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Second Sunday of Easter A
April 27, 2014
Reading I: Acts 2:42-47
Responsorial Psalm 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24
Reading II: 1 Peter 1:3-9
Gospel: John 20:19-31
Reading 1 acts 2:42-47
They devoted themselves
to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life,
to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.
Awe came upon everyone,
and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles.
All who believed were together and had all things in common;
they would sell their property and possessions
and divide them among all according to each one’s need.
Every day they devoted themselves
to meeting together in the temple area
and to breaking bread in their homes.
They ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart,
praising God and enjoying favor with all the people.
And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
Responsorial Psalm ps 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24
R/ (1) Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, his love is everlasting.
or:
R/ Alleluia.
Let the house of Israel say,
“His mercy endures forever.”
Let the house of Aaron say,
“His mercy endures forever.”
Let those who fear the LORD say,
“His mercy endures forever.”
R/ Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, his love is everlasting.
or:
R/ Alleluia.
I was hard pressed and was falling,
but the LORD helped me.
My strength and my courage is the LORD,
and he has been my savior.
The joyful shout of victory
in the tents of the just:
R/ Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, his love is everlasting.
or:
R/ Alleluia.
The stone which the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
By the LORD has this been done;
it is wonderful in our eyes.
This is the day the LORD has made;
let us be glad and rejoice in it.
R/ Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, his love is everlasting.
or:
R/ Alleluia.
reading 2 1 pt 1:3-9
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading,
kept in heaven for you
who by the power of God are safeguarded through faith,
to a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the final time.
In this you rejoice, although now for a little while
you may have to suffer through various trials,
so that the genuineness of your faith,
more precious than gold that is perishable even though tested by fire,
may prove to be for praise, glory, and honor
at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Although you have not seen him you love him;
even though you do not see him now yet believe in him,
you rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy,
as you attain the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Gospel jn 20:19-31
On the evening of that first day of the week,
when the doors were locked, where the disciples were,
for fear of the Jews,
Jesus came and stood in their midst
and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
“Receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”
Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve,
was not with them when Jesus came.
So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”
But he said to them,
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands
and put my finger into the nailmarks
and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
Now a week later his disciples were again inside
and Thomas was with them.
Jesus came, although the doors were locked,
and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands,
and bring your hand and put it into my side,
and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples
that are not written in this book.
But these are written that you may come to believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and that through this belief you may have life in his name.
Thomas could be the patron of this department of the Catholica Forum, if not of the whole Forum. "Y-not question" - that's the question. "Unless I see, and touch, I will not believe." But in the event, enlightenment overcame the human curiosity, and touching was no longer on the table.
But still, it was appropriate to doubt and question. Thanks to Thomas we have a manifestation on record of Jesus being met not just as a shimmering image, a mirage, but in substantial reality, touchable if someone needs to touch to have an experience on which to ground believing. Belief needs to be grounded, for blind faith is just that - empty emotion of one kind or another. Faith requires a well-thought-out foundation to be worthy of oneself and of the one believed in. Anyone choosing a life partner knows that; in securing our trust and commitment to God, may we be less exacting?
Until very recently the Roman Catholic Church presented itself as the embodiment of the Christ. One could see and touch its credentials: that it was one, and holy, and catholic, i.e., universal, and apostolic - having unbroken links back to the apostles. Millions are now disillusioned of this, having been touched or knowing someone who has been touched, and corrupted, by a mysterious blight that has affected the leaders of many communities and dioceses.
Many are asking, and myself among them, are we sure there was ever meant to be an Institution to embody the spirit of Jeshua of Nazareth, Son of Man, Son of God, Saviour? Can any establishment ever again say: "Come, see and touch and experience the life of Christ in us..., for this structured Society, this Institution is anointed as the Messiah was with his very Spirit?" Rather, blessed are those who have not seen or touched and yet believe. There are many groups of faith-full people in the world who reject the notion of religious establishments with their hierarchies, their rituals, their sacraments and creeds, in whom the Holy Spirit is alive and active. Their impact on the world is small but their influence is strong and wide and deep, for they seek only to follow Jesus in spirit and in truth.
*****
To come back to the gospel story: I imagine Thomas, looking back, may have seen this as the longest journey of his life, the shift from an entertaining mind-game of seeking evidence to a surrender in trust to the one who offered life itself, who had evidently overcome the constraint of death in himself, and for all his kin.
But I find myself compelled to stay with the questions that engaged the Forum coming up to Easter. The question of "WHY? Why do we need saving? And what do we need saving from? Most answers that come in terms the least bit abstract leave us cold, and doubting: "original" sin; the demands of justice; even the scapegoat idea - though this is getting close to the bone.
As it happens, I didn't "do" Easter this year - or Holy Week. Partly due to feeling less than really well, and partly due to spiritual disorientation. And it turns out to have been good. Now slowly reading through the wealth of material that came into the Forum, I am asking the questions from the outside looking in, and this is good too. There was much questioning, but I wonder were they always the 'right' questions?
To find the right question is the key to scientific discovery and indeed to advance in any knowledge. Mediaeval physics worked on the idea that things self-move in an effort to get to where they belong: flames leap upwards because they belong up there with the lightning and the sun; apples leap from the tree branch to get down to earth where they belong. Each thing has a tendency to get to its final resting place. Then one day Newton got hit on the head, and looking around for the offending apple, he formed the question: Did perhaps this big ball he was lying on (earth) pull this little ball right off the tree with force enough to raise a lump on his head?
And so I ask, is this still-unanswered question a 'right' question: Why did God decide that the only way he could forgive humanity for behaving exactly the way he designed them, was to make a bloody human sacrifice of himself, to himself?
Much as we might like to, we can never question god - because, if for no other reason, we will never comprehend a godly answer anyway. The right question must be about us, about life as we experience it, about good and bad as they are our values. The other major issue is lurking in the phrase: behaving exactly as he made them. Not sure about that at all.
Thomas, I think, was playing the scientist, until he was suddenly confronted with the question put the other way round: What if death is not the end, but the illusion? And he surrendered to the undeniable reality that turned the whole of human perception on its head. DEATH IS NOT THE END! And the necessary corollary in that context, "sin" is not invincible!
*****
Though it would be fitting to examine Thomas' trust and hope, I'm still locked into the questions about the brutal death of Jeshua, and why did he 'die for our sins' as the scriptures declare. Looking from the other end, why do we need saving? The investigation leads me to go inside, beyond the first room where I acknowledge evil things I have done that I cannot repair, beyond the second room where I see faulty connections that are clearly a disaster waiting to happen, beyond the third room where guilt and self-loathing lead me to despair and self destruction, eventually to a deepest place where I find an insidious little idea lurking: It isn't really my fault. It was the other one's fault. And here I am angry and vengeful and I will kill that other one for leading me on to such a shameful self-indulgence.
This, I think, is the foundation of the 'scapegoat', the source from which those words come: He has broken our law and he must die... Not this man, but [the common ruffian, the murderer,] Barabbas... Crucify him... and even Pilate's vacuous gesture of washing hands: I am innocent of the blood of this just man. He brought it on himself!!!
So too the pedophile who in his most secret self believes the child is to blame, for the child led me on.
Or the wife-basher: What can I do? She provokes me.
This is what we need saving from, this deepest, darkest denial of wrong.
It surfaces in another form in institutions when leaders deny that they have done wrong. Any institution that sees itself as better than average is more-than-average vulnerable to this blindness.
This is why we need someone to show us the way to walk the road rightly.
We know people, innocent victims, who have taken up their cross of shame in public to bear witness against the common way of thinking that children are not important, that they can be used by adults for profit, or pleasure. We know of the wives of men who were abused as boys, women who cannot accept that this exposing of their shame in public will solve anything, and yet these men do just that to shame at last some sector of society which may be ready to see the wrong and admit the common guilt. And these victims die again, abused by suspicious disbelief, manipulated by legal manoeuvring, shamed by being made a spectacle in public. The innocent one is killed again in shame to shame the guilt out into the open. Hopefully in the end to protect the children.
Why do we kill the innocent, unless it is some blind attempt to cover the shame of our lost innocence.We would even kill God whose rightness accuses our wrongness and we can't stand it.
This dark denial is what we need saving from. This is what we need to save each other from.
The saving act must of necessity involve the innocent taking on the shame of guilt, thereby to break the vicious cycle. Once death is done we suddenly see our naked shame and recognise our guilt. And then miraculously resurrection happens.
So the humble rabbi, whom they could not convict of wrongdoing, tortured on shame's cross becomes the talisman of liberation from darkest evil.
Strange, isn't it!
But common. The parent who 'loses it' in blaming the child for some wrong done can practically destroy the child in this violent outburst of righteousness. There are daily reports of actual murder done, as in these excerpts from a recent ABC Seven-thirty Report:
'...these men who choose to use violence see [a woman's independence] as a slight on their masculinity. And women are punished. And as Rosie Batty recently commented, you know, "I was no longer in his control and I was punished for it," and she believes that Greg Anderson actually orchestrated it so that she would witness the murder of her child.
'...women themselves will tell us it's really, really difficult to get men who choose to use violence to take responsibility for their behaviour. It's everybody else's fault. And when they hear these excuses, it actually affirms their belief they have a right to do this and the community supports it.'
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-21/high-profile-domestic-violence-murders-tip-of-the/5402488
ACT OF EVIL shouts today's front page banner headline, with the report of the little girls, 3 and 4 years old, killed by their father on Easter Sunday.
And people wonder whether we need saving!
*****
Was this in fact the doubt that Thomas had? Or at least the flash of understanding that made him say: My Lord and my God! In an instant he saw that if physical death is overcome, then so is the grip that sin has on us all. The physical is a sign of the spiritual. If a man can be brought back to life from the grave, so too can one be brought back to life from the dark denial evil of despair. It is possible to break the chains of evil, the ties of selfish greed, the chains of power that bind the freedom of the powerful even as they oppress the defenceless. No longer need we say: What can we do?
In fact, we can do.
I think the bodily resurrection of Jesus does not of itself 'make any difference'.
It is the end achieved, the goal reached, but the goal was never about restoring this corporeal world. The bodily resurrection of Jesus is the final sign, the final seal on the Creator's work. To read that sign rightly we must go from the physical to the spiritual, from the 'reign of physical death' to the 'reign of moral evil/sin'. And so, in spite of the ever-rising tide of evil lapping at out door, I do believe that we can beat it - 'in Christ'.
How? Only by following the kind of path that Jeshua walked, doing the right thing the way he did, getting clobbered ourselves rather than thinking we can destroy evil by doing violence against others. Doing the truth in love.
Do I really believe this?Perhaps I don't really believe that sin has been overcome. That's a problem. Perhaps I don't believe in a saving god. Perhaps it is all just fairy story and we are destined to wade through this sludge for eons more and eons more...
It is indeed the season for compassion after all.
Tony Lawless