Homily
for March 23, 2008
Liturgical Year A- Cycle II
Easter Sunday
By Fr. John Carney Topic:
We are an Easter People
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It
is a safe assumption to make that all the details,
especially the little details we read in scripture, have importance,
even if
the importance details aren’t immediately obvious to us. As we
heard that brief Gospel from John
today, you notice that Peter and the young disciple, I assume that
would be
John, went to the tomb after Mary brought them the news. The
younger man got there first because he
was younger. Peter was older. Nevertheless, the younger man
did not go
in. He waited for Peter in deference to
him. Peter went in and then the younger
man went in. There is a little lesson
about the first of the Apostles. I read a beautiful reflection a few
days ago about
another little detail of that story you just heard. The body was
gone, the shroud that had
covered the body was there but the cloth that covered His face was not
with the
shroud. It was folded and placed
elsewhere. This reflection suggested
that Jesus and the beloved disciple, the young John, were friends.
They had traveled together, as all the
apostles had with Christ, ‘cause in those days when you traveled you
took your
bed clothes with you, and you slept where you slept and you folded it
up each
time.. We all fold things in our own
way. The author of this reflection,
Father Richard Veras, suggested that maybe Jesus folded that head
covering and
put it aside, so that John could see it and say, “My goodness. He
has risen.” It is a beautiful little sign that Christ was
alive. Throughout our lives, we get many
little signs, don’t we,
that Christ is alive? You know we are
saved by faith and faith is belief in things unseen and unknowable in
the
natural order. God cannot show us
Himself completely or we wouldn’t need faith.
My goodness! We would see. However, I don’t think God can
resist sending
us little signs that He’s there, that He loves us and that all will be
well
because He is close to us. That’s just a
little prelude. You know, if you asked, I was about to
say if you ask a
non-Christian, but if you ask even most Christians, “What’s the biggest
Christian celebration of the year?” I
bet they would say Christmas. There is
certainly more commercial hoopla associated with Christmas than there
is
Easter. You know Christmas begins at
Thanksgiving, when the stores start it all, the decorations, the music.
Right?
I mean, it’s just a bigger thing, isn’t it? But it shouldn’t be,
at least it shouldn’t be
for us. Easter is the great feast of the
Church. Not that Christmas is
unimportant. Easter could not have
happened without Christmas. Frankly, I’m
not sure we should celebrate Christmas any more than we should
celebrate the
day nine months before Christmas, on March 25, the Annunciation.
That is when the Son of the living God took
on the flesh, took on our flesh in His mother’s womb. Without the
Incarnation, there is no passion,
death, and resurrection. But this feast,
Easter, is our great feast and it means a lot to us. We are here
today not only to worship the
living God, to praise and the thank Him, we are here today because we
get
something out of this deal, eternal life in Christ Jesus. Last
night we had a beautiful Mass and we
baptized five people. We welcomed others
into our Church and we confirmed them and we celebrated the New
Covenant. I spoke about what covenant means. You know
throughout the history of God’s
relationship to humanity, He’s made deals with us. He made a deal
with Adam and Eve and they
blew it. He made a deal with their successors
and they blew it. He sent Noah to purify
the earth and then He made a deal with Abraham and Sarah that they were
to
become the parents of a great nation and a great people. He made
a deal with Moses, a deal with David,
a covenant. Each covenant had conditions
on the part of humanity and on the part of God.
God always kept his part but we’ve never kept our part.
Especially in times of prosperity, the Hebrew
people didn’t perform well. When they
had plenty of freedom, power and wealth, they didn’t need God.
It’s in the times of their persecution and
suffering, that is when they were closest to Yahweh. What
happens, simply, is that God looked at
us carefully, and said, “What a mess!”
He said, “I’ll know what I’ll do.”
And in the fullness of time, He sent His own Son, who took on our flesh
and became one of us. It was necessary that a man redeem us,
a human
being. Humans had permitted the sin of
rejection of God’s love, so justice required that one of us then repair
the
damage. Therefore, Christ, the Son of
the living God, became human. God then
made a covenant with Him that can never be broken. We join that
covenant in Baptism. That is the deal. When Jesus rose from
the dead, after He
completed becoming the sacrificial victim, doing the work for us and
for our
salvation, we rose with Him in Baptism.
That is why Baptism is such a beautiful thing because it incorporates
us
into the life of the living God. The interesting thing is that there
were three orders of
creation. There was God, the angels, and
humanity, Adam and Eve. Moreover,
because of Adam’s sin, the Son of God became a human person and
elevated
humanity to take on the Divine likeness, elevated humanity above the
angels. There is a beautiful song, The Exsultet, we
heard last night, an ancient song and hymn of the Church. It
says, “O happy fault, O necessary sin of
Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!”
In addition, brought us into God’s life.
We are God’s children now. What
we later will be has not yet come to light but when it does we shall be
like
Him, for we shall see God as He is. We
shall share God’s divinity and the angels will worship you.
That’s no New Age nonsense. That’s ancient Christian Catholic
belief. That is why this day is so
important. We know how the story
ends. We know how Christ’s story on this
earth ends but we know how our story ends.
You know and I know how our story ends, our lives end. Faith in Jesus Christ gives true
purpose and real meaning
to life. Now consider, without this
promise of eternal life, what is life?
What is our life, these few years we have here? It’s going,
without Christ, without this
promise of heaven, of eternal life, it all ends in disaster.
Doesn’t it? I just don’t know how atheists
get through the day sometimes because if this is all there is, I want
my money
back. If this is all there is. You know, we are motivated
by goals, aren’t
we. We teach that to our kids, “You got
to have goals.” You work from goal to
goal. If you are a little older you can
go back in your life, even if your 90.
It doesn’t seem very long ago when you were 15, does it. Those
years went so quickly. You had goals. First, you wanted to
get out of high
school. I remember kids saying they
wanted to get out of high school, get a job making, you know, $7 bucks
an hour,
get a car, life is good and maybe I’ll go to college. Personally,
I never had the choice of going
to college. I never remember making the
choice. My parents indoctrinated me
somehow. I went to college, partied some
and studied. Then you had to get out of
college. If you went to college, you
remember that, those days and you were just looking forward to getting
out. The beauty of goals is you always can’t wait
to attain them. You graduated from college. I went into the
Army for 20 years. I wanted to get promoted and I got promoted a
few times, new assignments. Life was
exciting. At a certain point, I decided
I would become a priest. I retired from
the Army, started seminary and had to watch what I said for four years.
As a matter of fact, it was funny because we
used to say in seminary, “Don’t let the guards know what you’re
thinking.” I was going to be a priest, I’d be
happy. Then I was ordained a priest, I
wanted a parish. When I got here, I
realized, as I’m getting older, my next goal is to die well. That
is the most important goal of my
life. Now, I’m only 62. I hope that I have a few more
years,
sometimes I hope for a few more years.
You know what I’m saying. We are
motivated by goals. I’ve seen people
devastated when they retire because their goals are finished.
What do you do now? You’re 65 and you retire. You have a
pension that you couldn’t spend it
if you tried. What are you going to
do? You know what you’re going to do? You’re going to die.
It is because of Easter that’s something to
look forward to! It really is. Now you’re probably listening to the
biggest coward
you’ve ever met on his deathbed up here.
I don’t how I’m going to handle that day I do know that if my faith is
true and real, that I am not afraid of dying.
At least intellectually, I know that.
That is the good news of Easter.
Death has no more power over us. If you are
not afraid of dying, you’re not afraid of anything. I’m convinced
people who are not afraid of
dying, can really live. They can enjoy
every day that God gives them. Not only
that, all the stuff of their life makes sense.
In light of Christ, in light of eternal life, all of life makes
sense. Not only the good times, the success,
the degrees and the prosperity, that’s easy.
What really makes sense in the light of Christ, is our suffering, which
is inevitable. We will suffer. We have suffered. In
Christ, it all makes sense. Suffering can be the greatest
blessing that a
person has ever experienced. Suffering
slaps us in the face and wakes us up. It
says, “Pay attention! Get back on track! This is what is
important: eternal life is what is important. What benefit
will it be if you gain the whole
world and lose your soul! What are these
few years we have we call life? What do
they mean in comparison to eternity?
Where there is no time, where a gazillion, trillion years is
nothing. If we’re not ready for that,
we’re not ready for anything. Therefore,
even suffering makes sense. Even our sins God will use. God
will use our sins to help us to have a
sense of our own remorse. The greatest
sin that was ever perpetrated was right there on the cross. He
used that sin very well didn’t He? That
sin that man perpetrated upon the living God is the cause for us today
to
rejoice in our salvation. He’ll use
everything. Good days and bad, sickness
and health, success, failure. It doesn’t
matter. It will all bring us closer in
the light of Christ. I was in Germany in
the 60’s and Germany was still recovering from the war. It takes
a long time to recover from a World
War. The Germans, at that time, were
very frugal, out of necessity. The
Germans, as you know them, are a very generous people but at that time,
they
had nothing. There was a saying I
remember that when a German farmer slaughters a pig, the only thing he
doesn’t
use is the squeal. I think that is an
appropriate metaphor for our lives. When
we accept Christ as Lord, all of our life has meaning. All of it.
He’ll use every bit of it, if we let Him and if we offer it to Him to
bring us closer to Himself. That is why
Easter is so important. It is a
wonderful day. It is a beautiful
day. But it’s not just a day. Easter is a way of living.
We are to be an Easter people. We are to live with hope and
courage because
we know how His story ended and we know how our story ended. Psalm 4 says, “What can bring us
happiness? Many say, ‘Let the light of your face shine
on us O Lord.’ You have put into my
heart a greater joy than they have from the abundance of corn and wine.
I will lay down in peace and sleep comes at
once for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.” He is risen. He has risen, indeed.
Alleluia, alleluia.