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As this homily was being given, the “many faces of God’s love,” multi-ethnic and multi-cultural faces from around the world, as well as many faces from around the parish, were being shown on screens behind the homilist.

Technology is a wonderful thing. We are doing a little experimentation, and we will learn from this as we go along. Last night, a twenty-one year old came up to me and said, “Father, what was the point of those images?” because I came up and said, “Just ignore those and listen to me.” But I was watching everybody’s eyes looking up there and I am here. So, that’s a little disconcerting when you are preaching because you are trying to make eye contact with people. So, will some of you just look at me and I will try to work this at the same time?

It’s kind of interesting. As I have been praying about this all week, these readings, what I kept hearing over and over and over again was God’s inclusive love. And I thought to myself, what better way to communicate that because we are so visual. We have TV’s. We have computer monitors. We have all these visual things in front of us all the time. What way could I try to communicate this? And the only thing I could think of was just having lots of faces from all over the world. We are two hundred seventy million Americans and a world of six point something billion people. We are a billion point one Catholics in a world of that population. So, we’re kind of really tiny for all our bigness and our super-powerness. We are actually tiny in the population, and God is calling us all into his community of love, all people for all reasons. Who better represents this “catholicity”? (Is that the right word, Father, because I want to be able to say the right thing, Father Dibble. ...Isn’t that right? ....Yes. Thank you. I’m a little afraid, I told him when I was coming out, “Father, I’m a little afraid preaching in front of you because you’re so good! And I’m just starting out.” But anyway....)

This idea, John Paul, at his funeral, was able to pull together all disparate parts of our world into one place. Never, in the history of humanity, were so many people brought together, all the heads of states of nearly every country on earth. Our catholicity, and everybody knows what “catholic” means,don’t they? It means “universal.” Some people have said to me this past couple of days, “Father, I have a friend who’s Christian, and I’m Catholic.” And I’m like, “Oh, hello! What’s wrong with this picture?” We are Christians who are part of the Universal Church, simply “universal” and it’s been used from the very beginning, from St. Ignatius of Antioch in the early stages of the Church. “Catholic” simply means “universal.” Our Church came to a point, from maybe the Council of Trent in the fifteenth century to Vatican II, and we actually heard “There is no salvation outside of the One True Holy Roman Catholic Church.” You all heard that? I heard it and it sort of played on my mind for years. The first time I walked into a Protestant Church I felt I was, even though it wasn’t a sin anymore, I felt like it was a sin because of what my parents told me. So you had this idea, this sense of catholicity. (I don’t think I’m saying that word right, but anyway...) It’s kind of like John Paul represents that in a very powerful way. And our Church, in 1962, opened the doors of the Church wide and realized that Christ came for all people, just like the readings that we heard. All of the readings today talk about God’s inclusive love, talk about being open to all people.

I want to communicate to you what that woman must have felt. She was a Canaanite. She was a foreigner. I’m a foreigner here. No matter how long I live here, I’ll always feel that I belong a little bit in Ireland and a little bit here. I’m a foreigner, and I want to communicate to you that she was a woman and she was nothing in that society. She had so many strikes against her. She was lonely and powerless. And I looked at my life and thought of a moment when I was lonely and powerless. I got off the 22 Fillmore bus one night in San Francisco and, because I was running an AIDS hospice and because everybody was gay there mostly and everybody had AIDS and everybody had all this stuff going on, people presumed in the neighborhood, in the Western Addition behind City Hall, that everybody who worked there was all of those things. We would get called names coming from work. And one night I got off the bus and there was a bunch of young men, about ten of them with some girlfriends standing on the corner and they stopped me and started shouting these things at me and the next thing was I found myself in the hospital for two days with a broken jaw. (I’ll tell you this much. It didn’t stop me talking. I could still talk, much to all of my friends’ chagrin.) But the feeling of powerlessness was so awful because, at that time, I didn’t have my immigration status worked out. I felt I couldn’t go to the police and I couldn’t really go to talk to anybody. And the doctors at the hospital said, “You need to go to talk to the police”..... Then, I had to get on the 22 Fillmore again, and I saw these guys and I was afraid.

So, this woman is in the middle of hostile territory and yet her faith allows her to cry out to Jesus as a mother, as a person of faith. And Jesus is just trying to establish, “I’m just here for the lost sheep.... I’m just here for the people of Israel.” But her cry, her faith.... Hey, we’re all gentiles. Jesus was a Jew. Isn’t that amazing! Jesus was a Jew. He was not a Christian. I always remember in Belfast one time, going to take communion to this house and this lady says to me, “Oh, Father, we’re very Catholic and I teach all my family to say the rosary.” And I said, “Do you?” ....”Just like Our Lady did to Jesus,” (she says.) What are our Catholic schools doing sometimes, even over there!? It was like she had gotten this in her head. We get very weird notions, like “Jesus was a Catholic.” No, he wasn’t. He was a Jew!

And so, this woman with her gift of faith reaches out. Now, I hear echos of this. (I don’t know where you all stand on the war. Last night I said a few things and you could have cut the air with a knife afterwards. I was thinking, “Oh my God! Maybe I’m not supposed to be a priest....” You know, I was driving into San Francisco and I thought, “OK....” So, in the morning, I got up at five o’clock this morning and I’m like, “Let me try to rework this a little bit so that there aren’t too many people throwing daggers at me with their eyes.”) I hear this woman, Cindy Sheehan, standing out there in something of the same way. She is wanting to be heard. There isn’t a person in this church, anybody who has lost anybody, (who doesn’t understand) the grief that that woman must feel, to try to understand why she lost her son. Now, even if you’re a Republican or you’re a Democrat or you’re anything in between or Independent, there is something about that woman’s cry that is echoed in the gospel today. And I just wish the President would maybe stop his car and get out and just talk to her and hear her or what she has to say, because there is such pain in her heart and it’s actually mushrooming into something a lot bigger. Do you see echos between (her and) that woman shouting out to Jesus, wanting something, a healing, to happen. She’s looking for a healing also.

And so, I believe that all people are called to faith. Hans Kung, during the Vatican II Council, talked about the fact that the people who have not yet heard the gospel but do the right thing, that love, are anonymous Christians, that all people are called into the Body of Christ. We have to, no matter who people are, have to love and care for them. Every single child on this planet, every single woman, every single man, yes, even AlQueda, yes, even the people in Iraq, yes, all people. And sometimes that’s hard to hear. That’s what our God is calling us to love, all people. And let’s face it. That’s really hard sometimes. But that’s the challenge of the gospel for all of us to accept the faces of God in our daily lives and in the bigger lives of our Church and our world.

So, let us approach the table of the Lord where Christ is so present, that same Christ that was called out to. As we receive him, let us take his Spirit out into our world and into our lives. God bless you.