Homily for Easter Thursday: Luke
24:35-48.
“You
are witnesses of these things,” Jesus tells his first frightened and then
incredulous friends. 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment