Our noble and necessary bodies

Homily: The Ascension of the Lord – Cycle C

          Friends, today we celebrate this great feast of the Ascension: the final, culminating act of our redemption. This is not, of course, the crucial act: that was Jesus’ Passion, Death, and Resurrection.  Rather, it is the culminating act: the ultimate reason for which Jesus took on our human flesh; and that is, to re-unite our humanity to God. This, of course, is a joyful thing. I mean, just think about your humanity for a moment. Think about what happens when you don’t take a shower or a bath for a couple of days. Think about changing diapers on babies or when they spit up on your shoulder. Our humanity—as we experience it in this world, at least—is a messy (and, quite frankly, often gross) thing. Yet the Divine Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, took on our humanity, in all its grossness, suffered all of the worst things that it can experience in this world, and glorified it in his resurrection so that it could be restored to its perfect communion with the Holy Trinity: which is to say, into an existence of perfect and eternal bliss.

          This is something astounding!  And if you aren’t astounded by this, then you should be!  In the early centuries of the Church, Christians argued about the true nature of Jesus’ humanity: Did he truly have a human nature, alongside his divine nature, or did his divine nature simply “reside” in a human body while he walked on earth?  The fact that, after his resurrection, Jesus still had a human body, made of flesh and bone, and that he took that body with him as he ascended into heaven shows us, those early Christians argued, that Jesus’ divine nature was truly united to a human nature; and that this human nature, while always remaining distinct from his divine nature, can never be separated from him.  It’s truly mind-blowing to think about this because, even with all of our scientific achievements, we have no way of conceptualizing how our human bodies can exist outside of space and time.

          Nevertheless, what Jesus proved for us when he ascended in his human body is that our bodies are noble, and that they have a noble purpose.  In fact, I would say that our bodies are truly sacramental, in nature.  If you remember your catechism well, you’ll remember that a sacrament is an “efficacious sign of grace”: it’s something perceivable by our senses that makes imperceivably things happen.  For example, in baptism, the person is washed with water while invoking the Holy Trinity, which effects the grace of the cleansing of the person’s soul from sin (Original Sin and any personal sin) and marking it permanently for God.  In other words, the physical, perceivable washing makes a spiritual, imperceivable washing happen.  Thus, another way to define a sacrament is to say that it is “a visible sign of an invisible reality.”  A sacramental, in this sense, is something that does a “sacrament-like” thing.

          Our human bodies are sacramentals in that they are visible signs of invisible realities.  What is that “invisible reality”?  The presence of a human soul.  Subconsciously we get this, because whenever we see what appears to be a human body without a soul, we know it’s something less than human, a monster, right? (Any “Walking Dead” fans out there? Zombies are monsters because they are human bodies without souls.) Our bodies are more than just signs, however, they are integral parts of who we are as human persons.  This we also understand, fundamentally, because when someone does violence to our bodies, we rightly see it as an attack on the person, who cannot be known except through his/her body.

All this is to remind us today that the restoration of our communion with God could not be accomplished through spiritual means alone: it had to happen with our bodies.  This means that, any restoration that could have been effected without bodily communion would have been incomplete.  Jesus came, however, to restore our communion with God completely: thus, the Incarnation; the Passion, Death, and Resurrection; and, now, yes, the Ascension.  Real communion with God requires our bodies, as well as our soul.

          This message is also why, I think, that the Church has transferred the celebration of this great feast to Sunday.  Technically, 40 days after Easter happened last Thursday, but we celebrate the Ascension on Sunday so that the vast majority of us might be able to celebrate this important feast.  It is the feast of the culmination of our salvation and a reminder that our human bodies have a noble purpose.  The world tells us that our bodies are something to be used and thrown away.  Through Jesus, God reveals that our bodies are valuable and necessary.

          These valuable bodies are not meant to be static, however.  Rather, they are meant to move.  In Luke’s Gospel “movement” is the sign of a disciple: that is, someone responding to grace.  If we think about the parable of the Prodigal Son, we see that the prodigal responds to grace and moves to return to his father, and the older son stands still—he will not move—and refuses his father’s graces.  This is a common theme in Luke’s gospel.  Thus, it feels a little weird when, at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, Luke writes that Jesus told the disciples to “stay and wait”.  This, of course, is only to prepare them for the next big movement that will come with the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost: then they will move—and move big time—to take the Gospel message to the ends of the world.  We, who celebrate this feast, must be ready to move when the Spirit comes to us.

          Friends, Let’s use this time to meditate this week on this great mystery of the Ascension: that through Christ’s body, which has entered the eternal sanctuary in heaven on our behalf, we too will one day ascend bodily into full and perfect communion with God in heaven.  As we do, let us also pray and prepare to use these bodies that we have been given not only to be outward expression of ourselves—the visible signs of our invisible souls—but also to be expressions of God’s love that has been poured into our hearts: in other words, the visible sign of that invisible reality.  In doing so, we will be proclaiming God’s kingdom: the kingdom of heaven to which all men and women are invited and over which rules Christ, our risen Lord and king.  Alleluia!

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – June 1^st & 2^nd, 2019

Our noble duty.

Homily: 6^th Sunday in Easter – Cycle C

This weekend we celebrate Memorial Day.  Although this commemoration began as a memorial to the soldiers who died in the American Civil War, it has come to be recognized as a memorial for all who have died in service to the United States of America, particularly through the armed forces.  It’s original name, Decoration Day, points to the primary activity that marks this day: the visiting of cemeteries and decorating the graves of fallen service men and women with flowers or flags as a sign of honor and remembrance.  We will all do well to pay attention to this primary point as we embrace our activities this weekend.

I have to say, though, that I really appreciate this holiday.  As human beings, we recognize that the sacrifices that men and women make to defend our nation and our freedoms is something extraordinary; and that to have suffered death because of it is more extraordinary still.  In many ways these men and women are like martyrs: those who confront challenges to that which we value most (in this case, our nation and our freedoms) and who lay down their lives in defense of them.  These men and women exemplify the truth that Jesus spoke to his disciples the night before he died: “no one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  The men and women we honor this weekend loved us, as fellow citizens of this nation and, thus, friends, when they chose to serve our nation at the cost of their own lives.  Therefore, I appreciate this holiday because it honors something truly noble and worthy of remembrance.

In our second reading today, and over the last weeks of Easter, we’ve been hearing from the visions of John the Apostle while he was in exile on the Greek island of Patmos.  Although many over the centuries have called these visions a view of what Jesus’ second coming would look like, many more have said that these visions were given as prophecies of what the Christians in those days (and, really, Christians of every age following) would need to hear to strengthen them in faith so as to deal with the challenges that they will inevitably face to live the faith and to proclaim Jesus to others.  In these visions, John is often given a vision of a large multitude of men and women who stand before the throne of God in brilliant white robes.  These men and women are described as those who have “washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb”.  In other words, these are the martyrs: the ones who have suffered persecution for the faith and who have remained faithful to Jesus, to the point of dying for him.  In all of these readings, these are the ones who have an honored place in heaven.

In today’s reading, which is from the last chapter of this book (and, thus, from the end of John’s visions), it is Christ himself who speaks to John and, thus, solemnly declares the following: “Blessed are they who wash their robes so as to have the right to the tree of life and enter the city through its gates.”  Again, “those who wash their robes” are the martyrs who have handed over their lives in the imitation of Christ.  Their reward is the very thing that was taken away from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: access to the tree of life.  Thus, we see that, through Christ, we have been restored to the paradise lost by our first parents.  The martyrs seemed to lose everything in this world when they handed over their lives to death on account of their faith in Christ, but that same Christ reveals that, in reality, by handing over their lives, they have gained eternal life.

Of course, we recognize the extraordinary nature of this giving of life, also, and so we regularly honor the martyrs for their witness to the faith.  Like the honoring of our fallen military men and women, the honoring of the martyrs is a truly noble thing to do.  The honoring of the martyrs should also be a reminder for us, however.  A reminder that every Christian is called to be a martyr in some way: that is, one who gives witness to Jesus Christ in his/her life.  This is epitomized in the title given by the Church to Christians still living in time (a title that those who are old enough will remember learning in their early catechism classes), and a title that is fitting to be reminded of on this Memorial Day weekend: for we are called the Church Militant.

Although the term “militant” translates somewhat literally to mean something like “marching”, as in “walking around in space and time”, we should, nonetheless, allow ourselves to think of the term in the sense that it invokes: that we are God’s “armed forces” here on earth, sent into battle to proclaim and defend the name of Jesus and his kingdom here on earth.  We are God’s foot soldiers and we have a noble duty.  When Christ returns, as he revealed in the reading today, we will receive “recompense” for our faithfulness to that duty.  Notice, that I didn’t say “success”.  God won’t measure our success, as if we somehow earn our reward in heaven, but rather our faithfulness to the duty, thus demonstrating our love for him and our faith in the fact that he has already won the reward for us.  In our faithfulness to the duty—faithfulness, that is, without compromises—we demonstrate our love for Christ and, thus, our willingness to lay down our lives for him so as to have our robes “washed in the blood of the Lamb”.

We would do well, my brothers and sisters, to reflect on our faithfulness this weekend as we honor those who were faithful to us: our nation and our freedoms.  Are we giving ourselves as fully as we ought to Christ and his kingdom?  Or are we making compromises and, thus, shirking our noble duty?  My guess is that the answer for most all of us is that we can still give ourselves more.  And so, let’s let the inspiring example of those who gave their lives for our nation and freedoms point us to the inspiring example of the Christian martyrs; and, thus, lead us rededicate ourselves to fulfilling our noble duty to Christ and his kingdom.  For it is Christ himself who, out of love for us, first laid down his life for us; and it is Christ himself who, out of love for us, continues to give himself for us in the Eucharist; and it is Christ himself who, out of love for us, will one day return to take us home to himself in the glorious kingdom of heaven.  “Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!”

Given at St. Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – May 25^th & 26^th, 2019