Of Infinite Worth

This past Friday, I went to the store to pick up a few things. I remembered to use all the advice that my mom taught me about how to be a smart shopper. I bought the value pack of toothpaste. I made sure to pick up the off-brand trash bags. In the produce section, I selected the bag of salad greens with the latest sell-by date.

We are all used to making value judgments about things. We do it every day, choosing this and not that, preferring one thing over another. We even make the same kind of judgments about people. We make decisions about which friendships to invest in, which family members to consult for advice, which business relationships to cultivate. As limited people, we have limited time, which means we have to make choices about who is worthy of our time and attention, and who isn’t.

In today’s first reading, Peter addresses the Sanhedrin, the council of elders that was the highest authority in Jewish life. Peter had been arrested and brought before them because of someone who, along with Peter himself, would not have normally warranted their time and attention: a crippled man whom Peter had healed in the name of Jesus. This reading shows us the how the dynamic of religious authority was shifting after the Resurrection: the powerful Sanhedrin was losing its influence and being overshadowed by Peter, this poor fisherman from Galilee, by the crippled man who had been miraculously healed, and above all by Jesus, the itinerant preacher whom the Sanhedrin had condemned to death but who now had been raised.

In the Gospel today, Jesus declares himself to be the Good Shepherd, the true shepherd of the Lord’s flock, whose authority comes not from any human source but from God himself. He proves this authority by willingly laying down his life for his sheep; for that reason, Jesus has a special claim to our time and attention. As the Son of God, his self-sacrifice was of infinite worth in God’s eyes. Its value for us, therefore, is also infinite, the only way to be saved, as Peter tells the Sanhedrin. Amid all of the relationships we have in life, no one else has died for us, and even more importantly, no one else can ensure that we rise to eternal life. As limited people, who have limited time, we nonetheless must make sure we place the relationship with the Good Shepherd first in our lives – not just in theory or intention, but actually doing so. We are reminded again of the importance of the basic building blocks of a relationship with Christ: daily prayer, engagement with Scripture, Sunday Mass, frequent confession. These aren’t just dictates of the Church; they are the fundamental components of an authentic faith.

Jesus as the Good Shepherd also means that we are attentive to the ones whom he’s shepherding. This first starts with us. We can be our own worst critics, spiritually speaking. Because we know our own imperfections and sins, we can fall into the trap of thinking we are nobody special in God’s eyes. At times, his presence might feel distant. We might even feel unloved by him. But Jesus as the Good Shepherd reminds us that he laid down his life for us; how much we are worth to him! Whenever we feel tempted to put further distance between ourselves and him – to turn away from prayer, from Mass, from spiritual things, and seek solace or distraction somewhere else – the love of the Good Shepherd calls us back. Because he died and rose for us, he has time and attention for all of us. We must be careful not to minimize or discount the great value God has for each of us, the infinite worth he finds in each of our souls.

When we have understood better the value God finds in us – an awareness that we arrive at again and again, in ever deeper ways – then it will also affect how we look at others. Every person is either a member of the Lord’s flock, or a potential member, and so each person has a worth beyond what this world can give. We must be careful not to view other persons only in the ways that the world looks at them: according to earning capacity, social status, economic productivity, cultural background, skin color, immigration status, etc. etc. Even an individual’s personal history or moral choices don’t tell the whole story, because within everyone, there is an immortal soul, uniquely created by God and infinitely valued by him, and that means infinitely valued by us too. Peter healed the crippled man because he first did not overlook him; he saw him as someone worthy of his time and attention because he knew that, despite that man’s disability and low social status, he was loved and redeemed by Jesus Christ. In the same way, we can lead others to know the love of the Good Shepherd in the way that we first see them as persons and seek to love them in the way God loves them.

Friends, Jesus the Good Shepherd helps us to do this because he still cares for us, the sheep of his flock. He comes to us in this Eucharist, attending to us and reminding us of the infinite worth he finds in us. And then he sends us forth, so that having received him, we may use the limited time we have on this earth to bring others into his fold.

The Best News

No one likes to receive bad news. But bad news is part of life: the ballgame is rained out, you didn’t get the job, the doctor calls with a scary diagnosis. But sometimes bad news is followed by good. The game is canceled, but tomorrow is a doubleheader. You didn’t get the job, but the boss is offering a better one. That scary disease? No worries – there’s a cure.

In today’s first reading, the apostle Peter addresses the people of Jerusalem. What he has to say must have been very difficult to hear: the man Jesus whom they had killed had been sent by God, was in fact God’s very Son. As he says, “The author of life you put to death.” Talk about the ultimate bad news! But quickly he follows it with good news – the best news, actually: God has raised this Jesus from the dead, and through him he has made it possible to receive the forgiveness of sins.

This is the basic message of our Christian faith, and one which we continue to proclaim today: that we human beings did the worst possible thing – we killed the Man who was God – but even then God did not stop loving us. Risen from the dead, Jesus continues to offer us the love of God – the love that heals, reconciles, and forgives. We need that healing, reconciling, and forgiving, of course, because of our sins. It can feel like receiving bad news to realize that sin is still a part of our lives even when we believe – that even after receiving the Good News of the Resurrection, we can struggle with sin. But as St. John tells us in the second reading today, fortunately we have an Advocate: Jesus who continues to intercede on our behalf with the Father, most especially in the area of mercy.

"Jesus Appears to the Disciples" (14th cent.), Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France
Photo by Ralph Hammann, Creative Common License CC BY-SA 4.0

Sometimes we hear the criticism, “Why does the Church focus so much on sin?” That’s sort of like asking why a doctor focuses so much on disease! The Church speaks about sin, because sin is what stands in the way between us and God. Because of the Resurrection, there is no sin more powerful than God’s love, but to receive that love we must let go of our sins. That’s why the apostle Peter ends his address to the people of Jerusalem by urging them to repent: to turn away from sin in order to turn toward the forgiving love of the Risen Jesus.

If we really have faith in the Lord’s Resurrection, then repentance must be a theme never too far from our minds and hearts. We focus on it especially in the penitential seasons of Lent and Advent, but in Easter, too, there is cause to look at the newness of the risen life of Christ and where it is that we might need and desire that newness in our own lives. What in our lives feels old and tired? What still stands in the way between us and God? The Resurrection allows us to bring those things to Christ and to invite him to transform them, so that we can be transformed. The Lord comes to us, as today’s Gospel tells us, always with the gift of peace – a peace beyond what the world knows because he is beyond the power of the world.

Friends, receiving bad news is a part of life. But there is no bad news that isn’t followed by good news, the best news, really – that the love of the Risen Jesus heals, reconciles, forgives, and ultimately saves us, if we receive it. That is *the* Good News, the Gospel, which we must come to believe again and again and to which we must bear witness to the world.

The Community of Believers

When I was a senior in high school, I had to write an essay on “Meditation XVII”, better known today by its first line, “No Man Is an Island.” It’s a poem by the English writer John Donne, written almost 400 years ago, about how human beings are interconnected. What happens to any one of us affects all of us at a fundamental level: “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

Several years later, when I was in the seminary, I came to understand that idea even more deeply when I read another work called “No Man Is an Island” by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton. In one of the essays from that book, he says that the interrelatedness of human beings is rooted ultimately in our relation to God. We can really only learn to love each other when we come to understand the love that God has for the other, and he says that nowhere is this idea made more clear than in the Church, the body of believers. In the Church, we are united to each other in a communion, with each other and together with God.

The Fractio Panis ("Breaking of Bread") fresco, 2nd cent. Greek chapel, Catacombs of St. Priscilla, Rome

In today’s first reading, we hear about this unity was expressed in the earliest days of the Church: that “the community of believers was of one heart and mind.” Their connectedness was expressed by how they took care of the poor, holding in common what they possessed as the property of all, and also by together proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus. That degree of unity and interrelation might seem very far-fetched when thinking about the Church today, but this reading gives us an ideal to strive for. Each of us should consider: to what degree am I related to, connected to, the other members of my church community? Is it only that we show up in the same place on Sunday mornings, sitting in the same pews, listening to the same homily? Or is there something deeper too, a connection, a communion that I sense even with those whose name I may not know or who have a language or a culture or a history different than mine? Is this connection something about which I am passive or indifferent, or am I striving to deepen it in some way: to come to know and love more fully those I relate to in faith? In short, am I active in and united to the body of believers, or am I trying to live my faith individually?

Today’s Gospel tells us of the dangers of trying to live out our faith on our own. The apostle Thomas is not present when the Jesus first appeared to the disciples after his resurrection. We are not told why he was absent, and in a certain sense it’s not important; what matters is that he misses out on encountering the Risen Christ along with the others, and because he was not with them, he does not experience what they experienced. His doubt is borne of the fact that he had been separated from the community in which Jesus became present. It is only when he is present again with the community, in the midst of the body of believers, that he encounters the Risen Christ as they had and overcomes his doubt with an act of great faith.

I think the same dynamic often plays out today. The degree to which we are able to have an encounter with the Risen Christ is very closely related to how united we are to the body of believers. If we want an experience of faith to shape who we are and to inform how we live, then we must be present in and united to the community of faith. The fundamental starting point for this is attendance at the Sunday Mass – not just when we can make time for it, or when it’s convenient, but every week, no matter what else is going on. Aside from illness or some other grave situation, we have the duty to worship God every Sunday in the midst of the body of believers; to not to do so is to fall short of the most fundamental part of our faith, and thus we believe it is a mortal sin. While it’s most important to attend Mass wherever we happen to be (even, if we are traveling, for example), we should typically try to worship in our own church and with the same community, because we become more closely united with each other the more often we are gathered together in the presence of God.

Fridolin Assists at Holy Mass (1833) by Peter Fendi

Once we understand the link between faith and presence, unity and communion, we can then begin to understand how we are called – as a community and as individuals – to evangelize to others. As I mentioned, the reading from the Acts of the Apostles tells us that the Christian community was “of one heart and mind” not only in how they were united to each other but also in how they proclaimed the Gospel. This is still our obligation, too – part of our baptismal call to live out holiness is to invite others to do so as well. The Easter season invites us to consider: with whom can I share the Good News that Jesus is risen? Who is God calling me to invite to come and share in the Lord’s presence in this community of faith? Maybe it is a friend whom I know is struggling with faith, or a coworker who has shown some interest in the Catholic Church; we can be bold in encouraging them to come and find a place in the community of faith that we have found. Perhaps the ones we are most ardently called to invite anew are those that were once part of our community, but who have drifted away, have stopped coming to Mass, have left the practice of the faith for one reason or another, sometimes not even intentionally, but just over time. As the Church, we miss their presence; we can feel the absence of those who are not with us, like the disciples did with Thomas. Maybe all it would take is a kind word from us to welcome them back, to invite them to come home, to take their place with us again in the community of faith. Who knows? Perhaps that is just the way that Thomas himself returned to encounter the Risen Christ.

Friends, as that poem says, no man is an island; we are all connected to each other, and that is true above all in our faith, as the community of believers. This Easter season is a new springtime of rediscovering the communion we have with each other: to get to know each other better as brothers and sisters, to live out that unity every Sunday in worship together, and to invite our brothers and sisters who are not with us to come and join us again. Then, the more deeply we realize our unity with each other, and the more fully we live out that unity intentionally, the more effectively we can give witness to the world that Christ has indeed risen.

As his Body and Blood are given to us in this Eucharist, may the Lord Jesus inspire us to always believe, and to share with others our belief that his true and living Presence is here among us, in this community of believers: “Blessed are those who have not seen me, but still believe!”

Our Easter

One of my earliest memories is of my parents piling us kids in the car on a Sunday afternoon to take a drive. We headed downtown, far from the familiar environs of our neighborhood or any one that we knew. Past houses and shops that had seen better days, we finally arrived at our destination: a broad open space with giant oak trees and green sloping lawns. It was a cemetery. We had come to pray at a particular grave: the grave of my uncle, my father’s brother Paul, who died at only 25 years old several years before I was born.

This memory – which has deepened through the years, as our family repeated that visit frequently, even to this day – has stayed with me perhaps because I’ve always felt a connection to that uncle that I never met. I was named after him; when I was born, his name became my middle name, Paul. Even as a child, it struck me that here was someone with whom I was linked in the deepest way but who was no longer part of this world, who has literally passed away from this reality. Even from a young age, I became aware of the thought: what happened to him will happen to me, and where he has gone I will some day be.

Childe Hassam, Colonial Graveyard at Lexington (c. 1891)

The Greek writer Thucydides once said that every story in some way or another is about the human struggle against mortality. Within each of us there is an innate, unrelenting desire to live forever, and to believe that such is possible, and yet standing against that is the certitude and finality of the grave. Our readings this evening [at the Vigil] told us of how God is intimately bound up in this story, this great struggle within the human heart against the fortune of death. Abraham trusted in God’s promise to make him the father of many nations; but then as a test, God asked him to offer up the very one by whom that would happen, his only son Isaac, and Abraham remained faithful to the one who would be faithful to him. Moses and the Israelites had been brought out of slavery in Egypt, only to face impending death from Pharaoh’s armies; but God saved his people and destroyed their adversaries by the parting of the Red Sea. Through the words of the prophet Isaiah, God remembered that his people have been unfaithful; but he pledged he will wipe away their sins and restore them to the glory he had promised. In these readings and throughout the Old Testament, God promises that death will not triumph over life, that sin will be conquered by redemption, that by his loving mercy he will achieve a victory to overcome even the grave.

But how could he show this to us? With all apparent evidence to the contrary – wars and famines and pandemics, the deaths of our friends and families, our own physical frailties and aging bodies – how, with all of that, could he show us, convince us, inspire us to believe that death, in fact, does not have the last word?

The only way, perhaps, is by means of what St. Mark tells us in the Gospel: that early in the morning, women came to a tomb and found that the stone had been rolled back. This grave *was* empty; the One whom they had come to visit, gone. “He has been raised; he is not here.” Here, at last, is reason to doubt the total dominion of death, to truly believe in the possibility of eternal life – proof not by presence but by absence, by faith: death robbed of its power, and the One who had died raised up from its grasp.

As the Church sings in the Exsulstet, the great Easter Proclamation, it is this belief by which Christians are distinguished from the world: set apart from worldly vices, set free from earthly concerns, raised to a new and eternal possibility – that death has been defeated for all who believe in Jesus Christ. Our sorrows, our griefs, our fears of death – all are overcome for those who are connected to the Risen One. “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor 15:54). Even if for a while we might have to suffer, to wait patiently in sleep, we can say: what happened to him will happen to me, and where he has gone I will some day be.

The Holy Women at Christ's Tomb by Francesco Albani (c. 1645)

Having professed this belief, we must also live it out in actions. In acts of charity and attention to the poor, in seeking always to forgive and work toward reconciliation, in striving for sanctity each day, in a spirit always attentive to the other and willing to endure trials for the good of the other – by these works, we demonstrate that our faith is not hollow words. Every year, this great feast is made new for us so that by it we can be made new, enlivened once again to live for the God of Life.

My friends, Easter is not just about Jesus's Resurrection; it is about ours, as well. He has overcome the grave, and we await with joy and hope the final day when that reality will be unveiled for us too. I still pray for my uncle Paul, and visit his grave, and look forward to the day I will finally be able to meet him. I recognize now that besides our common name, he and I share a connection far more profound: we share a Savior, Jesus Christ, and it is His name that we call upon together, from either side of the grave, until His Easter joy has become ours too.

In Our Father's Hands

Since the early Church, the words of Jesus – his various teachings and sayings – have always been remembered and cherished by Christians. This is perhaps especially true about the words he spoke from the Cross. In the four Gospels, there is a total of seven things the Lord said after being crucified; they are sometimes called the Seven Last Words from the Cross. Five of these sayings are Jesus’s own words; for example, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” or “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” However, in two of the seven, Jesus quotes the psalms. We heard the first of these in our Responsorial Psalm on Palm Sunday, psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?” And in today’s liturgy, we hear the other one, the very last of the Seven Words of Jesus, quoting Psalm 31: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Christ on the Cross (1881) by Jules-Élie Delaunay

We should take a moment to briefly consider why Jesus quoted these psalms, and how they help us to better understand his Passion and Death. The first one – “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” – is the opening line of Psalm 22, and it is clearly a cry of anguish. The whole psalm is the plaint of someone in very dire straits, someone who has fallen into the hands of persecutors and evildoers, and who begs God for help. It’s not hard to understand why Jesus would be quoting from psalm, as he’s being put to death. However, traditionally the Church has understood this cry not as a sign that the Father truly abandoned the Son; we believe that the Father always loves the Son and that Jesus, even crucified on the Cross, never lost the blessed vision of the Father and his love. Rather, the cry is a sign of that the Son has voluntarily united himself to sinful humanity. His cry of abandonment is made on our behalf, we who have been estranged by God because of our sinfulness. That Jesus suffered terribly for our sake is undeniable, but he did not do so in despair. Jesus probably would have recited the entirety of psalm 22, and in the last nine verses, the psalmist expresses trust that God will be faithful, and will make known to future generations his salvation: “My posterity shall serve the Lord, and tell of him to future generations” (Ps 22:31).

This hope for and anticipation of God’s saving power is echoed in Jesus’s second quotation from Scripture, psalm 31. Once again, the speaker of this psalm is beset by evils; he looks to God as a refuge and asks for his justice to redeem him. At this point, Jesus is on the verge of death; he has been completely faithful to his mission from the Father, and now will await the vindication of the Resurrection. And so, addressing his Father directly, he quotes with his very last words the first part of verse 6 of the psalm, “Into your hands I commend my spirit;” the second part of the verse, which goes unsaid, is this: “It is you who will redeem me, Lord.” It is clear that Jesus, even as the very life breath is going out of him, has full confidence in God, the Father who has sent him, the Father to whom he now entrusts himself in the moment of death. In his final suffering, he does not despair but reaffirms his complete trust in his Father’s love.

Friends, what a powerful yet humble lesson our Lord teaches us with these, his final words. As we meditate today upon his suffering and death for our sake, we could hardly blame him if his reliance upon God had wavered in his final moments; but it did not. Even in the throes of death, Jesus is teaching us by example. In him, we see that the fire of God’s love cannot be quenched by any suffering, not even that of death. If we remain steadfast in prayerful trust in our Father’s love, then we remain in his very grasp; even if our bodies cry out in agony, we are in his loving embrace, safely in the care of his hands. The Son proves this for us, by his example, and by the Resurrection which followed. May we follow after.

Our Family Meal

In every culture on earth, communal meals are an important part of family life. Whether it’s a Sunday dinner, a family reunion, or holiday gathering, sharing time with loved ones over food gives us life: life to our bodies and to our souls.

It is for good reason therefore that, since its earliest days, the Church has recognized every Eucharistic celebration to be a spiritual meal for the community. The Mass is a true gathering of and nourishing of the family of the Church, the Body of Christ. Of course, unlike merely human meals, we aren’t doing this by ourselves; the Lord Jesus gathers us together and feeds us himself. We heard in the second reading that what we do at Mass is a remembrance of and a participation in what Jesus did for his disciples in the context of a meal. By sharing with them his Body and Blood, in the appearance of bread and wine, he nourished not only their bodies but their souls; he gave them a share in the Sacrifice that he was going to offer the next day on Calvary.

Giovanni Lanfranco, The Last Supper (c. 1625)

In the Mass, that spiritual nourishment happens for us as well. As St. Paul says, “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.” In the Mass, our bodies and, even more, our souls are nourished by participating in and proclaiming anew Jesus’s Sacrifice for our sake. In and through our communion with the Lord, we are united more closely to each other as spiritual brothers and sisters, and we are made ready to show to others the same love, the same charity by which he laid down his life.

Friends, over the last year, the global pandemic has changed a lot about how we have been able to gather together for events as a family, community, and even as a Church. As we begin to return to something approaching normal life, let’s be most grateful that we still have this most sacred family meal, to which we are called every Sunday. Despite the differences that exist among us, in language, culture, and viewpoint, we are even more closely united by the Lord in whom we believe, and by the Sacrifice and Sacrament by which he sustains us.

Hosanna in the Highest

Having just read together St. Mark’s powerful account of the Lord’s Passion, it might be easy to forget that at the start of Mass today we had another Gospel reading: the story of Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem. In that passage, we heard a word that is both familiar and foreign to us: “Hosanna”. Every Sunday, we sing or say that word before the Eucharistic prayer, echoing the cry of the people of Jerusalem as Jesus entered their city: “Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”

But what does “Hosanna” mean? Obviously, it’s a word of celebration; that much is clear from the Gospel. In Jesus’s day, the word was used in the way we might say, “Praise God! Glory be!” But “Hosanna” has an older meaning, as well, that we should know. “Hosanna” originally was an abbreviated prayer, a blending of two words that meant “save” or “rescue” and “now”. In the psalms, for example, “Hosanna” meant “Save us, Lord – now!”

Entry of Christ into Jerusalem (c. 1440) by Pietro di Giovanni d'Ambrogio

Keeping in mind these two meanings – a cry of celebration, and a cry for salvation – we can better understand the meaning of our liturgy today. The crowds in the Gospel greeted Jesus as the Messiah, the rightful Jewish king, and we hail him as the Savior, the Son of God. They welcomed him with joy, expecting him to bring earthly deliverance: to defeat Israel’s foes and establish a new reign of peace. We praise him with reverence, recognizing that he came not to conquer in earthly terms, but to deliver us from ancient enemy of sin and establish an eternal reign of peace. In faith, we can understand and, yes, celebrate what the crowds could not have foreseen: that this king has come not to conquer but to die, in order to give life to us.

Friends, let us not treat this week like any other: let us make it truly “holy”, adopting a spirit of prayer and meditation so that we can better understand all that Jesus has done for us. Reread the Passion account, pray through the Stations of the Cross, contemplate a crucifix for a while; and as you do so, let yourself be guided by that word that we say today, and at every Mass. “Hosanna!” – that is, “Praise you, Jesus!” “Save us, Lord – now!”

Life Springs Forth

One of the ways that I try stay spiritually grounded is to give myself frequent visual reminders of my faith – little things that I can see throughout the day to remind me of what’s most important. For example, I like to use holy cards as bookmarks when I read. On my keychain, I have miniature images of two favorite saints of mine. And throughout the year, I like to use religious images as the wallpaper on my phone. This Lent, each time I have picked up my phone, I have seen an image of a piece of religious art that is one of my all-time favorites. It is the mosaic on the inside of the dome of the Basilica of St. Clement: a beautiful vine that weaves and circles throughout the space of the basilica apse, blossoming with ornate flowers and sheltering birds of all kinds. At all parts of the vine, life springs forth – and right in the middle, the source of it all, is Jesus hanging on the Cross.

It might seem strange to think of the Lord’s Cross as something life-giving. At first glance, we see the opposite – profound suffering and injustice, the painful and torturous death of a man wrongly condemned. At a slightly deeper level, perhaps we also see the result of sin. The Christian faith teaches us that Jesus went to the Cross because of sins: not his own, but ours, and those of all the world. When we see the Cross of Jesus, therefore, we see our own sinfulness, and what our sins have made. Jesus’s suffering is all the more terrible when we realize our sins are its cause. But it is important not to stop there, lest we be tempted to despair. At the deepest level, the level of faith, the Cross is also revealed as the sign of God’s love for sinners, and the very means by which he saves us from our sins. In this way, then, when we look upon the Lord’s death on the Cross, we can see with eyes of faith how new life springs forth from it: our life.

The Apse Mosaic of the Basilica of Saint Clement in Rome
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, image by Dnalor_01, license CC-BY-SA 3.0

In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks to the disciples about his own interior approach to the Cross that awaits him. On the one hand, he admits that its future prospect makes him feel “troubled.” Perfectly understandable – how could it not? Yet, Jesus is also clear that the Cross will be the fullest way for him to reach out to all persons. All of those who had not seen or heard him in his earthly ministry, all of those who desired still to encounter him, like the Greeks who approach the disciples at the beginning of today’s passage, or even we ourselves who live two millennia later – when we look upon the Cross, we see in it the ultimate truth of who Jesus is and the purpose for which he came. This is also why Jesus says the Cross will be the moment he is “glorified.” In seeing the Son of Man lifted up, our human eyes also behold the Son of God made visible; in faith, we see very moment in which God-made-Man lays down his life for us, his friends. The Cross then is at once terrible and glorious – a reminder of our sinfulness but even more the sign of our salvation.

How helpful these inner thoughts and sentiments of Jesus can be for us as we approach the crosses of our lives! The situations in which the Cross comes to us are many and varied: dealing with physical pain or illness; facing a difficult reality or decision we do not agree with; striving to be charitable or forgiving to someone who seems not to deserve it; the hardships that sometimes come in marriage or family, or various challenges of the workplace or with friend groups; accepting a mystery of our faith or a teaching of our Church that we struggle to accept. All of these and more are moments of real suffering; there’s no getting around that. But when we look at these trials also through the eyes of faith – when we look at them as a chance to share in the Lord’s Cross – these sufferings can also be redemptive and even life-giving as well.

When we choose to bear our sufferings well, with patience and acceptance, we follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Our faith becomes concrete and more fully realized; we are able to bear witness to the world to the truth of God and to his love made present in us in a deeper way than before. The world is full of plenty of people who question the reality of faith, or the value it has in moments of difficulty; when we suffer well, we can demonstrate to others the sincerity of our faith, and the great truth we find in it that gives our sufferings meanings. Suffering also affords us the chance for greater growth. Like the grain of wheat that falls to the ground in order to bear fruit, sometimes there are aspects of our lives that need to pass away so that new growth can happen: sinful habits; distorted ways of thinking; broken cycles of acting in relationship with others; or even interior parts of ourselves that need to be pruned in order to be transformed.

Most importantly, though, suffering gives us a chance to participate more fully in the Cross of Jesus. This world and its present reality, with its joys and its sorrows, are not all there is. We have been made ultimately for something far greater. From the little deaths of our daily sufferings, we are more closely transformed into the image of the Son, and so able to become ever more ready for the final death by which we hope to share in his Resurrected life. The Cross draws us more closely to Jesus, forms us into his more faithful servants, and makes us worthy for future glory: “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me.”

Friends, as you entered church today, you saw that Holy Week draws near. With the central Crucifix in our sanctuary and the images of the saints now veiled, we are invited to turn our attention to the inside, especially to our own inner approach to sharing in the mystery of suffering. Where are you encountering the Cross of Jesus? Are you rejecting it, or are you trying to embrace it, accepting it from Jesus as a way to follow him? Do you see in it only sorrow and death, or is there something redemptive, even life-giving there as well?

In the Eucharist we prepare to celebrate, the mystery of the Lord’s Cross is made real for us anew. May the heavenly grace of this sacrament assist us each day, that the sufferings of this present life might spring forth even now with the glorious new life of heaven.

When Disaster Strikes

This past week, my sister and her three children came to visit my parents in Little Rock. I was able to go and spend my day off with them. My niece and nephews are 6, 4, and almost 2, and as you might imagine, it is constant activity with them: playing games, coloring pictures, building things out of blocks. The funny thing about playing with kids is how their play often involves a certain love for destruction. The toy airplane that flies through the air inevitably crashes, the race car skids out of control, the tower that was just built out of blocks gets knocked down in grand fashion. Even at a young age, we are aware that disaster can strike at any time.

As adults, we know this only too well. It has been a year since the disaster of the Covid pandemic turned our world upside down; in fact, it was this weekend a year ago that I announced that public Masses would be suspended for the foreseeable future. And in our personal lives too, we know how traumatic it can be when suddenly a loved one receives a difficult diagnosis, or a friend loses their job, or we experience some other sudden sorrow and heartache. Such moments are not only challenging emotionally; they can be spiritually disorienting as well. Sometimes, they can even lead to a crisis of faith. Why is God permitting this terrible thing?

Our readings today give us an insight into how to answer that question. We hear about two terrible events: in the reading from Second Chronicles, we are told about the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian captivity, and in the Gospel, Jesus predicts his own future crucifixion and death. But in both instances, we are told how God brings forth something good from the evil situation. In the first reading, the Israelite people are able to return to their city and rebuild it, now with a deeper awareness of their dependence upon God. And in the Gospel, Jesus explains that the Cross, although terrible, will also be the means of salvation for all who believe in it. The point is that God’s love is always present, always enduring, even in what is terrible or disastrous, and in fact, sometimes he is using those very things to bring about something new.

Gebhard Fugel, By the Waters of Babylon (c. 1920)

To be sure, not every disastrous thing is attributed to God directly. Often, our own poor choices are to blame: greed, lust, anger, fear, pride, hardheartedness – these emanate from the human heart, and our love for destruction means we reap what we sow, and others as well. And, of course, there are some disasters in which no one is at fault: natural disasters, or the continued pandemic, for example. But it is also true that nothing happens which God does not permit. When a terrible thing happens then, on the one hand it’s not correct to say, “God is punishing me,” but on the other, “God is allowing me to experience this for some reason, even if I don’t know what it is.”

In any disaster, therefore – public or private, communal or individual, the result of sin or something much more perplexing – what’s important is to consider our response. Will this terrible thing lead me to turn toward God or away from him? Am I able to believe in his love for me only when I experience good things or even as I experience this bad thing too? Do I trust that God can use this in some way for my own good, even if I can’t understand how right now?

I am reminded of another story about my niece and nephews that might be an example of what I mean. About a year ago, my sister had to take the three kids to the doctor for their inoculations, and each of them had a different response. The youngest, the baby, was distraught at the pain and unable to understand why it would happen: why would Mommy possibly allow this person with the pointy needle to prick me and make me hurt? The middle child understood the reason a little better: it would keep him from getting sick, but still it was painful and scary, and so he got upset. The oldest child handled it the best: the needle was frightening and no fun to experience, but she understood that her mother loved her and that she was allowing this to happen for her own good.

Perhaps we can think of the painful and sorrowful situations of our own life in this sort of way. Often what appears to us to be utter disaster can be the beginning of something new and even beneficial, even if we don’t understand how. Of course, whether we can recognize this depends upon the maturity of our faith. A person of deep faith will still experience very real sorrow and heartache, but they will also be able to handle those things better because they have trust in God and believe that what is happening is being permitted to happen in some way for their own good.

Friends, today’s Gospel reminds us of the ultimate purpose that God has for anything that happens to us: “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.” The disasters and sorrows and trials of our lives are all very much worth it – if they lead us to eternal life. And as Jesus tells Nicodemus, that depends upon whether we believe – whether we are ready to turn toward God, to believe in his Son, to come to his Light and live in his Truth, so that one day we may receive what he has eternally prepared for those who do.

Cleansing Our Temples: 12 Tips on Confession

The days are getting longer and warmer. Spring is in the air. This time of year, I always feel inspired to do a little spring cleaning – not just to actually clean, but to go through my things and see what I no longer need. Living more simply often means living more happily.

Lent is a great time to do this: to look at the stuff that has accumulated that we don’t need – whether material things, like books or clothes, or spiritual ones, like sins and bad habits. In today’s Gospel, Jesus cleanses the Temple. As ardently as he sought to purify his Father’s house, he even more ardently desires to purify us as well, we who are temples of the Holy Spirit, as St. Paul tells us. Our mother the Church calls us to do a little spiritual house-cleaning, at least once a year: to unburden ourselves of what has accumulated in our souls, to give it over to God, and to hear the healing words of God’s mercy spoken to us. The Sacrament of Penance, Reconciliation, Confession – it goes by different names but whatever we call it, it is one of God’s greatest gifts and one of the most important pieces of our spiritual well-being. When we confess our sins and receive sacramental absolution, we are once again purified by the saving blood of the Cross and restored to right relationship with the Lord.

Expulsion of the Moneychangers from the Temple (c. 1675) by Luca Giordano

Today, I would like to share a few tips on how to make a good confession. I hope they are especially timely since we have our Lenten Penitential Service this coming Thursday at 6:30 p.m. here in the church. If you can’t make it this Thursday, I hope you do avail yourself of this great sacrament in the next few weeks. I guarantee it will make your Easter a more blessed one.

1. Why do we confess to a priest? Because Jesus commanded it. “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (Jn 20:23). When we confess our sins to a priest, we confess them to Jesus. In confession, it is Jesus who acts through the priest, using him as an instrument to give us his mercy in a clear, perceptible way. The priest also is a representative of the whole Body of Christ that was harmed by our sins and who welcomes us back into the fullness of grace.

2. Examine your conscience thoroughly before you enter the confessional. Have an idea of what you want to say; it’s not helpful if you’re trying to think on the spot. If you have trouble remembering, take a deep breath and reflect; or feel free to write them down and read from a list. That’s not a problem – just make sure you destroy the list afterward!

3. Start your confession by mentioning how long it has been since your last confession and what your state in life is. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been two months since my last confession. I’m a 60-year-old father and grandfather.” Or “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been three weeks since my last confession. I’m a 25-year-old single woman.” You don’t have to reveal your complete identity, but providing a short description of your state in life gives the priest some context for the sins you will confess.

4. What must we confess? All mortal sins in kind and number. “Mortal sins” are sins that are gravely wrong which we do knowingly and deliberately and which therefore separate us from God’s grace. “Kind” is the nature of the sin: e.g. “I missed Sunday Mass because I was lazy,” “I ate meat even though I knew it was a Friday in Lent,” “I looked at impure pictures on the internet,” “I drank immoderately.” “Number” is how many times you did those things. If you can’t remember exactly, give an approximate idea (“a few times since my last confession”) or at least its frequency (“probably about once a week”). In addition to all of our mortal sins, we can also confess venial sins generally, without the number.

5. It is helpful to say first the sin that you most feel guilty about or are afraid of confessing. It makes the rest of your confession easier, and it gives the priest time to think of a word of helpful advice. We also can usually tell if you are hesitating about saying something, so not holding back gets to the heart of your confession more quickly. Never hold back a sin out of shame or fear; it will corrupt your whole confession, and you won’t be forgiven of that sin or any other!

6. Giving some context for your sins can be helpful, but the priest usually doesn’t need to hear the whole story. Try to be direct, precise, and brief when you tell your sins, especially if you know Mass will be starting shortly, or if there are others waiting behind you in line. At the same time, it’s important not to be too vague. “Father, I sinned in word and action.” Okay, how? “I watched something bad.” That could mean a lot of things: a video with foul language, pornography, an overly violent movie? “I had bad thoughts.” Impure thoughts, hateful thoughts, violent thoughts? About yourself or another? Again, we don’t have to describe the whole scenario, but it’s important to give enough information that the priest knows what we’re talking about.

7. It is important to realize that emotions and sins don’t always go together. You may feel bad about having had to reprimand your child, for example, but maybe it was the right thing to do. Just because you feel bad, doesn’t mean you necessarily need to confess it, but look underneath that bad emotion to see if you did something wrong. It also can happen that if we are habitually committing a serious sin – a sexual sin, for example, or missing Mass on Sunday, or receiving the Eucharist unworthily – we may no longer feel bad about it, but it is still doing us grave harm every time.

8. Be sure to confess your sins, not other people’s sins. You aren’t there to explain about why your daughter did something that made you get angry, or why your neighbor deserved the uncharitable comment that you said. Focus on yourself and your relationship with God. It’s also not necessary to tell the priest that you know what you did is wrong and you’re trying to be better. We assume that already – that’s why you’ve come to confession, praise God!

9. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is about receiving mercy; it is not the time to ask for life counsel or have a chat about your spiritual life. We priests are glad to do those things, but it’s best they are done outside of the sacrament. Make an appointment when the priest has more time, when Mass isn’t starting in a few minutes, and when there aren’t people waiting behind you in line. Remember that confession can always be done during such an appointment if needed.

10. Realize that whatever you tell the priest in the confessional he cannot repeat. This is helpful, of course, in that the priest can never reveal your sins to anyone else, no matter who asks or what consequences he may face. But it also means that if you share with him some personal difficulty or painful family situation, he won’t be able to ask you about it later. He might want to, but the seal of the sacrament prevents him from doing so. That’s another good reason to make an appointment for later or at least be sure to tell him again outside of confession of important things going on in your life.

11. Don’t be afraid to ask for help at any point, especially if you are a new Catholic, or if it has been a while since you have made a confession. It’s also helpful to let the priest know if you struggle with something like scrupulosity, or if a sin has become a habitual one, since it may mean that your will is no longer completely free.

12. After your last sin, say “for these and for any other sins that I may have forgotten”; that helps the priest realize you’ve finished your confession. Then the priest may give you some brief counsel about one or more of your sins. He will give you a penance (which you have the right to ask for a different one, if you like), and then you will say an act of contrition, and finally he wil pray the prayer of absolution, which actually forgives your sins. If you realize later you forgot a sin – honestly forgot – you can trust it was forgiven, but mention it the next time you go to confession in case the priest can say something helpful. When you leave the confessional, do your penance right away. 

Ludwig Passini, A church interior with women at the confessional (1863)

A final bit of advice, and probably the most important: Relax. Don’t be afraid. Jesus died for you. He loves you, and so does the priest. The priest is there to help you, not to judge you unfairly. He’s a sinner, too. Most of us priests forget the sins we hear almost immediately, and even if not, it is always much more inspiring to see a person trying to be holy than one who never comes to confession at all. Never be afraid of confession because of what someone else may think, even a priest. Focus instead on what Jesus thinks. He wants to meet us there; he wants to help us live more simply, more happily, free from our sins. We have much more to fear from our sins themselves than we do from the sacrament by which God frees us from them.

May our encounter with our saving Lord in this Eucharist inspire in us a true repentance of our sins and the boldness to seek him anew in the Sacrament of Mercy.