Homily for Saturday, 4th Week of Easter

Homily for Saturday
4th Week of Easter

May 9, 2020

Collect
Provincial House, New Rochelle, N.Y.

The collects at Mass follow the general pattern of 1st stating some attribute of God the Father or some blessing he’s bestowed.  Then they make a prayer based on that attribute or blessing of the Father.  (With very few exceptions, the collects are always addressed to the Father.)

So, this morning we note that thru our “celebration of Easter” God has “graciously given the world … heavenly remedies” for what ails us or troubles us, heavenly “healing.”  He offers us what neither health care providers nor CVS nor social distancing can.

What is our ailment?  What troubles us?  The corona virus is only one manifestation of what afflicts humanity.  We all face the inevitable breakdown and dissolution of our bodies.  We fear the extinction of not only our physical persons thru death but also the extinction of our very selves, the totality of who we are.

The Last Judgment (Bosch)

Worse, we’re troubled by a fear that we might pass thru bodily death and survive into an eternity burdened by our sins, carried down by their weight into the remorseless pit to be tormented by gleeful demons (you’ve seen some of the fantastical paintings of Hieronymus Bosch) and by our own consciences.

St. Paul exclaimed, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24), from all these ailments, troubles, fears—and hell.  The answer, of course, is “the healing of heavenly remedies,” the remedies offered to us by the cross and resurrection of our Lord Jesus, the remedies of grace, the remedy of our participation in the paschal mystery—“graciously given to the world.”

We note in the Collect that God has given these remedies to the whole world.  In that we hear the apostolic mandate, to go to the whole world with the Good News of divine healing, as Paul and Barnabas do with enthusiasm in their missionary journey (cf. Acts 13:44-52).  (Altho we’re very used to calling the team “Paul and Barnabas,” we should note that Barnabas is the senior partner in this Gospel enterprise, Paul’s mentor in the 1st stages of his conversion.  (I’m a little partial to Barnabas.  My parish for the 1st 3½ years of my life, where I was baptized, and also from which I’ve buried several family members, is St. Barnabas in Bellmore, Long Island.)

In the 2d part of the Collect, we ask God, “Show benevolence to your Church.”  Show your good will, your kindness, your mercy, to the people whom you’ve called together (ekklesia, “the citizenry called to assemble”), called thru your Son Jesus, called for heavenly healing.  What God has worked in the past, e.g., at the hands of the apostles, means nothing to us unless “our present observance may benefit us for eternal life.”  So we pray.  We plead that God’s healing remedies may touch us too.  May our participation in the Easter celebration, in these sacred mysteries of the Lord’s death and resurrection, our sharing in his body and blood, benefit us, heal us, and lead us to eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.