Homilies

When people go on trips and visit new places, they often look for and collect souvenirs to bring home such as t-shirts, coffee mugs, jewelry, or art work made by a local artist.

After my last fun-filled day at Disneyland several years ago, I joined other shoppers looking at the last minute for that perfect souvenir. My friend, Bob, persuaded me to buy this cap since Fantasia is one of my favorite movies. Souvenirs are reminders of where we have been, what we have heard and seen, and what we have done. Souvenirs along with our snapshots are the next best thing to be being there.

 

Today, each of us has received a souvenir of Holy Week, a simple yet powerful reminder of a trip we have just begun. Our souvenir is a palm branch. Hopefully, you will take this branch home and keep it in sight as a reminder of the tour St. Mark has just taken us on.

 

From Bethany in the home of Simon the leper, where a woman anointed Jesus with perfumed oil, we ventured to Jerusalem where Jesus and his disciples gathered for one last meal, a meal that has been celebrated many times since all over the world. We then continued on to Gethsemane to the Mount of Olives where Jesus prayed and the disciples slept and Jesus asked if they could keep watch for one hour.

 

But Mark’s tour didn’t end there. We have also been to the high priest’s courtyard, where Peter denied Jesus three times and heard the cock crow, to the praetorium, to a hilltop called Golgotha, and finally to a tomb where a stone was rolled across the entrance.

 

Our palm branch reminds us of what we have seen and heard. From the words of praise as Jesus entered the city riding a colt, to the angry words of a fickle crowd that just a few days later shouted, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” From the words of anguish as Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” to the centurion’s words of awe, “Truly, this man was the son of God!” 

 

This palm branch is our precious souvenir of the passion and death of Jesus. I urge you not to toss this palm branch out but to treat it with reverence and respect when you get home, for this simple souvenir is a vivid reminder of Jesus’ immense love for you.

 

But these branches are more than simple souvenirs of times past. As we venture into the holiest week of the year, they are an invitation to recount our salvation history.

 

Lent ends at sundown this Thursday. That is when the Triduum begins, the three most sacred days of the year for us. We will follow Jesus to the last supper. The next evening on Good Friday as we begin the second day of the Triduum, we witness his suffering and death as we gather to recall the passion according to St. John and venerate the cross.  The third day of the Triduum begins on Holy Saturday evening at the Easter Vigil.

 

At the vigil, weather permitting, we gather in darkness at 9 to be startled by the paschal fire, a visual reminder that Christ, our light, has risen from the dead to dispel the darkness of sin from our lives. Then we will welcome those who have been preparing for full initiation into our Church to be one with us at the Lord’s Table. The Triduum ends at sundown on Easter. Come and journey with us through all three days.

 

A week from today, your palm branch will be more than just a souvenir of this day; it will be our trophy over sin and death, a sign and symbol to hang proudly in our homes as a reminder that someday we too will rise from the dead!

 

I was seventeen when my father died unexpectedly of a heart attack.  I can still remember the moment when the call came from the hospital that he was dead.

That morning, nearly forty years ago, I dealt with death up front for the first time.  Aunts, uncles and grandparents had died but they didn’t live nearby.  I knew that I would never see them again but this was different.  Dad would not be home for dinner that night.  I would not see him around the house ever again. I had to imagine my father leaving on another trip, this time with a one way ticket, not into oblivion but to eternal life.

 

My father’s death comes to mind because you just heard the gospel passage proclaimed at his funeral.  I remember vividly hearing the words, “I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me, even though he dies, will live, and he who lives and believes in me will never die.”  Until then, those words had never hit home but now I had to believe them.  I just had to.

 

Face it, death is a subject that few of us care to talk about.  But the day will come when we will never see another sunrise or look upon the faces of those we love.  As common as death is, we use cosmetic words to soften its blow by saying so and so has passed away or has expired like a magazine subscription.  Many of us have lost friends and loved ones due to terminal illnesses and fatal accidents.  With good intention, others frequently encourage us to accept the outcome as though “It’s God’s will.”

 

I cannot believe that God would will the pain of any illness or accident on anyone. Be it the congestive heart failure my mother endured or the slow paralyzing death my friend, Jock, sustained from Lou Gehrig’s disease, or the bouts of cancer that have claimed the lives of friends and family in my lifetime. Nor can I believe that God would will for anyone to die traumatically as two teenagers did recently in a traffic accident not far from here, or in an act of random violence like what happened last weekend on Capitol Hill, or any other tragedy that disrupts the lives of those who survive.

 

To suggest that the appointed manner and time of my death is God’s will is to claim that God has control over my destiny. But what about our free will?  For our love to be real, God gives us free will, which allows us the freedom to do much with our lives, both good and bad, including making choices that impact our health and well-being in this lifetime and our destiny in the lifetime to come.

 

Any cardiologist today would tell me that my parents ultimately dug their own graves by the manner in which they lived their lives, exercising little, smoking heavily, and eating a poor diet until the damage was done. That cannot always be said for the victims of other illnesses but possibly their own will put them in the wrong place at the wrong time, making them vulnerable to whatever infected them.

 

The same could be said for the victims of most accidents.  Being in a given spot at the wrong time can put us at the mercy of others or of factors beyond our control.  Once while driving northbound on I-5 near Everett, a car skidded out of control across three lanes right in front of me. Had I been there seconds earlier, I would have likely been hit broadside or even head-on. 

 

Sooner or later, death will be our common experience.  If the reaction of Jesus to the death of his close friend, Lazarus, is any indication, God does not take any delight in this reality of life but never wanting to let go of us, God extends the promise of everlasting life to those who believe, as did Martha, in the resurrection. That we are destined to live forever has always been a tenacious belief of every Christian. The catechism puts it this way, “We firmly believe, and hence we hope that, just as Christ is truly risen from the dead and lives forever, so after death the righteous will live for ever with the risen Christ and he will raise them up on the last day.” (CCC 989)

The story of Lazarus is in fact our story for his name literally means, “helpless.”  There are moments in our lifetime when we feel utterly helpless and dying is likely to be one of them. That is how Jesus found Lazarus and as we heard he restored his friend to new life. 

 

And that is what we believe he has done for every righteous person since then.  In Masses for the dead, we hear the lines, “Lord, for your faithful people, life is changed, not ended. When the body of our earthly dwelling lies in death we gain an everlasting dwelling place in heaven.”  As St. Theresa of Avila said, “I am not dying; I am entering life.”

 

All of us, whether baptized or about to be baptized, should be uplifted by the claim Jesus makes in today’s gospel, “I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he should die, will come to life; and whoever is alive and believes in me will never die.” imagine Jesus posing the question to us that he asked Martha, “Do you believe this?” With her, let us each say, “Yes, Lord, I have come to believe that you are the Messiah.”

 

We need not fear the moment when death arrives for this will be, to borrow a line from Charles Dickens, the best of times. Unbounded by our earthly restraints, we will be free at last to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

 

Jesus brings us hope in place of despair and light in place of darkness. His words should remove whatever fear of dying we have for he is giving us the promise of everlasting life.

Where do you see yourself in this story? As one who can see or as one who is blind?  The answer may not be so apparent to those of us who presume to see what is going on like the Pharisees did, but really couldn’t see the light.

 

In my childhood, perhaps the best known blind person in our country was Helen Keller who lost her sight and hearing when she was 19 months old.  She grew up to become a highly regarded author.  On our failure to see what is around us, she wrote, “One day I asked a friend of mine who had just returned from a long walk in the woods what she had seen. She replied, ‘Nothing in particular.’

 

“How was this possible? I asked myself, when I, who cannot hear or see, find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate shape and design of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly over the rough bark of a pine tree.  Occasionally, if I’m lucky, I place my hand quietly on a small tree, and feel the happy quiver of a bird in full song.

 

“All this has convinced me of one thing: the greatest calamity that can befall people, is not that they should be born blind, but rather that they should have eyes and yet fail to see.”

 

A blind man who fell in love with a young woman raises that same observation in the film, Butterflies are Free. To get away from an over protective mother, Don moved into a shabby one-room apartment.  He tries to support himself as a singer and a composer. Along comes Jill who was briefly married once.  Her love was rejected and the experience wounded her badly. Jill becomes affectionate toward her next door neighbor and falls in love with him. But when Don proposes marriage, she turns him down.

 

Although she loves him and wants to marry him, Jill is afraid that she will be hurt again just as she was the first time she married. Don tells her that although she has eyes to see, she is the one who is really blind because she is afraid to step out in faith and make another commitment to love someone. His faith and courage eventually convince Jill to open her eyes and see the freedom from fear she could have.

 

There is a striking parallel between that movie scenario and the blind man and the Pharisees in today’s Gospel. As the blind man slowly progresses from darkness to light, those most critical of what is happening, the Pharisees, seem to be moving in the opposite direction.

 

The blind man gradually comes to see who Jesus is.  At first he refers to Jesus as the man who healed him. Then he describes Jesus as a prophet. Then during an intense interrogation, he insists that Jesus must be a man from God. Finally, he believes in Jesus as the Son of Man.

 

The Pharisees on the other hand plunge deeper into darkness.  They thought of themselves as having the light but they cannot bring themselves to recognize who Jesus is. Their closed-mindedness keeps them from seeing that Jesus was not only a great man and a great prophet but also the Son of God.

 

This really isn’t a story of a physical healing intended to awe us. Rather, this gospel passage is about us in our spiritual blindness.  As the line in the renowned hymn, Amazing Grace, puts it, “Was blind but now I see.”

 

All of us came into the world blinded by original sin from the fullness of God’s light and love.  By virtue of our baptism, we can see Jesus but is our vision still on the fuzzy side?  Anyone who has had cataracts knows what I mean by that. Are we still blinded by our personal sinfulness from seeing all that we can be?

 

Like the Pharisees and Jill, we can blind ourselves in so many ways.  We walk in darkness whenever we close our eyes to our fears and selfishness or whenever we refuse to face the truth about our hang-ups, addictions and greed. We walk in darkness whenever we fail to see the sufferings of the poor, the sick, and the abandoned or whenever we ignore the lonely, the oppressed, and the downtrodden.

 

To walk in the light means not literally to see but to see more than meets the eye, to have a vision of our potential, and to make commitments to live our faith. As Paul tells us in his letter, we are children of the light whenever we produce every kind of goodness and justice and truth. Light shines through us every time we brighten the lives of others.

 

The good news on this Laetare Sunday is that Jesus wants to do for us what he did for the blind man. Like him, we can be cured of our spiritual blindness, but first we must rid ourselves of those false values that blind us from the truth of who Jesus is.  Imagine how deep our faith would be if we could open our eyes and truly see what Jesus has to offer us.  John’s intent here is to show us what Jesus can do for us. To come to him in faith is to accept the light; to reject him is to remain in darkness.  The choice is up to you.

In my childhood, perhaps the best known blind person in our country was Helen Keller who lost her sight and hearing when she was 19 months old.  She grew up to become a highly regarded author.  On our failure to see what is around us, she wrote, “One day I asked a friend of mine who had just returned from a long walk in the woods what she had seen. She replied, ‘Nothing in particular.’

 

“How was this possible? I asked myself, when I, who cannot hear or see, find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate shape and design of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly over the rough bark of a pine tree.  Occasionally, if I’m lucky, I place my hand quietly on a small tree, and feel the happy quiver of a bird in full song.

“All this has convinced me of one thing: the greatest calamity that can befall people, is not that they should be born blind, but rather that they should have eyes and yet fail to see.”

 

A blind man who fell in love with a young woman raises that same observation in the film, Butterflies are Free. To get away from an over protective mother, Don moved into a shabby one-room apartment.  He tries to support himself as a singer and a composer. Along comes Jill who was briefly married once.  Her love was rejected and the experience wounded her badly. Jill becomes affectionate toward her next door neighbor and falls in love with him. But when Don proposes marriage, she turns him down.

 

Although she loves him and wants to marry him, Jill is afraid that she will be hurt again just as she was the first time she married. Don tells her that although she has eyes to see, she is the one who is really blind because she is afraid to step out in faith and make another commitment to love someone. His faith and courage eventually convince Jill to open her eyes and see the freedom from fear she could have.

 

There is a striking parallel between that movie scenario and the blind man and the Pharisees in today’s Gospel. As the blind man slowly progresses from darkness to light, those most critical of what is happening, the Pharisees, seem to be moving in the opposite direction.

 

The blind man gradually comes to see who Jesus is.  At first he refers to Jesus as the man who healed him. Then he describes Jesus as a prophet. Then during an intense interrogation, he insists that Jesus must be a man from God. Finally, he believes in Jesus as the Son of Man.

 

The Pharisees on the other hand plunge deeper into darkness.  They thought of themselves as having the light but they cannot bring themselves to recognize who Jesus is. Their closed-mindedness keeps them from seeing that Jesus was not only a great man and a great prophet but also the Son of God.

 

This really isn’t a story of a physical healing intended to awe us. Rather, this gospel passage is about us in our spiritual blindness.  As the line in the renowned hymn, Amazing Grace, puts it, “Was blind but now I see.”

 

All of us came into the world blinded by original sin from the fullness of God’s light and love.  By virtue of our baptism, we can see Jesus but is our vision still on the fuzzy side?  Anyone who has had cataracts knows what I mean by that. Are we still blinded by our personal sinfulness from seeing all that we can be?

 

Like the Pharisees and Jill, we can blind ourselves in so many ways.  We walk in darkness whenever we close our eyes to our fears and selfishness or whenever we refuse to face the truth about our hang-ups, addictions and greed. We walk in darkness whenever we fail to see the sufferings of the poor, the sick, and the abandoned or whenever we ignore the lonely, the oppressed, and the downtrodden.

 

To walk in the light means not literally to see but to see more than meets the eye, to have a vision of our potential, and to make commitments to live our faith. As Paul tells us in his letter, we are children of the light whenever we produce every kind of goodness and justice and truth. Light shines through us every time we brighten the lives of others.

 

The good news on this Laetare Sunday is that Jesus wants to do for us what he did for the blind man. Like him, we can be cured of our spiritual blindness, but first we must rid ourselves of those false values that blind us from the truth of who Jesus is.  Imagine how deep our faith would be if we could open our eyes and truly see what Jesus has to offer us.  John’s intent here is to show us what Jesus can do for us. To come to him in faith is to accept the light; to reject him is to remain in darkness.  The choice is up to you.

Eagerly, he ran home to ask the big question, “Dad, can I go?” His family was poor, but his father sensed how badly his son wanted to go, so he said, “If you get your chores done in time, I’ll see to it that you can go.” The next morning, the chores were done and the young boy stood dressed in his Sunday best by the breakfast table. His father reached down into his overalls and pulled out a dollar bill –the most money the boy had ever had at one time in all his life.

His father cautioned him to be careful and then sent him on his way. The boy was so excited his feet hardly touched the ground along the way. When he got to town, he noticed people were lining the street, so he worked his way through the crowd until he could see what was coming. And there in the distance approached the spectacle of a circus parade.

It was the grandest thing this boy had ever seen. There were tigers and apes in cages, along with elephants, bands and clowns and all else that makes up a circus parade. After everything had passed by where he was standing, a traditional circus clown, with floppy shoes, baggy pants and brightly painted face came up in the rear.

As the clown passed by, the boy reached into his pocket and took out the precious dollar bill. Handing the money to the clown, the boy turned around and went home. He thought he had seen the circus. He didn’t realize that the best was yet to come. All he had seen was a preview, a glimpse of the wonderful performance that was to come under the big top.

 

As awesome as the transfiguration must have been for Peter, James and John, they hadn’t seen anything yet. They had yet to witness the passion or the resurrection or experience Pentecost. Certainly, the moment of the transfiguration was incredible but that’s all it was, a moment Peter wanted to lock in time when he offered to build tents for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. “Let’s hold on to this forever.”  And who could blame him? Until then, Peter, James and John had been fishermen who had abandoned their nets to follow a man whom they believed would save them. Jesus saved them all right, not as they had expected from the oppression of the Romans but from the oppression of sin.

Our first inclination when we read this gospel is to think that Jesus was the one who changed that day but the real transformation took place in the apostles. Their eyes were opened. In that moment they saw Jesus in his true nature as he really was and always has been. Fortunately for us, they saw the transfiguration as God’s invitation to move forward on a new path of faith.

We can allow ourselves to be transformed when we give Jesus the opportunity through the power of prayer and penance to take us up on the mountain and be enlightened as well. Like the boy, many of us think we have already seen the show but we really haven’t yet.

For many people, making time for Jesus is like making time for a favorite TV show, only this time, instead of an easy chair in the living room; it’s a pew in church. When the show is done, we move on with other activities until the following weekend, but as the week progresses, how often do we think to “listen to him?”  

At any given moment, we can find ourselves in a tug of war between the values of the gospel of Jesus that lead us to salvation and the values of our secular culture, which beckon us with promises of short lived pleasures that captivate us like any parade passing by.

More often than we care to admit, we sin without much thought to the consequences of our actions. We play down certain sins, convinced they will do no harm. Come judgment day, we may be surprised like the teenager who was stunned to find himself grounded after missing curfew one time too many. “Dad, if you had told me you were serious, I would have gotten home on time!”

Be advised, Jesus is serious when he tells us to turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel but for any number of reasons, we are reluctant to listen to him. We consider ourselves Christians yet how committed are we to doing what Jesus expects of us? Until we see the value of why God calls us to be faithful and obedient, we are apt to miss the show, just as the young boy missed seeing the circus.

Having seen the parade, the young boy thought he had seen it all and he went home. Think of how much he missed!  Think of how much the apostles would have missed had they left the mountain, figuring they had seen everything. Think of how much we are missing if we think right now that we know all there is to know about our faith or that we have as intimate a friendship with God as we can possibly have. Jesus has so much to teach us, to show us, and to share with us. No wonder, God says, “Listen to him.”  Jesus invites us to ascend the mountain with him and to place our trust in him.  Are we willing to give him the chance to transform us through prayer and scripture in the remaining weeks of Lent?

If you really want to “do” something for Lent, then listen.  Listen to the 

Son of God who invites you to journey with him to the mountain-top.  When we refuse to listen, we are likely to sin and for those times we now seek God’s forgiveness.