THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER–4/18/10
by Msgr. Eric R. Barr, STL
READINGS: ACTS 5:27-32, 40-42; REVELATION 5:11-14; JOHN 211-19
There is a sound that I remember, that is one of the most hauntingly beautiful sounds I have ever heard. My brother has a cabin up in northern Wisconsin, right on a lake, and if you are not too sound a sleeper on a summer morning, this sound tells you that something magical, mystical and majestic is happening and you better get up and see it. So I get up, and I look at sunrise over the lake, with the morning mist rising from the water and giving everything an otherworldly feel to it. And there on the lake is the loon, luting its lovely, lingering song through the mist of the morning. For a timeless moment, earth and heaven meet together and you just don’t want such a beautiful experience to end. I’ve never been to the Sea of Galilee, but it must have been like that that Sunday morning a week after the Resurrection when Peter and John and the apostles went fishing. Can’t you just see the mist off the lake, the sun rising, and a voice calling–not the cry of bird, but THE Voice–one whom you remember and whom you thought you would not hear again. And the kid that’s with you–John–looks through the fog and sees a figure waving on the beach–and he has eyes, this John, and he puts a name to the voice he hears, and he tells Peter, the leader of this motely crew of fisherman, that Jesus–who once was dead–is standing on the beach, bidding them to come forward. And Peter, caught up in the moment, is not going to desert the Lord again. He jumps in the water and splashes toward the Lord, and the water washes his sins away, away; the water washes all his sins away.
I. Faith, The Task And The Cross
A. The Gospel – a fascinating story about fishermen, breakfast on the beach with the Risen Lord, and the rehabilitation of St. Peter. This chapter exists because God and the Apostle John want to make some very strong points.
B. First of all, there’s a real stress on the absolute fact of the bodily resurrection of Christ. This is no ghost, no figment of a fisherman’s imagination. This is a real, live, Risen Lord inviting the apostles to leave their boats and have breakfast on the beach. John wants to tell us that our faith is based on fact not fiction, on reality not imagination. Our faith is real, as solid as the glorified body of the Risen Christ who ate and drank with his friends on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.
C. Second, this chapter talks about the task of the Christian. Notice how Jesus rehabilitates Peter? Three times Peter denied Christ on Good Friday; now three times Jesus asks Peter if Peter loves Christ. And three times Peter says yes. Jesus gives him a task–to feed his flock, to take care of the Church. The task of any Christian, not just the first Pope, is to care for people, to seek out the lost, help those in need, protect the weak, spread Christ’s love.
D. Thirdly, this chapter says that having faith in Christ and doing the task of a Christian (living the faith in action) brings a person to the Cross. We cannot escape suffering. If we want to live with Christ, we must also be willing to die with Christ. We must suffer for what we believe.
III. Experiencing Christ Makes Us Certain Of Our Faith
A. The stories we have been hearing from the Acts of the Apostles, this Gospel, and the story of Peter’s denial all show clearly that when you experience Christ fear flees, despair disappears, and courage comes to those who believe and obey God.
B. Where do we get our courage from? Have we ever stood up for what we believed in even if it cost us friends or maybe even our job? Can what happened to the apostles and the early Christians happen to us? Of course! And here’s how:
C. Faith comes from contact with Christ.
1. The Apostle John is at great pains in his Gospel to tell us that the ability to receive the Eucharist means we get to experience the Risen Lord. Because we were baptized, because we were touched by the Holy Spirit, we can receive Christ. What convinced the apostles that it was really Jesus on the beach? It was when Jesus gave them the bread and fish–had a meal with them–a meal that looked a lot like a Eucharist. When we are in touch with Jesus through the Eucharist, we have courage to love, to proclaim our faith, to die for Christ if need be. The Holy Spirit puts us in touch with Christ. What happened on that beach that morning so long ago happens to us every time we come to Mass! Just like the apostles, we experience the real Jesus.
2. Jesus convinces us that our faith is real when we come to him in prayer. It is when we pray, taking our troubles to the Lord, asking God questions, and being quiet long enough to listen that we begin to feel the presence of God in us. This is no imaginary feeling. Throughout the ages, Christians in prayer have felt the presence of God in them. And that realization comes only when our conversation with God includes some silence so we can hear God talking back. When we see Christ ahead of us, like the apostles saw Jesus on the beach, we can jump into the chaos of our life, like they jumped into the chaos of the sea, and encounter Christ in prayer. The beautiful silence present in that early morning meeting with Jesus should remind us that in silence we can meet the Lord too–those few moments after we receive Communion, or when we come in here to Church to spend some time with our Lord before the Blessed Sacrament.
D. Our task is to love as Christ loved us. This only works if we are convinced our faith is real. But once certain of our faith, we have great power to love and heal other people and help them get to know the Risen Lord. That’s because Christ acts through us. We become the eyes, the hands, the feet, the voice, the face of Christ. People see Christ through us.
E. The Cross will come to us–we will suffer for living a Christian life style. Have you been mocked yet because of all the slander the Pope has had to undergo. Has anyone said to you, "Why in the world are you Catholic?" Be prepared to be mocked and ridiculed. But for us, this suffering is joyful. Sounds rather strange, but true. Through our suffering the world learns once again that evil cannot conquer good, that death doesn’t have the final say, that everlasting life is real. The world learns this through our joy. While we suffer, we are in touch with the Christ who fed his apostles one morning on the beach and then said to them, "Follow me."
F. Faith, Experiencing Christ, Cross–these are the three ideas that sum up the message of the Gospel and this homily: Faith in the reality of the Resurrection; experiencing the Risen Christ in the Eucharist and in prayer; and embracing the Cross even if it means giving our lives.
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