Second Sunday of Easter
April 3, 2005
I find it providential that at this painful and poignant
moment along our journey of faith, the Church consoles us with readings that
combine both idealism and realism. The description of the earliest Christian
community that we heard in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles is so
idealistic as to border on the unbelievable. The believers in Christ lived in
peace and they shared everything in common -- everything! They kept nothing for
themselves, they met together daily for prayer and Eucharist, and they witnessed
many signs and wonders done by the Apostles. And the community grew by leads and
bounds. Small wonder!
The note of realism comes, of course, in the gospel story
of doubting Thomas and I dare say that story probably rings a bit more true for
us than the idyllic one from Acts! But both stories are true and we need both in
order to keep our balance as we strive to live as faithful disciples of Christ.
The ideal Church and the real Church. They are one and the
same Church, the only Church we have, the Church Pope John Paul II has led with
single-hearted fidelity and uncommon courage for more than twenty-five years. In
so many ways he embodied in his own person the holiness of the church as he
fearlessly witnessed to the truth, called evil by its name, preached the Gospel
of Life, captured the imagination of the young, and called every one of us to
faithful discipleship.
Today at the 10:00 Mass we will be privileged to welcome
into the Church through the sacrament of Baptism, twelve beautiful babies, and
at the noon Mass, we will welcome a wonderful little group of young people who
will make their Profession of Faith, be confirmed, and receive the Holy
Eucharist for the first time. The Church these youngsters and infants become
part of is the Church we heard about in the reading from Acts but it is also the
Church of doubting Thomas. It’s the Church full of faith and the Church riddled
by doubt; the Church made one by the Eucharist and the Church divided by
controversy; the Church Pope John Paul II labored so mightily to hold together
and the Church he saw sometimes going its own way; the “perfectly imperfect
church” I sometimes like to call it.
This holy Church of sinners is the only Church there is.
At times we glory in its goodness and at other times we are disheartened by its
flaws. In our more enlightened and honest moments we are not surprised by its
ups and downs, its glories or its failures because they are our own ups and
downs, our own glories and failures. For the Church is not some abstract entity
way out there -- some impersonal institution off in Rome – the Church is people:
holy people, sinful people, people led by the Spirit of God, people dogged by
the spirit of evil. We are the Church!
As we strive to live our lives together as followers of
Christ we will sometimes reach the heights achieved by those first disciples who
embraced the gospel without compromise and lived it in its purest form, the
heights reached by Pope John Paul. At other times, we will more closely resemble
Thomas, the hard-headed doubter who wanted no part of the darkness of faith. But
even then – even then – Christ will find a way to break through to us as he did
to Thomas: gently chiding us but never rejecting us, coaxing us to reach beyond
our sins and our doubts and to touch his wounds, touch the Divine Mercy that
flows so freely and abundantly in the Church, in the healing grace of the
Sacraments.
Dear friends, our Church stands at a new and uncertain
moment as we mourn the loss of an extraordinary Pope, a Pope who for more than a
generation has defined the papacy, a Pope who in many ways has been larger than
life. He became the conscience of both Church and world as he crisscrossed the
globe courageously calling people to a higher and a deeper morality, calling all
of us to be our best selves, our most Christian selves: to free the oppressed,
to care for the poor, to feed the hungry, to defend human life and protect human
dignity at every moment and every stage, to work for peace.
My friends, we do stand at a new and uncertain moment as a
Church but we do not stand alone. The same Lord who inspired the earliest
Christian believers to the heights of holiness and who elicited from fearful,
doubting Thomas a dazzling act of faith is with us now and will be with us until
the end of time. We are not alone.
Father Michael G. Ryan
Cathedral Pastor
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