Fourth Sunday of Easter

Dominica in Pasqua IV
21 April 2024

 The Gospel passage for this Sunday is familiar.  We hear the Lord declare that he is the Good Shepherd.  It is a tender image.  The Lord Jesus is not simply claiming to be a good shepherd in a superficial way, as if to use the image only to put a nice sentiment in the minds of disciples.  He is also making a contrast between himself and those who are bad shepherds, what the text refers to as a “hired man” and other translations call a “hireling” and even a “mercenary”.  There is an Old Testament precedent for this image of the good shepherd.  It is the strong rebuke of the shepherds of Israel, meaning the religious leaders, who have God’s Word launched against them by the Prophet Ezekiel, in Ezekiel chapter 34.

Ezekiel delivered these words of God because he was told to prophesy against the shepherds of Israel and what they had done to the sheep: “Woe to the shepherds of Israel who have been pasturing themselves!... You have fed off their milk, worn their wool, and slaughtered the fatlings, but the sheep you have not pastured.”  And further, Ezekiel says, “As I live, says the Lord God, because my sheep have been given over to pillage, and because my sheep have become food for every wild beast, for lack of a shepherd; because my shepherds did not look after my sheep, but pastured themselves…. I swear I am coming against these shepherds.  I will claim my sheep from them and put a stop to their shepherding…. I will save my sheep… I myself will pasture my sheep” (Ez. 34:1-16).  The Lord is more indirect in his words in the Gospel than was the prophet, but the tender image he uses of the good shepherd has behind it this very forceful language about the seriousness of shepherding God’s people rightly toward the sheepfold and the pasture of eternity.  It has behind it a serious indictment for shepherds who take up the responsiblity of shepherding, but use it as an opportunity to pasture themselves, that is, to make shepherding about caring for themselves and what they can gain.

With that Old Testament prophecy as a backdrop, let’s consider again the Gospel passage.  In this section of St. John’s Gospel, Jesus is in Jerusalem and the temple area.  He is in the place of religious significance for Jewish faith, the place of encounter with God in the temple, the place where the religious authorities operate in a most important way.  And in fact, I think we get a richer sense of the Good Shepherd imagery by noticing that just verses before today’s passage, backing up into the prior chapter, in John 9, we have an entire chapter where the Pharisees are exposed for opposing the miraculous healings worked by Jesus, where they appear to be like clowns running a kangaroo court as they investigate the healing of the man born blind.  You should check it out and read John 9 today to see what immediately precedes the Lord’s declaration that he is the Good Shepherd.  As the Pharisees refuse to accept that Jesus healed the man born blind and they even refuse to believe that the man born blind was indeed blind, they reject that Jesus is the one sent from God, despite the fact of his doing the works of God.  At the conclusion of John 9, Jesus says, “ ‘I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.’  Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not also blind, are we?’  Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin remains’.”  Did you catch what happened there and what was being revealed about the Pharisees, the religious leaders, the shepherds of Israel?  The Pharisees themselves sure caught it!  “You’re not saying we’re blind, are you?”  While they might see with the eye, the Lord is calling them spiritually blind.  Because they refuse to acknowledge their blindness they are caught in sin.  They are shepherds who are being rebuked.  And so, in this context and atmosphere, the Lord reveals that he is the Good Shepherd.  It is he who fulfills the words from Ezekiel.  He is God coming to claim His own sheep and to take them away from the bad shepherds who are only taking care of themselves.  In their own blindness and sin, the Pharisees are leaving the sheep neglected, scattered, and even subject to the pillage of wolves, meaning the destruction of the evil one, Satan.

Next in this passage, the Lord says, “I know mine and mine know me.”  These words here and other Gospel words about the one good shepherd, and the one entrance to the sheepfold, and the one gate by which the sheep go in and out, have a strong resonance with later words of the Lord: “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn. 14:6).  St. Peter, in the first reading, likewise speaking to the Jerusalem elders and leaders, the same ones indicted by Jesus in the Gospel, seems to be saying something similar: “There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved” (Acts 4:12).  The Good Shepherd says, “I know mine and mine know me.”  Surely, we can understand that the Good Shepherd’s knowing us the sheep, his relationship with us, his knowledge about us is complete, and firm, and strong, and lasting.  He is God and there is nothing lacking in his knowledge.  “I know mine.”  But what about the last part of that claim, “and mine know me”?  For that claim to be true, that requires something of us the sheep.  How do we remain firm in our knowing of Jesus, our Good Shepherd?  I suggest that a cornerstone for our knowledge of the Good Shepherd and for our advancing toward the pasturing that leads to eternal life is whether we accept and truly embrace that Jesus is the only way to salvation.  There is no other name, no other person, no other figure, no other power, no other claim, no other system of belief, no other system of worship, no other movement, no other thing that will save us!  If we don’t accept that and live by that, then we are not knowing the Good Shepherd for who he is for us.  And if we do not know him, then we are weakened in identifying his voice and in following him.  We gradually seek pasture elsewhere and we listen to other voices that are not his.  And that will not lead us to eternal life and salvation in the pastures of heaven.  In an age like ours that treats everything as equal and equivalent, an age that emphasizes “my own personal truth”, an age that parrots “tolerance” and “coexisting”, an age that promotes what is really a secular progressive religion that promises the “salvation” of a man-made utopia here on earth, in this atmosphere we can fall prey to the wolves that weaken our confidence and faith in Jesus as the Good Shepherd and the only way to salvation.  The only way to salvation is the Good News that God Himself desires us to be shepherded rightly into good pastures, and He Himself has come as the Good Shepherd to save us.  The Lord has to have that kind of primacy and priority in our lives.  He knows us.  But for us to know him, we need to place all our confidence and faith in him.  We need to identify and remove from ourselves other persons, ideas, or things that we might follow ahead of the Lord.  We should examine our conscience for those things we make explicitly more important than the Good Shepherd and his guidance.  But we also need to search ourselves and to be honest about naming those things that, perhaps unintentionally or accidentally, we give more allegiance to than we do to the Lord.   We have the opportunity to repent and to know our shepherd more deeply by listening to his voice and entrusting ourselves to the One who knows us intimately.  Our Good Shepherd makes the astounding claim of calling us into a relationship with him that mirrors the relationship of the very Blessed Trinity.  What he says should fill us with joy: “I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father”.

Second Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday)

Dominica in Pasqua II
Divine Mercy Sunday
7 April 2024

 In my homily for the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday I suggested that our “Alleluia” returns in this season and is joyful precisely because, if we have used Lent well, when the “alleluia” is suppressed, then we have confronted the reality of our own sins and the sinfulness in mankind’s history.  This admission of our guilt can serve to make us more aware of what God has done for us in saving us.  And thus, it makes us more grateful and joyful in signing out “Alleluia” in this season of the resurrection.  Praise the Lord for his salvation in Jesus Christ!

At the root of mankind’s state and status is a pride that grasps for more and grasps to touch and to possess the place that properly belongs to God.  This is the lesson of Adam and Eve and their disobedience in grasping for the fruit of the tree that the serpent told them would make them like God (Gen. 3:5).  They desired the place and the knowledge and the power of the Godhead, and so they took the fruit of that tree and brought condemnation upon themselves and upon all of us who inherit that fallen nature, which is still inclined to sinfulness and unholy desires.

By Original Sin and our own personal sins we deserve condemnation.  We actually acknowledge that at the start of each Holy Mass when we call to mind our sins and ask God’s mercy, before we ascend the mountain, so to speak, of worship at Holy Mass.  When we call to mind our sins we are not merely calling to mind “struggles” or “mistakes” or “weaknesses” or some such vague language.  No, we are calling to mind our sinful choices and our guilt.  We are calling to mind that we deserve condemnation.  We call to mind everything that reflects sin in our lives.  Each one of us says, “I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done (the evil I have done) and in what I have failed to do (the good I have failed to do), through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault”.

Yes, as we recall God’s mercy we have many reasons to be thankful and to be filled with joy as we say alleluia, because we are aware of those sins from which we have been saved.  The apostles and disciples, the first Christians, faced condemnation for their own sins and they faced a world locked in death, when they experienced the Good News of the empty tomb and the resurrection of Jesus.  They knew the Lord’s resurrection to be a great victory of joy and hope.  And they knew they were called to live that victory.  Thus, the second reading had St. John proclaiming that belief when it said, “the victory that conquers the world is our faith”.  The disciples went out into the midst of a world whose mentality and vision was still very much locked in human power and the hopelessness of condemnation.  As the first reading showed, the disciples went out into that world and they lived differently.  They had different teachings.  They had different practices.  They were of one heart and mind, and with power they bore witness to the resurrection.

Do you acknowledge the drama of salvation and God’s generous mercy in your life?  Are you aware of sin in your life such that you can live the joy of Christ’s victory for you?  Are you ready to be like the first disciples and to go into the midst of the world and live differently?  Do you know it to be your mission, too, to bear witness to the resurrection of Jesus and to proclaim that the victory that conquers the world is our faith?  We are supposed to render that kind of evangelical service to the world.  For though we have been redeemed by the death and resurrection of Jesus, the world is still ensnared by that mentality and vision of grasping and possessing the place, and the knowledge, and the power that belongs properly to God.  In so doing, those who adopt a worldly way of thinking and acting dismiss the free gift of salvation from God, so busy are they grasping things for themselves and by their own power.

Yes, the world is ensnared by the mentality and vision of its own false god.  Do you ever consider why so many of the gravest evils of human history, so many of the gravest sins, involve human flesh, both how it is made and its very existence?  It’s because sins against human life, sins against its dignity, and sins against how human flesh is made strikes at the very image of God, who has made human beings male and female and has made us in His image and likeness.  Murder, adultery, pornography, sexual immorality of all kinds, abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, transgender ideology… all these ensnare our world and our contemporaries and they create an atmosphere that threatens to ensnare us.  These sins are like a retelling of the Garden of Eden with the serpent enticing mankind against God, against His very image and likeness.  These sins keep the world and the worldly from acknowledging the victory of our faith.  These things keep souls locked in condemnation and need our witness and our joyful “alleluia”.  We are to be so grateful ourselves for the gift of God’s mercy that we are ready to live differently in the midst of the world, and to be like those first Christians who proclaimed in word and action the victory of the resurrection of Jesus Christ!

Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday

Easter Vigil & Sunday
30 & 31 March 2024

   At Easter we return to our familiar singing of “alleluia”.  That word originates from the Hebrew and means “Praise the Lord” or “God be praised.”  One of the distinctive liturgical features of Lent is that the alleluia has been suppressed these past many weeks.  We are accustomed to the alleluia before the Gospel, but we use a different Gospel acclamation throughout Lent.  In some religious communities and in some parishes there is the practice as Lent gets started of marking that suppression of the alleluia by taking a banner that reads “Alleluia” and burying it in the ground.  So, when today “Alleluia” rings out again in our churches and from Christian mouths, there is supposed to be great joy in such a happy proclamation.  So, why would we be so joyful in that acclamation?  Why would that acclamation now return and what has prepared us to have joy as we again proclaim “alleluia”?

In part, it is because we have first observed Lent where we have been deprived of that familiar word of praise of the Lord.  But, of course, it is deeper because our observation of Lent is about more than just the absence of “alleluia”.  Rather, it is about walking the journey and the opportunity of that holy season to take note of what reduces our joy, what stifles or limits our joy.  What stifles our joy is sin, and/or being a glutton about good things in our life such that we give those things more focus than we dedicate to the spiritual life.  They become actual idols.  In Lent, we pass through the desert of recognizing sin and seeking to dismiss it from our lives in order that we live in greater freedom as God’s sons and daughters.  And as we grow in fidelity to that work of uprooting sin and growing in holiness by the fostering of virtue, well, then, we experience greater joy in Christ.

Yes, our Christian Lenten practice of the absence of that word alleluia is geared to making us now more fond of proclaiming “Praise the Lord”!  When something is missing, when I don’t get to experience it or enjoy it over an absence, I am enabled to be more aware of the blessing of that thing when I can experience it again.  Of course, we mean only good things here.  For, we ought not enjoy bad things or sins, and we ought not return to them once we get rid of them.  That’s why a true Lenten sacrifice, something you give up as part of your Lent, is about giving up a good, a legitimate thing that you are able to enjoy, but which you voluntarily relinquish.  You do this to make more time for God, to fill the absence (of that thing you have given up) with greater attention to prayer, discipline, and work on the virtues.

What has the absence of “alleluia” taught us such that we return to its use today?  By our working to uproot sin, by our willing sacrifice of good things in our life, by our struggles, by our weakness in our resolve, by having to recognize how inconsistent I can be at spiritual work and doing something for God, by all this we enter into a time of desert wandering.  We mark salvation history in our own living.  Like God’s people in Egypt we have to confront by the absence of our alleluia that we are very much trapped in sinful patterns and that our “egypts” – our sins – have quite a hold on us.  We are attached to slavery in Egypt and we need a savior.

If we have first done this self-reflective work in Lent.  If we have recognized the ways in which we need the Lord to save us, and if we take stock of just how desperate we are in our sinfulness, then we have noticed in the dryness of the missing “alleluia” that we have been given much by the Lord Jesus who has worked such marvels for us.  We likely do not take anywhere near enough stock that by our sins we deserve condemnation.  We are helpless and hopeless.  We would have no cause to dare think, much less say, Alleluia, were it not for the Lord!  That, friends, is what Christians actually believe about the seriousness of sin and the seriousness of the offer of salvation in God’s generous love.  In the dryness of Lent’s missing alleluia we have the opportunity to confront our Egypt and to learn to let it go.  We have the opportunity to pass through the desert, to follow – and yes, to wander (hopefully not for 40 years!) – where the Lord leads trusting that the slowness of our hoped-for growth in holiness is not due to anything lacking from Jesus, but from our own resolve.  And so, time and time again, we must be trained in the absence of our acclaiming “Praise the Lord” of just why we have such cause to praise him!  Missing the alleluia these many weeks, if we become convinced of our need for salvation, our need for Jesus, then our “Alleluia” returns now with deep joy!

In the absence of praise these long weeks, hopefully we return to that familiar acclamation with renewed gratitude for how salvation history has worked in us, how it is working, and how – by God’s continued generous love – it will continue to work into our future.  We praise the Lord now for God the Son has come to save us.  We praise the Lord now for God’s Kingdom has been inaugurated and we are called to inherit it.  We praise the Lord now because by baptism and faith and continued striving, salvation history is not only a story of the past but is very much here and now working in you and in me.  Our sins take us to the grave and eternal death.  But the Lord Jesus has gone there on our behalf.  The voracious appetite of death once greedily took his flesh.  But in so doing death got a surprise in that it swallowed up a power greater than itself: God almighty.  Jesus has tangled with death and left it ruined.  And by rising from the dead the Lord has opened the path for all who believe and who conform their lives to him.  Taking note of all of this divine work as a deeply personal history for me and for you, and not just a story from the past, we can say once again, “alleluia!”  Praise the Lord!

Holy Thursday

Holy Thursday 2024
28 March 2024

Ex. 12:1-8, 11-14; 1 Cor. 11:23-26; Jn. 13:1-15

  The season of Lent has now ended and the Sacred Pascal Triduum has begun with the start of this Mass.  The Gospel selection for this Holy Mass is taken from St. John’s unique account of the Last Supper, at which the Lord Jesus gives an extended Farewell Discourse.  Throughout that discourse it is clear that the apostles did not understand the full import of the Lord’s words, nor what he was doing.  We heard evidence of this in the passage where Jesus responds to Peter’s question by indicating “What I am doing you do not know now, but afterwards you will understand” (Jn. 13:7).  Later on in this passage we hear other words from Jesus, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now; but you shall follow afterward” (Jn. 13:36).  Still later in St. John’s final discourse, Thomas asks, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” (Jn. 14:5).  A final example of the lack of understanding on that first Holy Thursday evening: Philip says to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied” (Jn. 14:8).  The Lord responds, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip?” (Jn. 14:9).  Yes, throughout the Farewell Discourse is a contrast between the misunderstanding of the disciples in that present moment and a future time when they will understand what Jesus is saying and doing.

 The twofold sacramental significance of the Last Supper is that the Lord was establishing the apostles as his first priests and, at the same time, entrusting to them the duty to guard the Holy Eucharist, and giving them the sacred power to make that gift present in his Church for future generations.  The Lord was giving this charge to apostles whom he knew to be misunderstanding the significance of what he was doing for them, in them, and through them for the whole Church and the salvation of the world.  Knowledge of their misunderstanding apparently did not phase the Lord, for it did not stop him from doing what we celebrate this evening.  The future understanding would come as a gift of the promised Holy Spirit, sent from God and taking up dwelling in His Church.  For me, looking back over 25 years of ordained priesthood, I can sort of chuckle about these misunderstandings in the Gospel.  I chuckle because I am really chuckling about my own misunderstandings about what the Lord was doing the day I was ordained and given a share in that apostolic charge to guard the Holy Eucharist and to make it for the Church.  To be clear, that comment is not a claim that I have reached a moment of utmost clarity about the Lord’s workings.  No.  Rather, it is simply a comparative observation that the priest today can notice how much was misunderstood by the priest 25 years ago.  And I assume I will be able to say that in 25 more years should God grant me those years.  Indeed, the Gospel plays out again… In time and with growth we come to understand more of what the Lord does for us and in us.  The Holy Spirit helps us marvel at those gifts and helps us have a deeper understanding of these mysteries.

 But to have our misunderstandings clarified and to appreciate what the Lord does for us we have to get to know him and we have to let him do his work in us.  That means we must use our freedom to cooperate with him, to make ourselves available to him, and to beg the Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds.  Peter hesitated about letting the Lord wash his feet, and even said, “You will never wash my feet.”  The Lord’s response taught Peter a distinction between bathing and washing (as we heard in the use of language in the passage).  We might consider that an image that serves as a distinction between baptism and confession.  For when Peter thought he might need more of himself bathed, Jesus said, “Whoever has bathed has no need except to have his feet washed, for he is clean all over.”  Bathing makes one clean.  An image of the bathing of baptism.  Yet, even the one who is clean needs his feet washed from the daily dust of life’s journey.  An image of the washing of confession.

 Let’s stick with that initial protest of Peter: “You will never wash my feet.”  Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.”  In this spiritual interpretation of that exchange, we can understand that as the need to be washed in confession and restored there to our baptismal dignity.  Peter was apparently bathed.  He had no need to have more of himself bathed.  According to the Lord, he needed only his feet washed.  It is a model for us in our need to be healed, restored to baptismal dignity, and washed of the daily “dust”, the daily struggles, the daily sins.

 We the baptized have been bathed in the waters that make us clean all over.  Yet, like the apostles, we have misunderstandings.  We can suffer from hardened hearts.  We can refuse the Lord.  Our sins risk our inheritance with him.  As we pray this evening that the grace of the priesthood will be given to sons in your families, to sons of this parish, we know that our own misunderstandings cannot be relieved if we are not healed in confession.  We will be open to the Holy Spirit’s illumination to lift our misunderstandings and to heal our sins if we build our Eucharistic devotion, our devotion to this great gift given on this holy night.  Our resistance to prayer where that comes up in the busyness of our lives, resistance to uprooting sin, our resistance to coming to adoration in our chapel are ways we say to the Lord, “You will never wash my feet.”  We learn from the Gospel this evening, through the slowness and misunderstandings of those first priests, we learn of the ongoing need after being bathed in baptism, to encounter the Lord time and time again.  In the adoration of Holy Mass and worthy reception of Holy Communion, and in responding to the opportunity of adoration in our chapel, we go there to reveal our vulnerabilities and misunderstandings to the Lord.  He enlightens us and heals us.  He sends forth the Holy Spirit to transform us in any age and stage of our life.  By giving us his very self in the Holy Eucharist, through the hands of priests, the Lord holds out before us that inheritance that is the great hope of those who follow where he is going.