Homily: All That Matters

This is the second homily I preached at the 2018 Lasallian Buttimer Institute Summer Programme

Solemnity of Sts Peter and Paul

Readings: Acts 12.1-11/ Psalm 33.2-4,4-5, 6-7, 8-9 (R/v cf. 5) / 2 Timothy 4.6-8, 17-18 / Matthew 16.13-19

Sisters and brothers, have you ever experienced a situation when everything in your life, everything you’ve worked for or loved, everything you've cherished or put your hope in, was falling apart, and you could do nothing?

Many of us here would struggle in such moments. We are teachers and administrators with talents to analyse problems. We have will and power to solve them. We have experience and intelligence to overcome these moments. We have courage and determination to control the situations.  I believe none of us would give up when things fall apart; we would  want to set everything right again.

Yet the hardest action we sometimes have to make as Christians is to allow things to fall apart. 

To let things fall apart like Peter and Paul experienced in prison and when they are about to be martyred which we hear about in our  first and second readings.

To let things fall apart like St John Baptist de la Salle experienced so many times in his life and ministry, and most painfully on his deathbed when the Church removed his priestly faculties.

Yes, no matter the depth of our faith or the saintliness of our lives, to let things fall part in our lives must probably be the hardest decision to say ‘yes’ to, and the most difficult choice to make to live life, even if it is to live fully. 

Can we do this?  I believe we can by beginning to notice. To notice what is happening to us when things fall apart. Whether things fall apart slowly over time, as in a debilitating illness, or dramatically, as in senseless terrorist attacks and racist murders, or unbelievably, when children are pulled apart from parents at the border, our faith calls us to notice. 

To notice how our hearts begin to crack open in these moments. Crack open because we become more vulnerable, more available to God’s mercy that redeems, God’s love that provides, God’s life that sustains. Crack open for God.

Haven’t we experienced how our hearts – however pained and fearful, or our insensitive and small-hearted – have indeed cracked open when everything falls apart because all we need, we want, all that matters in such situations is God?

An important part of Christian discipleship is helping each other as community. When we experience things falling apart, don’t we turn to one another, to family, to community to make sense of this fragmentation in our lives and world? 

We do this best when begin to help each other recognise how God appreciates us and labors for our wellbeing in these spaces and moments of fragmentation and chaos. To God, we are never weak, limited or sinful. Instead, we are always good enough. Good enough for God in mercy to catch us, hold us, & lift us up as our lives fall apart. More wondrously, we are good enough for God in love to bless us, break us open, and give us, now transfigured, to many in need in the world to transform them anew.

So what should we do in when things fall apart? Pray more? Fast more? Do more acts of kindness? Confess and repent even more?

Perhaps, nothing more than this simple act St Edith Stein teaches us: to come and stand naked before the Lord. 

Stand with our fragmented lives. 

Stand naked in our vulnerability, our brokenness, our hope. 

Stand totally as we are before the Lord of our lives, with all that is bright and beauty about us and all that is dark and ugly in us. 

Stand before the Lord to answer only one question that he will ask.

How we answer the Lord’s question is important: it can be the wellspring of our living and the purpose of our lives. 

This singular question will be far more important than all those questions we so often associate with judgment day: have you fed the hungry? have you clothed the naked? have you visited the imprisoned? have you freed the unfree for life?

No, the one and only question Jesus will ask you and me every time we stand before him – be it when things fall part, or at the end of each day, or even now right here at Mass – is the same question he asks Peter in our gospel passage.

This evening we do not just overhear this question. We are being asked the question because today we are the unseen actors in this moment. We stand with Peter and before God, ready to listen.

And what do we hear? Jesus asking this question that penetrates into the depths of each of our hearts: “Who do you say that I am?  “Who am I for you? What is your experience of me in your life, in your history? How do you experience me now?” What will your answer, my answer, our answer be to Jesus? 

Perhaps for de la Salle on his deathbed, it was simply, ”Jesus” – Jesus who he sought union with, Jesus who he begged to belong to, Jesus who he prayed to live in him forever. This Jesus who joined de la Salle, without priestly faculties, in death with his Brothers, like then, with all of them united as Frères des écoles chrétiennes (Brothers of the Christian Schools).

May be when we come to understand that our own answer to Jesus’ question has something to do with who we really are – that we are much  more than sinners desperately in need of God’s salvation in Jesus – we might find our answer in this simplest of truths: we are God’s own, forever redeemed. 

The radical beauty of this truth comes alive for us when stand before the Lord because everything that is false, everything that is fake and everything that is untrue in us will indeed fall apart. And we will find ourselves as we have always been, and always will be, God’s beloved.

Then, we can say with Peter, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And we can also echo Paul who once wrote to the Philippians:  “All I want is to know (you) Christ Jesus and the power flowing from (your) resurrection. Now nothing else matters.”

Yes, nothing else should matter: only Jesus, the Christ of our lives. 

Preached at Buttimer Institute, Manhattan College, New York City

Photo: rain by adrian danker, sj (june 2018, nyc)