As
Saint Peter summarized today the message of the Gospel and the life
of Christ, so too for our own age should every priest, and so I
thought I'd better give it a try for my first Easter Homily as a
priest. So here we go, in one compact sentence: in order to reunite
us with Himself, God conquered sin by His Son's Paschal Mystery and
our own participation in that mystery.
The
essential reason for the incarnation is also summarized in the
Catechism of Catholic Church CCC 460 The
Word became flesh to make us "partakers
of the divine nature":78 "For
this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of
man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus
receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God."79 "For
the Son of God became man so that we might become God."80 "The
only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity,
assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."81
This
is the essence of the Gospel, the Good News that we hear in today's
readings, the center of our faith: Christ came to lift up a fallen
humanity. But why is it that humanity finds it so difficult to
believe this Good News?
The
reason is that humanity was (and without God, still is) in a dire
strait. We were lost from God, we were lost even from ourselves and
who we were created to be. We even fail to believe that God is a
loving God who desires our good; so often we cry out like Job does:
“why does God not care about my suffering? Why did he create me if
only to watch me waste away?” Such is the cries of Job.
Sin
causes this false view of God. We don't trust Him because we have
run away from Him. As God told Jeremiah the prophet, “they have
forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn out cisterns for
themselves, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” We ran away
from God, we chose to be self-sufficient. This all began of course,
with Adam and Eve, who believed the lie of the serpent that God was
holding back something from us, and so we should take it for
ourselves. They did, and the false image of God as a corrupt tyrant
began to be passed down from generations.
This
is why humanity fails to hear the Good News that God, who is love,
became man, died on a cross, and freed us from our sins.
We
see the disbelief in the disciples. As they cautiously gathered
information, wondering what it all could mean, we too feel like them.
We don't always see God nor understand his actions. We sometimes
ask, Where is He? Why have our hopes been shattered?
Often
the answer is: our hopes have been shattered because they are too
small. God has bigger plans, unimaginable plans for our happiness
and peace, and we fail to dream that big.
Jesus
conquers that ancient problem our sins have caused by His Paschal
Mystery: his Passion, death and Resurrection. The sin of Adam was
committed by a man's disobedient hand stretching out to take from a
tree. The forgiveness of Christ was completed by the God-man's
obedient hand being nailed to a tree. And because this one act of
perfect love and obedience was by God made man, it could not be
swallowed up in the history books, but rather transcends every time
and place to have cosmic consequences for us all.
But
for that victory to be our own, we have to participate in it.
Last
night at our Easter Vigil, our Elect began their sharing in the
Lord's death and Resurrection by their Baptism, Confirmation, and
First Eucharist. It does not end there. For us baptized, our life
must be continually shaped by transformation, by the new life that
Christ gives us. If we continually enter more deeply into this
mystery, we will find that God does keep His promises. We will find
that our faith has not been in vain, and that God has done things for
us that are beyond our greatest secret wishes.
No comments:
Post a Comment