Homily for Sunday, 31 March 2024– 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

Sisters and brothers: Christ is risen, alleluia! He is truly risen, alleluia!

Within the Scripture readings we have just heard on this Easter Sunday morning, I am always profoundly drawn to the descriptions of Jesus’ first disciples, the diversity of their experiences of Jesus’ resurrection and the preaching of apostles like Peter about Jesus’ resurrection.

First, I invite us to focus our attention on Mary Magdalene. She, not any of the Twelve, is the first to see the empty tomb of Jesus, with the stone rolled away from its entrance. She runs to tell Simon Peter “and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved,” that the tomb is empty. But at this point, Mary Magdalene’s experience is not one of excitement and joy; it is one of confusion. “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

In her anxiety and confusion, Mary Magdalene reaches for the first logical conclusion that comes to her mind: Somebody has stolen, has relocated Jesus’ body. Peter and the beloved disciple run together to the tomb to investigate Mary’s claim that the tomb is empty. I imagine that, when Mary Magdalene first tells Peter and the beloved disciple that the tomb is empty, they would have thought this was preposterous. But, to their credit, the two men go to the tomb. Mary Magdalene returns to the tomb, too, but remains in the garden outside it, weeping.

Simon Peter and then the beloved disciple enter the tomb. They see the stone rolled away, the burial cloths rolled up in separate places, the head cloth from the body cloth. And the next line in John’s Gospel always amazes me, every time I hear it: The beloved disciple (and we can presume Peter, too) “saw and believed, for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”

The beloved disciple believed first. Only later would Jesus’ disciples understand this mystery of the resurrection: “He must rise from the dead.” In the Church, dating back to the eleventh century Benedictine monk St. Anselm of Canterbury, we have a neat little phrase to sum up the goal of the Christian intellectual tradition: It is “faith seeking understanding”—fides quærens intellectum.

Now, maybe this speaks to the smallness of my faith, or maybe it is a more widespread phenomenon of contemporary Western thought (I will leave this question to the philosophers), but I have real trouble believing in something if I cannot first begin to understand it intellectually. I have trouble believing something if it is not at least reasonable to me. Simon Peter and the beloved disciple believe before Jesus’ rising from the dead becomes something reasonable, understandable to them. This is very bold on their part!

And Mary Magdalene, lingering, weeping in the garden outside the tomb, is bold in her own right in John’s account of Easter morning that we have just heard. She does not understand why Jesus’ tomb is empty any better than Simon Peter and the beloved disciple do. She thinks that somebody has taken Jesus’ body and laid it elsewhere. But Mary Magdalene does not flee her complex set of emotions and thoughts, her experience of the present moment: Confusion, anxiety, sadness because, as far as she knows, Jesus is still dead. Mary Magdalene remains in the garden to encounter this experience head-on. And she is blessed, because of her boldness, with an encounter with the risen Lord. Jesus asks her, “Woman, whom are you looking for”?

At that moment, Mary Magdalene recognizes the voice of her Lord, our Lord, immediately: “Rabbouni”! But she is still caught up in trying first to understand before she can believe that he is truly risen, that nobody has taken Jesus’ body away. Jesus reminds her, and reminds us, that the greatest faith precedes understanding—having everything worked out intellectually. Faith seeks understanding, ideally, not the other way around.

“Do not hold onto me,” Jesus tells Mary Magdalene. “Do not hold onto” this very human desire to understand, to make rational sense, before we can believe. “But go to my brothers,” Jesus says, “And say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

So Mary obeys Jesus. She goes and announces to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.” And then they, too, come to believe that Jesus is truly risen from the dead. They become vocal preachers, witnesses by their way of life, to Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus’ disciples can at last begin to understand, once they have believed. And then they can act on their faith, their understanding, to found and grow the Church, this communion of “witnesses” to the risen Christ as Peter calls those who hear him preach in the Acts of the Apostles, our first reading this morning.

But this story all begins in a garden, with the encounter between Mary Magdalene and the risen Lord, and in the tomb, when Simon Peter and then the beloved disciple enter to find the tomb empty and the burial cloths displaced. That our first encounters, in John’s Gospel, with the risen Christ happen in a garden and inside an empty tomb is no accident.

It was in a garden where, Genesis says in its account of the creation of the first humans, God created Adam and Eve. It was in a garden where Adam and Eve fell for Satan’s lie that eating the forbidden fruit would make them wise, would make them their own god, able to understand everything as God does, without the need to believe and depend on God whose goodness had created them and sustained them and all things. Yet it was in a garden where, when Adam and Eve sinned, God’s Spirit first blew through Eden and whispered to them, “Where are you”: Where are you, not a wise and all-knowing God but naked and ashamed? And it was in a garden, still, before Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden, where God first promised to redeem us from, overcome, destroy sin and its effects.

This promise reaches its peak in the mystery we celebrate today: God has sent his only Son to redeem us, to overcome and destroy sin by his death and resurrection from the dead. And this promise will reach its fulfillment when the Christ returns in glory at the end of time, as we hear today from the Letter to the Colossians: “When Christ [our] life is revealed, then [we] will be revealed with him in glory.”

It is in a garden, just as it was in a garden “in the beginning,” in those first moments of our creation and fall into sin, where God once again calls out. God’s “Where are you” to Adam and Eve becomes Jesus’ question to Mary Magdalene, “Whom are you looking for”?

While this Easter encounter with the risen Christ is still a mystery, God’s Christ calls to us, invites us to enter the empty tomb, to acknowledge that he is risen and is present with and through us. God invites us to do all that, starting in a garden and an empty tomb on Easter morning, before we could ever fully understand this mystery. God invites us, as he did Simon Peter and the beloved disciple, to believe first. Only once we believe, might we understand. And then, as God called Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, the beloved disciple, and all the other Christian disciples after them through the ages, God now calls us to be witnesses.

God calls us to “go and tell [our] brothers” and sisters: We believe. “We are witnesses to all that [Christ] did.” And now Jesus Christ, who died to redeem us, is risen. He is truly risen. Alleluia!

Homily for Sunday, 17 April 2022– 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

The Motherhouse Chapel of the Vincentian order, the Congregation of the Mission, in Paris includes a Latin inscription along the arch above the tabernacle and high altar: Pertransiit benefaciendo, “He went about doing good.” This inscription is surrounded by illustrations of Vincentians doing works of goodness and charity, especially among the poor, for which the order is so famous.

When I lived in Paris, my apartment was across a courtyard from the Vincentian Motherhouse. So this inscription in the Motherhouse chapel, Pertransiit Benefaciendo, “He went about doing good,” resonates especially with me. It is taken from the reading we hear this Easter morning from the Acts of the Apostles. In our reading, St. Peter describes Jesus’ ministry in this way as he preaches in the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion who would become an early Gentile disciple of Jesus Christ. “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power,” Peter proclaims; “he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”

The earliest Church, in the years right after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, and God’s sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, had a problem. I would describe it as a good problem to have. The problem is that—if we follow the Acts of the Apostles’ account of events—on the one hand, the Church was expanding; people were being baptized, both Jews and Gentiles like Cornelius, exceptionally quickly and in great numbers. Acts gives us a sense of an early Christian Church blessed with great fervor; great piety; people dedicated to going about “and doing good,” following Jesus’ own example. Acts says that, in these earliest Christian communities, “nobody had need”; the wealthiest gave of their excess to support the least well-off. All was well. This was, without doubt, the work of the Holy Spirit, as Acts so often emphasizes. Peter says of Jesus in Cornelius’ house that he was “anointed… with the Holy Spirit and with power.” Truly, this could have been a description not only of Jesus, but of any Christian disciple; any of us. Each of us, sisters and brothers, have been “anointed… with the Holy Spirit and with power” from the moment of our baptism. We have been anointed, after Jesus himself, to go out and do good.

On the other hand—and the earliest Christian disciples would have been acutely aware of this, especially as the Church expanded rapidly beyond the Jewish world and into the Gentile world, its cultures and customs—nobody directly witnessed Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. The Church had a problem.

The person closest to witnessing Jesus’ resurrection from the dead directly is Mary Magdalene, in John’s Gospel from which we hear on this Easter morning. But when Mary Magdalene arrives at Jesus’ tomb, the resurrection has already taken place, only Mary does not know this yet. The stone at the tomb’s entrance has been rolled away. John very deliberately says that Mary arrives at Jesus’ tomb “while it was still dark.” Mary Magdalene does not (yet) encounter the risen Christ. Instead, her first encounter is with darkness; confusion; emptiness. Mary Magdalene presumes the worst when she returns to tell Simon Peter and the beloved disciple, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

The beloved disciple and Simon Peter “set out” to the tomb to investigate. But, like Mary Magdalene, they, too, encounter darkness; confusion; emptiness; no body, much less that of the risen Lord. John says of the beloved disciple and Simon Peter: “As yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”

The beloved disciple and Simon Peter return “to their homes.” But, to her great credit, Mary Magdalene remains on scene. She remains to grapple with the darkness; the confusion; the empty tomb. Mary Magdalene is often called “the apostle to the apostles,” because she is the one who returns to the (male) apostles to announce to them that Jesus is indeed truly risen. Yet, in John’s Gospel, she does not return to the eleven remaining apostles until the very end of this episode; this encounter with the empty tomb. She remains there for some time to grapple with; to ponder in the darkness; the confusion; the emptiness. It is there, where Mary Magdalene is before the empty tomb; where Mary Magdalene at first mistakes the risen Jesus for a gardener (a subtle reference to God the creator-gardener of Genesis’ Eden; Jesus has been “with God”—he is God—from before “the beginning” of creation), where the Church is born.

Only then is Mary Magdalene ready for the great revelation: The gardener is the risen Lord; her and our Rabbouni; her and our Teacher. But now Mary must not remain there; she must not grasp onto Jesus as she has until now tried to grasp onto the mystery of the empty tomb. Otherwise there would be no Church. Our Easter story would have ended there, in the darkness; the confusion; the emptiness. “Do not hold onto me,” Jesus says to Mary Magdalene, “but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God.’”

Only then is Mary Magdalene ready to return to Jesus’ disciples and announce to them, “I have seen the Lord.” And only then (thankfully because, again, had it been otherwise, there would be no Church) are Jesus’ disciples ready to believe Mary’s witness: She has seen the risen Lord!

That they believe her is remarkable, because there was no body in that tomb when Mary Magdalene, and then the beloved disciple and Simon Peter, first saw it on the morning of the third day after Jesus’ death. So the Church still has a problem. It is a problem with which Peter grapples as he preaches to the household of Cornelius, sometime after Jesus’ resurrection and to a pagan, Gentile household at that.

All Peter is able to say in Acts about the first witnesses to the risen Christ concerns later events. Nobody saw Jesus rise from the dead. But, Peter insists, “God raised him on the third day.” And God “allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses”: To Mary Magdalene; to Jesus’ apostles; then maybe to a slightly larger group of Jesus’ disciples… To a rational, critical mind, and especially to Gentiles a step further removed from Jesus than his inner circles of disciples, Peter’s testimony to the appearances of the risen Christ to a limited group of witnesses must have seemed absurd. If Jesus is truly risen, why did he only appear to this select group of witnesses? Why did he send Mary Magdalene to tell his disciples that he had risen? How did such conviction that Jesus was truly risen and had commissioned them beyond an inner circle to communicate this news to all the world emerge from darkness; confusion; one woman peering into an empty tomb?

The conviction in the resurrection of the Lord and his mission to us must have emerged and spread from the Holy Spirit’s continued action through these first disciples. It is the only possible explanation. This conviction in God’s mission must have spread through the Church, all the way through history to us, so that we Christians (not perfectly, because we are sinners, but somehow still intelligibly and convincingly to the world) have continued to act as Christ did.

Jesus “went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him,” Peter proclaims on this Easter morning. Pertransiit benefaciendo: Peter was describing Jesus, his life and ministry; his death and resurrection, to a Gentile household of a Roman centurion, Cornelius. But Peter could just as well be describing us. Peter could just as well be describing the commissioning of every Christian from the moment of our baptism.

Sisters and brothers, from the moment we are baptized, the Holy Spirit of our risen Lord impels us to go about “doing good.” Our Easter story begins, as we have heard, in the darkness and confusion before an empty tomb. But it cannot remain there beyond a short time: “Do not hold onto me, but go to my brothers [and sisters] and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God.’”

“Do not hold onto me,” but go forth “doing good,” Jesus invites us. The risen Jesus lives in us. His Spirit is poured out on our world every time we do good; every time act with kindness and mercy; every time we care for the sick; the poor; the disadvantaged; every time we simply listen for the presence of the risen Lord and his Spirit in one another; every time we heal divisions and reject any form of violence. When we go about doing good, the Church is reborn, time and again, in our longing world.

So may our Easter proclamation be active in our going “about doing good.” Christ is risen; he is truly risen! Alleluia!

Homily for Sunday, 4 April 2021– 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

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Christ is risen! He is truly risen! Alleluia, alleluia!

If I can name one person, besides our risen Lord Jesus, my family, friends, or brother Basilians, who especially drew me toward religious life and priesthood, simply by the example of holiness she lived, it was perhaps my great aunt (my maternal grandmother’s sister), Jeanne d’Arc Brunelle. Aunt Jeanne was a sister of the Congregation of Holy Cross, in religious vows for 71 years. Just before and during my time in seminary as a Basilian, and for my first years of ordained ministry as a deacon and then a priest, I lived near enough to Aunt Jeanne while I was in Toronto and Rochester and she in Cornwall and then Montreal that I could drive to see her fairly often. And, for as long as I can remember, Aunt Jeanne would call our home at Christmas, and we e-mailed back and forth constantly.

Especially if it had been longer than usual since Aunt Jeanne and I had heard from or written each other, she would apologize for having taken so long to show “signs of life from your old, great aunt”! Aunt Jeanne, suffice it to say, lived with an attractive, holy, and fearless joy. She suffered with cancer for the last fourteen years of her life, but the disease never took away her joy and mildly sassy edge; it never took away those “signs of life” from our Aunt Jeanne. Her funeral, at Pavillon Saint-Joseph, the Holy Cross infirmary in Montreal, four years ago this past November, was about as joyful as a funeral could be. In fact, I do not remember a wake service, ever, with as many peals of laughter and tears of joy as from the (mostly) elderly sisters at Pavillon Saint-Joseph at Aunt Jeanne’s wake service, as memories of Aunt Jeanne’s 71 years of religious life, living and ministering in countless countries in the world (some very poor or marred by violence) were recounted.

A funeral, we may think, is a strange place to encounter “signs of life.” Yet I had a feeling I would encounter just this when the Superior of Pavillon Saint-Joseph contacted me to let me know Aunt Jeanne had died, so I could plan to attend her funeral. Today, our Gospel recounts another event, one central to our Christian faith, when the people involved, Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and Jesus’ beloved disciple, go to the scene—the tomb of Jesus—not expecting, we can be sure, to find “signs of life” there.

We have the gift of hindsight. We know this is just what Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the beloved disciple find: The ultimate sign of life; the empty tomb; our Lord Jesus, risen. But Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the beloved disciple did not know that they would find any signs of life at Jesus’ tomb. After all, it was a tomb; a resting place of the dead, not a place to encounter signs of life. So unexpected was it for each of them to encounter our risen Lord that this encounter, in a different way for each of Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the beloved disciple, was truly jarring.

Each of them—Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the beloved disciple—encounter signs of life where they expected to find death. Yet, in a way none of them realized in the moment, each of them brought their own “signs of life” when they went, that first Easter morning, to Jesus’ tomb. They brought with them signs of life in the depths of their hearts; signs of life that, as John’s Gospel recounts this event, anticipated the resurrection of Jesus.

How is this so? John’s Gospel is not clear why Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb at first, only that she goes to the tomb “while it [is] still dark” and finds the stone removed from the tomb’s entrance. But there is a tradition in our Church, from Mark’s and Luke’s Gospel accounts of Mary Magdalene’s Easter morning arrival at the tomb, of Mary as the first to bring spices to anoint Jesus’ body. Even the name Mary derives from myrrh, which was used then as a burial spice.

My sisters and brothers, the Easter morning visit to Jesus’ tomb by Mary, the “myrrh bearer” of Magdala, is a supreme act of love; a first sign on the part of Mary Magdalene of the risen Lord’s own life deep within her, before she even realizes it is there. And this love of the “myrrh bearer” and the Lord’s life source within Mary Magdalene overwhelm and overflow from her. She cannot remain at the empty tomb, but returns to tell Simon Peter and the beloved disciple, with some alarm: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” The three disciples of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the unnamed disciple “whom Jesus loved,” return together to the tomb. But only Mary remains there, weeping, until she is able to encounter her beloved; our beloved, the Risen One, Jesus. Maybe just as unnervingly for Mary Magdalene as it was to find the stone rolled away and the tomb emptied of the Lord’s body at first, we hear Jesus command Mary sharply, “Do not hold onto me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

“Do not hold onto me”: It is as if Jesus says to Mary Magdalene, “Do not hold onto the source of love; the sign of life that is already within you and that you communicated so freely and beautifully already by going to the tomb to anoint my body with myrrh, and then by returning to tell my disciples that I had risen. “Do not hold onto” Love; I must be free to ascend “to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God,” Jesus says. This is the only way that the source of love, the sign of the life of the risen Lord that is already within Mary Magdalene, may be received by God the Father and then showered on the whole world in the person of God the Holy Spirit.

My sisters and brothers, what we begin to celebrate today—our Easter time that runs from today’s celebration of our Lord’s resurrection, through the celebrations of Jesus’ ascension to heaven and the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost—Mary Magdalene and then Simon Peter and the beloved disciple experience in an instant. They are able to experience this entire Paschal mystery in an instant and then to found our Church on it because, in a sense, it is only possible to encounter love of this magnitude if we who set out to encounter love, to encounter the Lord’s “signs of life” in our world, already have that love within us and are willing to give it to the world freely, not to “hold onto” it simply for ourselves.

“Do not hold onto me”: At this point the risen Jesus gives Mary Magdalene the strength to release God’s love already within her, the love that enabled her to go to the tomb that first Easter morning in the first place, upon the world with an attractive, holy, and fearless joy. And amid these events at the empty tomb, Simon Peter and the beloved disciple are given this same strength, which they show in different ways: The beloved disciple arrives ahead of Simon Peter and enters the tomb. This “sign of life,” the disciple “whom Jesus loved,” enters a place of death and finds it, physically, empty of any body; empty not only of life or death, but simply empty. Biblical experts have commented on how this encounter of the beloved disciple with the emptiness and utter absence of the tomb may be John’s way of directing our memory back to the earliest tradition of Israel of the Ark of the Covenant of the Old Testament. The ancient people of Israel traveled with an empty box under a tent; emptiness in which God was believed to dwell.

So the beloved disciple encounters ultimate presence in utter absence. The beloved enters the absence of the tomb, as the Carmelite reformer St. John of the Cross would write centuries later in a poem in which he is the seeker, “seeking love.” And the beloved disciple finds the ultimate presence of the Love he seeks in the absence. “He saw and believed,” John’s Gospel says. Simon Peter does not enter the Presence of the empty tomb that has become the new Ark of the Covenant; the new Holy of Holies. Instead, he contemplates from outside. Simon Peter is set on a mission to understand these “signs of life” by which God chose to save the world; “to understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”

We, too, celebrate today because we love and have come to encounter Love Risen. We seek to understand this encounter in light of the Scripture, “that he must rise from the dead.” We believe once we realize we have encountered ultimate, saving love in utter emptiness. And our faith drives us to release the “signs of life” we have deep within us already, the love of the risen Christ, upon our world with attractive, holy, and fearless joy.

Homily for Wednesday, 15 April 2015– Wednesday of the Second Week of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 5:17-26; Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9; John 3:16-21

How many among us have ever taken on a task or become involved in a way of life from which we were confident that something good would result, but we were unsure where it would lead?

This is the situation in which Jesus’ first Apostles find themselves in today’s reading we hear from Acts. This group; this movement has been founded by Jesus Christ; filled with the Holy Spirit; commissioned to preach and to live the way Christ lived. But to this point the way these Apostles live has no name besides the fairly nondescript “the way.” And then, we hear today, they are imprisoned for their efforts. The religious authorities of the day, the Sanhedrin or class of temple priests in Israel, must have been concerned about this group of adherents to Jesus; to a movement these authorities had tried to stifle by having Jesus crucified.

To a point, can we not empathize with the Jewish religious authorities of this time? Have we not all heard of political and even religious movements in our world that lack a focus but nevertheless seem to draw followers and even cause trouble among groups of people; seem often lead to violence in regions of our world? I see the Sanhedrin of the earliest Apostles’ time as concerned with precisely this kind of unrest in Israel.

Of course, we know in hindsight that this Jesus movement would lead to great good; would develop a focus, inspired by the Holy Spirit. But today, in our first reading from Acts, we hear just the beginning of our Christian story. The first Apostles have been imprisoned, but are set free by an “angel of the Lord.”

And what is the instruction to the Apostles by the angel as they are released from prison? “Go and take your place in the temple area, and tell the people everything about this life.” Here the Jesus movement, long before we became known as “Christians,” is given its first name; its first focus: “This life.” I wonder: How reminiscent, for the Apostles, were these words of the angel to Jesus’ words; to how they knew Jesus: “I am the way and the truth and the life”… “I have come so that you might have life and have it abundantly”?

What is “this life” about which the angel speaks? Here was the first focus of the first Apostles, and our focus now: Preach and do what is most life-giving in the name of Jesus Christ. Build a world in which nobody is in need of basic necessities of life; a world of kindness. Build a world ready to forgive our failings freely; to heal “the wounds of sin and division.”

The most life-giving action will depend on the circumstances of our lives. For some of us, this will mean caring especially for those who are poor; sick; unemployed; underemployed; homeless; refugees or migrants… For many of us this might mean making a special effort to be kind or to pray for somebody difficult to us, or enjoying time with our wives; husbands; children; relatives, or simply a smile; a random act of kindness…

“This life”: Here is our focus, that we might all have life in the name of the risen Christ.

Homily for Friday, 10 April 2015– Friday in the Octave of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 4:1-12; Psalm 118:1-2, 4, 22-24, 25-27a; John 21:1-14

How often does our Lord encounter us exactly where we are in our lives? And, at the same time, how often are we unprepared or even afraid to encounter our Lord in these humble, everyday circumstances?

From Acts today we hear the continuation of the story of Peter’s and John’s healing of a crippled man outside the temple. Peter and John are brought before the religious leaders for healing in the name of Jesus Christ: “Annas the high priest,” the “elders and scribes,” and “all who were of the high-priestly class.” The two Apostles face with tremendous courage this same group of leaders who had killed Jesus. Peter and John, as well as the religious leaders themselves, know that this strength to witness to Christ and the power to heal the crippled man in the first place was not their own. This power; this strength, Acts emphasizes over and over, is from the Holy Spirit. We hear that Peter, “filled with the Holy Spirit, answered” the elders, scribes, and priests who were trying him and John.

When have we been “filled with the Holy Spirit”? If we were to face persecution for our faith, would we have the same strength and courage of Peter and John; the strength and courage that are gifts of the Holy Spirit that we receive in baptism and confirmation? For us to face persecution for our faith here in the United States is unlikely, but not so in many places in our world. And so we pray for the people who are persecuted and killed; who are witnesses to Christ by their lives today. And let us pray for the same Holy Spirit to give us the strength to end violence and poverty in our world and here in our country and city.

But are there not times when we feel anything but strong and courageous? Have there been times in our lives when we are more like Peter and the other disciples in our Gospel reading this morning than like Peter and John in Acts? Are there times when we expect a great sign or surge in strength and courage from our Lord, and here we encounter him in simple, everyday events of our lives?

Imagine this: After his resurrection, Jesus had appeared to his disciples twice. But eventually Jesus’ disciples want to return to their everyday activities. Are they maybe still fearful for their lives should they identify openly as followers of Jesus, who had been brutally killed? Peter, the same Peter who, inspired by the Holy Spirit, would later show great courage before hostile religious leaders, announces, “I am going fishing.” And the others follow him: I am going back to my everyday activities; back to the life with which I was comfortable.

And it is then when Jesus encounters us again, not with a great sign at first but humbly and quietly. Jesus joins us; joins Peter and the Apostles, for a simple breakfast. Jesus breaks bread and fish with them. In this simple act, the Apostles recognize that “it is the Lord.”

In the same way, Jesus encounters us in our everyday activities, but also calls us beyond our comfort zones to acknowledge him as our risen Lord and to be his disciples.

Homily for Wednesday, 8 April 2015– 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

How often do we pause and reflect on where Jesus Christ has been present in our lives during any particular day?

During one retreat I attended while in seminary in Toronto, the sister who led the retreat proposed that we retreatants reflect on two instances when God was present to us during that day. Now, a few years later, I still enjoy taking this short time to pray and reflect, every day, on when Jesus has been present in my life today. I think that this can even be a worthwhile examination of conscience, daily or for instance when we are preparing for the sacrament of reconciliation. Yes, to be mindful of our faults and even sins is important, especially when preparing for reconciliation, but it may be just as important and powerful to ask simply and prayerfully: When has Jesus; when has God been especially present to me today?

When have I immediately recognized Christ present in one of these events of this day? When have I had a moment like that of the man healed at “the Beautiful Gate” of the temple by Peter and John, when it is clear that somebody has acted in our favor “in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean”? These could be great instances of healing; of forgiveness; of comfort, or they could be (as often they are in my daily experience) small instances: The smile or laughter of a child; a kind greeting; somebody going out of her or his way to anticipate another’s need, and so forth.

And when have I not recognized Christ present in an event in my life, sometimes until much later? In these instances, what caused me to recognize Christ in that event when I finally did? When have we been like the disciples on the Road to Emmaus in today’s Gospel reading, conversing with Christ as though he were a stranger? Perhaps we have encountered Christ in this way when we have been grieving or upset, or even depressed.

The disciples on the Road to Emmaus met the risen Jesus as a stranger on this road. They had been grieving the horrible death of “the one” they had hoped would “redeem Israel”; the Christ; the Messiah. This stranger, Jesus, challenges the disciples sharply for being “foolish” and “slow of heart.”

But even more significantly the disciples invite Jesus to “stay with” them just long enough for them to recognize who he is. And how do the disciples recognize Jesus when finally they do? Luke says to us that Jesus “opened the Scriptures to” them and “was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”

Jesus “was made known to them” in the same way he is made known to us: In the Word of God and in our Eucharist, which many of us are blessed to partake in almost daily. How is the risen Jesus made known to us in our everyday events? Jesus is made known to us in our prayer. Jesus is made known to us in our kindness toward one another. Jesus is made known to us by a simple moment of joy; a smile; acts of compassion. Jesus is made known to us here “in the breaking of the bread.”