3rd Sunday of Easter B - Homily 5

Homily 5 - 2018

There was a lovely old lady in a parish where I was stationed many long years ago who was a great pray-er. Every Sunday morning I used to go over the church to open the door early, and she would be standing on the front steps, often in quite cold weather, waiting to get in. So the next Sunday I would go over earlier to open up. And there she would be. She would never complain. I am not sure if I ever beat her and got there first. Anyhow, she would go in and pray her heart out for the hour or so remaining before Mass began. Eventually, the years caught up with her, and she was given only a short time to live. I went round to her home to visit her – and there she lay, scared of dying. She was frightened of meeting God. I felt so sad. I wondered to myself, who was the God she had been praying to so faithfully all those years. Essentially, she anticipated meeting a ruthless, judging God. How come? I think that that was the God she had been taught, taught by an homogenized combination of parents and teachers, and ultimately us priests – not maliciously, but very effectively, all the same.

Why did we not hear? The Gospel message is clear. It shows us not the ruthless, meticulous, condemning judge – but God the forgiver. I think we can be so mesmerised by the familiar, that we become unable to hear, unable to observe how our insights into loving and relationships change over time. Children cannot get it. For them everything is arbitrary; and mum and dad often are inconsistent, sometimes unloving; but even when not, young children cannot understand. As they grow older, their insights into loving and relationships are challenged and change, until, with adulthood, and, for most, marriage and parenthood, they find themselves able, wanting to give themselves totally, unselfishly, in love, able to love unconditionally, selectively perhaps and not consistently, but when at their best.

Did you hear this morning how Jesus opened the disciples’ minds to understand that repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed to all the nations, to everyone? In order to proclaim it, disciples themselves need to repent, to think as adults, to grow up and to learn to trust that God is a forgiving God – because nothing changes, sadly, in our relationships until we learn to trust, to believe, to love. Mistakes are what we learn from. Sin obviously presents no big problem for God. The only thing that stymies God is denying our sinfulness.

Look at Jesus! Peace be with you! – the first thing said by the risen Jesus to that band of guilty former friends who had abandoned him in abysmal, crass, blatantly self-absorbed fear.

What does that say about Jesus? How could he say that if it were not where he was at? if he were not totally at peace himself? And how could be at peace with them unless he loved them? How could he love them unless his love was unconditional? How could he love unconditionally unless he had grown up, and learnt that that is the way love is, love at its best. And how did he learn that this is the way love is?

What do you think? I think that we learn love by learning to trust that we are loved; by practising to trust another, and then to entrust ourselves to that other, in time reciprocating their love; through observing, reflecting on experience, often suffering. It can be hard. I think unconditionally loving, forgiving, was part of the struggle, agony, Jesus went through in Gethsemane.

Repentance embraces all that – seeing differently, growing up, becoming consistent, learning to trust, risking love. This is the message that we are to proclaim: the forgiving Christ, the revelation of God the forgiver. It is a message with little credibility until we learn to live it ourselves.

“Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you!’”