Father Matthew Wiering Podcast

When Jesus appears in the locked Upper Room with the disciples, it is the first time that they are encountering him since they abandoned him and fled at the time of his passion. His first words to these so-called friends? "Peace be with you." This word of peace is a word of restoration of relationship -- a word of forgiveness. It restores joy to the disciples. On this Divine Mercy Sunday we reflect on the gift of God's forgiveness and the healing power that forgiveness has in our own lives.

On this Easter Sunday we hear the Gospel of Mary and the disciples discovering the empty tomb. St. John tells us -- unlike the other Gospel writers -- that they discover the empty tomb "in the night". He is referring to the darkness of their faith at that moment. Death has a finality to it that fills us with dread. The repulsion and fear that we feel in the face of death was ritualized in the Jewish impurity laws. Touching a dead body was believed to render a person unclean for days -- so contagious was death that it was thought to infect life with its disorder. But Jesus does the opposite... By allowing death to touch him to the core, he was not rendered unclean. In fact, he is so clean that he is able to transform death so that it no longer carries with it the finality that it once had. In Jesus death no longer has the last word. This is what is shown to us in the Resurrection!

The Passion of St. John begins and ends in a garden, a seemingly insignificant detail that helps us to understand what is happening here. Just like a serpent (Satan) intruded into the Garden of Eden, so Judas (under the influence of Satan) intrudes into the garden of the Lord's Passion. While the old Adam succumbs to Satan's influence in disobedience to the Father, the new Adam is victorious over Satan. Even though Jesus allows himself to be taken and to suffer, because he remains obedient to the Father, he is (despite appearances) victorious over sin and death.

Whenever we read John's Gospel, we are reading multiple layers of meaning. There is the historical-literal level that gives an historical account of something that Jesus said or did. But underneath that level is a deeper level that has a profound, spiritual meaning. This can certainly be said of John 13: the account of the Last Supper. This perspective gives us the story of Jesus's washing the feet of the disciples. Peter doesn't want to let Jesus touch this soiled, smelly part of his body. Yet he acquiesces, as Jesus tells him, "Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me." This leads us into the spiritual level... the washing is not just a service performed in charity and humility but also points to the washing in blood that Jesus is going to accomplish on the Cross. So Jesus washes their feet as a sign pointing to the service that He is offering them and that they must except: The cleansing of the soul by being washed in his blood -- accepting baptism and the forgiveness of sins.

In today's magnificent Gospel of the Passion of Jesus from Matthew's Gospel, there's an emphasis on the human suffering of Jesus. He is presented to us as the Suffering Servant from Isaiah's Gospel (Isaiah 53) who atones for the sins of the world and redeems it through his suffering. One example of the human suffering of Jesus is the profound psychological suffering we see in the Agony of the Garden. Jesus is gripped by anxiety; yet, he is able to call upon his Abba ("Daddy"), and trustingly commit his life into his Father's hands. This image is a good one for us as this Lent draws to a close. We may not have had the Lent we wanted. But this Holy Week we have the opportunity to choose and live not the Lent we wanted but the Lent our Father, our "Daddy", has given us.

While in the homily for Sunday we talked about the overall symbolism John is using in the dramatic miracle of the raising of Lazarus, today we look more closely at some details of the story which help to draw us into the mystery of why God allows pain and suffering in the first place and how the resuscitation of Lazarus is actually a symbol of Christ's resurrection... and our own!

The past three weeks we have heard three dramatic stories of encounters with Jesus from John's Gospel: the encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, the healing of the man born blind, and the raising of Lazarus. In each, the person encountered has a desperate problem. In each, Jesus provides the remedy. Looking at these stories from a spiritual perspective, we see how our own problems -- our unquenchable thirst, our spiritual blindness, and the death that occurs in our souls because of sin -- have a remedy: Baptism and life in Christ.

During this time of staying at home, why not dive a little deeper into the Scriptures? Today we focus on the Annunciation to Zachariah of the birth of John the Baptist (Luke 1) and compare/contrast with the Annunciation to Mary of the birth of Jesus.

Today's Feast of the Annunciation brings us back to the beginning of the New Covenant that God makes with his people: The sending of his only begotten Son, Jesus, who will give his life so that the world would live. We focus today on Mary in the Annunciation account... how it is her faith on God's message to her that brings about her yes, through which God has saved us in Jesus. Today in our many trials let us imitate the faith of Mary!

Today we reflect on this amazing Gospel for the 4th Sunday of Lent and the deeply symbolic healing of the man born blind. As we reflect on the symbols of clay and the pool at Siloam, we realize that Jesus recreates us at our baptism and heals the terrible defect in us that has been present since our birth: original sin. But the healed man shows us that this healing of our spiritual blindness that we received at our baptism results in the gradual unfolding of our faith, which is brought to perfection through our trials and our continual encounters with Jesus. May this Gospel help us to live with great confidence through the trials of our own day!