Father Matthew Wiering Podcast

As we continue to reflect on the event of the Resurrection, as we do hearing today's account of Jesus appearing to the Eleven in Luke, one of the things we notice is how different the details of the different accounts are. Do the discrepancies between the accounts make the fact of the Resurrection more or less plausible? As a man once questioned me after leaving Easter Mass, "How do we know the disciples weren't making it up?" In this homily we'll explore why Pope Benedict XVI claimed that the differences between the accounts supported their veracity: We should be more certain of the Truth of the Resurrection because of the difference in details than if the accounts were carefully edited to be in perfect agreement.

Today's powerful Gospel has Jesus walking through the locked doors of the Upper Room to meet the men who were his friends and disciples but most recently had abandoned him in his hour of need. He has one word for them: Peace. This is Divine Mercy. Having received divine mercy, the disciples are then sent (after having been strengthened for the task with the Holy Spirit) to share divine mercy with others. Let us receive divine mercy and share divine mercy!

A couple signs that Easter Sunday is an opportunity to "begin again": (1) The young man from Mark's Gospel who (figuratively) loses his baptismal garment in the Garden of Gethsemane reappears with a fresh, white garment in the Garden of Golgotha; and (2), Jesus tells his disciples that He will precede them to Galilee. Pope Francis says that this is an opportunity to ricominciare -- to begin again -- to go back to the place of their first encounter with Jesus, of their first love. Let us receive Easter 2021 as a time to ricominciare, to be reconciled and renewed in our following of the Lord!

It's fascinating to compare the passion accounts of St. John to the synoptic Gospel writers. While the main story is the same, the emphasis is quite different. The synoptic gospels spare no details of the brutal sufferings that Jesus experienced during his passion: psychological, physical, even spiritual. But John presents almost none of that. In his passion he depicts Jesus as a totally free man who is in control of his destiny and who allows everything to happen to him with knowledge, freedom, and choice. We see no weakness nor hear any cry or complaint until after the Scriptures had been fulfilled, when, just before breathing his last, he finally admits, "I thirst." For water or wine? No. Jesus thirsts for the only thing that He doesn't control -- which is how you and I respond to his gift of love. In response to his love, he thirsts for our love. Will we quench his thirst? 

Today's Liturgy of Holy Thursday inaugurates the sacred Pascal Triduum and itself marks three specific moments of Jesus's ministry: His institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper; his command to the Twelve to "do this in memory" of Him, by which He establishes the New Covenant priesthood; and His Agony in the Garden, in which He allows the weight of the sins of the world -- including mine and yours -- to press down upon Him. Mystery of mysteries! Let us do tonight as He commands: To wait, watch, and pray.

St. Mark begins his Passion narrative in a curious way. Instead of beginning it with the Last Supper, he begins it with a different meal, in which Jesus dines at the home of Simon the leper in Bethany. A woman enters and does something that catches everyone's attention. She takes a super-expensive jar of perfumed oil, breaks it, and pours out the liquid on Jesus's head. The aroma of this loving act wafts over the whole passion narrative and helps us to see that Jesus is the one who allows himself to be broken and his blood poured out for us -- out of devotion and love for us. What kind of gift will we give him in return?

Today's homily is from our confirmation Mass, and the focus is Jesus's image of a seed: "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it shall bear much fruit." Like a seed needs to be broken open in a death to self so that new life can come from within it, so it goes for us.

Today's Gospel features one of the most popular and beloved verses in all of Scripture: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life..." Today we examine what this means more closely by looking at the verse that comes right before it: "For just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up..." We discover what Jesus means by this confusing phrase, what it has to do with Jesus, and how all of this fits in with God's plan of love.

Today's Gospel portrays Jesus angry and overturning the tables outside of the Temple. Once we remember that the Temple was meant to evoke the Garden of Eden, the place that God dwelt in friendship with the man and woman before the Fall, we see that Jesus is acting as the "New Adam" -- casting out anything that would come between God and man. St. Paul reminds us that we, too, are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Any evil that would compromise us and our Communion with God is worthy of ruthless anger -- attacking it until the garden of our heart is once again a place where we can allow God to dwell with us in peace and freedom.

There's a word in today's Gospel description of the Transfiguration event that always catches my eye, and that is the word used to describe what happen to Jesus before the amazed eyes of the disciples: He was metamorphòthe before them. Like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly, Jesus's body was changed before the disciples. Fascinatingly, St. Paul uses the same word to describe our transformation in Christ: "All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being metamorphòumetha into the same image from glory to glory" (2 Cor. 3:18). So when the disciples see Jesus metamorphosed before them, they are not only getting a glimpse into the glory of his divinity but also their own destiny in Christ. And ours!