Notes for Sunday within the Easter Octave
Notes on a Divine Mercy Sunday Homily
Today is a glorious day in the Church—it is the final day of the Easter Octave, the great celebration of the Resurrection, it is the feast of Divine Mercy…
Our Gospel today is SO rich. It speaks to the depth of the human heart.
Poor Thomas… He wasn’t present in the upper Room when Jesus first appeared to the other apostles. And he lived for a whole week with the others, feeling so alone in his disbelief. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” No doubt he LONGED TO BE FREED from this prison he built; no doubt he wanted to share in the JOY he saw in the others… Then Jesus appears a second time.
What does this powerful Gospel tell us today, on this Mercy Sunday?
- St. John the Evangelist tells us: “Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, ‘Peace be with you.’” 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.
- 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. 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 lifegiving … 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.
- Jesus can still be touched today. St. John of the Cross tells us that faith touches God (i.e., “Faith, … gives and communicates God himself to us” [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 poverty—to allow our tiny minds to be the measure of reality. Imagine a great athlete who has enormous physical ability but he believes he is paralyzed and cannot move. …It is not that our Christian faith is some kind Peter Pan optimism; but rather, faith acknowledges that reality in God is NOT bound by the limits of our understanding.
- 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. In Blessed JP II’s encyclical, Dives in misericordia (Rich in Mercy), he writes: “The cross is like a touch of eternal love upon the most painful wounds of man’s earthly existence.”
Today, we celebrate God’s infinite Mercy revealed in Jesus Christ—may we not turn to this Mercy only for FEAR of God’s condemnation, but rather in order to return LOVE for LOVE. Let us turn to God is CONFIDENCE and LOVE and permit Him to live in our hearts.
An Easter Homily at Holy Hill 2012
The Resurrection of Our Lord
The oldest known version of the Gospel of Mark ends simply with the women finding an EMPTY TOMB. In this oldest form, there is no appearance of the Risen Jesus. Only the empty tomb. Mark has told the whole of the story of the life and death of Jesus—his baptism, his ministry, his words, his miraculous works, his betrayal, his arrest and trial, his passion and crucifixion and death—and finally, … he leads us with the women into an empty tomb. We are told by a young man clothed in white: “He has risen; He is not here; LOOK, here is the place where they laid Him.”
But these are the women who witnessed His torture and execution with their own eyes. These are the women who accompanied His broken and bloodied Body to the borrowed tomb—to this final dark, dank place of death. We were there ourselves on Good Friday!
The earliest redaction of Mark’s Gospel simply ends with this sentence: “Then they went out and fled from the tomb, seized with trembling and bewilderment. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” But clearly this is NOT the end. It is NOT what the women expect to find on this early Sunday morning … they are seized with trembling, not simply because the body of the Lord is missing … but rather, the words and teachings of Jesus begin to race through their minds: “Destroy this temple,” He said, “and on the third day I will raise it up.” …Only now (as they see the empty tomb) do they begin to suspect WHO Jesus is. And they are both terrified and enthralled as they come to believe. The goodness of God defies their wildest imaginations. Because, with this discovery of the empty tomb, these women come to believe in their hearts—“Everything this man said and did was absolutely TRUE.” And NOW He, who loved us, had even conquered DEATH!
Pope Paul VI wrote in his exhortation On Christian Joy: “The resurrection of Jesus is the seal placed by the Father on the value of His Son’s sacrifice: it is the proof of the Father’s fidelity (37). The promise of God is TRUE. The eternal Father raises the Son to new life, a life that never ends. And Jesus, the Son, now glorified makes it His first priority to return to us; “I will not leave you orphans!” He said. His glorious, risen Body is now the sign of the promise to us.
Brothers and sisters, do we understand that this is OUR story (we who were baptized into Christ Jesus). We, too, look into the tomb, the dark tomb hewn out of rock … and perhaps we expect to find in that place of death our countless infidelities before God, our history of casual betrayals, an immeasurable debt of sin for which we cannot atone (we know it well)… and YET, we are told by the young man in white sitting in the tomb, these are GONE (see where they had laid!), these are GONE because He is RISEN and He goes ahead to meet you. GO, tell the others, and go to meet Him.
Let me mention something here that NEEDS to be heard again and again in our times. In the Gospels, including the extended ending we heard in Mark’s Gospel today, angels (and eventually Jesus Himself) tells those who find the empty tomb or who see Him risen: “GO AND TELL THE OTHERS!” Just as Jesus had called twelve apostles and a multitude of disciples to share His mission, just as gave Himself in the Eucharist on Holy Thursday and COMMANDED the Twelve to “DO THIS IN MEMORY OF ME,” NOW these chosen disciples are COMMANDED to witness to the Resurrection… What do I mean to say? IT is that JESUS CHRIST gives HIS LIFE and SPIRIT to His CHURCH and MAKES HIS CHURCH one with Himself. …The cover of last week’s Newsweek magazine had an image of Jesus in contemporary clothing with the striking title: “Forget the Church, Follow Jesus.” Quite an exploitative cover for Easter… No doubt it again harkens to the scandals that have plagued the Church in recent years, BUT ironically it fails to understand that Jesus Himself is responsible for the Church—He chose certain disciples to share His authority to baptize, to teach, and to cast out demons. Jesus chose St. Peter to be the ROCK for His Church, against which even HELL would NOT prevail. Jesus gave to the Church the authority to absolve and to bind the sins of men and women. And finally it was Jesus who commanded and enabled His apostles to make the gift of His life and death present in the Eucharistic banquet. Jesus chose sinners to be His disciples—but He guarantees His salvation by the Sacraments they celebrate and by their remembrance on Sunday of His death and resurrection. And finally, Jesus identifies Himself with the community of His Church, with the members of His Church. It is the privileged commission of the Church, her bishops, priests and deacons, and her baptized faithful to always proclaim year-in and year-out WHO JESUS IS. As Cardinal Dolan has said many times in recent months, there is NO Christ without the Church, because He continues to LIVE and to FORGIVE through His Church. If you or a family member or a friend has been away from Mass and Confessions for a long time, tell them not EVEN the failings of priests and believers should justify the refusal of God’s sacraments! The throne of mercy is always waiting for us through the gift of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and the promise of ETERNAL LIFE is found in the Sunday Eucharist (Jesus says: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and will raise him up on the last day.”)
Brothers and sisters, JESUS CHRIST LIVES FOR US … and now WISHES only one thing of the Father, as he said on Holy Thursday night: “Father, I pray that where I am theyalso may be, so that they may see the glory which You have given Me, because You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”
In a moment we will renew our baptismal vows as members of Christ’s Church. . . . At our baptism, you and I received the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Risen CHRIST. What does that mean??? It means we possess the SEED of RESURRECTION within our hearts … because Jesus now lives forever, sharing our humanity, …our lives and our acts of love bear ETERNAL consequence. GOD’S LIFE NOW LIVES WITHIN US.
Brothers and sisters, do we wish to heed the voice of God? Let us then leave the TOMB and all that is within it … and let us go with faith and joy to meet our risen Lord at the altar and in our hearts. Christ is risen! He is truly RISEN!
“When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”
From a homily given at Holy Hill on the 5th Sunday of Lent.
This season of Lent is something of a school that educates and prepares our hearts to celebrate the great mysteries of our salvation—the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, Son of God and our Savior. Each Sunday of Lent is another LESSON that tells us something of WHO Jesus is and WHY He came into the world. Let me just offer a recap. The first Sunday of Lent Jesus is led into the desert to be tempted by the devil, to experience his human weakness in solidarity with us, and to glorify His Father by suffering in His weakness. The second Sunday of Lent Jesus is revealed during the Transfiguration as the Beloved Son of God the Father and the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. Peter, James and John and we ourselves are told: “LISTEN TO HIM.” The third Sunday of Lent Jesus cleanses the Temple and reveals Himself to be the NEW Temple and the means of offering true worship to God. Last Sunday, we had the beautiful passage in the Gospel of John where Jesus tells Nicodemus: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up so that everyone who believes in Him might have eternal life.”
And so we come to this fifth Sunday—the Sunday before his triumphant entry into Jerusalem where he’ll be crucified. Some Greeks want to “see Jesus”—they are not Jews but Gentiles—foreigners drawn to see Jesus… and it is THIS moment when Jesus declares that His “Hour” has come. In John’s Gospel, the “Hour” is both the time of Christ’s Passion AND His exaltation. Jesus tells us explicitly HOW He will be glorified and how He will glorify the Father… It is through His death on the CROSS.
Jesus tells us, “The Son of Man did NOT come to be served, but TO SERVE.” To give His life for the MANY. Why? Is it because SOMEONE has to PAY? Well, it is true that Jesus alone restores TRUE justice where our sins have offended GOD. …But let us remember that it is not blood and suffering that God requires for the salvation of the world, BUT rather A HEART THAT LOVES OBEDIENTLY, even unto death.
“Son though He was, Jesus learned obedience from what He suffered.” The Son of God lived a human life, united with us, and offered to God a heart that LOVED until death. “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” And so Jesus says to all of us today, “unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” Jesus comes to understand that His life is the grain of wheat that will die to produce much fruit.
We, too, must give of ourselves—more than likely NOT to be literally crucified—but maybe it is to be patient with those who greatly annoy us, maybe it is to still desire good to those who have mistreated us, maybe it is to LIVE TODAY for God even if we have FAILED to live for Him for the past week. Jesus says: “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be.” If you were baptized into Christ Jesus, then YOU TOO are a SEED that must die to itself so that FRUIT may be produced and GOD glorified.
Brothers and sisters, in today’s Gospel Jesus gives us a THEOLOGY for Good Friday—it is that He, the Son of God made flesh, will give His life for us to glorify His Father and to REVEAL the greatest love the world has ever known. And what is the FRUIT of this love: LISTEN. “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.” That is, WHEN JESUS REVEALS the FULLNESS of GOD on the CROSS, every HUMAN HEART will awaken and be drawn to this LOVE.
This is the meaning of our first reading from Jeremiah: God is making a new covenant… In the former covenant God has to show us to be our Master, but in the NEW and ETERNAL covenant, God “places His law within us and writes it upon our hearts.” The Lord says about His CROSS: “All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD, for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.”
Jesus is the Good Shepherd who climbs the wood of the cross in order to call all His scattered SHEEP to Himself and to lead them to the Father.
WHAT must we do in reply?
Let us LOOK at the CROSS and consider the love of Christ for us. As our shepherd, Jesus asks for the obedience of our hearts. Jesus never asks anything of us that He has not ALREADY DONE Himself. He calls us from the CROSS to give of our lives in LOVE. And if we love as He has loved, we will come to understand from experience that death is NOT the end—beyond the CROSS the Savior leads us to the Resurrection.
Holy Desire
Ah… my poor abandoned blog! I last posted during my travels at World Youth Day … and with good intentions of blogging the whole trip. But my plans were soon dashed when wi-fi could not be found! …Anyhow, we begin ANEW again and again. This is the gist of the spiritual life, isn’t it?
Yesterday’s second reading from the Office of Readings (Friday, 6th wk in Ordinary Time) was a precious jewel from St. Augustine. In number 4 of his “Tractates on the First Letter of John” Augustine comments upon the Scripture verse: we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2). Augustine’s passage merits being quoted in length… he tells us, “The entire life of a good Christian is in fact an exercise of holy desire.”
“Suppose you are going to fill some holder or container, and you know you will be given a large amount. Then you set about stretching your sack or wineskin or whatever it is. Why? Because you know the quantity you will have to put in it and your eyes tell you there is not enough room. By stretching it, therefore, you increase the capacity of the sack, and this is how God deals with us. Simply by making us wait he increases our desire, which in turn enlarges the capacity of the soul, making it able to receive what is to be given to us.”
I am reminded of something Fr. Conrad DeMeester (a Belgian Discalced Carmelite friar and arguably the world’s expert on the writings of St. Thérèse), wrote in his book, With Empty Hands, the magnificent, popular redaction of his doctoral thesis regarding Thérèse’s teaching on “confidence.” He says simply: “Hope is love in the state of becoming.” What does this mean except that the merciful God readies us and transforms us within the “arena” of our life’s particular circumstances? If each moment of life would bring us closer to “seeing Him as He is,” the Lord must test and “excite” our desire, purifying it of its false idols–those ends which are less than God by Whom and for Whom we’ve been created.
I recently shared with someone my realization that so much of my own disappointment and discontent in life comes from placing all my chips on things that CAN’T deliver. Hidden in that disappointment is an invitation to refocus my desires, to properly center my HOPE in God alone. The theological virtue of hope readies our hearts for the love to which we are called. And God loves us too much to let us wallow in lesser hopes. In the fact of disappointment the evil one prompts us to despair, to lose ourselves in the misery of dashed hopes. But the Holy Spirit, on the other hand, prompts us instead to “hope again” and to hope BEYOND our poor expectations … to place our HOPES in God alone. Whoever loves God knows intimately the ache of “love in the state of becoming.” We are being readied to look upon the Face of the Beloved, our hearts are being hollowed out and hallowed for God’s glory.