Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Preaching, Homiletics & Scripture

  • The Sixth Sunday of Easter

    The Sixth Sunday of Easter

    Today’s readings

    It’s interesting to me that some of the first things we ever learn about God are also some of the most foundational, most important things we learn about God.  One such notion is that God is love.  We’ve learned that, probably, when we were small children.  But theologically, it bears out and serves us well in our adult lives.  So I don’t know if you were counting or not, but between the second reading and the Gospel, the word “love” was used in one form or another eighteen times.  So it’s pretty easy to see where the Church is leading us in today’s Liturgy of the Word.  Love is a theme that runs through John’s Gospel and the letters of Saint John: John’s point is that the Gospel is summed up in that God is love, that foundational notion we learned when we were little children.

    Now we get all kinds of notions about what love is and what it’s not.  Our culture feeds us mostly false notions, unfortunately, and it gets confusing because love can mean so many different things.  I can say, “cookies are my favorite food – I love cookies!” and I think we can all agree that’s not the kind of love Jesus wants us to know about today.  When we say “love” in our language, we could mean an attraction, like puppy love, or we could mean that we like something a lot, or we might even be referring to the sexual act.  And none of that is adequate to convey the kind of love that is the hallmark of Jesus’ disciples.  All of these fall short of what Jesus wants us to know about love.

    So I think we should look at the Greek word which is being translated “love” here.  That word is agape.  Agape is the love of God, or love that comes from God.  It is outwardly expressed in the person of Jesus Christ, who came to show the depth of God’s love by dying on the Cross to pay the price for our many sins.  So that’s the kind of love that Jesus is talking about today; it’s kind of a benchmark of love that he is putting out there for our consideration.

    I love when my engaged couples pick today’s Gospel for their wedding Gospel.  Very often, they pick it because it sounds pretty and it says nice things about love, which are obviously pertinent to a wedding liturgy.  But I like it because it gives them quite the challenge!  To really see what Jesus meant by love in today’s Gospel, all we have to do is to look at Jesus.  His command is that his disciples – including us, of course – should “Love one another as I have loved you.”  And the operative phrase there is: “as I have loved you.”   Meaning, “in the same way I have loved you.”  And we can see how far Jesus took that – all the way to the cross.  He loved us enough to take our sins upon himself and nail them to the cross, dying to pay the price for those sins, and being raised from the dead to smash the power of those sins to control our eternity.  So the love that Jesus is talking about here is fundamentally sacrificial; it is a love that wills the good of the other as other.  And he says it rather plainly in one of my favorite pieces of Holy Scripture: “No one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  This sacrificial quality a vital property of agape love.

    And the disciples clearly were called to that kind of sacrificial love.  They were persecuted, thrown out of the synagogues, beaten for stirring up trouble, put to death for their faith in Christ.  Like their Savior, they literally laid down their lives for their friends.  That is what disciples do.  And so, we disciples hear that same command too.   Now, of course, we may never be asked to literally die for those we love, –although many in the world do that every day – but we are absolutely called on to die in little ways: to give up our own self-interests, our own selfishness, our own comforts, our own opinions, for the sake of others.  Love always costs us something, but real love, agape love, is worth it.

    So I think we should look for opportunities this week to love sacrificially, to love in ways that maybe we don’t do every day, ways that we may never do unless we think about doing them and make a decision to do them.  Doing a chore at home, or a job at work, that’s not our job and not making a big thing of it.  What might be important here is to not even call attention to the fact that it was we who did it.  Finding an opportunity to encourage a spouse or child with a kind word that we haven’t offered in a long time.  Picking the neighbor’s trashcan up out of the street when it’s been a windy day.  It doesn’t matter how big or small the thing is we do, what matters is the love we put into it.  When we make the decision to do something little for the sake of love, the joy we find in that act can help us to make it a habit of life, so that those little things become even bigger.  That kind of loving transforms families, heals past hurts, and can even make our little corner of the world a more beautiful place.  The love of God, agape love, offered most perfectly in the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, transformed our eternity.  That same love of God, lived in each one of us, can transform our world.

    Saint Theresa of Calcutta once said, “I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I do know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, ‘How many good things have you done in your life?’  Rather he will ask, ‘How much love did you put into what you did?’”  When we are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to love, there is no way we can miss the joy that Jesus wants us to have today.  “Love one another as I have loved you” might be a big challenge, but it absolutely will be the greatest joy of our lives.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter (Religious Education and Confirmation Program Closing Mass)

    Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter (Religious Education and Confirmation Program Closing Mass)

    Today’s readings

    In our first reading this evening, we have from the Acts of the Apostles a rather defining moment for the early Church.  Jesus hadn’t given them a precise rule book of how to make the Church develop: he simply sent them out to baptize.  But he also told them to make disciples of all the nations, and that’s what’s at stake in today’s reading.  The Gentile nations didn’t observe all the laws that the Jews did.  And so admitting non-Jews to the Church meant deciding whether they had to be circumcised, and whether they had to observe all the other laws of the Old Testament, as they had.

    Well, obviously, this little mini-council, swayed by the great stories of Paul and Barnabas, hearing all the wondrous deeds that God was doing among them, decided that the Spirit could call anyone God wanted to be disciples, and they shouldn’t get in the way.  So they decide to impose very little upon them, outside of avoiding idol worship and unlawful marriage.  

    And then the Psalmist’s prophecy, “Proclaim God’s marvelous deeds to all the nations” came to pass.  Think about it: because the disciples agreed to allow the Gentiles to come to Christianity in their own way, the proliferation of the Gospel was put into warp speed.  If it weren’t for this little council, we very well might not be Christians today.  Praise God for the movement of the Spirit!

    And now the command comes to us: we have to be the ones to proclaim God’s deeds to everyone, and not to make distinctions that marginalize other people.  God’s will is not fulfilled until every heart has the opportunity to respond to his love.  So we who have been learning about Jesus, now need to help others to know Jesus.  When we learn about Jesus, when we learn about our faith, it’s not just so that we know some good facts and can recite them.  We have to go beyond what we know in our head and bring it to our heart, so that we can love other people the way he has loved us.  When they experience that love in us, they will be attracted to come to know about Jesus too.

    That’s how it happened in the early Church.  That’s why Paul and the others were so successful.  That’s why the Gentiles couldn’t get enough of the faith.  We can reignite that fire in our world today if we bring what we have learned in Religious Education or Confirmation preparation, and take it from our head to our heart.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • May Crowning

    May Crowning

    Today’s reading: Luke 1:42-50
    This was used at a May Crowning prayer service for the school children.

    I remember a time when I was in seminary, and I was on my pastoral internship, much like seminarian Frank is today.  I visited with a nice lady that I had visited often in the nursing home.  This time she was doing poorly, and was in the hospital.  Her husband said to me, “She’s having a rough time.  She hasn’t said anything in days.”  So I suggested we pray and I told her she could pray with us in her heart, if that was all she could do.  So we began to pray, the Hail Mary, and she prayed it with us!  She hadn’t said anything in days, but she called on Mary!  We were all in tears!

    We all know, and say, the “Hail Mary” prayer all the time.  It’s a great prayer, and we should probably say it even more often than we do.  Mary loves to hear it, loves to be close to all of us, who are her children.  Since we are crowning Mary today, I thought it might be a good thing to talk about that wonderful prayer and what it means, because just like every familiar prayer, we can sometimes forget what it means when we say it so often.

    “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…”

    Mary never thought she was great all by herself.  She always knew that it was because the Lord had chosen her and that the Lord had given her his grace, his help, that she could live a holy life and be the mother of Jesus.

    “blessed art thou among women…”

    Because Mary was holy, she is able to help all women to lead a holy life.  When they follow her as mothers or even as women of faith, they have a wonderful role model.  She was the first of all the apostles, the queen of the apostles, and that was because of her faith.  She is an example for all women, and really all people of faith.

    “and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

    Mary was the first earthly temple that Jesus was to be in.  Because of God’s grace and her faith, she was the perfect home for Jesus to be born in.  And she said yes to that, even though she wasn’t sure how it would happen or what it would mean.  She was faithful to God by saying “yes.”

    “Holy Mary, Mother of God…”

    Some people think that it is weird, or even wrong, for us to say that Mary is the mother of God.  But Jesus was perfectly human and perfectly divine.  Yes, he was God, but he was also a human person.  Every human has a mother, and so Mary is the human mother of Jesus who is God and man.  We say that she is the Mother of God the Word, according to his human nature.

    “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

    This is what makes us celebrate Mary today.  She is not just the mother of Jesus.  She is also the mother of John, the “favorite disciple”.  Jesus made them mother and son at the foot of the cross.  While he was on the cross, he said: “Woman, behold your son.  Son, behold your mother.”  Because we are disciples now, she is also the mother of you and me, Jesus’ “favorite disciples” today.  Just like every other good mother, Mary prays for all of her children, including you and me, all the time – now and at the hour of our death.

    Sometimes we forget how very important familiar prayers are.  But we shouldn’t overlook them.  Those familiar prayers will get us through so much in our lives if we remember to say them every day.  They will be the last things we forget, and they will see us through the good times and bad times of our lives.  They will give us words to pray when words fail us.  So remember the “Hail Mary,” and say it every day.  Mary loves to hear her children call on her.

    The “Hail Mary” says everything about why we crown Mary as Queen of the Apostles, Queen of the Church, and Queen of Heaven and Earth today.  She was faithful, she said yes to God’s will, she prays for us all the time.  Mary is the mother of all of us, and as we come close to Mother’s Day, it is so appropriate that we give Mary the gift of our love and devotion today.

    Pray it with me: Hail Mary, full of grace…

  • The Fifth Sunday of Easter

    The Fifth Sunday of Easter

    Today’s readings

    When I was growing up, I often helped my parents trim the shrubs around the house.  We did it so that we could trim off the over-growth and make the shrubs look neater, but also to keep the shrubs healthy and growing. But when I did it, I often thought about the fact that this process could not be all that painless for the shrub.  It involved cutting away branches, some of which were dead, but some of them looked for all the world like they were healthy and life-giving. Sometimes, to make the shrub more vibrant, some branches had to be radically cut away.

    Jesus talks about pruning in today’s Gospel.  And he does that to point to the fact that we have to give in to that kind of painful process in our own lives too/  We have to be willing to get some of us pruned away if we are to grow as healthy and fully human people.  That’s our task in this world: to become fully human, fully the people God created us to be.  So whatever gets in the way of that fullness has to be chopped off, and sometimes that’s just not pretty.  Pruning ourselves is painfully difficult, but we recognize that the things we prune away can be really destructive: relationships that entangle us in ways that are not healthy, pleasures that lead to sin, habits that are not virtuous.  However enjoyable these relationships or activities may seem to be, and however painful it may be to end them, end them we must in the name of pruning our lives to be healthier, to be more fully the people we were created to be.  There is no other way.

    There’s one other thing that our Gospel today tells us that we must do in order to become what we were meant to be, and that is to remain in Christ.  That’s what he says in the Gospel:

    Remain in me, as I remain in you.
    Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own
    unless it remains on the vine,
    so neither can you unless you remain in me.

    And I’d have to say that they key here is the word “remain” because Jesus uses it four times in that short quote!  “Remain in me,” Jesus says, as the branch remains in the vine.  “Remain in me,” Jesus says, so that you can bear much fruit.  “Remain in me,” Jesus says, so that you will not wither and dry up only to be pruned off and burned as rubbish. “Remain in me,” Jesus says, so that whatever you truly need and want will be done, and so that you can bear much fruit and be my disciples.

    If we want to be truly happy, if we want ultimate fulfillment in life, if we really want to be the wonderful creation God made us to be, we must remain in Jesus, because, as he says, “without me you can do nothing.”  And that’s true.  How many times have we tried to better ourselves and lost sight of the goal before we even started?  How many times have we tried to stamp out a pattern of sin in our lives, only to fall victim to it time and time again?  How many times have we tried to repair relationships only to have egos, hurts or resentments get in the way?  When we forget to start our work and continue our work with God’s help, we are destined to fail.  Apart from Jesus we can do nothing.  Well does he advise us to remain in him.

    But what does “remain in me” look like?  Unfortunately, we don’t get a clear-cut blueprint for that in today’s Gospel. And the truth is, remaining in Christ is going to be different for every person.  Just like pruning shrubs isn’t a once-and-for-all activity, we are going to have to do some pruning every now and then so that we can remain in Christ.  And so we’ll have to continue to be on the lookout for parts of our lives that are not ultimately life-giving and prune them away.  But we’ll also have to look out for opportunities that will fertilize our growth.  We have to check our growth daily, we have to examine where we are remaining every day.  That might start with Sunday Mass attendance, and perhaps move on to daily Mass, praying devotions like the Rosary, reading Scripture every day, and taking time at the end of the day to see whether we’ve been part of the vine, or are in danger of breaking away from it.  We have to be willing to renew ourselves in Christ every single day of our lives.

    It’s not so easy for us to be most fully the wonderful human creation we were made to be.  But that, brothers and sisters in Christ, is our calling and our joy.  May we all support one another in our times of pruning and through our journey of remaining.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Saint Joseph the Worker

    Saint Joseph the Worker

    Today’s readings (I chose option 2 of the first readings.)

    In his encyclical, Laborem Exercens, Pope Saint John Paul II said, echoing the sentiments of the Second Vatican Council, “The word of God’s revelation is profoundly marked by the fundamental truth that humankind, created in the image of God, shares by their work in the activity of the Creator and that, within the limits of their own human capabilities, they in a sense continue to develop that activity, and perfect it as they advance further and further in the discovery of the resources and values contained in the whole of creation.” (25)

    The Christian idea of work is that through the toil of work, the Christian joins her or himself to the cross of Christ, and through the effects of work, the Christian participates in the creative activity of our Creator God. Today we celebrate the feast day for all Christian workers, the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker. This feast recalls that Jesus himself was a worker, schooled in the drudgeries and the joys of the vocation of carpentry, and probably masonry, by his father, Saint Joseph, who worked hard, as many do today, to support his family. 

    In today’s first reading, Saint Paul, urges all disciples to do whatever they do, as if they were doing it for the Lord.  This is a great spiritual principal that reminds us that our lives our not all about us, that we receive our abilities and talents from the Lord, and that we are accountable to God for all that we do, in thought, word, and deed.  He reminds us, too, that our working should be cause for thanksgiving: thanksgiving that we have our abilities, and that we can use them for God’s purpose and for the support of ourselves and for the family entrusted to us.

    Sometimes, it is true, work is far from blessed. There is, of course, a responsibility of the employer to provide a workplace that upholds human dignity. But often work seems less than redemptive. To that, Saint John Paul said, “Sweat and toil, which work necessarily involves in the present condition of the human race, present the Christian and everyone who is called to follow Christ with the possibility of sharing lovingly in the work that Christ came to do. This work of salvation came about through suffering and death on a Cross. By enduring the toil of work in union with Christ crucified for us, humankind in a way collaborates with the Son of God for the redemption of humanity. They show themselves true disciples of Christ by carrying the cross in their turn every day in the activity that they are called upon to perform.” (Laborem Exercens, 27) 

    And so we all forge ahead in our daily work, whether that be as a carpenter, a tentmaker, a homemaker, a mother or father, a laborer, a white collar worker, a consecrated religious or ordained person, or whatever it may be. We forge ahead with the joy of bringing all the world to redemption through creation, through the cross and Resurrection of Christ, and through our daily work.

  • The Fourth Sunday of Easter (Good Shepherd Sunday)

    The Fourth Sunday of Easter (Good Shepherd Sunday)

    Today’s readings

    Jesus uses an image in today’s Gospel that would have been very familiar to his hearers, and with it, he illustrates the significance of following one’s vocation in life. In a basically suburban place in the modern world, this image loses some of its clarity, since we don’t regularly have contact with people who care for sheep, but I still think Jesus’ illustration is a good one, and we can certainly understand it.

    We know basically what a shepherd does, right? He cares for a flock of sheep. The shepherd has an important task: he must keep the flock healthy and safe, so that the flock’s owners will be able to get a good price for them at market. He has to find good grazing grounds so the sheep can be fed, must see that they stay together and get to market, and has to keep them safe from predators. Jesus makes a distinction between good and bad shepherds: those who actually care for the sheep as opposed to hired hands who are just collecting a paycheck. When a predator comes along, the hired hand takes off, leaving the sheep in harm’s way. But not the good shepherd: that shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

    Of course, Jesus illustrates this beautifully in his own life, and we’ve seen that in these Easter days. The sheep are God’s people, the danger is sin and death, the hired hands who didn’t really care about the sheep were the religious leaders of the time, and the Good Shepherd is Jesus, who laid down his life for God’s people in his Passion and death. That’s what good shepherds do: they give their lives for the flock.

    So here’s the take-away: we are all called to be good shepherds. We all have a flock. For a priest, that flock is his parish. For a religious brother or sister, that flock is the community in which they live. For parents, it’s their families. You get the idea. But the important detail is that the task is the same: to save their flock from all danger of the foe. The foe remains sin and death, brought about by the predator who is the devil. The vocation of us shepherds is to get the sheep of our flock to heaven, which is a participation in the vocation of Jesus the Good Shepherd.

    Which means we have to be true to our promises. For priests, that would be preaching the Gospel faithfully, not just telling people what they want to hear, but challenging them to grow in their relationship with Christ. For parents that means being faithful in their marriages and diligently bringing their children up in the practice of the faith, as they promised at their child’s baptism.

    What’s important to know is this: all of our vocations work together. If we’re all faithful to our promises, God can do his work in us and through us. For example, when parents faithfully bring their children to Mass, and priests faithfully preach the Gospel, then children can grow up with a relationship with our Lord that will see them through whatever life throws at them, and can bring them one day to their goal of eternal life.

    To all of this, there are many distractions, wolves that threaten to scatter and destroy the flock. But if we are good shepherds, then we can count on the guidance of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, to bless our efforts and lead us all to life.

    This is the time when we celebrate shepherding vocations.  This past Friday, Greg Alberts, one of our current seminarians, and Tom Logue, our seminarian intern last year, were ordained to the transitional deaconate, on their way to priestly ordination next May.  In May of this year, our beloved Deacon John will be ordained to the priesthood for service to the Dominican order and to our diocese.  And during this time, we have several weddings scheduled.  All of this is joy, all of this is Christ the Good Shepherd continuing his work, leading us all to eternal life.  Let’s be sure to pray for all of them, for new vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and for faithfulness in the living of all holy vocations.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Friday of the Second Week of Easter

    Friday of the Second Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Our first reading today is filled with kind of intense drama.  The disciples, ever since Jesus rose from the dead and sent them the gift of the Holy Spirit, have been going around and preaching in the name of Jesus.  This is obviously attracting the attention of the religious leaders, and they’re not too happy about it.  It bothers them that the crucifixion of Jesus wasn’t the end of the story.  The news that he rose from the dead is something they are trying to cover up, and they don’t want anyone to know about it.

    So they take counsel together, and intend to deal with the disciples so that they will stop preaching.  But there’s a little interesting plot twist.  The official Gamaliel is trying to keep a balance between wanting to silence the disciples and not wanting to anger the people who are hearing them.  So he convinces the other officials to let the whole thing play out.  He reasons that if this isn’t of God, which he obviously things is the case, well, then, it will all die out on its own.  But if it is of God, he cautions the others that they don’t want to get in the way of that.  Now Gamaliel is obviously trying to brush the disciples off and cover his bets in case this doesn’t go well, but in doing that, he’s actually being king of prophetic.  We know that the preaching of the disciples was certainly something that came from God, and we know how it worked out.  After all, we’re here talking about their preaching today.

    But the courage of the apostles is inspiring, isn’t it?  They have been warned twice, and put in prison, and now beaten, and still we are told that “all day long, both at the temple and in their homes, they did not stop teaching and proclaiming the Christ, Jesus.”  Thank God for that!  We are grateful for their new-found courage today, or we wouldn’t be here worshipping right now.

    We are called to display that same courage and to speak non-stop of our Lord Jesus Christ in all that we say and do.  The psalmist today reminds us that the only thing worth seeking is to dwell in the house of the Lord, and the only way to do that is to follow our Risen Lord.  So when you’re making a decision about what you’re going to say to someone who may be annoying you, or what you’re going to do in a difficult situation, stop and think about how you can proclaim the Christ, Jesus, in what you say and do.  God built a Church and is filling heaven because of the preaching of the disciples.  He can do a lot with our own proclaiming the Word in what we say and do, too.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!

  • Second Sunday of Easter (Sunday of Divine Mercy)

    Second Sunday of Easter (Sunday of Divine Mercy)

    Today’s readings

    I always like to say that today, this octave day of Easter Sunday, this Sunday of Divine Mercy, is the feast day for those of us who sometimes question things, and the apostle, Saint Thomas, is would then be our patron saint.  And so today we can give Thomas a hard time for his unbelief, and we can disparage all those other “doubting Thomases” in our lives, or, maybe, we can just come to the Lord in our humility and say “My Lord and my God!”  Today, we celebrate with all the joy of Easter Day that God’s Divine Mercy reaches us in our doubt and uncertainty and calls us to belief.

    Now, I’m sure we can all think of at least one time when we were reluctant to believe something, or had our faith tested, only to have Jesus stand before us and say, “Peace be with you.”  I remember the time that it became apparent to me that the Lord was calling me to go to seminary after so many years being out of school.  I had a long list of reasons why that wouldn’t work, why it couldn’t be done at this stage of my life, why anyone would be a better choice than me.  And I never got a direct answer to any of that.  Never.  In some ways, all I got was Jesus standing in the midst of my questioning and saying to me “Peace be with you.”  And six months later I was in seminary.  Letting Jesus fill you with peace can be life-changing.

    I am going to guess that you had that same kind of experience at some point in your life, at some time.  If not, you will.  Maybe it was in college when you started really questioning your faith and felt like everything anyone had ever told you was a lie.  Or maybe it was the time you were called to do something at Church, or even take a turn in your career, and couldn’t possibly believe that you were qualified to do that.  Maybe it was the time it suddenly dawned on you that you were a parent, and had no idea how you could ever raise a child.  It could even have been the time when you completely changed your career – as I did – and weren’t totally sure that was God’s will for you, or how it would all work out.  Some time in our life, we have to take a leap of faith, or if we don’t, we will spend our forever wondering “what if.”

    Sure: like Saint Thomas, we want evidence, we want hard facts, a good hard look at the big picture, something that will confirm our decision before we’re ready to jump in.  We want to “see the mark of the nails in his hands and put [our] fingers into the nail-marks and put [our] hands into his side.”  But that’s not faith.  Some people say that seeing is believing, but faith tells us that believing is seeing.  “Blessed are they,” Jesus says, “who have not seen but still believe.”  We sometimes first have to make an act of faith, a leap of faith if you will, before we can really see what God is doing in our lives.  And that’s the hard part; that’s the part that, like Thomas, we are reluctant to do.

    Jesus makes three invitations to us today.  The first is to believe.  Believe with all your heart and mind and soul.  Believe first, and leave the seeing to later.  Trust that God is with you, walking with you, guiding you, willing the best for you.  This is Divine Mercy Sunday, so we are called to trust in our merciful God who pours out his love on us each day.   Be ready to make that leap of faith.  What God has in store for us is so much better than our puny plans for our lives.  We have to know that if God calls us to do something, he will give us what we need to do it.  Be blessed by not seeing but still believing.

    The second invitation is to touch.  “Put your finger here and see my hands,” Jesus says to Thomas, “and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”  He makes that same invitation to us every time we walk up to receive Holy Communion.  What a gift it is to be able to share in Christ’s wounds, to be bound up in his Passion, to live the resurrection and to be nourished by his very body and blood.  Just like Thomas, we’re invited to touch so that we too might believe.

    The third invitation is to live a new day.  The Gospel tells us that Jesus first came to the Apostles on the evening of the “first day of the week.”  That detail isn’t there so that we know what day it is or can mark our calendars.  In the Gospel, the “first day of the week” refers to the new day that Jesus is bringing about – a new day of faith, a new day of trust in God’s Divine Mercy, a new day of being caught up in God’s life.  We are invited to that new day every time we gather for worship.

    We will have doubts, periodically and sometimes persistently.  But God does not abandon us in our doubt.  Just like Thomas, he comes to us in the midst of our uncertainty and says to us: “Do not be unbelieving, but believe.”  “Peace be with you.”

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

    Jesus, I trust in you.

  • Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of Our Lord

    Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of Our Lord

    Today’s readings

    There’s certainly a flurry of activity in today’s readings, isn’t there?  Especially in the Gospel, we see Mary Magdalene run from the empty tomb to get the Apostles.  And then Peter and the “disciple whom Jesus loved” ran to the tomb.  This flurry of activity centers around a crisis in their faith, a time of confusion that will ultimately lead to stronger faith.

    So Mary comes to the tomb, early in the morning, while it is still dark.  In Saint John’s Gospel, the idea of light or dark always means something more than whether or not you can see outside without a flashlight.  Often he is talking about light and darkness in terms of good and evil.  That’s the way it was when we heard of Judas in Friday’s Passion reading: when he went out to do what he had to do, the Gospel says “and it was night.”  That wasn’t just to record the time of day, it meant that we had come to the hour of darkness.  But here when Mary comes to the tomb, I think the darkness refers to something else.  Here, I think it means that the disciples were still in the dark about what was happening and what was going to happen.

    Obviously, their confusion gives that away. Jesus had tried to tell them what was going to happen, but to be fair, what was going to happen was so far outside their realm of experience, that really, how could they have understood this before it ever happened?  All they know is what Mary told them: the tomb is empty and she has no idea of where they have taken the Lord.  And after all that had just happened with his arrest, farce of a trial, and execution, their heads had to be spinning.  How could they ever know this was all part of God’s plan?

    And even us – we who know that this was part of God’s plan – could we explain what was going on?  Could we give a step-by-step picture of what happened when, and why?  I know I couldn’t.  But, like you, I take it on faith that, after Jesus died, the Father raised him up in glory.  It’s a leap of faith that I delight in, because it is that leap of faith that gives me hope and promises me a future.  How could we ever get through our lives without the grace of that hope?  How could we ever endure the bad news that appears on our TV screens, in newspapers, and even closer to home, in our own lives – how could we endure that kind of news without the hope of the Resurrection?

    And so, even though there is this flurry of kind of confused activity among the Apostles this Easter morning, at least this day finds them running toward something, rather than running away as they had the night of the Passover meal.  They are running toward their Lord – or at least where they had seen him last, hoping for something better, and beginning with the “disciple whom Jesus loved,” coming to understand at last.  It’s not night anymore for them.  The day is dawning, the hope of the Resurrection is becoming apparent, the promise of new life is on the horizon.

    And may this morning find us running too.  Running toward our God in new and deeper ways.  Running back to the Church if this has been the first visit you’ve made in a long while.  Running back to families if you have been estranged, especially as we look forward to the end of this pandemic, whenever that may be.  Running to others to witness to our faith both in word and in acts of service.  We Christians have to be that flurry of activity in the world that helps the hope of the Resurrection to dawn on a world groaning in darkness.  It’s not night anymore.  The stone has been rolled away. 

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • 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!