Good Friday
Isaiah 52:13—53:12  +  Hebrews 4:14-16;5:7-9  +  John 18:1—19:42
April 10, 2020

We had all gone astray like sheep, each following his own way; but the Lord laid upon him the guilt of us all.

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click HERE to read Monsignor Charles Pope’s reflection

click HERE to watch Bishop Thomas Olmsted’s homily (11:44)

click HERE to watch Bishop Michael Burbidge’s homily (5:19)

click HERE to watch Archbishop Alexander Sample’s homily (14:42)

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click HERE to read the 2014 Good Friday address of Pope Francis

click HERE to read the 2009 Good Friday address of Pope Benedict XVI

click HERE to read the 1998 Good Friday address of Pope St. John Paul II

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references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church cited for this day by the Vatican’s Homiletic Directory:

CCC 602-618, 1992: the Passion of Christ
CCC 612, 2606, 2741: the prayer of Jesus
CCC 467, 540, 1137: Christ the High Priest
CCC 2825: Christ’s obedience and ours

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What is most striking about the scene in Gethsemane is not the betrayal of Judas, but the wandering of the other apostles.  Only two continued to follow Jesus after his arrest, Peter and John.  They follow Jesus, bound and carried away by the soldiers, at a distance:  their faith is wavering.  We know that before the night is over, Peter denies his Lord and Savior three times.

It is only John, the Beloved Disciple, who continues to journey with Jesus.  It is John who is beneath the cross with our Blessed Mother Mary.  We can be sure that even at the Cross, John, the youngest of the apostles, perhaps in his early twenties at this time, did not fully understand the death of his Master.  He wept for his Lord but could not fully understand what was taking place there on Calvary.

We know that of the apostles, only one did not become a martyr, and that apostle was Saint John.  It was he who had been faithful to the Lord’s Cross, who had shared Our Lord’s death not at the end of his life, but near the beginning.  Throughout the rest of his life as an apostle he prayed deeply about this great gift, this great sacrifice that Christ made.  Throughout the rest of St. John’s life, as he continued to serve others, his mind turned back, year after year, to that Good Friday and the hill of Calvary, where the love and the glory of God were brilliantly revealed.

Through the Eucharist which Christ, at the Last Supper, had given St. John the power to celebrate, John was able to enter into that scene once again, to return to that day which is today, and to that hill of Calvary.

There is no offering of the sacrifice of the Mass on Good Friday.  Yet still we are able to share in the fruits of that sacrifice.  As we enter into Holy Communion with Our Lord, let us turn our minds again to the sacrifice of Calvary, and the love in Christ’s Sacred Heart which allowed Him to offer it for our salvation.

Holy Thursday—Mass of the Lord’s Supper
Exodus 12:1-8,11-14  +  1 Corinthians 11:23-26  +  John 13:1-15
April 9, 2020

Before the feast of Passover, Jesus knew that His Hour had come to pass from this world to the Father.

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click HERE to read Monsignor Charles Pope’s reflection

click HERE to watch Bishop Thomas Olmsted’s homily (14:40)

click HERE to watch Bishop Michael Burbidge’s homily (8:01)

click HERE to watch Archbishop Alexander Sample’s homily (16:43)

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click HERE to read the 2018 homily of Pope Francis

click HERE to read the 2012 homily of Pope Benedict XVI

click HERE to read the 2003 homily of Pope St. John Paul II

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references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church cited for this day by the Vatican’s Homiletic Directory:

CCC 1337-1344: the institution of the Eucharist
CCC 1359-1361: Eucharist as thanksgiving
CCC 610, 1362-1372, 1382, 1436: Eucharist as sacrifice
CCC 1373-1381: the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist
CCC 1384-1401, 2837: Holy Communion
CCC 1402-1405: the Eucharist as the pledge of glory
CCC 611, 1366: institution of the priesthood at the Last Supper

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You might be tempted to think that Jesus, knowing that in just a few hours He was going to be nailed to a cross, would have had more important things on his mind than a meal.  If someone came up to you, and told you that you were going to be killed in less than 24 hours, would you sit down for a meal?  Many people would skip eating all together:  after all, if you really knew that you were going to die in less than 24 hours, why feed your body?  Wouldn’t there be more important things to put first?

But if you would answer “yes, I’d sit down for a meal,” then ask yourself, “Would you sit down for a banquet?”  Would you spend about three out of your remaining 24 hours at a banquet?  That’s what Jesus did.  Of course, to use the word “banquet” is still selling short what Jesus did at the Last Supper.  Yet the Last Supper was a banquet.

The Passover Meal was the ritual meal by which the Jews declared that the sacrifice of their ancestors had been worth it.  If they had to choose for themselves, they would do it all over again.  They would make that choice because freedom from slavery is worth the price that had to be paid, for God had something greater in mind for His Chosen People than slavery.

Some Jews, like Judas Iscariot, thought that that “something greater” was a powerful kingdom on earth.  But Jesus came into this world for something that goes beyond any earthly hopes, plans or desires.

Jesus came into this world to destroy the power of sin and death.  Jesus came into this world to offer freedom from sin, not from Pharaoh.  Jesus came into this world to open up again the gates of Heaven, not the Red Sea.  This is the freedom that Jesus won by dying on the Cross.  But tonight, Jesus institutes the Eucharist.  He establishes the Holy Eucharist in the form of a sacred meal.  In reality, it is a sacrament that allows us to share in the power of the Cross, and makes us present at Calvary.

This Sacrament of the Eucharist is the foretaste of all of the goodness that God has prepared for us.  Jesus gave us this Sacrament on the night before He died as a way of sharing in His promise to deliver us from every form of slavery.  He wills to free us through the Eucharist from every one of our sins, and to lead us from this world into something that is greater and that lasts forever.

Wednesday of Holy Week
Isaiah 50:4-9  +  Matthew 26:14-25
April 8, 2020

… from that time on he looked for an opportunity to hand him over.

Recent scandals in the Church prompt reflection upon the person of Judas Iscariot.  Why did Jesus choose him to be an apostle?  Didn’t Jesus know that Judas would betray Him?  Or is that precisely why He chose Him?

Divine Providence is difficult to parse.  It’s difficult, and perhaps even pointless, for us to reflect upon Judas from God’s providential point of view.  However, the Church does call us to reflect upon Judas from our own point of view:  that is, as sinners like Judas.

Can each of us imagine hearing Jesus say about oneself:  “It would be better for that man if he had never been born”?  Surely such words only apply to the worst of sinners, such as Judas?  In fact, Jesus did not choose Judas for eternal damnation:  rather, Judas chose that for himself.  Likewise, each of us chooses each of our sins.  It’s in the face of one’s sins that one has a choice to remain in sin, or to turn to Jesus as the one through whom we can find forgiveness.  Even and especially in our sins, Jesus wants us to turn to Him.  Yet we remain free until death to make the choices that we will.

Tuesday of Holy Week
Isaiah 49:1-6  +  John 13:21-33,36-38
April 7, 2020

So Judas took the morsel and left at once.  And it was night.

On the last two days of Lent before the Sacred Triduum starts, the Gospel Reading focuses on Judas Iscariot.  Yet while tomorrow’s passage from Matthew looks solely at Judas, today’s passage from John also looks at Peter, another apostle who will betray Jesus.

Jesus is God.  As a divine person, He could at any moment during Holy Week have turned away from the path leading to Calvary.  Even on the afternoon of Good Friday as He hung upon the Cross, He could have miraculously escaped, transporting Himself far away to safety:  indeed, even to Heaven.

All that is to say that Jesus is the primary “actor” in the drama of Holy Week.  The acts that Jesus did or did not carry out during Holy Week determined man’s salvation.  Any other “actor” within this drama is a second-string player.

Why, then, do the Gospel Readings today and tomorrow focus more upon those who betrayed Jesus than on Our Savior Himself?  The answer is that the Church is calling you to recognize yourself in Judas and Peter.

In the sinful persons of Judas and Peter we witness two different types of betrayal:  Judas by deed, Peter by word; Judas with a kiss, Peter by turning his back.  Judas cries, “Hail, Rabbi!”, while Peter cries, “I do not know the man!”

There are many different ways in our lives by which we betray Jesus.  But there is only one way for the chasm between our sins and God’s love to be bridged, and that is Jesus’ self-sacrifice upon the Cross.

Monday of Holy Week
Isaiah 42:1-7  +  John 12:1-11
April 6, 2020

Here is my servant whom I uphold, / my chosen one with whom I am pleased….

The Old Testament’s Book of the Prophet Isaiah contains four brief passages called “servant songs”.  Isaiah never names the servant who is described.  But in the earliest years of the Church, these servant songs were sung in praise of Christ, who fulfilled during Holy Week what they proclaim.

The First Reading on Monday of Holy Week presents the first of these four servant songs.  We might imagine God the Father speaking these words of His only-begotten Son, whom He sent from the paradise of Heaven into our world of sin and death.

Jesus is a servant.  All the words that Jesus speaks and all that He does and bears this week reveals Him as a servant.  Yet He’s a servant in a two-fold way, and we ought at the beginning of Holy Week reflect upon both of these.

Whom is Jesus serving through the sacred events of Holy Week?  Secondly, He is serving us.  All that He speaks, does, and suffers is for us:  to bring us salvation.

First, however, Jesus is serving His heavenly Father.  During Holy Week it’s easy for us to lose sight of God the Father.  Our view can become myopic, focused simply upon Jesus saving us.  But in saving us from the power of sin and death, Jesus is preparing us for new life.  This new life is given to us even during our earthly days through the gifts, the fruits, and the grace of the Holy Spirit.  But this new life in this world is only a foretaste of eternal life with our Father in Heaven.  Jesus is serving His Father during Holy Week because God the Father longs for each us to enter into His company.

Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord [A]
Matthew 21:1-11  +  Isaiah 50:4-7  +  Philippians 2:6-11  +  Matthew 26:14—27:66

“Who is this?”

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references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church cited for this Sunday by the Vatican’s Homiletic Directory:

CCC 557-560: Christ’s entry into Jerusalem
CCC 602-618: the Passion of Christ
CCC 2816: Christ’s kingship gained through his death and Resurrection
CCC 654, 1067-1068, 1085, 1362: the Paschal Mystery and the liturgy

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The rubrics for Palm Sunday indicate that a homily need not be preached.  A period of silence may be observed after the Passion instead.  The reason for the exception on Palm Sunday isn’t directly stated in the Roman Missal.

We might guess that the reason for this exception is the sheer length of this Sunday’s Gospel texts.  Not only is the Gospel of the Passion itself extremely long.  In fact, there are two Gospel Readings proclaimed on Palm Sunday:  the first is at the start of Mass, recounting Christ’s triumphal entrance into Jerusalem.

However, we might guess that there’s an additional reason why the priest is permitted not to preach a homily on Palm Sunday.  The Gospel Reading of the Passion is the very heart of Jesus’ Good News.  What could a homilist possibly add to the proclamation of the Gospel narrative?  What more is there to say?

Yet this second guess ought to be challenged.  In fact, there is something more to be said, because the temptation is to admire the Gospel of the Passion without entering into it:  that is, to look up to Jesus as if His Cross were a pedestal.

The homilist on Palm Sunday, then, preaches to each member of his congregation about her need to enter personally into the Gospel of the Passion.  Each congregant needs to make the narrative of the Passion her own.  Each needs to bear the conviction that when Jesus died on the Cross, He died for that individual.  In a church like the Catholic Church, which has on earth more than one billion members (and that’s not to mention those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith), it’s easy to feel lost in the crowd.

Each individual member of the Mystical Body of Christ is loved by Christ as if she or he were the only person He died for on the Cross.  The Church has always taught this, but in recent times St. John Paul II used the language of personalist philosophy to explore the meaning of the Gospel in general, and in particular the need for each Christian to encounter the crucified and Risen Christ as an individual rather than as an historical figure or a distant deity.

We might wonder how it’s even possible for the one single person of Jesus Christ to individually relate to, much less personally love, more than a billion individuals at the same time.  While this might seem impossible, it’s not something that you need to comprehend fully but simply to believe and experience.

It’s this relation between the individual and Christ Jesus that makes a disciple into a saint.  This connection is what makes a disciple strong enough to persevere in following Jesus all the way to the top of Calvary, with eyes fixed upon Jesus and His Cross instead of upon oneself and one’s desires.

The Second Reading for Palm Sunday helps us glimpse, if not fully comprehend, how Jesus Christ can relate to each individual member of the Church, including yourself.

In theology, the Second Reading is summed up by the Greek word “kenosis”.  In English this word is translated rather awkwardly as “self-emptying”.  We might say that it’s the virtue of humility in a complete, personalistic sense.  That is to say, kenosis is not just the performance of a humble action, but the humbling of one’s whole self in a permanent yet on-going manner.

In the case of the divine Person of Jesus, He chose not to cling to His divinity.  We see this at the Annunciation, when He took upon Himself a human nature, with all its weaknesses and vulnerabilities.  But as the following thirty years of His life passed, His kenosis continued as He put His divine Self entirely at the service of His earthly mission.

Yet the whole of Jesus’ earthly life was oriented by God towards a single hour:  the hour of Divine Mercy on the afternoon of Good Friday.  The kenosis of the Incarnation and public ministry were designed to lead individuals to Calvary:  not just the individual apostles, disciples and others who lived in the Holy Land 2000 years ago, but each individual living today as well, including yourself.

It’s at the Cross and through the Cross that Jesus Christ relates to each individual.  Through the Cross, the individual can enter into the mystery of Christ’s kenosis, sharing directly in Jesus’ Incarnation, Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension.  It’s not in spite of your sins that Jesus chooses to relate to you, but through your sins.  The depth of your human sins reveals the depth of His divine love.

Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent
Ezekiel 37:21-28  +  John 11:45-56
April 4, 2020

So from that day on they planned to kill him.

This morning’s Gospel Reading bears a sense of anxious anticipation.  Its final verse leaves us on the edge of our pew:  “They looked for Jesus and said to one another as they were in the temple area, ‘What do you think?  That he will not come to the feast?’”

Just a few verses before, St. John the Evangelist explains the reason for the heightened sense of anxiety:  “So from that day on they planned to kill him.”  The motive for this plan of the chief priests and Pharisees is the focus of this morning’s three readings.

Both this morning’s First Reading and Responsorial Psalm come from books of Old Testament prophets:  the First Reading, from Ezekiel; and the Psalm, from Jeremiah.  Both look to Israel’s future, when a shepherd king would reign over a united Israel.  The Responsorial is very strong in describing this shepherd

Yet the language of king is only implied, although in two ways.  First, Ezekiel prophesies about Israel being restored to one kingdom.  However, second and more intriguingly, Ezekiel prophesies that “there shall be one prince for them all”:  not one “king”, but one “prince”.  Twice in the verses that follow, Ezekiel identities David as this prince.  Through the prophet the Lord declares:  “My servant David shall be prince over them, and there shall be one shepherd for them all”; in the Holy Land, Israel shall dwell “with my servant David their prince forever.”

Everything that Ezekiel and Jeremiah prophesy about this shepherd king is fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.  More specifically, Jesus fulfills His earthly mission as Christ the King upon the Cross on Good Friday.  Jesus is drawing close to “His hour”.  Through the New Passover—the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass—we are able to enter into Jesus’ life and saving mission.

Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent
Jeremiah 20:10-13  +  John 10:31-42
April 3, 2020

“If I do not perform my Father’s works, put no faith in me.”

Some disagree with the saying, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” claiming that a little is better than none.  They do not see that those having the “little” often self-righteously and proudly conclude they “know it all.”

The Pharisees, purported Scripture scholars and experts in the Mosaic Law, fell into this latter category.  When Christ revealed Himself to them as the Messiah, though they had well documented knowledge of the miracles He had performed, they immediately rejected the evidence, accused Him of blasphemy and prepared to stone Him.

What rendered them more dangerous than their intellectual presumption, and perhaps their fear of losing authority and position, was their faithlessness, their lack of God’s light and love.  In this, Christ Jesus is their opposite, and this opposition to the Pharisees is what each of us must imitate:  knowing that in God, we have everything we are, and that all we are, God calls us to give:  for the sake of others, and for the greater glory of God.