Easter Triduum 2017

Now that we are firmly established in the Easter season, we can profitably look back and savor, once more, two homilies by our Abbot Peter.  We present to you here, Abbot Peter’s Homily for both Holy Thursday and the Easter Vigil Mass.

Holy Thursday Homily by Abbot Peter McCarthy

Homily by Abbot Peter McCarthy 4-13-2017

Right Here on this Holy Thursday afternoon we find ourselves knee-deep in the final section of a very intense Gospel. The Passion Narrative of St. John: with all the swirling themes (layer upon layer) of Light & Darkness; Love & Betrayal; Fear & Courage; Truth & Deception; Violence & Forgiveness;

Right HERE in this Gospel: level upon level of political intrigue: Judas; Pilot; Herod; Caiphus; AND what Happens? In the midst of all these swirling Life & Death tensions & political intrigue, Jesus becomes simplicity itself.

He got up from the table, removed his outer garment and, taking a towel, wrapped it round his waist; He then poured water into a basin & began to wash the disciples’ feet & to wipe them with the towel around his waist.

It seems to me that Real life is like that … isn’t it? I mean those rare times … those tender or hard times … those confusing; painful; or ecstatically joyful times … when all the exhausting levels of my often sub-conscious strategies, or self-defenses, or avoidances, are suddenly broken through … At these very important times in our lives (the death or birth of a loved one; a diagnosis of terminal illness; the ending or the beginning of a friendship; a sudden gracious moment of healing) At these very important times in our lives … even times we don’t immediately recognize as very important … Suddenly life gets very simple … suddenly we can be – if you will – “washed” in meaning. AND SO JESUS…

And so Jesus, during supper, fully aware that…he had come from God and was returning to God, he rose from supper and took off his outer garments. He took a towel and tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel around his waist.

Day after day after day, underneath all our defensive & ultimately self-serving structures of security & even our self-conscious programs for holiness… moment by moment we are being washed again in the love of Jesus (that is, humanly speaking, we are being washed clean- forgiven – in the life & death of Jesus of Nazareth.) This is the Gospel of Holy Week.

Peter said to Jesus, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Master than not only my feet, but my hands & head as well.”

My sisters & brothers, God needs only a lodging point in you, an infinitesimal point of truth on which to build your conversion, with his Love. Only the Love of Jesus (His Life – Death – Resurrection) can recreate you, but He needs a point, just one point of truth in you & me … God cannot build on a self-protective structure … on a lie, and this infinitesimal point of truth in you lies in your willingness to approach Him in your raw & naked need of Him … like Peter finally does in this Passion Narrative. The only difference between Peter & Judas Iscariot in these final days is that Peter loved enough … was desperate enough … to let his self-protective structure collapse … “He went out & wept bitterly”.

In the words of the contemporary theologian, Jurgen Moltmann,

As Peter when he denies Jesus will say: “I do not know this man”, so His disciples must no longer know themselves… (in this sense). They must forget “I” with its many anxieties & its petty pretensions; indeed, they must reject “I”. Rather they must regard Jesus and him alone, all their self-experience must be wholly in Him and no longer in themselves. Then they will realize in themselves Jesus & his Humanity.”

The entire Paschal Mystery (the passion – death & Resurrection) of Jesus is at heart always this invitation to COMMUNION to Radical Intimacy with HIM. And this is why this afternoon we celebrate the Institution of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is about being washed clean (with Peter) in the forgiving love (the Life Blood) of Jesus of Nazareth; being cleansed over & over again in God’s Passionate love & therefore having the capacity to wash my brothers & sisters in that same forgiving Love that I have allowed to cleanse my life.

Tonight, on this night He was Betrayed, Jesus gave us Communion. He gave us Eucharist – the center of Christian Community – The Simple Truth, the only real meaning at the center of us all.

If I then, the Lord & Master, have washed your feet, you should was each other’s feet. I have given you an example, so that you may imitate what I have done to you.”

+Abbot Peter McCarthy

 

Easter Vigil Homily by Abbot Peter McCarthy

Homily by Abbot Peter McCarthy 4-16-2017

Midway along our road of life I woke
to find myself in a secret dark wood,
for I had lost the narrow path. To evoke
what it was like – how hard, I barely could.

This wood was savage, dense and strange! The thought
of it renews those fears that I withstood,
a place so bitter, only to be caught
in death is worse.
I cannot rightly say how I came there,
I lost the true way wandering unaware,

Yet when I looked up, saw the hill’s wings with their clean
early light cast from the planet whose sight
leads men straightly on every road. The scene
diminished and I felt the force of fright
lessen in the lake of my heart, that fear
I felt so piteously throughout the night.

My brothers & friends,
Perhaps many of you recognize those lines of poetry; they are from Dante’s Divine Comedy. Dante’s words came to me when I was reflecting on the opening scene of our Easter Gospel tonight. It is “deep dawn” (Matthew tells us) on the first day of the week & Mary of Magdala and the other Mary are on their way to visit the tomb. We have two friends since the early days in Galilee; two women who have lost the One they loved most in all the world. Where are these two women going?

We know the answer from our own life experience and here we step more fully into this Gospel.

Where do the mothers & widows & sisters of Palestine or Israel go today?
Where do the mothers & widows & sisters of Iraq or Syria go today?
Where do the mothers & widows & sisters of our own deployed military go today?

The answer is right here in the Easter Gospel. Matthew tells us simply the two women are going to see, to touch, the grave – the tomb – of their beloved One. Unlike Mark Or Luke, the women are not going to do something – to anoint the body – no, they are simply going to BE there at the tomb of their loss.
The indeed find themselves this early morning in a dark wood, savage, dense, and strange – a place so bitter.

And yet, I want these two Marys to hear the words of our Father, St. Bernard in his first sermon for Easter.

We should ponder in diligent thought – he writes – what is that which is especially commended to us by this glorious solemnity of Easter. As for myself, I take it to be three things: 1) a resurrection, 2) a passage, and 3) a transmigration. For Christ has not fallen back today, but has risen: He has not returned, but passed on:

Now, however, having Himself passed on to a newness of life, He invites us also to make the same passage, He summons us to Galilee …

And so the women’s’ journey is interrupted by the sudden, blinding, flash of lightning – in the “deep dawn” of their awareness and the message delivered by an angel (because it is so foreign to our world)
Those four powerful words repeated throughout the Easter Gospels:

Do not be afraid.

Aside from the fact of the empty tomb – the evangelists don’t agree on much of anything concerning Easter Morning – BUT this they all agree on – The message / the experience / of Easter is this Do not be afraid whenever you find yourself in that secret dark wood of your own life’s loss & mystery.

Easter intercepts our life’s journey and calls us out to another journey toward others..out of isolation and into community (communion).
It is the angel who intercepts the journey of the 2 Marys this morning:

Come and see the place where he lay,
Then go quickly and tell his disciples.

The two women turn and run toward the community and then they see Jesus. And what does Jesus say to them?

Do not be afraid – Go and tell my brothers that they must leave for Galilee; they will see me there.

In this one final verse of our gospel is the truest – most intimate – experience of the Risen Christ by the earliest disciples. The very person of Jesus Risen unites these scattered deserters (each lost in his own “dark and savage wood). Jesus brings them together and calls them his brothers and sisters and sends them on a journey together.

Where? Not to some exotic destination but “return to Galilee” enter again your everyday life with me for others…that’s what it means to return to Galilee. You will see me there.

Earliest tradition has it that Peter & John and the others first returned to fishing – BUT it was all different now – They were a community called together & breakfasting on the shore with the Risen One! I am reminded of another fisherman, the South American poet Juan Ramon Jimenez who wrote:

I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there, in the depths,
against a great thing.
And nothing
happens! Nothing….Silence….Waves….

– Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
And are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

My sisters & brothers, let us join the two Marys this very early Easter morning – let us pray for one another, encourage one another, that we Do Not Be Afraid – that we discover that New Life – the Risen One – within our own lives – within our own community – within our own families this Holy Season.

+ Abbot Peter McCarthy