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Easter Sunday 2018

There seems to be a lot of Good Friday’s lately. There are shootings in school, violence in the homes, family members addicted to drugs, lonely, empty and broken hearts. These things fill our news reports and our minds with worry. Is Good Friday all that there is in the world today?  Is there really a way out? Was Jesus’ death on the cross for nothing? The answer to all these questions is a resounding no! Jesus Christ made an offering of total love to the Father as both God and man and for the last 40 hours the whole world has been awaiting the response from God the Father. What is he going to say to his Son?

This morning we not only hear the response of the Father through the Holy Spirit, we directly experience the answer of God the Father. The answer the Father gives to his Son, is “BE RAISED! BE RAISED!” This answer not only raises Jesus bodily from the dead, The Father also makes an everlasting offer to the human race: BE RAISED! Jesus’ resurrection has conquered Good Friday once and for all. Death and sickness and sin do not have the final say on our lives. God makes that point in the resurrection of his Son. The Apostles are eyewitnesses to the fact that Jesus who was crucified and died has been raised from the dead.

The Apostles are not the only eyewitnesses. They are simply the first. Because of our Baptism, we stand on the long line of witnesses to the life of God and the everlasting mercy of God. The day we were baptized, we rejected evil and its empty glamour and promises and professed faith in the ONE GOD, FATHER, SON AND HOLY SPIRIT. We experienced the power of the resurrection at that moment and through the power and gift of faith began to share in the very life of God.

Every Easter we come to Church and renew those promises of our Baptism, so that we can recommit ourselves to making sure the world never forgets that Jesus bodily resurrection makes our joy and hopes come alive in a new and exciting way. The celebration of Easter is not just a once a year celebration, it is a daily celebration of God coming among us and offering us a share of his life through prayer, the Word of God and the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.

As our world appears to grow darker, the reality of the resurrection becomes even more important. Many people have lost hope. Many people have become totally selfish. Many seek to cut themselves out of life. Many have lost the knowledge of true love. These days of Good Friday and Easter answer all these questions about the reality of the human race. God the Son has taken on our human nature, and as Son of God and Son of Man totally gives himself in love to the Father. The Father responds to the love of his Beloved Son by loving him in return and bringing Jesus back to life. Both the Father and the Son send their Holy Spirit as the sanctifying love that fills us at our baptism and serves as our constant companion throughout our lives.

This mystery is what we give thanks for today. God saw us knocked down by our own sin and so through the Incarnation, death and resurrection of his Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, raises us up makes us his children worthy of the glorious inheritance of everlasting life. We have the answer to the Good Friday’s people are experiencing in the world. We possess the answer to the weakness of people who fall into sin. We possess the answer to the question: What does real love look like?

The answers are Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead, and the Holy Spirit, offering us the fullness of God’s grace.

As eyewitnesses to this gift in our own hearts and minds and bodies, we have the duty to tell others what we have seen and heard. We have the message that has changed the world. We can’t keep it to ourselves.

The Piety of the Steps                                           Fr. Rob Jack STL

Piety is a gift of the Holy Spirit through which one cherishes and passes on the history of one’s faith as a source of one’s human and Christian identity. When we place around ourselves pictures of our families and friends and our pets and personal mementos, we practice a type of natural piety.

The supernatural gift of piety is a Gift of the Holy Spirit. We practice it by surrounding ourselves with the holy objects, such as statues, pictures, rosaries, medals, etc. and performing meaningful deeds. They remind us of the presence of God. They ground our faith. They motivate us to pass the faith forward.

In the City of Cincinnati, every Good Friday, people flock to the steps that lead to Holy Name- Immaculata Church on Mount Adams and slowly climb them. They come with different practices. Some say a prayer on each step. Some pray the rosary. Others may pray for sick friends or peace in the world. Whatever the reason, they are making a primordial human act. They are reaching up to God. Some bring friends, children and even grandchildren to pass on this simple yet powerful devotion. When they reach the Church at the top of the hill, they can go to the Sacrament of Penance or just say a simple prayer in Church in thanksgiving to the Mother of God, and God Himself for another year on this earth.

What are some lessons we can learn from this yearly devotion. The first is that faith is familial. We pass it on from parent to child to grandchildren. Of all the things we provide for our children, the most important is the gift of faith. It is the one thing we carry with us at the moment of our death. We also see as we climb the steps that we are part of a much bigger human family, the family of the Church. Faith connects us to each other in even deeper ways that blood.  It is interesting to note that Archbishop Purcell promised to build a Church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, on the highest hill in Cincinnati as a sign of thanks for surviving a dangerous storm at sea. She looks over the whole city. She is truly from the vantage point Our Lady of Cincinnati, our Mother and Protectrix. Every citizen of Cincinnati, believer and non-believer, friend and foe, is under her maternal care and protection. It brings me comfort that look up to the Church on Mount Adams and see the statue of the Virgin Mary looking over all of us with her arms extended. Her intercession to Jesus holds the key to many of the problem we face as a society.

A second Lesson is that, as sinful and wounded human beings, we desire to repair what we have broken and we know that God’s grace and the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary are necessary to do this. We have to train not only our souls, but our bodies. Our whole person is involved in the shaping and renewal of our life. We “climb the mountain of the Lord.” Over the Church of the Immaculata is a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. As Catholics, we recognize that Jesus himself has given us Mary as our Spiritual Mother, sure guide to Him and an advocate on our behalf that we may be pleasing to Him. Mary points to Jesus. Mary points to the Cross. Mary’s most important duties are to be the Mother of God and the means for us to truly get close to her Son. We have Mary in our sight as we climb the steps, but we know that our journey does not end with her, but with her Son.

A third Lesson that comes from walking the steps is the power of piety and tradition. These actions remind us that our lives are seriously weakened without the active and loving presence of God. These steps are not superstitious actions to get God to give us what we want, but a real reminder of what God has truly given us in human history: God has sent his Son Jesus Christ to save the world from sin and death and provide a new and true path to life. He does this by dying on the cross out of love for His heavenly Father and the human race, with whom God the Son shares a full human nature. Prayer and acts of self-denial reminds us that we are not the center of the universe. When we place ourselves in faith at the service of God, life opens up in profoundly new ways.

So whether we climb the steps on Good Friday or simply observe others as we drive by, remember that Easter is not about bunnies and little chicks and chocolate, but the Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world, Jesus Christ who makes of his own free will an offering of himself on the wood of the Cross for the redemption of the whole world.  That news is worth passing on. That news and the gifts of grace that come from it, make the climb worth it.