Community in Mission

As I cross the Potomac River on my Sunday morning drive to St. Hugh’s, I’m typically treated to a beautiful scene filled with peaceful water, impressive monuments, a rising sun, and a sky colored with brilliant shades of red, orange, and blue. As I take in this sight, I often imagine that another Sunday, the first Easter morning, must have been beautiful as well. I think of Mary Magdalene making her way to the tomb, and I picture her as disheveled, head hung low in grief, and bleary-eyed from weeping and a lack of sleep. But then I try to imagine the change that must have come over her when she finally realized that her beloved Jesus had risen from the dead. I wonder what she did. Did she shed tears of joy? Did she leap or dance or burst into song? Did she fall on her knees, lift her head, and raise her hands to the sky in a gesture of gratitude to God?

The Bible doesn’t tell us, so I guess that this side of heaven we’ll never really know what Mary Magdalene did. But I think it fair to say that she didn’t just stand there, and that her joy over Jesus’ resurrection was expressed with more than just words. Perhaps, for those first moments, she couldn’t find anything to say at all. Which would be understandable, because the Resurrection is such a marvelous and magnificent event that it’s hard to find the right words to describe it. Mere words can’t seem to do it justice.

In a sense, we Christians on Easter morning are a bit like the victorious team at the Super Bowl. As they celebrate their victory, the winning players express their jubilation by jumping, shouting, hugging, running, dog piling, pumping their fists, slapping high fives, lifting teammates on their shoulders, popping champagne bottles in the locker room, and dumping Gatorade on their coach. It would seem that they have to express their joy with much more than words.

The same is true for us today. We celebrate the rising of Jesus from the dead! The Son of God, who died for us on a cross, has risen to new life so that we might live in hope of living forever with him in heaven. This is something far more wonderful than winning a Super Bowl ring. In fact, it’s far more wonderful than anything else we will ever have, learn about, or experience. So how can words alone possibly be sufficient to celebrate such an event? We sing, “This is the day the Lord has made! Let us rejoice and be glad!” But that’s not enough. There has to be something we can do, in addition to what we can say. Not necessarily jumping or dancing, although maybe we can imagine doing that. And while I can sprinkle Holy Water on all of you, please do not dump any Gatorade on me.

Perhaps the greatest thing we can do to celebrate the resurrection with more than words it to share some of the love that Jesus has already shared with us by rising from the dead. Consider the two disciples in today’s gospel. We know that Peter was one of them. The other is simply identified as the “beloved disciple.” He’s not given a name here; we’re just told that Jesus loved him. But, in a sense, that’s all we need to know. Because even though he was a real person, the so-called “beloved disciple” represents each one of us because we, like him, are beloved of Jesus.

Remember what the beloved disciple did. When he and Peter learned from Mary Magdalene that Jesus’ tomb was empty, they ran to the tomb. Which is a reasonable thing to do, given the circumstances. Yet the gospel makes the point that they actually got into something of a race, and the beloved disciple won. Then he waited at the tomb, so that Peter could go in first. But what’s the point of our knowing this? Who cares which disciple was the fastest? Who cares that Peter went into the tomb first? Is this just a bit of biblical trivia, or is there some hidden meaning here?

Indeed there is a hidden meaning here. We’re meant to understand that the beloved disciple ran so fast, not because he was especially quick or Peter was particularly slow, but because he was impelled forward by his great love for Jesus. Yet he chose to allow Peter to enter the tomb first, not because he was courteous or catching his breath or afraid of going in, but because he acknowledged the authority of Peter, the head of the band of disciples and, of course, our first pope. By acting in this way, the beloved disciple shows the rest of us who are loved by Jesus how we can celebrate his resurrection with more than words. Like him, our lives are to be driven by love for Jesus within the fellowship of, and under the authority of, the Church and its chief shepherd, the pope.

At the beginning of this Mass, we were sprinkled with Holy Water, the water of baptism, to remind us of our own baptism and the promises that we made, or were made for us, on that day. Immediately after this homily, we will renew those baptismal promises, and pledge once again to live a life driven by the love of Jesus, and lived within the Church. We will promise to reject sin, so we can live in real freedom. We will promise to reject the “glamour of evil”- in other words, all the selfish, materialistic, and superficial temptations of our culture. We will promise to reject Satan, who hates us as much as Jesus loves us.  And we will renew our promise, and I quote, “to serve God faithfully in his holy Catholic Church.” Should we honor these promises, we will be able to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus with far more than mere words.

Readings for today’s Mass: http://www.usccb.org/nab/042411.shtml

Photo Credits (top to bottom): randomduck,  avinashkunnath, http://www.flickr.com/photos/jbtaylor/, via Creative Commons

How much is one human life worth? The head of our government’s compensation fund for 9/11 victims, Kenneth Feinburg, had to wrestle with that question over 1,500 times. In his book, appropriately titled What is Life Worth?, Feinburg shares his agonizing struggle in trying to ensure that victims’ survivors received a fair compensation for their loss. The average victim’s family received $2 million dollars. But not everyone received the same amount. For instance, the amount awarded for stockbrokers was higher that that awarded to military families, because stockbrokers’ annual salaries were higher. But some military families complained, saying that their relatives would have left the military soon and taken higher-paying civilian jobs. Feinburg also heard from people whose relatives had died when the Oklahoma City federal building was bombed. But those families received nothing, as Feinburg’s government mandate restricted the fund to 9/11 victims. Feinburg ultimately concluded that the whole process was unfair. He wrote: “Don’t ask one person to act like Solomon and try to calculate the value of lives. To be judge, jury, accountant, lawyer, rabbi, et cetera, is very, very difficult.”

Just what is one life worth? That’s a good question for us to ponder today. Perhaps a person’s value is his or her net worth of assets. Yet this would mean that Donald Trump is far more valuable than Mother Teresa of Calcutta. As Catholics, would we agree with that assessment? Our faith tradition holds in high esteem those men and women who have taken voluntary vows of poverty. But if the value of their lives were based soley upon what they possessed in this world, they would be worth very little indeed.

The truth is that at our most basic, physical level, we are worth very little. The combined value of all of the chemicals and minerals found in a typical human body, 96% of which is Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen, and Nitrogen, is less than one, single U.S. Dollar. One dollar is pocket change to most of us; it won’t even buy a small cup of coffee at McDonald’s. Contrast that with the price of an ounce of gold, which recently topped $1000. An ounce of gold is about the size of a matchbook, and can fit comfortably in the palm of our hand. But is it worth more than we are? Maybe on the commodities market. But not in the eyes of God. If you and I want to know what we are worth to God, all we need to do is listen carefully to today’s Passion gospel, and reflect on what is recalled in this solemn liturgy.

We are reminded today that God considers us to be so valuable, that his only Son surrendered his own life, so that we might live forever. If God thought that we were cheap, expendable, or dime-a-dozen, would he have bothered? How much effort do we make to save or protect that which we think has no value? Not much. We’re generally happy to throw it away, or write it off as a loss. But God, through the suffering and death of Jesus, has shown us clearly how much our lives are worth to him. As Pope Benedict has written: “Man is worth so much to God that he himself became man in order to suffer with man…as is revealed to us in the account of Jesus’ Passion.”

Can we put a dollar amount on how much we’re worth to God? If we were to try, we’d have to put a price on Jesus’ life, since he gave his life for ours. Judas Iscariot, when he betrayed our Lord, received 30 silver pieces for Jesus’ life. But this amount was an intentional insult, as it represented the fine to be paid a slave owner by anyone who injured his slave. Nicodemus, I think, was closer to the mark. We heard how he anointed Jesus’ dead body with over a hundred pounds of costly spices, an extravagant amount fit only for a king. Yet even this, of course, comes nowhere near to representing the true value of Jesus’ life. It would be absurd, and even obscene, to try to place a monetary value on Jesus’ life. It’s much better, and far more accurate, to say simply that Jesus’ life was priceless. And if Jesus’ life is priceless, then, in a sense, the same is true of ours.

In God’s eyes, we are indeed priceless. Nevertheless, God did pay a very specific price for us. More specifically, he paid the price of our sins. Like our lives, we can’t really attach a dollar value to our sins. But that doesn’t mean that our sins aren’t costly, because they are. Sin hurts our neighbors, our families, our enemies. Sin hurts us, as it keeps us from being the people God wants us to be. And sin harms our relationship with God. We might say that our sins have bankrupted us. Bankruptcy, of course, means that we owe more than we are able to pay. In terms of our sins, bankruptcy means that there’s nothing we can do to truly make up for all the harm our sin has done. Jesus had to do it for us. He is the one who satisfied our debt; he is the one who paid the price. And the price he paid was the cross.

In just a matter of minutes, we will venerate the cross of Jesus. We will bow before it, praise Christ for it, adore it as it’s lifted on high, and many of us, after the liturgy, will remain behind to reverence it with a kiss. We will do this because the cross shows us how precious we are in God’s sight; it shows us, more than anything else could, how much we are valued, and loved, by God. We may not be able to place a dollar value on our lives. But because of the cross, because of this “Good Friday,” you and I know exactly what our lives are worth.

Photo credits: pnoeric, moneyblognewz, nikoretro, via Creative Commons

Imagine yourself to be Jesus on this very night, nearly two thousand years ago. You’ll soon be betrayed, arrested, and subjected to a horrifically violent death. If you knew that this was going to happen, what would you do? Many people, I think, would want to meet violence with violence. They’d try to rally the troops and start a fight. It wouldn’t have been hard for Jesus to do. Many people in Jerusalem were looking for a warrior messiah. And Jesus, by his own admission, even had angel armies at his disposal!

But Jesus did something very different. With his apostles gathered around him, Jesus insisted that they love one another as he loved them. He washed their feet and told them to be servants. And then he took broke bread and said “This is my body.” He next took wine and said, “This is my blood which will be shed for you.” In so doing, Jesus instituted the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, an act we recall this Holy Thursday night.

Every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we remember that Jesus died a violent death. We “proclaim the death of the Lord,” as St. Paul explained in today’s second reading. However, the Eucharist also reminds us that Jesus didn’t respond to violence with more violence. At his Passion, Jesus practiced non-violence. One might say then, that the Eucharist is a sacrament of non-violence. In fact, this is exactly what Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, the official preacher to the Papal Household, proclaimed in his Good Friday homily at St. Peter’s Basilica in 2005. He said: “The Eucharist is the sacrament of non-violence! Thanks to the Eucharist, God’s absolute “no” to violence, spoken on the cross, echoes alive down the centuries.”

But what does this mean for us, who live in a world filled with violence? What implications does our participation in the Eucharist, the sacrament of non-violence, have for the way we live our lives? Fr. Cantalamessa said, “The Eucharist is not only a mystery to consecrate, to receive, to contemplate and adore. It is also a mystery to imitate.” In other words, if the Eucharist is a sacrament of non-violence, we ourselves need to practice and promote non-violence.

For starters, we can reject the glorification of violence in the media, through popular music, graphic video games, movies, and TV. Studies reveal that by the time a typical American child reaches 18, he or she will witness on television 200,000 acts of violence, including 40,000 murders. This saturation exposure leads children to be less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others; more fearful of the world around them; and more likely to engage in aggressive or harmful ways to others. As media consumers, we need to say “no” to this sort of content.

We can also say “no” to the death penalty, as both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict have clearly done. Recently, the Vatican contributed a position paper to the World Congress Against the Death Penalty, in Paris. It described the death penalty as “a refusal of the right to life” and “an affront to human dignity” which contributes to a “culture of violence” and shows “a contempt for the Gospel teaching on forgiveness.” It concludes by stating that the Vatican defends “all human life from conception to natural death.”

Of course, defending human life from the moment of conception would lead us to oppose the violence of abortion. 1.31 million abortions are performed in the US each year, which equates to 24.5 percent of all pregnancies. The majority of these abortions are performed after the baby’s heart has started beating, and many babies can feel pain when being aborted. But the violence of abortion extends to the mother too, who often experiences significant physical or emotional harm.

Another threat to women is domestic violence, which includes physical, sexual, psychological, verbal, and economic abuse. Our nations’ bishops issued a statement entitled, When I Call for Help: A Pastoral Response to Domestic Violence against Women. They encourage victims not to blame themselves, think they’re being punished by God, or fear that they betray their marriage vows if they leave an abusive husband. They challenge male perpetrators to find the courage to seek help and break the cycle of violence. And they call upon the rest of us to compassionately help victims and their children, while we work and pray to stop the violence.

Other forms of violence we encounter today are torture, bullying at school, and perhaps even some forms of child discipline. It goes without saying, however, that the most destructive form of violence in our world is warfare. For a Christian, war is always a tragic last resort, to be used in defense only when all other options have been exhausted. We need to be people who seek to avoid war with every ounce of our strength, by challenging our nation’s leaders to be peacemakers, and asking the Lord to purify our hearts of any resentments or hatred which might lead us to relish war, or be indifferent to its victims. “No to war!” said Pope John Paul II. “It is always a defeat for humanity.”

To say “no” to war requires courage. When Judas and the soldiers came to arrest Jesus, Peter and other disciples drew their swords and attacked- an act of both fear and courage. But when Jesus ordered them to drop their swords, their courage vanished, and they fled into the night. Sometimes a non-violent stance takes more courage than a violent one.

That’s why we need the Eucharist, the sacrament of non-violence, so that Jesus may fill us with the courage we need to be his non-violent disciples. To quote Father Cantalamessa again, “The cry ‘This is the Lamb of God!’ which resounds at every Mass…is an invitation addressed to all believers in Christ not to let themselves be contaminated by the violence of our world, but to respond to it with the meekness and the strength of love.”

Readings for today’s Mass: http://www.usccb.org/nab/042111.shtml

What was it that motivated Judas to betray Jesus? Was he trying to force Jesus to display his divine powers against his enemies? Maybe he was resentful that he hadn’t been chosen as leader of the apostles. Or perhaps he was simply malicious and greedy. We just don’t know.

What we do know is that, when all was said and done, Judas was overwhelmed by bitter regret. He tried to return his blood money, and ended his life in suicide.

Suicide is always a tragedy. But the greater tragedy here is that Judas had lost hope. In his despair, Judas lost hope in receiving mercy from the one whose entire life conveyed hope and mercy. We can say with absolute confidence that if Judas has run to the foot of the cross and begged forgiveness, he would have received it.

In a way, Judas represents the state of many people today- people who live lives of quiet despair, shame, and fear, because they believe themselves to be unlovable and unforgivable in the eyes of God.

But such fear is a self-inflicted wound. The good news of Holy Week is that no one need despair of God’s mercy and forgiveness. Not Judas Iscariot. Not you or me.

Readings for today’s Mass:  http://www.usccb.org/nab/042011.shtml