Love Actually: Sermon for Good Friday

My dear brothers and sisters, some weeks ago, on the fifth Sunday of Lent, I pointed out that God is always accompanying us in our sufferings, and that even in the darkest moments of human history – like the World War II and the accompanying atrocities – Our Lord was present with us, through the witness given by Christian faithful, often at the cost of their own lives and well-being.

Responding to this homily a faithful interlocutor responded with thanks, indicating that while it was a “comforting insight that we are not abandoned in this suffering, and that Christ is with us through the sacrifices of others,” it was not, nevertheless, an “entirely satisfactory answer to ‘why does God allow terrible suffering on innocents through war and bigotry and persecution or natural calamities like earthquakes or tsunamis.’”

He went on to elaborate:

anything that gives answers to the troubling question of why God allows bad things to happen to good people is welcome. Yes, free will and consequent sin - but it doesn’t explain everything, including illness, genetic deformities, mental deficiencies that eliminate free will (are the victims not human, then, because they don’t have free will?), natural disasters……

Also, why are only some then chosen for miraculous cures or deliverances? Do these not contradict the freely chosen sins of others? And if they are justified in some cases, why not in others?

I know that it is not possible for us humans to fully understand the wisdom of God - but we try, don’t we? Isn’t that what theology is?

Formally speaking, my interlocutor is engaged in, and invites my engagement with, what is known as theodicy - a theological or philosophical attempt to justify the goodness and omnipotence of God in the face of existing evil and suffering. What better day to engage with this question, than on the Friday that we speak about as Good Friday; the Friday when we commemorate the death of not just a good man, but an innocent man! We Christians proclaim this day good, because it demonstrates the goodness of God, who willed that His son, His only son, whom He loved, be offered up as a holocaust (Gen 22: 2) so that we may be ransomed from sin.

What every Christian must understand when faced with the death of Our Lord, is to recognize that if it was only His death – the death of the lamb without fault – which could reconcile us with God, then there wasn’t anyone before, or after, who can truly claim to be innocent. As the verses of Psalm 51 (5) recognize about human nature:

Indeed, I was born guilty,
    a sinner when my mother conceived me.

The sin of Adam marked all humans fundamentally, so that the tendency to sin was written into our nature. None of us, therefore, are in that sense innocent, not even a newly born babe! We were all born with the stain of Adam, necessitating the purification of baptism that wipes away the stain of this sin – cleansed through the blood offered by the single innocent in history, Our Lord Jesus Christ. And while this stain is washed away in baptism, our tendency to sin is not. To take away our tendency to sin would require that the free will offered to us by Our God be taken away, reducing us to mere puppets. God gives us this great gift – of free will – so that our love for Him is always a choice we make. And yet, free will can so often lead us to sin, often right after receiving the absolution at the sacrament of reconciliation! Also, while the guilt of sin is washed away, the effects of the sin continue to echo through all time.

Bear in mind that the Catholic Church does not teach that the child born with genetic deformities is being punished for their own sin. It is the teaching of the Catholic Church that all sickness and death, is the result of the sinful condition we live in. Sin affects us at the level of human nature and manifests as the pain and suffering endured by those who may be personally devoid of fault.

So, the challenge before us is this: how do we deal with sin, and the suffering, which is the effect of sin? Our Lord demonstrated this not theoretically, but viscerally, by embracing the Cross and putting an end to the triumph of sin, that kept all humans out of heaven. No more do we have to live with the defeatism that we cannot stand up to sin, or worse, that there is no point defying sin. Our Lord’s death opened for us the gates of heaven and ensured that the gates of hell will not triumph over the prayers and sacrifices of His people that ever batter these ancient gates.

One of the learnings I made in my time as a scholar and professional in the world of developmental sector, which curiously echoes the idea of a God who is love and wishes no harm to His creation, was that there is no such thing as a natural disaster. All natural events, such as earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, et al, that are experienced as disasters are the result of human choices, and responses – whether social, political, infrastructural.  While one cannot stretch this observation too far, we must recognize that there is some fundamental truth to it.

We are now able, in some way, to appreciate that suffering in the world is the result of sin. What matters is our response to the existence of sin and its effects. The presence of a child with horrific genetic deformities that seems to make their life unlivable is an opportunity, not just for the family (nuclear or extended) but the entire community to embrace that child and give meaning and value, not just to the life of the afflicted, but to all our lives! As for that child, we know that Our Lord in His kindness has plans for those whom He has willed to be signs to elicit our goodness. So too in the case of anyone afflicted by trouble. To so embrace this effect of sin would be to defang it and bring the light of the cross into the darkness of sinful existence.

The care of the sick and the dying, by those completely unrelated by blood or circumstance, has been the mark of Christian communities since the time of Our Lord. The entire edifice of the contemporary health and social services is in fact built on the example offered by the many, and nameless, nuns, religious men, and priests who cared for their brethren because they saw in them Christ wounded for our sins.

Unfortunately, there are too few today who would strip themselves of their ties and offer themselves to religious life. It is for this reason that Christian, and particularly Catholic, life today is floundering. Today, from the Cross, Our Lord is calling all of us to take up a cross, any cross, and follow Him in the crusade against the devil. How many of us will respond?

Adoramus te, Christe, et benedicimus tibi,

quia per sanctam crucem tuam redemisti mundum

 

We adore you O Christ, and we bless you,

For by Your Holy Cross, you have redeemed the world.

(This homily was written only to be published on this blogspot.)

The Desiring God: Homily for Holy Thursday

Desiderio desideravi                                                 
hoc Pascha manducare vobiscum,                          
antequam patiar                                                       

 

I have earnestly desired

to eat this Passover with you

before I suffer.

                                                        (Lk 22:15) 

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ. Tonight we celebrate the great gift that, quite literally, allows the Church to be. The great gift of the Eucharist, the real body and blood of Our Lord, that allows us to become the mystical body of Christ.

Listening carefully to the words from the Gospel of Luke, we can attempt to plumb the depths of the desire that Our Lord expresses, for it is when we begin to appreciate the depths of that longing, that we can begin to appreciate the depths that our own response must fathom.

              “Desiderio desideravi”

Earnestly, or greatly have I desired. In other words, “I have longed.” An appreciation of the depth of this longing desire, must commence from the fact that this was not the first time that God sat with humans and ate with them. In Genesis (18: 1-8) we read of Abraham entertaining three angels – understood to be the Trinity – to a meal. In Exodus (24:9-11) Moses and the elders were privileged to eat with God. But these meals do not compare with the meal that Our Lord was preparing for his disciples when He said these words. This was no ordinary meal, it was the memorial meal of the Passover – remembering the time when God saved the people of Israel from death and rescued them from Pharaoh. We can appreciate now, the depth of the desire of God, it was from the time of this first Passover that He wished to share the Passover meal with us. And not just any Passover, but this particular one, when He would finally become the very lamb that would be sacrificed.

In his letter to the Hebrews (9:26), St. Paul teaches that Our Lord:

appeared once for all at the end of the ages for the removal of sin by the sacrifice of himself

The Paschal Lamb that until then was only a promise, only a shadow, of the Saviour to come, would now finally achieve its fullness!

In his letter to the Galatians (4:4-5) the apostle Paul captures this desire well:

when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.

In other words, God the Father, and in obedience His Son, were waiting, not simply from the time of the first Passover, they were waiting for this moment for centuries, since the fall of Adam which they were now, in association with the Holy Spirit, going to undo. Adam, who had willingly sundered himself from God, was now going to be brought back into communion with the Trinity.

The words, fullness, could also be used to evoke the fullness of a pregnant woman’s belly. How great must be her desire to hold the child that she holds in her belly and will, in the fullness of time, issue forth! Our Lord, to whom belongs all time and all the ages, was similarly filled with like desire, though perhaps greater, since the child He would birth from the sacred wound on His side (John 19:34), would be the Church itself.

And as his words “antequam patiar” reveal to us, Our Lord was fully aware of what was to follow, that after “hoc Pascha” His Body would be broken, most finally on the Cross. Pope Francis, in his Apostolic Letter Desiderio desideravi (2022) teaches us:

Only a few hours after the Supper, the apostles could have seen in the cross of Jesus, if they could have borne the weight of it, what it meant for Jesus to say, “body offered,” “blood poured out.”

His desire to eat this Paschal meal with us, corresponds directly to His desire to offer up and pour our His blood for us. As St. John (15:13) tells us in his Gospel:

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

How does one respond to the depths of such desire? How does one love Him in return?

Speaking to us from across the centuries, St. Athanasius teaches us:

Above all, however, I wish to remind you and myself along with you that the Lord does not want us to come irreverently or unprepared to the Easter feast. We must have our doctrine straight, follow the proper liturgy, and do all things properly. The historical record of Israel’s feast tells us, “No foreigner, no slave purchased with money, no uncircumcised man, may eat the Passover.”

The first step toward responding to this love, towards the return of His desire, is reverence. We proceed towards Easter with reverence. And reverence above all, on this sacred night, towards Jesus really and truly present in the Blessed Sacrament.

Tonight we worship Him in adoration, on bended knees, and in silent worship. In three days, we will commune with Him more substantially. And so that we may be prepared for this great feast St. Athanasius reminds us:

no uncircumcised man, may eat the Passover

As I have preached before, the circumcision that Our Lord wishes of us is the circumcision of our heart (Deu 10:16, Jer 4: 4). And how do we circumcise the stony ground of our sinful hearts? We apply a blade, the blade of the spiritual plough to the soil of our hearts, so that the imperishable seed of Christ, born at the table of the Last Supper, may find rich soil in our hearts, instead of stony, thorny hearts. This blade is, of course, the soul-searching that we do prior to a confession, and the sacramental confession that we submit to, so that absolved of these and other sins we may have forgotten, we may appear before Him, with hearts of flesh, and give Him residence within these hearts of ours reverently, so that our own hearts may burn with the fire of His Sacred Heart.

St. Paul’s words regarding to reverence for the Eucharist we consume are well known:

For all who eat and drink [in an unworthy manner] without discerning the [Lord’s] body, eat and drink judgment against themselves (1 Cor 11:27-32).

More recently, reading through his letter to the Hebrews (10: 29), I realized that first Corinthians was not the only time he warned us to approach the Most Precious Body and Blood of Our Lord with reverence.

How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?

When we approach this perfect food irreverently, my dear brothers and sisters, and without preparing our hearts, we effectively profane the blood of the covenant by which we have been sanctified in baptism. When we receive communion on our hands and then consume Him casually, we do worse than trample Him underfoot; He who gave us of Himself with such great desire.

In other words, the reverence we must reserve for the great gift we celebrate today, is at least two fold; a physical reverence, where we approach and consumer the Body and Blood of Our Lord in a solemn and dignified manner; and a spiritual reverence where we do not permit His presence within us unless we have been sacramentally cleansed.

This evening, sacramentally prepared to return His love, let us approach the altar of repose, and in the silence of this sacred night, listen to Him speaking to us:

Long have I waited,

For your coming, 

Home to me and,
Living deeply our new life.

 

(This homily was written exclusively for a virtual audience.)