Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Homilies

  • Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of Our Lord

    Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of Our Lord

    Today’s readings

    I often tell the children in our school that if there’s just one thing they ought to know about God, one thing they ever learn about God, and that is that God loves them more than anything, that would be enough. It’s the thing that I hope they remember me saying, because that’s the message I feel called to proclaim. God’s love is the most important thing we have in this life, the most precious gift we will ever receive.

    It is true gift, because there’s nothing, not one thing, that we can do to earn it. Filthy in sin as we are, we certainly don’t do it. And entitled as we can sometimes be, there is no way we can ever say that we have a right to it. But we get it anyway. God freely pours out his love on us sinners, not because we are good, but because he is.

    God loves us first and loves us best, and it’s a love that will totally consume us, totally transform us, if we let it. It’s a love that can break our stony hearts and transform our sadness into real joy. It’s a love that can change us from people of darkness to real live people of light and joy. It’s a love that obliterates the power of sin and death to control our eternity, and opens up to us the glory of heaven.

    And even if we live our lives passing from one thing to the next and barely noticing anything going on around us, we have to pause and appreciate God’s love on this most holy morning. This is the morning that confounded Mary of Magdala; it’s the morning that got Peter and John out of their funk and sent them running. It’s the morning that John finally starts to get what Jesus was getting at all this time. He saw and believed.

    He saw that his Lord was not there, that death could not hold him. He saw that the grave was no longer the finality of existence. He saw that Love – real Love – is in charge of our futures. He saw that there is real hope available to us hopeless ones.

    “To him all the prophets bear witness,
    that everyone who believes in him
    will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.”

    That quote, from Saint Peter’s testimony in the Acts of the Apostles, today’s first reading, is the Easter faith to which we are all called. We have to stop living like this is all there is. We have to stop loving our sins more than we love God. We have to live like a people who have been loved into existence, and loved into redemption.

    That means we have to put aside our disastrous sense of entitlement. We have to learn to receive love so deep that it calls us to change. And we have to love in the same way too, so that others will see that and believe.

    We’ll never find real love by burying ourselves in work or careers. We’ll do nothing but damage our life if we seek to find it in substance abuse. We’ll never find love by clinging to past hurts and resentments. We are only going to find love in one place, or more precisely in one person, namely, Jesus Christ. We must let everything else – everything else – go.

    Today, Jesus Christ broke the prison-bars of death, and rose triumphant from the underworld. What good would life have been to us, if Christ had not come as our Redeemer? Because of this saving event, we can be assured that our own graves will never be our final resting places, that pain and sorrow and death will be temporary, and that we who believe and follow our risen Lord have hope of life that lasts forever. Just as Christ’s own time on the cross and in the grave was brief, so our own pain, death, and burial will be as nothing compared to the ages of new life we have yet to receive. We have hope in these days because Christ is our hope, and he has overcome the obstacles to our living.

    The good news today is that we can find real love today and every day of our lives, by coming to this sacred place. It is here that we hear the Word proclaimed, here that we partake of the very Body and Blood of our Lord. An occasional experience of this mystery simply will not do – we cannot partake of it on Easter Sunday only. No; we must nurture our faith by encountering our Risen Lord every day, certainly every Sunday, of our lives, by hearing that Word, and receiving his Body and Blood. Anything less than that is seeking the living one among the dead.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • The Easter Vigil in the Holy Night

    The Easter Vigil in the Holy Night

    Tonight’s readings

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

    The Paschal Triduum, as you may know, is a long, three-day liturgy that begins with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, continues with the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday, and concludes tonight, here, as we celebrate the Great Easter Vigil in the Holy Night. So right now, we are more or less three-quarters into the celebration, and we’ve covered a lot of ground. Back on Thursday night, Father John urged us not to be mere spectators of these events, not to observe the celebration from 500 feet, but to put ourselves in the story and experience that evening with the disciples. He spoke of the various movements in that celebration: the eating of the Passover meal at the Last Supper, the washing of the feet, the institution of the priesthood and the Eucharist. And finally, the agony in the garden that culminated in the arrest of Jesus. He reminded us that real love didn’t consist of just doing what we wanted to do for people, but instead to discern and do what they most needed, just as Jesus knew the apostles needed their feet washed, and needed to grow in their capacity to love as future leaders.

    This entering into the events is a part of Catholic theology, liturgy, and spirituality called anamnesis. One could translate anamnesis as memory, remembrance, or commemoration, but none of those is especially adequate. Anamnesis is a remembering in the sense of entering into the event as if it were in the present, of being part of the event itself.

    If you’re a cook or baker, maybe you’ve had the experience of making a family recipe, and it brings to mind the loved one who taught it to you, and then you remember a story you shared when that person made it, and then that loved one is almost present to you, and you shed a tear mixed with a smile and a tug at your heart. That’s a little bit of what anamnesis is like. Placing oneself at the Last Supper, in the Upper Room, at the Garden of Gethsemane, and even at Golgotha and the Empty Tomb and letting those events change you as Father John suggested, that’s anamnesis. It’s realized most perfectly in the celebration of the Eucharist, where we don’t just recall the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, but are spiritually present there with all the people of every time and place in every church in the world, on earth and in heaven; where we don’t just receive a symbol of the Lord, but actually receive his body, blood, soul and divinity in the consecrated host. Anamnesis is powerful because it catches us up in the divine life of our Lord, who came to gather up and redeem our broken humanity.

    Father James continued the anamnesis yesterday afternoon as we gathered to continue the Triduum Liturgy with the Commemoration of our Lord’s Passion. He reminded us that Jesus wasn’t some kind of helpless victim put to death on the cross, but instead our Lord who willingly laid down his life for us, went to battle to combat sin and death, and, in a somewhat gross analogy, exploded death from the inside out. He invited us to see in the Cross our own sin, failures, and frailty, but also the means of our salvation brandished by our Lord in the battle against all that frailty. We then venerated a cross, which symbolized that Cross that was the Altar of Our Lord’s Sacrifice, and finally we were fed with the Eucharist, presanctified on Thursday night, which nourished us with the Lord’s strength to find true contrition and Divine Mercy.

    The anamnesis continued during this evening’s extensive Liturgy of the Word. In it, we have heard stories of our salvation, God’s saving action in the world throughout all time. Each of our readings has been a stop in the history of God’s love for us. God’s plan for salvation began back at the beginning of it all. Each of the days was hallowed with precious creation, and all of it was created and pronounced good. Then Abraham’s faithfulness and righteousness earned us a future as bright as a zillion twinkling stars. Later, as Moses and the Israelites stood trapped by the waters of the Red Sea, God’s providence made a way for them and cut off their pursuers, making the future safe for those God calls his own. The prophet Isaiah calls us to seek the Lord while he may be found, not spending our lives on things that fail to satisfy, but investing in our relationship with God that gives us everything. The prophet Ezekiel foretells the re-creation all humanity will experience as they come to know Christ and are filled with the Spirit. Saint Paul rejoices in the baptism that has washed away the stains of sin as we have died and risen with Christ, and has brought us into a new life that leads ultimately to God’s kingdom. And finally, our Gospel tonight tells us not to be afraid, to go forth into the Galilee of our future and expect to see the Risen Lord. And in all of it, we are present, if we accept our Lord’s invitation to enter in.

    “You shall be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezekiel 36:28). I love that last line from the last of the Old Testament readings we heard tonight. There is a covenant, there has always been a covenant, there always will be a covenant. God created us in love, and he loves us first and best. No matter where we may wander; no matter how far from the covenant we may stray, God still keeps it, forever and always. We will always be his people and he will always be our God. If I had to pick a line that sums up what we’re here for tonight, what we’ve been here for these last 40 days of Lent, that would be it.

    And that covenant is pivotal truth in this time of apathy, falsity, and general disinterest. Against all of that, the Church serves as a beacon of truth and grace and mercy as she reflects the glory of our Risen Lord. Our world may indeed be jaded by corruption, hatred, violence, crime, war, racism, lack of concern for the lives of the unborn and the vulnerable, neglect of the poor, and so many other maladies. But when we accept the covenant in our lives, we can be transformed, and become that beacon, and lead those disaffected by the world to the glorious light of God’s redeeming presence.

    We have journeyed with our Lord for three days now. We ate with him, we prayed through the night with him, we saw him walk the way of the Cross and tearfully recalled his crucifixion. We reverenced the Cross, joining our own crosses to his. Now we’ve stayed up all night and shared the stories of our salvation, with eager excitement at the ways God has kept that covenant through the ages. A roaring fire shattered the darkness, and a candle was lit to mingle with the lights of heaven. Then grace had its defining moment as Christ shattered the prison-bars of death and rose triumphant from the underworld.

    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 the salvation history that we’ve heard in tonight’s readings.

    Our birth would have meant nothing had we not been redeemed. If we were born only to live and die for this short span of time, how horrible that would have been. But thanks be to God, the sin of Adam was destroyed completely by the death of Christ! The Cross has triumphed and we are made new! Dazzling is this night for us, and full of gladness! Because our Lord is risen, our hope of eternity has dawned, and there is no darkness which can blot it out. We will always be God’s people, and he will always be our God!

    And so, with great joy on this most holy night, in this, the Mother of all Vigils, we rightfully celebrate the sacrament of holy Baptism. Our Elect will shortly become members of the Body of Christ through this sacrament which washes away their sins. Then they will be confirmed in the Holy Spirit and fed, for the first time, on the Body and Blood of our Saving Lord. It’s a wonderful night for them, but also for us, as we renew ourselves in our baptismal promises, and receive our Lord yet again, to be strengthened in our vocation as disciples.

    We are and always will be God’s people. God has made new his glorious covenant through the resurrection of our Christ. And so, having come through this hour to be sanctified in this vigil, we will shortly be sent forth to help sanctify our own time and place. Brightened by this beautiful vigil, we now become a flame to light up our darkened world. 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 – IN US! – 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 forever and ever. Amen.”

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • 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 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.

  • Friday of the Fifth Week in Lent

    Friday of the Fifth Week in Lent

    Today’s readings

    God is dependable. The promises he makes, he keeps, because he is truth itself and cannot do anything contrary to that truth. So he delivers poor Jeremiah, who has been denounced – even by his own friends – for speaking the truth. Just so, he delivers Jesus from the hands of the Jews, because Jesus’ words and deed all testified to the truth. When we choose to live the truth the Lord puts in our hearts, we can depend on God to deliver us from the hands of those who do not seek the truth. As the psalmist tells us today, “In my distress I called upon the Lord, and he heard my voice.”

    It is difficult to witness to the truth sometimes, because in general, the world doesn’t want to hear it. The world would prefer to be deaf to the cries of the poor and the oppressed, preferring instead to attend to the convenience of big business and the wealthy. The world would prefer to ignore cries for real justice in the world, preferring instead to pacify lobbyists and others with more powerful voices. The world would prefer to ignore the truth of the Gospel: that Jesus is the way to the Father and the only way to eternal life. But we can’t be like that; we must witness to those truths every day. The costs are too high: Jesus gave his life for us. We may well be persecuted. But like Jeremiah and Jesus, we can depend on our God to hear our voice and deliver us from evil. God is dependable.

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

  • Thursday of the Fifth Week in Lent

    Thursday of the Fifth Week in Lent

    Today’s readings

    The story is quickly coming to its climax. Jesus’ claims of divinity are really starting to rile the Jews. They have placed their hope in Abraham and the prophets – great men, certainly – but seem to have forgotten about the promise of a Messiah, and so they totally miss the Christ who is standing right in front of them. It’s a sad situation. But it is also quickly becoming dangerous for Jesus. These are the ones who will stir up the trouble at his trial and get them to release Barabbas, putting Jesus on the cross instead.

    And I feel like it’s necessary to make a quick aside here. We have heard and will hear many references to “the Jews” in John’s Gospel. This wording was used for centuries to make anti-Semitic comments and policies seem like they are legitimate, blaming the Jews for killing the Lord. But this is John’s Gospel, and Jesus is in full control. He knows what is in their hearts. The Jews may indeed want to take his life, but Jesus instead willingly lays it down. Because that was his mission; that is his mission – to give himself completely for our salvation, and the salvation of the whole world. And honestly, if we want to blame someone for sending Jesus to the cross, we know only too well that we don’t have to look any further than our own sinful hearts.

    What we see in today’s Liturgy of the Word, ultimately, is that God made a promise to Abraham, and, in the person of Jesus Christ, kept that promise. Abraham was made a mighty nation, God’s promises have always been kept, and we have salvation in Christ. That’s our Good News today, and every day really. As we wade through these somber Passiontide days, we have the joy of keeping the end of the story clearly in mind, that Resurrection that Abraham himself so longed to see.

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

  • Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Lent

    Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Lent

    Today’s readings

    Just as the saraph serpent was lifted up on a pole in the desert for the people to see, and thus live, so the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, was lifted up on the cross for the salvation of the world. This fifth week of Lent is the beginning of what we call “Passiontide.” In these late Lenten days, the Church is looking to the Cross, looking toward Jerusalem, knowing that the hour of the Lord, in which he would pay the dear price of our salvation, is near at hand.

    With hearts filled with gratitude, we come to this Eucharist, with our eyes fixed on our Lord lifted up for us, who pours himself out for us again and still. When we see him lifted up, we remember that he is “I AM,” our crucified and risen Lord, and whenever we look to him, we are saved from all that ails us, from our sins and brokenness, and we ourselves are lifted up to eternal life.

    Our challenge in these late Lenten days is to be that icon of the Cross, like the saraph serpent, to whom people can look and find healing and salvation. We have to be the image of Christ crucified so that the world can become whole. Just as many came to believe because Jesus spoke of himself in this way, so may many come to believe because we live it.

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

  • The Fifth Sunday in Lent, Cycle C

    The Fifth Sunday in Lent, Cycle C

    Today’s readings

    Back in the sixth century before the birth of Christ, the Israelites were in a bad way. They had been separated from their God by sin: against God’s commands, they had betrayed their covenant with the Lord and made foreign alliances, which he had forbidden them to do. He forbade this because he knew that as they made these alliances, they would give in to the temptation to worship the so-called gods of the people they with whom they allied themselves. As punishment, God separated them from their homeland: the cream of the crop of their society were taken into exile in Babylon, and those left behind had no one to lead them and protect them. Because they moved away from God, God seemed to move away from them. But he hadn’t: it was really they who had exiled themselves from God. In today’s first reading, God shows them that he still loves them and cares for them, and promises to make them a new people. I love the line: “See, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?” God would indeed bring them back and create their community anew.

    The Israelites were in exile, but exile can take so many forms. And Saint Paul had a good sense of that. For him, the exile was anything that was not Christ; a sentiment we should embrace. Saint Paul knows that he has not yet taken possession of the glory that is promised him by Christ, and so he wants to leave behind the exile of the world and strains forward to all that lies ahead, the goal and prize of God’s calling in Christ.

    Which brings us to the woman caught in adultery. We certainly feel sorry for her, caught in the act, dragged in front of Jesus and publicly humiliated. But the truth is, just like the Israelites in the sixth century before Christ, she had actually sinned. And that sin threatened to put her into exile from the community; well, it even threatened her life. The in-your-face reversal in the story, though, is that Jesus doesn’t consider her the only sinner – or even the greatest sinner – in the whole incident. We should probably wonder about the man with whom she was committing adultery; that sin does, after all, take two. And as serious a sin as adultery certainly is, Jesus makes it clear that there are plenty of serious sins out there, and they all exile us from God. As he sits there, writing in the sand, they walk away one by one. What was he writing? Was it a kind of examination of conscience? A kind of list of the sins of the Pharisees? We don’t know. But in Jesus’ words and actions, those Pharisees too were convicted of their sins, and went away – into exile – because of them.

    Sin does that to us. It makes exiles out of all of us. The more we sin, the further away from God we become. And it doesn’t have to be that way.

    Jimmy and Suzy went to visit their grandparents for a week during the summer. They had a great time, but one day Jimmy was bouncing a ball in the house, which he knew he shouldn’t be doing. It didn’t take long for the ball to hit grandma’s favorite vase, knocking it off the table and breaking it. He picked up the pieces and went out back and hid them in the woodshed. Looking around, the only person who was around was his sister Suzy. She didn’t say anything, but later that day, when grandma asked her to help with the dishes, Suzy said “I think Jimmy wanted to help you,” giving him a rather knowing look. So he did. The next day, grandpa asked Jimmy if he wanted to go out fishing. Suzy jumped right in: “He’d like to, but he promised grandma he would weed the garden.” So Jimmy weeded the garden. As he was doing that, he felt pretty guilty and decided to confess the whole thing to grandma. When he told her what had happened, grandma said, “I know. I was looking out the back window when you were hiding the pieces in the woodshed. I was wondering how long you were going to let Suzy make a slave of you.”

    That’s how it is with sin: it makes a slave of us, and keeps us from doing what we really want to do. It puts us deep in exile, just as surely as the ancient Israelites. And it doesn’t have to be that way. You see, it’s easier than we think to end up in exile. All we have to do is a good examination of conscience and then think about the way those sins have affected us. Have they made us feel distant from God, family and friends? Have they caused us to drift in our life and not feel God’s presence in times of hardship?

    Exile is heartbreaking. And to the exile of sin, God has three things to say today:

    First, “Go, and from now on, do not sin anymore.” That sounds like something that’s easy to say but hard to do. But God never commands us to do something that is impossible for us, or maybe better, he never commands us to do something that is impossible for him to do in us. God’s grace is there if we but turn to him.

    Second, God says: “Forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead.” Once sin is confessed and grace is accepted, the sin is forgotten. God is not a resentful tyrant who keeps a list of our offenses and holds them against us forever. If we confess our sins and accept the grace that is present through the saving sacrifice of Jesus, the sins are forgotten.

    Third, God says: “See, I am doing something new. Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” We are the ones who get stuck in the past, always fearing to move forward because of past sins, hurts, and resentments. We are called today to be open to the new thing God is doing in our lives. The way to open up is to confess our sins and get rid of the past.

    For a long time in my young life, I didn’t go to confession. I didn’t think I needed to. I grew up in that whole time of the church when it was all about how you felt about yourself. Garbage. I knew something was wrong when I was in my young adulthood and felt lost. I took a chance and went to confession at a penance service, and the priest welcomed me back. In that moment, I knew exactly the new thing God was doing in me, and it felt like a huge weight was lifted off of me. In fact, I was released from the exile of all my past sins and hurts.

    I never forgot that, and whenever anyone comes to me in confession and says it’s been a long time since they went, I am quick to welcome them back. Because that’s what God wants, and it’s a great privilege for me to be part of that. He wants to lift that weight off of you, to end your exile. All it takes is for you to see that new thing he is doing in you, and to strain forward to what lies ahead.

    So we have just a few times left to receive that grace before Holy Week and Easter. We have what we lovingly call “Confessionpalooza” today at 1:30 in the afternoon. We will have thirteen confessors available to hear confessions in English, Spanish, and Polish. If you can come to that festival of mercy, I think you would find it beneficial. If that doesn’t work, our last chances are this coming Friday at 6pm and Saturday at 2pm. Please note that there are no available times for confessions during Holy Week, so please make plans to come this week. Would that we would all take this opportunity to forget what lies behind, and strain forward to what lies ahead. God is doing a new thing in all of us these Lenten days. May we all be open to it.

  • The Fifth Sunday in Lent, Cycle A/Scrutiny III

    The Fifth Sunday in Lent, Cycle A/Scrutiny III

    Today’s readings

    Think about it: if you died and were brought back to life, would your life be different? I tend to think we’d all say yes, very different. But how? I often wonder about Lazarus and how his life looked after he was raised from the dead by Jesus. We don’t get that part of the story, but I imagine he took care to proclaim the Good News that he heard from Jesus, and saw as he sprang from the grave.

    You know, living is subjective. What we might think of as “really living” and what the world may tell us is living the life we should all have is probably going to be quite different than the real life we hear proclaimed in these readings today. So if we want to know the meaning of life, I think we should spend some time reflecting on today’s Liturgy of the Word. And then pray to know whether that corresponds to what we think life is all about, or not. We might find ourselves, like Lazarus, rethinking life and finding new purpose.

    Our first reading today tells us that life without spirit is really death. Ezekiel prophesies that God sees his people dead, but will open their graves and have them rise. But the new life he intends to give involves receiving the spirit:

    I will put my spirit in you that you may live,
    and I will settle you upon your land;
    thus you shall know that I am the LORD.
    I have promised, and I will do it, says the LORD.

    In the second reading, Saint Paul echoes Ezekiel’s words and tells the Roman Church, and us too, that we who are in Christ have the Spirit who raises us from the dead:

    If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
    the one who raised Christ from the dead
    will give life to your mortal bodies also,
    through his Spirit dwelling in you.

    Then we have Martha, Mary and Lazarus in our Gospel reading. In his Gospel, John is very clear about death. When Jesus hears about Lazarus’s illness he says to his disciples, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep,” and they are encouraged by that, thinking that sleep is a good cure for illness and trusting that Lazarus will be well. So Jesus has to say it clearly:

    “Lazarus has died.
    And I am glad for you that I was not there,
    that you may believe.
    Let us go to him.”

    And, to underscore that Lazarus was really, really dead, when Jesus orders the bystanders to roll the stone away from the tomb, Martha points out the practical matter:

    “Lord, by now there will be a stench;
    he has been dead for four days.”

    That was significant, because the Jews believed that, if a person stayed dead for three days, he or she was definitely dead. So on day four, Lazarus was really, really dead, and there would be no waking him up.

    Except for the Spirit of Jesus. That Spirit, the One who would raise Jesus from the dead, gives life to the mortal body of Lazarus, for the honor and glory of God. So good for Lazarus, but what does it mean for the rest of us, standing there in awe of the miracle we have just witnessed?

    During Lent, we have been journeying with our catechumens, who are now called the Elect, as they prepare to be baptized, confirmed, and receive first Holy Communion at the Easter Vigil. Much like them, there are three groups of catechumens in today’s Gospel. The first group is Mary and Martha, those friends of Jesus that are part of John’s Gospel a few times. Here, the rubber meets the road in their faith. Here, like so many of us, they have something tragic happen in their lives, and now they have to grapple with whether their faith helps them with that or not. Mary is so troubled that she doesn’t even go out to meet the Lord until her sister tells her a white lie that Jesus was asking for her. Both she and Martha, when they first see Jesus, complain that he should have come sooner so that he could have saved Lazarus. But Martha has a little faith. She says very importantly that “Even now, I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” That’s the beginning profession of faith. She knows that Jesus has power over life and death. So then they have a little catechetical dialogue about life and death and eternity, and at the end of it, Martha professes that Jesus is the Son of God who was coming into the world. The sisters move from their grief, to faith in Jesus, even before he accomplishes the miracle.

    The second group of catechumens is the Apostles. God bless them, they’re still trying to make sense of Jesus. We can’t be too hard on them, because they’re a lot like many of us who are trying to be men and women of faith, but don’t really have all the facts right now. “Let us also go to die with him,” Thomas says. And they will, of course: they have to go through the cross before they see and understand Jesus fully. We too will have to take up our own crosses before we can fully understand the salvation that Christ has won for us.

    The third group of catechumens is the Jews. A bunch of them are weeping with Mary, and they go with her to see Jesus. Along the way, they complain that if he could heal the man born blind like he did in last week’s Gospel, why couldn’t he have healed Lazarus? But seeing the miracle, they come to believe, in the very last verse of this long reading. They are a lot like those of us who are skeptical for a long time, but see something wonderful materialize in the life of another and finally decide there’s something to this Jesus that’s worth believing in.

    Key to all of these catechumens is that, in order to move to belief, they had to have some kind of stench in their lives washed away. For Martha and Mary, they had to see past their grief. For the Apostles, they had to get over themselves and realize that Jesus was in charge. For the Jews, they had to get past their skepticism and let him perform miracles among them. For all of us, on the journey of faith, some kind of stench has to be washed away, in order to come to full faith in Jesus. And that stench, of course, is sin. The way it gets washed away is in baptism.

    So if you take away anything from today’s Liturgy, let it be this: this reading is really all about baptism. Is it a foreshadowing of Jesus’ death and resurrection? Sure. But it is more about baptism. Because baptism is a kind of death. As Saint Paul says in our second reading today, baptism is the kind of death that gives life to our mortal bodies. It’s hard for us to imagine that kind of thing when the baptisms we’ve seen are just a mere pouring of water over a baby’s head. But baptism in the early church was full submerging in water while the formula was pronounced, after which they came up out of the water gasping for air. Believe me, they got the connection of baptism with death and resurrection!

    Baptism is what washes away the stench in our lives. It does that with original sin, and if we live our baptism by participating in the sacraments, it does that with the sins of our daily life. The sacrament of Penance is an extension in a way of the sacrament of Baptism, in which the sins of our lives are completely washed away, leaving us made new and alive in ways we couldn’t imagine.

    So today, Jesus sees us dead in the flesh, stinking of our sins. But he calls us forth in baptism, rolling away the stone of sin that keeps us from relationship with him, releasing us from the burial-bands that bind us, and calling us to new life.

    So maybe in these closing days of Lent, we still have to respond to our Lord’s call to live. Maybe you haven’t yet been to confession before Easter. We have confessions tomorrow at 1:30pm, with thirteen priests to hear your confession. We invite you to come and have the stone rolled away and to be untied from your burial cloths. Wherever you find yourself at this point of Lent, I urge you, don’t let Easter pass with you all bound up and sealed in the grave. Don’t spend these last days of Lent in the grave. Come out, be untied, and be let go.

  • Friday of the Fourth Week in Lent

    Friday of the Fourth Week in Lent

    Today’s readings


    Saying, “We know where he is from” is from is a Scriptural way of labeling that person, and in a sense, writing him or her off. I think maybe we too have ways of “knowing where people are from” and we label them according to race, or parentage, or upbringing, or privilege, or whatever. We are especially quick to label and write off those who would challenge us, just like the just one was “beset” in today’s first reading, or the Jews who would write Jesus off because they know where he is from, in our Gospel reading. But we need to take care not to write people off – regardless if they are different from us, or are troublesome, or are challenging to us, because in doing so we write off Jesus himself, and turn our back once again on the words he would speak to us.

  • Tuesday of the Fourth Week in Lent

    Tuesday of the Fourth Week in Lent

    Today’s readings

    Water is so important to us, and we see a lot of water in these readings. Water refreshes us, sustains us, cleans us. I find I always need to remind myself to drink more water. These readings talk so much about water, and when that happens, we are being led to a reflection on baptism. We ourselves are the sick and lame man who needed Jesus’ help to get into the waters of Bethesda. The name “Bethesda” means “house of mercy” in Hebrew, and that, of course, is a symbol of the Church. We see the Church also in the temple in the first reading, from which waters flow which refresh and nourish the surrounding countryside. These, of course, again are the waters of baptism.

    Lent, really, is all about baptism. This is the time when the Elect in our OCIA program are preparing intensely to receive that sacrament of initiation. But it’s not just about them; lent call us to renew ourselves in our own baptisms. We are called to renew ourselves in those waters that heal our bodies and our souls. We are called to drink deep of the grace of God so that we can go forth and refresh the world.

    But what really stands out in this Gospel is the mercy of Jesus. I think it’s summed up in one statement that maybe we might not catch as merciful at first: “Look, you are well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you.” Now, I’m sure being ill for thirty-eight years is really bad. It’s hard to imagine anything being worse. But I’m also pretty sure missing out on the kingdom of God would be that one, much worse, thing. There is mercy in being called to repentance, which renews us in our baptismal commitments and makes us fit for the Kingdom of Heaven.

    Back in the 80s and 90s, parishes would often remove the holy water from church during Lent in a kind of fasting. But here is why you shouldn’t: Lent is all about baptism, all about God’s mercy, all about being renewed and refreshed and healed in God’s grace. So I encourage you all to not take holy water for granted. Think about that the next time you put your hand into the font and stir up those waters of mercy. Be healed and made new; go, and from now on, do not sin any more.