Sixth Sunday of Easter, cycle B

John 17:11 –19

God is love, John tells us. Love one another as I have loved you, Jesus says. Remain in my love, Jesus tells us. And he promises that his joy will be in us and our joy will be complete. When I read these two readings, I feel as though I am entering a bottomless pit. The words are simple, but the more you dwell on them, the less understanding. And probably the biggest question is not what Jesus means by love, but whether we have the love he is talking about.

God is love, for example. What comes to your mind? I'll bet it's a man with a beard and a white gown maybe smiling and holding out his arms? Or maybe it's Jesus inviting us into paradise. But John did not say, “God has love” or “God loves”. So how do we understand that God is love?

Love as someone said, is a verb, it is not a thing. And the way to see that God is love is to remember that God is Trinity, at least that's the best way we can understand what we are talking about. Because the very essence of the Trinity has to do with each person emptying himself out into the other, who in turn empties himself out into the third, and so on. This giving one's whole self to the other defines God; the whole giving of self defines each person. You could say that the only difference between the persons lies in their relationship to each other. And John tells us in plain terms that God loved us first; love spills over from the trinity and creates the universe.

Jesus further defines love: He in fact is the definition of love, in that he gave himself up for us. And he tells us that we will remain in his love as long as we keep his commandments. And his commandment is “love one another”.

And I think we can probably conclude that what Jesus is talking about, what John is talking about, has to do with how much we give up ourselves. It is not a feeling, it is not that we somehow equate praying and piety and good behavior with loving. Not the same thing at all. And it isn't that we equate love with good deeds. How are we giving ourselves up?

It's astounding, but God, the Trinitarian God, wants the same relationship with you and I that exists in the Trinity, a relationship in which there is mutual emptying and filling up. C.S. Lewis was of the opinion that this doesn't happen all at once or all the time. It is necessary each day to offer yourself to God, but shortly afterward, we find we have taken back what we offered. Over time if we persist, we do better at letting go of ourselves, and to the extent that we make room, God can work in us to put himself in the space we have made. God's love consists of taking a creature with free will, you and I, with a strong streak of selfishness, because we are bodies, because we evolved this way, because we share that self-centeredness with all conscious creatures – and transforming us into his Son.

CS Lewis says that this is a very hard thing for a human being to do – not because it's hard to become Jesus – it's impossible for you and I to accomplish. What makes it so hard is that once we allow God to begin working on us, even a little bit, our progress will do two things; first, it will make us feel righteous, because perhaps we have conquered our anger, or developed a little humility, or stopped abusing our spouses. Second, there will be a point where we say, thank God, I've gotten rid of those parts of my make up that are disturbing, negative, those things that keep me from being good. Now, God, you can go work on someone else, I'm done.

The point of course, is that God is never done. Once you put yourself in his hands, once you allow him to love you, he will not leave you alone – unless you break off your relationship with him. So being loved by God, who is willing to do all the work of love, is not easy.

But to the extent that you are loved and return that love, as with God it will spill over, into acts of love for your neighbor, and indeed acts of love for God. Those are consequences.

Human beings by nature worry about respect, freedom from pain and suffering, having enough “stuff”. We are attracted to things that give us pleasure, sometimes to our great detriment. And as long as these very natural inclinations motivate our lives and actions, we will never be happy, we will never have joy.

Our joy becomes complete when we completely empty ourselves in love. Will we be able to do this during this life? Probably not. If we are still motivated by those natural inclincations, to that extent we will need further work by God in us, and that is painful, and if it takes place after we die, it is what we call purgatory. If on the other hand we act as though we are motivated by love, over time, we will be. I think there's a great insight in the Church's attitude to martyrdom, defined as being put to death because of one's faith. If I die because I am a Christian, even a very imperfect one, then I am giving up everything for love of God. No wonder I am considered a saint, no wonder everything is forgiven me. Love of God, love of neighbor, emptying myself out for someone else, that is the goal. And every time we do such a thing, even if it is small, we become a little more like God.

Jesus knows that true joy can fill us to the extent that we are empty. We cannot bring about our own joy, because we confuse joy with many other transitory emotions. But Jesus tells us that he has the answer, that he wants to give us his own joy, so that our joy may be complete.

So simple, yet so hard.

Fifth Sunday of Easter, cycle B

John 10:11 -18

When I started visiting patients at a local nursing home, I met a man named Tom. He had a neurological disease, and had lost the ability to walk; he was also beginning to show weakness in his arms, and had trouble getting from his wheelchair into bed. And he was angry. The first time I met him, he told me he was busy; come back later. So I did. And I persisted until we actually had a brief conversation. He had been a career military man. He also was an alcoholic, and had been on and off the wagon for several years. He and his wife had divorced and he had very strained relations with his two children. He had been raised a Catholic, had been an altar boy, had been married in the Church, but hadn't been to the sacraments for years. Over a few weeks he had regained a little strength through physical therapy and his apartment had been modified so that he could manage, and he left.

About a year later he was back. Now he was bedridden, and could barely lift his arms. But he was changed. His wife was there nearly every day and his two grown kids made visits. He had reconciled with the Church and received communion. He received the sacrament of the Sick several times from Father Reilly. He was optimistic that one of these days things would get better, but when they didn't he didn't seem to be too bothered. And he had become nice. He thanked people for helping him out; he gave compliments; he listened to his fellow patients when they wanted to talk. And he liked to talk to me about what he was reading in the bible and other spiritual books. And when the end was near, he went home with the help of hospice and his wife, to die a few days later.

So what happened? Was this one of those situations where you turn to God because there is no other answer? In my life of dealing with cancer patients I don't think I've ever seen someone change his basic personality because he knew he was going to die. If she was a fighter, she fought to the end; if he was depressed, he stayed depressed; and if she didn't believe in God, the threat of dying didn't change her mind.

I think we see a hint of the answer in today's gospel reading. Jesus tells us that we are branches to his vine, that without that connection we can't bear fruit. Buy the way, he doesn't say that if we are cut off we can't be grafted back on. Jesus point is that connection to him is life, and a very special kind of life. And connection to him is what is necessary to bear fruit.

I used to read this scripture passage and feel inadequate. What fruit have I born, compared to Saint Francis or any saint for that matter? I can easily find examples of people who have born a lot more fruit than I ever will. But whatever fruit is born comes from God and depends on connection to the vine. And maybe that isn't the fruit Jesus is talking about anyway.

Saint Paul tells us that the fruits of the Spirit are charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control And you notice that these have to do with how we approach life, not with great works. I think the Father uses some of us branches to build up the Kingdom – some to a great degree, some to a small degree. But he isn't primarily concerned about that with respect to the individual Christian. What the Father wants is to see Jesus Christ in us. As John the Baptist remarked, “He must increase, I must decrease.”

And those of us who are branches are pruned by the word Jesus speaks to us. If we take his words and examples seriously and apply them to our spiritual lives, how we try to look at the world, how we try to grow in virtue, how we try to conquer our sinful impulses – and you will note I use the word try, because our progress depends not on our own efforts, but allowing the Holy Spirit to work in us, we will all be transformed. Some of us may become great saints; others might show tiny changes, like the Good Thief who at the last moment threw himself on Christ's mercy. And there will be those who simply don't bear fruit, simply don't cooperate with the Holy Spirit flowing through the vine which is Jesus. And some of those people may very well look like saints. Talented and clever people who turn their energies towards appearing holy can even believe they are holy – but holiness is the work of the Spirit, not of anything we can do.

We sometimes say things like “Look busy, God may be watching” or “God's in his heaven, all's right with the world” as the poet said. And we are comfortable with a far-off God who is going to weigh us according to our merits and demerits, preferably on a sliding scale. But the vine dresser is not up in the house on the hill; he is there in the vineyard, cutting off that branch which no longer shows life; trimming back this one because it is making leaves, not grapes; and perhaps grafting on a branch that came from another vine and shows promise.

My friend Tom never accomplished any great work. But he clearly bore great fruit if the fruits of the Spirit are what we are talking about.

They tell a story out in the West about a man from the city who asked an old cowboy if he believed in God. The cowboy said he did. The city man then asked, with a smirk, “ I guess the nest thing you will tell me is that you've seen God.” The old cowboy replied, “I've never seen God, but I've met a few Jesus's in my time.”

The whole reason the Son of God, at the request of the Father, became man and suffered and died, the whole reason he breathed the Holy Spirit into his disciples and through them his Church, was to make it possible for you and I to become Jesus – and God will do all the work. That's the promise of the parable of the vine and the branches.

Fourth Sunday of Easter, cycle B

John 10:11-18

My father's dad, my grandfather, was the oldest child in a family of four. His parents were farmers and he had a fourth grade education in a one room school house in Wyoming. When he was fourteen he left home and took a job on a ranch in Montana. He was a cowboy, which meant that he got food and lodging and a very small salary for herding cattle, mending fences, digging holes, putting out fires – you name it. His parents were Mormons, but I don't think my grandfather ever went to a Mormon church after he left home. When he married my grandmother the ceremony took place in the rectory of the local Catholic church since in those days so called “mixed” marriages were not allowed in the church proper. My grandfather would faithfully take my grandmother to Sunday Mass as she refused to learn how to drive. He would remain in the car reading the newspaper and smoking a few cigarettes. During his lifetime he never showed any interest in religion that I'm aware of.

I learned from the nuns who taught us that “Outside the Church there was no salvation.” However, this was nuanced by the doctrine of “limbo”, a place of natural happiness open to unbaptized babies and people like Moses and Abraham and maybe by extension really good people who never heard about Jesus through no fault of their own. I learned later that this was not an official church teaching. Besides, it didn't apply to my grandfather who obviously had heard of Jesus. The other escape route was baptism of desire, which meant that you tried very hard to please God but you lived in a society where baptism was unavailable. That didn't sound like my grandfather, either; he was a nice guy who fulfilled his obligations to his family but I don't know if he ever prayed.

I remember a particular moment when I was expressing my concerns over the ultimate destiny of my grandfather's soul to my grandmother. She responded, and I think I am quoting her exactly, “If you were God would you send him to hell?” To my ten year old mind, that seemed theologically valid so I stopped worrying.

But scripture is pretty clear: Saint Peter says “there is no salvation in anyone else, for there is no other name in the whole world given to the human race by which we are to be saved.” And Jesus himself says “He who believes and is baptized will be saved” and “unless you repent you will likewise perish” and “he who eats my body and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day”. So Jesus lays the basis for sacraments. And of course Paul tells us that the members of the Church constitute the body of Christ. So salvation can only come through Jesus, and Jesus established the Church to be the vehicle for salvation. So the statement “Outside the Church there is no salvation” is true. But before Jesus established the Church, he told the Samaritan woman that salvation is from the Jews, and that is the way we can understand this statement. Today Jesus might say, “salvation is from the Catholics”.

But if Jesus is the savior of the world is he constrained so that only those who hear the gospels and receive the sacraments are saved?

One theologian says that the Church is a sign of what God does in us, rather than a requirement for meeting God. The reality is that all salvation comes from the saving death of Christ. It is by the fact of God taking our body, dying our death, and rising in Jesus that our destinies are forever changed. God now looks upon all human flesh and sees the face of the beloved Son. Now it is possible to not know this. On the other hand, to have heard this and consciously reject the possibility is another story.

Today Jesus says, “Other sheep I have who are not of this fold, and I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice and there will be one flock and one shepherd”. In every human being there is the desire for unrestricted goodness. In every mind there is a thirst for the ultimate truth. Every human heart longs to be loved. We in the Church who have met Christ know that Jesus is the answer to these longings. But for those who have not met him, they must be faithful to these longings and hope that there is an answer. The gift of faith is exactly that, a gift. But our humanity is also a gift, and it is shared and transformed by Jesus.

When you read the New Testament, you keep coming across the notion that salvation is not something we earn – it has been earned – but in some way it requires a relationship with Jesus, and that relationship transforms us. Could it be that Jesus offers that relationship to everyone, even those who don't know him as Jesus? Could my grandfather have in some way responded to Jesus but not known it in formal terms?

This of course does not let us off the hook. When we look at the apostles they went about proclaiming the good news, that there is someone who fulfills all the deepest desires of our hearts, and he can be met in the Church through the word and the sacraments. They had been transformed by this discovery and wanted to share it with everyone else. And that should be our default position as well – it is, after all, very good news and if we have any love for our friends and neighbors who aren't members of the Church it's still our duty to tell them this good news.

Jesus clearly longs for there to be one flock and one shepherd; that's the reason he took on our flesh and laid down his life for us. I would rather know this than be ignorant of it. But if he loves my grandfather as much as he loves his own mother, and he does, I suspect he will move heaven and earth to get my grandfather into his eternal company.

Third Sunday of Easter, cycle B

Luke 24:35 - 48

Some of you may be familiar with the Go Local magazine that you can pick up free in your grocery store. The last issue featured an article on a man named Timothy Payne. He was a soldier in Afghanistan, and one day he stepped on a concealed explosive device. He lost both legs and severely damaged one arm. He could not be fitted for prostheses because their was nothing to attach a prosthesis to. After a very long period of rehabilitation, a bout of drug addiction, suicidal thoughts and PTSD, he finally came out of his ordeal. He now goes around working to connect disabled veterans with their community resources and speaking to various groups about their problems. In his spare time he participates in various sports – scuba diving, long distance swimming, racing on his arm-powered tricycle – and he has put more than 100,000 miles on the van he has fitted out so he can drive it. And when people first meet him, he tells them, “I got blown up” and smiles. His body shows the marks of his experience; it can't be hidden.

When you think about this gospel we just heard, it sounds very familiar. Jesus appears, the disciples can't believe it, they recognize him, then the are joyful. But if you were trying to convince someone that you were not dead, would you show them your hands and feet? We know from the story of Thomas that Jesus risen body showed the nail marks in his hands and the spear wound in his side. Jesus did not conquer death and come back as though his battle never happened. He wore the signs of his death on his living body. He did not avoid death, he went through death; death could not stop him, but put up a pretty good fight. And that may be why the apostles were incredulous. Besides the hands and feet, they very well may have seen the marks on his head from the crown of thorns; they may have seen streaks of dried blood on his face. It's as though Jesus is saying, “I'm just like you, I'm alive to pain and suffering. I'm not immune. This body is real. The theologian James Allison said, “Jesus wore death on his body like a trophy, and he can show his death to others to allay their fears.” We Catholics unlike most other Christians, decorate our churches and homes and sometimes even our bodies with realistic images of Christ on the cross. At some level we see these as symbols of death conquered.

The other odd thing about this gospel story is that Jesus asks for something to eat and then eats it. Now if you read the gospels you might say, “You can usually find Jesus around food – the wedding feast at Cana, the meal with Mary and Martha and Lazarus, the meal Peter's mother in law prepared after he healed her, eating with Simon the leper, with the Pharisee, with Zaccheus – and when Jesus isn't popping up at banquets he makes them himself – the feeding of the crowds comes to mind. And of course, Jesus instituted the central sacrament of Christianity, the Eucharist, at a real meal, a Passover meal. If you read the gospels, you know he had a healthy appetite. So it isn't surprising that after battling death and conquering death, he does something his disciples recognize – he asks for something to eat. As you can tell, I think this is one of those places in the scriptures where we are allowed a little smile.

But more seriously, we can look at this event as Jesus putting on a show, or Jesus really desiring to eat something, Jesus physically hungry. If he is putting on a show then he is not authentic; but if he is truly hungry, then he not only has returned in his body, but in a way he has made holy those impulses of the body. If Jesus rose from the dead so that we could rise at the end of our lives, Jesus was hungry and thirsty and in need of human companionship after the Resurrection because that is human, truly human. Jesus in not merely carrying out a demonstration for us, that he is risen; He is by his actions blessing and making holy everything we do, little pleasures, great pains, fellowship with each other – as Jesus lives through his post-resurrection days, he shows us that our bodies are loved, are blessed, are immortal.

Why is this emphasis on the body so important? Because our bodies are the means by which we love and are loved. And when Jesus rises from the dead in the flesh, he makes human flesh sacred. And the consequences of that are incredible. If Jesus' body is sacred, so is mine, so is yours, so is the body of the woman pushing a shopping cart with all her belongings in it, so is the body of the man sentenced to life in prison; so is the body of the person with end stage Alzheimer's disease – human bodies are sacred because Jesus still even today lives in a human body. He didn't just cast it off and ascend into heaven 40 days after he rose from the dead. He continues for all eternity to share our humanity because he took on our flesh and will never leave it.

Thomas Merton had a revelation while standing on a street corner in Louisville. He wrote:

“I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all of those people, that they were mine, and I, theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness … Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts, where neither sin, nor desire, nor self-knowledge, can reach the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only we could all see each other that way all the time! There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. I suppose that the big problem would be that we would all fall down and worship each other.”

The Resurrection of Jesus, the fact that God became man and conquered death for you and I, really does unite us all to each other and to Him. Let us be Resurrection people.

Second Sunday of Easter, 2018

John 20:19-33

After my father mustered out of the army, he and my mother and I moved back to Montana. My mother quickly got a job as a nurse, but my dad wasn't so lucky, and ended up taking a job as a farmhand for one of my uncles. This meant that he didn't get home except every other weekend. So I was given to my grandparents for several months. During this time, I was about four, and I remember how much I looked forward to seeing my dad. My mother stayed in nurse's quarters in the hospital so they would pick me up and usually take me out to lunch or the park or some activity. And after the big day I'd look forward to the next visit.

One day I was particularly naughty, I guess. I broke something my grandmother valued after being told not to keep running in the house. As my grandmother swept up the pieces, she said those words which strike terror into small hearts: “Just wait till your father hears about this!” But by the time my dad blew in again, I think she must have forgotten her threat because my father treated me just like he always had.

The apostles are in a locked room. If you read the accounts of the rewsurrection in the other gospels, you are told that they were fearful. In Luke, they think Jesus is a ghost and they are terrified. John, or gospel writer of today, doesn't mention fear, but I think we can assume they were afraid – afraid of the Jewish leaders, afraid of the Roman soldiers, afraid that if they went out someone would recognize them as disciples of Jesus – but maybe what they were really afraid of was what if Jesus returned as he had promised?

Everyone knew that when one king conquered another, that king's supporters would be deported, sometimes blinded or maimed, and often put to death. What would Jesus do if he came back? They had, after all, deserted him in his time of need; Peter had denied knowing him three times. If Jesus came back, the least they could expect would be a serious scolding – and in the Gospel of Mark Jesus does speak to them about their lack of faith. And certainly if Jesus was to come back and this time show forth God's power against the enemies of the Jews, they would have nothing to do with it; they, who had been his closest friends, would be out.

But Jesus appears and offers them his peace. Not once but twice. And then he tells them that they have the power to forgive sins. Sometimes we read what Jesus said as justication not only for the sacrament of reconciliation, but also that if the priest chooses to not forgive you, you are stuck with your sins. But Jesus may be saying something to all of us – he may be saying, “I have forgiven you and now go and forgive each other, because unless you forgive every sin against you, you won't have peace.” In other words, Jesus shows mercy and instructs the apostles to do likewise.

And that is probably Thomas' problem as well. When the disciples tell him they have seen the Lord, he notices that they are still in the same room; and they don't show any effects of having been scolded or kicked out of the disciple's club. They are, rather, full of joy. And I think it's interesting that when Thomas refuses to believe, they continue to include him in their group. They are already passing on the mercy that they received. Thomas may not believe, but he is still their friend.

And finally Jesus appears and offers to fulfill Thomas' conditions for him to believe. And we don't read that Thomas took Jesus up on this. Instead he drops to the ground and says, “My Lord and My God!” Thomas has experienced the mercy, the forgiveness, that Jesus offers with his whole being, not just his intellect. And we know that Thomas was probably as great a missionary as Paul; stories from the first couple of centuries have him founding communities up and down the Arabian peninsula and into southern India, where he was martyred. Thomas didn't leave a paper trail like Paul did.

So Jesus whose friends betrayed him, deserted him, denied knowing him, not only offers complete forgiveness and mercy, but commissions them to show mercy as well, through the forgiveness of sins. And while you and I can't forgive sins in Jesus' name as our priests can, we can forgive in our own names, those sins against us. And we can strive to forgive as Jesus did, offering mercy and love to the people who have offended us.

Because if we choose not to forgive, it not only keeps a barrier between me and the person who offended me, but it also impairs my own spiritual life, because in not forgiving, in not showing mercy, I cease to imitate Jesus' example.

So this weekend, this Mercy Sunday, imagine Jesus offering you his peace, and take advantage of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. And pray that as you receive the mercy that He offers, you will have the courage to offer it to others. As we learn to forgive we begin to restore the world and bring about the kingdom of heaven.

Easter Vigil, 2018

Mark 16:1-7

The Gospel of the Vigil of Easter which we've just read seems a little anticlimactic, or a better word is that it's a downer. Where is Mary Magdalene meeting the risen Christ in the garden? Where are the disciples on the road to Emmaus? Where are the overjoyed apostles who exclaim to Thomas, “We have seen the Lord!”. Instead, we have three frightened women who are as it says, “utterly amazed”. And I wish they had included the next verse, which reads, “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” And it's the place where Mark stopped writing. Some time in the early second century, someone who wasn't happy with that ending added a longer ending in which they describe Jesus appearing to his disciples, scolding them for their lack of faith, and making other appearances. But why would Mark have wanted to end his gospel with those words, instead of going on and describing several joyful appearances of Jesus to his friends?

The Gospel of Mark is the oldest of the four gospels – twenty to thirty years older than Matthew and Luke, maybe fifty years older than John. By the time the other writers were putting their gospels together, the Christian church was pretty well established; there were pockets of Christians, even whole towns of Christians, throughout the Roman empire. Sometimes we think of Christians being persecuted, and they were, but persecutions were not carried out relentlessly and usually the authorities were content with killing the leaders and the prominent citizens who embraced Christianity. But during Mark's time, there weren't nearly as many Christians, and the separation from the Jewish religion had not been complete. And there were many temptations to abandon Christianity because you could get better jobs and have a higher social status if you weren't part of this odd little sect that claimed to have been founded by someone who had been crucified and then rose from the dead.

If you look at Mark's gospel, there are two currents running through it. The first is that Jesus kind of goes about his ministry healing people and working miracles, not doing a lot of teaching; and whenever he does a great work, he tells the witnesses not to tell anyone. But they do anyway, and eventually Jesus has become so notorious that he can't go into a town without being mobbed. In other words, as he goes about doing good, demonstrating what the kingdom of God will be like, he becomes the outcast; he trades places with the lepers, the blind people, the crippled people that he has healed so they can go back into society. Even at the very end of his life, if you remember at the Garden of Gesthemene, there was a young man, a follower of Jesus, who was almost caught by the guards, and he slipped out of his linen garment – the Greek word is the same as you would use for a burial shroud – and runs away naked. Later, in the tomb where Jesus had been buried, his burial shroud is folded up, and the same young man – maybe –is clothed in a white robe, signifying baptism. He is sitting there in the otherwise empty tomb. In a way, Jesus has traded places with the young man, who had he been captured would probably have also been put to death. And maybe Mark means for the young man to be a symbol of the Christian, who escapes death because Jesus takes his place.

The other theme in Mark is how blind people are. The apostles, especially Peter, never quite figure Jesus out. James and John miss the point entirely and ask to be seated at his right and left hand when he comes to his kingdom. Even when he works miracles, the people get upset with him. Do you remember the time he drove demons out of a man into a herd of pigs? Instead of rejoicing over the freeing of the poor possessed man, the people of the town beg him to leave them. Or when he heals someone on the Sabbath, and the authorities decide he is healing with the help of the devil. And there are times when he can't work miracles because the people have no faith. The only people who get Jesus in the gospel of Mark are the foreigners – the people who weren't even Jewish. And it is in Mark where Peter is first called “Satan”.

And that brings us back to the gospel passage we have just read. The women had gotten up early that morning, probably heartbroken, with the intention of embalming Jesus' body. They couldn't have done it the day after his death because it was the Sabbath. So they make their way to the tomb, perhaps hoping they might enlist some men into rolling the stone back. Now Matthew has the same theme – they wonder about the stone, when suddenly an angel pops up and rolls it back. Not so in Mark. There's no indication that they young man is an angel, and nothing in the text that says he rolled the stone back. He is just there, a witness to the resurrection, who tells the women, “Do not be amazed!” Notice, angels always say, “Do not be afraid!” so this isn't an angel. The young man goes on to tell them that Jesus is not here, he has been raised. Go and tell his disciples he will meet them in Galilee.”

Now remember, in Mark Jesus tells people to tell no one what they have witnessed. Here the young man tells the women to go tell the apostles – but in the next verse it says they fled in terror and told no one. And clearly, they don't understand.

I think Mark is telling his readers, and that includes you and I, that for Christians, we are told about the Resurrection – that's how all of us come to know about it, someone tells us that it happened. The first Christians – a handful of people, relatively speaking – who were eyewitnesses, all died about 2000 years ago. And that's sort of how God works; he never makes us believe, he always gives us an out. And that is Mark's point. What do you do with this news? What do you do when you are told that God became man, suffered, died, and rose again? Do you run in terror and tell no one? Do you accept that Jesus rose from the dead but just put that information away in a corner of your mind where it can't do any harm? Perhaps you don't believe at all. Many people, even Christians, have developed ways of explaining away this central event in the history of the world. Or do you, like the first witnesses, like the saints of every generation, go through your life showing everyone that Jesus is risen, because here you are, speaking his words, doing his deeds, bringing peace and love to the world, carrying out those tasks he himself did and called on his disciples to do?

Jesus is truly risen, we believe this. But on this Easter vigil, how does that make a difference in your life and my life?

Palm Sunday, cycle B

Mark 14:1 – 15:47

I spend a lot of my time visiting elderly people. Many of them are impaired, physically or mentally or both. Sometimes over a relatively short time I'll witness further deterioration. One of the things I am told over and over again by many of these people is “I don't want to be a burden”.

Recently the assisted suicide issue has reared its head again. We will probably have it on the ballot next time, and I predict it will win. The last time this was on the ballot it barely lost and I don't see our society getting more religious. Part of the reason assisted suicide is popular is because people dread being a burden, dread being helpless.

We've just heard the Passion of Jesus read from the Gospel of Mark. First we heard the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem – pretty short and to the point. Then we hear the Passion. It took too long when I was a little kid and it takes too long now. If you take the time Mark devotes to the Passion, it makes up a bit more than one fourth of his Gospel. And that is probably as it should be – Christians see Jesus as a great teacher, and that's true, but Jesus didn't teach anything terribly new. What makes Jesus central to Christianity is the fact that he suffered and died and rose again. The word “passion” conveys to us modern people intense emotion, and we naturally associate Jesus' suffering with that. But the word really means “to have something done to you” – it comes from the latin root “passio” which means “I am moved”. One fourth of Mark's gospel tells us about when Jesus was helpless, when people were doing things to him, when he had no control over what was going on.

Saint Louis Martin, the father of Theresa of Liseaux, had seen his wife pass away from breast cancer; had seen three children die in early childhood; had known hardship, including a time when he and his family were forced to care for soldiers involved in a civil war. His daughters, all but one had entered the religious life and he had very little contact with them since they were in a cloistered order. One day he told his pastor that he worried about not becoming a saint because he had not really suffered. God must have been listening, because over the next ten years until his death he suffered from physical and mental deterioration due to vascular disease involving the brain and needed to be taken care of.

I think all of us will experience, if we have not already done so, some point in our lives when we will be helplessness. We will be like Saint Peter, whom Jesus predicted would be lead where he did not want to go. Some of us will know that we won't get better; the rest of our days will be increasing helplessness, increasing loss of physical and mental abilities. And we naturally dread this, we don't want to think about it. And when those days come we might very well say, “I don't want to be a burden!” and we may even feel sympathy for those who have the courage, or perhaps it isn't courage, to end their lives with the help of a few pills.

But Jesus has been there; he's been helpless, in such pain that he probably couldn't think straight, experiencing minutes that seemed to last hours, hanging there between heaven and earth. And someday, Jesus may invite you or I to enter into his passion. I dread that invitation. But I hope I remember, and if not, I hope someone reminds me, that it is my body hanging on that cross; it is my body that will be placed in the grave; and God willing, it is my body that will be raised on the third day, a body with no limitations, a body like Jesus' resurrected body..

That, after all, is the reason God became Man, lived and died for us, so that as he told us, “... this is the Father's will which has sent me, that of all which he has given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.” With our baptisms we were given to Jesus, and nothing of us will ever be lost.