EASTER HOMILY 2014
Alleluia,
Christ is risen!
The first
witnesses at the tomb of Jesus in the city of Jerusalem proclaimed, to their
peril, that the same Jesus who had been brutally put to death and buried was, by
the power of God, alive again in the very city in which he had been executed.
He was not vaguely
“with God,” nor had his soul escaped from his body. He was not an angel as
people sentimentally say at funerals these days. He had not risen in a purely
symbolic sense. No, he, Jeshoua, a Jewish man from Galilee,
the rabbi and friend whom they knew, was alive again in Jerusalem.
What they and all
Jewish people expected for the righteous dead at the end of time had happened,
in time, to this particular person, to Jesus whom they and we have come to recognize
as Christ, the anointed one. This reality gave energy and power to the first
Christian proclamation of the resurrection, which spread, rapidly through the
world.
Jesus’ apostles
and disciples began telling everyone in the city that something new and
astounding had happened and that the city of Jerusalem and the world would never
again be the same.
Author C.S. Lewis,
in his role as an Oxbridge professor of medieval and renaissance literature,
observed that those who think the resurrection story is a myth haven’t read
many myths. Mythic literature deals in archetypes, which are outside of history
and beyond time. Myths speak of “once
upon a time” or “in a galaxy far, far away.” The Gospels don’t use that sort of
language describing the resurrection of Christ.
The Gospels speak
of particular places like the City of Jerusalem, and the events, which took
place when a specific officer, Pontius Pilate, was the Roman governor of the
region. The Gospels and the oral
proclamation of Christian tradition refer to distinct individuals— Andrew, Peter,
James and John. These people encountered Jesus after he rose
from the dead. They did not refer to
this experience in any way as a dream or an hallucination.
As difficult as
some in the modern city find it to believe in the resurrection, even they know
that no one will risk death defending a myth. The myths of Greece and Rome are powerful
and illuminating but there are no martyrs to Zeus or Jupiter. Many of the first witnesses of the
resurrection who shared this Good News went to their deaths defending the truth
of their message: Peter in Rome, the other apostles, all except St. John the
Evangelist, did not die of old age, they died confessing the truth: Jesus
Christ is risen!
They proclaimed,
as we do, that because of Jesus’ victory over death, violence — from the Epic of
Hercules to “Game of Thrones”— is exposed and its legitimacy is condemned in
light of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
In the view of
many leaders past and present, order comes through warfare and invasion, through
power and physical strength. The great Pax
Romana of the Roman Empire maintained its hold through a massive army and
the imposition of harsh punishment on those who opposed it.
Jesus’ way of
establishing the Empire of Love, the City of God is not through violence or
retribution. Instead, it has to do with a love, which swallows up hate, with
confession of our own sins and the acceptance of God’s forgiveness, and then with
the grace to forgive others rather than seek vengeance or a scapegoat.
The significance
of Christ’s victory is emphasized by the fact that Jerusalem, where the events
took place, is not a mythical city, nor is Jerusalem simply a synonym for
heaven. Rather, Jerusalem and Temple of the Body of Christ form the new
civilization founded in our midst, the civilization of the Lamb – of the
innocent victim raised from the dead by the power of God in a new and transformed
city, a new civilization – the City of God.
Jesus has
revealed the truth of God’s love for us by undergoing the worst that humans can
do to one another and through his complete self-sacrifice he has put to an end
the repetition of human sacrifice by the forgiveness of sin. Today, tomorrow and
forever those of us who affirm Jesus’ resurrection are citizens of this City of
God, of the New Jerusalem which will come to its fullness at the end time.
Walker Percy,
the southern American Catholic novelist in his novel, “The Moviegoer” describes the city of New Orleans in which his main
character Bolling is increasingly uuneasy with the comfortable life he has. He
observes the sights and sounds of the human city and floats through
relationships. Finally Bolling comes to understand himself as a “seeker” rather
than a resident – he longs inchoately for meaning, for another city. Though he
does not say it explicitly, he longs for the heavenly city, the place of
meaning and love – Jerusalem, the City of God.
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| The Cathedral-Basilica of St. Louis King of France in New Orleans overlooks Jackson Square. It is the oldest Catholic cathedral in continual use in the United States |
This city, this civilization exists alongside the city of Man, the city of violence and greed. The City of God is the place in which the Holy Spirit continues to bring about saving acts through this new civilization, the sacramental life of the Church. While still in the human city we participate in the real city, the eternal city. We are baptized into Jesus real death, we are personally forgiven by him in persona Christi as the priest pronounces his words of absolution in real time, we share communion in the real presence of Christ’s body at the altar.
In today’s
ceremonies we see in sign and gesture the essence of the life of the Church and
the life of every Christian soul. We will renew our baptismal promises and pray
that we may be drawn more deeply into the civilization of the City of God,
the fullness of the Church’s life. We pray that we may come one day to that
awesome place – the New Jerusalem –
where sorrow and sighing will flee away and we shall, as Isaiah says: “be filled with joy and gladness” (cf.
Is. 35: 10) because we know the truth of the resurrection and we belong to the risen
Lord, the One who is the Temple
in the heart of Jerusalem, the eternal City of God.
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