Today we have gathered to celebrate this day, which carries the stern title “of truth and reconciliation”. These are two fundamental realities, truth and reconciliation.
They deserve respect and consideration.
A bit like the ground surrounding the bush on fire on the holy mountain, where Moses takes off his sandals, Truth and Reconciliation are, we could say, "holy ground."
While I was preparing for this celebration, the word "truth" reminded me of the question from Pontius Pilate to Jesus: What is Truth?
A question which Jesus, as you probably remember, does not answer.
There are many interpretations of why Jesus does not answer the question.
What is important is what Jesus had just said immediately before: “whoever belongs to the truth listens to me.”
I think it has never been easy to talk about the truth.
It was not easy two thousand years ago and it certainly is not easy today in this time where everything is “the truth”.
Today, the truth is what one believes to be true... and that's it.
For example, for many, “truth” may be the news that a madman proclaims to the whole world
about some refugees eating little cats and puppies in Ohio; that they steal jobs, that they are a threat to the survival of the country in which they have taken refuge.
Shame! that hundreds of “truths” like this circulate in our media every day, and that many people believe in them.
If rationalism, in the past, proclaimed that there is no truth, today, relativism proclaims that everything is true.
Unfortunately, where everything is true, finally, nothing is!
From Jesus' lack of response to Pontius Pilate, however, we can draw an important indication: if we want to belong to the truth, we must listen to Jesus.
And as Jesus taught us: the truth will set us free.
That is what we want to do here today, to place ourselves before God, so that by listening to his Word, by allowing ourselves to be penetrated by its light, the Word of God can reveal our lies,
the darkness that has us imprisoned.
The second word for today is Reconciliation. We probably know better what Reconciliation is, even if it is certainly not easy to achieve.
Reconciliation is not simply someone asking for forgiveness and being forgiven by someone.
It is something more.
Achieving reconciliation is a kind of exodus. We must move away from something and move towards something different.
For a believer it is to rise from ourselves to reach not a place, but to encounter someone,
someone we have hurt.
A someone with a lowercase s, but in which the Someone with a capital S is always present.
The first step to take is to recognize the sin and then, second step, move on to repentance, or metanoia, taking responsibility for the harm done.
Third step: a change of direction, breaking with sin, putting a stop to complicity (both active and passive).
This day is a call to repentance, and to the renewal of our lives that comes from the truth that sets us free, as we reflect on the sufferings of the Indigenous peoples of this land, especially those caused by the residential school system.
It is a call to be made ever more conscious of the harm caused by that system, in which children
were taken from their families and were often placed in a situation of fatal vulnerability.
It is a call to be made aware not only of particular acts of abuse, but of an environment in which respect was not shown for their culture, language, and traditions.
It is a call to look to the past of our Church, to acknowledge the truth, even if it is painful.
It is a call to feel part of these sins of the past, to be part of their solution in the present, and creators of a different and a better future.
In the Gospel that we have announced today, in his prayer to the Father, Jesus asks that those who believe in him be made one, with that unity that springs from God, where Father, Son and Spirit, even in diversity, exist in unity.
And this unity that Jesus speaks of is not an ornament.
When the prodigal son returns home, and his Father celebrates the feast, the older brother refuses to enter the feast and says to his Father: that son of yours.
He distances himself.
He breaks the bond that unites them.
But his Father in response, corrects him: this son of mine and brother of yours.
The key for the future in this -and other themes- is here: to move from "that son of yours"
to "this brother of mine."
We must move towards that unity, towards that brotherhood.
That is the true sacred ground we must walk, but first we must take off our sandals, because that sacred ground is the life, dignity, and integrity of our brothers and sisters, the sons and daughters of God.
So that, as St. Paul told us in the first reading today, we need each other, just as the body needs all its members.
We need to feel the other as ourselves, to rejoice together, to suffer together, because in the other, there will always be present that Other whom we call God and Father.
Whenever you did this
for one of the least important of these …
you did it for me.
There are many things to be done on the path of reconciliation, as we seek to learn from the sins of the past and to move forward together in hope.
For all of us, as disciples of Jesus, this pathway of reconciliation, must be founded on truth.
That is why today we ask God, and our brothers and sisters, for forgiveness.
May our brothers and sisters of the Indigenous people of this land, seeing our sincere repentance and willingness to undertake a serious path of conversion, also grant us