Notes and reflections for a homily on the Sunday within the Easter Octave
Following the Mass yesterday at Holy Hill, I was asked to share the text for my homily based on the appearance of risen Christ to St. Thomas. A bit was said impromptu but I’m posting what I had prepared before me… and I’ve provided something of a “more finished” end…
What do our Scriptures tell us today on this “Mercy” Sunday?
1) St. John the Evangelist tells us in today’s Gospel: “Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, ‘Peace be with you.’” Twice in the passage He does so. The Risen Christ has the power to enter the places of the heart which we keep locked up, out of fear. His love is not deterred by our stubborn lack of faith. He actively seeks us out to reveal to us His power and His love.
2) It is in spite of our stubbornness of heart that the Risen Jesus reveals His power. “Love conquers all fear,” St. John’s First Letter tells us (1 John 4:18). Jesus only invites us to look at His wounds and to touch them in faith. As He says to Thomas, so He says to us: SEE MY WOUNDS … look upon my RISEN BODY and see what GOD desires for you to BECOME. Forget your betrayals and infidelities. LOOK at ME.
Jesus reveals to Thomas and to us the beauty and the truth of our humanity. That even our many WOUNDS can become life-giving … an opportunity for compassion, a door to let God into our lives again. Do not be unbelieving but belief. Because as St John tells us, our faith in Christ is our means of conquering (1 John 5:4).
3) Jesus can still be touched today. St. John of the Cross tells us that faith touches God (see Spiritual Canticle, 12.4). For this reason, Jesus says: “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” Brothers and sisters, our FAITH permits us to personally encounter God and to touch the glorious wounds of Christ. Faith brings us HEALING. Those who refuse to believe outright are crippled by arrogance, unable to acknowledge whatever their minds cannot grasp. This is a GREAT misery—to allow our tiny minds to be the measure of reality. …Christian faith is NOT some “feel-good” optimism or mere positive thinking; but rather, faith embraces the truth that reality in God is NOT bound by or restricted to the limits of our paltry understanding.
4) In Jesus, God enters the locked upper room of our heart and reveals His power to save us. Mercy brings LIFE and LOVE where there was NONE. Christ desires to enter the dark recesses of our hearts and to carry there the light of His love—He wants to free us from fear, from sin, from death. For this reason He accepted the Cross.
Blessed John Paul II, a man well-acquainted with suffering, having lost all the members of his family to death by the time he was only 20 years old, a man who worked in labor camps at the time of Nazi occupation, and a man who was nearly murdered by an assassin while blessing the multitudes at St. Peter’s… this man wrote: “The cross is like a touch of eternal love upon the most painful wounds of man’s earthly existence” (Dives in misericordia, 8). The cross—in our petty sufferings, our impatience, our inconveniences, our misunderstandings—this cross is the path that, with Jesus, leads us to Resurrection and a peace that knows no limits…
5) Let us trustingly examine our hearts before the Risen Christ who enters the locked Upper Room of our heart and desires to give us His peace there. His is not a peace conditional upon our merits and righteousness. It is HIS peace, bestowed at His pleasure, to reveal to us the indomitable mercy that comes to us from the Father. A love that triumphs over death in any of its particular manifestations during this passing life. Jesus is like that owner of the vineyard, hiring workers throughout the day and paying them as HE wishes, who asks: “Am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?” (Matt 20:15). His “plenty” stems from His inexhaustible life, shared with His eternal Father, and now broken open to be poured out, through the Holy Spirit… upon whomever He pleases. May God grant we might be truly surrendered to the unfathomable gift of this Life.
An Easter Homily at Holy Hill, 2013
It was YOUR flesh and blood and MY flesh and blood that God took to Himself in Jesus, so to reveal to us A LOVE STRONGER THAN DEATH. Our humanity now has “a place within God” because Christ rose to new life with OUR humanity (cf. Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, p. 274). This is the meaning of our Easter celebration. After the horror of the crucifixion, and the abandonment and the shame, God FREELY reveals His gift of RESURRECTION. Jesus told His disciples, “I am going away and I will return to you. I do not leave you orphans.” Brothers and sisters, though at times we may think God is silent HE NEVER abandons us. When we think He does not remember us in our suffering, it is especially then that God is most active preparing an eternal dwelling for us.“Let the risen Jesus enter your life, welcome him as a friend, with trust: he is life! If up till now you have kept him at a distance, step forward. He will receive you with open arms. If you have been indifferent, take a risk: you won’t be disappointed. If following him seems difficult, don’t be afraid, trust him, be confident that he is close to you, he is with you and he will give you the peace you are looking for and the strength to live as he would have you do” (Easter Vigil Homily, Vatican Radio).
Remembering God in a World that Forgets
On this Thanksgiving Day, we remember the countless blessings of Almighty God. Simply our grateful remembrance of God is transformative and inclines us to become more and more vessels of Divine Charity, other “humanities” (as Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity would say) wherein Christ can live His Paschal Mystery.
From the Soliloquies of St. Teresa of Jesus: “My soul grew greatly distressed, my God, while considering the glory You’ve prepared for those who persevere in doing Your will, the number of trials and sufferings by which Your Son gained it, and how much in its greatness love [which at such a cost taught us to love] deserves our gratitude. How is it possible, Lord, that all this love is forgotten and that mortals are so forgetful of You when they offend You? O my Redeemer, and how completely forgetful of themselves they are! What great goodness is Yours, that You then remember us, and that though we have fallen through the mortal wound we inflicted on You, You return to us, forgetful of this, to lend a hand and awaken us from so incurable a madness, that we might seek and beg salvation of you! Blessed be such a Lord; blessed be such great mercy; and praised forever such tender compassion!” (3.1).
Let us always remember … and give thanks.
The Lineage of Holiness…
St. Teresa of Jesus, foundress and reformer
I am in Brighton, MA for a gathering of the Plenary Provincial Council, which is a consultative body composed of the provincial, his council, the superiors of all our monasteries, and elected delegates from the various communities.
Today, for the Feast of All Carmelite Saints, Fr. Santulino Ekada, OCD, the prior of our monastery/student house in Nairobi, Kenya, preached on the responsibilities incumbent upon us friars who are “descendants” of the saints of Carmel. He spoke strikingly of the African mindset of lineage. It is of primary importance in the African culture to maintain the bloodline, to pass on the heritage of father to son, and to assure the continuity and growth of the clan or the tribe. Still more, Fr. Santulino told us that one who breaks the lineage is considered accursed. And so, those religious and priests, who do not have biological children for the growth of the tribe, are also regarded accursed.
Analogously, it is the Discalced Carmelite community existing TODAY that bears aloft the call to holiness in Carmel. As St. Teresa wrote, “…if those of us who are alive now have not fallen away from what they did in the past, and those who come after us do the same, the building will always stand firm. What use is it to me for the saints of the past to have been what they were, if I come along after them and behave so badly that I leave the building in ruins because of my bad habits?” “Any of you who sees your Order falling away in any respect must try to be the kind of stone the building can be rebuilt with—the Lord will help to rebuild it” (Foundations, 4.6,7).
Carmel is not a history to be learned, nor simply a spirituality to be studied, but a life to be lived. May the Lord keep us faithful one day at a time that we may be counted one day among the saints!