Easter Homily
Miss Angelica Feldman, in the front and center, wearing white, member of the Martin Saints class of 2028, was baptized last night at her parish, our school home, St. Titus in East Norriton. Ms. Tanya Moyer, Angelica's mom, to Angelica's right and also in white, was also baptized. Mrs. Holly Guertin, her teacher, was Angelica's godmother. Our school family came out to support Angelica and Tanya.
Happy Easter! To all of our guests and visitors, welcome! A thousand times, welcome! We're so glad you're here. To all of our regulars, amen and hallelujah!
To embrace this great feast and celebrate together, let's start by looking around the edge of the room. Those 14 carvings are the Stations of the Cross. They memorialize Jesus’s passion and crucifixion, which, in one sense, happened just three days ago.
The Stations are a story of spiritual ignorance, of sin, of spitting, whipping, thorns, falling in the dirt, blood, and many more unspeakable humiliations. These agonies are a fulfillment of prophecy, of ancient mysteries about blood and sacrifice. They are a story of our Creator - the author of everything good, true, and beautiful - who loved us so much that he entered into the drama of history - and what we did to him and his gifts.
With profound understatement, we may say that the Stations are a confession that the world is not what it should be, that we are not what we should be.
And yet nevertheless, today we sing hymns. Today we play trumpets, and lilies surround the altar. All the candles are lit, and the sanctuary is thick with incense. Today the Lenten fasts are over, and soon we will eat rich delicious food.
The good news of Easter is that the Stations of the Cross are not the last word. The good news of Easter is that the Creator intervenes in creation, not to stop all suffering from happening, but to guarantee that in the end, suffering will not be meaningless. The good news of Easter is that the forces of darkness tried their best, and they lost. The good news is that the worst has already happened, and that the best has triumphed. The good news is that in the end - even if the suffering in our world recapitulates this crucifixion again and again - the Word of God cannot be kept in the tomb.
The Word rises again, and walks among us, alongside us in our own suffering. We can and we should trust the resurrection. Unseen spiritual realities are real. Supernatural goodness is real. God’s authority over history and creation is real. When we look down through a microscope, or up through a telescope…when you hold a baby, or watch the sun rise and set over the ocean, or just watch the light change on the trees…the beauty - the intricacies and the grandeur - they are all real, a sign that there is something at large in creation that we can trust.
Plato was right - there is a beauty beyond and behind the beauty. There is a clue in creation that points to something even greater than creation. Aristotle was right - philosophy begins in wonder. Everything that is good about our civilization is built on trust that this beauty and wonder are the most reliable pathways into the heart of reality. When we trust this beauty, this grace, and start to build our personal lives upon it, our trust is a pathway to goodness and truth too, for we naturally want to become the kind of people who are congruent with creation, who fit and are configured into this truth.
And so we start to wonder about reality. We start to pray and ask questions. We look for ways to participate in this beauty beyond the beauty, to draw close to God. Letting ourselves be configured to truth and goodness will feel like self-denial at times, but we start to trust the saints - we start to trust the lives of holy people, people who are radiant and have figured out how to live beautifully despite the suffering. At some point, we may encounter this thing called the Church. The Church is many things, but, when we first encounter it, we might call it a neighborhood, a family, a history of people on the same journey.
And when we peer into eternity - when we search for the beauty beyond the beauty - it is the testimony of the Church and of the saints that reality is personal, that there is a face. The face we meet is Jesus. He is the foundation of everything.
There are 14 Stations of the Cross. 14 ways that evil tried to degrade all that is good, 14 ways that evil tried to break the foundation. And yet our redeemer liveth, and so we hold fast.
More than that! We not only hold fast, but we flourish. He is not only our Creator, our suffering and resurrected Lord. He is also our friend. He knows our names and counts the hairs on our head. We suffer, and he stands beside us, reassuring us that none of this suffering will have the last word.
We suffer, and sometimes we falter, and that is called sin. We get anxious, we get resentful, and we act out from those places. We get in the habit (sometimes deeply in the habit) of being self-absorbed. Our pride is offended, and we try to self-medicate with the adrenaline of righteous anger, stubborn pride, and many variations on sloth, lust, gluttony, greed, envy, etc. But he invites us to lay down these strategies of self-justification and turn to him. He reminds us that we are not alone, that he has already persevered to the gates of hell and back, that he is with us, that he has triumphed, that he is alive.
It says in our second reading today that the secret of our lives is hidden with Christ. What does this mean? My favorite sentence from the documents of the Second Vatican Council echoes this verse. Vatican II teaches that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word (that is, in Jesus) does the mystery of man become clear.
Miss Carina Fiorella, in white, with her godmother, Miss Laura Lindmeier. Carina is a member of the Martin Saints class of 2025. She was baptized two weeks ago. Today she is with her classmates on a school pilgrimage to Rome. Laura, who is also Carina's theology teacher, is with her.
In other words, our scripture and our Church are telling us - if we want to know who we are; if we want to know about the mystery of suffering and sin, of identity and creation, of beauty and goodness; if we want to know how these things cohere and hold together; if we want to wake up and enter fully into life - then we have to look at this man Jesus. He is a human being like us, showing us what it means to live a beautiful life. He is also God, utterly unlike us, resurrected and immortal. He is true God and true man, the beauty behind and beyond the beauty.
And so - welcome to the Church. Whether you are a visitor or a regular, we welcome each other. We are here together to praise God and give thanks. The Church is many beautiful, wonderful, spiritual things. But perhaps at the level of everyday experience, a church is a group of people - flawed people, like you and me - who try to get our hearts and minds wrapped around this man Jesus. What does it mean to suffer, to serve, to persevere in the light of this beautiful God who became man? Sacraments, prayer, mission - it is the adventure of a lifetime when we give ourselves over to it. Amen and hallelujah!
