"HE REBUKED THEM FOR THEIR DISBELIEF."

April 27^th, 2019: Easter Saturday. Mark 16: 9-15.

 

          Throughout Easter week we have been hearing gospel readings which tell of the risen Lord Jesus sending out those to whom he appeared to proclaim that he is risen. On Monday he encountered the women visiting his empty tomb and told them: “Do not be afraid! Go and carry the news to my brothers . . .” On Tuesday we heard him giving the same command to Mary Magdalene. On Wednesday he encountered two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus and made himself known to them “in the breaking of the bread” – the first post-Easter celebration of Mass. On Thursday we heard the account of Jesus appearing to the apostles, with the previously missing Thomas, a week after Easter. “You are witnesses of all this,” he tells them: not just a statement, but also a command. Yesterday we heard about Jesus encountering seven of his apostles, tired from a night of fruitless fishing on the lake, and charged Peter to “feed my sheep.”

 

          Today’s gospel reading is a kind of summary of all this. Twice over we hear that even after hearing the testimony of people who had seen the risen Lord, “they refused to believe.” Sitting at table with the eleven remaining apostles Jesus “takes them to task for their disbelief and stubbornness,” Mark writes, “since they had put no faith in those who had seen him after he had been raised.”

 

          Note what immediately follows. To these men whose faith was not merely weak, but missing entirely, Jesus says: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the good news to all creation.” That challenged not only those eleven at table with Jesus. It also challenges us. When we think our faith is too weak to enable us bear witness to the risen Lord, and to proclaim his good news to an often hostile though hungry world, we should remember: the first witnesses were also weak in faith, even lacking in any faith. Yet Jesus did not hesitate to send them. He knew that in the very act of proclaiming the good news to others their own faith would be kindled, and deepened.

 

Another man who knew that was the namesake of the present Pope: St. Francis of Assisi. “Preach always,” Francis said. “When necessary, use words.”

YOU HAVE A FRIEND IN HEAVEN.

April 26^th, 2019: Easter Friday. John 21:1-14.

AHave you caught anything?@ Jesus calls out from the shore at dawn to his friends in their boat. What he really said was: AYou haven=t caught anything, have you?@ Jesus was poking fun at their lack of success in the one thing they were supposed to be good at: catching fish. Not once in the gospels is there any record of Peter and his friends catching a single fish without Jesus= help. Here that help is the command to try again. They do so – and at once they feel the net heavy with fish. One of those in the boat tells Peter: AIt is the Lord.@ It is the unnamed Adisciple whom Jesus loved.@ Peter and the others hurry ashore and find a charcoal fire with fish on it, and bread. Knowing that they would be hungry after their long night=s labor, Jesus has made breakfast for them.

Did Peter recall another charcoal fire, at night, in the courtyard of the High Priest=s house at Jerusalem, where Peter stood warming himself? We all know what Peter did that night. Three times he denied even knowing the Lord and Master he so deeply loved. How mortified Peter must have been to recall his weakness.

Is there someone here today who feels weak? You have made so many good resolutions. Some you have kept, others not. You have high ideals. Yet time and again you have compromised. You had so many dreams, hopes, plans. How many have you achieved? You wanted so much. You have settled for so little. If that is your story, you have a friend in heaven. His name is Simon Peter. 

If, like Peter, you have discovered that you are weak, take heart! Jesus doesn’t ask you to be strong, for he knows your weakness. He doesn’t ask you to be a pioneer or a leader. He knows that is too hard: that you would soon lose your way C or at least your nerve. He asks one thing alone. He asks you to follow him. 

Following Jesus Christ is not always easy. If you know your weakness, however, you have an advantage over those who still think they are strong. Then you will trust, as you try to follow your Master and Lord, not in any strength of your own, but only and always in the strength of Jesus Christ. His strength is always reliable; and it is always available. We have only to ask, and Jesus is there.  

"YOU ARE WITNESSES"

Homily for April 25^th, 2019: Luke 24:35-48.

“You are witnesses of these things,” Jesus tells his first frightened and then incredulous friends at the end of this gospel reading. Those words were not merely a statement. They were a sending, a command. The risen Lord continues to issue this command today – to us.

How do we bear witness to Jesus Christ? There are as many ways as there are witnesses. A few years back our local newspaper had an article about one such witness: Sister Irene Marie of the Little Sisters of the Poor, who take a special vow of “hospitality to the aged poor.” As “collector” for her community, she hits the street daily to collect supplies for their 100-bed home for the elderly. One of her regular stops is the wholesale food market, Produce Row. A man who sees her there often says: “I guess a polite way to describe Produce Row is ‘tough.’ But Sister Irene just goes right in there and tells those guys what she needs. They’re like little puppies around her.”

What’s her secret? She is careful not to push too hard, the article says. “You can’t expect people to give what they can’t afford,” Sister Irene told the reporter who wrote the article. “If we pushed like that, then God wouldn’t bless our work.”

          She wasn’t always in this line of work. “I was a seamstress in our Cleveland house,” she told the reporter. “One day Mother Superior told me I was going to be the collector.” Wasn’t she worried about taking on something for which she had no experience?  “Not really,” Sister Irene replied. “I’d never sewn before either.” That’s amusing, of course. But the deep and simple faith reflected in that Sister’s words is also uplifting. She is a shining witness to the power, and love, of the risen Lord Jesus.      

Friends, you don’t have to be a religious Sister to be a witness to Jesus Christ. You don’t have to be a priest either. There are people here in this church right now who, like that Sister, are bearing witness to the risen Lord by the inner quality of their lives: women and men of deep faith, steadfast hope even when all looks dark, and active, generous love for God and others.

          Here in the Eucharist we encounter the One who sends us out to be his witnesses in daily life. Here, in word and sacrament, we receive once again all his power, all his goodness, all his purity, all his love. And when we have Him, we have everything.  

THE TWO TABLES

THE TWO TABLES

Homily for April 24^th, 2019.  Luke 24:13-35. 

 

          This best known of all the resurrection stories is also one of the most loved.  The story appeals because it shows Jesus coming to his friends in the two ways he has always come: through word and sacrament. After Jesus’ disappearance, his two friends recall that their hearts had been “burning within us while he spoke to us ... and opened the Scriptures to us.” More than once the gospels record that “he spoke with authority,” and not like other religious teachers. (Matt. 7:29 and parallels.)

Jesus is still speaking with authority today; and our hearts too can burn within us, as we ponder his word. For that to happen, however, we must spend time alone with the Lord, in silence. The 16^th century Spanish Carmelite, St. John of the Cross, says: “The Father spoke one Word, which is his Son, and this word he speaks always in eternal silence; and in silence it must be heard by the soul.”

          Though the two friends of Jesus in today’s gospel feel their hearts burning within them as they listen to the Lord’s words, they recognize him only “in the breaking of the bread” – the first post-Easter celebration of Mass.

          Jesus’ swift disappearance at Emmaus shows also that he did not come to these friends of his so that they could luxuriate in a great spiritual experience. He came to empower them to carry the good news of his resurrection to others. Every encounter with God in Scripture is for the sake of others.

          Let me conclude with some verses written as a meditation on the Emmaus story. They are by a monk of the Benedictine abbey in St. Louis, Fr. Ralph Wright.

Sing of one who walks beside us / And this day is living still,

          One who now is closer to us / Than the thought our hearts distill,

          One who once upon a hilltop / Raised against the power of sin,

          Died in love as his own creatures / Crucified their God and King.

 

          Strangers we have walked beside him / The long journey of the day,

          And have told him of the darkness / That has swept our hope away.

          He has offered words of comfort, / Words of energy and light,

          And our hearts have blazed within us / As he saved us from the night.

 

Stay with us, dear Lord, and raise us / Once again the night is near.

Dine with us and share your wisdom. / Free our hearts from every fear.

In the calm of each new evening, / In the freshness of each dawn,

If you hold us fast in friendship / We will never be alone.

THE DOORS WERE LOCKED ... FOR FEAR

April 28th, 2019: Sunday of Easter, Year C. Rev. 1:9-11a,12-13, 17-19; John 20: 19-31.

AIM:  To show that the risen Lord, who banished the fears of the apostles, also banishes our fears.

Once we have learned the solution to a puzzling mystery, it is almost impossible to recapture our thoughts before the mystery was solved. For this reason we cannot easily enter into the state of mind of Jesus= friends in today=s gospel. We know something they do not yet know: that Jesus= tomb was found empty Easter morning not because his body had been removed, but because he had been raised from death to a new and higher life, beyond death.

Though it is already evening of Athat first day of the week@ (the first Easter Sunday), Jesus= friends know only that his tomb has been found empty. This causes them not joy, however, but fear. If their dead Master was not to be left in peace even in the tomb, what would his enemies do next? No wonder that they lock the doors, hoping by this feeble precaution to shut out the unknown dangers that every man in the room can feel in his bones.

Beneath this fear for their own safety, the disciples have another reason for fear; one so deep and terrible that none of them dares to speak of it. This fear had begun at Jesus= arrest Thursday evening, when Athey all forsook him and fled@ (Mk 14:50). The fear deepened at Jesus= death Friday afternoon. This deepest fear of all was connected with their answer to the question Jesus had put to them at what they now realized had been a turning point in his ministry. 

AWho do men say that the Son of Man is?@ Jesus had asked. They had responded with the various speculations and rumors about their Master. When Jesus pressed them further by asking, AAnd who do you say that I am?@ Peter had answered for all: AYou are the Messiah, the Son of the living God@ (Mt 16:14-16).

And now he was dead.

With him the whole basis for Peter=s confession of faith seemed to have collapsed. God had proved powerless to rescue his anointed servant, the one they had come to believe was the long-awaited Messiah. As Jesus hung on the cross, the bystanders had taunted him: ACome down from the cross and save yourself, if you are indeed the Son of God@ (Mt 27:40). To this mocking challenge Jesus had given no answer. His death seemed to destroy the very basis of the disciples= faith.  What was there left to believe in now? No wonder they were afraid.

Though we who know of Jesus= resurrection have difficulty sharing his disciples’ state of mind before the appearance of the risen Lord, we have little difficulty sharing their fear. We all have our private fears. As a cancer survivor, I live, like some of you, with the fear that the disease could return with deadly consequences. Though I normally sleep soundly, there are nights when I do not. So when I awake at night with an ache or pain, I wonder: Is this it? In the morning, of course, the fear is gone. 

In addition to such private fears there is, for all of us, fear of terrorism: in the air, over our country or elsewhere; in any place were large numbers of people gather. Parents across our country with sons or daughters in military service, some here in our parish, live with fear every day. We pray that the Lord will send his angels to protect these fine young people who have chosen to put country ahead of self.

Whatever our fears may be, we try, like Jesus= disciples in the locked room at Jerusalem, to shut them out. I am surely not the only one who looks away, or sometimes turns off the television, when the screen shows scenes of fiery death and destruction for our own people, and for the long-suffering people in the Middle East. We have also more sophisticated ways of trying to shut out our fears. We have technology which would have boggled the minds of those men in the locked room in Jerusalem: interplanetary travel, computers, machines to save or at least prolong life in the face of accidents and illnesses which were previously fatal. We have ever more sophisticated means of recreation: snowmobiles, water sleds, and computer games. The list goes on and on. What are all these things, at bottom, but desperate attempts to keep our fears at bay? The achievements that these things represent are magnificent. Yet our fears remain.

Equally incapable of banishing fear were the locked doors behind which Jesus= disciples gather in Jerusalem Aon the evening of that first day of the week.@  What turned their fear into joy was the appearance of the Master whose death had plunged them into bitter despair and confirmed their worst fears. His appearance despite the locked doors shows that he had been freed from the limitations of ordinary earthly life. Yet what they saw was no mere vision. The wounds in his hands and side convinced them that they had with them the same friend and Lord whose death they had so recently mourned.

Jesus= first words address their fears and banish fear: APeace be with you.@  This greeting was the fulfillment of words Jesus had spoken the night before his death: APeace is my parting gift to you, my own peace, such as the world cannot give. Set your troubled hearts at rest, and banish your fears@ (John 14:27).

At the Last Supper, immediately before speaking those words, Jesus had told them that the basis of this peace that the world could not give was to be his gift of the Holy Spirit (14:26). Now Jesus fulfills this promise as he breathes on them and says: AReceive the Holy Spirit.@ In this Spirit they have the abiding presence of Jesus and the gift of adoption as God=s daughters and sons that is the basis of Christian peace.

At every Mass we recall this imparting of Jesus= abiding peace through the gift of the Holy Spirit in the prayer before Communion: ALord Jesus Christ, who said to your apostles, peace I leave you, my peace I give you.  Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church, and graciously grant her peace and unity in accordance with your will. Who live and reign for ever and ever.@

Immediately after this prayer, we are invited to share a sign of the Lord=s peace with one another. As we do so, we are united spiritually but truly with that little band of previously frightened but suddenly joyful men in that locked room in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. Time and space fall away, as we hear with joy the words of the risen Lord, once dead but now alive forevermore, Aholding the keys of death and the netherworld,@ as our second reading told us. Jesus= closing words in the gospel today were addressed to the apostle Thomas. They refer, however, to us as well. AHave you come to believe because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.@

The gospel is not just long ago and far away. True to his promise of abiding peace such as the world cannot give, Jesus renews the gift of his Spirit here, and in every Mass. We lay hold of his gift by faith, saying with the apostle Thomas, and with great joy: AMy Lord and my God!@

"DO NOT CLING TO ME."

April 23^rd, 2019: Easter Tuesday: John 20:11-18.

          Mary Magdalene “saw Jesus … but did not know it was Jesus,” we just heard in the gospel. That was the experience of almost all those to whom Jesus appeared after his resurrection. Why? Jesus had not returned to his former life. He had been raised to a new life, beyond death. His appearance was somehow changed. Mary Magdalene realized it was the Lord standing before her only when he spoke her name. The gospel reading does not tell us how she reacted. We can easily infer this, however, from Jesus’ words: “Do not cling to me! Go to my brothers” with the news that I am risen.

          A young man thinking of priesthood told the priest who was helping him with his vocational decision that he had finally found courage to send in his application for admission to one of the Church’s religious orders for men. A few days after he received word of his acceptance into the novitiate, he was driving down the highway when he thought of a girl he had known. “She’d be the perfect wife for me,” he thought. “Am I crazy, throwing away that chance for happiness?” He got so upset that he prayed: “’Lord, you’re going to have to help me.” Immediately, he said, “the Lord came to me so strongly that the tears ran down my cheeks, and I had to pull off the road.”

          “Johnny,” the priest told him, “the Lord came to you to strengthen your faith and your decision to serve Him as a priest. You must be thankful for that. But don’t try to hold on to that spiritual experience by running the video over again in your head. That is spiritual gluttony.”

          Then the priest told him about Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Lord, and Jesus’ command to her: “Do not cling to me,” but go to my brothers with the news of my resurrection. Every encounter with the Lord is given to us not just for ourselves, the priest told the young man, to give us a nice warm spiritual experience inside. The Lord comes to us to send us to others – his brothers and sisters; yes, and ours too. 

 

"GO, TELL MY BROTHERS."

April 22^nd, 2019: Easter Monday: Matthew 28:8-15.

          “Do not be afraid!” Jesus says to the women who have just found the tomb empty. “Go and carry the news to my brothers.” The first witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection were women. That is significant. In Jesus’ day the testimony of women was considered about as reliable as the testimony of a three-year-old child today. Had the gospel writers made up the story of the empty tomb, it is hardly likely that they would have cited as their primary witnesses people whose testimony had little weight with their contemporaries.

          Jesus’ command to carry the good news of his resurrection to others is important for another reason. The command remains as urgent today as it was on that first Easter morning. Our wonderful Pope Francis never tires of telling us that we are a missionary Church. We “cannot passively and calmly wait in our church buildings,” he says. “Christians have the duty to proclaim the Gospel without excluding anyone. Instead of seeming to impose new obligations, they should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet. It is not by proselytizing that the Church grows, but by attraction.” (Evangelii gaudium Nos. 14-15)

          What is it about this first Latin American pope which so impresses people – and not just Catholics? Just about any priest will tell you that from the first days after his election, and continuing today, Catholics and non-Catholics alike come up to us spontaneously to express their admiration for Pope Francis. They perceive at once that he is a man of joy. And joy is contagious.

          If the Church is filled with joy, it will be an evangelizing community. The Church, Pope Francis tells us, “knows how to rejoice always. It celebrates every small victory, every step forward in the work of evangelization. Evangelization with joy becomes beauty in the liturgy. … The Church evangelizes and is herself evangelized through the beauty of the liturgy, which is both a celebration of the task of evangelization and the source of [the Church’s] renewed self-giving.” (op.cit. No. 24)

          Are you filled with that joy? If not, start cultivating prayer of thanksgiving. If a long life has taught me anything, it is this. Grateful people are joyful people – no exceptions!