Good Friday March 29, 2024 Cycle B

 Good Friday    March 29, 2024

The proclamation of the Passion this evening begins, of all places, in a garden.  We are told in the opening lines: “Jesus went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to where there was a garden, into which he and his disciples entered.”  

And our proclamation of the Passion this evening ends, of all places, in a garden. We are told: “Now in the place where he had been crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been buried.”   “there was a garden???”   Hmm.   An odd place for an execution.    

Any gardeners with us this evening?    Gardens have special significance.  The garden is not just the place where these events happened to occur.  The garden has, I believe, a deep religious significance. 

Can you think of any other gardens in the Bible?  Well. The Garden of Eden, going back to the very beginning of the human drama, to the time of Adam and Eve, and especially the breaking of the relationship between the Divine and the human, fractured by human disobedience.  …   Remember?

Now that breach of disobedience, of willfully choosing our own Will over the Will of God for us, is rectified, healed, made whole by the obedience of Jesus.  In the Letter to the Hebrews, our second reading this evening, we heard, “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he because the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” 

This “obedience” is not about following the rules and doing what you are told.  Not at all.  Rather this obedience is an act of freedom, an act of will, a decision and a choice to conform your will to the Will of God the Father, out of complete and perfect trust in God’s love for you. 

TWO                    TWO                    TWO          Good Friday 03/29/2024

It is summed up in our responsorial psalm this evening: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Jesus fully, totally, completely gave Himself into the loving hands of His Father, in spite of all the indications to the contrary.   And in doing so, Jesus healed the wound of disobedience from the earliest time of humans. 

In Jesus we are now able to live in the freedom of the children of God, in harmony with God, achieving who we most deeply and truly are: God’s beloved children.  All because of His obedience, in a garden.

AMEN.  

Palm (Passion) Sunday Gospel of Mark March 24, 2024

 Palm (Passion) Sunday Gospel of Mark     March 24, 2024

Clothes.  You probably wear them every day.  Clothes are important, giving us protection, modesty in most cases, and comfort.   Clothes are important.  Indeed, an ancient saying, going back at least to Erasmus in the 1500’s, and probably much longer before that, in Latin, is “vestis virum facit”.   Or, “Clothes make the man.”

That is true.  Any stranger walking into this service can, pretty quickly, determine who is the priest and presider of this service.  The vestments I am wearing pretty clearly give it away.  Clothing is important in how we view ourselves, and others.

Clothing plays an interesting and recurring role in the Passion we just heard.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus is arrested, we hear the peculiar incident of a streaker.  St Mark, and he is the only evangelist to mention this, states: “Now a young man followed him wearing nothing but a linen cloth about his body.  They seized him, but he left the cloth behind and ran off naked.”    I believe this young man will appear again on Easter.  But we will have to wait for that.

At Jesus’ interrogation before the Sanhedrin, where the chief priests tried to trump up charges against Jesus that would stick, Jesus, in response to the question if He was the Christ, answered, “I am; and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.”   At that the high priest tore his garments.   Tore his garments?  Did you ever tear your clothes out of frustration and anger?  He must have been mightily worked up.  Tearing the clothes you are wearing is a pretty extreme sign of frustration and anger. 

Later, in the praetorium, the headquarters of the Romans, the soldiers dressed Jesus in a purple cloak and put a crown of thorns on his head.  And they mocked Him in false homage, deriding Him as the King of the Jews. 

And still later, at the cross, Jesus was forcibly stripped of his clothes.   Jesus was truly naked and defenseless before everyone.  He was rendered completely vulnerable.  And the soldiers “divided his garments by casting lots for them to see what each should take.”

Finally, when Jesus is taken down from the cross, they wrapped Jesus in a linen cloth, His burial shroud.  His final outfit on earth.   ….

And now we believe that Jesus is clothed with GLORY.       //

How do we clothe ourselves?  St. Paul in the letter to the Romans tells us; (13:14) “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ…”  And in Galatians (3:27) tells us “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ.”  And in Ephesians (4:24) tells us: “clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Do we adorn ourselves with faith and hope and love?  Have we put on repentance, and dressed in virtue?   Now is the time to adopt your Easter outfit.  Not the physical one you might wear to show off a bit next Sunday, but rather the outfit of faith and hope and love, that identifies you as a follower of Christ, as a Christian. 

Put on Christ, as St. Paul urges us, so that at the celebration of Easter, you will have no reason to be ashamed, and every reason to rejoice.   AMEN. 

FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT CYCLE B March 17, 2024

 FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT   CYCLE B             March 17, 2024

 “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”  So proclaims Jesus in our Gospel today.

From the outside, in the sight of the world, what Jesus is subsequently to undergo and endure looks nothing like being glorified.  It is quite the opposite of glory.  In the view of the world it is betrayal, false condemnation, injustice, torture and an agonizing death.  And yet Jesus declares that the hour has come for Him to be glorified.

Either Jesus is delusional and is not connecting with reality, OR Jesus sees much differently and much deeper than the view of the world. 

So, the issue for us today is, how do you see?  How do you see your life, how do you understand the meaning and purpose of life?   What is most fundamentally real for you?   Is life all about getting stuff, owning and having, avoiding pain and seeking pleasure, taking care of yourself as best you can?  That is the message our society gives us all the time. 

But there is another, radically different way of understanding ourselves and what is the purpose of life. 

In our first reading this morning/afternoon, the Prophet Jeremiah gives us God’s promise of a new way of being in the world.   We heard: “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord.  I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

This is a law that comes from within us, not an external set of laws and rules that comes from without. 

We must be trained in this interior law.   In our second reading today, from the Letter to the Hebrews, we hear about Jesus,“Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered;’  This obedience is a very special sort of obedience.  It is not like the obedience a dog learns in obedience school, nor like military obedience which is all about carrying out orders.  Rather, this obedience is a choice to conform your will to the will of the one who gives the commands, because the one commanding is the beloved.  The motivation of this obedience is love. 

Jesus seeks His glorification not in getting and gaining and winning, but rather Jesus seeks glorification in being faithful to His Father’s Will.   Fidelity, not possessing, is the way to glory.

This was NOT easy nor simple for Jesus.  As we hear Jesus testify in the Gospel today: “I am troubled now.  Yet what should I say, “Father, save me from this hour’?  But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour.  Father, glorify your name.”    //

 

We are members of the Body of Christ.  We are called to follow where He has gone: not necessarily to a cross and crucifixion, but rather to that interior obedience to God’s Will for us. 

It will not be easy.  It involves sacrifice, the sacrifice of my personal will to follow the Will of God the Father for me.  Everyone of us needs to die to our selfishness, to the part of our person that screams “me, me, me”, and accept that we are so deeply and completely and powerfully loved by God, that we can lovingly surrender our own will to follow God’s Will for us.

That is what Jesus did.  He has shown us the way.  And the way leads to Easter, and the fullness of life.       Thanks be to God! 

HOMILY FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT CYCLE “B” March 10, 2024

 HOMILY    FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT   CYCLE “B”                                  March 10, 2024

 

We have a very beautiful Gospel today, from John.  We also have a very interesting reading about how God has dealt in history with His chosen people in our first reading.   Both provide good material for a homily.  But, as a Paulist, I am fond of St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians because it is so surprising.  Therefore, today you get a homily on our second reading.  

          Unfortunately, Paul’s complex thought processes, and our blah translation, make it difficult to understand Paul, buried under mounds of dependant clauses.  So I have taken a red pencil to today’s second reading, parsed it down to the essential structure, and this is what I came up with for the first half: “Brothers and sisters; (all of us), God .. brought us to life with Christ ...., raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus.”

          That is the core of St. Paul’s message:  God brought us to life, raised us with Christ, seated us with Christ in the heavens, so that God might show his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.  WOW!

          Now what strikes me as rather ‘odd’ about this statement is its tense.  It is in the past tense.  St. Paul is talking about something that has already happened.  Not something in the future that we await, not an award at the end of our life, but rather a done deal, a present reality, something already accomplished.  

          So, ¿Have you noticed that you have been brought to life with Christ, raised up and seated in the heavens? 

          Maybe, a little bit, once in a while???  And yet Paul speaks of this as an already accomplished fact.  He states: “For by grace you have been saved through faith.....”   

He does not say, “At the last Judgement, or sometime in the future, you will be saved,” but rather he insists, “you have been saved.”  Because God has already made it happen.  Once God decrees it, it is as good as done.

          “And this is not from you;” St. Paul continues.  Not our doing.  “It is the gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast.”  

          We can never – by our own efforts - achieve our own salvation.  No matter how good and holy we try to be, no matter how much we fast and pray and go to church, we can never achieve our own salvation.  But that doesn’t matter.  It has already been given to us as a gift!  

          The one thing we most desperately want, the fullness of life, everlasting life, or in shorthand “salvation,” which we can never accomplish on our own, has already been handed to us.  It is already accomplished!

          And what do we have to do?  We just have to accept it.  As we heard in today’s Gospel:  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.”

          All we have to do is accept the salvation God offers, believe in Jesus as the Son of God, and give thanks.  As St Paul states in our reading today: ‘For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God.”     GIFT. 

What should we do when we receive a gift?  If you have been brought up right, and have any manners, what do you do when you receive a gift is you say Thank you!  Gracias!  Danke!   Merci.  Graci.  

This past Summer, I learned that to say Thank you in Greek is efcharistó.

 Efcharistõ is the same root as the word “Eucharist.”  Eucharist is what we are gathered here to do.  We celebrate Eucharist, which means thanks.  We profess our faith in Jesus as our Savior, and we give thanks.  Because the heavy lifting and the hard work of securing salvation has already been done.  And it is all gift.

          Not our accomplishment.   Not our achievement.  Nothing we can claim by right.  It is simply pure gift.  Simply because God loves you.  And all we can do is give thanks.     //

          There is a song by a group called the Damiens that I heard many years ago when I was a new priest in Alaska: “Love that’s freely given wants to freely be received.  All the love you’ve poured on us can hardly be believed.  And all that we can offer you is thanks.  All that we can offer you is thanks.”

          God has already accomplished our salvation in Jesus Christ.  It is a done deal.  And it is pure gift, not our doing but God’s.  For, as St. Paul instructs us, “we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.”

          And all that we can offer back is thanks, is Eucharist.  

Thanks be to God!