Homily - The Fifth Sunday of Easter - 7 May 2023

The Fifth Sunday of Easter (A)

Dear brothers and sisters,

It is a plea both meek and moving Saint Philip utters today: “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us” (John 14:8). With these words, he expressed the deepest yearning of the human heart, to look upon the Face of the Creator. David, the great King of Israel, recognized this longing and sang of it to God in words each of us can sing with him: “You have said, ‘Seek my face.’ My heart says to you, ‘Your face, Lord, do I seek.’ Hide not your face from me” (Psalm 27:8-9).

The Lord calls out to each of us; he seeks us, even as we seek him! When Adam and Eve hid themselves from the Lord, he sought them, asking, "Where are you" (Genesis 3:9)? Does he not likewise still call out to each of us? Are these not the very words we so often use when we cry out to him? How often do we cry within our hearts, "O that you would tear the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake in your presence" (Isaiah 64:1)?

King Solomon, David’s son and heir, likewise sang words that may be both addressed by us to the Lord and by the Lord to us: "O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet, and your face is comely" (Song of Songs, 2:14). Yet despite the Lord’s longing to see us and our longing to see him, he said to Moses, "[Y]ou cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live," so great is the glory of the Most High (Exodus 33:20). When the prophet Elijah heard the Lord in “a still small voice,” he “wrapped his face in his mantle” lest he see the Face of God (I Kings 19:12-13). Knowing all this, the Apostle said, “Show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Is it true? Is seeing the Face of God enough for us, or do we want something more? To look upon him who is Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, what more could the human heart desire?

Generation after generation longed to look upon the Face of God but none could because of the impurity of sin. King David knew only "he who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false, and does not swear deceitfully" "shall stand in his holy place" (Psalm 24:4, 3). Even so, that ancient king sensed he would come to know the satisfaction of his – and our - deepest longing: "As for me,” he said, “I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with beholding your form" (Psalm 17:15).

It cannot be forgotten that, “because of his transcendence, God cannot be seen as he is, unless he himself opens up his mystery to man's immediate contemplation and gives him the capacity for it.”[1] This is why, in the fullness of time, the only begotten Son of God took on our flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary; he who was invisible made took on a human face and said to Philip, "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). Because of Jesus’ humanity, we can now look upon the Face of God and live, provided we receive his salvation.

Now that he has ascended to the right hand of the Father we still call out to him, "Your face, Lord, I seek!" He has left us the image of his Face in the Shroud of Turin - the linen cloth in which he was buried - and in the Veil of Manoppello - "the cloth that had covered his head" in the tomb and which Saint Peter found "not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place” (John 20:7). The one shows his Face in death; the other, his Face risen from the dead. In Jesus of Nazareth, who died and rose, the Son of God and Son of Mary, we can look upon the Face of God and live. In him, “the human face of God has burst into history to reveal the horizons of eternity.”[2]

In death, each of us will stand before him and see him as he is; we will look upon his Face and he will look upon our faces. What will we see? We know that

before his gaze all falsehood melts away… His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God… At the moment of judgment we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy.[3]

This is why Saint Philip can say the Beatific Vision, the sight of the face of God, will be enough for us.

If the vision of God’s Holy Face will satisfy the deepest desires of our hearts, why does Jesus tell us today not to let our hearts be troubled (cf. John 14:1)? The reason is twofold:

In commanding them not to be troubled, Jesus placed them, as it were, on the threshold between hope and fear. This way, if they fell into weakness and suffering in their human frailty, the hope of his mercy might help them to recover. On the other hand, the fear of stumbling might urge them to fall less often…[4]

We should not let our hearts be troubled - so long as we acknowledge our sinfulness and confess our sins - because Jesus “is the face of the Father’s mercy” and there is nothing to fear in mercy.[5] Let us, then, seek to be so transformed through the power of his love that we desire nothing else than to see him face to Face knowing that he will deliver us from death (cf. Psalm 33:19). Amen.

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[1] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1028.

[2] Pope Benedict XVI, Prayer Composed Following a Pilgrimage to the Shrine of Manoppello, 2006.

[3] Ibid., Spe salvi, 47.

[4] Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of John, 9. In Thomas C. Oden, et al, eds., Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament Vol. IVb: John 11-21 (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter Varsity Press, 2007), 120.

[5] Pope Francis, Misericordiae vultus, 1.

Homily - Mass During the Night - 25 December 2018

The Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord

Mass During the Night

Dear brothers and sisters,

Did you notice it? We intoned tonight a great and celestial hymn which – with the exception of two occasions - we have not sung these past four weeks. Did you miss it? Did its lyrics cause your heart to leap with joy? This hymn, of course, is the Gloria, the text of which begins with the wondrous hymn sung by the angels over the shepherds’ field this night so many years ago and has been lovingly expanded by Mother Church in praise of God.

There is something profound in the song of that heavenly host which cried out in the darkness of the night, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14). Did you feel the light of heaven warm your heart this night as you joined your voice to the voices of the angels? Did you feel your heart lift as you sang, “Glory to God in the highest”?

In the words of the Gloria, we, reflecting on the mystery of the Birth of the only begotten Son of God who has now taken to himself a human face, offer to the Father “words of pure praise. Praise is not an easy activity for us: left to our own devices we lapse into thanksgiving to God for his blessings (which is certainly a good thing to do, but it is not quite synonymous with praise).”[1] Thanksgiving is concerned with what God has done for us; praise is concerned only with God in himself. Indeed, when we praise God the Church does so “for his own sake and gives him glory, quite beyond what he does, but simply because HE IS.”[2]

We sometimes grow weary of praising God through the text of the Gloria because we are too pragmatic, too practical, for our own good. The act of praise “takes us beyond the merely ‘useful,’ the utilitarian, we might say, into that realm where the calling back and forth in the great seraphic antiphons of what is true turns out to be the central activity of the universe.”[3] Yes, the praise of God is at the heart of all that exists.

Put differently, we need to learn not to grow tired of singing laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te, we need to learn how to delight in the repetitive “spilling of verbs … like water flowing over the sides of a fountain.”[4] If we learn this pleasure and join our hearts with the words that come forth from our tongues, then we can begin

to be taken out of the sinkhole of egoism into which our sin plunged us at the Fall and to begin to take our true place in the universal chorus, which includes all things, from the seraphim right on down to the North wind, the surf, the mountains and edelweiss and the song of the winter wren and the atoms – that chorus which exults in what is true, and which cries Gloria![5]

To unite our heart and mind and voice together as one in the Gloria – both individually and collectively – is to realize the very meaning and purpose of life, simple as it may seem. “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life.”[6] If we learn to sing the Gloria in sincerity of heart, if we learn simply to praise God for who he is, then, with all of creation, we will indeed be glad, rejoice, be joyful, and exult; we will like the angels who, seeing God’s effusive love, joyfully exclaim, “Glory to God in the highest” (cf. Psalm 96:11-13; Matthew 22:30)!

But what is it about the Birth of the Child of Mary that caused the angels to erupt in praise of God? Why did they break forth into this chorus of praise of the Almighty Father when the shepherds did not? The angels sang their hymn because they saw what the shepherds did not see. The shepherds saw the face of a child; the angels saw the Face of God. It is safe to say that “the shepherds did not see what the angels saw. Nor do we share the vision which the angels know… We see one thing, a small child; we believe another, God made man.”[7]

Here, then, is but one aspect of the unfathomable mystery of Christmas:

Faith, not vision, makes us sing the angels’ song: “Glory to God in the highest.” It is a song of blind people who have not seen, but have heard the good news and understood. There is a gentle peace in the singing of that song. It is the peace that comes from giving glory to God, of reaching beyond where thought and word can take us – into God’s world.[8]

Approaching the manger of Bethlehem and looking upon the Face of the Holy Child, we see “the appearance of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ who gave himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people as his own, eager to do what is good” (Titus 2:13-14). When we look upon the Holy Infant, we look upon the very glory of God made flesh; how can we not rejoice in this mystery and let loose an exultant, “Gloria!”?

Tonight we come to “adore him, meaning, literally, we seek his face, we long to look upon him with awe.”[9] We seek to unite our voices with those of the angels in their great of hymn of praise, to share “in the blessed happiness of the pure of heart who love God in faith before seeing him in glory.”[10]

We do not simply give God thanks, but we thank him for his glory. That touches upon a mystery of love. We do more than say that God is glorious. We revel in his glory. We see that the glory of God is a great gift to us, because he has made us to enjoy that glory, as one delights to behold what is most beautiful and holy.[11]

What can be more beautiful, what can be more holy, than the only begotten Son of God? He has made us to see his glory, to look upon his Face!

J.R.R. Tolkien recognized this inner impulse of the human toward the praise of God, toward that praise of God which also gives joy to the human heart. This is why he gave this advice to his son: “If you don’t do so already, make a habit of the ‘praises,’” among which he included the Gloria. “I use them much (in Latin),” he said. “If you learn these by heart you never need for words of joy.”[12]

Tonight, then, let us together turn towards the Lord and lift our voices in his praise. Let us consciously join in the song of heaven and let our hearts be moved with joy. If we do, then “Gloria, Gloria we will sing / That God on earth is come.”[13] In Jesus of Nazareth, in the Child of Bethlehem, we discover his glory, the Face of God, the Face of Love, and “the further we penetrate into the splendor of divine love, the more beautiful it is to pursue our search, so that,” as Saint Augustine says, “amore crescente inquisitio crescat inventi – the greater love grows, the further we will seek the one who has been found.”[14] Amen.

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[1] Thomas Howard, If Your Mind Wanders at Mass (Steubenville, Ohio: Franciscan University Press, 1995), 63.

[2] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2639.

[3] Thomas Howard, If Your Mind Wanders at Mass, 64.

[4] Anthony Esolen, The Beauty of the Word: A Running Commentary on the Roman Missal (New York: Magnificat, 2012), 212.

[5] Thomas Howard, If Your Mind Wanders at Mass, 65.

[6] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1.

[7] Basil Cardinal Hume, The Mystery of the Incarnation (Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2000), 143.

[8] Ibid., 143.

[9] Anthony Esolen, The Beauty of the Word, 212.

[10] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2639.

[11] Anthony Esolen, The Beauty of the Word, 212-213.

[12] J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 54, To Christopher Tolkien, 8 January 1944.

[13] Ibid., “Noel.”

[14] Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, 28 August 2005. Cf. Saint Augustine of Hippo, Exposition of Psalm 105.3.

A veil in the margins

As is well known, one's Twitter feed can be filled with much that is ugly in this world, but what is less well known is that one's Twitter feed can also be filled with much that is beautiful in this world. This is why I follow, among others, a number of medievalists who tweet out images from some of the great manuscripts. Among these is Kathleen McCallum, who enjoys "life in the margins" and tweets images of what are known marginalia, images found in the margins of medieval texts.

Yesterday, she tweeted a beautiful image of the legendary Saint Veronica holding her famous veil, which, as Paul Badde has shown, is in reality what is now called the Veil of Manoppello, the Volto Santo, the cloth that covered Jesus' face in the tomb (cf. John 20:6-7):

Detail, Yates Thompson MS 27 f. 44

The image comes from what is called the Hours of Yolande of Flanders, made somewhere between 1353 and 1363 and now housed in the British Library. The image is found in the left margin of a page principally depicting the Visitation, which you can view here.

If you look closely at the veil held in the hands of Saint Veronica, you can see the face of Jesus bears a rather striking resemblance to the face of the Veil of Manoppello, the Holy Face:

If you compare these two images to the image of Saint Veronica as depicted in your parish church's Stations of the Cross, the face on her veil will more likely show Jesus' eyes and mouth as both closed, which is not what we see in the above images. In fact, in nearly every depiction of the Veil of Veronica before 1527, the eyes and mouth of Jesus are shown to be open because the artists clearly used the Veil of Manoppello as their model. After 1527, when the Volto Santo was taken from Rome during the sack by the German emperor to Manoppello, artists began to use the image of the Shroud of Turin as their model for the face of Jesus, hence the eyes and mouth of Jesus began to be depicted as closed in artistic renderings of Saint Veronica. Every now and again you'll find an image of her veil made after 1527 that shows Jesus' eyes and mouth as open, a sign the artist knew something of the Volto Santo.

Homily - 14 May 2017 - Will the face of the God be enough for us?

The Fifth Sunday of Easter (A)

Dear brothers and sisters,

It is a simple and beautiful prayer the Apostle Saint Philip utters today: “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us” (John 14:8). It is a plea simple, beautiful, and bold. With these words, Philip expressed the deepest yearning of the human heart, to look upon the face of the Creator. David, the great King of Israel, recognized this longing and sang to God in words each of us can also sing: “You have said, ‘Seek my face.’ My heart says to you, ‘Your face, Lord, do I seek.’ Hide not your face from me” (Psalm 27:8-9).

The Lord, the Good Shepherd, calls out to each of us; he seeks us, even as we seek him! When Adam and Eve hid themselves from the Lord, he called out to them, "Where are you" (Genesis 3:9)? Does he not likewise still call out to us? Are these not the very words we so often use when we cry out to him? How often do we cry within our hearts, "O that you would tear the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake in your presence" (Isaiah 64:1)?

King Solomon, David’s son and heir, likewise sang words that may be both addressed by us to the Lord and by the Lord to us: "O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet, and your face is comely" (Song of Songs 2:14).

And yet, despite his longing to see us and our longing to see him, the Lord said to Moses, "[Y]ou cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live," so great is the glory of the Most High (Exodus 33:20). Even the prophet Elijah heard the Lord in “a still small voice,” he “wrapped his face in his mantle” let his see the face of God (I Kings 19:12-13). Knowing all of this, Philip said, “Show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Is it true? Is seeing the face of God enough for us, or do we want something more? To look upon him who is Goodness, Beauty, Truth, and Love, what more could the human heart desire?

Generation after generation longed to look upon the face of God but none could because they were not pure, because they were not holy and without sin. King David knew that only "he who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false, and does not swear deceitfully," "shall stand in his holy place" (Psalm 24:4, 3). Even so, David sensed he would come to know the satisfaction of his – and our - deepest longings: "As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with beholding your form" (Psalm 17:15).

“Because of his transcendence, God cannot be seen as he is, unless he himself opens up his mystery to man's immediate contemplation and gives him the capacity for it.”[1] For this reason, in the fullness of time, the only begotten Son of God took on our flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary; he who was invisible made himself visible and said to the Apostle Thomas, "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). In Jesus, humanity can now look upon the face of God and live.

Now that he has ascended to the right hand of the Father we still call out to him, "Your face, Lord, I seek!" He has left us the image of his face in the Shroud of Turin - the linen cloth in which he was buried - and in the Veil of Manoppello - "the napkin, which had been on his head" in the tomb and which Saint Peter found "not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself (John 20:7). The one shows his face in death; the other, his face risen from the dead. In Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and the Son of Mary, the one who died and is raised, we can look upon the face of God and live. In him, “the human face of God has burst into history to reveal the horizons of eternity.”[2]

The Holy Face of the Shroud of Turin (left) and of the Veil of Manoppello (right).

In death, each of us will stand before him and see him as he is; we will look upon his face and look upon our faces. What will we see? We know that

before his gaze all falsehood melts away… His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God… At the moment of judgment we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy.[3]

This is why Saint Philip can say that the Beatific Vision, the sight of the face of God, will be enough for us.

If the vision of God’s holy face will satisfy the deepest yearnings of our hearts, why does Jesus tell us today not to let our hearts be troubled (cf. John 14:1)? The reason is twofold:

In commanding them not to be troubled, Jesus placed them, as it were, on the threshold between hope and fear. This way, if they fell into weakness and suffering in their human frailty, the hope of his mercy might help them to recover. On the other hand, the fear of stumbling might urge them to fall less often…[4]

We should not let our hearts be troubled, so long as we acknowledge our sinfulness and confess our sins, because Jesus “is the face of the Father’s mercy” and there is nothing to fear in mercy.[5]

Let us, then, seek to be so transformed through the power of his love that we will desire nothing else than to see him face to face knowing that it will be enough for us. Amen.

---

[1] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1028.

[2] Pope Benedict XVI, Prayer Composed Following a Pilgrimage to the Shrine of Manoppello, 2006.

[3] Ibid., Spe salvi, 47.

[4] Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of John, 9. In Thomas C. Oden, et al, eds., Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament Vol. IVb: John 11-21 (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter Varsity Press, 2007), 120.

[5] Pope Francis, Misericordiae vultus, 1.