The Puzzle of Salvation

Third Sunday of Easter

When I was in middle school, my best friend at the time, Jeff, had a puzzle for me to figure out.  It was a kind of a guessing game.  He said I had to guess the secret of the green glass door, by asking me if certain things were behind the green glass door.  He started off by giving me a few examples: Jeff was behind the green glass door; Anthony was not.  Neither cats nor dogs were behind the green glass door, but both trees and grass were.  I asked him all sorts of questions about whether certain persons, animals, and things were behind the green glass door, and it took me weeks to figure out the secret of the green glass door.  I won’t tell it to you, but don’t zone out of my homily to think about the green glass door!

St. Peter preaching

Peter in our first reading and Jesus in the Gospel are trying to give people the key to the puzzle of salvation.  Peter in the first reading is addressing the people who are listening to him after he and John had cured a crippled man at the temple.  They are all amazed and puzzled how these two fishermen could do such an amazing thing.  Peter points out that the man is healed by Jesus, who is the fulfillment of “‘what [God] had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets.’”  Peter was explaining that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s plan throughout the entire Old Testament, and that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah, even though Jesus suffered and was put to death.  This idea that the Messiah was a suffering servant was in the Scriptures, especially the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, but the Messiah was expected to bring suffering to those who oppressed the Jews, not suffer himself!  So Peter has to tell the Jews that following Jesus is the culmination of what it means to be a Jew, and that the healing of the crippled man bears witness to the power of the Risen Lord.

Peter knew this all too well at this point, because he had no idea throughout the life of Jesus before His crucifixion.  Right after Peter makes his affirmation that Jesus is the Christ (the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah), and right after Jesus tells Peter that the Church will be built upon Peter, the Rock, Jesus announces His passion for the first time, and Peter says, “God forbid!”  Peter doesn’t understand.  And as Jesus prepares His disciples before the crucifixion, they have no idea.  Even after Jesus has been raised, he has to explain to the apostles that this was part of the plan of God.  Jesus says, “‘Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’”  It takes a lot to help the apostles understand that the crucifixion was part of the plan just as the Resurrection was.  

We can often be in the same place as the apostles: confused.  How many times when suffering comes do we immediately go to: why me?  Or: what did I do wrong?  Or: why is God punishing me?  Our vision of what it means to follow Jesus is similar to the apostles and to the early Jews: if we follow God, everything is going to be hunky-dory (that’s a profound theological term, of course).  Sometimes we even hear it from religious leaders (hopefully not Catholic): if you follow Jesus, your life will be easy; if you give 10% of your income to the church, then you will never suffer from hard financial times; if you’re suffering then you must be doing something wrong.  That is, to quote Bishop Mengeling, puke!  

We often need to be reminded that suffering is part of individuals and groups that work against God, just as individuals worked to put Jesus to death.  Jesus Himself warned us that if they treat the Master that way, how else do we think they will treat the servants?  Suffering–and not just the natural suffering of bad weather and calamities–exists because the world is fallen and people can say no to God in radical ways that hurt us.  Suffering is not what God wants for us, but it is often part of His plan for us, not as a punishment or because God enjoys seeing us suffer, but because the cross and all the suffering in our life is the way to the Resurrection.  St. Rose of Lima said it this way: 

Our Lord and Savior lifted up his voice and said with incomparable majesty: “Let all men know that grace comes after tribulation.  Let them know that without the burden of afflictions it is impossible to reach the height of grace.  Let them know that the gifts of grace increase as the struggles increase.  Let men take care not to stray and be deceived.  This is the only true stairway to paradise, and without the cross they can find no road to climb to heaven.”

What beautiful and profound words from one of the first saints from the Americas!

Suffering is not good.  It is not good that Jesus died on the cross for us.  It would have been better if we would have just accepted Him.  But God knew from all eternity that we would reject Him, and so the cross became the means for our salvation, and the way that the new life of the Resurrection was made possible.  Easter doesn’t mean that Good Friday was just a bad dream.  But Easter makes Good Friday bearable because we know that suffering and death are not the end, but that Christ has won for us new life where once there was only death.  Sometimes we need to be reminded of the puzzle of salvation.  But in the times of suffering, let us cling to the faith and hope of the Resurrection, as the fulfillment of God’s plan for His suffering people.  

Recognizing Jesus

Third Sunday of Easter

            I remember that about a year and a half ago, when I was out of the State, I was walking around, minding my own business, when a person shouted, “Hey, Fr. Anthony!”  I turned and looked, saw the person who shouted, and, more or less, stared at them, trying to recognize who it was.  They came up to me, and they must have seen the gears in my head spinning, trying to figure out who they were, and so they introduced themselves…again.  It turns out it was a family I had known from an earlier parish assignment.  How embarrassed I was at not recognizing them, but they were out of the context with which I usually associated them!

            We hear about that same confusion today in the first reading and the Gospel.  In the first reading, St. Peter is explaining how Jesus is the Messiah for whom the Jews had been waiting.  But they didn’t recognize him, because their view of the Messiah was different from how Jesus presented Himself.  Jesus was out of the context that they were expecting.

            And in the Gospel today, Jesus has to convince the disciples that He’s not a ghost.  They were not expecting to see Jesus in His glorified body.  This is even more surprising when we consider that this passage happens right after Jesus reveals Himself to the disciples at Emmaus in the breaking of the bread.  And yet, the disciples were still not expecting Jesus.  He has to show them His wounds, and then eat something.  Jesus was out of the context that they were expecting.

            But Jesus explains clearly, as does St. Peter at Pentecost, that all of the teachings of Moses and the prophets and the psalms refer to Him and what the Messiah would have to undergo.  The Word of God, the Scriptures, bears witness to who the Word of God, Jesus, is.

            Two weeks ago, amid cries of “Hallelujah!” I challenged us to get to know Jesus better through Bible studies, the “Catholicism” DVD series, youth group, and many other ways.  Have we taken that Easter joy and run with it, or did we leave that joy at the doors of the Church?  St. Jerome, who translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin, famously said that ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.  Based upon that formula, do we know Christ?  Do we know the Scriptures?  Knowledge of Scripture is usually associated with our Protestant brothers and sisters, but the Bible is our family story, a gift of Christ to His Church.  Does that mean we all need to get started on memorizing the whole book?  No.  But it does mean that we should be able to talk about our main stories of faith, how they relate to Jesus, and how they apply to our daily lives.  Some of that is provided here at Mass through the readings and the homily.  But to truly know Christ through the Scriptures, we cannot rely only on coming to Mass each Sunday. 

            Another opportunity is through adult catechesis and formation.  We have a full time staff member, Al Weilbacher, whose job it is to create and promote opportunities for adults to learn the faith in an adult way.  We’re not talking about sitting at a desk, being lectured by a teacher, but by opening the Word of God, studying the teachings of the Church, and seeing how they intertwine with your life.  It’s not enough to simply drop off the kids at the school each weekday, or drop off the kids at Religious Ed each week or attend the confirmation sessions, for the adults here.  For the kids, its not enough that you attend a Catholic school or attend religious ed. classes.  That’s only the beginning.  Adults and children alike can and need to continue to grow in the understanding of how Christ makes Himself present to us.  If you are an adult and interested or have ideas about how this best can happen, make sure you give Al a call or email him.  For students, contact Michael Renauer, our director of youth ministry.

            When we do continue the lifelong mission of recognizing Christ, we are not surprised to find Him in new places.  When we read the word of God regularly and learn about the teachings of the apostles through their successors, the bishops, we come to see how all of the things that belong to the Catholic faith are connected to and prepare us for seeing Christ in our daily lives, and being prepared to see Him at the end of our life.

            On the other hand, if we do not continue the lifelong mission of recognizing Christ, then when He does appear to us, we will miss Him and the graces He wants to give us to help us celebrate life more, and help us through the times of trial and pain and loss so that they do not overwhelm us. 

            When we study Scripture and the teachings of the Church, we get a better view of Jesus and who He really is.  It’s all too easy, and I know this from my own life, to think that Jesus is just a trumped-up version of me.  It’s much easier to think that Jesus is as strict, or as wishy-washy, or as tender, or as stoic as we are.  It’s much easier to pretend that Jesus has to fit us.  But, that’s the problem that St. Peter tried to address to the Jews: they were waiting for a military king who would expel the Romans and restore the Kingdom of David.  Instead, if they changed their views to fit with who Jesus is, as was promised in the Scriptures, they would see that Jesus was the Only-Begotten, Son of the Father, Suffering Servant, Friend of Sinners Messiah who had to suffer, die, and then rise from the dead to save us, not from a foreign power, but from the power of sin and death. 

After St. Peter’s speech, 2,000 more people came to recognize Jesus and believe that He truly was the Messiah, and they changed their lives to believe in the one about whom the Scriptures spoke and the apostles preached.  Will we, the people of this parish, this Diocese, and all who watch the Outreach Mass commit ourselves to studying the Scriptures and the teachings of the apostles and bishops, so that we can recognize Jesus Christ as He makes Himself known to us?