VI Sunday Easter, Cycle B

(Mother's Day)

Acts 10:25-26, 34,35, 44-48
Ps98:1, 2-3, 3-4
1 Jn 4:7-10
Jn 15:9-17

Today’s Gospel is certainly one of my most favorite passages of our Lord because He simply lays it all out: This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. I like to make it a point to say that the most important word in that sentence is “as”.   It’s a comparative word; it signifies that there is a standard to love.  That love is not a subjective thing, but an objective thing; that I am to love not as I think I should love but as the Lord has loved me.  And by that standard… He loved me to death.

There are only a few people in my life that would do that for me.  And I know for all you mother’s out there – what wouldn't you do for your children?  That part of you that is willing to *literally* sacrifice your body for your children is naturally built into your feminine nature.  Mothers don’t really think about it and at times it is taken for granted.  And this is where it starts to really hurt.  From the moment of conception, the child in you depends on you, knows that you love them and returns that love in countless ways.  But as they grow up and become independent in their own person, the love you give them in your words and actions aren't reciprocated; the love doesn't come back.  And sometimes, it’s outright rejected.  And so mothers know about rejection and hurt all too well.  But this is where it’s pretty much true, not just for mothers, but for everyone…. Love that is given out but doesn't come back hurts a lot.  If love is supposed to be unconditional, then why does it hurt so much when it doesn't come back? I think the answer is that true love is supposed to hurt – it naturally hurts, but when it doesn't return it hurts even more. Why?

 The definition of Love is to “will the good for another” and the highest good that you can will is yourself.  And so the highest form of love is the gift of yourself.  And if you give yourself to another in love, to know them and to be known by them, then in a sense, you've lost a part of yourself.  But when love comes back, it fills that part of you that is given out and so you feel whole again. The more perfect the love, the more feeling of completeness and wholeness. 

Then what about Jesus?  How is Jesus able to give Himself completely over to sinners like us infinitely and perfectly – suffering torture, ridicule, rejection, and blasphemy?!  He’s given His whole entire life over – and so His pain is not only physically great, but I would argue: the emotional pain alone would be enough to kill Him and for Him to die of a broken heart.  According to this definition of love, of giving His whole self, and how is able face all of that on the Cross?  It doesn't add up.  

Something is missing… and this is the key not only for Christ but for us to endure this rejection.  As the Father love me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. When Christ gives Himself to us for the sake of our sins, He never ever loses sight of the Father’s abiding love.  This is the source of all consolation – the love that should never be sacrificed or given away: the Love of the Father: remaining in His love.  We are able to endure rejection, ridicule, and hatred because our hearts are never really given away but found in the abiding love of God.  If you don’t have that in your heart, if you don’t have His Love, His Peace, and Consolation in your heart – you will never ever be able to love one another as He has loved us. Through Him, with Him and in Him – is the only way to love and if you aren’t doing it that way, then you can expect to be hurt and wounded. And this won’t change until you turn back to Him for healing. 

Our love is imperfect and that’s why forgiveness is such an important part to love. If you find it difficult to forgive, especially your loved ones; if you find it difficult to release those grudges, those resentments, and offenses then you aren't *loving* in the right way. You need to go back to God because you cannot will forgiveness any more than you can will the night to be day. Forgiveness, true forgiveness starts in the deep recesses of the heart at the wound.  And in that wound, in that hurt, to allow the Lord God to come into it and pour His Love and Truth into it and heal it.  The hole in your heart is leaking and hemorrhaging and until it is healed, you will never have a strong enough heart to forgive. So take to heart these words: turn to God and ask for God to go to your heart and bring healing there. Only after you feel whole there, then you will be able to forgive.  

Remember that it is not we who chose Him, but He who chose us. He is the first mover, the first lover. And so our action is not the initiative but a response to His invitation to Love by His standard and not by our own.  

Today I picked a heavy topic for Mother’s Day and I wish that things could be lighter.  But all of you, especially you Mothers have at one time in your life experienced loss, experienced hurt and rejection at the hands of someone you have loved. However great or small that hurt was, it was a hurt and it’s important to recognize it because it was not meant to be like that. Although I am not a mother, I do know what loss and rejection feels like; I do know what it feels like to have a broken heart, after all I am a human being. What I offer all of you today is an invitation to find healing and reconciliation in God and by His standard of Love.  Because I know what the Love of the Father feels like, I have experienced it and in it I have experienced the power to forgive, to release, and to find and feel true freedom in Him.  And I only feel like I should share this with all of you, to share with you this great hope and joy in our Lord and Savior.  “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. "

 

Maundy Thursday

Ex 12:1-8, 11-14
Ps 116:12-13, 15-16bc,17-18
1 Cor 11:23-26
Jn 13:1-15

Isn’t it interesting that the less time we have on earth, the more we try to live on forever?  The threat of something or someone going away only makes you want it more; because once it is gone it is gone forever.  If you had only a few hours left with your closest friends and loved ones, what would you say or do?  Of course we would want to try to do something that would be remembered forever.  Usually people remember famous last words, not famous first words.  People’s last words are usually a summation of their entire life, all that defines them: in a pithy little sentence or phrase – their finiteness stretches to infinity with their parting words.

The very foundation of our faith, the focal point of our Christian life is centered on what Christ did this very night.  It is the night in history that lives on for eternity – a night that is different than any other night.  Tonight we celebrate now what had happened 2000 years ago, what continues to happen and what will continue to happen forever.  When our Lord celebrated His last meal with His closest friends, He brought about three things that radically transformed our relationship with Him: the priesthood, the Eucharist, and the new Commandment.  Tonight He brings His twelve disciples into a unique relationship with Himself. He offers His very self to His disciples in the Passover Sacrifice - Holy Eucharist, and thereby institutes a new priesthood in His example – simple ordinary men ordained into the High Priesthood of Jesus Christ.

In our Lord’s instruction, the Eucharist and the Priesthood are tied intimately together – one cannot be without the other. When Christ said, Do this in memory of me, He instituted the priesthood and the Holy Eucharist.  This seemingly simple meal that He shared with His closest confreres makes the all bloody sacrifices of Noah, Abraham, Moses, Passover, and ultimately Himself into the new unbloody sacrifice of the Mass. In our celebration of the Eucharist, we join in the sacrifice of Christ, a fragrant offering to the Father.  What we partake in tonight is His Body, His Blood.  The Holy Mass is not a show or a re-enactment that is performed and we are simply watching bystanders.  Tonight takes us back to the small upper room in Jerusalem. You don’t need to imagine it, you are already there when He says, Take this and eat of it.  Take this and drink of it.

In the same way, it takes Jesus Christ Himself to say those words to make the ordinary substances of bread and wine to become His extraordinary flesh and blood.  The authority for any priest to do this comes from the unbroken succession of the Apostles. No ordinary man does this on his own; but he must be ordained to do so by one who has the authority.  The power does not come from himself, but from Jesus Christ.  Therefore the priest is truly Jesus Christ in the celebration of Mass.  He is at one time merely a human collaborator and also in the person of Jesus Christ.  The priest is at the time a sinner needing forgiveness and one to absolve and forgive others’ sins.  The priest is to be holy beyond reproach and yet understands that he can do nothing without the help of God.  When a priest celebrates the Mass he assumes an incredible position between God and man through Jesus Christ in the Eucharist; he is a servant, a victim, and intercessor for all his faithful both here living and dead.  St. John Vianney writes this about a priest during the celebration of the Eucharist:

O Holy and Eternal Father, let us make an exchange. Thou hast the soul of my friend who is in Purgatory, and I have the Body of Thy Son, Who is in my hands; well, do Thou deliver my friend, and I offer Thee Thy Son, with all the merits of His Death and Passion.

The priesthood and the Eucharist cannot be separated.  Christ intended that these two sacraments be carried on and handed on to new generations.  “No priest, No Eucharist. No Eucharist, No priest.”  And tonight we remember the institution of the priesthood and the Eucharist.  But that is not all... for what comes out even more front and center to all of this is not to just stayed glued in our pews in Church, but to GO OUT into the world.

But why is tonight nicknamed Maundy Thursday and not Priesthood or Eucharist Thursday?  Aren’t those the more important things?  Let us not forget our Lord’s words: Greater love has no man than this, that to lay down one’s life for his friends.  The Maundy is an English adaptation of the Latin word Mandatum, which means “commandment” and is from tonight’s Gospel: I give you a new commandment to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do... Love one another. What is part and parcel to the establishment of the Eucharist and the Priesthood is the establishment of heart of sacrifice and worship: Love, Charity. And that’s why we call today Maundy Thursday. By fulfilling the Ten Commandments, Our Lord reiterates the commandment to love one another as I have loved you in the last moments of His life by washing the feet of His disciples. In all His acts that would be remembered, it is Love that is the bedrock; the foundation of all things that Christ has done.  Christ became man out of love for us.  Christ healed us, preached to us, shares Himself with us out of love for us, and finally He died out of love for us.

Ten years ago my pastor, a Franciscan priest who had served in the Vatican for decades, was going to wash the feet for the first time in his life.  When asked why, he said that in the Vatican, there was always a monsignor or bishop that trumped him.  At 70 some odd years old, this was the first time he had been a pastor.  As he stooped down in front of me to wash my feet, I was incredibly moved to tears because I thought to myself, “How am I worthy for this?  A priest’s hands are sacred and holy – they hold the Body and Blood of Christ, they are anointed with sacred chrism and they anoint others, they are the hands that bless and absolve sins. And now, they are touching my ugly and dirty calloused feet.”  If Jesus, whose hands were pierced by nails with blood flowing out washed the feet of His followers, surely a priest of Jesus must do the same.  If this action humbles the priest to service, I am sure the people whose feet are washed are even more moved to humility: love and truth are one.  And in turn, they know that the only way to respond is to perpetuate that love shown to them and bring it to others.  Therefore, the “commandment to love” is not an obligation or mandate by force – it the very LOVE of Christ that impels us to service; one is to Loved into service.

The Eucharist is food, spiritual food, and we are spiritually fed.  However, it is not just for ourselves, but to bring others to Christ and Christ to others through charity and service.  What good is it just to receive Christ by our mouths and not carry out the work of charity in our hands?  Christ gives us the model to follow; otherwise we would be greedy and selfish, hoarding God’s gifts to ourselves.

The Eucharist is our sacramental and spiritual connection with Christ and the Commandment to love one another demonstrated in the washing of the feet is our physical connection with Christ.  Tonight we not only see a priest do what Christ commanded his disciples to do at the Last Supper and thereby instituting the Eucharist, we also see how the priest – in the person of Christ – washes the feet of his disciples to show how we are to love one another.  Both the Eucharist and Charity are intimately united and is the reason why Christ came. God is love; His love is the gift of Himself completely and totally.  He gives Himself physically and spiritually and what has been given to us, we must give to one another until the end of time.  I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.  I give you a new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you.

Our Lady of Sorrows

Office of Readings: Second Reading

From a sermon by Saint Bernard, abbot
(Sermo in dom. infra oct. Assumptionis, 14-15: Opera omnia, Edit. Cisterc. [1968], 273-274
His mother stood by the cross

The martyrdom of the Virgin is set forth both in the prophecy of Simeon and in the actual story of our Lord’s passion. The holy old man said of the infant Jesus: He has been established as a sign which will be contradicted. He went on to say to Mary: And your own heart will be pierced by a sword.

Truly, O blessed Mother, a sword has pierced your heart. For only by passing through your heart could the sword enter the flesh of your Son. Indeed, after your Jesus—who belongs to everyone, but is especially yours—gave up his life, the cruel spear, which was not withheld from his lifeless body, tore open his side. Clearly it did not touch his soul and could not harm him, but it did pierce your heart. For surely his soul was no longer there, but yours could not be torn away. Thus the violence of sorrow has cut through your heart, and we rightly call you more than martyr, since the effect of compassion in you has gone beyond the endurance of physical suffering.

Or were those words, Woman, behold your Son,not more than a word to you, truly piercing your heart, cutting through to the division between soul and spirit? What an exchange! John is given to you in place of Jesus, the servant in place of the Lord, the disciple in place of the master; the son of Zebedee replaces the Son of God, a mere man replaces God himself. How could these words not pierce your most loving heart, when the mere remembrance of them breaks ours, hearts of iron and stone though they are!

Do not be surprised, brothers, that Mary is said to be a martyr in spirit. Let him be surprised who does not remember the words of Paul, that one of the greatest crimes of the Gentiles was that they were without love. That was far from the heart of Mary; let it be far from her servants.

Perhaps someone will say: “Had she not known before that he would not die?” Undoubtedly. “Did she not expect him to rise again at once?” Surely. “And still she grieved over her crucified Son?” Intensely. Who are you and what is the source of your wisdom that you are more surprised at the compassion of Mary than at the passion of Mary’s Son? For if he could die in body, could she not die with him in spirit? He died in body through a love greater than anyone had known. She died in spirit through a love unlike any other since his.

XVI Sunday Ordinary Time, Cycle A

Wis 12:13, 16-191
Ps 86:5-6, 9-10, 15-16
Rom 8:26-27
Mt 13:24-43

My brothers and sisters, today's Gospel of the Weeds and the Wheat is ultimately a parable about hope.  The fact that evil exists in the world; that sin abounds in the world is not a sign that God does not care or that God does not exist.  Rather it is in our weakness, our very dependence on God – especially in times of trial and tribulation – that we are given the opportunity to grow closer to God and rely less upon ourselves.  The evils that are visited upon us are opportunities for growth and repentance.  We have the blessing of time and space to be able to grow and correct our sinfulness.  Things don’t move forward without friction – and so the Cross that we pick up daily is not meant to be carried reluctantly, but embraced lovingly.  And this is where faith and hope are intimately tied together and will see us through to the end where all will be vindicated.

Justice belongs to God, not to us.  He is the source of justice. He will judge with clemency; with mercy and justice.  Therefore, do not hold resentment in your heart for those that are better than you or have more than you.  But look and see the blessings that are given to you.  God does not demonstrate His love for you by how much He blesses others; how silly that sounds! – You will never know how much He loves you until you start counting your own blessings, until you start praying, and desiring to follow His will.

To be upset at God for all the bad things and for the lack of good things happening in your life without praying and having a relationship with Him is like being angry and upset at a total stranger for not being your friend.  What did you do to get to know that stranger?  How have you tried to be his friend?  Even more so with our Lord – He desires an intimate friendship with us, but we have not taken those steps to befriend Him.  If you do not know how to pray then ask Him to help you to pray or learn how to pray!

You know…. there is a part of me that is glad that God is going to take care of business at the end of time.  I think you might have that feeling too.  All the sick people in this world – the ones who are so far gone, hopeless, and set it in their ways, and are just so evil – committing evil and heinous acts…. They’re gonna get their just punishment aren’t they?  Especially the ones that have wronged us; that they have trespassed against us and took advantage of us!  Yes, they will get what’s coming to them.  Am I right?

And then I realized that this is wrong.  All these “weeds” are still part of God’s creation and as long as they live here on this earth – there is still hope for them.  There is still an opportunity for them to change and transform their lives and hearts as best as they can towards God.  How have we reached out to reconcile and bring others to God – those “weeds” of the world?  How have we offered prayers and penances for their conversion – instead we have relegated them to be without hope and not worth our time to be saved.  This doesn’t sound very Christian.

Take care, too, for yourself – the last I checked, none of you are canonized saints – myself included.  I think that the real “kicker” in this Gospel today is that our Lord didn’t say who was the wheat and who are the weeds.  Wouldn’t it be unfortunate that all this time you thought you were a happy go lucky wheat when you were actually a weed?  There are times I feel like wheat and there are times that I am more a weed.  How sure are you, that when you die, you will not be a weed thrust into the fire?  The fire is not just reserved for the worst of the worst, but see what our Lord says [later] in the Gospel: The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect our of his kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers. They will throw them in to the fiery furnace where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. Hmmm… all who cause others to sin and all evildoers I think that might just cover us too – even on a good day.

Like I said earlier, the parable of the weeds and the wheat is a message of hope – not only for the world, but for our individual salvation.  We are not yet saints, but fortunately we are not yet condemned to the eternal fire.  As long as we are alive and in this world, we must pray and bring ourselves humbly before God – recognizing our sin – repenting and reconciling ourselves to His mercy.  Do not look down on or compare yourself with your neighbor, your spouse, or anyone else; but turn towards God to help you grow closer to Him.  God desires us all to be the wheat of the world and for others to become wheat.  It is why He gave us the Eucharist – Himself – to transform us to be more like Him.

Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle

A homily on the Gospels from St. Gregory the Great, pope

"Dearly beloved, what do you see in these events? Do you really believe that it was by chance that this chosen disciple was absent, then came and heard, heard and doubted, doubted and touched, touched and believed? It was not by chance but in God’s providence. In a marvellous way God’s mercy arranged that the disbelieving disciple, in touching the wounds of his master’s body, should heal our wounds of disbelief. The disbelief of Thomas has done more for our faith than the faith of the other disciples. As he touches Christ and is won over to belief, every doubt is cast aside and our faith is strengthened. So the disciple who doubted, then felt Christ’s wounds, becomes a witness to the reality of the resurrection.

"Touching Christ, he cried out: My Lord and my God. Jesus said to him: Because you have seen me, Thomas, you have believed. Paul said: Faith is the guarantee of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. It is clear, then, that faith is the proof of what can not be seen. What is seen gives knowledge, not faith. When Thomas saw and touched, why was he told: You have believed because you have seen me? Because what he saw and what he believed were different things. God cannot be seen by mortal man. Thomas saw a human being, whom he acknowledged to be God, and said: My Lord and my God. Seeing, he believed; looking at one who was true man, he cried out that this was God, the God he could not see."

"What is seen gives knowledge, not faith."  So many ask for proofs, evidence of the God invisible.  And yet, He is so present in our lives.  Well known story of "doubting Thomas" is invaluable in helping us bridge the gap between our experience and our faith. Must we see to believe?  And what exactly must be seen to believe? What is it going to take to believe for one who doubts and is skeptical?  Would it be better then to believe without seeing?

My Lord and My God, I do believe! Help my unbelief!

Ascension of Our Lord, Cycle A

Act 1:1-11
Ps 47:2-3, 6-7, 8-9
Eph 1:17-23
Mt 28:16-20


It would have been enough for God to have declared us forgiven and we would be forgiven. But He didn’t.  He took on human nature and became God incarnate out of love for us.  It would have been enough for Christ to assume human flesh and go about preaching a new morality that followed the spirit of the law rather than simply the letter of the law.  But He taught and revealed Himself and our morals through parables, healings, and preaching for three years out of love for us.  It would have been enough if Christ simply showed us how to take on suffering and carrying our Crosses daily by bearing insults and libelous claims against Him. But He carried that Cross to Golgotha suffered and died on the Cross out of love for us.  It would have been enough that He died for our sins, but then He rose from the dead, journeyed with all His disciples for 40 more days, He went and ascended into heaven out of love for us.

So after all that journeying, all of the lessons and parables, the miracles of healing and changing this into that, suffering a cruel and horrible death, resurrecting and now walking amongst His disciples for over a month re-hashing everything that He had been teaching them for the past three years…. Finally we come to the end of the journey and you can imagine the Christ’s frustration as the disciples ask: “Lord are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” Why don’t they get it?!  Why don’t WE get it?  Again the disciples are causing our Lord to have a Holy Face Palm!!  After all the sermons, after all of those examples and parables, the disciples are still looking for a messiah that would liberate their people from Roman occupation and reestablish the Davidic Kingship…. That’s all they cared about and their vision fell short to see the greater picture of Christ ushering in the Kingdom of God.  But why does Christ go away?  Why does He have to leave?

We are often times so focused on the here and now: our plans, our desires, our thoughts, opinions, feelings and emotions.  And here we miss what is really going on. You would think that Christ’s leaving would be something depressing and saddening, but this is not so.  At the end of Luke’s Gospel (which wasn’t read today) after the Ascension the disciples are recounted as joyful: [He] was taken up to heaven. They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God.  This doesn’t make sense because we are sad when anyone or anything goes away.  If our friends or family move away or passes away do we rejoice?  (Only if we don’t like ‘em – but we still feel guilty!)  But even if we hear about a tragic accident or a natural disaster in some remote part of the world, we feel a sense of loss.  But with the disciples this account seems strange – they are happy and rejoicing!  This begs the question: why?

In the first reading: When he [Christ] had said this, as they [the disciples] were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight.  I missed this line of scripture and didn’t think there was anything to it.  But as I read Pope Benedict’s interpretation in his second book Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week (from the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection), my eyes were opened.  The cloud is a theological statement.  Recall all the times in scripture that a cloud appears – “the Transfiguration: in which a bright cloud falls on Jesus and the disciples; at the Annunciation: the archangel Gabriel announces to Mary the ‘overshadowing’ of the Most High; in the Old Testament: Moses with the Israelites journeying in the desert had the ‘shadow’ of the cloud that hovered over the holy tent of God and led the people through the desert…”  All of these awesome miraculous miracles are a sign of God’s presence and when Christ ascends into the cloud, it means that He Himself is entering into this mystery that connects all of these events.

Why does the Lord go away?  The answer is simple, but the meaning is complex:  He goes away to come to us.  What do we say in the Creed?  “He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory…”  He goes away to come again, and to come closer.  We are not to think that Christ simply just goes away in some remote corner of the universe.  No, He is God and so He goes away to be at the right hand of the Father so that in the Father He can be more intimately closer to us!  To think that He is simply a human person sitting in a seat far far away is to limit the fact that He is God and omnipresent – always and everywhere present to us.  He goes away so that He can be closer to us.  

If you remember the story right after the Resurrection, Mary Magdalene goes up to the tomb and she is despairing and looking for our Lord, afraid that someone has taken Him away.  Our Lord simply calls her name, “Mary!” and she tries to grab onto Him.  Our Lord steps away and says, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.”  It is a puzzling statement, but when we understand that the Ascension is necessary for us so that we may be even more intimately closer to Him, it makes perfect sense.  To “hold on to Him” only in human terms would be limiting Himself to her and to all of us.  To believe that Christ would be the messiah to conquer Romans and re-establish the Davidic kingdom would be to limit the Kingdom of God to merely human terms/understanding.  NO! Christ is King of the world, King of the Universe and all of Creation.  It makes me marvel how small our minds are in the context of God’s designs!  Who would have known that He ascended to the right hand of the Father, not to hide Himself, but to reveal Himself more fully?  Who would have known that His ascension allows us to be more intimately connected to Him – not just in His humanity, but more importantly in His divinity!!

My Brothers and Sisters, the feast of the Ascension of Our Lord is not just another feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ and another “cool thing” that He did, but rather it is the great moment for us to recognize Him in all His glory and the pledge of His future promise of the Resurrection.  It is for us to recognize how our thoughts, whims and desires cannot compare to His ultimate love for us.  He didn’t just resurrect Himself and ascend into heaven…. He invites us into the divine hope – to have the Faith so that we experience Him in this life and the life to come: our Resurrection!   This week and for the rest of your life, remember that we cannot be so short-sighted to only think about this world, we must go beyond and try to understand first what God is revealing to us.  We must live for the Resurrection, for our life at the End, not just to make ends meet.  Know that Christ is here and now present to us more intimately than human comprehension through the Ascension so that we too – like the disciples in Luke’s gospel be rejoicing in His Temple.

III Sunday of Easter, Cycle A

Act 2:14, 22-23
Ps16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11
1 Pt 1:17-21
Lk 24:13-35

In the year 1984, there was a movie that was released and forever changed the way people looked at me, especially my classmates. But it was not until I was in the third or fourth grade did my classmates get to watch this movie.  I had pretty normal friends; friends that I played with in my back alley kicking soccer balls back and forth and using our garage doors as goals.  But when my friends got to watch that movie, they started acting strange around me.  I didn’t watch very many movies back then because my parents didn’t know.  But this movie had an unmistakable gesture, a tell-tale movement of the body that not only showed that you watched it, but that you embraced and embodied everything it stood for.  Now if I do this gesture, you too will know what I’m talking about…. It’s the universal sign and if you don’t get it, you have some catching up to do!!!

Of course the movie that I'm talking about is “The Karate Kid” and because this movie came out… every single one of my classmates thought I knew karate or some sort of martial art.  As if all Asians, by their very DNA, were genetically predisposed to know kung fu.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to be thinking in your minds: “Yeah, I bet Fr. Reuben knows Shaolin kung fu… I mean he even *looks* like a Buddhist monk.”  Sorry to disappoint… I don’t know any martial arts. And you shouldn’t be stereotyping people! ;)  What was so fascinating to me about this movie was how Ralph Macchio or “Daniel-san” was learning and training under Mr. Miyagi.  He was so excited that his new sensei or teacher would teach him how to fight off a Darth of bullies that were beating up him.  But all Mr. Miyagi instructed him to do was to Force him into menial work and chores: painting the fence, sweeping the floor, “wax on, wax off.”  Daniel was not only frustrated, but angry at Mr. Miyagi. Daniel was all too eager to start breaking wooden blocks and concrete bricks; retaliating and fighting.  Finally, Daniel blows up and yells at his master.  And what happens next?   Mr. Miyagi reveals that he had been training this young padawan all along – that all the sore muscles and disciplined work actually came to fruition.  His training was complete.

In the Gospel today, what the two disciples of Jesus had experienced was nothing short of unpacking the whole entirety of Salvation History from the beginning of time into a little seven mile journey from Jerusalem to Emmaus.  These two were completely dazed and confused at what had happened.  Remember that this passage takes place on Easter Sunday.  Only two days prior was their leader, their Lord and Master brutally tortured and crucified, dying a horrible painful death.  And now these events of Easter are still very puzzling… what does this all mean?  Their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.  Only when the scriptures were unpacked, the milestones marked, and bread broken did it all become revealed: their eyes were opened and they recognized him.  And they remarked in amazement to each other… “Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?”

So you might be wondering what does “The Karate Kid” have to do with the Gospel?  Well, let’s think about this Daniel-san.  The disciples were told certain things and taught certain things; and having inherited all of the writings and teachings of the Jewish faith, they knew and were expecting that the Messiah would come and save them… that a new kingdom – one as grand as old King David’s kingdom.  However, they did not put what they had learned into proper context – the context of the Incarnation: that God Himself would come down, to take on flesh and blood, to lay down His life, not with perishable things like silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ as of a spotless unblemished lamb.  The disciples were expecting another King David, but what they got was something even better: the Son of God!  That the patriarch David died and was buried… but God raised this Jesus of this we are all witnesses. 

The Old Testament scriptures recount the theological history of events of the Jewish people and out of habits of what they had experienced in the past was what they were expecting to see and experience in the present and future.  The people tried to fit Christ into THEIR narrative, but they missed the fact that He is THE NARRATIVE. He’s the one writing this story and people have been misinterpreting ever since.  "Daniel-san" also experienced and knew what manual labor was in the past, but with Mr. Miyagi those habitual actions are transformed into the art of self-defense and self-actualization.   The disciples’ hearts were burning with a desire that they knew unconsciously that this Man was speaking the Truth!!!  And so their very souls resonated and glowed for God, but yet not able to see.

My brothers and sisters, it’s time to start our training!!  Our bodies and our souls are equipped to receive God’s love; your souls can be burning too! And you can tell when you are not because you are frustrated, confused, and angry at God. The same menial labor worked day in and day out seems pointless and hopeless because our hearts have not experienced the Resurrection, our eyes have not been opened in the breaking of the Bread.  Our Gospel says that our Lord vanished from their sight – where did He go?  I don’t know about you, but my mind immediately jumps to the bread that was just blessed and broken – the Holy Eucharist!  When you receive God – the Holy Eucharist – do you know who you are receiving into your body?  Do you believe that this is substantially, essentially the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord? There are people that say that they don’t get anything out of Mass, that it is boring, and the same thing over and over again – that nothing changes…. Well guess what?  If earth is preparation for Heaven, and Mass is heaven on Earth and you don’t get anything out of it.... then there’s always another place you can go after you die!!!  It’s your choice.  Do not let yourself get angry about the failures and failings of things happening in life.  Do not let the same thing over and over again frustrate you and get confused.  But rather put everything into its proper context (get out of yourself) and your hang-ups, open your eyes, and see WHO is being revealed.