AWESOME HOMILIES PREACHED BY FATHER ALTIER ON THE THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER FROM 2001-2005.

In the Gospel reading today, at the very end of the Gospel, we hear this conversation between Peter and Jesus. Jesus looks at Peter and says to him, "Peter, do you love Me?" The Lord looks at each one of us and asks the exact same thing: "Do you love Me?" We, of course, are going to answer "Yes." We love Our Lord, after all, we would not be here if we did not love Our Lord. Peter could certainly say the same thing; but at that time, Peter was still very much afraid. He was concerned about other people and what they might think. He was concerned about going out and living his faith. They were still filled with fear.

So, there was a love for Jesus, but there was not a depth of love. What I always say is: We love Our Lord, but some of us are not "in love" with the Lord. That is exactly what Our Lord wants for us. He wants us to be totally in love with Him.

Sunday April 29, 2001

Third Sunday of Easter

Reading I (Acts 5:27-32, 40b-41)

Reading II ( Revelation 5:11-14)

Gospel (St. John 21:1-19)

If you think about it, there a lot of people in this world whom you love. There are family members, friends, and acquaintances that you have a certain amount of love for; but there are a few people in your life that you are in love with. Those would be your spouse, your children, maybe a couple of other people who are very close to you. If you put it into context, you could ask yourself what you would be willing to do for just a friend as opposed to what you are willing to do for somebody whom you are in love with. For a friend, you would be willing to take on a few difficult things, maybe suffer slightly for them. But it is different for somebody you are in love with. If one of your small children is in trouble, you would be willing to put out anything for that child. One would hope that, after a number of years of being married, you have not lost that same attitude toward your spouse. You would be willing to lay down your life for that person. You would be willing to give anything because you are so in love with that individual. You have given your entire life to the service of that person. That is the kind of love we should have for God: To give our entire life for the service of Almighty God, to lay it all on the line, just as He did for us.

But in that conversation with Peter and Jesus, there is something that happens that we do not see in English. In Greek, there are three different words for love; two of them are used in this conversation. Jesus asked Peter, in essence, "Peter, do you love Me with the highest, most perfect kind of love? Are you in love, Peter?" Peter says, "Lord, you know that I am Your friend." Jesus uses the word "agape", Peter uses the word "philos" or "phileo" in Greek. Jesus asks a second time: "Peter, do you love Me with ‘agape’ love, with the highest love, with the kind of love that God has for you?" Peter says, "Lord, you know that I am Your friend." The third time, Jesus says, "Peter, do you love Me as a friend?" Peter says, "Lord, You know everything. You know that I love You as a friend." See what Jesus is doing. He is saying, "Peter, are you in love with God?" Peter says, "Well… You know that I love God." Jesus says, "No. Are you in love with God?" Peter says, "You know that I love God." How many of us would have to answer the same way? If Jesus came down and looked us right in the face and said, "Are you in love with Me?" most of us could really honestly answer, "Lord, You know that I have some love for you. You know that I want to be Your follower. You know that I am trying, kind of, to do Your Will."

Jesus says, "No. Are you in love with God? Head over heels in love with God? Are you willing to do whatever God is asking of you? Are you willing, as the disciples were after Pentecost, to rejoice that you have been counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the Name?" Think about what Our Lord did. In the second reading today from the Book of Revelation, we hear twice, among a few other points, that the Lamb, Jesus Christ, is worthy of honor and glory and might. He is worthy of honor and glory. Yet, what He did for us was to accept dishonor. Look at the Passion. Look at the Cross. In His humanness, He was dishonored completely because He was in love with you. He did it for all of us, but He did it for each one of us, individually. Each of us can look at the Cross and say, "He suffered that dishonor for me. He did it for me." Why? Because He was your friend? No. Because He is in love with you. He loves you so much that He was willing to suffer any level of dishonor, even though He is worthy of honor and glory, He was willing to suffer dishonor. What He wants is that we would share in His honor and glory. But on our part, we need to be willing to share in His dishonor. We need to honor Him and glorify Him in any way that we possibly can. If that means that we will be rejected, scorned, and ridiculed by the people around us, so be it. Are we willing to suffer dishonor for the Name of Jesus Christ? Are we willing to be counted among those who would follow Him? These are hard things for us. This is where we really realize the answer to that question: Are you in love with Me? Or are you My friend? If we are really seriously honest, brutally honest with ourselves in the depths of our heart, most of us would probably have to admit that we really do not want to suffer dishonor on behalf of the Name of Jesus Christ. More than that, most of us probably would not be willing to rejoice that we had been counted worthy to suffer dishonor.

Jesus, on the other hand, rejoiced that He was able to suffer dishonor for us. "For the joy that lay before Him," Saint Paul says in his letter to the Hebrews, "He accepted the Cross, heedless of its shame." He did not care what kind of shame He had to suffer for us. A parent does not care what kind of shame he or she has to suffer for their children. Someone who is totally in love with another person does not care what kind of shame they would have to suffer in order to do some kind of charity for that other person. Jesus Christ did not care what kind of shame He had to suffer for you and me. Should we care what kind of shame we need to suffer for Him? We need to be willing to rejoice. We need to be willing to be counted among those who are followers of the Lord.

Jesus, knowing our weakness, is willing to come down to our level. When we cannot answer "Yes" when he asks, "Are you in love with Me?", He comes down to Peter’s level and He comes down to ours and says, "Fine. Are you My friend? Do you love Me with friendship kind of love?" But notice what He says at the end: "Follow me." He will bring us higher. He will bring us to be able to be in love with Almighty God. He will bring us to that point where we will be willing to do anything for Him. The question really is: Are we willing to follow Him? Are we willing to go to that level? Some of us, when we look at the lives of the saints, scratch our head and suggest that these guys were kind of crazy; they were a little different, they were weird. What is wrong with them that they were willing to go out and do all these things that people thought were so strange? So, we back away. We say, "If that is what it means to be in love with Jesus, I am not sure I really want it."

But think about it on the natural level. If you are in love with someone, don’t you do a lot of strange things? We are willing to put ourselves out and do things that we normally would not do because of the love of another person. It is not anything that we would personally prefer to do, but we will. Think of a man, for instance, who is in love with a young woman. Most men are not usually found frequenting flower shops, but they are more than happy to do it because they are in love with a woman. We can take a small example like that and so many others, if you just think about it for a few minutes. What are you willing to do for somebody with whom you are in love? Now, apply that to God.

If we were truly in love with God, it would not matter to us what we were asked to do. We would be willing to be thought foolish because it would not matter; it is done for Him, whom our heart loves. That is what God is asking for each of us. Not to keep Him at an arm’s distance, not to give Him lip service while our hearts are far from Him; but to be in love with Him, to give our whole heart to Him, to pour our whole being into the relationship with Jesus Christ, knowing that in doing that He is loving us perfectly, infinitely; and thereby giving us the grace and the ability to love the people around us more than we ever have before. If we are willing to lose ourselves, in our love for God, we will gain our true selves that God made us to be. That is the joy and beauty of what God is offering. Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, is worthy of all honor, glory, power, and might. He is worthy of our love. He looks at each one of us today and says, "My beloved, do you love Me? ... Do you love Me?" What is our response to this question of Jesus Christ?

Note: Father Altier does not prepare his homilies in advance, but relies solely upon the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

April 14, 2002

Third Sunday in Easter

Reading I (Acts 2:14, 22-33)

Reading II (1 Peter 1:17-21)

Gospel (St. Luke 24:13-35)

In the Gospel reading this morning, we hear Cleophas, as he is walking along the road to Emmaus, say to Our Lord (even though at this point he does not recognize that this is Jesus), "We were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel. We were hoping that." Now that would have made perfect sense if Cleophas would have said that on Holy Saturday, but this was Easter Sunday. After the women had seen the vision of the angels who proclaimed to them that the Lord was alive, even after Peter and John had gone to the tomb and found it just as the women had said and came back and reported that, still these men did not believe. They went off on a journey to Emmaus rather than to stay in Jerusalem and have faith in the Resurrection. Even along the way they would be able to say that they were hoping that he would be the one – just hoping. Now we need to ask our own selves, "Where do we stand on this issue?" Are we still just hoping that He would be the One who might save our souls? Are we hoping that He is the One who would forgive our sins? Are we hoping that He is the One who will open for us the way to Heaven? Are we hoping that the promises He made are really true? Or do we have faith in these things? In the second reading today, Saint Peter says, "He was known before the foundation of the world, but revealed in this final time to you, who through faith in Him, believe in God who raised Him from the dead." Before that, Saint Peter reminds us that we were saved and ransomed from our futile conduct, "not by any kind of diminishable sum of silver or gold, but by the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, a spotless and unblemished Lamb". The question I pose to you today is do you believe that or do you merely hope that that is true?

If you hope that that is true, then one day you are going to stand before Jesus and you are going to be filled with terror. Trembling, you will come before the Lord and you will say, "Well, I was hoping that it was true!" But you are not going to recognize Him. And far worse than that, He will look at you and say, "I do not know you. Out of My sight, you evildoer!" because if all that we have is the hope that He might be the One, the hope that maybe, maybe, His Blood would be enough to free us from our futile ways, our sinful ways, but we are not sure that it really will, then we do not accept the sacrifice that He offered, we do not accept that He really is the Messiah. We would only have hope that maybe He is.

And because we do not have the faith that He is the Christ, neither will we act upon it. We certainly are not going to put ourselves out on a limb for something that we do not believe in. Instead, we will have this quiet, interior hope. And we will not discuss it with anybody unless we know them very well because we would not want ourselves to be vulnerable enough to be known to be entertaining such thoughts. So again, I challenge you with that same question. Do you have faith that Jesus Christ has indeed saved you from your sins, delivered you from the futile ways handed on by our ancestors, and opened for us the way to Heaven? Or do you only hope that those things might be true?

Saint Peter, at first, did not have the faith. Jesus had told Him that He was going to be put to death, but that He would be raised up on the third day. Peter, remember, tried to argue with Jesus about that. Then Peter saw Jesus transfigured on Mount Tabor and [Jesus] told him, as well as James and John, to speak nothing of this until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. But they did not understand what that meant. Now Peter had seen the tomb empty and still did not understand, and, consequently, did not believe.

But in the Gospel reading today, we heard that Peter had seen the risen Lord. And because he saw, he believed. Then, filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter went out and preached. Filled with the understanding that the Holy Spirit had given to him, he now was able to say to the people: "Jesus the Nazorean was a man commended to you by God with mighty deeds, wonders, and signs, which God worked through Him in your midst, as you yourselves know." Then he went on to say, "This man, delivered up for the set plan and foreknowledge of God, you killed, using lawless men to crucify Him. But God raised Him up, releasing Him the throes of death, because it was impossible for Him to be held by it." Then he quoted what David said in the psalm about how He would not allow His flesh to undergo corruption. See this change in Peter as well as the other disciples who went forth and preached the Resurrection.

They no longer were hoping that Jesus was the One. They no longer looked at the Passion, the Death, and the Resurrection of Our Lord as something which was unfortunate, as something which they no longer understood. Now they saw with clarity that this was the Will of God, that this was the means by which we would be saved and that it was not just some tragedy that occurred, but rather, it was for the set purpose and foreknowledge of God; that this was the means by which everything God had promised in Scripture would be fulfilled, and therefore we can have faith in the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, we can have faith that all of the promises made by God are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. We do not have hope that He might be the One, but rather, we have hope that we will be able to be with Him forever in Heaven. But that hope must be built firmly and solidly on an unshakeable foundation of faith.

It is not enough for us to sit here today and hope that Jesus is the One; we must have faith – absolute and unshakeable faith – that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, that He is the Son of God, that He is the One who saves us from our sins. We will know if that faith is solid and unshakeable if we are acting upon it. If we are not acting upon it, we have hope that He is the One, but not necessarily the faith that He is the One. Are you living that faith in Jesus Christ? Do the people around you recognize your faith by the way that you live? Do you tell other people about Jesus Christ and about His Church? Or are you embarrassed to be known to be a follower of Christ? Are you embarrassed to be a Catholic? With all the scandals going on in the Church today, are you embarrassed to be called a Catholic? Are you looking more at the humanity in the Church rather than at the divinity of Jesus Christ? Have you decided to go on a journey, walking away from the scene of the Crucifixion, because your hope has been disappointed, because the way you thought it was going to happen is not quite the way it is going? Or do you have faith in Jesus Christ and that this is the one Church that He founded as the sacrament of salvation for all peoples at all times? Do you have that faith that makes you stand firm with Jesus in the time of His Passion, the absolute faith in His Resurrection and that He is the One, the only One, who is the Son of God sent into this world to die for our sins so that we could have everlasting life, and that what is happening now in the Church, just as it was 2,000 years ago, is according to the set purpose and foreknowledge of God and that it is for our salvation? Do we have that faith? Or are we like these disciples who have heard the Word of God, who have heard from others that this is the truth, but we do not have enough faith to believe it?

The Lord places this before us today and we need, each one, to answer this question that I have already posed twice and will pose for you again to ponder throughout this Mass, to ponder throughout the day, to take to prayer and look very seriously at the way you are living your life. Ask yourself, "Do I have faith that Jesus is the One? Or do I merely have hope that maybe He is the One?" Without faith there is no salvation. The hope that we must have is the hope to be with Him, not the hope that He might be the One. We must have absolute confidence in Jesus Christ that He is the One sent by God to free us from our sins and to give us eternal life.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

He has Given Us the Grace to Know Him

May 4, 2003

Third Sunday of Easter

Reading I (Acts 3:13-15, 17-19)

Reading II (1 John 2:1-5a)

Gospel (St. Luke 24:35-48)

In both the first reading and the Gospel reading today, we hear almost the exact same statements: that the Son of Man had to suffer, He had to die, He would rise again, and then the Gospel would have to be preached in His Name for the repentance and the forgiveness of sins. So there are a couple of things that we recognize in this statement: that there is no forgiveness of sin in any other name but Jesus Christ because He alone is the One who was foretold in the law and in the prophets, He alone foretold what was going to happen to Him as the Messiah, and He alone has risen from the dead so that our sins could be forgiven and so that we could have life. And so we recognize, then, that the forgiveness of sin is predicated on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, even though Jesus had given to His apostles, even while He was alive, the grace to be able to make decisions. For instance, He said to Peter, “Whatever you hold bound on earth will be held bound in Heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven.” He extended that to all of His apostles to a degree, and even to some degree gave them authority to forgive sin and to cast out demons and the like. But it was after His Resurrection that He breathed on His disciples and said to them, “Receive the Spirit. Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven.” And so it is in the power of the Resurrection and only in that power that the disciples were able to recognize the authority of Jesus Christ.

He, of course, is God from all eternity, Who became Man in the womb of His mother. He had preached this truth throughout His life. In fact, the very first words of His public life were: Repent, and believe in the Gospel. His whole message was one of repentance, but so too was the message of Saint John the Baptist. And while the people understood the notion of repentance, they did not understand at that point that the only way they could have their sins forgiven was in the Name of Jesus Christ.

The people of the Old Testament offered sacrifices – the sheep, the goats, the rams, the bulls and so on, all the blood of the various animals – for the forgiveness of sin. But it did not actually forgive the sin; it simply covered it over, but it did not take it away. It is not possible for the blood of an animal to remove something which is human because something which is lesser cannot take away the sins of something which is greater. And since the dignity of a human being is nearly infinitely greater than the dignity of an animal (since we are not infinite, it is not quite infinitely greater; but it is of no comparison, the dignity of a human person with the dignity of an animal), the blood of an animal cannot take away our sins. It cannot make up for what we do. An animal is not a person; an animal is not rational; an animal cannot make a free act of the will. Only a person can do that. That is why it is so essential that Jesus says, “No one takes My life from Me; I lay it down freely.” It was the owner of the animal that decided which animal would die. The animal did not decide to do that. The animal could not make any sort of act of the will to say, “I will die so that your sins can be forgiven.” Only the owner could offer to God the sacrifice of his sheep, but God offered the sacrifice His own Lamb for us. The difference is that Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, made the choice to die for us so that it is human blood which takes away human sin, and it is human sacrifice that makes up for human sinfulness – not an animal sacrifice that can cover it up, but a human sacrifice that removes it completely.

And so Saint John tells us in the second reading that if anyone does sin we have an intercessor with the Father, One who is just, and that He will take away our sins. “And not our sins only,” he says, “but the sins of the whole world.” Anyone who will turn to Jesus Christ with faith and with repentance will have their sins removed. That is the guarantee that Our Lord makes. But it is not merely turning to Him out of selfishness, but out of love. It is, as Saint John points out to us, a matter of coming to know Christ. Anyone, he tells us, who says that they know Jesus Christ but continues to sin, does not follow His commandments, is a liar. Those are strong words that Saint John uses. The point he is making is that you cannot truly know Jesus Christ, Who is love, and then continue to do things which are exactly the opposite of love, which means to sin.

Now we can obviously know Christ to some degree, but if we truly know Him, that is, if we are united with Him and perfectly one with Him, we will not do anything that is going to violate Him. And sin violates Christ. The same can be said for one another. If we truly love one another, as we have been commanded to do – to follow His commandments is to love Him and to love one another – if we truly love somebody, we will not violate that person. The most horrifying thing to the heart of the lover is to do something that would violate the beloved, to sin against that person. To love someone is to desire only what is the very best for that person. One could look, for instance, at your spouse, or at children, parents, siblings. There is no doubt that we love these people. There is no doubt that we know them in the sense that Saint John is talking about. But do we love them perfectly? Do we know them completely? Is the union, even within marriage, so perfect that you no longer sin against one another, that there is no longer any selfishness, that you do nothing that would violate the dignity of the other person?

That is what Saint John is talking about. Our union with Jesus Christ is to be perfected, and when it is perfected we will no longer sin. Then we can truly say that we know Him, that we love Him, that we are united with Him. But before that can happen, we have to recognize that we are sinners, that we are weak, and we need to repent. And that repentance is precisely the recognition that Jesus Christ is the One foretold in the law and in the prophets, that He alone is the One Who has suffered and died for our sins, that He has risen from the dead so that death and sin no longer have any power over Him, and that there is no other name given to humanity in the whole world by which we can be saved.

Initially, we all know that we look to Christ out of selfish motives. There is certainly some love that is there, but it is out of selfishness – we do not want to go to hell. Thanks be to God! – we do not want to do that. That is the grace of God at work within our souls saying, “I don’t want a part of that.” And so we turn to Jesus, but selfishly. It is to say, “Save me so that I won’t be condemned!” But our love for Christ has to grow, and we have to get to the point where we will be able to say, “It’s not about me. I want to love You. It’s not merely that I don’t want to have to go to hell, but rather it’s much more positive than that. I want to be able to love You for all eternity. I want to be so perfectly united with You that I will never sin against You again and I will glorify You in Heaven forever.” That is where the difference comes. Even in our Act of Contrition, we see the exact same thing. Every time we go to Confession we see the selfish part that is in there. “I am sorry for my sins.” Why? “Because I dread the loss of Heaven and I fear the pains of hell.” Or “Because of Thy just punishments” depending on the form we might use. But it is about my fear of what is going to happen to me. Then we see the way that it is really supposed to be. “But most of all” – it’s not about my selfishness – “most of all because they offend You, Whom I should love above all things.” That is why we are to be repentant of our sins: because we have violated Someone Whom we love and Someone Who loves us perfectly.

For most of us, if not all of us, we will have to admit that there is at least still some selfishness that is in there. And so in that sense we cannot yet say that we know Jesus Christ. We know about Him and we know Him to some degree, but we cannot truly and fully know Him unless we are totally transformed into Him. We will know Jesus Christ and the love of Jesus Christ when we become the very love of Jesus Christ Himself. Then we will be completely united with Him and we will sin no longer. When there is no longer any sin then we know Christ. In the meantime, we are striving to know Him. And the way that we will come to know Him is to repent so that we recognize His love and His mercy and the forgiveness of our sins. When we recognize that our sins have been forgiven, when we truly know that our sins have been removed from our souls, then the gratitude and the joy will overtake us to the point where we will truly strive to remove all sin from our lives and love Christ the way that He loves us.

That is the way that Jesus has laid out for us. That is the grace of the Resurrection that is at work within us. He has given this to us so that we can overcome sin, so that we can come to know Him, so that we can love Him, and so that we will sin no longer. The grace of Christ in us is given so that we will know Jesus Christ and we will love as we have been loved and we will understand exactly what He said to His disciples that all of this had to happen in fulfillment of the law and the prophets, and that the repentance for sin must be preached. If we accept it and we allow that forgiveness of sin in our lives then we will become the living preachers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ by bringing that out into the world and showing to other people the love of Jesus Christ in us. And we will bring them with us to love Christ more. That is what the Christian life is supposed to be. Only those who recognize that their sins have been forgiven, only those who recognize the love of Christ at work within their souls will be able to do this. That is what the Lord desires for each and every one of us: to come to Him, to accept His mercy and His forgiveness, to be united perfectly with Him, and to know Jesus Christ and the love of Christ at work within our hearts.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Do You Love Me?

April 25, 2004

Third Sunday of Easter

Reading I (Acts 5:27-32, 40b-41)

Reading II (Revelation 5:11-14)

Gospel (St. John 21:1-19)

In the Gospel reading today, we hear about the disciples up in Galilee deciding to go fishing. One could look at this whole situation and wonder, “What’s wrong with these men?” Jesus had risen from the dead, He had appeared already to His disciples on two occasions, and you would have thought that would have been enough to be able to change the way they were living and the way they were thinking. But instead, they go up to Galilee and Peter says, “I’m going fishing.” He was going back to his old way of life. Peter had not been fishing for three years, but all of a sudden he is going back to the old way. Now one would expect that if Jesus were like the others who had gathered people around them thinking that they might have been the Messiah and then when they were put to death all of their followers disbanded, but they knew that Jesus had risen from the dead. So we ask ourselves, “Why would they just go back to their old way of life? What’s wrong with them that they didn’t understand? Why wasn’t their life changed after the Resurrection of our Blessed Lord?”

But then as we continue on, we see Our Lord revealing Himself a third time to His disciples, this time on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias. The Sea of Tiberias is the Sea of Galilee, also known as Lake Gennesareth. There are three names for the same body of water in Sacred Scriptures, so as you read along, just understand what that is. This appearance is extremely important because as the disciples come to the shore, Jesus already has a charcoal fire lit with some bread and some fish upon the fire. It is also in this same place that Jesus (in the sixth chapter of Saint John’s Gospel) had multiplied the loaves and the fishes, walked across the lake, and then explained to His disciples the importance of what He had done to be able to tell them all about the Eucharist. The loaves and the fishes that they had at that time were a symbol of the Eucharist that He would give to the disciples later on.

In the reading today, we hear that the disciples did not dare ask who it was because they knew it was the Lord. Certainly, the context of it would suggest that Saint John was talking about the fact that Jesus was standing right there in front of them. But if you look at where that sentence is placed, it is placed right between the two sentences that say, “He said to them, ‘Come, have your breakfast’” and then, “He gave to them the bread and the fish.” Now one would expect that that sentence would come earlier when they had pulled up to shore and they did not have to ask who it was, but Saint John did not put that statement there. Instead, it is placed very similarly to what we have in the twenty-fourth chapter of Saint Luke’s Gospel where the two disciples are walking along the road to Emmaus, and it was not until the breaking of the bread that they recognized the Lord truly present with them. So, too, in this instance where Our Lord had revealed Himself to His disciples; it is more of a Eucharist presence, the revelation of the Blessed Sacrament once again of the loaves and fishes at the same place where Jesus had already done this, so that the disciples would have understood exactly what this was because it was not all that much beforehand that He had done the exact same thing in the same place and explained to them what the Eucharist was. It was in this Eucharistic symbolism that the disciples recognized Who He was, and none of them dared ask because they knew it was the Lord. And it was after this that their lives were changed.

As the Gospel reading goes on, Jesus then asks Peter three times, “Do you love Me?” And the third time, Peter was hurt; he was distressed that the Lord would have to ask him a third time, “Do you love Me?” One would wonder why. Why would the Lord have to ask that? Why would Peter be upset? If we just think about our own selves, rather than sitting back 2,000 years after the fact and pointing our fingers at the disciples and saying, “How slow they are to understand. What a bunch of dopes! They just don’t get it. The Lord is risen from the dead, and they just go off and start living their old way of life once again,” what about ourselves? The disciples came to recognize the presence of the Lord in the Eucharist. Do we? I am not saying, “Do you believe that Jesus is there?” We all know that. We all have it in our heads. We know what the Church teaches. We know what Scripture says. We know that Jesus Christ is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament; that is not the question. “Do you recognize Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament?” is the question. Do you recognize Him there? If you recognize Him there, then the question is “Why hasn’t one’s life changed?” Now we begin to see that we really cannot be pointing our fingers at the disciples, can we? Jesus had risen from the dead, and they did not change their lives until they recognized Him. We have Him right here in front of us everyday and our lives have not changed. Do we really recognize Him? You see, the disciples believed that Jesus rose from the dead. They knew in their heads that was the reality; it just had not gotten down to their hearts. So why did Jesus have to ask Peter three times, “Do you love Me”? Because Peter had not done a thing to demonstrate it yet.

What about us? From the Blessed Sacrament, Our Lord looks at each and every one of us and He says to us, “Do you love Me?” Of course, we are going to be quick to say, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love You!” But what are we doing to demonstrate it? Have we shown Our Lord that we love Him, or do most of us do just the opposite? “Just carry on. Jesus is there in the Blessed Sacrament, big deal. What’s that mean to me? I’ve got a life to live, after all. I don’t want to change.” But look at what it did to the disciples once they recognized Him there, once it was no longer just a logical proposition, once it was no longer just an objective teaching but they recognized Him. It was a subjective reality. This was a Person Who was truly present among them, and it changed their lives because they loved Him. They did not just know about Him – they loved Him. So Jesus looks at Peter in the Gospel, then, and basically tells Peter, “If you love Me, here’s what’s going to happen to you: Someone else is going to lead you away against your will.” But Saint John tells us that Jesus told him this because it was the way Peter was going to glorify God in his death.

Now if we want to know whether or not their lives changed, all we have to do is look at the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. We see Peter and Saint John before the Sanhedrin because they were preaching in the Name of Jesus Christ in the temple. They were arrested and they were flogged. They rejoiced that they were found worthy to suffer on behalf of the Name. They recognized Jesus, they understood, and they changed their lives because of the reality that was there. They recognized the Person of Jesus Christ truly present among them and living within them. How about us? Do we recognize Him? Are we willing to change our lives? Are we willing to suffer on behalf of the Name? Love, after all, is demonstrated only in suffering. It is easy to tell somebody how much you love them when everything is wonderful. We all know what fair-weather friends are all about. Life is easy and wonderful, loads of friends; and then the fortunes of life change, and you have very few people around you. But the only ones who are your true friends are the ones who are willing to suffer with you. So it is with Our Lord.

If we know in our heads that Jesus is there, what difference does it make to us? We do not come before Him to pray. We do not think about Him throughout the day. We do not spend time deep in our hearts trying to develop our relationship with Him because it is just a logical proposition, a truth indeed, but just a proposition that is kept at an arm’s distance because it is all objective. We need to recognize Jesus and we need to change our lives. We can ask ourselves just by looking at our own day-to-day life whether or not we have recognized Him. Has it changed our lives? It is just that simple: Has it changed our lives? How much time everyday do we spend in prayer? How much does the Blessed Sacrament mean to us? What are we willing to do to be able to be with Jesus in the Eucharist? Are we willing to suffer – and indeed rejoice to be able to be counted worthy to suffer – on behalf of the Name? Are we willing to let the world know by the way we live our lives that we are Catholic? Do we wear anything that would demonstrate that, or are we afraid? How about putting something on your walls at home? Not just in your bedroom, but how about your living room: a nice crucifix, a picture of Our Blessed Lady? Maybe at work? Think of the ridicule you will receive, the rejection that is going to happen if people find out you are a true Catholic. Think of how your life is going to change if you really start to pray deep in the heart, developing a relationship – not just saying prayers, but truly recognizing Jesus there and developing a relationship with Him. Life is not going to be the same anymore.

If we look at the second reading from the Book of Revelation, we can ask ourselves, “What do I want to do for eternity?” We are given a glimpse of a vision of heaven. And when the angels cry out, “Give all glory and honor and power and might to our God and to the Lamb Who is seated on the throne,” all of the elders bow down and worship. That is what eternity is going to be. It is going to be prayer. It is going to be the worship of Jesus Christ. It is to recognize Him and to love Him. If we do not want to do that now, why would we want to do it for eternity? Why would we want to go to heaven if we do not want anything to do with Him now? Jesus is right there in the tabernacle. He is going to enter into your heart at the communion rail today. And He is going to speak to you and say, “Do you love Me?” Not, “Do you know what the Church teaches about Me,” but, “Do you love Me?” What difference does it make in your life? What are you willing to do for our Blessed Lord?

You see, when we look at it this way, we cannot point our fingers at the apostles. As slow as they were to believe, they are a lot quicker than most of us have ever been. It only took them a few days – we have been at this for years and we still do not understand, we still do not recognize Him. We keep Him at an arm’s distance because we do not want to change our lives. Open your hearts, hear the voice of Our Lord speaking to you, and ask yourself, “What am I willing to do for Him? Am I willing to change my life based on the One Who is truly present within me? If I recognize Him there, can I continue to live just like everybody else? What is it that He’s asking?” Learn from the disciples. See the courage they had to stand up and preach in the Name of the Lord, see the conviction they had, and look at the response they had to that question. As you receive Holy Communion and go back to your pew and unite yourself with Jesus present within you, open your heart and recognize Him there, and answer the question that He is going to ask each and every one of us: “Do you love Me?”

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

We Must Recognize Him in the Breaking of the Bread

April 10, 2005

Third Sunday of Easter

Reading I (Acts 2:14, 22-33)

Reading II (1 Peter 1:17-21)

Gospel (St. Luke 24:13-35)

In the Gospel reading today, we hear the story of Our Lord walking along the road to Emmaus with two of His disciples. These two disciples of His were engaged in lively conversation about all the things that had taken place in Jerusalem a couple of days earlier, all about the Passion and the death of Our Lord, and now even what they had heard about the Resurrection. But what we have to understand and what is made very clear is that they did not believe. They knew what the truth was. It is exactly what we hear in the second reading. Saint Peter, talking about Our Lord, says that He was known from the beginning of the world, but He was only revealed in the latter times. And so He was revealed plainly for everyone to see, but what is important is to continue on with the story and see how it unfolds. Our Lord goes through all the Scriptures and explains to them every single passage that referred to Him in Moses and in the prophets. This means He went through all the passages that talk about the suffering of Christ, all the passages that talk about the Resurrection. Their hearts were burning within them, according to their own testimony. But still they did not believe. This is precisely the problem. They could look right at Him and say, “Well, we were hoping that he was the one. He was a prophet mighty in word and deed,” and Our Lord looked at them and said, How slow of heart you are.

This is important for us because today Our Lord walks with each one of us, and He will ask each one of us about the events that take place: “What is it that you have seen? What is it that you believe?” He will ask you what it is that you believe about Him. Now most of us would be able to rattle off all kinds of things and say, “Well, the Church teaches that He is the Second Person of the Trinity, that He was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit, that He is truly God and truly man but in the unity of one Person.” We can talk about the fact that He lived 2,000 years ago and all the things that He did because we have heard the Scriptures and read them so many times. Then He will look at us and say, “But you, what about you? What do you believe?” You see, these disciples of Our Lord, they knew what the objective teachings were, but it was the subjective element that they had trouble with. Human nature has not changed. We have the great grace of being able to have 2,000 years of the Church’s teaching. We have been taught about all these things since we were children. So we know in our heads what the truth is, but that is not the issue that is at the forefront. The question has to do with the subjective element of what it is that we truly believe.

If we look at what Saint Peter tells us starting in the first reading, quoting the Psalms he talks about how God would not allow His faithful One to undergo corruption. Saint Peter goes on to tell us that that could not have meant David because David’s tomb is right there in Jerusalem and all the people knew where it was and they all knew that his flesh had corrupted. So Saint Peter goes on to explain to the Jewish people Who it was that David was talking about and explains the Resurrection and the fact that the flesh of Jesus Christ was never corrupted in the least, neither by sin nor by death. Then in the second reading, Saint Peter talks about how each one of us was ransomed, not by silver or gold or by anything that was corruptible, but by the precious blood of a spotless, unblemished Lamb.

Again, we see what we all know to be the objective truth. We know Jesus is the Lamb of God, He is the Passover Lamb, He is the One who was sacrificed for us so that we could live, all these things; we could go right down the list. We know what the Church teaches about the Blessed Sacrament. We know what Scripture says. If we were asked, we could all repeat very quickly: “In the Eucharist is the true Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ. It is His flesh and His blood.” And if asked why we say that, we could quote exactly what He tells us when in John 6, for instance, He says: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. My flesh is real food and My blood is real drink. We can talk about what happened at the Last Supper when He took the bread and said, This is My body, and He took the cup and He said, This is My blood. And as He talks to us about these things, we will find that our hearts will burn within us, but we will also find (if that is all that we do) that just like these two disciples we will not recognize Him.

In order to recognize Him, it is not a question of the eyes. It is not about the senses. Jesus was present to these two disciples for hours as they walked along the way. He told them every single Scripture passage that referred to Him. They had it all in their head, but still they did not believe and they did not recognize Him. They did not even recognize Him objectively – “Oh, yeah, all these Scripture passages refer to Jesus.” No, all they looked at was “We were hoping that he was the one. He was a prophet mighty in word and deed.” Even when it was all laid out before them, they still did not believe! How many times has it been laid out for us? He is right there in the Blessed Sacrament, and how many of us really believe? Not how many of us know – we all know what the Church teaches, and like I said, if we were talking about this in lively conversation, our hearts would burn within us – but how many of us have recognized Him there?

These two disciples recognized Him in the breaking of the bread. They understood, not in their minds, not with their senses, but with their hearts, their hearts that were so slow to believe all that the prophets taught. Our hearts are so slow to believe, not so much what the prophets have taught, but what the Son of God Himself has taught. If we can sit back now 2,000 years later and in our minds, in essence, we can chastise these two disciples for their lack of faith, for their dullness of heart, we also have to realize that we are held far more responsible than they were because we have all of the teaching, we have the knowledge. But do we recognize Him? To recognize Him, as I said, is not a question of the senses. When you receive Holy Communion, you do not see Jesus with your eyes, you do not taste Him with your tongue. The priest does not feel Him with his fingers. We do not hear Him in our ears. It is not about the senses. If we are going to recognize Jesus, it requires entering into the heart; the heart, which the prophet Jeremiah tells us is more tortuous than all else: Beyond remedy, he says, who can endure it; the heart, which is so slow to believe all that the Son of God has taught, all that the Church has taught.

You see, we live in this society where we are taught that we can decide for ourselves. We can make up our own minds, we can make the choice, and we can make the rules. We have all of these things out there, the teaching of the Church and the teaching of Jesus Christ being one among many, and so it is all at an arm’s distance. We think somehow that we can pick and choose what we want to believe. Even if we accept it, the real question is: how much of an effect does it have in our lives? The question each one of us needs to ask today is: if Jesus has been known from the very beginning of creation but He has been revealed to us, how many of us recognize Him? Not how many of us know what the Church teaches, not how many of us can talk about the Eucharist in eloquent and objective terms, but subjectively, in the depths of our hearts, how many of us recognize Jesus truly present in the Eucharist?

The Blessed Sacrament is not a “piece” of the Lord, it is not a symbol of the Lord, and it is not a sign of the Lord. It is the very Person – and the fullness of the Person – of Jesus Christ. Every single host contains the fullness of the Person of Our Lord. Now the question is not whether we know this in our head; it is not even whether we have accepted it in our head. The question today is whether or not we recognize Him in the breaking of the bread. To recognize Him, again, requires a relationship. It requires that we spend time with Him. If we are going to say in our heads, “I believe that Jesus is there in the Eucharist,” then the question is what we are doing with that belief. If we know that He is God and He is right there, then the obvious question is: why aren’t we? Why is the TV set more important than the tabernacle? That (the TV) is where most of us spend much more time. If we know that God is right there, why do we not recognize Him? Why do we not act upon what it is that we profess? Our hearts burn within us as we think about the reality, but then like the two disciples, who saw the events of Jerusalem and heard about the Resurrection, we turn around and walk away. They left Jerusalem and walked down to Emmaus. They were hoping that He was the one! But their hearts were slow to believe. Our minds have accepted the truth, but our hearts are slow to believe.

In this Year of the Eucharist, all we can do is be challenged to do exactly what Pope John Paul II asked of each one of us: to spend time in front of the Blessed Sacrament, to make changes in our lives, to truly recognize Him in the Blessed Sacrament. Not just to have the objective knowledge and faith, but to have the subjective faith, to recognize Jesus Christ truly present in the Eucharist in our hearts, not merely in our minds. If we recognize Him there, then we will be there with Him. We are not going to be like the disciples on the road to Emmaus any longer, who walk away with the knowledge but do not have it in our hearts. When we recognize Him Who has been revealed to us and has shown Himself to us in the breaking of the bread, we who come forward and receive Him into our own bodies and hold Him in our hearts, when we recognize Him there, we will come to Him and we will be with Him and we will enter into the depths of our slow and unbelieving hearts. We will doubt no longer, but we will believe. And we will live what we believe because we know and we have recognized that this is Jesus Christ, true God and true man, present with us and among us and within us, and we will change our hearts. Like those two disciples, we will be able to look at our own lives, we will be able to look at our wanderings in this world of tears, and like them we will get up and we will return. We will stop wandering about aimlessly, knowing what the truth is but not letting it in, and we will return so that we can announce to the whole world and live in our lives that we have recognized Jesus Christ truly present in the breaking of the bread.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

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