Easter Power in Daily Life (Easter 3.B)

A young mother was driving along Marine Drive with her two children in the car. Although she was doing the speed limit, a woman stressed-out man was tailgating her, right on her bumper for many blocks.

All of a sudden the light turned yellow. She did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk rather than zipping through the intersection.

The tailgater was furious. He honked his horn, screaming in frustration. He even made a rude gesture I can’t describe here—but it wasn’t exactly the universal sign of peace.

In the middle of his rant, the road-rager heard a tap on the car window and looked up into the face of a very serious West Van police officer. The officer ordered him to get out of the car and arrested him.

He took the man to the police station where he was searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a holding cell. After a couple of hours the man was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with his personal effects.

The policeman said, “Sorry, my mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the woman in front of you, and swearing a blue streak at her.

“So when I noticed the ‘What Would Jesus Do’ bumper sticker, the ‘Choose Life’ license plate holder, and the chrome-plated Christian fish symbol on the trunk… naturally I assumed you had stolen the car.”

Well, it’s not a true story! But we laugh because there’s truth in it that most of us recognize.

And the truth is that we can pretty easily put our faith in one compartment and our daily life in another.

When we’re caught doing that—by ourselves or others—we feel guilty. But that’s not what I want to talk about this morning. I’d like to talk about how we miss out when we keep faith and life separate: specifically, the great things we miss when we keep Easter in a box, unconnected with the joys and sorrows and challenges of everyday life.

Both this Sunday and last week, the Gospel describes appearances of the risen Lord that underline how real the Resurrection is. Jesus breaks bread. He lets Thomas touch him. And he cooks breakfast.

By such simple actions, the risen Jesus taught his disciples that he is real, and that he wants to be part of their daily life. And what he taught them, he teaches us.

So let’s ask ourselves, right now:  is the risen Lord part of my life? What difference does Easter make to me? Would my daily struggles be any different if Jesus had not risen from the dead on that first Easter day?

Consider these questions:

·       Does Easter strengthen my belief that Jesus is able to heal and help me?

·       Does the Resurrection make me feel more peaceful about growing old? Does it help me face the approach of death with serenity?

·       Does Christ’s victory over death give me hope that sooner or later I will win my fight to overcome some particular sin?

·       Did celebrating Easter give me a fresh sense of how real Christ is in the Eucharist I receive?

·       And—most important of all—is my faith in the Resurrection, renewed at Easter, bringing me closer to Jesus?

These aren’t pious or rhetorical questions. They deserve answers—because Easter makes a difference; it must make a difference.

Think about it: if Easter isn’t the most important thing that ever happened, then Jesus suffered in vain, and—perhaps more astonishing—rose in vain. It’s preposterous that someone could be mercilessly tortured and killed, and then return to life wrapped in glory—and it made no difference!

But of course it made all the difference. This morning’s Gospel tells us that the Resurrection brings peace and joy—because his presence brings peace and joy.

It brings the comfort of his presence—not just Sunday morning in church, but all the time, even at the breakfast table.

If Easter hasn’t any power in your life or in mine, it may be because we’re not meeting the risen Lord in our daily life.

If Easter isn’t helping us deal with our challenges, from everyday fears to the ultimate fear, that of death, then maybe we aren’t connecting the dots. We need to recognize that Easter didn’t just have power: it had purpose.

Jesus doesn’t say “peace be with you” only to a select group who are doing everything right. His resurrection offers peace also to sinners: it both strengthens us against sin, and provides a remedy for sin.

Sometimes we feel defeated by sin. But in our second reading St. John reminds us that we have an advocate who defends us, an advocate who is also an atoning sacrifice. Jesus is like a lawyer who pays the penalty his client owes. He paid that penalty on Good Friday, but on Easter we see proof that God accepted and was pleased with this atonement.

All who struggle with sin, who can hardly imagine how God can keep on loving them, need to know that Christ’s perfect sacrifice is the best source of peace and hope they can ever have.

Easter offers spiritual power to the weak. Hope of life for the dying, hope of mercy for the sinful, hope of peace for the unsettled. But tapping into this source of power and peace requires more than belief in the fact of the Resurrection, crucial though it is.

It calls for relationship. “Come closer,” Jesus seems to say to the disciples. “Look at me; touch me; I’m as real as you are.”

Sure, we can’t look at the Lord and feel his wounds the way the disciples did. But we can get close to him through prayer. Easter is a time for prayer that is up close and personal: we can ask God in conversation, “What does all this mean for me?”

This prayer should be fueled by reading what the Scriptures say about the first Easter. Why not sit quietly at the kitchen table one or two mornings this week, and read the Resurrection stories in all four Gospels?

And ask the Lord to sit with you at the table, and to open your mind through his Holy Spirit so you can better understand the meaning of what you read. He won’t be offended if you eat breakfast while you’re with him.

Because Easter faith and daily duties were never meant to stay in separate compartments of our busy and challenging lives.

Truth and Consequences (Easter 2.B)

Christmas afternoon. The living room is deserted except for a few piles of gifts; the younger kids are downstairs with an Xbox or a Gameboy, and the teenagers have gone back to bed. The excitement’s over, except for Boxing Day madness and the annual suspense over whether or not Father Xavier will lace up his skates for the parish skating party.

Most of us, parents and children alike, know the feeling.

Even the Church seems quickly to turn our thoughts from Christmas, celebrating several big feasts in the week following December 25.

Easter is different. We focus on the resurrection without a moment’s pause. Today’s Gospel records an appearance of the Risen Lord. So did the Gospel yesterday, and Friday, and Thursday—at every Mass last week we read an Easter story, whether it was on the road to Emmaus, or along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, or behind the locked doors of the Upper Room.

The Risen Lord appears also in next Sunday’s Gospel. That’s the last in this long series, but it doesn’t mean an end to the Easter theme. Two Sundays from now we’ll turn our thoughts back to the earthly ministry of Jesus in order to better understand his continuing presence with us now that he has risen.

I’m not telling you this just to describe the pattern of the readings we’ve heard today and will hear from now until the Ascension. There are three important things we can learn from looking at the readings today, and all of them connect to one central fact: Easter is a continuing experience in our lives.

The first point is that the resurrection has consequences for the Church. In our first reading, the Acts of the Apostles tells us about the unity and charity of the early Church. It tells us that what the first disciples believed had enormous consequences for how they worshipped.

It’s generally true in our parish that those with the greatest commitment to the faith are also those who make the greatest financial sacrifices. But imagine a community where the financial sacrifice was total—no envelopes or tax receipts involved! What strong faith is needed to surrender everything, trusting that the fellowship of believers would look after your needs.

And not just faith in God: by giving up what they owned to the Apostles, those first Christians also had faith in the Church. What they saw in one another allowed them to trust in the goodness of the community.

This short reading from Acts is presented in three paragraphs. The first says the group was “of one heart and soul” and “everything they owned was held in common.” That’s unity.

The third paragraph say “there was not a needy person among them.” Every member of the community was looked after according to need. That’s charity.

But the middle paragraph is the key. It tells us that the Apostles testified “with great power” to the resurrection of Jesus and that “great grace was upon them all.” There you have the source of the unity and the source of the power. It’s a direct consequence of that small community's faith in the resurrection.

The second point is that the resurrection has consequences for our lives. It is historical, for sure, but also something personal which we live each day.

We see this in the second reading today. Our belief in Christ, immeasurably strengthened by his rising from the dead, leads to love of God. And love of God leads to loving what he loves—in other words, to obeying his commandments.

Sometimes we’re like children who whine to their parents “Do I have to?” Or “why do I have to….” In today’s second reading, St. John says that’s the wrong question. Obedience to God is less a matter of what we have to do than something we want to do. We want what he wants because we believe. Our faith’s not just a series of dogmas, but an overall conviction that faith leads to victory—victory over sin and all that oppresses us.

As he rose from the dead, Christ won the greatest of all victories; through faith, each disciple has a share in that triumph—not just at the end of our lives, but each day that we live according to what he taught and commanded.

The third and final thing we can learn from the readings today comes from the Gospel. The resurrection of Jesus is the cornerstone of our faith. Doubting Thomas is convinced by experience. We don’t have the chance to touch the risen body of the Lord, but we do have his testimony and that of countless others. We have not seen, but we have heard; the Scriptures show us his wounded hands and his pierced side.

Seeing is believing, the saying goes, and it’s true enough. But if seeing were the only way to belief, I would wonder whether I really have a brain—certainly I’ve never seen it, and I do doubt it sometimes—or whether Australia exists. But Australians have assured me it does, and I have no reason to doubt them.

On this Divine Mercy Sunday, Jesus says “peace be with you” to each and every one of us. He offers the peace that comes from forgiveness, and the peace that comes from faith.

In his resurrection from the dead, he strengthens our faith with the most absolute of all signs—not only that we might believe, but that, through believing, we might have life in his name and the gift of peace.

The truth about the Lord's resurrection has consequences—for our Church, our lives and our hearts.

Top Ten Reasons Not to Come to Mass Only at Easter

At Christmas and Easter we’re very happy to welcome many visitors to the parish—both family members from out of town and others who live in the area but don’t come regularly to church.

Some years we even have a visitor or two who’s never been to Mass before. The other day I heard about someone like that: at Easter she went to church for the first time, encouraged by her Catholic boyfriend.

Everything seemed a bit strange, but the friend was very helpful and explained whatever he could. When the priest came up and kissed the altar, the visitor asked “what’s that mean?” and her friend explained that the altar was a symbol of Christ and of his sacrifice.

When the priest made the sign of the cross, she asked again “what’s that mean?” The boyfriend said that the priest was blessing himself in the names of the persons of the Holy Trinity.

Everything went smoothly until the homily, when the priest took off his watch and put it on the pulpit.

“What’s that mean?” the newcomer asked.

“Nothing whatsoever,” came the reply.

Well, now that you know how things work, I thought it might be useful this Easter to say a few words to those who aren’t usually with us on Sundays—not so much to those visiting us from other parishes or churches, but to the Catholics who come to Mass only occasionally, particularly Christmas and Easter.

Thinking about those folks, I came up with a Top Ten list—not a funny one, like David Letterman does on TV, but one I hope will give us all some food for thought.

So here we go: Top Ten Reasons to Come to Mass Every Sunday

Number Ten: Joining us each week helps you follow the story. Catholics who come at Christmas and don’t return until Easter go from Jesus in the manger to Jesus risen from the dead, with nothing in between. It’s like joining a book club and missing three-quarters of the meetings. In our first reading this morning, St. Peter gives a very short version of the Gospel, but even his condensed story covers more ground than the birth and Resurrection. Over the course of the year, our Sunday liturgies present the whole plan of salvation in an organized way.

Number Nine: It’s easier to come to Mass all of the time than some of the time. That may sound surprising, but it’s true. I’m speaking to those Catholics who really do want to come to Mass, but who find all kinds of things interfere. If you have to make a fresh decision to come to Mass each week, it’s a weekly conflict; but if you decide once for all to come every Sunday, you’ve avoided a lot of angst.

Number Eight: Only by attending regularly do you connect with the community. We’re not, to be sure, the only community in town, but we’re serious about it, we support those who need help, we pray for those who need prayer, and if you give us a chance we’re pretty good at welcoming people and making them feel included.

Community matters more than you might think. A recent book called “Being Mortal” says something very important about community. The author, a doctor, writes that “The only way death is not meaningless is to see yourself as part of something greater: a family, a community, a society.” Loyalty, the book suggests, is built on something bigger than ourselves and provides ultimate meaning to our lives.

Number Seven: Sunday Mass may be your best chance to pray. For some of us, even a short daily prayer time is hard to manage. But an hour in church can be a time of spiritual rest and recreation. I can’t say that’s my own experience for me—I’m up here on the altar, and I have to keep my mind on a number of things, but many parishioners, especially the busy younger ones, have told me about the relief they get from spending this one hour with God.

In our second reading today, St. Paul says “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” Nowhere better to do that than at Mass, where heaven and earth come pretty close together.

Number Six: This may be your best opportunity to let go and let God. We all carry around many worries and concerns, and sometimes we need a place to park them. A psychologist once told me that worry is the most useless form of human behavior. It achieves nothing, but it costs plenty. Prayer, properly understood, is an exercise in surrender and trust. You can bring your worries to Mass, and leave them on the altar. And on top of that, we help you pray for your needs—remembering the intentions of one another is an important part of what we do when we celebrate the Eucharist as a parish. We pray especially for the sick and the recently deceased, keeping a list of their names up to date as you come in to the church each week.

Speaking of prayer, Sunday Mass is an excellent place to count your blessings. One of the psalms asks “How can I repay the Lord for his goodness to me?” and gives the answer “The cup of salvation I will rise; I will call on the Lord’s name.” For the Christian, the cup of salvation is the chalice we raise at Mass, and the Eucharist is the best of all thanksgiving prayers.

Number Five: Worry’s not the only thing you can leave behind as you walk out of Mass: you can leave some of your sins behind, too. While a sacramental confession is the way Catholics become free of grave sin, at every Mass we pray for forgiveness of our lesser sins and failings. And we do it together—again, praying with and for one another.

Sunday Mass can also be a weekly moment of accountability as we prepare ourselves for the worthy reception of Holy Communion.

Number Four: If you’re concerned that the church is full of hypocrites, coming to Mass reassures you that there’s always room for one more! Years ago I read a Protestant church leader say that belonging to anything meant accepting its inevitable shortcomings. To learn to accept the weaknesses of others we need to hang in when disagreements arise and work them out.

Number Three: Hearing the message of Christ proclaimed each week helps us meet the challenges of our lives. When I was born, almost all Canadians agreed on the basic rules of the good life. Now they don’t. If you want timeless wisdom about the choices you make, and you’ve forgotten what Sister Elfreda taught you in grade school, it’s time for a refresher course. Fifty-two Sunday Masses covers a lot of solid Christian teaching in a year.

Number Two: Coming to Mass each Sunday can make you feel loved—and I don’t mean by the usher, friendly as he or she might be. The Eucharist is Christ’s way of staying close to those he loves until he returns to earth at the end of time. The Eucharist is a sign of his love, and while our own feelings will fluctuate, at least some of the time our experience in church should make us deeply aware of God’s intimate love and care for us—expressed by the gift of his Body and Blood.

Number One: The top reason for coming to Mass each and every Sunday is that Christ is risen from the dead! The mystery we celebrate today—the feast that has drawn some of you here, perhaps for the first time since Christmas—is what we celebrate every Sunday.

Every Friday is a little Lent, and every Sunday a kind of Easter. The flowers and the music may not be quite so glorious, but each week we rejoice that Christ has risen, reliving the wonder of the Resurrection and experiencing its power to change our lives.

There’s my top ten—I could go to twenty, but my seeing my watch in front of me does mean something!

Come back and join us next week.

Darkness to Light, Slavery to Freedom (Easter Vigil)

From darkness to light, night to day.

The early Church lived this paschal reality by praying throughout the night, and celebrating the Eucharist at dawn.

We’re not such hardy souls! But the modern liturgy makes sure we don’t miss the point. Our Easter vigil began in a darkened church that quickly became ablaze with light.

The Exsultet, proclaimed in the light of the Easter candle, prays that its undimmed flame will banish the darkness of the night.

Even if the words of this glorious hymn fail to reach us, the very first reading, from the story of creation, begins with God creating light where there had been only darkness.

The third reading, from the Book of Exodus, also shows us the darkness of night overcome by light: a shining cloud and a pillar of fire lit the way for Israel through the desert.

Even tonight’s Gospel says that the sun had risen by the time the women arrived at the empty tomb.

But what, precisely, does this mean to us? Do we of the 21st century relate to the fact that Christ has overpowered darkness? Certainly not the way people did when the darkness of night was absolute, even frightening, and the rising of the sun a most welcome thing.

If I were to preach tonight about our darkened hearts or souls or lives, people would feel insulted and judged. And if I turn to Susan and Lisa, our two catechumens, and tell them that baptism will overcome their darkness, they might feel a little awkward too.

So I asked myself if there might be a way of looking at this sacred night that modern man could relate to more easily.

I found the answer in a wonderful book by the French priest Jacques Philippe, who says that freedom is the only moral value about which people still agree about today. He thinks that modern culture and Christianity can find common ground in the concept of freedom.

Even if there are some mistaken ideas about freedom in the world today, he concludes that it’s still a meeting point between Christians and non-religious folks.

His thoughts made me take a second look at tonight’s liturgy. When I did, I decided that this vigil is almost as much about the passage from slavery to freedom as it is from dark to light.

Think back on our third reading. What was the Exodus about? The chosen people were in flight from the slavery of the Egyptians.

The Exsultet declares “This is the night when once you led our forebears, Israel’s children, from slavery in Egypt and made them pass dry-shod through the Red Sea.

Tonight we celebrate not only the triumph of light over darkness, but also the eternal victory of freedom over slavery. This is something everyone can relate to: we all want to be free; no-one wants to be a slave.

As Father Jacques Philippe says, “human beings were not created for slavery, but to be the lords of creation.”

Why is this? Tonight’s first reading tells us: because human beings are created in God’s own image, in the divine likeness. “We were not created to lead drab, narrow or constricted lives… we find confinement unbearable, simply because we were created in the image of God and we have within us an unquenchable need for the absolute and the infinite.”

Father Philippe sums it up in these words: “We have this great thirst for freedom because our most fundamental aspiration is for happiness, and we sense that there is no happiness without love, and no love without freedom.”

Or in other words: “Freedom gives value to love, and love is the precondition of happiness.”

Even amidst confused modern thinking people understand they need to be free if they are to be happy.

But how many of us experience freedom? We feel like slaves half the time: to work, to the demands of family life, and—worst of all, to our weaknesses, sins and addictions. Some of us are slaves to fear, including the greatest of all, the fear of death.

In the face of this struggle—which people of every age have experienced but which is particularly difficult in our day—the apostle Paul tell us how the Resurrection of Christ can free us from slavery.

In tonight’s Epistle, St. Paul gives us a simple formula for freedom. He also explains why the Resurrection is such a personal thing for the follower of Christ.

Paul tells us three crucial things:

One, since by baptism we shared in the death of Christ, we will certainly share in his resurrection. It only makes sense.

Two, since Christ’s death overcame sin, our share in his crucifixion is our death to sin. Sin is no longer our master, and we are no longer its slaves.

Three, since Christ will never die again we must claim our share of the divine life: both here—by turning away from sin, which has lost its stranglehold on us—and in eternity, to which we are called by our share in the Resurrection.

In other words, there is a power for freedom promised to us; a source of strength beyond human resources is ours for the asking.

Of course our release from the many bonds of slavery isn’t automatic. The victory of Christ which we celebrate tonight is absolute, but our effective share in this victory is conditional. It takes discipleship to be free. We must accept the victory, live it, and profess it.

But it is nonetheless ours in baptism, and nothing could be sadder than to turn back to slavery after the Lord has delivered us from the darkness and called us into his kingdom of light.

Let us this Easter share the hope of Susan and Lisa who are about to be baptized; let us share the enthusiasm of Nathan, who is about to make his profession of faith in the Catholic Church.

Most of all, let us accept the freedom that the Risen Lord offers to us, the freedom to love and to live abundantly for which we thirst. We have shared in his death, let us share in the power of his Resurrection.

Palm Sunday: Reflections on the Passion

It's hard to preach on Palm Sunday after the solemn reading of the Passion. What, really, is there left to say?

But when I heard a young priest offer a very powerful reflection earlier in the week, I asked if I could 'borrow' it for this Passion Sunday.  Candidly conceding that he'd borrowed the words himself--from Archbishop Sheen or Cardinal Dolan, he wasn't quite sure!--he readily agreed.

God came down to earth, so that we could go to heaven.

God became human so that we could become divine.

God became a slave, so that we could be set free.

God became an object of hate, so that we might learn love.

Christ was rejected, so that we could be accepted.

Christ forgave, so that we could be forgiven.

Christ was convicted, so that we could have conviction.

He was arrested, so we could be bailed out.

He was hurt, so that we could be healed.

He was lifted up on the cross, so we could be raised up with him.

He took on hell, so that we might take up heaven.

He was given a crown of thorns, so that we could receive the crown of life.

He is guilty so that we might be deemed innocent.

He took the cross, to cross out Satan’s plan.

He died…  so that we could live forever.