Fr. JC Maximilian

[Bella Swan and Edward Cullens, characters from the Twilight series]

        Last weekend, in my homily, I said that being a Christian is not always comfortable — and that’s true. However, I do not want to give the impression that following Christ Jesus is complicated. In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus reduces the essence of what it means to be His follower into one sentence. This one sentence has come to be known as Jesus’ New Commandment, “Love one another as I have loved you.” If we do that, we are on Christ’s path, and we will experience the joy and meaning that only God can give.
        Knowing that we tend to make things unnecessarily complicated, Jesus makes it even simpler by telling us exactly what He means by the word “love,” a word that the Devil is always trying to distort: “A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.” In other words, love is self-giving, and so, the greater the self-giving, the greater the love. When we put our lives at the service of others, when we live in order to give and not to take, when we are willing to suffer so that someone else can rejoice, then we may call ourselves Jesus’ disciples. True charity, true love is the willingness to totally give of yourself in order to help the beloved achieve their ultimate destiny — eternal life with Christ in heaven.
        Jesus really wanted us to understand this teaching about what real love is all about. To make sure that we did, He did not just explain the meaning of true love with words. He also explained it with His deeds, with His own suffering and death. Jesus accepted mockery, humiliation, torture, rejection, injustice, misunderstanding, betrayal and finally death, not because He was too weak to resist, but in order to show us what love really is: self-giving, self-forgetful generosity.
        God’s idea of love is Jesus Christ hanging on the cross, bearing the weight of our sins, thinking not of Himself but of the men and women He came to save, even pleading for their forgiveness up until the very end; giving without counting the cost, and without asking for something in return. That is God’s idea of love, is it ours?
        I do not know how many of you have gotten into the whole “Twilight” series; first of novels and since 2008 the novels have been turned into very successful movies. I must admit, I have not read the books, nor seen the movies, but I have heard a lot of people, especially teenagers talking about the series. It is a series about a teenage vampire named Edward Cullen. Edward is a tall, handsome vampire who is a junior in high school when the series begins. The character of Edward became overnight the biggest new heartthrob for young women, which is a bit strange if you think about it because vampires are scary, destructive monsters, aren’t they?         “Twilight” puts a new twist on the old vampire theme. Edward thirsts for the blood of Bella, his human girlfriend, just as all vampires do. However, unlike other vampires, Edward actually cares about Bella. In fact he loves her so much that he is willing to resist his own urges. Instead of devouring her, he sacrifices himself in order to protect her. He is a guy who will not allow his girlfriend to get hurt, even if it means saying “no” to himself.
        It is this self-sacrificial aspect of Edward’s character, I believe, that has made him so attractive to viewers. I read an interview of one 19-year-old about why she liked the movie so much, which I think beautifully sums up this point: “Edward loves Bella, and wants to be with her forever, so he controls himself. The self-discipline is very hard on him, but seeing her hurt would be even worse.”
        Even in this Hollywood realm of pagan fantasy films, the truth about real love is what connects to the human heart; it is not the self-indulgent, rather it is the self-giving. Pope Benedict, in one of his Wednesday catechesis talks, summarized this point when he said, “Love, to be fully expressed, demands self-control.”
        This idea of true love is not pie-in-the-sky; it is practical. It gives us a way to see our relationships from God’s perspective. From a merely human perspective, we tend to look at our relationships in terms of what we get out of them. When we are no longer “getting” anything out of the relationship, from the merely human perspective, it is time to move on. This is why the divorce rate is so high.
        However, when we understand that the path to true wisdom and lasting joy is Christ-like love, self-forgetful, self-giving love, considerations such as whether the person is fun to be around, or whether they rub us the wrong way, begin to take a back seat. When we are self-centered, we tend to be passive and reactive. However, when we are Christ-centered, we tend to be proactive. We see relationships in terms of what we can give to them, and that is much more dynamic and energizing.
        Imagine starting the week by making a list of things you want to do FOR people. It would change the whole tone of our week. We would be lighting lights instead of dodging shadows. Instead of having our light under a basket, we would be the Light of the World.
        This week think of one small thing you can do to ease the burdens of your spouse, or your brother or sister. Think of one small thing you can do to make your boss’s or coworker’s job just a little bit easier. Think of one small thing you can do to bring some encouragement and joy into your parents’ lives. Think of a friend or relative who is suffering, and think of one small thing you can do to help support them.
        Is it really so simple? YES!!! This is what self-giving looks like in real life. It is within the reach of all of us, if we are willing to step out of our comfort zone. Jesus did it for us on the wood of the cross; today, this week, let us promise to do it for Him on the pavement of our daily lives.

[An icon of St. Marcellus of Tangiers, iconographer unknown]

        One of my favorite movies is The Robe starring Richard Burton, Jean Simmons (the actress, not the rocker from the group Kiss), and Victor Mature. Richard Burton plays a Roman tribune, named Marcellus, who supervised Jesus’ crucifixion and won His robe. Did you know that there is a real St. Marcellus, who was a Roman centurion during the latter half of the third century?
        The second half of the third century was a period when the Church faced some of the most severe and widespread persecutions. During one of the calms between the storms of Roman persecution, Marcellus became a Catholic. As he began to live out his new faith in his daily life, Marcellus started noticing things that he had not noticed before. He began to see just how decadent the pagan Roman culture had become. It was filled with various forms of self-indulgence, lust, violence, and gluttony that life in the Roman army encouraged. All this decadence started to bother Marcellus’ conscience. How could he follow Christ faithfully if he continued to follow the pagan practices all around him? His crisis came to a head during a huge feast that was being held in honor of the emperor’s birthday. As a centurion, he was required to attend, but he became so disgusted at the gross excesses that he publicly renounced his allegiance to the emperor and the Roman Legion. Marcellus threw the insignia of his rank to the ground and walked out. He explained his actions by saying, “I serve Jesus Christ the eternal king. I will no longer serve your emperors, and I scorn to worship your gods of wood and stone, which are deaf and dumb idols.” St. Marcellus had concluded that the requirements of his pagan duties were incompatible with the demands of Christian living, and he knew that he had to not only talk the talk, but also walk the walk. His superiors convicted him of treason for refusing to worship the pagan gods, and St. Marcellus was executed as a martyr.
        Our Catholic faith is not a comfortable faith. It does not tell us, “You’re OK, do not worry about how you live your life; just enjoy yourself.” That message comes from our popular culture, not from Jesus Christ. It might be a comfortable message, but it is false. Comfortable is not always good. The comfortable thing to do when the Titanic hit the iceberg was to roll over and go back to sleep, or just to keep on dancing. It was uncomfortable to get out the lifeboats and evacuate the ship, however, the uncomfortable thing was the better thing and the right thing.
        Jesus loves us too much to just let us waltz away our lives in superficiality, meaninglessness, self-indulgence, and comfortable immorality. He makes it clear that if we claim to be His followers, we have to do two things. We need to talk the talk and walk the walk. We must look like good Catholics by praying, coming to Mass, being involved in our faith, and speaking up for Christ’s truth. But we must also make a daily effort to live like good Catholics. This means we need to study the Church’s teaching when we do not understand it. We need to go out of our way to help others. We need to resist temptation and carry our crosses with elegance. And we must be faithful to Catholic morality and to our life-mission, even if it means enduring discomforts like hardship, ridicule and persecution.
        This is what St. John meant when he wrote in his first letter, which we heard in our second reading, “Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth” (1 John 3:18). As disciples of Christ we are called to talk the talk, AND walk the walk.
        Like a good coach, Jesus never lets us get comfortable, because He knows we are still capable of improving as human beings and Catholics. Jesus loves us too much to let us rest on our laurels. He knows that constant growth in the Christian virtues is hard work, so He gives us a secret ingredient to insure that we never run out of spiritual gas: prayer.
        Prayer is a great privilege. The Lord of the universe, our Creator and Redeemer, is online 24/7. He is always watching over us and listening for when we call out to Him. Whenever we send Jesus a message, He reads it right away and answers by sending an attachment of grace into our hearts. Daily, personal prayer is the bridge that turns our Catholic talk into a powerful Catholic walk. Daily, personal prayer is the heart of our relationship with Christ, a bridge that links our knowledge of Jesus with our day-to-day actions. Jesus wants us to become mature men and women of prayer. This is what He means when He says in today’s Gospel, “I am the vine and you are the branches . . . remain in me . . . because without me you can do nothing.”
        Here at St. Mary’s we have many opportunities to talk the talk and walk the walk of our faith. We have various prayer groups, Bible studies, the Moms Group, the Fathers Group, Men’s Bagels & Bible, Adult group, youth groups, Young Adult Group, Knights of Columbus and the Ladies Auxiliary. We also have various service apostolates where we can put our faith into action; such as St. Vincent de Paul, Ken’s Kitchen, Respect Life, St. Bernard Pet Ministry, and Interfaith. Last weekend, we held our first Light of the World Evangelization Ministry retreat which is designed to grow the Fire of the Holy Spirit in our lives, so that we can spread that Fire through the witness of our lives. Our next retreat will be in September.
        Let us today ask ourselves what we can do to improve our prayer life this week. Perhaps we can take a few minutes to pray a decade or two of the Rosary while driving to work. Speaking of that drive to work, we can start by just turning off the radio and spending some quiet time with the Lord. Or if driving proves to be too distracting, maybe we can get up ten minutes earlier so as to be able to spend some quiet time alone with God before the hustle and bustle sweeps us away. We can look for a vice in our lives — like telling “little white lies” or gossiping — and prayerful plan on how we can work on eliminating it in our lives.
        At this Mass, Jesus, the vine, will renew His commitment to us in the sacrifice of the Eucharist. When He does, we should renew our commitment to be faithful branches, by making prayer a real priority.

[“The Good Shepherd” by Philippe de Champaigne]

        This weekend the Church celebrates “Good Shepherd” Sunday. Why do we call Jesus the Good Shepherd? There are two main reasons.
        First, because Jesus laid down His life in order to save us, His sheep, from the devil. After Original Sin, the human race was under a curse. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “By our first parents’ sin, the devil has acquired certain domination over man, even though man remains free…. Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action, and morals” (#407). Jesus came to break that domination, to reclaim us for Himself, and through His grace, to lead us gradually out of our inherited, sinful self-centeredness to the everlasting happiness of self-forgetful love. It is important to remember that Jesus did not have to do this. In His love for us, Jesus freely chose to do this for us — He is the Good Shepherd.
        Jesus is also the Good Shepherd because He is faithful to the mission He received from the Father. The mission of carrying out the Father’s plan, of obeying the Father’s will, consumes Jesus and constitutes in His mind the entire meaning of His life. Jesus lived His human life perfectly, and that perfection consisted in focusing wholly on the Father’s will, and in being passionately faithful to His Sonship.
        In order for us to fulfill our own identity as children of God, and so experience life as Christ created us to live it, both now in eternity, Jesus invites us to imitate Him: “The sheep follow, because they know his voice” (John 10:4). The voice of Christ, our Good Shepherd, is His example of fulfilling His life-mission, no matter the cost. We follow Him by doing the same.
        But what is our life-mission? For Jesus, this was clear: save the world by fulfilling the Old Testament prophecies and obeying His Father’s will up to death on a cross. However, Jesus, because He was true God and true man, had two advantages that we do not have.
        First, Jesus knew with perfect clarity what the Father wanted Him to do in every situation. Jesus never had to ask, as we often do, “What is God’s will for me right now?”
        Secondly, Jesus had more strength than we do to fulfill that will. Because of Original Sin, we have leaks in our spiritual batteries. We are attracted by evil, selfishness, laziness, lust, greed, self-indulgence, and so many other things which are not of God. Our fallen nature has a strong tendency to disobey what God wants us to do, or to rebel against what God sends our way. Jesus, however, was not stained by Original Sin, so he had no leaks in His spiritual batteries. He did not have a spiritual default setting on self-centeredness, as we do. This does not mean that it was always easy for Jesus to do His Father’s will — we only have to look at His agony in the Garden for proof of this. It does mean, however, that His human nature was in better shape than ours. Spiritually speaking, Jesus was like an Olympic athlete, and we are like couch potatoes.
        So Jesus had some advantages over us in the fulfillment of His life mission of saving the world, which makes perfect sense, considering that His mission was much bigger than ours.
But because He is our good shepherd, He has given us two supernatural resources to help us overcome our disadvantages. To the extent that we make good use of these resources, we will be able to experience the meaning and fulfillment that comes from living our life-mission to the full. To the extent that we don’t, we won’t.
        The first supernatural resource our Good Shepherd gives us is the teaching authority of His Church, the Catholic Church. This teaching authority, called the Church’s Magisterium, is a light showing the Father’s will for our lives, making up for the ignorance we inherited from Original Sin.
        Jesus made a solemn promise that “when the Spirit of Truth comes he will lead you to the complete truth.” He also commanded His disciples, “Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations, . . . and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you. And look, I am with you always; yes, to the end of time” (Matthew 28: 19-20). It would be a foolish command if He did not also guarantee the reliability of their teaching. Thus, Jesus fulfills His promise to be present in His Church, guiding and guarding the deposit of faith, until the end of history.
        This teaching authority belongs to the Pope and the bishops who are in communion with him. This is the reason why Catholics today believe the same doctrines that Catholics believed 500 years and a 1000 years ago. Our faith has not been corrupted or lost, even though the Church and the world have suffered so much turmoil through history.
        Of course this teaching authority does not apply to everything. It is only guaranteed to be trustworthy when dealing with the doctrines of our faith: the truths we profess in the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the implications these have for our lives in today’s world.
        When we keep in touch with the Church’s teaching, through personal study, the various small faith communities, and faith formation programs which we offer in the parish, it gives us a clear idea of what we are here for, and what God expects of us, and how to live our lives deeply and meaningfully.
        The first supernatural resource, the divinely guaranteed teaching authority of the Catholic Church, is light for our minds. It shows us the path of life. The second supernatural resource gives us the strength we need to follow that path, even when it is difficult. This resource is the sacraments.
        Every one of the sacraments is meant to increase God’s grace in our souls. This is especially true of those sacraments which we are encouraged to receive frequently — the Eucharist and Confession. The Eucharist, as the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ Jesus, is nourishment for our souls. Confession strengthens us by healing the wounds of sin and reinforcing our efforts to follow Christ. The sacraments are not just pretty symbols; real power flows through them into our minds and spirits. We need this power in order to plug those leaks in our spiritual batteries. We need this boost of supernatural energy in order to counteract the self-centered tendencies that we inherited from Original Sin.
        Christianity is NOT self-help; it is Christ-help. Jesus gives us His help through His sacraments, and that is why He gave them to us. If we do not make use of them, or if we live them only superficially, which happens when we do not try to develop a personal prayer life, then we do not receive the power Jesus wants to give us through them.
        Our Good Shepherd wants us to experience the meaning and joy that comes from discovering and striving to fulfill our life-mission. That is why He came to earth. He leads us to the cool waters of the Church’s teaching, a clear, refreshing stream that never stops flowing and is never polluted. Jesus leads us to the rich, grassy meadows of the sacraments, where we can feed on His grace for free, without ever having to worry about famines or droughts. He is truly our Good Shepherd.
        The question is: are we good sheep? Most of us want to be; that is why we are here today. However, even if we are already good sheep, without a doubt we can become better sheep, if we make a more responsible and active use of these two supernatural resources that Christ came all the way down from heaven to give us.

[OK, you may be wondering why I am calling this a reflection instead of a homily. I guess I was still glowing from my week of retreat so when I read the readings for this weekend I had an idea for a homily and wrote it. Then I realized that this was Deacons’ Preach weekend. Waste not want not; so it goes on the blog as a reflection]

        I am sure that I am not the only one here who is a fan of cop shows. As a kid, I liked “Barney Miller,” “Quincy,” even “T.J. Hooker.” Later I liked “Hill Street Blues,” and “NYPD.” My favorite is the perennial “Law and Order.” One common scene in cop shows is the detectives arriving at the crime scene and asking if there are any witnesses. Often they are told something like, “yeah, there were a dozen people here but they all saw nothing.” It seems that people are reluctant to be witnesses.
        Why are people often so reluctant to be witnesses? Some people might be afraid that they will get in trouble or might be targeted for retaliation. Others just do not want to get involved because of the time it might involved; they do not want to take time from their own lives.
        While this lack of willingness to be a witness is frustrating for the police, and a failure to live one’s civil duties, when we fail to be witnesses to Our Lord Jesus Christ, we are failing in charity. Through our baptism, all of us are called to be witnesses of Christ Jesus. It is not an option, rather it is essential. It is central to what it means to be a Christian — a follower of Christ.
        We see that Jesus gave His followers this commission on the day of His Resurrection. In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus appears to the disciples, explaining the Scriptures to them so that they understood that the Christ had to suffer, die and rise from the dead on the third day for the forgiveness of sins. He then tells them, “You are witnesses of these things.”
        The first disciples of Jesus took this mission of witnessing very seriously. Most of the Acts of the Apostles is a testimony of how they witnessed to Jesus after His Ascension. In today’s first reading, as St. Peter is preaching to the people about how Jesus was the promised one of God of whom the prophets and law spoke, and how in their ignorance they put Him to death, he boldly proclaims on behalf of all the Apostles, “of this we are witnesses.”
        Why is being a witness so important? First, in general, it is the key for most of the things we know in life. Too often the world today tells us that the only way we can really know something is through science — we can only know things that we can observe. However, if you stop and really think about it, this is not the way that we know most things. How many of you had coffee today? How did you know that the coffee was just that, and not something that is poison? Did you grow the beans, roast them, and then grind them? While maybe some of you ground your own beans, I would guess that most of us did not grow and roast our own. Rather, we buy them and we trust the companies that sells them to us. We could say that we know that the coffee is not poison because we take it on faith. How do we know that George Washington was the first president of the United States? Were any of us there to see him being the president? No, rather we learned that from our teachers, who also did not have first-hand knowledge of that fact. Again, we took it on faith. Faith is a method of knowing something, it is knowledge that we have through the testimony of a witness; even a chain of witnesses. Most of the things that we know in life we know through the method of faith, based on the testimony of witnesses.
        Now we can see just how important witnesses are, just for knowing everyday things in life. Anything that we know by faith is only as reliable as the witnesses that tell us. So how do we evaluate the reliability of a witness? There are just two criteria: is the person someone who ought to know what they are talking about? And is there any reason to think that they are trying to deceive us?
        Going back to those cop shows I like so much, we see that they use those same criteria for evaluating any witness they get: were they there? could they really see what they claim to have seen? do they have any hidden agenda or motive for deceiving them?
        How do we know Jesus? None of us lived in Judea 2000 years ago to have actually seen Him preaching, performing a miracle, let alone rise from the dead. The Apostles and those other first disciples, who did see these things, told others about Jesus who judged the Apostles to be people who should know and had no reason to deceive them. In fact, if a witness passes the two criteria by which witnesses are evaluated, it is actually UNREASONABLE not to believe them. And for 2000 years there has been a constant chain of witnesses who have passed on what they had received themselves about Jesus.
        However, witnessing to Christ Jesus is much more than this. It is not like the knowledge we have about George Washington which we received from our teachers, who had received the information from their teachers. The difference is that unlike George Washington, Jesus IS ALIVE! HE IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD! The Apostles did not merely witness to the fact that Jesus had risen from the dead, but by their lives they witnessed that they had an ongoing relationship with Jesus Christ. Because of this living relationship with Jesus, when people encountered the Apostles, they were able to encounter Jesus Himself. This is the kind of witnesses we are called to be; living encounters with Christ Jesus, but of course this means that we must have a continuous, vibrant relationship with Jesus ourselves.
        Witnessing to Christ increases the life of the Church. As disciples of Christ, we should always be asking ourselves, what is the greatest need that the Church seems to have in this moment, and then make ourselves available for that. What does the Church need most today?
        The world today is atheistic. Even that part of the world that calls itself Christian is too often atheistic. “An atheistic world is a world where Christ is no longer relevant to life. So the most urgent need of the Church today is that of a witness that makes Christ present in day-to-day life” (Luigi Guissani, “Witnessing to Christ in the Lives of Everyone,” Traces, 2000). We must witness to the fact that Jesus fulfills what is human. In our present day, work is the measure by which most people measure things. It is often how we measure the value of a person. Thus we need to witness to Christ in the workplace. We need to witness to the fact that people who follow Christ feel better than those who do not live this way. We must witness to the fact that true followers of Christ Jesus embrace their humanity more intensely, are more open to others, and more constructive than those who do not have a living relationship with Jesus Christ. In whatever work we do, we need to witness to the fact that we do all in, through and for Christ Jesus.
        Are we good witnesses of Christ? Are we proud to be witnesses of Christ, or do we rather not be bothered? Perhaps we are afraid of the reactions of others — that they might reject us, or worse, persecute us — for being Christians. In the Acts of the Apostles, the disciples “rejoiced for having been found worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus.” Easter is a season of joy, of rejoicing, however true Easter joy can only be found in being witnesses of Christ Jesus in all aspects of our lives.

[“Doubting Thomas” by Caravaggio]

        St. Thomas Aquinas once said that, “Mercy consists in bringing a thing out of non-being into being.” Like many of the sayings of the Angelic Doctor, at first this definition of mercy may seem difficult to understand. However, after spending the past week on retreat, with the theme, “In Christ You are a New Creation,” I think I have an idea of what St. Thomas meant.
        In today’s readings, several references are made to the pierced side of our Lord. Recall from the account of Jesus’ Passion, that when the Roman soldiers perceived that Jesus was already dead on the Cross, one of them pierced His side with a lance, and immediately blood and water flowed from His side.
        While an indication that Jesus was really dead, the Church has always seen much more in the piercing of Jesus’ side. The water that flowed from His side has always been seen by the Church as a symbol of baptism, by which we are all made members of Jesus’ Mystical Body, and the blood that flowed from His side has been seen as a symbol of the Eucharist, in which we eat of the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ. As Adam, the first man, was cast into a deep sleep, a type of death, and his side was pierced so that a rib could be removed from which his bride, Eve, was formed, so on the Cross Christ Jesus was in the deep sleep of death, and His side was pierced and from it flowed the life which became the Church, His Bride. While we celebrate the visible birth of the Church on Pentecost, in reality the Church was born from the pierced side of Jesus on the Cross.
        From the non-being of Christ’s death on the Cross, the Church was brought into being. Truly a great act of mercy. As St. John writes in his first letter, which we heard from in today’s second reading, Jesus Christ, in the form of His Mystical Body, the Church, “came through water and blood.”
        That early Church, which we see in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, was certainly something new. Imagine if your son or daughter, mother or father, or neighbor sudden decided to sell their house and all their possessions, to give everything to a group of people who believed that they had found the Messiah, the Savior of the world, the Son of God. Most of us would probably want to start searching for a good “de-programmer” thinking that they had been taken in by some crazy cult. Isn’t that exactly what the early Church must have looked to their neighbors, family and friends when they saw exactly that? We are told that the “community of believers was of one heart and mind, . . . .” Can you imagine that? I am pretty sure that Msgr. Ken would be thrilled if just everyone here in St. Mary’s were of one heart and mind, agreeing on everything.
        Why aren’t we like that? Why are we not of one heart and mind? Why are we not willing to hold everything in common? Was the early Church different in some essential way? Sometimes I think we feel jealous of the Apostles and the first Christians, for after all, most of them had seen Jesus, they had heard Him speak, and perhaps had seen Him perform a miracle. We think that that is why they were able to so radically transform their lives. If only we could have the same experiences, then we would be better Christians too.
        How can I say this? WHAT A LOAD OF … BALONEY!!
        This was the very excuse that St. Thomas, the Apostle not Aquinas, used for his disbelief in the Resurrection of Jesus. He skeptically said, “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.” Of course Christ Jesus did appear to St. Thomas, and offered to allow him to put his finger into the nailmarks and his hand into His side. St. Thomas did not have to do those things, just seeing Jesus was enough for him to fall to his knees and cry out, “My Lord and my God!”
        Deep in our hearts, how many of us are still waiting for Jesus to make the same kind of appearance to us? Divine Mercy is Jesus crying out to us, “do not be unbelieving, but believe.” It is Jesus making us a new being, a new creation. Jesus is risen from the dead, and He is constantly trying to resurrect in our hearts, if we but let him.
        St. Faustina, the great mystic of Divine Mercy, did not give us an image of Divine Mercy of Jesus’ pierced side on the Cross. No, it is from the heart of the Resurrected Christ Jesus that the rays of Mercy — white symbolizing the water and red symbolizing the blood — shine forth. It is a reminder for us that we must be constantly allowing ourselves to be recreated by the Mercy of God, by the Resurrected Christ.
        Do we live as New Creations in Christ Jesus, raised from the dead? Have we allowed the Resurrection to radically transform our lives, so that we see ourselves completely at the service of the Gospel, at the service of the Church? Or do we cling to our sins, and our old ways? Do we find Mass boring, the same old thing week after week? Or do we experience the indescribable joy of Jesus’ Presence each time we hear His Word in the Scriptures and receive His Body and Blood in the Eucharist?
        Jesus is always offering us His Mercy, always inviting us to become New Creations through His Resurrection. What are we waiting for?

[“The Resurrection” by Fra Angelico]

        “What do you hold most dear?” Is it a piece of jewelry? Your car? “What do you hold most dear?” Your job? Your reputation? Your power and authority? “What do you hold most dear?” Your spouse? Your children? Your grandchildren? “What do you hold most dear?” What are you willing to risk everything, including you life for?
        Recently I read a short story by the 19th century Russian philosopher and theologian Vladimir Solovyov titled, “A Short Story of the Anti-Christ.” In the story, Europe is swept up in a positivistic movement. In positivism, only things that can be experienced through the senses or demonstrated through mathematical and/or scientific methods are treated a real and authentic. An unnamed genius comes on the scene, and everyone is captivated by him. After he goes through a spiritual crisis, this genius rejects Christ as the Messiah, and instead sees himself as the Savior of the world. He writes a book which proposes solutions to all the world’s problems, and the “United States of Europe” decide to make him the president for life, and eventually crown him the new Roman Emperor. In fact he does bring peace through much of the world, and with very little force. He then solves the problem of poverty while still respecting the rights and privileges of the wealthy. This new Roman Emperor is creating paradise on the earth through science and technology. He then decides to address the problem of the world religions. He calls for an ecumenical council of all the different Christian religions. He makes various promises to them, as long as they recognize him as their sole protector, lord, savior and doctor of theology. Most of the Christians join him, however Pope Peter II, John the Elder, an Orthodox monk, and Professor Pauli, the leader of the evangelical Christians, with a small number of followers refuse to join the Roman Emperor.
        Angered, the Emperor asks, “‘What do you hold most dear in Christianity?’ At this Elder John rose up and said in a quiet voice: ‘Great sovereign! What we hold most dear in Christianity is Christ Himself — He in His person. All the rest comes from Him, for we know that in Him dwells bodily the whole fullness of Divinity.’”
        I am not going to tell you how the story ends, but I am going to ask once again, “What do you hold most dear?” About a hundred years after Solovyov wrote “A Short Story of the Anti-Christ” we live in a world much like he described. For some time now Pope Benedict has been preaching about the danger of positivism; that Western culture seems to be becoming insensitive to the spiritual realm, and dismissing anything which it cannot sense, measure, manipulate or calculate. And there is no doubt that science and technology has been solving many of the world’s ills. Yet, what about the questions which stand at the center of the human heart? What is the meaning of life? Where did we come from? What is our ultimate destiny? Can we measure, sense, manipulate or calculate Love, Truth, Beauty, Justice? To paraphrase a question of another Russian, Dostoyevsky, can a person of our day really believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ?
        Our very life depends on the answer to this question. This is not a theoretical or abstract question. It is the question that Easter places before everyone each year, it is whether we accept as a fact the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
        In answer to the question, “What do you hold most dear?” do we answer Jesus? I do not mean merely the memory of Jesus, and the stories we have heard about Him from the Bible. Nor do I mean the teachings of Jesus and the doctrines of the Church. Rather, do we hold most dear the Presence of Jesus here and now? Do we accept, as Blessed John Paul II said, that Christ Jesus is the permanent, “center of the cosmos and of history”? With the Resurrection, Jesus has conquered history once and for all. He has made it His forever. Christ Jesus has changed the meaning of time and space, and because of His affection for us, because of the tenderness that He has for every instant of every day of every one of us, Jesus is challenging us now. Jesus allows our freedom to recognize Him now, in every instant of every day. He remains forever. This explains the ancient Christian greeting during the Easter Season of saying to each other, “The Lord is Risen! He is truly Alive!”
        What do I hold most dear? What am I willing to give everything that I have and am for? Jesus! My dear Lord Jesus! How about you?

[“Madonna of the Pilgrims” by Caravaggio, in the Church of St. Augustine in Rome]

        Look at the crucifix. Notice the execution notice that hangs above the head of Jesus — INRI. That stands for the Latin phrase for, “Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews.” It was meant as another cruel jest of our Lord. A visible sign of what happens to people who claim to be a king in opposition to Caesar. Yet for us Christians, that execution notice became “confession of faith,” the real starting-point of the Christian faith. As a crucified criminal Jesus is the Christ, the King, and the crucifixion is His coronation. For it is His coronation, His Kingship to surrender Himself to men.
        When we contemplate the Passion of our Lord, Jesus Christ the King, we cannot doubt that He experience the absolute depths of human misery. There is no doubt that as prophesied by Isaiah, Jesus was “spurned and avoided . . . a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom people hide their faces . . . .”
        We have all felt like that at some time in our lives, because we live in a fallen world. We have all been sick, betrayed and hurt, and we have all caused pain in others. Jesus saves us by coming down to our level. He steps into the middle of our pain and sorrow. Again, as prophesied by Isaiah, “It was our infirmities that He bore, our sufferings he endured.”
        Jesus did not save us by eliminating suffering, but rather by suffering WITH us and FOR us. Through His example, Jesus teaches us to trust and love God even in the midst of suffering.
        Have we fully realized what this amazing truth means? It means that we do not have to become perfect before we can be friends of God. It means that with, in and through Christ Jesus, we can go right into God’s presence just the way we are, will all our miseries and confusions, wounds and sins. Jesus’ arms are outstretched on the cross to embrace us. The Letter to the Hebrews understands this, as we read in our second reading, “So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.” This sentence, this earth-shaking sentence, can set us free from all fear and hesitancy in our relationship with God.
        In the church of St. Augustine, in Rome, there is a painting by the great Italian baroque painter Caravaggio, that illustrates this memorably. It is called “The Madonna of the Pilgrims” and it shows two pilgrims kneeling in front of the baby Jesus, who is in Mary’s arms. The pilgrims — a man and a woman — are poor, dressed humbly, with walking sticks for their only possessions. Their hands are clasped in heartfelt prayer. Both Jesus and Mary look at them with interest and compassion, listening intently to the pilgrims’ prayers.
        The painting was quite controversial when it was first unveiled. It was meant to be hung above the altar, above the viewer. When you look at it, you can clearly see the faces of Mary and Jesus, but you mostly just see the pilgrims’ backs. The man is barefoot, and when hung above the altar right at eye level, you are staring at the soles of his feet as he kneels in prayer — the ugly, dirty, grimy soles of his feet. The sophisticated public, at the time of the painting’s unveiling, complained that it was disrespectful to put someone’s dirty feet in such a prominent position, right above the altar. They called it shameful and in bad taste.
        Yet Caravaggio was right. Jesus came to earth precisely for that reason; to meet us right where we are, in the grime of our struggles, our wounds, and our sins, and to lift us up from there into His Kingdom. The coronation of Good Friday reminds us that Jesus, our King, knows our misery because He shared it. Therefore, we can “confidently approach the throne of grace,” just as we are.
        Although we are saddened by the pain our Lord experienced in order to save us from our sins, today our hearts should also be glad, because we know that we are not alone in our sufferings, and that we will never be alone. God’s door is always open to us, and His arms are always stretched wide to welcome us. God’s throne is always just a simple prayer away. Let us not leave church today without thanking the Lord for this great gift. When we come up to the cross today and kiss it, let us do so with the smile of gratitude in our hearts.
        At the same time, we should not forget that many people have still not received this gift. Many people are not here today; they have not heard the good news. Too many do not know that they can confidently approach the throne of grace. Too many are suffering alone.
        Perhaps we know someone like this. Maybe we know someone who is afraid to come to Christ Jesus. Is there any better way to please our Lord and to be his faithful followers than by bringing this good news to that person?
        From today until Easter, all the tabernacles of the world will be empty, and all the altars will be stripped bare. Where will the suffering women and men of the world go to find the comfort of Jesus’ love? They will have nowhere to go, so we will have to go to them. From today until Easter, we will have to be living tabernacles; our hearts will have to be the altars where Jesus’ love comes down to earth, by loving our neighbors as Christ has loved us. When we receive the Lord’s Body and Blood in Holy Communion today, let us ask Him — with humility and confidence — for that grace to be Jesus’ living tabernacles filled with the love of Christ, our King.

[“What Our Savior saw from the Cross” by James Tissot]

        Reading the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, like we just did, has been an ancient and venerable practice among Christians. In fact, the Passion is what we call the original kerygma or preaching of the Apostles. When St. Peter, St. Paul, St. John and the other Apostles first entered a new town or village, it was not the parables that Jesus told nor the miracles that He worked that they first proclaimed. It was that Jesus suffered, was crucified, died, was buried, and then rose from the dead that they first proclaimed. Yes, it was the account of an execution, and for any one who has seen the movie, The Passion of the Christ, knows, a particularly brutal execution at that. Not the parable of the Good Shepherd or the Prodigal Son, not the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes, but rather the story of Jesus’ brutal death and resurrection was what people first heard about from the Apostles and other Christians.
        Why this focus on the Passion of our Lord? Isn’t morbid to focus on the details of Jesus’ sufferings? Don’t some of us find it difficult to meditate on the Passion of the Lord? Isn’t that the most common objection to the movie, The Passion of the Christ, that it was too bloody? What is the purpose of meditating on Jesus’ Passion? Isn’t the “Good News” contained in His parables and sermons of how we should love God and our neighbor?
        To meditate on the Passion of our Lord is to begin to be illuminated by the fire of divine love that radiates from the heart of Jesus through every moment of His suffering. To meditate on the Passion of our Lord is to begin to experience that in His passion He loved ME and each one of YOU! That He gave Himself for all of us. To meditate on His Passion is to experience His love not in some abstract way, but in a very personal way. In his Gospel account, St. Mark wants us to ask ourselves what does Jesus’ death have to do with each one of us? What does it have to do with me?
        I am sure that many of the people who first heard the Apostles proclaiming this original kerygma were turned off and just walked away. Maybe they were too disgusted by the agony of it. Perhaps, although unwilling to admit it, they walked away because they did not want to deal with their guilt, recognizing in their heart that this Jesus had died for them. However, others were cut to the heart. Yes, they recognized that it was their sin that nailed Jesus to the Cross, but they also experience that fire of divine love and it completely transformed their lives. In the Passion they experienced forgiveness and the freedom of the children of God.
        What about each of us? Does the Passion of our Lord make us just want to walk away? Do we find it long and boring; perhaps because we do not want to look at what it means about us? Or will we devoutly reflect on the Passion of our Lord, be transformed by the divine love it radiates, and walk in the freedom of the Cross?

[“Visit of Nicodemus to Christ” by John La Farge, 1880]

        “Bless me Father, for I have sinned… I have lied…I have pulled my sister’s hair…I have hit my brother…I cheated on a test…I haven’t obeyed my parents…I have taken things from work…I have looked at pornography…I have masturbated…I have had sex outside of marriage…my spouse and I have been using contraception…I am prejudiced against certain groups of people…I have told racists and sexist jokes…I have used the name of God in vain…I have cursed…I miss Mass on Sunday…I have cheated on my taxes….I have had an abortion…I wish some people dead…I haven’t spoken to my brother in years because we had a fight….” In my nearly eight years as a priest, I have heard quite a few things in the Confessional, so that list could have gone on and on. The writer of the Second Book of Chronicles, from which we heard in our first reading today understood the prevalence of sin in the lives of people. He wrote, “…the people added infidelity to infidelity, practicing all the abominations of the nations….” As a result of their countless infidelities and sins, the Israelites saw the Temple of the Lord destroyed, with the city Jerusalem, and most of the people taken into exile to Babylon. It was a humiliating experience, to be a people banned from their homeland. They must have felt worthless, maybe as worthless as we sometimes feel when we in humility recount our many sins and infidelities.
        Yet, God did something remarkable and unexplainable for the Israelites. He brought the pagan king of Persia, Cyrus, to not only release the Israelites from their exile, but also ordered that they rebuild the Temple of the Lord, and he provided material help for them to do it. Why would God work through this non-Jew to set the Chosen People free?
        We really never know someone until we know what is in their heart — what motivates them, why they do what they do, and what is their goal. In today’s Gospel reading Jesus lays bare the heart of God.
        Jesus is speaking with Nicodemus, a member of Israel’s ruling body, the Sanhedrin. Nicodemus was too afraid to speak with Jesus during the day, so they are talking at night. Nicodemus acknowledge that he knew that Jesus came from God, and he wants to know what he must do to share in the Kingdom of God. Jesus tells him that he must be born again. Jesus tells Nicodemus that the whole of salvation history, from the fall of Adam and Eve until the final judgment, revolves around the coming of Jesus Christ, the Savior, the Son of God. Jesus came into the world because the Father sent Him. The Father sent Him because “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life.” God simply could not bear to see us perish in our sins. He longed to share with us His everlasting life. As Fr. Bill Garrott reminded us during our parish mission this past week, God loves us not because we are good, but because He is Good.
        Jesus is the definitive proof of God’s care for us. God cares so much for us that He is willing to sacrifice His only Son to atone for the sins that have separated us from God. There is no hidden agenda here, no selfish undertones. It is pure generosity. This is the heart of God. Only when we internalize this fundamental motive of God does our Christian adventure really begin.
        St. Paul understood this lesson to the core. All of his letters in the New Testament comment on this one, key truth of Christianity: that God’s love comes first. This is what he means when he writes twice in today’s second reading that we are “saved by grace” and not by “works.” We do not earn our salvation by saying prayers and avoiding sin. Rather, God gives us the gift of salvation, of friendship with him. He offers us salvation not because we are worthy, but because He is generous. Again, God loves us not because we are good, but because He is Good.
        Once we receive this “lovely gift” of salvation, we must live according to it; God’s love teaches us how to love like He does. Through our friendship with Jesus, God invites us to be gradually purified from all of our selfish and sinful tendencies, and in that way to let Him make us worthy of heaven. God becomes one of us so that we can become like Him — isn’t that amazing?
        This is the real source of self-esteem. Psychologists tell us that having a healthy self-esteem is critical for interior peace, self-confidence and emotional maturity. However, many of us have problems with our self-esteem. We live in a fallen world. Not only are we aware of our own sinfulness, but we have all experienced the rejection, betrayal, abuse and sinfulness of others. People who were suppose to teach us what it is like to be loved and valued have sometimes failed us.
        Some of us have reacted by trying to build up our self-esteem through our achievements. We try to be more beautiful than other people — only a few of us can succeed in that, LOL! We try to win more awards, go to the right college, get the right job, make the most money, get the big promotion. We think these things will prove that we are valuable and that we matter. However, our own achievements are as flimsy and undependable as are other people’s opinions. There will always be someone else who will be more beautiful, make more money, achieve more and greater honors than we do, so we will never stop feeling inferior.
        The only true, stable and lasting source of self-esteem is God, our Lord and Savior. As St. Peter Chysologus put it a long time ago, “Why do you have so low an opinion of yourself, when you are so precious to God? Why do you so dishonor yourself when you are so honored by God?”
        We do not have to make ourselves valuable, because we are already valuable — eternally valuable — and the crucifix proves it. This is why right in the middle of Lent the Church invites us to REJOICE! The rose-colored vestments — OK, our new “rose” vestments are not very rosy — but they still symbolize Christian joy, the deepest self-esteem that we can ever experience, because it is based on the solid rock of God’s unfailing love. His love is bigger than our sin, misery, and weakness.
        As we continue with Mass today, let us thank our Lord for His love, and when He renews that love through the sacrifice of this Mass, may our hearts be open to receive it. Then we can truly Rejoice!
        

(OK, like most people, from time to time I can be a real bone-head. I wrote the following homily for this weekend, and remembered that the priest giving our parish mission, Fr. Bill Garrott, OP, was preaching at all the Masses this weekend. What makes me even more of a bone-head is that I am the one who has handled all the planning for the mission, so I should have known. So here is my un-given homily.)

We all want to be satisfied in life. That’s what happiness is; the achievement of satisfaction, of spiritual contentment, of a sense of fulfillment that does not wear out. Everything we do is directed towards that end. It’s like we have a homing device built into our hearts, and it keeps drawing us towards fulfillment and satisfaction. We keep seeking new activities, accomplishments, relationships, adventures – all because we feel this interior drive for fulfillment, meaning, and happiness. This is a good thing. God made us that way. He put the homing device in our hearts, because he wants us to find that satisfaction and fulfillment, that happiness.

There is a problem, however. Ever since sin entered into the world, we have had a tendency to look for this fulfillment in the wrong places. God designed the human heart to find its lasting fulfillment in a deep, personal, ongoing friendship with him – in what the Catechism calls “communion with God” (#45).

This is why the first three commandments, as we read in today’s First Reading, have to do with our relationship with God – that’s the most important thing. However, our fallen human nature tends to look for it in other places: career success, money, pleasure, power, popularity…. But that is wrong. Those things are fine in themselves, and they have their place in the human story, but they cannot substitute for God! Only God can satisfy our deepest longing.

That is why Jesus gets so worked up in today’s Gospel passage. The Temple was set aside as a place where people could go to pray, to encounter God and develop their friendship with him. But all of these merchants and money changers had made it into a mall, a place of buying and selling things! The place that should have helped people find God had gradually become full of obstacles to finding God. Jesus passionately wants us to find God, because he wants us to find true satisfaction.

No one is completely satisfied in life, completely fulfilled; we are all searching for that happiness that we were made for. St Augustine expressed this beautifully at the beginning of his autobiography when he wrote: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O Lord.” One of America’s most renowned philosophers and writers, Henry David Thoreau, expressed this same idea less optimistically. He wrote, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” The human heart is hungry, but in this fallen world people do not always remember what it’s hungry for.

Jesus came to put hope into that desperation, to give direction to that restlessness. Only friendship with him can lead us to the satisfaction we long for, not because it ends our search – that will not happen until heaven – but because it puts us on the sure path, the dependable, hope-filled path of the saints. That friendship, however, has a price – we have to let him clear away the false gods that are cluttering our hearts.

And friendship always involves wanting, liking, and doing the same things. And so, our friendship with Christ depends on our learning to know and share Christ’s desires – in other words, it comes from seeking and doing God’s will. “Thy will be done, thy Kingdom come…”

Today’s Psalm is a beautiful expression of this fundamental Christian truth. It uses six different terms to express “God’s will,” showing how rich and multifaceted God’s will really is: law, decree, precepts, command, fear of the Lord, ordinances. These are terms that appear over and over again in the Old Testament – and the list of Ten Commandments in today’s First
Reading is a prime example. In the New Testament, they are all summed up with “Thy will be done,” or as Mary put it, “Let it be done to me according to your Word.”

The Psalm also goes on to describe what happens when we follow God’s will, and all the benefits that come from living in communion with God. It lists eight characteristics: It refreshes the soul – and who does not want a refreshed soul, full of energy and enthusiasm? It gives wisdom – that elusive ability to say the right thing at the right time and make the right decision. It rejoices the heart – fills us with an interior joy that does not depend on circumstances. It enlightens the eye – it gives us the ability to understand things, people and events, just as God understands them. It endures forever – eternal satisfaction, not passing delights. It establishes justice – it removes regrets, guilt, and unholy anger. It is more precious than gold – friendship with Christ gives us all those things that no amount of money can ever buy. It is sweeter than honey – communion with God is the deepest pleasure we can ever experience.

That is what following God leads to, and that is what Jesus wants for each one of us. Jesus wants our friendship, because the only place we can find the fulfillment and satisfaction we yearn for is in communion with God.

Our part in building this friendship consists of two things: first, seeking to know and love
Christ through prayer; and second, seeking to follow Christ by fulfilling God’s will for our lives.

This phrase, “God’s will,” can easily be misunderstood or used as an excuse to justify questionable personal agendas, whether violent, political, or self-indulgent. However as Catholics, we are protected from that kind of error; a Catholic knows exactly where to go to find God’s will. First, we go to Christ’s example and teaching – both in the New Testament, and in the Old. That enables us to know God’s will easily and surely 85% of the time. Christ wants us to avoid sins of anger, arrogance, judgementalism, gossip, lust, greed, laziness, dishonesty… These behaviors damage our friendship with him and cause destruction to those around us. Christ also wants us to develop our God-given talents and opportunities, and to use them to build up society: “love your neighbor as yourself,” as he put it. That’s God’s will for us, and 85% of the time it’s perfectly clear – if we just think about it.

For the other 15%, when we are doubtful or uncertain, we need some more assistance. God has given it to us in his Church. He has promised to guide us through the teachings of the Church, which sheds the light of Christ’s truth on tough issues, both social and personal – as it has done faithfully for the last 2000 years. To know, love, and follow Christ, then, also involves knowing, loving, and following Christ’s Church.

Jesus wants the temple of our hearts to be filled with his friendship, not with false idols and empty promises. When he comes to us in this Mass, let us let him clean out whatever he wants to, so that that friendship can really flourish.