April 21, 2024
Love and relationships, “sexual orientation, and gender identity” are high-profile issues today. How do today’s readings shed light on them?
Key Points
- “Do not speak in that name.”
- What does St. Peter say about “that Name”?
- What does St. John Paul II say the human person needs to understand themself?
- What is the mystery that Jesus alone can reveal in us?
This is a computer-generated transcription that has been included to make the homily searchable. It has not been verified by the author.
“Leaders of the people and elders, it was in the name of Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. In his name, this man stands before you healed. He is the stone rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.” So this is St. Peter very early on in the Acts of the Apostles. And already, there’s this great opposition of the powers to Jesus, to proclaiming Jesus. And we experience that today, there’s growing opposition to the name of Jesus, the power of evil is increasing. And the domination of evil wants to stamp out any proclamation of Jesus, and to proclaiming the truth of Jesus Christ. And there’s an issue today, in which we see that maybe most intensely, it’s the well, the issues around marriage, and the family, around relationships, and love. And in the language of the faith, we hear so much today about sexual orientation and gender identity. And there’s a strategy which is very well planned and executed, deceptive and very effective today. Like for instance, using things like social media and like tick tock and using that to manipulate; especially young people are the most vulnerable. And, you know, through entertainment, and through education, and so forth. And almost all the powerful institutions in our society have already been co-opted and controlled for this agenda. And so this is a very sensitive topic because all of us want to be loved and accepted and appreciated. In the area of our effectivity, of our sexuality, the relationship between men and women, is an area that has experienced a lot of pain, a lot of suffering since the Garden of Eden and original sin. And, in this situation, the disorder that sin has caused and the woundedness that sin has caused in all of us. It’s an area that a lot of people have felt confused and unsure, misunderstood, marginalized. Some people today have been, especially in this area have been intolerant, of imposing our morality, have been harsh and judgmental, lacking compassion for those who are different, causing unnecessary and great suffering, and depriving people of love and happiness. And so is there any truth to that? Have we always been faithful witnesses to Jesus, to His truth and His mercy? Well, no, we haven’t. Right? We are Christians, we have to humbly recognize and ask forgiveness for the times in which we haven’t been faithful to what Jesus calls us to be, He calls us to be for others, when we have hurt others. And so Jesus calls us both to truth and to love. Some people want to defend the truth, but they end up lacking love. And some people want to be loving and compassionate, but they end up sacrificing the truth. And so the answer is, we need both of those in Jesus, that’s His truth and His love. So the answer is not to abandon Jesus, or to diminish Jesus, but on the contrary, to be more faithful to Him. And that’s the best service that we can render to our wounded world, is a greater fidelity to Jesus, even if it’s not always accepted and appreciated. And so that’s what we see Peter proclaiming today. And he’s proclaiming it, striking that he’s proclaiming that right after healing somebody, proclaiming that it’s not him who healed, but it’s Jesus. He says, “by the name of Jesus Christ, this man is standing before you well. By the name of Jesus Christ. This man is standing before you well. The only one who can heal our deepest wounds is Jesus Christ.” All of us are wounded, and only Jesus can heal our deepest wounds. We’re celebrating now this Easter time, of celebration of His resurrection. And I’ll share with you a little message that sister received last June, a little excerpt from it, where He said, “our Abba shall open the heavens in the second great deluge of mercy and grace.” Not like the first deluge with Noah, but there’s a deluge of mercy and grace that’s represented by the rage coming from our Lord. “Shall thunder upon all creation, what is broken, shall be made a new, what is wounded shall be healed in full, what is torn shall be restored, what is soiled shall be purified, what is dead shall be brought back to life.” So speaking of this infinite power of the resurrection of Jesus, St. Peter said, “this is the stone which was rejected,” that Jesus is “the stone, which was rejected by you, the builders, but which has become the cornerstone, and there is salvation in no one else. For there is no other name under heaven, among men by which we must be saved.” So there’s no one else who can bring about this work of salvation. Only Jesus can liberate us. Only He can save us. Only He can transform us to the glory that God calls us to, that God wants us to experience. Only He can fully illuminate the full truth of each one of us. You know, today that these issues that I mentioned at the beginning, are treated so superficially, you know, so with likes, sound bites, and bumper stickers, and like love is love and so superficially. And Jesus tells us that it’s the truth. It’s not slogans. It’s not superficial slogans. It’s the truth that will set us free. And I want to read you a passage from St. John Paul. This was from his very first encyclical called Redemptor Hominis, the redeemer of man. And it’s a little bit long, but it’s, I think, it illuminates this very well. He says, “Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself. His life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it, and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in love. That is why Christ the Redeemer, fully reveals man to himself,” and the Pope would come back often to this, “that the only way for Man to understand himself fully is in Jesus Christ. In the mystery of the redemption, man finds again, the greatness, the dignity and value that belongs to his humanity. In the mystery of the redemption Man is created new, he is newly created.” Again scripture says, I make all things new. “The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly, must not just in accordance with the immediate partial and often superficial and even illusory standards and measures of his being,” which is what most of the discussion is today. He says, “But he must with his unrest,” listen to how realistic this is, “he must with his unrest, and uncertainty, and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life, and death, drawn near to Christ,” draw near to Christ, he must, so to speak, enter into him with all his own self, he must appropriate and assimilate the whole of reality of the incarnation and redemption, in order to find himself.” Now, so many people speak of need to finding themselves today, and the Pope was saying in entering into Jesus, that a man can find himself. “If this profound process takes place within him, he then bears fruit not only of adoration of God, but also a deep wonder of himself. How precious must man be,” and of course, man is saying, meaning the human person, men and women, “be in the eyes of the Creator, if he gained so great a redeemer, and if God gave His only Son, in order that man should not perish but have eternal life. In reality, the name for that deep amazement at man’s worth and dignity is the gospel. That is to say the good news, it is also called Christianity.” That is, the gospel is the revelation of this great good news of man’s dignity. “The redemption that took place through the cross has definitively restored his dignity to man and given back meaning to his life in this world, and meaning that was lost to a considerable extent, because of sin. The Church’s fundamental function in every age, and particularly in ours,” so what is it?, “The church’s fundamental function in every age, and particularly in ours, he says, is to direct man’s gaze, to point the awareness and experience of the whole of humanity, towards the mystery of God, to help all men to be familiar with the profundity of the redemption, taking place in Christ Jesus,” or in other words, to reveal Jesus, to reveal Jesus and in Jesus, that man finds all that he is looking for. So Jesus reveals as the pope is saying, the mystery of who we are, St. John said in reading today, “see what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called children of God. Yet so we are, the reason the world does not know us is it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We know that when it is revealed, we shall be like Him.” That’s unbelievable what he says that we shall be like Him, “for we shall see Him as He is.” And so we could summarize this in three stages, which I’ll call source, sin and Savior. Source, how God created us, sin, what sin and satan did to us. And then what Jesus calls us to do. So the source or origin, created by the Father’s love, infinitely cherished, each one of us, called to share His divine joy forever. That’s what He wants us, to share forever, His infinite happiness, by calling us to union with Him. And right from the very beginning, we read that God made us male and female. And so there’s a great mystery. Now this issue is treated again so superficially today, in which there’s actually a great mystery. Because it touches something so intimate of our, of the human person, our capacity for love, as the Catechism says, “our capacity to freely give of ourselves, and to enter into communion with another person.” As the Pope was saying, that man’s fundamental call is a call to love. Or vocation is a call to love, and to share God and that love for that love to be fruitful, fruitful, physically, but especially fruitful spiritually. And so that so man is made in the likeness of God, and God has not called solitude, but God is a loving communion of persons. And man is called to manifest that in his experience of love. But of course, that’s why God created us, but there’s then sin, satan, and the sin he brought, because satan is jealous of the love that God has for us. And so he’s introduced his lies, his cruelty, his deception, attacking this precious and vulnerable capacity in us. And his attacks in sin have caused so much pain and darkness. And all of us have been affected by it, since we were very little, all of us. And then there’s Original Sin, there’s the sin that has affected us, there’s our own sin. And we can make it worse by continuing to sin. Or we can take the hand of our Savior. And that leads us to the third point, the source, the sin and the Savior. St. Peter says their salvation in no one else, because only He, the Good Shepherd, understands us fully, because He knows what it is to be misunderstood, to be rejected, to be wounded, to be judged, to be crucified, but His love has triumphed. And only He can love us the way our souls need to be loved. This, the reading today from the Acts showed a beggar who is healed by the word of Jesus, only Jesus has the gentle, compassionate touch of divine healing. You know, I think for instance of those who have like burn victims, who are, who’ve experienced such a terrible, such a terrible burn on that they can’t be touched at all without that just intensifying their pain. And, and there’s a lot of people who are like that; they’ve been hurt so badly their souls, their hearts have been hurt so badly. Jesus is the only one who has that gentle, powerful healing touch, in which mercy and truth are united. And so that today there’s a lot of discussion, a lot of confusion about what it means to be a man, and what it means to be a woman. We know there’s all sorts of different ideas, and all sorts of different opinions. And so where can we find the truth. And I think here just in our chapel, we have a very clear example. It’s looking to Jesus, and looking to His mother, that we see the fullness of manhood, the fullness of womanhood. Jesus, the fullness of manhood, so strong and courageous, at the same time, so gentle, and compassionate. And Mary, the fullness of womanhood, so tender, and loving, but at the same time, so strong, and so brave. But differently, one as a man, and one as a woman. The first reading shows us, Peter, Peter, who had failed at a critical time, and as witness to Jesus, when Jesus was arrested. But then, so Peter, in a sense, represents us with all our weakness and woundedness. But then, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, Peter first had to fall and realize how weak, Peter was trusting in himself, that’s when he fell. But when, after he fell, and he realized how weak he was, and that he was a weak sinner, that’s when he could be open to the power of the Holy Spirit and could become a healing witness of Jesus and not just a healing witness, but not just a faithful witness, but a healing witness who was transmitting the healing grace of Jesus Christ. And like Peter, we are wounded sinners, who have been unfaithful, who have been weak sometimes. But in our wounded, desperate world today, we are called now by the grace of the Holy Spirit, to be faithful witnesses, healing witnesses, to the only Savior, Jesus Christ, the infinite source of love. And so in our world, which is so complicated, and so confusing today, and that’s part of the tactic of satan, to fill us with so many opinions, and so many experts and so forth, that we have no idea. And so what satan is trying to do, is to get the message of Jesus lost in a lot of confusion and the chaos of ideas and opinions. And so we need something very simple. You know, Jesus talked about grace. So having, for instance, the image of Divine Mercy, or the image of the Sacred Heart, or a crucifix in his home, and how much just that simple image, which calls us back to Jesus, because in Jesus is all the truth that we need. And with Mary, because Mary is like, a transparent window, who shows us Jesus Christ, who always leads us to Jesus, we can’t look at Mary without coming to Jesus. And so, in this difficult, painful, confused, suffering world, and especially suffering, as I mentioned, in his very intimate issues, we know that this the response the solution is in Jesus Christ, the one that we have come, the one that (we are shivering now,) where you came to Mass, and this not a comfortable situation, why did you come? You came not to listen to Father John Mary, you came for Jesus, you came to encounter Jesus, and for yourself, but also for all the people that you are carrying in your heart. All the people that you know, that need Him. And so you’re coming to Jesus and you’re saying, Jesus, I’m becoming a penguin today. Shivering like this little penguins, are doing it for you to come to you. And for all those most in need of your mercy, because as Saint Peter says, there is salvation in no one else. Jesus, we trust in you. Amen. I’m just going to say a few words in Spanish.
KEYWORDS / PHRASES:
Acts 4:8-12
1 John 3:1-2
John 10:11-18