Corpus Christi   June 7, 2026    SJU 11:00 AM

 

     This feast of Corpus Christi always has a special place in my heart because it is the anniversary of my First Mass some 54 years ago.   The Feast, the Mass, and my ordination the day before all came together to make a coherent celebration.

 

     And over all these past years the Body of Christ in the Eucharist accompanied me in thousands of places.

 

E. g. I concelebrated at a  Corpus Christi Feast Day Mass in a small town in Mexico.  Firecrackers were going off actually inside the church.   This was, I am told, accidental but the noise and the burst of color added to the explosion of praise and song led by the mariachi band.

 

And as grace would have it, my one opportunity to visit the great Gothic Cathedral of Chartres in France occurred on the Feast of Corpus Christi.   I surprised myself arriving at the doors of this Cathedral dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God at exactly the hour when the Sunday Mass of Corpus Christi was beginning. 

 

     And those of us present 50 years ago at the 1976 Eucharistic Congress here in Philadelphia remember it for several reasons.    Our Jesuit Father Ed Brady, so active in justice issues here at SJU, was conscious of the broad meaning of the Eucharist.   He helped Cardinal Krol and the local church organize a shipment of grain and emergency food sent that summer to a drought stricken part of the world.  That Congress, too, was memorable because three saints, each short of stature but tall on holiness and hope appeared together on the same stage in Philadelphia: Dom Helder Camara from a poor area of Brazil, Jesuit Father Pedro Arrupe who founded Jesuit Refugee Services and  Mother Teresa who founded services for the dying poor in several continents.  All three witnesses of terrible human suffering; all three proclaiming a message of hope and God’s love.

 

     And still just yesterday in our City a prayerful Corpus Christi procession with great devotion took part in South Philadelphia through the streets between two of the Latino parishes (Annunciation and St. Thomas Aquinas) and ending at the Shrine of St Rita of Cascia on South Broad St.   I was blessed to join a part of the walk in which the monstrance displaying the Body of Christ was carried led by a dozen young altar servers with flower petals, incense and the Cross.   Teenage girls scattered the flower petals along Tasker St. to beautify the Lord’s path.  We called upon Jesus and his Mother in song and prayer to protect our Latino families from deportation and ended with Mass at St. Rita’s.   Among the hundreds in the procession were many young people, many Latino families, parents with their children of all ages.   The event was organized by a prophetic local group called Faithful Philadelphia which has been proclaiming the need for just paths to citizenship for our neighbors.   

    

     To summarize these events that I describe: Catholics who have an experience of their community as the Body and Blood of Christ find support in their lives from both the word of God and the sacrament of Holy Communion.   The sacrament invites us into a culture of solidarity far different from a contrasting national Christian culture which sometimes acts as a cover for white supremacy.   To be fed by the Body of Christ is to take part in the willingness of the community to contribute to the common good.   We are one body in the one Lord living together and guided by Catholic Social Teaching.   Its most important principle: the dignity of every single human being created in God’s image.   Just this morning P:ope Leo while celebrating Mass for over a million people in Madrid expanded this message preaching that God identified with the poor, the downtrodden and those who are alone and forsaken.

 

     I mentioned in the opening remark that my own First Mass took place years ago on the Feast of Corpus Christi, a Sunday like today.   At any First Mass Families like my own go out of their way to provide extra music and flowers and very often a reception afterwards.  Such celebrations actually introduce a tension between their optimistic richness and the basic original Eucharistic event at Jesus’s Last Passover Supper when he foretells the tragedy to come.

 

Let me complete my homily by a short presentation about this tension.

 

               Scripture commentators in their discussion of the Last Supper as reported in the gospel of Mark, remind us that yes, Jesus’ shares his body and blood in the bread and wine at that table meal.    But this sharing is sandwiched within words of Jesus that on one side predict the betrayal of Judas who helps the Temple authorities arrest him.   And on the other Jesus tells of his imminent abandonment by the disciples.  Further the last words of Jesus at this Supper are these: “I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I will drink it new in the kingdom of God.”   The commentators write that Jesus’ vow of fasting is a prophetic symbol of his coming death.  In fact one commentator goes so far as to say this: “At the Last Supper Jesus neither ate of the Passover lamb nor drank of the wine; probably he fasted completely.

 

     Jesus’ Last Supper was not a happy event.  There is a foreboding starkness.   I quote in summary: “Mark’s somewhat sober account stresses above all the sacrificial death of Jesus ‘for many’… We recall not only a meal, but the final meal of one who was to be executed as a criminal for our sake.”   

 

But thanks to the return of the risen Jesus to his disciples the report of the last supper in the gospel of Mark can generate hopeful feelings of a redemptive solidarity.   The risen Jesus sends the Spirit who helps us understand the importance of finding solidarity in the sharing of the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist.   The celebration of the Mass and the sharing of the Eucharist becomes the way in which the Catholic Church takes part in his complete saving action, his life, death and resurrection.   Indeed this celebration gives us the courage to be for and with others in their sorrows as well as their joys.

 

Finally, I imagine, in solidarity with the suffering of this world, Jesus is still fasting from the fruit of the vine.   He will so fast until that time when together with him we bring about the victory of the common good.    Then with us he will drink the fruit of the vine new in the kingdom of God.

 

We thank Jesus for inviting us to the celebration of Mass…. as always an encouraging preview of the Kingdom of God.   And we commit ourselves to joining in his mission so he may drink from the fruit of the vine once again.

 Blessed Virgin Mary on Saturday  (Our Lady of Lourdes Parish  May 30, 2026)

Some of you know that St. Ignatius, the Founder of the Jesuits, wrote a detailed outline of a set of meditations that we call the Spiritual Exercises.    A good portion of the meditations are reflections on the stories of Jesus in the gospels and he asks us to consider these events as if we were active participants or observers.  

It is rare that Ignatius would create any additional events to the gospels.   But there are two that relate to the Blessed Virgin Mary.    One is totally imaginative in that Ignatius suggests that we pray over something that surely happened though the gospels do not report it.   That is, surely the risen Jesus appears to Mary, His Mother even before he appears to Mary Magdalen or to Peter or to the men on the Road to Emmaus.   In such a meditation we are encouraged to imagine what is said and done.   Surely hugs and surely tears of joy.    Some Jesuit told me once that he imagined some of the conversation between Mary and Jesus.    Once the two have had a chance to settle into this new reality of life after death, Mary questions Jesus.  “Why did your death have to be so brutal?    It was so hard on you and so hard for us to experience the brutality.”  And they talk about that, Jesus saying that he knew that even innocent children would be killed brutally.   “I wanted to be sure that every murdered person could know that God understood their pain.”

Ignatius also asks us to take time and pray with Mary on the day after the crucifixion…we call it Holy Saturday.    We know surely that John the apostle would have been with her.   But we should go to console her.    She is exhausted and overcome with sorrow.   But at the same time, when engaged with Mary in her mourning, we find her even in Jesus’ death to be as close to him spiritually as she had been physically.   They loved each other so much.    In this situation she is not isolated and alone in her grief but rather she is in solitude with him.   And this solitude she can share with those who mourn with her.  

 I suggest that those who are grieving the loss of a loved one go to this Mary who in solitude is with Jesus.   She will share her love and the love she has for Jesus with those who pray with her.    No one should feel that they must mourn alone.   

 

Pentecost Sunday   May 24, 2026   OSJ 7:30 & 9:30

I have little understanding of how our three-person divinity is forever unified as one.   We speak of father, son and spirit, or creator, redeemer and animator.  I once heard this description: the Church of Europe is the Church of the Father, the Church of Latin America is the Church of the Son and the Church of Africa is the Church of the Spirit.    There is a fallacy about such a regional description not including the Church of Asia but there is a kernel of truth.  At least we know that the Faith of Africa is filled with the Spirit. 

But today on Pentecost, now fifty days after Easter, we celebrate the gift of the Spirit given to the disciples and then to the whole Church down through the ages.

First: a reflection on an ordinary experience of the spirit; Second an imaginative look at the Spirit of God and Third a look at the Scriptures and the life of the Church.

Our ordinary notions of spirit can give us some clues about the work of God’s Spirit.   We often hear the phrase “school spirit” identifying an attitude that permeates student engagement, especially athletic engagement.  Players of school sports, let’s take basketball as an example, need spirit as much as they need skills.   A coach must build the team around some skilled players.  But the typical second string and even the last man or woman chosen has a role not only on the practice team but also on the bench.  Whether in practice or during games the bench must fill the court with encouraging verbal and body language.   And every huddle must be spirited.

How might such a Spirit act in the life of God?  I call on imagination to illustrate the benefits for us of the Spirit in God.   Imagine a God contemplating at length the problems with creation from nothing and then even hesitating to create because of the possibility of evil.    For such a God the outgoing transparency and enthusiasm of the Spirit in God would overcome any hesitation.   Such a Spirit provides an impetus into space and time, into matter and movement.  

Or suppose there was in our God a tendency to act like an introvert.  Indeed suppose God so relished quiet and the comfort of being alone that creation itself was considered a kind of threat to the divine.    If such a situation existed the third person spirit and animator in God would encourage the taking of some risks with the possibilities of conversation and group activity.   And much to our benefit!  The Spirit is a friend to the noise of creation, to its beauty, its music and art, its vitality and diversity.

It is, I imagine, too, the Spirit of God that drives the divine impulse to become Incarnate in Jesus Christ.   To our benefit, of course.  We humans then are known to be made in the likeness of the Son of God.   And we have a familiar and loving relationship with the divine one like us, with the human Jesus and all of his joys and sorrows. 

But always it is the Spirit, the Spirit sent in turn to us by Jesus that gives zest to this relationship.   It is the Spirit that overcomes our doubt.  It is the Spirit that provides endurance and stability.

Third:  Scriptures, Old and New:   We find in so much in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Bible mention of the influence of the Spirit of Yahweh.  It is this Spirit that looks at the chaos of the waters of creation and separates the land from the sea.   This is the Spirit of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of the Kings and Prophets, and of the Wisdom literature.  Although this Spirit in the Old Testament has no personal separate identity, it has feminine characteristics.

Later in places in the New Testament gospels the influence of the Spirit is often present to Jesus himself, bringing about his conception, protecting him in the desert, empowering him at his baptism and in his preaching and healing.   Finally in the Gospel of John, however, near the end of the New Testament period the Spirit of Truth appears with a personal identity when the evangelist  John names this Spirit the Paraclete.   This name signifies that the Spirit is the one who stands by our side and assists us in our needs.  Jesus promises this Spirit both to those individuals who want to know him and to the community of his followers.    

The NT is clear:  Jesus himself knew by his own experience the difficulties that the disciples would have after he was gone.   Jesus sends the Spirit to sustain the life of the Church, that is to sustain the lives of all of us, especially in our faith communities.   We know that Jesus dies penniless, and leaves nothing for the disciples.    But then, then he sends them the Spirit with every gift they need, every gift we need.   While Jesus is the personal foundation of the Church, the Paraclete takes on an accompanying encouraging role in the continuing life of the Church.   

Finally, then:   Over the ages the Spirit fills the Church, the People of God, with the seven gifts of the Spirit that support the goodness to which God calls us:  wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety and fear of the Lord.    Wherever we find traces or even the fullness of these seven gifts, there the Spirit of God is present.   Think now each of us about those in our lives who are images of the Spirit of God and stand by us: a parent, a grandparent, a coach, a mentor, an author, an artist , those who have inspired us.  In them we experience the powers of these seven gifts: wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety and fear of the Lord.  

Spirit of the living God, fall now afresh on us.

 

2^nd Sunday of Easter  2026   Thomas

In our human ways of imagining I sometimes forget that Jesus’ resurrection is inevitable because the person of Jesus with a human nature is intimately one with God the Father and the Spirit.  At no time did the Father have any other plan for Jesus with his human nature, body and soul, except his return to being one with God in that unimaginable realm where God lives.             

 

And this risen Jesus also, as he promised, sent the Spirit to the men and women who had followed him.  As clear as it was that Jesus died, Jesus is alive.   That conviction came even to St. Paul who had persecuted the early Christians and who had never even met Jesus.  Paul, himself, tells of a personal experience with Jesus.  We have in Paul’s very own writings in First Corinthians his own first person testimonies that he has seen the risen Lord.    I quote: “Did I not see Jesus the Lord?”  And elsewhere after speaking of the risen Lord’s appearance to the disciples he writes: “in the end he appeared even to me.”  That experience convinced him that Jesus lived.  The power of his encounter with the risen Lord is evident in his stunning transformation from a persecutor of Christians to an apostle.  

 

All the other early Christian reports of experiences of the risen Jesus are written by third parties in the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John).   These third parties are members of a community of believers in Jesus’ resurrection.  And oddly none of these third parties explicitly testifies to their own personal experience of the Risen Lord in the way that Paul testifies about his, however brief his testimony.    At least Matthew of the four gospel writers must have seen the risen Lord.  He writes about himself in that gospel but oddly not a single word about his personal experience of the risen Lord.  

 

Certainly all the third party accounts of the risen Lord are genuine expressions of the faith and hope of the witnesses of the resurrection and their communities.  But I so wish we had some other first person versions of a vision of the risen Lord similar to Paul’s. Take Peter, for example.     There is some doubt that the apostle Peter is the writer of the Second Epistle of Peter.   But if he is, he in this Epistle describes himself as a personal witness of the Transfiguration.    But he writes not a single personal word about his experience as a witness of Jesus’ resurrection.  How instructive in his Epistle would be Peter’s first person account, of what he himself saw, for example, when Jesus made that second appearance to the disciples and there responded to welcome Thomas.    

 

And how instructive would be Thomas’ own first person report about his encounter with the Risen Christ.    I would like to hear Thomas tell it.  He might have answered my questions!   Why, Thomas, did you raise the stakes so high?    “I won’t believe,” the third person account so reads, “unless I can put my hand into the wound in his side.”  Yes, I would like him to answer my questions.   What kind of sorrow moved you to make this extreme demand about the wound?    Why did you doubt your own friends’ testimony?  Were you angry because Jesus appeared to them and not to you?   But did you not expect that Jesus might appear again?   Is that why you returned to the group?  And then after Jesus encouraged you to touch him, were you afraid?    I wish that we had some personal supplements to the testimony in the four gospels.   How about, for example, Thomas giving us a Ted Talk?

 

As the whole story is recorded, however, by John, surely, the story clearly records the faith of Thomas and of John and of the whole early community.  They came to understand that God’s exaltation of Jesus in some way restored an integral physical presence after the suffering and humiliating death on the cross.  His wounds on his resurrected body become the sign of that consolation.  His wounds become badges of honor.  His wounds encourage all of us who suffer in our humanity. We imagine this and remember the words that Jesus had spoken during his life:  Blessed are those who mourn…blessed are those who suffer persecution…Blessed are the merciful…        

 

But let me address my disappointment that we have no first person accounts, not from Peter, not from Thomas, not from Matthew.  And, excuse me, not from John, either.  There is more doubt than certitude that the writer of John’s gospel is the same person who is described in that gospel as entering the empty tomb with Peter and as seeing and believing.   Is this John the evangelist?          

And not from Mary Magdalen.   In John’s gospel we have a third person account of her in the cemetery garden thinking Jesus was the gardener.  And an account of the two guys on the road to Emmaus.   They like Mary seem to be quoted exactly.   But they and she and the other women do not record their own experience of the risen Lord.

 

But let’s be clear:  the principal appearances of Jesus are with groups of his disciples where they recognize him.   They hear then about his personal love for them and his instructions for the future.

 

And I think that is the point.    We are not being called simply to follow Mary Magdalen or the women, or Thomas, or Peter or John or the men on the way to Emmaus.   We are called today by the risen Jesus to membership in the community of men and women disciples to whom he returned in resurrection.  Jesus commissions them together to preach the mystery of his enduring love shown in his risen self.  The community’s faith in Jesus transcends the faith of all others.

 

So yes, admire those individuals to whom Jesus appeared.   The gospels call us to believe them, yes, but calls us more so to faith in the  community.   The New Testament is the story of the first Christian community of believers called by Jesus Christ and he calls us now to be one with them.   Jesus saves us in a community.             

And, of course, Paul had to give first person testimony. He himself had to write “I have seen the Lord.”  He was not like the members of that first community whose testimony was credible in the third person.

 

      At the Holy Thursday liturgy I attended there were only two men.   The congregation was

 made up of religious sisters from a variety of 

communities.   Some of the women refused the footwashing but the priest

was kept busy!

Holy Thursday   April 2026

We have very limited knowledge of the kingdom of God to come.  We have an image of that kingdom taken perhaps from imaginative pictures of Eden before the fall of Adam and Eve.   Or we craft an image taken from our favorite experiences.  But Jesus provides us with his leading image of heaven.   He frequently mentions in the gospels, the image of wedding feasts and other meals of celebration.   And this evening we commemorate how Jesus put his own stamp on feasts by the way he acts at the Passover meal that celebrates freedom, a memorial of the Exodus of the Israelites from the slavery of Egypt.    

 

Adopting Jesus’ image of the meal in general as the experience of heaven might lead us to imagine ourselves sitting in heavenly luxury at an elaborately set table surrounded by our favorite foods and wines and our best friends and family.   And a gospel story or two surely does confirm that God reserves some such places in the heavenly kingdom.   But it is clear that such places are especially for the poor, like Lazarus and for others who are poor and hungry.  Moreover, Jesus takes a variety of actions in such settings.   Sometimes they are celebrations of reconciliation or of healing.  But today, of course, he provides us with a striking model for our participation in such meals, the model of the servant.  

 

In this evening’s ideal setting for a heavenly banquet, Jesus, as he celebrates Passover, provides us with the image of how he himself will always behave.   It is so humbling to watch him.  He takes the role of a trusted household servant and bathes the feet of his friends, that is, of course, our feet.   This action appears at a moment in time but it is a gesture that informs all of human existence.  It is the gesture that defines for Jesus his love for us and the deepest desire of the Trinity in God to be of service to us.  It is, also, the gesture that defines how we ourselves are to live.

 

So in our own images of God’s banquet in God’s new kingdom, we must consider the whole picture.   It appears that Jesus encourages us at banquets rather to wait on table or prepare the meal in the kitchen or be the rancher presenting the choicest meat or the farmer the choicest fruits or vegetables.   Images of waiting on table or remote and immediate preparation of the meal can take the place of the usual ones we make up for ourselves in the next life: prideful head-of-the-table images or maybe lead singer in the heavenly choir.  But what a pleasure it will be to take some of these service duties at the heavenly banquet  without the danger of running out of joy and energy and with perfection of service and of food and drink always within reach.

 

I had an experience that gives us a pale image of such transformation in roles that Jesus suggests. Years ago I officiated at the wedding of a black couple, a lovely couple, the bride an elementary school teacher and the groom a bank official.   After the wedding at the Gesu Church in North Philly, I was among those invited to the reception at a suburban country club. 

 

At the reception I could not find another guest who was white and, surprisingly, I could not find a person on the service staff at the club who was not white.   Like all wedding banquets it was an expensive transaction.   And, in fact, it symbolized our segregated society in a striking way.    The venue hired only whites.    And at the same time whites were denied by the overall culture from coming to know the lovely couple and their families.    The role reversals at that country club represented no ideal at all.   But I am convinced that those in heaven will experience transformational joy whether sometimes seated at table or sometimes preparing and serving the meal.

.

The Raising of Lazarus  by Tintoretto   

 Frances Maguire Museum of Art  at St. Joseph's Univeristy, Philadelphia

 (on loan from USEast Province of Jesuits)

5^th Sun of Lent   The Raising of Lazarus    SJU  2026

         The main event in today’s readings, of course, is the call of Jesus in raising Lazarus from the dead.  “Lazarus, come out.” Any of our own experiences of coming to our senses or waking up to a new day pale in comparison with that of the experience of Lazarus restored to life after four days dead in his tomb.   I think of a time when I had a very bad concussion and lost consciousness for much of a day before I became conscious suddenly with two friends standing at the edge of my hospital bed.   And we think, too, of every morning pulling our bodies out of bed, some of them stiffened by old age.    No real comparisons here except for one.     We can hear the voice of Jesus calling us in situations like these two just as the dead Lazarus is called by Jesus:  “Come out” “Wake up!”  “Get up!”  Without that voice I might still be in bed this morning.

First the story of Lazarus again and then some talk of the human body:

          Jesus arrives days late on the scene after his friend Lazarus is buried.  Lazarus’s sisters greet him.  First Martha sadly wishes that Jesus could have been there to save her brother from death.  But together they agree that Lazarus will rise again on the last day.   This was, of course, a common belief for the Jews that on the last day the bodies of faithful Jews will rise again from their burial places.  Jesus takes this opportunity to proclaim that he himself is the resurrection indicating that his own risen body will be the confirmation of this Jewish belief.   

       Then, arriving on the scene the other sorrowing sister, Mary, comes to greet Jesus.  She repeats what Martha already said, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.”    The sisters had discussed this and the mention of it becomes an admonition of Jesus contributing to the sisters’ tears.

       But Jesus has a plan to respond to these two women directly and he asks, “Where have you laid him?”    And they lead Jesus to the gravesite, the three of them in tears with those around noting how Jesus loved Lazarus.  The burial place is a cave like tomb with a stone placed against the entrance.  When Jesus gets close by, he says, “Take away the stone.”  The practical Martha is quite disturbed by this and speaks up as if Jesus does not understand that the grave was closed now four days ago.   She patiently says, “Sir, there will be a stench”.    As much as to say:  Let Lazarus be.  He has been buried far too long.   And for Martha these days have been painful enough.   For her another viewing will only deepen the pain.  Her words underline for the late-coming Jesus and his followers that they must trust Mary and herself that truly Lazarus has been dead for days.   There is nothing else to be said or done.    Nothing else: Except what Jesus says:  “Did I not tell you that if you have faith you will see the glory of God?”   The stone is removed.

       Jesus quietly raises his eyes to heaven to thank his Father for hearing him knowing that his action will help those gathered to understand that Jesus has been sent by him.   Then he cries out in a loud voice: “Lazarus, come out.”  Lazarus comes out wrapped in his burial clothes and Jesus directs that he be untied.   The astonishment and the hugs and tears don’t need to be expressed in the gospel text.

       The body of Lazarus rising from the tomb becomes later in the Easter resurrection of Jesus another full confirmation of the divine source of the body and its destiny.

       The pre-Christian Judaic focus on the human body starts in the accounts of the beginning with the creation of the first humans.    In Genesis we learn about the care that God takes with the creation of the human body divinely proclaimed as good. 

         Our own understanding of the long process of evolution that results in our bodily creation only adds to our amazement.    We are in our bodies intricately related to the beauty of all life in our created world.  This relationship leads us to engage in sustenance and enhancement of life.

         But In Christanity we learn of more creative excitement. God in the Second Person of the Trinity comes among us as a human being in Jesus.    From the time of Jesus’ birth God can say what we each say from our beginnings: “I am not not my body.”   That is, God says, “divine though I am, my definition now in Jesus Christ includes permanently a human body.”   

         We take up the same phrase that God uses about the divine self in Christ Jesus: that is, whatever I am, my definition includes my unique and intrinsically good human body.    Surely just as the Spirit of God gives breadth and depth to the bodily identity of Jesus, so, too, God brought us into being, a body with a soul.     So, yes, of course, the spirit has a role in our practice of love of God and love of neighbor.    But in our loving clearly those of us who love one another are not some vaporous ghosts without essential and permanent material bodies.   Love is not whole if it is expressed simply virtually.  Jesus, himself in his bodily life, his body living, dying and rising is the expression of love in its entirety.

          It is with His bodily voice that Jesus called out “Lazarus, come forth.”   With bodily eyes he looked on the risen Lazarus and the amazement of Mary and Martha.    His voice, too, told parables and peached with authority.   His feet walked on the waters.   His hands touched the eyes of the man born blind.  His ears heard the songs that welcomed him to Jerusalem and the curses that condemned him on the cross.  Jesus is nothing if not a body.   And if no body, then no soul as well.

       Finally about Lazarus:   Lazarus who experienced the death of his body might not enjoy the fact that Jesus brought him back to life.  But imagine that he, too, could want to be with Jesus and with his own sisters, with them in their bodies.   Yes, in death he knows of their spiritual prayers for him but their prayers miss their full impact in the absence of their bodies with him.    While we believe that heaven somehow makes up for this absence, we have now no way of understanding it.

       And finally about Jesus.   Christ's body enters us in the Eucharist.  His spirit in the host of Communion brings righteousness to our whole being body and soul.    In the promised time to come we like Lazarus will hear the voice of Jesus reuniting our body and soul in a risen life.

       As Easter approaches, it is good for us to reckon with any deafness that is in our spirits. On Easter We want to hear the voice of the Lord that raised Lazarus calling to us, too, no matter our deafness of any kind.    Sons and daughters of God, come out!

 

  

 

   The image at the center of the Jesuit Center's Chapel Mosaic, this a rendering by Marsha Rowe.

  Homily for Palm Sunday and The Passion of Matthew 

       We learn from our scriptures that Jesus’ violent death, brought on by those who were envious and fearful, fulfilled the loving plan of our divine Creator.    Jesus’ violent death is God’s way  of entering completely into our humanity and also revealing that the grace of God is the full gift of reconciliation.

In the past, I often imagined that Jesus did not need to go through such suffering and humiliation in order to bring about our redemption.    The decision of God to come among us in the humanity of Jesus, the decision that brings about the Incarnation itself, is itself radical enough, it seemed to me.   The fact that God walks among us with a human nature seemed enough to bring about the salvation of the whole human race.   Jesus was free by my past thinking to die a natural death in his bed in the way that most of us die, without a violent execution, and without utter humiliation.   Such a Jesus of wisdom and grace and love could certainly save us.  Such a Jesus could still call us to the highest standards of love of God and neighbor.

But the testimony of the earliest friends of Jesus is perfectly clear.   We read today about the final days of Jesus.   Instead of dying in his bed surrounded by his friends, instead of leaving as a last image that of a wise and honored teacher, the human Jesus, under the inspiration of the Trinity, freely chooses the way of abandonment, of humiliation and of the cross, freely chooses a bloody and brutal shattering of the connection of human body and soul.   But let us consider that within the theology of Jesus’ death, the violence itself carries two gifts for us.

The first:  Jon Sobrino, the Latin American theologian who witnessed a lot of violence, gave us one reason for the choice that Jesus makes:  God is making a conscious choice for all of humanity.  By embracing the most degrading and brutal death, God shows the divine love for us as fully as is humanly and divinely possible.   Jesus shows his love and his solidarity not only for us who are likely to die in our beds but also, more pointedly for those tortured in prison, for those victims of genocide, for those who suffer persecution for the sake of what is right.   By embracing the most degrading and brutal death, God in Jesus Christ shows how our divine creator in creating us offers us compassion whatever our suffering.

         Secondly, Jesus also makes another statement about the love that he and our creator God have for us human beings.  He pronounces from the cross these words: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke: 23-34).   The divinity of Jesus in some ways remains hidden as his body and soul are split one from the other.  But here, in Jesus’ complete gesture of forgiveness, the love of the divinity for all human beings, no matter their acts of evil, is overwhelmingly clear.   We write the words in huge letters:  “FATHER, FORGIVE THEM FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO.”  Jesus Christ dies brutally, his human body separates from his soul while his divinity remains hidden,  but still God is eager to recognize our ignorance and to forgive us.   Jesus longs for every human being to accept love and forgiveness.    It is in imitating him and dying to ourselves that we can show our acceptance of the divine mercy.   Jesus urges us to long for and work for that world where each of us can forgive others and be reconciled with one another.  On that day violence will vanish from the world.

       So yes as we enter this Holy Week, Jesus leads us in the bearing of our physical suffering, however severe.    And in the forgiveness, even of his murderers, he offers a way to the reconciliation that will end all violence.    May we eagerly accept his offer.