Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Triduum

  • Holy Saturday Lauds (Morning Prayer)

    Holy Saturday Lauds (Morning Prayer)

    Today, the Church asks us to do something that is almost impossible for we modern people to do, and that is to be silent. Today, we continue to keep the Paschal Fast until the end of the Easter Vigil. That means we eat less, speak less, do less – all to keep the silence of this time.  This is the time that has Jesus in the tomb.  This is the time where Jesus descends into hell.

    We don’t rush the resurrection, because we need to sit in the uncertainty and wait for the working out of our salvation. It’s not unlike the uncertainty we experience when we are awaiting test results for a serious illness. Or when one job ends and a new opportunity has yet to open up. Or when a relationship breaks and we have to wait our way through the healing. The uncertainty, the meanwhile, requires us to sit in the silence and await salvation.

    There is a lot going on in the meanwhile, even though we don’t see it. There was on that first Holy Saturday. An ancient homily for this day puts it this way:

    Something strange is happening—there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

    He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

    Tonight our Elect – and one infant! – are to be baptized into Christ. Tonight we will hear the stories of salvation and keep vigil for our Risen Lord. That’s tonight. For now, we fast and pray and keep silence, letting the significance of this moment sink in, waiting for the working out of our salvation.

    And maybe we join our waiting to the wisdom of Saint Joseph, whose silence throughout the Gospel allowed the salvation of all the world to be worked out.

  • Good Friday of the Passion of Our Lord

    Good Friday of the Passion of Our Lord

    Today’s readings

    These holy days, this Sacred Paschal Triduum, are all about the Cross. In these moments, the cross takes center stage: it is, in fact the focal point of the Gospel. At his birth into our world, he was laid in a wooden manger, that wood that is the precursor of the wood of the cross. Throughout his public ministry, he journeyed to the cross which was the reason for his coming. And today, he mounts the altar of the cross as the priest, the altar, and the lamb of sacrifice, given for us.

    There can be no greater demonstration of God’s love for us than we have in these days. We broken ones, the ones who incurred the sentence of death, have that sentence served by God the Word, the One who was with the father in the beginning, the One through whom all things were made. Our God is just and there is a price for sin. But our God is mercy and there is forgiveness and redemption and salvation.

    Isaiah’s lament in today’s first reading catches us up in the emotion of Good Friday.  The suffering servant’s appearance is so marred, stricken and infirm that we cannot bear to look at him.  Because if we really looked hard enough, we know, in our heart of hearts, that the marring, the strickenness, the infirmity are all ours. All ours! This is a dark hour.  It seems like all is lost. 

    We too will have dark hours of our own.  That’s one of the few guarantees that this fleeting life gives us.  We absolutely will have to bear our own cross of suffering: the illness or death of loved ones, the loss of a job, the splintering of a family, or even the shame of addictive sin.

    It is our brokenness that we see in the suffering servant, our sinfulness on the son of man.  And this suffering one is embodied by our God, Jesus Christ our Savior, who carries all of that nastiness to the cross, and hangs there before us, bleeding and dying and crying out to the Father.  That’s our sin, our death, our punishment – and he bore it all for us.  Who could believe what we have seen?

    And just when it seems like there is nothing left to give, when it seems like all hope is lost, when it seems like death has the upper hand, the soldier thrusts his lance into the side of Christ, and our Jesus gives still more and yet again: he pours forth the life blood and water that plants the seeds of the Church into the barren ground of the earth, guaranteeing the presence of the Lord in the world until the end of time.  Christ our God gives everything he has for us, takes away all that divides us, and performs the saving sacrifice that makes salvation possible for all people.  Our God gives up everything – everything – for love of us.

    We have the eyes of salvation history, we who have grown up in the Church. So we know that the suffering and death of Jesus is not the end of the story.  In the day ahead, we will keep vigil for the Resurrection of the Lord which shatters the hold that sin and death have on us.  We are a people who eagerly yearn for the Resurrection.  We must certainly hope for the great salvation that is ours, and the light and peace of God’s Kingdom.  But not today: today we remember that that salvation was bought at a very dear price, the price of the death of our Savior, our great High Priest.  Today we look back on all of our sufferings of the past or the present, we even look ahead to those that may yet be.  We see all those sufferings in our suffering servant on the cross.  And as we sit here in God’s presence we know that we are never ever alone in those dark hours, that Christ has united himself to us in his suffering and death.  As we come forward to venerate the Cross, we bring with us our own crosses: past, present, and future, and join them to the sufferings of Christ. In these moments, we unite ourselves to him in our own suffering, and walk confidently through it with him, passing the gates of salvation, and entering one great day into God’s heavenly kingdom.

    We adore you, O Christ and we bless you:
    Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

  • The Easter Vigil in the Holy Night

    The Easter Vigil in the Holy Night

    Today’s readings

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!
    ¡Cristo ha resucitado!  ¡Él ha resucitado!  ¡Aleluya!

    If anyone’s counting, this has been a very long Mass so far.  And I don’t mean just the blessing of the fire and the candle, the singing of the Exsultet, and the rather extended Liturgy of the Word that the Easter Vigil contains.  Yes, those are longer things, but we didn’t start this Mass with the blessing of the fire.  This Mass started back on Thursday, when we gathered for the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper.  The Paschal Triduum is one Liturgy, conducted in three parts.  During Mass on Thursday evening, we heard about Jesus washing the feet of his Apostles, and commemorated the night when Jesus gave us the Eucharist and began the Holy Priesthood.  We ended with adoration outside in the parking lot.  Then the Mass continued yesterday, on Good Friday, when we heard the Passion story from Saint John’s Gospel, we prayed extended intercessions for all of the people of the world and their needs, then we venerated the Holy Cross and shared in Holy Communion.  And then, we gathered tonight for what we are doing here.  This is literally the longest Liturgy of the entire Church Year, and there’s a reason for that.  The reason is that we absolutely cannot get enough of God’s love.  In these holy moments, God’s love for us is poured out in service to his friends, in sacrifice for us on the cross, and in the glory of the Resurrection which shatters the prison bars of death and opens for us the glory of eternal life.  That, dear friends, is love.

    This crazy three-day Liturgy stands in opposition to the simple-mindedness of our world and its pathetic understanding of what love is.  Our world takes love and makes it, at best, a cool feeling that lasts only as long as everyone is nice to each other, and at worst, something tawdry and unworthy of children of God.  But none of that is the love we receive in this Liturgy, that’s not the love that our God pours out on us, that is not a kind of love that has ever entered the mind of God.  This love, this real love, is caritas, a particular kind of love that is poured out in service to another, a love that seeks the good of the other as other.  It’s a love that meets the other where she or he is at, and then takes them to a place greater than could be achieved without this love.  This love breaks through the darkness of sin and death and calls us to life.

    The Exsultet, that long proclamation I sang when we came into church with the new Paschal candle, tells us of this transforming love.  It said:

    This is the night,
    when Christ broke the prison-bars of death
    and rose victorious from the underworld.

    Our birth would have been no gain,
    had we not been redeemed.

    O wonder of your humble care for us!
    O love, O charity beyond all telling,
    to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!

    We, friends, are that slave.  We are slaves to sin, slaves to the thirty pieces of silver and the Barabbas that we want more than life sometimes, as Father John talked about yesterday.  We are that slave, but God won’t have us remain in our slavery.  In order to ransom us from it, he gave away his Son, his only one, whom he loves, to use the words of the second reading tonight about God calling Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.  You see, there was going to be a sacrifice: but, it was never going to be Isaac, it was never even really the lamb caught in the thicket.  It was always going to be Jesus, and God’s love for us is so deep that he readily sacrificed his only Son rather than leave us to be slaves to sin.  Our life would have meant absolutely nothing, our birth would certainly have been no gain, had we not been redeemed by the death and resurrection of Christ our Lord.

    Quoting from the second line of the Gospel reading from Saint John that we heard on Thursday evening, Father Ramon reflected on this great love.  That line read: “He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end.”  On Thursday, Jesus showed that love by washing feet and giving the Eucharist to be his everlasting presence until the end of time.  Yesterday he showed that love by suffering the passion and dying on the cross.  Today, we see that he showed that love by rising from the dead so that our own death doesn’t get to be the end of our story.  Indeed, Jesus does love his own, which includes all of us, and he loves us to the end, and that end hasn’t happened yet.  He loves us forever.  He loves us when we gather here to pray.  He loves us when we show mercy to others.  He loves us when we share the love he gives us with others.

    But, he loves us when we’re not at our best, too – he loves us when we are, in the eyes of the world, unloveable.  He loves us when we refuse to wash the feet of our brothers and sisters, when we refuse to be of service because we can’t be bothered with their problems.  He loves us when we take the thirty pieces of silver and call for Barabbas, when we do the wrong thing because we love our sins too much.  He loves us when we are at our best, but he loves us when we are at our worst, when we have participated in the “necessary sin of Adam.”  That sin doesn’t get to rule over us either, as the Exsultet proclaims:

    O truly necessary sin of Adam,
    destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
    O happy fault
    that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!

    He loves us so much, too, that he calls us to live lives of holiness.  When we do that, we become like him, and we can be caught up in his life and live with him one day in heaven.  That’s what life is all about for us.  What we have here is nice, most of the time, but it’s nothing compared to what waits for us.  And because he loves us, he has always wanted us there.  In order to get us there, he has given us the Church to light the way through the darkness of the world, and the sacraments to give us strength in his presence.  Tonight, shortly, three young people – Carly, Adrian and Enrique – will be initiated into this life of love and grace by receiving the Easter Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist for the first time.  For them, the stain of original sin will be destroyed completely by the Death of Christ, and because Christ broke the prison-bars of death, they will, with all the baptized, be able to be raised up to eternal life one day.  Saint Paul proclaims this boldly in our Epistle reading this evening from his letter to the Romans:

    If, then, we have died with Christ,
    we believe that we shall also live with him.
    We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more;
    death no longer has power over him.

    Having, all of us, received the grace of God through the Passion of Christ and the cleansing of Holy Baptism, we then have work to do.  Having celebrated and been sanctified in this Vigil, we will shortly be sent forth to help sanctify our own time and place.  Because everyone must know that Christ is risen, that his love is eternal, that his grace obliterates our sin, that his love raises us beyond the grave, and makes us into disciples who are fit for heaven.  Earlier today, our Elect received the Ephphetha rite which called on God to open their ears to hear his Word and their lips to speak his praise.  In this Vigil, we all receive the call to Ephphetha, to make known the praises of our God.  That is our ministry in the world.  That is our call as believers.  That is our vocation as disciples. 

    May this flame be found still burning
    by the Morning Star:
    the one Morning Star who never sets,
    Christ your Son,
    who, coming back from death’s domain,
    has shed his peaceful light on humanity,
    and lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.

     ¡Cristo ha resucitado!  ¡Él ha resucitado!  ¡Aleluya!
    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Good Friday of the Passion of the Lord

    Good Friday of the Passion of the Lord

    Today’s readings

    Last night, I talked about the New Testament theme of kenosis, which is the idea of self-emptying, of pouring oneself out.  Last night, we talked about that in terms of the call to service: that Jesus himself got up from table, tied a towel around himself and took the lowest position, washing the feet of his disciples.  We reflected on how we are all called to that kind of kenosis, giving up our entitlement to see to the salvation of everyone in our life.  Today, I’d like to take another brief look at kenosis, because today we see that idea played out in its ultimate form.

    I said yesterday that kenosis applied to our Lord, who, as Saint Paul wrote to the Philippians, “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.”  That’s today, of course.  It echoes what Isaiah says of the suffering servant in today’s first reading.  The suffering servant’s appearance is so marred, stricken, so infirm that we cannot bear to look at him.  It shouldn’t be that way; he is our God.  But that’s kenosis.

    The reason we can’t bear to look on him, of course, because if we really looked hard enough, we know, in our heart of hearts, that the marring, the strickenness, the infirmity are all ours.  This is a dark hour.  It seems like all is lost.  That’s one of the few guarantees that this fleeting life gives to us.  We will have to bear our own cross of suffering: the illness or death of loved ones, the loss of a job, the splintering of a family, or even the shame of addictive sin.  It is our brokenness that we see in the suffering servant, our sinfulness on the son of man.  And this suffering servant is embodied by our God, Jesus Christ our Savior, who carries all of that nastiness to the cross, and hangs there before us, bleeding and dying and crying out in agony.  That’s our sin, our death, our punishment – and he bore it all for us.  He chose to pour himself out – for us.

    And just when it seems like there is nothing left for him to give, when it seems like all life has been snuffed out, when it seems like death has the upper hand, the soldier thrusts his lance into the side of our Lord, and he pours himself out in one more glorious act of kenosis:  from his side pours forth the life blood and water that plants the seeds of the Church into the barren ground of the earth, guaranteeing the presence of the Lord in the world until the end of time.  Christ our God gives everything he has for us, takes away all that divides us, and performs the saving sacrifice that makes salvation possible for all people.  Our God gives up everything – everything – for love of us.

    We know that the suffering and death of Jesus is not the end of the story.  In the day ahead, we will keep vigil for the Resurrection of the Lord which shatters the hold that sin and death have on us.  We are a people who eagerly yearn for the Resurrection.  We certainly hope for the great salvation that is ours, and the light and peace of God’s Kingdom.  But that’s for tomorrow.  Today we remember that that salvation was bought at a very dear price, the price of the death of our Savior, our great High Priest.  Today we look back on all of our sufferings of the past or the present, we even look ahead to those that may yet be.  We see all those sufferings up there on that cross, willingly taken there by our Saving Lord.  And as we sit here in God’s presence we know that we are never ever alone in our dark hours, that Christ has united himself to us in his suffering and death.  May we too unite ourselves to him by embracing our own suffering, and walk confidently through it with him, pass the gates of salvation, and enter one great day into God’s heavenly kingdom.

  • Holy Thursday: Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper

    Holy Thursday: Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Gospel gives us a very interesting start to the Sacred Paschal Triduum.  This three-day-long-feast begins with a meal, which makes sense.  But it’s a meal interrupted by a very important teaching.  I think it’s fair to say that Jesus never did anything without also trying to teach something important in the process.  When he healed on the Sabbath, he was teaching that the Sabbath was not something to be observed for its own sake, but was for the glory of God and the recharging of people.  When he fed the thousands, he was teaching that there was nothing so impossible that God could not make it happen.  Even when he chose his disciples, he was teaching that people’s worth was defined by God and not by the things they have accomplished on their own.

    So when he interrupts this Passover supper to wash the disciples’ feet, he was trying to teach them something, and to put the meal and the teaching together in context.  Washing the feet of guests was a common practice in Jesus’ time.  In those days, people often had to travel quite a distance to accept an invitation to a feast or celebration.  And they would travel that distance, not by car or train or even by beast of burden, but most often on foot.  The travelers’ feet would then become not only dirty from the dusty roads, but also hot and tired from the long journey.  It was a gesture of hospitality to wash the guests’ feet, but it was a gesture that was not usually supplied by the host of the gathering, but instead by someone much lower in stature, like a servant or slave.  But at the Last Supper, it is Jesus himself who wraps a towel around his waist, picks up the bowl and pitcher, and washes the feet of his friends.  So we are about to see that he wasn’t just washing their feet to get a job done or even to provide hospitality; he was dong this to give them an example of what Scripture scholars call kenosis.

    I had a Scripture teacher who always used to talk about kenosis.  During my seminary days, we went through some pretty rough times with the Church.  Just two weeks after we started, we had the tragedy of 9/11.  Along with the rest of the country, we all felt like the bottom had dropped out and nothing was really certain any more.  Then, the following spring, the sexual abuse scandal broke wide open, and so many of us wondered what we were getting ourselves into.  Many of us had personal tragedies as well, me included when both of my parents were diagnosed with cancer just one month apart from each other.  We ended our time in seminary with the tragic death of two of our brother seminarians in a car crash on the school grounds.  Life is like that, we all have things that we go through and we wonder why we go on, why we even try to live as disciples.  And I remember whenever we would express that, one of my Scripture teachers would always look at us and say, “It’s all about kenosis.”

    At first when we heard that we looked at him like most of you are looking at me right now.  But we came to know what kenosis meant.  It is a New Testament Greek word that basically means “self-emptying.”  It comes from the root word kenos which is used to describe places or vessels that are empty, or to describe people who are empty handed or arrive without a gift.  Kenosis in the New Testament sense is used to describe Jesus Christ, who as St. Paul says in his letter to the Philippians, “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.”  Christ emptied himself of the honor that was rightfully his as our God and took our own human form.  That’s kenosis.

    And he drove the point home as he finished this great act of service.  He says, “Do you realize what I have done for you?  You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’ and rightly so, for indeed I am.  If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet.  I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”  If even our Lord who had the right to demand anything from us, to whom he gave everything, if even he would tie a towel around his waist and wash people’s feet, then we disciples, we followers of the Lord, we who would look for our reward with him, we must also be willing to do whatever it takes to bring people to salvation.  We’re not supposed to just watch the Mass be performed for us, we’re supposed to live the Mass every day of our lives in any place the Lord puts us, knowing that he walked that way before us, and that our reward will be great.  We, brothers and sisters, are called to kenosis in our own lives.

    But here’s the kicker: another aspect of our own call to kenosis is that sometimes we have to empty out the part of us that desperately wants to do everything for ourselves, and to let someone else minister to us in our need.  I told you about my parents both being sick when I was in seminary.  That was such a hard time for me, mostly because I was still really convinced that I could get through anything life threw at me on my own.  But I had to learn that sometimes I need to let my friends pick me up and carry me to Jesus when I couldn’t get there on my own.  I’m bad at that.  I’m like Peter – no one’s going to wash my feet.  But I learned that I have to get over that if I’m ever going to be empty enough for Christ to fill me up.  It’s not about me – and it can’t be about any of us, we who would take up our crosses to follow our Lord.

    There’s another part of this Gospel that really strikes me.  You heard me tell you about the practice of washing the feet of guests in Jesus’ day.  So when do you think their feet would be washed?  Immediately upon arriving, of course: their feet were dusty and tired from the journey.  But that’s not what happens here, is it?  The Gospel reading says that during the supper, Jesus rose, changed his clothes, and washed their feet.  That’s a detail that would really stick out to those hearing the story in that day, because they understood the practice.  Now Jesus didn’t wash their feet at that time because he forgot to do it when they arrived, or because he had just now noticed how filthy their feet were.  He had a very specific reason for washing their feet during the meal.  Because now that great act of kenosis would be forever intimately tied to the celebration of the Eucharist.  Because of the very precise timing of this act of service, we who receive the Eucharist now know that we are called to follow Jesus’ example and to pour ourselves out in service to our brothers and sisters.  Every time we are fed by our Lord, we must always remember that we are called by our Lord to empty ourselves and become the presence of Christ for those who share life with us.

    On this great night, as we begin the great three-day feast of our Savior’s triumph over sin and death, we come together to share a meal – the same meal he shared with his friends on that night so long ago.  And because we Catholics don’t simply remember this night with mere fond recollections of an ancient historical event, but instead by entering into the experience in all its fullness yet again, then we have to hear the same commandment Jesus gave his disciples: “If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”  As we gather and come forward to do this in remembrance of Christ, may we also pour ourselves out each day for our brothers and sisters, lovingly washing their feet just as ours have been washed by our Saving Lord.

  • Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion: The Way of the Cross

    Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion: The Way of the Cross

    Today’s readings

    I saw a little comic on Facebook yesterday that had two panels. The top panel was entitled “your way” and showed a stick figure on a bicycle traveling a straight road to the finish line. Smooth sailing, or bicycling, whatever. The bottom panel wasn’t so simple. The same bicyclist had to travel a very treacherous road, filled with rocks, mountains to climb, ditches to avoid, an ocean to cross, and many other obstacles. That panel was entitled “God’s plan.” The only thing that panel was missing was the Cross, and well might it have been there.

    We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
    in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection,
    through whom we are saved and delivered.

    You heard me quote that, the Entrance Antiphon for this Sacred Paschal Triduum, in my homily last night. Last night I reflected on the scandal of the Cross, and today I’d like to continue the discussion by reflecting briefly on the Way of the Cross. Lots of us are familiar with the Way of the Cross: we come to the Stations of the Cross on Fridays of Lent and reflect on them; perhaps we even reflect on them privately in our homes, or here at church, or outside of church on the back piazza. Whenever we’ve prayed the Stations of the Cross, maybe like me you’ve found it tiring to stand and kneel and genuflect in fourteen different stations. But I can assure you the first person to have traveled the Way of the Cross didn’t have it anywhere near as easy.

    As we reflect on the Passion of our Lord, the Way of the Cross becomes quite clear to us. It involves betrayal, injustice, and abandonment. It required prayer, focus, and love.

    The betrayal was easy to see. Judas is disgruntled, or disillusioned, or greedy, or some combination thereof, and so he looks for an opportunity to hand Jesus over to the authorities. They were delighted and most willing to pay Judas. And there begins the injustice: the tainted motives of the Sanhedrin, the cowardice of Herod and of Pilate. Our Lord is railroaded to his death. And then begins the abandonment: Peter denies him, the disciples fall asleep, they all flee when he’s arrested. Because our Lord has taken all of our sin on himself in this moment, he rightly feels abandoned, a living hell on earth: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Ps. 22:2)

    But it’s important that we get this right today. John spells it out quite clearly throughout his Gospel narrative: Jesus did not get dragged kicking and screaming to the Cross – no, he willingly gave his life that we might live. And that required prayer: uniting himself totally with his Father, he took on his Father’s will. It required focus: Jesus never took his eyes off the Father, he was completely focused on what he came to do and why he came to do it. And it required love. And this is the part I can’t stress strongly enough, Brothers and Sisters: our God loved us so much, that even the betrayal, injustice and abandonment could not stop him from bringing us back to him. His great love and mercy required that his only Begotten Son would pay the price for your sins, and my sins. He willingly gave his life for us – because he loved us beyond anything we could imagine or dare hope for.

    That was Jesus’ Way of the Cross. But it’s important to know that we have our own crosses too, and while they might not be what God would like to give us in his love, he allows them in his mercy. The Way of the Cross is the way disciples live. And so we too will suffer from betrayal: when friends let us down, or coworkers take advantage of our compassion, or when our bodies stop doing what we need. We too will suffer from injustice: when someone pre-judges us, or when we give so much to a relationship without anything seeming to come in return, or when our jobs are eliminated. And we will also endure abandonment: when nobody comes to our defense, or when our illness causes them to pull away. Some days it may even seem like God has abandoned us.

    But our prayer will tell us otherwise. Prayer is the fuel disciples use to navigate the Way of the Cross. Prayer helps us to focus, and when we keep our eyes on Jesus, we can see where the road is leading us. And that focus helps us to embrace the cross in love, joining our sufferings to those of Christ, who deeply longs to lead us to eternity.

    Because the Way of the Cross might require death, but it doesn’t end there. Good Friday is good for a reason. And in our deepest sufferings, we can always take comfort that our Savior has gone there before us, and has blazoned the trail that leads to life.

    We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
    in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection,
    through whom we are saved and delivered.

  • Holy Thursday: The Scandal of the Cross

    Holy Thursday: The Scandal of the Cross

    Today’s readings

    I love what Jesus says to Peter after Peter initially refuses to have his feet washed. “What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will understand later.” I kind of feel like that’s what could be said about the entirety of our faith. What we are taught very rarely makes sense at the first presentation, but later, when we have eyes opened up by the Resurrection, well, then things start to fall into place.

    So I want to start my reflection on these three holy days, this Sacred Paschal Triduum, with the incredibly scandalous idea that is the Holy Cross. The Church would have us do so, too, for She provides just one entrance antiphon for these three days, and that comes at the beginning of today’s Mass, and it says:

    We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
    in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection,
    through whom we are saved and delivered.

    This antiphon is adapted from Saint Paul’s letter to the Galatians (6:14) in which he spends most of the letter chastising the community – even to the point of calling them “stupid” (3:1) – for taking their eyes off Jesus and the Gospel and everything that Saint Paul has taught them, and instead looking back to the Jewish law and all its artificial marks of righteousness. But we dare not condemn them so quickly. Because, quite frankly, we have to understand their faltering faith in light of our own.

    For us, now removed a couple of thousand years past the Crucifixion of our Lord, the Cross seems pretty standard – it almost doesn’t even phase us any more. We see it in church, we probably have one or more in our homes, and we might even wear one around our neck pretty often. And so, I think, the Cross may have lost some of its very important impact: an impact Jesus’ disciples certainly experienced as they fled in fear. It’s an impact Saint Paul’s Church in Galatia would have experienced too, and perhaps explained their trying to find justification in other ways.

    Because the cross was terrifying. And not only that, the cross was scandalous. It was saved for the dregs of society, for the worst of the worst. For those who were a problem for society. It was saved for the likes of Barabbas, for heaven’s sake! And the unrepentant thief. And yet, that is where our Lord went at the end of his life on earth. Nobody in Jesus’ day would have been inspired by this awful display. Saint Paul acknowledges as much in his first letter to the Corinthians when he says, “But we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1:23).

    But if people in that day missed the importance of Jesus embracing and dying on the cross, then they missed his entire message too. Because it was every bit as scandalous that Jesus ate with sinners and touched lepers. Just as scandalous as the cross was his getting up at supper and taking off his outer garments, tying a towel around his waist, and washing the feet of the disciples. That was the job of a servant, but then he did come to serve not to be served. That was the job of a slave, but then he did come to set us free from our ancient sinfulness.

    As scandalous as the Cross was for the early Church, it is also deeply problematic for the Church today. Because we live in a society that values freedom, convenience, and bright shiny happiness – none of which, I dare say, you’ll find on the Cross. In our society, we might boast that there is a pill for almost every ailment, even if they come with a horrifying list of side-effects. In our society, we have convenience down to a science: we eat fast food, we bank and shop online and delight in free overnight shipping, we lose our minds in the line at the DMV. In our society, we do our best to spin every situation into some kind of false happiness, with painted smiles and happy music and all kinds of glitzy advertising.

    We’re more than happy to have a Resurrection, thank you, but the Cross … well that’s just not something we’re open to embracing. And the problem with that is that living the Gospel requires that we take up our own crosses and follow our Lord (Matthew 16:24). So our aversion to the Cross, both in the ancient Church and now, is a real obstacle to our life of faith, a real obstacle to our eternity.

    The cause of the obstacle, I would assert – at least in my own spiritual life – is that on the Cross, we see our own sins. The real scandalous part of the Cross for us is that our Savior had to go there to free us from our sins. What makes us turn our heads away and avert our gaze is that we can’t bear to see that even our smallest sins have such horrible, scandalous consequences. The real scandal of the Cross is that the Word made flesh had to give up his own life in such a terrible death in order that I might live.

    What on earth are we supposed to do with that? How do we live with the fact that God’s only begotten Son died for us? Well, he tells us in today’s Gospel. “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.” And he’s not just talking about washing feet, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ. Whatever he’s done for us, we’re supposed to do for others. If he’s forgiven us much, then we should never stop forgiving. If he has served us, then we have to serve others. If he has laid down our life for us, then we better do the same for the people in our lives. Anything less is an offense against the Holy Cross.

    As we gather on this Holy Thursday night, we know that the washing of the feet is a mere foreshadowing of the Cross. Jesus came to give himself completely so that we might have life. He washes feet, cleansing the disciples of their sins and making them fit for service. He offers his Body and Blood to be the food that sustains us on our journey. And he offers us our own crosses that we might have a share in his own, leading us onward to eternal life.

    We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
    in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection,
    through whom we are saved and delivered.

  • The Easter Vigil in the Holy Night

    The Easter Vigil in the Holy Night

    Today’s readings

    We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
    in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection,
    through whom we are saved and delivered.

    During this Triduum journey, I have been reflecting in my homilies on the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. I’ve talked about the fact that this is not a popular thing to do because we as a society are not big on suffering. If we put a sign out on Chicago Avenue that said, “Come suffer with us,” I’m pretty sure we’d be all alone here in church! We certainly do suffer in this life, but no one wants it – as well we shouldn’t. The problem is that we tend to gloss over it, not acknowledge it, be embarrassed by it. Suffering becomes the elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge, and that’s too bad, really.

    Certainly it seems odd that I would continue to talk about the Cross on this holy night. I mean, we’ve moved on, haven’t we? We came here for resurrection and want to get on with our lives. Just like we tend to rush through our grieving of loved ones – to our own psychological and spiritual peril, by the way – so too we want to rush through our Lent and particularly our Good Friday and Holy Saturday, so that we can eat our Peeps and chocolate bunnies and call it a day.

    But we can’t, right? If we’ve prayed well this Lent and particularly in these Triduum days, we know how we got here to this moment. We know that we don’t get an Easter Sunday without a Good Friday, that we can’t have resurrection if there hasn’t been death, that we can’t have salvation if there hasn’t been a sacrifice.

    And there sure was a sacrifice. Our Lord suffered a brutal, ugly death between two hardened criminals, taking the place of a revolutionary. He was beaten, humiliated, mistreated and nails were pounded into his flesh, that flesh that he borrowed from us. He hung in agony for three hours and finally, when all was finished, he cried out in anguish and handed over his spirit. The veil of the temple was torn in two, there was a tremor in the earth, and an eclipse of the sun. And no wonder, the light of the Messiah had been extinguished on the Cross.

    Placed in the tomb, he descended into hell. Collecting the souls of the blessed ones of old, he waited while earth mourned and disciples scattered and everyone wondered what happened to this Christ.

    But then came the morning. The Sabbath was over, and the sun was rising in the east on the first day of the week, and the women came with spices to prepare our Lord for burial. But they couldn’t: he has been raised! He is not here! Our Lord is risen and death is defeated! The menacing, ugly Cross has become the altar of salvation! The instrument of horror has become the Cross of glory, and we can do no less than praise our God!

    Saint John Damascene reflected on this salvific reality. He writes, “By nothing else except the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ has death been brought low: The sin of our first parent destroyed, hell plundered, resurrection bestowed, the power given us to despise the things of this world, even death itself, the road back to the former blessedness made smooth, the gates of paradise opened, our nature seated at the right hand of God and we made children and heirs of God. By the cross all these things have been set aright…It is a seal that the destroyer may not strike us, a raising up of those who lie fallen, a support for those who stand, a staff for the infirm, a crook for the shepherded, a guide for the wandering, a perfecting of the advanced, salvation for soul and body, a deflector of all evils, a cause of all goods, a destruction of sin, a plant of resurrection, and a tree of eternal life.”

    It’s so important that we enter into Lent and the Triduum every year. Not just because we need to be called back from our sinfulness to the path of life – yes, there is that, but it’s not primary here. What is so important is that we see that the Cross is our path too. In this life we will have trouble: our Savior promises us that. But the Cross is what sees him overcome the world and all the suffering it brings us. We will indeed suffer in this life, but thanks be to God, if we join ourselves to him, if we take up our own crosses with faithfulness, then we can merit a share in our Lord’s resurrection, that reality that fulfills all of salvation history that we’ve heard in tonight’s readings.

    In these Triduum days, we have seen the Cross call us to service, we’ve seen it stand for our suffering, and tonight we’ve seen it help us on the way to salvation. The cross is brutal and ugly and harsh. But it’s also beautiful, if we have eyes to see it.

    We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
    in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection,
    through whom we are saved and delivered.

    He is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • Good Friday: Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion

    Good Friday: Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion

    Today’s readings

    We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
    in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection,
    through whom we are saved and delivered.

    Last night, I talked about the cross, and how, while brutal and inconvenient and ugly, it is the way to salvation for all of us. We see that so poignantly on this Good Friday, when we remember the Lord’s Passion, we venerate his Cross, and we receive the gift of Holy Communion to sustain us in these somber days. Our Lord’s complete gift of self, his act of emptying out his will so that he could fully embody the will of the Father, this is our hope and our salvation, and it is only possible through the brutal, ugly Cross.

    Our world hates the Cross. I talked a bit about that last night, too. We want instant gratification, and we don’t want to go through a lot of hassle to get it. We seek instant remedies to pain, quick ways to get rich, instant service at any establishment according to our whim. We don’t like to wait, we don’t like to endure pain, we don’t like to suffer in any way. But as St. Augustine once said, “God had one Son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.”

    Today we see that, taking up our crosses at our Lord’s command is going to involve suffering in this life. It did for Jesus, and so we have no right to assume that won’t be the case for us. Jesus never came into this world to take our suffering away; he came to redeem it. He’s not going to wave a magic wand and make your problems go away, but he will endure them with you, taking up the Cross with you, giving his life with you and for you. And most importantly, as we’ll see tomorrow night, he will redeem your suffering to eternal glory. That, dear ones, is the Paschal Mystery, and we absolutely have a share in it.

    So think about your worst problem right now – call to mind whatever you may be suffering. Or call to mind the suffering of others: a loved one who is battling cancer, or a friend who is unemployed or underemployed. Perhaps call to mind those who are homeless, or those who go without much food every day, even while we dread keeping the Paschal Fast! Whether it is your suffering or the suffering of others, bring that to the cross as we venerate it shortly. And know – know – that that suffering does not go unnoticed by our God; that it never is willed for its own sake. And know that our Lord walks through it too, bringing it at last to its eternal redemption.

    Suffering is the way to glory for all of us who take up our crosses to follow our Lord. Pope Saint John Paul II said it well: “There is no evil to be faced that Christ does not face with us. There is no enemy that Christ has not already conquered. There is no cross to bear that Christ has not already borne for us, and does not now bear with us. And on the far side of every cross we find the newness of life in the Holy Spirit, that new life which will reach its fulfillment in the resurrection. This is our faith. This is our witness before the world.”

    The Cross of Jesus is brutal, ugly and harsh. It embodies the horror of all our suffering. We might hate to look at it, hate to take it up, but there is no glory without it.

    We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
    in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection,
    through whom we are saved and delivered.

  • Holy Thursday: Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper

    Holy Thursday: Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper

    Today’s readings

    We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
    in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection,
    through whom we are saved and delivered.

    The Church sees this evening’s Mass as the beginning of a three-day Liturgy that embodies our Lord’s passion, death and resurrection. These three days are the Paschal Mystery, in which we see our Lord’s love and Divine Mercy poured out freely on sinners – which is to say, of course, on you and me. No one in this church has merited this Divine Mercy; it is freely given, and if we have prepared ourselves properly this Lent, freely received.

    At the beginning of every Liturgy there is an introit or entrance antiphon. It’s a brief scriptural verse that provides the mindset, if you will, that the Church wants us to have as we pray that Liturgy. For these three days, the Church gives us an adaptation of the fourteenth verse of the sixth book of Saint Paul’s letter to the Galatians:

    We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
    in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection,
    through whom we are saved and delivered.

    The Church wants us, appropriately enough, to focus on our Lord who is, after all, the whole reason we’re here tonight, and for the rest of these days. More specifically, the Church wants us to reflect during this most holy three-day liturgy on our Lord’s Cross. And quite honestly, that’s kind of inconvenient. It’s hard to gather people together to celebrate the Cross – it’s not pretty and it doesn’t portray the glitzy kind of happy message that beckons Christians to church.

    It’s always been that way. In the early days of Christianity, they knew the cross all too well. They saw it on almost a daily basis. What had been intended to provide an ignominious and painful death to the worst criminal offenders soon enough became the way to execute all those who were politically inconvenient, most especially Christians who refused to take up the worship of pagan gods which was required by the government of the day.

    But even now, quite honestly, who wants to look at the cross? We don’t like pain or grief or anything like that. We take a pill for every malady, even braving a horrifying list of side-effects. To those who have experienced the death of a loved one, we offer meaningless platitudes like “everything happens for a reason,” and then we expect them back at work in no more than three to five days, functioning and behaving just as they did before. We anesthetize ourselves with drink, or drugs, or hours in front of the television or computer, or immersing ourselves in work, so that we don’t have to confront the difficulties in our relationships, or family lives, or whatever else might be on our plates. So for us, reflecting on the cross is just too painful, and glorying in the cross – well, that’s just ridiculous.

    But we know the Truth: we know that it is only by our Lord’s Cross that we have won salvation; we know that we too have been called to take up our own crosses and follow our Lord; we know that we have been given an example and that we need to follow it – we know that if we don’t glory in the Cross, we can never have a resurrection. And so during these three days, I’d like to suggest some ways that we can reflect on the Cross and glory in it, that we might come at last to Easter glory.

    Today we see in the Cross our call to service. But by service, I don’t mean the light and fluffy things we see as service – it’s not a quick service project, or writing a check to do our little part of handling a need. Those things are nice, but they don’t really measure up to the example our Lord gives us today. Our Lord’s service was one of kenosis – the Greek word for “emptiness.” Our Lord emptied himself of his own will so that he could completely embody the Father’s will. He did that to save us from our sins. So the service our Lord calls us to today is one of emptying our own will out so that we can be filled by God’s will.

    Jesus emptied himself of his will to be served by serving in the most menial of ways. At the banquet, it was not the host who washed the hot, dirty and tired feet of the guests – it was instead the task for a servant or slave. But because none of those at the Last Supper thought himself low enough to take on that task, our Lord did it, and one wonders if Peter’s reluctance to have his own feet washed was because he didn’t want our Lord to stoop down and serve him, or if it was because he knew it meant that he had to do the same thing. How willing are we to empty ourselves of our entitlement and instead to serve the poor and needy among us?

    Jesus emptied himself of his will by giving his body and blood to be our Eucharist – our reason for thanksgiving – and to sustain us on the journey to eternal life. He didn’t come just to give us directions to heaven. He came to bring us there, nourishing us along the way, helping us to get up when we’ve fallen, giving us food for body and spirit. He knew that it was only his Body and Blood that would overcome our profane human nature, that would give us enough a share in his Divine nature, that we could find our way to heaven. How willing are we to empty ourselves out, completely giving ourselves for others?

    Today the Cross we glory in is one of service – and it’s a service that is a complete giving of self for another. It’s love beyond words. It’s mercy and grace given with wild abandon. It’s an emptying out of self-will so that God’s will can be accomplished now and in the life to come. That Cross can be heavy and inconvenient and even repulsive at times. But it’s the only way to heaven.

    We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
    in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection,
    through whom we are saved and delivered.