Fr. Jacobi's Homily Message

The Resurrection does not erase the cross. The Risen One is also the Crucified One. What we celebrate during this Easter Season is the fullness of the Paschal Mystery---the dying and rising of Christ.

His suffering, especially his dying on the cross, is a stumbling block for his disciples who want to run as far as they can from any kind of suffering. So he breaks open the Scriptures for them so they may understand why he had to suffer and die. He allows them to touch the shadow of the cross—his body.

Jesus Christ, fully human, knows that loving entails suffering. Being vulnerable enough to give his life away in love of others, he opens himself up to a world of hurt. Not just the hurt inflicted on him by the fear-filled ones who demands his death. But he also opens himself up to the suffering ones—the littlest, the least, the neglected, the hungry, the stranger, the sick person no one would touch, the sinners with whom no one would sit down and break bread.

The story of Jesus of Nazareth is a story of suffering love, of the God-man who suffers with and for his sisters and brothers. Thus, the cross casts a long shadow over his entire life and even marks him after death. Even after rising from the dead, the cross is still part of his story. His wounds, transformed by the Father’s love, still are part of his glorified body.

We can pass from death to new life by surrendering our suffering into the hands of the Crucified and Risen Lord Or we can remain in denial---deny the reality of our own suffering and deny the reality of the suffering of others. We can embrace our humanity as fully as Christ did, with all its aches and pains and limits and thus find the way to new life. Or we can deny the reality of our humanity, deny the reality of these frail, mortal bodies in which we dwell, and in the process, deny the humanity of others.

The refusal to acknowledge Christ’s wounds, wounds that appear on his raised body inevitably leads to the death of others, and indeed, to our own death. All pain, all suffering appear in our lives as unwanted reminders that we are not in control of our lives, that we are indeed vulnerable. Thus, authentic human relationships of mutual love and trust are suspect, since they involve a dimension of vulnerability and even pain in the face of another, who, however much we seek to control, always remains beyond our control. So we surround ourselves with things that promise security and invulnerability. We run from persons, who will demand vulnerability and the possibility of pain. We fall in love with cars, houses, mobile phones and computers, even as we remain “unattached” to human persons.

But not just any persons. We distance ourselves from weak, powerless, vulnerable persons in particular---wounded persons, who are especially threatening to our sense of invulnerability. They are mirrors of our own souls; their very existence in our midst is so terrifying that we must eradicate them or at least hide them from view, “get them off the streets,” so we won’t have to see them and their uncomfortable wounds.

There is a direct, intimate relationship between the struggle for social justice and the possibility of experiencing ourselves as loved, experiencing our own lives, with all their woundedness, as gifts of an extravagant Lover. The act of solidarity with the wounded other is, at the same time, an acknowledgement of our common woundedness, our common powerlessness. It is also an acknowledgement of our complicity in the infliction of those wounds. In the end what we fear most is not “those” persons but ourselves— our weak fragile, vulnerable, wounded selves. So we avoid touching, even seeing the wounds.

But Jesus comes to save us from ourselves but forcing us to look upon his wounds, still present in his Risen body. Look at his hands and feet—touch his wounded side. To force us to look at our own wounds, and to surrender these wounds, and our very selves to him. The Risen Lord longs for us to see the wounds still present in His broken body on earth that need to be transformed by our love, from signs of death to new life.

The shadow of the cross falls across every life. What matters is how we respond to the suffering that comes our way--- we can try to live in denial, or we can join our suffering to the suffering of the Crucified One, so we can rise with him to new life. Not all suffering has value—only that suffering which is joined to Christ. Not all wounds we carry can be transformed into portals of glory---only those wounds which we surrender to the Wounded/Glorified One.

I have some good friends who discovered they were unable to conceive children. This discovery was a source of great suffering for them. They could have remained in the shadow of this suffering and become bitter about life, but instead they chose to walk with Christ from death to new life, into the light of a new day. They decided to give their lives away in love to children not their own by adopting several children.

Their eldest child just celebrated her First Holy Communion. I was present at the party celebrating her 1 st Communion, and what a celebration it was. The parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles were so excited and happy for the First Communicant. By God’s grace she was part of a family that loved her into new life. She will forever carry the wound of not being wanted by her birth mother or birth father, but that wound has been transformed by the crucifying/resurrecting love of her adopted family. She has found her identity as an adopted child of God in the midst of a loving community of faith.

The Risen Lord almost always appears to a group of his disciples, to the community called “church.” Even when the Risen Lord appears to individuals, such as to Peter or Mary Magdalene, it is so they can return to the community of disciples with the good news of his Resurrection.

The Risen Lord still reveals himself in the midst of his wounded followers today, so that as a people, as His Broken/Glorified Body, we may rise with Him to New Life. Our lives are not our own---we need a Savior to surrender to who will transform our suffering into something of shining value, our dying to new life, our fear into the seeds of faith.

At this holy meal the Risen Lord eats with us and breaks open the Scriptures for us. All the other meals we share on this earth are connected with this Sacred Meal, and this Sacred Meal sheds light on all the ordinary ways we nourish others by our love.

So we may comprehend the Good News that good can come from evil, that suffering love can be the doorway to glory, and that the radiance of new life can emerge from the darkness of death.