Not As the World Gives You Peace

Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 25, 2025 — Year C
Readings: Acts 15:1-2, 22-29 / Ps 67 / Rv 21:10-14, 22-23 / Jn 14:23-29
by Msgr. Michael McCarron, Guest Celebrant

When I was in my 20s and had just been ordained a deacon and was working in my diaconal assignment, the pastor with whom I was working was quite a character, to say the least.  He was a brilliant man, but sometimes with some rough edges.  I don’t think he would mind my saying so.  In any case, when the gesture of peace would come around, I was with him on the altar, of course, and he was a powerful man.  He wasn’t large of stature, but he had some real oomph, I would say, and he would come to give me the gesture of peace in what today would be similar to a chest bump.  He would grab me and look at me and say, “May the peace of Christ always disturb you.”  The first time it happened, I said, “Well, and with your spirit.”  I didn’t know quite what to say, but I did think to myself, “Boy, I hope this doesn’t catch on.”  But it caught on to me.  The reality is that it comes right out of today’s gospel.

“Not as the world gives you peace.”  Not that complacent, calm, serenity business, not that kind of peace.  This is His farewell discourse.  This is what He’s saying right before He gives Himself up to death for our sake.  These are the chapters in which there is so much richness. He’s proclaiming all of this to his friends, His kind of last will and testament at the Last Supper.  The whole new world is about to dawn, and they don’t have a clue as to what is about to transpire.  I don’t just mean the trouble but what the trouble will usher in—the shattering of an old world is about to happen.  To call “peace” peace and place it in the context of what’s coming.  Everything He says is true, but wow!

Not as the world gives you this peace; it’s a peace that will disturb you.  When you, peaceful in My love, see hatred, it’ll make you crazy.  You won’t like it.  You’ll feel viscerally the presence of evil when you’re in its presence and, you know, that’s psychologically true.  When we’re in the midst of something very wrong, we feel it in our gut.  Jesus feels this way when He raises Lazarus from the dead—He knew this was wrong.  It’s the peace that allows us to see that things really aren’t the way they’re supposed to be.  It’s reaching back into that primal instinct from our first days before the Fall, where the remnants of that time that we only glimpse once in a while still linger in our ancient memories.  It’s that peace that tells us this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.  And we have spent how long, how many thousands of generations trying to bury it because it does disturb us?   We throw our hands up.  There’s nothing I can do about it.  It’s not my job.  My little bit won’t help.

Thank God for the Saints, regularly appearing in the midst of that denial to remind us that the disturbing peace of Christ does, in fact, do wonderful things.  Oh, that’s not just a story.  We all know that.  Anybody here happily married?  If you are happily married, even with all the struggles in that happy marriage, you felt this peace.  Why else would two normally sensible people look at each other at the ripe old age of 18, 19, 20-something, and say, “I’m going to be with this person forever?”  Right.  Yes.  Why would a man lie on the floor of a cathedral and say, “I will foreswear sexuality and my own will for the obedience to a Bishop I don’t even know, and I will live with God’s people as my family until I’m as old as McCarron and longer?”  Why?  Because the peace of Christ disturbs us enough to have a glimpse of what the world is like when we listen to it. And so, when we don’t listen to it, what do we get?  We get dry, and wizened, and dark.

The readings today are filled with fabulous one-liners.  I mean if you are going to embroider something, go to these readings.  Put them on a cushion.  Like the second reading from the Book of Revelation, one of my favorite books in the scriptures.  Of course, it’s everybody’s favorite for all the right and wrong reasons.  In this wonderful, wonderful statement where John says, as he looked at the new Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven, that no sun or moon was needed for light in the city of God, because the glory of God shone on it and the Lamb was its lamp.  You hear what he is saying?  He’s saying that, when you have Jesus, you don’t need the lesser lights, the lesser lights that we rely on.  We all rely on a lot of things to protect ourselves from what people think or say, to build ourselves up.  John is basically saying, if you’re relying on Jesus, you don’t need to rely on anything except His choice of you.  Don’t rely on your worthiness, because you ain’t got it!

I was a vocations director for about 18 or 19 years in our diocese, and I remember asking one person what was preventing him from becoming a priest.  He said, “Well, I don’t think I’m worthy for priesthood.”  I looked at him and said, “Really?  What sacraments ARE you worthy for?”  And the answer is none, but we are chosen for all of them.  The Lamb is its lamp.  When we are in love with Jesus Christ, when we spend time with Him, and yes, sometimes that is time for prayer, and sometimes it’s time before the Blessed Sacrament, but it’s also time before the blessed sacrament that is your husband, the blessed sacrament that is your wife, the blessed sacrament that’s your girlfriend, the blessed sacrament that is your boyfriend, your brother, your pesky little sister.  It’s spending time before them.  Do you think your guardian angels are looking at you and they linger because of your good looks?  Sorry, they see in you the spectacular gift of the Lamb shedding light in the image of God.  You are that gift, and the persons you live with are, too.  How cool is that?

And if that weren’t enough, of course, we have in today’s first reading the sending of this letter.  These poor people are getting bombarded by folks telling the Gentiles, well, it’s OK, you are welcome to be a Christian, but you’ve got to become a Jew first.  And they meant it!  They said that God made this covenant, and God’s covenant is made full in the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, who is a Jew and a rabbi, and so you must follow what He followed, and He followed the law.  So, the apostles didn’t know what to do, because the Gentiles weren’t having any of that.  I mean, you can imagine, I want to be a Christian, but you have to be circumcised first.  Never mind!  And you know, they weren’t being silly.  I mean, obviously, there was pain involved, but that wasn’t the problem.  The problem was that the pain involved could be lethal.  This wasn’t the days of antibiotics and antiseptics.  The knife you were doing a circumcision with today was the one you used to cut your fish with tomorrow and the day before.  People died of circumcision; they said, there must be something wrong with this.

And so, they say in their letter that “it is apparent to the Holy Spirit and to us.”  Don’t you love that line?  Can you imagine using that line when your teenage son comes home after curfew, and he knows he’s wrong?  You know he’s wrong.  He gets to the door and you go, “It appears to the Holy Spirit and to your mother and I that you are grounded for a week.”  I mean, what is he going to say?  The Holy Spirit said it had to happen.  The reality is that Jesus is giving us that Holy Spirit that allows us to see through Him the very way the Spirit is working.  That’s the peace that disturbs—when we see the way the Spirit is seeing, when we don’t just see through the vision of Christ in the Holy Spirit, we see WITH the Holy Spirit, and suddenly we see that people are people—not a race, not a religion.  The people who have hurt us are people who have hurt us.  The reality is that I’m bigger than any hurt I can receive.  There was no light in the city, no light in my life, no light in my dryness, no light in the hurt, no light in the sins I’ve committed, no light in all these things I need to be forgiven for, BUT it had no need of those lights because the Lamb was the light.

That’s the peace that disturbs us; it disturbs us enough to believe that when I look in the mirror, I really am God’s chosen one, but I’ve done this, and I’ve done that.  Do you think He doesn’t know that?  Oops!  If I had only known he was such a jerk, I would never have asked him to be mine.  God’s not surprised.  You cannot disappoint God, because disappointment means surprise and God’s not surprised by anything.  He knows whom He calls, and when He calls us to the table, when He gives us his very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, it is to transform us.  It’s to make us different.

In a few moments, I’m going to read a prayer that says that basically everything we are is being placed into the bread and wine that’s being offered to the Father, who will receive it and transform it by the Holy Spirit into the Body and Blood of the Son.  That means that all of us, all of our ups and down, our sins, our foibles, all of that is being picked up, put into the bread and wine, and offered to the Father who accepts it.  The light is the Lamb, and as long as we have our eyes on Him, well then suddenly that girlfriend that we burn for is a daughter of the King, that guy that  we can’t live without is to be respected as the Holy Sacrament, that we should treat our sexuality with the same kind of reverence we give to the Eucharist, that we should look at those who have hurt us and pray for them.

I get in a lot of trouble because I watch the news and my heart is heavy, and I see these horrible people who have done horrible things, and I hear all of these things about people wishing they were dead, and they belong in Hell, and blah, blah, blah.  I pray for the perpetrator.  Do I think he’s good?  No.  I think he is a good person who has done horrible things, but he’s the one in danger.  He’s the one chosen who has thrown away his chosen-ness.  I’m disturbed by the hatred that he feels for himself.

I heard a story about a young priest who went into a little town in Italy, and he was sent there because it was an awful little town and he wasn’t a particularly good priest.  He didn’t know much and didn’t have a lot of education.  His superiors didn’t have a lot of hope for him.  So, as a young priest he went there, and he got up the morning after he arrived and opened the doors and he went outside. He walked down the center part of the main street in town, and he said, “Repent.  Believe the good news.  It’s awesome.”  Then he went back home.  He went about his priestly business, but every single day, the entire time he was there, he’d get up and he’d walk out and he’d shout at the top of his lungs, “Repent.  Believe the good news.  It’s awesome.”  One day, after about ten or eleven years of doing this, a little kid came up to him and said, “Father, with all due respect, you haven’t done anything.  The place is still a mess; everybody is still who they are.  You haven’t done a thing to change them.”   The priest stopped and looked at the little kid, and he said, “Change them?  I’m trying to keep them from changing me.”

The peace of Christ that disturbs us keeps us from being like our society.  The peace of Christ that disturbs us makes us see things that no one else will see, keeps us from being blinded to the goodness of those who hate and those who are hated, makes us see in the immigrant, and the poor—people who aren’t a problem to be solved, but a family member to be helped.  It’s not outside our grasp, and if it seems like it’s too big of an issue, well, okay, start at home.  Feed the hungry child who desperately just needs Dad’s attention.  Feed the teenager who’s beset by a thousand options, all of them alien to the Gospel, by proving in yourself as a parent, that it’s awesomely joyful to be a Christian and a Catholic.

Today, you and I will receive the Body and the Blood and the Soul and the Divinity of Christ.  The same One upon whom St. John, who wrote the second reading, lay his head at the Last Supper, will be in our hands or on our lips.  The same One.  If we sit down without a smile on our face, if we sit down without that peace that’s disturbing us, and maybe prompting us to write that letter to the elderly aunt we haven’t talked to in so long, or to tell our teenage kids how much we love them, or to tell a husband or wife you’re still the best looking thing I’ve ever seen, then maybe we should rethink how we are receiving Him and try again.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless You, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.  If that’s not peace disturbing you, I don’t know what is.

I Make All Things New

Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 18, 2025 — Year C
Readings: Acts 14:21-27 / Ps 145 / Rv 21:1-5a / Jn 13:31-33a, 34-35
by Msgr. Michael McCarron, Guest Celebrant

Our gospel reading today is incredibly rich.  It’s also ancient, proclaimed in the Church’s lectionary since about the fifth century.  So once again, we’re in a part of the lectionary that allows us to stand on the shoulders of giants, as they say, our forebears in the Faith.  The reason that it’s here is that it is a pivot point.  This gospel serves as a hinge from the Easter season into the anticipation of Pentecost and the season that follows immediately after, with the great feasts and solemnities.

You’ll notice that in the first part of the season of Easter, we talked a lot about the Resurrection appearances.  We talked a lot about where our Lord was, what He was doing, what He was saying to His disciples who witnessed Him.  But now we’ve jumped back to another place.  It’s not Eastertide; it’s the Last Supper.  This is part of what is called the Farewell Discourse.  And it’s a part of the Farewell Discourse that follows pretty much the plan that John sees our Lord setting out:  His service to His people and then all of the great proclamations of His love for us that we can only do by the Holy Spirit, which is what we’re awaiting.  And so, the lectionary is pointing us towards Pentecost, which is only a couple of weeks away.

I would suspect that this gospel sounds a little bit difficult to understand.  I mean understand if, for no other reason, is all the “glorified”:  God is glorified in Him and God will glorify Himself and if He glorifies Himself, He will glorify Him rightly.  After a while, you say what’s the point?  But it’s a really big point, and it’s the point upon which the pivot happens because it says, “Now is the Son of Man glorified.”

Now this is the Last Supper and “Now is the Son of Man glorified.”  What’s happening now?  He’s about to be crucified.  That’s God glorifying Him?  That’s a very powerful statement.  You remember He’s at the Last Supper, and Judas has just gone out to betray Him, and Jesus says to the rest that now it’s happened and that the Son of Man is glorified by the Father.  And He’s doing it right now, right here in this room at this table and we would have a right to say, “It sure doesn’t look like a lot of glory.”  Especially to them.  We have the wonderful gift of reflection of two thousand years and know that a Resurrection is going to happen after this, but the people here did not know that.  It’s telling us something.  It’s telling us something about what it means to believe in the power of Easter, but also the wonder of Pentecost.

One of the great sins of our society — in fact, it’s the great heresy that grips our society — is cynicism.  Cynicism, which anybody over the age of about eighteen, or even younger than that, will be afflicted by, is a belief that things just don’t change.  Nothing’s going to change. The world’s always going to be this way.  I don’t change; this is just the way I am.  A lot of people, as we get older, just kind of shake our heads and say that these are habits I’m never going to break, on and on and on and on.  It really is out there, and it’s a very particularly serious heresy for Catholic Christians, because it robs us of hope.

Hope is the understanding that in fact what you see is not what you get.  That in fact what we taste is a better sign of what we’re going to get.  That moment when she says, “I do,” and our whole world just lights up with fireworks?  That’s a taste.  It’s not always going to be that way.  The fireworks will turn into a bonfire sometimes.  But the reality is that you knew then more truly than you’ve ever known.  I say to couples on their wedding day, you are seeing more clearly the truth right now, today, than you ever will.  Remember what you see, because sometimes it’s easy to forget you see.

When Jesus says He’s going to be glorified, He’s saying it in the midst of the understanding of a living hope that the evil which is about to capture Him and torture Him and bury Him is not the end.  He dispels and destroys any basis for cynicism.  If God can take the cross (the most horrible, obscene evil that human beings can ever do to each other, much less the Son of Eternal Father) and turn it into the greatest good that ever has been (the absolute power of life over death) so that the greatest  it’s-never-going-to-change death (which all of us feel when we lose somebody) is broken, what could He not do with us?  What sin in our past that nobody knows about that we think makes us unlovable can He not forgive?

The fact of the matter is, He knows us best, and He loves us the most.  The power of His love is to birth hope.  Hope that no matter where we are, whatever situation we’re in, however lackluster or lukewarm we’ve been in our faith, He births a hope so that the glory of God is revealed in the midst of our difficulty.  Why?  Because there in the midst of our difficulty, even at our desperation point, if we have hope, we’re seeing beyond it.  We’re seeing bigger than it, we’re seeing something more powerful.  If I look at that person that I’ve always had a low opinion of and begin to hope, I’m open to the possibility that there in that person, there may be something I can give to help them.  Or I could be helped by them by forgiving them for the ill they may have done me.  If I look at my children and begin to lose hope for their future, because the world seems so topsy turvy, perhaps I could remember what I understood when I held them first in my arms here or at the hospital, and realize I’d be willing to do anything I could to give them a future filled with hope.

Faith, hope, and love.  The greatest of these is love.  You know why that is, don’t you?  In heaven, we don’t need faith anymore.  What we had faith in we’ll see right before us.  Even in heaven, hope will at last be fulfilled: that thing which points us to a world that’s different, to a belief that’s different.  But we’ll still need love even in heaven.  Practicing that love now, as Jesus says, “God’s going to glorify Me in this,” but how will we see that glory?  By the fact that you love each other.   Because you’ve experienced My love, you’ve come to love each other as I love you.  How do I love you?  I love you the way the Eternal Father loves the Eternal Son.  In just a couple of verses He is going to tell us, not only do I ask you to love that way, I command it.  To love the way God loves.  You can’t be cynical if you have that kind of love.  You just can’t.  It’s not permitted, but it’s also not possible.

In the second reading, from the Book of Revelation, John says, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth,” and that everything that I thought was going to be here forever, it was gone.  There’s a whole new way of being a human being.  As that passage continues, the Lord says, “I am the Alpha and Omega.”  He says that I am the beginning and the end.  At the end of today’s reading, the Lord says, “Behold, I make all things new.”  Even you and me.

So, if there are patterns of hurt in your relationships that you don’t think you’re ever going to change, now is the time for God’s glory to shine.  If you haven’t had a great deal of respect or a good relationship with your parents, you can change today before you leave these doors.  With the hope and the power of the Eucharist itself, the love of Jesus Christ can make a husband and a wife see each other in all new ways, if we just let it.  We cannot be cynical because the only thing that is forever is God, and God is love, and His love is for us, and that means we’re forever in love with Him.

May Jesus Christ be praised forever.

Leaving the Median

Fourth Sunday of Easter
May 11, 2025 — Year C
Readings: Acts 13:14, 43-52 / Ps 100 / Rv 7:9, 14b-17 / Jn 10:27-30
by Msgr. Michael McCarron, Guest Celebrant

It’s such a joy to be here with you again today and over these next couple of weeks.  It’s exactly the elixir that this retired priest needed:  to have a parish community again for a while.  So, thank you for that gift.

I said to someone at the last Mass, and I would repeat it, especially since it’s happened twice in a row:  8 o’clock is really early.  Especially if you’re coming all the way from Lynchburg, which is not far, of course, but it means that, for me, I have to get up around 4:45 or thereabouts and get the dog settled and myself settled, so that I don’t come out bleary-eyed and mumbling things at Mass.

It’s always a joy for me to have the distance between my home in Lynchburg to this parish here in Bedford because of that drive.  I come out on 460 and, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it at that hour on a Sunday, when there’s almost no traffic, but that drive is absolutely delightful.  It’s not usually delightful, especially if I’m behind you saying, “Hurry up!”  But that’s my fault.  This morning, however, when I came up it was just so awesome.  There was a little haze across the fields, the deer were kind of bedding down.  You could see them heading into the woodlands, instead of the middle of the road, like they usually do.  It was just wonderful and very peaceful and a wonderful way to arrive, of course, to celebrate the Prince of Peace.  It was really a gift.

And so, as I was driving along that 32.5 minutes, according to my GPS, that it takes to get here, I was immediately lulled into those wonderful spiritual thoughts, and I began to think about the median strip.  I mean, really, about the median strip!  I’ve always been fascinated by them.  When you think about it, they’re the victims of violence, aren’t they?  Somebody has come through what was once a pasture or a road, and just created this 4-lane highway, and left there in the middle, seemingly forgotten, this strip of land.

I admit that, if you’re a traffic engineer, and you’re here in the congregation, you shake your head and say “They’re there for a purpose.”  Yes, I know they’re there for a purpose.  They do serve a purpose:  they separate the lanes and keep the lights down; they do all sorts of things!  But there’s a study that says, since the late 1950s and early 1960s, when they began the interstate system and when road construction began to take in things like median strips for safety, a group of animals has begun to adapt to living in median strips.  They don’t live anywhere else, because they can’t get off of the median strip.  And if they do, they don’t get to the other side, generally speaking.  So, there’s a whole life ecosystem going on.

As I’m driving down the road, I’m kind of watching how the wildflowers are coming up, how different things are happening in that median strip.  And I thought to myself, I’d really hate to be a median strip, because they don’t go anywhere.  They always stop at a bridge, or at an intersection, or something.  They don’t go further.  And if you’re one of those lucky animals who has decided this is home, well, you’re wrong because you don’t go anywhere, either.

Today our Lord talks, as he does on this Sunday every year, about the Good Shepherd.  The readings we hear today have been proclaimed in the Church since the fourth century. This is part of the ancient lectionary, as pretty much all of Easter is.  This particular one is called Shepherd Sunday, because all of the readings are about being a shepherd, doing shepherd-like things.

In Jesus’ day, it’s beautiful.  We have this wonderful image of our Lord with a lamb across His shoulders.  It’s very touching.  But, of course, in Jesus’ day, if I called you a sheep, you would be really upset.  It still is not complimentary.  I mean, go to a friend of yours and say “You’re such a sheep,” and see if you get a happy response.  You won’t.

In Jesus’ day, and in ours, sheep are very sweet.  I mean, who doesn’t love a lamb?  You just want to cuddle with them.  But they’re dumb as a box of rocks.  I grew up on a farm that had sheep, among other things, and you just couldn’t help but love them.  They all have different personalities.  But they don’t know anything.  They can get spooked by a branch falling in a field a mile away.  They run, once they’re spooked, until they drop.  They don’t stop; they drop.  If they’re left to their own devices, they exhaust themselves.  They’re a catering service for wolves, basically.  They don’t protect themselves; they can’t.  They run and they are challenged and, if they fall in a creek, they turn over and they can’t turn themselves back.  They get soaked in the wool and they drown.

They need a shepherd, and that is Jesus’ whole point.  Goats are like the cats of the sheep world.  They can do anything on their own.  They have brilliant minds, they take care of themselves, they gather together and they push back any danger.  They don’t really need a lot of help.  Sheep in the wild need an awful lot of help.  In fact, without the shepherd – and Jesus is making this very clear in the gospel of St. John – they won’t go anywhere.  They stop.

But His sheep know him, and when He calls them, they come forward.  This is important for people who are living in the median.  And I hate to tell you, but we’re living in the median.  That is to say, we live in a time when faith has been reduced to a kind of pausing.  Faith has been reduced to trying not to stand out too much.  Faith has become a kind of Catholic agnosticism.  You know God exists.  Everybody in this room believes that.  We’re not sure He does anything.  He doesn’t really intervene.  He doesn’t really get on our side or have our back.  When we are in trouble, we go to a lot of different places before we get to Him.  He’s kind of our desperation point, isn’t He?

You see, Jesus is the Shepherd that we who live in the median – not quite sure, wanting to be sure, but OK about staying in one place – need.  He’s the one who gets us off the median.  We need a shepherd to see us across those four lanes.  We need a shepherd to tell us that there really is life on the other side of that concrete:  the concrete of our prejudices or our own grudges, the concrete of our opinions about ourselves when we look in the mirror and just don’t like what we see if we’re honest, the concrete of the difficulties we have with our kids, or we who are kids have with our parents.  We need a shepherd to show us how to get off of that median safely.

Jesus says that they know My voice.  They’ve heard what I’ve said to them.  And I’ve put them into My hand.  That is to say I will never let them go.  I will never get them to come out into the road unless I can lead them safely to the other side.  I will hold on to them.  Our prejudices can be coming down the road at seventy-five miles an hour, and we could be in the middle of the road, but He’s not going to let us get hit by them if we stick with the Gospel.

When we’re at work, and everybody’s talking about the new Holy Father, and that he’s an American, as though the Holy Father can be minimalized into a nationality, we are able to stand up and profess our faith, and what it means to be one Church of enormous diversity, with an enormous broad Catholic reach.  It means that Jesus, who has called us, has summoned us off the median because we’ve heard the voice of one person who makes more sense than all of the stuff we see on social media, the stuff that our computer can lure us to.  It tells us that our sexuality is some kind of a playground, instead of a sacred gift, as sacred as the Eucharist is – a sacrament to be given to another with faithfulness, permanence, and love.  We may feel like we’re in a pretty unsafe place.  But living on the median, we can begin to think that sometimes the bad behaviors we compromise with, that we accept, in order not to seem different, just pass by. Those bad behaviors can suddenly begin to be a toxin that takes hold of us and changes us.

Today we celebrate Mother’s Day.  We’re glad to celebrate our mothers.  Hopefully we remember a Mom who taught us that there was a difference between love and hate, forgiveness and grudges.  Hopefully, we remember a mother who, by her own example, showed us what she cares about.

Do you know what the first memory that comes to mind of my mother, at my ripe old age of almost seventy-four?  It is of my mother putting rubbing alcohol on me when I was about twelve years old, because I had the flu and my fever had gone up into the dangerous zone.  I don’t remember much else of that fever or of that time.  I just remember her being at my bedside late at night, and bringing my fever down.  Thanks, Moms.  Happy day.  I had a good shepherd.  It looked an awful lot like my mother.

That’s, of course, the point.  “The Father and I are one,” Jesus says.  That means when they hear My voice, and they follow Me, they know that I can get them, allow them, help them, infuse them to be Me to others:  Moms to their children, husbands to their spouses, children to their parents, elderly to the young, and bless the young, to us, who are older in years.

It’s funny to be on the median, isn’t it?  It looks very peaceful, but sometimes it’s a little too peaceful.  The median isn’t the woods.  The woods give life to so many creatures.  The medians give it only to a few that will accept the narrow boundaries as normal.  We don’t.  We’re Catholics.  We have no boundaries.  Our boundaries are as big as eternity, as long and as deep as grace.  And we have a Shepherd who will never let us be extricated from His grasp.  And He’s grabbed us, tight, with a hug that leads to everlasting life.  Does it go somewhere?  It goes on forever, as it should.

May Jesus be praised forever.

Follow Him

Third Sunday of Easter
May 4, 2025 — Year C
Readings: Acts 5:27-32, 40b-41 / Ps 30 / Rv 5:11-14 / Jn 21:1-19
by Msgr. Michael McCarron, Guest Celebrant

It had been quite the week. It weighed on him more than he could possibly say. They had gone up to Jerusalem, of course, all of them with such high hopes. It was that procession, that raucous, loud, singing procession into the gates. It had all changed so swiftly. Within a week they were running and hiding, afraid to be caught like He was caught. Peter, His dear friend, leader of the rest, hid better than most of them, even denied Him. Three times.

And so, finally it got to be too much, and Peter could not live with his thoughts. And he decided just to go back to normal life, and he said, I’m going fishing. And to his great surprise and pleasure, the others had been feeling the same. We’ll go with you, they said. We’ll go back home. And so, they went fishing and, true to form for the week that had been, it was just like the week: no fish, no nothing. Nothing but a continuous heavy barrage of bad news and, especially for fishermen who hadn’t fished in so long, particularly bad news. At least there were no Romans such was the benefit of fishing at night: no tax collectors, no Romans, no fish either.

And so, as they found themselves drifting up towards the place of the seven springs, where they had often gone after they had fished successfully, where they had cleaned the fish, where Jesus had met them so many times, spending the night on that rock, telling stories, laughing, teasing each other, teasing Him. He was a sight in the morning, and they’d let him know it.

As they drifted toward shore, it was already almost dawn. That kind of half-light of early morning obscured the view, but they could see the mooring spots where they were going, and there was someone there, there on the steps down into the water. And the person cried out, “Children, have you caught anything?” Peter cocked his head.  It was a familiar voice.  But he answered, “Nothing. Nothing, sir.” “Well then, put your nets on the right side of the boat, as opposed to the wrong side of the boat.” And so, Peter did the opposite of what he had done, but as he did, it was becoming more and more familiar to him. Déjà vu perhaps, but more real than that, until John cried out, “It’s the Lord!”

As the fish were being hauled in, one hundred and fifty-three of them, one for every nation known on earth, Peter threw on some clothes, jumped into the water, and swam to Him. There, the smell of charcoal smoke, fish cooking, and his friend. “Tell them to bring it all ashore and bring me some fish. You’ve got a lot of people that are hungry here, Peter. Come, have your breakfast.”

For many of you who know me, I’m Monsignor Michael McCarron. It is my privilege to have been the pastor of St. Thomas More for the last thirteen years, retiring last June. So almost a year into retirement, and I’ve survived so far. I will be a priest for forty-eight years on this Wednesday, which just sounds like a long time, even to me. Not to mention the congregations that have endured me. But I have to say even though that’s the case, every time I come before these wonderful mysteries, the gospels like this, I get nervous. I said to the deacon earlier today as I began, you know it’s the first time I’ve been here for fourteen years. This is the first time we’ve ever been together on the altar. It’s kind of a wonderful occasion. And I said, are you nervous? And he said, yeah, you know, and I didn’t say to him then, but I should have: so am I. I’m always nervous before I preach or teach, and why wouldn’t I be?

You see, I have been given a call. I have been asked to follow Him and right now, I’m standing before you and His call is to convince you somehow, whatever age you are or level of faith you are, to convince you about something that is true. That something is really true, and that is that you have a God who wants to make breakfast for you. Wants to make breakfast for you. You have a God so tender that one of the first things He does after He rises from the dead is meet you in the place where you have always talked into the night. Where the only memory is a memory of goodness and companionship and fellowship. To convince you that, in fact, no matter how many times we’ve denied Him, we will have opportunity, ample opportunity to nevertheless, affirm Him. “You know I love you, Lord. I’m sorry, but you know everything. You know I love you.” And He does.

I’m nervous because I know that I am called to somehow awaken every single heart here. Your salvation has been presented to me, too. The Lord wants me to tell you, Follow Him. Just the way He told Peter. No different message from the gospel. And following Him is what makes me nervous, because to convince you to do that, I’m fully aware that following Him is no easy task. Following Him means, following Him into charity and into forgiveness when they tease you at high school or in elementary school, because you’re a faithful person, and they’re not. Because you’re home schooled, and they’re not; because you live a way that other teenagers don’t live. Follow me and the urges to go to the computer and satisfy them are all there and all powerful; following Him means saying no.

There’s a better way. Even though you might not be able to see it right now, there’s a better way. I’m nervous. Because there’s a message here today that if we have a God who loves us so much that He will make us breakfast, then we had better be sure we believe He’s made us dinner and that He intends to feed us just as surely as He intended to feed them.

“Follow me” is His command at the end of this gospel. And I hope with all that I am that something, somehow, as the Lord speaks through me, blessed be God, will speak to you, whether you’re thirteen or eight, fifteen or fifty, it doesn’t matter. Do we think that a God who would cook breakfast for us is uninterested in anyone here because of their age, their gender, their aptitude, their looks? Follow Him and reject all of the false values the world will give you for acting the way it thinks you should. Follow Him so that the unborn find a voice screaming for life and a chance to live; Follow Him so that the elderly may find themselves, in fact, reverenced as wise for their years and cared for because of their giving.

What a wonderful gospel, but I’m nervous. Because you see, if you believe this gospel, listening to that first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, how can I convince you to go home and gives thanks to God for being declared worthy to suffer embarrassment for the sake of the Lord? No one wants to do that …except those who follow Him, because, where He is, we want to be. Where He goes, we want to go. The meal He prepares, we want to eat, because its dessert is eternal life.

May Jesus be praised forever.

Death Has No Sting

The Resurrection of the Lord
April 20, 2025 — Year C
Readings: Ac 10:34a, 37-43 / Ps 118 / Col 3:1-4  / Jn 20:1-9
by Rev. Jay Biber, Guest Celebrant

In Lexington where I live, we have a little bit of a reading group, and what we landed on at the beginning of Lent this year, was a work which included some homilies, done in 1981 by a German theologian.  His name was Joseph Ratzinger.  You may remember him; he  became Cardinal Archbishop shortly after Pope John Paul II was made Pope in 1978.  This book, by whom I believe now is the greatest theologian of the 20^th century (although none of us knew it at the time), was published in 1981.  This was a series of homilies that he gave in Munich in 1981.  

Looking at the piercing of Christ on the cross, and at the Resurrection, Cardinal Ratzinger took a different starting point.  It was captivating to me.   When you think of the Resurrection, what image comes to mind?  The scripture doesn’t give us that moment that shows what it was like.  We could look at the Shroud of Turin and we’re free to believe that, somehow in its miraculous way, it captures what happened beyond our knowing.  And so, I think we imagine the stories of the dazzling angels.  So, for me anyway, it’s sort of dazzling.  

But actually, when you see all the stories of the Resurrection, whether it’s the Sunday night in the Upper Room where Jesus joins the disciples, He walks through the door.  So, obviously, there’s something very different here, but He’s still in a body.  He’s still got the wounds.  He’s the same, but He’s not.  By the Sea of Tiberius, He makes a point that He’s eating fish for breakfast, like they are.  Other examples are the story of the women who are at the grave – Mary Magdalene thinks He is the gardener.  She sees Him but doesn’t recognize Him.  On the road to Emmaus, He is not recognized until the breaking of the bread.  Something profound is going on.  

Within what we call the west, there are two dimensions and Pope John Paul II was keenly aware of those.  Of course, Cardinal Ratzinger became the main theologian of the Church and then later became Pope himself in 2005.  So, if you look at what is between Greece and Italy, Greece belongs to the eastern part of the empire,  but from Italy all the way over to Germany, Austria, Finland, England, and Ireland are the western part of the empire.  I guess you could say that Poland is in the middle – it touches both the east and the west.  So, in the two parts of the empire, the art is different.  We have our representational art here; it looks like people.  We don’t want it to become idolatry, but it looks like people.  It’s got three dimensions.  In the east the Orthodox art is much more mystical, and so when you see it, you are seeing icons, perhaps the famous icon of the Trinity, or the icons of Mary with the Infant Jesus.  These are clearly not meant to be exact representations of people because they are only two-dimensional, not three.  They are created this way so that we pass through it to the deeper, mysterious, mystical reality that it leads us through.  

It turns out that this was where Cardinal Ratzinger made the point that, as far as the Resurrection goes, in the eastern part of the west, that half (all the Balkans, and Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Greece) have looked at the Resurrection in a very different way.  If you want to see it, you can see pictures of it; just punch in “the Harrowing of Hell” or “Descent to Hell.”  Remember when we pray the Apostle’s Creed, “He descended to Hell,” to the land of the dead, not to the permanent separation of God for those who have rejected or unconfessed, but the waiting, beginning with Adam and Eve, all the just people waiting for God to set things right.  And so, in the east, since there was no image of the Resurrection, the image they developed was the Harrowing of Hell.  Now, a harrow is an agricultural implement that basically roughs up the ground.  After all the vegetables, fruits, and grains are all harvested, the earth needs to be turned over so it can receive the rain, so it can receive the seed, somewhat like aerating a lawn.  The harrow is a machine that churns up, so we speak of the Harrowing of Hell.  Go online; you’ll see icon after icon after icon and with some of them, you can find the commentary, so you can even understand the details of what the symbols are.  

Basically, the Harrowing of Hell, the Descent to Hades (Sheol in Hebrew), is where Christ goes to bust up Hell. It’s very physical because he comes to break open Hell, to break all the locks, to let the light in to where there was only dark.  So, in the icons, first you see the images of Him going to Adam and Eve who have been waiting for so long, and to all the just souls who have been waiting for that great moment of redemption.  This becomes the final act in Christ’s saving work.  He has come to earth, He has taken on our flesh, and now He has died, which permits the final act – to go down to the land of the dead and say, “I did not make you to live in a dungeon.  Come out.”  The story of Lazarus is a foreshadowing of that.   “Come out,” He says to all the souls who were waiting.  So that’s the redemption.  

The harrowing is that He shows no mercy to Satan.  Satan turns out to be a nothing, just a minor thing.  The Satan that had everybody terrorized is now seen whimpering in the corner.  The death that had everyone terrorized no longer has any power. 

Now we read the Psalms with a different mindset.  Think of Psalm 24.  “Oh gates, lift high your heads.  Grow high you ancient doors.  Let him enter, the king of glory.”  He’ll break those gates open.  It’s physical, it’s athletic, it’s muscular.  Who is that king of glory?  The Lord, the mighty, the valiant.  Oh gates, lift high your heads, because death has no sting.  He has entered the world of death for our sake, His love for us, and blown it up at the middle.  

What Cardinal Ratzinger understood too, was that this is the story that applies; this is a pattern that gets repeated all through history.  For Israel certainly had the experience of the Exodus of being set free from slavery, from the dungeon of darkness, of pure solitude and the loneliness of no connection.  All that is done away with.  This is not just for once; this is a pattern of God.  It is a rhythm.  Lost, then found.  Israel would experience not only the Exodus, but hundreds of years later, the exile.  And the Church would navigate in our own way. The new Israel would navigate seas and waves and tides and winds that we could not have imagined,  every generation going through the pattern.  To even up to now; to yourselves and your stories.  Even in those moments when you felt like death warmed over, you somehow experienced that there was a new life under all this and this is true today as well.  

To go all the way back to the story of Abraham going up the mountain with Isaac ready to sacrifice him and Isaac’s asking where the lamb will come from.  Abraham says the Lord will provide.  And there he is bound on the altar and they look and see the ram caught in the thicket, and that becomes the sacrifice.  The derivative of Isaac’s name is “laughter.”  Ultimately, there is joy for the person of faith because this is the way God has set up the world.  It is a joy that courses in a laugh.  Probably most of us have been in certain situations where we thought we would never laugh again.  But no, we have too much evidence to the contrary.  With Isaac, he laughed to see the lamb, as if to say that, Yeah, I need to learn to believe that when God says, “I got this,” He means it.  

Food for the Journey

Holy Thursday – Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper
April 17, 2025 — Year C
Readings: Ex 12:1-8, 11-14 / Ps 116 / 1 Cor 11:23-26 / Jn 13:1-15
by Rev. Jay Biber, Guest Celebrant

In your own families I’m sure you have a calendar of your own, just for your family.  It’s not a big calendar of New Year’s Day or Memorial Day, or the Fourth of July, like the great national calendar.  It’s the calendar of your family: the calendar of the birthdays, the wedding days, or maybe the time you first met and where you first met.  It’s the calendar of those big dates and maybe some sad dates, too:  a car accident, or a death in the family, and those things that mark the calendars down through the years.

I love to think of this Holy Week as our calendar.  It’s not a particularly special day for the country or the world, but it’s our calendar.  It is here that we count our time, and obviously, a lot of the people you know don’t recognize this timing.  Why, in the middle of all this on a Thursday, all of a sudden, you’re counting time, you’re marking time, differently?  Maybe that’s where we got that expression, “She marches to a different drummer.”

We have a rhythm.  Our whole creation has a rhythm to it the way we understand it.  It’s not just building material that we can rearrange the way we like.  It comes with a pattern; it comes with a shape to it.  Even in science, for example, there is a pattern.  The Vatican astronomer spoke up in Lexington this year.  He said, “Science is meant to lead to worship.”   We see the patterns of God, and we want to begin to know who is the One behind these patterns?  Who is the One behind these forms?  And so, we measure things a little bit differently.

With this Holy Thursday feast today, especially this year, I was struck because it coincides exactly with the Jewish Passover feast.  It coincides this year, but not every year, because of the course of history.  We’ve asked, “How are we going to measure?”  Maybe by the first day of spring, because that’s the way the sun works.  Or is it the lunar cycles, the cycles of the moon?  There are different ways to measure, and that’s why you have an Orthodox Easter and a Catholic Easter.  The Eastern and Western Churches calculated differently, but what they had in common, together with the Jewish people, is that all this creation of God and all this history is all connected.  It’s somehow all connected.

When we say, “in those years since the time of Christ,” we say “AD.”  If you know your Latin, that means anno Domini, in the year of the Lord.  That way, we’re counting time with Christ at the center point of history, with the incarnation of Christ at the very center point of the cosmos and of all human history.  He’s at the center.  That’s how we count.

Sometimes when people don’t understand what’s going on at the Mass, I’ll say, “Well, you know, it’s okay.”  The Mass is not something that started in America, nor is it something that came over from Europe.  It comes from the Middle East.  What we do always comes from the Middle East.  Those are the origins of our faith, the patterns.

This year, the whole Passover Week is exactly the same as Holy Week.  It began as did our Holy Week, as is the Jewish custom.  A lot of our roots are taken from our great Jewish ancestors.  There are a lot of the roots of this faith.  And so, the pattern for this Holy Week begins when?  Sunset, Saturday night, last Saturday night.  Because in the Jewish reckoning, the day always begins at sunset the night before.  That’s when you start counting it.  So, what we call the Vigil Mass is really a Sunday Mass, but it’s done in vigil, the night before.  That’s when Passover begins.

Holy Week finishes on Easter Sunday at sunset.  That means that the week is right smack on top of the feast of Passover.  It suggests to us, especially in the celebration of Holy Thursday, the many gifts that accompany these celebrations.  Think of the great gifts of today:  the first First Holy Communion.  Some have said the first Mass – I suppose you could, but it was definitely the first First Holy Communion for all the Apostles.  This was the beginning of the Eucharist that is to accompany us, the manna from heaven, built on the Jewish patterns.  And now, we have not the manna that came down during the night, nor the quail that they were able to kill to eat, but the Body and Blood of Christ.

So tonight, we commemorate the gift of the Eucharist, the institution of the Eucharist.  We commemorate the institution of the New Testament priesthood, not the Aaronic priesthood of offering sacrifices, but the New Testament priesthood.  When did that happen?  Well, you’re going to hear it at Mass tonight, when He says, “Do this in memory of Me.”  It’s that simple.  It wasn’t like a Super Bowl half-time show.  In all simplicity, the greatest gift to the Apostles around was: “Do this (what we do tonight) in memory of Me.”

So, think about what went before you.  I think, especially when I’m among Catholics, that every single one of you came from immigrant stock.  There wasn’t one of us who didn’t, if you check back in your family.  Maybe you remember the stories.  I’m old enough.  I guess I got the fresh stories of the trip over:  steerage in the boat, the anti-Catholic prejudice.  I got all the stories.  Maybe you got some of them.  But that’s part of your depth, because those people came with a faith.  When you think of all those in our own families who came over, they didn’t know what they were getting into.

Like a lot of life, if you really knew what you were getting into, you’d beg off.  We’d say, “I don’t think so.  I’m afraid.”  But we got into it and flourished.  We follow the Jewish pattern.  So, what happened that first Passover?  First of all, we hear the command.  Egypt is the slave-owner.  The people of Israel are in Egypt.  They were in Egypt and were enslaved, and they were just pushed harder and harder.  They’re pushed to their breaking point.  It’s Moses whom God chooses to lead them out.  And he gives them their order for Passover.

First of all, Passover is meant to be commemorated in the family or in the local community.  By Jesus’ time, when they were celebrating Passover, there was a rule:  you couldn’t leave Jerusalem.  The whole family had to come to Jerusalem.  The whole family had to get together.  This is a family feast.  The whole family had to get together because that’s where you get your strength.  And there you heard the orders:  to sacrifice the lamb, to eat the meal, a convivial meal.  The rule was that you couldn’t leave Jerusalem, because they said, on this one night, everybody’s got to be there, because it’s so important to keep that tradition.  Otherwise, we risk just falling apart, if we don’t remember.

Of course, then, the eating of the Passover lamb is a foreshadowing of Christ who will become the lamb of the Passover. The understanding is that what was begun in the Passover is continued in the pattern. First of all, the Church is still a pilgrim people.  Israel had a promised land to look forward to.  We have a different promised land, for which we depend on the manna from heaven, and we still know that we are nomadic.  We’re nomadic people in the sense still that there is no lasting city, that we can’t count on making this earth perfect. Pope Benedict said, “If we try to think this world is supposed to be perfected, we’ll make Hell out of it.”   Our lives are carried out in moments of great beauty and in moments of great darkness and sadness, where each generation, and the Church in each generation, has its own challenges on the way, always on the way, looking forward to the final resolution.

And so, we get to take nourishment from, not the manna that came down from heaven, but the Body and Blood of Christ.  On the journey, we always need to be grateful, as God taught Israel to be, for the beautiful things given it.  We must also keep faith through the sad times as well, keeping faith through tough times because Israel’s been through them, and the Church has been through them.  There’s no generation that hasn’t, and that’s a way, I think, to interpret our own lives.

In our lives, there come times of great fullness, when you can’t imagine it being any other way and equal times of emptiness, when you can’t imagine it being any other way.  Yet somehow, in every generation, we turn ourselves over finally to God.  We surrender to this manna from heaven.  So, every generation is able to give its own witness that God did provide.

Bestow Your Spirit

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 29, 2024 — Year B
Readings: Nm 11:25-29 / Ps 19 / Jas 5:1-6 / Mk 9:38-43, 45, 47-48
by Rev. David Stanfill, Guest Celebrant

In the first reading from the Book of Numbers, Moses says, “Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets, would that the Lord might bestow His spirit on all of them.”  And then Jesus says something very similar: “There’s no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time think ill of me, for whoever is not against us, is for us.”

I love what Moses said to the young man who was scandalized that the two stray men receive the Holy Spirit, but not in the planned way, and I love that Jesus says the same response when he tells His disciples, because they are upset that someone else who isn’t a regular follower was driving out demons in Jesus’ name.

God’s grace, God’s many gifts don’t always come in the pathways that we expect. It is an unfortunately natural jealous reaction in us that resents that someone isn’t a follower of Jesus the right way, and we’ve missed the great presence of the Lord working in that person, through that person, because it isn’t happening the approved way, the way that we think it should be.

Think about the current conflicts and controversies in the government, even in the Church concerning Pope Francis, and how he’s proclaiming the Gospel and the Church teachings in a different way than other popes or Church leaders have in the past. Because conservative Church leaders or conservative radio hosts don’t hear Francis standing up strongly for the issues or doctrines that they feel are most important, they say things to weaken the message that’s being given, they criticize.

And it’s easy to criticize, it’s easy to jump to conclusions, it’s easy to favor our own way of thinking.   Sometimes, if a person doesn’t like if you’re not from their team, their club, their fraternity, their political party, their theological direction, nothing you say will be good enough to please them. If we get in our mind that a person doesn’t like us, then we can interpret anything that they say as insulting or confrontational, even if what they’re saying is true.

I remember having some hard feelings towards my father when I was a teenager. He was always on me about my hair or other things too.  You wouldn’t think about it now to see me, but at one time, I had a really thick head of hair and wore it unkempt and long all the time.  He did not like that. My father came from a military family, you see, and he thought any head of hair that could hold a part was way too long. Finally, at my mother’s urging, to keep the peace, I went to the barber myself and I got a haircut that I thought was better, but probably still borderline.   So, I get home from the barbershop and my father takes one look at me and says, “Hey, nice haircut.”  And before his words registered in my brain, I jumped right back at him angrily and I said, “What do you mean by that?  You never like my hair!  Why can’t you just give me a break?”  He was giving me a compliment, and I took it as an insult. Selective hearing can get us into a lot of trouble, for sure.

People can too often easily condemn others, whether they are bad sinners or just people who don’t seem to be following the rules.  Jesus sees the presence of the Spirit where we do not sometimes. Thank goodness for that. Jesus is always looking for the good in us and in everyone.  So, we can be encouraged to look more deeply for the effects of the Spirit’s working, rather than in the externals.  Each of us can look for ways to do this.

In our reading from St. James, it’s quite concrete.  Several weeks ago, he challenged us to notice whether we treat wealthy visitors better than poor ones.  The next week, he reminded us of the importance of good works in the form of care for others as a sign of our true faith.  Then last week, he warned us about the results of jealousy and selfish ambition, as well as the divisive passions that are within us.  This week, he reminds us that wealth is corrosive and it will devour our flesh like a fire.  And he powerfully points out to us that our injustices towards others are crying aloud.

Jesus offers us a remedy from the things that take us in such dangerous, destructive, and sinful directions.  He tells us to cut it off, to separate ourselves from what is the source of our self-defeat.  The easiest way to begin that journey is for us to recognize the problem.   Why am I so judgmental? Why do I always seek to have more, to look better than others? Why do justice or care for those on the margins come to me with such difficulty?  What causes me to sin?

From there, we can ask for forgiveness in healing, and asking for healing can lead us to identify what instincts and practices and habits that I can change, what I should cut off from my life.   Change is difficult, that’s for sure. We only change something in our life, which has become habitual or addictive when we arrive at a deeper desire for something else, something better. Otherwise, it’s just so easy to deny that we even have a problem, even when we know we aren’t happy.  When we experience God’s love and mercy filling our hearts with gratitude, then we can want to be closer to the one who loves us.   Being closer to Jesus leads us to want to be more like Him.   Gradually, over time, His love heals our wounds, changes us, and it helps us to make our heart like His.   Let’s bow our heads now and pray for that right now.

Dear Lord, fill our hearts with Your love and then open our hearts to love the way that You love. Open our hearts to those who are different from us, difficult for us, to those who have hurt us in the past. Let us see, or at least believe, that Your own spirit is with them, in them somehow.   Let us believe there is a path to You from every human heart, even the most sinful, those who are most insecure and difficult. Transform us, O Lord, and help us become instruments of Your justice, real advocates for those in need. We ask this, trusting in Your spirit’s work within each of us.  Amen.

Right on Time

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time
June 23, 2024 — Year B
Readings: Jb 38:1, 8-11 / Ps 107 / 2 Cor 5:14-17 / Mk 4:35-41
by Rev. Louis Benoit, Guest Celebrant

Today’s gospel has a few meanings.  One meaning is that Jesus is the fulfillment of God in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, especially in the book of Psalms, like the psalm we just heard, we hear how God is over all creation and over the storms and the winds, with God having domination over all those things.  So, we see Jesus fulfilling these Old Testament aspects of God, being creator and domineering over all.

Also, at the beginning of Mark’s gospel, we are told who Jesus is.  However, for Jesus’ followers, that gradually unfolds as the gospel goes on.  As they see Jesus doing various things, it deepens their faith in who Jesus is.

And so, we have, at the last line of today’s gospel, “Who then is this, whom even the wind and sea obey?”  It’s the deeper knowledge of who Jesus is, as they come to a deeper faith in Him.  For the apostles, it’s a deepening of faith.  And it’s a faith that needs to be deepened.  He asked them, “Why are you terrified?  Do you not yet have faith?”  And that’s not just an admonition, but it’s calling them into deeper faith in who Jesus is, and of course, they are questioning it.

Who then is this, whom even the winds and sea obey?  Now, for us, it’s a very good gospel.  How many times in your life have you felt you were in your own little boat on rough seas and by yourself, and you don’t know where to turn?  I think anyone who has logged in some adult years can identify times when that has happened.  And yet, do you doubt that Jesus is in the boat with you?  I think we do doubt when we are being tossed about by the waves of life, and wondering where God is, but Jesus is with you.

You know, the apostles weren’t too keen on that, but although He was asleep on a cushion, He was with them, and that’s for us to see that Jesus is with us.  And we have things that keep us from that.  We have a peculiar situation in our country that militates against that, that we so over-emphasize independence.  We tend to ignore our dependence on God and others.  And we are very dependent on people.  This over-emphasis on independence is not a good thing, because we are extremely dependent.

You’re dependent on dozens of people every day.  We can’t live alone; it’s impossible.  And so, we have to get that sense of dependence, and many times in a sense of dependence, we find the presence of Jesus in other people around us.  If we get too much into our own independence, we don’t see it.  But Jesus is with us, and many times it’s with the people who are surrounding us.  We’re not as independent as we think.

Years ago, I was chaplain of a Youth Development Center.  It’s kind of a reform school for young men, and many of them were extremely belligerent and believed that they didn’t need anybody and could get by on their own.   So, I played a little game with them.  I said, “Well, if you are so independent, what would you do if you were out in the woods alone?  How would you survive?”  A response might be, “Well, I’d get an axe and I’d chop down some trees.”  I would respond, “Wait, wait, where did you get that axe?  Didn’t somebody provide that for you?”  And as I played that game and kept pushing it, and they realized that if they were totally independent, they’d be standing naked in the woods.

We’re terribly dependent, and we really need Jesus, and we really need each other, and sometimes “each other” is the presence of Jesus.  That’s the way it is, and we have to realize our dependence on Jesus, and that Jesus is with us to calm the storms of life.

The other aspect of this, a totally different aspect but a very important one, is that it’s God’s creation, not ours.  We have a terrible time with this.  But God is the one who is running the show, not us.  And we have to learn to be able to discern God’s action in our lives and what that action is calling us to.

I know that almost any of you my age or even a bit younger can recall times in your life when things happened that you hadn’t planned, but it worked out for the best.  You know, God was working, and it was God’s plan, not yours.  And so, it’s for us to see that no, we’re not running the show, and when we try to run the show, we can end up feeling very alone, swamped by the waves of life.  We are trying to run everything ourselves, and we do the best we can with life, but always with an openness to God’s presence, God’s plan, and God’s direction.  It’s God’s, not ours.

I love an old spiritual that the gospel choir at St. Gerard’s used to sing.  The chorus of the song says, “He ain’t always there when you want Him, but He’s always right on time.”  That’s a bit humorous, but it’s quite profound.  You know, He ain’t always there when you want Him, but He’s always right on time.

Can I Get a Witness?

Third Sunday of Easter
April 14, 2024 — Year B
Readings: Acts 3:13-15, 17-19 / Ps 4 / 1 Jn 2:1-5a / Lk 24:35-48
by Rev. Jay Biber, Guest Celebrant

Some of your fellow parishioners are away on a Cursillo weekend.  If you are not familiar with that word, it’s a Spanish word which means “a short course.”  In Christianity, it began almost a hundred years ago as a way of revitalizing the Faith among lay people.

And so, this is a women’s Cursillo going on this weekend, and like all Catholic stuff, there’s a specific order to it.  There’s reason behind it.  It’s ordered so it exposes the core elements of the Faith in an ordered way, but it’s also very personal.  There’s a lot of witnessing to people’s own experiences.  One of the things that happens is what they call the Emmaus Walk.

What we begin the gospel with today is the end of that walk.  Two discouraged disciples encounter Christ on the way to Jerusalem, on the road.  They are so discouraged and heartsick.  They think that everything they hope for is gone.  They meet the risen Christ, but they don’t recognize Him, and He explains it all.  He lays it all out to them – this is how it had to happen.  And then at the end, when did they recognize Him?  This is the breaking of the bread; that’s when they recognize Him.

The women on Cursillo this weekend are from as far Charlottesville, Harrisonburg, Waynesboro, Roanoke, this whole part of the state.  On this Emmaus Walk, two participants are paired with each other; they go out and walk for half an hour.  They are a couple of days into this experience already, and it’s probably begun to shake up their hearts a little bit.  This is the time when they’re saying, “This is the time; what’s going on in there?”  They get a chance to talk; and they know they won’t be judged.  They probably don’t know the other person to start with.  But they know that God is at work, and it’s a good opportunity to put their faith into words.

At the core of our Faith is the capacity to take into the world, sort of like charity.  It begins at home, but it doesn’t end there.  The giving of witness, a testimony is a way of doing that.  Telling the stories begins at home, but it doesn’t end there.  The allusions to witnessing are strong.  If you believe you have a gift to give, a gift around which you can organize your whole life, a gift that echoes through the ages, that gift can be shared with simple people, complicated people, rich people, poor people, educated, not educated people.  We can give that gift to our children by telling them here’s where you are, you’re a member of this family, you belong here, you’re not just some piece adrift in the universe.  As you’re at this table, you’re part of a great family, and it goes way, way back in time and every place on Earth.

Think about Peter in the Acts of the Apostles.  He says the author of life you put to death, but God raised him from the dead.  Of this we are witnesses.  That’s what the apostles were doing – being witnesses and giving a testimony.  And then of course in the gospel, it is Jesus himself.  Thus, is it written – He’s laying out what you can do with your children and tell them the stories that say that Christ would suffer and rise from the dead.  So, you don’t have to panic or run away.  No – He said this was going to happen and that repentance for the forgiveness would be preached in his name.  Where?  To all the nations.  And you are witnesses of these things.

In the summer of 1983, I had completed my seminary studies but had declined ordination in 1972.  I went into the business world, enjoyed the heck out of it, and thought I’d be married with a family by 1982.  But it didn’t happen, and I began to consider ordination.  People asked if it was the hand of God, and I said no, I think it was the foot!  He was nagging me.  I thought I had a better idea, but long story short, I was in Boston at the time, and happened to meet the bishop; he asked if I wanted to go to school.  I said no, I need to decide if I have enough faith for something like this, and I don’t know if I’d be any good at it.  I needed to know if people would think I was any good at it.  I said I don’t know what I think; you’ll have to throw me in the pool.  So, he did; I started off at six months at St. Vincent DePaul by the shipyard in Newport News.  That was a special blessing because it was way ahead of its time in a lot of ways.  It was a very integrated parish.  I sang with the folk group and a gospel choir both.

When summer came, I knew this would be a real test because I worked up at what was then called Medical College of Virginia in Richmond.  I liked it, because it was a combination of the hospitals I had known in Boston, a little of Mass General, and a little bit of Boston City Hospitals – Mass General being the high-end teaching place for all the exotic stuff, and Boston City being a tough hospital in the inner city.  MCV (now VCU Medical Center) was both.  I spent ten weeks there in the summer of ’83.  And I was a wreck at the end of it – we were on call two nights a week and saw all that comes in in the course of a night.  My special unit was the burn unit in which people come from all over.  I also had general surgery which included a lot of gunshot and knife wounds. These are tough places to be.  I wondered if I could bring faith to this whole world, not just to Catholics.  It was awful at the time, but it did the trick, and I decided that I could go on.

At the same time, I realized that I was going to benefit from being there.  Broad Street in Richmond is a great dividing line between white and black neighborhoods.  And there I was on campus at VCU staying in one of the dorms.  And somebody recommended that I visit a Baptist Church right near here – Cedar Street Baptist.  So, I would go to Mass at St. Peter’s (the original Cathedral for our diocese) near the state capital, and then I’d go to Cedar Street Baptist, and there I experienced my introduction into this brilliant black culture, where the whole idea of witnessing is very important.  The gospel choir and the preaching are very important, and they would say that it’s not even a prayer until you break a sweat.  There’s an energy to it; ours is beautiful but much more modest.  There are so many beautiful ways to pray.  So, we’d be singing and then there was a quiet, beautiful ritual to it.  As it warmed up, you’d hear the Amen Corner.

We have our own Amen Corner; we have the back and forth which is a core of our worship.  “The Lord be with you.”  “And with your spirit.”  “Lift up your hearts.”  “We lift them up unto the Lord.”  We do that throughout the whole liturgy.  The antiphon is the back-and-forth prayer.  In the black churches, there was a time when the church was the only place they could legally meet.  The church was where everyone was at home, and as the preacher would warm up, people would say, “Come on now, preach!” to encourage.  At some point, he would ask, “Can I get a witness?”  They recognized the depth.  Of course, this is a witness that’s gone through things that you can’t imagine.  This is a witness that goes back how many generations?  A witness where the only one was God; the only one was Christ.

What a lesson.  You know, the centrality of the witness that would tell the story and break out into a testimony.  I had an event this past week in Lexington where there were a lot of college kids.  There was free pizza – what’s not to love?  The program was on loss and joy and included a bunch of kids from W&L and VMI and also parishioners.  I told them that I look at them differently than their professors do, because I look at you and I say, I want you to be ready to be able to your 3-year-old seven years from now, to be able to give a witness to your 10-year-old, to your 16-year-old, to put the story of your faith on your own lips, and learn how to do it with great confidence.  I want to say that you want to have children, that you are not afraid, and I have the big story of our Faith to tell them, and the personal stories that go with it – the personal stories that illumine the big story.  And I said that’s what I like to see.  Of course, giving a witness is a little bit like dancing – you’re scared stiff because you move one foot and you don’t know what the other is going to do yet.

But what a beautiful gift to give – it’s how the faith gets spread to the corners of the earth.  Our way of looking at things, telling the big story, as those women are doing on their Cursillo this weekend, telling their stories as well.  It becomes an enormous gift, because I know that whatever happens to my child, in success or in moments of difficulties, Christ will be there.  I’ll have words on my lips to say that we don’t have to run from anyone.

God’s Infinite Mercy

Second Sunday of Easter
Sunday of Divine Mercy
April 7, 2024 — Year B
Readings: Acts 4:32-35 / Ps 118 / 1 Jn 5:1-6 / Jn 20:19-31
by Rev. Jay Biber, Guest Celebrant

Ancient baptismal fonts would be octagons in shape.  You’d walk in one side with moving water, a river flowing through, built separate from the church. You’d be received, and you’d have your old crummy clothes on, and those would be taken. Those would be left behind, and you’d walk through the water, you’d be baptized in the water, and then you’d be given all new garments. You’d be a new creation, a new person. And you’d walk out a different door than the one you came in, on a different side. You can see that still on the coast of France, the ancient churches from the fourth and fifth centuries, where you still see the octagonal baptismal font.

The whole idea of the octagon is that you have the week as seven days, but the eighth is the first day of the new creation. If you’re in France, they don’t say “I’ll see you in a week;” they say “On se voit dans huit jours,” we’ll see each other in eight days. That notion of the octave makes its way into the ordinary daily language.

Pope John Paul II and St. Faustina Kowalska had a vision of the glorified Christ; that’s what is described here, the glorified Christ. This is not the same as being resuscitated, as when a person “dies” during an operation and is brought back. In that situation, the person who comes back is the same one as the one who left, as in the case of Lazarus. Christ was able to resuscitate, to revive Lazarus, even though he was clearly dead for four days.

But the Resurrection is what we pray for when we say, “I believe in the resurrection of the body” in the Apostles’ Creed. Our bodies are so important that Christ took on a body in the Incarnation. We look forward to that Resurrection in our glorified body. The glorified body, what will it look like? Will it be an old one or a young one? God brought us into being from nothing, that’s how important our bodies are. That’s where a lot of our moral code comes from, the significance of the human body. And so, do you want your body to be a playground or a temple?

This great week of Easter is largely a story of mercy. St. Faustina Kowalska developed the Divine Mercy devotion. And for those of you not familiar with it, it’s a devotion that’s prayed on your rosary. Just like you pray your rosary, you work the same beads. You do the same beads with different prayers, and super focused on the Passion, the suffering that Christ went through for us.

What does mercy look like? The community of believers was of one heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions were his. Think of it like this, if you eliminated the word “mine” from your vocabulary. They had everything in common, no needy person among them. Those who had property or houses would sell them and put the proceeds at the feet of the apostles, and they would distribute them to each according to need.

Now this is not the same as Das Kapital by Karl Marx; this is not some communistic thing at all, because it’s not taking the aristocracy and eliminating it and replacing it with the state with a lot of force. No, I think this is that, from having experienced mercy, having known what mercy was like, what mercy does to set us free. We have the instinct to protect and mark our territory; that’s evolutionary, that makes sense. There’s also that other competing instinct within us to go outside of ourselves.

I sensed it in that early community that when mercy has touched you, fear leaves you. And the stuff that you can’t do when you’re afraid, you can now do, when you not only believe in God, but when you can say with St. Faustina, “Jesus, I trust in you,” and entrust Him with the details of your life.

Can you imagine if you place yourself in that upper room? You’re one of the apostles who have made all the promises to Jesus, and the last He saw of you was your back. Peter, of course, collapsed once he heard the cock crow, for that exposed him, exposed all the shame of having dropped the ball in the one great moment that he had. Judas sold him out. The others had fled, and here they are gathered in fear when the Resurrected One joins them. Walks through the locked door. And what does He say now?

If I had like eleven friends abandon me like that, I’m thinking I might have some salty language for them. But no, Christ says, “Peace be with you,” of all things. And then it says the disciples rejoiced. We can rejoice in the gift that Thomas the doubting one, a scant twenty years after his own moment of doubt, brought his faith to India and proudly died a martyr, as did eleven of the twelve apostles, pouring out their blood joyfully for the sake of being able to bring the scriptures.

Can we really believe that God is that merciful? Are there chances that you can show mercy? I suspect that you will begin to feel that freedom and deep joy, because now you’re beginning to see through the eyes of Christ.