Cold Drinks, Questions, and Christ Cold Drinks, Questions, and Christ

Here we are: we have reached the climax of our celebration. For the past seven days, we have journeyed from the Lord Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, to the final hours of His life, His death on the Cross, to this: the glory of the Resurrection. The glory of the Resurrection that it so beautifully described in the Easter Exsultet as “the night that even now, throughout the world, sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices and from the gloom of sin, leading them to grace and joining them to his holy ones.”




Resurrection is so often described as the goal of Christian life, the promise made by Christ to all Christians. I dare say, though, that we might not fully grasp the meaning and the significance of the Resurrection of Christ or what it offers to us; actually, I don’t think it takes too much boldness to say because to grasp the fullness of the Resurrection is to grasp the fullness of God, and what we must constantly remember is that pursuit is beyond our reach. The human family has been given a mediator to the inaccessible God, His Son, Jesus Christ, and to know the Church and the breadth of its gifts is to know Him, but I don’t think even the boldest of Christians would claim to know Christ, His Church, His will for them, or the meaning of the Resurrection fully.




We live in that in between time where the victory of life over death, good over evil, Christ over sin has already been accomplished, but in the in between time we still don’t see Christ fully in the great beatific vision that we have been promised—that is to say, that great heavenly splendour that awaits us.




As we have done throughout this Holy Week, it would be useful to turn again to the symbols that our faith offers us to understand the great mystery of God in our life. On Palm Sunday, we saw how even of deepest despair could be a proclamation of faith; on Holy Thursday, we saw how service and love of our neighbour brings God even more fully into the world; and on Good Friday, the symbol of suffering was made manifest in the example of Mary who herself is a symbol of perfect discipleship. At this most ancient celebration, the clearest and most distinct symbol offered to us is the contrast between light and darkness, especially as it’s made manifest in the Easter fire that continues to burn in our Easter Candle.




Rightly, the Easter Vigil begins with this holy fire because, unlike how fire is often a symbol for the Holy Spirit at times like Pentecost, it is a symbol for Christ. The fire burns greatly in the beginning of time and indeed even before time when all that existed was God. In the time before time, before space, God lived in perfect relationship with Himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Creation happens, and this is the very first scripture we hear proclaimed: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,” but if there is a beginning, there must have been something before that beginning. That something before the beginning is what we call God; St Thomas Aquinas might call it the unmoved mover. The point is that God was before there was. 




His first creation, while “the earth was [still] a formless void” was light. But for a time, human life still seemed to be in darkness. God had not vanished, but His light was that of a candle in the darkness, and the people He chose to reveal that light to most clearly were the Jewish people. Why God chose particularly the Jewish people will always remain for us here a mystery, but certainly the faith of men and women like Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Moses, Aaron, and Miriam were part of that choice. Their great example of faith, of encountering God in profound ways, anticipates the faith we are called to emulate and the deep relationship with God that we are similarly offered. 




The people in these ancient times, the Jewish people included, did not know God as we know God; we must uphold their great dignity and uniqueness while acknowledging th

Good Friday looks a lot different than most of the days when we gather as a community. Most of the time when we gather as a Catholic community, we gather to celebrate the Mass, to celebrate the great event when through the power of prayer, God transforms bread and wine into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. This great transformation is the presence of God in the world, the Eucharist, the reason Catholics gather. We call it, and I repeat over and over again, the source and summit of our faith, the origin and destination—where our faith comes from and where our faith is going.




This great mystery of our faith is removed from us on Good Friday. We don’t celebrate Mass on Good Friday. We still receive Communion; indeed, that the Communion we share today was consecrated last night at the Holy Thursday Mass is a great symbol of the continuation that exists between the two celebration and the celebration that we look forward to in our Easter celebrations tomorrow night and Sunday Morning. But the absence of a Mass today is a unique thing; in fact, Good Friday and Holy Saturday are the only two days of the year that there is not a Catholic Mass. Sometimes, Priests need days off or communities can’t gather, but always, every day, somewhere in the world, at all times except Good Friday and Holy Saturday, there is a Mass being celebrated. The great absence of this prayer, of this celebration, of this opportunity for our community to gather is minimized by what we do here, in this unique way that we gather, this unique way we manifest our prayer and raise our intentions to God.




We gather in memorial, in commemoration, of Jesus’ death, this very sad moment in our salvation history. The man Jesus is stripped, beaten, and the crucified beside two criminals, where our Lord who did nothing wrong is treated with such contempt and violence and evil. Yet in the last moments of Jesus’ life, as we hear in the Gospel of St John today, His focus is not on His suffering; His focus is not on His impending death, but indeed, it is on the Church, the community of believer that He will leave behind.




So, in this great action of prayer and this great sacrifice, He also takes this great action of entrusting the Church in the Grace and Providence of His Mother, Mary, who will be there for a time to journey with the Church as a guide, as a leader, as an example of what it is and how it is to follow Christ. Mary, we know, followed Christ Her whole life perfectly, from the moments before His birth and beyond the moments after His death. Mary is a perfect example of what Christian faith is and how Christian faith should be lived out. 




Faced with the death of her son, she provides for us a model of how to deal with suffering, how to deal with sadness: meeting and encountering her son who has been beaten and flogged and is now crucified, there is no description of a profound change in Mary; she continues along in her mission, ministry, and prayer as a mother, disciple, and lover of Jesus. This reveals to us a great acceptance, and in the great acceptance of her suffering, Mary makes Christ present by bearing suffering beside Him. She carries out her daily duties, but there could be no denial that suffering carries tangibly in her life. Indeed, the great tradition of the Church gives Mary the Crown of Martyrdom not because she was killed violently as the rest of the other martyrs in our tradition have but because of the great suffering she endured seeing her Son crucified and die on the Cross. 




In this great example of what it is to suffer, we see what it is to bear the wounds of Christ without actually physically bearing the wounds of Christ. We see in this a model of discipleship, an invitation and a reminder that our suffering, although it is not physically on the Cross with Christ, it is similarly offered to the Lord and with the Lord. Our suffering has the opportunity to be a great prayer of supplication to the Lor

Before diving deeply into the heart of tonight’s homily, I want to ensure that we all share an understanding of an important concept. A symbol is something that points to something else of much deeper or more abstract meaning than the initial symbol itself could contain. A stop sign, for example, is a symbol for the instruction to stop; the sign itself cannot make us stop, but our shared knowledge of what it stands for, makes us stop. The Sacraments are symbols—not simply symbols, but symbols nonetheless. Baptism points us to a much deeper understanding of eternal life than simply being washed in water could do alone. The Eucharist points us to Christ’s salvific actions, on the Cross, to His Resurrection, and even more. Baptism and Eucharist are much more than symbols, of course; beyond pointing to it, Baptism is the entry into eternal life in the here and now; Eucharist points to Christ’s salvific actions because it is truly the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. But the symbolic action of the sacraments is crucial to understand because it allows us to enter more deeply into the mystery—that is to say, to enter more deeply into that which is beyond the human experience: the divine experience. The eternal life offered in baptism is a good thing, indeed a very good thing, but by understanding the symbolic value of the sacrament, we are invited to enter more deeply into the mystery, to ponder what it means that are sins are forgiven and to embrace salvation it offers in the here and now—to be changed by God not just in eternal life but in our present life. Every time we receive the Eucharist, we receive the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ, even if we don’t understand what it is or what it points to, but when we fully participate in the great mystery by understanding what the symbol points to, we even more fully embrace the Grace that God gives us, allowing a more profound change in us through God’s action in the world.




I preface tonight’s homily be ensuring an understanding of symbols because tonight’s Mass has a symbol that is only seen once a year, and sometimes, as has been the case in the last two years, and I gather even longer in this Parish community, even more rarely. The Washing of the Feet is a unique symbol in tonight’s Mass. The Gospel assures us that this important symbol is not an arbitrary decision, but an imitation of the last moments of the life of Jesus. Describing this important event in the last hour of Jesus’ life, Pope Emeritus Benedict says that:




“Jesus represents the whole of his saving ministry in one symbolic act. He divests himself of his divine splendour; he, as it were, kneels down before us; he washes and dries our soiled feet, in order to make us fit to sit at the table for God’s wedding feast. …[T]he meaning is that Jesus’ love ‘to the end’ is what cleans us, washes us. The gesture of washing feet expresses precisely this: it is the servant-love of Jesus that draws us out of our pride and makes us fit for God, makes us ‘clean.’”




There is such profound theological meaning in the Washing of the Feet. It reveals even more clearly how the ministry of Jesus is about the emptying of Himself, the willingness to be the servant instead of the served, and it points to how Christ’s salvific act will wash us of our sins and make us prepared to share in His great heavenly wedding feast.




Long before I knew about this great theological meaning, and indeed, long before I knew much about Christianity at all, I shared with a friend about my desire to know more about the Christian faith. Growing up, her Christian faith was important to her, and one particular moment stood out. As I remember her telling me, near the end of a retreat opportunity, the small group of young Christians she spent much of her time with were gathered together and told that they were going to have an opportunity to wash one another’s feet. There was much trepid

After a significant episode, Fr Parker is still sort of absent! But he plans to upload his homilies for Holy Week 2022, so that's a thing. Full text below!

There is so much of value in the readings from today’s Mass, but perhaps what has called to me the most is the Psalm Response, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” By the measure of the world, this response is sorrowful, dark, and maybe even seems evil, but our Christian imagination challenges us to read more deeply into this proclamation of faith, into the whole of the Psalm it points to, and how that relates to the whole of the Christian mystery which we celebrate today.




I call the response to today’s Psalm a proclamation of faith because people who do not believe in God do not think he forsakes them; people who do not believe in God simply fail to consider God at all. For a true atheist, God is not absent, dismissive, good or evil, but rather, God simply does not exist. Thus, the Psalm response is a proclamation of faith, even if it’s a proclamation of faith in a God who seems distant or even entirely absent.




In how the Psalm is presented in today’s liturgy, there are only four stanzas. The actual Psalm is much longer, but the Church presents this summarized version around the main themes of the full Psalm. This shortened version really emphasizes just how drastic the turn that occurs in the final stanza is. The speaker turns from describing the mockery of the crowd around him, the feebleness he feels, and the injustice he faces at the hands of those who have condemned him to a great proclamation of faith and desire to evangelize:




I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters; 
 in the midst of the congregation I will praise you!
 You who [stand in awe of] the Lord, praise him!
 All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him!
 Stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!




The world would tell us that those who feel forsaken by God should do their best to change their feelings; the world would tell those who feel forsaken by God to forsake Him back. “If your God is really a God of love, why would you feel forsaken?” “Your God has abandoned you because you don’t fit into some idealized and impossible mould that you are supposed to embrace.” “If you really feel forsaken, if you really feel sentenced to death and despair, isolation and loneliness, ‘let this God rescue the one in whom he supposedly delights!’”




In the world, even some of those who claim to have a faith in the same God might tell you to change your feelings if you feel forsaken by God. “God loves you, and that should be enough.” “God wouldn’t give you more than you can handle.” “You just need to deepen your faith so that you can know that this is all part of the great plan that God has for you.”




I’m here to tell you that these pieces of atheistic advice and pious platitudes are both equally wrong and equally dangerous—equally wrong and dangerous to a lived authentic faith because the God whose scripture proclaims professions of faith like “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” can handle your feelings. Like a mother who nurses a fussy baby, a father who does not abandon a teenager who spits hatred at him, a true friend who can handle absence, or like sons and daughters who still fall deeply in love with their moms and dads as their physical and mental health declines in old age, the God whose scripture proclaims “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” can handle your feelings, whatever they are. The God of the Old Testament and the New Testament, the God of the Jews, the God Incarnate in Christ, Jesus Himself, embraces and loves you no matter your feelings and patiently bears them out beside you, embracing you in suffering in the same way that any lover embraces his or her beloved. While feelings of abandonment or forsakenness are legitimate, they certainly do not reflect the reality of an always-present

One of Fr Parker's favourite authors, Michael O'Brien, has released a new novel, The Lighthouse: A Novel. It's novel, then, because Fr Parker has a good excuse to try to use the word novel again, except he used it as an adjective. The Lighthouse tells the story of Ethan McQuary a lighthouse keeper who encounters the world and encounters the Divine in the midst of it. Leaning on an interview by Michael O'Brien and recent words by Pope Francis, Fr Parker explores how this novel: A Lighthouse calls us each to community, belonging, and acknowledgement that his might make us uncomfortable.

The interview Fr Parker references is found here:
https://www.catholicweekly.com.au/qa-with-the-lighthouse-author-michael-d-obrien/

An article about the words of Pope Francis can be found here:
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2021-03/pope-francis-iraq-interreligious-meeting-ur-chaldeans.html

Find the full text too!

Not Fr Parker! That is, he didn't really like the movie Greenland. And even though in the podcast he encourages people to not be negative to whole nations, it's true that he's ambivalent to the country as a whole, as he is to most countries. But be better than him! And be better than Greenland! From a quality perspective and an ethical perspective (in this case, better than refers specifically to better than the move).