Solemnity of the Annunciation: Isa 7.10-14, 8.10; Heb 10.4-10; Luke 1.26-38And though we do not celebrate Mary this morning, we do honor her faith in the Word. Our Testaments testify to the fact that God has revealed Himself to prophets, priests, kings, and even children, pulling back the Creator/creature veil to allow us to glimpse through their witness the glory that reigns supreme. Mary encounters more than an archangel, more than a mere angelic invitation; she is confronted with the fulfillment of the Messianic promise; she is shown, head on, face up the culmination of her people’s historic anticipation of their salvation. In effect, she is shown the end and the beginning of the promise that our Father spoke to Ahaz: Emmanuel, “God is with us!” Mary’s faith in the divine achievement of the impossible moves this promise from the Word to the world.
Fr. Danielou writes, “Faith is the recognition of revelation, and of equal importance in going to make up saving history. Faith is the special mark of biblical man”(24). Mary’s trust in the truth of Gabriel’s announcement that she will bear the Word into World is exemplary; it is also prophetic and priestly: she brings us to our end in Christ and she stands between us and the divine, offering herself as sacrifice, giving herself to God as a bloodless holocaust to bring our final and true Mediator into the flesh. With her Son, Mary says, “Behold, I come to do your will, O God!” but it is Christ who alone who accomplishes his Father’s will for us on the Cross. Word made flesh, he dies for us so that we might live.
Our eucharist this morning, this early morning party of praise and thanksgiving, brings that same Word into the world, making us carriers of the hope of creation’s salvation. St Peter says that we are a “living hope.” Jesus himself sends us out to be that living hope for others. Mary says yes to the work of bearing the Word. And so do we. Every “amen” we exclaim this morning binds us to the annunciation, to the revelation that God not only speaks to us, but he also holds us to our baptismal promise to speak of Him, to be His revelation in the world to every heart and mind free to see and hear. So, when you pray “amen” this morning, you pray a promise along with Christ and his Mother: “Here I am, Lord; I come to your will.”
Pic credit: Henry Tanner
2nd Sunday of Easter: Acts 2.42-47; 1 Peter 1.3-9; John 20.19-31On this second Sunday of Easter, celebrating the Divine Mercy of God, we are asked to brave a closer look at fear, an eyes-wide-open stare at what it means for a follower of Christ to live dreadfully, panicked. Just look at the disciples who lock themselves away, afraid of the Jewish leaders. Look at the Jewish leaders who chase and threaten, afraid of the disciples and their teacher. Look at Thomas, fearful of disappointment and despair, he denies the resurrected Christ, “I will not believe.” Look at us. . .are we afraid? Are you afraid? The Psalmist this morning-evening sings, “I was hard pressed and was falling. . .” Peter must remind his brothers and sisters, in the midst of their “various trials,” that their inheritance in Christ is “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading…” Jesus appears among his friends, with them behind their locked door, and he must say to them, “Peace be with you.” He breathes the Holy Spirit on them, charging his friends to go out and preach. He shows them that security is not the Christian answer to fear. It is his peace that trumps our fear, and our commission from Jesus himself—“I send you as the Father has sent me”—this commission is the source of our peace.
So, what is peace for a Christian? We might have this idea that Christian peace is pacifist; that is, we might tend to conflate “peace” with “being passive” and call “pacifism” the only proper attitude for a Christian to take in the face of violence, persecution, or trial. And why not? Surely, it is the case that when faced with the ire of the Jewish leaders, the disciples run home and lock their doors. Surely, it is case that in the early church one soul after another drops out when the way gets to be too much to handle. Surely, it is better to live another day to preach than it is to die inopportunely? Surely, Thomas is right to deny the bizarre claims of his brothers that the dead and buried Jesus has appeared to them. With both the temple and the state chasing you for being a heretic and a traitor, surely, it is best to shut up, run away, hide, and wait. Surely, surely, this cannot be true for the peaceful Christian! Thanks be to God, it is not.
Our peace as a risen Church is not rooted in pacifism, a passive lounging about in the face of opposition. Our peace as a risen Church is rooted in what Peter calls our “new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. . .” Our peace is “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading,” gifted to us by our Father, we “who by the power of God are safeguarded through faith…,” we who are ordered by the Spirit to rejoice “so that the genuineness of [our] faith, more precious than gold…even though tested by fire, may prove to be for the praise, glory, and honor” of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our peace as the risen Body of Christ is our “indescribable and glorious joy. . .” We do not live with hope. We do not live in hope. We are Hope—embodied, living, growing, spreading; we are attaining “the goal of [our] faith, the salvation of [our] souls.”
It is not enough that I achieve the goals of faith for myself. We, all of us, the whole Church, we are charged with “going out,” with “being sent” and with sending others out. To live as if the single end of our living hope is my personal salvation in is to live fearfully, dreadfully, passively; to live against the hard, bare witness of Good Friday and Easter Sunday. To believe that I alone am saved by the Cross and the Empty Tomb, to believe that my salvation is sufficient and that now all I need do is wait—this is another betrayal, another act of Judas, another discount on the ministry of Christ. Luke tells us in his Acts that “awe came upon everyone. . .All who believed were together and had all things in common. . .Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together. . .They ate their meals. . .praising God and enjoying favor with all the people.” We defeat fear together as Hope, or we live in dread. . .alone.
Look at Thomas. The disciples, locked behind their fearful door, witness the risen Christ—his wounds, his peace—they witness Christ as they have never seen him before. Thomas is not there. And when his brothers testify to Christ’s visit, he says, “Unless I see the marks. . .I will not believe.” One week passes and we can only imagine what happens in that single week. Do the disciples plead with Thomas to believe? Do they challenge his lack of faith? Do they argue with his skepticism, his need for physical evidence? Why do they need for Thomas to believe? Maybe Thomas regrets his willful rejection of his brothers’ witness. Or, maybe he becomes more and more obstinate in the face of their cajoling. Maybe Thomas, exhausted from the pressure, resolves to live alone, outside the witness of his friends. In just one week, maybe everything he learned from his Master sours, and he grows in fear. Who knows? We don’t. What we do know is that one week later, our Lord appears to them again and he gives Thomas what Thomas believes he needs to believe: physical proof. But lest Thomas or any of us begin to think that this faithless demand for evidence is ordinary, Jesus teaches them and us: “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” Let’s say here that Thomas’ sin is not unbelief per se, but a failure to be “a living hope” with his brothers. Rather than hope with his friends, Thomas demands a demonstration for his security; he needs to know before he believes. And so his peace, freely given through God’s hope, is ruined. Fortunately for him, our Lord decides to restore his peace and teach him a lesson.
In this you rejoice: “Peace be with you!” And what a peace it is! First, Jesus says to the frightened disciples: Peace be with you. Then he says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Let’s see. . .where did the Father send Jesus? A three year teaching and preaching trek across the home country with angry Jewish leaders and Romans soldiers on his heels with little more than twelve guys who sometimes got it but most of the time didn’t, one of whom will eventually sell him as a criminal to the authorities, and the others will run like whipped puppies into the night right before his trial and execution! Peace be with you. . .here’s your suffering and death, have fun with it. Obviously, Christian peace is not a form of pacifism but a radical means of being the living hope of God for others…despite the risks, despite the trials, despite the costs. And despite the risks, the trials and the costs, we have this truth from Peter: the Lord our God and Father in his great mercy has given us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. That living hope has been given to US not to you or to me but to US and nothing can stand against it, nothing, if we but take the peace of Christ, our living hope for eternal life, and spread it thick like spring seed. We have seen the Lord! Now, peace be with you. . .
Octave of Easter (F): Acts 4.1-12 and John 21.1-14At the very core of our being-here, we desire intimacy with God; our imperfection as creatures yearns for His perfection as our Creator. That yearning, that sometimes near painful desire to be with God throws up for our choosing a radical choice: (very simply put) I either embrace my lack of perfection and run after the perfection God offers through Christ; or in my folly, I make my lack of perfection a god and worship it with my whole being, pushing God further and further away, adding to the distance btw us, divinizing my desire, my lacks, filling up all my God-shaped with misshapened deities. For most of us, we walk the fine, razor-thin line somewhere btw these two forms of surrender and spend our time praying (desperately praying!) for help in choosing.
Look at the disciples, squatting near the fire while Jesus serves them fish and bread. John reports: “. . .none of the disciples dared to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ because they realized it was the Lord.” What’s the problem here? Why the anxiety? John has already told us that once Jesus asks—“Children, have you caught anything to eat?”—the disciples recognize him. Having obeyed the Lord’s command to stay together as his family in faith, the disciples are “sighted to see” him; that is, they are properly illuminated to see, gifted to recognize the Lord after his resurrection, but notice that they still need a prompt to understand fully.
The beloved disciple shouts, “It is the Lord.” Simon Peter jumps into the sea and wades ashore. The other disciples follow soon enough. But none will ask him who he is, none will dare to request a confirmation of what they know to be true. Why? It could be fear of offending their Lord with such an obviously doubting question. It could be that they simply want to respect his presence without pestering him with student questions. It could be that they are hoping that they are wrong. Likely, it is b/c they understand—if only in the head—what this appearance of the Lord means for them. Do you think that they are squatting there eating bread and fish and remembering back over the last three years all the promises of their Master? The promise of political and religious persecution? The promise of familial strife? Brotherly conflict? The truly frightening promise that they too—if they follow him on his Way—that they too will die horribly with a prayer to the Father on their lips? Of course, of course. And so they squat there, knowing and remembering and sweating through all those promises of violence and inevitable glory. And we, like them, sit and stand here, btw our choices of radical surrender, and pray for courage, stout hearts: give up to God all that is His and be wildly transformed, or cling to our imperfect creatureliness and worship all the little gods of deficiency?
Here’s what we are to do: go fishing! Wade into the deep! Shout: he is the Lord! Row ashore with our nets bulging and eat and drink with the Lord! He is risen. . .he is dead, buried, risen again, and when he comes for us, he will count us among his wondrous fishes!
Octave of Easter (W): Acts 3.1-10 and Luke 24.13-35After nearly twenty decades of exile in the woodshed for barbaric acts against humanity and a slow rehabilitation on the continent with French and German philosophers, I am happy to report that Belief is once again welcomed among us as an acceptable weapon against the encroaching hordes of nihilism. With those hordes shaking the ground right outside our gates, some in the civilized world line up for defense behind the utopian promises of secular scientism; some behind the ever more suicidal versions of Christless Christianity; some behind the absurd absolutes of religious fundamentalism; and some have even come to understand the wisdom of the West’s Catholic heritage and have, as a result, embraced the power of basic belief as the first best step in the dangerous project of shining a bright beacon into the darkness. Luke’s gospel story of meeting Jesus on the road to Emmaus greatly clarifies this last option: if our eyes are to be opened, we must first believe and only then will the need for sight disappear.
As the disciples walk to Emmaus, Jesus joins them. Since “their eyes were prevented from recognizing him,” the disciples confess their deepest doubts about the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday: “…we were hoping that [Jesus] would be the one to redeem
Jesus patiently teaches them—again!—the heart and soul of the prophetic tradition: God will come to His people in the person of a savior. This is a promise fulfilled in their hearing. But it is not until Jesus blesses, breaks, and gives them the bread at table that their eyes are opened and they see. The instant they recognize him for who he is, “he vanishe[s] from their sight.” They believe, they recognize. They see him. And seeing is no longer necessary. Remember just last week or so that Jesus stood before an angry crowd busy gathering stones to throw at him. He urges the crowd to believe in his good works so that they may come to “realize and understand” that he is the Christ sent by the Father. The evidence he offers is only good as evidence if we first believe. This is basic. Comes first. Primary.
Belief is fashionable again b/c we have exhausted the modernist project of scientific absolutes, and we have discovered along the way that for all its usefulness science is a story we tell about the world. Like most stories, it has characters, plots, settings, action. Unlike most stories, it does an excellent job of explaining we think we see and hear and taste and touch. What it cannot do as a story is tell us about how to live in wonder at creation, how to thrive in love with the very fact of just being-here. Scientism demands that we place our faith in a investigative method. Christless Christianity demands that we place our faith in the bastard children of the hard sciences: sociology, psychology, economics, history. Fundamentalism demands that we place our faith in the infallible genius of the individual’s zeal for absolutes. What does Christ demand? How do those hearts so slow to believe catch fire? As Jesus and the disciples approached Emmaus, Jesus “gave the impression that he was going on farther. But [the disciples] urged him, ‘Stay with us…’ So he went in to stay with them.”
Pic credit: Stefan Blondal
I also found the four volume set, The Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers. Just let me say that I only bumped my thick head once on the ceiling jumping for joy to see this available from Amazon.com!
5th Week of Lent: Jer 20.10-13 and John 10.31-42
The Italian philosopher of religion, Gianni Vattimo, was once asked in an interview, “Do you now once again believe in God?” Vattimo, a scholar of Heidegger and Nietzsche and a proponent of Christian nihilism, answered, “I believe that I believe.” Unpacking this enigmatic response would take most of Spring Break, so let me get quickly to the point: Vattimo believes in belief, that is, he holds that believing in God is a desirable practice even if we cannot assert that believing in God is properly rational. Vattimo argues that science has done Christianity a huge favor by showing that most of what we call “religious belief” is nonsense. Why is this a “huge favor”? Because in a futile effort to prove itself “true,” Christian belief, Christian religious practice, has become weighed down by the excessive baggage of metaphysical philosophies, or ways of thinking that constantly add packages of myth, magic, and mystical gibberish to our basic commitment to God. His answer—“I believe that I believe”—is the first step to emptying out our belief so that we might simply love God and one another. Vattimo’s argument is most often linked to Philippians 2.6-8: “Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus, Who, though he was in the form of God,. . . emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. . .” Just as Christ emptied himself to become a slave, so our beliefs must be emptied of any metaphysical speculation that we might confuse with revealed truth—to believe is enough. Now, is this the commitment that Jesus urges on the Jews as they collect their stones?
Let’s see what Jesus is asking of them and us. Confused as to why the Jews want to stone him for doing good works, Jesus professes his relationship to the Father and urges the Jews to believe that he is the Son of God. He pleads: “…if I perform [these good works], even if you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may realize and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” What is he asking? Jesus is asking the Jews (and us) to “realize and understand” who he is, and we are to do so first by an act of belief, specifically an act of belief in his word or, if not his word, in his good works. Belief is prior to our understanding. Belief, therefore, is basic. And basic in this sense: belief constitutes the possibility of our understanding. Without prior belief subsequent understanding is impossible.
It should be clear that Jesus is not urging the Jews to believe in belief; that is, he is not pleading with them to trust in trust or to be convicted by conviction. Jesus is urging the Jews (and us) to trust him when he says that he is the Son of God. And by trusting that he is the Christ, we come to understand that he is the Christ. You may say that this is just blind faith. Maybe so. But if so, it is a blinded faith that finds itself brilliantly healed and gifted with every possibility of seeing Christ as he is for us: the only Son of God, betrayed, tried, convicted, humiliated, hung on a cross, dead and risen again for our redemption. Our philosopher-friend, Vattimo, is right about the need to empty ourselves out, but it is not metaphysical speculation that crowds our believing hearts. What stunts out growth in holiness is our desire to know before we believe; that is, our need to be sure before we trust, our need to be shown proof and evidence before we begin to hope; this need puts the work of human genius in front of trust and gives reign to the methods and prejudices and limitations of the human mind.
Our Lord says that we must first believe and then understand. In no way does he mean that all we have to do is believe. As creatures of intellect and will, we are also obligated to know, to comprehend. But we must pour out what we think we know, what we think we understand, and begin again in trust. Without this beginning in the divine, we start and finish as little more than stone-throwers, maybe even highly advanced, technologically superior stone-throwers; but without a heart for God’s love, you are just a smart monkey with shiny gadgets driven by your stomach.
Belief is basic. Trust God, seek to understand, grow in holiness. In that order.
5th Week of Lent (R): Gen 17.3-8 and John 8.51-59When I say that this is the “crucial question,” I mean that quite literally: the Jewish question to Jesus is the question of the Cross (crucial, cruce, cross). Jesus stands before his heritage, his long tradition as a Jew and a rabbi; he looks at and through the men in front of him, and back down the ancestral line to Abraham, and responds with these shocking words, “Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day…Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.” Who does he make himself out to be? God, the Father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of the ancestors, the One Who brought them out of slavery in Egypt and gave them their land and their descendants as numerous as the stars. Not surprisingly, the stones began to fly.
Why is the question of who Jesus is a question about the Cross? Modestly put, the Cross is an empty religious gesture if the man who dies on it is just a man. If the man on the cross is a teacher, we may learn some moral lesson. If the man on the cross is a preacher, we may see his end as merely exemplary. If the man on the cross is a rebel and a heretic, we may feel secure that rebellion and heresy are justly punished. But what if Jesus is telling the truth? What if he is “I AM,” and I AM is executed on a Roman cross? What now?
“What now?” is our crucial question, for us, right now—the question of the Cross that we must answer. For you, who hangs on that Cross come Good Friday? A demon possessed egoist? A mad rabbi with authority issues? A Jewish redneck from
Most importantly, how you answer that question changes what Easter will be for you. Jesus doesn’t have to die to teach us a moral lesson, or to show us the way to peace, or to give us an example of love. He has to die so that we might live. If death is to be defeated, Life Himself must die and rise again. Only I AM can do this for us. Jesus says to his accusers: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever keeps my word will never see death.” And our Lord remembers his covenant forever. . .
Fr. Jay Scott Newman, pastor of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in
Dear Friends in Christ,
One objective of the liturgical reforms of the 1960’s was to encourage the active participation ["actuosam. . .participationem" means "actual participation" (SC14)]* of the Catholic people in the celebration of the sacred liturgy, in part by reminding them that they are participants in, not spectators of, offering the sacrifice of praise at the heart of all Christian worship. Unfortunately, in the years following the II Vatican Council, the Church’s desire that all the faithful participate fully in the sacred liturgy was too often rendered a caricature of the Council’s teaching, and misconceptions about the true nature of active participation multiplied. This led to the frenzied expansion of “ministries” among the people and turned worship into a team sport [precisely!]. But it is possible to participate in the liturgy fully, consciously, and actively ["actually"] without ever leaving one’s pew, and it is likewise possible to serve busily as a musician or lector at Mass without truly participating in the sacred liturgy. Both of these are true because the primary meaning of active participation in the liturgy is worshipping the living God in Spirit and truth, and that in turn is an interior disposition of faith, hope, and love which cannot be measured by the presence or absence of physical activity. But this confusion about the role of the laity in the Church’s worship was not the only misconception to follow the liturgical reforms; similar mistakes were made about the part of the priest [oh boy, were there!].
Because of the mistaken idea that the whole congregation had to be “in motion” during the liturgy to be truly participating, the priest was gradually changed in the popular imagination from the celebrant of the Sacred Mysteries of salvation into the coordinator of the liturgical ministries of others [i.e. "Fr. Hollywood"]. And this false understanding of the ministerial priesthood produced the ever-expanding role of the “priest presider,” whose primary task was to make the congregation feel welcome and constantly engage them with eye contact and the embrace of his warm personality [i.e. "Fr. Oprah"]. Once these falsehoods were accepted, then the service of the priest in the liturgy became grotesquely misshapen, and instead of a humble steward of the mysteries whose only task was to draw back the veil between God and man and then hide himself in the folds, the priest became a ring-master or entertainer whose task was thought of as making the congregation feel good about itself. But, whatever that is, it is not Christian worship, and in the last two decades the Church has been gently finding a way back towards the right ordering of her public prayer. In February 2007 Pope Benedict XVI published an Apostolic Exhortation on the Most Holy Eucharist entitled Sacramentum Caritatis in which he discusses the need for priests to cultivate a proper ars celebrandi or art of celebrating the liturgy. In that document, the pope teaches that “the primary way to foster the participation of the People of God in the sacred rite is the proper celebration of the rite itself,” and an essential part of that work is removing the celebrant from the center of attention [i.e., the liturgy is not about you, Father! Get out of the way!] so that priest and people together can turn towards the LORD. Accomplishing this task of restoring God-centered liturgy is one of the main reasons for returning to the ancient and universal practice of priest and people standing together on the same side of the altar as they offer in Christ, each in their own way, the sacrifice of
5th Sunday of Lent (A): Eze 37.12-14; Rom 8.8-11; John 11.3-45 (revised)This is who we are, People of God! We are those who live in the spirit of the Lord. We are not made to live with dry bones or poisoned blood; we are not made to rot in the ground or to be scattered like dust to the wind. The grave is a temporary place, a moment’s rest, just a quick stop on the way to a new heaven and a new earth. Our hope rests in the promise of the Lord to breathe into us again the first breath of creation, His Word of over the void, and to re-create us anew; from the drying bones and rotting flesh of death, we are made to rise, to be refreshed, to be brought up again so that we might dwell with Him, body and soul, whole persons with Christ. And this promise of re-creation in the Word is not a promissory note that we must wait on to mature, an account that we sit patiently by waiting to balance: we are raised up now, lifted up now, brought to new life in the resurrection right now!
We have spent four weeks allowing the desert heat of Lent to reveal our temptations. Once uncovered, we know our weakness, we know how we can fall, how our hearts are emptied. But if your heart—that is, the very root of your link with God—if our heart is dead and still, an icy void—no revelation, no divine showing will move you to live again. That link to the Father must remain alive, whole, undefiled, and free. So, what do we do when we feel the spirit in us failing? Think of Mary and Martha and Lazarus—those loved by Jesus. Lazarus is sick and dying. Martha and Mary send word to Jesus that “the one he loves is ill.” Jesus calms their anxiety: “This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Jesus waits two days and then tells his friends that they must all go back to
If we walk in the darkness, we are blind. But since we walk in the light, we see: Jesus is going to
Even so, how often do you feel the spirit failing you? How often do you feel the disbelief scratching at your heart? What is it that tells you to welcome the void? More often than not our faith in the Lord’s promises is challenged by sickness and loss. The very fact of our mortality, the reality that we will die, stands against His promise of life. There is nothing for us to do but die. And because our eyes are open and because we walk in the light, we see that this stumbling block litters our path. My death, your death is no death at all if we live and move and have our being in the Spirit. Paul writes to the Romans, “If the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the One who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit dwelling in you.” Is this a wish? A fantasy? A dangerous gamble? No! It is our most precious hope, His most gracious gift—we live, and we live with Him forever.
Listen again to Ezekiel: “O my people, [you people here, right here, right now] I will open your graves and raise you from them. . .you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and raise you from them, O my people!. . .I will put my spirit in you that you may live. . .” That promise is made good here this morning/evening in the Eucharist, right here in this celebration of the Lord’s last supper with his friends. Gathering together in his name, repenting of our disobediences, listening to His word spoken and preached, we are offer on the altar of sacrifice not only our first fruits, our material goods, we offer ourselves; we make of ourselves a true and living sacrifice, an offering made acceptable to the Father by His Son through the Spirit. We are the Body and Blood of Christ offering Christ to Christ through Christ for Christ so that we might be Christ in the world for others! And when we do this, our opened ears hear loud and clear the voice of God say, “Untie them and let them go.”
Though the Enemy throws scandal in our way, we are our own worst enemy. How hard do you work against your own eternal life? How often do you create—from thin air and dust—obstacles for yourself? How many burdens do you pile on your back? On the backs of your family and friends? Do you bind yourself with the minutiae of the Law that Christ himself fulfilled for you? Do you properly credit yourself as freed from the necessity of sin and death? How much do you labor to untie yourself, to find your own way out of the prison of sin? You cannot free yourself. You cannot bring yourself back to life. You cannot lift your tombstone and walk out of the grave. Why not? You cannot do for yourself what the Lord Himself has already done for you. When Jesus tells Martha that he will raise Lazarus from the dead, Martha accuses him of being too late, too slow to arrive to help Lazarus. Jesus says to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha, ever practical, ever sensible, says, “I know he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus corrects her saying, “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live. . .” He says, “I AM the resurrection” not “I will be the resurrection” or “I was the resurrection.” He says, “I AM the resurrection. . .” Present tense. Right now, he is life for believers.
Let’s say that you are dead. Have been for some time now. But it’s hard to tell that you are dead b/c you are still up and walking around. It is time for you to get angry with death, time for you to get angry with your hardened heart; it’s time for you, looking at the Cross and hoping on the resurrection, it’s time for you to join Christ, get angry and cry out: “Take away the stone!” And it is time for you to walk out of your grave, let your bonds be untied, and walk freely in the Spirit of a Father who gave His only Son for you. It is time for you to show the glory of the Lord!
Honestly, the first thing I would do is drag my habit sleeve across the ink bottle 
4th Week of Lent (F): Wisdom 2.1, 12-22 and John 7.1-2, 10, 25-30
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St Albert
The second chapter of the Book of Wisdom opens with this cheery scene: “The wicked said among themselves, thinking not aright: ‘Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us…’” Our book on the wisdom of the Lord prominently features the foolishness of the wicked. What are they worried about? The foolish and the wicked are feeling increasingly anxious about a holy man among them who stands as a living rebuke to their folly. The foolish wisely call him “just,” but because of this he is judged to be “obnoxious.” We have to wonder what he is doing to be so obnoxious! According to the wicked, he reproaches them and charges them with violations of the law; he claims to know the Lord and calls himself a child of God; his very presence is felt as a rebuke, censure; the wicked say of him, “…merely to see him is a hardship for us!” And their carefully considered response to this horrible man is predictable: they will test his claims to holiness with “revilement and torture;” they will give him a shameful death to test his claim that God will help him: “For if the just one be the son of God, he will defend him and deliver him…”
We know the wicked aren’t thinking clearly here…
You may object here by pointing out that I’ve set up a false dichotomy with no good result for the earnest seeker and no way out. I’ve pointed out the obvious temptations of both the wicked and the righteous. Here’s the way out; Jesus says to the residents of
