THE EMPTY TOMB

April 21st, 2019: Easter, Year C.  John 20:1-9.

AIM:  To show the significance of the empty tomb: for the first witnesses, and for us.

What is the greatest Christian festival? If we were to put that question to a non-Christian from a country like China or India, we might well get the answer:  AChristmas.@ What other Christian festival starts being celebrated two months in advance? We who live in the Church, however, and who are the Church, know that our greatest festival is not Christmas but Easter. Today we celebrate with joy the event which gives meaning to every other festival, Christmas included: Jesus’ resurrection. No one has said it better than St. Paul: AIf Christ was not raised, then our gospel is null and void, and so is your faith. ... You are still in your old state of sin.@ (1 Cor. 15:14 & 17) Without Easter the story of Jesus= life would not be good news. We could not speak of a gospel. For without Easter the final act in Jesus= life would have been his crucifixion. And without Easter the crucifixion would not be good news, but horribly bad news: the defeat of goodness and the triumph of evil.

Astonishingly, we have no account of this greatest event in the Christian story. Scripture nowhere describes Jesus= resurrection for the simple reason that it cannot be described. The resurrection is not an event within history. Jesus= resurrection belongs not to this world of time and space which we perceive with our senses. Though it took place at a certain time and in a certain place, the resurrection belongs to the unseen, spiritual world of God, which we can perceive only by faith.

The final event of Jesus= earthly life, his crucifixion, could be perceived. The gospels record what the witnesses saw and heard at the time. With his death on Calvary, Jesus departed from this world just as truly as we shall depart when we die. At Easter Jesus did not resume his former life. Easter celebrates Jesus= passage from worldly life to a new and higher life, beyond death.        

Though the gospels nowhere describe the resurrection itself, they do recount a number of appearances of the risen Lord to his initially skeptical and frightened friends. Where was Jesus before or after these appearances? The gospels do not tell us. They could not do so, for after his resurrection Jesus had no earthly abode. The resurrection was Jesus= exaltation to heaven.

Contrast with this what John=s gospel tells us about the raising of Jesus= dead friend Lazarus. He emerged from the tomb, John tells us, Abound hand and foot with graveclothes@ (11:44). Lazarus had returned to earthly life. He would need his burial garments again. Jesus, our gospel reading for today tells us, left his burial garments behind. He would never need them again.   

The gospel picture of the empty tomb, with Jesus= burial garments lying where they had been when they shrouded his body, but now empty, as if in leaving them Jesus had somehow passed through them, is for us the most powerful symbol of the resurrection. For his friends at the time, however, the discovery early Easter morning that the tomb was empty was a source not of joy, but of consternation. Mary Magdalen spoke for all but one of Jesus= friends when she cried out in grief: AThe Lord has been taken from the tomb, and we don=t know where they have put him.@ The empty tomb seemed to deepen the tragedy of Good Friday. Even in death, it seemed, the Lord was not to be left in peace. Our gospel reading says that Peter himself failed to believe in the resurrection, even after inspecting the empty tomb with its abandoned burial wrappings.

The only friend of Jesus who did not share the grief of Mary Magdalene and Peter at the discovery of the empty tomb was the unnamed Adisciple whom Jesus loved@ as he is called in this gospel according to John. He had sat next to the Lord at the Last Supper and leaned on Jesus= breast. Alone of all Jesus= male friends he stood the next day with Jesus= mother Mary and some of his other female followers, more faithful than the men, and more courageous. 

The description of this one faithful male friend as Athe disciple whom Jesus loved@ goes to the heart of the gospel message. He is not Athe one who loved Jesus most,@ who Asacrificed most,@ or who Aworked hardest.@ Those are human achievements, and God does not need our achievements. God loves us not for what we do but for who we are. We are saved not by our achievements, but by accepting the love which God offers us as a free gift before we have done anything to deserve such a gift.

Accepting God=s love sounds simple. Most people find it difficult. It offends our pride, for one thing. Most of us don=t like accepting something we have not earned. It=s like being on welfare. We don=t like that. We prefer to be independent, to make our own way in life. With God, however, we are always on welfare B dependent all our lives long on God=s freely given love, the love that (as Paul tells us) Abears all things, hopes all things, endures all things@ (1 Cor. 13:7); the love that will never let us go.

God=s love could not let his Son go. It was love that raised Jesus from the tomb. Easter is our greatest festival, and a time for joy, because it tells us that we are objects of that same love. The New Testament calls Jesus Athe firstborn from the dead@ (Col. 1:18; Rev. 1:5). The love that raised Jesus will also raise us. Indeed, God=s love can raise us, even now, from boredom, loneliness, and discouragement at the seeming meaninglessness of life.  His love can raise us from whatever pain, injustice, suffering, or sickness life may bring. And one day God=s love will raise us from physical death, as his love raised Jesus our elder brother and our best friend on the first Easter day.

That and nothing less than that is the gospel. That is the good news. And the best news of all is that the love which God offers us is ours for the taking.  

NO CROSS, NO CROWN

NO CROSS, NO CROWN

Homily for April 18^th, 2019: Good Friday

AIM: To proclaim the centrality of the cross.

 

There are three religious symbols that are recognized the world over: the crescent of Islam, the six-pointed star of David for Judaism, and for Christianity the cross. The cross is at the center of every Christian church the world over, Catholic or Protestant. 

The cross hangs round the necks of millions of people in our world who give no particular evidence of deep religious faith or practice. Teachers of young children report that if they offer the youngsters a selection of holy cards and invite them to choose one, they will almost always select the picture of Jesus on the cross.

How can we explain this continued fascination with a horrifying instrument of torture and death? The cross has a magnetism that can never fade because it is a picture of how much God loves us. ANo one has greater love than this,@ Jesus tells us, Ato lay down one=s life for one=s friends@ (Jn.15:13).

Those present on Calvary viewed the cross as an instrument of defeat. In reality, the cross is a symbol not of defeat but of victory. What looked to the bystanders like a display of weakness is in reality a source of power. A scene of utter degradation and shame is actually a place of glory. 

We can perceive the cross as a place of victory, power, and glory, however, only if we see behind it the open portals of the empty tomb. Too often we separate the two. The cross alone C Good Friday without Easter C gives us a religion of grimness and gloom. The empty tomb without the cross, on the other hand, is nothing but superficial optimism and empty sentiment. The late Bishop Fulton Sheen said it well: AThe law of Christ is clear. Life is a struggle; unless there is a cross in our lives, there will never be an empty tomb; unless there is a Good Friday, there will never be an Easter Sunday.@

Jesus could not have the one without the other. Neither can we. Take the cross out of Christianity, and you have ripped the heart out of it. Today more than ever a religion is credible only if it is costly. People today say, with the apostle Thomas on the evening of the first Easter day: AUnless I see in his hands the print of the nails ... I will not believe@ (Jn. 20:25).

Perhaps there is someone in this church this evening who is thinking: >What does a priest know about suffering?= And just possibly, you are right C though I can assure you that a priest=s life has, along with great joys, its share of suffering as well: loneliness, misunderstanding, unjust criticism, frustration, disappointment, and for some priests bitter injustice.

But for the sake of argument, I am willing to grant the objection. Say, if you like, that I know little of suffering; that I have a soft and easy life: pampered, coddled, cosseted, put on a pedestal by a certain kind of Catholic; that I am a man with soft hands, clean fingernails, and no aches or pains from heavy lifting. Say, if you will, that I am a stranger to suffering.  

But you cannot say that of my Lord. Whatever pain you suffer, Jesus suffered more. Whatever injustice you bear, Jesus bore it first. Whatever loneliness you experience, Jesus was lonelier. As our second reading tells us: AWe do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin@ (Heb. 4:15).

Suffering comes to us all, in one form or another, sooner or later. Why it is so, our Christian faith does not tell us. The existence of suffering in a good world, created and upheld by a loving God, is a dark mystery. Because of the cross, however, because Jesus tasted human suffering in all its bitterness and pain, any suffering we experience becomes the key that one day will help unlock for us the gate of heaven.  Let me quote Bishop Sheen again:

AAll of you who have lain crucified on beds of pain, remember than an hour will come when you will be taken down from your cross, and the Savior shall look upon your hands and feet and sides to find there the imprint of his wounds which will be your passport to eternal joy.@

To learn the deepest meaning of our Christian faith we must take our stand beneath the cross and contemplate in silent awe and reverent love the One who hangs there. All the great lessons of life are learned at the foot of the cross.

"DO THIS IN MY MEMORY."

Homily for April 18^th, 2019: Holy Thursday.  1 Cor. 11:23-26.

AIM: To help the hearers see the centrality of the Eucharist and the significance of the foot-washing

 

          “Do this, in my memory,” Jesus tells us. Was ever a command so obeyed? Down through the centuries, and continuing today, the friends of Jesus Christ have obeyed his command to do this in his memory.

          In Rome today our Holy Father has done this. Bishops all over the world have done this, surrounded by their priests, at the only Mass other than this one which the Church permits on Holy Thursday: the Chrism Mass at which the bishop consecrates the oils to be used in the year following for baptisms, confirmation, the sacrament of holy orders, and the anointing of the sick. In our Cathedral this morning our archbishop did this, surrounded by some 200 of his brother priests. We renewed our ordination promises to serve you, God’s holy people.

          In Lent 2000 a Vietnamese bishop, Francis Xavier Van Thuan, preaching the annual Lenten retreat to Pope John Paul II and the Roman curia, told them of how he had obeyed Jesus’ command to do this, in a Communist prison in Vietnam. Here is his story, in his own words.

          “When I was arrested I had to leave immediately with empty hands. The next day I was permitted to write to my people in order to ask for the most necessary things: clothes, toothpaste ... I wrote, ‘Please send me a little wine as medicine for my stomach ache.’ The faithful understood right away.

          “They sent me a small bottle of wine for Mass with a label that read, ‘Medicine for stomach-aches.’ They also sent some hosts, which they hid in a flashlight for protection against the humidity.

          “The police asked me, ‘You have stomach aches?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Here’s some medicine for you.’

          “I will never be able to express my great joy! Every day, with three drops of wine and a drop of water in the palm of my hand, I would celebrate Mass. This was my altar, and this was my cathedral! It was true medicine for soul and body ... Each time I celebrated the Mass, I had the opportunity to extend my hands and nail myself to the cross with Jesus, to drink with him the bitter chalice. ... Those were the most beautiful Masses of my life!” [Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, Testimony of Hope (Pauline Books, Boston, 2000) p. 131] 

          Young men of twenty-five, fresh from their priestly ordination, surrounded by family and friends, nervous but joyful, do this for the first time. Somewhere today more than one priest, and perhaps a bishop or two, has done this for the last time: encountering the Lord under the outward forms of bread and wine for the final time before he encounters him face to face in heaven.

          We do this when Christians marry. We do this for birthdays, for anniversaries of marriage and ordination. We do this at life’s end, to pray for our departed loved ones, coming closer to them through our obedience to Jesus’ command than we can in any other way here on earth.

          No matter what the outward circumstances, whether accompanied by splendid ceremonial, gorgeous music, in a stately cathedral — or under makeshift conditions, in a primitive hut, a prison cell, or on the hood of a military jeep under the open sky — our obedience to Jesus’ command, “Do this in my memory,” is in every essential respect the same. When we do this with the bread and wine Jesus is with us as truly as he was with his twelve apostles in the Upper Room on this evening, with but one exception: we cannot see him with our bodily eyes, only with the eyes of faith.

          If our fulfillment of Jesus’ command were merely an act of obedience, it would still be impressive. But there is more to it than obedience. We do this with the bread and wine so that Jesus may empower us to do in daily life what he did before he gave us this command — and what I shall shortly do in literal imitation of Jesus. The washing of feet is a symbol of what all of us are called to do as followers and friends of Jesus Christ: to serve the needs of others whom we encounter on life’s way. 

          If we are faithful to that calling, one day we shall hear the Lord saying to us, very personally: “Come, you have my Father’s blessing! Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me. I was ill and you comforted me, in prison and you came to me. ... As often as you did it for one of my least brothers [or sisters], you did it for me” (Mt. 25:35f, 40).

THE GROUNDS OF OUR EASTER FAITH

April 21^st, 2019: Easter Sunday. Acts 10:34a, 37-43; John 20:1-9.

AIM:  To show that belief in the resurrection is not based on “tales artfully spun” (2 Pet. 1:16), but on solid evidence.

 

          “If Christ has not been raised,” Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, “our preaching is void of content, and your faith is empty too.” (1 Cor. 15:14). Is Christ’s resurrection really true? Or is it just a nice story? What  evidence do we have that the resurrection is true? The evidence is of three kinds: first, the empty tomb; second, the appearances of the risen Lord; and finally, the Church’s continuing experience of Jesus not as a dead hero, but as its living Lord.  Let me speak about each three.

1. The empty tomb

          The gospel we have just heard tells us that the empty tomb was discovered by Mary of Magdala, “early in the morning, while it was still dark.” The other three gospels report that the discovery was made by several women, after sunrise.  Is this discrepancy a reason to dismiss the whole story? Many people would say yes. In reality, however, different accounts are just what we should expect. Police, lawyers, and judges know that eye witnesses seldom agree about all the details of a particular event. It is perjurers who try to harmonize their stories in advance, to give them greater credibility.

          In one detail, however, all the accounts agree: that the first people to find Jesus’ tomb empty on Easter morning were women. That is significant. The legal system of Jesus’ day considered the testimony of women 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, is it credible that they would have cited as their primary witnesses people whose testimony had little weight with their contemporaries?

          By itself, however, the empty tomb does not prove the resurrection.  It could have been empty because the body had been moved. That is what all but one of Jesus’ friends believed at first. And Matthew says that Jesus’ enemies put out the story that the body had been moved in order to discredit the resurrection. If we accept this, however, we must believe that the entire preaching of the early Church was based upon a carefully concealed fraud; and that those who perpetrated this fraud were prepared to die for it. Friends, if you believe that, you’ll believe anything.

          One person alone came to faith in the resurrection on the evidence of the empty tomb alone. He is called in today’s gospel, and throughout the gospel which bears his name, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” This same bond of love with the Master would permit this “disciple whom Jesus loved” to recognize the risen Lord before Peter and the others when, weary from a night of fruitless fishing on the lake, they saw Jesus standing on the nearby shore at dawn (cf. John 21:7). All the other disciples came to believe in Jesus’ resurrection not on the basis of the empty tomb, but only through the second kind of evidence  —

2.  The appearances of the risen Lord.

          The gospels report that Jesus appeared after his resurrection only to those who had previously known him, loved him, and believed in him. As we heard Peter say in our first reading: after his resurrection, Jesus was visible “not to all the people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.” None of the reports of the resurrection appearances contain any evidence of hallucination or wish-fulfillment. On the contrary, in every case those to whom Jesus appeared were initially skeptical or fearful, as if they were seeing a ghost. Only slowly and reluctantly did they come to believe that it was truly the Master they had known and loved, alive again in flesh and blood.

          This slowness of the witnesses to believe was due not only to the astonishing nature of the occurrence itself (for in all human experience, the dead do not come back to life). It was due also to a mysterious alteration in Jesus’ appearance. Jesus did not return to his old life. He was raised to a new life, beyond death. His appearance was changed. The mode of his existence was changed. He could appear and disappear at will.

          The empty tomb is the first evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. In itself, however, the empty tomb proved only that Jesus’ body was elsewhere. Save for the one disciple who was linked to Jesus by a special bond of love, none of his friends came to faith in the resurrection on the basis of the empty tomb alone. They became convinced only when they saw the risen Lord, talked with him, and ate with him.

          Had there been no further evidence for Jesus’ resurrection, we would expect his friends to become increasingly skeptical as the memory of their encounters with the risen Lord became ever more distant. In fact, precisely the opposite happened. In time, Jesus’ friends became not less but more certain of the resurrection. This deepening certainty can be explained only by the third kind of evidence for Jesus’ resurrection —

3.  The Church’s continuing experience of Jesus as her risen Lord.

          This evidence is available to us today. We cannot see the empty tomb. We have not seen the risen Lord. But we are members of that great family of God called the Catholic Church who experience Jesus not as a dead hero from the past, but as gloriously alive here and now. We encounter him in this way especially when we obey Jesus’ command at the Last Supper to do this in my memory.”

          If Jesus were a dead hero from the distant past, the celebration of the eucharistic memorial which he left us would be tinged with sadness. Always and everywhere, however, when Christians have obeyed Jesus’ command at the Last Supper to “do this in my memory,” they have been filled with joy. We express this joy today in the Church’s characteristic Easter greeting: “Alleluia!” This untranslatable word expresses more fittingly than a word of known meaning something that is, at bottom, inexpressible: our overwhelming joy at knowing that the One whom we encounter here in the Eucharist is not a dead hero from the past, but our ever-present and risen Lord, gloriously alive for evermore, risen from the tomb holding, as we read in a striking image in the final book of the Bible, “the keys of death and the nether world” (Rev. 1:18). 

          This joyful encounter with the risen Lord is the continuation not merely of the Last Supper, but also of the meals which Jesus shared with his friends after the resurrection.  Peter referred to those meals in our first reading, when he spoke of Jesus appearing “to us ...who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”

          Because Jesus Christ is alive, we can live in confidence, in joy, and in hope.  The darkness of this age has been overpowered by the light of Him who is the world’s light. The power of evil, clearly evident in the morning headlines and on the evening news on television, is temporary. In raising his Son from death, God has shown that his power is stronger than evil. This world, with all its horrors, is still God’s world. Death, our final enemy, is not the end. The grave, which was for Jesus a temporary resting-place only on the way to a new and more glorious life, will be for us too the gateway to this same eternal life.

          Truly we have every reason to join in the church’s ecstatic Easter hymn:

                              This is the day the Lord has made;

                              Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Amen.  

"ONE OF YOU WILL BETRAY ME."

April 17^th, 2019: Matthew 26: 14-25.

          “One of you will betray me,” Jesus tells his twelve apostles gathered in the upper room for the last supper. The gospel writer tells us that they were “deeply distressed” – and no wonder. And no wonder too that they ask, one after the other, “Surely it is not I, Lord?” Even Judas asks that question. To which Jesus replies: “You have said so.”

          Why did Judas betray the Lord? People have speculated about that question for two millennia. One theory is that Judas expected a Messiah who would come in power and glory, throw off the hated Roman yoke, and lead his people to new triumphs. When Jesus proved to be a very different kind of Messiah, Judas was angry and decided upon revenge.

Writing about John’s account of Judas’ betrayal, which we heard in yesterday’s gospel, Pope Benedict XVI says: “For John what happened to Judas is beyond psychological explanation. [Judas] has come under the dominion of another. Anyone who breaks off friendship with Jesus, casting off his ‘easy yoke’, does not attain liberty, does not become free, but succumbs to other powers. To put it another way, he betrays that friendship because he is in the grip of another power to which he has opened himself.” (Jesus of Nazareth vol. 2 p. 68)

How important it is for us to know that, and to reflect on it. One of the most effective lies that Satan, a liar and the father of lies, has in his armory is the seductive lie: ‘Throw off the yoke of the moral law. Come with me, and you will be free, free at last.’ Exactly the opposite is true.

Judas’ betrayal has yet another lesson for us. Whatever harm the open enemies of Christ and his Church do, the damage done by the Lord’s friends is worse. As we stand on the threshold of the Triduum, the solemn three days before Easter, we pray that we may not be among those unfaithful friends; and that when, like Peter, we do fall, we may repent, as he did, and receive the Lord’s forgiveness and the embrace of this best of friends and passionate lover, whose love will never let us go.

JUDAS AND PETER

Homily for April 16^th, 2019: John 13:21-35, 36-38.

          “One of you will betray me,” Jesus says. Here, as in many of the gospel readings we have been hearing as Lent proceeds to its climax on Good Friday, we see that Jesus remains in charge. His passion and death were not imposed on him. He accepted them freely. Jesus knows in advance that he will be betrayed. And he knows his betrayer. In a final gesture of love for one of his chosen circle of intimate friends, Jesus reaches out to Judas Iscariot by offering him a morsel of food from the common dish. At this point, the writer tells us, “Satan entered him.” Yet Jesus continues to act with sovereign freedom, telling Judas: “What you are going to do, do quickly.”

          “And it was night,” the writer tells us. Yet even now, in what might be considered his darkest hour, Jesus’ faith lights up the darkness. “Now is the Son of Man glorified,” he cries out, “and God is glorified in him.” How thrilling those words are, and how magnificent.

          There was another betrayer at that table in the upper room. With characteristic impetuosity he pledges loyalty even unto death: “I will lay down my life for you.” Jesus knew that Peter could not match those words with deeds. “The cock will not crow before you deny me three times,” he tells Peter.
          We know the sequel. Despairing of forgiveness, Judas would compound his guilt by adding suicide to betrayal. Peter would wash away his betrayal with tears of penitence to fulfill the destiny Jesus had foretold for him: to become, through his faith, the Church’s rock, and one of her earliest martyrs.

          Recall again what I told you here on Palm Sunday: every saint has a past; every sinner a future. Praised be God through Jesus Christ his Son!

"WHY THIS WASTE"

Homily for April 15^th, 2019: John 12:1-11.

          “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred days’ wages and given to the poor?” Judas asks. Three hundred days’ wages represents the annual income of an ordinary working man in Jesus’ day, in today’s terms perhaps thirty-thousand dollars – valuable perfumed oil indeed!
          The complaint of Judas continues to be made today. It takes genuine faith to appreciate the expenditure of money for things that cannot be justified in utilitarian, worldly terms: the building of a beautiful church, for instance, the beautification of an existing church, the purchase or upgrading of a pipe organ, rather than settling for a cheaper electronic instrument. There are always people who will ask, when such things are proposed or undertaken: “Why this waste?” The answer to that question is simply: “God deserves the best.”   

          People complain about waste when a young person decides to forego marriage and parenthood in order to be a priest or a religious sister. The media reported recently about a highly accomplished young woman in Washington in her late 20s who has decided to abandon a successful career to enter a rapidly growing congregation of Dominican Sisters. There are people who’ll tell you that she’s throwing her life away. They ask, with Judas: why this waste? Without faith that question cannot be answered. With faith no answer is necessary.

          We have several communities of so-called contemplative Sisters in our diocese, women who stay always in the convent and have no work outside: Carmelites, Passionists, Poor Clares, the so-called Pink Sisters, and others as well. They have given their lives to the Lord God. They pray for us. Without them the Church would be poorer.

          Nothing we do for the Lord God is wasted. And nothing we do for the Lord is sufficient to express our gratitude for the blessings he showers upon us, always more than we deserve, on any strict accounting. Do you sometimes have doubts about whether the sacrifices you make for God and for others are worth making? Then pray the closing verse of today’s Responsorial Psalm: “I believe I shall see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord with courage; be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord.”