I found this one linked to spiritdaily.com also. This priest puts things in excellent perspective, or at least I think he does
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Homily, Sunday Homily, Catholic Homily, Homilies, Sunday Homilies, Catholic Homilies, Sermon, Sermons, Catholic Sermons
March 27, 2005
Easter Sunday 2005
A Homily Reflection with
Fr. James Farfaglia
St. Helena of the True Cross Parish
Roman Catholic Diocese Corpus Christi, Texas
Rev. James Farfaglia
He Has Truly Risen!
"On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb". (John 20: 1)
The resurrection of Jesus is a reality beyond doubt. The Catechism of the Catholic Church eloquently explains this truth, which is the cornerstone of our faith.
The liturgical season of Easter fills us with immense joy and profound hope. However, each time we contemplate the gospel passages detailing the resurrection of Jesus we are faced with a sense of strangeness. The barriers of time and space no longer apply to Him. The Lord appears and disappears with shocking suddenness. He continually demonstrates His physical reality. The Apostles and the disciples see him, hear him, and eat with him. Thomas is told to touch his wounds. The stone rolled away from the entrance, and the carefully folded burial cloths direct our gaze to the physical. He has truly risen.
The disbelief and uncertainty evidenced by those who saw him testify to an apparent strangeness in the appearance of the newly risen Christ. Slowly they came to recognize Him, but they still struggled with doubt. Their response shows us that although the risen Jesus is the same Jesus that died on Calvary, His physical reality is now different than before. The body of the risen Lord is indeed his physical body, but he now moves about with a glorified body. Each of us will have a glorified body also at the resurrection of the dead if we persevere and are faithful.
Repeatedly the gospels stress that something extraordinary has occurred. The Lord is tangible, but he has been transformed. His life is different from what it once was. His glorified body transcends the limitations of time and space. For this reason, he can pass through the closed door of the Upper Room, and appear and disappear as he desires. At times his disciples cannot recognize Him precisely because their physical reality moves within time and space, and the Lord's physical reality is no longer subject to time and space, although he exists within time and space.
The clarity of the physical reality of the risen Jesus provides us with the certainty of the existence of the Lord and the veracity of everything that he has taught us. The empty tomb and the neatly folded burial cloths illustrate that redemption is not only for the soul, but for the body as well.
Applied to our practical daily living, the reality of the Risen Jesus fills us with profound peace. There is no need to worry or to fear. He is truly with us. With Jesus, we know that we are journeying, not to the sunset, but to the sunrise. We enter into a new relationship with God when we really believe that God is as Jesus told us that he is. We become absolutely sure of His love. We become absolutely convinced that he is above all else a redeeming God. The fear of suffering and death vanishes, for suffering and death means going to the one God who is the awesome God of love. In reality, our life long journey is a journey to the eternal Easter in Heaven.
When we truly believe, we enter into a new relationship with life itself. When we make Jesus our way of life, life becomes new. Life is clad with a new loveliness, a new light and a new strength. When we embrace Jesus as our Lord and Savior, when we develop a personal relationship with him, we realize that life does not end, it changes and it goes from incompletion to completion, from imperfection to perfection, from time to eternity.
When we truly believe in Jesus, we are resurrected in this life because we are freed from the fear and worry that are characteristic of a godless life; we are freed from the unhappiness of a life filled with sin; we are freed from the loneliness of a life without meaning. When we walk with Jesus and follow His way, life becomes so powerful that it cannot die but must find in death the transition to a higher life.
The bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead makes our entire journey to eternal life tangible, real, certain, and credible. Because Jesus is physically alive, His Church is visible. Because Jesus is corporeal, the sacraments are visible aqueducts of His divine life. Because Jesus physically transcends time and space, He remains with us in the Eucharist as the "medicine of immortality" (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1405). Because Jesus has truly risen from the dead and ascended to the Father, we await with joyful hope his return in glory.
Nevertheless, despite the victory of Jesus over death, the attack of evil continues. Sometimes, we might ask ourselves why this is so.
The sacrifice of Christ on the cross is unique. His death on Calvary completes and surpasses all the other sacrifices of the Old Testament. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: �First, it is a gift from God the Father himself, for the Father handed his Son over to sinners in order to reconcile us with himself. At the same time it is the offering of the Son of God made man, who in freedom and love offered his life to his Father through the Holy Spirit in reparation for our disobedience� (CCC 614).
Nevertheless, Christ�s reign is to be fulfilled with his Second Coming in glory. Until that day occurs, Satan continues his attack even though he has been already conquered definitively by Christ�s sacrifice on Calvary (cf. CCC 671).
In our own times, it is not hard to notice an ever-increasing presence of evil powers in the world. Back in January, Pope John Paul II raised many eyebrows when he addressed this issue during his Wednesday General Audience.
Commenting on a passage from the Book of Revelation, he said: �The joy stems from the fact that Satan, the ancient adversary, who stood in the heavenly court as �accuser of our brothers� (12:10), as we see him in the Book of Job (see 1:6-11; 2:4-5), was �cast out� from heaven and therefore no longer has great power. He knows that �he has but a short time� (12:12), because history is about to undergo a radical change of liberation from evil and that is why he reacts �in great fury� (January 12, 2005).
Without a doubt, we can see the great fury of continual evil in the world. However, many, like myself, are wondering what is going to occur that will cause history to undergo a radical change of liberation from evil?
Until this change takes place, the battle continues. It seems as if humanity is out of control. The perversions of a world that has rejected the Savior of the world continues to carry much of humanity down the blind road of self-destruction.
Recently, we have been witnessing the passion of a Florida woman who is fighting for her own life. The culture of death is once again trying to claim another victim. However, many voices, such as the Vatican, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, President George Bush and Governor Jeb Bush are crying out for her life.
Bishop Thomas Wenski of Orlando, Florida wrote this commentary for the Orlando Sentinel: �� the feeding tube that provided Terri Schiavo with the normal care of food and water was withdrawn. Barring last-minute intervention, Terri has now begun to die by starvation. One can pray that her husband will have a change of heart or that the state of Florida will find new grounds to intervene so that, in spite of what transpired on Friday, a safer course might still be taken and that Terri �continue to receive nourishment, comfort and loving care" -- as we Catholic Bishops of Florida have continually advocated.
As Pope John Paul II points out in his just released book, Memory and Identity, the crisis of our age is rooted in the presumption that we can decide for ourselves what is good and evil without reference to God. Yet, the Decalogue, while certainly an expression of divine positive law, is nonetheless more than a religious code: It is a reflection of natural law -- of the law written on the heart of man. In other words, we cannot not know that it is wrong to kill innocent human life.
That we do nevertheless kill is evidence of the misterium iniquitatis at work in the world; but, when we do kill, we usually seek by evasions and subterfuges to make up excuses for our crimes. Thus, we disguise what we do by rationalizations: We don't abort �babies�, we remove the �products of conception�; we don't murder unarmed civilians, we engage in �ethnic cleansing�; and when we dispatch with a fatal cocktail the feeble minded it is because such a life is lebensunwerter Leben (life "unworthy of life") -- as euthanasia was justified in the Germany of the Third Reich.
In Terri's case, we can speak of the controversial diagnosis of PVS -- persistent vegetative state. Yet, even while to speak of her as a �vegetable� might give a false reassurance to our conflicted consciences, she still remains a human being, no less human than Christopher Reeve, who was kept alive on a respirator until he died late last year of natural causes. No one begrudged his heroic struggle to live, and we were all edified by his courage and that of his family who stood by him. Terri, however, is not being kept alive by any machine as was Reeve for most of his last decade of life. She only needs assistance to be fed. Does the fact that he could speak and she cannot make it right to deprive her of the ordinary means of human sustenance? If so, how can any of our seriously ill brethren ever again trust themselves to sleep while under a doctor�s care?
Some would argue that to remove her feeding tube is simply to let nature take its course. Yet what is "natural" about starving to death? True, she was fed through a feeding tube -- she depends on others, but so did Christopher Reeve, and so does a newborn baby depend on others for nutrition and hydration. John Donne said: "No man is an island entire of itself". As members of the human race we all are interdependent on each other to one degree or another. The mark of a civilized society was that the helpless had the greatest claim on our protection. Now it would seem that they have the least.
And so, Holy Week, the annual remembrance of Jesus' passion and death, begins with the Passion of Terri Schiavo. Terri's agony has already begun and, barring some miracle, the denouement of Terri's drama will be her death. This week, in recalling Jesus' Passover from death to life, we celebrate the fact that the misterium iniquitatis is overcome through the misterium crucis. From the cross Jesus cried out, and his cry is echoed today by all those held captive to a world of pain and sin. As Terri shares in his passion, she will share in his Resurrection. Like Jesus did, Terri Schiavo cries out, though with muted voice: �I thirst�.[1]
The reality of the risen Jesus fills us with peace and consolation because He is truly with us. His resurrection assures us of his final victory over evil. The genuineness of Easter keeps us from worry, fear, and discouragement. It sustains us in times of trial and it opens the heart to the expectation of eternal life.
However, this Easter should inspire us to be apostles of life because Jesus is the resurrection and the life.
http://www.goccn.org/diocese/spcl/reflect.asp
