First Holy Communion

In our parish children are receiving their First Holy Communion these Sundays of the Easter season. They will come into the church together, each one with her or his name printed on their clothes and we will greet each one of them by name at the altar. Their families and relatives will be here.

Later, we will call them to stand around the altar at the Eucharistic prayer and they will be the first to receive Communion. Afterwards, they’ll be joining their families to celebrate this important step in their life of faith.

We call them by name. In baptism, that’s the first thing we ask parents who bring their children to the baptized: “What’s his/her name?” and later we baptize them “in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

God calls us by name. It’s my name and it stands for me. In baptism we are called by God, who takes us into his hands forever. We are baptized with water, with life, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. We know God’s name: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Baptized as infants, we didn’t speak for ourselves; our parents spoke for us, and they were entrusted to bring us up in this belief: that we are God’s children, God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

At first Holy Communion we speak for ourselves; no one holds us in their arms or speaks for us as they did in baptism. When we receive Jesus in the bread we say “Amen.” I believe he comes to me; I know who he is; He is my Lord and my God who loves me. He gave his life for me and he calls me to eternal life.

Our First Communion should be the beginning of many communions. Jesus wants us to know his name and to know us. That’s what the word “communion” means.

3rd Sunday after Easter

John 21, 1-18

I think I know where this gospel took place. It’s called Tabgha, a quiet, wooded area on the Lake of Galilee just south of the ancient town of Capernaum. It’s easy walking distance from the town that was the center of Jesus’ ministry.

The name Tabgha comes from the seven springs of water flowing into the lake there. When I visited some years ago, flocks of birds were singing in the trees and drinking from the streams of water.

For centuries fishermen must have pulled in here to get fresh water from the springs, and perhaps fry some fish over a fire on the beach. It’s a likely place where Jesus would come to pray. Tradition, witnessed by two centuries-old churches on the site, says he met his disciples here in this beautiful place after his resurrection.

According to John’s gospel, Peter and other disciples of Jesus came to Galilee after the Lord’s death and resurrection and went fishing. Through the night they caught nothing, but at dawn they heard a call from the shore to cast their nets out again.
“… Jesus was standing on the shore; but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.” They caught of large catch of 153 fish. Jesus then called from the shore to come eat some fish at a fire he had started and he gave them bread and some fish to eat and revealed himself to them.

Peter has a leading role in this story. He jumped into the water to get to the shore after he’s told Jesus was there. Then after they have eaten, Jesus takes him aside and three times asks the disciple who denied him three times, “Do you love me?”

Three times the apostle who cursed and swore in the courtyard of the High Priest that he did not even know Jesus answers “Yes, I do. I love you.” And Jesus tells him “Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep.”

A great example of forgiveness is found here. No scolding words or recriminations. No “I told you so.” No warning, “You do that again and …” No demotion, no putting on parole. Rather, Jesus gives Peter new responsibility. “Feed my lambs” as I do. A beautiful picture of what God’s mercy is.

Instead of punishing him, God calls Peter to new things. The mercy of God always calls us to something new, some new life.

Tabgha, along the Lake of Galilee where Jesus met his disciples, is a wonderful place to visit. My guess is that this spot was where Jesus often prayed during his days in Capernaum and where he often called his disciples to rest awhile. Here he communed with God his Father and showed his love for others; here he prayed and forgave. His memory lingers at this lovely place besides the Sea of Galilee.

We learn here that prayer and forgiveness go together, as Jesus taught. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Today’s gospel urges us to pray and learn to forgive as Jesus did. Maybe there’s someone who has hurt us, maybe we have an unforgiving attitude towards some situation we’re facing now. A job we don’t like, a home situation we’re angry about, something in society that upsets us.

Pray and forgive.

The Thomas in Us All

The yearly feast of Easter is a celebration, not of one day, but of fifty days, from Holy Saturday till the feast of Pentecost. We also celebrate Easter each Sunday of the year.

Why this extensive celebration? Because we’re so slow to realize what it means, and need reminding over and over.

Some things — like telling time or tying our shoes — we learn once, but the resurrection of Jesus is a mystery not learned at once. Never grasped completely, it unfolds as life unfolds, day by day.

That’s why Thomas, the apostle, whom we remember on the 2nd Sunday of Easter, is such an important figure. Far from being a lonely skeptic, an isolated dissenter, he represents the slowness of heart and mind, the recurrent skepticism, that affects us all.

Yet, Thomas is still a sign of hope. He reminds us that the Risen Jesus offers, even to the most unconvinced, the power to believe.

Lord Jesus,
the Thomas in us all
needs the wounds in your hands and side,
to call us to believe
you are our Lord and God.

Risen, present everywhere,
bless those who have not seen,
blind with doubts
and weakened faith.

Bless us, Lord,
from your wounded hands and side,
give us faith
to believe in you.

Sing a New Song

In the days after Easter our readings during the liturgy speak of the growth of the church as well as the source of its growth, the Risen Christ, who abides with us in signs and mysteries.

The church’s growth is never easy;  Stephen’s persecution, described in the Acts of the Apostles, tells us that.

But we have “Bread from heaven,” better than the heavenly manna. This bread  keeps you alive forever.

“Sing to the Lord a new song; his praise is in the assembly of the saints.” We’ve been given a new song to sing each day, Augustine says in his commentary.

“A song is a thing of joy; more profoundly, it is a thing of love.” To sing we’ve been  given the gift of love, a new convenant,  a new promise of a kingdom.

“You have heard the words: Sing to the Lord a new song. Now you want  to know what praises to sing. The answer is: His praise is in the assembly of the saints. If you desire to praise him, then live what you express. Live good lives, and you yourselves will be his praise. Singers become the song.”

Reality has Come

“Reality has come,” Melito, bishop of Sardis in the 2^nd century, says in a homily for Easter. “The type has passed away… The lamb gives place to God, the sheep gives place to a man, and the man is Christ, who fills the whole of creation.

“The sacrifice of the lamb, the celebration of the Passover, and the prescriptions of the Law have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Under the old Law, and still more under the new dispensation, everything pointed toward him.

“Both the Law and the Word came forth from Zion and Jerusalem, but now the Law has given place to the Word, the old to the new. The commandment has become grace, the type a reality. The lamb has become a Son, the sheep a man, and man, God.

“The Lord, though he was God, became man. He suffered for the sake of those who suffer, he was bound for those in bonds, condemned for the guilty, buried for those who lie in the grave; but he rose from the dead, and cried aloud… I have freed the condemned, brought the dead back to life, raised men and women from their graves… I am the Christ; I have destroyed death, triumphed over the enemy, trampled hell underfoot, bound the strong one, and taken men and women up to the heights of heaven: I am the Christ.

“Come, then, all nations, receive forgiveness for the sins that defile you. I am your forgiveness. I am the Passover that brings salvation. I am the lamb who was immolated for you. I am your ransom, your life, your resurrection, your light. I am your salvation and your king. I will bring you to the heights of heaven. With my own right hand I will raise you up, and I will show you the eternal Father.”

 

Death Destroyed

On this Friday in the Easter season the poetic St. Ephrem the Syrian has this beautiful description of Christ conquering death:

“Death trampled our Lord underfoot, but he in his turn treated death as a highroad for his own feet. He submitted to it, enduring it willingly, because by this means he would be able to destroy death in spite of itself. Death had its own way when our Lord went out from Jerusalem carrying his cross; but when by a loud cry from that cross he summoned the dead from the underworld, death was powerless to prevent it.

 ” Death slew him by means of the body which he had assumed, but that same body proved to be the weapon with which he conquered death. Concealed beneath the cloak of his manhood, his godhead engaged death in combat; but in slaying our Lord, death itself was slain. It was able to kill natural human life, but was itself killed by the life that is above the nature of man.

  “Death could not devour our Lord unless he possessed a body, neither could hell swallow him up unless he bore our flesh; and so he came in search of a chariot in which to ride to the underworld. This chariot was the body which he received from the Virgin; in it he invaded death’s fortress, broke open its strong-room and scattered all its treasure.

The Resurrection Stories

In this retreat at Lake Placid I’m reflecting on the resurrection narratives from the four gospels.

The gospels speak to the churches for which they are written and we can find their particular purpose by looking at each gospel without trying to harmonize it with accounts found in the other gospels.

Matthew’s Gospel

Matthew’s resurrection account, for example, obviously speaks to a Jewish Christian church being attacked by a resurgent Judaism under Pharisaic leadership  The story of the Jewish guards at the tomb, an important part of Matthew’s resurrection narrative, was surely part of an attack on the reality of Jesus’ resurrection. His messianic origins, his parents and the leaders he had chosen to follow him were also being questioned.

Matthew insists that Jesus really died, he tasted death in all its harsh reality. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he cries out after a long silence on Calvary. He was buried, then he rose again.

An earthquake announces his resurrection and an angel clothed like lightening sits triumphantly on the stone rolled away from an empty tomb. Death has been conquered. Jesus appears to his disciples, however, not here at the tomb, but on a mountain in Galilee, according to Matthew’s gospel.  From there, he sends his disciples into the whole world to preach the gospel, baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

The Christians of Galilee about 90 AD, when Matthew’s gospel was written, were struggling with Pharisaic Judaism for dominance in that part of Palestine; they may well have been losing the battle. In the centuries that followed, there is evidence that Christianity hardly survived in the land where Jesus began his ministry.

According to Matthew, the Risen Christ comes to urge his followers to a global mission. He is not a figure of the past; he is present where his followers are, leading them on.  At his command they are to leave Galilee which, instead of a place where the Christian movement ends, becomes a place of hope and new beginnings. Matthew doesn’t forget that the Risen Christ emerged from the tomb in Jerusalem, but he is intent on presenting him bringing new life and direction to his struggling church.  He constantly calls it to a wider mission.

Luke’s Gospel

The focus of the resurrection narrative of Luke is the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Like Matthew, Luke begins with the women at the tomb, but he also directs us beyond the tomb to a road where two downcast disciples sunk in disappointment are abandoning their hopes for God’s kingdom. He appears gradually to the two disciples. Slow to understand and to recognize Jesus, they see him finally in the breaking of the bread. They remember afterwards his words on the road.

Luke’s account of the Risen Jesus with the two disciples who have lost hope and are trying to find their way is a key to understanding the journey of the church the evangelist outlines in his gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles. It will be a journey from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, Rome. But it is not a triumphant journey; it’s the road taken by the two disciples. Luke’s narrative is a wonderful corrective to a triumphalist view of the church and a perfectionist view of our personal journey of faith.

John’s Gospel

The Gospel of John, with its lengthy series of resurrection stories, begins in Jerusalem with Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene as she goes to the tomb in the darkness of Sunday morning and finds it empty. In John’s church the eye-witnesses to what Jesus said and did are long gone. John  emphasizes the incredulity of the original eye-witnesses. Mary, first of all , is convinced that the body of Jesus has been stolen. She and Peter are not at all ready to believe. Like the Emmaus disciples who do not see him at first, Mary does not recognize the mysterious stranger.She thinks he is a gardener and only recognizes him after he calls her name. The Emmaus disciples find him “in the breaking of the bread,” Mary recognizes him as he speaks her name.

Their stories remind us that the eucharist and the word of God help us recognize the Risen Lord. “My sheep hear my voice, Jesus says.

Mark’s gospel describes Mary in his resurrection account as the one from whom Jesus cast out seven devils and that’s the way John’s gospel presents her. She is not a romantic interest as some modern sensationalists would like her to be. She is a symbol of every individual whom the Risen Lord comes to save; she represents the weakest of humanity that Jesus will bring to the Father.

As he rises from death Jesus has been changed, John’s gospel indicates. The lack of recognition of him by his disciples tells us that. Yet he is the same. “Life is changed, not ended,” we say in our prayers. He has a mission beyond this world to prepare a place for us. So Mary is not to cling to him. He will come again to take her and all of us to himself.

Like Mary Magdalen, who represents the weakness of us all.  Thomas the apostle, on the other hand,  represents institutional doubt, the doubt of the church and all humanity before the mystery of the resurrection. Thomas is not unique.

The locked doors of the Upper Room are more than a defense against the Jewish leaders. The Risen Jesus must come to his church with his gift of peace and forgiveness to renew it in its mission.  He comes to be present and to show us the wounds in his hands and his side, which remain in his risen body. When we see them in him and in also others, we will recognize him.

In John’s gospel Jerusalem is where Jesus meets his followers first. He meets them as individuals, like Mary. He meets them together as they gather on the first day of the week and on the Lord’s Day. He meets them in sacraments and signs. He empowers them with the Holy Spirit, the Creator Spirit.

After recalling his appearances in Jerusalem, John recalls the appearances of Jesus in Galilee, continuing the tradition of the two places where the early church saw the Risen One appear.

The gospel accounts of the resurrection offer a wonderful picture of how the Risen Christ comes to us as individuals, as a church and as the world.

His Glorious Wounds

A reflection by Athanasius of Antioch in Wednesday’s Office of Readings speaks about the glory of Jesus. First, he had a glory before the world began. It was a glory far beyond the light of the sun, a light inaccessible to us. We could not even look at him.

None of the appearances of the Risen Jesus in the gospels reveal a glory like that. Becoming human, he relinquished that glory and experienced death on the cross

His glory now appears in the mystery of the cross, as he repeatedly shows his disciples the wounds in his hands and his side.

“ It was necessary for Christ to suffer: it was impossible for his passion not to have happened. He said so himself when he called his companions dull and slow to believe because they failed to recognise that he had to suffer and so enter into his glory.

“Leaving behind him the glory that had been his with the Father before the world was made, he had gone forth to save his people. This salvation, however, could be achieved only by the suffering of the author of our life, as Paul taught when he said that the author of life himself was made perfect through suffering.

“Because of us he was deprived of his glory for a little while, the glory that was his as the Father’s only-begotten Son, but through the cross this glory is seen to have been restored to him in a certain way in the body that he had assumed. `

“Explaining what water the Saviour referred to when he said: He that has faith in me shall have rivers of living water flowing from within him, John says in his gospel that he was speaking of the Holy Spirit which those who believed in him were to receive, for the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified. The glorification he meant was his death upon the cross for which the Lord prayed to the Father before undergoing his passion, asking his Father to give him the glory that he had in his presence before the world began.”

For more on the wounds of Christ:

http://www.cptryon.org/xpipassio/wounds/index.html

Belief Comes From His Wounds

Reading the letters of St. Paul of the Cross you notice how often he wishes the one to whom he’s writing to be placed in the “wounds of Christ” or the “holy Side of Jesus” or his “Sacred Heart.”.  “I am in a hurry and leave you in the holy Side of Jesus, where I ask rich blessings for you.”

Expressions like these seem to be pious phrases until we read the story of Thomas from John’s gospel. Jesus shows the doubting disciple the wounds in his hands and side, and Thomas believes.

Belief is not something we arrive at by our own powers of reason or will. Faith is a gift that God gives through Jesus Christ.

Light in Darkness

The readings for Easter often remind us that Jesus Christ, the “Word made flesh,” is also the “Word through whom God made the universe.” “God from God, Light from Light…Through him all things were made.”

Jesus does not come as a stranger to our universe, therefore.  As man, he learns for the first time, as God he knows the secrets of creation.

We quickly pass over insights into the nature of Jesus Christ to consider the graces he gives us– we are God’s children and have the promise of his resurrection.

But do we pass over what we know about Jesus Christ too quickly? He came to redeem the universe: don’t we share in the work of the divine Word who came to save the world? We have more to save than ourselves.

As we learn more of the universe created by the Word, we can’t help but be amazed at its slow, mysterious evolution. Nothing is done in an instant, it seems. God works in complex ways. Shouldn’t we, then, expect the complexity we face?
Listen to Maximus of Turin’s reflections on Jesus Christ, “Light from Light.”

“Yes, we have the light of Christ, but it is a light that shines in darkness.  The light of Christ is an endless day that knows no night. Christ is this day, says the Apostle; such is the meaning of his words: Night is almost over; day is at hand. He tells us that night is almost over, not that it is about to fall… This is why John the evangelist says: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never been able to overpower it.

And so, my brothers and sisters, each of us ought surely to rejoice on this holy day. Let no one, conscious of his sinfulness, withdraw from our common celebration, nor let anyone be kept away from our public prayer by the burden of his guilt. Sinner he may indeed be, but he must not despair of pardon on this day which is so highly privileged; for if a thief could receive the grace of paradise, how could a Christian be refused forgiveness?”

Shouldn’t we, then, expect to walk in darkness?