An Easter Homily at Holy Hill

The Lord is risen!  He is truly risen!  Alleluia!

     Brothers and sisters, there is NO love like the love of God in Jesus Christ.  God is PASSIONATE for the man and the woman He created—He is passionate for each and every one of you and me.

He is passionate enough to accept being truly immersed in OUR suffering, and even to surrender the power of death… so to enter into our pain and our loneliness and our fear.  In His Son, Jesus Christ, God scours the very depths of HELL to look for us and to take us upon His broad shoulders and to bring us home to Himself.

  It was YOUR flesh and blood and MY flesh and blood that God took to Himself in Jesus, so to reveal to us A LOVE STRONGER THAN DEATH.  Our humanity now has “a place within God” because Christ rose to new life with OUR humanity (cf. Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, p. 274).  This is the meaning of our Easter celebration.  After the horror of the crucifixion, and the abandonment and the shame, God FREELY reveals His gift of RESURRECTION.  Jesus told His disciples, “I am going away and I will return to you.  I do not leave you orphans.”  Brothers and sisters, though at times we may think God is silent HE NEVER abandons us.  When we think He does not remember us in our suffering, it is especially then that God is most active preparing an eternal dwelling for us.

  So then, it is not ONLY Christ’s victory we celebrate today, but the promise of OUR VICTORY in Jesus.  Following the homily, we will renew our baptismal promises and be sprinkled with the newly-blessed Easter water, that symbolizes the waters poured upon us in Baptism.  On the day of your Baptism, God made an eternal covenant with you.  On that day, through the action of the priest in the company of the whole Church, God etched into your very being the very name of His Son and planted in you the seed of eternal life.  We bear this SEED.

  ETERNAL LIFE is not a perpetual “continuation” of the life we experience now.  It is a life of abundant love and joy, a life that has NO fear or self-concern.  It is the life we LONG for in the depths of our hearts—to know a LOVE that has no end or conditions.

  It is our Christian belief that the gift of RISEN life begins here on earth.  Brothers and sisters, understand! We are not celebrating an event of the past, or an event to come in the future.  It is a reality NOW in this moment….  We who are baptized into Christ’s death are baptized into His resurrection.  But the disciples running to the tomb in today’s Gospel show us HOW we are to receive this gift of new life.  We are told Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved ran to the tomb, the other disciple who arrived first, BENT DOWN and LOOKED into the empty tomb, saw the burial cloths, entered the tomb and BELIEVED.  We are called to BEND DOWN in faith, to make ourselves small as it were—to put aside our selfishness, our pride, our resentment of others—and to believe—to humble ourselves before the mystery of Jesus Christ risen from the dead.  Many do not come to know Jesus as Lord, even many baptized Catholics, because they refuse to run to the tomb, to humble themselves and to believe.  They insist on holding on to the hurt and anger that is so familiar, rather than to embrace the freeing love of Christ Jesus that makes us new.

     We Catholic Christians believe that the Risen Jesus touches our lives and transforms us EVERY TIME we receive the Sacraments—when we come to Holy Communion, when we receive the Sacrament of Penance—we encounter the living Jesus.  How many do not come to Sunday Mass because they think there is nothing to be gained there!  And yet EVERY time we receive the Eucharist, we receive the RISEN LIFE of Jesus Christ into our own body and soul!  We can go pray by ourselves, go get exercise, commune with nature and even stand on our heads, BUT nothing we do can give us that RISEN LIFE that we receive in the EUCHARIST.  God wants us to receive His Risen Life…  Imagine the person you love most and how you would so desire to give what is most intimate to them … imagine then, this person you love casually dismissing this most intimate gift of yourself.  How much MORE Christ wishes to give us the gift of His Risen Life in the Eucharist.

    Today, let us all “run to the empty tomb” moved by love and let us bend down and humble ourselves so to receive through faith the gift of Christ’s Risen Life.  Jesus Christ is our Savior, now and forever!

     Let me finish with the words spoken last night by Pope Francis in Rome:

“Let the risen Jesus enter your life, welcome him as a friend, with trust: he is life!  If up till now you have kept him at a distance, step forward.  He will receive you with open arms.  If you have been indifferent, take a risk: you won’t be disappointed.  If following him seems difficult, don’t be afraid, trust him, be confident that he is close to you, he is with you and he will give you the peace you are looking for and the strength to live as he would have you do" (Easter Vigil Homily, Vatican Radio).

“When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”

From a homily given at Holy Hill on the 5th Sunday of Lent.

This season of Lent is something of a school that educates and prepares our hearts to celebrate the great mysteries of our salvation—the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, Son of God and our Savior.  Each Sunday of Lent is another LESSON that tells us something of WHO Jesus is and WHY He came into the world.  Let me just offer a recap.  The first Sunday of Lent Jesus is led into the desert to be tempted by the devil, to experience his human weakness in solidarity with us, and to glorify His Father by suffering in His weakness.  The second Sunday of Lent Jesus is revealed during the Transfiguration as the Beloved Son of God the Father and the fulfillment of the law and the prophets.  Peter, James and John and we ourselves are told: “LISTEN TO HIM.”  The third Sunday of Lent Jesus cleanses the Temple and reveals Himself to be the NEW Temple and the means of offering true worship to God.  Last Sunday, we had the beautiful passage in the Gospel of John where Jesus tells Nicodemus: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up so that everyone who believes in Him might have eternal life.”

And so we come to this fifth Sunday—the Sunday before his triumphant entry into Jerusalem where he’ll be crucified.  Some Greeks want to “see Jesus”—they are not Jews but Gentiles—foreigners drawn to see Jesus… and it is THIS moment when Jesus declares that His “Hour” has come.  In John’s Gospel, the “Hour” is both the time of Christ’s Passion AND His exaltation.  Jesus tells us explicitly HOW He will be glorified and how He will glorify the Father… It is through His death on the CROSS.

Jesus tells us, “The Son of Man did NOT come to be served, but TO SERVE.”  To give His life for the MANY.  Why?  Is it because SOMEONE has to PAY?  Well, it is true that Jesus alone restores TRUE justice where our sins have offended GOD.  …But let us remember that it is not blood and suffering that God requires for the salvation of the world, BUT rather A HEART THAT LOVES OBEDIENTLY, even unto death.

“Son though He was, Jesus learned obedience from what He suffered.”  The Son of God lived a human life, united with us, and offered to God a heart that LOVED until death.  “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  And so Jesus says to all of us today, “unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.”  Jesus comes to understand that His life is the grain of wheat that will die to produce much fruit.

We, too, must give of ourselves—more than likely NOT to be literally crucified—but maybe it is to be patient with those who greatly annoy us, maybe it is to still desire good to those who have mistreated us, maybe it is to LIVE TODAY for God even if we have FAILED to live for Him for the past week.  Jesus says: “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be.”  If you were baptized into Christ Jesus, then YOU TOO are a SEED that must die to itself so that FRUIT may be produced and GOD glorified.

Brothers and sisters, in today’s Gospel Jesus gives us a THEOLOGY for Good Friday—it is that He, the Son of God made flesh, will give His life for us to glorify His Father and to REVEAL the greatest love the world has ever known.  And what is the FRUIT of this love: LISTEN.  “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”  That is, WHEN JESUS REVEALS the FULLNESS of GOD on the CROSS, every HUMAN HEART will awaken and be drawn to this LOVE.

This is the meaning of our first reading from Jeremiah: God is making a new covenant... In the former covenant God has to show us to be our Master, but in the NEW and ETERNAL covenant, God “places His law within us and writes it upon our hearts.”  The Lord says about His CROSS: “All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD, for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.”

Jesus is the Good Shepherd who climbs the wood of the cross in order to call all His scattered SHEEP to Himself and to lead them to the Father.

WHAT must we do in reply?

Let us LOOK at the CROSS and consider the love of Christ for us.  As our shepherd, Jesus asks for the obedience of our hearts.  Jesus never asks anything of us that He has not ALREADY DONE Himself.  He calls us from the CROSS to give of our lives in LOVE.  And if we love as He has loved, we will come to understand from experience that death is NOT the end—beyond the CROSS the Savior leads us to the Resurrection.

"Tear through the veil of this sweet encounter!"

Regarding the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Pope Pius XII "pronounces, declares, and defines" that "the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory" (Munificentissimus Deus). Deliberately left unanswered is the question of whether or not the Blessed Virgin "died." The Eastern Church has long celebrated the "Dormition" (the "falling asleep") of Our Lady.

Without delving into the arguments of "immortalists" and "mortalists," etc., I thought it pertinent to post what St. John of the Cross writes in his commentary on the first stanza of the Living Flame of Love, regarding the experience of death in persons far advanced in their union with God.

He comments on the verse "tear through the veil of this sweet encounter":

"It should be known that the natural death of persons who have reached this state [i.e., spiritual marriage] is far different in its cause and mode from the death of others, even though it is similar in natural circumstances. If the death of other people is caused by sickness or old age, the death of these persons is not so induced, in spite of their being sick or old; their soul is not wrested from them unless by some impetus and encounter of love, far more sublime than previous ones; of greater power, and more valiant, since it tears through this veil and carries off the jewel, which is the soul.

"The death of such persons is very gentle and very sweet, sweeter and more gentle than was their whole spiritual life on earth. For they die with the most sublime impulses and delightful encounters of love ..." (LF, 1.30).

One might imagine the Blessed Virgin Mary experiencing such a transitus, a seamless surrender to love now consummated, a moment wherein she experiences a definitive and glorious embrace by God, her Father, her Son, and her Spouse.