homilies
on the liturgy of the Sundays and feasts



by james gilhooley

Missionary spirit
4th Sunday of Lent—April 2

“B” Readings: 2 Chr. 36:14-17 • Eph. 2:4-10 • John 3:14-21

Title: The Meaning of the Crucifix
    Purpose: (1) to explain this familiar crucifix; (2) to encourage its understanding as a constant reminder of God’s love and of our reconciliation with God.

I was watching a World Series game. The TV camera panned in on a young man carrying a big sign reading John 3:16. Dutifully I opened my New Testament and read a line from today’s Gospel: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

    Did the fellow come to the game paying top dollar for that box seat to enjoy the game? Or did he come to tell millions of people about Jesus the Nazarene? The latter, I wager, is the correct answer.

    I forget who won the ballgame. But what I cannot forget was the missionary spirit that moved the young man to come to Yankee Stadium that night with his homemade sign. No one had to tell him, “Go, tell it on the mountain!”

    To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, his religion had become less of a theory, as ours may well be, and more of a love affair with the Christ.

    The eulogist, as folk wisdom puts it, will not have to lie at that man’s funeral. He may have to do such at ours.

    It is consoling to realize that there are people around who are eager to give an unqualified yes to the Eternal Galilean. The young man at the ballgame accepted the invitation of Christ “to have eternal life in him.” Unhappily, too many of us are Xerox copies of Señor Nicodemus. Like him, we hedge our bets with the Lord. We are afraid to give him our lives. We say, “Why not ring me tomorrow, Lord?” Of course we know we will not be at home tomorrow. And even our answering machines will be turned to the off position. “Most people,” wrote one perceptive author, “talk cream and live skim milk.”

    However, we should not be too hard on Mister Nicodemus. Our Savior clearly took delight in his company. Tired as he no doubt was, he enjoyed his long conversation with the urbane, well-read gentleman. After all, the apostles, at this point at least, were not the Jewish version of the Whiz Kids. Only a few of them were able to read and write. Would any of them have been able to hold up his side in the conversation described in the third chapter of John? It is unlikely.

    Furthermore, through this gentleman Nicodemus, we receive a splendid outline of the job definition of the Christ as he himself understood it. And what better authority could one look for?

    But, after saying all that, the well-born Nicodemus was still tied up by fear. In a word, he was a person awesomely respectable, crippled by conventions, and fearful of important decisions. The opinion of the man or woman next door was more critical to him than the Nazarene’s. Do you get that uncomfortable feeling that we might be talking about our honorable selves?

    For example, his chat with the Lord was held under the cover of darkness. He was not willing to be seen by his peers in the company of the itinerant preacher from Galilee. He might lose his credibility in their eyes. So, he chose to be an after-midnight disciple of Christ. He would probably remain at best a closet Christian all his life. Will that be our fate? Or will we be bold enough to break free of our confining restraints and take a genuine gamble on the Lord?

    Several months after my viewing of the World Series game, I pulled into a greasy spoon for a fast food lunch. My waiter was a kid about twenty. He spotted my Roman collar and began talking volumes. He told me he had recently been “born again” (John 3:7) in a Pentecostal church. He was already giving away 10% of his modest income to the church. He was waiting for a call to be shipped out as a lay missionary. I asked, “What country do you want to work in?” Immediately he replied, “Whichever country Jesus wants me to go to, Mister.” Even though the lunch had given me heartburn, I left deeply impressed and even a little ashamed. I was envious of the man’s almost childlike faith. Nicodemus or this author he surely was not. He was convinced he genuinely knew Christ and, like the man at the baseball game, he wanted everyone to meet him.

    That wonderful line of Kierkegaard came to mind: “It is so much easier to become a Christian when you aren’t one than to become one when you assume you already are.”

    Yet, there is hope in this Lent which means spring or new birth, for the poet tells us “in every winter’s heart there is a quivering spring.”

    Live so that the preacher won’t have to lie at your funeral!

Suggested reading: Catechism of the Catholic Church, 605-618; 849-856.

Greeks in Jerusalem
5th Sunday of Lent—April 9

“B” Readings: Jer. 31:31-34 • Heb. 5:7-9 • John 12:20-33

Title: Dying to Sin
    Purpose: to show (1) that sin, though attractive to people, is actually heinous; (2) so that we must eliminate sin from life: mortal sin and also venial sin and occasions of sin.

    Egypt’s King Tutankhamen, more popularly known as King Tut, left us his golden furniture, but he is stone cold dead in the market. Jesus the Nazarene left behind him no golden toys, but he lives. The answer to this riddle is locked in today’s Gospel.

    The only Gospel that tells us of the Greek travelers belongs to John. But that is not surprising. John wrote his Gospel to present his Master to the Greeks and Gentiles at large. Nor should anyone be surprised to find Greek travelers in Jerusalem. Records of the time reveal they were constant tourists. They had a deep need to see fresh locales and to savor challenging ideas. They were yesterday’s jet set. Athens must have been dotted with travel agencies offering attractive package plans.

    These Greeks were in Jerusalem in the last week of Christ’s life. They may well have witnessed his spectacular entrance into the capital on Palm Sunday. They must have heard of, and very possibly seen, some of his miracles. They may have watched him angrily driving the businessmen out of the Temple.

    Is it any wonder that they wanted to pull up a chair with our Christ and have a long chat with him? No doubt they suspected that he would not be around too long. And, as we know, they were right. He would be dead by Friday.

    They chose the apostle Philip as their messenger. They appreciated the sound of his Greek name. And Philip probably spoke Greek. Their petition “Sir, we should like to see Jesus,” has been echoed by billions down through the centuries. But the apostle broke into a sweat at their original request. Did the Teacher want to meet with foreigners? After all, they had no appointment. And was not the Master solely interested in the Jews?

    The hesitant Philip consulted his fellow townsman, Andrew. He set up the meeting immediately. He had long ago learned that no one could be a nuisance to his Christ. Appointments are not necessary. This I submit is a good point to keep in mind as one prays.   

    Besides, Jesus was absolutely delighted to meet with the Greeks. They would carry his message outside Palestine to their own people. This was in fact the working out of a plan set up by his Father centuries before.

    The relaxed Nazarene shares a Greek salad (what else?) and fresh white wine from a nearby hill town with his Gentile visitors. He does much of the talking. He blows the mind of his spellbound luncheon guests with his central message that only death brings life. They had been taught by their philosophers on the Hill of the Acropolis that one must live before he dies. Yet, their intense host is telling them that one must die before he can live.

    Our Lord was teaching his Greek guests and ourselves that only by spending one’s life does one retain it. We will exist long into the third millennium if we are laid back, avoid stress, and protect our lives as would a hypochondriac. We will be among the survivors, but unhappily we will be counted among the living dead. We will be walking illustrations of James Tahaney’s point that not all the dead are buried. The ancient line that it is better to burn out than rust out may well have Christian roots.

    George Bernard Shaw’s St. Joan of Arc is a splendid example of the Eternal Galilean’s teaching. She was conscious that her enemies were closing in for the kill. So, she exclaims to God, “I shall last only a year. Use me as you will.”

    Incidentally, the Teacher underlines his central teaching that out of death comes life not only in the Gospel of John but also two times in Matthew, twice in Luke, and once in Mark. Do you get the feeling he had no intention of putting this teaching in the back of the file cabinet or, as we say today, burying it deep in his computer files.

    Jesus picked up the bill at the outdoor restaurant. As he pushed back his chair, he threw them another curve that must have rocked them out of their soft leather sandals. “And, when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself.” It was on the magnet of the cross that Our Lord nailed all his hopes. And history proved him right.

    The empires founded on military force have disappeared. Almost mythical heroes in history have disappeared into the stacks of dusty libraries. But, as our presence here today testifies, Jesus the Christ lives.

    When the Greeks got back to Athens, they had much to tell their friends over strong red wine in sight of the Parthenon.

    Hopefully, the aphorism that life is a lot like parachuting and that one must do it right the first time was uppermost in their minds. May it be such in ours also!

Suggested reading: Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1008, 1010-1014, 953, 1861, 1963.

Suggestions for
Holy Week
Palm Sunday—April 16

“B” Readings: Isa. 50:4-7 • Phil. 2:6-11 • Mark 14:1—15:47

Title: How to Spend Holy Week
    Purpose: to explain (1) the liturgical and (2) the personal observances of Holy Week in the life of a follower of Christ.

The ideal way to spend Holy Week is to grab a fistful of American Express travel checks and fly to Israel.

    Since most of us will not be able to do that, then our parish church must become the Holy Land. Within these walls, we must be creative enough to find Jerusalem, the Upper Room, Gethsemani, Calvary, and the Tomb.

    The theme of the week might be the Christ of the nineteenth century English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson:

The Lord from Heaven

Born of a village girl—carpenter’s son.

Wonderful. Prince of Peace. The Mighty God.

Today our church vestibule becomes the suburban town of Bethany just outside Jerusalem. There at the home of good friends Jesus had spent Saturday night. Hopefully he had a comfortable bed and a good sleep. Bethany had become the jumping off point where he began his triumphal march to Jerusalem. Donald Senior calls it a hero’s welcome for this anti-establishment figure. It was, says US News & World Report, an early Palestinian equivalent of a ticker-tape parade.

    This center aisle must become the dusty road on which our Christ rode amidst cheers.

    As you watch the Man on the skittish donkey pass you by, you might want to recall the lines of H.E. Fosdick: Mongol Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Caesar cum his laurel wreath, inscrutable Napoleon

They all perished from the earth,
As fleeting shadows from a glass,
And, conquering down the centuries,
Came Christ the swordless on an ass.

    Tomorrow, Tuesday, and Wednesday were relatively quiet days for the Nazarene. He spent them largely in prayer and reflection in the Great Temple of Jerusalem. For us, this church must become the Great Temple. Our theme might be the little known words of an anonymous poet:

I thought that I could follow Him,
But, when my feet drew near
To Calvary, at dead of night,
I quailed in utter fear.
Whereat a voice came whispering,
through darkness like a sea:
Child, child, be not afraid.
Your cross is occupied by me.

    On Holy Thursday, our sanctuary becomes the Upper Room. The altar becomes the long narrow table where the Eternal Galilean sat.

    When we hear the words of Consecration, we might call to mind the words of this century’s Nobel Prize laureate T.S. Eliot. “In the juvescence of the year comes Christ the tiger to be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk among whispers.”

    Holy Thursday late this dark church becomes the Garden of

Gethsemani. It is filled with whispers, shadows, and the sharp shouts of angry people. Here the Christ undergoes the dark night of the soul. Our theme might be the words of the Irish poet Joseph Mary Plunkett:   

I see His blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of His eyes.
His body gleams amid eternal snows.
His tears fall from the skies.

On Good Friday, this Church becomes that area delicately called in history Calvary Hill located outside Jerusalem. In fact, it was a garbage dump filled cum wild dogs waiting for their next meal. That it would be the blood of the Savior made no difference to them.

    We shall squeeze into this church for Good Friday services. The side aisles of the church will become the Via Dolorosa or the Street of Sorrows. We will follow his tortured walk in his bleeding feet in the Stations of the Cross.

    The words of Sydney Carter’s Lord of the Dance might be appropriate:

I danced on Friday when the sky turned black.
It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back.
They buried my body, and they thought I’d gone.

    Or perhaps this memorable one-liner from Simone Weil may be just what you need: “The cross by itself suffices me.”

    The day closes out with obscenity that was the assassination. The cross, as a writer puts it, reveals our sins at their worst and God’s love at its best.

    On Holy Saturday, his body lay in a borrowed tomb. We will come to this church sorrowful but full of hope. This day was called by our ancestors in the faith the Day of the Great Sabbath Rest.

    Our reference point might well be Francis Thompson’s Lilium Regis:

Look up, O most sorrowful of daughters,
Lift up thy head and hear what sounds are in the dark,
For His feet are coming to thee on the waters.

    This tabernacle empty of its Christ becomes for us the tomb. We pray expectantly—knowing “the grass will have no time to grow on the Savior’s grave.”

    On Easter Sunday, we shall crowd in to this church. We shall shout together the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins:
Let Him easter in us.

Be a dayspring to the dimness in us,
Be a crimson cresseted East.

Suggested reading: Catechism of the Catholic Church, 559-560, 570, 2096, 2135, 1070.

The new life
Easter Sunday—April 23

“B” Readings: Acts 10:34-37. 43 • Col. 3:1-4 or 1 Cor. 5:6-8 • John 20:1-9

Title: The Resurrection, Source of Our Joy
    Purpose: to explain (1) that the Apostles found joy because of the Resurrection of Jesus; (2) that we have joy and live in joy for the same reason.

    The tale is told of the child who picked up the Gospels. Like billions before her, she quickly became charmed by Jesus. Suddenly she ran out of her room crying hysterically. She ran into the arms of her alarmed mother. She cried, “They killed him. They killed him.” Her mother soothed her and then whispered to her, “Now go back and finish the story.”   

    The Feast of Easter belongs to young people and not to their seniors. If you wonder why, read on.

    Once Jesus was arrested, the apostles with the exception of the teen-ager John remembered pressing previous appointments and disappeared.

    But the women followers of Jesus, my dear macho men, were cut from a different mold. They dug in and held their ground. They were not about to desert their Man.

    Friday, if you had the courage to go up there, you would have found the women up on Calvary hill. Christ’s male followers were nowhere to be seen. The women exchanged stare for stare with the Roman army patrol who had the death watch. They were not about to be intimidated by the military.

    That evening, though bushed and spent, they busied themselves preparing spices to anoint the body of their deceased Leader. The apostles were still MIA.

    On the Sabbath, as Luke tells us, the women “kept still, as the law commanded.” They were of course devout Jews. It would be a long time before some Madison Avenue wordsmith would coin the term Christian to describe this fresh movement.

    Early Sunday A.M. was their target date for anointing his corpse. As dawn was about to break, they bolted out of their economy motel and made for the tomb.

    But it was no contest. The young and lean Mary of Magdala reached the tomb first. She did not need Michael Jordan’s Nikes.

    That famous humungus stone had been rolled from the tomb’s mouth. There is no way of telling whether Mary scoped the interior of the tomb. It seems the girl just assumed the body had been stolen. So, she did an abrupt about face and made for the nearest fax machine to get a frenzied message off to Peter.

    Though convinced Mary Magdalene was off the wall, Peter pulled on his sandals over his arthritic feet to check out the scene for himself. Otherwise, she would not get off his case. Young John tagged along for the ride. Peter hoped he would not hold him up.

    John soon had the older man eating his dust. Despite youthful curiosity, John waited for the out-of-shape Peter to catch up. After all, despite his Friday afternoon disappearance when he had turned yellow and run, Peter was still commander-in-chief.

    The exhausted and out-of-sorts Peter takes a quick look and brusquely tells John, “Some ghouls have stolen his body.”

    But, although he is smart enough to keep his mouth shut, the boy is having none of it. John’s mental computer raises a batch of interesting questions. If this were the work of body snatchers, why would they have wasted the precious time needed to unwind the sheets? Why would they have risked galloping disease in handling the decomposing body? Furthermore, why would they leave the linen cloths behind?

    Cloth of the quality provided by the wealthy Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimethea would have top value at the nearest pawn shop. One washing in Tide at the local laundromat and the linen would have passed as new.

    A shattering light flashes in the teenager’s brainpan: Jesus has risen from the dead. The boy begins to tingle all over with suppressed excitement.

    Nor was the symbolism of the linen cloths laying about lost on the young man. When the puzzled Lazarus walked out of his tomb, he carried his winding cloths with him. He would need them again for death down the road. But not so Jesus! He would never require them again.

    The Feast of the Resurrection belongs to young people. Easter Sunday belongs to them and not to their seniors.

    It was Mary of Magdala, just a slip of a girl, who was the first person to reach the tomb that first Easter A.M. Her overpowering love, even for a deceased and vanquished Jesus, caused her to destroy all existing track records.

    And it was the gangly adolescent John who was the first one on record to realize that the Master had risen. Remember all John had to go on was faith. He had not seen the resurrection; no one had. Like ourselves, he was peering through a glass darkly. Only his own glass was much more clouded than ours. Yet, that same faith changed the life of that boy.

    “The old life,” someone has written, “is comfortable. The new life is demanding. Yet the new life is rich and the old life is barren.” The Resurrection of their Teacher was the beginning of a fresh life for young John and Mary of Magdala. Why could it not be the same for each of us—even those of us long in the tooth?

Suggested reading: Catechism of the Catholic Church, 638-658.

Believing is seeing
2nd Sunday of Easter—April 30

“B” Readings: Acts 4:32-35 • 1 John 5:1-6 • John 20:19-31

Title: Living our Lives in the Church Community
    Purpose: to describe (1) the ideal parish and Church (2) that we are trying to reach.

    Two American tourists stood in awe before Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. One asked, “Why can’t we build structures like this anymore?” Her friend answered, “The Catholics who built this had faith. Today we have opinions. And you can’t build a cathedral with opinions.”

    In a book modestly titled The Great Thoughts, the inventor Thomas Alva Edison is quoted as dogmatically saying, “I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell. . . .”

    Edison was no doubt a genius. Yet I think we will all agree that Thomas the Apostle would have much to teach Thomas the Inventor after the events of today’s Gospel. If one can prove something by scientific proof, one is not talking about faith. And faith, as the apostle learned today, is the point at issue in this Easter season.

    The doubting apostle after his encounter with the glorified Lord had more in common with the thirteenth century Thomas Aquinas than with the twentieth century Thomas Alva. It was the saint who wrote: “The heart can go where the head has to leave off.”

    Contemporary writers spend more time on Thomas the Inventor than they do on Thomas the Apostle. That is a pity. The latter has more to teach us about the answers to the ultimate questions than the former.

    The apostle was a complex and unique personality. That very uniqueness may well explain why Jesus chose him in the first place. It is probable that Our Lord was determined to use his personality for the education of future generations. That he struck out with his namesake Thomas the Inventor should not be held against him.

    Who knows? Perhaps Mr. Edison learned in the course of his long life R.B. Graham’s insight. “It takes more faith,” said Graham, “to be an atheist than it does to believe in God.”

    There are but three informative references to Thomas in the entire New Testament. Each is in John’s Gospel. The Gospel of John it is said was the last to be penned. Perhaps the Eagle concluded that the neglect of Thomas in earlier accounts did a serious injustice to Thomas himself and to Catholics at large.

    A composite work-up of his psyche from John’s Gospel tells us much about Thomas. He is pessimistic, stubborn as that famous mule, and subject to the all-too-common line that teaches seeing is believing.

    You can check the first two references to Thomas in John’s chapters 11 and 14 at your leisure for confirmation.

    The third illustration, and surely the most celebrated, is of course the subject of today’s Gospel. We know the story and especially its happy conclusion. Thomas would never forget that searing line of his resurrected Friend, “Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe!” The doubting Thomas had received a lecture on faith that he would never forget and which unhappily Mr. Edison seemed never to have learned.

    Thomas had told his fellows that he had to see before he could believe. And it was the Christ who taught him that believing is seeing.

    The no longer doubting apostle would enthusiastically applaud the observer who opined that a strong faith sees the invisible, believes the incredible, and receives the impossible.

    There was nothing uncertain about Thomas’s unqualified cry to the Nazarene, “My Lord and my God.” While he was the last to believe in the risen Christ, he was the first of the apostles to make such an unequivocal confession of his divinity. In a millisecond, his faith had taken a quantum leap. It must have splintered every theological seismograph throughout the even-then ancient city of Jerusalem.

    The clever St. Gregory realized the value of Thomas to Christendom at large. He wrote: “The slow surrender of Thomas is of more advantage to strengthen our faith than the more ready faith of all the believing apostles.”

    As we leave this Liturgy today, we should say a prayer in gratitude for such a person as the apostle Thomas. But in addition each one of us will want to reflect on the aphorism that teaches that it is not sufficient for Catholics to believe their faith. They must show it too.

    And do remember to say an Ave for Thomas Alva Edison.

Suggested reading: Catechism of the Catholic Church, 198-227.

Reverend James Gilhooley is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York. His articles have appeared in America, Commonweal, the Tablet (London), the Month (London), Church, etc. He is also a book reviewer for the Catholic News Service. This is his first series of homilies for HPR.

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