Reading
and praying on these readings, it occurred to me – I don’t remember ever
hearing these readings, this Gospel, before.
So I did a little digging – and best I can come up with (and I could be
wrong) was that the last time we heard these readings proclaimed at Sunday Mass
was in 1989, 27 years ago. In every
third year since then, we’ve celebrated the feast of the Holy Trinity or Corpus
Christi on this date.
Many
times, it’s a real challenge to me to really listen to the readings, since I’m
so familiar with them, heard them so many times before. Not so this weekend. It almost seemed to me that someone slipped
in a couple new passages into the lectionary!
In
both our first reading and Gospel, we see the raising from the dead of a
widow’s son, first by God invoked by Elijah, then by the power of Jesus Christ,
in a miraculous sign of which word spread far and wide. And in our second reading St. Paul speaks of
a spiritual raising from the dead, speaking of His own conversion from a
persecutor of Christians to Apostle of the Lord, Apostle to the gentiles.
So
I think Holy Mother Church, by putting these three proclamations together,
wants us to focus on miracles – specifically miracles which bring death to
life!
Now
some people in our day and age read scripture and say we don’t have miracles
any more. Perhaps the miracles we
experience aren’t quite as visually earthshaking as the raising of the widows’
sons, but miracles we have - if we are open to seeing them.
Did
you ever walk into Wegmans in the middle of February, -2 degrees outside, and
stop in your tracks at the door, marveling at the beauty and abundance of the
fresh fruits and vegetables before you?
I have. I look at that and think
– that’s a miracle. Thank you, God.
The
last time I stood here and preached, there wasn’t a single leaf on the trees
and bushes, hardly a single flower in the gardens. When you leave Mass tonight(today), stop for
a moment and marvel at the miracle of springtime. The splendor of new life all around us.
Oh,
that’s beautiful, you might say, but not a miracle. It’s the way God made things to be. True enough, but isn’t that the miraculous
power of God bringing the light and life of springtime out of the darkness and
death of winter?
In
our own lives, we will see the miraculous power of God, if only we are open to
seeing. My mother and her sister went
like 30 years without speaking to each other.
I can’t tell you why that was.
Nor do I I know which one made the first gesture of reconciliation, or
if maybe someone else reached out to both of them to bring them together, but
as wonderful a person as my mom was, it was comforting to know that she didn’t
go to her grave distant from her own sister.
They reconciled. Buried whatever
hatchet caused 30 years of silence, distance.
Anyone who knows the darkness and death of broken, estranged
relationships, would call that a miracle.
In
my own marriage – eight or so years in – my wife Pam and I were very
distant. I was completely about my work,
she was totally busy with our three daughters, and we were drifting apart. Neither of us was happy, each with unmet
expectations of what married life was going to be like.
No
telling where our marriage would have ended up had not we been invited to make
a Marriage Encounter weekend. That was
the answer some fervent prayers – mostly my wife’s - as she was the one most in
tune with how distant we’d become. Somehow
by God’s grace I was open to making the weekend. That weekend, led by Kathy and Bill, Dale and
Lea, Barb and Dave and Basilian Father Jack Murray, was a life-changing three
days for us, a U-turn in our relationship with each other and with God. A rebirth of hope for our future
together. A renewal of the love we vowed
on our wedding day.
Now
you might say that’s no miracle, but to have experienced the grace and healing
and strength of the Holy Spirit as powerfully as we did on that weekend – well
to me that was a miracle. It was, in a
very real sense, Christ bringing light into darkness, life out of death. Through the words and example of His holy
priest, Father Jack, and these three couples who shared their stories and their
love.
You
see, I think the one takeaway from this weekend is that Christ desires to
continue to work miracles, as He did in St. Paul’s conversion, as He did for
the widow and her son, as He did for my wife and me. And to do that, since He’s no longer here to
walk and talk and listen and love, He calls you and me, He calls US the Church,
to work miracles in His name.
That’s
what Father Jack and the three couples who presented our Marriage Encounter
weekend did. And it’s what Pam and I
were called to do for the ten years or so after that, when we too presented
Marriage Encounter weekends, letting Christ use us to heal other couples
through the power of His Holy Spirit.
And
that’s what we are all called to this weekend.
Strengthened and nourished here by sharing in His Most Blessed Body and
Blood, we are called to go forth to seek miracles – to seek the mercy, the
healing and reconciliation that we need, and then to share our miracles, share
our healings, our reconciliations, our peace, our joy, with others.
For only through you
and me, brothers and sisters, can Our Blessed Lord continue to work miracles in
our world today.
