Dedication of the Lateran Basilica

 Dedication of the Lateran Basilica

John 2:13-22

Last Sunday and this Sunday we have unusual situations in the Church calendar.  Both are feast days which, if celebrated on weekdays, are not Holy Days of Obligation, but when they land on Sundays, they outrank the readings for that Sunday.  Last week was the feast of All Souls ‘’ we can kind of understand why this would outrank the 32nd Sunday of Ordinary time -- after all we are celebrating all those who have been or will be received into God’s heaven -- including, we hope, ourselves.  But the feast of the Lateran Basilica of Saint John?  Why does that outrank the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary time?  Historically the Lateran Basilica was dedicated in the years 324 A.D, after Constantine stopped the persecution of Christians.  In a way it marks the emergence of Christianity  from an underground movement to one which would eventually reach the whole world.  Also, it is the Cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, the pope, and as such celebrates the unity of all local churches with the church of Rome.  

For Sundays and major feasts the Church selects three readings from scripture, usually one from the Old Testament, one from the New, usually from a letter of Paul, and one from the gospels.  Often the texts are related, but  the three texts here seem to be related to each other since they all contain the word “temple”.   But in a way, that’s worth looking at in itself. 

Ezekiel is a prophet who probably was born in Jerusalem but spent the rest of his life in Babylon..  His book in the bible is a series of prophetic actions and visions, the themes of which include the promise of God to restore the Israelites to their land and kingdom.  A  famous passage is when God shows Ezekiel a field of bones which get covered with flesh and then made to live again -- probably an inspiration for movies about zombies, but more seriously a prediction that Israel, swallowed up by Babylon, would eventually be restored.  Today’s reading looks forward to that time of restoration, when the restored temple will bring about the fulfillment of God’s promises and the source of life-giving water, which will bring about abundant food and healing medicine.  In a similar way our Catholic churches are sources of life-giving food and drink, the body and blood of Jesus.  In our churches we gather around this sacred feast and through it become one with Catholics all over the world.  

The gospel describes a scene in Jesus’ life when he appears to become angry and violent.  John describes this as happening early in his public ministry, whereas in the other three gospels it happens in Jesus’ last weeks on earth.  If it really occurred late in his ministry, and he didn’t do it twice, which some literalist scholars believe, then it may not be that he was angry, but that he was performing a prophetic sign, like Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and the other prophets often did.  If you remember, Hosea at God’s command married a prostitute to symbolize not only God’s love for his people, but his persistence in loving them despite their sins.  Jesus is showing his concern for what is sacred.  I know when I was very young we had a sense of the sacred when we would enter the church; very little talking and what had to be said was said in whispers; genuflecting when passing the tabernacle,  signing ourselves with blessed water when entering the church which recalled our baptism that made us part of God’s family -- we’ve probably lost a lot of that sense of the sacred, unfortunately.

Perhaps the reading from Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans carries a third important message, and one which has immediate application.  Paul writes, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and God’s spirit dwells within you?”  How often do we reflect on the fact our bodies are sacred? In a world where  we are told that we can do whatever we want with our bodies or the bodies of others, as long as we can get away with it; where the politics of assassination is condoned by some of our fellow citizens; where unborn human beings can be destroyed and their organs sold for medical experiments; where every two or three years we have to fend off another attempt to make assisted suicide legal in this state.  But our bodies are sacred, they are temples of the Holy Spirit, individually and collectively -- because since we are one through the Eucharist, the Holy Spirit in each of us is in all of us.  

Francis of Assisi, Mother Theresa, Dorothy Day, and many, many of the saints lived their whole lives in recognition of this fact, and saw the service given to even the most destitute of human beings as service to Jesus himself.  

To me, the readings of the Feast of the Dedication of the church of the bishop of Rome calls to mind that we live in a sacred world in which God is building up his kingdom, a kingdom in which the ultimate temple will be the dwelling place of God who will give his people his own divine life.  So may this be a feast of hope for all of us. 

All Souls Day 2025

 All Souls Day, 2025

John 6:37-40

When I was in fourth grade one of my classmates was a son of the then governor of Montana.  I never got to know him too well; we lived in different friendship circles.  About Christmas time he stopped coming to school and rumor had it that he was ill.  In April all the guys in my class received an invitation to his birthday with the order to dress up in girl’s clothing.  So we all did, feeling like fools.  If it had been today, of course, we’d make the front page of the newspaper and be praised for bravely coming out.  As we shyly gathered in the living room, my classmate was brought out in a wheelchair -- dressed in a pinafore, as per requirement.  He was shaved bald and had a big scar on his scalp.  Though he was smiling he clearly could not speak.  It wasn't a very fun party and a month later we were all attending his funeral -- he had had a brain tumor and, in the attempt, to remove it had lost his ability to walk and to speak.  This was the first time in my life that I sensed my own mortality, the first time that death drew close to me.  

Nowadays it seems that every funeral we attend leaves the impression that the dearly departed is now in heaven with Jesus.  Not so when I was a child.  In those days the priest wore a black chasuble, and the choir chanted the ancient sequence in Latin, the Dies Irae.  Some lines in English were “Day of wrath, that day will dissolve the world in ashes…. How great will be the quaking when the Judge is about to come … Earth and nature will marvel when the creature will rise again to respond to the judge ..”Just judge of vengeance, make a gift of remission before the day of reckoning.”  And it goes on like that. In the end it goes “Tearful that day on which from glowing embers will arise the guilty man who is to be judged -- then spare him O God, merciful Lord Jesus grant him rest.”  It was a good thing it was all in Latin because the translation is pretty scary.  In those days we knew that most of us had some purgatory ahead of us, including my fourth-grade classmate.  

All Souls Day remembers the faithful who have passed into the next life.  Most non-Catholic Christians don’t believe in purgatory.  We Catholics and Orthodox Christians do, and the belief in purification after death has Jewish roots.  In the Second Book of Maccabees Judas Maccabeus offers sacrifice explicitly that the dead soldiers would be delivered from their sin.”  We Catholics believe that redemption is a process; The price of our redemption was paid in full by Jesus on the cross, but we need to cooperate completely with his grace, and who does that?  And Pope Saint Gregory the Great said, “It is certain that the souls in purgatory are saved … through the prayers of the living.” Although they can pray for us, they cannot pray for themselves, because our eternal fate is governed by our lives on earth.  

My mother was a very religious woman but had a fierce temper which would emerge periodically.   My dad was religious, but now and then would drink more than he should.  We all die with flaws, with souls that need purification if they are to enter into the beatific vision of heaven.  That isn’t God’s requirement, it’s God’s mercy.  We imagine purgatory as a place of purifying fire, but none of us know what will go on except that we will have to let go of everything we loved on earth so that we can love God completely.  And that is going to be painful.

Back in the olden days All Souls Day called forth special prayers for the dead.  The church taught then and never changed the teaching, that on that day you could gain a plenary indulgence for a soul in purgatory.  This requires that you make a good confession within twenty days of seeking the indulgence, that you have received Holy Communion, prayed for the Pope's intentions, and that you are completely detached from sin, even venial sin (that's the hard one), and that you perform the indulgences work.  On All Souls’ Day the work is to visit a church and pray the Our Father and the Apostles Creed.  You can do this more than once.  During the Octave of All Saints Day, November 1 through 8, you can in addition gain a plenary indulgence once a day by visiting a cemetery and praying for the dead -- again, with the other conditions met.  If you can’t be completely detached from sin, a partial indulgence is granted.  This is what our Church teaches, even though it sounds strange to our ears in the year 2025.

What does an indulgence do? It lessens (if partial) or eliminates (in plenary) the purification of the soul for whom it is intended.  No one knows how, but the Church which has been given the power to bind on earth what will be bound in heaven, has proclaimed this and continues to teach it. Long ago I prayed for my classmate on All Souls Day.  I hope he’s praying for me now. .  

Will you pray for a soul in purgatory this week?  Do you know of anyone who died who was not completely holy?  If your prayers release a soul from purgatory, think of how grateful that person will be -- and you have another friend in heaven praying for you.  

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 18:9-14

In the Gospel of Luke we have many more parables than do the other gospels.  Luke seems to have gone out of his way to collect them.  Luke probably never met Jesus; he was a gentile who became a disciple of Paul and thus learned about Christianity.  And remember, Paul probably never met Jesus in the flesh either.  I mention this because one of the things Luke does when he records a parable of Jesus is he tells us why Jesus told the parable.  And if you know what I just told you, you might ask, “How did Luke know why Jesus told the parable?”  Most of the time it isn’t a big deal for Luke to give his opinion because many of the parables are pretty obvious.  But sometimes hearing Luke tell us why Jesus told the parable prejudices us to accept his interpretation and ignore what else might be going on here.  

Do you have a little sympathy for the Pharisee in today’s story?  I think you should.  He’s thanking God that he isn’t like the rest of men; in a way he’s thanking God that he is privileged, that he  can afford to tithe everything, that he can fast twice a week when Pharisees generally fasted once a week, and you had to be rich to fast because poor people ate whenever they could find food.  You and I, just by being citizens of this country, are better off than most human beings; just by being able to come to Church, we’re better off than a lot of people who for physical or political reasons, can’t.  And just by being Catholic we are better off than so many people who don’t have access to the teachings of Jesus and the church Jesus founded.  If you  aren’t thanking God for these things, you should -- several times a day, several times a week.  

It’s not charitable, I guess, for the Pharisee to point out that unlike the rest of men he’s not greedy, dishonest or adulterous, or even like this tax collector over here who works for the Roman occupiers and is therefore a traitor.  And the Pharisee is thanking God that he’s not like that either. Are you thankful that you are not greedy or dishonest or adulterous or a traitor to  your church or your country?  I’m thankful that God has kept me out of trouble.  

We are drawn to the humility of the Tax collector, who stands off beating his breast and repeating the words “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”  and that’s something every one of us could say in all honesty, even if we’ve just gotten out of making a good confession.  Saint Paul speaks for all of us when he says, “I know that good does not dwell in me …For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want…when I want to do right, I discover that evil is at hand… Miserable one that I am, who will deliver me from this mortal body?  

Jesus of course tells us, or maybe Luke is telling us, that the tax collector went home justified, nor the Pharisee.  And there is really only one thing I can think of that really differentiates the two of them; the Pharisee lacks humility.  Even though he is appropriately thanking God for all his blessings, in a way he is attributing his good fortune to himself.  He is pleased that he’s taken the right path, that he’s made the right choices in life.  

When I was in high school one of my classmates was always going around telling people how humble he was -- not in so many words, but by his behavior.  He had a terrible image of himself, or at least that’s how it came across.  He would say “I’m too stupid to go to college” and “I can’t go out for a team sport because I’m so clumsy” or “I won’t ask a girl on a date because I know she’d turn me down”.  He lived a life of very low expectations.  I don’t think that’s what humility is all about.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, my go to saint for difficult questions, says that humility is a virtue that recognizes one’s own limitations and the gifts received from God.   It does not involve self-deprecation, but rather an honest acknowledgement of one’s abilities as gifts from God meant to be used for his glory, rather than personal satisfaction.  And it is crucial to spiritual growth and the proper relationship to God, because only in this relationship can we submit to divine authority,  which is a necessary condition to receive God’s grace and achieve true wisdom.  And it is seen most clearly in Mary, our mother and Jesus' mother.  After being informed that her life would be totally given over to God’s purpose, she replied, “Then do it to me like you said!”.  And her acceptance of God’s will changed history.  And she went on to say, “My being is like a mirror that reflects God”.  (or words to that effect, I’m translating from the Greek). Mary, the perfect human being, recognized that in complete submission to God, she would be exalted.

Isn’t it amazing to think that the universe is four and one half billion years old, that traveling at light speed it would take 16 000 years to reach the most distant visible star; that human beings have been around for about 300,000 years?  We are practically nothing, we individual humans.  But isn’t it amazing to think that Jesus would have died for you if you were the only human being who ever existed, that’s how important you are to God.  Maybe if we meditate on these two facts, we will find true humility.  

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 18:1-8

A good Catholic girl married a man who had no faith.  He was a good man in every respect but had no use for religion.  They loved each other, built a life together and had several children.  One day he decided to look into the Catholic faith and signed up for the Order of Christian Initiation for Adults, only then it was called “The Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults.”  I’m not sure why the Church changed the name, but there must have been a good reason.  In any event, he went through the process and on Holy Saturday entered the Church, baptism, holy communion and confirmation.  Since then he’s been a model Catholic gentleman, and he and his wife had a couple more children.

But to me the more interesting part of the story is that the man’s mother-in-law, his wife’s mother, decided at the time they got married that she wasn’t going to rest, literally, until God answered her prayer for his conversion.  So she slept on the floor every night and told God that she wasn’t going to enjoy her bed until he granted her prayer, And on that Holy Saturday after the man had become a Catholic, she muttered to herself and to God, “I can hardly wait to sleep in my own bed tonight!”.

Saint Monica is like the lady I mentioned.  She never stopped praying for the conversion of her son, now known as Saint Augustine, who along with Thomas Aquinas, is probably one of the most influential doctors of the Church. Saint Augustine in his autobiography also points out that another of Monica’s prayers were answered:  her husband, a pagan up to the moment of death, had a deathbed conversion.  Today Jesus seems to endorse the idea that if we pray long enough or hard enough we will get what we pray for -- or conversely, the reason we don’t get our prayers answered is that we don’t pray hard enough. 

There is something to be said for persistence in prayer, of course.  But if it’s only a matter of how hard we pray or what other things we do to confirm our sincerity, we turn God into a vending machine; if we put in the right coinage, we get what we want.  And I don’t think that’s Jesus’ point.  After all in the garden of Gethsemane he prayed so hard that he sweated blood, and yet his Father did not answer his prayer, at least the prayer the evangelist recorded -- “If it be possible let this cup pass from me.”

So this story, in my estimation, is not the idea that if we pray hard enough, long enough, we will get our prayers answered.

Picture the situation.  The judge is a big man in a small town.  He’s supposed to listen to the petitioners and decide who is right.  It’s generally agreed upon that his word is law, and will probably be enforced by the local equivalent of a sheriff.  And his judging is in public, everyone who wants to listen in can do so.  Our widow is in a dispute with someone else.  We don’t know the circumstances.  We don’t even know if she’s right or wrong.  We do know that she’s very much alone, otherwise her son or some male in the family would be helping out. And every day she comes into his presence and demands to be heard.  At first she’s ignored, then gradually she becomes a fixture, and the crowd falls into silence as she brings her petition forth.  The judge resolves to render a just judgement because he’s losing face  -- the original words are that he fears she will give him a black eye -- which is a way of saying she is making him look foolish.  

Jesus’ point is of course that if the unjust judge can be made to deliver a just judgement, shouldn’t we expect justice from God, who is justice himself?  I think that is the real message here -- not how hard or long we pray, but that we can expect that in due time God will judge justly; all the terrible things in the world that appear seem to say otherwise will be revealed in the end as part of God’s justice -- we just don’t understand how that will be and sometimes we end up thinking God is a tyrant, or God is not all powerful, or God doesn’t even exist; but Jesus is saying to have faith, we will see in due time how, as the Apostle Paul tells us, “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” And that’s Jesus' challenge to us; do we have faith in what God has promised?  Do we live as though we believe God desires the best for his faithful?  The martyrs certainly did.

So pray unceasingly; fast, from food, from sleep, from comfort; give to God’s poor what you can; because prayer accompanied by fasting and almsgiving is stronger than prayer alone.  But live knowing, having faith, that God is even now working out his plan in the world and in some mysterious way, our faith makes us part of that plan; our faith will make us whole..  

28th Sunday in ordinary time, cycle c

Luke 17:11-19

I don’t know if this story is true or not.  I unfortunately missed the 50th anniversary celebration of one of my aunts and uncles.  He was an old farmer and with his wife had raised six kids, two of whom died in childhood.  Their lives were very routine most of the time; she would get up at five and make bread; breakfast would be about 6:30 and he would go off to work on the farm; they would meet at lunch and supper, and after supper she’d usually go to bed early while he read a little, which was painful since he had quit school after fourth grade.  They’d get to church on Sundays and that was about the extent of their social life, that and a visit to the grocery store in their small town.

The kids threw a party for their 50th anniversary.  One of the kids commented that she had never heard her parents say “I love you”.  Aunt Pat replied, “Oh, he knows I love him.”  Uncle Joe replied, “Pat, I love you so much that there have been times I could hardly keep from saying it.”

If it isn’t literally true, it should be.

Anyway, today we hear the parable of the ten lepers.  The lepers, isolated from society by their disease, have heard about this miracle worker and standing far apart, as was the rule, they beg for healing.  And Jesus heals them, no touching, no making mud out of dirt and spit -- just go to the priests and show them your skin.  And they are healed on the way.  And only one returns to say thanks.  Is this about gratitude?

Some people have made up reasons the other nine did not return.  Maybe it wasn't just ingratitude.  Some may have felt that the miracle was no big deal -- Jesus hadn’t done anything you would expect, no magic wand, no special words.  How many times have you gone out of your way to thank a doctor who gave you an antibiotic for your infection?  His job, right?  You, or your insurance company, paid him.  Isn’t that enough?   

Some of the ones who didn’t return were so happy with their newfound status that they rushed home to their loved ones and it was like a party.  In their joy they forgot who was responsible for their joy, not forever, but long enough so that  Jesus had moved on to another village.  

Perhaps one of them, angry at God for his misfortune, figured it was about time he did something about his pain and suffering, and he wasn’t about to be grateful for what he felt God owed him.  

One didn’t return because he suddenly realized that without his leprosy he had no reason to beg, and he didn’t know how to do anything else.  He felt worse off that before.

But the Samaritan returned

We might look at this story as an endorsement of the virtue of gratitude, and surely it’s that.  But it’s more than that.  Think of the ten lepers as people who are basically dead -- as far as society is concerned, they no longer count.  In fact in some parts of the ancient world the diagnosis of leprosy was accompanied by a ritual much like a funeral.  After all, you were being cut off from all your relationships, no matter how strong.  Get the mourning over so that those you left behind could get on with their lives and you could get on with what remained of yours -- probably in the company of strangers who also had leprosy, because out of necessity they banded together to take care of each other.  

You and I are like lepers in that sense.  We never fully appreciate it, I guess, but we are sinners, and we can’t do much about that.  We miss the mark, which is what sin is all about.  I’ve never experienced a day when I could look back and say, I did everything right today; I missed no opportunities, i did my job perfectly, I treated everyone I met with love.  If you think you’ve had a perfect day where you didn’t miss the mark, you are sadly mistaken.  

And that’s the wonderful truth of our religion -- because God loves us so much he makes up for our leprosy, for our living death, by becoming human and doing everything perfectly.  Most of the time we don’t appreciate this deep in our souls, but some do, and out of gratitude they give something to God.  We call them saints.  The Samaritan realized that he had been rescued from a living death and fell at Jesus’ feet.  You and I have been rescued as well.  How will we show our gratitude? 

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 17:5-10

If you were a disciple of Jesus as he traveled around the northern part of the Holy Land, you would have observed him curing people of all kinds of disorders, and sometimes he would say, “Your faith has saved you.”  He also accused his apostles of having very little faith -- you remember when the disciples found themselves in the middle of a storm and called on him to save them; he woke from his nap and said to them, “Ye of little faith, why are you afraid?”  So our friends the apostles seem to have decided that faith was something you could have more of or less of, and they wanted more.  If you only had enough faith, great things could be done.  It’s still a common position in the Christian world -- the more faith, the more miracles, the more prosperity, the more good things for you.  So Lord, increase our faith.

I think I hear a little sarcasm in Jesus' voice when he says “IF you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this  mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea’ and it would obey you!”  And surely the apostles, and some of us modern hearers, might think to ourselves, “Why on earth would anyone want that to happen?”  It wouldn't do anyone, including the mulberry tree, any good whatsoever; it’s a pointless act that at best might amaze a few people for a short time.  

We still speak as though faith is a quantity.  We admire people with a lot of faith; when someone falls away from the church, we assume he does not have enough faith.  We even talk about faith as a gift, and indeed it is, but it can’t be quantified.  Saint Thomas Aquinas says that ordinarily, our intellect takes in sensory information and integrates it with memory, and then commands the will to act through the body and mind.  The intellect comes first.  But in supernatural faith, the will commands the intellect to contemplate something which cannot be completely known.  It’s like a woman who falls in love with a man; she doesn’t know everything about him and never will, but makes the decision to love that person despite the uncertainty of what she knows about him; and it works both ways of course.  In other words, faith is a decision to commit oneself to something only partially known

And that's the point of Jesus’ reflection about slaves.  I know it says “servant” in the gospel passage, but the Greek word means slave, and the people who wrote the gospels knew the difference between servants and slaves.  Slaves in Jesus’ time made up about a third of the population.  Some lived under deplorable conditions, like the African slaves in the early years of our country.  Those were the ones who would usually try to escape and get executed for their trouble.  But most slaves were working off a debt, or had a long history of being associated with a well off family.  Being a slave of a king was actually considered an honor. This was the kind of slave Jesus was talking about.

Unlike servants, slaves were part of the household.  It was expected that they would be fed and given a place to sleep, and treated more or less humanely, and they would be expected to carry out reasonable labor for their master.  Society as a whole acted as a check on abuses; if your slaves were relatively content and your household peaceful, that was a good thing; if there was a lot of strife and disruption, that brought you down in the eyes of your peers.  And that’s the kind of situation Jesus envisions.  The slave was a member of the household, although a subordinate member; and there was no mistaking his place.  

In the Christian community we have been given a home by our Father and we are expected to carry out his will.  The Pharisees and many Christians believe that the more good we do the greater our reward.  But God the Father has given us a place in his household and looks after all our needs according to his own plans.  Whatever good we do, whatever service we render, that’s only to be expected, because God has given us everything we have and promised that his slaves will one day be welcomed into the Master’s joy and given a place in the family like that of his son Jesus -- we will be adopted as children of the Master.

Faith is not magic; faith is not quantifiable;  faith is the disposition to submit to our God as slaves now, knowing that although he needs nothing from us, he gladly accepts what we give.  But he has already made plans for those who he has invited into his household, and being a slave to such a master is a privilege, not a punishment.  

Exaltation of the Holy Cross

 Exaltation of the Holy Cross

John 3:13-17

If you were a sincere Buddhist, you would spend your life trying to get rid of all desire, desire is the reason for unhappiness.  If you were a Muslim, the bad parts of life come because of the absolute, unchangeable will of God that no one can do anything about.  Mohamed said that if God wanted to send a newborn baby to hell, we had no reason to question his action.  If you were a Hindu,  unhappiness is only a dream, and eventually the one soul that is in all living beings will wake up to perfect bliss.  

The religions of man all attempt to answer that fundamental question – why are we unhappy, and what can we do about it?  And it isn't just religions that try to answer this question; secular society thinks it has answers as well.  If you are unhappy, it is because you don't have stuff, and if you go get stuff, you will be happy.  If you are unhappy, it may be a problem with your brain's chemistry, and there are pills to fix that.  If you are unhappy and someone else is happy, you will be happier if he or she is made to be unhappy.  

There are Christians who believe happiness lies in knowing that you are saved, or being baptized in the holy spirit, or developing a relationship with a Jesus who doesn't judge, who is all warm and fuzzy and just dying to do whatever we ask him to.  And of course, all of us Christians believe that real happiness lies in the next life, and some of us even feel that this life should be a veil of tears.

But today we honor the holy cross.  We remember Jesus being judged, stripped of his clothing, mocked, beaten, and made to carry that cross through the streets of Jerusalem.  We remember the nails that fixed him to it, we remember him hanging for three hours, never being able to take a deep breath, and gradually suffocating.  We hear him cry out, “my god, why have you forsaken me.”  And we see his body, finally, taken down and put in the arms of his weeping mother.  

And we might ask, what does that have to do with happiness?  Why do we honor the cross, that instrument of death?  Why is the cross displayed in our homes, in our church, usually, among us Catholics, with a representation of Jesus' body on it?  

How does Christianity answer the question, why are we unhappy, and what can we do about it?  

I think we have a unique answer, one not shared with any other religion, or by secular society.  We say that true happiness comes when we embrace the cross.  Why is that?  Because in embracing the cross, we become caught up in the reality that Jesus experienced, and we have to do that if we are to join him in his resurrection; so the knowledge that we are headed for resurrection in Jesus can make even the most terrible of human circumstances not only bearable, but a source of joy.  One philosopher said that a soul in purgatory was happier than any person still alive, because he knew his destiny in heaven was assured.  

St. Paul knew this.  All through his epistles he refers to the joy he receives from his suffering; the glory that comes out of his human weakness; he's gotten to the point where it doesn't really matter to him whether he lives or dies, because his deepest longing is to be with Jesus.

But what does it mean to embrace the cross?  Well, there isn't anyone in this congregation who is not suffering in some way right now.  You may be coming down with a cold; you may have arthritis.  You may be getting old and losing parts of yourself.  You may be young and bored by having to come to church when you could be doing something a lot more fun.  You may have had a quarrel with your spouse, and you are feeling badly because you still haven't gotten back to your normal relationship.  

But we can suffer alone, or we can unite that suffering to the suffering of Jesus; when we realize that all of these little crosses are bridges to Jesus' cross, and therefore to his resurrection, they can lead us to joy.  Some of us are called to greater crosses than others, but all of us will be asked sometime in our lives to embrace a great cross, and as frightening as that seems to be, the grace will be there to unite that cross to the cross of Jesus, and god willing, we will find ourselves rushing towards calvary so that our suffering will be with him, and our resurrection as well.  

God so loved the world that he gave us his only son.  Jesus loves us so much that he gives himself up for us.  By becoming one of us, Jesus made it possible for each of us to turn all our suffering into joy, not in some future time, not by destroying part of what makes us human, not by blindly accepting a fate over which we have no control in the hopes that an arbitrary god might choose to let us join him in paradise – he made it possible to find joy within our very suffering, because he suffers in us, and when we realize that, there can be only joy.

So today let us pray to God that we will learn to embrace the cross, the sign that there can be happiness in suffering, and life can be found in death, because where the cross is, there Jesus is, and where Jesus is, there is resurrection.