Easter Sunday: A Rx and a Referral

A few weeks ago, in the middle of the night, I landed at the emergency entrance to Lions’ Gate hospital. I was alone and in pain. Within a minute I was taken into a treatment area, where my self-diagnosis of a kidney stone was swiftly confirmed.

I wasn’t a happy patient, but I was a grateful one. I am now a big fan of pain medicine! But the most positive element in my ordeal was the compassion and care of the nurses and doctor on duty. Before they sent me home, the kind young doctor gave me a prescription, reassurance and the answers I needed to plan the next step to recovery.

Why am I telling you all this? Because today I want to say “Welcome to the hospital!”

I know. You thought you were in church. But even Pope Francis has said “I see the Church as a field hospital after battle.”

And I love the old saying that the church is not a hotel for saints but a hospital for sinners, though I can’t find out who said it.

Whether you’re a visitor or someone who attends regularly, I want to welcome you to church today in the same way I was welcomed to the emergency department. We don’t offer pain medicine, but we offer pain relief.

This Easter Sunday, I hope you can find whatever reassurance and answers you need in your life—because I think many people in church today can identify with the story of the two disciples trudging along the road to Emmaus.

Cleopas and his unnamed friend represent religious people whose hopes have been dashed. But they also represent non-religious people who just don’t know what to believe. They represent the way almost everyone feels some of the time.

There’s a whole lot of us slogging along, standing still, looking sad. We have more questions than answers and it’s been a long time since we felt reassured or comforted by faith.

Some of our questions can be very basic: we wonder what life is all about. We ask “Is there a higher power? What is our purpose? Why are we here? Is there more to this life?”

We might feel that God is far away from us or that we are far away from God. This can leave us feeling guilty or empty. It can make us fearful or confused.

So why don’t we let those two disciples stand in for all of us, whatever their particular thoughts and feelings were that Easter evening? And let’s take a close look at how their questions and doubts were answered.

The obvious thing is that there was no obvious thing. Jesus performed no miracle, other than vanishing, and gave no special sign. He used the Scriptures—the prophecies about the Messiah—to open their eyes.

The disciples, in turn, did not shout out “Eureka! Now I get it!” All they did was try to continue the conversation. “Stay with us,” they said. Maybe they were just trying to be hospitable to this knowledgeable stranger, but we’ll never really know.

What we do know is that the combination of God’s word, broken open for them by Christ himself, and the breaking of bread that recalls the Eucharist opened their eyes to recognize Jesus.

The end result of this encounter is dramatic. Their hearts are on fire and the two disciples return to Jerusalem, sharing what had happened on the road and what they had seen and heard.

This Easter I want to invite you to that same experience—to that same encounter with Jesus. Sometimes our experience in church is like the waiting room just inside the door of Emergency. We know there’s help to be found, but we’re not sure when it’s coming or how.

Father Paul and I and all our brother priests do our best today and every Sunday to explain the meaning of the Scriptures. But only a personal meeting with Jesus really opens our eyes and sets our hearts on fire.

This Easter we want to invite every single person in church today to a conversation with the Lord that will lead to a personal relationship with him.

He wants to hear you say “Stay with us.” As the Book of Revelation says: “I’m standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.”

At Easter we encounter the one who took upon himself the consequences of our sins and the sin of the whole human race. We meet Jesus who rose from the dead, brought us new life, and bridged the gap caused by sin.

Don’t start thinking you’ll find the whole story in one sermon. Just like the ER doctor, I’m going to offer you a prescription and a referral. The prescription is found in this little booklet called “The Ultimate Relationship”. It’s tells the story of the consequences of Easter and of what the Resurrection of Jesus promises.

The booklet begins with a question that I want each one of you to think about it right now. The question is “If you could know God personally, would you want to?” It’s a question for atheists and believers, for young and for old. If you could know God personally, would you want to?

Only you can answer that, but I can tell you that God wants to know you personally. He wants this Easter celebration of what we call the Paschal Mystery—the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus—to make a difference in your life, to open your eyes to what’s really happening around you and in you.

A few Sundays back I took the time to study the congregation. At Easter we have many visitors but on an ordinary Sunday I know most of the people in church. I think I expected to feel like the general manager of a hotel for saints—because certainly we have some wonderful, holy, and dedicated people in this parish.

But that’s not what hit me as I thought about the stories of the men and women sitting in front of me. I was truly the duty doctor in the ICU. There was a woman whose husband had left her abruptly and without warning; a few pews back a young man dealing with a recent diagnosis of serious illness.

On the other side of the church, a couple struggling to keep their marriage going; to the right of them a man unemployed after many years with the same company. Five rows back a grieving widow; right behind her someone struggling with addiction.

Real people. Real problems. But real Christians, putting their faith in the power of God to get them through.

You don’t get there in an hour on Sunday or an hour and ten minutes at Easter. You get that kind of practical help from the friendship of Jesus and a living faith in his power to save and to heal.

So there’s a prescription: The Ultimate Relationship booklet is a prescription you can take home with you today. But some of us need a referral. That’s the Alpha course.

Alpha is a series of social evenings where we explore life’s big questions with food, a talk and open discussion. There’s no pressure and no question that’s off-limits.

When the doctor at Lions Gate referred me to a specialist, he made sure I saw him right away. I want to refer you to Alpha with the same urgency—it starts this Thursday night, with dinner at 6:30.

It might just prove to be the kind of meal the disciples shared with Jesus that first Easter night.

Holy Thursday: The Eucharist and Charity

       

 I’m more than a little reluctant to post the following homily, because a great deal of the first part is taken straight from a marvelous sermon by Rev. Fleming Rutledge in her splendid book The Undoing of Death. I wrote in haste, without the time to properly identify all the many quoted or lightly adapted sentences I used. Many were so apt they resisted any attempt at paraphrase, and properly crediting their author would have made my delivery awkward.

         I’m indebted to my sister-in-law Nicole for the gift and discovery of Mrs. Rutledge’s book and to Bishop Robert Barron for introducing me to this remarkable Anglican preacher through his video on her more recent book The Crucifixion.

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I complain often enough that almost everyone here tonight knows that I have a second job helping to train permanent deacons.  But many of you may not know that I am the pastor of four parishes.

         I am the pastor of every Catholic soul living in the territory of Christ the Redeemer church, whether or not those souls ever show their faces in church. 

I am the pastor of the wandering sheep who come and go, making their infrequent appearances particularly at Christmas and Easter.

         And I am the pastor of the thousand or so people who form the community at Mass every Sunday.

 But tonight I am pastor of the fourth parish, the parish I might call our family.  This night is one of the three greatest nights of the Christian year, but it attracts well less than half the number who attend Midnight Mass. 

It’s a fair bet that most people who make the effort to come to church on Holy Thursday—that would be you—are members of the parish-within-a-parish formed by the committed.

I was reading a Holy Thursday homily by Fleming Rutledge, an Anglican priest who is an expert on preaching. She said that “tonight the homilist can dispense with crowd-pleasing warmups” and go directly to the heart of the matter.  I thought that was such good advice that I even took out some teasing of Father Paul I had included in my first draft.

Really, there is just no better night to be in church than tonight.  At the Last Supper no one sat at the table with Jesus but his inner circle.  I don’t think it’s wrong for you to think of yourselves as the inner circle tonight—“not because you are more worthy than others, but simply because, in the mystery of his will and purpose, Jesus has called you to be here.”

This is family night.  Jesus had a reason for choosing the Last Supper to declare his love for his disciples; and he has a reason to gather us tonight, each of us drawing near to one another as Jesus draws us near to himself.

At the Last Supper Jesus changed the relationships of the apostles to one another, by making them sharers in the one bread and the one cup, while changing their relationships to him by sharing with them his Body and his Blood.

It is exceptionally difficult to do justice in one homily to the three peak moments of the Last Supper—the institution of the Eucharist, the establishment of the priesthood, and Christ’s example of charity which the Gospel just related.

It is difficult—but during this special family gathering it is possible, because I am not telling most of you anything that you do not already know, or that you haven’t at least begun to grasp in the depths of your heart.

Mrs. Rutledge’s advice about dispensing with crowd-pleasing warmups and going directly to the heart of this mystery was not intended to insult those who come to Mass out of a sense of obligation or even good habit; but the fact is that your ears are open tonight to words of greater depth than a homilist dares to speak on an average Sunday.

Consider these words about the Mass from the fourth century, and ask how they would go over with the crowd on Easter: “When you see the Lord sacrificed, and laid upon the altar, and the priest standing and praying over the victim, and all the worshippers empurpled with that Precious Blood, can you then think that you are still among men, and standing upon the earth?

“Are you not, on the contrary, straightaway translated to heaven?  Oh!  What a marvel!  What love of God to man!  He who sits on high with the Father is held in the hands of all, and gives himself to those who are willing to embrace and grasp him.”

These words of St. John Chrysostom are not the thoughts of most folks who come rushing into Mass at ten after five on a Sunday afternoon.  But they must be our thoughts tonight as we allow the Lord to lead us deeper and deeper into the mystery he instituted that first Holy Thursday night.

The Passover meal that our Lord celebrated with his beloved apostles recalled the first Passover, which began Israel’s Exodus.  Instead of going where their captors demanded, as in the past, Israel became a people on the move at the command of God. 

In the same way, tonight’s sacred meal—like every Mass—makes us a people on the move.  The command to get moving flows directly from the Eucharistic Mystery; when Jesus told the disciples to follow his example of service, he did not intend to separate the humble gesture of foot-washing from the total sacrifice of self he was to make on the Cross.  His noble gesture at the feet of his apostles was not an invitation only to service, but to sacrifice.

I wonder if we are aware in this parish family of the extent to which the Eucharist is fulfilled by the Christian charity of many of the family present tonight?  You all know how difficult it is for me to cope with the emotion involved when I lay bare the gratitude of my heart.  But I must take that risk tonight; this Eucharistic community has examples within it as powerful, really, as Christ’s washing those feet.

I often speak of the work of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, but tonight I have an example even more concentrated, if I can use that word.  Last week a parishioner told me and some others of some great and painful difficulty he experienced a few years back. 

In his candid testimony, he named a parishioner who had been a tremendous support to him in those dark days.  He had no way of knowing that I was aware of two other men who had faced similar or even greater hardships, and who had been guided and supported by that same parishioner.

I’m trying my best to respect privacy but I can say that this man’s wife has been similarly generous to individuals, and has been instrumental of one of the most fruitful but demanding of our parish’s outreach ministries.

From what source has this couple received the spirit of charity, the tireless generosity, and the humility that demands no recognition for these and other works in the parish?  I don’t think I insult them at all in saying he is an ordinary man and she is an ordinary woman, although, in her case an ordinary woman with six times my energy.

But where did it come from?  The answer can only be this Eucharistic celebration, the institution of which we rejoice in tonight.  This link between the Mass and sacrificial service of others is something I studied in the seminary, something I’ve known, but it was only here at Christ the Redeemer that I’ve come to understand it. The parishioners, through their remarkable charity in many forms, have taught me this lesson, and taught it well.

So many of our parish family are, here and now, just what the great servant of God Dorothy Day was in an earlier time. 

Dorothy Day was known for a very progressive vision of social justice and Christian charity.  She worked to change society according to the Church’s social teaching—she was a radical, proposing a radical Christian alternative to the Marxist agenda for the poor and the working class.

And yet she said to all who would join her in the Catholic Worker Movement that the Mass was “the greatest work of the day”, and that all other works must flow from worship.

That is what Jesus has taught us tonight, that is what is happening in our midst in this parish community, and that is what each of us must recommit ourselves to as tonight we eat his Body and drink his Blood.

His Passion Has Purpose

We've just heard a chapter of the greatest story ever told. If it were the last chapter it would be the saddest story ever told.

But of course it's not; there's a triumphant final chapter waiting to be read next Sunday.

Still, the Church wants us to pause at this point in the story and take a long hard look at the suffering and death of Jesus. What does his Passion say to each of us this morning?

A single verse from the Prophet Isaiah has an answer: “He was wounded for our transgressions... upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.”

Let me read you the same verse from the Jerusalem Bible, a less literal but more elegant translation: “Ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrow he carried… On him lies a punishment that brings us peace, and through his wounds we are healed.”  (Is. 53:4-5, JB)

Isaiah’s prophecy tells us that the sufferings of Christ were for a purpose. In the first place, to atone for our sins: he took on himself the punishment that we deserved.

In the second place, to give us peace: he took away the fears that we sinners carry around with us, namely the fear of condemnation and hopelessness.

And finally, to bring us healing: healing of the ancient wound of sin, healing of the modern wound of despair.

Listening to the Passion this morning with no sense of its purpose would really make this a sad story. We live in a world that’s horrified by waste. Throw out a half-eaten apple in any cafeteria and see how many dirty looks you get.

Yet we can “waste” Christ's sufferings, so to speak, by failing to apply their blessings to our lives. The purpose of the Passion is not accomplished fully without our involvement— without our own acceptance of the gift.

So let’s prepare for Easter by taking Christ’s Passion personally. Let's make sure we don’t waste—another word for taking for granted—a moment of his suffering or a drop of his saving blood.

The Lord has ransomed us, restored us, and healed us. We should walk through Holy Week with the gratitude that our awareness of such gifts demands.

In the face of his generous love, the least we can do is make a confession of our sins, and celebrate prayerfully the three liturgies that bring the paschal mystery to life—Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil.

Today’s bulletin contains a brochure that offers simple ways to walk with Jesus in Holy Week. I guarantee they can make this your best Easter ever.

More important, your walk with the Lord this week will help you find the true peace and healing that will make his Passion your hope.  

Unbind Him! (Lent 5A)

Today’s Gospel is a drama in three acts. First, there is the illness of Lazarus—during which Jesus seems unwilling to respond. Then there is his death, followed by Martha’s encounter with Jesus. The drama concludes with the raising of Lazarus.

At every point the dialogue is gripping. Jesus declares that his friend’s illness will not lead to death, something his disciples must have struggled with when they found Lazarus was already in the tomb. There are the pained but faith-filled words of Martha when Jesus makes finally his appearance. And of course we hear Jesus praying directly to his Father as he stands at the entrance to the tomb.

We could reflect and pray for hours on any one phrase from this magnificent Gospel passage. Certainly the Church intends us to think about the Resurrection of Jesus, to which the raising of Lazarus is obviously connected, especially as Easter draws near.

But I would like to preach on just two words from St. John’s powerful text. The two words are “unbind him.”

Unbound is the title of a book by the Catholic layman Neal Lozano, who helps people struggling with evil in their lives. He and his wife speak internationally about the Gospel message of deliverance from sin, promoting five keys to freedom.

I believe there’s a need for this ministry in many lives, but there’s no time to talk about it today. But the first of the five keys described in Unbound is the essential one: repentance and faith.

Jesus is speaking to the Church when he says “unbind him.” The Church is called to free us from the sins that bind and encumber us—the sin that clings to us and restricts us, as the Letter to the Hebrews says (12:1).

But we are not passive, like Lazarus; we must repent personally of wearing the burial shrouds of sin, and have faith in Christ’s ability to restore us to life by his merciful forgiveness.

This is the time in our Lenten journey when we decide whether we’re going to make the effort to go to confession. The first of our two penitential services is this Thursday, at Holy Trinity parish, and the second is next Tuesday, here at Christ the Redeemer. Do we hear the Lord calling us to come out from the cave and into the light?

We all have our reasons for avoiding confession. Too busy. Too good. Too bad. But the worst reason is feeling that I’m not ready.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen wrote that our modern world of instant communications, instant food, instant diets and instant-beauty aids often makes us think of repentance as instantaneous transformation: “We are rotten one moment, pure the next.”

He says this is bad psychology, “because it leads us to think God accepts us only after and because we have reformed. It leads also to discouragement because we soon see how quickly we fail after we had repented.”

But Archbishop Sheen, one of the great preachers of the 20th century, reminds us that the Prodigal Son did not say to himself: “I know what I will do. I will work myself back up by my own bootstraps, make myself acceptable again and then I will return to my father.”

“No, he went back a repentant, but not yet fully reformed, prodigal. We must think of repentance as a beginning rather than an ending, as a change of heart that only gradually leads to a change of ways. Repentant sinners are still sinners, but the difference is, they no longer want to be sinners.”

Doesn’t that make it seem easier to approach the sacrament of reconciliation?

During these final weeks of Lent, the Church hears the Lord’s call to unbind and untie her members from sin. Each of us should hear him call “Come out!” Even though our bodies are dead because of sin, as we read in the second reading, we know that God’s spirit will give us life.