Monday, April 24, 2017

The wounds that show us his mercy

Homily: Sunday in the Octave of Easter – Cycle A
(2nd Sunday of Easter – Divine Mercy Sunday)
          One of the things that I’ve come to realize over the years is that boys are strange.  I have many reasons for drawing this conclusion, but one in particular stands out to me today.  It’s a behavior peculiar to boys in which they readily show and compare open wounds and / or scars to one another.  Am I right?  They do this especially when the story of how those wounds / scars were obtained is something of which they were particularly proud.  While most of us would look at one of their gaping wounds and feel disgusted, a boy would say “COOOL!!!!” while the boy with the wound recounted how he obtained that wound while attempting to leap between tree limbs, like the monkeys that he saw at the zoo on the school field trip.  His wound, far from being a thing of shame for having failed in his attempt to imitate a monkey, is displayed as if it is a badge of honor for having attempted something adventurous and having survived.  Yep, boys are strange.
          Today, in our Gospel reading, we recount that, when Jesus appeared to the Apostles on Easter, He showed them the wounds in His hands and His side.  Hearing this passage again, nearly two thousand years after it was written, the oddity of this situation may no longer strike us as odd: rather, we’ve become accustomed to the idea that Jesus’ risen body retained the wounds of his crucifixion.  Perhaps we even think of this showing of His wounds in terms of the young boys who show off their wounds like badges of honor.  For the disciples, however, this whole experience was odd, frightening, and shocking: not only to see the Lord risen from the dead, but risen with the gaping wounds still in his body.  I imagine that everyone who encountered Jesus after the Resurrection must have noticed that His glorified body retained these wounds of the Crucifixion; and the fact that the wounds, themselves, remained not as scars, but as torn flesh: flesh which Thomas’ fingers and hands could probe and examine.
          Imagine, for a moment, that we were hearing this news for the first time.  Wouldn’t we stop and ask ourselves, “Why is it that Jesus chose to retain the wounds of such a gruesome death, a death that His Resurrection had powerfully defeated?  Wounds, or even scars, are imperfections.  Why, then, do the marks of Jesus’ Passion remain in His perfect, glorified flesh when, just as easily, He could have chosen not to have them?”
          As in all things, when we look for the reasoning behind the actions of God, the best place to start is always with the answer: “He did this for me.”  Remember that God never needs to act to help Himself because God is perfect in Himself.  God is also love; and so all of His actions are acts of self-giving love which are directed towards our salvation.  With this in mind, therefore, we can assume that Jesus chose to keep the wounds of the Crucifixion in His glorified body for our benefit. “He did this for me.”  This, of course, begs the next question: “If Jesus did this for me, how am I helped by encountering the wounds of the Risen Jesus as His disciples did?”
          First, the wounds of Jesus are a proof of His identity.  When Our Lord showed his hands and side to the Apostles on Easter, they rejoiced because the wounds verified that the man in front of them was truly Jesus, the crucified One, who had been raised.  There’s a legend that says that the devil once tried to fool Saint Martin of Tours into worshiping him by appearing to him dressed in fine clothes and jewelry, and claiming to be Our Lord.  Martin, however, quickly spotted the devil’s trick and said: “Where are your nail marks?  Where is the wound in your side?  When I see the marks of the Passion then I will adore Him.”  Without the wounds of the crucifixion, Martin knew it was not Jesus.
          The wounds of the Risen Christ are more than just a means of identification, however. Rather, they are integral to who He is.  Jesus cannot be separated from His wounds, even in His glorified body, because His wounds continually show us that He is Our Savior.  The Risen Lord Jesus kept the marks of His sacrifice, which freed us from our sins.  He carried in His Resurrected flesh the marks that prove that He, too, knows our physical and emotional suffering intimately, and that, through His victory, our suffering may be transformed into a means of salvation for ourselves and others.  In other words, Jesus bears the wounds of His crucifixion in his glorified body to show us that he did not come to eliminate our woundedness, but rather to redeem it.  Finally, Jesus bears the wounds of the crucifixion in His glorified body for all eternity so that we may experience the power and depth of His merciful love for us when we meet Him in the flesh, just as Saint Mary Magdalene, Saint Thomas, Saint Peter, and Saint Paul did when they themselves encountered the Risen Lord: a power and depth that we can experience when we meditate on these wounds through which he saved us.
          Saint Faustina Kowalska, the Polish mystic to whom Jesus appeared and gave the task to spread devotion to Divine Mercy, wrote in her diary: “As I was praying before the Blessed Sacrament and greeting the five wounds of Jesus, at each salutation I felt a torrent of graces gushing into my soul, giving me a foretaste of heaven and absolute confidence in God's mercy.”  Friends, Jesus’ glorified body bears the wounds of the crucifixion so as to continually invite us to approach him so as to receive his mercy.  Thus, meditating on Jesus’ Sacred Wounds is a way to put us in contact with His merciful love.
          Still more, my brothers and sisters, Our Risen Lord appears to us at each Mass—body, blood, soul, and divinity— in Holy Communion: glorified wounds and all.  Although Saint Thomas could touch these wounds with his hands, we can experience them even more intimately by entering into them each time that we receive Holy Communion.  And so, as we prepare to receive Our Lord here today, let us meditate on this great mystery of the glorified wounds of Christ, so that we, too, might feel “a torrent of graces” rushing into us, and thus receive, like Saint Faustina, “a foretaste of heaven and absolute confidence in God’s mercy.”  Filled with this confidence we ourselves, wounds and all, will be strengthened to realize our vision of a Catholic Cass County, united in the Eucharist.
          May Mary, the First Disciple of Divine Mercy, be our guide and protection as today we rededicate ourselves to this joyful work.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – April 23rd, 2017

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