Jesus opens the door to peace – John 20:19-31, 1 John 5:1-6

2nd Sunday of Easter; Holy Cross parish.

The disciples have locked themselves in a room.  They’re frightened.  And they have cause for fear!  Their lord and master had spoken to them of the persecution to come, and they’d seen what that looked like, they’d seen how it played out against his very flesh, and Peter had seen what would come from association with those that imperial power condemned.  So, they had every reason to be afraid.  It was entirely rational.  But, Jesus has better than that.  The law of love trumps the cold rationality of fear; perfect love casts out fear.

Jesus unwraps and unveils for us – John 20:1-9

Easter Sunday; St. Stanislaus parish.

Do you how much Americans spent on gift wrap last year?  Well, neither do I.  In the busy-ness of this week, the most recent data I could find was from 2010, when this country spent 9.36 billion dollars on gift wrap.  That’s over $30 each.  And gift wrapping isn’t a purely modern or uniquely American phenomenon.  The earliest reference to it is 2200 years old, and comes from China.  Why do we do it?  Why do we wrap presents, or to take an example that might be more timely: hide eggs?  There’s something very humane about the wrapping of gifts.  Somehow, the giving and, more importantly, receiving of a gift is made even more joyful when it’s wrapped.

Jesus restores us to life – John 18:1-19:42

Good Friday; Holy Cross - St. Stanislaus parish.

He came at night.  Judas came at night, with lamps and torches.  He had walked out on the Light of the World incarnate, to live in darkness.  He’d exchanged the Light of Salvation for lamps and torches, meager hope to illumine a cold, dark world.  Jesus had longed and had acted to set his heart aflame with burning zeal and fiery love, and he couldn’t take it.  It was too much, too daring: to entrust one’s heart to a man walking to his death, to one who calls us to a love as brilliant as his, a love that would love unto death, a love the darkness could not overcome, but could not comprehend either.  So he trades it in, for lamps and torches, barely enough to put the darkness at bay long enough to stumble to the garden of betrayal.

Jesus refuses abandonment – Mark 14:1-15:47

Palm Sunday, Yr B; Holy Cross Parish.

Jesus refuses to abandon the cup.  He doesn’t want this; he wants to stay and teach and heal and form disciples… but that’s not the cup that has been poured.  The cup of divine wrath: divine anger and anguish mixed into one at human suffering, sin and death.  He would drink that fully for us, he would never abandon his perfect obedience to being human, to being his father’s son, to being anguished at sin and, in love, consuming it.

Two weeks off preaching

Due to our increased offertory campaign, I've had two weeks off Sunday Mass preaching.  Here's a link to my homily from this Sunday last year, on the Scrutiny Gospel.

Jesus zealously sacrifices for us – John 2:13-25

Lent 3, Yr B; Holy Cross Parish.

“Zeal for your house will consume me.”  The disciples remembered those words from scripture, we’re told.  Well, they remembered wrong.  The psalm they were thinking of doesn’t say that.  It says: “zeal for your house has consumed me;” not ‘will.’  Their very memory has started to be transformed by their encounter with Christ.  Could they have understood what this renewal of their minds meant yet?  No, not yet.  But, when Jesus had been raised from the dead… then they’d remember anew.  They’d remember scripture and remember Jesus’ words, seeing the two as originating from the same source, and they’d believe.  But now, they let themselves be so transfixed by this encounter with zeal incarnate that their memory of scripture, a psalm they must have sung hundreds of times, gets transformed.

God provides ever more – Mark 9:2-9, Gen 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18

2nd Sunday of Lent, Yr B; Holy Cross - St. Stan's

There used to be a show on British tv called Crackerjack.  It was a game show, with kids as the contestants.  After every question, the kid would get a prize no matter whether they answered right or wrong.  There were only two catches: firstly, the prizes would marvelous, getting better with each passing question, if they answered correctly; if they answered wrongly, they’d get a pretty boring prize, often a cabbage.  Catch two: they had to hold all of their prizes in their arms.  Drop one, and their time on the show was over.  I don’t think anyone ever got any of the most coveted prizes, because by the time they became available, they were too busy clutching earlier gifts to be able to receive the gifts they really longed for.