Monday, April 28, 2014

Peace Be With You

2nd Sunday of Easter - Cycle A

Homily on John 20:19-31

Peace be with you!
(Response: And with your spirit!)
Amen!

            So here it was, the evening of the Resurrection, and Jesus’ disciples were all gathered in a room with the door locked because they were afraid. Jesus came and stood with them and, I am sure, startled them, but then he said, “Peace be with you”. A week later he they were in the room again, still with the doors locked, and he appeared again and said “Peace be with you.”

            And so here it is, the second Sunday of Easter, and we, the disciples of Jesus today, are gathered together. Our doors aren’t locked, but I wonder if we are any less afraid than those first disciples. Are we a Resurrection people? Are we listening to Jesus when he gives us his message of peace?

            The Gospel’s call to be a Resurrection people means that from now on, as followers of the risen Christ, we are to be at peace – first with ourselves, with God, with Jesus, with our families, with our neighbors, with everyone in the town and everyone in the church and with the whole world. From now on, we are a people of peace, a people who have peace within us, a people who shares that same greeting of peace with one another, a people who offers that peace to the whole world.

            The greeting that Jesus gives to the disciples, “Peace be with you”, echoes an earlier passage in John 14 when Jesus says at the Last Supper, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you”. The world’s idea of peace would lead us into the false ideas that stronger borders or more bombs or more military power will give us peace. No, the peace that Jesus calls us to is a peace that refers to the harmony that we experience when relationships with God, with the community and with ourselves are ordered correctly. Jesus calls us to be peacemakers and peace-builders – to create that order in relationships based on justice and right. Jesus breathed out the Spirit on those first disciples and gave them the mission of peace – and he still breathes that mission into us today.

            I was thinking about the call for us to be peace-makers and peace-builders as the canonization approached of these two Popes. For me, one aspect of both of their ministries was their commitment to peace.

            John XXIII wrote a most amazing encyclical entitled “Pacem in terris”, or “Peace on Earth”. There is a great quote from that encyclical on the front of our bulletin today. That document was written shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis and the building of the Berlin Wall. Some of you only studied those events in history class, but some of us lived them and the fear that went along with them. But as frightening that those events might have been, John XXIII took a very optimistic tone in this writing. He focused on the kind of world that we are obliged to build as Christians – a world where peoples’ rights are respected, where governments truly have the common good as their goal and a world free from nuclear weapons where everyone who has helps those who have not – kind of the world that the Acts of the Apostles portrayed in our first reading today. One result of that encyclical is that every year since then, whoever is Pope issues a message for the World Day of Peace on January 1.
           
            Just as John XXIII saw the Berlin Wall go up, John Paul II saw it go down – and saw the end of Communism in Eastern Europe without a single shot being fired. Four years before that, John Paul gathered representatives of over 160 different religions and denominations in Assisi to pray for peace. There were not just various Christian traditions there, but Buddhists, Moslems, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians – every imaginable faith – to make the point that the desire of each religion, and the human heart, is the desire for peace. And they prayed – each in their own tradition, in their own language, all day for peace. And at the end, Pope John Paul offered a message to all the participants and to the whole world. He said, “Peace is a workshop, open to all and not just to specialists, savants and strategists. Peace is a universal responsibility: it comes about through a thousand little acts in daily life. By their daily way of living with others, people choose for or against peace.”

            Even though we hear the messages of Jesus and these two Popes, it’s very human for us to doubt that peace is possible. We read the paper or watch the news and have a hard time finding any examples of even the hint of peace. We question the possibility of peace in the world – where is the evidence that it’s possible? We wouldn’t be the first ones to doubt what we have yet to have proven to us.

            Thomas was like that. And yet, even in his doubt, Jesus offers his greeting of “Peace be with you” in Thomas’s presence. Two times Jesus shows his disciples his wounds when he gives them his peace, which I think means that Christ’s peace, the peace not of this world, comes not through violence or war or the false security of weapons, but through sharing in Jesus’ wounds, in his cross, in his non-violent suffering and his self-emptying love. When Thomas learns this, he exclaims, “My Lord and my God”. Thomas was making it clear that he was not following any false gods of power, or money, or weapons, or, the kings of this world.  Jesus is his Lord, and his mission is one of peace. Thomas accepted Jesus’ mission of peace. Thomas became a part of the Resurrection people.

Are we like the “doubting Thomas”, or the believing Thomas? Are we a Resurrection people? Are we listening to Jesus when he gives us his message of peace?

Peace be with you!
(Response: And with your spirit!)

Amen! Alleluia!!

Monday, April 21, 2014

Easter Vigil Homily - April 19, 2014

(Matthew 28:1-10) (See all the Easter Vigil readings here: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/041914.cfm)

         We stand at the threshold on this most holy night. We are no longer in one place, but we have not yet arrived at the other. We are at the crossroads – gathering in the night and awaiting the brilliant light of the morning, moving from darkness into light. We are at the crossing from sin into salvation, from slavery into freedom, from death into life.
          We are the women, the “two Marys” who “came to see the tomb” – filled with anxiety, and fear and uncertainty. We are unsure, and scared, and at least a little uncertain about putting our entire trust in Jesus. And even when that brilliant messenger appears, with quaking earth and rolling stone, and even though we are told, “Do not be afraid”, we go on our way, “fearful but overjoyed”.
          Until we encounter the Risen Jesus. When we encounter the Risen Jesus we see that his resurrection is not just about a glorious event of the past, but is about seemingly impossible transformations that occur in the present because of Christ’s power in the Holy Spirit. When we encounter the Risen Jesus we realize that God’s kingdom has already broken into human history.
          Jesus, there at creation, is the victor of order over chaos and light over darkness. He is the one who leads us out of our slavery and oppression – as what God did for one people Jesus now does for the salvation of every nation. Jesus, the Lord, calls us to his water, to come without money or price, to have all we need in him.
          But we are still on the threshold – God’s kingdom has broken into human history, but it is not yet complete. There is still evil and misery, and we do not deny it or turn away from it, but we refuse to surrender to their power because of our faith in the Risen Jesus. We are an Easter people, and Alleluia is our song, and Alleluia is an act of defiance in the face of evil.
          If we have encountered the Risen Jesus, we can say that God is ultimately still in charge of the universe, despite any indications to the contrary – that brutality and evil notwithstanding, at the end of the day, violence, injustice and sin will be silenced and overcome, and graciousness and gentleness as exemplified in Jesus are ultimately what lies at the root of all reality.
          We are an Easter people and we believe that truth is stronger than lies, that good is stronger than evil, that love is stronger than hate, and that life is stronger than death. 
          In just a few moments, we will renew our baptismal promises, our acknowledgement that we have died and risen with Jesus, and that we must lead a new life of who we already are – living for God in the Risen Jesus. And, like the two Marys who encountered him, we are commissioned to “go and tell” what we have experienced.
          On this holiest of nights, as we stand on the threshold between light and darkness, we encounter the Risen Jesus, and we once again become an Easter people, with Alleluia as our song.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – and Repent!
Justice Perspective – April 2014

            I know that there is a picture somewhere of me and some of my fellow Bishop Turner High School students digging a hole to plant a tree in celebration of the first Earth Day. That was forty-four years ago in 1970. The Vietnam War raged on, student protesters were killed by police at Kent State, and Apollo 13 abandoned its mission.
            Back then everybody drove gas-guzzling V8s, water and air was regularly polluted by industry without care or consequence, and no one really talked about “the environment”. That first Earth Day began a movement and a raising of public awareness that led to the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air and Water Act.
            We will again “celebrate” Earth Day later this month on April 22, and it should give us an opportunity to assess where we are in our relationship to God’s creation. It is probably also a perfect time to do that during Lent because we undoubtedly have some penance to do for the way that we treat the environment.
            The hard truth is that we generally live like all of the earth’s resources are free, unlimited, and ours for the taking. We act as if there is an endless supply of anything that comes out of the earth or is produced by it. And we generally have little hesitation in using environmentally violent means to acquire whatever it is that we “must have” from the earth – from blowing off the tops of mountains for coal to “fracking” levels of shale beneath the surface for natural gas.
            And when the earth or the animals who live upon it do not produce enough, or quickly enough, we rush in with chemicals for faster crops, or hormones for larger animals, or artificial “enhancements” to water and air. Our need for consumption seems to know no bounds.
            Our faith calls us to a different perspective by lifting up the moral dimensions of these issues and actions and how they affect the most vulnerable among us. The Catholic Climate Covenant organization, for example, points out that our cars, power plants, energy consumption and waste all contribute to a larger “carbon footprint” – the amount of damaging carbon gasses that are released into the air causing climate change.
            And, as it is with such wide-reaching wrongdoings, the poor and most vulnerable are the ones who suffer the most from our misuse of the world’s resources. This is why the US Bishops can talk about the issue in terms of “environmental justice” and why Pope John Paul II linked the problem to the same lack of respect for life and human dignity that shows itself in so many other areas of human interaction.
            Lent and Earth Day together give us an excellent opportunity to re-examine our attitudes and uses of resources, and to make changes in our lifestyles and our actions where necessary. The Catholic Climate Covenant offers us to take a “St. Francis Pledge” on their website that would commit us to five actions. We are called to pray and reflect on our duty to care for creation; to learn about the causes and moral dimensions of climate change; to assess how we personally contribute to the problem by our own consumption and waste; to act to change our choices and behaviors; and to advocate for Catholic principles in environmental discussions with special attention to the needs of the poor.

            This Lent we can pledge to reduce, reuse, recycle – and repent.