Homily for the First Mass of Fr.
Vincent Strand, S.J.
St. Bruno Parish, Dousman, WI -- June 5, 2016
St. Bruno Parish, Dousman, WI -- June 5, 2016
1 Kings 17: 17-24; Galatians 1: 11-14a, 15a,c, 16a, 17, 19; Luke 7: 11-17
Two women. Both are heart-broken. They have lost their
husbands, and now, their own flesh and blood, their sons.
The Prophet
Elijah was a boarder at one widow’s home during a time of drought and famine. God miraculously provided food for the three—the
prophet, the widow and her son—but now the son dies. Elijah feels her pain. He prays.
And God brings the boy back to life.
Jesus was recognized as “a great prophet,” in the tradition of Elijah. He feels the widow of Nain’s pain and is moved with pity. Then, with his own power because he is Son of God, he brings the youth back to life.
Jesus was recognized as “a great prophet,” in the tradition of Elijah. He feels the widow of Nain’s pain and is moved with pity. Then, with his own power because he is Son of God, he brings the youth back to life.
Commenting on
this story, Pope Francis said:
This “compassion” is God’s love for humanity,
it is mercy--thus the attitude of God in contact with human misery, with our
destitution, our suffering, our anguish. The biblical term “compassion” recalls
a mother’s womb. The mother in fact reacts in a way all her own in confronting
the pain of her children. It is in this way, according to Scripture, that God
loves us. What is the fruit of this love and mercy? It is life! … The mercy of
Jesus is not only an emotion; it is a force which gives life that raises man.
The
restoration to life of the two sons is beautiful, but temporary. They will die
again. Their being raised to earthly life
is a sign of something better. Because Jesus rose from the dead, he has power
to give not just a temporary extension of life, but eternal life. He can raise people from the dead to live
forever with him in heaven. This is part
of the Creed which we proclaim together:
“I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the
world to come.”
Jesus shares
this power to give new and eternal life with the Church, his Body.
Vincent,
Jesus shared this power with you yesterday. Jesus called you and yesterday he empowered
you to heal broken hearts and souls. Pope
Francis, in a recent interview book entitled “The Name of God is Mercy,” said
that the Sacrament of Reconciliation is not like going to the dry cleaner to
get stains removed. It’s much more, much
deeper. It involves healing wounds. You
are now an instrument of this healing and life-giving grace.
St. Paul, as
we heard in the Second Reading, experienced the merciful love of God that took
him from being a persecutor and zealot to proclaiming the love of God revealed
in Jesus.
Pope Francis,
at age of seventeen, on September 21, 1953, went to confession and had such a
profound experience of God’s merciful love—and the healing and peace that it
alone can give—that he chose to become a Jesuit priest. You have also experienced the profound merciful
love of Jesus that has drawn you to this vocation.
In the
Novitiate you wrote:
As I grew more and more aware of
God’s great love for me, suddenly my vocation seemed simple: to bring the love
of Jesus to the world. For me, the love of Jesus was symbolized by the love of
his Heart. I felt Christ calling me to share the love of his Heart, to be an
apostle of his Heart. This, it seemed to me, was at the core of what it means
to be a Jesuit. I knew it was to the Society of Jesus that God was calling me.
The image of the Heart of Christ that you chose for your ordination card is striking. It’s not pretty, not sentimental. It was etched into a wall in one of the cells in the starvation bunker in Auschwitz. It’s just down the hall from St. Maximilian Kolbe’s cell.
And on the wall opposite this image is another—
the one that is spoken of in the quote from Pope
[We know that in the
end—as Saint Ignatius of Loyola saw so clearly—the only real “standard” against
which all human reality can be measured is the Cross and its message of an
unmerited love which triumphs over evil, sin and death, creating new life and
unfading joy. The Cross reveals that we find ourselves only by giving our lives
away, receiving God’s love as an unmerited gift and working to draw all men and
women into the beauty of that love and the light of the truth which alone
brings salvation to the world.]
In that
place of darkness—symbol of humanity’s inhumanity, of sin, and the hatred and
violence it brings, there are images of love—the Cross and the Pierced Heart
You were
ordained yesterday to bring the light of Christ’s love into the darkness. You
will do this through the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
You will do
this through the prophetic ministry of the Word, speaking words that challenge
us to believe in the love of God and to have hope when it is so easy to
despair; to, as some have said, comfort the troubled and trouble the
comfortable; to speak and write the truth that saves and to do so with love.
But more,
you are now able to bring to people the very One who forgives, heals, and gives
eternal life. When you celebrate the
Eucharist, Christ makes himself present through you. He makes present his
life-giving death on the cross and his resurrection. Through you the bread and
wine become the Body and Blood for us to receive and to be transformed.
Pope Benedict
XVI spoke of this in Cologne Germany at World Youth Day 2005. Your brothers
were there, but you were not able to go because you had just entered the Novitiate.
Speaking
about the Last Supper, Pope Benedict said:
By making the bread into his Body and
the wine into his Blood, he anticipates his death, he accepts it in his heart,
and he transforms it into an action of love. What on the outside is simply
brutal violence - the Crucifixion - from within becomes an act of total
self-giving love. This is the substantial transformation which was accomplished
at the Last Supper and was destined to set in motion a series of transformations
leading ultimately to the transformation of the world when God will be all in
all.
In their hearts, people always and
everywhere have somehow expected a change, a transformation of the world. Here
now is the central act of transformation that alone can truly renew the
world: violence is transformed into love, and death into life.
To use an image well known to us
today, this is like inducing nuclear fission in the very heart of being - the
victory of love over hatred, the victory of love over death. Only this intimate
explosion of good conquering evil can then trigger off the series of
transformations that little by little will change the world.
All other changes remain superficial
and cannot save. This first fundamental transformation of violence into love,
of death into life, brings other changes in its wake. Bread and wine become his
Body and Blood.
But it must not stop there; on the
contrary, the process of transformation must now gather momentum. The Body and
Blood of Christ are given to us so that we ourselves will be transformed in our
turn. We are to become the Body of Christ, his own Flesh and Blood.
Through your
service at the altar, Vincent, we receive the Bread of Life, the food that
transforms us, in Pope Benedict’s words, into “the Body of Christ, his own
Flesh and Blood.” As “the Body of
Christ, his own Flesh and Blood,” all of us are now empowered to bring the
merciful love of God into our own little corners of the world. The Eucharist,
of which you are now a special servant, makes this possible.
We thank God
for the call that you received and the grace with which you were able to accept
the call.
St. John
Vianney, patron saint of all priests, said:
"The priesthood is the love of
the Heart of Jesus.”
No comments:
Post a Comment