Sixteen of our deacons made priesthood promises tonight.


We are witnesses of these things,as is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.

It is said that the rector has only two commands. The first you have all already heard. It is the invitation to be here. From the very first day of your arrival the rector said: “Be here”. It was a command, but also an invitation.

Be here and witness the power of the love of God in the ordinary workings and inner workings of this community, in the laughter and tears of your brothers, in the wonder of new discovery, in the satisfaction of hard work.

Be here and know the miracle that Christ can wrought in lives full of doubt and despair, the hope that Christ can give in men who seem to have no hope.

Be here and see the daily foibles of men slouching toward Jerusalem in fits and starts until they are finally able to run the race with grace and dignity.

Be here and witness the annual joy of work completed, prayers answered, lives fulfilled in ordination, insights gained, spiritual realties revealed in the horizons of faith that are ever expanding, ever broadening, ever deepening.

The first command of the rector is to be here. Obey him. Or rather obey God.

We are witnesses of these things,as is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.

The second command you have also heard and tonight I repeat it to our brothers who are publically proclaiming their priesthood promises. Now at the end of your sojourn on this Hill the rector says: “Get out”. It is a command, but also an invitation.

Get out and confront the Body of Christ in all of its personal grandeur and depravity. See in the eyes of your brothers and sisters, men and women and children who long for the human dignity so often denied them in the quotidian commerce of the world.

Get out and observe in your trembling hand the host, the chalice, the contents of a universe, the Lord and Master of All, in what appears to be bread and wine. See in those simple things the miracle that nothing is what it seems to be, not bread and wine, not the world, not the parish, not brothers and sisters, even the nasty ones.

Get out so you can realize that you are called to another place and when you have arrived at the other place, be there. Give your lives there; pour out your blood there. Give that place where you will be for three weeks, three months, or three years, everything you have. Hold nothing back because the Body of Christ deserves good priests, they deserve the best priests.

Get out and be aware perhaps for the first time of the skills and knowledge you have gained here. And be aware perhaps for the first time of what you do not know, cannot know without the living witness of the Body to inform you.

Get out and realize that you hold in your hand, in the promises you make tonight your passport. These promises are food for a hungry world. They are hope. They are the promise that men and women are still free, that it is still possible to make a commitment for life, that it is still possible to sacrifice and love in the sacrifice, that it is still possible to profess faith in something greater than the ephemeral, passing interests of popular culture, that it is still possible to give your life to something greater than your tastes, your opinions, your momentary whims.

For the one whom God sent speaks the words of God.He does not ration his gift of the Spirit.

We are witnesses of these things,as is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.

You will make these promises tonight in the presence of this community, but you make them in light of those other communities, in towns and pit stops from here to Iowa, to Louisiana, to Minnesota, to Kentucky, to Ohio, to Switzerland, to Alabama, to Indiana, to India, to the farthest corners of the world. You make them for men and women, for people you have never met, for the thousands upon thousands of people whose lives you will touch in your decades of priesthood, you make these promises for them and for us.

We are witnesses of these things,as is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.

Now, I also want you to make some additional promises tonight. I want you to make some promises to us as you prepare to leave us, leave this Hill, and leave Saint Meinrad.

Promise us that in the twilight of some evening wherever you may be, when you are downcast and distressed you will see in some glimmer, in some golden glow off a surface, the golden sandstone of these walls in the spring evening and be comforted.

Promise us that when you are crying, when you are feeling sorry for yourself, when you are sad, you will remember some stupid joke, some turn of phrase that made you laugh in these echoing halls so long ago and be consoled.

Promise us that in all of the difficult places that life will take you in the coming years, you will occasionally remember the Unstable, and cheap beer and the best pizza in Southern Indiana, and the prosthetic nose of an elk.

Promise us that as you traverse the classrooms of your future ministries, the numerous schools, you will remember B106 (which will somehow remain forever B106) and those tables lined up and the order in which everyone sat.

Promise us that when you think of your alma mater you will think of the laughter not the tears.

Promise us that when you can no longer kneel because of your knee replacement you will remember days of prayer in this chapel, and on this Hill.

Promise us that you will remember all the characters that were here and stayed or were here and left in vivid detail.

Promise us that you will remember the old monks who have devoted their lives, every ounce of their lives to the formation of men like you.

Promise us that your will remember the bells, those irritating bells when you need to be called back to sanity and reality.

Promise us that your will remember those sandstone crosses and their vigil candles on a blustery November night, every time you bury the dead.

Promise us that every time you pass a Wendy’s on the streets of towns in Iowa or Louisiana you will feel the exhilaration of escape and remember moaning and complaining in the drive through of the most inefficient fast food joint in the Americas.

Promise us that you will remember the Holly Tree, and chant, and roadtrips and unread books and indifferent food and black napkins and caramel macchiatos and the scholar shop and the Celtic cross and the stained glass glow of these windows at 8:00 in the morning and Esther’s voice and eggs and Easter and the Angelus.

Promise us that whenever you are awake at 2:30 in the morning worrying about the finances of the parish, or drafting a difficult letter for the third time you will remember the old rector of your seminary who may be sitting at that very hour in his room, head in hands, praying for his lost sheep.


Promise us that every year in the early autumn you will take a moment to remember the now faceless, nameless men who will climb this hill with their hearts full of fear and hope and joy and expectation and will hear some future rector say to them: “Be here” and promise us that you will pray for them as so many faceless, nameless alumni of this sacred place have remembered each of your journeys and feared and hoped and rejoiced and expected again to be revived in an invitation to promise their lives for the good of the Church and the world.

Now for the last time: Obey the rector. Or rather, obey God.

Because we are witnesses of these things,as is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.

O my what a week it has been.
Jesus rose from the dead last Sunday, and well, after Lent and all that business with the three days, the emotional roller coaster, the ups, the downs, I for one, felt like crawling in that empty tomb and rolling that rock back in place

Not possible however, as Easter must be celebrated
And celebrated we have. We have alleluiaed ourselves hoarse, exultated and lauded, we have gone through every Gloria in that book, we have sequenced in several languages, we have chanted, sang, run up and down the Church, Te Deumed, rung bells, talked in the refectory and eaten lamb cake until we were sick.

Alleluia Easter is here
And
Everything looks pretty rosy in the shining pastel light of the paschal candle

The primitive Church, depicted so lovingly by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles seems ideal
Everyone gets along
Everyone shares
There are no power struggles, no questions, no conflicting points of view

Gone is the bickering and status mongering of those old disciples; Who will be first and who will be second?

Gone is the rockheaded attempt to maintain control in often out of control pastoral situations GET BEHIND ME SATAN

Gone is the need to justify actions with dramatic professions of faith that will only be shattered momentarily. Lord I will never deny you

Gone is the equivocation, the lies the mendacity, the depravations,

The Church, in the afterglow of Easter is looking pretty good
Now that everything is peace, and love and sweetness and light and hope and faith and truth

And all would be perfect, idyllic, utopian,

Except for Thomas

Except for Thomas, O there is one in every crowd

Thomas the doubter
Thomas the fly in the ointment,
Thomas the complainer
Thomas the worrier
Thomas the skeptic
Thomas the empiricist
Thomas the evidentialist
Thomas the curmudgeon

The disciples were all worked up. He is risen, He is alive, He is glorified
He walks through walls
He cooks breakfast
But Thomas says:
I will not believe
I will never believe until I touch him, probe his wounds. Touch his hands and his side.

Fortunately, the resurrected Jesus is very patient with this sort of thing
He gives Thomas what he wants

And what did Thomas discover in that exploration of the body of Christ

What did that probing reveal to him that leads old Tom to make the most profound profession of faith in the Gospel
My Lord and my God
What did Thomas find out

That it was in fact Jesus .

It was Jesus

It was the Jesus that walked with him and the others along those dusty roads. Racing down the corridors of time with a revolutionary message of salvation THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND

It was the Jesus that healed the sick and raised the dead to new life and changed people forever, giving them not only sight, not only movement, but a reason for living, a reason for being

It was the Jesus that was hosannaed into Jerusalem on that Sunday of Palms who had been the darling of the crowds, the one they followed, adored, adulated. MESSIAH KING

It was the Jesus that offered himself, his very body and blood to his followers as a living legacy, who changed the world that night with a simple bit of bread and a cup of common wine. This is me. This is my memorial

It was the Jesus who stood trial and endured the agony of interrogation, the humiliation of being ridiculed in the court of mockery

It was the Jesus who suffered the indignity of the cross, who endured its pain even though he owed nothing, was guilty of no crime.

It was the same Jesus, the very same Jesus that called Thomas, that loved Thomas, that shared a life with Thomas, that encouraged Thomas
The same Jesus
The same Lord
The same one
Except for the wounds

Except for the wounds in his sacred hands, rent by the cold iron of our hardness of heart, our sin, our selfishness, the pride of generations, the iniquity of Adam, the indignity of the Law, broken promises, shattered covenants

Except for the wounds in his precious feet, those feet that trod the dirt strewn backroads of the human condition, healing and proclaiming announcing that we are more than what we seem, that we are a people worth fighting for, worth dying for, a beautiful people who have forgotten their own dignity and worth

Except for the wounds on his dear brow that marred his appearance beyond that of other men, that cut into his mind with the keenness of thorns the reality of the human condition, a conflicted condition, the human dilemma. I do not do what I want to do but what I am compelled to do by my pride, by my ego, by my petty wants and desires

Except for the wounds that rent his side pouring out blood and water, his precious blood for the life of the world, the waters of the new Eden, the spring of life, the flood of baptism flowing out from the Jordan and cleansing a sin ravaged landscape, giving life to the deserts of our hearts.
Except for the wounds we should have died, weighed down by our sins, pierced for our own offenses, cut off from the friendship of God and humanity, isolated from our own identity

Except for the wounds we should not be alive in these Easter Days, we could not know truth of this paschal tide, we could never see the pure grace of the cross, we should not taste the glory of the empty tomb

Except for the wounds we would not know who we are
For we too are a wounded people
We are a wounded people. Wounded by our past, our lost loves, our broken dreams, our shattered childhoods. Wounded by violence, by abuse, by hurts and real pains, by isolation, bigotry, prejudice

We are a wounded people in a wounded world, a world wounded by the ravages of hunger, of war, of a culture of death, wounded by indifference, by economic inequity, by sexism, by genocides, old grudges, hatred among peoples

We are a wounded community, wounded by pains that are long in healing, by old rejections, perceived slights, generational confusions, the indignities of disability, a lack of respect for the wisdom of age, impatience, judgementalness, self love

We are a wounded church, scarred by theological warfare, liturgical infighting, a lack of charity, dissent, clericalism, sexual abuse, power scandals

Wounded in the Church
Wounded in our community
Wounded in our world
Wounded in ourselves

And all Thomas like we probe these wounds, get to know these wounds, explore these wounds, ultimately love these wounds because these wounds tell us precisely who we are the BODY OF CHRIST

We hold a treasure but in Earthen vessels
We carry the mystery of Easter but in scarred bodies

By his wounds we have been healed

And by the wounds in his body, the Church, we come to know him

There is no Church if his body is not broken

There is no communion if his flesh is not rent, his blood poured out

There is no people if we do not share his sufferings

There is no me except that he first suffered and died and rose for me

Except for the wounds we would be nothing

Doubting Thomases without a vision of the living God

Except for the wounds there could be no salvation

And that is a reason for rejoicing in a season of endless celebration, that is a reason for singing alleluia, that is a reason for acknowledging in the rosy glow of the resurrection that it is only through the wounds, through the scars, through the fissures of life that grace rushes in.

Great Silence
It is the theme for this day

We experience great silence in the wake of the cross and burial of Jesus.

We don’t know what to do with ourselves
We wander over the campus, looking for chapels or places that are familiar.

Perhaps we don’t want to be alone.

Last night we watched at the tomb, we offered tribute, but even in the midst of the ritual there is a kind of desperation
Why are we here?

The sparseness of the burial rite, our muted voices testify to this

And then there is nothing but sheer silence

Great silence reigns on earth today.

Tonight we will gather again in a kind of bewilderment.

In parishes around the world, people will not know what to do, where to sit, where to gather.
Churches will be pitch dark
Their door flung open to the world
Nothing within
Nothing

Where do I go?
How do I see to get there?
Everything that is familiar about going to Church is made strange.

I am convinced that people do not come to the Vigil, not only because it is long, but because it is STRANGE.
We are uncomfortable

And so we gather somewhere else, for community, wherever we can find it, in the yards on the streets.

It is amazing how that sacramental presence in the Church forms us as a people, and when it is not there, how alien we feel, how alien the building feels, how much the building is like the people

We gather outside, in darkness and confusion
And then, there is a spark. And then a flame and then a fire
It is hope and light rekindled in darkened lives

Then a candle is brought out
It is the size of a man

And it represents a man, it is Jesus. The dead wax is his dead body. We thrust into it his wounds five wounds.

Then

The light of Christ rising in Glory
It moves through the people enlightening them
It moves into the Church, transforming strangeness into home again

We become one by the light of the fire of Christ

Tonight we celebrate the resurrection.

We have been through the passion and death and now we welcome Christ back to life

Of course, He was never dead. We are enacting a little drama but hopefully not a pantomime.

What we celebrate in Holy Week is not the death of Jesus, he has already died and has been raised

He is alive
He has remained alive in these three days

What we celebrate this week is the body of Christ. That is us
We recall the paschal mystery of daily living
How Christ sometimes seems to die in us and is brought to life
How we sometimes betray him and are brought back
How our lives seem empty until there are filled with the light of Christ

How we need one another to make sense of who we are.
How much we miss God when we believe him Gone

The paschal mystery is a reminder of the dynamics of discipleship
And it reminds us every year of who we are.

Suddenly, the dour sadness of the three days is over. We knew it would be, but somehow we have to live it. We watched as Jesus washed the feet of the twelve on Holy Thursday, we agonized with Christ in the garden, were offended by his betrayal, embarrassed by those who denied him. We stood steadfastly by him at the cross, wept as we wiped the blood from our arms, cried with his mother and friends, recoiled at the sight of his dead body, anointed him with Mary, lamented him with Joseph, buried him, guarded him, sorrowed.

Of course all of this is very safe from the seeming distance of 2000 years. It is easy to be with Christ in the profound but sanitized rituals of the Church.
The old song asked the poignant question. Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Well, we might have been there, but we might not have been.

Of course all of this is not the point. We remember the three days, but we do not live in the three days. We live in the today, today, the day of resurrection.

Were you there when he rose from the tomb?

Of course, we were there and we are there because in a temporal slight of hand we are now standing at the entrance to that tomb and as we peer into its emptiness, PROMISE yawns in our faces.

The empty tomb challenges us today to become people of the resurrection a people whose question is what if.

The miracle of the resurrection is the fulfillment of a promise made to Mary on the day when the drama of God’s life on earth began.

The angel said to her, nothing is impossible with God
Now we know that is true but it has consequences for us and so we ask


What if we could really believe in Easter?
What if we could let others and ourselves remain open to the gifts God wants to give us
What if we could have confidence in conversion?
What if we could share our cloaks with the needy?
What if we could give without hope of repayment?
What if we could turn the other cheek?
What if we could be people of hope?
Of the open end
Of the promise
Of the possible

What if we could really believe that nothing is impossible with God? Nothing is impossible, God can do with anyone of us what he likes, he can change our hearts, change our lives, change our community, our monastery, remove our sins, our habits, our idiosyncrasies, our singularity. He can takes our mortal bodies and make them like his own glorified body. What if

What if we could hope that there is more to our lives than what we see before us, what if we could hope for a world in which war, and hunger, and pain and sickness were but feeble memories. And beauty and truth and goodness were viable ways of living. What if poverty could be eradicated and cancer could be cured. What if the world could rise with God this Easter day. What if

What if we could give without counting the cost, without the interminable calculus of the ledger sheet of owed and owing. What we if we could be as generous with our charity as we are with our opinions, as giving to others as we are hoarders for ourselves. What if we could fast from obstinacy, give endless alms of kindness, and pray for potentials realized. What if the promises of Lent had really changed our lives? What if

What if we could aspire to live in a world of ideals, in which peace and justice are palpable and not merely dreams, in which women and men and children no longer hunger for dignity and bread. In which more resources are invested in feeding and healing than in killing and destroying. A world in which drugs are not seen as necessary because that world is not a frightening, threatening place. Where neighborhoods are safe, children are not exploited. What if Christ was alive? What if

What if we could encourage others to be more than they think they can be. What if we were endless sources of inspiration, what if we preached possibility, proclaimed truth, nourished dreams, announced forgiveness, lived lives that looked more like Good news and less like Tabloid journalism

What if we could forgive enough to put aside the petty grudges that eat away at community living? To love our brothers and sisters in the midst of their failings and foibles because we know deep down that we are somehow connected to them. We are one because the one that gives our lives meaning is One. What if the body of Christ rose from the tomb today?

What if we could forgo judgment and become a people committed to what if

With God the question is more important than the answer, the quandary more attractive than the quagmire. The possible more significant that the problem.

What if we lived in a world, in a nation, in a Church, in a community of what if?

Then our lives might be transformed and those of our neighbors might be transformed in a radiant shower of forgiveness, then we might see in others the pristiness of new snow on the dogwoods and not the slush of their accidents. We might view those around us with the urgency of coming to be. Easter people

Then our spirits might soar above the mundane the everyday, the mediocre and dare to live into the audacity of holiness. We might strive to be saints. We can do it you know? We might have a clear vision of the world above the clouds of doubt, the thunderheads of despair. People of the resurrection

Then our minds might think new thoughts, conceive new projects, engage new images, dream new dreams of fresh wind and blinding light. We might rise from the grave of our indifference, our selfishness our pride, we and all around us.

Then our souls might hover and shimmer, rising above the earth like a new moon, like an azure sunrise, like a radian host, like a glistening drop of wine, like a man risen from the dead and we might experience the purest love of God in the radiant dawn of resurrection.

Sisters and Brothers he has risen, and we have risen with him. We are the body of Christ, newly alive, preparing to meet the dawning day of what if …

Preached to the monastic community on Holy Thursday



Do you realize what I have done for you?

Jesus’ question in the Gospel tonight is not rhetorical. In fact, it may be a matter of life and death.

Last week, I had the privilege of being the retreat director for the seminarians in First Philosophy.

As we gathered for prayer each day during the retreat in the Saint Joseph Oratory, there was a small sparrow, a beautiful tiny bird, that kept flying against the large window repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly.

The bird of course, did not realize that there was no way through and so it dashed its increasingly frail body, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly against an object that would never move.

It could see its goal on the other side, but it was never going to reach that goal and so there were two possible futures for this bird.

The first was to continue to throw itself in hope against a window that it could never penetrate until at last its tiny body was worn out and it died. We have seen this pattern often enough here with our great clear windows. The sidewalk outside the monastery slype is littered with the carcasses of hummingbirds, sparrows, even cardinals that could not be taught and so the great barrier of the window finally overwhelmed them.

The second option for the sparrow would be for someone to help him out. He cannot break his determination on his own, but if someone was to capture him, to set him down in another part of the garden, to redirect him, then he could live.

The story of this tiny sparrow is not alien to us.

It is in fact our story, our collective story, the story of a people who cannot learn their lessons no matter how repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly we throw ourselves against the immovable objects of our so-called world views or lifestyles.

We make sacrifices to gods that cannot save us. Gods named fame, fortune, prestige, patronage.

We fling ourselves repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly at the windows of our own vanity, our pride, our sinfulness, our sense of self sufficienc.y

And we never realize that this is not the way to make it. This is not the way to success. We can’t get through here.

And we repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly rehearse the same old, tired scripts:

I am not good enough
I am not attractive enough
Thin enough
Rich enough
Powerful enough
Holy enough
Loveable enough
Monastic enough
Our lives become litanies of: I am not
I am not


We write our legacies in the sand, our wills in the wind, our futures in the rushing river of popular sentiment, passing fame, perpetual indulgence.

We exhaust ourselves with trying to figure out why our lives are not working.

We alienate ourselves from our families, our neighbors, our monastic brothers and ourselves in the pursuit of a false, elusive reality.

We make deals
We dream useless dreams
We ponder unattainable and ultimately undesirable ends

We glimpse the other side but we cannot reach it on our own.

And our bodies, our souls, our minds become weakened

Weakened
Weakened
Weakened



And the window remains. It is impenetrable by our efforts. It damages us.

And so the sad story of the human race is a story of a thwarted effort, a people repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly throwing themselves at nothing.

Tonight Jesus asks his followers a question?

Do you realize what I have done for you? It is not a rhetorical question because just when we had no hope, just as we were and are nearly worn out. Just when we have no strength left,

Jesus took on our human condition
Jesus turned us around
Jesus captured us
Jesus took us to another part of the garden
Jesus set us on a new path

Do you realize what I have done for you?

I have washed your feet. I have begun your reconstitution from the ground up. I have touched the basest part of you and made it holy. I have hastened to my death to give you life.

Do you realize what I have done for you?

I have emptied myself into the vessel of the human condition. I have become one of you, with your hungers, your thirsts. I have witnessed your temptations, known your sorrows and your joys, wept your tears.

Do you realize what I have done for you?

I have knelt before you, put myself at your service, accepted my fate, drank my cup. I have given you my body and blood as your food and drink. I have entered your life in a profound and intimate way.

Do you realize what I have done for you?

I have healed you. I have kissed your leprosy. I have abolished your sickness, raised your dead, cast out your demons.

So you realize what I have done for you?

I have placed my body on a cross for you. I have stripped myself naked for you. I have let them place the whip to the body of the living God for you. I have let them mock me for you. I have let them crown my head with thorns for you. I have poured my blood upon the thirsty, insatiable ground for you.

Do you realize what I have done for you?

I have allowed myself to be placed into the dankness of the tomb. I have heaped the darkness on myself for you. I have gone down into the depths of the earth for you. I have tasted hell for you and I have broken down its gates for you.

Do you realize what I have done for you?

I have redirected you. I have turned you from the windows of your interminable preoccupation and given you a new direction. I have captured you in the power of my love. I have made life possible for you. I have given you a reason to live. I have touched your life with grace, filled it with grace, flooded it with grace.

Can you know this brothers and sisters here tonight as we realize in real time the love of God poured out for us in words, and living men and women and in the bread and the wine that is our physical connection to the one who asks so boldly:

Do you realize, do you even realize what I have done for you?

I have made all things new
I have given you new hope
I have instilled in you new glory
I have loved you into eternity
I have turned you from the windows of your futility

Do you realize, can you realize what I have done for you?

Now respect yourself
Now know your dignity
Now turn from that window
Now do it for the other
Now serve your brothers and sisters in love
Now be food and drink for the life of the world
Now bath the tired feet of the weary sojourners
Now love with a love that cannot be quenched
Now settle the debt of the poor
Now embrace the captive
Now be a peacemaker
Now be a leveler
Now be a perpetual sacrifice
Now touch the basest part of the human condition
Now give without counting the cost
Now worship the living God in one another
Now go with me to the garden
Now be redirected
Now be converted
Now be renewed
Now be mine
Now be mine
Now be mine

Do you realize what I have done for you?

Of course we do not. Not completely, not yet at least, but the drama of these three days raises the curtain for us on a dress rehearsal for the greater drama of the eschaton, when we shall be redirected to the worship of the living God in that place where there is no sorrow, no sadness, where there are no windows at all.

On that day our spirits will soar above the mundane and the mediocre trivialities of life at which we hurl ourselves repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, and will dare to fly into the audacious grandeur of holiness. We will be saints. Redirected into the garden of his promise we will have a clear vision of the world above the clouds of doubt, the thunderheads of despair. We will go with him there shortly, even tonight and from that garden our washed feet will find a new path, a path that will take us three days to walk, but in just a little while we will become the people of the resurrection and fly freely once again.

Tonight, we begin the Holy Week retreat for our guests here at Saint Meinrad. Here is what I have to say to them.


I hope everyone here is going to have a profound week. It will certainly be action packed. Always something to do. Like life of course. We are very busy people.

Sometimes it can seem like we are just swamped with responsibilities. Endless activities, classes, people, friends, family, Church, rules, commitments. All necessary of course in our busy lives, but sometimes things can become, well, just too much.

So it is undoubtedly important that the reading from St. Paul tonight, proclaimed here as we begin this journey, calls us back to the basics, to the foundations of our lives as Christians. That is what the Triduum does as well. It reminds us of the basic realities of our faith.

If God is for us, who can be against us
If we have God on our side, if we are in a relationship with God, nothing can stand in our way

And so Paul tonight asks us some key questions: Why are we here? What is most important to us? What is the source of our living?

And, of course, we might have many answers. But ultimately.

There is only ONE way of authentically living the Christian life, and that is a powerful, intense relationship with Jesus Christ, lived in the community of his body, the Church.

But we can become trapped in the middle of a lot of MESS, junk that can make our lives complicated.
Life can be very messy
We get into troubles
We have fights at home
Our relationships don’t work out
Things can get really confusing really fast

AND WE NEED TO BE REMINDED
Christ is the foundation, the rock of certainly, the only hope

Christ is the foundation and the plea of Jesus in the Gospels, the plea of Paul is plain
Make HIM the center and the meaning of your life
Jesus says, even if you feel unloved and unwanted,
I want you
Each of you in all of your complexity, with all of your problems and all of your sins. I know your sin and yet I want you
You as you are

You need not be strong for I am strong

You need not be rich for the wealth of the nations overflows in me

You need not smart, for I am wisdom itself

You need not be popular, for I am popularity itself, from age to age gathering a people to myself

And when we can do that what we discover is remarkable
When we make Him and only Him the center of our lives then we will be able to withstand the storms of sin, self doubt, confusion, pain, loneliness, heartbreak.
We know that at the deepest level of our being

Nothing can stand in our way if Christ is with us

And yet we back away. We move away from what we know will help us. We revert to living lives of worry and questions.
O I am not worthy to be here
O I am so sinful
And so we back away, we doubt our lives, our commitments, our goals, we move away from God, from family, from friends

The interesting thing about God however is this. He never backs away from us.
God never loses heart even when our hearts are hardened to the needs of others, to our own shortcomings, to God’s particular invitation.

God never forgets us, even when in our sinfulness, our stubbornness and pride, we forget ourselves and who we really are and we bury ourselves all the lies and deceptions that the world around us heaps upon us

God always confronts us with the challenge to be better than the miserable wretches that we are, to see the world in fresh and life giving ways.

God always loves us and holds us in infinite worth even when we blatantly demonstrate again and again that we do not love ourselves, Cannot even locate the center of our very being that we received at baptism
cannot see in ourselves the beauty that God has given us in calling us his children

Yet sisters and brothers that is what we are. Children of a merciful, forgiving, patient and infinitely loving Father, brothers and sisters of Jesus. Part of the Body of Christ, beautiful and wonderful and meaningful in ourselves.

Set your hopes here, put down your burdens here, Bring all that you have here. Come here, now and know the very source of your lives in this place,

And we do know, because Christ has revealed it. Here in this place, on this Hill, here in this place, God will satisfy all our hungers, not with the perishable food of human consumption, but with his own body and blood, the richness of which we can only measure in mercy, the power of which we can only conceive in the priceless witness of falling in love

Here in this place, there can be no fear, no self reproach, no sense of worthlessness, because here we are all beggars and wayfarers, Here in this place there is no slave or free, no woman or man, no Jew or gentile, no rich or poor. We all come with what we have, which is nothing and receive what God gives, which is everything.

Here in this place, set firmly upon the love of Christ there is no time and no room for sorrow, Here there is no place
for grudges, for hurts, for animosity, for shame, for death,
because here we encounter the robust reality of the living God, who comes to us in the Eucharist (what a clever disguise) in words of comfort and challenge, in the very presence of the hurt and needy people we are.

Here in this place God will fully supply whatever you need,in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.
Because Christ is the center of our lives
Because Christ is all in all
Because Christ is everything
Because Christ eradicates the remains of human ego
Because Christ shows us how much we are worth
Because While we are still sinners, Christ died for us, he died for us. He did for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Christ is the center all our hopes and all our dreams and all we are and all we wish to be


Let us pledge ourselves tonight, in front of Jesus, in front of one another to be completely for God, to let nothing stand in our way. Let us take the blessings of this week and put them into action for the world.

Let us resolve tonight, to love more, to pray more, to respect more.

Because if God is for us NOTHING and No One can be against us, nothing will be able to separate us from his love, from his Church, from one another. This is the promise of Holy Week and of the Great Three Days. It is where we begin tonight.

In a garden IN THE MIST OF PRIMORDIAL HISTORY
Everything was perfection
There was a complete transparency in that garden
Between God and the people
Between the people and God
BETWEEN THE MAN AND THE WOMAN

and then, the snake, the lie and the apple core hitting the bushes.

God had given us everything, but we wanted something else, independence, personality, false freedom
And so we transgressed, we thought we knew better than God, the creature fancied himself the creator and thus a legacy of woe.

The Fall initiates in the human experience the uniqueness of division and that is our inheritance from our parents

We are divided from one another
In the fall, there is woman and man, slave and free, Greek and Gentile, Black and White, young and old
In the fall we have strangeness, foreignness, isolation which masquerades itself as freedom, independence, individualism.

And yet we are isolated. We are outcast. We feel the need for God but cannot name him because his name is not our name.

and in how many ways does this isolation show itself?
impatience,
Judgementalism
Prejudice
contempt
Coldness
Marital strife
Conflicts with children
Competitiveness
misunderstanding
Lack of communication
the cold shoulder
argumentativeness
Belligerency
Violence
Sexual abuse
Greed
Lust
All the deadlies

We experience the remnants of this fall in our lives until this day
Loss which is real
Sickness which is real
loneliness which is real
despair which is real
Hopelessness, which is real
It is real
it invades our bones, the marrow of our bones, it infects

And why must this be? Why is this? Because

God has given us everything and we throw it in his face
We try to live as though he does not exist
does not care
does not cryBetween God and us there is unfinished business

We definitely have a case here of a dysfunctional family dynamic
These folks are not the Cleavers
These boys are all messed up

We have junior, all rebel without a cause he is
Take the money and run
Give me what’s coming to me
It’s a sordid tale
Shady ladies
Smokey bars
Sleeping in sties
A real piece of work is junior

Then we have Big Brother
Isn’t he Mr. Perfect?
Always doing the right thing
Polishes his shoes
Cleans his room
Does his homework
Combs his hair
Says his prayers
Coated from head to toe in the shimmering shellac of his own shining ego
And simmering of course

Yep, these boys are all messed up
But there is a difference between them
One has the ability to say
Hey, I’m all messed up
While the other is deformed in the damning denial of delusional determination

What is interesting is that both have a father who loves them very much
In spite of juniors betrayal, his dereliction, his wanton wastefulness
In spite of seniors haughtiness, sang froid, his perfectionism

The Father loves them
He goes out to them
He cares for them, just as they are

Of course this is all about community
Looking around here
We definitely have a case here of a dysfunctional family dynamic

We boys are all messed up
Some of us are wastoids, derelict, continually contravening our own best interests
Some of us are squeaky clean, altar boys, never sullied, never wrong, and never sorrowful
We are weird
We are dysfunctional
We don’t know how to behave
We don’t understand how things really work
We insert our opinions into every equation
We are odd
We are bad boys who could be good boys
and good boys who could just as easily turn bad

But we also have a father who loves us
Just as the father in the story went out to meet both of his sons where they were
So God comes to us
Here today
In the Words we celebrate
In the presence of other sons and daughters, prodigal or otherwise
In the presence of the One Son who knew what to do
Although he was perfect, he allowed himself to be humbled
Broken
Betrayed
Wasted
Stepping into he sty of our humanity
And bringing the Father to us

Dysfunctional
Undoubtedly
But equally Divine