Homily, 3 April 2016, Second Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday)
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Authors
Jizba, Richard
Issue Date
2016-04-03
Volume
Issue
Type
Homily
Sermon
Sermon
Language
en_US
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Abstract
Acts 5:12-16; Psalms 118:2-4,13-15,22-24; Revelation 1:9-11a,12-13,17-19; John 20:19-31|—————|I am the first and the last, the one who lives.|Once I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever.|—————||Long before that first Easter morning, when Jesus was traveling with his disciples near Caesarea Philippi he asked them a very challenging question: “who do you say that I am?” |Simon Peter said in reply, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”||And Martha, after her brother Lazarus had died, when she went out to meet Jesus, said to him: “I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”||It seems as though Jesus closest disciples and friends had finally begun to understand who Jesus was. So it seems.||Yet on Easter morning they weren’t so sure. What had they understood when they declared that Jesus was the Son of God?||On Easter morning, when they discovered that the tomb was empty, no one said, “just as I expected,” or “it doesn’t surprise me.” ||Rather they were confused, afraid that the body was taken, meaning they expected that Jesus would be as dead on Easter morning as he was on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. If they understood what happened on Easter morning, why would they huddle together in locked rooms?||They had to experience Jesus as risen from the dead before they would finally have an answer to that question: “who do you say that I am?” They had to see his body, hear him speak, cling to his feet, touch his wounds, walk with him, share food with him, and watch him eat.||But, at last, they did understand: Jesus had conquered death. “One short sleep past,” says the poet, “and we wake eternally. Death shall be no more.”||It took a while, but it was Thomas who finally gave the definitive answer to Jesus’ question and his answer was simple and clear: “My Lord, and my God.”|—————|Last fall the Pew Research Center published the results of the “2014 U.S. Religious Landscape Study.” Among the findings was that “roughly seven-in-ten Americans believe in “a heaven, where people who have led good lives are eternally rewarded.” Among Catholics, 85% declared a belief in heaven.||Now, those results sound pretty encouraging, though I’m not sure why 100% of Catholics wouldn’t declare a belief in heaven. Perhaps it was quibble over the definition of heaven.||But there was another survey, first taken in the mid 1980’s and updated ten years ago. It asked those who declared a belief in heaven if it was a place where people existed spiritually or physically. In 1986 eighty-two percent said only spiritually. In 2005 seventy-eight percent gave the same answer. Even many of those who believe in Christ, it seems, do not believe in the resurrection of the dead. Yet every week we say these words at the end of the Creed:| “… I look forward to the resurrection of the dead|and the life of the world to come.”||When some of people in the Church at Corinth denied the resurrection of the dead, Paul was so alarmed that he wrote to them:||“If Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then neither has Christ been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then empty too is our preaching; empty, too, your faith.”||It is a non-negotiable part of the faith.|It is the Mercy from which all other Mercies flow:||“Eye has not seen and ear has not heard, |what God has prepared for those who love him.”||Why, I often wonder, do people believe in God, but hesitate over this belief and imagine that heaven is only a spiritual place?||—————|Thomas Aquinas says simply: “I am not my soul.” He believed that the soul was is part of the human body and, not by itself the whole of a human being. We exist on the border of the spiritual and the material. Human beings are en-souled bodies. It is how God created us. It is how he wants us to be.||Our bodies are the means by which our souls encounter most of creation:| * When I rested my cheek on my little granddaughter’s fuzzy head as she slept in my arms, my soul felt love, and peace and joy. It felt them through touch, not by intellect or reason.| * When I was a young man I remember racing a friend down a mountainside, bounding off rocks, leaping fallen logs, dashing through pools of bright sunlight scattered about on the forest floor. My soul rejoiced in the wonder and exhilaration at being part of God’s physical creation. | * When I hear a good joke and laugh down deep, when my wife and kids and I share a bottle of wine and talk long into the night, this is how my soul experiences fellowship and friendship with others.| * When the bread of life rests gently in my hand, when I smell the incense on Holy Thursday, or hear the choir at Midnight on Christmas eve, or sit on a hillside with no sound but the rustle of the wind in the grass, these are ways that God touches me, deep within my heart, within my soul.||Some day, I would love to sit with Jesus at the heavenly banquet, with all those I love by my side. There would be good food, good drink, good company, good cheer. That would be heaven. And it is, at least in part.|I know it … because I believe in the resurrection of the dead.||Why would God ask us to spend eternity without a body?|—————|Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire and expect from God both eternal life and the grace we need to attain it. Hope has everything to do with heaven and the resurrection.||Keeping this in mind, listen to what Pope Benedict wrote about our hope for heaven:|Hope draws the future into the present, so that is no longer simply a “not yet.”|The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over in those of the present and those of the present into those of the future.||This is the Mercy of God, that we are a people of such great hope. |This is Easter.||In world beset by problems, the people of the world need hope, and it is our job to make hope real for them. We have to pull the future into the present by our works of mercy. ||We have to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless, whether they are people in our own town or refugees in distant lands. ||We have to welcome the stranger whether they are immigrants at our border, or babes in the womb. ||We have to instruct the ignorant and let them know of the love and mercy of God.||All these things -- and much more -- are possible if we have hope, if we are an Easter people, if we can say with Thomas, “my Lord and my God.”