Easter Sunday

Readings: Acts 10:34a, 37-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18

“Seeing is believing.”

It is a phrase by which we express credulity:

“I didn’t think that Tide could get out stubborn stains,

but I saw an advertisement on TV that convinced me.”

It is also a phrase by which we express incredulity:

“Well, Congress may have passed healthcare reform,

but I’ll believe that it works when my insurance premiums go down.”

“Aunt Martha claims that UFOs land in Druid Hill Park every July 4th,

but I’ve never see it for myself.”

“You say that you are going to change,

but talk to me when you’ve been six-months sober.”

“Seeing is believing.”

We also sometimes apply this principle

when it comes to religious faith.

Students in my classes at Loyola

will often venture the opinion

that faith was easier for people in the time of Jesus

because God worked a lot more miracles back then,

and that if they could have seen a miracle –

Jesus healing someone

or walking on the water

or feeding the multitude –

then they could believe because, after all,

seeing is believing.

But the Gospels repeatedly make the point that,

at least when it comes to Jesus,

seeing is not believing,

at least not necessarily.

Again and again in the Gospels, Jesus will work a miracle –

sometimes a quite spectacular miracle –

and some of those who see it believe,

but many of those who see it do not.

Indeed, in our journey through Holy Week

we have heard how the disciples,

those who had been with Jesus since Galilee

and who had seen his mighty works,

all abandon him in the end,

because though they had seen,

they had not believed.

Even in the face of the mightiest work of all,

Jesus’ resurrection,

seeing is not always believing.

John’s account of the resurrection tells us

that at the empty tomb

the beloved disciple “saw and believed,”

but this was not the case for everyone there in that garden.

Mary Magdalen, who finds the stone rolled away from the tomb

and who summons Peter and the beloved disciple,

tells them “They have taken the Lord from the tomb

and we don’t know where they put him.”

She doesn’t specify who “they” are,

but presumably she thinks that someone has stolen Jesus’ body.

For Mary Magdalene, seeing the empty tomb is not believing.

Once the disciples return home, Mary stays at the tomb, weeping.

She peers into the tomb and sees two angels in white

who ask her why she weeps,

and the responds again that “they” have taken her Lord away.

For Mary Magdalene, seeing the angels is not believing.

Then she turns and sees Jesus,

but she thinks that he must be the gardener

and she asks him if perhaps he is the one

who has taken away Jesus’ body.

For Mary Magdalene, seeing the risen Jesus himself is not believing.

 

She must have turned away from him in disappointment,

because John tells us that when he speaks her name

she turns back to him.

She turns back because now, suddenly, she recognizes him,

and she says to him “rabbouni” – “my teacher.”

There is nothing there to see that was not there before,

but now Mary believes.

She believes because the risen Jesus calls her by name.

Gregory the Great wrote that it is as if Jesus were saying to her,

“Recognize him who recognizes you” (Homily 25).

Mary believes not because of what she sees

but because she stands before the one

who knows her to the very depths of her heart

and who reveals himself to her there.

The resurrection is surely something that happens to Jesus:

the one who was killed on Good Friday

is the one who lives on Easter morning;

his tomb is empty and his body is raised.

But it is also something that happens to his followers.

The resurrection involves not simply a change in Jesus,

but a change in those who, like Mary Magdalene,

will become witnesses to his resurrection.

Paul tells us in the letter to the Colossians

that we have died with Christ,

so that our life is hidden with Christ in God,

and that we have been raised with Christ,

so that we ought to seek that which is above.

Seeing is only believing if the one who sees is transformed.

Were we to stand at the empty tomb,

were we to see angels

and the risen Christ himself,

we would not, could not, believe

until the risen one calls us by our name,

summoning our belief

in the good news of the resurrection.

Jesus is truly risen,

but to know this we must be risen with him;

along with him we too must rise from death:

the death of sin and sorrow,

the death of doubt and disappointment.

To truly recognize the resurrected Lord

we must experience

not simply his rising from death,

but also our own.

Otherwise, the story of the resurrection

is just another tale

about something that supposedly happened

a long time ago

in a land far, far away.

During Lent we have focused on a phrase

from the letter to the Ephesians:

“Let the eyes of your heart be enlightened.”

We have prayed in this season of Lent

that God would help us to see

with the eyes of the heart,

that our vision might be transformed.

And now as Lent blossoms forth into Easter

we continue that prayer.

We don’t simply want to see,

but we want to see with the eyes of faith,

the eyes with which Mary Magdalene

was able to see the risen Jesus.

We want the faith that will allow us

to recognize him who recognizes us,

to know him as a living presence

in this community of faith:

in the words of scripture,

in the sacraments,

and in one another.

We want the faith that enlightens the eyes of our hearts.

Because seeing is not believing;

rather, it is believing that allows us to see.

Easter Vigil

Readings: Genesis 1:1-2:2; Exodus 14:15-15:1; Isaiah 54:5-15; 55:1-11; Baruch 3:9-15, 32-4:4; Ezekiel 36:16-17a, 18-28; Romans 6:3-11; Luke24:1-12

“Evening came, and morning followed. . .”

This phrase, along with the refrain “God saw how good it was,”

punctuates the story of creation

found in the opening chapter of the book of Genesis.

And throughout the history of God’s saving work,

by which God seeks to restore and perfect that creation,

we see evening and morning

punctuating the lives of God’s people.

In the book of Exodus, evening comes

as the Israelites camp at the edge of the Red Sea

with the Egyptian armies bearing down upon them,

intent upon their enslavement and destruction.

But God parts the sea for them and they pass over to safety

and as morning comes God closes the sea back,

destroying the Egyptians.

Evening came, and morning followed.

In the book of the prophet Isaiah,

after the long night of exile in Babylon,

the light of God’s love dawns upon the Israelites

as they return to their homeland,

and they are invited: “come to the water. . .

come, receive grain and eat. . . drink wine and milk.”

The night’s long fast is ended as the people of Israel

return to their promised land and its abundant fare.

Evening came, and morning followed.

The word of God comes to Ezekiel,

so that he might speak to God’s people,

to tell them that though they have defiled themselves

with deeds of darkness,

God will cleanse them,

and place within them a new heart and a new spirit,

hearts of living flesh in place of their stony hearts.

The night of God’s wrath

gives way to the light of forgiveness.

Evening came, and morning followed.

Dawn follows sunset,

morning follows evening,

down through history

until we come to that morning when,

“at daybreak on the first day of the week

the women who had come from Galilee with Jesus

took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.”

Day is breaking after what must have seemed to those women

to be one of the longest and darkest nights of their lives.

This is a morning that brings with it no joy, no hope,

but only the sorrowful but necessary task

of preparing the dead body

of the one in whom they had placed all their hopes.

For them, what lies dead in the tomb

is not simply the teacher from Nazareth

but hope itself.

Though the sun may crest the horizon,

and its light fall upon the world,

for these women it seems

that an evening has come

that no morning will follow;

they are dwelling in a darkness of despair

that the sun cannot dispel.

But evening and morning,

darkness and light,

despair and hope:

these are in the hands of God.

As the prophet Baruch reminds us,

God is the one “who dismisses the light, and it departs;

calls it, and it obeys trembling.”

On Easter morning,

at the mouth of an empty tomb,

the women learn what our Exultet proclaims,

that Jesus Christ is “the Morning Star which never sets. . .

that Morning Star, who came back from the dead,

and shed his peaceful light on all humankind.”

The women learn that Christ is risen from the tomb,

and their hope is risen with him.

Evening came, and morning followed,

and the hope that was resurrected with Christ on Easter morning

is a light that will never set.

As Paul says, “Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more;

death no longer has power over him.”

And we know that this is true

because this history of salvation is our history as well.

The death and resurrection of Christ

is one that we mystically share in baptism.

“If we have died with Christ,

we believe that we shall also live with him.”

This is the mystery into which Laura will be baptized,

the mystery of Christ’s saving death and resurrection.

This is the mystery that Dan will reaffirm

in his reception into the Church.

Of course, as all of us who are baptized know –

and as Laura no doubt suspects –

after our rebirth in Christ

evening still comes

and morning still follows.

Even for those who have died and been raised with Christ in baptism

there is the daily dying and rising,

an evening and morning,

that remains the fabric of the Christian life.

Yet in the resurrection of Christ God has given us,

like those women at the tomb at daybreak,

a rebirth of hope.

And so we live, with the alternation of

evening and morning,

woe and wellbeing,

sorrow and joy,

but always knowing that Christ’s victory over death

has changed the world forever,

so that even in the darkest night

the light is still with us,

even if we can only see it

with the eyes of faith, hope and love.

“At daybreak on the first day of the week. . .” –

on the first day,

the day on which God said “let there be light” –

God speaks again:

let the morning of light and life

follow the evening of darkness and death.

Evening has come and morning has followed,

and it is the first day once again:

the victory of light over darkness;

the victory of life over death.

Christ has risen!

Death is defeated!

Let there be light!

Palm Sunday (C)

Readings: Luke 19:28-40

Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Luke 22:14-23:56

So, who killed Jesus?

Who is responsible for his death?

Of course we believe that the death of Jesus

is somehow part of God’s plan for human salvation,

but we might still ask about the human actors in this drama.

This has been a question of particularly intense interest

among Christian theologians and others

since the 1950s when,

in the wake of the slaughter of millions of Jews by the Nazis,

Christians began to reassess the long-held view

that the Jewish people as a whole

were collectively responsible for Jesus’ death

and therefore, as a people, cursed by God.

For Catholics, this process of reassessment eventually led in 1965

to the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate,

which declared that the Jewish people did not share

collective or hereditary guilt for Jesus’ death

and that “the Jews should not be presented

as rejected or accursed by God.”

Which then leaves us with the question:

if not the Jews, then who?

Where can we lay the blame?

Whom can we hold responsible?

Today’s passion Gospel from Luke

seems to be of limited help here,

since the story it tells is one

in which responsibility is passed around like a hot potato.

The leaders of the Jewish people

would like Jesus out of the picture because he is a blasphemer

and because he has just enough of a following

that his disciples might cause serious trouble

that would bring down the wrath of the Romans on the whole city.

But they don’t want to alienate the crowds

who had greeted Jesus upon his entry into Jerusalem,

so they would like the Roman governor, Pilate,

to take care of the problem.

Pilate does not see Jesus as much of a threat,

and he waffles and vacillates and hems and haws,

not because he wants to acquit an innocent man,

but because he wants someone else to make the decision for him.

So he sends him to Herod,

the ruler of Jesus’ home province of Galilee.

Herod is initially curious, but eventually disappointed

when Jesus won’t perform tricks for him,

so he sends him back to Pilate.

Finally, Pilate, strengthened by Herod’s contempt for Jesus

and incited by the crowd

and the advice of the religious leaders of the people,

agrees to have Jesus executed.

So who is responsible?

Whom can we blame?

There seems to be plenty of blame to go around,

and lots of plausible candidates to hang it on.

But it is unsettling not to have a clear scapegoat to blame,

someone whom I can clearly identify as evil,

the sort of monster who would do the kind of things

I would never do.

It was so much clearer when it was “them” – the Jews –

who were responsible.

It is unsettling not to have a scapegoat,

because it leaves me open to asking myself

if perhaps I might not be all that different

from those who passed Jesus around like a hot potato.

Perhaps I too, like the Jewish leaders,

want those who disturb my peace simply to go away.

Perhaps I too, like Pilate,

am unwilling to act on what I know is true and good.

Perhaps I too, like Herod,

want only the sort of savior who will perform tricks at my behest.

Those responsible for the death of Jesus were not monsters

who did something that I would never do;

they were ordinary people who did what I do on a daily basis.

Their sins are my sins.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world:

enlighten the eyes of our hearts and have mercy on us.

Lent 4

Readings: Joshua 5:9a, 10-12; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Luke 151-3, 11-32

I had a homily that I prepared and delivered
yesterday at the 4:00 Mass
that was, if I do say so myself,
spiritually rich and theologically astute (as usual).
But between then and now something happened.
When meeting last night with our RCIA candidates, Laura and Dan,
Laura asked about the latest wave of reports coming out of Europe
of cases of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy,
and the perhaps worse crime of covering such things up by bishops.
So we talked and, as usual, I had no particularly good answers.
I had no good answer to the question of why one would want
to become part of a Church that would allow such things.
I had no good answer to the question of how one reconciles
the joyous and life-giving aspects of the Church
with what can only be called
the dark and demonic power of evil
that seems to infect the Church
and not to be going away any time very soon.
It is beginning to feel like a nightmare
from which I cannot wake up,
and I find myself having to face the ugly truth
that this is no bad dream, but reality.

And the reality is that the Church has, like the prodigal son,
wandered into the distant land of sin and alienation from God.
As someone who studies the history of the Church and Theology,
I am well aware that in every age
we, the Church, have fallen short of God’s will for us,
and there have, believe it or not, been eras
when the leadership of the Church
was even more corrupt, more venal, more scandalous
than it is today.
I am also well aware that matters are complex,
and the media often doesn’t get things quite right
when it comes to the Church,
wanting a sensational story
rather than the complex and messy truth.
But such historical perspective
and such awareness of complexity
are little comfort when one reads yet again,
not simply of priests and deacons and religious
who have used their status to abuse the vulnerable,
but also of bishops and other leaders
who conspire to hide these crimes.

This is not a bad dream from which we can awaken,
but a horrible reality that must be changed.
Indeed, the dream seems to be
our illusion that everything is alright.
So we ask ourselves,
what hope is there for change?
What hope can we find that the Church will,
like the prodigal son,
come to her senses and realize
that she has been longing for the food of swine
and say, “I shall get up and go to my father
and I shall say to him,
‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
I no longer deserve to be called your son.’”?
Every time I think the Church has learned this lesson,
every time I think we have turned the corner,
I find myself back in the distant land,
feeding the swine, far from God.

We seem unable to come to our senses,
unable to recognize the truth of our situation,
unable to wake from our illusion
that the problems have been fixed.

In all this I can only cling to the promise of Christ
that the gates of hell
shall not prevail against the Church –
despite the best efforts of her leaders.
I cling to the belief that the Church is the body of Christ
and that we are joined to Christ our head
and that his graces can still flow into this body
despite our sins and failings.
I keep returning to one of the more enigmatic statements
by Paul in our second reading today:
“for our sake [God] made him to be sin who did not know sin,
so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”

The entire context of the parable of the prodigal son in Luke’s gospel
is a controversy with the scribes and Pharisees
over Jesus’ willingness to share a table with sinners,
his unwillingness to dissociate himself from those
who live their lives alienated from God’s covenant.
Jesus’ solidarity with sinners means that no land is so distant
that the God who was in Christ reconciling the world to himself
is not there with us.
Jesus has joined himself to humanity,
becoming like us in all things but sin.
But though he himself remains faithful to God and does not sin,
he still, as it were, knows our sin from the inside.
Indeed, he not only knows our sin, he suffers it.
In his cross, he knows both the anguish of the sinner
and of the sinner’s victim.
He knows the evasions of the abuser,
the crooked ways of the human heart,
and the pain of the abused child.

I have no adequate answers to the hard questions of Laura and Dan,
no ready reply when asked how the Church – indeed, how God –
can allow such things.
But I do know that Jesus Christ has made the journey
into the distant land of sin,
not just to share the misery of our alienation from God,
but to be light in that land of darkness,
to reveal our sin and to awaken us from our illusions,
so that we may come to ourselves
and say “I will get up and go to my Father.”
In the distant land of alienation from God,
the land of hunger and death,
he is the one who arises to return to his Father
and in his returning he can bring us back with him.

During Lent we have been focusing
on Paul’s exhortation in the letter to the Ephesians:
“Let the eyes of your heart be enlightened.”
I pray this even more fervently today:
O God, enlighten the eyes of my heart
so that I may understand myself and you;
enlighten the eyes of your Church’s heart,
so that we might arise with Christ this Easter
and return to your embrace. Amen.

Lent 1

Readings: Deut. 26:4-10; Rom. 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13

In our first reading, from the book of Deuteronomy,

we hear Moses giving instructions to the Israelites

on how to celebrate the offering of their first fruits at harvest time.

Given that today is the (long-delayed) beginning

of the Archbishop’s annual appeal,

the temptation to focus this homily

on the incredible generosity of the Israelites in their giving,

and to try to draw some contemporary parallel,

is almost overwhelming.

But, strengthened by our Lord’s example in today’s Gospel reading,

I will resist that temptation

and simply say, “Let those who have ears to hear. . .”

Instead, I would draw your attention

to the narrative that is ritually recited

prior to the offering of the gifts.

It is as if he Israelites must remind themselves of who they are

before they bring the fruit of their life and labor before the Lord.

“My father was a wandering Aramean

who went down to Egypt with a small household

and lived there as an alien.

But there he became a nation great,

strong, and numerous.”

The Israelites – God’s covenant people – are to recall

how they left the land God had given them

and lived as aliens in Egypt, and prospered for a while.

“When the Egyptians maltreated and oppressed us,

imposing hard labor upon us,

we cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers,

and he heard our cry and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.”

The Israelites are to recall

how they came to be oppressed by the Egyptians,

and how, though they had forgotten God,

God did not forget them.

“He brought us out of Egypt with his strong hand

and outstretched arm,

with terrifying power, with signs and wonders;

and bringing us into this country,

he gave us this land flowing with milk and honey.”

The Israelites are to recall how God

saved them from their oppression

and brought them to the land

that has produced the fruit that they now offer to God.

It is only then,

when they have remembered who they are, and whose they are,

that they can freely offer back to God

the gifts that God has first given to them.

Why this ritual recitation?

Why tell over again the story

that they all probably know pretty well any way?

Well, it is easy to forget who you are.

The Israelites were constantly tempted to think

that they were the people of other gods

rather than the People of the one true God,

who had saved them from oppression.

And for us, too, it is easy to forget who we are.

Not, of course, that we forget our names;

but with all the clamor of the world and its allurements,

we can forget the deepest truth about ourselves –

that we are God’s people and disciples of God Son –

and begin to think that we are something else:

maybe a wonder-worker who can, and must, solve everyone’s problems

by turning stones into bread;

maybe a power-broker who can, and must, break a few eggs

to get done what needs to be done;

maybe even a minor celebrity who can, and must, bask

in the admiration of others.

In our Gospel today we hear how Jesus resisted the temptation

to think of himself in these ways

because he remembered who he truly was:

the Messiah who must give himself over

to the way of cross and resurrection.

And we can resist these same temptations

if we remember who we are.

This is one way to think about what Lent means.

Lent is a time to remember

that we are God’s people and disciples of God’s son.

It is a time in while, by our disciplines

of prayer and fasting and alms-giving,

we let God teach us once again who we are and whose we are.

In the RCIA, Lent is known as

“The Period of Purification and Enlightenment.”

During this time our catechumen, Laura,

and our candidate for full communion, Dan,

will undertake the final period of their preparation

for reception of the Easter sacraments.

It is, as the Rite of Christian Initiation says,

a time intended “to enlighten . . . [their] minds and hearts . . .

with a deeper knowledge of Christ the Savior” (RCIA §139).

For it is in coming to know Christ more deeply

that they will come to know who they really are.

For they will know that it was for them that Christ gave himself over

to the way of cross and resurrection.

For us, too, Lent is a time of purification and enlightenment.

Perhaps we are used to thinking of it as a time of purification,

when we try to wean ourselves away from bad habits

by giving stuff up.

But it is also, and even more so, a time of enlightenment,

a time in which we seek to let God’s light shine in our hearts,

by removing from our lives those things that cast the shadows

that keep us from seeing the deepest, truest,

and most real thing about ourselves:

the fact that God has called us to be God’s people

and disciples of God’s Son.

During Lent, whether praying at Mass or praying in private,

ask God to give you the light you need

to know yourself as you really are,

as God knows you to be.

So as we pray during this period of enlightenment

for those who are preparing

to receive the Easter sacraments,

we pray also for ourselves,

that God will enlighten the eyes of our hearts.

Lent is a time to turn away from the false images of ourselves

that we are tempted to take as true –

those images that would seem to make us greater than we are,

and those images that would seem to make us less than we are –

so that we can see ourselves as we truly are:

those wandering souls whom God has heard

and rescued from the oppression of sin

and brought into a land flowing with milk and honey.

Then, with the eyes of our hearts enlightened,

remembering who we are and whose we are,

we can offer back to God the gift of our life and labor

that God so generously gives to us each day.

The Baptism of the Lord

Readings: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

“Are you saved?”

Have you ever had anyone ask you that?

It is a question that tends to make Catholics nervous.

Many years ago, when I was young and foolish,

I spent a summer in Alaska working at a seafood processing plant.

If that in itself is not sufficient evidence that I was young and foolish,

I should add that, at the end of my summer in Alaska,

I decided that I would hitchhike home to South Carolina.

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time

(did I mention that I was young and foolish?).

And in many ways, it was very educational.

One of the things I learned

is that when traveling across a vast space, like the Canadian plains.

you can easily lose any sense of forward progress,

especially when it is your fifth consecutive hour

standing on the side of the highway with your thumb out.

I also learned that one group of people who habitually pick up hitchhikers

are Christians who are on the lookout for potential converts.

I met several of these folks on this particular journey,

but one who stands out in my mind was a Baptist minister

who picked me up somewhere outside of Medicine Hat, Alberta,

and took me all the way to Regina, Saskatchewan.

This was a journey of several hours

in which our conversation consisted pretty much of a single topic:

was I saved?

He would ask, and I would reply,

“Well, I don’t really know. I’d like to think I am trying.”

He would in turn reply, “If you were saved, you would know it,

because you would believe in Jesus as your personal Lord and savior.”

To which I would say,

“Well, I believe in God and Jesus, but I still don’t know if I will be saved.

A lot could happen between now and when I die.”

And he would respond, “If you’re saved, you know it.”

And so forth and so on,

from Medicine Hat through Swift Current and Moose Jaw, on to Regina –

a conversation going nowhere at great length.

So, are you saved?

This might seem to be a simple case

of a classic difference between Catholics and Protestants:

Protestants believe that they are saved by grace through faith,

once and for all in a decisive moment,

while Catholics believe you need to do something in addition to having faith,

something we call “good works,”

and that until your good works are totaled up at the end of your life

you can’t really be sure of your salvation.

But if this were really what we believe,

then why would we be reading in our second reading today

that “the kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared,

not because of any righteous deed we had done but because of his mercy”?

In fact, it has always been the teaching of the Catholic Church

that our salvation depends totally upon God’s grace:

we are saved simply through the generous love of God

and not through any righteous deed – any good work – that we might do.

So why are we so nervous about the question “are you saved?”

Why can’t we rest easy with simply answering “yes”?

I would like to think that our Catholic anxiety

over this question of salvation

grows out of an at least implicit awareness

that the real question with regard to salvation

is not “what should I do?” but “who should I be?”

The question is not whether I should perform

some sort of inward, mental action called “having faith,”

or some other sort of outward, physical action called “performing a good work,”

that God will reward by saving me.

The question is rather one about who it is that I am in the eyes of God.

The question is whether the kindness and generous love of God

is transforming me into someone

who can live fully in God’s presence,

and thus share in the eternal life that is God.

Our faith is that the answer to this question is “yes”;

we believe that God’s grace is transforming us

into what Paul calls “heirs in hope of eternal life.”

But note that we are heirs “in hope” –

our certainty is the certainty of hope,

which is quite different

from the kind of certainty we might have in science or mathematics.

We have a keen awareness of ourselves as works-in-progress,

people on a journey,

and whatever assurance we have of salvation

is found in our faith

that God’s grace is sufficient to bring that work to completion,

to guide our journey to its destination.

Paul singles out baptism as a key moment

in our becoming heirs in hope of eternal life.

In Jesus’ own baptism, recounted in our Gospel today,

the Holy Spirit descends on him

and a voice speaks from heaven,

“You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

Likewise for us, baptism is what Paul calls “the bath of rebirth”

in which we are reborn with a new identity

as God’s sons and daughters,

an identity that we do not fashion for ourselves,

but that is bestowed on us by God,

through the Spirit of renewal that, as Paul puts it,

“is richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior.”

But the grace that God gives through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit

takes time – a lifetime – to work itself into our bones.

Our new identity typically takes shape slowly within us:

it is a journey far longer

than the journey from Medicine Hat, Alberta, to Regina, Saskatchewan.

The very way in which the Church celebrates the sacraments of initiation

recognizes this.

In the case of children,

the identity given in baptism must be nurtured and developed

through the other sacraments,

not just until adulthood, but over the course of a lifetime.

For those who are baptized as adults,

their new identity is not just nurtured after baptism

but must also be prepared for prior to baptism.

This is the point of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults or RCIA:

to assist adults who desire baptism or the other sacraments of initiation

in preparing themselves to live the new identity God will give them.

Paul puts this rather dramatically

in terms of God “training us to reject Godless ways and worldly desires.”

We might put it, somewhat less dramatically,

in terms of those who ask for baptism

seeking to live a life of greater spiritual depth,

a life more deeply rooted in God’s love and mercy,

given to us in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit,

a new life that may well involve unlearning an old way of life.

In the Rites of Christian Initiation we the Church

assist them with our prayers and our love

as they undertake the arduous task

of learning to live lives of faith, hope and love.

For all of us, the task of living the identity given to us through grace in baptism

is one that is on-going.

We should ask God each day in prayer

to make us more faithful, more hopeful, and more loving.

Sometimes, it is true, we can see little in the way of forward progress,

not unlike hitchhiking across the Canadian plains,

yet in our faith we trust that God has already given us

the grace to finish the journey,

the grace that is gradually transforming us into those

who can live fully in God’s eternal presence.

“Are you saved?”

Let us answer with the confidence of the early Christian poet who wrote:

"I trusted, consequently I was at rest;

because trustful is the one in whom I trusted.

And immortal life embraced me, and kissed me.

And from that life is the Spirit which is within me.

And it cannot die because it is life" (Odes of Solomon 28:1-3, 7-8).

Holy Family

Readings: 1 Samuel 1:20-22, 24-28; 1 John 3:1-2, 21-24; Luke 2:41-52

As many of you undoubtedly know,

Christians in the first five or six centuries

produced a number of gospels

in addition to the four that are in the New Testament.

These gospels, which are almost surely not as old as the canonical Gospels

that the Church accepts as Holy Scripture,

seem to have been composed in many cases

to fill in gaps that were perceived in the Scriptural Gospels,

particularly concerning the birth and childhood of Jesus, or his resurrection.

One of these gospels is known as The Infancy Gospel of Thomas

and is composed of materials written between the second and sixth centuries.

It tells stories of Jesus as a young boy – and an unusual young boy he is, too.

It opens with a story of five-year-old Jesus

playing by a brook on the Sabbath day:

he first gathers the water into pools, simply by commanding it,

and then begins to forms figures of birds out of the clay.

The neighbors, of course, complain to Joseph

that Jesus is engaged in work on the Sabbath.

When Joseph goes and reprimands him, Jesus claps his hands

and the birds come to life and fly away,

silencing, at least temporarily, his critics.

This is a charming story

that seems to be trying to depict God incarnate as a child:

the same God who in the book of Genesis commands the waters

and forms Adam from the clay of the earth

and makes him a living being.

Other stories in The Infancy Gospel of Thomas

sound a more ominous note,

such as the one in which Jesus strikes dead

a boy who inadvertently runs into him.

When the boy’s parents go to Joseph to complain,

Jesus strikes them blind.

Joseph boxes Jesus’ ear, but this does not seem to have much effect:

in the stories that follow Jesus seems as likely to curse and kill the neighbors

as he is to bless and heal them.

Again, what we seem to have here

is an attempt to imagine what God incarnate is like as a child,

only in this case we see the power of God

combined with the impulsiveness and petulance

that sometimes characterizes young children.

Jesus comes across in these stories as some sort of evil child-genius

who terrorizes the town of Nazareth.

While we might appreciate the impulse

that motivated those who composed these tales –

the desire to imagine God incarnate as a child –

in the end what is conveyed

is less the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ,

and something more like one of those movies

in which the demon-possessed child kills off the characters on-by-one.

The events in these stories are, as my son Denis would say,

are not so much miracles as they are “weirdicals.”

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas concludes

with a version of the story from Luke’s Gospel

that is our Gospel reading for today,

which is the only story from the New Testament

that tells us anything about Jesus between his infancy and his baptism.

After the sometimes bizarre tales

that precede it in The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,

it is something of a relief to arrive at this familiar story

that doesn’t involve anything particularly extraordinary.

Indeed, compared to what has come before,

one is struck by just how ordinary the boy Jesus depicted by Luke is.

True, he seems to astonish people with the answers he gives

to the questions of the teachers in the Temple,

but no one gets struck dead or blind;

Jesus doesn’t levitate or speak with a booming heavenly voice;

he seems nothing more than a spiritually precocious child.

He is not, as he comes across in the later imaginings

of The Infancy Gospel of Thomas,

a powerful and capricious deity in human disguise,

like an avatar of Zeus or Apollo.

Rather, he is a fully human being,

who listens and asks questions of his teachers,

who slips away from his parents and causes them great anxiety,

who returns home with them and is obedient to them,

who advances in wisdom and age and favor,

in the same way that any of us grows and develops within a human family.

And yet, within this ordinariness

there is something extraordinary,

something miraculous.

The boy Jesus says to his anxious family,

“Why were you looking for me?

Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

Even at this young age, Jesus knows

that when he is in the Temple he is in his Father’s house;

even at this young age Jesus knows

that he is the Son of the God whom he calls “Abba,” Father.

We might try to imagine what this consciousness was like,

whether the twelve-year-old Jesus could have formulated words

such as “begotten, not created” or “one in being with the Father.”

But in the end our imaginations fail,

as they always fail when it comes to knowing God.

Suffice it to say that Jesus knows himself to be God’s Son

in something like the way we might, from our very infancy,

know ourselves to be loved by our parents.

While the newborn infant “knows” very little –

if we are using the term “know” in the sense

that I know next Tuesday is the 29th

or that Caracas is the capital of Venezuela –

there is a sense in which the infant that is held in its mother’s arms

knows her love more deeply and surely

than any other knowledge it will ever have.

The infant knows this love

as the power that has given and sustains its life.

It cannot know itself without knowing this love,

for this love is the soil in which it is rooted.

Just so, Jesus cannot know himself

without knowing the love of his Father,

which is the eternal source of his identity:

we might say that from the outset

he knows himself to be rooted from all eternity

in the soil of divine love.

But there is a difference between this divine love and our human love.

While we human parents try to love our children to the best of our ability,

we are also keenly aware of the failures of our love:

the limits of our patience and generosity,

the shortness of our tempers,

the poverty of our wisdom.

Jesus, however, knows himself to be rooted in a love that is perfect,

a generosity without limits,

a power that will enable him to face opposition and misunderstanding

and even the failure of the cross,

a love that will carry him through death

into the risen life of the Kingdom of God.

This is the true miracle of the boy Jesus:

not the power to make clay birds fly or strike opponents down,

but the miracle of a human life rooted perfectly

in the eternal love of God,

the miracle of one like us,

who unshakably knows himself to be God’s beloved child.

But the miracle does not stop there.

As our second reading, from the First Letter of John, tells us:

"Beloved:

See what love the Father has bestowed on us:

that we may be called the children of God.

And so we are.”

The miracle is that God’s Son has become what we are

so that we might become what he is.

The divine love in which his life is rooted from all eternity

has now, in time, been bestowed upon us.

In the face of misunderstanding and opposition and even death

we can know that we are held in God’s love,

a love that will carry us through

to the risen life of God’s Kingdom.

Tricks with clay birds pale in comparison

to the true miracle of this Christmas season –

that we become by grace what Jesus Christ is by nature:

beloved children of God.

2nd Sunday of Advent

Readings: Baruch 5:1-9; Philippians 1:4-6. 8-11; Luke 3:1-6

In our first reading, from the prophet Baruch,
we are presented with a vision of the return of the Israelites to the promised land

from their exile in Babylon.
We know from the book of Ezra that the return of the exiles

was not that of triumphant victors,
but of a divided and dispirited people,

plagued by economic woes and threatened by hostile neighbors.
And yet Baruch presents this return as a glorious one.
Indeed, in today’s reading the word “glory” is used six times.
God is glorious, shining forth in mercy and justice,

but the Israelites too are glorious:
indeed, Jerusalem is called to share in God’s glory,
which is like a cloak that she is to wrap around herself,

having put off her garments of mourning.

So who is right, Baruch or Ezra?
Was the return from exile a glorious one,
or was it really a disheveled band of displaced people straggling home,
beset by troubles and bickering among themselves

and otherwise acting in all-too recognizably human ways?

I am not sure we need to choose.
I suspect Ezra is more or less accurate

in his depiction of the disarray of the returning exiles,
but Baruch the prophet offers us a different sort of vision,
the kind of vision that only a prophet can have,
the kind of vision that can discern the glory of God in the most unlikely of events,
the kind of vision that sees God’s glory
even in the stumbling and all-too recognizably human return of these exiles.
Because Baruch knows that in this event

the most unlikely of things has happened:
God has made a way home for his people.
The prophetic eye can see glory

in the all-too recognizably human struggle of the returning exiles
because it sees that God is present.

What would it mean to look with the same prophetic eye

at our own community here at Corpus Christi?
Like the returning exiles, we too are all-too recognizably human;
even when we are on our best and most self-consciously “churchy” behavior –
when we gather to celebrate the liturgy –
our human limitations seem at times more manifest than God’s glory.
As any liturgical minister will tell you, during the liturgy, stuff happens –

stuff that you hadn't planned on.
You read the wrong reading as a lector,

or mangle the name of some Bronze Age potentate from Assyria.
You drop the host when you are a minister of the Eucharist,
or realize half-way through communion that you've been administering the chalice
with the words, "the body of Christ."
You are leading the the prayer of the faithful and realize in the middle of it
that the carefully thought-out and theologically profound response

you had so carefully prepared
is in fact too long and too quirky for the congregation to remember.
These examples spring to mind because they are all things that I have done.
For me, a particularly memorable moment came last Easter when,
after the gifts of bread and wine has been brought forward

and I had filled the first chalice,
I discovered that the wine was full of ants.
Often such mistakes go unnoticed by the congregation,

though they seem momentous to the minister.
But as anyone who has had a role in serving the liturgy will tell you,
that’s just how liturgical ministry is:

we prepare, we do our best, but sometimes things go wrong,
so we accept our all-too recognizably human imperfections,

and perhaps long for the heavenly liturgy,
where every voice will be in tune,

every word spoken eloquently,

every movement executed gracefully.

Of course, the all-too recognizably human imperfections of our worship

are not limited to liturgical faux pas.
The true imperfection of our worship

is our falling short in faith, hope and, especially, love.
The true imperfection of our worship

is not the mispronounced name,

but the unkindly spoken word;
not the inadvertently dropped the host,

but willfully ignored neighbor;
not the ill-chosen prayer response,

but the hardness of heart that turns us away from prayer altogether.
In short, our worship is imperfect

because we fail to be a people who, in the words of the prophet Micah,
do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before God.
This is why we begin our worship by acknowledging our sins

and asking for God’s grace and mercy.

Yet despite all this,

we believe it is in our limited, imperfect, error-prone liturgical celebrations
that God comes to meet us,

that the glory of Jesus Christ shines forth in our midst,
and we catch a glimpse of that perfect heavenly liturgy.
It is through hands that all too often fail to do God’s will
and voices that all too often fail to speak God’s good news
that we sinners worship the God of grace and mercy.
And this is possible not because of what we do,

but because of what Christ does.
Last week Fr. Rich spoke of the confidence that we can have that,
despite the turmoil in our world and within ourselves,

Christ is with us.
In the liturgy, Christ becomes flesh and dwells among us.
When we gather as Christians for worship and proclaim the mystery of faith

in words both ancient and new,
when we move beyond words and enact that same mystery

through the language of ritual,
we can have confidence that Christ is present,
speaking and acting with us,
speaking and acting for us.

It is this presence that takes from us our cloak of mourning

and wraps us in the cloak of God’s glory.

Julian of Norwich said that

“As the body is clad in the cloth, and the flesh in the skin,
and the bones in the flesh, and the heart in the chest,
so are we, soul and body,

clad in the goodness of God and enclosed in it” (A Revelation of Love, ch. 6).
We – a poor, disheveled and all-too recognizably human band of pilgrims –

gather weekly in this place
and speak our imperfect words of prayer

and make our imperfect gestures of peace and. . .
wonder of wonders,

Jesus Christ stands with us in our midst
and clothes us in the robe of his own glory
and, perhaps for just a moment,

we feel the weight of that glory resting on our shoulders,
and we know in that moment

that we truly are clad and enclosed in the goodness of God.

Solemnity of All Saints

Readings: Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12aIn his Revelation, St. John gives us a vision of the saints in heaven:
“a great multitude, which no one could count,
from every nation, race, people, and tongue.”
This redeemed multitude
worships before the throne of God, crying out,
“Salvation comes from our God,
who is seated on the throne,
and from the Lamb.”
It is a glorious vision of the saints
caught up in the worship of God.
And one of the most striking things about it
is the way in which the saints are envisioned
as being not just in the presence of God,
but in the presence of each other.

Our Catholic tradition tells us
that heaven is an eminently social place:
it is not a matter of the isolated soul
alone with God for eternity.
Rather, part of the joy of the saints in God’s kingdom
is the joy that they feel in being with each other.
St. Catherine of Siena, the 14th century Italian mystic,
wrote that the saints,
“rejoice and exult,
sharing each other’s goodness with loving affection. . . .
For when a soul reaches eternal life,
all share in her good and she in theirs. . . .
They experience a new freshness in their exultation —
a mirthfulness, a jubilation, a gladness —
in knowing this soul” (The Dialogue, ch. 41).
So the great multitude rejoice not simply in knowing God,
but in knowing the incredible varieties of goodness
that God’s grace has made possible in human beings:
the mother rejoices in the martyr’s courage
and the martyr in the mother’s patience;
the pastor rejoices in the scholar’s knowledge
and the scholar in the pastor’s prudence.
The saints bring with them the particular gifts
that God’s grace has poured into their lives
and then they share those gifts of holiness with each other,
so that each may delight in the goodness of others.

In our family there is an All Saint’s tradition that, to me,
embodies this sharing of gifts that we find in the saints.
On the eve of the solemnity of All Saints
our children go (or, at least did when they were little)
from house to house in our neighborhood
while dressed in costumes representing the multitude
drawn from every nation, race, people, and tongue
(you know: pirates, princesses and zombies)
and collect gifts, known as “treats,” from the neighbors.
Perhaps you have heard of such traditions;
your families may even have similar customs.
The highpoint of this traditional celebration of All Saints
has always been the point after the gifts have been collected
and the children gather at someone’s house,
dump out their bags on the floor,
and begin trading:
Kit Kats exchanged for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups;
bars of dark chocolate for bars of milk chocolate;
Circus Peanuts for. . .
well, you might just have to hang on to those.
And what is most remarkable is that,
aside from occasional bickering,
this exchange is characterized by great excitement and happiness.
And it is not just the excitement and happiness
of trading up for better candy,
but it is really the excitement and happiness
of being together with friends
and of both giving and receiving.
To borrow words from Catherine of Siena,
it is an occasion of mirthfulness, jubilation and gladness
as people rejoice and share in the gifts that others have received.
What more appropriate way to celebrate the saints
than to joyfully share our gifts with one another,
for this is what the saints do for eternity.

Last week Fr. Rich spoke about how our financial support of our parish
ought be something that we do not out of guilt, but out of gratitude.
I would go so far as to say that it should be an occasion
of mirthfulness, jubilation and gladness,
because it is a chance to take what God has given us
and to share it with each other.
Both our first and second collections are ways in which
we acknowledge God’s gifts to us
by sharing them with others.
In our second collection we share them with those outside our parish
who are most in need of material assistance,
and in our first collection we contribute to supporting the parish structures
that make our ministries possible:
keeping salaries paid and lights on and boilers heating.
The money we give makes it possible for us
to gather as a community of worship,
to be an image of God’s kingdom,
where the saints cry out in concert,
“Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving,
honor, power, and might be to our God forever and ever.”
Indeed, it not only makes this worship and community possible,
but in the offering of our gifts to God and to each other
we are engaged in an act of worship
and the building up of our community.
We are doing what the saints do for all eternity in God’s kingdom.
So it is appropriate that we do it together.

In a minute the ushers will pass out offertory pledge cards
and I will ask you to fill them out.
You are, of course, free to do so or not:
no one will twist your arm;
God will not spurn you;
the parish will not have to close its doors.
But what if we think of it not as paying our dues or paying a bill
or even making a contribution to a good cause,
but rather think of ourselves as children sitting on the floor
sharing their Halloween candy;
think of ourselves as the saints in heaven
sharing the gifts of God’s grace with each other.
It is an occasion of mirthfulness, jubilation and gladness.
Why would we not want to join in?

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Genesis 2:18-24; Hebrews 2:9-11; Mark 10:2-16
Today is designated by the Catholic Church in the United States
as “Respect Life Sunday.”
The phrase “respect for life” is not simply a code word
for the issue of abortion.
Catholic teaching on respect for life extends to issues
of poverty, healthcare, war, the death penalty,
the environment, the disabled and so forth.
As Eileen Egan put it, “The protection of life is a seamless garment.
You can’t protect some lives and not others.”
I would like to think that part of the strength
of our tradition of Catholic Social Teaching
is precisely the breadth of vision that is involved
when we speak of respect for life.
But I also think it is worth focusing at times
on respect for human life at its earliest stages of development
not least because many Catholics
feel confused and conflicted over how to think about this issue,
feeling as if they are being presented by our culture
with the demand that we choose between concern for the unborn
and concern for women.
Catholic teaching about respect for life says that this is a false choice.
But the only way that we will begin to see
another way of framing the issue
is if we begin with what, for Christians,
is the most fundamental question:
What does Jesus Christ require of us?

In today’s Gospel, we hear that Jesus
welcomed the children who were brought to him;
he blessed them, and told his disciples that
“the kingdom of God belongs to such as these,”
going on to say that “whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child
will not enter it.”
Jesus seems to be saying that those who inherit the kingdom of God
are those who, like children, are without power, without strength,
and who must rely entirely on others — who must rely entirely on God.
Those who are weak and vulnerable
have a privileged place within our community
because they are living signs of who we must become
if we wish to enter God’s reign.
As Catholics, our concern for the unborn
does not grow from a right to life that they possess,
but from the fact that we cannot be the people whom God calls us to be
unless we protect and foster the lives of those
who are least able to care for themselves,
unless we see the unique beauty and value
that grows from that vulnerability,
unless we extend to the most vulnerable
the same welcome that Jesus himself did.
To be who we are called to be as members of Christ’s body,
we must care for the unborn.

This is something distinct from the legal and political controversy
surrounding the issue of abortion.
In our Gospel reading today Jesus treats the question
put to him by the Pharisees
about the Jewish laws concerning marriage and divorce
as rather beside the point
when thinking about how his followers should approach these matters.
Jesus says that Moses gave them that law,
“because of the hardness of your hearts” —
to establish a minimum standard of semi-justice —
not as the standard by which we measure Christian discipleship.
If this is true of the Law given by God through Moses,
how much more true it is of our human laws.
Any legal structure will be at best
a distant approximation of the justice that God desires.
This does not mean that our laws are unimportant;
indeed, with regard to the issue of abortion,
I think every Catholic should desire
that our nation’s laws would foster and protect the lives of the unborn.
But, unlike some, I also think
that the exact nature of those laws,
and how they would relate to other goods
that need fostering and protection,
and how distantly or closely
they might approximate true justice,
are matters over which it is possible for Catholics to differ in good faith.
I have my own ideas about these matters,
and I am sure that many of you do as well,
and it might be interesting to discuss these sometime,
preferably over a drink, or maybe three.
But the political question, important as it is,
cannot be for us the first question.
The first question is not one of legislation
or court decisions
or executive orders;
it is the question, “what should we as the Church of Jesus Christ
do to help create a world
in which every child is welcomed
and cared for from the moment of conception,
and recognized as one of the ‘little ones’
whom Christ himself welcomes?”

In asking this question, we see that our concern for these children
is inseparable from a concern for the mothers of these children.
This is part of the reason why in Catholic teaching
the respect for life is a seamless garment:
we can’t separate the issue of abortion
from the fight against poverty or the fight for the dignity of women.
Our concern for the unborn must extend to the material needs
of women who are pregnant in difficult circumstances —
and this is an area in which individual Catholics
as well as numerous Catholic social service agencies
have an admirable record,
though there is of course always more that can be done.

But our concern must extend beyond material needs.
We have a gospel — good news — to share,
what Pope John Paul II called “The Gospel of Life.”
And part of the message of this gospel
is that even when it appears that there is no way forward,
when we can see no good choices,
when we seem trapped by circumstances,
we can have faith that God can make a way forward,
and, with the help of God’s grace and God’s people,
God can strengthen us to choose life.
People often see the abortion issue in terms of tragic choices,
and I would never want to underestimate the moral struggle
of women who find themselves pregnant in difficult circumstances,
or to suggest that choosing life
does not often require women to live lives of heroic virtue.
Choosing life might mean raising a child
when you are young or single or poor.
Choosing life might mean caring for a disabled child
long past his or her childhood, on into adulthood.
Choosing life might mean living with the life-long sense of loss
experienced by many women who surrender their children for adoption.
These are heroic choices.
But the Gospel tells us that God’s grace makes such heroism possible,
if we can receive that grace with the trust of a child
and if God’s Church is ready to be the kind of community
that will itself go to heroic lengths
to be a place where such heroic choices can be lived out.
The Gospel also tells us that when we fail to live heroically,
there is mercy and forgiveness to be found in God’s Church.

For Christians, there are no tragic dead ends,
because the world’s story is ultimately not a tragedy,
that ends with the bodies of the dead
strewn across the stage of history
and nothing left to do but the work of mourning.
Rather, for Christians the world’s story ends
with the marriage of heaven and earth
and the wedding feast of the lamb.
This is the vision that we have to offer to the world:
a vision that sees the beauty in vulnerability,
a vision that we possess only to the degree
that we actually put it into practice.
This is the vision that must sustain our hope
that our respect for life
can weave together concern for the unborn
and concern for women,
together with concern for the poor, the elderly,
the disabled and the imprisoned,
into a seamless garment in which we,
as Christ’s body,
can be clothed
as we bear witness
to the Gospel of Life in our world.