Sacred Heart Parish

Homilies

Announcements

We are looking for persons able to transcribe the audio portion of our town meetings.
Please call the rectory if you can help.


HOLY THURSDAY (B)

  1. The Creed we profess at every Sunday Liturgy seems chock full of mysteries; but there is only one mystery, the mystery of the Holy Trinity and the plan of God’s “good pleasure” for all creation. God the Father accomplished “the mystery of his will” by giving his beloved Son and Holy Spirit for the salvation of the world and for the glory of his name. St. Paul had a major role in the proclamation of God’s plan to save and sum up all things in Christ. The “Year of St. Paul” suggests that we focus on Paul’s teaching as we seek inspiration and strength and thus deepen our efforts to follow Christ this holy week.

  2. St. Paul writes to the Church at Corinth: “When I came to you, brothers and sisters, proclaiming the mystery of God, I did not come with sublimity of words or of wisdom. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my message and my proclamation were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of spirit and power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.” Yet Paul was quick to add – “Yet we do speak a wisdom to those who are mature, but not a wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away. Rather, we speak God’s wisdom, mysterious and hidden, which God predetermined before the ages for our glory, and which none of the rulers of this age knew for, if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” Paul then quotes from the Book of Isaiah the prophet: “What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him. This God has revealed to us through the Spirit.”

  3. The Scriptures give many names to what St. Paul calls “the mystery of God”, and “the wisdom of God”. The Letter to the Colossians speaks of it as “the mystery hidden from ages and generations past, but now made manifest to his holy ones, to whom God chose to make known the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; it is Christ in you, the hope for glory”. The Letter to the Ephesians calls it “the plan of the mystery hidden from ages past in God who created all things”. In I Corinthians Paul calls it “the mystery of Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks”. The Liturgy calls it the paschal mystery, the Easter mystery, of Christ’s dying and rising for the world’s salvation. “His death is our ransom from death; his resurrection is our rising to new life.”

  4. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, quoting from the Second Vatican Council, tells us that this mystery of God’s good pleasure for all creation was not without precedents in salvation history – “The wonderful works of God among his people of the Old Testament were but a prelude to the work of Christ the Lord in redeeming mankind and in giving perfect glory to God. He accomplished this work principally by the paschal mystery of his blessed Passion, Resurrection from the dead and glorious Ascension, whereby ‘dying he destroyed our death, rising he restored our life’.” The event of Christ’s dying and rising is the event that the church must always celebrate in the Liturgy until the end of time. The event of Christ’s dying and rising is the event you and I are called to live from and be witness to in the every day liturgy of faith-filled lives as we seek to be imitators of God as his dear children and follow the way of love by our acts of faith, hope and love. For our reflection this evening I would like to focus on this event as expressed in the second preface prayer for the Passion of the Lord. The prayer reads: “The days of his life-giving death and glorious resurrection are approaching. This is the hour when Christ triumphed over Satan’s pride, the time when we celebrate the great event of our redemption.”

  5. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that during his earthly life, Jesus announced his paschal mystery by his teaching and anticipated it by his actions. When his hour comes, he lives out this unique event of history which does not pass away; Jesus dies, is buried, rises from the dead and is seated at the right hand of the Father – once for all. Christ’s paschal mystery is a real event that occurred in our history, but it is unique; all other historical events happened once and then passed away. The paschal mystery by contrast cannot remain only in the past, because by his death, Christ destroyed death, and all that Christ is – all that he did and suffered for us – participates now in God’s eternity and so transcends all time while being made present in them all.

  6. You will remember from John’s Gospel Jesus’ words at the Wedding Feast of Cana – “My hour has not yet come”. Later on John writes – “Jesus spoke his words in the temple treasury, but no one arrested him because his hour had not yet come”; but tonight things are quite different tonight – As our Gospel has expressed it – “Before the feast of Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father. He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end.” The hour of Jesus is the paschal mystery, first in the hidden event of Good Friday’s cross, but then manifested to all times and all peoples through Easter Sunday’s glorious resurrection. God saves us by Christ’s death and resurrection. What does this mean? One writer says – He does not do this by teaching us theology or even by his command of love. And so we must ask ourselves, as the author Jean Corbon reminds us – What good would all the teachings of religions, philosophies and the many sciences of the world be for us if the one basic question remains untouched; and that one question is the mystery of death. Corbon writes – “Of what use to me are models of morality and the fine promises of life as long as the root of the tragedy of life, that is, death, has not been pulled up and destroyed – not tomorrow but now. This is the only really important question. Everything else is a passing episode and distraction.”

  7. On this solemn evening, as we reflect on the Eucharist and the priesthood and the command of love, we begin the Sacred Triduum which plunges us into the ever-abiding, ever-present paschal event. We plunge into the waters which the prophet Ezekiel called “the river of life”, as we die to sin and selfishness, and rise in faith and hope to eternal life. And so we pray, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, by the will of the Father and the work of the Holy Spirit, your death brought life to the world. By your holy body and blood, free me from my sins and from every evil. Keep me faithful to your teachings and never let me be parted from you.”