Friday, May 1, 2015

"YOU WILL DO GREATER WORKS."


Homily for May 2rd, 2015: 14:6-14.

“Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do,” Jesus says, “and will do even greater works than these …” How is that possible? Well, consider. During his life on earth Jesus= works were confined to just a few years, and to one very small part of the world. But these works did not end with Jesus= return to his Father in heaven. They have continued, through his Church. Starting as a sect of Judaism, the Church throughout the whole world and has continued through twenty centuries of history. We the Church=s members are charged to continue Jesus= works. He has now no hands to bless people than ours; no eyes to look upon people in love than ours; no tongue to speak words of love, encouragement, or reproof but ours; no arms to support people and their burdens than ours. The Church=s works are greater than those of her Lord because they are more extended in time and space than they could ever be during the few years that Jesus walked the dusty roads of Palestine. And the Church=s works are great C amazing in fact C because they have never ceased despite the failures and betrayals of Church leaders and members. The betrayals began when, at Jesus= arrest, Athey all forsook him and fled@ (Mk 14:50); and when, only hours later, their leader, Peter, three times denied that he even knew the Lord. Should we be surprised when we hear of similar betrayals today?

Let me close with a story. It’s only a story, but it tells us something important.  When the Lord Jesus returned to heaven at the ascension the angels wanted to know everything he had done on earth.  So Jesus told them how he had gone about doing good, healing the sick, and teaching people about the freely given love of God.

AThat=s wonderful, Lord,@ the angels said.  ABut now that you=re no longer in earth, won=t people soon forget about what you have done and said?@

AOh no,@ Jesus explained.  AI founded a Church.  I chose twelve men to be its first bishops.  I spent three years teaching them: how to pray, how to heal people, how to free them from their burdens, how to teach others about God=s freely given love.  They are going to carry on my work.@

AThat=s all well and good, Lord,@ the angels replied.  ABut we know how fickle and unreliable these human beings are.  How do you know that they will keep on doing all those things you trained them to do?  How do you know that they will remain faithful?@

At that the Lord fell silent.  He looked down and seemed to be thinking.  Then he looked up and, with that beautiful, radiant smile of his, said very simply: AI trust them.@

Thursday, April 30, 2015

"I GO TO PREPARE A PLACE FOR YOU."


       May 1st, 2015: John 14:1-6: “I go to prepare a place for you.”

                Jesus has just washed his disciples' feet. Then he tells them he would be
        leaving them. The news plunges them into grief and fear. Jesus responds by
        saying: "I am going to prepare a place for you ... so that where I am you also
        may be."      

          That is a tremendous claim. The disciples whom Jesus was addressing didn’t yet know him as we know him — as the divine Son of God. To them he was a man like themselves. Realization that he was more came only after the resurrection. “I am going,” Jesus assures his friends, “to prepare a place for you. I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.” Down through the centuries Christians have pondered and prayed over this promise. Here is what three of them have said.

St. Cyprian, 3rd century Bishop of Carthage in North Africa:

“We reckon paradise to be our home. A great throng awaits us there of those dear to us, parents, brothers, sons. A packed and numerous throng longs for us, of those already free from anxiety for their own salvation, who are still concerned for our salvation. What joy they share with us when we come into their sight and embrace them! What pleasure there is there in the heavenly kingdom, with no fear of death, and what supreme happiness with the enjoyment of eternal life.” [Office of Readings for Friday of the 34th week of the year)]

St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa from 395 to 430.

“How happy will be our shout of Alleluia there, how carefree, how secure from any adversary, where there is no enemy, where no friend perishes. There praise is offered to God, and here too; but here it is by people who are anxious, there by people who are free from care; here by people who must die, there by those who will live forever. Here praise is offered in hope, there by people who enjoy the reality; here by those who are pilgrims on the way, there by those who have reached their own country.” [Office of Readings for Saturday of the 34th week of the year)]

Pope Benedict XVI, now retired:

Christianity does not proclaim merely a certain salvation of the soul in some imprecise place beyond, in which everything in this world that was precious and loved by us is erased, but it promises eternal life, ‘the life of the world to come’: nothing of what is precious and loved will be ruined, but will find its fulfillment in God. All the hairs of our head are numbered, Jesus said one day (cf. Matthew 10:30). The final world will also be the fulfillment of this earth, as St. Paul states: ‘Creation itself will be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God’" (Romans 8:21). [Aug. 15, 2010]

          How do we reach the joys of which these three great Christians speak? Jesus tells us in the final sentence of today’s gospel: “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

 

    

       

 

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

GOD'S MESSENGERS


Homily for April 30th, 2015: John 13:16-20.

          How does God come to us? Through others. This is what Jesus tells us in today’s gospel reading. Prefacing his assurance with the double Amen, a form of special emphasis, Jesus speaks first of those he sends as his messengers: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me.” Here are two examples.
        A woman rings the rectory doorbell and asks if she can go into the church to pray. The priest who opens the door sees that she is deeply troubled. In answer to his enquiry, she tells him that her husband has just told her that he no longer believes in God and is leaving her. The priest assures her that despite this terrible blow, the Lord Jesus is still with her, loving her with a love that will remain with her, no matter what. In accepting this assurance, and taking it into the church with her as she prays, she is accepting the One who sent her to this priest, Jesus’ personal representative to her in her grief.  

          Here's a second example. A member of the parish St. Vincent de Paul Society listens to an equally desperate message on the Society’s answering machine. It is from a young man whose life is in a complete mess. When the two meet, the Vincent de Paul representative is able to tell the caller where he can receive help to get his life in order and, with God’s help, begin to stand on his own feet. In accepting and acting on this offer of help, the caller is in touch with Jesus himself.

          Today’s gospel contains a further assurance from Jesus: “Whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” This assurance is fulfilled when, with trusting faith, we receive Holy Communion, when we receive the forgiveness of our sins in the sacrament of reconciliation, or experience the healing touch of Jesus, the Good Physician, in the anointing of the sick. In each of these cases, in receiving the human messenger whom the Father sends to us, we are receiving the Father himself: all his love, his power, his purity, his goodness, his peace. And when we have Him, we have everything.   

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

"WHOEVER SEES ME SEES THE ONE WHO SENT ME."


Homily for April 29th, 2015: John 12:44-50.

          “Whoever sees me sees the one who sent me,” Jesus tells us in today’s gospel reading.

          What do we see when we look at Jesus? We see that he preferred simple, ordinary people. He came to the world in an obscure provincial village on the edge of Nowhere, where nothing interesting or important ever happened. Jesus moved not among wealthy or sophisticated people, or among scholars and intellectuals, but among ordinary people.

Jesus was of the earth, earthy. In his youth he worked with his hands in the carpenter’s shop. His teaching was full of references to simple things: the birds of the air, the wind and the raging waves, the lilies of the field, the vine, the lost sheep, the woman searching for her one lost coin, leavening dough with yeast, the thief breaking in at night. 

          In preferring simple people and simple things, Jesus was showing us what God is like. He who is God’s word, God’s personal communication to us, is saying that God loves humble people. In his earthiness Jesus shows us God’s love for this world and everything in it.

Many people think of God and religion as concerned only with some higher, spiritual realm. Not true! God loves the earth and the things of earth. He must love them, because he made them. And God does not make anything that is not lovable. God made each of us, using our parents as his agents. And he loves us with a love that will never let us go.

How do we know that? Jesus told us himself when he said: “Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). And Paul writes in his Letter to the Romans: “It is precisely in this that God proves his love for us: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (5:8).
          That, friends, is the gospel. That is the Good News.

Monday, April 27, 2015

"THE FATHER AND I ARE ONE.."


     Homily for April 28th, 2015: John 10:22-30.
A careful reading of the gospels shows us that Jesus was very guarded about revealing his true identity. Pressed in today’s gospel to say whether he is God’s long awaited Messiah (“the Christ” in English) he replies: “I told you and you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me.” What works is Jesus referring to?  
          First on any list would be his miracles: the healings he performed, the stilling of the storm on the lake, the raising of the widow’s son at Naim and of Jesus’ friend Lazarus. Jesus also fed the hungry: the vast crowd in the wilderness, his twelve apostles at the Last Supper. After his resurrection Jesus prepared a lakeside breakfast for Peter, James, and John, tired and hungry from a night of fruitless fishing, with the net coming back empty time after time, until a man on shore, still unrecognized, calls out, “Cast the net on the right side” — and they feel the net heavy with fish, and “the disciple whom Jesus loved” calls out excitedly: “It is the Lord.” Jesus’ works also include his beautiful stories — the  parables — and all his teaching about the love of God, his heavenly Father: the love that will never let us go.  
        These works say nothing to you, Jesus tells his questioners, because “you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice; I know them and they follow me.” What does it take to be among Jesus’ sheep? The first requirement is openness: willingness to learn, not just once, but all our lives long. People who think they know it all already, that they have nothing more to learn after their formal education is finished, cannot be among Jesus’ sheep. “My sheep hear my voice,” Jesus says. That requires listening, all our lives long. Our education is never finished as long as life lasts.
         To those who come to him not as skeptics, saying ‘show me,’ but in a spirit of openness Jesus gives the greatest of all gifts: eternal life. “No one can take them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”
         That too is the gospel. That is the Good News.
 

Sunday, April 26, 2015

"I CAME THAT THEY MIGHT HAVE LIFE."


Homily for April 27th, 2015: John 10:1-10.
          “Whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of he sheep,” Jesus tells us in today’s gospel reading. “The sheep follow him because they recognize his voice.” Those who follow Jesus find that he is always close to them, yet that he remains the totally Other. They know his goodness, his kindness, his patience, his strength, his courage. They recognize Jesus Christ as the embodiment of everything good and noble and worthwhile in human life: completely sinless, selfless, pure, holy. Those who try to follow Jesus, the Good Shepherd, experience him as a man set apart; yet drawing people to himself with a mysterious magnetism which centuries cannot diminish. (Why is it always quiet in the church when I speak about Jesus Christ? Why is it quiet right now?)
          Jesus Christ is the one who understands us when no one else understands. He is the one who raises us up when we fall; whose help is effective and powerful when every other help fails. He is the Good Shepherd. He tells us in today’s gospel: “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” Does that mean somewhere else, tomorrow? pie-in-the-sky-when-we-die? No! Though the abundant life which Jesus came to give us will never be complete in this world, he wants it to begin here and now.
          Perhaps someone is asking: “Can you prove that?” To that I must answer: “No, I cannot prove it. You must prove it.” You do so when you take Jesus at his word; when you listen for the shepherd’s voice, and heed his call. Once you do that, you will be able to say, in the words of the best known and most loved of all the 150 psalms: “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall lack.”
          Jesus’ words in today’s gospel are a reassurance and a promise. But they are more. They are also an invitation, and a challenge, addressed personally to you: “Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. ... I came so that they might have life and have it to the full” [New American Bible]. 
          That, friends, is the gospel. That is the good news. Jesus came so that we might have life, and have it to the full!