Homilies & Reflections / April 2021

Homily of Friday, April 30, 2021

This is from Pope John Paul II’s encyclical on the Eucharist and its relation to the church: “The Second Vatican Council teaches that the celebration of the Eucharist is at the centre of the process of the Church's growth. After stating that “the Church, as the Kingdom of Christ already present in mystery, grows visibly in the world through the power of God”, then, as if in answer to the question: “How does the Church grow?”, the Council adds: “as often as the sacrifice of the Cross by which 'Christ our pasch is sacrificed' (1 Cor 5:7) is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried out. At the same time in the sacrament of the Eucharistic bread, the unity of the faithful, who form one body in Christ (cf. 1 Cor 10:17), is both expressed and brought about”. By its union with Christ, the People of the New Covenant, far from closing in upon itself, becomes a “sacrament” for humanity, a sign and instrument of the salvation achieved by Christ, the light of the world and the salt of the earth (cf. Mt 5:13-16), for the redemption of all. The Church's mission stands in continuity with the mission of Christ: “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (Jn 20:21). From the perpetuation of the sacrifice of the Cross and her communion with the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, the Church draws the spiritual power needed to carry out her mission. The Eucharist thus appears as both the source and the summit of all evangelization, since its goal is the communion of mankind with Christ and in him with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Homily of Tuesday, April 27 (Fourth Week of Easter)

“In Antioch, the disciples were first called Christians,” we hear today in the first reading. It is a question we should ask ourselves: what does it mean to be a Christian? And like Jesus in today’s gospel, to say, “The Father and I are one.” Or is it to be a really nice person, to be a person of intense virtue, or all of that, and a lot more. How should we judge what it means to be a Christian? I think the best thing of all is to rea the New Testament vigorously, both the gospels and letters of Saint Paul and others. And we will know what it means to be a Christian, to be guided by the Spirit. I don’t think that I would count, at least not too much, in that reality, or many others, which is unfortunate for all of us. That is our happiness, our fulfillment, our completion, etc. We should judge ourselves and our behavior, our inner nature, by the New Testament itself. The more we do so, the more we are guided by the Spirit, the more transformed by the grace of God, the more the Father and we are one.

Homily of the Vigil Mass, Fourth Sunday of Easter (Saturday, April 24, 2021) 

This is the Fourth Sunday of Easter time, and it is called Good Shepherd Sunday, because of the reading from the gospel and also the prayer at the beginning of Mass, which speaks of our Lord has the Good Shepherd. That is a common and well-known epithet for our Lord: the Good Shepherd. We are the flock; we are the sheep. It is not a compliment, to be called sheep. I know from past experience. I lived here when we had a flock of sheep. And I can tell you that, apart from the lambs – the lambs are cute, but lambs grow into sheep – the sheep are dirty, and they are ugly, and they befoul the environment. When the students used to go down to play football on the field, and the sheep had been there ahead of them, it was a very messy and not very happy situation for the people playing football. The sheep were noisy and they could do what they wanted when the shepherd was not looking. For our sheep, it was not the shepherd that kept them in line, but the sheepdog. In the West anyway, the sheepdog was the organizer of the sheep. In our Lord’s time in the East, that was not the case. Our Lord says he calls: the shepherd goes in and they recognize his voice and follow him. Here in the West, the shepherd comes after the sheepdog is leading them and pushing them where they have to go.

So, as I say, sheep are very much like us. They are disobedient; they are dirty; they foul their environment. They are not very intelligent. They are like us. But our Lord loves us, he says, because he is the good shepherd. He lays down his life for the sheep. That is what Good Friday is about. He laid down his life, and thus opened for us the gates of heaven, and thus brought it about for us that we can easily have our sins forgiven. He is not a hireling. He does it because the sheep are his. We are his. He knows us, it says. The gospel for these three Sundays, in A, B and C years, are from the same chapter in Saint John’s gospel. Earlier in the chapter he says: “The good shepherd calls his sheep by name.” That is an important thing to keep in mind. Jesus is saying he knows everyone of us. He knows us better than we know ourselves. And if you think about it, you think “That’s nonsense! There are billions and billions of people, and millions and millions of Catholics and Christians. How can he know us? How can he know us all?” Well, that’s what he says he does. He knows us all. He knows us, Saint Augustine says, better than we know ourselves. 

Now, in calling himself a shepherd, he is also telling us something about himself, Because, for the Jews, the shepherd of Israel was God. The shepherd of Israel after God, that was the king of the Jews. The king of Israel later was the king of Judea. So, what is Jesus saying when he calls himself Shepherd? Well if you go through the Old Testament, you see that he is calling himself God. And he is telling us also that he is a king. He said to Pilate, if you remember, on Good Friday we read it: His kingdom is not of this world, but he is a king. He is the king of Israel, and that means he is the king of all creation. Because the God of Israel created all things. And it says in today’s gospel: he lays down his life for the sheep. That is what he did on Good Friday.

So that is important. And the other proof, as it were, or I should say: King David was the Exemplary, the Great Example of a Jewish king. If you know something about him, when we meet him in the bible, he is keeping his father’s sheep. He is a shepherd. He was sort of proud of that. And he became the king of the Jewish people. He wrote a psalm which begins, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He – God – makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. He prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” And that we are about to do, to have: the table that the Good Shepherd has prepared for us – the Eucharistic banquet, the sacrifice of his body and blood which in Communion we receive.

Homily of Thursday, April 22, 2021 (Third Week of Easter Season)

It used to be said that the Holy Spirit was the unknown Person of the Holy Trinity. That is no longer true, thanks God. I think the spread of Pentecostalism, and the Second Vatican Council: many things have made us aware of the importance of guidance by the Holy Spirit in our transformation in our spiritual lives. But we are meant to be taught by God, be taught by the Spirit directly. Human prudence is good, though defective. Supernatural prudence is good, though incomplete. But the Holy Spirit himself, God himself, that is the best of all. It all of us try, more and more so, to be guided by Him, by God himself, to be taught by God, by the Holy Spirit, then a lot of the great errors and mistakes that we presently make, and a lot of the imperfect things that we presently do, a lot of the unhappinesses that we presently create for ourselves would disappear. Not that all unhappiness will disappear, for in life there is suffering, there is the cross, there is difficulty, there is temptation, there is challenge. But it is better to suffer for God than to suffer not for God, and you will suffer no matter what. So let us be taught be God. Let us be guided by the Holy Spirit. And let us find eternal life.

Homily of Monday, April 19, 2021 (Third Week of Easter Season)

This is a continuation of the meditation by John Henry Newman on the appearance of Our Lord to “doubting Thomas”: “O my God, though I am not fit to see or touch Thee yet, still I will ever come within Thy reach, and desire that which is not yet given me in its fulness. O my Saviour, Thou shalt be my sole God! – I will have no Lord but Thee. I will break to pieces all idols in my heart which rival Thee. I will have nothing but Jesus and Him crucified. It shall be my life to pray to Thee, to offer myself to Thee, to keep Thee before me, to worship Thee in Thy holy Sacrifice, and to surrender myself to Thee in Holy Communion.”

Homily of Sunday Vigil Mass, April 17, 2021 (Third Sunday of Easter)

“I am spiritual but not religious.” This is a very common phrase. I think you’ve probably heard it many times. “I am spiritual but not religious.” And there is much truth in it, qnd points to much truth. But it also can be a danger. I think part of this desire for the spiritual over the religious is a fear: a fear of the real; a fear of obligation; a fear of anything that is substantial. Which is why the gospel, especially at Easter time, stresses so intensely that Christ really did rise from the dead. He really is physically alive, transformed. In this state, he does really eat. The Holy Eucharist really is Christ’s body and blood. Spiritual for us can also often mean not real. So, the Eucharist is “real, but not real” – “not Real real.” And Christ rose from the dead, yes, and that’s “real, but it’s not real real.” And that’s not true. Christ truly, really, rose from the dead. Physically, to show this is a real resurrection, not some beautiful metaphor. We don’t need metaphors; life is not strong enough for a metaphor. We need Reality: the reality of the Holy Eucharist, the reality of Christ risen from the dead, as our path to eternal life. So the church calls us, particularly at Easter, to stress the real. Like the Holy Eucharist, the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist. Like the real resurrection; like Christ rose from the dead. And that is our power and our life. This is not it, I can tell you. I am getting close to the end, I have had a taste of death more times than I would like to say. And this is not enough. This is not it. This is not life, this is not reality. It is a part of reality. The supernatural is the most real thing you will ever experience. The supernatural. The Real real is the supernatural.

We have more and more of that when we receive the Holy Eucharist, when we pray. When you have true religion. Not just externals. Those are good. But some of the most wicked people I know go to Mass every day. But live the reality of the faith, at least try to. No one’s perfect. We try our best. The more we live this reality, the more we are transformed, body and soul. We are not just spiritual. We are spiritual and physical. So the power of grace affects us internally, yes but it also affects us externally. And it’s not surprising that in the lives of the saints that external physical power, external light, and other kinds of manifestations happen. Bodily so, because we are a body soul unity. The power of God is such that all nature is also transformed, spirit and flesh. All of nature, body-soul composite. We are called to real life, true life, the Real real. And this ain’t it. But through the sacraments, through prayer, through virtue, more and more so we are transformed, more and more so our physical entities are transformed. So that even physically we manifest the power of God, The life of God, the resurrection of God, God-made-man in Jesus Christ. And Easter becomes very real to us.

There is always a danger in religion, which explains its decline in a more recent period, to overwhelm true spirituality. To try to domesticate, destroy, defile, defecate, whatever, true religion. And that’s unfortunate, and that explains lots of things that we see. But if we truly follow God, truly follow Christ, we ignore these things – which are difficult to ignore, I admit – ignore these people and be transformed and find happiness. But nothing comes freely and nothing comes cheap. So we must do our best. There will be defeats, there will be struggles, there will be difficulties. But the Real real is unlike anything out there; better than, you know, Rock and Roll and drugs, you name it. Better than anything possible. When I was a senior in high school and I experienced the power of God, after that, anything seems thin beer, indeed. Not much at all, not as truth. But to get back there is not always so easy. To reach elements of that paradisio life is not easy. And that’s the Christian struggle. And that’s the struggle of Easter. But it can happen, it can happen. It can happen to us. Not just special weird people like me, or other people more special, and also more weird than me, but all of us, any of us. We’re called to supernatural existence, which is the most real thing possible. It is not spiritual in a kind of empty sense that we often think of, but in the most real sense possible. The truly spiritual is really intensely Real, intensely alive, intensely physical and spiritual. We are called to that. Let us follow it. 

 

Homily of Wednesday, April 14, 2021 (Second Week of Easter)

This is from a meditation by John Henry Newman on last Sunday’s gospel about “Doubting Thomas.” Newman says: “I adore Thee, O my God, with Thomas; and if I have, like him, sinned through unbelief, I adore Thee the more. I adore Thee as the One Adorable, I adore Thee as more glorious in Thy humiliation, when men despised Thee, than when angels worshiped Thee. Deus meus et omnia – “My God and my all.” To have Thee is to have everything I can have. O my Eternal Father give me Thyself. I dared not have made so bold a request, it would have been presumption, unless Thou hadst encouraged me. Thou hast put it into my mouth, Thou hast clothed Thyself in my nature, Thou hast become my Brother, Thou hast died as other men die, only in far greater bitterness, that, instead of my eyeing Thee fearfully from afar, I might confidently draw near to Thee. Thou dost speak to me as Thou didst speak to Thomas, and dost beckon me to take hold of Thee. My God and my all, what could I say more than this, if I spoke to all eternity! I am full and abound and overflow, when I have Thee; but without Thee I am nothing – I wither away, I dissolve and perish. My Lord and my God, my God and my all, give me Thyself and nothing else.”

Homily for the Second Week of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday; April 10-11, 2021) 

Every year, one week after Easter, we read one of the most striking gospels of the year. It starts the evening of Easter Day, as the disciples, except for Thomas, are gathered together. Jesus appears to them, says "Peace be with you," gives the Apostles the Holy Spirit to give them the power to forgive sins, and goes away. During the week, they tell Thomas about this, but he refuses to believe them.  A week later, the reason this Gospel is always read a week after Easter, Thomas is present, and Jesus appears again, inviting Thomas to believe that he is risen. Thomas responds “My Lord and my God!” and Jesus answers “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."

Jesus proposes to us a different mode of belief than what the Apostles have: they witness the Risen Christ, but we must come to him through faith, through belief. A deep faith that we most easily arrive at through the experience of God’s Mercy, which makes it fitting that the current official title of this Sunday is Divine Mercy Sunday, a name given it in 2000 by Pope John Paul II, following on the diaries of an early 20th century Polish nun named St. Faustina. Before we discuss that, however, I will explore our experience of faith, or at least my experience of faith.

The first, incomplete, sense of faith is the blind faith of children who do not yet fully think for themselves. We believe Jesus Christ is risen because we trust the magisterium, the teaching authority of the Church, and it has defined this. We do not seem to see the risen Christ, but believe in him because the Church, our parents, our friends, and those we trust have told us he is risen. This is then built up and nourished through spiritual food. As the introit, from which the informal French name for today’s feast, Quasimodo Sunday, is derived, tells us: “Like newborn infants, you must long for the pure, spiritual milk.” This spiritual food includes regular practice of the faith: participation at Mass and studying God and his works in school, where we are given authorities we can trust to explain how this makes sense. Doing this, our faith grows, growing up from the infancy of blind faith to the adulthood of educated faith. Or at least, that’s theoretically how it should work, and would work if we didn’t sin.

The reality is often very different. We see sin seemingly inside the Church, scandalizing us about what is supposed to be an organization dedicated to God. Our teachers seem to fail to answer legitimate questions. Sometimes we come to see the faith itself as infantile, refusing the spiritual milk that would allow it to grow into spiritual maturity. Sometimes, it’s just willfulness on our part to refuse the good we are given. In my case, as a teenager, I went to a Catholic School, where I greatly respected most of my Theology teachers, who were largely monks clearly living out their faith. This came after joining the Archdiocesan Children’s Choir so that I could be part of the group that sang at the Mass celebrated in St. Louis by Pope John Paul II, a notable and memorable experience of a deeply spiritual man, although one who was already clearly ill. In spite of how nourishing all of this was and should have been, I largely stopped practicing my faith as a teenager.

This happened because I had a similar response to Thomas in today’s Gospel. I felt I could not see God, I could not see the risen Christ. God did not fit into my worldview of self-perpetuating physical realities. I thought, maybe there was some force that we could call God at the beginning, who took part in creating things out of nothing, but whatever that force is is not something I have seen. It isn’t something that came to Earth. Instead, what I had seen, and found most plausible was a world of physical laws and regular, predictable events, a world I was curious to know more about, which led me to study Physics. I continued in this mode until about November of my freshman year in College when the combination of the Church’s moral teachings, a realization that the perfect world of Newtonian physics was incomplete, and the experience of the liturgical life of the Church lead me to return to practicing the faith, ultimately growing in it, eventually entering the monastery in order to devote myself to growth in faith, to feeding on spiritual food. Faith for me was a bit of a journey. This idea of faith as a journey, however, is also incomplete. Faith isn’t just something we arrive at, but a true experience of God, it isn’t just a thought that God is probably real and Jesus Christ probably rose from the dead, or a belief that some concept is true, but a life-giving experience of Christ, of being adopted sons and daughters of the Father in the Son.

This level is arrived at, not through something we do, but rather through something that is done to us, although we cooperate with it. We experience God, although not by sight. Through grace, God comes to us, not as the visible, tangible body that Thomas could touch, but as the God who created us, the God who chose to die for our sins, and the God who rose from the dead. He comes to us as Divine Mercy. An example of this is Thomas himself. Thomas denies the resurrection to the other apostles, in spite of their already witnessing it. So Jesus comes to Thomas out of mercy. As Thomas touches the wounds and sees Christ’s mercy, he recognizes his Lord and God. This was not an empty concept, or a passive belief, but a real, life-changing event. Eventually, Thomas would evangelize in India, and was martyred, as would happen to all of the Apostles except for John. It is this type of faith, a living faith, the experience of the risen Christ himself, that enabled the Apostolic Church to live as described in the first reading. It is this faith that we experience as God’s mercy, and that brings us back to him when we stray, the faith that keeps us truly in communion with the Church, the faith that, as St. John says, conquers the world, and that can make all of us saints, if we let it.

Homily of Saturday in the Easter Octave (April 10, 2021)

From the writings of Blessed Abbot Columba Marmion. First: “All that God does for us proceeds from His mercy. God builds an eternal monument to His mercy in heaven. The stones of this monument are the miserable who draw down mercy by their misery. For mercy is goodness in the face of misery. The foundation stone of this monument is Christ who has espoused all our misery.” Second: “Baptized in Christ, we are born through grace to divine life in Christ. While awaiting the coming of that blessed day when our inward renewal will shine forth in its eternal beauty, we ought often to thank God for the divine adoption given us at our baptism.”

Homily of Thursday in the Easter Octave (April 8, 2021)

“Silver and gold and do not have, but what I do have I give you.” What does Christianity give us? Plenty of hospitals, dispensaries, orphanages. Meaning, hope, purpose. Most powerfully, most truthfully: God Himself. Life and salvation and transformation and strength and power. And these come from the resurrection of Christ, the resurrection we have talked about this whole week, we will talk about. It makes Christianity a unique religion throughout the world. That Christ claimed to be the Son of God. He died, which is not too difficult, but rose again, and by that power changes all reality. And gives to each of us, his apostles, power. More so insofar as we follow him, imitate him, and become true disciples. A great Russian saint once said that in former times people did experience God more powerfully. But nothing is lacking now, in this much more barren age, than an attempt of each of us to imitate God, to follow him, to pray to him virtuously. And if we did so, then that would change and we would experience God more powerfully. So it’s good to have meaning and purpose, good to have dispensaries, hospitals, and other kinds of nice things. It is good to have society change and be somewhat more moderate, and somewhat more kind and gentle, which is also the result of Christianity. But the thing that Christianity offers the most of is power and life, truth and salvation, and a means of eternal existence, forever and ever.

Homily of Tuesday, April 6, 2021 (Tuesday in Eastr Octave)

In these joyous days after Easter, with the Easter celebration continuing, I think a short excerpt from the Holy Father’s Easter Sunday homily is worth hearing again. In the homily he said the following: “The witnesses of Christ’s resurrection report an important detail: the risen Jesus bears the marks of his crucifixion, the wounds in his hands, feet, and side. These wounds are the everlasting seal of his love for us. All those who experience a painful trial in body or spirit can find refuge in these wounds and through them receive the grace of the hope that does not disappoint. Among the many hardships we are enduring let never forget that we have been healed by the wounds of Christ. In the light of the Risen Lord our sufferings are transfigured. Where there was death, now there is life. Where there was mourning, now there is consolation. In embracing the cross, Jesus bestowed meaning on our sufferings. We pray that the benefits of that healing will spread throughout the world. May all who suffer take refuge in the wounds of Christ, and through them receive renewed strength and hope.”

Homily of Monday, April 5, 2021 (Monday in Easter Octave)

This is from a discourse of Pope John XXIII when he was patriarch of Venice: “Easter is for Holy Church the meeting, the marriage of the Bride with her Bridegroom. The Bridegroom comes forth from his tent which was a tomb, but which he has transformed into a pavilion of victory; and his Bride, Holy Church, sings with heart and voice the hymns of joy and exultation: “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad!” We rejoice because he has risen again, and because in him we too shall rise. May the Risen Christ remain always with us! Cheered by our hope of ensuring our future resurrection, let us begin once more our race to win the prize of victory, with our gaze fixed on the ‘pioneer and perfecter of our faith’ (Heb 12:2) who for our sake fought with death to give us life. He who rose in triumph, the firstborn of the dead, the Prince of the rulers of the earth, has won and bestowed upon all predestined souls the grace and glory of resurrection.”

Homily for Easter Day (April 4, 2021)

Today we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and to mark this event the word “Alleluia” reappears in our liturgy. This one word indicates to us today’s theme and the literally earthshaking event it celebrates: the theme is Joy.

You wouldn’t pick that up from the readings or the Gospel, especially not from the Gospel. That records the immediate reaction of the disciples to the news of the empty tomb. The first to see the empty tomb was Mary Magdalene and the Gospel of Mark tells us the other great women followers of Jesus, those women who cared for the day to day needs of Jesus and his male followers as they traveled like a gypsy caravan from town to town while Jesus preached the coming of the Kingdom of God. The women were astonished and carried the news of the Resurrection to the apostles, who were in hiding, in fear for their own lives. The Apostles did not believe the women; their story seemed like nonsense. So, Peter and John raced to the tomb to see for themselves. John, probably just a teenager, ran faster than the older Peter. Even though John got there first he waited for Peter, and let Peter be the first to enter the empty tomb. Peter, who even though he loved Jesus much, who was a hothead and who, out of fear, had denied he even knew Jesus: he was second to know, to see with his own eyes the empty tomb. And then John, the young man whose whole life was ahead of him, who didn’t know much, who hadn’t seen or experienced much, who only knew that he believed Jesus and loved him as his best friend. He was the third to know and to see. But all they could see was what wasn’t there, there was no body of Jesus in the tomb. The other gospels tell us that Mary Magdalene returned to the tomb after Peter and John left, and Jesus then appeared to her (and that perhaps tells us something about the spiritual acumen of women) only later that day did Jesus himself appear to the apostles, to turn their astonishment into joy.

We can learn a lot from these three very imperfect, flawed first witnesses to the Resurrection. They are a lot like us. First, we learn that for us to experience that same resurrection that Jesus did we don’t have to be perfect. We don’t have to have led a sinless and saintly life and we don’t have to be rich and powerful and influential. We just have to have love: love for God in Jesus Christ, and also love for our neighbor, because as that later in life quick teenager St. John tells us that … God is love, and whoever lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him or her. Second, although we do have to be heading in the right direction, we learn that we don’t have to be fast. God is not in a hurry. He waits for us always, like the father in the story of the Prodigal Son. He watches us on the roads we travel and waits for us; He comes out to us when we are on our way and He will make everything right once we arrive, or when he intervenes in our lives. Third, we learn we don’t have to understand everything right now. Peter, John and Mary Magdalene all went home from the tomb confused. They had seen the evidence of the Resurrection with their own eyes, but did not understand. Later that day the Risen Jesus came to them to explain it to them. God is so much bigger than us, so much better, so much wiser, and merciful even to those we would condemn, that it is impossible for us to understand all of how he works and why he does what he does. There’s an old Baptist hymn that says: When the saints…us hopefully…are gathered home in the kingdom, we’ll tell the story how we’ve overcome. We will understand it better by and by. For now, we can understand: Joy is the message of Easter.

Pope Francis speaks eloquently about this. He said: Our joy comes from having encountered the person of Jesus, from knowing that with him we are never alone, even at difficult moments, even when our life’s journey comes up against problems and obstacles that seem insurmountable, we accompany, we follow Jesus, but above all we know that he accompanies us. This is our joy, and this is the hope that we must bring to our world. Every Christian, every one of us, is meant to radiate joy, because the Christian knows what has ultimate meaning, because the Christian knows that death… that thing which is the ultimate downer to the orgy of self-satisfaction which so much of modern life has become… that death is NOT the end of it all, but is the beginning of a more perfect life of Justice, Tranquility, the Liberty of the Children of God, and above all of perfect love, unhindered by the material stuff to which our earthly lives are so attached.

All this is made possible by Jesus Christ and is demonstrated to us by His Resurrection, which is God’s promise to us that we will share in His Resurrection to that life, eternal life. If we are not about love and joy, then we are really missing something important, and we do a disservice to GOD, the Gospel and Church. Christians and preachers who shout messages of fire and brimstone, of condemnation, anger and negativity, who induce fear and anxiety, who exude smugness and anticipation of vengeance, who make it seem all about sin, they are far from the Gospel mark of faith, hope, love and joy. Sin happens. Jesus cleaned it up for us. If we know the risen Jesus Christ, no one and no thing can take that joy from us, no one and no thing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ, not even death. So let us all exude joy. Let’s make this an Abbey, a community of joy. May our joy be palpable in all our activities, all our work, worship, all our prayers. As we as individuals and as a society perform the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, may we perform them with joy. May we live our lives in such a way that our friends, relatives and neighbors want to know: “What religion do they belong to? Where do they go to Church? They are really happy.” Jesus Christ did not suffer and die for us, did not rise again for us so that we should be anxious, guilt ridden or downcast. For 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. It was all for love, to free us from fear and sadness and anxiety so that we might love Christ in and through others. Today we celebrate the attainment of the pinnacle of that love.

When I was a child, at Easter my father would always get my brothers, sister and me new clothes. I was the youngest, so new clothes for me were sometimes new hand-me-downs from my older brothers. But I always got brand new shoes of my own. New shoes to walk in, to walk in during a new year of growth. This joyful Easter Sunday always comes in the Spring. The whole earth is getting new clothes: a new look as flowers come up and the leaves finally bud on the naked trees. While we ourselves may or may not be getting new clothes, we can get a new look on the inside. We can renovate up our faith and trust in God’s love for us, and walk joyfully in Jesus’ footsteps, knowing for sure God has something great in store for us.

May each of us be a source of joy to each other and to our community, our family, our dorm; may we channel our joy to our Church and the world. May our joy in the full meaning of the Resurrection be our participation here and now in this life of the Kingdom of God, Jesus tells us: Look and see, the kingdom of God is all around you. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. He is really and truly risen. Happy Easter!

Homily for the Easter Vigil (April 3, 2021)

We just heard St. Paul’s words to the Romans: If we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over him. (Romans 6) St. Paul also wrote to the Corinthians: If Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all. (1 Cor 15; 17-20)

As I was googling around recently, I came across a statement. “Let’s just admit it. The Resurrection is unbelievable.” But, of course, we are here because we do believe. This belief sets us apart from everyone else in the world. Everyone else in the world believes in the golden rule, in not killing-stealing-lying. Everyone wants peace and justice and something they define as salvation or liberation. We, however, believe that Jesus became a human being like us so we humans could become just like God. That is something of a higher order. His very real human death was followed by the resurrection of his glorious body. And this was to show us not only his divine nature 
but also what is in store for us. And nothing can prove this to the 21st century. Only faith and trust can convince us.

We heard in this Gospel that Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, and then the other disciples on the third day after his death. We are also told that later he appeared to 500 people at once. All this testimony was written down. There were no cameras, no video, none of the things we use today to document important events. But we have the reliable testimony of those honest people who say they saw the risen Jesus with their own eyes. Some skeptics think they lied, but why would they? There were in those times in Palestine other leaders, healers and false Messiahs that had more followers and more power than Jesus ever did during his life. And they met with death and failure just as Jesus appeared to on Good Friday. But none of their loyal followers attempted to prolong their liberation or religious movements with myths of the rising of their heroes. Jesus’ contemporaries were pretty fuzzy and even unsure about eternal life, if they didn’t deny it altogether. So we stand out because we believe the otherwise unbelievable. The testimony of the truthful witnesses is true.

But perhaps the more convincing argument for the Resurrection is the experience of Jesus by the faithful in his Church. So many saints, those canonized with a capital “S” and others known only to God, have mystically experienced this risen Jesus. When I was a child it was a custom on Easter to wear new clothes to add to the festivity. That was probably never the case in monasteries. But there was that informal Easter Parade in New York City. That custom has passed. But today we can put on a new attitude, one of contagious joy. That is what knowing that Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead and is alive right now is meant to make us experience: joy in the certain knowledge through our faith, our trust and our love; that despite all the personal Good Fridays we may endure in life, God IS with us, God is on our side in life’s struggles and that if we keep the faith, we too will rise. That joy and knowledge is what drew people to the church and caused it to grow from the small group of Jesus followers to 1.2 billion people today.

Tonight, we add one more person to this billion plus Church membership, and we also add to our joy, because a member of our school community will be baptized and confirmed. The body of Christ will welcome Flynn O’Connell as a new member. And we will have a new brother. May the unbelievable joy of Easter permeate every part of his and our lives and overflow to all those around us. Thank you for the unbelievable joy you bring to my life. Jesus is alive in Portsmouth Abbey, on Aquidneck Island, in Rhode Island, in the United States of America, in all of our world. Jesus is Risen. Happy Easter!!!

Homily for the Liturgy of the Passion of the Lord (Good Friday, April 2, 2021).

In 2009, the organization, then very British, now it is more expansive, called Intelligence Squared, staged a debate. That’s what they do, primarily, stage debates. You can watch the debate if you wish to on YouTube. That’s where I saw it. About 3 million people, I think, have seen it so far on YouTube. There are probably other platforms you can see it on. They have staged many other debates. This was on a particular topic, a particular statement, both pro and con. The statement was: The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world. That was the statement. The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world. On the anti-side you had two very witty, sharp, British celebrities – Stephen Fry, who has made a lot of comedic realities and is a celebrity. He was described on the side as a “well-known celebrity.” I’d like to think all celebrities are well-known. But a well-known celebrity, a comedian, actor, etc. He mostly does things like P.G. Wodehouse, and that stuff. I like Stephen Fry. He is extremely smart, extremely sharp, extremely intelligent. The other anti-person was Christopher Hitchens, who is now dead unfortunately. Also extremely sharp (also very British) in a very different way than Stephen Fry. So, you have these two debaters, Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry, saying the church, the Catholic Church, is not a force for good in the world. And two in support that it is. The two in support of it were Ann Widdecombe, then a member of Parliament, a conservative member of Parliament who became a Catholic in 1993, still living, I believe. And the Catholic Archbishop from Abuja, Nigeria in Africa. I think he may still be there. A very pleasant man. His father was the first Christian in his family. His English was a little broken, I’m afraid, but a very pleasant man, not an unintelligent man. You would expect an archbishop to be intelligent; he was also somewhat intelligent but he had, I have to say, broken English. 

It was a fascinating debate, a kind of sad debate. That is why I don’t watch debates. To have Ann Widdecombe and the Archbishop of Abuja defending the Catholic Church, mostly through history, referring mostly to hospitals and orphanages and whatever. And Hitchens and Fry passionately, extremely passionately, attacking the Catholic Church for lots of things: historical things and more recent things – child abuse, you name it: the kind of standard things you see every day. It was kind of disappointing and sad. That’s why I don’t watch these debates; for a lot of reasons. And there are people in this church today who could have excoriated the Catholic Church far more viciously, far more intelligently, than Fry and Hitchens. And there are those in the church today who could have defended the Catholic Church far more intelligently, far more passionately, then Ann Widdecombe and the Archbishop of Abuja. On the whole, a very disappointing experience, because so much of it was based on ignorance and stupidity. There’s nothing more painful than to see intelligent people who are ignorant or unintelligent. That’s why I don’t watch these debates usually. I did because I thought it was particularly important to do so. It’s also very famous, in any case. 

Now there’s two reasons why the whole idea was a mistake. First, historical judgments are really hard to make; really, really hard to make. If you know history extremely well, there’s nothing more difficult to make then historical judgments, because everything has a context. You can’t discuss the inquisition without the context. You can’t discuss this without the context. You can’t discuss Galileo without the context. And so, a lot of half-truths are said that no one responds to. It would take too long, or you don’t know it perhaps. That’s the first objection. And this is a really difficult thing. The church has done great good, and great evil. There’s no doubt about it. Great good and great evil. And it’s hard to adjudicate which is superior, which is more numerous which is more advanced. Is it a force for good in the world or a force for evil? It’s been a force for both, I think.

But there’s a bigger question that was not discussed very much, though Ann Widdecombe came closest when she said that people received hope from the church; the church offered hope to people in the world, hope of a future life, of a better life, of justice, etc. And there’s a great deal of truth in that. But still it falls far short of what the debate should have been on. They should not have asked the question: Is the Catholic Church a force for good in the world? - but the question: Is Jesus Christ a force of good in the world? Because really it is about who Christ is. Organizations are a mixture of good and bad, as are people good and bad, as are bishops and archbishops and popes: good and bad, individuals and bureaucrats who are good and bad. But Christ is the core of what Christianity is all about. That should have been the question. It should have been the answer. It should have been the whole discussion. Is He a force for good in the world? And I would say yes. Of course, I have a little advantage here, I am on a certain side. 

But God knows that being on the right side does not mean you don’t experience things. So what Christ does do, what he supremely does, which we celebrate today on Good Friday, is suffer. And that I do know about, a lot about. Everybody in this room, all of your parents, your grandparents, your friends, have experienced suffering and evil. And you’ll experience a lot more of it before you die, so be ready. Of course, we are never ready, but be ready. Nevertheless. What Christ has done, what God has done in Christ – because Christ is the Son of God, God made man – is to have made suffering and evil, which is a universal (the rich and the poor, the smart and the stupid, the old and the young) experience. And Christ has given to evil and suffering not only value, and a means of transformation, but something much larger, something much more vast. And we celebrate that – insofar as we can celebrate evil and suffering and death and pain – on Good Friday, on this day. Why is it “good”? Not for Jesus, he certainly suffered a great deal on Good Friday. But because by means of that, suffering, all suffering, all evil, has been transformed, has been made very different, has been radicalized, has been elevated to a whole new existence. 

The theologians, at least Thomas Aquinas, which to me count as “theologians”, say the biggest impediment to believe in God is the experience of evil. I think that is so. You know, when you experience suffering or disappointment or whatever –you know: why did mommy die? Why did fluffy die? Why does this eight-year-old have cancer? Etc. You wonder about a good God. You wonder about all these things. Christianity is not deism. Christianity is not, you know, a simple religion. It’s a complex religion. But it has taken the worst thing, the most difficult thing in our experience – and all of you will experience it – suffering and evil, in a very serious way. It makes the cross the symbol of Christianity. Not a Happy Meal, not the Resurrection - Resurrection is important, because without the resurrection you don’t have completion of what the crucifixion is all about. Nonetheless, the cross is itself the symbol of Christianity. As the great powered Claudel one said: Christ did not come to end suffering or to explain it away, but to fill it with his presence. And that’s what’s important. You will suffer. You will suffer in ways you could never have expected. You will wish you were dead. All of you – most of you, I can’t speak for all of you, but most of you. If I knew the things I knew today, I never would have gotten out of bed. If I knew the things I knew today, I never would have lived this long. I would’ve died a long time ago, because if I knew the things I know now, it was really not worth it. It was not worth it not to me in those days, certainly. But Christ did not only give meaning to suffering or give value to evil and suffering, etc. which is nice, that’s good. As Claudel put it, he fills it with his presence. 

You saw in today’s gospel: “I thirst” Our Lord thirsts. We thirst too. What do we thirst for? We thirst for life, what Christ offers through his crucifixion, what Christ offers through our crucifixion, is the fulfillment of life. We want to be alive, we want to be transformed, we want to be fulfilled, we all want our thirst satiated. Christ will do that. Nothing else can; nothing else will; nothing else claims to – well they do often claim, but without making it possible. All these ideologies claim answers to realities they can’t fix. We could have full bellies and still be unhappy. We can have full everything and still be unhappy. There’s more we need and more we want and more we are made, for we are made for God. And only Christ can make that happen. So, we thirst as Christ thirsted and we thirst for him, and he fills our suffering, our evil, with his presence, so we no longer have to thirst. We are satiated, we are made whole, we are full. And so, on this day, certainly know that suffering can be a good of sorts. I never want to say suffering is good, because having suffered a little bit myself, and you will suffer, it’s never good. It’s something you grew up with; it’s something you are transformed by; something to put up with; something that is a way to something else. It’s a means to a different end, but suffering is now given value. Suffering is now given a means of transformation. Suffering can now be filled by something else that is not suffering, it’s not pain, it’s not empty, it’s not darkness: it’s Christ himself. So, the end of this reality is not Good Friday, it’s not Christ dead on the cross, humiliated, degraded, broken. He is broken. But transformed as on Holy Saturday – well, Sunday I guess, really strictly speaking – the Resurrection. We are made for a better life. 

There is a wonderful book, I’ve mentioned it frequently: it’s called Unbroken. It’s a true story of an American airman who was also in 1936 an Olympic runner. It’s a true story that was on the bestseller list for years and years. How he had suffered in the Second World War in the Japanese camps etc., in the Pacific, and how so deeply scarred he came back and he fell apart, basically. And what is so beautiful about the book is not his overcoming difficulty in the first case with the Japanese in the Pacific, with the sharks, and this and that, the beatings, the starvation – which are impressive enough, believe me. But the second half, where he is profoundly broken, profoundly wounded, he is healed by Christ. He is forced to go to this great meeting with Billy Graham in Los Angeles. He’s touched by the power of Christ. He is filled by the power of Christ and he is transformed. And for the rest of his days (many, many decades), he does good, because he has been healed. He is no longer broken. He appeared to be unbroken, but he wasn’t. Because only Christ can truly fix us, only Christ can truly transform us only Christ can truly fill us as we are meant to be filled.

Homily of the Mass of the Lord's Supper, Thursday, April 1, 2021

This is the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, or the Last Supper, as it is called commonly, which we read about last Sunday in Saint Mark’s Gospel. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, it is clear that that Last Supper was a passover meal, about which we heard in the first lesson. And the center of the passover meal was the passover lamb: spotless, male, a year old. And tonight we celebrate the meal, the Last Supper, of the True Lamb of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is foretold, predicted if you like, foretold in the Passover supper of the Jews. They celebrate Passover every year. They are at it now – they’re celebrating it now, as the memorial feast of their being saved from slavery in Egypt and being brought into the presence of God on Mount Sinai. 

Now at the Last Supper, our Lord instituted (or began or started) several things, the most important in a way, was the Mass. That is, what he did that night was the first Mass. He took bread, as we heard last Sunday – and from Saint Paul now – he took bread, broke it, and gave it to his disciples saying, “This is my body.” Then, he took the cup of wine, blessed God, gave it to his disciples saying, “This is my blood.” Now, the church tells us the bread, once the priest says “This is my body,” and the cup, once he says, “This is my blood,” is in fact the body and blood of Christ. It continues to look the same, but the reality is different. If you were ever told or heard that the bread and wine in Mass are merely a symbol of the body and blood of Christ, that is wrong. It is truly the body and blood of Christ. And that is the teaching of the church, right from the beginning. The second aspect of the mass is that it is a sacrifice. That body and blood was offered by Jesus. He knew what he was doing. He knew he was instituting a sacrifice, which at that time had not taken place except that he willed it and yielded to the Father’s will and would do it. When he said, “This is my body given for you” – Given? Given? Hanging on the cross, it was given for our sins to the Father. “This is my blood poured out.” Poured out? When do you pour out blood? At a sacrifice. So, the mass continues, makes present, that sacrifice which was begun, was instituted as I say, in the Last Supper. The other thing he did was to ordain the first priests, when he said to the apostles, “Do this in remembrance of me.” 

That it was a sacrifice is known and present from the earliest times of the church. The great Ignatius of Antioch, a bishop and martyr, who was a disciple of Saint John the Apostle, who wrote this gospel and who may have been, they say (maybe it’s a legend), the boy that Jesus called to himself and stood in the middle of the apostles and said, “Unless you become like this you can’t enter the kingdom.” Well, that may be true or maybe not, but in any case: the Eucharist, he said, is the flesh of Christ that suffered for us, and that the Father has raised by His will. Not a symbol: it is the very flesh that suffered, and on the first Easter was raised. Another witness from the early church, about 200 and some years later, Cyril of Jerusalem, said “Christ himself clearly described the bread to us in the words ‘This is my body’ – who will dare henceforth to dispute it. And since he has emphatically said ‘This is my blood’, who will waver in the slightest and say it is not his blood? So let us partake with the fullest confidence that it is the body and blood of Christ, for the body has been bestowed on you under the figure (as he puts it – under the figure) of bread, and his blood under the figure of wine, so that by partaking of Christ’s body and blood, you may become one body and blood with him.” That’s to us: we become on body and blood with Christ. “This is how we become bearers of Christ (“Christophers” – Christ Bearers), since his body and blood spread throughout our limbs, this is how in the Blessed Peter’s words (as Peter said in his second epistle) we become partakers of the divine nature.” You probably heard that God wants us to partake in the divine nature. That will be greatly and fully experienced in heaven, please God, but even now by partaking of the body and blood of Christ it begins in us. “Do not,” says Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, “then regard the bread and wine as nothing but bread and wine, for they are the body and blood of Christ, as the master (that is Jesus) has proclaimed.” So, your senses suggest otherwise, let faith reassure you. We walk by faith, not by sight.

Saint John tells us that at the Last Supper, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. And the church emphasizes that in a big way at this Mass tonight, because it is an underlining by our Lord of the second great commandment: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The first, remember, is to love God with your whole heart and soul and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself: Jesus shows to what extent that love should and can go. Now, washing the feet when you entered in Jerusalem or any place, I guess, in Palestine at that time, the roads were dirty, dusty. If you were walking in sandals or simple shoes, your feet got dirty. So when you entered a house you, a Jew, washed your feet. As we might go wash our hands, they washed their feet. You washed your feet yourself. If you had a non-Jewish slave, he could do it. But the Jews consider this job so menial, so very, very lowly, that if you owned Jewish slave, you could not make him do that service for another person. So that is why Peter is upset. He said, “You’re washing my feet? No.” And that is the very instinct that our Lord is trying to crush. No, he says, I am going to, because you are going to have to do things like that. He says you don’t understand it now, but you will. That is another thing about your religion: you may not understand it now, but in time you may. And that is what we have to do, you and I: we have to learn to live the first and the second commandments. The early pagans said about Christians: “See how these Christians love one another.” Could you say that today? Could you say it of us? See how these Christians, these Catholics, love one another. There are people, saints, an obvious great example of the last century was Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She had a nice job as a nun and a teacher, and she gave it all up to work with the lowest of the low. So, it can be done. For most of us, as John Henry Newman said, Jesus shows us the way and we spend our lives trying to learn the way. 

So those are the lessons of the Mass. And this is the lesson, the washing of the feet, is the lesson of this particular mass in a big way. And they will sing the hymn “Ubi Caritas et Amor,” which means where charity and love are – there is God. If you listen to the whole text, if you see the whole text in English, it is worth pondering. If you want to know how to get God in your life: where love and charity are, there is God.