Saturday, April 7, 2012

risk of faith

Homily
Easter Vigil
7 April 2012
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead.  Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Sounds good, doesn't it?  And not just because Lent is over, and we get to chow down on whatever we want as soon as this longest of liturgies is over.  No, not just for that, but because these words are as mysterious, and dramatic and profound as any words that have ever been, or could ever be, spoken in human history.  Without these words - Jesus Christ has been raised - even the words Christ says in the Eucharist - this is my body broken for you, this is my blood poured out for you - would be said in vain.  And if these words do not represent the thing I  most know to be true out of all the things that I know, then we might as well all go home right now.  Because of this, it feels great to say these words on the most holy night of the year, to sing these words!  Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead.  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

These are words that are easy for us to say tonight.  For we do not say them alone.  There are lots of us here, and we are led by our catechumens who profess faith in Christ's resurrection for the first time.  We say these words with special attention tonight for at this liturgy we do not simply repeat the creed, but we renew the faith of our baptism with unparalleled meaning and attention.  It is easy to profess our faith in the Resurrection today, for it is Easter.  There are signs of new life all around us, confirming that death does not have the final say.  There are new sights and sounds in the Church alerting our senses to the resurrection of Jesus.  On Easter Sunday we call upon the cloud of witnesses who have gone before us, our ancestors and especially the saints in heaven who have gone to the end of the earth and paid for our faith with their very lives, so that the historical truth of the resurrection would be strong enough to traverse all of human history and safely reach us here in Lawrence, Kansas on April 7/8, 2012.  In this context, it is easy for us to say the words that are supposed to be as true or moreso than any other words we ever say - words that are as mysterious and dramatic and profound as any words that can be or ever have been said - Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Let us be glad that it is easy for us to profess this faith tonight.  But let's not let the confidence of this day make us forget the risk of faith that we are taking. For being a Christian is never to go with the flow.  Renewing our baptismal promises is pointless if we do it only because everyone else is doing it.  Let us find ever better reasons for doing what we are about to do, not just going with the flow, not just tinkering with becoming a better person, not just vainly wishing that there might be a magic ticket for bonus time waiting for me on the other side of death.  If this is all we profess tonight, we are the most pitiable people of all.

Let's instead profess a faith that is exciting and dramatic.  There are plenty of people around us who have become anesthetized to Christianity and the resurrection, those who no longer feel at all the historical truth of the resurrection shaking the story of the world like an earthquake and dramatically changing the destiny of man.  There are plenty around who conclude instead that Christians are dumb, and afraid of scientific reality.  So if we only profess something small, and profess it meekly, the Church's proclamation will limp into tomorrow, and too many will remain unimpressed, even with those who today join the Church.

Against any person who would say that the Christian story is a myth for weak thinkers who need a fantasy to avoid their fear of suffering and death, we must be able to profess without equivocation that we are not avoiding anything.  Instead, Christians must be known as those who more than anyone else on the planet are more radically and intensely searching for a love that is stronger than death.  That my friends, is why being a Christian is the most adventuresome way to live, and if we have made it routine and boring, we are doing it all wrong.  Christians instead profess that this quest to find a love that conquers all has led them to the cross of Christ.  It is because a Christian knows this love revealed on the cross to be ultimate reality and truth, that that same Christian may profess the resurrection, the fruit of the cross, to be the most certain truth of his life.  A true Christian then fears nothing, and avoids nothing, but eagerly enters into suffering and death, knowing that only those who follow Christ with love all the way through the cross and into the tomb, may arrive at the truth of what our Lord said, that whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, but whoever seeks to lose his life, will save it for eternal life.

So let's do more today that buy a ticket for the eternal life lottery.  Let's do more than make grandma proud that I made it to Mass on Easter Sunday.  No, let's profess our faith in the resurrection not only because the faith has been courageously and carefully passed onto us, but because I have most personally and intensely taken Jesus up on his word, and have actually tried being a Christian.  The resurrection is not something we have to pretend to be true, it is something we find to be true, because I know myself to be getting younger, and my life getting bigger, everytime I lose myself in the adventure of following Jesus more closely.

So when we profess our faith tonight let's not say something easy.  Let's not say something pitiable.  Let's say something with sharp minds and pure hearts and courageous wills.  Let us say together words that are as mysterious and dramatic and profound as any words that have been, or ever could be, uttered by the lips of a human person.  Jesus Christ is truly risen from the dead.  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

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