A Palm Sunday Homily

[Consigliere]

[Palm Sunday]
Lk 22:14 – 23: 56

When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!”

In the well-known hymn Rock of Ages there are lines that make a very vivid image:
Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to thy cross I cling.

It would be hard indeed to cling to the cross of Christ if we were also clinging to our own achievements and reputation and virtue. The cross begins to make sense the very moment we reach the end of our own resources. It often happens that people discover its meaning in prison or in wartime, but rather seldom when they are in the lap of luxury. During the Second World War Edith Sitwell wrote:

Still falls the Rain -
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss -
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.

The cross of Christ, far from being a decoration or just an external badge of identity, is the very substance of our pain and struggle. It tells us there is hope for us even at our very worst; and equally that our best is not good enough: “Nothing in my hand I bring.” It extends beyond us at both ends of the scale: it measures our life.

Or rather, Jesus – the man who bore the cross – is the measure of our life. The cross shows his range: and it goes beyond our reckoning.

St Thomas Aquinas was asked where he got his wisdom. “At the foot of the cross of Christ,” he replied. There, contemplating the life and death of Jesus, he found a wisdom that went beyond human wisdom. Wisdom is described (in the Book of Wisdom, 8:1) as “reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other.” In Jesus we see this as no abstract thing, but as a lived experience. He reaches mightily from one end of the human scale to the other, and beyond. He so identified himself with us that St Paul could say he became sin for us: “For our sake God made the sinless one into sin,” (2 Cor 4:21). And at the other end of the scale: “Through him we have access to the Father” (Eph 2:18).

There is a difference between inevitable suffering and the suffering we bring on ourselves. (Still, they are equally painful.) Much of our suffering is self-inflicted. Have you heard of the monkey trap? It has a very small opening at the top. When the monkey reaches into it for a piece of fruit, he is unable to pull his hand out again because his fist clutching the fruit is too big. To be free, all he would have to do is open his fist and let go of the fruit. But that is the one thing he is unwilling to do. And so he is caught. He is caught by his own greed…. Aren’t we all? Don’t we make our life a monkey trap? We trap ourselves with our own greed, fear, lazy habits, addictions, anger… in a word, everything we hold onto.

Of course we are trapped in the other kind of suffering too, the inevitable suffering that is part of every human life. We have every reason to know that birth, life and death are arduous.

But whatever our suffering is, self-inflicted or otherwise, it finds its meaning in the cross of Christ. Because Christ is one with the Father he is the beginning and the end, the full range. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End” (Rev. 21:6).

 

[Consigliere]

I posted the above homily because I thought it was very well written and it seemed quite touching.

Part of the reason I enjoy mass so much is when a priest can give a great homily, tying the Gospel message together with also philosophy and theology intertwined.

Do any of you have any other homilies that you’ve particularly enjoyed?

Peace be with you.

 

[littlenothing]

That’s beautiful! One of the best homilies I have heard in awhile. But how did you remember it?

 

[BernadetteM]

We have a Norbertine priest that does several Masses for us on Sunday and he is one of the best preachers I have heard. It is always like he touches my heart as I listen and his homilies always are related to the difficulties I am going through in life.

This Sunday, he did something unique, when the sermon was to be said, he announced that we were to take time to review our sins. We sat there for the length of a regular homily in quiet to reflect on our own souls. Actually I felt it was one of the best sermons I have heard. How often does one take the time to relfect on what they have done or not done in their lives. It brought to mind that our sins are what brought our Lord Jesus Christ to be crucified for us.

Yours in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary

Bernadette

 

[HoosMommie]

Every time Father opens his mouth he speaks directly to me. Directly. To me. He has such a gift in his ability to reach souls within his homilies. I thank God every day that I am coming into His one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church being shepherded by Father.

 

[Consigliere]

Jn 11:45-56

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, ‘What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.’ But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, ‘You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.’ He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to put him to death.
Jesus therefore no longer walked about openly among the Jews, but went from there to a town called Ephraim in the region near the wilderness; and he remained there with the disciples. Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves. They were looking for Jesus and were asking one another as they stood in the temple, ‘What do you think? Surely he will not come to the festival, will he?’

----- HOMILY -------

From the point of view of his popularity, Jesus’ low point was after the feeding of the five thousand: “After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him” (Jn 6:66). But now everyone was beginning to believe in him; because of the raising of Lazarus his popularity soared. So the religious authorities stepped in. Their own status was being undermined, but they would not say this in so many words. Instead they said he was a threat to national security.

The highest religious authority in the land, the Sanhedrin, determined to have him killed. There had been attempts on his life before (Jn 5:18; 7:1, 19; 8:59; 10:31), but this time it was official. Caiphas, the high priest, rationalised it: “It is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” John draws out the many ironies in this event.

First, by raising Lazarus to life Jesus has sealed his own death. But there is the even greater irony that it is through the death of Jesus that life will come for “the dispersed children of God.” Caiphas was thinking only about the Jewish nation (or perhaps only pretending to do so), but by marking Jesus out for death, he was unwittingly bringing about the salvation of “the dispersed children of God”, a much wider group than the Jewish nation. Without knowing or willing it, he was instrumental in fulfilling the hope of all the ages: Isaiah 11:12; Jeremiah 31:8; Ezekiel 11:17 Micah 2:12-13; 2 Maccabees 17. A third irony (if irony it be) was the plot to sacrifice Jesus “lest the Romans come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” They sacrificed Jesus, but the Romans still came and destroyed both the holy place and the nation.

“Being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation.” It is more than irony; it borders on dark humour. Caiphas the prophet! “Thus even in the most dreaded councils of the wicked, the plan of God goes forward,” wrote a scholar on this passage. “This does not in any way lessen the reality of evil, but it places that evil within a larger framework which is ultimately positive, the framework of divine providence.”

 

[Consigliere]

14 April [3rd Sunday of Easter]
Jn 21:1-19

• • • • • • • • • • HOMILY - - - - - - - - - - -

When we are in doubt we return to what we know: the past. When we don’t know where we are going, we turn back. When Jesus was dead his disciples returned to their former way of life: they tried to go back to fishing. But “they caught nothing that night.” Even the past could give them no reassurance; they had nowhere to go. They had no future, they thought, because Jesus was dead; and now they seemed to have no past either. Tragedy and failure drove them into the present moment. It was in that cataclysmic Now that they saw Jesus. The Good News reveals itself in the Now. The Resurrection of Jesus is God’s new deed.

There on the shore of the lake Jesus asked Peter three times, “Do you love me?” People like to connect this with Peter’s triple denial of Jesus: he was being given a chance to undo the damage, layer by layer. In addition, something else is happening in the original language, something that doesn’t appear in English. There are several words for ‘love’ in Greek. Look at two of them. ‘Philein’ means to love someone as a friend; ‘agapan’ means to love someone in the distinctive way that Jesus loved: unselfishly, creatively, unconditionally, endlessly. This second kind is mysteriously deeper and wider than the first, because it doesn’t depend on like-mindedness as friendship does; it can even reach out to include one’s enemies. Now, Jesus first asked Peter, ‘Agapas me?’ (Do you love me with this kind of love?) Peter replies, ‘Philo se’. (I love you as a friend.) The second time the words are the same. But the third time, Jesus asks him, “Phileis me?’ And Peter answers as before, ‘Philo se’.

Peter wasn’t yet able to love Jesus in that heroic way; he could love him only as the friend he had known for three years. But the third time around, Jesus steps down, as it were, to accept what Peter was able to offer at that time.

Can we put it this way: all forms of love and friendship are capable of advancing gradually towards ‘agapè’, the heroic kind of love Jesus shows. (It is pronounced ‘agga-pay’). How do we go along that road? By doing the best we can at the time. Peter was not able to rise to heroic love on that occasion. But he understood friendship. Friendship is the best rehearsal for agapè. It is a deep mystery in itself. “I have called you friends,” Jesus said (John 15:15). But agapè is even deeper.

Peter’s first instinct, once he had turned his back on Jesus, was to go back to the past. Like Jonah he set off in the wrong direction. But also like Jonah he didn’t get very far; God’s mercy caught up with him. Then when he was brought face to face with Jesus he couldn’t quite grasp what he was being brought into. He would have to be dragged into the future. “When you grow old you will stretch out your hands and somebody else will put a belt around you and take you where you would rather not go” (verse 18).

Peter’s task was to let himself be dragged into the future, even though all his instincts rebelled against it. He is a sign to every believer. My temperament may try to drag me into the past, persuading me to call cowardice by some fancy name: faith, or safety, or responsibility, or fidelity…. But there before me stands the humble figure of Peter, the crowing rooster by his side. If the compassion of Christ extends to him it extends to me too. If Christ trusts him to feed his lambs, his sheep, he trusts me too.

In early Christian art Peter was always portrayed with the crowing rooster beside him; this identified him. It was to give courage to the many Christians who had buckled under persecution and, like Peter, had betrayed the Lord. If he was received with mercy by Christ, so, they knew, would they be received. But in later times, when the Church turned to ways of power, Peter was portrayed holding the keys of the Kingdom.

St Paul knew the paradoxical ways of God: “When I am weak,” he wrote, “then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). It is true of Peter too. Peter was told by Jesus, “Strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:32). It is in his very weakness that he does it.