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FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Fr. Jim Deiters

Last week, the world lost an amazing person when Jean Vanier died.  Jean Vanier, if you aren’t familiar with him, was a single Catholic Canadian man, and founder of L’Arche community that cares for people with severe disabilities.  He founded the first L’Arche home in a small village in France after he had this conversion experience when visiting an asylum for the mentally disabled.  When he was there, one of the residents with a severe disability approached and asked him, “Will you be my friend?” He wanted to create a place with a home environment where the disabled are living with the caregivers in a playful and prayerful setting. Today there are more than 150 L’Arche communities in 38 countries.  He named it L’Arche after Noah’s Ark, to have an image of people living together in hope, regardless of ability.  In one of his books with the great title, "Becoming Human," Jean Vanier writes about how people with disabilities have so much to teach us about simply being human, since they have no need for pretentiousness or trying to impress people.  He wrote about how much the rest of us NEED those with disabilities to become holier since they give us the opportunity to love the marginalized and helpless of this world as Jesus did and told us to do.  

As we continue in the Easter Season reading from the Book of Revelation, we have this beautiful passage that makes me think of what L’Arche communities do in creating a new place for the marginalized...as we hear God say those encouraging words, "see, I make all things new for you."  This section from Revelation is often read at funerals, but it also gives us a powerful Easter image of a “new heaven and new earth” which is exactly what we believe happened through the Resurrection of Jesus.  In the author’s vision of a “new Jerusalem,” which is us the Church, we are to make “all things new” in how we treat one another.  The author calls us to see life differently, from an Easter paradigm, when we hear God say “My dwelling is with the human race.” God now resides IN each person God created.

When you believe that Jesus really did rise from the dead, it changes our view of suffering... into a path to something new!  This ‘new paradigm’ of the “new heaven and new earth”  allows us to participate in God’s plan for the Garden of Eden to be recreated....where justice is restored, and all of humanity is meant to live in peace...with renewed reverence for all of God’s Creation.

People who don’t see themselves and others as part of Jesus Resurrected “new earth” way of living…usuallygive up hope in people’s inner goodness...and exclude people because they don't fit a certain mold.  They think only of themselves and can’t see the bigger picture of God’s vision for our world...and thus are not willing to do the hard work of changing unjust systems.  The problem we Christians face is that much of what we see in the media and movies…rarely give us any hopeful images that God IS MAKING all things new! 

Our world has too few visionary leaders who truly believe in this  Resurrection Truth that in God’s ‘new world order’ of things, every person is a son or daughter of God and is a sister or brother to you and me.  Fortunately, visionaries like Jean Vanier and Pope Francis are modeling for the rest of us how to get down on our knees to humbly wash feet and speak out for those who are least valued in our society.   We so need the Holy Spirit tomotivate more of us to be co-creators with God in forming new possibilities of light and hope in a world of so much darkness.

To be a baptized person… who shares in Jesus Resurrected life, we have to choose every day to SEE the world as already re-created in God’s Light.  That means being actively engaged with God in helping create in our own times some kind of new heaven and new earth, that will especially help those who suffer or are looked down upon by our culture.  People of the Resurrection never give up hope in people’s goodness… and believing that the world can be a better place if we work with God in making that happen.  With Jean Vanier’s example, we each have to find our own way of reaching out and caring for people in need…as they help US become more human and holy.

We come to Jesus in the Eucharist, admitting that we all have some form of disability, addiction, or sickness. Here, God says to us our world, “Behold, I am making all things new” for you.

LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Fr. Jim Deiters

In 2003 I was privileged to be on sabbatical in Rome for a few months that included participating in the Beatification ceremony for Mother Theresa who was later declared a saint in 2016.  For Mass that day, I was honored to be a minister of Holy Communion f and was escorted to one of the furthest sections in St. Peter Square filled with over 100,000 people.  I was assigned to stand in front of a barricade where there was no Communion line, but simply a crowd of about 5000 people in my section pushing forward in hopes of receiving the Body of Christ.  The problem is that I had only a couple hundred hosts.  It was a very emotional, holy moment for me as hands and faces of every color, age, and hunger were reaching out to me sort of begging to receive the Eucharist.  In such a brief moment before my eyes was the Universal Church, as people from every continent of the world gathered to honor a single woman who was mother to millions; all of us were united in our hunger for God in the Eucharist to help us see like Mother Theresa, with eyes of love for every single person, regardless of skin color, religion, gender, or nationality.

Mother Theresa was graced with many special gifts, including a voice and ears like our Good Shepherd Jesus.  She had an ability to speak softly to the deaf homeless… as well as use her hammering voice of justice to Heads of State; she could hear every cry by God’s sheep outcast by society…and gather into her arms every abandoned lamb whose stench of poverty was too much for others.  Jesus sent her into this world as a Christ-like Shepherd for our own times…and we must never forsake her vision for a Church that keeps service of the poor, the abandoned, the refugee, a baby in the womb, and homeless migrant as our main priorities…as Jesus taught us.

I couldn’t get Mother Theresa’s example out of my head as I was reflecting on this Sunday’s scriptures that highlight the universality of the Body of Christ. Especially in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles during this Easter Season, we are learning about how the Early Christians spent their lives bringing the message of Jesus’ love and mercy way beyond their comfort zone.  They heard Jesus’ command to take Christianity to “all nations” very seriously and St. Paul and the other Apostles traveled to such far places now known as Libya, Egypt, Ethiopia, Syria, Iraq, India, Spain, Turkey, Greece, and others.   It was a time when the Church’s ‘skin’ was more brown, black, Asian, African, and Middle Eastern.  The Early Christian’s genius was to use the ancient roads built by the Persians and Romans and go into the larger cities of the surrounding countries and start helping the poor and teaching them about this person Jesus who is Risen from the Dead andincludes them in God’s Kingdom!  In the midst of terrible persecutions, the Church thrived…as people then (and NOW!) longed to hear about a God that loves and includes them no matter how awful the rulers of the day say otherwise!

It is amazing how the Apostles from farm-country Galilee walked to such places as Alexandria in North Africa and Antioch in Syria, maybe comparable in glitz as a place like Dubai today, and spoke boldly about God’s love and mercy and justice that won over huge numbers of people.  It is a chapter in our rich Catholic historythat these Easter Scriptures beckon us to dust off, recall, and revive, as we must be the new generation to make these scriptures REAL for the needs of people today.  Similar to last week, the Book of Revelation give us again a beautiful image of heaven as a time and place when people of “every nation, race, and language” will gather around the Lamb and Good Shepherd Jesus in praise together.  We hear that heaven rewards those who are faithful to Jesus and do the hard work of the Gospel.  The author assures us that in heaven there will be no more suffering or pain…and “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

We know too well that there is tremendous suffering in our world; beyond our aches and pains of health issues, there is immense suffering in the lives of those who have no home, no food, refugee orphans without parents, and other sufferings beyond our imagining.  We so need the prayers and help of the saints like Paul, Barnabas, and Mother Theresa, to spark new flames of the Holy Spirit within us Christians here today.  We must ask the Holy Spirit to help us step out of our comfort zone and be the ongoing voice of Jesus our Shepherd, especially reaching out to those who feel like lost sheep with no hope.  We have to retrain our own ears to better listen to all the diverse sheep in God’s kingdom.  If we are to model Jesus’ voice for all people of the world, we have to learn a new language that is as inclusive and welcoming as Jesus is.  In God’s pasture, there is no place for voices of exclusion, hate, or separating people into categories.

As our Good Shepherd called each of us sinners to be here today and receive his healing mercy, so too must we become, through this Holy Eucharist, active agents of his love, especially to those who do not know or think that Jesus sees them as one of his beautiful sheep.

THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER
LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
Fr. Jim Deiters


 

When we selected the artist, Elizabeth Devereaux, to create our stained glass windows, we gave her a copy of the poem by St. Francis of Assisi called the “Canticle of Creation” in which he praises God for the beauty of the cosmos.  The bright red-purple one behind the altar represents the beginning of the universe and God creating the sun and earth; and the brilliant blue one above the baptismal font represents God creating the waters, wind, and stars.  If you look closely, one of the things the artist creates in her design, which is so mesmerizing, is how she shapes and cuts her hand-blown glass into a swirl towards a center point of infinitythat represents how the Eucharist is meant to draw all things into God.  In its abstract form, the image includes each of us in praise of God at Mass caught up in the beauty and miracle of God’s evolving cosmos, with all of creation ultimately united in worship of our Triune God.  This connection between the mysteries of God’s created world and our worship of God at Mass is most powerfully described in the spiritual writings of priest-paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin for those who want to delve more deeply into this theology.

Fortunately for us today, we have this simple, yet profound passage from the Book of Revelation which is theroot of our Catholic theology of the Mass that challenges to remember that what we do here in Eucharist goes far beyond fulfilling our Sunday obligation.  This text also makes a wonderful connection to how our windows add to our worship.  If you remember, the Book of Revelation is based on a vision that John had about the coming together of heaven and earth through Jesus’ Resurrection.  It is not a prediction about how the world will end as Fundamentalists and Hollywood think.  In this particular passage we just heard, the author describes heaven as this Divine Liturgy in which all saints, angels, all who were faithful to Jesus, and all of creation are united around the throne of the Lamb, who is Jesus.  He describes a timeless cosmic event in which all creatures of heaven and earth, and the entire universe are all united in worship and singing this song “Worthy is the Lamb to receive honor, glory and might forever and ever, Amen!”

The Mass is our participation in this timeless universal event which is continually going on in the realm of heaven all around us.  In a material way we are here in this space, on a date and time in history.  But since we are so much more than a species who eats, sleeps and dies, the Mass takes us into the spiritual world of Godand we are privileged to participate in something way beyond this world…into the very life of God!

While the way we pray the Mass has evolved over our Catholic 2000-year history, the core beliefs about what we do here in the Eucharist have never wavered from this passage from Revelations…as a participation in thewhole universe surrounding the throne of the Lamb in worship of God.  This is a key element of what distinguishes us from congregational churches that depend solely on the quality of the preacher or music to make it meaningful.  In the Mass, it is the choirs of angels and saints in heaven who are leading our worship…and we are simply PRIVILEGED to join with them in something that has been going on since the creation of the world billions of years ago!

This is why the Church teaches that each person attending Mass is to have “full, active, and consciousparticipation” in the celebration; The Church instructs us to sing and pray not as a ‘have to’ mandate, but because Mother Church doesn’t want you to miss out in the joy of being a part of what the rest of the universeis doing around God’s throne!   If one doesn’t pick up the hymnal and at least mouth the words of the hymns and prayers, there is one less voice giving God glory and honor with the angels and saints.

The beautiful windows above and around us, as well as the ancient prayers and hymns in our Eucharist, remind us that we are more than mortal creatures in this time-limited, divisive world, destined to work, worry, and die.  In the Mass, we get caught up into the “Spirit’s swirl” of God’s universe… where Jesus our Saving Lamb reclaims us as members of God’s heavenly world…where the entire universe is united in love, peace, and worship of God.  I’m not sure where you are at in life…but are you ready to let go and be swept up and drawn into something glorious around the throne of God?  It changes everything -- in how we see ourselves…and how we treat others.

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

Fr. Jim Deiters

The scriptures in the Easter Season are some of our most prized and beautiful texts…but they can also be confusing, so I’m starting my homily differently with a brief overview to better prepare us for these Easter readings.  Especially for those of us who usually work out of the left side of the brain and like structure, for the next six weeks we have to let go of our need for a timeline of what all happened after Jesus’ Resurrection since each of the three readings comes from a very different perspective.  While all the readings have a common goalof getting us to believe in the miracle of Jesus’ Resurrection, each text was written at a different time for different communities who had different questions about what this all meant.  For example, the Gospel each week details Jesus’ appearance to the disciples in the 50 days following the Resurrection; but the first reading from Acts of the Apostles is about how the Resurrection changed the disciples’ lives to be so devoted to Jesus.  Then in between those two, each week we have a passage from the Book of Revelation which was written much later and describes a mystical vision that John had about the cosmological effects of Jesus’ Resurrection in how we humans now get to participate in the things of heaven!  So, Jesus’ Resurrection is like a ‘prism’ with many facets in how it affected the first disciples and how it is still making a difference in each of our lives right here today.

So I was teaching our St. Clare students this week that even though we can’t ‘physically’ see the Risen Jesus standing before us, we are given what I called for them, “Resurrection Power” to do amazing things for God. We hear of one example of this “Resurrection Power” in our scriptures today when the disciples were changedfrom being people of fear…to being bold witnesses of Jesus and having these healing powers to cure people.  We have so much to learn from this first post-Resurrection story.

First, let’s look at their fear.  Besides being afraid of getting caught by the leaders for being followers of Jesus, I imagine they also had some fear and guilt for having betrayed Jesus and running away when he was arrested.  But then, right in the middle of their ‘locked up’ fear, the Risen Jesus appears in their midst with his healing, forgiving words of “Peace.”  The story reveals how God recognizes the various kinds of anxieties we each have and wants to come INTO that place of fear and bring us his peace.  Some in our midst have big fears about their health, their marriage, or a child with a disability.  No matter how big or small our fears may be, Jesus shows us that he wants to enter that place where we keep our worries…to assure us that he is with us in the middle of it all. 

I especially like the way the writer describes how Jesus calmed their fears by telling us that he “breathed on them and said ‘receive the Holy Spirit’.”   In that one phrase, the author John takes us back to the Creation story when God first “breathed on” the chaos of the earth and brought God’s peaceful Presence into all of creation!  John is suggesting that the work of creation, begun in Genesis, is now being revived or renewed in the Risen Christ. Through Jesus’ Resurrection, God’s gift of light has entered the world afresh and enables all disciples to go out into the fear-filled, dark, chaotic world…to spread healing and reconciliation -- to be a “light to the nations,” as Jesus calls us disciples.  We so NEED God’s Spirit to breathe upon the face of our earth! 

Applying this to our personal prayer life, we need to invite Jesus into that ‘locked room’ of our fears…and let Jesus approach each worry we have in our heart or mind, and “breathe” his gift of peace into every crevice of our bodies.  Into each nook of fear, sin, addiction, guilt or shame, Jesus breathes into us his “Resurrection power” to recreate us and call us out of our locked up place that gets us stuck in self-centeredness.  God always wants to use our life for some good purpose in his Kingdom, so he breathes into us his Holy Spirit to be Christ’s messengers of peace and forgiveness which our world so desperately needs.

What these readings reveal is that you can’t really separate the Resurrection Event from Pentecost’s arrival of the Holy Spirit on the earth.  We meet the Risen Jesus AND receive God’s Spirit at the same time!  And in this encounter, Jesus makes sure we know what our mission is as he specifically tells us to be messengers of forgiveness to others.  Healing and forgiving others becomes our Resurrection “job description” once we allow Jesus to breathe his Spirit upon us.

To take all of this in, I invite us to sit for a moment and pray about two things:  First, what fear or worry do you have ‘locked up’ inside that needs to be turned over to Jesus in faith?  And secondly, to know that Jesus’ Resurrection is real, invite him to now breathe his Holy Spirit into any part of your mind or body that needs re-created into a disciple of peace, forgiveness, and love.

Fr. Jim Deiters
LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
Out of all the amazing stories that have come out since the tragedy of the Notre Dame Cathedral fire, one that really struck me was when an historian spoke about the burned ceiling and said, “When those wooden oak beams of the ceiling were carved and installed over 800 years ago, their size indicates that they were already 400 years old at the time they were cut down!”  It just made me think… that these wooden beams have been around physically for 1200 years…and spent their lifefor a church building whose purpose is to proclaim the miracle of Jesus’ Resurrection!  Notre Dame’s glorious windows and the 800-year old stones have been the public face for Christ, but these 1200-year old wooden beams were behind the scenes…holding it all together…with every grain of their existence proclaiming, “we are here because Jesus rose from the dead!”  THIS is what church buildings are for…not as social halls, or places of status, or museums of art, but as tangible human expressions of something we don’t know exactly how to explain – that GOD, came to earth as a human, died for our salvation, AND came back to life after three days buried in a tomb!  In addition to our great doctrines and 2000-year service of the poor, we Catholics have added great beauty to our world in music, art and architecture as testimony of our faith.

But even more beautiful than any glass, wood or stone…are the LIVING stones and beams of the Christians gathered here today and every Sunday who recognize their own life as part of the timeless structure called the “Church” which daily proclaims that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead!  Since every baptized person is a part of Christ’s Risen Body, each of our lives as Christians is meant to be like a ‘little Notre Dame,’ being a visible witness to Jesus and his example of love and mercy to others.  I think most people think that “Church” is simply someplace you "go to"...IF one can fit it into their busy schedule.  But the feast of Easter reminds us, that due to Jesus' Resurrection, each of US and our family now become a 'little domestic church' that helps make up the 'bigger Church' of Christ's Risen Body!

YOU and I are then the “behind-the-scenes wooden beams” meant to hold the bigger Church together!  Each day of our life is a gift and opportunity to BE a living edifice of Christ, adding to the beauty of how our Catholic Church has been a beacon of light and hope for 2000 years. And when one beam, one person, does not do their share by volunteering, contributing, and showing up on Sunday to join the other working beams in the Body, then the structure is not as sound and beautifulas when everyone unites in the bigger picture of BEING the mystical structure of Christ's beautiful Risen Body!

I think those beams that sacrificed their life for 1200 years for a greater purpose...call out to us from the ash heap and ask us this Easter: will you give YOUR life… to be an active part of Jesus’ timelessmission of helping the poor and proclaiming to the world that He is Risen from the dead?  We learn from the Gospel story that God chose simple ordinary country people to be the first witnesses of proclaiming the Resurrection miracle.  Their simple lives...and those simple wooden beams...invite US to BE the next generation to keep building and re-building a place and community who will pass on this incredible faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God!  God NEEDS YOUR LIFE - your simple, less than perfect ‘wooden beam’ to help hold the Church together and actively welcome new people to know this person Jesus who is alive and right here in our midst!

What is interesting in the Gospel Resurrection stories is that each disciple, rightly so, had a hard time believing Jesus came back to life...until they either saw the empty tomb themselves or experienced the Risen Jesus in front of them.  Similarly, we each have to come to our own personal encounter and experience of Jesus; and once we DO, we are never the same!  The faith question we are posed with on Easter and every Sunday is the same as those first disciples: am I going to believe the 'rumors' that Jesus is raised from the dead...or open my eyes of faith and really believe the Risen Jesus is right here before me?  If we are just here because someone else 'told' us this is all true...but don't have a personal conviction about Jesus, it will be easy to stay in bed next Sunday or go to a sports event.  BUT IF we really believe that Jesus miraculously came back to life after three days in the tomb, then one will be eager to run back to this Altar each weekend...to see and experience again and again this amazing miracle that the Risen Jesus is right here in our midst to give us God’s Love and Mercy!

Wherever you are at in your faith journey, please know that God needs your life to be an important part of the 'behind-the-scenes beams’ that are privileged to hold the Church together.  No person has ever left an impact on the world by simply being a tourist in life…stopping in for a brief look. When a disciple comes to know the Risen Christ…they want to go and tell others to come and see!  And then they spend their life making their unique addition to the most beautiful building in the world, which is the Risen Body of Christ, the Church.

LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
Fr. Jim Deiters 
(Read before the proclamation of the Passion)

Since these three days of the Triduum are intimately connected, it is important to pay attention to various clues and threads in the scriptures for these days that disclose a unified meaning of what God is revealing to us humans.  So before we listen to John’s version of Jesus suffering and death, I want to highlight one line from his Gospel that we heard last night from the Last Supper…which makes what we are about to hear very personal…and not just a “long reading.”

Here is the question Jesus posed after he instituted the Eucharist and washed the disciple’s feet: “Do you realize what I have done for you?”  I am sure that he wanted that question to stay in the mind of his friends long after the Crucifixion and Resurrection.  Of course Jesus wants every one of us to stay with that question, “Do you realize what I have done for you?” especially when we are trying to make sense of certain trials or pain we are going through.

I’m not sure why you are here tonight…or what is going on in your heart, but I simply invite each of us to sit with that question from Jesus as we listen to the many ways that Jesus shows his incredible love for us in this Passion narrative.  Whether you are here as a teenager, adult, someone grieving, or you are here with fear and anxiety about something….listen to the Passion with Jesus’ question haunting our thoughts, “Do you realize what I have done for you?” 

IN the betrayal, the mocking, the beatings, and in being nailed to the Cross, Jesus goes INTO the most forsaken place of the human condition– suffering and death!  God’s love INVADES even those places of humanity that seems so abandoned and empty.  The one who hung upon that terrible cross was not just a man; he was God as well. God has taken upon himself all of the pain that bedevils the human condition: physical, psychological, and spiritual. God goes into the darkest places that we inhabit.  And this means that pain does not have the final word! This means that pain has beenenveloped into the limitless sphere of divine mercy…and that God’s love is more powerful than suffering.  Jesus’ actions of complete LOVE…show us a whole new meaning to pain…which we call Redemptive Suffering.  Pain and suffering are no longer the end of the story!

As we pay attention to the tragedy of what Jesus all went through, he wants us to listen not with pity or sadness, but with faith…that he did this for you and me…very personally.   So let us listen andwalk alongside Jesus in the story… and bring with us…any suffering, doubt, fear, emptiness, or pain in own life…and invite him INTO that place with which we are struggling and hear him say to us “Do you realize what I have done…for YOU?”

LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
Fr. Jim Deiters

Like many of you, my family has had its share of health problems around cancer.  My brother-in-law is one year into his stem cell transplant and miraculously is in remission due to a generous donor who matched his cell type.  Our family was especially moved when the nurse delivered a letter from the anonymous 32-year old donor who said that he was praying for the recipient and wrote that he did the transplant “to pass on the love of Jesus.”  While news of violence and selfishness usually makes the headlines, we must remember that the world is filled with an amazing number of really good people.  Each of us can choose daily to add to humanity’s goodness with words and actions ofselflessness, including the donation of blood, stem cell, or organ.

I have to admit that the sight of blood makes me queasy.  And I have the utmost respect for those in the medical profession who deal with it daily.  But here I am as a priest, offering daily Mass, which in a sense is a participation in a divine blood transfusion or transplant.   We step into this ‘clinic’ to be examined by God’s Word…and the Word gives us a ‘diagnosis’ of what we are doing well and what needs to change.  Then we submit to the IV of the Holy Spirit, admitting we want new ‘blood’ and new ‘cells’ that better match us with the Divine Life we are supposed to have flowing through our arteries!

Our Catholic captivation with blood goes all the way back to Moses, some 1300 years before Christ, as we hear in the Exodus story on this holy night.  The Passover lamb that was sacrificed and eaten was meant to nourish the people on their Exodus journey…and its blood then marked their houses toprotect them from death.  Just in case we missed the symbolism, Jesus offers himself as the newLamb, giving his own body to us as heavenly Food for our life journey; and his blood marks thedoorposts of our bodies as belonging to God… by getting into our incredible human cardio systemeach time we drink from the chalice of his Saving Blood.

If we take seriously what actually happens in the miracle of the Eucharist, and really let God do the “spiritual blood transfusion-transplant,” the malignant cells of our sin and selfishness are strippedand the new blood of Christ takes over and gives us a new life in Jesus!  This is how St. Paul can so boldly say, “I no longer live my own life but Christ living in me.”

However, what makes this Eucharistic Covenant of Divine Blood exchange so unique from all other transplants is what happens in our Gospel story of Jesus’ example of selfless service.  If we allow the blood of Jesus to flow through us, he shows us what it will do to our thinking and actions… that will have us behaving in ways that our culture will deem quite strange or at least baffling.  Here at the Last Supper, we have the Creator of the world, the Source and Cause of all that comes into existence, the Savior of the world, the Beginning and End of all peace and justice, the greatest Lover and Spouse of our Soul…now on his knees…humbling washing the feet of humanity!

The same Blood of Jesus that dripped from his forehead in agony in Gethsemane, the blood that oozed out of his back from the scourging, and the blood that flowed from his side on the Cross…comes into our own blood stream in the Eucharist…NOT to make us better than anyone else, but rather to re-create us into humble servants of others.

The washing of feet is just a symbol; but a powerful one.  It represents what it means to consume the Body and Blood in the Eucharist…and be transfigured into the very life of Jesus, emptying our self, and putting the needs of others before our own.  As we watch or participate in this symbolic action, may it lead us to an acceptance of the diagnosis of any selfish cells in our body…and desire in a new way to have Jesus transplant his life and Blood into my own.

PALM SUNDAY
Fr. Jim Deiters

I have a tradition of giving a brief homily BEFORE the reading of the Passion to help us listen with new ears of faith.  And this year we are blessed with Luke’s account, whose author wants us to notice particular virtuesof Jesus to apply to our own life of discipleship.  When we return on Good Friday, we will John’s version of the Passion with its own unique emphasis.

One of the dominant images of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke is that of Jesus filled with God’s Spirit.  That may seem obvious, but Luke highlights this.  Luke begins Jesus’ public ministry in his hometown of Nazareth…when Jesus stands up in the synagogue and announces his Mission with a quote from Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor…”  Three years later in his ministry, and filled with that same Spirit, Jesus is now able to enter into his suffering and death… by trusting in God through it all.

The unique Lukan element that I invite us to listen for during the proclamation is Jesus’ unbelievably forgiving disposition through it all.  There is so much we can learn from the way Jesus keeps forgiving each person during his Passion and suffering.  Luke summarizes Jesus’ never-ending forgiveness in the beautiful words that are only in this Gospel when, from the Cross Jesus prays, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” 

From this ultimate prayer of forgiveness, listen and watch for other personal interactions Jesus has with people, unique in Luke’s version, and how he extends forgiveness…even while being betrayed, mocked, and crucified; for example:

-         When Peter denies him…Christ silently looks at him with love.

-         When the crowd of poor and women are crying for him…he turns it around into a concern for them

-         Then, as he is suffocating and bleeding to death, he uses his last breath to forgive a criminal next to him and promises him Paradise.

Jesus’ incredible acts of self-emptying and forgiveness…certainly give us much to pray about as we reflect on his example and apply it to situations in our life that require a kind of forgiveness, compassion, and love beyond what we thought we are capable of.  As we listen attentively to Jesus’ model of forgiveness, let us enter into the Passion story… mindful of people or situations in our life and our world that need us to pray with Jesus, “Father, forgive them…”

FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT
LISTEN TO THIS HOMILY
Fr. Jim Deiters

There is something beautiful and innocent in watching a little child learn how to spell their name.  When some of them bring drawings they created for me, they are proud to point out their name on the paper.  Even with the letters sometimes jumbled or backwards, they are signs of the amazing way the human brain develops as they begin to associate sounds with letters and words.  As Christians, our baptism signed us up for a life-long classof learning the words and sounds of God’s language and ways of love.

In one sense, God has a ‘small vocabulary’ that centers on a few key words: love, forgiveness, justice, and peace. God has repeated a variation of these lyrics over and over since the creation of humanity.  Actually, the whole dictionary of God’s language is already in our DNA since we were created in God’s Image and Likeness from the moment of our conception in the womb.  The problem is that humans began creating our owndefinitions to God’s original words of love, forgiveness and justice…and we started making up our own rules, religions and ideologies.

The Hebrew Scriptures in the Old Testament are filled with stories of God’s attempt to reshape our dialogue and relationship.  We hear this poetically defined in our passage from Isaiah today when God is described as “opening new paths…and doing something new!” for his people.  From an historical perspective, Isaiah is encouraging the people to remember that God is with them and taking them to new places after their exile in Babylon.  But Isaiah is also reminding them and us of the meaning of God’s Covenant of Love… that we sometimes forget when life is difficult and we start to doubt God’s care.  This Isaiah text reaches out to us withHOPE as we move toward the end of Lent and may still be stuck in old thoughts or behaviors that we had hoped to change.  God is saying to us in this passage, “It’s not too late; I am still doing something new in you!”

After Isaiah, God sent other prophets to also try and teach humanity about peace and justice…but we humans stubbornly wanted to write out our own terms of what those mean.  So, God decided to send his own Son, of the same mind and heart as his Self, to “re-teach” us the true meaning of the actual commandments and love that God has been trying to get into the human heart and mind from the beginning.  The words and actions of Jesus, the world’s Savior become then… the new standard lexicon for all of humanity! This is why we process with the Gospel book and incense it, since these are the actual words of Jesus, who teaches and shows us a new way of living and speaking.  Of course this Word of GOD often clashes with the words and thinking we have developed as our own ‘gospel.’

This leads us to our Gospel today, in which we hear of Jesus using his finger to write down some words on the ground of the Temple area.  There is no recording of what he really spelled in the dust.  It isn’t really necessaryto know since Jesus IS the very Word of God…and his very Being and Presence reveal God’s message of love and forgiveness.  The woman in the story of course represents all of us…standing before the face of Jesus with our sins and the need for his healing grace.  She also represents all women throughout humanity…who stand before a patriarchal society and beseech God’s justice to be re-defined for the dignity of all. In today’s terms, this woman could also represents every migrant and refugee who has been condemned because they were “caught in the act” of being poor and without a home.  God’s sense of justice and mercy for every human person glares at us… in this haunting Gospel image of Jesus looking into the eyes of each person who does not help those who suffer.  His same eyes of Love look into the face of any one who comes to him seeking healing and forgiveness.  Jesus always sees beyond one’s failing and into a person’s heart…where God’s very Image of holiness is always present.  This Gospel is a very different dictionary and vocabulary from that of our culture.  It requires us to sit down and re-think any words or ideas that do not look and sound like those of Jesus…the very ‘spelled-out’ Word of God!

Since Isaiah gives us the Good News that God is always trying to “do something new” with us, I invite us for our prayer at Mass and throughout our week to think about this particular gesture of Jesus writing words…with his finger…on our heart and mind.  It would be very powerful to ask God, “What are you trying to write with my life?”