Corpus Christi

Readings: Gen 14:18-20; 1 Cor 11:23-26; Lk 9:11b-17

VIDEO

Let’s talk about Melchizedek.

We don’t talk about Melchizedek very often,
partly because Scripture 
doesn’t talk about him very often.
In fact, today’s brief first reading 
tells pretty much the whole story of Melchizedek.
He, the King of Salem,
appears in the story of Abraham out of nowhere 
with an offering of bread and wine,
and blesses Abraham, 
who then offers him a tenth 
of the loot he has just won in battle.
Having received his tithe,
Melchizedek then vanishes from the story.
He comes up again in the New Testament,
in the Letter to the Hebrews,
where he is seen as a prefiguration 
of Christ’s royal priesthood,
a priesthood far surpassing
the priesthood of the old covenant.
but, again, he remains a shadowy figure;
as Hebrews puts it: 
“Without father, mother, or ancestry, 
without beginning of days or end of life” (7:2).

So why do we hear about Melchizedek 
on this feast of the Body and Blood of Christ?
Well, he makes an offering of bread and wine,
prefiguring the Eucharist
even as he himself prefigures Christ.
But Melchizedek not only 
points us toward the Eucharist,
he also tells us something important 
about the Eucharist and our sharing in it.

The letter to the Hebrews explains 
that the name Melchizedek 
means king of justice (in Hebrew tsedek)
and the title of King of Salem
means king of peace (in Hebrew shalem).
Commenting on this passage from Hebrews,
St. Thomas Aquinas says, 
“It is good that he unites justice and peace,
since nothing makes for peace
that does not preserve justice” (In Heb. §332).
Or, as Pope Saint Paul VI put it back in 1972,
“If you want peace, work for justice.”

A peace not founded on justice 
is not a true peace;
it is merely the suppression 
of obvious forms of violence
by less-obvious forms of violence,
as a quick glance at both human history
and the world of today will tell us.
The world is filled with those 
whose offers of false peace 
ring in our ears,
who say, “give me power 
and I will give you peace.”
But peace as the world gives it
is all too often a matter of one group
dominating another,
whether through force of arms
or economic exploitation.
Peace as the world gives it 
is the peace brought by
the boot that tramps in battle,
and the cloak rolled in blood,
the peace of the gallows and the ghetto,
the peace of walls and of razor wire.

But Melchizedek—
king of justice and king of peace—
points us toward Christ,
whose priestly kingdom is one
of eternal peace built on justice:
a justice that is exercised not
in repression and domination
but in mercy and reconciliation,
a justice that believes not 
that we must grab for ourselves
the scarce resources of the world,
but that five loaves and two fish,
blessed and broken in the hands of Christ,
could feed a multitude.

Now you might say that the evidence 
tends to favor the kind of peace the world gives
more than the peace of Christ’s kingdom.
You might say that talk of mercy and abundance
is all very nice and everything,
but the real world is about hard choices,
about ceaselessly holding our enemies at bay,
about guaranteeing our own peace and security
by any means necessary.
You might say this.
Many people do say this. 
The devil on your shoulder says this.

But Jesus says something different.
On the night before he died,
a night poised on the edge 
of the most unjust act 
in the history of the cosmos—
the judicial murder of God incarnate—
Christ did not decide that the time had come
to get tough with his enemies;
he did not decide that he had to do
whatever was necessary to secure his own safety;
he did not decide to start acting
as if God’s goodness were not abundantly present,
as if God’s mercy were not the true way of justice.
No, amid the world’s injustice and violence 
he held fast to his ministry
as the true and eternal king of justice and peace,
by giving himself away for the life of the world,
bringing forth the bread and wine of blessing
to feed us with the food of undying life. 
And as often as we eat the bread 
offered by the king of justice 
and drink of the cup 
offered of the king of peace
we proclaim the reality of the kingdom
that springs from his death and resurrection,
appearing seemingly from nowhere,
like the figure of Melchizedek himself.
In this feast we taste 
the truth of mercy and abundance
even amid violence and greed,
and we take him into ourselves.
We commit ourselves to his path,
joining our lives to his
so that we too might become 
an offering to God for the life of the world.

The world is filled with evidence 
of the need to grab what we can,
of the demand to do whatever is necessary
to gain our own security and prosperity,
of the wisdom of sacrificing justice for others
for the sake of peace for ourselves.
But Jesus points us toward 
a different sort of evidence,
what the Letter to the Hebrews calls
the evidence of things not seen.
We say we believe that bread and wine 
become the body and blood of Christ,
no matter what our seeing or smelling 
or touching or tasting tells us;
can we not also believe 
that the deepest truth of the world
is mercy and abundance,
even as we live surrounded by evidence
of violence and greed?
We say we believe that Christ’s body broken
and his blood poured out for the life of the world
are truly here under sacramental signs;
can we not also believe
that his kingdom of justice and peace
is present even now as we partake of his feast?
We say we believe.
So let us pray that Christ
would make us true members of his body,
true servants of the king of justice and peace.
Let us pray that he would bless us 
in the name of God most high,
and that God in his mercy
would have mercy on us all.

Easter 6

Readings: Acts 15:1-2, 22-29; Rev 21:10-14, 22-23; Jn 14:23-29

In today’s gospel, 
Jesus tells his disciples to “keep his word”
as a sign of the love that they have for him,
and he promises to send the Holy Spirit,
who “will teach you everything
and remind you of all that I told you.”
To keep Jesus’ word means not simply 
to remember what he said,
or even to follow his instructions,
but it is to have Jesus, 
who is God’s eternal Word,
come and make his dwelling in us,
giving us his peace,
the peace that the world cannot give.
That is what the Holy Spirit does
in teaching and reminding us:
it makes Jesus and his peace abide in us.

This sounds all very pious,
but what does this look like in practice?
What does it look like for the followers of Jesus
to embody the peace that the world cannot give? 
Well, it might look pretty mundane—
even legalistic and bureaucratic. 
In our first reading, from the book of Acts,
we hear recounted a meeting called
among the apostles, 
along with Paul and Barnabas,
to address a legalistic question:
namely, which parts of the Law of Moses
did non-Jewish converts to Christ have to obey?
It results it what is essentially an HR memo
to the Gentile converts in Antioch
telling them which parts of the Law 
applies to them—
those concerning idolatry,
certain foods,
and whom you can and cannot marry—
and, by implication, which did not—
namely, the practice of circumcision. 

The apostles describe this as 
“the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us,” 
which is a pretty grand claim
for an HR memo—

what might sound to us more like 
a legalistic, bureaucratic compromise
than the workings of the Spirit 
who blows where it will.
But who’s to say that the Spirit cannot be at work 
in legalistic bureaucratic compromises?
After all, Jesus calls the Spirit an “advocate,”
which is how we translate the Greek parakletos,
the term for a legal counsel,
one who stands beside you in a court 
to advise you and represent your interests.

As strange as it may seen,

as hard as it is for me to believe,

the Holy Spirit is a lawyer.
So it seems that the Spirit 
not only can be at work within processes 
of legalistic bureaucratic compromise,
but this is actually the Spirit’s special skill set.

Still, to fully appreciate 
how the Spirit works in the Church,
we also need to pay attention
to what is left out of the account
as we have just heard it.
Our reading omits the process by which
the apostles, counseled by the Spirit, 
arrive at this compromise.
First, Peter tells the story of his experience
with the Gentile Cornelius and his family,
how God “who knows the heart, 
bore witness by granting them the Holy Spirit 
just as he did us… 
[and] made no distinction
between us and them, 
for by faith he purified their hearts.”
His testimony is strengthened by Paul and Barnabas,
who speak of “the signs and wonders 
God had worked among the Gentiles.” 

Then, James, who is chairing the meeting,
speaks up to note how what 
Peter, Paul, and Barnabas are describing
fits with the words of the Lord
as recorded in the prophet Amos,
showing how their experience 
sheds new light on Scripture
and Scripture confirms their experience:
“I shall return and rebuild the fallen hut of David;
from its ruins I shall rebuild it and raise it up again,
so that the rest of humanity may seek out the Lord,
even all the Gentiles on whom my name is invoked.”
The words of Amos show how this story
fits into the wider story of salvation:
the family of Israel is called by God
and given the Law of Moses
so that through it all of families of peoples
might be freed from the curse of sin
and regain God’s primordial blessing.
God’s will is that Jew and Gentile 
be brought together in one body,
the ancient dividing wall of hostility between them
broken down by Christ’s cross and resurrection.
This legalistic and bureaucratic HR memo
is a key moment in God bestowing
the peace that the world cannot give.

God does not act in this way
because God is legalistic or bureaucratic,
but because we are.
We exist in time and space,
we are beings with histories and institutions,
we require meetings and memos 
to make and communicate judgments.
We needs synods and conclaves
and planning processes.
God accommodates our human condition
by the gift of the Spirit who stands with us
as we listen to people’s experiences,
as we read the Scriptures together,
as we sift and negotiate and compromise
and try to find our way to something
that looks a little more like that peace 
that the world cannot give.

Of course, our listening and reading and negotiating
will never on their own lead us to the fullness that peace.
In the vision of John recorded in Revelation,
the heavenly Jerusalem descends from heaven.
We do not build that glorious city 
that gleams with the splendor of God;
we receive it as a gift.
This heavenly city that comes to dwell on earth,
this city that is the peace the world cannot give,
requires no meetings or memos or institutions—
it doesn’t even need a temple 
to mark God’s presence,
for the crucified and risen Lamb is there,
from whom shines forth the light of God 
by which all judgements are just,
in which all our stories are honored,
through which all divisions are healed.

But until that day,
as we make our pilgrimage through time,
holding our meetings,
writing our memos,
making our judgments as best we can,
we trust that the Spirit stands beside us,
walking with us as our advocate and guide,
making God’s Word dwell somehow
within our human words.
And we pray on our pilgrimage
that God would give us 
the peace that the world cannot give,
that God in his mercy
would have mercy on us all.

 

Easter 5

Readings: Acts 14:21-27; Rev 21:1-5a; Jn 13:31-33a, 34-35

Christianity did not arrive in the world
as a philosophy or an ethical code, 
but as a community that grew up
around a person: Jesus of Nazareth.
Of course, we Christians do 
have beliefs and rules
but, at the heart of it, 
Christianity is a way 
of being with one another
by being with Jesus.
The Church is not an optional support group
for Christians who need that sort of thing.
To be Christian is to belong to a tribe—
a tribe not defined 
by land or ideology or bloodline,
but by abiding in Christ’s love
as we abide in love for each other:
“As I have loved you, so you also 
should love one another.”
To be a Christian is to belong
to the community of those
who love one another as he has loved us.

And how has he loved us?
He has loved us with a love 
both divine and human:
divine in its inexhaustible power
and human in its form of appearing.
Love mighty enough to call a universe into being
and yet emptying itself to become
the infant entrusted to our human care,
the teacher speaking our human language,
the victim receiving our human wrath,
the risen one revealing our human destiny.
Above all, he has loved us without reserve,
without holding anything back;
he has, as John’s Gospel says,
loved us to the end.
And we in turn 
should love one another in this way:
we should love each other to the end.

Easier said than done, right?
Loving as he loved is difficult 
because people can be pretty unlovable:
petty, stubborn, willfully blind,
self-involved, thin-skinned, and so forth.
This is as true today as it has always been.
But it also seems to be difficult in new ways.
We live in a culture that has long valued
independence and individualism
but our society is now said to be suffering
from an “epidemic of loneliness”:
over 50% of people say that they have
fewer social connections than they would like.
Some of this might be the long-term effect
of our individualism and independence,
and some may be fallout from the pandemic:
“social distancing” has become a habit.
Whatever the cause, medical professionals note 
numerous threats to human flourishing
associated with loneliness: 
impaired cognitive function, 
depression, anxiety, increased risk of suicide, 
cardiovascular disease, diabetes, infection.

But for those of us 
who belong to the tribe of Christ
there is a more profound threat 
in this epidemic of loneliness,
for we cannot be Christian alone.
To be a Christian is to be part of a tribe,
part of a body that gathers.
It’s not enough to claim 
membership in the Church 
in the abstract way one claims membership
in a political party or an honor society.
The Catholic tradition expects the tribe
to gather weekly, 
on the day of Christ’s resurrection,
to celebrate the Eucharist—
not simply to recall Christ sacrifice
and receive his body and blood,
but also to be confronted with the concrete reality
of the brothers and sisters for whom Christ died;
to bear with our unbearable neighbor 
for at least one hour;
to try to love those who are 
petty, stubborn, willfully blind,
self-involved, thin-skinned—
those who, in short, 
are as bad as we are.

And maybe this hour is all we can manage.
Maybe rituals of shared listening and singing,
of wishing peace to our neighbor,
of eating and drinking
the one bread and one cup
are as much love as we can handle.
But these are not mere ritual gestures;
these are sacred signs that make present to us
the love that loves us to the end,
and calls us more deeply into itself
by calling us into love for one another,
a love that shows itself to the world
in concrete acts of service and fellowship,
love leavening loneliness.
In the midst of our loneliness
this hour opens a door into loving as he loves,
and to step through that door 
is to begin here and now 
a shared journey to the heavenly Jerusalem,
where God will dwell with us 
and we will be God’s people together, 
where God will wipe every tear from our eyes—
no more death or mourning or wailing or pain—
where the old order of isolation 
will have passed away
and we will know and love each other
even as we are each known and loved by God.

The servant of God Dorothy Day,
who devoted her life 
to living with the poor,
to feeding the hungry
and sheltering the outcast, wrote:
“We cannot love God unless we love each other,
and to love we must know each other.
We know Him in the breaking of bread,
and we know each other in the breaking of bread,
and we are not alone anymore.
Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too,
even with a crust, where there is companionship.
We have all known the long loneliness
and we have learned that the only solution is love
and that love comes with community.”

Or, as another American Catholic, Pope Leo,
said this morning in his inaugural homily: 
“With the light and the strength of the Holy Spirit, 
let us build a Church founded on God’s love, 
a sign of unity, 
a missionary Church that 
opens its arms to the world, 
proclaims the word, 
allows itself to be 
made ‘restless’ by history, 
and becomes a leaven 
of harmony for humanity.”

Let us pray that the one we know 
in the breaking of bread
will call us out of our isolation
and into journeying together to our true home,
drawing us ever deeper into loving as he loves,
and that God in his mercy
might have mercy on us all.

Easter 2

Readings: Acts 5:12-16; Rev 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19; John 20:19-31

Resurrection, if it means anything at all,
means Jesus being raised from his tomb:
not a metaphor, not a symbol, 
not even a timeless truth concerning 
the power of life over death,
but the returning to life of Jesus of Nazareth.
Resurrection, if it means anything at all,
means the eruption of life 
through the hard crust of death
at a particular place and time,
a startling new fact in our world.
Resurrection, if it means anything at all,
involves a body that still bears the wounds
inflicted in a moment of time on the Son of God,
wounds that could be seen and touched
even in his glorified body,
wounds that he shows to us and says,
“do not be unbelieving, but believe.”

Resurrection, if it means anything at all, 
means what happened to Jesus.
But that is not all it means.
Resurrection means what happened to Jesus
but it also means what happens to us.
Resurrection is the new life of Jesus 
erupting into our lives,
erupting into our world,
remaking everything we think we know
about life and death 
and how to navigate the world.

And this is why resurrection scares us.
When the seer John, 
living in exile on the Island of Patmos,
beheld the risen Jesus
he fell at his feet “as though dead.”
When Thomas heard of Jesus’ resurrection
he refused to believe without evidence,
not because he had a skeptical cast of mind,
but because he knew that if Jesus were risen
then everything was changed,
and he was not so sure that he wanted
to live in a world where the dead do not stay dead.
He was not so much doubting Thomas 
as he was fearful Thomas:
fearful of what it would mean for life
if the certainty of death’s victory 
were overturned.

We may fear death, 
but this is a fear that has been with us so long
that we have learned how to manage it,
how to cope with death’s finality.
Death sets a limit to our lives
and a limit to our loves,
and so we measure out our attachments,
we ration our compassion,
we hold our mercy in reserve,
doling it out only to the deserving.

But resurrection is beyond 
our capacity to manage,
for it opens to us 
the dizzying abyss of God’s love,
a love that gives us everything
and asks everything in return,
a love that sweeps us up in a torrent
flowing from wellsprings of mercy 
that we could not imagine.
Resurrection calls us to love as Jesus loved,
and, well, we know how he ended up:
hung upon a cross.
Yet resurrection says that the way of Jesus,
the way that passes through the cross,
is the only true way to life.

What does resurrection look like?
If it looks like anything it looks like Jesus,
whose wounded body now pulses with life eternal.
But the light shed by the glory of Christ’s resurrection
also illuminates resurrection all around us.

It looks like Yolanda Tinajero,
whose brother was one of twenty-three people
killed five years ago at a Walmart in El Paso
by a self-proclaimed white nationalist.
This past Tuesday, at the victim impact statements
that are a part of the sentencing process,
she asked if she could approach 
the convicted killer to embrace him, 
“so you could feel my forgiveness, especially my loss.”
The judge, to everyone’s surprise, allowed this,
and as she held her brother’s killer he began,
for the first time in the proceedings, 
to weep tears of remorse.
Mercy was offered not because the killer deserved it,
but because she needed to give it.
She showed him her wounds and said,
“do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
That is what resurrection looks like.

It looks like the six couples
who spent this weekend with Deacon Andrew and me 
preparing for the sacrament of matrimony,
preparing—in a world in which relationships 
seem ever more transactional and disposable—
to offer themselves to each other 
freely and without reservation,
in fruitful and permanent love,
to open themselves to the abyss of God’s love
by opening themselves to each other,
for better, for worse,
for richer, for poorer,
showing each other their wounds and saying,
“do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
That is what resurrection looks like.

It looks like Pope Francis,
his bodily strength exhausted,
going out one last time 
to impart a blessing to the city and the world,
to share with us the glad tidings of Easter. 
Too weak himself to speak, 
his message was read out:
“The resurrection of Jesus is indeed 
the basis of our hope. 
For in the light of this event, 
hope is no longer an illusion. 
Thanks to Christ— 
crucified and risen from the dead— 
hope does not disappoint! 
Spes non confundit! (cf. Rom 5:5). 
That hope is not an evasion, but a challenge; 
it does not delude, but empowers us.”
In his final hours 
Francis showed to us his wounds, and said,
“do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
That is what resurrection looks like.

The light of the risen Christ reveals
resurrection all around us.
The voice of the risen Christ commands us:
“Do not be afraid.
I am the first and the last, the one who lives.
Once I was dead, 

but now I am alive forever and ever.
I hold the keys to death 

and the netherworld.”
The love of the risen Christ 
raises us with him from the tomb
so that we may love as he loves,
without counting the cost,
without measuring mercy,
without fearing to fall,
for his mercy will bear us up. 
So let our lives be 
what resurrection looks like,
and let us pray that God, 
who is merciful,
will have mercy on us all.

Palm Sunday

Readings: Lk 19:28-40; Is 50:4-7; Ph 2:6-11; Lk 22:14—23:56

VIDEO

We like our leaders strong.

We like them strong because 
we want them to protect us.
We like them strong because
the world is a tough place
and if you don’t want 
to get pushed around 
you need someone
who can meet force with force,
who can return blow for blow.
We like them strong because 
we see our leaders as role models,
and would like to be strong ourselves,
or at least to feel the warm, reflected glow
of our leader’s strength.

Alas for us Christians.
There is a moment where Jesus 
looks like he might turn out to be 
the strong leader that we want.
There is a moment 
when he rides into Jerusalem 
greeted by rapturous cries of
“Blessed is the king who come
in the name of the Lord,”
and we think, 
“Now it’s going to happen;
here at last is the one 
who will keep us safe
and make our enemies pay.”

Alas for us Christians,
that’s not how it turned out.
Our leader did not 
make our enemies pay.
Our enemies betrayed him
and arrested him
and lied about him
and mocked him
and tortured him
and killed him.
And what did he do?
What did he say?

Alas for us Christians, he said, 
“let the greatest among you 
be as the youngest,
and the leader as the servant….
I am among you 
as the one who serves.”
He said, 
“not my will but yours be done”
as his sweat became like drops of blood
falling on the ground.
He said,
“Stop, no more of this!”
when his disciples drew their weapons
to defend him.
He said,
“Father, forgive them, 
they know not what they do.”
He said,
“Father, into your hands 
I commend my spirit”

Are we disappointed?
Are we disappointed that he,
who was in the form of God,
“emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave…
humbled himself, 
becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross”?
Are we disappointed that he seems
to have surrendered his power
just when we needed it most?
Are we disappointed not merely
because he did not meet force with force,
did not return blow for blow,
but let himself be humiliated
before the watching world,
giving his back to those who beat him,
his cheeks to those who plucked his beard;
not shielding his face from buffets and spitting.
Are we disappointed that he didn’t rage 
against the dying of the light?

But what if we are wrong?
Not wrong to want a strong leader,
but wrong about what counts as true strength.
Not wrong to want our enemies defeated,
but wrong about how that defeat takes place.
Not wrong to aspire to emulate our leader,
but wrong about what it means to follow his way.
What if strength 
is found in humility?
What if the defeat of our enemies 
is found in forgiving them?
What if the path to glory
is the way of the Cross?

Now we enter into this mystery—
the mystery of strength found in weakness,
the mystery of victory found in mercy,
the mystery of life found in death.

Alas for us Christians 
if we turn our backs on this mystery,
preferring the ruler of this world,
with his blustering power and his empty show,
to the true king who comes in the Lord’s name.

Alas for us Christians if we walk amid 
the halls of worldly power,
rather than walking the path of the Cross,
the path that leads to the empty tomb 
and the halls of heaven.

Alas for us Christians if we trust in those
who have no power to save,
rather than praying that God, 
who is merciful,
might have mercy on us all.
Father, forgive us,
if we know not what we do.

Lent 5

Readings: Ez 37:12-14; Rm 8:8-11; Jn 11:1-45

“Jesus wept.”
Lazarus has died, 
but it is not the thought 
of Lazarus in the tomb
that wakens weeping in Jesus;
it is the sight of Mary mourning,
grief-stricken at the death of her brother.
He weeps not for Lazarus,
for Jesus is the resurrection and the life
and knows that he will soon 
call forth Lazarus from the tomb.
He weeps with Mary and the others
so that he may meet them in their mourning.

Jesus wept.
He weeps because he is truly human—
like us in all things but sin—
and the truly human thing 
to do in the face of death
is to weep together.
The God who in the beginning
gathers the waters into oceans,
who in the waters of the Great Flood,
cleanses the earth,
who at the Red Sea parts the waters
to save his people,
who in the wilderness
brings forth water from the rock,
now draws tears from his human eyes
so to be like us in all things but sin—
not feigning sorrow,
not play-acting humanity, 
but knowing what only a human being can know:
the experience of human grief from the inside.

Jesus wept.
He is “perturbed and deeply troubled,”
because, though sinless,
he still bears the weight of sin,
and the weight of sin is sorrow.
He mourns at the tomb of Lazarus—
not as those who mourn without hope,
for he is himself the world’s hope,
the resurrection and the life—
but still he mourns.
He mourns the sheer fact of death,
“the veil that veils all peoples,
the web that is woven over all nations,”
the sign of our exile from the God of life.
He mourns the decay of the flesh 
that God once formed from the dust
and breathed his own Spirit into.
He mourns to see God’s work undone.

Jesus wept.
He weeps because he does not want us 
to weep hopelessly without him.
Jesus stands outside the tomb of Lazarus,
but he knows the day is close at hand
when he will enter into his own tomb
so that the place of death 
might become the place of life.
He wants to dwell in us in our weeping,
to breathe his Spirit in us once again,
to give life to our mortal bodies.
And he wants us to dwell in him,
to be knit together as members of his body,
so that just as he knows our weeping,
we in turn may know his joy.

Jesus wept.
And in weeping he teaches us 
that while we are still journeying in this life
pain and sorrow and hardship remain,
even for those who have been reborn in Christ.
Indeed, for those of us who seek to follow Jesus,
in some sense our sorrow must grow greater, 
for we are called to imitate our Master
in making our own the suffering of the world.
The hunger of the poor,
the pain of the sick,
the fear of those afflicted by war,
the grief of those in mourning,
the uncertainty of the displaced,
the cravings of the addict,
the despair of the faithless,
innocent suffering,
guilty suffering,
all of this must touch our heart,
all of this is given us to bear
together as members of Christ’s body.

Our catechumens, who will be baptized at Easter,
come asking to become members of Christ’s body,
not so that they may leave all weeping behind,
as if being a follower of Jesus 
could magically remove the weight of mortal flesh.
They come so that they may weep within him,
so that they may mourn the world’s pain, 
not as those without hope,
but as those who have died through baptism
and have found in those waters
Christ who is resurrection and life.

This day we are bidden to pray 
for those who will soon be baptized.
We pray for them because the struggle 
to strip off your old self
and clothe yourself in Christ
is something none of us can do alone.
And we must pray for ourselves as well,
for we too are engaged in the daily battle
to live for Christ and not for ourselves,
to let his life grow within us
so that we, in some small way,
bring that life into our world’s 

places of death.
As we draw close to the Easter feast,
the feast of resurrection and life,
let us ask for the grace to mourn,
so that God in his mercy
might have mercy on us all.

Lent 4

Readings: 1 Sm 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a; Eph 5:8-14; Jn 9:1-41

VIDEO

In today’s Gospel we have two sorts of blindness.

There is the blindness that Jesus heals
and the kind that, at least in the story, remains unhealed.
The kind that Jesus heals is that of the man born blind—
physical blindness healed with spittle and mud,
an affliction that becomes the occasion 
for God’s power to be displayed in the work in Jesus.

We’re not told what sort of blindness afflicts this man,
and “blindness” can mean a lot of things.
There is the relatively rare condition of total blindness, 
which prevents one from perceiving 
any light whatsoever.
There is the more common condition
of partial blindness or low vision,
in which one can see some light and shapes,
but one’s activities are extremely restricted
by a lack of sight.
There are also cases of legal blindness:
extreme near- or far-sightedness
that diminishes the capacity to see to the point
where one’s daily activities might be impeded.
We also talk about color-blindness,
which is typically more an inconvenience
than it is a true affliction,
but does reduce one’s capacity
to take in visual information.

Then there is the other sort of blindness
depicted in the story,
the spiritual blindness that cannot be healed 
with mud and spittle.
This spiritual blindness is what keeps the Pharisees
from seeing that Jesus is one sent by God.
It is also what makes the disciples presume
that the affliction of the blind man 
must be a punishment for sin. 
We see it in our first reading as well,
in the inability to see in David the shepherd boy
God’s chosen leader of his people.

Just like physical blindness,
there are different kinds and degrees
of spiritual blindness.
There is total spiritual blindness,
in which one is totally cut off 
from any sense of transcendence,
any sense that there might be something more
than the brute material forces of the universe.
I suspect that, like total physical blindness,
this sort of spiritual blindness is comparatively rare,
found mainly in atheists on the internet
who are running as fast as they can
from the religious belief they were raised with.

More common is something analogous
to partial blindness or low vision:
those who sense that there is some larger reality
but cannot identify what it is,
who might call themselves agnostics,
because they are not sure 
what it is they are perceiving,
and so cannot commit to calling it God.

Then there are those who have the spiritual equivalent
of extreme near- or far-sightedness,
those who feel sure of the reality of God
but who cannot quite bring it into focus,
those whose spiritual lives are shapeless,
who might call themselves 
“spiritual but not religious.”

Finally, there are those whose spiritual vision
is perfect in terms of its clarity and definition,
but it lacks a sense of color and vibrancy,
those whose sense of God does not bring them
the joy that it might if they could perceive
the full spectrum of God’s love for the world. 
I suspect that this might describe many of us:
we can recite the creed without crossing our fingers,
but our faith can feel faded and drab,
we feel like we’re missing something.

“Not as man sees does God see.”
God sees the full spectrum:
the power of the weak,
the wisdom of the foolish,
the blessedness of those who are hungry,
who are poor and meek, 
mourning and persecuted.
We might see more or less clearly,
more or less of the spiritual spectrum,
but even those of us who see best 
by the natural light of reason
are blind by comparison with God.
As Thomas Aquinas puts it, 
what our own ability to see shows us
is something perceived only by a few, 
and after much time and effort, 
and still mixed with many errors.

But thanks be to God Jesus has come
to share with us the light of grace and glory,
God’s own light that 
can take away our blindness,
can shows us a world that we, on our own,
can only imagine and hope for.
Washed in the waters of baptism,
filled with the Spirit,
fed at Christ’s banquet,
we have hope to see as God sees,
to see as the saints see:
a clarity that pierces through the fog of sin
to reveal a world saturated with the colors of grace.
“You were once darkness, 
but now you are light in the Lord.
Live as children of light.”

This is what our catechumens are seeking:
to live a children of the light.
Today, as they go through the rite of Scrutiny,
we pray that they may pass from darkness to light,
that they may be safe from error, doubt, and unbelief,
and that they may come one day to see God face to face.
And as we pray for them,
we ought also to pray for ourselves,
for we too are blind to all that grace can show us,
we too can find our faith grown drab and dull,
we too can lose hope to see God in the light of glory.

As we continue our Lenten pilgrimage
let us pray that God would shed his light upon us all
and that God, who is merciful, might have mercy on us all.

Lent 2

Readings: Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 9:28b-36

I was in Los Angeles the past few days
and for most of the time that I was there
it was cloudy and rainy, 
with highs in the mid-50s.
While I was disappointed to miss out 
on sunny California weather,
the native Californians seemed 
far more disconcerted than I was:
where had the sun gone?
What was this stuff falling from the sky?
Perhaps they felt like Peter, James, and John 
in today’s Gospel: “a cloud came 
and cast a shadow over them,
and they became frightened 
when they entered the cloud.”

But I suspect whatever consternation 
might have been felt by the Angelenos
was minor compared to the disciples
on the Mount of Transfiguration. 
Though the Transfiguration of Jesus
is ultimately about the revelation of divine glory
and the hope it engenders in us,
the path to this glory and hope 
seems to pass through darkness and fear,
for the “exodus” that Jesus speaks of 
with Moses and Elijah
will prove to be his passage 
through suffering and death 
to new life on Easter Morning.
For the disciples, the Transfiguration 
is a moment of realization 
that they are lost in a wilderness
and confronted by the living God.
We hear something similar 
in the account of God’s appearance to Abram:
“As the sun was about to set, a trance fell upon Abram,
and a deep, terrifying darkness enveloped him.”
The promised land and offspring are to come,
but first Abram must sit in fearsome darkness
amid dismembered animals and carrion-eating birds.
On the journey to the land of promise,
divine glory sometimes looks to us
like cloud and darkness and perplexity. 
Pope Leo the Great, 
commenting on the Transfiguration,
says, “The way to rest is through toil,
The way to life is through death.”

Of course, we in the Church 
hear and say these sorts of things all the time,
and sometimes we reduce them to platitudes like
“you’ve got to carry the cross to wear the crown,” or
“God never closes a door without opening a window.”
These kinds of things make sense,
until, that is, you find yourself enshrouded
in a deep terrifying darkness.
You receive a frightening medical diagnosis
and you don’t know what the days and weeks will bring.
The work that gave you meaning and purpose is taken from you
and it is not clear if you will find anything to replace it.
Your beloved parish closes 
and you wonder if you will ever 
find a new spiritual home.
“The way to rest is through toil,
The way to life is through death.”
But now you are forced to ask yourself:
do I really believe this?
Can this really be true?
Is there rest on the other side of toil?
Is there life on the other side of death?

One way to think about Lent 
is that it is a time of God 
training our vision
so that we can glimpse his glory
even within the cloud,
even amid the deep terrifying darkness.
Writing to the Philippians, 
Paul criticizes those for whom,
as he strikingly puts it,
“their God is their stomach.”
That one certainly hits close to home.
How much time do I spend amassing things
that I think will satisfy my deepest cravings?
How many things or achievements do I grasp
in the hope that they will afford me security,
that they will allow me to avoid pain,
that they will keep fear and loss at bay?
But then the cloud descends
and a deep terrifying darkness envelops me
that no thing or achievement can illuminate.

Through practices of prayer, fasting, and charity,
Lent calls us to not let our minds 
be occupied with earthly things.
Not because earthly things are not important,
but because we can see their true value
only in the light of eternity,
only in the light cast by the transfigured Jesus. 
The fear and anxiety and loss that come
from our attachment to earthly things
cannot be magicked away by platitudes 
about crosses and crowns 
and doors and windows;
illness and uncertainty and mourning are real
and we should not pretend that they are not.
But God is more real.
The love of Jesus is more real.
The power of the Spirit is more real.
Lent invites us to loosen our grip
on our fear and anxiety and loss
so that Christ can take all these things 
into his heart,
and carry them with him in his toil
so that we can find rest,
carry them with him through his death
so that we can find life.

It is precisely because 
fear and anxiety and loss are real
that we must place them in the heart of Jesus,
for it is through his toil that we find our rest,
it is through his death that we find our life.
He has entered the cloud 
and the terrifying darkness
so that he can be our light.
Let us allow God this Lent
to bear our burdens
and show us the light of his mercy
so that God in his mercy
might have mercy on us all.

Lent 1

Readings: Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13

Temptation is often a subtle thing.
If it works the way the devil intends,
you may not even know you’re being tempted.
In our Gospel today,
temptation takes a fairly dramatic form:
Satan appearing and speaking directly to Jesus.
Perhaps he knew that Jesus 
would be able to see through any ruse,
and so he thought he might as well 
take a direct approach.
But with us, temptation rarely if ever
takes such an obvious form.

Think about it:
you start out in your life’s work 
with high ideals, firm principles,
and a desire to make the world a better place,
but then there comes the pay raise
or the promotion,
or the recognition,
or the power,
and all you are asked to do
is to lower your ideals just a tad,
to bend your principles just a little,
to make yourself just slightly less
than that person you set out to be
and one day you find
that there is nothing you will not do
to keep your pay or position or notoriety or power,
that your life has become 
only about you and your ambitions.

Or you and your spouse begin life together
promising to love, honor, and cherish
until you are parted by death,
but then comes routine and a bit of boredom
and distractions and other people and things
in which to invest your time,
and one day you find
that those promises you made
seem like something said by someone else,
and you no longer feel bound by your vows,
no longer feel bound
to love or honor or cherish.

Or you have a moment 
of profound certainty that God is real 
and that God’s reign is the pearl of great price 
for which you should give your all,
but then the feeling begins to fade,
and other things—
things good and worthy in themselves—
begin to assert their own claims on your life,
and in the busy hours of your day 
prayer gets crowded out,
and you tell yourself it is enough to make it
two Sundays out of four to Mass,
or you say you don’t really need 
the sacrament of reconciliation,
since you can settle your sins with God yourself,
and one day you find
that you can’t remember the last time
that you took a moment to pray,
or to receive Christ in the sacraments,
or to examine your conscience
and reckon with your sins,
and God seems like a once close friend
with whom you have lost touch.

No drama.
No devil with horns offering you
riches or power or glory
in exchange for you soul.
Just fleeting thoughts 
like water dripping on a stone,
tiny temptations that gradually
wear away your soul.
And one day you will look around
and no longer remember who you were
and what and who you once loved
and why you tried to live a life
that was about something more than yourself.

And the worst part is,
living this diminished life won’t even bother you;
it will seem natural and normal.

Lent is a call to face these temptations
and to return to ourselves,
to rediscover the convictions and desires
with which we set out on our journey,
above all our commitment
to the God we meet in Jesus Christ. 

It is for us what the offering of firstfruits were
for the ancient Israelites.
As described in the book of Deuteronomy,
this was not simply a sacrificial ritual
but the occasion to recall who they were
and who God had been for them:
“we cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers,
and he heard our cry and saw our affliction.”
It was a call to gather themselves 
together once more before the face of God
and bow down in worship and gratitude.

So too for us, 
Lent must be the occasion to recall who we are
by hearing the Word who has drawn near us,
the occasion to confess with our mouths 
that Jesus is Lord
and to believe in our hearts 
that God raised him from the dead,
and to let that Word dwell within us
so that our diminished selves 
might be enlarged.

This might sound dramatic,
but grace is typically no more dramatic 
than temptation is.
If temptation rarely takes the form 
of a horned devil blandishing enticements before us,
grace rarely takes the form 
of a shining angel grasping us by the hand.
Grace too is something that manifests itself
in the everyday events of our journey through life.
It too is like drops of water on a stone:
present in smalls acts of selflessness,
seemingly trivial gestures of love,
stolen moments of prayer,
the day-by-day ordinary life of the Christian,
the week-by-week celebration 
of Christ’s death and resurrection,
the year-by-year return to God in which
we offer small sacrifices with great love.
Rather than wearing away the true self 
that God has called us to be,
these tiny drops of grace 
transform and refresh us,
they make our souls blossom forth in beauty,
the first fruits of the harvest of God’s reign.

Let us pray that God would grant us a holy Lent
in which we turn from temptation
and bow down before the Lord who has loved us,
that the drops of grace would water
the parched land of our souls,
and that God in his mercy
would have mercy on us all.

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Jeremiah 17:5-8; 1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20; Luke 6:17, 20-26

VIDEO

Jesus says a lot of things

in this brief series of blessings and woes.
Some of them are surprising:
the poor possess the kingdom of God;
the hungry will be filled;
the weeping will laugh;
those hated, excluded, and insulted
will receive a great reward.
Some of them are disturbing:
woe to the rich,
whose reward is earthly, not heavenly;
woe to the full,
who will find themselves hungry;
woe to the laughing,
who will find themselves weeping; 
woe to those who are spoken well of,
because this is the sign of a false prophet.

In these few words, Jesus says a lot:
a lot of things that surprise and disturb us,
a lot of things that seem unlikely
in terms of how we think the world works,
and a lot of things that call 
our own lives into question.
Am I one of the poor, the hungry,
the weeping, and the hated,
or am I among the rich and satiated,
the laughing and admired?
How must my life change
in light of all this that Jesus says?

Jesus says a lot of things 
in these few words,
but something he doesn’t say is, 
“I don’t really mean all of this.”
He doesn’t say,
“This doesn’t apply to you.”
He doesn’t say,
“Feel free to ignore this 
if it doesn’t fit in 
with your plans or worldview.”
These blessing and woes 
are given to us by Jesus
to tell us how the world is
when seen from God’s perspective,
and to direct us how to live
in the world as God sees it.

Maybe the reason 
that we try to convince ourselves
that Jesus didn’t mean what he said,
or that it doesn’t apply to us,
or that it is optional
is that we don’t yet see the world
the way that God sees it.
We see a world in which the poor 
are simply losers in the game of life,
the hungry haven’t worked hard enough,
the weeping need to get themselves together,
and the reviled and rejected need to learn 
how to go along to get along in the real world.
Jesus’ words seem to ask us to become
everything that our world tells us to avoid 
and that it blames people for being;
his words ask us to lament being 
everything that our world tells us to desire
and that it praises people for attaining.

But we are often like the ones 
of whom the prophet Jeremiah speaks,
who trust in human beings,
and seek their strength in flesh.
And we are this way
because we don’t see the possibilities
that Jesus has unleashed in the world
through his life and his death
and, above all, his resurrection.

St. Paul writes to the Corinthians,
“If Christ has not been raised, 
your faith is vain.”
The blessing and woes 
that Jesus lays before us
only make sense in a world 
in which the dead do not stay dead.
To see the world 
through Jesus’s resurrection—
to see the world with Easter eyes—
is to see a world in which 
the rejected are raised.
It is to see a world in which 
the poor and the hungry and the weeping
have hope in God for food and consolation,
for the kingdom is now 
already appearing among us.
The resurrection of Jesus 
is like an underground stream
that has burst through 
to the surface of the earth
to sweep away the old world
of riches and luxuries,
of shallow joys and hollow praise,
to water the dry land of our hearts,
carving new channels of grace.

St. Paul writes,
“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,
we are the most pitiable people of all.”
Commenting on Paul’s words,
the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote,
“Belief in the resurrection is a high-stakes game 
in which the player has bet the bank 
and, if there is no resurrection, loses.” 
If we listen to the words of Jesus
about those who are 
poor and hungry,
weeping and despised,
and he turns out to be 
just one more good man
who has gone down 
into death’s darkness,
then the world is right to pity 
our foolishness and weakness.
But if “Christ has been raised from the dead,
the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep,”
then our foolishness is wisdom
and our weakness is power.

So in the end, it comes down to this:
do you believe that Jesus Christ is alive?
Do you hear in his blessings and woes
not a voice from the distant past
that echoes faintly down the ages 
in the memory of his followers,
but the living voice of the one
who is calling you from death to life?
Do you hear the voice of one
calling you forth from the tomb
of riches and self-satisfaction,
of shallow joy and empty glory?
Do you hear his voice this day
ringing in your ears 
as it rang in the ears of his disciples,
calling you to follow him 
on a journey whose destination 
you cannot see,
but which faith tells you 
ends in the mystery 
of God’s eternal love?

Hear the Good News:
Jesus is alive
and he is calling you to follow him:
from death to life,
from woe to blessing.
Let us pray for the grace
to answer that call,
and that God, in his mercy,
might have mercy on us all.