Easter Sunday Homily

The Gospel for Easter Sunday (John 20: 1-9) offers a contrast between Peter and “the other disciple whom Jesus loved,” traditionally identified as John.  Both ran to the tomb of Jesus, peered into it, and saw “the burial cloths there,” but no sign of Jesus.  Or rather, they did not see Jesus but they did see a sign that pointed to his resurrection.  One saw the sign and that was all while the other saw the sign with the eyes of faith and believed that Jesus had risen from the dead.

Peter saw the cloths and believed what Mary of Magdala had told him—“they have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.”  But why would anyone remove the corpse and leave the burial cloths behind?  Peter saw but did not connect the dots.

John, on the other hand, “saw and believed.”  The cloths pointed to the fact that the dead body of Jesus had not been removed but that Jesus had risen from the dead as he had promised. 

Peter sees from a purely physical perspective, without faith.  John sees with the eyes of faith. 

We too walk by faith and not by sight.  We see signs of the resurrection, but do we believe?  Really believe that Jesus is alive and is present and at work among us and through us? 

Paul wrote that our “life is hidden with Christ in God” (second reading, Colossians 3: 1-4).  Just as Christ, who at this point in the Gospel who has not yet appeared to the apostles in his risen glory, so the full glory of the new life we have in baptism is hidden.  Yet there are signs of this new life already present in us.  What are they?

In the first reading (Acts 10: 34a, 37-43), Peter says that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power. He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”  The Holy Spirit and the power to do good and heal those burdened by evil in our world—these are the signs.

In baptism we were anointed with the Holy Spirit and empowered to continue the work of Jesus.  We do good in our lives and bring healing to those wounded by sin.  In the renewal of our baptismal promises we reject the devil and his works and profess our faith in God and the new life we were given when we were joined to the Body of Christ.  But we need faith to believe, really believe, that we, joined to the Risen Christ, have the power to do good and avoid evil.  We need faith to believe that in the midst of the world’s darkness, the light of Christ shines through us. 

In “The Joy of the Gospel” Pope Francis wrote about faith in Christ’s resurrection:

Christ’s resurrection is not an event of the past; it contains a vital power which has permeated this world. Where all seems to be dead, signs of the resurrection suddenly spring up. Often it seems that God does not exist: all around us we see persistent injustice, evil, indifference and cruelty. But it is also true that in the midst of darkness something new always springs to life and sooner or later produces fruit. However dark things are, goodness always re-emerges and spreads. Each day in our world beauty is born anew, it rises transformed through the storms of history (#276).

Do I really believe this?  How can I believe this when the daily news presents a picture of death rather than new life and beauty?  This is where faith enters.  Faith does not remove the struggle.  It requires surrender—to see the signs of death, like the burial cloths, and to believe that this death is not the end. 

Pope Francis continues:

Faith also means believing in God, believing that he truly loves us, that he is alive, that he is mysteriously capable of intervening, that he does not abandon us and that he brings good out of evil by his power and his infinite creativity.

“Good out of evil!?”  Yes.  We can believe this because God took the worst thing that humanity could do—nailing the Son of God to a cross—and brought about the greatest good—forgiveness of sins and the salvation of the world.  If God can do that, God can do anything.  And so Pope Francis challenges us:

Let us believe the Gospel when it tells us that the kingdom of God is already present in this world and is growing, here and there, and in different ways: like the small seed which grows into a great tree. Christ’s resurrection everywhere calls forth seeds of that new world; even if they are cut back, they grow again, for the resurrection is already secretly woven into the fabric of this history, for Jesus did not rise in vain (#278). 

We do not want to simply see, as Peter did, and hold fast to faithless theories. We want to see and believe as John did.  This faith in the power of Christ’s resurrection at work in the world through me and through you leads us to live the new life we’ve been given.  It empowers us to be light in the darkness, to reject evil and to do good.  In that way we answer the challenge that Pope Francis presents at the end of this particular section of his exhortation:

May we never remain on the sidelines of this march of living hope!

The Hope and Joy of Easter

St. Paul wrote to the Colossians (3:1): “If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above….”  In other words, live in the light of Easter.  Live with the hope and joy of Easter.  You have been baptized and given a new life.  Live with the hope and joy that this new life in Christ brings.

Our temptation is to live in darkness and despair.  There is so much “Good Friday” in the world today.  So many tragic deaths. So much abandonment on crosses made, in Pope Francis’ words, by “the globalization of indifference.” 

In his Apostolic Exhortation “The Joy of the Gospel,” Pope Francis wrote about the serious temptation to “defeatism which turns us into disillusioned pessimists, ‘sourpusses’ (#85).  People who give in to this temptation “think that nothing will change” (#275).  But because of Christ’s resurrection, we have hope. 

Pope Francis writes: “If we think that things are not going to change, we need to recall that Jesus Christ has triumphed over sin and death and is now almighty. Jesus Christ truly lives” (#275).  This means that “Christ’s resurrection is not an event of the past; it contains a vital power which has permeated this world” (#276).  Because of the resurrection, we have hope and confidence. 

But holding fast to hope requires work.  We have to strengthen the hope that Christ’s resurrection gives, to believe that it “is not an event of the past,” but a force at work in our lives and in the world.  “Faith means believing in God, believing that he truly loves us, that he is alive, that he is mysteriously capable of intervening, that he does not abandon us and that he brings good out of evil by his power and his infinite creativity” (#278). 

That is where our faith is challenged: to believe that evil is not the final word and that God can bring “good out of evil.”  Yet this is what we have just celebrated.  God took the worst evil possible—the crucifixion of the Son—and brought out of it the greatest good—our salvation from sin and death.  This is the reason for our hope and joy. 

Timothy Cardinal Dolan of New York has identified four threats to joy. 

The first is self-pity which puts “me” first, at the center.  Joy comes when God is first, others are second, and I am third.  Self-pity inverts that order and leads to unhappiness.

Secondly, joy is threatened by worry which fosters a negative attitude toward the future, feeds pessimism, and again places “me” at the center.

The third threat to joy is the belief that my happiness depends on something outside of myself.  I believe that certain things or people or situations will make me happy whereas, in the words of Jesuit Fr. John Powell’s book, “Happiness is an Inside Job.”  But what about God?  Shouldn’t God be the source of my joy and isn’t God transcendent?  Yes, but through baptism God is also within.  As baptized temples of the Holy Spirit, we find God within the secret chamber of our heart.

Finally, the fourth threat to joy, according to Cardinal Dolan, is complaining which not only saps our joy but spreads negativity to others who often in turn reinforce our own negative attitude.  The antidote?  Gratitude.  Seeing the glass as half full rather than half empty and being grateful for what fills the glass. 

In our case, we are filled with the light, hope, and joy of Christ’s resurrection.  Having spent forty days of Lenten preparation for the celebration of the Easter Triduum, we now have fifty days in which to savor its hope and joy. 

But we must do more than savor the hope and joy of Easter.  We must live it in our daily lives.  We were made new through baptismal waters.  The world was made new by Christ’s resurrection.  As Pope Francis wrote in “The Joy of the Gospel”: “Christ’s resurrection everywhere calls forth seeds of that new world; even if they are cut back, they grow again, for the resurrection is already secretly woven into the fabric of this history, for Jesus did not rise in vain.  May we never remain on the sidelines of this march of living hope!” (#278).

Our lives are a journey to the Kingdom of Heaven where we will live forever.  We will live body and soul sharing in the glory of Jesus Christ, our Risen Savior.  May we not, as Pope Francis said, “remain on the sidelines,” but may we march forward with hope and joy.  

Christ Trampled Down Death by Death

Both readings at Mass today, Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Lent, offer a paradox.  For Christians with the eyes of faith, paradoxes are not problems to be solved but mysteries to be appreciated.  Today's readings call us to appreciate God's love in a deeper way.

In the First Reading (Numbers 21: 4-9) saraph serpents bring death to the Israelites and Moses is told to "make a saraph and mount it on a pole" so that "whoever looks at it after being bitten will live." The cause of death became the source of healing. A paradox.

This anticipates what we will remember and celebrate next week.  At the Easter Vigil, in the Exultet hymn, we will hear that Adam's sin was "necessary" because it won for us such a great Redeemer. It's a "culpa felix" or "happy fault."  Paul repeats this paradox in 2 Corinthians 5: 21: "For our sake, God made him [Christ] to be sin who did not know sin...."  And, in Galatians 3: 13, he writes: "Christ ransomed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us...."  Jesus suffered and died as a criminal to bring righteousness to sinners.

Even more, he overcame death by means of death.  Throughout Easter, Eastern Christians, both Orthodox and Catholic, sing: "Christ is risen from the dead trampling down death by death and to those in the tomb restoring life."

In the Gospel (John 8: 21-30) we find another paradox.  Jesus declares: "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM...."  You would think just the opposite!  How can you see the One whom Jesus refers to by the unpronounceable Divine Name--God--in a crucified criminal?  Only with the eyes of faith.

On the cross we see the greatest act of love the world has ever known.  And, since, according to the First Letter of John (4: 8 and 16), God is Love, God is revealed most clearly on the cross. When Jesus is lifted up on the cross, we are called to believe: here is God, here is Love in the flesh!

Mass in the Tomb

In 2006 I was chaplain for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land that was organized by Mater Dei Tours.  There are many memories that I carried away.  I've been reading Jesuit Fr. Jim Martin's recently published book "Jesus: A Pilgrimage" and it has brought back some of those memories which my mind's hard-drive had misplaced.  I'm looking forward to getting near the end of the book where I'm sure Fr. Martin will write about the tomb of Jesus and his resurrection. That remains one of my most vivid memories.  And it's one that has been on my mind a lot this Easter.

One morning our group of 45 or so pilgrims got up early and went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  We had visited it the day before and were returning for something special: Mass in the tomb of Jesus. Today the tomb consists of a small cave-like chapel in the middle of a large church. You have to bend down to get through the doorway and only three or four people at a time can fit in the chapel.  Our group and several passersby gathered in chairs outside the tomb and we celebrated the first part of the Mass, the Liturgy of the Word. Then, for the second part, the Liturgy of the Eucharist, I entered the tomb and prepared the gifts of bread and wine on a stone slab which served as the altar. Tradition has it that this is where the body of Jesus was laid after it was taken down from the cross, anointed, and placed in the tomb. I prayed the Eucharist Prayer and after the Consecration it happened.

Part of the Eucharistic Prayer includes prayers for the deceased. Out of the blue, as I prayed those prayers, I thought of my deceased mother, father, and sister. And the thought occurred to me: here I am remembering them at the very place where Jesus rose from the dead.  That thought brought me profound peace and joy.  I finished the Eucharistic Prayer and exited the tomb to invite the congregation to pray the Our Father.  Later, people said couldn't believe the radiance that shone on my face.

My face has lost the radiance of that moment, but the memory lingers and continues to bring a smile to my face.  As it should.  Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  And so shall we! 

God's "I Do"

Like most citizens, I've been called upon for jury duty but I've never been selected to serve, so I've never been at a trial. But I've seen enough TV and watched enough movies to know the answer to the question, "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" It's "I do."

We hear that same response weddings where the couple has chosen to answer the question, "Do you take (Name) for your lawful wife/husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?"

And we hear this response six times at the Easter Vigil when we solemnly renew our baptismal promises. When asked if we reject sin and Satan we respond with a resounding "I do!" When asked to affirm the statements of our creed we respond as well with "I do." 

This "I do" reject sin and "I do" believe in the Christian faith is really a response to God's prior "I do."

We could ask God, "Do you love me?"  The response would be, "I do." The Most Holy Trinity shared love by creating the world, human beings, and me.  Each of us is, in the words of Blessed John Paul II, "unique, precious, and unrepeatable." It is as though each of us gives God a pleasure and joy that no other person can give God.

We could also ask God, "Do you love me enough to die for me?" And the response would again be, "I do." When humanity sinned, rejecting God's love and plan, God did not abandon us but the Second Person of the Trinity became human, shared our life, our suffering, and our death. And he rose from the dead to blaze a trail to heaven, the fulfillment of God's plan for humanity.  In the words of a contemporary Christian song, "You would rather die than to ever live without me."

And we could ask God, "Do you love me so much that you want to marry me?" That may seem like an odd question, but the truth is we are made for union with God. In Pope John Paul's words, we are made for a "spousal union" with God and human marriages are sacred because they are a sign of that union which God desires with each human person. So, to this question also, God responds, "I do."

The Exultet from the Easter Vigil speaks of this marriage: "O truly blessed night, when things of heaven are wed to those of earth, and divine to human." God became one with us so that we might become one with him.  Easter is the feast which anticipates the wedding feast of the Lamb of God when, as St. Paul declares in his chapter on Christ's resurrection and ours, "God will be all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28). Jesus rose from the dead so that we too could rise from the dead to be one with him forever.  He gives us a taste of his risen life in the Eucharist where he unites his flesh with ours. 

Another way of putting the six questions from the renewal of our baptismal promises is: Do you reject everything that gets in the way of your union with God? Do you want union with God more than anything else? May we also answer "I do" to God's "I do." 

Matter Matters

I was sharing some thoughts about Easter and Christ's resurrection with a brother Jesuit yesterday and he said "Matter matters." It's true. The resurrection of Jesus and the promise of our own resurrection shows how much the material world matters to God.

Death is the separation of the soul from the body. The spiritual element of the human person, the soul, is what gives life to the material element, the body. However, would it not have been enough for Jesus, after his death, to return to the state he had before the incarnation, before he took flesh in his mother's womb and was born? Why didn't Jesus return to the pure spiritual state he had from all eternity? Part of the answer to that question must be that God loves matter.

It wasn't enough for God to create pure spiritual beings with which he could share his love. It wasn't enough for God to create the angelic spirits. God created a whole material world on which to lavish his love. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, humanity "occupies a unique place in creation" because it "unites the spiritual and material worlds" (#355). We are both spiritual like the angels and material like the rest of the created world. We are spirit and matter. This "unique" creation is meant to continue into eternity. We were not created to die and then exist forever as an immortal soul or spirit while our material bodies decayed and disappeared.

But the Greeks of the 1st Century thought differently. For them matter was evil and the spirit was good. The body was of no consequence and when it died the soul was finally freed to live a good existence unburdened by matter. This is why when St. Paul entered into dialogue with the people of Athens (see Acts 17: 22-34) and told them that the man Jesus had been raised from the dead, many of them "began to scoff." The thought of a body being raised from the dead was ridiculous to them and they laughed.

The resurrection of Christ reveals how important the body is to God. It was not in God's plan for his Son to return to a purely spiritual state but to rise body and soul from the dead. Then Jesus ascended body and soul to the heavenly realm. A living and material body now sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven to show us our own future. Christ has blazed a trail for us. Where he has gone body and soul we will follow, if we follow the path he has given us for our life on earth.

Christ is risen! We will rise too! Alleluia!

Bright Week

For seven months in 1999 and 2000 I lived at Holy Transfiguration Skete on the shores of Lake Superior near Eagle Harbor, Michigan. I was on a sabbatical and wanted to spend time learning, as Pope John Paul II put it, to breathe with the Eastern lung of the Church. Holy Transfiguration Skete is a Ukrainian Catholic Byzantine monastery that is part of the Eparchy (the Eastern word for Diocese) of Chicago.

In the Eastern Churches, both Catholic and Orthodox, the week after Easter is called "Bright Week." For the entire week the doors of the iconostasis, the wall which separates the altar and sanctuary from the rest of the church, are open. This is the only time that they are left open. Two things are signified. First, the open doors represent the stone that had been rolled away from the tomb of Jesus. Second, they represent the fact that Jesus, by His resurrection, opened the doors of heaven.

Eastern Christians greet each other these days with "Christ is risen!" And the reply is "He is risen indeed!"

The antiphon that is sung over and over again is "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs bestowing life."

Happy and Blessed Easter to all!

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!