Homily - 31 March 2024 - Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord

Easter Sunday of the Lord’s Resurrection

Mass During the Day

Dear brothers and sisters,

 

There is a curious absence in the Gospel chosen for this Easter Sunday of the Lord’s Resurrection. Did you notice it? “In today’s Gospel Jesus is not even seen, but He leaves signs, so that those who desire Him, those who seek Him, may finally meet him anew.”[1] How carefully do you look for the signs he has left for you? How ardently do you desire him? How diligently do you search for him?

 

In this intriguing detail of the absence of Jesus, we have an implicit reminder of what Christianity is all about: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”[2] This cannot be forgotten; knowing Jesus, and being with him, is of fundamental importance.

 

Saint Mary Magdalene knew this very well. She went to the tomb “while it was still dark” (John 20:1) because, as Saint Augustine tells us, she went to the tomb because “she was unquestionably more ardent in her love than these other women who had ministered to the Lord.”[3] She knew Jesus in life and did not forget him in death. For this reason, she is “the first witness and herald of the Risen One” (cf. John 20:1, 11-18).[4]

 

Detail, The Three Marys at the Empty Tomb, BL Cotton MS Tiberius C VI, f.13v

 

This was especially fitting, for “just as a woman had announced the words of death to the first man, so also a woman was the first to announce to the Apostles the words of life.”[5] It was also fitting that the words of life be announced in a garden because the words of death had previously been announced in a garden. The Magdalene’s love for Jesus was greatly rewarded; she knew him well and would not be kept apart from him, not even by death. What was the cause of her ardent love for Jesus?

 

Saint Luke mentions – as if in passing – that during the days of Jesus’ public ministry, “accompanying him were the Twelve and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out” (Luke 8:1-2). Jesus had cast these demons out from her, and she followed him in love as a result. In his great love, the Lord has done similar things for each one of us. He offers his mercy to each of us, again and again. By his Death and Resurrection, he invites us to be with him, now and for eternity, to share in his divine life and to be friends of God.

 

Why do we not love Jesus as ardently as Saint Mary Magdalene? Why do we not seek Jesus no matter the cost or risk? If we look to her example and listen to her, Mary teaches us that

 

a disciple of Christ is one who, in the experience of human weakness, has had the humility to ask for his help, has been healed by him and has set out following closely after him, becoming a witness of the power of his merciful love that is stronger than sin and death.[6]

 

In like manner, Mary’s love for the Lord Jesus was stronger than her fear of death; while the Apostles remained cowering in the Upper Room, Mary went to the tomb, knowing the danger (cf. I John 4:18; John 20:19).

 

Casting her fear aside, she looked for the signs she thought Jesus left behind, namely his dead body; she desired him and looked for him and met him again, but not how she expected to find him, as we will hear in the Gospel tomorrow (cf. John 20:14). She did not find his dead body, but instead found him in the garden and in the Church, which is why she went to tell Saint Peter (cf. John 20:2). Here, then, is an important lesson for us: when the Lord seems absent or missing, we can find him in the Church; in the Sacraments, especially in confession and the Eucharist; and in the Sacred Scriptures.

When the Lord Jesus seems absent or missing from us, we should imitate Saint Mary Magdalene, not just on Easter but every day of our lives. Our love for him must be so ardent that nothing keeps us from him, that nothing keeps us from growing in his friendship, that nothing keeps us from remaining always close to him.

Everything, absolutely everything, that keeps us from encountering Jesus in his Church must be cast aside and left behind.

So when you die and you meet God and God asks you why he should let you into heaven, please do not speak of how well or how poorly you understood and obeyed some abstract principles, important as they are. What saves you is a person, not a principle. Your answer should not begin with the word “I” but with the word “Jesus.” As they say even about your life in this world, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.[7]

Let us, then, not be afraid to search for his signs, to desire him ardently, and to seek him above all else, so we might meet him anew when he comes again in his glory, sharing in his Resurrection from the dead (cf. Colossians 3:4). Amen.

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[1] Pierbattista Cardinal Pizzaballa, O.F.M., Homily, 30 March 2024.

[2] Pope Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est, 1.

[3] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Harmony of the Gospels, 3.24.69.

[4] Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, 14 February 2007.

[5] Saint Thomas Aquinas, Super Ioannem, ed. Cai, 2519.

[6] Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, 23 July 2006.

[7] Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings, Cycle B (Elk Grove Village, Illinois: Word on Fire, 2023), 283.

Homily - Easter Sunday - On seeing the visible Lord

Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord

The Mass of Easter Day

Dear brothers and sisters,

We have gathered this Easter morning at the altar of the Lord because we have heard from others that “Jesus the crucified … has been raised just as he said” (Matthew 28:5-6). Do we ourselves know this to be true?

We have gathered this Easter morning at the altar of the Lord because we, too, want to encounter the Risen Christ, whom “God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible” (Acts 10:40). But if the Lord Jesus has indeed risen from the grave, if he is visible in his human flesh, why is it we do not seem to see him? The answer is simple: we are not looking correctly.

We have gathered this Easter morning at the altar of the Lord to encounter the One whom death could not hold, to look upon “love’s risen body.”[1] (cf. Acts 2:24). What do I mean?

Detail, The Last Judgment, Jugement et des XV signes, MS Arsenal 3516, fol. 15v

Our Master and Teacher offered himself as the Paschal Victim at the Last supper and commanded his Apostles to “do this in memory of me;” he offered himself as the Lamb of God to the Father on our behalf to take away the sins of the world (Luke 22:19; cf. John 1:29). The word which is translated as “do” also means to make sacrifice.[2] When the Lord Jesus commands the Apostles to “do this in memory of me,” what sacrifice is it they are commanded to offer if not the very same sacrifice Jesus offers?

Jesus does not simply offer bread and wine to the Father; there would be no need for a priesthood if this were all he offered. He offered something more: he offered himself, his Body and his Blood. From ancient days, “the Church has regarded Christ’s command to the apostles to ‘do this’ as their ordination to his priesthood of the new covenant.”[3] The Apostles handed on this priesthood to certain other men, who likewise handed it on to other men down to the present day (cf. II Timothy 1:6).

Because Jesus “died once for all,” his priests do you not sacrifice him again when they offer his Body and Blood to the Father; rather, they re-present the very same sacrifice Christ offered on the Cross on Good Friday, an offering of self that Christ Jesus has never – and will never – take back (Hebrews 7:27). “The consecration by the priest which effects the sacrifice is, more precisely, the visible manifestation of an eternal act,” the eternal offering of the Paschal Victim.[4]

There is, then, a very great mystery to be discerned in the celebration of the Eucharist and, indeed, in each of the Sacraments. Pope Saint Gregory the Great put it this way: “What was visible in the life of the Savior has passed over into the Sacraments.”[5] To put it another way, if we want to encounter the Risen Lord, we need only look to his Sacraments.

At each celebration of the Mass there is a double consecration, first of the bread into the Body of Christ and then, immediately afterwards and separately, of the wine into the Blood of Christ by the power of the words of Jesus. Why? Have you ever wondered why both are not consecrated at the same time?

On the one hand, the double consecration highlights the symbolic meaning of ordinary bread and wine. Contained in each is “the mystery of death and resurrection,” for “in order to become bread and wine, the wheat and grapes have undergone a sort of ‘passion’: the grain has been ground and grapes pressed, but both, after this ‘death,’ are ‘brought to life’ again in a more noble form, bread and wine.”[6]

On the other hand – and more importantly – the double consecration reveals part of what has passed over into the Sacraments of the life of Jesus. The consecration of the bread and then of the wine “constitute the immolation of the victim, whose blood, the vehicle of life, is drained from its body.”[7] To put it perhaps more simply, the double consecration reveals to us the mystery of Good Friday: the separation of his soul from his human body, which is to say the mystery of his Death.

Just before the reception of Holy Communion, a simple action takes place, one which may often go unnoticed because it is done so quietly: the priest breaks off a piece of the host and places it into the chalice. This is done while the priest quietly says, “May this mingling of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ bring eternal life to us who receive it.”[8]

These words and this gesture also convey a very great mystery: “the mixing of the host, that is to say His body, with the wine, which is His blood, necessarily signifies the reunion of His soul (the blood) with His body, and therefore the resuscitation of the being.”[9] To put it perhaps more simply, the comingling of the Body and Blood of Christ reveals to us the mystery of Easter: the reunion of the soul of Christ with his human body, which is to say the mystery of his Resurrection from the dead and triumph over the grave.

If, then, we wish to encounter the visible Christ risen from the dead, we need only approach his altar. We must “think of what is above, not of what is on earth,” that is, we must look with the eyes of faith and not with those of the body (Colossians 3:2). If we do, we will encounter Christ because every celebration of the Sacraments is an encounter with him for what was visible in his life has passed over into them. This is why have gathered this Easter morning at the altar of the Lord.

If we look upon the Holy Eucharist with the eyes of faith, we, too, will see love’s risen body and become witnesses to the truth of his Resurrection. This is why “we are an Easter People and Alleluia is our song!”[10] Amen. Alleluia!

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[1] R.S. Thomas, “The Answer.”

[2] Cf. Mitch Pacwa, S.J., The Eucharist: A Bible Study Guide for Catholics (Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor Inc., 2013), 38.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Jean Hani, The Divine Liturgy: Insights into its Mystery (Kettering, Ohio: Angelico Press, 2016), 34.

[5] Pope Saint Gregory the Great, Sermon 74.2.

[6] Jean Hani, The Divine Liturgy, 59.

[7] Ibid., 69.

[8] The Order of Mass, 129.

[9] Jean Hani, The Divine Liturgy, 72.

[10] Pope Saint John Paul II, Angelus Address, 30 November 1986.

Homily - 16 April 2017 - Easter Sunday: On the oldest and deepest desire

Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord

At the Mass During the Day

Dear brothers and sisters,

Upon our lips today is that “song of sweetness,” that “voice of joy that cannot die,” that glorious word of Alleluia.[1] Having repressed this gladsome strain within our hearts these past many weeks, Holy Mother Church now urges each of us to open our lips and let this “anthem ever raised by choirs on high” and resound throughout the land.[2] Why? Because “this is the day the Lord has made” (Psalm 118:24). This is the day on which the Lord Jesus, the conqueror of sin and death, rose victorious over the grave. This is the day in which we should “rejoice and be glad” (Psalm 118:24). Alleluia!

On Friday, the Lord Jesus ascended the throne of his Cross and poured out his love for us; in doing so, he broke the chains of sin. Yesterday,

…after his triumph over the devil, he descended to the heart of the world, so that he might preach to the dead, that all who desire him might be set free… He had descended to trample death underfoot with his own power, then only to rise with the captives.[3]

Today we rejoice and cry out, “Alleluia!”, with the confidence that as we were “buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life (Romans 6:4).

Permit me, if you will, to change course for just a moment in a direction that might at first seem a bit odd. In one of his many letters, the great J. R. R. Tolkien, the celebrated author of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings (and, more importantly, a devoted Catholic) answered a query about the meaning of the  of his legendarium, saying:

I should say, if asked, the tale is not really about Power and Dominion: that only sets the wheels going; it is about Death and the desire for deathlessness. Which is hardly more than to say it is a tale written by a Man![4]

Elsewhere he called this “the oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death.”[5]

It was the professor’s firm conviction that at the heart of every man, woman, and child is a desire for deathlessness, for life without end. Is this not why we smooth out our wrinkles and dye our hair in a vain attempt to deny the reality of aging? Is this not at the heart of the recent and distressing news that a man hopes to have his head transplanted onto the body of another?[6] Whether we have yet acknowledged it or not, each of us indeed has a desire for deathlessness.

This desire is rooted in the fact that death was not part of God’s original plan for us; rather, death entered into Creation as a consequence of the Original Sin, as a consequence of our rebellion against the will of God (cf. Genesis 3:19).

God did not decree death from the beginning; he prescribed it as a remedy. Human life was condemned because of sin to unremitting labor and unbearable sorrow and so began to experience the burden of wretchedness. There had to be a limit to its evils; death had to restore what life had forfeited. Without the assistance of grace, immortality is more of a burden than a blessing.[7]

Is this not something of what Tolkien tried to show by the unnatural long life the ring granted to its bearers, a length of life that wore away at their existence, an “endless serial living”?[8]

It was this realization that led Saint Ambrose of Milan to see death as “no cause for mourning, for it is the cause of mankind’s salvation.”[9]

It was by the death of one man that the world was redeemed. Christ did not need to die if he did not want to, but he did not look on death as something to be despised, something to be avoided, and he could have found no better means to save us than by dying. Thus his death is life for all. We are sealed with the sign of his death; when we pray we preach his death; when we offer sacrifice we proclaim his death. His death is victory; his death is a sacred sign…[10]

His death is victory because he is, in fact, not dead, but “seated at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1). His death is victory because it is not the end for him because “he rose from the dead” (Acts 10:41). This is why we sing, “Alleluia!”

In his Resurrection from the dead, in the fact that he still lives after his death, that he can move about, that he can eat and drink, that he can converse with his friends, we see that Jesus “is the death of death, death hidden in the word of God and therefore related to life, which takes death’s power away when, by the destruction of the body, men are destroyed by it in the earth.”[11] In this, though it may seem strange to say, “the tomb is not the central point of the message of the Resurrection. It is instead the Lord in his new life.”[12]

It is often said today that we Christians are fools and simpletons because we believe in the reality of the Lord’s Resurrection. Truth be told, we are

not affirming an absurd miracle but affirming the power of God, who respects his creation, without being tied to the law of its death. Indubitably death is the typical form of things in this world as it actually exists. But the overcoming of death, its real, not simply its conceptual elimination, is still today, as it was then, the object and desire of the human quest.[13]

The desire for deathlessness remains the greatest desire of the human heart, though it cannot be achieved by any technical means. Rather, it “comes about through the creative power of the word and of love. Only these powers are sufficiently strong to modify so fundamentally the structure of matter, to make it possible to overcome the barrier of death.”[14] For this reason, the Resurrection of Jesus gives us the promise of true and lasting Joy, of “Joy beyond the walls of grief, poignant as grief.”[15]

The great cry of Alleluia sounds today from our lips because, in the Resurrection of Jesus the Christ, we have the confidence that “this victory is in effect possible, that death does not belong principally and irrevocably to the structure of the creature, to matter.” The message of the Resurrection is not principally about a faith in an empty tomb but about “the real power of God, and the importance of human responsibility,” a responsibility grounded in love of God, both of his love for us and of our love for him.[16] From the Incarnation to the Resurrection, “this story,” as Tolkien said, “begins and ends in joy.”

There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.[17]

Today, then, just as the Lord opened wide the tomb which tried to swallow him up, let each of us open our hearts and our ears to Jesus, the Risen Lord. Let us not be stubborn and closed off to his grace, but let us speak to him as friends and ask for the gift of his life, that we might truly, with him, escape from death. Let us hear him say to us, “I have risen, and I am with you still, alleluia.”[18]

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[1] “Alleluia dulce Carmen,” J. M. Neale, trans. In Eleanor Parker,  “‘Ceasing from the voice of joy and gladness’: Aelfric’s Homily for Septuagesima,” A Clerk of Oxford, 16 February 2014.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ambrosiaster, Commentary on Ephesians, 4.9. In Ancient Christian Doctrine, Vol. 3: We Believe in the Crucified and Risen Lord (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter Varsity Press, 2009), 135.

[4] J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter to Herbert Schiro, 17 November 1967. In Humphrey Carpenter, ed., The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), 262.

[5] Ibid., On Fairy Stories. In Christopher Tolkien, ed., The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (London: Harper Collins Publishers, 2006), 153.

[6] Cf. Tina Chai, “Surgeon plans to perform first human head transplant,” The Cavalier Daily 30 March 2017. Accessed 15 April 2017.

[7] Saint Ambrose of Milan, From a book on the death of his brother Satyrus.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Saint Ambrose of Milan, ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Benedict XVI, Journey to Easter: Spiritual Reflections for the Lenten Season, (New York, New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company), 131.

[12] Ibid., 130.

[13] Ibid., 131-32, emphasis original.

[14] Ibid., 132.

[15] J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 153.

[16] Benedict XVI, Journey to Easter, 132.

[17] J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 156.

[18] Entrance Antiphon for Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord, Roman Missal, 71.