Homily for Sunday, 18 April 2021– Third Sunday of Easter, Year B

Readings of the day: Acts 3:13-15, 17-19; Psalm 4:2, 4, 7-8, 9; 1 John 2:1-5a; Luke 24:35-48

“Peace be with you,” alleluia!

How many of us have noticed that today, for the second Sunday Gospel reading in a row, Jesus’ first words to his disciples when he stands among them after he rises from the dead are, “Peace be with you”? Jesus’ greeting has become very familiar to us. And I imagine that Jesus’ greeting to his first disciples quickly became very familiar to them, too, after his resurrection. After all, both Luke’s and John’s Gospels, from which we have heard this Sunday and last, feature the risen Jesus greeting his disciples in this way. In fact, in John’s Gospel (think back to last Sunday), the risen Jesus greets his disciples not only once but three times—first to his disciples, except for Thomas, on the evening of the day he rose; a second time immediately after that, when Jesus also breathes the Holy Spirit on his disciples; and then a third time with Thomas present: “Peace be with you.”

Luke has Jesus greet his disciples only once, in Emmaus, “Peace be with you.” But it is effective. I imagine that, at this point, although Luke says that Jesus’ disciples were still “startled and terrified,” they began to think, “This is bizarre, even terrifying, but we have heard this greeting sometime, someplace before.”

And we hear from Luke today the second major part of the Easter story that, in Luke, begins with Jesus among only two of his disciples on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. By the beginning of today’s Gospel, these two disciples have already met up with and “told the eleven [apostles] and their companions what had happened on the road to Emmaus, and how Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”

My sisters and brothers in the risen Christ, Jesus is still making himself known by this same simple action; this same simple greeting as he did those first times to his first disciples: He “had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” He made himself known to them by greeting them, “Peace be with you.”

There is a reason why, since Vatican II, the sign of peace has been included as part of what we call the Communion Rite at Mass, which extends from the Our Father until we receive communion. To greet one another in the risen Jesus’ words, “Peace be with you,” is essential in order to recognize Jesus “in the breaking of the bread.” When we greet one another at Mass, “Peace be with you,” we recognize the Christ really and truly present in one another, in the Church. We need to recognize the Christ really and truly present in one another, in the Church, before we are able to recognize and worship him as really and truly present in the Eucharistic bread and wine that become his Body and Blood.

“Peace be with you” and “the breaking of the bread” are inseparable. But is the sign of peace, where it has been in the Order of Mass for over fifty years now, not still a bit startling? Most if not all of us have, I suppose, gotten used to the sign of peace where it is now in the Mass. Certainly it is not terrifying as Jesus’ disciples found it when Jesus greeted them, “Peace be with you,” that first time in Emmaus. And maybe we have gotten used to our “text of peace” during our Masses streamed over Zoom for the last year or so, even if it still commands our attention in (I still find) a bit of a jarring way when we exchange peace through Zoom’s chat function: Make sure we exchange a sign of peace with panelists and participants, and so on…

During Vatican II, where the sign of peace was to be placed within the Mass, and whether everybody in the assembly or only clergy during a Solemn Mass (as had been before Vatican II) would exchange peace ritually, were hotly-debated among the bishops at the Council. The English former Master of the Dominican order, Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, tells one of my favourite stories about the sign of peace when it was inserted back into the Mass just after the Our Father after Vatican II. Two French Dominicans Fr. Radcliffe visited at that time, Frs. Yves Congar and Marie-Dominique Chenu, both important figures at Vatican II, had very different approaches to the sign of peace although both lived in the same house in Paris. Congar’s sign of peace “was a grave and formal gesture, whereas Chenu affectionately punched and hugged… and pulled one’s hair”!

“Peace be with you”: We hear the same oh-so-familiar greeting; it is the same Christ really and truly present in one another as in the “grave and formal” Congar, the excitable Chenu, or the terrified disciples who had just witnessed Jesus’ death on a cross and “thought they were seeing a ghost.” It is the same Christ who makes himself known “in the breaking of the bread” and who opens our “minds to understand the Scriptures”: That death no longer has power over the risen Christ, or over us; that we are invited to proclaim the “repentance and forgiveness of sins” that Jesus’ resurrection has made possible, “to all nations.”

This seems to be a daunting task, does it not? How are we to proclaim this “repentance and forgiveness of sins… to all nations” in Jesus’ name? Well, we could begin with a familiar greeting, one that captured its hearers’ attention when Jesus said it, and still does whenever we say it and live it: “Peace be with you”; shalom!

The familiar peace Jesus offers us stirs the world to attention because it does not and cannot come from this world. Jesus’ shalom captures our attention, but it also consoles, reconciles, empowers each and every one of us not only to speak this greeting to one another, but to live it: To seek to console, to reconcile, to empower and so to point out God’s work to still more people in our world and to point one another to God, our only everlasting peace and salvation.

In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Peter gives us an example of how to proclaim and live the risen Christ’s shalom. Yet, I will admit, I find the way in which Peter addresses the people “at the temple gate” in Jerusalem a bit troubling at first hearing. His preaching sounds at first to be heavy on the fire and brimstone, speaking to the people about “Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate… You killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead,” Peter rails. This is not a homily I think I would be capable of giving!

But, if anybody knew their need for Jesus’ shalom—“Peace be with you”—it was Peter. It was Peter who stood before the temple gate, a redeemed sinner, witnessing to his reconciliation and peace with God made possible only by Jesus’ death and resurrection and that is now available to all of us, redeemed sinners whom we are. “Repent therefore, and turn to God”; turn toward the one who greets us, “peace be with you”… “so that your sins may be wiped out.” How remarkable is Peter’s message from the temple gate?

And the first Letter of John proclaims the same message, the same greeting at its heart, in a slightly different way than Peter. Jesus Christ is “our advocate with the Father… the atoning sacrifice for our sins” and the sins “of the whole world.”

Jesus Christ, crucified at the hands of sinners,

Jesus Christ, “our advocate with the Father” and the redemption of sinners,

Jesus Christ, our reconciliation with God,

Jesus Christ, who calls us to proclaim his peace to all peoples and nations,

Jesus Christ, really and truly present in all the Scriptures, in the Eucharist, and in each of us and our signs of peace,

Jesus Christ, of the familiar greeting that stirs the world to attention; that forgives; that quells fears and doubts; that saves,

Jesus Christ, risen from the dead,

Jesus Christ, our shalom.

“Peace be with you.”

Homily for Sunday, 12 April 2015– Second Sunday of Easter

Divine Mercy Sunday

Readings of the day: Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24; 1 John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31

This homily was given during the monthly Mass for Pax Christi, a Catholic movement to promote peace, at the Federal Building in downtown Rochester, NY.

“Peace be with you.” Is this not a beautiful and yet very simple greeting? How appropriate that we hear the risen Jesus greet his disciples, on “that first day of the week” after his resurrection: “Peace be with you”! We here are dedicated to the peace of Christ. We are a movement named and entrusted with bringing into; witnessing in our world to the peace of Christ, Pax Christi. And so, on this day especially, “Peace be with you.”

But can this greeting not also be somewhat off-putting? In a few moments, just before we receive Christ in our Eucharist, I will invite us, in Christ’s own words, to offer one another a sign of peace: “Peace be with you.” But have some of us, especially those of us who remember the Mass before Vatican II, ever found the sign of peace where it is now during Mass to be off-putting? It is fairly new to us to “offer a sign of peace” just before receiving communion. The sign of peace just before communion is only about fifty years old, dating back to Vatican II.

Have any of us heard, mainly from Catholics a generation or two before my time, but from some younger faithful, too, words like “unnerving,” “off-putting,” “embarrassing,” and even “distracting” to describe our exchange of a sign of peace just when we are preparing reverently to receive communion? There sometimes seems to be no “right” way to give and receive the sign of peace. Have we not seen timid handshakes, the peace sign to somebody across several pews, or the people who wander to try to shake hands with every person in the building? Alright, perhaps this might be a bit excessive…

Yet our sign of peace has deep roots in our Catholic liturgy. Dominican Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, who lives in Oxford, England, speaks of this history in a humorous way. Fr. Radcliffe says that in the 1200s the newly-founded Dominican and Franciscan orders were sent to preach peace and unity among people from divided city states in northern Italy. Before communion at Mass, there would be a pause for “a solemn moment of reconciliation.” Each person would embrace the person next to them: “Peace be with you.” How is this for off-putting; unnerving; embarrassing?

“Peace be with you.” This ritual sign of peace as we know it was recovered at Vatican II as a symbol of our peace with all people. Fr. Radcliffe also tells the story of two of the “fathers” of Vatican II, the French theologians Marie-Dominique Chenu and Yves Congar. Congar’s sign of peace “was a grave and formal gesture,” Radcliffe says, “whereas Chenu” would “affectionately” punch and hug his neighbor and tug on his hair! How is this for off-putting, unnerving, and embarrassing? And yet this is nothing compared to medieval northern Italians reconciling and wishing Christ’s peace to the people they had just tried to kill in battle!

“Peace be with you.” Why is this such an off-putting, unnerving, maybe embarrassing gesture, even for many of us today? Why, perhaps, should it be? What are the effects of Christ’s peace, of wishing Christ’s peace, to one another? Let us return to our Gospel reading today. What was the effect of Christ’s peace on Jesus’ first disciples, gathered behind locked doors a few days after Jesus’ resurrection?

Imagine for a moment being one of these first disciples. We hear from John that “the doors were locked” to the room where they were gathered, for fear of the religious leaders of the day who had put Jesus to death; for fear of their own lives! And then Jesus enters the locked room and greets them: “Peace be with you.” Does this not raise off-putting, unnerving, and embarrassing, not to mention frightening, to a new level?

The first effect of this peace that the risen Christ gives to his disciples is the gift of the Holy Spirit. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” Jesus says. And what does the Holy Spirit empower us to do? The Holy Spirit empowers us to go out to the world; to evangelize the world with Christ’s peace for one another; with the same gift of the Holy Spirit for one another: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

Christ sends us forth with his peace; his gift of the Holy Spirit, a gift that empowers us to forgiveness and, at the same time, conviction and accountability: “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” The Holy Spirit enables us to keep God’s commandments, the sign that we love God and one another according to our second reading today, from the First Letter of John. The Holy Spirit is “the one who testifies”; the one who bears witness to the truth through us. The Holy Spirit bears witness to the truth that, with God, peace is possible and indeed our responsibility as baptized Christians. “The Spirit is truth.”

The Holy Spirit empowers us to be what is impossible without God’s presence and action in our lives: To be “of one heart and mind” in bearing witness to the resurrected Christ. “Peace be with you”: This is not a peace that is a mere absence of violence or war; a peace that means keeping one foot on the throat of our enemy. This is a peace that seeks one another’s good; a peace borne out of true love of God and of one another. Christ’s peace, given us by the gift of the Holy Spirit, empowers us to love in this way; to love as God loves us. Christ’s peace and gift of the Holy Spirit also empower us to bold words and actions of faith.

When Jesus stands among his disciples and greets them the first time, “Peace be with you… receive the Holy Spirit,” the Apostle Thomas is not present with the others. Why is Thomas not present? This could be for many reasons: Perhaps fear; perhaps a feeling of being wounded by his own guilt, which had broken down his faith. But the risen Christ does not give up on us; does not give up on Thomas. “A week later,” when Thomas is present with the other disciples, Jesus appears and greets them once again: “Peace be with you.”

Is Thomas unnerved; embarrassed; frightened? He is probably all three. Thomas speaks what the other disciples are probably all feeling: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Jesus invites Thomas to put his hands in Jesus’ wounds. Jesus invites Thomas to make physical contact with his and our own woundedness; our own sin that, with Jesus Christ, was put to death that day on Calvary.

This is the condition for true healing for Thomas and for us: To touch our own woundedness; our own sin; our violence done to our own human dignity; our own lack of peace. This is the only way for us to true forgiveness; to true peace. Only then is Thomas able to exclaim with possibly the most beautiful and profound profession of faith in all of Scripture: “My Lord and my God”!

For Thomas and for us, is this way to peace, to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit of witness; of faith; of forgiveness; of peace; of God’s love for us, not off-putting; unnerving, or perhaps embarrassing? I imagine so.

And yet to be in touch with our own woundedness is the only way for us to be healed; the only way for us to “receive the Holy Spirit”; the only way for us to receive the peace of our risen Christ, a peace the world cannot give. It is the only way for us to be able then to exclaim boldly with the believing Apostle Thomas: “My Lord and my God”!

“Peace be with you.”