Second Sunday of Easter Sunday of Divine Mercy (April 24th, 2022)

On Easter day, Christians throughout the world are invited to be overcome with joy that God, in Christ, proved himself of drawing out of a horrific tragedy new and hope-filled life and possibilities.

God in Christ did something that demonstrated that an end can, through his grace, become a beginning and that even what we fear the most can be transformed.

What God in Christ did was, of course, his resurrection from the dead.  And mind you, by resurrection from the dead we are not trading in metaphor or symbols, in understanding something in a new way or discovering a new outlook or perspective.  The Lord Jesus was really and truly dead- a battered and bloody, mangled and mutilated, corpse in a grave, and this Jesus is really and truly alive.

The American author Flannery O’Connor put it most aptly when she has one of her characters remark that it is Jesus who “throws everything off” and it is not just his teachings that do the “throwing off”- it is, most especially, his resurrection.  The world has been reeling from being “thrown off” by the resurrection for over two thousand years and it is the Christian who should be the one who has the least equilibrium.  We should know that because of it all the tectonic plates that we take as solid have and continue to shake and shift.  What human beings had, for countless millennia projected into the world as sure and certain are irrevocably altered by God in Christ’s extraordinary surprise. 

We thought we had it all figured out and then Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead, threw everything off.

Today’s Gospel presents an extraordinary account of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

Christ’s disciples, who had abandoned and betrayed him, are living in fear.  We are told that they are afraid that those who had executed the Lord Jesus with such cruelty and ruthlessness are coming for them and this should not be taken as an illogical conclusion.  Yes, they were in danger, but not just from the wicked people who had crucified their Lord.

The danger was the Lord Jesus himself.  And before him all defenses, represented by the locked door, would prove ineffectual. 

You see, if the rumors they were hearing were true, and the tomb was empty and the Lord Jesus was alive, then he was truly more than what they had conceived him to be, and he had a power greater than anything that they had seen him reveal. 

Christ’s words about judgement, with its dramatic separation of good from evil, and the horror of losing the opportunity that he offered, was undoubtedly afflicting their hearts and minds.

If and when the Lord Jesus returned to them what would he do with those who had abandoned and betrayed him?  They knew what they deserved.

And they would be surprised.  They would be thrown off.  They would not receive from Christ what they expected or what they deserved.

Christ could have thrown fists, what he did, instead, was offer mercy.

If the story of the Lord Jesus was simply the construct of a human author, then  the ending would have likely been very different than what the testimony of the Gospel delivers to us.

Our sense of justice is fierce and terrifying.  We render what we believe is due to people with calculation and cruelty.  We are not naturally inclined to restraint when we feel we have been wronged and our response to being hurt is often to hurt those who we perceive have hurt us even more.  We are masters of justifying the manner in which we increase the suffering of the world.

The manner in which we weaponize justice as a means of retaliation and impose restitution as a fatal blow against our enemies is truly dark.  The distillation of our sin, our sin rarified into its purest form, is cruelty. We are so quick to pass judgement and mete out punishment for what we conceive others have done or failed to do.

And Christ points out repeatedly and then definitively exposes in his own suffering and death, that the clouds and vapors of our self-righteousness and moral indignation are merely a smokescreen meant to conceal our envy and our hate.

What was done to the Lord Jesus was unspeakably cruel- what price should be paid for such a horrific injustice?  What could set things right in its wake?

If the author of the Gospel was merely a human author- somebody would have to pay. “Justice” would have to be served- and served cold.

But the author of the story is not merely a human author, but a divine author, the one, true God himself, and his response is, as I have noted, absolutely surprising.  There is a judgement and it sets things right, but it is not what we would have expected.

The great revelation of Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead is not simply that he is really and truly alive, but what he does with the new and transformed life in which he is revealed.

That is what today’s Gospel manifests. 

What we see and receive in the risen Lord Jesus is not just a real body whose wounds we can touch but an unexpected grace, an undeserved gift.  Christ’s followers betrayed and abandoned him.  It would have been fitting, it seems, that they received what was deserved for such treachery, a retaliation that was at least equivalent to what they did and a restitution that imposed a burden at least as heavy as the cross he had carried.

That would have been a fitting end to the story.  But God in Christ surprised us. 

He threw everything off.

Third Sunday of Lent (March 20th, 2022)

The Church’s first scripture is an excerpt from the Old Testament Book of Exodus.

The Book of Exodus recalls the extraordinary events that led up to the liberation of the Israelites from slavery to the false gods of the Egypt.

Moses, an Israelite who had been adopted by the daughter of Pharoh (the god-king of the Egyptians) has been sent into exile to the land of Midian.  It is in Midian that Moses is summoned by the Lord to act as his emissary and as God’s emissary manifests his power in signs and wonders.

These signs and wonders will be terrifying to behold.

Today’s scripture from the Book of Exodus, Moses hears that the Lord has not been indifferent to the sufferings of the Israelites and has come to rescue them.

This scripture foreshadows the revelation of Christ, who is the power of God sent to affect the liberation of his creation from the power of sin, of death and of the devil- who like the gods of the Egyptians, afflict and enslave humanity.

God in Christ presents his power in signs and wonders, the most significant of which is the cross, which is terrifying to behold.

God in Christ did not reveal himself to us as simply a teacher or social reformer, but as the Lord God himself, who seeing the affliction of humanity enslaved to dark powers, entered into the human condition so as to confront the dark powers directly and reveal to us that these powers, that, like the gods of the Egyptians, seem so fierce and invincible, can actually be defeated.

As Christians, we are, like Moses, emissaries of the Lord, charged with a mission to announce that the one, true God despises the sin that afflicts us, the death that frightens us and the devil that accuses us.  Christians are meant, like Moses, to stand our ground athwart these dark powers and announce the power of God’s liberation in Christ.

The apostle Paul makes reference to Moses in his first letter to the Corinthians.  His purpose is to remind us that despite the signs and wonders that were revealed and the power of God that was manifested to the Israelites, they were not faithful to God and the consequences of this infidelity was grim.

He warns us Christians that we should not take our relationship with God in Christ for granted or think that it exempts us from living in the manner that Christ asks us.

It is not enough simply to bear the name of Christian as if it were merely a title or something akin to an ethnic identity.   Being a Christian is a way of life. This way of life makes demands on us and because of it we accept certain responsibilities. 

St. Paul insists that it is not merely being designated as a Christian that is enough, being a Christian is more than that.  The Israelites made that mistake and we should take care and be mindful of what it truly means to be a Christian or we will repeat the mistakes of our spiritual ancestors.

Today’s Gospel is strange as Christ the Lord makes reference to terrible events that were known to the people of his own time but seem obscure references to us.  After these observations Christ the Lord speaks to us in a parable, the meaning of which is meant to not only teach us, but also to warn.

Christ makes reference to how Pilate mixed the blood of Galileans with the temple sacrifices (an unspeakable desecration and sacrilege).  This horror is accounted for in the writings of the ancient historian Josephus as a response to acts of sedition against Roman rule (remember, the Israelites were subjects of the Roman emperor and their lands were under control of Caesar’s empire).

The other reference is to a terrible accident in which flaws in the construction of a tower results in the collapse of the structure and the deaths of many people.

What is this all about?

Christ is making references to these events in order to point out that life is precarious and has uncertain outcomes.  Misfortune befalls just and unjust alike. 

Christians will not be exempt from the raw facts of life.  It is within the reality of this world that we will know our purpose and discover our mission.

So… Given the unpredictability and fragility of life, we should not defer until later what God asks of us today, which for the Christian is the demand of love. 

This insight is a prepares us to consider the meaning of Christ’s parable. 

The unfruitful fig tree is an image of the Christian who is unproductive and who generates little to nothing.  Grace increases in us in the measure that we give it away.  Holiness is evident, not just in one’s interior disposition, but in external actions that manifest one’s interior life.  The Christian way of life is not about the evasion of responsibility, but about our willingness to love what Christ loves and to do what he asks us to do.

Because the fig tree is unproductive and does not generate life, it’s future is imperiled.  It receives a reprieve, becoming the recipient of a mercy, a grace that is undeserved.  God proves in Christ that he is the great giver of another chance.

If we are unproductive as Christians, there is the opportunity right now to repent of our indolence and resistance, but this opportunity, like life itself, has its own expiration date.

Life is short and unpredictable. Christ insists that he has work for us do during our lifetimes.  Our time to love is limited.  We must be attentive and be productive on behalf of love, for our opportunities to love what Christ loves and serve what Christ serves are not unlimited.     

The time to be a Christian is now, not later. 

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (February 13th, 2022)

The Church’s first scripture for today’s Mass is an excerpt taken from the Old Testament book of the prophet Jeremiah.

The prophet Jeremiah proclaimed the Lord’s word of truth during a dark time, the enemies of the Israelites were poised for war and an invasion of Jerusalem was imminent.  In 587 BC the Kingdom of David would fall and the devastation that would follow would be horrific.  Jeremiah foresaw all this coming and sent out word of warning.  Yet, his interventions went unheeded. 

The people would not trust the word of the Lord, but they would trust the words of men and this would bring the Israelites to utter ruin.

True prophets, authentic prophets, do not proclaim themselves or their opinions, they speak the word of God, bearing that word into real, human situations.  The prophet is not concerned with polls or politicos, consultations or the commentariat. 

Instead, the prophet presents a God’s eye view of human realities, and for the most part, that view insists on our conversion, identifying the real problem, the origination for all our woes is our own egoism, the elevation of ourselves to the status of God and the failure to come to terms with God’s commandments as non-negotiable necessities for human flourishing.

For Jeremiah, the real enemy of the Israelites was not just the enemy outside the gates, but the enemy within each person, that part of ourselves that thinks that we know better than God and acts as if God does not matter. 

For the person who trusts in God, their vision of themselves and the world is radically changed.  This vision imparts wisdom and understanding about the world and the role God wants us to play in his creation.  This vision inspires purpose and imparts meaning.  Bishop Barron speaks of authentic Christian spirituality as “a way of seeing” and this is an important insight.

Spirituality, Christian spirituality, should not be reduced to pious practices.  Spirituality is a participation in the God’s eye view of oneself and the world. 

This is the viewpoint of the prophet, but more than this, it should be the viewpoint of the Christian, not just in matters of piety, but in terms of all human endeavors.

An apt spiritual question for us Christians is this- in the midst of the particular circumstances of life, in relation to reality, to all the raw facts of human experience, am I willing to give priority to God?  And further- as I survey the realities of life have a learned that what God sees is of far greater importance than my own perceptions and opinions, indeed of far greater importance than the perceptions and opinions of others.

The apostle Paul reminds us in his first letter to the Christians of the city of Corinth of the centrality and significance of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

Denial of the Resurrection, with all its implications, is anti-Christ and anti-Christian- and this includes the diminishment of its reality for our own lives- meaning how we understand our lives right now and in the life that is yet to come.

What does the resurrection reveal to us?

Our lives are not limited to the here and now.  What begins in this world for us does not end in a grave.  This world is not all that there is and there is a greater power, a power greater than even death, that is not just a power, but a person, a divine person, who wants to share a relationship with us, share communion with us, and invites us to become his friends.  This divine person has given us his name and even given us his life.  His relationship with us is personal- in this life and in the life to come.

If you believe this you are a Christian, and if your faith is in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus you see and understand your own life and death differently.  Both life and death unfold their meaning and purpose in relation to Christ and in terms of Christ’s relationship with you.  There are many systems of conviction (ways of understanding) about life and death, but for the Christian, whatever truth might be gleaned from these systems is always positioned by priority of the Resurrection of Christ.

In his Gospel, the Lord Jesus delivers to us blessings and woes- he has words of encouragement and words of warning.

He imparts blessing to those who are poor, hungry, mourning and reviled.

He imparts woes for those who are rich, comfortable, satisfied, content, and honored.

In other words, he overturns our expectations for what blessings really are.

What does this mean?

In one respect, God in Christ is telling us forthrightly who he identifies as being important to him- those who are in most need of him and if we want to be in relationship to him we should place ourselves in relationship to those whom God deems to be most important, not to us, but to God.

In another respect he is warning us about our inclination to see worldly success and accomplishment as somehow indicative of divine favor or of virtue.  This not always the case, and in many instances, worldly success is accomplished by using the appearance of virtue to mask immorality and selfishness.  For this reason, it would be better living bereft of worldly satisfactions, for if they come at the price of our own integrity, of our own soul, they are just not worth it.

In the end, when we all face the Lord, we come to him stripped of all our accomplishments, in the words of the author Flannery O’Connor, “even our virtues are burned away”.  What will matter then is not the “blessings” we have received, but the “blessings” that we have imparted.  The mercy that we plead for will be met by the measure of mercy that we ourselves offered to others.

Did we live in such a way that we sought, as God in Christ does, to alleviate the sufferings of the world, or did we, out of our own desires, for things like wealth, comfort, security, honor-  or worse- out of self-righteousness, personal entitlement and moral indignation, increase the sufferings of the world?

This question demands our answer.  It’s best to contend with question now rather than defer it to that moment when the possibility of changing our answer is no longer possible.

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Church’s first scripture for today is from the Old Testament book of the prophet Jeremiah.

Jeremiah spoke the Lord’s word of truth in the dark days before the destruction of Jerusalem and fall of the Kingdom of David in 587 BC.

A true and authentic prophet does not proclaim his own truth or flatter people with words that confirm their biases or comfort them with pleasing unrealities. A true and authentic prophet speaks what God commands the prophet to speak and when God bids his prophets to speak it is usually because his people (that means us) have lost our way.

Jeremiah did precisely this and paid a heavy price.  In this respect, the prophet Jeremiah has for centuries been understood as a foreshadowing or anticipation of Christ, who, as the Gospel of John reminds us, “came to us and we did not know him”, meaning- we would not heed his words and change our lives.

Instead we lashed out at him, frustrated that he would not just tell us what we wanted to hear.

Prophecy has not faded into the past, but it is truly alive in the Church.  At our baptism we are all declared to be “priest, prophet and king”.  And this is not merely decorative language meant to flatter, but a statement about who Christ has made us to be.

Our role as prophets is to bear witness to Christ, not only by telling people the truth about who Christ is, but living in such a way that it is obvious to others that we not only know about Christ, but that we seek to live like him and to imitate him.

We do this out of love and because of our love for Christ we will suffer much- for wherever love is true there is a willingness to suffer and the intensity of our love brings with it the willingness to endure much for the sake of those whom we love.

Thus, the greatest suffering of a true prophet is not the pains of persecution, but the pain of a love that is unrequited and refused.  As Christian prophets, this is the risk that we must prepare ourselves for and the risk that we all must make.

The great Apostle Paul has much to say about love in today’s excerpt from his First Letter to the Corinthians.

This scripture passage, one of the most memorable in the New Testament is often proclaimed at weddings, and therefore might become associated with romance and sentimentality.

It is only romantic inasmuch as it speaks of the kind of love with which Christ loves us, love his Church, loves all those he draws to himself.

But sentimental?  It is nothing of the sort.

Try loving in the manner St. Paul describes and you will understand.

When a Christian speaks of love our reference is not a concept or idea or even a feeling, but instead love is for us Christians a revelation, it is a divine person who show us in himself what love actually is.

We all have ideas and desires about love, but these are always inadequate for us Christians, however helpful they might be. 

The thick description of love for us Christians is Christ himself and it is given to us not just in his teachings, but in what he reveals about himself.  In particular, what he reveals in his suffering and death.  One way to think about St. Paul’s testimony about love is that it is a commentary about Christ, a description of him.

St. Paul provides this testimony because far too often we prefer descriptions and definitions of love that although emotionally satisfying, are really just selfish and self-interested.  Consider then this beautiful text of St. Paul as a correction and an invitation to know what true love is, perhaps even for the first time.

Finally, in his Gospel, the Lord Jesus faces furious opposition.  Why?

Because he reminds the people that God loves the people that they deem unworthy of love- outsiders, outcasts, sinners. 

The opponents of the Lord Jesus, bound in self-imposed chains of moral indignation and self-righteousness have taken it upon themselves to tell others that they are less worthy of God then they are. 

Confronted with this truth, they become violent and the recipient of their violence is Christ, who is God himself!

Moral indignation and self-righteousness are signs of a grave spiritual crisis and throughout the New Testament, particularly in the Gospels, Christ presents himself as particularly attentive to these vices.

Rather than evading these vices in our own lives, we must confront the tendency of both in our own lives.  In other words, we are meant to come to terms with the opponents of the Lord Jesus as being none other than ourselves.

There is in each of a refusal of Christ, a refusal of love.  This “no” to Christ will subvert us if we are unwilling to contend with it and acknowledge its reality.

If we do not attend to it, our “no” to Christ it will manifest itself in subversive and destructive ways.  In the devout or pious, it appears in a religious outlook deformed by moral indignation and self-righteousness.  God’s love for those we deem unworthy will drive us to a frenzy and God’s mercy for sinners will be received by us as an attack on our own virtue.  

Christ can rescue us from this, but we must let him.  If not, we will ultimately turn on him and risk losing him.  We can avoid this, but not without conversion, not without change, not without repentance.

There is much at stake in our refusals of Christ. 

Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe (November 24th, 2019)

Today the Church celebrates the great solemnity of Christ the King. This is a relatively new celebration, being established by Pope Pius XI in the early decades of the 20^th century. The reason for this celebration might be understood as a reminder to Christians that they live in a world in which there are rival claims to the authority of God in Christ- other worldly powers insist that they are owed the honor and obedience that should properly only belong to God in Christ. These rivals to Christ might be political powers, or economic interests, or allegiances to ideologies, or even the belief that in all matters of morality and religion, the will of the individual should prevail. For the Christian, all these things are properly positioned under the highest authority, which is not the state, the political party, the economy or my own will, but God in Christ. This is what is meant when Christians declare that Christ is the King. It is a statement of faith that has real world and real life implications. And what we Christians call spirituality is our often times stark confrontation with the demands of Christ’s kingship.

Will we serve Christ as our King or do we pay lip service to his authority? Christ is not a constitutional monarch with whom we have negotiated the terms of his authority. The Church is not a parliament that comes to Christ with a list of demands that he must approve in order to maintain his privileges. To be a Christian is to be someone who accepts the authority of Christ over one’s life and the proper reference point for understanding his authority is that he is our king.

The truth that God has rivals to his authority is one of the great themes that drives the grand narrative of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, from start to finish, from cover to cover.

In fact, the Bible identifies as the reason for the mess we creatures make of the world as the result of humanity’s rejection of the authority of God over our lives. God’s authority wills human flourishing, as his revelation indicates the means by which human flourishing is possible, but in our willfulness and arrogance, we prefer our way to his way and the result is the degradation of human flourishing. The Bible insists that the rejection of God’s authority provokes inescapable consequences. This rejection and these consequences is displayed with brutal realism in the Bible.

This reality is what the Church’s first scripture is about. We heard an excerpt from the Book of Samuel, which a recounting of the people and circumstances that led to the establishment of the monarchy of Israel. This kingdom was established because the Israelites wanted a king to “make them like other nations” (a desire which is telling). Prior to the monarchy God was the king who ruled through the Law by God given to Moses. And so the Israelite desire for a king is a rejection of his kingship. The Lord warns the Israelites through the prophet Samuel that their desire to be ruled by an earthly king will have consequences. And yet the people insist and so God gives the Israelites a king. The Book of Samuel and the subsequent historical and prophetic books of the Bible will reveal the consequences that the Israelites will endure because of their desire for a king.

The New Testament is about how God acts in Christ to rescue his people and with them the whole world from the consequences of the refusal to accept him as the one true and only king.

God does this in an extraordinary way by entering into the human condition himself in Christ and revealing himself as the only king who is worth our allegiance. This is the what the testimony of St. Paul is about in his letter to the Colossians. The apostle testifies that Christ is not merely a teacher of ethics or exemplar of morality or spiritual guru or whatever category cultural elites try to impose on Christ to make him palatable to our preferences and opinions.

Christ is, St. Paul testifies, the visible image of the invisible God- he is God. Not just a god, but the one, true God, who has revealed himself by accepting a human nature and living a real human life. God has done this to rescue us, to save us. To rescue us from what? To save us from what? From ourselves. From our inclination and proclivity to give authority to things that are not God and to let those things rule our lives and our world. These things can be worldly realities like wealth, pleasure, power and honors. We make idols of these things, they become our God and in doing so we subvert their true purpose and make them into forces of destruction. These false gods can also be things like our political ideologies, our economic theories, and even our cultural and ethnic identities. When these things become our ultimate concern, they become our kings and then we need to be rescued from them, we need to be saved from them!

St. Paul insists in this scripture from his letter to the Colossians that we are saved and rescued from false kings, rivals to Christ the King, by the cross. What does this mean?

We look to today’s Gospel for insights.

Christ crucified unmasks the power play of earthly rulers or worldly kings, who mask their cruelty and violence behind a subterfuge false claims and empty promises. They demand our allegiance, often insisting that our submission is to our benefit and will bring with it order and prosperity. And yet, all this is accomplished with the threat of potential violence- defy us and we who give you life will take your life. Notice the diabolical lie in this- worldly powers do not give us life and have no legitimate authority threaten and kill people so as to legitimate their desire for wealth, pleasure, power and honors.

This has been the reasoning for thousands of years for displays of brutalizing power like the cross- cross us and we will put you on a cross. Christ’s claims, his revelation of his divinity and his identity as the true and only king do precisely this- he undermines the claims of worldly powers over us. He subverts their claims to authority. He shows us the nature of their lies. He unmasks that their base of power is not benevolent promises that impart human flourishing, but instead it is the threat of death. They will manipulate us in our fears to get what they want. And if we resist- look at the cross and see what they can do!

In his cross he reveals the true nature of worldly power and how the rulers of this world have legitimated their authority. All this looks like the cross. They would even seek to torture and kill God to serve their purposes. And out of our own fear and lack of love we would let them do that.

That’s the power you serve, the power that will torture and kill the innocent, when you refuse Christ’s authority and his revelation as king.

The criminal hanging in agony with Christ sees this revelation and understands it before it is too late.

The question is will we.

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time (October 20th, 2019)

The Bible is literally a book of battles.

Conflict and war are a persistent preoccupation of the biblical authors and the inspired authors even go so far as to assert that God, who is an active agent in all of human affairs and history, also concerns himself with our violence. God is not only present in the temple, but also on the field of battle.

This upsets many of us and has upset many believers in the Biblical revelation for centuries. In fact, centuries ago, a Christian by the name of Marcion was so upset that he advocated that the warlike texts of the Bible be excised from the canon of Church’s scripture and that the God of these battles and wars be understood, not as the true God, but as a false god, a pretender, a mistake, a fraud.

Marcion’s insistence was identified by the Church as heresy, false teaching.

The conflict and violence of the Bible gesture towards the truth of the human condition. We might be more comfortable with stories that excise the hard facts of what it means to be human, leaving only that which idealizes us and provides comforting emotional reassurance, but while these kinds of stories might delight us, they are dealing in half-truths, and as such, are deceptive.

The Bible intends to tell the truth and its unflinching presentation of our conflicts and violence is the telling of our truth.

I say all this to you because the first scripture for today, an excerpt from the Old Testament Book of Exodus presents a scene of conflict and violence- it is God’s revelation situated on the battlefield.

Moses, God’s chosen leader of the Israelites, presides over this battle, and the strength of his presence and charisma inspires those who fight to victory. Yet, as the strength of Moses falters, so also does the strength of the Israelites. And so Moses, God’s chosen one, is supported to the priest Aaron and the warlord Joshua. And thus, the victory of the Israelites is assured.

What does this mean?

Think of Moses as a symbol of the Church, a Church that battles all the time against all those dark powers in ourselves and in our world that place themselves in opposition to Christ. This battle is waged in our world, yes, but more importantly in ourselves.

In each of us there is a no to Christ, a preference to reject his presence and his power. This refusal (our refusal) is manifested in our opposition to do what he asks of us, a refusal to serve and honor his Lordship over our lives. Our stark confrontation against our refusals of Christ is the battle we all face. And the heat of that battle in all of us is lightning hot.

Within the heat of this battle we must be supported in our efforts or we will fail. Thus, we require the priests who give us the Sacraments and the saints who show us the right strategy. These are represented in today’s Scripture by Aaron and Joshua. Left on our own, the battle will be lost. Supported by the Sacraments and Saints, victory is made possible.

Remember, the battle here is not simply external- it is a battle within ourselves, in our desires, in our choices and in our decisions. The conflict happens because of our refusals of Christ. All else is a distraction. The field of battle external to ourselves is secondary to the conflict that rages within and the external battle is lost if we fail to accept this truth. If the Church is losing the external battle with a culture that holds us with contempt or indifference, it is because we Christians are failing to fight against the refusals of Christ in our own hearts and minds. We have made the Church weak through our refusals, our qualifications, our equivocations.

The great enemy is not just the world, or the flesh, or the devil- it is ourselves.

The enemy is our own refusals of Christ. The means toward victory have been given to us in the Sacraments and in the Saints, but will we call upon their power and accept their help? The answer to this question for far too many Christians is no. But what is your answer? Your own “yes” or “no” to Christ can turn the tide towards victory or towards defeat.

Our second scripture for today is an excerpt from St. Paul’s second letter to Timothy. In this text the apostle Paul insists that we look to the Bible, to the Scriptures for wisdom and that the wisdom that we receive from the Bible is not merely human insight, but it is the revelation of God. St. Paul further insists that this divine revelation, this holy wisdom from the Scriptures must be interpreted by the Church, and that our interest in the Bible must be “persistent, whether it is convenient or inconvenient”.

For most Catholics and for many Christians, their experience of the revelation of God in the Scriptures is limited to the liturgy, to a formal worship service. The experience of the Scriptures in this context is appropriate and good, but it is meant to be foundational, not the whole structure. What good is a foundation without walls and a roof? In other words, we should desire more and seek opportunities to receive the wisdom of God’s revelation in the Bible outside of Mass and worship. And further, within the Mass and worship we should want more than brevity and clichés in the preaching and teaching of the Church’s ministers. The Bible is not a children’s storybook and it places a demand on us to listen, to think, and to pray. If we expect the wisdom of God reduced to sound bites for our convenience, it is not the wisdom of God that we will receive.

Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. One day we will all come face to face with Christ, and we all have to ask ourselves right now whether we will meet in him a stranger or a friend. Christ wants to be our friend, but for many Christians, this offer of friendship is refused. You cannot truly be friends with someone you do not know and the opportunity for getting to know Christ is there for you in Holy Scriptures.

Finally, in his Gospel, the Lord Jesus presents a parable to us, a story in which a woman’s persistence wins over an unjust judge so that he settles a case in her favor.

Many preachers present the meaning of this parable as the woman representing us in our persistent appeals and petitions to God and God as the judge.

This is one way of looking at the story, but another is to see the woman as God and ourselves as the unjust judge.

God in Christ is persistent in his overtures to us, unrelenting in his insistence that we accept the gifts he wants to offer. Most often he is met with our refusals, but even in the face of our refusals, he persists and his persistence is such that he can utterly wear us down until he gets what he wants.

This is reason for us to have hope. God can do for us what we cannot or will not do for ourselves. Our will is not the absolute obstacle we often make it out to be- our will is not more powerful than God. We often fall under the devilish delusions that our refusals of Christ are the final word. But ours is never the final word, the last word belongs to God in Christ. And God in Christ reveals his final word to us in the revelation of his cross.

God in Christ demonstrates that not even the cross or even death are insurmountable obstacles to his persistent willingness to love us and to save us. He will always keep trying and even run ahead of us into the horrific limits of godforsakeness so that he can get what he wants- our salvation. He will not coerce us to receive this gift, but he has the unlimited capacity to overcome our refusals through his persistent, unyielding, utterly relentless offer of grace.

 

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (August 18th, 2019)

The Church’s first scripture for today is an excerpt from the Old Testament Book of the Prophet Jeremiah.

Jeremiah spoke the Lord’s word of truth in the dark days that preceded the catastrophe of 587 BC.

Remember, it was in the year 587 BC that the last remnant of the once mighty Kingdom of David came to a tragic end. The armies of Babylon invaded the Israelite territories and sacked the city of Jerusalem, executed the royal family (the descendants of King David) desecrated the holy temple, enslaved the city’s inhabitants and leveled the city. Jerusalem was no more and in the eyes of the world the God of Israel had been defeated.

Jeremiah warned the Israelites of this impending tragedy and his words stung their egos and cut into their hearts. This was, Jeremiah testified, no accident of history, but the direct result of the Israelite’s indifference and opposition to God and the mission he had given his chosen people. While the elites of Israel scrambled to find some political solution to what was essentially a spiritual predicament, Jeremiah spoke the Lord’s word of truth.

Political solutions could not hold the inevitable at bay. The only hope for the Israelites was conversion, a change of hearts and minds, and a willingness to endure what was to come, understanding that stripped of all the worldliness they had valued, a new kind of Israel would emerge.

Jeremiah’s truth telling provoked opposition and today’s scripture describes the suffering that the prophet endured. Cast into a deep pit to die. Essentially buried alive, let him preach to the dark and speak his truth into his grave.

The mission of a prophet is one of formidable risk and this mission has passed into the Church. The teaching authority that the Lord Jesus has given to his Church, particularly to his Magisterium (the Holy Father and the Bishops in communion with him) is not merely to explicate doctrines, establish procedures or enact legislation, but to speak the truth of God. To remind us and the world that God is sovereign, he is the Lord, and his will for our lives is no small matter.

This prophetic mission will have consequences, engender opposition, not just from the world, but even from the baptized. The natural inclination of humanity is to hear what we want to hear, to be confirmed in our ideologies and prejudices, to be told that God is on our side. How often we use religion to justify our actions! We recoil when the Church tells us what we don’t want to hear!

It is inevitable that the Church, at times, will find itself with Jeremiah in the pit!

The ancient sages of the Church also saw in this particular scripture a foreshadowing of Christ, an anticipation of what he would accomplish.

Christ, like Jeremiah, speaks the truth, and is cast into a pit- in his case, it is the pit of death, and like Jeremiah, he is pulled out of the pit by the will of the king, not a worldly king, but God himself- who did not abandon him to the pit of death, but raised him up.

In this we Christians place our hope- Christ reveals in his descent into the pit of death that God will not abandon us, and that though we suffer, he remains with us and will draw us from death to a new kind of life.

This is the meaning and message of the Letter to the Hebrews (the Church’s second scripture).

In this scripture we are told that Christ endured suffering and death and did so that we “might not grow weary or lose heart”. The worldliness that opposed Christ will inevitably oppose those who follow him. Suffering and death will afflict us in this world. But Christian faith in not in worldliness and our hope is not in the world, but our faith is in God in Christ and our hope is in his passage into suffering and death on the cross.

It is in the cross that we see and understand what God is doing and what God will do for us.

Christian faith is at its heart, not just about ethics or social service. Nor is Christian faith merely an expression of culture or ethnicity. These things are important, but they are positioned by a revelation far greater and more important. They are positioned by a deep mysticism that is revealed in the cross of the Lord Jesus. It is only in this mysticism that the meaning and purpose of Christian faith delivers its light.

This deep mysticism is given to us in the Mass, in our worship, in the Blessed Sacrament. For in this Blessed Sacrament, we participate, not just in a ritual, but in cross of the Lord Jesus. What Christ revealed in his cross he reveals to us in the Mass. What Christ gives on the cross, he gives to us in the Mass.

It is for this reason the Mass is proclaimed by the Church to be the “source and summit of the Christian life” and the Eucharist is proclaimed to be, not just a symbol of Christ, but his very own and very real life and presence. It is in our participation in this deep mysticism that the meaning and purpose of our Christian faith is revealed.

Christ in his Gospel testifies that he has come to set the earth on fire! This seems a frightening prospect and we all know the destructive power of fire. Yet the fire Christ speaks of here is not just a force for destruction, but it is the passion that we know in this world as love or what the Church calls charity. This fire is the Holy Spirit, which is the love of God the Father for God the Son, a love that Christ gives to us and it is this love that expresses itself in the mission of Church.

The love of God in Christ inspires at times conflict and division because it compels us to love that which the world despises. The world holds before us as most valuable and most lovable, things like wealth, power, pleasure and honors. These are what we are supposed to love, and in contrast and contradiction to these worldly passions, the love of God in Christ insists that we “seek what is above” and this means that pursuit of wealth, power, pleasure and honors is not the priority for a Christian.

Instead our priority is love- it is charity. To live in imitation of Christ, offering our gifts, our talents, our resources, even our very lives, to love and serve what God loves- and doing this even if our efforts to love are refused or thwarted, or even if our willingness to love is exploited and refused.

The world struggles against the love that I have just described and so do we. Wealth, pleasure, power and honors seem more straightforward and rewarding, so we tend to love these, to be passionate in our pursuit of these things and make them the meaning and purpose of our existence. Our attachment to these things is such that it drives us to oppose Christ.

Or our love for these things is such that it means that we often try to give ourselves to Christ with a divided heart, our gift of self to him is half not whole. If only Christ would give us the wealth, pleasure, power and honors we deserve, then we will serve, only then will we follow.

Thus, the fire that Christ casts into us, into our world, is something we tend to reduce to a mere flicker, rather than flame, cooling embers rather than radiant heat.

The saints defy this cooling and allow themselves to burn hot with the love of God in Christ.

Christ’s desire for us is that we were all his saints, that we would be for a world grown cold a blazing fire of his love.

Fifth Sunday of Easter (May 19th, 2019)

This morning’s first scripture is an excerpt from the New Testament Book of Acts.

Remember, the Book of Acts is, like the Gospels, testimony to the life and presence of the Lord Jesus. In the Gospels, this testimony is to the encounter with the life and presence of the Lord Jesus in the body of his Incarnation. God, in Jesus Christ, accepts for himself a human nature and reveals himself as a man. Thus, God shows us in Christ that he is a living, divine person who offers us a relationship with him and wants us to know him as we would know a friend.

In the Book of Acts, the encounter with Christ is different, but no less significant. God in Christ reveals himself in a different kind of body- the Body of the Church. God in Christ in living and present to us and to the world in the Church. The Church continues the revelation of God in Christ. The Church is the extension of the Incarnation, the revelation of his living presence in our midst.

In today’s scripture, the missionaries Paul and Barnabas return from one of their adventures. Through their persons, God in Christ has shared his life and presence with others and the result has been that there are new Christians in places where there had formally been none. Because of the missionary efforts of Paul and Barnabas, the Body of Christ in the world, the Church, is living, active, and present.

Paul and Barnabas testify that while their efforts have been fruitful, it has not been easy. There has been a cost in hardship and suffering for them, but this was necessary. They do not lament their hardship and suffering, but they testify that their mission to bring the Lord Jesus to others, their mission to grow the Church, was worth hardship and suffering.

Many times, Christians will falter and fail in their faith, particularly in their mission to bring the Lord Jesus to others, because such efforts are usually difficult and emotionally unsatisfying.

The aversion to suffering and hardship for the sake of the Church has led some Christians to believe that the missionary task that belongs to every Christian by virtue of Baptism can be delegated to others, preferably those who will serve their interests and keep the difficulty of being a disciple from disrupting their lives.

When this takes hold of a Christian community, Christians become the contrary of Paul and Barnabas, and the Church, rather than growing, shrinks away and disappears.

It is difficult for us to hear and to accept, but it is a willingness to make sacrifices, to accept hardship, to endure suffering, that enables Christ to be known and the Church to flourish and grow.

The second reading for today is from the New Testament book of Revelation.

The Book of Revelation should not be reduced in our minds to a text about the destruction of the planet and the end of the world.

Thinking of the Book of Revelation in that way misses the point entirely.

The Book of Revelation is a Book assuring persecuted Christians that God’s justice works his way through human history and the apparent defeat that the persecuted Church suffers is not the end of the story. The world so often rages against the Church because the Church so often tells the world what it doesn’t want to hear and acts in ways that the worldly find loathsome and subversive. In response to the Church the world unleashes the power of persecution and death.

Christians are right to be afraid of this power, but lest fear overtake and paralyze us, the Book of Revelation testifies that God, who in Christ, reveals he is more powerful than persecution and death, will not allow persecution and death to have the last word. The last word of history is word of God in Christ, a word that gives justice to the persecuted and glorified life for the dead.

As such, Christians need not despair in the face of threats and difficulties.

The Book of Revelation is also testimony to how God in Christ makes himself known in the mysterious worship of the Church called the Mass.

The Mass Christians gather to celebrate and offer is not just a historic ritual, faith based group therapy, or a religious themed sing along. The Mass is the form of worship God in Christ gives to the Church and it is the form of worship God in Christ wants from Christians.

It is during the Mass that God in Christ reveals himself, fulfilling the testimony of the Book of Revelation that “God’s dwelling is with the human race”. This is testimony to the Eucharist, to the Blessed Sacrament, which is not just a symbol of Jesus or of the Christian community. The Blessed Sacrament is the life and presence of God in Christ dwelling with us, changing us, moving us, making us new.

The reduction of the Mass to being merely a kind of faith-based entertainment and the Blessed Sacrament to merely a symbol is demonic. These reductions blaspheme the gifts Christ gives to us and stunts the growth of the Church.

When Christians fall into these kinds of the reductions the harm done to the Church is akin to the harm unleashed by the worldly persecutors of Christians.

Many times, when we Christians see the Church faltering and failing, the cause is not an enemy external to the Church, but ourselves. For this, we must all repent.

Finally, in his Gospel, the Lord Jesus testifies that the great sign of his life and presence in the Church will be love. Christ commands his Church to love. Love is the mission of the Christian.

Recently, Bishop Robert Barron was interviewed by Ben Shapiro and asked whether or not the Church was faith based or action or work based. Shapiro was trying to get at the distinctions between the Catholic Church and Protestantism and the difference between the Church and his own faith, Judaism.

Bishop’s reply was that the Church is love based.

The reaction to the Bishop’s insight was by some negative, who accused him of being weak. Those who opposed him remarked that they had had enough of a reduction of the Church’s message to love, which they associated with feelings and bland toleration.

Of course, in their ire of not hearing what they wanted to hear, the Bishop’s opponents, they had no time to listen to what the Bishop defined as love. The need to be right makes us deaf and blind.

Love is, the Bishop testified, paraphrasing St. Thomas Aquinas “willing the good of the other”. Try doing that some time if you think its bland and mere feelings. It’s hard and dreadful and conforms one not to a blandly tolerant world view, but to the cross of the Lord Jesus. Willing the good of another is true love and it is always a sacrifice. There is no love without sacrifice and love without sacrifice is false, its counterfeit, it’s a merely a charming and deceptive pretense.

To truly will the good of the other is to abandon your ego driven attachments and ideologies and to will for the other person, not what you want, or even what they want, but what God wants. Such love offers to the other not what you or that person wants, but what they need the most.

If you are unsure what God wants for others look to sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, consider his Gospel, and delve into the lives of the saints. If the culture in which the Church is embedded does not know what love is, it lacks the witness of Christians who should know better what love is because of what the Lord Jesus has revealed to us. It is the mission, the purpose of the Church, of each Christian, to show the world true and authentic love. In the words of St. John of the Cross, where there is not love, put love and there you will find love”.

If the culture does not know what love is, we might ask ourselves what we Christians are doing wrong or not doing at all, because love is supposed to be our mission.

When Christians become averse to Christ’s command of love something has gone terribly wrong. The distinction that love is not bland toleration or feelings is necessary, but when Christians seek to bypass the primacy and priority of love, the Gospel is rendered unintelligible and the mission of the Church is refused.

When we no longer accept our faith as love based, we are no longer Christians.

Third Sunday of Easter (May 5th, 2019)

The Church’s first scripture for today is an excerpt from the New Testament, from a book called “Acts of the Apostles”.

The “Acts of the Apostles” continues the witness and testimony to the Lord Jesus that is revealed in the Gospel of Luke, and so, it is about the Lord Jesus but with a sudden and surprising change- while the Gospel of Luke is about the revelation of God in Christ in the body of his Incarnation, Acts of the Apostles presents the revelation of God in Christ in the Church.

Think about it this way: the great revelation of Christ is not an idea or a feeling or philosophy or ethics, but a person- a divine person- and this divine person is God in Christ. God in Christ reveals himself to us, to his creation and does so in an incredible way- he accepts a human nature and lives, like us, a real, human life. He even suffers and dies, demonstrating to us that nothing inhibits his power to have a relationship with us, nothing, not even the power of death, can prevent him from loving us and offering us communion with his divine life. This is how God in Christ “saves” us. This is how God in Christ “redeems” us. And God in Christ does this in a real, human body. We Christians call this the Incarnation and it is the central and most important truth of our faith.

The Gospels give testimony to this revelation. Those who knew and experienced God in Christ in his Incarnation tell us in the Gospels who Christ is and how their relationship with him changed their lives and indeed changed the world.

Acts of the Apostles tells us about the Incarnation in a different way. It is testimony to how God in Christ continues to offer himself to the world through a body, how he continues the revelation of his Incarnation- but it is in a different kind of body- a body called the Church. The Church bears the life and presence, indeed the person of Christ in to the world and it is the privileged means by which the world can know Christ and have a relationship with him. The Church continues the Incarnation. This is the purpose of the Church. This is why there is a Church.

The Church is not just a global non-profit, established centuries ago to provide humanitarian assistance. The Church is not just an extensive building and grounds project, an institution whose purpose is the matriculate people through its structures like a school or a university. The Church is Christ’s Body, living, acting, working in the world, offering people the invitation to know the Lord Jesus and share a relationship with him.

It is for this reason, in today’s scripture from the Book of Acts, that the disciples of the Lord Jesus, resist, even in the midst of threats and violence, attempts to inhibit or curtail the mission of the Church. The Church cannot be itself if it cannot invite others to know Christ. The Church cannot be itself if it is reduced to a privatized experience of faith-based ideas and feelings. Because the Church is a revelation of God in Christ the disciples declare “we must obey God rather than men”. The disciples of the Lord Jesus resist attempts to qualify, inhibit and block public expression of their Christian faith. Do we?

The second scripture the Church presents to us today is an excerpt from the Book of Revelation.

The Book of Revelation is the last book of the Bible and it has quite reputation!

Many people construe its meaning as being about the destruction of the planet and the end of the world- but this is misleading and overly simplistic.

The Book of Revelation was written for persecuted Christians, beset by violence and oppression who wondered how Christ would act to bring his justice into their situation and into the world. Would they be vindicated in their sufferings? How would God in Christ act to set things right?

The Book of Revelation presents how God in Christ continues to act in history to set things right and in particular, to vindicate the sufferings of Christians who are persecuted and killed because of their Christian faith.

But it is also about the worship of the Church, in signs, symbols and metaphors, the Book of Revelation presents the worship of the Church as how Christ continues to reveal himself to his Church and offer his presence and power to those who participate in the Mass.

This is what is being described in today’s scripture from the Book of Revelation- the Mass, the worship of the Church, as a privileged encounter with “the Lamb that was slain”, meaning- Christ the Lord.

It needs to be repeated lest we think the Mass is less than what God in Christ intends the Mass to be and we miss the point and therefore miss its meaning and purpose: The Mass is not a pageant of culture. The Mass is not the community gathered to celebrate itself and its values. The Mass is not faith themed entertainment. What is the Mass? The Mass is the power and presence of Jesus Christ given to us in sacrament and sacrifice. The Mass is the revelation to the Church of the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”. The Mass is the fullest expression on earth of what it means to have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

We could out of our own ingenuity and skill make up all kinds of worship of the Lord Jesus (and we Christians do this all the time) but the worship God in Christ gives to us and the worship God in Christ wants is the Mass. It is here that Christians are meant to come to know Christ, to receive Christ, and be known and received by him!

Stay away from the Mass and you are staying away from Christ.

Finally, in his Gospel, the Lord Jesus reveals himself to his disciples in the body of his resurrection. Meaning, Christ rises from the dead in his body, not as an idea or a feeling, Christ’s resurrection is about a real body- once dead, and now alive. God does this in Christ, revealing that death is not an end for him and it will also not be an end for us.

In today’s account of the revelation of Christ’s resurrection in his real body, there is a confrontation with Peter, and in this confrontation with Peter a confrontation with all Christians who have sinned, who have through their words and actions denied or betrayed him.

In last week’s Gospel, Christ confronts those Christians who doubt him, who will not believe in the fact of his revelation. This week he confronts those Christians who deny or betray him.

The startling result of this confrontation is not what one would expect. Peter, and indeed all of us who have denied or betrayed Christ, rightly deserve condemnation and his scorn, but what Christ offers is an undeserved possibility of another chance. In this, we learn that Christ loves us enough to not only face down the darkest powers of the devil and death, but also to forgive us, even when our sin is denying him and betraying him.

This should overwhelm us and never cease to astound us.

The betrayal and denial of Christ looks like the cross. This is the form our betrayal and denial of God in Christ takes in the world and considering what the cross is- it’s cruelty, injustice, and horror, what should be the proper response in justice to such a refusal of God? Certainly not forgiveness! But that is what Christ offers, not what we deserve, but what we truly and really need.

Christ’s forgiveness is not something that we can simply take for granted because we don’t ever really deserve it and he offers it to us freely. It’s not something that we can earn or buy or coerce from him.

Those who accept the forgiveness of God in Christ are changed by this acceptance. Their lives become different, and as the Lord Jesus tells Peter in his Gospel, one’s life does not become easier, but the purpose of one’s life and it’s meaning forever changes.

The great indication of acceptance of the forgiveness of God in Christ is acceptance of the mission he gives us. This is not a mission that is self-directed, but instead it means placing your life at his disposal. This is what Christ asks Peter to do, it then what Peter does, and it is what all Christians are asked to do. The saints reveal what this looks life in its fullest expression, but all of us who are Christians are called by Christ into mission.

Those who truly know Christ and also those who are willing, ready, and able to do what Christ asks them to do. And just as Christ does not calculate the cost of his forgiveness of us, so neither should we calculate the cost of our willingness to do what Christ asks us to do.

Second Sunday of Easter (April 28th, 2019)

The Church’s first scripture for today is from the New Testament, a book called “Acts of the Apostles”.

Acts of the Apostles is the continuation of the Gospel of Luke. The Gospel of Luke presents the revelation of God in Christ in the Incarnation- remember, it is our faith that the Lord Jesus is the Incarnation of God, which means that in Christ, God accepted a human nature and lived a real, human life, presenting himself to us as a man, God in Christ revealed himself to us not as a vague cosmic force or an abstraction of our mind or as a figment of our emotions, but as a living, divine person, capable of a relationship with us. God in Christ meets us face to face.

Thus, the testimony of the Gospel of Luke is how God in Christ reveals himself to us in a body, a human body. The book of Acts continues this revelation of Christ, but the body through which God in Christ is revealed is expanded to include a new kind of body- the Body of Christ we know as the Church.

It is for this reason that today’s excerpt from the Book of Acts presents the apostles as doing the kinds of things that the Lord Jesus did- working great signs and wonders, healing the sick and casting out the dark spirits of evil. All this is meant to indicate that the Church’s mission is Christ’s mission. The Church, which is the Body of Christ in the world, continues the revelation of Christ is space and in time.

The revelation of the Church as Christ’s Body in the world challenges the prevailing notion that many Christians have of the Church as being merely an institution, a faith-based building and grounds project, an expression of culture and ethnicity. These things are not necessarily wicked or bad, but to reduce the Church to these things is bad, as it limits the Church’s power and potential to be what Christ intends for the Church to be- the continuation of his mission in the world.

The lesson from today’s excerpt from the Book of Acts is therefore this- the Church is most who Christ intends the Church to be when we are doing what Christ did, when we continue the revelation and work of his Incarnation. When we Christians fail at this mission, the Church drifts away from its true purpose and meaning.

Treat the Church as a faith-based building and grounds project or an expression of culture and watch the Church fail and fade away. Set about doing what Christ did and the Church will exceed all your expectations.

The Church’s second scripture for today is from the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible.

The Book of Revelation is often construed as a text that predicts a violent future and the destruction of the planet. But this is just not the case.

The Book of Revelation is written to help Christians, particularly persecuted Christians understand how God in Christ acts to set a world gone wrong right and to bring about justice for those Christians who have sacrificed their lives as martyrs for the faith.

The language of the Book of Revelation is richly symbolic and not easy for us to understand. This is because the Book of Revelation was written at a time of persecution and the symbols and images refer to people and places that its original audience would have appreciated and understood. These people and places have faded from our memories and become opaque to us. It’s for this reason that Book of Revelation is so often misunderstood.

The symbolism of the Book of Revelation refers to events in history during a past time of persecution, but the text remains relevant to us because of its message and meaning, which is that God in Christ will ultimately prove victorious and the sacrifices of the martyrs in every age of the Church’s life will be vindicated. It may not seem that way in the immediacy of the Church’s circumstances, but the vision of faith reveals what worldly vision conceals.

More than even this, the Book of Revelation is about the Church’s worship, the Mass, which is the context in which the strange and fantastic visions are revealed.

Thus, today’s excerpt presents a vision of the heavenly temple, the revelation of Christ as the High Priest. This is signaled to us by the description of the golden lampstands and the figure in the ankle length robe and golden vesture. The Mass, the worship of the Church is the source of our spiritual vision, a participation in the things of heaven. It is how we learn to see and understand the mysteries of Christ and come to terms with his revelation.

The reduction of the Mass to a kind of cultural pageant or celebration of community concerns and values numbs us to the true meaning of our worship and blinds our spiritual vision. The Mass is a deeply symbolic, like the Book of Revelation, it is an event through which the truth of Christ as our High Priest is revealed. The Mass is first and foremost a revelation of God in Christ, and we distort its purpose and meaning when we prioritize some other value as being more important than him. If we are not coming to Mass to meet God in Christ, we are missing the point.

Finally, in his Gospel, the Lord Jesus is revealed in the glory of his resurrection. Christ was truly dead and now he is alive. He lives, not as a metaphor or as a symbol, but really and truly. The body that was tortured and killed has been raised from death to a new and glorified life. Only God can do this and God has done this in Christ.

The followers of the Lord Jesus find this frightening and even doubt it can be true. Many of us Christians act like the disciples in today’s Gospel, living in fear of Christ’s resurrection or doubting it can be so. Why? Because if it is true then our lives must change- the way we think and act and change provokes as much fear and doubt in us as the resurrection of the Lord. Change is difficult and too many of us, faced with change, choose instead to be ruined. Fear and doubt constrict us, which is the meaning of the locked door behind which the disciples are hiding.

The door is fear and our doubts are the lock.

But God in Christ cannot be held back by our fear and doubts and boldly and overtakes them with the same boldness with which he overtook the dark powers of sin, death and the devil. There is no door we can construct or lock we can contrive that can resist him. The gates of hell cannot prevail against him and neither can we. This is what his resurrection reveals.

And his resurrection happened in his body, a real body, and it happened in real space and real time. It is the fleshiness, the physicality of the resurrection that all disciples must come to terms with. This is what Thomas confronts and what all Christians must confront. We cannot qualify Christ’s revelation through clever equivocations or appeals to myths and metaphors. We cannot make it something it is not in order to justify our fears, doubts and refusals to change. The resurrection of the Lord remains what it is despite all our hesitations and refusals.

The lesson:

God in Christ doesn’t change because of us. We change because of him.