Homily:
5th Sunday in Easter – Cycle A
“Do not let your hearts be
troubled...” I kind of wish we had this message back on March 18th,
when we first entered into this situation!
It feels, perhaps, a little late now, because our hearts have been long
troubled by this extended lockdown. But
let’s step out of the context of our own situation, and back into the context
in which Jesus originally made this statement.
Perhaps, then, we’ll be able to make more sense of how Our Lord’s words
can speak to us.
This passage comes at the
close of the Last Supper. Just prior to
it, Judas Iscariot has left to betray Jesus to the Jews, after which Jesus
announces to the remaining eleven that he’s “going away” and that where he is
going, they cannot follow him. Peter
finds this awfully strange and makes a bold statement (as he’s wont to do): “No
way! I’m going wherever it is that you are going. I’ll even lay down my life
for you!” Jesus corrects him and says,
“LOL, not only will you NOT do that, you’ll do the opposite! In fact, you are
going to DENY me... three times... TONIGHT.
You can imagine the “stunned
silence” that followed. Imagine
with me back to the beginning of February.
Now imagine if I said to you, then, “Hey, things are going to shut down
completely in a month and you won’t even be able to come to Mass.” You would have all been like Peter and said,
“Ha! Yeah right! We will never let that happen!” Fast forward to March 18th and... stunned
silence. Friends, this is where
Jesus starts this passage with his first and closest disciples; and this is
where he starts this passage with us... Do not let your hearts be
troubled...
Now, let’s look at the
disciples in the ensuing hours: The disciples would watch Jesus be arrested,
tortured and murdered... Do not let your hearts be troubled... They discovered that his body had been buried
and the tomb closed... Do not let your hearts be troubled... They would hear that “murderous threats” were
being spoken about them... Do not let your hearts be troubled... I imagine that they all felt pretty helpless
to do anything and that they were despairing that what they had hoped for would
ever be possible again. But has this not
been our experience? Some of you have
lost loved ones during this time (whether to the coronavirus or for other
reasons). Perhaps you didn’t even get to
attend the funeral. Many more of you are
desperately separated from loved ones because of a need (yours or theirs) to be
protected from infection. Some of you
have lost jobs and more in terms of material security. Some of you have lost milestone experiences
(like prom and graduation). In all of
this, we’ve experienced our own helplessness and, perhaps, despair that we’ll
ever get back that for which we had hoped and into that Jesus says, Do not
let your hearts be troubled...
In Matthew’s gospel, we hear
Jesus say, “Blessed are those who mourn...”
Perhaps, in the midst of all of this, this “Beatitude” seems much more
like a “pious platitude”, unhelpful in the face of real suffering. Trappist Monk and spiritual writer Thomas
Merton has something to say about that, however, and I’d like to share a bit of
an extensive quote from him that might help put this into perspective. In his book, No Man is an Island,
Merton wrote:
“’Blessed are they that mourn.’ Can this be true? Is there
any greater wretchedness than to taste the dregs of our own insufficiency and
misery and hopelessness, and to know that we are certainly worth nothing at
all? Yet it is blessed to be reduced to these depths if, in them, we can find
God. Until we have reached the bottom of the abyss, there is still something
for us to choose between all and nothing. There is still something in between.
We can still evade the decision. When we are reduced to our last extreme, there
is no further evasion. The choice is a terrible one. It is made in the heart of
darkness, but with an intuition that is unbearable by its angelic clarity: when
we who have been destroyed and seem to be in hell miraculously choose God!”
He continues:
“Only the lost are saved. Only the sinner is justified.
Only the dead can rise from the dead, and Jesus said, ‘I came to seek and to
save that which was lost.’”
Finally, he adds:
“Some men are only virtuous enough to forget that they are
sinners without being wretched enough to remember how much they need the mercy of
God.”
Friends, could it be that God is allowing this
to remind us of our desperate need for his mercy, to remind us that we are lost
and in need of saving, to remind us that we are sinners who need a
redeemer? My friends, let us be in agony
because of this pandemic and the sacrifices it has demanded of us (most
especially separation from the Eucharist).
Yes, let us be in agony, but let us not despair! Remember the crucifixion: Jesus went to the
depths of the darkest place of humanity and cried out, “My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me!?!?” Yet he had
already told us what it was all for: “Do not let your hearts be troubled... I
am going to prepare a place for you.”
My friends, this time is not a
time for despair, but a time for mercy.
Do not let your hearts be troubled by this time of chaos, confusion, and
sorrow. Rather, have faith in God; have
faith also in the one whom God has sent, Jesus.
Where he is going in this time, you know the way. Wait, we know the way? Yes, Thomases, we know the way: “I am the
way...” Jesus said. The Way, is the way
of mercy.
Jesus has entered the depths
of humanity in order to redeem it in its depths: in your depths and in my
depths. Our way, therefore, is the same. We must enter into the depths of our own
humanity to find the wretchedness that still exists there so that God’s mercy
might penetrate to it. And we must enter
into the depths of others in their sins against us so as to bring God’s mercy
there when we forgive their offenses.
Merton says that, “We must forgive them in the flames of their own hell,
for Christ, by means of our forgiveness, once again descends to extinguish the
avenging flame. He cannot do this if we do not forgive others with his own
compassion.”
Friends, soon enough Jesus
will return to “take us to himself”.
Perhaps even sooner, we will be returning to him, here in our
churches. When we do, will we truly be
seeking him? Or will we be seeking the
comfort of the familiar? Our challenge
is to be sure that we are seeking him.
We can do this by embarking (or re-embarking) on the Way of mercy, in Truth,
who is the Life: the way of deep forgiveness that comes from a place of true
humility and compassion—that is, the way that brings deep and lasting healing—the
way that leads into the life, who is Christ.
To do so will not only make our return to him joyful in the depths of
our souls, but will also be the cause of a great renewal in our Church and in
our world.
Friends, Jesus promised his
disciples that “whoever believes in me will do the works that I do and will do
greater ones than these.” This is the
crux of why we need to set ourselves on the Way that is mercy. For what are the greatest works that Jesus
did? Without doubt, the conversion of
souls; and he brought souls to conversion by forgiveness, by mercy. Thomas Merton wrote, “God has left sin in the
world in order that there may be forgiveness: not only the secret forgiveness
by which He Himself cleanses our souls, but the manifest forgiveness by which
we have mercy on one another and so give expression to the fact that He is
living, by His mercy, in our own hearts.”
What is the point of evangelization except to give witness to the fact
that God is living and among us and that he wants to give us life, through
mercy? The conversion of even greater
numbers of souls through mercy are the greater works that Jesus has promised
that we will accomplish.
“Do not let your hearts be
troubled... I am the way, the truth, and the life... whoever believes in me
will do greater works than these...” Friends,
may we today, even in the midst of our ongoing sufferings, find the grace to
echo the words of Our Lady and say, “Father, let it be done unto me according
to your word.”
Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – May 10th,
2020
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