Welcoming the Night Visitor

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Jesus engaged Nicodemus at night. Will he engage the hesitant visitors in our age, that growing group whom surveys say are leaving religious traditions they were raised in because they have stopped believing in their teachings.

Charles Taylor in his book “A Secular Age” may have insights into the “Nones”. Some become unaffiliated because they do not believe in God or the teachings of most religions. Many leave a religion because “they think of religious people as hypocritical or judgmental, because religious organizations focus too much on rules or because religious leaders are too focused on power and money.”

It’s interesting to see, Taylor writes,  that “ far fewer say they became unaffiliated because they believe that modern science proves that religion is just superstition.”

The theory that religion will disappear as science advances doesn’t hold up, Taylor says, because there’s a search for “human fullness” for a “higher world” that doesn’t go away. Surveys indicate that’s the case among the unaffiliated today

But Taylor also recognizes that people find religions difficult today.  In the western world, our secular age is an age of “expressive individualism;” people want reasons to believe and belong. They need religious places that meet them as they are. They’re looking for religious experience.

“Those who believe in the God of Abraham should normally be reminded of how little they know him, how partial is their grasp of him. They have a long way to go…Many believers (the fanatics, but also more than these) rest in the certainty that they have got God right (as against all those heretics and pagans in the outer darkness). They are clutching onto an idol, to use a term familiar to the traditions of the God of Abraham.”  (p.769)

Churches need to engage the world with reasons, not with condemnations.  Belief leads us to the mysterious Unknown, not sharp certainties. Jesus kept speaking to Nicodemus many nights, it seems. His story and the story of the disciples on the way to Emmaus says it takes time to believe. We’re slow learners. We have to keep talking to the “Nones” at night, praying they find him “in the breaking of the bread.”

The Easter Tree

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san clemente copy

The Cross  flowers at Easter time. There’s a flowering cross brimming with life  in the great apse of the church of San Clemente in Rome. Its branches swirl with the gifts God gives. It brings life, not death. Humanity is there, signified in Mary and the disciple John. We are there in the doves resting on it. Creation itself is there, drawing new life from it. The hand of God makes it so.

The sacraments offered in this sacred place bring life-giving graces to us.

An early preacher Theodore the Studite  praises the mystery of the cross:.

“How precious the gift of the cross, how splendid to contemplate! In the cross there is no mingling of good and evil, as in the tree of paradise: it is wholly beautiful to behold and good to taste. The fruit of this tree is not death but life, not darkness but light. This tree does not cast us out of paradise, but opens the way for our return.

“This was the tree on which Christ, like a king on a chariot, destroyed the devil, the Lord of death, and freed the human race from his tyranny. This was the tree upon which the Lord, like a brave warrior wounded in his hands, feet and side, healed the wounds of sin that the evil serpent had inflicted on our nature. A tree once caused our death, but now a tree brings life. Once deceived by a tree, we have now repelled the cunning serpent by a tree.

“What an astonishing transformation! That death should become life, that decay should become immortality, that shame should become glory! Well might the holy Apostle exclaim: Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world!”

San Clemente, Rome

See Children’s Prayers here for a children’s version of the Easter Tree.

2nd Week of Easter: Readings and Feasts

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The church grows gradually after the resurrection. The followers of Jesus meet him, but they are slow to believe.The ApostleThomas exemplifies their skepticism. John’s gospel this week adds another group slow to believe – people like Nicodemus, who comes to Jesus by night. Supposedly a well-informed religious person, Nicodemus only understands Jesus Christ slowly. 

Our week’s readings from the Acts of the Apostles describe the apostles witnessing bravely in the temple after the Holy Spirit comes upon them at Pentecost. “Uneducated, ordinary men,”  the temple leaders call them, but they proclaim boldly God’s mighty works in Jesus Christ. Told to end their witness, they cannot. “It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.” They’re persecuted, imprisoned, yet the number of believers grows.

The account of the  healing of the crippled man read  last Wednesday is only the beginning of the healing miracles that accompany the preaching of the resurrection of Jesus. Signs must accompany preaching. Signs not only support the witnesses, they are evidence that God is creatively restoring humanity and the earth itself.

The Acts of the Apostles for Saturday points to a new development of the Christian community. ( Acts 6:1-7) Seven men are chosen to provide for the needs of Greek-speaking followers of Jesus, Stephen and Philip among them. Their call prepares for a Christian break from Jerusalem, its temple and its laws, for a new center in Antioch in Syria.  

With the 6th chapter of John’s gospel, we begin reading about the miracle of the loaves, an important reading for the Easter season. Bread is a sign that the Risen Jesus remains with us. Bread, “which earth has given and human hands have made,” is also a sign that creation itself shares in the mystery of the Lord’s resurrection.  John’s gospel is read into next week: the mystery of the Eucharist has a major place in the Easter season. 

On Friday the Passionists celebrate the beautiful feast of The Glorious Wounds of Christ.

2nd Sunday of Easter: Thomas Doubts

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For this week’s homily please watch the video below.

readings here

This is the Second Sunday of Easter. Notice we don’t say the Second Sunday after Easter. We say it’s the 2nd Sunday of Easter because Easter isn’t a one day feast. It’s celebrated every Sunday of the year. Every Sunday is a little Easter. After the yearly feast of Easter we continue to celebrate it for fifty days.  Easter isn’t  for  one day.  

Why do we celebrate Easter so extensively? Because the resurrection of Jesus is the center of our faith. It’s central to what we believe. We believe in God who created us and all things. We believe in Jesus Christ, who came among us, died and rose from the dead on the third day. That belief has tremendous consequences for us and for our world.

                                                                                                                                                              The story of Thomas the apostle in today’s gospel offers another reason why we celebrate easter as often as we do. Thomas was one of Jesus’ closest followers, “one of the twelve” who heard him teach and saw him work wonders, but Thomas won’t believe the others who tell  him they saw Jesus, risen from death.

He’s deeply skeptical. You can hear skepticism in his words:  “Unless I see the marks of the nails, and put my finger into the nailmarks, and put my hand into his side, I won’t believe.”

Certainly Thomas isn’t the only one who’s skeptical. You can hear skepticism in the way the other disciples after Jesus rises from the dead. Thomas represents human skepticism, the slowness of us all to believe, the distrust we all have. What’s unique about Thomas is he represents skepticism at its worst.  

It’s all right to have some skepticism, you know. We shouldn’t believe everything we hear. We need to check things out. We have to make sure that facts are facts,  we need a certain caution in life. 

But Thomas’ skepticism seems more than the ordinary. He’s a strong doubter. Yet still, the next Sunday–notice it’s a Sunday–Jesus comes and says  “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”


Thomas answer, “My Lord and my God!” That’s a beautiful act of faith. 

What about us? We’re described in today’s gospel as “those who have not seen, but believe.” and Jesus called us blessed. Yet, we can relate to Thomas. In fact, we live today in skeptical times. We’re skeptical about politics, about our institutions, about our churches, about ourselves.  There’s a deep distrust today in the way we speak and in the way we think. We’re wary of others, especially people different from us.  It affects our faith too. 

Yet, as he did to Thomas,  Jesus never abandons us. He  gives us the gift to believe. His mercy is always at work. He strengthens us when he comes in the signs of the Eucharist; he strengthens us through the faith we share with each other, week by week, day be day.   

Our Sundays may not be the dramatic experience that Thomas had, but  something happens here. Our Sundays are always little easters. Jesus come into the room where we are, with our fears and lack of trust. He tells us, as he told his disciples: “Peace be with you.” He shows us the signs of his love and enters our lives.  Every Sunday is a happy Easter. Jesus gives us life.

Easter Saturday: We’re Slow, like the Apostles

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Like the apostles we’re slow to understand the mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The two disciples going to Emmaus are not the only ones slow to understand– we’re slow too.

Peter, who preaches to the crowds in Jerusalem at Pentecost, certainly was slow to understand. He speaks forcefully at Pentecost, forty days after the Passover when Jesus died and rose from the dead, but the days before he’s speechless. It took awhile for him and for the others who came up with Jesus from Galilee to learn and be enlightened about this great mystery..

Mark’s accounts of Jesus resurrection appearances, read on the  Saturday of Easter week, stresses the unbelief of his disciples. They were not easily persuaded.

For this reason, each year the Lord refreshes our faith in the resurrection, but it’s not done in a day. We need time to take it in, like the first followers of. Jesus, and for that we have an easter season of forty days. Just for starters.

The disciples are slow to understand the mission they’re to carry out because it’s God plan not theirs, a plan that outruns human understanding. A new age had come, the age of the Holy Spirit, and they didn’t understand it. The fiery winds of Pentecost had to move them to go beyond what they see, beyond Jerusalem and Galilee to the ends of the earth.

The Holy Spirit also moves us to a mission beyond our understanding. Luke says that in the Acts of the Apostles. “The mission is willed, initiated, impelled and guided by God through the Holy Spirit. God moves ahead of the other characters. At a human level, Luke shows how difficult it is for the church to keep up with God’s action, follow God’s initiative, understand the precedents being established.” (Luke Timothy Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles)

“You judge things as human beings do, not as God does,” Jesus says to Peter elsewhere in the gospel. We see things that way too.

Peter’s slowness to follow God’s plan remained even after Jesus is raised from the dead. He doesn’t see why he must go to Caesaria Maritima to baptize the gentile Cornelius and his household. (Acts 10,1-49) It’s completely unexpected. Only gradually does he embrace a mission to the gentiles and its implications. The other disciples are like him; God’s plan unfolds but they are hardly aware of it.

One thing they all learned quickly, though, as is evident in the Acts of the Apostles. Like Jesus, they experience the mystery of his cross, and in that experience they find wisdom.

Readings here

Easter Friday: Tabgha

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Tabgha. James Tissot

Our gospel story s today ( John 21, 1-14) must have taken place at Tabgha, the quiet stretch of wooded land on the Sea of Galilee just south of ancient Capernaum, the center of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee. Seven springs of water flow into the lake there. Some years ago, during an early morning visit I made to the place, birds were singing in the trees and drinking from the streams of fresh water.

Fishermen would surely draw into Tabgha after a night’s fishing for fresh water from the springs and maybe fry some fish over a fire on the beach. It’s a likely place where Jesus would meet with his disciples. Two ancient churches are on the site. He met his disciples here after his resurrection, tradition says.

Peter and the others returned to Galilee after the Lord’s death and resurrection and went fishing, John’s gospel says. They caught nothing through the night, but at dawn they heard a call from the shore to cast out their nets again.
“… Jesus was standing on the shore; but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.”

They caught a large catch– 153 fish. Jesus then called from the shore to come eat some fish at a fire he had started and he gave them bread and some fish to eat and revealed himself to them.

Peter figures prominently in this story. He jumped into the water to get to the shore. Then after they ate, Jesus took him aside and asks the disciple who denied him three times, “Do you love me?”

Three times the apostle cursed and swore he did not know Jesus. Three times he answers “Yes, I do. I love you.” And Jesus tells him “Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep.” Peter isn’t alone in this encounter, the other disciples and all of us are with him.

A statue at Tabgha marks that beautiful meeting, an example of God’s forgiveness! No scolding words or recriminations. No “I told you so.” No warning, “You do that again and …” No demotion, no putting on parole. Rather, Jesus gives Peter new responsibility. “Feed my lambs” as I do. God’s mercy does not take away, but gives more.

Tabgha– the memory of Jesus lingers at this lovely place besides the Sea of Galilee. Jesus, risen, brings us mercy and a mission.

The church and rock table at Tagbha

Easter Thursday

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Emmaus Disciples: Duccio

On Easter Thursday, a week after Holy Thursday, the traditional day we celebrate the institution of the Eucharist, we read the account from Luke’s Gospel of the two Emmaus disciples. After recognizing Jesus in the breaking of the bread and in the scriptures, they return to Jerusalem, to the Eleven and his other followers.

They’re told: “The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon.” The two recount their experience “on the road”, and their message is affirmed. They take their place among the witnesses.

Jesus then appears to all of them, the Eleven, the others who have come up from Galilee, the Emmaus disciples – all are “startled and terrified”, wondering if they’re seeing a ghost. Jesus then shows them the wounds in his hands and side.  He takes some fish and eats; then, “opening their minds”, he explains the scriptures to them. 

Like the Emmaus disciples we meet the Risen Jesus “on the way” and know him through the breaking of the bread and the scriptures. We are not like the Eleven who knew Jesus in the flesh, the Galileans who were with him in Galilee as he taught and worked wonders. Now, though, we join them in witnessing that “the Christ had to 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 nations, beginning with Jerusalem. “  (Luke 24:35-48) 

Each Resurrection account from the gospels this week adds its own dimension to the mystery of the Risen Jesus. Luke’s account seems to emphasize the role of those who meet him “on the way,”  and know him through the scriptures and the breaking of the Bread. Luke’s church was made up increasingly of gentiles, who live far from the places where Jesus lived and died and rose again.

They have the same mission as the Eleven from Galilee. Like us.

Readings here

Easter Tuesday: Mary Magdalene

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Most people think that Easter is over, but we celebrate Easter for more than one day. For 50 days we celebrate the Easter season, from the Easter vigil till the feast of Pentecost. Over and over in that time we pray: “This is the day the Lord has made.” 

The reason we celebrate Easter over this long period is because it takes time to grasp a mystery like this. It’s hard to take it in. It’s beyond us. Jesus spent 40 days with his apostles helping them understand. We see them struggling with this mystery in the gospels and readings for this week. In these days we believe the Lord helps us as we try to understand. 

We can see it today in Mary Magdalene searching for the One she thought was taken away, then finding him and wanting to hold him, then being told by Jesus “Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go tell my brothers, ‘ I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

Jesus had taken on a new existence. He does not return to his ordinary life, as she knew him. He has changed and become the first to enter a new life and a new world. He is “the first fruits” of those who die; others will follow him. Mary is told to go tell the others.

It will take Mary more than a day to grasp this and it takes us more than a day to grasp it too.

In one of his sermons Cardinal Newman has a beautiful meditation on the Day when God did his greatest work.

 “Let us rejoice in the Day that He has made… the Day of His Power. This is Easter Day. Let us say this again and again to ourselves with fear and great joy. As children say to themselves, ‘This is the spring,’ or ‘This is the sea,’ trying to grasp the thought, and not let it go; as travellers in a foreign land say, ‘This is that great city,’ or ‘This is that famous building,’ knowing it has a long history through centuries, and vexed with themselves that they know so little about it; so let us say, This is the Day of Days, the Royal Day, the Lord’s Day. 

s“This is the Day on which Christ arose from the dead; the Day which brought us salvation. It is a Day which has made us greater than we know. It is our Day of rest, the true Sabbath. Christ entered into His rest, and so do we. It brings us, in figure, through the grave and gate of death to our season of refreshment in Abraham’s bosom. We have had enough of weariness, and dreariness, and listlessness… 

“May we grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, season after season, year after year, till He takes to Himself, first one, then another, in the order He thinks fit, to be separated from each other for a little while, to be united together for ever, in the kingdom of His Father and our Father, His God and our God.”

John Henry Newman, “Difficulty of Realizing Sacred Privileges,”

Morning and Evening Prayer here.

Children’s Prayer here.

Easter Monday: Peter at the Tomb

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Holy Sepulcher
Tomb of Jesus, Jerusalem

Readings here

“God raised him on the third day,” Peter says at Pentecost, “and granted that he be visible, not to all the people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.” (Acts 10, 37) In simple, concrete ways, eating and drinking with them, Jesus showed he was alive, but it took his disciples time to believe and then time to witness to their belief.

Belief and disbelief occur at his tomb. The tomb of Jesus was empty. (Acts 2,29)  Where is his body, Peter asks in today’s readings as he speaks to the people of Jerusalem?  David’s tomb was nearby and the great king’s remains lie there. Why is Jesus’ tomb  empty?

The tomb of Jesus even then, in Peter’s day, must have been a place pointed out and contrasted with the tomb of David. Later it was destroyed when Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD, but the tomb was still known to those who honored it as the centuries passed. When Constantine’s workers searched for it in the 4th century they had a tradition that told them where to look.

Today there’s almost a unanimous agreement by archeologists and historians that the tomb of Jesus. is found in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, recently restored, but it’s still a sign that’s questioned.

It’s empty.

Matthew’s gospel, read today, speaks of stories circulating after Jesus’ death that his body was stolen from the tomb. (Matthew 28, 8-15) For those who believe, though, it was not stolen. “God raised this Jesus, of this we are all witnesses, ” Peter, a trustworthy witness, says.

We notice too the time it took for Peter to become a vocal witness of the resurrection. He retreated to Galilee after Jesus’ death.  It took time for him to become aware of the magnitude of this event. It’s takes us time for us too.