Homily for Wednesday, 23 April 2014– Wednesday in the Octave of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 3:1-10; Psalm 105:1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8-9; Luke 24:13-35

What are some of the ways in which the risen Christ is “made known to” us? How do we experience the risen Christ in simple everyday events; when we are at peace; when we are busy, worried, or distracted; in our prayer; in other people, especially those in need or those who help us in our need; when we are gathered at Mass, many of us every day?

The events described in our readings today invite us to encounter the risen Christ, who makes himself known to us in these everyday situations of our lives, even if we do not realize immediately that Christ is present among us.

This is true in John’s and Peter’s healing of the “man crippled from birth” at “the Beautiful Gate of the temple” in today’s first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles. The risen Christ does not make himself present through earthly wealth. Peter admits to the crippled man: “I have neither silver nor gold.” No, Peter and John bring something more valuable than silver or gold: “the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean,” through whom we experience healing; through whom we experience the promise of resurrection.

I suspect, though, that man healed at the gate of the temple did not immediately realize that Christ was being made present to him through Peter and John. He was probably caught up in his own need for healing. Would the realization that the risen Christ was present in Peter’s and John’s healing only have come to this man in hindsight? How often does the realization that Christ is present in simple events in our lives only come to us in (sometimes distant) hindsight?

This belated realization is also true of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in our Gospel reading today from Luke. They have just experienced the worst they could ever have experienced: Jesus, to whom they had looked as “a prophet… the one to redeem Israel,” had been put to a shameful death on a cross! Now they are conversing with the risen Christ on their way to Emmaus, but understandably “their eyes [are] prevented from recognizing him.”

Just before it becomes too late, when Jesus is about to pass through “the village to which [the disciples] were going,” they recognize the presence of the risen Christ in two simple ways: In the opening of the Scriptures and “in the breaking of the bread.”

In these same simple ways, the breaking open of the Scriptures and the breaking of the bread, the risen Christ is made known to us here and now in our celebration of the Eucharist. How else is the risen Christ made known to us in the simple events of our lives? How quickly do we recognize the presence of the risen Christ in our simple everyday experiences? May we now open our hearts in prayer, and in our prayer; in our Eucharist; in one another may the risen Christ be made known to us who long to encounter him.

Homily for Sunday, 20 April 2014– The Resurrection of the Lord, Mass of Easter Sunday

Readings of the day: Acts 10:34a, 37-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9

Christ is risen! He is truly risen! Alleluia!

Before I entered the Basilians, I was a student at St. Joseph’s College in Edmonton, Canada. There, at the end of the Easter Vigil each year, one of our Basilian priests would announce in Greek according to an early Church tradition: Christos anesti! Aleithos anesti! (Christ is risen! He is truly risen!). Shall we try this here this morning?

Christos anesti! Aleithos anesti!

At St. Joseph’s College, after this first exclamation in Greek the congregation would be invited to proclaim, “Christ is risen; he is truly risen,” in as many other languages as the people gathered knew. Often, in our small St. Joseph’s College chapel, we would approach twenty languages in which we would proclaim the central joy of our faith: “Christ is risen! He is truly risen!” This multi-language proclamation was always a very moving experience for me.

I won’t ask us to try to proclaim Christ’s resurrection in multiple languages here today. I also promise that the rest of my homily, after “Christos anesti; Aleithos anesti,” won’t be all Greek to us!

Nevertheless, I ask: What feelings do we experience when we hear it proclaimed that the Lord Jesus is truly risen? Perhaps first of all we may feel joy that our Lord is risen from the dead. We may find it easy to give our voice to today’s Psalm: “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad!”

We may feel a sense of thanksgiving to God for Christ’s resurrection from the dead. After all, just days ago, on Good Friday, we echoed the cries of the crowds of Jesus’ time: “Crucify him!” Jesus Christ died to put to death our sin; our having called out for his death on a cross. Now, through his resurrection, we are promised resurrection with Christ to new and eternal life. We are promised by God’s mercy a new beginning, free from sin, to be as our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles says, “Witnesses to all that [Christ] did” for us; witnesses to our redemption by Christ’s death and resurrection. We are promised, in the words of St. Paul to the Colossians, that we, “too, will appear with [Christ] in glory.” And so we may echo our Psalm today: “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his mercy endures forever… I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD.”

Along with joy and a sense of thanksgiving, it would be natural for us to feel somewhat confused at the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Some of us may be asking, “Why would we feel confused”? Let us put ourselves into the events of the morning of Jesus’ resurrection as John describes them in today’s Gospel reading. Mary Magdalene arrives first at the empty tomb, sees “the stone removed from the tomb,” and then runs frantically back to Peter to tell him not that Jesus is risen, but that “they have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

Mary Magdalene’s reaction to the absent stone is of confusion and fear. Perhaps someone had stolen the body of Jesus and hidden it elsewhere to make sure that his disciples would not do the same or something more strange yet… Would we have reacted any differently than Mary Magdalene to the empty tomb with no stone?

Peter arrives at the tomb still, we can imagine, overcome with sadness and guilt for having denied Jesus and contributed to his death. He sees the scattered burial cloths and, like Mary Magdalene, is afraid and confused. Would we have reacted any differently than Peter?

Only for the unnamed “disciple whom Jesus loved” does the joy and thanksgiving at Jesus’ resurrection overcome the confusion and fear at his empty tomb. The other disciples “did not yet understand the Scripture that [Jesus] had to rise from the dead.” Would any of us act with the faith of this beloved disciple in his situation? Perhaps some of us may act with such faith, but if my experience at funerals is any indication, many of us would react more like Peter and Mary Magdalene than like the unnamed disciple who “saw and believed.”

The confusion, fear, and sorrow with which most of us face the loss of loved ones are natural human feelings. For us to hear, as in a Eucharistic Prayer frequently heard at funerals, that “the hope of blessed resurrection has dawned,” for our deceased loved one and for all of us, because of Christ’s own resurrection, often does not lessen our confusion; our fear; our sorrow.

Our Easter celebration gives us a space for our confusion; our fear; our sorrow at the death of a loved one, Jesus Christ. And yet through our Easter celebration we are invited to move from natural, human feelings of confusion; of fear; of sorrow toward joy and thanksgiving because Christ is risen. This move may not happen immediately, and so our Easter celebration lasts fifty days each year: From today, Easter Sunday, to Pentecost, when we receive the Holy Spirit, the decisive breath of joy and thanksgiving into our Church.

We now begin our fifty days to move from confusion to joy and thanksgiving; fifty days from sorrow to the Spirit; fifty days from not knowing “where they… laid” Jesus to understanding more fully the Scripture that Jesus, and we after him, “had to rise from the dead”; fifty days to proclaim in the language of our hearts the central joy of our faith: Christos anesti! Aleithos anesti!

Christ is risen! He is truly risen! Alleluia!

Homily for Tuesday, 15 April 2014‒ Tuesday of Holy Week

Readings of the day: Isaiah 49:1-6; Psalm 71:1-2, 3-4a, 5ab-6ab, 16-18, 15, 17; John 13:21-33, 36-38

 

When we hear the word “night,” what descriptions might we associate with night? We might associate with night the mysterious; the hidden.

John sets the scene of the Last Supper that Jesus has with his disciples with a simple description that we hear in our Gospel reading today: “And it was night.”

Judas Iscariot goes out into this night “at once” from this scene of the Last Supper. We know how this event unfolds: Judas is about to betray Jesus, but why? What are his motives? We can know nothing from John’s Gospel except that “Satan entered” Judas, and so he left the Last Supper hurriedly. “And it was night.”

Here, night carries the sense of the mysterious; the hidden. But in John’s Gospel, night does not so much hide in mystery as reveal the truth about who we as Jesus’ disciples really are. And so our question becomes, as Pope Francis asked in his homily on Palm Sunday, “Who are we?”

“And it was night.” Other than Jesus, there are three main characters in this scene on the night of the Last Supper. There is the unnamed disciple “whom Jesus loved” who asks who Jesus’ betrayer will be: “Who is it?” There is Simon Peter, who vows that he “will lay down [his] life for” Jesus, only to have Jesus predict that Peter will deny him three times during this same night. And then there is Judas, who says nothing but exits quickly into the night…

On this night of the Last Supper; in our celebration of Holy Week; in our celebration of this Eucharist in which we remember the Last Supper, who are we?

Are we, at least usually, most like the disciple “whom Jesus loved”; the disciple closest to the heart of Jesus, who cannot imagine how anyone would betray or deny even knowing the Christ; the disciple who, if we continue hearing John’s Gospel, will be at the foot of the cross as Jesus dies, when most of the other disciples flee?

Are we sometimes most like Simon Peter, vowing to keep our faith in Christ in the most difficult of times, only to find out how frail and in need of God’s grace we really are?

Have we ever been like Judas who, perhaps because of pressure or insecurity, succumbs to temptation to sin with eerie silence?

Perhaps we have experienced as disciples of Jesus times when we have been most like any one of these three apostles…

The night reveals who we really are as Jesus’ disciples, and so we might ask: Who are we as we gather to celebrate our Holy Week; our Eucharist? Who are we as we remember the first Eucharist, the Last Supper, when “it was night”?

Homily for Sunday, 13 April 2014‒ Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord

Readings of the day: At the procession with palm branches: Matthew 21:1-11. During the Mass: Isaiah 50:4-7; Psalm 22:8-9, 17-18, 19-20, 23-24; Philippians 2:6-11; Matthew 26:14-27:66

Who among us is ready for Holy Week? So Holy Week begins with this, our Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion.

I could ask this same question every time we gather for Mass. Are we ready to celebrate the Eucharist? I suspect that, if we thought carefully, most of us would wonder if it is even possible to be ready for such a magnificent celebration as the Mass. Many of us try to overcome the distractions and worries of our everyday lives when we prepare ourselves for Mass. We are fortunate if we have managed not to become upset at another driver who has cut us off on our way to Mass (Oops!); if we have gotten everybody up and to Mass on time, without any complaining; if before Mass started someone in the next pew or at the back of the church were not disrupting our silent and prayerful preparation by speaking too loudly…

I sometimes find it difficult to be as ready for Mass as I should. Now magnify this difficulty in preparing prayerfully for Mass by the intensity of Holy Week. It may be impossible for any of us to be ready for Holy Week! Fortunately, Jesus does not ask us to be fully ready to encounter him. This would be an impossible task for us. Instead, especially in our Eucharist; our Holy Week; our Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion, Jesus meets us as we are; as unprepared as we are to encounter him.

The first Holy Week, almost two thousand years ago, and every Holy Week since Jesus entered Jerusalem triumphantly, was and has been about people who are not ready to encounter our Lord Jesus; and Jesus who knows our lack of readiness to encounter him and yet meets us as we are.

We begin Palm Sunday by receiving palm branches. While it is true that the palm branches we hold are a symbol of royalty (we welcome a king, Jesus Christ, into Jerusalem; into our midst) and also of martyrdom (notice how icons and statues of those who died for their faith, St. Cecilia for example, often include a palm branch), our palm branches also remind us that we are not yet ready to encounter our Lord Jesus.

The crowds welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem waving palm branches crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Within just one week, the crowds would be crying out, “Let him be crucified!” The crowds in Jesus’ time were not ready to encounter their Lord.

Among Jesus’ closest friends, Peter would deny him. Judas Iscariot would betray him. Most of the others would flee the scene. They were not ready to encounter their friend; their Lord.

And here we are. We have begun our celebration of Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion; our Holy Week by hearing, “Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Within this same Mass, we have joined the cry of the crowds of Jesus’ time: “Let him be crucified!” We are sinners. We are as frail as Jesus’ first apostles. We are not fully ready to encounter our Lord.

Yet Jesus meets us where we are. We experience forgiveness of sin through Christ’s passion and death; through our celebration of Holy Week that begins today: “Hosanna to the Son of David.” By being lifted up on the cross, Jesus lifts us up to eternal life. Are we ready?