Seeing the Risen Jesus

Solemnity of Easter

The entrance to the aediculum

   [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]  One of the most memorable things that I experienced when I went to the Holy Land for the first time in 2007 as a seminarian was attending Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the place where Jesus died and rose from the dead.  At the place where the tomb was, there is a small building inside the church called the aediculum, and inside that aediculum is where a slab of stone rests that held the dead body of our Lord.  The Franciscans gave us permission to have Mass there one day.  The way Mass works in that space is that the Liturgy of the Word/Mass of Catechumens happens outside the aediculum.  For the Liturgy of the Eucharist/Mass of the Faithful, the priest enters the aediculum and says the Eucharist Prayer inside there, which you can hear, but not see, because of how small it is inside.
    The great moment is when the priest gets to the point where he says, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” because the priest leaves the aediculum, and, holding the Body of the Lord above the chalice says, while showing the Eucharist to the people.  Part of the power is that this is the same risen Lord, coming from His tomb, alive for us to see, though of course under sacramental signs.
    As we celebrate Easter today, we remember the event that changed the course of human history.  While the Prophet Elisha had raised a person from the dead in the Old Testament, and our Lord had raised the daughter of Jairus, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus from the dead, the resurrection was altogether different.  Our Lord’s Body no longer suffered under the restrictions of the physical world, as we will hear next Sunday when we hear about Him entering a locked room through the door.  While the Body was certainly His, and bore the marks of His crucifixion, in a glorified state there was something different about it.  I often imagine it as having a slight glow to it, though maybe that was not the case.  It was different enough that the disciples on the road to Emmaus didn’t recognize Christ as He walked with them, until He broke bread in a room with them.  
    But that event that changed everything, starting really with Good Friday and culminating with Easter Sunday, we celebrate and enter into each Sunday in particular, and each time we come to Mass more generally.  At the Mass, we begin by acknowledging that we are sinners and that Christ suffered for us and because of us.  We stand at the foot of the Cross and nail our sins there with Christ so that they can be forgiven.  We offer our lives–the joys and sorrows, pain and comforts, work and leisure–since the last time we attended Mass united to the perfect offering of Christ to His heavenly Father on Calvary.  We stand there at Calvary and hear God’s word proclaimed to help us understand what work God does in our lives.  And then, during the Eucharist Prayer/Canon of the Mass, we enter into Christ’s offering of Himself on the cross, and His burial in the tomb.  In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church references how the altar, besides being symbol of Christ Himself and the Cross, also symbolizes the tomb.
    And that is perhaps a bit clearer as we celebrate Mass facing the Lord together, or ad Dominum.  During the three days between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, Christ’s Body laid in the tomb, unseen by all others.  After the elevations which follow the words of institution, the words that Christ Himself spoke (“This is my Body”; “This is my Blood), Christ is not seen by the faithful in the pews until the priest shows the Body of Christ while saying, “Behold the Lamb of God.”  This is, as it were, Christ breaking forth from the tomb, and appearing before His disciples after the Resurrection.  The same experience I had in Jerusalem, of seeing Christ in the Eucharist come forth from His tomb you can experience as I remove the Body of Christ from the tomb of the altar and He rises so that you all can see Him and His glorified Body, which is not limited in the way our bodies are limited.
    And the Lord does not just show Himself from afar as I show Him to you.  At the time for the reception of Holy Communion, He comes near to you, as He came near to Mary Magdalene at the tomb or as He came near the Blessed Mother, the Apostles, and the disciples in the Upper Room.  He stands right before you, and then even enters in to you to bring that power of the Resurrection into your individual lives.
    And what is our response, then?  The same as the disciples who realized that Christ was risen: they had to tell other disciples, and, after Pentecost, everyone.  Knowing that Christ had died, but that He was truly risen, they could not remain silent, but shared that joy and the transformation of their lives that the Resurrection made.  Death no longer had the last say.  Sin no longer could hold them in slavery.  They could not contain the joy of that revelation, but had to tell others.  And so should we.  The joy of this day should cast away all sorrow and fear and lead us to greater holiness of life.

Inside the aediculum

    Christ has risen from the dead.  It is not just a past event, but a reality that we get to join every Sunday, which the Church calls a “little Easter.”  May we recognize the Risen Christ as we see and receive Him in the Eucharist, the Lamb of God, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, live and reign for ever and ever.

The Desire for Life

Fifth Sunday of Lent–Third Scrutiny
    We spend so much of our energy trying to avoid or cheat death.  “The experts” suggest foods that we should eat or not eat.  Companies make large amounts of money selling creams, vitamins, and pills which aim to prolong life, or even just the appearance of life.  One of the things I have learned with my work with the Michigan State Police is that a drowning person will push a potential rescuer under water if that Trooper is not prepared in order to try to stay above water and not drown.  A person in the cold will start to lose function in most parts of the body, except the brain and the loins, the two seats of preserving current life and perpetuating life, which shut down last.  While some may say that death is natural, the fact that we try to avoid death at all costs shows that God made us for immortality, not simply like the animals who are born into this world and then die and decay.
    As Catholics, we know that death entered the world through our disobedience to God, the source of life.  God further expelled us from the garden and the tree of immortality, which some Church Fathers interpret as a mercy, as it meant that we wouldn’t live forever with sin, but that the reign of sin in our earthly bodies would end at death.  But, even with this, we have an innate sense that God made us to live forever with Him.  And so we fight death as much as possible.
    And while we cannot support euthanasia, assisted suicide, or suicide, because every life has value, and only God is the Lord of Life, we all have to die.  In order to get to heaven, we have to die.  Not before our time, but as a necessary preamble to eternal life, hopefully in heaven, death will come.
    But we know of another kind of death that we must undergo in order to live, and that is the death of baptism. St. Paul speaks very clearly about death needing to occur in order for the spirit to live, and then the body to be raised on the last day.  He also says in Romans chapter 6, verse 3: “Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”  Water was an ancient symbol of death, because it wasn’t as sure and steady as the ground.  The waters of chaos swirled about before God ordered them and created light and life in the beginning.  In the early church, the priest fully submerged the elect in the waters.  And anyone afraid of water knows that being under water you can’t breathe, and, if it takes too long, you drown and die.  Baptism is death.
    But that submersion did not signify the end.  The priest would then also raise the elect out of the waters where he or she could breathe, signifying new life.  St. Paul in Romans, chapter 6 continues:
 

We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.  For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be untied with him in the resurrection.

Christ died, and so rose to new life.  In baptism we, too, die, and rise to new life with Christ, with a downpayment here on earth, and the fulfillment in heaven, if we stay faithful to Christ.

    Lazarus, then, and his death and resurrection, prefigures both Christ’s death and resurrection, as well as our own death and rising to new life through baptism.  The four days of his death are like the entire life of the Catholic after baptism, where new life is present, but death seems to reign.  Four score is 80 years, and the psalms describe the life of a strong person as 80 years.  So the four days are like a full life.  But then, after our death to sin in baptism, and staying faithful to dying to sin during our earthly life, we rise to new life with Christ, as He calls us out from the tomb.  
    Dylan and Isaiah, you are about to go into the tomb in just a couple more weeks.  At the Easter Vigil you will die with Christ in the waters of baptism, but because of that death you will also get to receive new life from Christ, and a pledge of future glory for when your earthly life is done.  In some sense, you life after baptism will be a practice in dying.  Each day you will have opportunities to die to your sinful self, and stay alive with Christ.  You will die to your own sinful past, and choose to nail your own will to the cross along with anything in you that does not imitate the life of God.  
    But do not be afraid of that death, because it brings life.  Only fear the eternal death that comes when we reject God and His ways in our daily actions and words.  This earthly death may seem scary, like holding your breath for a long time under water, but if you stay faithful to God you will rise to new life.     
    So do not fight the death of all that is not of God.  Embrace the penances and pain that come from denying our sinful passions.  Because if we die that death, starting with our death in the waters of baptism, we have a sure and certain hope that we will live with Christ for ever in joy beyond all description.

Ordo Amoris

Quinquagesima
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I try to communicate accurately as much as I can, though I do sometimes err.  As a third order Dominican, the truth occupies a special place in my life and in my interactions with others.  When I make decisions, I try to have all relevant information that I can, to help me arrive at the right decision for a particular circumstance.  The more accurate information I have, the better decisions I can make, whether for the immediate present moment or even for the future.
    But truth, while greatly important, should not occupy the highest priority in our life.  St. Paul tells us that love, or charity (that type of love that reflects the love of God) is what is most important.  God could have given you special charisms, like speaking in tongues or prophecy.  You could know everything.  Your faith could be so strong that you, as our Lord said, move mountains or trees.  You could be the most generous person alive, giving away all that you have to the poor.  You could even offer up your body.  But if you do not love, all of that counts for nothing.
    What a good gut check!  How easy we can find it to do the right things.  We check off the lists of the precepts the Church asks us to follow: we go to Mass; we give money to support the parish; we pray daily; we abstain from meat on Fridays or do some other penance.  But even if we do all those things, if we do them without love, there is no merit for us.  All our daily deeds are like dehydrated food.  They have what they need to sustain us, but we need the water of love to rehydrate the food and make it edible once more.
    What many Catholics struggle with today is understanding what love is.  So many people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, do not understand love.  They reduce love to an emotion or a desire.  They make non-sensical statements like “love is love.”  Or they react like children who want candy from the check-out line and say that if we really loved them, we would let them do whatever they wanted.  But that’s not how St. Paul describes love.  Love doesn’t seek after itself.  If I do not display patience with another, I’m not loving that person.  If I’m only looking out for myself, I’m not loving.  If my desires are perverse and contrary to nature, I do not desire love.

    Recently, our Vice President mentioned a teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas: the ordo amoris or order of love.  He referenced it in regards to the ongoing immigration debate.  I’m going to side-step the immigration debate, and simply focus on the ordo amoris, which will hopefully help you decide how best to implement what is most loving.  If you want the actual and full treatment from St. Thomas Aquinas, you can go to the Summa Theologiae, the Second Part of the Second Part, Question 26.
    The general order of love is: God, self, neighbor.  We then further delineate neighbor into family, city, country, and world.  We should love God above all else.  We owe everything to God as our Creator, and the first commandment our Lord gives us is to love God with all of who we are (and He cites the Book of Deuteronomy).  The second law is that we should love our neighbor as ourself.  But to love our neighbor as ourself, we have to love ourself first.  Love of self can be sacrificed for a higher good, the love of God, as we see in martyrs, or in parents for their children, but we need to have a proper love of self.  Lastly, we love others after God and self, based upon how close they are to us.  Generally speaking, the closest to us are family members, then members of our community, then other people.
    If we follow this to its natural conclusion, it makes perfect sense.  If I didn’t believe that there are priorities in love, then I might skip Mass on Sundays to spend time with a friend playing basketball or drinking bourbon.  Or if I don’t have a hierarchy of loves, then when I give money to charitable contributions, I should give the same amount of money I spend on groceries each week to each of the following: my parish; my Diocese; my local food pantry; the homeless shelter; each religious order that exists; each food pantry that exists in the US; each homeless shelter that exists in the US; every orphanage around the world; every charity around the world; etc.  Of course, that would lead to poverty, and the family would lack necessary goods, to which they have a right, while others, who are not even known to us, would receive the same financial support.  

    The Holy Father rightly brings up the parable of the Good Samaritan as our Lord reminds us to care for our neighbors who are not like us.  The Samaritan had no family or even national connection to the man left for dead.  But the man on the brink of death was close to him, and the Samaritan could do something at that moment to help the man, without neglecting any of his other legitimate responsibilities.  The man was in immediate need of assistance, and so, even in the ordo amoris, the Samaritan, like the priest and the levite before him who failed, had a duty to assist as a way of expressing love.
    The Scriptures also challenge us to remember that love of God cannot fully be divorced from love of neighbor.  St. John writes in his first epistle: “whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”  Love of God, strictly speaking, does outweigh love of neighbor.  I should be more concerned with what God thinks of me than what my friends or family think of me.  However, more often than not, we show God we love Him by loving the people He loves, that is, our neighbor.
    The argument of modern society is that we should love everyone equally.  To the extent that we generally will good for all people, that is true.  But we cannot, strictly speaking, actually love every single person on this planet equally, because we have closer ties with some than with others, and the resources by which we show our love are limited, even while love is not limited.  So we should order our loves, putting God above all else, then myself next, then my neighbor, and my neighbor starting with my family, then my friends, then my other communities both locally and internationally.  I also have to order my love so that I deal with what is in front of my face: the rich man had a duty to care for poor Lazarus because Lazarus was at his doorstep and needed the rich man’s help.  
    But we also have to understand what love is and what love is not.  Love is not just a feeling, or license to do whatever we or another want to do.  Love means willing the good, for ourselves and for others.  If we allow a person to do that which is harmful, or if we want to do something which is harmful, we are not loving.  
    We could do so many good things, or have so many spiritual gifts.  But love, willing the good of the other, has to undergird all of what we do.  Otherwise all of our good deeds and actions are worth nothing.  If we ever have a question about how love looks, then gaze at the crucifix.  Because that is the greatest example of love: to lay down one’s life for God and for neighbor.  If our actions connect us to the cross of Christ, then there is good chance that they are truly loving actions, and therefore join us to the God who is Love: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

New Life Not Rules

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time–Third Scrutiny Readings
    Go to Mass on Sundays and holydays; don’t eat meat on Fridays; serve the poor; love your enemies; save sex for marriage and don’t live together before you’re married; contribute to your parish; pray daily.  Catholicism is often broken down to these and many other rules.  And when Catholicism is presented as simply one set of rules (and fairly strict!) over others, it doesn’t sound that good.  But these rules are meant to be the response to a new life, rather than a reason for joining a new club.
    Yes, clubs have rules, but people make rules for themselves based upon their goals.  I remember a classmate of mine from high school whose goal was to become valedictorian.  She spent much of her time studying and making sure that she understood the concepts that the teachers taught.  She didn’t shy away from tougher honors classes, but I can only imagine the hours she spent going over lectures and assignments (and this, in addition to playing various sports).  But, her years of study, probably when others were doing things that seemed more enjoyable, paid off when she had the grades to be the valedictorian for the Lansing Catholic graduating class of 2002.
    Your goal, Mia, is not simply another tassel around your graduation gown.  Your goal is the new life that Christ offers.  And that is really what Catholicism is about.  If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that we are not always who we want to be.  We desire the eternal, even while going through life in very limited bodies.  There is a desire for God in our hearts, but we don’t always choose God.  We need help.  And God gave us that help in Christ, who not only teaches us, but can fill us with the power to accomplish what we want: union with God.  

    Catholicism isn’t about rules (though we have a lot of them).  Catholicism is about dying and rising; dying to our old, fallen self, and rising to our new glorified self.  That is most evident in baptism, where the Death and Resurrection of Christ are given to us so that we can be changed in a way we couldn’t on our own.  The death of Lazarus, which we heard today in the very long Gospel account, anticipated Christ’s own dying and rising, except that Lazarus would die again, but Christ would never die again, because it no longer had power over Him.  
    Catholicism is about being connected to the source of the power that allows us to reach beyond our limitedness, and begin to reach into infinity as we grow in our relationship with God who is infinite.  God desires us to have new life, not just be dried bones in graves.  And He makes it happen in us through the sacraments and through the grace that comes each day from them.
    And that new life comes from doing our best to live like Jesus.  When we live our merely human life, we care most importantly for ourselves.  We go throughout life seeking pleasure and avoiding pain wherever we think we can find delight and hide from discomfort.  The merely earthly life is very self-centered, very solipsistic.  And while it may lead to more money than one can imagine, or more things that one can count, or more power to exercise over others, it does not, as so many have shown us throughout history, lead to true and lasting happiness.  Ironically, the one who cares for others, who dies to his or her own desire to be most important, ends us rising to a happier form of life where doing God’s will is most important, others follow in importance, and only then are my desires considered.  The happiest people are those who live the new life where service to others comes before pampering the self.  
    And over the centuries, Mia, the Church has created rules and practices that help us die to self and rise for God.  Ever since Pentecost when the Church was born, we have come to know more and more deeply what actions are in accord with how Christ showed us to be happy, and what actions are antithetical to living a truly happy life in Christ.  And the more we live the life of Christ here on earth, the more it will seem like the place we want to be at the end of our life when our actions will shows whether or not we want to be in heaven, which is where God created us to be.  We do those practices and we follow those rules not because we can earn God’s love; we can’t.  We go to Mass, we serve the poor, we fast and abstain, we do all those things that I mentioned and more as our response to the love of God that has been poured into our hearts.  So happy are we that we have access to new life, that we can escape the bonds of death in Christ, that we don’t just tell Christ we love Him; we show Him by what we say and by what we do.
    Mia, you are not signing up to join a new club that your friends are in.  You are not simply applying new rules to your life as a form of self-control.  You are one week away from dying to everything that is old and fallen in you, and rising to all that is young and glorified in Christ.  God doesn’t just want to give you rules, He wants to give you new life.  Hear the voice of Jesus as He invites you out of the tombs of death of your old way of life.  Let Jesus unbind the sinful bands around you.  Come to the waters of baptism next week, not for a new set of rules, but for a new life that is only possible in Christ. 

The Raising of Lazarus and a Greater Miracle

Fifth Sunday of Lent
    I have a vague memory from when I was a young child of the first funeral visitation I attended.  I remember looking at the casket with the deceased person, and being a bit confused.  The person looked to be asleep, and I wondered if the person would ever wake up again, and if it would happen while I was there.  I obviously did not, at that point, really understand death.

    We have heard this story about the raising of Lazarus how many times in our life, and it probably has become a bit passé and humdrum.  We know what’s going to happen.  But imagine that story was transposed into our time.  Imagine a wandering priest, who had worked some miracles, walked into the funeral home visitation with a closed casket, told you to open it, and then said, “Awaken!”  And then imagine the person actually opened his eyes, sat up, and then got out of the casket.  Not so humdrum anymore!
    That is the shock that we should have when we hear this familiar story.  It should shake us out of our complacency.  The raising of Lazarus is the last great sign in John’s Gospel that Jesus is who He says He is.  And Jesus takes great pains to make sure that no one will be confused about the significance of what just happened.  Perhaps the other accounts of Jesus’ miracles were written off by others as parlor tricks, or clever shows put on by a snake oil salesman.  But this amazing feat could not be written off.  Jesus waited two days after knowing that Lazarus was ill even to go to Bethany.  And by the time He gets there, Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days.  There was no question that Lazarus was dead.  In fact, the people were concerned that decomposition had started.  And yet, no one could deny that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, because they saw Lazarus, tied up in burial cloths, walking out of the tomb. 
    And yet, that work, as amazing as it is, is not the greatest work of Christ.  This sign, this miracle, merely restored earthly life to a man who would die again.  Incredible?  Yes.  But not as incredible as the greatest work of Christ, which was His own Death and Resurrection, into which we will enter and participate in less than two weeks. 
    The raising of Lazarus was the re-vivification of earthly flesh.  The Death and Resurrection of Christ brought about the possibility of eternal happiness by filling the earthly flesh with the Spirit of God.  St. Paul references this in our second reading when he writes, “if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of righteousness.”  And Christ comes into us through Holy Baptism, the Sacrament in which we die with Christ so that we can rise with Him to new life.
    Through Baptism, God takes something which is opposed to Him, His own enemy, and makes it the dwelling place of His Holy Spirit.  He makes a son or daughter out of an enemy, and takes that which is pointed towards destruction and makes it that which is pointed toward glory.  Our bodies operate under the weight of sin and the death that comes with sin.  And yet, by the Spirit of God, they can continue on this earth but no longer plagued by sin and death, but designated for eternal life.  And that eternal life will not end, like the earthly life of Lazarus eventually ended (and as our earthly life will eventually end).  But God will raise up our bodies to be like His in glory, as St. Paul said, and those bodies will experience no more death, nor more pain, no more limits that our earthly bodies experience. 
    With this in mind, it is also striking that we often choose to reject the resurrection that Jesus offers us, and give in to the death that comes from sin.  If Baptism is our own raising like Lazarus, so that we are a new creation, choosing to commit major sins after Baptism is like asking the crowd to re-wrap us with burial cloths and put us back in the tomb where can rot.  Sin binds us up and brings death and rot.  Jesus, on the other hand, frees us to be ourselves as God created us to be, and refreshes us and restores us to our youth. 
    Do we believe that Christ can do this?  Do we have faith in Christ who is the Resurrection and the Life?  Are we like St. Martha, so often put down because of her busyness, but here demonstrating her faith in the Lord?  Do we meet Him and express our faith that we will rise in the resurrection on the last day, because He is the Christ, the Son of God?  Are we like Mary, who previously had sat at the feet of Jesus, but who, in this instance, was slow to come to Jesus and slow to believe?  Are we willing to accept the new life that God desires for us, a life separated from the sins of our past, leaving them in the tombs as we walk about in the fresh air of life in Christ?
    [My dear Elect, in this last scrutiny, we once again ask God to heal you from your past sins, and remove any hold that Satan has upon you.  Christ beckons for you and says, “Come out!  Do not be bound any longer!”  You are less than two weeks away from the time when Christ will make you His own, and pour His Spirit within you, the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead.  Hear the voice of God.  Do not linger in the tombs, but enjoy the bright light of freedom.]
    I dare say it would be a shock to any of us if, at the next funeral we attended, the person were to come back to life.  And if that person said that Jesus had sent them back, we would probably pay heed to what Jesus had said to that person.  Jesus does a greater work than that: He frees you from the death of sin.  Pay attention to what Jesus has said through the Scriptures and the Church.  Pay attention to the witness of those who have died to their sins and risen to freedom in Christ.  Come out of the death of sin.  Allow the grace and mercy of God to unbind you from slavery to Satan and walk about freely in the Spirit of God.

Waiting in the Tomb

Fifth Sunday of Lent
    The summer after my first year in college seminary, I worked at St. Thomas Aquinas in East Lansing as a custodian.  And on a sunny, hot day on 2 July, I was working with my supervisor–a gruff older man named Grady–on trimming the bushes around the school.  Some of the work wasn’t bad; we were using gas-powered hedge trimmers.  But some of the bushes were big, taller than any of us, and we needed to trim the top.  Grady was convinced that the best way to trim the tops was to put me in the bucket of a tractor, and lift me up so I could reach the branches.  I hated the idea, but didn’t want to say no to my supervisor. 
    So I started to get in the bucket, my mind racing with the hundreds of ways that this could end with a lost limb or fatality.  But, before the bucket could be raised, the secretary radioed for me to come to the office.  Somehow, I knew something wasn’t right, so while my first few steps were at a regular pace, I quickly sped up and ended up running to the office.  It was there that the secretary told me that my sister, Amanda, had been in a bad car accident, and I needed to get to Sparrow Hospital in Lansing quickly so that I could ride in the ambulance down to Ann Arbor with my other family members as my sister was air-lifted to U of M Hospital.  Fr. Dave, the pastor, drove me to the hospital in Lansing, where my sister ended up having surgery, rather than going to U of M. 
    I knew something was wrong, so I ran, and I’m willing to bet that Fr. Dave drove faster than the posted speed limit to get me to the hospital.  And yet, when Jesus gets word that his friend, Lazarus, is ill, St. John says, “[Jesus] remained for two days in the place where he was.”  What was Jesus doing? 
    Jesus knew exactly what He was doing, and what He was going to do.  We heard Jesus say, “‘Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him.’”  This may seem cold, Jesus waiting for Lazarus to die, and then raise Him from the dead.  But it was part of the Father’s plan, for the good of Lazarus, for the good of Martha and Mary, for the good of the apostles and disciples, and even for Jesus’ good. 
    It didn’t seem that way for Martha.  She said to Jesus, “‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’”  But, even in the midst of her grief and confusion, Martha trusts in Jesus, and the power of God to do anything, even raise someone from the dead.  Mary, too, when she comes to see Jesus, repeats the refrain of Martha, “‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’”  Mary, who had sat at the feet of Jesus to hear Him, while Martha worried about being hospitable, is now wondering what Jesus was doing, and why Lazarus had to die. 
    But Jesus is not callused to the death, either.  When Jesus came to the tomb, He cries.  This is the shortest verse in the entire New Testament: “And Jesus wept.”    Faced with the loss of His friend, Jesus cries.  He even took on our sorrow in the face of the death of a friend.  As Jesus goes to raise Lazarus, the crowd does not believe.  Even Martha says, “‘Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.’” 
    And then, after this long, drawn-out episode of Lazarus getting ill, Jesus waiting, Jesus greeting Martha, and then Mary, and then going to the tomb, it all changes.   “‘Lazarus, come out!’” Jesus says loudly.  And Lazarus does.  And the Jews began to believe in Jesus.
    We’re in week two of no public Masses.  Now we have a Stay At Home order from Governor Whitmer.  School is still out.  We’re trying to prevent deaths from COVID-19 by our social distancing, but it almost feels like the world is dead.  It seems like there has been no life.  Many people aren’t even leaving their houses, or doing so very sparingly.  With so many people staying inside their homes, by now, there will be a stench! 
    And yet, the Lord is doing something.  Somehow, according to the will of the Father, this is for our good.  It seems like Jesus is waiting too long.  Things are dire!  We need a cure now!  We need this to end now!  But He’s still waiting.  So what is on the other side of this pandemic?  We don’t know, other than it’s new life.  And somehow, God will be glorified, and others will have the opportunity to believe in Jesus. 
    I know we want to rush this, and get this over as soon as possible.  Believe me, as much as I am grateful to Tommy for Facebook live broadcasting me to you, I’d rather have you here!  I’d rather celebrate the holiest week of the year with you.  But, for now, we wait in the tomb with Lazarus.  For now, we wait for the Lord to act.  And while we wait, we reaffirm our trust, that when the Lord Jesus does act, it will mean new life for each of us.  So let us wait with joyful hope to hear those words of our Lord: Come out!  And we will be unbound, and able to live in the freedom of the resurrection. 

The Whole World Is Changed

Easter Sunday–At the Easter Vigil in the Holy Night of Easter

Tonight the whole world is changed.  Tonight we participate in the most wondrous, unexpected, joyful event ever: the Resurrection.  We keep watch, or vigil, with Jesus, knowing that at some point, during the night, the tomb which had sealed Jesus was broken, the guard scattered, and Jesus went forth from the tomb, not dead, but alive.  The holy women went to the tomb at daybreak on the first day of the week, on Sunday, and the stone had already been rolled away.  They see two men in dazzling garments, who tell them that Jesus has been raised.  And the whole world was changed.

The Aediculum, the place of the Resurrection of Jesus
in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Nothing like this had ever happened.  Sure, people had been raised from the dead before.  Elijah and Elisha both raised a boy from the dead; Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.  But no one had ever risen from the dead on His own power.  And that is what Jesus did.  Jesus, who had no sin, took upon Himself the penalty for sin, and because He suffered willingly for a crime He didn’t commit, sin itself was defeated, and with it death.  And the world was created anew.

We heard about creation in the first reading tonight.  God ordered the chaos.  He separated light from darkness, day from night, earth from water, animals of different kinds, and crowned His creation with man and woman, made in His image and likeness.  But tonight, the night of the Resurrection, God created the world again, no longer under the burden placed upon it by Adam and Eve and their disobedience, but liberated by the Son of Adam and His obedience, even when this meant death, death on a cross.

Abraham showed us a prefigurement of the sacrifice of Jesus in his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, his beloved son.  Isaac carried the wood upon the mountain, Mount Moriah; he willingly let himself be bound to it when his father was about to sacrifice.  But at the last moment, God stayed Abraham’s hand.  Yesterday, Jesus carried the wood of the cross up Golgotha, the place of skull, so named because it was, by tradition, the place Adam died.  It was the place of his skull.  Mount Moriah is also, according to some, the place where King Solomon built the temple a thousand years later.  And so Jesus would have died somewhere around that mountain.  But no ram took the place of Jesus, as it did for Isaac.  Jesus suffered the fate that the angel of God stopped when it came to Isaac.  And because of that death, life, eternal life, became possible.

From the pierced side of Jesus, blood and water flowed.  The water flows from the side of Jesus, which quenches the thirst of all who approach it.  The Blood is the Eucharist; the water is Baptism; both are essential to the life of the Church.  The water renews the covenant God made with David, and makes the new creation fertile and fruitful.  It is the clean water that Ezekiel prophesied, which cleanses us of our impurities and false gods.  It is the water which gives us a new heart and a new spirit, so that we can live by the statutes of God, and become truly His people, His children by adoption.

Tonight the whole world was changed because of what one Person did.  And tonight, the whole world is changed because of what two people are doing.  Tonight, Bilal, with your new baptismal name, Maron, and Mikayla, you two are changing the world.  You are dying with Christ in the waters of baptism, and rising with Him to new life.  You are becoming a part of that new creation, no longer weighed down by the slavery to sin and death, but called to live in the freedom of the children of God.  And it is by people such as yourselves that the world is changed.  

Tonight you become children of God, whereas before you belonged only to your parents.  Tonight you become friends of God, though before you were at enmity with Him.  And that friendship and that identity as a son and a daughter of God in the Son of God will allow you to make the life of Jesus your own in your day-to-day lives.  You may not look different, but you will be different.  The Spirit of God will dwell in you, to help to you love God and love your neighbor; to help you to choose good and avoid evil; to be the light of Christ in a world surrounded by darkness.

People wrote off Jesus when He died on the cross.  Even the holy women, with the exception of Mary, the Mother of God, expected only to anoint Jesus’ body, which they were not able to do on the day before because of the solemn Sabbath of Passover.  They did not expect to see Jesus raised.  But Jesus outdid their expectations.  So you, too, may not seem like much.  You’re only two young people.  But if you stay faithful to Jesus, then you have the same power in you that Jesus had, to change the world, not by force or violence, but by grace and love.  Jesus now shares with you the power to help re-create the world according to the will of God, not the reign of Satan.  

Tonight, we, too, already baptized in Christ, stand with you, assuring you of our support, but also recommitting ourselves to be that new creation in Christ.  As we wait for Jesus to return to put an end to all sin and death and usher in the fulness of His Kingdom, we sometimes forget that we have the power to change the world for Christ by His grace.  We become complacent.  We write ourselves off.  Tonight, we are reminded, as we are every Sunday, that Jesus is alive, not dead; that life conquers death and holiness conquers sin; that God can change the world by His grace active in us.

Tonight, the whole world is changed through Christ.  Tonight, the whole world is changed through God’s grace in you, Maron and Mikayla.  Tonight, the whole world is changed through God’s grace in us.  Tonight, the whole world is changed.  

The Conversion Process

Fifth Sunday of Lent-3rd Scrutiny

For the past two weeks at this Mass, we have had the readings from Year A.  We do this because of the scrutinies, the rites by which we ask God to cast out from our Elect any evil which is in them, and to prepare them for the Easter Sacraments–Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist.  In one sense, Bilal, our Elect, these readings have been specifically for you.  

Each Gospel passage (and the other readings as well that point to it) has hit home a theme of conversion, which is the process which has led you here.  On the third Sunday of Lent, we heard about the woman at the well, the woman who came to know Jesus more deeply as Jesus conversed with her.  He went from “a Jew,” to “Sir,” to “the Prophet,” to “the Messiah.”  And all of that happened because of a conversation with Jesus at a well.  Jesus was thirsting, not so much for the water, but for her.

On the fourth Sunday of Lent, we heard about the man born blind.  The man cannot see, and yet recognizes that Jesus is not an ordinary person.  Never before, he tells the Pharisees, has a man cured a man who was blind from birth.  And yet that is what Jesus did.  Because Jesus opens the eyes of the man, the man believes in Jesus, while the Pharisees, whose eyes were opened but hearts were closed, remain blind in their unbelief.

Today, the fifth Sunday of Lent, we hear about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  Martha, the woman who was so concerned with serving Jesus that she forget to actually spend time with him, now is the sister who has faith that Jesus can do anything, that Jesus is Himself the Resurrection and the life.  And, sure enough, even though Lazarus was in the tomb for four days, deader than dead, Jesus brought Lazarus back to life.  

These readings were not chosen on accident.  Holy Mother Church, reflecting on her newborn children, sprung to life from the waters of baptism, saw in these three Gospel passages a message so important for you, our Elect, that she bid them to be read every year, even when it would interrupt the usual cycle of readings.

And She did this because in these three Gospel passages is the format for conversion: conversation with Jesus; Jesus opening our eyes; Jesus raising us to new life.  In your own life, Bilal, Jesus has spoken to you, to you heart.  And you sought to know more about him.  I can remember the day when you asked me about the Catholic Church, and what we believe, and we sat and talked on the pew in the narthex.  Jesus Himself spoke with you, maybe not about your past, but about your future, and about who He is.  

Through the Rites of Christian Initiation of Adults, which we have been celebrating with you for months, Jesus has also opened your eyes to see how He is who He says He is: God.  In fact, ever since Bishop Boyea chose you for the Easter Sacraments at the Rite of Election which you celebrated the Saturday after Ash Wednesday, you have been in the period that the Church calls “Purification and Enlightenment.”  In these last weeks of your preparation, Jesus has been opening your eyes to believe in Him more deeply, so that you are ready to follow Him always.

And today, as we hear about Jesus raising Lazarus to new life, you are being prepared to die with Christ and be buried with Him in the waters of baptism, so that you can rise with Him to new life.  You are almost at that point where Christ calls you out of the tomb into the radiance of new life with Him.

But these are also for us, because conversion is a process that is never done.  Each one of us, though we come as Christ’s faithful, have not always been so faithful.  There are parts of each of our lives that do not belong to Christ fully, and need conversion.  And so, Jesus continues to talk with us about those parts of our life.  He talks with us about our sinfulness, like the Samaritan woman, and the ways that our life is not configured to Him, not to condemn us, but to draw us to the freedom that only Jesus can give.

We, though we have been enlightened by Christ, still have some areas of blindness in our lives.  Each person here has things that we do not see, for a variety of reason, which we will not see unless we ask Jesus to open our eyes.  Some of these are failings that we have had since birth; others are failings that we have developed along the way.  But Christ wants to illuminate our vision so that we can see our failings, turn away from them, and turn back to Jesus.  

Though many of us have been through the waters of new birth in baptism, we all make deals with death.  We blockade ourselves into the tomb by our sins, which cause spiritual death.  We often want new life, but we sometimes don’t want it enough to accept it from Jesus.  The tomb may be musty, it may be dark, it may be a place of death, but sometimes we are comfortable with it, because death has become second nature to us, and we are surrounded by a culture of death.  But, Jesus wants to raise us to new life, and sometimes it’s someone else who begs the Lord to give us that new life.  

Yes, Bilal, these readings are for you, as our Elect, but they’re for all of us here.  Conversion does not end with baptism, or confirmation, or the Eucharist.  Conversion is a life-long process, of dying to sin and rising with Christ to new life.  Your first period of conversion is almost complete.  Your baptism is less than two weeks away.  Then you will join with us in continuing the conversion to which Jesus invites us each and every day, week, month, and year.

New Life in God's Time

Fifth Sunday of Lent

Sometimes we have heard these stories in the Gospel so often, that we miss the parts that would have shocked the first listeners, or would shock anyone who is unfamiliar with the story.  The part that should have made us at least scratch our heads in today’s Gospel was, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.  So when he heard that he was ill, he remained for two days in the place where he was.”  If you really love someone, why wouldn’t you go immediately to see them, hopefully getting to them before they die?!?  It’s not like they had stellar hospitals at the time of Jesus who could keep someone alive for a few more days in order for friends or family to visit.

Two things are clear from Scripture: the Lord desires life for His people; and sometimes the Lord delays (from our point of view) in giving that new life to His people.  

Our first reading, second reading, and Gospel all make clear that God desires life for His people.  Ezekiel prophesies that God will open the graves of His people and have them rise.  He will put His spirit in them so that they may have life, and settle them in their land.  This will be the proof that God is the Lord.  And St. Paul reminds us that, while the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive.  If we have the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, the one who raised Jesus from death to new life, then God will also give our mortal bodies new life, through the power of the Holy Spirit.  And our Gospel is, we can say, the fulfillment of Ezekiel, as Jesus proves He is God by raising Lazarus from the dead.  God, in the Person of Jesus, opens the grave of Lazarus, one of the People of God, and has him rise.  

The raising of Lazarus
From the Church of Sts. Martha, Mary, & Lazarus in Bethany

But those same readings, if we delve more deeply in them, also give us a less exciting piece of news: God sometimes waits to give new life to His people.  The prophet Ezekiel is writing to a people totally devoid of hope.  Because of their infidelity to the Lord, He has exiled them to Babylon, destroyed their temple, and they don’t know if they will ever return.  They are the living dead, zombies, we might say, as they live but without the love of their life: their land and their temple.  But Ezekiel reminds them that they will go back, and, after some years, they do, and they, metaphorically speaking, rise from their graves by returning to the land of Israel.  But they had to wait.

As St. Paul talks about the Holy Spirit raising us to life, he speaks about it in the present, as the Spirit gives us a new way of life in Christ, putting to death the works of the flesh.  But St. Paul also talks about how the Holy Spirit will raise up our mortal bodies.  This only happens after death, and not simply when we die, but at the end of time.  What the Church calls the general resurrection of the dead, will only come at the end of time (except for Mary, whose body was already raised up by a singular grace).  We have to wait.  

And in our Gospel, that odd paradox of Jesus hearing about one of His best friends being ill, one Jesus knows will be dead (though He uses the term “asleep,”), but Jesus waits two days.  And when Jesus arrives, Lazarus has already been dead four days.  As it turns out, even if Jesus would have left immediately, Lazarus would still have died two days before Jesus arrived.  But Jesus waits, though not without cause.  In fact, Jesus waits in order to prove beyond a doubt that He is God, and to work His greatest miracle during His earthly ministry.

Those two points are certainly true for us.  Jesus desires new life for us.  I am convinced that God has good things planned for St. Pius X, and I am happy to be a part of them, and to hopefully shepherd you as we find new life in Flint.  But, at least in some ways (and in those ways it goes without saying), we’re not there yet.  In some ways, we’re still in our graves, still in the tomb.  That’s a tough place to be.  But we cannot give ourselves life.  New life can only come from Christ, and on Christ’s terms and schedule.

Think about the Israelites.  They were so excited to leave Egypt!  No more slavery, no more Pharaoh!  But as soon as the first difficulty comes, they want to go back to Egypt.  At the Red Sea, as the Egyptians get closer and closer, they cry that they want to go back, until Moses splits the Red Sea and they pass to safety.  In the desert, the people start to complain that they don’t have meat or bread; they lack trust that God will provide; they don’t like waiting for new life in the Promised Land.  So they tell Moses it was better in Egypt, and that they’d rather go back.  They prefer the grave to new life, because they’re not convinced the new life is on the way.

God desires new life for us.  Of that I am sure.  But we’re not there yet.  We’re still in the desert, on our way to the Promised Land, on our way to new life.  The Lord invites us to have faith in Him, as Martha did, that we will rise.  To quote Jesus, “‘Do you believe this?’”

New Life

Fifth Sunday of Lent–Year C and Scrutinies

Most of the times when we have the yearly readings and the scrutiny readings (which 2 out of three years means they are different), I prepare two different homilies.  Usually each set of readings has its own focus and takes me down two different roads as I think about what the Lord wants me to say.  But this week the two Gospel passages–the woman caught in adultery and the raising of Lazarus from the dead–tied in together and seem to both emphasize the same point.

If I think about the raising of Lazarus (you can go home and read John 11 if you want a refresher), it is an amazing passage in itself.  Probably all of us have experienced the death of a loved one, and if it was a close family member or friend, we know the pain and sorrow that Martha and Mary were feeling.  We understand and maybe even have said with Martha, “‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’”  We can then also imagine how moving it would have been to actually have seen Lazarus risen from the dead.  Imagine your loved one, who had been dead for four days, being returned to life.  Maybe it would be a little creepy, but the joy would have been inexpressible.  

And then I think about the woman caught in adultery from John 8.  That woman was raised from the dead by Jesus, but in a pre-emptive way.  His challenge to the scribes and Pharisees keeps them and the mob that had formed from stoning her to death.  Jesus’ words have been repeated (whether appropriately applied or not) throughout the ages: “‘Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’”  Jesus saves her life, and encourages her to go and sin no more.

But both Lazarus and the woman caught in adultery would later die.  Lazarus’ earthly life came to an end…again, at some point.  By pious legend Lazarus either became the first bishop of a city in Cyprus, or Provence in France.  We have no idea what happened to the woman caught in adultery.  But they both died.  We usually think of the raising of Lazarus as Jesus’ biggest miracle.  And certainly it was a biggie, and proved His divinity.  Jesus showed that He, as God, had power over life and death.  But we might say that, in one sense, his miracle with the woman caught in adultery was bigger.  When Jesus raised Lazarus, Jesus gave Him back earthly life.  When Jesus forgave the sins of the woman, He offered her eternal life.

Forgiving sins raises people from death.  In my ministry as a confessor, I have been privileged, though I am a sinner and in need of God’s mercy, to be the instrument of God’s mercy to people, some of whom have been away from God’s grace for longer than I’ve been alive.  To hear the confession of people who have been alienated from God by their choices, and to reconcile them to God and bring them back into His family, is a humbling and truly awesome gift, one of the greatest that a priest receives.  To act in Jesus’ Name, with His power, when someone tells me, often with tears in their eyes, that they have been away from the Church for 10, 20, 30, 40, or even 50 years; that they have killed the infant in their womb; that they have committed adultery, allows me to see the great power of Christ which raises their dead soul to life, and recreates them.  

I can often see the guilt and hurt, or hear it in their words.  These are people who are as good as dead, and yet are looking for new life.  The world has not shown them kindness.  They have been drug out into the streets, ready to be killed by the stones of judgment of others.  Sometimes they even expect judgment or condemnation in the Sacrament of Penance.  But what they hear are the words of Jesus: “‘Has no one condemned you?  […]Neither do I condemn you.  Go, and from now on do not sin any more.’”  Once inside that confessional, the only one who could truly condemn that person because He truly knows what the person has done and why and to what extent he or she is truly culpable, does not condemn, but forgives.

Forgiveness is a way that Jesus gives new life.  Not just an extension of earthly life.  But a new life that can last forever in heaven.  It is given in Christ’s Name with His authority in the Sacrament of Penance.  But each one of us has the power to raise someone from death by forgiving them.  If we truly forgive someone who has wronged us, especially if they have wronged us in a powerful way, we give that person new life, and raise their souls from death.  It is not easy.  It doesn’t mean we forget the pain and hurt that person caused us.  But it means we no longer hold it against him or her, and grant them the opportunity of a new life without the chains of sin dragging that person down to death.  Today, and every day, you have the opportunity to raise someone from the death of sin to the new life of forgiveness.  Can you say with Jesus, “‘Has no one condemned you?  […] Neither do I condemn you.  Go, and from now on do not sin any more.’”

From Death to Life

Fifth Sunday of Lent-Third Scrutiny

            For the past two weeks we have heard from the Gospel according to John at this Mass.  We step aside from the usual hearing from the Gospel according to Luke to meditate and reflect upon what St. John calls the main signs of Jesus’ ministry.  We do this to assist our Elect to prepare for baptism, confirmation, and the reception of Holy Communion for the first time, as we accompany them through the Scrutinies.

            These three signs that we hear about all have to do with life, and are fitting for the Elect who are preparing for new life in baptism.  Two weeks ago we heard about the Samaritan woman at the well, and how Jesus was going to give her living water.  As we all know, we can’t live without water.  Last week we heard of the man born blind and how Jesus is the light of the world.  Light is an important part of life.  Without sunlight, the plants don’t produce, which means we, and the animals we eat, don’t survive.  Today, we don’t deal with an image or a metaphor for life, but with life itself in the raising of Lazarus from the dead.

            The first important aspect is that faith is involved.  The Samaritan woman comes to believe in Jesus, and so she is given the life-giving water in her soul which will never run dry.  The man born blind has faith, and Jesus opens His eyes.  Martha has faith that Jesus will raise Lazarus.  In none of these cases is the faith complete, as if one knows it all.  In fact, if one truly knows it all, faith, the knowledge of things unseen, is not necessary.  But faith makes new life possible.

            It is faith, at least in its seminal form, which led you, Elect of God, to ask questions about the Catholic Church.  It is faith which led you to continue searching and opening the Word of God to see if this Jesus should be followed.  It is faith which you will profess before you are baptized.  This will not be the end of the journey, but only the beginning of new life in Christ, just as for those of us who were baptized as infants, when our parents and godparents professed faith for us so that we could receive the precious gift of new life in Christ, that moment of baptism was not the end of our pilgrimage, but the beginning.  And likewise confirmation is not the end of our development of faith, but another important step in the pilgrimage, not the destination.

            God’s love is shown for us in giving us new life.  God promises through the prophet Ezekiel that the way we know that God is God is by receiving new life from Him.  Jesus fulfills that prophecy in our Gospel passage from today.

            But new life is meant to be new, not old.  You don’t pour new wine into old wineskins.  Lazarus had been dead for four days.  His decomposing body was rank with the odor of death.  It looked like a body, in some regards, but was not (we use the word corpse for a body that is no longer animated by a soul).  That is how it is with us before we come to Christ.  Yes, we are made in the image and likeness of God, we have human dignity because we are rational and have an immortal soul, but we do not have new life in us.  That comes through baptism, at least ordinarily.  Before baptism, we are plagued by original sin which puts us at enmity with God.  That is why we pray for you, dear Elect, that, because you have already been chosen—elected—for baptism, the power of Satan may have no sway over you.  After baptism, original sin is washed away—death is washed away—and you are filled with new life.

            But our outsides need to match our insides.  There needs to be a certain consonance, a certainly harmony between the new life we have in our souls, and the way we act with our bodies.  Beauty comes from when the image matches the idea, and if we truly want to be beautiful, then we should try with all our might to make sure that the way we live matches what we believe.  That goes for all of us, not just you Elect.  How many times did Jesus decry the lack of consonance in the Pharisees: “‘You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth.’”  The same could be said when what we have inside does not match what we do on the outside.  The temptations are great to keep our faith to ourselves and not let it impact the way we live our lives.  That is where scandal arises, when what we profess with our lips does not match the other actions of our life; when we have new life in us, but we still act like a rotting corpse; when we are members of the Body of Christ, but we act no differently than those who do not know Jesus.

            Dear Elect of God, we pray for you, that as you draw nearer to the life-giving waters of baptism, to the Light of Christ, to new life in Jesus, that you will grow in faith and be kept safe from the Evil One so that you are prepared to put to death the old man, and put on Christ, the new Man.  And we thank you, because your consonance of life between what you believe and how you live reminds us who were baptized before to live up to that call ourselves, so that more and more will be drawn to new life in Christ that not only changes our souls, but changes how we live each day.

Another Lazarus at Our Door

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            I don’t know about you, but for me, I find it difficult when a person comes up to me and says, “I’ve got good news and bad news; which do you want first?”  I’m guilty, myself, of using this phrase.  But I always hate hearing it.  And I’ll tell you why.  When someone comes up to me and says that, I’m always wondering which I should choose: should I choose the good news first and hope that it carries me through the bad news?  Or should I start with the bad news first and then get built up after I hear the good news?  And just how bad is the bad news and how good is the good news? 

            So, rather than saying, “I’ve got good news and bad news,” I want to start by commending this community for recognizing the poor in our community and reaching out to them.  By our Matthew 25 collection at the end of Mass, where we find those who are in dire need and assist in their plight, by our distribution of food, and many other activities, we are doing a good job at identifying the Lazarus who is poor and sitting right at our doorstep.  We should not be complacent, as Amos warns us, nor should we rest on our laurels.  Rather, we should continue to exercise generosity to those in need and practice the Corporal Works of Mercy to feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty.

            But there is another Lazarus, lying at each of the doors of our lives, including my own, whom, I would guess, we ignore on a regular basis.  This Lazarus, too, is covered with sores.  And yet we ignore him.  This Lazarus is the fallen-away or “ex-Catholic.”

            At a recent prayer breakfast in Los Angeles, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, and a personal hero of mine, stated that the largest Christian denomination in the United States today is “former Catholics.”  What’s the reason for this?  Why the great exodus out of the Church?  As Archbishop Dolan says, “we are now living in an era where people believe they can have Christ without his Church; people want a king without a kingdom; they want a shepherd with no flock; they want a spiritual family…with God as their Father and Jesus as their brother and them as the only child.  They want to believe without belonging; they want a general without an army; they want spirituality without religion; they want faith without the faithful.  They want Christ without His Church and for us as Catholics, no can do: Jesus and His Church are one.”

            Why do I bring this up?  Because this is the challenge that we face as those who remain: to bring the Gospel to those who were already baptized, but who live as if they are strangers to Jesus.  The “former Catholic” is the Lazarus of our day, and we so often ignore them.  Last year we had 1200 Catholic students registered here at St. Johns out of a MSU population of about 44,000. If every baptized Catholic on campus came here on Sunday, we’d need a Church bigger than St. Thomas!  I know that there are more Catholics out there who do not come to Church, do not receive the abundance of graces, spiritual support, and love that are available from being connected with the Church.  And just as they exist within my own family and friends, so I’m sure that your roommates, friends, family, and co-workers include those who have fallen away from the practice of their faith.

            But, in general, we tend not to say anything because “we don’t want to offend them;” or “they’re good people.”  Christ didn’t command the disciples to “Go and make disciples of all nations, unless they’re already good people.”  The greatest insult we can give people is to not share Jesus with them and bring them back to the fold.  If Christ is the greatest treasure in our life, then why don’t we want to share that message with others?!?  Why would we deprive people of the treasure of the Church to which they have a right, just as the poor have a right to our assistance?

            Of course, if we’re afraid that we’re going to offend them, then we do need to examine our message.  Are we trying to coax them back by assuring them that if they don’t, they’ll go to hell?  For some that might work, but for most it doesn’t.  We need to convincingly, lovingly invite others back to the practice of the faith of their baptism.  But to do that, we actually have to talk to them.  At Sparticipation, when we handed out flyers for St. Johns and encouraged others to come, there were many I talked to who, at first were going to pass us by.  But after an invitation from me, or from one of the students or staff working, they at least picked up information, and I am willing to bet that some of you here are here because someone welcomed you to practice your faith, to go to Mass, to be a part of this community. 

            To spread the Good News, we must know it ourselves.  And we try to offer many opportunities to grow in both love and knowledge of Jesus Christ and His Church through Fr. Joe’s Bible Study, Men’s and Women’s Groups, retreats, and many more ways.  We try to make sure that you are well equipped to invite others back to the Church, and to answer their concerns about the Church and Her teachings so that you can be evangelists: people who spread the Good News.  And, of course, if the Catholics you know all practice, then we can spread that Good News to those who are not connected to Christ through His One Church.  The mission never ends.

            Each of us knows at least one Lazarus, if not more, who is suffering on our doorsteps because they are not connected to Christ through His Church.  Their wounds of ignorance and sin are festering and need to be healed by Christ, the Divine Physician, through His sacramental graces.  Don’t ignore them; invite them back so that they and we, at the end of our lives, can celebrate with Abraham in the Kingdom of Heaven.