FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

30 APRIL 2023

 

            In our culture, we tend to hold up individuals as models of good leadership.  Abraham Lincoln was a great president who gave himself to the cause of uniting a divided nation during the Civil War.  Pope Pius X reluctantly accepted the call to be Bishop of Rome.  He liked to contrast the pomp and ceremony of Rome with his humble beginnings in northern Italy.  Zelie and Louis Martin endured many hardships to provide a safe home for their daughters in France.  These people provide models to imitate.

            However, the model for good leadership in the Bible came from the bottom of society.  Shepherds were looked down upon and shunned by local people, because they wandered around and brought suspicion upon themselves, much like  carnival workers today.  However, shepherds taught people in authority how to act.  Unlike royalty who saw their subjects as pawns to be used, shepherds knew each sheep of the flock by name.  Shepherds did not drive their sheep like cowboys drove cattle in the wild west.  They walked ahead of the sheep.  They followed them to green pastures and pools of water.  At night, shepherds led their flocks into sheepfolds carved out of the hillside.  Without gates in the sheepfold, shepherds took turns lying across the entrance as a gate.  Some shepherds gave their lives when thieves or wild animals tried to enter.  At dawn, the shepherds called their own sheep, who followed them, because they knew their voice.

            This is the image which our Scripture readings present to us today.  Jesus is the Good Shepherd.  He has just spoken to us today in the Word of God.  He knows each of us by name and calls us to himself.  We see this image in our Triumphal Arch.  The Good Shepherd is seated in the Heavenly Jerusalem.  Each of us can identify ourselves with one of those sheep.  Our Good Shepherd has laid down his life for us on the cross, which we see above the Altar.  He has been raised from the dead and has become the Lamb of God, who feeds us with his Body and Blood.  We see this Victorious Lamb in the mosaic on the front of the Altar.

            Boys and girls, your parents brought you to the Good Shepherd when they brought you to the waters of Baptism.  You became one with the risen Christ and were clothed with a white garment.  In just a couple of minutes (depending on how long I go on and on), you will walk to the Baptismal Font and renew the Baptismal Promises made for you by your parents and godparents.  Then, you will be fed with his Body and Blood for the first time. 

            The Good Shepherd speaks to those of us who are leaders today.  When the crowds hear Peter proclaim the Paschal Mystery in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, they want to know how to respond.  He tells them to repent and be baptized.  We adults have been baptized, and the Lord calls us to repent and live our baptismal promises.  The Lord calls me, as shepherd of this flock, to reflect on my role.  He challenges me to put the needs of this flock ahead of my own comfort and ego.  He calls me to repent of those times when I put my own needs fist.  He also challenges you parents, who are the shepherds of your children, to repentance.  You parents lay down your lives constantly for the sake of your children.  As they receive their First Holy Communion, he challenges you to embrace your baptismal promises and grow into a deeper relationship with him in the Eucharist.  For some of you, that means developing a greater encounter with the Lord in your Sunday participation at Mass.  For others, that means making a commitment to be more regular participants at this Feast of the Lamb.  We need to listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd speaking to us every Sunday, drawing us closer to himself and feeding us with his Body and Blood to form us as good shepherds.  The Good Shepherd has been raised from the dead and invites us to share in his dying, so that we can share in his rising.

 

THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER

23 APRIL 2023

 

          Today we meet two of the disciples of Jesus leaving Jerusalem and heading to the village of Emmaus.  In their walk, a stranger joins them and wants to know what they are talking about.  They tell the stranger about their hopes.  They had been become followers of Jesus of Nazareth, because they had recognized him as a great prophet, mighty in deed and word.  They had hoped that he would be the one to redeem Israel.  That hope had been reinforced when he had entered Jerusalem a week before.  People had spread palm branches and their garments on his path and hailed him as the Messiah, singing “Hosanna to the Son of David.”

            Then those hopes have been completely crushed.  They tell him that the chief priests and religious authorities handed him over to the Romans, who executed him in the cruelest and most humiliating way possible by crucifying him.  They had to spend the next day, the Sabbath, in utter despair and had to wait until the first day of the week to get out of Jerusalem.  They have so completely lost their hope that they cannot believe the women who found the tomb empty and reported that a vision of angels had reported that he is alive.

            The stranger begins to speak to them.  In reviewing the Scriptures, the stranger points out that all the authentic prophets of Israel had been rejected.  He gently points out that Jesus of Nazareth is more than a prophet.  In opening their eyes to the Scriptures, he expands their limited concept of the mission of the Messiah.  He had come not to expel the Romans, but to endure suffering and death to allow him to enter into his true glory.  As they listen with their ears, their hearts begin to burn within them, and they invite him to stay with them when they reach Emmaus.  At table, the stranger does exactly what he had done at the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes and at the Last Supper they had shared with him.  When he takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them, their eyes are opened, and they recognize the stranger as the risen Lord.  Their hope is expanded in an unexpected way, and they rush back to Jerusalem .

            Hope is a gift from God.  When their limited hopes are destroyed, the risen Lord gives them the gift of hope that will sustain them in their new role as members of the Body of Christ.  In addition, hope is a gift that must be shared.  The two disciples return immediately to Jerusalem.  With this new hope, they ignore the dangers of traveling at night.  They pass through the fear that the authorities will arrest them as followers of Jesus of Nazareth.  They share their encounter with the risen Lord with the others in Jerusalem who had lost their hope.

            That is why we celebrate these fifty days of Easter every year.  Life has a way of upending our expectations and robbing us of hope.  Like those two disciples, we hear the Lord speaking to us in his Word now as we gather to celebrate the Eucharist.  Our eyes are opened when the priest takes bread, blesses the Father for the sacrificial love of Jesus made present as we remember it, breaks it, and gives it to us.  After encountering the risen Lord’s real presence in this Eucharist, we too are sent out to celebrate the Lord’s gift of hope and share it with others.

            On this weekend, our second graders are given the gift of the Eucharist for the first time.  They have been looking forward to this day for months.  In their excitement, they can teach us a valuable lesson about hope.  Like those two disciples, we can easily become discouraged and lose hope.  In our very busy lives, we rush around and fail to recognize the risen Lord in those we encounter on a daily basis.  The Lord works through our children to remind us of how important it is to take time every Sunday to listen to him and recognize him in the breaking of bread.  With them, we renew our hope in the Paschal Mystery of the Lord, whose death and resurrection (the Paschal Mystery) remain at the heart of everything we believe as disciples.

 

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

16 APRIL 2023

 

          The Gospel of Saint John equates seeing with believing.  John the Baptists invites the crowds to see him as the Christ when he declares after baptizing him: “Behold the Lamb of God.”  Those who see him as the Lamb of God will understand his role as the Messiah giving his life out of love for everyone.  Jesus invites people to see him as the Christ in each of his seven miracles or signs, beginning with changing water into wine at the Wedding Feast of Cana.  When the man born blind finally sees the one who restored his sight, he believes and worships him.  On the third day after his death on a cross, his earliest followers see the empty tomb.  However, they do not believe until they see the risen Lord.  Mary Magdalene recognizes him when he calls him by name outside the empty tomb.  She sees, believes, and becomes the Apostle to the Apostles when she runs and reports to them that she has seen the risen Lord.  However, they do not believe her until the risen Lord breaks through the locked doors of the room where they are cowering in fear and guilt.  Once they see him, they believe.

            However, Thomas is not with them.  The Gospel does not tell us why he skipped that first Easter Sunday gathering.  Perhaps guilt at abandoning the Lord in his hour of need separates him from the other ten.  Maybe grief isolates him.  When they tell him that they have seen the risen Lord, he refuses to believe until he can see for himself.  On the following Sunday, he rejoins the community and sees the risen Lord.  He sees the wounds, still present on the Lord’s Risen body, to show us that even in our most wounded hours, the Risen Christ feels our pain as his own, is present with us, and has conquered the world.  He sees, believes, and makes the most profound statement of faith in the New Testament: “My Lord and my God.”

            Jesus calls Thomas “blessed,” because he sees and believes.  But then he names us blessed, who believe without seeing as the earliest disciples had seen.  Beginning on Holy Saturday when we celebrated the bright light of the risen Lord emerging from the darkness of his tomb, we have celebrated his resurrection throughout this Octave of Easter.  Even though we have not seen as they had seen, we believe their testimony and renew our faith that Good Friday was not the end of the journey for Jesus of Nazareth.  On this last day of the Octave of Easter, we hear the same words addressed to the first disciples and accept his mercy and his forgiveness for the times we may have abandoned him through our actions.

            Saint John Paul II is the Pope who designated this last day of the Octave of Easter Divine as Mercy Sunday.  He said this about Easter: “We do not pretend that life is all beauty.  We are aware of darkness and sin, of poverty and pain.  But we know Jesus has conquered sin and passed through his own pain to the glory of the Resurrection.  And we live in the light of his Paschal Mystery – the mystery of his death and resurrection. ‘We are an Easter People and alleluia is our song!’ We are not looking for a shallow joy but rather a joy that comes from faith, that grows through unselfish love, that respects the ‘fundamental duty of love of neighbor, without which it would be unbecoming to speak of Joy.’”

            As a parish, we can accept the Pope’s challenge to remain as Easter People, with alleluia as our song.  We can commit ourselves to making our parish look like Saint Luke’s description of the earliest community of believers in the Acts of the Apostles.  Like them, we must devote ourselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.  As Easter people, we can be in solidarity with the poor and those who need our help.  Perhaps more people might come to believe if they see the presence of the risen Lord in our community of Easter People.  

 

EASTER SUNDAY

9 APRIL 2023

 

            The last time we encountered Simon Peter was on Good Friday.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, he and the sons of Zebedee could not stay awake as Jesus agonized over his impending death, which would be the expression of perfect love.  When Judas, one of his closest friends, betrayed Jesus in the Garden, Peter and the other disciples ran away in fear.  In the courtyard outside the high priest’s house, Peter denied knowing Jesus three times.

            We meet Peter again in today’s Gospel.  Mary Magdalene had reported that the body of Jesus had been stolen.  Peter and the Beloved Disciple arrive at the tomb, which is in a garden.  Both see the burial bands laid aside.  The Beloved Disciple contrasts those burial bands with the burial bands that had clung to Lazarus.  He believes that the Lord had been raised from the dead.  Peter is not yet at that point of faith. 

In our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we meet Peter again.  By this time, Peter had encountered the risen Lord later on Easter Sunday and received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  Peter’s conversion has been complete. Now, Peter has the courage to enter into a pagan house and baptizes Cornelius and his household.   He boldly proclaims the truth about Jesus Christ and the Paschal Mystery.  The risen Lord has transformed him.

            As we celebrate the triumph of the Lord over death on this Easter Sunday, we can trust that the Lord has the power to transform us through his resurrection.  The key to understanding this power lies in the garden. Gardens in Scripture are not just locations where vegetables and flowers are grown.  Gardens are where lovers meet.  Our first parents experienced perfect love in the Garden of Eden.  It was in the Garden of Gethsemane where perfect love was betrayed and abandoned.  It was in a garden of the tomb that Mary Magdalene later in the day mistakes the risen Christ for the gardener.  In that garden, Jesus reveals himself to her as the risen Lord and tells her to announce the good news to his disciples.

            As we grow in faith and in our encounters with the risen Lord, we find ourselves in a variety of gardens at different times in our lives.  All of us have experienced glimpses of the intense love of the Garden of Eden.  But, we have also participated in what happened to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.  We have betrayed the Lord by our actions.  We have abandoned him out of fear.  Now, Mary Magdalene invites us to encounter him in the garden of the resurrection.  He calls her by his affectionate name, and she recognizers him.  He does the same to us.  He speaks to us in the Word.   He invites us to recognize his risen presence in this Eucharist.  He feeds us with his Body and Blood.  He sends us forth to reflect more deeply on the ways we can share in the Lord’s sacrificial dying and rising during these next fifty days of Easter.

            That is why we need to celebrate the Sacred Paschal Triduum year after year.  No matter which garden we find ourselves in at this moment, the Lord invites us to recognize his risen presence and encounter him in the many ways in which he reveals himself to us.  The risen Lord eventually transforms Peter into the leader he had been called him to be:  The Rock of the faith of his Church.  Peter has learned to live the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ. Instead of running away, he will rejoice and suffer for the sake of the name. 

As we renew our baptismal promises, Jesus extends the same invitation to us.  We can renounce sin and the lure of evil and Satan, the author and prince of sin.  We can embrace the absolute love of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  We too can learn that in sharing in the sacrificial dying of Jesus Christ, we share in his rising. 

 

PALM SUNDAY OF THE PASSION OF THE LORD

2 APRIL 2023

 

            When Jesus comes down the Mount of Olives and enters Jerusalem, the crowds of his followers give him the “red carpet” treatment and hail him as the Messiah, the Son of David.  Saint Matthew tells us that the entire city of Jerusalem is shaken and asks “Who is this?”  And the crowds reply, “This is Jesus the prophet, from Nazareth in Galilee.”

            During the course of the week, Jesus will demonstrate that he is much more than a prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.  The truth about him will be revealed, and people will be invited to see the truth.  He extends that same invitation to us.  The Season of Lent will end on Thursday evening when we enter into the Sacred Paschal Triduum. 

As we celebrate the central Mystery of our faith in the Triduum, we will ask, who is this who gives himself as food and drink in a New Covenant?  Who is this who washes the feet of his disciples like a common slave?  Who is this who allows himself to be crucified and forgives those who revile and abandon him?  Who is this who is buried and raised from the dead and transformed through the resurrection?

            Please do everything you can to participate in the principle Liturgies of the Sacred Paschal Triduum.  Embrace the Paschal fast and participate in the Paschal watch in church.  Come to the other liturgies.  Together, we will deepen our faith and encounter in an intimate way the person of Jesus Christ, who is more than any human prophet.