Homilies

There is a saying we have all heard countless times: “God never gives us more than we can handle.” While it might sound comforting, it is simply not true. Life’s experiences teach us otherwise. Think of the parent who loses a child, the person diagnosed with a terminal illness, or someone facing the shock of unemployment. In these moments, the burdens are undeniably overwhelming, stretching human strength far beyond its limits.

I had a different homily prepared originally, but I spent almost five hours hearing confessions at various places across the diocese yesterday. In the midst of that, I found myself thinking about all of you—thinking about what these past three weeks have been like—and something struck me during that time.

One of the things I have noticed, fairly consistently, is that most of us here, if not all of us, are wounded. As a community, it seems we have all had experiences that have hurt us in some way, and we have held on to those hurts.

When Mary Magdalene first encountered the empty tomb, her heart was filled not with joy but confusion and fear. Her cry was felt deeply in the hearts of Peter and the other disciple: “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.” This emptiness, this initial shock, confronts us too. We, like Mary and the apostles, live in a world overshadowed by the reality of death, faced daily with uncertainty and the haunting question: Is it all vanity?