Homilies & Thoughts

The upper room has the stillness that comes before grief. Jesus has spoken of departure, and the disciples feel the ground shift beneath them. Their daily life has taken shape around his presence. Now the one whose nearness has steadied them speaks as though he will soon be hidden from sight.

That apparent hiddenness is where this Gospel touches us most today. The disciples could look upon the face of Jesus. They could hear his voice without the veil of memory and meet the gaze of the Son who reveals the Father. Their confusion was real, but their privilege seems undeniable. They could see God in the flesh.

I think we all recognize that the incarnation—God becoming man—is God’s free choice. He decides to do that. Nothing compelled him or coerced him. But I do not think we always appreciate some of the consequences of that choice. Not only does he freely choose to become man; he also chooses of whom he becomes man.

He chooses the Blessed Virgin Mary. He did not have to. And in choosing her, he chooses the situation in which she lives. God could have chosen to be born among the royalty of the world. He could have been born the son of a king and lived that life. He could have been born into the leisure classes, among those who do not have to work.

There is a kind of noise that does not merely fill a room. It takes possession of it. Leave a television running long enough, keep the phone close enough, let the commentary pour in day after day, and the soul begins to change. The noise takes root. What was once a stranger begins to sound familiar, it begins to sound like the truth.

That is the danger Jesus calls out on this Good Shepherd Sunday. The stranger does not always sound strange at first. He may sound like courage itself. But his voice carries a hidden deception. It pulls the sheep away from the gate and into places where the heart grows suspicious and hardens.

Several years ago, when I bought a car, I did everything carefully. I researched the options, compared features, went on test drives, talked to other owners, and slowly narrowed it down until I found exactly what I wanted. Then I bought it, drove it home, and before long I had the same thought everyone eventually has: it was good, but something was missing. There was some feature I wished it had, some improvement I could already imagine.

A room can be crowded and still feel empty. The disciples are together, but the room feels hollow. The doors are locked and the news of the resurrection has not yet settled their hearts. They are afraid, but something deeper is wrong. They have stepped back from the very work for which the Lord chose them, and so they have stepped away from themselves.

That is why the peace of Christ does not come as a vague comfort. It comes as a summons. He enters the room they sealed off in fear and speaks the words they most need to hear: “Peace be with you.” Then he does more than calm them. He shows them his wounded body. He sends them as the Father sent him. He breathes his Spirit upon them. He entrusts them with the work of mercy and reconciliation. Peace arrives together with mission.

There is a way fear tightens a person. The hand closes. The shoulders draw in. We guard and hold back. That is how much of the world has learned to live. If this life is all there is, then everything must be seized now. If death is the final horizon, then of course people grasp and claw and wound one another trying to secure a little safety, a little control before the darkness comes.

The Church has lingered long tonight beside the works of God. We have listened as the great story unfolded: the beauty of the first creation, the wound of our fall, the ache of exile, the call of Abraham, the deliverance through the sea, the voice of the prophets, the promises spoken again and again to a people who could not remain faithful for long. The pattern was painfully familiar. God gave. Man squandered. God called. Man wandered. God rescued. Man returned to dust and disobedience. And then, in the fullness of time, God sent his Son.

Evil usually does not look obviously evil. It does not wear a sign and announce itself as such. It usually arrives in compromised hearts and the quiet surrender of courage. Good Friday forces us to confront that.

The Passion according to John does not present a stage crowded with cartoon villains. Pilate is weak and calculating, yet he is not blind. He knows Jesus is innocent. He sees the malice and envy around him. He senses that something holy stands before him. Still, he yields. The empire presses on him. The crowd presses on him. His own desire to preserve himself presses on him most of all. And so a man who can still recognize justice and truth refuses to act in defense of them. That is how evil works its way into history.

When I was a kid, WWJD was everywhere—bracelets, t-shirts, billboards. “What would Jesus do?” I never cared for it. It was a bad question. Jesus would walk on water, give sight to the blind, and raise the dead. I was not going to do that. A better question, a concrete and real question is, “What does Jesus want me to do,” WDJWMTD. That would look silly on a t-shirt. But that is okay. The Lord is not a slogan or an abstract ideal. He is a living person who speaks to us and loves us.

The road into Jerusalem begins with cheers and ends at Golgotha with mockery, blood, and a dying man. The crowd can welcome a king while they still imagine victory in familiar terms. They can cry, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” while picturing strength and the swift defeat of enemies. But when this king refuses the path of spectacle and force, many hearts turn. The same city that rejoices at his arrival will soon look upon him beaten, condemned, and hanging on a tree, and many will decide that he has failed. They notice his suffering. But they do not recognize his throne.

There is something almost painful in this scene. Jesus is told that his friend is gravely ill. He loves this family. He has power to heal. And still he waits. To Martha and Mary, that delay must have felt like silence. To anyone watching from the outside, it can even look heartless. But the delay belongs to the love.

Had the Lord gone at once, Lazarus would have been healed. Bethany would have rejoiced. Tears would have dried. But Lazarus would not have become what he now becomes: a witness. He would have remained a man restored to health. Instead, he becomes a man carried through death and brought back by the voice of God. He enters the place where every family must one day surrender someone they love, and from there he returns. In Lazarus, the Lord gives more than relief. He gives a sign that death itself has met its Master.

A difficult thing happens, and the human heart begins its familiar work. It starts searching for a cause, a guilty party. Someone must have done something. Someone must deserve this. That instinct appears almost immediately in the Gospel. The disciples see a man blind from birth, and before they see a neighbor, they see a problem to be explained. Before they see suffering, they begin assigning fault.

Jesus refuses that path. He says, “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.” With that sentence, he turns the whole scene. He pulls his disciples away from blame and toward mercy. He teaches them, and he teaches us, that suffering is not an invitation to sit in judgment. It is an invitation to let God act.