The Fifth Sunday of Easter (B)
Dear brothers and sisters,
We know all too well how very difficult and heart wrenching these past days have been for our small, tight-knit parish. This is as it should be. The days ahead will be no less difficult and heart wrenching for us than these past many days have been. I do not say this to be depressive or pessimistic, but simply to be realistic and honest.
We have suffered an immense loss and, as Saint Paul reminds us, “If [one] part suffers, all the parts suffer with it” (I Corinthians 12:26). This reveals a very great mystery about the Christian: “We are not just his admirers, his students, his disciples. We are not just his workers, his employees, his laborers. We are not just his people, his associates, his friends. We are his organs, his feet and hands, his body parts!”[1]
There is, perhaps, something even more mysterious about the life of the Christian revealed in this: Because we are all joined together in the Body of Christ, Jesus also suffers with us and in us. Even as Jesus says to us “Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted,” he also weeps with us (Matthew 5:4; cf. John 11:35). It is Jesus’ identification with us and our identification with him that brings us comfort.
But how we can go forward? How can we pick up the broken pieces of our hearts and begin the attempt at putting them back together? We can only go forward together because there is no such thing as a solitary Christian. We can only pick up the pieces of one another’s broken hearts. We find a hint of this in the figure of Saint Barnabas.
Remembering the ancient Roman maxim nomen est omen (the name is a sign), we turn our eyes for a moment to Saint Barnabas. He was a collaborator with Saint Paul in preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles, to those who were not Jewish. Because of his friendship with Barnabas and with several other close collaborators, “Paul does not act as a ‘soloist,’ on his own, but together with these collaborators in the ‘we of the Church. This ‘I’ of Paul is not an isolated ‘I’ but an ‘I’ in the ‘we’ of the Church, in the ‘we’ of the apostolic faith.”[2]
If we return to the name of Saint Barnabas and break it apart etymologically, we find that it means either “son of encouragement” or “son of consolation.” Both are fitting. Both are a sign of what Barnabas was for Paul and for his converts to Christianity. Both are a sign of what you and I must be for one another. We must be those who encourage and console one another. But what does it mean to give encouragement and consolation?
To encourage means to strengthen the heart of another, the heart, of course, being a metaphor for the seat of our innermost feelings and emotions. To console means to offer comfort while to comfort means to strengthen. Both words are closely connected, as you and I must also be.
We must hold one another tight. We must do what Christians have also been renowned for doing: we must love one another. We must reach out and care for one another in whatever way we can, however insignificant it might seem. We cannot resist Jesus’ command to love one another (cf. I John 3:23). We must be sons and daughters of encouragement and consolation for one another. We must become renowned for this.
We cannot be afraid or embarrassed to reach out or call each other, to stop by, or to invite each other over. We must become entangled in each other’s lives, as branches on vines often become. The only way we can help mend each others’ broken hearts is to remain attached to the vine, to abide in the heart of Jesus that was broken for us (cf. John 15:5; John 19:34).
Detail, Sacred Monogram in a Sacred Heart on a Cloth Held by an Angel, woodcut, ca. 1480
Let us turn our eyes
toward the heart of Christ, toward our eternal home. Let us together take one step
at a time, hand in hand and arm in arm, holding each other up as we make our
pilgrim way toward heaven. Then, standing before the Face of God and experiencing
the fullness of his love, our hearts will be fully mended and live forever (cf.
Psalm 22:27). Amen.
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