Authentic freedom = Jesus Christ (Revised)

5^th Sunday of Easter: Acts 6.1-7; 1 Peter 2.4-9; John 14.1-12
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Paul Hospital and Church of the Incarnation

[NB. If you listen to the podcast of this homily you might notice something a little odd...just maybe...I was pretty much blown away by the Holy Father's homilies during his visit. At several points in this homily I had to restrain myself from "Going Baptist" and spending a hour or so preaching from B16's homily texts! Several times I got a little choked up and had to collect myself. We have been blessed by a truly amazing Pope!]

Jesus says to us, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Can we hear this gentle admonition without thinking, “Easy for you to say!”? Ten minutes on the internet or fifteen listening to the news and my heart is convinced that the earth is shaking in its last throes before splitting pole to pole and sending us all—man, beast, plant, and rock—into a fiery fall toward the sun! We read that the housing market is crashing the economy. Food prices are racing to the highest in decades. Iran is jockeying for a place among the exclusive nuclear weapons club. China is polluting its environment at twice the speed of light. These are macro problems. On the micro-level we have an “artist” at Yale inseminating herself with donated sperm, getting pregnant, and then inducing miscarriages, all filmed and displayed as an art project. Another “artist” in Costa Rica has chained a stray dog to a museum wall and is letting it starve to death. (Apparently, there is an art to both murder and dog catching!) But even as we recoil from these examples of rotting cultural decadence, we can hear Jesus saying to us, “Do not let your hearts be troubled!” And why not? “You have faith in God; have faith also in me.” Faith is the good habit of trusting God, we know this. But do we know where we are going and do we know how to get there? Touching our anxious hearts, Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Therefore, Jesus himself is the means to our end (the way); he is the Wisdom of that means (the truth); and he is our end (the life).

Indeed, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. He is our mission, our ministry, and our goal. He is our work, our standard, and our wage. As the only gate through which we might come to the Father, he is our unique path, our singular goodness, and our beautiful conclusion. Lest we believe that the road is broad, smoothly paved, and easily traveled, listen again to this difficult fact: Jesus says, “Where I am going you know the way.” We do? Then why do we so often feel lost? Why do we so often feel like we have been thrown into a mess? The view from the window can be bleak, heartbreaking: recession, unemployment, war; the consistent defeat of life by a culture of death: torture, rampant disease, inconvenient lives ended by judicial decree, sometimes in the name of mercy, sometimes for the bottom-line, sometimes for the sake of art or state sponsored vengeance. Do we know the way that Jesus is going? We do if we know him.

In his letter, Peter calls on his brothers and sisters: “Come to him, a living stone, rejected by human beings but chosen and precious in the sight of God…” A living stone. Jesus the Christ lives in his Church, the Body. We know this because we live. He lives in us just as the Father lives in him and he in the Father. And living here does not mean that we merely process food, water, and oxygen; nor does it mean that we move about, working, playing, sleeping; nor does “living” mean that we are waiting for death. To live in Christ is to grow in his truth; to progress in his ministry to bring the Good News to all creation; to live in Christ is to nurture the seeds of goodness and broadcast them to every corner, every field, every garden, every heart we meet.

Peter says that Jesus is a “living stone,” a “cornerstone...a rock that will make [those who reject him] fall…” We build with stones. Build up and out. Solid and strong. We also defend ourselves with stone; we build against enemies, “wall-off” when assaulted. Stones mark a site for us to gather, to eat together, to drink together. Stones anchor, lend strength, provide protection, weigh the rolling ship. In the storm of cultural chaos, Jesus is the keystone to a beautiful Church—arches, alcoves, windows and doors. Our trust in the Father then is built-up, over time, with practice, through His goodness and truth, with one another for the other, and in His name!

Our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, in his address to this country’s young people and seminarians, says, “[an] area of darkness that which affects the mind often goes unnoticed, and for this reason is particularly sinister. The manipulation of truth distorts our perception of reality, and tarnishes our imagination and aspirations. . .The fundamental importance of freedom must be rigorously safeguarded…Yet freedom is a delicate value. It can be misunderstood or misused so as to lead not to the happiness which we all expect it to yield, but to a dark arena of manipulation in which our understanding of self and the world becomes confused, or even distorted by those who have an ulterior agenda.” For those who walk the Way, our freedom may not serve a lie. Our Holy Father goes on to ask a question that cuts to the heart of our culture of death: “Have you noticed how often the call for freedom is made without ever referring to the truth of the human person?” Fire up your internet connection, turn on the TV, open a newspaper. . .and notice! The “freedom” to sex without consequence trumps the truth of our human end as co-creators with God. The “freedom” to kill an unborn child trumps the truth of that child’s divine origin and its humanity. The “freedom” to profit from another’s labor without regard to the dignity of the person trumps the truth of our human need to work in order to live. We cannot have sex without creating; kill our children without destroying our future; nor exploit those who need to work without poisoning our economy; we cannot do these things and at the same time excuse ourselves by shamelessly mumbling the word “freedom.”

To be free is to walk the path of truth. Just this morning, in New York City, at a Mass in Yankee Stadium, our Holy Father preached, “True freedom blossoms when we turn away from the burden of sin, which clouds our perceptions and weakens our resolve, and find the source of our ultimate happiness in him who is infinite love, infinite freedom, infinite life. [Quoting Dante’s Paradiso,] ‘In his will is our peace.’ Real freedom, then, is God’s gracious gift, the fruit of conversion to his truth, the truth which makes us free. And this freedom in truth brings in its wake a new and liberating way of seeing reality. When we put on 'the mind of Christ' new horizons open before us!"

Let’s ask the question of the despairing postmodern heart; this is Pilate’s question to Jesus: what is truth? Benedict teaches us: “Dear friends, [he says] truth is not an imposition. Nor is it simply a set of rules. It is a discovery of the One who never fails us; the One whom we can always trust. In seeking truth we come to live by belief because ultimately truth is a person: Jesus Christ.” What does this mean? It means that we cannot start our search for truth in formulae, argument, texts, experience, or work. We must start with Jesus Christ. How? Jesus himself says to his disciples: “The Father who dwells in me is doing his works…whomever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these…” To be truly free then is to do what Jesus did and to do it as his Body, the Church. Benedict elaborates, “…authentic freedom is not an opting out. It is an opting in; nothing less than letting go of self and allowing oneself to be drawn into Christ’s very being for others.” Do we draw ourselves into the very being of Christ and do his work for others when we abort our children; abuse the gift of our sexuality; torture our enemies; execute our criminals—the guilty and the innocent; allow greed for profit to destroy our means of living; do we grow in holiness by refusing in our pride to listen to Christ’s church; by exercising our “rights” against the truth of the faith, creating dissent and scandal? No. We spread lies and multiply despair. Benedict says to the Catholic educators of this country: “Truth means more than knowledge: knowing the truth leads us to discover the good.”

Jesus must be the “living stone” of our lives together. We are lost, living a lie, and without a purpose if we refuse to place this living stone at the foundation of the structures we hope to build as a holy people. Peter writes, “…let yourselves be built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” What our God wants for sacrifice on His altar is the believer’s contrite heart, and from this pile of repentant stones, hearts turned from falsehood to truth, from selfishness to love, with these pure gifts, He will build His kingdom.

*NB. I am not suggesting here that this list of sins against human dignity are all morally equivalent. Obviously, abortion is its own genus of depravity.

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from Pope Benedict XVI’s homily at Yankee Stadium (4/20/08):

"My dear young friends, like the seven men, "filled with the Spirit and wisdom" whom the Apostles charged with care for the young Church, may you step forward and take up the responsibility which your faith in Christ sets before you! May you find the courage to proclaim Christ, "the same, yesterday, and today and for ever" and the unchanging truths which have their foundation in him. These are the truths that set us free! They are the truths which alone can guarantee respect for the inalienable dignity and rights of each man, woman and child in our world – including the most defenseless of all human beings, the unborn child in the mother’s womb. In a world where, as Pope John Paul II, speaking in this very place, reminded us, Lazarus continues to stand at our door, let your faith and love bear rich fruit in outreach to the poor, the needy and those without a voice. Young men and women of America, I urge you: open your hearts to the Lord’s call to follow him in the priesthood and the religious life. Can there be any greater mark of love than this: to follow in the footsteps of Christ, who was willing to lay down his life for his friends?"

--read to the students just before the final blessing/dismissal