EASTER SUNDAY OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE LORD

20 APRIL 2025

 

          Saint John says that it is dark when Mary Magdalene arrives at the tomb.  He not only describes the darkness of the early morning of the first day of the week.  He is also talking about the darkness which Mary Magdalene herself brings with her.  She is grieving in a very dark way at the death of Jesus, her beloved mentor.  When she arrives, she sees that the stone has been removed from the tomb.  She reacts by running to Simon Peter and the other disciples whom Jesus loved.  She tells them that someone had taken his body from the tomb, and she does not know where they put him.  Simon Peter and the beloved disciple react by running to the tomb themselves.  When they arrive, they recognize that the tomb is empty, and that the grave clothes are folded and the cloth that had covered his head is rolled up in a separate place.  The beloved disciple allows Simon Peter to enter first.  He does not know what to make of it. 

            The beloved disciple sees and believes that something extraordinary has happened.  With Mary Magdalene, he had been present when the Lord died on the cross.  He had been part of his burial.  However, Simon Peter had not been present at the crucifixion and burial.  Probably, he is still wallowing in deep pain and regret for his three-time denial that he knew Jesus when we was warming himself by the fire in the courtyard of the high priest.

            Later, all three would remember the Scriptures to allow them to move from recognition to a deep and abiding faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  That happens to Mary Magdalene when the risen Christ will reveal himself to her later in the day, after she thought that he was the gardener.  That will happen to Peter and the other disciples when Jesus will break though the locked doors of the upper room that evening as the risen Lord.  Peter’s belief in the resurrection of the Lord is evident in his words which we heard in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles.  Not only has he encountered the risen Lord in the upper room, but the risen Lord has forgiven and healed his denials by asking three times if Peter loves him when he appears to Peter and the other disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

            On Easter Sunday, we come to the empty tomb again.  In our busy and hectic lives, we do a lot of running, just as those three characters are running in today’s Gospel.  Each of us comes to Easter Sunday with whatever is happening in our lives.  Some of you come today having lost a loved one in death.  You come with heavy hearts and profound grief.  Some of you have faced job losses and the danger of economic havoc.  Others come burdened by physical illness and pain.  To be honest, all of us come to Easter Sunday worried about the political divisions that bring the anger and disputes and a dreadful uncertainty about the future of our country.

            Easter Sunday challenges us to deepen our faith in the Mystery of the resurrection, as those three characters in today’s Gospel did.  We begin by reacting.  After celebrating the Liturgies of Holy Thursday and Good Friday, we react to the fact that the Lord’s body is not in the tomb.  We can easily say, “Jesus is not here, he is risen.”  Then we run back into our busy lives.  Instead, we need to take time to recognize that the power of the Lord’s resurrection can become a more profound part of our lives.  That is whey we celebrate the Season of Easter for fifty days.  When we gather to hear the Word of God and remember the Scriptures in these next Sundays of the Easter Season, we can reflect more deeply on the truth we recognize today.  Death and sin and the horrors of this world do not have the last word.  We can experience a little bit of the Lord’s rising every time we deliberately enter into his dying.  Not only do each of those deaths give us a share in his rising, but the final answer at the end of the world and the end of our lives is not death.  It is life, and an eternal sharing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

 

EVENING MASS OF THE LORD’S SUPPER

17 APRIL 2025

 

          The first reading from the Book of Exodus helps us understand the background for Saint Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians.  Moses instructs his people to gather as families to slaughter an unblemished lamb.  They are to take the blood and smear it on the lintels of their homes, so that the angel of death can pass over their homes.  As they eat the flesh of the lamb, they are to prepare themselves to pass over from slavery to freedom in their journey to the Promised Land.        

            Jesus follows these instructions and gathers his disciples to celebrate the Passover as a family.  But he goes beyond the original Passover Meal.  He will be he unblemished lamb to be sacrificed on Calvary.  In taking the unleavened bread, he identifies it as his own body, given up for them.  In taking the cup, he reveals the new covenant established in his own blood poured out for them.  He establishes the Eucharist as a perpetual remembrance of his real presence in the new covenant.  He speaks to us in insisting that every time we celebrate this Eucharist as Saint Paul commanded the Corinthians, he is really and truly present.

            Last week, I read a report from a psychologist who insisted that half of Americans are afflicted with loneliness.  She provided an interesting solution to this problem.  She urged lonely people to make a list of three things for which they are grateful each day.  She argued that keeping these lists of gratitude will combat loneliness.  That is why we gather to celebrate the Eucharist every Sunday, or every day if we choose.  We do not gather as isolated individuals making lists, we gather as a community of disciples to give thanks to the Father not only for all that we have received.  With the Greek word for Eucharist meaning thanksgiving, we especially give thanks to the Father for the sacrifice of Jesus made present as we remember it at Mass.

            In the Gospel of Saint John, there is no account of the Lord instituting the Eucharist at the Last Supper, as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul do.  He has already given his theology of the Real Presence in chapter six.  Instead, Saint John tells us that Jesus washes the feet of his disciples.  In the ancient world, the best way for a host to welcome a visitor would be to have the visitor’s feet washed.  Those dirty, ugly, and smelly feet are the results of many miles walked through dusty roads.  The host himself would not lower himself to do this humble task.  Instead, a servant or a slave or one of the children would do it.

            Jesus reverses the order of a master dominating and the servant obeying.  Saint Augustine identified the dysfunction of human society when he names the lust to dominate.  In becoming the servant, he reverses the dysfunction of human society and teaches us how to be humble servants.  He anticipates his ultimate act of giving his life totally out of love for us on the cross.  In doing so, he teaches us how to love as he has loved us.  In the Eucharist, he nourishes us with his own Body and Blood so that we can be humble servants and foot washers today.  He nourishes parents to wash the feet of their children.  He feeds bosses and managers so they can take care of those who work under them.  He feeds every single one of us to reverse the lust of dominance to make a difference in our world today.  He sends us out of this and every Mass to keep our eyes open and to humble ourselves to serve those people.

            Normally, we end our homilies at this point.  But not only Holy Thursday.  Tonight, I will wash the feet of twelve parishioners known for their humble service to this parish and to those in need.  In this Sacred Paschal Triduum, we are not just acting out events that happened over 2,000 years ago.  We are participating in the saving actions of Jesus Christ, who continues to free us from whatever holds us back.  We are a Eucharistic people, becoming what we consume.  As the Body of Christ, we give ourselves in humble service.

 

PALM SUNDAY OF THE LORD’S PASSION

13 APRIL 2025

 

            In 1931, Gertrud von Le Fort wrote a novel, entitled The Song at the Scaffold.  It was about the true story of a Carmelite community of nuns in France, who were executed in the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.  During a moving scene, the nuns are observing the “blasphemous mockeries of Eucharistic processions.”  One of the sisters refers to the Eucharist as “the defenseless God.”  Her remarks describe how dependent God in the Eucharist is on human respect and faith.  God in the Eucharist is wholly vulnerable to human choice and action, whether that action is faith-filled and reverent or blasphemous and denigrating.

            Ours is a God who does not shield himself from buffets and spitting.  To use the words of Saint Paul, Jesus does not grasp at divinity as an escape from (or punishment for) human weakness. This Passion according to Saint Luke sets the stage for our reflection on the final chapter in the continuing story of God’s choice to be vulnerable to human sin.

            Lent ends this Thursday evening when we enter into the Sacred Paschal Triduum and celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper at 6:00.  We are invited to stay with the Lord through the Passover Meal and the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.  We will witness the denial in the courtyard of the high priest, along with the solitude of the night in custody and the mockery of the council of elders.  On Good Friday at the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion at 1:00, we will visit the shuffle between Pilate and Herod, along with the brutality of scourging and the carrying of the cross.  On Calvary, we will hear the reproach of friend and foe alike, the last breath, and the placement of the dead body into his mother’s arms.

            We will begin with the darkness of that death at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday evening at 9:00.  But throughout that incredibly beautiful Liturgy, we will renew our faith that the horrors of this reality will be replaced by Easter joy and redemption.  It is critical that we gather together for these liturgies, identifying with our defenseless God who has destroyed the power of death by entering into it himself.

 

FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT

6 APRIL 2025

 

          The prophet Isaiah gives hope to his people in captivity in Babylon.  He reminds them of God’s saving acts in the past.  God had led their ancestors in their journey from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land through the Red Sea in.  The mighty army of Pharaoh’s horsemen was drowned in their pursuit.  However, he tells his people not to remember the events of the past.  God will do something new.  God is present to his people in captivity, and God will lead them in a new journey through another desert to their homeland.  God will give them water, just as God had done for their ancestors. 

            Saint Paul is also on a journey when he writes to the Philippians.  Writing from his prison cell, he has lost everything.  He has lost his ministry to the Gentiles and the freedom of traveling wherever the Lord led him.  He had also lost the sinful parts of his life, especially his original hatred for the disciples of Jesus Christ and for his active persecution of the Church.  He accepts the loss of all those things, because he has found gain in Jesus Christ.  Because of that gain, he can let go of what is behind him and strains forward to what lies ahead.  He can continue his pursuit toward the goal of achieving the prize of God’s upward calling in Jesus Christ.  He is confident in his journey to share in the fullness of the resurrection.

            As we continue our journey through the desert of Lent, the story of the woman caught in adultery provides some direction.  The scribes and Pharisees bring a woman caught in the act of adultery.  As Pope John Paul II asked, where is the man?  Instead of bringing both people, they bring the more vulnerable of the two.  They could care less about this woman.  They use her to set a trap for Jesus.  They ask him if they should follow the law of Moses and have the woman stoned.  If Jesus agrees, they will question his teaching about mercy.  If he responds that the woman should be shown mercy, they will accuse him of ignoring the law of Moses.  Instead of falling into their trap, he bends down and writes on the ground with his finger.  We have no idea what he is writing.  Then he dares the one among them without sin to be the first to throw a stone at her.  After they all go away one by one, he addresses the woman.

            Instead of using her as an object, as the scribes and Pharisees has done, he speaks to her with love.  Just as no one had been able to condemn her, he does not condemn her either.  He does not minimize her sin of adultery.  Instead, he tells her to leave that sin in the past and not sin again.  He invites her to cast off the misery of her past sins to live without sin with him.  The loss of her misery can be replaced by his mercy.

            We have no idea what that woman chose to do.  Did she go back to her lover, or did she agree to allow Jesus Christ to journey with her?  Because this is the living Word of God, the Lord invites us to deepen our trust in his presence and to journey with him.  In our journey, we can recall the many ways the Lord has been with us in the past and give thanks.  We might be tempted to recall the ways we have refused to journey with Jesus Christ and have turned against him.  Like the ancient Israelites, like Saint Paul, and like the woman caught in adultery, we can count all of those times as loss.  Our common gain is our relationship with Jesus Christ.  It is that gain which is being revealed in our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

            In these last two weeks of our journey through the desert of Lent, we can face a wilderness of uncertainty, because God is before us preparing the way.  He is doing a “new thing," which we can embrace with hope as we walk with him through his passion, death, and ultimately to his resurrection.

 

FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT

30 MARCH 2025

 

          In the first reading, Joshua reminds his people that God has formed them into a new creation by leading them through the desert to the Promised Land.  Saint Paul builds on the words of Joshua in his letter to the Corinthians and applies them to Christ.  Jesus Christ has formed us into a new creation by reconciling us to the Father through his death on the cross.  As members of this new creation, we are ambassadors for Christ, extending the reconciliation we have received with others.

            This most famous parable of Jesus helps us to understand God’s reconciling love.  We call it the “Parable of the Prodigal Son.”  The word “prodigal” means “recklessly extravagant.”  The younger son is definitely “prodigal.”  He makes a recklessly extravagant demand on his father.  He demands half of his inheritance.  In the ancient world, the inheritance would be given only after death.  He recklessly considers his father dead.  The older son is also reckless, because his job would have been to negotiate the terms of the inheritance with his brother and to talk sense into him.  But he stands by and does nothing.  He seems to be waiting for his father to die to get the rest of the inheritance, with his younger brother out of the way.  However, the most recklessly extravagant person is the father.  He recklessly gives his younger son what he demands.  He risks looking like an old fool to his neighbors.

            The younger son leaves and squanders his wealth on a life of dissipation, recklessly and extravagantly wasting his wealth on himself.  But when the famine strikes and he is stuck caring for pigs (a horrible job for a Jewish boy), he comes to his senses and regrets his actions.  He intends to return to his father as a slave, supporting himself apart from his father’s house.  But the father is filled with compassion.  He rushes out to welcome him back as his son.  Again, he looks like an old fool to the neighbors.  Not only does he embrace him, but he gives his son the symbols of his reckless extravagance – the finest robe, the ring, sandals on his feet, and an extravagant feast.  At this point, the son recognizes the incredible gift of his father’s mercy and accepts the gift of his original sonship.

            As members of the new creation, the Father offers us the recklessly extravagant gift of reconciliation.  Through the Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, the Lord invites us to examine our consciences to see how we may have imitated the example of the younger son.  Have we been estranged and rebellious while being absent from the presence of the Lord?  If so, we can honestly confess our sin.  When we repent and make up our minds to change our course, we open ourselves to receive the Lord’s grace of extravagant mercy.  We can share the joy of that gift and be restored to the status of sons or daughters given to us when we were baptized.  Then, we can become ambassadors of Christ, extending that same gift to others.

Or, are we more like the older son, estranged and rebellious in our hearts while remaining in the presence of the Lord?  The father rushes out to meet his older son to answer his angry questions about his brother.  The father does so publicly, again looking like a fool to his neighbors.  He has been estranged and rebellious in his heart while remaining in his father’s presence.  In his arrogance, he refuses his father’s gift of extravagant mercy. 

This parable answers the objection of the Pharisees and scribes: “this man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  They clearly resemble the older brother.  The Lord has thrown a feast for us in this Eucharist.  He eats with us sinners, whether we are the older or the younger son and invites us to repentance.  Then he sends us out of this Mass to be ambassadors of his reckless mercy to others.

 

THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT

23 MARCH 2025

 

          By this time in the Gospel of Saint Luke, people recognize that Jesus is an authentic teacher.  So, they ask a pressing question.  They want to know why those Galileans had been murdered by Pilate.  The common answer was that this disaster is a result of their sin.  Jesus refutes that answer and adds another example.  He mentions the eighteen people who had been killed by a falling tower at Siloam.  No, he says, they have no more guilt than everyone else in Jerusalem.  Jesus refutes the common solution that disasters, either human or natural, are not punishments from God for sin.

            We can identify with these questions, because disasters are still a part of our lives today.  When a disaster happens, we realize how vulnerable we are.  Any of us could have been on that plane that crashed into the helicopter earlier this year in Washington DC.  We could have been in the paths of the tornadoes ripping through the south last week.  We empathize with the victims and their grieving families.  We become more aware that these disasters can happen at any time to any of us.  That is why we were marked with ashes at the beginning of Lent.  More aware of our immortality, we use the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving to turn away from sin and become more closely aligned with Jesus Christ.  The ashes are not intended to frighten or make us paranoid, but to move us to repentance.

            The parable of the fig tree helps us to understand the dynamics of the Lord working in our lives.  Even though the fig tree had been growing for three years, it is not bearing fruit.  When the owner of the orchard wants to cut it down, the gardener asks for more time.  The gardener promises to cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it.  He argues that these actions will cause the fig tree to produce fruit.  The gardener is Jesus Christ, and he is working through this Season of Lent to cultivate the ground around us and provide fertilizer so we can produce good fruit.  He gives the tools of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving to cultivate that ground.  He the Sacrament of Reconciliation for fertilizer.  Lent invites us to be honest about whether or not we are producing good fruit.  Are the Lenten disciplines enabling us to be more patient, especially those who drive us crazy?  Are we responding to the needs of other people, especially the poor and the vulnerable?  Are we working to overcome chronic behaviors that tear us down?  Can others see a difference in the way we act?  Are we beginning to let go of the anger, resentment, and desire for revenge that tend to consume us?  God is looking for us to produce good fruit.

            In the first reading, Moses does not look for God.  Instead, God seeks him out and reveals his presence as a fire burning in a bush without consuming it.  Moses throws himself on the ground and hears God speak to him.  God uses seven verbs to describe God’s activities on his behalf.  God has observed the misery of his people.  God has heard their cries.  God knows their sufferings.  God has come down to deliver them.  God will bring them to a land.  God has seen the oppression.  Finally, God will send Moses.

            These seven verbs describe God’s actions through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in our lives, especially during the Season of Lent.  In their journey in the desert, the Israelites did not always trust these verbs.  They often grumbled against God and Moses.  We are also tempted, especially on our journey through the desert of Lent, to complain and grumble.  But the Divine Gardener keeps working with us.  The Lord continues to seek us out and journey with us.  There is a wideness in God’s mercy, and we must open our eyes, our ears, and our hearts to allow him to continue to work with us, so that we can bear good fruit.

 

 

SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT

16 MARCH 2025

 

          Abram had responded to God’s call to journey from his home in Ur of the Chaldeans.  God had promised Abram both a land of his own and many descendants.  However, in the land promised by God, he and his wife had not been able to conceive in their old age.  In the first reading, God enters into a covenant with Abram.  The making of this covenant sounds strange to us.  But it was the way Abram and his contemporaries entered into agreements with one another.  Each participant would bring an assortment of animals, kill them, and cut them in two, placing each half on the opposite side of the road.  They would sit there all day, and then pass through the halved animals.  In sealing the deal, each party was committed to keep the covenant or be split in half like the animals.

            Abram sits by the side of the road all day, as he wards off the birds of prey, representing future threats to the covenant.  At sundown, Abram emerges from a trance to see a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch pass between the pieces, symbolizing the presence of God.  God enters into a covenant with Abram, promising descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the land.  Abram puts his faith in God’s promise to fulfill this covenant agreement with him. 

            Jesus is also on a journey.  He has already passed the tests of the devil in the desert, and he has set his sights on Jerusalem.  He stops to pray at a mountain in Galilee, taking with him Peter, James, and John.  Especially in the Gospel of Saint Luke, Jesus spends time in prayer seeking direction from his Father at crucial times in his ministry.  As he prays, his face changes in appearance.  The answer to his prayer is written all over his face, and he is determined to continue his journey to Jerusalem.  His clothing becomes dazzling white, and he is joined by the two great figures of the faith.  They are discussing his exodus.  Moses had led his people in an exodus from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the promised land.  In the land promised by God, Elijah called his people to continue their journey to the Lord in the spirit of Moses.

            Emerging from sleep, Peter and James and John see this vision of glory.  Peter wants to pitch three tents and remain in this glorious state.  Instead, they hear the voice from the cloud, the symbol of the Father’s presence, say the same thing he said at the baptism of Jesus: “This is my chosen Son; listen to him.”

            As the three disciples continue to journey with Jesus to Jerusalem, they struggle to listen to this voice.  Once they reach Jerusalem, they will fall asleep as Jesus agonizes over what being faithful to the Father’s will involves.  It will involve hanging in agony on another mountain, Mt. Calvary.  His face will not be changed, and there will be no clothing.  He will be surrounded not by two figures from the past, but by two thieves. On that horribly dark day, he will be buried in a borrowed tomb.  But three days later, he will be raised from the dead, fulfilling the vision that Peter and James and John had glimpsed on Mount Tabor.  In his exodus to Jerusalem, he did much more than Moses or Elijah could have even done.  They had been heralds of the Messianic Age.  Through the Paschal Mystery, he will initiate the Messianic Age for all of us.

            As we continue our journey through these forty days of Lent, we pause at this Mass and in our daily lives to take time to pray.  Like the first disciples, we are walking with Jesus on our journey to the new and eternal Jerusalem.  We open our hearts and ears to listen carefully to his words.  We must face obstacles and difficulties and problems.  We too will have to face the agony of the Garden of Gethsemane and eventually embrace our crosses and the cross of death.  But, through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, we can discipline ourselves to listen to God’s chosen Son and walk with the same faith and trust that Abraham did.