Easter Season in a Time of Pandemic (04/2020)

If they had only known.

The scribes, the pharisees, and the elders of the people attempt to silence Stephen’s proclamation of the Resurrection. They try to silence the Word of God, to hide Christ’s risen presence from the world. And they certainly seem to succeed. As each stone brings Stephen closer to his death, his voice falters. He is only able to utter one final plea before he dies: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And yet this final prayer was like the lighting of a fuse which set off the explosion of Paul’s voice. The Jewish leaders’ attempt to silence the proclamation of the Gospel set up the conditions for Stephen to utter a prayer that gave that proclamation its loudest voice. How much they must have regretted what they did.

If they had only known.

They hymn for Lauds during Holy Week expresses beautifully the futility of Satan’s attempt to silence the Word of God. The Church sings:
Such the order God appointed
When for sin He would atone,
To the serpent thus opposing
Schemes yet deeper than his own,
Thence the remedy procuring
Whence the fatal wound had come.
If Satan had only known that his attempt to remove the Body of Christ from the world was setting up the very conditions for God to give His children the bread from heaven that gives life to the world! As Satan launches his attack on Christ’s Body, he sets the stage for Christ to offer Himself to the Father for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus finds Himself in the position where He is able to make a plea for mercy and for that plea to be heard. How much Satan must regret his attempt to silence the Word of God and hide Him from the world.

If he had only known.

Satan will come to regret what he is doing right now during this time of pandemic. As the Church, the Body of Christ, suffers this silence and this removal from the world, she finds herself in the same position as Stephen, in the same position as Christ. Satan has again created the conditions for the suffering Body of Christ to cry out for mercy. Satan will come to deeply regret what he is doing.

For our part, we must adopt the same spirit as that which we find in St. Stephen. As is clear from his final sermon, he was not exactly trying to avoid martyrdom. Indeed, his words seem to reveal a longing for it. He embraced martyrdom joyfully, with his eyes set on the imperishable crown of glory that was being fashioned for him. We, too, must not run from our sufferings. No amount of distractions or worldly pleasures must distract us from the joy that awaits those who persevere during this time. We look forward, in confident hope, to the glorious coming of our Savior when we, too, will appear with Him in glory. The Word of God will not be silenced. Christ’s Body will not be removed from the world. Satan is igniting the fuse that will bring forth an explosion of God’s mercy upon the world.

If he only knew.

Triduum Reflection in a Time of Pandemic (04/2020)

During these days, there’s an image of my parents that’s been coming to my mind.  My mom has a connective tissue disorder that keeps her in pretty much constant pain.  A few years ago, she had to have surgery that left her bed-ridden for weeks.  I remember one day, walking into her room and seeing her in bed in tears because of the pain.  My dad was next to her.  He was holding her hand, also in tears as he suffered with his beloved.  What I saw at that moment, even more than the image of my mom’s suffering, was the image of love between my mom and dad.  My dad’s love for my mom turned what would otherwise have been an image of misery, into something really beautiful.

As we turn our eyes to the cross, we see a man in excruciating pain, an image of the most heinous injustice history has known.  And yet, far more than that, we see an image of divine love.  In Jesus, the suffering and weeping of humanity is joined to God’s love.  God reaches down, draws close to us, and holds our hands.  He weeps with us.  He suffers with us.  When Christians look at the Cross, we see, not primarily an image of misery, but an image of suffering that has been transformed into something beautiful by the love of God. 

We see this, however, because of what Christ did on Holy Thursday.  We see the cross as a sign of love because before Christ’s life was taken on Good Friday, it was given on Holy Thursday in the Eucharist.  “On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread… and said, ‘This is my body.’”  And then he took the chalice and said, “This is the chalice of my blood… which will be poured out for you…”  It is the priesthood of Jesus Christ that transforms the suffering of Good Friday into an image of divine love.

Reflect, for a moment, on the power of Christ’s priesthood, exercised in the Eucharistic offering.  It takes the most horrific image of misery and turns it into an image of love.  Our world has no idea what to do with suffering.  We run from it or tensely fight against it.  Might this reaction not come, at least in part, from an absence of priestly service in the world?  Priests themselves, we well know, have hidden and disfigured the reality of Christ’s priesthood that He shares with them.  Likewise, especially in these days of coronavirus, we feel so keenly the absence of the Eucharist in the lives of the faithful.  We are reaping the fruits of the seeds that we ourselves have sown by seeking to make Christ’s priesthood something other than what it is.  Yet sometimes the via negativa is the best teacher.  It is by the absence of Christ’s priesthood that we recognize more clearly what it has to offer.  Without the Eucharist that the priesthood of Jesus Christ offers, the Cross fails to reveal the love of God.  Our suffering remains empty and meaningless.

I think, as we enter into this Sacred Triduum in the midst of this pandemic, Christ is revealing to us His desire to renew His priestly ministry in the world.  He is awakening within us a longing for the Eucharist, a longing for the real power of His priestly ministry to show itself.  He is enkindling within us a desire for that sacrifice that transforms our sufferings into an image of love.  Obviously, we all want this pandemic to end; we all want to “defeat” the virus.  And as much as we need medications and vaccines, ultimately it is the Eucharist that provides the medicinal power to defeat death.  If this time of difficulty serves to renew Christ’s priestly ministry in the world, the world that emerges from the coronavirus will resemble Heaven far more than the world that entered into this crisis.  And so we will see the victory that Jesus Christ won on Easter Sunday being made manifest to us here and now.  And this, I think, is cause for great joy.  As we enter into the Triduum, reflecting on the Eucharist and the Priesthood of Jesus Christ, we discover that even coronavirus cannot separate us from the love of God revealed on the Cross.  Through His sacrifice that He still exercises through the ministry of priests, our present experience of misery is transformed into an encounter with divine love.

Palm Sunday Homily (04/2020)

The events that we recount this week, of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ, continue to actualize themselves in the history of Christ’s Body, the Church.  These events were not merely historical, though they certainly were that.  Rather, the Passover of the Lord continues to unfold itself throughout time and, consequently, uncovers the meaning of every other event in the history of the world.  As such, it is, in fact, Christ’s Paschal Mystery that we are experiencing during this time of the coronavirus.  So let us turn to the Cross, that it may cast its radiant shadow on the present circumstances of our lives.

From the Cross, Jesus draws out two worldly reactions to the presence of Death in the world.  The first reaction we see in the disciples: flee!  Keep Death at a distance for as long as possible!  As they see the Lord in such pain and suffering, they become fearful for their own lives.  They do not want to face such travesty.  In despair, they run so that they may live another day, even if that means living a superficial existence.  Peter, we know, goes back to his old life of fishing.  In the face of Death, the first reaction is flight. 

The second reaction to the presence of Death in the world is seen in Jesus’ enemies.  They are, in a sense, more courageous; they follow Christ to His death.  But they see death as something to be overcome by force.  Those who mock Jesus shout out: “He saved others; he cannot save himself.  Let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him.”  Jesus, dying on the Cross, seems foolish.  If He is God, He should prove Himself to be the more powerful superhero that can overcome the villain, Death, by his superior strength.  These do not succumb to distractions, but tensely grasp onto the preservation of life.

Do we not see Jesus drawing out these two reactions from us during this time?  How many of us oscillate between the two, sometimes several times an hour?  When we become aware of the good things that the coronavirus is taking from us, we try to distract ourselves from the reality of this suffering.  We simply want to continue living as though nothing happened.  Or we just seek to comfort ourselves until this nuisance passes.  “Once Death stops attacking,” we think, “I’ll be able to go back to my normal life.”  We, like the disciples, want to keep the Cross at a distance.

Likewise, how many of us tensely examine the news, wondering how we will defeat this?  “Who has the cure?  Surely, we will take Death by the horns and rid it from our land.”  Like Christ’s enemies, we look at Jesus hanging on the Cross and say, “Get down, you fool!  If you are God, don’t die; rather, save yourself and us!”  We want someone who will overcome the power of Death by superior force.

Naturally, neither of these reactions is entirely off-base.  We should be finding good sources of comfort during this time.  And likewise, we should be striving to find a cure to this disease.  But we must ask ourselves, in the face of Death, what is the reaction that Christ offer us?  As He lives His Paschal Mystery within us during this time, what victory over Death does He offer?

As Jesus approaches the Cross, He neither flees nor exerts His power.  Rather, He gives Himself up in love to the Father for us.  He knows that the true source of comfort and power in the world is found in the love of God.  Consequently, as Death clenches its fist on Christ, suffocating Him on the Cross, it accidentally destroys itself.  Suffering is transformed into sacrifice as Christ lovingly makes death the place of union with God.  Jesus’ reaction, then, is to overcome Death’s reign by infusing suffering with God’s love.

What, then, is Christ doing during this time?  The early Church martyrs provide an answer.  Obviously, due to their circumstances, they could not receive the Eucharist.  They could not unite themselves sacramentally to the Lord’s Paschal Mystery.  And yet they found that their lives were becoming “eucharistified.”  What takes place sacramentally on the altar was taking place in their very flesh as their bodies were offered up in love to the Father.  They were, in a sense, being transformed into the Body of Christ.  St. Polycarp, for example, as he was being burnt on the pyre, glowed as a loaf of bread glows in the oven.  The flames around him fanned out like an oven and the onlookers smelled a fragrance of baked bread.  In his martyrdom, the early Church saw Christ’s power to transform the suffering of His chosen ones into a sacrifice.

As we look at the suffering caused by the coronavirus, Christ invites us to see His crucified Body as He suffocates in his members.  He invites us to see His loneliness on the Cross in those who are separated from loved ones.  To the extent that we react to the presence of Death, neither with flight nor with strength, but with the love of God, we allow Christ to transform us into His Body.  More and more, by the power of the Paschal Mystery that is being lived out in our days, the world can be remade into the dwelling place of divinity.

These are days filled with expectation.  Right in front of us, God is offering us the ability to fill this time of difficulty with His love.  Holy Week this year may well be a once-in-a-lifetime (once-in-a-millennium?) experience.  May we not waste this opportunity for the Paschal Mystery to remake our lives and our world.

May God Bless you this Holy Week.