23/04/2022
Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Easter by Fr Michael Ruddy ss.cc.
Were you ever home alone? Maybe the rest of the family were away. You come downstairs in the morning and you notice the mail, which is usually on the floor under the letterbox is on the hall table. Maybe it’s there from the day before and you hadn’t noticed. As you look out the kitchen window, you notice the wheelie bins have been put out for collection. Maybe a neighbour thought you were away too, and kindly put them out for you. You turn to put on the kettle and see a little whiff of steam coming from the spout and when you touch it, it is still warm. Now you’re beginning to get a little unsettled or maybe scared, so you go to the bottom of the stairs and shout up, just in case the family returned during the night, unexpectedly. ‘Honey!’ ‘Sugar!’ ‘Maple syrup!’ or whatever way you address your beloved, but no reply. Going back into the kitchen, how did you miss your favourite breakfast all laid out for you, the one you only have on Sundays: ‘The full Irish!’ Sausages, bacon, eggs, black AND white pudding, and the soda bread already buttered for your convenience. Well if it wasn’t a member of the family, it was certainly someone who knew your tastes, someone who wanted the best for you.
There’s a similar experience in the post Resurrection appearances of the Risen Lord, where the Disciples do not at first recognise who it is that’s in their presence.
So Mary Magdalene at the tomb, thinks Christ is a gardener until he speaks her name. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus, don’t know who the stranger is that joins them on their journey and explains the scriptures to them, that is until he shares a meal with them and breaks the bread.
The disciples who went fishing, didn’t know who the stranger on the shore who was preparing breakfast for them, until they saw how he divided the bread and fish as he had done in the feeding of the five thousand. And in today’s Gospel, the disciples recognise their Risen Lord in the way he greets them as he has always done: ‘SHALOM - peace be with you,’ and to leave them in no doubt, shows them the wounds in his hands and his side.
It is interesting that the tense of that greeting ‘shalom,’ is imperative, so it’s more than just ‘hiya,’ or ‘hello,’ but Christ is giving us a command: ‘Be at peace.’ Work for peace. Never tire in bringing about peace: peace within yourself, within your family, among your friends and neighbours and with all those you are not on good terms with.
St Seraphim of Sarov, a monk of the orthodox tradition said something really amazing in this regard, when he said: ‘Learn to be at peace, and thousands around you will find salvation.’ Not a few, not hundreds but thousands!
This peace building is not easy - the invasion of Ukraine has shown us that it is so much easier to destroy than to build. Within seconds, one shell can obliterate something that has taken years to build.
Linked to this imperative to work and build peace is as we have seen in the Gospel: ‘Forgiveness,’ and like peace, something that Jesus in his ministry pleaded and prayed for us to take seriously: ‘How often must I forgive my Brother? Seven times? Not seven times but seventy times seven.’ ‘And this is the way your Heavenly Father will deal with you if you do not forgive your Brother from your heart.’ ‘If you come to the altar of God and there discover your brother has something against you - leave your offering and go first and be reconciled with your brother.’
So crucial and so indispensable is forgiveness, that Jesus placed it front and centre of the prayer he taught us in the Our Father, which we cannot pray with honesty and integrity nor receive God’s forgiveness unless we ourselves are prepared to forgive. Likewise, at the Last Supper, at the institution of the Eucharist, Jesus told us that his blood poured out for us, is for the forgiveness of sins in the new and eternal covenant. So again, how can we with any integrity receive his body and blood if we carry unforgiveness in our hearts and if we are unprepared to use the grace of the Eucharist to forgive as we have been forgiven.
This is heavy stuff, isn’t it? These are two ‘biggies’ of our Christian lives and faith: peace-building and forgiveness. This is the heavy lifting required of each and everyone of us who call ourselves Christian. But let’s not become despondent that what Christ asks of us and commands of us is beyond us, because the whole context of the Gospel today is the new life, hope, grace and energy that the Holy Spirit gives us to live this life. For God will never ask us to do anything that he hasn’t already and beforehand given us the grace and the wherewithal to accomplish.
Have you ever felt something was beyond you, but did it anyway? Did you surprise yourself at how you did it? And did such an achievement have something to do with how you called upon the Holy Spirit to help and inspire you? I hope so.
And so we come to the Eucharist today, where all our lives, our struggles, our hopes, our dreams, our sinfulness, our victories, our disappointments, our losses, our desires for ourselves, our loved ones and our world are gathered up and taken up into the heart of God, ‘in Christ,’ through the Holy Spirit. Because all life, our lives, become breathed upon with the peace of Christ which only he can give. The gifts of bread and wine, made by our own hands and which symbolise our whole lives, are breathed on by the Holy Spirit at the Consecration, whose peace that descends into the gifts, become in a mysterious and paradoxical way the grace and gift of peace for our own hearts and Christian lives in the week ahead.
So this week, when we are called upon, challenged to do something difficult in terms of our faith and our Christian lives, remember: God has already given us the grace, strength and peace of this Sacrament to live out our belovedness as sons and daughters of God our Father.
Maybe coming down to breakfast tomorrow morning and seeing certain things in place, will remind us: that the Risen Lord is with us, He has promised never to leave us and goes before us to prepare and assist us in every aspect of our day. All we have to do is acknowledge His presence, and ask Him through the Holy Spirit to be with us.
