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God has kept his promise today. This was the promise he made to Adam and Eve, to Abraham and the Patriarchs, to King David, to his Apostles and finally to us. What was the promise he made exactly? He promised us that he would restore what we surrendered; he would recreate what we destroyed; he would fix what we had broken. This is our relationship with him. All throughout the Bible God was faithful to his promises but we have not been.

Today that has changed. Jesus Christ, true God and true man kept the promise that he made to the Father: that he would be eternally faithful and living to him, and he kept his promise to us, that the Son of man who was handed over to death would be raised on the Third Day. This is what we remember today not only because it truly happened in history, but that his bodily resurrection has changed history in a way that no one ever could have done before. By our Baptism, we have become not only partakers, but history makers with the risen Jesus Christ.

The Resurrection of Jesus from the dead is connected with our baptism because that is the day we became a part of salvation history. That is the day we put on Christ. That is the day we were anointed with the Holy Spirit. That is the day that the grace of God changed our hearts and made them capable with sharing Jesus’ life in a life altering way.  Jesus’ death and resurrection has opened up the river of God’s mercy and love that we had closed by our sins.  The light of the Easter candle has permanently removed the inky darkness of despair that has filled some many hearts. IT is a time to renew our faith and remember the promises we made to Jesus and to the church when we were first baptized.

In a couple of moments, we will renew the promises we made at baptism, namely to reject sin and to believe in the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Maybe we have taken this lightly in the past, but I ask you to focus on it today. These promises in the realm of our faith really have a life or death meaning for us. By keeping our promises to the Lord, he grants us his many gifts of grace and strength and perseverance through good times and bad. He makes life truly livable. We become able to follow teachings and the path Jesus Christ in a way that we cannot do without him.

God has lived up to his word because this Word is Jesus his Son. May our renewing of the promises made our Baptism fill us our hearts with a new life, a new love and a new commitment to pray every day in thanksgiving and petition to God who opens us heaven for the human race today, by the bodily Resurrection of Jesus his Son. Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.

Jesus was wounded for our offenses. In his wounds we are healed. In the Prayer the Anima Christi, one of the invocations is “within your wounds hide me.” How is it possible to hide in the wounds of Jesus? We know he was wounded by scourges, he was wounded by a crown of thorns, he was wounded by nails in his hands and feet, and he was pierced in his side. These wounds are the result of his rejection by the very people he has come to save, each one of us. He paid a price we could not pay. He suffered a horrible death to put to death, death itself. He took on these wounds to offer us freedom.

We have our own wounds. They are not from scourges or nails or thorns or a sword but from a lack of love of God and neighbor. They are the wounds of sin, both those we have committed and those that have been done to us.

In a few moments, each of us will come forward to venerate the cross of our Lord, bearing our own wounds. We come to him with sorrow and suffering in our hearts. We pray that the wounds of our guilt may be healed by the wounds of Christ’s mercy. Our wounds are known to him. These are wounds of pride, arrogance, lust, selfishness, greed and violence: The wounds of our hands when we struck out at others rather than offer to lift them up: The wounds of our feet when we walked away from those in need instead of offering to carry them: The wounds of pride when we considered ourselves too good to serve or too proud to admit weakness: The worst of all, the wounds of the heart broken by rejection or having broken hearts out of selfishness or cruelty.

Jesus Christ, free from all sins, took on the ugliness, the emptiness and our rejection of his offer of unconditional love. He calls out to us from the cross:

“I thirst.” He thirsts for us to hide our wounds in his. He thirsts for our suffering, he thirsts for our broken and hardened hearts.  This day he offers to hide these wounds in his so that they can be forgiven and healed by the blood and water that flows out of his pierced heart. How can we not take him on this offer? How can we not embrace the cross and kiss it and say that here my wounds are hidden and here they are healed? Why would anyone stay away?

Jesus Christ has come among us one of us so that he can live with us and offer his life for us in love for the Father and for the sorrow of the human race. The cross we venerate today makes clear the glory of God the Father, the love of God the Son and the power of God the Holy Spirit to free us and bring us back to life. Leave your wounds here. Leave your sorrow here, leave your sins here, and go with the love of Jesus Christ to make that love, the love which will direct your life.

Jesus never stops leading us. In the darkness of his approaching death, he offers the light of his obedient love. In the chaos of his arrest and trial before the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate, he tells us the truth of who he is. In a world suffering from a famine of faith and love, He gives us himself as our food and drink.

Jesus has taught us through his preaching that the Father is one on whom we must depend. He tells us to live out this message and also commands us to love as he loves. St. Paul teaches the Corinthians this lesson in his Letter. He reminds them that he is passing on what he has received, namely that Jesus gives us his Body and Blood under the appearance of bread and wine to unite all people in faith and pour salvation upon the world. We can say that St. Paul gives us an example of living a “hand to mouth” existence not in the sense of his poverty, although he was poor, but rather by receiving everything from the hand of the Lord.

There are some people today who are forced to live a “hand to mouth” existence. They are just able to get by. They have enough money for rent, utilities, gas and food and that’s about it. The people we know who are living this way are not happy about it. They hope for a day when they have more than enough so they can do other things.

The Mass of the Lord’s Supper teaches us a different lesson. The hand to mouth existence that Jesus creates for the one who believes in him is one of great abundance. The Bible shows us time and time again that life is truly a hand to mouth existence. God fed the Israelites every day in the wilderness for forty years with manna from heaven. God sent ravens and an Angel to feed the prophet Elijah and his way to Zarapeth in Sidon. Jesus himself teaches us to pray every day “give us this day our daily bead.” Living in this country blessed with abundant resources, we can take for granted the poor and believe we have the ability to take care of ourselves without the help of God. Jesus makes it clear to his disciples that they cannot take care of themselves, not only their bodies, but particularly their souls. Like them, we receive everything we have from the hand of God. In the great mystery of the Holy Eucharist we are fed by the very hand of God with his own Body and Blood.

The disciples feel safe around Jesus, but soon he will be taken from them as he is handed over to the authorities for trial. Sadly, the disciples fail him. He is betrayed by one, denied by another and abandoned by the rest. They have not yet fully learned the lesson he taught them at the Passover meal, that when they eat his body and drink his blood, they proclaim his death until he comes again.

After the death and resurrection of Jesus and the descent of the Holy Spirit, the disciples will carry out what Jesus commanded them to do in memory of him, namely to proclaim his message and to share in the sacrificial offering of his body and blood that he commissioned them to carry out for his church and the world.  This is the lesson we must remember tonight.

We need to learn to live from hand to mouth, from God’s hands to our mouths. When there is darkness, the Eucharist brings light. When we are wounded by sin, the Eucharist brings healing and forgiveness.  Where there is division and confusion, the Eucharist will bring us unity and clarity.  In this action we accept and welcome our total dependence on the mercy of God who feeds us with himself. It is only then that we like Paul and the other Apostles can hand on what we have received to the mouths of others

Jesus has given us this memorial, this truly living reality of his presence, to remind us that his love never ends. May the celebration of the Lord’s Supper bring us peace, and fill us with the zeal to faithfully carry out his works today.