Sunday, March 28, 2021

Passion Sunday: Care for His Body

(Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord-Year B; This homily was given on March 28, 2021 at the Church of Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome, Italy; See Mark 14:1 to 15:47)
 

There is a short story that was written at the beginning of the 20th century by D.H. Lawrence called “Odour of Chysanthemums.”  It is about a small mining town in England.  The story begins with the main character, Lizzie, waiting for her husband, John, to come back from working in the mines.  When he does not get off the train she becomes bitter and remorseful.  Her husband has a problem with alcohol, and it is not the first time he has not come home immediately after work.  Especially on payday, he goes right to the pub, and makes it home much later if he is able to come back by his own power.


With bitterness, Lizzie reflects that he will not be home tonight until they come carrying him home.  Tragically, she is correct.  As the story unfolds we hear about a terrible accident that has happened in the mines.  The shaft had collapsed, trapping underground several of the men.  They had run out of air before they could be reached.  John’s lifeless body comes home, as Lizzie had predicted, being carried by his colleagues from the mines. 


As they bring him into the house, John’s mother is there, as well.  She is also devastated, and offers to help clean up the body, which is covered in coal, filth and grime.  Both women are surprised to see how terribly beautiful his countenance is as they clear off the dirt.  John’s mother says, “He went peaceful, Lizzie—peaceful as sleep.  Isn’t he beautiful, the lamb?”  Perhaps acknowledging all the pain he would have caused the family, the mother begins to explain that he must have had time to make his peace with God; he is her beautiful lamb and “he wouldn’t look like this if he hadn’t made his peace.”


The two women continue to wash the body when Lizzie becomes increasingly more uncomfortable and even disturbed.  She suddenly begins to reflect to herself:  


“Who am I?  What have I been doing?  I have been fighting a husband that did not exist.  He existed all the time.  What wrong have I done?  What was that I have been living with?  There lies the reality, this man.”


The narrator relates, chillingly, “And her soul died in her for fear: she knew she had never seen him, he had never seen her, they had met in the dark and had fought in the dark, not knowing whom they met nor whom they fought.  And now she saw, and turned silent in seeing.  For she had been wrong. She had said he was something he was not.”


It is only when she begins to care for the body of her husband that Lizzie discovers not only his beauty and depth, but also essential things about herself.  Some of those things are challenging and disturbing, but they are important for her to know and understand the truth.


The passion narrative that we listen to this weekend from St. Mark’s gospel is replete with references to the body of Jesus Christ.  As the narrative begins, we hear about the woman who came to Bethany to anoint the body of Christ in preparation for His burial.  In that act of generous love she comes to understand the depths of the love God has for her, that He will literally die for her.  Hence she comes to realize her own great worth and dignity in Christ.


At the Last Supper, Christ will give His body and blood to the Apostles as a total offering of love, helping them to see how very much He wills that they be united to Him and in Him.  They will never know themselves more completely than they will in that Blessed Sacrament.


Sadly it is the soldiers who fail to recognize the dignity they have been given and instead abuse the body of our Lord.  They spit upon Him, mock Him and scourge His body, seeing only its objective weakness.  They crucify the body of Christ and fail to see the very offering He is making for their salvation.


Joseph of Arimathea will lovingly seek to acquire the body of Christ and tenderly prepare it for burial, while Mary Magdalene will refuse to take her eyes off the body as she studies the place where Christ is buried.  She will be the first to see the risen body of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday.


Care for the body of Jesus Christ changes us.  We come to discover our own dignity, our own beauty when we truly appreciate and lovingly attach ourselves to Him.  In this Holy Week we seek to come to know Christ more deeply in the Blessed Sacrament on the altar and also in the depths of prayer and adoration, hoping to become more appreciative of all that God has created us for.


Care for the Body of Christ, of course, also means care and concern for His body, the Church.  Sometimes that can be the easiest and most natural thing in the world.  Sometimes it can be a tremendous challenge.  In particular, when we consider the sexual abuse crisis in the Church, or the financial crises that have rocked the Church in recent times, we can be tempted to become discouraged or cynical about the body of Christ.  Perhaps because of the personal situations we may have faced, when we were hurt or disappointed by the actions or words of other members of the Church, we may find it difficult to have the same love for the Church that we have for Jesus.


Like Lizzie, we are called to care for the body of Christ and to do everything in our power to make it beautiful.  By our prayer and works of penance we plead with God to purify His body and His bride, as He certainly does in His passion.  Christ challenges us this Passion Sunday to raise the bar, to love Him and to love the Church in a passionate and selfless way.  When we do, we come to discover our own dignity and the beauty that He has created us for from the beginning.

Sunday, March 14, 2021

Rebuilding the Castles

(Fourth Sunday of Lent-Year B; This homily was given on March 14, 2021 at the Church of Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome, Italy; See 2 Chronicles 36:14-23 and John 3:14-21)

There is a book series by C.S. Lewis called the Chronicles of Narnia.  The story centers around four children in London who discover a doorway into a mystical and magical land called Narnia.  There they encounter all kinds of adventures, led by the King of Narnia, Aslan.  With Aslan they become kings and queens, sharing in his power and authority.  They have a castle, crowns, and best of all they have a relationship with Aslan.  The whole story is an analogy for the Christian life.  All of the characters, and the events of that series, correspond to the story of our salvation.


In Book Four, Prince Caspian, the story begins with the children suddenly transported from London back into Narnia.  It has been a long time sine they were last there.  They find themselves on a deserted island and soon begin to explore that strange place.  They come upon an abandoned apple orchard, and a broken and collapsed wall.  After more careful inspection, they realize that the wall is actually a huge foundation for what remains of a ruined castle.  Immediately they are reminded of their own castle back when they were kings and queens in Narnia.  Cair Paravel, they had called it.  It was on an island much like this one.  It is Peter who is the first one to realize that this castle is not simply like their own, but that it is actually Cair Paravel, long abandoned and in ruin.


What those children felt must have been what the people of Israel had experienced in the first reading we listen to this weekend.  Because of the disobedience of the people, and their reluctance to listen to the warnings God sends them through the prophets over many years, God allows the unthinkable to happen:


Their enemies burnt the house of God [the Temple], tore down the walls of Jerusalem, set all its palaces afire, and destroyed all its precious objects.  Those who escaped the sword were carried captive to Babylon.

—2 Chronicles 36:19-20


It is, by far, the lowest point in the history of the nation of Israel.  By the end of the reading, however, God announces His plan to restore that broken land.  It is His initiative, His will to deliver them into freedom.  He calls Cyrus, the King of Persia, to be His instrument in rebuilding the city of Jerusalem.  Cyrus will even be called the anointed one of God (Isaiah 45:1).  God takes the initiative and brings the people back home, appointing Cyrus to rebuild the fallen temple.


The world that we live in today is, in many ways, a broken world.  For years now we have been trying to construct a world without God.  More and more, in Europe, America and in many other places, we have developed a way of living that is very far from the moral and ethical demands of the Gospel.  The more we build that world the more we realize how broken it has become.  Perhaps even personally we have experienced what it is like to find our castles-our lives-in ruins.  The history of salvation in the Christian faith can be summed up in our Gospel this weekend, where God takes the initiative and sends Christ to heal our broken world and rebuild the castle.  Jesus says:


Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.  For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

—John 3:14-16


He speaks to us of the cross: “… as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up”


In the desert, on their journey to the Promised Land, the people of Israel sinned against God and He sent serpents against them.  Many became sick and some even died.  Then God commanded Moses to lift up a bronze serpent on a pole, and all who looked at the image of the serpent were healed.  They looked upon the source of their sickness, and placed their faith in the God who heals.  


Our broken world is raised up again by Jesus’ humiliation on the cross.  We look at that cross and we can see the effects of our own sin and brokenness.  Uniting ourselves to Him in faith, however, we allow God to raise us up again and give us new life in Christ.


In the Catholic faith we have a sacrament for that salvation.  It is called the Holy Eucharist.  God instituted the Eucharist because He calls us to make a perfect sacrifice to Him, yet on account of our sin, none of us are capable of accomplishing that.  We are all broken and in need of healing and we all experience the effects of sin.  We are all too aware of how imperfect we are.  Still, God calls us to offer a perfect sacrifice.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains beautifully how God has provided that perfect sacrifice for us in Christ:


The only perfect sacrifice is the one that Christ offered on the cross as a total offering to the Father’s love for our salvation.  By uniting ourselves with his sacrifice we can make our lives a sacrifice to God.

—CCC, #2100


In the Eucharist, at every Mass, we unite ourselves to the sacrifice of Christ in the bread and wine that becomes the body and the blood of Christ.  We offer up to the Father that perfect sacrifice, and in so doing we give Him a sacrifice of ourselves that is good, pleasing and perfect (see Romans 12:1-2).  


As we approach the sacred altar now, let us unite ourselves completely to Him, so that we may allow Him to rebuild our own fallen castles.  We ask, in the Eucharist today, that God would continue to raise up our fallen world and make us His instruments in Christ.