Homily - The Fifth Sunday of Easter - 15 May 2022

The Fifth Sunday of Easter (C)

Dear brothers and sisters,

At first hearing, it may seem as though we receive two contradictory statements in the Scriptures today. First, Saints Paul and Barnabas tell us – curiously enough, by way of encouragement – that “it is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Second, Saint John tells us that God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 21:4). The first saying is disarming and striking; the second saying is comforting and desirous. Can it be that the Beloved Disciple contradicts what the Apostle to the Gentiles says?

When considering such a question, it is good for us to remember that the Sacred Scriptures do not compete against each other. Rather, taken in their entirety, the Sacred Scriptures form a great harmony. It is for us to attune our ears to their hymn so that we might hear it properly.

When Saints Paul and Barnabas remind us that it is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God, they say this as a matter of fact. This is a central fact of the Christian life. Even so, the centrality of the Cross in each of our lives is often either rejected or denied – whether implicitly or explicitly – by many Christians today. This rejection of a tenet of discipleship is, in part, what hinders our efforts to evangelize our culture and society that drifts further and further away from Christian life.

If we are to find the harmony between what Paul and Barnabas and John say, we have to consider who the they are to whom Saint John refers. Looking at his words in their full context, we see that they are those found in the holy city, in the new Jerusalem, those who names are found in the book of life at the Last Judgment. Their tears will be wiped away precisely because they endured the time of tribulation, because they underwent hardship, because they remained faithful to Christ Jesus, and for this reason they now live with God. We have the relics of two of these here in this very Cathedral Basilica.

What Paul and Barnabas say, then, about the necessity of hardship and what John says about the final and enduring comfort are not contradictory statements at all, but are instead part of a whole, two sides of the same coin, if you will; both are the fruits of an authentic discipleship. Both are to be found in the faithful adherence to Jesus’ command: “As I have loved you, so you should love one another” (John 13:34).

It should come as no real surprise that our society does not understand what love is. True love is always a willingness to suffer for the beloved; true love always entails a willingness to sacrifice for the beloved; true love always entails a renunciation of self in favor of the beloved. If there is no wiliness to suffer, if there is no willingness to sacrifice, whatever else it may be, it is not love.

Is this not what made the ministry of Saint Damien, of Saint Marianne, and of the Servant of God Joseph Dutton so very fruitful compelling? Did they not each in their own choose to suffer for those they loved, to sacrifice for those entrusted to their care, to renounce themselves in favor of those who needed their assistance? They did not choose the easy way out because they knew “it is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” Their lives were fruitful because they lived and loved like Jesus; they willingly suffered for others and made heroic sacrifices for their benefit.

Some today might think that this aspect of love is difficult to discover because so few of us seem to recognize it. But there are always examples of authentic love to be found, and hints of love can be found in perhaps surprising places. We can find one such hint in the Hawaiian language in a word we all know well, though it is famously difficult to translate in English terms.

The word aloha, so I understand, has something of a kaleidoscope of meanings. While its best known meaning is love, it is not simply a romantic or rosy love; it is instead a love that also connotes compassion and patience, which is to say a love that involves suffering, hardships, and sacrifices. It is a love as we encounter and receive in Christ Jesus.

Father Damien, Mother Marianne, and Joseph Dutton each understand this, even if each in their own unique way. Saint Damien famously said, “I make myself a leper with the lepers.”

Saint Damien of Moloka'i

Saint Marianne said, “I am hungry for the work.”

Saint Marianne Cope

And Joseph went to Kalawao on his own accord as a personal penance to atone for his past sins. This heroic trio show us as if through a prism what it means to undergo hardships so as to enter the kingdom of God. They show us what it means to love others as Jesus love them and as he loves each one of us. And in the joy they exhibited in their care of the lepers, they received a foretaste of God wiping away their tears from their eyes; they were comforted by the Lord Jesus because they united themselves to him and loved like him. 

They did so in the extremes of the leper settlement, but you and I do not have to go so far. Joseph Dutton once said to a correspondent who lamented he could join Joseph at Kalaupapa, “One’s Molokai can be anywhere.”

The Servant of God Joseph Dutton

It remains then for us to undergo hardships wherever they come to us out of love for Jesus Christ and out of love for others. It remains for us to unite ourselves to the Lord Jesus and to love like him so to suffer for those we love, to sacrifice for those entrusted to our care, and to renounce ourselves in favor of those who need our assistance. For if we live and love in this way, being united to Christ Jesus, on the last day he will wipe away every tear from our eyes and welcome us into his kingdom. Amen.

Standing before suffering

When faced with great suffering, many people long for an explanation as to their suffering.  Have they done something wrong to warrant a punishment?  Does this suffering have a purpose?  However the question is posed, it might well be summed up with this one question: Why me?

We ask this question of one another, hoping for an explanation from a mere mortal that will someone explain our present situation.  Of course, none of us can provide an adequate answer; we can't understand our own suffering, let along the suffering of another.

Others try to comfort us with empty platitudes, saying, "It'll get better," or "you'll get through this," or "he's in a better place."  Well-meaning though they may be, such words or are of little help; they do not address - with courage and humility - suffering itself, but only our emotions.

Curiously, it often happens that many people are afraid to address this question to God thinking he might strike them down, or some other such thing.

Job asked this question; indeed, it might even be said that he demanded an answer of the Lord: "Oh, that I had one to hear my case: here is my signature: let the Almighty answer me (Job 31:35)!

Although we cannot rightly claim with Job, "Let God weigh me in the scales of justice; thus will he know my innocence," we can take consolation that Job so questioned the Lord and was not struck down (Job 31:6).

The Lord did not ignore Job's complaint; the Lord answered Job, though not in a manner we might have expected.  From the midst of a storm the Lord responded to Job's complaint in what can only be called a form of mockery.  Job questioned the designs and plans of God, and so God questioned Job in return:

Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth?
Tell me, if you know it all.
What is the way to the dwelling of light,
and darkness - where is its place?
That you may take it to its territory
and know the paths to its home?
You know, because you were born then,
and the number of your years is great (Job 38:18-21)!

It might seem harsh, but we do sometimes forget that "God is wise in heart and mighty in strength; who has withstood him and remained unscathed" (Job 9:4)?

For two full chapters the Lord answers Job in kind, and finally Job responds:

"Look, I am of little account; what can I answer you?
I put my hand over my mouth.
I have spoken once, I will not reply;
twice, but I will do so no more" (Job 40:4-5).

Standing before suffering, standing before the Lord, what is there to say?  We faced with suffering we come face to face with the reality that suffering is a mystery, in the true sense of the word.  Mystery has at its root the Greek word muo and means "to close the mouth."  In the presence of mystery words can never speak adequately.

It seems to me there are two things we might do well in the presence of suffering.  The first is to follow the example of Job and speak no more.  The second is to follow the example of Saint Francis of Assisi and praise God in the midst of suffering.

Two years before his death, Francis asked God for two particular graces:

My Lord Jesus Christ, I pray you to grant me two graces before I die: the first is that during my life I may feel in my soul and in my body, as much as possible, that pain which You, dear Jesus, sustained in the hour of Your most bitter passion.  The second is that I may feel in my heart, as much as possible, that excessive love with which You, O Son of God, were inflamed in willingly enduring such suffering for us sinners (The Little Flowers of St. Francis, 190-191).

To this request, the Lord gave to Saint Francis the Stigmata, the holy wounds of the Savior.  Few of us are prepared to ask for these same two graces, but we can ask to receive them at least in part.

When suffering befalls us, in one of its many forms, let us not seek to complain and be rid of it.  Let us seek rather, with Saint Francis, to know in our sufferings something of the sufferings of Jesus Christ who suffered out of love for us.

Suffering with the King

Yesterday’s Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King calls our attention to that moment, at the close of our lives, when we will each stand before the King of the Universe to give an accounting of our lives. 

To some he will say, “Come,  you are who blessed by my Father.  Inherit the kingdom prepared for from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34).  To others he will say, “Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).  What determines in which direction the Son of Man will send us? What determines whether we will be counted among the sheep or among the goats? The measure of our love.

As such, yesterday’s feast calls to mind the day of our own individual deaths.  Earlier this month, on the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, Saint Ambrose said to us,

We should have a daily familiarity with death, a daily desire for death.  By this kind of detachment our soul must learn to free itself from the desires of the body.  It must soar above earthly lusts to a place where they cannot come near, to hold it fast.  It must take on the likeness of death, to avoid the punishment of death.

Enlightened as we often like to think we are, these words of Saint Ambrose strike us as harsh, even morbid.

We push death far from our consciousness.  In so doing we fail to realize that, in the words of Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, “when one faces death, the supporting foundations of one’s life come to light” (Happiness, God and Man, 97).

Knowing the difficulty of this necessary task, he asks, “What is the remedy?”

The remedy is Jesus Christ, he who “has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (I Corinthians 15:20).  By virtue of our baptism into Christ, of our baptism into his death (cf. Romans 6:4).  Saint Paul goes on to say that “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5).  For this reason, we must, as Saint Ambrose says, take on the likeness of death.

If we live with a daily desire for death then the supporting foundations of our lives will come to light.  The measure of our love will be revealed and we will learn – if only slowly – the truth of the Lord’s words: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).

Of course, part of the measure of our love is seen in the manner in which we carry the cross as it comes to us, keeping in mind the words of Saint Paul: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church” (Colossians 1:24).

As the winter months set in, my arthritis is afflicting me all the more, focusing on the backs of my hips.  My energy is low once again, especially in the mornings, and I will admit it is difficult to find joy in it.  Yet that is what I must do.  If only I would suffer it well, my arthritis can be a true path to holiness.  It would be easier if I didn’t know that the arthritis would all but disappear if I simply switched climates, but that might be part of the beauty of it.

As I pondered this yesterday, I found myself reading Basil Cardinal Hume’s Hope from the Cross: Reflections on Jesus’ Seven Last Words (which I highly recommend).  In it, he addresses the question of rejoicing in one’s sufferings:

If we kiss the crucifix, we shall discover him who suffered like us and for us.  That kissing can, sometimes, more easily be done when words seem empty and meaningless.  It is a way of saying, “Into your hands I commit my spirit,” and often it is the best way, perhaps the only way.  Relief from pain and sorrow may not be immediate; indeed, we may be called to walk further carrying our cross, but the yoke will be sweeter and the burden lighter.  Of course we cannot, and must not, rejoice in the pain.  That would be doing violence to our instincts and to our nature.  We are not made for pain; we are made for happiness.  But recoiling from the cross, as it natural, we can yet rejoice in the carrying of it, but it must be for his sake, I mean, to be like Christ, and so we with him, he in us and we in him (71).

The cross, he says, has something to teach each of us.

All of us experience moments of despair and suffering.  We may be sick or handicapped; we may realize that we are old and unloved; we may have been deserted or let down; we may be out of work and losing our pride.  At times of great distress and confusion, thinking may only add to the pain, and praying will be impossible.  Then the only helpful thing, the only possible thing, is to sit or to kneel looking at the crucifix, the image of Christ dying on the cross.  We may indeed have to share the darkness that was in Christ when he prayed that psalm from the cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”  We can do no more than just look at the crucifix – but we can do no better, for then it will give up its “secret.”  It will speak to us – in our misery – of hope and of encouragement.  There is no tidy, rational explanation for the crushing burden of suffering. We cannot work out easy answers about why it should be.  God gave us instead not an answer but a way to find the answer.  It is the cross that will reveal it, but it has to be a personal discovery.  You cannot begin to see pattern and purpose unless you have known the cross and blindly let Jesus lead you from despair into hope (42-43).

The secret of the cross is that it is the way to eternal life, for by sharing in the cross we will also share in the resurrection of the Lord.  Let us, then, implore Christ our King to strengthen us with his grace so that each of us may carry our cross – in whatever form it comes – out of love for him and for our fellow sheep.

Pope: The Cross is God's "Yes" to mankind

Today marks the 19th World Day of the Sick.

The Message of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI for the ocassion follows, with my emphases:

Dear brothers and sisters!

Every year, on the occasion of the memorial of the Blessed Virgin of Lourdes, which is celebrated on Feb. 11, the Church proposes the World Day of the Sick. This circumstance becomes, as the venerable John Paul II desired, the propitious occasion to reflect on the mystery of suffering and, above all, to make our communities and civil society more sensitive to sick brothers and sisters. If every man is our brother, much more are the weak, the suffering and those needful of care, and they must be at the center of our attention, so that none of them feel forgotten or marginalized; in fact, "the true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer. This holds true both for the individual and for society. A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through 'com-passion' is a cruel and inhuman society" ("Spe Salvi," No. 38). May the initiatives that individual dioceses promote on the occasion of this day be a stimulus to make care for the suffering more and more effective, also in view of the solemn celebration that will take place at the Marian shrine in Altötting in Germany.

1. I still have in my heart the moment when, during the course of the pastoral visit to Turin, I was able to pause in reflection and prayer before the sacred Shroud, before that suffering countenance, that invites us to meditate on him who took upon himself man's suffering of every age and place, even our sufferings, our difficulties, our sins. How many faithful over the course of history have passed before that sepulchral winding sheet, which covered the body of a crucified man, which in everything corresponds to what the Gospels transmit about the passion and death of Jesus! Contemplating him is an invitation to reflect on what St. Peter writes: "By his wounds we have been healed" (1 Peter 2:24).

The Son of God has suffered, he has died, but he is risen, it is precisely because of this that those wounds become the sign of our redemption, of our forgiveness and reconciliation with the Father; they become, however, a test for the faith of the disciples and our faith: every time that the Lord speaks of his passion and death, they do not understand, they reject it, they oppose it. For them as for us, suffering is always charged with mystery, difficult to accept and bear. Because of the events that had occurred in Jerusalem in those days the two disciples of Emmaus walk along sadly, and only when the Risen One walks along the road with them do they open up to a new vision (cf. Luke 24:13-31). Even the apostle Thomas manifests the difficulty of believing in the redemptive way of suffering: "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe" (John 20:25).

But before Christ who shows his wounds, his response is transformed into a moving profession of faith: "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28). What was at first an insurmountable obstacle, because it was the sign of Jesus’ apparent failure, becomes, in the encounter with the Risen One, the proof of victorious love: "Only a God who loves us to the extent of taking upon himself our wounds and our pain, especially innocent suffering, is worthy of faith" (Urbi et Orbi Message, Easter 2007).

2. Dear sick and suffering ones, it is precisely through the sufferings of the Christ that we are able to see, with eyes of hope, all the maladies that afflict humanity. Rising, the Lord did not take away suffering and evil from the world, but he defeated them at their root. To the arrogance of Evil he opposed the omnipotence of his Love. He has shown us, then, that the way of peace and joy is Love: "As I have loved you, so must you love one another" (John 13:34). Christ, victor over death, is alive and in our midst. And while with St. Thomas we also say: "My Lord and my God!" we follow our Lord in readiness to spend our life for our brothers (cf. 1 John 3:16), becoming messengers of a joy that does not fear pain, the joy of the Resurrection.

St. Bernard said: "God cannot suffer, but he can suffer with." God, who is Truth and Love in person, wanted to suffer for us and with us; he became man to suffer with man, in a real way, in flesh and blood. Into every human suffering, then, there has entered One who shares suffering and endurance; he offers consolation in all suffering, the consolation of the participating love of God, which makes the star of hope rise (cf. "Spe salvi," 39).

I repeat this message to you, dear brothers and sisters, so that you become witnesses through your suffering, your life and your faith.

3. Looking forward to the meeting in Madrid, in August 2011, for World Youth Day, I would also like to address a special thought to young people, especially those who live the experience of sickness. Often, the Passion and the Cross of Jesus cause fear, because they seem to be the negation of life. In reality, it is exactly the contrary! The cross is God’s "yes" to mankind, the highest and most intense expression of his love and the source from which flows eternal life. From the pierced heart of Jesus this divine life flows. He alone is capable of liberating the world from evil and make his kingdom of justice, of peace and of love grow, the kingdom to which we all aspire (cf. Message for World Youth Day 2011, 3).

Dear young people, learn to "see" and to "meet" Jesus in the Eucharist, where he is present for us in a real way, to the point of making himself food for the journey, but know how to recognize and serve him also in those brothers who are poor, sick, suffering and in difficulty, who have need of your help (cf. ibid., 4). To all of you young people, sick and healthy, I repeat the invitation to create bridges of love and solidarity, so that no one feels alone, but near to God and part of the great family of his children (cf. General Audience, November 15, 2006).

4. Contemplating Jesus’ wounds our gaze turns to his most sacred Heart in which God’s love manifests itself in the supreme way. The Sacred Heart is Christ crucified, with his side opened by the lance, from which blood and water flow (cf. John 19:34), "symbol of the sacraments of the Church, that all men, drawn to the Heart of the Savior, might drink from the perennial font of salvation" (Roman Missal, Preface for the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus). Especially you, dear sick ones, should feel the nearness of this Heart full of love and draw from this font with faith and with joy, praying: "Water from the side of Christ, wash me. Passion of Christ, strengthen me. O good Jesus, hear me. In your wounds, hide me" (Prayer of St. Ignatius of Loyola).

5. At the end of this message of mine for the next World Day of the Sick, I would like to express my affection to each and every one, feeling myself a participant in the sufferings and hopes that you have daily in union with Christ crucified and risen, that he give you peace and healing of the heart. May the Virgin Mary keep watch over you together with him. We invoke her confidently under the titles Health of the Infirm and Consoler of the Suffering. At the foot of the cross there is realized through her Simeon’s prophecy: her Mother’s heart is pierced (cf. Luke 2:35). From the abyss of her pain, a participation in her Son’s, Mary is made capable of accepting her new mission: to become the Mother of Christ in his members. In the hour of the cross Jesus presents her to all of his disciples: "Behold your son" (cf. John 19:26-27). The maternal compassion for the Son becomes maternal compassion for each one of us in our daily sufferings (cf. Homily at Lourdes, Sept. 15, 2008).

Dear brothers and sisters, for this World Day of the Sick, I also invite the political authorities to invest more and more in health systems that are a help and a support for the suffering, above all the poorest and the most needy, and, addressing all the dioceses, I offer an affectionate to the bishops, the priests, consecrated persons, seminarians, health workers, volunteers and all of those who dedicate themselves with love to care for and sooth the wounds of every sick brother or sister, in hospitals or nursing homes, in families: in the faces of the sick know how to see always the face of faces -- that of Christ.

I assure everyone a remembrance in my prayer, while I impart to each of you a special apostolic blessing.

From the Vatican, Nov. 21, 2010, Feast of Christ the King of the Universe

Translation via Zenit.

Living the Gospel

From time to time there are those who say that if we would but follow Jesus Christ faithfully life would nice, happy and easy. Call it the "Gospel of Prosperity" or the "Gospel of the Rose-Colored Glasses." Call it whatever you like, but in the end be sure to call it false.

Today the Master and Teacher sends out to the Twelve with this warning, "You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved" (Matthew 10:22). Those who wish to follow after Jesus Christ should expect difficulty and persecution.

The Lord never promised that life with him would be pleasant, but that it would lead to eternal life, to the satisfaction of the deepest yearnings of our hearts. He requires, rather, that his disciple "take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23).

The curious thing is that even after such a warning - and others like it - still the Apostles willing went out proclaiming the Gospel and continuing the ministry of the Redeemer. Though warned that "brother will hand over brother to death," still they went (Matthew 10:21).

When the struggles and difficulties of life come our way, let us, too, with the Apostles, go out to proclaim the Gospel, remembering always the words of the Prince of the Apostles:

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice in so far as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed (I Peter 4:12-13).

In honor of the day

The dying words of Pope Saint Pius V were these: "Lord, increase my sufferings but also my patience."


His words are a reminder to us of the redemptive power of suffering, both for ourselves and for others, if suffered well. For this reason he asked for an increase of patience.


So often we - or at least I - only want to ask the Lord for an increase of patience (which, experience has shown, can often be a dangerous request in and of itself), but to ask for an increase of sufferings? This seems contrary to reason. It is the foolishness of the Cross that is wiser than human wisdom.


To utter these words of Saint Pius takes great faith, humility and courage. May this holy Pastor obtain for us an increase in these virtues so that we might say with him, "Lord, increase my sufferings but also my patience."

A spiritual gem for Lent

One day last week I randomly picked a book from my shelves that I’ve always meant to read but haven’t yet (there are many such books): A Man Born Again by Saint Thomas More.

More wrote this book while locked in the Tower as an autobiography. I am half-way through the book and have greatly enjoyed it. It has proved useful while exercising on the elliptical machine and as meditative reading before bed.

Today I read this magnificent passage, written just after the death of his wife:

Memory fixed on the first day at the Charterhouse. I would be a saint? Men would revere my memory? How pleasant the prospect! How easy the path before me! I had not counted the cost. I did not consider that sanctification of man is not the work of man but the work of God. I had contemplated that God would work that sanctification only in those obedient to Him unto death – even to the death of the cross. No thought of Christ’s Passion had disturbed my dreams. I would be a saint! How mockingly the words must have ascended before the throne of my crucified God.

My cross pressed heavily as I sat there. I could thrust it aside. I could obscure it by any of a hundred pleasures. Or I could bend forward submissively, lift my arms, as Christ did, to steady that cross, and begin the weary march to Calvary.

I had not the strength. I could not bear the burden. I could not submit. I slumped on the bench and looked vacantly at the altar. I had not even sufficient courage to ask for strength.

“Then pray only for courage!”

I stiffened, so clearly had I heard the words. They had been as loud and clear as though someone had spoken them. I glanced at my father beside me but he had not noticed my movement. He knelt straight and motionless. Pray for courage? - I had no desire to pray even for that.

“Then pray for the desire!” The voice was louder and clearer, more insistent than before; yet there was no sound. The voice was within me, urgent and compelling.

I could not pray. Sorrow – self-pity – numbed my mind and heart. I pushed myself forward and knelt beside my father. I could not pray. Let my action answer the insistent voice! Let the voice pray for me!

In what manner does God not work within the soul, yet credit the work as merit to man? I offered no prayer – I had no prayer to offer. I could do no more than push my body mutely forward and kneel, more the token than the substance of prayer. Love impelled me and God accepted that love however poorly I expressed it.

Ponderables from the Poverello

I thank you, Lord God, for all these sufferings; and I ask you, my Lord, to increase them a hundredfold if it pleases you, for it will be most acceptable to me. Afflict me with suffering and do not spare me, since to do your will is an overflowing consolation for me.

– St. Francis of Assisi in Bonaventure, The Life of St. Francis 14.2