Wednesday in the Octave of Easter
April 7, 2010
Reading I
Acts 3:1-10
Peter and John were going up to the temple area
for the three o’clock hour of prayer.
And a man crippled from birth was carried
and placed at the gate of the temple
called “the Beautiful Gate” every day
to beg for alms from the people
who entered the temple.
When he saw Peter and John
about to go into the temple, he asked for alms.
But Peter looked intently at him,
as did John,
and said, “Look at us.”
He paid attention to them,
expecting to receive something from them.
Peter said, “I have neither silver nor gold,
but what I do have I give you:
in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean,
rise and walk.”
Then Peter took him by the right hand
and raised him up,
and immediately his feet and ankles grew strong.
He leaped up, stood, and walked around,
and went into the temple with them,
walking and jumping and praising God.
When all the people saw him
walking and praising God,
they recognized him as the one
who used to sit begging
at the Beautiful Gate of the temple,
and they were filled
with amazement and astonishment
at what had happened to him.
+++
Today we see the first healing performed by Peter and John. By this they show that the work of Jesus is continuing in them. The fact that two of them are involved in the healing also indicates that the work of Jesus is being done not so much by individuals (although that may happen) but by the community which he left to carry on his mission.
Our reading is the beginning of a longer passage with a dramatic public healing which results in a large group of people gathering to hear Peter make a Gospel proclamation. Some Sadducees, taking exception to what is being said about the resurrection of Jesus (they denied any life after death), will have Peter and John, and apparently the cured man as well, arrested and brought before the Sanhedrin. There is also the matter of Peter and John teaching publicly in the Temple - something they had no authority to do. When Peter refuses to back down on the basis that he was speaking in a prophetic role, he and John should have been jailed but because the healing of the cripple, a well-known figure whose healing had been witnessed by many, the authorities backed down with just a warning.
We are told that Peter and John were on their way into the Temple in Jerusalem for the afternoon prayers. The three stated times of prayer for later Judaism were midmorning (third hour, 9 a.m.), the time of the evening sacrifice (ninth hour, 3 p.m.), and sunset. At this early stage in the Church’s life, the disciples maintained many of their former Jewish customs and practices. They did not see themselves as breaking away from their past, still less setting up a new religion.
Peter and John are among the most prominent of the apostles. Together with John’s brother, James, they formed an inner circle with Jesus (attending the healing of the daughter of Jairus, witnessing the Transfiguration, brought along to give support to Jesus during his agony in the garden). Peter and John will be arrested together and later we will see them evangelising in Samaria.
For them, Jesus was the continuation and the fulfilment of God’s promises to his people. Jesus was the Messiah long awaited by the Jewish people. Later, we will see how they began to realise that Jesus had come not just for the Jews but for people everywhere.
As they enter the Temple, they see a cripple being carried in. His friends brought him every day so that he could sit at the Beautiful Gate and collect alms from passers-by. This gate was the favourite entrance to the Temple court. It was probably the bronze-sheathed gate elsewhere called the Nicanor Gate. It seems to have led from the court of the Gentiles (open to everyone) to the court of the women on the east wall of the Temple building.
When the crippled beggar saw Peter and John, he naturally asked them for money. Peter and John both fixed their gaze on the man (as Jesus used to do). “I have neither gold nor silver to give you. But I have something else,” Peter told him. “In the name of Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, walk!” And Peter raised him to his feet (a symbol of resurrection, new life, also seen in Gospel healings). Again, we note that the healing is done not by Peter himself but in the name of Jesus. Jesus himself only healed in his own name.
The man gingerly tries out his “new” legs and the next thing is seen bounding his way into the Temple, giving praise and thanks to God for his healing. The onlookers, many of whom were familiar with the beggar, were struck speechless by what they saw. The miracle has a dramatic impact: it symbolises the saving power of Christ and leads the beggar to enter the temple, where he hears Peter’s proclamation of salvation through Jesus.
The story clearly indicates that the power of Jesus has, as promised, been transferred to his followers. “The one who believes in me will do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these” (John 14:12). The crippled beggar can also be seen, as in similar gospel stories, as symbolical of each one of us who are permanently in need of God’s help and who stumble in our efforts to follow him. But, once healed, we immediately join him on his Way.
+++ +++ +++ +++
Responsorial
Psalm 105
Rejoice, O hearts that seek the Lord.
Give thanks to the LORD, invoke his name;
make known among the nations his deeds.
Sing to him, sing his praise,
proclaim all his wondrous deeds.
Rejoice, O hearts that seek the Lord.
Glory in his holy name;
rejoice, O hearts that seek the LORD!
Look to the LORD in his strength;
seek to serve him constantly.
Rejoice, O hearts that seek the Lord.
You descendants of Abraham, his servants,
sons of Jacob, his chosen ones!
He, the LORD, is our God;
throughout the earth his judgments prevail.
Rejoice, O hearts that seek the Lord.
He remembers forever his covenant
which he made binding
for a thousand generations.
Which he entered into with Abraham
and by his oath to Isaac.
Rejoice, O hearts that seek the Lord.
+++ +++ +++ +++
Gospel
Luke 24:13-35
That very day, the first day of the week,
two of Jesus’ disciples were going to a village
seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus,
and they were conversing
about all the things that had occurred.
And it happened that
while they were conversing and debating,
Jesus himself drew near and walked with them,
but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.
He asked them, “What are you discussing
as you walk along?”
They stopped, looking downcast.
One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply,
“Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem
who does not know of the things
that have taken place there in these days?”
And he replied to them, “What sort of things?”
They said to him,
“The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene,
who was a prophet mighty in deed and word
before God and all the people,
how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over
to a sentence of death and crucified him.
But we were hoping
that he would be the one to redeem Israel;
and besides all this,
it is now the third day since this took place.
Some women from our group,
however, have astounded us:
they were at the tomb early in the morning
and did not find his Body;
they came back and reported
that they had indeed seen a vision of angels
who announced that he was alive.
Then some of those with us went to the tomb
and found things just as the women had described,
but him they did not see.”
And he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are!
How slow of heart to believe
all that the prophets spoke!
Was it not necessary
that the Christ should suffer these things
and enter into his glory?”
Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets,
he interpreted to them what referred to him
in all the Scriptures.
As they approached the village
to which they were going,
he gave the impression
that he was going on farther.
But they urged him, “Stay with us,
for it is nearly evening
and the day is almost over.”
So he went in to stay with them.
And it happened that,
while he was with them at table,
he took bread, said the blessing,
broke it, and gave it to them.
With that their eyes were opened
and they recognized him,
but he vanished from their sight.
Then they said to each other,
“Were not our hearts burning within us
while he spoke to us on the way
and opened the Scriptures to us?”
So they set out at once
and returned to Jerusalem where they found
gathered together
the Eleven and those with them
who were saying,
“The Lord has truly been raised
and has appeared to Simon!”
Then the two recounted
what had taken place on the way
and how he was made known to them
in the breaking of the bread.
+++
One of the great passages of the New Testament. It encapsulates in a little over twenty verses the whole Christian life. It is Easter Sunday as the passage opens. In Luke all the resurrection appearances take place in the vicinity of Jerusalem and on Easter Sunday.
It begins with two disciples on the road leaving Jerusalem. For Luke the focal point of Jesus’ mission is Jerusalem - it was the goal to which all Jesus’ public life was headed and from there the new community would bring his Message to the rest of the world.
They are on their way to a place called Emmaus, about 7 miles (11 km) from Jerusalem, whose exact location is not now known. It does not really matter and that is the point. They were on the “road” - they are pilgrims on the road of life. Jesus is the Way, the Road. The problem is that at this moment they are going in the wrong direction.
The Risen Jesus joins them as a fellow-traveller. “Something” prevents them from recognizing him. What was that “something”? Their presumption that he was dead? Was it their pre-conceived idea of what Jesus should look like?
Seeing their obvious despondency and disillusionment, he asks what they are talking about. With deliciously unconscious irony they say, “You must be the only person staying in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have been happening there these last few days.”
Jesus plays them out a little more with a totally innocent-sounding, “What things?” He wants to hear their version of what happened. To them the death was the failure of Jesus’ mission. They refer to him as a “prophet” as if, after the debacle of his death, they could not see in Jesus the Messiah they had earlier acknowledged. “We were hoping that he would be the one to set Israel free.” Again the delicious irony of their own words is lost on them. For them, freedom meant liberation from the tyranny of foreign domination and perhaps the inauguration of the Kingdom of God as they understood it.
They are puzzled also by the stories of the women describing an empty tomb and angels - but there is still no sign of Jesus. More irony! They are addressing these very words to Jesus!
Jesus then gives them a lesson in reading the Scriptures and shows them that all that happened to Jesus, including his sufferings and death, far from being a tragedy was all foreordained. Luke is the only writer to speak clearly of a suffering Messiah. The idea of a suffering Messiah is not found as such in the Old Testament. Later, the Church will see a foreshadowing of the suffering Messiah in the texts on the Suffering Servant in Isaiah.
This story emphasises that all that happened to Jesus was the fulfilment of Old Testament promises and of Jewish hopes. All through Acts, Luke will argue that Christianity is the fulfilment of the hopes of Pharisaic Judaism and its logical development. In many respects, Matthew’s gospel has a similar theme.
As they reach their destination, Jesus makes as if to continue his journey. However, they extend their hospitality to the stranger. “I was a stranger and you took me in.” “It is nearly evening time and the day is almost over,” they say. So Jesus goes in to stay with them. Wonderful words. But it would not have happened if they had not opened their home to him.
As they sat down to the meal, Jesus, the visitor unexpectedly acting as host, took the bread, said the blessing over it, broke it and gave it to them. And in that very act they recognized him. This is the Eucharist where we recognize the presence of Jesus among us in the breaking of bread. Not just in the bread, but in the breaking and sharing of the bread and in those who share the broken bread.
Then Jesus disappears. But they are still basking in the afterglow. “Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked to us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?” In the light of all this experience, they turn around [conversion!] and go back along the road to Jerusalem from which they had been fleeing. There they discover their fellow-disciples excited that the Lord is risen and has appeared to Simon. And they tell their marvellous story and how “they had recognized him at the breaking of bread”.
All the ingredients of the Christian life are here:
- Running away from where Christ is to be found. We do it all the time.
- Meeting Jesus in the unexpected place or person or situation. How many times does this happen and we do not recognize him, or worse mistreat him?
- Finding the real meaning and identity of Jesus and his mission in having the Scriptures fully explained. Without the Scriptures we cannot claim to know Jesus. Yet how many Catholics go through life hardly ever opening a bible?
- Recognizing Jesus in the breaking of bread, in our celebration of the Eucharist. The breaking and sharing of the bread indicates the essentially community dimension of that celebration, making it a real comm-union with all present.
- The central experience of Scripture and Liturgy draws us to participate in the work of proclaiming the message of Christ and sharing our experience of it with others that they may also share it.
- The importance of hospitality and kindness to the stranger. “I was hungry… and you did - or did not feed…” Jesus is especially present and to be found and loved in the very least of my brothers and sisters.
The scene is also a model of the Eucharist:
Those walking together on the Road gather together and meet Jesus, first, in the Liturgy of the Word as the Scriptures are broken open and explained, and, second, in the Liturgy of the Eucharist, where what Jesus did for us through his suffering, death and resurrection is remembered with thanksgiving and the bread that is now his Body and the wine that is now his Blood, is shared among those who are the Members of that Body to strengthen their union and their commitment to continuing the work of Jesus.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
I Have Seen The Lord, And He Said These Things To Me.
Tuesday in the Octave of Easter
Reading I
Acts 2:36-41
On the day of Pentecost, Peter said to the Jewish people,
“Let the whole house of Israel know for certain
that God has made him both Lord and Christ,
this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart,
and they asked Peter and the other Apostles,
“What are we to do, my brothers?”
Peter said to them,
“Repent and be baptized, every one of you,
in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins;
and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
For the promise is made to you and to your children
and to all those far off,
whomever the Lord our God will call.”
He testified with many other arguments, and was exhorting them,
“Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.”
Those who accepted his message were baptized,
and about three thousand persons were added that day.
+++
Today we see the first and immediate results of Peter’s proclamation of the Gospel message.
After Peter’s proclamation his hearers are “cut to the heart”, deeply moved and shaken, and sincerely ask what they should do. It reflects both their belief in what they have just heard about Jesus and regret over former rejection.
They are told to “repent”. Repentance was important in the message of the forerunner, John the Baptist (Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3), in the preaching of Jesus (Mark 1:15; Luke 13:3) and in the directions Jesus left just before his ascension (Luke 24:47).
‘Repentance’ implies not just regret for the past but, much more positively, a radical change to one’s way of thinking and behaving. It translates the Greek word metanoia of which the nearest English translation is something like ‘conversion’, a turning around to a completely new way of seeing life. This they pledge through being baptised and having their former sins forgiven and left behind, and receiving the gift of the Spirit.
Each of the great apostolic addresses in Acts finishes with a call to conversion leading to full reconciliation with God.
This is in fulfilment of the promises made by God in the past and extended not only to the Jewish people but also “for all those who are far away”. We are told that on that very day - the day of Pentecost - 3,000 people became followers of Jesus the Lord. Luke always likes to note the Church’s numerical growth and does so several times in the Acts.
A reading like this is a call for all of us to renew our own commitment and to make the necessary conversion (metanoia) to bring us closer to Christ and the Gospel. It is also a reminder for us to share the Easter message with others. We may not have the same response that Peter got but if we all brought one person to Christ what a difference it would make to their lives - and ours!
+++ +++ +++ +++
Responsorial
Psalm 33
The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.
Upright is the word of the LORD,
and all his works are trustworthy.
He loves justice and right;
of the kindness of the LORD the earth is full.
The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.
See, the eyes of the LORD are upon those who fear him,
upon those who hope for his kindness,
To deliver them from death
and preserve them in spite of famine.
The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.
Our soul waits for the LORD,
who is our help and our shield.
May your kindness, O LORD, be upon us
who have put our hope in you.
The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.
+++ +++ +++ +++
Gospel
John 20:11-18
Mary Magdalene stayed outside the tomb weeping.
And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb
and saw two angels in white sitting there,
one at the head and one at the feet
where the Body of Jesus had been.
And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”
She said to them, “They have taken my Lord,
and I don’t know where they laid him.”
When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there,
but did not know it was Jesus.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?
Whom are you looking for?”
She thought it was the gardener and said to him,
“Sir, if you carried him away,
tell me where you laid him,
and I will take him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary!”
She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,”
which means Teacher.
Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me,
for I have not yet ascended to the Father.
But go to my brothers and tell them,
‘I am going to my Father and your Father,
to my God and your God.’”
Mary went and announced to the disciples,
“I have seen the Lord,”
and then reported what he had told her.
+++
After going off to tell Peter and the other disciples about the empty tomb, it seems that Mary of Magdala went back there to grieve over her lost friend and master. She sees two angels sitting inside the tomb and asks where her Lord has been taken. When asked why she is weeping, she replies that her Lord has been “taken away” and she does not know where he has been put.
Then, as she turns round, there is Jesus before her but she does not recognise him. This is a common experience with those who meet Jesus after the resurrection. He is the same and he is not the same. In this transitional period they have to learn to recognise Jesus in unexpected forms and places and situations. He asks the same question as the angels: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” A question we need to ask ourselves constantly. Like Mary, we may say we are looking for Jesus – but which Jesus?
She thinks the person in front of her is the gardener. How often we jump to conclusions about people, about their character and personality and true identity! Maybe this man has taken Jesus away and knows where he is. It is also another lovely example of Johannine irony. First, that the one she took to be the gardener should know where Jesus was to be found. Second, it is John who tells us that the tomb of Jesus was in a garden (19:41). All the world’s pain and sorrow began with the sin of the Man and the Woman in a garden (Eden) and now new life also finds its beginnings in a garden. Mary was unwittingly right – Jesus is a Gardener, the one who produces life from the earth, and is the Word of his Father, the Gardener of Eden.
Then Jesus speaks: “Mary!” Immediately she recognises his voice, the voice of her Master. It reminds us of the passage about Jesus the Shepherd. “The sheep hear his voice, as he calls his own sheep by name… the sheep follow him because they recognise his voice… I know my sheep and they know me” (John 10:3-4,15).
Immediately she turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni”. This is a more formal address than just “Rabbi” and was often used when speaking to God. In which case, Mary’s exclamation is not unlike that of Thomas in the upper room – “My Lord and my God!” We should also note that earlier she had already turned to face Jesus so this turning is different. It is an interior turning from strangeness to recognition, from sadness to joy, from a sense of loss to a close bonding, from doubt to faith.
With a mixture of joy and affection and partly out of fear of losing him again, she clings on to him tightly. But Jesus tells her to let him go, because “I have not ascended to the Father”. A sentence which may be better read as a rhetorical question: “Have I not ascended to my Father?” In John, the glorification of Jesus takes place on the cross at the moment of death. At that moment of triumph, Jesus is raised straight to the glory of the Father. In that sense, it is the glorified Jesus who now speaks with Mary not the Jesus she knew earlier. This Jesus cannot be clung to. In fact, there is no need. From now on “I am with you always.”
The phrase “I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” echoes a sentence in the Book of Ruth (1:16): “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” The Father of Jesus now becomes the Father of his disciples as they are filled with the Spirit that is both in the Father and the Son. Thus they will be re-born (John 3:5) as God’s children and can be called “brothers” by Jesus.
Mary – and all the others – have to learn that the Risen Jesus is different from the Jesus before the crucifixion. They have to let go of the earlier Jesus and learn to relate to the “new” Jesus in a very different way.
So she is told to do what every Christian is supposed to do: go and tell the other disciples that she has seen the Lord and she shares with them what he has said to her. “I have seen the Lord.” She is not just passing on a doctrine but sharing an experience. That is what we are all called to do.
It is significant that it is a woman who is the first person in John’s gospel to see and to be spoken to by the Risen Jesus. Not only that, if she is the same person mentioned by Luke as one of Jesus’ women followers (Luke 8:2), she was formerly a deeply sinful woman from whom seven demons had been driven out. Often no one is closer to God than someone who has been converted from a sinful past. We think of people like St Augustine or St Ignatius Loyola. We remember the example of the sinful woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:35-50). Of her Jesus said: “Seeing that she loved much, her many sins are forgiven. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little" (Luke 7:47).
So Mary, who (who with Mary, Jesus’ Mother, stood by the cross of Jesus to the very end – unlike the men disciples), is now rewarded by being the first to meet him risen and glorified. She is truly a beloved disciple.
Reading I
Acts 2:36-41
On the day of Pentecost, Peter said to the Jewish people,
“Let the whole house of Israel know for certain
that God has made him both Lord and Christ,
this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart,
and they asked Peter and the other Apostles,
“What are we to do, my brothers?”
Peter said to them,
“Repent and be baptized, every one of you,
in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins;
and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
For the promise is made to you and to your children
and to all those far off,
whomever the Lord our God will call.”
He testified with many other arguments, and was exhorting them,
“Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.”
Those who accepted his message were baptized,
and about three thousand persons were added that day.
+++
Today we see the first and immediate results of Peter’s proclamation of the Gospel message.
After Peter’s proclamation his hearers are “cut to the heart”, deeply moved and shaken, and sincerely ask what they should do. It reflects both their belief in what they have just heard about Jesus and regret over former rejection.
They are told to “repent”. Repentance was important in the message of the forerunner, John the Baptist (Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3), in the preaching of Jesus (Mark 1:15; Luke 13:3) and in the directions Jesus left just before his ascension (Luke 24:47).
‘Repentance’ implies not just regret for the past but, much more positively, a radical change to one’s way of thinking and behaving. It translates the Greek word metanoia of which the nearest English translation is something like ‘conversion’, a turning around to a completely new way of seeing life. This they pledge through being baptised and having their former sins forgiven and left behind, and receiving the gift of the Spirit.
Each of the great apostolic addresses in Acts finishes with a call to conversion leading to full reconciliation with God.
This is in fulfilment of the promises made by God in the past and extended not only to the Jewish people but also “for all those who are far away”. We are told that on that very day - the day of Pentecost - 3,000 people became followers of Jesus the Lord. Luke always likes to note the Church’s numerical growth and does so several times in the Acts.
A reading like this is a call for all of us to renew our own commitment and to make the necessary conversion (metanoia) to bring us closer to Christ and the Gospel. It is also a reminder for us to share the Easter message with others. We may not have the same response that Peter got but if we all brought one person to Christ what a difference it would make to their lives - and ours!
+++ +++ +++ +++
Responsorial
Psalm 33
The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.
Upright is the word of the LORD,
and all his works are trustworthy.
He loves justice and right;
of the kindness of the LORD the earth is full.
The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.
See, the eyes of the LORD are upon those who fear him,
upon those who hope for his kindness,
To deliver them from death
and preserve them in spite of famine.
The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.
Our soul waits for the LORD,
who is our help and our shield.
May your kindness, O LORD, be upon us
who have put our hope in you.
The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.
+++ +++ +++ +++
Gospel
John 20:11-18
Mary Magdalene stayed outside the tomb weeping.
And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb
and saw two angels in white sitting there,
one at the head and one at the feet
where the Body of Jesus had been.
And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”
She said to them, “They have taken my Lord,
and I don’t know where they laid him.”
When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there,
but did not know it was Jesus.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?
Whom are you looking for?”
She thought it was the gardener and said to him,
“Sir, if you carried him away,
tell me where you laid him,
and I will take him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary!”
She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,”
which means Teacher.
Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me,
for I have not yet ascended to the Father.
But go to my brothers and tell them,
‘I am going to my Father and your Father,
to my God and your God.’”
Mary went and announced to the disciples,
“I have seen the Lord,”
and then reported what he had told her.
+++
After going off to tell Peter and the other disciples about the empty tomb, it seems that Mary of Magdala went back there to grieve over her lost friend and master. She sees two angels sitting inside the tomb and asks where her Lord has been taken. When asked why she is weeping, she replies that her Lord has been “taken away” and she does not know where he has been put.
Then, as she turns round, there is Jesus before her but she does not recognise him. This is a common experience with those who meet Jesus after the resurrection. He is the same and he is not the same. In this transitional period they have to learn to recognise Jesus in unexpected forms and places and situations. He asks the same question as the angels: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” A question we need to ask ourselves constantly. Like Mary, we may say we are looking for Jesus – but which Jesus?
She thinks the person in front of her is the gardener. How often we jump to conclusions about people, about their character and personality and true identity! Maybe this man has taken Jesus away and knows where he is. It is also another lovely example of Johannine irony. First, that the one she took to be the gardener should know where Jesus was to be found. Second, it is John who tells us that the tomb of Jesus was in a garden (19:41). All the world’s pain and sorrow began with the sin of the Man and the Woman in a garden (Eden) and now new life also finds its beginnings in a garden. Mary was unwittingly right – Jesus is a Gardener, the one who produces life from the earth, and is the Word of his Father, the Gardener of Eden.
Then Jesus speaks: “Mary!” Immediately she recognises his voice, the voice of her Master. It reminds us of the passage about Jesus the Shepherd. “The sheep hear his voice, as he calls his own sheep by name… the sheep follow him because they recognise his voice… I know my sheep and they know me” (John 10:3-4,15).
Immediately she turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni”. This is a more formal address than just “Rabbi” and was often used when speaking to God. In which case, Mary’s exclamation is not unlike that of Thomas in the upper room – “My Lord and my God!” We should also note that earlier she had already turned to face Jesus so this turning is different. It is an interior turning from strangeness to recognition, from sadness to joy, from a sense of loss to a close bonding, from doubt to faith.
With a mixture of joy and affection and partly out of fear of losing him again, she clings on to him tightly. But Jesus tells her to let him go, because “I have not ascended to the Father”. A sentence which may be better read as a rhetorical question: “Have I not ascended to my Father?” In John, the glorification of Jesus takes place on the cross at the moment of death. At that moment of triumph, Jesus is raised straight to the glory of the Father. In that sense, it is the glorified Jesus who now speaks with Mary not the Jesus she knew earlier. This Jesus cannot be clung to. In fact, there is no need. From now on “I am with you always.”
The phrase “I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” echoes a sentence in the Book of Ruth (1:16): “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” The Father of Jesus now becomes the Father of his disciples as they are filled with the Spirit that is both in the Father and the Son. Thus they will be re-born (John 3:5) as God’s children and can be called “brothers” by Jesus.
Mary – and all the others – have to learn that the Risen Jesus is different from the Jesus before the crucifixion. They have to let go of the earlier Jesus and learn to relate to the “new” Jesus in a very different way.
So she is told to do what every Christian is supposed to do: go and tell the other disciples that she has seen the Lord and she shares with them what he has said to her. “I have seen the Lord.” She is not just passing on a doctrine but sharing an experience. That is what we are all called to do.
It is significant that it is a woman who is the first person in John’s gospel to see and to be spoken to by the Risen Jesus. Not only that, if she is the same person mentioned by Luke as one of Jesus’ women followers (Luke 8:2), she was formerly a deeply sinful woman from whom seven demons had been driven out. Often no one is closer to God than someone who has been converted from a sinful past. We think of people like St Augustine or St Ignatius Loyola. We remember the example of the sinful woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:35-50). Of her Jesus said: “Seeing that she loved much, her many sins are forgiven. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little" (Luke 7:47).
So Mary, who (who with Mary, Jesus’ Mother, stood by the cross of Jesus to the very end – unlike the men disciples), is now rewarded by being the first to meet him risen and glorified. She is truly a beloved disciple.
Monday, April 5, 2010
This Jesus, Whom You Killed, God Has Raised Up; Of This We Are All Witnesses.
Monday in the Octave of Easter
Reading I
Acts 2:14, 22-33
On the day of Pentecost, Peter stood up with the Eleven,
raised his voice, and proclaimed:
“You who are Jews,
indeed all of you staying in Jerusalem.
Let this be known to you, and listen to my words.
“You who are children of Israel, hear these words.
Jesus the Nazorean was a man commended to you by God
with mighty deeds, wonders, and signs,
which God worked through him in your midst,
as you yourselves know.
This man, delivered up by the set plan
and foreknowledge of God,
you killed, using lawless men to crucify him.
But God raised him up,
releasing him from the throes of death,
because it was impossible for him to be held by it.
For David says of him:
I saw the Lord ever before me,
with him at my right hand
I shall not be disturbed.
Therefore my heart has been glad
and my tongue has exulted;
my flesh, too, will dwell in hope,
because you will not abandon my soul
to the nether world,
nor will you suffer your holy one to see corruption.
You have made known to me the paths of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence.
My brothers, one can confidently say to you
about the patriarch David that he died and was buried,
and his tomb is in our midst to this day.
But since he was a prophet and knew
that God had sworn an oath to him
that he would set one of his descendants upon his throne,
he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ,
that neither was he abandoned to the netherworld
nor did his flesh see corruption.
God raised this Jesus;
of this we are all witnesses.
Exalted at the right hand of God,
he poured forth the promise of the Holy Spirit
that he received from the Father,
as you both see and hear.”
+++ +++ +++ +++
Reading I
Acts 2:14, 22-33
On the day of Pentecost, Peter stood up with the Eleven,
raised his voice, and proclaimed:
“You who are Jews,
indeed all of you staying in Jerusalem.
Let this be known to you, and listen to my words.
“You who are children of Israel, hear these words.
Jesus the Nazorean was a man commended to you by God
with mighty deeds, wonders, and signs,
which God worked through him in your midst,
as you yourselves know.
This man, delivered up by the set plan
and foreknowledge of God,
you killed, using lawless men to crucify him.
But God raised him up,
releasing him from the throes of death,
because it was impossible for him to be held by it.
For David says of him:
I saw the Lord ever before me,
with him at my right hand
I shall not be disturbed.
Therefore my heart has been glad
and my tongue has exulted;
my flesh, too, will dwell in hope,
because you will not abandon my soul
to the nether world,
nor will you suffer your holy one to see corruption.
You have made known to me the paths of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence.
My brothers, one can confidently say to you
about the patriarch David that he died and was buried,
and his tomb is in our midst to this day.
But since he was a prophet and knew
that God had sworn an oath to him
that he would set one of his descendants upon his throne,
he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ,
that neither was he abandoned to the netherworld
nor did his flesh see corruption.
God raised this Jesus;
of this we are all witnesses.
Exalted at the right hand of God,
he poured forth the promise of the Holy Spirit
that he received from the Father,
as you both see and hear.”
+++ +++ +++ +++
Responsorial
Psalm 16
Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.Keep me, O God, for in you I take refuge;
I say to the LORD, “My Lord are you.”
O LORD, my allotted portion and my cup,
you it is who hold fast my lot.
Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
I bless the LORD who counsels me;
even in the night my heart exhorts me.
I set the LORD ever before me;
with him at my right hand
Psalm 16
Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.Keep me, O God, for in you I take refuge;
I say to the LORD, “My Lord are you.”
O LORD, my allotted portion and my cup,
you it is who hold fast my lot.
Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
I bless the LORD who counsels me;
even in the night my heart exhorts me.
I set the LORD ever before me;
with him at my right hand
I shall not be disturbed.
Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices,
my body, too, abides in confidence;
Because you will not abandon
Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices,
my body, too, abides in confidence;
Because you will not abandon
my soul to the nether world,
nor will you suffer your faithful one
nor will you suffer your faithful one
to undergo corruption.
Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
You will show me the path to life,
fullness of joys in your presence,
the delights at your right hand forever.
Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope
+++ +++ +++ +++
Gospel
Matthew 28:8-15
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary
Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope.
You will show me the path to life,
fullness of joys in your presence,
the delights at your right hand forever.
Keep me safe, O God; you are my hope
+++ +++ +++ +++
Gospel
Matthew 28:8-15
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary
went away quickly from the tomb,
fearful yet overjoyed,
and ran to announce the news to his disciples.
And behold, Jesus met them
on their way and greeted them.fearful yet overjoyed,
and ran to announce the news to his disciples.
And behold, Jesus met them
They approached, embraced his feet,
and did him homage.
Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid.
Go tell my brothers to go to Galilee,
and there they will see me.”
While they were going,
some of the guard went into the cityGo tell my brothers to go to Galilee,
and there they will see me.”
While they were going,
and told the chief priests all that had happened.
The chief priests assembled
with the elders and took counsel;The chief priests assembled
then they gave a large sum of money
to the soldiers, telling them, “You are to say,
‘His disciples came by night
and stole him while we were asleep.’
And if this gets to the ears of the governor,
we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.”
The soldiers took the money
and did as they were instructed.we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.”
The soldiers took the money
And this story has circulated
among the Jews to the present day. +++
From the moment we are born, we are brought into a world of the unknowns - and fear becomes a part of our lives. Today's Gospel offers us two very different but very human looks at fear.
For Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, it is a fear of the unexpected and the unknown as they encounter an empty tomb. Just before this Gospel begins, the women are told by an angel, “Do not be afraid! I know that you are seeking Jesus the crucified.” They hurry away and their thoughts must been racing as they try to make sense of something incomprehensible. Jesus' body is gone? An angel has told them not to be afraid? What in the world has happened to Jesus?
And then he is there himself: Jesus is coming toward them, greeting them and we can imagine their stunned reaction and their joy as they embrace him. The first thing he says to them are the words we have heard him speak so many times, “Do not be afraid.” He is telling them to trust in him, to trust in this experience and in this unknown. Then he gives them the mission to spread the news and let others know that they will encounter him. Their fear has been turned to joy by the presence of Jesus in their lives.
The other fear is in the second part of the Gospel: while the Marys are hurrying back to the city, the guards, now wide awake and frightened, tell the chief priests what has happened. Jesus' body is gone! The elders and chief priests are also deeply afraid, but their fear is the kind all of us have rooted in the darker parts of our souls. Their fear is about losing power and control and having the people begin to believe in Jesus, this unlikely King of the Jews. This kind of fear, so tangled in our insecurities and lack of trust, creates more complexities. Lies are created, money exchanged. In case the soldiers fear for their jobs, they are reassured: “if this gets to the ears of the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.”
We can imagine the very different reactions to fear at the end of this story. Mary Magdalene running back, filled with joy, bursting with the incredible news for the Apostles: Jesus is alive! He is risen! In the face of their disbelief, her story of her encounter with Jesus will tumble out in joy and laughter and is rooted in the truth.
It is this same kind of knowing we see in the first reading as Peter feels the truth deep in his soul. It gives the timid and afraid leader the courage to fearlessly proclaim the story of the resurrection. Peter stands up and raises his voice loudly to tell to the crowd that God raised Jesus up, “releasing him from the throes of death.”
On the other side? The guards trudge home, puzzled, afraid of what they don't understand, afraid of being caught in this lie. The chief priests are soured with fears, lies and deceptions. Who among us can be trusted with the truth? Will the frightening truth leak out? Can we all keep our stories straight? What will we lose if people find out the real story? They move farther from the truth and the Good News of Jesus' life and resurrection.
Dear Jesus, on this great day after Easter, help us to hand our fears over to you. Today, in all of the terrors and anxieties that we face, both those that are real and those that are not, we ask for the light of your truth to shine in our hearts. Give us the sense of your presence deep in our hearts and fill us with your Spirit so that our hearts find a new courage to proclaim you with joy.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Christ, Our Paschal Lamb, Has Been Sacrificed. Let Us Now Feast In Joy With The Lord!
The Resurrection of the Lord
The Mass of Easter Day
Reading I
Acts 10:34a, 37-43
Peter proceeded to speak and said:
“You know what has happened all over Judea,
beginning in Galilee after the baptism
that John preached,
how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth
with the Holy Spirit and power.
He went about doing good,
and healing all those oppressed by the devil,
for God was with him.
We are witnesses of all that he did
both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem.
They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.
This man God raised on the third day
and granted that he be visible,
not to all the people, but to us,
the witnesses chosen by God in advance,
who ate and drank with him
after he rose from the dead.
He commissioned us to preach to the people
and testify that he is the one appointed by God
as judge of the living and the dead.
To him all the prophets bear witness,
that everyone who believes in him
will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.”
+++ +++ +++ +++
Responsorial
Psalm 118
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
for his mercy endures forever.
Let the house of Israel say,
“His mercy endures forever.”
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
“The right hand of the LORD has struck with power;
the right hand of the LORD is exalted.
I shall not die, but live,
and declare the works of the LORD.”
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
The stone which the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
By the LORD has this been done;
it is wonderful in our eyes.
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
+++ +++ +++ +++
Reading II
either
Colossians 3:1-4
Brothers and sisters:
If then you were raised with Christ,
seek what is above,
where Christ is seated
at the right hand of God.
Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.
For you have died,
and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ your life appears,
then you too will appear with him in glory.
or
I Corinthians 5:6b-8
Brothers and sisters:
Do you not know that a little yeast leavens all the dough?
Clear out the old yeast,
so that you may become a fresh batch of dough,
inasmuch as you are unleavened.
For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.
Therefore, let us celebrate the feast,
not with the old yeast,
the yeast of malice and wickedness,
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
+++
Gospel
John 20:1-9
On the first day of the week,
Mary of Magdala came to the tomb
early in the morning, while it was still dark,
and saw the stone removed from the tomb.
So she ran and went to Simon Peter
and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved,
and told them,
“They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we don’t know where they put him.”
So Peter and the other disciple
went out and came to the tomb.
They both ran,
but the other disciple ran faster than Peter
and arrived at the tomb first;
he bent down and saw
the burial cloths there, but did not go in.
When Simon Peter arrived after him,
he went into the tomb
and saw the burial cloths there,
and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths
but rolled up in a separate place.
Then the other disciple also went in,
the one who had arrived at the tomb first,
and he saw and believed.
For they did not yet understand the Scripture
that he had to rise from the dead.
+++
OUR EASTER CELEBRATIONS form the heart of our Christian living. Our faith is deeply rooted and finds its real meaning in the resurrection of Jesus. St Paul says that, if Christ is not raised, then all our believing is in vain. It is sad, then, that we still find people who make Good Friday and the death of Jesus the climax of Holy Week. However, attitudes seem to be changing and more and more people have come to love the Easter Vigil liturgy, especially when it is done well.
No longer on the Cross
Those Christians who depict the cross without the body of Christ on it are making a very important point. The cross was the high point of Jesus' gift of himself to the father for our sakes but he is no longer there and it was his entry into glory with the Father which gives the Cross its validity. Otherwise it was a journey into nothingness.
Because of the resurrection, the disciples, who were at first paralyzed with fear of being arrested as accomplices of Jesus, suddenly made a complete turnaround and began boldly to proclaim that Jesus, who died on the Cross, was alive and with them. And when, in fact, they were arrested, persecuted and imprisoned, it became a cause of rejoicing that they were now even more closely related to the life experience of their Lord, sharing in his sufferings that they might share in his glory.
A call for change
Easter, however, is not only concerned with recalling the resurrection of Jesus or its impact on the first disciples but also with the meaning of this event for our own lives and for our faith. The celebration of Easter (and the days of Holy Week leading up to it) are a call for us to change - and perhaps change radically - as Jesus' own disciples changed.
The sign that we are truly sharing in the risen life of Jesus is that our lives and our behavior undergo a constant development. We not only believe, we not only proclaim but we do what we believe and what we proclaim.
Proclamation and witness
The theme of today's Mass includes both proclamation and witness. In the First Reading we see Peter speaking after the baptism of Cornelius and his family, the first Gentile Christians. He is speaking about his own experience and sharing that experience with the listening crowds. For the true disciple of Jesus there is a close and indivisible relationship between experiencing and proclaiming. Because of his experience, his experience of knowing with utter conviction that Jesus, who died on the Cross, is now alive, he is so filled with the joy of it that he simply must share that joy with others - so that it can be theirs, too.
Paul's experience
We find a similar theme in both the Second Readings (we are given a choice) and the Gospel. Paul was a Pharisee, a dedicated Pharisee and a man of integrity. He persecuted Christians because he saw in them a dangerous deviation from the Jewish Law and Jewish traditions. Then he, too, had that sudden experience when the Risen Jesus revealed himself while Paul was on his way to Damascus to bring the Christians (whom he saw as heretical Jews) into line.
That experience, as we know, brought about a total change in Paul's life. It gave him a totally new vision of things and especially of the meaning of Jesus' life and message. For the rest of his life, he used all his energies, the same energies he once used against Christians, to help others - Jews and non-Jews alike - to know, love and follow Jesus his Lord.
Empty tomb
In the Gospel we have the experience of the empty tomb as the sign of Jesus' resurrection to life. Mary Magdalen saw the stone rolled back (it was so heavy; who could have managed to do such a thing?) and she went running to the disciples. The "disciple whom Jesus loved" went with Peter. They ran to the tomb and, although the "beloved disciple" got there first, out of deference, he let Peter go in before him. They saw, they understood and they believed. Up to that moment, the Gospel says, "they had failed to understand the teaching of scripture [i.e. of the Old Testament] that he must rise from the dead". The disciples on the way to Emmaus will also hear that, for those who can see and understand, the positive meaning of the sufferings of Jesus can be found in the Old Testament. [We now use some of those texts during Lent and Holy Week.]
Not just resuscitation
It is important, however, to be aware that the Resurrection is not simply the resuscitation of the body of Jesus which died on the Cross. No one SAW the resurrection because there was nothing to SEE. The crucifixion is a historical event; the resurrection is a faith event. The Risen Jesus enters a completely new way of living. The post-Resurrection texts all indicate that; he is not recognized at first by even his intimate friends, he is everywhere that his disciples happen to be and his new Body, the means of his being visibly present among us, is the community of his disciples. We are, quite literally, from that time the Body of Christ.
Mary stays behind
We see the beginnings of this in the second half of today's Gospel. Peter and the "beloved disciple" went back to their companions to tell them of their discovery. But Mary Magdalene, a formerly sinful woman who was now totally devoted to Jesus as her Lord and Master, stayed behind. She was distraught. Her beloved Master was not only dead, his body was now missing. In the tomb she saw two angels, representing God's presence, who asked her why she was crying.
A familiar voice
At that very moment she turned and saw Jesus but did not recognize him. This is a constant feature of post-Resurrection apparitions. Jesus is not recognized; he looks just like an ordinary person, any person. In this case, Mary thinks he is the gardener and wonders if he is the one who has taken away the body of Jesus. The Gospel tells us that Jesus was buried in a 'garden'. It was in a garden that the original Fall took place. Redemption also begins in a garden.
When Jesus calls her name, "Mary", she immediately knows who it is. Earlier in John's gospel Jesus had said: "The gatekeeper opens the gate for the shepherd; the sheep hear his voice as he calls his own sheep by name, and he leads them out. When he has brought them out, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow someone else; instead, they will run away from him, because they do not know his voice."
Unwilling to let go
Mary then begins to cling passionately to Jesus, not wanting to let him go. But she has to let go. She is clinging to the "old" Jesus. The Risen Jesus is going into glory with the Father. He will return but in a very different way. From now on he will be found in all those who call themselves his disciples and who are united together as one Body - the Church and all its constituent local churches.
And so Mary runs back to the disciples proclaiming her personal experience: "I have seen the Lord." It is a woman, a sinful woman, who is given this unique privilege of being the first to proclaim the Risen Jesus. And that is what evangelization is about: it is not just the handing on of doctrines but the sharing with others our experience of having seen the Lord in our own lives and inviting them to have the same experience.
The same mission
The celebration of Easter reminds us that we have the same mission as Peter and Mary Magdalene and the other disciples of Jesus. First, as the optional Second Reading from the First Letter to the Corinthians indicates, Easter calls for a radical conversion, a radical purging on our part. In the celebration of the Pasch, the Jews used to throw out all the leavened bread they had and replace it with freshly baked unleavened bread.
Because of the fermentation process that leavened bread undergoes, yeast was regarded as a corrupting agent. So Paul tells us that we, too, as we celebrate our Christian Passover, are to become "a completely new batch of bread, unleavened [in other words, free from all the corrupting influences in our life] as you are meant to be...having only the unleavened bread of integrity and truth."
An experience to be shared
And, to go back to the First Reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter emphasizes the importance of Jesus' disciples not only experiencing and enjoying the joy of their Risen Master and Lord but also of sharing that experience and joy with as many people as possible. It is something we must do also. Not to share our Easter joy and what it means to us is to leave Easter only half celebrated. For the true Christian, in fact, every day is an Easter Day lived joyfully in the close company of the Risen Lord.
Witnesses
"Now," says Peter, "we are those witnesses" that is, of Jesus' preaching and healing, of his arrest, execution and death and also of his being raised again to life. "We have eaten and drunk with him after his resurrection from the dead," he continues. Is that not something that we, too, do every time we take part in the Eucharist - to eat and drink with the Risen Jesus? And what message comes from that? Have we satisfied our Christian responsibility just by being in church on Sunday?
"He has ordered us to proclaim this to his people and to tell them that God has appointed Jesus to judge everyone, alive or dead,...that all who believe in Jesus will have their sins forgiven through his name." There we have our mission.
A yardstick for every single person
Putting it in language that may be more easily understood today, Peter is saying that Jesus and the way of life he proposes is the yardstick by which people are to measure themselves and not just as Christians but as human beings. To attach oneself totally to the Way of Jesus -- a way of Truth and Life -- is to bring about a deep reconciliation with God and with all our brothers and sisters. It is to bring freedom, justice and peace into our world and prepare us for the day when we all become one in our Creator God, the Father of Truth and Compassionate Love.
The Mass of Easter Day
Reading I
Acts 10:34a, 37-43
Peter proceeded to speak and said:
“You know what has happened all over Judea,
beginning in Galilee after the baptism
that John preached,
how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth
with the Holy Spirit and power.
He went about doing good,
and healing all those oppressed by the devil,
for God was with him.
We are witnesses of all that he did
both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem.
They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.
This man God raised on the third day
and granted that he be visible,
not to all the people, but to us,
the witnesses chosen by God in advance,
who ate and drank with him
after he rose from the dead.
He commissioned us to preach to the people
and testify that he is the one appointed by God
as judge of the living and the dead.
To him all the prophets bear witness,
that everyone who believes in him
will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.”
+++ +++ +++ +++
Responsorial
Psalm 118
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
for his mercy endures forever.
Let the house of Israel say,
“His mercy endures forever.”
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
“The right hand of the LORD has struck with power;
the right hand of the LORD is exalted.
I shall not die, but live,
and declare the works of the LORD.”
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
The stone which the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
By the LORD has this been done;
it is wonderful in our eyes.
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
+++ +++ +++ +++
Reading II
either
Colossians 3:1-4
Brothers and sisters:
If then you were raised with Christ,
seek what is above,
where Christ is seated
at the right hand of God.
Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.
For you have died,
and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ your life appears,
then you too will appear with him in glory.
or
I Corinthians 5:6b-8
Brothers and sisters:
Do you not know that a little yeast leavens all the dough?
Clear out the old yeast,
so that you may become a fresh batch of dough,
inasmuch as you are unleavened.
For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.
Therefore, let us celebrate the feast,
not with the old yeast,
the yeast of malice and wickedness,
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
+++
Gospel
John 20:1-9
On the first day of the week,
Mary of Magdala came to the tomb
early in the morning, while it was still dark,
and saw the stone removed from the tomb.
So she ran and went to Simon Peter
and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved,
and told them,
“They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we don’t know where they put him.”
So Peter and the other disciple
went out and came to the tomb.
They both ran,
but the other disciple ran faster than Peter
and arrived at the tomb first;
he bent down and saw
the burial cloths there, but did not go in.
When Simon Peter arrived after him,
he went into the tomb
and saw the burial cloths there,
and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths
but rolled up in a separate place.
Then the other disciple also went in,
the one who had arrived at the tomb first,
and he saw and believed.
For they did not yet understand the Scripture
that he had to rise from the dead.
+++
OUR EASTER CELEBRATIONS form the heart of our Christian living. Our faith is deeply rooted and finds its real meaning in the resurrection of Jesus. St Paul says that, if Christ is not raised, then all our believing is in vain. It is sad, then, that we still find people who make Good Friday and the death of Jesus the climax of Holy Week. However, attitudes seem to be changing and more and more people have come to love the Easter Vigil liturgy, especially when it is done well.
No longer on the Cross
Those Christians who depict the cross without the body of Christ on it are making a very important point. The cross was the high point of Jesus' gift of himself to the father for our sakes but he is no longer there and it was his entry into glory with the Father which gives the Cross its validity. Otherwise it was a journey into nothingness.
Because of the resurrection, the disciples, who were at first paralyzed with fear of being arrested as accomplices of Jesus, suddenly made a complete turnaround and began boldly to proclaim that Jesus, who died on the Cross, was alive and with them. And when, in fact, they were arrested, persecuted and imprisoned, it became a cause of rejoicing that they were now even more closely related to the life experience of their Lord, sharing in his sufferings that they might share in his glory.
A call for change
Easter, however, is not only concerned with recalling the resurrection of Jesus or its impact on the first disciples but also with the meaning of this event for our own lives and for our faith. The celebration of Easter (and the days of Holy Week leading up to it) are a call for us to change - and perhaps change radically - as Jesus' own disciples changed.
The sign that we are truly sharing in the risen life of Jesus is that our lives and our behavior undergo a constant development. We not only believe, we not only proclaim but we do what we believe and what we proclaim.
Proclamation and witness
The theme of today's Mass includes both proclamation and witness. In the First Reading we see Peter speaking after the baptism of Cornelius and his family, the first Gentile Christians. He is speaking about his own experience and sharing that experience with the listening crowds. For the true disciple of Jesus there is a close and indivisible relationship between experiencing and proclaiming. Because of his experience, his experience of knowing with utter conviction that Jesus, who died on the Cross, is now alive, he is so filled with the joy of it that he simply must share that joy with others - so that it can be theirs, too.
Paul's experience
We find a similar theme in both the Second Readings (we are given a choice) and the Gospel. Paul was a Pharisee, a dedicated Pharisee and a man of integrity. He persecuted Christians because he saw in them a dangerous deviation from the Jewish Law and Jewish traditions. Then he, too, had that sudden experience when the Risen Jesus revealed himself while Paul was on his way to Damascus to bring the Christians (whom he saw as heretical Jews) into line.
That experience, as we know, brought about a total change in Paul's life. It gave him a totally new vision of things and especially of the meaning of Jesus' life and message. For the rest of his life, he used all his energies, the same energies he once used against Christians, to help others - Jews and non-Jews alike - to know, love and follow Jesus his Lord.
Empty tomb
In the Gospel we have the experience of the empty tomb as the sign of Jesus' resurrection to life. Mary Magdalen saw the stone rolled back (it was so heavy; who could have managed to do such a thing?) and she went running to the disciples. The "disciple whom Jesus loved" went with Peter. They ran to the tomb and, although the "beloved disciple" got there first, out of deference, he let Peter go in before him. They saw, they understood and they believed. Up to that moment, the Gospel says, "they had failed to understand the teaching of scripture [i.e. of the Old Testament] that he must rise from the dead". The disciples on the way to Emmaus will also hear that, for those who can see and understand, the positive meaning of the sufferings of Jesus can be found in the Old Testament. [We now use some of those texts during Lent and Holy Week.]
Not just resuscitation
It is important, however, to be aware that the Resurrection is not simply the resuscitation of the body of Jesus which died on the Cross. No one SAW the resurrection because there was nothing to SEE. The crucifixion is a historical event; the resurrection is a faith event. The Risen Jesus enters a completely new way of living. The post-Resurrection texts all indicate that; he is not recognized at first by even his intimate friends, he is everywhere that his disciples happen to be and his new Body, the means of his being visibly present among us, is the community of his disciples. We are, quite literally, from that time the Body of Christ.
Mary stays behind
We see the beginnings of this in the second half of today's Gospel. Peter and the "beloved disciple" went back to their companions to tell them of their discovery. But Mary Magdalene, a formerly sinful woman who was now totally devoted to Jesus as her Lord and Master, stayed behind. She was distraught. Her beloved Master was not only dead, his body was now missing. In the tomb she saw two angels, representing God's presence, who asked her why she was crying.
A familiar voice
At that very moment she turned and saw Jesus but did not recognize him. This is a constant feature of post-Resurrection apparitions. Jesus is not recognized; he looks just like an ordinary person, any person. In this case, Mary thinks he is the gardener and wonders if he is the one who has taken away the body of Jesus. The Gospel tells us that Jesus was buried in a 'garden'. It was in a garden that the original Fall took place. Redemption also begins in a garden.
When Jesus calls her name, "Mary", she immediately knows who it is. Earlier in John's gospel Jesus had said: "The gatekeeper opens the gate for the shepherd; the sheep hear his voice as he calls his own sheep by name, and he leads them out. When he has brought them out, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow someone else; instead, they will run away from him, because they do not know his voice."
Unwilling to let go
Mary then begins to cling passionately to Jesus, not wanting to let him go. But she has to let go. She is clinging to the "old" Jesus. The Risen Jesus is going into glory with the Father. He will return but in a very different way. From now on he will be found in all those who call themselves his disciples and who are united together as one Body - the Church and all its constituent local churches.
And so Mary runs back to the disciples proclaiming her personal experience: "I have seen the Lord." It is a woman, a sinful woman, who is given this unique privilege of being the first to proclaim the Risen Jesus. And that is what evangelization is about: it is not just the handing on of doctrines but the sharing with others our experience of having seen the Lord in our own lives and inviting them to have the same experience.
The same mission
The celebration of Easter reminds us that we have the same mission as Peter and Mary Magdalene and the other disciples of Jesus. First, as the optional Second Reading from the First Letter to the Corinthians indicates, Easter calls for a radical conversion, a radical purging on our part. In the celebration of the Pasch, the Jews used to throw out all the leavened bread they had and replace it with freshly baked unleavened bread.
Because of the fermentation process that leavened bread undergoes, yeast was regarded as a corrupting agent. So Paul tells us that we, too, as we celebrate our Christian Passover, are to become "a completely new batch of bread, unleavened [in other words, free from all the corrupting influences in our life] as you are meant to be...having only the unleavened bread of integrity and truth."
An experience to be shared
And, to go back to the First Reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter emphasizes the importance of Jesus' disciples not only experiencing and enjoying the joy of their Risen Master and Lord but also of sharing that experience and joy with as many people as possible. It is something we must do also. Not to share our Easter joy and what it means to us is to leave Easter only half celebrated. For the true Christian, in fact, every day is an Easter Day lived joyfully in the close company of the Risen Lord.
Witnesses
"Now," says Peter, "we are those witnesses" that is, of Jesus' preaching and healing, of his arrest, execution and death and also of his being raised again to life. "We have eaten and drunk with him after his resurrection from the dead," he continues. Is that not something that we, too, do every time we take part in the Eucharist - to eat and drink with the Risen Jesus? And what message comes from that? Have we satisfied our Christian responsibility just by being in church on Sunday?
"He has ordered us to proclaim this to his people and to tell them that God has appointed Jesus to judge everyone, alive or dead,...that all who believe in Jesus will have their sins forgiven through his name." There we have our mission.
A yardstick for every single person
Putting it in language that may be more easily understood today, Peter is saying that Jesus and the way of life he proposes is the yardstick by which people are to measure themselves and not just as Christians but as human beings. To attach oneself totally to the Way of Jesus -- a way of Truth and Life -- is to bring about a deep reconciliation with God and with all our brothers and sisters. It is to bring freedom, justice and peace into our world and prepare us for the day when we all become one in our Creator God, the Father of Truth and Compassionate Love.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Vigil Of The Resurrection Of Our Lord.
The Easter Vigil is a celebration of life.
1. It begins with the story of creation: Out of nothing, God made everything, and breathed life into all living things. Then, God looked at all that he had made, and found that it was very good.
God’s creation and conservation of the universe he has made continues. Made in the image of God, are partners in this work, stewards to take care of all that makes up this planet, in particular, all living beings. Made in the likeness of the Creator, we are also called to be life givers, and life preservers. One writer has called this the “Original Blessing”, the gift of creation which precedes the failure of human beings to respond, and the disasters which have been visited on the human race ever since.
2. It continues with the story of the Exodus, the great event in which God’s people are brought out of the half-life of slaver to the fullness of life and of freedom. We no longer need to be slaves since we are God’s chosen people. Yet, many of us remain enslaved to habits and desires. The liberation of the children of Israel from Egypt is an event commemorated and celebrated to this day by the Jewish people at the Passover. We are also God’s chosen people, and we can join our celebration with theirs at this time.
3. It is, in fact, no mere coincidence that the events we celebrate during this week coincide with the Paschal Feast of Passover. Through Jesus, Lamb of God, we have been granted the opportunity to pass from the slavery of sin and all the destructive elements of life to a new life freedom. As the crucified Jesus breaks the bonds of death in glorious resurrection, he opens the gates of life for us as well. “I AM the Resurrection and the Life.” “I have come that they might have life, and have it to the full.” “I am the Way; the Truth and the Life.”
4. This evening is the special time for catechumens to become full members of our community by being baptized into Christ Jesus. It is a time of special joy for them, and for all of us. It is also a time for us to reflect on the meaning and the effectiveness of Baptism in our own lives right now.
Our Baptism and Confirmation and our sharing in the Eucharistic feast are signs of our participation in the outpouring of life and love which we celebrate in this holy night. Going down into the waters is dying to the ways of sin and evil. Coming up from the waters is a rising to the life God wants us to experience and to possess. Baptism and Confirmation are an ongoing reality reflected in the way we live out the Good News of the gospel from day to day.
5. Now that we have completed our Lenten observance, let us renew the promises we made in baptism, when we rejected Satan and all his works, and promised to serve God faithfully in his Holy Church.
Do you reject sin, so as to live in the freedom of God’s children?
I do.
Do you reject the glamor of evil, and refuse to be mastered by sin?
I do.
Do you reject Satan, father of sin and prince of darkness?
I do.
Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth?
I do.
Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was born of the Virgin Mary, was crucified, died and was buried, rose from the dead,
and is now seated at the right hand of the Father?
I do.
Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting?
I do.
This is our faith; this is the faith of the Church; we are proud to profess it
through the risen Christ our Lord.
Amen.
1. It begins with the story of creation: Out of nothing, God made everything, and breathed life into all living things. Then, God looked at all that he had made, and found that it was very good.
God’s creation and conservation of the universe he has made continues. Made in the image of God, are partners in this work, stewards to take care of all that makes up this planet, in particular, all living beings. Made in the likeness of the Creator, we are also called to be life givers, and life preservers. One writer has called this the “Original Blessing”, the gift of creation which precedes the failure of human beings to respond, and the disasters which have been visited on the human race ever since.
2. It continues with the story of the Exodus, the great event in which God’s people are brought out of the half-life of slaver to the fullness of life and of freedom. We no longer need to be slaves since we are God’s chosen people. Yet, many of us remain enslaved to habits and desires. The liberation of the children of Israel from Egypt is an event commemorated and celebrated to this day by the Jewish people at the Passover. We are also God’s chosen people, and we can join our celebration with theirs at this time.
3. It is, in fact, no mere coincidence that the events we celebrate during this week coincide with the Paschal Feast of Passover. Through Jesus, Lamb of God, we have been granted the opportunity to pass from the slavery of sin and all the destructive elements of life to a new life freedom. As the crucified Jesus breaks the bonds of death in glorious resurrection, he opens the gates of life for us as well. “I AM the Resurrection and the Life.” “I have come that they might have life, and have it to the full.” “I am the Way; the Truth and the Life.”
4. This evening is the special time for catechumens to become full members of our community by being baptized into Christ Jesus. It is a time of special joy for them, and for all of us. It is also a time for us to reflect on the meaning and the effectiveness of Baptism in our own lives right now.
Our Baptism and Confirmation and our sharing in the Eucharistic feast are signs of our participation in the outpouring of life and love which we celebrate in this holy night. Going down into the waters is dying to the ways of sin and evil. Coming up from the waters is a rising to the life God wants us to experience and to possess. Baptism and Confirmation are an ongoing reality reflected in the way we live out the Good News of the gospel from day to day.
5. Now that we have completed our Lenten observance, let us renew the promises we made in baptism, when we rejected Satan and all his works, and promised to serve God faithfully in his Holy Church.
Do you reject sin, so as to live in the freedom of God’s children?
I do.
Do you reject the glamor of evil, and refuse to be mastered by sin?
I do.
Do you reject Satan, father of sin and prince of darkness?
I do.
Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth?
I do.
Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was born of the Virgin Mary, was crucified, died and was buried, rose from the dead,
and is now seated at the right hand of the Father?
I do.
Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting?
I do.
This is our faith; this is the faith of the Church; we are proud to profess it
through the risen Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Friday, April 2, 2010
We, Like Sheep, Had Gone Astray, But By His Suffering, We Were Healed.
Good Friday of the Lord's Passion
Reading I
Isaiah 52:13—53:12
See, my servant shall prosper,
he shall be raised high and greatly exalted.
Even as many were amazed at him,
so marred was his look beyond human semblance
and his appearance beyond that of the sons of man,
so shall he startle many nations,
because of him kings shall stand speechless;
for those who have not been told shall see,
those who have not heard shall ponder it.
Who would believe what we have heard?
To whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
He grew up like a sapling before him,
like a shoot from the parched earth;
there was in him no stately bearing
to make us look at him,
nor appearance that would attract us to him.
He was spurned and avoided by people,
a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity,
one of those from whom people hide their faces,
spurned, and we held him in no esteem.
Yet it was our infirmities that he bore,
our sufferings that he endured,
while we thought of him as stricken,
as one smitten by God and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our offenses,
crushed for our sins;
upon him was the chastisement
that makes us whole,
by his stripes we were healed.
We had all gone astray like sheep,
each following his own way;
but the LORD laid upon him
the guilt of us all.
Though he was harshly treated, he submitted
and opened not his mouth;
like a lamb led to the slaughter
or a sheep before the shearers,
he was silent and opened not his mouth.
Oppressed and condemned, he was taken away,
and who would have thought any more of his destiny?
When he was cut off from the land of the living,
and smitten for the sin of his people,
a grave was assigned him among the wicked
and a burial place with evildoers,
though he had done no wrong
nor spoken any falsehood.
But the LORD was pleased
to crush him in infirmity.
If he gives his life as an offering for sin,
he shall see his descendants in a long life,
and the will of the LORD
shall be accomplished through him.
Because of his affliction
he shall see the light in fullness of days;
through his suffering, my servant shall justify many,
and their guilt he shall bear.
Therefore I will give him his portion among the great,
and he shall divide the spoils with the mighty,
because he surrendered himself to death
and was counted among the wicked;
and he shall take away the sins of many,
and win pardon for their offenses.
+++ +++ +++ +++
Responsorial
Psalm 31
Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
In you, O LORD, I take refuge;
let me never be put to shame.
In your justice rescue me.
Into your hands I commend my spirit;
you will redeem me, O LORD, O faithful God.
Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
For all my foes I am an object of reproach,
a laughingstock to my neighbors,
and a dread to my friends;
they who see me abroad flee from me.
I am forgotten like the unremembered dead;
I am like a dish that is broken.
Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
But my trust is in you, O LORD;
I say, “You are my God.
In your hands is my destiny; rescue me
from the clutches of my enemies and my persecutors.”
Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
Let your face shine upon your servant;
save me in your kindness.
Take courage and be stouthearted,
all you who hope in the LORD.
Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
+++ +++ +++ +++
Reading II
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
Brothers and sisters:
Since we have a great high priest
who has passed through the heavens,
Jesus, the Son of God,
let us hold fast to our confession.
For we do not have a high priest
who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but one who has similarly been tested in every way,
yet without sin.
So let us confidently approach the throne of grace
to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.
In the days when Christ was in the flesh,
he offered prayers and supplications
with loud cries and tears
to the one who was able to save him from death,
and he was heard because of his reverence.
Son though he was,
he learned obedience from what he suffered;
and when he was made perfect,
he became the source of eternal salvation
for all who obey him.
+++
Gospel
Jesus went out with his disciples
across the Kidron valley
to where there was a garden,
into which he and his disciples entered.
Judas his betrayer also knew the place,
because Jesus had often met there with his disciples.
So Judas got a band of soldiers and guards
from the chief priests and the Pharisees
and went there with lanterns, torches, and weapons.
Jesus, knowing everything that was going to happen to him,
went out and said to them, “Whom are you looking for?”
They answered him, “Jesus the Nazorean.”
He said to them, “I AM.”
Judas his betrayer was also with them.
When he said to them, “I AM, “
they turned away and fell to the ground.
So he again asked them,
“Whom are you looking for?”
They said, “Jesus the Nazorean.”
Jesus answered,
“I told you that I AM.
So if you are looking for me, let these men go.”
This was to fulfill what he had said,
“I have not lost any of those you gave me.”
Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it,
struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear.
The slave’s name was Malchus.
Jesus said to Peter,
“Put your sword into its scabbard.
Shall I not drink the cup that the Father gave me?”
So the band of soldiers, the tribune,
and the Jewish guards seized Jesus,
bound him, and brought him to Annas first.
He was the father-in-law of Caiaphas,
who was high priest that year.
It was Caiaphas who had counseled the Jews
that it was better that
one man should die rather than the people.
Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus.
Now the other disciple was known to the high priest,
and he entered the courtyard of the high priest with Jesus.
But Peter stood at the gate outside.
So the other disciple, the acquaintance of the high priest,
went out and spoke to the gatekeeper and brought Peter in.
Then the maid who was the gatekeeper said to Peter,
“You are not one of this man’s disciples, are you?”
He said, “I am not.”
Now the slaves and the guards
were standing around a charcoal fire
that they had made, because it was cold,
and were warming themselves.
Peter was also standing there keeping warm.
The high priest questioned Jesus
about his disciples and about his doctrine.
Jesus answered him,
“I have spoken publicly to the world.
I have always taught in a synagogue
or in the temple area where all the Jews gather,
and in secret I have said nothing. Why ask me?
Ask those who heard me what I said to them.
They know what I said.”
When he had said this,
one of the temple guards standing there struck Jesus and said,
“Is this the way you answer the high priest?”
Jesus answered him,
“If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong;
but if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?”
Then Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest.
Now Simon Peter was standing there keeping warm.
And they said to him,
“You are not one of his disciples, are you?”
He denied it and said,
“I am not.”
One of the slaves of the high priest,
a relative of the one whose ear Peter had cut off, said,
“Didn’t I see you in the garden with him?”
Again Peter denied it.
And immediately the cock crowed.
Then they brought Jesus from Caiaphas to the praetorium.
It was morning.
And they themselves did not enter the praetorium,
in order not to be defiled so that they could eat the Passover.
So Pilate came out to them and said,
“What charge do you bring against this man?”
They answered and said to him,
“If he were not a criminal,
we would not have handed him over to you.”
At this, Pilate said to them,
“Take him yourselves, and judge him according to your law.”
The Jews answered him,
“We do not have the right to execute anyone, “
in order that the word of Jesus might be fulfilled
that he said indicating the kind of death he would die.
So Pilate went back into the praetorium
and summoned Jesus and said to him,
“Are you the King of the Jews?”
Jesus answered,
“Do you say this on your own
or have others told you about me?”
Pilate answered,
“I am not a Jew, am I?
Your own nation and the chief priests
handed you over to me.
What have you done?”
Jesus answered,
“My kingdom does not belong to this world.
If my kingdom did belong to this world,
my attendants would be fighting
to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.
But as it is, my kingdom is not here.”
So Pilate said to him,
“Then you are a king?”
Jesus answered,
“You say I am a king.
For this I was born and
for this I came into the world,
to testify to the truth.
Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
When he had said this,
he again went out to the Jews and said to them,
“I find no guilt in him.
But you have a custom
that I release one prisoner to you at Passover.
Do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?”
They cried out again,
“Not this one but Barabbas!”
Now Barabbas was a revolutionary.
Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged.
And the soldiers wove a crown out of thorns
and placed it on his head,
and clothed him in a purple cloak,
and they came to him and said,
“Hail, King of the Jews!”
And they struck him repeatedly.
Once more Pilate went out and said to them,
“Look, I am bringing him out to you,
so that you may know that I find no guilt in him.”
So Jesus came out,
wearing the crown of thorns and the purple cloak.
And he said to them, “Behold, the man!”
When the chief priests and the guards saw him they cried out,
“Crucify him, crucify him!”
Pilate said to them,
“Take him yourselves and crucify him.
I find no guilt in him.”
The Jews answered,
“We have a law,
and according to that law he ought to die,
because he made himself the Son of God.”
Now when Pilate heard this statement,
he became even more afraid,
and went back into the praetorium and said to Jesus,
“Where are you from?”
Jesus did not answer him.
So Pilate said to him,
“Do you not speak to me?
Do you not know that I have power to release you
and I have power to crucify you?”
Jesus answered him,
“You would have no power over me
if it had not been given to you from above.
For this reason the one who handed me over to you
has the greater sin.”
Consequently, Pilate tried to release him;
but the Jews cried out,
“If you release him, you are not a Friend of Caesar.
Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.”
When Pilate heard these words he brought Jesus out
and seated him on the judge’s bench
in the place called Stone Pavement,
in Hebrew, Gabbatha.
It was preparation day for Passover,
and it was about noon.
And he said to the Jews,
“Behold, your king!”
They cried out,
“Take him away, take him away! Crucify him!”
Pilate said to them,
“Shall I crucify your king?”
The chief priests answered,
“We have no king but Caesar.”
Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.
So they took Jesus, and, carrying the cross himself,
he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull,
in Hebrew, Golgotha.
There they crucified him, and with him two others,
one on either side, with Jesus in the middle.
Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross.
It read,
“Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews.”
Now many of the Jews read this inscription,
because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city;
and it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.
So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate,
“Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’
but that he said, ‘I am the King of the Jews’.”
Pilate answered,
“What I have written, I have written.”
When the soldiers had crucified Jesus,
they took his clothes and divided them into four shares,
a share for each soldier.
They also took his tunic, but the tunic was seamless,
woven in one piece from the top down.
So they said to one another,
“Let’s not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it will be, “
in order that the passage of Scripture
might be fulfilled that says:
They divided my garments among them,
and for my vesture they cast lots.
This is what the soldiers did.
Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother
and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas,
and Mary of Magdala.
When Jesus saw his mother
and the disciple there whom he loved
he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.”
Then he said to the disciple,
“Behold, your mother.”
And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.
After this, aware that everything was now finished,
in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled,
Jesus said, “I thirst.”
There was a vessel filled with common wine.
So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop
and put it up to his mouth.
When Jesus had taken the wine, he said,
“It is finished.”
And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.
Now since it was preparation day,
in order that the bodies might not
remain on the cross on the sabbath,
for the sabbath day of that week was a solemn one,
the Jews asked Pilate that their legs be broken
and that they be taken down.
So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first
and then of the other one who was crucified with Jesus.
But when they came to Jesus and
saw that he was already dead,
they did not break his legs,
but one soldier thrust his lance into his side,
and immediately blood and water flowed out.
An eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true;
he knows that he is speaking the truth,
so that you also may come to believe.
For this happened so that
the Scripture passage might be fulfilled:
Not a bone of it will be broken.
And again another passage says:
They will look upon him whom they have pierced.
After this, Joseph of Arimathea,
secretly a disciple of Jesus for fear of the Jews,
asked Pilate if he could remove the body of Jesus.
And Pilate permitted it.
So he came and took his body.
Nicodemus, the one who had first come to him at night,
also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes
weighing about one hundred pounds.
They took the body of Jesus
and bound it with burial cloths along with the spices,
according to the Jewish burial custom.
Now in the place where he had been crucified
there was a garden, and in the garden
a new tomb, in which no one had yet been buried.
So they laid Jesus there
because of the Jewish preparation day;
for the tomb was close by.
+++
Today we celebrate one of the principal parts of the Paschal Mystery of Jesus, His death and resurrection, and the culmination of our Lenten prayer and preparation for these saving events. This day is called “Good” and this week is called “Holy” because of the very goodness and holiness of God and Jesus as he carries out God’s will for our ultimate rescue.
The readings today begin with the haunting passage, “See, my servant will prosper,” one of four suffering servant poems found in the later chapters of the Prophet Isaiah. The servant songs describe the servant of God who is called by God to be a source of justice for and among the People of Israel. For his efforts the Servant is abused and suffers greatly for his commitment to justice and God’s call.
The servant is described here: “so marred was his look beyond human semblance and his appearance beyond that of the sons of man.” Originally the servant represents the People of Israel as they suffer at the hands of others for their faithfulness to Yahweh. But as Christians we can be led to see and to interpret Isaiah’s words to refer to Jesus in his suffering on the cross and death for us.
An appropriate reflection today would be a quiet, meditative reading of Isaiah 52: 13 – 53:12, discovering in the Servant of God an image of Jesus as he is “marred beyond human semblance” and how he bore our infirmities and was “pierced for our offenses.” These phrases and others like them allow us an insight into the mystery of Jesus’ cruel death and the meaning of this Good Friday.
Thank you, Jesus, for your gift of life given to us through your Cross. Help each of us to discover in your sacrifice the meaning of that event as it touches into our lives. By your actions you have blessed us with mercy and forgiveness. Call us to be instruments of your compassion, forgiveness and mercy to those that we meet.
Reading I
Isaiah 52:13—53:12
See, my servant shall prosper,
he shall be raised high and greatly exalted.
Even as many were amazed at him,
so marred was his look beyond human semblance
and his appearance beyond that of the sons of man,
so shall he startle many nations,
because of him kings shall stand speechless;
for those who have not been told shall see,
those who have not heard shall ponder it.
Who would believe what we have heard?
To whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
He grew up like a sapling before him,
like a shoot from the parched earth;
there was in him no stately bearing
to make us look at him,
nor appearance that would attract us to him.
He was spurned and avoided by people,
a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity,
one of those from whom people hide their faces,
spurned, and we held him in no esteem.
Yet it was our infirmities that he bore,
our sufferings that he endured,
while we thought of him as stricken,
as one smitten by God and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our offenses,
crushed for our sins;
upon him was the chastisement
that makes us whole,
by his stripes we were healed.
We had all gone astray like sheep,
each following his own way;
but the LORD laid upon him
the guilt of us all.
Though he was harshly treated, he submitted
and opened not his mouth;
like a lamb led to the slaughter
or a sheep before the shearers,
he was silent and opened not his mouth.
Oppressed and condemned, he was taken away,
and who would have thought any more of his destiny?
When he was cut off from the land of the living,
and smitten for the sin of his people,
a grave was assigned him among the wicked
and a burial place with evildoers,
though he had done no wrong
nor spoken any falsehood.
But the LORD was pleased
to crush him in infirmity.
If he gives his life as an offering for sin,
he shall see his descendants in a long life,
and the will of the LORD
shall be accomplished through him.
Because of his affliction
he shall see the light in fullness of days;
through his suffering, my servant shall justify many,
and their guilt he shall bear.
Therefore I will give him his portion among the great,
and he shall divide the spoils with the mighty,
because he surrendered himself to death
and was counted among the wicked;
and he shall take away the sins of many,
and win pardon for their offenses.
+++ +++ +++ +++
Responsorial
Psalm 31
Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
In you, O LORD, I take refuge;
let me never be put to shame.
In your justice rescue me.
Into your hands I commend my spirit;
you will redeem me, O LORD, O faithful God.
Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
For all my foes I am an object of reproach,
a laughingstock to my neighbors,
and a dread to my friends;
they who see me abroad flee from me.
I am forgotten like the unremembered dead;
I am like a dish that is broken.
Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
But my trust is in you, O LORD;
I say, “You are my God.
In your hands is my destiny; rescue me
from the clutches of my enemies and my persecutors.”
Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
Let your face shine upon your servant;
save me in your kindness.
Take courage and be stouthearted,
all you who hope in the LORD.
Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
+++ +++ +++ +++
Reading II
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
Brothers and sisters:
Since we have a great high priest
who has passed through the heavens,
Jesus, the Son of God,
let us hold fast to our confession.
For we do not have a high priest
who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but one who has similarly been tested in every way,
yet without sin.
So let us confidently approach the throne of grace
to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.
In the days when Christ was in the flesh,
he offered prayers and supplications
with loud cries and tears
to the one who was able to save him from death,
and he was heard because of his reverence.
Son though he was,
he learned obedience from what he suffered;
and when he was made perfect,
he became the source of eternal salvation
for all who obey him.
+++
Gospel
Jesus went out with his disciples
across the Kidron valley
to where there was a garden,
into which he and his disciples entered.
Judas his betrayer also knew the place,
because Jesus had often met there with his disciples.
So Judas got a band of soldiers and guards
from the chief priests and the Pharisees
and went there with lanterns, torches, and weapons.
Jesus, knowing everything that was going to happen to him,
went out and said to them, “Whom are you looking for?”
They answered him, “Jesus the Nazorean.”
He said to them, “I AM.”
Judas his betrayer was also with them.
When he said to them, “I AM, “
they turned away and fell to the ground.
So he again asked them,
“Whom are you looking for?”
They said, “Jesus the Nazorean.”
Jesus answered,
“I told you that I AM.
So if you are looking for me, let these men go.”
This was to fulfill what he had said,
“I have not lost any of those you gave me.”
Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it,
struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear.
The slave’s name was Malchus.
Jesus said to Peter,
“Put your sword into its scabbard.
Shall I not drink the cup that the Father gave me?”
So the band of soldiers, the tribune,
and the Jewish guards seized Jesus,
bound him, and brought him to Annas first.
He was the father-in-law of Caiaphas,
who was high priest that year.
It was Caiaphas who had counseled the Jews
that it was better that
one man should die rather than the people.
Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus.
Now the other disciple was known to the high priest,
and he entered the courtyard of the high priest with Jesus.
But Peter stood at the gate outside.
So the other disciple, the acquaintance of the high priest,
went out and spoke to the gatekeeper and brought Peter in.
Then the maid who was the gatekeeper said to Peter,
“You are not one of this man’s disciples, are you?”
He said, “I am not.”
Now the slaves and the guards
were standing around a charcoal fire
that they had made, because it was cold,
and were warming themselves.
Peter was also standing there keeping warm.
The high priest questioned Jesus
about his disciples and about his doctrine.
Jesus answered him,
“I have spoken publicly to the world.
I have always taught in a synagogue
or in the temple area where all the Jews gather,
and in secret I have said nothing. Why ask me?
Ask those who heard me what I said to them.
They know what I said.”
When he had said this,
one of the temple guards standing there struck Jesus and said,
“Is this the way you answer the high priest?”
Jesus answered him,
“If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong;
but if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?”
Then Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest.
Now Simon Peter was standing there keeping warm.
And they said to him,
“You are not one of his disciples, are you?”
He denied it and said,
“I am not.”
One of the slaves of the high priest,
a relative of the one whose ear Peter had cut off, said,
“Didn’t I see you in the garden with him?”
Again Peter denied it.
And immediately the cock crowed.
Then they brought Jesus from Caiaphas to the praetorium.
It was morning.
And they themselves did not enter the praetorium,
in order not to be defiled so that they could eat the Passover.
So Pilate came out to them and said,
“What charge do you bring against this man?”
They answered and said to him,
“If he were not a criminal,
we would not have handed him over to you.”
At this, Pilate said to them,
“Take him yourselves, and judge him according to your law.”
The Jews answered him,
“We do not have the right to execute anyone, “
in order that the word of Jesus might be fulfilled
that he said indicating the kind of death he would die.
So Pilate went back into the praetorium
and summoned Jesus and said to him,
“Are you the King of the Jews?”
Jesus answered,
“Do you say this on your own
or have others told you about me?”
Pilate answered,
“I am not a Jew, am I?
Your own nation and the chief priests
handed you over to me.
What have you done?”
Jesus answered,
“My kingdom does not belong to this world.
If my kingdom did belong to this world,
my attendants would be fighting
to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.
But as it is, my kingdom is not here.”
So Pilate said to him,
“Then you are a king?”
Jesus answered,
“You say I am a king.
For this I was born and
for this I came into the world,
to testify to the truth.
Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
When he had said this,
he again went out to the Jews and said to them,
“I find no guilt in him.
But you have a custom
that I release one prisoner to you at Passover.
Do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?”
They cried out again,
“Not this one but Barabbas!”
Now Barabbas was a revolutionary.
Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged.
And the soldiers wove a crown out of thorns
and placed it on his head,
and clothed him in a purple cloak,
and they came to him and said,
“Hail, King of the Jews!”
And they struck him repeatedly.
Once more Pilate went out and said to them,
“Look, I am bringing him out to you,
so that you may know that I find no guilt in him.”
So Jesus came out,
wearing the crown of thorns and the purple cloak.
And he said to them, “Behold, the man!”
When the chief priests and the guards saw him they cried out,
“Crucify him, crucify him!”
Pilate said to them,
“Take him yourselves and crucify him.
I find no guilt in him.”
The Jews answered,
“We have a law,
and according to that law he ought to die,
because he made himself the Son of God.”
Now when Pilate heard this statement,
he became even more afraid,
and went back into the praetorium and said to Jesus,
“Where are you from?”
Jesus did not answer him.
So Pilate said to him,
“Do you not speak to me?
Do you not know that I have power to release you
and I have power to crucify you?”
Jesus answered him,
“You would have no power over me
if it had not been given to you from above.
For this reason the one who handed me over to you
has the greater sin.”
Consequently, Pilate tried to release him;
but the Jews cried out,
“If you release him, you are not a Friend of Caesar.
Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.”
When Pilate heard these words he brought Jesus out
and seated him on the judge’s bench
in the place called Stone Pavement,
in Hebrew, Gabbatha.
It was preparation day for Passover,
and it was about noon.
And he said to the Jews,
“Behold, your king!”
They cried out,
“Take him away, take him away! Crucify him!”
Pilate said to them,
“Shall I crucify your king?”
The chief priests answered,
“We have no king but Caesar.”
Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.
So they took Jesus, and, carrying the cross himself,
he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull,
in Hebrew, Golgotha.
There they crucified him, and with him two others,
one on either side, with Jesus in the middle.
Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross.
It read,
“Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews.”
Now many of the Jews read this inscription,
because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city;
and it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.
So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate,
“Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’
but that he said, ‘I am the King of the Jews’.”
Pilate answered,
“What I have written, I have written.”
When the soldiers had crucified Jesus,
they took his clothes and divided them into four shares,
a share for each soldier.
They also took his tunic, but the tunic was seamless,
woven in one piece from the top down.
So they said to one another,
“Let’s not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it will be, “
in order that the passage of Scripture
might be fulfilled that says:
They divided my garments among them,
and for my vesture they cast lots.
This is what the soldiers did.
Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother
and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas,
and Mary of Magdala.
When Jesus saw his mother
and the disciple there whom he loved
he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.”
Then he said to the disciple,
“Behold, your mother.”
And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.
After this, aware that everything was now finished,
in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled,
Jesus said, “I thirst.”
There was a vessel filled with common wine.
So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop
and put it up to his mouth.
When Jesus had taken the wine, he said,
“It is finished.”
And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.
Now since it was preparation day,
in order that the bodies might not
remain on the cross on the sabbath,
for the sabbath day of that week was a solemn one,
the Jews asked Pilate that their legs be broken
and that they be taken down.
So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first
and then of the other one who was crucified with Jesus.
But when they came to Jesus and
saw that he was already dead,
they did not break his legs,
but one soldier thrust his lance into his side,
and immediately blood and water flowed out.
An eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true;
he knows that he is speaking the truth,
so that you also may come to believe.
For this happened so that
the Scripture passage might be fulfilled:
Not a bone of it will be broken.
And again another passage says:
They will look upon him whom they have pierced.
After this, Joseph of Arimathea,
secretly a disciple of Jesus for fear of the Jews,
asked Pilate if he could remove the body of Jesus.
And Pilate permitted it.
So he came and took his body.
Nicodemus, the one who had first come to him at night,
also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes
weighing about one hundred pounds.
They took the body of Jesus
and bound it with burial cloths along with the spices,
according to the Jewish burial custom.
Now in the place where he had been crucified
there was a garden, and in the garden
a new tomb, in which no one had yet been buried.
So they laid Jesus there
because of the Jewish preparation day;
for the tomb was close by.
+++
Today we celebrate one of the principal parts of the Paschal Mystery of Jesus, His death and resurrection, and the culmination of our Lenten prayer and preparation for these saving events. This day is called “Good” and this week is called “Holy” because of the very goodness and holiness of God and Jesus as he carries out God’s will for our ultimate rescue.
The readings today begin with the haunting passage, “See, my servant will prosper,” one of four suffering servant poems found in the later chapters of the Prophet Isaiah. The servant songs describe the servant of God who is called by God to be a source of justice for and among the People of Israel. For his efforts the Servant is abused and suffers greatly for his commitment to justice and God’s call.
The servant is described here: “so marred was his look beyond human semblance and his appearance beyond that of the sons of man.” Originally the servant represents the People of Israel as they suffer at the hands of others for their faithfulness to Yahweh. But as Christians we can be led to see and to interpret Isaiah’s words to refer to Jesus in his suffering on the cross and death for us.
An appropriate reflection today would be a quiet, meditative reading of Isaiah 52: 13 – 53:12, discovering in the Servant of God an image of Jesus as he is “marred beyond human semblance” and how he bore our infirmities and was “pierced for our offenses.” These phrases and others like them allow us an insight into the mystery of Jesus’ cruel death and the meaning of this Good Friday.
Thank you, Jesus, for your gift of life given to us through your Cross. Help each of us to discover in your sacrifice the meaning of that event as it touches into our lives. By your actions you have blessed us with mercy and forgiveness. Call us to be instruments of your compassion, forgiveness and mercy to those that we meet.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
This Is My Body Given For You; This Cup Is The New Covenant In My Blood; Do This In Remembrance Of Me.
Holy Thursday
Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper
Reading 1
Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14
The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,
“This month shall stand at the head of your calendar;
you shall reckon it the first month of the year.
Tell the whole community of Israel:
On the tenth of this month every one of your families
must procure for itself a lamb, one apiece for each household.
If a family is too small for a whole lamb,
it shall join the nearest household in procuring one
and shall share in the lamb
in proportion to the number of persons who partake of it.
The lamb must be a year-old male and without blemish.
You may take it from either the sheep or the goats.
You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month,
and then, with the whole assembly of Israel present,
it shall be slaughtered during the evening twilight.
They shall take some of its blood
and apply it to the two doorposts and the lintel
of every house in which they partake of the lamb.
That same night they shall eat its roasted flesh
with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
“This is how you are to eat it:
with your loins girt, sandals on your feet
and your staff in hand,
you shall eat like those who are in flight.
It is the Passover of the LORD.
For on this same night I will go through Egypt,
striking down every firstborn of the land, both man and beast,
and executing judgment on all the gods of Egypt—I, the LORD!
But the blood will mark the houses where you are.
Seeing the blood, I will pass over you;
thus, when I strike the land of Egypt,
no destructive blow will come upon you.
“This day shall be a memorial feast for you,
which all your generations shall celebrate
with pilgrimage to the LORD, as a perpetual institution.”
+++ +++ +++ +++
Responsorial
Psalm 166
Our blessing-cup is a communion with the Blood of Christ.
How shall I make a return to the LORD
for all the good he has done for me?
The cup of salvation I will take up,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD.
Our blessing-cup is a communion with the Blood of Christ.
Precious in the eyes of the LORD
is the death of his faithful ones.
I am your servant, the son of your handmaid;
you have loosed my bonds.
Our blessing-cup is a communion with the Blood of Christ.
To you will I offer sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD.
My vows to the LORD I will pay
in the presence of all his people.
Our blessing-cup is a communion with the Blood of Christ.
+++ +++ +++ +++
Reading 2
1 Corinthians 11:23-26Brothers and sisters:
I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,
that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over,
took bread, and, after he had given thanks,
broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying,
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup,
you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.
+++
Gospel
John 13:1-15
Before the feast of Passover,
Jesus knew that his hour had come
to pass from this world to the Father.
He loved his own in the world
and he loved them to the end.
The devil had already induced Judas,
son of Simon the Iscariot, to hand him over.
So, during supper,
fully aware that the Father had put everything into his power
and that he had come from God and was returning to God,
he rose from supper and took off his outer garments.
He took a towel and tied it around his waist.
Then he poured water into a basin
and began to wash the disciples’ feet
and dry them with the towel around his waist.
He came to Simon Peter, who said to him,
“Master, are you going to wash my feet?”
Jesus answered and said to him,
“What I am doing, you do not understand now,
but you will understand later.”
Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered him,
“Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.”
Simon Peter said to him,
“Master, then not only my feet,
but my hands and head as well.”
Jesus said to him,
“Whoever has bathed has no need
except to have his feet washed,
for he is clean all over;
so you are clean, but not all.”
For he knew who would betray him;
for this reason, he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
So when he had washed their feet
and put his garments back on and reclined at table again,
he said to them, “Do you realize what I have done for you?
You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’
and rightly so, for indeed I am.
If I, therefore, the master and teacher,
have washed your feet,
you ought to wash one another’s feet.
I have given you a model to follow,
so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”
+++
TODAY’S SCRIPTURE READINGS cover the whole sweep of what today’s feast means.
The first reading is a description of the Jewish Passover Meal. It is a sacramental re-enactment of the meal taken by the Israelites before their flight across the Red Sea from Egypt. A flight from slavery to freedom and liberation. This, once a year commemoration, could be called the “Eucharist” of the Jews. Except that they celebrate it just once a year and not weekly or even daily, as we do. It is a sacred remembering of God’s great act to liberate them from slavery and the beginning of their long journey to the Promised Land. It is no coincidence that it was precisely during the celebration of this meal that Jesus instituted what we now call the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Here is the link between the Hebrew and the Christian Covenants.
In the Second Reading, Paul recalls what Jesus did during that Last Supper, that Passover Meal. He took the bread at the table and said it was his Body. He took the cup of wine and said it was his Blood to be poured out for us. These actions were to be repeated by his followers in memory of the liberation brought about for us through his suffering, death and resurrection.
Three events are thus united into a new mystery:
- the Jewish Passover and Paschal Meal;
- the whole Paschal Mystery of Jesus: suffering, death and resurrection.
- the linking of the bread and wine and its communal eating
with the sacrificial death and the resurrection of Jesus.
There is a new liberation, not just from physical slavery, but from every kind of slavery, especially that of sin and evil. There is now a new Pasch and a new Passover. There is a new Lamb, the Lamb of God. There is a new unleavened bread, the Bread that is the Body of the Risen Lord. The blood of the lamb is now replaced with the Blood of the Lamb, Jesus, who takes away the sin of the world.
The Gospel links all this with the concrete reality of our lives. It says nothing about the Pasch or the Passover. It says nothing about the Eucharist, or the Body and Blood of Jesus. Instead it speaks of Jesus, Lord and Master, getting down on his knees and washing the feet of his disciples. It is this spirit of love and service of brothers and sisters which is to be the outstanding characteristic of the Christian disciple.
And this is the true living out of the Eucharistic celebration. To have one without the other is not to live the Gospel. And so the words of the Eucharist are also repeated here: “Do this in memory of me.”
Not to celebrate the Eucharist in community and not to spend our energies in love and service of each other is not to be living the Gospel. Our Christian living is a seamless robe between Gospel, liturgy and daily life and interaction.
Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper
Reading 1
Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14
The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,
“This month shall stand at the head of your calendar;
you shall reckon it the first month of the year.
Tell the whole community of Israel:
On the tenth of this month every one of your families
must procure for itself a lamb, one apiece for each household.
If a family is too small for a whole lamb,
it shall join the nearest household in procuring one
and shall share in the lamb
in proportion to the number of persons who partake of it.
The lamb must be a year-old male and without blemish.
You may take it from either the sheep or the goats.
You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month,
and then, with the whole assembly of Israel present,
it shall be slaughtered during the evening twilight.
They shall take some of its blood
and apply it to the two doorposts and the lintel
of every house in which they partake of the lamb.
That same night they shall eat its roasted flesh
with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
“This is how you are to eat it:
with your loins girt, sandals on your feet
and your staff in hand,
you shall eat like those who are in flight.
It is the Passover of the LORD.
For on this same night I will go through Egypt,
striking down every firstborn of the land, both man and beast,
and executing judgment on all the gods of Egypt—I, the LORD!
But the blood will mark the houses where you are.
Seeing the blood, I will pass over you;
thus, when I strike the land of Egypt,
no destructive blow will come upon you.
“This day shall be a memorial feast for you,
which all your generations shall celebrate
with pilgrimage to the LORD, as a perpetual institution.”
+++ +++ +++ +++
Responsorial
Psalm 166
Our blessing-cup is a communion with the Blood of Christ.
How shall I make a return to the LORD
for all the good he has done for me?
The cup of salvation I will take up,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD.
Our blessing-cup is a communion with the Blood of Christ.
Precious in the eyes of the LORD
is the death of his faithful ones.
I am your servant, the son of your handmaid;
you have loosed my bonds.
Our blessing-cup is a communion with the Blood of Christ.
To you will I offer sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD.
My vows to the LORD I will pay
in the presence of all his people.
Our blessing-cup is a communion with the Blood of Christ.
+++ +++ +++ +++
Reading 2
1 Corinthians 11:23-26Brothers and sisters:
I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,
that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over,
took bread, and, after he had given thanks,
broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying,
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup,
you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.
+++
Gospel
John 13:1-15
Before the feast of Passover,
Jesus knew that his hour had come
to pass from this world to the Father.
He loved his own in the world
and he loved them to the end.
The devil had already induced Judas,
son of Simon the Iscariot, to hand him over.
So, during supper,
fully aware that the Father had put everything into his power
and that he had come from God and was returning to God,
he rose from supper and took off his outer garments.
He took a towel and tied it around his waist.
Then he poured water into a basin
and began to wash the disciples’ feet
and dry them with the towel around his waist.
He came to Simon Peter, who said to him,
“Master, are you going to wash my feet?”
Jesus answered and said to him,
“What I am doing, you do not understand now,
but you will understand later.”
Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered him,
“Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.”
Simon Peter said to him,
“Master, then not only my feet,
but my hands and head as well.”
Jesus said to him,
“Whoever has bathed has no need
except to have his feet washed,
for he is clean all over;
so you are clean, but not all.”
For he knew who would betray him;
for this reason, he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
So when he had washed their feet
and put his garments back on and reclined at table again,
he said to them, “Do you realize what I have done for you?
You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’
and rightly so, for indeed I am.
If I, therefore, the master and teacher,
have washed your feet,
you ought to wash one another’s feet.
I have given you a model to follow,
so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”
+++
TODAY’S SCRIPTURE READINGS cover the whole sweep of what today’s feast means.
The first reading is a description of the Jewish Passover Meal. It is a sacramental re-enactment of the meal taken by the Israelites before their flight across the Red Sea from Egypt. A flight from slavery to freedom and liberation. This, once a year commemoration, could be called the “Eucharist” of the Jews. Except that they celebrate it just once a year and not weekly or even daily, as we do. It is a sacred remembering of God’s great act to liberate them from slavery and the beginning of their long journey to the Promised Land. It is no coincidence that it was precisely during the celebration of this meal that Jesus instituted what we now call the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Here is the link between the Hebrew and the Christian Covenants.
In the Second Reading, Paul recalls what Jesus did during that Last Supper, that Passover Meal. He took the bread at the table and said it was his Body. He took the cup of wine and said it was his Blood to be poured out for us. These actions were to be repeated by his followers in memory of the liberation brought about for us through his suffering, death and resurrection.
Three events are thus united into a new mystery:
- the Jewish Passover and Paschal Meal;
- the whole Paschal Mystery of Jesus: suffering, death and resurrection.
- the linking of the bread and wine and its communal eating
with the sacrificial death and the resurrection of Jesus.
There is a new liberation, not just from physical slavery, but from every kind of slavery, especially that of sin and evil. There is now a new Pasch and a new Passover. There is a new Lamb, the Lamb of God. There is a new unleavened bread, the Bread that is the Body of the Risen Lord. The blood of the lamb is now replaced with the Blood of the Lamb, Jesus, who takes away the sin of the world.
The Gospel links all this with the concrete reality of our lives. It says nothing about the Pasch or the Passover. It says nothing about the Eucharist, or the Body and Blood of Jesus. Instead it speaks of Jesus, Lord and Master, getting down on his knees and washing the feet of his disciples. It is this spirit of love and service of brothers and sisters which is to be the outstanding characteristic of the Christian disciple.
And this is the true living out of the Eucharistic celebration. To have one without the other is not to live the Gospel. And so the words of the Eucharist are also repeated here: “Do this in memory of me.”
Not to celebrate the Eucharist in community and not to spend our energies in love and service of each other is not to be living the Gospel. Our Christian living is a seamless robe between Gospel, liturgy and daily life and interaction.
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