Fr. JC Maximilian

St. Peter tells us, in our second reading today, to “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope….”  How many of us are truly ready to do just that?  A good starting point for answering this question is looking at what do we, as Christians, mean when we use the word “hope.”  Fortunately for us, Pope Benedict XVI recently wrote a beautiful encyclical that is all about hope; in fact it is entitled, Spe Salvi, which is translated “Saved in Hope.”

For many people hope is little more than a wish for a better future.  It tends to be rather abstract and “pie-in-the-sky.”  Hope is not seen as something that has anything to do with present reality.  As Christians, we have more solid understanding of the virtue of hope.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes hope as, “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC #1817).  A quick reading of this definition of the virtue of hope might lead some of us to conclude that it is just a fancier way of saying that it is a wish for a better future.  There is no denying that there is an element of looking to the future in Christian Hope, but there is much more to it.  Hope is the desire for the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness.  This is not just a desire for something only in the future, but a desire for something NOW.  While the kingdom of heaven will not be complete until the end of time, it is the desire of every person who takes serious their Christian faith to desire the building up of the kingdom of heaven now.

This is one of the reasons why in Scripture the words faith and hope are often used almost interchangeably.  Faith and hope is not just about the “not yet.”  Rather they draw the future into the present, so as to change the way we live in the present.  Our faith in Jesus gives life a new basis; He reveals to us what life is really all about.  One of the first images of Christ to appear on Christian tombs had Jesus carrying a philosopher staff.  For the people of that time, a philosopher was someone who teaches the art of being authentically human, both in living and in dying.  Christian faith and hope is lived because Christ Jesus has communicated the substance of what true life is.  As He says in the Gospel, “I have come that you might have life, life to the full.”

In his encyclical, Pope Benedict uses the sacrament of Baptism as an example for learning about hope.  The sacrament of Baptism actually begins outside the church; the parents and the child should be met at the door of the church as a sign that the child is not yet a member of the Church.  After asking the parents what name do they give their child, they are asked “What do you ask of God’s Church for your child?”  Now there are several acceptable answers to this question such as “baptism,” “entrance into the Church,” etc., but one of the better answers is “Faith.”  In the old rite of baptism the priest would then ask, “What does faith give you?” and the parents would answer, “Eternal Life.”  Right in that simple exchange we see the connection between faith and hope; Faith in the Lord Jesus points to Eternal Life.  It also points to the nature of this faith and hope.  The child is obviously not able to understand a bunch of doctrines and dogmas; in fact the parents and godparents have to say the Creed for the child.  So faith is not primarily about knowing a group of facts.  Faith, and hope, is about having an encounter with God, and encounter with Jesus Christ who loves us and has saved us.  It is Jesus, through His Passion, Death and Resurrection, who has redeemed us so that we can share in eternal life.  While their parents, and hopefully their godparents, will teach the newly baptized child their prayers and the basic “facts” or doctrines of the faith, their real responsibility is to witness a living, loving relationship with Christ Jesus in their own lives so that their child will also desire a living, loving relationship with Christ Jesus.

So what is this hope that we should always be ready to give an explanation of?  St. Paul, in writing to the Ephesians says that they were without hope because they were without God in the world.  As Pope Benedict says in his encyclical, hope for the Christian is to come to know God.  Hope is a relationship with God who is Beauty, who is Truth, who is Love.  Hope is a relationship with God who is the source of life.  The unconditional love of God is what gives us the certainty that we need in life.  As St. Paul says in the Letter to the Romans, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).  How do we give an explanation to anyone who asks us for a reason for our hope?  By witnessing in our lives our relationship of love with Christ Jesus which calls us to love our brothers and sisters with His love.

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[An Olive wood statue of the Good Shepherd.  Naturally, I do not want to get into “advertising” here on my blog, but since I borrowed this image from www.holylandmarket.com, I would like to give a plug for them, and the other communities of Christians still living in the Holy Land, often in poverty, who make a living making these items.]

The image of the Good Shepherd is one of the most familiar in all of Christianity.  Archeology has uncovered tombs of Christians dating from the second century after Christ that have this image carved into them.  Clearly, for the early Christians, and for us, Jesus was identified as the Good Shepherd, guiding His flock to heaven.

Even for us, who have been raised far removed from the pastures, we recognize in the image of the Good Shepherd that the shepherd protects and cares for his sheep, wanting them to be happy and healthy, and giving them all that they need to grow and multiply.  One of the favorite images for Christ Jesus in Christian art, from the earliest years to the present day, is that of the shepherd carrying a little lamb around his shoulders.  Who of us do not take some comfort in that image of the loving care that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, has for each of us?  I think if we were more familiar with shepherding most would be very surprised at the real meaning of that image of the shepherd carrying the lamb around his shoulders.

The only time that a lamb is likely to wander away from the shepherd, and the rest of the flock, is when it is either fearful or overconfident.  And when the lamb wanders away, it is putting itself in great danger because it cannot protect itself from predators, and it lacks the experience and knowledge to really recognize danger.  When a lamb keeps wandering away, either because it is fearful or overconfident, a shepherd will sometimes purposely break one of its legs.  Then the shepherd puts the lamb around his neck and carries it to and from the pasture for the few weeks it will take for the leg to heal.  By that time, the lamb has become so attached to the shepherd that it will never again stray from its master’s protection and guidance.

What do you think about that?  It probably changes our feelings about that so familiar image of Christ as the Good Shepherd, but should it?

We are the sheep, and Christ is the Good Shepherd.  As St. Peter says in our second reading, we “had gone astray like sheep.”  When are we most likely to wander away from the teachings of the Church, the teachings of Jesus?

When we are frightened?  We get scared of something in our lives — maybe it is trouble at work, or unemployment, or trouble in our families, or facing an illness — and we run so quickly towards things that we think will give us “quick fixes” to whatever is frightening us.  Maybe it is the bottle, or drugs, or pornography, or overeating, or shopping, or any of a large number of addictions or escapes that our modern world offers us.  We run to them thinking that they will keep us safe and make us happy, but whatever comfort they offer us does not last for long, and then we are right back facing what scared us in the first place.

Or maybe we wander away from the Good Shepherd when we become overconfident and filled with pride.  We think that we know what is best for ourselves and others, and that we can fix all the problems.  Isn’t that just what the serpent said to Eve in the Garden when he tempted her with the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?  He told her, “you will be like gods, knowing good from evil.”  It was a lie when he said it to Eve, and it continues to be a lie that we often fall for.

Understanding the meaning of the image of the Good Shepherd carrying the lamb around His shoulders gives us something to think about when we encounter difficulties and suffering in our lives.  Because we have wandered away so often, we need some “pain,” some “brokenness” in order to learn that we must be dependent on the Good Shepherd to stay out of trouble, so that we will be truly healthy and happy, and grow and multiply.

Sin — whether it is from fear or overconfidence — is our wandering away from Jesus, the Good Shepherd.  Sometimes as the Good Shepherd, His correction seems painful and hard to us, but it is so that we can learn to entrust ourselves to Him, to allow Him to carry us, care for us, and protect us.

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, knows what will truly fulfill the deepest desires of our hearts and make us truly happy.  He knows us better than anyone because He is our Creator, our Brother, and our Lord.  He does want to lead us to the dream of a tranquil and simple life.  He did come so that we “might have life and have it more abundantly.”  Pope Benedict XVI, in his recent encyclical Spe Salvi: Saved in Hope, explains why Christ Jesus is the true shepherd that leads to hope:

“The true shepherd is one who knows even the path that passes through the valley of death; one who walks with me even on the path of final solitude, where no one can accompany me, guiding through:  he himself has walked this path, he has descended into the kingdom of death, he has conquered death, and he has returned to accompany us now and to give us the certainty that, together with him, we can find a way through.  The realization that there is One who even in death accompanies me, and with his ‘rod and his staff comforts me’, so that ‘I fear no evil’ (cf. Ps 23:4) — this was the new ‘hope’ that arose over the life of believers (Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, #6).

As one of my seminary professors said in the shortest homily I have ever heard, “Don’t be a stupid sheep.  Follow the Shepherd!”

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[”Doubting Thomas” by Caravaggio] 

This past week I was on retreat with a group of priests involved in the Church Movement called, Communion and Liberation.  Our retreats are somewhat atypical of what one might think a retreat is like.  In the morning we do keep silent, with a conference and Mass.  However, one of the beliefs of Communion and Liberation is the importance of friends, or companions, as we follow Christ, so we also spend time socializing with each other; sharing how we encounter the presence of Christ Jesus in our different ministries.  Another aspect of Communion and Liberation is the full embracing of our humanity through contact with reality.  Since the Word of God became flesh, we too, need to experience the reality of God in the flesh, so we embrace expressions of beauty and culture.  On this retreat we attended a concert of classical music, and went to one of the Catholic Missions established by Blessed Junipero Serra; in fact the Mission where he is buried.

While on retreat I did have my copy of Magnificat, so I was able to pray over this weekend’s readings, but I did not the various commentaries that I look at in preparing my homilies.  Of course today’s Gospel is one that we are all familiar with; the story of “Doubting Thomas.”  As I prayed over this Gospel reading a question came to my mind, was St. Thomas’ doubt, his wanting to “see the mark of the nails in his hands” and put his hand into Jesus’ side before he would believe in the Resurrection really all that outrageous?  I think the answer to that question is by “yes” and “no”.

Let’s look first at the “no,” that it was not outrageous for St. Thomas to want some proof of Jesus’ Resurrection.  As I mentioned earlier, one of the themes frequently discussed in Communion and Liberation is the carnal, in the flesh, reality of Jesus.  St. John’s Gospel begins with the beautiful song of how the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us.  Throughout His preaching mission Jesus is frequently eating and drinking with people; in fact some of the scribes and Pharisees used that as a critique of Him, saying that Jesus was a glutton and drunkard.  Jesus often physically touched people in healing them.  In several of the post-Resurrection accounts Jesus reveals Himself, and that He was not a ghost, by eating with His disciples.  In today’s Gospel reading, when He first appeared to the Apostles and said, “Peace be with you,” Jesus then showed them His hands and His side, and it was only then that “the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”

St. Thomas was not at that first appearance of the Risen Christ to the Apostles, so it seems quite normal for him to want some tangible proof of Jesus’ Resurrection.  And Jesus is not bothered by this doubt of Thomas; when He next appears to the Apostles and says, “Peace be with you,” Jesus right away turns to Thomas and tells him to touch Him for Jesus is eager for Thomas to have believe in Him; “do not be unbelieving, but believe.”  Jesus knows the importance of Faith in order to share the new life He came to bring to all people.  How often during His public ministry did Jesus say, “your faith has healed you,” or “your faith has been your salvation.”

Yet, there is something a bit outrageous in St. Thomas’ doubt, but I think Jesus uses that to help us so that we will “not be unbelieving, but believe.”  St. Thomas’ doubt seems to fit right in with our modern world.  We have seemed to so embrace science and technology, that most people want to only believe what they can see, touch, hear, taste or smell.  They say that they want “proof” and by proof they mean something tangible.  They seem to relegate faith as being just sentimentality and not connected with reality.

However, there are two general methods of knowledge; both direct and indirect.  Science relies on direct knowledge; we know something because we observe it, we experience it ourselves.  This is a powerful method for knowing something, indeed, but it is actually not the most common method for knowing something.  Most of the things that we know, we know indirectly.  Alexis de Tocqueville, in his classic work, Democracy in America, made this wonderful observation:

“If man were forced to demonstrate for himself all the truths of which he makes
daily use, his task would never end. He would exhaust his strength in preparatory
demonstrations without ever advancing beyond them. As, from the shortness of his life,
he has not the time, nor, from the limits of his intelligence, the capacity, to act in this way,
he is reduced to take on trust a host of facts and opinions which he has not had either the
time or the power to verify for himself, but which men of greater ability have found out,
or which the crowd adopts. On this groundwork he raises for himself the structure of his
own thoughts; he is not led to proceed in this manner by choice, but is constrained by the
inflexible law of his condition. There is no philosopher in the world so great but that he
believes a million things on the faith of other people and accepts a great many more truths than he demonstrates.”

So most of the truths that we know come through this indirect method.  This indirect method of knowledge is called “Faith,” and we can define Faith as knowledge that we get through the testimony of a witness.  While it is obvious how this applies to religious matters, just think about your own life; how do we know what is in that soda can we are about to open and drink?  By faith in the testimony of a witness, a label, we know that it is soda and not poison.  Of course we need to evaluate the credibility of the witness in order to determine if we should believe what they say, but most of the truths we know in life is through this method.

And this is how St. Thomas’ doubts is a kind of failure, but one that Jesus uses for our benefit.  St. Thomas should have believed the testimony of the other Apostles.  He had lived with them, as they lived with Jesus, for three years.  Theirs was an intimate community of companions.  He should have known that their testimony was credible, and to not accept the testimony of credible witnesses is unreasonable.  However, his failure to believe through the testimony of the other Apostles, and needing direct knowledge, is for our benefit for it demonstrates to us, who did not live with original Apostles the credibility of their testimony.  So when they went out and preached the Good News it was reasonable for their listeners to have faith in their testimony, to come to know Jesus through their testimony.  It has been through this method of knowledge that we have come to know Jesus — by faith, that gives us “a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

Something else struck me by this Gospel passage; namely the context of the encounter with the Risen Christ.  Both appearance occurred on Sunday.  The Lord welcomes them by saying, “Peace be with you,” a phrase we hear during Mass.  Jesus speaks to them, as He does to us through the Scriptures, and He shows the Apostles His body, as He shows us His body and blood in the Eucharist.  Our communal celebration of Mass on Sunday is a participation in this experience of the Resurrection of the Lord.  It is a direct experience of Jesus’ presence that requires Faith, and builds up the Faith.

This experience of Jesus places a demand on us.  Pope Benedict XVI recently commented that Faith is both instructive and performative.  By instructive, the Holy Father means that by Faith we learn about Jesus and His teachings so that we may have life to the full, so we even learn more about ourselves.  However, this knowledge must bear fruit in our lives.  This is what he means when he says that Faith is performative; our Christian faith should change the way we live life, for we have been given new life.  We should give what we have received, so as we have received the gift of Faith through the testimony of witnesses, we are called to be witnesses of Christ’s resurrection.  The resurrection of Jesus should touch our lives, so that we live differently.  Even when we are tested by suffering through various trials, our Faith in Jesus should cause us to “rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy,” as St. Peter says in today’s second reading.  Be witnesses to Jesus Christ, crucified and risen.

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[”The Women at the Tomb” by Fra Angelico]

Have you ever wondered where the phrase, “black balled,” came from?  I believe it started in the monasteries; when the solemnly professed monks gathered for a meeting to make a decision, each would have a white ball and a black ball, and they would cast their vote by dropping one of the balls into a basket — a white ball for “Yes” and a black ball for “No.”  So when a proposal was defeated, it had been “black balled,” it had received more black balls than white balls when the vote was taken.

I heard a story once that when Pope John XXIII meet with his closest advisors about planning the Second Vatican Council, many of the cardinals were opposed to the idea of having an Ecumenical council of the Church.  At the very least they would need more time to plan it.  When the Holy Father called for them to vote on the issue, they started to pass a bowl so that the cardinal-advisors could drop in either a white ball or a black one.  When bowl finally came to the the Holy Father, it clearly had more black balls in it than white balls.  Then the Holy Father took off his white skull cap, placed it on top of the bowl, and said, “See, they are all white!”

While this amusing story reminds us that the Church on earth is not a democracy, I think it can remind us of an even more important truth, an Easter truth.  When human beings say “No,” God says “Yes.”  Isn’t that the real meaning of Easter?  On Good Friday we human beings said “No.”  We said no to the love and freedom and redemption that Jesus offers all of us.  On Easter, God overruled this “no” with His triumphant “YES” of the Resurrection.

We only need to watch the news on television or read the newspapers to see all the evil and suffering in the world, to see all the injustice.  Faced with all that bad news, many want to say that there is no hope, that there is no meaning to life.  These are the prophets and witnesses of despair — of doom and gloom.  They tell us that there is no point to holding on to ideals, in trying to live for the best and the highest we know.  They ridicule the idea of self-sacrifice, saying that it will always be defeated.  They are the voices that continuously say, “No, No, No” and continually nail Jesus to the Cross.

But that is OK, because God has shown that the defeat of Jesus Christ on Good Friday is just an illusion.  God says that there IS a hope.  He triumphantly declares that He is the hope, that He is stronger that suffering and evil.  On Easter morning the empty tomb proclaims that there IS a future for us, and God Himself is that future.  Pope Benedict XVI recently said, “Faith in the resurrection of Jesus says that there is a future for every human being; the cry for unending life which is part of the person is indeed answered.”  To the continuous “no, no, no” of Good Friday, God continuously says, “Yes, Yes, Yes.”  He turns all the black balls white.

All of us can at times be tempted to listen more to the voices of this world that say “no” than to the Word of God which says “yes.”  Too often we want to rely on ourselves, others, and science only to see that none of these can give us the answers.

Marie Curie learned this lesson in her life.  She and her husband Pierre were two of the most brilliant scientific minds in the world during the early modern period.  In 1903 they received the Nobel Prize in physics for their groundbreaking work on radioactivity.  Pierre died in 1906, and Marie was despondent with grief, yet she did not give in to despair.  Every day she wrote in her diary a message to Pierre, and on the day of his funeral she wrote:

“Your coffin was closed and I could see you no more…. We saw you go down into the deep hole…. They filled the grave and put flowers on it.  Everything is over.  Pierre is sleeping in his last sleep beneath the earth.  It is the end of everything, everything, everything!  No, science, as such, does not have the answer.  The answer must come from the other side, God’s side.  It comes from the life and lips of the Man of Galilee.  Into the darkness of death He brings light.  Into the midst of our doubts He comes with His voice of promise, ‘I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.’”

In a world that says “No, there is nothing after death,” God says, “Yes!  There is life beyond death.  This life is our preparation for that life.”

In today’s first reading St. Peter says, “They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.  This man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible, not to all the people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”  In this passage from the Acts of the Apostles, the fact of the resurrection of Christ from the dead is not only proclaimed.  We also are given a commission.  We are to make the “Yes” of God known to all the world.

We ARE His witnesses.  The Eucharist that we receive at Mass is the eating and drinking with Him that St. Peter mentions.  In our worthy reception of Holy Communion we are saying “Yes” to God, we are saying yes to the redemption that Jesus won for us not only by His death on the Cross, but by is resurrection from the dead.  It is this “Yes” — God’s Yes — that we need to take into the entire world.

The same Second Vatican Council, which was held because Pope John XXIII did not listen to the nay-sayers, re-affirmed this commission given to all of Christ’s disciples.  While the bishops, priests and deacons, through the special grace that they received through their ordination are entrusted the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments, the Council made it clear that the spreading of the Good News — God’s Yes — is not their responsibility alone.  It is the responsibility of all the baptized to be witnesses to the Good News of Jesus Christ.  In fact, it is to the laity that this witnessing to the Christ’s resurrection in the workplace, public square and marketplace is especially entrusted.

Are you a “Yes-person”?  Do you witness to the joy of Christ’s Resurrection from the dead to all those around you?  Or do you just do the minimum, maybe an hour on Sunday saying Yes with God, and then the rest of the week part of the world’s chorus of “No”?  It is never too late to accept God’s Yes into your life.  Commit yourselves anew to being witnesses of Jesus’ Good News.  Spread the joy and triumphant of Easter throughout your part of the world.  Invite others to join you in saying “Yes, Lord Jesus, You are Risen!  Yes, Lord Jesus, You are truly alive!  Yes, I want Your mercy to heal me, and forgive me from my sins.  Yes, Lord, I want Your Love and Your Grace!  Yes, Lord, yes!  YES!”

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[A fresco of  the Lord’s Passion by Fra Angelico]

I am sure that most of you know who the actor Sir Alec Guinness is.  For those who are more on the young side, he played Obi-wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope).

In one of his earlier movies, even though he was not Catholic, he played a Catholic priest.  They were filming in a lovely old village in France, and one day, after many hours of filming, Sir Alec was walking back to his hotel through the village streets while still dressed in his priest’s costume.  Suddenly a little girl ran up alongside him.  Apparently she was on her way home after running an errand.  Seeing the actor and thinking that he was a real priest, she skipped right up beside him, took his hand, and started walking along with him.  She started chattering away to him as if she had known him all her life.  The actor didn’t know French, so he didn’t know what she was saying, and he couldn’t say anything in response, but it didn’t seem to matter.  The little girl chattered happily on for a couple of blocks, until she had to turn off to another street.  Then she let go of his hand, waved goodbye, and skipped on home.

Sir Alec Guinness just stood there for a moment utterly amazed.  He was intrigued by a religion that inspired so much confidence and joy.  The little girl had mistaken him for a priest, and although she must have known that she had never met him before, she treated him as a life-long friend just because he was dressed as a priest.  This experience not only affected how Sir Alec played his role in the rest of the movie, but it also was the first step on a path that eventually led him into the Catholic Church (I found this story on www.epriest.com, “Homily Pack for Good Friday”).

So, what is it about our Catholic Faith that inspired so much confidence and joy in that little girl, and so intrigued Alec Guinness that it eventually lead him to enter the Catholic Church?  I think the answer is that God — the Creator of the entire universe — wants to be so close to us that He took on our human nature and experienced the absolute depths of human misery.  Is there any way, after contemplating Jesus’ Passion and Death, that we can doubt this?  As we heard in our first reading, the Prophet Isaiah did not doubt it, “He was spurned and avoided . . . a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom people hide their faces. . . .”

Haven’t we all felt like that at times?  Since we live in a fallen world we have all been sick, betrayed, and hurt.  And we have all caused pain in other people.  Like the ripples in the waters, the effects of evil and sin have reached out and touched each one of us.

Jesus did not save us by eliminating suffering, rather He suffered WITH us and FOR us.  Jesus came down to our level, and stepped into the middle of our pain and sorrow.  Again Isaiah testifies to this, “It was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings he endured.”  By doing so, Jesus gives us an example of how we too are called to trust and love God, even in the midst of suffering.

You might be wondering how would all this lead to the confidence and joy that the little girl demonstrated with Alec Guinness, but if we really think about it, we will realize what this amazing truth of the Lord’s Passion and Death means.  It means that we do not need to be perfect BEFORE we can be friends of God.  It means that in Christ Jesus we can go right into God’s presence with all our sins and wounds and confusions and miseries.  We can enter God’s presence just as we are — in, with and through Jesus Christ.  Jesus did not stretch out His arms on the Cross to embrace just those who have never sinned, those who are already saints.  No, He stretched out His arms on the Cross to embrace US!  This is why St. Paul says in his letter to the Hebrews, “So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.”

Although we are rightfully saddened by the pain our Lord had to experience in order to save us from our sins, at the same time our hearts are also glad because we know that we are not alone in our suffering, and we will never be alone.  Jesus is always near to us.  His throne of grace is just a simple prayer away, and His heart is open to pour grace upon grace upon us.

It would be unjust to leave this church today without thanking God for this great gift.  As we come up to the cross today to kiss it, let us do so with a smile of gratitude in our hearts.

But that is not enough.  We need to remember that there are still many people who have still not received this gift.  Just look around; as crowded as the church might be, there are still many people who are not here today.  There are still many who have not heard the Good News; who do not know that they can confidently approach the throne of grace, and are suffering alone.  Maybe we know someone like that.  Maybe we know someone who is afraid to come to Christ.  There is no better way to please our Lord and be His faithful disciple than by bring 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 bare.  Where will these suffering men and women go to find the comfort of Christ’s love?  If they have no place to go, we will have to GO to THEM.  We will have to being living tabernacles and our hearts will have to be the altars where Jesus’ love comes down to earth, by loving our neighbors as Christ has loved us.  Like that little girl, we must share the confidence and joy of our Faith with all those around us.  Maybe like Sir Alec Giunness, that will begin their journey to Christ Jesus.

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[A Mosaic from the Chora Church in Istanbul Turkey]

If you read much of the writings of the early Church Fathers, or some of the classics of Christian spirituality, one of the phrases that you often run across is “memento mori,” which means, “remember death.”  While it might not seem very cheerful, that brief saying is meant to remind all of us that we do not know the hour or the minute that we will die, so we should live all the moments of our lives for God.  We should not plan to live a less that Christian life for most of our lives, and then just go to Confession before we die to make things right with God.

However, I am sure that all of us have experienced people who seem to take “memento mori” as their own personal motto.  These are the Eeyores we encounter who always see the glass as half empty, and are always recounting all the woe in their lives.  I think if we are really honest with ourselves, we can all acknowledge times when we are “remembering death” in an unhealthy way.

The two days before Ash Wednesday, this year, I was feeling very much like Eeyore; I was not only remembering death, I was even making a list of all the bad things that were happening in my and my family’s life over the past couple of years.  Fortunately God did not allow me to slip into despair, for He graced me in a special way.  Before the latest family crises hit, I had made my Lenten plans to read a book a friend gave me.  Actually the friend who gave it to me, Michael Dubruiel, is also the author of the book, which is entitled, The Power of the Cross:  Applying the Passion of Christ to Your Life.  It is a wonderful book, and it has helped me learn more about how to carry the cross that Jesus has given me in my life, and to trust in Him — to have total confidence that He will never give me more than I can handle.

In this book, Michael tells a story about a man named John who was a fixture at the school Michael was doing graduate studies at.  John had been a “big success,” at least in terms that the secular world measures success.  He had started a business that made him a lot of money.  He had the nice car, the nice big house, and all the gadgets of luxury.  Then things started to change for John.  First his wife left him for a younger man, then his partner embezzled money from their company and John lost everything.  The house, the car, and all the money was gone.  John was living in poverty, alone, and he turned to the bottle for help.  After a few years of alcoholism, John finally hit bottom, through the grace of God known as Alcoholic Anonymous, John started to put his life back together.

You did not need to know John for long to learn all about the woe of his life.  One day, John was sitting behind Michael at Mass, and the Sign of Peace Michael noticed that John wore a bracelet with the phrase “memento viva” — “remember life” — on it.  After Mass Michael asked John about the bracelet, and John told him that it was a gift from his brother who told him one, “All you think about is death.  You’ve got to think about life!” (Dubruiel,  The Power of the Cross:  Applying the Passion of Christ to Your Life, Huntington, IN:  Our Sunday Visitor, Inc, 2004, pp. 163-164).

As followers of Jesus we do need to be people who “memento viva” — REMEMBER LIFE!  Though it is not this life that we are called to focus on.  Rather we are to set our eyes on eternal life.  This is what St. Paul means, when he tells the Romans in today’s second reading, “But you are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.”

In today’s Gospel, Jesus brings this message to Martha and Mary who are in grief after the death of their brother Lazarus.  Some commentators have wondered if Martha is mildly chastising Jesus for not coming sooner when she says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  However, at the same time she expresses her faith in Jesus; that God will give Him whatever He asks for.  Jesus tells Martha, in assuring her that her brother will rise, that He is “the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”  Then Jesus asks her, and us, “Do you believe this?”

It is easy to say we believe in the resurrection, that we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, but Jesus asks for more than just an affirmation with our minds and our lips.  He demands an affirmation with our lives.  How do we live our faith in Christ Jesus?  Do we just fulfill the minimum duties of our Faith, or do we see everything — every person, every situation — with the eyes of Faith?  Do we recognize Jesus’ presence in all the situations of our lives?  Do we recognize Jesus present among us right now?  Jesus does not just speak about the resurrection to Martha; He says that He is the resurrection and the LIFE!  At baptism we were given the new life of Christ Jesus and we are called to live that new LIFE in Christ, so that with St. Paul we can cry out “it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives within me.”  We need to “memento viva” — remember life, the new life of Christ.

What keeps us from remembering life?  From living the new life of Christ?  In a word, SIN.  Sin damages the life of grace within us, and mortal sin actually kills the life of grace within us.  We need to remember death, that sin kills, so that we can remember life.  In today’s Gospel reading, after Jesus tells those with Him to unbind Lazarus who is still wrapped in the clothes of death.  We too need to be unbound from the clothes of death which bind us.  Jesus left us the sacrament of Reconciliation just for that purpose.  While the Confessional may seem dark, it is so that when we have allowed Christ Jesus to unburden us from our sins we can step into the light, into our new Life.  The Sacrament of Reconciliation is a sacrament of LIFE, it is remembering the life that Jesus gives us through His redemption.  This Tuesday we will have the opportunity to be unbound from our sins.  We will be having our area Penance Service on Tuesday at St. Gregory’s Church at 7 p.m.  There will be a number of priests available to celebrate the sacrament of God’s mercy with.  I strongly encourage all of you to avail yourselves of this opportunity to remember life, life in Christ Jesus.

“Remember life, keep Jesus in mind, unbind whatever else is there, and let it go” (Dubruiel,  The Power of the Cross:  Applying the Passion of Christ to Your Life, Huntington, IN:  Our Sunday Visitor, Inc, 2004, p. 166).

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[Henryk Siemiradzki. “Christ and the Samaritan Woman.” 1890. Oil on canvas. The Lvov Picture Gallery, Lvov, Ukraine.  Found on the web at www.abcgallery.com.]

Have you ever grumbled because you were thirsty?  It was probably on a hot summer day, when you were outside working hard on something — maybe cutting the grass, doing some gardening, maybe painting the house — but you became so thirsty that you grumbled at someone to get you something to drink.  I think that all of us can remember a time when we were so thirsty that we grumbled.

There are a lot of thirsty people in today’s readings.  In today’s first reading, from the Book of Exodus, we are told that the Israelites, soon after being set free from slavery in Egypt, started to grumble against God and Moses because they were thirsty.  They started to ask themselves if the Lord was in their midst.  Then in today’s Gospel we hear Jesus tell the Samaritan woman that He was thirsty.  Our Lord did not grumble at her, but He did ask her for a drink.  So why all this talking about being thirsty?

Through our readings today God is trying to help us understand the difference between two different kinds of thirsts; two different kinds of needs.

The first kind of need is what we can call a finite or horizontal need.  These are the needs that we all have for the good things of this earth:  food, drink, companionship, safety, fun, a good income, medical care, success at work or school, etc.  These needs are all part of our nature as human beings, and there is nothing inherently wrong with desiring them.  These are needs that we can usually fulfill through our own effort.  We are hungry so we get ourselves something to eat, and then we are satisfied; at least for awhile.  We are thirsty so we get something to drink.  As long as to do not go to extremes, and we use proper means for satisfying these needs there is nothing wrong with having them.

However we also have another kind of need; ones that are deeper, infinite or vertical.  These needs are part of our desire for meaning and purpose.  These would include our need for love, truth, beauty, justice, and integrity.  These needs are also built into our nature as human beings, but unlike our finite or horizontal needs, there is nothing that we can do to satisfy these needs by our own effort.  Only God Himself can satisfy these needs, because only God is infinite Love, infinite Beauty, infinite Truth, infinite Justice, and perfectly One.  These are the needs that we can never get too much of; the more we experience them, the more we desire them.  God created us with these infinite, vertical needs in the very core of our being so that we would be constantly drawn toward Him, towards intimate, personal contact with His eternal, transcendent and infinite Love.

It is because of these needs that we are always restless, even when we have satisfied all of our horizontal needs.  It is when we forget this, when we try to satisfy our infinite, vertical needs with horizontal stuff that we put ourselves on the road to disappointment, frustration and even tragedy.

The Samaritan woman in today’s Gospel is an illustration of a person who has made the mistake of confusing these two kinds of needs.  Jesus notes that she has had five husbands and that she was not married to the man she was currently living with.  She was coming to the well in the middle of the day in order to avoid the other women of the village, so she had become isolated from her community.  Jesus, in His thirst — not only for water but for healing wounded souls — saw that this woman was living a life of frustration and alienation.  A life of loneliness and inner turmoil.  She had been trying for years to satisfy her vertical needs, which only God can satisfy, with all kinds of horizontal stuff:  human love, comfort, earthly pleasures.  She had started to learn the hard way that that formula does not work.  She started to have the spiritual awakening to realize that she needed a Savior, a “gift of God.”

Then she had an encounter with a man sitting by the well.  She had an encounter with Jesus, and she came to recognize in Jesus the embodiment of that which could fulfill all the deepest desires of her heart; all of her infinite, vertical needs.  While she did not get all the answers, she recognized Jesus did have all the answers, that He was the Christ, the gift of God.  He was the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that if she truly wanted to take seriously the deepest desires of her heart then she needed to follow Him.  And she did not keep this treasure, this gift, to herself.  No, she went to all the people that she typically tried to avoid, and shared with them the Good News that she had encountered in Jesus, and she brought them to Him.

What can we learn from the Samaritan woman?  Maybe that we too have been trying to satisfy our vertical needs with horizontal stuff, and that doing so will only leave us feeling disappointed and frustrated.  Maybe we can learn from her to have the spiritual sensitivity to recognize the gift of God, to answer the question the Israelites asked in today’s first reading, “Is the Lord in our midst or not?”, with a definitive YES!

As we approach the Altar of the Lord, let us be people who worship what we understand in Spirit and truth.  Let us encounter Jesus, the great Gift of God, who is thirsting to heal our wounded souls.  Then, like the Samaritan woman, let us testify to all those around us — even those we typically avoid — that Jesus Christ is “truly the savior of the would.”

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[Temptation of Christ, 1854, by Ary Scheffer]

In today’s first reading we encounter that familiar first scene in the long, complex drama of human history.  Even though they are not named, we know it is the story of Adam and Eve, our First Parents, who were created in the image and likeness of God, filled with the breath of God’s own Spirit so to live as children of God.  They were crowned with glory, and given dominion over the world.  They were made to worship God; that is, to live not by bread alone but in obedience to every word that comes from the mouth of God.  However, they decided to put the Lord to the test, by trying to seize for themselves all that God had already promised to give them.  Why?  Because they chose to believe the lie of Satan, that they could be “like gods who know what is good and what is evil.”  We call this first scene “Original Sin.”

The final scene in this drama of human history will be Christ’s Second Coming and the Last Judgment.  Everything in between is connected to both Original Sin and to the Last Judgment.

However, today’s world has largely forgotten about these two pivotal milestones in human history.  We think that we have made so much progress in science and technology, and this leads to the temptation to think that we are totally self-sufficient.  We are tempted to think that we are not affected by the consequences of original sin, and that we will not be judged by a higher power — namely God — after we die.

The temptation to think like that is just another version of Satan’s original lie to our First Parents in the Garden.  Satan has convinced us that since we have learned to dominate our physical and material world, that we have no need for God, because we have become gods ourselves.  It is the same lie that tricked Adam and Eve.

As we begin the holy season of Lent, the Church is exposing this ancient lie.  The Church calls us to pay special attention to our sins and sinful tendencies, precisely because we do not want to forget the bigger story that gives real meaning to our lives by reminding us that we are not self-sufficient.  In fact, it is only by acknowledging our dependency on God that we are truly free and fully human.

Since Original Sin is one of the most important chapters in the drama of human history, and one of the most misunderstood, let us take a few minutes to recall what this most important of doctrines is all about.  There are three things to keep in mind about Original Sin: the Fact, the Cause, and the Effect.

The fact is that Original Sin happened.  It is part of God’s revelation.  In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, this fact is clearly stated:  “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place in the beginning of the history of man.  Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents” (CCC #390).

As fallen human being we are constantly tempted to blame evil on abstract social structures, or to chalk up sin to psychological traumas.  In other words, we are tempted to deny, ignore, or belittle the real source of evil in the world:  Original Sin and its effects.  If we give in to those temptations we will end up closing ourselves off from God.  We will lose touch with reality.  If our sinful behaviors are only due to poor upbringing and psychological trauma then we do not need a savior to bring us forgiveness, we just need psychotherapy.  If all the evils in the world stem from inept politicians and faulty economic systems then we do not need God’s grace to change our hearts.

The second key doctrine about Original Sin has to do with what actually happened.  In other words, what was the cause of Original Sin.  The Church points out that the account from the Book of Genesis that we heard in our first reading is told in figurative language; not historical or scientific language.  This means that the Scriptural account expresses the truth about WHAT happened, but not necessarily the exact details of HOW it happened.  While we can speculate about the HOW, we can never speculate about the WHAT.

Adam and Eve were created by God as morally free beings.  God created them in His image and likeness, which meant that they were capable of living in friendship with Him, of knowing Him, and loving Him.  However, friendship with God is unique because God is God and we are dependent on Him.  To live in friendship with God, who is the only source of our true happiness, we must admit and accept the fact that we are dependent.  The Catechism puts it this way, “The ‘tree of knowledge of good and evil’ symbolically evokes the insurmountable limits that man, being a creature, must freely recognize and respect with trust.  Man is dependent on his Creator and subject to the laws of creation and to the moral norms that govern the use of freedom” (CCC #396).

Adam and Eve uprooted themselves from the soil of God’s friendship because they resented the fact that they were not equal to God, and this is the essence of Original Sin.  Again, from the Catechism, “Man let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command.  This is what man’s first sin consisted of.  All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness” (CCC #397).

So now we know that Original Sin happened, it is a fact, and that it consisted of our First Parents rebelling against their dependence on God.  The third key point about Original Sin is that it affected not only Adam and Eve, but the whole human race.

As God is a communion of Three Divine Persons, He created us as a communion, the communion of family.  So when our First Parents rebelled against God, the whole family suffered the consequences.  Adam and Eve’s hiding in the garden symbolizes the alienation that they felt from God; an alienation that has been passed on to us.  The fig leaves that they wore symbolizes the tendency to be selfish that we all have.  Eve’s pain in childbirth and Adam’s toil and sweat to earn a living symbolizes that there is now an adversity of the forces of nature.  Lastly, “By our first parents’ sin, the devil has acquired a certain domination over man, even though man remains free” (CCC #407).  Original Sin was not only the origin of sin, but of the whole battle between good and evil that marks the history of every human life and community.  We all now have two tendencies built into us; the tendency towards goodness, which is that part of our nature that God created us with, and the tendency towards selfishness, which is that part of our nature that is fallen.  We only need to read the daily newspaper to see the effects that the battle between these two tendencies in the human heart has on the world.

This reflection on the nature of Original Sin can seem very discouraging at first glance:  that life is a battle that we cannot escape and will not end until we die.  However, Original Sin is only the beginning of the story.

God did not abandon us.  He had every right to, but He didn’t.  Just as God searched out Adam and Eve when they were hiding in the garden, God searches for us too.  And most importantly He has sent us a Savior:  Jesus Christ.

Unlike the first Adam, Jesus, the new Adam, never disobeyed God the Father.  Jesus never allowed His trust in His Father to die.  That is the lesson from today’s Gospel.  Despite the dire temptations in the desert, Jesus stayed faithful to His Father by being dependent on Him.  Jesus’ battle with Satan did not end after those forty days in the desert.  Satan continued to tempt Him right up to His death on the Cross.  Jesus defeated the devil, repairing the rift torn open by Original Sin, not by becoming all-powerfully self-sufficient but by being faithfully dependent on the Father.

Christ gives us food for the journey, the Eucharist, to strengthen us for the battle.  He has promised to walk with us, leading us every step of the way.  Lent is a time to renew our commitment to follow Christ.  Trust and depend on Him!

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Ash Wednesday has to be the most messy day of the liturgical year, and the ashes that we receive on our foreheads are the least of the mess.

The real mess are with the people.  The secretaries and priests go crazy with all the phone calls wanting to know when people can get their ashes.  The past couple of years I have even gotten calls from Robert Wood Johnson Health & Fitness center wanting me to go over there to distribute ashes to the people getting a workout during their lunch break.  We even have people wanting to know if they could get their ashes early; say on Monday or Tuesday.  There are so many people wanting ashes that the phones ring off the hook.

It seems as if more people come to church on Ash Wednesday, which is NOT a holy day of obligation, than on Christmas and Easter the two most important holy days of obligation.  As a priest I often wonder why so many people feel such a strong need to receive ashes.  There are so many unfamiliar faces on Ash Wednesday, so many who come for ashes but do not even stay for the reception of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.  Are they all here for the right reason?  How long has it been since some of them have been to Mass or Confession?  Are they faithful to the Church’s teaching?  Are they in a state of grace or a state of sin?

Whether people understand the real meaning of Ash Wednesday or not, it seems that all of us acknowledge at the most gut level the fact that we belong in church on Ash Wednesday.  I pray that part of the reason for this gut reaction is that deep down, we all know that we are sinners in need of forgiveness.  We all know that there are times, too many in fact, when we are selfish, impatient, angry, hateful, and just not nice to the people around us.  Deep down we know that we are too often ungrateful to God for all the blessings that He has given us in our lives.  We know that we are not able to live the good life on our own, and we so often fail to do the good that we want to do and do the evil we do not want to do.

Hopefully this awareness that we are all sinners also brings us to a more important awareness; that through the grace of our baptism we have all been made members of the one body of Christ.  Our baptism, which can never be “undone” no matter how much we sin, links each of us inextricably to Christ and to one another for ever.  “The ashes on our foreheads are a reminder to ourselves and a proclamation to the world that somehow, we belong to Another.  Our lives are not our own but are bound up with a greater Reality.  Some are more actively aware than others that this Reality has a name:  Jesus Christ” (Fr. Rich Veras, “The Experience of Being a People,” Magnificat, February 2008, Vol. 9, No. 13, p. 89).

Most of us do not like messes.  Messy people often make us annoyed, yet as followers of Jesus we need to recognize that Jesus was followed by a crowd of messy people.  They didn’t all come to Him for the right reasons.  Many of them were not faithful to Jesus, especially when the going got tough.  Yet all of them were welcomed by Jesus, who looked upon the mess of women and men, and loved them.

And on this Ash Wednesday Jesus looks on us — very messy people — with that same love and acceptance.  As a people of God let us enter into the holy season of Lent by acknowledging the mess of our lives so that the mercy of Christ can renew us as His Holy People.

[I really need to give Fr. Richard Veras, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, most of the credit for this homily.  Monday night, as I was working on my homily for Ash Wednesday, I got a phone call from one of my sisters concerning a serious crisis with her daughter.  The rest of the night was tied up with my family.  Fr. Veras and I know each other through our involvement with Communion and Liberation, so when I saw he had an article in this month’s Magnificat I read it.  I thought he had a wonderful reflection for Ash Wednesday on the messiness of our lives.  Given the mess in my family, it really struck home for me, so I took that theme and basically said what he said, but in more of my own words.] 

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[A picture I took in St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, in Rome, 2007]
The readings from today’s Mass gives us a lesson in ancient Israelite history and geography. As you may remember from the Book of Exodus, when the Israelites entered into the Promise Land, after their 40 years in the desert, each tribe was given a particular section of the land to be their own. The tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali lived in the northern part of the Kingdom, by the sea.

Eight hundred years before Jesus, the Assyrians attacked the part of the Kingdom of Israel where the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali lived, and they were taken into captivity. That Assyrian attack marked the beginning of the end of the Kingdom of Israel. Two hundred years latter, the Babylonians would seize Jerusalem, and the rest of the tribes of Israel would be driven into exile.

In today’s first reading, the Prophet Isaiah assures the Israelites that God will never abandon them, and will save them from their captivity. Isaiah prophesied that since Zebulun and Naphtali were the first to be degraded, they would be the first to see the light of God’s salvation. In today’s Gospel reading, St. Matthew makes it clear that Jesus fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah; “Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light….” The message of salvation that Jesus preached was, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Pope Benedict XVI, in his book Jesus of Nazareth, declares what all serious scripture scholars say, that “The core content of the Gospel is this: The Kingdom of God is at hand” (p. 47). The basic statistics bare this out; the phrase “Kingdom of God” or “Kingdom of heaven” is mentioned 122 times in the New Testament, 99 times in just the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and 90 of these 99 times the phrase is spoke by Jesus Himself. Clearly a key to living an active, authentic Christian life is understanding and entering into the Kingdom of God. So what does this phrase mean?

The Catholic modernist heretic, Alfred Loisy, in noticing that the axis of Jesus’ preaching before Easter was the Kingdom of God, and that after Easter the preaching of the apostles became centered on the person of Jesus, sarcastically remarked that Jesus preached the Kingdom of God, and what came was the Church. His comments suggests that we have gotten away from the real preaching of Jesus. But have we?

In the fourth chapter of his book, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict does a marvelous job in examining the different ways that theologians have tried to understand the phrase “the Kingdom of God,” and he notes that many of these different hypotheses are lacking or even does violence to the Scriptures. While I cannot cover all the points that the Holy Father makes in his book in one homily, it is important to hear his conclusion.

The Kingdom of God is not a thing or a place or merely an interior attitude. Rather, “Jesus himself is the Kingdom. . . . By the way in which he speaks of the Kingdom of God, Jesus leads men to realize the overwhelming fact that in him God himself is present among them, that he is God’s presence” (Joseph Ratzinger [Pope Benedict XVI], Jesus of Nazareth, New York: Doubleday, 2007, p. 49). The Pope continues, “When Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God, he is quite simply proclaiming God, and proclaiming him to be the living God, who is able to act concretely in the world and in history and is even now so acting” (p. 55).

What does all this mean for us, today? Through His parables, Jesus repeatedly invites people to enter into the Kingdom of God. Since He, Himself, is the Kingdom of God to enter into the Kingdom means that we need to enter into a relationship with Christ Jesus. Entering into the Kingdom of God demands a change in the way of life for those who believe in Jesus. When Jesus calls people to “Repent” He is not calling people merely to feel sorrow and remorse for doing wrong, for their sins. He is inviting people to radically rethink their life orientation; to turn away from the slavery of sin which leads to death, and towards Him, the Kingdom of God, which is the “great light” that leads to everlasting life.

Today’s Gospel reading then shows us examples of those who did hear Jesus’ call to repentance and left their old lives to follow Him. Peter, Andrew, James, and John left their boats and their previous way of life to become “fishers of men.” Do you honestly think that Peter, Andrew, James and John understood what it meant to be “fishers of men”? I don’t think they had a clue at the time Jesus first called them, but something so attracted them to Jesus that they knew that they wanted to follow Him and be His companions. They placed their faith in Jesus, and knew that He would not let them down; He would give them new Life, life to the full.

What attracts you to Jesus? Is entering into the Kingdom of God, the communion of the saints, the primary orientation of your life? The Scriptures make it clear that God is a jealous God who will not accept other gods in our lives. We need to ask ourselves, “Am I addicted to alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex or pornography? Am I a workaholic who fails to live up to my commitments to my family? Do I love and honor my spouse every day? Do I spend time with my children, and give them the time and good example they need? Do I seek justice in my professional and political life? Do I respect the dignity of all people, including the poor, the unemployed, the sick, and the elderly? Do I place Christ first in my life, and make a joyful gift of my time, talent and treasure to His Church, His Mystical Body, as made present in my parish?” If some of these questions leave you scratching your head, or feeling a bit guilty, then listen to the words of Jesus, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

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