Poet and author Maya Angelou wrote, ‘people will easily forget what you have said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.’ When people join our parish, we ask them how they came to choose us. They often share that they choose St. Joseph’s because there is just ‘something special about this community’.
This week the resurrection is fresh in our minds and this makes us ponder the awesome love, mercy of our Lord. Even for those of us like Thomas in the Gospel, who may have doubts, the Lord calls us to embrace the power and the mystery of the resurrection. I am sure most of us are familiar with this Gospel story. Through the lens of this story we see a picture of the disciples locked behind doors not knowing were their future lies. And this Gospel is truly about mystery and the love of our Lord. When Jesus appears in the disciples midst he shows them his hands and his side to confirm and reassure them. Imagine how stunned they must have been at the appearance of Jesus! Jesus must have known that they needed this reassurance, how could they not! This is why he showed them His hands and side. Immediately after this the disciples responded with joy at encountering the risen Lord!
On the evening of the day - when Jesus rose from the dead, he went to his disciples, who were gathered behind locked doors for fear of the Jews, and said to them, “Shalom, Peace is with you.” Can you imagine how speechless the disciples must have been as they gazed upon the crucified Christ? They were already experiencing profound fear, confusion, and no doubt mourning the death of Jesus. Were they now experiencing some form of hallucination? In order to unlock the door that housed their doubt, Jesus showed them his hands and side, and once again said Shalom, Peace is with you. However, this time that conventional greeting meant much more.
This Sunday is Divine Mercy Sunday. The resurrection is fresh in our minds this week as we ponder the awesome love, mercy and forgiveness that our Lord offers us. This mercy is a most precious gift, more valuable than gold. The Lord call us to embrace the power and the mystery of the resurrection. We are like Thomas, we have our own doubts, fears and pain. None of us walk through life without doubts and trials, but we are reassured by the first words spoken by Jesus after the resurrection: “Peace be with you”. We all invited to stand with Thomas and proclaim our humble prayer “My Lord and my God”! In this Easter season we are called to live out and share the Easter promise. Christ is risen! We are all called as disciples to go out despite our fears to proclaim our faith in word and action.
I would love all of us to have the opportunity to reflect on how we encounter the Lord on this Easter day -- as parents who bring their families to this Easter Eucharist, as Catholics who have participated in the other liturgies of Holy Week on Holy Thursday and Good Friday, as Catholics who may have not been in Church since Christmas day, as Catholics who are very distracted by the busyness of life, as Catholics who have recently experienced the death of one you love or the pain of some significant brokenness in life, or as pilgrims who seek to come to the Lord more deeply in their lives. My hunch is that those of us who are gathered today come from all over the spiritual landscape. Each one of us is unique. This is not by accident. It is by God’s design that there is no perfect cookie-cutter Catholic. We need to dispense with the myth that there is one size that fits all for us as Catholic Christians. May there always be considerable diversity in the ways each one of us encounters our loving God. We are a big Church. There is room for everyone.
Leading up this holy night, the whole church has been keeping vigil. At the Last Supper, Jesus gave us an example of how we are to transform the world. Jesus got down on His knees and washed the feet of his disciples, and said we are to do likewise: that is to say, we are to wash the feet of God’s poor. On Good Friday, the crucified Jesus showed us that death is not a defeat. Rather it is the way to the fullness of life. The fullness of Easter joy is experienced on the other side of the cross. Now we celebrate the Easter Vigil, the mother of all vigils.
The Holy Saturday message is we are never abandoned by what seems to be the silent love of God. We are in the midst of the great Easter Triduum as we remember and as we celebrate our sharing in the paschal mystery of the Lord Jesus -- our sharing in the dying and the rising of Jesus. On Holy Saturday, remembering that Christ is now buried in the tomb, we gather in silence and in expectation between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
I would invite you to reflect for a moment on how you were reacting to the Proclamation of the Passion. What were you thinking or feeling? My hunch is that there were many different responses, like “this is really long”, “didn’t I just hear this last Sunday”? Or maybe you lost contact with it because of a certain preoccupation that you have. Maybe you had a vague feeling of guilt. May you tried hard to place yourself in the various scenes and sense something of what was happening. No matter. Our reading is finished. So maybe we need to ask what is the appropriate reaction that all of us should have to the Passion Gospel? I would suggest that there are two basic responses that should dominate our whole celebration this afternoon, the first gratitude and secondly compassion.
In an unlikely place, unimaginable hope was born. Calvary. Who would have thought hope could ever come from there? The women who stood under the Cross? Those crucified with Jesus? What about us? Are your hope and your heart with Jesus today? With Jesus whose prayer and trust in God led Him to push beyond despair and the cries of the crowd to face death and the ultimate surrender of His life here on earth?
Service rooted in love is the example Jesus gives to his disciples. It is a radical form of service because it is based on a radical form of love. So, the question I leave with you as we ritually wash the feet of parishioners is: Where is your towel with your name on it? We will never perceive the Reality beneath the bread and wine unless we first understand the point of the basin and feet; we never see Christ in the Eucharist we kneel to adore, if we do not first see Christ in those before whom we kneel to serve.
Can you be the person who encounters someone whose faith needs resurrecting? Can you be the one who welcomes and reassures a parent with restless children? Can you anoint the stranger with a warm smile and greeting – maybe even give them your seat on Easter?
In the first Gospel proclaimed for our Palm Sunday liturgy, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey with palm branches being spread on the road…When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil. “Who is this?” people asked. Palm Sunday presents us with a very unusual version of who Jesus is. St. Paul in the second Scripture reading proclaims: “Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality to God something to be grasped, rather he emptied himself taking the form of a slave…he humbled himself.” This is the kind of God Jesus preaches and imitates. God is the one who identifies with and enters into the experience of the people He loves. God is sending a message through Jesus in this Palm Sunday celebration that states that nothing human is abhorrent to me. All of life –even the most horrible kind of suffering, even death – is something so precious that God wants to be in solidarity with it. God wants to embrace it and transform it. That’s who our God is.