5th Sunday B - February 4, 2024
A few years ago, I served as Chaplin at the Catholic House at the Chautauqua Institute. I was there for a humor week. Each week the priests at the house give a lecture on a topic. Being a week on humor I spoke on Catholic humor. (Some of you heard my talk last summer as the patio talk), the other priest chose to speak on the Humor of Jonah, but when we got there the flyer said the Humor of Job, he rewrote his talk and found some humor in Job. Today’s first reading from Job has little humor or even hope in it.
As you know, the book of Job tells the story of Job who unlike Hercules goes from Hero to zero. All Job has is taken away and he spends lots of time on the ash heap as his friends keep asking him what sin he has committed to be so punished.
What Job says today rings true for anyone who has been on this globe for a period. None of us are free from struggles and often life can seem like a flash that is over all too soon. The words of Job are words spoken by one who has lost hope. He doesn’t allow his friends to console him. He moans and mourns his situation but seeks nor receives consolation.
We have all been there. Job is in desolation. In life we easily find desolation, but we may have to seek consolation.Years ago, St. Ignatius of Loyola spoke about these two experiences. He said we experience both desolations and consolations, and they will follow one upon the other. It is easy to identify desolation. Bad news seems to travel faster than good news. We may have to seek consolations, but they will present themselves.
Consolations can be as simple as a warm hand shared with another.
In the gospel Jesus reaches out and takes the hand of Peter’s mother-in-law. (let’s call her Amatatllah, which means “servant of God.”) Other than physical healing she needed the comfort of human touch. Illness can be an isolating experience. I recently heard an interview with a doctor, she told how when she visits people in the hospital, she takes a seat or asks permission to sit on the bed, this way she is level, eye to eye with the person. Reaching out to grip Peter’s mother-in-law’s hand helped to bridge the gap between her and Jesus. They are now more or less on an equal footing. I learned when I was sick how much energy small talk can take, this is why I usually keep my visits short. I was thankful to my mom who simply sat with me and didn’t engage me in conversation.
Let’s get back to desolation and consolation. St Ignatius said they would come together. I have found that when I am experiencing desolation consolation will soon follow. Often it is something as simple as a warm hand or a kind voice. Sometimes it is necessary to look for consolation, desolations seem easier to recognize, yet consolations will come soon. When they come, they make the desolations tolerable.
Poor Job needed consolation, yet his friends simply accused him of wrongdoing as if he brought his difficulties upon himself. The book of Job rehashes many of the old, trite explanations on why bad things happen to good people. Finally God appears and speaks to Job, mainly what God says is I am God and my ways are not your ways you are not to understand. Simply place faith in me and in time all will work out.
Illness helps us to understand this. When we are ill we are reminded that we are not in charge, God is in charge, and my faith reminds me that my God loves me and all will work our in the end. Peter’s mother-in-law was ill and then she met Jesus and was well. Her healing came through the intercession of her family and friends. God sends us people to aid us in our times of need.I am standing here before you, able to see, due to the prayers and support of many people. I felt the comforting hands of many of you. Your hands and prayers provide consolation in my time of need.
John Updike summed it up well in his poem Fever
Let me share with you his words:
I have brought back a good message from the land of 102 degrees:
God exists. I had seriously doubted it before;
but the bedposts spoke of it with utmost confidence,
the threads in my blanket took it for granted,
the tree outside the window dismissed all complaints,
and I have not slept so justly for years.
It is hard, now, to convey how emblematically appearances sat
upon the membranes of my consciousness; but it is truth long known,
that some secrets are hidden from health.
After mass today we will pray for the intercession of St Blaize to deliver us from illness. The blessed candles placed on our necks will be used to intercede with God for continued health. Like Job and Peter’s mother-in -law we experience the healing power of our God.
Let us give thanks and praise to our God who delivers us from our desolation and provides us with healings and consolations.
The Road to Emmaus is a metaphor and model for the Christian life. The two disciples gather. They come together. They gather in spite of the fact that they are struggling with their faith in Jesus. They look downcast when they encounter Jesus (whom they do not recognize.) Their words betray their struggling faith and lost hope: “we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel”. As Christians we too gather today. We gather out of faith and in hope. And, if we are honest with ourselves, we gather because of our struggles with our faith and hope. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, it is important that we come together, we come into communion with each other, because it’s in the midst of that gathering, that communion, that God becomes present in our midst to strengthen our faith and give us hope, in Him and through one another. There is another very practical and important reason for us to gather as disciples of Christ. You see, the one thing about the road to Emmaus, the road of our faith journey, is that there are potholes! We walk together in this journey of faith just as Jesus sent his disciples together to minister. We look out for each other, watching out for the potholes in the Road of Faith to Emmaus, to warn each other, to help each other around those potholes, and to help lift each other with God’s help out of those potholes. We walk the Road to Emmaus in response to God who calls us to follow this road, planting the seeds of desire in us to follow this road, walking with each other , that we might encourage each other — and ourselves — to stay on that road. This spiritual companionship is critical. Now, as the disciples travel the road to Emmaus, they encounter the Risen Christ. Though they don’t recognize Jesus yet, Christ — God the Word — makes scripture present to them, and breaks it open for them, interpreting all that the prophets had written about him. We too, as gathered disciples today, have the Word of God made present to us through the readers who, with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, give their voice to the breath of the Spirit in proclaiming that Word in our midst. Just as with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus makes himself present here in our midst through the proclaimed Word! Do we experience the scripture proclaimed to us in each Mass, each Children’s Liturgy of the Word, each time we pray the Liturgy of the Hours, each scripture study, each What About Monday , Cursillo, and Men’s faith sharing group, recognizing Jesus present in our midst, our God who is walking with us on our Road to Emmaus faith journey? Are our hearts burning within us when we hear the Word proclaimed? Though fed by Jesus the Word on the road to Emmaus, it is only in the breaking of the bread that the disciples finally come to recognize Christ in their midst. And how powerful and how much is in that action of breaking bread. Just as when Jesus feeds the 5,000, just as when he gathers with the disciples in the upper room at the Last Supper, just as when he gathers at table with the disciples in Emmaus, he takes the bread , says the blessing , breaks the bread , and gives it to them. The fact that Jesus chooses to reveal himself to the disciples in Emmaus in the breaking of the bread tells us that he wants us too to recognize Him today in the breaking of the bread. In a few moments, those same four actions of Christ will again be made present to us today in the priest, Fr. Chris, who will take the bread from the gift bearers, bless the bread in the Eucharistic prayer, break the bread in the fractionation rite, and give it to us as Eucharist in Communion. Ah, that we would have our eyes opened to recognize Christ, the extraordinary in the midst of the ordinary! To see Christ present, not only in the broken bread, the Eucharist, but equally important and perhaps more challenging, in one another! What happened next to the disciples at Emmaus confounds us a bit, for the Lord, who wishes that he be made known in the breaking of the bread, disappears from their sight. What are we to make of this? St. Augustine gives us insight when he wrote: He withdrew from them in the body, since he was held by them [now] in faith. That indeed is why the Lord absented himself in the body from the whole Church, and ascended into heaven, for the building up of faith. After all, if you only know what you can see, where does faith come in? But if you also believe what you cannot see, when you do see it you will rejoice. Let faith be built up, because it will be paid back with sight. (1) Sisters and brothers, we walk this road of the journey of faith, our Road to Emmaus, together. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we walk it together with the Lord, whether we recognize Him in our midst or not. It is a journey of a lifetime, lived day-to-day and experienced often daily, as a journey from dark to light, from despair to hope, from unbelief to belief. It is a journey we walk by faith, and not by sight, no gracious words we hear, as Him who spoke as none e'er spoke, and we believe him near. (2) (1) St. Augustine, sermon 235 in Sermons , trans. Edmund Hill, O.P., The Works of St. Augustine III/7 (New Rochelle NY: New City Press, 1993) (2) We Walk by Faith : text by Henry Alford (alt.), tune by Marty Haugen. ©1984, 2006, GIA Publications, Inc.
It is said that when Oliver Cromwell had his official portrait painted, he asked that it be a true portrait with “warts and all”. You may say that the resurrected Christ appeared with “wounds and all”. Here is the resurrected Christ in his glorified body, who could pass through locked doors, appearing with the wounds of his crucifixion. He is resurrected, not simply resuscitated, in his glorified body still bearing the marks of his passion and death. Why, if he is in his perfect resurrected body, does Jesus still bear the marks of his passion and death? It is an interesting paradox that the woundedness of our lives can be what makes us who we are. There is a story told about a man in therapy: When he first met the counselor, he was asked to draw a picture of himself; he drew a picture of a vase with a crack in its side. After many years of therapy, the counselor showed the man the picture he had drawn. The man asked for use of the crayons. He took a yellow crayon and drew yellow strips just above the crack in the vase. When asked why he did that he told the counselor, “The crack is where the light can get in.” Leonard Cohen summed it up well in his song “Anthem”: There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. By showing the apostles his wounds, Jesus is reminding them that the wounds, the pain is not the end of the story. Many of us bear wounds from our past; they are what make us who we are. Part of the journey is the struggle. When we reach our destination, we can look back and see how the struggles made us who we are. Elbert Hubbard, the founder of the Roycrofters, once said, “God will not look you over for medals but for scars.” I am sure the disciples looked over the past three years and saw how the struggles made a difference; their time with Jesus made them new people.
Growing up on the family dairy farm, there were many difficult things we experienced. Certainly, there was much hard, physical labor. But among the hardest things we experienced was caring for sick animals, and in particular, caring for cows that had been injured or lost muscle strength and were unable to get themselves up to a standing position. This typically would happen around the time of calving and might be due to a nerve injury during birth or mineral and metabolic imbalances that affected muscle strength. We called them “down cows”. What was so hard about dealing with down cows was really two things: one, the size of the animals — often 1000 lbs. or more — made it difficult, if not impossible, for us to help them physically if they had little or no muscle strength of their own. Secondly, and more profound, was the emotional burden that weighed upon us as their caregivers. We wanted them to get better and be back on their feet. We loved our animals, as all farmers do, and we wanted the best for them. Although we could help them with support therapies and medicine with help from our veterinarian and made sure they had feed and water at all times, it felt like there was only so much in our control. And the longer a cow was down, the less likely it would be that she would ever rise again. Some never did. That outcome happened frequently enough that it was a real possibility. And there is nothing that was more discouraging for us as farmers than a cow we could not help to get better. It cast a pall over our days and robbed us of hope and joy — really, robbing us of life — replacing them instead with weary discouragement. Late one Lent going into Holy Week, we had one of these down cows. It was a year not unlike this one, with the signs of spring beginning to emerge in early April. My father used to say the best thing we could do for a down cow was to get her out of the barn and out onto the earth in the fields or pasture, where there was no concrete and better footing. So we did, and we were able to get this cow out of the barn and into the hayfield behind the barn. There, day after day, we would take her food and water, administer medicine to her, and roll her over from side to side, to make sure she did not lose circulation in one hindquarter or another. If she seemed like she wanted to get up, we would try to get enough people to see if we could help her get up. Although she ate and drank, she did not get up, and as Holy Week wore on, it felt like she wasn’t going to. That discouragement set in as a constant droning undertone to everything we did throughout the day, seemingly getting louder with each passing day. Whether we were thinking about that down cow consciously or not, it seemed to affect our outlook and demeanor in everything we did. Late one night that week, my father, brother and I were finishing evening milking. It was after dark; we were at the far end of the barn, near the door going out to the hayfield. As I came out from between two cows holding the milking machine, I turned towards the open barn door and was shocked when I found myself face to face with the previously down cow, standing there, head poked in the barn door, chewing her cud! I shouted to my father, “Dad, she’s up!” We all ran over to the barn door, peering into the darkness of that night to see this risen cow. I will never forget what my father said next, turning to us and smiling: “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but he has been raised.” In that instant our demeanor changed. The discouragement was gone and we were filled with joy and hope. There was a lightness in our step as we finished chores that night and the following days. We knew the end of the story, and this illness was not to end in death. Everything was going to be OK! I have to imagine our Passion and Easter experience on the farm those many years ago was something of what the disciples experienced when they encountered the empty tomb, the message of the angels, and ultimately the Risen Christ. I have to imagine that joy and hope that we felt that night was some small measure of the joy and hope that filled and animated them when they encountered the Risen Christ, whom they deeply loved and who deeply loved them. They finally knew the end of the story, and came to know that it did not end with death. Brothers and sisters, we too have the benefit of knowing the end of the story. We too know that it does not end in death, but in Christ triumphing over death, not only for himself, but also for us! It is this rising to new life that we celebrate in every Mass, in every Eucharist, in every Sacrament, and especially tonight, as we celebrate with our Elect their rising to new life with Christ in the waters of Baptism. So let us be filled with Easter joy and hope, as we should be, for we know the end of the story: He has Risen, He has Truly Risen, and we with Him!
