The Pattern and Presence of Jesus

Friends, all during the Easter season, we read from the Acts of the Apostles, and this Sunday, we hear part of Peter’s oration on Pentecost morning. His bold proclamation is, in a way, the mother of all sermons; it is the essence of authentic Christian preaching. Peter, filled with the excitement of the Gospel, names the problem of sin, declares Jesus as Lord and Christ, and cuts his listeners to the heart. Then there comes naturally a question in response: “What are we to do?”

Friends, for this Third Sunday of Easter, we read once again the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus—a literary masterpiece, yes, but above all, a spiritual masterpiece. This story is not just about something that happened long ago; it's also about the Church now, and in all times. And it tells us who Jesus is and how to recognize him.

Friends, peace be with you—an echo of the words of the risen Jesus in our Gospel for the Second Sunday of Easter, also called Mercy Sunday. Christ gives his disciples the gift of shalom (peace). But there’s an exceptionally important juxtaposition here: He also shows them his wounds, a sign of humanity’s own sin and dysfunction. It’s not one or the other, his peace or his wounds; it’s both. To get this wrong is to get a lot of Christianity wrong.

Friends, Happy Easter! We’ve come to the high point of the Church’s liturgical year, the reason why we’re Christians at all. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, Christianity is a waste of time; the resurrection is the hinge point, the standing or falling point, of our faith. Taking Easter seriously is the source of our joy and our hope. Everything else is secondary to the great declaration of our Easter faith. In light of that, I want to talk to you today about earthquakes.

Friends, we come now to Palm Sunday, also called “Passion Sunday” because we read, in its entirety, one of the Passion narratives from the Synoptic Gospels. This year, we hear Matthew’s version, and one of the distinctive qualities of Matthew’s account is his stress on Judas—and more precisely, on the deep regret that Judas felt over his betrayal of the Lord. We’re challenged here to contemplate the radicality of God’s mercy and his relentless pursuit of even the worst of sinners.

Friends, this Lent, we’ve been journeying through some marvelous stories in John: the woman at the well two weeks ago, the man born blind last week, and now the climactic story of the raising of Lazarus. The great miracles of Jesus in John’s Gospel are referred to as “semeia” in Greek—“signs.” They’re indicators of God’s power and manner that teach us great truths about our spiritual lives. And the raising of Lazarus teaches us about the ways of God amid our suffering. Why do these things happen? Why doesn’t God act? 

Friends, on this Fourth Sunday of Lent, we hear the incomparably rich story of the man born blind, which has beguiled Christians up and down the centuries. We are meant to identify with this man: All of us are born into a world that has been infected by cruelty and violence and hatred. Original sin blinds us; it takes us out of the light. But Christ declares himself “the light of the world”—the one who will heal and illumine the eyes of us all.

Friends, on this Third Sunday of Lent, we hear the story from John’s Gospel of the woman at the well—a kind of master class in evangelization. What is evangelization all about? It’s about telling starving people where to find bread; it’s about telling people dying of thirst where to find water. Every one of us sinners seeks life in this way; thus, this story, so rich in its dynamics, is a story about all of us.

Friends, on this Second Sunday of Lent, our first reading about Abraham and Matthew’s account of the Transfiguration orient us to a basic biblical principle. God has made us to go out from ourselves, to experience the splendor of reality. The more we let go of ourselves and our prerogatives—and the less we try to grasp and hang on to things—the more alive we become. Salvation, therefore, has a lot to do with adventure.

Friends, we commence the holy and wonderful season of Lent, the time of preparation for Easter. I always think of Lent as something like spring training for baseball players, or like the end of the summer workouts for football players. It’s a time to get back to spiritual basics, to reacquaint ourselves with the elemental things in the spiritual life that we might get ourselves ordered to Christ. So the Church, in our first reading from Genesis, brings us back to the beginning.