Homily for 3d Sunday of Easter

Homily for the
3d Sunday of Easter

April 6, 2008

1 Pet 1: 17-21
Acts 2: 14, 22-33                              
Luke 24: 13-35
Christian Brothers, Iona College, New Rochelle, N.Y.
Scout Leaders, Putnam Valley, N.Y.

As we continue to shelter in place, my collection of old homilies is getting a good workout!

“Conduct yourselves with reverence during the time of your sojourning, realizing that you were ransomed from your futile conduct … with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Pet 1: 17-19).

St. Peter is addressing recent converts to Christianity.  He could be addressing any Christians, tho—recent or veteran converts, people raised as Christians from birth.  He speaks to us in the secular culture of the 21st century as much as he did to former pagans in the morally rotten culture of the 1st-century Roman Empire.

The 7 Deadly Sins (Hieronymus Bosch)

People everywhere are tempted by what Peter calls “futile conduct.”  That means idolatry:  worshipping gods that are not God and cannot save us, cannot ransom us from the power of evil, cannot give us everlasting life.  It means all those things to which men and women look in vain for lasting happiness:  to wealth—Peter explicitly refers to “perishable silver and gold” (1:18)—to health and beauty, to power and influence, to comfort and pleasure.  Those are pretty much the temptations that the Devil threw at Jesus (Matt 4:1-11), and they are the temptations that try to seduce all of us.  Like Faust, a lot of people would sell their souls for something—something that at the end of their lives, “in the final time” (1 Pet 1:20), would prove awfully empty, futile, perishable.  Some of those people could be us.  Certainly we’ve yielded plenty often to the seductiveness of greed, sloth, lust, pride, gluttony, anger, and envy.  (Those are what we call the 7 capital sins or 7 deadly sins.)

St. Peter reminds us that we have set our hope elsewhere—not on anything empty, futile, perishable, but on “the precious blood of Christ,” whom God has raised from the dead and glorified (1:21).  And God has promised to include us along with Christ because Christ has “poured forth the Holy Spirit” upon us:  the Holy Spirit who is “the Lord and giver of life,” as we profess in the Creed; the Holy Spirit who hovered over the waters that gave birth to all life “in the beginning, when God made the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1-2); the Holy Spirit that became the breath of life in God-shaped clay and made it into a man (Gen 2:7); the Holy Spirit that overshadowed the Virgin Mary and empowered her to give birth to our Savior (Luke 1:35; cf. Matt 1:20).

That Spirit has come upon us, too, in Baptism and Confirmation.  That Spirit touches us in the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist—note that at Mass the priest invokes the Holy Spirit over the bread and wine, that they might be mysteriously, sacramentally transformed into the body and blood of our Lord Jesus, and that we might become sharers in that body and blood.

A couple of years ago Pope Benedict welcomed to St. Peter’s Square all the boys and girls of the diocese of Rome—of which he’s bishop—who had just made their 1st Communion.  Unrehearsed, he invited them to ask him questions about Jesus.  One little fellow asked:  “My catechist told me that Jesus is present in the Eucharist.  But how?  I can’t see him!”

And the Pope, master teacher and theologian that he is, explained—off the cuff!

      No, we cannot see him, but there are many things that we do not see but they exist and are essential.  For example, we do not see our intelligence, yet we have intelligence.  We do not see our soul, and yet it exists and we see its effects, because we can speak, think, and make decisions.  Nor do we see an electric current, for example, yet we see that it exists; we see this microphone, that it is working, and we see lights.  And so, we do not see the very deepest things, those that really sustain life and the world, but we can see and feel their effects.

      So it is with the Risen Lord:  we do not see him with our eyes, but we see that wherever Jesus is, people change, they improve.  A greater capacity for peace, for reconciliation, is created.  Therefore, we do not see the Lord himself, but we see the effects of the Lord.  So we can understand that Jesus is present.  And as I said, it is precisely the invisible things that are the most important.  So let us go to meet this invisible but powerful Lord who helps us to live well.*

It was, of course, that invisible Lord who was suddenly revealed to the 2 disciples at Emmaus “in the breaking of the bread” (Luke 24:30-31,35), which in the 1st days of Christianity was the term for what we call the celebration of the Eucharist or the Mass.

But the eyes of those 2 disciples were made ready to know Jesus in the breaking of the bread thru the reflection on the Scriptures and the dialog with the Lord that preceded their stop at Emmaus.  Under the tutelage of Jesus they searched for the plan of God in the Bible; they searched for the meaning of the events of their own lives in the Word of God.  They pondered all that with Jesus.  My brothers and sisters, we must do the same:  we must read and reflect on God’s Word, the Sacred Scriptures, and we must pray with them (as well as praying in other forms), which is what dialog with God is.  And then the Eucharist will have an impact upon our lives, will help us to live well, as the Pope said to the little boy.  Then the Holy Spirit will direct us on our sojourning thru life, will help us to live reverently despite temptations, as St. Peter says, will direct us despite our sins and lead us to turn away from them, will bring us toward “the final time,” the day when Jesus Christ returns in his glory to usher us, too, into eternal life as God’s dearly beloved children.

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    * Adapted from quotation in “The Narrow Gate,” Fairfield County Catholic, 3-29-08, p. B7.