a new day would bring. During the height of the pandemic, I found myself working in the parish of St. Martin de Porres in Soweto. That time of pandemic and lockdown felt like we were sitting in the dark—waiting for the dawn, waiting for wisdom, waiting for hope, waiting for a vaccine, waiting for restrictions to be lifted so we could go back to a normal life again.
It’s easy for us to focus on the negative, on what we’ve lost. It’s so easy to be consumed by our fears for the future. Our parish community was consumed with fear. The bills kept on coming, people just weren’t there. Did our community have a future? Well, I had to ask myself, when will our brothers and sisters return to us? Will they return? It’s very easy for us to sit in the darkness of our despair and wonder what will happen to our church community when the dawn that we long for finally breaks. During that period of COVID, the dawn that we longed for was a return to a normal life, the life that we’d had before COVID. Now, maybe the dawn that you long for is a church, which is truly synodal; one that listens to and journeys with women who feel the call to ordained ministry, the church that recognizes the graced beauty of love, no matter the gender of the lovers. And until that dawn comes, we wait; fearful, hopeful.
I wonder if this fearful waiting for the coming of the dawn—whatever your dawn is—isn’t stopping us from living this moment fully. Take those 10 wise and 10 foolish maidens.
Remember that both groups fell asleep, and when the foolish ones woke, it felt like a disaster because they had not been prepared. The only difference between the wise and the foolish is that the wise had prepared a plan for the unexpected and were able to experience a certain peace or serenity, even in the face of the unexpected, in the face of what seemed to be a disaster. Wisdom then is not about knowing everything about the future, whether that future is good or bad. Wisdom is about spending the present moment—our waiting—well. We have a tendency to rush; we think we have to get things done. If we aren’t busy, we think we are wasting time.
But I think the real waste of time is how we rush through it. We think that we are active and achieving things, but in fact, we are not paying attention to this moment. In our rush to prepare for disasters that we imagine, the things not yet upon us. We are unprepared for the things that are right here, the things in front of us in this present moment.
In the end, we acknowledge that our church will be different, either because of this pandemic or because of this synodal journey that Pope Francis has placed the church on.
Different isn’t good or bad; it’s just different. And I think we need wisdom, discernment, and courage to prepare for that future. But we should not do it in a spirit of fear, with busyness that stops us from being grateful for this moment, stops us from being aware of God’s presence amongst us, in the here and the now.
I’d like all of us to have a quiet and gentle conversation with God, but also conversations with one another about how we’re experiencing the church and what the future of the church might look like, and how we need to prepare for it—just as those 10 wise maidens did.
COVID forced us to become a much more technological church with masses and homilies online and via WhatsApp. Confirmation classes were done online and through social media. Even though we’d been through a time of physical separation, we found ways of staying connected. We still needed, and still need and relish, the companionship of others. And that’s something that we as a church need to be planning for and paying more attention to in the future.
Maybe the emptiness that we feel as we look around empty churches may end up being a blessing if it helps us to become better missionary disciples of Christ. The synodal process has been a bittersweet moment for many people. It shone a light into the dark corners of the church. We’ve seen fear, patriarchy, discrimination, closed-mindedness, clericalism, and self-absorption. But we’ve also seen open hearts and generous spirits; the willingness to listen and openness to change. Yes, there are challenges, but God is with us.
So let’s take a moment also for gratitude. This moment of gratitude, this one gift of another breath, this particular person before me, this chance to hope, this hour to believe, is all now. Eternity is now, and God is with us.
